I haven’t seen you guys in a while, he broke the void. As one, they invited him to sit down at a crate as they did. The Colored Girl pushed a plate of cigarette butts and beer bottle caps in front of him. She winked at him. Where are you always? You’re never about.
Busy. Here and thereabouts evers and nevers. I’m always close. Mr. Moustache said this, the others, too. Not much callin’ for our ilk these days here in Weatherhead.
He felt a flinch of despair when the bi-faced bandit told him this, but the leader caught his grimace and added, We truck in the trouble-hearted, mate, ‘specially, like yourself. He levelled both his stares at the younger man.
He watched them for a while. Frank was gently sewing shut a hole in his pants, cigarette poised between two obdurate knuckles. Rapey and the Colored Girl were brushing ash off of butts and divvying them out for the others to eat. Mr. Moustache smoked skilfully, legs stretched out and crossed before him. Something on a nearby crate caught his eye. A baseball glove—
How’d that come to be here? he blurted out.
Frank paused in his work and looked down his nose at the leather mitt, as faded and worn as their forever boots. Where there’s a chase and a hunt, there’s a catch. He tossed it to him.
Sliding it over his hand made his stomach convulse. Light slate, dark slate, the Colored Girl muttered to the others.
Mr. Moustache nodded and slapped their charge’s knee. What can we do ye for?
Why had he come? For answers, yes. But answers to what? These bandits, these thieves, would answers crash from the barrels of their revolvers? His own gun had brought none, had merely prolonged the chase. He could no longer listen sideways to the puzzle of Weatherhead.
Who are you, he began.
Ah, Mr. Moustache beamed, our tales are many and des-parrot! The other three ignored them, busied themselves with eating and cleaning their weapons. How refreshin’ an’ kind an’ all that you ask after us since most people are willin’ only to ask of us not about us. He cast his gaze as a murdering father might over his three fellow highwaymen, before going on. He pointed at the gauze-faced youth. Rapey you call him? Ah, he is Youth! Youth of the red-barn affair. He won’t speak of it as judgment is still pending, but I can tell ye he was a devotee and student of de Coincy and he sang the praises of the unpraisable in a voice as swift and ordered as to be counted amongst the miracle’s heroes. All until the red-barn affair, that is, but best we not speak of that.
He was a little surprised at this torrent of secrets about one he’d assumed just as likewise foolish as he figured himself to be, devourer of women and all. But, no, this reeked of secret eternities and eternal secrets hanging from the ears of something quite alive, something quite accursed, as he figured himself to be. He was more than a little surprised to find himself feeling sympathy for the adolescent rapist. What’d he do?
Without taking his gaze away from Rapey, the second face whispered, Trapped and raped a goddess, they said, a wrecker she was and she didn’t take kindly to being treated thus in the long shadows, they said. Such is the storm of Youth’s passions.
And that’s why he’s part of Love?
I said the judgment was still pendin’, didn’I? No one said this was a reward, did they?
As if he overheard and wished the talk dispelled, I think the fire is coming this way, Rapey intoned darkly. Mr. Moustache nodded.
We should move soon.
Move? He stared one from of them to the other.
Frank nodded. Hate found us again. They’re trying to chase us out of town. Or worse. He peered, one-eyed down the chamber of his six-shooter.
They want this, Rapey growled and he held a smoothly-rounded stone to him. He took it and studied its flat underside. His eyes asked why and the rapscallion replied, A name on a grave.
Yeah, but there’s no name on this. Nothing written on it.
They all nodded as one, and the other three turned to break camp.
After a moment or two, he nodded at the Colored Girl, And her?
Oh, Bow? I think you should know. She is all the hues of love. I am old love, the first love, the love with no need of law, lore, or lie. I am the father of them all.
Bow?
That’s her name. Bow Neverthe. She was a queen or a judge or somethin’ like that.
A sheriff too, Rapey cawed, having overheard them, a sheriff before she went agint th’ law.
Ah, yes, a sheriff. Mr. Moustache ticked off his fingers as he spoke: Judge, sheriff, then criminal, right. He grinned. She played many roles before she went to the bad. Hers is a sad, sad story full of the embraces of corpses onstage and illusions out the wazoo. She passed just then and Mr. Moustache reached out to pat her cheek. She seemed untroubled by the talk about her and just grinned her ivory grin. Her eyes flushed black, though. The play’s the thing, eh, Bow?
Velveteen scarlets, drape-worthy dusk-wine maroons, she nodded.
She’d rather us end it there. Curtains, he observed, she means curtains. End of the show.
Impressed, Mr. Moustache nodded. One meaning, yes. She always has more than one, I think you should know.
New meanings, Rapey poked his head up out of his collar and showed his peculiar teeth, come from the crashes of two things, like a—like a scream outta rape!
As for me and me, Mr. Moustache touched a finger to one mouth, then the other, I’ll tell ye presently-like, as you and me’s goin’ to go about for a bit.
This surprised him. Where were they going?
I’m sure, though, you didn’t come here just to purlee ‘bout our perticukuler circumstances, didja? Five pairs of eyes fell on him.
N-no, he stammered and stumbled, not just that, no. And in that terrible moment, caught still between the echo of his blood and the immense abyss of loneliness, the bookends that separated the death of Maggie Mechaine from his chase to Weatherhead, he wished he had never learned a language, he wished he had been born in a world where meanings were swift and just and free of intermediaries, where there were no need for things like Love, Hate, Life, Death—with their smells of gauze and rainbows and slaughters and modern things—where peace could be made with chance and desire would never be made obsolete, where a crime without passion would be like wine without drunkenness. I wanna talk about last things. It’s time to talk about last things, he gasped.
Mr. Moustache rolled his eyes and roared with a kind of sodomy’s laughter, a hesitation’s laughter, post-atrocity, a laughter of borderline relief yet beginning to bud with amusement. He was troubled by this young man’s words—but only just. Last things—last things, he gasped, exasperated, what about first things?
He mulled this over and replied, I remember the day I met her. I remember what she said.
Forget words. Words are clot. Think of the bloodly things, how she changed the way you filled yourself up with red. Which reds? Hers, yours, it doesn’t matter. Think of the wound, boy, the wound.
He looked at the Colored Girl, who nodded in encouragement and was that a dash of blue in her lumen? Sometimes I only remember pieces—
Mr. Moustache seized his hands. But they’re of her, yes?
He put the edge of a smile about his face. Yeah. Always of her. They’re always of her—
Maybe you’re remembering what you love about her.
I never knew her that well. I can see that now.
But well enough to drag us into it. They all smiled.
For example, he told them, he could remember everything he ever got her for Christmas. That ill-gotten softball glove. “Like bringin’ a knife to a gun fight, you guinea.”
“Nope.”
“Day-go.”
“That’s for Italians. Both of them.”
Love laughed at his voices. She was so bad at hating, yes she was. She wasn’t like him in that regard. He stared down at the weathered baseball glove he still clutched. Love was right. Last things were moot in the moment, any moment, and all he remembered were moments. What did he want, then? A grand panorama, the who
le of Maggie Mechaine? Well, he’d be the first to admit: he’d never possessed that, not even close. It was funny, too, how he could observe the bend and curtsy of the weather called Maggie Mechaine against empires and scoreholds, but he couldn’t remember what kind of cigarettes she smoked, her pants size, her favorite food—the minutiae.
Tongue-torn cinereous cinders from a pure puce—from ash, the Colored Girl whispered.
Frank, who had remained silent, now stepped forward and cleared his throat: He remembers the time she stared at her tongue in the mirror when she thought he wasn’t home and with something not exactly wickedness she pinched it between her thumb and finger and tried to sing along with some terrible heavy metal album.
He remembers the time he found the baseballs with hearts drawn on them and he accused her of infidelity, but only with half a heart ‘cause he knew she never would. He’d forgotten Valentine’s Day so she’d made her own.
He remembers the time she made a study in fear, dropped to the floor at his feet, and asked him if this how the freeze approached him when he was lost in that blizzard the winter before she died—if it came as a beggar that shuddered at his touch like she did then in that moment.
He remembers the time she turned wine into milk.
He remembers her poetry made out of faces.
Frank stopped speak-singing and all of Love stood staring at him as he breathed shallowly, taking in these accusations as pitch-perfect hitches of air.
But why? Why are we here, she and I? Why does she have such a violent, violet song? His furious stare went to the Colored Girl who narrowed her eyes at him.
Mr. Moustache drew up his shoulders. She fights for you to live as much as you fight to die. Ye both are at cross-purposes. Love is a violent act.
Cross! Rapey made an X with the barrels of his revolvers.
I don’t understand.
Charcoal and red under faded lily-whites, the Colored Girl put in. Everyone nodded at this and turned to him. It was Frank who translated,
You wanted to follow her ‘n find her because you spent nine months ago waiting for her to come back with a new map n’ she never did. Ain’t gonna happen. We don’t operate like that. We’re by the book an’ this whole thing is stretchin’ it anyways. He waved his hand at him. What Bow’s sayin’ is that underneath you burned until you cracked.
He was growing impatient, insistent, And what about the hunters?
Seekers on the plain, like you. Leaks, Frank shrugged, scouts, if you wanna call ‘em that. They never learned anything more ‘n you have now.
They’re me, aren’t they? So it does just keep happening again and again?
Everything does, Mr. Moustache sighed, leaning back and stroked his hair, his moustache, his hair, in a way. Difference bein’ now is that we’re here when before we weren’t. Time is nothing here. We told you that from th’ get-go. Love lives by the gun. You of all people should know that.
What does that even mean anymore?
Gentle, gentle yellows. The Colored Girl patted his hand.
Not that we’re, ahem, allowed to interfere too much. Falls out of our jury’s dick shun.
He scoffed at them then. You kidnapped me and brought me here! If anything, this is all your fault.
You called us. We came. S’simple. Look ‘ere, Mr. Moustache leaned forward, arms on his knees and tapped his shin, you live by the gun as much as we. Don’t you remember that day? The book of faces? The poetry of faces?
No—Maybe—I can’t. He signaled his frustration by kicking up dust. You told me once that death gives one roar.
The wealth of the beast, Rapey added from his corner. He waggled his head in hunger.
That it does, Mr. Moustache said twice over, but you’re not dead.
He sat back in defeat. Then what am I?
They all surprised him by all smiling at him sweetly and the five pairs of bloodthirsty, bandit eyes turned to him with a dew of innocence, a sheen upon them, and for a moment he thought they’d weep and sob, cry out in unison. And they knew: they knew that he could no longer trust himself, that he had only them to turn to, the unsullied, straight-shooting hooligans that were Love.
You must learn, Mr. Moustache’s mouths for once spoke in unison: echoes were unneeded here, that to treat such a thing as death as death is a frustrating and unsatisfyin’ endeavor, chuck. You’re the worst lawman ever. They all laughed. He searches the orchestra but not the score. He searches the fist, down between the fingers, but not the punch. He searches the canvas but not the brush. And, finally, he searches the story but not the page. You are a vast fool, Mr. Moustache declared with a bark of doughy laughter. What of the book? Under the table? She had everything inside. She lacked nothing inside and no mind-bender could tell her otherwise, could he? She was lackin’ what was outside her.
She said that was me—but she had me. I was always there.
Mr. Moustache ignored him twice-over. Now what she had inside got all jumbled up after her fall to this place. He thought for a moment before asking, Do you know what you saw in the grove?
No.
No, you know. You told her. Strong magicks, magicks kept from the city.
She summoned the sun. Is night the secret pleasure of the ruled? Weatherhead doesn’t want sun, does it? No one answered. Feverish, he wandered about the once-camp, Not its first people anyways. I wonder who the last peoples will be.
They all exchanged glances but still said nothing. He paused in his pacing and rounded on Love.
What about the high voice?
The Colored Girl answered first this time, with her skin, though, not her terrible, lovely lips and when she did, she did so differently than she had done before him before, for there was nothing reflective to her, nothing metallic, she was pliable flesh that he knew, that he had molded and penetrated. Her answer required something behind her palette and for the first time he saw her struggle with her tongue of spectrums—but after a moment of frowns and down-twisting eyebrows, cleverly levelling her intention on that of particular undersides of particular trees that flash their leaves terror-eyed in the winds and storms of the world, she managed to turn herself a brilliant, hesitant shade of silver.
This was impossible, he thought. He knew only one silver soul. Out loud he made a choking sound. His sister Silver was no black mountain refugee. Silver would never have come to Weatherhead, not the way he had, that is, it seemed, by choice. How could it be her?
Love was hayride quiet, as it should be, watching him, casting wary glances at itself. There was nothing worse than a soul lost and at the mercy of itself.
My sister can’t be here—that ain’t possible. She was not even of a perishable substance, ol’ Silver. She was immortal at birth, already skilled at covering her ears and ignoring death, that funny way she had. And she’d sit there hawk-eye and owl-ear and read to him when he was just a boy, swearing off dying, the two of them—reading by his bedside—reading—
She ain’t, Rapey said.
Oh god. He did live by the gun just as Love did. He wiped his eyes and drew himself up with a gentle, murderous movement. And finally, he asked, What are the cities of the plain? Why do you all keep looking at each other like that?
It was clear they could not answer.
Are they all like this?
Oh, no, Mr. Moustache shook his faces, deigning to reply at last. Each has its own story. Everyone is a story. Poems of a life turned inside out—
If you’re lucky, Frank added hastily.
Grey upon black upon white, the Colored Girl—he could never think of her as anything other than that, despite knowing her true name—said sadly.
So where’s my city then?
It was impetuous, raw Rapey who broke the silence. You ain’t got one, Rapey replied, yet. You ain’t dead, ya dummy!
No, I understand now. That’s why I hear my sister reading to me. I know the story, too—
Mr. Moustache nodded. First things.
Shit. He remembered the feeling of doi
ng up buttons with swiftly freezing fingers the night he almost froze-to-death in Alaska, that second time he almost died; Weatherhead felt like this now. He always almost died. Why?
Mr. Moustache cast a wary, anxious glance over their surroundings. There was a troubling scream of needlespeak and knifeplay nearby. Dangerous times, dangerous times. We must be off—
And away? Was Love to abandon him now?
Hmph. Never away, son, but always with her. Can’t you see that? The rough outlines shaped by accident are filled in by—regret, maybe? Something more? Us? The pieces don’t all rightly always fit back in place the way you think they might. But what if it was no accident? Then the outline can be perfect, a simply geometry of molded things—lives, for example.
She killed herself.
Frank squeezed his arm. So did you, of-a-sorts. You bought a ticket over the black mountains with a bullet.
He shrugged him off. I’m not done for yet. You said so.
Mr. Moustache smiled, So says the high voice, friend. And his voice brightened and his four eyebrows shot up in wonder as if he was surprised at himself, which he always was: he was Love, dagnabbit!
The five of them spilled out into the clamor of the street. The buildings facing them were rifled with flames. By this light, he turned to face them,
I’m going to kill her? Clever. Phrased as a question seeking succor.
Mr. Moustache’s lower face grimaced, but that above said, You could try. Shes a divil with the knife, chain, and swing, tho’.
You’re trappin’ yourself between the random act an’ the deliberate act, Rapey added in a humbler tone. Don’t make that mistake.
Reds exist in autumn, the Colored Girl frowned, and yellows and oranges, she reminded him. The behavior of fluids: blood and spit, he knew this to mean. Would kiss become bite? Knife-fight become waltz? Would the blood and spit fall back up into her if he spilt it?
Rapey flapped his gun at him. Have you tried pushin’ her in a puddle instead? Not a penny-drop, but her and a push?
No, he tried to laugh, what is it with everyone and that?
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