Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales

by Norman Partridge

  I remember staring down at Mary Lyn in her coffin, thinking that the pink ribbon tied around her neck wasn't quite wide enough. Maybe it was just me. Most folks said that they couldn't see the rope burns at all.

  In the moonlight, Carl looked like a man made of shadows as he sprinted away from Mrs. Castro's garden. He flung open the car door and his sweaty white face came toward me; droplets of blood splattered against my naked chest as Carl flung roses into the back seat.

  The car door slammed shut. I grabbed one of Carl's big paws and held it up to the radio light. Jagged, bloody rips crisscrossed his lifeline. "Didn't have no shears," he said. "I had to rip 'em loose."

  I didn't know what to say. I was quiet all the way to the cemetery. Carl hit damn near every pothole and didn't even cringe.

  A rusty road sign bobbed in the darkness. FIDDLER CEMETERY.

  "Comin'?" Carl asked, collecting the roses with bloody hands.

  "She's dead, Carl," I whispered. "Take me home. I don't want to see this."

  Carl squeezed the rose stems. His eyes narrowed. "You don't want to see nothin', you just don't watch, then."

  Slam. Carl was out of the Chevy. Slam. In and out of the trunk. He loped into the darkness, roses in one hand, something else in the other.

  I sucked down the last drops of the last beer. Damn. First time that I could remember Carl not listening to me. He always listened, even in high school. If I dropped three fingers, he threw a slider. If I dropped my pinky: fastball to a left-handed batter.

  I rolled down my window. Somewhere, a high keening voice, breaking with emotion. Carl singing "Save the Last Dance for Me."

  Shit. Why couldn't I be at home? A couple more beers there, nice and cold. A Dark Mistress video. The one with her in that little black leather outfit; you know, nasty little leather strips, full of holes and tight like you can hardly believe. Makes her look like she sprang off the cover of some kinky science fiction paperback. Wearing that leather mask that never comes off. Blonde hair spilling around it; web from a black widow's ass.

  Hell, you know the feeling. Only real D. M. fans like you and me understand how you get addicted to that kind of stuff, right?

  Outside, a shovel bit into the cemetery lawn. I listened. The shovel bit again. Then I was out of the Chevy and screaming, "Carl!"

  I guess not many people know that I was the first one to see Mary Lyn that morning. Mr. McCarthy had hired me and Carl to work on farm equipment that summer, only Carl decided that he couldn't keep the job because he was afraid he'd get his pitching hand caught in some machine. Besides, he didn't feel right about taking money from Mary Lyn's dad.

  It was Saturday morning, not quite light and already hot like it gets in August. I opened the barn door and saw those blue eyes hanging in the shadows, heard the rope twisting. I tripped over the fallen ladder. I had to look, and then it seemed like I couldn't stop looking.

  Mrs. McCarthy broke down when I told her. Mr. McCarthy wanted to cut Mary Lyn down, but I said we'd better wait for the sheriff.

  They never did find a suicide note, and I guess that's why Mr. McCarthy still says it was murder. The sheriff didn't agree. When he found that broken 45 on the record player in the loft, he was sure that he had found Mary Lyn's final message. The sheriff went straight to Carl.

  Of course, the sheriff's guess was right. "Save the Last Dance for Me" was Carl and Mary Lyn's song. And that's what was on the broken 45.

  I tackled Carl and knocked the wind out of him. The shovel went one way, we went the other, and before we hit the grass Carl's head came down hard against Mary Lyn's tombstone.

  Took nearly five minutes for him to come around. I was trying to imagine what prison would be like when he shook his head and tried to sit up.

  "Just a minute, buddy," I said, holding Carl down. I could feel a bloody goose-egg rising on the side of his head just above his ear. "You'd better sit still until — "

  Carl sobbed. "Damn you. Jack. I gotta see Mary Lyn. I heard her on the radio! You did too!"

  A car skidded around an axle-buster out on Old Howard Road. I lay down next to Carl and the headlights passed over us. When the car was gone, I said, "I heard the Dark Mistress, not Mary Lyn. Someone we know must be playing a joke. A real sick joke."

  Carl rolled over onto his belly and yanked a handful of grass from Mary Lyn's grave. He buried his head in his arms. For a minute I thought that he had passed out, but then he said, "Why'd you leave, Mary Lyn? Didn't you know you'd take everything away?"

  He sat up and stared at me, his face shiny with blood and tears, his eyes wild and unfocused. "Take the shovel. Jack," he said. "Dig me a grave. I been dead for years, can't you see?"

  I reached for him and he batted my hand away. There wasn't any stopping him now. "She took it all away — the wedding, the kids, the baseball — all of it. Without her, I just couldn't do nothing. I didn't have the confidence, didn't have none of her strength, didn't even want to try. It would have been like trying to pitch without you catching for me."

  I smiled at that last thing, though I don't know how. "You could have kept pitching," I said, hoping I could get him talking about something besides Mary Lyn. "If you would have signed that Triple A contract like you should have, folks around here would be sayin', 'That Seaver boy from Fresno was good, but let me tell you about Carl Hart from Fiddler — '"

  "How could I sign? Mary Lyn dead half a year.. .everyone looking at me like I was some kind of ghost, like her death was my fault...."

  "But you could have left Fiddler."

  "Could have. Should have. Those are terrible words, Jack." Carl wiped blood out of his eyes. "No, I could never leave Mary Lyn. I'd never go anywhere without her. This damn town stole her from me." He laughed: a hard, bitter sound. "You want to know the truth? They never wanted to let her leave. None of 'em. Didn't you see her parents whispering to each other at the wake? Like they were happy that she'd never change? Like they were relieved somehow?"

  "Carl, that's crazy talk."

  He didn't even hear me. "Mary Lyn would always be that perfect girl from Fiddler who everyone could worship. She'd never get fat or old, never get wrinkled, never leave." His head sank forward and he blinked back tears. "But they'll have to put up with me forever. I'm a ghost, Jack. As long as I'm here, even when I'm old, they'll look at me and see Mary Lyn."

  Carl wobbled to his feet; he stood big and bloody, black sky and bright stars rimming his head. "Now they want to drive me away." He laughed and threw the shovel into the darkness. "Almost did, didn't they, buddy? But it ain't so easy. Take more than some crazy bitch playin' around on the radio to get rid of Carl Hart. Someone's gonna learn that tonight, that's for damn sure."

  I remember the rest of it kinda blurry, and Reverend Tim says that's probably for the best. I remember the clump of graveyard grass that Carl set on the dashboard, the Chevy hitting potholes, and then Carl cussing the headlights on 180. I remember wishing that I had another beer.

  Gray outskirts of Fresno... tall black radio transmitter with a single red light... buzzing sound like ten million fireflies and Carl slipping a key into the locked trunk, reaching for his shotgun... empty hallways in the unlocked building... the smell of floor wax... following Carl... the Mexican woman in black jeans and a black KTCB T- shirt and her familiar blue eyes... Carl smiling, grass stains on his knees... shotgun pellets turning her T-shirt red while she screams Spanish... Carl's words and then a fat technician shouting "Christ, she's only the janitor" and Carl lets him have it too, the fat guy lurching against a desk, scattering glazed donuts and spilling coffee... and then Mary Lyn's voice coming from the speakers.. I love getting into my work, and sometimes it gets into me... Carl screaming laughter now as he pulls a cassette out of some machine and the Dark Mistress's voice gone and the song gone and Carl laughing at the dead air....

  I was looking at Playboy up in the barn loft the first time it happened.

  "I see you," Mary Lyn said, peeking over the top rung of the ladder.
/>   I tossed the magazine away and stared into those sparkling blue eyes. Dead quiet in the barn. Both of us eighteen, scared. Mary Lyn waiting.

  "'Course you see me," I said. "I'm right here. You see me damn near every day."

  Mary Lyn came off the ladder. Her bare feet padded across the rough wooden floor. "I mean I see you at the drive-in. I see you watching me and Carl." She ran a thumb across her stomach and hooked it under the top button of her Levi cut-offs.

  I laughed and she came closer. I said, "I never — "

  Mary Lyn picked up the magazine and flipped through it. Her eyes widened. Sparkled. "Why, Jack, you're a bad boy. No wonder the girls stay away from you." She laughed. "You lonely? Is that why you like these magazines? That why you like to watch?"

  "No, it isn't like that. I just like to dream about how things might be."

  Sparkle. Mary Lyn dropped the magazine, and she unbuttoned her loose blue work-shirt, and she came closer. I undid her cut-offs, kissed her blonde curls. "Show me your dreams. Jack," she whispered, "and I'll show you mine."

  It would have been fine that way. We could have had our own separate world, one little spot where we could be like we wanted. We could have done everything. Trouble was, after a while Mary Lyn wasn't like my dreams at all. And then she started talking about bringing Carl into it. She should have left things alone. It could have been so wonderful.

  Could have. Should have. Those are terrible words....

  Funny how it ended. I remember it was a quiet August night. You could hear the old windmill down by the almond orchard sighing in the breeze; you could smell the heat, even at midnight.

  Sparkle. Nothing blue like that anywhere in Fiddler. Mary Lyn laughed.

  She thought the rope was part of some new dream.

  I've got an uncle up in Sacramento who's been after me to move north for years. He's got arthritis and wants me to take over his body and fender shop. Last night I talked it over with Sherry and we decided that it wasn't such a bad idea. We don't care anymore if people find out about us — we're leaving Fiddler for sure — but we're just sorry that we won't be around when folks find out that an eighteen-year-old cheerleader has run off with a guy who's been cashing paychecks from the tire factory for fifteen years.

  Sherry's gonna be just fine. She doesn't have one single dream rattling around in her cute little head. Course, I won't ever be able to tell her things like I could with Mary Lyn. I'll never look up from my morning coffee and say, "Hey, babe, I ever mention those cinder blocks I put in Carl's coffin? I ever tell you about the things I like to do with his head?"

  But Sherry's not the real reason I'm leaving. And it's not because KTCB replaced the Dark Mistress with tapes of Reverend Tim and his pals, either. See, the last two nights after I finished my shift at the tire factory, I was followed home by an iron-blue '57 Chevy. Damn thing chewed my tail all the way up Highway 63. And tonight, flipping around the dial while I was waiting for Sherry out in the McCarthy's almond orchard, I heard a woman's voice on KTCB after midnight.

  She sounded a lot like Mary Lyn; she sounded a lot like the Dark Mistress. I wrote down the name and frequency of the Sacramento radio station she told me about.

  She said that I should avoid working on '57 Chevys, and then she played the song I've been wanting to hear: "Save the Last Dance for Me."

  It was a request from someone named Carl.

  Building Your Sandcastle

  Most aspiring writers don't have a problem dreaming big. I was no exception... and you can see a little of that in "Sandprint," a bittersweet tale of a bestselling husband/wife writing team which reaches its conclusion on a storm-swept beach in Hawaii.

  And—minus the storm, of course—that's not a bad place for us to begin. See, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about writer's dreams, and about sandcastles. Fact is, I'd like to do more than talk. If you're a beginning writer mapping out a career, you can jump in and help me. Let's grab a couple shovels and a couple pails and get to work, imaginatively speaking. We'll hunker down and build ourselves a castle big enough to house your not quite Stephen Kingsize but definitely bigger than average dreams.

  Sound fair enough? Okay. Check out the following little scenario and see if it sounds like something you'd like to shovel into your bucket: it's your first year of serious writing, and you're amazingly successful. You've been trying to market your fiction for awhile now—last year you sold a couple of stories to webzines which in truth didn't pay enough to buy you a cheeseburger and fries—but now that you've really started to work hard the real-deal editors have started to bite. In January you sold a story to Cemetery Dance, and February and March brought acceptance letters from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Subterranean. Not long after that you managed to crack Tom Monteleone's Borderlands series, and you sold another story to a John Pelan anthology. Those sales topped off your creative gas tank, and during the summer you finally knuckled down and finished that first novel you've been working on for the last few years.

  So you decide to take a chance and buy yourself a ticket to the World Fantasy Convention, where you hope to meet some publishing people and maybe get something going with your novel. Sure, it's going to cost you some money to make the trip—even if you do share a room with a couple writers you met on a message board. You'll have to buy a membership. And since the convention site isn't anywhere near your neck of the woods, you'll have to buy a plane ticket too. But you're willing to take the chance.

  And since this is your lucky year, the risk pays off. A Locus reviewer who's enjoyed your work introduces you to one of the top-flight agents in the business at a con party, and the guy actually gives you his card and tells you to send a copy of your novel to his office. Well, no one needs to tell you twice. You jam your manuscript into a box as soon as you get home.

  You FedEx that sucker... and, wonder of wonders, the agent reads it right away.

  He flips for it.

  He shoots your manuscript over to an editor at Tor, who—wonder of wonders. Part II—drops everything to read it. She flips for it, too. You get an offer just before Thanksgiving. It's a five-figure advance. Not extremely high five, or extremely low five, or even middle-ground five. Let's say that Tor puts twenty grand on the table, and that seems damn good to you. Twenty-thousand bucks is a lot better than the two or three grand advances most of your friends have been getting selling paperback originals that are stripped and pulped almost as soon as they hit the bookstore shelves (hey, even some of the old-timers you've met are scraping by on that kind of money, so you know you just got lucky and then some).

  The novel contracts come, and you sign them and send them back. You are ecstatic; you are also very eager to get paid. Your agent tells you he'll try to get your check soon, but he's a straight shooter—he admits that nothing much ever happens in New York during the holiday season, and you'll maybe get your first installment in January... and that's if he really gets lucky. But that's okay with you. You're flying high, because you've had more good news on a couple other fronts. Based on your novel sale and the stories that saw print this year, a small press publisher has called to talk about doing a collection. Hey, no big surprise there. After all, you're hot... or did I forget to mention that one of your stories has garnered recommendations for the Bram Stoker award that register in the double digits? And did I omit the fact that Ellen Datlow has just selected that very same story for inclusion in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror?

  Yep. That's the icing on your own personal cake. You've arrived at long last. You kick up your heels. You buy a bottle of champagne. Not the cheap stuff, either. You buy yourself a bottle of Dom Perignon, the same stuff good old Paul Sheldon drinks when he finishes up his bestsellers in Stephen King's Misery. And when it comes to the holidays you spoil that significant other of yours a little bit, because God knows that he or she deserves it for all the days he or she clocked with you before you—yes, you can now say it officially—hit it big as a writer.

  See, that's w
hat you've done. You have beaten the odds and then some. You've had the kind of year that most folks who put pen to paper only dream about, and I tip my hat in your direction.

  Congrats! Three cheers! Encore!

  Now let me rain on your parade.

  And why shouldn't I?

  After all, you just had a very rough year.

  Here's why:

  You sold five stories to really good markets, but even really good markets don't pay that much for short fiction. Mostly, the rate of pay for an established writer of short fiction will be somewhere between five and ten cents a word. Even at the high end, that certainly isn't a king's ransom.[18]

  And let's face it, as a newcomer you're going to get the low end. Let's say you were paid five cents a word for all five stories. And let's say that the stories themselves averaged 5,000 words. That makes 25,000 words of fiction at five cents a word. That's $ 1,250 American.

  But wait a second. One of your stories was selected for The Year's Best. That's quite an honor, but the truth is the payment for such a large reprint anthology is more in the form of an honorarium than a check that will see you through a trip to the grocery store. The pay for your Year's Best story amounts to $50, at a rate of one cent a word for 5,000 words. And the Stoker nomination? Well, it's great to be recognized by your peers, but that particular feather in your cap doesn't bring you a penny (even if you end up winning that cool little haunted house statue).