Fugue State

by Brian Evenson

  Hecker opened his mouth to speak but felt already that anything he said would be wrong, perhaps in several ways at once. So he hung up.

  “What did he say?” his daughter was asking him.

  “Nobody,” he said. “Wrong finger.”

  IV.

  First, he thought over and over, I will lose all language, then I will not be able to control my body. Then I will die.

  All he could clearly picture when he thought about this was his daughter, her life crippled for months, perhaps years, by his slow, gradual death. He owed it to her to die quickly. But perhaps, he thought, his daughter’s suffering was all he could think about because his own was harder to face. Even as he was now, stripped only partly of language, life was nearly unbearable.

  First, he thought. And then. And then.

  He remembered, he hadn’t thought about it for years, his own father’s death, a gradual move into paralysis, until the man was little more than rattling windpipe in a hospital bed, and a pair of eyes that were seldom open and, when they were, were thick with fear.

  Like father, like son, he thought.

  First, he thought. Then. Then.

  He lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. When it was very late and his daughter was asleep, he got out of bed and climbed up to the attic and took his shotgun out of its case and cleaned it and loaded it. He carried it back downstairs and slid it under his bed.

  No, he thought, No first, no thens.

  He was in bed again, staring, thinking. The character of the room seemed to have changed. He could not bear to kill himself with his daughter in the house, he realized. That would be terrible for her, much more terrible than watching him die slowly. And too horrible for him to think about. No, that wouldn’t do. He had to get her out.

  But ever since he had been to the hospital, she had been sticking near him, never far away, observing him. She kept asking him what exactly was wrong with him, what had the doctor told him, why hadn’t she been allowed to hear? And then, what had the doctor said on the telephone? She was always giving him cups of soup which he took a few sips from and then left to scum over on the bookshelves, the fireplace mantel, the windowsills. It wasn’t fair, she said, she had only him, they had only each other, but the way he was acting now, she didn’t even feel like she had him. What had the doctor said? What exactly was wrong with him? Why wouldn’t he tell her? Why wouldn’t he speak? All he had to do, she told him, was open his mouth.

  But no, that wasn’t all. No, it wasn’t as simple as that. And yes, he knew he should tell her, but he didn’t know what to say or if he could say it. And he didn’t want her pity—he wanted only to be what he had always been for her, her father, not an old, dying man.

  But she wouldn’t let up. She was making him insane. If she wanted a fight, he would fight. He turned on her and said, utterly fluent, “Don’t you have someplace to be?”

  “Yes,” she said fiercely. “Here.”

  “Fat cats,” he misspoke, and, suddenly helpless again, turned away.

  He made a grocery list, a long one, and offered it to her. She glanced at it.

  “Groceries, Daddy?” she said. “Since when did you have anything to do with groceries?”

  He shrugged.

  “Besides,” she said. “We have half this stuff already. Did you even open the cupboards?”

  He was beginning to have trouble with one of his fingers. It kept curling and uncurling of its own accord, as if no longer part of his body. He hid it under his thigh when he was seated, felt it wriggling there like a half-dead worm. He and his daughter glared at each other from sofa and armchair respectively, she continuing to hector him with her questions, he remaining silent, sullen.

  He ate holding his utensils awkwardly, to hide the rogue finger from her. She took this as an act of provocation, accused him of acting like a child.

  It went on for three or four days, both of them at an impasse, until finally she screamed at him and, when he refused to scream back, left the house. He watched the door clack shut behind her. How long would she be gone? Long enough, he hoped.

  He got the shotgun out from under the bed and leaned it against the sofa. He dialed 911.

  “What’s your emergency?” a woman’s voice responded.

  “I’ve just killed myself,” he told her. “Hurry, please. Cover the body before my daughter gets home.”

  But it didn’t come out like that. This had only been what his mind was saying, his tongue uttering something else entirely.

  “Excuse me?” said the operator.

  He tried again, his voice straining with urgency.

  “Is this a prank call?” the operator said. “This isn’t funny.”

  He fell silent, tried to gather himself.

  “Sir?” said the operator. “Hello?”

  He looked desperately around the room. The dog was now regarding him intently, ears perked. He picked up the shotgun, held it one-handed near the receiver, and fired it into the wall behind the sofa. The kickback hurt his wrist and made him drop the weapon. The dog skittered out of the room, yelping.

  He put the receiver to his ear again. The operator was talking more urgently now. He hung up the telephone.

  After picking up the gun, he sat down on the sofa. He hoped that they would come soon, and that it would be soon enough, before his daughter’s return. He leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to gather himself.

  When he was calm again, he braced the stock of the shotgun between the insoles of his feet and brought the barrels to his face. Carefully, he slipped the ends of the barrels into his mouth.

  It was then that his daughter chose to return. He heard her open the front door and then she came into the room, her face pale. It was clear she had been crying. She came in and saw him and stopped dead, then stood there, her face draining of blood. They stayed there like that, staring, neither caring to be the first to look away.

  He waited, wondering what words he could use, what he could possibly say to her. How could he ever talk his way out of this one?

  “Daddy?” she said finally. “What are you doing?”

  And then the words came to him.

  He lifted his mouth off the barrels and licked his lips. “Insect,” he explained as tenderly as he possibly could. “Grunion. Tent-pole motioning.”

  An Accounting

  I have been ordered to write an honest accounting of how I became a Midwestern Jesus and the subsequent disastrous events thereby accruing, events for which, I am willing to admit, I am at least partly to blame. I know of no simpler way than to simply begin.

  In August it was determined that our stores were depleted and not likely to outlast the winter. One of our number was to travel East and beg further provision from our compatriots on the coast, another was to move further inland, hold converse with the Midwestern sects as he encountered them, bartering for supplies as he could. Lots were drawn and this latter role fell to me.

  I was provided a dog and a dogcart, a knife, a revolver with twelve rounds, rations, food for the dog, a flint and steel, and a rucksack stuffed with objects for trade. I named the dog Finger for reasons obscure even to myself. I received as well a small packet of our currency, though it was suspected that, since the rupture, our currency, with its Masonic imagery, would be considered by the pious Midwesterners anathema. It was not known if I would be met with hostility, but this was considered not unlikely, considering no recent adventurer into the territory had returned.

  I was given as well some hasty training by a former Midwesterner turned heretic named Barton. According to him, I was to make frequent reference to God—though not to use the word goddamn, as in the phrase “Where are my goddamn eggs?” “What eggs are these?” I asked Barton, only to discover that the eggs themselves were apparently of no consequence. He ticked off a list of other words considered profane and to be avoided. I was told to frequently describe things as God’s will. “There but for the grace of God go I” was also an acceptable phrase, as was “Praise
God.” Things were not to be called godawful though I was allowed to use, very rarely and with care, the phrase “God’s aweful grace.” If someone were to ask me if I were “saved,” I was to claim that yes, indeed, I was saved, and that I had “accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.” I made notes of all these locutions, silently vowing to memorize them along the route.

  “Another thing,” said Barton. “If in dire straits, you should Jesus them and claim revelation from God.”

  So as you see, it was not I myself who produced the idea of “Jesusing” them, but Barton. Am I to be blamed if I interpreted the verb in away other than he intended? Perhaps he is to blame for his insufficiencies as an instructor.

  But I am outstripping myself. Each story must be told in some order, and mine, having begun at the beginning, has no reason not to take each bit and piece according to its proper chronology, so as to let each reader of this accounting arrive at his own conclusions.

  I was driven a certain way, on the bed of an old carrier converted now to steam power. The roads directly surrounding our encampment—what had been my former city in better days—were passable, having been repaired in the years following the rupture. After a few dozen miles, however, the going became more difficult, the carrier forced at times to edge its way forward through the underbrush to avoid a collapse or an eruption of the road. Nevertheless, I had a excellent driver, Marchent, and we had nearly broached the border of the former Pennsylvania before we encountered a portion of road so destroyed by a large mortar or some other such engine of devastation that we could discover no way around. Marchent, one of the finest, blamed himself, though to my mind there was no blame to be taken.

  I was unloaded. Marchent and his sturdy second, Bates, carried Finger and his dogcart through the trees to deposit them on the far side of the crater. I myself simply scrambled down hand over foot and then scrambled up the other side.

  To this point, my journey could not be called irregular. Indeed, it was nothing but routine, with little interest. As I stood on the far side of the crater, watching Marchent and his second depart in the carrier, I found myself almost relishing the adventure that lay before me.

  This was before the days I spent trudging alone down a broken and mangled road through a pale rain. This was before I found myself sometimes delayed for half a day, trying to figure how to get dog and dogcart around an obstacle. They had provided me a simple harness for the dog, but had foreseen nothing by way of rope or tether to secure the fellow. If I tried to skirt, say, a shell crater while carrying the bulky dogcart, Finger, feeling himself on the verge of abandonment, was anxious to accompany me. He would be there, darting between my legs and nearly stumbling me into the abyss itself, and if I did not fall, he did, so that once I had crossed I had to figure some way of extricating him. Often had I shouted at him the command “Finger! Heel!” or the command “Finger! Sit!” but it was soon clear that I, despite pursuing the more dangerous of the two missions, had been disbursed the less adequate canine.

  Nevertheless, I grew to love Finger and it was for this I was sorry and even wept when later I had to eat him.

  But I fear I have let my digression on Finger, which in honesty began not as a digression but as a simple description of a traveler’s difficulty, get the better of my narrative. Imagine me, then, attempting now to carry Finger around a gap in the road in the dogcart itself, with Finger awaiting his moment to effect an escape by clawing his way up my chest and onto my head, and myself shouting “Finger! Stay!” in my most authoritative tone as I feel the ground beginning to slide out from under my feet. Or imagine Finger and me crammed into the dogcart together, the hound clawing my hands to ribbons as we rattle down a slope, not knowing what obstacle we shall encounter at the bottom. That should render sufficient picture of the travails of my journey as regards Finger, and the reason as well—after splicing the harness and refashioning it as a short leash for Finger—for abandoning the dogcart, the which, I am willing to admit, as communal property, I had no right to forsake.

  Needless to say, the journey was longer than our experts had predicted. I was uncertain if I had crossed into the Midwest and, in any case, had seen no signs of inhabitants or habitation. The weather had commenced to turn cold and I was wracked with fits of ague. My provisions, being insufficiently calculated, had run low. The resourceful Finger managed to provide for himself by sniffling out and devouring dead creatures when he was released from his makeshift leash—though he was at least as prone to simply roll in said creature and return to me stinking and panting. I myself tried to eat one of these, scraping it up and roasting it first on a spit, but the pain that subsequently assaulted my bowels made me prefer to eat instead what remained of Finger’s dog food and, thereafter, to go hungry.

  I had begun to despair when the landscape suffered through a transformation in character and I became convinced that I had entered the Midwest at last. The ground sloped ever downward, leveling into a flat and gray expanse. The trees gave way to scrub and brush and a strange crippled grass which, if one was not careful, cut one quite badly. Whereas the mountains and hills had at least had occasional berries or fruit to forage, here the vegetation was not such as to bear fruit. Whereas before one had seen only the occasional crater, here the road seemed to have been systematically uprooted so that almost no trace of it remained. I saw, as well, in the distance as I left the slopes for the flat expanse, a devastated city, now little more than a smear on the landscape. Yet, I reasoned, perhaps this city, like my own city, had become a site for encampment; surely there was someone to be found therein, or at least nearby.

  Our progress over this prairie was much more rapid, and Finger did manage to scare up a hare, which, in its confusion, made a run at me and was shot dead with one of my twelve bullets, the noise of its demise echoing forth like an envoy. I made a fire from scrub brush and roasted the hare over it. I had been long without food, and though the creature was stringy and had taken on the stink of the scrub, it was no less a feast for that.

  It was this fire that made my presence known, the white smoke rising high through the daylight like a beacon. In retrospect, cooking the rabbit can be considered a tactical error, but you must recall that it had been several days since I had eaten and I was perhaps in a state of confusion.

  In any case, long before I had consumed the hare to its end, Finger made a mournful noise and his hackles arose. I captured, from the corner of an eye, a movement through the grass, the which I divined to be human. I rose to my feet. Wrapping Finger’s leash around one hand, with the other I lifted my revolver from beside him and cocked it.

  I hallooed the man and, brandishing my revolver, encouraged him to come forth of his own accord. Else, I claimed, I would send my dog into the brush to flush him and then would shoot him dead. Finger, too, entered wonderfully into the spirit of the thing, though I knew he would not harm anybody but only sniff them and, were they already dead, roll in their remains. There was no response for a long moment and then the fellow arose like a ghost from the quaking grass and tottered out, as did his compatriots.

  There were perhaps a dozen of them, a pitiful crew, each largely unclothed and unkempt, their skin discolored and lesioned as well. They were thin, arms and legs just slightly more than pale sticks, bellies swollen with hunger.

  “Who is your leader?” I asked the man who had come first.

  “God is our leader,” the fellow claimed.

  “Praise God,” I said, “God’s will be done, the Lord be praised,” rattling off their phrases as if I had been giving utterance to them all my life. “But who is your leader in this world?”

  They looked at one another dumbly, as if my question lay beyond comprehension. It was quickly determined that they had no leader but were waiting for a sign, viz., were waiting for God to inform them as to how to proceed.

  “I am that sign,” I told them, thinking such authority might help better effect my purposes. There was a certain pleased rumbling at this. “I have come to be
g you for provisions.”

  But food they claimed not to have, and by testimony of their own sorry condition, I was apt to believe them. Indeed, they were hungrily eyeing the sorry remains of my hare.

  I gestured to it with my revolver. “I would invite you to share my humble meal,” I said, and at those words one of them stumbled forward and took up the spit.

  It was only by my leveling the revolver at each of them in turn as he ate that each was assured a share of the little that remained. Indeed, by force of the revolver alone was established what later they referred to as “the miracle of the everlasting hare,” where, it was said, the food was allowed to pass from hand to hand and yet there remained enough for all.

  If this be in fact a miracle, it is attributable not to me but to the revolver. It would have been better to designate said revolver as their Messiah instead of myself. Perhaps you will argue that, though this be true, without my hand to hold said weapon it could not have become a Jesus, that both of us together did a Jesus make, and I must admit that such an argument is hard to counter. Though if I were a Jesus, or a portion of a Jesus, I was an unwitting one at this stage, and must plead for understanding.

  When the hare was consumed, I allowed Finger what remained of the bones. The fellows whom I had fed squatted about the fire and asked me if I had else to provide them byway of nourishment. I confessed I had not.

  “We understand,” one of them said, “from your teachings, that mankind cannot live by bread alone. But must not mankind have bread to live?”

  “My teachings?” I said. I was not familiar at that time with the verse, was unsure what this rustic seer intended by attributing this statement to me.