by John Farris
“’Twas base of me to act so hastily,” she said. “I am now content there be a touch o’ antick to this place.”
“I TRIED to—”
From inside Jonas Fresno’s seedy honky-tonk came the sound of a trumpet, fingered with such authority and soaring élan that even the crows flocking to roost in a nearby tree fell silent, deferring to the majesty of a golden horn.
Delilah listened with cocked head; presently Gwen’s toes began to tap a more agreeable rhythm. Patrick’s anxieties became muted. When the trumpet paused, Delilah frowned and addressed the unseen hornman.
“O! Pray do not resolve that strain! I am smitten. Take breath, and play again the hot condition of thy blood.”
“That was Jonas,” Patrick informed her, and enthused, “He’s just practicing. Great, DON’cha think? But wait until you hear them all. The Jubilation Joymakers. My unca Mickey calls them the ‘Hotlicks Six.’ ”
“Hot licks?”
“Jonas on trumpet, natch. Shadrach Delhomme on bass, Delaware Joe Parker on trombone, Roscoe Raines on skins and ivories, Saint Vincent Poitrine on clarinet, with Jimmie ‘Ducks’ Clyborn playing banjo. C’mon, we’ll go inside. It’s early yet but we can have ourselves a couple of sodas, I’m DYing of thirst. How about you and, uh, Gwen?”
“Yea, we do thirst. Yet I know not what you mean by ‘soda.’ A goodly sherris-sack, or stronger distillation?”
“ ‘Strong stuff’? It’s illegal, but the Vortex has that too. Only you have to be CAREful about drinking moonshine.”
“ ‘Moonshine’? It sounds most agreeable. We go hence, then, to the fellow that hath the gift of spheres in a bawdy, hallow’d horn.”
* * *
Well, I dunno,” Jonas Fresno said, making a circle with a long finger in a small spill of beer, then touching the finger to his lower lip. “We can play ’em down from the skies okay, been doin’ jus’ that for the longest time. But play ’em back up to where they comes from? Don’t rightly know how to do that. Seein’ as I can’t ’zackly tell how I latches on to ’em in the fuss place. It be all in the horn. How it was made, and how it be played.”
“But,” Patrick said, popping a few boiled peanuts into his 7-UP, “you NEVer had to do it before! Because when they’re in the Vortex, either the machines or their inventors get damaged. Me and Uncle Mickey made it through the Vortex okay. I mean, it’s not all that different from New Jersey around here. But the NOmad won’t start anymore.”
He looked unhappily at his uncle Mickey, soused as usual at the far end of the bar, face in hands and mumbling to himself.
With Gwen’s hand Delilah irritably scratched at the side of her neck where there was still a lump and a rash from the mosquito bite. She looked from Patrick to Jonas Fresno, fascinated but perplexed, biding her time.
“Aw, honey,” Letty Fresno said to Delilah as she approached their table, carrying a platter in each hand. Baby-backs, hot corn bread, and vinegar greens. “You ought not be scratchin’ thataway, give yo’self a fever in the blood befo’ you knows it.” She set the platters down and leaned over the table for a closer look. “Umm-umm.” Delilah eyed her warily. “I gots blue ointment in the kitchen, good fo’ all kinds of cuts and burns. Draws the torment right out. But go ‘head, chil’, eat yo’self somethin’ fuss, you is lookin’ half starved to me.”
Jonas Fresno stroked his pure-white Uncle Sam goatee and looked at Letty.
“Woman, you done studied on such things. You think it could be?”
“What that now?” She was a tall lean freckled high-yellow woman with a crooked back and flesh like bees-wax, or summer squash ripened on the vine. On the back of her head she had a tight bun of hair as white as Jonas’s beard. Her left eyelid was sewn down tautly over an empty socket. On that parchmentlike lid was tattooed the blue facsimile of a wide-awake eye. Through the piratical flap of skin (Patrick had observed) a light sometimes gleamed like the mysterious lens of a far-gazer.
“Meanin’, toot time-travelers—like these yere folk—back to they’s own time ’n’ place?”
The idea startled, then seemed to intrigue Letty Fresno. She didn’t comment right away. Patrick held his breath. Delilah watched her with an expression of suppressed mirth, and had another sip of moonshine from a nearly emptied cup.
Letty made up her mind. She shook her head regretfully.
“No. It don’t seem possible to me.”
“Why NOT?” Patrick said, dismayed, his dream of home vanishing like soap bubbles.
“Oh, lamb. Don’t you see? If you done come here in somethin’, no matter what kind of contraption it be—and Jonas and me, we done seen a mighty lot of odd contraptions fall outer the sky when his mighty horn reach up and nab ’em—” Letty chuckled. “What I be sayin’, you jess cain’t traipse on back to where you been, if’n you don’t gots nothin’ to ride there in.”
Jonas nodded. “Makin’ sense to me.” He glanced at the eight-by-eight-foot bandstand raised a few inches above the honky-tonk’s warped old pine-board floor. The bandstand was crowded with instrument cases, an upright piano, a drum set, and a standing bass fiddle. Saint Vincent Poitrine, an elf of a man in shirtsleeves and a brown fedora, had appeared from nowhere to clear his throat, insert the mouthpiece of his shining clarinet, and begin to noodle. The sundown light coming through tall plantation shutters behind the bandstand illuminated a standing microphone as if it were a round gold-toned web woven by a metal spider.
Delilah hiccupped loudly. They all looked at her, Patrick through eyes that were brimming over. Delilah smiled a little giddily.
“Jonas—” Letty said, with a formidably censorious brow.
“Aw, now. She done axed me fo’ the good stuff. ’Shine ain’t ’zackly a ladylike ’freshment, but I done figured, what harm?”
“So y-you’re saying we’re STUCK here?” Patrick wailed at Letty, his hopes betrayed once more.
“Moonshine? It is potation fair-named, that with the sting of physick doth bring forth humours of the blood and merrily prick the senses. Such amusement I have not had in a pissing-while! Look you, goat-bearded fellow; dost apprehend what bodies forth upon the empty air? O riotous visions! I see ten thousand, nay, ten millions of twinkling lights all raving before me, like the eyes of Holofernes proffer’d on a serving plate.”
“My, my, how she can talk that talk,” Jonas marveled.
“Oh, great,” Patrick said sullenly. “Now she’s as soused as Unca Mickey.”
On the bandstand, Shadrach Delhomme, beside whose great shapeless bulk the standing bass looked almost cello-size, began to find rhythm of his own. Knuckly old hands love-thumping the mellowed curvy wood, fingers thrumming taut guts.
“ ‘Soused’?” Delilah hiccupped again, a hand going to Gwen’s belly. “Sure, I know thy meaning. But always beware: Delilah hath wit to spare.” And she winked at them.
“Don’t nobody want to be eatin’ my good ribs and corn bread?” Letty complained. “Jonas, here’s Roscoe now, and Ducks too. It be gettin’ on time fo’ the broadcast.”
“I’m eatin,” Jonas said. He smacked his lips and tucked a saucy napkin under his chin. Patrick began to chew lugubriously on a rib bone. Only Delilah’s plate went unfilled. She was scratching furiously again at the wound on Gwen’s neck.
“Honey, I can see that itch ’bout to devil the life out o’ you. Come on back to the kitchen, then, let me doctor it up. Then you can pay ’tention to yo’ appetite instead.”
“It hath me tetchy,” Delilah acknowledged, “and burthened as if ’twere angry canker. Mistress, my thanks.” And she followed Letty to the kitchen.
LAS VEGAS • OCTOBER 31 • 8:20 P.M.
Devon, look, it’s her!”
Harlee and her best friend were passing the Gallery of Western Art on their way to the Italian restaurant across the canal within the Venetian Hotel, where Harlee’s crew customarily gathered for dinner on Thursday nights. The occasion at the gallery was an invitation-only show. Smart-casual dress, with some H
outie-style, rodeo-parade regalia optional.
Eden Waring had augmented her hair with a fall; she was wearing a black mantilla and triangular native-art gold earrings with a short-sleeved blouse, green sash, and ankle-length black skirt, but Harlee hadn’t had to look twice to pick her out of the crowd. In fact, Eden had seldom been off her mind for the past couple of days.
“It sure is,” Devon said, and they stopped along with other strollers on the concourse to take in the festive scene. “Looking bloody marvelous, I must say. But what is she doing with a cane, has she injured herself?”
Harlee didn’t reply. She was laser-focused on Eden. A scowl crept onto her face. Below them a gondola went by, the gondolier singing a tenor aria that echoed from the vault of the faux St. Mark’s Square.
After a minute of silence Harlee said, her piss-and-vinegar expression replaced by a look of wry resolve, “Devon, why don’t you go on to Canaletto’s? I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“If fate has brought Eden and me together, must be a good reason, don’t you think?”
“Harlee—it’s called playing with F-I-R-E.”
“No, no, Bronc said I should buddy up to the Avatar! He made it a priority, in fact. He wants to turn Waring over to Marcus Woolwine for the good doctor’s brand of R and R.”
“Bronc has a fucking screw loose.”
Harlee said in her breathless, brainless-bombshell voice, “But I always do what Bronc wants, like a good li’l scout.”
“’Twas only yesterday you wanted to kill him.”
“Still do,” Harlee said, being Harlee again. “Oh yes. Bronc came close to shooting off my left ear. I’m still half deaf on that side. He made me wet my bed! Bronc’s horseplay with his .45 moved him all the way up to number two on my shit list, but Eden Waring is still numero uno. Woolwine isn’t going to get his hands on her. Rest assured. Eden Waring is mine.”
“But—you aren’t ready to—”
“Will be soon. Matter of fact, I think we’ll drive up to Ferdie Younger’s place tomorrow. He called me a couple of days ago to say he had something new and rare to show me. Good old Ferdie. He said the pain that his new little friends inflict is—it’s just so fucking incredible, the victims beg for death. The venom of those nasties consists of eleven different chemicals and enzymes that, among other things . . .” Harlee paused, letting the suspense build, “. . . dissolve human flesh.”
“Harlee! We are about to have our dinner.”
Harlee turned her head to look somberly at Devon.
“But that would be a fair payback, don’t you think, for the agonies the Great One must still suffer?”
“Yes. I feel his pain too, Harlee.” Devon sighed. “Whatever you have in mind. I simply don’t relish hearing the gory details.”
“But it’s what we do, love. Have always done. Will do again . . . and again. Of course we sometimes feel sympathy for some of those souls who have recklessly made their lives dispensable; we’re not inhuman monsters.” Harlee looked back at the gallery, Eden’s mantilla topsail above the crowd. “There’s no harm chatting with her. It will make access easier when her time does come. I want to look into her eyes. I want her to look, in all innocence and unknowing, into my eyes.”
“You don’t have a crush on her, do you?” Devon asked suspiciously.
“In a complex way, I suppose I do. It’s almost inevitable, a part of the age-old syndrome. The captive and her jailer. The stalker and the stalked. I get delicious chills.”
“As long as you don’t get burned. How are you going to manage, though? It looks as if they’re being rather strict about invitation-only.”
“You silly. I may have forgotten my invitation, but I did remember to bring my checkbook.”
Eden deftly plucked a crab roll from a passing caterer’s tray and nibbled while listening to Cody’s father, Eloy Olds, talk his way through part of the family genealogy. He’d sired seven children with two wives. Five of his married children had thus far provided him with seventeen grandchildren. As Eloy had but seventy-two well-lived years, he said he was looking forward to at least a baker’s dozen more while he still had the faculty to remember all their names.
“Course, I’m losin’ brain cells now faster than hell is gainin’ politicians. Come from a sizable family yourself, Eden?”
“No, I’m an only child.”
Eloy snagged the arm of a caterer and handed over his empty glass. “Bull Run, straight up, son.” Eloy was a towering man in his dress boots. He carried enough gut to keep him back on his bulldogger heels most of the time. He had an untamed handlebar mustache, a thick sun-silvered head of hair cut like a thatched roof, a beefeater complexion, and one droopy eyelid that gave him a droll look as he peered down his weather-pocked nose at her.
“That an heirloom walking stick you have with you?”
“I think it’s probably very old. It belongs to my—to a dear friend. He’s from Kenya. He lent it to me because my knee goes out on me from time to time.”
“Kenya? Did some huntin’ there one time. Met Mr. Hemingway. He autographed me a book a’ his’n. I think I’ve read durn near all he ever wrote. Agatha Christie too, particularly the Poirots, but I never had the honor of knowin’ her. Well, I read a lot for pleasure, but you know, they say if a man stays mentally active, it keeps the little gray cells from dryin’ out. But chess or games a’ chance don’t appeal. Keep myself amused, I make up these little songs when I find myself in the saddle for a long stretch.”
“Daddy’s had three of his tunes on the gospel-music charts,” Cody said, pausing on his circuit of the gallery. “Which one hit the top ten on Billboard’s list, Eloy?”
“That was ‘Jesus Hot-Wired My Heart (and I’m drivin’ straight to heaven)’.”
He had a voice that carried, despite being near basso in quality. A woman with blue eyes in a Navajo face and a straight fall of hair to below the small of her back turned her head with a smile and sang in a Dolly Parton soprano:
“Back on the road to glory,
And I know his way is right.”
Eloy did a slight double take, then came back with:
“Lost my key to the heavenly
kingdom
And my soul was out of gas.”
And the woman sang:
“But Jesus got me up and runnin’
Now I’m travelin’ Angel-class.”
The man she was with, slim in a dark suit and a bolo tie, was a tenor. The three of them harmonized, shutting down most of the conversations in the packed gallery.
“Well, the devil’s shoutin’
‘Detour!’
Yes he’s a tempting sight.
But I’ll see pearly gates
a-flashin’
In my high beams tonight!”
“You can tell we’re not a stuffy bunch,” Cody said, grinning at Eden.
“Nikki Lea!” Eloy said, peering through the crowd. “That you, honey?”
“Put on your glasses, Daddy.”
“Didn’t have no idea you was gonna be here.”
“Daddy, I told you twice on the phone I was headin’ up to Carmel for the weekend. My old roomie from Arizona State is fixin’ to marry again.”
“That would be the Korean gal with the mustang temper? Shoot. Somebody oughter tell the groom to start lacin’ up his combat boots.”
“Having a good time?” Cody asked Eden.
“I’ve got a mad crush on your daddy,” she said sweetly. “You can go away. Call me sometime.” Eden suppressed a mild belch with her fist. “And those delicious crab rolls are making a pig out of me.”
“How about a beer?”
“No, I’ll stick with champagne.”
“You can have mine,” Harlee Nations said cheerily. “I haven’t touched it yet.”
Eden glanced at her, mildly startled. She hadn’t been aware of the girl, who was standing at her left elbow and just a little behind Eden. Seemed to have appeared
in a faint aura of pixie dust, or maybe that was a visual effect from the champagne she’d already drunk. Eden looked back at Cody as he squeezed her shoulder and moved on to work the room and sell paintings. Then she looked again at Harlee, who held the champagne flute out to her.
“Anyway,” Harlee advised Eden, “I don’t have any fatal diseases.”
And not a filling in her teeth; her smile was a dazzler. Eden smiled back. “Sure doesn’t look that way. Thanks.”
“I’m Harlee. Not like the motorcycle, but with two es?”
“Gotcha. I’m Eve.”
“Ohhhh—you know? I have always loved that name! It has such a peaceful sound, like a gentle wind blowing through trees. Like in the Garden of, you know, Eden.”
Eden almost said no shit but held her tongue because Harlee didn’t seem to be trying too hard or putting her on. Just her age, maybe, accounting for an earnest, unsophisticated poetic streak. Eden guessed that Harlee was about sixteen. Sage-green eyes and that vividly dimpled smile. A good tan for the end of October. Wholesome teen-model looks. She was wise enough to go easy on the eyeliner and lip gloss.
When Eden accepted the champagne flute, Harlee reached past her, stuck out her hand a little bashfully to Eloy Olds, and reintroduced herself. “I just love Christian rock. And old-time gospel music.”
“You don’t say. Are you born-again, girl?”
“No-o. Not exactly.”
“Read your Bible?”
“Yes, sir, I do. Every day. You just have to have faith in terrible times like these. I could talk about Jesus all day! That is a huge diamond you’re wearing, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“’Bout six karats, I’d allow.”
“It looks pink in this light. Excuse me, just can’t help myself. I love diamonds.”