The Best of Lucius Shepard (48 page)

The
fish resembled a carp and measured three feet from its head to its tail; its
overlapping scales were a muddy brown, and its face was the mask of a
lugubrious god, with huge golden eyes and a fleshy down-turned mouth. It seemed
to be regarding Buddha sadly, registering him as another of life’s
disappointments, a subject with which it was quite familiar, for its swollen
belly encaged all the evil and heartache to the world, both in principle and
reality. Buddha gazed into its eyes, and the pupils expanded into black funnels
that connected with his own pupils, opening channels along which torrents of
grief and fear began to flow. The deaths of his wife and mother were nothing
compared with the hallucinatory terrors that now confronted him: demons with
mouths large enough to swallow planets; gales composed of a trillion dying
breaths; armies of dead men and women and children. Their bodies maimed by an
infinity of malefic usage. Had he witnessed these visions while awake, he would
have been overwhelmed; but protected by the conditions of the dream, he
withstood them and was made strong.

And
before long he fell asleep in the midst of this infinite torment contained
within the belly of the fish in his dream, contained in turn within his skull,
within the ramshackle frame house, within the gunshot-riddled spiritual realm
of the Detroit ghetto, whose agonies became a fleeting instance of distress—the
fluttering of an eyelid, the twitching of a nerve—within the dreamed-of peace
of Buddha’s sleep.

*
* * *

The shooting gallery was
located in the Jefferson-Chalmers district, the section of the ghetto most
affected by the ‘67 riots. Hundreds of gutted houses still stood as memorials
to that event, and between them—where once had stood other houses—lay vacant
lots overgrown with weeds and stunted trees of heaven. The following afternoon,
as he walked past the lot adjoining the shooting gallery, Buddha was struck by
the sight of a charred sofa set among weeds at the center of the lot, and
obeying an impulse, he walked over to it and sat down. It was the first day of
fall weather. The air was crisp, the full moon pinned like a disfigured cameo
of bone to a cloudless blue sky. In front of the sofa was a pile of ashes over
which somebody had placed a grill; half a dozen scorched cans were scattered
around it. Buddha studied the ashes, the grill, the cans, mesmerized by the
pattern they formed. Sirens squealed in the distance, a metallic clanging seemed
to be issuing from beyond the sky, and Buddha felt himself enthroned, the
desireless king of a ruined world in which all desire had faltered.

He
had been sitting for perhaps an hour when a teenage boy with a freckly
complexion like Pete’s came running along the sidewalk. Dressed in jeans and a
sweatshirt and lugging an immense ghetto blaster. The boy looked behind him,
then sprinted across the lot toward Buddha and flung himself down behind the
sofa. “You tell ‘em I’m here,” he said breathlessly, “I’ll cut ya!” He waggled
a switchblade in front of Buddha’s face. Buddha just kept staring at the
toppled brick chimneys and vacated premises. A dragonfly wobbled up from the
leaves and vanished into the sun dazzle of a piece of broken mirror canted
against the ash heap.

Less
than a minute later two black men ran past the lot. Spotting Buddha, one
shouted, “See a kid come this way?” Buddha made no reply.

“Tell
‘em I headed toward Cass,” the kid whispered urgently, but Buddha maintained
his silence, his lack of concern.

“Y’hear
me?” the man shouted.

“Tell
‘em!” the boy whispered.

Buddha
said nothing.

The
two men conferred and after a second ran back in the direction from which they
had come. “Damn, blood! You take some chances!” said the boy, and when Buddha
gave no response, he added, “They come back, you just sit there like you done.
Maybe they think you a dummy.” He switched on the ghetto blaster, and rap music
leaked out, the volume too low for the words to be audible.

Buddha
looked at the boy, and the boy grinned, his nervousness evident despite the
mask of confidence.

“Ain’t
this a fine box?” he said. “Fools leave it settin’ on the stoop, they deserve
to get it took. “ He squinted as if trying to scry out Buddha’s hidden meaning.
“Can’t you talk, man?”

“Nothin’
to say,” Buddha answered.

“That’s
cool.... Too much bullshit in the air, anyhow.”

The
boy reminded Buddha of his younger self, and this disquieted him: he had the
urge to offer advice, and he knew advice would be useless. The boy’s fate was
spelled out by the anger lying dormant in the set of his mouth. Buddha pitied
him, but pity—like love, like hate—was a violation of his policy of
noninvolvement, an impediment of the emptiness to which he aspired. He got to
his feet and headed for the sidewalk.

“Hey!”
yelled the boy. “You tell them mothafuckas where I’m at, I’ll kill yo’ ass!”

Buddha
kept walking.

“I
mean it, man!” And as if in defiance, as if he needed some help to verbalize
it, the boy turned up the ghetto blaster, and a gassed voice blared, “Don’t
listen to the shuck and jive from Chairman Channel Twenty-Five....”

Buddha
picked up his pace, and soon the voice mixed in with the faint sounds of
traffic, distant shouts, other musics, absorbed into the troubled sea from
which it had surfaced.

*
* * *

From the shooting gallery to
Taboo’s apartment should have been about a twenty-minute walk, but that
day—still troubled by his encounter with the boy—Buddha cut the time in half.
He had learned that it was impossible to avoid involvement on his day off,
impossible not to confront his past, and in Taboo he had found a means of
making the experience tolerable, letting it be the exception that proved the
rule. When he had first met Taboo seven years before, Taboo’s name had been
Yancey; he had been eighteen, married to a pretty girl, and holding down a
steady job at Pontiac Motors.

Three
years later, when he had next run into him, Taboo had come out of the closet,
was working as a psychic healer, curing neighborhood ladies of various minor
complaints, and through hormone treatments had developed a small yet shapely
pair of breasts, whose existence he hid from the world beneath loose-fitting
clothes.

Buddha
had caught a glimpse of Taboo’s breasts by accident, having once entered his
bathroom while he was washing up, and after this chance revelation, Taboo had
fixed upon him as a confidant, a circumstance that Buddha had welcomed—though
he did not welcome Taboo’s sexual advances. He derived several benefits from
the relationship. For one thing, Taboo’s specialty was curing warts, and Buddha
had a problem with warts on his hands (one such had given him an excuse to
visit that day); for another, Taboo—who dealt on the side—always had drugs on
hand. But the most important benefit was that Taboo provided Buddha with an
opportunity to show kindness to someone who brought to mind his dead wife. In
their solitary moments together, Taboo would don a wig and a dress,
transforming himself into the semblance of a beautiful young woman, and Buddha
would try to persuade him to follow his inner directives and proceed with the
final stage of his sex change. He would argue long and hard, claiming that
Taboo’s magical powers would mature once he completed the transformation,
telling Taboo stories of how wonderful his new life would be. But Taboo was
deathly afraid of the surgeon’s knife, and no matter how forcefully Buddha argued,
he refused to pay heed. Buddha knew there had to be an answer to Taboo’s
problem, and sometimes he felt that answer was staring him in the face. But it
never would come clear. He had the notion, though, that sooner or later the
time would be right for answers.

It
was a beautiful spring day in Taboo’s living room. The walls were painted to
resemble a blue sky dappled with fluffy white clouds, and the floor was
carpeted with artificial grass. In Taboo’s bedroom where he did his healing, it
was a mystical night. The walls were figured with cabalistic signs and stars
and a crescent moon, and the corner table was ebony, and the chairs upholstered
in black velour. Black drapes hid the windows; a black satin quilt covered the
bed. Muted radiance shone from the ceiling onto the corner table, and after he
had fixed, it was there that Buddha sat soaking his wart in a crystal bowl
filled with herb-steeped water, while Taboo sat beside him and muttered charms.

Taboo
was not in drag because he was waiting for Johnny Wardell to show; but even so
he exhibited a feminine beauty. The soft lighting applied sensual gleams to his
chocolate skin and enhanced the delicacy of his high cheekbones and generous
mouth and almond-shaped eyes. When he leaned forward to inspect Buddha’s wart,
the tips of his breasts dimpled the fabric of his blousy shirt. Buddha could
make out his magic: a disturbance like heat haze in the air around him.

“There,
darlin’,” said Taboo. “All gone. Your hand back the way it s’posed to be.”

Buddha
peered into the bowl. At the bottom rested a wrinkled black thing like a
raisin. Taboo lifted his hand from the water and dried it with a towel. Where
the wart had been was now only smooth skin. Buddha touched the place; it felt
hot and smelled bitter from the herbs.

“Wish
Johnny’d hurry up,” said Taboo. “I bought a new dress I wanna try on for
ya....”

“Whyn’t
you try it on now? If the buzzer goes, you can pretend you ain’t at home.”

“
‘Cause I just have to deal wit’ him later, and no tellin’ what kinda mood
Johnny be in then.”

Buddha
had no need to ask Taboo why he had to deal with Johnny Wardell at all. Taboo’s
reason for risking himself among the bad dogs was similar to Buddha’s reason
for retreating from life: he felt guilty for the way he was, and this risk was
his self-inflicted punishment.

Taboo
pulled out a packet of white powder and a drinking straw and told Buddha to
toot a few lines, to put a shine on his high. Buddha did as he suggested. A
luxuriant warmth spread through his head and chest, and little sparkles danced
in the air, vanishing like snowflakes. He started getting drowsy. Taboo steered
him to the bed, then curled up beside him, his arm around Buddha’s waist.

“I
love you so much, Buddha,” he said. “Don’t know what I’d do without you to talk
to…I swear I don’t.” His soft breasts nudged against Buddha’s arm, his fingers
toyed with Buddha’s belt buckle, and despite himself, Buddha experienced the
beginnings of arousal. But he felt no love coming from Taboo, only a flux of
lust and anxiety. Love was unmistakable—a warm pressure as steady as a beam
from a flashlight—and Taboo was too unformed, too confused, to be its source.

“Naw,
man,” Buddha said, pushing Taboo’s hand away.

“I
just wanna love you!”

In
Taboo’s eyes Buddha could read the sweet fucked-up sadness of a woman born
wrong; but though he was sympathetic, he forced himself to be stern. “Don’t
mess wit’ me!”

The
buzzer sounded.

“Damn!”
Taboo sat up, tucked in his shirt. He walked over to the table, picked up the
white powder and the drinking straw, and brought them over to Buddha. “You do a
little bit more of this here bad boy. But don’t you be runnin’ it. I don’t want
you fallin’ out on me.” He went out into the living room, closing the door
behind him.

There
seemed to be a curious weight inside Buddha’s head, less an ache than a sense
of something askew, and to rid himself of it he did most of the remaining
heroin. It was enough to set him dreaming, though not of Africa. These dreams
were ugly, featuring shrieks and thuds and nasty smears of laughter, and once
somebody said, “The man got tits! Dig it! The man’s a fuckin’ woman!”

Gradually
he arrived at the realization that the dreams were real, that something bad was
happening, and he struggled back to full consciousness. He got to his feet,
swayed, staggered forward, and threw open the door to the living room.

Taboo
was naked and spread-eagled facedown over some pillow, his rump in the air, and
Johnny Wardell—a young leather-clad blood with a hawkish face—was holding his
arms. Another man, darker and heavier than Wardell, was kneeling between
Taboo’s legs and was just zipping up his trousers.

For
a split second nobody moved. Framed by the vivid green grass and blue sky and
innocent clouds, the scene had a surreal biblical quality, like a hideous act
perpetrated in some unspoiled corner of the Garden of Eden, and Buddha was
transfixed by it. What he saw was vile, but he saw, too, that it was an
accurate statement of the world’s worth, of its grotesque beauty, and he felt
distanced, as if he were watching through a peephole whose far end was a
thousand miles away.