The Best of Michael Swanwick

by Michael Swanwick

  It was my misfortune to die several decades too early. I was beat to death in Athens, Georgia. A couple of cops caught me in the back seat of a late-model Rambler necking with a white boy name of Danny. I don’t guess they actually meant to kill me. They just forgot to stop in time. That sort of thing went on a lot back then.

  First thing I died, I was taken to this little room with two bored-looking angels. One of them sat hunched over a desk, scribbling on a whole heap of papers. “What’s this one?” he asked without looking up.

  The second angel was lounging against a filing cabinet. He had a kindly sort of face, very tired-looking, like he’d seen the worst humanity had to offer and knew he was going to keep on seeing it until the last trump. It was a genuine kindness, too, because out of all the things he could’ve called me, he said, “A kid with bad luck.”

  The first angel glanced up and said, “Oh.” Then went back to his work.

  “Have a seat, son,” the kindly angel said. “This will take a while.”

  I obeyed. “What’s going to become of me?” I asked.

  “You’re fucked,” the first angel muttered.

  I looked to the other.

  He colored a little. “That’s it,” he said. “There just plain flat-out ain’t no way you’re going to beat this rap. You’re a faggot and faggots go to Hell.” He kind of coughed into his hand then and said, “I’ll tell you what, though. It’s not official yet, but I happen to know that the two yahoos who rousted you are going to be passing through this office soon. Moonshining incident.”

  He pulled open a file drawer and took out a big fat folder overflowing with papers. “These are the Schedule C damnations in here. Boiling maggots, rains of molten lead, the whole lot. You look through them, pick out a couple of juicy ones. I’ll see that your buddies get them.”

  “Nossir,” I said. “I’d rather not.”

  “Eh?” He pushed his specs down his nose and peered over them at me. “What’s that?”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I don’t want to do nothing to them.”

  “Why, they’re just two bull-neck crackers! Rednecks! White-trash peckerwoods!” He pointed the file at me. “They beat you to death for the fun of it!”

  “I don’t suppose they were exactly good men,” I said. “I reckon the world will be better off without them. But I don’t bear them any malice. Maybe I can’t find it in me to wish them well, and maybe I wasn’t what you’d call a regular churchgoer. But I know that we’re supposed to forgive our trespassers, to whatever degree our natures allow. And, well, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do any of those things to them.”

  The second angel was staring at me in disbelief, and his expression wasn’t at all kindly anymore. The first angel had stopped scribbling and was gawking at me too.

  “Shit,” he said.

  ***

  Three days they spent bickering over me.

  I presented something of a political problem for those who decide these matters, because of course they couldn’t just let me go Upstairs. It would have created a precedent.

  The upshot of it was that I got a new job. They gave me a brass-button uniform and two weeks’ training, and told me to keep out of trouble. And so far, I had.

  Only now, I was beginning to think my lucky streak was over.

  ***

  Old Goatfoot looked over his shoulder with a snarl when I entered the cab of the locomotive. Of all the crew only he had never been human. He was a devil from the git-go, or maybe an angel once if you believe Mister Milton. I pulled the bag off of the bottle of rye and let the wind whip it away, and his expression changed. He wrapped a clawed hand around the bottle and took a swig that made a good quarter of its contents disappear.

  He let out this great rumbling sigh then, part howl and part belch, like no sound that had ever known a human throat. I shuddered, but it was just his way of showing satisfaction. In a burnt-out cinder of a voice, Old Goatfoot said, “Trouble’s brewing.”

  “That so?” I said cautiously.

  “Always is.” He stared out across the wastelands. A band of centaurs, each one taller than a ten-story building, struggled through waist-high muck in the distance. Nasty stuff it was—smelled worse than the Fresh Kill landfill over to New Jersey. “This time, though.” He shook his head and said, “Ain’t never seen nothing like it. All the buggers of Hell are out.”

  He passed me back the bottle.

  I passed my hand over the mouth, still hot from his lips, and took a gingerly little sip. Just to be companionable. “How come?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. They’re looking for something, but fuck if I can make out what.”

  Just then a leather-winged monster larger than a storm cloud lifted over the horizon. With a roar and a flapping sound like canvas in the wind, it was upon us. The creature was so huge that it covered half the sky, and it left a stench behind that I knew would linger for hours, even at the speeds we were going. “That’s one ugly brute,” I remarked.

  Old Goatfoot laughed scornfully and knocked back another third of the bottle. “You worried about a little thing like that?” He leaned his head out the window, closed one nostril with a finger, and shot a stream of snot into the night. “Shitfire, boy, I’ve seen Archangels flying over us.”

  Now I was genuinely frightened. Because I had no doubt that whatever the powers that be were looking for, it was somewhere on our train. And this last meant that all of Heaven and Hell were arrayed against us. Now, you might think that Hell was worry enough for anybody, but consider this—they lost. Forget what folks say. The other side are mean mothers, and don’t let nobody tell you different.

  Old Goatfoot finished off the bottle and ate the glass. Then, keeping one hand on the throttle all the while, he unbuttoned his breeches, hauled out his ugly old thing, and began pissing into the firebox. There were two firemen standing barefoot in the burning coals, shoveling like madmen. They dropped their shovels and scrambled to catch as much of the spray as they could, clambering all over each other in their anxiousness for a respite, however partial, however brief, from their suffering. They were black as carbon and little blue flames burned in their hair. Old Goatfoot’s piss sizzled and steamed where it hit the coals.

  Damned souls though they were, I found it a distressing sight.

  “Y’all have to excuse me,” I said uneasily. “They’ll be opening the casino round about now. I got work to do.”

  Old Goatfoot farted. “Eat shit and die,” he said genially.

  ***

  Back in the casino car, Billy Bones had set up his wheel, and folks that on an ordinary day gambled like there was no tomorrow had pulled out all the stops. They were whooping and laughing, talking that big talk, and slapping down paper money by the fistful. Nobody cared that it was a crooked game. It was their last chance to show a little style.

  Billy Bones was in his element, his skull-face grinning with avarice. He spun the wheel with one hand and rested the other on the haunch of a honey in smoke-grey stockings and a skirt so short you could see all the way to Cincinnati. She had one hand on Billy’s shoulder and a martini and a clove cigarette both in the other, and you could see she was game for anything he might happen to have in mind. But so far as Billy was concerned, she was just a prop, a flash bit of glamour to help keep the money rolling in.

  LaBelle, Afreya, and Sally breezed by with their trays of cigarettes, heroin, and hors d’oeuvres. They were all good girls, and how they got here was—well, I guess we all know how good girls get in trouble. They fall for the wrong man. They wore white gloves and their uniforms were tight-cut but austere, for they none of them were exactly eager to be confused with the damned. Sally gave me a bit of a smile, sympathetic but guarded.

  We had some good musicians died for this trip, and they were putting in some hot licks. Maybe they sensed that with the caliber of competition Down Below, they were going to be a long time between gigs. But they sure were cooking.

  Everybody was having a high
old time.

  This was the jolly part of the trip, and normally I enjoyed it. Not today.

  Sugar stood by the rear door, surrounded by a bevy of the finest honeys imaginable. This was nothing new. It was always a sight how they flocked to him on the southbound platform at Grand Central Station, elegantly dressed women who weren’t even dead yet, rolling their eyes and wriggling their behinds something outrageous. Sooner or later one would ask, “You ever seen…him?” and then, when he squinted at her like he couldn’t quite make out what she was getting at, “You know—Lucifer? The Devil.”

  At which point Sugar would say, “Seen him? Why, just this last run, I had a private audience with His Satanic Majesty. Sugar, he says to me, You been talking mighty big of late, I guess it’s time to remind you who’s boss.”

  “What did you say?” They would all hold their breaths and bend close.

  “I said, Drop your pants and bend over, motherfucker. I’m driving now.”

  They’d shriek then, scandalized and delighted. And when Sugar opened his arms, two of the honeys would slide in under them neat as you please.

  Business was brisk at the bar. I tried not to let my thoughts show, but I must’ve made a bad job of it, for I was just thrusting one of those little paper umbrellas into a frozen daiquiri when a hand closed upon my shoulder.

  I whirled around, right into the most knowing smile I’d ever seen. It was a smart-dressed lady, all in red. She had on a bowler hat and she smoked a cigar. Her skirt went all the way to the ground, but there was a slit up one side and you could see the silver derringer stuck into her garter.

  “You look worried,” she said. “I wouldn’t think the crew had much of anything to worry about.”

  “We’re human, ma’am. Subject to the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to.” I sighed. “And I will confess that if I weren’t obliged to be here behind the bar—well. What’s your pleasure?”

  For a long moment she studied me.

  “You interest me,” she said at last, and vanished into the crowd.

  Not much later she was back, steering a shy little porcelain doll of a girl by the elbow. “Missy can tend bar,” she said. She slipped one hand between the girl’s legs and the other behind her shoulder blades and hoisted her clear over the bar. It was an astonishing display of strength and she did it with no special emphasis, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “She’s had more than sufficient experience.”

  “Now hold on,” I said. “I can’t just—”

  “Missy doesn’t mind. Do you, little sweet?”

  The girl, wide-eyed, shook her head no.

  “Wait for me here.” The lady leaned down and kissed her full on the mouth—full, and deep too. Nobody paid any mind. The festivities had reached that rowdy stage. “You come with me.”

  I didn’t have much choice but to follow.

  ***

  Her name, she said, was Jackie. And, when I’d introduced myself, “I’m going to help you, Malcolm.”

  “Why?”

  “I have observed,” she said, “that other people are often willing to accept whatever events may chance to happen to them, rather than take an active part in their unfolding. That’s not me.” She glanced scornfully back at the casino car. “I am no gambler. All my pleasure lies in direct action. Tell me your problem. Make it interesting.”

  When I’d told my story, Jackie took the cigar out of her mouth and stared at it thoughtfully. “Your friend’s attention is currently given over entirely to the pursuit of money. Can’t you just go back to the baggage car now and look?”

  I shook my head. “Not with Sugar standing by the rear door.”

  We were in the space between the casino and the next car forward, with the rails flashing by underneath and the cars twisting and rattling about us. Jackie put a hand on the bottommost rung of the access ladder and said, “Then we’ll go over the roof.”

  “Now, just a minute!”

  “No delays.” She frowned down at her skirt. “As soon as I can arrange a change of clothing.”

  Up the sleeper car she strode, opening doors, glancing within, slamming them shut again. Fifth one she tried, there was a skinny man in nothing but a white shirt working away on top of his lady-love. He looked up angrily. “Hey! What the fuck do you—”

  Jackie pressed her derringer against his forehead and nodded toward a neatly folded bundle of clothing. “May I?”

  The man froze. He couldn’t die here, but that didn’t mean he’d relish a bullet through his skull. “They’re yours.”

  “You’re a gent.” Jackie scooped up the bundle. Just before closing the door, she paused and smiled down at the terrified face of the woman underneath her victim.

  “Pray,” she said, “continue.”

  In the hallway she whipped off her skirt, stepped into the slacks, and zipped them up before I had the chance to look away. The jacket she tossed aside. She buttoned the vest over her blouse and tentatively tried on one of the man’s wing tips. “They fit!”

  ***

  I went up the rungs first. The wind was rushing over the top of the train something fierce. Gingerly, I began crawling across the roof of the casino car. I was scared out of my wits and making no fast progress, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked back.

  My heart about failed me. Jackie was standing straight up, oblivious to the furious rattling speed of the train. She reached down and hauled me to my feet. “Let’s dance!” she shouted into my ear.

  “What?” I shouted back, disbelieving. The wind buffeted us wildly. It whipped off Jackie’s bowler hat and sent it tumbling away. She laughed.

  “Dance! You’ve heard of dancing, haven’t you?”

  Without waiting for a reply, she seized me by the waist and whirled me around, and we were dancing. She led and I followed, fearful that the least misstep would tumble us from the train and land us broken and lost in the marshes of Styx. It was the single most frightening and exhilarating experience of my entire existence, moreso even than my first time with that traveling man out by the gravel quarry at the edge of town.

  I was so frightened by now that it no longer mattered. I danced, hesitantly at first, and then with abandon. Jackie spun me dizzily around and around. The wind snatched sparks from her cigar and spangled the night with stars. Madness filled me and I danced, I danced, I danced.

  At last Jackie released me. She looked flushed and satisfied. “That’s better. No more crawling, Malcolm. You and I aren’t made for it. Like as not, all our strivings will come to nothing in the end; we must celebrate our triumph now, while yet we can.” And somehow I knew precisely how she felt and agreed with it too.

  Then she glanced off to the side. The dark wastelands were zipping past. A ghastly kind of corpse-fire was crawling over the muck and filth to either side of the tracks. “A person might jump off here with no more damage than a broken arm, maybe a couple of ribs. We can’t be more than—what?—two hundred fifty, three hundred miles south of New Jersey? It would not be difficult for a determined and spirited individual to follow the tracks back and escape.”

  “Nobody escapes,” I said. “Please don’t think of it.”

  A flicker of sadness passed over her face then, and she said, “No, of course not.” Then, brisk again, “Come. We have work to do. Quickly. If anybody heard us stomping about up here, they’ll know what we’re up to.”

  We came down between cars at the front of the baggage car. There was a tool closet there I had the key to, and inside it a pry bar. I had just busted open the padlock when LaBelle suddenly slammed through the door from the front of the train, wild-eyed and sweaty.

  “Malcolm,” she said breathlessly, “don’t!”

  From somewhere about her person—don’t ask me where—Jackieproduced a wicked-looking knife. “Do not try to stop us,” she said softly.

  “You don’t understand,” LaBelle cried. “There’s a hound on board!”

  I heard it coming then.

  The hounds
of Hell aren’t like the Earthly sort: They’re bigger than the biggest mastiffs and they bear a considerable resemblance to rats. Their smell is loathsome beyond description and their disposition even worse.

  LaBelle shrieked and shrank aside as the hound came bounding down the aisle.

  With something between a howl and a scream, it was upon us.

  “Go!” Jackie shoved me through the doorway. “I’ll handle this. You do your part now.”

  She slammed the door shut.

  Silence wrapped itself about me. It was ghastly. For all I could hear, the hound didn’t even exist.

  I flicked on the electric and in its swaying light took a look around. All the usual baggage: cases of fine French wines and satin sheets for the Lords of Hell, crates of shovels and rubber hip boots and balky manual typewriters for the rest. But to the rear of the car there was one thing more.

  A coffin.

  It was a long, slow walk to the coffin. I thought of all the folks I’d known who’d died and gone where I’d never see them again. I thought of all those things it might contain. It seemed to me then like Pandora’s box, filled with nameless dread and the forbidden powers of Old Night. There was nothing I wanted to do less than to open it.

  I took a deep breath and jammed the edge of the pry bar into the coffin. Nails screamed, and I flung the top back.

  The woman inside opened her eyes.

  I stood frozen with horror. She had a wrinkled little face, brown as a nut, and you could tell just by looking at it that she’d led a hard life. There was that firmness about the corners of her mouth, that unblinking quality about the eyes. She was a scrawny thing, all bones and no flesh, and her arms were crossed over her flat chest. Light played about her face and lit up the coffin around her head. I looked at her and I was just flat-out afraid of what was going to happen to Sugar and to me and to all of us when word of this got out.