by A. R. Moxon
Near the center of the display, a large hollow child crouches, its knees drawn against its chest. The child is twenty feet tall from rump to head, pure white in the places it exists—though these places are few, as the hollow child is primarily comprised of empty space. Its shape a hint, suggested rather than insisted upon, rounded at the borders of his existence but muddled by the jagged internal shapes of his sparsely spaced remains, as if it’s been artfully filigreed from paper and then expanded from a denser state, as if its cells have abandoned their structural bonds, and, caught in the act of dispersing like smoke or cloud, have been frozen before the final dissolution. You can see right through the hollow child to the sky and clouds and buildings beyond. As a result of its distention, it seems, from a distance, to be made of arbitrary shapes, spaghetti and tendril, but as Bailey nears, she realizes it’s composed of an assortment of alphabetical figures interlocked and artfully arranged. This is the largest statue in the park. There are gaps at the base, allowing entrance and egress. In the center of the interior space a man sits in a posture mirroring that of the hollow child. He looks up as she enters. They stare at each other in amazement.
“What are you doing here?” the man asks.
“What are you doing here?” she returns.
Gordy smiles, shows a pamphlet—a bearded lady flying through the air. On the schedule, a listing for Raccoon River. “I’m chasing a circus,” he said. “And I think I’ve finally
* * *
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solved all his other problems, too.
“There’s no ticket. I don’t need any object to do what I do,” you say.
Donk fires again, again, again. It goes the same as before. You watch him accept the fact that you can take his bullets unharmed—and, again, it’s impressive, watching Donk receive the new information, almost immediately accept it, and adapt. He shrugs, tosses the rifle clatter to the ground.
“All right. And what do you do, exactly?”
You walk over to the rifle, heft it. “ ‘Whatever I want’ is what I do.” You balance it upright on your palm, barrel down. With your other palm you reach up to the stock. “I can do anything.” You press down and the rifle softens, collapses into your hands and you roll it like clay into a sphere. “Anything—except for one little thing.”
You wait for Donk to ask about one little thing. Donk keeps quiet and watches you. My God, you think, I have complete advantage—is he putting me off my balance?
“Except for one little thing,” you repeat awkwardly, “There’s a man I can’t go near, but I think you can. More, I think you want to. Hurting him might be the only thing you want.”
“Morris?”
“Morris.”
“And what makes him so special that you can’t go near him, if you’re King-Hot-Shit-I-Do-Whatever-I-Want?”
“Call it…the universe’s preference,” you say, still rolling, rolling the clay sphere that had been a rifle, rolling it smaller and smaller in your hands, thinking with the slightest defensiveness—Of course I can. But when he dies, or he calls it, then the wave comes. And the wave is like the ticket—it comes from other levels, from heights I’ve yet to attain. How fast might it come? Faster than I can escape? It’s certainly possible. And why risk it, when I have one such as this to do my work for me? “And…” a dramatic pause for effect “The universe’s preferences are my preferences.”
“That’s sort of nonsense, but have it your way,” Donk says. He loosens his necktie. “What’s your game with me?”
“You sought Gordy for the power he holds. You want to harm Morris. I know why.”
“I want justice for Morris. He deserves it.”
“Indeed he does. All you have to give and more. So tell me.”
“Tell you…what?”
“Tell me what you’d have done with Gordy’s ticket if you’d gotten it. Convince me you’ll do it right.”
And so Donk does. His plans for Morris, describing it in lingering detail. Bit by bit, piece by piece, moment by moment, pain by pain. When he’s done, you pause and regard him. Extraordinary. His inventiveness may even surpass your own. The clay sphere between your palms is tiny. You harden it into a diamond. You give the diamond a setting. You give the setting a chain. You say:
“And then, the amulet had All Power. And it was so.”
Then you toss it to him. When he’s put it on, you disappear, folding in half, then half again, then again, reducing to nothing. It’s the damnedest thing. But before you go, you can see Donk has become aware of his new limitless abilities, that he has
—Jordan Yunus, Subject to Infinite Change
* * *
—
understood. That’s all I ever wanted: to understand.
Tennessee shut off Gordy’s confession and sat in the quiet. Nothing but the wall of a motel at his back and the stillness; no wind. The corn standing in the sun made low crackling sounds as it warmed, and the man who had been Sterling Shirker pondered his son’s words: command and door and edict and wave and voice. And think of Julius’s beautiful words, his last and only sermon, about fools and hopelessness. No wonder it moved you so; after all, your boy’s found a hopelessness bigger than the world. That’s why he ran. He’s out there, somewhere. He’s playing out the line for us, as far as he can take it. Disobeying the command. Waiting until that wave finally comes and takes Morris and this whole Pigeon Forge mess away. You should take on a hopelessness of your own. It feels right, with Gordy taking on such a massive hopelessness, that his father should take up one of his own. So what hopelessness could you choose?
You could go back to the Neon—no end to hopelessness in Loony Island. Julius has informed you that Nettles stayed behind; you could go help her. Or you could head out over the sea, find one of those desert lands you hear about on television, those kids with the spindly arms and bloated bellies and teeth escaping from their faces. If ever there was a hopelessness, that would qualify. Or, do the near thing instead of the far thing, wander over into the nearest town, into Raccoon River, find some hopelessness there. No doubt one would present itself. Here’s a tempting one—go and find Gordy, join him in his own hopelessness. The boy could use another set of eyes, another pair of hands. Or go buy a giant map and play a game of “pin-the-tail.” Go where my pin stuck. Or go itinerant; walk the land, hopping from trouble to trouble as I found it, like a hero from a TV show.
But you know where already, said the Sandals Julius. Sterling, haven’t you realized yet?
There was no sense of searching for a disembodied voice. Never any question it was the sandals talking. Tennessee didn’t even open his eyes. It was as if he’d been waiting the whole time to hear from them.
Tell me then, Tennessee answered back. Where’s my hopelessness. Well, Sterling, they asked, where do you never want to go again? and he answered, with growing excitement and horror and joy, Why, you know where I’m never going back to. As if I haven’t told everybody a thousand times. Well then, said the Sandals Julius, you have your answer. Don’t you.
There must be something else, Tennessee said, there must. But the Sandals Julius lapsed into silence. The corn crackled in the sun.
It’s funny, Sterling thought, but since I put these sandals on, I haven’t stammered even once. Maybe I’m not “Tennessee” any more.
—Boyd Ligneclaire, Subject to Infinite Change
Artists, a word to you now—whispered in your ear: Your art is not about you. To be more precise, it is not about you alone. It is about you no more (and no less) than it is about every other consciousness encountering it.
—Unknown
begun already to suspect what he’s capable of.
Within an hour, it’s no longer anything so uncertain as suspicion; it’s certainty, and Donk is gone. For whatever it’s worth, he’s the Coyote now. Not just what they call him anymore but what he thinks of himself. He’s spen
t the hour in the unfurnished Domino City room, testing the limits of the abilities the stranger gave him. There don’t seem to be any meaningful ones.
This room is the one. The very One. Ever a man of compartments, Donk long ago secured for himself an unoccupied room in every tower of Domino City to use, as needed, for surveillance (or, for example, in the case of Tennessee, for storage), and in this tower, he selected this specific room precisely for the sentimental weight of it. As a boy he sat here—right here—hour upon creeping hour throwing a rubber ball tub tub tub tub into a cup. The Coyote thinks of the ball and cup, and they appear on the floor. He spends long minutes holding them, these long-gone artifacts of childhood.
Using his mind, he opens and closes, locks and unlocks, the apartment’s front door.
He gives himself muscles of comical proportions, shredding his suit. He deflates himself again, restores his suit back around him as he does.
He floats himself a foot above the floor.
There’s a shell casing on the floor. He turns it into a potato. He turns the potato into a ferret. He turns the ferret into mist. He turns the mist into a fine filigree of platinum.
He could turn the platinum into a rifle to replace the one that became his amulet, but he has no need anymore of a rifle. The rifle was only ever a tool.
He goes to the window. It’s open; it’s the one he’d been watching from, surveying the entrance to the children’s room in a panic through his rifle scope. A laughable worry now. The Coyote gives himself ultraviolet and infrared senses—Look, there the children are, subterranean, safe. They’ll keep safe forever now, he thinks. I’ll see to it.
Out the window spreads a cloudy sky. He pushes the clouds away. He turns the sky purple. He turns the sky yellow. He turns the sky black. He turns the sky back the way it was. Here and there, he hears the sudden screams of those attentive souls who had been, at that moment, watching out their own windows, who without warning had seen this inexplicable atmospheric display.
He casts his awareness out, guided by unerring instinct, locates his friends—amazed to discover how far they’ve scattered without his knowledge—how? When was Bailey healed? It’s a miracle, but miracles, it seems, are thick on the ground these days. He’s briefly shocked into anger and something like fear to see how apparently loose was his grasp upon this puzzle’s moving pieces, but then he remembers that it no longer matters; that grasp has become infinite, so let them run. Gordy’s chasing the vanished circus, sleeping on a bus out of Elk River traveling to Buckeye. He locates Tennessee and Bailey driving circuitous roads toward nothing, running from Morris, but also…ah. They’re running from you. They fear you; they think you’re a hard man, consumed only by thoughts of vengeance. They’ve misunderstood you badly. You’ll teach them a better lesson in time; at least they’re clear and safe. He can’t find Julius. This is unfortunate, and suggests that perhaps Morris has ended the life of at least one of his comrades. So be it: one crime more to make the bastard answer to.
The Coyote thinks—Pragmatism won’t be necessary any more, nor secrets. These were never anything but tools. There won’t be any more lies to keep track of, there’ll be no more compartments. These were your cruder tools, your defenses against power, but now you have the power to make obsolete any need for defense; it will be all plain dealing from here, and nothing but dealing plain.
The Coyote returns to his home, pours a drink, picks up his book, then quickly sets it down again. Thinks—reading isn’t necessary anymore. Reading was only ever a tool. To know a book, now, you simply have to think about knowing it and you know it. He steps out his window, rises high, higher, higher, hovers over the city. Tells himself: Neither is a home necessary. Home, too, was only ever a tool. Now you can be all the tools you ever needed. Descending slowly back down to the roof where the twisted remains of the greenhouse stands, he begins to understand the new forms he’ll need to mold for himself.
The Coyote thinks—Consider the weight a place can take on. How many children disappeared that day? Perhaps a dozen. He threw Yale off this roof, Ralph did. You and Bailey watched him fall, and then you ran. You never saw what happened to the kids, but you always had your suspicions. Let’s keep the math simple. An average weight of a hundred pounds. Twelve hundred pounds of life. For each day gone by between then and now, this is the weight of unpaid wrong that lands upon that roof. Visit it; you’ll feel it. The greenhouse isn’t gone; you just wouldn’t know it had ever been a greenhouse. Scattering of glass shards, twisting metal framework rusted out and rain-riven, monkey bars for a malicious gnome. This is where you’ll start your new republic, the centerpoint of a new reality. The weight of the place expunged at last—no, not expunged, but rather fully invested, converted, redeemed.
They’ve understood you so poorly—your enemies and your friends. The bricks of cash you stored, the prestige you gained, whatever small influence you managed to accrue—all meant to be spent in restoration. You never thought you’d gain such a power as this, but it will be spent wisely and well. A fully restored greenhouse atop HQ, and all the children invited from their hidden secret room. The gangs purged, their slaves freed, their quarreling silenced, the narcotic spike pulled from the social arm. Do they truly think you never intended to finish your quest? Did they think you’d be satisfied once you’d sent Ralph to a fitting and deserved end? As if Ralph were the start and the finish of the problem. As if even the five gangs were. What of the police, who failed to make even a cursory investigation of the sad end of what were, to them, nothing more than a dozen public nuisances? What of the city’s entire population, whose practiced disinterest was so complete it gave license to the authorities for their apathy—who with tasteful aversion and willful blindnesses, were the source and the wellspring of that apathy? No, Loony Island is only the beginning of your work on the world, even as the greenhouse will be only the beginning of your work on Loony Island. From the greenhouse, from the Island, it will spread—a quickly growing sphere of order, restoration, peace, and safety, cresting out from you in rapidly expanding concentric circumferences…
But first: Morris. You’ll make him pay a slow debt, then you’ll block his tunnels and empty his oubliettes, then heal his prisoners, bring them back to themselves, return meaning to their lives. Once you’ve finished with Morris, you’ll go to Bailey, and make her understand. She’ll apologize when she understands…but first, there must be a reckoning, some unspecified time for her, of reflection and penance. For her to have understood you so badly, to have healed herself and used her good fortune to run from you…There must be some form of redeeming punishment.
But—it occurs to him—you can allow yourself the fun of one last deception. Your deadline is tomorrow, and you haven’t found Gordy. Morris will send for you. Be subordinate Donk another day. He’ll find you easily; you’ll be
—Jordan Yunus, Subject to Infinite Change
* * *
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all over the country. And who’ll replace them? Sister Nettles gazed around the emptiness of the Neon Chapel; without any of the brothers and sisters to share it, the space, once charming and cozy, felt garish and vast. Wanting to glare at Julius the way she was accustomed whenever he was being annoying, but most annoying of all, Julius had left, his only goodbye his sermon.
Brother Tennessee, having only recently arrived, had done nothing. At least his absence left no gap. But the rest…
Father Julius, of course, had scoured the city, locating need, folks hungry, things broken, noting it, bringing the list to his proxy for funds
And Dave Waverly, the secret proxy with reserves of moxie, he’d released the funds.
Sister Biscuit Trudy had hauled sacks of fresh-baked rolls to those Julius found.
And Jack and Brock, they’d fixed what needed fixing.
Sister Mishkin, she’d done the baking, then followed Trudy, carrying the excess sacks.
Brother Pretty T
rudy, himself only recently escaped from a hard life selling ass, had brought medical and emotional aide to all the pretty girls and pretty boys, and those not so pretty, and those aged out and discarded, all those who had found their young bodies bought them first attention and flattery but then rough treatment and bad use.
And Sister Winnie had tutored in the secret room Donk kept for abandoned children, the only other entrusted with knowledge of that location.