Люциус Шепард: The Best of Lucius Shepard

Beth, when I called her, didn’t feel like talking. I asked if there was anything I could do, and she said if I could find out when the police were going to release the body, she would appreciate it. She said she would let me know about the funeral, sounding—as had Gwen—like someone who was barely holding it together. Hearing that in her voice caused me to leak a few tears and, when she heard me start to cry, she quickly got off the phone, as if she didn’t want my lesser grief to pollute her own, as if Rudy dying had broken whatever bond there was between us. I thought this might be true.

I called the police and, after speaking to a functionary, reached a detective whom I knew, Ross Peloblanco, who asked my connection to the deceased.

“Friend of the family,” I said. “I’m calling for his wife.”

“Huh,” said Peloblanco, his attention distracted by something in his office.

“So when are you going to release him?”

“I think they already done the autopsy. There’s been a bunch of suicides lately and the ME put a rush on this one.”

“How many’s a bunch?”

“Oops! Did I say that? Don’t worry about it. The ME’s a whack job. He’s batshit about conspiracy theories.”

“So… can I tell the funeral home to come now?”

Peloblanco sneezed, said, “Shit!” and then went on: “Bowen did some work for my mom. She said he was a real gentleman. You never know what’s going on with people, do ya?” He blew his nose. “I guess you can come pick him up whenever.”

The waters of the Polozny never freeze. No matter how cold it gets or how long the cold lasts, they are kept warm by a cocktail of pollutants and, though the river may flow more sluggishly in winter, it continues on its course, black and gelid. There is something statutory about its poisonous constancy. It seems less river than regulation, a divine remark rendered daily into law, engraving itself upon the world year after year until its long meander has eaten a crack that runs the length and breadth of creation, and its acids and oxides drain into the void.

Between the viewing and the funeral, in among the various consoling talks and offerings of condolence, I spent a great deal of time gazing at the Polozny, sitting on the stoop and smoking, enduring the cold wind, brooding over half-baked profundities. The muted roaring of the mill surrounded me, as did dull thuds and clunks and distant car horns that seemed to issue from the gray sky, the sounds of business as usual, the muffled engine of commerce. Black William must be, I thought, situated on the ass-end of Purgatory, the place where all those overlooked by God were kept. The dead river dividing a dying landscape, a dingy accumulation of snow melting into slush on its banks; the mill, a Hell of red brick with its chimney smoke of souls; the scatters of crows winging away from leafless trees; old Mrs. Gables two doors down, tottering out to the sidewalk, peering along the street for the mail, for a glimpse of her son’s maroon Honda Civic, for some hopeful thing, then, her hopes dashed, laboriously climbing her stairs and going inside to sit alone and count the ticks of her clock: these were evidences of God’s fabulous absence, His careless abandonment of a destinyless town to its several griefs. I scoffed at those who professed to understand grief, who deemed it a simple matter, a painful yet comprehensible transition, and partitioned the process into stages (my trivial imagination made them into gaudy stagecoaches painted different colors) in order to enable its victims to adapt more readily to the house rules. After the initial shock of Rudy’s suicide had waned, grief overran me like a virus, it swarmed, breeding pockets of weakness and fever, eventually receding at its own pace, on its own terms, and though it may have been subject to an easy compartmentalization—Anger, Denial, etc.—that kind of analysis did not address its nuances and could not remedy the thousand small bitternesses that grief inflames and encysts. On the morning of the funeral, when I voiced one such bitterness, complaining about how Beth had treated me since Rudy died, mentioning the phone call, pointing out other incidences of her intolerance, her rudeness in pushing me away, Andrea—who had joined me on the stoop—set me straight.

“She’s not angry at you,” Andrea said. “She’s jealous. You and Rudy… that was a part of him she never shared, and when she sees you, she doesn’t know how to handle it.”

“You think?”

“I used to feel that way.”

“About me and Rudy”

She nodded. “And about the business. I don’t feel that way now. I guess I’m older. I understand you and Rudy had a guy thing and I didn’t need to know everything about it. But Beth’s dealing with a lot right now. She’s oversensitive and she feels… jilted. She feels that Rudy abandoned her for you. A little, anyway. So she’s jilting you. She’ll get over it, or she won’t. People are funny like that. Sometimes resentments are all that hold them together. You shouldn’t take it personally.”

I refitted my gaze to the Polozny, more or less satisfied by what she had said. “We live on the banks of the River Styx,” I said after a while. “At least it has a Styx-ian gravitas.”

“Stygian,” she said.

I turned to her, inquiring.

“That’s the word you wanted. Stygian.”

“Oh… right.”

A silence marked by the passing of a mail truck, its tire chains grinding the asphalt and spitting slush; the driver waved.

“I think I know why Rudy did it,” I said, and told her what I had found in the office waste basket. “More than anything, he wanted to do creative work. When he finally did, it gave him nightmares. It messed with his head. He must have built it into this huge thing and…” I tapped out a cigarette, stuck it in my mouth. “It doesn’t sound like much of a reason, but I can relate. That’s why it bites my ass to see guys like Stanky who do something creative every time they take a piss. I want to write those songs. I want to have the acclaim. It gets me thinking, someday I might wind up like Rudy.”

“That’s not you. You said it yourself—you get pissed off. You find someplace else to put your energy.” She rumpled my hair. “Buck up, Sparky. You’re going to live a long time and have lots worse problems.”

It crossed my mind to suggest that the stars might have played some mysterious part in Rudy’s death, and to mention the rash of suicides (five, I had learned); but all that seemed unimportant, dwarfed by the death itself.

At one juncture during that weekend, Stanky ventured forth from TV-land to offer his sympathies. He might have been sincere, but I didn’t trust his sincerity—it had an obsequious quality and I believed he was currying favor, paving the way so he might hit me up for another advance. Pale and shivering, hunched against the cold; the greasy collar of his jacket turned up; holding a Camel in two nicotine-stained fingers; his doughy features cinched in an expression of exaggerated dolor: I hated him at that moment and told him I was taking some days off, that he could work on the album or go play with his high school sycophants. “It’s up to you,” I said. “Just don’t bother me about it.” He made no reply, but the front door slamming informed me that he had not taken it well.

On Wednesday, Patty Prole (nee Patricia Hand), the leader of the Swimming Holes, a mutual friend of mine and Rudy’s who had come down from Pittsburgh for the funeral, joined me and Andrea for dinner at McGuigan’s, and, as we strolled past the park, I recalled that more than a month—thirty-four days, to be exact—had elapsed since I had last seen the stars. The crowd had dwindled to about a hundred and fifty (Stanky and Liz among them). They stood in clumps around the statue, clinging to the hope that Black William would appear; though judging by their general listlessness, the edge of their anticipation had been blunted and they were gathered there because they had nothing better to do. The van belonging to the science people from Pitt remained parked at the southeast corner of the library, but I had heard they were going to pull up stakes if nothing happened in the next day or two.