“I join you in fishing, I think,” said Constant.
Charlie had lost Constant on the mountain. Later, Leech would formalise a deal with the boy. He had an ability to put things together or take them apart. Charlie had been depending on that. He should have taken the trouble to offer Constant something of equal value to retain his services.
“No, no, this can’t be right.”
“You show Charlie the way out, meanie,” said Ouisch, shoving Junior.
“If you know what’s good for you,” said Squeaky.
“One word and you’re out of here safe, Charles,” said Leech. “But abandon the deluge. I want Los Angeles where it is. I want civilisation just where it is. I have plans, you dig?”
“You’re scarin’ me, man,” said Charlie, nervy, strained, near tears.
Leech smiled. He knew he showed more teeth than seemed possible.
“Yes,” he said, the last sound hissing in echo around the cavern. “I know.”
Minutes passed. Junior hummed a happy tune, accompanied by musical echoes from the stalactites.
Leech looked at Charlie, out-staring his Satan glare, trumping his ace.
At last, in a tiny voice, Charlie said, “Take me home.”
Leech was magnanimous. “But of course, Charles. Trust me, this way will suit you better. Pursue your interests, wage your war against the dream factory, and you will be remembered. Everyone will know your name.”
“Yeah, man, whatever. Let’s get going.”
“Creighton,” said Leech. “It’s night up top. The moon is full. Do you think you can lead us to the moonlight?”
“Sure thing, George. I’m the Wolf Man, ahhh-woooooo!”
* * *
Janice Marsh had died while they were under the mountain. Her room stank and bad water sloshed on the carpets. The tarpaulin served as her shroud.
Leech hated to let her down, but she’d had too little to bring to the table. She had been a coelacanth, a living fossil.
Charlie announced that he was abandoning the search for the Subterranean Sea of California, that there were other paths to Helter Skelter. After all, was it not written that when you get to the bottom you start again at the top. He told his Family that his album would change the world when he got it together with Dennis, and he sang them a song about how the pigs would suffer.
Inside, Charlie was terrified. That would make him more dangerous.
But not as dangerous as Derek Leech.
* * *
Before he left the Ranch, in a requisitioned buggy with Constant at the wheel, Leech sat a while with Junior.
“You’ve contributed more than you know,” he told Junior. “I don’t often do this, but I feel you’re owed. So, no deals, no contracts, just an offer. A no-strings offer. It will set things square between us. What do you want? What can I do for you?”
Leech had noticed how hoarse Junior’s speech was, gruffer even than you’d expect after years of chilli and booze. His father had died of throat cancer, a silent movie star bereft of his voice. The same poison was just touching the son, extending tiny filaments of death around his larynx. If asked, Leech could call them off, take away the disease.
Or he could fix up a big budget star vehicle at Metro, a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, a final marriage to Ava Gardner, a top-ten record with the Monkees, a hit TV series...
Junior thought a while, then hugged Leech.
“You’ve already done it, George. You’ve already granted my wish. You call me by my name. By my Mom’s name. Not by his, not by ‘Junior’. They had to starve me into taking it. That’s all I ever wanted. My own name.”
It was so simple. Leech respected that; those who asked only for a little respect, a little place of their own—they should get what they deserve, as much as those who came greedily to the feast, hoping for all you can eat.
“Goodbye, Creighton,” he said.
Leech walked away from a happy man.
TAKE ME TO THE RIVER
by
PAUL McAULEY
THE FIRST AND probably last Bristol Free Festival hadn’t drawn anything like the numbers its blithely optimistic organisers had predicted, but even so, the crowd was four or five times as big as any Martin Feather had ever faced. Martin had been brought in as a last-minute replacement after the regular keyboard player in Sea Change, the semi-professional group headlining the bill, had broken his arm in a five-a-side football match. Last night’s run-through had gone okay, but now, in the mouth of the beast, Martin was beginning to get the jitters. The rest of the band were happy to hang out backstage, passing around a fat spliff, drinking free beer, and bullshitting with a mini-skirted reporter from the Bristol Evening Post, but Martin was too wound-up to stay still, and after his third visit to the smelly Port-A-Loo he wandered around to the front of the stage to check out the action.
It was the hottest day yet in the hottest summer in living memory. More than three hundred people sprawled on drought-browned grass in front of the stage, and a couple of hundred more queued at icecream vans and deathburger carts or poked around stalls that sold vegetarian food, incense sticks and lumpy bits of hand-thrown pottery, hand-printed silk scarves and antique shawls and dresses. A fire-eater and a juggler entertained the festival-goers; a mime did his level best to piss them off. There was a fortune teller in a candy-striped tent. There were hippies and bikers, straight families and sullen groups of teenagers, small kids running around in face paint and dressing-up-box cowboy outfits and fairy princess dresses, naked toddlers, and a barechested sunburnt guy with long blond hair and white jeans who stood front and centre of the stage, arms held out crucifixion-style and face turned up to the blank blue sky, as he grokked the music. He’d been there all afternoon, assuming the same pose for the Trad Jazz group, the pair of lank-haired unisex folk singers, the steel band, a group of teenagers who’d come all the way from Yeovil to play Gene Vincent’s greatest hits, and the reggae that the DJ played between sets. And now for Clouds of Memory, second-from-top on the bill, and currently bludgeoning their way through ‘Paint It Black’.
Martin had joined Clouds of Memory a few months ago, but he’d quickly fallen out with the singer and lead guitarist, Simon Cowley, an untalented egomaniac who couldn’t stay in key if his life depended on it. Martin still rankled over the way he’d been peremptorily fired after a gig in Yate and left to find his own way home (it hadn’t helped that his girlfriend had dumped him in the same week), but watching his nemesis make a buffoon of himself didn’t seem like a bad way to keep his mind off his stomach’s flip-flops.
Simon Cowley ended ‘Paint It Black’ by wrenching an unsteady F chord from his guitar a whole beat behind the rest of the band, and stood centre-stage with one arm raised in triumph, as if the scattering of polite applause was a standing ovation. His shoulder-length blond hair was tangled across his face. He was wearing a red jumpsuit and white cowboy boots. He turned to the drummer and brought down his arm, kicking off the doomy opening chords of his self-penned set-closing epic, ‘My Baby’s Gone to UFO Heaven’, and Martin saw Dr. John stepping through the people scattered at the fringe of the audience, heading straight towards him.