A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  “How?”

  “Gettin’ a car from the cops.”

  “You sure about that? What’ve you told them about their dead pal?”

  “Nothin’. Told ‘em he’s safe and sound but I’ll shoot him dead they make a move on me.”

  “You really think they’re going to let you have a car without talking to their man, without making sure he’s all right?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Fat Henry’s voice faltered. “They gotta. Don’t they?”

  Jack shook his head, slowly, deliberately. “Switch places: Would you let you have a car?”

  “I ain’t goin’ back.” Tears began to stream down his face. “I’ll off myself first!”

  “You already tried that.”

  Fat Henry glared at him. Again he lifted the shotgun. Jack thought he was going to put it under his jaw again; instead he offered it to Jack.

  “Here. You do it.”

  Jack took the weapon and sniffed the bore. It hadn’t been fired tonight. He was almost tempted to aim it at Fat Henry’s face to see how serious he was about this, but decided against it. Instead, he worked the pump, sending red-and-brass cylinders tumbling through the gloom one after another until they lay scattered on the floor like party favors. He tossed the empty shotgun back to Fat Henry. Hard.

  “Do your own dirty work.”

  “You fucker!”

  Thoroughly fed up, Jack stepped over him toward the airshaft opening.

  “And I’m not hanging around listening to you blubber.”

  “I need help, dog.” He was whining now.

  “No argument there. But there’s only one person here who can help you and he’s sitting on the floor whining.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Jack had one leg through the opening. He turned and jabbed a finger at Fat Henry.

  “You’re the one who’s fucked, Fatso. Look at your life! What’ve you ever done with it? You got busted dealing—crack, right? You let yourself be the shower-room bimbo until some tough guy came along and made you his private tool. You went along on this armed robbery bullshit, and now somebody’s dead and you’re bawling because it’s time to pay the piper. You make me sick.”

  Another whine. “But what can I do?”

  “First of all, you can get off your ass and onto your feet.”

  Fat Henry rolled over and struggled to his feet.

  “Good,” Jack said. “That’s a start. Now you’ve got to go upstairs and face the music.”

  He stepped back, a caged animal look in his eyes. “Uh-uh.”

  “Either they take you up there, or they come down those stairs, step over the body of their buddy, and take you here.”

  “Told you! I can’t go back to the joint!”

  “You’ve got to stand up, Henry Thompson. For once in your life you’ve got to stand up.”

  “But I can’t!”

  Jack stared him down in the silence that followed.

  “Then sit here all night and play with yourself until somebody else makes the choice for you. That seems to be the story of your life, Henry.”

  Fat Henry looked toward the steps up to the first floor. He stood like a statue, staring.

  “I can choose,” he said in a soft, far-away voice. “I can choose. I’ll show you I can choose.”

  “Sure you can, Henry.”

  Jack left him like that.

  4

  A little while later Jack stood in the street, on the fringe of the crowd around Costin’s. He wanted to tell the vultures to go home, that it was going to be a long night. He was about to leave for home himself when Fat Henry came out.

  Costin’s front door slammed open and there he was, all three-hundred pounds of him, brandishing his shotgun and screaming like a wild man. He got off one blast that looked like it was aimed at the moon. All around Jack the crowd screamed and dove for cover, leaving him standing alone as the two-dozen cops out front opened up.

  The fusillade slammed Fat Henry back against the doorframe, his sawed-off went spinning, and then he was turning and falling and rolling down the steps. It was over in seconds. No Peckinpah slo-mo. No ballet-like turns. Quick, graceless, ugly, and red. He hit the sidewalk face first and never moved again.

  Fat Henry Thompson had finally stood up. And he’d got his wish: He wouldn’t be going back to Attica.

  Jack turned and walked away, stepping over the prone onlookers as they peeked between their fingers and made horrified noises. As he headed home he tried to put his finger on the feelings massed in his chest like a softball-sized lump of putty—cold putty.

  Not sadness, certainly not glee or satisfaction. More a bleakness. A dark despair for all the hardcore losers in this city, the ones it created and the others it attracted.

  He passed a corner litter basket and gave it a hard kick, adding an especially deep dent to its already bruised flanks.

  A waste. A damn stupid fruitless futile ass-brained waste.

  When he got to his door he realized he didn’t have his beer. The six-pack he’d gone out for earlier in the evening was long gone from where he’d left it sitting on the curb. He could really have used a Rock about now. And he could probably find an all-night deli to where he could buy some.

  Nah.

  Jack stepped inside and locked the door behind him.

  He couldn’t risk it. The way things were going tonight, he might not make it home again.

  NYRO FIDDLES

  CBS Recording Studios

  The New York Tendaberry sessions

  July 20,1969

  We were supposed to go to Studio A but there didn’t seem to be a Studio A in this building so Mary asks the guard where’s the Laura Nyro session and he says it’s in Studio B on the second floor. A placard by the guard’s desk reminds us that Arthur Godfrey broadcasts from the sixth floor.

  We sign in and take the elevator.

  The main double door to Studio B opens into a sort of T-shaped vestibule with the sound studio to the right and the engineer’s booth to the left. I hesitate outside, not sure we should walk in because it’s in use right now and we had been told to go to Studio A in the first place. The guard could be wrong (it’s been known to happen) and the studio could be filled with strangers and I’d feel dumb walking in and then just turning around and leaving.

  Then through the door window I see Jimmy Haskell walk by from the sound studio to the booth and I know this must be the place. Jimmy’s arranging the horns for Laura. He’s a sweet, easy-going, middle-aged guy with a salt-and-pepper beard and he’s wearing a beanie with propellers sticking out each side. They spin deliriously as he walks.

  Laura likes everyone to be happy at her sessions.

  We walk into the booth and there’s Laura and a friend smoking a little pipe. The friend has longish hair and a moustache, both brown, and is wearing one of those knee-length Indian style coat-shirts, and I think he looks a lot like a guy who used to play lead guitar in my band.

  Laura sits by the console in her full-length black dress and black lace shawl and that incredible black hair and I think maybe she’s put on a few pounds since last I saw her.

  There’s also this German shepherd bitch running around and it has what looks like an old Sara Lee coffee cake tin in the closet filled with dog food and every so often it goes over and chomps some down. Laura tells us the dog’s name is Beauty Belle (or did she say Bill?).

  It’s eight o’clock and the session was supposed to start at seven but the engineers are having trouble setting up the second eight tracks and Laura Nyro, who’s usually fairly talkative, is preoccupied tonight. Dallas could be the city, a guy—or a gal—is on the phone and Laura’s telling he, she, or it how stoned she is. The engineer’s on another line with someone named Danny explaining that he doesn’t see how he can mix the new album this week because his kids are out of school and he’s gotta spend some time with them. Indian Coat was trying to persuade him on this point earlier but Indian Coat is now out in the sound studio talking to Twin-Prop Jimmy wh
ile the musicians sit around bullshitting, trying each other’s instruments, and getting paid scale for it. Beauty Belle (Bill?) is watching Indian Coat very intently through the glass.

  A young photographer approaches the console and waits for the lady to get off the phone. He shows her some shots he took of her a while back and she picks out some she likes and says she doesn’t want to give this one or that one to Vogue because they’re very personal-type pictures, you know? Indian Coat strolls in and says he wants that one blown up for his wall and Laura says he’s got to be kidding. She hates that picture. Well, she doesn’t really hate it, it’s just that she likes others better and I get the impression she’s uncomfortable with the word hate.

  Break time rolls around for the musicians so they interrupt their bullshitting in the studio and move it out to the hall where they regroup around the soft drink machine. I go over and hang with one of the trumpets I know who with a couple more years could be old enough to be Laura’s father and he tells me it’s anarchy, pure and simple anarchy but wait and see . . . they’ll start to play and she’ll point things out and say do this and try that and before you know it everything falls into place and it’s beautiful, man. The girl’s crazy but she sure as hell knows her music.

  Back in the booth they’re blasting ‘Time and Love’, the song that’s to be rerecorded tonight. The back-up tracks were laid down at an earlier session but something didn’t click and so they’re going to be done again tonight. Laura’s tracks with her piano and vocal won’t be touched and the band will play off them. After the second run-through of the tape Mary turns to me and says it sounds familiar and I say I guess it does have a few phrases reminiscent of ‘Flim-flam Man’, especially in the fade.

  After more replays the band thinks it’s ready and they try it. It’s about nine now and Laura wants to finish by ten (definitely no overtime tonight) but the drummer isn’t the same one as last time and he’s doing some of his own thing (like doubles on the downbeat) and Laura wants to know the drummer’s name. Jimmy tells her it’s Maurice and she gets on the mike and tells Maurice what she wants. Her speaking voice is soft, almost sibilant, and I can never get used to associating it with the power, range, and clarity that explodes when she gets behind her piano. She tells Maurice to do it like Gary Chester did at the last session, keep it simple and easy and light and happy and no cymbals except for a bam-bam-crash in the chorus and only a one-stroke downbeat, okay?

  At first I think the doubles on the downbeat sound better than the singles Laura wants but as the session wears on I come around to agreeing with the lady in black. Many more tries follow and one sounds perfect until Maurice forgets the boom-boom on his bass that leads into the fade. It’s nine fifty and Laura swears she’s not going into overtime again. Everything’s going to stop dead at ten whether ‘Time and Love’ is finished or not. Okay now, everybody be happy and light, everybody smile, and one of the percussion men sticks his head out from behind some baffling and flashes Laura this hideous shit-eating grin and everybody laughs.

  At ten fifteen the musicians take another break and Laura is asking about overtime. At ten thirty all the musicians pile into the engineer’s booth to hear the last take. It’s crowded and Mary and I have other stops to make tonight so we leave without goodbyes because no one could hear us over the replay anyway. Art Garfunkel comes in as we’re leaving and asks if the Nyro session is here and I tell him yes.

  He shakes his head and says he heard it was Studio A.

  Outside the moon is high and bright and I remember hearing that somebody might be walking on it tonight. I also hear that Laura Nyro sleeps in a coffin.

  I don’t know.

  THE LORD’S WORK

  Vampires finally rule the world. They use humans as either slaves or livestock, but there are still a few who have the courage to fight back against their undead masters ...

  And what are you doing, Carole? What are you DOING? You’ll be after killing yourself, Carole. You’ll be blowing yourself to pieces and then you’ll be going straight to hell. HELL, Carole!

  “But I won’t be going alone,” Sister Carole Flannery muttered.

  She had to turn her head away from the kitchen sink now. The fumes stung her nose and made her eyes water, but she kept on stirring the pool chlorinator into the hot water until it was completely dissolved. She wasn’t through yet. She took the beaker of No Salt she’d measured out before starting the process and added it to the mix in the big Pyrex bowl. Then she stirred some more. Finally, when she was satisfied that she was not going to see any further dissolution at this temperature, she put the bowl on the stove and turned up the flame.

  A propane stove. She’d seen the big white tank out back last week when she was looking for a new home; that was why she’d chosen this old house. With New Jersey Natural Gas in ruins, and JCP&L no longer sending electricity through the wires, propane and wood stoves were the only ways left to cook.

  I really shouldn’t call it cooking, she thought as she fled the acrid fumes and headed for the living room. Nothing more than a simple dissociation reaction—heating a mixture of calcium hypochlorate with potassium chloride. Simple, basic chemistry. The very subject she’d taught bored freshmen and sophomores for five years at St Anthony’s high school over in Lakewood.

  “And you all thought chemistry was such a useless subject!” she shouted to the walls.

  She clapped a hand over her mouth. There she was, talking out loud again. She had to be careful. Not so much because someone might hear her, but because she was worried she might be losing her mind.

  She’d begun talking to herself in her head—just for company of sorts—to ease her through the long empty hours. But the voice had taken on a life of its own. It was still her own voice, but it had acquired a thick Irish brogue, very similar to her dear, sweet, dead mother’s.

  Maybe she’d already lost her mind. Maybe all this was merely a delusion. Maybe vampires hadn’t taken over the entire civilized world. Maybe they hadn’t defiled her church and convent, slaughtered her sister nuns. Maybe it was all in her mind.

  Sure, and you’d be wishing it was all in your mind, Carole. Of course you would. Then you wouldn’t be sinning!

  Yes, she truly did wish she were imagining all this. At least then she’d be the only one suffering, and all the rest would still be alive and well, just as they’d been before she went off the deep end. Like the people who’d once lived in this house. The Bennetts—Kevin, Marie, and their twin girls. She hadn’t known them before, but Sister Carole felt she knew them now. She’d seen their family photos, seen the twins’ bedroom. They were dead now, she was sure. Or maybe worse. But either way, they were gone.

  But if this was a delusion it was certainly an elaborate, consistent delusion. Every time she woke up—she never allowed herself to sleep too many hours at once, only catnaps—it was the same: quiet skies, vacant houses, empty streets, furtive, scurrying survivors who trusted no one, and—

  What’s that?

  Sister Carole froze as her ears picked up a sound outside, a hum, like a car engine. She hurried in a crouch to the front door and peered through the sidelight. It was a car. A convertible. Someone was out driving in—

  She ducked down when she saw who was in it. Scruffy and unwashed, lean and wolfish, bare-chested or in cut-off sweatshirts, the driver wearing a big Texas hat, all guzzling beer. She didn’t know their names or their faces, and she didn’t have to see their earrings to know who—what—they were.

  Collaborators. Predators. They liked to call themselves cowboys. Sister Carole called them scum of the earth.

  They were headed east. Good. They’d find a little surprise waiting for them down the road.

  As it did every so often, the horror of what her life had become caught up to Sister Carole then, and she slumped to the floor of the Bennett house and began to sob.

  Why? Why had God allowed this to happen to her, to His Church, to His world?

  Better question: why had she allowed
these awful events to change her so? She had been a Sister of Mercy.

  Mercy! Do you hear that, Carole? A Sister of MERCY!

  She had taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, had vowed to devote her life to teaching and doing the Lord’s work. But now there was no money, no one worth losing her virginity to, no Church to be obedient to, and no students left to teach.

  All she had left was the Lord’s work.

  Believe you me, Carole, I’d hardly be calling the making of plastic explosive and the other horrible things you’ve been doing the Lord’s work. It’s killing! It’s a SIN.’

  Maybe the voice was right. Maybe she would go to hell for what she was doing. But somebody had to make those rotten cowboys pay.

  King of the world.

  Al Hulett leaned back in the passenger seat of the Mercedes convertible they’d just driven out of somebody’s garage, burning rubber all the way, and let the cool breeze caress his sweaty head. Stan was driving, Artie and Kenny were in the back seat, everybody had a Heineken in his fist, and they were tooling along Route 88 toward the beach, catching some early summer rays on the way. He casually tossed his empty backward, letting it arc over the trunk, and heard it smash on the asphalt behind them. Then he closed his eyes and grooved.

  The pack. Buddies. The four of them had been together since grammar school in Camden. How many years was that now? Ten? Twelve? Couldn’t be more than a dozen. No way. Whatever, the four of them had stuck together through it all, never breaking up, even when Stan pulled that short jolt in Yardville on a B&E, even when the whole world went to hell.

  They’d come through it all like gold. They’d hired out to the winners. They were the best hunting pack around. And Al was one of them.

  King of the fucking world.

  Well, not king, really. But at least a prince ... when the sun was up.

  Night was a whole different story.

  But why think about the night when you had this glorious summer day all to—