by Brian Short
TWELVE
From the Journals of Sheriff Friendly
[Late Autumn, 2004]
Who will sing the Ballad
of Headless Joe Apache?
– the song of his profession,
next winter’s stolen white?
THIRTEEN
The World
[Late Winter/Early Spring, 2006]
Fortunately for Proteus – who didn’t need much, not at present – the light remaining was sufficient. It may have been late in the day. His body had assumed itself to the shape. He, at the table, in the chair, the central if not singular form in the arrangement of world-making: with the plate in front of him, the ashes fallen to the plate, and his arm, his head, his shoulder, rested, forming triangular necessities, as were written – these were the first forms, the elbow-angled, the heavy lean, the droop to the skin of the mouth, the heavy eyes, the languid eyes, the hopeless eyes, heavy-lidded, drooped and looking toward nowhere; the curve of the mouth, open mouth, drooling some, shivering slightly.
I stood at the window. I held the curtain open by a finger, the heavy orange fabric, most likely nylon, lifted to one side, and looked out into the courtyard, visible in the failing light. Yellow lamps had struck and lighted at the edges of the square. Of the people who moved about it, off from work, out about, none seemed to pay much mind to the spherical object just stuck off-center, as if dropped from a height, except to walk around the thing, their separate pathways all going this way and that.
Mosquito had broken frozen ground. Its fall had done that here, too. A divot formed around it of broken ice and frozen mud earth. And footprints left woven in most every direction described at least some small radius of avoidance, enough to continue on as if it were almost not there.
“I’ve seen more, being dead, than you might think,” I said into the window, perhaps at the glass, perhaps at the object out some ways distant, though really toward, in round-about, Proteus, unmoving, who sat in the tableau of world-making, though I could not tell that he heard me. I didn’t face him, except in some reflection. He didn’t respond, did not seem to move at all. “No, strike that,” I said. “I scarcely see the point – what I’ve seen or not seen. You can probably imagine. Imagine, if nothing else. None of it was real. It was all kind of hollow, really. The lack of time, the colorless light. Nothing real. I guess the point…” I turned, dropped the curtain shut, faced the figure at the table who granted me scarce acknowledgement. None at all, in fact. “The point of all that was to take Finch across. To where he could get across, to the truly dead place. You remember Finch? Because he was stuck. He’d been facing into that divide – he’d been facing it and didn’t even know it, I’d bet – he’d been… facing straight into it. But he couldn’t get across. For some reason, I could help him across, get him to where he could get over. I guess. Just that little push. He couldn’t do it himself. You remember Finch, don’t you?” Proteus didn’t make a move, nor a sound. Imbecilic. Lucky for me, things had started coming back, filling me, facts and memory. Patterns. Presence. It was like I had a mind again. Now that I was back, all these things were, in their many, small details, returning: the scant traces at first, the sense of a thing, what things the body remembers; touch, smell, the sensation… and then, an accumulation of facts, one just piling up into the next. After that you’ve got a story. It’s your story: what happened: you. “Yeah, you remember Finch. Dead Finch, long dead, long ago, from school. Dead from smack. Smack-dead. Face-down on someone’s couch, throat filled up with puke. He wasn’t much, but he was always there, somewhere, somewhere in the back of your head, wasn’t he? Well, he’s gone now, finally. He finally got across. So you can stop thinking about him? I guess that’s what all that was about. I don’t know.” I turned back to the window, lifted the curtain again, looked. “After that, I was stuck. I didn’t think I’d be able to get out again. I forgot everything; I forgot all of this life. I figured I was just dead and that was it. I forgot you were even here.”
Outside, the object. The it-thing. Shallow reflections of the yellow sodium-vapor light, hinged in mid-substance, a variable likeness, flickering across the.
The.
“Right. And I brought you these.” I carried the articles of magic over and dumped them onto the table beside him: hat, badge, gun, all a-spill. “There,” I said. They sat in a scattered mess and Proteus scarcely twitched to notice them. “You’re welcome,” I added, and, “If anything can help you now, I suppose these might. Your credentials. What else have you got, really?”
His eyeballs rolled up to look at me.
“That’s right,” I said. “What else?”
A lip quivered, and he made a sound like duh-duh-duh…
That was it. That was enough. I’d had already quite enough of this imbecile act, and I went up to him and I slapped him, and hard.
His head rocked to the side and then slowly righted itself. Those dull eyes looked back up at me, unfocused, uncomprehending. I slapped him again, again and again, because now I was enjoying it. Each time his head rolled with the impact, and yet he didn’t seem to feel it, or feel anything. That was probably why I liked it so much. I watched the side of his face where I’d hit him turn bright red, but still he said nothing.
We looked to one another: he/I.
“Do you have any real cigarettes?” I asked, noticing the pack nearby on the table. I picked up the box and looked inside, found one remaining. “They don’t have anything but ghost cigarettes over there.” I fished it out and tossed the box aside. Looking for a lighter and finding none, I went to the stove and lit the end from a burner, inhaled, and coughed.
I looked again at him. He watched me. “It didn’t work,” I said.
He stared blankly.
“I said it didn’t work,” I repeated. “You’ve not made the whole world. You’re sitting there, like that, like you’re doing it, but it hasn’t done anything. So something’s wrong with it, with your tableau. It’s not working. There’s got to be something missing.”
Finally, that brought some life out of him, something like words, something comprehensible. What he managed to mumble was, “M-missing? But… here’s…?” A flap of the arm, upsetting the plate, sending it to a clattering, rolling, eventual stop and startling him with the noise, the gesture still something short of the roving, encompassing sweep it was maybe meant to be, to indicate: yes, this whole world, all around, right here.
“Well,” I said, standing planted, foursquare, at the middle of the room, “there’s that.”
•
Consider? Yes, this. A ghost will tell us what is and what is not. A ghost for assigning importance, a ghost for distance, and to describe these variable proportions of certain, lost objects, which are now recovered. Hat: a crumpled skin of some vacant creature long dead, wretched of shape and boneless, though with the greatest volume of all three. What bones there ever once were to presuppose this thing a proper or likely crown were long ago broken, sawed off, now gone for good. Badge: the fair oblong and shiny-shiny, deferential to the dully suppressed sheen of other orbs, flares well when sparkled, when rubbed hard and bright and left in the light of nearby radiant objects. Not that anyone has done this. But the scratch and damage resultant of negligence obtained has not, one might observe, done anything but to add to its impression as an object. Otherwise it offers no protection whatever. And gun, the: of this the least is known, and of what is known, the least is understood, and all those great gaps in knowledge left yawning are otherwise filled by misimpression, misperception, deliberate deception and misdirection of the mind. Which can be quite subtle. But the force and form of the matter, like the drawing of a scepter or most eloquent stick, is that the thing goes bang, and that loudly, and in potentia as often as one feeds it with the necessary metal slugs. That much is known. So mote it be.
FOURTEEN
From the Journals of Sheriff Friendly
[Early Winter, 2005]
The worst is when I look into the mirror-glass
and see, staring back, exactly myself, with no difference save for the difference of being myself reversed. If I could look, for instance, and find a hole instead of my face, otherwise exactly the details, in whole, of my head, it would be some greater comfort, some lesser fear. I would know that I am not there. But that I am there, or that I’m there in that form, is the worst impossible terrible.
The light light of the bathroom is a flat and flickering sick-light, a dead-body-light, the mirror-glass scratched and speckled, flecked with toothpaste and paint and the small, smashed bodies of bugs, the fist-ham-prints of insect-killing blows, not all of them mine. I’ve never thought to wipe this glass clear, and neither has anyone else, ever. The yellow walls of the little bathroom are striped with thick drippings of some inconceivable oily stuff, which maybe come from the walls themselves. There is a shower stall standing floor-to-ceiling behind my body, at the opposite end. It too, its glass, frosted and translucent, runs also with the gray striping of mineral accretions, ignored over decades, brought finally into appreciation.
Why is my face… only my face? What’s gone wrong?
I should have known better than to come to this place.
I should have known better than to repeat the signal.
I should have known not to call the others, and not to send the others away, and not to call for the like-kind, and not to send them into the heart of the empty sun, with their fingers splayed and small hands upraised, and their feelers pointed nowhere but forward and sniffing at the air, sensing perhaps the subtle presence of prey, hands to their weapons, objects extracted, their whispering voices scarcely audible over the vast and sourceless wind, that same thing that carries them, that holds their bodies aloft and carries them, and if I am the living stone center of some plural-world, incompatible with the justice of law, I should have known this first. But then, if the law is mine, or if I am some servant of its form, then the law establishes itself by plurality, and the parallel world is served, or in the service of, the protection and the service of the law –
And But Then I smashed at the mirror-glass with my hand fist and broke the glass into simple shards, and each shard shook shone back a separate face that was just exactly like mine, only backwards THE WAY THEY SAY IT SHOULD BE and that was how I knew that it was time – and time again – and time – to leave this box and go into the gathered force of comparable body-forms, all filling in the empty space and that shake together and severally in the whole-form and dry-shape, the Shape that was pressed, the hole-punch circle-face, the picture-form, the empty-space; this, the perfect and the plural world, the Valley of the Snake. Is it? Because I was never there. I was never there. Oh… fuck.
FIFTEEN
The World
[Early Spring, 2006]
“We’ve considered the embodied form, a thing embryonic, multi-limbed, hands and feet, arms and legs, what have you – these may still not be enough, time will tell – but still, the first word spoken when first awakening, when the eyes first open, when you recognize that you are there, and human, and there again, and still human, and perhaps this is necessary, the first word – you understand? – what you can scarcely help but say: that there is a body. Yes, this. That this may be necessary, all of this. In any event, it seems we haven’t got much choice. It could be you’ve thought about this also, this need, how nothing seems possible unless you have a body to carry yourself around in. Do you know what I mean?”
The old man beside me on the bus probably did not, but he smiled and nodded all the same. He seemed a friendly and agreeable sort, the sort you might hope to meet traveling on a fine spring morning; dew on the ground, dew on the trees – what trees there were – the ice beginning at last to thaw and unfix the mud expanse of the courtyard.
I continued to explain. “I wasn’t always myself, you know. Not me, but not anyone else either. Not exactly. When human again, at last…” I found I didn’t know quite how to continue. Could my companion relate to not being human? Being human, sure, but not being human? Otherwise, why bring it up at all? Of course, being human, or something like it… “Well, don’t worry about that. I was simply less than myself. But now that I am that thing, and I have a body, and am walking – or no, actually, well, sitting right now, never mind – but metaphorically, say, walking toward some horizon – I forget which one – with my arms, hands, stretched out before me, feeling that dying warmth of the sun, now setting – yes, now it sets – and we must be facing west, aren’t we…?” Though the bus in fact traveled east, along an empty road leading out from the city toward the airport, and my elderly companion shifted slightly in his seat, his face showing no particular discomfort. He was in fact quite entirely placid and serene, unruffled by the American who now sat beside him talking incessantly, unable to stop. He smiled, he nodded, yes. “What was I saying?” I asked, though this last was more to myself than him. “Oh yes, the body, the self, right. Well, that I was not myself, and not anyone else either, and moreover a body, a self disunited – though this isn’t the case anymore; I’m much better now, thanks…”
“You… are…” the old fellow said in a quavery voice, surprising me, since these were the first words I’d heard from him, and I’d assumed he’d not spoken any English at all, “the… police?”
I took stock of the items that I wore, however poorly: the badge, the hat, the heavy, holstered gun. “Well,” I said hesitantly, “yes? What else?”
I looked around us at the others who rode this crowded bus. Though some few noticed our conversation, those eyes which sought us just as quickly looked away again as soon as they were met. Those other bodies, sat or standing, hands clasped to safety straps, jostled with the vehicle’s shuddering movements, the vagaries of the road.
My friend continued, “Perhaps then… you go home…” An arm raised slowly made a sweeping gesture with his hand just above, but not touching, the crown of his head.
Home. Yes. He’d understood, then, what I meant, and was looking for – far better than I’d imagined – and this need, now, to leave the city; how, though what I’d found here, helpful as it was, was not sufficient. “Yes!” I said, excitedly. “Home! To the valley. I’ve learned this much. Not the mountain. You see, I’ve made that mistake before. I’d thought… I was… But no, that wouldn’t work out, would it? However, the valley? Of course, that’s different. In the valley… well, that’s different.” I felt that it would be better if I could explain myself to him more fully, and more to the point. “Listen… We sat facing ourselves, he and I. Or no, I… and I. We sat facing ourselves… and the evidence, what we found, it was specific, specific enough. We’d, I’d… found it in his remaining documents. The sheriff, he’d left enough documentation that the rest of it, if not spelled out explicitly, could be inferred. The valley. That would have to be the place then, wouldn’t it? In the valley, yes…”
The old man nodded serenely.
“Yes,” I agreed. “This is our home. In the valley. The place of the like-kind. Our people. Ourselves. Where ourselves meet ourselves and are recognized. So few have this opportunity, in life. We think, oftentimes, that we might meet ourselves, in life. And when that doesn’t happen, the sense of disappointment… it’s too much. No one can bear that, that we haven’t found this thing. Finally, though, let me tell you…” I leaned in closer – not so close as to threaten my new friend, but closer, enough to make my point heard and heard clearly. “It wasn’t our choice, was it, to leave? Ultimately we did leave. First, we had to leave the mountain, for we did not find there what we sought. Do you understand? Next – now – we’ve left the empty rooms in these strange and empty buildings, these places where nothing can happen, where everything is still and the world has not been made. We did all this, not because it was our choice, no. Because it wasn’t. It wasn’t our choice. Choice was not ours, and we could not choose. In the embodied form…”
The old man had fallen asleep.
“In this embodied form,” I continued, now in a whisper, since I didn’t
want to disturb him, “certain agencies are necessary, agencies and exigencies. How else are we to know ourselves? When will we see ourselves? How else can we know… that the right thing… is to leave? They will come to us then. They come and show us the way out. They show us to the door, and if we did not know the door, they will show it to us, and tell us, now is the time, now you go. This is one way of knowing. To be told like this, by these… these… very small people. Do you see? This is a way of knowing that we are brothers in this world. This one. And that it is time.”
•
The airport was a bare block square in concrete, and I was able to read in the red large letters above its entrance CHINGGIS KHA – in the moment between being flung from the bus by the driver and hitting the pavement. I was lucky enough to land on my rucksack and not my face, and struggled, amidst the laughter of strangers, who filed out around me, to recover my crushed Stetson from the wind and get back to my feet.
Up again, limping a little, I found my way into the building and faced the board of departures and arrivals. When I first looked, all was in Russian, a language senseless to me. But when I banged my head with the ham of my hand and looked again, the words were re-arranged into a Roman alphabet, duplicated in English, and all was sensible enough. I shuffled forward across the tiled floor and toward the MIAT ticket counter where a young woman in uniform stood, and I said to her, “Good evening. Everything is well. Love and substance are the words of recommendation, and they will turn this world – this one – into colors, from red to blue and back again. I know this, having come from the sea. I’ve risen to rest on the rocks of this beach, up on the land, up on the flat earth, to breathe the air and adjust. Yes, I adjust. But sleep has not yet come, and I will not tell you the future, no matter how you ask, so please, don’t bother. I’ve learned my lesson, believe me. I won’t destroy you that way.”