Stillness & Shadows John Gardner (nice books to read .txt) 📖

sides of Carnac’s face looked in different directions. He’d been hit by a train. He was not an intentionally troublesome man, just playful and crazy as a loon; all the same, he was trouble. He’d be arrested every two, three weeks or so, once for begging with a sign that said stop Christianity! And to Gerald Craine he was especially trouble. He’d elected himself Craine’s devil. He’d dart from some entryway, drooling and gibbering, picking as if at Craine’s clothes, but from six feet back, sometimes making sudden passes, like Mandrake the Magician. Meeting Craine on the sidewalk he’d stop, throw his arms out, strike the ground with his stick, and cry, “Whang!” Craine had once caught him by the neck and yelled, shaking him—at the time flashing panic at the rage that had come over him—“Two-heads, why are you doing this?” Craine’s voice went up an octave, like the voice of a child about to cry. “Whoo-ee!” Two-heads yelled, as if joyfully, snatching off his top hat. “We making contact, brother! The spirits say, ‘Two-heads, don’t you mess with him, baby! That dude in the service of St. Cyril!’—but I mess with you anyways.” “Saint who?” Craine had yelped, but Two-heads had managed to wriggle free and had run from him, swinging his rear end obscenely and shimmying all over, making shocks and waves fly up his choir robe like light off a pigeon. Craine had not pursued and had never again touched him. Two-heads’ neck was as muscular as an adder’s. Ever since, the very thought of that flesh under his fingers made Craine’s skin crawl.

Carnac’s whisper came through to him from the other side of the bookshelf. “Hssst! Look down by your belly, Mr. Craine! Quick!”

Before he had time to think better of it, some thought of the scar on his belly in his mind, Craine raised the book and looked down, below it and between his lifted arms. Carnac’s black fingers came poking out, reaching through from the far side of the bookshelf, holding fanned-out red and white bicycle cards.

“Pick a card,” Carnac whispered. He waited. Then, as if the police might swoop in at any moment, “Come on, man!”

Craine lowered the book with his left hand, slowly, then after a moment reached forward with his right, his mouth turned down grimly, and drew a card from the fan. He tipped it over slowly. “Ace of hearts,” he said. His voice was thin and jarring, even in his own ears, like an iron wheel on concrete. He put the book down—slid it, opened to his place, onto the books on the bookshelf—then slowly, deliberately, tore up the card, glanced at the floor, then put the pieces in his pocket.

“Pick another,” Carnac whispered, as if everything was exactly as it should be. His smell came through the bookshelves, sour as medicine.

Craine picked another card and slowly tipped it over. “It’s another ace of hearts,” he said, and methodically tore it up.

“Two aces of hearts!” Carnac whispered as if in astonishment. “There’s some mystery in this! Pick another!”

Craine picked another, tipped it over—another ace of hearts—and tore it up.

“Man, you lucky I caught you when I did,” Carnac whispered, and drew his hands and the remaining cards back in through the bookshelf, out of sight. “Strange forces is converging. No question about it!” The cards and the tips of his fingers reappeared, the cards face up. They were now all twos of diamonds.

Craine lowered his head to look over the tops of the books into Carnac’s eye. It was wet, as if tear-filled, and unnaturally wide, staring as if trying to pin him where he stood. Craine glanced down, and instantly, as if reading his mind, Carnac jerked his hands and the cards back out of sight.

Craine leaned closer to the bookshelf. “You don’t fool me, Carnac,” he said, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “I know what you’re up to.”

The wet eye closed. “God bless you for saying that, brother! You got a heart of gold!” The eye popped open, very wide, as sober as the eye of a myna bird. “You the only one in this universe understands me, that’s why I takin good care of you. I lose you, Craine, and I’m ’onna sink into hopeless confusion. You hear about St. Peter, trine walkin on the waves?”

Craine laughed sharply, then scowled and abruptly turned away. It was his usual experience with Carnac; everything just at the edge of making sense. His madness was surely studied, like that of a fool to some old-time king. But also he was crazy; he’d been diagnosed. Sometimes he would sit on the sidewalk and cry. As if guiltily, Craine’s mind flicked away from the thought, and his right hand, unbeknownst to him, moved to touch the bottle in his pocket. He glanced at the watch on his left wrist—ten a.m., too early to be as drunk as he was, he thought, unaware that he was thinking it. He retrieved his book, still open, from its shelf.

As Craine started down the aisle, retreating, Carnac called softly, “That’s a interesting point you make, tearin up my cards. I guess I never looked at it that way before.” He sounded hurt, and, again for no reason he could think of, Craine felt guilty. He glanced at his watch.

As he emerged into the central area of the bookstore, where the tables were, Craine stopped abruptly. The doctor from the university stood six feet away, gazing at the floor, slightly smiling, the dictionary under his arm. There was someone else there, Craine believed for a moment, or rather someone else standing not far off, toward the back of the store, motionless, hidden among the stacks. He got a sudden mental image—as if the person in the stacks had beamed it at him—of a huge winged bull carved in stone. He would have known, if he’d thought for a moment, thought hard, that it was a memory from his childhood, a visit to some