Gardner Dozois - Disciples

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Disciples

Gardner Dozois

1 was roaming the post-midnight halls of a science fiction convention hotel not long ago, trying to find a

party still functional, when I heard great waves of laughter filtering through a locked door. I knocked

and was informed that I had stumbled on the "bad joke" party; to gain admission you had to tell a joke

bad enough to elicit universal groans. 1 did dredge one out of childhood memories, and entered to find-

of course-Gardner Dozois, the party's perpetrator, surrounded by dozens of adoring science fiction fans.

The party turned out to be one of the most entertaining times I've ever had, because although the rest of

us did tell a joke now and then, it was mainly The Gardner Dozois Show, tale after hilarious tale

emerging from the shaggy heap enthroned in the corner.

Gardner is a natural-born storyteller, with great gifts of gesture, accent, timing. He can hypnotize a

crowd in .seconds and keep them laughing for hours. But the aforementioned Buchwald Paradox is very

much at work here: Gardner's writing is anything but jolly: his work is predominantly concerned with

the dark face of life, with tragedy and pathos. His writing is a

unique brand of gritty naturalism, done with terrible accuracy but also compassion and grace. As witness

this tale of Nicky the Horse.

Nicky the Horse was a thin, weasely-looking man with long, dirty black hair that hung down either side

of his face in greasy ropes, like inkmarks against the pallor of his skin. He was clean-shaven and hollow-

cheeked, and had a thin but rubbery lower lip upon which his small yellowed teeth were forever biting,

seizing the lip suddenly and worrying it, like a terrier seizing a rat. He wore a grimy purple sweater

under a torn tan jacket enough sizes too small to look like something an organ grinder's monkey might

wear, one pocket torn nearly off and both elbows worn through. Thrift-store jeans and a ratty pair of

sneakers he'd once found in a garbage can behind the YMCA completed his wardrobe. No underwear. A

crucifix gleamed around his neck, stainless steel coated to look like silver. Track marks, fading now, ran

down both his arms, across his stomach, down his thighs, but he'd been off the junk for months; he was

down to an occasional Red Devil, supplemented by the nightly quart of cheap chianti he consumed as he

lay in the dark on his bare mattress at the Lord house, a third-floor loft in a converted industrial

warehouse squeezed between a package store and a Rite-Aid.

He had just scavenged some two-day-old doughnuts from a pile of boxes behind a doughnut store

on Broad Street, and bought a paper container of coffee from a Greek delicatessen where the counterman

(another aging hippie, faded flower tattos still visible under the bristly black hair on his arms) usually

knocked a nickel or two off the price for old times' sake. Now he was sitting on the white marble steps

of an old brownstone row house, eating his breakfast. His breath steamed in the chill morning air. Even

sitting still, he was in constant motion: his fingers drumming, his feet shuffling, his eyes flicking

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nervously back and forth as one thing or another-a car, some

windblown trash, pigeons taking to the air-arrested and briefly held his attention; at such times his

shoulders would momentarily hunch, as if he expected something to leap out at him.

Across the street, a work crew was renovating another old brownstone, swarming over the

building's partially stripped skeleton like carrion beetles; sometimes a cloud of plaster powder and brick

dust would puff from the building's broken doorway, like foul air from a dying mouth. Winos and pimps

and whores congregated on the corner, outside a flophouse hotel, their voices coming to Nicky thin and

shrill over the rumbling and farting of traffic. Occasionally a group of med students would go by, or a

girl with a dog. or a couple of Society Hill faggots in designer jeans and expensive turtlenecks, and

Nicky would call out "Jesus loves you, man," usually to no more response than a nervous sideways

glance. One faggot smirked knowingly at him, and a collegiate-jock type got a laugh out of his buddies

by shouting back "You bet your ass he does, honey." A small, intense-looking woman with short-

cropped hair gave him the finger. Another diesel dyke, Nicky thought resignedly. "Jesus loves you,

man," he called after her, but she didn't look back.

When his butt began to feel as if it had turned to stone, he got up from the cold stoop and started

walking again, pausing only long enough to put a flyer for the Lordhouse on a lamppost, next to a sticker

that said EAT THE RICH. He walked on, past a disco, a gay bookstore, a go-go bar, a boarded-up

storefront with a sign that read LIVE NUDE MODELS, a pizza stand, slanting south and east now,

through a trash-littered concrete park full of sleeping derelicts and arrogantly strutting pigeons-stopping

now and then to panhandle and pass out leaflets, drifting on again.

He'd been up to Reading Terminal early that morning, hoping to catch the shoppers who came in

from the suburbs on commuter trains, but the Hairy Krishnaites had been there already, out in force in

front of the station, and he didn't like

to compete with other panhandlers, particularly fucking groups of them with fucking bongos. The

Krishnaites made him nervous anyway-with their razor-shaved pates and their air of panting, puppyish

eagerness, they always reminded him of ROTC second lieutenants, fresh out of basic training. Once, in

front of the Bellevue-Stratford, he'd seen a fight between a Krishnaite and a Moonie, the two of them

arguing louder and louder, toe to toe, until suddenly they were beating each other over the head with

thick packets of devotional literature, the leaflets swirling loose around them like flocks of startled birds.

He'd had to grin at that one, but some of the panhandling groups were mean, particularly the political

groups, particularly the niggers. They'd kick your ass up between your shoulder blades if they caught

you poaching on their turf; they'd have your balls for garters.

No. you scored better if you worked alone. Always alone.

He ended up on South Street, down toward the Two Street end, taking up a position between the

Laundromat and the plant store. It was much too early for the trendy people to be out, the "artists," the

night people, but they weren't such hot prospects anyway. It was Saturday, and that meant there were

tourists out, in spite of the early hour, in spite of the fact that it had been threatening to snow all day; it

was cold. yes, but not as cold as it had been the rest of the week, the sun was peeking sporadically out

from behind banks of dirty gray clouds, and maybe this would be the only halfway decent day left before

winter really set in. No, they were here all right, the tourists, strolling up and down through this hick

Greenwich Village, peering into the quaint little stores, the boutiques, the head shops full of tourist-trap

junk, the artsy bookstores, staring at the resident freaks as though they were on display at the zoo,

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relishing the occasional dangerous whiff of illicit smoke in the air, the loud blare of music that they

wouldn't have tolerated for a moment at home.

Of course, he wasn't the only one feeding on this rich stream of marks: there was a juggler outside

of the steak-

sandwich shop in the next block, a small jazz band-a xylophone, a bass, and an electric piano-in front of

the Communist coffeehouse across the street, and, next to the upholsterer's, a fat man in a fur-lined parka

who was tonelessly chanting "incense sticks check it out one dollar incense sticks check it out one

dollar" without break or intonation. Such competition Nicky could deal with; in fact, he was

contemptuous of it.

"Do you have your house in order?" he said in a conversational but carrying voice, starting his own

spiel, pushing leaflets at a businessman who ignored him, at a strolling young married couple who

smiled but shook their heads, at a middle-aged housewife in clogs and a polka-dot kerchief, who took a

flyer reflexively and then, a few paces away, stopped to peek at it surreptitiously. "Did you know the

Lord is coming, man? The Lord is coming. Spare some change for the Lord's work?" This last remark

shot at the housewife, who looked uneasily around and then suddenly thrust a quarter at him. She hurried

away, clutching her Lordhouse flyer to her chest as if it were a baby the gypsies were after.

Panhandling was an art, man, an art-and so, of course, of course, was the more important task of

spreading the Lord's word. That was what really counted. Of course. Nevertheless, he brought more

fucking change into the Lordhouse than any of the other converts who were out pounding the pavement

every day, fucking-A, you better believe it. He'd always been a good panhandler, even before he'd seen

the light, and what did it was making maximum use of your time. Knowing who to ask and who not to

waste time on was the secret. College students, professional people, and young white male businessmen

made the best marks-later, when the businessmen had aged into senior executives, the chances of their

coming across went way down. Touristy types were good, straight suburbanites in the twenty-five-to-

fifty age bracket, particularly a man out strolling with his wife. A man walking by himself was much

more likely to give you something than a man walking

in company with another man-faggots were sometimes an exception here. Conversely, women in pairs-

especially prosperous hausfraus, although groups of teenage girls were pretty good too-were much more

likely to give you change than were women walking by themselves; the housewife of a moment before

had been an exception, but she had all the earmarks of someone who was just religious enough to feel

guilty about not being more so. Brisk woman-executive types almost never gave you anything, or even

took a leaflet. Servicemen in uniform were easy touches. Old people never gave you diddly-shit, except

sometimes a well-heeled little old white lady would, especially a W.H.L.O.W.L. who had religion

herself, although they could also be more trouble than their money was worth. There were a lot of

punkers in this neighborhood, with their fifties crewcuts and greasy motorcycle jackets, but Nicky

usually left them alone; the punks were more violent and less gullible than the hippies had been back in

the late sixties, the Golden Age of Panhandling. The few remaining hippies-and the college kids who

passed for hippies these days-came across often enough that Nicky made a point of hitting on them,

although he gritted his teeth each time he did; they were by far the most likely to be wise assesonce he'd

told one, "Jesus is coming to our town," and the kid had replied, "I hope he's got a reservation, then-the

hotels are booked solid." Wiseasses. Those were also the types who would occasionally quote Scripture

to him, coming up with some goddamn verse or other to refute anything he said. That made him uneasy.

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