Cahokia Jazz

by Francis Spufford

“I see,” the Man said. “You have a very transactional attitude to life, don’t you? All about what’s in it for who, and who gets what.—By the way, I don’t threaten people; Oscar does that for me.” “That’s the way I’ve found the world works.”

think. I spend my days on symbolism, Mr. Barrow, because of course unlike my ancestors I am a symbolic king, not a real one. And yet that is not nothing, Mr. Barrow. Sometimes, symbols move solid objects; sometimes they act on flesh and blood. If you don’t pay attention to what things mean, you miss a piece of the puzzle. Without the meaning of things, without the stories people tell about them—that people believe about them—you can’t understand events, detective. You can’t understand this city.”

Anderson on her way out of the building had leaned over his own desk in a cloud of eyelashes and perfume and russet tweed, and said “Friend of yours?,” nodding at Drummond’s back. “I guess.” “Me, I prefer friends who aren’t assholes,” she’d said.

“Show me a believer, in pretty much anything, and I’ll show you somebody someplace else who’s making bank. It’s a law of the universe, is what it is. No different for the takouma, mind, with their holy Cardinal to keep ’em in line, who just so happens to be brother to the Man. It’s all a racket, Joe, everywhere you look, and the only way not to be a sucker is, believe none of it.

“Louis Bessa,” said the second agent as if talking to a child, “is a member of the Workers Party of America. The Workers Party is organizing opposition to the war up in the New Siberian Territory. If the war in the NST is lost, and the White government in Kodiak falls, Moscow will rule all the way to the Yukon. The Soviet will have established itself on our continent. The Red Army will be camped up there, ready to roll down on top of us.” “He’s going to make all that happen from a job in a meat-packing plant?”