Hazards (10 page)

“Don’t do that!” she snapped.

I didn’t know whether to apologize or tell her to protect herself in the clinches, so I settled for circling around her again and grabbing a little lower this time, which just got me another slap in the face.

“Damn it, Lucifer, are you wrestling me or molesting me?”

Before I could answer she launched herself through the air at me, and I fell over backward with her on top of me. After that things happened real fast for the next few seconds, and then she slapped me yet again.

“No kissing!” she yelled.

I grabbed a hold of her left wrist with my right hand and her right wrist with my left hand. She wrapped her legs around my waist and started squeezing the air out of me, and while she was doing that she wrapped her other legs around my ankles so’s I couldn’t move, which surprised me because up until that very moment I’d thunk she only had two legs.

Then she wrapped some more legs around my thighs, and then I heard her legs starting to hiss, and I realized that Bubbles had decided his mistress was in trouble and had come on over to protect her.

“Foul!” I yelled.

“What are you talking about?” she grated. “I haven’t done anything to you yet.”

“You get that snake off’n me or I’m gonna bring my godly wrath down on both your heads!” I said.

She twisted around to see what I was talking about.

“Bubbles!” she cried. “Go back to your dog house!”

Bubbles looked plaintively at her.

“Now!”

Bubbles gave my legs one final squeeze for good measure and crawled off.

Valeria watched him slither off, and since her attention was took elsewhere, I gave her a delicate little pinch in a delicate little place to see if I could encourage her to get off me, and all I can tell you is that if basketball players could jump like that they’d have to give serious consideration to raising the hoop to maybe twelve or fifteen feet high.

As for me, I figgered if I got up she’d just knock me down again, and if I actually put any hold on her, she’d either slap my face (depending on where the hold was) or Bubbles would come hissing and sliding to her rescue again, so I reasoned that the best thing was to stay right on the ground where I was.

“Get up, Lucifer!” she snarled. “I’m going to tear you to pieces!”

“I can’t,” I said. “Your snake done busted up my legs.”

“I didn’t hear anything break,” she said.

“Muscles don’t make as loud a snapping sound as bones do,” I said. “But if you want this to be a fair fight in front of your people, we’re gonna have to postpone it until I got my legs back under me.”

“All right,” she said reluctantly. “But if you’re lying…”

“Gods ain’t capable of lying,” I said, crossing my heart.

“I’d have sworn there were a lot of things gods weren’t capable of before I got in the ring with you,” she said bitterly.

“I suppose that means you don’t want to kiss and make up?”

She just glared at me and then ordered a couple of the bigger guys who had wanted to rassle me to carry me over to the altar, where I’d have room to lie down and stretch my feet out. One of them pulled his knife out and turned to her.

“As long as he’s here anyway, Priestess,” he said, “it seems a shame to waste the opportunity.”

“No, I must keep my word,” said Valeria. “We will continue our battle when his legs have healed.”

“You know,” I said, “as long as we’re postponing it, we could pass the word to neighboring continents and sell tickets.”

“What’s a ticket?” asked Valeria.

“What’s a neighboring continent?” asked the guy with the knife.

Well, I could see that they were just a bunch of ignorant peasants, half of ’em beautiful and half of ’em ugly, and all of them badly in need of a god what could teach ’em the ways of civilized societies. But before I could tell them why they were in serious need of me, Valeria ordered them all out, except for two nubile lesser priestesses what wasn’t wearing no more clothes than she herself was.

“On the off chance that you really are a god, you will stay here in the temple until you can walk again,” said Valeria. “I am leaving these two handmaidens to bring you food and tend to your wounds.”

“You ain’t staying your own self?” I asked.

I thunk she was gonna slap me again, but instead she just glared at me for a moment, then turned to the two girls.

“You know your duties,” she said. “But be very careful whenever you get within arm’s reach of him.”

“But isn’t he a god, High Priestess?” asked one of them.

“Possibly,” said Valeria. “But if so, then he is a dirty old god. You have been warned.”

Then she was gone.

I sat up and slung my feet over the side of the altar. “Well, ladies,” I said, “what’s for dinner?”

“Henry, if they catch him before sundown,” said the one on the left.

“Are you really a god?” asked the other one.

“Cross my heart and swear to myself I am,” I answered.

“What’s heaven like?”

“Funny you should ask,” I said. “I thunk we might just experience a little bit of it before we eat.”

“You can actually transport us to heaven?” she asked, all kind of wide-eyed and trusting.

“Sure can.”

“How?”

“Come on over here and I’ll show you,” I said.

About three seconds later she slapped my face.

“Don’t they teach you anything in priestess school besides sunbathing and face-slapping?” I asked, rubbing my cheek.

“Don’t they teach you gods anything besides pinching and grabbing?” she shot back.

“I was just practicing my rasslin’ holds,” I said.

“I
know
what you were practicing,” she said.

“Actually, it looked like fun,” said the other one. “And, well, if he really
is
a god, it’d be a shame to miss an opportunity to learn what lies ahead of us in heaven.”

“You know,” said the first one, “I never looked at it that way.”

“Sure,” said the other one. “And if he’s as clumsy as Henry, then we’ll know he’s a mortal and we’ll feed him to Bubbles.”

“No,” said the first. “The High Priestess says Bubbles is gaining too much weight. We’ll just chop him up into little pieces and feed him to the piranhas.”

“I don’t know,” said the other one. “Then they’ll want to be fed every day, and it won’t be safe to go swimming.” She paused for a moment, considering their options. “We could tie him up and put a bunch of hungry scorpions on his belly.”

The first one made a face. “I don’t like scorpions.”

“Rats, then,” suggested the other. Then she shook her head. “No, that won’t work. Bubbles has eaten most of the rats. I suppose we could make him swallow a bunch of
marabunta
and let them eat their way out.”

“Remember that Chinaman who wandered in here, delirious from fever, and kept raving about the Death of a Thousand Cuts?” said the first.

Well, the two of ’em kept discussing the penalties for my potential failure in their delicate ladylike way for the next ten minutes, and got so wrapped up in it that they didn’t even notice that I’d climbed down off the altar and had made my way to a side door.

“All right,” announced one of ’em at last. “We’re ready to be transported to heaven on a sea of sexual bliss.”

“Or else,” said the other ominously.

They may have said some more things, but by then I was running back down the hill I’d climbed when I first found the lost continent of Moo, and I didn’t slow down nor miss a step until I’d put quite a distance betwixt me and it.

I was mentally patting myself on the back for making good my escape when I felt a thumping somewhere between my shoulder blades. This struck me as kind of unusual. I knew I had a right powerful brain, but I didn’t know it was strong enough to translate mental pats into real ones, so I turned around and who should I find myself facing but Henry, who was covered by dirt and a bunch of cuts where he’d brushed by thorny bushes on his way out of Moo.

“I hate you!” he said. “You ruined the god business for both of us!”

“Maybe not,” I said. “There’s a couple of heavenly handmaidens in the temple that are just waiting to be transported on a wave of bliss, or maybe it was a sea of passion. Anyway, it was something wet, I’m pretty sure of that. Just go back up there after dark and they’ll think it’s me.”

“What the hell good will
that
do?” demanded Henry. “I see they ran you off too.”

“No, I run off on my own,” I said. “Believe me, there’s two beautiful naked priestess just dying for a little male companionship.”

“Really?” he said, his face brightening under the dirt and the beard.

“I give you my godly word on it,” I said. “Just make sure it’s dark when you get there, and it probably wouldn’t hurt none to lose your beard first, or at least convince ’em it’s fast-growing since I didn’t have none when I took my leave of them a few hours ago.”

He stuck out his hand. As first I thunk he was looking for money, but then I realized it wasn’t palm up so I took it and we shook in friendship.

“I guess you ain’t all that bad a guy, as lying, backstabbing, claim-jumping bastards go,” said Henry.

“And you’re certainly better than the average greedy, uncouth, foul-smelling fiend from New Jersey,” I said.

So we parted friends after all, and I figured it was time to continue my quest for the perfect spot to build my tabernacle. I wan-dered across that huge cow pasture for almost a week, and finally I came to a little outpost made all of logs except for the parts that weren’t, and I walked in and made a beeline for the bar.

“What’ll it be, stranger?” said the bartender.

“Gimme a shot of your best whiskey and a chaser,” I told him.

“What kind of chaser?”

“Another whiskey,” I said.

“You’re new around here, ain’t you?” he said. “Where do you hail from?”

“I just arrived from the lost continent of Moo.”

He stared at me for a moment. “Funny,” he said. “You don’t
look
Mooish.”

“Tell me something, Brother,” I said. “Where’s the nearest civilized city what’s got an abundance of sinners, especially of the female persuasion, that’s in serious need of saving?”

“Well, you’ve got a lot of choices,” he answered. “It’s getting close to carnival time in Rio off to the east, they say they just discovered emeralds up north in Equador, I hear tell they found some lost Inca city filled with gold and other trinkets off to the west in Peru, and the gauchos are having their annual round-up just south of here and there figures to be a lot of money at the other end of it, ready to buy a few million tons of beef, and where there’s money there’s almost always sinners.”

“True, true,” I agreed. “Thanks for your help, Brother.” I downed my drinks, had a few more, got my face slapped yet again when I thunk one of the ladies at the bar was looking lonely and lovelorn, and finally I wandered outside to watch the sunset.

I’d been guv a lot information about where to go next. Too much, you might say. So I did the only reasonable thing. I waited until the breeze died down, turned my left hand palms up, spat in it, then slapped my right hand down right hard, and decided that whichever the way the spit flew was the direction in which a passel of sinners would soon find themselves saved.

As my next narrative will show, it wasn’t near as easy as it figgered to be.

Carnival Knowledge

I wandered north and east until I finally came to Los Blancos, which had two hotels, three restaurants, a whorehouse, and five bars, none of which felt inclined to extend credit to a man of the cloth. I finally got a grubstake together when I taught some of the locals a little game what had to do with statistical probabilities and the number 21. It was when they became more interested in the number 54, which was how many cards there were in the deck once you counted the two aces that slipped out of my shirtsleeve at a most inopportune time that I felt a need to take my leave of that fair metropolis, and the sooner the better.

I’d won just enough money to buy passage with an itinerant bush pilot, whose profession was sadly misnamed as there wasn’t a single bush aboard his little three-seater. I figgered I might as well go to Buenos Aires, since I was in Argentina anyway, but he explained that this was carnival week in Rio, and that’s where people from all over South America was headed, and I figured if
they
were going to Rio probably their money was going along with them, and I just might get my hands on enough contributions, freely given and otherwise, to finally get around to building the Tabernacle of Saint Luke—and even if not, there had to be a passel of fallen women in serious need of salvation, and taking the sins of fallen women unto myself was one of the things I did best, me being one of God’s personal representatives.

“Tell me about this here carnival,” I said after I agreed to let him take me there. “Got a lot of sideshow games of chance in it?”

“No, Señor,” he replied.

“Elephants and lions and other trained critters like that?”

“Certainly not, Señor.”

“Well,” I said, “we can play guessing games all the way to Rio, or you can tell me what makes carnival week different from any other time of year.”

“Everyone dresses up in costumes, and they march through the streets, and everywhere there are bands and dancing. The whole city is filled with revelers.”

It sounded a lot more like a costume party than a carnival, but I didn’t want to disagree with him, especially not at 7,000 feet of altitude and no parachute, so I just sat back and started making plans. I figured I’d go dressed as a preacher what had been stuck in the South American outback for a couple of months, which would at least save me the cost of a costume, and with people coming from all over the continent, there figured to be enough sinners for me to get right down to the business of saving souls, since if you’re going to save sinners you just naturally got to go to where they all congregate, and when the pilot started describing some of the ladies’ costumes, which sure as shooting sounded a lot more like the ladies’ lack of costumes, I knew that I’d somehow lucked out and was going to the very best place to find a bunch of blackened souls what was in serious need of some spiritual soap and water.

“Not only is it Carnival,” he continued as this great big city came into view, “but if you are lucky you will have the opportunity to see the Pebbles of God.”

“I speak to God every day,” I said, “and He ain’t never mentioned no pebbles to me. You make ’em sound like they’re mighty special, at least as pebbles go.”

“That is merely the name for them, Señor,” said the pilot. “They are actually a matched set of perfect blue-white diamonds.”

“You don’t say? Worth a lot, are they?”

“A king’s ransom,” he answered. “Maybe an emperor’s.”

“And they’re going to be on display during this here costume party?” I asked.

“They won’t be out on the street with the revelers, of course,” he explained. “But they have been moved to the Presidential Palace under heavy guard where certain select dignitaries will be allowed to view them.”

“How do these here dignitaries get themselves selected?” I said.

He shrugged, which damned near sent the plane into a tailspin. “Who knows, Señor?” And then he added, kind of suspiciously, “Why do you ask?”

“Well, Brother,” I said, “as a man of the cloth, I figger I might be offended by all the drinking and scanty costumes and the like. I kind of yearn for something more sedate, like admiring works of art.”

“There is an excellent art museum on San Paulo Street,” he offered.

I shook my head. “Probably filled to overflowing with paintings of shameless naked women,” I said. “No, I think I’d better stick to admiring God’s marbles.”

“The Pebbles of God,” he corrected me.

“Whatever,” I said with a shrug.

Then he got busy landing the plane, and the conversation kind of lay there like a dead groundhog, and finally we bumped down—I was going to say that we touched down, but I wouldn’t want my Silent Partner to strike me dead for lying to you—and I got out of the plane and wandered over to the Customs and Immigration shed, which was composed of rotting wood and a leaky roof, and lit by a gas lantern.

“Welcome to Rio,” said a uniformed man with a bushy mustache and a toothy smile.

“Glad to be here, Brother,” I said. “Which way to the diamonds?”

“It is the wrong time of year,” he said apologetically. “We do not play baseball during Carnival.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Just point out the Presidential Palace and I’ll be on my way.”

“I am afraid no one is allowed in or out of the palace since the robbery, Señor,” he told me.

“What robbery are you referring to?” I asked, hoping that it was something trivial, like maybe someone stealing Mrs. President.

“The Pebbles of God, Señor,” he said. “You have heard of them?”

“Once or twice,” I said. “What happened?”

“I do not know, Señor,” he replied. “I have been at my station all day. But we received word about an hour ago that an incredibly brazen thief somehow got past all our security and stole the Pebbles. They are searching the city for him even as we speak, but with Carnival going on….” He shrugged. “Ah, well. We have the finest police force in the world. I’m sure that eventually they will apprehend the thief and recover the diamonds. Now then, Señor, have you anything to declare?”

“Just that I’m as outraged as you are, and that Satan’s probably warming up a seat in hell for him even as you and I shoot the breeze,” I said.

“I mean, have you anything to declare for Customs?”

“No,” I answered. “Us men of the cloth travel light.” I showed him my wallet, which was empty, since I’d put what little money I had left inside my shoe.

“Thank you, Señor,” he said, looking at it and handing it back to me. “By the way, your driver’s license expired nineteen years ago.”

“Yeah?” I said, taking a look. “You know, I could have sworn it was only seventeen years out of date. Thanks for pointing it out to me.”

Before he could answer I was heading through the airport and out into the street, where I caught a double-decker bus and headed off toward the center of town. I figured since the Pebbles of God were no longer available, the least I could do was join the party that seemed to be going on all around me, and maybe share a little carnival knowledge with an obliging lady of quality.

Everywhere I looked people were wearing costumes (or in the case of some of the young ladies, not quite wearing them), and they all were smiling and laughing and dancing the samba, which for them of you what ain’t never seen it is a kind of rhythmic form of palsy where you take a ton of steps but don’t get nowhere.

The bus was slowing down for a corner when my eyes fell on the prettiest morsel of femininity I ever did see. She had long black hair flowing down to her waist, and the kind of figure that made you think she had room for an extra set of lungs, and her hips were vibrating like unto a rattlesnake about to strike. I couldn’t quite figure out her costume, but mostly it looked like a naked lady covered with gold and silver glitter and maybe a set of false eyelashes and not a hell of a lot more.

I hopped off the bus and made my way through the dancers right up to her side.

“Howdy, ma’am,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind this intrusion, but I got to tell you that your beauty done dazzled me from afar, so I thunk I’d come on over and let it dazzle me from close up.”

She flashed me a smile that would have made me bay at the moon if I could have spotted it amidst all the balloons and confetti.

“You are rich Americano, no?” she said in the most beautiful feminine voice.

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said, because I figured hitting .500 already put me ahead of Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.

“I am Conchita,” she said. “You put me in movies, maybe?”

“Sure, I’ll be happy to,” I said, making a mental note to buy a little eight-millimeter camera the next morning, and maybe purchase some film in a month or two, after all the tourists went back home and the prices began dropping.

Well, we got to talking, and one thing led to another, and before long Conchita had samba’d her way to a little hotel on a side street, and then she samba’d up the stairs, and then she samba’d into the big double bed, and sometime during the night while I was snoring peacefully she samba’d back out and about an hour before sunrise she samba’d in back and brung her six brothers with her. One of ’em looked like Primo Carnera, only meaner, and he was the runt of the litter. She introduced us and asked me to name the date, and I told her I couldn’t rightly remember but I thunk we were in June, or maybe April, or possibly October, and she laughed musically and said that she didn’t mean today’s date, she meant the date for our nuptials.

The whole family seemed mildly upset when I explained that offering to buy a cheap camera didn’t constitute a bonafide proposal of marriage back where I came from. Then she started crying, and her brothers began ripping the room apart and looking like they was about to leave the room alone and start in on me, so I kind of rushed out the doorway and down the stairs. By the time I hit the main floor I realized I didn’t know how to get in touch with Conchita in case she wanted to go out on another date at some point in the future when everyone had calmed down, but them brothers were thundering down the stairs so fast that I figured that it was better to have loved and lost than to have loved and been dismembered, so I took off down the street and tried to lose myself in the crowd, which was still there and still dancing, even though the sun was thinking of coming up.

“There he is!” yelled a voice, and I saw that one of Conchita’s brothers—the one with steel teeth and hobnailed boots—had spotted me. I raced down an alley, turned onto the next street, damned near bumped into the brother who carried a hand axe for comfort, spun around, and headed off in a new direction. Before long all six of ’em was hot on my tail, and the only thing that saved me was that the crowd was getting thicker and thicker, and none of us could make much headway.

Finally I spotted a big building where a bunch of gents in sparkling white suits and ladies in sparkling pink skins were gathering, and I made a bee-line for the door. I don’t think Conchita’s brothers saw me, because they were no more than fifteen seconds behind me, and no one entered the place for the next half minute. I looked around, and saw that I was in a warehouse, and that this was where a bunch of men were getting into their costumes and a bunch of ladies were getting out of them, so to speak. I figgered the best way to become incognizant was to put on some of the duds the men were wearing, but they seem to have brung their own, because big as the place was I couldn’t find no spare costumes hanging on the walls.

Finally I walked up to one of the men and offered him five dollars for his sequined tuxedo.

“Ten,” he said.

“Okay, ten.”

“And a date with Jean Harlow,” he added.

“I don’t know Jean Harlow,” I admitted.

“Then the deal’s off,” he said.

“Hang on a minute,” I said. “I know a right friendly local girl named Conchita.”

“Conchita with all the brothers?” he said. “You and 500 others.” He crossed himself. “Those brothers made short work of at least 490 of them.”

“That’s why I need a disguise.”

“You need a priest.”

“I
am
a priest,” I said desperately. I held up my well-worn copy of the good book.

“Really?”

“Well, a minister,” I said. “The Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones. Same position, different league.”

“If you’re a minister, what were you doing with Conchita?” he asked me.

“Showing her what sins to avoid if she wants to move to the head of the line at the Pearly Gates.”

“I think I may convert,” he said with a great big grin. “Will you bless me, Father?”

He still had the wrong religion, but I didn’t have no time to argue.

“Domino nabisco, my son,” I said. “Now help me find some duds before them brothers of hers bust the building down.”

Suddenly a trumpet blared and everyone began rushing to the door.

“I am sorry,” he said apologetically. “My group is beginning our march through the city now. We must continue our discussion later.” As he reached the door he turned and yelled back, “If I see Conchita, I’ll give her your regards.”

Then he was gone, and I was all alone in the building. At least I thought I was when I heard a very cultured, very familiar voice say, “I see Fate has brought us together once again, Doctor Jones.”

I kept my eyes on the door, because I didn’t want to turn around and find out for sure that the voice belonged to who I thunk it belonged to.

“Have you no word of greeting for an old friend?” it said.

“Show me an old friend and I’ll let you know,” I said.

“But it’s me, Erich von Horst,” he said, walking into my line of vision, looking as trim and elegant as ever, kind of like a headwaiter without a hair out of place.

“So it is,” I said, walking around him and heading to the door. “And it’s sure been nice seeing you again, but I got urgent business elsewhere.”

“I overheard what you were saying,” he replied. “If you go outside, you’ll run into the girl’s brothers.”

“The worst they can do is bust my arms and legs and maybe break my back and gouge out my eyeballs,” I said, still walking away from him. “That makes it an easy choice.”

He grabbed my arm. “I believe the heat has gotten to you,” he said. “You really should start wearing a hat. You know what the vertical rays of the sun do to Englishmen.”