by A. R. Moxon
Occasionally, Goop-Goop sneaks a glance over his shoulder. The wave is still there, a comfort to him. The proof he’s always had; this at least cannot be taken away. But everything else is gone, gone. He lists the things the Coyote has
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taken Finch and Sterling away from Jane. The Andrews have promised both will be processed in the Assizement. Already they’ve been sent to the cages. It seems to Jane natural it would be the Andrews, truest of believers, to fill the void of leadership Morris has left behind, naturally they’ll continue the traditions for which they have such zeal. They haven’t stopped believing in Morris’s vision, they’ve only stopped believing in Morris specifically. Now they have a new god, one who floats down from the sky and daily proves his worthiness by seizing their old god and unmaking him. The Andrews have taken to looking skyward for him. It’s on the Coyote’s behalf they will continue the old ways, bird and spade, fountain and cavern. Besides, there’s no stopping this ceremony; the tickets were delivered already, days ago, to every Pigeon Forge resident. Blue if you’ve been chosen for the Assizement, green if you’re invited to the show, a distraction as those left behind are collected: carnival and circus, freaks and fun, the flight of the acrobats, the caper of the clowns, the roar of the lion, the dance of the bearded lady.
But today there will be no dance, the crowd will leave disappointed. Jane has neglected to tell Krane, or the Andrews, or anyone else. It’s her decision; one they won’t like, but by the time they know, it will be too late to correct. There’s no time to dance, not with Gordy’s confession to listen to. The confession was Sterling’s first gift. His second gift was a promise of hope, the only hope remaining.
It feels like a year ago. It hasn’t even been a day.
“We need Gordy. And we need him immediately. Gordy’s been given a command he needs to fulfill. Gordy’s the only chance.”
Sterling’s eyes widened. “The ticket’s gone,” he whispered. “Julius turned it to water. It’s gone.”
She shakes her head. “The ticket’s beside the point. The ticket only matters because your idiot son thinks it matters. Gordy can be miracle enough. But he has to get here soon.”
“Gordy is coming!” Sterling had yelped, with almost comic relief. “In fact, Gordy’s on his way here as fast as he can get.” This had been Sterling’s gift of hope, though Jane had to admit he’d tarnished the gift significantly by the next thing he said, which was this: “My sandals told me so.”
She’d wanted to ask him more, but that’s when the Andrews had burst into the caretaker’s apartment and captured them. “I’ll keep her safe,” Sterling shouted as he and Finch were bustled away—another promise of hope, though an empty one. Nor would there be any safety, not if Gordy didn’t arrive. Braiding her beard for the trapeze, Jane filled her ears with Gordy’s voice and waited for him to come. It has to be soon, she thought. It has to be soon. If it’s not soon, it won’t matter.
Jane listened, then rewound and listened again. How typical. Naturally, Gordy had seen everything behind the door. Just as naturally—for Gordy at least—seeing had not brought understanding. Gordy had been
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stolen from him. First, the eyelids, replaced by a chitinous substance resembling fingernails; forcing him into a terrible, careful, never-ending awareness of his blinks. It’s easier to simply keep the lids closed, opening them only at need.
Then, a week later—last week—Goop-Goop lost his feet. Legs neatly replaced from the knees down, the shins tapering grotesquely into prehensile pink boneless worm-squid nubbins.
Next the Coyote played his terrible trick. He’d vowed to come once a week, but he’d lied. After the legs, he returned the very next day, duded up as a caped superhero, his diamond of power set in his forehead, and changed Goop-Goop’s tongue. It belongs to some rougher beast, this tongue. The only order it can give is Goop. Along with the tongue, he lost his authority. The Coyote made his modifications in the bright of day, right where all Goop-Goop’s followers could see, then set him down once more on the grass. Goop-Goop had crawled for his crutches, but the Andrews moved faster, knocking his props away, pinning him with prods as he rolled legless and mewled wordless on the turf, making for the first time the hated goooop noise—guttural, epiglottal, the baboon of rage within him finally given full throat. Meanwhile his lieutenants fought each other for dominance, and the Andrews prevailed.
The next day, the Coyote took Goop-Goop’s name.
He wishes he could remember it—his own name. No other memories have yet been stripped from him, but his name is…is…no. It’s empty there. He remembers the moment it went, but he can’t remember what it was, only that it’s now gone. He lost his teeth next. They still work somewhat; the sand is dense and hard, making a shred of the unfortunate tissue of the inner lip. Then the hair, turned to a horrendous tin filament you can feel extrude from the scalp with the excruciating slowness of hair’s growth. Losing his name is more maddening than any of the physical disfigurements. To search within your mind and not find it. To be compelled, for lack of a suitable alternative, to take the name bequeathed by the lout Krane.
Goop-Goop grinds his teeth, bringing a fine dusting of sand to his tiny, inarticulate, salamander tongue, and he stops, mindful; he can’t allow his teeth to disintegrate, he needs to parcel out their use now, just as he needs to ration his blinks to spare his eyes as long as possible. This is the cruelty and the genius of the Coyote: He doesn’t take away, he transmutes. If you simply remove something, then it is gone and you can begin to learn to live with the lack, but if you replace something correct with something unsuitable, a torturous maintenance and constant consideration of your predicament becomes necessary. So it is with the name: Goop-Goop’s learned you can’t not name yourself, there must be some signifier, some placeholder. But worse than the maddening itch of the misplaced name is the terrible notion that a piece of one’s internal furniture might be removed. The time may come, Goop-Goop knows, when he will remember only that he once occupied a better state and a more commodious form, but not what that state or form might have been. Even the idea of Continuity will someday be stripped away. Why, might he even take away the—a quick glance over his shoulder—no; it’s still there—the wave.
The stake that holds him is a thick wooden tent peg, a four-footer used for the big top, driven deep into the ground and affixed to a heavy buried concrete slab. A series of chains are merged by welds to a heavier chain, which is wrapped around the stake, and the smaller chains are themselves welded to the iron collar and shackles around his neck and wrists. Carefully, Goop-Goop closes his eyes—Yes, these are your dividends. You’ve got nothing else, except for
* * *
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the flight in. If you want an indicator of what sort of a froth Bailey’s been in since reading the end of Boyd’s book, Gordy thinks, look no further. For the sake of speed, she was willing to buy an airline ticket, which means she was willing to appear on the grid—and Boyd’s book has taught her things about Donk’s new powers and cruelties that have made subtle living less a preference and more an obsession. It was the late flight into Nashville, then a rental to another motel in Knoxville for a rest ahead of the circus, both of them judging it wisest to roost at a reasonable remove from Pigeon Forge proper.
The wave is coming, according to the book. Morris is being tortured past endurance—Donk’s been up to this horrific work. Gordy doesn’t see the trouble with that. “That wave is exactly what I’ve been waiting for,” he’d sputtered, “and now you want us to go and be there when it…?” But no, Gordy, stop it, you’ve followed this line of reasoning, and it only leads to another squabble. If we’re going to do the unimaginably stupid thing, it’s better to do it quickly and silently, and then be gone.
And, it must be admitted, the book also has it set down that Jane will die; a fate Gordy would gladly risk hi
mself to prevent. It must be further admitted, the book has proved…unnervingly predictive, enough so that basing your actions on its prognostications no longer seems entirely insane.
The idea is to sneak to see Jane, and get her clear. It makes sense to find her in any case; she’s the only person who might not attack them. Also, Gordy does have to admit that Jane, with her insider’s knowledge of Pigeon Forge’s subterranean politics, is likely to be authoritative regarding the question of whether Morris really is being replaced piecemeal by a hyper-powered Donk, and what to make of that. And Jane will be in town, if the circus schedule’s still accurate. Gordy knows exactly how to find her, as long as Morris is still using the circus as cover for his fountain shenanigans. Crumb’s ’Mazing is still open; it stands to reason the maze will still contain the secret entrance, and Gordy can still remember the trick.
“There’s a gross coffee machine in the gross lobby.” Bailey emerges from the bathroom dressed in her customary black. She’s ripping a flimsy motel towel into strips. “Want some gross coffee?”
Gordy smiles. “I’ll live without.”
Bailey’s got a heavy-duty flashlight she intends to use as a baton, her preferred weapon. Now she works the strips of towel into a makeshift holster. “Think we’ll find our way in?” she asks, absently.
“One way or another,” Gordy answers, truthfully. No doubt if they can’t sneak in, they’ll be captured and brought in.
Bailey takes the meaning. “Stay behind,” she says. “Tell me how I can get in; I can take it from there. You’re not wrong; it’s dangerous. But it’s more dangerous for you.”
Gordy looks at her, and feels a rush of emotion; here’s someone whose instinct is always to run toward the danger, never away from. Not because she loves danger, but because she refuses to dismiss the way it reaches for others. He shrugs, says: “We’ve come this far already. Let’s go put our minds at ease if we can.”
And that’s it, in the end, isn’t it, Gordy realizes, as Bailey leaves for the coffee. That’s the whole mission: putting a single lovely mind at ease. It’s insane, but it’s enough. Gordy can find peace in it, if not logic—and anyway, there’s not much logic in anything, is there? What do you expect from the world? Salvation? Justice? Sanity? This course may doom us, but the risk is our own. If it leads to a world ruled by Morris, so be it; those are global concerns. I’m finished shouldering the burden of a world that allows someone like Morris to rise. Worse, a world that insists on the success of its Morrises. He and this world are hand and glove, so perfectly matched, it’s difficult to know if it created him or he created it. He works the way the world does: Give the useful enough slack in their reins to let them imagine they run free, take the useless and make a use of them, herd them together and make money from the consumption of their bodies, profit from their poon, lucre from their labor, or (if they are especially incompatible) interest from their incarceration. If you’re killed, then the world will end—for you at least. Let such a world end. Or, let Morris rise to take control of it, so we may at least be honest about how we are dominated. For those of us on the margins, there won’t be much difference either way. Meanwhile, if there’s a scrap of comfort to be found, let’s make a try for it. If there’s a chance for a modicum of hope, pursue it. Where can you find even the hint of sanity or clarity in a world like this, hold it. Wrestle what you can away from the world, dodge and scrape and pull a scrap to sustain you from between those eternally grinding teeth that exist only to consume, for whom you are nothing more than a catholic particle of the fuel allowing them to continue their grind. Here is a hint, a scrap, a chance: to settle Bailey’s mind about this apparently existential danger rising up in Pigeon Forge, and maybe find her never-was brother. It’s not logical, but Julius is (if Boyd is to be believed) many pairs of sandals, and you were only partially visible for years, and somewhere nearby hundreds or thousands linger in mirrored boxes, screaming their lives away at their own images, so screw logic or sanity or justice or certainly salvation—none of that foofaraw for you. Here is love, Gordy-Gord, riding alongside, somehow discovered, unlooked-for, invested in you without any wheedling or clinging or wishing. It might be love for the first time, friend, and you don’t just stroll past love. Nor does love stroll by every day. Nor, perhaps, does it always last. Perhaps sometimes love is nothing but a momentary ray of sun, the most precious gold there is. How foolish not to bask in it, while it shines.
“Gordy…?” It’s Bailey, in the doorway, holding a cup of coffee and wearing a trepidatious expression. “Look at this.” She brings a large brown envelope into view.
“What is it?”
“Mail. For you. Somehow somebody’s found us.”
She tosses it to Gordy. The return address is a familiar one—the Neon. Sister Nettles.
“What is it?”
Bailey gives him the fish eyes until Gordy realizes there’s really only one way to get the answer; he opens the envelope, extracts the sandals.
Sandals. Gordy whispers it: “Are these…?”
“What else could they be?” Bailey asks. “Or should I say ‘who?’ ”
“What do I do?”
Bailey looks at him like he’s the imbecile he supposes he is. “Well, Gordy,” she says. “I think what you do is, you put them on your feet. And then maybe you’ll get
* * *
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the inexplicably restored loyalty of the bearded lady.
Jane’s recent transformation is the one pleasant lesson Goop-Goop’s mind has provided him throughout this ordeal: a restoration, at the precise moment all others have fallen away, of his greatest disciple from pure apostasy and opposition to accommodation and renewal of allegiance. She’s arrived each day—she’s here now—with cool water and a sponge. A comb, a razor. Some food. Drops for the eyes. Her expression inscrutable, but in these actions, he divines an impending return of his singularity—She understands that harm was never your intent. All these people, projections of your distracted mind; they harm themselves, they’ve spilled from your wire’s plastic jacket like wayward filaments. When was the original sin, the breach of the casing? When did they escape your perfect Oneness? It must have been some time in the deep past, before Isaac, even before memory. All you’ve ever done has been to tease them all back into their original configurations and seal the breach. It was your great work, as the world’s only consciousness, to trace each of them to their source, to reconnect the links, to restore the connections. No wonder, thinks Goop-Goop, your entrepreneurial mind gravitated toward prisons: some way of holding people and keeping them properly ordered, so perfect unity might be reached—What, then, is the lesson of this present suffering? Is this the end of your being, or some other beginning? Jane has cast her lot with you. Is it possible she represents the part of yourself that holds the deeper consciousness? She may have an understanding of you greater than your own. This seems to be one of only two possible conclusions. The other is that both you and she have gone mad—a distinct possibility. “Hold the wave,” she says. “Please. Don’t call it.”
The water from the sponge is blessedly cool. But wait, she’s gone—When did she go? His eyes were shut; he hadn’t noticed.
Goop-Goop realizes—Jane isn’t insane, she’s a prophet. She even has a prophet’s beard. More has been revealed to her than to any other. She knows about the wave. He’s never told any other about the wave—the great certifier of his position—of this he is sure. But she knows. It’s always there, in the periphery of his vision, over his shoulder, kissing his awareness. Never in his recollection has it been absent. Through his life he’s tried not to think of it if he can help it; accessible to him at any moment, the ability to call it and end the entire struggle, wash it all away until nothing is left but a great blankness and himself—unless it were only the blankness left; unless he would be the blankness, or the blankness would be him. It’s there for him, the relief of a criminal abou
t to surrender, the haven of the fox who lies down at last to await the baying hounds. He could call it now, a trillion trillion tons of cresting water, and end this. Bring an end to this pain in a great cleansing deluge. Each day, as another thing is taken from him, he contemplates it. If he’s honest, he’s been thinking of it more than he likes. Lately it calls to him powerfully, and, more frequently, he returns the call.
Goop-Goop spares himself a peek around the tent before shielding his vision once more beneath the jaundiced translucence of fingernail lids. He allows the world to become a thing captured in glimpses.
He can hear telling sounds of early arrivals to the circus. It’s all these others, thinks Goop-Goop—all their fault. Why can’t they see that any power—all power—must be given to you? Why won’t any of them understand it? This pain all stems from their universal stubbornness. But look here—their stubbornness is your stubbornness, for they all came from your mind. This realization is good; it simplifies. No need to waste any time on mercy even for yourself. This, then, is your lesson: to reach your apotheosis, it has become necessary to divest yourself of those things that are not truly you. Even your name. Even that. Strip away all illusion until only the essential character remains. Nothing but undistilled self. The Coyote is the tool for this perfection, and your punishment for the stubbornness of your consciousness, as well—yes, punishment. Even you have failed to entirely become yourself.
For a moment, Goop-Goop entertains the notion that Continuity, having been offered no fit offspring from him into which to house itself, has passed from him and moved to another…but who? A vengeful hypersteroidal skygod in cape and spandex? A pair of midgets? It’s an atrocity either way. An aberration. A mockery. Why even consider it? Since the onset of his torments, so many strange and false notions have been pressing their noses against his window. It’s maddening—Continuity passed down to the Andrews? To Donk? No. Whatever lesson this is, it isn’t that. It’s a hard lesson you’ve given yourself, but the difficulty prefigures great significance, so you must resolve to learn it well. A test of your own faith in yourself. No. This, too, is nonsense. Or perhaps it isn’t? It’s all become so unbearably muddled. Goop-Goop throws back his head and brays a single howling