“It’s my turn,” the tall and fat repeated, tightening his grip.
“It seems to be attached to your arm,” the short and fat went on. “I can help you with that.” With his left hand he pulled the straight razor from a back pocket of his jeans. He flicked it open. “Just hold still.”
The tall and fat grinned wide. “My brother,” he cooed. “You will eat that razor. I will carve Xs in your eyes.”
“Maybe not so wise,” the tall and skinny nodded in solemn agreement.
The short and fat let go of the string that wrapped the package and he and the tall and fat both slowly stood. The tall and fat’s fat fingers still encircled the short and fat’s fat arm. The razor glinted in the lamplight. Their eyes locked. They stepped in slow circles, dancing stiffly, motionless from the waist up. The package remained on the ground between them so that they resembled terrible, misshapen moons orbiting the same dull sun. A single eager, half-demonic grin contorted both their faces. They whispered words of love.
“Come on then,” said the short and fat. “Come closer.”
“Touch me,” said the tall and fat. “Just once.”
The tall and skinny crouched and waited as they turned until the moment came that neither of his comrades stood between him and the package. The tall and skinny took his opportunity. He scooped up the package, hooted, and wheeled about on his heel. But before he could lope away, the tall and fat and short and fat were on him. The tall and fat dove and swept his legs out with one huge extended arm. The short and fat hit him like a cannonball. The tall and skinny clattered to the ground. He lay there like a broken spider, his long limbs splayed at curious and unnatural angles. The tall and fat jumped on his back and yanked his arm up between his shoulder blades. The short and fat grabbed him by one earlobe, tugged his head up and held the razor to his throat.
“You’ve forgotten,” he said into the tall and skinny’s stretched, translucent ear. “You’re not the smart one.”
Just then the wind picked up. Something rustled across the dirt in front of them. All three looked up at once. It was the package. It had flown from the arms of the tall and skinny and landed a few yards off. It had come untied. The string lay flaccid on the ground. The oil-stained brown paper blew crumpled through the grass. It was empty. The three men leaped to their feet. They scoured the earth around them. They couldn’t believe it. They looked everywhere, but all they found was rocks and dirt, broken bottle glass, fine, gray ash and sand.
I open the door.
When I open the door to my office, the stranger’s sitting there. He’s at my desk, in my chair. His suit is gone. He’s wearing just a blanket. He doesn’t look much better, but he’s dry and most of the blood is gone. My papers, which I had left in neat stacks on my desk, have been scattered all around the room. They’re crinkled and torn, as if a parade had just passed through. The stranger leans and retrieves a sheet from off the floor. He reads aloud, his voice striving for ridicule but too weak to pull it off. “Why all this hiding?” he scoffs. “Why night at all? Why this filth and darkness?” His fingers tremble as he tears the page in half. He pulls another page from the mess at his feet and reads, “It’s okay baby wake up baby it’s okay.”
I take the page from his hand, smooth its creases with my thumb. “How long have you been here?” I ask.
“Long enough,” he says.
“You do know, don’t you, that I can always print another copy?”
He swivels around to face me. “I want to see the end.”
“I haven’t written it.”
“Tell it to me.”
I take off my jacket, hang it on the hook on the back of the door. “Get off my chair,” I say.
To my surprise, he does. With a modesty that is almost touching, he gathers the blanket around him, stiffly stands. His legs are pale and hairless and marbled with welts. He looks like a cartoon stork. Papers crumple beneath him as he lowers himself, hunching, onto the couch. “Do you want to hear the rest of the story?” I say.
“The little boy?” he sniffs.
“Yeah, the little boy.”
“That’s not the story I was talking about.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” I say. I begin where I left off:
“When at last the little boy roused himself again, he did not feel hope, but anger. He took no joy this time from the warmth of the sun, finding in it only a dim, more distant likeness of the rage that burned within him. How dare the little girl desert him? How dare the bird, the fish, the rabbit, the dog, all the creatures he had kissed to life?
“He gathered thorns, nails, tacks, rusted and serrated blades, razor wire, hard and pointed stones, ground glass, barrels of bubbling industrial waste. With these he built a shark. He spat upon its head and sent it off to chase the fish. He built a hawk to fall upon the rabbit. He cursed it to life and with a flutter of feathers hurled it in the air. He built a snake, filled its teeth with poison, and kicked it down the path where the little girl might skip and the dog might curl itself to sleep. Just in case, he built a man and a woman. He slapped and spat them awake, bid them wreck whatever the others chanced to miss. He built a vulture so as not to leave a mess.
“Exhausted by his efforts, the little boy laid down beneath a tree to rest. But his heart would not slow. Even when he closed his eyes, he saw the branches above him thrashing in rhythm with his pulse. In fact the tree was still. The wind sang softly through the grass, but all the little boy could hear was shrieking, gnashing, tearing. He picked at the grass, twisted it into rope, tore the rope, twisted the tearings into a cord again. Repeat.
“Sleep fled before him as everything else had. Wakefulness had lost what little charm it held. He shook the leaves from his clothes. If he could find only displeasure here, perhaps elsewhere he might find rest. Or something like it. Some variety of relief. Perhaps, it occurred to him, as he let his feet fall one after the other, he had not given his creations a chance. Perhaps they had been playing. Perhaps they had run, intending that he give chase. Perhaps they were wondering where he was, feeling as injured by his absence as he was by theirs. Perhaps. Insomnia weakens the workings of the mind. But it allowed the little boy to indulge in a species of optimism that gave purpose to his wanderings. Perhaps, he consoled himself, he would find what he had lost, and be welcomed by it.”
The stranger’s eyes have closed. He lets himself fall slowly onto his side and rests his head on the arm of the couch. He pulls his blanket up to his beard. My papers, these pages, lie crumpled all around him.
“I’ll finish later,” I say.
He speaks without opening his eyes. “Are you trying,” he asks, “to tell me something?”
He journeys out.
The stranger tried to walk. His rescuer stood beside him, one hand on his elbow, the other around his back. “Don’t. Touch. Me,” he hissed. But she could not hear him, and after three steps, he let himself lean into her and limped onward with her support, adding another hissed don’t-touch-me as he did.
He made it out the door and a few feet outside the shack before he stumbled. His legs were not the problem. His ribs were broken, his organs bruised; he grew weaker with each step. The woman caught him and lowered him in her arms to the ground. The stranger lay there naked on the dirt, and before she could bend to drag him back inside to bed, he was able to crane his head around and see where he had landed.
The deaf-mute’s shack sat on a small plateau of level earth midway up the slope between the railroad tracks below and a concrete embankment just up the hill. A cement overpass provided shelter from the elements, and the woman’s dwelling was protected on all sides by tangled shrubbery — the skeletal remains of oleanders long-since cannibalized by kudzu. A wan poinsettia protruded from a flowerpot beside the door. Dried and wilted flowers lay in heaps. Rank upon rank of plastic baby dolls guarded the hovel — some pink, some brown, most nude but some dressed in soiled jumpers, some with hair and some without, others without heads but still standi
ng on alert, their feet planted in the soil. Behind this plastic phalanx, other goods lay piled: blenders and toasters, a vacuum cleaner and two broken-screened TVs, the backseat from a Ford, a plush giraffe, more flowerpots, all empty, a sombrero’d Mexican lawn jockey with a cracked ceramic beer mug foaming in his hand. Off to the right a drainage pipe projected from the hillside, and from its lip water dribbled forth. An iron grill sat atop a circle of blackened bricks and concrete blocks a few feet in front of the car seat, still smoking from the night before.
“Quite a grand estate you have,” the stranger began to say. Before he could finish the phrase, though, as if in response, the dolls all turned to face him. Or seemed to turn, it’s hard to say — the stranger wasn’t feeling well. The dolls stood at attention, straightening what spines they had (none really) and clicking together their fat, naked heels, though the effect, since they were plastic, was more soft thud than click. Each kicked out a right leg, then a left. They goose-stepped solemnly in place. Pudgy ankles rising, falling, here and there catching glints of sun. Those that had heads held their heads high. Each doll reached to the doll beside it. They partnered off, clasping one hand straight out in front and placing the other in the very small small of their partners’ plastic backs. They tangoed as elegantly as broken and discarded dolls can tango, filing off pair by pair and dancing, arms extended, in straight lines towards the stranger, stopping just out of his reach, twirling their hips, switching hands and dancing back. When all had had a chance, the dolls decoupled. Stiff-legged, they marched in place, showing him the soles of their varyingly booted and unbooted feet. The stranger groaned. The dolls all curtsied. The woman, smiling, lifted the stranger from beneath the arms to pull him back inside. Did she see what the stranger saw? Did dead things come alive for him alone? To salute him or to mock him? Was it the deaf-mute’s doing? Did anyone see it but he and you and I? It’s hard to say. The stranger’s eyes were shut. He bit his lip, and let himself be pulled.
Searching.
Searching, they found nothing but searchers. They walked all day every day. They asked all those they came across if they had seen the man in the ragged white suit. Usually the old man asked because words came to him most easily. Too easily, sometimes, and with too many other words attached. “You haven’t seen him, huh? Too bad. Maybe not for you, though, right? Maybe okay for you. Cause really, who’s fool enough to want to encounter such an individual, besides my companions here, and my sorry old self?”
They met two crippled twins outside a bowling alley who shook their heads in unison and wheeled along beside them. The twins required no convincing, no long explanations. They seemed to know what the men were looking for before they even asked. Or maybe not. Perhaps they were looking for something completely different, a buried treasure, misplaced keys or a kidnapped terrier, and their path happened to coincide precisely with that of the bagman, the old man and the preacher. No matter, they were searching too.
They met a long-haired teenage girl carrying a yellow-nozzled red plastic gas can. It was empty. Her car had run out of fuel, and when the old man asked her to join them, she thought for a while, then shrugged and asked, “Why not?” No one had an answer for her, and she did not expect one, so none was good enough. They met an old prostitute in tennis shoes with a black eye and sagging knees. She had never seen no one never, she insisted, but then she tagged along a quarter block behind them. They met a small gang of boys in baseball caps and windbreakers who would not any of them answer the old man’s queries, who just stood and gaped at them with fear and revulsion in their eyes.
They slept in alleys and beneath the hedges that limned the parking lots of malls. They took turns bathing in gas station restrooms. “A bird bath for a funny, funny bird,” the old man said, shaking the water from his hands and winking at the long-haired girl. “A funny flock of birds.” They ate at minimarts and at liquor stores where bulletproof dividers separated the merchants from their wares. The preacher bought individually wrapped donuts and styrofoam cups of instant soup, but never shared his meals. The bagman endured stern glares from the preacher for shoplifting frozen burritos. He thawed them beneath his sweater and gave everyone a piece. The old man always refused his share. He didn’t seem to eat anything at all.
No one had seen the white-suited stranger, or would admit to having seen him. Deprived entirely of clues, his seekers had no reason to choose one direction over another, so they marched in concentric circles, in an unfolding spiral, to cover as much surface area as possible without having to commit to any single — and perhaps mistaken — bearing. Freeways got in their way, and gated lots, so they zigzagged where they had to. They spent two days following a man with an eye patch who told them he had received a coded message from the stranger on his transistor radio and knew precisely where he was, but who, when pressed for details would only sweep his arm broadly and shout, “Right over here, I’m telling you, right here.” A fat woman in a pink sweatsuit fell in with them. A cockatiel perched on her shoulder. “Think you’re much?” the bird screeched every twelve minutes, morning and night, “Know you’re living?” The long-haired girl threatened to strangle it, and the fat woman called her a skank. A three-legged greyhound trailed limping behind them, all ribs and half bald. The old man began lifting shrink-wrapped sandwiches and pre-sliced poundcake to feed it. Twice a police car shadowed them, cruising slowly behind them until without incident they crossed an invisible line dividing the municipality from the one that flanked it, at which point their pursuers lost interest in the chase.
Mainly they were silent. The preacher’s sandwich board beat against his calves. The lenses strung around his neck rattled against the board and against one another. The bagman’s bags rustled on his back. The wheels of the cripples’ wheelchairs squeaked, and the two of them conversed in rare whispers in a language known only to one another. The bird squawked right on schedule. Their feet collected calluses and blisters and the soles of their shoes wore thinner as they plodded down the pavement, across the avenues, and through the broken fields.
Sometimes the old man whistled, and sometimes he talked. The preacher scowled when he approached. He took this as encouragement and, with a spark of mischief in his eye, started in. “I don’t want you to take this wrong,” the old man began, “but have you ever considered another profession? I mean, something more suited to your strengths?” But the preacher could walk faster than the old man, and soon outdistanced him without a word in response.
Flushing the urinal in a QuickMart men’s room, the old man chatted up the twins as they sat wheel to wheel, brushing their teeth before the sink. He pointed to the video camera mounted on the tiled wall above the mirror. “You ever wonder,” the old man said, “if anybody’s watching?” The twins exchanged panicked glances. They looked at each other, at the camera, at the old man’s reflection in the mirror. Someone had scratched the words “Sureños rifan putos” in the glass. “I don’t just mean the cameras,” the old man continued. “Cause who could have time to watch all those things? It’s hard enough to keep an eye on what’s right in front of you. I’m talking about inside, inside your head. I mean who’s watching there? Who’s keeping track? Like when you say you don’t know how you feel about something and you decide to listen to your thoughts, to keep an eye on yourself, who’s doing the listening? Who’s watching and who’s being watched?” In unison, the twins shook their heads and spat toothpaste into the sink. “Everything keeps splitting in two,” the old man said. “Know what I mean?” As they wheeled out of the room without a word, the old man grinned. “Course you do,” he said.
He tried to tell the man with the eye patch a story about his wife. “She was not a small woman,” he began, “and I don’t mean that she was fat, though she wasn’t svelte. She was what they call big-boned, and tall to boot. First time I kissed her I made sure we were standing on a flight of stairs, and that she was three steps below me. Her tongue was the size of my whole face. I fell for her right there and then. I could c
limb her legs like trees. She’d cradle me like an infant in her arms. That’s the kind of girl for me, you lay her down, you need a sextant and a clear sky to navigate your way across.”
The man with the eye patch hid his ear behind his radio and broke into a jog. The old man tried again to chat up the cripples but they just nodded and said things he didn’t understand. The prostitute avoided him. The cockatiel talked, but it didn’t seem to listen and it always said the same thing. Its owner was no better a conversationalist. “Oh no,” she’d say whenever she saw him coming, “don’t you get me started.”
The old man winked at the long-haired girl and asked her why she’d joined them. “You’re a pretty girl,” he said, “what’re you running with these fools for?” She dug in her pack for a cigarette, but didn’t answer. “Oh,” said the old man, raising his eyebrows. “I see how it is. Someone went and broke your heart.”
The girl’s shoulders dropped a little. Her eyes fell to her feet, and the old man knew that he was right. His old man’s heart felt heavy, and he wanted to tell her not to take it too hard, not to hold on to it too long or too tight. He wanted to warn her to get used to it, that love is not the substance of this world. Maybe of some other one. Here the planets spin on yearning. But instead he laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “Don’t worry kid. There’s lots of fellas out there.” She shook him off and rushed ahead, hugging the empty gas can.
They walked all day, over steep, treeless hills, through weedy, smog-choked valleys. They followed the train tracks until a security guard chased them back into the streets. When at last they stopped to rest in the shade of an awning behind an empty warehouse, the old man crouched beside the bagman. The bagman pulled a piece of peanut brittle from a pocket, dusted off the lint, and offered it to the old man. The old man smiled gratefully, but shook his head. “You really seen him, huh?” he asked.
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