Just North of Nowhere

by Lawrence Santoro

  Roy looked. In the distance, the ocean should have flickered in moonlight, but didn’t. White breakers should have rippled. They did not. The edge of the world was a blackness that merely was! Not water, salt, sand, or chill, not the ever-rolling rhyme that had led him to sleep every night of his life before...before Bluffton. What was out there was a place he’d never been and from which he’d never return.

  “Puzzles you, huh?” Bedlam said. “Makes you want to stay; never go anywhere else.”

  Roy nodded.

  “Sad thing, Eugene. Going’s mandatory. When you gotta...” Bedlam shrugged. “Well, you know what they say!” Roy felt Bedlam’s shrug all along his side. “Who can stand that?! No one is who! A little terror, THAT’S what’s wanted! Scalable mountains, leapable gulfs.” Bedlam flicked a look at Roy. “A couple monsters to stare down. You know? They make life better. Don’t you think? Make it all bearable!”

  Roy nodded.

  “You’re born, okay?”

  Roy nodded.

  “The world’s nothing, just cold, hunger, warmth, food, and miracles. Nothing sensical about it! Then! Well, then you learn. You figure it out, you stop wondering about anything except the usual. You see?”

  Roy nodded.

  “The old ‘straight and narrow’. It’s dull, Roy, dull. That’s when we start nosing after things, you see? Scary stuff. Start collecting what might be wrong, things that could happen if, or would happen, probably. See? We do this because there, out there,” He pointed at the black horizon, “out there is that!”

  Roy nodded.

  “So people – rubes, you understand – need a few things that jump boo at ‘em! Just to nudge them, you understand?”

  Roy nodded.

  “That’s us! Bedlam and Swathe! The nudge. Terror in friendly dollops. The impossible in plausible gulps! We give the Rubes their darkness, cut and stitched, their fantods soothed to snoozey pusscats.”

  Suddenly Roy realized he was nodding again, his whole body rocking with agreement. He pulled back, almost jumped to his feet. The carnie had taken his quiet acceptance and had fed it back to him! Had him going like a yo-yo!

  What the hell do you want?”

  “We want your monsters, Eugene. Haven’t I said? The rampant beasties here,” he tapped Roy’s forehead, “the critters there,” he laid his hand on Roy’s chest.

  For a moment, the tears of the thing on his block popped into his head, the moist streaks in the light of the dying day.

  “Our stock in trade,” Bedlam shrugged, “our menagerie, now, alas, is beastless.” He hung his head. “Give them to us, Eugene. You do, you’re back on terra firm before...” Bedlam shimmied, the car rocked, the wheel swayed back and forth. Roy gripped the bar. “We’ll have you down before you disgrace yourself again.”

  “You want my outer people?”

  “’Outer’? How sweet. The outré, yes. What a lad, what a bright boy, it is. Our outrés, you see, aged, faded, dimmed, died. The menagerie, the chaosium – even Madam Adam’s slithery kootch is serpentless. You, Eugene,” Bedlam looked at Roy as though he were the world’s last banana split, “you are the dark continent, all the world’s jungles, its deepest sea-depths. How did that happen? Haven’t a clue! Not here! Not on the wheel! All the places where a body can be have already been passed here! You, Eugene... By the way,” Bedlam looked at Roy as though they’d just been introduced, “May I call you Eugene?”

  Roy nodded again. One sharp jerk of the head.

  “Eugene, you are the place where we must go to bring ‘em back alive!”

  Roy opened his mouth.

  Bedlam went on. “The blame, my friend? Mine, of course. Should I have been on top of it? Should. Was I? Wasn’t! Things were! Then? Then they were not. So here we are: a calm chaosium, a toothless menagerie, a meek extravaganza.” He drew Roy closer. “Son, may I call you son? Son, you are blessed with a discomfiture of monsters.” He looked down at Roy. “While we, alas, have lost our soul, as it were. Can you help?”

  Bedlam was still. Finally, Roy said, “Me, heal your soul? I can’t.”

  For a moment nothing. Then Roy felt Bedlam’s chuckle building.

  “What?” Roy said.

  “That was cobbled together, boy! Get it?”

  “What?”

  “Cobbled. As by a cobbler…? A mender of souls? Could also be a heeler! Good one, lad?”

  Below, the carnies tittered, then laughed aloud.

  Soon, his and the laughter of the carnies had merged and, finally, the laugh was real! The seat swung, the wheel rocked with it. Roy smiled, grabbed hold of the bar and hung on as the horizon rose and dipped. Finally, hilarity peaked and began to fade and Bedlam thumped Roy’s shoulder. “My boy, a mot muy juste! The aptest mot for the occasion and, in timing, precise! It would seem, son, that you are one of us – in spirit if not in body. Spirit if not body!” He leaned closer again. So, what say you, Eugene? Give us your monsters. Give us back our crowds, our time, the rubes who give substance to our stuff, hm?” Bedlam leaned back and fixed a proud smile beneath the warmth of his eyes. “At heart, you are us. One of the family, son.”

  “How can I give them? They’re not mine?”

  “Whose then?”

  “Their own, I guess.”

  “Phau! They’re not citizens. They can’t vote. Beasties don’t buy liquor, marry or bear arms. No one demands they school their young. Who stands for them, their rights and ways? Not even you! They’re all yours, little Rube, like marbles. And I want ‘em. We want em. The question is: Do you?

  That got him.

  “That got you, huh? Well, now, how about this? What’ll you take for them?”

  Got him again. Roy looked out at the world below.

  “You’re right, King Eugene. This is like the story: I take you to the top of the world, show you everything there is and say, ‘give me what I want and all this...’”

  “Well, Jeeze, I just don’t know how...”

  “Nothing simpler!” Bedlam pulled a document from his coat pocket. “You cede them with a contract!”

  Roy unfolded the document without taking his eyes off Bedlam.”

  “You knew we’d arrive at this point, yes? The circle, Eugene? Everyplace you’ll ever go, one time or other and blah, blah, blah. And, yes, we were always going to have this talk and, yup, it was always going to arrive at this point, right here!” Bedlam poked one stubby, hairy finger at the last line on the bottom of the final page. “Sign,” he said.

  Roy continued to stare at Bedlam.

  “Oh, by the way: I ain’t the devil and you’re not... Well, you know!

  “So? How do I...?”

  “Sign? Sign here.”

  “And what am I...?”

  “Right...here!”

  “But the monsters, they’re not here. Not now...”

  A squeaky voice come from nearby. “Yes we are,” it said. “We’re here. We’re here.”

  Bedlam was the worst ventriloquist Roy had ever seen. “That’s you!” Roy said.

  “No, it’s not!” the voice said.

  “Say ‘Willy Wimbledon’s wonderfully bodacious perpetual motion machine’” Roy said and watched Bedlam’s mouth.

  “’illy indulton’s underfully odacious eretual notion nachine!’” the voice said. Bedlam’s lips twitched, the voice was thrown no farther than his throat.

  “Okay,” Roy said, “okay, you can have them. Take them. Jeeze. I never wanted them in the first place!”

  “Zing go the strings of my heart!” Bedlam said as he stuck a quill in Roy’s hand. It dripped.

  “Blood?” he asked.

  “’Course!”

  “Mine?”

  “Of course.”

  “When did I...?” he began but gave it up. “Never mind. The circle, right?”

  “Of course.” Bedlam hovered, waited.

  “I should read this.”

  “It’s standard,” Bedlam said.

  “Because I want Leslie – she’s my friend,
Leslie – I want her to have a life that’s magic!”

  “She will, she will! It’s in there!”

  Roy squinted. The tiny words became smaller as he read; they wiggled on the page ahead of his eyes or skittered to the next line, flowed around the edges of the paper.

  “And another thing.” Roy lifted the pen. “Leslie again. She wants a hundred kids. Could she have that?”

  “Pshaw!” Bedlam said. “Page twenty-six!”

  “Huh…” he flipped the pages: 24, 25, 27, 28…

  “It’s there,” Bedlam said.

  Roy touched pen to paper. The blood ink flowed onto the paper in a thin line. The line twisted into “Eugene Roy”.

  Bedlam had the contract out of Eugene’s hand before the pen was off the paper. A thin line trailed from the name to the bottom of the page.

  The wheel sighed. The ground slipped up and ate the sky. The bar swung open and there was Roy, feet deep in sawdust. The bar clanged down, the seat swung away and the lights swirled. Mr. Bedlam, Mr. Swathe, the He-She, the fat and the bearded ladies, the others, spun past.

  “G’night,” Roy said. Somewhere, something said ‘goodnight’ back. Roy thought it was Mr. Bedlam’s ventriloquist voice, it sounded mostly like but Roy wasn’t sure.

  Ken was just about ready to give her up, take off, leave without...when a sudden wind whopped him in the kisser and the barker’s cane hooked the back of his shirt collar.

  “Whoa, younger,” pitchman said, “Ain’tcha heard? The show! It’s gotta go on!” The clatter and snare-drum buzz of the carnival kicked up a dozen notches in a sniff, color and light whomped him swirly. Racket kicked him in the head.

  Ken turned to face Madam Adam’s kootch. The tent flap blew wide. Smokey light poured forth and music grabbed his hips. The scent of snake and woman musk, that and stranger critters yet, washed his face, filled his nose, chest, groin. His knees knocked.

  “Come on, younger. You are a man can stand danger; munch terror like marzipan and piss spun sugar tales of derring-do! Madam Adam is open wide! One dime, only!”

  Ken’s hair roots perked and a chill spread down his back. “Oh, Lord,” he said and flipped the man a full hard-dollar. Ten times the joy! he shouted. The flap wrapped and drew him into the hiss and slither within.

  “Tell your chums!” the barker called and the tent flap slapped closed.

  Night was common, empty: owls caught rabbits, rabbits screamed. That was it.

  Used to be, he thought, night whispered. The whispers had been sort of mournful. He thought that night, once, had crossed his path. Silly! Okay. The wind in the trees was what some might call, ‘mournful’, might think it was spirits whispering, think it something horrible or dead for years. He’d thought that, anyway. Once; thought they were talking about HIM, the whispers. Made him think it might not be too bad, being one of them, himself! Stupid.

  “Outer,” he said. “Outré,” he corrected.

  Roy walked along Commonwealth back toward town from the park. The night seemed dryer. The trees along here, by the river, on the bluffs were... What? They were further apart from each other is what. The woods were kind of thin. The flow of the Rolling River over the dam was the boring sound of water falling. A sliver of moon barely lit the haze that gathered on the lawns and across the roadway. The Sons of Norway lodge looked... “Like just a run down shack,” he said.

  Everyone in town was asleep. Ahead, a dog hobbled across the road slowly. Just a dog.

  Outré. Roy snorted. Funny. All these years he thought daddy had said “Outer”. And, Christ! That was right.

  He stopped dead.

  It was his father that had said the word and the word was about him. He was the strange one, he was ‘outré’. Not the old man.

  Roy stood at the intersection, bottom of Slaughterhouse. It was he that had driven the old man away. The old man was just a guy who packed out because he couldn’t take his weird kid, all the time whimpering. Seeing shit; seeing things in walls, moving in rooms, crowding by in hallways. And there had been? Nothing. Kid stuff.

  He thought of his mother. Poor mother. What the hell could he do? She had no husband. She was left, just him, a bum car and a rented place by the ocean.

  And now, here. Christ. He couldn’t think about all this. Not now. Not at...

  He looked at his watch. Almost 3:45. What a fast night it had been.

  No. Not to worry. He’d go home. He’d sleep. He’d get up. He’d talk to his mother. Little bit by little bit, day by day, he’d make it up. He’d make something of himself. She wouldn’t be ashamed of him or be afraid for him. No.

  He walked uphill toward home. The street was quiet. Of course it was quiet. Cripes, it was night in a small town. No snuffling things crossed his path, nothing rustled the bushes, nothing flapped water or sucked mud from down by the river. Owls and rabbits only.

  At Leslie’s house, her window showed light. Still up, witching? He smiled. He was going to stop, toss a pebble at the pane; whisper back and forth with her.

  No. He wouldn’t. What would be the point? She was a good kid but, a kid. It was late. Early! A hundred kids! Witchcraft and hexes! He smiled, headed home; headed into the darkness.

  Chapter 24

  ABSENT THE SCENT OF PIE

  Why? Esther Elias had had it was why.

  What happened was she woke that morning, night still black around the town, silence in the bed next to her, as always. That was part of it! She woke in the quiet, the radium green of her travel alarm nearly faded at the tail end of night, as always, but something there was about that dial, about the length of that silence, or the hue of that morning’s dark, because that morning it came to her: she’d never heard the damn alarm go. She wound the clock every night, a religion of sorts, but she’d wound the alarm key only once: the day she’d bought the thing years before! Every morning she awoke and lay staring at the radium dial until just about, then, by God, hit the button just before! Done that for a couple dozen years.

  That morning, like all mornings, she lay there and considered pie while heart wished Hawaiian black sand beach. Like all mornings, she rolled on her back, stared at the ceiling and weighed one against the other: French apple, peach, cherry, the assortment of creams and meringues, banana, Boston and coconut, lemon and key lime or South Pacific sun?

  Considering, weighing, she inhaled the ghosts of a hundred thousand pies and more. Then she exhaled the day.

  Cripes! she realized that morning, I see each damn one!

  She did. Pie ghost soaked her rooms from the restaurant below. She saw the quirks of each Goddamn one, their little faces scored to let off steam, their cute Goddamn dough florets baked on, each unique, each baked in grades from cinnamon gold to negro brown. She examined all their little pretty bits, things only she would notice: an endearing chip from the rim of one, a crust gone lumpy here and sagged just there, dimples and blushes, or the uneven finish where the butter gloss had spread a funny kind of way. Each ghost pie was an ugly child who smiled its hidden beauty to its mom.

  One hundred and twenty three thousand, three hundred and seventy of them. She’d sat down and worked out the number once. A joke, yes. After that she kept a running count: Now, one hundred and twenty three thousand, three hundred and seventy. That morning, she realized that was no joke.

  And Marv gone now for how many of them pies? she thought. She damn well had to think that out! When she did, it didn't seem important anymore but he’d been gone for almost all. After a moment of dark consideration of her Bluffton years, she realized: Now’s just the last part of back then—plans me and Marv made thirty years ago in Philly… this is what’s left over.

  What?

  Nothing that included the daily making of pie.

  And the daily making of pie was all that held her in this cold room in this cold place.

  The window curtains bellied, rolled open, flapped hems at her.

  Huh, she thought, didn’t leave the damn window open did I?

  In the sti
ll-dark morning a colored light flickered.

  She tensed. Cops? she thought. Cripes! Twenty years in the Driftless and she was still a city girl. For Esther from south Philly, blinking lights said “Emergency! Outta the Goddamn way!”

  Her feet curled at the touch of autumn-cold linoleum. She cussed how close it was to rising time, cussed the problem-maker, cussed Vinnie. She cussed the morning limp that started at her hip and ran to her foot. That too.

  At the window: No cop car, no Vinnie. The flicker was in the sky, a wink sliding in silence leaving a faint trail.

  Lotta light for a damn aurora, shooting star, whatever she thought.

  The light blushed, settled down. Ain’t shooting stars. Ain’t auroras? Cripes, it ain’t the rapture, just a plane up there, going. “Pretty,” she said.

  Satisfied, disappointed, Esther looked back at the green time on her clock. Choose: pie or Hawaii? Get up and bake? Get up and get? A deep breath. Funny. It was always easy. Never a real question to it. Never…

  The dark room rang with a sharp brass chatter.

  Cripes! The damn alarm. THAT’s what it sounds like. She watched it as the bell rang down, slowed, paused, clanged again. Stopped.

  “Well, huh!” she said. She was about to make the same decision she’d first made ninety-eight thousand two hundred and seventeen pies before, the same damn pitiful decision when…

  Out in the universe, that patch of sliding light above the town went red, then orange, then yellow, green, blue, violet, gold, and back again.

  Huh?

  It winked again.

  More like a wrinkle, she thought. Esther winked back. Was that? She thought, is that a flying whatchacall? UFO? Saucer? Had some piece of the universal strange come to get her? Invite and take her? She shivered. Then, Christ, she recognized the shiver. Christ, she was afraid it wasn't that! Afraid it was nothing! Hell that’s it! She feared it never would be a saucer, UFO, or anything whatever out there. It would always be a weather balloon, a DC 10, or Seven-ought-something out from some city taking the high road so far up and so far away it didn't even sound a whisper down in Bluffton.