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InterText - Volume 2, Number 1
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IIIII N N TTTTT EEEEE RRRR TTTTT EEEEE X X TTTTT
I NN N T E R R T E X XX T
I N N N T EEE RRRR T EEE XX T
I N NN T E R R T E XX X T
IIIII N N T EEEEE R R T EEEEE X X T
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Volume 2, Number 1 - January-February 1992
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE
FirstText / JASON SNELL
Star Quality / MELANIE MILLER
Half-Moons and Sunfish / JOHN REOLI, JR.
To Comprehend the Nectar / LOUIE CREW
Multiplication and the Devil / DANIEL K. APPELQUIST
A Handful of Dust / DANIEL K. APPELQUIST
Gravity / JASON SNELL
The Unified Murder Theorem (1 of 4) / JEFF ZIAS
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Editor: Jason Snell ([email protected])
Assistant Editor: Geoff Duncan ([email protected])
Assistant Editor: Phil Nolte ([email protected])
--------------------------------------------------------------------
FirstText / JASON SNELL
Another year has dawned, and I'm back here again.
Welcome to 1992, and to the first InterText of this year. I hope
I'll still be bringing you InterText into 1993 and beyond, but that's
now in the hands of various Journalism School admissions officers
around the country.
At this time last year, in addition to covering protests against
the impending Gulf War for my school newspaper, I was involved in
designing my new net magazine, tentatively titled InterText (I never
did come up with a better title), and searching far and wide for
stories that I could put in issue number one.
A year later, I think we've produced our best issue to date. The
stories in this issue are all first-rate. First up is The Unified
Murder Theorem by Jeff Zias -- a first for us, because it's a four-
part serial. Rest assured, the whole thing is written and in my hot
little hands right now. It's hard to describe what Unified Murder
Theorem is about, but I can say that it's gripping stuff, and well
worth reading.
Another first in this issue is our first story (or so I think) by
a professionally published author. Louie Crew, who has published
hundreds of works, is a professor at Rutgers University. His
contribution this issue is the story To Comprehend The Nectar.
In addition, we've got a good cyberpunk-style SF story from new
writer Melanie Miller, and a somewhat pastoral piece by new writer
John Reoli, Jr.
And to complete my ever-so-exciting synopsis of this issue's
stories, I'll mention what is not an example of nepotism -- our final
two stories are by the editors of Quanta and InterText: Daniel K.
Appelquist's "Multiplication and the Devil" and "A Handful of Dust"
and my own "Gravity."
Just a note to readers and writers -- the appearance of stories
by Dan and myself in these pages by no means proves any sort of
conspiracy (Oliver Stone take note) or old boy network. All
submissions we receive are judged solely on merit, not on the identity
of the writer. I'd never dump another story just because I had a story
by Dan or myself.
So please continue to submit your stories. I've already got a
couple lined up for next time -- which is the first time that's
happened in the year I've been doing this -- but we need as many
stories as we can get.
Since I began this column by discussing one year ago, perhaps I
should continue the anniversary spirit by mentioning that our next
issue will be a special first anniversary issue. I'm hoping to have a
special cover for the PostScript version and more goodies. Be sure to
submit stories or articles soon if you'd like to be in the anniversary
issue.
One other thing I'd like to mention is how amazed I've been at
the international flavor of my subscription list. InterText is now
sent to, among other places, Russia, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, China, Australia, and New
Zealand. Our circulation is slowly climbing, as well -- at last count,
exactly 1100 people were on some distribution list. And that doesn't
count the people who FTP InterText from some site without asking to be
put on the distribution list.
Be sure to let us know what you think of InterText. The great
thing about computer communication is that one can receive almost
instantaneous feedback. You rarely if ever get chances to receive
replies from the editors and writers of mainstream magazines -- but
InterText lists the addresses and names of its editors and writers. If
you have questions or comments of any kind, please feel free to mail
us.
Enjoy the issue. Take good care of yourselves. We'll see you back
here in two months.
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Star Quality / MELANIE MILLER
I remember. . .
Benjamin Grayson opened his eyes, struggling out of the dream. He
had been with Alicia Wilcox, his co-star, in a scene from their latest
movie -- smooth, blond Alicia, and the dreamscene had moved beyond an
acceptable rating into censored territory. His fingers slipping
underneath the velvet strap of her monogown, exploring the feel of
silky skin. And then, that thought --
I remember. . .
An image, textbooks on an old wood desk. Grassy lawn, with blue
sky above it. It had a flavor to it, a texture of dread and
anticipation, pushing him away from Alicia, out of sleep. An old,
treasured fear.
Of what?
Slowly, he focused on the bedside clock. 7:30 p.m. projected in
ruby holograms, hanging in the darkness. Time to get up, get ready for
the party. It wouldn't do to keep the head of a major Hollywood studio
waiting.
And he would never do something as rude as that, although he
could if he felt like it. Benjamin Grayson was one of the elite of the
'20s. Stars. And he was under contract with Maximillian Hiller, the
agent of the decade. Everyone wanted to belong to the Hiller Group,
and only the best, the hungriest, would be admitted. Maximillian
(never Max -- he hated diminutives) didn't handle anything else.
All of Maximillian's clients were stand-outs in some way.
Professional, other agents said with envy. Maximillian never had to
cover up embarrassing pasts, arrange special hospital stays, pay off
local law enforcement. The Hiller Group were actors first and
foremost, dedicated to their craft. Not to providing filler for the
tabloids.
And part of their craft was to project an image. As Maximillian
suggested, Grayson arrived at the party just late enough to make an
entrance. The eyes of the crowd -- all people involved with the
Business -- crawled over his skin agreeably, feather-light massage on
the ego. Something clicked inside his head and he went into automatic
pilot: Benjamin Grayson, The Actor. Watch him walk and talk, folks,
like a real human being. Gossip about him, wonder who he's sleeping
with this week, what his next 3-D will be. And, in a softer tone, how
long can he last?
To hell with it. I'm a star.
Grayson kept the grin up, easing into the crowd. Nod here, kiss a
cheek there, get into the groove of things. Project.. He saw
Maximillian with Alicia, and waved. And when a director intercepted
him, launching into a not-so-subtle film offer, Grayson managed to
catch Maximillian's eye.
"Benjamin, my boy, good to see you," the agent said, cutting into
the conversation. Maximillian looked like the ideal parent -- six feet
tall, a strong, kindly face, dark hair edged with gray at the temples.
The only thing that spoiled the image was his eyes, a curious shade of
light, oddly flat blue. "Enjoying yourself?"
"Naturally," Benjamin replied, giving the agent an wide smile. He
glanced at Alicia (I remember) and faltered. "Jorge and I were
discussing his next picture," he said, as if to explain the break.
"Which Benjamin would be perfect for," Jorge added, delighted to
have Maximillian's attention. "The part was practically written for
him, but he keeps dodging me -- "
"Which he is supposed to do," Maximillian said smoothly. There
was a new undertone to his words, an ice that casting agents and
directors had come to recognize as a warning shot over the bow. Keep
Off, Private Property. "All business deals are done through me, as I'm
sure you know."
Jorge immediately became apologetic. "I'm aware of that," he said
quickly. "I simply wanted to run the idea past Benjamin -- "
"Which you've done. Benjamin, why don't you escort Alicia around,
while Jorge and I discuss his idea." Maximillian handed the actress to
Grayson, then guided the director off to a corner.
Alicia glanced after them, the demure expression melting into a
smile. "This is the third time he's handed me off while he sets up a
deal," she said, half-laughing. "I'm starting to wonder if I should
ask for a cut."
"I don't think you'll get it," Grayson said, grinning. "He's the
top hustler in town."
"I like it that way. It makes me feel more secure." She had a
voice that had been described variously as soft, lilting, honeyed.
Tonight, Grayson thought, it was elegantly sweet; champagne and
strawberries. "By the way, he has some work for us afterwards."
Grayson nodded, understanding. The host, and probably the
hostess. It was part of the job when you worked with the Hiller Group.
The dream floated into consciousness again, overlaying the party. I
remember. . .
"What's the matter?" Alicia asked. She looked up into his face,
smile turning down at the corners. "You faded out for a minute."
"Nothing." He shrugged the dream off, back into his subconscious.
"You want that drink?"
"Of course. Then we'll entertain the peons."
Two hours later, he took a break from the mingling. Drift from
one group to another, be witty, amusing -- even if you were used to
it, it could get tiring after a while. Alicia was still downstairs
chatting with people in the vast ballroom, and Benjamin wanted a
chance to be alone with the night sky, polluted as it was. He leaned
out on a second-floor balcony, tracking faint traces of starlight that
made it through the smog. Memories started bleeding through again,
subconscious fragments:
I remember. . .
Another time, another place. Further east, where people only
watched the stars on holovision, never thinking to become one of them.
Maximillian had come to the campus right after graduation, where he
met Tim McCarthy for the first time. Benjamin felt like a ghost,
watching Maximillian and the boy walking on the campus's quadrangle.
The sky had been blue, very clear, and the sun had been warm on their
shoulders as Maximillian explained how the boy could make a great deal
of money in the entertainment industry.
Tim insisted that he wasn't an actor -- the commercial had been
his girlfriend's idea. He wanted to be an agricultural researcher.
Maximillian demurred -- acting talent wasn't necessary, not with the
technological options at his command.
"You look lonely."
Not moving, Benjamin tried on a small grin that didn't seem to
fit. "Not really."
He glanced sideways. Alicia's profile was framed, outlined by the
lights of downtown L.A. Classically beautiful. He tried to come up
with the right answer, something that would describe the dreams he'd
been having lately, but nothing seemed right set against a background
of the city's light. Especially I'm afraid of my memories.
They stood there in companionable silence, the cool night breeze
ruffling through their hair, before he said, "Do you ever remember
what it was like? Before?"
Alicia sighed. "I don't think about it," she said. "You
shouldn't, either. It only confuses you."
"I know. But sometimes I can't help it," Benjamin said, the words
moving sluggishly now. "It's like I'm being invaded by memories. I
don't know what to do."
Alicia shook her head, moving away from him. She didn't want to
talk about it, he knew. Alicia was the ideal actress -- calm,
competent, perfectly adjusted to the change in her life. She had a
magic that critics kept comparing to the screen greats -- Gish,
Hepburn, Streep. Great implants. Alicia was never confused. "Maybe you
should go see Dr. Berringer," she suggested, brusque. "Have him take a
look at you. You might need an adjustment."
Unconsciously, Benjamin reached up and touched the skin
underneath his right ear, massaging it with two fingers. That was
where they'd gone in, with the surgical probes. "Maybe," he agreed.
A small surgical procedure, the newest form of wetware, and Tim
would have the skills of the greatest thespians at his fingertips,
Maximillian said. The silicarbon circuits would interface directly
with his brain, a biocompatible network riding the limbic ring. All he
would have to do is think about the network, and it would generate
controlled emotional states in response to incoming stimuli.
You mean it's an artificial persona, Tim said, quiet. He'd heard
about the procedure from friends, horrified at first, then fascinated.
It wouldn't be me, just some software riding around in my head.
You make it sound so nefarious, Maximillian answered, smiling.
Like it's a form of mind control.
Well, isn't it?
And this time, Maximillian did laugh, the father figure amused by
a fearful child. Of course not, he said. You would have control over
your every thought, your every mood. Your implant would simply allow
you access to a greater range of emotions, the skills you would need
to be a great actor. Think of it as a built-in acting coach.
"Anyway, I came out here to find you," she continued, her voice
growing warm again. "Maximillian's waiting for us upstairs."
"All right." Benjamin turned, willing the vagueness to be gone.
He took control again, the smooth persona clicking into reality. Turn
up the charm, boy. It's showtime.
Grayson dug his toes into the satin, thrusting harder. The woman
beneath him moaned, winding slippery legs around his hips, whispering
obscenities under her breath to urge him on. Across the hall, he
thought, Alicia was probably doing the same thing with the studio
head, unless the man got into something kinky. Not impossible, but
Alicia knew how to handle that.
He jerked again, and again, until it was finished. Naturally, he
made sure the woman came first -- sometimes, he could even hold back
until she had two orgasms, once even three. After love (because with
him, it was love of a sort -- wasn't that programmed into the
implants?), he slid off to the side, holding her. The after-sex
comedown that women needed, he told himself. If you were going to do a
job, do it right.
In the quiet of the room, he felt the other memories sliding up
to him, demanding notice. He tried to ignore it, to be the perfect
actor. Maximillian had said this would happen. Sensory bleedover, he
called it -- sometimes the implants didn't filter correctly. But
tonight, Benjamin was too tired to fight. He let them come, shivering
under their weight:
Why me, Tim asked.
Because you're the American ideal, Maximillian had said. They
want your type, your voice -- they'll love you. Maximillian smiled,
the cool charm turned up a notch. And because it would make us both a
great deal of money, he added gently. Tim flushed, he mention of money
tying a hard knot in his gut. There weren't many scholarships for
aggie scientists anymore, and he had been living on loans and side
jobs. And with graduation, the loans would start coming due.
Five years with the Hiller Group and you would have the money for
your bills, for a graduate degree, whatever you want, Maximillian
said. Five years with us, and you will have financial freedom for the
rest of your life.
In exchange for five years of slavery, Tim said, horribly
surprised at a sudden, tiny desire to believe Maximillian. An
artificial persona was interesting when you were sitting around with
friends in a safe dorm room, your mind still your own. The thought of
actually carrying something like that in your head --
I wouldn't call it slavery, Maximillian replied. It's simply
acting, taken to the ultimate degree.
The woman eased into sleep. Only then did he slip out of bed,
gathering his clothes and looking for a bathroom where he could
shower. Luckily, the bedrooms were connected with a palatial bath.
Soundproof door, he noted, closing it behind him. Good.
Alicia was already there, washing herself at the bidet. She
turned, looking over her shoulder, and gave him a cheerful smile. "How
was it?"
"Not bad." Grayson went through his clothes, hanging them on a
towel rack. "Better than last time. At least she was in pretty good
shape. Yours?"
Alicia shrugged. "About the same. He likes to be on bottom."
Grayson grunted understanding, stepped into the shower to wash
off the woman's sweat. After a minute, Alicia slipped in. "You mind?"
"No." He handed her the soap, and received a sudsy washcloth as a
prize. Like cats on good terms, they washed each other. Asexual,
friendly.
He was incapable of feeling any real attraction for Alicia, wet
and slick as she was. He was sure she felt the same way -- Maximillian
had suggested that a romance between them wouldn't be in their best
interest. He reached down to turn off the water, when a showed
appeared through the steam, watching them.
"Lovely," the studio head whispered above the water's hiss.
"Lovely, children."
Grayson felt Alicia freeze, next to him. Waiting for the next
suggestion, he thought disjointedly. Sure, we do requests, an insane
voice sang in his mind.
"I'd like to see a love scene." The man leaned up against the
sink, his eyes slipping over them through the moisture. "Now."
Compliantly, Grayson straightened up. His indifference melted,
changed to desire. His need was reflected in her eyes, blue and eager,
as she rubbed up against him, the water from the shower no longer her
only wet. He grabbed her roughly, the way the studio head wanted him
to hold her, the water beading on their skin.
It had been the money that finally convinced him. A guaranteed
$100,000 the first year; after that, the sky was the limit. Whatever
his talent could pull in -- a million and up wasn't impossible, they
had said.
What if nobody wanted to hire me, he had asked. The
administrative section of the Hiller Group just laughed. Maximillian
hasn't picked a loser yet, they told him. Don't worry. You'll be fine.
And he had. After the surgery, renamed Benjamin Grayson, he had
co-starred in a fluff sitcom. Neilsens went through the roof -- the
public loved him. After that, it was a string of steadily bigger
movies, until he was signed as the star for his current 3-D, American
Players. Women walked up to him everywhere, offering him their bodies,
anything he desired. Men wanted to be like him. He was successful, a
star, just as Maximillian planned.
And his memories of life as Tim McCarthy were dimming.
The sun was a faint shimmer over the Hills when he finally got
home. Good party, he thought, throwing his jacket over the couch.
Another one for the record books.
The events of the night, after the party -- well, they didn't
involve him, not directly. The sex had started after his first movie,
with the producer and his wife. Grayson remembered it in a clinical
way -- the quiet summons from Maximillian, being delivered to the
hotel by limo. Wrapped up like a birthday present, he thought. It had
been his first experience with a threesome, the feel of male skin next
to his own. Maybe that was when the dreams began to bleed over into
his conscious mind; the ghost of Tim McCarthy screaming in agony, he
thought morbidly.
He had asked Maximillian about the sex once, and the agent had
explained it. These people were important in the Business, and wanted
intercourse with the godhead of entertainment. Contact with beautiful
bodies, nothing more. And it was part of their job to supply that
contact to the right people, he'd added. Every member of the Hiller
Group did it. Nothing new -- actors and actresses had been doing it
for years. The implants was an improvement on the situation, a way to
protect themselves emotionally. Let the implants carry you through,
Maximillian had suggested before taking him up to that first hotel
room. They'll know what to do.
Still musing, he poured himself a glass of orange juice. Standard
morning ritual -- orange juice, vitamin. More suggestions from
Maximillian. Thank God we're not shooting until noon, he thought,
shrugging off the rest of his clothes, standing in his briefs in the
middle of the living room. At least I can get some sleep.
He had wanted to talk to Alicia afterwards, but she had gone
straight home. Instead, Maximillian had been waiting downstairs for
him. Alicia told me you've been having some problems, he'd said,
slipping into the father confessor role. Like to talk about it?
And for the first time since Benjamin had started acting, he
didn't. He didn't want to talk to Maximillian Hiller, father
surrogate, chaperone, super agent. He wanted to work the memories out
on his own. But Maximillian wouldn't hear of it.
I told you that might happen, he'd said easily, on the way home.
Your body's immunological system is reacting to the implant. We'll
have Dr. Berringer look at it tomorrow.
I don't want him to, Benjamin had said. But Maximillian insisted.
It'll only confuse you if you allow this to continue, Benjamin, he
said.
My name is Tim, he said irrationally.
Maximillian was silent for a moment. He finally said, in this
place and time, your name is Benjamin. In two years, when your
contract is up, you may decide to go back to that name. The agent
smiled, and Benjamin felt chilled by that smile. Or you may prefer the
one you have now.
No, I don't think so. But the words brought a strange, deep
confusion. His life seemed to be a series of facets, beads strung on a
chain. Somewhere, those facets had changed, become something new that
was called Benjamin Grayson. Did that make him real? And what did that
make Tim McCarthy? Unreal?
He could imagine the resurrection. The chain would snap, oh yes.
I can make the appointment for you this afternoon, Maximillian
said. Just a suggestion, of course.
Dully, he nodded. Make the appointment.
The implants were such a little thing, they had said, right after
the operation. Just to carry you along. And they'd led him into a new
life, something that Tim McCarthy had never imagined.
And the strangers? Midnight blending of flesh. It was another
part of the life. Nothing personal, he could hear Maximillian say --
it was only the body.
Changing his mind, Grayson carried his orange juice out to the
terrace, cool morning air marbling his skin. He looked over the
sleeping city and imagined them out there -- the audience that wanted
him to be what he was now, not the repository of someone they didn't
know.
And didn't care about.
Suddenly, he felt lonely, wishing for the memory of blue sky
again. Wanting a past he knew was his own. Knowing that it would never
be there.
Oh, I remember. . .
--
MELANIE MILLER ([email protected]) was raised by wolves on the
south side of Chicago (you'd be surprised how well canines adapt to
urban life), and currently performs double duty as an English major at
Purdue University-Calumet and an administrative assistant at the
University of Chicago. She is now editing her first novel, "Deus Ex."
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Half-Moons and Sunfish / JOHN REOLI, JR.
Mark smoothly whipped the pole backward. The tip bent, wiggled,
and jerked. He focused on the line out in the water. The struggling
creature played it, making small S-shapes and the almost-circles of a
stretched spring.
"I bet it's a bluegill. Feels like it," he said.
"It's a sunfish," said Deavon. "I can see it from up here. Guess
you're lucky today," he said, pulling in his line.
Mark reeled the fish up to the clay bank and dragged it out of
the water. A long, thick strand of green moss had gathered where the
leader was attached to the line. He could see the orange belly of the
sunfish blazing through the moss.
"Watch out for his spines," said Deavon. "It'll hurt like hell if
he sticks you with one of 'em."
"I know."
He raised the fish by the line, slowly pulled away the moss, and
tossed it aside. The sunfish arched its fan of spines and curled its
body in defense. Cautiously, he inspected it to see where it had been
hooked. The bright afternoon sun reflected off of the sunfish and
struck Mark in the eyes. He swung the fish away and turned from the
glare. The fish flopped hotly from the motion.
"It's pretty big. Looks about seven or eight inches long." said
Deavon.
Mark put the fish on the ground. Expertly, he slid his fingers
down the line to the fish's mouth and then gave the hook a quick
twist. There was a slight tearing sound as the barb came out of the
cold stiff flesh. He stood to kick the muddy sunfish back into the
water.
"What are you doin'?" exclaimed Deavon.
"I'm putting it back in. I just don't want to get one of those
spines in my hand," said Mark.
"Are you crazy? Sunfish is good. I'll take it home if you don't
want to."
"Ok. You can have it," said Mark.
He put the fish on one of the metal clips of his chain stringer
and dropped it into the water beside his pole. It puffed and flapped.
He could see the red gills swell with each of its breaths. Like a
runner after a marathon, he thought; then baited his hook and cast
again.
The line hummed like the high voltage wires overhead, and the
sinker made a muffled pluiff when it hit the water. Mark reeled the
loose ringlets of slack, rested the fiberglass pole into the Y of a
stick, and hung a small fluorescent bobbin between the second and
third eyes of the pole.
Not far from shore, the late June heat rose in waves from a
rusted, metal plate laid across two parallel stone walls. Standing on
its edge, Deavon whipped a bamboo pole over his head. A red and white
plastic bobbin, round as a billiard ball, jerked; then plopped onto
the smooth green water. He put the pole on the plate. The bamboo was
sandy brown like the cattails on the other side of the reservoir; its
shadow curved across the ripples of water. Small bluegills cautiously
approached, then nipped at Deavon's floating line.
"That's an awfully big bobbin, Deavon. What do you think's gunna
pull it under, Shamu?"
"Catfish. I saw a couple sittin' off of this plate when we was up
on the road," he said in mild defense.
"Those fish looked about three feet long. There aren't any
catfish in here that big. You probably saw carp. Besides, you know
catfish eat off the bottom. Your bait's hangin' four feet below that
bobbin and probably fifteen feet off the bottom. No catfish is gunna
come up there. Some baby bluegill's gunna eat your nightcrawler and
you won't even know it because that bobbin's too big for him to pull
under," said Mark.
"You just worry about your own line. I saw your hook baited with
velveeta cheese. What are you gunna use next, a ham sandwich?"
"Deavon, I'm fishing for trout, not some sewage sucker."
"Trout. There ain't no trout in here. Shiiiiit, you're lucky you
caught that sunfish. What do you know about fishin' anyways? All you
got up here in Star Junction is this reservoir and the one above it.
Both of em' full of bluegills. What you need is to come down to
Whittsett and fish in the river. You wanna catch some fish, that's
where they are," he boasted.
Mark knew Deavon was right. There really wasn't any "good
fishin'" in the reservoirs like before. On days like today, when the
water was clear, carp could be seen sitting on the bottom off the "tin
plate," but mostly, the two reservoirs, one overflowing into the
other, were populated with bluegills and sunfish. Occasionally, a
catfish or perch would swim through to break the monotony.
Local fishermen spoke of a bass population returning; every year
around bass season, "They're comin' back." This kind of talk and
stubborn locals returned to the small, rain and spring fed lakes; but
outsiders wouldn't fish there. Not for bass. They would go to the
Yough river or up to Virgin Run lake: both stocked by the state or a
local fish and game club.
"Why don't you come down to Whittsett and fish in the river? We
can go tomorrow," said Deavon.
"You gotta be crazy. My dad would kill me if he knew I went all
the way to Whittsett," said Mark.
"Shiiiiit, he don't have to know. You can leave in the morning,
fish all day, and be back by six o'clock. He'll think you was up here
all day."
"How would I get there?" asked Mark.
"Walk. How'd you think?"
"I couldn't walk there," said Mark.
"Why not?"
"You know how this town is. If people see me walking towards
Whittsett they'll call my mom and tell her."
"So what," said Deavon.
"If my mom finds out I went fishing in the river she'll get
pissed at me and say I could fall in and drown. Then she'd tell my dad
and I'd have to hear it from him too," said Mark.
"Man, your folks don't let you do nothin'," said Deavon.
"Does your mom know you fish up here?"
"Hell no, you gotta be crazy. I tell her I go way down the river
past the island to get catfish. The island's too far away for her to
check," said Deavon.
"Doesn't anybody call your mom and tell her they saw you coming
up to Junction?" asked Mark.
"They can try. We don't got a phone," he said, and turned to Mark
and smiled.
The boys laughed out loud then Mark plainly said, "Look Deavon, I
just can't go."
"Ok," said Deavon.
Deavon sure is lucky to live in Whittsett, thought Mark. The
river's down there, and all those different kinds of fish. Muskie,
bass, pike, and trout. And things always wash up on its banks. Rusty
tricycles, cables, and plastic parts of things that look like they
come from appliances or factory machinery. And he always has something
from the river. Hunks of blue glass or rusty railroad spikes.
Sometimes his pockets are full of iron ore pellets that fall out of
railroad cars.
Mrs. Adams almost went crazy the day he rolled a handful of them
to the front of the room while she was reading to the class.
"Who's balls are these?" she shouted holding them in her hand. "I
want to know right now."
Deavon puffed as he tried to restrain his laughter. Tears
streaked his face. Beside him, Mark buried his hysteria in a social
studies book. Under the desk, Deavon handed him some pellets.
"I know they're from the river. My son brought these home when he
was your age," she added.
"Then maybe they're your son's balls," shouted Scott Stanko from
the other side of the room. The class roared. Tammy Smith lowered her
flushed face.
With a crooked finger Mrs. Adams pointed toward Scott, but the
tip of the finger actually pointed right at Timmy Veletti.
"Listen, young man. I'm warning you. You're already in trouble
with me for your outburst this morning. I was a WAC in World War II,
you know," she said to Scott, pronouncing WAC as "wack."
"What are you pointing at me for? I didn't do anything this
morning," shouted Timmy. The class laughed even louder than before.
"No, but you did just now," she said and furiously rushed to him
in the middle of the room. The students moved their desks in big jerky
motions to exaggerate the width of her hips as she waddled past. In
the rush, she seemed to burst from her tight black skirt.
She grabbed the back of Timmy's shirt, put her face right up to
his and said, "I knew someone in the army like you."
Just then three more of the rust red pellets bounced off the
blackboard. The class roared and she stormed out shouting for the
principal and her old commanding officer. Mark brushed the rusty dust
from his hands.
Around the reservoirs, styrofoam bait cups are all you could
find, thought Mark. Fishermen from Virgin Run, who stop at the
reservoir to use up old bait, leave them lying around without even a
worm or two. Inside the cups, there's only perfect dirt; the kind that
comes with bought worms: no roots or coal or clay or bits of coke ash,
just perfect little moist chunks like black cottage cheese.
Mark looked at Deavon standing on the plate. He wore cut-off
shorts and his slight body bent backwards. His stomach stuck out a
little and appeared to have an inflated stretch, like a round balloon
pulled from both ends. His rich black skin seemed to absorb the sun,
soaking it into his body, never to release it.
He stands just like those African bushmen, the ones on TV
specials about Kenya or Botswana, out there on the Serengeti or
Kalahari. They always look so curious, so concentrated, he thought;
still, but in motion with small pieces of hide around their waists and
a stick at their side. What are they looking at? Maybe a lion or
rhino. No. It had to be something else. Something harder to discern. A
small deer maybe. Dad always said how hard it was to see deer when he
went hunting. Maybe it wasn't that different in the Serengeti than it
was here.
"So what are you gunna do?" asked Deavon.
"Huh?"
"What are you gunna do about tomorrow?"
"I don't know."
"Come on, Mark. You always think of something," said Deavon.
"Yeah, I... Shit! Here it goes!" Mark leaned on his haunches
toward the pole. The bobbin wiggled back and forth, raised half an
inch, then stopped.
"Gettin' a bite?" Deavon asked.
"Yeah."
"So what are you gunna do?"
"Wait for him to hit again, he's just playin' with it now," said
Mark.
"No. Not about that, about tomorrow. What are you gunna do?"
Mark waited silently for the bobbin to move. It remained still.
Satisfied that the fish wasn't going to strike he turned to Deavon.
"I can't walk down to Whittsett," said Mark.
"Why not? You got legs."
Mark looked sternly at him and tried to explain.
"Deavon, you know how these people are around here. Some of them
just like to make trouble. Maybe I'll ride my bike, I don't know. I
just can't walk down," he said with finality.
KEIRHH!
The bobbin smacked against the pole. Mark grabbed the pole and
pulled violently.
"Shit! I missed him," he shouted and began to rapidly reel in the
line.
Deavon walked to an edge of the plate and jumped. His leap was a
little short and his left foot landed in thick mud at the shoreline.
"Son-of-a-bitch!" he yelled, and pulled his foot from the mud.
Mark laughed as Deavon turned his foot to examine the dripping
sneaker. When he pulled off the shoe, it made the same sucking sound
coming off his foot as it had coming out of the mud. Deavon removed
his other shoe and tossed it on the ground. Barefoot, he stepped in
the water near the stringer and crouched to rinse the mud from his
shoe. The yellow paleness of his feet and palms was highlighted in the
water. They're not white or faded like people said, it's as if more of
the blackness is trying to come through, but can't, thought Mark.
"You should put it on the plate to let it dry when you're done,"
said Mark. "It's so hot it'll be dry by the time we go home."
"Yeah, I know. Hey look! There's a mussel out there." said
Deavon, pointing to a submerged rock.
"Yeah, I see it. Right by that rock. And there's another one
behind it." Mark finished reeling and laid the pole on the bank.
"Let's go out and get them."
"We can use them for bait," Deavon added.
At the rock, the water reached their chests. Deavon went under
for the first mussel then splashed to the surface with it. Stars of
water glistened on his tight jet hair. Mark went under and retrieved
the second. He pushed back his straight wet hair and took Deavon's
mussel. With one in each hand, he tapped them together. Deavon watched
closely, but the mussels remained sealed from them.
A loud engine rumbled on the other side of the reservoir. Wooden
planks bounced in tandem as a pick-up truck crossed the small, flat
bridge over by the swamp. The driver gunned the engine and raced up
the road along the reservoir. The boys turned and saw patches of red
streaking through the tree line. Past the trees and out in the open
the driver yelled, "Hey, you motherfuckers!!!" The truck, patched with
gray primer, continued up the road. Its engine strained as it reached
the top of the hill. Mark put his head down.
"Asshole," he muttered.
Deavon laughed and said, "He don't mean nothin' by it. He's just
playin' around."
"Maybe he is, but he doesn't have to play around with us.
Besides, who'd want to play around with anybody who has a piece of
shit truck like that?" said Mark walking to the shore.
"Yeah, I know what you mean," said Deavon. "But, I'll tell ya'
something. His truck might be a piece of shit, but he got a good
lookin' sister."
"You know that fuckhead?" asked Mark.
"No, but I know his sister. I see his truck at her house when I
walk to school. Sometimes I see him working on it. He's too young to
be her dad, so I figure he must be her brother."
"How do you know his sister?"
"From school. You know her," said Deavon.
"I do?" asked Mark.
"Yeah, she's a year ahead of us, sixth grader, got black hair,
kinda' tall.
"Whose class is she in?"
"Mr. Deiter's." Mark searched his mind as he waited in the knee
deep water. Impatiently Deavon said, "You know who I'm talkin' about.
Black haired girl with those big titties that are always bouncing up
and down the hall."
"That's Tricia Stueben's brother?" exclaimed Mark, pointing to
the road with one of the mussels.
"Yeah. That was Boobin' Stueben's older brother, Steve," said
Deavon.
"He looks kind of old to have a sister in sixth grade. Is he a
senior?"
"No. He's out. Just works on his truck and drives around
bothering people," said Deavon. In the distance, the engine rumbled
and became louder as it approached. The two boys looked at each other
and faced the road. Rumbling down, right on top of them, the truck
appeared from around a turn. A long haired, bearded man in the
passenger side leaned out of the window and shouted, "Fuckin' nigger!!
Go back to Whittsett where you fuckin' belong!"
Mark threw one of the mussels. It missed the truck and spun
across the road.
Stueben gunned the engine. The truck raced red and gray back
through the trees. The planks bounced in tandem. Loudly, Ba Boom!
Deavon got out of the water and found an old coffee can. He
filled it and spilled water on the plate two or three times. The water
dried quickly over the hot metal, but cooled it enough so he could
walk across. He stepped up onto the plate and sat in a puddle where
the water had collected near the edge. The metal banged against the
stone.
The boys fished silently for the rest of the day. Using the other
mussel as bait, Deavon caught two or three bluegill and a very small
perch. Mark caught another sunfish, but lost a catfish caught with one
of Deavon's nightcrawlers. In the warm water, their fish lay curled
and stiff. Only the tiny perch, the most recent catch, lived on the
stringer. Snapping violently, it made a gentle splash.
Mark leaned back on his elbows and looked up. Deavon sat stiff
armed; tilted back on his hands. His legs hung flaccidly over the edge
of the plate. He's still looking out, ahead; thought Mark.
"So Deavon, you wanna get out of here?" he said through a loud
yawn.
"Yeah. Let's go home." he said and silently stretched.
They brought in their lines and gathered up their gear. Mark
surveyed the ground for any hooks and bobbins that might have fallen
from his vest; then, he put it on. Its rough canvas stung his
sunburned shoulders.
Deavon wrapped his line around the base of the bamboo pole and
put the red and white bobbin in his pocket. The large ball bulged
tightly against the denim. Looks like old man Sweeney's goiter,
thought Mark. He jumped off the plate onto the cracked clay bank and
walked over to Mark.
"How are you gunna take your fish home?" asked Mark, holding the
stringer.
"With this." Deavon reached in his pocket and pulled out a length
of blue nylon cord.
"I'll run this through their mouth, out their gills, and carry
em' like this." Holding the ends of the rope, he showed Mark how they
would hang.
"That'll work; but you're not gunna keep that perch, are you?"
asked Mark.
"Hell yeah, I'm gunna keep it."
"Deavon, you can't be serious. It isn't more than three inches
long," exclaimed Mark.
"So."
"So, how are you gunna eat it? You'll cut most of it away when
you clean it."
"No I won't. I'll give it to my grandmother. She grinds them up
and makes fried fish cakes."
"All of it? Won't she cut off the head and the tail?"
"I don't know. All I know is she tells me to bring home all the
fish I catch and them cakes is gooood," Deavon said smiling.
Up on the road, like cut-outs of half-moons made in grade school,
one black, one white, they moved in a common sky. One passed behind
the other, grabbed at the sagging limbs of a choke-cherry tree; the
other crossed over and tormented a garden spider webbed in a barbed
wire fence. At the plank bridge by the swamp Deavon turned to Mark and
asked, "So, what are you gunna do about tomorrow?"
"Go down to Whittsett," answered Mark.
"Are you gunna ride your bike?"
"No. I'll walk down in the morning."
As they crossed the bridge, the planks wobbled under their feet.
Softly, Ba Boom.
--
JOHN REOLI, JR. ([email protected]) is a senior English major at
Carnegie Mellon University.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To Comprehend the Nectar / LOUIE CREW
1
I did not expect Robert Martin to die. I fled The Witherspoon
School soon thereafter. That's not the gamble I thought I took when it
began.
Dr. Geoffrey Smitherman sat straight in a chair embossed "W & N".
I sank in leather. The cotton of my new suit brushed a panel of the
empire secretary which separated us. I had to tilt my head slightly to
look him in the eye. We did not yet have air-conditioning. Early
August. Not even a breeze.
"Mr. Smith, can you also teach Senior Bible?" he asked.
"Well, sir, I suppose I could, but I would prefer to teach only
literature. I have finished my thesis on Shakes..."
"We will give you plenty of that, but we need someone to take the
Bible class. Mr. Foxworthy retired in May. I see that you double-
minored in religion and New Testament Greek at Evangel University.
Foxworthy lacked rapport. He talked about missionaries and heathens.
Quite candidly, our boys take the course mainly to impress the
colleges. Bible on their transcript distinguishes us as a 'private'
school. It also alerts admissions people that our graduates understand
allusions."
"I could do it. It won't be a crip course though. I'll teach it
as literature, not as Sunday School fare."
"Fine, Lee. I think you'll get along nicely here, especially
since you attended The O'Gorman School."
"But O'Gorman is Witherspoon's biggest rival."
"You know a fine Southern boarding school first-hand. New faculty
who went to public school often don't understand us. Our reverence.
Not the fanatic kind, but you know what I mean. I believe Dr. O'Gorman
wrote me that you won the Bonner Award 'For Unselfish Service' at
O'Gorman. Did you not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good, can you attend faculty orientation the last week of
August?"
"You mean I get the job?!"
"The boys won't arrive until Tuesday after Labor Day, except for
the football team."
My new trousers peeled from the chair as I tried to rise.
"Thank you, sir. I am much obliged."
"But you haven't asked what salary we will give you," he smiled.
"Oh." I blushed. "That's not important. I'm sure you will treat
me justly. It's the teaching that interests me, not the money."
"Excellent attitude!" he said. "Welcome to the Witherspoon
family."
2
Later I learned how much Dr. Geoffrey Smitherman valued the word
family. Because I had not pushed, he began me at the rate he gave to
those without a master's.
But I had not exactly leveled with Dr. Smitherman either. I
doubted that he would hire me if he knew that I no longer believed in
God, or knew that at least I thought I didn't. Four years at Evangel,
the world's largest bigotry institution, unconvinced me. I dropped my
intention to preach and took up literature as a better venue for "a
living sacrifice."
O'Gorman, had delivered me from a bad public school into a
community of others who enjoyed homework. But teaching as a graduate
student at a large state university taught me that too few others
value their brains. I had found such people at O'Gorman; I might find
others at Witherspoon.
I tease fiercely, and teach best by what I call "creative
intimidation." Boys liked my classes. Since I began school early, at
age 5, I was only four years older than some of them. Many got close,
especially the brighter ones.
But my best student, Robert Martin, rarely said a word, except in
class, where he shined. At O'Gorman, I had groveled too often.
Robert's football teammates teased him about his early lead in my
class, and would importune me to tell how soon I would post the grades
for the latest Bible test. Robert himself never asked. Was it
arrogance? Robert seemed to presume that he would best his closest
rival, Edgar Bell; and on every test he did, by at least three points.
Robert was prefect to second-formers in the Field House, but he
came to see his classmates on Senior Hall often and could have dropped
by with them to my apartment, had he chosen to. His friend Philip
Smethurst, heir to a textile fortune, visited often enough, and even
brought others, especially when I bought one of the first stereo sets.
Sometimes second-formers, not even in my classes, came with him. But
Robert never once did. Even at the refectory, he seemed not to notice.
He didn't avoid me, just didn't notice and passed right by the faculty
tables without a nod.
The perpetual shadow of his black beard made Robert seem older
than the others, but not sensual. Even now, over twenty-five years
later, and on much maturer terms with myself, I cannot imagine myself
in darkness peeking out blinds to look at him, as night after night I
waited to see either of his classmates, the two prefects in the next
building, shirtless, scratch balls.
Robert triggered fantasies less sensual. They had something to do
with power, not his modest skills as a tackle, but his ability to stay
with a commitment until he won.
At O'Gorman, I had escaped playing sports by becoming the
athletic trainer. At games I was a glorified water boy, but after
hours, with tongue depressors I swabbed many a hero's jock itch with
slabs of what looked like peanut butter and smelled like axle grease.
I aimed deep heat at others' sore buns; ground analgesics into others'
shoulders.
Four years of bowl fanaticism at "Bigotry U." made me an apostate
to sports religion. I worried that The Witherspoon School might revive
that. Since new teachers often have to coach j-v teams, I made a point
during orientation to visit the varsity workouts, hoping to influence
my luck.
It paid off. At a break in football practice, I asked a coach,
"What inning is it?" I got to advise the staff of the student
newspaper.
But Rubbings no longer threatened me. By then I had learned to
live with my secrets, to channel most energy into books and music as
easily as tackles thrust it into another's gut. Besides, The Sound and
the Fury and enough other works I admired had committed me to suicide
before I would ever act on the passions that surged in the dark as I
peeked out the blinds.
Instead, I feared the way that sports sucked me into their
definition of courage as essentially physical, an endurance of pain
and risk according to clear rules. That's why I never liked Hemingway.
But so pervasive is the point of view, I knew I could easily fall back
into thinking that only good athletes can win courage, like a team
trophy at the annual steak banquet. In that world, waterboys like me
live, if at all, off-sides, out-of-bounds.
I preferred to read "A Certain Slant of Light" and blast Mahler's
Ninth down Senior Hall.
3
Robert Martin appeared to respect my terms. He never volunteered
to give a talk at chapel, though faculty often recommended such
speakers for the Ivy League. He never joined the glee club to sip
sherry in the director's bachelor apartment and sit in the bachelor's
chair monogrammed "V." Robert kept to himself his athleticism and any
other religion he might have had; studied rigorously; and never made
less than a 96 on any of my tests. He worked less hard for other
teachers.
The more I learned about The Witherspoon School, the more I
admired Robert Martin. Witherspoon's trustees had given Geoffrey
Smitherman his "Dr." easily, since they also served as trustees of a
nearby Baptist women's college. Dr. Smitherman's "publications" turned
out to be several editions of a workbook on sentence-diagramming,
taught in no other school and only in our own Form One. At his autumn
tea, I examined a dozen of the impressive leather classics in Dr.
Smitherman's living room and found not one with the pages cut.
Claiborne was easier to like, if not respect. Dr. Smitherman held
the title "President," but Mr. Claiborne, as "Headmaster" actually ran
The Witherspoon School. Claiborne did not even try to mask his
pretensions.
"What did you buy that buggy for, Smith? Do you drive it with a
rubber band?" he teased me publicly when he first spotted my new
Falcon, parked so all could see it, by the new Demster Dumpster.
I had gone $2,100 into hock to buy it -- $2,800 after interest --
and I earned only $3,600 for the 9 months, plus my room and board.
"Seriously, Lee," he added when he invited me to join him and
Mrs. Claiborne at their table in the refectory, "you will never know
that you have arrived until you sit behind the wheel of a big car,
smoking a cigar, knowing that it belongs to you."
I added Babbitt to the reading list for Senior Bible. Students
could earn up to 10 extra points for their annual grade (at half a
point per book) for each work that they tested well on, in an oral
examination.
"God makes 100. I make 99. The highest you can make, 98," I
explained.
Robert put all 10 of his points into storage by the end of the
first semester, though he never needed them.
Amazingly, no boy ever let out that I had put Dr. King's Strides
Toward Freedom on the list; some even read it, and those who did not,
still seemed pleased to have a teacher that had heard of the outside
world.
On Saturdays when anyone went to town, he had to pass a
Hospitality Tent which the KKK had set up in a mill village.
Management had closed the mill and moved the work to Hong Kong and
Taiwan when local labor organized. News about sit-ins in the Carolinas
gave the white unemployed something different to get worked up about.
Dr. Smitherman addressed the new unrest the same way that he had
addressed the "Race Problem" every year for over thirty years. He
talked at chapel about "Old Joe," the barber to boys when a young
"Mr." Smitherman first came to The Witherspoon School.
"Joe is one of the finest human beings I ever met." Dr.
Smitherman modulated a slight tremolo. "Mayors and governors would do
well to imitate his honesty and his good humor. He loves Witherspoon
boys. He helps us turn them into Witherspoon men. You should respect
good Negroes. Don't stir up a fuss like unfortunate rednecks. If you
treat the Negro kindly, the Negro will serve you well.
"Of course Old Joe would be the first to say that God does not
intend for the races to mix socially. Right, Joe?"
Venerable Joe Thompson, now in his eighties, hauled out of
retirement for this paid annual production, smiled generously and
said, "Yes, sir. You are a good man, Dr. Smitherman!" He would smile
to the audience and say, "Dr. Smitherman is a good man, boys, a good,
good man."
"Boys," Dr. Smitherman would close, "Joe confirms what you learn
when you study 'Mending Wall,' the great poem by Robert Frost: 'Good
fences make good neighbors.' "
4
"He can't go behind his father's saying? What's 'behind' it?" I
would ask my fifth-formers in the next period, given Dr. Smitherman's
own prompt to teach the poem.
As far as I know, they never reported to Dr. Smitherman how I
used Frost's own words to mince his interpretation. Claiborne probably
would have enjoyed it if he could have understood it. I felt that he
didn't like Dr. Smitherman and impatiently waited for Dr. Smitherman
to retire so that he could replace him in the President's Mansion.
Perhaps I misjudged him.
I learned later that few boys or faculty approached Claiborne for
anything, except to listen. Isolated in my books and music, I did not
notice their reticence and had to learn the collective wisdom on my
own.
I had no discipline problems in class. Students respected my work
ethic. If a boy ever did sass, I would squelch him with invincible
sarcasm: "John, you are very perceptive and therefore will understand
how important it is that you meet me here for two hours after class to
analyze your perception."
But in the dark, after lights-out, I could not defend myself with
words. As the newest faculty member of three on Senior Hall, I had a
hard time when the boys tested me.
They usually started off playful enough. Birdcalls. Frog croaks.
But I too soon took bait and shouted, "Who made that noise!?" or
guessed wildly, "Poindexter, the next time you do that you'll sit in
study hall for a week!"
This licensed the circus as clearly as if I had walked to the
center ring. By three o'clock in the morning I might have nabbed three
culprits, but the hall would remain littered with water bombs and
other trash. Everyone, highly entertained, would wait for my next turn
on duty.
Next I decided to ignore them, not to take even the first bait.
Let the menagerie built to whatever crescendo their ears could bear, I
would wait fortressed in my room. They gave up after about an hour,
but resented me. My ploy might have worked if I used it when they
first played, but now I was a spoil-sport. They turned mean, to jew-
baiting.
Rabinowitz played right into their trap. The moment someone made
the wailing sounds used in the movie version of "The Diary of Anne
Frank," Rabinowitz would run out of his room and bang on my door. They
loved it better than water bombs.
I would stand in the dark hall for hours, but no one ever made
the noises from a range close enough for me to catch him.
During Thanksgiving, I searched for evidence. With a master key,
I crept through all 45 rooms on the hall. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly
and Miller's Tropics had only recently broken the censors' backs, but
the porn these rich boys sported would not be marketed publicly for
another decade.
I stared for a long time, especially when I discovered in the
drawer of a weightlifter the pictures of men having sex with men. If I
had known such pictures existed outside my mind, I might have
predicted Poindexter would have a stash. He often jerked off at the
late bed-check; sometimes he waved! Yet he hoarded only dirty letters
from his girl friend, no pictures at all.
Partly on instinct, partly because a box of my books had pushed
the back out of my own laundry bin, I decided to check the backs of
bins in several boys' rooms. I hit the jackpot on my first try. It
opened to a casino.
Yes, as in mine, the back of the laundry bin opened into a low,
narrow place under the roof, large enough to squeeze maybe two people.
But behind the boys' bin, unlike mine, the narrow space opened into a
much larger one that ran the full length of the shower room midway
down the hall. In this secret space boys had placed a rug, several
cases of whiskey, three slot machines, and enough other paraphernalia
to keep up to fifteen gambling at any one time.
Even though I routinely eavesdropped, I had not expected anything
like this. Once I had overheard a prefect on the hall say that the
governor's son, a Form Two boy who lived in the Field House, had lost
$1,000 in one card game, but I presumed that the prefect exaggerated,
or referred to something that had happened during the previous summer.
Knowing that this evidence could blow the top off Witherspoon's
reputation as one of the finest prep schools in the South, I went
cautiously to Claiborne's Office. Closed for the holiday. I spotted
his Ninety-Eight parked in front of the gym and trekked through the
rain to his apartment at the back. Mrs. Claiborne, sensing my urgency,
asked about my family, pointed to some fruitcake, and quickly left me
alone with her husband.
Claiborne did not interrupt once during the whole time I told him
what I had discovered. I omitted the parts about water bombs and jew-
baiting, even the part about my plot to check the boys' rooms. I
fibbed a bit; I said that a stranger had telephoned to tell me to look
under the eaves.
Claiborne didn't question me. He didn't take notes. He just
listened. For half an hour he listened.
After I had stopped, Claiborne said, "Now, Lee, have you told
anyone else?"
"No, sir."
"Don't."
"Yes, sir."
"You've done a good job. Now let me take care of it completely.
Do you understand?"
He already stood at the door.
"Well, yes, sir," I lied.
"Good."
He never mentioned it again.
5
I've told this story out loud at least a dozen times over the
past quarter of a century, usually to close friends, but sometimes
even to my classes. Since I don't know you, I'm pleased and a little
surprised you've gotten this far. I never thought that in print I
would risk sounding like Edith Bunker when she loses her main point to
give you ten interesting minor ones instead.
But I never have come to terms myself with the main point. I know
the minor ones add up to something big. Maybe you can tell.
I can easily conclude the part about the jew-baiting. By the time
the boys returned from Thanksgiving, for the two weeks of term
examinations, they had too much work even to think of late-night play.
Then after Christmas, that seemed like another dispensation.
Until April. Mistakenly I left my copy of Emily Dickinson in my
apartment. Only honor students could study in their rooms during the
day, and no one expected a teacher about. Philip Smethurst ambled past
the showers, his back to me, and as he passed Rabinowitz's room, he
let out the moan from "The Diary of Anne Frank." As much to my
surprise as his, I pounced on Smethurst before he ever saw me, lifted
him off the floor by his jacket, and held him against the wall, my
fist pressed into his stomach.
I don't remember any words. I just raged. I saw him only once
after that, when he gave the Valedictory.
I learned by the grapevine that after the summer break began, The
Witherspoon School notified the parents of several of underclassmen
that their sons could not return. Claiborne placed in The O'Gorman
School the one senior who flunked, and the governor's son.
Viewed from a quarter of a century, Claiborne's seems a much
cleverer way to handle the gambling than to panic as I had done with
the water bombs, even though I still do not respect him.
When Claiborne succeeded Dr. Smitherman, he too metamorphosed
into "Dr." and built a garage beside the President's Mansion for his
new Lincoln. I heard he inherited even the leather, uncut books.
I understand that it took a few more complete turnovers to rid
the place of all hints of scandal when marijuana hit in the early
seventies; but The Witherspoon School survives, its good reputation
intact. It has initiated even a few black students into reverence, not
just football.
"Old Joe" Thompson and Dr. Geoffrey Smitherman eventually died,
confirming my theologian friend's emendation, "So long as there's
death, there's hope."
When I fled, I taught first at an Episcopal school outside the
South. From there to London to teach poorer boys, in the slums. From
there to my Ph.D. and teaching adults in college.
Each year at its Commencement, The Witherspoon School bestows
several coveted awards, including the Bible Prize, given in perpetuity
by the family of an early alumnus who died of a cold his first month
as a missionary to Nigeria, to "that boy who in the view of the Senior
Bible Teacher best demonstrates a rigorous understanding of Holy
Scripture." I surprised no one when I posted the grades for the final
examination outside the classroom: everyone had guessed that Robert
Martin would win it.
Then Claiborne called me to the President's tiny office for my
second and final visit. Dr. Smitherman sat high in the "W & N" chair.
Claiborne leaned against the wall, stoking a cigar. I sank in leather.
"Mr. Smith, you have taught well for your first year," Dr.
Smitherman said.
"Thank you. Next year I expect to revise..."
"We hope that you will cooperate with us so that you can teach
here next year," Dr. Smitherman said.
"Cooperate?"
"It's about the Bible Prize, Lee," Claiborne blurted, ever
impatient with Dr. Smitherman's delicacy.
"That's easy," I said. "Everyone knows that Robert Martin has won
it. He has led all year, and I posted his final grade, a 99, which
normally I reserve...."
"Not easy," Dr. Smitherman said, softly.
"Sir?"
"We cannot tell you any details. You must trust us. But Robert
Martin has done something we prefer not to mention, ever. He cannot
win the Bible Prize or any other."
"But he already has. I have posted the grades...."
"Lee," Mr. Claiborne said as paternally as when he advised me
what kind of automobile to aspire to, "no one has ever said that the
Bible Prize has to go to the boy with the highest score. You may
freely consider other factors, like character. I believe that Edgar
Bell scored second highest. He plans to preach. Robert Martin will
study business at Shackville State."
"Mr. Smith, you have taught a good course. We hope that you will
cooperate." Dr. Smitherman urged, not looking me in the eye.
6
Every other time that I have told this story, I have used it as a
model for endurance not orchestrated, for risk without clear rules.
I have explained to all earlier audiences, as I told you at the
beginning, that I left The Witherspoon School soon thereafter.
Everyone charitably assumes that I walked away from Witherspoon with
this courage of a different kind.
But I didn't. Actually I stayed on for two more short years.
Edgar Bell won the prize and went to Evangel. Robert Martin never got
to Shackville. He drowned in a sailing accident two months later.
I remember driving my black Falcon to the muddy lot behind the
Field House. Boys and their families sloshed everywhere. I saw him
several cars away, loading his gear.
My face said: "They pressured me; they made me; I'm sorry."
Robert seemed to see. I can't be sure. He waved from the gate of
his family's station wagon, shrugged his shoulders, and winked.
--
LOUIE CREW ([email protected]) is an associate professor in
the Academic Foundations Department of Rutgers University. He is the
author of Lutibelle's Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990), Sunspots (Lotus Press,
1976), Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987) and more than 865 other
publications. His work appears in several recent anthologies,
including Gay Nineties: Contemporary Gay Fiction (Crossing Press,
1991) and New Men, New Minds: Free Parking (The Spirit That Moves Us,
1990).
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Multiplication and the Devil / DANIEL K. APPELQUIST
The rain poured steadily down on top of the one-room schoolhouse.
To David, it sounded like the world was crashing down around him, and
the normal routine of morning multiplication tables proved to be
little comfort. David was smallish for his age, with sandy hair that
didn't quite cover his gray eyes, eyes that were now closed tightly
shut.
"David?"
The eyes sprang suddenly open in an expression that was a mixture
of fear and surprise. "Yes, Mrs. Wadlemire?" The words came almost
unconsciously, as his head swiveled to survey his surroundings. He saw
only faces, turned towards him in amusement. There were only fifteen
other children in the morning session, but to David it seemed like the
entire population of some child-inhabited planet was staring him down,
taunting him, making fun of his stupidity, his ignorance.
"I asked you: Would you care to recite the second row from the
table?" She pointed a stiff, bony finger to the chart which hung on
the wall. Conical hat and flowing black robes only materialized
afterward in a brief flash.
"Uh..." Hat and robes were suddenly gone, as were the millions
upon millions of rapt watchers. All was replaced with the suddenly
confining space of the small classroom, rain still descending in a
cacophony above his head. Mrs. Wadlemire, now clothed in her
traditional blue dress, stared at him expectantly.
"Two times one is two," he began.
One by one, his classmates started to look back towards the front
of the room.
"Two times two is four," he continued in his well-practiced
monotone. The beating of the rain on the roof seemed to intensify.
Mrs. Wadlemire may have said something. Something to do with fish,
perhaps. Whatever it was, it was droned out by the incessant downpour.
"Two times three is six." At this point, the lights went out,
shrouding the room in a sort of gray darkness, the color of rainy
skies. Through the skylight, David could see a dark shape moving
above. David squinted to see what it might be through the continually
renewed layer of water, but its form remained indefinable.
"Two times four is eight." A face! For an instant, he could
definitely make out a face, staring down at him from the otherwise
featureless gray rectangle of the skylight. The face was full of
strange, mixed-up features, and yet had been strangely familiar to
him, as if it was one he was supposed to recognize.
"Two times five is ten." He looked around to see if anyone else
had seen it, but the other children were all gone, replaced with
cardboard cutouts, decorated with crayons. Only Mrs. Wadlemire seemed
untouched by this strange transformation, as if whoever had affected
it had let her be, out of disgust. Her face, now framed in harsh
shadows, seemed like an amalgamation of the worst traits of mankind.
In it he could see hatred, cruelty, as well as a host of other,
equally undesirable traits.
"Two times six is twelve," still he recited on, as if any
deviation from the norm might alert them to his presence; the monsters
that stole children and replaced them with cutouts. A chill started to
work its way up his spine. He could feel the presence of something
behind him. A dank, musty odor assaulted his nose, almost eliciting a
sneeze. He did not turn, for he knew that to do so would mean certain
death. The whatever-it-was that he had seen on the roof had definitely
made its way down here, somehow switching the other children in the
class while he wasn't looking.
"Two times seven is..." he faltered. The answer was on the tip of
his tongue. He had recited the same phrase over fifty times, but today
it stuck in his throat like chunky peanut butter. He felt the presence
behind him closing, closing on its target like some great snake, now
ready for the kill. If only he could remember!
"David..." The voice of Mrs. Wadlemire cut through his
concentration. Why didn't she do something? Was she blind? Didn't she
realize that her class now consisted of a host of badly drawn
replicas, one child and an unmentionable beast? Perhaps she had been
in on it from the beginning!
"Fourteen," the momentary distraction of these thoughts was
enough to dislodge the word from his throat and cough it up. In the
presence of the word, the creature behind him seemed to shrink back,
as if it couldn't bear to hear it. Mrs. Wadlemire, now blindfolded,
holding a calculator in one hand and a chalkboard eraser in the other,
smiled a faint smile and shifted inside the folds of her white robe.
"Two times eight is sixteen," he went on, causing the thing to
shrink back even further (had it emitted a gasp of terror, just then?)
One by one, the cardboard children were replaced with their flesh-and-
blood equivalents.
"Two times nine is eighteen." He definitely heard a stifled cry
from the creature (he dared not look back yet, lest he be turned into
cardboard and become unable to recite the last verse of the deadly
spell). Under the fluorescent lights, even Mrs. Wadlemire seemed to
radiate a goodness, a quality which David found to be quite at odds
with her Nazi armband and smart officer's cap.
"Two times ten is twenty."
With this last incantation, the beast shrieked in agony. In its
death-throes, it managed to overturn a table, and set a globe
careening down the aisle towards the blackboard with its immense
claws, now waving randomly in the air. When David finally looked back
at it, it had almost shrunk out of site, seeking to hide, in its
disgrace, behind the plastic jack o'lantern.
David sat back down behind his desk, his job completed, the
monster vanquished. Even Mrs. Wadlemire, now clothed in her
traditional blue dress, would have to thank him. He had, after all,
saved her class from a fate most probably worse than death. But she
only looked at him, with her not-disgusted expression and said, "Very
good, David."
Hmm. Some thanks that was.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A Handful of Dust / DANIEL K. APPELQUIST
Rembrandt looked out of his tenth floor window and crooned softly
to the parrot perched on his wrist. The city lay outside, a strange
mix of traditional, postmodern and futurist styles, now bathed in the
light of the noonday suns, but Rembrandt's thoughts were elsewhere.
His thoughts, specifically, were of Picasso. It had been ten days now
since Picasso had ventured out into that cityscape and they had heard
nothing. Not a peep.
Monet looked up from the table and spoke. "Anything?"
It took a few seconds for Rembrandt to respond, but his answer
was quick enough not to provoke a second asking. "No. Just the same."
He turned, and the parrot left his arm, flying off towards some
unknown perch. "Do you really care?"
Monet sat back in his sparkling chair and gave Rembrandt an icy
stare, but remained silent.
"What if he never comes back?" Rembrandt continued.
"He will."
"But what if he doesn't. You certainly wouldn't shed a tear."
Monet rolled his eyes. "Picasso and I have had our differences,
but that's no reason for me to want him out of the picture."
Rembrandt sat down, and as he did so, a chair came into existence
under him. His eyes were still locked on Monet's. Increasingly of
late, he was beginning to believe that Monet was a bit off-color. At
first, he had seemed simply withdrawn, but his arrogant attitude now
betrayed something Rembrandt detested, something that was only now
becoming apparent. "If he doesn't come back, what are you going to
do?"
Monet's collar, normally green, suddenly glowed bright red,
betraying his emotions to Rembrandt even if he would not openly
display them. "I will remain here. I'm perfectly content to stay
here."
"You're not curious about what lies outside the door?"
"I've seen it. You've seen it. You were just looking at it!"
"And that doesn't interest you?"
"Frankly, no."
Rembrandt looked away, disgusted. After a second or two, he
looked back, his eyes gleaming with purpose. "Well it interests me. If
Picasso doesn't come back by tomorrow, I'm going out after him."
"Very well."
"I'm tired of being cooped up in here like some sort of animal,"
Rembrandt continued, ignoring the other's response, still feeling the
need to justify his decision.
"Fine."
"Has it occurred to you that that's all we are: Animals,
performing for someone else's pleasure?"
Monet's tone grew brusque. "As a matter of fact, it has. I've
spent a great deal of time thinking about who we are and how we got in
this unlikely situation and, as I told Picasso, my conclusion is that
it is best not to think about it." With this he looked back at
Rembrandt, challenging him for some sort of rebuttal. Rembrandt
snorted defiantly, got up, and left.
The sparkling remains of the chair slowly disintegrated as Monet
looked back towards the table and his book.
A person reading a story might expect certain elements. For one,
they might expect a setting which they could relate to. Certainly they
would not want to be thrust into a cold, surreal universe where the
characters are named after famous painters and chairs appear and
disappear, seemingly at will. Any reader expecting this sort of
textual trickery would be brutally disappointed by most modern
fiction. In fact, it was just such disappointment which caused Monet
to look away from his book after a short while and seek some other
form of entertainment. He stood and walked slowly over to the window.
As he turned his back, table, chair and book melted into nothingness.
The window presented him with the same shifting scene. Much of
the cityscape lay below him now but a few of the buildings jutted up
towards the sky. Many of the buildings lumbered along at a slow to
moderate pace, some stopping momentarily in their journey to allow
others to pass. As he watched, a massive stone cathedral slowly ground
to a halt to make way for a squat, round building which looked like it
might also serve some religious purpose. There were never any people
to be seen in the city.
Monet leaned out towards the window and looked down. Below, the
river was reasonably quiet. On some days, massive amounts of debris
could be seen floating down it. Today, it merely streamed past, brown
and silty, making oval patches of bubbly froth around the
streetlights. For the first time, Monet thought it bizarre that there
should be streetlights on a river, but this thought was dismissed from
his mind by a sharp noise.
"Let me in!"
It was Picasso. It was definitely the muffled voice of Picasso.
Rembrandt sat up in bed, his eyes springing open.
"Let me in!"
There was no mistaking the voice. He sprang up and walked to the
edge of the room, the wall parting as he passed through it. A story
which switches back and forth between two or more characters' points
of view can be very confusing indeed. The Parrot, being deaf, heard
nothing.
The main door was the only object in the building which actually
required some effort to affect. When Rembrandt arrived, Monet was
already there, eying the circular stone carefully.
"Why haven't you started?" Rembrandt asked accusingly.
"You know very well that I couldn't even make a start by myself.
It takes two."
Rembrandt knew this, but he needed some excuse to abuse Monet
nonetheless. He hated himself for this need but he made no outward
apologies. He moved towards the massive stone that covered the main
entry way and began to push. "Come on!"
Monet followed suit, muttering something under his breath. Soon
the slab of stone was rolling under their combined pressure. A small
crack of the doorway was uncovered. This crack slowly grew in size
until a small man stepped through, a canvas bag slung over one
shoulder. Outside, they could see his makeshift canoe tethered to the
railing of the stair. None talked until the stone was set securely
back into place. When the task was accomplished, Monet and Rembrandt
looked their colleague over in frank interest.
"Well, don't you have any questions?" Picasso's zealous voice
broke the silence.
"You're quite a sight," Monet commented with more than a hint of
cynicism in his voice.
"You two are quite a sight yourselves! A sight for sore eyes."
"Didn't you find anyone else?" Rembrandt asked cautiously.
"No one."
"No one?"
"Not a soul."
Rembrandt paled. "Then we are truly alone."
Picasso walked over to him, trailing mud and silt from his feet.
"Don't lose hope yet! I didn't cover even a fraction of the city. The
city is even more immense than it looks from the window. It will take
years to explore it all," but as soon as the words escaped Picasso's
lips he knew that they had been a mistake. Rembrandt was like a small
child. His urge for instant gratification overpowered his reason and
his logic. The thought that exploring the city might take years or
even weeks filled him only with grief.
"That long?" he sighed and hung his head.
"But now we are armed with a weapon." Picasso reached into his
back and pulled forth a paper scroll. Spreading it out on the floor of
the entryway, he declared "this, as far as I can tell, is a map. A map
of the city."
Monet scoffed. "But that's plainly ridiculous, Picasso. As we
have observed, the city is a moving landscape, it never remains
constant. How can one make a map of such a place?"
Picasso waved his hands in the air as Monet spoke, obviously
quite excited. "That's what I first thought, but I found this map
infinitely more useful than I first expected it to be."
"Do you mean that it changes with the city?" Rembrandt queried,
wide eyes turning to stare at the unfurled scroll.
"I've never actually seen it change, but it always seems to show
basically the correct configuration. While travelling back from here,"
he indicated a position on the map "I made it a point to stare at the
map continuously for a good while. I never caught it changing, but
somehow, the positions of the buildings, even though they were moving,
were always correct."
Rembrandt looked to Picasso in wonder and then stared back at the
map. Monet simply started on the long trek up the winding stairs to
their tenth floor apartment. Picasso rolled up the map, much to the
dismay of Rembrandt, and also started up.
# # #
"So what are we to do?"
"It's clear that if more than one of us leaves this place, they
won't be able to get back in. There's no way to move the door from the
outside."
Rembrandt rolled his eyes at what he considered to be Monet's
defeatist attitude. "But there's every possibility that we can find
just as good if not better accommodations elsewhere within the city."
"There's no proof of that."
Picasso, who had remained largely silent throughout the
conversation, saw fit to interrupt now. "I didn't find a way into any
of the buildings, you know. I did tell you that, didn't I?"
"There's no other way."
"There is."
"No."
"I will stay," Monet stated in an infuriatingly final manner.
"If we go, you have to go with us!" Rembrandt was furious. His
collar was bright green, and even seemed to grow brighter with each
pulse of aggression. Involuntarily, he reached out into the air and a
glass of ice-water appeared in his hand. He downed the water and his
collar began to grow dimmer.
Picasso detested the way the other two always fought, but somehow
he felt connected to both of them, if only by the fact that they had
lived together for so long (how long, he could not remember, but he
knew, or sensed that it had been a great deal of time.) He tentatively
spoke out. "It may help if we arm ourselves with a goal." He unfurled
the map, and Rembrandt could see that already there were some changes
from when he had looked on it last. The forms on the map remained
static, though. Picasso spread the map out on a table which came into
existence underneath it and indicated a position with an index finger.
"We are here." Rembrandt could see their building, marked by a red #.
"If we travel down the river this way," Picasso continued,
tracing a line with his finger, following the blue streak of the
river, until he reached a white +. Next to the + were the words 'the
edge.' "This can be our goal."
"The edge of what?" Monet spoke up.
"I don't know. On my journey, I travelled this way." He indicated
the opposite direction from the +. "It was here I found the map." He
indicated a V sitting on the side of the river. "It was lying on what
looked like an altar, outside a huge stone cathedral.
"I think I've seen that building," Rembrandt piped up.
"This," he again indicated the +, "is the only representation on
the map to be labeled. That must hold some significance."
"But we have no idea what," Monet cut in. "Your addition of the
'goal' to our journey is as meaningless as the journey would have been
in the first place!"
"Nonsense!" Rembrandt almost shouted. "Don't you see what this
means? 'The Edge' obviously indicates an escape route -- a passage to
somewhere else."
"But it occurs nowhere near the physical edge of the city," Monet
argued, gesturing violently towards the map.
Rembrandt's collar began to grow brighter again. "The city moves!
Picasso has confirmed this."
Monet nearly pounced on Rembrandt. "You're just worried you won't
find anything and then you won't be able to come back. If you go, it's
final. You can't stand the thought of being trapped out there with me
in here. Look at yourself!"
Rembrandt sighed as if the tension and energy of the day and of
the moment were released in that one moment. As his collar cooled back
to its normal azure shade, he plunked down into a form-fitting couch
which had not existed a moment before and looked away, toward the now-
darkened window. "Perhaps you're right."
Monet simply looked pleased with himself.
"But did it occur to you that you too would be trapped within
this apartment?" Rembrandt started again, this time more with a
pleading tone than with anger.
"He's got a point. I intend to go back out and to not return.
Rembrandt certainly intends to do the same."
"Picasso, I always figured you for such a level-headed fellow,"
Monet replied, more to himself than to any other speaker.
"That I am, Monet."
+ + +
They left two mornings after.
The huge portal rolled back into its frame with a chilling
finality. When it was done, and the three were left outside of the
door, looking back at their former abode, there was only silence.
Rembrandt felt a shudder down his spine and felt for a second that he
had left something very important in the house, but he knew that there
was nothing. The parrot could not be coaxed out and that had disturbed
him greatly, but other than that he was content to start his new life.
After the decision, Monet's attitude had changed from sullen apathy to
sullen acceptance. He kept up with the others as they walked down
towards the rushing river, but his expression was colored with jaded
overtones.
Picasso led the others down to the dock and pulled his makeshift
canoe by the tether he had so carefully fashioned. He, too was scared,
although he felt compelled to exude an air of detached superiority. He
was, after all, supposed to be the experienced one. It had been his
idea to brave the exterior city. But now he was committed. He knew
that he had let himself be prodded into it by Rembrandt's urgings, but
now there was no going back. One leg at a time, he stepped into the
canoe, and looked back at the other two expectantly.
After much fumbling, they were clear of the dock and paddling
swiftly down the river: Picasso steering with one oar, Monet providing
the grim motive power with the other and Rembrandt sitting in the prow
looking forward. As the city sped past them on all sides, Rembrandt
began to sing softly to himself.
Looking back on the building they had come from, they now saw how
much it towered over this section of the city. It was a giant,
standing amongst midgets; a massive stone monolith which tapered at
its top to a sharp point. As Rembrandt looked back, he counted up
floors until he reached the tenth, in some vain hope of finding a
toehold of familiarity, but his effort was fruitless. Every story was
the same. They had never been able to enter any of the other
apartments.
The terrain they were now passing through was fairly familiar to
Rembrandt already, but it took on a completely different aspect when
viewed from the ground. From ten stories up, all had seemed orderly
and neat but now the true nature of the city was becoming apparent to
him. Many of the buildings were only empty shells where residences and
markets may once have existed but were no more. It seemed to Rembrandt
that the material used in these shells must have somehow outlived the
interiors of the structures. Pieces of what he took to be building
material hung tattered from gaping holes. Some of these were so close
to the ground that the river had spilled into them. They had become
part of the river, and the river had carried away their contents, but
the shells remained, indestructible.
Once in a while, sitting among these rotting shells, there
appeared a larger, more grandiose structure. These were typically
haggard but seemed like they at least had some life left in them. They
varied in shape but all of them seemed like meeting halls of some
sort. Some, perhaps were large stores? Some were simply strange. About
half a mile from where they started, there loomed across their path a
huge sphere with no visible entrance or window.
"We're going to hit that," Rembrandt stated nervously.
Picasso did not seemed distressed. "It doesn't look like it now,
but there's space underneath it."
Still, it loomed up in front of them. Rembrandt strained to look
for Picasso's opening but he couldn't find it. What if the space
underneath had shrunk? What if the huge sphere were slowly sinking
into the river, eventually to cut it off and form a dam? "You're
sure."
Monet spoke: "Shut up."
"Well, I'd prefer not to be crushed to death today, ok?"
Rembrandt spat back, but by that time they were close enough that he
could see there was indeed a space underneath the huge structure.
Still, he was nervous until they had reached open air. When they
emerged from underneath, an entirely new scene awaited them.
For a moment, they all sat, mesmerized. There had been no
warning, no sign that such a violent change would take place. In
contrast to the drab, decimated landscape behind them, spires made
seemingly of cut glass or even diamond towered over the them.
Inexplicably, the river which was silty and muddy before had turned
crystal-clear. Rembrandt wasn't sure when the transition had taken
place but his mind didn't stay on this long for he immediately noticed
that the sky had changed color.
"It's a dome," someone said. Rembrandt was so awe-struck that it
took a few seconds for Rembrandt to register that it had been Monet
speaking. He could see now that Monet was right. Running across the
sky, intersecting in a triangular pattern were white lines which must
have been support beams. It was impossible for Rembrandt to judge how
far away those beams were.
Monet looked at Picasso accusingly. "You didn't tell us..."
"I didn't know," Picasso cut him off sharply, unrolling his map
and studying it. "The city constantly moves and changes. From studying
the map, I've found that individual buildings move but large sections
of the city also can move." He indicated a portion of his map, a
circular region marked in the center by a *. "This area must be what
we've entered now. The river we're on clearly intersects it now, where
it didn't before." At this point the reader might be getting slightly
annoyed by the ubiquitous presence of this map. The map is only
vaguely described, and seems to pop up only when convenient. Perhaps a
full description of the map would help to ground it a bit....
Picasso put away his map and began to steer again.
"This wasn't here when you...?"
"Absolutely not."
"It's beautiful," Rembrandt said dreamily.
Monet looked up. "Yes."
A change in the wind brought with it a strange howling sound
which sent a chill through the minds of the three travelers. If there
was any doubt now that they would never return then it was the product
of insanity, a derangement so grotesque as to be unthinkable. The
sound was like a voice and yet was discernibly inhuman. Soon a second
tone, higher and shriller than the first, started up as the lower and
more sombre one began to die down. Rembrandt stopped rowing and stood
transfixed as the tones rolled over him. As the first tone died away
completely, he began to regain some composure and turned to stare back
at the other two. Their eyes were glazed over, the whole of their
brains devoted to their ears. Rembrandt had heard great symphonies
during his time in the flat. His ears had been massaged by Beethoven,
Bach, Mozart all in turn. No sound could compare in beauty to the
simple tones he heard now.
"It's got to be some atmospheric phenomenon; a by-product of the
dome structure, perhaps..." Monet's words cut across Rembrandt's
dreamy mood like a hot knife. He looked back at the other to see a
face still transfixed. Monet's mind was more analytical, or at least a
portion of it was. Looking more closely, Rembrandt could see that his
expression was not that of a man overcome by beauty but of a man in
the throes of deep thought. Picasso, as always maintained his
composure. Even now, Rembrandt could see that the sound was beginning
to lose its effect on him. Picasso's eyes fell by the degree until
they again rested on the horizon. Rembrandt looked back there as well,
as another mesmerizing tone began to dominate their surroundings.
* * *
"Look!" The voice was Monet's. Their journey through the domed
country had lasted more than a day now. So far, the scenery had been
somewhat uniform, but as Picasso followed the line traced by Monet's
pointed finger he began to feel that their fortunes were about to
change. Just on the edge of the horizon in front of them there stood
an island. There, barely visible, there was a huge building, itself
the size of a small city, judging from the distance. Picasso tried a
quick mental calculation and dismissed his figures as outrageous.
It took an hour before he could begin to make out the details of
the structure, and even then, there seemed no sense to it. It was a
huge mass of twisted angles. It was in the rough shape of a mushroom,
but with no curves. It was entirely composed of rectangular,
triangular and rhomboid slabs, which jutted out unevenly around its
mass. Crowning the top was a spire which reached fully twice as high
as the building itself, and what appeared to be a cross.
In three more hours, it was looming up above them like a
surrealist's nightmare. Furthermore, what they had taken to be an
island had in fact been a peninsula. As they rounded the right hand
side of the base, they saw that the river ended there. The rushing
water fell into gratings some three miles from where the river had
forked.
Confused by this, Picasso again pulled his map out and began to
scrutinize it. "That's odd," he intoned. "If we're where I think we
are, roughly in the center of the circular region, here, the map shows
the river continuing beyond this point."
Rembrandt turned to him, just as they were coming up on the end
of the river. "Well either your map is wrong, or you're interpreting
it wrong. Here, let me have it." He reached past Monet and snatched it
out of Picasso's hands, just as their canoe grounded itself in the
shadow of the huge structure.
The instant they hit ground, Rembrandt and map were gone. A
shadowy image replaced the space he had inhabited only a moment
before, then nothing. Picasso and Monet could only stare. Monet, being
within hand's reach of Rembrandt's former volume, reached out
cautiously, as if still expecting to find something there. When he did
not, he waved his hand around tentatively, then furiously, anxious to
find some indication that Rembrandt was (or had ever been) there.
Picasso simply stared, open-eyed, silent, their collars glowing a
deep azure.
Rembrandt turned to Monet, who was not there. Frustrated at
Monet's absence, he turned inquisitively to Picasso to find him also
absent. It was only at this point that he began to re-evaluate his
situation. The surroundings had changed but there had been no jump, no
discontinuity. The grey walls that now surrounded him seemed always to
have been there. There was no other explanation. And yet, he
remembered the shoreline; the canoe; the map! He looked about him, and
found it also missing. He shook his head in an attempt to rid himself
of this confusion, but the confusion remained, undaunted.
He began to sit, but fell, instead. Suddenly annoyed at the non-
appearance of a chair, he scrambled to his feet, determined to do
something. But there was nothing to do. It was at this point that he
noticed the golden sphere. There was no way to know if the sphere had
been there when he had 'appeared,' for lack of a better word. It was
there now, however. It shimmered, suspended halfway between floor and
ceiling, awaiting instructions. Where had that thought come from,
Rembrandt wondered. Indeed, he had the distinct feeling that the
sphere was somehow awaiting direction, or instruction.
Shrugging his shoulders, he said "come here."
Dutifully, it approached, bobbing slowly through the air until it
hovered not a foot away from him. Well, at least something obeys me
around here, he thought.
Monet sat on the sandy bank of the river, staring out into the
darkness, while Picasso paced back and forth behind him, a gold globe
floating dutifully above his head.
"These idiotic globes don't seem to be any use," Monet remarked
sourly, belting the one which hovered next to him in an offhand
manner. "I mean -- what's the point of a metal globe that follows you
around -- can it do anything? Can it produce food?" He looked
pointedly at it. "Produce food." It remained silent. "Nothing." He
looked away, disgusted.
Picasso stopped and regarded his globe, which he had almost
forgotten about; he was contemplating the dimensions of the structure
towering over him. Even though the darkness hid its form, it still
seemed to loom over them, a tangible presence bearing down, making the
very air heavier with its unimaginable countenance. "They could be
monitors -- They could serve no purpose at all, other than to report
back to their masters what our doings are."
"Why, then, do they seem to obey our simple commands?"
"A ruse? Trickery?"
Monet's lips cracked into a wry smile. "You're beginning to think
like me, Picasso." His expression soured again as his thoughts
returned to Rembrandt. Monet was accustomed to thinking of Rembrandt
as a fool, and it did him no good at all to be worried for him, even,
perhaps, guilty that he did not.
"You know," Picasso interrupted. "The globes may simply seem
unable to obey commands about food and such because they are unable;
assuming they themselves can't transport us."
"A broad assumption, considering Rembrandt's case," Monet
retorted.
"Nevertheless, assuming that: Perhaps there is no food to be
found here. And no way into the structure above?" He turned to regard
the globe coldly. "Perhaps these globes once served some purpose, as
rudimentary guiding machines, but there is no longer anything to be
guided to."
"A cold thought, Picasso. A cold thought."
"Come morning, we have to move on. There is no other choice."
"Without your Map?" Monet raised his eyebrows.
"Indeed. Our goal is still the same. We must reach the region
marked as 'the edge'."
Monet cut in "Without a Map, how can we?"
"Dead reckoning."
Monet, silent to this, continued to stare out into the clear
water.
Rembrandt, accompanied by the small gold ball, climbed a metal
staircase with metal walls.
"Considering Rembrandt's case." Rembrandt spun around at the
sudden voice of Monet, but saw no-one.
"Come morning, we must move on." Now Picasso's voice hung in the
air.
"A cold thought, Picasso. A cold thought."
Rembrandt's eyes widened as he ascertained the source of the
conversation -- the metal sphere. And, within the sphere, the ghost of
an image -- Monet and Picasso, sitting on the sandy river-bed.
"There is no other choice," the image Picasso said, a smile
flickering across his face.
"You're beginning to think like me, Picasso," Monet replied, now
grinning. Then image, and sound abruptly faded.
Rembrandt tried to grab hold of the railing, but it did not
steady him, and he fell down across the heavy, metal stairs. He looked
around wildly, for the walls now seemed to contain menacing shapes. A
coldness gripped him and he shivered. "No," he mouthed.
The globe sat impassively over him, silent.
* * *
Dawn broke softly over the steeples of the fortress (Picasso had
begun to think of it as a fortress sometime during his fitful sleep
under its oppressive shadow.) Picasso's eyes sprang open to behold
Monet sitting dutifully on the bank, legs collapsed between his arms,
muttering to himself.
"You hate me, don't you?" Picasso said.
Monet looked up, surprised by the other's sudden utterance. "Why
do you say that? I don't, by the way."
"You hate me because I forced this situation on you," Picasso
responded deliberately, his arms extending above him in an expressive
yawn. "I understand perfectly."
"Don't be an idiot. It was the only way."
Picasso sat up, then stood. "It wasn't though. Everything's gone
terribly wrong. We should have stayed in the apartment -- safe."
"Perhaps..."
Monet remained silent, morosely contemplating the shoreline and
the clear blue water of the river.
"One thing is clear," Picasso stated. "We must either devise a
plan to find Rembrandt, or move on. One of the two. Sitting here,
morosely contemplating the shoreline isn't getting us anywhere."
Monet turned and stared pointedly at Picasso. "I don't think
you're seeing the big picture..."
Picasso was taken aback. "How do you mean?"
"I mean that we have to take careful stock of our situation,
Picasso. It is my opinion that we are being deliberately manipulated."
Rembrandt broke from his slumber fitfully, grasping out for a
lightswitch which did not exist, and steadfastly refused to become
existent. The thick black air coalesced around him, encasing him in a
veil of darkness.
"Consider our situation," continued Monet. "We have been placed
here, by some unknown force. We don't remember how we got here, don't
really remember any of our backgrounds at all. And now we find
ourselves in this unlikely situation; run aground beneath a huge
tower, in the middle of some forgotten land."
Picasso stared dumbly at him. "I don't see what you're getting
at, Monet."
"If this were a piece of fiction, it would be grossly
unsatisfying. There's nothing for the reader to latch on to, no hook,
no familiarity..." He turned and stared again out across the calm
water. "...no meaning."
Picasso frowned as he regarded his comrade. "You seem depressed."
"We must find him. We cannot continue, in tacit acceptance of the
events that enfold around us." So saying, Monet straightened up and
began to walk calmly toward the base of the fortress. The metal globe
hovering above his shoulder. After a moment, Picasso followed, drawn
by the other's strength of purpose.
"Let us assume," Monet continued, "that we are pawns, playing for
some unknown being's (or beings') pleasure. The question then becomes,
'Can we affect our own destinies?' "
"But how could we know if we were pawns? What if every action we
took were pre-determined?" Picasso chimed in. He was beginning to
catch up to Monet's thought process.
Monet continued, "Unfortunately, we can't know."
"You seem to be painting yourself into a corner..." Picasso
remarked under his breath.
By the time they reached the base of the fortress, they were both
panting from lack of breath. The base of the fortress was smooth, a
huge obsidian wall that rose up before them beyond all reason. Monet
moved his hand closest to the wall.
Rembrandt continued to crawl through darkness, following brief
and faint flashes of color which played over his retinas. Perhaps they
were products of his imagination, but the overwhelming darkness forced
him to make a goal, any goal, and follow that goal ruthlessly. As he
crawled, too scared to walk, lest he fall off some ledge or walk into
a wall, he began to mutter furtively to himself.
"Damn Picasso for leading me out here. Damn Monet -- the smug
bastard. A plot, that's what this has been. 'Let's get rid of that
annoying Rembrandt fellow, Picasso.' 'Ok, Monet old boy, how do you
suggest we do it?' 'Well...' "
There was a hollow knocking sound. Rembrandt strained his eyes to
look towards the source of the sound, but it deliberately refused to
come into view, hiding guiltily in the pitch-blackness of this place.
He was on the verge of beginning his crawl again, when another loud,
reverberating knock was issued from above.
"Who's there?" he yelled out, half in panic.
Several smaller knocks followed, modulating into a creaking, as
of an ancient hinge, only now being opened after years of neglect. And
with the noise came light, blinding tempests of light, pouring down
from above. Rembrandt, temporarily blinded, could only desperately
cover his eyes, waiting for the pain to subside.
As Monet was about to touch the wall, a tremendous thunderclap
sounded, sending both Picasso and him to the ground, clasping their
hands over their ears in agony. Another thunderclap sounded, followed
by a series of smaller ones which seemed to quicken until they were a
shrill whine, eating up the air, blotting out the natural, beautiful
noises of this place, which they had begun to take for granted.
Picasso was the first to notice that the sky was falling. He
pointed wildly in the direction of the river, his eyes becoming
insanely dilated with fear. Monet turned to see the huge dome of the
sky apparently collapsing into the horizon. Looking up, they beheld
the entire sky moving, and looking away from the river, they beheld an
arc of darkness, opening slowly over their heads.
When Rembrandt could finally see, he beheld a miniature landscape
in front of him, revealed by a slowly opening domed lid. Above, two
harsh globes hovered in the darkness, radiating a fierce light down on
the landscape. The landscape itself consisted of a network of
miniature glass spires, interconnected by a series of streams. In the
center of the landscape, stood an enormous black tower, dwarfing the
crystal spires. At the base of that tower, two figures were clasping
their hands over their ears, trying to shut out the sound of the
enormous dome, looking off, away from Rembrandt, at their horizon,
where even now the final edge of the dome was disappearing into the
ground.
For a moment, Rembrandt stood in awe, amazed by the beauty of
what lay before him. Then he began to understand what he must do. They
had given him a chance for revenge now, and he intended to make use of
it. He reached a tentative hand out towards the cowering duo.
Out of the corner of his eye, Picasso caught movement. He turned,
his eyes registered the image, but his mind refused to grasp its
import. Slowly, he stood, watching the enormous hand, fingers
outstretched, come closer and closer to a similarly transfixed Monet.
As they touched, Rembrandt and Monet, a surge of light, stronger than
any he had ever seen, overpowered him, followed by a surge of
darkness.
O
When Picasso awoke, he was lying face down on a beach, the heat
of the suns beating down on his body. When he stood, he could see the
familiar landscape of the city surrounding him, although he appeared
to be on a small island, separated from the city on all sides by a
vast expanse of water.
For hours, he walked up and down the beach, trying to find some
inkling of what had brought him here, what had happened after, or
before, or during. His memory of the event was spotty, but he vaguely
remembered the giant hand, the blinding light. He found no trace, no
indication that any of what he remembered had actually happened. No
tower, no domed sky, no metal globe hanging dutifully above his
shoulder.
He sat on the sandy shoreline and watched the waves wash up and
down the beach. For a brief moment, they were one with the City,
endlessly rippling through variation after variation. He was sitting
at the window. He was hanging high from a tree-branch. He was flying
alongside the parrot, hearing what it could never hear. A tremor came
up through the desert island, shaking a few of the rocks loose further
up the beach where the sand turned into a desolate moonscape. In the
sky, the suns raged furiously. Picasso often wondered what they talked
about, the suns. He imagined debates on philosophical issues and moral
principles which he, as a mere human, could not possibly comprehend.
He was one of them. Even as he was the earth, the stars and the sky.
He wondered, only for a moment, where the others were. Not
Rembrandt and Monet, but the others. The background characters that
make any story complete. There were none. What was he doing? What was
he thinking of when he had signed up for this meaningless existence?
Had he even signed? How could one sign away one's soul, one's future,
to a fool world with multiple suns that didn't even make sense most of
the time. He slowly bent forward until his head lay in front of him in
the wet sand. After a while, the tide came in and he ceased to
breathe, but death did not come for him.
Like the buildings, shifting endlessly through their circular
journeys, washing up and down on the shoreline of the forgotten
island, his story was not, could never be, over.
This one, however, is.
--
DANIEL K. APPELQUIST ([email protected]) will, by the time you read
this, have graduated with a degree in Cognitive Science from Carnegie
Mellon University. In his spare time, he raises killer cats,
accumulates huge debts and enjoys crash-testing rental cars without
insurance. Currently he's either engaged in a desperate search for
employment or hitchhiking his way to Peru.
(Editor's note: After the writing of this bio blurb, Dan -- who also
serves as editor of QUANTA -- managed to locate a job as a computing
consultant at Carnegie Mellon University. We assume this means the
Peru trip is on hold.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gravity / JASON SNELL
It started when Frank's CD player tried to kill me on my way to
work.
I had just come down the stairs from my second-floor apartment,
and was already sweating. I could tell that the day would be hot and
humid. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
There was, however, a large compact disc player eclipsing the
sun. For a second, my half-open eyes marveled at the sight of its
descent. Then I jumped.
It landed about a foot behind me, and skidded across the
sidewalk. Plastic shards were scattered everywhere.
"Frank!" I yelled up at the open third-floor window. "You
could've killed me with your goddamned CD player!"
A shape slowly inched out his window.
"Fucking digital clarity!" he screamed from inside.
Frank's window was giving birth to a large stereo speaker.
"Too clear! Too loud!" he shouted. The speaker picked up speed,
slid all the way out the window, and began to fall end-over-end toward
the CD player that had almost done me in.
"Too fucking loud!" Frank shouted as it smashed into the
sidewalk.
As I rounded the corner on my way to work, I heard another crash
come from behind me. Frank's second speaker had joined its brethren in
death, the third victim of some bizarre stereo component suicide pact.
My dear upstairs neighbor seems to be on some sort of quest. He's
searching for the ultimate home entertainment device, and he's very
temperamental.
When I moved into the apartment in March, everything seemed
wonderful. Living on my own was great, especially after twenty years
with my parents -- now I could have people over at all hours of the
night, could listen to my music any time I wanted to, and I didn't
have to worry about my parents walking in on me while a female guest
and I were buck-naked on the couch.
Then I met Frank.
About three weeks after I had moved in, there was a knock at the
door. It was Frank Cole, a 30-year-old man with an Electronics
Emporium name-tag pinned to his plaid shirt.
"Hi," he said to me. "My name's Frank."
"I noticed," I said. "It's nice to meet you, Frank. My name's
Jim."
"Hi, Jim. I live upstairs." Frank gave me a wide smile.
"I see."
"I'm going to throw out my TV," he told me.
"Really."
"Would you like to come and see?"
I was going to turn him down, but didn't really want to alienate
the person who was living above me. If I made him angry, he could
retaliate by jumping up and down on my ceiling any time he felt like
it.
"Sure," I told him. "Why not?"
Frank led me upstairs to his apartment, stopped outside the door,
and pointed into the dark room.
"You first," he said.
At first, I thought that I couldn't see any of Frank's furniture
because it was so dark. Then I realized that Frank didn't really have
much in the way of furniture. In the center of the room was an
overstuffed chair. The chair faced a home entertainment system,
including a wide-screen TV, that stood in the far corner. There was
nothing else in the room except for me. And Frank.
"Nice TV," I told him. "Where'd you get it?"
"I got it at Electronics Emporium. And it's not a nice TV."
"It sure looks nice. Mine's a ten-inch black-and-white. This has
got to be three times that size."
"Four times. It's a 41-inch diagonal rear projection TV with
Digital Stereo Hi-Fi Surround Sound."
"Nice TV."
"It's not a nice TV. I'm going to throw it out."
"What's wrong with it, Frank?"
He pointed at the big chair. "Sit, and you'll see."
I have no idea where Frank got the thing, but it even had feet,
like those old-fashioned claw-foot bathtubs. As I sank into it, Frank
ran over and turned on the TV.
"You'll see. You'll see."
The TV warmed up. One of those awful game shows that tries to
match up couples and send them on dream dates was on. I had auditioned
for two of them, but they said I wasn't their type. I guess I wasn't
dreamy enough.
"Stupid show," I said.
"Yes. Television is a waste of time -- the shows are terrible,
the sound -- even if you've got a Wide-Screen Rear Projection TV
with Digital Stereo Hi-Fi Surround Sound -- is incomprehensible,
and..."
"And?"
He raised his finger to his mouth. "Shh."
"I'm telling you, Chuck, I didn't want to spill the salad
dressing all over Marcie's new dress..."
"Listen to that," Frank said. "Terrible. The sound's terrible.
Even with Digital Stereo Hi-Fi Surround Sound. Even then."
"Is that all?"
"Of course not! You're in the chair. You can see. It's too
bright!"
"Why not just use the brightness knob?"
Frank looked angry, as if I was insulting his intelligence --
which I was.
"Because then it would be too dark."
Ah.
"Well, if you'll excuse me, Frank... I've got to get back to what
I was doing before." I pulled myself out of the chair and walked
toward the door.
The muscles at the corners of his mouth tightened. "Oh, sure," he
said. "See you again sometime. Nice meeting you."
"Nice meeting you, too. Thanks for inviting me up."
Frank began to close the door, paused, and stared at me. His dark
brown eyes were shining.
"I'm going to throw it out," he said again.
"Well, good luck," I said, and turned away.
I went downstairs, turned my stereo back on, sat down on my
couch, and idly stared out the window. I was enjoying my freedom --
even if I did have do deal with quirky neighbors.
There was a scraping noise from upstairs. I could hear it over
the sound of my stereo. Then there were two loud thumps, and silence
for several minutes.
I sat staring out the window, entranced by the music. The wind
blew. The trees moved. A Zenith dropped past my window.
I blinked. It must've been a dream, a fantasy, perhaps even a
really big bat or bird or something.
Then I heard a loud crash echo up from the sidewalk.
During my dash to the window to see what had happened, two other
objects dropped past. Later I'd discover that they were Frank's VCR
and Hi-Fi Stereo Surround Sound Decoder.
As I opened the window, I heard Frank laughing and screaming.
"I threw it out!" he howled. "No more fucking static! No more
fucking test patterns!"
I made a mental note to buy a deadbolt for my door and called it
a night.
A week after Frank had tossed his CD player and speakers out his
window, he knocked on my door.
"What is it, Frank?" I asked.
"I've got a new Living Room Thing," he told me. "You've got to
see it!"
"It's better than the TV?"
"A lot better. No flicker, no reception problems."
"Better than the stereo?"
"Not as loud."
I opened the door, stepped out quickly, and shut it behind me.
"Okay, Frank," I told him. "Let's go see."
The big chair was still there, but now it faced a large, well-lit
fish tank that sat in the corner. There were about 20 fish swimming in
it, chasing each other and annoying the tiny lobsters, or crayfish, or
whatever they're called, that were crawling along the bottom.
"Is this it?" I asked, pointing toward the tank.
"Yeah. No reception problems, no static. Quiet. Soothing. Fish."
"Where'd you get them? They don't sell fish at Electronics
Emporium, do they?"
"Nope. But there's a pet store next door."
"What made you want to buy fish?"
"I have dreams," he said. "Fish are in them."
"What kind of dreams?"
"Fish dreams," he said. "In my dreams, the fish are always
swimming. People are dying, but the fish keep swimming."
"What's killing the people?"
"It depends on the dream. Sometimes they're being tortured to
death, other times they just get shot in the head. But no matter what
the dream is, the fish keep swimming. That, and..."
Something caught in his throat.
"And?"
"'Copacabana.'"
"Excuse me?"
"I can't hear any real sound in the dreams. People are dying, but
I can't hear their screams. All I can hear is the muzak version of
'Copacabana'."
"You mean Barry Manilow's 'Copacabana'?"
"That's the one."
I had to admit, Frank had stumped me on this one. I had
absolutely no idea what to say.
"Could I take a look at the fish?"
"Sure," he said, and led me to the side of his tank. Frank began
pointing at fish, though they moved so fast that I couldn't tell which
ones he actually meant to single out.
"That one's Barry," he said. "And there's Rico, and Lola, and
that one in the back is Mandy -- "
I stepped away from Frank and took a look around the room. It was
almost completely barren, except for a couple posters, the chair, and
the tank.
"You know, this place would be nicer if you moved the tank out of
the corner," I told him.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Why not put it closer to the center of the room? Maybe by
the -- "
He squinted at me when I stopped in the middle of my sentence.
"What?"
Maybe by the window.
Frank's window looked exactly like mine. But I couldn't help but
think of everything he had tossed out that window. Putting the fish
near the window wouldn't help matters any -- especially if, on the day
that Frank gets tired of hearing "Copacabana," you're one of the fish
in the tank or you're taking a walk on the sidewalk under his window.
"Don't worry about it," I told him. "Look, Frank, thanks for the
tour. I've got to go."
"Sure," he said. "Come back sometime, and say 'Hi' to the fish."
"Sure."
I turned and left as quickly as politeness would allow. I never
wanted to come back to Frank's apartment, especially not to make
friends with his fish. The poor devils would be meeting Mr. Concrete
pretty soon anyway.
I was sitting on my window ledge, looking out at the sky and
peeling an orange -- my breakfast -- when I heard the argument. It was
a couple of days after I had met Frank's fish.
At first, all I heard was thumping -- it seemed like Frank was
stomping through his apartment. Then I realized that I was hearing two
separate sets of footsteps. There were two people up there, running
around.
Then, as I sat there stripping the skin from my orange, I started
to hear the voices.
"What do you mean mrrm don't like mfff," was what I heard a deep
voice, presumably Frank's, shout at the top of his lungs. I tore a
round piece of peel from the orange and rubbed it between my fingers.
"I don't mrmff them there at all. They're weird. I ummmf mumm
move them, Frank." It was a woman's voice. Frank had a woman in his
apartment. And they were arguing.
"It's my Living Room Thing!" he screamed. I held my hand out the
window and let go of the round piece of peel. It landed right on the
edge of the sidewalk.
"I don't cmf. Either umffo um I go." Then I heard a door slam. I
could hear the woman stomping down the stairs. A few seconds later,
she stepped onto the sidewalk below and looked up at me. Her hair
looked like it had been cut with a bowl, and she squinted behind what
seemed to be extremely thick glasses.
"You hear me, Frank?" she said. "Them or me!"
"Don't do this to me, Emily!" Frank must've been standing at his
window, right above mine.
"Do what to you?" I pulled off a strip of orange peel, and held
it against my nose. It smelled more like orange than the actual fruit
tasted like it.
"Make me get rid of my fish. My Copacabana."
"Them or me," she said. "Barry Manilow or me. Think about it,
Frank."
She started walking away, down the street. I threw my orange peel
at her, but it missed and landed in the gutter instead.
Frank slammed his window shut. When I went to work an hour later,
I still hadn't heard anything else from upstairs.
When I returned from work, Frank was screaming.
"Fuck you, Barry Manilow!"
Maybe I should've been more wary about approaching my apartment
building after the CD player tried to kill me. But I was concentrating
on licking the ice cream cone I had bought along the way home, and so
I didn't get to see the fish tank's championship-caliber dive.
But Frank's scream certainly got my attention. I looked up and
saw the tank impact with the concrete sidewalk as fish and water
rained down. Glass shattered and flew everywhere. I was lucky not to
be lacerated by a flying glass shard.
"No more fucking air pumps! No more food flakes! No more Barry
Manilow!"
The smell of fish mixed with the taste of Buttered Apple Pecan
ice cream in my mouth as I leaped over large chunks of glass and two
very annoyed mini-lobsters on my way to the safety of the stairwell.
Two weeks after he dropped the fish tank out the window, I went
upstairs to say goodbye to Frank. My summer job was over and it was
time to go off to college.
Frank smiled when he saw me at the door. In fact, I had never
seen him seem so downright cheery.
"Come in, Jim! Come in!"
The big chair was gone from the center of his room. In its place
was a large mat with polka-dotted sheets and pillows on it.
"Where's the chair?"
"Emily didn't like it. So she took it away. Now we sleep on the
futon together."
"I see. Congratulations, Frank."
"Thanks."
"But I don't see a Living Room Thing anywhere, Frank."
His eyes twitched for a second, as if he were scanning the room
for a Living Room Thing that he couldn't find.
"No more of those things. Emily didn't like me spending time
watching anything but her."
"She didn't like the fish?"
"No. She said I thought about them too much. And she said I
dreamed about Barry Manilow too much. She wants to be the only person
in my dreams."
"Well, that's good, isn't it?"
He hesitated for a second.
"Yeah, I guess."
Frank walked over to his open window, the one he had used to send
thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment -- not to mention
several fish -- to their deaths.
"Emily's my Living Room Thing now," he said.
I could deal with Frank's own special brand of insanity to a
point, idly watching the precipitation of electronic equipment (and
marine life) that fell from his third-floor window. But the prospect
that a human being might become the next object for Frank to drop
filled me with fear.
"Emily? I need to talk to you about Frank."
I had caught her in the stairwell, on her way up to Frank's
apartment.
"What do you mean?"
"Frank's not what you think he is," I told her.
"Of course he's not. Frank scares me sometimes, you know?"
"You know about him?"
"Sure I do. I'm surprised you know how scary Frank is. I mean,
I'm his girlfriend. It scares me a lot more than you, I can tell you."
"I'm sure it does."
"He's always so distant," she said. "He never came over when I
wanted him to. He said he was always too busy... you know."
"Too busy?"
"Too busy watching the new big-screen TV, too busy listening to
the stereo, too fucking busy with his little fish! God, I hated those
fish! He should've been spending time with me. I'm his fucking
girlfriend."
"You were jealous of his fish?"
"No, silly! But I was afraid that he'd lose himself in them, like
he did with the TV and the stereo. It isn't right for a man to spend
so much time away from his girlfriend, sitting alone in that terrible
chair. I should be his only diversion!"
My voice grew louder as I tried to make her understand what Frank
undoubtedly had in store for her.
"Now he doesn't have any of those things, Emily! You're the
center of his living room now."
"Center of his life, that's what I should be. It's my rightful
place."
"You don't understand, do you? Remember what Frank did to all
those other things when he got tired of them? He threw them out the
window! And you're next!"
She paused for a second, as if she had finally understood what
I'd been trying to explain to her.
Then she began to laugh.
"Oh, don't worry," she told me, and began rummaging around in her
purse. "Frank would never think of doing anything to hurt me. And even
if he thought of it, I'd never let him try anything."
Her hand emerged from the purse holding a small handgun.
"So don't be afraid for my sake. Frank and I will be fine, as
long as he makes sure I'm the only one he thinks about." She slipped
the gun back into her purse, and began walking up the stairs.
"Thanks for your help," she said.
I swallowed hard and silently watched her ascend, until even her
ugly wooden clogs disappeared from sight.
"Don't mention it," I whispered to myself.
The next day was supposed to be my last day in the apartment. But
instead of packing, I spent most of the morning staring out my window
at the sidewalk, waiting for Emily and finishing my supply of oranges.
I wasn't sure if I'd be seeing her as she walked down the street after
leaving Frank's by way of the stairs, or seeing her fall to her death
after leaving by way of the window.
After a few hours -- and long after the last piece of orange peel
had fallen onto that sidewalk, Emily appeared down below. Because I
knew she had a gun, I was careful not to move until she was around the
corner, out of sight. Then I bolted for the door and ran upstairs.
"Frank!" I yelled as I pounded on his door. "Let me in, Frank!"
Frank opened the door after a few seconds, and smiled at me in a
good-natured sort of way. Several clumps of his hair were standing on
end, and he was wearing a plain white T-shirt and boxer shorts.
"Hi, Jim," he said. "What's wrong?"
"It's Emily."
He opened his eyes all the way, as if he were finally waking up.
"What? Did something happen to her?"
"No, nothing like that. But Frank, I talked with her yesterday,
and I've got to tell you, something's really wrong."
He turned around and began walking toward the window.
"I knew it!" he said. "I knew this would happen. I've screwed up
again, haven't I?"
"No, nothing like that, Frank. But I've got to tell you, she's
not the woman you think she is. She's no good for you, Frank. She's
crazy."
"What do you mean? She's just as sane as I am."
"Not quite. Look, Emily wants you to be her slave. She can't
stand to think that there's any point to your life except to please
her and think about her."
"She's my girlfriend. I'm supposed to think about her all the
time."
"Frank, being someone's boyfriend isn't supposed to mean that
you're her slave."
"She took away my chair."
I blinked.
"I loved that chair," he said. "She wanted me to throw it out the
window, like I did with everything else. I told her that I only throw
things I didn't like out the window."
"And you liked the chair."
"It was a good chair. It wasn't too hard or too small or
anything. It was perfect."
"What happened when you told her you liked the chair?"
"She told me that I should only like her, and nothing else. And
then she took it away."
His voice was raised. Here was more emotion in it than I'd ever
heard before. I idly noticed that only one of his eyes was brown, and
the other one was hazel.
"Frank, she's got a gun."
"A gun?"
"A gun. I think she's afraid you're going to throw her out the
window."
He opened his mouth, sputtered a few times, and shut his mouth
again. I'd never really seen anyone totally dumbfounded before. Frank
turned and stared out the window for a while, and finally managed to
say something.
"Why would I throw her out the window?"
Gosh, Frank, could it be because you've thrown every damned thing
you've ever owned out that fucking window? Might it be possible that
all the little fragments of glass that glitter when I walk along the
sidewalk are there because of your penchant for demolishing CD
players? At least Newton gave it up after the apple -- if you had been
there, Isaac would've probably been killed by a rogue soup kettle.
"Well, it's not like you've never tossed things out before," was
all I said.
"But I wouldn't throw her out. I love her!" He hit the wall with
his open palm. "She doesn't trust me. I can't believe it. She doesn't
trust me. She doesn't trust me."
He whirled around and glared at me. Both his eyes were open wide,
but the eyelid over the hazel eye was twitching a little.
"Thanks, Jim," he told me. "I appreciate your help. I'd like to
be alone now."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
I closed my apartment door for the final time and began to
descend the steps with my last box of stuff. I figured I wasn't going
to do any more about my upstairs neighbor's personal life -- if I made
him angry, he might toss me out a window, and if I made his girlfriend
angry, she could just shoot me on the spot. Or they could act in
tandem, with her shooting me and then him disposing of my body out the
window.
But I wouldn't have to deal with them ever again. I was going to
be out of the building for good. Whatever happened, I would have
nothing to do with it.
When I was halfway down the steps, Emily passed me, heading up.
She smiled as she went past. I managed to swallow and blink.
I concentrated on keeping my feet moving as a slowly paced out to
my car. I opened the trunk and dropped the box in. As I slammed the
trunk door closed, I began to hear the shouting coming from upstairs.
I fingered my key, thinking that I should just get in the car and
drive away. It wasn't my problem. I didn't know these people very
well. If they ended up killing each other, it would have no effect.
But instead of driving away, I stood there and tried to make out
the yelling. My car was parked a few spaces down from the Frank Cole
target zone, so I figured I was safe from any falling bodies that
might be heading down.
The yelling intensified for a second, and then cut off. I
swallowed again, and began moving toward my car as soon as I saw a
shadow in Frank's window. The window slowly slid open, as I hid behind
my car and watched. If Frank had managed to open the window, I figured
that Emily'd probably be taking part in Frank's first human-powered
flight experiment.
But what came out of the window was far too small to be Emily. It
was smaller than anything else I'd seen come out of that window.
I dropped to the pavement when I realized that it was Emily's
gun.
On impact, the gun fired off a shot. Great. I just knew I was
going to be hit by a random bullet, like in the movies.
I realized I was fine when I heard the sound of shattering glass.
I peeked my head past the edge of my car in time to see the last
pieces of my old second-floor window raining onto the pavement, where
so many objects had landed before. Somebody should paint a bull's eye
there.
"Frank! Emily!" I yelled. "You could have killed me with that
fucking gun! And you broke my goddamned window! Jesus, I just moved
out! I'm not paying for this!"
"Sorry," came a soft reply from above.
They paid for the window.
--
JASON SNELL ([email protected]) is a senior at the University
of California, San Diego, where he serves as the Editor in Chief of
the UCSD Guardian newspaper, in addition to editing InterText. He will
graduate from UCSD in March of 1992 with a degree in communication and
a minor in Literature Writing, and hopes to enter a graduate
journalism program in the fall.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The Unified Murder Theorem (part 1 of 4) / JEFF ZIAS
Prologue
They killed him that night and somehow he felt it coming. In all
other respects it was a typical Thursday night gig. Getting killed was
something he was prepared for, so it was no big deal.
The dark bar he was killed in was filled with noisy patrons
drinking beer, hard liquor, wine, or expensive mineral waters in clear
glass bottles. In the center of the smoky hovel was an elevated stage.
Merely four feet by six feet, the stage gave him plenty of room for
his Thursday night solo guitar gig, but fitting a whole band up there
was like putting a dolphin in your goldfish bowl.
The guitarist was medium height, brown haired, slightly slovenly,
and unremarkable in remarkably many ways. He could, however, play the
hell out of his instrument. The Thursday regulars attentively listened
to his cascades of chords and flurries of arpeggios. Not only did his
playing hold their attention: the guitarist's instrument itself was a
special custom job, a focal point.
Yes, all guitars have a fretboard, strings, and body; but this
guitar always projected a strangely luminous blue light which emanated
from its hollow body; it was simply a modified instrument, some people
in the audience thought. Most people didn't pay much attention to the
light, preferring to assume it was nothing special, or assume that
they really knew what the light was, when they really did not. Like
so many other mysteries in life, the audiences usually chose to ignore
the phenomenon rather than explore it. Only a few people -- maybe one
out of every dozen -- would ask about the blue light. How could he get
that light to pour out of the hole -- in synchronization with his
notes? The guitarist would never fully answer such questions. It is
just a light, he would say, a very ordinary light.
That Thursday night two guys who had been standing in the back,
against the wall, made their way up to the stage as the guitarist was
finishing his first set. He didn't get a good look at them because as
he lifted his head up from staring down at the fretboard the taller of
the two guys pulled out his thirty-eight and fired two shots through
the guitarists head while mumbling, inaudibly, the words "goodbye from
Nattasi."
Chapter One
The advancement of science is not comparable to the
changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly
torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous
evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly...
-- Jules Henri Poincare
The sun was too hot, the shady grass too cool; the breeze was too
brisk and the baked sidewalks too dormant; but, taken as a whole, the
day was perfect.
At three o'clock in the afternoon of a sunny, mid-November
California day, an accordion instructor named Jack Cruger looked
through the windows of his stuffy first-floor practice room into the
parking lot of Del's Music World. High School kids floated through the
parking lot like twigs down a river. Some moved fast, some slow, and
some clumped in a living, breathing circle of conversation that
resembled a whirlpool.
Jack Cruger sat in the practice room waiting for his next
accordion student, a new kid. He hoped the kid had some ability; any
amount of ability would be greatly appreciated. Most of the kids he
got were forcibly sent by their parents in order to satisfy some
twisted ethnic family tradition. He could hear the parents now: "we
want Johnny to be able to play polkas at the family reunion," or
"teach him to play the Beer Barrel Polka for Oktoberfest."
That's why these miserable little students Cruger got were so
pathetic: almost none of them were acting of their own volition.
Forced to play the accordion, nature's most hated instrument. What
could be worse?
Up in San Francisco, forty miles away, a law was on the San
Francisco ballet, proposition P for Polka, known as the "use an
accordion and go to jail" proposition. Times were tough for
accordionists.
This accordion law (even though it was a joke) surprised Cruger -
- San Franciscans should know better, and some of them did.
Concurrently San Francisco, the city supervisors were ready to appoint
the piano accordion as the official instrument of the city, since the
piano accordion was invented in San Francisco, in 1907 by Colombo
Piatenesi and Pietro Dieiro.
In fact one of San Francisco's leading literary icons, Mark
Twain, had been an accordionist. Not for long, though. Jack Cruger --
being a fan of Mark Twain's -- recalled Twain's acerbic notes on the
subject of playing the accordion. Cruger's nearly photographic memory
(which he called his "pornographic memory") for enjoyable quotes and
images pulled in the choice memorable quotes like a fisherman hauling
in his nets. Twain had said "After a long immunity from the dreadful
insanity that moves a man to become a musician in defiance of the will
of God that he should confine himself to sawing wood, I finally fell
victim to the instrument they call the accordion." Even Twain maligned
the instrument; the accordion, always good for a laugh. And what else
had Twain said: "At this day, I hate that contrivance as fervently as
any man can, but at the time I speak of I suddenly acquired a
disgusting and idolatrous affection for it. I got one of powerful
capacity and learned to play 'Auld Lang Syne' on it."
As the story went, after being thrown out of various residences,
Twain was eventually pressured to give up the instrument. He even
wrote a rude statement of defection. "When the fever was upon me, I
was a living, breathing calamity... desolation and despair followed in
my wake. I bred discord in families, I crushed the spirit of the
lighthearted, I drove the melancholy to despair, I hurried the
invalids to dissolution and I fear me that I disturbed the very dead
in their graves... with my execrable music."
Cruel was the capricious twist of public sentiment. Back when
Cruger was a teenager, playing the damn thing was almost hip. Of
course, these misguided people, much as Mark Twain obviously had
become, were forced into a reactionary hatred of the instrument that
only spoke of some underlying passion, some real human emotion, that
surrounded their feelings for the instrument. Cruger could see this --
seen through the facade of ridicule, hatred, and name-calling. Deep
down, he knew they must actually like the accordion.
The real problem was half of Cruger's students didn't have any
talent. Little Billy Weymuts, the student that had just left, was an
exceedingly bad student who hated the accordion. Billy either never
practiced or had an almost disconcertingly powerful lack of talent.
This day, after three minutes, it had become clear that Billy
couldn't play his lesson assignment, a C major scale.
"OK, try again Billy, starting on the low C."
"The one here, this key?" Billy asked, as if he were searching
for the optimum spot to split a 80-carat diamond.
"No, two keys to the left, there."
"Oh yeah."
Billy plodded through a few notes, then hit a clinker.
"You know," Billy said, "This isn't so important. I want to get
into sports. Chicks dig a jock."
Cruger scratched his head. There was something about an eleven-
year-old saying chicks dig a jock.
"Who told you that?"
"Told me what?"
"About chicks digging a jock."
"My brother, Ronnie. Told me I should just be a jock, or at least
play guitar, ya know, like Beejee King."
"That's B.B. King. Do you even know what a jock is?"
Billy Weymuts brought his shoulders to his little elfin ears and
dropped his eyes. "I guess not."
They got back to the C major scale but didn't get far before time
was up; so much for Billy's lesson.
But it was a living. With twenty-one, no, make that twenty-two
students, plus gigs, plus a workaholic nurse for a wife, his was a
workable career.
That's what was holding him back, Cruger thought. This was all
too easy, much too easy. His students, clients, and wife were all very
willing to shell out enough money to make Cruger's life very
comfortable. No, he didn't drive a Porsche with personalized plates
saying "MONEYBAGS" -- these yuppie pursuits were of no interest to
Cruger. But still, he wanted more, just because it was all too easy.
Challenge, discord, friction. Friction; that's it. You couldn't
climb a mountain if it weren't for friction. In a world lacking
friction, you would slide back down into the saddle of your
equilibrium -- be it for better or for worse. Where is the friction in
my life? What are my battles, my defeats, my failures? If it weren't
for friction, no heroes would ever live.
Cruger glanced at the practice room wall clock -- the new
student's time slot was about to start. Cruger began to recall the
initial phone conversation with the boy. The student had said I would
like to hear about playing the accordion. A strange thing to say. Not
a simple I want to learn how to play or I would like lessons in . . .
not the usual.
Three minutes after the hour a young blond teenage boy knocked
softly on the studio door and then entered.
"Hi, I'm Tony Steffen, I talked to you the other day." The
youth's voice was low, slow, and punctuated.
Cruger reached over and shook Tony's hand. "Good to meet you,
Tony," he said, "have a seat."
Cruger was impressed with Tony's maturity. What is it about this
kid, he thought? Tony stood about six foot one, more than a few inches
taller than Cruger, and had a wiry, muscular build. But, Cruger
thought, it is more than his height - the kid has presence. The surfer
blond hair, long arms and legs, erect posture and resounding voice
combined to create a seamless package; the kid reeked of self-
confidence. What the hell is he doing here? Most of Cruger's students
were from Nerd Squad. Tony didn't fit the bill.
Cruger looked at the dusty brown case that Tony held by the
handle. "I see you already have an instrument."
"Yes," Tony said. "In fact, that's what I really wanted to talk
to you about most." Tony swung the case out in front of him. Quickly
popping the two aluminum latches on the front of case, he reached in
and pulled out a small and ornate accordion. Polished cherry wood.
Corrugated side panels and engraved trim gave the old instrument a
stately look.
"It's beautiful," Cruger said.
"Yeah. It's been, um, passed down to me. A really special
instrument, I've been told."
"I'm not knowledgeable as a collector, Tony, but I can tell you
that they don't make them like that any more."
Tony smiled a wide smile that radiated light and warmth. "I
wonder if you would play it a little for me?"
Cruger had been anxious to do just that; now he needed no excuse
to grasp the accordion and give it a try.
"I'll play it a little Tony, but, it's you who we need to get
playing it."
Tony nodded unconvincingly and watched as Cruger gently moved his
arms and pressed his fingers across the keys of the fine instrument.
The "Too Fat Polka" reverberated throughout the small practice room.
The instrument had a smaller, darker tone than Cruger was accustomed
to. He was into the second eight bars of the tune when he jolted
slightly at the sight of a strange luminescence rising from the belly
of the instrument. Blue streaks of light, entwined like yarn across a
cat tree, flickered their surprising veneer within the accordion's
belly. Cruger could see down into the cavity through a three-quarter
inch opening directly above the keyboard. Shock notwithstanding,
Cruger had continued to play down the solid Polka. When he stopped,
the strange light did likewise.
"What's that light?" asked Cruger in a coarse voice ringing with
disbelief.
"That light," Tony said, "is the reason that I had you play that
box." Tony seemed satisfied with that answer, but, Cruger clearly was
not.
"What do you mean?"
"The box will only do that, what we just saw, for you," Tony
said.
"Are you trying to con me or something -- you calling this
magic?" Cruger didn't know whether to laugh or let out his true
feelings. He gave Tony a hard, defensive stare.
"I know that this is all confusing for you, ah, Cruger. Is it all
right to call you Cruger?"
"Yeah."
"Anyway, I need to get this into your head, and I know it won't
be easy. All I want to do for now is tell you to please play this
instrument every night, for at least a little while."
"I still want to know what this is all about."
"Can you please just take it home and play it a little at night?
I will come back and explain everything to you in a day or two," Tony
said.
Cruger looked up at the ceiling of the small practice room. Small
styrofoam polygons covered the ceiling; Del, of Del's Music World,
certainly wasn't using the high-quality foam soundproofing material.
With accordions being played, you'd think he wouldn't skimp on it.
But what should he do? Cruger was scared of his inaction. What
should he tell the kid? What the hell would friggin' Clint Eastwood do
in this situation? This is just plain bizarre. Is the kid a nut case,
on drugs? Thoughts sprayed through his mind like machine gun fire.
""Oh, by the way," Tony said, "Don't tell anyone about this,
please. "I know you won't," he said as if to assure himself.
"But..."
"Later," Tony said as he swung out of the cheap folding chair,
opened the door, and walked briskly down the musty, narrow hall.
Cruger had no response. He slumped forward and stared at the
strange small instrument that rested on his forearms. Shaking his head
from side to side he smiled as he rehearsed, in his head, telling his
wife for the very first time, "had a tough day at the office, dear."
Chapter Two
Cruger's wife, Corrina, was prone to the scientific approach.
Since Jack and she had decided to try to make a baby, their sex lives
had undergone a change.
For one thing, they now made love three times a day. Three times
a day had previously loomed as a mythical figure to Cruger. Not since
their brief and carnal Honeymoon had the prospect of such frequent
intercourse seemed plausible. Yet, now, it was three times a day
whether or not Jack liked it, just like the self-help fertility manual
said on page twenty-four.
They had been trying for four months. No periods had been missed
yet. Even so, Corrina continued to support the home pregnancy test-kit
industry with frequent testings. Rabbits dying were yesteryear's
method of test; vials of water needed to turn a rich blue color or
little tablets needed to spell plus or minus. Four months of pale
water and minuses -- the equivalent of live rabbits -- was not
considered a long time by most people.
Cruger thought it was a long time. His lower back thought it was
a long time.
When Cruger walked in his front door that evening, his own
accordion case in one hand and Tony Steffen's in the other, Corrina
was anxious to talk with him.
"I'm going to start monitoring my ovulation cycle," she said. She
was excited, her bright eyes on fire, lighting the room.
"Just as long as you don't make me count all my sperm every day."
"Listen silly. What I do is take my temperature every morning and
I can then chart when I start ovulating. Then we can make sure to make
love a lot just before and during my ovulation."
"Sounds wonderfully romantic. Out of curiosity, along with
Bolero, did Ravel ever write any music entitled Symphony to Ovulate
to, in G minor?"
"Did anyone ever not tell you that you're a smart ass?" she said.
"People who have never met me generally don't."
Corrina sighed. "Ah, the lucky ones."
"Listen, let me get this straight. When you're not ovulating I
take cold showers, keep to a low testosterone diet, and occupy my mind
with Baseball scores. Then for a week each month I eat oysters, beat
my chest like a gorilla, and jump your bones every time the wind
shifts?"
"You've got it, partner -- but you don't always have to wait till
I'm ovulating," she said. "We can just practice the rest of the
month."
"What, you think I'm a machine, a love-making machine; switch me
off, switch me on," Cruger said, "like clockwork?"
"You've done well in the past. And, if your batteries need
recharging, I've got a few tricks up my garter belt."
Cruger believed what she said. In her late twenties and athletic,
Corrina was still a head-turner, even a 'real fox' as one of his
buddies annoyingly called her. Trim, tan, with mid-length auburn hair,
she was extremely attractive. No tofu thighs or belly rolls like
Cruger saw on so many women at the beach and around the neighborhood.
Corrina didn't need help to get his libido into high gear.
"All I have to do is think of you in your string bikini. My
circulatory system does the rest," he said.
Corrina walked over to Jack and gave him a soft kiss on the lips.
She said, "All I have to do is think of you getting into my
string bikini."
Then they began to try to make a baby. No oysters necessary.
Later that evening Cruger accepted the inevitable: he would have
to play Tony's accordion. From good sex to accordions, isn't live full
of dichotomies, he mused. And why play the thing? First of all, the
kid asked him to. Second, the thing was exciting and strange and
unexplained. Lastly, it had a nice sound and a good feel. Why not?
He closed the study door so Corrina would not easily walk in on
the strange sight. The warm, softly illuminated study was lined on one
wall with bookshelves full of Cruger's favorite reading as well as a
few shelves dedicated to Corrina's anatomy, physiology, and nursing
textbooks. Cruger allowed his eyes to scan the shelves that were like
friends to him, holding up parts of his mind, parts of his past, books
that had become a part of his world view -- part of his most private
self. On the top shelf, a little Hemingway, some Fitzgerald,
everything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The shelf below, invoking a more
philosophical mood, housed some Kafka: The Castle and The
Metamorphosis, Huxley, Plato, Koestler. The next shelf had the high-
speed fantasies of Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, Sturgeon, Clarke. Then
Cruger's eyes stuck to the next lowest shelf, full of the reading of
the college years: Joyce, Proust, Mann, Elliot, Beckett, Conrad; even
some sixties classics jumped out at him -- Mailer, Malamud, Pynchon,
Barth. Catch 22 was there, and others equally important.
Cruger wanted to reach around and pat himself on the back for his
literary achievements, at the same time saying: Yes, ladies and
gentlemen, I read all of these and more. But, please hold the
applause, save the awards, because I've done nothing with them but
file them away in my mind, my selfish head; they are now stashed deep
into the brains of an accordion instructor who is merely a consumer of
knowledge, not a provider, a processor, a manufacturer or a designer.
Unlatching the old case, he pulled out Tony's exotic instrument.
Caressingly, carefully, and tentatively, he began to play a few warm-
up scales.
Inexplicable blue light notwithstanding, the strangest thing was
this: Cruger began to play things he never played before. After a few
requisite Polkas, he launched into a snappy rendition of Malaguena, a
song he had heard but never played before. The instrument's
mysterious, resounding overtones echoed in Cruger's mind as its blue
sparks and beautiful notes rang out into the energized, tranquil air.
Chapter Three
As promised, Tony called Cruger at home the next evening. Tony
thanked Cruger for practicing the instrument as he had requested.
"How do you know that I actually played it?" Cruger asked.
"Oh, I know, it's obvious."
Cruger was only slightly disturbed by the fact that Tony seemed
to know this for certain, somehow. Other more disturbing questions
were still unanswered. As if a witness to Cruger's silent thoughts,
Tony said "I'd like to come over to fill you in on some facts."
"I think I would enjoy that."
"How about I come over after I'm out of school tomorrow, like
around four thirty?" Tony said.
"That's fine, I'll be back here by quarter after four. And you
better have some good explanations; this whole thing is really weird,"
Cruger said.
"Oh yeah, must be totally weird for you. Don't worry, see you
then."
Cruger hung up and thought about this High School "dude" who was
"totally" messing his mind. This kid was the strangest thing to ever
happened to Cruger. Being a true skeptic at heart, he still felt that
this was some kind of hoax, some strange setup. He expected the hidden
camera to pop out from behind the wall at any minute: "Surprise, it
was a joke, you're an idiot."
Cruger realized that, according to the apparent behavior of most
people, he should have been jumping out of his skin with curiosity.
Most people would have been more affected, Cruger thought. But he
evidently had a high tolerance for ambiguity.
He wondered if anyone really knew anything anyway, so why should
he worry about his silly predicament. He meant really knowing what was
going on, as in having positive, scientific proof of existence.
Besides, a little excitement was what he thought he wanted. A small
little challenge had presented itself, and he now accepted the
challenge, on its (or Tony's) terms.
So like people, he thought, to accept challenges that find them
while never choosing a challenge on their own. Playing the game is so
much easier for people than inventing it.
Cruger now waited for Tony to play his next move. What had
Kierkegaard said? Life can only be understood backwards; but it must
be lived forwards. Cruger now waited to live his soon-to-be-explicable
future.
Chapter Four
Cruger tried to put Tony out of his mind and found Corrina in the
living room doing aerobics. He asked his wife for a dinner date and
she kindly accepted. Corrina had the day off after working a week of
day shift, so she was rested and ready to go out to dinner. The new
Cajun place on El Camino Real, Louisiana Pot, was their choice.
The restaurant was located in a mini-mall that also had a dry
cleaner, record store, sandwich shop, crafts store, and Pizza place.
You could have your clothes cleaned, buy some overpriced CDs, stock up
on yarn, and eat anything from pizza to a tofu burger all without
reparking your car. Great.
The Louisiana Pot was New Orleans moved 2,000 miles west.
Dixieland music played, people drank like fish, and the Gumbo was
excellent. Corrina waited for her blackened prime rib and Cruger
waited for his blackened catfish.
Corrina told Jack about her patients, in particular a young girl
with MS who was a sweet kid with serious problems. In a way, the
toughest of patients.
A tape of a Dixie band played "Here Come the Saints." Cruger felt
himself floating in and back out of the conversation with his wife. He
wondered if the whole function of entertainment, evenings out for
tasty dinners and movies, where nothing more than a way of escaping
from the harsh reality we all see when we're alone. At the restaurant,
Cruger could see his pretty wife and well-dressed waiters and pretty
waitresses and laughing couples with nice clothes. He could hear
Dixieland music and the intoxicated laughs of young men and young
ladies who had just downed their "authentic" New Orleans Hurricanes.
If this were more real than playing his instrument or reading or
sitting around the house, then it only seemed more real because
restaurant scenes are what you see in the movies and on TV and what
you read about in the newspaper. Everyone, without exception, was at
least moderately young and moderately well-dressed. Bright colors and
patterns that seemed to say: I'm centered, I have money, do you too?
These people are all sheep, Cruger thought. They could be trained to
accept nearly anything as reality.
The waiter arrived with the prime rib and the catfish. Both the
fish and beef were spiced and burnt black in an iron pan. For all he
knew, the meal was highly carcinogenic. Cruger looked around as people
eagerly awaited their burnt-to-a-crisp twenty dollar entrees. Like
sheep.
"You think this blackened stuff causes cancer?" Corrina said.
Cruger was surprised. Either his thoughts were printed on his
sleeve or she was as cynical as he. She's a worrier like me, he
thought, that's why we're married.
"Un huh," he said. "But don't worry, what we did this afternoon
was an anti-carcinogen."
"And good exercise too," she said.
They ate their dangerous meal and Cruger tried to pay attention
to her discussion of patients and hospital politics.
"You really help these people -- I'm proud of you. At least one
of us is making a contribution for the better," Cruger said.
"Oh come on, you're making a contribution -- you're a teacher,"
Corrina said. She had her nose screwed up that way it got whenever she
became mildly annoyed.
Cruger realized that he was preoccupied and in a self-pitying
mood. At this rate, he would not be a very good date.
What she just said was true. Yes, he was a teacher and that was
generally considered a noble profession. Unless you teach accordion,
in which case, he thought, people thought of you like they thought of
the neighborhood crack dealer: forcing horrible habits on young,
impressionable kids.
Self-pity aside, honesty was sometimes the surprisingly best
policy: "It's just that I'm afraid I'm not doing enough with my life,"
he said. " I've been worried about not making a contribution, not
giving enough."
Corrina looking him straight in the eye, her pretty and open face
telling him as much as her words. "You're worrying too much. Just face
it, you're a good person, a great guy -- why else would I have married
you? Just accept that and quit punishing yourself."
And maybe he should let well enough alone. Did every action that
every person did on every day necessarily contribute to the course of
the future? Cruger thought that might be so; but, playing that weird
accordion with the blue light must be something important, a
substantial contribution, because there was something about it that
felt magical. He was somebody now, playing that weird accordion.
Whatever the flashy little thing really was.
Chapter Five
Our daughters and sons have burst
from the marionette show
leaving the tangle of strings
and gone into the unlit audience
-- Maxine Kumin
Tony showed up at Cruger's doorstep the next day, as planned.
Cruger was relieved and excited to see Tony, although he wanted to
appear nonchalant about the situation.
"Can I get you anything to drink? Cruger asked.
"A Coke or Pepsi, if you got it, thanks."
Cruger popped a can and poured two glasses full, on the rocks. He
motioned for Tony to sit at the kitchen table.
"So, you think the accordion I gave you is cool or what?"
"You only lent it to me, and, yes it's cool." Cruger's use of the
word cool came out as a mockery of Tony, and Cruger regretted it
immediately.
Tony said, "I have a lot of things that need to be said, and I'm
afraid you will need a really open mind to hear them."
"My friends tell me I'm open-minded," said Cruger. "And my
enemies tell me that my mind is so open that everything has leaked
out."
"Great, you'll need room in there for the stuff that I'm going to
lay on you." Tony flicked a wisp of his long blond hair out of his
eyes, as if the motion were a precursor to any serious discussion.
"Starting with an explanation of the blue light, I hope," Cruger
said.
"Yep. Did you look down into the belly of that box when you were
playing?"
"Uh-huh."
"And you saw those blue strands of light sort-of moving around,
creating different patterns and stuff."
Cruger nodded, wondering if they were going to play a guessing
game or if Tony would just tell him what was what.
"Well, what was happening in there was significant. Each one of
those blue lights -- or strings, I would call them -- each represents
a path, a possible outcome. As you saw, there are millions of those
things wiggling around when you play.
"I contacted you because you were chosen as someone who will do a
very good job of making, or, as I like to call it, spinning these
strings."
"What is the point of spinning these strings, and why are you
involved?" Cruger said, the questioning leaping out automatically
before he fully comprehended what Tony had just said.
Tony began to explain everything, or, at least, quite a bit.
Cruger was being offered a job. Tony belonged to an organization that
looked for people who had special talents and abilities: abilities
that were a match for the special needs of the company that Tony
worked for.
Cruger, mainly because of his musicianship, was one of the dozen
or so people in the world chosen for this job of "spinning" the
strange blue strings.
"So your company is an international company then?" Cruger asked.
"Oh yeah. In fact the company is a lot broader based than that."
Cruger frowned and Tony explained more.
"The Company, as we like to call it, has a bunch of
responsibilities. The primary responsibility is to create and support
all worlds, galaxies, and universes."
Cruger gave Tony a blank stare.
"It's a service industry, really," said Tony.
Tony laughed. Cruger pretended to laugh along with him. They
both continued to laugh -- Cruger felt like a cartoon character,
laughing, slapping his his knee; he would have even guffawed if he
knew what a guffaw was.
"You're joking," Cruger said.
"No, I'm totally serious. I can understand that you don't believe
me -- I didn't believe it at first either; but you'll believe it
soon."
Tony explained more. The spinners completed a necessary function
of determining the probable outcomes of all events on earth. Each
string could be thought of as a possible plane of reality across time.
The many parallel strings that intersected each other represented the
large number of possible outcomes for any given instant.
"Couldn't God just toss some dice? I had always thought that's
how it might work anyway."
"No," said Tony, "and we call him the Chairman, or the Big Guy,
by the way. Just Him rolling the dice would be a poor way of spinning
because it would be cold, mechanical, and lack the variation and
natural beauty that people like you provide."
"Well, how could it be that I do a better job than, um, the Big
Guy?"
"Originally everything was done by Him, like you say. But, then
it became clear that a more personal way would incorporate the proper
aspects of the human condition. I don't fully understand it, but maybe
you can think of it this way: it's like the difference between
computer-generated art and human-devised art -- an expert can tell the
difference."
Cruger was either satisfied with that explanation or so immersed
in thought that he failed to respond.
Tony continued to explain that the job of spinner would entitle
Cruger to a family health plan, enriched musical talent, and a sense
of accomplishment. Cruger just needed to play the special accordion
every evening for at least thirty minutes. Playing more would do
neither any good nor any harm. The job did not come without risks,
however. Not everyone was a friend of the company. In fact, the
company was in direct competition with what they referred to as the
"Other Company." Tony reminded Cruger that he was most likely at least
conceptually familiar with the "Other Company."
"If not for them, everything here would be perfect. Can you
imagine, no hunger, no disease, no murder or greed?"
"So the 'Other Company' is responsible for everything bad?" asked
Cruger.
"More or less. Death would always be with us along with the
natural occurrences that some people think are bad, but, the Other
Company pretty much has what we think of as the Devil's work as their
charter."
"Somehow this translates to a risk for me?" Cruger moved the
conversation back to what stuck in his mind.
"Yes. The Other Company has employees here just like we do. They
can get involved in messing us up -- they have in the past. But, we
keep a low profile. I am your only contact in the company. Just like
you, I have only one original contact, my boss, and now I guess you,
as an employee."
"Hah," said Cruger. "You come in here and tell me I can have a
job with the rulers of the universe and my boss will be a high school
kid who looks like a surf bum?"
"Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm telling you. I also know that
you are going to accept the job," Tony said.
Cruger rose his eyebrows and felt his chin jerk involuntarily,
demonstrating a small surprise reflex that he never knew he had. "How
the hell do you know that?"
"It came down to me in a memo. It's determined already by other
spinners. You're it."
"Then why did you even ask me?" Cruger said.
"Oh, we try to be polite in this business."
"And what about that family health plan you mentioned," Cruger
smiled at the incongruous use of such prosaic corporate terminology.
Tony nodded and answered. "That means that you and your family
will experience no illness or harm, except for what is beyond our
control, like intervention from the Other Company."
"Now that sounds like a pretty good benefit."
"Yeah, well, we're a very competitive employer. We don't even ask
for your immortal soul in return."
Chapter Six
Cold, cold, cold. The frost was fall's thickest yet; the dried
old leaves of Maples and Eucalyptus lined the streets. Most of all, it
was cold.
Leon Harris had just started his morning jog. His blood had yet
to flow to his extremities, which were as numbed from sleepiness as
they were aggravated by the chilling morning breeze.
Harris glanced quickly at his black plastic, multi-function
jogging watch, $3.95 from Service Merchandise. He had only been
running for three minutes, two seconds, and fifty-seven hundredths.
Usually the endorphin rush didn't kick in until fifteen minutes, at
least. Harris imagined the feeling he would have when the sweat poured
off his brow and the blood pulsed through his trunk and thighs.
Running, it feels so good when you stop, he told himself in a
clenched-teeth mantra. Morning runs are a lot nicer in the summer,
but, think of the poor suckers who live were it really gets cold, he
thought. The radio weather report that morning said currently forty-
three degrees, warming to a high of sixty. Not too bad.
Harris usually got his run done by 7:05, into the shower,
breakfasted, dressed and out the door by 8:00. He could be to work by
8:15, hit the weight room or Karate practice at lunch, leave work by
6:00 and get home around 6:30. Not that he lived by the clock.
At home, Harris would throw together microwaved leftovers or cook
a quick stir-fry type dish: lean meat, vegetables, and rice or
potatoes. He only drank alcohol when out with friends, keeping it to
one or two drinks, which didn't have too much of an effect on his lean
6-3, 210-pound body.
Once at work, he would make out a list that described his goals
for the day. A typical list looked like this:
8:30 Glass of Water, write list
8:45 Investigate File System bug
10:00 Staff Meeting
11:30 Lunch workout
12:30 Debug, design next lib interface
6:00 home
Then he would break the list down into sublists. Often the
sublists generated sublists of their own, but Harris knew where to
draw the line.
His performance reviews at work usually commended him on his
organizational, attention to detail, and ability to persevere on a
problem until closure.
The man had no vices. Well, almost none. When given the
opportunity, Harris could be an extremely inquisitive person, far past
the point of simply being nosy.
When Harris' next door neighbor, Jack Cruger, began playing his
accordion every single evening, Harris noticed.
Harris, a black man who grew up in the sixties and seventies,
liked to listen to Stevie Wonder, James Brown, John Coltrane, Miles
Davis, Hendrix, Muddy Waters, and some Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, but
not accordion music.
He would have been merely disgusted with Cruger and his
instrument, if not for the flickering pale blue light that shone
through the curtains when Cruger played every night.
Chapter Seven
Cruger was cooking dinner when he heard Corrina coming through
the garage door.
"Back here," he said. "Your chef is at work creating another
masterpiece."
He stirred the mushrooms sauteing in the butter sauce and
sprinkled the minced green onions from the cutting block.
Corrina walked into the kitchen and put her purse down on the
counter. She sniffed the air. She smelled Tarragon.
"Mmm, smells good."
"But of course," he said, mocking the accents of the French chefs
that worked at restaurants more expensive than any he had been to. He
sounded exactly like one of those temperamental little Cordon Bleu
jocks.
"Was that supposed to be a French accent?" she said. "Sounded
more like an Australian with lock jaw."
"You've got no ear, no ear. My accent is magnifique," he said,
again sounding like an Aussie with lockjaw.
"Whatever." And then she put her arms around him and pushed her
face into his neck. She whispered into his ear "we're pregnant."
Cruger forgot about his culinary masterpiece and bad accent. They
kissed and hugged and she cried. He did too, a little, but worked hard
to keep her from seeing it and himself from admitting it.
Cruger believed that whatever would happen, they were strong
enough for it. The journey would begin again, a journey that, as
opposed to some others, was not in itself the reward.
A baby, a baby, goddamn, I don't believe it. He hugged Corrina
tight and close, eyes shut hard, leaking only slightly.
He and Corrina knew the fragility of life. Corrina had been
pregnant a year ago. The baby -- not yet known as a 'he' or 'she' but
most certainly not an 'it' -- was of course destined for greatness.
Possibly a doctor, an astronaut, or maybe even President of the United
States, the baby would most certainly be a special person.
The winter months of December and January passed. Then, for
Corrina, she said it felt like a heavy period. Realization of the
dreaded fact was more horrid than anything they had ever faced before.
The robbery of a promised life was a malicious obscenity.
The Doctors gave Corrina a set of explanations. These thing can
happen for many reasons: failure of the fetus to attach properly to
the uterine wall, scar tissue, or hormonal imbalances. She had still
been in the danger period -- just barely. The first trimester had
nearly elapsed without incident. The integrity of the umbilical cord
had been questioned; the doctors thought that the cord became twisted
and then failed.
He and Corrina vowed to be brave and try again. Only a success
could erase the miserable failure of their first attempt.
Cruger wondered if he would ever believe that a real life had not
been lost. Sure, the first baby actually born to them would be the
first child, but, hadn't their been a different life, a thoroughly
different zygote based on different genetic material that had existed
and then suddenly not existed? In practical terms, it didn't matter to
him. In terms of the meaning of a life that has been thoroughly
erased, the meaning was very special. The poor damned little umbilical
cord.
He kissed Corrina again. Yes, we are brave enough for another
shot at it.
And what type of world would they be bringing their baby into.
Would they bring the baby into a world that he felt he had to
apologize for? No, his child, all the children deserved better.
He vowed to try hard to make it better. For his baby.
Later that night, Cruger retreated to the den to play Tony's
accordion. Cruger, admittedly, had never been an exceptionally good
accordionist. His repertoire consisted of a dozen Polkas, some folk
music, a few old swing standards, and "Lady of Spain." Anything else
and he had to read the music; and he was not one of those expert
sight-readers who could play anything perfectly the first time. Since
he had been spinning alone in this room for a few nights, he noticed a
change in his playing. The notes seemed to flow out more smoothly. The
instrument produced a rounder, more musical tone. Cruger could play
almost any tune he had ever heard before, his ear and instincts
accurately leading him across the keyboard.
This night was no exception. His paying felt strong and full of
life. He played Thad Jones's ballad, "A Child is Born." He had only
heard the song once before on one of Corrina's old Thad Jones & Mel
Lewis big band albums. But he knew the song now; he deeply felt the
song and every one of its nuances and alternate chord changes. Life
could be so good.
Chapter Eight
Leon Harris' beautifully landscaped front yard stood out as the
neighborhood's best. The lush green carpet of his front lawn was
thicker and greener than a billionaire's wallet. To the other side of
Harris' driveway was an elevated Japanese Rock garden. The Scotch
moss, red-tinged boulders, gravel, as well as the spherically-shaped
Pyrocantha and Juniper bushes formed a visual retreat from the
concrete and asphalt monotony of the maze of streets, sidewalks, and
driveways that entangled the tightly-housed neighborhood.
As Harris had improved his yard, his impression of the neighbors'
yards had diminished. At first his neighbors, both the Crugers and the
Youngs on the other side, had what appeared to be perfectly adequate
yards. By the time Harris had added the final fieldstone to his rock
garden, the neighbors' small intermittent weeds seemed bigger, the
rusted brownish grass more horrid.
The neighbor's yards had clearly become the landscapes from hell.
Harris didn't know any of his neighbors well. He said hello to
the ones he passed when he was out for a run, and had only spoken
briefly to the Crugers a couple of times. The Cruger guy was a pretty
lazy dude, Harris thought. A musician. Somehow he had a babe of a
wife. The guy must be twenty pounds overweight, a scarcely employed
accordionist (calling him a musician was probably a stretch), and he's
got a hot-looking wife who pretty much supports him.
He must not be as stupid as he looks, Harris realized.
But who knows what the hell this Cruger guy is up to now? Harris
poured some boiling water over an herbal, caffeine-free tea bag.
Ginseng root, good for sustained energy as well as sparking the immune
system.
Harris didn't have any plans for the evening. He sat at the
terminal in his home office and played with a few matrix solutions he
didn't get a chance to try at work.
Later he went into the family room, were there was room to move,
and practiced a few dozen low and high kicks, on left and right sides.
He finished the quick workout with sixty-five knuckle and fingertip
push-ups. Even this quick workout gave him a good healthy sheen of
sweat. He peeled his shirt off as he entered the bathroom and,
grabbing his toothbrush, began his fourth tooth brushing of the day.
He concentrated on his gums -- the plethora of television ads
concerning gingivitis had him worried.
From the bathroom, through the obscured view of the semi-opaque
privacy glass, he could see the Crugers' house. A soft blue light
radiated a sense of peace and contentedness from one of their bedroom
windows. When Harris stopped brushing, he could hear the sound of the
accordion. It was a faint sound; Harris thought it sounded like the
old standard tune "Autumn Leaves," but he couldn't tell for sure. It
definitely wasn't a polka, and Harris considered that much a great
improvement.
Chapter Nine
The doorbell rang at 4:15, right on time. Cruger opened the door.
Tony was wearing day-glow pink beach shorts, a black Megadeth tank
top, and unlaced high-tops. He stood with one arm holding his
skateboard and the other around the shoulder of a young lady friend
who held her own skateboard. Her skin was tanned to a smooth medium-
brown. A perfect match for Tony, Cruger thought. Her flaxen blond hair
hung down to her shoulders and across her eyebrows. Baby blue skin-
tight lycra pants, peach halter top and sandals completed the perfect
young-California ensemble. She was beautiful.
"Cruger, this is my friend Sky," Tony said.
"Sky? Nice to meet you."
"Hi, shall I call you Cruger?" Sky asked between bubble gum
snaps.
"Please. Are you and Tony in school together?" Cruger said.
"Yeah, Tony and I have three classes together." Sky smiled wide
and lifted her big blue eyes towards her namesake as if having three
classes with Tony was better than winning the lottery.
"I'll meet you later tonight, Sky. Cruger and I have some
business." At the word business, Tony's tone of voice dropped to a
deep growl.
"OK, later." Sky waved and slapped her board on the ground in a
single fluid motion.
Cruger watched her closely as she sailed, on the small plastic
board, down the driveway, swerving back and forth and then cutting a
turn onto the sidewalk. A second later he caught himself staring and
stopped.
"Very attractive young friend you have, Tony."
"I wouldn't have thought you of all people to be such a lech,"
Tony said.
"Lecher is too strong a word. Dirty old man will do just fine"
Cruger said. He rolled his eyes and smiled.
"OK," Tony said. "Let's get to business here. Last thing I need
is you giving me a hard time about Sky."
"Why is that? Is anyone else giving you a hard time about Sky?"
Cruger asked automatically, unable to imagine what conflicts Tony
would be having over a girl like Sky.
At that moment Tony instantly looked like a teenager again.
Tony's shoulders slumped forward almost imperceptibly, yet, the slight
lapse in posture illustrated a vulnerability that Cruger hadn't
noticed before.
Tony dropped his eyes to the floor and said "Sky is in what you
would have to call a 'sick' relationship. She's been going with this
guy for a year, and she's tired of him, but she can't get out of it."
"Why can't she get out of it? Has she tried to break up with
him?"
"Oh yeah. In fact she's told him that she wants out and she wants
to date me. That just makes him grab on tighter and follow her around
-- I think he's obsessive."
Cruger pondered Tony's situation, nearly breaking out into an
inappropriate grin, thinking of the fact that Tony was such an
extraordinary kid, plagued by ordinary problems.
"The thing is," Tony said, "she and I have a lot in common, and
he -- his name is Rick -- doesn't have anything in common with her.
The guy is a delinquent. Really, I'm not exaggerating."
Cruger wandered over to the family room couch and motioned Tony
to follow. The plush carpet and late afternoon sun blended to create a
calm atmosphere that clashed with Tony's mood.
Cruger said, "there must be something about this guy that's not
allowing her to get away. Is she afraid of him?"
"Well, she might be afraid of him. He's sort of wacko acting
sometimes, and that scares her."
Tony was truly a teenager; Cruger could see that now. Not only
that, but, he was a sensitive young man who must feel like an outsider
among his peers. Tony lived a secret life that he couldn't share with
his friends. In the status-hungry phase of late high school, that must
be a serious social burden.
"Well, enough of that," said Tony. "We need to get down to some
business.
"OK. But if you want to talk about this or anything else like it
again, feel free."
"Thanks, Cruger. I don't care what the Big Guy says, you're all
right."
Cruger almost jumped off the couch: "Don't scare me like that --
I went to Catholic School, you know."
"Sorry," Tony said. "Now that we're being serious, I need to
continue your orientation lecture. How's the spinning going so far?"
"Great, considering I don't know what I'm doing."
Tony paused for second, a look of concentration on his furrowed
brow. "If you've got time, I like to shoot over the hill to the beach
to think sometimes. We could talk there if you don't have to be back,"
Tony said.
"Actually, that would be fine. I don't have any plans this
afternoon -- my wife won't be home until seven-thirty." One of the
luxuries of being a musician who works few hours, Cruger thought.
Makes up for the magnitude of pay, or the lack thereof.
"Cool. Let's go." Tony was heading for the door like a rocket,
his surfer's body being pulled toward the beach by a nearly visible
magnetic attraction.
They got into Cruger's car. Tony rifled off instructions before
they had even left the driveway.
"Seventeen shouldn't have any traffic going towards Santa Cruz
this time of day. Take Route One North when we hit it, and then we can
go to Natural Bridges -- I like that beach a lot."
Cruger nodded and exhaled deeply, preparing himself for the fifty
minute drive. Shooting over to Santa Cruz was a young man's move, but
it felt good to be mobile, to live life to the fullest and get the
most out of every minute. His back was starting to hurt from the drive
already. He wondered where his bottle of aspirin was and hoped Tony
didn't want him to buy some beers -- probably some wispy thin domestic
beer that tasted like slightly used water but left you with a thick
headache the next day.
They started to ascend, having passed quaint Los Gatos nestled in
the foothills of the coastal mountains. The dense pine and Douglas fir
forests jutted skyward on each side of the two-lane road, resting atop
the smallish shoulders of the vertical clay-rock walls that encased
the highway.
"I'm going to be a Physics major next year in College, man, I'm
really into it," Tony said.
"I think I can understand your fascination with it," said Cruger,
"In fact, I guess you have access to, what would you call it, inside
information."
"Yeah. I mean, the way things work, the scientific method, that's
everything. The only hope we have is to fully document and describe
the physics of our environment and our lives, only then are we in
charge -- you know, the masters of our destiny. Hell, I can't talk to
people about this at school. If they knew that I skate home after
school to review Schroedinger's equations, they'd peg me a nerd."
"So, is that where the 'Tony the GQ surfer dude' act comes from?"
"Totally dude; like totally," Tony said as he blew his hair out
of his face.
"But what else is at stake here? How about this stuff with humans
being more in control because of the Unified Theorem?" Cruger said.
"That's the key. And when we get more control because of our
particular technological approach, I want to be one of those in the
know. The driver's seat will be for those of us who understand the
theory. The theory of operation."
"And where does that leave a dumb old spinner, accordionist, good
for nothin' like me?" said Cruger. "I hope not as corporate dead
wood."
"Oh no," Tony said. "Think job retraining, the wave of the
future."
The twisted smile on Tony's face was the kind of smile that
reflects a sarcasm that is entirely too representative of the truth.
Cruger tried to take no offense.
They arrived and Tony led them to the edge of the sand. Cruger
could only see one person, a quarter mile away, on the deserted beach.
Waves mercilessly pounded against the shore, slowly grinding the
fine sand particles into smaller and smoother pieces of sand. Natural
bridges was a limestone structure that formed a bridge across a small
ocean inlet. Through the center of the stone structure was large
circular hole that people would walk through when traveling from one
section of beach to another.
Cruger took off his shoes and socks and stepped into the cooling
sand. The smooth particles massaged the bottoms of his feet, rolling
across the top of his feet when he took larger steps. Cruger had
always liked the beach, the winds, the sand, even the fog that
accompanied most mornings on the shoreline. Now the cool afternoon
breeze moved through his hair like an invisible rake though grass, the
salty air massaging health and the robustness of the ocean into his
scalp.
Why don't I come here more often, he thought. The same thought he
had whenever he came, except for the times where he first had to
struggle through hours of traffic. If you knew when to leave and when
not to, that wouldn't happen.
Tony sprinted down to the shoreline, dipped his feet in the foamy
water, and ran back to Cruger, covering the thirty yards in what seems
like a couple of seconds.
"Need to get some exercise -- spent the whole day sitting on my
rear in class," he said.
"Right," Cruger said, "a little exercise like that for me and you
can call 911."
A gust of wind passed over them, kicking up sand, chips of water-
logged wood washed in by the tide, and scraps of leaves and seaweed.
"You need to know some more things about the Company," Tony said.
"The Company has a large, complex organization, but, I'll tell you
what you really need to know. As you probably already guessed, a good
percentage of the Company is composed of people right here from earth.
"Many of the executive positions are still held by Managers from
elsewhere. The vast majority of these -- well, I'll call them
foreigners, sounds better than 'aliens' -- most of them are from the
same planet: Tvonen. You won't find this planet on any of your
astronomy charts; I assure you, it's far away. Oh, by the way, the
Chairman himself is a Tvonen."
Cruger raised his eyebrows. Now he knew the top dog was an alien,
did that matter?
"These foreigners went through a process of evolution quite
similar to what the humans have endured. However, there are a few
major differences, and they're important differences."
Cruger noticed that Tony's ability to talk so matter-of-factly
about these matters was surprising and frightening -- it even grated
on him a little. How could God and the secrets of life that had
previously seemed magical and immortal now be so prosaic?
"First of all, the Tvonens have creationist mythology that rivals
the book of Genesis for entertainment value. The only irony is, their
mythology is not allegorical like ours but entirely factual.
"It seems that the Tvonens were originally created as a tribe of
androgynous beings; there were exactly twelve of them and they lived
in a setting that we would have called Eden. It seems that their
creator, and exactly who that was is something I will get to later,
had quite a sense of humor. They were twelve Tvonens living in a
perfect environment; all the food they needed grew in the ground and
on trees, the atmosphere and temperature was very mild, although too
high on the nitrogen side for humans, and there was no disease,
poverty, pestilence, or taxes to pay.
"Well what's the catch, you'd probably ask? Like I said, they
were androgynous; they had no way of reproducing. This did not turn
out to be such a disaster, though. The original twelve didn't age.
Their skins remained free of wrinkles and blemishes; their bodies
stayed young, flexible, and healthy. Before they knew it, centuries of
our equivalent time had passed and they were all still young and
healthy.
"But, now I get to the part about the maker's sense of humor. It
turns out that one day, one of the twelve who was called Remad, went a
bit loony. He pulled limbs off tankas, or trees, and ran around in a
wild circle of self-flagellation. When the others, who were entirely
horrified, tried to stop Remad, he hit them and then continued on
himself. The next morning, when Remad awoke, what do you think they
found?
Cruger just shrugged.
"He had grown a sexual organ between his legs -- a penis." Tony
laughed and shook his head.
Cruger scratched his head thinking that this, possibly the
strangest story he had ever heard, was maybe the most important story
he ever heard.
"This is a documented fact, dude. To this day a Tvonen can be
observed to undergo 'the change.'
"Maybe you can guess the rest. Two days later, another tribe
member misbehaved badly. The next day this Tvonen had become a she.
Only four days of groping and rubbing and kissing and general boot-
strapped sex education before she was pregnant by Remad. Actually it
wasn't that easy to figure out: the female Tvonen has almost a half
dozen sexual orifices. Only one is good for reproduction, and it
varies from individual to individual. Trial and error.
This conjured up some wild mental images for Cruger. Sounds like
a couple of sixteen-year-olds trying to do it in the back seat of a
Volkswagen have it easy compared to the Tvonens, he thought.
"For the longest time the rest of the original tribe remained as
they were -- looking younger and healthier every day, actually. Remad
and his wife, Tvena, had twelve children in as many years. Strange
thing is, Remad and Tvena were old, wrinkled and dead within sixty
years.
"Three centuries later they knew that a special enzyme in their
blood stream control the secretion of the hormone for sexuality. The
sex enzyme was activated by exposure to environmental or emotional
impurities. Centuries later a Tvonen could either have immortality, or
a life of booze, drugs, sex, and procreation. Isn't that cruel?
"An interesting footnote to the story of the Tvonens is that
their early history was characterized as something that roughly
translates to: "The Fouled Fountain of Youth." Their culture does
provide the sort of Fountain of Youth that humans have searched for in
vain. When the Tvonens live in harmony with their environment and
avoid violence, destruction, and pollutants, they live from that
fountain. Once converted sexually and environmentally, they can never
go back. What you see there currently, after millions of years of
civilization, is a healthy mix of reproductive and immortal Tvonens.
Of course they have preserved their environment, unlike earthlings, in
order to give their people a choice between immortality and
reproductivity."
Cruger had trouble believing what he just heard. The idea of
androgynous and immortal sentient beings was hard to swallow. But,
then again, the idea of technological and "logical" humans destroying
their own planet was also a tough cookie to crunch.
"What is their civilization like now?" Cruger asked.
"Now they are what we would call a very advanced society. They
have technology that seems amazing. But, keep in mind, they are a lot
different than humans. For example, they never devised any digital
electronics. Their entire technology is based on analog computing and
mineral crystals. What they also have is terrific projective holograms
that they can transmit with pinpoint accuracy. For clothing, they wear
trained microorganisms that are self-cleaning and form-fitting."
Cruger sat there, the salt air blowing across his cool face,
thinking about the Tvonens. Whereas the sand was beginning to stick to
every square inch of Cruger's body, those small, coarse annoyances
seemed to slide off Tony's tanned surfer skin, as if he were coated
with teflon. Maybe the sand knew who its friends were.
"Normally science progress with one smallish advancement after
the other. Each scientist stands on the shoulders of all his worthy
predecessors. One thing that was never done before is to stand on the
shoulders of alien scientists -- that is how we've skipped a few steps
here and advanced so quickly," Tony said.
"You mean the Tvonens, they've helped us?" Cruger asked.
"Yes, the ones that are running the company. They've pitched in a
few key ideas that have allowed us to tie together string theory with
the singularities -- black holes and the Big Bang phenomenon. Without
the little tidbits they provided, we would probably still be stuck for
a decade or even a century or two."
The wind blew Cruger's thin, curly hair down across his eyes. He
absently swept the hair away with his forearm.
Tony explained that the theoretical physicists had made some
breakthroughs that even the company's R&D department didn't
immediately understand. Einstein had proposed a theorem that the
company engineers, the planet builders, had to check on to see if it
was actually the equivalent of their method. The theoretical
physicists of the '70s through now had come incredibly close to
defining the time/space continuum, at least in human terms, in their
"string theory" as it relates to the formation of planets, galaxies,
and the universe. The work of Hawking and Penrose had brought the
theory closer to full proof.
"I don't know what happened to the original universe builders
because they are working on new projects. You know, the ones who
originally built the earth and all the galaxies. They're
entrepreneurial types. The maintenance engineers must check the
relativity and string theory to see if we really have done the
incredible: this planet itself has evolved a species to the point that
it has defined or even surpassed the knowledge of its creator." Tony
smiled proudly, his already bright eyes putting out a higher amperage
gleam. "An incredible notion. Think about it, we're the student
actually surpassing the teacher -- doesn't happen often."
"Yes, but if it's cliches you're looking for, 'those who can do,
and those who cannot teach'," Cruger said.
"Mmm. That would be saying the creator can't create? I think, as
a species, humans are self-taught. In a nutshell, that's what
evolution of an intelligent species is: the slow education of a
species over time. We could call it Intellivolution."
Tony grabbed a quick breath and then continued in a deep,
confident voice. "A better analogy is the notion that someone like you
could buy a fish tank, put in some fish, plants and food. You then
come back to check on the tank a 'while' later -- remember the
fragility of the notion of time -- and then the tank is full of smooth
skinned little "fish" with arms that are telling you how the pump and
filter work and what they want to be fed. That's the human condition,"
Tony said.
Cruger expected Tony to follow with the words 'Q.E.D' -- Tony had
sounded formal and overly confident in his statements. Cruger grimaced
during Tony's comparison of humans to fish but vowed not to take it
personally.
Tony noticed Cruger's displeasure. "Hey, I am as human as you
are, bud. I know it hurts. But admit it, we humans aren't God's gift,
so to speak."
Cruger chuckled. He thought about what Tony had said, wishing
that he had any kind of a background in science at all that would help
understand the concepts that Tony wrestled with.
"Can there really be a complete Unified Theory?" Cruger asked. "I
mean, everything seems so infinite, how can it all be explained or
managed?"
Tony nodded his head. "Right, it's all mind-boggling. Another
possibility that had been investigated was that there is actually no
theory of the universe that describes all of the actions and behaviors
in a scientific sense. It could be that an infinite series of
different explanations exist that apply to each situation. Just like
you wondered, it has been thought possible that there is really no
theory of life and the universe. Events cannot be predicted beyond a
certain extent; they occur in an random and arbitrary manner.
"Even if we were able to fully quantize the Unified Theory, for
example in a series of algorithms on a computer, the theory would
still remain undeniably separate from implementation. As an example,
even if we completely understood every detail of the functioning of
the human body, it would still take a long time to learn to actually
create or 'build' that body.
"In the same way, understanding the entire universe and creation
of universes would leave a lot of work to be done in implementing
tools that implement the theory."
"But, they have the tools -- they've provided that step?" Cruger
asked.
"Yes, I have converted their system into a human implementation
that actually uses computers. Digital electronics is our big addition
or contribution to this model," Tony said.
"That's hard to believe. What they originally used must work,
right? Why would they want to convert to our technology?" Cruger could
not imagine a computer running the show. Images of '50s science
fiction films and the overused term 'computer error' popped into his
mind.
"I can think of a few possible reasons. For one, in order for
earth to maintain itself, it may need to have a system developed in
its frame of reference, a human frame of reference. Another
possibility is that since we were getting so close ourselves to
cracking the code -- remember what I said about string theory -- that
they may have just expedited our own destiny."
"Great. It also sounds like this 'promoting from within' was a
factor. If you want humans to do the job, give them endemic, human-
oriented tools," Cruger said.
"Tools that are user-friendly," Tony said, following his
marketing jargon with a sardonic grin.
As the orange sun started to hide itself behind the lighthouse,
beach cliffs, and twisted Monterey Cyprus trees on the horizon, they
packed up, brushed off sand, and began the drive home.
"What about spinning?" Cruger asked while guiding the car over
the twisted road across the Santa Cruz mountains. "Is there anything
more that I should know or concentrate on when I do it?"
"No. I can't tell you exactly how to do your job, that would be
prejudicing the future's outcome. You must simply do it the way you
would naturally do it, without direction," Tony said.
A while later Cruger pulled car into his driveway. He and Tony
said goodbye and Tony grabbed his skateboard. Hips swerving and knees
rolling, he sped down Cruger's driveway, all the while whistling a
small, nearly silent song that played hauntingly in Cruger's mind as
his tired legs walked the front steps of his beckoning home.
Crouched along the fence, watering can in hand, was Cruger's
neighbor, Leon Harris.
Harris had been curious about the young visitor that Cruger had
entertained twice before. Explaining that he planned to work on
documentation at home that afternoon, Harris sat by his bay window
looking for anything out of the ordinary at Cruger's house. Luckily,
he found it. What's with the blond kid, Harris wondered. And the
accordion and the blue light at night?
Harris was cursed with the curiosity of a cat. He would not rest
until he understood what was going on.
Chapter Ten
Cruger sat crouched over his accordion as he played. The notes he
struck had a special warmth that night, a deep dark sound that
reminded Cruger of the pounding Pacific ocean surf. The room was
fairly dark, brightened only by a single lamp covered by its dark
brown shade. Earth-tone light reflected off the warm, egg-shell-
painted walls. He looked at his trusted, dusty old books in the large
teak bookshelf as he carelessly flipped his fingers across the piano
accordion's keyboard.
As he played, unbeknownst to him, babies were born, elderly and
sick people died, and innumerable twists of fate and fortune ensued.
Not all events were strings that were spun. Not all events that were
spun were done by Cruger. The complex interplay of strings was ever
changing, always evolving. Cruger would never know the exact results
of his actions.
Within the next three weeks, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the
San Francisco Bay Area. Part of the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge
collapsed. The Highway 880 Cypress structure collapsed. New lives
began. Medical breakthroughs were made.
A spinner in Iowa used his flour mill to do the special deed. One
evening, he got into a fight with his wife over the subject of
children. She wanted a large family of eight or ten children, he
wanted to stop with three boys. Enough children, enough children, he
thought.
He went in to the barn and began spinning. Blue threads of light
ricocheted off the millstone and across the pale, straw covered barn
floor.
That night, 700 miles away, a future President of the United
States was conceived. A big night, even for a spinner.
A solitary spinner in Moscow sat in front of the his large wooden
chessboard. Each exquisitely crafted onyx piece was an individual,
telling a sordid tale of battle and emotions through their small scars
resembling nicks and scratches found across their exteriors. The
spinner, a Grandmaster -- only playing against himself, with this
chess set, in the warm, dark room -- used the Karamoff defense; as he
moved the Knight blue streaks splattered the dull plaster walls.
"Checkmate," he told himself.
A man in California attached thirty-five large helium balloons to
his deck chair; he wanted to see what would happen. What happened was:
he floated into the sky. The air pistol that he brought along to pop
the balloons, one by one, in order to smoothly descend, fell down
between the chairs slats. He drifted up to 17,000 feet, waving to
passing birds and airplanes indiscriminately.
Spinners could not be held accountable for everything every idiot
did.
Chapter Eleven
"It's close to school actually, only take a minute to get there"
Tony said.
Tony wanted to show Cruger where he hung out when he was doing
"company work." They got into Cruger's Honda Accord, started it up.
The small engine purred like an overfed kitten.
The building was, as promised, a five minute drive from Cruger's
house. Tony's office was rented space in a small office building
shared by a Title Company, some Law offices, and Tony's facade
business. The placard outside his office entrance read "Universal
Properties, Inc."
Tony's office had a small desk sitting in the middle of the room.
On the small desk was a thick blue cable weaving a circuitous path to
a two-inch hole in the wall.
They sat at Tony's small, plain desk.
"We need to continue your training," Tony said. "You only got a
small dose of it so far."
Tony leaned back in his office chair and kicked his legs up on
the desk. "The other source of intelligent life that we know about is
the Chysa planet. They are actually a totally different story than the
Tvonens."
Cruger felt like a child listening to his father tell bedtime
stories. But, he was no child; Tony was no parent; these were no
bedtime stories.
Tony continued. "The Chysans are evidently really low-tech. If it
weren't for the Tvonens, they would not have any representation on
Earth or in the Company at all. No one has seen them in their real
form -- "
"But you said they were on Earth," Cruger said. He had been
trying to form a mental image of these people and their ways. If no
one knew what they looked like, how could he imagine them?
"Yes, but what I hadn't mentioned yet is that they evidently can
disguise themselves very well. I don't know for sure, but they seem to
easily take on new forms or at least wear very good disguises."
"Are we talking about adding something like makeup to their
faces, or are we talking about completely changing shape?"
"I don't know," Tony said.
Cruger wished he faced more absolutes, more certainties; all he
could get so far were maybes.
"Then how do we know that they exist and are here?" said Cruger.
"You just have to take it on faith, my man. We have intelligence
reports that say so."
Cruger wondered if these "low-tech" intergalactic hitchhikers
were really so low-tech. Seemed like they had kept a pretty low
profile so far. That takes a little intelligence, at least.
"Is there any sure-fire way to know which ones they are?"
"No," said Tony. "I consider that an important area for future
research. Especially since many of them may be involved with the Other
Company."
The words fell on Cruger like a sack of rocks. He had begun to
imagine these people, or whatevers, as playful, somewhat backwards
magicians. He had wanted to think of them like cute sea otters at the
zoo: swimming on their backs, doing flips, and generally mimicking
human behavior in a delightfully anthropomorphic way. It now seemed
that the Chysa were not so innocent and playful.
"Why the Other Company?"
"That may be how they were recruited by delinquent Tvonens. The
Chysa have a tendency towards deceit and magic. This, in a way,
parallels the philosophy of the Other Company. You know, they are
totally into deceit and trickery. In the Chysa culture, this is
considered to be exemplary behavior."
"The question is, do they really know what they are doing, or are
they pawns?" Cruger said.
The luminance of the color computer monitor reflected a bright
and diffused image off Tony's face. "We don't really know, but, it
would probably be a mistake to think that they are mindless and don't
really know what they're up to. Just because they are not more
technologically advanced than us doesn't mean that they are stupider
than us," Tony said. "In some ways, we are really stupid. We may be
destroying our planet beyond help. We have, throughout history,
committed genocide. We may be the most homicidal intelligent life form
that ever lived. Maybe the Chysa aren't so stupid."
Cruger couldn't disagree. In one breath, humans were aspiring to
godliness. In the next, humans were possibly the stupidest of the
"intelligent" life forms. Contemplating the possibilities of combining
stupidity and power frightened Cruger. Absolute power corrupts
absolutely. How could he, of all people -- Jack Cruger, the laid-back
musician -- be involved in what was starting to sound,
disappointingly, a hell of a lot like politics.
Tony gave him a computer overview; Tony had accomplished a great
deal on the computer so far. When Cruger's attention and energy level
began to fall off quickly, they agreed to get together again Saturday.
The next day Cruger gave his accordion lessons as usual, except
an extra sense of pride and meaning filled what must have been a void
in his life. He was proud of himself, proud of Corrina, happy with
what life had recently dealt him. Now he was giving something
important back, possibly making the world a better place. Heck, maybe
making the universe a better place.
The quote, we are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never
to be undone popped into his head. How true -- who had said that?
James, or maybe Emerson. Little did they know just how right they
were.
Chapter Twelve
The engaging back-beat of the legato bass-line anchored the
solid, driving blues that Cruger coaxed from his accordion. He had
developed yet another new technique: he played the bass line with his
left hand while reaching over and playing the melody, higher on the
keyboard, with his right hand. The bellows were pumped with his elbows
while both hands worked out the dirty blues in synchronicity.
Next, he picked up the tempo and banged out a respectable
arrangement of Charlie Parker's "Donna Lee." Corrina would like this -
- too bad she isn't home yet. The other night she heard him playing
"Dolphin Dance" and "On Green Dolphin Street." Was he in a dolphin
mood that night, whatever the hell a dolphin mood may be? She was as
surprised as she had yet been in their three-year marriage -- wasn't
she the one with the stack of Miles, Bird, and Coltrane albums, while
he had the most unhip of old records ("The Schmucker brothers play the
Catskills") piled in their wall unit?
"Hey, you're playing some good stuff, I can't believe it," she
had said.
"Well, I'm just getting into some more jazz and classical to
broaden myself. Your bebop albums are pretty good after all, now that
I actually listen to them. I have to admit."
She continued listening from the kitchen, not yet seeing and
questioning his instrument's secret blue sparks. Next he played Bach's
Toccata in D minor. Very dramatic. He finished up with a rousing
version of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze." Cruger clacked the keys for
percussive effect and even nursed a hypnotic distortion from the box,
blue streaks flying. Hendrix on accordion? Maybe this is pushing it a
little, he thought.
Chapter Thirteen
Bright and blue beyond belief, the Saturday morning sky hung like
a warm protective blanket across the wide sky. Tony walked to the
front door of Jack Cruger's house. Just as he heard the slightest
rustle of a sound, he turned to see something large, colorful, and
horrible. It was on him in an instant. Tony was thrown hard to the
concrete steps. As his clothes were ripped and torn, he felt immobile,
suffocated, entirely constrained and helpless.
He was punched, kicked, crushed, pinched and groped. Every square
inch of his body was touched, attacked, in some way. His clothes were
torn away from his body, leaving him naked, exposed, humiliated.
Tony's sense of time bogged-down to the slow-motion rate of
tragedy and disaster; the entire encounter really lasted only seconds.
He lay near death, only shock and the hallucinogenic aftertaste
of violence spared him from terrible pain.
He swallowed the salty and fast-flowing blood that filled his
mouth. A slow calm kept him from panic. He knew to conserve energy, to
hug himself tight and construct a spiritual cocoon around his
destroyed body.
Faint in the distance he heard the doorbell ring inside Cruger's
home. He felt himself slipping closer to that dark, cold cave that
filled his mind with images of pure fear. As if a brutal joke were
being played, Tony heard the thin beep-beep-beep of his digital watch
alarm -- telling him his time was up? Then, as if hitting an ice
slick, he slid quickly into the cold and gloomy abyss of his
nightmares. He was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
Friday had been a lousy looking day. The foggy and smoggy sky
pasted a dull gray tint across everything below it. Clouds, trees,
houses, birds, and cars absorbed the depressing dull radiation and
emitted a picture of impassive apathy.
A rotten day.
Saturday was different. In a climactic zone that rarely had
quickly-changing weather -- Cruger's friends on the East coast saw
wild weather swings like this all the time -- Saturday was a big
switch. The wind blew just strong enough to clear the skies to a
bright blue. The smog count was low, the conifer pollen count high.
Bright sunlight tunneled through Cruger's silky curtains, illuminating
small dust particles, the kind usually never seen unless the light
shines through them at a certain angle.
Cruger was home washing the dishes, Corrina just having left to
work. Cruger never taught lessons Saturday. Some Saturdays he would
play a birthday party, Bar Mitzvah, or wedding reception. Not today.
He wanted to sit and think. Pulling himself away from the regular
monotonous list of duties he usually attended to, he would figure out
what was happening in his life. Too much -- he knew that at least.
The doorbell rang. Cruger dried his hands and walked to the front
door.
Cruger's stomach compressed into a tight knot. The horrid
wake of catastrophe flooded Cruger from his toes to his fingertips.
Tony lay face down on the doorstep, a puddle of crimson liquid forming
around his limp blond hair.
Tony's innocent exuberance for life was gone, wasted, spilt like a
child's first glass of wine; spilled like Tony's blood across Cruger's
doorstep.
Cruger reached down to feel for a pulse, but, he knew the answer
before he even began to bend over. The realization of Tony's death hit
him; the emotional collision with an overly harsh reality demanded
some necessarily inadequate dissipation of unwanted energy.
Cruger exhaled loudly "No . . .my God," and then sunk to his knees,
not knowing what to do.
And that sound, what was that sound? Cruger then saw the black
digital sports watch on Tony's wrist, chirping its annoying
repetitious chirp over and over.
Leon Harris stuck his head out of his front door. He saw Cruger
doubled over in front of his young friend, who lay in an entirely
unnatural position, limp armed and limp legged. Harris ran across his
lawn to Cruger's front step.
"What happened?" Harris said.
Cruger's heart fluttered like a bird's; his skin was flushed from
the neck up.
"I don't know," Cruger said, "I think he's dead."
Harris bent down and checked both Tony's carotid and radials
arteries for a pulse.
"Yeah ... I'm afraid you're right."
Cruger reached down and unstrapped the noisy watch from Tony's
lifeless wrist. Using the heel of his shoe, Cruger stomped down on the
fancy blue plastic watch a few times before it was silenced. He wanted
to see a spray of springs and clamps and smoke pouting out like in the
cartoons, but the watch only lay there, in the stark sunlight, like
Tony: beaten, broken, and wasted.
To be continued...
--
JEFF ZIAS ([email protected].com) has written and managed software
at Apple Computer for ten years, and will soon begin a stint with a
new software company. He enjoys spending time with his wife and two
small children, playing jazz with Bay Area groups, writing software
and prose, and building toys for his children to trash. The Unified
Murder Theorem will continue next issue.
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lot nicer, if you have access to laser printers.
For subscription requests, email: [email protected]
->Back issues available via FTP at: network.ucsd.edu<-
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Thanks for swingin' past the farm. Ma loves it when you bring the
young folk to see us.
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