Laughing Man

by Wright, T. M.

  He'd have to think about it.

  Or maybe not.

  He looked down at himself, looked out his big window again as the naked morning twilight became morning in full dress.

  In time, he thought, he'd hang some clothes on himself.

  Williamson the Loon was certain that there was no never and no ever and no not and no possibility or probability or perhaps anywhere in the universe he breathed in and fucked in and ate in and died in; and he was certain that there was no died either. Ever. Never.

  For the first time in his existence he smiled a true smile.

  So many non-possibilities among the possibilities and improbabilities, and impossibilities brimming with nots and serial magic and the lasts of nothing. He might as well have been a flower blooming underwater or a planetoid caught in an hourglass or a blade of summer grass contemplating Nietzsche. Because he was the nothing that was all. He was the poet. He was the mother and father of poets and magic. He was the child of sandstone and night music. He devoured the soulless and became another evening or another afternoon.

  He was Williamson the Loon. Great evaporator. And resurrector. A small part of the bacterial whole. The bacterial whole turned to crude language and cruder gestures and a need for exposition.

  He was Williamson the Loon holding spleens in his teeth. He was Williamson the Loon following the blood around his body like a lover. He was Williamson the Loon needing to recreate. Himself. And all the whole. The subterranean bacterial self of himself that slipped naked through fissures and openings in granite to bustle about on streets built by that other species, the one transplanted on the earth from stardust and Mars meteorites.

  He was Williamson the Loon who, like that other species, had gotten it all wrong, and so needed to return and resurrect on another day. On the long day that was night and day. In the long year that was decade and century and millennium.

  What could end what?

  He slipped away, smiling his first-ever true smile. Knowing he slipped away to nothing from nothing and so became everything. In the long day, in the long year.

  This is what Jack Erthmun said to Patricia as they drove away from the Wee-Welcome Motel in the naked early morning twilight: "It is the magic of being."

  Patricia was driving. She liked to drive. Erthmun didn't. He found artifice in it that he couldn't understand or explain. If he had thought about it, he would invent this metaphor to describe it: That it was like a snail riding a bicycle.

  Patricia glanced confusedly at him and said, "Again, cryptic?"

  "Yes," he said. "Of course. People enjoy it. People enjoy cryptic. They need to know and not know all at the same time. They want answers but are always unsatisfied."

  "Not always," Patricia told him.

  "At the end, I think."

  "The end?"

  "When the earth comes alive again and swallows them up."

  "Oh."

  He said, "It is the magic of being. It is all the magic of being."

  She glanced at him, said nothing, watched the twilight change to something grander and less interesting.

  Erthmun said, "A rock might see us flexing our toes and declare that it was magic. But it would be magic only for the rock."

  "Jack, it would be magic simply for the rock to speak."

  "Oh, yes, wouldn't it," he said.

  She said nothing. She had no idea what he was talking about. But she thought that he knew what he was talking about.

  He went on, "Chocolate murders are an aberration, Patricia."

  "I think I know that."

  "They are such a thing as we do. Do you understand?"

  "On the face of it, yes." She turned the headlights off. Morning was upon them.

  "As if a rock were to come along and flex its toes," Erthmun said. "It would be magic for the rock to do that. But it would be a magic that needed to pass away. Do you understand?"

  "No."

  "Because only creatures such as ourselves flex our toes. Rocks don't. And shouldn't."

  Patricia came to a stop at a red light that seemed to have been placed, she thought, in the middle of nowhere. A semi loaded with car parts whizzed around her and through the light. "Jesus," she breathed. "He'll kill someone."

  Erthmun said, "He already has."

  She glanced at him. "Huh?"

  "Or someone else has. Someone also with a brain between two ears and genitals waiting to be put to their proper use and hands to caress and also to do murder."

  She glanced at him again. "Good Lord, Jack, you're being almost . . . Shakespearean this morning."

  "I wouldn't know that," he said.

  "Read him, you'll understand."

  Jack shrugged. "I will."

  Patricia leaned forward, noted that the light was green, looked right, left, went through.

  Jack said, "We never stay. Patricia, we never stay. We always come and go. We always try to get it right."

  "What do we try to get right, Jack?"

  He looked out his window. "Living on the earth," he said.