Green Eyes

by Lucius Shepard

  ‘Tent show hucksters,’ offered Donnell.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Papa, unruffled. ‘And freaks. You gonna fit right in.’ He worried at something between his teeth. ‘I’ll be up front with you, brother. Goin’ to Otille’s is like joinin’ the circus. Three shows daily. Not everybody can deal with it. But gettin’ back to her theory, she figures if she insulates herself with this mess of lowlife, she’ll muffle her unnatural appetites and won’t never do nothin’ real bad like Valcours and Clothilde.’ He fingered a card out from his side pocket and handed it to Donnell. ‘You wanna learn more ‘bout it, call that bottom number. She’s dyin’ to talk with you.’ He stood, hitched up his trousers. ‘One more thing and I’ll be steppin’. You’re bein’ watched. Otille says they on you like white on rice.’

  Donnell did not react to the news; he was staring at the card Papa had given him. But Jocundra was stunned. ‘By who?’ she asked.

  ‘Government, most likely,’ said Papa. ‘Otille says you wanna check it out, you know that little shanty bar down the road?’

  ‘The Buccaneer Club?’

  ‘Yeah. You go down there tomorrow. ‘Bout half a mile past it’s a dirt road, and just off the gravel you gonna find a stake out. Two men in a nice shiny unmarked car. They ain’t there today, which is why I’m here.’ Papa twirled his car keys and gave them his most unctuous smile. ‘Let us hear from you, now.’ He sprinted out into the rain. Jocundra turned to Donnell. ‘Was he telling the truth?’ He was puzzled by the question for a moment, then said, ‘Oh, yeah. At least he wasn’t lying.’ He looked down at the card. ‘Wait a second.’ He went into the back room and returned with a notebook; he laid it open on top of the stove. ‘This,’ he said, pointing to a drawing, ‘is the last sketch I made of the patterns of light I’ve been seeing. And this’ - he pointed to a design at the bottom of the card - ‘this is what my sketch is a fragment of.’

  Jocundra recognized the design, and if he had only showed her fragmentary sketch, she still would have recognized it. She had seen it painted in chicken blood on stucco walls, laid out in colored dust on packed-earth floors, soaped on the windows of storefront temples, printed on handbills. The sight of it made all her explanations of his abilities seem as feckless as charms against evil.

  ‘That’s what I want to build with the copper,’ said Donnell. ‘I’m sure of it. I’ve never been…’ He noticed her fixation on the design. ‘You’ve seen it before?’

  ‘It’s a veve,’ said Jocundra with a sinking feeling. ‘It’s a ritual design used in voodoo to designate one of the gods, to act as a gateway through which he can be called. This one belongs to one of the aspects of Ogoun, but I can’t remember which one.’

  ‘A veve?’ He picked up the card. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not?’ He tucked the card into his shirt pocket.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to wait until morning, because I don’t want to appear too eager.’ He laughed. ‘And then I guess I’ll go down to the Buccaneer Inn and give Otille a call.’

  Donnell dropped in his money and dialed. A flatbed truck passed on the road, showering the booth with spray from its tires, but even when it had cleared he could barely make out the pickup parked in front of the bar. The rain dissolved the pirate’s face above the shingle roof into an eyepatch and a crafty smile, smeared the neon letters of the Lone Star Beer sign into a weepy glow.

  ‘Yes, who is it?’ The voice on the line was snippish and unaccented, but as soon as he identified himself, it softened and acquired a faint Southern flavor. ‘I’m pleasantly surprised, Mr Harrison. I’d no idea you’d be calling so quickly. How can I help you?’

  ‘I’m not sure you can,’ he said. ‘I’m just calling to make a few inquiries.’

  Otille’s laugh was sarcastic; even over the wire it conveyed a potent nastiness. ‘You obviously have pressing problems, or else you wouldn’t be calling. Why don’t you tell me about them? Then if I’m still interested you can make your inquiries.’

  Donnell rubbed the phone against his cheek, thinking how best to handle her. Through the rain-washed plastic, he saw an old hound dog with brown and white markings emerge from the bushes beside the booth and step onto the road. Sore-covered, starved-thin, dull-eyed. It put its nose down and began walking toward the bar, sniffing at litter, unmindful of the pelting rain.

  ‘I need three tons of copper,’ he said. ‘I want to build something.’

  ‘If you’re going to be circuitous, Mr Harrison, we can end this conversation right now.’

  ‘I want to build a replica of the veve on your calling card.’

  ‘Why?’

  At first, prodded by her questions, he told half-truths, repeating the lies he had been told at the project, sketching out his plan to use the veve as a remedy, omitting particulars. But as the conversation progressed, he found he had surprisingly few qualms about revealing himself to her and became more candid. Though some of her questions maintained a sharp tone, others were asked with childlike curiosity, and others yet were phrased almost seductively, teasing out the information. These variances in her character reminded him of his own fluctuations between arrogance and anxiety, and he thought because of this he might be able to understand and exploit her weaknesses.

  ‘I’m still not quite clear why you want to build this precise veve,’ she said.

  ‘It’s an intuition on my part,’ he said. ‘Jocundra thinks it may be an analogue to some feature of my brain, but all I can say is that I’ll know after it’s built. Why do you have it on your card?’

  ‘Tradition,’ she said. ‘Do you know what a veve is, what its function in voodoo is?’

  ‘Yes, generally.’

  ‘I’m quite impressed with what I’ve heard about you,’ she said. ‘If anyone else had called me and suggested I build the veve of Ogoun Badagris out of three tons of copper, I would have hung up. But before I commit… excuse me.’

  The hound dog had wandered into the parking lot of the bar and stood gazing mournfully at Mr Brisbeau’s tailgate; it snooted at something under the rear tire and walked around to the other side. Donnell heard Otille speaking angrily to someone, and she was still angry when she addressed him once again.

  ‘Come to Maravillosa, Mr Harrison. We’ll talk. I’ll decide whether or not to be your sponsor. But you had better come soon. The people who’re watching you won’t allow your freedom much longer.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’m very well connected,’ she said tartly.

  ‘What guarantee do I have they won’t be watching me there?’

  ‘Maravillosa is my private preserve. No one enters without my permission.’ Otille made an impatient noise. ‘If you decide to come, just call this number and talk to Papa. He’ll be picking you up. Have that old fool you’re staying with take you through the swamp to Caitlett’s Store.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Donnell. Gray rain driven by a gust of wind opaqued the booth; the lights of the bar looked faraway, the lights of a fogbound coast.

  ‘Not for too long,’ said Otille; her voice shifted gears and became husky, enticing. ‘May I call you Donnell?’

  ‘Let’s keep things businesslike between us,’ he said, irked by her heavy-handedness.

  ‘Oh, Donnell,’ she said, laughing. ‘The question was just a formality. I’ll call you anything I like.’

  She hung up.

  Someone had drawn a cross in blue ink above the phone, and someone else, a more skilful artist, had added a woman sitting naked atop the vertical piece, wavy lines to indicate that she was moving up and down, and the words ‘Thank you, Jesus’ in a word balloon popping from her lips. As he thought what to to next, he inspected all the graffiti, using them as background to thought; their uniform obscenity seemed to be seconding an inescapable conclusion. He walked back to the truck, cold rain matting his hair.

  After Donnell described the conversation, proposing they see what Maravillosa had to offer, Mr Brisbeau grunted in dismay
. ‘Me, I’d sooner trust a hawk wit my pet mouse,’ he said, digging for the car keys in his pocket.

  ‘She sounds awful,’ said Jocundra. ‘Shadows can’t be any worse. At least we’re familiar with the pitfalls.’

  ‘She’s direct,’ said Donnell. ‘You have to give her that. I never knew what was going on at Shadows.’

  Jocundra picked at an imperfection of bubbled plastic on the dash.

  ‘Besides,’ said Donnell, ‘I’m convinced there’s more to learn about the veve, and Maravillosa’s the place to learn it.’

  Rain drummed on the roof, the windows fogged, and the three of them sat without speaking.

  ‘What’s today?’ asked Donnell.

  ‘Thursday,’ said Mr Brisbeau; ‘Friday,’ said Jocundra at the same time. ‘Friday,’ she repeated. Mr Brisbeau shrugged.

  Donnell tapped the dash with his fingers. ‘Is there a back road out of here, one the truck can handle?’

  ‘There’s a track down by the saw mill,’ said Mr Brisbeau. ‘She’s goin’ to be damn wet, but we can do it. Maybe.’

  ‘If Edman still spends his weekends at home,’ said Donnell, ‘we’ll give him a chance to make a counterproposal. We’ll leave now. That way we’ll catch whoever’s watching by surprise, and they won’t expect me to show up at Edman’s.’

  ‘What if he’s not home?’ Jocundra looked appalled by the prospect, and he realized she had been counting on him to reject Otille’s offer.

  ‘Then I’ll call Papa, and we’ll head for Caitlett’s Store. Truthfully, I can’t think of anything Edman could say to make me re-enter the project, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.’

  She nodded, downcast. ‘Maybe we should just call Papa. It might be a risk at Edman’s.’

  ‘It’s all a risk,’ he said, as Mr Brisbeau switched on the engine. ‘But this way we’ll know we did what we had to.’

  As Mr Brisbeau backed up, the right front tire jolted over something, then bumped down, and Donnell heard a squeal from beneath. He swung the door open and climbed down and saw the old hound dog. The truck had passed over its neck and shoulders, killing it instantly. It must have given up looking for food and bellied under the wheel for shelter and the warmth of the motor. One of its eyes had been popped halfway out of the socket, exposing the thready structures behind, and the rain laid a glistening film upon the brown iris, spattering, leaking back inside the skull. Bright blood gushed from its mouth, paling to pink and wending off in rivulets across the puddled ground.

  Mr Brisbeau came around the front of the truck, furious. ‘Goddamn, boy! Don’t that tell you somethin’?’ he shouted, as if it had been Donnell’s fault he had struck the dog. ‘You keep up wit this Rigaud foolishness, and you goin’ against a clear sign!’

  But if it was a sign, then what interpretation should be placed upon it? Pink-muzzled, legs splayed, mouth frozen open in a rictus snarl; the grotesque stamp of death had transformed this dull, garbage-eating animal into something far more memorable that it had been in life. Donnell would not have thought such a miserable creature could contain so brilliant a colour.

  Chapter 13

  From Conjure Men: My Work with Ezawa Tulane by Anthony Edman, MD, PhD.

  … Though Ezawa’s funding was private, he had been required by regulation to notify the government of his work with recombinant DNA. Government involvement in the project was minimal, however, until the death of Jack Richmond. The morning after his death - I had not yet learned of it - Douglas Stellings, our liaison with the CIA, visited me without appointment. I was not happy to see him. We had managed to keep news of the escape from the other patients, but Staff was in shock and the general reaction was one of utter despondency, of resignation to failure. Not even Dr Brauer could bestir himself to muster a sally against me. We had all been expecting a breakthrough, but with the exit of Magnusson, Richmond and Harrison our little stage had been robbed of its leading players, and we of our central focus. And so, when Stellings appeared, I greeted him as the bereaved might greet a member of the wake, with gloomy disinterest, and when he notified me of the deaths, I could only stare at him.

  Stellings, a thin, fit man given to punctuating his phrases with sniffs, was wholly contemptuous of me, of Staff, in fact of anyone with less that CIA status. ‘We’ve told the locals to back off,’ he said. Sniff. ‘The Bureau’s taking care of it… under our supervision, thank God!’ As he glanced at the display of aboriginal crania behind my head, a tic of a smile disordered his features, which were, to my mind, pathologically inexpressive. ‘Get your people up here,’ he commanded. ‘I want to see videos of Harrison.’

  Until late in the evening we reviewed Harrison’s last four days of tape. After a few initial questions, Stellings withheld comment; then, around midnight, he asked that three particular segments be rerun. The first showed Harrison sitting at his desk; he leaned forward, resting his head in his left hand, propped his right elbow on the desktop and wiggled his fingers. He gave the impression of being deep in thought. Shortly thereafter the image broke up and the screen went blank. The second section was similar, except that Harrison was limping along the downstairs hall, and the third, recorded the night of the escape, was identical to the first.

  ‘Cameras are always screwing up,’ muttered someone.

  Stellings ran the tape back to the beginning of the third segment, then ran it forward again. ‘He’s peeking at the camera,’ he said. ‘He’s looking up and sideways so you won’t notice, masking his eyes behind his fingers. And then he waggles his fingers, we count to ten’ - he counted - ‘and the camera malfunctions. Got it?’

  ‘Just like Magnusson,’ breathed Dr Leavitt in tones of awe, tones which sounded false to my ear.

  ‘What about Magnusson?’ snapped Stellings.

  ‘He exhibited similar finger-eye behavior prior to video malfunctions,’ said Leavitt - earnest, deeply respectful Leavitt. ‘I mentioned it to Dr Brauer, but he didn’t assign it much importance.’

  ‘You people ought to be in short pants,’ said Stellings with disgust.

  ‘Why wasn’t I appraised of this?’ I asked of Brauer. I was, I admit, delighted to see him squirm, though I realized that the downfall of a Brauer only permits the rise of a Leavitt; and Leavitt, our learning expert, whose primary contribution had thus far been a study of the patients’ acquisition of autobiographical detail from their exposure to television, was if anything more of an opportunist than Brauer.Of course I had not noticed Harrison’s behavior myself, but there sat Brauer, narrow-eyed, licking his lips, the image of a crook set up to take the rap.

  Stellings dismissed everyone excepting myself and called his superiors. He recommended that all measures be taken to remove the FBI from the case, thus beginning the jurisdictional dispute which, in effect, allowed Harrison and Verret to find refuge at the home of Clarence Brisbeau. At the moment Harrison stood upon the stage of the revival in Salt Harvest, not one agent or officer was searching for him. All the hounds had been frozen at point, waiting until their masters could untangle their leashes, and by the time the CIA had won dominance and Harrison had been located, the decision had been made to permit his continued freedom. The idea was, as Stellings put it, to ‘let him roll and see if he comes up sevens.’ Harrison would certainly prove uncooperative if captured; therefore it would be more profitable to monitor him. Brisbeau’s cabin was not an optimal security situation, but its isolation was a positive factor, and neither Stellings nor his superiors expected Harrison to run. Besides, there would be other slow-burners; the more Harrison inadvertently revealed, the more effectively we would be able to control them. When it was learned that Harrison was practising a form of faith healing, the CIA, in a master stroke of bureaucratic efficiency, sent him patients from their hospital, all of whom experienced miracle cures; and it was then -awakened by this luridly mystical image of sick spies being made whole by the ministrations of a ‘zombie’ healer - that I came out of the fog which had lowered about me since the escape and began to be afra
id.

  The surveillance devices planted within Brisbeau’s cabin malfunctioned most of the time, but on days when no patients visited and Harrison’s electrical activity was at a minimum, we were sometimes able to pick up distorted transmissions; and from them, as well as from our extant knowledge and agents’ reports, we pieced together the science underlying Harrison’s abilities. Stellings evinced little surprise upon learning of the cures or any other of the marvels; his reactions consisted merely of further schemes and recommendations. Yet I was shaken. Harrison had been alive five months, and he was already capable of miracles. And listening to one particular exchange between him and Verret, we caught a hint of some new evolution of ability.

  VERRET: What is it?

  HARRISON: Nothing. Just the gros bon ange. I’m getting better at controlling it (laughter) or vice versa.

  VERRET: What do I look like?

  HARRISON: You’ve got a beautiful soul. (Verret laughs). What I was reacting to was that all the bits of fire were swarming about in the black, coalescing at random, and then, whoosh! they all converged to form into your mask. It wasn’t the same as usual, though the features were the same. Are the same. But the colors are different. Less blue, more gold and ruby.

  VERRET: I wonder…

  HARRISON: What?

  VERRET: A second ago I was thinking about you… very romantically.

  HARRISON: Yeah? (A rustling sound.)

  VERRET: (laughing) Do I feel different? (A silence.) What’s wrong?

  HARRISON: Just trying to shift back. It’s hard to do sometimes.

  VERRET: Why don’t you not bother? I don’t mind.

  HARRISON: (His voice becomes briefly very resonant, as if the transmission were stabilizing.) It’d be like two charred corpses making love. (A long silence.) There. Are you okay?

  VERRET: (shakily) Yes.

  HARRISON: Oh, Christ! I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry.

  VERRET: You’ve no reason to be.