Her fingers searched through his hair. You always thought I was the one speaking in fears but it was you, my giant fool. There was nothing for you to fear in our most ordinary love. But I could not make you happy.
He sat up and dueled her eyes. No.
She yawned and dismissed his protest with a flick of her hand. She didn’t want to discuss such things, pursue such arguments. They no longer mattered. Outside the patterns of fictions and exceptions, she explained dream-eyed, and all things that lie that he had come to know until Weatherhead, there was only one thing anymore that was certain and true: a human life is an extraordinary thing—doubly so when it’s lost. She pushed him off of her. Drive on, she commanded, for there was still something she wanted to show him before they turned back.
She stood in the bed, legs firmly planted apart, a ship’s captain as naked as world’s morning, lashed to the mast of their hunger, leaning on the cab of the truck as he wended his way up and over the ridge that dominated this part of the plain. She rapped on the window when she wanted him to stop. She leapt down and refused to dress. Hand in hand they walked some distance away until there spread out before them the vastness of the plain. They had leapt so far into distances and elevations that they could see, to their right, Weatherhead. Off to the left—
I remember now that day that I’d got it in my head to bring you back, that day that Love came and kidnapped me. I had to leap in, grab the prow, steer you back—after I saw you—you didn’t know me, couldn’t remember.
Mis-translated. She nodded, feverish. The end of the first story was near, she knew, he had something to give her in his coat, she knew, because she’d written this into his story, the one ending just so soon. She looked almost greedy, voracious, for what she’d once been to shape she would now be what she would always be. And he, this stranger from the black mountains—her husband, she corrected herself— he had been the one to bring it back. Curious that she’d not—
But there was so much more to tell him before their new birthdays. They’d fall in love all over again, fight and fuck, they were the prison, not the world. So much to tell him—and a forever to do it in, her own winds reminded her as they dallied through her hair. She grabbed his hands. Listen, I thought to burn and to scatter and become the wind and hide in the howl of the day but I wanted to leap, not be pushed—not have to choose to jump or not but just to do it. Murder is so much more uncomplicated than they say. And I am an empress of suicides! Twice I thought you dead when I was in the long shadows, convinced that you would die and I still loving you more—more than I thought possible. She wept. I thought—
You roared at me. He kissed her hair, her mouth, her neck.
She smiled up at him through rainy eyes. “Sorta, I guess. It made me feel happy to think that you’d stay so warm when I was just so cold. They dripped hostile kisses on each other’s mouths and embraced for at least seven thousand hours.
Oh. Ah. But they were hungry, too hungry to fuck, she warned him off, so they made to leave, to return to Weatherhead, but first—ah, there he went. She saw him standing in a half-lean staring across to the southeast, to the east, where the sea lay. She put her arm through his, their flesh pressed together, for in a godless eden where was the shame in that? What’re you starin’ at? This was what she wanted him to find with those plain eyes.
Those cranes in the distance?
She squinted through the light and grunted and pretended. I know that place. Name of Wellingwish. I warred against it once, I think. Memory is fickle, she thought. She squeezed his arm. I will again! Come! I think you came to the plain too soon. How did you come to be here?
So he started his story over.
⧜
Everyone knows that Maggie Mechaine was struck by a rocketing truck and killed, but not everyone knows that she had been in 51 pieces when her husband finally managed to gather her all up again and count her all out. This happened on an empty service road, a sweeping curve of road that ran for a bit by the sea. She’d found the place after they first moved there. She used to hit baseballs out to sea there.
The summer before she died, before velocity broke her down into puzzle pieces, before she began her fall to the plain, he found her out there on that same road, dark and catastrophic. She was throwing rocks at birds. She had barely said a word to him since his birthday and the sun at midnight. She’d taken to sleeping in her batting cage he’d built her in the backyard. They both knew, somehow, that soon she’d be dead.
He parked some distance away from her. She hadn’t seen him drive up, but who could mistake that red down the road a ways? He took in the air, the road, the sea. She’d die a little over a mile from here where an expanse of dead land lapped the road, inland a bit where there was room to scatter and gather and too many trucks and tankers for the birds to dare.
She was throwing rocks at birds, winding up with delicious form and putting velocity’s entire hex into the throw, eliciting squawks and storms made out of feathers, but the birds kept coming up. They loved her alive, though she hated them.
“Let go!” She cried at him as he picked her up and crushed her to him. They stumbled backwards as she fought against him, knocking over the little ammunition cairn of rocks she’d built next to her perch. “Fuck! Lemme go!” But he wouldn’t. Her hair stuck to his lips. She kicked against him with her shoes. She would’ve bitten him if he hadn’t clamped his hand over her mouth and chin, stifling her cries and silencing her woe. Effortlessly he got her over the side of the truck and tossed her in the bed. Disheveled and half-pretty breathless she crouched there on all fours with her eyes all bald-beast glisten.
“Stay,” he growled. She laughed and when she did it was unbankrupt—her laughter didn’t seem so close to the grave as it was. This was because, as she knew, and he’d come to learn, there were secret thoughts and faces behind everything she did, things he’d been to blind and nameless to know. She no longer regretted the unforeseen. But she wasn’t resigned; hers was no surrender to whatever fate delivered. She was triumphant, for there was one power left to her that nothing could determine for her: death. Nothing could ever strike out Maggie Mechaine, she cautioned, through the little sliding window that bled wind into the cab of the truck. She rode home in the back, speaking through the rear window,
“I remember bein’ a little girl—well, not that little, ‘cuz my little brother was there—but it was winter and it snowed and I was sick and I remember standin’ there at the window watchin’ them play in the snow and I thought, If only I could bring it all inside—take all that winter—everything I could see outside my little frame and bring it in, maybe even redo it.
“A frame is a question, see?” She expected no answer, so she continued, “Something waiting out there for me, for you. For Us.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Didja know I haven’t cried in years. I know you think there’s somethin’ wrong with me. But I haven’t. You know what I do when I’m alone? I laugh when I’m alone. The whole thing is just too damn funny. Margaret Mechaine: Striking Out at Life, like you told me a long time ago. I know that’s what you think. One time I heard you tell someone, maybe your girlfriend or whatever, you called me Little Dead Hiding Hood. Just shut up for a second and lemme talk. Only the mountains give me hope. I dream about mountains and falling and falling from even higher than they are, almost from space. It was the first dream I’ve ever had. And what about you? You jus’ giant your way through life without ever sayin’ anything about all this. We only are allowed to talk about wars at parties. Zat mean we’re only allowed to talk about peaces at funerals? Fair enough.” Her shining eyes fled to his as he plucked her out of the truck and set her down in their driveway. “Jus’ don’t let the birds get me, okay?”
He promised. And they didn’t. At her funeral, Silver, the only sister who came, read a poem called “Dream Land” by a poet named Rossetti. This shooed away the scavengers, he thought as he listened, and he pondered how Maggie Mechaine wouldn’t be able to feel rain on the backs of h
er hands anymore, how her thunder had been silenced, and how the gentle, martyr’s breeze of her voice, her high, and her breath had been stilled once and for all and forever.
But Love is a greater thing than death, even when one refuses to acknowledge either. You can die all you want and never be in love, he told himself, or you can be in love all you want and never die. The simple mechanics of an existence built on the first self or second self. Maggie Mechaine had had no need for immediate illusions as he did: she was happy in and of herself—it was everything else that was wrong.
⧜
She drove on the way back to Weatherhead. The way things hear when your ear is full of water? That’s how we felt. She didn’t look down or away as such a sentiment might incline one to, but eyed him ferociously. There was always something dampening the sound.
He wasn’t sure what to say.
That’s why I always thought that I drowned in the long shadows. She reached out and patted the dashboard.
Of her return to Weatherhead, there is little left to tell.
On their way back through town, they robbed a few of its banks. She teased him the way sleep teases a man with its dangling, slanderous dung-tongue, pronouncing piety in the pleasures of the thief’s life as she slammed the truck into neutral, left it running as they burst through the refurbished reinforced doors made out of brass of Weatherhead’s Worst Savings Bank, run, she explained breathlessly as they opened fire over the heads of the milling crowd inside, by the town’s shame, a dusty-lipped rapist priest who made desperate snares during confession. He had so many lies under his jawbone, she exclaimed as she brought the butt of her pistol down on an old woman’s skull, that you could line the inside of the panties of every amortal woman in Weatherhead with ‘em! And he’d tried, believe, you, me!
Dingy and wedded, their indelicate, equally impious, lying, and filthy mouths found each other as they dove into the getaway truck and though there was no time for imperilous love, for the ruler of Weatherhead would find out any moment what they’d done, she growled with a wink, and set her hunters on them, though there was no time for the little death of the orgasm, they made trouble for each other with their sloppy, wet palms and fingers and nearly drove into a crowd of pilgrims to autumn in a side-street.
Love means tasting peril together.
Next time, she had laugh in her eyes, both, you must sneak into town and do this and I’ll be the one there tryin’ to stop you. This is the way of the plain.
He spat out the window. She admired his new clothing. He looked, she said, like a western gentleman though she knew better and she showed him the teethmarks on her neck and the knife always at hand. She was all fire and fight and he loved her so. What was the haul? With his chin he indicated the bag of cash. She thumbed through the bills and sifted change on her palm.
“$33.24,” she replied with satisfied firmness. She reached across and played with his hair. “You were the only one who ever paid three times. Three times. I’m going out for a walk.” And with that, she leapt from the speeding truck.
Cursed chase.
On a roof above Weatherhead they sat and watched the puzzle rebuild itself for once as her subjects set about undoing what had been undone. They didn’t speak or touch, they just sat, legs stretched out before them, hands clasped in their laps, their loins still butterfly-vibrating and trickly purple from their recent deepness. Above their heads, a few flowers drifted. The ruler of Weatherhead wanted to call for thunder and hail later, but. Around mid-day Love appeared below, clambering up the fire escape, their bandit voices and snickers carrying up to them on the wind. They came with packs and bindles slung and shouldered, pistols freshly bristling with bullets for the long road ahead, hats tilted back to let in the breezes. Love paused before them.
Well played back there, son, Mr. Moustache winked, and you, young lady. He held out his hand and yanked her to her feet. In a slither, he drew out the needle and thread of Lux Vomika from her coat and wove it through the underside of the brim of his hat. She began to protest but Mr. Moustache raised a silencing hand. Best that we keep it, young lady.
What will we use then, Father, to cry, she darked.
Each other, Frank answered. He wiped his nose with the heel of his hand. He looked pained to leave them.
Blazes of orange and purple, too, diamond-roughed rouge-slapped faces, the Colored Girl answered. And the ruler of Weatherhead knew her to be right. There was enough of the feral in these two lovers to feed passions and wars enough.
He stole across to Mr. Moustache and whispered in his ear. Both grins expanded. Oh, aye-yay. I think we could conjure up the time for a game ‘fore we move on.
With Love in the bed, they drove out to the grove. Behind them, the hill flattened out into a heath and though the verdant was swelling, the ground was bare enough for the time being. Love fanned out. Rapey and Frank drew with their heels in the dust a diamond. The Colored Girl fetched five empty sacks used for pilfered cash out of her pack and placed four at each point of the diamond and one in the center. He, himself, took up station there, leaving the confused, anxious ruler of Weatherhead standing alone.
She called out to him, uncertain, was there danger— Love took up their positions, leaning on their knees. He took his hand out from behind his back. She looked down at this hand and she rushed blood to the vanguard in her face. He wound up. She started to shout and roar and then, and then, she shrunk back in fear before him, crying
This is forbidden in—
In Weatherhead. I know. He threw the pitch anyway. Lightning, her bat was in her hands. She slammed into the pitch with all of her might just as she always had and the bat shattered into a thousand pieces of driftwould. She stood staring at him in shock. The bat she had flung aside. There wasn’t room for it in her fists anymore. The debris began to accrete around her, beginning a slow and terrible orbit of this pallid star, and she held out her hands and the bat remade slid over her palms like lover’s meat.
Again, she called out to him. He reached down into the well that’d grown at his feet. This one was full of baseballs and rain. There was another one, he knew, down the track past the outfield, that was full of guns and stupid promises, a cache for the amateur highwayman. In fact, he knew from the map Rapey had slipped him, that there were a series of wells dotting the road down to—what was the next city called?—anyway, these were to be used for stowing loot and hiding supplies.
He wound up and pitched to her again. This time, she kept the bat whole, not puzzle-scattered, held it together by her will, kept it one not 51. The ball shot out into center field, well over the Colored Girl’s head. She leapt from second to hound the slug.
Again, called his love. This was the way she had always wanted to be caged: free, locked in an eternal struggle against him.
They played almost until dusk. His unpracticed arm had grown weary and he was tossing her long-lob easy pitches. Then the time came for them and Love to part ways.
The grail at bedside is quiet now, lad, was all Mr. Moustache would say when he asked why they must needs leave. Time for us to move along. We’ve work elsewhere. They began to change out of their bandits’ clothes. Frank swung open a hatch on the top of his head and hands grabbed at gear stowed there.
He watched his wife and Rapey swap stories of purple crime: the deeper one’s blasphemy and horror the closer to a religion one draws the soul. Love, they both knew, is at the root of the most terrible crimes. To Frank he murmured, I can’t remember somethings. I’m no longer troubled by the muteness of my footfalls around her body in the morning as I flee her bedside before she raises the alarm, nor her villainous lies about me to the constabulary of Weatherhead—
Frank laughed, Easy there, friend, even on the plain there are sequences and serials. This is what is to come not what was once.
Oh. He looked down. He’d have to forget time. Well, she will, then, ha. But I can’t remember so well the root of our villainy? Or the reason I turned soldier? And there is an urgent purp
ose in me towards and for her, for she is the scent of an autumn fire on the wind, an outstretched hand to catch the leaf and the fallen dying—these things I know—
Yes, Mr. Moustache watched him patiently, but we can offer no broken, uninfinite words that’ll jest end up truant at the thickness of your heart and hers. Live and love, now and forever. Don’t trouble yerself with questions of what-have-beens and dids and didn’ts.
No, he interrupted, it’s not that. I just wasn’t sure—well—He drew a long, rectangular pad out of his coat. Was this, he showed it to Mr. Moustache and Frank, taken from our lovely evil to come or—
Frank put his hands over his. Oh. Ah. You’ve forgotten! It’s easy to live by the gun but leave the bullets behind! This is your birthday present for her. You’re her Lost and Found.
And who am I?
Mr. Moustache clapped his shoulder, The man who loves that woman there. Do you know the story called Weatherhead? It’s about a man remembering a woman and how two thieves saved each other.
Who will remember me for my sake, then? He cried and threw out his hands.
She will, Love said, remember the fable of the knight she told ye?
Ah. But th-that wasn’t true!
S’just poems writin’ poems, son, that’s all that is.
You look like my father, he said suddenly.
Ayuh, and he touched the brim of his hat with an ancient hand. And Mr. Moustache smiled twain, Best we be goin’, friend.
The ruler of Weatherhead and Rapey joined their circle of farewells. They shook hands all around. The Colored Girl threw her arms around his neck and bit his earlobe, drawing laughter from his wife. Mr. Moustache embraced him as well and bade him good fortune. He, in turn, thanked him for showing him the life and love in death itself, that nothing fades away forever, that the scarlet symphony has more than one score, demands more than one score. Love’s leader, for his part, said, Live now as if you’re always in each other’s arms, feel the fire sinking over you together and one day—he tapped the side of his nose—one day—for me and mine we never lose the tune of our long shadows being among those who move back and forth as you know, putting paid to the lie that the unison between stone and erosion is an unfair one—one day we may come back and visit you two.
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