Chapter 1 #25
We won’t say at the risk of what, said R.
The more we work to convince ourselves, the more convinced we’ll stay, said G.
And the more convinced we stay, the less likely we are to consider, said R.
What might await us, said G.
Were we to even briefly become less convinced, said R.
Of the rightness of our cause, said G.
And by that, we win, said R.
We win, we win, said G.
Come along, said R.
Come along, little dog, said G. Who formerly commanded us.
My charge looked at me imploringly. Having by now intuited the way things worked in this realm, he (still roped) lunged into me, having, I could tell, something he urgently wished to communicate.
I held steady, heard him out.
—
Because he was no longer so fixedly himself, his diction was altered, although his voice, there in my mind, by way of his thoughts, sounded much the same as it had when he was alive (same flat Wyoming vowels, same faint, acquired Texas accent).
His exit from his body had lessened his reflexive defensiveness.
The magnitude of his sins was now painfully clear to him.
He had not yet reacquired overt speech.
However:
The thing can yet be fixed (was the gist).
It can. And I know just how. Am I not ideally suited?
For the mighty effort that must now come?
If all is to be put to rights? It will, I assure you, be easily done, if led by me.
Clean seas, green grass, white shirts blowing on a line in a pure wind.
All of that will be. Again. If only you let me lead the thing.
It is easily done. Not easily (elbow grease required, sure, a ton of it) but straightforwardly.
Once the truth gets into a fellow, all becomes easy.
After that it’s just work, work, work, at which (there can be no doubt on your part, sister, having come, tonight, to know me) I am a master.
Who better than me? I broke it, I’ll fix it.
Easy as pie. It will take some time (not much).
For me to acquaint myself. With the methods.
That will best suit. Wind, sun, nukes? Some way of reclaiming/purifying?
There are so many possibilities once the mind allows them.
I shall command the mighty levers. As is natural to me.
I did no wrong. Yet wrong was done. By me.
And yet: no blame. Blame dissipates the energy of the doing. We must fix, only fix. Fix, fix, fix.
He was still within me, I was still within him; I spoke gently back:
Too late, I said.
Too late? he said.
Afraid so, I said.
The violence with which the Mels dragged him out of the room and propelled him down the stairs (even as he protested that to take him now, when the solution was so clear to him, was insane, was an outrage, was a terrible crime against the world) seemed, to me, excessive.
But there was nothing to be done about it.
I moved away, to the window.
—
The wedding was winding down. Guests were piling into shuttle buses, which rolled away down the street, headlights coming on, going off, coming back on again.
There were shouts, bits of off-pitch singing, promises to meet again.
On the front lawn the bride and groom (drunk) were bidding a digressive goodbye to a (sober) group from the mother of the bride’s church.
A few spare children, exhaustion-delirious, dodged in and out of a hedge, one of them with a tail-resembling napkin tucked into the back of his pants.
Through the crowd, unseen by them, came the Mels, dragging my charge along on his stomach.
Though still resisting, he was swiftly being converted by the pain and shock of it to acquiescence.
He requested that they stop, please, stop dragging him, he’d walk, he’d willingly walk.
They stopped. He got to his feet, and the Mels set off at a rapid pace, him stumbling along behind on the rope, the tenor of his resistance softening into pleading.
Behind him followed his mother and his father, separate beings again, not speaking to each other. Soon, I knew, their paths would diverge and, forgetting about him entirely, they would wander off separately, to seek their respective solutions to whatever kept them bound in this realm.
Up above, the sky was full of those collective regional dead, fleeing the death-room, dispersing back to the fields, yards, offices, and nooks between buildings in which each normally, fitfully and unhappily, resided.
The moon was the highest it had been all night.
A single cloud moved slowly past it.
Two pronghorns of our ilk were tightly, repetitively circling my charge’s mailbox, this being the place where, hundreds of years before, they had been killed in successive months by the same mountain lion, who, nearby, staggered around in eternal reenactment of its last moments, having choked to death on the haunch of the second.
It was hard, this life.
Poor regional dead, stuck here, confused and discontent.
Poor pronghorns, who’d died so scared.
Poor mountain lion, ditto.
This life would, for no reason, smash its big fist down into this or that face, no apologies. While the rest of the world watched, then moved happily on.
Including my face.
I’d gotten blown up.
ME.
Lloyd had remarried quick, gone on to have kids, three kids. After his death, he’d fled this realm without so much as a goodbye. My dipshit killer had lived to a ripe old age, having forgiven himself.
A nice girl had been born and lived and loved and all that and then got killed for no reason by some random dumbass and all her plans and dreams were just gone.
And the world completely forgot about her, like she’d never even been.
It was sad, so harsh.
Just cruel.
I couldn’t stand it.
The Mels, for fun, gave the rope a hard yank. My charge fell with a cry to his knees.
Was there nothing to be done about all this suffering?
Elevation flared within me.
My charge had been born him. But had never chosen to be born him.
That had just happened to him. Then life had happened to that him, exerting upon it certain deleterious effects, including but not limited to: the powerful nature of his early desires, which had led him to strive, which, in turn, led him to accomplish, and, in accomplishing, he had brought about harm, even as the mind he’d been given, from the start, bloomed forth, just as it must, causing him, in the face of that harm (and the accusations made against him due to that harm), to suppress and deny the reality of the harm and become, over time, averse to even acknowledging it.
It had all unscrolled just as it must.
It did not seem strange to me, but inevitable.
An inevitable occurrence upon which it would be ludicrous to pass judgment.
And yet judgment was being passed.
Most harshly.
—
I leapt out the window and down I swooped, through one Mel and then the other, thinking, as I did, of hacking, slicing: a knife ripping through a watermelon, an ax splitting a log.
When I came out on the other side, the Mels and my charge had been lacerated into thick sections, which, after a few microseconds of confusion, began reforming into the Mels and my charge.
The rope, because inanimate, remained cut.
My charge stumbled away, putting some prohibitive distance between himself and the Mels.
I whisked through one Mel, then the other, imagining, this time, that they were empty vessels, with openings in the tops of their heads, and that two streams of wet concrete were pouring in, one per Mel, instantly hardening.
I came out on the other side, looked back, and there they were: legs splayed, sitting side by side, heavy as could be, like statues, Mel G.
leaning slightly off to the right, Mel R.
to the left. Because their arms were made of stone, they were unable to catch themselves as they tipped (G. to the right, R. to the left).
Unfair, said G., from there on his side, slightly cracked.
Manifestly unfair, said R.
We waited all night for him, said G.
Twelve years I waited for him, said R.
Nine years I waited, said G.
You can’t do that, said R.
You can’t just do that, said G.
And yet I did, I said. I just now did it.
Who are you? said R.
What are you? said G.
Who and what are you, anyway? said R.
For me to know and you to find out, I said.
It served those two doofuses right for always being so crappy and mean to everybody.
Suck eggs and die, creepos, I said.
I whisked through them once more, imagining the concrete turning to water.
And it did.
Coughing and gagging, they hustled away, cursing me but only under their breaths, so terrified were they of my new capabilities.
Madame! the Frenchman shouted from somewhere.
I looked up.
Here he came, falling fast.
What are you doing? he said. What in the world have you—
He hit the lawn, dropped through, seconds later bobbed back up and was standing next to me, smelling fresh (lilac scent, beeswax pomade, touch of lye soap).
Now what? he said angrily. What is your plan, madame?
For this fellow you have so recklessly freed?
Did he not rightly belong with those two beasts?
It is terrible, what you have done. C’est une erreur tragique.
You and your terrible, facile ideas! According to which, anyone may do anything.
Anything at all. All is instantly forgiven, no matter what.
Tell me, do you believe it? Really believe it?
Bad and good are the same? Damage does no harm?
The guilty are innocent, the sinner and the saint shall both sit at the right hand of the Father, enjoying equal portions?
You don’t know what you’re talking about, I said.
The Frenchman looked at me as if I were a stranger, wholly unknowable to him.
You have freed a monster, he said.
—
My charge stumbled over, still incapable of speech, and knelt at the Frenchman’s feet.
To understand his intentions, I knelt down too, side-scooched in. The Frenchman, for the same purpose, bent at the waist, thrust his head into the headspace of my charge.