Dean Wesley Smith - Slowboat Man.pdf

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DEAN WESLEY SMITH
IN THE SHADE OF THE SLOWBOAT MAN
In the last year. Dean Wesley Smith has sold ten novels. Spiderman: Carnage in
New York from Ace/Boulevard is one of the first to appear in print.
He has also sold a large number of short stories. His most recent for F&SF,
"Jukebox Gifts" (January, 1995), made the preliminary Nebula ballot.
He returns with a tender tale of love abandoned, but not forgotten.
OVER THE LONG YEARS I HAD grown used to the sweet smell of blood, to the sharp
taste of disgust, to the wide-eyed look of lust. But the tight, small room of
the nursing home covered me in new sensations like a mad mother covering her
sleeping young child tenderly with a blanket before pressing a pillow hard
over
the face.
I eased the heavy door closed and stood silently for a moments, my clutch
purse
tight against my chest. One hospital bed, a small metal dresser, and an
aluminum
walker were all the furniture. The green drapes were slightly open on the
window
and I silently moved to stand in the beam of silver moonlight cutting the
night.
I wanted more than anything else to run. But I calmed myself, took a deep
breath, and worked to pull in and study my surroundings as I would on any
night
on any city street.
As with all of the cesspools of humanity the smell was the most overwhelming
detail. The odor of human rot filled the building and the room, not so much
different from a dead animal beside the road on a hot summer's day. Death and
nature doing their work. But in this building in this small room, the natural
work was disguised by layer after layer of biting poison antiseptic. I suppose
it was meant to clean the smell of death away so as not to disturb the
sensitive
living who visited from the fresh air outside. But instead of clearing, the
two
smells combined to form a thick aroma that filled my mouth with disgust.
I blocked the smell and focused my attention on the form in the bed.
John, my dear, sweet Slowboat Man, my husband once, lay under the white sheet
of
the room's only bed. His frame shrunken from the robust, healthy man I
remembered from so many short years ago. He smelled of piss and decay. His
face,
rough with old skin and white whiskers, seemed to fight an enemy unseen on the
battleground of this tiny room. He jerked, then moaned softly, his labored
breathing working to pull enough air to get to the next breath.
I moved to him, my ex-husband, my Slowboat Man, and lightly brushed his
wrinkled
forehead to ease his sleep. I used to do that as we lay together in our
featherbed. I would need him to sleep so that I could go out and feed on the
 
blood of others. He never awoke while I was gone, not once in the twenty years
we were together.
Or at least he never told me he had.
I had never asked.
I was hunting the night we met. The spring of 1946, a time of promise and good
cheer around the country. The war was won, the evil vanquished, and the living
bathed in the feeling of a wonderful future. I had spent the last thirty years
before and during the war in St. Louis, but my friends had aged, as always
happened, and it was becoming too hard to answer the questions and the looks.
I
had moved on many times in the past and I would continue to do so many times
in
the future. It was my curse for making mortal friends and enjoying the
pleasures
of the mortal world.
I pleaded to my friends in St. Louis a sick mother in a far away city and
booked
passage under another name on an old-fashioned Mississippi riverboat named Joe
Henry. I had loved the boats when they were working the river the first time
and
now again loved them as they came back again for the tourists and gambling.
For the first few days I stayed mostly to my small cabin, sleeping on the
small
bed during the day and reading at night. But on the third day hunger finally
drove me into the narrow hallways and lighted party rooms of the huge
riverboat.
Many soldiers and sailors filled the boat, most still in uniform and most with
woman of their own age holding onto their arms and laughing at their every
word.
The boat literally reeked of health and good cheer and I remember that smell
drove my hunger.
I supposed events could have turned another way and I might have met Johnny
before feeding. But almost immediately upon leaving my cabin I had gotten
lucky
and found a young sailor standing alone on the lower deck.
I walked up to the rail and pretended to stare out over the black waters of
the
river and the lights beyond. The air felt alive, full of humidity and insects,
thick air that carried the young sailor's scent clearly to me.
He moved closer and struck up a conversation. After a minute I stroked his
arm,
building his lust and desire while at the same time blocking his mind of my
image. I asked him to help me with a problem with the mattress on my bed in my
cabin and even though he kept a straight face the smell of sexual lust almost
choked me.
Within two minutes he was asleep on my bed and I was feeding drinking light to
not hurt him, but getting enough of his blood to fill my immediate hunger.
After I finished I brushed over the marks on his neck with a lick so that no
sign would show and then cleaned myself up while letting him rest. Then I
 
roused
him just enough to walk him up a few decks, where I slipped away, happy that I
might repeat the same act numbers of times during this voyage. It was an
intoxicating time and I felt better than I had ever remembered feeling in
years.
I decided that an after-dinner stroll along the moonlit deck would be nice
before returning to my cabin. I moved slowly, drinking in the warmth of the
night air, listening to the churning of the paddle wheel, feeling the boat
slice
through the muddy water of the river.
Johnny leaned against the rail about mid-ship, smoking a pipe. Under the
silver
moon his Navy officer's white uniform seemed to glow with a light of its own.
I
started to pass him and realized that I needed to stop, to speak to him, to
let
him hold me.
He affected me as I imagined I affected my prey when I fed. I was drawn to him
with such intensity that resisting didn't seem possible.
I hesitated and he glanced over at me and laughed, a soft laugh as if he could
read my every thought, as if he knew that I wanted him with me that instant,
without reason, without cause. He just laughed, not at me, but in merriment at
the situation, at the delight, at the beauty of the night.
He laughed easily and for the next twenty years I would enjoy that laugh every
day.
I turned and he was smiling a smile that I will always remember. I learned
over
the years that he had the simple ability to smile and light up the darkest
place. He had a smile that many a night I would lose myself in while he told
me
story after story after story. I never tired of that smile and that first
exposure to it melted my will. I would be his slave and never care as long as
he
kept smiling at me.
"Beautiful evening isn't it?" he said, his voice solid and genuine, like his
smile.
"Now it is," I said. I had to catch my breath even after something that
simple.
Again he laughed and made a motion that I should join him at the rail gazing
out
over the river and the trees and farmland beyond.
I did, and for twenty years, except to feed on others while he slept, I never
left his side.
THE SMELL of the room pulled me from the past and back to my mission of the
evening. I looked at his weathered, time-beaten form on the bed and felt
sadness
and love. A large part of me regretted missing the aging time of his life, of
not sharing that time with him, as I had regretted missing the years before I
met him. But on both I had had no choice. Or I had felt I had had no choice. I
 
might have been wrong, but it was the choice I had made.
Since the time I left him I had never found another to be my husband. Actually
I
never really tried, never really wanted to fill that huge hole in my chest
that
leaving him had caused.
But now he was dying and now I also had to move on, change cities and friends
again. I had always felt regret with each move, yet the regret was controlled
by
the certainty that the decision was the only right one, that I would make new
friends, find new lovers. But this time it was harder. Much harder.
I sat lightly on the side of his bed and he stirred, moaning softly. I again
brushed his forehead, easing his pain, giving him a fuller rest, a more
peaceful
rest. It was the least I could do for him. He deserved so much more.
This time he moaned with contentment and that moan took me hack to those
lovely
nights on the Joe Henry, slowly making our way down the river, nestled in each
other's arms. We made love three, sometimes four times a day and spent the
rest
of the time talking and laughing and just being with each other, as if every
moment was the most precious moment we had.
During those wonderful talks I had wanted to tell him of my true nature, but
didn't. The very desire to tell him surprised me. In all the years it had not
happened before. So I only told him of the twenty years in St. Louis, letting
him think that was where I had been raised. As our years together went by that
lie became as truth between us and he never questioned me on it.
He was born in San Francisco and wanted to return there where his family had
property and some wealth. I told him I was alone in the world, as was the true
case, just drifting and looking for a new home. He seemed to admire that about
me. But he also knew I was free to move where he wanted.
I had so wanted him to know that.
The day before we were to dock in Vicksburg I mentioned to him that I wished
the
boat would slow down so that our time together would last. The days and nights
since I met him had been truly magical, and in my life that was a very rare
occurrence.
He had again laughed at my thought, but in a good way. Then he hugged me. "We
will be together for a long time," he had said, "but I will return in a
moment."
With that he had dressed and abruptly left the cabin, leaving me surrounded by
his things and his wonderful life-odor. After a short time he returned,
smiling,
standing over me, casting his shadow across my naked form. "Your wish is
granted," he had said. "The boat has slowed."
I didn't know how he had managed it, and never really asked what it had cost
him. But somehow he had managed to delay the boat into Vicksburg by an extra
day. A long wonderful extra day that turned into a wonderful marriage.
 
From that day forward I called him my Slowboat Man and he never seemed to tire
of it.
"Beautiful evening isn't it?" he said hoarsely from the bed beside me. His
words
yanked me from the past and back to the smell of death and antiseptic in the
small nursing home room. Johnny was smiling up at me lightly, his sunken eyes
still full of the light and the mischief that I had loved so much.
"It is now," I said, stroking him, soothing him.
He started to laugh, but instead coughed and I soothed him with a touch again.
He blinked a few times, focusing on me, staring at me, touching my arm. "You
are
as beautiful as I remembered," he said, his voice clearing as he used it,
gaining more and more power. "I've missed you."
"I've missed you, too," I somehow managed to say. I could feel his weak grip
on
my arm.
He smiled and then his eyes closed.
I touched his forehead and again he was dozing. I sat on the bed beside him
and
thought back to that last time I had sat beside him on our marriage bed,
almost
thirty years earlier.
That last night, as with any other night I went out to feed, I had put him to
sleep with a few strokes on the forehead and then stayed with him to make sure
his sleep was deep. But that last night I had also packed a few things, very
few, actually, because I had hoped to take very little of our life together to
remind me of him. It had made no difference. I saw his face, his smile, heard
his laugh and his voice everywhere I went.
I had known for years that the day of leaving was coming. And many times over
the years we were together I thought of telling him about my true nature. But
I
could never overcome the fear. I feared that if he knew he would hate me,
fight
me, even try to kill me. I feared that he would find a way to expose those of
us
like me in the city and around the country. But my biggest fear was that he
would never be able to stand my youth as he aged.
I could not have stood the look of hate and disgust in his eyes.
At least that was what I told myself. As the years passed since I left him I
came to believe that my fear had been a stupid one. But I never overcame that
fear, at least not until now.
I know my leaving to him must have felt sudden and without reason. I know he
spent vast sums of money looking for me. I know he didn't truly understand.
But for me I had no choice. During the month before I left comments about my
youth were suddenly everywhere. Johnny and our friends had aged. I hadn't. I
even caught Johnny staring at me when he thought I wouldn't notice.
 

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