Steve Vernon Special Edition Gift Pack, Vol 1

by Vernon, Steve

  I reached over to my cupboard and poured some wine into my communion cup. The cup was one of the few souvenirs I'd brought from the church.

  There's a lot you can pick up from a communion cup. The priests will tell you that between the Holy Spirit and the alcohol in the wine you're perfectly safe, but that's just a gentle lie for you to swallow. The cups are highly pestilent. Streptococci, diptheroids, lactobacilli and staphylococcus, not to mention the ever popular herpes simplex virus. Would you like some fries with that?

  That's how life works. There's always a taint that creeps into everything. A little mold in the basement, a little funk between the toes.

  Nothing is immune.

  I refilled the communion cup. I took a deep swallow. Never underestimate the healing qualities of a good cheap cabernet.

  Robert Bruce slept on, twitching as if he were dreaming something that would best be painted by Hieronymus Bosch. I wondered if I had healed him or hurt him far beyond my imagination.

  "God knows," I whispered.

  I figured I had saved him. Figured I might even be able to raise him. I figured a lot of things, but the fact was I knew shit.

  I knew shit, but I had faith. Sometimes that was enough.

  I took another sip of the wine, watching the boy sleep.

  I felt something move in the bottom of the cup.

  I looked down. There were shadows moiling in the cup, like eels, or something darker.

  I spat the wine out.

  I looked again.

  There was nothing. Nothing but some cheap cabernet.

  I poured the cabernet on the floor.

  The puddle of wine lay there in the darkness, looking a little like wine and a little like blood.

  I let it sit.

  The Shambles was no Hilton. It wasn't even a Holiday Inn.

  The sleeping quarters at The Shambles consisted of an open area that used to be the main floor of the sausage factory. I always thought of it as the killing floor. There were fifty-four beds, some made of metal, some made of wood, and some tinkered together from pallet board and prayer.

  There were a half a dozen florescent banks blinking and quavering high in the darkness. A tangle of wires eeled down from the places where we'd yanked the extra fixtures out for salvage. People here were used to the dark. We didn't fear it the way most people did. In a way, we were a part of it.

  Our eyes worked differently.

  Everybody snored. It was a hobby and a survival mechanism. You snored to drown out the other snoring bodies. You snored for company. Fifty-four men snoring all at once. Usually there were a lot more than fifty-four. The Shambles wasn't big on fire regulations. We were a haven and a last resort, no questions asked. If you didn't mind throwing a few blankets onto a concrete floor, there was always room for a fifty-fifth body.

  If you didn't mind the noise. Fifty-four or more men snoring all at once, hitting decibels that jet engines could only dream of. Low, guttering snarls and choked snores, like the sound a sewer might make if it figured out how to breathe. A dark, snotty, filthy and unwiped cacophony. A harmony of bulldozers, bullfrogs, and backfiring basset hounds.

  And above the din there rose a stench that completely overwhelmed the blood taint. A merciless odor of sweat, dirty nine-week-old socks, unwashed underwear crapped and pissed in. A miasma of body odor, halitosis and apathy. Men were dying, men were drowning in a slow decaying kind of letdown.

  They had let go of it, whatever the hell it was that had made living important to them. They had let go of hope, passion, and prayer. Nothing was going to save them. These men, sleeping in a fat, dreamless fog of alcohol and apnea, waiting for death to deliver them home.

  I sat there watching a thirteen-year-old boy sleeping.

  What was I doing?

  Robert Bruce had everything going for him. Despite his father and his lack of a mother he had a life ahead of him. I swore to myself that I would protect the promise of this boy's life. I would kill anyone who got in my way.

  I fell into deep, uneasy dreams.

  In my dreams I watched as tall, red men with skulls split like bishop's miters hauled live squealing pigs from up off of the gray concrete floor of The Shambles. I watched as they scalded the beasts with buckets of boiling water and scrubbed their hides off screaming clean.

  The pigs wriggled beneath the red men's ministrations. Their screaming sounded like the shrieks of women being raped by jackhammers. Their throats were slit and the red men caught all the remains in a shining golden goblet.

  There were meat hooks driven into the walls, and hanging off of each one of them was a corpse. I knew many of these men, both alive and dead. There was Montezuma, his face scalded the color of sunburned flamingos, runnels of soup juice bleeding out of his screaming pores.

  I didn't know what was wrong, and I didn't know how to help him.

  There on another hook, melting from the inside out like snow on a steam grate, was Lucius Cartland Maugham.

  I watched as a third man I thought I should know inflated like a forever beach ball, his eyes like a pair of silent shouts for help.

  I could do nothing but stand there and watch.

  I kept looking around, half expecting to see the bludgeoned batter of Robert Bruce's father's face; but instead, I watched in amazement as a smiling Jesus Christ walked across the pools of blood, stinking of pig guts and grinning like he'd just won the lottery. He wore a long leather apron with a huge red Templar cross splashed upon it.

  "Blood and sacrifice, that's what we need," he shouted, clapping his hands like the major domo of the damned. "Just like the old days."

  He looked a lot like a young Charles Bronson, hard and capable and ready for a fight. Then Jesus H. Bronson grinned at me and showed me his fists, balling them up and squeezing them tight. His knuckles were knotted and horned, and a row of brass crosses grew from each knuckle. It looked like blood was flowing between the crosses, wet and organic and telling no lies.

  Then Jesus H. Bronson pointed up at something high on the walls of The Shambles. I looked up to see a naked Robert Bruce duct taped to a crucifix made out of barbed wire and scrap lumber.

  "There he is," Jesus H. Bronson said. "Up there, dying for your sins. You blame him, and he accepts your blame."

  Robert Bruce's body was bleeding, and the wounds were crying open like small puckered mouths. The blood was crawling down his skin. I could see fingers moving in the blood, touching and squeezing and caressing.

  "I think we ought to punish him, don't you?" Jesus H. Bronson asked.

  I wanted to wake up, but I guess I didn't want to wake up hard enough.

  The Bronson Christ turned and hammered a straight left, getting his weight behind it, and slamming it into Robert Bruce's abdomen. It was the hardest punch I'd ever seen. The blow tore through Robert Bruce like he was made out of a Swiss cheese tunnel. Robert Bruce broke like the mother of all water balloons, his blood gushing out and flooding down.

  "That's how you've got to do it. Smite the fuckers just as hard as you can. Smite them hard and don't look back."

  The flow of blood washed over me, feeling cool and hot at the same time. I lay back in the running stream, tasting the salt and the hot red tang, naked and not giving a damn.

  And then Markie stood over me. He was on top of me, holding me down under the blood. I didn't fight back at all. I just lay there and let myself go.

  "You're mine," Markie said. "You belong to me."

  He leaned closer. I could see every pore of his face, open and needing. He was made of fog and ice vapor and darker things.

  "Savvy?" he whispered.

  His flesh seemed to liquefy and run, pouring down over me, engulfing me, swallowing me. I felt him moving inside me in a sort of hard total-body rape. I couldn't stop it. I was as helpless as a thirteen-year-old boy.

  He came at me like a long burning veil, all gun-steel and smoke, reaching for my throat with long pale fingers. There were tiny mouths on the end of each finger, puckering like
leech kisses. They stuck to my throat like misplaced candy.

  It felt good. A part of me wanted to let go.

  Then came the soul kiss. His mouth gaping open, like a tear in the skin of forever midnight, a wind sucking in and out of it, and his tongue a long, fat tombstone. I felt his tombstone tongue crawling down my throat, a tuberous insertion thick and sluglike, raped by fat, wet degrees. I would have gagged if I were still breathing.

  I chewed on his tongue, thinking of Montezuma, as I tried to bite it off. I might as well have been trying to gnaw on an ectoplasmic Jell-O phallus.

  I looked him in the eyes.

  Fuck you, bastard, I thought as hard as I could.

  "Th-th-that's all folks," Markie said, cackling like a rabid Porky Pig.

  And then I started awake.

  I looked down at Robert Bruce's sleeping form.

  I kissed him softly on the forehead. He stirred in his dreams.

  "Sleep well, boy. I'll keep watching."

  Robert Bruce opened his eyes.

  "I'm watching you too, asshole," the boy said in his father's voice. "Do you savvy?"

  Then the boy closed his eyes and made his chest move up and down, up and down.

  Sleep stayed away from me for a very long time that night.

  CHAPTER 6

  * stained glass shrapnel *

  "Everything goes into the soup," I said. "Every last scrap of meat, bone, and vegetable. Carrots or turnips or onions or mushrooms. All or none of the above. Corn is good, and so are potatoes."

  Robert Bruce watched me in that eerie calm way of his. I still thought about what went on last night. Was it a dream, a nightmare or a premonition? I didn't like to leave him alone here in the Shambles. Not after what he'd been through. Yet I didn't like having him this close to me. Not after what I'd seen.

  "My mom does all the cooking at home," he said.

  Does. My mom does. He told me before that his mother was dead. He was contradicting himself, and he didn't seem to notice.

  I didn't let on.

  "That's good," I said. "I'm sure she's a good cook. But a man needs to know how to do things for himself."

  "Why?" Robert Bruce asked. "Why don't you just go out to a restaurant?"

  I saw the anger flare up, just for a minute. His eyes widened and his fists clenched and he ground his teeth.

  And then it seemed to pass. He grinned at me. I thought he was looking pretty chipper, considering he'd just murdered his father three days ago. I wasn't certain if that was a good sign or not. There's a lot that can happen underneath the surface. I was keeping an eye on him.

  At least, that's what I told myself.

  "You can go to a restaurant," I said. "Sometimes it's nice. But sometimes it's nice just to stay at home and cook for yourself. Sometimes you want to watch television in your boxer shorts. Besides, I need to feed a lot of people here, and McDonald's just won't cut it."

  "Why do you have to feed them?"

  There was a bit more anger behind his words. I saw his father's face swimming beneath the surface. I ignored it.

  "I don't have to do anything," I said calmly. "Nobody does."

  "I had to do what my father made me do."

  "That's different. He was bigger than you. You couldn't help yourself."

  He didn't look that convinced. I let it pass for now.

  "So why do you feed them?"

  "I feed them because I want to. I feed them because, in a way, they feed me."

  "Do they cook for you?"

  I grinned at that bit of thirteen year old logic. "Better than that. They make me feel needed. They don't ever ignore me. They make me feel at home."

  When I said it this way it sounded kind of symbiotic, and maybe it was, but I didn't want to confuse the issue so I fell back on gruffness.

  "Now shut up and listen," I said. "You might learn something."

  I went back to the soup and my sermon. "Beef is good, and so is chicken. Even pork or fish."

  "What kind of soup are we making?"

  "Potluck soup," I said. "Refrigerator soup."

  "What's potluck?"

  "Comes from potlatch. That's an Indian term. It means to give it all away. That's what they'd do, these Indians. They'd have a big party and whoever gave the most away was the winner."

  "Is that like rummy? You have to give away your cards?"

  "Kind of. It's like sacrifice. You have to give something up to become a better person."

  I didn't know why I was telling him all this. It wasn't like I figured my bits of homemade wisdom were going to make him that much of a better person. I guess it was because I kind of felt like this kid had absolutely nobody on his side. I guess I'm just a sucker for the underdog. Besides, I was beginning to like him.

  "I call it refrigerator soup," I said. "There isn't any recipe. I'll teach it to you. Now chop those carrots."

  He kept chopping. He was pretty good at it, a natural with the knife.

  I wasn't surprised. I'd seen him with a hammer. I tried to lose that image.

  "Whoa," Robert Bruce said as we dumped the carrots in. "That's a lot of soup."

  "I've got a lot of people to feed."

  "Do you cook like this every day?"

  "Every day I can. Sometimes I'm too busy working."

  "What do you do? Preach, like in a church?"

  "I've done that. But mostly what I do is fix things that are wrong."

  Robert Bruce looked at the knife. "Like my father? Is that the sort of thing you do?"

  I nodded.

  Robert Bruce thought about it. "I'm worried about him. I'm worried he might come back."

  I looked at him. I could see the spirit of his father now, as clear as day, hovering over him like a worried parent. At least I hoped it was his spirit. One thing was for sure. It wasn't my imagination. The bastard had come back from the dead, or maybe he just wouldn't allow himself to die.

  There was nothing I could do, so I just ignored the fucker. It was nothing more than my imagination. I was seeing things, was all.

  "He isn't coming back," I said. "Not on my watch."

  Robert Bruce didn't look all that certain, but he let it pass.

  "You do good work," he decided. "And you make good soup."

  I smiled. I wondered what was going on behind those thirteen year old eyes of his. Kids could be so damned resilient.

  Or was he only fooling me?

  "We make good soup," I corrected.

  "Do you think it's enough?"

  "It has to be. It's all we've made. You know what, though?"

  "What?"

  "It usually is. The soup pot is empty when we get to the end of the meal. Not a drop is ever wasted. Not a smidgen is ever poured out."

  "Never?"

  "Not on my watch."

  Wrong, twice in one conversation. It wasn't much of a record.

  The supper crowd filed in. I stood there at the soup pot serving it up. A soup man in his natural habitat.

  I liked to watch the faces going by. They came in so many different flavors, like soup, only deeper. This one was ready for a fight, that one was just thankful for a warm place to hide. This one wanted to talk, and that one didn't want to listen anymore. They were always different. You never could tell completely what was going on inside of them. They always surprised me.

  Montezuma stood at the grill, flipping burgers. Briarchild broke the bread. Robert Bruce handed out paper napkins. We were a good team.

  The umpteenth hungry man of the night held his bowl out to me.

  I ladled the soup up, digging deep for the meat that had sank to the bottom. This was always a good time for me. It was kind of a Zen moment, just letting myself get lost in the stirring of the soup. There was no need for stress. Nobody pushed in line and there were few fights or arguments here at The Shambles. Everyone knew that troublemakers found themselves back out on the street.

  Just then Montezuma pushed me aside. He was a big man, and he got his weight behind the push. I steppe
d back, catching myself against the counter before I fell.

  "What gives?" I asked.

  Montezuma wasn't listening. He grabbed both sides of the soup pot. His hands had to be burning, the metal of the soup pot was hot.

  He looked at me before he spoke. "Sacrifice. You savvy?"

  Then, like a kid bobbing for Halloween apples, Montezuma dunked his head into the steaming pot of soup. For a moment, I froze. I watched him struggle, the white half-moons of tension etched upon his fingernails as he tried to force himself up, but another part of himself kept forcing his face down into the soup.

  He pulled himself back up, and I'll swear he was grinning. Biting and chewing on his tongue and lips and any part of his face that he could catch hold of. Through it all, his words on cannibalism kept haunting me. I just liked the taste of it, is all he'd said.

  Then he'd get his face back down into the soup again.

  I grabbed him by the shoulders, trying to pull him back up. There were a lot of us there. I felt hands all over me trying to help, so many and so close that I damn near couldn't breathe.

  We might as well have been trying to beach a whale.

  That's when I saw the shape hovering behind Montezuma, bending him over, forcing his face into the soup. There was something there behind the man, a shape, an entity forcing him under.

  Montezuma's knuckles knotted in effort. I think he was trying to force himself up. That was the hell of it. He kept trying to raise himself up, like he was trying to save himself, while something else kept forcing his face deeper into the boiling soup.

  Nothing was moving and that was what was wrong with the whole picture. The soup wasn't churning. It ought to have been bubbling like a witch's cauldron. He should have been snorting and choking like a drowning water buffalo. Yet there was nothing but an awful, absolute silence. He wasn't making a noise.

  The shape kept holding him down. I tried to grab at it, but I might as well have been trying to grab a handful of smoke. I felt a tingle running through my fingers as they brushed the shape. I pushed closer, trying to catch hold of something that wasn't there.

  And then I saw the face. Leering out of the shape that poured itself around Montezuma. The face of Robert Bruce's father, pale and blue, his smile a thin razor blade trapped between garrote taut lips. Rope burns and heavy dry heaves, undertones of talcum, concrete and bone, with a pair of eyes as bright blue as stained-glass shrapnel.