"But you got through it. You made adjustments."
"I did."
"You met new people; made a new life for yourself in a new place."
"Yeah."
"And without a full education; and without parental support. You did that."
Pharos nods.
"And you'll have to do it again." Candyman grabs Pharos by the shoulders. "You have to do it all again if you want to live a normal life; if you want to have your own family, and give your kids the kind of childhood you had. Do you want kids?"
Pharos's eyes glaze wet, and his lip curls; he looks away, "Yeah," and nods. "Yeah, I think so."
"Then you got to get out of here. Go somewhere temperate; somewhere quiet, with a lot of white people so you blend in. Learn the language. Then move again and forget English; become a native. Forget your powers and get a real job. Don't heap any stresses upon yourself that might awaken your burning eyes, alright?"
"Okay," he utters, slow to comprehend.
"Where's a place you've always wanted to go?"
"Um," he thinks, "Bavaria, maybe."
"Too hot right now, with the whole Iron Curtain thing; think further west, but not England."
"What about Norway?"
"Norway—yeah that's good." He looks around, quieting himself, "Okay, find your way to India; get aboard a train headed for Europe. Go to Amsterdam and hitch a ride to Norway, and settle anywhere. Learn the language-"
"Then move again and forget English."
"Exactly right! You're Norwegian now. What was your birth name?"
Pharos blinks. "James—or Jim, or J.J."
"Doesn't matter—you're none of those now; you're not even Pharos. Pharos is dead."
"Huh?"
"Michael and I, we're," he motions back towards his son, "that's Michael, my son."
Pharos raises his hand to some degree. Michael nods and somewhat waves.
"Michael and I are gonna tell General Abrams what he already expected we'd tell him: Our capture mission went hot, and to save ourselves we had to kill you—and we'll add something about your powers blowing you to smithereens, that way they don't come looking for a body."
"Why would you do all that? You don't even-"
"I know, I know, 'I don't know you,' 'I don't owe you anything,' 'We have orders,' well, fuck—you're just a kid, Jim. You're a heartbroken, angry kid. The system failed you; you've seen behind the curtain. You would've had a meltdown someday, anyway, and life would've been miserable for you regardless of how this all worked out. But Jim's dead now, see? And you have a second chance at a good life; at a peaceful life; at earning respect and," he hesitates, "and at finding love."
Pharos looks down.
"Nobody will ever replace her," Candyman leans in, "but that doesn't mean there's nobody else who can love you, or that you can love in return."
Pharos looks to his eyes.
Candyman leans back. "Now get out of here. You're supposed to be dead, remember?"
Pharos bites his lip and nods. He looks to the jungle, looming beside him, and back. "Thanks."
Candyman shrugs. "Just don't squander this."
"I promise I won-"
"Stop talking and get outta here!"
Pharos clasps his hands together, bows, turns, and runs into the jungle.
The trees take him.
Candyman sighs and puts his arm around his son's shoulders. He asks, "Are we boned?"
Michael cocks a brow. "What?"
"No—you're right," he puffs, and he smacks Michael's chest with a heavy pat. "We're not boned," he says, relinquishing his son's shoulders, "but I have to take care of something first."
He walks back up the hill and retrieves his rifle. Michael follows.
"What, dad?"
Candyman crests the hill.
Michael retrieves his M60 and runs after his father. "What is it?"
Candyman trudges down the slope, toward the blackened meadow of smoldering saplings and fallen logs. He clears the breach in his rifle and loads a fresh magazine.
Michael follows him over the hill.
Candyman signals the three gooks in the gully, and they leap to their feet against the dirt embankment. Candyman aims his rifle. They freeze in place, shifting their gaze between his eyes and his muzzle.
Candyman leans in, whispering phonetically, "Bạn không thấy gì cả."
The gooks stare in reply; their teeth chatter.
Candyman squats down to their level, and he unsheathes his knife. Stressing the emphasis, he croons, "Hoặc tôi có thể loại bỏ tinh hoàn của bạn."
The gooks nod wide-eyed and fervently.
Candyman cocks his head and the gooks scamper out of the gully, running into the torched jungle and vanishing into the smoky haze.
Michael sidles up behind his father, holding low his weapon. He squints. "What'd you tell 'em?"
Candyman shrugs. "Eh, I told 'em we weren't here. They seemed to agree."
He walks off, east, toward the treeline.
Michael follows. "I dunno—it sounded like you said more than just that."
"Eh," Candyman hollers back, "I might've threatened to take their best parts."
Michael drops his jaw. "Their what?"
Candyman turns and smiles. "Even the freedom fighter has something to lose," and he winks.
Candyman then slings his rifle over his shoulder, turns towards the jungle, and swaggers into the hazy thicket—of splintered black timber and crackling flames—all while whistling Tchaikovsky's "Waltz Of The Flowers."
His son follows him into the abyss.
( II | IX )
Pale red steel skims the surface of the choppy sea, dark blue and slick with foam. The riveted hull towers high above the inky deep, black as night, save for the streaks of silver-brown rust and the high-water clusters of green-white barnacles. Stretched across the length of the mighty hull, in thick, unmistakable white font, the name “WYSS—CLEMENTS” beset by four-pointed stars.
Just above the printed name, spanning the vast deck in compact stacks, rest hundreds of steel intermodal containers, featured in a palette of pale colors—red, blue, white, green, yellow—with faded logos, labels, and otherwise. The cold ocean air rushes between them, funneled like seabreeze sucked between city skyscrapers, and bursting out the rear stacks, washing up and over the wide control tower—a white monolithic wall bespeckled with tiny tinted windows.
He stands atop the tower, leaning against the railing and looking down—down at the pixelated array of intermodal containers; down at the dark ocean charging around the ship. An endless gust of cold seabreeze washes over him like the billowing spray of a tireless waterfall.
His ebony mitt clutches the collar of his jet-black turtleneck and pulls it high, against his chin. He tightens the bronze tassled leather jacket around his waist and folds the lapels to seal his chest. He looks to the horizon.
Three weeks pass in this position—staring off the balcony, from daybreak to twilight, at the passing ocean; propelling ever eastward—straining to recall her face, and the way her nose crinkled when she smiled, and how her freckles came out in the sunlight, and how deep her eyes seemed when she looked at him. Three weeks of reminiscing on old memories; of visualizing her final moments; of suppressing his volatile heart; of ruminating on rancor, dwelling in disillusionment, and refining his mettle in the forge of his fury.
Acrimony. Nostalgia. Harmony.
Harmony, better known as Clio Wallace; born November 26, 1942, and died August 6, 1968.
All that she accomplished lies now between two dates etched in stone, and whatever effects she had shall ripple through the years until her name fades into the aether; until all that remains are two dates etched in stone.
And what of all that went undone, unsaid? All the cities never built; all the hearts never swayed; all the sonnets gone unwritten. And what of the mountains that went unmoved? And the oceans never charted? To whom is her torch passed; her sword bequeathed; her mantle mounted?
These thoughts command him like a migraine.
Acrimony. Nostalgia. Harmony.
The ides of March welcome him to Seattle, along the wharfs of Puget Sound, and he transfers there—from the dockyards to the railyards—aboard a freight line headed home.
Manifest Destiny unwinds across America; the pioneers’ progress retold in reverse, set against a backdrop of natural splendor—mountains of tyrian mauve; turquoise aqueducts; boundless halcyon skies—across a score of distinct bioregions, from the boreal taiga to the tropical bayou; a veritable panorama of color, creed, and profession detailed in the dilapidation of old townships, the gleam of alabaster cities, and the sweep of unmolested prairie—the candid route that roads have never known.
Her voice renders above the roar of the engine; the calamity of the rails; the silence of the sylvan seas. He stares vacant across the country, absorbing America’s recesses through tired eyes, but—when he closes them—he sees only her, and she haunts him.
The first sennight of April yields a chill as the train squeals into the Oak Point Yard of the South Bronx. The railroad tracks diverge in daedal order, spreading systemic, like a genealogical tree laid in fasces rods; line after line of steel rails, masterfully parallel, only then cruelly half-buried beneath dirty, salted snow.
The byzantine metro rises across the Harlem, glowing in the dark of night—bathed in orange by tungsten on argon; bespeckled white by mercury on phosphor—yet glowing only enough to distinguish one building against another. Not even the sun could illuminate the city’s many crevices—its alleys, dens, and vacant lots—cloaked in the deep and dreary shadows of urbana.
Ajax Madison steps out from his freight car, pulling tight the lapels of his jacket. He scans the periphery with scrutinizing eyes. His breath lingers like fog in the cold air.
He treads cautious across the adjacent railway—eyes prying; preying for a nightwatchman. He steps between rusted railcars, long-settled in their grooves.
From above, a voice like a snarling dog: “You’re early.”
Ajax looks up to see, crouched atop the graffitied boxcar, a man bent inside a trenchcoat and shrouded in shadow. He perches like a gargoyle—elbows set upon his knees; hands hanging limp between them; coattail fluttering in the breeze.
His unshaven grey visage peers from beneath both sweatshirt hood and baseball cap.
“I’m early?” Ajax replies, raising an eyebrow. “How long have you been here?”
“I’ve always been here,” the gargoyle grumbles. “I got your call.”
“It’s good to see you, D.P.”
“Hm—sentence unusual,” he says, dropping off the boxcar; landing quietly on his feet. “It is good to hear.”
Ajax extends a closed fist. “What’s poppin’ these days?”
The Dark Patriot looks to the fist and, in a calculated gesture, manifests his own to bump.
Ajax lingers, peering under the rim of the nightprowler’s cap. “You hear me?”
“Yes,” the Dark Patriot replies. “What is popping. Big question. Not enough time to answer.”
“Alright,” Ajax resigns, looking away.
The nightprowler looms over his shoulder. “You want to know.”
Ajax shrugs. “I’ve been away awhile.”
The nightprowler nods. “You want to know.”
“Uh—yeah,” Ajax mews. “Man, you gotta get out more.”
“I am always out. I am to this city like ink on-”
“Okay, man—I get it.”
“I fear, however, that you do not.”
“How’s that?” the ebony giant replies, lukewarm.
“The expressway.”
“The expressway?”
The nightprowler points, to an elevated highway in distance. “The expressway.”
“What about the expressway?”
“You know of it?”
“Yeah, I ‘know of it.’ I grew up in its shadow,” Ajax gripes. “What’s your point?”
“The expressway,” Dark Patriot nods; “the concrete dragon that looms over the South Bronx; that which razed these once-esteemed neighborhoods and subjugated their once-proud people. The catalyst, the conduit, and the symbol of oppression in an America on the decline; a once-great nation recognizable only in name; now a decadent empire, like Rome before the fall.”
“Is this one of those sermons that you practice on the rooftops?” Ajax smirks.
The nightprowler persists. “America, as we know it today, is an authoritarian regime run by a repressive elite oligarchy; a nebulous system of bureaucracies whose strings are pulled by corporate powers. Politics is theatre; truth is interpretative, like shadow puppets on the wall, or a cum stain on a debutante’s dress.”
“Augh—really, man?”
“The world's a stage, and we’re all-”
“Why you gotta compare truth to semen?”
“Metaphors hold a great power, relying on the human mind’s irrepressible ability to infer connections.”
“But ‘semen,’ Mike?”
“Mike doesn’t live here anymore,” the nightprowler growls. “It’s Dark Patriot.”
“Right, right,” Ajax smiles, “so you talkin’ about semen and you wanna be called D.P.”
Dark Patriot grumbles, “What’s your point?”
Ajax bites his lip. He inhales, “Just found it interesting.”
The nightprowler grips the lapels of his trenchcoat and readjusts his shoulders within. “Gone are the courier and steed, replaced by screaming jets and telegraph wires, strung around the globe like spider silk. Gone are the old roads and stone bridges, replaced by concrete tentacles that choke the earth like tourniquets. Gone are the forests, repurposed into towns now buried under steel; cleared for land now dressed in suburbia—the same square-block department stores every twenty miles; the same garish houses, prefabricated, shoulder-to-shoulder, on subdivided tracts of land, like ‘Little Boxes;’ like mold spores spreading, growing; like xeroxed copies of Frank Lloyd Wrong-”
“I know what neighborhoods are, man.”
“Not neighborhoods,” Dark Patriot growls. “No neighbors—only tenants and lessees. No families—only cohabitants and dependants. No schoolchildren—only vessels to fill with biased history lessons, coded ideology, and values that encourage eyes-closed, head-down subservience to higher powers.”
“God?”
“God is dead. All that remains are bureaucracies; administrations; corporations; institutions.”
“Well—lawful institutions, too; I mean, we need laws.”
“No—laws are ‘do’ and ‘do not;’ there is no thought in obeying laws. What should be taught is morality—the ‘why’ behind action; but morality—true ethics—requires thought, and thought is untamed, unpredictable, and unregulated. Freedom of thought means freedom of action, and action is contrary to subservience.”
“I see action every day, on these very streets—some good, some bad. If we didn’t have laws, that bad action—those crimes—would run wilder than it already does.”
“O ye of little faith in humanity,” the nightprowler shakes his head, squinting; inhaling the city’s smog. “The depraved will act depraved; the deviant will act deviant—no amount of written restrictions will dissuade them—but the real argument lies with the others: the willing participants of society, the ‘collection’ of individuals working together. Why they choose what they do matters; it’s free will, and anybody who acts against the interest of the collective will be reprimanded accordingly.”
“Or lynched, for having a big mouth, or a lapse in judgment, or the wrong color skin.”
“Hiccups in every plan, true. Some rules, necessary, yes; but most rules only empower an institution of fear: the bogeyman ever-watchful for your mistakes and bad decisions, barking tangible threats against even an inkling of disobedience, like a dog whipped for teething his leash. Not explained, nor corrected, only punished, with ever-steeper penalties for the legal offenders: the impatient driver, the
jaded taxpayer, the destitute divorcé, etcetera. It’s the ethical offenders who are jailed in perpetuity—free bed, free food, free entertainment; all uncertainties and anxieties stripped away—whereas the legal offenders are made to pay reparations, perform in public displays of ridicule, and carry shame and stigma into every home and office they ever hope to enter. Their lives are made unbearable—via the same society they still very much feel a part of, despite their whatever infraction—all to beat them into submission, cos if a man is still manageable, he may still be a cog in the machine; he may still serve the system’s purpose, only now he will obey.
“Consider the rapist. He is unfit for society, and he has proven his inhumanity with absolute commitment to that end. So—how is he punished? Is he tortured to death? Are his sexual organs removed? Is a spectacle made of his disembowelment? No—in most cases, he is locked inside a box and nurtured, sheltered, protected on the citizens’ dime. What of this constitutes a punishment? Sure, his severance from society serves our benefit, but it is at our cost, at his luxury.
“Consider instead the kid born in the ‘bad part of town,’ be it any town across America. This kid is probably colored, probably poor. He sells dope because he finds kinship in his gang, which he finds not at home, for his father is among the incarcerated. He finds profit in his dealing, which he finds not elsewhere to satisfy his human soul or reward him proportionately for his effort or acumen. He is arrested, as inevitably as he would be, and he is imprisoned for the remainder of his youth, away from all the good influences that still saw the human within him; away from those who still treated him as an individual. In prison, he is assigned a number, and at the end of fifteen mind-numbing years he is returned to the streets, with no support system. He is able only to find a job of menial task—burger-flipper, floor-mopper, toilet-scrubber; a job so trivial and small that nobody else would take it, yet a job still necessary to the grand machine, to keep it operating; to keep it in production.
“Consider the misfortunate driver—he who, on the commute to work, follows the herd down the highway. The car before him slams their brakes, and he bends fender; is he at fault? No, but the law says he is, because he was last in the flow of collision. Is this logical? No, logic be damned; like speed limits—which exist as both minimum and maximum—whose stigma requires you go no lower; whose law demands you go no higher; whose unspoken societal norm expects you go twenty-five percent faster; and whose enforcers decide, on the whim of the hour or the day of the month, how fast is ‘too fast,’ and to levee fines accordingly. And the misfortunate driver who is uninsured must pay more, and out of pocket. This uninsured driver is punished for making the free choice of not donating a portion of his paycheck, every month, to a public insurance corporation ‘of his choosing.’ What other public industry can you think of, by law, are you required to purchase the products of?
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