Triumph of the Spider Monkey Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Raves for the Work of Joyce Carol Oates!

  Some Other Hard Case Crime Books You Will Enjoy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Triumph of the Spider Monkey

  1 Nativity

  2 The Maniac Explains His Sanity

  3 The Machete

  4 Gotteson’s Juvenilia

  5 Unrehearsed Interview

  6 El Portal

  7 The Maniac Meditates

  8 An Unfilmed Love Scene

  9 Unfilmed Love Scene

  10 How the Maniac Gotteson Travelled West

  11 Are You in Love

  12 Gotteson on Film

  13 Why I Hacked

  14 Soul-Programming

  15 Above the Sea

  16 Hitting Off

  17 Gotteson’s Pilot-Film

  18 Louise D.’s Birthday/Deathday

  19 Doreen B.

  20 The Redemption

  Love, Careless Love

  Raves for the Work

  of JOYCE CAROL OATES!

  “Few writers better illuminate the mind’s most disturbing corners.”

  —Seattle Times

  “Oates is a mind-reader who writes psychological horror stories about seriously disturbed minds, and it’s hard to tear your eyes away.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “I love her writing…Oates is simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious, and creative writer going, as far as I’m concerned.”

  —Gillian Flynn, author of GONE GIRL

  “Wrenching…a grim examination of how humans cope with unspeakable physical and psychological pain. She illuminates the darkest corners and shows us the startled, troubled creatures hiding there, nursing their wounds, staring back at us, their kin.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Dread, in fiction, can be a magnificent thing…Oates isn’t writing horror fiction, but she might as well be. Her stories pack the same kind of visceral wallop.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Brilliant…A shattered spirit, furious, violent, confused, a creature of the gothic underbelly where Oates’s sympathies most often lie…breathtaking.”

  —Washington Post

  “Grimly compelling…terrifyingly hallucinatory.”

  —Wall Street Journal

  “Sinister, edgy, delectably creepy.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A graceful and excruciating story.”

  —USA Today

  “Powerful…feverish.”

  —The New Yorker

  “Immensely moving.”

  —People

  “Seethes with Oates’ trademark intellect and psychological insight…delivers nightmares that are…unforgettable.”

  —Elle

  “An urgently compelling and drastically revealing study of evil, habitual terror, and survival.”

  —Booklist

  “Rarely is [Oates] so intriguing as when she strays into a genre best described as ‘faction.’ It’s as unsettling as it is worthwhile to take a fresh look at a much-publicized event or personality through Oates’ eyes.”

  —Times (London)

  “Joyce Carol Oates explores in fiction what most of us only experienced through headlines some twenty-five years ago.”

  —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

  “A raw and earnest mix of fiery drama and…bone-cold truths.”

  —NPR, All Things Considered

  “Haunting, terrifying, disturbing.”

  —Atlantic Wire

  “[Oates is] a superb storyteller…unsurpassed.”

  —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “One of America’s most accomplished writers.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Joyce Carol Oates, author of dozens of grim novels, knows the dark side of life better than most and explores it here in a lean and disturbing tale that reverberates after its ending.”

  —Columbus Dispatch

  “Ambitious, complex, and powerful.”

  —Greensboro News & Record

  “A torrentially imaginative, compulsively readable tour de force.”

  —Sunday Telegraph

  “Overwhelmingly vivid and powerful.”

  —New York Review of Books

  “That rarity in American fiction, a writer who seems to grow with each new book…A brilliant writer.”

  —Time

  I didn’t have my guitar any longer. I did have the Machete with me, which I usually carried wound in many yards of coarse woven cloth some girl gave me, brought back from Taos, to go with my primitive good looks, but where was the Machete…?

  The dressmaker’s dummy with all the blood was lying on it. The handle was showing. Weird-red, glowing-red, pink-scarlet-sinister radiance. It glowed in the dark. I crawled over to her and said, “Honey you didn’t tell me your name, even,” and it wasn’t until later that day when I had escaped and was having a tamale-burger at a Strip drive-in, standing near some teenage bastard and his bright yellow Ferrari with the radio blaring, that I heard the news bulletin, but by then…by then the memory of it had all evaporated and I felt only that fuzzy little interest, you know, that you feel when you hear about four or five stewardesses murdered in some bungalow they rented out in Pasadena that the neighbors swore had been raided three times in the last three months for drugs and wild parties and late-night noises so I had only a foggy good citizen’s interest in that, because my real self was with my music but my music was shut off and all those powers that went with it that I lost in the scramble-climb up Vanbrugh’s house while those bastards stood around clapping and cheering and snickering…

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

  JOYLAND by Stephen King

  THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

  ODDS ON by Michael Crichton writing as John Lange

  BRAINQUAKE by Samuel Fuller

  THIEVES FALL OUT by Gore Vidal

  SO NUDE, SO DEAD by Ed McBain

  THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES

  by Lawrence Block

  QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  BUST by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  SOHO SINS by Richard Vine

  THE KNIFE SLIPPED by Erle Stanley Gardner

  SNATCH by Gregory Mcdonald

  THE LAST STAND by Mickey Spillane

  UNDERSTUDY FOR DEATH by Charles Willeford

  CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL by Scott Von Doviak

  SO MANY DOORS by Oakley Hall

  BROTHERS KEEPERS by Donald E. Westlake

  A BLOODY BUSINESS by Dylan Struzan

  The TRIUMPH

  of the SPIDER

  MONKEY

  by Joyce Carol Oates

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-140)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: July 2019

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London SE1 0UP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  Copyright © 1974, 1976 by Joyce Carol Oates

  Cover painting copyright © 2019 by Robert McGinnis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to
actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print edition ISBN 978-1-78565-677-4

  E-book ISBN 978-1-78565-772-6

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.signalfoundry.com

  Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  —for those on the Outside

  slowly we are overrunning the earth spidermonkeys twittering climbing leaping leering on broken banjos

  the Jukebox of the 40’s could not cage us in stunned, the arm of the mechanism pauses paralyzed

  when the Spider Monkeys inside open soul-doors to us spidermonkeys skinned alive the magic of My Passage on Earth will be just another headline

  THE TRIUMPH OF THE SPIDER MONKEY

  1

  Nativity

  Noise, vibrations, murmuring nosey crowd of bastards with nothing else to do but gawk—grunting sweating bastard in a uniform reaching in and grabbing me out of the darkness and delivering me to light—

  —to lights, that is—

  Holding me up to those lights. A baby! A baby still alive!

  Time: 6:05 PM. Date: February 14, 1944.

  Delivered by the Master Key endowed by its creator to open all the lockers, foot-lockers renting for 25c for 24 hours—delivered by some amazed outraged bastard in a uniform to the surprise and anger and gradual disappointment of the crowd (It’s still alive…a baby, yeh, locked in there…but it’s still alive…Yeh. Let’s go.) Held up to the lights and declared Still alive in the Trailways Bus Terminal on Canal Street, New York City, New York, as good a place as any. The time had been 5:55 PM when the disturbance began. The Master Key was summoned, and delivered out of its duffel bag the screaming ungrateful little—

  * * *

  “Bobbie Gotteson” hears the name “Bobbie Gotteson” uttered and a long loud string of words he tries to interrupt, rising to his feet though his legs are weak, interrupting the words to cry “I Bobbie Gotteson being of sound mind and body do hereby request—insist—want—” while the Judge stares and the courtroom goes wild and the bailiffs and the police converge—and the Maniac falls back in his chair— Counsel is advised by someone very angry to instruct his client “Bobbie Gotteson” to refrain from such outbursts this is a Court of Law he is on trial for his life if that can’t make him into a sober mature responsible adult what will?*

  * * *

  —screaming ungrateful little red-faced monkeyish diaper-soaked Bobbie Gotteson, delivered to the gawkers out of footlocker 79-C, already in trouble with the Law. Mouthy little sonuvabitch. Mouth runs away with it though on trial for its life, just as mouth ran away with it at the age of 1 week. Mouth has a sense of humor. Jokes too much. Gets the rest of it into trouble, as the Prosecuting Attorney is going to show in all that detail, the bastard. Public records will show and are never wrong. Public records were following closely and were never wrong causing taxpayers to rebel…What, is it still alive?… Alive? Bobbie Gotteson is already there, existing in the typed-up words in the reports and can’t be erased or wished away by the friendliest Friends of the Court or the pickets (mainly kids, looking skinnier and uglier and crazier than I do) outside this Hall of Justice, picketing for the release of the Maniac. Mouth might as well confess. Mouth might as well inform on itself.

  When the screaming stopped and the diapers were changed the joking started, but jokes only got it into trouble. You wouldn’t think so, but it was true. Into trouble and into it deeper and deeper, a total of seventeen years four months fourteen days spent Inside, but with a cheerful natural bright sense of humor and a basic optimism that ebbed or was kicked hard occasionally but always surfaced again. Sheer delight is the Maniac’s energy, always bubbling back, the best trick of all as was demonstrated on Variety Night or Talent Show nights, and afterward in the Outside World (which you inhabit not knowing it is Outside of other people’s Inside, but more of that later!—later!), but somehow sweetest of all when fellow inmates doubled over with laughter and sometimes had to beg it to stop, Jesus Bobbie, Jesus kid, cut it out you’re killing me—! What did they like best? Popular opinion divided equally between the spider-monkey-climbing-up-a-pole routine and the spastic-crossing-the-freeway pantomine. Inmates showed surprising enthusiasm and spontaneous interest in these amateur nights—even the most hardened criminals, even the crudest and hardest of heart could find a tear, or laugh till tears rolled down their coarse cheeks…which only goes to show you…doesn’t it?…But wouldn’t you know it, no surprise, that’s human nature, after the first flush of excitement and enthusiasm interest in Variety Night or Talent Show Night always faded away, and the hard work, the hard grinding work, had to be done by just a core of prisoners…you can’t beat human nature, Inside or Out. Hard work to organize rehearsals and paint scenery and fight people off and find a lonely corner somewhere to practice your songs and dance-routines and mimes, so by the time And now—little Bobbie Gotteson! summons you out of the wings and onstage you are haggard and weary and must pull yourself up by your own gray wool-and-cotton socks, so to speak, in an effort to appear happy. But I had a natural talent for show business, for pleasing the crowd, I was always singled out for applause and encouraged to express myself by people in uniforms, so as to induce paroxysms of laughter in other people, or maybe a stray tear.

  * * *

  If it please Your Honor and the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury my client is quieted down and people can stop snickering and gawking and prodding one another and giggling in the corners…and that motherfucker on the bench can stop smirking and trying to catch Bobbie’s moist brown eye with a wink…and the fact remains as a matter of Public Record that the Maniac was delivered to the world out of Locker 79-C in the main waiting room of the Trailways Bus Terminal on Canal Street New York City, as good a place as any and why are you snickering?—the dark, dark odorous Inside of the locker and the urine-soaked duffel bag were sweet to our Bobbie, as to anyone on the other side of sanity.

  *One of Gotteson’s fixed ideas was that he faced death in the gas chamber, though he had been told repeatedly that capital punishment had been abolished in the State of California. All remarks in this strange document are the Maniac’s even those he attributes to the “court” and to other people.

  2

  The Maniac Explains His Sanity

  I can play sane, like you. Like everyone. Sometimes I played insane, but now I am very sane. My mind is a net, with holes in it that can be very tiny or quite large; to sift things through or to catch them.

  Twice my life was saved by playing insane. The first time, in a jail in Reno on my way out here, I woke up and some old wire-bearded bastard was staring down into my face. His lips were moving. He seemed to see me inside, his eyes were really scooping into mine, and he started mumbling some words about his little girl. He grabbed hold of me and tried to embrace me. He said I had a little girl’s mouth, that it was his little girl, a terrible panic ran everywhere in me and I began to beat him around the face to make him let go of me, but he wouldn’t let go, he was shrieking now, and I butted at his face with the top of my head, in a rage, to make him let go of me. My little girl! My girl! Like hell I am your little girl, Gotteson raged, Gotteson with his muscles and his chest-hair and his deep bass voice, but when he fell down and grabbed my legs I saw he was hurt bad, there would be trouble, already the sheriff’s men were headed for us, so I proceeded to go crazy. It saved me from a beating. I was transferred to a psychiatric ward in a hospital that was very modern, and after a while charges were dropped against me, whatever they were, maybe loitering or vagrancy. I was always an expert actor. At another place where they give you tokens for behaving well, instead of beating you, I acted so well that I accumulated heavy sagging pockets filled with tokens.

  Another time my life was saved by
playing insane, out here. A contact came to pick me up, in a blue Ferrari, and he told me to leave behind my guitar because it wouldn’t be needed tonight. I asked him what was wrong. I asked if the client had changed his mind, if the party was called off, and he said well, no, the client has not changed his mind but the instructions were different from what I had been told. He said to put on a blindfold he had in the glove compartment. So I put it on. But I took the guitar with me because there wasn’t a safe place to leave it, and we drove out somewhere up into the Hills, that was pretty obvious, and I just relaxed and thought well hell, I would just relax and not even make nervous jokes to the man who was driving, but try to sit calmly, and relax. So we stopped somewhere out in the country. He said, O.K., take the blindfold off, it’s already past ten and we were due at ten, so we got out and he opened the trunk of the car and took out two leather thongs with fringes on them and a leather arm-band with something propped up on it. I asked him what the hell that was, but he said just to put it on, so I buckled it on my forearm and a car came around a curve just then, so in the headlights I saw that it was a bird pasted onto the arm-band, and it was so strange with its glass eyes and sharp curved beak that I stood staring at it while the car went by, and my friend shouted at me to wake up, or we’d both be in trouble. He had put on a helmet with a feathery fringe to it, going all around the helmet though longer at the sides and the back, and he told me to get going up through the brush and began to explain what the assignment was. We would be told to stop, he said, but we must not even pause—must shout No mercy! No mercy!— and keep on beating the client. I began to concentrate my powers inside my head. By the time we smashed our way through a terrace door and into the sunken living room where a man sat watching television I was all on fire and could not have been stopped except by bullets. The stuffed falcon shivered on my arm. The client, seeing my face, began to scream. But there was no stopping me and no mercy.