Dagger Key and Other Stories

  Stanky wasn’t happy with me—he was writing a song a day, sometimes two songs, and didn’t want to disrupt his creative process by doing something that might actually make money, but I gamed him into cutting the track.

  Wednesday morning, I visited Rudy Bowen in his office. Rudy was an architect who yearned to be a cartoonist, but who had never met with much success in the latter pursuit, and the resonance of our creative failures, I believe, helped to cement our friendship. He was also the only person I knew who had caught a fish in the Polozny downstream from the mill. It occupied a place of honor in his office, a hideous thing mounted on a plaque, some sort of mutant trout nourished upon pollution. Whenever I saw it, I would speculate on what else might lurk beneath the surface of the cold, deep pools east of town, imagining telepathic monstrosities plated with armor like fish of the Mesozoic and frail tentacled creatures, their skins having the rainbow sheen of an oil slick, to whom mankind were sacred figures in their dream of life.

  Rudy’s secretary, a matronly woman named Gwen, told me he had gone out for a latte, and let me wait in his private office. I stepped over to his drafting table, curious about what he was working on. Held in place on the table was a clean sheet of paper, but in a folder beside the table was a batch of new cartoons, a series featuring shadowy figures in a mineshaft who conversed about current events, celebrities, et al, while excavating a vein of pork that twisted through a mountain…This gave rise to the title of the strip: Meat Mountain Stories. They were silhouettes, really. Given identity by their shapes, eccentric hairstyles, and speech signatures. The strip was contemporary and hilarious. Everything Rudy’s usual work was not. In some frames, a cluster of tiny white objects appeared to be floating. Moths, I thought. Lights of some kind. They, too, carried on conversations, but in pictographs. I was still going through them when Rudy came in, a big, blond man with the beginnings of a gut and thick glasses that lent him a baffled look. Every time I saw him, he looked more depressed, more middle-aged.

  “These are great, man!” I said. “They’re new, right?”

  He crossed the room and stood beside me. “I been working on them all week. You like ’em, huh?”

  “I love them. You did all this this week? You must not be sleeping.” I pointed to the white things. “What’re these?”

  “Stars. I got the idea from that song Stanky did. ‘Stars Seen Through Stone.’”

  “So they’re seeing them, the people in the mine?”

  “Yeah. They don’t pay much attention to them, but they’re going to start interacting soon.”

  “It must be going around.” I told him about Stanky’s burst of writing, Kiwanda’s adventures in office management.

  “That’s odd, you know.” He sipped his latte. “It seems like there’s been a real rash of creativity in town. Last week, some grunt at the mill came up with an improvement in the cold forming process that everybody says is a huge deal. Jimmy Galvin, that guy who does handyman work? He invented a new gardening tool. Bucky Bucklin’s paying his patent fees. He says they’re going to make millions. Beth started writing a novel. She never said anything to me about wanting to write, but she’s hardly had time for the kids, she’s been so busy ripping off the pages. It’s not bad.”

  “Well, I wish I’d catch it,” I said. “With me, it’s same old same old. Drudgeree, drudgeroo. Except for Andrea’s back.”

  “Andrea? You mean you guys are dating?”

  “I mean back as in back in my house. Living with me.”

  “Damn!” he said. “That’s incredible!”

  We sat in two chairs like two inverted tents on steel frames, as uncomfortable as my upstairs couch, and I told him about it.

  “So it’s going okay?” he asked.

  “Terrific, I think. But what do I know? She said it was a trial period, so I could get home tonight and she might be gone. I’ve never been able to figure her out.”

  “Andrea. Damn! I saw her at the club, but I didn’t realize she was with you. I just had time to wave.” He leaned across the space between us and high-fived me. “Now maybe you’ll stop going around like someone stole your puppy.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said.

  He chuckled. “Naw. Which is why the people of Black William, when asked the date, often reply, ‘Six years, a months, and twelve days since the advent of Vernon’s Gloom.’”

  We moved on to other topics, among them the club, business, and, as I made to leave, I gestured at Rudy’s grotesque trophy and said, “While those creative juices are flowing, you ought to design a fishing lure, so I can watch you hook into the Loch Polozny Monster.”

  Rudy laughed and said, “Maybe if I have a couple of minutes. I’m going to keep working on the comic. Whatever this shit is, it’s bound to go away.”