by A. R. Moxon
He had failed. Failed.
Yet still…there had come—had there not?—even in the moment of failure, a moment where the damnable handle had seemed—had it not?—almost to have turned? Where there had seemed almost a vision, a picture of another, like to yourself in appearance but in strange and unfamiliar garments, clean and gray, standing in this same cavern, trying this same door…
Yes. Perhaps there is a further vision here. Perhaps, as you suspect, this body and its depredations are illusion only. Perhaps the progression of father to son is some great and undetectable Continuity, not of legacy alone, but of spirit, even of consciousness?
Yes. It may be so. Perhaps through the repeated test of the door you can at last learn to escape this illusion of body. Perhaps your victory over the timeless door is itself timeless, arrives in some far century, some other self, toward which you might learn to project yourself…
Rising to his feet, Love slowly climbed the granite steps, toward his day and his people.
—Jane Sim, Love’s Fountain
CIRCUS
The work went on, though whether it was a novel or a roman à clef was anyone’s guess. Jane Sim wrote it like fiction, but everything she set down was corroborated in the history…and the history was written by Isaac Love himself.
Again, the “what” of it never changed much, outside the odd detail. For example, the mountebank preachers never made a go at hawking the restorative qualities of nearby spring waters, because in this new history, instead of springs in Henderson Hollow; there existed only an unnaturally cleared circle of turf and a fountain. Yes, the shape of the story held, but the “why,” everything that happened beneath and behind…all that had changed, changed.
And even still, I was thinking only of my fame. Even still, I hadn’t felt the danger. Father, I read the whole night, and never even thaw thaw thought of checking in on Gordon. Never once. That’s the were were worst thing I can tell you. I never even considered my boy.
But the new history.
First there was the fountain, then came the settlement, then the town, then the circus. The oubliettes came after. Morris made the oubliettes—his great contribution. All down the line, they’ve each added to the Love empire in their own way. Isaac, he found the damn thing, and he started the digging beneath. He started the bird and the spade, too, all the liturgy, the ceremony he called his “Assizement.” Twice a year—as winter melted to spring, as summer curled into autumn—the people gathered around the fountain at the directive of a man they could no longer fathom disobeying. Isaac stood near it, barrel beside him, ladle in hand. He’d call names of those who had failed his standard, and forward they’d come, where he’d show them one of two different placards; image of a bird, or image of a spade.
The birds were shown to those deemed by Love capable of improvement. These would get the water; would sink, lost to themselves; ready to be reformed, they were led by the rest back to the village, to learn their role better than they had before.
Later, after the people had gone, those shown the spade would get the axe.
Isaac ruled like a backwoods king back in a day when the Tennessee woods were remote enough and thick enough to allow such open displays. He sowed the seeds, but the system remained small under his stewardship, rigidly controlled, paralyzed against innovation, hobbled as it was by Isaac’s unshakeable belief in his own singularity. Even as he grew old, Isaac clung to the idea of his existence being the only real one, and as his body betrayed him to age, his rationalizing mind turned to heredity. One autumn Sixmonth, Isaac declared a writ, that the firstborn of the Love line must always be a son, and that this son would always be him, and only him, the Continuity of the universe’s sole consciousness, whose spirit would be named Isaac Love no matter the name given the body.
William, Isaac’s son—still the founder of the county’s first post office—was the first to take on the mantle of Continuity. William, who possessed a more pragmatic mind, realized if Isaac’s law survived in its raw state, the colony at Pigeon Forge would inevitably find itself in short and open warfare with the westward-expanding United States. William saw the new country’s encroachment; to him she appeared as a wave, inescapable as she was inevitable. As a bulwark, he purposed to make the town economically attractive to that wave. He expanded the mill, which built their fortune, and opened lines of communication back to the state and federal governments. That an outpost in the Smokies had been eking out an existence for decades came as a surprise—not because they considered the Love party missing and dead, but because they had forgotten any such party had ever existed. Emissaries dispatched from the Tennessee Department of Commerce returned, effusive in their report: Yes, there is an outpost, and yes, the government should by all means consider utilizing it for promotion of frontier trade and as a staging ground for further movement westward. There was a general sense of marvel at what an efficient operation was being run out there—men, women, children, all working with military precision, as if they were a single entity. Viable, self-contained, unmolested by savages, free of famine; in regard to agriculture, maintaining a surplus; in regard to defense, equipped with a stockade and militia, well-stocked and well-drilled.
Even then, William realized the strange success of Pigeon Forge must remain submerged. He even modified the Assizement to make it a secret thing; erected a tent around the fountain, hid barrel and ladle and axe and placards within. Only those ordered into the tent discovered what happened there—of course, they kept their secrets.
The government emissaries returned from Pigeon Forge bearing letters detailing carefully phrased proposals, allowing Pigeon Forge to integrate with the outside world without being absorbed by it, and to prosper by the association without closer investigation. William realized the state was seeking a way to relocate native tribes en masse, to clear-cut the cultural landscape for a more manifest destiny; knew also that the whole South was looking for a way to make an enslaved labor pool still more pliable. William had a genius for understanding how his darkest asset might provide a solution; he understood, in time, that the fountain would allow the Loves to operate as before, not by standing in opposition to power, but by injecting themselves directly into the corporate bloodstream of a nation that would never be without some unwanted class from whom to profit.
And he knew well enough to add fresh bodies to his empire.
The Loves soon learned to make a friend of war. Each son in his turn entered the conflict of his day, distinguishing himself properly through bravery and skill, returning from the conflagration as Continuity, ready to continue the tradition, the liturgy, the ceremony. Each son returned, having gained the friendship and loyalty of a certain type of soldier: dirt-poor, without much family, without a girl back home, without ties. Mercenaries, career soldiers, confirmed bachelors, tear-streaked G.I.s clutching Dear John letters, men skilled in dangerous arts—all of them, after their various wars had finished, made their way to Sevier County, where their old war buddy and commanding officer had a job for them. All of them thirsty for some greater purpose to their lives. And, for their thirst, the Loves had a drink.
And yes, again, history’s shape remains the same, even as the reasons for the shape move beneath the blanket. As before, Pigeon Forge still experienced the same long stretch, lost to record or rumination, before its re-emergence as a hillbilly carnival playland, but now this hidden time was not a time of impoverishment, but a time of enrichment. In the years after the Failed War to Preserve Slavery, with the tribes gone, with the slaves emancipated, the Loves sought out new channels of revenue for their secret asset, and they quickly found a current so strong they float on it to this day: prisons. Slowly, secretly, carefully, the Loves began to supply wardens seeking a more pliable population with a tonic suitable to their needs.
So the Loves became early merchants of imprisonment, but once Morris took on the mantle of Continuity he made them all seem like diletta
ntes, loafers willing to rest on the advantage of their unholy fountainhead. Morris took to the family business with gusto and verve. Not content to merely supply prisons, he began to acquire them. He poured funds into lobbying, into research, into technology. Soon he had a fate different than an axe for those he showed the sign of the spade.
Morris invented the oubliettes, as I said.
And, of course, he also brought in the circus. He purchased it, sent it out to travel the country, and attract little-needed people and runaways, as circuses are known to do. He used it to grow the ranks. Every six months, the circus would return, and the ceremony would begin.
* * *
—
For Gordy the next few moments are all lights and fantastic, but after the initial flush of revelry, the gorilla is depressing him something terrible. This is not to say the circus is without enticement—what a joint! The inside of the tent is large enough to accommodate a midway along the front half of its circumference, which is lined with vendors and booths and other attractions—and that doesn’t even take into consideration the show. The inner wall of this midway is formed by high risers of bleachers, backed by strips of striped tent canvas tied to the bleacher base and reaching all the way to the roof. Through the gaps of the aisles between the risers, Gordy espies what the bleachers are facing: the big show, three rings on sawdust, the trapeze rigging stashed overhead. Gordy can smell more than a hint of big animals, too, but before the main course begins, they’ve provided a suitable zoological appetizer out here in the midway; a great ape, silver of back and wise of face. Still, Wembly makes Gordy feel queasy. It’s a roomy cage—there’s that at least—but the beast hunkers in the corner of it with his playing cards and, in his despondency, makes it seem small. It’s his gorilla eyes, Gordy decides; they’re too human. As Wembly flips his cards with his feet, there is contemplation in those eyes, motionless activity, a suggestion he remembers better gorilla times, a gorilla childhood of sorts, perhaps a gorilla family. You can imagine those eyes pining for a gorilla sweetheart long lost in the jungle mists, you can see nostalgia and want, a desire for a return to a gorilla home where all gorilla pleasures await: plenty of bananas, lots of fellow apes bearing tasty ticks and mites, cool moist green everywhere crawling with familiar insects, familiar scents, familiar faces—not this horrid stinking poking horde. His eyes aren’t the vacant black dots of rats or hamsters, Gordy thinks, not the alien full-pupil disc-slits of jungle cats, these are soulful hazel human eyes in a hairy man’s abnormally large and pointed head.
The Colonel holds forth at the cage, drumming up extra business: COME on over, STEP right up, SEE the see. He’s bringing a crowd, naturally. Apparently the gorilla tells futures with those cards of his; he’s a big draw, you could say, ha-ha-ha. Fairgoers press forward, digging deep into wallets and purses, while the big simian lug rests his chin on his fist and sighs. Gordy walks away. It strikes him as unseemly to observe the ape; of all those caged here, it alone sits behind its bars against its will. The other freaks are clearly putting on an act and have some agency about them. They’ve all decided to do this—Plastilica, Ol’ Hatchet-Arms, Sharkboy, the Illustrated Man, Eak (the man with Space All Over His Face), Zippy the Pinhead, Insectavora the Bug-Eating Lady, the minute and deadly bodyguards—duties momentarily abandoned—sparring each other in a cage of their own (to which a sign has been affixed advertising them as twins, and each apparently named “Andrew”), even the Fat Lady lounging brazenly in her tentlike shift—all have been led here by some bad fate; nevertheless, for them there are other frequencies of consciousness, they have in some way chosen this life for themselves over others they deemed even less satisfactory, and, what’s more, they know it. Eddie the Eyeball there, he’s clearly enjoying himself. But the gorilla? He has no alternate frequency, and he will never learn the art of concealing his desperation, or his boredom, or his confusion. He seems to be trying, and failing, to learn how to weep.
An announcement blares over the PA: The circus begins in five minutes. The freaks start to make themselves scarce as Gordy winds his way between the bleacher risers with the rest of the latecomers to pick over the remaining real estate. Long hard backless benches moan under rows of posteriors already planted, foresightful types who managed to resist the call of carny food and freaks, who’ve already taken the plum spots. Dawdlers like Gordy will have to settle for spaces high in the bleachers. Gordy sees the tent has been bifurcated along the back by a large tapestry embroidered with archetypical circus images: the animal tamer, the clown, the acrobat. It cuts across the sawdust, extracting from the staging area a small portion of the tent’s floor space—concealing, Gordy supposes, the backstage. They’re back there now, getting ready for the show, getting into character, preparing to do their bit. Makeup, nervous puking, stretching exercises for the acrobats, sedatives for the lions and tigers. The curtain prevents the intrusion of the mundane, the ruination of the magic.
The bleachers wrap around and nudge right up against the tapestry. Stuffed already with fairgoers, they rim the white stripe on the ground demarcating audience from performance. Gordy climbs the bleachers abutting the tapestry toward a remaining cluster of unchoice seats. These risers are canted at an unnaturally precipitous angle, and the stairs leading up are narrow and steep as a mountain trail. Face full of the ass of the fat man ahead, Gordy trudges carefully up the wooden structure, which feels less trustworthy the higher he goes; it complains restlessly beneath thousands of milling stamping feet. Once seated, however, Gordy notices something strange: Lots of these folks don’t look particularly interested in the show. The guy next to Gordy is talking to nobody, far too loudly, about nothing much, and a few people are, are…are they crying? Yes. To see crying people at a circus seems a bad omen. That lady there, for example, three rows down. She’s moaning a name again and again. Lucy. Lucy. Lucy. Oh, Lucy. Everywhere along the semicircle, people are carrying on—hilarity too intense to be unforced, resigned stares, quiet weeping.
Gordy wishes he didn’t feel perched atop a crow’s nest. He’s at the summit, his back pressed right up against the floor-to-ceiling canvas swards tied to the bleacher backs, and up here the whole construct sways like a treetop in a slow breeze. Sometimes it leans so far right or left that structural collapse feels, for a terrible second, inevitable. There’s no guardrail against the back row, nothing to prevent a backward fall but innate balance and the backing of canvas—but the canvas, loosely tied, doesn’t help much; if anything, it provides false reassurances of stability, a fool’s backrest. Gordy sits, very much aware of the open space behind him. He tries to calculate his altitude, imagines falling all that way, shudders…
At present there is nothing to see down on the circus floor but a few sad clowns slapping each other. The minutes stretch out; the audience chafes with boredom and anticipation. Everyone tries to ignore the lumbar pain the bleachers are already cooking up, tries to remember not to lean back onto a stranger’s knees (or, in the case of Gordy and his fellow back-row nose-bleeders, not to lean back into deadly nothing), tries to fix upon something to entertain themselves, to keep themselves from turning mean. The clowns sure aren’t doing the trick, and they seem aware of this. Beads of flop sweat form on greasepaint. Something sharp pokes Gordy’s lower back. He recons in his pocket and extracts the offender—Oh yes. The scratch-off from that vivid smoking weirdo. Its embedded foil winks in the light. The ticket reads:
LUCKY 21! WIN $1,000!!
EVERY CARD HAS A WINNING COMBINATION!!
CAN YOU FIND IT???
A thousand clams. A kid could do worse. Gordy digs in his front pockets for a good rubbing coin…there’s some change in here somewhere…but all he can find are two accursed Jeffersons—nickels, the ridgeless bane of all scratch-off junkies. Gordy pockets one coin, brandishes the other. He pauses a moment to study the thing. Two rows, each comprised of four silver scratch-away squares, and in the middle of each square the instruction:
HIT ME
Below this a silver scratch-away rectangle, above which the caption:
SEE WHAT YOU’VE WON!
Gordy scratches at see what you’ve won first—let’s see what we’re playing for. The nickel makes this task difficult, but in the dent formed by the coin he sees the zeros appear. Three little zeros, ducks in a row following their mama, a tall skinny number one. A grand. This is one of the few tickets that might pay top prize. The fever of “what if” is upon him; the circus forgotten. A thousand dollars. Gordy is fifteen. This is the most money there could possibly be.
What’s this? That smoking guy must have already started playing the ticket before handing it over; there’s already a disc scratched away. A six of clubs.
Lucky 21, eh? Gordy knows this game. The video-game version is a ubiquity in the restaurants and hotels of Pigeon Forge. There is some strategy to it, which escapes him, but strategy’s unimportant in this context; this is the bastardized scratch-off format. You scratch until your revealed sum is twenty-one and you’re free to claim your prize, or you go over that number, and are free to piss off.
Hands shaking, he hits the top row, one in from the right.
Lower right corner. Jack of hearts.
Sixteen.
What next? Gordy holds the nickel poised, trying to stare through the remaining six boxes. The next move could spell disaster. The pool of good possibilities has dried up way too fast; anything over a five is death. The Jack mocks him with one good eye, the creep. He flips the ticket over and holds it up to the light, trying to divine some clue, but the cardboard is impenetrable. His nickel hovers, makes tight ellipses. He scratches, very gently, at the top row, second from the left, hoping to see some telltale before he has gone too far, before it is an official scratch—it was like that when I bought it I didn’t do that—but the nickel defies finesse. He tries his fingernail with slight improvement in control, so he pitches the nickel into the void behind him. The box is scratched beyond alibi, so he rubs the rest of the way without looking at it hoping five five five five…He looks down, breath pent.