by A. R. Moxon
“Gordy-Gord,” the apparition says, hushed. “It’s you. It’s really you.”
“Hi, Dad,” says Gordy, allowing his father’s embrace to pull him from Ex’s wooden confines. The rest of the cells are dark; the Neon brothers and sisters are either sleeping or listening quietly. His father is weeping. “You remember. You remember me.” Gordy lets himself be shaken. His father’s arms, surprisingly strong for their scrawniness, clutch at him. “Found you at last at last, my boy. Found you at last.” He releases Gordy and collapses to the floor, sobbing soundlessly, and Gordy, not knowing what else to do, sits beside him and pats his shoulder. Here’s what’s left of your dad, Gordy muses. Sterling Shirker, onetime professor, PhD of History, your father—a bag of rags and sticks on the floor. “Tennessee” now. It must have been hard for him; most of what you’ve been through he’s been through, too. Spent as much time as you in the oubliettes, and then when you got out you wouldn’t even claim him. Can’t even say anymore if it was genuine amnesia or delayed adolescent pique, but unfair, unfair…another soul you’ve left in your wake. Imagine raising a child by yourself and losing him. Days, weeks, years, the two of you together. The man he’ll become revealing himself to you as he grows. Every day the boy unfolds new possibilities, day after day he builds towers of potential. Nobody knows him like you do. To lose that. For that story to end roughly, incomplete, a book torn in half and the back half burned and lost to you forever. Then years later you find it again, but it’s written in a strange tongue, an alien alphabet.
Dad weeps and heaves and then shudders and hauls himself from the floor, recovering slowly; they sit side by side, father and son, unsure of each other and made awkward by lost time. Gordy can’t think where to begin; there’s so much more still to be explained—How to tell this man all that happened, about why you ran from the cavern, about what forced you to leave him behind? How to bridge the moments between? And still in him is the desperate craving in his bones to make himself forget again, before the next command crashes into him.
“I’ve been looking for you for a while, boy,” Dad says. He smacks Gordy’s back and grins like the loon he is.
“We’ve been looking for you, too.” As he says it, Gordy remembers how excited Julius is going to be. “Where have you been?”
Dad makes an ostentatious show of looking around for eavesdroppers. “Donk,” he breathes. “He holed me up in a back room. He’s been lying to me about everything for months. My new buddy busted me out.*2 My door locked on the outside, you know, but suddenly, blammo! It falls down. And there he stands.”
“Who’s this…new buddy?” Gordy asks, suspecting he already knows.
“Well…” Dad screws up his face. “Now we come to the point of it, he never did drop his name. An unusual fellow.”
“Powder-blue suit? Chain-smoker?”
Dad is appropriately astonished: “You’ve seen him?”
“I’ve seen him,” Gordy says. “What did he have to say to you?”
“Not much. He told me not to be scared. He’s sort of startling to look at, you know…”
“I do.”
“Anyway, he told me where to find you. Told me we had to go. Then he just folded up.”
“Folded…?”
Dad nods gratuitously. “Right up. Just folded in halves again and again until he was gone. It was the damnedest thing.”
“I’ve…never seen such a thing.” Gordy says, quite honestly.
“And he told me…lots of things. Including, I gotta get you out of town, pronto,” Dad says. “But I already knew that. I can add up two and two. You gotta boogie, buddy. Donk is coming for you any day.”
“Donk? That’s nonsense. If Donk wanted to grab me, he could have done it at any time. He had me hidden away under his floorboards and he let me go without a fuss.”
“Listen, boy, I’d be very very careful about trusting our buddy Donk. I don’t know how he’s been presenting to you, but until recently he’s been real friendly to me—chummy. Doesn’t matter, he’s lied to me in every word. Told me Julius was missing and run off. Told me you were long gone and that the heat was on for me. He’s been keeping me locked up three months ‘for my own safety.’ Keeping me around—and I now see keeping me away from you—pumping me for information.”
“What sort of information?”
“About your ticket, of course. Where you keep it. Where you might hide it.”
“Donk knows about the ticket? Did Julius tell him?”
Dad looks suddenly sheepish. “I told him. Well, no—I told Julius and he overheard. Anyway, he knows. And look, boy—he told Morris he could get it for him, and Morris gave Donk a deadline, which is just about up. Donk was hoping to steal it without harming you. Couple mornings ago, he came to where he had me, drunk and screaming. Told me I hadn’t done squat for him. Told me he was done with me. I’d been plan A. Now he goes to plan B. He’s gonna bring some guys to snatch you, take the ticket from you, alive if he can. That’s what he said to me the other day—’Alive, if I can.’ That’s when I knew Donk was no friend and that I was in yet another pickle. Not a clue how to get out, either, until my new buddy jailbroke me.”
“What does Donk have against me?”
“Nothing. He likes you—you and Father Julius—if you can say he ‘likes’ anybody anymore. The Father in particular. It’s why snatching you was his last choice instead of his first. It’s why he’s been so patient about it. And, he’s not sure what you might do to him with the ticket while he’s trying to get it from you. But his big plan was to catch you at the circus; and that plan evaporated—literally, according to Donk. That put him in a bad bind. Morris isn’t one to budge. Donk’s going to have to deliver or pay for failure, and Donk’s affection only goes so far.”
“The circus was…?”
“Donk’s idea,” Dad persists. “Morris owns the circus, but Donk told him to bring it, and to put Jane on those posters. He thought she might draw you out of hiding.”
“She nearly did. The circus vanished…”
“Donk says after the Island show she’d go out touring. She’s out there, trolling for you.”
Gordy rubs his temples. It’s all too much. Donk, ready to turn them in to Morris? If true, it’s the worst possible news. They’ve trusted Donk with so much; he’s the reason they walk the streets confident of their safety, avoiding only the increasingly rare cardinal and the swinging arms of loonies. But who in the Island doesn’t Donk control? If he wants you, he’ll get you. But hold on now, wait just a minute…
“If Donk wanted to give me to Morris he could do it any time. What’s the wait?”
“He wants you for himself. Since Bailey, all he really wants is revenge. He’s got extravagant plans for what he’ll do to Morris with that ticket once he gets it off you.”
Gordy, stammering. “But that’s just…it’s…it’s…fine. Actually, it’s perfection.” It’s as if the great Gordy-an knot has been cut—Why didn’t you think of it before? You can abdicate before the next command comes, divest yourself of the ticket entirely and scoot. Donk wants it? Donk can have it. You came out on top by the luck of the draw, or by luck’s opposite, by some cosmic happenstance or accident. It could have been anyone; certainly, it doesn’t need to be you. In wrath, Donk will erase Morris; no need to wait for divine justice’s truant and increasingly tardy wave to do the trick. He laughs. “Donk wants to use the ticket to hurt Morris? Great. I tried. I can’t. But if he wants to give it a shot…”
Dad shakes his dandelion fluffhead. “Donk isn’t the one, son—you haven’t heard him go on about what he’s going to do when he gets that tick tick ticket.”
“I’ve got to do something soon.” The fear of the next command is upon him. It may be the one that breaks him. He needs to make himself forget, soon, soon. Dad, who doesn’t notice the immediacy of his son’s distress, continues: “He’s thirsty for it, boy�
�and I don’t think he’ll stop with more more Morris…he’s been talking about what he’ll do to anybody who’s wronged anybody…anyone at all. Talking about using that ticket to run the whole city—all the cities. He may be as dangerous as Morris.”
“Impossible.” Gordy, suddenly mindful of the hour and nearby sleeping Neons, whispers, hoping to bring his fulsome father’s voice down a touch—a foolish instinct, perhaps, after the hour he spent screaming.
“Well, I slept like shit.” This is Julius, emerging from his cell, obviously unrested; his head keeps listing to the starboard before coming with a jolt back into sudden alertness. A mug in one paw contains an inky eye of coffee. Surprisingly, Julius takes Tennessee’s reappearance onboard with indifference; whatever other effect Landrude’s doughnut-shop speech has had, it’s drained him of curiosity for any questions that Tennessee might be able to answer. He’s similarly disinterested in the errant loony’s urgent new information about Donk. “We were leaving already anyway,” he says. “So, now we’re leaving without goodbyes for Donk.”
“We’ve got to go right away,” Tennessee insists. “It should be today.”
Julius falls heavily into one of the sanctuary’s plush chairs. “Right, today—but not immediately—I need to talk to my people before I go. They at least deserve a goodbye. And I need to settle some business with Dave Waverly.”
“I’m coming with you when you go,” Tennessee says.
Julius barely even shrugs.
At Julius’s summons, the Neon brothers and sisters gather; they wait for Sister Nettles to arrive from Bailey’s bedside. She enters silently, seeming somehow to know Julius’s purpose already; her mouth’s a fixed line, her eyes focused on a middle distance past the ceiling or beyond the floor. When all the brothers and sisters have come together in the large central room, Julius speaks to them, the first and last homily of this strange gutter priest. As he speaks, Gordy watches their faces go from perk-eared interest to confusion to horror and slack dismay. Julius speaks slowly, distinctly, voice raw and deliberate, measuring each word to avoid choking on emotion.
“I’m going to say some things, and you’re going to want questions answered right away. You’re going to want to interrupt. Please wait until I’m done. I feel like if I don’t say it all right now, right away, I won’t be able to say it ever. This is going to be short. It’s too hard to make it long. I’m leaving. I’m leaving today. Tonight. I don’t expect to come back.
“There, that’s the hard part done.
“That’s a lie. That’s not the hard part done. It’s all the hard part. Every part of this is hard.
“I love you all. All of you. I came to Loony Island with the notion that if I came, others would join. A ridiculous notion. No reason to expect others to join me in a mission I couldn’t even define for myself. And yet, here you are. Let me say again: I love you. I’m not leaving because I want to be gone. I’m leaving because I see no other choice. You may as well say I’ve been called by God, though I won’t say that. I know leaving without explanation will confuse you and hurt you. But I’ve decided explaining will confuse and hurt you even more. I leave the matter in your hands. If you disagree with my secrecy, come find me. I have a few errands to run this morning. After, I plan to spend several hours in my room in contemplation. Find me there, and I’ll tell you what I know to tell you. If you trust my judgment on the matter, you won’t ask. I don’t think it’ll help you to understand. But if you must know, I’ll tell.
“I think most of you know this house rests on the foundation of what used to be a cathedral. In that cathedral was the most beautiful window you’ve ever seen. I used to wake up early and run into the city every morning to watch the sun rise through it. They told me the name of it was “Sin of Moses.” Back then I always took my run at night, and I always ran past this cathedral. But this particular night, I saw…I don’t know what. It looked like a meteor, but coming up, out of the earth. A fiery tail, arcing way up in the sky and then back down. I saw the glow red in the distance, and kept coming closer until I could tell it was from my…from the cathedral. It was burning when I arrived. The diocese closed up shop a decade before; now it was a rundown haunt, home for vagrants and runaways and people who couldn’t even figure out how to get themselves thrown into prison or the Wales. I could hear people in there, screaming exactly the sorts of thing you scream when you’re about to burn. I ran around the place, every door heavy and locked tight. Who locked the doors? I wish I could say. If I’d been able to open them, I’d probably have died running through the fire. As it was, I ran around outside like a crazy person. Tried to break through the windows, which were stained glass. Bashed whatever I could find futilely against the tracery to knock it out.”
Julius hesitates, seemingly surprised at how vivid it’s become in the retelling; the almost sensory memory of smokestink and flame, and Bernadette’s old home and Wavy Dave’s refuge turning to ash in front of him, and the screams of children and adults. “I felt like…like maybe my destiny was upon me. Like I’d been brought to this place each day for so many years simply to perform this one great act of salvation—but then there came this deafening clap like a bomb from the upper decks as the flames blasted out through the roof and the Sin of Moses came all to pieces, blue and white and gold and crimson tinkling around in shards all around me, and even in some places into me, and I despaired. No destiny brought me there, no unseen forces moved, it was nothing but another coincidental cock-up, door and window, frames like granite, and me useless against them. May as well shoulder Everest out of the way. My chest heavy, the air stolen out of me, eyes filled with smoke…
“I couldn’t help them. With nothing left to do, I did what I never did before. I fell to my knees. I prayed for divine help for the doomed. I prayed for the help I couldn’t bring.
“And, you know, it was the damnedest thing. Help came.
“I felt the first drop maybe a few seconds before the sky dumped half a lake directly on us. The hardest storm I’ve ever been in. My shoulders sagged, the weight of it. Soon I was in an inch-deep river running down to the drains. I don’t know how long it lasted. It couldn’t have been more than…what? Five minutes? Ten? No more than that. It was enough.
“The onlookers came up to me. They’d seen me drop to my knees. And then the rain. I could see the awe in their eyes, some of them. It was from them the word spread.
Julius pauses for a while, then:
“I didn’t pray. I don’t know what praying is, really. I wasn’t asking for rain. I wasn’t asking for anything. It’d all been a puppet show. I didn’t pray rain into existence; it simply happened to rain. Eventually in life you win some kind of lottery, I guess; my winnings came in the form of precipitation. I didn’t have a thing to do with it, other than being there when it happened. It was still a miracle—almost no lives were lost—but it wasn’t my miracle.
“Almost no lives lost in the fire, I said, but there were lives lost. The church had abandoned the building, but their representative had not. There was a priest still there. She may have been defrocked for refusing reassignment. I never asked, and she never mentioned. Her name was Father Bernadette, and she was my true friend. She was there with them that day. A part of the ceiling collapsed, trapping a child beneath. She crawled under the burning pile to pull the child out. It was hopeless and brave and foolish and heroic and pointless. She was caught under there with the kid. They finally excavated the bodies after the rain extinguished the flames.
“I’ve been here these years, acting the priest, in her memory. A hopeless cause, I suppose, but whenever it looks hopeless, I think of her. Did she die for nothing? Sometimes I think she did. Sometimes it all strikes me as futile. The result of her heroism wasn’t anything like what you would want in a story like this. Often I think it was foolish, a useless death. But other times, I don’t think what matters is the result. In those moments, I think all that matters is the hope. N
ot the hope the world provides us. I think the only hope there is to be had is the hope we make for ourselves, and the only way I know for us to make it is by being fools. I think sometimes that’s the only way hope can be made: some utter fool, doing some hopeless foolish thing, with failure very likely, moving, unexpectably, from the safety of sanity into some hopelessness or other; by being foolish, and moving farther into the foolishness. It’s been what I’ve done thus far. So far, things haven’t gotten noticeably better. And yet, some kind of miracle has happened, and, like the miracle of the rain, though I’m credited with it, I had nothing to do with it. I was merely nearby as it happened. It’s a simple miracle; nothing from God, no tongue of fire. Only you. You have happened. You have come for a while, and gathered with me, and eaten with me, and without provocation or reward, you have gone about some sort of foolish work. I want to say to you now, with all the sincerity my scabbed up and cynical heart can muster: Thank you. Thank you for letting me be a fool among you. Thank you for being fools around me.