Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

by Beagle, Peter S.

  “Susie’s looking fine, don’t you think?” I asked him. “I mean, for having been dead and all.”

  Oh, that reached him. That got his attention. He looked at me then, all right, and he answered, real slow and cold and careful, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, Esau,” I said. “Tomorrow I might wake up remembering mostly whatever you want me to remember, the way you do people, but right now, tonight, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to sit here and talk to me—”

  “Or what?” Those two words cracked out of him just like a whip does—there’s the forward throw, almost gentle, like you’re fly-fishing, and then the way you bring it back, that’s what makes that sound. He didn’t say anything more, but the color had drained right out of his eyes, same way it happened with Donnie Schmidt. Didn’t look much like the TV now.

  I asked him, “You planning to make me a ghost too? Kill me off in a plane crash a few weeks ago? I ought to tell you, I hate flying, and everybody knows it, so you might want to try something different. Me, I always wanted to get shot by a jealous husband at ninety-five or so, but it’s your business, I wouldn’t presume.” I don’t know, something just took me over and I didn’t care what I said right then.

  He didn’t answer. We could hear Susie rattling things in the kitchen, and Willa singing softly to her kids upstairs. Got a pretty voice, Willa does. Wanted to do something with it, but what with school, and then there was Jerry, and then there was the trouble starting with Ma… well, nothing ever came of it somehow. But I could see Esau listening, and just for a minute or so he looked like somebody who really might have had a sister, and maybe a brother too, and was just visiting with them for the evening, like always. I took the moment to say, “Papa was funny, wasn’t he, Esau? Getting us backwards like that, with the naming?”

  He stared at me. I shrugged a little bit. I said, “Well, you think about it some. Here’s Jacob, which I’m named for, cheating Esau out of his inheritance, tricks him into swapping everything due him for a mess of chicken soup or some such. But with us… with us, it kind of worked out t’other way round, wouldn’t you say? I mean, when you think about it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said it in the TV voice, but his eyes still weren’t his TV eyes, reassuring everyone that the world hadn’t ended just yet. “Papa was as crazy as Ma, only different, and our names don’t signify a thing except he was likely drunk at the time.” He slammed his hand on the table, setting all the dishes Susie hadn’t cleared off yet to rattling. Esau lowered his voice some. “I never stole anything from you, Jake Robbins. I wouldn’t have lowered myself to it, any more than I’d have lowered myself to take along a lump of sand-covered catshit from this litterbox of a town, the day I finally got out of here. The one thing I ever took away was me, do you understand that, brother? Nothing more. Not one damn thing more.”

  His face was so cramped up with anger and plain contempt that I couldn’t help putting a finger out toward him, like I was aiming to smooth away a bunch of rumples. “You want to watch out,” I said. “Crack your makeup.” Esau came to his feet then, and I really thought he was bound to clock me a good one. I said, “Sit down. There’s ladies in the house.”

  He went on glaring in my face, but by and by he kind of stood down—didn’t quite sit, you understand, but more leaned on the table, staring at me. He’d cracked his makeup, all right, and I don’t mean the stuff they’d put on his skin for the filming. You wouldn’t want that face telling you any kind of news right then.

  “I bet Papa knew,” I said. “Ma just had like a glimmer of the truth, but Papa… likely it’s how come he drank so much, and read the Bible so crazy. It’s his side of the family, after all.”

  Esau said it again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” but there wasn’t much what you might call conviction in the words. It’s an odd thing, but he was always a real bad liar—embarrassing bad. I’d guess it’s because he’s never had to lie in his life: he could always make the lie be true, if he cared to. Handy.

  I said, “I’m talking about genetics. Now there’s a word I hadn’t had much use for until recently—knew what it meant, more or less, and let it go at that. But there’s a deal to genetics when you look close, you know?” No answer; nothing but that bad-guy stare, with something under it that maybe might be fear, and maybe not. I kept going. “Papa and his Bible. There’s a lot in the Bible makes a lot more sense that way, genetics. What if… let’s say all those miracles didn’t have a thing to do with God, nor Moses, nor Jesus, nor Adam’s left ball, whatever. What if it was all people like you? Two, three, four, five thousand years of people like you? The Bible zigs and zags and contradicts itself, tells the same story forty ways from Sunday, and don’t connect up to nothing half the time, even to a preacher. But now you back off and suppose for one moment that the Bible’s actually trying to record a world that keeps shifting this way and that, because people keep messing with it. What would you say about that, Esau?”

  Nothing. Not a word, not a flicker of an eyelid, nothing for the longest time—and then, of all things, my brother began to smile. “Declare to goodness,” he said, and it wasn’t the smooth TV voice at all, but more like the way his mouth was born, as we say around here. “Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while. Continue, please. You have all my attention.”

  “No, I don’t yet,” I said back to him, “but I will. Because with genetics, it’s a family thing. Somebody in a family has a gift, a talent, there’s likely to be somebody else who has it too. Oh, maybe not the same size or shape of a gift, but close enough. Close enough.”

  I surely had his attention now, let me tell you. His hands were opening and closing like leaves starting to stir when a storm’s coming. “Willa doesn’t have that thing you have,” I said, “none of it, not at all. She’s the lucky one. But I do. Wouldn’t have guessed it before, not even seeing what you’d done, but now I know better. That same power to mess with things, only I guess I never needed to. Not like you.”

  Esau started to say something, but then he didn’t. I said, “I turned out pretty lucky myself. I had Middy Jo—for a while, anyway. I got a job suited me down to the ground. Didn’t have nearly so many people to get even with as you had, and the ones I did I have I mostly forgot over time. I was always forgetful that way. Forget my head, it wasn’t screwed on.” Papa always used to say that about me, the same way he used to say Willa’d make some woman a great husband, because she could get the car started when he couldn’t. Never yet heard old Jerry Flores complain.

  “What you did to Donnie Schmidt,” I said. “What you did to Susie. What I know you did to a few other folks, even though you made sure the rest of everybody didn’t remember. It all scared me so bad, I would never gone anywhere near power like that, if I’d known I had it.”

  Esau’s voice was sort of thickish now, like he was trying not to cry, which surely wasn’t the case. He said, “You can’t do what I do.”

  “You know better than that, Esau. Same way I know you’ve never bent reality towards even one good thing. I watch you on the TV, every night, just about, and everything you report on—it’s death, it’s all death, nothing but death, one way or another. A million baby girls left out on the street in China, a raft full of people capsizes off Haiti, some kid wipes out a whole schoolyard in Iowa, there’s more people starving in Africa, getting massacred, there’s suicide bombers and serial killers all over the place—it’s you, it’s your half of the genetics. It’s what you are, Esau, and I’m sorry for you.”

  “Don’t be.” It was only a whisper, but it came at me like a little sideways swipe from one of those old-time straight razors, the kind Papa had. Esau said, “You’re the good one.” It wasn’t a question. “Well, who’d have thought it? My loud-mouthed, clumsy, stupid big brother turns out to be the superhero in the closet, the champion with a secret identity. Amazing. Just shows you something or other. Truly amazi
ng.”

  “No,” I said. “No, I don’t care about that. I just wanted you to know I know. About the genetics and so forth.” And then I said it—because he’s right, I am stupid. I said, “You’re trying to be the Angel of Death, Esau, and I’m just so sorry for you, that’s all.”

  He’d been looking toward the kitchen, like he expected something—or maybe didn’t expect it—but now he turned around on me, and I’m not ever about to forget what I saw then. It was like we were kids again, and he was screaming at me, “I would be a nice God! I would!” Except now the scream was all in his eyes: they were stretched wide as wide, like howling jaws, and the whites had gone too white, so they made the pupils look, not black, but a kind of musty, crumbly gray, like his eyes were rotting, nothing left in there but gray anger, gray pain, gray brick-lined schoolyards, where my brother Esau learned what he was. I’d been halfway joking when I’d said that about the Angel of Death. Not anymore.

  “Sorry for me, Jake?” It wasn’t the razor-whisper, but it wasn’t any voice you’d have recognized, either. Esau said, “Sorry for me? I’m on television, asshole. I’m a star. Have you the slightest notion of what that means? It means millions—millions—of people inviting me into their homes, listening to me, believing in me, trusting me. Hell, I’m a family member—a wise old uncle, a mysteriously well-traveled cousin, dropping by to tell them tales of the monsters and fools who run their lives, of the innocents who died horribly today, the people murdered to please somebody’s god, the soldiers being sent to die in some place they never heard of, the catastrophes waiting to happen tomorrow, unless somebody does something right away. Which they won’t, but that isn’t my work. I can’t claim credit there.”

  He smiled at me then, and it was a real smile, young and joyous as you like. He said, “Don’t you understand? They love death, all those people, they love what I do—they need it, no matter how awful they say it is. It’s built into the whole species, from the beginning, and you know it as well as I do. You may be the Good Angel, but I’m the one they hang out with in the kitchen and the living room, I’m the one they have their coffee with, or a beer, while I smile and lay on some more horror for them. Meaning no offense, but who wants what you’re selling?”

  “Those people who watch you don’t know what they’re buying,” I said back. “Your stories aren’t just stories, you aren’t just reporting. You’re making real things happen in the real world. I see you on the TV and I can feel all those things you talk about, and explain about, and tell folks to be afraid of, I can feel them coming true, every night. It’s like Ma said, your stories kill people.” He didn’t turn a hair, or look away, and I didn’t expect him to. I said, “And I keep wondering, how many like us might be doing the same right now, all over everywhere. Messing with people, messing with the world so nothing makes no sense, one day to the next, so most everybody gets run over in the end, like Donnie Schmidt. You suppose that’s all we can do? That’s all it’s for, this gift we’ve got? This heritage?”

  Esau shrugged. “No idea. It suits me.” He gave me that smile again, made him look like a happier little kid than he ever was. “But why should it concern you, Jake? Are you planning to devote the rest of your life to writing letters to my sponsors, telling them I’m the source of all the pain and misery in the world? I’ll be very interested in watching your efforts. Fascinated, you could say.”

  “No,” I told him. “I’ve got a store to run, and I meet Earl Howser and Buddy Andreason for breakfast at Buttercup on Tuesdays, and it’s not my place to chase around after you, fixing stuff. What I know’s what I know, and it don’t include putting the world back the way it ought to be. It’s too late for that. Way too late for heroes, champions, miracles. Don’t matter what our heritage was maybe meant for—your side got hold of it first, and you won long ago. No undoing that, Esau, I ain’t fool enough to think otherwise. I’m still sorry for you, but I know your side’s won, this side the grave.”

  He wasn’t listening to me, not really. Just about all his attention was focusing on the kitchen right then, because Susie’d begun whistling while she was clattering pots in the sink. She could always whistle like a man, Susie could. Esau took a step toward the sound.

  “I wouldn’t,” I advised him. “Best leave her be for a bit. What with one thing another, she’s not real partial to you just now. You know how it is.”

  He stopped where he was, but he didn’t answer. Halfway crouched, halfway plain puzzled—I’ve seen dogs look like that, when they couldn’t figure what to do about that big new dog on the block. He said, real low, “I didn’t bring her back.”

  “No,” I said. “You couldn’t have.”

  He didn’t hear that right off; then he did, and he was just starting to turn when Susie came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a dishtowel and asking, “Jake, would you like me to wash that old black roasting pan while I’m at it?” Then she saw Esau standing there, and she stood real still, and he did too. Lord, if I closed my eyes, I’d see them like that right now.

  I stood up from the table, so that made three of us on our feet, saying nothing. Esau was breathing hard, and I couldn’t hardly tell if Susie was breathing at all. That made me anxious—you know, considering—so I said, “Esau was just leaving. Wanted to say goodbye.”

  Neither of them paid the least bit of attention to me. Susie finally managed to say, “You’re looking well, Esau. That’s a really nice tie.”

  Esau’s voice sounded like a cold wind in an empty place. He said, “You’re rotting in the ground. You’re bones.”

  “No.” Susie’s own voice was shaky, but stronger than his, some way. “No, Esau, I’m not. I refuse.”

  She sort of peeked past him at me as she said that, and Esau caught it. He turned.

  “Susie stays,” I said. I was madder than I ever remembered being, and I was wound up, ready to go at whoever, let’s do it, just pick your weapons. And I was heavily spooked, too, because pretty much the only mix-ups I’ve been in my whole life, they were always about hauling some guy off my baby brother one more time. Heritage or not, I’m no fighter, never wanted to be one. It’s just I always liked Susie.

  As for the way Esau stared at me, it did clear up a few things, and that’s about all I’m going to tell you. I looked back into those TV eyes, and I saw what lived in there, and I thought, well, anyway, I’ve still got a sister. If you can get through the rest of your life without ever having that feeling, I’d recommend it.

  Esau said, “She goes back where she belongs. Now.”

  “She didn’t belong there in the first place,” I said to him. “Leave her be, Esau. She’s got no business being dead.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. His lips were twitching like they didn’t belong to his face. “Stay out of it, Jake.”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “I can’t fix up all the things you do, what you’ve already done. Might be Superman, Spiderman, Batman could, but it’s not in me, I’m no hero. I’m just a stubborn man who runs a hardware store. But I always liked Susie. Nice girl. Terrific whistler. Susie’s not going back nowhere.”

  Even a little bit younger, I’m sure I’d have been showing off for her, backed away against the wall as she was, looking like a lady tied up for the dragon. But I wasn’t showing off for anybody right then, being almost as scared as I was angry. Esau sighed—very dramatic, very heavy. He said, “I did warn you. Nobody can say I didn’t warn you. You’re my brother, after all.”

  I started to answer him, but I can’t remember what I meant to say, because that was when Esau hit me. Not with his fists, but with such a blast of—I still don’t know what to call it… hatred? Contempt? Plain meanness?—that it knocked me off my feet and right over my chair. For a moment I swear I thought I’d caught on fire. My head wouldn’t work; nothing worked; it was like every single string in my body had been cut—I couldn’t even flop around on the floor. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I was.

  Susie
screamed, and Esau hit me again. That time I did flop around, after I slid across the floor and fetched up against the wall. To this day I can’t honestly explain how it felt—been trying to describe it to myself for years. Best I can do is that it wasn’t like an electric shock, and it wasn’t really like being burned, or beaten up either, although I was all over bruises next day. It was more… it was more like he was unmaking me, like he was starting to take me apart, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, so I wouldn’t exist anymore—I wouldn’t ever have existed, he’d never have had a brother. I could feel it happening, and I tell you, I’ll never be scared of anything again.

  But I didn’t die. I mean, I didn’t get lost, the way he wanted me to. Susie ran to me, but I managed to wave her off, because I didn’t want her getting caught between us. Esau went on hammering me with whatever it was he had that let him smash planes out of the sky, trains off the tracks, set mudslides boiling down on little mud villages. But it wasn’t hurting me anymore, not like it had been. I was still me. He hadn’t been able to make me not be, you understand?

  I got my back against the wall and pushed myself up till I was on my feet. Took more time than you might think—I work, I don’t work out—and anyway Esau just kept at me, like point-blank, coming close up to me now and knocking me this way and that, one belt of crazy rage after another. I couldn’t do much about it yet, but he couldn’t quite put me down again, either.

  I did tell him to stop it. Same way he warned me, I told him to stop. But he wouldn’t.

  So I stopped him. Or the thing stopped him, the thing that had been rousing up in me all this time, while he was whupping the daylights out of me. It burst out of me like from a flamethrower, searing me—mouth, throat, chest, guts—way worse than anything Esau’d done to me, and slamming me back against the wall harder than he had. I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t hear a thing, and right that moment, that’s when I did think I was going to die. Looked forward to it, too, just then.