The Revisionaries

by A. R. Moxon

  Hands relaxed, Donk lets the moment build, allows it to seem as if this were something unexpected he needs to digest. Then he says:

  “You’ll give me three months.”

  Morris is so startled by the effrontery he laughs, once, a single surprised bark. He looks around at his redbird lieutenants as if providing them a share of his own amusement.

  “I will?”

  “Probably.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because I know what specifically to look for.”

  “And that is?”

  “It might be a little rectangle. It might be shiny. It might be green. I’m being circumspect for your benefit here.”

  In the silence that follows, something long and poisonous uncoils. It’s a serpent Donk knows he’s unleashed, which he now must ride. Morris says: “Everybody except for the Andrews, take a walk.” When they’ve gone and it’s only them and the little guys, he says. “All right. You have my attention.”

  “So it seems.”

  “This had best be good, or you go in the box today. What does Gordy have that I want?”

  Donk says. “I expect he has a number of things you want to take from him, including a pound or two of his flesh. But I’m talking about that little green lottery ticket he boosted from you back in Pigeon Forge. From behind your door. Under that fountain of yours. The one whose prize is control over everything in the universe.”

  The Andrews eyeball each other, the first reaction he’s ever seen from them. Morris says nothing for a while but neither does he look away. Donk’s hands are relaxed.

  “Go get the others,” Morris says at last. As the Andrews go, he says what Donk has been expecting and dreading:

  “And make the oubliette ready.”

  His hands relaxed, Donk keeps his face empty. This is the final negotiation—I’ve got you, prick. I’ve got you and you won’t even know I’ve got you, not even after I’ve done it.

  Morris says: “You’ve got some terribly classified information, my friend.”

  “It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done.”

  “You realize you’re not leaving here?”

  “Sounds like,” Donk remarks. “But I’m still thinking you’ll give me that three months, before you show me a shovel or a bird”—thinking oh, that one hit all right as Morris’s eyes go briefly wide—Yes, Morris, how did I know about the bird and the spade?

  “Everything you know,” Morris says. “And how you know it.”

  Donk begins to explain it, all of it, from door to vault. He’s cut off before he’s halfway.

  “How.”

  “Because I came to realize something true. Which led to knowledge.”

  “What knowledge?”

  “You exist. I don’t. Neither does anyone else, only you. These things I know—fountain, ticket, the rest—I think I know them because you know them. I know them because…it sounds silly to say out loud…because I’m a part of you.”

  “And what part of me are you?”

  “I think I’m your lesson to yourself about this place.”

  From deep in Morris’s throat a tiny surprised sound escapes. Neither of them says anything for a while. From his pocket Morris removes a cigar; with deliberate and ceremonial anticipation unwraps, clips, and lights. He folds the cellophane wrapper precisely. Only the slightest shake of the wrapper as he returns it to an inner pocket betrays him. Languorously, he emits a wreath of smoke. “You know everything I know?”

  “Not everything,” Donk says, immediately. “I think it’s whatever you want me to know. Or what a deeper part of you requires me to know. I’m speculating.”

  “But you know things that I know.”

  “And other things besides. I may be how you’re choosing to inform yourself. I definitely know more about what’s going on in Loony Island than you do.”

  “Then where is Gordy?”

  “That much I don’t know—yet.”

  “And you think I’m giving you months to find him?”

  “I think it would be a good idea.”

  “Instead of the box? I’m sure you do.”

  “Not for my own sake. I want to find the ticket, because I want you to have it. It’s yours. None of us can be whole until you have it. I won’t stop until you have it or you dispose of me.”

  “I might dispose of you in five minutes.” But Donk can see Morris warring with himself, caught between hope and suspicion.

  “If that’s what you want, I don’t see how it could be wrong.”

  “You’re so deferential now. You weren’t so polite earlier.”

  “I’m your lesson to yourself. Have your lessons to yourself typically been polite?”

  “And you don’t care what I do to you?”

  “You’ll eventually get the ticket without me, and then I’ll be a part of you, like everybody else. What I do until then isn’t of much bother to me one way or another.”

  Morris, looking keenly at him: “I almost believe you.”

  “You’ll believe me in time if you don’t believe me today. You’ll believe me because I’m a tool you’ve given yourself.”

  Beetle-browed, Morris tries on a variety of grimaces. “I still think you’re bluffing.”

  Donk shrugs. “Put me in the box. See how I react.”

  And so Morris does.

  The cardinals come back in with the box and Donk surprises them. He puts on the harness and other accoutrements himself. Folds his suit coat, trousers, shirt. Sets his tie neatly atop the pile. Neither eager nor lagging, businesslike he dresses himself in the harness as if it were just another suit; he latches it to himself where he can reach as if adjusting a tie clip. The cardinals eye each other nervously; they’ve never seen this one before. He waits patiently as they affix him inside the box, latching and strapping, connecting, his face indifferent. He bides his time and just when they are about to shut him in, in cold crisp tones he says it. “Oh yes, there’s something else you could use to catch him: Gordy is still looking for a bearded lady.”

  His hands are relaxed relaxed relaxed as the lid closes and the lights come on.

  “You weren’t bluffing after all,” Morris says.

  Donk can’t see much; even the white anteroom looks dark after the brutal banks of fluorescent glare on each side bounding off the mirrors. He can, however, see Morris’s eyes at the crack, calm but curious, flitting around to various points on Donk’s face, as if reassessing him piecemeal, reconstructing him into something more than he had been previously. Donk bites back the scream of relief. It’s over. He’s still hooked into the box, but he’s come through the narrowest place, shot the rapid, won the big hand. The rest of this will be nothing but pantomime and posture, Morris assuring himself he’s still the man in charge, but Donk, about to be released and elevated, knows it’s only a matter of time now.

  “What do you know about Jane?” Morris asks.

  Donk smiles. “Well, now I know her name. I know that Gordy’s looking for her. She’d draw him out, if we knew where she was.”

  “She’s…elsewhere.”

  “Can you trust me enough to share where?”

  “Down this tunnel. End of the line.”

  “Can you get her?”

  He nods. “Tunnel CATs.”

  “Tunnel…cats?”

  “Channel Automated Transports. My researchers developed them. You’ve seen them. The entrance to the living capsule looks like a safe door. They can carry me safely through, but it takes a week. It’s…a far land.”

  “Worth the trip. Go get her. She’ll draw Gordy out.”

  Morris, musing almost to himself: “She’s been gone quite some time. She…stopped being useful, but…there was a time she belonged to a circus I own.”

  “Then bring the circus and put her in it. Set it up right in Ra
lph’s parking lot if you want. You have the circus, bring the lady. We’ll advertise it everywhere. I’ll plaster Ralph’s store with posters. If he’s here, he’ll come out.” Donk finds he’s warming to the plan even as he makes it. It’s genius, really—because it’ll work. It will bring Gordy out of hiding, and it’ll keep him here in the meanwhile. “Give this Jane something to do ahead of the show, some dance or something. Make her easy for somebody who wants to find her to find her. Tell her to give a shout if he shows, and have your people watching just in case she doesn’t.”

  “You know for a fact Gordy’s still hanging around here.”

  “No. But I do think it’s alarmingly likely.”

  “Likely, why?”

  “It’s a fantastic place to hide, Loony Island. There’s no end to places in it where nobody would go or would want to go. And there’s this: It would be unexpected. The right-under-your-nose thing. Also, his only known friend is here.”

  “The priest.”

  “He’s easy to find. I bet the dummy’s already back at his chapel. I’m serious, he’s that thick. Even getting shot doesn’t run him off, so I doubt his tussle with you will do it. Want me to have some guys go kill him?”

  Morris takes a long time pretending to consider this. Even harnessed, trapped, even entirely at the mercy of the one whom he wished most harm, Donk takes pleasure in making him try to order violence against Julius. In experimentation with the priest, it’s become clear Gordy’s prohibition between them remains: No Harm. Julius had found himself unable even to form violent thoughts against Morris; attempting to do so, he’d reported, was an unpleasant experience.

  “No,” Morris says at last.

  “At least I could have him snatched and brought back here. Torture him until he coughs up what he knows.” This is pushing it; but for Julius’s sake, Donk needs to make the boss say it in front of all his guys, so they hear it. Surely Morris’s pride hasn’t allowed him to admit to his minions that an outside force shackled his will to some restriction. Donk tries to imagine how badly Morris wants to order Julius’s destruction, how hard he’s fighting to give that word. The anguish it’s causing him. How he’ll even be forced, if pushed on the subject, to order Julius protected, if only to reassert himself. At last, in strained tones, Morris says. “No. Watch him. If we grab him, it might scare off that little bastard Gordy for good.”

  “It’s your call, boss, but even if he’s not a lead, he’s a loose end. We can snip it…”

  Morris snarls, “Are you deaf? I said we leave the priest alone.”

  Donk thinks: So passes that particular danger. Julius, three times denied, will stay safe from this crowing cock.

  “You’re a bothersome fellow, Coyote.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “You may be a true lesson for me. I’m going to give you three months to find him.” Morris says this as though it’s an idea he’s originated. “I’ve had false lessons before who were as convincing as you. If you’re one of those, you’ll fail, and I’ll put you back where you are now.”

  To the others, he snaps: “Well? Get him out of there.”

  It’s dark when Donk returns to the Fridge. He starts some coffee, looks around as it percolates. There ought to be somebody here to tell that the long path is now walked, that Yale is now revenged, that Ralph has gotten his. He can tell Julius or Gordy, but it won’t mean the same to them. He can tell Bailey, if she wakes up, but for now there’s nobody. He has the strangest feeling, there used to be, ought to be someboyd here to tell. “Done,” Donk whispers. He holds the coffee cup to his forehead, feeling the warmth. He repeats it: “Done.”

  Five minutes. They’d left him in the box five minutes—a bad eternity…but he’d been right in the end. His hands had still been relaxed when at last the case opened, though in another five minutes they wouldn’t have been. He could feel the scream building in him like a slow promise of coming vomit. Within the hour it would have been tearing from him. Nothing but your eyes staring back into your eyes. Your body immobile. Walled in. Donk checks his watch; Ralph has now been in his own box for seven hours. There’s a hell, Donk tells himself. Ralph is there. You went and found it, picked it out for him. You even sampled it for yourself to be sure. Our plan is done, better than we ever hoped.

  It feels like nothing. Thinking back on the aging heavyset Ralph, bloodcaked and struggling on the floor…he may as well have been a different person than that green-suited snake slithering up the fire escape to the greenhouse. Ralph hadn’t remembered doing it. He’d forgotten killing all those kids, as easy as a cook disposing of stale biscuits, remembering it years later no more than the cook would remember the biscuits. If he doesn’t remember doing it, he may as well have been a different person. To suffer but never know why he’s suffering…

  In time he realizes the problem: He’s had to empty himself of Ralph to fill himself with Morris. That’s the only problem. It’s good to have completed the job with Ralph, even if it tastes like sand and air. It will be different when it’s Morris. When it’s Morris, revenge’s consummation will feel like he always dreamed it would feel. But for Morris, oubliettes are too easy; they seem a kindness in comparison to the impossible horrors Donk has devised. For Morris, he has suffering planned that will require a new power. His coffee needs a stiffener, so he gets the booze. Drinks half the coffee, fills it back with the other stuff. Remembering oubliette walls. Jesus. The coldness is in him, but all the same…the haunted look in Gordy’s face makes more sense now…the guy spent years in there. And Tennessee, too. Jesus. Oubliettes. And hundreds of people still caged up like that; not monsters like Ralph, but ordinary people who did nothing but cross the wrong guy…

  Donk, suffused with outrage on their behalf, pours some more dark liquid into the mug, refills the rest with coffee—not only for Bailey, then. For Gordy. For Tennessee. For all of them. All of them, whether flying through the air to their earthy doom or latched into boxes, or the whores forced by cruel men onto their backs while their kids spend long days alone staring at the same four walls day after day, tub-tub-tub-tub; for panes of greenhouse glass smashed forever, for the cold and sick lying on the streets, unattended and cooking unique madness beneath their coverings of filth and rag. You want to be the maker of the whole world, boss? Fine. I’ll try you for the whole world’s suffering. I’ll make you feel it all, once I get that ticket. I’ll find it for you, all right. I’ll find it. For you.

  He pours some more coffee, his hands so relaxed so calm they shake.

  The coffee is gone, and so is the booze. Donk is calm now. Very calm, much calmer than before. He is the very calmest of all times. Totally calmery. His hands are so relaxed he could throw the ball into the cup tub-tub-tub-tub-tub a thousand times in a row if he needed to but Yale and Bailey aren’t on the other side of the door to help him anymore if he loses his ball Bailey fell her eyes going wide and there was hardly any blood but she fell like meat, now he has no pot to throw into or a window to throw out of, all he has is the lies he’s told. The room moves but only a little. In time he stands with exceeding steadiness. Selects a bottle of fine port, then stops himself—you fool, you’ve left your guests waiting too long, they’ll want to celebrate. He walks to the room he once shared with Bailey, rolls back the rug, revealing the door to a panic room set into the floor of the Fridge. Yes, Ralph commissioned a panic room within a panic room; no wonder he was so hard to capture. Donk stomps on the floor in the sequence he and the priest have agreed upon. The trapdoor lifts up, revealing Julius’s hairy head.

  “Well?”

  Donk is mindful not to slur. “It’s taken care of. It was just like I said. He wants you dead, you can see it on his face. But he couldn’t say it, and he certainly couldn’t admit he couldn’t say it—not in front of his guys. I got him to demand nobody hurts you.”

  “Thank fucking God. I’m going stir-crazy down here, sniffing Gordy’s farts.”
>
  From below, out of sight (though no longer invisible to them), another voice, less hearty, says: “If it’s a question of farts, I’m pretty sure I’m not the offending party.”

  “Come on out, have a drink. You can go back to the Neon in the morning if you want.”

  Halfway out, Julius stops.

  “Thank you, Daniel.”

  “No worries,” Donk says, but unfortunately the priest is in a mood for sincerity.

  “No. Honestly. I have to confess, I was beginning to mistrust you. But you truly…I…there are no words.”

  “Forget it. Easy to do. Schmuck loves me. Got him eating out of my hand.”

  “And Tennessee?”

  Donk shakes his head. “I told him to stay with me, but he wouldn’t listen. He ran off. Either he’s skipped town like he said he would, or the redbirds got him.”

  “Please try to find him. I need to talk to him. He was telling me something important, but I kept drifting in and out. At the very least I owe him my thanks.”

  “Hell. Now you’re safe again, you can look for him.”

  Later, all the lights off, bottle emptied, guests passed out, the priest’s snores threatening the structural integrity of the walls, and Donk sits, blinking. It’s all he can do. The room spins. He thinks: The mistake was the port. That’s not right you fool, you got it reversed, it’s wackbird. He blinks. The room moves. He blinks and waits. The room moves. He blinks. He’s forgotten the thing that happened to him. He’s drowned it in the blinking spin, the safe port of Blink the harbor of Spin, which exports coffee mixed with gold. Any storm in a port. No. Wrong. How does it go? “Andy stort in a porm?” Perfect. Blink. Spin. I wish I could forget being in the box. What I wouldn’t give for a fountain. Splinkbin.

  From time to time, Gordy sits up on the couch, emits a terrified, terrifying scream, then collapses back down again. The moom rooves.

  Later, the room has stopped moving somewhat and he’s remembered being in the box again. He considers more booze to counter it, but he knows he needs to think in more structured ways. With effort he makes his mind once more into compartments—anyway the memory of being in the box will always be there, and you can’t keep drowning it. You have three months to make moves if you don’t want the thing that happened to happen again forever, so you’re going to have to learn to live with it. His hands curl and relax. It’s going to be tricky. Julius is going back to the Neon Chapel, which is fine. Gordy wants to go off looking for his precious bearded lady (remember Coyote, remember: They don’t know that you know about the fountain ticket bearded lady) which is not fine. Keeping Gordy hidden here in the Fridge isn’t an option, unfortunately, unless you want to use force, and using force against Gordy is too unpredictable. There needs to be a way to keep him in the Island. Julius will be useful there; he seems to hold some sway over the kid—but that won’t be enough.