Highfire Read online

  Waxman was surprisingly not laid up in his hammock but sitting in his rocker on the slatted deck, an AK-47 laid across his bony knees.

  “Heard me some explosions,” he explained. “Figured either a flare or a visit. Praise be: Lord Highfire come to parlay with his subject.”

  Waxman was a sight to behold.

  By all laws of nature, a fellow with that amount of wrinkles on his visage should be tumbling forth out of a sarcophagus or some such, but Waxman was alive and kicking. Mostly kicking back was how he liked it now. But there was life in the old dog, and so forth. He wore a suit of black-panther velvet and a black bowler hat with a rooster quill in the band. His face might have been any color at some point but had come around to gray mostly, with black in the creases. Sky-blue eyes and a white beard curled down into his scarlet cravat.

  Folks who got up close, who were few and far between, said that Waxman’s skin looked scorched, like he’d been given the third degree as a little one, which was kinda funny considering the origins of his species.

  Which were as follows: Somewhere along the line when dragons were kings of the hill, one would occasionally crossbreed with a human. That didn’t usually turn out so happy-ever-after for the progeny. A baby dragon had teeth from the get-go, which didn’t augur well for the human mother, and a dragoness’s tubes would crush a human baby on the way out. So most of these mutant children never saw the light of day. But life is tenacious, and every so often one of these tough little bastards would pop out looking like he’d spent the night in a cauldron rather than a womb, all burned in appearance. Eventually you got an Adam and an Eve, so to speak, and they took it from there on their own, propagating a new hybrid species neither dragon nor human, and not accepted in either world.

  Waxman was one of these guys: full-breed new breed and tough as briar. He wasn’t in Vern’s league age-wise; he numbered in centuries, rather than millennia. The Chinese called what Waxman was a mogwai, a malevolent-type fairy. But history was written by the victors, and humans had a habit of painting themselves as the nonmalevolent guys in spite of the fact that everyone else was generally swinging from gibbets. And if Waxman was asked, he wouldn’t consider himself unnecessarily malevolent. He was a survivor, was all, and a guy did what had to be done.

  Mogwai and dragons often buddied up to avoid death by whatever elaborate method the crusading mob favored at the time. Vern ran into Waxman in the early 1960s, when the mogwai was doing some indentured servitude as a freak on a circus train. Vern heard about the Amazing Melting Man and reckoned the circus had a mogwai on its hands and it sure would be nice to have someone to talk to.

  So, a little rescue operation, he thought. Quick in and out. No mess, no fuss.

  Turned out there was beaucoup mess and fuss. Vern miscalculated his approach and derailed half a dozen flatcars as they crossed the Pump Slough Bridge, sending them plunging into the Pearl.

  “Some goddamn rescue,” Waxman often noted. “Broke my goddamned back.”

  It had been, Vern would admit, a “stoppered cock of a situation,” which had been quite the phrase back in the day. Waxman’s back had been broken, but luckily Waxman had amazing healing qualities.

  “And I almost drowned,” was the mogwai’s usual gripe.

  Which was true.

  “‘Almost’ being the word,” Vern always argued. “I fished your sorry ass out of the river, didn’t I? I can ship you back to the circus if you prefer? If running the occasional errand for me is too strenuous?”

  And Waxman would chuckle and say, “Nah, you ain’t the worst, Highfire. You is just the ugliest.”

  The most useful thing about Waxman, from Vern’s perspective, was that he could pass for human—weird as all hell, but still human, which accounted for him living way downriver. And so long as he kept his jacket on, stayed swamp-wild, and paid his bills, then no one bothered him. Of course, every now and then a couple of good old boys would try their luck, but Waxman had more pep in his step than one might assume, and he kept his weapons in good order.

  Like the AK-47 which lay across his lap right now. Vern noticed the mogwai’s finger was on the trigger, and he knew Waxman was putting those sharp ears of his to work, making sure Vern hadn’t picked up a tail.

  “Clear, Vern,” he said eventually. “So far as I can tell. These days those sharp-eyed motherfuckers could be watching us from off-world.”

  “Let’s mosey inside,” said Vern, shaking his wings. “I can’t relax none with the sun on my back.”

  “Ain’t that a sorry statement?” said Waxman, and rocked forward in his chair, using the momentum to scooch himself upright. “Too early, you think?”

  “Ain’t never too early,” said Vern, and followed his associate into the houseboat.

  WAXMAN’S ORIGINAL NAME was lost in the twists of time. In the days since, he had been known as Winkle, Blackhoof, Saundersonn, Roachford, Roach, and finally Waxman. The mogwai had never felt the need for a first name or qualifier.

  “Ain’t but one Waxman,” he always said, to which Vern usually replied, “You can sing that, brother.”

  Waxman used to have family, back in the way back when, and maybe he still did. Weren’t no hives left, just spread out and fit in was the plan. Latch onto a dragon if you could, but there weren’t so many of those anymore neither, and Waxman had near to gone into early hibernation when Vern dropped out of the sky.

  “Shit, your lard-ass descending from the heavens was one of the sweetest sights I ever seen, even if you did shatter my goddamned back.”

  Vern let the “lard-ass” comment go, and that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Half a century and counting.

  And the Waxman name worked for the mogwai. Suited his face.

  “Makes me seem a character,” he said. “‘Crazy Waxman’ would be better, or maybe ‘Scary Waxman’ to keep the kids away, but ‘Waxman’ will do just fine. I’m like Boo fuckin’ Radley on crack to these backward-ass folk.”

  Truth was, Waxman was scary, or could be, when the occasion called for it, and sometimes, if he was feeling irritable, when it didn’t. Most of the time he was just a swamp character, living out on his houseboat, cut off from civilization; plenty of old guys went off the grid. Kept himself to himself mostly. Something up with his face, but who gave a good goddamn about that so long as he paid his bills? But it had happened, down the years, that some boat people would exercise their human nature and try taking over Waxman’s little patch, and then the mogwai would take out his bag.

  That creepy-ass bag of sharp things and small corked bottles.

  Wasn’t no human saw that bag and lived to tell the tale, and Vern often thought that he never wanted anything coming out of that bag with his name on it, because he knew there was something in that purple silk interior that was brewed special for him.

  Vern tucked his wings and ducked through the doorway. The inside of the houseboat was a lot more salubrious than the outside. Waxman liked his comforts, even if he didn’t draw attention to the fact. The only people who knew how Waxman lived were Vern and Bodi Irwin, who ordered his antiques, and often dropped them off in the tour cruiser, if they were too bulky for the boy who ran for him.

  Wall-to-wall rugs, North African mostly, overlapping each other’s borders. A forest floor of colors and textures. The walls were pumped full of foam insulation, and there was a nice quiet Honda generator running the electrics when the solar panels on the roof ran out of juice. Where Vern had his cable TV with its treetop combi-dish for entertainment, Waxman had books: three walls of books, which started one shelf off the deck in case of damp or storm, a tactic learned the hard way, the most bitter lesson being a water-damaged first edition of Ulysses. The Irish version.

  Vern had scoffed, “Irish Ulysses? I wouldn’t pay ten bucks for that shit. You been had, Wax. Ulysses was a Greek sonuvabitch.”

  Which had almost put an end to their symbiosis.

  But Waxman endured. “You know, Highfire, how come a dragon be so old
and so ignorant?”

  Which led to huffing on both sides, but they got over it. No choice really. What the hell else were they going to do?

  Because of the Ulysses incident, there was not one but two dehumidifiers running at all times and a slab of air-conditioning machinery crouched in one corner. Waxman’s bed was an ebony four-poster, which had taken some lugging, and he had a rainfall shower plumbed in which Vern envied even as he scoffed at it.

  “You gotta watch all this shit when I’m down,” said Waxman. “Specially the books. Something happens to my Faulkners and that’s the final nail in the coffin as far as this here is concerned.”

  Vern settled into a velvet armchair with the ass conveniently sawed out of it to accommodate his tail. “You ain’t going down anytime soon, though, right?”

  Waxman took down a bottle of fine Irish whiskey from the dresser. “Could be soon. I feel this thing in my hide.”

  Vern accepted a tumbler of whiskey. “Hide? The hell you say. You gone all New Agey on me, Wax?”

  “Nah,” said Waxman, sniffing his drink, “my skin gets all itchy. Look at me, Highfire. I’m grayer than a badger’s asshole. This skin has gotta come off. I can show you if you have a hankering for specifics.”

  Vern finished his drink in a swallow. “I’ll take a pass there, Wax. It’s bad enough I got to see your face.”

  “Feeling’s mutual,” said Waxman. “Thing is, my entire skin is above regular on the itch scale, which means I gotta go down for the dirt nap soon.”

  “Shit, Wax,” said Vern. “When?”

  “As soon as,” said Waxman. “Once we sort whatever needs to be sorted. Whatever brings you here in the first place.”

  Vern was not best pleased with this news. “Come on, Wax, ain’t you got some way to bypass that process?”

  The mogwai laughed. “Yeah, Highfire. I jest calls up Mother Nature and asks her to speed up evolution. You sure is a dumb shit for an ancient motherfucker.”

  Vern tossed off his second drink and scowled. “If we got to drink whiskey, you know I favor Scotch.”

  “Sorry,” said the mogwai, betraying his lie with a grin, “all’s I got is Irish. Irish like Ulysses.”

  Vern crossed his legs and stared through the golden film at the bottom of his glass down to the marl-tinged shades of the rug under his feet. He twisted his cut-glass tumbler, a makeshift kaleidoscope. “I need the bag, Wax.”

  Waxman sighed, deep down to his boots. “Come on, Highfire. I ain’t needed the bag in years. A guy gets older, you know? You need someone killed, do it your own self. You never had no problem before.”

  “This is different. I need this fella done quiet. It’s a human, if that helps your conscience.”

  “It does, but not much. Tell the truth, I’m about done with hating the world. It’s hard to maintain.”

  “I know it,” said Vern. “Even Ice Cube smiles now and again. But I got seen, Wax. Up close. Flying, conversing, the whole works.”

  “And this human? You let him escape?”

  “Goddamn gator,” said Vern. “Came stomping in with a challenge. I got distracted and the human, the boy, shoots out the window. Plucky little fucker, I give him that.”

  Waxman sat up. “Plucky little fucker, says you? You got a name to go with that description?”

  “I do, indeedy. A stupid-ass name,” said Vern.

  The dragon didn’t need to say it.

  “My nerves are twitching up a storm,” said Waxman. “Squib Moreau, am I right?”

  Now Vern sat up. “Right you are, Wax. These nerves of yours is pretty goddamn specific with names.”

  “Naw,” said Waxman, “I am familiar with Squib is all.”

  “You’re familiar with him? That ain’t gonna be a deal-breaker, Wax? You know the arrangement we got.”

  Waxman finger-combed his beard. “I know it, Vern. Us against them, right?”

  “Goddamn right. Like it’s always been. The angry mob ain’t nothing but one jabbering kid away from our doors.”

  “Thing is, Highfire,” said Waxman slowly, “this kid, Squib, he don’t exactly jabber.”

  Vern snorted. “He jabbered plenty when I showed him the dragon flame. Tried to make himself all familiar. Showed me his fingers and shit.”

  Waxman smiled, and a person looking closely might spot that there seemed to be a second row of teeth lurking behind the front set. “Yeah, Squib’s an operator, sure enough.”

  Vern was a little surprised by Waxman’s attitude. “You gone soft on me?” he asked. “You loving humans now?”

  “I ain’t loving nobody,” said Waxman. “Not even your scaly ass. But Squib. He’s a one, you know? Credit where it’s due.”

  “What in blue blazes are you talking about, Wax? ‘Credit where it’s due’? Have you gone and switched sides on me?”

  “Calm down, Highfire,” said Waxman; then he actually shushed the dragon.

  Vern was not one for being shushed. “‘Calm down’? You forget that cage I found you in? Look at you, Wax. You’re positively purring over that kid.”

  “Well, lookee here,” said Waxman, clapping his hands. “Highfire is shook up. What the hell happened downriver?”

  “Shit,” said Vern. “Shit happened. Explosions. Boats sinking. The whole ball of wax. I either gotta tie this off or move on, Wax. Not that I like it here overly, but I don’t like it nowhere else neither.”

  “And this boy, Squib. That’s the only way?”

  “How I see it. Less’n you got something else up that sleeve?”

  Waxman sighed. “I hates to do it, Highfire. That boy does for me like I do for you, if you get my drift. Keeps me in the supply chain. Good kid, too. Resourceful. He ain’t the squealing type.”

  “Sure,” huffed Vern, “ain’t nobody the squealing type till they get a load of me. Little asshole has probably already done squealed. Only chance we got is that he was messing with Constable Hooke downriver, so could be he won’t run to the law.”

  “How about I do Hooke?” said Waxman, brightly. “I would surely hop to that task. I got just the bottle for that prick.”

  Vern shook his head. “Hooke didn’t see nothing apart from his own ass catching fire. I reckon he’ll steer clear.”

  “You don’t know Hooke. That man is trouble. I can smell it offa him a mile away.”

  “So long as he stays a mile away.”

  Waxman reached up with both hands and set eight fingers on the brim of his felt bowler hat, removing it delicately and laying it on his lap like a house cat. “You is set on the kid then, Highfire?”

  “I can’t see another way. I done marked his crib for you. There’s this metal rail on the decking. Get it done, is my advice, before he gets to whispering with his buddies after pud-tugging time.”

  Waxman stroked the hat, which was a downright creepy habit. “No need for the mark o’ the dragon, Highfire. Kid should be here in a half hour or so.”

  Vern found himself both delighted and anxious. “He’s coming here? That is downright considerate. I should shake a leg and let you be about your business.”

  Waxman cackled. “No, sir, Highfire. It is true that Waxman goes where you cannot go, but since you is already present and correct, I’m thinking you can sit a spell and do your own dirty work.”

  “Come on, Wax. I need to get gone. You the man when it comes to vanishing humans.”

  Waxman mulled this over. “I been thinking about that. Humans, dragons, mogwai—ain’t no bad species nor good species. Ain’t you always telling me how your brother was an asshole?”

  “He was an asshole,” said Vern with vehemence, flashing on his brother, Jubelus, looming over him and mashing pig guts into his face.

  “Three thousand years and still you can’t let that go,” said Waxman. “But my point is that we is all souls. And there is good souls and bad souls. The boy Squib is somewhere in the middle, but I believe he’s leaning toward good. So if you want to vanish him against my counsel, then you gotta do the deed your
own self.”

  Vern squinted, considering this. The mogwai didn’t offer this level of counsel lightly. Usually shooting the breeze was about as profound as it got at Chez Waxman. Vern had learned to spend a while mulling over anything that resembled the philosophical coming out of his friend’s mouth, but on this occasion there was no time for mulling, and no room for soul theories. The boy had got to be got was the boiled-down bones of the truth.

  Vern thought that maybe he could pull rank, but really, the mogwai-dragon thing was pretty much an equal-partners class of an arrangement, and he couldn’t blame Waxman none for being leery of the job. Wasn’t in his nature anymore. Sure, the mogwai had his bag of tricks, but he didn’t relish opening it unless completely necessary. And he drew the line at kids of any species. It could be argued that this Moreau boy wasn’t exactly a kid, but he wasn’t exactly a grown-up neither.

  “You ain’t for budging on this, I guess?” said Vern.

  “Reckon I ain’t,” confirmed Waxman, threading the feather in his hatband through his fingers like he was stroking a tiny bird.

  “Well then, I’ll do the kid,” said Vern, “and leave you to stroking your hat. Which is creepy as all hell, by the way.”

  “I’d rather be a hat stroker than a kid killer,” said Waxman, which did have a ring of logic to it.

  SQUIB WAS JUMPY as a cat in a doghouse traversing the river. The current tugged at the hull of his pirogue, but the boat rode the catspaws like a leaf and cut across the flow in a series of tiny hops. On another day, Squib might have relished the sunlight on his face and the prospect of passing an hour with old Waxman, who was never averse to beer and cigarettes in the afternoon under that circus awning of his, but today he was hot and bothered by the knowledge that dragons could swim and he was currently on the water.

  Dragons can swim? he thought. Surely to Christ that ain’t fair, swimming and flying both? What kind of a chance does a fella have against abilities like that?