Someplace to Be Flying
Read Someplace to Be Flying Online
Authors: Charles De Lint
ALSO BY CHARLES DE LINT FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES
Dreams Underfoot
The Fair at Emain Macha
Into the Green
The Ivory and the Horn
Jack of Kinrowan
The Little Country
Memory and Dream
Moonheart
Spiritwalk
Svaha
Trader
Yarrow
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING
Copyright © 1998 by Charles de Lint
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor Books on the World Wide Web:
http://www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Design by Basha Durand
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
de Lint, Charles
Someplace to be flying / Charles de Lint.-1st cd.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-85849-3 (acid-free paper)
I. Title.
PR9199.3.D357S6 1998 97-37433
813’.54-dc21 CIP
First Edition: February 1998
Printed in the United States of America
0987654321
Grateful acknowledgments are made to:
Kiya Heartwood for the use of lines from her song “Wyoming Wind” from the album
Singing with the Red Wolves
by her new band, Wishing Chair (Ter-rakin Records). Copyright © 1996 by Kiya Heartwood, Outlaw Hill Publishing. Lyrics reprinted by permission. For more information about Heartwood, Wishing Chair, or Terrakin Records, call 1-800-ROADDOG, or email [email protected].
Ani DiFranco for the use of lines from “If He Tries Anything” from her album
out of range.
Copyright © 1994 by Ani DiFranco, Righteous Babe Music. Lyrics reprinted by permission. For more information about DiFranco’s music, contact Righteous Babe Records, P.O. Box 95, Ellicott Station, Buffalo, NY 14205-0095.
MaryAnn Harris for the use of lines from her song “Crow Girls.” Copyright © 1996 by MaryAnn Harris. Lyrics reprinted by permission.
John Gorka for the use of lines from the title cut of his album
Jack’s Crows.
Copyright © 1991 by John Gorka, Blues Palace Music/ASCAP. Lyrics reprinted by permission. For more information about Gorka’s music, write to Fleming-Tamulevich & Associates, 733-735 N. Main, Ann Arbor, MI 48104; call (313) 995-9066; or email [email protected].
Chris Eckman for the use of lines from his songs “The Light Will Stay On” from the Walkabouts album,
Devil’s Road,
Virgin Schallplatten GmbH. Copyright © 1995 by Chris Eckman, Wolff Songs/EMI Publishing GMPH. Lyrics reprinted by permission. For more information on Eckman’s songs and the Walkabouts, write to 4739 University Way, N.E., Suite 1100, Seattle, WA 98105.
For Kiya
yippee-ki-yi-yay
Thanks for inspiration, guidance, and crow stories go out to MaryAnn, Terri, Rodger, Andrew and Alice V., Kiya, Amanda, and Ginette.
And, as usual, let me mention that the city, characters, and events to be found in these pages are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
If any of you are on the Internet, come visit my homepage. The URL (address) is http://www.cyberus.ca/~cdl.
C
HARLES DE
L
INT
O
TTAWA
,
SUMMER
1997
CONTENTS
6 The Lonesome Death of Nettie Bean
So I asked the raven as he passed by,
I said, “Tell me, raven, why’d you make the sky?”
“The moon and stars, I threw them high,
I needed someplace to be flying.”
—K
IYA
H
EARTWOOD
,
FROM
“W
YOMING
W
IND
”
If men had wings and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be
crows.
—R
EV
. H
ENRY
W
ARD
B
EECHER
(mid-1800s)
it’s a long long road
it’s a big big world
we are wise wise women
we are giggling girls
we both carry a smile
to show when we’re pleased
both carry a switchblade
in our sleeves
—A
NI
D
IFRANCO
,
FROM
“I
F
H
E
T
RIES
A
NYTHING
”
POETRY IN A TREE
Everything is held together with stories. That is all
that is holding us together, stories and compassion.
—B
ARRY
L
OPEZ
,
F
ROM AN INTERVIEW IN
P
OETS AND
W
RITERS
,
V
OL
. 22, I
SSUE
2 (
MARCH/APRIL
1994)
Newford, Late August, 1996
The streets were still wet but the storm clouds had moved on as Hank drove south on Yoors waiting for a fare. Inhabited tenements were on his right, the derelict blight of the Tombs on his left, Miles Davis’s muted trumpet snaking around Wayne Shorter’s sax on the tape deck. The old Chev four-door didn’t look like much; painted a flat gray, it blended into the shadows like the ghost car it was.
It wasn’t the kind of cab you flagged down. There was no roof light on top, no meter built into the dash, no license displayed, but if you needed something moved and you had the number of the cell phone, you could do business. Safe business. The windows were bulletproof glass and under the body’s flaking paint and dents, there was so much steel it would take a tank to do it any serious damage. Fast business, too. The rebuilt V-8 under the hood, purring as quiet as a contented cat at the moment, could lunge to one hundred miles per hour in seconds. The car didn’t offer much in the way of comfort, but the kinds of fares that used a gypsy cab weren’t exactly hiring it for its comfort.
When he reached Grasso Street, Hank hung a left and cruised through Chinatown, then past the strip of clubs on the other side of Williamson. The clock on his dash read 3:00 A.M. The look-at-me crowd was gone now with only a few stragglers still wandering the wet streets. The lost and the lonely and the seriously screwed-up. Hank smiled when he stopped at a red light and a muscle-bound guy crossed in front of the cab wearing a T-shirt that read, “Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian.” He tapped his horn and the guy gave him a Grasso Street salute in response, middle finger extended, fingernails painted black. When he realized Hank wasn’t hassling him, he only shrugged and kept on walking.
A few blocks farther, Hank pulled the cab over to the curb. He keyed the speed-dial on the cell phone and had to wait through a handful of rings before he got a connection.
“You never get tired of that crap, kid?” Moth asked.
Hank turned the tape deck down.
“All I’ve got left is that six o’clock pickup,” he said by way of response. The only thing Moth considered music had to have a serious twang-add in yodeling and it was even better-so there was no point in arguing with him. “Have you got anything to fill in the next couple of hours?”
“A big nada.”
Hank nodded. He hated slow nights, but he especially hated them when he was trying to raise some cash.
“Okay,” he said. “Guess I’ll head over to the club and just wait for Eddie outside.”
“Yeah, well, keep your doors locked. I hear those guys that were jacking cars downtown have moved up to Foxville the past couple of nights.”
“Eddie told me.”
“Did he say anything about his people dealing with it?”
Hank watched as a drank stumbled over to the doorway of one of the closed clubs and started to take a leak.
“Like he’s going to tell me?” he said.
“You got a point. Hey, I hear that kid you like’s doing a late set at the Rhatigan.”
Hank almost laughed. Under a spodight, Brandon Cole seemed ageless, especially when he played. Hank put him in his mid-to-late thirties, but he had the kind of build and features that could easily go ten years in either direction. A tall, handsome black man, he seemed to live only for his sax and his music. He was no kid, but to Moth anybody under sixty was a kid.
“What time’s it start?” he asked.
He could almost see Moth shrug. “What am I, a press secretary now? All I blow is Dayson’s got a couple of high rollers in town-jazz freaks like you, kid-and he told me he’s taking them by.”
“Thanks,” Hank said. “Maybe I’ll check it out.”
He cut the connection and started to work his way across town to where the Rhatigan was nestled on the edge of the Combat Zone. The after-hours bar where Eddie ran his all-night poker games was over in Upper Foxville, but he figured he could take in an hour or so of Cole’s music and still make the pickup in plenty of time.
Except it didn’t work out that way. He was coming down one of the little dark back streets that ran off Grasso-no more than an alley, really-when his headlights picked out a tall man in a dove-gray suit, beating on some woman.
Hank knew the drill. The first few times he took out the spare car, Moth had stopped him at the junkyard gate and stuck his head in the window to reel it off: “Here’s the way it plays, kid. You only stop for money. You don’t pick up strays. You never get involved.” One, two, three.
But some things you didn’t walk away from. This time of night, in this part of town, she was probably a hooker-having some altercation with her pimp, maybe, or she hadn’t been paying attention to her radar and got caught
up
with a john turned ugly-but that still didn’t make it right.
He hit the brakes, the Chev skidding for a moment on the slick pavement before he got it back under control. The baseball bat on the seat beside him began to roll forward. A surge of adrenaline put him into motion, quick, not even thinking. He grabbed the bat by its handle, put the car in neutral, foot coming down on the parking brake and locking it into place. Through the windshield he could see the man backhand the woman, turn to face him. As the woman fell to the pavement, Hank popped the door and stepped outside. The baseball bat was a comfortable weight in his hand until the man reached under his jacket.
