The Revisionaries

by A. R. Moxon

  Jane runs for the stairs.

  Everything that’s happened to us after I got my hands on this ridiculous book has happened, too, exactly the way it says. Which means…beneath the covers, Bailey gazes up from the flashlight-lit pages in wild wonder. It’s not just what’s happened, or what’s happening. It’s what’s going to happen. It’s as if it’s all coming together…As Gordy snores insensible and sated beside her above the duvet, Bailey, no longer feeling the tug of slumber, reads on through the

  wordless chuckling screams. “No fair,” screamed Morris. “No fair. No fair.”

  “Oh but a week is so long to wait,” laughed the Coyote. “The rule has changed. It’s every day now.”

  —Boyd Ligneclaire, Subject to Infinite Change

  fair, no fucking fair.

  You smoke and read the latest revisions. It’s so unfair.

  All that work enduring the nightmare of interpretation, setting everything up just so, and now Jane goes behind the door to cock things up? You course through the revision, the doughnut stack, back and forth, reading its woeful report. Even Donk, the mighty Coyote himself, vested with all power, fails you. The problem with a comic is, what it shows you, it shows you unmistakably—pictures on a page—but what it leaves out is just as unmistakably out, lost, and unguessable. Example: Here, on this page…close to the end…You flip to the page…yes, here: Julius takes the ticket. The priest turns to sandals, and the ticket turns to water. It’s gone. It’s gone.

  How then—how—do you account for this unexplained and inexplicable final page?

  You decide to brave the interpretation. Once more through the door, dear friend. Go to Morris yourself, face to face, and push him to the breaking point yourself. You’ll have to risk his wave. No choice but that your work be done on the other side; it’s the only way you can see behind the panels, the only way to know.

  —Jordan Yunus, Subject to Infinite Change

  How redundant, to lard a book with epigraphs and quotations. Every book you read is itself already a quotation.

  —Unknown

  Sterling brought her back below the fountain again, back to the apartments, thinking only to keep her safe from the chaos above: the howls of tortured Morris, returned from the sky, set down by the Coyote upon the fountain lawn, a civil war that his followers have been fomenting now broken out around him, a schism not between loyalists and traitors, it seemed, but between various tribes of apostates, deciding the final fate of their defeated boss, determining among them the new order of dominance and dominion. It was only a matter of hollering when he scuttled her below-ground, but it looked apt to turn to blood any minute.

  The girl remained friendly, alert, and completely blank. What the hell am I supposed to do now, Sterling wondered, heating tea for no reason other than to have a thing to do. I’ve already told her my story. I suppose I could tell her about my experience of

  * * *

  —

  reading until dawn lit the room and she could rest the fading flashlight batteries. It’s all here, all in the book, captured not with exacting fidelity, true, embellished in ways, yes—but certainly correct in a general sense, certainly rendered in more detail than might be expected from even a first-rate parlor diviner. No, never-known brother Boyd’s prognostications go beyond the talents of the corner mystic; as soothsayer, his sayings are sooth from surface to sump. Page to page to page to page, curiosity curdling to fear, fear fulminating to dread, Bailey flips forward. And—can it be?—here at the end who is it, anyway

  * * *

  —

  wearing the Sandals Julius? What’s it like? Oh, my. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. You’re in good company, in not asking me, is what I’m saying. But there’s something so polite in the way you don’t ask—so, since you haven’t asked me so nicely, I’ll tell you. Wearing the Sandals Julius. Well. It’s an interesting sensation. They’re real nicely padded, for one thing. Cushiony. Like walking on clouds or on the surface tension of water, or deep-pile carpet. But still supportive in the arch. You get a real nice balance there. You can’t usually run in sandals, but you can run in these better than tennies. I think there’s something in the soles. Then there’s the uppers. Look at this. Just feast your eyes. Blond leather, connected to the lowers by what looks to me (I’m no expert, now) like hand-stitching, tight loops, very sturdy. Look at the pattern of the stitchwork. Look at the etching on the buckles. Look at the tang—see there at the tip of it, where it’s crimped back just a bit for maximum hold to the buckle? See the way the uppers are serged into the soles? Tucked in. That’s craftsmanship. This isn’t some slipshod slipper-shoe, these aren’t the cardboard foot-bags they gave us in the Wales, this footwear’s been constructed with intention and purpose. They don’t talk as much as you might want—considering who they are, I mean—but you can’t deny the craftsmanship. And they don’t wear out. At first I wondered, but at this point it’s damn near undeniable. Take a look. Not a scuff, not anywhere, no wear on the tread, not a single stray thread or popped stitch, nothing—and after the miles I put on them, too. That used car I borrowed from Bailey didn’t last all the way to Pigeon Forge. Some people may have cars last the whole trip, but not me—I promise you I’ll never have that good of luck. Threw a rod right through the engine block in the western tip of Tennessee over the Kentucky border. I had to hoof it.

  “Here’s the tea, sweetheart. Careful, it’s still too hot. Just blow on it a bit and take it easy.

  “So. What I’m telling you is, to get here, I walked the length of Tennessee, most of it—walked when I wasn’t running. It’s odd. I’ve never been one to run, and if ever there’s been a trip a fellow might want to consider dawdling on, this would have been it. All the same I kind of felt the running itch as I went; a sort of feeling there was something ahead that might be better seen to sooner than later. So, I’d get into a kind of a trot, and then I’d get into a sort of a gallop. Then I’d walk when I got tired or the hills got too steep. And so when I say I find it singular—noteworthy—that these sandals haven’t taken on a bit of wear, that’s what I’m talking about. Was there precipitation? Does a bear shit in the rain? It poured on me most of a day. That sort of thing is hard on leather sandals, or at least that would be my expectation, but have a look—not a stain, not a blot. And, as far as I can tell, there never will be one. And I’ll tell you another thing, which is harder to prove. These sandals are as lucky as I am unlucky. I can see by your silence you’re confused. I’ll explain to you what I mean, and I agree explanations are in order. When you make a claim to have lucky sandals (not ‘lucky’ sandals, in the sense of a preference or a superstition, you know: ‘I always wear my lucky sandals on game day,’ but, in a more literal sense: ‘These sandals are, as a part of their nature, lucky, filled with luck and exuding luck and providing luck to their wearer’), well, any fool will tell you, that’s a claim you have to back up with explanations and evidence.

  “By way of explanation, a question: Are you clumsy? No, I can tell looking at you you’re not. You’re more like my boy, he could run a fence-rail the long way, post-to-post, and never slip or slurry. You met him years ago, but I daresay you don’t remember. Don’t get offended at the question, now. I’m not asking out of a sense of superiority, only it’d be easier for you to empathize with me if you were clumsy. You have to understand me, it’s a particular type of luck I’m speaking of here. Not the sort of luck that will win me the lottery someday. Not even the sort of luck that can keep my car from a breakdown. It’s all to do with finding the next step. Clumsy versus adroit is our dialectic. Me, I am an irredeemable stumble-crumb. Trip over my own feet. Over the feet of others. Over small creatures and their leashes. It’s a documented fact I’ve fallen off a curb on more than one occasion. I’m a terror in a public park, a menace in a library, and it’s an inescapable fact: Since putting on Sandals Julius, I haven’t fallen or even tripped—and not for lack of opportunity o
r increase in my own nimbleness or grace, neither. A good piece of my statewide stroll was cross-country work, you understand. The backwoods around here aren’t above throwing up a tree root or a shrub in the grass for you to stumble over, and the Smokies have no end of scrub and steepness to scramble up, loose stones and shale waiting to turn under a fellow’s ankle, hidden holes, sudden drops camouflaged by scrims of weeds, and on and on and on. Given my particular lack of aptitudes, I should have broken a leg and died out there. But these sandals, they always find a firmness in a slough, a flatness in the midst of a skid. They miss the hole. They masticate the miles without misadventure. They never skip a step. I bet they could safely dance a minefield. I can tell you with authority they can cross a field larded with cowflop and never catch a squish. They’re the reason I’m here with you, in more ways than one. Without them I couldn’t have made it here all in one piece. Without them, I’d have never come in the first place.

  “Hush. Hush. Did you hear that? Are they coming? I thought I heard somebody knocking.

  “No, it’s passed. We might dare hope they’ve forgotten us in the commotion. They’re scared. Look what’s being done to their great leader. Something’s falling apart, and they know it. Hopefully your mama can find something behind that door. Maybe she’ll bring us a

  * * *

  —

  hint of memory. Finch, perched on a chair she doesn’t recognize as having once been her own, doesn’t feel from this loquacious stranger any expectation that she should speak, and therefore she does not speak. She sips tea and listens, restful in silence. She likes to hear his voice. She likes the way it goes. Occasionally she takes note of the words and their meanings, and sometimes she drifts, enjoying the music and the rhythm of his sounds. Then she tries to experience and enjoy each individual sound of each word, as if each articulation were its own distinct presentation; each glottal, plosive, fricative, and glide encased in velvet, placed behind glass, attributes and contexts authoritatively delineated by handsome placards. All modes of listening are equally pleasurable to her, as is shifting from the one to the other.

  In time the words halt. She opens her eyes and sees that the kindly bearded woman from before has come again, whose name is Mother. When they were beneath the sky, she was sorrowful. Now she looks different; her eyes have gone wide and urgent. Sterling has gone to her. This is interesting. Finch keeps her eyes open and decides to do the listening where you follow the meanings of words.

  “What did you see?”

  “Everything. There isn’t much time.”

  “Did you see a…a wave?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  “Is it close?”

  The woman makes an indistinct and impatient noise. “It’s the wrong question. We’ve been thinking about that wave all wrong. We’ve been thinking about everything all wrong. We have to find Morris. He’ll need our help. And we have to find—”

  “But Gordy said we’re waiting on the wave. Is it coming soon?”

  “Wrong question. It might be here any second. It might never come. We need to find Gordy. Do you know where he is?”

  “Even better. I know his motivations.” The man rummages in a bureau drawer, procures from a travel-battered rucksack a large brown envelope, unopened, as well as a device and a set of earbuds. “Now that we’ve got a bit of time to ourselves, I’ve got something you really ought to

  * * *

  —

  know better than that. Page to page to page to page, curiosity curdling to fear, fear fulminating to dread, Bailey flips forward…Yes, just now, as she’d been reading, the Ex-Position pages had shimmered, flexed, changed. Most of it was…yes, mostly the same, but now it’s got more at the end…but this ending…

  The crowd fell into a deadly hush. The two lay together on the ground, one atop the other, broken past repair. Ah, Jane, the thing that had been Morris thought. My only confidant, my constant betrayer. It’s good of you to be with me at the end. You’ve given me this at least. You’ve let me catch sight of my last intention. As Morris watched he saw the wave lurch forward to take all—everything. It’s right over his shoulder, the wave, sardine-sized no more; it’s the size now of a gorilla charging. Soon it will be the size of a train, of a mountain, of a planet. Soon it will extinguish sun and stars. Soon it will be the size of the everything, and then there will be the nothing, and, in the nothing, only a oneness. Only Morris could see it but he knew soon everybody would see, and all the nations of the world will mourn as they see it forever—but forever will be no more than the flit of a pigeon’s wings, for this wave is large enough to destroy even time itself…

  Hang on, Jane begged. Her final breaths, she spent on him. Don’t. Hold it back.

  It’s too late, Janey, Morris said. He felt so calm and so free. Aware Jane couldn’t understand the sounds his empty mouth made; they weren’t even words. He said them anyway, and looking into those beautiful almond eyes as the light went out of them forever, he thought: She did understand. It’s the last thing she ever did. She knew. I’ve called it already. It’s done. It’s done it’s done it’s done.

  THE END

  Done? Bailey thinks, closing the binder. Done already? Done forever?

  “The hell it is,” she mutters to herself, getting out of bed. “Nothing’s done.”

  * * *

  —

  As soon as you do it to Morris, you return quickly to the door, fearing the oncoming wave. In moments, you find yourself back in the study on the author’s side. Lying on the table, thicker than ever before, the expected stack of pages. Come, wave, come, you think, almost beg, nearly pray.

  Then, reading: This ending…it’s perfect.

  He calls it. It comes.

  No safe dropping.

  No Gordy giving Morris any ticket.

  You want to weep with joy and relief. Showing yourself to Morris worked—and you’d been so frightened to do so. Still, you waited until the moment was right to get this ending. It’s perfect.

  But…wait…no. This is the game of the blank. The ending’s perfect but the story’s still there. There’s still a story.

  Why isn’t the story gone?

  * * *

  —

  “Gordy, wake up. Wake up.” Gordy’s gone, out cold, lost in platinum unconsciousness; he requires a rougher jostle. “We have to go right now. We have to get to Pigeon Forge.”

  “Blmmmph?” Gordy inquires.

  “Boyd’s story just changed. Something’s terrible is going to happen. Jane needs us, soon.”

  Gordy, still pushing sleep from his mind: “Did she…call to tell you that or something?”

  But Bailey is already up and packing.

  It may seem brave to abrogate this notion, to face squarely the inevitable realization: There is no pattern to be found in the universe, no sense, no meaning, only dust. Yet if we are braver still, we may come through this realization to a further realization. Of course there is meaning, of course there is pattern, of course there is sense. We created it ourselves: first by imagining it, and then by naming it. And, in naming, causing others to imagine it, too.

  —Unknown

  Nettles finds that once you’ve accepted your old friend has somehow become your talking sandals, accepting their pronouncements is a less complicated matter. She finds herself in possession of a great and sudden belief, and a terrible dread. “But if…if everything’s going to end, Jules…shouldn’t we go there, too?”

  The sandals keep quiet so long she thinks they may have embraced sandal-ness and given up talking completely. Just when she’s stopped listening for an answer, they speak. Whether it ends or not is their business, they say. Our business is what happens after. We have

  * * *

  —

  a knife, but he hasn’t used it yet. Here, in the straw in the main-tent freak show in the Circus of Bearded Love,
chained to a stake near Wembly’s gorilla cage, sits the greatest freak the world has ever known. Most freaks are born to it, but not this one—he’s a recruit, a novice, a greenhorn. Even so, he’s a main attraction. There’ll be a hush when he’s displayed, a great intake of breath, an understanding that in this freak, a culmination has been attained. Here at last is the Ur-freak, a freak who keeps enfreakening.

  He calls himself Goop-Goop. He doesn’t know what else to call himself. It’s what the hateful sign above him says. The sign is wooden, and hand-painted, and hung too high to reach, to tear down and smash to bits. It reads: THIS IS GOOP-GOOP OF PIGEON FORGE, FREAK OF THE FREAKS. Below this, a hasty scrawl: Beware! Danger! Keep Your Distance! A desultory ring of paint around Goop-Goop’s stake demarcates the zone of peril, Goop-Goop’s range of motion. It’s a wiser precaution than they know, Goop-Goop thinks; they’re unaware of his knife. Colonel Karl T. Krane, author of this message, visits regularly, overweeningly proud of this new addition to his freak show. “They’re going to go nuts for you, my lad,” Krane propounded this morning with false avuncularity, smacking Goop-Goop on one cheek, his preposterous moustache taking the liberty, it seemed, of twirling itself, his patois slipping momentarily into his carny-barker shuck and jive: “THEY will be AB-so-LUTE-ly AWE. STRUCK. for you.” Goop-Goop muses upon Krane, who has betrayed him, as did all others. He thought of using the knife on Krane, but Krane isn’t anything more than a messenger, a barker. He’ll save the knife for the Coyote. Fat old Krane breaks away from his barking at the tent entrance every ten minutes or so to peep over, his expressive face full of naked hope for the moment of revelation—What is the next modification going to be? The Coyote’s come every day, just as he promised. He hasn’t arrived yet.