Ho, now, Riddle Afield just come in the door.

Remember that?  Course you do.  That man come through any door, no one can forget it.  Block out the sun with hisself, block out the chill in the air with the heat that comes off him.  That heat stored up inside from all them years plying his trade on the steam gun.

That man, come there to swap one of his eyes, eyes so sharp they cut when they run across your face, sawp that eye to the old voodoo man for somethin regular folks don’t want to talk on.

But he forgot that swap.  That swap slipped right from his ugly mind and out the back door and never was nothin so glad to be got from a place than was anything that got from Riddle Afield’s mind.

But a new swap, not knowin no better, ambled in the front.

Necrotic Culver.

Nothin but a babe, swaddled an all, shock of black hair over green eyes, pale, pale skin.  An a murderer’s soul inside.

Not that you need to know that part yet.  But it’s true.  Necrotic had a soul for killin.  She’d come to do it natural enough.

But first a girl has to learn.

Old voodoo man had no fear of nothin.  Nothin vexed him true, nothing mayhaps but the sound of a violin bein scraped by someone who knew whathow to do it right.  But of men, he had nothin to care about.  Riddle didn’t spook him none at all.  Just a man.  A big man, yed.  An ugly man, yes.  A man who joyed on misery, yes.  An evil man, yes.  But the old voodoo man knew there was worse things than a big, ugly, evil man who joyed on misery.  He knew there was worse because he looked every morning at himself in the mirror and saw it right there.

So, Riddle came in and the old voodoo man just jabbed him with a stick he carried around sometimes when he was in an especially jabbin mood.  Say when his piles was botherin him.  (piles is like hemerhoids, which is like nothin you want to know about anyways)

He jabbed at Riddle Afield and asked him whatafter he was.  An Riddle, he never took his eyes off Necrotic Culver, just pulled off his goggles, showed em sharp and cutting, and gave with his gunner’s rumble, “Come to swap.”

Across the room, Shadding Lyttle, still recovering from the wound Necrotic put in his heart when he set eyes on her, felt that voice shiver his ribcage, and watched as two tiny twin cuts appears on Necrotic’s cheek.  Thin and red, beads welling at the end of each.

Old voodoo man, he smiled.

Talk about a smile, mostly you’re talkin about somethin happy.  Someone happy.  True enough, old voodoo man was happy, but not in any way me and you would want to feel happy.  He was happy like a spider maybe is happy.  Happy to feel a vibration on teh threads of its web.  To know it’s gonna be wrappin a meal up tight soon enough.  Suckin the melted entrails from somthin still warm.

It was that kind of smile.

Sharp as Riddle Afield’s eyes were, he’d have been payin attention to that smile, he’d have got the message.  An even a man as fearsome as himself would have taken that message and gone right out the door.

But he was still all eyes on Necrotic.

An he said, “C’mon, old man, lets you an me swap.  Got an eye here, you can see halfway to China an back again with it.  An all I want,” an here he licked his lips, “an all I want is a little somethin you got just lyin around the place.”

Old voodoo man didn’t look where Riddle was lookin, didn’t need to.  He just pulled a whittlin knife from inside that vest coat of his and shaved a point on the end of his jabbin stick.  Sayin, “Yes, Mr. Afield, I think we can make a swap, indeed.  First now, let us see about getting that eye out.”

Shadding Lyttle knew there was bad business about to come to play. Knew it cause he was born into it an all.  Pulled Necrotic Culver closer to his chest, nodded at something only he could hear, and was intimately grateful for the honed piece of onyx he kept tucked in the top of his boot.  Thought about that stone edge, and looked at Riddle Afield’s pocked cheek.

There’s violence comin in this tale soon enough.  That sort of thing can always wait.

-c

Riddle Afield was a steam gunner in the Tinker Wars.

 

When I say steam gun I ain’t talkin about one of them things they use what to wash subway cars down in the yard.  Those they call steam guns.  An they ain;t hardly do no good nohow.  Cars still covered in graffiti an flyers an pigeon crap.  That’s a whole racket that is.  Somebody got a cousin somewhere owns a company makes them steam wands.  Betcha that’s the case.  Buy up them wands, give some jobs to some low income types to appease the masses, have them in the yards at three in the morning wavin steam around, like it do some good other than to make a night atmospheric.  It don’t.

 

Anyhow, steam gun’s got nothin to do with that.

 

Steam gun was like a cannon with a boiler.  Boiler is like what you got in the basement.  ‘Cept they mostly call it a water heater in your basement.  These days they do, anyhow.  Water goes in, little fire burns under it, heats that water, sends it up to your shower.  Mmm, nice hot shower on a cold day, nothin like that.  Anyhow, that’s how it works you got a landlord who isn’t in a racket tryin to drive tenants out so’s he can get in new ones on a new lease that costs them more money. 

 

Little off the track there.  Got me a landlord puts rats in the halls, turns off the boiler, don’t fix leaky pipes, don’t have no garbage pickup.  Got landlord issues I do.

 

Anyways, steam guns.  They got boilers, too.  But ain’t a hot shower kind of boiler.  Got the kind of boiler could drive a train.  Drive two trains.  Some of them steam guns got boilers so big and so powerful, they could drive ten locomotives up a steep grade in the snow. Steam gun like that gets loaded down a barrel that’s just about as wide as a cask.  A cask is like a barrel itself, but the kind you put stuff in, not the kind you shoot from.  See in the basement of a winery, see all them big barrels?  Casks.  Picture on of them made from iron, solid through.  Picture the cannon you gonna shoot than from.

 

That the kind of a gun Riddle Afield was on in them Tinker Wars.

 

Big gun.  Giant gun.  Boiler at the base of the barrel, furnace fire blazin, boilin a tank of water big enough for five classes of twelve-year-olds to swim in all at once on a hot summer day.  ‘Cept you wouldn’t want to swim in there on a hot day.  Nor on any other day.  Wouldn’t want to dip a toe in there on the coldest day of the year.  Stick your toe in there, it be cooked tender to tough in a second.  Hot, bubblin, roilin, steamin.  Steam fills a tank right at the back end of the gun.  Fills it and fills it and fills it.  Pressure builds in there, kind of pressure someone would be crushed by it.  Pressure, it’s like weight.  Like pounds of it.  Thousands and thousands of pounds of it in that tank.  And when it hits red on a dial on the side of the gun, then it’s time.  Got that iron cask down the barrel.  Fitted in there so tight it had to be rammed in all the way.  Iron plug in the neck of an iron bottle.  Needle hits red and the steam gunner grabs a lever, squeezes, and pulls.  Got to be a big man a steam gunner, got to be a strong man.  Those guns, no one wants them goin off by chance, so’s that lever is massive hard to pull.  Trip an fall against it, it ain’t gonna pull.  Takes four normal men, or takes one big, mean steam gunner.  Man with calluses instead of skin, man with the smell of singed hair always floatin around him.  Despite the fact he got no hair of his own.  Burned off from the heat of the gun, all of it, every strand.  Steam gunner got eyes on him, keeps them behind goggles, keeps them safe from the heat and the flames and the steam.  Eyes like hawk eyes.  Eyes to see far over the horizon, so’s he knows where that cask is gonna hit when it runs tired of fightin gravity and comes to earth and shakes the bones of everything it doesn’t flat crush.  Got to keep them eyes sharp.

 

Eyes the target does the steam gunner, flexes the muscles in his legs and back and shoulders and arms, squeezes and pulls and, man-o-man-o, WHOOSH goes the steam out of that tank, all that pressure at once, crams itself behind the cask where there just ain’t enough room for it so it’s got to have more and it pushes and pushes and the cask it tries to stay put cause it’s crammed in tight like it wants but the steam is stronger and it says GIT OUT, CASK!  And the cask, it gets the hell out.  BANG flyin up the barrel and into the air and gone, like nothin you ever saw and too fast too see anyhow it’s over the horizon and lookin for the spot the gunner sent it to.

 

Only it don’t happen like that. Like one thing after another.  It happens all at once.  And it don’t sound WHOOSH and then GIT OUT, CASK and then BANG.  More it’s all one thing.  WHGITOUTSHBACASKNG!  Just all at once.  A single sound faster than thinkin and louder than thunder.  Steam gunner loses his teeth early from the rattlin they take.  An ain’t no matter how much cotton they stuff in theys ears and how many yards of cheese cloths they wrap around and around ‘em, theys hearin ain’t too hot neither.

 

Still, better than bein on the other end when the cask from one of them guns returns to earth.  Travel so fast, the front end goes red from the friction.  (friction is what you got when things rub gainst each other.  Like rub your hands together real fast and feel hows they heat up, that’s friction.) Steam gun cask gets friction from the air, that’s how fast it shoots.  So one end is red and hot, other end is black and trailin steam an pretty hot itself, but not so hot as the front.  Call that contrast.  One thing is one way and the other thing is the other was and the difference between them is how they contrast one another.  That contrast between red hot and black hot, it makes something like a giant iron cask unstable.  Makes it less rigid than if it was all black (rigid means stiff, hard), and less pliable than if it was all red (pliable is like how somethin can bend or drip or squish.) So what happens when that damn cask hits ground? 

 

It shatters is what.

 

Hundreds, thousand pieces, fragments is what, some red hot, some black, spray and whistle, slicin, cutting, lodgin in things, makin a mess.

 

Ugly.

 

Man on the field, woman too, they hear when that steam gun goes off, no matter how far, they hear that fast thunder.  Look up, look for a black dot with a red tip, trailin steam, look for it and where it’s comin to, an they theys run somewheres else. 

 

But don’t matter too much.

 

Cask hits, shatters, sprays, and it sprays far.  Runnin ain’t much good.  Bestways thing to do, bury yourself deep.  Maybe it saves you, maybe it don’t.  If it don’t, you just saved some work for the local burryin man.  An he’ll thank the memory of you, cuz he’s got plenty of burryin to do after the cask drops from a steam gun.

 

Riddle Afield was a steam gunner in the Tinker Wars.  Last one left.  Big, that goes without sayin, got none of his own teeth left, got brass hearin aids screwed into both ears, scars where hair is on most folks, muscles where skin is on most folks.  Wears a great coat from the Tinker Wars.  Medals and such on the front for bein the best steam gunner ever.  Wears his goggles still, to protect eyes that are so sharp, they see round corners and behind his back.  Left side of his body, it’s gnarled (means twisted and hard and knobbly, like an old limb on an old tree front of a scary house on a block where ain’t nobody livin.)  That side of his body got that way from bein closest to the steam guns, closest to the fire an the steam and the fast thunder.

 

When Riddle Afield laughs, sounds like the old echo of one of his guns.

 

But he don’t laugh much.

 

They day he showed up at the old voodoo man’s iron building, that same day Shdding Lyttle was holding the baby Necrotic Culver in his arms and they was both realizin without knowin what they felt that they was in love, that day Riddle Afield laughed.  Broke half the windows on the street when he did.

 

What made him laugh is part of the story.

 

What he come to the old voodoo man for is, too.

 

Came to the old voodoo man to sell somethin, somethin he knew that old man had the covets for (covet is like when you want somethin so bad it’ all you think on.  that toy ya saw in the shop window an all you can think is how much better life will be when ya get it, that’s a covetin toy.)  For years Riddle had no-wayed they voodoo man.  Wantin to keep his eyes for when the wars came again and he could be back beside one of his guns, bringin the fast thunder, hurlin casks on the unexpectin.  But now he had a covet of his own, an he come to the old voodoo man ready to swap one of his hawk eyes for what it was he wanted. 

 

An he saw Necrotic Culver, and he laughed, and glass broke all over, and what he was covetin for changed on an instant.

 

Shivers it gives me, right into that foot I don’t got anymore, foot that was taken from me by the piece of a steam gun cask in the Tinker Wars, gives me shivers to think on that man, Riddle Afield, and makes me sharpen up my knife to think on his throat.

 

Go on now, let me stew a little on the past.  Come back later and I’ll tell you more.  Go on, my foot’s shiverin, an I want to be alone.

 

-c

I’m reposting chapter 7 of The Book of All Future Names because some readers have reported problems opening the page.  

  

    Let me tell you somethin about Necrotic Culver, that girl, she had a bee sting for a heart.  Hot, swollen, a fierce pain ya don’t dare touch for fear it will hurt worse than before.  But it weren’t so much that she felt it herself, more than those that tried to touch her heart pulled back with red welts all over theys ownselves. 

            She didn’t plot it out to be that way, but that’s the way it was all the sames.  That old voodoo man what raised her, if ya can call what he did raising a child, he saw that in her the first time he looked at them mismatched color eyes.  Saw a pain-full heart.  Saw a sewer of hurt and longing.  Saw an instrument for lost hopes and lowered expectations.  Saw just about everythin he could want to see in a girl of his own blood. 

            Standin there at the threshold (that’s like where a door is, but more if the door is open, just that spot you step over to go from one place to the next is a the threshold of the place), holdin that baby in his arms the first time, thinkin he ought ta just hand it right back to the biddy on his stoop, he saw the destruction in that girl and had hisself a thought.

            No, he didn’t little Necrotic back ta the biddy, he just kicked the door closed on her face and took the babe inside. 

            Now I already told you how he had that Hugo Cauldron fetch up the Book of All Future Names for him.  How he flipped the pages and found the name Necrotic Culver waitin for the baby.  An’ also I may have mentioned about another baby that comed to live in that dark, iron building, boy baby nursed up in a fish bowl, Shadding Lyttle. 

            Case you missed it, Shad was there that day too.  Standin right there in the room, got his sweepin broom in his hand, which is what he had in his hand anytime he didn’t have his mopping mop or his sponging sponge or his wiping wipe or his scrubbing scrub or any of the other tools of the cleaning trade he was plying there (plying means he was doing it.  Like to ply your trade is to work at your work, if ya  follow) at the command of the old voodoo man. 

            That boy Shad, you’d have thought that comin to term in a fish bowl, bein fed on voodoo man scraps, livin in a dark iron building full of dark goings in and such, you’d have thought such a boy would grow stunted and low, a scuttler (scuttle is something you do when you kinda creepy crawl to the side like.  See a crap walkin sideways, that’s a scuttle.  So a scuttler’s someone who scuttles.  Or so says I), a boy to hang at the walls in the dark places, of which there were lots in that building, out of sight and out of mind.  But it weren’t so.  Shadding Lyttle, he were tall and straight and comely (means good looking, hot, in the parlance of the kids.  An you got to know what parlance means you can go fetch your ownself a dictionary.  I got no time for every last little multisyllabic word out of my mouth.  And what I said before goes twice for multisyllabic.), more than that, he was bright and kind and strong, and, well, just a good damn boy is what he was. 

            Old voodoo man, he hated Shadding Lyttle.  Hated him like he hated grit between the layers of a grilled leek (it’s a kind of an onion), hated him like he hated when it was late at night and he couldn’t sleep an he just wanted it to be morning and every time he looked at the clock he swore an hour at least was gonna have passed, but it was never more than five minutes, hated that boy like you could only have expected him to hate the boy if the boy had done somethin personal like to him that no one knew about except him, and that includes the boy not knowin neither.  Which is what the case was as a matter of fact. 

            Just by bein born that boy had done something terrible to the old voodoo man, somethin the old voodoo man was like never to forgive or forget.

            No, I ain’t gonna say what it was.  You open a book to read it, do you skip first to all the secret good parts first?  Find out every little twist and turn in advance then go back and read the in-between parts?  I didn’t think so.

            Ya read a book in order, ya can listen to a story in order.

            So, there’s young Shadding Lyttle in the iron home of the old voodoo man, an there’s Necrotic Culver, a baby girl with a poison heart.

            An what’s the old voodoo man do?

            He turns to Shad, smile on his face, ugly smile on his face, as if any other kind of smile crossed his face ever (actually, truth to tell, there was a time he had a beautiful smile.  Before it got broke.  But that’s for later, too), turned to that boy with that baby girl in his arms and said, “You, young master Lyttle, come take the darling child.”

            An Shad did as he was told.  Did it happy and relieved.  Happy caused once he had that baby in his arms he knew he could maybe keep her safe.  Relieved because he thought the first place that baby might have gone was straight into Hugo Cauldron’s bubbling maw (it’s a mouth, but picture a big nasty one opened wide to swallow you whole).

            Holdin that baby girl himself, Shad, just not much more than a baby, he looked into those eyes, red and black, no doubt trouble spellin eyes, an he flat fell in.  Fell in deep, droppin, tumblin, lost, an not carin a damn.  When he come up out of those eyes, he’d of thought a month had passed at least, or a year, or ten, no tellin how long, didn’t leastways expect to find no time at all had passed.  Standin there dumbstruck (which means speechless), standin there wonderin at the new thing he was feelin.  Deep in his chest, an ache, a swellin ache, more like a burn really, a fierce hot pain like nothin he’d ever felt before.  A pain he’d go on feelin the rest of his born days.  A pain that would only be more painful when it was took away from him for a while in some later years.  Pain that hurt worse when it was gone than when it was there.

            Old voodoo man looked at Shad’s face, an he knew in an instant what the boy was feelin.  Yes he did.  How’d he know?  Cuz he’d felt it hisself.  Years before.  Now he only felt the pain of it bein gone.

            Old voodoo man laughed.  He let Shad hang on to that girl, let him take care of her, feed her, tuck her in nights, let that pain grow and fester and blister and swell.  Let that pain get big as all Shad’s insides. 

            All so it would hurt more when he took Necrotic away from him.

            What did Necrotic Culver feel in all this?  What was that little baby child thinkin?

            Mostly she was thinkin what baby childs think.  She was thinkin goo-goo and gah-gah.  But also, looking up at Shadding Lyttle, she was thinkin somethin else, she was thinkin, goo-goo, gah-gah, why’s my heart hurt so bad?

            Round bout right then’s when Riddle Afield showed hisself up. 

            Riddle Afield, about who this here chapter is named.

            But about who I ain’t gonna tell now.

            Cuz it’s gettin dark.

            An every fool knows you don’t talk on Ridde Afield when the dark’s come.

            Even a fool like me.

 

-c

 

PREVIOUSLY IN THE BOOK OF ALL FUTURE NAMES

Hugo Cauldron is old.

 

How old?

 

Damn old.

 

Think on it.  How old a cauldron got to be before it get a name, any name, let alone a name like Hugo?

 

Yeah, that old.

 

But Hugo even older than that.  Take for instance how Hugo knows, whenever the old voodoo man tells him to fetch some of this or some of that, how Hugo knows where to get it.  How comes a cauldron on those kind of details?

 

Here’s a hint.

 

This world of ours, it didn’t just go pop one day and there it was all finished.  It didn’t do that anymore than your favorite dinner of lamb korma (a Indian style of curry with cream and raisins and other good stuff that you can look up in a cook book if you want to) just pops up on a plate with a big pile of basmati rice and nan bread and mango chutney.  No, this world of our, it first had to be cooked up.

 

All the bits and pieces of this world, steamed, sautéed, browned, broiled, par boiled, emulsified, seared, smoked, deep fried, roasted, or blanched, they all had to be prepared, cooked, and tossed in a big damn pot so they could stew up together.

 

A pot.  Like what they call a cauldron.

 

See where I’m goin?

 

In case you don’t see all that well, let me paint a picture a bit brighter.  Hugo Cauldron, could be he knows where every damn thing is because he cooked every damn thing at one time or another.  Got the taste of everythin in his big iron mouth does Hugo.

 

You don’t got to believe me if you don’t want to, but there it is.  An whether you believe it or not, there’s still the plain fact that when the old voodoo man says, Hugo, go fetch me the last livin breath of the thief to Christ’s left up on Calvry Hill, Hugo goes and fetches it.

 

So you tell me how he does it an I’ll shut up an you can tell the story.

 

Sayin that Hugo Cauldron is old.

 

Not sayin that the old voodoo man is as old as Hugo.  Cuz I know you’re thinkin that someone had to chop an dice and mince all them ingredients before puttin them in the cauldron, an they did, but it wasn’t the old voodoo man, that’s damn sure.

 

Yeah, he old.  He damn old, but he’s not that damn old.

 

Let me tell you somethin about that old voodoo man.  That fella, he’s mean.  Like you didn’t suss that out already.  But that’s not all.  He’s mean and he’s nasty.  More.  He’s mean and he’s nasty and he plays the violin. 

 

Didn’t see that comin.

 

Plays the violin as sweet as it ever been played.

 

Know who’s a sucker for sweet violin playin?  Yeah, that’s right.  Hugo Cauldron.  So if you were wonderin where all this was windin to, now you got the hint. 

 

Hugo Cauldron, he’s old.  And he knows things.  Things ain’t no one else ever known.  Well, one other know them, but only that one, and then Hugo.  Knowin things, that makes a person, or a cauldron, powerful.  You got a knowledge of things, you got a way to shape them, control them, possess them.  That kind of power, Hugo has it in spades.  But he ain’t the type to use it.  Not on his own. 

 

Hugo, he’s the kind of cauldron, he mostly wants to simmer over a fire with his belly full of a nice thick onion soup.  Leave all that power business up to some other people got the hunger for it.  But Hugo, he suck a wonder, he found his way into some stories, some legends, some rumors and tales.  And all those whispers, they found their way, year after year, into the ears of the old voodoo man.  Well, just into his left ear really, his right ear, it don’t hear so well.  Accident he had when he was a boy.  Well, not so much an accident as a case where his granny cut that ear off to use in a conjurin potion.  But that’s a long story.

 

But that good left ear, it heard plenty. 

 

An what it heard was that this knowin and powerful cauldron, it liked the violin.  So what does the voodoo man do? (an I call him the voodoo man her instead of the old voodoo man because he’d been around some by then but he wasn’t quite old by the standard of how old he got to be later) That voodoo man got himself taught how to play the violin as sweet as could be.

 

It was hard.

 

Sweetness was not somethin that came easy to the voodoo man.  Bein mean and nasty he could pull off at the drop of a hat.  First time he put bow to strings he could eke mean and nasty from that violin, but sweet sounds took him time.  Years.  A pile of years.  And then another pile.  Like fightin all of nature tryin to get that violin to sound sweet.  Wore out a hundred and seventy three violin teachers learnin to play sweet. 

 

By wore out what I mean is he killed most of em in some mean and nasty way or another when they couldn’t teach him proper what he wanted. 

 

Then he met someone special. 

 

But he don’t talk about her. 

 

No, I ain’t gonna tell you her name or what happened to her.  It comes later.  Nuff to say she taught him how to play sweet.  How?  Well, I’ll tell you this much.  Only way to learn what it is to be sweet is to have someone be sweet to you.  Then you maybe get some of that sweetness on you.  Then maybe you can rub it off elsewhere.  An if maybe the person who rubbed all theys sweetness on you up and dies of a sudden and leaves you alone, well maybe your sweetness gets seasoned with sadness.

 

An there ain’t nothin sweeter than that.

 

After that, whatever it was that happened to the old voodoo man (he was old by then) whatever it was that happened to him that I ain’t sayin, he could play that violin sweet like to make your teeth fall out.

 

In them years, an it took years, find him in every house wares and pot shop in the world, goin up an down the aisles, plain that violin as sweet as dyin in the arms of the one you love.

 

Playin and walkin and playin and listenin and playin some more.

 

Till he heard it, comin down a cluttered shelf of bric-a-brac in a rummage sale raisin money for a volunteer fire department in some small place with barely a name in some hills lost aways from the city.  Pausin between notes, lettin the last sweet one vibrate out of the air before the next could be bowed, he heard a sigh.  Delighted and content, the sigh of someone who enjoys a good cry now an again.  Someone who accepts the sour with the sweet.  Someone who knows a thing or three about seasonin.

 

How much? is all the old voodoo man asked the churchy ladies runnin the sale.

For that old thing? is what they answered.

 

And in the end the old voodoo man had him for six yankee dollars.

 

Hugo Cauldron, bargain basement, with all his knowin and all his power.

 

An Hugo got seasoned by the old voodoo man.  Around all that mean and nasty, Hugo got some of it hisself.  So that when Necrotic Culver was dropped on theys doorstep, all he could think to hisself was how yummy that baby might be in his tummy. 

 

But sweepin up the corners, already there for a few years, big enough now to keep things clean and tend to duckin out the way when the old voodoo man got mean and took a swipe at him, sweepin up in there was Shadding Lyttle.  One eye on that girl baby, one eye on the old voodoo man and Hugo.

 

Shad, he’d been figuring he needed to get out for some time from that place, had a plan just about finished, but when he saw tiny Necrotic Culver, he hung up his plan and put it to the side. 

 

Have to wait a few years it would, until that girl was old enough that he could take her out too. No was that boy leavin her behind with the old voodoo man and Hugo.

 

Then things got a little complicated.

 

-c

 

PREVIOUSLY IN THE BOOK OF ALL FUTURE NAMES

Castigleone didn’t like to be called fat. 

 

Problem being there wasn’t many way around callin him fat.  Face the truth, wasn’t many ways around Castigleone.  Boy was big.  Hefty.  Rotund (which is another way of sayin fat without sayin fat).  Castigleone coming down the sidewalk, you bet he cleared a ton of space for hisself.  Don’t got to ask people to make way, they just do.  Got no choice.  Only other option bein that you stand your ground and Castigleone tromps over you and you end up an extra large wad of sticky somethin or other on the sidewalk that gonna adhere (mean stick to somethin) to the bottom of some fella or gal’s shoe.

 

Castigleone didn’t like to be called fat.

 

But I am here to tell you somethin, that boy was fat and there ain’t no two ways or nevermind about it. 

 

Fat.

 

An under that fat, he strong.

 

All that jello shakin all over the boy, that just hidin what he got underneath.  You could render that fat away (render means, in this context, like to melt somethin) (by the by, context means within the terms of which we are discussin at the moment.  Cuz render can mean other things in a different context and I don’t want to confuse no one.), so if you could render that fat away, what you’d get left over would look like a bull standin up on its hind legs like a well-trained dog. 

 

But all them muscles, they got Castigleone in trouble.

 

Time was, when he was a mite (mite is like a tiny insect kind of a thing), he didn’t have no fat on him at all.  An the thing to remember is, when I say he was a mite, I don’t mean his bigness, I mean his age.  He was plenty young, barely up to tyin his own shoe laces age, but he was already the kind of a boy who cast a shadow down the ground before him.  Case a shadow like you get when it’s early mornin or late afternoon and you turn your back to the sun and see how it stretches out ahead of you.  Imagine what it’ll be like when you all grown up, to be that tall.

 

Well Castigleone, he didn’t have to wait.  He was already as tall as that shadow, an the one he was castin was taller than any adult you know. 

 

A boy that size, wearin overalls, got a runny nose, draggin a stuffed penguin around with him everywhere he’s goin, well you just know he’s gonna draw hisself some bad trouble.

 

Some kinds of people, they ain’t happing in theys ownself. 

 

True.

 

Hard to see it, but that is truth.  People like that, they always lookin for reasons outside theys ownselves for why they ain’t happy on theys own.  Figure it got to be someone’s fault. 

 

Take offense at the drop of a hat a person like that.  Go around lookin for what it is makin them not happy.  Look around this world, spoilin for a fight with whoever it is they think responsible.

 

Castigleone, him an that penguin of his, they just catnip to people like that. (Catnip, it’s a flowering plant that a scientist would call Nepeta.  Part of a family it is, family called Lamiaceae.  Take some of that Nepeta and let a cat get at it an that cat gonna go wild and roll around an drool maybe and meow and want some more.  Then it gonna get bored and wander away till some time passes. Then it gonna go crazy all over again.)  So these people I’m talking about, that’s about how they behaved when they got sight of Castigleone.

 

Little boy, who ain’t little at all, so big people think he at least a teenager, build like a bull, with a stuffed penguin and a gapin grin on his face, mouth still full of baby teeth.

 

An here they comes, the bullies.  Fellas so unhappy in theys ownselves, they got to push someone else around to feel happy.  See Catigleone, his bigness, those muscles, it like an affront to theys unhappiness (affront is like an insult.)

 

So they start in, makin fun. 

 

“Wipe that snot offa your lip, boy.”

“Where you get them clothes, boy, the poor box?”

“What that you draggin, boy, that a teddy bear?  You too old for teddy bears.”

 

Castigleone, he don’t understand half of it.  But he get the tone.   Sound of those voices, he know theys givin him the business.  An bein a little boy, it plain upsets him.  Gets the tears to flowin.  Blubberin is what the child gets up to.  Cryin on the sidewalk.

 

Well, you talking catnip, that is some catnip for these fellas.  A big guy cryin, that’s about as much fun as theys can imagine.

 

Start circlin Castigleone.

 

“Crybaby.”

“What you cryin over, boy, you wet your pants?”

“Where’s your mama, boy, she gonna wipe your nose for you?”

“Hey, boy, gimme that!”

 

Oops, that a mistake that fella made, grabbin that penguin out from Castiglenoe’s hand.

 

Boy stops cryin.  Boy opens his mouth wide.  Boy pulls his arm back as far as he can.  And he swings it forward at the fella what took his penguin from him.

 

Heard people talk about someone goin all raggedy doll?  Means they fall jumbly on the ground without they got no nothin to hold them up.  Raggedy doll, it got no bones inside what to give it stiffness.  This fella what grabbed Castigleone’s stuffed penguin, he don’t go raggedy doll all at once.  What he do is fly through the air a ways, sail across the sidewalk, looks like he’s struggin against somethin as he fly, his arms an legs all kicky and swingy, like he don’t know yet how the ground got knocked out from under his feet.  Then he hit a wall.  A brick wall.  It had been a wood wall, a fence say, things might have turned out better for that fella.  He maybe would have just broke this an that.  Or probably not.  He might have broke a few less part, but he probably end up just the same way.  Way is was, the wall was brick.  He hit that wall, that’s when he went rageddy doll.

 

Sound was like a wet crunch.  Which is kinda like one of them paradoxes I explained to you before.  Wet crunch.  Things splattin an breakin at the same time.

 

He hit that wall high up, an then he flop all boneless onto the ground.

 

Them other fellas, ones was makin theysselves feel better bout things by pickin on Castigleone, they get lost in a hurry.

 

Castigleone, he don’t know what’s goin on.  He run over, grab up his penguin and hugs it to him.  Wipin snot an tears off on that poor sad ol penguin.  He don’t know what to make of that fella all raggedy doll an all.  He just stand there kickin at him an waitin for him to move.  Till some people come around and see the mess and starts to screamin.  Then he get scared an run on home.

 

Yep, there was some trouble.

 

Castigleone, he was bein raised up by his mom.  His dad was some fella she never knew to well.  Castigleone, when he was born, be was small and weak as a kitten.  She worried he might die of bein so small and fed him up. Fed him up an up an up.  Then she tried to stop feedin him up, but it didn’t seem to make no matter.  Whatever and however much she fed him, he got bigger.  Like sunlight and breathin an water was all it took to make that boy grow. Like he was a weed or somethin.

 

But now she was scared.  No of Castigleone, she loved that boy.  But she was scared what was gonna happed to him. 

 

So she did what she had to, an she sent him away.  Sent him away to her cousin in the city.  To live there, hidden in the city.  The only place where a boy that big might hide.  City is a place where ain’t no one gonna star at you, no matter who or what you may be.  People mind theys own business in the city.

 

So that’s where she sent her son.

 

Castigleone, he starts to think he done somethin wrong, somethin made his mom not love him no more.  Somethin bout the way he hurt that fella so bad.  He starts to hate how strong he is.  Hate them muscles.  He don’t want to look at em.  He don’t want people talkin about em.  He wants to hide em. 

 

So that’s what he does.

 

Boy starts eatin again.  Eats an eats.  Boy can grow on sun an air an water, an he’s eatin hotdogs an avocadoes (creamy green fruit that people think it a veggie because it’s green, but it’s got a pit which makes it a fruit) an cheese crackers an chick pot pie an asparagus (green veggie that makes you pee smell funny) an ossobuco an corn flakes an menudo (a spicy soup made from stomach from a pig or a cow or a goat or a sheep) an endive (like a kind of lettuce) an cheddar cheese an key lime pie an baba ghanoush (fancy mashed eggplant), an, his favorite, viccysoise (cold fish soup).

 

That when he get fat.  Though ain’t no one says it to him.

 

But that muscle, it don’t go away.  In fact, under all that fat, it gets stronger.  Haulin all that around?  Man, them muscles just gettin stronger an stronger.  That boy lost all that fat at once, he’d take one step on them strong legs that was used to carryin all that weight, and he’d just about lift off the ground, kick hisself into space, he would.

 

Truth.

 

So here’s Castigleone, which is what his name is in the Book of All Future Names, comin down the street, makin way, no one callin him fat, an he comes behind him his mom’s cousin, lettin Castigleone clear him a path. 

 

Cousin’s name is Bobo Link.

 

Uh-huh.  Startin to see it now, ain’t ya?  Things they come together a little if you wait.  Cuz trailin after Bobo is his two new apprentices, Munez Lautner and Petty Affair. 

 

We already know cuz I told you that Munez and Petty gonna someday be in the mob of Shadding Lyttle.  We already know cuz I told you that Storie Latier was already come to be the first of Shad’s mob.  An now let me tell you that the last of Shad’s mob was gonna be Castigleone. 

 

But what about Necrotic Culver an all that? 

 

An how does four plus Shad make up a mob when a mob is supposed to be a whole mess of people?

 

Let me tell you now, I just got them all in one place an introduced to you, so hang back an give some room an let me take a breath an we get down into what happened an got on caused all the trouble round here.

 

Truth.

 

-c

 

LOS ANGELES, August 8, 2008

 

Previously in The Book of All Future Names

Munez Lautner knew not a damn thing about Shadding Lyttle, and he liked it that way.

You can ask how a fella that knows nothin about another fella can like it that he don’t know nothin about that fella.  An I’ll tell ya the answer, an all you got to do is sit an wait for the story to catch up to your curiosity is all. 

So, Munez didn’t know a damn thing about Shad, and liked it that way.  An truth be told, Shad didn’t know a damn thing about Munez, but whether he cared a damn about that state of things I couldn’t tell you.  See, theys situations was different in regard to what they knew of one another.

Mind that of  I just dropped in there. 

Told you Munez didn’t know a thing about Shad, didn’t say he didn’t know of  Shad.  Different points entirely.  Way I tell a story they is anyway.

Take a step back, backer than that, little more backer, kay, now you’re at the time when Munez was a whippet child.  Slink of a gutter snip, zigzaggin crowds around the Square, rubbin his belly an looking out from under curly bangs from outta big brown eyes.  Boy had two singular talents, boy could make them eyes leaky as a hydrant at will. 

Tell you, many’s the traveler made the mistake of glancing down and making eye contact with that child, watched as the valve was opened and the waters flowed down those dirty thin cheeks, felt theys hearts touched, frozen there by pity, reached to they’s back pocket for handbag for a little something for to give the mite that he could buy a hotdog from the cart over there, an found that while they’s better natures were being touched upon, theys wallets had likewise been touched up and gone.  Time they looked back for Munez Lautner, he was gone too, down some stray alley was with his big sister, watchin as she counted out the cash, threw the plastic down a sewer drain, stuffed the bills into the strap of a bra she didn’t even need none, and spilled the silver into his cupped palms.

Yeah she got a name too.  What, you think the Book call her Munez’s Sister?  No.  Her name in the Book of All Future Names is called Petty Affair.  An why they has different last names ain’t because theys mommy married different daddies or somesuch, it because the Book don’t care what your brother or sister or mommy or daddy or grands or great grands be called, the Book has your  name, for just you, got no relation to whosoever’s womb you happen to squirt out of or how you got in there or whether theys people what got together to put you in there was married or any other nonsense the Book don’t give a damn about.

So there.

Munez Lautner and Petty Affair.  Brother and sis.  Tight as tight.  How tight they be, you ask, if she be pocketing all the foldin money an givin him only the jinglin? 

Tell you: for ones, she the dipper.  He the shill, keep the attention of the suckers while she stick her hand in theys money keepin places, but she the one taken the rap if a blue suit show up at the wrong occasion of time.  For seconds, she not hoggin that cash.  That cash, sure she take some for herself, but somthin nice, a scarf like she like to wear over her head, wrap up those waist long dreads and keep them manageable while she work, she got dozens of those, master at tyin knots and makin ropes an other usful stuff from them scarves, but mostly what she do with that cash is pay rents on theys place to live, buy groceries for theys to eat, an books from the three-for-a-dollar bin for Munez to read on cuz he way ahead of himself with that readin an go through books like nobody you seen.

That was the other singular talent of Munez (singular, by the by, means theys only one of them.  Don’t give me no mess about how can the boy have TWO singular talents. I mean by singular is that no one else have them, they all his alone.  So there.), readin.

Boy could read a storm. 

Mean that literally (literally mean I mean it exactly how I say it an it ain’t no figure of speech meant to illustrate a point.  If you follow).

Mean that boy was so proficient (proficient mean someone really, really good at something) in the art of readin that he could read a storm.  Look up through the rain, up at the clouds, cracklin lightnin, rollin thunder, whippin wind, look it all over an read it in a flash.  Tell you if it a cleansin kind of a rain, a ill wind, tell you where the thunder from, if it Chinese or from Zaire, know if the clouds the silver linin type, or the other, read everythin in a storm. 

That not all.

Munez Lautner, he could read the street.  Read the buildings.  Read your face.  Read dirt.  Read pigeons on the wing.  Read the grease on a diner countertop.  Read clothes line.  Read shoe soles and bald spots and coffee cups and chocolate cake.  Boy could read anyolthin.

Over the years, as he growin, he read the city, an it tell him of Shadding Lyttle, but it don’t tell him anythin about Shad.

Just tell him such a boy exist, that an no more.  Well, it tell him one more things of Shadding Lyttle.  It tell him that he gonna kill him someday.

Sorry, what I mean is, he (Shadding Lyttle) gonna kill him (Munez Lautner) someday.  Tell you, that a hell of a thing to read about yourself and some other fella you ain’t never met nohow.  Remember back when I talked about foreshadows?  It like that, when you read about somethin that’s to come to pass but ain’t yet, but it better to call it a portent, like a sign of what’s to come.

Having read that much of Shadding Lyttle, Munez didn’t want to know nothin about him.  The less there was in the city to read about Shad, the further than person, whoever he be, must be away from him and his sister.

Still and somehow, Munez ended up in Shad’s mob.

Thought I’d forgot what I was tellin didn’t you?  No, I didn’t just comin at it kinda sidelike here. 

How is it a fella that knows that some other fella is or might be destined to kill him come to cross paths?  An how it was that it happened was like this:

Munez was readin one day, readin the crowd like he was supposed to, lookin for that person whose moles would read to him a story about how they had some scratch on them and that they was a soft touch for a cryin child at the same time.  Took an awful lot of readin to find that combination.  An truth to tell, by the time of this, Munez was gettin a little largish.  Growin into those big brown eyes.  Cheeks fillin out. 

Petty Affair knew she should make him fast now an again, specially on wokin days, but she loved her brother angry.  Not by which I don’t mean that she loved him when he was angry, but that she loved him with angry love.  Not gentle love, not all-consuming love, not even fierce love, but angry love.  Like to rip up the world if it do wrong by him kind of love.  So she never had it in herself nohow to ask him to skip a meal.  She’d skipped plenty meals in her time.  Three years older than him, she’d skipped means every one of the days of her life.  First because the meals weren’t there, then because they weren’t there and what was there she gave to Munez.  An then, once they was out on theys own, she coulda stopped skippin meals, but it was like her body didn’t know what to do with food.  Just looked at it an said, what that for?  She looked proper ragamuffin.  Pretty as all damn, but boney as hell. 

So Munez takin a long time readin the right mark, an he getting bored, start readin other things.  Readin the exhaust from a cab, readin the cups and gum wrappers in the gutter, readin the statue in the middle of the Square, even though he read it a hundred times before.  Sudden, he read somethin on a man, read a big fat backroll, read a weakness for children.  An he tickle his earlobe the way he supposed to for Petty to know it’s on. 

Problem is, Munez don’t read deep enough.  He just kind of scan this fella, don’t get the who story. 

So when he catch this man’s eye, fire up the tears, get em goin good and strong, an see the smile come over that man’s face, he plain shocked by what he read in that smile.  The nasty things that smile tells him, they make him want to run an hide some other place.  Before he can, an before he can lift the sign tells Petty to slip off otherways, she’s dipped the man’s pocket, an found his hand already there, grabbin her wrist, twistin it, pullin her close, that same smile all over his face.

“Well,” he say, “what a delightful pair of children you are.”

Munez Lautner, he just frozen there, readin the man’s face over an over again, readin his belt an his socks an his toupee, readin the same thing in all of them.

This here man, he knowed Shadding Lyttle.

That how Munez Lautner and his sister Petty Affair come to be indentured to Bobo Link.

And the sadness that followed should come as no surprise when it does.

-c

LOS ANGELES, July 30, 2008

THE BOOK OF ALL FUTURE NAMES

The mob, then, an how Packer, whofor was really named Shadding Lyttle, and whofor the sake of clarity an brevity (brevity meaning shortness so as to take less time) we will henceforth call Shad, how Shad came to have the mob in the first place.

Well, it was back in them days when Shad was most like to be called Packer, and not mind it much cuz he’d rather not be reminded of his being Shadding Lyttle an how he got that name an how it was the old voodoo man what gave it him. 

First up in that mob of his was Bingo.

Kay, let’s get this over with.  Yes, Bingo ain’t what his real name was.  His real name, as according to the Book of All Future Names, was Storie Latier.  An, no, I ain’t gonna tell you how he come to know that was the name he got in the Book cuz if I do I’m gonna end up tellin a whole damn other story about Storie instead of the one I mean to be tellin which is about how Shad come to have a mob an how the love of his life Necrotic Culver come to steal it away from him.

Oh damn!

I just let that slip before I was supposed to.  That bit about how Necrotic Culver was the love of Shad’s life.  I didn’t mean to let onto that twist in the tail for a good long time.  Damn.  Kay, what you do is, you file that away, as in like a foreshadow.  A foreshadow bein a shadow that runs ahead of something, you see it before the actual thing an it give you a hint of what castin it.

So an like, maybe I screwed up an just told you a little more than I meant to, or maybe like I’m funnin and teasin an slippin things that ain’t exactly so just to confuse the trail we all on. 

You make up your own damn mind.

I’ll tell you this much: I don’t lie.  Not on purpose nohow.  That’s a rule I got.  I tell you somthin, it’s the truth as best I know it.  Course, sometimes I ain’t know but the least bit of the truth an I got to make up the rest.  Bespoke truth, as it were.  Bespoke is something made to order.  Made custom just for you.  Usually means a suit of clothes.  Get you a bespoke suit from a bespoke tailor, that how people know you livin high.

Shad, at the top, with his mob behind him, he had such a suit.  Suit made for him by the finest bespoke tailor in the city.  Suit had woven into it special things.  Charms an wards, talismans (talisman is like a good luck charm only it really magic an not just some damn rabbit’s foot), a runic suit is what the tailor called it.  Proof against many things.

But he didn’t have that suit at the start.

At the start he had a bloody apron an he was packin boxes down in that butchery.  An with him down there also was a boy whose real name was Storie Latier, but who got called Bingo mostly because he was the furthest thing from a bingo.  Meanin to say, he was the furthest thing from a winnin card.  Fellas in the butchery, other boys, other packers and hookers and haulers and washers and even the cuttin men, they all knew him for to have bad luck.  Not for other people. Just for hisself. 

Storie was the first of the mob.

Was a marrower he was.  Marrow be what is at the middle of your bones, stuff that makes blood cells and whatnot.  Can’t live without you got it.  Also it makes damn good eatin.  Take a nice thick thighbone, cut it into chunks an roast it.  Careful comin out of the oven, that bone gets hot.  Dig that marrow out with a tiny knife or spoon, spread it on some bread with some salt an some chive.  Yum, I say.  Yum.

Anyhow, Storie was a marrower.  Cracked bones all day, dug out the marrow and scraped it off his long thin knife into tiny jars.  Every day a little fella with a wee little moustache come by.  Fella named Touch Marple.  Had hisself a grocery way aways uptown where the big houses is.  He take them jars, pays off the head cutter man for them, sticks fancy labels on them and puts them on the shelf at his grocery.  Next to the caviar (fish eggs) and foie gras (fatted goose or duck liver) an other fancypants stuff like that.  Matrons of that there neighborhood, a matron bein a kind of respectable lady of a certain age, they buy up that marrow.  Not so much for the eatin, but because someone start some damn fad about how it get rid of wrinkles. 

Whyhow wrinkles supposed to be some damn horrible thing still a mystery to me.  Whyhow marrow supposed to get rid of em just as big a mystery.  Biggest mystery is whyhow someone want to smear good marrow on theys face when theys could smear it on a nice bit of sour bread toast.

After the butchery close one day Shad be walkin home.  He just about the last one out on account that he the junior packer an the junior packer responsible not just for his cleanin up, but also for the cleanin up of the senior packer. 

So he walkin tired up out of the Water Street Cul de Sac, an he see somethin that don’t play right be him.  He see three fellas, big fellas, got Storie Latier backed up against a wall and seem like to be menacing him (menacing is like the same as threatening for all intents here).  Comin a little closer, Shad overhear a bit of what goin on.  What he hear is the biggest an oldest fella, fella about say nineteen, tellin Storie to cough up his daily paycheck.  Give it over before somthin bad happen.

Shad, he no stranger to this fella.  This fella is Storie’s dad. 

An you ask, wait, how the hell old is Storie if his dad only nineteen?  An I say, wait right back, Storie’s dad was a dad when he was eleven, an so you do the math.  (19 – 11 = 8).

Shad don’t look to want no trouble, but he know that Storie’s dad a nogood.  He know that man got nothin to do with Storie bein raised.  That matter, ain’t no one got nothin to do with how Storie raised ‘cept Storie.  Boy been on his own since he was four.  Make his own damn way in the world he does.

What Shad see that make him pull up, is he see Storie’s long thin marrowin knife slippin from the sleeve of his shirt an into his hand.  Shad see it, but Storie’s dad an his friends they don’t.  They don’t on account of how damn drunk they be.  Blind drunk.  The real an sincere thing.  Sightless with booze those three. 

Shad seen Storie do things with that shiv.  Seen him flick the blade down the inside of a rib and come out coated thick in yellow marrow, leavin the inside of that rib dry as a what?  Dry as a bone, that’s what.  An I ain’t tryin to be funny by sayin it that way.  Just sayin that boy knew what to do with his knife. 

Shad know what comin next.  He know Storie ain’t gonna hand over his check.  He know Storie’s dad gonna make a grab for him.  He know Storie gonna cut somethin.  He know that gonna make the other two mad an grabby.  More cuttin.  Time it’s all done, there could be some mighty rivulets of blood in the gutter (rivulet is like a stream or a tiny river). 

What Shad does is, he trips hisself.  He falls in the gutter hisself.  All eyes come his way, look at the fool in the gutter.  Blind drunks, they start to laughin.  Point at Shad, callin some names.  Talk about some times back from when theys was all in school together, times when they was big men on campus an had Shad’s number.  By the time Shad get hisself up and shuffle off quiet like an they turn back to finish theys business, Storie Latier be gone. 

Down the street a little, he come out of a alley behind Shad.  Walk there behind him.  Not sayin anythin, just walkin behind him, little off to the right, few steps back.  Not like he taggin after, but more like he watchin Shad’s back, wachin it so Shad don’t gotta worry bout no one comin at it.

Storie Latier’s dad, he got hisself killed that same night anyways.  Tried to rob a liquor store an was so blind he didn’t see the proprietor (that’s the owner) when he come from behind the counter with a sawed off shotgun and blew his left leg off just below the hip.  Bled to death in a hurry.

So an he died that night, but it wasn’t Storie Latier what killed his own dad.  Which would have been a cursed thing to happen that no good would have come of.  First big of good luck Storie Latier had in just bout his whole damn life.  A turn in the river for that boy.  Thanks to Shad.

An that’s how he become the first of Shadding Lyttle’s mob.

Damn.  Still can’t believe I let that other bit slip. 

Mind my tongue from now on.

-c

LOS ANGELES, July 25 2008

THE BOOK OF ALL FUTURE NAMES

Los Angeles, July 22 - Something else.

A few weeks back Warren Ellis posted some musings on his site regarding how he might like to see the Internet in general, and blogging in specific, evolve.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could stand up now and say, okay, these are the post-curation years? The world does not need another linkblog. What is required, frankly, is what we’re supposed to call “content” these days. When I were a lad, back in the age of steam, we called this “original material.””

LINK

Ellis’ site was one of those I took a good hard look at when I first embraced the idea of a site of my own.  The combination of archive/research tool/reader portal was about what I was looking for.  Someplace to store ideas and material that might be of future use, post random thoughts, reflect on my very new working life as a writer, and give readers a reason to come back on a regular basis.  The archive and research tool part of that plan got dropped.  I ended up doing brief essays focussing primarily on writing and publishing.  As life changed, I returned to that original vision and moved my clippings and files to the site, intending to post on a wider range of subjects in a more spontaneous manner. 

But that’s not working.

After becoming a father this place went unattended for quite a while.  Returning to it and giving it an overhaul, I’d hoped to inject a little new life into it, while also making it more easily integrated to the new demands on my time.  But I’m still posting far more irregularly than I’d like.  I’m not talking about the bits of research and such, but the original essays and commentary that used to be the bulk of what Ellis quaintly refers to in the language of us in the older generation as “original material.” 

What struck me when reading Ellis’ post was basically that I think he’s right.  More to the point, I think what’s he’s driving at is right for me.  I still want this site to serve as an archive that I, or anyone else, can use to mine ideas, but I also want it to carry original, creative content.  words, put together, in the form of stories. 

Essays served me well, and I’m sure I have a few left in me.  But I think part of the reason I’ve been so often stymied in that last year when I try to think of something relevant to write is because I’ve said about all I have to say regarding writing and publishing.  For now.  I’ve plateaued.  Certainly I’m learning more about writing just about every day, but most of it is either so personal, or so subtle, that I don’t know how to share it.  As for publishing, I feel like my last several essays on the subject tended toward redundancy and whining.  Could there be anything more agonizing to regard than redundant whining?  No, there could not.

What is coming out of me with some degree of freedom are random words, slipping together, and fitting in a manner that I find pleasing and soothing.  Also good exercise.  One such example was my post from a few days ago, Necrotic Culver.  This was meant as a lark.  Having received spam sent from “Necrotic Culver”, one of those randomly generated spam names that are meant to slip past your filter, I fell in love with the name.  I thought it might pop up in a Joe Pitt book.  On later consideration I thought I might use it as the jump off for a stream of consciousness bit of micro fiction for the site. 

And I liked it.  More than I expected.  I liked the world the name led me into.  And I thought about writing more.

Days later, I received more spam (inevitably), this sent from “Shadding Lyttle”. 

A perfect fit for Necrotic Culver’s world, I thought.

And so it is.

And I wrote more.

And I will write yet more.

The Book of All Future Names will be ongoing, episodic, original fiction for the web.  I will publish and archive it here.  It will be written in stream of consciousness with no advance plotting, as few written notes as possible, and no reverse engineering.  Which is to say that I will not edit past episodes to fit as it evolves.  Names for all the characters will be drawn entirely from spam, either spam senders, or fellow addressees, or from the content of the spam. Episodes may be of any length, from a few words to thousands, but they will be published within a day or two of being started.  I’d like to write them directly into my WordPress editor, but I’ve lost too much material that way when my laptop has glitched.  Instead, I’ll be writing on Word, cutting and pasting into WordPress, and posting.  I may experiment with email posting at some point.  New episodes will appear when I have them.  But most certainly with regularity.  I will still post items for my archive, along with details of personal appearances, upcoming releases, and suchlike, but for the next several months  I will primarily be using this site as a venue for The Book of All Future Names.

Part I: Necrotic Culver

Part II: Shadding Lyttle

-c

LOS ANGELES, July 21 – First off, Packer weren’t even his real name nohow neither.

That name he got slapped with account the time he spent working the butchery, packin meats in cardboard cartons.  See him in his apron, supposed to be white, but it so drenched in pig an cow insides that it gone red all over, got them black rubber waders on, high pressure hosin the concrete floor, washin all that blood and them gobbets of whatall into the gutters and down the drains.  Someone callin to him, one of the old hands what works the blade, cutting dead flesh all day for a livin, old hand callin him, sayin, “Packer, haul your ass over here, got me a haunch got to go in the back of this man’s Cadillac.” 

Man with the Cadillac ain’t no man at all, he Bobo Link.  Bobo, that his real name, he run rackets in the Water Street cul-de-sac where the butchery did business.  He come by couple times a week for to have somethin put in his trunk, some haunch, or slab, or flank, or hock of meat sliced from whatever he took a fancy to as it hung from them danglin hooks.  Every time he come by, Packer get called over to lug that meat and drop it on the tarp spread in the trunk of that shiny white Cadillac.  Bobo, he always give the boy’s hair a tousle, pinch a saw buck between his forefinger and his flippinfinger an slip in into the boys back pocket for him.  “You come see me some time when you had enough of this crap, Packer, I’ll put you to work.  Man’s work.”  Then Bobo get in that car and roll off down out of the cul-de-sac, away off to his office on Water Street proper. 

Packer, he think about it, but not for long.  Old hand with the blade, he snap his fingers.  Packer take the ten dollars he just got gived and hand it to the cutter.  Cutting man take that ten, put it in his own pocket, hand packer a couple singles for his troubles.  Then he point his butcher blade off down the street where Bobo Link rolled to. “You go work for him, I tell you what kind of work he got for you, hustler work.  Have your ass on the street.  You want to sell that ass.”  Packer, he a kid back then, not no older than you, but big, big enough to shoulder a half a side of beef on his own and sling it if he have to.  He young but he already been here an there.  He know what the old hand sayin, but he act like he don’t, just kind of shrug.  “Dunno.”  Old hand, he run his thumb down the blade of his cutter.  “Dunno, huh?  Let me tell you then, you don’t.  Take if from me, you got a gift with the carcasses.  You stay here, earn your keep honest like.  Soon you be a cuttin man.  Have your knives.  Like bein a sculptor is what it is.  Good work.  An you’re suited.  Now git an load them beefs.  Move on it, Packer.” 

So you see then, that how he got the name.  But it not his.  His name, his name be Shadding Lyttle.  Uh huh, yes it be.  That name, it come from the place names come from, come from the Book of All Names that the old voodoo man had delivered to him by Hugo Cauldron that time I was tellin bout before this.  An how he got that name from the book is that he knew the old man his own sameself. 

When that boy were little else than a tadpole, belly swimmin in his momma’s insides, his daddy had a notion to get hisself elsewheres.  An so he did.  That boy’s daddy got hisself gone and goner.  Split town with whatall was in theys back account and under theyalls mattress and crossed the bride.  Or anyways he got halfways across the bridge.  Halfways was where someone crossed his path an took offa him all he was carryin and sent him over the rail an inta the river.  Water’s a damn hard thing to smack into from such a height. 

Anyways, Shadding Lyttle (that’s Packer to most folks), his mamma was what they call the hysterical type.  Which is to say she had a tendency to freak out at the drop of a hat.  Now I ain’t sayin that bein knocked up an havin your fella blow out the door with your savins on his hip an them have him end up takin the long dive is the drop of a hat.  Not noways unless it’s a damn big hat with a killin propensity (a propensity bein a thing you have when you got a natural way that you tend to bend towards when you got things to do).  An I don’t know no killer hats.  Do you?  Didn’t think so.  But Shadding Lyttle’s mamma anyway, she got herself hysterical, with good reason, I say, an she decided she couldn’t have no baby noways on her own with no fella and no dimes and besides which that man was no damn good and why bring inta this world one of his seed?

So she went to see the old voodoo man.

Sad old night, when she went to see him.

Old voodoo man, he deal in more than just a hex or a potion or two, he deal in medicines and medicals.  What she lookin for, well I don’t got to tell you, but what she lookin for was not to be a mamma. 

That old man, he say, “Sure, no problem.  I get that baby out of you no trouble. But you got to answer what in it for me.”  She don’t got nothin much left in this world, so all she can do is ask what he want.  Old voodoo man, he give her that grin he get on his face, grin that looks like the nastiest frown in the world, only turned the other way round.  Just as ugly as before when it pointed down, only now it pointed up like it pretending to be somethin other than what it is.  An he tell her what he want.  An she, not havin no choice nohow, she say yes, you can have that.

He get a cup make from some kinda bone that make you not want to think about where it come from, an he whisper somethin low to Cauldron Hugo, an that pot fizzle an belch and the old man dip the cup inside and bring it steaming and stinky to Shadding Lyttle’s mamma. 

Don’t look.

What happen, it bad.  Very bad.  Nothin you want to see or know about.  Trust me on that.  Ain’t sayin I’m a person you trust everyday on everythin important to you, but trust me on this. What happened to Shaddin Lyttle’s mamma, that ain’t nothin no one want to know too much about.

Suffice to say (suffice be a world that means something is just plain enough and don’t need no more), she didn’t have to be mamma to no baby without no man or no money.  Plain spoke, she didn’t have to be nothing to nobody noways any nohow anymore. 

She was dead.

People tell you the old voodoo man plan it that way.  But it ain’t be so.  He warn her, like he warn all the ladies show up on his door back in them old days, “There is no guarantee.  No guarantee that you will survive.”  Oh he guarantee plenty that theys all lose theys babies if that what they want, but no guarantee they live theys ownselves. 

Call that tough luck.

Be what it be, don’t know one nowhere be tellin you this life is fair.  They do, you know just one thing for certain, whoever it is tellin you so, they a liar.  A mean liar at that.

So then, Shadding Lyttle’s mamma, she dead from what she drunk that come from out Hugo Cauldron’s belly.  But Shadding Lyttle, he alive. 

Whatsay, you ask?

He no bigger than a tadpole, how he livin?

True I said that, but maybe I was perhaps exaggerating a little.  Exaggerating is what you do when you ain’t exactly lyin, but maybe you might be makin things to be a little more or less than they really is, so for to make a story a little better soundin. 

So he a little bigger than a tadpole when his mamma go to see the old voodoo man.  Which maybe had somthin to do with why she ain’t able to drink that potion an live. 

Enough said on that.

Shadding Lyttle alive.  So, what to become of him?  Old voodoo man, what he gonna do with what left over after the woman die?  Tell ya, never no question, he gonna keep it. 

Remember when old voodoo man whispered in mamma’s ear, told her what he take for in payment to give her that potion what killed her?  What he told her was, “Whatever you leave me, my dear.”

Ain’t no trick neither.  Old voodoo man woulda taken whatever was she left for him.  Handful of change, broken heeled shoes, wadded kleenex, button torn from her blouse.  He would have taken whatever whatfor.  Why?  Cuz he a collector of things personal.  Never know when some slight personal thing might come in handy if you in the voodoo business. 

She left a baby, not quite finished.

Old voodoo man keep that.  Keep it in a big glass bowl.  Go an tell Hugo Cauldron, “Fetch me up broth of tyrant fish and spume (spume is like frothy bubbles on top of boilin soup) from a kraken’s spit.  Fetch me lecher’s grass (a lecher is like a dirty old man standin by the playground.  Don’t talk to em.) and coffin moss.  Fetch me piker dust (piker is someone cheap) and mud from the Mariana Trench (Mariana Trench is a deep place at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It some 32,733 feet deep.  Deepest place anyone know on the face of this Earth).  Hugo Cauldron grumble some at all the work he got to do, but he hop it.  Start to burblin and gurglin and raisin some of his own damn spume, and old voodoo man start dippin his bog ol ladle in there and servin out gook and grime, spillin it all over that unripe baby boy in that glass bowl till that tiny thing be swimmin in sludge.

But he alive.  Can’t say whether he look happy, but he alive.

An so he stay.  Months come an go, old voodoo man tossin in the occasional clump of withered hag grass or a dollop (dollop is about say a big spoonful of somethin like whipped cream maybe) of beggar’s rheum (rheum is them crusty eye boogers you get at the corner of your eyes come morning).  Any old ways, that muck and mess, it keep that baby growin, an growin, an growin.  Ain’t never no time the voodoo man pull that baby out, no.  What happens is that baby grow an grow and one day that glass bowl it crack, like an egg what hatched, an out spilled a fully done baby.  Done an then some.  Less like a baby an more like a toddler.  See, that was one big damn bowl he was in. 

Old voodoo man he look up from where he’s twisted some hair from someone’s head onto a rusty nail for some mischief or other, he point at the boy an he say, “Shadding Lyttle.  Looked you up in the Book of All Names, boy, and you are Shadding Lyttle.”

Boy look at that old man an you know what he did?  He said his first world right there.  Know what that word was?  Well I tell ya.

“Mamma.”

How damn sad is that.

Anyway, I was supposed again to be tellin how Packer, that was really Shadding Lyttle, lost his mob to Necrotic Culver.  But it late again.  So you bide some and we get to it next time.

-c

 

Necrotic Culver: The Book of All Future Names I

PS

 Shadding Lyttle was the sender on another piece of spam.  Bobolink was one of the addressees on more spam.  See this POST for my Book of All Future

LOS ANGELES, July 16 - Packer wants his mob back.

Bingo told him, “Let it go, Pack, they’s gone and goner and ain’t nohow gonna come back.” 

But Packer won’t let it go.  That mob, he gathered em, fed em, learned em what and whyfor, put clothes on they’s hides and roofed they’s heads.  Nurtured em is alls he did. 

Then Necrotic Culver came along.

Hip sashayin Necrotic Culver, castin’ spells with her sway, draggin all eyes after her as she comes down the street.

Hear that traffic screech and crunch?  Cars forcin theys ways into one another?  That’s Necrotic walkin by.  Distractin drivers as they approach a yella lighted intersection.  Blowin they’s timin.   Dishes bein dropped, mans walkin through plate glass windas, fellas trippin over they’s own feet, crotch splittin they’s own selves on fire plugs.  Sowin chaos and discord is what she does.   

Necrotic Culver. Like she’s all that.  Like she got it like that.  Well, truth bein a thing to be told, truth is she is all that.  And she got it. Not always so. Before she bit it, took that dirt nap, before she up and died and all, she didn’t have nothin that was noways special to see. But when she come back? Oooh that Necrotic Culver.  Look at that.  Loose limbed and long.  Tight black leather keepin her together, pale skin, long back nails, that shaved head thing goin on and really workin it. How she get so damn hot? Dyin.  Dyin is all.   Necrotic Culver, up and died, come back steamin.   

Other ladies see her, they turn theys noses up, act like they can’t don’t see it, like it ain’t there.  But it is.  An they see it and they knows it too.  Couple ladies, they try it, like it’s a beauty secret or some damn thing.  Pop a cap in theys ownselves, put theyselves down.  That Necrotic chick come back so damn hot, see what happens when some real thing come back. But it don’t work.  They’s just dead.  Plain old dead.  Gettin uglier by the second.  Some shit just only works for some people and other people need to learn to keep to shit they’s understand. 

Necrotic Culver, she understands dyin. Lady born into it, born into dyin. 

Momma died on the table pushin her out.  Daddy died even before that.  Granny died when she found out she was gonna have to take care of this damn baby.  Other granny already dead.  One grand pappy was dyin in a alley with a needle in his arm the night Necrotic was conceived, so they say.  Brother was born still years ago.  Two sisters, twins like, one died she was three years old and wanted to know what broken glass tasted like, other twin sister died at the same time, of the same bleedin’ inside, even though she didn’t eat no glass.  I ain’t lyin.  That shit is truth.  Aunties and uncles, all dead.  Hangin rope, car crash, influenza, big C, an 89 bullets from the guns of a half dozen policemen is what got them. Add it all up, Necrotic Culver came inta this world with one grand pappy for family. 

And that grand pappy, he was a mean sonuvabitch. Bad voodoo that old man. 

An I don’t mean it in the figurative way neither. 

Catch him up in his attic room in that old Bogardus  building on Lispenard Street.  Got a big stew pot stewin all the damn time.  Only that no stew pot, that a damn cauldron.   

See a picture of three hags around a big pot, stirring in frog brains an such?  That pot’s a cauldron. Necrotic Culver’s grand pappy, he had hisself a damn cauldron.  An that cauldron, it had a name.  A pot with a name.  I ain’t lyin.  Called that pot Hugo.  Talked to that pot.  Old man sittin up there with that pot, havin a conversation like.  Sayin, “Hugo, fetch me that dawn light from off the coast of Korcula.  Don’t talk back to me, Hugo, I’ll set you over the fire and forget to fill you up.  Leave you dry on the hob with nothing to boil.  Neglect to scrub you out and oil your belly, I will.  That’s right, Hugo, a little of that dawn light from the coast of Korcula would be perfect. And a little less talking back next time.” 

Crazy old man, talkin to a pot.   

An now, now this old man got what?   A baby.  A baby girl at that.  His dead wife’s sister’s daughter goes and dies on the damn table and leaves no one nohow to take care of this little snippet an someways someone pulls his name outta some damn hat an finds him up in his room in that old iron building an says, “This here’s your grand daughter.  Take her an sign this receipt for goods received.” 

First thought he had was simple enough.  No.  No damn way.  Not takin no damn baby.  Not signin no damn receipt.  He married a woman who turned out to be cursed and unlucky and she up and died young.  Far as he was concerned her dyin cut all ties with her side of the family.  Hadn’t seen them people for whatsay years an years an years.  An Marryin one of their women didn’t make him obliged to raise one of their baby childs.  Noways nohow. Bout to slam the door in the social worker’s face an send that baby back off to find someone elseways to be burdened, he happened to catch a peek of her eyes. 

Mismatched eyes.  One an another color eyes. 

Not like one bein blue an the other brown or likewise, but one bein red an the other black.  Left eye red like a fire engine.  Red like the apple Snow White’s witchy step mama brought to put her to sleep.  Red like what runs from a suicide’s veins in the tub when he punches his ticket to the other side.  Right eye black.  Black like caves at night.  Black like under a blanket in the back of a big closet with the light off an the door closed.  Black like evil. 

Old man look at those eyes, an he liked what he saw. Said, “We’ll give it a try.”  Scratched somthin at the bottom of the receipt, somethin that made the paper hiss and smoke, and took  that baby and slammed the door before the social worker could have a second thought an take that baby out of that place. 

An there he was, old voodoo man with a baby in his arms.  Lookin at her, those eyes, tellin him that there might be somethin special bout this girl, somthin to tilt-a-whirl the world offa it’s axis.  Somethin to make the start stumbly.   “You got potential, young lady,” is what he said.  Then he cackled. 

Kind of a laugh is what a cackle is.  Wicked kind of a laugh.  Evil.  Like you’re thinkin on doin somthin you know you shouldn’t oughtta be doin cuz you know it’s gonna cause trouble for all kinds a people but you kinda like that anyways an ya laugh bout it?  That’s a cackle.  Old man cacklin, rockin that baby girl in his arms, cacklin away. Hugo, that cauldron, that big steamin pot, start cacklin too, like it in on the joke.  But Hugo just cacklin cuz it think maybe the old man gonna toss that baby inside his big black belly, braise her, like slow cookin with some nice red wine an a big pile of taters an suchlike.  Yum.  But that ain’t the old man’s plan nohow.  Not yet. 

“Stop that cackling, Hugo.  She’s not for you,” so he says.  And the pot stopped cacklin and started sulkin.  “Not for you,” says the old man.  “A little lady like this, with potential like she has, she needs a name.  Fetch me the book of names, Hugo, from the Library at Alexandria, the book of all future names.” 

I know, I know.  The Library at Alexandria ain’t there. 

Aside from it bein crazy to tell a pot to fetch you this an that, now the old man’s sendin his pot to fetch something from someplace that ain’t is no more.  Mean, that library, thought up by Ptolomy the Savior took so long to build and fill, it didn’t even have no grand openin till his son Ptolomy II come along to cut the ribbon.  An while a place that aimed to gather up all the knowledge in the world an collect it on one place might have such a book as the one that old man was tellin his pot to fetch for him, that Library at Alexandria was burned down a whole long time ago.  At least once.  Julius Caesar in 48 BC may have caused the fire when he burned his own damn fleet during a failed attack and set the Egyptian docks on fire, burnin down the whole damn city. Or the Emperor Aurelian in the third century could have done it when he was suppressing a revolt by Queen Zenobia of Palmyra.  Or the Christian patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria in 391 may have done it to comply with a order to destroy all pagan temples an places of worship (though what that has to do leastways with a library is lost on me.  Or Amr bin al Aas’s army after the Battle of Heliopolis in 642 may have burned them books to heat they’s bathwater.  Or maybe such all four burned different parts of that great library over the years. 

Don’t no one know nohow rightwise. 

But here that crazy old man tellin a pot to fetch him a book from that library. An know what that pot does?  He does as he’s told.   

Cauldron Hugo burbles and boils and gurgles and sputters and steams and whooshpop, a book, a big damn book, comes bobbin to the surface.  Old man dips that book out with a mighty ladle and flaps it back an forth to dry the pages and drops it on the floor, pages floppin open howsoever they will.  Closes his eyes and says somethin in a ways that sounds like he’s talking backwards Russian an jabs his toe down an this is what he read when he opened his eyes. 

Necrotic Culver. 

Smiled did this old man.  Toothsome and gummy that smile, like he’s thinkin on bitin into something yummy like.  Somethin braised mayhaps.  Looked at the baby girl in his arms, looked at those red an black eyes, and gave her her name. “Necrotic Culver, is your name, little lady.  Says so right here in the book.” 

An that’s how that girl got that damn name. 

But I was talkin on Packer an his mob.  How he lost them to Necrotic.  An how he badly wanted them back.  After all the work he’d put in on them.   

Well, it’s late now.  So we’ll finish that up nother nightby. 

Hush to sleep.

-c

Shadding Lyttle: The Book of All Future Names II

PS

Received spam the other day.  Sender’s name: “necrotic culver”. Inspiration is where you find it.