Chapter 114
But now, strapped into the chair, and them getting ready to put the leather mask over my face so the witnesses wouldn' t have to see the smoke coming out of my eye-sockets and the little sparks as my nose hairs burned, when it was urgent that I get into the thoughts and landscape of Henry Lake Spanning, I was shut out completely. And right then, that moment, I was scared!
Presto, without my even opening up to him, there he was: inside my head.
He had jaunted into my landscape.
" You had a nice roast beef sandwich, I see."
His voice was a lot stronger than it had been when I' d come down to see him a year ago. A lot stronger inside my mind.
" Yes, Rudy, I' m what you knew probably existed somewhere. Another one. A shrike." He paused. " I see you call it 'jaunting in the landscape.' I just called myself a shrike. A butcherbird. One name' s as good as another. Strange, isn' t it; all these years; and we never met anyone else? There must be others, but I think- now I can' t prove this, I have no real data, it' s just a wild idea I' ve had for years and years- I think they don' t know they can do it."
He stared at me across the landscape, those wonderful blue eyes of his, the ones Ally had fallen in love with, hardly blinking.
" Why didn' t you let me know before this?" He smiled sadly. " Ah, Rudy. Rudy, Rudy, Rudy; you poor benighted pickaninny.
" Because I needed to suck you in, kid. I needed to put out a bear trap, and let it snap closed on your scrawny leg, and send you over. Here, let me clear the atmosphere in here..." And he wiped away all the manipulation he had worked on me, way back a year ago, when he had so easily covered his own true thoughts, his past, his life, the real panorama of what went on inside his landscape- like bypa.s.sing a surveillance camera with a continuous-loop tape that continues to show a placid scene while the joint is being actively burgled- and when he convinced me not only that he was innocent, but that the real killer was someone who had blocked the hideous slaughters from his conscious mind and had lived an otherwise exemplary life. He wandered around my landscape- and all of this in a second or two, because time has no duration in the landscape, like the hours you can spend in a dream that are just thirty seconds long in the real world, just before you wake up- and he swept away all the false memories and suggestions, the logical structure of sequential events that he had planted that would dovetail with my actual existence, my true memories, altered and warped and rearranged so I would believe that I had done all seventy of those ghastly murders...so that I' d believe, in a moment of horrible realization, that I was the demented psychopath who had ranged state to state to state, leaving piles of ripped flesh at every stop. Blocked it all, submerged it all, sublimated it all, me. Good old Rudy Pairis, who never killed anybody. I' d been the patsy he was waiting for.
" There, now, kiddo. See what it' s really like?
" You didn' t do a thing.
" Pure as the driven snow, n.i.g.g.e.r. That' s the truth. And what a find you were. Never even suspected there was another like me, till Ally came to interview me after Decatur. But there you were, big and black as a Great White Hope, right there in her mind. Isn' t she fine, Pairis? Isn' t she something to take a knife to? Something to split open like a nice piece of fruit warmed in a summer suns.h.i.+ne field, let all the steam rise off her...maybe have a picnic..."
He stopped.
" I wanted her right from the first moment I saw her.
" Now, you know, I could' ve done it sloppy, just been a shrike to Ally, that first time she came to the holding cell to interview me; just jump into her, that was my plan. But what a noise that Spanning in the cell would' ve made, yelling it wasn' t a man, it was a woman, not Spanning, but Deputy D.A. Allison Roche...too much noise, too many complications. But I could have done it, jumped into her. Or a guard, and then slice her at my leisure, stalk her, find her, let her steam...
" You look distressed, Mr. Rudy Pairis. Why' s that? Because you' re going to die in my place? Because I could have taken you over at any time, and didn' t? Because after all this time of your miserable, wasted, lousy life you finally find someone like you, and we don' t even have the convenience of a chat? Well, that' s sad, that' s really sad, kiddo. But you didn' t have a chance."
" You' re stronger than me, you kept me out," I said.
He chuckled.
" Stronger? Is that all you think it is? Stronger? You still don' t get it, do you?" His face, then, grew terrible. " You don' t even understand now, right now that I' ve cleaned it all away and you can see what I did to you, do you?
" Do you think I stayed in a jail cell, and went through that trial, all of that, because I couldn' t do anything about it? You poor jig slob. I could have jumped like a shrike any time I wanted to. But the first time I met your Ally I saw you."
I cringed. " And you waited...? For me, you spent all that time in prison, just to get to me...?"
" At the moment when you couldn' t do anything about it, at the moment you couldn' t shout 'I' ve been taken over by someone else, I' m Rudy Pairis here inside this Henry Lake Spanning body, help me, help me!' Why stir up noise when all I had to do was bide my time, wait a bit, wait for Ally, and let Ally go for you."
I felt like a drowning turkey, standing idiotically in the rain, head tilted up, mouth open, water pouring in. " You can...leave the mind...leave the body...go out...jaunt, jump permanently..."
Spanning sn.i.g.g.e.red like a schoolyard bully.
" You stayed in jail three years just to get me?"
He smirked. Smarter than thou.
" Three years? You think that' s some big deal to me? You don' t think I could have someone like you running around, do you? Someone who can 'jaunt' as I do? The only other shrike I' ve ever encountered. You think I wouldn' t sit in here and wait for you to come to me?"
" But three years..."
" You' re what, Rudy...thirty-one, is it? Yes, I can see that. Thirty-one. You' ve never jumped like a shrike. You' ve just entered, jaunted, gone into the landscapes, and never understood that it' s more than reading minds. You can change domiciles, black boy. You can move out of a house in a bad neighborhood- such as strapped into the electric chair- and take up residence in a brand, spanking, new housing complex of million-and-a-half-buck condos, like Ally."
" But you have to have a place for the other one to go, don' t you?" I said it just flat, no tone, no color to it at all. I didn' t even think of the place of dark, where you can go...
" Who do you think I am, Rudy? Just who the h.e.l.l do you think I was when I started, when I learned to shrike, how to jaunt, what I' m telling you now about changing residences? You wouldn' t know my first address. I go a long way back.
" But I can give you a few of my more famous addresses. Gilles de Rais, France, 1440; Vlad Tepes, Romania, 1462; Elizabeth Bathory, Hungary, 1611; Catherine DeShayes, France, 1680; Jack the Ripper, London, 1888; Henri Desire Landru, France, 1915; Albert Fish, New York City, 1934; Ed Gein, Plainfield, Wisconsin, 1954; Myra Hindley, Manchester, 1963; Albert DeSalvo, Boston, 1964; Charles Manson, Los Angeles, 1969; John Wayne Gacy, Norwood Park Towns.h.i.+p, Illinois, 1977.
" Oh, but how I do go on. And on. And on and on and on, Rudy, my little porch monkey. That' s what I do. I go on. And on and on. Shrike will nest where it chooses. If not in your beloved Allison Roche, then in the cheesy f.u.c.ked-up black boy, Rudy Pairis. But don' t you think that' s a waste, kiddo? Spending however much time I might have to spend in your socially unacceptable body, when Henry Lake Spanning is such a handsome devil? Why should I have just switched with you when Ally lured you to me, because all it would' ve done is get you screeching and howling that you weren' t Spanning, you were this n.i.g.g.e.r son who' d had his head stolen...and then you might have manipulated some guards or the Warden...
" Well, you see what I mean, don' t you?
" But now that the mask is securely in place, and now that the electrodes are attached to your head and your left leg, and now that the Warden has his hand on the switch, well, you' d better get ready to do a lot of drooling."
And he turned around to jaunt back out of me, and I closed the perimeter. He tried to jaunt, tried to leap back to his own mind, but I had him in a fist. Just that easy. Materialized a fist, and turned him to face me.
" f.u.c.k you, Jack the Ripper. And f.u.c.k you twice, Bluebeard. And on and on and on f.u.c.k you Manson and Boston Strangler and any other dips.h.i.+t warped piece of sick c.r.a.p you been in your years. You sure got some muddy-shoes credentials there, boy.
" What I care about all those names, Spanky my brother? You really think I don' t know those names? I' m an educated fellah, Mistuh Rippuh, Mistuh Mad Bomber. You missed a few. Were you also, did you inhabit, hast thou possessed Winnie Ruth Judd and Charlie Starkweather and Mad Dog Coll and Richard Speck and Sirhan Sirhan and Jeffrey Dahmer? You the boogieman responsible for every bad number the human race ever played? You ruin Sodom and Gomorrah, burned the Great Library of Alexandria, orchestrated the Reign of Terror dans Paree, set up the Inquisition, stoned and drowned the Salem witches, slaughtered unarmed women and kids at Wounded Knee, b.u.mped off John Kennedy?
" I don' t think so.
" I don' t even think you got so close as to share a pint with Jack the Ripper. And even if you did, even if you were all those maniacs, you were small potatoes, Spanky. The least of us human beings outdoes you, three times a day. How many lynch ropes you pulled tight, M' sieur Landru?
" What colossal egotism you got, makes you blind, makes you think you' re the
" You so G.o.ddam stuck on yourself, Spankyhead, you never give it the barest that someone else is a faster draw than you.
" Know what your trouble is, Captain? You' re old, you' re real old, maybe hundreds of years who gives a d.a.m.n old. That don' t count for s.h.i.+t, old man. You' re old, but you never got smart. You' re just mediocre at what you do.
" You moved from address to address. ' You didn' t have to be Son of Sam or Cain slayin' Abel, or whoever the f.u.c.k you been...you could' ve been Moses or Galileo or George Was.h.i.+ngton Carver or Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth or Mark Twain or Joe Louis. You could' ve been Alexander Hamilton and helped found the Manumission Society in New York. You could' ve discovered radium, carved Mount Rushmore, carried a baby out of a burning building. But you got old real fast, and you never got any smarter. You didn' t need to, did you, Spanky? You had it all to yourself, all this 'shrike' s.h.i.+t, just jaunt here and jaunt there, and bite off someone' s hand or face like the old, tired, boring, repet.i.tious, no-imagination stupid s.h.i.+t that you are.
" Yeah, you got me good when I came here to see your landscape. You got Ally wired up good. And she suckered me in, probably not even knowing she was doing it...you must' ve looked in her head and found just the right technique to get her to make me come within reach. Good, m' man; you were excellent. But I had a year to torture myself. A year to sit here and think about it. About how many people I' d killed, and how sick it made me, and little by little I found my way through it.
" Because...and here' s the big difference 'tween us, dummy:" I unraveled what was going on...it took time, but I learned. Understand, a.s.shole? I learn! You don't.
" There' s an old j.a.panese saying- I got lots of these, Henry m' man- I read a whole lot- and what it says is, 'Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience- twenty times." ' Then I grinned back at him.
"f.u.c.k you, sucker," I said, just as the Warden threw the switch and I jaunted out of there and into the landscape and mind of Henry Lake Spanning.
I sat there getting oriented for a second; it was the first time I' d done more than a jaunt...this was...shrike; but then Ally beside me gave a little sob for her old pal, Rudy Pairis, who was baking like a Maine lobster, smoke coming out from under the black cloth that covered my, his, face; and I heard the vestigial scream of what had been Henry Lake Spanning and thousands of other monsters, all of them burning, out there on the far horizon of my new landscape; and I put my arm around her, and drew her close, and put my face into her shoulder and hugged her to me; and I heard the scream go on and on for the longest time, I think it was a long time, and finally it was just wind...and then gone...and I came up from Ally' s shoulder, and I could barely speak.
" Shhh, honey, it' s okay," I murmured. " He' s gone where he can make right for his mistakes. No pain. Quiet, a real quiet place; and all alone forever. And cool there. And dark."
I was ready to stop failing at everything, and blaming everything. Having fessed up to love, having decided it was time to grow up and be an adult- not just a very quick study who learned fast, extremely fast, a lot faster than anybody could imagine an orphan like me could learn, than anybody could imagine- I hugged her with the intention that Henry Lake Spanning would love Allison Roche more powerfully, more responsibly, than anyone had ever loved anyone in the history of the world. I was ready to stop failing at everything.
And it would be just a whole lot easier as a white boy with great big blue eyes.
Because- get on this now- all my wasted years didn' t have as much to do with blackness or racism or being overqualified or being unlucky or being high-verbal or even the curse of my " gift" of jaunting, as they did with one single truth I learned waiting in there, inside my own landscape, waiting for Spanning to come and gloat: I have always been one of those miserable guys who couldn' t get out of his own way.
Which meant I could, at last, stop feeling sorry for that poor n.i.g.g.e.r, Rudy Pairis. Except, maybe, in a moment of human weakness.
This story, for Bob Bloch, because I promised.
XV.
PROCESS.
" The path of true art is invisible. When you start perceiving your surroundings as a creator, you lose that innocence of childhood or nature which provides the genuine spark of creativity. So when someone asks you to explain such-and-such, you should run from it like the plague, because the minute you start to explain, you kill. It's what the architect Robert Smithson said: 'Establish enigmas, not explanations.' "
from " Power of the Word" An interview with Harlan Ellison in The Australian, January 1996 Harlan has always been fascinated with process. Not only does he admit to being " ensorcelled" by it in "Telltale Tics and Tremors," but, as well as being famously known for resisting labels and categories, he's a writer who is always challenging the storytelling forms that have made his reputation, that have won him so much acclaim. In other words, someone eager to find out what else his craft can be.
There are some who would deny the Author this natural growth, this inevitable, healthy and appropriate aspect of his professional and creative life. As Harlan reminds us in Xenogenesis: " they like what they like, and they want more and more of it, without change, without growth, without experimentation." Fortunately, playing it safe has never been an issue here.
It's not surprising to find that Harlan is someone who rarely plans his stories ahead, who sees himself as the delivery system for a much more ordered, intelligent, savvy, sure-handed and intuitive part of himself, who insists, as in an interview in The Australian in 1996, that" the talent part is smarter than the person part." At core, he is Story Teller.
Thus we find him ambus.h.i.+ng his unconscious by writing stories in bookstore windows (the sort of exuberant and courageous autos-da-fe that really should be seen for what they are: ways of taking creativity by surprise, non-ego acts of testing process par excellence). Thus we see him using whatever means necessary: engaging in the MEDEA and MIND FIELDS projects, more PARTNERS IN WONDER collaborations, in " The Region Between" convulsing the actual linear type on the page to a " medium is part of the message" visual captured by the framing art of the late Jack Gaughan. So it is we have the stories inspired by the Dream Corridor cover paintings, and Harlan's part in conceiving, coordinating and coediting that whole enterprise.
But there's more to it. While committed to exploring the forms and tropes that have served him so well, Harlan constantly finds himself drawn to considering the role of author in situ, no less than Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce or Laurence Sterne did.
Perhaps at its heart it is a simple and utter fascination with how what comes when it does. And, wouldn' t you know, like the kid told not to put blue beans up his nose, Harlan can' t hold back from trying to catch his Muse flat-footed, speechless, unable to cough up the goods. Hence twenty-eight stories written in bookstore windows (so far), hence a trio of stories- " Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World," " Scartaris, June 28th" and " The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ash.o.r.e" - pursuing the same vital auctorial task (and which, to use Harlan's words, succeed in the ratio of a Model T Ford to a 1947 Packard to a Bonneville Salt Flats Racer). Hence this sampling of Harlan's work to show how it can happen. Sometimes.
" Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World" (1992) begins as a jeu d' esprit, then, through a playful expansion of fragments, delivers a cogent, ipso facto enactment with a wonderful, self-justifying sense of completion, reminding us of what it is that play and words can ultimately do.
" The Museum on Cyclops Avenue" (1995), like all the fiction in the Dream Corridor series, was inspired by the painting (a Ron Brown this time) that became the issue's cover. This is the reactive, projective aspect of storytelling, where what locks you in and limits you becomes, at the same time, something totally liberating.
"Objects of Desire in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear" (1999) is one of Harlan's bookstore window stories (others in this volume are " Mom" and " Strange Wine"). Triggered by the line- " The 102-year-old pregnant corpse" - -handed to him by X-Files creator and executive producer Chris Carter, the result presents us with an intriguing mystery, an interesting symmetry, and a very elegant conclusion. (By the way, just ignore the paper bag. it was already lying in the alley when the green light flared.) " Man on Spikes" (1998) shows another aspect of process entirely. Intended as the first in a series of reviews that, for reasons shown here, never happened, it's a valuable insight into Harlan's approach to the business (and custodial end) of being a writer. Writing is very much the cottage industry so many professional writers say it is, but it isn't enough simply to produce the work. Harlan's original review, the severely abridged version as published in the The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, and Harlan's subsequent letter to literary editor, David Kipen, remind us that sometimes you have to be the village policeman as well.
" Introduction to 'Tired Old Man' " (1999) is both a dutiful homage and a valuable prefatory note on process for the story (on page 557 of this volume) that this fateful meeting inspired. By its nature, the act of writing is so often of the businesslike, frequently contrived, even off-handed "Let's see what happens/Wouldn' t it be fun if" variety. Other times it is immediate and intimate and caused by things that stay in the heart forever.
"The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ash.o.r.e" (1991) is Harlan's Atheist Manifesto and one of his most life-affirming, elusive and " interactive" stories (his readers must work for their supper). When you keep in mind that the Author is an Atheist who would dearly love to be an agnostic, one who is filled with faith, then it comes as no surprise what we get in place of a comforting cosmic perspective, no surprise that we are, all of us, responsible for the perfectibility of our own lives, regardless of what happens. It was selected for Best American Short Stories, 1993.
Taken together, these pieces show the writer enjoying, coaxing, reacting, unable to forbear, one moment earnestly nudging the talent part, the next painting it into comers. They show him- always- as the beneficiary of the act of making, for good or ill, and always responsible for the act: regardless of how it emerges and how it fares: in short, what it is and does. This is Harlan, as he puts it, " pulling the plow."
" This is my current smart remark- no matter what form art takes, it only has one message: pay attention!"
from " Power of the Word" An interview with Harlan Ellison in The Australian, January 1996 Where I Shall Dwell in The Next World Preparatory note on process: How it happens, where it comes from, why it " speaks in that particular tongue, always the same d.a.m.ned unanswerable question. But they never give it a rest, the endless interrogation. Their cadre is never depleted. We sit under the broiling lights turned into our eyes, and they ask and ask, always the same d.a.m.ned question, and we plead ignorance; and when one of their number tires, she or he is replaced by another. And the question is asked again and again, without change, without compa.s.sion. We would tell if we knew, honestly we would. We would give up every secret we possess, if only they would turn off the lights for fifteen minutes, let us curl onto the cold stone floor and catch forty winks. We would tell all, divulge every tiny code number and Mercator track, drop the dime on even the dearest and closest friend or lover, spill the beans, tell the tale, give it all up if only they' d knock off for fifteen minutes, let it go dark, let us sleep.
But they won' t, they' re merciless; and they never wise up, because their cadre is never depleted. There' s always another one warming up in the bullpen as the one on the mound begins to tire and keeps missing the strike zone. And here comes the new one, still moist from the academy, eyes bright as a Borneo Green Broadbill' s, smiling ingratiatingly, plopping into the well-worn interrogator' s chair, and here comes that same stupid, d.a.m.ned unanswerable question. Again.
Where do you get your ideas?
In a letter dated 10 July 1991, Jeremy G. Byrne of the Editorial Committee of Eidolon, an extremely elegant and smart literary journal emanating from Perth (which is on the coast of Western Australia), wrote to me, in part: "...the genesis of Eidolon was a long process. You might well have guessed that it was your own ANGRY CANDY piece, 'Eidolons' - with its Australian connection- that gave us the idea; and when we discovered the alternate definitions for the word, it seemed stunningly appropriate, or at least amusingly pretentious."
Where do you get your ideas?
In the liner notes I wrote for the recorded reading I did of my story " Jeffty is Five" I said: My friends Walter and Judy Koenig invited me to a party. I don' t like parties. I do like Walter and Judy. I also like their kids. I went to the party.
Mostly I sat near the fireplace, friendly but not ebullient. Mostly I talked to Walter and Judy' s son, josh, who is remarkable beyond the telling. And then I overheard a s.n.a.t.c.h of conversation. An actor named Jack Danon said- I thought he said- something like this- " Jeff is five, he' s always five." No, not really. He didn' t say anything like that at all. What he probably said was, " Jeff is fine, he' s always fine." Or perhaps it was something completely different.
But I had been awed and delighted by josh Koenig, and I instantly thought of just such a child who was arrested in time at the age of five. Jeffty, in no small measure, is josh: the sweetness of josh, the intelligence of josh, the questioning nature of josh.
Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered.
Where do you get your ideas?
I purposely mishear things. The excellent novelist and critic Geoffrey Wolff has written, " Every fictioneer re-invents the world because the facts, things or people of the received world are unacceptable." So I purposely mishear things that are said. It mortars up the gaps in boring conversation. It a.s.sists in doing honor to the late architect Robert Smithson' s dictum: Establish enigmas. Not explanations. "Jeffty is five, he' s always five."
Speak to me of a Chinese hand laundry, and I visualize a large wicker basket filled with Chinese hands that need laundering. Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear. Tearalong, the Dotted Lion.
Where do you get your ideas?
My story " Eidolons" came from the a.s.semblage of a congeries of misheard remarks, altered to form brief allegories or tone-poems. I did one each week as introduction to my stint as the host of a radio show. Now, like Ouroboros, we come full circle: kindly note process, and let me sleep: Mishearing purposely; translative adaptation of misheard remark to fictional state; a.s.semblage of misheard adaptations to story; story as impetus for Eidolon magazine; request from magazine for contribution; a.s.semblage of misheard adaptations submitted to magazine born of effects of mishearing.
The process. Where do you get your ideas? First, the stories. Then, revelation of what was said; and what was heard. The process. At last, to sleep, the answer.
NECRO WAITERS.
The yellow tabby had only one good eye, but that one was good enough to do the job. Cat sat on the low ledge filled with potted cacti that ran the interior length of the enormous front window of the Long Pig Bar & Grille. Cat sat no more than two steps away from me as I absently smoothed the white tablecloth, waiting for my dinner to be served. Cat sat watching a three-legged dog crossing Cyclops Avenue, staring with all the rigid attention of a coffin observing the open grave.
Body still rigid, the cat swiveled its gaze to me, the one good eye fixing me mercilessly. " I knew that one," she said. " In life, he was an a.s.sociate Professor of Comparative Religions. Smug beyond belief. Talked to G.o.d and received regular replies, often by fax, occasionally by overnight express mail."
I said nothing. I dislike cats, have never trusted them.
" Serves him proper," she said, " losing a leg. See how he can rationalize his 'personal relations.h.i.+p' with the Deity now, ha!" This was a vindictive creature. I fancied she had been a switchboard operator at a New York brokerage house.
" Don' t care to reply?" she said, a feline blowziness in her tone. " You' re absolutely dead, too, you know."
I said, " Demise does not preclude maintaining one' s ethical standards. Go away. Suck a fish head. Bother someone else." I looked away.
The dining room was filled, after-theater crowd and night life hangers-on crowd. Chatting, spearing hors d' oeuvres, rubbing the wounds that had killed them. I felt quite alone in the midst of pressed bodies and yammering noise level.
The cat was now attempting to insult me. I paid no notice. If a. cat could stand atop a dog, would it do so gently, hoping its living perch would not bolt...or would it dig in like an earth-mover, drawing blood and hanging on like a dude ranch novice? Such was the quality of rumination as I waited for my dinner to be served.
I saw my waiter threading his way through the crowd, in and out, around the tables, the aluminum serving tray held high, balanced on the spread fingers of one hand. He was one of the newly-dead and yet unpenitent. A zombie, a walking dead thing, a necro waiter. He had been, obviously, a Rastafarian; his dreadlocks oiled to a gloss with the life-blood of sperm whales and dolphins, lightly scented with rose petals; a tattoo of Haile Sela.s.sie on his chest that winked as the waiter approached.
He set the heavy tray on the edge of my table, and began uns.h.i.+pping plates. A gla.s.s of murky water. A salad plate on which the ceremonial Greek olive had been placed midway between an arc of pignoli nuts below and a pair of sago b.a.l.l.s above, the design forming a sort of happy face. The main course, the steaming soul of my first wife, filled the large square dinner plate, garnished with remorse, a sprig of justified annoyance, and a double portion of mashed errors, gravy pooled in the center. " Will there be any' tin else, mon?" he asked, as he swept my cloth napkin off the table, shook it into a sail, and canopied it over my lap.