The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes) (5 page)

“But no one calls me
‘
Preston
’!”

“What do they call you?”

“
Pocket
.”

“See that, Storm Cloud, that’s how you act in my class.  No school guidelines in here!”  Smith flipped around so fast he almost poked me in my eye.  “Who are you?”

A few of the kids groaned, Welf the loudest of them all.  Standing next to Smith I felt smaller than I usually did but I still glared him down . . . or up.  “King Henry Price,” I told him.

Smith winked
at me.  “Our late arrival.”

“I was busy.”

“Do you know that you’re the only Artificer attending this school, King Henry Price?” Smith asked me.

“So I’ve heard.”

“Guess it means I should give you the name
Snowflake
on account of being unique.”

I shook my head at him.  “No
. . . I think King Henry is name enough for anyone.”

Smith’s smile got all twisted up in a smirk.  “King Henry and Pocket
. . . and I don’t even have to do any work, it’s not fair, it’s not fair!  So . . . King Henry . . . what’re your hobbies?”

I smirked back at him.  “Fighting, stealing, fucking, and smoking
. . . in that order.”

It started Smith into a laughing fit that ended up in a coughing fit.  When he
could breathe again he just shook his head.  “I love this job . . .”

[CLICK]

By fourth per
iod you’re starting to get hungry and just a little worn out.  Since the world hates me, or at least the Asylum staff hates me, they decided my class could have
Science
fourth period.

We were taugh
t by Nevada Slaton, a cryomancer Intra who I never found particularly interesting beside the fact she kept a freezer in class that she pulled popsicles out of if we got a perfect score on our pop quiz at the end of class. 
Pop
quiz, get it?

That first day you don’t have normal class though, you’ve got library
familiarization.

For us only one interesting th
ing happened.  The class was left to roam in the Entry, which is the size of most normal libraries and has thousands of books on shelves all around you, tables in the middle for study once the year really gets going.  Thirty kids, one of the junior librarians, Hanks, and Ms. Slaton walking, mixing, and mingling.

Most of us
contented ourselves with reading titles but a few opened up books from a section on
Basic Elementalism
—a class later that day apparently.  After Smith’s hour of interrogation we finally had a vague sense of names, or at least the stupid nicknames he’d given.  Valentine Ward, Ice Cube, and Miranda Daniels sat in a row.  Miranda’s nickname was
Airhead
as an aside.  Peaceful, quiet, typical library sounds.  Then Welf dropped a thick tome of a book on the table opposite them.

THUD
.

Followed by: 
BLAM
.

L
ike an explosion going off right in front of Welf, his book bursting into flames, pages crimpling with red fire, blackened at a stunning pace.  He won’t admit it if you ever ask, but he screamed like a girl.  I know because so did Valentine, running away before anyone could stop her.

It didn’t spread, wasn’t even a big deal apparently.  Ms. Slaton gave us a nice show with a bit of ice to kill the fire, Hanks threw down his coat to stamp the embers.  No problem at all. 
Accidental anima discharge . . . wasn’t a single one of us in the Class of ‘09 that didn’t have at least one.

I had several.

But this time my little foul mouth made a comment.  “She’s not a bookworm, she’s a
boomworm
!”

Name stuck.

A joke at the time . . . but you’d be surprised how many times I’ve said that word tenderly since . . .

We had PE next—
more bullshit information—then lunch.  You’re going to love lunch.  Monday . . . let’s see . . . that means mac and cheese, burger and fries, or the sushi-rice plate.  Every day was different, but the same every week.  There’s a non-meat meal, a meat meal, and then something with fish or the like.  Friday, fish tacos, do yourself a favor and take my advice.  Monday?  I’ve tried all three and you’d think I’d go for the burger—which is great—but I’m fond of the mac and cheese.  They put mushrooms and some kind of soft gooey cheese in it that just makes your mouth water.

Damn it
. . . now I’m hungry.

Know what?  Fuck doing the whole day for you little brats.  We’re getting through
lunch and that’s all you’re getting.  I’m damn starving now . . . want to drive up to the Asylum just for the mac and cheese.  Maybe I can figure out the recipe . . . wonder if I called if the lunch ladies would give it to me . . .

Okay, so
. . . lunch.  Groups were starting to form, not the whole thing, but the tightest bonds of friends in those groups.  Valentine and Miranda, Curt and Rick, Quinn and Hope, Nizhoni and Asa, Miles and Ronaldo, Estefan and Debra.

Me and Pocket.

He sat across from me at the table, big burger on his plate.  Interesting fact—floromancers love eating nothing but animal, faunamancers are always vegetarian.  Other interesting fact—floromancers and faunamancers end up grunting and humping with each other like they have magnets up their asses.  Mancy will do weird shit to you.  For example . . . me eating mushrooms over a plump succulent burger.

Pocket grinned at me.  “King Henry, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Fighting, stealing, fucking, and smoking—in that order?”

I shrugged.  “He wanted the truth.”

“Must be hard on you.”

“What’s that mean?” I said, getting all angry thinking he pitied my life or something.

“The smoking, dude
. . . my mom quit awhile back and she was mean for a whole month.”  Pocket took a big bite out of his burger, continuing with a mouthful of food, “She’s not usually mean, but she got mean then, so I figure . . .” He swallowed.  “You’re extra mean right now.”

I thought about it.  “Mean?”

“You made the fire girl cry twice and you knocked out Von-Von.” 
Von-Von
was Smith’s nickname for Welf.  “That’s pretty mean, dude.”

I sighed, pushing away a plate of empty mac and cheese.  “I love fighting, love beating up bullies
. . . love telling someone if they’re being an asshole, what an asshole they are . . .”  I frowned some, sucking soda through a straw at the corner of my mouth. “But I’m not mean . . . I just . . . protect mine, you know?”

Pocket nodded.  “I got it.  Von-
Von made fun of you . . . you punched him so other people wouldn’t make fun of you.”

“That’
s the idea.”

“But what about fire
girl?”

“
. . . Just my big mouth.”

Pocket grinned a mouthful of burger.  “I got one too.”

We shared a laugh, then shared some fries, then shared a bit about the absolutely nothing we knew about the Mancy.

My first real friend
. . . just like that.

The rest of the day?  Guess you’ll have to find out for yourself, cuz this tape is moving on to another story.

Questions are like a swarm
, one makes more.  The number of them always moves upward. They never end.  Just building and building on top of each other, trying to reach the pinnacle of the Tower; a pyramid into the fucking sky, mankind reaching and screaming, feet on the soil of Babel, asking ‘
why this way, you cruel bastard
?’

The End of Questions is just another name for the End of
Everything.  Once they run out, there’s no damned point, is there?

“I don’t understand
. . . how are you a mancer?” JoJo asked me.

“And I don’t understand
. . . how do you know what a mancer is?” I asked back.

As far as questions go, those are some good ones to begin with.

We glared at each other, neither giving in.  Nothing changed on that score.  We’d had thirteen years of practice and that shit is the kind that takes a while to fade away from you.  Could have been old geezers in our eighties and we would have glared the same fire and brimstone we had as teenagers.

The crowds of videotaping spectators and the knock
ed-out bullies—who my sister was apparently riding with—were all left behind.  It took some pretty talking from Sis along with Suit handing out some twenties from a rolled up wad of cash to keep the cops from being called, but it got managed.

Good thing too.  L
ast thing I needed in my life was Ceinwyn Dale bailing me out of jail.

Owing to
life’s continued need to destroy expectations, our reunion took place in the burger joint near my shop, where JoJo slurped at a strawberry milkshake and I ate my Taco Bell
grande
whatever-the-fucks.  They tasted like all the rest of the
grande
whatever-the-fucks I’ve ever had.  Unhealthy but cheap.

Fighting makes me hungry.

Eating makes me want to fuck.

Fucking makes me want to fight.

Talk about a vicious circle.

Finishing the first whatever-the-fuck in silence, I decided I’d answer her question and hope for the best in return.  “I’m a mancer because I was born a mancer.” Okay, I never said it would be much of an answer.

“I know about mancers because someone told me about them,” JoJo shot back.  Yeah . . . she’s my sister all right.

Guess I wasn’t going to get anything back unless I opened up
. . . and now that the fighting was over and the alarm bells could be heard, I needed some opening up on her part.  I took a bite of whatever-the-fuck, cheesy meat filling my mouth.

Outside the window
, Suit, Tatter, and Overcoat had pulled their truck up to the burger joint—all three of them glaring at me with nothing near JoJo’s skill.  The girl in pajamas who had walked out of the grocery store with JoJo stood with them, watching me too, but scared-like.  I know the difference in types of scared looks and this look wasn’t the kind of scared
about
the person they looked at, it was the kind of scared
for
the person they looked at.

Alarm
Bell Number Four . . . like I needed another one.

“T
he Institution recruited me about a year after you left home.”  Notice the politeness. 
Institution
instead of
Asylum
. 
Left home
instead of
ran away
. 
Left home
instead of
abandoned me
.  “I graduated a couple years back and set up my shop across the way.  This is my amazing story.”

She sipped at her shake, not meeting my eyes.  JoJo was always flighty.  Not like Susan.  When Susan left I’d taken it like a gunshot to my heart, when JoJo left it was almost a relief and it wasn’t even c
lose to a surprise.  Dad had been the only one who seemed to care, yelling about how she was up to no good.  If I remember right, Mom even had a few ‘Good Days’ in a row right after.

“Your
turn,” I pushed.

“What kind are you?” she asked instead, eyes on my
brown coat.

“I’m an Artificer.”

Her mouth opened in shock around her straw.  “Isn’t that like one of the best ones?”

“Someone didn’t just
tell you
about us . . . someone schooled you.”

She shrugged, all litt
le-girl-gotten-caught in her act.  “Horatio explained it all.”

“Who’s Horatio?”

She flashed a ring on her finger I’d neglected to see, big with pink-colored diamonds.  “Horatio Vega . . . my husband.”

Some deep
Arkie-Okie part of my being was annoyed she’d married a Mexican.  It’s pretty amazing where the racism will sneak up on you even when you thought it exorcised completely.

Another part, the thinking part, put two and two together. 
King Vega’s Coyotes
.  The ‘
princess
’, Suit had called her.  My sister had gotten herself mixed up in some horrible shit.  The kind of shit that sticks on your shoes and won’t leave for water or soap, got to get in there with a knife to get it out.

Shouldn’t call it a butter-knife, should call it a shit-scalpel.

JoJo’s face got some defiance in it.  Dared me to get all defensive of her.  Dared me to tell her what a little screw-up she was . . . just like Dad used to.

But I played it cool.  “He good to you?”

“Better than most men I’ve known.”

Not really a concrete endorsement that, given her boyfriends I’d met. 
Most were only interested in fucking her, the worst dropping her the minute they were flaccid, the best . . . actually I think I got it backwards . . . the best just left her alone.  “He lets you dress like that?”

Her eyes glittered
like a mirror.  “When do I let anyone tell me how to dress, King Henry?”

“I suppose.  Still
. . .”

“He complains, are you happy?  Or do you want to tell me I look like a whore?”

“Horatio,” I said.  “That ain’t Mexican.”

JoJo settled down a bit.  She
did look a little whorey though. 
Maybe
porn-starry if she’s lucky.  “Somewhere, a long time ago, his ancestor was raped by a French soldier back when they were in Mexico.  Only his grandmother was British, I guess she met his grandfather during World War Two . . . she’s the one who raised him.  She decided he needed a good British name to kill off any French he had left in him.  Hence Horatio Vega.”

“Sadly, my math skills are regularly practiced,” I told h
er, “So . . . how much older is he then you?”

“
Forties?  Fifties?”  She shrugged again, pink jacket falling down her shoulders.  I noticed a tattoo across them when it did.  Some kind of totemic marking.  Alarm Bell Number Five.  “I’ve never asked him.”

“Do I have nieces and nephews?”

She actually blushed.  “Not for lack of trying . . .”

I paused to start in on my last whatever-the-fuck.  I’ve always felt the best part of fast-food is that you get to unwrap every item you eat.  Like a birthday with every meal.  “I suppose it’s your turn,
Sis.”

Yeah, I
left my big question for later.  You figure out what it is yet?  I hope so.  If you haven’t then you’re short bus material.

I saved the question, u
nlike JoJo, who asked her big question first.  Waiting had never been her strong suit.  Never mine either, not until the Asylum kicked some into me.  “How are the parents?”

Look at me, getting to be the bearer of glad tidings.  “I don’t know how to soft
en it or I would, JoJo.”

“What kind of thin
g is
that
to say?” she gasped.

There was some awkward silence filled with digesting whatever-the-fuck noises from my stomach, then,
“Mom’s dead . . .”

JoJo st
ared at me in silence, her face . . . so like mine . . . stretched out in pain.  Had that been what I’d looked like the first time Ceinwyn told me?  No wonder she’d been kind at the time.  No wonder she’d actually hugged me.

“But—
” JoJo finally said before stopping with a little hiccup.

“Been a while now
. . . over five years at least.  Lung cancer . . . happened fast . . .” 
Mom made sure it happened fast
, I added but I couldn’t say . . . those words would break my sister.

“Why
—” she stopped yet again in another hiccup.

“No one knew how to rea
ch you, Sis.  They barely got a hold of me,” I thought aloud, remembering back.  “I saw Susan at the funeral; believe it or not . . . she’s up north near Seattle she said, normal life and all.  Makes her the lucky one I suppose.”

JoJo wrapped her coat up around her
self tighter, pulling the hoodie up on her head like it was cold inside of the burger joint—which it was anything but.  Loud with eating and laugher all around, but at our table—troubled silence.

“Dad’s okay, still working at the warehouse, still at the house too.  He finally got himself a girlfriend few months ago.  I’ve met her, nice enough woman
. Works as a secretary at the warehouse, husband died in a car accident, so they got the widow thing in common.”  I went about crinkling up my trash, emotions surprisingly controlled.  “Seems to make him happy, so I guess that’s all any of us can hope for.  Horatio Vega make you happy, Sis?”

She’d sneered through the whole bit about Dad.  Susan had been th
e
daddy’s girl
and fought with Mom.  JoJo’s the opposite.  Worse Mom got, less time she had for JoJo.  Less time JoJo had with Mom, more rebellious she got—haired dyed pink or blue, fake tats, skuzzy clothes, skipping school, one older boyfriend after another, coming home drunk or stoned.  More rebellious she got, more Dad and her fought.

Guess it wasn’t much of a surprise to me where she e
nded up, married to what she was married to, done what she’d done to herself, dressed like she dressed, holding a gun like she knew how to use it, involved with the kind of creatures she was involved with. 
Or is one herself,
I thought just then.

She ignored my question.  “You have someone to make you happy, King Henry?”

And I went along with it.  “Few over the years, nothing now . . . too busy working.”

“Anyone I know?” she asked, brightening up a bit.
  I think with a normal upbringing JoJo would have been the girliest of girls.

“Ever heard of Valentine Ward or Eva Reti?”

“Should I have?”

“I don’t know what kind of info your husband’s feeding you about mancers
. . .”

“I know they exist,” JoJo explained
without noticing she gave information she’d been holding back, “I know they can do things with anima . . . and there are different kinds of them . . . and they don’t like . . . certain
people
.”

Alarm
Bell Number Whatever-the-fuck.

“Val and Eva
were two of my girlfriends in school.”

She waved it off.  “Anyone I’d
know
?”

“Sally Hendrickson?”

She started laughing at me.  “When did that happen?”

“Few months after you left.”

“Gee . . . wonder why you liked her?”

“It
is
a mystery.”

“It
is
whatever her bra size reads.”

“Suppose so
. . . I was simple back then.”

“Now?”

“More complicated.”

She
actually smiled at me . . . made her pretty despite the outfit.  “You love one of them, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“The first two girls you mentioned, you should have seen your face when you said their names.”

I tried not to think about it.  Love?  How does a Price even process that feeling?  “You’d get along well with
Val . . . everyone does.  Eva and you would kill one another though . . .”

JoJo’s smile got bigger, showing teeth.  “On the contrary, little brother, sounds like I’d like her too.”

She was opening up, feeling at ease finally, defenses starting to weaken.  First sign I could hit her with a surprise and I did it.  Mancer special, straight down the plate—learned it from Ceinwyn Dale.  I threw my big question at her.  “You mixed up with a Were Nation, little sister?

[CLICK]

We’ll get back to the
idiot picking a fight with the biggest Were Nation in the entire world in a few minutes, but for now, older wiser King Henry is here for a refresher course.

Were as in we
rewolf.  Werewolf is the one which made the mainstream consciousness for some reason.  Probably it has to do with the closeness of dogs to humans and the fear of wolves going after cattle, sheep, and even humans if winter gets harsh enough.  There’s something primal about the wolf, but it is far from the only Were-type in the world.