Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“The Consort. It’s only about four blocks.”

“From such a neighborhood as this? I am amazed. Then I go to the Consort. And yes, you may carry my things for me. You will save me the price of a taxi. Ozzie, you are a man and know about such matters. How may I pass through this fence?”

The barrier the wrecking crew had erected was not actually a fence, but a pack-train of yellow sawhorses carrying indolent orange lights, harnessed with an orange cord. Stubb cut the cord with his penknife, and Barnes moved one aside.

Not even the front wall of the house that had been Free’s was entirely gone as yet. Its outline remained, bricks hanging from their mortar to make a crazy arch that framed the dollhouse interiors of the front rooms. Under drifted snow, the hall was still recognizably the hall, with its stair vanishing upward into blackness. On its right, the parlor was changed mostly by the dying of the fire and the absence of the stuffed bird, its glass bell, and the table they had burned. To the left, Free’s bedroom seemed to bare all its poor secrets; his rumpled sheets cowered on the bed under a thin blanket of snow. Above, Candy’s room and the witch’s were only half exposed.

“Look!” Barnes pointed. “I saw something.”

“Where?” Stubb craned his neck and lifted his small body on tiptoe.

“Up there. Something moved.”

“Probably just the light.”

“Or Free. It could have been Free. I never saw him after this morning. Did you? Did anybody?”

The witch glanced back, her face half buried in the fur of her coat collar. “Free is dead.”

Stubb grunted. “You see the body?”

“I walk into it now.”

“Without a flashlight. Ozzie, you got a light?”

Barnes took out what appeared to be a small chromeplated pistol and pulled the trigger. A blue flame an inch long burned at the muzzle. “Butane,” he said. “You like it?”

“I’m crazy about it.” In the dim, blue light, Stubb examined the trampled snow. “Kids been in here. See that little sole with the hole in it? Neighborhood kid. Madame S., I hope you hid whatever you got, or it won’t be there now.”

“My things are here still. I feel them.”

Barnes hurried to catch up with her. “Hold onto the rail, please, Madame Serpentina, or you’ll fall.”

“Not on this. Not even without your light, Ozzie. I do not require it, nor would I if this place were entirely dark.”

Something creaked.

No one spoke; but there was in the air the almost palpable agreement not to speak, to ignore whatever it had been. The old house seemed to sigh. Perhaps there was no wind—the snow never stirred. Perhaps there was no sound.

“We’d better hurry, Madame Serpentina. The butane won’t last long.”

“I have told you I do not need light.”

Stubb muttered, “Well, we do.”

The door of the witch’s room was locked. She took her key from her purse and opened it to reveal one wall half dissolved in space and streetlights.

“I’m surprised the kids didn’t break in,” Barnes said.

“They were in fear, my Ozzie. They did not venture to the top of the stair, I think.”

“Tracks?”

“I do not need to look at tracks.”

Stubb said, “Somebody came up here. Big feet. Probably the wrecking crew.”

“No one has entered my room. That is all I care about. Ozzie, my bags are beneath that bed. Will you get them for me?”

One was an old suitcase, the other a bag in actual fact, a sack of hairy goatskin as big as a laundry bag. Its knotted thongs were sealed with a lump of wax that looked black in the faint light.

“‘Now I am done.’ So speaks the poet. If you will carry these for me, gentlemen? Mr. Stubb, it would perhaps be better if you were to take the suitcase. Ozzie, you may have the honor of the other. That is somewhat heavier, I think.”

Stubb was already maneuvering the suitcase through the narrow doorway. After a final, lingering glance around the room, the witch followed him, leaving Barnes to bring up the rear.

“What a day has this been, and what a time in my life! You say, Mr. Stubb, that it is not far to this hotel?”

A voice out of the darkness asked, “Did somebody say hotel ?” There was a flicker of light on the opposite side of the stairwell.

“Candy, is that you?”

“Jim?” The fat girl’s face appeared as the moon appears with the passing of a cloud. She struck a match and held it up.

“Candy, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Getting some stuff. Celebrating.” She smiled, and despite its unfocused quality, the smile made her pretty. “This is where it was, right? I thought,” (she belched softly) “that maybe before they tore down the stadium I’d go stand on the mound again.”

“Yeah,” Stubb said. “You had them going.”

The witch added, “And we should be going.”

“To a hotel, you said.” The fat girl still wore her white plastic raincoat, but her lost white plastic boots had been replaced by enormous black ones. She carried a flight bag and brought the malty odor of beer with her. “I met this guy I know, and he said sorry I’d like to but I don’t have the bread, right? And I said tonight he didn’t need it—just let me sleep over. So we went up to his place, and then he said come on, I know where there’s a party tonight.”

The witch pushed past Stubb as he stood listening; Barnes followed her.

“So we got in his beater and drove way the hell out. Shadylawn. Sounds like a graveyard, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Stubb said.

“And then he said give me a cigarette, and I said I didn’t have any. I’d been smoking his on the way out. So we went by a drugstore, and he stopped and dug out a buck and said here go in and get us a pack.” A tear splashed on Stubb’s hand.

“And he split while you were inside.”

“Buh huh.”

“Jesus Christ. No wonder you feel down. How’d you get back?”

“Hitched.”

“Jesus Christ,” Stubb said again.

“It wasn’t so bad, except I was afraid I was going to get picked up by the smokies.” The fat girl swallowed and snuffled. “Jim, we’d better go. We’ll lose them.”

“Sure we will. I got her suitcase here. Can you make it down the steps okay?”

“I made it up. You don’t have a drink on you?”

“I got two cigarettes, and that’s it.”

“Up at Harry’s, I knocked down six or eight beers, and now I can feel them dying in me. You know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

She was going down the stairs beside him. There was just enough room for the two of them with the suitcase between them. At the bottom, she asked, “Let me have one of those cigarettes?”

“Sure,” Stubb said. Barnes and the witch were already some distance down the street. Stubb put down the suitcase, took out his last two Camels, and crumpled the pack and tossed it into the gutter. He lit their cigarettes from a paper match, as he had before.

“This lady picked me up. She was about forty, I guess. Her husband was out of town and she was going downtown to have dinner with another lady she’d gone to college with. Hey, let me carry part of that—see, I can just hook a couple fingers in the handle.”

“All right.”

“Now we kind of walk in step. I told her I was on a date and he wanted me to come across, and when I wouldn’t, he shoved me out of the car.”

“Happens a lot, I guess.”

“Not to me. Anyway, she bought it. At first, you know, I thought she was just pretending to make it easier for both of us, but she really did buy it. I was kind of messed up.”

“Like now,” Stubb said.

“I guess. I didn’t give her any big act. Just what I told you. I asked her about this college she and the other lady went to. It sounded great. When I got out, she said how far, and I said oh, ’bout eight blocks, but you wouldn’t want to go down there, and she gave me a couple of bucks for a cab.”