Hal Duncan, page 25
He hushes me with a finger to his blue lips.
¯ No questions, he says. No questions, no lies, OK?
I stare at him silently for a second then let go of his hand and stand up, brushing sand off my trousers. It opens up a space between us, both physical and... aesthetic; there's a wrongness about me in my black trousers, white shirt, and this beautiful naked man lying on the sand. I remember seeing some French painting years back in a book old Mr Hobbsbaum bought from the rag-and-bone-man, to teach me and the other youngsters about Art ¯ Impressionism and such; it had these old guys in fancy black coats sitting having a picnic with a naked woman, and none of them seemed to be bothered about the fact that she was naked and they were clothed. What was she meant to be ¯ an artist's model, a whore hired by the idle rich? Mostly me and the other kids just giggled because it was a dirty picture, but I remember the way that woman stared out of the painting, like a challenge. What's wrong with this picture?
¯ Don't look so sullen, says Jack.
¯ I should get back, I say. It's got to be past midday.
¯ Come on; don't be so hurt. Stay a little longer. You only just got here.
¯ If you tell me who you are.
I pick up my jacket and pull it on.
¯ I can't, he says, climbing to his feet.
He opens his mouth like he wants to explain, then just shakes his head. Mystery man Jack, dead man Jack, his refusal to speak about ¯ to even admit to ¯ his past only makes my frustration more persistent, teases desire into need.
¯ Don't you love me? No, don't answer that.
I look out past the line of crosswise-lashed steel spikes and windings of barbed wire between them and I think of history books, of wartime beaches mined to keep the enemy from invading ¯ except that, with its tinkling watch-chains and key-chains and whatever, this isn't a defence against a foreign military, but against something less tangible. I look out at the slop of grey waves, hating myself for saying it ¯ don't you love me ¯ even if it was meant to be ironic, knowing that it isn't really and that the more I grasp at him the more he draws back, but too weak to stop myself. I just want to know why he won't let me get close to him.
¯ Tom, he says.
The United States of Anachronisms
Anna kicks down the bike stand, looks across the parking lot of the roadhouse and the bowling alley that share the same building here, buried in the woods just off the Business 70, to the floodlit baseball field where the little leaguers with their parents mill in the excitement pre or post game. Post, she thinks. It's just corning on for evening, maybe seven or so; she'd be surprised if all the kiddies were just coming out to play. But it's impossible to say, the way they throng and chatter, children's giggles like the chirps of birds, and fathers lowing, proud bulls in their baseball caps, mullets beneath, and all the mothers with kids skipping round their legs, Ma, Ma. Ma!
She feels something that she can't quite place in words and sentences, a yearning for their mundane lives, sorrow for what she knows is coming to them all, a bitterness at the easy banality of it all ¯ something she'll never have herself ¯ a joy in the absurd simplicity of lives free of the demons driving her these days, a wonder that these people somehow disregard the evenfall ¯ the Evenfall ¯ spreading across their world, sweeping in shadows up from under trees. A horror that the world they know has already started falling apart, that they're still bringing children into it. Don't they watch the news?
There's no news on any of the screens in Ivan's ¯ sports bar grill and steakhouse of the sort so typical in this part of the Vellum masquerading as the southern states of North America. The States. O, yes, they live in states alright ¯ in states of ignorance and bliss, in states of rural godliness and patriotic faith, of temperance and trust, their car doors left unlocked, their smiles given freely, easily, even to a strange girl in a biker jacket and thick, black mascara, entirely alien to their whole mode of existence. The waitress who takes her to the smoking booth ¯ old habits die hard ¯ is genuinely pleased to see her; there's no hippy goth freak we don't like your sort around here ambience. That's all bullshit. People aren't always afraid of what they don't know; sometimes they just blank the strangeness out and go on with their lives, living only in as much of the world as they can deal with.
So there's no news on any of the screens in Ivan's, not on the big video screen behind the squared-out horseshoe of a bar, or any of the small screens in the corners. There's no news in Ivan's, just baseball, football, Nazcar racing, and karaoke. Shit. Karaoke. She looks at the photocopied notice on the dark wood panel wall of the booth, coming events ¯ and, yup, tonight's the 12th, she's sure. She smiles a grimace to herself, and wonders what she's going to have to sit through ... 'Stand By Your Man' and 'Achy Breaky Heart', some shit like that. Fuck that shit. But she's already ordered.
Two younger guys are winding up this old beer-bellied drunk sat at the bar beside her booth ¯ Come on, you gotta, yeah, come on, hey ¯ [one of them turns to her, the blond one ... he looks vaguely and uncomfortably familiar] ¯ tell him that he should sing.
She smiles and slurps her Mountain Dew, wishing she could be drunk like them.
¯ Go on, she says to the old guy, joining the fun, the hospitality of participation offered by the local youngblood.
And the old guy wipes his hand across his thick, white, mountain beard and, grinning, stumbles from his stool to take the stand to whistles and cheers.
The Song of Silence
He sings of the vast void and of seeds, of shatterings and scatterings and gatherings, of seeds of earth and air and sea and Bickerings of flecks, the flash, the flux of fire. He sings of the beginnings of all things in these original forms of force, and how a young curved world took shape, unfurled its involutions and emerged in evolution, revelation of its own course; how its hard crust sealed eternal nevers in the deep blue/black of ocean and the world took form, little by little, in ephemera; of the awestruck earth watching a newborn sunrise shining, and the showers of the rainfall out of clouds high in the sky; of the time when forests first began to spring, and of the living creatures roaming, far and wide, over the unknown and unknowing wilderness of hills.
He sings of the first little gifts of the uncultivated earth: foxgloves in every dell, smiling acanthus mingled with the gypsy lilies, and wild ivy wandering everywhere; the goats that wander home unherded, udders stretched with milk; the oxen with no fear of any lion, not for all his might; and of our very cradles flowering with soft caressing blossoms; of the snake perished among the poisonous plants, and perfumes of azure breathing from every hedge.
He sings of the marvel of a maiden gathering the golden fruit of hesperidium; he sings rings of moss-hound bitter bark around the alder sisters of a photon, brings them springing from the ground to tower tall as poplars. He sings how, as the gulls strayed by permissive streams, one of the sisters of the music led him up into the mountains of the aeons, how the choir of the sun rose up before him; how a shepherd singer of divine lines, hair entwined with blossoms and bitter parsley, spoke to him:
— These pipes of reeds you see — take them. The music gives them to you, just as once it gave them to a scarred old man to rhyme, to draw down ash trees rooted deep in time, down from the hills. With these, tell of the birth of the grinning forest, pride of all the groves of Apple.
He sings of after times, when we've all learned at last to read the praise of heroes and ancestor's deeds and know what manhood is, of how the corn will flood the fields with golden, shimmering grain, the reddening grape hang heavy on untended vines, and solid oak will seep with sap that is part honey and part dew.
Blue Like the Veins in Marble
He lays his hand on the back of my neck and turns me to face him. I pull away.
¯ Tom, look at me.
I look.
Jack is tall and sleek, lithe like a cat, every contour of his muscles easily visible; veins snake around them, blue like the veins in marble under his translucent white skin. Sand dusts his body and his fair hair which blows everywhere in the crisp sea-breeze. Naked, he brushes at the sand on his hip and, as always, I find it difficult to look him in the eyes and even harder to look anywhere else. At his scarred right hand which looks like someone drove a nail through it. At the scars running across his chest, mark of some awful time of suffering, of abuse or penitence. More questions. I grew up with Endhaven's black-suit-and-tie ideas of 'decency', and though I've been around Jack for at least two years now I still feel as uncomfortable with his nudity as he seems to be with my questions.
He stands there, as calm in his flesh as some alien or angel with no idea what this human thing called sex is.
I found Jack two years back, washed ashore on the beach like so much driftwood, face-down, half-shrouded in a black-green slithe of seaweed, and cold and dead. It was early morning and, as I came down the dirt path from town to watch the silver daybreak over the ocean horizon, I saw him lying there. First thing I noticed was the fear in the gulls. They strutted around in a rough circle twelve feet or so in diameter, cawing and flapping their wings as if to scare off an intruder. Next thing I saw was the arm stretched out in the low surf, hand clenched in a rigor mortis fist. And then, although half-hidden by the shreds and bubbles of kelp, I noticed the latticework of scars that hatched his chest and I realized that he was like us, like the rest of us in Endhaven ¯ marked by the needle and scarred by the knife.
But Jack's something different. Where we all have just a memory of a tattoo and a small diamond of pink scar tissue on a shoulder or a thigh, Jack's whole chest is carved in a filigree of skin.
¯ Tom, he says, you're young and I'm ... I'm not. I've seen what's out there.
¯ Come on, I say. You make it sound like I'm—
¯ Younger than me, he cuts in.
He doesn't look it. At least, not much. Smooth-skinned and soft unshaven, he doesn't look any older than twenty-five max and me, I turned seventeen in Damnuary. He glares up at a gull, sighs and goes on.
¯ I know, Tom, believe me; I know you're not some idiot fucking kid. A kid fucking an idiot, maybe ¯ [he smiles wryly] ¯ but not an idiot fucking kid. But you don't know what damage a little knowledge can do. People can get hurt.
¯ What people? What knowledge?
Did you tell them, I want to ask him, how you can live and walk and be here with me without breath, without a heartbeat? Did you tell them whether you're even human, whether you've ever been human, because I don't know that much?
¯ What damage? I say. What people? Who did you hurt?
¯ Let it drop, Tom, he says quietly, and I back down, drop my gaze.
The gulls scatter as I slide down the dunes and move in closer. There's no smell of decay, only the pungent salt of seaweed, rich enough to taste; no bloating or rot on the body either, so he can't have been dead long. It's the first time I've seen a dead body and Fm scared. Death is something from the old world, from the cities. This is Endhaven, where people don't die, people don't just disappear out of your life with no good reason; that's why we're here. That's why we left the city. Here, at least, when people go it's because of a decision. A weighing of the scales. A reckoning. Death is an arbitrary, senseless thing, belonging with the chaos of the city crumbling on its headland out across the bay. A body washed up on the beach.
I crouch down to clear some of the debris and detritus, slip my hands under his smooth torso and heave him over onto his back. The body is in perfect condition, more like a statue than a corpse, some construction of erotic tranquillity. My dry throat, my tight balls, my erection, my heartbeat ¯ I'm not sure I can tell the difference between my fear and my desire. It's sick, I'm sure, but I don't have a say in being, you know, and, anyway, it used to be OK they tell me... once upon a time, in a place far, far away.
Slowly, the fist uncurls, a little silvery box inside it, a cigarette lighter clutched like a talisman.
The Simple Pleasure of a Good, Square Meal
She closes her hand around the Zippo.
¯ What can I get ya to drink, honey?
¯ A Mountain Dew, she says.
She wishes she could have a beer6¯ God, how she wishes she could have a beer ¯ but she's driving, got the bike parked in the lot outside, and you can't have a designated driver on a bike ... not that she's got anyone to drive her home, anyway. Not that she's got a home to go to anyway, just another motel room. It's kind of lucky that McDowell is a dry county, though she's not exactly sure how you can call the county dry with Ivan's roadhouse selling beer, bottled or draught ¯ they've even got Guinness, shit, Finnan would be pleased ¯ and the gas station out beside the Comfort Inn, its wall of fridges stocked with stacks of Bud and Miller, Coors and whatnot. God, how she wants a beer. But she can't have one; it's not just the driving, anyway.
¯ You ready to order?
She asks for the fillet mignon, caesar salad first, and after she's crunched her way through croutons drizzled with dressing, munched the greenery from an idle fork that hangs in the air every so often as she watches the New Jersey Devils put another puck into the net, after she's finished the salad, laid her cutlery together on a napkin to the side so she'll still have it for the main course, the waitress comes out with a ribeye, a huge slab of red meat served with mounds of cracked potato and red onion. It looks good, and from the menu she can tell that this is the house specialty; so she feels a little awkward, trying hard not to come off obnoxious as she calls the waitress back and says this isn't what she ordered, sorry.
Fifteen, twenty minutes later, she's got her fillet mignon. More apologies and good-natured smiles on both sides ¯ you need a refill, there?
¯ Sure, thanks.
The waitress fills her glass from a clear, plastic jug.
The steak tastes great.
She settles back after the meal, feeling her stomach full to bursting, sated with the simple pleasure of a good, square meal. Square is the word in this little area of the Vellum. All the eateries she passed before she found this place were perfectly in tune with the terrain, the time and space of it ¯ Hardee's and Wendy's, Taco Bell or Pizza Hut, a fifties-themed diner called Moondoggy's. She stopped to look at a menu in the window of a Japanese and realized it was basically all the same dish, different meats ¯ stir-fry prawns with rice, or stir-fry chicken with rice, or stir-fry beef, or prawns and chicken, chicken and beef, beef and prawns. No miso soup here, no tempura here, no sushi. Ivan's is not exactly cosmopolitan either, but who gives a fuck? They do know how to cook a steak, seared on the outside, blood-red on the inside, and the beef is good, high-quality Angus beef raised on the lush dairy farms of a land that's wetter than you might expect if you didn't know the little highlands nestling around the Blue Ridge Mountains.
She eats a lot of red meat, these days; can't get enough of it.
She runs a hand over her full-filled stomach, ever-so-slightly bulging now.
And she realizes that she's got a cigarette smoking in her other hand, a pack of Marlboro sitting on the table beside her silver Zippo where she's lain them down unconsciously, completely unaware of ever bringing them out of her jacket pocket, tapping a smoke out of the pack, tapping it down on the pack between her thumb and forefinger, turning it round to slip between her lips and flicking the lighter open and lit and shut again with a flutter of her thumb. She looks around for an ashtray, holding the bastard nicotine demon away from her, like she's got shit on her fingers and she really needs a wetwipe. A hand-motion to the waitress. An ashtray brought over, wiped, lain on her table. Thanks.
She grinds the cigarette down into the glass.
Her fingers tap unconsciously as she gazes round the bar, needing some distraction from the demon. The old guy's still singing; surprisingly it's not the C & W she expected, but something much more bluegrass ¯ country, yes, and western, yes, but more folksy and bluer, truer.
The Liquid Light of Language
And he tells of the pyre that cast stones into men when Crow was king with all the cawing, raucous birdmen of his caucus, tells of the theft of primal theos and his torture on the rock, watching the Eagle as he talks of carrion's king and warrior hawks. Of fate and freedom, thieves of fire.
He sings, to Chrome and Mainsail, how the sailors of the argot called, cried for their hylic loss, lost at the fountain, calling out until Alas! Alas! called back in echo from the solid shore as they themselves set off again upon the liquid light of language, leaving the land, and all the matters of the flesh behind, a fallen comrade. He works on the loyalties of brothers-in-arms. He works his charms.
The two young guys, one blond, one dark, watch him intently as he sings some sentimental song about a war on foreign soil, about an old soldier who's lost his rabbit's foot, who's lost his friends, who's lost his faith, and comes looking for some other kind of enchanting charms, in a whore's arms. She can't date it, doesn't recognize it; it could be about the Second World War or Vietnam, Korea or Iraq, Iran, or even the unnamed ¯ undefined, not limited by a name ¯inferno of firefights all across the Middle East right now. The stuff that's on the news that no one's watching here in Ivan's.
¯ Dogtags and rosaries. Bodies bagged liked groceries. Delivered to your door. Dogtags and rosaries. Folded flags and ribboned trees ... mean nothing to a whore.
The blond guy takes a deep, deep chug of his beer. He swallows hard. At the back of his neck she can just see a chain of tiny steel beads.
— O dear miss fortune, Silence sings as others gather in the tavern round his song.
He sings to soothe those only pacified with their lost love of a white bull, those who'd be happier if the herds had never been.
— What frenzy grips your soul? The protean daughters filled the fields with their false lowings, but not one of them sought such unholy union, bestial mating, though her neck had shuddered from the plough and she had felt for horns with fingertips, smooth, touching on her forehead. Dear miss fortune, now you wander in the wilds, while he lies on his snowy side upon soft blooms of hyacinths and, under some dark ilex, chews the pale grass, tracks some heifer through the herd.
