Edward Lee: Selected Stories Read online

  Edward Lee – Selected Stories

  ISBN: 978-88-99569-21-1

  Copyright (Edition) ©2016 Independent Legions Publishing

  Copyright (Text) ©Edward Lee

  1° edition epub/mobipocket: 1.0 July 2016

  Digital Layout: Lukha B. Kremo - [email protected]

  Proofreading: Jodi Renée Lester

  Cover Art by Giampaolo Frizzi

  www.independentlegions.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The First Header

  (A portion of ‘Header 2’, 2010)

  Pay Me

  (Originally published in ‘Quest for Sex Truth and Reality’, 1993)

  Make a Wish

  (Originally published in ‘Carnal Surgery’, 2011)

  Makak

  (Originally published in ‘Brain Cheese Buffet’, 2010)

  A Header Tale

  (Promo chapette for Header DVD, 2006)

  A Header Tale Part II

  (Promo chapette for ‘Header 2’, 2010)

  The Cities of Sixties

  (Promo chapette for ‘Infernally Yours’, 2009)

  The Deliltry of Elemental Valence

  (Originally published in ‘Skull Full of Spurs’, 2000)

  Chef

  (Originally published in ‘In Laymon’s Term’, 2011)

  Ever Nat

  (Originally published in ‘Bullet Through Your Face’, 2010)

  Edward Lee

  Selected Stories

  THE FIRST HEADER

  Ten minutes was all it took for the young and eagle-eyed Micky-Mack to bag several squirrels, and a few minutes after that, those squirrels were promptly skinned and gutted via Helton’s big buck knife. Now the tasty rodents roasted slowly on steak skewers over the roaring campfire outside the truck. The smell was delectable, and it was unfortunate that one of the family’s favorite meals would be tainted by the specter of death, sin, and secrets that hovered over many backwoods folks. They all sat on logs, keeping warm the way men were meant to. Dumar and Micky-Mack looked expectantly to their elder.

  “Well, Paw?” Dumar asked.

  “We’s waitin’,” Micky-Mack added, antsy by the mystery of what it was that so pained Helton to relate.

  “The time’a reckonin’ is upon us, boys,” Helton began, eyes reflecting firelight and something like dark wonder. “We done got our chops busted by this evil man Paulie, and nows we’s out fer our revenge. It’s been the law of the land since time began. Someone do you wrong when you ain’t deserved it, then ya got no choice but to do him wrong even worse. Says so in the Bible”—he pronounced “Bible” as bob-ul. “Says ‘a eye fer an eye.’ ” Helton sipped some soda yet scarcely tasted it. “What I got ta tell ya both tonight hurts me right in my heart—”

  “It hurt me in my heart, Paw!” Dumar raised his voice, “Seein’ my boy kilt so awful!”

  “Simmer down,” Helton ordered. “And listen. In these parts, for years and years, folks been feudin’ over this’n that. It’s part’a man’s nature, I s’pose. But sometimes folks can be so blammed evil that they’ll do ya a wrong that’s so ever-livin’ bad it seems there ain’t nothin’ you can do back to get yer proper revenge. This happened to our family way back in a war they calt the Civil War when the Yankee army come through here’n started burnin’ our ancestors’ houses down for nothin’ more than retrievin’ the nails out the ashes, which they’d melt down to make more bullets so’s ta kill more decent Southern folk. But that ain’t all they did, see?”

  Micky-Mack was so intrigued he sat on the edge of his log. “What else they do, Unc?”

  Helton’s voice lowered to a grim rattle. “They round up all the gals in all the nearby towns, even li’l girls nine, ten years old, and they made ’em all live fer a month in what they called a Sibley Camp on account that’s what the tents they put up was called—Sibley tents, and what they turned this camp into…was a fuckin’ camp.”

  “A what, Paw?” Dumar asked.

  “It were a camp, son, where Yankees from all over could come and git thereselfs a piece’a ass. A blammed rape camp’s what it was! The Yankee general was a black-hearted cad the name’a Hildreth—it’s him was the one who order this big camp put up, and by the hunnerts, the Yankee soldiers’d come to git their willies up in our gals and fill ’em with their evil Yankee peckersnot, and General Hildreth, what he done is he charged each soldier a five-cent piece fer each nut they git in the camp, making profit on his crimes against our gals!”

  Helton’s rancor echoed through the woods. He had to recompose himself. “And, see, bein’ that the gals was forced ta live in this camp fer over a month, they’se all wound up pregnant, and General Hildreth, he like that a whole lot, he did, cos even after his Yankees left, these poor gals’d pop out kids they’d have to raise, just bringin’ more’n more hardship on ’em. And worser than that even was that whiles the gals was in the camp, they weren’t givin’ nothin’ to eat, so’s one’a the gals—name’a Constance McKinney, it was—she were kind’a the speaker fer all the poor gals. What she do is she say to General Hildreth, ‘Please, general, ya gots to give my gals some food ever so often, else we all starve to death!’ So ya know what General Hildreth did? He give each gal a tin cup and then he laugh back ta Constance’n said, ‘Each time one of my men gets his nut up your dirty Rebel pussies, you just stand up and put this cup between your legs and let my men’s jism dribble in the cup…cos that’s all you’re ever gonna get ta eat while you’re here! Ain’t no way I’m wasting a single morsel of food on Rebel bitches!’”

  “God dang, Unc Helton!” Micky-Mack wailed. He and Dumar were clearly unsettled. “Shorely only the most evilest’a men’d make gals live on cum!”

  The shadow of Helton’s nodding head loomed huge in the forest behind them. “Oh, they was evil, all right, boy, evil as if they was the sons’a Lucifer hisself. Our poor gals got fucked or sodder-mized probably a thousand times each by those dag-blasted Yanks. Eventually, though, they moved on, leavin’ our towns burnt and dester-toot. See, the Yanks et all the livestock theirselfs, but what was left they kilt’n left ta rot so’s no one else could have it, and they burnt all the fields too. That blammed Hildreth even sent his men inta the woods to kill every animal they could see; he didn’t want nothin’ left for the folks here to eat. And, a’course, all them poor gals was knocked up and their bellies full’a Yankee bastards…”

  Dumar and Micky-Mack shivered, not from the chill air but from the macabre suspense being conveyed by the fire.

  “Weren’t long after, the war ended, and the town’s men that didn’t get kilt or die in Yankee prison camps, they come back home, but imagine their horror when they did. Town in ashes, fields destroyed, folks livin’ on roots’n head lice’n tree bark’n worms, their wives rack-skinny’n traumer-tized’n with a Yankee baby on their tit. It’s said that a good many’a our boys hanged theirselves in despair when they seed that.” Helton eyed the two young men. “But there were a pair’a Rebel soldiers who come back, and they didn’t kill theirselfs, no sir! They decided to do somethin’ ’bout it!”

  “What, Paw? What?” Dumar pleaded.

  “They hunt down them evil Yankees’n kill ’em, Unc?”

  Helton raised a silencing finger. “Listen ta me now, cos this is important. These two men I’m speakin’ of? One was a fella named Clyde Martin—”

  “Hey!” Micky-Mack exclaimed. “That’s my last name!”

  “Dang straight it is, boy, cos this soldier, Clyde Martin, is yer direct ancestor, and the other fella, he was Lemuel Tuckton—”

  “So, Paw,” Dumar calculated, “you’n me, we’s related to him?”

  “Yes, we is. He’s my great, great grandfather, son. It’s the bl
ood’a these two men—these heroes—that all of us gots runnin’ in our veins. When they seed what General Hildreth did to the town, they got all in a swivet, they did. And they decided to go after him.”

  “Please, Paw! Tell us they kilt Hildreth in a bad way!”

  Did Helton smile in the crackling firelight? “After the war, Hildreth, he go back to someplace calt Filler-delfia, became mayor. Lived in a big mansion with pillars out front, had a beautiful wife and couple’a children, and his two best officers from the war, he hired ’em ta run his estate. See, Hildreth, he were pig-shit rich from all’a his war crimes over the years. So what Clyde Martin and Lemuel Tuckton do one night is after ridin’ on horseback all the way to Filler-delfia, they snatch them two’a Hildreth’s officers…”

  Micky-Mack and Dumar stared.

  “Their bodies was found the next day, both dead as dead could be. Had their heads busted open, they did…but it weren’t no ordinary head wound, no. Hildreth ain’t never seen nothin’ like it, so’s he called the family doctor to inspect the bodies. Both the tops’a their skulls was busted open—a ballpeen hammer, probably, the doc said—and ya could see their raw brains still sittin’ inside’a their skulls. But the doc look close at them brains with a magnifyin’ glass, and ya know what he saw?”

  “What, Unc Helton! What?”

  Helton nodded. “He seed what look like a single knife slit in each brain, then he took a whiff’a them brains—”

  “He smelt the dead fellas’ brains?” questioned Micky-Mack in utter puzzlement.

  “He smelt ’em, all right,” Helton assured, and it appeared by his demeanor that something joyous deep inside was just itching to get out. “And he rekka-nized the smell, and then he stick his finger inta each slit and felt somethin’ slimy, like snot…”

  Dumar’s brow furrowed. “Paw, ain’t no way snot could wind up in a fella’s brain.”

  “It weren’t snot, son. It was cum—”

  “Cum!” Micky-Mack yelled.

  “Dick-loogie, Paw? Peckersnot? That what youse talkin’ ’bout?”

  “It shore is, Dumar! Man batter! Joy juice! Cock hock!” Helton affirmed, rising to his feet as the frenzy of the tale he told began to unwind like a spring. “What Clyde Martin’n Lem Tuckton did is they cracked them two officers hard on the top’a their skulls, picked out the pieces’a bone, and stuck a knife in each brain ta make a slit fer their dicks, and then-then”—Helton began to shake—“and then they fucked their brains!”

  Micky-Mack almost fell off the log. “They fucked their brains, Unc Helton?”

  “Holy sheeeeeeeee-IT, Paw!”

  “They fucked their evil Yankee brains, and I’se mean they fucked ’em hard, and they each got theirself a nut, boys!” Helton was reeling. “Then they done the same to all’a Hildreth’s housemaids and servants, snatchin’ ’em two at a time and humpin’ their heads!”—the frenzy rose, veins bulging in Helton’s forehead, eyes wide and gleaming in vengeful delirium—“then they snatched Hildreth’s children—his children!—and they fucked their heads, and then they done the same to his wife! And then, then, they snatched Hildreth himself and they fucked his head ta kingdom come! They fucked that head three times apiece, boys, comin’ each time’n blowin’ their load right inta the middle’a Hildreth’s twisted brain, they did, till his head was full up with their cum, and that, boys”—Helton stomped the ground—“that…is what’cha call a header!”

  PAY ME

  I’m trying to think what this is.

  Providence? A confession? No, not even close. Words like that ring too thinly, don’t you think? Nor could it be anything so stale as a rite of passage. My God, a passage to what?

  These are excuses—lies. Like touching a lover’s thigh and feeling shadow instead of flesh.

  Sometimes it’s hard to write honestly. Without truth, without the revelation of what things really are, it’s just more lies. More shadows in want of flesh.

  It says—in Ezekiel, I think: I make blood your destiny. That’s God talking, not me. And if God can’t reveal the truth, who can?

  So I guess that’s what this really is. I guess this is my blood.

  Smith wasn’t sure what to make of it; he approached the way dared children might edge toward a house said to be haunted. LIVE SEX! boasted the sign in blue neon. D.C.’S BEST! ALL YOUNG PRETTY GIRLS! LIVE SEX LIVE SEX LIVE SEX!

  The place was called The Anvil; Smith smiled at an obvious symbology. He remembered it as one of the many bottomless bars wedged into the city’s porno district. Now, though, it seemed The Anvil had graduated to more definitive designs. Smith felt confused. What, after so many years, had brought him back? He was a writer; he wanted things to write about, real things, real truths in a real world. He wanted substance, not tales; he wanted people and lives and honest experience, not cardboard cut-outs and soap opera dialogue. He figured his professional insights had posted a challenge. So here he was. Couldn’t better judgment, in a sense, also be called cowardice?

  Music rocked into the street when he opened the door. He shouldered through a standing crowd in a brick-arched entrance, craning his neck to sense The Anvil’s depth. The twenty-five dollar cover didn’t seem to thwart business—people were jammed in attendance. Smith had come here a few times during college, with friends. It seemed larger now, a cavernous expansion of the layout he remembered. The main stage existed in a stagnant haze of glare, accentuated by multicolored spotlights set to throb with the music. Around all this, dozens of tables and chairs were arranged in uneven concentric circles. The stage was empty, save for an armless chair and a loop harness suspended from the ceiling. The loop cast a shadow like a hangman’s noose.

  Two stone-faced city cops eyed for minors near the bar, but no one seemed to care. Smith thought, temporal excommunication. They were invisible here, shunned. Outsiders in the chasm’s jubal.

  A large video screen rounded one corner—entertainment between the acts. Smith winced. This was “homegrown” fare; you could always tell by the track marks on the girls’ arms, and forced smiles full of broken teeth. The grainy shot zoomed in from behind for the eloquent close-up of frenetic copulation. Then a cut to the girl’s head rocking on the desk. Was she asleep? Eventually the penis withdrew and offered its obligatory ejaculus externus. High-class stuff, Smith thought.

  Consciously he wanted to leave—this was not his territory. Places like this were dangerous and not of his ilk. Drug deals took place here; prostitution was solicited. Fights broke out on a regular basis. There’d even been police raids. But down deep Smith wanted to see—he needed to—as if seeing would verify the reality he pursued, whatever that might be. He was an outsider, too, goody-two-shoes in the den of iniquity. His discomfort excited him; it made him feel, somehow, more like a writer. Cowards die a thousand times, he reflected and almost laughed. But when he began to search for a table, his arm was grabbed, spinning him around. Suddenly a girl was shouting in his face. “Hey-hey! It is you! My God, I haven’t seen you in ages!”

  The moment warped, mental feelers searching for a bearing. Then: recognition. He knew this girl.

  “Lisa?” he queried. He’d had a crush on her as a kid, but the crush had never progressed past distanced longing. Her odd haircut and glossy blue-vinyl overcoat made her look like some kind of pop baroness. It dizzied him to see her in such contrast—in school she’d always dressed like a minister’s daughter.

  “Lisa,” he finally managed. “The last time I saw you was in—”

  “High school,” she finished. “I know, I know. Ten years.”

  Smith groped for some cordiality, but before he could speak she was yanking him through the throng by the arm. The meeting had transpired so quickly, Smith was flabbergasted. He couldn’t stop wondering what Lisa, of all people, was doing in this seamy place.

  She led him to a table marked RESERVED, then ordered two beers from a mohawked blonde with glittered nipples and an orange G-string. When Lisa looked at him she seemed to smile through a
wan aura. Smith felt hit in the face by a flying stone; it was the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen.

  “Surprised to see me?” she asked.

  “I, uh,” he replied. He shook his head. “You look as good as you did in ’83.”

  “Do I really?”

  “Well, no. Actually you look better.”

  She leaned forward, coyly, as if to tell a secret. A subtle scent drifted up, clean hair and a hint of perfume that Smith found intensely arousing. “You know, this is really freaky,” she enthused. “But I was poking around my basement today, and I found one of my old yearbooks. I opened it up and the first face I saw was yours. And here you are, a couple of hours later, sitting right in front of me.”

  “A classic example of the power of the feminine mystique,” Smith joked. It might make a good social allegory. “Come to think of it, I did trudge here in a zombie-like state, beckoned by your psychic call.” He grinned stupidly, lit a cigarette. “I still can’t believe it’s you.”

  Her big brown eyes beseeched him over a beautiful smile. She paused dreamily. “There’s so much I remember all of a sudden…”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how you used to look at me. Follow me around. Think of the silliest questions just for an excuse to talk to me…”

  Smith turned red.

  She touched his hand, laughing. “I’m sorry. I’m embarrassing you.”

  You’re goddamned right you are, Smith thought. But then, weirdest of all, he replied, “I remember, too.”

  The waitress brought the beers, and stooped to converse with Lisa. Smith used the distraction to take a good look. A black velvet choker with a tiny silver penis at its center girded her throat. Her hair hung perfectly cropped in a straight line, cut at the same level as the choker; it was lank and shiny as black silk. Bar light and shadows diced her face into a puzzle of hard, pretty angles. Her eyes were so big and bright they dominated her face almost surrealistically.