by Jarett Kobek
Celia did the only thing that she could.
She called in the Big Dog.
She summoned Rusticano.
He’d been off Fairy Land for three hundred years.
There had been no word in a century.
But he had lived on Fairy Land for centuries and the background radiation of its magic had made him undying.
He was somewhere on Earth.
Celia cast a spell.
Rusticano was transported straight into the house on the hill.
He arrived midsentence, in a burst of light and untamed magic.
“… und deshalb empfehle ich immer einen Tampon,” he said.
In the Gray’s Inn adaptation of Tom a Lincoln, Rusticano occupies the traditional role of an Elizabethan/Jacobean clown.
He’s a lower-class brute in a fictional world where everyone else in resplendent in their finery and goes on about Fairy Queens and dragons.
Rusticano is the one who, in the middle of a speech about the redemptive blood of the Savior, can be relied upon to unleash the world’s most unholy fart.
It’s the simplest of things, but the device works.
The device always works.
Upper-class social mores, as constructed by the middle-class people who create cheap entertainments, are structured around a pretense that people with money and power believe themselves to be something more than dumb animals.
Enter Rusticano’s fart.
What greater rebuke to the pretense of non-animal man than the trumpet-like sound of stinky methane being expelled from a clown’s ass?
But that was just a play written to amuse rich kids.
There was a real Rusticano, and other than the name, he shared nothing in common with his fictional iteration.
Rusticano was a human oddity.
He was the one man who’d come to Fairy Land and escaped the hangman’s noose.
After the Red-Rose Knight was killed by Orson’s shit, the women of Fairy Land rounded up all of the Red-Rose Knight’s men.
The men died screaming.
Every single one of the men had defended themselves with weaponry and brute force.
Except Rusticano.
In the massacre, Rose Byrne had been the chief executioner, but she didn’t command the task force. Leadership fell to Celia, who stood on a chariot pulled by Fairy Land’s meanest buckskin stallions.
Her warrior women followed behind like a bridal train.
When the chariot arrived at the Babbling Brook of Sorrow, where Rusticano spent his days, Rusticano did not flee. He did not pull out his sword.
He stood and faced the women.
“Hail Rusticano,” cried Celia. “The time has come for your demise.”
“What is my crime, lady?” asked Rusticano.
“No crime, sir,” said Celia. “Only that you are a man in Fairy Land. No men shall remain on this island. Your leader is dead. Your friends are dead. You too shall join them in nevermore.”
Rusticano kneeled down and picked up a rock.
The women of Fairy Land drew back their arrows and unsheathed their swords.
Rusticano tossed the rock into the Babbling Brook.
“Are you certain,” he asked, “that I am a man?”
“What else would you be?” asked Celia.
“No one has ever told Rusticano what makes a man, so how can Rusticano judge for himself? Can you tell me?”
“A man is the opposite of a woman,” said Celia.
“Do I not have the same arms and legs as you, do I not have the same head? Should not an opposite be in direct opposition to the thing it opposes?”
“Your body is different than ours,” said Celia.
“Are your bodies so similar?” asked Rusticano. “Look at the skinny maid, holding her axe. Is her body the same as the fat one who cripples the horse? Are those differences so much less than the distance of my body from yours?”
“Too much prattle, fair Rusticano,” said Celia. “Your talk will not save you.”
“Lady,” said Rusticano. “I am happy to die if you wish it. But I have shared your salt and lived as your guest, and I have given you my own gift, and by those sacred and ancient terms, I claim certain rights. I demand to know why I should die. Tell me, then, what makes a woman and what makes me not a woman.”
“Do you bleed with the moon?” asked Celia.
“I do not,” said Rusticano. “But is that what makes a woman? I vow to you here that I shall take the sword to my flesh with every full rise and let flow as much blood as you demand.”
“Where are your breasts?” asked Celia.
“Again, lady,” said Rusticano. “I have no breasts but I see at least three women here with chests flatter than mine. Are they not women?”
“What of that prick between your legs?” asked Celia.
“Are we so certain that it is a prick?” asked Rusticano.
“What else would it be?” asked Celia.
“I would caution against defining a thing by its appearance,” said Rusticano. “How many chairs are there on this island? Each looks different from the others and yet we see them and know that they are chairs. This is because a chair is a thing for sitting upon, and as with a prick, it is defined not by its appearance but rather by its function. So tell me, lady, if this is a prick, then what is its function?”
“You piss through your prick,” said Celia. “And you put it inside a woman.”
“These are the two functions of a prick?” asked Rusticano. “These are what define a prick, and you say that having a prick is what defines me as a man?”
“Yes,” said Celia. “I put this to you as the reason why you must die.”
“And will you swear by this definition?” asked Rusticano. “Will you swear by it before the hospitality under whose banner I now march?”
“I swear it,” said Celia.
“And you speak that oath with the full force of your reign?” asked Rusticano. “This definition is the law of Fairy Land?”
“It is,” said Celia.
“If the two functions of the prick are to piss on the earth and make shame in a woman,” said Rusticano, “then are not all women of Fairy Land halfways a man? For do not all of you piss the same as me? You may claim that your piss issues forth from a different place than my own, but Rusticano says that the piss is defined by itself in its own state of being and not its source. When someone speaks a word, do you concentrate on the teeth and the tongue? Nay, you heed the final issuance. When my piss is on the ground, does it demonstrate any difference from your own puddles? Nay, lady, I suggest that this cannot be a function that defines a prick.”
“You are right,” said Celia. “A prick is a prick because it goes into a woman.”
“Then lady,” said Rusticano, “I ask you to find a single woman here on Fairy Land in whom I’ve entered. I’ve pricked none of your island. I’ve pricked no woman anywhere in the world. How often did you laugh when the Red-Rose Knight made sore jests about my untried virginity? I submit to you that by your own definition what hangs here is no prick. I know not what I am, lady, but I further submit that Rusticano is no man.”
Rusticano stayed on Fairy Land.
Centuries ticked off.
He was transformed into an immortal supranatural creature, but he never developed the ability to cast spells.
Rusticano was not accepted as a full member of Fairy Land’s society.
He was just this person who lived in a cave near the Babbling Brook of Sorrow.
Rusticano developed a reputation.
He was someone who could talk his way through anything.
Sometimes the women of Fairy Land relied on Rusticano to solve problems.
Like when Freita Muscleback and Bianca Findlay both fell in love with Youna Shifa.
Love affairs on the island were especially fraught with peril.
If something went really wrong, everyone would be stuck dealing with the consequences for centuries.
This model of old lovers’
inescapability was something that the mortal world would later duplicate in the form of Facebook.
The social media platform had doomed everyone in the mortal world to the worst possible fate: living in a small town where they never ever lost contact with the people whom they’d fucked in high school, and worse yet, seeing the people whom they’d fucked in high school post daily updates on the topic of White Supremacy.
White Supremacy was a rhetorical device that’d been developed to describe the unfathomable social advantages that allowed the dominant social group in America to experience hereditary social wealth, primarily at the expense of people descended from African slaves who, once upon a time, literally had been that wealth.
The very expression of the concept drove a lot of people crazy.
They denied that it existed.
They stamped their feet and put their fingers in their ears.
But c’mon.
Of course White Supremacy was real.
The author knows better than anyone.
He is nothing but the product of White Supremacy.
He was raised in a single-parent household!
Child of divorce!
Rhode Island!
Traumatized by an early violent death in the family!
And his father was a Muslim!
And an immigrant from the Middle East!
And a member of the proletariat!
And an alcoholic!
#MENA!
And even with these obvious deviations, White Supremacy still carried me to the promised land of a commercial failure published with Nazi money by Penguin Random House.
Meanwhile, Byron Crawford, who is the best writer that you’re not reading, was self-publishing his own books.*
And Ernest Baker had to do the same thing with Black American Psycho, one of the previous five years’ most interesting novels.
Published through fucking Amazon.com!
Print on demand!
So, yes, fucking obviously.
White Supremacy is real.
But the fact of its existence in no way alleviates the tedium of Facebook updates on the topic. Particularly those written by your high-school sweetheart.
On the day when Freita Muscleback and Bianca Findlay realized that they were both in love with Youna Shifa, they approached Rusticano.
Rusticano was in his cave by the Babbling Brook of Sorrow.
“What is the nature of the problem?” asked Rusticano.
“We both love Youna,” said Freita. “Has anyone ever told you about Boadicea Thrumpguts?”
“The bloody story,” said Rusticano. “I know it well. I wonder if the nature of your problem is not love, but rather something else. You would agree that love is predicated on an object of love? If one loves, then one must necessarily love something?”
“That is right,” said Freita.
“Would you also agree that if love is predicated on an object of that love, then one cannot love nothing?”
“Yes,” said Bianca. “It is impossible to love nothing.”
“If the lover must necessarily love something or someone, then does the lover love the beloved based on contingent actions, or does the lover love because she recognizes a quality in the beloved that is a mirror of a greater love?”
“I am not sure that I follow, Rusticano,” said Bianca.
“Do you love your mother?” asked Rusticano.
“Yes, Rusticano,” said Bianca.
“On what basis do you love her?” asked Rusticano. “Is it because of an action that she performed?”
“No,” said Freita. “One is born with a love of her mother.”
“If this love is not contingent,” said Rusticano, “then may we say that it is based not on the actions of the beloved, but rather some quality that the lover can recognize even before she speaks words?”
“You are correct,” said Freita.
“Then why are you worrying over whether the actions of the beloved affect the nature of the lover’s love?”
“I don’t understand,” said Freita.
“When your beloved is occupied with something other than yourself, such as preparing a meal or hunting a deer, do you stop loving them?”
“No,” said Bianca.
“If you agree that the beloved does not impede the lover’s love with the performance of tasks unrelated to the lover’s love, then why should the lover’s love be affected by the beloved’s love of another? Do you fault your beloved when she expresses love for her sister? Does the lover’s love diminish because the beloved loves a family member?”
“No,” said Bianca.
“If you say that a beloved’s love for another does not detract from the lover’s love, then would you admit that when the lover experiences jealousy, it cannot be from any diminishing of love that is reactive to the beloved’s actions?”
“Yes,” said Freita.
“Rusticano would suggest that this jealousy is not above love, but rather its opposite, which is the fear of loving nothing. When your beloved loves another, and your fears rise up, you must remember that your fear is not of a fear of your own diminished love, but rather fear that you are loving nothing. But as we have proven it is impossible to love nothing, then this fear is without base and is a meaningless thing.”
“You are right there, Rusticano,” said Freita.
This went on for hours.
By the end of it, Freita and Bianca had agreed to share the love of Youna Shifa. It was going to be the Fairy Land version of San Francisco polyamory. The only problem was that no one had bothered to ask Youna Shifa if she loved Freita or Bianca.
She didn’t.
The centuries passed.
Rusticano grew bored with the island. He asked Celia to send him to the mortal world, where he would make his way.
She agreed.
The only condition was that once Rusticano left the island, he could never return.
He departed.
Word filtered back through the usual channels.
Rusticano was in Spain.
Rusticano was in Germany.
Rusticano had opened a business.
Rusticano’s business sold luggage.
Rusticano’s business was evolving into fashion.
After the psychic cataclysm of World War One, there were no more reports.
At the very moment that he disappeared in a flash of untamed magic, Rusticano was sitting in a Coffee Fellows at München Hauptbahnhof’s northeast corner.
He was eating an egg bagel sandwich and talking to his friend Liv Lisa Fries.
And then, like that, he was standing face-to-face with Celia in the house on the hill.
“My lady,” he said. “It has been too long.”
“I have need of you, Rusticano,” said Celia. “The debt comes due.”
“Payment in full,” he said. “I am yours to command.”
Celia told Rusticano about her children and their conversion to Christianity.
“What would you have me do?” asked Rusticano.
“Talk them away from their folly,” said Celia. “Get them out of that building. Convince Fern to come back to Fairy Land.”
Celia tried to drive Rusticano to Stanford Avenue, but Rusticano insisted that before they departed, he be allowed to drive the Jaguar around the neighborhood.
He said that he was a fan of vintage British engineering.
“How will you find your way?” asked Celia.
“Rusticano keeps a smartphone upon his person,” said Rusticano. “But I require that you cast a spell and turn on its international roaming.”
Celia cast the spell.
Rusticano owned a Samsung Galaxy Note 8. He’d installed LineageOS 14.1, an open source fork of CyanogenMod, which was itself an open source fork of Google’s Android OS.
When Rusticano returned from his neighborhood sojourn, he carried a black duffle bag.
He did not explain the bag.
He informed Celia that she could drive them to
Stanford Avenue.
They headed downtown.
“In my experience, people with religious beliefs are the least open to reason,” said Rusticano. “Yet Rusticano has his ways. My only request is that you do not interfere with my deeds.”
“By my leave,” said Celia, “I vow that I shall not interrupt you.”
“No matter the action?”
“No matter the action,” said Celia.
“The nature of the problem is that they are in this building and will not leave this building?” asked Rusticano.
“They believe they are doing the work of Jesus Christ,” said Celia.
“They always do,” said Rusticano.
“Have you read the Bible?” asked Celia.
“Once,” said Rusticano. “Many years ago.”
“Jesus was weird as fuck,” said Celia.
“I imagine that had he come to Fairy Land, a crucifixion would have been the least of his worries.”
Celia parked the car in front of the TUNA EXPRESS CO.
They followed the line of bodies inside the building.
They went up to the second floor.
They went into the backroom.
Fern was pumping out her brother’s blood into the mouths of several homeless men.
The Fairy Knight was on the table, half dazed.
“You say that you believe in Jesus Christ and do his works?” asked Rusticano of Fern.
“We do,” said Fern.
“Nothing can shake you in your faith?” asked Rusticano.
“Nothing,” said Fern. “We have been baptized. We are his.”
“What say you, Fairy Knight?” asked Rusticano. “Are you too unshakeable in your faith?”
“Totally, completely, utterly,” groaned the Fairy Knight.
Rusticano paused.
Rusticano thought.
“You may not remember,” said Rusticano, “but the Red-Rose Knight was my bosom friend. I knew the man when he was still Tom a Lincoln, and I was there when we crowned his head with a laurel of roses.”
“We remember,” said Fern.
“I wager that I knew the man better even than your mother understood him,” said Rusticano. “I never shared his bed, but I spent more time with him than any other.”
“Our father would not object to our service,” said Fern.
“Oh, I have no doubt that he would not,” said Rusticano. “The Red-Rose Knight would offer no dissent from this practice. But do you heed Rusticano when he says that the Red-Rose Knight was the stupidest man that he ever met? Your father was a jumped-up fool who believed that he was better than Lincoln, and for his delusion, all he earned was a few years between the thighs of a fairy queen before he drank a glass of water filled with filth. I grant you that this is more than most men, but it does not change anything. Children, your father was a jackanapes, and while the royal blood of England and the royal blood of Fairy Land flows through your veins, I fear that you have not inherited any of your mother’s wisdom. Do you know that the woman asked me here to dissuade you from your perverse hobby? Rusticano agreed. Rusticano thought about his best method of attack, considering every possible avenue of criticism. Then Rusticano remembered. There is only one way to deal with religious people, and there is only one way to deal with the grandchildren of King Arthur, a man who I also met, and who, if I may say so, rivaled your father for his stupidity.”