The Gypsy

by Stephen Brust

  Been asking for the cost

  So I can make amends,

  Been waiting for the questions

  So my answers will make sense,

  Been looking for the way home

  But the snow is much too dense.

  "NO PASSENGER"

  Maybe it was a mistake to stay sober, for this was certainly not the coach.

  Ten years ago their language would have been giggles; now it was full of strange words and hints of things these two couldn't know enough to hint about. But it was really no different. Fourteen? Fifteen? Sixteen? Wishing they were eighteen, which was the age at which they would be trying to be twenty-two. And they were dressed-how? What did it mean here and now? What had it ever meant? Maybe it was a mistake to stay sober, for this was certainly not the coach.

  He climbed into the driver's seat, pretending that he was climbing up high on top, above the count and his current mistress, who sat inside, below, with the curtains pulled against the wind from the mountains and-

  But never mind. The horses knew him by now, and Bunny's ears flicked back as he spoke to them. Bunny liked his voice, had liked it the first time they'd epsilon was slower, but her neck came up high, like a feeble old grandmother who pretends, for a moment, to her former pride and health. Heh.

  There were only the five of them. Bunny, Stallone,and two children as he set off; and, of the five, the two passengers were in their own world, one of cars and boys and stolen cigarettes. He picked up their names from their conversation, but said nothing because they didn't speak to him, and habit is habit,and a job is a job, even if a ride through the park isn't a race against a mountain storm.

  "Hey, driver," said the one called Sue. "Can't you make this thing go any faster?"

  "Yes," he said, "I can." But he didn't- The question made him realize how much he enjoyed these occasional chances at the seat; he wouldn't risk them for the likes of these.

  "Oh come on," said the other one. "Let's really move."

  For a moment, something almost snapped, but he held it back. Every time the young "driver" (he couldn't be called a coachman) let him use his "rig"(it couldn't be called a coach) two or three customers would try to make him race the horses, or attempt to bribe him to take them off the regular path. He was always tempted, but he held it back.

  The one called Sue began to abuse him, but he stopped listening. The wife of one of his old masters used to do that, two or three times a week, when he refused to take the Bobolos Trail (which his master had forbidden). He was good at ignoring abuse.

  But he heard the other one say, "Oh, cut it. Sue.It's his job."

  There was a sound like Bunny made when she got food in her nose. "Some job. Shit. Driving snotty assholes around the park all day."

  The Coachman remained impassive.

  "It's probably all he can get. Right, mister?"

  That called for an answer. "It is what I do," he said.

  "What," said Sue. "You can't get a taxi gig, so you do this?"

  "I am the Coachman," he said.

  "So?"

  "I am the Coachman."

  "Is that s'posed to mean something?"

  "My horses are called Vision, Experience, Wisdom,and Love. By the skills of my hands I hold the reins of Will and Desire. I will take you by roads that climb and fall, twist and go straight."

  He was no longer speaking to them, didn't care if they listened, or even if they could hear him. "Sometimes the horses try to run wild, and I fight them, or let them run, as may be. Sometimes they go where I guide them,and I can bring you to places of which you have never dreamed, or perhaps you have. Sometimes you, in the coach, may direct me, and then I will bring you where you wish. Perhaps you will be glad to arrive.

  "But, always and ever, I drive the coach.

  "I am the Coachman. You are here. Ten dollars,please."

  He watched sadly as they walked away after paying him and even tipping him a quarter. Across the path,a man who was far too old for them watched them leave with an intensity that, in another place and time,would have gotten him hanged. But this was here and now. The Coachman reached down into the seat for his bottle, thought better of it, shook his head and went around to scratch Bunny between her ears.

  "I am the Coachman," he told her.

  She nodded.

  FOUR

  The Wolf and the Badger

  12 NOV 15:51

  Can't take the aggravation;

  I'm tired to the bone.

  I'm sick of watching cable

  and sleeping here alone.

  "STEPDOWN"

  The park was a pleasant place, still. The neighborhood around it was declining, and the people walking the paths and the mothers pushing babies in strollers reflected the change, but the park itself-the plantings,the grass, the pond-seemed immune to the changing fortunes of the economy. More swings were vandalized, perhaps, and the ducks more wary of stone throwers, but the park itself was still nice. Cold. Quiet,this time of the morning.

  Stepovich found a bench and sat, facing the play equipment. A small boy dug determinedly in the sandbox, despite the cold and the snow. A couple walked by the pond. The swings hung slack and empty. He could remember sitting on one of those swings, holding Jeffrey and swinging. And singing.Old songs, the same old songs his dad had sung to him. And Jennie and Laurie feeding the ducks, pretending they didn't know the strange man who was belting out "Barnacle Bill The Sailor" to the little kid on his lap, swinging high and pumping his legs to carry them even higher.

  For one aching instant, he wondered if Jeffrey could remember any of that. Jeffrey had been so small. Stepovich reached back into himself, trying to see where his own memories of his father began. But he couldn't put a date to it. Big hands. That's what he thought of when he remembered his father. Big hands, with the thick nails rounded off short. Big hands that could swing him up to touch his head against the ceiling,but could also tie his shoelaces in double knots that wouldn't come undone. He looked at his own hands,and wondered if Jeffrey would ever remember them.

  He glanced from his hands to the ground. Two small sneakers faced him. He looked up to find the sandbox kid regarding him steadily with confident brown eyes. "Push me," he said, and then fumed and ran toward the swings. Stepovich didn't move. The boy grabbed the chain of one swing, rattled it impatiently. Stepovich pulled himself to his feet,wondering why, and obediently came to help the boy get into the swing. He pushed him, small pushes at first, and then as he laughed aloud and kicked out his short legs, harder. Then, "Down, down," he was saying, and Stepovich caught at him, slowing the swing's momentum, catching boy and swing and easing them to a stop. The kid jumped from the swing,his shirt pulling out of his jeans.

  "Merry-go-round," he announced, and reached up for Stepovich's hand.

  "A moment, little man," he said, and knelt to tug the boy's shirt straight and pull his jeans back up over his shirt tail. The boy wriggled in his hands, giggling as if tickled.

  "Get up, you son of a bitch!"

  Stepovich came up from his knee in a controlled spin that put him face to face with the male half of the duck-feeding couple. He had muscular arms and a punk's spoiled face and he was still trying to look tough as he stepped back from Stepovich. "Touch my kid's pants again, I'll kill you, asshole," he snarled. Stepovich glanced past him, habit of a career, keep the eyes moving, and spotted the woman, still clutching her bag of bread. She was watching the scene with neither fear nor anxiety, but absorption, as if it were her two o'clock soap- Stepovich's eyes went back to punk dad, locked there. He kept his face impassive as he said, "The kid's shirt was untucked."

  "Yeah, I'll bet it was," Dad sneered, rocking away as if he knew how deep and still the other's anger was. He sidestepped Stepovich at a distance he probably believed was out of fist range and glared at the kid. "You, Jamie. Didn't I tell ya never to let no one touch you? You let that old faggot shove his hands down your pants?"

  Jamie's eyes went from bright to confounded. Much like Stepo
vich, the boy could think of nothing to say.

  "You get your ass over to your mother. Right now." And as the boy scrambled away. Dad put his fists on his hips and swelled his chest. "I oughta kick your ass for touching my kid. I catch you hanging out around here again, I just might, old man."

  "I wasn't molesting your child," Stepovich spoke softly. "But if you want to try kicking my ass, feel free." Little bits of anger, floating loose for days, at Durand for answering the phone wrong and always being such a dumbshit pup, at the old gypsy woman for dying so ugly, at the Gypsy for not knowing or giving him the answers to who had killed her, all the little bits of anger were coalescing in him, not hot,but cold and uncaring. He'd rip him a new asshole.He'd make him bleed, not the easy blood from nose and cheekbones, but the deep blood that comes out over the tongue and chokes a man with his own salt.

  Punk Dad took a step back. "There's laws in this town about people like you. We don't like your kind."

  "It's mutual," Stepovich said softly. His hand went slowly to his jacket pocket, groping after the knife as he set his balance and waited. A smile he didn't feel gripped his face and twisted his mouth.

  Something in punk Dad's face changed when Stepovich smiled at him. His own sneer faded, to be replaced with an uncertain fear. A fear that blustered."You touch me, I'm calling a cop."

  Stepovich had started to lift his foot for the step towards him when the horn sounded. No little import car toot, but the deep throated bellow of the all-American Cadillac. The punk glanced toward it as he was backing away and Stepovich's eyes instinctively followed.

  Ed. In his goddamn baby blue land-yacht. The window glided down and Ed leaned out. Even across the distance, his dark brown eyes locked with Stepovich's and drew his anger out like a poultice draws poison from a wound. The couple and the kid were gone, the father hurrying them down the pond walkway and Stepovich was halfway to the car before he had his next thought.He felt just wakened from a dream. He took his hand from his pocket, half-surprised to find it empty.

  As he got in the passenger side, Ed demanded,"What was that all about?"

  "Damned if I know," Stepovich replied, settling back in the seat and stretching his legs out. One thing this car had was room. Lousy gas mileage, and a dinosaur in a parking garage, but roomy. Ed toed the gas pedal and they glided away from the curb.

  "I didn't even recognize you for a minute, back there, you know," Ed pushed.

  "Yeah. Me neither." The car interior was warm after the morning's brisk air. It smelled of car wax and spice from the little tree-shaped car deodorizer and Ed's pipe tobacco. Stepovich leaned back into it as if it were a summer hammock. "Sometimes," he said conversationally, "I feel like an old bull elephant. One the young males have driven out of the herd. And any time I get close at all to the females or the young,they turn on me- Instinctively. You ever feel anything like that?"

  "You need a few days off, Mike," Ed told him.

  "I need a few days off like you need a few days of work."

  "Well, maybe that's true, too. So why don't we combine them. You take a week off and help me do a little work on this baby, and then go fishing on the lake. Or maybe get out of Ohio all together. I know a kid in Michigan, in the U.P., who said he could get me a special rate on cabins on Black Lake."

  "What you doing to this car now?" Stepovich asked idly. Not that he was actually considering Ed's plans. But it was easier to distract him into talking about the Caddy than it was to argue with Mm.

  "Automatic dimmer switch. See, it's a two person thing. I'm supposed to be able to set it on automatic,and then it dims when it senses oncoming headlights,and goes back to bright after they're past."

  Ed was lighting his pipe, a nerve-wracking juggling of steering wheel, pipe, tobacco and lighter. Stepovich looked out the window and reminded himself of all the times their squad car had survived the pipe-lighting ritual, and observed, "You had the Caddy dealer adjust that a month ago."

  "Yeah, well, they didn't get it right," Ed replied testily.

  "Oh." The dealership never got anything right according to Ed. He was always redoing adjustments he'd just had them make.

  "No. It dims way too late. So, what I need is someone outside the car, to set off the dimmer switch with a light, while I'm inside doing the adjustment. Won't take long, I promise. And then we can go fishing."

  It would take four hours, if it didn't take all day.The Caddy was an older model, a pre-gas-crisis dinosaur among cars and Ed's pride and joy. He insisted that everything in it had to work perfectly, not just the power windows and the clock, but the automatic dimmers and the adjustable steering column and the hydraulic load levelers and the button in the glove compartment that opened the trunk from inside the car.Sometimes Stepovich got tired just thinking about all the gadgets in the damn car. And there wasn't a one that Ed hadn't taken apart and put back together. He was always saying that when he got it running perfectly, he was going to take off, crisscross the U.S., see the whole country.

  "Well," said Ed. "What about the fishing?"

  Stepovich half turned in his seat. "There's this gypsy," he said, not even knowing that he was going to say it. But once he had started he told him, not just what had happened, but all of it: The knife and the dream and the creepy feeling and the crystal in the old gypsy woman's bag. By the time he had finished,they were pulling into the parking lot of the Shamrock Bar and Grille. Ed stopped the car and turned the key and the gentle vibration of the engine ceased. He looked across at Stepovich.

  "Well?" asked Stepovich after a long pause.

  "I think you need to go fishing," Ed replied.

  They got roast beef on rye and potato salad and dark Becks to go with it and the sweet hot mustard- horseradish spread that was the Shamrock's only claim to fame. They sat in a high-backed booth with red leather on the seats and ate as they had eaten when they were partners, companionably, without speech, giving their attention to the food and trusting some other parts of themselves to pay attention to whatever problem was currently besieging them. Occasionally Stepovich stole a glance at Ed. He hadn't changed that much. A little thicker, his chest merging into his belly. Less hair, and what there was getting grayer. Same snapping dark eyes. Eyes that could ask one question while Ed was asking a suspect another,and half the time the guy would end up answering both questions before he'd thought about it. A good cop and a better friend.

  Stepovich went for two more Becks, and when he sat down, Ed asked, "You want I should look into it a little?"

  "How?"

  "Turn over a few rocks, shake out a few people who used to know things for me. Ask some tactless questions in ways you aren't allowed to ask them. You know."

  Stepovich did know. "I don't want you getting your ass in a crack over this," he said.

  Ed snorted. "Give me a little credit. But here's the deal. I shake out what you want, then you take a week off and we go fishing. Right?"

  "Okay," Stepovich conceded. Some part of him felt relieved, and another part of him felt ashamed to have dragged Ed into this. Over what. Over a bad dream and a peculiar feeling.

  "Feeling guilty?" Ed read him, and Stepovich nodded sheepishly.

  "Good." Ed grinned wickedly. "We can spend the rest of the day adjusting my automatically adjusting dimmers."

  AFTERNOON

  I got no home I can go back to,

  I got no one to call a friend.

  I can't find the place I started.

  I can only guess how it will end.

  "HIDE MY TRACK"

  They almost caught you, said the Voice. They almost caught you, and now they're closing in.

  Timothy moaned and rolled over, pushed damp sheets away from him, and pounded his fist into the pillow. The Voice didn't go away, though; it never did. They almost caught you, it repeated. He sobbed.

  Tim, it said. Timothy. Little Timmy.

  "No!" he cried. He hated being called Little Timmy. He'd always hated that. Little Timmy got pushed around. Little Timmy got beat up, a
nd, most of all. Little Timmy got laughed at.

  Little Timmy, said the Voice.

  He sat up and cried to the air, not caring by this time if the whole building heard him. "If they catch me it's your fault. You said you'd protect me, damn you."

  There was a pause, but then the voice inside his skull answered him. Damn me? it said. How redundant.Timmy felt a shudder go through him, and, more than anything else, he wanted to be away. But it wouldn't let him go. I disguised you, Timothy. I made you look like someone else, and the police caught him, but he escaped.You were almost found three days ago, Timothy, but I protected you. So you see-

  "You did that?" he spoke to the walls, and there was hysteria in his voice. "I did that. You made me kill an old woman who had never-"

  Shush, Timothy. You tire me. Yes, you killed her, but what took you so long? Was she too strong for you? If you had killed her quickly, they wouldn't be after you. But I acted to protect you. Now 1 will act again. It is time for you to get up and go out. It is no longer enough to count on your police, Timothy. You must act yourself.

  He sat on the bed and looked at his hands. There was a power there, as there was a power in the Voice. His stomach churned once more as he thought of the old woman, her eyes bright with anger and pride and hate, and he felt the fear in his bowels as she had struck the gun from his hand, and then he'd been holding a knife, and where had it come from? And where did it go?

  "What must I do?" he said.

  The knife has fallen from our hands, and we could not use it against him in any case. You must get your gun. I will tell you what to do with it.

  He still sat at the edge of the bed and stared at his hands, "Why are you doing this to me?" he asked.

  To his surprise, she answered.

  Because I can. Little Timmy.

  MID-AUTUMN, AFTER SUNRISE

  I keep finding hands to help me with the load

  So I'll keep walking further up this road.