“Man, you’re one for the books,” says Charlie Six Pack. “Why don’t you just simmer down and stop freaking out on me.” He takes another toke, shakes his head, then offers the joint to Maxie. Now, normally Maxie’s fine getting high with the likes of Charlie Six Pack, but right at this particular moment, well, he’s thinking he’s better off trying to keep a clear head. So he says no thank you, and he asks again where the thing in the bag came from. Not that he actually wants to know, mind you, or thinks he’ll get any sort of an honest answer, but Maxie figures he keeps this up long enough, Charlie’s bound to grow discouraged and go looking for someone else to hassle.
“I told you,” says Charlie, “Indians made it. You ever heard of the Donner Party, those folks got lost in the mountains and had to eat each other to keep from freezing to death?”
“Yeah, man,” Maxie replies, “I’ve heard of the freaking Donner Party. Who the fuck hasn’t heard of the freaking Donner Party?” And he sits back in the booth and takes an unfiltered Pall Mall from the half-empty pack in his shirt pocket.
“Okay, well, so the dude from whom I acquired this little objet d’art,” and Charlie nods at the paper bag, “this dude’s a professor out in Salt Lake City, this Mormon dude—Brigham Young University—and he claims the doodad there belonged to one of the survivors of the Donner Party, one of those didn’t get eaten, but did the cannibalizing. Professor, he tells me that this guy—”
“What was his name?”
“What’s who’s name? The Mormon dude?”
“No, man. The Donner Party cat.”
“Fuck if I know,” says Charlie Six Pack, and he takes another hit. “Who cares what the guy’s name was, man? Do you want to hear this or not?”
Maxie Honeycutt, he taps his Pall Mall on the back of his left hand, then lights it. He shrugs and stares at this chick at the bar, because he thinks she looks a lot like Grace Slick and he’s got a serious hard-on for Grace Slick, even if he can’t stand fucking hippie music.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t,” he says.
Right then, Charlie Six Pack snaps his fingers real loud and Maxie jumps. “Now I remember,” says Charlie Six Pack. “Dude’s name was Breen. Patrick Breen.”
“Who’s name was Patrick Breen? The professor?”
“No, man, the cannibal. Way that guy at Brigham Young told it, Breen said he found the thing”—and Charlie nods at the greasy paper bag again—“up there in the mountains, and it was the doodad here told Breen that if they ate the dead people, if they could get over being all squeamish and shit, maybe they wouldn’t all starve and freeze to death hundreds of miles from civilization and no hope of rescue till spring. Some kind of Indian fetish or heathen idol or some shit, I don’t know, right, and desperate people, well, you figure they were all just looking for some excuse not to let that meat go to waste. So, great, fine, blame it on voices from this doodad. Rationalization, man.” And Charlie Six Pack taps at his forehead.
“So, how’d this professor get his hands on it?”
“No idea, man. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”
“And what’s the Turk want with something like that?” Maxie asks again.
“Look, ain’t the Turk who wants it. It’s this cat down in Australia, right? So, you gonna hold onto it for me or what? You do it, I’ll cut you in for seven percent.”
“I don’t want to go getting messed up in some sort of heavy Apache hoodoo horseshit,” Maxie Honeycutt tells him, and he takes a long pull on his Pall Mall, then checks his watch like maybe he’s got somewhere better to be when he most certainly does not. “I don’t like the look of the thing.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” sighs a thoroughly exasperated Charlie Six Pack. He licks a thumb and forefinger and pinches out the joint, then stashes it in a snuff tin. “I always knew you were crazy, man, crazy fucking Paranoid Jack, loonier than a run-over dog, but I didn’t ever take you for the superstitious sort. Didn’t finger you for the sorta guy’s gonna let a spook story get in between him and easy money, leaving me fucking hanging in the wind like this.”
“It ain’t nothing personal, Charlie.”
“Sure it ain’t,” Charlie tells Maxie, and the cat makes no effort whatsoever to hide his displeasure. “But don’t think word ain’t gonna get back to the Turk how you had a chance to lend a hand and didn’t do diddly squat, all right?”
“Sounds fair,” says Maxie Honeycutt, though he doesn’t think it sounds fair at all, the off chance he might find himself in Dutch with the Turk just because he doesn’t want to play nursemaid to Charlie Six Pack’s little green gargoyle.
“What time you got?” Charlie wants to know. “I have to make some calls, man, try to find someone ain’t such a goddamn pussy.”
“My watch says it’s seven fifteen,” Maxie tells him, “but it’s running a little slow, because of all NASA’s excess electromagnetism or something.”
“You and your fucking watch,” snorts Charlie Six Pack, and he takes his greasy brown paper bag and leaves Maxie Honeycutt alone in the booth. And Maxie, he tries hard to feel relieved. He sits there chain smoking Pall Malls and staring at that girl who doesn’t look even half as much like Grace Slick as he at first glance thought she did. He’ll have a few beers, stick around for the band, then head back to Silver Lake and the two-room rattrap he calls home. And round about dawn, cat’s gonna wake up from the worst bad dream he’s had since he was a kid. He’s gonna wake up
