The Axman Cometh (22 page)

"What's going on?"

"We will make tracks to find out. Not that way!"

"Why?"

"Venomous
smew
country. I can smell the buggers."

Another detour, Don waxing impatient and evermore frightened, for Shannon's sake. The torchlight is low and red, barely enough light to cover the two of them.
Shufflings
, low breathing in the dark. A metallic rattling, as if something is trying to get out of a cage. They are all cave dwellers, aware of, uneasy with one another. Papa pauses to light the second torch. After a few moments of slow-curling flame it flares up. Don sees, off to their left, a startled begrimed face, swaddled, rotund figure. Knit cap, shoulder-length gray hair as blunt and shaggy as an old whisk broom. A woman? She is pushing a shopping cart across the concrete floor, possibly the rattling noise he heard, distorted by the vast emptiness of this place and the state of his nerves. The cart is heaped with bags, papers, cartons. Her earthly possessions. She attempts to withdraw, but the wheels of the cart won't go in reverse, and it's too heavy for her to drag.

Papa holds the torch out, the better for them all to see. She snarls at this intrusion.

"Where are we off to, daughter?" Papa asks calmly.

"I have a right to change my place of residence when I get the fidgets."

"But it's raining out."

"When it's time to go, it's time to go."

The elephant sounds off again; she hunches her shoulders until they hide her ears and looks craftily at Papa.

"You heard that."

"I believe I did. Where is he?"

"She. That is to say, whatever it is, it's got no balls. Not like them that I
seen
at the zoo, when I lived fancier uptown."

"She. The female of the species. But do you know where—"

"Upstairs. Where there's all sorts of goings-on."

"For instance?"

"Would you have a dollar on you, mister?"

"No."

Her mouth turns down vehemently. She rattles her shopping cart at them.

"You're blocking traffic."

"I have," Don says, "maybe two dollars." He's looking, by the flickering light, at something that moves in one of the bags in the shopping cart. A nudge here, a nudge there, trying to make room for itself. His skin crawls.

"We could use a guide, daughter," Papa says. "We need to get to the goings-on. Without delay."

"Don't look at me. It's not worth
my
life." She stares suddenly at the black garbage bag wiggling on top of her pile in the cart, then leans over, protectively placing both arms on it. They hear a muted howl. Don's skin crawls faster over his store of ice-cold blood.

"What's that you've got in the bag, daughter?"

"Don't 'daughter' me, Mr. Whiskers! To the best of my knowledge I was never conceived of your loins. If you knew who I was, you'd have some respect. I lived thirty years in a triplex at 600 Park Avenue. My husband was Mr. Hamilton. If you haven't heard of him, too bad for you.
Oww
!"

She jumps back suddenly as something like a head pops up from the shiny plastic bag. Dark, rugged head, snappy bright eyes. Almost like a hyena pup but the wrong color: a vivacious, electric green.' The woman regroups quickly, wrestles it back down into the bag and holds the bag tight, like the valve of a balloon, in one fist. She sneaks a look at them.

"You didn't see that."

"More goings-on?" Papa inquires politely.

Don draws a heavy breath. "I think," he says, "it was a
gadzook
."

"Sure it was a
gadzook
."

The woman laughs derisively. "I've had my fill of you two crazy bums," she declares. "Out of my way, I'm going to the zoo! It's finders-keepers in this world. I found it. And they'll pay me for it. Enough to bargain for my late husband's remains. They've got him in the greenhouse, until the railroad bonds mature. Orchids growing on his grave. There are some that will say it's a nice touch. I'm not fooled. I never held Mr. Hamilton's siblings in high regard, that's for sure. If you live long enough, all of your suspicions about human nature are bound to be confirmed. But will the
Times
print my letters? What's your hunch?"

"Daughter, I think I am becoming very fond of you."

She wipes a hand across her nose. "That 'daughter* stuff," she simpers, and shrugs. "Elevator's no good to you. It's not running. You might not want to be on it if it was."

"There are elevators, and there are elevators."

"I get your meaning."

"We have to be on the right one, and in damned short order."

"Then your best bet's the stairs. All the way to the sixth floor. It's probably left already, though. The doors are closed. No more room."

"How many in the wedding party?"

"The
what?"
Don says.

"Everybody I know, from the first floor on up. Pup and
Smokie
Joe and
Vashti
and The Hook. None of those
noddies
in the shooting gallery, who can't stand on their own two feet. Speaking of undesirables. Let them come out of it for a couple minutes, they will cut your throat if they think you have a buck in your shoe."

"What wedding?" Don says.

"Expect there'll be room for two more," Papa says thoughtfully. "Don? Pony up two dollars."

The woman ties a knot in the garbage bag and rummages deeper among her possessions.

"Pony up three, you get this."

She holds out a child's plastic play- sword—gilt cutlass handle, curved blade— that looks as if the child had teethed on it.

Don, wallet in hand, hesitates. Papa gives him a sharp look. The woman is miffed.

She swishes the flexible sword through the air.

"I wouldn't go where you're going without it," she says ominously.

"Why?"

"It's the sword of Damocles. Your ignorance is no reflection on me."

For a couple of moments Don thinks he is going to start screaming. Then he tears most of the cash from his wallet and thrusts it at the woman. Her muddled but oddly cherubic face lights up; she hands over the sword .and turns her back on them, finding a safe place for the fistful of dollars beneath her shabby outer garments.

"Now take us to Shannon!" Don demands of her.

"Hold on, hold on," she mumbles, but at last is satisfied with the disposition of her loot. The
gadzook
is carrying on inside the garbage bag, threatening to topple it from the cart. She swats the bag with an open hand. "Settle down!" To Papa she says, "Follow me," then glances hard at Don, as if disapproving of the way he is holding the sword, by the raggedly chewed blade instead of the handle.

"I could give you a hand with the cart, daughter."

"No help needed, Mr. Whiskers."

As they trudge along she murmurs and chuckles to herself. In addition to other sounds of the dark—rhythmic swamp-grunts, catcalls,
peckings
and
noodlings
—they hear a high, sustained scream. It has power, momentum, but no emotion. Fear, pain, ecstasy, the scream is about none of these basic things. Yet it goes on and on, until Don is grinding the enamel off his back teeth.

"La-la-la-la," the woman sings breathily. "The
noddies
are restless tonight. I'm betting you don't make it through
noddie
country."

"What's she talking about?" Don says hoarsely to Papa, who, one hand in a side slit of his sou'wester, the other holding the torch to light the way, is into his own steady trudge and unshared thoughts. He shakes off the question somewhat irritably. Don stumbles on the uneven floor and thereafter concentrates on his footing. He has a raging headache. He is half sick from despair. But in
a
way he's grateful for physical discomfort, otherwise he could not believe his own senses. If there is room for anomalies in mathematics—and anomalies do exist— there is room for them in life. He does not have to rigorously define the world which he is now experiencing, he must only manage to
survive it. The scream again. If it is neither
a
relief nor
a
necessity to scream, why do it at all? Don. squints in misery and holds his tender head.

They have come to a series of plywood partitions and walkway tunnels like those put up by construction people around the city so that pedestrians won't fall into awesome holes in the earth or be lobotomized by dropped rivets. Smoke from the torch hovers nastily under the low roof, choking Don as he brings " up the rear. Left turn, right turn, a long straightaway, where will this end? Poor Shannon. At least it is not Shannon whose screams he must bear: The anonymous sound might not even be human. Some kind of machine. A computer programed to scream, as a joke, when it loses at chess.

The squeaky-wheeled grocery cart is on an incline now. They're going down. Torchlight revealing nothing but the narrow plywood tunnel. Someone has spray-painted what look like political slogans in a middle- European language. Why here? Don thinks of men in cloth caps huddled, smoking tobacco harsh enough to kill the
tastebuds
, plotting
firebombings
. The woman sings in a wistfully jocular voice, "
Ain't
misbehavin
'." She knows all the words. Tears come to Don's eyes. He

brushes them away, still holding that fool sword. Their footsteps sound more and more hollow. The tunnel ends.

A damp place, paint peeling from the walls, more huge bolted-together iron pipes feeding out of it than from the chambers of a heart.

"That way," she says, and Papa walks around her with the torch to better examine a series of rusted iron steps going from platform to platform up into the dark of a shaft through which rain comes down intermittently, revealed in silvery streams.

"Why, daughter?"

"It takes you past
noddie
country, if you know how to be quick and careful. Otherwise, you're in the thick of them. You'll have a sporting chance, anyhow. Well, I'm on my way! Don't look for me back here any time soon. First it's the zoo, then I plan to be unstinting in my efforts to
funeralize
the late Mr. Hamilton."

Papa takes off the slouch hat of his sou'wester and grins widely.

"Our thanks to you, daughter."

He lights her way back to the lip of the tunnel. Don is already on the stairs, looking up, quivering, impatient. "Come on!" This time he leads the way, footsteps clanging, as Papa follows with the torch.

"Look out for surprises," the old hunter says, grunting; they both find it a chore going up, straight up, on the treacherous iron stairs. The light is barely adequate. Rain drips on their heads.

They hear screams, squeals, commotion.

"That's—something else, isn't it?" Don says, breathing hard, a stitch in his side.

"Sounds like an ordinary old porker to me. Probably more than one."

"What—next?"

"Third floor. Keep moving."

"I don't know why—haven't kept up at the gym. Lifetime—member. Shouldn't— neglect myself."

Papa is right behind him, the remains of the torch flaking scraps of hot charred paper at Don's neckline.

"Running out of light. Another minute or two. Speed it up, Carnes."

"I'm not quitting. Your old man—in the boat. With his fish. Wouldn't give up—his fish. That's me. I'm not—giving up Shannon."

"Fourth floor!"

"Listen—"

"Don't stop."

"But I heard—I thought I heard—"

"Yes. The elevator. Just the other side of the stairwell.
Go."

Fifth floor.

"Papa!"

"I know. I smell it too."

"Fire!"

"It's either a riot, or a feast. Maybe both. A few more steps, Carnes."