The Devil Delivered and Other Tales Page 15

  “We’re not conspiring, Andy! We never do that! You know that, you know me, you know!”

  “Of course not. Just a gentle reminder, darling.”

  Andy came to the trail’s end, his eyes tracking the dried streaks climbing the metal stand, up to the double-latched, locked cover above the glass. “Perception is everything, Annie, my dear.” Take my friend here, for instance. He mimicks, changes color, changes shape even, perfectly reflecting what’s in front of him. I admire that, dearest. Interesting parable, make a note for the minister, maybe he can use it, not in public, of course, but for his private hate sessions. ASAP. “It counts for much, much more than reality. The world’s a game of mirrors. Deflection, reflection, defraction.” He found himself eye to eye with Kit, a quarter inch of glass and a hundred million years of evolution between them. Kit wouldn’t meet Andy’s gaze, the eyes kept shying off to one side. His eight tentacled arms were at rest, their tips drifting lazily in the gentle current created by the water pump. Eye to eye, Kit in the shadow under the rock ledge, Andy on his knees in his penthouse. You don’t fool me, Kit. You’re up to something. I don’t know how you picked the lock. I don’t know what you do once you’re out—it’s not just crawling around, oh no, there’s a pattern, a purpose. “You’re a cephalopod,” he whispered. “A mere octopus. Clever to be sure, with a neural sensory net more complicated and more sensitive than our own. Those tentacles, so deft, so precise—”

  Annie’s hands slipped over his shoulders, her fingertips inscribing patterns on his hairy chest. “Oooh,” she murmured in his ear, “another fantasy. I love this bestiality stuff. You want my eight arms around you, darling? So tight, they’ll never let go? Hmmm?”

  Andy closed his eyes. Eight? Eight arms? See above, i.e., web imagery. Is this coincidence? Some kind of psychic linkage? Reexamine later, make a note. He made his sigh sound like desire. “What about your meeting?”

  “It can wait,” she answered huskily. “Just let me wrap my—ohmigod, look at Kit—he’s frowning!”

  Andy’s eyes snapped open.

  “Ooh now, Andy! He’s going all red!”

  3.

  meeting the throwback

  Entirely by coincidence, a certain page from a certain newspaper had been plastered on the wall by a handful of poorly rendered grease, and sat stuck there directly above Sool Koobie’s tousled, burr-snagged head whenever he slept. While he couldn’t read, and wouldn’t have been much interested in any case, there was an article on the page discussing his existence.

  One certain theory popular among some scientists held that Neanderthals did not become extinct; rather, they interbred, merged with, and eventually disappeared within the race of modern humans. It followed that, since these genes still persisted, there was always the chance that a perfect anachronistic match could occur within a single individual, creating a throwback. A pure, dyed-in-the-wool Neanderthal, characterized by pronounced brow ridges, an oblong-shaped skull with proportionately smaller frontal lobes behind the sloping forehead, and larger occipital lobes at the back. No chin, a huge nose designed to heat glaciated air, a high larynx and tiny voice box, a robust skeletal frame, and massively large, strong muscles.

  For Sool Koobie, the newspaper article on the alley wall above his nest was, could he have read it, redundant, since he himself was the real article, and not in the least concerned with arguments over his existence—theoretical or otherwise.

  On this particular night, in the darkness of his cave, Sool Koobie’s eyes were closed, but he was wide awake. In his mind, which ran paths alien and potentially alarming to normal, modern humans, he concentrated on every detail describing, with absolute precision, the next few hours of his life.

  He moved within his cave, alone, beyond even the suspicions of the world outside yet so intricately connected to its unmindful pulses that his hair prickled with every passage through the night’s cool air, unveiling in his mind an area that extended six blocks in every direction—encompassing the heart of the city—this city. Through this mental map he danced, slipping from shadow to shadow, padding soundlessly down alleyways, pausing to test the air—nostrils flaring—and cocking his head to the sound of footsteps a block away. He gestured rhythmically with his chert-tipped spear, jabbing it as he leapt upon his unsuspecting victim. He crowed a rasping, voiceless cry, his head tilted back, as the creature stumbled and fell.

  So it was, so it would be. The hunt’s the thing. The hunt’s this thing.

  Sool Koobie knelt on the grimy floor of his cave, setting aside the weapon that would soon be slick with his victim’s blood, and made propitiation to the quarry’s spirit, which would flee the cooling flesh, hover uncertainly, then float away into the night sky. Duly appeased by the respect and honor Sool was now displaying.

  He opened his eyes and blinked rapidly in the musty darkness. He’d let the hearth fire dim to just a few faintly glowing coals, and now his eyes were adjusted to the night. He breathed deeply, swelling his thick, boxy chest. He jiggled his muscles loose in his arms, did the same with his short, stocky, bowed legs. He flexed and splayed out his broad, hairy toes, then finished his preparation with a twitch of his small ears.

  Sool’s brain was bigger than the average Homo sapiens sapiens brain. Sool possessed big thoughts to match his prodigious gray matter, which is why the city was in trouble—though it knew it not.

  The hunt’s the thing. This thing, and another thing, soon to come.

  Sool Koobie slipped outside. Within minutes he’d traveled a block, then another, moving unseen, silent and deadly. He found a hiding place, where he could wait in ambush near a watering hole, and settled in.

  An hour later he rolled out from under the Cadillac, his wide, flat face smeared black with dirty oil. Heart pounding with eagerness, he sprang to his feet, straddling the curb, and sniffed deeply the night air. The rain had dampened the city’s miasmic smells, but not enough to hide the scent from Sool Koobie’s nose.

  There were grass-eaters about, close by. A waft of weeds expelled in the breath of someone near, the slick tang of canola oil palpable on Sool’s tongue. He licked his stubble-ringed lips and tested the air once more, then, hefting his spear, he slipped once again into the shadows.

  4.

  ambition’s slow burn

  Maxwell Nacht sat alone, a huge cup of decaffeinated mocha lait centered on his small table, crowded against the bowl of raw sugar and the beeswax candle—the huge cup his only company this night, like so many others since he’d moved to the city. The coffee had gone cold, its puff of petroleum whip collapsed into a wrinkled caldera, wax drippings from the candle slowly flowing down the cup’s edge, disappearing beneath the foam and secretly growing like an island on the liquid’s hidden surface.

  The waitress hadn’t looked his way in forty minutes, so he continued his slow, rhythmic unraveling of the Peruvian straw place mat, plucking out the staples when he found them and dropping them into the golden candle’s sputtering flame.

  I’m in my struggling phase, Max told himself. This is a phase in the artist’s life that requires a certain amount of public display. Still, what are these staples doing in this Peruvian place mat?

  At a nearby table a conversation was under way, a smooth, oiled machine of elocution chugging along, part dialogue, part performance. Max registered every word, absorbed every nuance. He knew every person at the table, if only by reputation. They were the cream of the city’s art establishment. They were brilliant. Breathtaking. Deep beyond words. They were talking.

  “Can’t play the game until you know the rules,” Don Palmister said, shrugging ineffectually somewhere inside his sprawling carpetlike tweed jacket.

  Max smiled to himself. Amen to that.

  “It’s not a game,” Lucy Mort said, wrinkling her nose in a way someone must have once told her was cute. “It’s my life, it’s what I am, to the very heart of my soul.”

  “Absolutely,” Brandon Safeword said, his studied enunciation delivered in a rolling to
ne, like ball bearings on a teak floor. “When struggle itself assumes an aesthetic modality, for instance.”

  A moment of silence, either in homage or bafflement—it didn’t matter which, really. Talent, Max knew—real talent—lay in mastering the ambiguity. With sufficient self-consciousness, one could turn dim-witted stupidity into an intellectual brown study.

  “In any case,” Don Palmister eventually said, “it’s a jungle out there, that’s for certain. Clearly—” The professor looked at each of his companions. “—something must be done.”

  “Clearly,” Brandon Safeword agreed. The media pundit and self-professed art critic for the Cultural Public Broadcasting station leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “After all, the core has begun to rot, hasn’t it?”

  Lucy Mort gasped.

  “No,” Brandon drawled, “not that core, darling. I was speaking of the city’s core.” He waved toward the restaurant’s front window. “This scattering of streets, the various knots of heritage buildings presently untenanted and left to decay.”

  “Refurbishment,” Don Palmister said, nodding. “Upscale apartments, condos, people with money…”

  The others shared a soft laugh that made Max’s stomach jump.

  “Indeed,” Brandon said. “Money.”

  Everyone laughed again, the magic word even better the second time around.

  A distant shriek from somewhere outside made Max sit up, alarmed. He twisted in his seat and leaned close to the window. Outside, all he could see was the wet street, parked cars, and old, exhaust-stained buildings. Must’ve been a car. Of course it was a car. Whew. He sat back. No one else had heard the sound, it seemed. Unnerving, sitting this close to the dark world outside, but it had been the last table available.

  Culture Quo Vegetarian Restaurant was a popular place.

  “I’ve found,” Don Palmister was saying, “that the postmodernistic zeitgeist has finally embraced the culminating notion of dismantled meaning.” He paused to roll his eyes and shift again inside his tweed jacket. “It’s been a notion of mine, firmly implanted in my class syllabi for at least ten years.”

  Syllabi? Like … octopi? Of course there’s no such word as octopi. The word is octopods. Syllapodes, a many-tentacled description swathed in a cloud of black ink when alarmed.

  “Patience,” Brandon said. “The ultra-awareness of pure genius, once delivered into the virgin and perhaps limited minds of your students, Professor, necessitates a certain gestation period before fruition, hah hah, ho ho!”

  “Sure, Brandon,” Don said, “but where’s my credit?”

  Everyone laughed again, but this time the sound had acquired a timbre of uncertainty. Said in jest or honest vexation—that seemed to be the secret question.

  Whining’s always honest. Max nodded to himself. But very artfully done, Professor Palmister. You’ve got them guessing.

  The conversation ended abruptly, as did the serene hum of a healthy dining experience, when the door banged open and two young men stumbled inside, faces white and eyes wide with fear—Max hadn’t even seen them coming, but he shrank back from the chill air that swept in around them. The two men skidded to a stop just inside the door, heads whipping as they stared wildly at everyone in the restaurant.

  “Someone help us!” the man closest to Max screamed. “Our friend’s been attacked!”

  “Kidnapped!” the other shouted.

  “This hairy naked man jumped us from an alley!”

  “He had a spear—he stuck it in Maury!”

  “Maury’s our friend!”

  “Maury fell down and the naked guy barked at us—”

  “Snapped and showed his teeth!”

  “Then he dragged Maury into the alley!”

  “Someone call the police!”

  “We’re regular patrons here!”

  “Maury, too!”

  Brandon Safeword surged to his feet, his massive, muscular frame suddenly dominating the room. “My God,” he whispered, “not again!”

  5.

  lessons in history

  Joey “Rip” Sanger’s mother threw herself in front of a train the day his father walked out on them. It had been one of those vintage jaunts somewhere around the Gatineau Hills, a Kitson Meyer steam engine pulling six antique smokers full of Health Club Americans on a package tour. She’d stepped between the restored bullhead rails at a sharp bend from which, on a clear day and with the aid of binoculars, one could see Ottawa.

  The Kitson Meyer had slowed to a steady twenty miles an hour taking the bend, and the broad cowcatcher scooped up Joey’s mother and gave her a three-hour ride down into Hull. She’d walked away with only a chipped front door, which she got when she rolled off the catcher at the station.

  These days, Emilia Sanger knitted toques for old folks in Scarborough.

  Joey’s father had gone off to find his true love. Five years later, Joey and his brothers received a photograph postcard showing their old man, his white face a startling blotch amidst all the dark-skinned Pakistanis, perched on the runner of the twelfth Clayton Wagon steamer originally built in Lancashire. Most historians claimed that the Clayton Wagon Company built only eleven engines. Thomas Sanger had found his phantom lover, doing the Afghanistan run, and on the back of the card he’d written: Go get ’em, boys.

  A sentiment his three sons had taken to heart. Wally Sanger, the eldest, was doing time in Fort Saskatchewan for the attempted murder of Joey’s kid brother, Mack. Wally had been a professional scab for the railroad companies. Mack had gotten in the way on a picket line and Wally had driven over him, crushing both legs and leaving him a paraplegic. They’d since patched things up and now wrote each other every other day.

  Like his brothers, like his old man and his grandfather and his great-grandmother on Daddy’s side, Joey also had the railroad in his blood. His grandfather, Straight-Line Sanger, drove the third-to-last spike in the Rockies moments before pitching over dead of heat prostration and, it was rumoured, syphilis. Joey’s great-grandmother, Liza Sanger, baked bread, built saunas, and stored explosives for the railroad work teams at the camp southwest of Rennie. One day, while walking beside one of the stone-houses—which held 727 sticks of dynamite—Liza had blown up. Not the house. Just her. Some stories went around after that, since everybody knew how Liza had an adventurous spirit.

  Joey “Rip” Sanger stepped off the train at the station and waited for the redcap to collect his twin steel trunks from the baggage car. He ran a battered hand across his fiery red brush cut, scratched at his scar, then fished for a fiver from his off-white trench coat’s spacious pockets. The redcaps had a history. Something that demanded respect. The fiver would tell this redcap that Joey knew what tradition was all about.

  He watched the crimson-clad young man loading the twin steel trunks onto the roller. The man wheeled the cart up to Joey. “Man, these are heavy buggers, Jack. Whatcha got in ’em, rocks?”

  Joey scowled. “Redcaps bend their backs without jawing and moaning. Redcaps don’t retire. They go on compensation. You new or something, son?”

  “Tell ya what, Jack. You just climb on here and I’ll roll ya all off the ramp and the Devil with ya.”

  “Follow me to the head office. I got an appointment.”

  “You gonna citation me?”

  Joey turned away and headed for the hallway that led into the company offices. He pulled out the fiver and fluttered it over one shoulder. “Let’s go, Bobby-boy, we’re wasting time and Joey ‘Rip’ Sanger never—I repeat, never—wastes time.”

  “Did you say Joey ‘Rip’ Sanger? Geez, Mr. Sanger, I didn’t know, honest. I’m right with ya, Mr. Sanger, right here behind ya. Y’just lead the way and I’m right with ya.”

  They passed through the room containing the scaled-down model reconstruction of the station yards. Joey waved a hand at it. “This, Bobby-boy, is something you should pay attention to. It’s what we’re all about and you know why?” He paused at the door and met the redcap’s wide eyes.<
br />
  “No,” the young man said softly.

  “’Cause it’s for the little people, that’s why.”

  They continued on, came to a stop outside the president’s office. “Leave the trunks here,” Joey said.

  “Yes sir, Mr. Sanger. And I’ll stand guard, too, right here till you’re done.”

  Joey narrowed his iron gray eyes to slits. “Learn to respect that red cap, son.” He raised the five-dollar bill. “Learn it good, and maybe one day a fiver like this one will land in your pocket.” He swung around, opened the door, and stepped inside the office.

  Joey hung up his trench coat, scrubbed the crimson bristle on his head, then walked past the secretary. “Wild Bill in, honey? Good, I ain’t got much time. Buzz him I’m on my way, let’s see how fast you are.” He walked to the inner door and had his hand on the knob before the secretary suddenly snatched at the intercom on her desk. Joey grinned to himself and stepped into the president’s office.

  “G’afternoon, scum-face,” he said to the balding man spread out in the chair behind an antique desk. “Hey, you’re not Wild Bill Chan. What the hell you doing in his chair? Take a hike, I got an appointment with Chan.”

  The balding man’s round, patchy face deepened a shade as he slowly sat forward. “You got one thing right, Mr. Sanger,” he said in a reedy voice. “Wild Bill made the call, making sure it was you who’d take the job. But he retired last year. The name’s Jeremy Under. Please, Mr. Sanger, take a seat.”

  Scowling, Joey sat down. “What the hell? Wild Bill couldn’t be over eighty-five. What do you mean, he retired?”

  “It was,” Jeremy Under said, “a forced retirement. Management folded on this one, because it had to. The old give and take. We fold, they fold, you know how it is. Now, onto the business at hand.” The man leaned back, lacing his pudgy fingers together on his round belly. “The reports have it you almost single-handedly collared that Kerouac Gang out of Toronto’s East Side.”