Drink for the Thirst to Come (34 page)

Whoo-hoo...
the crowd laughed. Some crossed themselves with a shiver. The tea-drinking lady turned her blind face to him, cocked her head.

Jeremy smiled Robideaux’s big eyes at the sweet sweated girl by his table.

“So then,” she shifted her hip and looked at Robideaux’s hands, “suppose you’ll be wanting to make arrangements? Pay your drinks with playing, now? An’ if that, well then that’s a thing you gotta take up with Daddy Boil and Daddy Boil ain’t here, so there.”

Jeremy had already fished down his pocket and grabbed the envelope of money. “I pay,” he fanned the bills across the table, “American folding. I play when I want and not for nothing, neither, girl.”

She ran to bring a mess of food, trailing smiles and the fine perfume of sweat and laig. When she lay down his plates, she hovered to admire Robideaux’s way with food and those big hands working.
She’s thinking
, Jeremy knew. So, too, was Robideaux. That much he knew.

Daddy Boil came, trailing a hail of calls and the spit of shootin’ cracker. The street gave him up with a grudge and Daddy filled the door. Then he stopped, sniffing like with a smell of something old, long-gone but real familiar. Then Daddy squeezed through and ate the oldness right out the room, filled it with his own self, then some. “Where dat man? Where is dat one?” Daddy shouted. “Where is dat Jeremy?” he called, head rising from his neck like a fat black cobra.

Onstage, Jeremy was snugged down and riffing, stroking the neck of the guitar. All for himself, but the room was in love.

Daddy’s voice took the room, Jeremy with it—who tingled at his name, his by fuck real name of Jeremy, who no one in this room, in this
town
, should know. No one anywhere should see him, Jeremy, wearing Robideaux like a skin-suit,
no one but oh fuck, another Traveler.

Then Jeremy looked and saw
old Father Goddamn, himself
. Jeremy, for-real pickled. “Aw, fuck,” he said aloud. Daddy boomed so no one heard. Bodies made a wake around him, saying “Where yat?” or “What the hell, nigger!” Then, quickly, “Goddamn sorry, Daddy Boil,” or, “Shit, Daddy, din’t know ’twas you,” voices sorry to be alive in the place Daddy Boil wanted to be.

But shoving toward the stage, Daddy was in no mood for mad. Inch-thick fingers wagged gold. Beads and poppits snaked around his arms and neck. He smiled white and gold; purple, yellow, and green rainbows, baubles and sweat sprayed as he threw to the crowd.

Jeremy squatted inside Robideaux, watching the unlikely approach of another Traveler.

The big head rumbled deep laughter, “
Ho, ho, HO
,” and, “
Ha, ha, HAAA
.” It called, “
Heya, heya, HEYA,
you got yousef kotched, for sure you did, Jeremy Fuck-face. Let yousef be traveled, you yousef, trying to travel
him…
” Daddy pointed at the Robideaux Jeremy wore. “Preach’ there traveling
you
all the way to Fat Tuesday and some Gumbo
Gris-Gris
for to salt your tail like some garden slug. Ho, the Big Dark be hungry for you, Fucked-faced Jeremy.”

“Goddamn,” Jeremy said by way of greeting.

“Ay-yez,” Daddy yelled to the crowd, “you hear dis? The Queen of the Iris’s tossed out her t’ree carat diamon’ ring wit’ her poils, Sattiday past, an’ nobody ain’ find it yet since. Riotin’ in the streets ovah deah, y’heah?”

Jeremy’s music was forgotten in the suck of bodies chasing three-carat riches through the door.

Daddy Boil turned to Jeremy. “Ain’t no ring been toss’d, but it one good rumor, huh?” Close and personal, Father Goddamn’s Daddy-voice sounded like a millwheel. His head shook with the joy of it.

The laugh became a steel smile.

“Been a time, Goddamn,” Jeremy said.

“Has indeed,” Daddy nodded. “A decade? No, I lie. Two.”

“Ireland,” Jeremy said.

“The Lebanon,” Daddy winked, “but who’s arguing? Lemme hear some of that good old stuff, Master Fuck-face. Gimme that old minstrel lay from the foist Crusade, what say?”

Jeremy obliged the old, old creature inside Daddy Boil. The guitar wailed for Father Goddamn and the few slouchers, too drunk—and the church lady, too blind—to go hunt diamond rumors in the streets. They heard the music of the Elder World, a ghost’s prayer, cried in a tongue common two thousand years gone, words called out in market cities along the eastern trades, or spoken in places where desert waves broke against sandstone gates, or whispered across campfires when frigid night breathed
wolf
from dark forests.

The drunks turned to squint. The Church lady sipped. Jeremy finished.

“Maire Laveau,” Daddy Boil called. His voice loosed dust from the ceiling tin. “Maire Laveau,” he said when the pretty lady came running, “you forgive this po’ dumb preachah man his bill of fare for the night, y’heah?”

“Paid,” Jeremy said.

“True it is, Daddy,” Maire Laveau said.

“Huh,” Daddy said. “Well that I owe, you providing free entertain’ an’ all.” The Daddy smile slipped from behind old Father Goddamn’s knife-edge grin. “Come with me Jeremy, and we’ll have a drink. The old stuff. Upstair.”

Through the kitchen, where lean, tired men lolled after the crowd’s quick departure, cigarettes dangling long ashes. When Daddy steered Jeremy through their sweat and smoke, they twitched, being busy, but the big man paid no heed. Then, up a spice-soaked stair, round a dark corner and up another few treads to a room.

The room was high and wide. To Jeremy, it was cramped. Room enough for Father Goddamn and his furniture. Robideaux and the guitar squeezed in behind.

Daddy lit a candle and poured two pulls of thick green liquor. “Play s’more of that sweet old stuff,” he said over the noise from the street. “Let me to more’a that Jeremy noise.” Daddy laughed again.

The bitter essence of old time rose from the liquor; the scent of wormwood filled Jeremy’s heart.

“Oh, Daddy Boil…” Robideaux started. Jeremy shut him out of it. “What’re you fucking doing here, Goddamn?” he said.

“What am I doing?” Goddamn slipped from behind the Daddy Boil face. He spilled a touch of the Red to Jeremy’s drink. It spun clear in the glass. “Same’s you, Vatachela. Traveling.”

Jeremy bristled. Long years since he’d heard his old name. He sipped. The bitter touch of worm’ made him tingle, numb and alive together. “High-profile traveling. You settled like a citizen, living big.”

A touch of Daddy edged his voice. “Comforts and joys, Vatachela.” He poured another slop of absinthe and laced it Red. “Been the Daddy Boil here, near ten years, J-boid. Since the Lebanon, I think.” The fat man sat back. Watered silk cushions lapped him like a loving tongue. “Comfort. Joy. The way you taste time, feel its flow.” He sipped. “You understand? No you don’t,” he added without a pause.

Tight-stretched, Jeremy stood in the center of the room. He held his guitar by her neck.

“An’ han’t it been a time?” Daddy said. “Tell you, this the fines’ city in this half-round woild.” Goddamn sipped. “An’ you? You criss-crossin’ de oith? On the bum. Hoppin’ into one, eatin’ up another? And now...” Daddy Boil laughed again. “All that bumming and hopping and you ain’t loined nuddn’. And now you gets dragged here by dat... dat
Robideaux
.” He leaned forward and spat the name ahead of his laugh. “Robideaux taking you to conjure the Jeremy out of him; he going to shove you inter the big Dark for the long Forever.” He sat back. “Thought you’d like to know.”

Jeremy tingled. “You warning me, Goddamn? You love me same’s I have respeck’ for you.” He sucked green, poured another. “You just another eater of flesh.”

“Mebbe absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, Jayboid,” Goddamn said. Another
ho ho ho
filled the room. “You got respeck’ for no one and no thing,” he said, the cushions sagged around him. “Trouble Jeremy, trouble is. Nothing make you love. You travel, you go nowhere. Don’t live the life you have, don’t use the lives you take.” Then there was Daddy Boil again. “And you gots yourself a pickle now, nigger; cotched holt a mans as wants to live, a mans as believes in his heart all the magics of the woild he given.”

Fireworks crackled. A wind carried a whiff of flesh, old food and fresh night. Jeremy felt the stars above burn through smoke and scent. He heard the old Earth grinding on its axis. Daddy smiled through sweat and rolling skin, his eyes creased all way back to his hair. “And that living man’s gonna blow you the fuck outta him and t’row you de hell off this oith.” Daddy’s eyes narrowed, laughing. “I’d feel sorry for you Jeremy, I purely would, if you was woith it. But you…” He looked up and down Jeremy.

Father Goddamn’s heart tickled like a bug every which way over him.

“…you jess a small thing,” Goddamn said, “been aroun’ a couple dozen thousand year and soon be gone, ’fore anyone knows you was even heah, none carin’ that you left.” The smile drained to nothing. “Won’t remember you, myself, Vatachela.”

The absinthe was body-warm in his mouth. “We see,” Jeremy said, smiling Robideaux’s lips. He backed toward the door. “We see.”

Daddy Boil stood, filled the room. Outside, the night blew steam. “Will miss your music, though.”

In a second, Jeremy was in the dusty hall, heading for the dark. Daddy’s voice followed. “Hey Robideaux, you hear?”

Jeremy, on the steps down, gripping the guitar by her neck…

“You get shut of that old Traveler man inside you, Robideaux, and come back to Daddy Boil’s, y’heah?” The voice shook the walls.

Jeremy, in the moldy stairwell, then running through the bright hot kitchen…

“Come back alone, I get you fed, drunk and laid.
Ho, ho, ho
, you hear? All on me.”

Goddamn’s voice shook the building. The cooks looked up. A dozen eyes covered him. An ash hissed into the roux.

Jeremy, out the back and up the alley…

“Come back alone, an’ I’ll sure take care of you, Robideaux. You know Daddy Boil pays for nuffin’ he doan gotsta, but I figure: this, he gotsta.” Father Goddamn’s laugh followed over Mardi Gras.

The old town wrapped Jeremy. The sidewalk bucked like the tow in the chops of a wake. Some places, rain and centuries had worn all away leaving the old, old dirt of the Earth.

Daddy’s voice gone, Robideaux commenced shouting. “Help me! Help me!” He called to the masked world reveling around them. The world laughed.

Jeremy dashed into a wall. “Take that!” he whispered to Robideaux. Blood ran down his face.

“Help me, Lord!” the man called and tried to run them to a line of dancing men.

“Show us your tits!” Jeremy called to the men.

They laughed and did!

For a thin moment Jeremy felt the urge to ditch this body, leap into a dancing man.
No, Goddamn it.
He did not, would not, no.

They ran.

Now, as before, Robideaux hauled left when Jeremy heaved right; Robideaux urged full ahead, Jeremy spun ’round, turned back.

Half a short block from the blinking blue emergency light, Jean Louis’s Charity Hospital, he snatched them shy of the glow that washed down from the cross above the old wing.

Then Jeremy, off into the dark streets beyond where…

Robideaux ran them to a mounted cop leaning in his saddle like
The Thinker.

“Devil got me!” Robideaux shouted. “Ho, ho, ho!” Jeremy added to Robideaux’s scream, cry-eyes flashing.

“Ho, ho to you, too, sir,” the cop said. The horse farted. “Wanna keep movin’?” cop said. “Sir,” he added and waved Robideaux on.

Jeremy heard
fucked up nigger
, beat unspoken in the cop’s heart.

“Thank you, sir, thank you muchly,” Jeremy said, Robideaux gibbering. “I be one fucked up nigger, I sure do, sir. Surprised you don’t just whomp me upside my haid.”

Jeremy stumbled them down the way, chuckling, sobbing, running, walking. The dark way widened to gaping holes between old buildings. The buildings soon dissolved leaving flat earth and ruins, broken brick and glass, either side of the broken street. Here and there a building. Mostly, though, empty stretched to the distance, the distance vanished into silent night. Robideaux took breath in this place. He sobbed. Jeremy let the man have his cry, fed on it.

“I runs to the Rock…” Robideaux blubbered.

“Rock doesn’t hide you.” Jeremy’s song bounced across night silence in the dead city. Jeremy grabbed Robideaux, shoved the man’s face, their face, to the black glass front of a boarded bar.
Baby Doll,
the sign said. Robideaux’s face pressed
Baby Doll
’s window.

“Now you’re gone stop. We gone stop.”

In a minute Robideaux’s breath settled. Ahead a squat silhouette loomed against a few milky stars. Two bell towers, either side of the building. The roof between them sagged.

“That a church, Robideaux?” Jeremy said. Robideaux’s heart tingled.
Sanctuary
, the tingle said. “You taking me to church, old man?”

Robideaux, he said nothing.

“You want church?”

Robideaux said nothing.

“We’ll go church, then.”

The shadow of the place loomed then swallowed them in stone and damp ruin. The doorway was a black opening. Inside, the smell was old smoke and mold. Arched vaults let into the walls, one row atop another, flanked the narthex. The empty chambers glowed green with phosphorescent moss. White niter gathered like colonies of coral.

“
Bad gothic,”
Jeremy said. “Never liked the mode. Heavy, dull. Dead now, gothic. This ’bout as dead a place as you’ll find,” Jeremy whispered then let silence hover. “I do believe this was a cemetery. Am I right, Robideaux? I disbelieve old man God’s at home. Not even the dead left here. Gone with the wind. Sure this the church you want?”

Robideaux’s body chattered as it had in the chill night of Cairo. Soft stars ruled the air and the broken land surrounding. Creepers cascaded the walls. In summer sun the place would have been a torrent of goldenrod in a mist of fronds. Now, the vines were tense and dark. Small things crawled within. Dry leaves quivered with living shadow: rat, possum, snapping palmetto. Life crackled winter dry vines under starlight and in deathglow from the vaults.