Remington moved his hands from the headless’ ankles to their calves, causing the raft to rock.
“Really, Remington, these two aren’t structurally sound,” said Jacob. “You’ll have to stay where you are.”
“No fair,” said Remington, ignoring the increasing velocity of their spin. “How come you two get to ride the whole time?” As the valley whirled around them, he slapped a hand on Eve’s thigh, pulling himself out of the water. “Stay down, boy!” snarled Leopold, aiming a savage kick at his chin. Teeth clashing, Remington flew backwards, snatching Eve’s ankle as he plunged beneath the surface. The current caught his body and twisted it like a loosely-held oar, turning the raft’s spin into a sudden somersault.
In an instant, the entire company was submerged. The river wrenched Remington free from his fellows, flinging him about in the bubbly murk with astonishing force. Down he plunged, then up he came, buoyed briefly into the air before smacking against the river’s surface. As he thrashed upright, he let out a cry: his friends were nowhere to be seen.
That’s horrible! he thought. They’ll be so sad, stuck in the mud, waving around like little weeds—except for the head.
Just as he began to wonder if the headless had deflated, Eve surfaced, her arms wrapped around Leopold, who would otherwise have sunk like a stone.
Adam popped up a moment later, with Jacob clinging to his legs, howling, “The head, Remy! I’ve lost hold of the Living Man’s head! Dive, boy, dive!”
Remington did his best to oblige, tilting his torso into the river and flailing his arms and legs, but due to his natural buoyancy, his legs were still scissoring in the air when the plaque rose to the river’s surface, carrying the Living Man’s head on its underside.
“Look, the river washed off his makeup!” said Remington, tossing the head to Jacob before linking his elbows and knees with those of the headless to become the raft’s middle plank. He was facing skyward this time, and as the waters of Lethe filled his empty skull, he started to feel a little funny—not intoxicated, but profoundly, almost passionately awake—and began to question the monotony of the hazy sky.
“We ought to chastise him for dunking us, I know,” said Jacob to Leopold as they climbed aboard, “but it’s nearly impossible to stay angry at the little bugger, wouldn’t you say, Leopold?
“Leopold? Are you all right?”
But Leopold didn’t answer. He was perched atop Eve’s ribs in a fetal crouch, his face buried in his folded arms as if he were about to weep.
“I know how you feel,” said Jacob. “I thought we were done for. As soon as the water closed around me, all this leather started to pull me down to the bottom, and it was only by chance that I caught on to this fellow, who, as luck would have it, was headed in the opposite direction. Even then, it was a battle between my ballast and his gas!”
Leopold made no sign that he’d heard, and Jacob noticed that the scarf holding his head erect had slipped from its broomstick and was dangling amidst his dripping hair.
“It’s all right now, we’re floating freely. Look, there’s some riverbank up ahead! Perhaps we’ll stop for a moment.”
Leopold muttered something into his knees.
“Come again?” said Jacob.
“I said, ‘You were right.’ It’s not a phrase you’re likely to hear again, so savor the moment.”
Grasping the crimson scarf from behind, Leopold hoisted his head aloft. The last clumps of painted river clay fell away from his cheeks, plopping onto Eve’s belly. Denuded of cosmetics, his face was like an acid-eaten cheesecloth.
“You told me not to put all of my eggs into one basket, didn’t you? ‘Treat yourself to a full-body treatment,’ you said, but I treated you like an opportunistic salesman, and now I’ve paid the price. Well, go ahead and laugh: laugh through all of that fine, waterproof leather! Don’t worry, these withered ears can still hear the echoes, even if I emulate your disembodied friend and squeeze my eyes shut, so as not to catch sight of my reflection on this rancid river’s surface.”
Slowly, with his head lolling freely on the shattered pivot of his neck, Leopold began to peel off layer after layer of clothing, littering the river behind them with frills and ribbons, until nothing remained but a long-sleeved black undershirt, a pair of purple corduroy trousers, and his boots. Carefully, as if approaching a strange dog, Jacob extended his hand toward Leopold’s neck and looped the scarf over the broomstick.
“If you didn’t give him a regular treatment, what did you do?” said Remington from below, startling both men, who had grown accustomed to riding a raft that didn’t speak.
Jacob looked uncertainly at Leopold.
“Oh, out with it,” Leopold said. “We’ll leave the legend of l’Eclair back in the city.”
“As you wish,” said Jacob, rubbing his palms together.
“I first met Leopold in the months before Shanthi’s arrival, when I was still tied to my studio and could only rely on word-of-mouth for business. Word was spreading, slowly but surely, as the success of my first full-body casting prompted a savage rivalry between myself and John Tanner, who was, believe it or not, my toughest competition. As my star rose, he lost his hold on the richest corpses in Dead City, notably that notorious pervert known as the Plucker, whose appetites kept me busy renovating the fresh young ladies his minions found on the riverside.
“Weeks earlier, Tanner stood outside my window backed by two rejects from the Plains of War and threatened to bury me in quicklime if I didn’t agree to become his partner. So, when I caught sight of his massive head floating up my street like a piebald parade balloon, I shut the window and prepared to ignore whatever vitriol he might utter.
“Ultimately, I found it impossible to ignore his roaring apology, followed by a declamation that he needed, nay, begged for my help in a matter that was quite beyond his skills. The last part intrigued me, and against my better judgment I let my rival inside.
“‘Now, Jacob, you know it was only a little ribbing,’ he said, ‘fraternal in nature, a sort of initiation ceremony or brotherly encouragement, quite similar to tough love. I meant no harm, and I certainly wouldn’t know where to find enough lime to eat up more than a few of your toes! We’re builders-up, after all, not breakers-down. Let’s put the past where it belongs, let us amend, for I really and truly need you today.
“‘It’s this ghastly boy the whole city is talking about, the kick-stool who won seventeen years on a single throw!’
“Sequestered in my quarters, I’d missed out on the gossip, and Tanner was delighted to fill me in. ‘Some sullen, teenaged madman,’ he said, ‘his neck still warm from the friction of his belt (you can count the notches!), walked into Caesar’s yesterday and staked his lifespan on a single throw. Well, wouldn’t you know the lucky little dangler won and took his credit-pebbles to the District, where someone was kind enough to refer him to me.
“‘I was thrilled to see him, and with seventeen years lining his pockets, why wouldn’t I be? I offered him a top-of-the-line Tanner tanning, thinking that I’d suggest some additional enhancements once his skin was off, since, as you know, the indignity has a way of loosening their wallets, but the awful child said no! “There’s only one thing I’m interested in preserving,” he said, and then he showed me what he meant, and I realized I’d have to turn away business for the first time in a decade.
“‘First of all I wouldn’t know how to go about it, and if I did I wouldn’t want to, but I thought that, given your recent innovations in the preservative arts, you might enjoy the challenge.
“‘I beseech you, Jacob, get this nasty man-child off of my divan, where he has insisted on remaining until, to use his phrase, his situation is made permanent. Isn’t that just a darling way of putting it?’
“Putting what, I wanted to know.
“‘Well,’ said Tanner, ‘it turns out that what they say about hanged men is true.’
“‘And what do they say about hanged men?’ I asked him.
&nbs
p; “‘Zounds, Jacob, do I have to spell it out? He passed priapic! He ended engorged! His last word was “yes”! The filthy bugger’s bell-end is hard as a bone, and he wants to have it fixed that way before it drains! Now are you or are you not the man to handle it?’
“I didn’t care to answer that question as it was posed, but I told him to bring Leopold up and I’d see what I could do.
“When he left I began to consider the problem. True, I claimed to offer a full-body preservation, but I’d never considered the rehabilitation of an organ before, least of all that one. Where women were concerned, I dealt with their affairs simply and with decorum; as for men, all my male clients had died flaccid, resigned themselves to the rot of their privates, sewed up their flies, and never looked back.
“Suddenly, I realized that I’d fitted the penis into the same category as the tongue: organs made useless by death, not worth the effort to preserve. Now that such a preservation had been requested, however, I had to consider it carefully, for to my mind it wouldn’t do merely to lay the skin over a carved reproduction as I would with an arm or leg, since this would result in nothing more than a glorified dildo. No, it was clear to me that a man willing to go to such lengths to retain his genitals would need them preserved in their entirety, meaning that I would have to salvage every last vein and vesicle by teasing them out of their casing, drying them individually, hardening them by the application of lacquer, and fitting the entire puzzle back together again, with whatever resinous filler might be required, giving the client a direct and visceral sense that nothing had been lost.”
“Gross!” said Remington.
“Indeed,” said Jacob, “but fascinating, and entirely dependent on the freshness of the corpse in question. Luckily, the boy who stumbled through my window was so fresh his pimples were still pink, having just gone through his mortis on John Tanner’s divan. So, without pausing for niceties, I laid him down on the table and pressed Tanner into service as my assistant, since I needed materials and couldn’t leave to get them myself.
“The job was intricate, but I had to start immediately, and I credit Leopold’s strong stomach with the swiftness of its completion, for even with his manhood vivisected, he never flinched from the task. In fact, he hardly spoke a word: he was shy to the point of muteness, hard as that may be to believe.
“In any case, when his organ’s constituent parts had been safely dissected, I took a break to let things drain, and it was then that curiosity got the better of me, and I asked Leopold why it was so important that this feature be preserved.
“He said nothing at first, and when he did speak, he would only say that it would be his secret weapon. At first I was confused by this answer, but I saw what he meant when everything was sewed up. The boy who’d climbed through my window was a sullen thing who looked like he’d been slapped in the face at least once a day for the entirety of his adolescence, but the boy who pulled up his pants and walked to the mirror in my flat was swaggering.
“Now, although my prices were high enough to make such an exhaustive operation worth my time, they weren’t so exorbitant that he couldn’t afford a full-body treatment, but young Leopold refused.
“‘What you’ve given me is what counts,’ he said. ‘Pride is all. The rest is smoke and mirrors.’
“When I asked what he meant to do with his pride, he said only that great things lay ahead, and implored me to keep his preservation a secret, even offering to pay for my discretion. Of course, I took no payment for this professional courtesy, and while John Tanner is a notorious gossip, he was either too embarrassed by his incompetence or too mortified by the experience to mention it again, and so far as I can tell, Leopold never mentioned it, either, since in the years that intervened between our first and recent meetings I never heard a murmur about the work I’d done, which begs the question, doesn’t it—”
“Say!” said Remington, popping his head up from the middle of the raft. “If everyone kept the secret, how come the Masker knows you have a boner?”
“Curious,” said Leopold as he dipped a hand under the river’s surface. “The waters of Lethe, according to the ancient Greeks, induce forgetfulness in all who drink them, and yet here we are with our bellies full of river, contemplating old times like a bunch of biddies at bingo night. What happened when, and to whom, and with whom, and to what end? We make such pretty noises reminiscing, and it gives us a sense of power to revel in hindsight, but really, boys, it tells us so little about where we are.
“Oh, I could talk for days about my proud little member, and in the course of our journey it’s likely that I will, it being a subject my afterlife has given me little opportunity to indulge, but while the two of you, and, who knows, maybe Adam and Eve to boot, have your minds thoroughly invested in the contents of my trousers, I am more attentive to the fact that we are floating due south up the inner rim of nowhere, without any apparent care for our alleged quest.
“Really, Jacob, how long do you intend to follow the directions of a deaf-mute who has yet to open his eyes?”
Jacob drummed his fingers on the Living Man’s driftwood plaque. “Truthfully, gentlemen, I’m stumped. If we stop to consider our options, the Masker will catch up, but if we sail on, we’re that much more likely to end up miles from the Living Man’s original path.”
“For that matter, who’s to say that’s really the Living Man’s bonce you’re cradling like a babe in your arms?” said Leopold.
Jacob bristled. “His flesh lacks the river’s signature, just like the fingertip. He could not have come to the underworld by way of the river—or, if he did, he was alive at the time.”
“And what if he was dead, but crossed over in a waterproof body bag? What if his casket had a trick bottom, and he fell right through the earth onto the Heap? You’re a reasonable enough man, Campbell, but when it comes to this second cranium of yours, you insist on ignoring every possibility but the most magical, and to what end?”
“You think I’m a fool,” Jacob said quietly, “but you’re following me all the same.”
“You think worse of me,” said Leopold, “but you’re letting me follow. Look here, it’s possible that your pet noodle really is the last vestige of some world-vaulting hero. It’s also possible that he’s just an unlucky drunkard who lost a bet with a sadist. But we’ll never know the difference if you don’t put some energy into waking him!”
“And how would you suggest I do that?”
“You could always set him on fire. Isn’t that your standard backup plan?”
Deciding nothing, they drifted upstream. Jacob and Leopold nursed a long, hostile silence, the import of which was lost on Remington. He was so saturated with river-water that when he closed his mouth abruptly a little spume shot out of it.
I am the river, he thought. I’m an eddy, an eel, a piece of driftwood! We’re two of a kind, Lethe and me.
But we weren’t always. Or were we? I don’t think I thought about myself that way when I washed up. I don’t really think I thought about much at all. I got up, I saw a big pile of stuff, and I climbed it. I wonder who I was before?
I was born the day I died, that’s what Ma used to say. Just like Adam and Eve were born the day they lost their heads.
Is that really how it happened, though? Did they start over again when their heads got cut off?
Are they whole people—or parts of people?
If they’re parts of people, are they parts of the people they used to be?
Or are they parts of me?
Remington’s mind, full of the River Lethe and all that its waters contained, began racing, leaping ahead of itself, finishing his thoughts before he’d had a chance to examine them, hurtling him toward an inevitable conclusion whose shape he couldn’t see.
The headless can’t be parts of me, he thought, or I’d feel it.
Or would I?
I can’t feel my hands any more, but they’re still parts of me, aren’t they?
Of course they are, and I kn
ow it because they move when I want them to.
And so do Adam and Eve!
Remington’s body jerked, provoking some complaints from above.
I should test it, he thought. I can move my hands without telling them what I want them to do out loud. If there’s no separation between Adam, Eve, and me, I should be able to do the same thing with them.
It’ll be just like when I quickened.
He remembered that day clearly: the slow slog from darkness into light, the lack of breath in his lungs, his body’s surprising numbness, the thought itself: I’m dead. Then the struggle. His limbs failing to respond, his will coursing like hot liquid through his bones. His first twitch, his first thrash, his first unsteady step. Then down in the mud, then up again, then again, then again.
He’d had to reach into his bones to learn to walk. This time he’d just reach a little farther, into the bones of his friends.
In his mind’s eye he saw Adam and Eve spreading their arms into the river, hands extended like paddles, angling the raft smoothly toward the banks. Then, with an open, flowing patience, he moved the image from his mind toward their fingertips.
There was no result, but a calm seemed to suffuse the water around him. I can’t do it yet, he thought, but I’ll learn. We’ll learn together.
He closed his mouth, and the river bubbled over his lips.
Maybe I’m not reaching far enough, he thought. Maybe it’s not enough just to be myself, or to be myself and Adam and Eve. I have to think as wide and long as Lethe. If I could do that, moving an arm or a leg would be easy!
Remington softened his gaze and entered something like a daydream. He saw his mind as a blanket, a flowing, purple quilt made up of millions of tiny patches, a quilt that he draped with ghostly fingers along the length of Lethe, watching it billow from Dead City far into the darkness of the unknown. It wasn’t long before he felt the river tugging on its fabric, and then, in satisfaction, he started to hum a little tune to himself.
Above Remington’s unsettlingly musical torso, Jacob alternated between two types of anxiety, the first concerning the Masker, whom he had begun to imagine pursuing them on a motorboat, and the second about the Living Man, whom he had good reason to doubt would ever wake up. As his attention swung from one to the next, his worries deepened into terrors, and just as he was approaching a state of frenzy that would certainly have led to an embarrassing outcry, he was distracted by the arrival of an unexpected visitor.
Dead Boys Page 8