theMystery.doc

by Matt McIntosh

  As you can see the sky was blue back then before the apocalypse—

  ★

  My book was coming out in a few months. And though I tried to immerse myself in this one—what was it called then? I don’t remember—well, each time I waded in, the water did part around me…

  but I could never get my head down below. I’d float there for a while, then become bored, put the pen down, dry off, close the laptop.

  And we would lace up our shoes and walk around San Francisco, exploring. We came to see most of the city this way.

  At the tops of each hill you could lean against ten million dollars to remove the rock from your shoe and when you had descended to the next basin there they were sprawled out beneath blankets and newspapers, streams from crotch to gutter, you stepped over those streams.

  You wait to cross the street beside them. And beside men in convertibles with bleached teeth, with their hands on the wheel waiting to proceed, revving their engines and nodding their heads to music out-of-time. Well, soon we’ll all be out of time, and what will we have left behind? A drawerful of photographs, letters, notes, little strips of paper. A drawerful of jpegs, tifs, pdfs, mp3s, midis, wavs, aiffs, mpgs, movs,

  and all other accounts we keep

  of our

  de:::

  cline::::

  ★

  So……we uh

  we’d always be on the uh on the lookout for information, we’d always be uh open to it, just report what you see,

  don’t embellish…uh

  don’t take away,

  don’t try to analyze it…

  just report it.

  And it worked—

  it worked

  for over twenty years…

  ★

  A woman in sweatpants slept on a couch outside our bedroom window.

  the couch

  someone had tossed it off the bed of a truck and sped away. I’d walk out in the morning and she’d be stretched out, asleep. Sometimes her friends would come over and they’d sit up late, talking in loud voices, smoking crack and sharing sips from a tall can of malt liquor.

  ★

  Trash strewn all over. The whole street smelled, and the man down the block was always out with his hose. And the

  wind always blew

  and it was cold.

  ★

  So we would be we would be sent as far—ah—I got as far as Lebanon, uh, during the first, uh, snafu that uh, was given to them…They landed in Lebanon, I went in…… got information that uh… that was planted… specifically pla—well it had to happen, you know! These things, if you don’t do it right, uh, there’s no sense in doin them because uh you get false information and that’s it,

  you’re dead…

  ★

  Up the alley, across the street, were the projects.

  I was walking up Laguna toward the Safeway, past that AME church there—

  approaching a small intersection with four stop signs, I heard tires squealing up the road, coming out of the project blocks.

  And a car comes racing down, a nice car, a shiny black (stolen) Lexus.

  Barreling, motor wailing, toward me, where I’ve got one foot on the curb, and one off; as it approaches its stop sign, it slows down—just barely—glides into the intersection, and then the driver wrenches the wheel, guns it, engine wailing, tires squealing, he starts doing doughnuts in the center, smoke swirling up from his tires xxxxxxxxx,

  a black kid, maybe sixteen years old—a calm, indifferent expression on his face. There were other people there too, a few, on that corner. A black woman with her young son. She pulled him back into the church’s doorway

  ★

  Uh…went into Morocco…

  M: What was the—in Lebanon—

  what was the issue?

  Well, the issue was uh the beginning of the Palestine situation with uh—with Israel…

  ’60s? Or was it earlier…

  Yeah, it was earlier, but it wasn’t that much earlier… it was ’64, ’65… uh… so…… you’d get uh… you get a lot of planted information because— they were trying to outwit one another, you know, the Palestines—‌the Palestinians and the uh and the uh Israelis. The Israelis have always had the uh control over there uh… because they were good at it, they were part of the land… and they knew what they were doing. So…

  M: Did you go out into the field and work or did you stay in the—

  ★

  —I stepped behind a parked car so if he lost control he wouldn’t run me over.

  I never took my eyes off the car, its tires screeching, engine wailing, in circles—

  and the circles,

  the thing about the circles is that they were perfect. Each time he finished one, each time he closed a loop and came around again, it looked like he might lose control, it always looked like he might lose control, the back end would swing out and the front tires would skip, it always seemed so close to coming apart, he seemed so close to losing control—

  but round after round

  he kept it together. And standing there, too, was an older black man, with a white/black beard, can of beer in his hand. He raised it aloft and cried out:

  Go on boy! Blow off your steam!

  ★

  No, we were mostly in the cities and towns and being able to pick up uh—

  But you’d go around from town to town and see what you could hear?

  Yeah, we’d travel, we’d travel…we’d do a lot of uh in-disguise type of surveillance…uh, we’d become part of the shadows—that’s what we were—‌you know—‌what we were required to do!

  ★

  Nothing fazed that kid as he blew off his steam. He did maybe five or six revolutions, maybe seven, then one Final Ring, larger than the rest, and finally: pulled out, straightened out, and sped away, in a cloud of smoke, down the street toward the dome of City Hall.

  I stepped into the street and looked back from where he’d come. A bunch of kids a few blocks up were standing in the street, jumping up and down, cheering him on!

  He took a loud left turn at the end of the block and disappeared.

                                          Sirens.

  The woman and her child walked on. The older guy did the same. So did I. Or the time— how about this—

  Another day I was walking that same street and a couple blocks farther up, a shiny white Lexus was stopped at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. And in it: two blond teenage girls sat bobbing their heads and singing and laughing along to the rap music booming from their stereo. Their windows were rolled down, the music echoed down the street. There weren’t any other cars around. But up ahead, two young black males were jogging down the sidewalk in their direction, bouncing around and punching each other, playfully. The girls were so caught up in the music that they didn’t see the two black kids, so they didn’t see that they had stopped jogging, whispered to each other, then split up.

  The taller one walked into the crosswalk in front of the girls’ car— the girls stopped singing, stopped bobbing, and watched him, sort of curiously—

  while his friend ducking low crossed behind the car, and came skulking around the driver’s side, very low...

  he crept up to her window without being seen— by anyone but me—

  the girls transfixed on the one in front—he gave them a big smile and wiggled his fingers hello— and the girls smiled back and giggled—

  Rap music.

  When without warning the one below the driver’s door jumped up!

  put his hand in through the open window,

  the han
d in the shape of a gun,

  placed his finger against the girl’s temple,

  pulled the trigger

  and yelled:

  POP-

  POP!

  ★

  You were doing spy work…

  Yeah, it was a combination and all—and mind you, we had very little training…very little training—

  ★

  The girl closed her eyes and screamed —an awful scream, terrorized —and you would never want to hear that scream again—and she punched down on the horn, B A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A S C R E A M I N G ! ! ! ! eyes closed head low ducked down bracing for the bullet —

  and although the gunman and his friend were already half a block away now—had already passed me, in fact, laughing and playing and carrying on, just as they’d been doing before

  THE GIRL STILL SAT THERE SCREAMING! HER EYES STILL CLOSED HER HORN STILL GOING A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A

  ★

  You’ve done some interesting stuff.

  Yeah I—I hope I did. But uh it was good stuff.

  ★

  Finally she opened her eyes and stopped screaming—she let off the horn and now, gasping and weeping, lurched the car forward in an attempt to escape, but she didn’t remember how to work the pedals anymore;

  and so she stalled out in the middle

  ★

  of the intersection.

  (revolution.avi)

  W: Message for the world, Independence Day, famous author… Matthew McIntosh…… on the eve of…… his release…

  M: I just wanted to say that… I think everyone should just love each other and get along… and no more war… and… no more bloodshed and heartache… just love… everyone just hold hands… everyone just hold hands in a circle and play the drums in a little drum circle…

  W: I’ll hold your hand, baby.

  M: Will you? It only takes two! It only takes two and then the world will come around!

  [sounds of man kissing his wife’s arm up and down]

  ★

  But get-getting back to that castle… uh… Huge. I’d had no idea how huge it was until I started walking around the grounds! And—within the—the blinds of the—of the cellar—and uh overground…… uh, it was like a little miniature city, wrapped around a city… uh?

  ★

  M: Or…… Plan B… Which would be to… fashion some sort of device that might actually… blow up the entire world?

  ★

  Once,…………………………

  in Seattle, when I was a young man, outside of the St. John Apartments where I lived, Our Lady of the Sweatpants tried to rip my legs off, as I attempted, like a model citizen, to help her out of the gutter, into which I had assumed she’d fallen.

  Only, instead of using my outstretched hand to raise herself up, she grabbed ahold of my legs with both arms and tried to pull me down with her. I said: Hey. Hey! Fuckin’—Hey! LET GO!

  ★

  If we could come into enough tons of plutonium we could start with one city and then work our way… We’ll start in the north, northwest… then go from Seattle down to Portland…

  ★

  W: Uh-huh. Let’s continue our tour of the back yard. This is where we used to live. It’s a very dark… back yard.

  M: Maybe we should start with LA…

  W: Plastic chair, perhaps visible, perhaps not…

  M: …We need some sort of…… device…

  W: …A little dark out here right now. Independence Day, 2003. A box in the distance. Another box and here we have a bush… lovely. A not-oft-used hibachi.

  M: Show where the cat lives.

  W: Uh… the cat likes to live up there. The cats are afraid of the… gunshots or… perhaps fireworks that we’re hearing.

  M: The revolution is going on all around us. We are in… uh… zero hour. You can hear the gunshots all around San Francisco; I’m reporting live—

  ★

  So… it was… we had a lot of fun, we had a lot of fun—

  ★

  W: We’ll continue our tour of… this fine establishment we used to live in.

  M: We bought this camera yesterday… it came in the mail.

  W: Well, yesterday many years ago.

  M: Right.

  W: When we were poor.

  M: When we were poor when we—

  W: I think we should go record evidence of tuna melts: eaten.

  M: How much time do we have le

  ★

  And when I was a kid, I used to get out of bed late at night, jump from my window, catch a bus into the city, wander the streets with my school pack on my back and a pad of paper and a pen inside, seeking adventure. I’d travel around with the people we’d meet.

  ★

  A lot of a lot of individuals that uh opened their mouths at the wrong time and uh…

  they uh…

  wound up uh…

  being sent back…

  but there was……

  there was uh………

  you know they’d…

  they’d come back and uh—

  and say something out of turn and you’d have to report him right away—

  and he was within 24 hours shipped back to the States.

  M: What did he say?

  Well, little things you know— he’d uh—recently come back from a from a mission and uh— you know—the human mind is uh is tricky, and uh… if something bothers you… psychologically … it stays with you quite a while… So…

  he come back,

  make his report…

  go out with his family

  or go out whatever he was doin recreationally,

  and uh… all of a sudden you find him—he’d had an extra few drinks, and he’s in the bar, and he’s talkin to a stranger, you know? Just talkin. Then you come find out half his conversation… is about the mission! See? So… which was strictly a no-no… and……… we’d lose uh… we lost some uh… out in the field… we lost some as they come back and talked out of turn…

  ★

  I bought a homeless guy a cheeseburger and we sat in a booth together and he took off his cowboy hat and placed it on my head. Once upon a time, a little boy ran out from the wet palm trees, which dripped with warm rain, and as he ate his burger he swore the boy had had a gun—or at least appeared to have had—so he riddled the little body with bullets and the blood splattered upon the mud, and spilled out from the holes when the boy fell onto his back, and when he had fallen onto his back his eyes looked up at the orange sky through the dark dripping canopy, and the rain dripped from the palm fronds and fell upon the boy’s brown face, and from his hand rolled a round piece of fruit, rolled into the mud, rolled through a mudpuddle, and down a path, which wound down a hill, and rolled off a bank and into a river. The marble spiraled down, down, down the spiraling chute. The man was barely older than me then, just a boy, himself, he said, and the boy he had killed was just my age, he was sure, right down to the day, the hour, right down to the minute, the second, you see the parts of all those particles have been compressed condensed and coalesced into one tiny little speck one tiny little mote of matter and with a very delicate instrument the Surgeon placed it in the center of the face of a clock that has no hands just to torture me he said you can keep the hat. I gave it back.

  ★

  Uh…… but you had to use uh a lot of discretion—a lot of discretion—and that’s what I liked about it, because… you keep pounding, you know, that situation to them—and say uh, Be careful how you talk, be careful how you—who you speak with… ah… but do
n’t stop being friendly…