Author's Note on Master of Misery
I did this one for Roger Zelazny. It was the last anthology he edited.
It was a martial arts anthology, and I was proud to be in it. I love the martial arts and have been a student of the arts all my life. To know about this, check out www.joerlansdale.com, and click on THE MASK OF SHEN CHUAN.
He wrote a nice intro praising my writing, and it made my day. I loved his work, especially the shorter pieces and they had influenced me early on.
He was a nice man, too.
He got a bum deal. Cancer got him. And just when we were starting to be friends.
I got a bum deal in that way. He was a hell of a guy.
Master of Misery
Six o'clock in the morning, Richard was crossing by ferry from the Hotel on the Quay to Christiansted with a few other early-bird tourists, when he turned, looked toward shore, and saw a large ray leap from the water, its blue-gray hide glistening in the morning sunlight like gunmetal, its devil-tail flicking to one side as if to slash.
The ray floated there in defiance of gravity, hung in the sky between the boat and the shore, backgrounded by the storefronts and dock as if it were part of a painting, then splashed almost silently into the purple Caribbean, leaving in its wake a sun-kissed ripple.
Richard turned to see if the other passengers had noticed. He could tell from their faces they had not. The ray's leap had been a private showing, just for him, and he relished it. Later, he would think that perhaps it had been some kind of omen.
Ashore, he walked along the dock past the storefronts, and in front of the Anchor Inn Restaurant, the charter fishing boat was waiting.
A man and a woman were on board already. The man was probably fifty, perhaps a little older, but certainly in good shape. He had an aura of invincibility about him, as if the normal laws of mortality and time did not apply to him.
He was about five-ten with broad shoulders and, though he was a little thick in the middle, it was a hard thickness. It was evident, even beneath the black, loose, square-cut shirt he was wearing, he was a muscular man, perhaps first by birth, and second by exercise. His skin was as dark and leathery as an old bull's hide, his hair like frost on scorched grass. He was wearing khaki shorts and his dark legs were corded with muscle and his shins had a yellow shine to them that brought to mind weathered ivory.
He stood by the fighting chair bolted to the center of the deck, and looked at Richard standing on the dock with his little paper bag containing lunch and suntan lotion. The man's crow-colored eyes studied Richard as if he were a pile of dung that might contain some kernel of rare and undigested corn a crow might want.
The man's demeanor bothered Richard immediately. There was about him a cockiness. A way of looking at you and sizing you up and letting you know he wasn't seeing much.
The woman was quite another story. She was very much the bathing beauty type, aged beyond competition, but still beautiful, with a body by Nautilus. She was at least ten years younger than the man. She wore shoulder-length blonde hair bleached by sun and chemicals. She had a heart-shaped face and a perfect nose and full lips. There was a slight cleft in her chin and her eyes were a faded blue. She was willowy and big breasted and wore a loose, white T-shirt over her black bathing suit, one of the kind you see women wear in movies, but not often on the beach. She had the body for it. A thong, or string, Richard thought the suits were called. Sort of thing where the strap in the back slid between the buttocks and covered them not at all. The top of the suit made a dark outline beneath her white T-shirt. She moved her body easily, as if she were accustomed to and not bothered by scrutiny, but there was something about her eyes that disturbed Richard.
Once, driving at night, a cat ran out in front of his car and he hit it, and when he stopped to see if there was hope, he found the cat mashed and dying, the eyes glowing hot and savage and terrified in the beam of his flashlight. The woman's eyes were like that.
She glanced at him quickly, then looked away. Richard climbed on board.
Richard extended his hand to the older man. The man smiled and took his hand and shook it. Richard cursed himself as the man squeezed hard. He should have expected that. "Hugo Peak," the older man said, then moved his head to indicate the woman behind him. "My wife, Margo."
Margo nodded at Richard and almost smiled. Richard was about to give his name, when the captain, Bill Jones, came out of the cabin grinning. He was a lean, weathered fellow with a face that was all nose and eyes the color of watered meat gravy. He was carrying a couple cups of coffee. He gave one to Margo, the other to Hugo. He said, "Richard, how are you, my man."
"Wishing I'd stayed in bed," Richard said. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this, Jones."
"Hey, fishing's not so bad," said the captain.
"Off the bank at home in Texas it might be all right. But all this water. I hate it."
This was true. Richard hated the water. He could swim, had even earned lifeguard credentials as a Boy Scout, some twenty-five years ago, back when he was thirteen, but he had never learned to like the water. Especially deep water. The ocean.
He realized he had let Jones talk him into this simply because he wanted to convince himself he wasn't phobic. So, okay, he wasn't phobic, but he still didn't like the water. The thought of soon being surrounded by it, and it being deep, and above them there being nothing but hot blue sky, was not appealing.
"I'll get you some coffee and we'll shove off," Jones said.
"I thought it took five for a charter?" Richard said.
Jones looked faintly embarrassed. "Well, Mr. Peak paid the slack. He wanted to keep it down to three. More time in the chair that way, we hit something."
Richard turned to Peak. "I suppose I should split the difference with you."
"Not at all," Peak said. "It was my idea."
"That's kind of you, Hugo," Richard said.
"Not at all. And if it doesn't sound too presumptuous, I don't much prefer to be called by my first name, unless it's by my wife. If I'm not fucking the person, I want them to call me Mr. Peak. Or Peak. That all right with you?"
Richard saw Margo turn her face toward the sea, pretend to be watching the gulls in the distance. "Sure," Richard said.
"I'll get the coffee," Jones said, and disappeared into the cabin.
Peak yelled after him. "Let's shove off."
The sea was calm until they reached the Atlantic. The water there was blue-green, and the rich purple color of the Caribbean stood in stark contrast against it, reaching out with long purple claws into the great ocean, as if it might tug the Atlantic to it. But the Atlantic was too mighty, and it would not come.
The little fishing boat chugged out of the Caribbean and onto the choppier waters of the Atlantic, on out and over the great depths, and above them the sky was blue, with clouds as white as the undergarments of the Sacred Virgin.
The boat rode up and the boat rode down, between wet valleys of ocean and up their sides and down again. The cool spray of the ocean splattered on the deck and the diesel engine chugged and blew its exhaust across it and onto Richard, where he sat on the supply box. The movement of the water and the stench of the diesel made him queasy.
After a couple of hours of pushing onward, Jones slowed the engine, and finally killed it. "You're up, Mr. Peak," Jones said, coming down from his steering. He got a huge, metallic chest out of the cabin and dragged it onto the deck and opened it. There were a number of small black fish inside, packed in ice. Sardines, maybe. Jones took one and cut it open, took loose one of the rods strapped to the side of the cabin, stuck the fish on the great hook. He gave the rod to Peak.
Peak took the rod and tossed the line expertly and it went way out. He sat down in the fighting chair and fastened the waist belt and shoulder straps and put the rod butt in the gimbal. He looked relaxed and professional. The boat bobbed beneath the hot sunlight and the minutes crawled by.
Margo removed her T-shirt and leaned against the side of the
boat. The bathing suit top barely managed to cover her breasts. It was designed primarily to shield her nipples. The top and sides of her bathing suit bottom revealed escaped pubic hair, a darker blonde than the hair on her head.
She got a tube of suntan lotion out of a little knit bag on the deck, pushed the lotion into her palm, and began to apply it, slowly and carefully from her ankles up. Richard tried not to watch her run her hand over her tanned legs and thighs, finally over her belly and the tops of her breasts. He would look away, but always his eyes would come back.
He had not made love to a woman in a year, and for the first six months of the year had not wanted to. Now, looking at Margo Peak, it was all he could think about.
Richard glanced at Peak. He was studying the ocean. Jones was in the doorway of the cabin, trying not to be too obvious as he observed the woman. Richard could see that Jones's Adam's apple rode high in his throat. Margo seemed unaware or overly accustomed to the attention. She was primarily concerned with getting the suntan lotion even. Or so it seemed.
Then the line on the rod began to sing.
Richard looked toward the ocean and the line went straight and taut as the fish hit. The line sang louder as it jerked again and cut the air.
"I'm gonna hit him," Peak said. He tightened the drag, jerked back on the rod, and the rod bent slightly. "Now I've got him."
The fish cut to the right and the line moved with him, and Peak hit him again, said, "He's not too big. He's nothing."
Peak rapidly cranked the fish on deck. It was a barracuda. Jones took hold of a metal bar and whacked the flopping barracuda in the head. He got a pair of heavy shears off the deck and opened them and put them against the barracuda's head, and snapped down hard. The head came part of the way off. Jones popped the head again, and this time the head hung by a strand. He cut the head the rest of the way off, tossed it in the ocean, put the decapitated barracuda in the huge ice chest. "Some of the restaurants buy them," he said. "Probably sell them as tuna or something."
"Good catch," Richard said.
"A barracuda," Peak said. "That's no kinda fish. That's not worth a damn."
"Sometimes that's all you hit," Jones said. "Last party I took out, that was it. Three barracuda, back to back. You're next, Mrs. Peak."
Jones baited the hook and cast the line and Margo strapped herself into the fighting chair and slipped the rod into the gimbal. They drifted for an hour and finally Jones moved the boat, letting the line troll, but nothing hit right away. It was twenty minutes later and they were all having a beer, when suddenly the gimbal cranked forward and the line whizzed so fast and loud it sent goose bumps up Richard's back.
Margo dropped the beer and grabbed the rod. The beer foamed out of the can and ran over the deck, beneath Richard's tennis shoes. The line went way out. Jones cut the engine back plenty, and the line continued to sing and go far out into the water.
"Hit him, Margo," Peak said. "Hit him. He's not stuck, he's just got the bait and the line. You don't hit, the son of a bitch is gone."
Margo tightened the drag, pushed her feet hard against the chair's footrests, and jerked back viciously on the line. The line went taut and the rod bent forward and Margo was yanked hard against the straps.
"Loosen the goddamn drag," Peak said, "or he'll snap it." Margo loosened the drag. The line sang and the fish went wide to starboard. Jones leaped to the controls and reversed the boat and slowed the speed, gave the fish room to run. The line slacked and the pole began to straighten.
"Hit him again," Peak said, and Margo tried, but it was some job, and Richard could see that the fish was putting a tremendous strain on her. The sun had not so much as caused her tanned body to break a sweat, but the fish had given her sweat beads on her forehead and cheeks and under the nose. The muscles in her arms and legs coiled as if being braided. She pressed her feet hard against the footrests.
"It's too big for her," Richard said.
"Mind your own business, Mr. Young," Peak said.
Young? How had Peak known his last name? He was pondering that, and was about to ask, when suddenly the fish began to run. Peak yelled, "Hit him, Margo, goddamn you! Hit him!"
Margo had been working the drag back and forth, and it was evident she had done this before, but the fish was too much for her, anyone could see that, and now she hit the big fish again, solid, and it leaped. It leaped high and pretty, full of color, fastened itself to the sky, then dived like an arrow into the water and out of sight. It was a great swordfish, and Richard thought: when we drag him onto the deck, immediately it will begin to lose its color and die. It will become nothing more than a dull, gray, dead fish to harden in some taxidermist's shop, later to be hung on a wall above a couch. It seemed a shame, and Richard suddenly felt shamed for coming out here, for wanting to fish at all. At home, on the banks, he caught a fish, it got eaten. Here, there was no point to the fishing but to garner a trophy.
"I want him, Margo," Peak said. "You hear me, you don't lose this fish. I mean it, goddamnit."
"I'm trying," Margo said. "Really."
"You know how it goes, you screw it up," Peak said. "You know how it works."
"Hugo . . . I can't hold him. I'm hurting."
"You'll hold him, or wish you had," Peak said. "You just think you're hurting."
"Hey," Richard said, "that's ridiculous. You want the goddamn fish, take over."
Peak, who was standing on the other side of Margo, looked at Richard and smiled. "She'll land it. It's her fish, and she'll land it."
"It's ripping her apart," Richard said. "She's just not big enough."
"Please, Hugo," Margo said. "You can have it. It could have been me caught the barracuda."
"Look to the fish," Peak said.
Margo watched the water and her face went tight; she suddenly looked much older than she had looked. Peak reached out and laid a hand on Margo's breast and looked at Richard, said, "I say she does something, she does it. That's the way a wife does. Her husband says she does something, she does it."
Peak ran his hand over Margo's breast, nearly popping her top aside. Richard turned away from them and called up to Jones. "Cut this out. Let's go in."
Jones didn't answer.
"He does what I want," Peak said. "I pay him enough to do what I want."
The boat slowed almost to a stop, and the great fish began to sound. It went down and they waited. The rod was bent into a deep bow. Margo was beginning to shake. Her eyes looked as if they might roll up in her head. She was stretched forward in the straps so that her back was exposed to Richard, and he could see the cords of muscle there; they were as wadded and tight as the Gordian knot.
"She can't take much more of this," Richard said. "I'll take the fish, if you won't."
"You won't do a goddamn thing, Mr. Young. She can take it, and she will. She'll land it. She caught it, she'll bring it in."
"Hugo," Margo said. "I feel faint. Really."
Peak was still holding his beer, and he poured it over Margo's head. "That'll freshen you."
Margo shook beer from her hair. She began to cry silently. The rod began to bob up and down and the line on the reel was running out. The fish went down again.
Jones appeared from the upper deck. "I've killed the engine. The fish will sound and keep sounding."
"I know that," Peak said. "It'll sound until this bitch gives up, which she won't, or until she hauls it in, which she will."
Richard looked at Jones. The watered gravy eyes looked away. Richard realized now that not only was Jones a paid lackey, he had actually made sure he, Richard Young, was on this boat with Hugo Peak. He had known Jones a short time, since he'd been staying on St. Croix, and they had drunk a few together, and maybe he'd told Jones too much. Not that any of it mattered under normal circumstances, but now some things came clear, and Richard wished he had never known this Captain Jones.
Until now, he had considered Jones decent company. Had told him he was staying in the Caribbean for a few months to
rest, really to get past some disappointments. And over one too many loaded fruit drinks, had told him more. For a brief time, two defenses, he had been the Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion of the World. Trained in Kenpo and Tae Kwon Do, he had gone into kickboxing late, at thirty, and had worked his way up to the championship by age thirty-five, going at a slow rate due to lack of finances to chase all the tournaments. It wasn't like professional kickboxing paid all that much. But he had, by God, been the champion.
And on his second defense, against Manuel Martinez, it had gone wrong. Martinez was good. Real good. He gave Richard hell, and Richard lost sight of the rules in a pressed moment, snapped an elbow into the side of Martinez's temple. Martinez went down and never got up. The blow had been illegal and just right, and Martinez was dead and Richard was shamed and pained at what he had done.
He had the whole thing on videocassette. And at night, back home, when he was drunk or depressed, he sometimes got out the cassette and tormented himself with it. He had done what he had done on purpose, but he had never intended for it to kill. It was an instinctive action from years and years of self-defense training, especially Kenpo, which was fond of elbow strikes. He had lost his willpower and had killed.
He had told this to Jones, and obviously, Jones, most likely under the influence of drink, had told this to Peak, and Peak was the kind of man who would want to know a man who had killed someone. He would want to know someone like that to test himself against him. He would see killing a man in the ring as positive, a major macho achievement.
And those glowing yellow shins of Peak's. Callus. Thai boxers built their shins up to be impervious to pain. Used herbs on them to deaden feeling, so they could slam their legs against trees until they bled and scabbed and finally callused over. Peak wore those shins like a badge of honor.
Yeah, it was clear now. Peak had wanted to meet him and let it lead up to something. And Jones had made at least part of that dream possible. He had supplied Richard, lured him like an unsuspecting goat to the slaughter.