Futile Efforts (31 page)

You get off and follow an overweight man with flickering eyes and wearing dude clothes down the steps into the station.
 
He's got the walk of someone who needs to take a serious shit, sort of hopping along, skipping, tugging his baggage behind him.
 
Must have bashful bowels and couldn't go on the bus.

The brown painted door to the men's room is chipped and peeling, and the hinges squeal as he grabs the handle and pulls.
 
The bathroom is filthy and you revel in it as you slip inside.
 
You can't quite remember but you get the feeling that maybe, when you were a pre-teen, you played some kind of toilet games with the little girl next door.
 
There should be a reason for the sudden intoxicating arousal that's slipping over you.
 
Or maybe you're just sick.

The fat man rushes into the closest stall and jerks his luggage inside with him.
 
He bangs around in there for a minute trying to situate himself, shuts the door and, within seconds, lets out a sigh of relief.

A couple of other travelers enter and exit, washing their hands quickly as if only going through the motions because you're leaning up against the tiled wall, watching.
 
In a minute you feel the tension in the small confines leave and you know the station traffic has eased and nobody else is going to enter for a while.
 
You move to the stall door.

There's a shine to it but the metal is warped, dented, and your face is distinct yet unknown.
 
You've forgotten your name.
 
Again.
 
You're not sure what's brought you here but you realize the memory is awful and terrifying and, momentarily, obscured by the force of your willpower.
 
You decide to let it ride.

Clearing his throat, and without flushing, the fat man exits the stall and finds you standing there in front of him.
 
An instant passes where you feel nothing but love for the guy because he is, as he must be, your father, your brother, and your son.
 
He's a friend who plays a part in your needs.
 
He's willing to give you what you must have, and in the greater scheme, it really isn't that much.
 
If you were slightly more insane than you are, currently, you might slash his throat, or chew on his eyes, or rape his chunky ass.
 
There are evils in the world that you cannot conceive, and that's a positive pronouncement on your character.
 
Maybe.

Instead, you haul off and slug him once, on the point of his yielding chin.
 
His eyes roll back in his head and he starts to fall backwards, but you grip him, gently, and draw him close.
 
You hug him to you and press the side of your face against his well-
titted
chest.
 
He's your mother too, and a sob breaks inside you and you go, "Oh Goddamn, Mom,
Ma
," before champing your teeth together.
 
A moan writhes inside without release and eventually crawls back down into your heart.

You gently lay the guy on the bathroom floor and riffle his pockets.
 
As you suspected, he's got a wad on him.
 
Probably doesn't believe in banks, keeps his cash in a
 
shoebox at the back of the closet.
 
He doesn't trust his government or his neighbors and has a pistol stashed in every room of his house.
 
You check and sure enough he's got a .38 and a .45 stuck in his suitcase, both on safety but loaded.
 
You leave them there, prop the dude back up onto the john and ease the stall door shut again.

You're tired and crazy and hungry enough that time is starting to skip out.
 
Without knowing how it's happened you're at the ticket window like a bad splice-cut has jumped you into the middle of a scene.
 
The unloved girl behind the counter scowls through her tangled orange bangs doing her best to appear as
unlifelike
as a clown marionette with a painted sneer.
 
She's been practicing for years and has gotten pretty good at it by now.

You hand the girl all the cash and ask how far it'll take you.
 
She gives you the mechanically pleasant smile reserved for the people beneath her contempt and you don't blame her much.
 
You haven't shaved or showered in five days either.
 
The hinges of her jaw snap up and down and you know she's talking but you can't make out what she's saying.
 
Her arms and legs tilt at odd angles as if yanked by cords.
 
You're starting to get the feeling that you may be repressing some things.

The ticket she hands you is blotted by your blunted vision.
 
She points and you wander loosely in that direction, find a bus just rolling in.
 
You have the patience of God and wait calmly while the passengers ease off, unload their luggage, and drift into the streets meeting family members and hailing taxis.
 
You watch the driver walk purposefully away, grumbling about hemorrhoids as he goes get a ham sandwich and a triple shot of scotch.

This is how it is.
 
Your stomach stopped grumbling two days ago and ever since you've had a crimson tint at the edges of your sight.
 
It seems to be shifting to gold now and you wonder what it'll change to next after that.

Others congregate.
 
The lost, the innocent, and the meaningful cluster together.
 
Some giggle, more are serious-minded, intent in their direction.
 
You're working up a fair burn standing in the sun like this and the fact scares you a little.
 
This thing you do is a thing of shadow.

Before your travels you always believed madness was an occurrence, a circumstance, or an event of the night.
 
You may be crazy but you're not a lunatic, and that doesn't sit as well as it might.

Time to go.

You climb aboard the bus and take an empty seat about halfway back.
 
The other passengers appear only as real to you as you do to them.
  
In five minutes you're five miles further on down the road.
 
You scope out which wayfarer might have a wad of bills in his pocket and already you start thinking of how you'll take him down three or four days from now.

A pretty girl with ratty mussed hair and a dirty skirt
 
slips next to you.
 
She isn't Mariel but she carries Mariel's pain, the pain Mariel carried before you paid the bill.
 
The black smudges around her eyes are almost dark enough to make her appear blind.
 
The dead glint of her gaze is purposeless but not without meaning.
 
Her belly has a tiny bulge to it but that doesn't mean she's pregnant.
 
But you hope, you still have a little hope.

You reach over and place your palm on her stomach and wait for her to start yelling.
 
She doesn't.
 
She puts her hand over yours and together you remain like that as you travel, mile after mile until the moon flashes against your lips, and she soon begins to whisper-too low to hear at first but gradually growing louder-saying all that you need to hear but have never heard before, as she hisses the names of all the children she will bear into your scarred and trembling hands.

by James Moore

W
hat can I say about Tom Piccirilli?
 
Tons. Most of it would be rumors and innuendo, however, so let's try to stick to the facts as I see them. First, it's important to know that Tom loves cheese puffs. I tend to think that they may actually be the primary source of his talent, much like the yellow sun gives Superman his amazing powers, cheese-coated puffs of corn seem to be integral to Tom's ability to pour out the most amazing works of fiction and make them seem easy.

He must have a secret, but I haven't figured it out yet. I tried the cheese puffs routine, but it didn't work for me. I just wound up with orange colored stuff all over my keyboard. I tried reading all of his books back to back——I figured what the hell, it was a good excuse to read them again—but all I got was a mild embolism from thinking too hard about how this sentence was built or why I hadn't managed to hit just the right imagery in one of my stories when he made it seem so damned effortless.

Tom Piccirilli is one of those disgusting writers who makes me stop from time to time, read over a sentence, and wonder how the hell he made a perfect work of art from just a few words. It's really very annoying. I can't just read through his works, I have to read them, savor them and go back again to make sure I wasn't just dreaming.

However he does it, I hope he never stops. Sure, it causes migraines trying to understand how he does it. Okay, I put on fifteen pounds trying to understand the magnetic pull that cheese puffs have on Tom—word to the wise, wash those hands before typing—and, okay, I have come to accept that I write stories and that bastard Piccirilli writes literature, but I can live with all of these things as long as Tom keeps writing. He's one of the best.

The story you're about to read is one of his more...unusual pieces. Well, okay, most of his writing falls into the unusual category, but "Jesus Wrestles the Mob to Feed the Homeless" takes it to a new height. The title told me nothing, so I plunged in eagerly and I was far from disappointed. But, damn it, he did it to me again. There are five separate occasions where I read a line and just had to stop and savor it. I won't tell you which ones. This is an introduction. Find them yourself.
 
But try to finish the story first. It's worth resisting the urge to diagram the sentences out in an effort to see how he did it.

–James Moore, author of
SERENITY FALLS
and
POSSESSIONS

for my
goombahs
, Michael Bishop & Paul Di
Filippo

T
he
Ganooch
, with most of his cranial bone removed and frontal lobe exposed, computer chips inside firing beneath the transparent plastic dome, rolled towards me with a bottle of wine while the old ladies in black wept their novenas.

It was the kind of thing my father had warned me about, but it still made a hell of an impression.

You could make the argument that Don
Vincenzo
Ganucci
had been dead from a stroke for the past three months.
 
Mama
Ganucci
sure believed it.
 
She'd been upstairs wearing a veil and doing the rosary for weeks, and she even put in a personal call to the Pope and left a message on his machine.
 
He phoned back yesterday but Mama was too busy with the exorcists, who were calling demons out of the
Ganooch
while he ate a bowl of pasta
fagliogli
.

I took the Pope's call and we chatted for a while, mostly about the oil embargo and his recent trip to Tokyo, where he was trying to thwart the war between the New Buddhists and the Yakuza.
 
It wasn't working.
 
He offered me eighty grand to push the button on Emperor
Mitsomosho
but I had to pass.

The family medical team had done a pretty good job with the old man.
 
The sutures, where they'd opened his brain cavity and rewired his cerebral cortex, could barely be seen anymore.
 
Not much scarring on the overall and what little there was just looked like more gray wrinkles.
 
They'd finally managed to get a partial rug over the flexible casing in the event there was any sudden raised intracranial pressure, and it gave him a fairly dignified appearance.

Tommaso
, he said.

The back of my neck grew warm and my hackles pricked up.
 
I could feel his thoughts, his very personality, down in my blood.
 
"Hold on,
Ganooch
, give me a second to get dressed."

I know you hate me, I know
—

"Relax, we'll get into it, just let me throw my pants on."

Tommaso
,
aiutilo
…

"Oh hell, Grandpa, you sure can be a pushy bastard."

I gestured and Joey Fresco and Bone wheeled him into my suite, poured him a glass of the wine and let him sit. Our bulldog, Barabbas, wandered down to the end of the hall and peered around the corner suspiciously.
 
He panted and started to whine.
 
I didn't blame him.