The Canal

by Daniel Morris

  There was no helping Joe -- he was already cursed, already lost. But Alan's son wasn't. Alan wasn't...

  Joe's gaze limped regretfully toward the sink, to the cabinet above it. This could only go one place. Joe and his secrets. Rose and her presents. Don't open 'till Christmas.

  In better days, that cupboard was where Rose had kept a supply of candy -- licorice, chocolate, lollipops, cellophane-shiny bags of gumballs -- anything that came loaded with narcotic amounts of sugar, all of which she doled out indiscriminately to their son. Henry had adored her for it.

  No candy in there anymore though. Just a crowbar.

  Alan was starting on the door again. Joe didn't have the key to the cupboard lock. Instead he found a butter knife and began working on the latch, to where it was screwed into the wood. He got the leverage he needed, the knife bent, but the screws pulled free.

  Inside, the cabinet held the faint dishonor of a gym locker. He dragged out the crowbar and stared. He had put it there years ago, sick at the time. Deep down he'd known. He'd always known. Every circle had to come back around some day.

  Back at the door he undid the chain, the bolt, the latch. Alan was there, dangerously, with his gun and looking like a dunked dog, water trickling off his coat.

  Oh no, he hadn't jumped in had he...no, of course not. The rain. Just the rain...

  Joe had never considered it before, but Henry would have been about Alan's age by now. He wondered if they would have been very much alike...

  "I'm sorry," said Joe. "I didn't hear you knock."

  *

  Alan parked at the end of the street. They couldn't see the canal -- the headlights skipped over the channel and exposed the far shore instead, mostly construction yard remainders.

  Alan's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "And what will I do if she won't help?" Joe and him, they'd actually shared a cigarette on the way over -- it had been eerie and seemed staged, Alan coughed all throughout and Joe did too but more harshly, and when he took his hand away there was blood on it, warm and alive.

  "Bring her here," said Joe, hands tightening on the crowbar. "Anyway you can. Just remember what I said. Get through to her. Make her understand that, that I'm--" Joe did a thing where he rubbed his lips together. "That I'm going to kill it."

  Joe thought he heard Alan snicker, or maybe he had snickered himself, it was all very unbelievable sounding, until he realized it was just the hee-haw of the windshield wipers.

  "And what about Eugene?" asked Alan.

  Joe did the thing with his lips again. "We can only hope."

  Joe had been doing his best to evade Alan's questions. The less Alan knew the better. "Don't think about it," Joe would say. Or, "Watch the road. I heard you the first time. No, that's not true. Let's say I have an understanding, it's an old score. Sure, she's my wife. I can't do this without her. I'm not answering that. And I'm not answering that either. Trust me, you don't want to be involved..."

  Joe got out of the car. He banged on the roof and said, "Best not waste time." Drive away from this knowledge, drive away.

  Alan lingered, maybe to say something, but then he leaned over and pulled the passenger door shut. Joe waited as the car swiveled back down the street and then shimmied quickly away. If things went well, Alan could be back in half an hour.

  Joe looked at the ground. He was standing on a manhole cover; it was thick and gray like a melanoma. He started walking toward the water. There was no bulkhead here; the canal had chewed it away. Instead a lopsided stairway of cement boulders led straight down to the hissing river.

  The canal was already swollen with rain and it smelled weirdly of the sea: moldy docks, sailors in semen stained wool, fish left to sour in the sun. Joe slid most of the way down, causing little mudslides of bottle caps and glass. He had to climb over the unraveling frame of a shopping cart.

  Unfortunately, this evening a hand in the canal wouldn't be sufficient. Joe needed to make a much bigger commitment. It was the only way he could navigate the tangle of underground tunnels, the only way he'd know where to look.

  In the water, a school of condoms darted into the depths. He reached out one nicotine-spotted hand and cupped it in the river. The water was blood temperature, gooey like snot. "To health," he said. He brought the tingling liquid to his mouth and drank.

  The water congealed in his mouth like an oatmeal, scratching when he swallowed, which he had to do often, because it kept coming back up. The taste was immediately recognizable from long ago -- entirely inappropriate, its vintage a very, very, very bad year. Joe gagged and sobbed. The end of the world was intimate in his throat and stomach, and it had the flavor of crotch.

  He lolled awhile in the sickly weeds, canal water leaching across his bodily membranes, ravaging the tissue, harassing his health. He began slithering back up to the street.

  At the manhole cover he worked the chisel of the crowbar down into the edge and then put his weight behind it, forcing the lid from its cavity. He dragged the cover aside and celebrated by vomiting down the sewer shaft. He could already feel the tickle of fever, the heat in his throat and nostrils. Joe swung his legs inside. Fast running water rumbled from below -- storm drains had engorged the tunnels, inflating them into canyon rapids. A warm tornado of septic stench whistled past Joe's face, blowing rain from his eyelashes.

  Joe briefly looked around him. Mostly the world was a foggy swirl of water -- a Venus atmosphere -- shadows mostly, and shapes. He started down into the sewer one rung at a time, but slipped. The ground closed up around him as he fell several feet onto the cement below. He hardly noticed.

  Beside him, sewage stampeded through midnight capillaries with low, arched ceilings. Misdirected tree roots poked through the brick walls. Everything was shaggy with algae, which flourished here in the human, tropical steams. Runoff splashed on Joe's sleeves, fizzing like soda. As he stood up there was some swaying, a tentative jitter, before he powerfully retched, spraying a luminous yellow paste, like a man shooting sparks. Bright reins of dreck spilled from either side of his mouth and stuck to his coat.

  Meanwhile dim fireworks were pitching across the inside of Joe's eyelids. His head was a hissing vent, his brain the steam. Down he went, into the underbrain with ease. That was the canal's bounty and its bane; it showed the way into the dark, where the waking mind couldn't find you, where everything forgotten was remembered, where everything remembered found form, where the future was waiting to become.

  He wanders here, in this underground of imagination. That dank, watery place. With vast beaches. And a twilight sky, the surf crunching at your feet. The glinting edges of aluminum cans poke through the sand. Naked skin as far as the eye can wander. Joe's tan going to black.

  Dear friends, am having fantastic time. What a lovely beach. What a paradise. PS, dear friends, there's an island I see made of ginger colored fog. Lets bury ourselves to the necks and wait for the tide to come.

  This island, it surfs from wave to wave. There's dragon's breath there. Friends, I feel a close fear... The fog parts and closes, peeks and winks, revealing kudzu veins that feed cysts dark as squid ink and blond abscesses that drape the shoulders, mounted like armor. There are colonies of chancres that squirm and suck madly at the air. The dragon at bay. The honking of a baby.

  Joe was close.

  But the water, the thickening, reddening water. It was coming ashore, pulling at Joe's feet, kicking up bits of ears and legs and bodies. Joe began to entertain another fierce request to purge, from down in the digestive quarter.

  Dear friends, the sea, I fear the sea may be watching me. Not having wonderful time. Want come home. I fear, I fear it already knows...

  From the island a cry emerges. And then a shock -- the dragon in full, lying in tatters of brimstone cloud. Teeth everywhere, sticking through lips and cheeks, a beard of blood-smeared hooks. Behold, the assassinator of the light.

  A voice comes to him, from the creature, a voice that has no right being in this place. The same voice from t
he top floor.

  "Pee-yuu, right pop?"

  Oh, Please no. Let it lie...

  A red balloon. The churning ocean.

  Please, let him be!

  On wings the dragon flies, dear friends, across the water. And it laughs, a tinkle of bullets impacting flesh, of swishing guillotines. Dear friends. Scream if you want to. Why not? Eyes roll back in head. One arm out, for protection maybe, or as an offer, take me finally, kill me finally. Arm out, saying, kill me...

  >> CHAPTER SIXTEEN <<

  The car wreck ward was to be avoided. As were the burn wing, the poison unit, the anemia dome, the senior center, and the maternity corral. There was to be nothing genetic. No blindness and no burst appendices, no dropsy, no tumors, no kidney stones, no eczema's. Rather, it had to be contagious, transmittable across the air like radio waves, or through fluids, or the electricity of touch. Give her your meningitis, your measles, your influenza, your pox, your person-to-person, friend-to-friend, what's-mine-is-yours affliction. She'd take all of it from if you if you'd like. She'd prefer to...

  Rose was planning another excursion amongst the ailing flock. She hoped that in the small hours of two, three, and four AM she would find space to move -- a gap in doctor routine, a lull in medicinal activity -- so she could stealthily climb from room to room, testing the air, foraging amid the get well sentiments, the scentless flowers, and the gift shop teddy bears still bearing their price tags.

  In this room was...colic. In this room was...failure, all kinds of failure, poor, poor thing. Here was...brain blisters. Here was...kidney cramps. This one's awake, with the television. And in this room...hepatitis -- ah, yes, transmittable, passable, hepatitis. Rose was a gourmand, lovingly inspecting the latest produce -- the more bubbling sores, parasites, and scars the better.

  But hospitals were a sellers market and these germs knew it. Last night Rose had only two serious suitors before she succumbed to wellness and was forced back to bed -- a promising bacterium that ultimately left her for a recuperating tonsillectomy, and a virus, possibly mumps, which had expressed interest but was only leading her on, having already devoted most of its resources to, of all people, the policeman then alertly dozing outside of Rose's room. Even more disappointing was that these elusive pathogens would make for unworthy fuel -- this wasn't the canal after all. But she still had to try; she was desperate to stay the hand of health and the loss of her one memory...

  It was still there but getting weaker all the time, less accurate after every hour. Details had dropped away: the bridge now stood in her mind as a medley of geometrics, hash marks and solid underfoot. The neighborhood was reduced to flashes of cast-iron, playground chatter, skinny avenues, porch steps. The canal was hurt and hate and gross. Damn these medicines and benedictions -- she had to keep remembering the heat, the heat was her guide. It had been late in the day. Peripheral molecules. Rattles in the trees. There had been no warning, no gut feeling. There had been no difference that day in Henry, walking in his chest-out way, fearlessly cutting into the world--

  "Rose."

  She was being shaken and not softly. This was not part of the memory; it was an intrusion from that other stubborn world, the one that refused to forget her, that in spite of everything was always waiting, insisting on itself. What did they want? She would do no more penance. She would take no more pills. She would give no more names.

  Wet hands roughly pried open her eyes. Rose gradually oriented on a face: stubble, rubble, trouble. That man again, wanting something, his expression belying a panic rarely seen here (solemn religious reverence being endemic, along with the imported chatter of daytime TV and the beige greenery). But this one, he looked about to turn messy.

  Rose listened closely to his skin and temperature, sounding him for bugs. She came away disappointed -- barely a microbe to bother with. Although he'd be one to watch, there was definite promise...poor diet, much duress (it was there in the urgent heartbeat and the rigid eyebrows). Give him a few hours...

  "Joseph said to he's going to kill it. The thing, it has my son. He's going to kill that...that animal--"

  A sudden agony. He said animal. It is not an animal. He said Joseph...

  A chain reaction started in Rose's outer extremities. Cell after battered and startle-eyed cell emptied its stores, transferring energy hand-to-hand, tissue-to-tissue. Kill it, he'd said Joe was going to kill it. Rose heaved upright, savagely grabbing the detective by the arm. It was NOT enterprise. Why couldn't they see this? It was NOT a monstrosity. She'd tried to show them. She'd wanted to take them to it, to see. All you had to do was go backward. The origin was easy enough to trace. It was NOT the enemy.

  The man tried to pull away. But she had him, the horn of her thumbnail pressed into the soft underside of his wrist. She could feel the pulse tingling just at the edge of her nail. Good. Hurt him, make him feel pain. And Joseph. Of all people. He'd killed already hadn't he? If you had to make someone accountable -- he had already let Henry die, hadn't he? He had wanted to leave Henry alone with the bridge. How stupid of her, how naïve of her, HOW had she listened to him. And now he was going to kill again.

  The detective was pulling her. Her feet touched the refrigerated floor. She was being ripped from the beside machines and he was bringing her to Joe. He was making her run.

  She'd kill Joe if she had to. Joe. She wouldn't mind. If that's what it took, she'd do it gladly.

  >> CHAPTER SEVENTEEN <<

  In the mouth of the dragon Joe fought with great disvalour. He battled with tremendous unbravery. He faced the withering fire poorly, and dumbly. He cringed for the most part, and then gave up rather easily.

  Or so it was to a point. All had been lost. It had his arm all the way to the armpit. Sucking every last bit of juice, sucking it to jerky. The score, canal: everything, Joe: nothing. Or so it was to a point.

  *

  Either Joe was still alive or death was one big failure, one big limp dick. Because it stank here. It was loud. And that just wasn't right. Don't even...don't even tell me death is also a piece of shit. Don't even tell me that death can't find Joe, that old wash rag, all rung out, can't find him a mere ten feet underground in the city's guts.

  No, Joe decided. He was still alive. It hurt too much. And he was still too...angry. That's what it was, that had been the turning point -- anger. He'd survived because of it. He'd found himself -- of all things -- not wanting to die. And not because life was a blessing, with rainbows and greeting cards, or because of religion, or art, or for all the downtrodden, or for anyone else. And not because he was a coward, which he was. But because he was furious. He wanted to survive so that he could destroy, so he could punish, because nobody cared, because nobody gave a damn, because he wanted to live OUT OF SPITE, for FUCK ALL, because life was one poorly conceived principle, man, any concern for its participants being cursory at best. Let's see, first you're born, hurled into the unknown, and well, you should know ahead of time that the world is kind of like...like a big house of mirrors laced with about a billion booby traps -- you've got your poison darts, your dung smeared spears, your mines designed not to kill (thank God) but to politely turn everything below your waist into wind, and so on -- and the only reliable thing in evidence will seem to be your own general insignificance, and eventually you'll go die and in those last few moments you'll realize what a beautiful opportunity you'd been given, this thing called life, how absolutely gorgeous and sublime it all is, so stunning really, breathtakingly so (no, breathobliterating, no, no, its more, its just plain obliterating, it's just obliteratingly beautiful), utterly terrible and fantastic and humbling, and how you, yes you, you really fucked it all up by spending so much time being scared absolutely shitless.

  So be furious. FURIOUS. For once Joe would not be the one to suffer. For once Joe would not be the one made to pay.

  He opened a brittle eye and saw his foot dragging in waste. Rain squeezed through the open manhole and patted his face. He hadn't even moved, he'd been here the whole tim
e. For a moment, he even thought it had all been a hallucination, a byproduct of feverish delirium. Except that his left sleeve was gone, ripped at the shoulder. The arm itself, well, it was barely there. Incisions corkscrewed around it, studded with heavy beads of blood; the cuts were skinny and deep and there were far, far too may of them. The skin, puffy, pastry-like, had a very temporary quality, a very soon-to-be-leaving-you-and-dropping-away-in-tracing-paper-strips sort of feel, repulsively unanchored, alarmingly mobile.

  Joe laughed. Look at that arm; it belongs to me, and not for very long. This was comedy. Not one of those stand-up gags, no, real comedy, your laying in the sewer with your arm halved off kind of comedy. He laughed like a man who did this for a living, died every day. Then he downshifted into more of a howl. Sitting up now, he was howling. Hear this you canal. You fucking drain.

  Joe stood. He was dizzy, felt full of old yarn. But not this time. This once, not him. There were ledges here he could walk on, and with his bleeding arm tight across his chest, Joe skimmed like a stone, he floated. Where to go was taken care of -- the sickness pulled him there. That thing, that monster, the ruin in his body was drawn to it. Joe grinned as he bounced through the dense darkness, many times falling into the surging flow, through the tangled spaghetti of tunnels, his hair sticking in chandeliers of low-hanging fungus.

  Deeper and deeper and darker and down. Thub thub...thub thub. The Enterprise, yes, but he could also hear the baby, faint yelps and gibberish. He juked into a tunnel, easing down a hill, deeper still, where gravity was stronger, and the ground was prehistoric and hot. Vapor rolled off the water here. The canal was far above him maybe, leaking through the ceilings. You could sense its weight, hear it slurping at the sewer spouts. The dragon was near -- Joe tasted the bile that it brought to his throat, he could hear the drone of the surf and feel the sand itching in his shoes.