by A. R. Moxon
Love raised the axe and struck it with all the strength he possessed. The force of the blow numbed his hands, but the axe-head caromed off the unmarked surface. He cried out, and struck again, and again, and again, assailed his adversary in precise rhythm, until at last the axe handle snapped a half-inch below the head and the iron flew flipping back over him, coming to rest at the far end of the corridor near the foot of the stairs. The door stood absolutely unmarked, without splinter or blemish, without the slightest mar as record of the assault. Love shrieked; the door was hexed. To be frustrated in his pursuit by nothing but thin planks of wood…Love cursed; in his rage he battered the clay floor with the useless stave, and then, with the abrupt and determined bearing that marked all his actions, he silenced himself and withdrew, pausing only to stoop and collect the axe head. Shoulder cannot buckle the hinges, nor iron splinter the wood? The shovel next. If one cannot go through, one must dig around.
He found Frankie curled into a ball and sucking on one big thumb. Love lifted the top half of the boy and dragged him into the woodland tunnel and waited for him to awaken. Finally, he commenced to nudging him in the ribs with his boot until he was roused. He was pleased to see the boy was not reduced to an infant. Frankie still knew how to stand, and to walk, and to speak. He knew what hunger was, and what it was to be frightened, but he remained void of thought or notion particular to himself. Love spoke to him in soothing tones, and produced some dried fruit from his poke. With these and other inveiglements, he calmed the boy, and taught him his Christian name back to him, and fabricated certain truths for him to gnaw on. Love—creating this boy back to himself as he would shape a tool at the forge, but by instinct alone, without the practice he had in the honing of iron, decided to keep him away from the others entirely. Your name is Frankie. Eighteen years old. You are a brave boy, and strong, and good. And your whole life, until this day, you have been deaf and dumb. Today there has been, it would seem, a miracle. Frankie, you have in some wise (how I do not know) purchased your tongue and your ears at the cost of your memory. All men have hated you and abused you in your infirmity, save for I, save for Isaac Love. The others beat you and mocked you, spit on you and robbed you of your portion of food at meals. Only I protected you from them. They are not to be trusted. But if you listen well to your one true friend, if we keep the miracle of your cure secret from them, together we may devise a way to exact some measure of revenge…
Love watched the boy take all this into himself; watched his eyes burn with hatred for wrongs not remembered but believed, slights and injustices occurring only in imagination, which had become to Frankton Jay incontrovertible fact—harm which demanded harm, injury which required redress. The elder man watched as the boy, melted down and poured molten into Love’s mold, hardened into a new shape.
In late afternoon, Love and Frankie returned by the path they had created and began assisting the rest in the construction and founding of their settlement. Love worked with such vigor he astounded his fellows, acting within the group both as mind and conscience and thews, directing all in their individual tasks, and, as the weeks passed, their outpost quickly climbed up from the banks. Love kept Frankie aside from the rest, setting him to work not with the carpenters raising shelters for man and horse, nor with the parties hunting opossum and fox and deer and the occasional small bear, nor with the tailors crafting skins into garments—for winter was nigh—nor did he set him to the unforgiving drudgery of fashioning lye into soap, nor the churning of butter, nor any other communal work. Frankie he set to labor in the forbidden area downstream, clearing the thicket leading to the fountain, and once it lay cleared back to the deadfalls Love judged it to be passable enough for his purposes, and set the lad to the task of building a smithy and forge along the river within the fresh-cut cove. The boy cast wary glances at the rest of the party and spoke to no man but Love, and then only when he was certain they were alone. The rest of the company, mystified by the change that had come over their affable lout, wondered what secret wrong he suspected of them. But, though they were perplexed, by this and by Love’s embargo against the far bank, their awe of their leader kept their misgivings hidden behind the walls of their cabins. The whispers of husbands and wives under thick blankets (for it was now growing cold indeed) never reached daylight.
Love was pleased as weeks melted to months. His settlement lay bulwarked against the coming mountain winter. All shelters were built simply but solidly enough, the chinks between the boards well occluded with rags and pitch, each abode the precise replica of its neighbor to either side—for Love had learned from his years in muster that repetition of process brings both speed and accuracy, and, if all shared in the building of each home, and no home was the better of another, then envy would not sow discord among them. For the sake of morale, even he for now took one of these shacks—the general’s trick of accepting a private’s quarters. The larders swelled with butter, with game birds, with gourds and sour wild apples and meat from the kill stretched, dried and salted; the cupboards brimmed with warm clothing, wraps, muffs, and boots in each abode at the ready; firewood filled the ruck split and stacked enough for three winters; the livestock lowed, warm and safe, in new stables. Their main risk would be enemy attack; the ground would soon be too hard to break, and a fort-wall would have to wait on spring’s thaw.
He had taken these rough tools he’d been given, these Carolina sod-busters, and built up something to last a mountain winter—still, Love’s dissatisfaction ate at him like a canker. There were exceptions still to his order. Yes, even still, even now, even after he made this place as much his own as if he had been the Creator himself who spake “let there be” and then watched the results of his divine fiat, even after saving these recalcitrant sheep from starvation and icy death, even still, there was resistance. It was all in the minutiae, yes, it was unmistakably small, but still…they were defying him behind these walls he had built. Whispering. Scheming. Mistakes were made, every day. Little things, yes. Small things. A wrong tool selected for the task, or a horse chosen from the remuda when another more rested beast might have better served the purpose. Infractions nonetheless, insults to his order. Each of these a flouting of his will. All of them, asserting their imperfections, impressing themselves as beings apart from him in silent defiance of him. It pointed toward chaos, division, fragmentation of purpose, danger.
And then there was the woman. Margaret, she was called, but “Jezebel” hit nearer the mark. Beautiful as the dawn, and yet she had taken up with Runyan. They were courting now, the two of them. There could be little doubt they would soon be married. Moreover, she regarded Love in a direct, appraising way he specifically disliked—there was effrontery in it.
And the cursed door.
From August until November, he had kept away, but as the months passed, the door called to Love, despite his forswearing it until he had proven himself perfect through the perfection of his followers. That impenetrable door. A guardian of such relentless strength must perforce guard something worthy of that strength. It taunted him, pulled him, coaxed, cajoled, with its promises of a greater power, which should by rights belong to no other but him, which had waited long years for him, for him alone, to awaken. This door was the guardian thwarting his birthright, his rightful destiny. He knew it threatened his sanity. That he had not yet mastered it was his failure, and failure within himself he found unbearable. No matter the risk, he would have it. But, in the meantime…there were small things still outstanding, flaws in the process, whispers behind doors. His people had not yet fully taken on his aspect. Love had taken these crooked tools and built a settlement, built it well enough they would last the winter, but then would come a remaking. His tools were not yet perfected, but he had a forge.
—Jane Sim, Love’s Fountain
TICKET
Let me tell you what Gordon was like as a boy. He’s not like what you see there. For one thing, you could see him, one hundred percent of th
e time. Not one flicker from him then. But visibility isn’t what I’d call notable; most folks are visible. Gordon had a quality about him. A certain way of carrying himself, a way of fitting. Natural poise, I suppose. He didn’t get it from me. I could fall down sitting on a park bench. But Gordon, he never hitched. His toe never caught a table leg. His feet always found firm ground.
He should’ve been a klutz like his old man, to look at him. A skinny kid, all elbows and ankles and neck. Hair going wherever it would. But he was quiet, with quick eyes, and whenever he said something, seemed like it was something that mattered. He just had a way…ever since he was little, even sitting at the breakfast table, it was like…I don’t know how to put it, but, like, it was like the chairs and table and the whole room had arranged themselves around him. Like he always carried the center with him; he knew his place in the world, and the world knew his place in it, and the both of them just loved each other. That’s what it was: He was somebody who was right in the world, and he knew it. I was always lost in my mind, but Gordon, he could chart his physical location with startling awareness, whether it was a five-year-old understanding our position driving through a city far better than his old man at the wheel, navigating for us with savant skill, or just simply sitting with perfect poise at the breakfast table.
Breakfast. That was our time.
Before everything went sideways, we were together like any family, the two of us: a boy and his papa, a papa and his boy. And also his mama…she’d sing while we drove, the most beautiful voice…but no, she wasn’t there. I remember the song, but when I look over it’s Gordy sitting shotgun. She’s been lost. I just can’t…
I already told you, Father. I’m not talking about it.
Do you know, every morning, I used to make Gordon eggs and garlic toast? Can you imagine—garlic breakfast toast? When he was little he’d run out the room in his pajamas, me reading on the chair, he’d come curl himself into me and we’d set there a while, just sitting. I remember that. And then he’d say, “gar lick?” like that, like it’s two words instead of one, and then I’d butter up the…the bread, and he’d sit…waiting, he’d sit on the stew stew stool, he’d talk to me…he was an internal person, but in the morning his lips loosened up; that’s the time I’d discover whatever was on his mind…when he was bigger, he’d put his legs up on the table and balance his plate on his lap, talk about whatever he had going on—a school bully, a story he wrote for the class newspaper, some girl that had flirted with him in the library—and I’d remember days when he was little, when his legs would…dangle…
…scuse me.
Excuse me. Beg your pardon, Father. He may have forgotten me; I haven’t forgotten a thing. Anyway. That was how it was with us, the first fifteen years.
I still remember the last time I saw my boy. That last breakfast. He was wearing what I called his “mustard and ketchup” T-shirt—half red, half yellow. On that morning, we didn’t talk much. We just sat together in peaceable silence, chewing. I remember the sun coming in through the window of our RV’s kitchenette, and the two rectangles the light made on his face. I remember…that image is so strong. My last breakfast with my boy.
Then he got up and I went to my day, which by then meant research in the Smoky Mountain Historical Institute, and Gordon went off to his day, which that summer meant walking the Pigeon Forge strip and taking adventure as it came to him.
Yes, and that was the day it changed. The day Morris caught us.
And I’ll tell you something more, too, about that change. I felt it was Gordon making it happen. I couldn’t say exactly why, but it seemed to me that this was something mostly happening to old Gordon, the boy who fit, and that he was taking me along with him—maybe whether I wanted to or not, but more likely, I think, because wherever my Gordon was going, I wanted to go too. And I had time for one thought, too, as the world slewed and spread and pulled like carnival taffy, and then put itself back together.
Just this one thought: Oh no, not again.
I remember having that thought, Father. But I couldn’t tell you why I had it. That change, in that moment…it felt familiar—but I’ve never experienced anything like it in my memory. No wonder Gordon wound up with the ticket.
It’s a lottery ticket, Father. The prize is control over everything in the whole world.
And I don’t know how, but my Gordon won it.
* * *
—
Here is what happens when you eat a box of banana runts, a bag of circus peanuts, and three hot dogs, and then go on the X-Treme Slingshot: As the sling sends you screaming up to kiss the moon, right there at the top of the parabola, in the exact moment between your thrill-seeking phases of being, as you switch from the oh shit oh shit oh shit G-forces of an over-rapid ascent to the gut-clutch nightmare of freefall, you achieve a blissful moment of weightlessness, which causes you to hork up the secrets of your stomach in a beautiful arc, which descends, like an emetic crescent, a new moon of puke, to the boardwalk—a yellow-orange splattering ruining the emerging night for a hapless random smattering of tourists below.
The boy in the two-toned shirt—left side bright yellow, right side bright red—safe once more on the ground and released from the confines of the body-harness, walks shamefaced, fleeing from the taunts he is trying not to hear. An angry tank-topped redneck wearing a mesh cap emblazoned with the legend: “I Eatum Heap Buffalo at Uncle Wampum’s Bar and Grill” throws a consoling arm about his puke-tainted lady and hollers at the retreating boy. Others, lucky enough to have avoided the spray, point and guffaw. Gordy walks quickly; the ride and onlookers recede. Once he has passed the bright-red Comedy Barn, he slows. The boy’s throat and sinus are raw from sudden sickly sweet residue of candy and salts and stomach bile. He snorts three times in rapid succession, and spits out the remainder.
“Hey, faggot. No spitting on the sidewalk.”
A pride of young stooges have followed him from the X-Treme Slingshot. Three of them, all bigger than he is. A glance backward confirms one of them is a beneficiary of his recent gastric gifts—the shirt is spackled with puke—and they appear intent on revenge.
“Hey kid. Hey! Asshole! I saw that. No spitting on the sidewalk.”
“Hey, you dirty little shit, look what you done to my shirt. It’s ruined.”
The boy looks about for a rescuer, a hero, some intervening force—a cop, maybe, or a tart-tongued old lady—but the boardwalk here is empty, and between the Barn’s floodlights behind, and the hypnotizing vermilion neon of Piehole Pete’s Fried Foodery ahead, there stretches a hundred yards of rare darkness along the strip; a field of weeds and thistle. The voices are closer now. They’re talking themselves into violence.
“That dirty shit spit on the sidewalk. Did you see him? You see what he did?”
“Never mind the fuck sidewalk. Come here, shit. Look at what you done to my new shirt I just bought.”
“Gonna tell the cops on ya, kid.”
“Come on over here, faggot. You’re gonna pay for my shirt.”
“Yeah, faggot. You’re gonna clean up the sidewalk, too. You’re gonna lick it.”
Wafts of laughter, irate no more, but anticipatory; implicit in their dull amusement the boy hears the promise of the chase, the inevitable submission, humiliation, and brutality. Not fair, thinks the boy. Not fair. I didn’t mean to. He casts about for a plan, a destination, preferably one with a suitable hiding place. You can’t count on adults around here to behave responsibly; they don’t exude the usual automatic bubble of sanity, the implied assumption that, should he attain public space, he could no longer be dragged back outside for some light-to-moderate beating. No, adults here are mainly tourists made numb by gaudiness, with little interest in inserting themselves into cases of casual assault. The usual excuses: It’s character-building; he must have done something to deserve it; boys will be boys. As for the proprietors and employees of the est
ablishments up and down the boardwalk, in them he senses, if not a meanness of spirit, perhaps a spiritual vacantness; perhaps you can only serve up so many deep-fried banana-fritter pies to lumbering sun-baked suburban shirt-pastries before you lose some of the shine off of your essential spark. So it will have to be a run, and then it will have to be a dodge. In short, he needs to disappear. But where? The Comedy Barn is closest. You could get lost in the shuffle right away; the audience is packed in close around circular tables in the dim, and between the waitresses fertilizing the crowd with beer and the full-bladdered patrons heading toward the restrooms, there’s plenty of milling about. But to get in, you need a ticket, and a ticket is one thing Gordy doesn’t have.
“Come here, faggot, lick the sidewalk.”
They’re close. He has to decide now. Stretching out before him, the darkness between the Comedy Barn and Piehole Pete’s presents itself. He could try to risk a dash across, but Piehole Pete’s is unlikely refuge. The menus are overlarge, but they aren’t walls, and the whole place is an expansive celebration of glass and chrome, a nightmare of visibility. And even if the Fried Foodery were chockablock with hidey-holes, it would remain an unsatisfactory destination, for to make for it would be to run across the empty place, to lend his hunters the benefit of darkness. This is all they want: to catch up to him there in the empty, to trip him thudding to the boardwalk, and then to drag him and his newly acquired face-splinters into the deep weeds for the sort of serious beating a bully is only emboldened to administer when unobserved. Gordy’s main advantage, he realizes, is their stupid faith in his predictable blind panicked flight—that and nimble feet. He runs.
“There he goes!”
“Get him!”
They wanted him to run into the field, and because it’s what they wanted, it’s what they expected. He feints into the darkness, and then, as the pack give chase, dodges, cuts back across the boardwalk, dashing in between two of them who grasp at him but miss, and out into the street, where he’s nearly pancaked by a blue Plymouth, low-riding and lit neon from the bottom, and apparently without brakes, as it utterly fails to slow—it swerves around him, cutting between him and the pursuing louts—and then the