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