American Craftsmen (20 page)

“But I saw those things,” she insisted. “You raised a ghoul from the dead.”

“You saw that much? Well, I didn’t do that,” I said. “And he wasn’t resurrected. Just a meat puppet. Ghosts are usually more pleasant.”

“Hey,” she asked, “is it cold in here?”

Speak of the devil—Grandpa was in the back seat! “You’re back!” I said.

“What?” said Scherie, startled.

Grandpa’s hand rested on the keystone fragment, and I saw the answer. “I thought I’d lost you with House,” I said. But some of the House was still with me.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Scherie, looking at the rearview mirror. “Oh God! What is he doing here?”

Scherie veered violently toward the shoulder, nearly colliding with a truck and an SUV.

“Scherie! It’s OK! Please, keep driving.”

She steered back into traffic, clutching the wheel in terror. “What the hell is going on?”

“Please, be calm. It scares them when we’re nervous.” I was speaking too rapidly. “You saw him at the party. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you who he was. Scherie, this is Grandpa. Um, he’s a ghost.”

But Grandpa wasn’t listening. He was staring at another figure in the backseat who had just manifested to my view. Uh-oh.

“Scherie, this other ghost is my father.”

“Your father? Oh. Then I can’t tell them to leave?”

“No, please don’t.”
Not that it would do any good.

The two ghosts glared at each other with a lifetime of anger, not even glancing at me. Then, they spoke over each other, both asking, “What are you doing here?”

“Dale,” said Grandpa, “tell this revenant to depart.”

My father held up an open palm. “We’re not on Morton ground, Pops. You’re in my territory now.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me that way,” said Grandpa. “You betrayed this family, the craft, everything—and look at what it got you.”

“Same thing we all get, in the end,” said Dad.

“What a surprise,” said Grandpa. “Self-pity.”

“If only you had listened to me,” said Dad. “But too late to change your mind now, dead man.” After Dad’s death, still-living Grandpa had told his ghost to stay out, out of the house and out of our lives. Grandpa hadn’t altered this command before his own demise, and it was very hard for the dead to change their minds or anything else.

But Grandpa didn’t appreciate being reminded of his limitations. He shouted, “You’re leaving, now!”

“No time,” I said. “You can resume your afterlife combat when this is done. This is family survival, so you will stand down.”

“Shit, we’re nuts,” said Scherie.

Grandpa’s hand lashed out to smack Dad, and then they both went at it. They smashed each other out of shape, distorting the reality around them to a queasy extent. I swatted at both of them, but couldn’t pacify their skirmish. “Stop it, both of you! You’re embarrassing me!”

“Don’t mind me,” said Scherie.

Grandpa pulled his rifle from the air above Scherie’s head. Dad drew the ghost of his Colt .45, and the living gun at Scherie’s side quivered.

“Hey!” she said. “Can they shoot us?”

I didn’t think the ghosts would actually wipe each other out of this plane; right now I didn’t care. I reached for my inner West Point. “Dad! Grandpa! Sirs! I respect you both, but if you don’t stop this brawl, I’ll dispel you so thoroughly you won’t come back in time for the next century.”

Dad grinned ferally at me. “You think you’re strong enough to take your old man?”

Grandpa gave Dad a last swat on the head. “Knock it off. Any other day, he could take you and me and the Left-Handed dead while filling out his taxes.”

“There are Left-Hand ghosts?” asked Scherie.

“I apologize for our rudeness, ma’am,” said Dad. “I’m Dale’s father, Captain Morton. My, but as dooms go, you’re a pretty one.”

“Yes, very nice to finally meet you,” said Grandpa, who then turned toward me. “A little exotic for my taste. Parents not born here. But she’ll do.”

Scherie scowled with outrage. “Look, ghost, I’m not interested in your opinion…”

“We’re on a mission, not a honeymoon,” I said.

“Honeymoon?” asked Scherie. She hadn’t gotten what Grandpa meant.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m fading again. Go up to 84. Wake me up in Pennsylvania. We’ll get off the freeway there.”

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

At Matamoras, Pennsylvania, Scherie woke me from a doze of patchwork dreams. Like General Washington in retreat, we had crossed the Delaware. We left the freeway and drove through the Poconos, heading south and east. Some unlicensed station played a song by Guided by Voices. Barring a serious allocation of government resources, Roman’s documents would break any conventional trail. But they wouldn’t trail us conventionally.

The camouflage spell must have been flickering by now. The diminished traffic moved around us more smoothly.

My ancestors weren’t fighting or even manifesting. “Can we talk to my grandmother now?” asked Scherie.

“Sorry,” I said. “Maybe you can, if she shows up. For me, it’s mostly Mortons. They’re the ones who want to talk to me. Though for most of them, that’s like saying your phone message wants to talk to you. The dead may not want anything. They’re dead.”

The night only felt forever; I needed to find our stop before dawn. Good craft sites dotted every state in the Union, but I didn’t know the ones outside of Rhode Island. The back road route was slow; I needed a recharge fast. Even spending my craft with brutal efficiency, the debts of magic demanded repayment.

The dark hills blurred; I was starting to nod again. I could force myself awake, but that would just burn my remaining energy all the quicker toward complete collapse. I might have to try to recharge on mundane ground. So be it. “We have to stop.”

“What about there?” said Scherie.

I saw our destination: an intersection with an old beat-up “Crossroads Motel” that Norman Bates might have graduated to, not part of a chain, with plenty of vacancies. Its ghostly history was strong enough to see without effort. Before, it had been an inn, and before that, a fort, and before that, a tribal ceremonial clearing. Most would pass it by; it was exactly what I needed. On this craft ground, I could recharge.

Ignoring the ghost structures, I scoped out the present-day motel, a run-down monument to that brief time between highways and interstates, a destination for the few sportsmen and adulterers this remote area could support. Hunting and sex were craft-sensitive activities, and the remaining glow of this place was enough to give an edge to both. Three buildings with ranch-style rows of rooms boxed the parking lot, with an office at the far end of the right-hand row. In front of the left-hand building was a sports car. We drove past the car, a candy-apple red late-model Porsche, parked in front of room 128. Its quality raised suspicion, but no tracker could have anticipated us here. I could use it as a distraction. It would look very Morton to any pursuers.

We rang the bell at the desk. A large man woke, Tony Perkins’s antithesis. “We’d like a room with twin beds, please.” The same room with two beds meant two different types of security: I could protect Scherie, and we could avoid dealing with yesterday’s relational fallout.

“Visa or—”

“I’ll pay in cash,” I said.

“I still need a deposit,” said anti-Tony.

“I’ll pay more cash,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” said the clerk. “Let’s see. Room 108 is a twin.”

Good, that was across from the Porsche. But wait—it had been a long time since I’d gone to ground in my own country. Something I was forgetting, something important. No, unimportant, yet very annoying. “The Gideons.”

“What’s that?” said anti-Tony.

“Do your rooms have Gideon Bibles in them?” I asked.

“Some of them. If it’s missing, I can get one for your—”

“Not necessary,” I said. “I’d prefer a room without a Bible. It offends me.”

“What’s your problem with God’s word? You some kind of … oh, sorry, ma’am.” Typical—the man tolerated hints of criminality more than an irreligious fellow American.

“It’s not the Bible,” I said. “A Gideon once hurt my grandmother.” The lie came easily; it was nearly true.

“Oh. Well, you can—”

I drew out some more bills. “Could you just check for me?”

“I can just check,” whispered Scherie.

“No, dear, this nice gentleman will check for us,” I said. I gave her a military glare that even a civvy could translate:
not another word, soldier
.

Anti-Tony walked outside. I held up my hand. “Nice weather we’re having,” I said. We stayed silent. The clerk returned. “No Bible, Koran, or Satanic ritual.” He gave us the room key, then bent forward to fill in the ledger.

My pursuers might question this clerk, so I hit him with as much suggestion as I had left. “
I think you misread it. We’re staying in room 128. We’re the couple in 128.
”

“The couple in 128,” repeated anti-Tony.

“We came in the bright red Porsche.
”

“Cool car,” said anti-Tony.

The deception in place, I took the key for room 108. I continued to hide my limp until we were outside. “You need to lie down,” said Scherie.

I held out the key to her. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

Scherie took the key, but didn’t budge. “Suit yourself,” I said. First I went to the trunk of the Chevy and put two automatic pistols and a case of ammunition into a small bag with the Colt we already had. Then I limped over toward the Porsche and looked around. The lights were off in 128 and all the other rooms. No one was watching except Scherie. I unzipped my fly, and pissed on the Porsche’s rear tire. Scherie gasped, the urine splattered, and all else was quiet. There was the pinkish tinge of blood in my piss from the beating I’d taken, which was bad for me, but good for this deceptive marking.

Finished with my business, I limped back to Scherie. “What the hell?” she said.

“I don’t like Porsches that aren’t mine,” I said. “Help me to our room. I’m going to collapse quicker than a French craftsman in a blitzkrieg.”

*   *   *

Before collapsing, we loaded and prepared our weapons. For me, it was like old pencil sketches of Mortons on the raw frontier and the high plains, molding lead musket balls together by the fire. A comfortable domestic delusion, given what Scherie must have thought of me now.

“What’s our route to Mexico?” asked Scherie.

“Ask me tomorrow.” I thought I knew, but when I was exhausted I made decisions when needed, and not before.

“Why don’t we just show and tell?” asked Scherie. “This isn’t Colonial Williamsburg. You could go to the media. A couple tricks and they’d believe you. You’d be protected.”

“No,” I said. “That would break the fundamental deal between craft and country. We serve, the government protects, and we can live our own lives.”

“You’d rather be dead?” she asked.

“If I break that deal, I might as well kill myself, and shoot a lot of other craftspeople besides.”

“Oh.”

“It’s usually not bad like this. We live where we choose, go to school or get homeschooled, just like everyone else, marry who we want, have kids…” Damn, I must have been beyond exhausted to start this line of conversation. Maybe I was just mumbling at this point, because Scherie didn’t look up from her gun to see my embarrassment.

We tucked our guns away for the night and fell back on our separate twin beds in our Gideon-less room, fully clothed. A long silence, then Scherie yawned. “I’m exhausted, but I can’t sleep.”

“Try counting breaths,” I said. No time for pillow talk—I had to start healing.

“Why are you against the Bible?” she asked.

“I’m not against the Bible,” I said. “I’m against Gideon Bibles. The government can use them to track people, particularly craftsmen.”

“That’s insane,” she said. “Not serious.”

“Dead serious,” I said. “The Bibles are magical trip wires, a surveillance net covering hotels and motels. No freedom of the road for craftsmen. If you aren’t government craft, you’re in trouble. I could cover the Bible in a craft-soaked cloth, but they’re looking for me, so they might spot that.”

“And it’s the same if you ask someone to remove it for you?” she asked.

“Like a security camera going suddenly dark,” I said. “They’d see it.”

“Oh. I thought you just didn’t like the Bible because it’s against wi—” Scherie blushed. “It’s against magic.”

I chuckled, though it hurt to laugh. “You don’t have to worry about the W-word, though I prefer ‘craftsperson.’ I enjoy the Bible; it has plenty of interesting things to teach about the craft. The Koran too. It’s always there in the old sacred texts, hiding in the corners.”

Scherie said, “I don’t remember any…”

“How about the witch of Endor?” I asked.

“She doesn’t count,” she said. “She wasn’t a real witch.”

“That’s not clear in the original,” I said.

“You believe that story?” she asked.

“Maybe not the details,” I said, “but yes, I believe it. It’s one of the few stories in the Bible that every craftsperson believes.”

“Why’s that?” she asked.

“Because,” I said, “it’s a story where craft works.”

*   *   *

Dreamless sleep beckoned. Only the force of long discipline impelled me to rudimentary self-healing. I couldn’t wake up like this.

I initiated my repair through breathing exercises. This sputtering fount of craft wasn’t like the House, where the air itself was supercharged with Morton life force. I’d have to delve deeper for power here. As I breathed from my belly, it felt like roots growing down from my spine, into the mattress and shooting through the legs of the bed, down through the floor and the walls, into the native soil, seeking magical sustenance.

This passive work wouldn’t set off any Bibles in the nearby rooms. Our pursuers wouldn’t detect it until we were long gone.

But even discipline couldn’t keep me awake forever. Like falling into a well, I slept.

*   *   *

As Dale became quiet, Scherie still couldn’t relax. She had seen ghosts and magic, but that wasn’t what kept her awake. She was lying in the same room with a man with whom she’d been intimate, but about whom she knew less and less with certainty, including how she felt. A day ago, she had known her feelings with passionate exactness. Now, she only knew one thing for sure. Dale was hurt. A magus, yet he couldn’t instantly heal himself. His injuries and pain alone would have made her too anxious to sleep.