Tyree's Tuppence

by Tyree Campbell

Evermore

On a recent midnight dreary I was feeling weak and weary, having pondered some quaint and curious submissions for our various publications. I'd just about dozed off when I thought I heard someone rapping at the study door. I dismissed it, figuring it was probably just some visitor rapping at the study door, and nothing more.

Happens allatime.

Yet the sound was somehow familiar. In fact, distinctly I remember 'twas the mid of last September when I first heard it. The sounds, and flickers of ghosts from embers in the dying charcoal grill--yep, just someone rapping at the study door.

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, though I don't know you from Adam, your rapping bars my napping, and deserves an earnest slapping," and I got up and opened wide the door.

"I AM JA---"

So startling was the sight and it gave me such a fright that I swiftly shut the door on this ghostly voice of yore.

And stood there breathless.

Once again there came a tapping, for the visitor was rapping, rapping at my study door, merely this and not a whole lot more.

Quaff some nepenthe, anyone?

"Surely," said I, "surely there is something strange without, let me see then what thereout is and this mystery explore. Let my heart be still a moment," and open here I flung the door.

"I AM JAMES B. BAKER AND I WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENED TO MY MAGAZINES!"

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance he wore, I was certain of his purpose as he left the Nightly shore, and the porchlight o'er him streaming threw his shadow on the floor as he strode unto my desk and the computer that it bore.

And he started on his visit, asking, "This ain't ProMart, is it?" as I served him up some coffee and some crunchy butter toffee. He acknowledged with a dipping of his hat as he was sipping, so I sat down there before him, as I hardly could ignore him.

"Jim?" said I.

"Right heah, podner. Now WHERE ARE THEY?"

"Yeah, it's you, all right, Jim. You're capitalizing again."

"J said y'all were changing the name to Sam's Dot Publishing. Said it had to be changed on account of some legal stuff about inheritance." Back he sat and crossed his legs and when he reached the coffee dregs I took his cup and filled it up. "But darned if Ah CAN'T get into the site! Ah keep typing sams.publishing, and it KEEPS BUMPING ME. Says the search FAILED to find a MATCH."

He looked just like his photograph. Wizened old man with the boyish grin, mop of gray hair under the oversized cowboy hat, jeans and flannel shirt, brown boots good for slogging through pastures.

Said I, "It's samsdotpublishing.com. Sams d-o-t. Go ahead, I'm online, use my keyboard, you'll do fine."

"Well, that's...that's right nice of ya." And he followed my instruction ['twas the logical deduction] and the dot com there appeared e're the keyboard he had cleared.

For a long time he was sitting while I wandered round a-flitting, wondering what he thought of all that we had done since previous fall. For a long time he was reading all the archives and re-reading here and there whene're he came across an old familiar name.

"'Oubliette'?" he said with a twinkly eye at me. "But there ain't much else in here from you that Ah see."

"The writing has slacked off a bit, Jim. I've been rather busy."

"So Ah see, so Ah see. Looky here, from now on Ah want a story or pome from y'all in each of mah magazines, unnerstand?"

"Well...I do have a few ideas I could work on."

"Now who's this here Dorthy Bates? Dang, she's good! Where'd y'all find her?"

"She found us. We've been getting some really good work in."

"Y'all must be doin' somethin' right, then. And lookee this one. 'The Migration of Frost.' Ah swear Ah gotta read that 'un again and again. And what'n hell kinda name is that? L.A. Story Houry? They named her after a movie?"

"She's---"

"Say, can Ah trouble y'all for some more of this here coffee? Ah got myself onto one o' them politically keerect clouds last week and they had done barred caffeine."

So I went into the kitchen while he sat there still a-bitchin' and quite soon I was returned with a, "Careful, you'll get burned." And he sat there sorta quiet and I wondered 'bout his diet, what they served him on that cloud and what was and not allowed.

"Jim?"

"Yeah, podner."

"What's it like? You know...being dead."

"It's like being on holiday in Belgium in a tour bus loaded with town gossips and TV weather girls."

When I stopped laughing, I said, "TV weather girls?"

He tried to speak in a ditzy falsetto voice, not an easy task for someone whose words came out drawled and gravelly. "They don't know where to stand, they don't know where to point, they don't know where to sit." Then he added, in his own drawl, "They need a border collie." Finally he clicked off the website and turned around, eyes still twinkly. "Still, there are moments. For people like me there's a bar they call Rick's. But only for people like me."

"People like you?"

"Shore they do!" He got that boyish grin again, as if to say that jokes were as rare as coffee on that cloud he'd visited recently. Then he sobered. "Heinlein's there, and Asimov, and Kornbluth, and some fine Roman lady named Hypatia. Verne, Brunner, Twain. Judith Merril. All sorts o' people like that. An' little ole me, of course."

"People who dreamed."

He gave me two thumbs up. "You got it!"

"People who dreamed of going to the stars."

"Ah tole y'all that was the future." He touched a hand to the monitor. Briefly it seemed to hiss. "And from what Ah've just seen, looks like y'all are...well..."

"Keeping the faith?"

He nodded so hard his hat almost fell off. I don't know what I would have done if it had. I'd never seen him without it.

"So tell me: how are y'all doin'? Ah seen some new magazines in there, and some new editors. How's all that working out for ya? Who's payin' the bills?"

"Well...I am."

His grin was huge now, as if to warn me in advance that he was laughing at himself. "Ya mean Ah can't go around sayin' I AM JAMES B. BAKER AND I PAY THE BILLS AROUND HERE?"

I wanted to shake his hand. "You paid your dues, Jim. That's how you got into Rick's. Anyway, since you asked, we're close to breaking even this year."

He held up a hand, the knuckles a bit gnarly from writing his earlier stories in longhand. "Way way way way waaaaait a second here. Y'all got money comin' in?"

"And going out. We put it back into the company, so to speak, what's left after paying contributors and expenses and all. We even raised the pay rates in The Martian Wave and Scifaikuest."

"What're y'all selling, anyway?"

"Subscriptions to our three print magazines," I told him, "and some of the novels and anthologies. But poetry chapbooks, mostly. Some of those illustrated chapbooks are quite popular. As are the chapbook anthologies, like Random Planets and Portals. And we have high hopes for Unspeakable Limericks. That idea you had about publishing an anthology a month might have been a bit impractical...but we've published an average of one chapbook a month, so you weren't too far off."

At that Jim beamed: one of his ideas had worked.

"And don't look so surprised," I added. "You started all this, you know."

"So Teri's an editor now, eh?"

"She and Ellay run that magazine, Scifaikuest."

"Ellay? That girl named after the movie?"

"That's a long story, Jim. But yeah, her. She's in charge of our advertising and marketing now. She's gotten our publications on shelves in seven bookstores in two states now, and working on more."

He almost jumped out of his chair. He made a sound like Slim Pickens, riding that bomb in Doctor Strangelove. Then he calmed down, sort of. "Print publications? On shelves? Dang! Who is this girl? Ah gotta meet her."

"And she's gotten us press releases, and television and radio interviews, and newspaper articles about John Bushore and Kevin Donihe...Julie Shiel's up soon, and right now she's working on getting Erin Donahoe some ink."

Again he sobered. "Oh, yeah, Erin..."

"She got her law degree, you know."

"Ah know. Ah was there at the ceremony with...someone she knows... She's taller than Ah reckoned. And Ah see she's still writing. And drawing now, too."

"She has the front cover for the December Aoife's Kiss."

"And J? You're hasslin' him, Ah hope. Gotta keep him on his toes, that's what Ah allus tried ta do. But don't you tell him Ah said that."

"My lips are sealed."

He leaned back in the chair, balancing on the rear legs, and for a moment I feared he might spill. But he floated there in perfect equilibrium. If an aura had appeared around him, I would not have been surprised. "Andree's still managing Creators Club, Ah see. She ever git her compooter fixed?"

"And she does the bells and whistles for Cathy's Champagne Shivers."

At the mention of Cathy Buburuz his face became grim. "Yeah, horror. Personally Ah can't stand the stuff. But Cathy's good. And she allus tole me like it was, never held back nuthin'. If y'all're in touch with her, you tell her Lovecraft is holding a spot for her up there...one o' the black clouds. Noisy place. H.P. likes it that way. Last week he and E. A. Poe sealed up somebody in a cloud with a bottle of wine. They're a hoot when they git together. They're even talkin' about givin' Cathy her own personal slot machine with forty eight pay lines."

He seemed to know a lot of people, a lot of people. But it had always been so. Just about everyone in the genres knew who he was, or had some dealings with him.

"Terrie Relf?" he asked, after a pensive silence. "Jen Cawthorne? Dave Shtogryn?

"I think Terrie's working on a piece called Dating Aliens for Dummies. Jen is still painting and drawing, and writing poetry. David is still writing, working on another novel."

Again he paused, then slapped his hands on top of his thighs and pushed himself up. "Got to go, podner. They only let me do this once a year, and Ah can't afford t'be late gittin' back. Why the Afterlife has ta have a curfew, Ah've no idear, but it do."

I walked him to the study door, only this and nothing more.

Said I, "Now that you know the correct website address," and here he grinned sheepishly, "you can keep an eye on what's going on with us. In fact..."

Jim squinted up at me from under that hat like a Texan Columbo. "Yeah?"

"I think we'd all appreciate it if you'd keep an eye on us. Give us a nudge now and then, when we aren't quite doing what we should be. Go easy on the capitalizing, of course."

He chuckled. "Gits yore attention, though."

"Yeah, it did. It does. Anyway...look in on us, now and then, and see how we're doing."

And Jim's eyes took on the seeming of an angel's that is dreaming, and the porchlamp o'er him streaming threw his shadow on the floor, and o'er his shoulder glanced as he reached the Nightly shore...

...and whispered softly, "Evermore."

Past Tuppence:
June 2003
March 2003
December 2002
October 2002
August 2002
June 2002
April 2002
February 2002
December 2001
October 2001
August 2001

Read more from Tyree Campbell in any of the following:

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 3

Sex and the Single Alien
An anthology

Nyx
A novel by Tyree Campbell

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 2