The Best of Lucius Shepard (118 page)

The world
beat against our door. Pin’s photograph was printed on the third page of the
Black
William Gazette
, along with the news that the University of Pittsburgh
would be sending a team of observers to measure the phenomenon, should it occur
again, as was predicted (by whom, the
Gazette
did not say). There was a
sidebar recounting Black William’s sordid history and Jonathan Venture’s
version of BW’s involvement with the stars. The body of the article.... Well,
it was as if the reporter had been privvy to our conversation at the Szechuan
Palace. I suspected that he had, if only at second-hand, since my wavefront
theory was reproduced in full, attributed to “a local pundit.” As a result of
this publicity, groups of people, often more than a hundred, mostly the young
and the elderly, came to gather in front of the library between the hours of
five and nine, thus depriving me of the customary destination of my evening
walks.

Stanky, his
ego swollen to improbable proportions by two successful performances, by the
adulation of his high school fans (“Someone ought to be writing everything Joey
says down,” said one dreamy-eyed fool), became increasingly temperamental,
lashing out at his bandmates, at me, browbeating Liz at every opportunity, and
prowling about the house in a sulk, ever with a Coke and cigarette, glaring at
all who fell to his gaze, not bothering to speak. In the mornings, he was
difficult to wake, keeping Geno and Jerry waiting, wasting valuable time, and
one particular morning, my frustration with him peaked and I let Timber into
his bedroom and closed the door, listening while the happy pup gamboled across
the mattress, licking and drooling, eliciting squeals and curses from the
sleepy couple, an action that provoked a confrontation that I won by dint of
physical threat and financial dominance, but that firmly established our
unspoken enmity and made me anxious about whether I would be able to maneuver
him to the point where I could rid myself of him and show a profit.

A gray
morning, spitting snow, and I answered the doorbell to find a lugubrious,
long-nosed gentleman with a raw, bony face, toting a briefcase and wearing a Sy
Sperling wig and a cheap brown suit. A police cruiser was parked at the curb;
two uniformed officers stood smoking beside it, casting indifferent looks
toward the Polozny, which rolled on blackly in—as a local DJ was prone to
characterize it—”its eternal search for the sea.” Since we were only a couple
of days from the EP release, I experienced a sinking feeling, one that was
borne out when the man produced a card identifying him as Martin Kiggins of
McKeesport, a Friend of the Court. He said he would like to have a word with me
about Joseph Stanky.

“How well do
you know Joseph?” he asked me once we had settled in the office.

Kiwanda, at
her desk in the next room, made a choking noise. I replied that while I had, I
thought, an adequate understanding of Joseph as a musician, I was unfamililar
with the details of his life.

“Did you
know he has a wife?” Kiggins was too lanky to fit the chair and, throughout our
talk, kept scrunching around in it. “And he’s got a little boy. Almost two
years old, he is.”

“No, I
didn’t know that.”

“Poor little
guy nearly didn’t make it that far. Been sick his whole life.” Kiggins’s gaze
acquired a morose intensity. “Meningitis.”

I couldn’t
get a handle on Kiggins; he acted as if he was trying to sell me something, yet
he had arrived on my doorstep with an armed force and the authority of the law.

“I thought
meningitis was fatal,” I said.

“Not a
hundred percent,” said Kiggins cheerlessly. “His mother doesn’t have insurance,
so he didn’t get the best of care.”

“That’s
tough.”

“She’s on
welfare. Things aren’t likely to improve for the kid or for her. She’s not what
you’d call an attractive woman.”

“Why are we
talking about this?” I asked. “It’s a sad story, but I’m not involved.”

“Not
directly, no.”

“Not any
damn way. I don’t understand what you’re looking for.”

Kiggins
seemed disappointed in me. “I’m looking for Joseph. Is he here?”

“I don’t
know.”

“You don’t
know. Okay.” He put his hands on his knees and stood, making a show of peering
out the window at his cop buddies.

“I really
don’t know if he’s here,” I said. “I’ve been working, I haven’t been downstairs
this morning.”

“Mind if I
take a look down there?”

“You’re
goddamn right, I mind! What’s this about? You’ve been doing a dance ever since
you came in. Why don’t you spit it out?”

Kiggins gave
me a measuring look, then glanced around the office—I think he was hoping to
locate another chair. Failing this, he sat back down.

“You appear
to be a responsible guy, Vernon,” he said. “Is it okay I call you Vernon?”

“Sure thing,
Marty. I don’t give a shit what you call me as long as you get to the point.”

“You own
your home, a business. Pay your taxes ... far as I can tell without an audit.
You’re a pretty solid citizen.”

The implicit
threat of an audit ticked me off, but I let him continue. I began to realize
where this might be going.

“I’ve got
the authority to take Joseph back to McKeesport and throw his butt in jail,” said
Kiggins. “He’s in arrears with his child and spousal support. Now I know Joseph
doesn’t have any money to speak of, but seeing how you’ve got an investment in
him, I’m hoping we can work out some arrangement.”

“Where’d you
hear that?” I asked. “About my investment.”

“Joseph
still has friends in McKeesport. High school kids, mainly. Truth be told, we
think he was supplying them with drugs, but I’m not here about that. They’ve
been spreading it around that you’re about to make him a star.”

I snorted.
“He’s a
long
way from being a star. Believe me.”

“I believe
you. Do you believe me when I tell you I’m here to take him back? Just say the
word, I’ll give a whistle to those boys out front.” Kiggins shifted the chair
sideways, so he could stretch out one leg. “I know how you make your money,
Vernon. You build a band up, then you sell their contracts. Now you’ve put in
some work with Joseph. Some serious time and money. I should think you’d want
to protect your investment.”

“Okay.” I
reached for a cigarette, recalled that I had quit. “What’s he owe?”

“Upwards of
eleven thousand.”

“He’s all
yours,” I said. “Take the stairs in back. Follow the corridor to the front of
the house. First door on your right.”

“I said I
wanted to make an arrangement. I’m not after the entire amount.”

And so began
our negotiation.

If we had
finished the album, I would have handed Stanky over and given Kiggins my
blessing, but as things stood, I needed him. Kiggins, on the other hand,
wouldn’t stand a chance of collecting any money with Stanky in the slam—he
likely had a predetermined figure beneath which he would not move. It
infuriated me to haggle with him. Stanky’s wife and kid wouldn’t see a nickel.
They would dock her welfare by whatever amount he extracted from me, deduct
administrative and clerical fees, and she would end up worse off than before.
Yet I had no choice other than to submit to legal blackmail.

Kiggins
wouldn’t go below five thousand. That, he said, was his bottom line. He put on a
dour poker face and waited for me to decide.

“He’s not
worth it,” I said.

Sadly,
Kiggins made for the door; when I did not relent, he turned back and we resumed
negotiations, settling on a figure of three thousand and my promise to attach a
rider to Stanky’s contract stating that a percentage of his earnings would be
sent to the court. After he had gone, my check tucked in his briefcase, Kiwanda
came to stand by my desk with folded arms.

“I’d give it
a minute before you go down,” she said. “You got that I’m-gonna-break-his-face
look.”

“Do you
fucking believe this?” I brought my fist down on the desk. “I want to smack
that little bitch!”

“Take a
breath, Vernon. You don’t want to lose any more today than just walked out of
here.”

I waited, I
grew calm, but as I approached the stairs, the image of a wizened toddler and a
moping, double-chinned wife cropped up in my brain. With each step I grew
angrier and, when I reached Stanky’s bedroom, I pushed in without knocking. He
and Liz were having sex. I caught a fetid odor and an unwanted glimpse of Liz’s
sallow hindquarters as she scrambled beneath the covers. I shut the door
partway and shouted at Stanky to haul his ass out here. Seconds later, he burst
from the room in a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, and stumped into the kitchen
with his head down, arms tightly held, like an enraged penguin. He fished a
Coke from the refrigerator and made as if to say something; but I let him have
it. I briefed him on Kiggins and said, “It’s not a question of morality. I
already knew you were a piece of crap. But this is a business, man. It’s my
livelihood, not a playground for degenerates. And when you bring the cops to my
door, you put that in jeopardy.”

He hung his
head, picking at the Coke’s pop top. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t
want to understand! Get it? I have absolutely no desire to understand. That’s
between you and your wife. Between you and whatever scrap of meatloaf shaped
like the Virgin Mary you pretend to worship. I don’t care. One more screw-up,
I’m calling Kiggins and telling him to come get you.”

Liz had
entered the kitchen, clutching a bathrobe about her; when she heard “wife,” she
retreated.

I railed at
Stanky, telling him he would pay back every penny of the three thousand,
telling him further to clean his room of every pot seed and pill, to get his
act in order and finish the album; and I kept on railing at him until his body
language conveyed that I could expect two or three days of penitence and
sucking up. Then I allowed him to slink by me and into the bedroom. When I
passed his door, cracked an inch open, I heard him whining to Liz, saying,
“She’s not
really
my wife.”

I took the
afternoon off and persuaded Rudy to go fishing. We bundled up against the cold,
bought a twelve-pack of Iron City and dropped our lines in Kempton’s Pond, a
lopsided period stamped into the half-frozen ground a couple of miles east of
town, punctuating a mixed stand of birch and hazel—it looked as if a giant with
a peg leg had left this impression in the rock, creating a hole thirty feet
wide. The clouds had lowered and darkened, their swollen bellies appearing to
tatter on the leafless treetops as they slid past; but the snow had quit
falling. There was some light accumulation on the banks, which stood eight or
nine feet above the black water and gave the pond the look of an old cistern.
The water circulated like heavy oil and swallowed our sinkers with barely a
splash. This bred the expectation that if we hooked anything, it would be a
megaladon or an ichthyosaur, a creature such as would have been trapped in a
tar pit. But we had no such expectation.

It takes a
certain cast of mind to enjoy fishing with no hope of a catch, or the faint
hope of catching some inedible fishlike thing every few years or so. That kind
of fishing is my favorite sport, though I admit I follow the Steelers closely,
as do many in Black William. Knowing that nothing will rise from the deep,
unless it is something that will astound your eye or pebble your skin with
gooseflesh, makes for a rare feeling. Sharing this with Rudy, who had been my
friend for ten years, since he was fresh out of grad school at Penn State,
enhanced that feeling. In the summer we sat and watched our lines, we chatted,
we chased our depressions with beer and cursed the flies; in winter, the best
season for our sport, there were no flies. The cold was like ozone to my
nostrils, the silence complete, and the denuded woods posed an abstract of
slants and perpendiculars, silver and dark, nature as Chinese puzzle. Through
frays in the clouds we glimpsed the fat, lordly crests of the Bittersmiths.