The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction

by Dale Peck

“Should we really be arguing in fron—”

  “—instead of a weekend.”

  “—of him?”

  Malcolm likes to go to the Savage Land with Prince Fetasha. He likes the caverns and the canyons, the mountains of steel and glass. They speak in loud booming voices. Sometimes they scream. The roads are wide and black with strange hieroglyphics painted about them, and the inhabitants rush about, surely chased by some monster like Godzilla or Smaug or Bigfoot. Prince Fetasha, when he was Mahammet al-Saddin, married Malcolm on his shoulders when they were in the Savage Land. He could smell the scent on his father called M-cents. Malcolm liked the smell. Prince Fetasha’s hair is in long black snakes like Medusa’s. He says they are called deadlocks. Malcolm likes to play with his father’s deadlocks. They feel spongy and soft, and they smell of M-cents. Once Fetasha, who was then Mahammet al-Saddin, gave Malcolm a necklace of shells like the one he’s wearing now. The shells told Malcolm where a magic amulet, long lost, lay in Africa. But when he got home his mother, the Empress, tore the shells from his neck and said he might get funjus from them and threw them into the trash compactor. The amulet will never be found.

  “Denise.”

  “No.”

  Yamor, the black winged horse, is getting antsy, and the floating yerple turtle seems to be slowing down. A mask on the wall winks at Malcolm, and the hobbit is climbing down off his grandmother’s lap. Malcolm stands up, and his wing’d sandals take him across the room to his mother and father.

  “Mom, can I get some deadlocks like Daddy’s?”

  His mother, the Empress, raises her hands in the air and rolls her eyes—the look she has when his grandmother says his mother is “disgusted with the world again.” His father, Prince Fetasha, pats him on the head. But before either of them say anything, his grandmother pops her magazine shut.

  “Okay, Boo”—his grandmother always calls him Boo—“time for your bath and bed, birthday boy. It’s been a big day.”

  Malcolm’s grandmother, the Queen Mother of the Empress, sells castles and palaces when she’s not being Queen Mother. They call her a Real Tor and she wears a man’s jacket with a house decal on the breast that looks just like his F-16 decal. Each day she meets people looking for a new castle. Sometimes she takes him with her. People make very strange noises when they look about and ask the Queen Mother weird questions. Malcolm likes to explore the castles, looking for ghosts and lost elves, always on the lookout for hobgoblins, his sworn enemies.

  Sometimes his grandmother, the Queen Mother, takes him to the movies and gives him candy and makes him swear he won’t tell his mother, the Empress, since she’d be “disgusted with the world.” Malcolm isn’t allowed to have candy. But he sneaks plenty.

  In the bathroom his grandmother helps him undress. He lifts his arms to get his shirt off. The water sloshes into the tub with a river’s rush. The Queen Mother sprinkles the secret magic special potion into the water and it begins to bubble like a witch’s cauldron.

  “Okay, soldier. In you go.”

  “Gramma?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Am I going to go to Jamaica with Daddy?”

  “I doubt it very seriously.”

  “Will I get to go to New York with him?”

  “I don’t think so baby. Not for a while.”

  “Can I get deadlocks like his?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Why?”

  “Into the water.”

  The silly octopus with the glasses caresses Malcolm’s ankle as he steps into the water; the bubbles tickle his hind parts as he eases down. When each one pops it says a magic word. The water is warm and heavy and fun.

  “Now don’t forget to wash behind your ears.”

  The Queen Mother leaves, and Malcolm closes his eyes and says the magic words and—Qwiza!—he is a merman with a fishtail wide as the dining-room table, its scales diamond-shaped and sparkling and the color of oil on water, and it flops gracefully in the air like a sail in the wind. When Malcolm is in the water he is transformed into the Lord of the Sea (a part-time job), and he must save his Dominion from the evil sea-wizard Nptananan who takes on many forms, his favorite thing that of a merwolf with fangs like a viper.

  Malcolm knows when it is about time for his grandmother to come to fetch him out of the water, “so your skin won’t wrinkle,” she says, so in a flash he turns back into a boy. He lathers himself with the secret magic special potion soap that will make him invincible to arrows and bullets and swords and hexes. He remembers to wash behind his ears.

  Grandmother, the Queen Mother, dries him off in the huge towel that could eat him whole—yet another gift from the Maharajah. In times of trouble, with the right magic words, it becomes a flying towel.

  After saying good night to the Empress and the former Prince-Consort Fetasha, who once was the Crown Prince Mahammet al-Saddin, Malcolm is tucked into bed, the Nubian still fanning him. The yerple turtle sleeps bobbing in the air current; the lizards are aligned on the curtain in the pattern of the family coat-of-arms; the flying horse, Yamor, is ZZZZZZing on the floor, his wings fluttering ever so gently with each breath; Fidor, the hobbit, is curled underneath the covers with Malcolm; Qwnpft, the blue cockatoo, nestles in Malcolm’s hair; and the barber-pole-striped cobra coils into a perfect O at Malcolm’s feet. The demons, Ksiel, Lahtiel, and Shaftiel, are secure in the closet and Malcolm can smell the pink smoke as it wafts up from underneath the door.

  “Sweet dreams, Boo. Happy birthday.”

  “’Night.”

  The Archangel Rafael, right on schedule, appears in the corner when the lights go out, his blazing sword at the ready.

  Voices drift up through the ventilation shaft.

  “Denise, you know it would really be a good experience for him at his age.”

  “I’ve already paid for his trip down South with Mama.”

  “Money, money, money.”

  “I know, I know. I was the Marxist once, remember? I still . . . well, you know . . .”

  “Oh yeah, the occasional freebie at the clinic, the volunteer work at the soup kitchen, the checks to Amnesty and the NAACP and Klanwatch and Greenpeace. You mean the payoffs for the guilt ghosts?”

  “Now who’s being mean? I’m not going to be a hypocrite, Bran—Fe—I can’t. Mr. Dreadlocks. I’ve worked hard for this life. If you don’t like it, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. It’s my life, okay? I’m the one going to Capitalist Hell.”

  “But do you have to take Malcolm with you? I don’t want my son to grow up to be a vain, pampered, spoiled, over-educated, suburbanite airhead with no sense of history and no sense of self.”

  “Like you, you mean?”

  “Hey, I’m trying, okay? At least I’m—”

  “Well, so am I.”

  “. . .”

  “. . .”

  “Look. I don’t want to take the bus to the PATH to the subway to home.”

  “Brandon? I don’t know why you won’t just buy a car.”

  “Can I . . . ? Well . . . you know . . .”

  “Oh, you’re such a baby, Brandon; a cute baby, but a thirty-six-year-old baby just the same.”

  “Please, Dr. Harrington, ma’am, please. I’ll wash your turbo-engined-diesel-guzzling-air-polluting-whatever-the-hell-it-is in the morning. Please . . .”

  “Stop that. You know . . . I’m . . . oooooh . . . Now quit that. Brandon. Brandon. You . . .”

  “. . .”

  “. . .”

  “Remember the time we got ourselves holed up for a whole weekend and listened to nothing but Carmen MacRae and ate nothing but fruit and did it till we were sore?”

  “Hmmmmmm . . . Where do you plan to sleep?”

  “Right here.”

  “But Mama’ll . . .”

  “She is a grown woman, you know.”

  �
�. . .”

  “. . .”

  “I do like the way those feel.”

  Through the open window Malcolm can see four red eyes aflame. He knows they belong to the hobgoblins, Gog and Magog, on the lookout for him, lurking in the whispering New Jersey night. But the Archangel will protect him and there is no cause for worry. The castle is secure. The drawbridge is drawn. The Imperial Family is one. And he is six years old.

  Once in a great while, now and again, deep with dreams of dreams of dreams, we may chance to hear our true selves speak, and in those words are kept the keys to ourselves; but we must listen softly, listen soundly, listen silently, or we may never hear our voices telling tales of who we are.

  A Good Man

  by Rebecca Brown

  Jim calls me in the afternoon to ask if I can give him a ride to the doctor’s tomorrow because this flu thing he has is hanging on and he’s decided to get something for it. I tell him I’m supposed to be going down to Olympia to help Ange and Jean remodel their spare room and kitchen. He says it’s no big deal, he can take the bus. But then a couple hours later he calls me back and says could I take him now because he really isn’t feeling well. So I get in my car and go over and pick him up.

  Jim stands inside the front door to the building. When he opens the door I start. His face is splotched. Sweat glistens in his week-old beard. He leans in the door frame breathing hard. He holds a brown paper grocery bag. The sides of the bag are crumpled down to make a handle. He looks so small, like a school boy being sent away from home.

  “I’m not going to spend the night there,” he mumbles, “but I’m bringing some socks and stuff in case.”

  He hobbles off the porch, his free hand grabbing the railing. I reach to take the paper bag, but he clutches it tight.

  We drive to Swedish hospital and park near the Emergency Room. I lean over to hug him before we get out of the car. He’s wearing four layers—T-shirt, long underwear, sweatshirt, his jacket. But when I touch his back I feel the sweat through all his clothes.

  “I put these on just before you came.” He sounds embarrassed.

  I put an arm around him to help him inside. When he’s standing at the check-in desk, I see the mark the sweat makes on his jacket.

  Jim hands me the paper bag. I take his arm as we walk to the examination room to wait for a doctor. We walk slowly. Jim shuffles and I almost expect him to make his standard crack about the two of us growing old together in the ancient homos home for the prematurely senile, pinching all the candy stripers’ butts, but he doesn’t.

  He sits down on the bed in the exam room. After he catches his breath he says, “Nice drapes.”

  There aren’t any drapes. The room is sterile and white. Jim leans back in the chair and breathes out hard. The only other sound is the fluorescent light. He coughs.

  “Say something, Tonto. Tell me story.”

  “–I . . . uh . . .”

  I pick up a packet of tongue depressers. “Hey, look at all these. How many you think they go through in a week?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I take an instrument off a tray. “How ’bout this?” I turn to show him but his eyes are closed. I put it back down. When I close my mouth, the room is so quiet.

  I can’t tell stories the way Jim does.

  A doctor comes in. She introduces herself as Dr. Allen and asks Jim the same questions he’s just answered at the front desk—his fevers, his sweats, his appetite, his breath. She speaks softly, touching his arm as she listens to his answers. Then she pats his arm and says she’ll be back in a minute.

  In a few seconds a nurse comes in and starts poking Jim’s arm to hook him up to an IV. Jim is so dehydrated she can’t find the vein. She pokes him three times before one finally takes. Jim’s arm is white and red. He lies there with his eyes closed, flinching.

  Then Dr. Allen comes back with another doctor who asks Jim the same questions again. The doctors ask me to wait in the private waiting room because they want to do some tests on Jim. I kiss his forehead before I leave. “I’m down the hall, Jim.”

  Jim waves, but doesn’t say anything. They close the door.

  Half an hour later, Dr. Allen comes to the waiting room.

  She’s holding a box of Kleenex.

  “Are you his sister?”

  I start to answer, but she puts her hand on my arm to stop me.

  “I want you to know that hospital administration does not look favorably upon our giving detailed medical information about patients out to non-family members. And they tend to look the other way if family members want to stay past regular visiting hours.”

  “So,” I say, “I’m his sister.”

  “Good. Right. OK, we need to do some more tests on Jim and give him another IV, so he needs to stay the night.” She pauses. “He doesn’t want to. I think he needs to talk to you.”

  She hands me the box of Kleenex.

  Jim is lying on his back, his free elbow resting over his eyes. I walk up to him and put my hand on his leg.

  “Hi.”

  He looks up at me, then up at the IV.

  “I have to have another one of these tonight so I need to stay.”

  I nod.

  “It’s not the flu. It’s pneumonia.”

  I nod again, and keep nodding as if he were still talking. I hear the whirr of the electric clock, the squeak of nurses’ shoes in the hall.

  “I haven’t asked what kind.”

  “No.”

  He looks at me. I take his sweaty hand in mine.

  “I don’t mind going,” he says, “Or being gone. But I don’t want to suffer long. I don’t want to take a long time going.”

  I try to say something to him, but I can’t. I want to tell him a story, but I can’t say anything.

  Because I’ve got this picture in my head of Jim’s buddy Scotty, who he grew up with in Fort Worth. And I’m seeing the three of us watching “Dynasty,” celebrating the new color box Jim bought for Scotty to watch at home, and I’m seeing us getting loaded on cheap champagne, and the way Scotty laughed and coughed from under the covers and had to ask me or Jim to refill his glass or light his Benson & Hedges because he was too weak to do it himself. Then I’m seeing Jim and me having a drink the day after Scotty went, and how Jim’s hands shook when he opened the first pack of cigarettes we ever shared, and how a week later Jim clammed up, just clammed right up in the middle of telling me about cleaning out Scotty’s room. And I think, from the way Jim isn’t talking, from the way his hand is shaking in mine, that he is seeing Scotty too.

  Scotty took a long time going.

  Jim stays the night at Swedish. The next night. The next. He asks me to let some people know—his office, a few friends. Not his parents. He doesn’t want to worry them. He asks me to bring him stuff from his apartment—clothes, books. I ask him if he wants his watercolors. He says no.

  I go to see him every day. I bring him the Times, the Blade, Newsweek. It’s easy for me to take off work. I only work as a temporary and I hate my jobs anyway, so I just don’t call in. Jim likes having people visit, and lots of people come. Chubby Bob with his pink, bald head. Dale in his banker’s suit. Mike the bouncer in his bomber jacket. Cindy and Bill on their way back out to Vashon. A bunch of guys from the baseball team. Denise and her man Chaz. Ange and Jeannie call him from Olympia.

  We play a lot of cards. Gin rummy. Hearts when there are enough of us. Spades. Poker. We use cut-up tongue depressors for chips. I offer to bring real ones, but Jim gets a kick out of coloring them red and blue and telling us he is a very, very, very wealthy Sugar Daddy. He also gets a big kick out of cheating.

  We watch a lot of tube. I sit on the big green plastic chair by the bed. Or Dale sits on the big green chair, me on his lap, and Bob on the extra folding metal chair: We watch reruns, sitcoms, Close Encounters. Ancient, awful Abbot an
d Costellos. Miniseries set between the wars. But Jim’s new favorites are hospital soaps. He becomes an instant expert on everything—all the characters’ affairs, the tawdry turns of plots, the long-lost illegitimate kids. He sits up on his pillows and rants about how stupid the dialogue is, how unrealistic the gore:

  “Oh come on. I could do a better gun-shot wound with a paint-by-numbers set!

  “Is that supposed to be a bruise?! Yo mama, pass me the hammer now. Now!

  “If that’s the procedure for a suture, I am Betty Grable’s legs.”

  He narrates softly in his stage aside: “Enter tough-as-nails head nurse. Exit sensitive young intern. Enter political appointment in admin, a shady fellow not inspired by a noble urge to help his fellow human. Enter surgeon with a secret. Exit secretly addicted pharmacist.”

  Then during commercials he tells us gossip about the staff here at Swedish which is far juicier than anything on TV. We howl at his trashy tales until he shushes us when the show comes back on. We never ask if what he says is true. And even if we did, Jim wouldn’t tell us.

  But most of the time, because I’m allowed to stay after hours as his sister, it’s Jim and me alone. We stare up at the big color box, and it stares down at us like the eye of God. Sometimes Jim’s commentary drifts, and sometimes he is silent. Sometimes when I look over and his eyes are closed, I get up to switch off the set, but he blinks and says, “I’m not asleep. Don’t turn it off. Don’t go.” Because he doesn’t want to be alone.

  Then, more and more, he sleeps and I look up alone at the plots that end in nothing, at the almost true-to-life colored shapes, at the hazy ghosts that trail behind the bodies when they move.

  Jim and I met through the temporary agency. I’d lost my teaching job and he’d decided to quit bartending because he and Scotty were becoming fanatics about their baseball team and consequently living really clean. This was good for me because I was trying, well, I was thinking I really ought to try, to clean it up a bit myself. Anyway, Jim and I had lots of awful jobs together—filing, answering phones, xeroxing, taking coffee around to arrogant fat-cat lawyers, stuffing envelopes, sticking number labels on pages and pages of incredibly stupid documents, then destroying those same documents by feeding them through the shredder. The latter was the only of these jobs I liked; I liked the idea of it. I like being paid five bucks an hour to turn everything that someone else had done into pulp.