Уолтер Мосли - John Woman

“You wanna come fuck again to work off some’a that whiskey?”

At 3:56 a.m. John was fully dressed. Senta walked him across the highway to the bar parking lot. He climbed over the side of his topless T-bird.

“You want a ride?” he asked.

“My car’s right across the street.”

“I’ll wait for you to get in and drive off.”

“Ray,” she said.

“What?”

“My last name, it’s Ray, Senta Ray.”

The speedometer hovered around ninety. John didn’t feel the cold — only speed and wind. Ten miles from faculty-housing a shiny-eyed coyote darted into the road. It lowered itself on its haunches, yellow eyes glaring at the sports car’s headlights.

Without thinking John jerked the steering wheel to the left. The car skidded out into the desert, spinning uncontrollably as it went, knocking down several ocotillo trees. Finally the car raised up on its right side, almost rolled over, crashed down on its wheels, then juddered for long seconds while the metallic frame strained and creaked.

The radio came on. James Brown was singing, say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud, on an oldies station.

The right headlight winked out.

The stars, John thought, must be laughing at the crazy dance of the classic car. He also wondered about the meaning of the song. Though he’d learned his profession from Herman, his mother’s superstitions still held sway over his heart in much the same way that the hovering half-moon controlled faraway tides.

Twenty or so feet from the car the topaz-bright eyes of the coyote blinked. The creature, John imagined, had run away but then returned thinking that maybe there was some spilled food or, better, blood to lap up at the scene of the accident.

Gazing at each other over the desert span, both man and canine were motionless. John considered honking the horn to frighten away the sometimes deadly desert jester. But instead he climbed out over the side and stood there.

Illuminated by the single headlight the black-and-brown streaked beast sniffed the air. Maybe John had been wounded, the scent of his blood in the air.

The coyote yipped; hopped; and then, in the middle of a turn, disappeared.

John leaned back against the warm hood. There was a chill in the air. His mother would have said that this was all a single sign; he should see either a priest or a fortune-teller to decipher the meaning.

But he was afraid of seers and holy men, worried that their powers might be based on something real, that they’d find him out if he got too close. So he climbed back into the one-eyed green T-bird and drove the ten miles back home.

The faculty complex was protected by twelve-foot-high matte adobe walls. The wrought iron gate across the driveway was locked at night, attended by a uniformed guard. But the late-night sentry was not at his post.

John stopped at the barred entrance, sat back in the driver’s seat and fell immediately asleep.

He was sitting in a dark room. Fanciful pulsing light came through large industrial-like windows; the neon pulse was from a blinking sign somewhere outside. This light was blue and red; these colors refused to combine. Each time the sign flashed John saw something different.

The first burst revealed a bookcase filled with tomes, some of which were hundreds of years old while others were modern-day publications with gaudy book jackets promising things unworthy of the written word.

The second flare of blue and red illuminated a high wall where some mad painter had fashioned a huge ogre made mostly of thick black and brown brushstrokes, with hints of scum green here and there.

The third blaze slammed down on Chapman Lorraine’s corpse, a deep and bloody cleft in his temple. The dead man was seated awkwardly on a tarnished brass throne festooned with huge cool-colored man-made jewels that were both opaque and brilliantly striated with platinum radiance.

The light faded but John could see the afterimage of Lorraine quite clearly. There seemed to be some kind of intention in his unfocused eyes, in the crooked grasping of his powerful fingers.

He’s trying to hold on to life through me, Dreamer John thought.

The neon pulsed again. John was afraid that the new brilliance would bring Lorraine fully alive; that those dead hands might drag him back to pay for his crime.

But instead the light seemed to trap the dead man in its cloying glow. Chapman was stuck to his blackened throne. Dreamer John took in a deep breath that came out as a relieved sigh.

After two or three of these exhalations he noticed a sound, a gentle tapping.

The light went down and the tapping stopped. When blue and red filled the room once more, it started up again. John found himself walking down a long, dusty hall guarded by dogs sleeping beneath hanging candelabras. The candlelight flickered, forming and re-forming the walls into hallucinatory images; these possible/impossible subjects ranged from hummingbirds frozen in mid-flight to huge Soviet farm tractors that appeared to be breathing.

His father was there wearing a scuffed-up suit of armor, seated upon a brass-plated horse. John wore a shapeless straw hat and carried a rude rucksack fashioned out of simple calico cloth.

A column of tiny spiders marched in the opposite direction along the edge of the wall. Looking closer John saw that the spiders were actually little severed hands, their fingertips frantically stamping on the wood floor.

The tapping came again. John looked up. He was standing at a plain wood door.

“Who is it?”

“Me of course,” a woman said. She sounded older if not elderly.

It was a familiar voice but he couldn’t place it; like the first notes of a song on the radio — you know the tune but cannot name it.

He hesitated. After a few seconds he felt something wet and warm against his hand. He flinched then saw it was one of the guard dogs now awake and come to greet him. John smiled at the friendly gesture and pulled the door open.

The woman standing there was short, in her early fifties, thin but not skinny, with dark brown skin like chocolate fudge. Her full-length dress was made from natural canvas-like material printed with five or six rude images of blue and red roses. She wore a cotton hat that was round with a ridge along the brim. Half a dozen daisies grew out of the top as if from soil.

Her glasses had delicate pewter frames, surrounding large brown eyes that watched him closely.

There was a half smile on the woman’s lips. This smile tweaked his memory...

“You’re... a... a fairy godmother,” he stuttered.

Her smile deepened.

“You’re my fairy godmother,” he said, shocked.

“How are you, Cornelius?”

“Not too good,” he said. “I mean... nothing’s all that bad but it’s cold in here and my homework is so boring and I can’t get the man I killed out of my head. He’s back there in the living room. I don’t remember his name but...”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the children’s goddess said. She patted his shoulder and walked past him down the candlelit hall of dust, drowsing dogs and impossible images. “All that’s over now.”

When he turned to follow John felt burgeoning elation in his chest. After one step he was grinning, another and he began to laugh. Instead of a third stride he hopped, landed, then swung from the waist like doing the hokey-pokey dance when he was in kindergarten.

He stopped there watching the brown goddess traipse toward the flashing neon at the end of the passageway. He wanted to go after her but was suddenly afraid of the passion rising in him...

“What’s your name?” he shouted.

“Posterity,” she said not turning.

“Professor. Professor.”