by Jack Yeovil
"That's Colonel Presley to you, Chamberlain. And get your dirty boot offa my clean car."
"Okay, okay. No need for us Southern boys to bite each other's heads clean off, is there?"
Chamberlain stepped away from the Cadillac and held up his hands in mock surrender.
"You should watch where you step, Chamberlain. You never know when a man has bought himself a pair of new shoes he don't want messed up. Like these. They're blue suede, you know."
Chamberlain bit off the wet end of his cigar and spat it out on the floor. Elvis had never liked the man. He had been the Enderby Registration officer for Tennessee before he transferred to the GOB, and had given Elvis a hard time granting the Hound Dog Agency its license. He'd always been in the pocket of Harbottle's Boys, and now it was official.
"We're from different Souths, Chamberlain."
"How do you mean?"
"Yours is all settin' on porches sippin' mint juleps and stringing up the coloured folks with ropes of magnolia blossom, and mine is all starvin' to death in sharecropper shacks goin' blind from bad moonshine and workin' eighteen hours a day just to stay even."
Chamberlain expressed disgust.
Elvis looked around for Nick. He wanted to make sure the car was in peak condition. He and Krokodil planned on hitting the trail tomorrow, and he didn't want to be stranded in the swamp with a burst tyre or a jammed minicannon.
Chamberlain grinned nervously. He was oily enough to get ahead in politics, but Harbottle and the Good Ole Boys could pour more dollars into his numbered bank accounts than the government.
"What the hell do you want anyway. Chamberlain?"
Chamberlain blew more smoke, and scattered ash on the tarmac. "Just a friendly li'l call, Colonel."
"You ain't no friend of mine."
"Aw, c'mon. Colonel. You know, what with this big ol' brouhaha up there in Washington D.C., all us Ops gotta stick together. We got us a whole set of interests to look after. Mutual interests, y'understand. There are damnyank politicians who just plain don't like law and order, y'know."
Elvis spat. "Yeah…well, the way some Agencies do business, I reckon I can understand how they feel."
Chamberlain stabbed the air with his cigar. Its tip glowed.
"You small-time guys really unsettle mah stomach, y'know? We got us a nice thing going here, and you just breeze in and dicker around with the situation like it don't matter whether you're eatin' 'taters or grits."
Elvis began to see what this was about. "Would you mind excusing me. Chamberlain? I've got some arrest documentation to file. I brought in a real scumjumper yesterday. Burtram Fassett. You ever hear of him?"
A deep red flush started at the GOB man's neck and filtered up over his face.
"You needn't bother doing the bytework, Colonel. Fassett hanged himself in jail last night.'"
"Ain't that a shame…"
"Yeah, you're the one to blame…"
"My tears will fall like rain."
The red reached Chamberlain's hairline, and crept into the roots of his dyed white locks.
"Burtram Fassett was a patriot of the New South, and you had no business turning him over to the damnyanks. No business at all."
Elvis was getting riled himself.
"Burtram Fassett was a psychopath, a dirtbag filth-hog, a disgrace to his state and should have been clapped in the pokey a long time ago."
Chamberlain snorted smoke.
"I wouldn't be right in guessing that there was maybe some little link-up between the Confederate Air Force and the Good Ole Boys, would I?"
Chamberlain didn't answer.
"Some of the hoodheads I tangled with out in the Delta were mighty well tooled-up for a bunch of fanatics. They had the kind of hardware only the Agencies are supposed to have access to."
"Presley…"
"Colonel Presley."
"Colonel, Field Marshal, Whatever-You-Like, you have to get with the big picture some time…"
"Are you gonna offer me a job with the GOB again?"
"The offer is always there. You're too smart to stay independent all your life, Colonel. Within the organization, there are plenty of slots for a smart cog like you. And soon, the New South will have a lot of use for gun-guys like you and me. Utah has gone secesh, and that sets a precedent. It's the War of Southron Independence all over again, y'know. Them fellers up there in Washington want to mess with our way of life."
Nick's assistant Gandy was working on a Studebaker across the workshop. He kept shooting Chamberlain dark looks. Elvis wondered if the mechanic had any kinfolk out in the boondocks who'd fallen prey to one of the CAF's indenture sweeps. He knew the black man was a worshipper at the hounfort down on Highway 51, and that the voodoo church had been turned over by hoodheads a couple of times. Gandy was hefting a heavy wrench, and looking at Chamberlain's long white hair, wondering about the eggshell skull under it.
"Maybe your way of life ain't so good, Chamberlain."
The GOB Op was really steaming now. His neck was bulging, straining his collar button and bootlace tie.
"Freak you. Colonel. Get with the programme, or get out of the business."
"If your programme means whipping and flogging and all that Southern-fried horsecrap, then you can take it all and shove it…"
"Why, you redneck white trash peckerwood. You're just a nigra wrapped up in a white skin."
"I've heard that said before."
The GOB had been getting fat off indenture for a few years, first hauling in the indentees, and then picking up fees from the corps for bringing back any absconding happy workers. None of the national Agencies—Turner-Harvest-Ramirez, Hammond Maninski, and the others—would touch the indenture system with a ten-foot electric cattle prod, and so the Good Ole Boys had a monopoly on slave-taking. Unofficially, GenTech had a fifty dollar bounty on the head of any able-bodied indentee brought back in a condition to work. And sometimes they weren't too scrupulous about examining the bytework, so, if the indentee you were after got clean over the state line or wound up crippled or dead, you could just pick someone with similar skin-colouring and slap the tagmarker on them. By the time anyone noticed the missing person, he'd have his own indentee status stuck on him and the New South had itself another gaily singing darkie in the sweatshops.
"Listen, guitar man. You've been scratching up some mighty important folks. This may just have been the last nice li'l talk you get. Mr Judgement Q. Harbottle himself asked me to be real persuasive. Y'know, him and Burtram Fassett went back a long way…"
"Yeah, I heard they were real close in kindergarten, loved dressing up for Hallowe'en in them white sheets and lynching all the other kids' kittens and puppy dogs while they burned those cute little wooden crosses on the porch…"
A couple of Gandy's buddies from the hounfort had shown up. There was often a knot of them hanging around Nick's workshop, doing odd jobs, swapping boasts about broads and cars, listening to Sovrock on the FM, shooting craps. Gandy was pointing at Chamberlain, and making ugly faces as he filled them in on the little man in the white linen suit. The Good Ole Boy hadn't noticed them yet.
"Go right on ahead and laugh. Colonel Presley, laugh all you like, and curl that thick nigra lip o' yours until it just plain sticks to your nose, why don't you. The South is changin', and you'd better change with it, or maybe you're like to find yourself out in some cotton field somewhere with all your nigra buddies singin' them ol' worksongs you used to wiggle your butt to…"
Gandy's half-brother Big Bill was walking over. Big Bill was not a small guy. Elvis had seen him single-handedly win a tug o'war with five members of the Union Avenue Bloods gangcult, and one of his party tricks when he had a few brews in him was to bite bullets in half with his eyeteeth.
"…or maybe you won't be in them cotton fields, guitar man, maybe you'll wind up under 'em. You think about that for a while, hey? And furthermore, I just reckon I might take it into my mind to drop in on that diner you're always hangin' around and give that fat old ha
sh-slinger Cissy Smedley some o' that deep-dish lovin' she ain't been gettin' from you, you dried-up ol'…"
"Is this dude bothering you, Colonel?" Big Bill asked, his flipper-sized hand landing hard on Chamberlain's shoulder.
Elvis shrugged.
The Good Ole Boy looked up at Big Bill, and cowered. Big Bill smiled, showing off eighty-eight ivories. A diamond sparkled in one of his front teeth. Gandy and the boys had wandered over.
"Yo, Elvis," said the mechanic, stretching out his hand. The Op slapped it down, and raised his own palm to be punched.
"Yo, Gandy."
"How's ever' li'l thang?"
"Mighty fine."
Chamberlain was trembling now, and the angry flush was bleaching into a chickenbelly white.
Dollman Cleele, part-time priest of Santeria, pulled out a lump of hard wax, and started whittling away at it with a tiny switchblade. Big Bill angled Chamberlain's head from side to side so the Dollman could get a good likeness.
"Heard you saw some action down in the Delta a few days back," said Gandy.
"Some."
"My man, Elvis. Word is you done pretty good for the bros in the wetside."
Big Bill stuck his long tongue in Chamberlain's ear, and whispered something that turned the Good Ole Boy a yellowish shade of grey. Here was an Op who could get a whole rainbow on his face. The Dollman's fingers moved fast, and flakes of wax fell to the floor like dandruff.
"I tried to do my best, Gandy. I was paid. It's my job."
"You tellin' me you couldn't bring down ten-twenty times the kish workin' for the Man here than you can helpin' out the pore folks?"
The Dollman held up the tiny white head, and his friends admired it. He pulled a headless wooden human figure, its joints loose, out of his pocket, and stuck the head onto the spike sticking up from its neck. He showed the doll to Chamberlain.
"I just go my own way," Elvis said. "I don't like people owning any part of me."
Gandy produced a switchknife, and pressed a pearl stud. A six-inch blade, razor-edged, sprang out.
"I get the 'pression the Man here don't reckon much to the bros?"
Gandy touched the tip of Chamberlain's nose with his knifepoint
"You could say that."
"Hey, massah," Gandy said in a high-pitched voice, "kin Ah pluck yo cotton?"
Chamberlain's chin was shaking. His cigar slipped out of his mouth.
"I always wondered," began Big Bill, "why does a honky need two ears?"
The bros looked at each other, shrugging and saying, "Swiped if I know." Gandy nicked the lobe of Chamberlain's left ear.
"Hey, massah, yo bleedin'. Yo' bleedin' 'zactly the same colour as us tan-tinted types. Ain't that an amazin' fact. Under that lilywhite skin, you just a mess of red blood and brown shit and all them other colours."
Gandy's knife leaped forwards, and Chamberlain flinched, green slime leaking from his nose as he blubbered. Gandy's hand moved fast, and his knife was back in his overall pocket. Chamberlain wasn't hurt. He opened his eyes, and looked around.
Gandy held up a tuft of white hair, which he passed over to the Dollman. Elvis had seen this done before. The Dollman took the hairs and fixed them to the wax head, warming up the surface with a thumb-rub to make the material soft, and then pressing the hair in.
"Finished," he said.
Big Bill let Chamberlain go. The Good Ole Boy was sagging.
The Dollman gave Elvis the stick-figure. "Here's a present, Elvis."
"Thank you."
"The spirits be with you, my son."
The Dollman was twenty-three, and he called everyone "my son," even his grandfather. Elvis had heard he was the best conjure man in the city.
Elvis looked at the little Chamberlain, and at the original model.
The Good Ole Boy was straightening his tie and wiping his face off. Some of the starch was coming back.
"I hope you don't think all that hoodoo mumbo-jumbo scares me none?"
Elvis tossed the doll from hand to hand, almost letting it fall. Chamberlain cringed every time it flew into the air. Everybody had heard the story about the Japcorp exec who gave Dollman's sister Daisy Cleele a squeeze too many down at the cockfights and took mysteriously sick, all his facial features (and other features too) dropping off with a rot that none of the smart boys in the BioDiv had been able to diagnose. And there were people who suggested that Homely Harvey, Dollman's best friend, was only married to a fox like Bonnie the Boom-Boom because of a charm posset the conjure man had put together. Homely Harvey suffered from curvature of the spine, while Bonnie, a dancer at the Hi-Hat Club, benefited from curvature of everything else.
"That's a mighty pretty toy, Elvis," said Gandy. "What are you going to do with it?"
"I reckon I might hang it up in my car where I can see it when I'm driving."
Gandy smiled. "Hang it up?"
"Yeah. I can make a little noose of string, give the little feller a necktie. Then, it'll hang neat as you please, right?"
"It surely will."
"Bye, Elvis."
"Bye,bros."
Gandy and his gang drifted away, back to the Studebaker. Chamberlain looked dangerously at Elvis.
"It won't go easy with you, Presley. It ain't just me you've got to worry about. Harbottle isn't as understanding as me. And he's connected so high you'd need an oxygen mask to get into the office. You understand?"
Elvis nodded, and gave the wax head in his hand a squeeze.
Sweat stood out on Chamberlain's forehead.
"You look peaked, Robert E. Lee. Have you got a migraine coming on?"
Chamberlain rubbed his temples. Elvis didn't know if the voodoo was working, but something was certainly getting to the Good Ole Boy.
"Can I get you an aspirin?"
Chamberlain clamped his hat on his head and stumped out of the garage, leaving nine inches of cigar behind him.
Elvis stamped on it, grinding the tobacco tube into the asphalt.
VIII
"Old man, can you hear me?"
“…”
"Old Man?"
"Yes?"
"It's me.Krokodil."
"I know."
"Of course. I'll kill you, you know?"
"All must die."
"But you haven't. Not so far."
"No."
"How long has it been?"
"I know not."
"Hundreds of years? Thousands?"
"Longer."
"I feel very close to you, old man."
"You are part of me, just as I am part of you."
"Was it the shades?"
“…”
"Well?"
"Yes. It was the spectacles."
"I saw things through them. Things that weren't there."
"The lesser entities. Yes."
"Lesser than what?"
“…”
"You might as well tell me. I won't go away. Lesser than what?"
"The Dark Ones."
"Like the creature at Santa de Nogueira?"
"The Jibbenainosay. Yes, like that. There are many more like the Jibbenainosay."
"Where do they come from?"
"The Outer Darkness."
"That tells me a lot."
"You would not understand."
"Try me. We have all night to talk.."
"The Outer Darkness lies beyond the lip of the universe."
"Old man?"
"Yes?"
"The thing inside me, is it a Dark One?"
"No."
"Then what is it. What makes Jessamyn into Krokodil?"
"You are host to the Ancient Adversary, the Pawn of the Nullifiers."
"Why are you telling me all this? You know I'll kill you."
"It does me no harm. You cannot understand. It would take centuries to make you understand. Even the creature inside you cannot make you understand."
"Centuries? You've had centuries, haven't you? Do I have centuries? Will I live forever with this Ancient Thing i
n me?"
"You could, but you won't."
"Why not?"
"There are no more centuries, Krokodil. Not after this one. There are none left. The Dark Ones will descend. It will all come to an end."
"You're looking forward to that?"
“…”
"Well?"
"Yes…I look forward to the Nothing."
"I'll see what I can do for you."
"Believe me, Krokodil, I would thank you for it. But there are things that must be done, and I am here to do them. I am the Summoner."
"You're to blow the last trump? You don't seem like Gabriel to me."
"That is just a story, little girl. One of many. All the stories distort the truth, but contain a little of it."
"Why me?"
"It was just an accident. You took the spectacles. You became a channel to the Outer Darkness."
"Like you?"
"Yes, like me."
"And this thing, the Ancient Adversary, came into me because of that? Just because I took your shades?"
"Yes. That is so."
"But that's insane. I was just a panzergirl. A kid, for freak's sake. How could I know?"
"How could I know? I should have killed you in Spanish Fork."
"Why didn't you?"
“…”
"Well?"
"You knew, didn't you? When you left me alive with the seeds of this thing in my brain. You knew what I would turn into."
“…”
"Am I just another part of the story? Do I have a role to play in your big game?"
“…”
"I won't, you know. I won't be the thing you want me to be. I'll stop you."
"You will try."
"I will win. I'm not alone."
"Neither am I."
"I can scream inside your head forever, Nguyen Seth. I can shriek and shriek until you go mad."
"I am already mad by most standards."
"Big of you to admit it."
"You will never live to know what it is like, to carry the burden of memory as I do. I remember a hundred years ago as if it were the last minute. A thousand, two thousand, ten thousand years ago. I have it all with me. Forever."