Gypsy Blood (15 page)

Carnival was looking for one dock in particular. He found it on his third try. A long creaking dock and a long battered dory, marred and stained with the patina of maltreatment. Closer, and the hull was engraved with graffiti of a thousand ancient languages. Closer still, and Carnival saw the carvings move, like slow scuttling roaches.

There was a hand scrawled sign arching over the dock-way. SHUTTLE FERRY, the sign read, followed by something in bastardized Ancient Greek. The captain of the ferry looked up and scowled. Although it might have been a smile. He was a largish man in a heavy knit sweater with a tear in the neck from where he pulled it on over his shoulders. He wore a black battered fishing cap and a bushy white beard. He looked a little like a cross between Kenny Rogers and Solomon Grundy.

“Ahoy Skipper,” Carnival called out. “Permission to come aboard?”

The old captain turned and fixed a smoldering stare, his eyes burning like dying coals. He held one long gray hand palm outwards.

Look, more flattery. He’s heard of your reputation for reading undead palms.

Carnival couldn’t resist. He had to take a look. The lines on the old man’s palm ran like vigilant rivers, an eternity of loneliness, endurance, and long standing duty. They spoke of memory worn as old as the man’s fishing jacket, as old as time and tide and regret.

There is always a river. Be careful it doesn’t float you away.

“Hello Gypsy,” the old captain said in ancient Greek.

The wind rattled the ferry’s black tattered sails. Carnival smiled in his best friendly manner. “So how is business?”

A stupid question. The ferryman’s business is dead, always dead. How else could it be?

The old ferryman grinned like he’d heard Poppa’s joke. He shrugged and Carnival saw the bones folding and moving beneath the tattered wool sweater.

“It could be better. We need a real war. These games they play nowadays, these teacup epics of double digit casualties. Nothing like the old days. The world wars, the revolutions, Napoleon, Stalin.
Washington
elects amateurs. We need ourselves a god like Mars to take the helm.”

Mars? Is that old blood-monger still around? I haven’t seen him since
Auschwitz
.

The ferryman shook his head.

“Mars has moved on.
Viet Nam
depressed the hell out of him. I ferried him over back when you still walked on your own two legs.”

That far back? It’s been a while.

Thirteen years, Carnival thought.

“What can I do for you, Gypsy?”

He was talking to both of them, Carnival and Poppa.

“I need a favor,” Carnival said.

The old ferryman snarled, his face lengthening into that of a jackal. He whispered something in an ancient tongue that sounded of knives being drawn and throats opened in wide screams.

“I’m not in the business of giving favors, Gypsy,” he said in perfect Old Egyptian.

Amateur! Show him the silver. Nothing else will catch his eye.

Carnival showed him the silver. Seven silver dollars he’d purchased at the coin shop. Seven for luck and seven for all he could afford.

“Who said anything about give?” he asked, holding two of the coins up to his eyes like a pair of flat binoculars. “Silver, to cleanse the soul.”

The old ferryman leaned closer. His jackal face softened and rounded out into a greasy looking Burl Ives with eyes that burned like soft red coals.

“You must have a hard time settling on a passport photo,” Carnival said.

Smart, boy. Piss the death god off. See how far that gets you.

The old ferryman stirred the silver coins with his long boney fingers.

“Ah. In the old days it would have been a silver obulus.”

Carnival shrugged.

“Obuli are hard to come by, old Greek.”

The silver dollars flew upwards into the old ferryman’s outstretched hand, clinking softly. He rubbed them into the fabric of his sweater until they vanished.

“So what can an old Greek boatman do for you, Gypsy?”

“I want some inside information. Something you would know.”

He told the ferryman what he wanted to know. The old ferryman smiled.

“There is a profit in this for you, Gypsy?”

“There is always a profit in prophecy.”

Tell him about the wino’s fee. A bag of dirty bottles. That will impress him.

Carnival did his best to ignore Poppa and smile wisely, like he was getting away with the crime of the century. That was what was expected of him. The old demigod would have spurned his request if he realized he was being asked in the name of love.

The old ferryman pulled the hole in his sweater aside.

“Look here,” he said.

Carnival looked into the hole in the sweater. The silver-white threads wove and rewove like an oracle of faded white eels, offering a glimpse of far darker waters. There are spaces between spaces, and invisibles that should never be seen. The shadows whispered and the rambled threads wavered soft hieroglyphic truths.

Carnival leaned in. He felt a pull like the wet kiss of gravity drawing him downwards. His lungs slowed, the air seemed moist and comfortable.

Careful, boy. It’s not time to drown, yet.

Carnival pulled back. He refocused his eyes on the tear, avoiding the pull. All of the old gods, the old beasts, were endlessly hungry and would suck the unwary in. Carnival braced himself. He looked more carefully into the old Greek’s sweater. In the twisted yarns of madness and interminable eternity, Carnival saw a name swimming softly like the reflection of the moon in a midnight wishing well.

“Thank you, mighty Charon.”

He bowed because that also was expected of him but the old demigod had already turned to his business at hand, tallying the next ferry-load of dead men to pole across the lonely endless river. Carnival walked away, trying not to hurry.

Did you get what you came for?

Now Carnival grinned that same grin, because he had the information he needed.

“Place your bets, gentlemen. The fix is in.”

Confession is Good for the Soul

C
arnival picked up a carton of eggs and a six pack of dark ale, giving thanks to the gods of yeast and malt for the blissful numbing amnesia that the dark brew would bring. By the time he got home the sky had turned into the slow bruising color of early twilight. He threw the six pack into his refrigerator freezer and counted
Mississippi
’s, waiting for the beer to chill.

Only a fool hides inside a bottle, when there’s work to be done.

“I’m not hiding, Poppa. I’m waiting.”

Open your eyes.

Carnival kept on counting. He thought of the little room that Maya had found hidden beneath his cot. He thought about the invisible trapdoor that would materialize as night began to fall.

She’d be hungry too.

You mean thirsty.

Carnival counted faster.

Chollo walked in. The door was locked so he must have picked the lock. Or maybe he had his own key. Carnival hadn’t heard a crash so he probably hadn’t kicked it down. Still, you could never tell with Chollo.

What’s to tell? This one wears his mysteries in wide open sight, as ugly and plain as homemade soup.

“Got beer?” Chollo asked.

“How do you know? Can you smell a six-pack?”

“My secret-cider-senses tell me that something has successfully fermented. Are they cold?”

“Soon,” Carnival said.

“How soon?”

“I’ve got 3800 more
Mississippi
to go.”

“Count faster,” Chollo urged. “Think cold thoughts.”

Carnival tried, but all he could think of was Maya. He wasn’t certain if that thought was hot or cold

“Are you feeling strong?” Carnival asked.

Chollo nodded grimly.

“Let’s drink it warm.”

Carnival opened the freezer and took the six pack out. He yanked two tall bottles from their cardboard cage and slid the remainder back into the refrigerator. It would take longer to chill but he didn’t want to take the chance of them freezing. The sight of Chollo crying over the lost beer would be too much to bear.

“Let’s drink them outside,” Carnival suggested. “We can scandalize the neighbors.”

Chollo smiled.

“We’d be fools not to.”

It was a warm evening. The streetlights hadn’t turned on yet. Carnival smelled a balcony barbecue up the road. Roast pig or maybe the sausage house was burning down.

The doorway to the upstairs floor had a separate entrance with three neat little concrete steps leading up to it, just perfect for sitting. Carnival didn’t figure the tattooist would mind. If he did Carnival would sic Chollo on him. Maybe take a few bets on the outcome, two falls out of three.

Don King had better watch his fat ass. My son the entrepreneur makes bookie dreams.

“You take care of what needed doing today?” Chollo asked.

“Yes and no,” Carnival answered.

“Yes and no?”

“One thing leads to another.”

“It surely does.”

Carnival took a swallow. The beer wasn’t bad warm. Maybe the British were on to something.

“Did you get the part?” Carnival asked.

Chollo shook his head.

“God damned director wouldn’t know talent if it tore his throat out.”

Carnival didn’t ask, because Chollo just might have.

For the time being Carnival just kept staring down the street. He saw somebody coming up the sidewalk, a kid, maybe eighteen, maybe twenty, about as long and skinny as a malnourished soda straw.

“Lookee yonder,” Carnival warned Chollo. “There’s a-going to be a showdown.”

“Someone best call the marshal,” Chollo drawled.

They tried unsuccessfully not to laugh when the young man walked up.

“Is this where the tattooist lives?”

The kid wanted a tattoo. Chollo started singing softly to himself.
Lydia
the tattooed lady. Groucho Marx would have been so proud. Carnival recognized the tune and tried his best not to grin.

The kid didn’t flinch. Carnival had to give the kid some credit. It took a lot of nerve to walk up to a disreputable looking gypsy palm reader and a two hundred and thirty pound thug singing “
Lydia
the Tattooed Lady” slightly under his breath and ask them for directions.

Chollo kept singing, and to make matters worse Poppa joined in on the chorus.

Carnival gave Chollo an elbow in the ribs that he barely felt. The kid repeated his question. He must have been shy, because he had a hard time looking directly at Carnival as he spoke.

Chollo kept singing. Poppa began to harmonize. The two of them were nearly in tune. Chollo even stepped his pitch up a notch, as if to accommodate the old gypsy.

“Night of the Living Undead Smothers Brothers,” Carnival muttered.

“Huh?” the kid said.

Carnival wondered if the kid knew the difference between the Marx Brothers and the Smothers Brothers.

Carnival fixed the kid with a hard steady glance.

“Are you sure you want to go up there, kid?” Carnival asked. “A tattoo is forever, you know? Once you start a thing like that there’s no turning back,”

Chollo and Poppa kept on singing. Carnival tried to ignore the two unlikely troubadours, which was about as easy as ignoring a burning three ring circus. The kid nodded in that curt surly teenage fashion. Fuck you old man, I’m still prepubescent and damn proud of every pimple stained inch of it. Carnival smiled. Was he ever that young?

“He’s upstairs,” Carnival gestured with a hook of his thumb. “Go on up. There’s a bell upstairs. Ring it and he’ll answer.”

He was making it all up. He’d never been to see the tattooist. He figured it didn’t pay to get to know folks you’d only have to say goodbye to, sooner or later. The kid squeezed past leaning away from Chollo’s singing. Carnival didn’t blame him. The sight of the short ugly thug crooning softly to himself was enough to scare a drunk man sober. It was even worse hearing Poppa. Carnival stared closely at Chollo, trying to decide if the ugly thug could actually hear Carnival’s Poppa or not.

It was hard to decide.

You never could tell with Chollo.

The kid closed the door behind him.

“Well you were a lot of help,” Carnival said to Chollo.

“You can learn a lot from
Lydia
,” Chollo deadpanned.

“Another beer?” Carnival asked.

“Can’t fly on one wing.”