by A. R. Moxon
“I wish you could have known her before,” Julius usually tells Gordy.
“Me, too,” Gordy usually replies. There doesn’t seem to be any other appropriate response.
After the hospital they run back to Loony Island. Julius can see it in his mind’s eye: a lumbering slab of hair and denim trotting with the impatient bearing of a racehorse held in check, followed either by—depending on the observer—nothing at all, or a flickering shadow, or a smaller, younger man, wheezing, stumbling, halting, racing to catch up again, a terrier trailing a bulldog. Putting pavement behind them slab after slab as the overpass looms ever closer and, beyond it, the larger higher slabs rise up; Domino City, holding masses, bearing names unknown by the multitudes driving past: The Deuce and HQ, Florida and Presto, the Hammer, the Penthouse, each with its own character entirely indistinguishable from outside observance; closer and closer they come, the priest and his ghost running through the tunnel leading under the highway, drawing themselves nearer to the headstones around which they will spend much of their day.
“The worst thing,” Gordy moans, “is that when we get there, there’s the stairs to climb.”
Julius grins. “But the best thing is, after all those stairs, the running doesn’t seem so bad.”
They make their way through each building, visiting shut-ins. The list is extensive, and memorized. Weeks pass before they repeat a visit. “There were only a few in the beginning,” Julius had explained, the first day. “But those few knew about others, and the others know about more. If I have time left over, sometimes I go and knock on doors and see who’s in there.”
“Knocking on random doors around here seems dangerous.”
“Can be. But the list grows.”
Shut-ins—Domino City cultivates them, the old and the young, the abandoned. The elderly, abandoned, their bodies too broken for work, their children escaping the Island but lacking the strength to bring others along, or else failing to extricate themselves but leaving their elders behind all the same, either joined with the gangs or used by them, or rolled by the cops for the sin of existing unprofitably, made into profitable prisoners. The young, abandoned by their parents, either out of necessity—turning seven keys in seven locks, creeping toward the day’s labor to earn enough to purchase the day’s scraps—or to meet the body’s need, pushing the plunger, emptying the bottle, sinking once more into daily stupor. It’s these to whom Julius and Gordy appear. On spiral notebooks Julius marks building, room, and any other more pressing requirements…six, 1778, broken oven; three, 619, bedbugs; five, 112, windowpanes smashed, need fortified…To some children, he’ll whisper the location of a hidden children’s room, a description of the door, instructions on the precise way to knock upon it to be received by Daisy Coyote. Some—mostly the elderly—ask him to pray for them, and this he does with only the slightest hesitation. He listens, and nods, and murmurs.
Up and down the stairs. They run into occasional packs of gangsters, who, recognizing Julius, allow them to pass unmolested. Occasionally there’ll be a catcall, a brief grab, a young Zoot showing off in front of his elders, making a show of blocking the hall. Julius ignores them as he moves past, and Gordy, unseen, slides by as well.
Fourth stop is the craps game. Julius always plays a hundred, ten tens from petty cash, winning more than he loses, to the annoyance of The House, the blind lady who runs the game. As they play, The House dishes: the temperature of the street, high-pressure and low-pressure zones, where the lightning of good or bad fortune struck today. Her perspective is more valuable in some ways than Donk’s, because she’s less apt to draw conclusions. Nowhere are the tongues of degenerates looser than at the craps ring, and what The House hears, she trades to Julius for nothing more than his company. The gossip, the trends, new slang, all fall from her lips without agenda or strategy, a profound and trivial reflection of what’s going on. Lately, The House claims, the gangs are nervous. Nervous and getting nervouser. The more authority and prestige a faction enjoyed before the great elevation of the Loonies, the more they chafe now. The cardinals are rarely seen anymore, appearing only occasionally to issue cryptic orders on the Coyote’s authority, while various of the loonies appear to be out doing much the same inexplicable work that had once been the office of the redbirds, wandering the neighborhood swinging broomsticks or mop handles or even their own arms at nothing but air. It’s unnatural, the street cats say. Loonies being given authority? Orders coming from the cardinals? Nobody’s received word from Ralph about these changes, but then nobody ever did receive word from Ralph except through Donk—the Coyote, that is. Meanwhile, the Coyote’s gone silent. The goddam loonies have his ear now. Among the now nearly mutinous gangs, desire for power and influence are starting to supersede their fear of Ralph—though, as the fear of Ralph drains from their chalice, it’s being refilled anew with fear of the Coyote. There are rumors of disappearances, not only of random soldiers, but of major guys.
“Sylvester has gone missing,” The House says, gravely. “Nobody seen him, nobody know where he gone to.”
“Who’s Sylvester?” Gordy asked.
“One of the top guys,” Julius replied, worried. “He knew Ralph back in the day. Some people claim the two of them were still in touch.”
“All I’m saying,” The House says, “I’m worried it’s going to turn into another riot.”
After a while, Julius scoops his winnings and they jog down the line.
“You took that blind lady’s money,” Gordy wheezed, the first day.
“She’d be pretty pissed off if I hadn’t,” Julius called back to him. “I won it.”
“She’s blind.”
“You try to leave winnings behind out of pity sometime. See what happens.”
Fifth stop is Ralph’s. Donk’s there but it’s not the same. These days Donk is in the full flower of growing influence. He’s the Coyote now, and the Coyote is as taciturn as he is feared, so their meetings now transpire in grunting silence, and their only communications are Julius’s purchases. Gordy can buy what he likes—only, to be on the safe side, nothing orange.
“Is all this really necessary?”
“Donk thinks it’s necessary. Donk’s usually right.”
This conversation takes place at Bailey’s Donuts, the sixth stop. There’s no significance or purpose to this stop beyond enjoyment of donuts. It’s being run by an orange-haired loony, a cat Donk’s befriended named Garf. It’s not the same, Julius thinks, without Bailey here. Still, Garf must be an apt enough manager; the pastries are as delicious as always. They get a baker’s dozen; Julius wolfs three, while Gordy savors one.
“This is how I can run all day and not get thin,” Julius says. He says it every day.
Julius brings any remaining donuts in the box for later at the Neon Chapel, which is the seventh and final stop.
Gordy’s screaming starts a few hours later. Out of the secret dark and silent fabric of slumber it comes knifing through, a wall of sonic misery, then another, then another, inevitable and unstoppable, never failing to arrive until a minute after you’ve finally—though you wasted half the night waiting for it, dreading being awakened by it yet again—dropped off into sleep. Scream after scream after scream, the same as it had been in the tunnel, the same as it’s been every night since. Terrified. Horrified. Wordless. Hopeless. It doesn’t seem like a body could remain whole after delivering a scream like that, but still they come, regular as waves, again, again, again. On Gordy’s first day the entire Neon Order had rushed to their new member’s cell to see what sort of beast had broken in and who it was killing. They’d found Julius already there, holding Gordy, who was stiff-limbed and wide-eyed and catatonic.
“It’s fine,” Julius announced as they arrived. “Or at least it’s normal. I’d hoped it would stop once we left Donk’s hidey-hole. It lasts fifteen minutes at most.”
Julius lied; it usually lasts a half-
hour at least. It isn’t a seizure. Nor is it a vision. It’s a series of nerve-rattling dark soul-screams. Always the last one the loudest, rising in pitch and volume until, with as little warning at the end as at the beginning, it ceases.
That had been on the first day, though; days have stacked up now. If they were bricks they’d have made a wall: months of weeks, weeks of days, seven stops at a time. Awaken, run. Dave, Bailey, Projects, Craps, Ralph’s, Donuts, Barbecue, scream, scream, scream, SCREEEEEEEEAM, sleep, repeat. As the weeks have progressed, as they continue their routine unmolested by cardinals, undetected by loonies, Julius realizes he’s searching less urgently on the rounds for Tennessee; meanwhile, Gordy has gone more than a day without talking about the upcoming circus. Perhaps, Julius thinks, there’s no doom hanging over us after all, no creeping beast swimming up behind us; perhaps this is all there will be: strangeness melting into familiarity, all these changes slowly becoming normal; not better, but comfortable, expected. Certainly, there’s no sign of a ticket. Julius finds it’s a relief in a way—Ever since meeting Gordy, you’ve mistrusted your motives, perhaps rightly so. You’ve felt a hunger for it within you shouldn’t trust. And jealousy—yes, jealousy, too. God talks to him? Why to him and never once to you?
When do I get my chance at God? All your life that’s been your question.
Ask another: Should I want one?
* * *
—
After the confused crowd had meekly dispersed, after Julius (relieved) and Gordy (crushed by disappointment) had left for the Neon Chapel, Donk stood in the empty parking lot, alone except for Morris’s two tiny lieutenants, who stood at a distance. A lone flyer done in the style of the promotional posters floated by, carried by a momentary gust: The Flying Bearded Lady.
“I’m totally fucked,” Donk muttered.
“That’s certainly how it looks to us,” said one of the Andrews with what sounded like satisfaction. “Just a few days remaining on your deadline.”
Donk grimaced. He hadn’t seen them there. The fact his voice could carry testified to how completely his plan had just vanished into nothing. It’s the guy Julius told you about. The man in powder blue. But how?
He decided: No. You won’t figure out how, so how doesn’t matter. Figure out what’s next instead. At least there’s no question anymore that a ticket with world-bending powers might exist. You just have to hope Gordy has one. The man in powder blue certainly has one, or something like.
Donk stalked off, deciding not to waste time giving the Andrews the satisfaction of an answer. Let them report back to Morris you think you’re doomed—you’re not. This just means you’ll have to do it the hard way is all. Invite the priest and his friend over for a doctored drink and give them a thorough search when the sedative takes hold.
Hopefully that turns the ticket up. If not, you’ll have to get rougher.
—Boyd Ligneclaire, Subject to Infinite Change
* * *
—
Maybe there never was a ticket, Julius muses. Maybe it was always the Deep Man, acting behind the scenes on behalf of Gordy.
Maybe it would be better if that’s all it was.
Certainly, it would be better if the Deep Man stayed away.
Julius now thinks of the ticket—if such a thing even truly existed—as an icon, some metaphor or another: a microphone, or an old club-shaped telephone receiver, to seize and scream into, demanding answers at last from one who could no longer pretend not to hear, a way of making oneself known at last. Gordy doesn’t want to talk anymore, bubba. You’re talking to me, now. And I have a thing or two I want to say…
Julius grimaces. Challenging God. Therein lies a thicket of existential perils—especially after last night’s vanishing act. Better, maybe, that no ticket has manifested nor seems likely to. Better, maybe, to focus on routine, regularity, forget about flickering and tickering and divinity and doubt. At least Donk appears to have moved on from his tough-guy act; he was friendly yesterday at the grocery, almost effusive. Invited Julius and Gordy by his place—the first such invitation in months—to talk over the inexplicable events of last night. When they arrived, Donk had been loose and relaxed and casually abusive in their old fraternal way. “I don’t have any news,” he said. “I just thought maybe we’d play some cards and drink some bourbon and I make fun of you for being ugly.”
He’d also made fun of Julius’s theories about the Deep Man and God.
“Give me a rest with the God trip. Everything we’ve seen is explainable. We just don’t have the explanations.”
“A circus just vanished. Explain that.”
Donk gesticulated vaguely. “There’s weird shit in the universe. Things we don’t understand. Listen to what the scientists are figuring out these days. Strange particles, dark matter, spooky quantum action.”
“What’s ‘spooky quantum action’?”
“Am I a particle theorist? I read it in the newspaper. It’s quantum action. It’s spooky. My point is, weird shit you don’t understand doesn’t equal God. It just equals you don’t understand, because it’s weird shit. Even smart people haven’t figured it out yet, and you are not a smart people. You are an idiot.”
A good conversation. Like old times. The day after the circus. Just a day before the end.
Later, when Gordy and Julius woke in the deep of night from what they assumed was a bourbon haze, they stumbled home, entirely unaware of how thoroughly they’d been searched.
GORDY READS: WINDOW
The ways of need amuse me even today. Satisfaction of one need brings not peace, but simply the awareness of the next, a coffle of human demands constantly promoted, one after the other, to eminence. When I was running, my need was rest. Once I was rested, my need was warmth. Once warm, I was hungry. Once full, thirsty. Quenched, the injuries I had performed upon my outraged body presented themselves again to me, and I found I needed rest once more. Outside was the cold, and so I was led by my chain of need, brought to heel like a trained dog, up the spiral staircase behind the altar, seeking some manger for a bed. High above, the domed ceiling, its base ringed with small lamps, illuminated both the valanced (and newly desecrated) altar below, and the frescoes of angels above, in soft lambency. I entered upon a narrow balcony, which rose sharply upward behind me in four terraces, each supporting a row of choral pews made of dark varnished wood and padded with red velvet cushions. The balcony itself described a semicircle huddled against the back of the apse, exempt from the lighting encapsulating the rest of the dome.
I lowered myself into a pew on the front row near the center of the arc, hunched forward like a child at a matinee, my hands and chin resting on the balustrade.
I now faced directly back the way I had come. Below, on the wall opposite, the doors through which I had come were visible. Directly above them, peering at me like a giant’s extinguished eye, the opaque glass circle dominated. I closed my eyes, lost in weariness and a growing awareness that soon, despite cold and fatigue, I’d have to move on. Faintly, a choir singing from unseen speakers floated down to me. I sighed again, but relaxed, content, allowing myself to live in the animal now. It was pleasant here, and calm. Long years of ceremony had embedded itself in this place, speaking of depth, promising meaning. But I, cuddled into my new cynicism, remembered my father’s “laboratory,” and congratulated myself on having pierced the illusion. Belief itself was for fools. I allowed myself to luxuriate in my suffering, melancholic and noble, realizations that pained me, but even in the pain, provided grips to which I could cling. These at least would not change. A painful but constant wisdom had, at great cost, been attained.
I opened my eyes.
I had seen stained-glass windows before.
I hadn’t seen anything like this.
It could not have been more than a minute since I had closed my eyes with the window darkened by night, but now the giant’s eye had come
alive with vibrant light pulsing from delicate, multihued slivers connected by a frame of nearly invisible webbing. A prophet, staff in hand, stood beside a rock gushing water. In detail the artist had not spared pain or labor; the prophet’s gray and tangled beard, the folds of his robe, his eyes glinting defiance, his staff raised high, needles of the inhospitable rock, ripples in the stream, white spray of foam leaping from the new-lanced freshet to the lofty upper periphery of the window’s circular frame, while below the trickle spread to a creek at the prophet’s feet, flourishing to a river as it swept downward and past the window’s scope. The glass, so recently impenetrable, now disclosed itself, blue and white and gold and crimson, in its translucence creating a strange doubling effect. You could focus on the artist’s vision, or you could shift your gaze, and there, around the image and through it, the prospect beyond emerged: a ragged horizon, jutting sunlight, buildings looming like great trunks on either side, the city captured in color. Near the center, directly above and to the right of the prophet’s head, like bishops parting for a new pontiff, the skyline gave way, and for a scant length of horizon, the sunrise pierced through the concrete forest, scraped the roof of the building directly across the cathedral, and shone like a diamond in its setting. Whether by propitious accident or design, the tip of the prophet’s staff glowed with divine power as its end made a perfect confluence with the heart of this morning jewel. The nave, now revealed in detail, lay blanketed in diaphanous light refracting from every facet; it bathed me, cleansed me like a benediction, washed me in peace. The altar rails cast long shadows stretching beneath my perch and away out of sight. The slender sentinel windows lining the nave now woke from their slumber and glowed, not from morning light without, but from the ineffable beauty filling the space within.