Others of my Kind E-Book

James Sallis

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 148

Beschreibung

At age eight, Jenny Rowan was abducted and kept for two years in a box beneath her captor's bed. Eventually she escaped and, after living for eighteen months on cast-offs at the local mall, was put into the child-care system. Suing for emancipation, at age sixteen she became a legal adult. Nowadays she works as a production editor for the local public TV station, and is one of the world's good people. One evening she returns home to find a detective waiting for her. Though her records are sealed, he somehow knows her story. He asks if she can help with a young woman who, like her many years before, has been abducted and traumatized.Initially hesitant, Jenny decides to get involved, reviving buried memories and setting in motion an unexpected interchange with the president herself. As brilliantly spare and compact as are all of James Sallis's novels, Others of My Kind stands apart for its female protagonist. Set in a near future of political turmoil, it is a story of how we overcome, how we shape ourselves by what happens to us, and of how the human spirit, whatever horrors it undergoes, will not be put down.

Leseprobe

At age eight, Jenny Rowan was abducted and kept for two years in a box beneath her captor’s bed. Eventually she escaped and, after living for eighteen months on cast-offs at the local mall, was put into the child-care system. Suing for emancipation, at age sixteen she became a legal adult. Nowadays she works as a production editor for the local public TV station, and is one of the world’s good people.

One evening she returns home to find a detective waiting for her. Though her records are sealed, he somehow knows her story. He asks if she can help with a young woman who, like her many years before, has been abducted and traumatized. Initially hesitant, Jenny decides to get involved, reviving buried memories and setting in motion an unexpected interchange with the president herself.

As brilliantly spare and compact as are all of James Sallis’s novels, Others of My Kind stands apart for its female protagonist. Set in a near future of political turmoil, it is a story of how we overcome, how we shape ourselves by what happens to us, and of how the human spirit, whatever horrors it undergoes, will not be put down.

James Sallis has published fifteen novels, multiple collections of short stories, essays, and poems, books of musicology, a biography of Chester Himes, and a translation of Raymond Queneau’s novel Saint Glinglin. He has written about books for the LA Times, New York Times, and Washington Post, and for some years served as a books columnist for the Boston Globe.

In 2007 he received a lifetime achievement award from Bouchercon. In addition to Drive, the six Lew Griffin books are now in development as feature films. James teaches novel writing at Phoenix College and plays regularly with his string band, Three-Legged Dog.

He stays busy.

Praise for Others of My Kind

‘Let me start out by saying that I think James Sallis is one of America’s finest writers. In his last few efforts he has achieved both popular success with the book and film, Drive and critical success with the Turner Trilogy and last years Driven and The Killer is Dying. His new novel, which will be published in early September, is a stunning work of art. It is short, powerful and deeply affecting. I found it both hard to read, horrifying and beautiful all at the same time. The book takes place in the near future and mirrors the political problems of our own present day. Jenny Rowan, who tells us her story, is a survivor of a terrible kidnapping and a ruined childhood. She has survived and now works at a TV station where she constructs both a life and news stories from film fragments as an editor. Through her eyes and the genius of Mr Sallis we are shown a deeply humanitarian path towards a resurrection of her life and a glimpse of what America can be. The book is a crime story, a political precis and a magnificently realized journey to the heart of what we can become as a people if we want to.

While the book is lean in pages, it has a power that is perfect in its execution. The language is both simple and yet rich in its imagery and metaphor. With each new book James Sallis reaches ever higher into the pantheon of pure writing. The beauty and empathy that he radiates in his prose is breathtaking. His melding of humans and nature allow the reader to feel a wholeness with the world we live in that is rarely found in modern literature. I cannot praise this gem of a novel enough and hope that all who read this review avail themselves of a chance to experience something unique.’

Poisoned Pen

Praise for Driven

‘Fantastically economical … a savage depiction of America’ – Mark Lawson, Radio 4

‘Driven marks a rare case of mutual respect between an author and… Hollywood’ – AnOther Magazine

‘A one-sitting read that’s a mean, lean drive into darkness’ – Financial Times

‘If James Sallis’ totemic Driver seemed somehow superhuman in the original Drive, then in its sequel, things have evolved even further’ – 3:AM Magazine

‘Driven is another delicious slice of neo-noir crime served razor-sharp by James Sallis’ – Alternative Magazine Online

Praise for Drive

‘Crime novels seldom come as lean and mean as this subtle tale... James Sallis has always been one of America’s most intellectual mystery authors, but this sparse evocation of hardboiled angst in the blazing sun, in which destinies criss-cross with ferocious results, is a minor masterpiece ...Sallis’s treatment is minimalist, stylish, and all the more evocative for it. Essential noir existentialism’ – Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian

‘a small masterpiece’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘Full throttle getaway to the underworld’ – Independent

‘James Sallis has written a perfect piece of noir fiction’ – New York Times

‘The character Driver holds a place in American literature’ – Dazed Digital

Praise for James Sallis

‘Sallis is an unsung genius of crime writing’ – Independent on Sunday

‘James Sallis is a superb writer’ – Times

‘James Sallis - he’s right up there, one of the best of the best... Sallis, also a poet, is capable of smart phrasing and moments of elegiac energy’ – Ian Rankin, Guardian

‘[A] master of America noir...Sallis creates vivid images in very few words and his taut, pared down prose is distinctive and powerful’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘Sallis’s spare, concrete prose achieves the level of poetry’ – Telegraph

‘Sallis is a wonderful writer, dark, lyrical and compelling’ – Spectator

‘Sallis is a fastidious man, intelligent and widely read. There’s nothing slapdash or merely strategic about his work’ – London Review of Books

‘Classic American crime of the highest order’ – Time Out

‘Unlike those pretenders who play in dark alleys and think they’re tough, James Sallis writes from an authentic noir sensibility, a state of mind that hovers between amoral indifference and profound existential despair’ – New York Times

‘carefully crafted, restrained and eloquent’ – Times Literary Supplement

‘James Sallis is without doubt the most underrated novelist currently working in America’ – Catholic Herald

‘I’m brought back, yet again, to my conviction that the best American writers are hiding out like CIA sleepers, long forgotten fugitives from a discontinued campaign’ – Iain Sinclair, London Review of Books

‘The leading light in neo-noir existentialism’ – Mirror

Sallis’ wonderfully varied crime fiction is generating all kinds of overdue interest... existentialist, black top noir’ – Metro

‘An artist and a radical’ – Book Geeks

SELECTED WORKS BY JAMES SALLIS

Novels Published by No Exit Press

The Long-Legged Fly – Lew Griffin Book One, 1992

Moth – Lew Griffin Book Two, 1993

Black Hornet – Lew Griffin Book Three, 1994

Death Will Have Your Eyes, 1997

Eye of the Cricket – Lew Griffin Book Four, 1997

Bluebottle – Lew Griffin Book Five, 1998

Ghost of a Flea – Lew Griffin Book Six, 2001

Cypress Grove – Turner Trilogy Book One, 2003

Drive, 2005

Cripple Creek – Turner Trilogy Book Two, 2006

Salt River – Turner Trilogy Book Three, 2007

The Killer Is Dying, 2011

Driven, 2012

Others of My Kind 2013

Other Novels

Renderings What You Have Left: The Turner Trilogy

Stories

A Few Last Words Limits of the Sensible World Time’s Hammers: Collected Stories A City Equal to my Desire

Poems

Sorrow’s Kitchen My Tongue In Other Cheeks: Selected Translations Rain’s Eagerness

As Editor

Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany Jazz Guitars The Guitar In Jazz

Other

The Guitar Players Difficult Lives Saint Glinglin by Raymond Queneau (translator) Chester Himes: A Life A James Sallis Reader

To the memory of my mother, who knew about secrets and hard lives

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Other Books Extracts

Copyright

OTHERS OF MY KIND

Chapter One

AS I TURNED INTO MY APARTMENT COMPLEX, sack of Chinese takeout from Hong Kong Garden in hand, Szechuan bean curd, Buddhist Delight, a man stood from where he’d been sitting on the low wall by the bank of flowers and ground out his cigarette underfoot. He wore a cheap navy-blue suit that nonetheless fit him perfectly, gray cotton shirt, maroon tie, oxblood loafers. He had the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.

‘Miss Rowan? Jack Collins, violent crimes.’ With an easy, practiced motion he flipped open his wallet to display a badge. ‘You give me a minute of your time?’

‘Why not. Come on up.’

Without asking, I spooned food out onto two plates and handed one to him. For a moment he looked surprised, but only for a moment, then tucked in.

‘So what can I do for you, Jack Collins?’ I asked between bites. We stood around the kitchen island. Tiles chipped at the edge, grout stained by untold years of spills and seasoned by time to a light brown. The kitchen radio, as always, was on. After six the station switches from classical to jazz. Lots of tenor sax. California bebop beating its breast.

‘Well, first, I guess, you could tell me why you handed me this plate.’

‘You’re not wearing a wedding ring. Your shirt needs pressing, and, even with that suit and tie, you have on white socks. A wife or girlfriend would have called you on that. So I figure you live alone. People who live alone are usually up for a meal. Especially at six-thirty of an evening.’

‘And here I thought I was the detective.’ He forked in the last few mouthfuls of food. ‘Vegetarian?’

I admitted to it as he went to the sink, rinsed out utensils and plate and set them in the rack.

‘I know what happened to you,’ he said.

‘You mean how I spent my early years?’

‘Danny and all the rest, yes.’

‘Those records were sealed by the court.’

‘Yeah, well…’

He came back to collect my dishes and utensils, took them to the sink and rinsed them, added them to the rack. Stood there looking out the window above the sink. Another tell that he’s a bachelor, used to living alone. Maybe just a little compulsive.

‘Look, I’m just gonna say this. I spent the last few hours up at the county hospital, Maricopa. Young woman by the name of Cheryl got brought in there last night. Twenty years old going on twelve. Way it came about was, the neighbors got a new dog that wouldn’t stop barking. They didn’t have a clue, tried everything. Then, first chance the dog had, it shot out the door, parked itself outside the adjoining apartment and wouldn’t be drawn away. Finally they called nine-one-one. Couple of officers responded, got no answer at the door, had the super key them in. Found Cheryl in a closet, bound and gagged, clothes-pins on her nipples, handmade dildos taped in place in her vagina and rectum. Guy was a woodworker, apparently – one of the responding officers is a hobbyist himself, says this mook used only the best quality wood, tooled it down to a high shine. Cheryl didn’t talk much to begin with. Then about five this morning she stopped talking at all. Just started staring at us. Like she was behind thick glass looking out.’

‘Yeah, that’s what happens. You get tired of all the questions, you know they’re never going to understand.’

‘Mook got home from work not long after the officers arrived on the scene. Had some sort of club there by the door, apparently, and came at them with it. Junior officer shot him dead, a single shot to the head. Training officer, twenty-plus years on the job, he’d never once drawn his piece.’

Collins opened the refrigerator door and rummaged about, extracting a half-liter bottle of sparkling water. Mostly flat when he shook it, but hey. He poured glasses for both of us and threw in sliced limes from the produce drawer.

‘Look, you don’t want to go back into all that, I’ll understand. But we’ve got nothing but blind alleys north south east and west. No idea who this girl – this woman – is. Where she’s from, how long she’s been there.’

‘Twenty going on twelve, you said.’

‘Could just be shock. One of the doctors mentioned sensory deprivation, talked about developmental lag. A nurse thought she might be retarded. At any rate…’ He put a business card on the island between us. ‘They’re keeping her at the hospital overnight, for observation. You see your way clear to visiting her, talking with her, I’d appreciate it.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Anyone ever tell you you have beautiful eyes, Officer Collins?’

‘My mother used to say that. Funny. I’d forgotten…’ He smiled. ‘Thanks for the meal, Ms Rowan – and for your time. If by some chance you should happen to change your mind, give me a call, I’ll drive.’

I saw him to the door, tried to listen to music, picked up a Joseph Torra novel and put it back down after reading the same paragraph half a dozen times, found myself in a bath at 2 a.m. wide awake and thinking of things best left behind. Not long after six, I was on the phone.

‘Hope I didn’t wake you.’

‘No problem. Alarm’ll be going off soon anyway.’

‘Your offer still open?’

Nowadays whenever anyone asks me where I’m from, I tell them Westwood Mall. I love seeing the puzzled look on their faces. Then they laugh.

Everyone here’s from somewhere else, so it’s doubly a joke.

But I really am from Westwood Mall. That’s where I grew up.

I was eight years old when I was taken. I’d had my birthday party the week before, and was wearing the blue sweater my parents gave me, that and the pink jeans I loved, and my first pair of earrings.

His name was Danny. I thought he was old, of course, everybody over four foot tall looked old to me, but he was probably only in his twenties or thirties. He liked Heath bars and his breath often smelled of them. He wasn’t much for brushing teeth or bathing. His underarms smelled musty and animal-like, his privates had an acid smell to them, like metal in your mouth. Some days I can still taste that.

I really don’t remember much about the first year. Danny kept me in a box under his bed. He’d built it himself. I loved the smell of the fresh pine. He took the jeans and sweater but let me keep my earrings. He’d come home and slide me out, pop the top – two heavy hasps, I remember, two huge padlocks like in photos of Houdini – his own personal sardine. He’d bring me butter pecan sundaes that were always half-melted by the time he got home. I felt safe there in the box, sometimes imagined myself as a kind of genie, summoned into the world to grant my summoner’s wishes, to perform magic.

I’m not sure I was much more than a doll for him. Something he took out to play with. But he’d be so eager when he came home, so I don’t know. His penis would harden the moment I touched it. Sometimes he’d come then, and afterwards we’d just lie together on his bed. Other times he’d put things up me, cucumbers, shot glasses, bottles, either up my behind or what he called my cooze. He’d always pet my hair and moan quietly to me when he did that.

He worked as a nurse’s aide at D.C. General and as a corrections officer at the prison, pool and swing shifts at both, irregular hours, so I never had much idea what time of day it was when I felt my box being pulled out. Sometimes, from inside, I’d smell the heavy sweetness of the sundae. I was always excited.

Two years after I was taken, we went to Westwood Mall, the first outing we’d ever had. It was our second anniversary, Danny explained, and he wanted to do something special to celebrate. He gave me a pearl necklace, real pearls, he said, and I promised to behave. He’d even bought a pretty blue dress and shoes for me. At Acropolis Greek I stabbed his hand with a plastic knife, kicked off the shoes, and fled. I was surprised at how easily the knife went in, at the way it broke off when I twisted. Flesh should not be that vulnerable, that penetrable.

After that, I lived in the mall. Found safe places to hide from security guards, came out at night or during the rush hours to dine off an abundance of leftover fast food, had my pick of T-shirts, jackets and all manner of clothing left behind, read abandoned books and newspapers. I had turned from genie to Ms Tarzan. Periodically I’d watch from various vantage points as Danny prowled the mall hoping to find me. You may remember apocryphal tales of Mall Girl, sightings of which were first reported at Westwood then quickly spread throughout the city’s other malls. Eventually everyone came to believe the whole thing was ex nihilo, spun from vapor to whole cloth, no more than a self-serving stunt. The journalist who first reported these tales and devoted weeks of her column to following up on them, Sherry Bayles, was summarily fired. Lack of journalistic integrity, the paper cited. Later, when she was working as a substitute teacher, more or less by simple chance we became friends. She’s the only one I ever told about my days on the mall. Endearingly, she did no more than smile and nod.