by A. R. Moxon
Suddenly, without preamble, like a magician’s trick, like a guillotine blade, the backing tapestry falls, and the circus confronts them with its innerworkings, without mask or prevarication, spilling its evil guts for the audience, who, rapt already, find it impossible to dissemble any longer away from it. They see the cage, and all of their own meticulously unremembered sons or daughters or husbands or wives—lucky recipients of backstage passes—packed within. They see the stage. They see the armed trustees dressed in scarlet, pointing their weapons in chaos, bewilderment, indecision. Beside the cage, there’s a hole in the ground. Beside the hole, an older fellow kneels in a growing puddle of blood. He smiles at them like a child with a drawing, and, with a flourish of his arms—ta-da!—he reveals the spill of his belly. Still and staring, he crouches in the quickly reddening straw as the crowd, still a single entity, falls into a hush. But their sudden quiet is not for the disemboweled man, nor for the cage of prisoners, nor for the red-clothed army and their guns. All of this they see, but barely. Their attention is terrified into diligence by two other spectacles.
First, there is the fountain, the evil white fang, the cherubs pissing darkwater into the abyss of the basin, the turtle’s eternal alabaster stare. They’ve known about it so long and so deeply they’ve forgotten how much of themselves it has become necessary to spend in order to deny their knowledge to themselves. Now here it is, and no expenditure of the soul will put it off. Face to face they are with its claim upon them all, its radiating malignancy, quelling them into fear, hurling them into submission.
Then there is the floating man. He’s a wonder to behold. Seconds ago, he burst like a rocket from the ground, emerging from a spot close to the gutspilled man, and dropped the curtain with well-aimed eye lasers. A cluster of men in scarlet seem to be shooting him, but that can’t be right, because they have no weapons—are they janitors? They hold brooms and mops pointed at the floating man in pantomime of gunplay, like children aping the posture of soldiers in war movies. The floating man hovers over all this scene, nearly to the top of the tent’s ceiling, duded out in a cape, a diamond on his forehead, his muscles poured into a skintight outfit of blue and red. In one strapping arm he holds a creature—Why, it’s that Goop-Goop fellow, the freak, what’s he doing up there?…
* * *
—
It’s so strange, thinks Sterling, because now the crowd is all around. They’ve dropped the curtain. You’ve been given the spotlight, have you? Well that’s fine. They aren’t applauding, but they’re interesting. No, not interesting—interested. Interest, Ed. Now you have their attention, Ed. Yes. His belly has a joke to tell, goodness look at it grin. It would be good to lie down somewhere. Right here would be good. Steady as you go. You don’t want your belly to tell its joke too fast. It’s sort of a dirty joke, but this is a hip crowd, they can take it; nevertheless, you have to time it right. First one knee. There we go. Now the next. Let’s settle onto our side. Steady as she goes—whoops! Well, there’s the joke told, and you flubbed it. They’re not laughing. Just a sort of shocked silence. At least it’s made an impression on them. You could hear a pin drop, if you had a pin, and a dropper to put it in.
I never meant to come back to Tennessee ever again. I promised myself every day I wouldn’t. Now look.
* * *
—
Do you see?” the floating man announces. His voice, super-magnified, fills the tent. With his free hand he indicates the fountain, the cage. “Do you understand?” He shakes the freak. “Citizens of Pigeon Forge, I say to you now: This is the man responsible for your pain. He’s stolen your selves away from you.” The floating man holds the freak out to them, arm’s length, a display piece. Goop-Goop is writhing now, twisting and warding, anticipating some terrible and fast-approaching development: a child about to be spanked, a dog foreseeing a kick.
“You see what I’ve done to him already, on your behalf. Citizens, since I find you all gathered together, I wanted you to see what happens to him next!”
Below the floating man, the show goes on. The bearded lady, all but forgotten, still flies, flips, swings, grabs at every last chance presented her. Do any in the crowd understand? Is even one of them still watching the lady? If they are watching her, are they watching her? Not her actions, but her intent? Are they watching what she’s watching? Do they even for a moment consider her hopes, her plans? It seems unlikely. It’s too much to ask of a crowd already distracted past comprehension.
Still the lady skips past gravity with a wink and a flip, flies agile around their awareness, eschews pretensions of grandeur by locating grandeur itself, an Icarus who discovers the sun, then boldly flies straight at the center of its dazzling eye.
* * *
—
They tell her it looks effortless from the stands. From there, they don’t hear the grunts, creak of rope, slap of hand on bar, labor of breath. From a safe distance, she looks like a feather on the breeze. Here, up close, where she can hear herself, she is as real as any carcass on any butcher’s block. From the stands, a spectator might be fooled into thinking the acrobat is an angel, someone who has transcended physical law, but the acrobat on the trapeze knows she is only certain associated pounds of solid meat and bone, subject to gravity’s original sin, not defeating gravity but wrestling against it, pulling gravity’s bleeding fees from its jaws with her bare hands. For all flesh, falling is the natural state. Every catch takes its own toll upon the tendons and ligaments. Every leap pushes you down. Even as you rise, what you feel most is not the lift, but the hand of God pushing against you, gently but remorselessly slowing you, slowing you, stopping you, forcing you down.
It’s glorious. She tries to lose herself into it: leap, catch, spin, flip, the inertia and inevitability, the knowledge and the skill. Best to enjoy it. It is certainly her final flight, whatever comes: Succeed or fail, sacrifice or wave.
The Coyote has come. She didn’t see where from, but he’s there now, floating directly above, addressing the crowd. He’s got Morris in one hand by the scruff of his shirt, shaking him like a naughty pup. He’s about to deliver some new deserved atrocity. He’s so certain of his correctness, the Coyote, so taken with his self-perceived moral authority. Having targeted the worst person he’s ever met, he’s bestowed license upon himself to bestow the worst punishments ever yet devised. Puffed with power, he wallows in the justification with which he’s gifted himself, and imagines he’s coating himself with righteousness rather than a different ordure—But you’re nothing but a new Morris, asshole, another dummy who thinks because you’ve put his hand on a bit of power it’s a sign you deserve to wield it. Worse, you think you are the power. You think you know what you’re doing. You don’t have the slightest idea. You’d do well to learn the trapeze. The trapeze would teach you necessary lessons about what must happen to everything that goes up. It would teach you not to be so proud of your rise. It would teach you that you are not justice, cannot bring justice, it would teach you there is no justice, only physics. When you’re in the air, the solid ground is all the justice God will ever deliver. Here’s the great blindness, the great ignorance, what none of these little men or prospective gods understand: We’re all in the air, all taking any catch we can find. You’ll feel every catch, pay every toll, just to stay in the air. How cruel, how cruel, how cruel—but that’s the inescapable condition, Coyote. Would you cut the strings to each bar and attach them to your fingers, as if your hands had the strength to support all our weight, as if you weren’t falling, too?
There isn’t much time now. There’s precious little hope in Gordy—all he’s ever done is run. Even if he understood your meaning, there’s not much hope in his return. Even if he does return, you can’t be sure it will have the effect you intend. There’s no reason to trust in your version of the metaphysics; it’s up to you, and you only. You’ll need luck. Morris can’t possibly sustain himself against another replacement of his physical being, even though he�
��s probably telling himself otherwise. He’s puffed himself with false confidence, like he always has before. His cosmology is a rubber ball: compact, self-contained, impenetrable. Every setback for him has only ever been an opportunity to rebound. She knows him. Suffering is no teacher of his; he’s learned nothing from it. The fool. Even now she’s forced to chance herself for him. No more rubber left in his ball, not another rebound left in him. The Coyote is going to do something to him, then return him to his stake and tether. Whatever comes next will certainly be the end, the tipping point, the event horizon of despair. He’ll call the wave, and in so doing he won’t think he’s risking anyone but himself. He thinks because he’s invented all of us, that means we’re not real.
It will come soon; the Coyote won’t be content much longer with presenting him to the audience. You’re going to have to snatch Morris from him before he does it. And what then? Where will you run? It doesn’t matter; these questions are too far ahead to answer; they are catches after the one immediately before you, and you’ll seek them when you need.
Jane knows exactly how high she can leap. She knows it to the inch. The Coyote’s lowering slowly, sinking almost into range. The diamond on his head holds his power. If she can reach him, perhaps she can snatch it away. Just fly a little lower. Just a little lower. Just a little lower.
But then, without warning, everyone is falling.
* * *
—
Sterling Shirker blinked. Then he blinked.
He didn’t blink again.
I remember…oh, everything. Everything.
I.
Gordy-Gord. Gordy. Is that you?
I remember you
I remember our last
Our last breakfast
Is that you, coming up the fountain steps.
Gordy-Gord.
I almost think I see you.
* * *
—
The floating man dangles the struggling freak, then brings him near, whispers cruel instructions to him, and it happens: The freak’s skin blurs and shimmers and changes, and an involuntary sympathetic moan goes out from the crowd. Then, improbably, the diamond on the floating man’s forehead bursts into a spray of water, and he changes, too: Muscles deflate, chest collapses, coif loses its perfect forehead curl—and gravity, long denied its due, once again exerts its claim. He and his captive fall, but the crowd has only eyes for his captive, the Goop-Goop, that most unfortunate thing. It has happened to him, the bad thing, the worst thing ever to happen to anybody. If ever this audience has felt pity, they feel it now for this awful translucent thing.
The Goop-Goop begins its descent to the earth, and the crowd knows its fatal landing will be the only mercy it will ever receive in life. They scream in unison, rise to their feet, and, as they rise, there is something audible beneath their scream, deeper, darker, vibrating far beneath their feet and coming on impossibly fast, rushing toward them with the speed of rage. The Goop-Goop has only begun to fall, but what can stop the fall? They could look away, but their curiosity or duty won’t allow it. They are the witnesses; it all will happen and they will see it, not because they want to but because they are meant to. They’ve become the eyes of the world, the memory of the universe, a jury without a verdict to deliver. Then they gasp—the flying lady has swung vertical on her bar, let go at the absolute apex, and, releasing, launched straight upward to catch the poor falling thing, to gather him up, catch him tight by the crook of her knees beneath his armpits, her beard caught in the spotlight like a wreath of flame, a holy hirsute halo. For less than a fraction of a second before they’re both carried downward, the two of them are emblazoned into eternity by her audacity. A stunt beyond any she’s yet shown them—but to what purpose? She has no handle, nothing to grasp, she’s connected to nothing but him. What possible catch could there be after such a heedless leap?
Forgive the crowd a slight lapse of attention. During these impossibly fraught moments, none of them has marked the slight figure climbing swiftly up the ladder, wearing sandals, scrambling up the rungs to gain the high wire.
* * *
—
Goop-Goop thought—Even now, you’re calm. That’s good: These are decisions that should be reached rationally, not emotionally. We’d been watching the air for him. We should have been watching the ground. The Coyote used that old tunneling trick of the original burrower, Gordy. Burst from the straw and earth, he scattered your men. Their bullets bounced off him until he converted their guns to brooms. He has you now. He’s lowered the tapestry, exposed the Assizement. They all see you. Every pair of eyes on you. It was Sterling Shirker, he distracted you in the crucial moment—isn’t it always the way? Every pattern broken, each expectation confounded, every victory impregnated with defeat. Now this idiot has the power you sought so long. He shakes you and pontificates. It’s a failed world; there’s no good in it. You’ve given it your best, you’ve given it all you had. To it, you sacrificed your leg, feet, teeth, tongue, name, more. Methodically, you’ve created systems to help your unruly parts find themselves, but it’s a failed world, one you now have no choice but to regret creating. In a way, the Coyote is the kindest part of you; through him, you are teaching yourself the futility of continuance; through him, you are finally giving yourself permission to release it. You are calm now, done with fighting, and that is enough. You can relax into the relief of surrender, knowing that soon, seconds from now, you will end it all.
There it is, over your shoulder—the wave. Your proof to yourself that you are what you say you are. Frequently you’d catch others noticing your peculiar affect, your tendency for the over-the-shoulder glance. None of them ever guessed what you were looking at, for none could see it. It’s a tiny thing, so small, a wave the size of a pickled fish, but in truth, it’s small only if you don’t look at it. It’s when you look at it direct, take it in, that it unfolds and unfolds and unfolds, and you realize you’re seeing it inverted, looking down the wrong end of the telescope. It isn’t small; rather it’s the totality of everything else that exists that is small: planets, even galaxies, even systems of galaxies, all are dwarfed by the wave perched over your shoulder. Ah. This was your lesson you gave yourself, about the midgets, so much larger than their stature, so much more destructive than initially imagined. So many lessons! It all connects when you think about it. As wicked as the universe has been, as uncooperative, as painful, still what a shame to wipe it clean…The Coyote is done speechifying. He draws you near and whispers, and you feel your skin go into something else. The pain is beyond horror, but still you are calm—it’s good, it’s right. You want to kiss the Coyote, for making it so easy for you. The crowd howls in revulsion and pity, as if they were your missing tongue—which is what they are. If only you could comfort them, hold, caress, soothe—no, hush-hush, hush-hush-hush, it will be over soon. Soon you will see my sign coming, and then you all will mourn, and then it will be over. All it takes is a thought.
Come. Come, wave, come.
Yes. In an instant it’s already twice as large as it was the moment before. Ah. The atmosphere is pregnant with the coming momentum. Everybody in creation will see my sign coming. All the nations of the world will mourn. Suddenly falling—I see your plan, Coyote, dropping me, thinking to kill me before it reaches us, and to thereby escape it. Fool, it’s all the same effect—my death would have brought it on as easily as my thought did. I can remain calm, but—What’s this? The descent intercepted before it’s begun, Jane, coming flying up from below to catch you. She’s taken hold; feel the tightness in the axes of your axillae, feel the momentum of her upward thrust trying to halt your fall—but then gravity reasserts its authority upon you both. Here comes the earth, and—no!—a gut-surging loop, then another…and you’ve been halted somehow. Caught up in the high-wire line. It’s a whole tangle up there, a moaning shudder of torn tendon and dislocation. Jane has you still, you dangle beneath. Ah, Jane. My only confidant, my con
stant 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, to see the wave as it takes us all. It’s right over my 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 I can see it now, but soon everybody will see it, and at last they will know. They’ll see it forever, and forever will be no more than the flit of a pigeon’s wings, for it will destroy even time itself….
Hang on, Jane begged. You hang on. Don’t do it. 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 wishing he could see those beautiful almond eyes one last time, he thought: She does understand. She knows. I’ve called it already. It’s done. It’s done it’s done it’s done.
—Boyd Ligneclaire, Subject to Infinite Change
* * *
—
All at once they see her, a slight figure, running, top-speed, down the tightrope. The long-timers know about the tightrope—stretched from flet to flet, the high-wire, always incorporated into the trapeze finale. But this lady…she carries no pole to counterbalance. She doesn’t even go barefoot, as any tightrope-walker knows to do, the better to sense every vibration of the line, the better to grip with the toes—but she makes no concession to balance, shod in soles of rubber and strap of leather, running the thread, pell-mell and heedless, gatling-kneed and holler-betsy, never missing a step. You don’t know what you’re seeing as you see it, it would be impossible to understand, it’s all-at-once, it’s too much, you’re a part of it now. Only afterward, when you talk about it, will you piece together these events, and you’ll wonder, all of you together, what could conspire to create such a singular confluence of action. Everybody is falling now—the man in the cape, the bearded lady, the freak she holds by her legs—save only this one, this last hope, this impossible sprinter. The caped man has deflated somehow, lost his muscles and his flight. The ruin of a man, the creature, the Goop-Goop…is he smiling as he heads toward his inevitable skin-sack explosion? The bearded acrobat has him, but to reach him she’s abandoned all hope of a catch. And the sandaled cat running the tightrope, what does she hope to accomplish? Running the line in sandals, she’s already a scofflaw of physics, is she going to attempt…a catch?—No! —Yes! The fool!