SQUIB WOULD HAVE LIKED TO GET ON THE DRAGON SITUATION ASAFP, but there were things to do. Things like cleaning himself up till he was the squeaky-clean epitome of innocence in five-foot-five Cajun form. Things like destroying all evidence of his involvement in the dragon situation, which was an add-on to the first thing, really. And in this respect Squib caught a break, as the whole Hooke-collapsing-on-the-premises episode had more or less trashed the stilt house’s main area. The constable had been all wheeling and splattering, distributing more mess than a group of finger-painting toddlers on a Skittles sugar high.
His momma had ridden with Hooke to the clinic, pausing just long enough for a cursory check on Squib.
“Goddamn that constable,” she whispered at Squib, who was probably in shock, which passably approximated just-woken-up wooziness. “That man is a plague on the parish. I’m no sooner out of that damn place than I gotta go back in again. I’m still in my scrubs. You get some breakfast in the Pearl, okay, cher?”
Squib had mumbled, “Okay, Momma,” and put his head back down like, Here I go off to sleep again like I been doing all night.
But no sooner had the paramedics stretchered Hooke off the Moreau stoop than Squib was up and pacing.
Could be that the dragon wasn’t done with him for the day.
Could be he’d come back and torch the whole place with him inside it.
Squib couldn’t help thinking that he kinda-sorta woulda deserved that. He’d been sticking his oar into other people’s creeks for so long now that he was due some kind of payback. The universe, you know? A person keeps waggling his ass at a shark, then someday that shark’s gonna bite. Especially if the shark’s a dragon.
But not Momma. Momma’s good people. The best. All she does is look out for me. I’m the one waggling my ass.
Miss Ingram would call that a metaphor, he said to himself.
Squib was almost overcome with an adolescent desire to text Charles Jr. over in Riverview Trailers, but he decided that the best thing to do was keep the circle small. The less people who knew, the less people were gonna get hurt.
Should he tell the police?
Oh, sure. Tell ’em that Constable Hooke slit a smuggler’s throat, and then his face got torn off by a flying turtle, shortly after which I was abducted by a gator-overlord dragon.
Even if he bypassed the constable’s office and went direct to the sheriff in St. Tammany, who were they gonna call?
Ghostbusters?
No, sir.
Regence goddamn Hooke, that’s who.
No, Squib, son. Keep this nightmare to your own self. Hooke don’t know shit and Vern can be figured out.
Before nightfall, though.
Squib knew that scaly critter was gonna drag his ass back upriver come dusk to finish what he started.
But Problemo A: clean up the swamp mess, which might take his mind off Problemo B: avoid being a dragon’s dinner.
Squib switched on the boiler and, while he waited on the hot tank, stripped off his own crusted duds and the bedclothes, too, and balled up the whole lot into a trash bag, along with the woven chair cover Hooke had messed all over and the rug the constable had a shit fit on.
He tossed the sack on the porch, then made a decent try at swabbing the Moreau shack down. After that he patted the boiler to test for heat, then showered his own self in the bath stall.
As he scrubbed the bilge from his crannies, he thought on the whole dragon predicament, pinching his flesh from time to time to remind himself that Vern was real and on the hunt. It would be all too easy in the light of day, and in something of a daze, to believe the monster nothing more than a nightmarish figment, but Squib was determined to figure a solution before sunset brought a fiery reckoning.
Waxman had once advised Squib to keep moving, for that’s when answers presented themselves: i.e., when the mind was active.
“Them idlers staring outta windows is just staring outta windows. They ain’t solving shit,” he’d said.
Keep on keeping on, thought Squib. Get the cogs turning.
So he shrugged himself into his second set of clothes, which was jeans and a cut-off black T-shirt, and, throwing his sack of sodden articles over one shoulder, headed off to the Pearl Bar and Grill.
SQUIB MADE THE short hike to the Pearl in less than ten minutes. The entire township of Petit Bateau boasted barely more than five hundred residences, not counting the various shotgun shacks, trailers, and houseboats dotted around the limits like scattered seed. And fully one-fifth of those residences were boarded up. Currently the mayor was lobbying for a name change, as it had long been a source of embarrassment for the townsfolk that the name “Petit Bateau” had risqué connotations, i.e., “petit bateau de pêches,” that being old-timey slang for cooter.
In truth, the town was less of a town and more of a village, and less a village and more of a collection of services sprung up around a landing on the West Pearl River, just off the interstate. Didn’t even have its own ramp, just a two-mile-long service road leading right down through the cypress swamp to the riverside.
Bodi Irwin was the town’s lifeblood: a benevolent mogul who somehow managed to run Petit Bateau’s bar, boatyard, swamp tours, and shooting range. The campsite was presided over by his sister Eleanora, and he employed most of the town, even attracting labor out from the city at the height of tourist season.
Squib could have made the journey in five minutes easy, as he usually walked double time, eager to make a dollar one way or another, but today, post-dragon-encounter, he took himself round back of the trio of Creole cottages that served as town hall, constable’s office, and car lot, just in case Hooke had somehow crawled out of his hospital bed and was spying through the slats of his office blinds, watching out for some kid with a bag of swamp laundry.
Also, Squib wanted to make a silent entry via the Pearl’s back door so he could load up the bar’s industrial washing machine, and maybe grab himself a grilled cheese with hot sauce before Bodi noticed he was present and correct.
He was two bites into the sandwich when Bodi appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking like a refugee from a Grateful Dead tribute act, long graying hair tied up in a Stars and Stripes bandanna.
“How you eat that shit I don’t know, son,” said Bodi. “That hot sauce will tear the lining right out of your stomach, and that amount of cheese will back up your plumbing big time.”
“Thanks, Mister Irwin,” said Squib. “Appreciate the culinary advice.”
Bodi snorted. “Culinary, my ass. We don’t do culinary here, boy. We do whatever the tourists want. Gumbo, crawfish, po’boys. Four different kinds of fries. Chicken wings at a push. Ain’t no ‘culinary’ on the menu.”
Squib crammed a triangle of grilled cheese into his mouth. “Whatever you say, Mister Irwin. What you got on the list for me?” Thinking, Don’t send me out on the river, not today.
And it was like Bodi reached into his mind and plucked out the thought.
“Today,” said the bar owner, “I got to send you out on the river. Waxman’s vodka came in, and you gotta run a crate down to him.”
And what had been fresh bread in Squib’s mouth tasted suddenly like swamp sludge.
Well, balls, he thought, but aloud he said, “Yessir, Mister Irwin. Gimme ten minutes to bring my boat around to the yard.”
“Take thirty,” said Bodi. “First run a rinse cycle on my machine, clean out all that shit you left in the drum.”
“That was Constable Hooke made the mess,” said Squib. “He showed up this morning snake-bit. Momma rode with him to Slidell.”
“I heard,” said Bodi. “Your momma done more than I would have. All we can pray for is that no-account asshole don’t make it till nightfall.”
“Amen,” said Squib, with feeling.
VERN SWAM DIRECTLY from Petit Bateau, or specifically the Moreau landing, to Waxman’s houseboat on the east side of the West Pearl, maybe a mile diagonally across the river. The houseboat was of the shotgun variety, and sat ten feet wide, set half in the river on cypress stumps. The houseboat must have been something other than swamp-colored at some point in its history, but now looked like it had been camouflaged by experts, when in fact it was simply assimilated. Vern often commented that it looked like “the goddamn Borg gotta hold of this craft,” to which Waxman always responded, “The goddamn who you say?”
Waxman didn’t appreciate modern media as much as Vern. He was more of a reader.
“I just lolls around,” he’d say. “Toot some weed, then see what the fuckin’ demon lizard wants this time. Pain-in-the-ass dragon be the bane of my existence.”
To which Vern usually responded with something along the lines of, “You just remember where I found you, Waxman. I am your liberator.”
Waxman generally chose not to stir from his deck hammock till late afternoon, preferring the hours of dusking sky for business, but Vern considered this Squib situation a full-blown emergency and wanted to engage Waxman’s expertise tout de suite.
The swim across wasn’t nothing special. Vern dodged a tour boat and scythed through a fishing net, punching a cheeky gator just to burn off some of his irritation, but within minutes was shucking off river water at Waxman’s deck.
The houseboat had a fairground candy-striped awning out back that Waxman kept to remind him of the bad times. The awning seemed impervious to even the enswampening of the dwelling itself, shining with a reasonable luminescence while simultaneously throwing the area beneath into deep shadow, which suited Vern on the rare occasion he felt it necessary to show up in person and not send a WhatsApp.
Waxman was surprisingly not laid up in his hammock but sitting in his rocker on the slatted deck, an AK-47 laid across his bony knees.
“Heard me some explosions,” he explained. “Figured either a flare or a visit. Praise be: Lord Highfire come to parlay with his subject.”
Waxman was a sight to behold.
By all laws of nature, a fellow with that amount of wrinkles on his visage should be tumbling forth out of a sarcophagus or some such, but Waxman was alive and kicking. Mostly kicking back was how he liked it now. But there was life in the old dog, and so forth. He wore a suit of black-panther velvet and a black bowler hat with a rooster quill in the band. His face might have been any color at some point but had come around to gray mostly, with black in the creases. Sky-blue eyes and a white beard curled down into his scarlet cravat.
Folks who got up close, who were few and far between, said that Waxman’s skin looked scorched, like he’d been given the third degree as a little one, which was kinda funny considering the origins of his species.
Which were as follows: Somewhere along the line when dragons were kings of the hill, one would occasionally crossbreed with a human. That didn’t usually turn out so happy-ever-after for the progeny. A baby dragon had teeth from the get-go, which didn’t augur well for the human mother, and a dragoness’s tubes would crush a human baby on the way out. So most of these mutant children never saw the light of day. But life is tenacious, and every so often one of these tough little bastards would pop out looking like he’d spent the night in a cauldron rather than a womb, all burned in appearance. Eventually you got an Adam and an Eve, so to speak, and they took it from there on their own, propagating a new hybrid species neither dragon nor human, and not accepted in either world.
Waxman was one of these guys: full-breed new breed and tough as briar. He wasn’t in Vern’s league age-wise; he numbered in centuries, rather than millennia. The Chinese called what Waxman was a mogwai, a malevolent-type fairy. But history was written by the victors, and humans had a habit of painting themselves as the nonmalevolent guys in spite of the fact that everyone else was generally swinging from gibbets. And if Waxman was asked, he wouldn’t consider himself unnecessarily malevolent. He was a survivor, was all, and a guy did what had to be done.
Mogwai and dragons often buddied up to avoid death by whatever elaborate method the crusading mob favored at the time. Vern ran into Waxman in the early 1960s, when the mogwai was doing some indentured servitude as a freak on a circus train. Vern heard about the Amazing Melting Man and reckoned the circus had a mogwai on its hands and it sure would be nice to have someone to talk to.
So, a little rescue operation, he thought. Quick in and out. No mess, no fuss.
Turned out there was beaucoup mess and fuss. Vern miscalculated his approach and derailed half a dozen flatcars as they crossed the Pump Slough Bridge, sending them plunging into the Pearl.
“Some goddamn rescue,” Waxman often noted. “Broke my goddamned back.”
It had been, Vern would admit, a “stoppered cock of a situation,” which had been quite the phrase back in the day. Waxman’s back had been broken, but luckily Waxman had amazing healing qualities.
“And I almost drowned,” was the mogwai’s usual gripe.
Which was true.
“‘Almost’ being the word,” Vern always argued. “I fished your sorry ass out of the river, didn’t I? I can ship you back to the circus if you prefer? If running the occasional errand for me is too strenuous?”
And Waxman would chuckle and say, “Nah, you ain’t the worst, Highfire. You is just the ugliest.”
The most useful thing about Waxman, from Vern’s perspective, was that he could pass for human—weird as all hell, but still human, which accounted for him living way downriver. And so long as he kept his jacket on, stayed swamp-wild, and paid his bills, then no one bothered him. Of course, every now and then a couple of good old boys would try their luck, but Waxman had more pep in his step than one might assume, and he kept his weapons in good order.
Like the AK-47 which lay across his lap right now. Vern noticed the mogwai’s finger was on the trigger, and he knew Waxman was putting those sharp ears of his to work, making sure Vern hadn’t picked up a tail.
“Clear, Vern,” he said eventually. “So far as I can tell. These days those sharp-eyed motherfuckers could be watching us from off-world.”
“Let’s mosey inside,” said Vern, shaking his wings. “I can’t relax none with the sun on my back.”
“Ain’t that a sorry statement?” said Waxman, and rocked forward in his chair, using the momentum to scooch himself upright. “Too early, you think?”
“Ain’t never too early,” said Vern, and followed his associate into the houseboat.
WAXMAN’S ORIGINAL NAME was lost in the twists of time. In the days since, he had been known as Winkle, Blackhoof, Saundersonn, Roachford, Roach, and finally Waxman. The mogwai had never felt the need for a first name or qualifier.
“Ain’t but one Waxman,” he always said, to which Vern usually replied, “You can sing that, brother.”
Waxman used to have family, back in the way back when, and maybe he still did. Weren’t no hives left, just spread out and fit in was the plan. Latch onto a dragon if you could, but there weren’t so many of those anymore neither, and Waxman had near to gone into early hibernation when Vern dropped out of the sky.
“Shit, your lard-ass descending from the heavens was one of the sweetest sights I ever seen, even if you did shatter my goddamned back.”
Vern let the “lard-ass” comment go, and that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Half a century and counting.
And the Waxman name worked for the mogwai. Suited his face.
“Makes me seem a character,” he said. “‘Crazy Waxman’ would be better, or maybe ‘Scary Waxman’ to keep the kids away, but ‘Waxman’ will do just fine. I’m like Boo fuckin’ Radley on crack to these backward-ass folk.”
Truth was, Waxman was scary, or could be, when the occasion called for it, and sometimes, if he was feeling irritable, when it didn’t. Most of the time he was just a swamp character, living out on his houseboat, cut off from civilization; plenty of old guys went off the grid. Kept himself to himself mostly. Something up with his face, but who gave a good goddamn about that so long as he paid his bills? But it had happened, down the years, that some boat people would exercise their human nature and try taking over Waxman’s little patch, and then the mogwai would take out his bag.
That creepy-ass bag of sharp things and small corked bottles.
Wasn’t no human saw that bag and lived to tell the tale, and Vern often thought that he never wanted anything coming out of that bag with his name on it, because he knew there was something in that purple silk interior that was brewed special for him.
Vern tucked his wings and ducked through the doorway. The inside of the houseboat was a lot more salubrious than the outside. Waxman liked his comforts, even if he didn’t draw attention to the fact. The only people who knew how Waxman lived were Vern and Bodi Irwin, who ordered his antiques, and often dropped them off in the tour cruiser, if they were too bulky for the boy who ran for him.
Wall-to-wall rugs, North African mostly, overlapping each other’s borders. A forest floor of colors and textures. The walls were pumped full of foam insulation, and there was a nice quiet Honda generator running the electrics when the solar panels on the roof ran out of juice. Where Vern had his cable TV with its treetop combi-dish for entertainment, Waxman had books: three walls of books, which started one shelf off the deck in case of damp or storm, a tactic learned the hard way, the most bitter lesson being a water-damaged first edition of Ulysses. The Irish version.
Vern had scoffed, “Irish Ulysses? I wouldn’t pay ten bucks for that shit. You been had, Wax. Ulysses was a Greek sonuvabitch.”
Which had almost put an end to their symbiosis.
But Waxman endured. “You know, Highfire, how come a dragon be so old and so ignorant?”
Which led to huffing on both sides, but they got over it. No choice really. What the hell else were they going to do?
Because of the Ulysses incident, there was not one but two dehumidifiers running at all times and a slab of air-conditioning machinery crouched in one corner. Waxman’s bed was an ebony four-poster, which had taken some lugging, and he had a rainfall shower plumbed in which Vern envied even as he scoffed at it.
“You gotta watch all this shit when I’m down,” said Waxman. “Specially the books. Something happens to my Faulkners and that’s the final nail in the coffin as far as this here is concerned.”
Vern settled into a velvet armchair with the ass conveniently sawed out of it to accommodate his tail. “You ain’t going down anytime soon, though, right?”
Waxman took down a bottle of fine Irish whiskey from the dresser. “Could be soon. I feel this thing in my hide.”
Vern accepted a tumbler of whiskey. “Hide? The hell you say. You gone all New Agey on me, Wax?”
“Nah,” said Waxman, sniffing his drink, “my skin gets all itchy. Look at me, Highfire. I’m grayer than a badger’s asshole. This skin has gotta come off. I can show you if you have a hankering for specifics.”
Vern finished his drink in a swallow. “I’ll take a pass there, Wax. It’s bad enough I got to see your face.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” said Waxman. “Thing is, my entire skin is above regular on the itch scale, which means I gotta go down for the dirt nap soon.”
“Shit, Wax,” said Vern. “When?”
“As soon as,” said Waxman. “Once we sort whatever needs to be sorted. Whatever brings you here in the first place.”
Vern was not best pleased with this news. “Come on, Wax, ain’t you got some way to bypass that process?”
The mogwai laughed. “Yeah, Highfire. I jest calls up Mother Nature and asks her to speed up evolution. You sure is a dumb shit for an ancient motherfucker.”
Vern tossed off his second drink and scowled. “If we got to drink whiskey, you know I favor Scotch.”
“Sorry,” said the mogwai, betraying his lie with a grin, “all’s I got is Irish. Irish like Ulysses.”
Vern crossed his legs and stared through the golden film at the bottom of his glass down to the marl-tinged shades of the rug under his feet. He twisted his cut-glass tumbler, a makeshift kaleidoscope. “I need the bag, Wax.”
Waxman sighed, deep down to his boots. “Come on, Highfire. I ain’t needed the bag in years. A guy gets older, you know? You need someone killed, do it your own self. You never had no problem before.”
“This is different. I need this fella done quiet. It’s a human, if that helps your conscience.”
“It does, but not much. Tell the truth, I’m about done with hating the world. It’s hard to maintain.”
“I know it,” said Vern. “Even Ice Cube smiles now and again. But I got seen, Wax. Up close. Flying, conversing, the whole works.”
“And this human? You let him escape?”
“Goddamn gator,” said Vern. “Came stomping in with a challenge. I got distracted and the human, the boy, shoots out the window. Plucky little fucker, I give him that.”
Waxman sat up. “Plucky little fucker, says you? You got a name to go with that description?”
“I do, indeedy. A stupid-ass name,” said Vern.
The dragon didn’t need to say it.
“My nerves are twitching up a storm,” said Waxman. “Squib Moreau, am I right?”
Now Vern sat up. “Right you are, Wax. These nerves of yours is pretty goddamn specific with names.”
“Naw,” said Waxman, “I am familiar with Squib is all.”
“You’re familiar with him? That ain’t gonna be a deal-breaker, Wax? You know the arrangement we got.”
Waxman finger-combed his beard. “I know it, Vern. Us against them, right?”
“Goddamn right. Like it’s always been. The angry mob ain’t nothing but one jabbering kid away from our doors.”
“Thing is, Highfire,” said Waxman slowly, “this kid, Squib, he don’t exactly jabber.”
Vern snorted. “He jabbered plenty when I showed him the dragon flame. Tried to make himself all familiar. Showed me his fingers and shit.”
Waxman smiled, and a person looking closely might spot that there seemed to be a second row of teeth lurking behind the front set. “Yeah, Squib’s an operator, sure enough.”
Vern was a little surprised by Waxman’s attitude. “You gone soft on me?” he asked. “You loving humans now?”
“I ain’t loving nobody,” said Waxman. “Not even your scaly ass. But Squib. He’s a one, you know? Credit where it’s due.”
“What in blue blazes are you talking about, Wax? ‘Credit where it’s due’? Have you gone and switched sides on me?”
“Calm down, Highfire,” said Waxman; then he actually shushed the dragon.
Vern was not one for being shushed. “‘Calm down’? You forget that cage I found you in? Look at you, Wax. You’re positively purring over that kid.”
“Well, lookee here,” said Waxman, clapping his hands. “Highfire is shook up. What the hell happened downriver?”
“Shit,” said Vern. “Shit happened. Explosions. Boats sinking. The whole ball of wax. I either gotta tie this off or move on, Wax. Not that I like it here overly, but I don’t like it nowhere else neither.”
“And this boy, Squib. That’s the only way?”
“How I see it. Less’n you got something else up that sleeve?”
Waxman sighed. “I hates to do it, Highfire. That boy does for me like I do for you, if you get my drift. Keeps me in the supply chain. Good kid, too. Resourceful. He ain’t the squealing type.”
“Sure,” huffed Vern, “ain’t nobody the squealing type till they get a load of me. Little asshole has probably already done squealed. Only chance we got is that he was messing with Constable Hooke downriver, so could be he won’t run to the law.”
“How about I do Hooke?” said Waxman, brightly. “I would surely hop to that task. I got just the bottle for that prick.”
Vern shook his head. “Hooke didn’t see nothing apart from his own ass catching fire. I reckon he’ll steer clear.”
“You don’t know Hooke. That man is trouble. I can smell it offa him a mile away.”
“So long as he stays a mile away.”
Waxman reached up with both hands and set eight fingers on the brim of his felt bowler hat, removing it delicately and laying it on his lap like a house cat. “You is set on the kid then, Highfire?”
“I can’t see another way. I done marked his crib for you. There’s this metal rail on the decking. Get it done, is my advice, before he gets to whispering with his buddies after pud-tugging time.”
Waxman stroked the hat, which was a downright creepy habit. “No need for the mark o’ the dragon, Highfire. Kid should be here in a half hour or so.”
Vern found himself both delighted and anxious. “He’s coming here? That is downright considerate. I should shake a leg and let you be about your business.”
Waxman cackled. “No, sir, Highfire. It is true that Waxman goes where you cannot go, but since you is already present and correct, I’m thinking you can sit a spell and do your own dirty work.”
“Come on, Wax. I need to get gone. You the man when it comes to vanishing humans.”
Waxman mulled this over. “I been thinking about that. Humans, dragons, mogwai—ain’t no bad species nor good species. Ain’t you always telling me how your brother was an asshole?”
“He was an asshole,” said Vern with vehemence, flashing on his brother, Jubelus, looming over him and mashing pig guts into his face.
“Three thousand years and still you can’t let that go,” said Waxman. “But my point is that we is all souls. And there is good souls and bad souls. The boy Squib is somewhere in the middle, but I believe he’s leaning toward good. So if you want to vanish him against my counsel, then you gotta do the deed your own self.”
Vern squinted, considering this. The mogwai didn’t offer this level of counsel lightly. Usually shooting the breeze was about as profound as it got at Chez Waxman. Vern had learned to spend a while mulling over anything that resembled the philosophical coming out of his friend’s mouth, but on this occasion there was no time for mulling, and no room for soul theories. The boy had got to be got was the boiled-down bones of the truth.
Vern thought that maybe he could pull rank, but really, the mogwai-dragon thing was pretty much an equal-partners class of an arrangement, and he couldn’t blame Waxman none for being leery of the job. Wasn’t in his nature anymore. Sure, the mogwai had his bag of tricks, but he didn’t relish opening it unless completely necessary. And he drew the line at kids of any species. It could be argued that this Moreau boy wasn’t exactly a kid, but he wasn’t exactly a grown-up neither.
“You ain’t for budging on this, I guess?” said Vern.
“Reckon I ain’t,” confirmed Waxman, threading the feather in his hatband through his fingers like he was stroking a tiny bird.
“Well then, I’ll do the kid,” said Vern, “and leave you to stroking your hat. Which is creepy as all hell, by the way.”
“I’d rather be a hat stroker than a kid killer,” said Waxman, which did have a ring of logic to it.
SQUIB WAS JUMPY as a cat in a doghouse traversing the river. The current tugged at the hull of his pirogue, but the boat rode the catspaws like a leaf and cut across the flow in a series of tiny hops. On another day, Squib might have relished the sunlight on his face and the prospect of passing an hour with old Waxman, who was never averse to beer and cigarettes in the afternoon under that circus awning of his, but today he was hot and bothered by the knowledge that dragons could swim and he was currently on the water.
Dragons can swim? he thought. Surely to Christ that ain’t fair, swimming and flying both? What kind of a chance does a fella have against abilities like that?
The Pearl River was bustling now—nothing compared to the Port of New Orleans, but by St. Tammany Parish standards they were bang in the middle of rush hour, with tour cruisers heading out for the afternoon shift, loaded to the gunwales with folks itching for a glimpse of the legendary Honey Island monster.
I could tell them, thought Squib. The monster is real as all hell, but he don’t reside on Honey Island.
These boats could be his salvation, Squib realized. Vern had stayed alive by keeping himself to himself, so could be the dragon would not relish breaching the surface with so many itchy shutter-fingers on the river, so he plotted himself a zigzag course cross-river, bumping up close to the tour cruisers, just a traditional-type Cajun boy willing to flash his poor-ass optimistic smile for the tourists. It took a while longer to make the journey, but Squib reckoned he wasn’t in no particular hurry, and the cruisers kept him safe from dragon strike.
Dragon strike. Imagine, that’s a real thing. If Charles Jr. knew, he would crap his pants.
This wasn’t a word of exaggeration. Charles Jr. had crapped his pants once before, in seventh grade, when some asshole in a clown mask had snuck up on him. His friend would have a pants-crapping reputation still if Waxman hadn’t advised him through Squib to climb up on a cafeteria table and drop his jeans, confirming the monster-dick rumors. And as Waxman had predicted, dick trumps drawers any day of the week.
It took a while, but eventually Squib got eyes on Waxman’s houseboat, rising up outta the river like part of the cypress forest, all camouflaged apart from a flash of the awning round back. Squib came up on Waxman one time when the old man was down past the label on a bottle of Jameson and learned a couple of things. One, the swamp dweller didn’t much care for vodka, and two, he disliked circus folk even more than clear spirits.
Old Waxman never drilled down into either comment much, but it had left Squib wondering why the hell he was delivering crates of Absolut to the houseboat once a fortnight.
For an old boy who don’t like vodka, he sure chugs through an amount of it.
As Squib tied off on Waxman’s pole, it occurred to him that maybe here was a guy who could offer some advice re: his dragon situation. It was said in town that Waxman was near to one hundred years old, and surely to Christ a man couldn’t live on the water that long and not catch a sniff of a dragon downriver.
Could be old Waxman will have a trick or two up that velvet sleeve of his.
Squib hefted the crate of Absolut from his boat and swung it onto the deck, where it landed with a jangle of clinkings.
“Waxman,” he called, announcing his presence loud and clear. It didn’t do to sneak up on anybody in the bayou. The human-to-gun ratio in this swamp was about five times the national average, and the shots-fired-to-guns-owned ratio was even higher. “It’s your boy, Squib Moreau. I got you a crate of Russian lightning.”
“Lug it in, boy,” came Waxman’s voice from inside the houseboat. It was an out-of-the-ordinary type of voice. Maybe the acid that’d done for his face had soaked through the vocal cords. Waxman sounded like one of those old-time blues singers who spent sixty years in smoky joints and came out the other end with a growl like a junkyard dog. Squib liked the sound; he liked sitting around listening to Waxman talk about long ago, shit that went down when castles had murder holes and battle was waged with honest-to-God axes. Horror stories, but cool to listen to.
“I’m coming, Waxman,” said Squib, and rather than humping the blue plastic crate, he just dragged it across the planks, smooth as they were with great age.
Generally Squib would’ve said “Mister Waxman” or “sir,” schooled in manners as he was by his momma, but Waxman didn’t hold no truck with formalities: “Just ‘Waxman,’ boy, less’n you wanna call me ‘Handsome Waxman,’ and then I know you be lying.”
So plain old “Waxman” it was.
Squib pulled aside the screen and nudged the crate through the doorway with the toe of his Converse. He sighed hugely, as though he had completed the labors of Hercules.
“There she is, Waxman. One crate of Absolut, free from additives and colorants. Hell, it’s practically a health drink.”
Waxman was in his upright armchair, which, according to Bodi Irwin, he had shipped from England, where it might one time have been warmed by the queen’s royal behind.
Squib picked up the crate and carried it into the center of the room, lifting his feet over the overlapping edges of the rugs. He plonked it down on a small round table that didn’t look balanced right, the stem being off to one side; didn’t seem like it could bear the weight, but it always did.
“You should come down to the bar one Saturday,” said Squib. “Could be you’d like it.”
Waxman stuck out his lower lip and shook his head. “I ain’t a fan o’ mankind, son. With certain exceptions.”
“Me being one of those exceptions, I’m hoping,” said Squib.
“You being one, Bodi another. I like you fine, but I ain’t about to go buck-sociable, no offense.”
“None taken. I’m happy to be liked.”
Waxman shifted in his chair. “Sometimes being liked ain’t enough, Squib.”
“It’s enough when you don’t experience it none too often. So far in my life, I’ve gathered three likes and one love. That sure seems enough for me.”
“More than I got,” admitted Waxman.
“So with that in mind,” said Squib, lowering himself into the weird assless chair, slowly, in case Waxman wasn’t in the mood for chitchat, “maybe you could advise me on a problem I got.”
Waxman frowned. He was obviously on the point of not wanting shit to do with Squib’s problem when he threw a quick glance over his shoulder into the shadows and seemed to change his mind. “Well, maybe I could, son. Maybe I could at that. Waxman has seen it all, and what he ain’t seen, he can hazard a guess at. So why don’t you open on up?”
Squib was hesitant now that he had leave to spit it out. “It’s a strange one, Waxman.”
“Worse than Charles Jr. and the soiled britches?”
“Yeah, I gotta say. Way worse. I near to soiled my britches my own self.”
“Shit, boy. Now I’m intrigued. Lay it on out, and don’t spare the color.”
Squib took several quick breaths like he was preparing to dive into icy waters and then blurted out the whole thing: Hooke, Carnahan, the face-eating turtle, and, of course, Vern the dragon.
Waxman sagged when the telling was over. “Shit, son. You sketched that real well. Nice and calm, barely a stutter. You’ve had quite the night, ain’t you?”
Squib nodded, allowing that he surely had.
“And your tribulations ain’t over yet.”
This was a statement not a question.
“If this dragon don’t get you, then Hooke probably will.”
Squib hadn’t even gotten around to fretting on Hooke. “I guess maybe, but Hooke ain’t getting no one from a hospital bed. It’s this Vern fella I’m concerned about.”
Waxman twisted his beard. “Seems sensible.”
Squib realized that he had been neither ejected nor mocked. “Are you saying that you believe me, Waxman?”
Waxman smiled crookedly. “I ain’t sure about the face-eating turtle. Sounds far-fetched to me.”
“But the dragon?”
“Oh, him? Hell yeah, that old coot’s been around for years. The Honey Island monster. ’Cept he don’t live on no Honey Island. And he ain’t your typical monster.”
“Right,” said Squib, feeling a little lighter simply from being credited with telling the truth. “He’s a dragon.”
“I know it,” continued Waxman. “That motherfucker is older than the river itself.”
This was all well and good, confirmation-wise, but Squib needed a solution. “So what do I do, Waxman? I ain’t got no options other than to leave the country.”
“You told anybody?”
Squib rolled his eyes. “Told anybody? Who’m I gonna tell? The cops? I’d surely land my own ass in a cell, then I’m a sitting duck for Hooke. Momma? She frets enough already. Thinks I’m scarred by not having no daddy. Also, if she knew the truth, then Vern might do the entire family.”
“How about Charles Jr.? The dick man?”
“Charles ain’t exactly got his feet on the ground. Last week he swore to me that he was spending his nights in New Orleans man-whoring hisself. I ain’t trusting him with no sensitive information. You are the first and only person to hear this story.”
“That’s good,” said Waxman. “Maybe we can bargain with that.”
“Bargain? I don’t figure this dragon is for turning.”
Waxman chewed on that then spoke a bit louder than seemed necessary. “You know, kid, I did hear that dragons were ornery cusses. Butt-ugly, too.”
Squib had been far too awestruck by Vern to accept this. “I thought this Vern fella was kinda noble-looking. Big as all hell too. Like a basketballer. You shoulda seen the way he schooled those gators. Shit, I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
“Just a pity Mister Noble wants to burn you, huh?”
“Yeah,” said Squib, dejected. “If it weren’t for that. And I ain’t even gonna tell nobody.”
“Here’s what I hear,” said Waxman, conducting the air. “Dragons like their entertainment—cable and such. Got their tastes, too: booze, Pringles, all very particular. Now, a butt-ugly dragon can’t exactly waltz hisself into town with a fistful of dollars in his scaly claws, so I’m guessing he needs himself a go-between—like how you go-between for me.”
Squib jumped right on that notion, eager as he was for a solution. “Yeah. Like Renfield with Dracula. Vern needs himself a Renfield. I could Renfield the shit out of the bayou for him. Shit, I run deliveries for Bodi Irwin—can’t be much different. Whatever a dragon needs.”
Waxman grinned wide, and for a second Squib thought something shifted behind his teeth, something like more teeth. “You said ‘Renfield’ a bunch of times there, kid. The way I remember reading it, Renfield was a pathetic old boy. I reckon Vern’s go-between is more of a partner in crime than a bug-eating half-wit.”
“Yeah,” said Squib, “go in there like an equal. Like I got value.”
“Like you got an offer he can’t refuse,” said Waxman. “Though Vern can be pigheaded.”
At the second mention of the dragon’s name, something slotted into place inside Squib’s brain, and he found himself staring at the bottles of vodka seated on the table and losing himself a little in the fuzzy colors refracted therein while he waited for whatever his subconscious had already figured out to bob to the surface. It was vodka-related, he felt sure. This fraction of the realization was solid as the glass of an Absolut bottle, but the rest was a dark cloud of smoke and terror.
Vodka-related.
Vern can be pigheaded.
Squib felt the blood drain from his face as he consciously joined the dots. Waxman knew the dragon’s personality. Waxman was personally acquainted with the dragon.
Waxman is the go-between. Waxman is Renfield.
And:
I done walked right into the dragon’s den, more or less.
Squib was so tired all of a sudden that he couldn’t so much as lift his head to face his doom.
“Yep,” said Waxman, “there it is. I guess you done remembered where you seen the vodka recently. I guess you figured how I know Vern is pigheaded.”
“I guess,” said Squib. “You is Renfield.”
Waxman begged to differ. “I don’t see that. We is like partners. We do for each other.”
Squib was sinking into shock. His hands dangled loose on their wrists, and all he could do was watch them. “For each other,” he said dully. “Right.”
“Right,” said Waxman. “That’s right, ain’t it, Vern?”
Squib heard the bathroom door open, and someone stepped into the main room.
Three guesses who that is, thought Squib, and closed his eyes.
VERN STRODE OUT of the bathroom angry. “Why are you talking all that shit?” he asked.
Waxman played it innocent. “What shit? I was just jawing with the kid. Getting him relaxed.”
Vern wasn’t buying this. “Uh-uh, Wax. You’re stirring. Stirring and planting notions is what you’re doing.”
Angry as he was, the dragon kept his eyes on Squib. The kid seemed to be in a bit of a daze, but he had pulled that dodge before and then skipped out when the chance presented itself.
Fool me once, thought Vern.
“What notions am I planting?”
Vern pointed a taloned finger at him. “‘What notions’ is it, Wax? ‘What notions’? Hows about the notion that Squib takes over your position while you’re taking the dirt nap? How about that notion?”
Waxman grinned wide, his rows of teeth clearly visible. “Say, Highfire, that ain’t a bad idea. You come up with that on your own?”
“Screw you,” said Vern, and then clamped Squib’s head in one massive hand, easier than a Globetrotter gripping a Spalding. “Just let me sort this a second.”
Vern felt the kid tense in his grip and then slump as the fight went out of him. Goddamn Waxman, he thought, irritated. Stirring and planting.
He tilted Squib’s head back and gave him the double barrels of his sulfur-laden nostrils straight in the face.
Sleep, kid, he thought, while I sort this mess out.
“Neat trick,” said Waxman as Squib sank immediately into gassed slumber.
“Yeah,” said Vern. “Humans can’t take the dragon breath. Knocks ’em for six. Apparently they wake up a little dumber, but it’s hard to tell.”
Vern tumbled Squib out of his chair and slotted his tail through the hole carved into the foam. “Okay, Wax,” he said, snagging a bottle of Absolut from the crate. “Make your case, buddy, though I’m warning you, this will be a tough sell.”
Waxman composed himself, placing his hat on a low table beside a chintz-shaded lamp. “Tired of that lamp,” he commented while he got his ducks in a row.
Vern took a slug of vodka straight from the bottle, which he knew would irritate the house-proud mogwai. “Good start,” he said. “Damned if I ain’t coming around already.”
“Okay, cut the bullshit, Highfire,” said Waxman, getting to his feet. “Here’s the way I see it. We’s both in the unfortunate position of needing a go-between. I got Squib and you got me.”
“With you so far,” said Vern.
“The problem being that I gotta go under soon, which leaves you up the creek. Or down the creek, to be more accurate.”
“You absolutely gotta go under? You couldn’t skip a cycle?”
“Sure I could skip a cycle, and I’d be in a wheelchair by the spring. This old body gotta be nourished, Highfire, and soon. I been putting it off for your sake, and these bones is tired.”
“How soon is soon, exactly?”
“Yesterday,” said Waxman. “And for three years, maybe.”
Vern gaped. “Three goddamn years? You ain’t just saying that?”
“No, I ain’t just saying it,” snapped Waxman. “I got hair falling out in clumps and skin dropping off my ass. You wanna see?”
Vern sighed. “It’s been a long day, Wax. No offense to your ass, but I don’t wanna see.”
“So, we take the kid on,” said Waxman. “He sees to me while I’m down and takes up my duties as far as you’re concerned.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah.”
“A human familiar?”
“I ain’t no familiar, Highfire, we done had that talk.”
“Yeah, but a human ain’t coming in at your pay grade.”
Waxman weighed this. “Okay. A human familiar.”
“We had human familiars before, at the eyrie. Remember how that ended up.”
Vern let that hang over the negotiations. This was crunch point as far as he was concerned. In a thousand years it had never worked out with a human. Let Waxman argue that fact away.
Waxman steepled his fingers, and Vern sensed a speech coming.
“Vern, Lord Highfire as was. The older I gets, the more I realize that we is all just souls. All souls in different bodies. Human bodies, dragon bodies, mogwai bodies. Vessels, as such. Some souls are assholes and some ain’t. Maybe it seems like there is an inordinate amount of human assholes, but that’s just percentages. And I do believe this specimen of a boy is a good soul. He ain’t never tried nothing too shady. He looks after his momma. And he will shovel shit all the livelong day if it’s required, which it surely will be. He likes a good story, too, and you do like to deliver a story with flair.”
Vern nodded, allowing that he did enjoy spinning a yarn, but it was an absent kind of nod as he was chewing on Waxman’s second delivery of his souls theory in one day. Could be his friend had mellowed more than Vern had realized. Maybe the signs had been there and he’d never cottoned on.
To buy himself a breather, Vern asked, “Go back one point. You seriously need all that shit to come out of the hole smiling?”
“If you want me perky as all hell, yessir, I surely do.”
“Balls,” said Vern. “I ain’t no spring chicken neither, you know. The pipes get clogged.”
“Eat some fiber,” said Waxman. “I know you is all about the protein nowadays, but that stuff will bung up a body if you ain’t hydrating.”
“Can we swing back to the other shit? The big pile you were trying to sell me?”
Waxman got back on track. “So ultimately what we is doing here is removing a link from the chain. Making the chain stronger.”
“Unless the link is a lying piece of human trash who runs to the newspapers with dragon stories,” said Vern.
“So we take steps to ensure that don’t happen,” said Waxman.
“What steps?” asked Vern.
“We tell him the sad truth,” said the mogwai.
“Which sad truth is that, Wax?”
Waxman’s black eyes glittered like water-polished stones. “The sad truth that he’s already dying.”
SQUIB WAS AWAKE a while before he opened his eyes, which was habit rather than master planning, and he overheard a few snippets of Vern and Waxman arguing over his fate. At first he thought the TV was on somewhere and he was listening to a gangster show with a supernatural element, but pretty soon his limbic system whispered to his motor system that he better get the hell out of here, because there was a dragon having it out with some other kind of immortal being about whether or not to kill him or have him shovel shit for all eternity, which he presumed was a metaphor for something.
“Look at the kid,” said the dragon. “He ain’t nothing but skin and bone. You telling me this specimen can even hump that volume of shit?”
“Sure he can,” argued Waxman. “I seen him move a stack of crates higher than his whole self.”
Squib thought he better get his speak in. “I can work,” he blurted. “Shovel shit for real, or whatever that might mean. Deliveries, collections. Hell, I can do foot massage if you need it, Mister Vern, sir.”
The boy opened his eyes to find two very different expressions trained on him. Waxman was grinning as though he was ahead in some competition or other, and Vern was scowling like the food on his plate was irritating him.
“‘Mister Vern, sir,’” repeated Waxman. “That’s more courtesy than you’re accustomed to, Highfire.”
“Sure is,” said the dragon. “But I ain’t interested in courtesy. Humans always start out courteous—then, before a fellow can even retract his balls, it’s all torches and spears.”
Squib was a mite confused over the retraction-of-balls section of that statement, but he reckoned he could let that go for the moment, though it pained him not to ask a question that was begging to be asked. “No torches and spears from me, sir,” he assured the dragon. “I’m a hustler, is what I am, from the day I was born. If you got a paid job for me, then that’s the job I’m doing.”
Waxman smiled sadly. Squib had seen that class of a smile before in the clinic when he was waiting for his momma’s shift to finish. Momma called that class of smile the BLT, for “Bad Luck Teeth.” Usually doctors pasted on that smile when they were about to hang a right into the terminal ward.
“It ain’t a paid job, exactly,” said the mogwai.
“Shit,” said Squib. “Am I dying?”
“We is all dying, boy,” said Waxman. “Even Lord Highfire here, but you is definitely further along the road.”
“Come on, Waxman,” objected Squib. “Don’t be fooling around. I been a good runner for you these past years.”
This was true, and so Waxman reluctantly relented. He had been hoping to spin out the telling a while more.
“Okay, son,” he said, “Vern gave you the dragon breath. A full dose. And that is fatal to humans, I kid thee not.”
Squib could not believe it. “You killed me for delivering vodka? I can’t believe it. My poor momma.”
At the mention of Squib’s momma, Waxman interjected with the “but.”
“But the effects can be ridden out if a fella has access to the antidote.”
“Yeah,” said Squib miserably, “and I bet the antidote is growing out of a goat’s ass on the top of Mount Everest and I gotta go there directly.”
“Not exactly,” said Waxman, opening one hand to reveal a small shining amber disk. “This here is one of Vern’s scales. He molts them all over the place. You need a fresh-dropped scale maybe twice a week for a few months.”
Squib took the disk. “And what? I just lay it on my forehead or something.”
“Oh, hell no,” said Waxman, straight-faced. “That right there is what we call a pessary, which means you gotta stick it where the sun most definitely do not shine.”
“Come on, Wax,” said Vern, “don’t toy with the kid.”
“You chew on it,” said Waxman. “Like tobacco. Until the color is gone. That should get her done.”
“And if I don’t chew on it?”
“Cramps initially,” said Waxman.
“And then a burning in your innards,” said Vern.
“Nausea,” added Waxman. “But you won’t mind that none, occupied as you’ll be with the burning.”
“Then you vomit up your lungs.”
Waxman disagreed. “Last guy shit out his lungs.”
“No, he shit out his shitpipe. Colon, you know. Lungs were up top.”
“You is the expert,” conceded Waxman. “Either way, everything comes out.”
“And then your heart explodes,” said Vern.
Squib stuffed the scale in his mouth and sucked it like a baby sucking a pacifier. It tasted bitter, but a fella could endure it, considering the alternative.
“You get the implications?” asked Waxman, while Squib worked on the scale. “You mess with Vern and you don’t get your scale. You bring the mob and you don’t get your scale. It’s a little insurance for Lord Highfire.”
Squib nodded. He got it. In his entire life he had never so completely gotten something.
“So, you take up my duties while I recharge. And then in three months I’m back and you’re clear.”
Vern’s brow ridge shot up. “Three months, Wax? You total dick. Three years, you told me. I coulda lasted three months without cable. Shit, I can brew my own hooch if I have to.”
“Did I say years?” said Waxman, all innocence. “I meant months, Highfire. My sincere apologies.”
“You played me, Wax. It’s like you don’t even want me to kill this kid.”
“He’s a soul, Vern,” said Waxman, earnestly restating his philosophy. “We is all souls. You gotta get with that.”
“They’re gonna carve that souls lecture on your headstone,” said Vern, actually kicking the leg of Waxman’s bed. “And I don’t gotta do nothing because I’m the last dragon.”
“So you say,” said Waxman, “but it’s a big world and you ain’t took a squint around for a long time.”
“Taking a squint around, as you puts it, Wax, is liable to get a fella killed. Dragons learned that the hard way.”
Squib watched them go at it and realized that he could easily have made a dart for the door.
But I got dragon breath in my lungs. So there’s nowhere to run.
He figured he’d heard about dragon breath somewhere, read it in a book, maybe. Admittedly, it sounded like horseshit, but only if a guy didn’t believe in dragons. When there was a dragon standing in front of a person, it seemed to Squib like that person had no option but to believe in anything and everything.
“Okay,” he said, “I accept the job offer, like I even got a choice. What time I got to be here?”
Waxman broke off his arguing with Vern. “What time? I’d say nightfall. That okay with you, Highfire?”
Vern ran some numbers in his head. “At the earliest, Wax. I got to go into production, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I hear you, brother. What say we party down some? Have ourselves a send-off. Then you can leave the first deposit on site for the shoveler here.”
Squib was starting to get the picture.
Shit, he thought, and then said aloud, “Shit.”