If he refused the Transubstantiation, what would happen? Would Wiggler die and all that he’d created fade away? What if Wiggler/Sitturd really had been waging a clandestine war of the magnitude he described? Could he, Elroy, Elijah, Hosanna—whoever—abandon this lone hero—father figure or no?
Wiggler could remove the lethal brain probe—perhaps restore his full penis. His intellectual powers would be clarified. He would be of the spirit, the flesh, and the mind. His suffering and spiral wanderings would all be worth something. The anxiety of the decision weighed on him. He had to find an answer somewhere, and it wasn’t going to be lying awake in bed. He rose and dressed.
The Marshal was breathing heavily and Maggie was coiled in a fetal squeeze that reminded him painfully of his dear Kokomo. He crept down the stairs. The lanterns still shone in the street—but faintly, fading and brightening as if in time with the breathing of the sleepers. The organic architecture of the buildings, too, changed shape. Of the freestanding buildings only the livery stable and the mill house held steady. He looked in the livery stable. There was no obvious source of illumination but he could see in the pulses of lantern light the frame of the punctured Billy Connolly—along with an assortment of microphone stands and stage risers. Parked where the horse stalls might’ve been was a vehicle that even in the dark gleamed. It was an old Scenicruiser bus, modified as if for stadium-show touring, gunmetal blue and silver with the wheelbarrow-of-fire logo mounted on the front—the name SPIRITCRUISER in swirling steel letters on the side, the words BE YOND dialed up on the destination reel.
The door was open and the keys were in the ignition. Wiggler must’ve used this on his music tours, Clearfather figured, although he thought it strange how neat and tidy the bus was now. Like a carefully maintained museum piece. He drifted back out into the street.
He knew from his earlier explorations that the Canyon was a labyrinth, dividing and branching into subcanyons. The whole place could be honeycombed with tunnels, just like Dustdevil. But that didn’t explain the section of wall where he’d seen Calamity Jane playing. How had the sloth girl seemed to disappear? He wanted very much to inspect that stretch of cliff. Then he saw the three Chinese men floating a few yards before him, as pale and bright as silver bromide.
As he approached, they became unstable, swirling like egg whites. Whenever he stopped, they re-formed. He sensed that they were calling to him but he couldn’t hear. At last they fluttered away and he did hear something, although it wasn’t necessarily vibrations in the air. It was highly organized. Music. But what kind? He kept walking and found himself in front of the KRMA shack. All the lights were on and his whole being felt activated and agitated. He peered in the dusty window. Where before all he’d seen was a cobwebbed rocking chair, now there was space spreading out like a giant studio.
Inside, the walls were covered in autographed posters and promotional photos lacing back and forth through pop history. Wiggler and Blind Lemon were down front, musing and bluesing together. Between him and them were—other people—for he sensed their presence—but when he tried to focus on them, they seemed to dissolve. Blind Lemon was dressed as before and playing an ordinary-looking electric guitar, but Wiggler, who’d traded in his reflective suit for a phosphorescent robe, was at the controls of a kind of synthesizer that changed shape as he played. If Clearfather didn’t try to concentrate directly on what was happening, he became aware of distinct presences on the bandstand. They came and went like thoughts—two black saxophone players, a trumpet player—an orchestra that rippled like time-lapse flowers, bewigged chamber musicians, robed choirs, gospel singers, and bluegrass pickers—drummers. There were funky black people and sultry female singers—Latin marimba orchestras. Around and around and through him the suggestion of music swirled until finally all was still and the room was much smaller again and only Wiggler and Blind Lemon were visible.
“Welcome to the Church of Good Booty and Haunted Communion,” Wiggler said. “Couldn’t you sleep?”
“No,” said Clearfather. “Guess you couldn’t, either.”
“I don’t sleep anymore,” his mentor answered. “And neither will you soon. It’s a question of Refurbishment. That parts of the network do sleep reduces the strain, so night’s a good time to work in the studio.”
“Were there other people here?” Clearfather asked, looking around.
“Yes,” said Wiggler. “A very distinguished lineup of musicians sitting in. Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis—members of the Bach family—the list is quite impressive.”
“Do you mean—what I think you mean?”
“True Soul Music. Keyboard contributions by Mozart and Ahmad Jamal. James Brown’s rhythm section with Bootsy Collins on bass. What did you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Clearfather replied, shaking his head.
“I’m not asking if you liked the music or not—you don’t have any intelligent way of answering that. I’m asking what it made you think of—how it made you feel.”
Clearfather paused to try to put into words what he’d experienced.
“I felt like how you do when you’re falling asleep or waking from a dream. I was both slipping away and slipping back.”
“Anything specific?”
“Food . . . hot spicy food. Crawfish heads and whiskey. Voluptuous women giving birth to catfish and violas . . . starlight . . . then sadness and the cool early-morning smell of damp grass and rose beds . . . and that smell of a girl just after you’ve kissed her—and then a roaring mist like a waterfall. Was that right?”
“Ah, there’s no right or wrong with music. But in this case it’s even more true, because the music wasn’t being played for you—it was being summoned from you.”
“What?”
“A revolutionary concept. The Spiritual Remix of my masterwork Placebo Domino performed by the Soul All-Stars, then mixed in real time on the Communiononium—an instrument I invented that channels deep-mind psychwaves. The result is that the composer, the musicians, the listener, the medium, the environment . . . all these distinctions disappear.”
“That . . . was a part . . . of me?”
“Boy’s got barbecue in him,” the bluesman smiled. “Pleasin’ to hear.”
“And those . . . the people . . . were ghosts?”
“You’ll understand all this soon now. When the Transubstantiation is complete, you’ll have more than my understanding. And with Lemon’s contribution—”
“What do you mean?” Clearfather asked.
“Blind Lemon is joining us in the merger.”
“You mean he’s going to die?”
“Those who would lose their life will find it. Isn’t that right, Lemon?”
“Amen to that,” said the old black man and made the guitar cry.
Clearfather smelled fried okra and the turpentine heat of a pinewoods.
“It’s a matter of faith,” Wiggler said, motioning Clearfather toward the door. “See you in the morning, Lemon.”
Outside the air was as clear as glycerine and the world appeared to be solid again. They walked for a while in silence.
“You want to know about her,” Wiggler said at last. “Kokomo. You know there is a connection, but you aren’t sure what it is.”
Clearfather’s heart jumped. “Yes,” he said. “I just . . . want . . . to know.”
“Just to know?” Wiggler smiled sadly. “Not to see? Not to hold?”
“I . . . don’t know what to say. Or what to hope for.”
“Come,” Wiggler said and whistled.
Out of the dark came an old black Model T with the wheelbarrow of fire painted on the side. At the wheel was one of the Harijans. The antique car stopped, and Wiggler gestured for them to climb in. They drove to the funeral parlor, which was filled with caskets and the smell of old wood and dust. On a curtain rod above the counter perched the eagle Clearfather had seen earlier. A coffin reserved for EBEN FLOOD stood upright against the back wall. Wiggler opened the
door and bade Clearfather enter. The coffin led to a flight of traction-grid steps and then a long narrow passageway like the gullet of a creature. Light was provided by translucent globes filled with gelatin shapes like blue water diatoms. Wiggler moved in silence down the length of the passage but Clearfather had the impression that he was being questioned nonetheless.
“You’re right,” said Wiggler at last. “I’m accessing a part of your mind that we share. But you’re much too powerful now for even me to read openly. You’re like a dense code—or a book in a lost language. I know you’re worried and wanting to stay with the Marshal and Maggie—but you’re gaining speed and clarity. Soon your friends may be transparent to you. You’ll know not only what they’re thinking and all that they know—you may have a good idea of all they can ever know.”
“That sounds . . . horrible,” Clearfather said as they reached an old mine-shaft elevator.
“Nietzsche gave the famous advice that when you wrestle with monsters, be careful not to become one yourself. What he neglected to mention is that if you are to wrestle a monster and win . . . then you must become something that looks remarkably like one.”
The bucket lift shuddered on its chain and they descended into a black stone well.
“Isn’t there another way?”
“This is the other way. No darkness, no journey.”
“But I don’t want to lose them!” Clearfather groaned.
“As I’ve said,” Wiggler frowned. “I didn’t choose the task, it chose me. You, too.”
The elevator descended through a steel-mesh chute, coming to a rest on a small stone island in the midst of a subterranean lagoon. Across the mirrored water were the kaleidoscopic automata of the amusement park, with all its mechanical clanking and the eldritch music of the calliope echoing through the caves.
Wiggler led him out of the elevator. “There’s an old saying that I invented: God gave us Loss so that we would be complete. I must lose this,” he said, indicating the jeweled lights weeping over the cavern walls. “My science, my magic . . . my inventions. You must lose your humanity, your capacity for connection and compassion . . . your virility and your courage. Lemon must lose the healing power of the blues . . . his improvisational genius and his gift of feeling and being. Mind, heart, and soul. Together we will become something greater—the ultimate synthesis.”
Wiggler led him to the edge of the water and Clearfather thought for a minute he might walk out across the surface—but he stopped.
“Do you know the password?” he asked.
“Should I?” said Clearfather.
“Relax your mind. Melt like the lights in the water.”
Clearfather closed his eyes and concentrated on the calliope music.
“Placebo Domino in regione vivorum . . . ,” he intoned . . . and when he opened his eyes, the water had begun bubbling. Up from the depths emerged a spiral path of opalescent faces the size of stepping-stones. The faces were his own.
“Bravo. And now that you talk the talk, let’s see if you can walk the walk.”
All of the faces submerged except the first. Wiggler stepped onto it and then out across the water, the shining faces surfacing in sequence all along the spiral, allowing him to cross to the other side without once slowing or breaking stride. The moment he’d set foot on the carnival landing, the faces vanished back down into the water.
“Trust yourself,” he called. “Believe the step will be there.”
Clearfather looked across the lagoon—at Wiggler silhouetted against the lights. He looked at the water . . . the last ripples wrinkling away. Then he took off his moccasins, pulled up his robe, and leapt in.
CHAPTER 4
Smoke and Mirrors
Splashing across the lagoon, Clearfather could see that Wiggler was angered, but by the time he’d reached the island the Lord of Labyrinthia had mastered himself.
“You have to do things your own way, don’t you?” Wiggler said, offering him a hand out of the water.
Clearfather leapt out without assistance and replied, “I could see myself falling in your way—or worse, freezing up on one of those stones like a scared little kid.”
“Is that your greatest fear . . . vulnerability, dependence?”
“Actually I took your advice. You said trust myself. When I thought about it, it was obvious the faces were more for theater than utility.”
Wiggler looked both miffed and pleased and pointed out over the clockwork playland. “You don’t seem surprised,” he said. “Anyone might think you were expecting this.”
“I was expecting you to want me to be surprised.”
“I give myself away,” said Wiggler swanning forward past a silver policeman with the head of a bull moose and a hinged-glass matron strolling through a garden of gramophone trumpets. “But I think you may be surprised yet.”
“It’s a beautiful amusement park,” Clearfather acknowledged.
“It’s a bemusement park,” Wiggler replied. “The only one of its kind.”
Clearfather knew that he was expected to ask what that meant but he was lost in his own speculations. Gazing around at the rides and attractions this time, he sensed a sadness pervading the whimsy—an embellished grief, like the calliope music. Such a world was meant to be enjoyed by people. Who was this wonder kingdom designed for? Or was it a mechanical version of Green Pastures—a velvet cage for miscreant marionettes?
Wiggler led him through a knot of performing robotic clowns to the other end of the midway from where he’d been before. Here all was thimblerig and sword cane—booths displaying Scandinavian bog people and the bones of the Donner Party. Shoot a pioneer and collect an authentic Indian peace pipe . . . win a hand puppet of President Bill Clinton for tossing a cigar in the mouth of Monica Lewinsky!
At last they came to the Hall of Mirrors, laid out in a nautilus shell spiral. Clearfather’s pulse quickened. He knew that Kokomo was dead. He’d experienced the horror firsthand. Whatever Wiggler had to show him, it wouldn’t bring her back. Even for the great Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd there was a limit to what science and magic could do.
Or was there? Kokomo would be a reason to stay. Kokomo would be a reason to live . . . whatever the inhabitants and secrets of the Canyon. She was a reason to go into battle. She was a hope . . . for a child of his own. A future. His mind stormed back to the cylinder of sand the Nourisher had worn . . . the remains of his unborn son. His heart thudded in time with the whirling rides.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Wiggler interjected, and there was a hint of gentleness in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “You asked to understand, not to touch.”
“Won’t you tell me?”
“You will see for yourself. But what I will tell you is that the young woman you met was actually old. She was in a sense, a step toward you—like an early draft of a novel. She was an Empath. She had the ability to take on the experiences, particularly the pain of others—but she was damaged. You awakened her. She became powerful in proportion to you. Her mind couldn’t function along conventional patterns and yet, even crippled as she was when you first met her, she brought happiness and clarity to others. I let her go as I let you go—and when she stumbled, I decided it was best to let her remain in the wild—but in the care of people I could trust.”
“So . . . you know Bean Blossom?”
“Oh, yes,” said Wiggler. “A wicked witch was just the right kind of protector.”
“And so you know Parousia Head?”
“I am Parousia Head,” Wiggler answered.
“What?”
“You’d call her a myth or a legend. I think of her as a memetic disinformation strategy. She’s given my allies a goal and a leader to believe in, while it’s given Vitessa another source of anxiety and vulnerability.”
“But why?”
“Always have a decoy—as many as you can. Give your allies as much confidence and hope as you can, and your enemies as many shadows to shoot at as possible.”
“So in Indianapolis . . .”
“The Kickapoo Ladies are a resistance cell of mine. If things had gone to plan, you’d have come straight here.”
“And Kokomo . . .”
“Would’ve stayed there. In fact, you would never have met her. Of course, if things had gone to plan, you wouldn’t have ever been in Indianapolis. If things had gone to plan, it’s hard to say just how different life would be. What’s interesting about the Kickapoo episode is that what didn’t go to plan was Carny’s desire to help you—and your natural affinity for Kokomo. This is the problem with stratagems on the scale that I work. Actually, this is the problem, period. One adjustment here and everything changes there.”
“Why not just stop?”
“Oh, that sounds easy and even attractive sometimes. But it’s not possible. Even if you were to negate yourself—to stop the possibility of further action—think what a drastic effect that could have on others. The more entangled your life is, the greater the effect—and therefore damage. On a vast scale, this is the problem with APPARATUS. The goal it’s pursuing is like the attainment of Nirvana by the elimination of all else. My vision of enlightenment is not trying to rise above the game—but accepting that one is always in the game—and striving to be more involved, not less.”
“Which of the Entities made you aware of that?”
“I think of all my teachers the most important was a young boy named Paul Sitio, who later changed his name to Hosanna Freed. Now enter the Hall of Mirrors and find—what you will.”
Zanesville: A Novel Page 41