He was our friend, and so we mourn his passing; but he was also the voice of our community for fifteen years, and the evening air will not sound as safe and friendly and worth the breathing without him.
Mike Hodel is gone and there is little comfort in saying well, his was as good a death as we're permitted. No death is good because it robs us of the only treasures that matter, the companionship and closeness of a friend who mattered. Perhaps others will find consolation in remembering that we had him with us for forty-six years, fifteen of which enriched all of us, and the literature he loved so much.
Good night, Michael.
I did the radio show for a year, but it didn't help much. I still miss Mike. The litter of his pipe ashes around my office. Funny how many of my friends smoke pipes. I smoke a pipe, too. That probably isn't anything, but it occurred to me.
The necrology went on, gathering names. Most of them close friends, others I'd only known as important icons in my world, with whom I'd had minimal personal contact. Benny Goodman and Jorge Luis Borges. I wrote the last liner notes on a Benny Goodman album. Wrote them for the Musical Heritage Review, and Benny had to approve them. And when he read them he told Bob Nissim at the Musical Heritage Society, "These are terrific. Use them on the album, too. This kid can write."
I thought I'd fuckin' die!
And I met Borges once. For a second. After a lecture. But he was my father in what he wrote. He is the pinnacle always before me, the reminder that no matter how arrogant I get about what I write, at my tip-top finest I'm not fit to sweep up his shadow. That he died, never having received the Nobel Prize for Literature that he deserved, crushed me and sent me deeper into melancholia.
The list mounted. You'll find the necrology printed as side-runners near the beginning of this rumination. You may recognize some of the names. Trust me on this, they were all extraordinary people. I still can't believe I live in a world that doesn't have Alfred Bester and Terry Carr somewhere over there, out of sight, still saying and writing nifty stuff.
Alfy got the book I dedicated to him and Ray Bradbury just a week before he died. He told the day nurse to go back to the phone and tell me I was the best there is. That was bullshit, of course, but coming from the best there was, it made all the work worth the effort. And Terry Carr. Jeezus, he couldn't bear it when someone used "hopefully" the wrong way. Or "viable."
And so I went a little more than a little bit mad about all the deaths. And the stories started reflecting it. "Paladin of the Lost Hour" and "Eidolons" and "The Avenger of Death" and "Laugh Track" and I saw the thread, and one day actually had the strange dream that opens "The Function of Dream Sleep" and I knew I had to write that story to make some sense of all this misery and loneliness and aching.
Now it's done, and it was never my intention to sadden the reader, but if a writer is what he writes, then perhaps anyone who picks up this book needs to know that the footsteps in which we walk are deep. There is little anyone can say that makes sense and doesn't read as arrant foolishness. Dead is dead, and we all feel as if we've driven cross-country without any sleep or break, when someone we need is taken away.
Like Jack London, Jack Black, Josiah Flynt and Jim Tully, I was a road kid who found a way to get off the road. I learned how to write. It was mostly time alone. But there have always been friends and lovers who brought me back to the understanding that when it is all written, there remains nothing more important than the lives you touch, and that touch you. You are not alone.
This is a book of stories that you may think of as angry candy. They will please and entertain, I really and truly hope they will entertain (and a few of them are supposed to do no more than that), but they are also stories that I hope leave a bittersweet taste in your mind, like a jalapeño-laced cinnamon bear. They are stories I wrote because my friends are gone, a lot of them, and if you can't be angry about it, how the hell much did you care to begin with?
It's something. At last, it is something.
THIS WAS AN OLD MAN. Not an incredibly old man; obsolete, spavined; not as worn as the sway-backed stone steps ascending the Pyramid of the Sun to an ancient temple; not yet a relic. But even so, a very old man, this old man perched on an antique shooting stick, its handles open to form a seat, its spike thrust at an angle into the soft ground and trimmed grass of the cemetery. Gray, thin rain misted down at almost the same angle as that at which the spike pierced the ground. The winter-barren trees lay flat and black against an aluminum sky, unmoving in the chill wind. An old man sitting at the foot of a grave mound whose headstone had tilted slightly when the earth had settled; sitting in the rain and speaking to someone below.
"They tore it down, Minna.
"I tell you, they must have bought off a councilman.
"Came in with bulldozers at six o'clock in the morning, and you know that's not legal. There's a Municipal Code. Supposed to hold off till at least seven on weekdays, eight on the weekend; but there they were at six, even before six, barely light for godsakes. Thought they'd sneak in and do it before the neighborhood got wind of it and call the landmarks committee. Sneaks: they come on holidays, can you imagine!
"But I was out there waiting for them, and I told them, 'You can't do it, that's Code number 91.03002, subsection E,' and they lied and said they had special permission, so I said to the big muckymuck in charge, 'Let's see your waiver permit,' and he said the Code didn't apply in this case because it was supposed to be only for grading, and since they were demolishing and not grading, they could start whenever they felt like it. So I told him I'd call the police, then, because it came under the heading of Disturbing the Peace, and he said . . . well, I know you hate that kind of language, old girl, so I won't tell you what he said, but you can imagine.
"So I called the police, and gave them my name, and of course they didn't get there till almost quarter after seven (which is what makes me think they bought off a councilman), and by then those 'dozers had leveled most of it. Doesn't take long, you know that.
"And I don't suppose it's as great a loss as, maybe, say, the Great Library of Alexandria, but it was the last of the authentic Deco design drive-ins, and the carhops still served you on roller skates, and it was a landmark, and just about the only place left in the city where you could still get a decent grilled cheese sandwich pressed very flat on the grill by one of those weights they used to use, made with real cheese and not that rancid plastic they cut into squares and call it 'cheese food.'
"Gone, old dear, gone and mourned. And I understand they plan to put up another one of those mini-malls on the site, just ten blocks away from one that's already there, and you know what's going to happen: this new one will drain off the traffic from the older one, and then that one will fail the way they all do when the next one gets built, you'd think they'd see some history in it; but no, they never learn. And you should have seen the crowd by seven-thirty. All ages, even some of those kids painted like aborigines, with torn leather clothing. Even they came to protest. Terrible language, but at least they were concerned. And nothing could stop it. They just whammed it, and down it went.
"I do so miss you today, Minna. No more good grilled cheese." Said the very old man to the ground. And now he was crying softly, and now the wind rose, and the mist rain stippled his overcoat.
Nearby, yet at a distance, Billy Kinetta stared down at another grave. He could see the old man over there off to his left, but he took no further notice. The wind whipped the vent of his trenchcoat. His collar was up but rain trickled down his neck. This was a younger man, not yet thirty-five. Unlike the old man, Billy Kinetta neither cried nor spoke to memories of someone who had once listened. He might have been a geomancer, so silently did he stand, eyes toward the ground.
One of these men was black; the other was white.
Beyond the high, spiked-iron fence surrounding the cemetery two boys crouched, staring through the bars, through the rain; at the men absorbed by grave matters, by matters of graves. These were not really boys. They
were legally young men. One was nineteen, the other two months beyond twenty. Both were legally old enough to vote, to drink alcoholic beverages, to drive a car. Neither would reach the age of Billy Kinetta.
One of them said, "Let's take the old man."
The other responded, "You think the guy in the trenchcoat'll get in the way?"
The first one smiled; and a mean little laugh. "I sure as shit hope so." He wore, on his right hand, a leather carnaby glove with the fingers cut off, small round metal studs in a pattern along the line of his knuckles. He made a fist, flexed, did it again.
They went under the spiked fence at a point where erosion had created a shallow gully. "Sonofabitch!" one of them said, as he slid through on his stomach. It was muddy. The front of his sateen roadie jacket was filthy. "Sonofabitch!" He was speaking in general of the fence, the sliding under, the muddy ground, the universe in total. And the old man, who would now really get the crap kicked out of him for making this fine sateen roadie jacket filthy.
They sneaked up on him from the left, as far from the young guy in the trenchcoat as they could. The first one kicked out the shooting stick with a short, sharp, downward movement he had learned in his tae kwon do class. It was called the yup-chagi. The old man went over backward.
Then they were on him, the one with the filthy sonofabitch sateen roadie jacket punching at the old man's neck and the side of his face as he dragged him around by the collar of the overcoat. The other one began ransacking the coat pockets, ripping the fabric to get his hand inside.
The old man commenced to scream. "Protect me! You've got to protect me . . . it's necessary to protect me!"
The one pillaging pockets froze momentarily. What the hell kind of thing is that for this old fucker to be saying? Who the hell does he think'll protect him? Is he asking us to protect him? I'll protect you, scumbag! I'll kick in your fuckin' lung! "Shut 'im up!" he whispered urgently to his friend. "Stick a fist in his mouth!" Then his hand, wedged in an inside jacket pocket, closed over something. He tried to get his hand loose, but the jacket and coat and the old man's body had wound around his wrist. "C'mon loose, motherfuckah!" he said to the very old man, who was still screaming for protection. The other young man was making huffing sounds, as dark as mud, as he slapped at the rain-soaked hair of his victim. "I can't . . . he's all twisted 'round . . . getcher hand outta there so's I can . . ." Screaming, the old man had doubled under, locking their hands on his person.
And then the pillager's fist came loose, and he was clutching — for an instant — a gorgeous pocket watch.
What used to be called a turnip watch.
The dial face was cloisonné, exquisite beyond the telling.
The case was of silver, so bright it seemed blue.
The hands, cast as arrows of time, were gold. They formed a shallow V at precisely eleven o'clock. This was happening at 3:45 in the afternoon, with rain and wind.
The timepiece made no sound, no sound at all.
Then: there was space all around the watch, and in that space in the palm of the hand, there was heat. Intense heat for just a moment, just long enough for the hand to open.
The watch glided out of the boy's palm and levitated.
"Help me! You must protect me!"
Billy Kinetta heard the shrieking, but did not see the pocket watch floating in the air above the astonished young man. It was silver, and it was end-on toward him, and the rain was silver and slanting; and he did not see the watch hanging free in the air, even when the furious young man disentangled himself and leaped for it. Billy did not see the watch rise just so much, out of reach of the mugger.
Billy Kinetta saw two boys, two young men of ratpack age, beating someone much older; and he went for them. Pow, like that!
Thrashing his legs, the old man twisted around — over, under — as the boy holding him by the collar tried to land a punch to put him away. Who would have thought the old man to have had so much battle in him?
A flapping shape, screaming something unintelligible, hit the center of the group at full speed. The carnaby-gloved hand reaching for the watch grasped at empty air one moment, and the next was buried under its owner as the boy was struck a crackback block that threw him face first into the soggy ground. He tried to rise, but something stomped him at the base of his spine; something kicked him twice in the kidneys; something rolled over him like a flash flood.
Twisting, twisting, the very old man put his thumb in the right eye of the boy clutching his collar.
The great trenchcoated maelstrom that was Billy Kinetta whirled into the boy as he let loose of the old man on the ground and, howling, slapped a palm against his stinging eye. Billy locked his fingers and delivered a roundhouse wallop that sent the boy reeling backward to fall over Minna's tilted headstone.
Billy's back was to the old man. He did not see the miraculous pocket watch smoothly descend through rain that did not touch it, to hover in front of the old man. He did not see the old man reach up, did not see the timepiece snuggle into an arthritic hand, did not see the old man return the turnip to an inside jacket pocket.
Wind, rain and Billy Kinetta pummeled two young men of a legal age that made them accountable for their actions. There was no thought of the knife stuck down in one boot, no chance to reach it, no moment when the wild thing let them rise. So they crawled. They scrabbled across the muddy ground, the slippery grass, over graves and out of his reach. They ran; falling, rising, falling again; away, without looking back.
Billy Kinetta, breathing heavily, knees trembling, turned to help the old man to his feet; and found him standing, brushing dirt from his overcoat, snorting in anger and mumbling to himself.
"Are you all right?"
For a moment the old man's recitation of annoyance continued, then he snapped his chin down sharply as if marking end to the situation, and looked at his cavalry to the rescue. "That was very good, young fella. Considerable style you've got there."
Billy Kinetta stared at him wide-eyed. "Are you sure you're okay?" He reached over and flicked several blades of wet grass from the shoulder of the old man's overcoat.
"I'm fine. I'm fine but I'm wet and I'm cranky. Let's go somewhere and have a nice cup of Earl Grey."
There had been a look on Billy Kinetta's face as he stood with lowered eyes, staring at the grave he had come to visit. The emergency had removed that look. Now it returned.
"No, thanks. If you're okay, I've got to do some things."
The old man felt himself all over, meticulously, as he replied, "I'm only superficially bruised. Now if I were an old woman, instead of a spunky old man, same age though, I'd have lost considerable of the calcium in my bones, and those two would have done me some mischief. Did you know that women lose a considerable part of their calcium when they reach my age? I read a report." Then he paused, and said shyly, "Come on, why don't you and I sit and chew the fat over a nice cup of tea?"
Billy shook his head with bemusement, smiling despite himself. "You're something else, Dad. I don't even know you."
"I like that."
"What: that I don't know you?"
"No, that you called me 'Dad' and not Top.' I hate Top.' Always makes me think the wise-apple wants to snap off my cap with a bottle opener. Now Dad has a ring of respect to it. I like that right down to the ground. Yes, I believe we should find someplace warm and quiet to sit and get to know each other. After all, you saved my life. And you know what that means in the Orient."
Billy was smiling continuously now. "In the first place, I doubt very much I saved your life. Your wallet, maybe. And in the second place, I don't even know your name; what would we have to talk about?"
"Gaspar," he said, extending his hand. "That's a first name. Gaspar. Know what it means?"
Billy shook his head.
"See, already we have something to talk about."
So Billy, still smiling, began walking Gaspar out of the cemetery. "Where do you live? I'll take you home."
They were on the
street, approaching Billy Kinetta's 1979 Cutlass. "Where I live is too far for now. I'm beginning to feel a bit peaky. I'd like to lie down for a minute. We can just go on over to your place, if that doesn't bother you. For a few minutes. A cup of tea. Is that all right?"
He was standing beside the Cutlass, looking at Billy with an old man's expectant smile, waiting for him to unlock the door and hold it for him till he'd placed his still-calcium-rich but nonetheless old bones in the passenger seat. Billy stared at him, trying to figure out what was at risk if he unlocked that door. Then he snorted a tiny laugh, unlocked the door, held it for Gaspar as he seated himself, slammed it and went around to unlock the other side and get in. Gaspar reached across and thumbed up the door lock knob. And they drove off together in the rain.
Through all of this the timepiece made no sound, no sound at all.
Like Gaspar, Billy Kinetta was alone in the world.
His three-room apartment was the vacuum in which he existed. It was furnished, but if one stepped out into the hallway and, for all the money in all the numbered accounts in all the banks in Switzerland, one was asked to describe those furnishings, one would come away no richer than before. The apartment was charisma poor. It was a place to come when all other possibilities had been expended. Nothing green, nothing alive, existed in those boxes. No eyes looked back from the walls. Neither warmth nor chill marked those spaces. It was a place to wait.
Gaspar leaned his closed shooting stick, now a walking stick with handles, against the bookcase. He studied the titles of the paperbacks stacked haphazardly on the shelves.
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