by A. R. Moxon
Bailey shakes her head—talking sandals is a level of crazy best contemplated at some other time, perhaps never—and reaches for the binder. The idea is to read for hours, but the day’s been too much and in the middle of a discursive passage about apes she drifts into what
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seems to be the problem, good buddy?”
“Who the fuck are you?” Donk screams, pointing his rifle right at you. He’s recognized you, and of course he’s pissed. To his mind, you just disappeared his circus—his big scheme—and left him holding the bag.
You smile and light a cigarette. No movement required; you just tell a cigarette to exist in your mouth, then you tell it to be lit. And so there is cigarette, and so it is lit, and you see that it is good. You judge this a useful way to go—with Julius you always approach cautiously and hidden, but Julius goes in for the whole God jive. Donk, he’ll respond better to a direct show of power. Thank God it’s an empty room. Even so, the dimensions lurch wildly from something like a large closet to a space the size of a warehouse. The walls are painted a thousand colors, they’re a hundred varieties of brick. The floor is carpeted and it’s bare. Donk looks like a million different people.
Donk, of course, has a multitude of problems, a constellation of complications. That’s why he’s got the rifle, which really isn’t his style. Think of all his problems. Start with the sack of oranges, which he’s still got with him—look—tossed in the corner of the room. Donk found those citric globes propped up against the doorway to the Fridge, and to him, in that context, they could only be a message from Julius, and from Julius, oranges could by mutual agreement only mean the compromise of their secret: the children’s room, a truly safe place, where food and toys and warmth and a comfortable bed can be found, built beneath-ground, the only entrance a hidden spot surrounded by a scrim of high grass, tucked between two of the projects of Domino City. Only when Donk rushed immediately to the secret door did he realize how utterly he’d been had. He’s never visited the children’s room; Julius had arranged the whole thing: contractors, payment, bribes, decorating, staffing, all. The idea’s always been to have complete arm’s-length separation, remembering all too well the danger Yale put everyone in. Gangs are as aware today as they were during Ralph’s rise of the extent to which abandoned children can be used as spies and soldiers; to be caught gathering them all in one place, as Yale had done with his greenhouse, can only ever be seen as an act of war—and Morris wouldn’t have paused, had he discovered Donk’s children’s room, from treating those unlucky kids the same way Ralph treated Yale’s.
So here’s Donk, getting the oranges and immediately rushing, certain beyond certainty he’ll find the whole place tossed, a charnel house of murdered kids…barging in only to find everything peaceful, fine…and he knew he’d been tricked, watched, tracked to the spot, his greatest secret exposed. So now Donk’s sitting in Domino City by a window in building 2, top floor, an unoccupied room he’s secured for himself with clear sightlines, vest on but jacket off, hair mussed though he doesn’t know it, watching the entrance through a rifle scope, waiting to see who it is who’s tricked him into revealing the door, and what they intend to do with the knowledge. While he waits, he’s already brooding over everything else—Someone’s got the drop on him, that much is clear. Nobody knows what oranges mean but Julius. Which means Julius has betrayed him…but under what duress? And who else is giving him up? He sent his loonies out and they’ve brought nothing but bad news. Tennessee’s escaped, door off the hinges. Bailey’s gone from her hospital bed. Julius missing, and most of the Neon brothers and sisters gone. Donk can only conclude this means Morris has everyone captured. And his deadline with Morris is tomorrow, and no Gordy to be found. There’s no better interpretation; the new boss has decided he’s failed and is getting ready to collect on Donk, hard, and he’ll take everyone Donk loves first, just to make it sting more…
You think: I could tell him it’s simpler than that. That the oranges were nothing but a feint, just Tennessee acting on my instructions, buying some time for those meddlesome muddlers I wanted safely out of town. But I won’t do that—goodness, no. I want Donk as angry as I can get him.
You’ve waited too long to give an answer; Donk fires. The bullet clips your cigarette, extinguishing it; passes into your right cheek and out through the back of your skull.
You smile and heal yourself slow enough so Donk sees it; you want him impressed—yes, a direct show of power will be just the thing.
“Who are you?” Donk asks, without lowering the rifle. “How did you take it from Gordy?”
Ah, you think. He sees your power, he thinks you have the ticket. He’s still obsessed with the thing. A logical conclusion. Still, he sees your power and doesn’t quail. Most people are scared just seeing you, but not him. Even when he’s seen he can’t hurt you, he stays focused on the task before him. It’s an impressive display of will and nerves. You need someone who will punish Morris to the breaking point; he appears to be an apt tool for the job. Just wait until you’ve
—Jordan Yunus, Subject to Infinite Change
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observed these behaviors across wide ranges of related species. For example: Apes hate little people. Science hasn’t done enough to study this. There’s a certain logic to it. Think of the pecking order. Think of living in an ape community, surrounded by jungle. Jungle on all sides—on all sides jungle! And in that jungle, the Things creep. Them. The Things. You, with your body of hair and sinew, without language, without words, lack even the rudiments of comprehension’s gruel. All you know is the jungle is out there, pressing all around, deep and dark and hidden, jungle forever and forever jungle. You can smell The Things in there, the unseen Things; you might hear them move but you don’t see them, until—with first a rustle and then, immediately thereupon, a horrendous screal of fang or coil or claw or spur—there bursts from the foliage like Satan’s dogs a dread beast, releasing massive deathly energy after long stealth to grab you if you are unlucky, or one of your cohorts if they are unlucky, to pull you into the darkness that surrounds and murder you loudly within earshot of the rest, eat warm bananacurry yoghurt from your intestines while you still live. Then there are the other ape tribes, competition for your territory and resources. They’re worse than the Things, because they leave nothing behind. If some other group wants your plenty and sees weakness in you, they’ll be all around you in an instant, grabbing you with powerful rough hands and smashing you against the rocks, teeth at your neck, clever strong fingers in your eyes. Every male and every child killed and eaten. Learn the smell of your tribe. Any ape from outside is a presumed advance scout and must be dealt with immediately.
So you learn to sleep in the trees. You forage on the ground in packs, you and your coterie of hairballs, picking and chewing each other’s curdling fleas. You stick close to your fellows, forgiving them their farts, for only when you cling together like dingleberries can you hope to live even one day more. The largest of you, the meanest, the strongest, he is your best friend. Not despite the fact that he is cruel to you, not despite the fact that he can (and does) hold you down and abuse you, screw your girlfriend while you watch, bully you, torment you, dominate you and at every turn remind you of that domination, not despite all this, but because of it. In the life of the jungle, bigness isn’t just good, it is goodness itself. If you are one of the whales in your midst, so much the better. All the best of the difficult ape life will be yours. But if you are small, then you, dependent on whales, love the brute for throwing his weight around. He’ll keep you from getting eaten alive, you see. But your love for him in no way mitigates your seething hatred of him—how could it? Outrages committed against you are outrages still. You remember each bite, each shove, each cuckolding, each time your food was snatched from you with a snarl—and not only you. Did you think you were the first weak ape? Oh no, you fool, genetics had its
way with you long before any bully did; you are the product of a weaker strain. Centuries of generational submissive memories are packed into your poor cranium, highly pressurized, providing you each night with angry orgasmic dreams of chasing, of catching, choking, biting, screwing, killing…this pure naked compressed rage must inevitably find an outlet. It can’t go to your actual tormenter, distiller of your ire. Not only would this be suicidal, but it wouldn’t even occur to you. You don’t want to attack your tormenter. You love him. He’s the strength of your tribe. He’s your protection against The Things. He’s better than a bad death out there.
No, your anger goes to the smaller ape. The one you yourself can hold down, torment, cuckold, terrorize. The one who holds the food you can snatch. The one who, in turn, loves you with rigid devotion, all the while making his own daily microscopic deposits into his own storehouses of shame and hate. The smallest ape is a dangerous ape. Everybody knows it. Abused by all, abuser of none. Nothing but a powder keg. The rest of the tribe tolerates but does not trust him. He goes around, futilely showing his teeth at all times in gratuitous show of submission. Someday his mind will snap from the abuse and he’ll attack, and then he’ll have to be destroyed. It’s only a matter of time. The second-smallest ape dreads, without realizing it, this day of unwanted demotion.
Now: Apply ape logic to small people. You see? Remember, an ape can’t tell a person from an ape. Apes think everybody is an ape.
What then, in the eyes of an ape, is a little person? Why, to ape perception, a little person is the smallest ape there is. Smaller than has ever been imagined. He must represent eons of pent-up violence. Distrusted, hated, feared, abused. And from an outside tribe! In the presence of any small person, any ape will convert into a frenzied murder-salad. Any ape, any small person. And what if a small person should be unlucky enough to encounter the one ape whose spleen has found no vent, who has never had a target for his slow years of violent urges? What if some unlucky small person should chance upon…the smallest ape? This clearly observable phenomenon
—Boyd Ligneclaire, Subject to Infinite Change
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can only be described as a disturbing disappointment: sleep but no Attic.
In the morning, Bailey, beginning to find the familiarity of her body, takes a shift at the wheel. She drives the longest roads they can find, and the most circuitous, and the farthest from the main. Tennessee pops in the earbuds and listens, eyes closed, while the tires eat horizon. His eyes pop. “It’s Gordy-Gord talking, all right!” he exclaims. “Like Julius promised.” Then he’s gone, listening to the confession of his son gone forever, learning to the whys and wherefores of Gordy’s great abdication, information Tennessee has long sought, and sought almost as fervently as he has his abdicating lad. Bailey relishes the silence; she needs the time to ponder her missing Attic, and the strange visitation she’d received from a stranger who said he was her brother. So much else strange has happened, what if it’s true? What if you have a sibling, lost to you on some other plane, some other room you only managed in all your exploration to discover once? And what was it he’d told you? To run. Yes. Run and you’ll find me, Boyd had said. You’ll have to jump, and trust your luck, he’d said. I was; now I’m not, he’d said. If you find me, I can be. Bailey looks out the window, seeing but not seeing the passing sameness of flatland, fixated on her reflection thrown weakly by the glass, which suggests a ghost hovering just inches outside, traveling alongside on a parallel course.
In the evening they stop some miles outside Iowa’s capital city, selecting their motel for its remoteness, but near enough to see the city’s modest skyline from the front porch, as well as the roadside distance marker: RACCOON RIVER 12 MILES “Once upon a time, a long time ago, everything changed for me,” Tennessee remarks, studying the sign. “I think this town was called something different back then.” The next morning, Bailey clutches her knees to her chest, weeping noiselessly so she won’t have to explain to her companion why she mourns. It’s even worse now. When she sleeps, she now knows the Attic will not be there. Her dreams are worse than empty, they’re full of nothing. She walks endless hallways of doors but when she tries the doors the entrances have been bricked. She’s been restored. She’s been banished. But she suspects she knows what she needs to do. “You’ll have to run,” Boyd had told her. Fine, Boyd, whoever you are. You want me to run? I’ll run.
Bailey laces up her sneakers, heads out down the long flat straightness, between the heights of cornstalk. Running out into this perverse sameness to reclaim her infinity of variance, running until she’s sun-baked, heaving herself back in time to fall asleep under the shower until woken by the water going cold, hauling herself aching and road-battered to the bed, too exhausted to remember sleeping, waking to find herself unchanged, the Attic still missing. Forcing herself back out in the morning to start again; letting the realities of motion, of pain, of balance, of dominion over her limbs, settle their physical benedictions wearily upon her.
Six days of this. For the first two days, Tennessee remains with her, seemingly unconcerned that they’d chosen to stop driving, seemingly incurious about his companion’s strange new routine, sitting on the low concrete slab that serves the motel as a porch, back to the wall, sandals stretched out, letting the sun shine on his face, listening unceasingly to his son’s voice.
On the third morning, Tennessee packs his luggage: the envelope, a single plastic grocery bag containing a change of underwear, a toothbrush, the device, and the earbuds. “I found my hopelessness,” he says. “Oh,” says Bailey. Not until evening, when she returns to find Tennessee gone, does it occur to her: She’d never thought to ask what he meant, or where he was going. He’s taken the car and a single stack of twenties from the satchel. Bailey finds herself unconcerned by the theft, even unclear about whether or not it was theft. Had she offered? She can’t remember.
Tennessee’s departure throws something ineffable but vital, previously balanced, out of skew. The world becomes drab but surreal, unfamiliar, as if illustrated by a vivid and tainted mind. Stranded in an island of corn in an unfamiliar land, each morning she puts the distant modest skyline of Raccoon River to her back and lets it melt away from her, step by step, sun on her left side until it beats down from above. Then she stops, turns and watches the skyline creep back toward her once more, sun crawling down toward the horizon, the sun always on the left; before long, the left side of her body perpetually feels several degrees warmer than the right. On the sixth day she can barely move from her bed and dares hope—in vain—this may be enough to open the Attic. But on the seventh day, rising from a sixth night dreaming of hallways and bricked doorways, she awakens to a new revelation.
Bailey puts the satchel with cash and manuscripts—the original from Father Ex and the copy she made not long after—into her backpack and stands on the motel stoop, watching the sun light the dawn sky. Everything grows sharp and clear for her; the world again becomes exact, comprehensible. The thought rises—I’m still in the Attic, or else this is the real Attic and I never considered it. Imagine: This is the room with all the corn. There are other rooms to find everywhere. It’s like Boyd said, you have to run. Run, and it will all reveal itself to you as it comes to meet you. The beauty of it makes her want to weep, and so she does. Two low concrete steps and off the motel porch, weeping and blissful, Bailey runs, but when she reaches the road the wind pushes her out of her usual course. Rather than struggle against it, she surrenders, puts her back to the wind and her face to the skyline, and watches the city of Raccoon River slowly rise up to meet her.
Her suspicion proves correct: Raccoon River is another room. It’s the room that has Raccoon River in it. A collection of high buildings that would not have overwhelmed Loony Island’s modest towers, spaced wide apart from one another, gaps in a child’s mouth, stones across a pond, a city at once urban and rural. They watch her beneficently, the buildings, as she pass
es in and out and among them, as she slows to a more observant pace, to a trot, to a walk, to a stroll, coming to rest at last in a greensward filled with sculptures. It is, Bailey sees, a smaller room nested within the greater room of Raccoon River. The room with the sculptures, within the room holding Raccoon River, which is itself contained within the room with all the endless gossiping corn. She wanders, captured by this new perspective, thinking—This changes everything. The paths leading to harm and doom are endless, so what advantage is gained in blockading against one or another of them? Choose one of the endless safer paths, and where do you find yourself eventually but in danger, beset once again on all sides by no fewer possibilities of harm and doom than before? But here is the room with statues on the lawn, a reality far worthier of contemplation than any catastrophic possibility. Here is the rangy skeleton of a horse described by driftwood. The sinister and contemplating statue of a rabbit posed in a parody of Rodin. The iron statue of a long coat standing with no visible wearer to support it. The blasted white tree. The steel girders, painted saffron, arranged at jutting angles. The two fat pawns, one black and the other white. The spider with impossibly long spindle-legs. An array of intriguingly shaped obelisks. White monkey bars nested in white monkey bars nested in white monkey bars.