Cruel Zinc Melodies Read Online Free PDF

started. Most of the planking meant to become ground-level flooring remained to be pegged into place. No seating or stages or walls had gone up yet. A couple of carpenters pegged away. I strolled over. One worked an augur. The other sanded the head of a peg just driven into place. I peered into the lower-level gloom. “What’s the plan for ventilation down there?”
    The carpenters looked like brothers separated by five years. The elder said, “I’m a carpenter, chief. You want to know something like that, ask the friggin’ architect.”
    The other said, “Don’t mind this asshole. He married my sister. She sucked the nice out of him years ago.”
    Not brothers, then. The sister must be a walking disaster zone, she had a brother who talked like that.
    The younger continued. “They'll be louvered iron windows that can be adjusted from inside. And a stack in the center that’s supposed to draw hot, stale air.”
    “Thank you.”
    Something brown scooted through the lower murk.
    Carpenter the Elder failed to object to his companion’s remarks. I assumed the crab-and-grin was a regular act.
    Another something moved downstairs. Followed by a bunch of somethings. Rats? “You guys seen any ghosts?”
    “Say what?”
    “Ghosts. Old Man Weider said you construction guys can’t stay on schedule on account of ghosts and bugs.”
    The crabby carpenter whacked a peg into place with a wooden mallet. “I heard the same shit, slick. But I ain’t never seen no spooks. Bugs, though? Shit. Yeah. We got them fuckers out the wazoo. Some a’them big enough to rape a dog.”
    “Not mosquitoes, I hope.” In the islands we’d joked about the skeeters being so big they’d hang you in the trees so they could snack on you later.
    “Nah. They’s cock-a-roaches, mainly. I seen some ugly beetles, too. Shit! Lookit! There’s one right over there.” He threw his mallet. He missed. The mallet bounced all the way to the wall. Which I noted only in passing. Because I was looking at the biggest goddamned roach that ever lived. And the fastest thing on six feet that I ever saw.
    It wasn’t big enough to rape a dog. Not even one of those little yappy fur balls favored by old women on the Hill. “Holy shit!” That son of a bitching bug had to be eight inches long. There wasn’t anything like that native to TunFaire.
    I begged, “Tell me that wasn’t a baby.”
    “Nope.” That was the carpenter who wasn’t busy retrieving his mallet. “That was the biggest one I ever seen. But they keep getting bigger. We kill as many as we can. Old Man Weider needs to get somebody in here that knows what they’re doing.”
    “He got me instead.”
    “Kind of takes the optimism out, don’t it?”
    What the hell? This guy didn’t even know me and he was piling on. “I'll be back.”
    “That a threat or a promise, chief?”
    “Pick your poison.”
     
     

7
    I took a meandering route home. A little south of the direct route. I stopped by Playmate’s smithy and stable. Before he could start carping I told him, “I need to rent a coach. Tomorrow. Big enough for four people and fifty rats. I'll need a driver, too.”
    “Rent?” He sounded skeptical.
    “You always get paid.”
    “Thanks to Pular Singe.”
    Playmate skeptical is a vision. Because he’s a big black human house. Three hundred pounds, every ounce muscle. A slow-talking, fierce-looking sweetheart of a guy. So soft he’s squishy on the inside. A religious sort fully stuffed up with homilies about turning cheeks. He oozes unwarranted faith in the innate goodness of mankind.
    My experience suggests the opposite. The species is naturally wicked. People just fake it till opportunity crosses their bows. Only rare, twisted souls and random mutations, like Playmate, rise above the muck.
    And Playmate is no fanatic. He'll turn the other one only once. Then he'll bring the hammer down. If you’re obviously a bad guy, you won’t get the once.
    He stared and went right on not