Page 104 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

Thunder rumbled again, closer, the continuous percussive echo of a rockslide.

“I must admit, I was expecting only to meet with Mr. Shaman. You, Mr. Teague,” he said, gaze cutting youth-quick behind his glasses to Ghost, “are a surprise.”

“That’s what my mama said when I came out three weeks early.” Ghost leaned on his Tennessee roots, his accent. “You didn’t expect Shaman to come alone, did you?”

Though tremulous, a sickle edge of delight carved the old man’s smile into something sinister. He had anticipated this moment, and intended to enjoy it: enemies finally seated across from him, and wholly defenseless. “It’s what I told him to do. And…” His gaze shifted to Ian, and his smile deepened, pressing folds into his papery cheeks. “I would have been within my rights to kill you when you disobeyed that command.”

“Hey,” Ghost said sharply. The guards shifted, hands going to gun butts, gazes pinging. “You don’t get tocommandhim. You asked him to come, and he came, and I came with him.”

Abacus turned back to him, slowly, gaze half-lidded in clear contempt.You’re beneath me, that look said, and it put Ghost’s hackles up. “Forgive me” – his voice was silken – “but it’s not my practice to negotiate directly with persons of your…station.” He lifted his wobbling chin, and despite his clear physical infirmity, managed to look regal. “I wished to speak today with a man in a position of power.”

He started to turn away.

Ian started to speak.

Ghost laid his hand on the table in front of Ian and said, “Hey, shithead. Yeah, you.” The guards shifted in closer, restless, and Abacus turned back to him with flared nostrils, and lips quivering with quiet outrage. “You wanna talk to the decision maker? That’s me. In case you forgot, you decided you wanted to go to war with the Lean Dogs MC, and I’m the president, not Shaman. You wanna talk to the boss? You talk to me, and you consider Shaman one of my boys, ‘cause that’s what he is.”

Abacus smiled, that same knife-sharp delight. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. If you’re gonna make a sales pitch, make it to me.” And he spread his hands on the table in invitation.

“Very well, then.”

A uniformed waiter brought a tray, and poured red wine into three glasses; handed out little plates of sliced cheese, and berries, and crackers.

Ian folded his hands in his lap, but Ghost pushed his aside so he could keep his elbow resting on the table.

“I assure you it isn’t poisoned,” Abacus said, bringing his glass to his lips and managing not to spill wine all over himself despite the quaking of his hands.

“I’m not much of a wine guy,” Ghost said, flatly.

“Shame. This is a good vintage.” He then proceeded to gum his way through a few slices of cheese on soft crackers, and sip his wine, a guard there with a blood-colored cloth napkin to wipe his mouth between bites.

Ghost had expected exactly this sort of stunt, a display of power: they were awaiting the king’s pleasure, forced to watch him slurp at brie and dribble wine into the waiting napkin of a servant, unable to do a damn thing about it. And so he waited, quietly, until the last drops of wine had been dabbed from Abacus’s lips, and he’d belched quietly into a clawlike hand.

“Ah. Excuse me. Now.” He didn’t so much lean back in his chair as fold downward into it, so that the edge of the table caught him in the middle of the chest. “Where were we?”

“Your pitch,” Ghost prompted.

“Oh yes. Right.” He sent Ghost a speculative look, really analyzing him for the first time. “I want to ask you a question, and I want you to do yourself, and me, the courtesy of truly considering before you answer. I don’t want you to think about anything so trivial as the law, or your –club customs.” His lip curled in disgust. “Don’t think of your family, or your past experiences. I want you to think only, and truly, and deeply, about what it is thatyouwant, Mr. Teague.

“You see, the thing I’ve learned about want over my many, many decades on this earth, is that it is bottomless. When constraints – be they social, societal, moral, religious, financial – are stripped away, a man is a creature who can have plenty of something, and always want more. The imagination is limitless; once he begins traveling down the mental pathways of want, it is only a forced about-face that makes him say, ‘That’s enough.’ Because in truth, if allowed unchecked, a want will only grow and grow.

“But those constraints I mentioned, those are important. Those cripple our wildest dreams. Consider the normal course of life.” He held out a hand palm-up, fingers curled into fat-knuckled claws. “Man wants carnal pleasure. He wants it so terribly he can barely think of anything else. And so he pursues a romantic relationship, as society dictates. He goes to bars, and parties, and to websites in search of women. Women he then must take to dinner, and to the cinema. Women whose parents and friends and coworkers he must meet and make nice with. Should the woman eventually consent to sleep with him, he might ask for her hand in marriage some day. Not that marriage is without its merits: marriage, and the passing-on of names, theproduction of children, is essential in preserving our lineages…though I don’t suppose all bloodlines ought to be handed down, hm?”

It seemed to be a rhetorical question, and a pointed one.

He continued, “But those men stillhunger. They stillwant. But they are locked into circumstances that limit them. Are they victims? Perhaps. But only of their own lack of ambition. They are content in their wanting. They lackvision.

“But some of us are blessed with a vivid imagination, and the skills and cleverness to pursue it. Those men – men like me, men like my friends, perhaps” – he cocked his head – “even men like you – have the means and the courage totakewhat they want.” His hand, still held aloft, closed with startling speed, the fingers overlapping at painful, awkward angles. He lowered his arm, whole body shaking from the effort of having kept it elevated so long.

“You’re married, aren’t you?”

Ghost nodded.

Abacus smiled, sideways, stroke-victimlike, but his eyes were still narrow and sharp. “Margaret Lowe, now Teague.”

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