by Kris Saknussemm

(Sliptongue is honored to present a preview from the novel ENIGMATIC PILOT, scheduled by Random House for publication in 2008.)

The possessor of the mechanical prosthesis was supposedly named Henri St. Ives and while he claimed to be from Vicksburg, he had the aura of those who habitually obscure their origins. It was at a card table in one of the parlors on the upper deck, surrounded by a stack of coins and greasy notes that young Lloyd made his official acquaintance.

The boy had been drawn to the drawing room by the smoky male voices of the players, punctuated by the ping and rustle of money and cards on the thick felt cloth. Once in position, Lloyd had simply refused to leave, standing so steadfast that the general conclusion around the table was that he was simple minded.

The game was straight poker and it was clear that St. Ives’ fellow players were becoming disgruntled and a little suspicious about his run of luck. After sweeping another pot, several unkind remarks were openly muttered, to which the maimed man replied, “Gentlemen, please. Good and bad fortune finds us all in its own time.” He then raised his shining left mitt with a flourish, and one by one, the other men at the table grunted their acceptance and chipped in their money.

Another game was dealt and then another, both won by St. Ives. By this time one of the men had suffered such losses, the presentation of the artificial hand and its suggestion of some past catastrophe was no longer sufficient to ease the tension. The man, a plump mortician named Throckmorton, lurched up, almost capsizing the table, and shouted, “I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I know a cheat when I see one!”

St. Ives sat impassively, save for a lightning wink at little Lloyd.

“My good sir. Here you’ve been allowed to play at the gentlemen’s table, which, given your level of skill and maturity is a gift. Now sit down and wager or make a dignified retreat.”

A roped vein in the mortician’s forehead began to throb and his skin reddened. “Retreat?”

The blustering undertaker then drew from his coat a cadaver scalpel, which he carried for protection. The lethal nakedness of it gleamed for all to see.

St. Ives’ face did not blanch but his silver hand came alive. With a click like the lock in a drawer, from out of the index finger snapped a dagger that nearly doubled the length of the digit—and then with a flick of the wrist, as if he were blithely flipping a card into a hat, St. Ives doubled the length of the blade yet again so that he was able to slice the ribbon that held Throckmorton’s pocket watch in place without stirring from his chair.

Flabbergasted, the shroud tailor clutched his paunch as if to make sure his lights had not spilled out across the table. St. Ives laid his cards face down and nudged the severed timepiece forward.

“Now, my friends, if any of you feel similarly discomfited, I am prepared to meet you individually on the afterdeck to settle this affair with honor. Alternatively…” he rasped…and the silver hand clicked and expanded again to reveal a set of razor-sharp claws, one from each finger. “You can learn what justice comes from attacking a helpless cripple. It’s your call, gentlemen. I am entirely at your pleasure.”

This last remark was uttered through an unwholesome smile that the pudgy undertaker would never forget. Faced with such an unexpected display of weaponry, the poker players decided in unison to yield the table and when their chairs were empty, the claw blades retracted and the gambler eyed the young boy.

“You think I cheated? You think me a scoundrel?”

Lloyd shook his head. “You count the cards. You have a method. It merely gives you an advantage.”

“Hah! Do you know how to play the gentleman’s game then?”

“I think I do now,” the boy replied.

“How do you mean?” St. Ives puzzled.

“I watched. I listened.”

“That you did, lad. I could feel your glance penetrating me like one of my own fingers. But have you ever really played? Do you know the rules?”

“You just taught me. All of you…by how you played,” Lloyd answered.

“Posh!” declared the gambler.

“Would you care to bet your winnings to find out?”

St. Ives smiled wickedly. There was something about this child, preternatural and unnerving—and yet engaging too. “I like your manner, lad. Always up the ante. A good rule.”

At this point a burly steward with great mutton chop sideburns barged into the drawing room and jabbed a muscular finger into the gambler’s chest.

“See here, charlatan. And don’t even think of taking a swipe at me with that fancy stump. I don’t like your kind. Gambling is only allowed when it’s honest and above board.”

With that the steward reached out and seized a wad of the notes that still remained on the table.

“Is that your commission for overseeing the play?” St. Ives jibed.

“That’s the price a cheater pays.”

“He didn’t cheat,” Lloyd piped up behind the man. “I was watching.”

The steward withdrew his finger from St. Ives’ chest and whirled around.

“What are you?” he demanded, noticing the boy for the first time. “His hired monkey? A poker table is no place for young’uns. Get along with you!”

“I don’t know if the captain would be pleased to know you’re taking that money,” Lloyd returned without moving. “He might want some of it himself.”

A spark of anger and resentment flared across the steward’s face mingled with a flush of surprise that someone so young could be both so astute and so matter of fact. But the boat’s whistle blew just then and some other passengers waltzed by, so that he became flustered and chucked the money back on the table and stomped out.

“Well, Monkey,” grinned St. Ives. “What a good team we make, eh? Here. Here’s your share. Rightfully earned and from the look of you, rather needed.”

St. Ives swiped the notes the steward had returned to the table and stuffed them into the boy’s eager hands.

“If you are the savant you appear to be, who knows what we could achieve?” the gambler mused. “As partners of course.”

There was a sign in the Dining Saloon that St. Ives particularly enjoyed. It read, “If you need to carry large sums of money, wear a money belt. Avoid games of chance on riverboats.” And so it was that Lloyd made a new friend and had something to look forward to other than reading his uncle’s cryptic letter yet again. He also made some much needed money. His parents were only too glad to have a little privacy as their intimate life had suffered greatly in recent times, and so let the boy wander the boat at will. Lloyd, meanwhile, was careful to keep the bank notes he accumulated for helping St. Ives hidden from his parents.

The Sitturd’s stateroom was in a sorry state, eight feet square with crimson threadbare curtains, a narrow slat bed and a mothball scented dresser, but it was considerably more luxurious than the bales and boxes the deck passengers were forced to share with animals ranging from horses to chickens, all sheltering amongst the walls of crates they arranged, and all scrambling for space as cargo and passengers came and went and the manure was scooped. A blasted and recently repaired boiler (which had scalded a billy goat and one of the crew members) required continuous adjustments and seemed to inhale fuel so that there were regular and lengthy interruptions to the journey to allow for wooding parties to scour the shoreline. One of the passengers who volunteered to assist with such an expedition in order to reduce his fare was stricken with heart failure and had to be buried in a tea chest, while another was bitten by a snake. Then a cow leapt off the deck and tried to swim home to the Illinois side, only to have the bucktooth lad whose family owned it make the mistake of trying to swim after it. Both the hefty milk cow and the overbite boy were never seen again.

The fine packet boats operating between St. Paul and New Orleans were famous for their excellent cuisine. This was not one of those. Salt pork, mutton, boiled potatoes and beans were the usual fare, although wine, stout, porter and brandy could be found in abundance. Like stage drivers, steamboat captains tried to make the most of the daylight, usually pulling in toward shore when darkness fell. Dead trees, snags and sandbars, not to mention smaller craft without any illumination posed a constant threat of travel at night, although most captains would run at reduced steam if the moon or starlight allowed. The crew was a blind barrel mix of Irish, German, blacks and those St. Ives referred to as “pure muddy river.” Huge fleets of rafts with their cook shanties puffing out greasy odors of fried fish could be seen en route to the sawmills. Not infrequently what appeared to be the body of a man or a gassy inflated horse would drift past, once a dollhouse with a ginger cat aboard.

In addition to the predictable range of cads, conmen, sharpers, bamboozlers and bible thumpers, there was the occasional “steamboat evangelist,” who made a practice of buttonholing anyone they could to lecture on the evils of any other form of transport, especially the “fiendish rail cars” (which many travelers heartily wished there were more of). St. Ives loved baiting such individuals, and then when their metaphorical steam had been blown off, pointing out to them they were on a steamboat and so rather pointlessly preaching to the converted.

Despite the interminable delays, travelers flowed back and forth on the gangplanks in stovepipe hats or swishing skirts. One afternoon the men had a shooting competition on the top deck, blasting at buzzards circling the remains of a runaway slave who had washed up on a sandbar. The days were growing warmer and the bugs thicker, sultry nights becoming humid with whiskey and cigar smoke—perfume dabbed to wrists and crotches.

St. Ives was well acquainted with the ship’s chief entertainer, the singer named Viola Mercy, a tall but surprisingly buxom brunette whose lavender scented pantaloons filled the boy’s mind with notions and cravings of a new and exquisitely painful kind. Twice a day she performed in the Dining Saloon of the Fidèle that was laid out around a dance hall stage with a heavy velvet aubergine curtain. And twice a day she would sing a song that he grew to love.

There’s a place I know

Where I always go

There to dream of you

And hope that you’ll be true
And someday I pray

That you’ll find your way

Back to the secret place

Within my heart.

He became obsessed by the songstress and her exotic apparel. Ostrich feathers, silk stockings, lace brassieres. How he wanted to infiltrate her private domain and experience directly the dark wonder of this dark beauty (who in truth kept a flask of rye in her garter belt and had done as much singing on her back as she had on stage).

Meanwhile St. Ives opened the boy’s eyes to the larger world—relating to him the news of the day, with its cults of gangsterism becoming political forces—Tammany Hall warring with the Bowery Boys in New York—angry mobs attacking Mormons, Protestant secret societies with names like “The Supreme Order of the Star Spangled Banner” murdering Catholics—abolitionists dragged through the streets—slave families broken, the women raped, the men castrated and lynched. St. Ives had dire warnings about what lay ahead, although he himself took no sides and indeed was chiefly concerned about how such turmoil might be turned to personal advantage. “In confusion, there is profit, my young friend,” he told Lloyd.

More to the boy’s liking however, the gambler let him examine the metal hand. The plates that formed the exterior were made of polished steel, but so finely forged, they provided exceptional strength without the corresponding weight. Inside lurked the potential for a fantastic array of implements, from the throat-cutting blades that had appeared at the poker table, to a choice of such accessories as cigar scissors, a lock pick and a sewing kit—not to mention that the miniature compartments could also be used to hold coins or keys, vials of various potions (such as chloral hydrate), snuff, ink, even poison. However, St. Ives was not forthcoming with any intelligence about how he had come by it, until one evening.

It was a close night and a full moon shone down on the river, so the captain had the boiler fired. Lloyd had been encouraged out of the family’s cabin to allow his parents some time alone, a practice he was growing more and more curious about. Only the thump of the paddle blades stirred the quiet, so that occasionally the sounds of a baying dog or the crashing of a caving bank reached the deck where he found the gambler smoking a cigar, staring down at the gentle wake.

“You wonder about it, don’t you boy? St. Ives asked and tapped a bright ash into the water. “How I came by the hand—and how I came to lose my own.”

“I do,” Lloyd agreed. “There’s no hiding there’s a story behind it.”

“Well put, lad,” the gambler nodded. “And well spoken. Like a gentleman. I will reward your discretion. After all, we’re friends aren’t we?”

“Partners,” Lloyd responded.

“Indeed. Gentlemanly put again. Well. Some people would say I asked to have this done to me.”

“You asked for it?”

“I said some people would say that,” the gambler answered, and his face went glassy, as if he were now looking at something long ago. Then some hatred surged up within him, like a dead log that had been submerged.

“Ten years ago I used to be the secretary to a very rich man in the east. He valued my memory and my head for calculations. He was a fellow of extreme cleverness and cruelty—Junius Rutherford, or so he called himself then, but that was not his real name I am sure. Owner of the Enigma Formulary and Gun Works in Delaware. For himself he made the hand—and others like it. Said he’d lost his own in a foreign war—or with the Injuns—or in a swordfight. His stories changed with his audience.”

“So do yours,” Lloyd pointed out.

“W-ell…yes…” stammered St. Ives. “A man must be flexible given the unkindness of fate. But I am inclined to think that he was the cause of his own misfortune. He had the marking of an acid burn on his face as well. My belief is that one of his experiments backfired on him. He was always fiddling with new combinations of chemicals—schemes for weaponry. And other things. Weirder things. ‘Better to be the head of a louse than the tail of a lion,’ was his motto—and if ever there were a fellow to plant the head of one creature upon another, he was the one. A mind without boundaries. His estate was like nothing you can imagine.”

“How so?” Lloyd asked, certain he could imagine much more than St. Ives.

“He called it the Villa of the Mysteries and the name was apt. There were lightning rods all about—and he had hung up effigies around the grounds to keep the meddlesome townsfolk from spying. That and his dogs—a breed I had never seen before and hope to never see again. Gruesome beasts. What a bewitched realm!”

“Go on…” Lloyd said softly.

“Well…I know this will sound like flapdoodle, but he carried a seashell around with him. Like a polished black conch. He listened to it—as people sometimes do with shells, thinking they can hear the sea. But he did it often and stranger still—he spoke into his.”

“What did he say? Who was he talking to?” Lloyd asked.

“I wish I knew,” St. Ives sighed. “He spoke in a language I could never understand. To whom, I have no idea. I assumed he was touched in the head. And I had good reason to think so.”

“What else?” Lloyd encouraged as the gambler took another puff of his smoke.

“The estate had an artificial lake, and on the water he had arrayed a fleet of automatic model ships that reenacted the British defeat of the Spanish Armada. And there was a greenhouse full of orchids that looked like they were made of glass—but they were alive and grew. God’s truth. He loved books and fine things, but most of all he prized unexplainable things.”

“How do you mean, unexplainable?” Lloyd asked. “Like the orchids?”

“There was a collection of paintings. Flemish, I think. Milky, watery landscapes without much obvious interest—except that over time they changed.”

“You mean with the light?”

“No!” the gambler exclaimed. “I mean changed. One day a peasant in the picture would be pitching hay, the next day a hay cart would be seen departing—a cart that had not been there before! And he had a huge aquarium that he would swim in himself. He had a kind of vessel built—it looked like a diamond coffin in which he could stay submerged for long periods of time. He used it to study his electric eels and those jellyfish creatures we call the Portuguese Man of War.”

Lloyd whistled.

“Yes!” St. Ives shook his head. “Exactly so. You see, I would not have been in his service had I not found something in him to admire—and there was much to hold my interest. The trouble was I found too much to admire and ended up taking too much interest in his wife, an auburn-haired beauty with eyes like sapphires.”

“You fell in love—with his wife?” Lloyd blurted, but when he spoke, an image of Miss Viola rose up in his mind. A glimpse he had had of one of her corsets.

“And she with me!” St. Ives replied. “My beautiful Celeste. Never will I experience such bliss in this life again!”

A storm of rage passed through the gambler’s eyes.

“Rutherford was much older than Celeste and ignored her—spent too much time with his compounds and machines. He was also addicted to a narcotic that he manufactured himself. A transparent liquid, tinted a faint blue like damson plums. He called it Mantike. Every night he would inject some of the foul stuff and slip off into a meditative stupor in his library. But there were other eyes and ears about the place and when that cowardly bastard found out about our sin he drugged me with something—whether it was the Blue Evil I do not know. I woke to find myself secured to a table in one of his infernal laboratories. And I remained awake. No drugs or sedatives after that. There he conducted a little piece of theater involving surgical instruments.”

At these words the gambler’s body seemed to quiver in the warm air while Lloyd’s thoughts flashed back to his rabbit Phineas. St. Ives spat into the river.

“My hand he took, he said, because I had known his wife, and so I must know his pain. The other thing he did…oh…there are no words…no words…”

“But then, why did he give you this?” Lloyd asked, pointing to the hand.

“This I stole,” St. Ives chuckled darkly. “He had many similar versions made, as spares or replacements. And perhaps for all the agony he inflicted, I may have been lucky not to have been turned into one of his gadgets.”

“I don’t understand,” Lloyd murmured.

“He was far, far ahead of his time, was Mr. Rutherford. His toy caravels were ingenious, but he was capable of other feats. Oh, yes! He had designed and built a mechanical manservant. A sort of a butler named Zadoc. What it was powered by I do not know, he would not reveal it—but it was not steam. The device had a blank, faceless head, taken from a tailor’s dummy. Gave Celeste nightmares. But he was working on a much more complex contraption—a giant Indian chief he called Dire Wolf. I may be fortunate not to be driven by gearwheels now.”

“And what…happened…to him?” the boy whispered.

“I set a booby trap in his laboratory,” the gambler replied and let out an ugly, tragic laugh.

“His body was never found. Not whole at any rate. But pieces of another’s was. My sweet Celeste. I believe she thought that I was trapped in the fire and was trying…to save me…”

St. Ives’s silver prosthesis flashed in the moonlight.

“I was questioned by the authorities—but I knew enough of his ways to make it look like an accident. And what an accident!”

“But what…became of Rutherford?” Lloyd asked cautiously.

“Ah! That is the question. Well, you see, he was not a well liked man. Almost everything he did he did in secret. He was a hard employer and a recluse who rarely ventured off the estate, and he seemed to have no close friends or immediate kin—other than my poor darling. The neighbor folk all feared him. There were stories about children in the vicinity who had gone missing. Who can say? But the members of the local constabulary were willing to take the path of least resistance. They came to believe that perhaps he had perished in the explosion too, blown to bits as I had hoped he would be—they could find no other explanation.”

“But you believe differently?” Lloyd asked.

“I am certain in my soul that he is still alive!” St. Ives ejaculated. “His will left his estate to some distant relative in Louisiana—probably himself under another name. His business interests were absorbed by a consortium called the Behemoth Innovation Company and the estate was systematically denuded of all its objets and apparatus.

“Did you investigate?” Lloyd asked meekly.

“Can you imagine me not?” the gambler exclaimed, and then he drew his voice back down low. “The so-called relative now lives abroad and I have not been able to find a trace of any news about him in any of the foreign papers—I even hired a London detective. Not a skerrick of a clue. As to the consortium, they have offices registered in several cities but there is no information about any of their directors. They are but shadows as near as I can tell. And that is why I ride the riverboats—or one of the reasons—to one day learn something of his whereabouts. He would have a new name—and perhaps a new looking face. But he is not dead! The hidden may be seeking and the missing may return. Remember that, my young friend. Beware, if you should ever cross paths with a man a few years older than I—with a hand like this—or some such invention. He would have found a way to make a better one by now, devil take him. Who knows what he has learned how to do in the years that have passed since what he did to me?”

With a vehemence Lloyd had not seen before, the gambler heaved his cigar into the river and spun on his heel, heading to his stateroom—probably to consume more absinthe and combat the demons of the past, the boy figured.

Nothing more was said about the mutilation or the vanished designer of the mechanical hand, but the creatures and contrivances of the lost Villa exert a pronounced fascination for Lloyd—which was only outweighed by his ripening interest in Viola Mercy.

She said she came from Maryland, but like the gambler she seemed a child of the river and the road. Bawdy and quick-tempered, in the boy’s presence she became demure. When she drank, however, in between performances, her voice deepened and her eyes burned with a lecherous yearning. One afternoon he found himself sneaking into her cabin. He had only meant to steal a glimpse, then suddenly he was sniffing her pillow—when there came the sound of hushed, lewd voices at the door.

Mortified, he leapt under the bed. The door opened and Miss Viola entered with the gambler. They merely drank at first, absinthe, the green liquor with the bittersweet mysterious licorice scent that St. Ives favored, preparing it ceremoniously with the long ornamental slotted spoon that reminded Lloyd of a decorative trowel, delicately straining water poured from a carafe through a crystal chunk of sugar and then waiting and watching, and finally stirring the mix of liquor, water and sugar until it reached a cloudy green shade he deemed right. They took a few sips and Miss Viola shed her long dress with the plunging neckline and her bodice and something else that Lloyd couldn’t see. They tumbled onto the bed and lay there together sipping their drinks for what seemed like a long time. Then they came together and started to thrash about—until St. Ives muttered something and began to fiddle with his prosthesis.

Miss Viola’s cabin had once been one of the more opulent staterooms, but times had not been kind to the owners of the Fidèle and the chamber’s former glamor had faded so that it now possessed a peeling gaudiness along with a noisy excuse for a brass bed (which supposedly William Henry Harrison had once slept in before becoming President). It was the audible complaint of the bedsprings that allowed the boy to wiggle into a position on the floor where he could catch sight of the looking glass, in which the figures of the two adults were partially visible. There he lay trying hard to hold his breath—for no number of sightings of dogs mating or cows mating or horses mating or the rooster ravaging the hens back in Zanesville was preparation for the proceedings that followed.

Viola Mercy’s generous bosom was fully exposed, her hips arched, providing a tantalizing hint of that taboo passage that led to the secret place within her heart. The gambler still had on his once dapper but now slightly threadworn britches and his bull’s blood Spanish leather boots. The sleeve of his frilled shirt drooped down from a chair. His silver hand, however was hard at work. The dagger that had been projected from the index finger had been replaced by a device of equal length, significantly greater girth and arguably far more innovative utility, which St. Ives referred to as the “Tickler.”

The “tickling” went on for a long time with Miss Viola’s rough whisper rising into what sounded like an asthmatic crisis. The boy had heard a similar sound coming from his mother from time to time, but nothing as both feral and restrained as this. Another scent filled the room, distinct but confused—like wild onions and fish eggs. Then there was a shudder that shook the bed and Lloyd was sure he was going to be found out. Instead, St. Ives rolled off and began dismantling his mechanical finger piece.

“Don’t you fret, honey,” Miss Viola croaked. “Most men can’t do as well.”

The gambler started to say something but choked on his words and reached for his clothes after draining his glass. Not long after he’d left the room, Miss Viola rose, poured water from a jug into a bowl and bathed, humming softly to herself. Powder and perfume were added and then came the slow, measured ritual of dressing. That night, when Lloyd closed his eyes and tried to imagine his dead sister, all he could see was Miss Viola.

The Fidèle was fast approaching the fabled river town of St. Louis. The next day little Lloyd snuck into the entertainer’s cabin again. He couldn’t help himself. This time he chose as his vantage place, her steamer trunk, a great battered box that reminded him of a coffin but had the consolation of facing directly toward the bed and of being filled with costumes and underthings, all permeated by her womanly scent. There, snuggled tight, he waited and watched through a tiny crack that he made by balancing the lid on his head, counting the agonizing minutes.

At last she returned—without the gambler this time. Slowly, oh, so slowly, she disrobed, poured herself a drink from a flask, then water for bathing from the jug. It was excruciating. Finally, she reclined on the bed—without a stitch on. Gradually, she began to sing to herself, stroking her breasts and thighs with her right hand, easing her legs farther apart. And that was when it happened. He let the lid slip with a thump! He ducked down but it was too late. Everything went so silent he could hear the piston rods driving in the distant engine room. He waited—then cracked the lid.

“Don’t you know not to come into a lady’s room without an invitation,” Miss Viola scolded—and then let out a trill of confusing laughter.

“I—I’m s-sorry…” Lloyd stuttered.

“No you’re not,” the dark lady replied. “Come. Here.”

He rose from the trunk as if from the dead, stiff, and yet intensely alert.

“Take off your clothes,” she commanded.

With fumbling sweaty fingers he obeyed.

“You’re not such a little boy, are you?” she wheedled.

Who knows what the chanteuse was first thinking? Perhaps just to teach him a lesson about spying. But as soon as she saw the boy, naked and aroused beside her bed, something happened in a secret place inside her and she knew that for herself as much for him, this was an opportunity that would never come again.

_______________

Kris Saknussemm's first novel Zanesville was published by Villard Books in late 2005. The Austin Chronicle called it "The most original novel of the year" and it received a Starred Review in Booklist, which praised it as "brilliantly inventive black comedy."

Kris is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area but for many years has lived in Australia and the Pacific Islands. A painter as well as writer, his work has appeared in such publications as The Boston Review, The Hudson Review, The Antioch Review, River Styx, ZYZZYVA, New Letters, Prairie Schooner and The Hawaii Review. This excerpt is taken from a novel in progress called ENIGMATIC PILOT, which is scheduled by Random House for publication in 2008. For more information see www.saknussemm.com or www.zanesvillethenovel.com

River of Secrets, River of Mercy
© 2006 by Kris Saknussemm

2 Fork Hwy
"Is a website run by two very different writers and two good friends, Katie Arnoldi and Kris Saknussemm. It’s a mindscape where the language fetish is openly celebrated - where we support and promote the work of friends and fellow travelers - and where we investigate and discuss the lives and achievements of some major figures in the arts and sciences."