The Salvation of Billy Wayne Carter and Other Stories

M. David Hornbuckle

Tritone Media, New York

Copyright 2009 by M. David Hornbuckle All Rights Reserved

Published by:
Tritone Media
Old Chelsea Station
P.O. Box 632
New York, NY 10113

Design by Marie Mundaca

Please visit the website at www.billywaynecarter.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009937048
The Salvation of Billy Wayne Carter and Other Stories
ISBN: 978-0-557-10294-5
Printed in the USA
First Printing October 2009
e d c b

These stories were originally published in the following: "The Salvation of Billy Wayne Carter" was published as an e-book by Cantarabooks; "The Office Party" was originally published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. reprinted in Air in the Paragraph Line; "Funeral Music" was published in Ruminate; "Bertrand Russell Sees a Man" was published in Isms, reprinted in Nanofiction; "The Art of Invisibility" was published in the volume Bunnie 2: Voyeurism by Red Rabbit Books; "The Year of Myself" was published in Kora; "Backstroking" was published in Astarte; "The Boy Who Cried Wolves" was published in Fogged Clarity; "Pineapple Tie" was published in Peek

The Salvation of Billy Wayne Carter
The Office Party
Funeral Music
Bertrand Russell Sees a Man
The Art of Invisibility
The Year of Myself
Backstroking
The Boy Who Cried Wolves
Pineapple Tie

For Marie, the only reader who matters.
And for Frankie, who can't read but likes the smell of books.

The Salvation of Billy Wayne Carter

THE BAR IS DARK, primordial, the air full of dust. Frayed wires protrude from the walls where there were once pay phones. Wood chips cover the floor, and a half-busted jukebox plays country hits through a tinny speaker. The regulars all pass through in a cloudy solipsism, drearily executing their genetically programmed agendas--work, drink, sleep, start over again.

Then a girl walks in, a lady if you prefer. She's wearing a black leather mini-skirt (with zipper up the side), a black chiffon blouse and fishnet thigh-highs. Without a word being exchanged, she puts three dollars on the bar, and the bartender hands her a black drink, which she carries at a leisurely pace to a booth in the most remote, blackest corner of the bar where just the top of her black, shoulder-length hair glows under the halo of a neon blue sign that says "Lite."

The bartender chides the trucker-capped barflies. "Put your eyes back in and mind your own business."

Jenny Mae Crosby is the only Goth in the bigger-than-it-seems town of Lyonness, Mississippi, but she has a melodic Southernbelle accent that was a little incongruous with her daughter-ofMorpheus affect. She doesn't have any desire to justify her penchant for black clothes, dark music, kitschy horror films, the poetry of Byron, and the novels of H. P. Lovecraft. She doesn't crave the attention of her peers at the local junior college or the rednecks in the local bar. This is who she is. Fuck them if they can't handle it.

The blue light reminds her of her childhood visions, waking nightmares of demons in the flesh. She'd frightened her parents and teachers with her drawings of them, and she'd frightened her way through numerous preachers and counselors who tried desperately to patronize, normalize and Christianize her. She had frightened herself into a nervous breakdown at age fourteen, and now eight years later, through experience and books and movies, her fear has transformed into a fascination. Mythology and History are her passions, but she doesn't like to recall the childhood sicknesses that had originally led her down those paths. It's been years since her last vision, and the thought of it gives her a chill.

*

Dear Faithful Friend,

Spring has finally come around, almost in spite of itself, and Central Park is tempting me with warmth, singing birds and lovely young girls in tissue-thin sun dresses. One could almost forget that there's a war going on but for the military check points at every major intersection in Manhattan. I could go on and on about that, but I have a more important task to perform here.

There is so much that I've neglected to write down so far, I'm not sure where to begin. I suppose I should begin with Billy Wayne Carter.

Billy Wayne Carter, just like any of us, is a roughly organized chunk of somewhat autonomous matter, as far as matter can be considered to exist at all in this modern universe of zeros and ones. However, his importance, and perhaps his very existence is, more than most, contingent on abstractions like TRUTH, DESTINY and ART, all bejeweled in such capital letter regality as would be appropriate for a genuine old-fashioned hero.

Although his fame in our society has become legendary, his background is still something of a mystery. Folklore has it that Billy Wayne met his life partner and muse Jenny Mae Carter in a roadhouse bar on a dirt road in rural northeast Mississippi, not far from where I myself grew up. I've tried to imagine what they were like before. I can't. As if nothing existed before. Yet out of nothing comes nothing. In the beginning was the word. The word was Anonymous. Out of nothing, ALL.

Billy Wayne and Jenny Mae are the Genesis and the Exodus--perhaps even the Revelation. This was all before Civil War 2.0 began, and it's not hard to find a conservative scholar (considering himself, in some warped way, the final judgment, a god over history) who will outright blame the entire war on this meeting of two rural Southern white folks. Even I cannot wholeheartedly disagree with the conservative scholar's point of view.

This is the way I have to think things begin (events of cosmic importance anyway), in anonymity. You have to start with subatomic particles in perfect anonymity, and you make a world of it. A remarkable thing, even if the world itself turns out to be rather entropic and dysfunctional.

Yrs., Trly.,

TH2

*

"I knew everything once, and now I've forgotten it." Billy Wayne Carter chokes on his cigarette, not being used to smoking. He also doesn't drink often. But this night is the eve of his twentyfourth birthday, and he's been driving aimlessly for three days and nights in his long-ass blue '78 Impala. He's on the run, although not so much on the run from something, but for something. For weeks, he's been sinking into abysmal depression, and tonight he needed a break, needed human contact, so he stopped into this neon-encrusted shack and ordered a bourbon and Coke.

Disheveled shadows dance around him like gnats around a lamp. He feels like he's at the center of a demon-magnet. It don't matter anyhow, he thinks. Eventually you die anyway. He wants his tombstone to say that. "Billy Wayne Carter--he died anyway." He doesn't even know what he means by all that. If he did, he wouldn't have believed it anyway. It's just a bunch of rot. He speaks out loud but to nobody in particular, "Didja ever feel deep in your soul that you were destined for some kind of greatness?"

The bartender, good man that bartender, responds, "Sure. I s'pose we all do at times."

Billy Wayne takes a moment to daydream, to wonder what he will do that will make him great. Will he be a wealthy entrepreneur? Will he perform saintly tasks and heal the world's weaknesses? Will he develop great sexual powers and live an infamous life of rakish decadence? Why not do it all? Just not enough time in the human lifespan. And suppose you could have it all, what is All? He can see in the eyes of his fellow drunkards and the way they circle around him, they know they are in the presence of someone different from them. Surely, they can't help but notice the raw diamond that sits before them.

"No matter what I do, when will it be enough? How can I ever be satisfied as long as death is looming over every minute of socalled success?"

What he really wants, he supposes, is to cheat the fates. It is in this weary, intoxicated state that Billy Wayne Carter begins a search for the Truth. Because it does not matter to him what year it is, what day it is, on which planet he is sitting; because it does not matter in the grand truth of it all whether life on this planet happens for a second or for a hundred million years; because a second and a hundred million years are the same as far as light and gravity are concerned; because the only borders on earth were created by humanity, because the real borders of earth can no longer hold the resourceful human race to the ground; because time is the only border they have left, because the difference between a second and a hundred million years is Truth; he begins his search for it. It does not matter to him that in the great infinity of the universe, that in this remote corner, on this watery satellite of a star, what happened to spark his existence, and it doesn't matter to him if that spark was a Being that created him in Its own image or if it was a force that just Happened and somehow continues to Be.

On every side of him are the regulars, sickly, vomit-breathed, most with beards like Spanish moss and sun-faded baseball caps. Nobody speaks up to answer him. It ain't nothing worth talking about anyway really, he thinks. Just a bunch of rot, like what he's putting in his bladder. "What kind of rotgut bourbon is this, bartender?"

"That there is something called Old Goat. Y'know, if you want some name brand bourbon, you have to ask for it."

Good man, that bartender. Watching out for himself. Can't hold that against him. A haze covers Billy Wayne's perception. The lights pale, and even the country music on the jukebox seems to evaporate into the fog of cigarette smoke. He looks over in the corner and can just make out the shape of a woman beneath the blue neon light of a beer sign. He tries to focus on her, but it's all too blurry. She's dark and beautiful, a personification of death lingering in the background, vaguely menacing.

He's been living out of the Impala, and he imagines he doesn't look especially presentable. He looks down at his black steel-toed boots; they're clean at least. He has on blue jeans and a white tee shirt, a blank slate. He stares into the bottom of his glass at the last few drops of bourbon, a long brown tail that chases itself around the bottom perimeter as he rotates the glass in his hands. He wants to check his reflection to see if his hair is straight, but in the glass, he can only perceive a larger-than-life, round nose that blurs and splits. There's a mirror behind the bar where he discovers that his coif, though a little windblown because of its shaggy length, is more or less in place.

"Bartender, I wanna buy that woman over 'ere a drink."

"Listen, brother. You don't want t' get involved with her. She ain't right. I don't even like talkin' to 'er. She gives me the creepy jeepies."

"I don't see nothin' wrong with 'er."

"I think she's a witch. Or maybe a devil, somp'n." Still Billy Wayne sneers back at him, and the bartender relents. "A'ight, but you take it to 'er yourself, an' I warned you. Watcha wanna buy 'er?"

"Well, whatever she wants. Whatever she's drinkin' already."

"A'ight. Three dollars."

Billy Wayne pays up and swaggers over to her table. With the bar behind him, outside the physical attention spans of the grumbling drinkers, he senses a prophetic change of atmosphere, as if entering an entirely unexplored world. Her first words are the truest he has ever heard.

*

"I hear you have a problem with mortality."

She regrets beginning that way, jumping right into metaphysics, and she decides to start over. She invites him to sit down and says her name is Jennifer Crosby.

And after a melodramatic pause, she adds that her friends call her Scylla. This isn't true, and she isn't sure why she said it. For some reason, the six-headed mythological beast is on her mind, and although she's never devoured six men simultaneously, it is a secret fantasy of hers. Moreover, the few people that she calls friends, when they call her, call her Jenny Mae. She's a little embarrassed to meet an intriguing stranger while mercy-killing another useless evening in this dusty roadside bar, but that is where they are, and she decides that, well, they're at least starting on even ground.

"William Carter. You can call me anything you like."

She thinks to herself that he'll be a great ghost some day. She imagines the moment when the life force fizzles out of him, the pattern of energy that made up his mind separating from his body and not being able to recycle itself into the environment, out of sheer stubbornness.

"So, what do you want out of life?"

"Mostly just the impossible."

She lightly touches his leg with her foot. She begins to imagine that she has spent her whole life wasting away in this dirty little roadhouse for a reason, that she's to be his savior. She hears a thump, which must have been one of his boots dropping to the floor because she soon feels a socked foot reaching into the sheath of her skirt. And then he speaks.

"Today's my birthday."

"Really."

No question mark. The fact, if it is one, does not impress her. She is impressed, however, by the diligence of his foot, which has found its way inside her skirt and is gently yanking at her panties.

"So how old are you?"

She rests her free foot on his crotch, petting his erection with her toes. She lifts herself a little to help him tug at her underwear.

"Old enough."

He's successfully pulled her panties past one hip, and soon his other boot is off, and he's beginning to work on the other side.

"Bartender, another round."

The bartender brings a bourbon and Coke and one mysterious black drink and sets them on the table. Then he drifts back into his own universe.

Jenny Mae feels the draft signifying that her panties have dropped to the floor. She knows it's her move. A table separates her from Billy Wayne. She stares intensely into his deep brown eyes. "Listen, I gotta pee, but I will be right back."

She slowly stands up, not removing her gaze until she's walked through the slightly less dilapidated of the two bathroom doors. In the restroom, she catches her breath and splashes some cold water on her face.

Fear grips her shoulders as a swift breeze ripped through the dusty cracked smile in the window pane. She scrutinizes the mirror, runs her fingers over the almost invisible scar under her eye where a table corner had once stopped her running from a gorgonshadow.

A warm flush covers her face and neck. She wonders how far she should let things go before inviting him back to her place or maybe a motel. Then she wonders what will happen afterward, and if he will disappoint her. All that she wants was to escape the deathtrap that is her mind. Outside the bar, she has her classes at the junior college and her tiny nondescript apartment. But if she had to pick one thing that had a real presence in her life, it would be the red Naugahyde pew where she sits drinking her black drink, thinking under a blue light.

She comes back and sits down next to Billy Wayne in the booth. "So, do you have any plans?"

"No. The future's wide open, far as I'm concerned."

She slides over closer to him, and he puts his right hand over her left leg, which she's prudently crossed over her knee. She covers his hand with her own. As he massages the lower part of her thigh with his palm, his fingers find the crevice where her leg no longer protects her virtue, and she wonders if he'll dare to pry it open. He slips his hand along the seam of this fleshy border, and she opens for him.

As he massages her clitoris and she feels the juice on the inside of her legs, she unbuttons his pants and brings out his cock, which flips out of his fly desperate and rigid as if it's been freed from suffocation. She caresses it with her manicured fingertips for a few seconds then bends down to put it in her mouth.

She feels his hand gripping her breast, and she begins to be driven by a deeper force, the force that runs through all living matter, that forms at the base of the libido and spawns the urge to procreate. If this is the spirituality she had been missing, she wants to break out in a hymn. The only one she can think of is "When the Saints Go Marching In." In her mind, she sings as loud as a dream, Oh I want to be in that number / When the saints go marching in.

She loves the warm fleshy taste of his erect cock in her mouth, but when she feels it begin to tremble with urgency, she's not ready for him to spend. She pulls back his testicles and removes her lips from the trunk. She glances over at the barflies. They don't seem to have noticed anything. She lifts one leg and wraps it around Billy Wayne, and then she sits back onto the table with her knees spread in front of his face.

She unzips her skirt down the side, and he peels it off. Lacing her legs over his shoulders, she sees that he notices the message tattooed just above her crotch, one word in a simple black ink sans serif font--the word "yes."

Every beast and demon that Jenny Mae ever imagined appears before her and then dissolves into the red light with the neon blue halo that lines the back of her eyes. She pulls his face out of her crotch and turns over to mount him from his lap. She reaches into her purse and expertly opens a condom package. She slips the sheath onto his rigid cock and helps him insert this final monster into her body. She cradles it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until neither can stand to go any longer. Her back arches all the way over the table, and she begins to pant and moan. He lets out a small whimper, and she knows it will be over soon, so she rocks backward more forcefully until, face and neck flushed, her flight has landed.

He rests back in his seat, fully spent. She breathes. He speaks. "What do you say we get out of here?"

She nods and quickly zips back on her skirt, follows him out to his long-ass Impala.

"This long-ass car here is mine." With both hands, he swings open the rusty, blue passenger-side door, and she climbs in. Oh, I want to be in that number...

*

Dear FF:

I never met my grandfather, but I've been told that he was a lunatic, an alcoholic, a religious fanatic, a bank robber, perhaps also a murderer. Maybe I am he. Law of Preservation of Souls. Have to have a body. If nothing else. I know it isn't like that, really. The beginning of life. Something to do with chemistry, hydrocarbons, stardust. Still, helps to think about souls as a placeholder for whatever turns out to be meaningful about humanity. Helps to have a mythology.

Here's mine.

My father, Tom Hawkins, a.k.a Old Tom, lived all his life in the same little house his granddaddy had built in the outskirts of Lyonness, Mississippi. Tom's father died in prison, and Old Tom resigned himself to a quiet life of farming, hunting and reading the Bible.

Old Tom married Mildred Blaylock. The Blaylocks owned a farm up the road from the Hawkins' place and ran a watermelon stand by Highway 81 in the summer. Mildred was their only child. Her parents were old and didn't live to see the marriage pass a year. Mildred, herself, was feeble, and she died giving birth to her third child, my sister who was named after her, Millie.

One of the only things I remember about my mother Mildred is that when she was upset about something, she wrote letters to God and then burned them in a rust-coated trash bin. To me, this act is as pure as any work of art can be--addressing the unaddressable, the anonymous, the mystic--if only for the sake of having done it.

This crosses paths with some of the ideas I laid out in my second book, Being on Time. All of time exists in a single instant of eternity beyond the physical universe, yet we the living are trapped in a constant, fragmented perspective on that instant. I don't think this is just a metaphor; this is really how time works. Art, particularly the kind created by Billy Wayne Carter, gives us the ability to transcend the instant of time, or at the very least to allow us some control over our perspective. It also provides us with a means to discover and rediscover the instant itself.

Whether by accident or design, Billy Wayne Carter has mastered this aspect of art, this power. It appears that his motives, at least in the beginning, were pure. He picked up an electric guitar and transubstantiated his personal energy into sound. Everything he had ever known or experienced became part of that energy. Every song contained every other song. And then he became the song.

Yrs., Evr., Trly,

TH2

*

Old Tom's teeth grind in slow, deliberate shifts on a celery stalk, a habit he's taken up recently in lieu of chewing tobacco. He sits in the living room of the small farmhouse he's lived in his entire life, plopped in front of the television, resting after a typical long summer morning in the field. He hasn't yet restored enough energy to draw himself a bath (they got wired for electricity a few years ago, but they have not yet been fitted with a more basic convenience of modern living—indoor plumbing). The electricity is a wonder, but Tom sometimes wishes he'd left well enough alone rather than compromise their independence, but Clyde Dixon (who owns a truck stop outside of Lyonness and lives in an antebellum plantation house about two miles down the road) had paid for most of it and had also gotten them hooked up with the telephone.

Someone on the TV is discussing the mating habits of possums, an animal Tom has despised since his youth. What had forged Tom's hatred of possums was what he considered the first act of true evil he'd ever witnessed, during the most innocent of times, before he realized or appreciated the full measure and magnitude of the devil's wing span. He had been wandering aimlessly, as is the habit of young boys, and he had come to a fenced-in field, on the other side of which he had seen a dead cow. Having never yet seen a dead cow, and being naturally curious about it, he started climbing over the fence to check it out when the carcass began to bulge and pulsate. Young Old Tom started to look closer to make sure he wasn't imagining it when suddenly the cow's stomach ripped open and mess of slime-covered possums, a half dozen of them probably, erupted from the body, grinning and screeching with their rancid little teeth dripping with bloody saliva.

Finally, the documentary is over, and a real life emergency show will be coming on, a show where they re-enact various extraordinary rescues, both professional and amateur. While Old Tom sits idly on the sofa, gnawing on his celery, the three kids are out in the driveway, throwing a half-flat basketball at a gnarled rusty hoop.

Outside, a car horn honks three times. A voice, Clyde Dixon's, says, "Tommy, y'in there?"

Tom remains engaged in the show. They always get there just in time, he thinks. They'd never make it out here, though. Just have the Lord to protect us from danger, and the dogs, and the guns, depending on what kind of danger it is.

Jason, fourteen, walks in bare-chested and dusty from dribbling the basketball on the dirt driveway.

"Diddy, Clyde Dixon's outside with some folks, an' he wants you."

"What folks?"

"Don' know."

Scout and Rex, the two German shepherds tied to the basketball post, growl in the direction of Clyde's Cadillac. Clyde, with his white hair slightly windblown and his face blistery red, is leaning out the window, a long-haired boy and a vampire girl looking bewildered, perhaps stoned, in his back seat.

"Tom, good, I thought you was out in the field. You still got that old tow line?"

"Yep, but it ain't hooked to the truck. It's way down in the field, hooked to a tractor."

"These two nice, young folks got stuck in the sand down by where your road crosses by Old Mill Road. Now, I wanted to help 'em out, but I got a meeting in Lyonness in half an hour. Now, you got something that could get 'em outa the sand, don't you?"

The mill on Old Mill Road is no longer in use. Nearby there is a giant pit that was excavated by some of the farmers in the area, a place they call the chicken graveyard. When farmers in the area have chickens that are too diseased or otherwise emaciated to eat or sell, they're dumped there. That means buzzards and other scavengers are always around, including possums. Old Tom doesn't like going down there. But he can't rightly refuse a request by Clyde Dixon.

"That tractor'll get 'em out."

"Now, you don't mind helping these nice folks out, do you? Especially since I was gonna help 'em, but I got a meeting in Lyonness in half an hour? And I told 'em what a good neighbor you are and a Christian and everything, and you could help 'em out, couldn't you?"

"Yep, I'll get 'em out."

"I 'preciate this, Tommy. Now, I was gonna help 'em myself, but I got this meeting in Lyonness in half an hour."

"I'll get 'em out. May not even need the tractor."

"Tom'll help you. He's a good, honest man. So just go on ahead with him, a'ight?"

The strangers step nervously out of the car, and Clyde drives off down the dirt road, leaving a trail of red clay dust behind him. The two dogs both run the length of their chains toward the strangers, barking and drooling.

"Don't mind them dogs. They can't reach you where you're standing. Well, before we worry about gettin' the tractor, let's just take the truck up 'ere and look at what we got, a'ight?"

The young couple introduce themselves as Billy Wayne Carter and Jennie Mae Crosby. Tom gets in the cab with Millie. Jason and Junior climb into the back where the two strangers soon follow.

After about a mile, a possum tries to cross the road in front of them. They feel a bump, only slightly more severe than the valleys and craters that pock the dirt road they're driving on. A couple of minutes later, they're at Old Mill Road, and Old Tom yells through the gun rack on the back window. "That Impala down there?"

They pull over and Tom steps out of the truck, dust clouding up around the heels of his boots, the leafy end of a celery sticking out of the side of his mouth. As he crunches down on the last piece of stemand discards the stub in the nearby switch grass, he steps around the car, looking it over. No mistaking the smell of copulation, faint scent of alcohol and jism, the potent flowery aroma of a woman's sex slime. And he can't forget either that the chicken graveyard is close by. Overhead, buzzards hit the arc of their infinite circular vigil, and the smell of rotting fowl corpses, buzzard shit and sin permeate the air around him.

"Automatic?"

Billy Wayne nods, his half smile displaying a hint of shame. While Old Tom is evaluating the seriousness of the situation, he hears Jason asking the stranded couple questions.

"What was y'all doin' way up here off the highway?"

"She had to go to the bathroom."

"You sure did go a long way off the road just to go to the bathroom."

"I'm, uh, shy," Jenny Mae says.

"Didja have to do number two?" Jason giggles spastically, and so does Junior.

Billy Wayne looks at Jenny Mae, as if to pre-approve his answer, then laughs. "Yeah."

Old Tom turns to Billy Wayne and says, "Tell you what. Put 'er in neutral, an' we'll push it forward into this here switch grass. Then maybe you can go in reverse and get enough traction to get past the sand an' get back up on the road. A'ight?"

"A'ight."

Tom and the boys push the car into the brush, and Billy Wayne revs the engine.

The long-ass blue car speeds backwards past the sand pit and up to the dirt road. Billy Wayne gets out of his car and shakes Tom's hand.

"Thanks for your time, brother. I really do appreciate it. Take it easy."

The family and the strangers then part ways.

As Tom and the kids come up on a squished possum on the road, a single buzzard, a huge minacious sucker, is feeding on the carcass. The truck clips close by, forcing the parasite to fly out of the way. A moment later, though, Tom looks out his side window and sees that the bird is flying along next to him and appears to be gazing angrily into the truck. Tom stares back. Jason, now riding shotgun, stares at it also. Tom turns his gaze forward and calmly addresses the boy.

"Boy, get the .22 off the rack. I'm gonna roll down the window and lean back out of the way. And when you have a good straight shot, take it."

Carefully, and with some assistance from Junior, Jason reaches through the sliding panel of the rear window and lifts the top gun from the rack. Old Tom leans back in the seat to give the boy room to aim. The buzzard picks up speed then and flies a few feet ahead of the truck. Looking back with a vengeful eye, it regurgitates a thick, red and green slop all over the front windshield as well as on Old Tom's arm and face.

Disgusted, Old Tom stops the truck, takes a rag out of the truck bed to wipe himself off. The bird has flown out of sight.

Tom, wiping his face off, turns around and looks upon his oldest son with remorse. Jason is leaning into the bushes on the side of the road, dryly heaving and clutching his stomach with both hands. Junior and Millie remain wide-eyed and wordless in the truck. "C'mon, boy."

He wipes off the windshield and armrest, then throws the towel on the ground. Jason has not moved. He grabs Jason by the arm and shoves him into the truck. Red dust clouds their trail.

That night, when the kids are finally asleep, Old Tom takes his usual position on the sofa and removes a bookmark from the family Bible, marking his place at the beginning of Leviticus. Just as he's focusing his eyes on the words, Tom notices a thin strand of smoke rising, cobra-like, from the television screen, and then a silver glowing light. The light flickers and fills the room with flashing strobes making every movement of Tom's body seem strange and disconnected. Red, green, and yellow lights begin to circle around the walls, and the air begins to fill with a pumping funky drum rhythm and bass guitar. Tom grabs his Bible off the table and grasps it against his chest, which vibrates with the loud music.

Then he hears fast percussive rhythms in the distance and then the weeping call of a guitar. Suddenly, the room, as Tom knows it, disappears. The floor takes on a slick hardwood finish. The walls widen and turn black, emphasizing the whirling lights. The ceiling raises itself and grows a giant mirrored ball in the center, above which four speakers churn out the surrounding music.

Tom realizes with sudden horror that his feet are moving without his will, side-stepping in the rhythm of the beat. He tries to scream, but his voice is drowned out by the music. Out of a door on the other side of the room, ten skinny blonde women in pigtails, dressed in white, glittery miniskirts and white roller skates, glide in single file around the outer ring of the floor. Their breasts are brazenly unclothed, and out of each bare back grow a pair of enormous, white, feathery wings. Half way around, they do a syncopated turn in the air and then skate backwards. When they have made a full lap, they do another turn and start over. Each lap, ten more angels appear until there are a hundred of them.

A voice booms through the speakers over the music. "Do not try to resist the groove, Tom. The groove is more powerful than you. We have traveled across galaxies and millennia, and we have a message for you."

Tom spins around, pointing in the air while his legs split and then rejoin. "Well, what is it?"

As he turns, he sees that a fifteen-foot column has appeared, supporting a deejay booth where a young man, probably in his early twenties, sits looking over the floor. The man turns off the music, stands up, and skates down a previously unseen platform, landing with a quick spin and screech three feet in front of Tom's face. The man has shoulder length blond hair, parted down the middle, and he wears small, round, dark glasses. The dog-eared ends of the blue spangled butterfly collar of his polyester, western cut shirt bounce off the ends of his shoulders with the inertia of his entrance. His shirt contains an intricate pattern that resembles the angelic skaters. Through the strobe and the circling colored lights, the angels on his shirt appear to be dancing with the same choreography of their larger counterparts.

The DJ opens his mouth, and a screeching and horrific roar rattles straight through Old Tom's psyche.

Then, with a little twirl, the man skates off gracefully with his brown corduroy pants zipping through each stride, followed by his entourage of angels, around the room once then out the same hidden door that the angels had used to enter. The music comes back on just for a minute and then everything fades.

*

The moon poses open-faced over the trees on the crest, casting a cool shadow over dew-glazed fields of yawning cattle. Old Tom is asleep on the sofa, clutching the family Bible to his breast and snoring above the white noise of the television. Millie and Junior are also sleeping, and the entire house is as silent and still as a cathedral. Jason sees the keys to the truck unguarded on the end table, and he creeps back into the bedroom he shares with his brother and sister, careful not to wake them.

From underneath a pile of his clothes, he pulls out a plastic bag of mushrooms Johnny McGovern had shown him how to pick from the cow paddies. He eats several and puts the rest in his pocket, and sneaks out the door.

The red pickup starts with a roar and peels out into the road. His destination--Dixie Clyde's Truck Stop Supreme, a multipurpose travel center owned by their friendly neighbor Clyde Dixon (natch), offering food, pool tables and video games to truckers and the occasional bored teenager--the only oasis of its kind within twenty miles.

Winding along the thin, thicket-lined gravel and clay paths, Jason yeehaws out the open truck window, lighting a twenty-five cent cigar and blaring the latest country/western hits from the radio. Finally, the wilderness begins to clear, and a hot blue neon sign rises from the west. Jason pulls clumsily into the rocky parking lot, throwing the cigar butt carelessly onto the ground, stepping it out with a satisfying hiss and crunch into the bottom of his brown leather boot.

He decides to wander a bit before trying to get in on a pool table. He's a little intrigued by the bathroom here because he isn't used to having plumbing at home where they just have an outhouse. The outhouse is interesting in its own way. He can climb on top of it or hide inside it and smoke the pot cigarettes that Johnny McGovern sells him sometimes, and the smell of the lime covering the waste and the bugs that crawl around in there to feed on it become not unpleasant, but kind of fascinating, like he's seeing what the world really looks like underneath all of people's manners and pretty painted houses with chimneys and gutters and front porch swings and lemonade.

But here, the dull white urinals have dark stains of tobacco spit running down the middle and cigarette butts in the bottom, soaking up piss and spit and who knows where all that water goes when you pull the handle and how can they possibly clean it up before it comes back out the faucets of the city and people drink it, and do they know where it has been? Do they even care?

And hidden behind mirrors that warn you on the front if you might be offended by it, you can buy for four quarters French ticklers and rainbow rubbers and little cards that show you all the positions. He's bought them all from time to time, and the little cards are pointless, just cartoons, and the positions are pointless too; he figures one is as good as any other, long as you can get yourself off. And the rubbers, he really has no use for.

Behind the wall of urinals, truckers are taking showers, and they occasionally come out with their pricks flopping around, longer and wider than his own. He wonders if his would ever grow to that size. It eats at him a little, much like when he heard other boys his age say that they had done things, and he never even had the courage to ask a girl if she would, if she wanted to. Why would a girl want to, anyway? And if they did, wouldn't they expect something more from it? Wouldn't they expect one like their father's or their older brother's or even Johnny McGovern's? Johnny McGovern had exposed his prick once in front of Jason and in front of some girls just to show that he would. It wasn't that big, but it was big enough, he figured. The girls all turned away and squealed, except one, that Maggie Williams. She just looked at it and said, that's nothin' I ain't seen before, Johnny. Maggie is cool.

Clyde Dixon mans a glass counter just outside the bathroom door where you can get change for the pool tables or video games, and the truckers buy cigarettes there, and naked lady playing cards, which always draw an involuntary stare from Jason and a smartass commentary from the red face behind the counter.

"You like those cards, don't you, boy?"

"I guess..." "D'ja get that city boy and his girl outta the sand this mornin'?"

"Yeah, we did."

"Listen here, since you're so curious. If you've got the cash, I can show you something that will blow your little mind."

He gestures at the ceiling. Jason knows what he's getting at. He's heard rumors that there's something secret upstairs, and that for $50, you can go up there for a half hour. "Ain't worth it."

"Ain't worth it? Boy, I believe you don't know what's up there."

"Why don't you tell me what's up there? What can you show me for ten?"

"I can show you your daddy's hairy ass."

Resolved, Jason starts to walk away.

"A'ight, now don't turn your back on me just yet, boy. Seeing as how your daddy's always been such a good neighbor and since you yourself ain't never given me no trouble, I'll give you my discount package. It's not the full treatment, y'understand, but it'll be more than sufficient for your thirty dollars."

"I can think of better uses for thirty dollars. Besides, I only got twenty. Honest."

"We might be able to arrange something... Say, Jason. Where is your daddy? I saw his truck outside. You ain't got your license already do you?"

"A'ight. Twenty, but it better be worth it."

Clyde shows Jason to a door next to the counter. Jason opens it, revealing a long and creaky, wooded staircase. Clyde nudges him on, following close behind. At the top, they enter a small anteroom with a red velvet love seat and several matching chairs. There are no sounds at all, but there was a musty smell that reminded him of egg whites for some reason. The walls are freshly painted a yellowish white, and the ceiling is covered with a crumbling layer of soft asbestos in which truckers had carved their names and other messages while waiting their turns. Jason circles the room, taking in every detail while Clyde's imprisoning eyes keep him closely surveyed.

"A'ight. Money first. You got fifteen minutes."

Jason places the crisp bill in Clyde's outstretched hand. He wonders if a quarter hour will be long enough. Clyde leads him to the farthest door on the right. Opening it leads him into a long hallway that empties into a dark room with a nauseating odor. Clyde turns back, and the heavy door slams shut behind him. Jason hears noises coming from an open doorway on the other side of the room. It sounds like dogs whimpering. He tries to hold his breath.

A chill overcomes him, and he's overwhelmed with an urge to forget about the whole thing and just leave. But he knows he's just being a pansy so he investigates. The floor is littered with plastic, cheap-looking dick-shaped toys--like nothing Jason has ever seen. Two heavyset girls are rolling over each other in a naked frenzy, giggling hoarsely atop the sheets of a filthy looking king sized bed. Now he remembers hearing once that Dixon had a couple of daughters, and the rumor was that they were retarded or somehow afflicted mentally, and Jason's never seen them. He wasn't sure it was really true, if they really existed.

Both creatures have dark, short hair, cropped sloppily and uncombed; they could be twins. When they notice him standing there watching them, they stop their rambunctious play and stare back at him.

"A visitor. Say halloo."

"Halloo."

Their speech is slurred. Jason hardly hears them, though, preoccupied with the thought that he has just spent twenty good dollars to spend fifteen minutes in a room with two naked retards. The one on the left seems more coherent, and he thinks he might get his money's worth with her if he doesn't puke first.

"Do you want to play, or do you just want to watch?"

The more he thinks about actually touching them, the more his stomach quivers.

"I'll just watch for now. Thanks."

The two old gals start kissing each other. To his surprise, Jason finds their rubbing and fingering each other a little arousing. But he doesn't know what he should do about it. Should I drop my drawers, he thinks, and let them invite me over to the bed, or should I just take off all my clothes and jump in? And what if they laugh? But then he figures that if you pay for it, they can't laugh.

Before he does anything though, the one on the right stops kissing and begins to grimace. The other one begins to scold her.

"I told you not to..."

Sister Right then reaches underneath and pulls out a fresh turd and throws it against the wall, then starts giggling, then laughing hysterically. She can't seem to stop. This makes the Sister Left visibly angry. She reaches for a wooden paddle next to the bed and bashes in the head of the other one.

"I told you not to do that with visitor's here! We have a visitor! I told you!"

At first, Jason freezes, and though he can smell the blood and the shit and the general filth of the room, he finds the entire scene difficult to believe. Even the dialogue sounds badly rehearsed, like a cheap movie and one that he doesn't want to watch. When he's finally able to move, he turns around and runs out, his eyes glazed over with fright. He closes the door behind him, hoping that nobody ever opens it again, that the secret that lives in there should remain a secret for eternity. He slowly, carefully descends the stairs. At the bottom, Clyde is waiting.

"Back so soon? Well, the first time is always quicker'n you think. I can see by your face you got your money's worth."

*

The sun beams down, pulling Millie's eyes gently open, whispering a subtle reminder that it's Saturday, and cartoons will be on. She stretches her arms and her jaws with an extra happy Saturday morning yawn. Baffoon! There's a happy word.

Millie hears the T.V. on already, and she figures that Tom Junior got up early to watch Roller Derby. He likes Roller Derby, but she doesn't want to see any real people on Saturday, only cartoons. She wears one of Diddy's flannel shirts and some old sweat pants for pajamas, and the outfit swallows her like a... Cocoon! She drags along a blanket and pillow to build her nest in front of the set. She can hear the announcers from Roller Derby interviewing players. Baffoon! She gets to the sofa and realizes that it isn't Junior there; it's Diddy, and Diddy's asleep. Badaboom!

Roller Derby is ending, and a cartoon comes on. She doesn't know what it is, but there are lots of pretty colors and funny looking animals, so she thinks it will be a pretty good cartoon. A pig is chasing a man around. And a duck is chasing the pig around. And there's an old evil man and an old good man, and you know which one is good because he has a long, white beard like God and talks like a preacher. And you know which one is evil because he wears black clothes like that girl they saw yesterday who picked a strange place to pee, and he talks out of his nose and laughs too loud. Junior meanders in, snorts, wipes the sleepy out of his eyes.

"Mornin' Bubba."

"What'r you doing up so early?"

"It's Saturday. Cartoons are on. What's Diddy doin' in here? He don't watch cartoons."

"Guess he fell asleep readin' the Bible, and he ain't woke up yet... Trip, ain't it?"

"What?"

"Fallin' asleep readin'. I don't think I could do it. You have to think too hard."

"It's just like goin' from one dream to another one." Toodeloon! The old evil man is building a machine that will kill all the good animals, and the pig is chasing the duck around, and the funny little man is chasing the pig, and the good old man tells them all that everything would be better if they would stop and be friends.

Junior coughs, and a hard wad of mucus flies from the back of his throat and lands lightly in his father's hair, clinging to the end of an awkward cowlick just above his ear. The resulting laughter jerks Tom from his sleep. Surprisingly, the sudden motion does not shake the bogey from his hair but rather strengthens its foundation, shaking it further into his gray-brown curls.

"Mornin' Diddy."

And the pig and the duck and the funny little man are whispering with the old good man and the old good man is whispering to his big black dog (who looks like her old dog, Lightning, that died of worms last year and she doesn't remember him very well, but Jason and Junior talk about Lightning all the time, the stuff he could do), and it looks like they were going to fight. Monsoon! Now that's a word. She's heard it before.

Diddy is yelling at Bubba, and she doesn't know what it's all about, but she figures it's on account of that booger, but she's busy watching the cartoon people get ready for their fight. The duck starts chasing the funny little man around again, and the pig starts chasing the duck around again, and the old evil man comes in with his machine and is blowing up the houses in the village (Kaboom!), and the big black dog is chasing around all the animals in the village, including the little funny man which she decides is supposed to be a monkey or a bear (she hasn't ever seen a monkey or a bear in real life, but she has seen a duck and a pig; they had some pigs once, but they sold them all when the corn crop didn't come in on time last year).

Diddy is looking for Jason, so she guesses he isn't too mad about the booger. Jason must have snuck out again. He thinks nobody ever sees him, but she sees him, and when he gets home sometimes he smells like the chicken graveyard, and sometimes he smells sweet and smoky.

Alakazoom! Diddy is yelling. The fight is starting and it really is kind of boring. Nobody seems to really get hurt, but her father is raving. He's talking about their mother; she didn't know her mother, but she knows she has to have one from the things Jason had told her about babies, that there has to be a mama and a daddy to make one, at least at first. But her mama has gone away to God and never writes letters back so Millie figures her mama is just dead. Jason sometimes speaks of how their mother wrote letters to God then crumpled them up and put them in the garbage. She would sometimes fill the garbage can in one night; then she would take them outside and burn them. She didn't have to mail the letters for God to know what they said because He read them through her eyes as they were being written. Or maybe she just never had a stamp. Maybe if her mother is with God now, she writes letters to home and burns them because there aren't any stamps in heaven.v Between the shouting of her father and the shouting on the television, Millie is getting tired trying to pay attention to everything so she decides to go for a walk outside. The weather is cloudy but warm, and she keeps on her sleeping clothes, barefoot. A strong wind keeps her from wandering too far, though, and she's going to sit in the truck, but it's gone. She decides to go back inside and hide under the covers until the storm blows over.

*

Dear FF,

Must every story have a hell descent? Every story contains every other story, so yes. At least a hell digression. I've often wondered where were Billy Wayne and Jenny Mae going when they got stuck in the sand at Old Mill Road. Most people think that they were going to California. There are some who claim to have met them in Arizona or New Mexico during that trip. There are other reports of them having been seen as far off course as Wyoming. I can picture them driving in circles, no air-conditioning in Billy Wayne's long ass blue car, listening to country/western radio stations and smoking grass.

They would sweat it out together, windblown and dust covered, until they ran out of money and settled in Northern California where Jenny Mae had some distant but charitable relatives. We know that Billy Wayne appeared a couple of years later as Little John Thomas in a garage band called the Mango Patch. The Mango Patch played small clubs around the San Francisco Bay area. He had been teaching himself how to play guitar. Many of the lyrics that survived that period were actually written by Jenny Mae.

Compare, for instance, the aloof optimism of "Periodic Table" (She's the periodic table of the elements / She's got a talent for unusual gift ideas) to the cynical tone of "River" (Get your money's worth, the river echoed / God is testing you). The first is typical of the earlier songs, the pop songs. The meaning is insignificant if not absolutely untenable. The music has atonal elements, but mainly depends on the brash, angular, percussive guitar that keeps the backbeat moving. The second lyric is brusque, disturbing, but subtle. The melody of "River" wanders as if floating down an actual waterway. Tribal drums blend with cascading piano chords and splashes of militaristic cymbals suggesting a cinematic vision to the listener.

As Billy Wayne evolved artistically and began writing and composing on his own, his lyrics became progressively didactic, and his music grew more and more impressionistic. At the same time, the music became more ethereal. But still, it is difficult to pin him down to a genre because every album was an exploration of a different facet of his mind.

An article I read recently said this: "Billy Wayne's ability to incorporate the ideological with the emotive, in addition to his established fame at that point, is what allowed him to become a revolutionary icon. He is now so highly recognized for his outspoken views that the government apparently considers him a danger to national security."

My own feeling, unsurprisingly perhaps, is that he is dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with political influence, but everything to do with his temporal influence. Further research will indicate whether I am right.

Ever yours,

TH2

*

An otherwise non-descript concrete block structure in Oakland has a sidewalk marquee out front that says, "Little John Thomas and his Mango Patch" below the names of three other bands. Billy Wayne Carter is leaning on the sign smoking a cigarette. He's more or less taken up the smoking habit full time. Jenny Mae says it makes him look debonair and gives an edge to his singing voice. In the occasional soft breeze, he can smell the bags of rotting garbage piled on the curb a few feet away. The cigarette helps with that too.

It's the first show with the band that he cobbled together after placing flyers around the local music shops looking for musicians. The response was immediate and enthusiastic, and the next thing he knew, he had a band. To rehearse, they rented a room in a building that was once upon a time a hotel and fortunate that it hasn't been condemned. It's humid and cramped in the practice space, and the carpets smell of mold, but the important thing is that there's a lock on the door and working electricity. Before they found that space, they played at the drummer's house--Aubrey's parents weren't home much and he already had a space set up there for his drum set. But it was too far out in the suburbs for easy access, and the neighbors had complained about the noise a few times.

As he sucks on the cigarette, Billy Wayne realizes his certainty on three points: (1) this band is only the first step. Some of these guys will end up working in guitar shops or playing top forty covers in yuppie bars, and the rest will quit music altogether in a year or two. If he's to succeed, he has to keep his eyes open for better opportunities. (2) He has to approach the show as performance art, ephemeral, only existing for the people who happen to see it and then gone forever. (3) It looks like it's going to rain.

Generally, he thinks that he isn't as brooding since he met Jennie Mae. Still, sometimes he wonders why he's doing this, why he invests nearly all his spare time and money in a vocation that often seems like a futile charade. Is this what all that pining and drifting was leading to? Does this have anything to do with that elusive Truth he was chasing?

Jenny Mae appears on the horizon in a white tee shirt with a lacy black bra peeking though strategically located rips, her hair in black pigtails, carrying a bouquet of flowers. She's also wearing the same miniskirt she had on the night they met, exactly one year ago.

"Happy birthday." He takes the flowers and holds them up to his nose. "They're fake. I didn't want you to break out into a sneezing fit right before your big show."

Her face glows under a neon blue halo from the beer signs in the club's windows. Billy Wayne has an erection.

"I've got the backdrop in the car. Help me get it out?"

Inside, they unroll the backdrop, a white sheet, splattered Jackson Pollack style. The foreground features shadowy stick figures, with their limbs variously akimbo, like mannequins dancing in a rainstorm of Skittles.

The stage is about a foot and a half off the ground, about ten feet wide and six feet deep. Not much wiggle room. A stout, bald, mustachioed man starts moving carts of electronic equipment from a closet in the corner. As he passes in front of the stage area, Billy Wayne reaches out his hand.

"Hi, I'm Billy Wayne. Are you the sound guy?" The extended hand is not shaken.

"Yeah. You're the first band tonight?"

"Part of it. The other guys should be here any second. What's your name again?"

"Warren."

As if on cue, the door opens and Aubrey enters carrying drum cases, followed by Dutch and Gary with guitar cases and amplifiers. Billy Wayne instructs Warren about their technical requirements, which aren't many—just a couple of vocal mikes up front. In turn, Warren points out where the electrical outlets are located on the sides of the stage, and then they each go about their individual business of unraveling and plugging in cables.

Billy Wayne stands at the edge of the stage and surveys the room, almost half of which is consumed by the two pool tables at the back. A modest bar counter occupies the wall to the left of the stage, and two old men are sitting there, paying no mind to anything beyond their happy hour draughts. Above, the ceiling tiles are all water-stained or missing, and the fluorescent light bulb tubes are shamelessly naked. Parts of the floor are sunken in as well. Warren places a boom stand in front of him and angles it so that the microphone cradle is a few inches away from Billy Wayne's chin. Billy Wayne can't think of a time when he's ever been happier.

*

The bleach blonde behind the bar hands Jennie Mae a cup of black coffee. Jennie Mae reaches into her tiny, black patent leather backpack, but the bartender waves off the suggestion of payment. Instead of money then, she retrieves a pen and a small notepad and starts sketching.

"Whatcha drawing?"

"Nothing, just doodling." Circles and spirals. The occasional eyeball. Before long, there are tentacles and teeth. The beast almost does seem to stir. She isn't sure where this comes from, somewhere deep in the recesses, the catacombs of her soul.

"Pretty impressive for doodling."

"Thanks."

At the other end of the bar, the presumed regulars drink yellow beer from plastic pint cups.

Aubrey's bass drum resounds in a martial cadence as the sound guy adjusts the level in the p.a. system. Jennie draws an army of stick figures around the borders of her page with tiny flags, swords and cannons, surrounding the beast. After a minute, the mixing process is repeated with the snare drum, then the two toms. The brigades cower in the shadow of the monster as jagged guitar chords ring through the speakers at the sides of the stage, followed by variations on the word "check."

Billy Wayne puts his guitar away and comes to sit down next to her. He asks the bartender for a Maker's Mark on the rocks, and she brings it.

"Get much of a crowd in here on Tuesday nights?"

"Depends. It's really up to the bands to bring people in. Did you promote the show?"

"Sure. Sure."

Billy Wayne looks a little sullen, more than usual, and sips his drink. Jenny Mae turns to the bartender. "Don't worry. They'll come."

She knows that it doesn't matter much who shows up tonight. They'll show up eventually. This venture out west is the testing ground, a place to make mistakes and learn from them. They don't yet have to know exactly what they're doing.

In a year, with maybe only Dutch from the original band, they'll relocate to a small college town in the Southeast--Athens, Chapel Hill, or Gainesville. They'll build up a strong, young local following, put out a couple of CDs with their own money on a made-up record label, tour regionally. After a couple of years, Dutch will have a crash with alcohol, get sober, go back to school, start a new career. They'll get another guitar player, move to a bigger city in the east--Atlanta, Philadelphia or Boston. Their following will grow. They'll be offered contracts with bigger distribution, a marketing budget, opening slots on tours with major artists.

In twenty years, Billy Wayne will be a living legend, beloved by multiple generations, and still going strong. Jennie Mae can see the entire progression as clearly as her reflection in the Coors Light mirror behind the bar.

She turns to a new, empty page in her sketchbook, the previous page now filled.

*

Twenty years later...

Although there is a party going on upstairs, Thomas Hawkins, Jr. isn't quite ready to make an appearance. Instead, he's wearing his loafers and a loosened ochre tie, watching television and browsing a weekly news magazine. His tweed college-professor jacket is folded over the sofa arm. The party is in honor of his returning from a signing tour for his first book, How to Save Time. In the book, he advocates doing more than one thing at a time when possible, such as reading and watching television, trying to hone the skills to absorb competing stimuli simultaneously. There's another level to it though, which is more about literally saving time, as if it were endangered. He plans to explore this idea more in the next book.

The home he's made with his young wife Anna is located in a pristine suburb outside Atlanta. The décor is a typically bland country motif--dry twig wreaths with blue ducky ribbons, heart-shaped biscuit irons, cross stitched alphabets. This is all Anna's doing, not his. He's only really comfortable in the cocoon of his study with his computer, his books, his ugly, comfortable brown sofa, and the small TV set that helps keep him company when he's immersed in the world of abstracts. He wants to savor it a little while alone before joining his guests.

On the television, on a public broadcasting station, is one of his colleagues in the self-help/life advice racket, a former Mississippi psychologist gone New Age named Jack Hinderson. The philosophy Hinderson promotes is a mishmash of heavily plagiarized Buddhism, vegetarianism and socialism. With that sort of platform, it's a mystery to Thom how Hinderson ever sells any books, especially here in the South. But Hinderson has his market, and Thom has his own; they aren't competing with each other, really.

Hinderson is a short, plump, Santa Claus of a man. Though diminutive in stature, he has a huge voice that plays well on television. He's wearing a loose-fitting bright orange robe, a cross between the costumes of a Buddhist monk and a prison inmate, sitting on a small raised platform in half-lotus position (probably too fat to pull off the full lotus), leading a meditation to an audience in theatre seats. "Close your eyes and focus on the point beyond the blackness, off beyond the horizon," he says. "Look into the nothingness, and then look beyond it."

Anna comes downstairs, wearing a spangled blue cocktail dress and her strawberry blonde hair in a bun.

"Have a minute?"

"No," Thom says, "but if you find one lying around, let me know. Minutes are scarce."

"When are you going to come upstairs and join the human race?"

"In a few minutes. I'm just catching up on a couple of things."

"Thom..."

"Yes?"

"Thom, one other thing... When can we spend some time together?"

He glances at the date book sprawled open on the sofa next to him, flips the page a couple of times. "In about two weeks. April 12?"

She gives him a sharp look, arching her eyebrows. "Pencil me in." She turns and leaves the room. Thom changes to a cable news channel. The anchorwoman, Chastity Rogers, is talking about the increasing cultural tension across the U.S.

Chastity Rogers: There were incidents all along the East coast today. In Baltimore, factions stormed through a shopping mall defacing all the best selling books, all the popular framed prints, all the biggest selling compact disks. In Philadelphia, protesters surrounded the offices of all the major market radio stations, demanding airplay for independent artists. Many of the incidents appear to be organized by a group that calls itself the Society for the Proliferation of Higher Art or SOPHA.

Josh Abelman (protestor): Yeah, man. A grass roots movement has developed, almost overnight.

Rebecca Haley (SOPHA representative): We don't condone violence or destruction of property. When there has been violence, more often than not, the police were the cause. The pressure from the demonstrations seems to be producing results. We've got radio stations that used to have a mainstream country format that are now playing bluegrass; rock stations playing mostly blues; stations that had previously specialized in electronic dance music are playing sambas, polkas, and waltzes.

Chastity Rogers (over a montage of footage of protestors throwing home-made bombs at a multiplex theater in central New Jersey): Throughout the Northeast, commercial movie theaters have been the target of protestors, insisting Loews, Sony, and other large multiplexes present foreign, independent, and nonrated films. Movie and television production has almost stopped completely while the controlling media corporations decide how to respond to the increase in violence against their property and threats to their employees. Finally, there was a march and rally in New York's Central Park today, also organized by SOPHA, where the popular musician Billy Wayne Carter, among others, spoke to an estimated ten thousand protesters. Carter urged the administration to listen to the will of the people and take action against what he called the corporate ransoming of culture.

At the mention of this name, Thom remembers a hot summer day years ago—fluttering images of his father, sister, and brother, of carrion-scavenging birds, and of a man named Billy Wayne Carter. It was that same night that his brother disappeared, a day when his life had changed forever. Couldn't be the same guy, he thinks. He rewinds the DVR and pauses when they close up on the face at the podium. That's him. That's Billy Wayne Carter, and that's the guy.

Chastity Rogers: Earlier this week, in his State of the Arts address, the president officially supported the "low" art regime. Critics claim that the state has retaliated against the insurgency with pamphlets outlining the legitimate lineage of commercial art from the common folk heritage. We'll have more on these stories at eleven.

Thom turns off the television and puts on his jacket. Using the reflection in the gray silent screen, he adjusts his collar, his tie, his lapels, his glasses and his brown curls. He sucks in his stomach, straightens his back, and ascends the stairs.

*

Anna lies in bed, not able to get up. Why? Self-indulgence. Disappointment about whatever was outside the bed. Entropy. Thom, next to her in the same supine position, eyes toward the ceiling, speaks into the dead air.

"Why don't you get up?"

"I'm hiding."

"From what."

"I don't know. Myself."

Such a cliché. He lies next to her, making every furious effort to imagine what it is to hide from oneself, visualizing a shade over his body with his mind on the other side or his mind in a drawer somewhere hidden beneath the darkness of socks. He dislikes the Cartesian element there. Still, something has to account for the mystery of the mind beyond neurophysics. An energy that flows through the body along the nerves and spine and brain and which can come out somehow. Law of the Preservation of Souls. From the propagation of souls comes the erotic aspect of art. The desire to create the kind of energy out of which souls are made. The desire to crawl back into the womb of that energy is self-indulgence. The desire to hide from your own soul, to hide your soul from your self. This is all he can think about.

When she said to him, if we don't have sex before April 12 one of us is going to go crazy, did he really not know which one it was?

He's always been slow to understand what she really wants from him. They've never exactly been on the same plane in that way. Why did she even marry him? There must have been a reason for it at the time, when she was twenty-two and afraid of going out into the world alone, and he was secure in an academic career, but that was not all. She'd loved many men, and many of them had promised her security. Thom didn't promise anything. He simply asked at the right time. His timing is impeccable; in fact, that is his true talent, the one on which he has built his entire life.

She isn't comatose. She can speak. She can even shift her weight, roll over, but she can't, or won't, get out of the bed. To change the sheets, he has to work around her, lifting her legs, then her buttocks, then her neck to remove the old sheets from under her, repeating the exercise to secure the new set. For a few days, they struggle and quarrel over how she will eat, how she will urinate. He thinks he'll leave her there, let her starve and wallow in her own waste. She won't be able to take it more than a day or two, and then she'll come out of it, proclaiming it was some kind of miracle. Meanwhile, he'll sleep on the sofa.

It's summer, and his sister Millie is home from school at Auburn. She's grown into a svelte young woman, quiet and demure, with straight blonde hair that reaches to the small of her back. She doesn't talk much, keeps to herself. He's used to this, as she's been that way since they were children. Thom approaches her in the living room where she's listening to headphones.

"Do you have any idea what's wrong with Anna?"

She stands, looks at him with eyes of sympathy, shakes her head no, then gives him a hug.

"What are you listening to?"

She directs him to the screen on her mp3 player. "River" by Billy Wayne Carter. He remembers the name from the newscast the other day. His curiosity is really up now.

"Do you remember the day that Jason ran away?" She shrugs then nods a tentative yes. "Do you remember the couple that we helped out of the sand that day?"

She shakes her head no.

"Can I listen to that for a minute?"

She puts the headphones over his ears, presses a button to start at the beginning of the song. He doesn't hear anything.

"Is it on?"

She leans her ear in and indicates that it is. The silence moves him in a metaphysical direction that isn't comfortable, and he takes the headphones off after about 30 seconds, a half minute of silence that he can already feel starting to haunt him.

To distract himself, he vows to redouble his effort to finish his next book, Being on Time, heavier on the philosophical, lighter on the practical. It's predicated on the idea that an individual can be in control of the way he experiences time, that time doesn't control us. But this is contingent on our actions being coordinated with natural patterns of time regarded as mere physics--matter moving through space. He thinks of Anna's stillness, and it angers him. He's sure that it's a direct affront, a quiet argument against everything he stands for.

*

There's a heavy quiet setting on the parking lot of the Cobb Square strip mall in the upscale Atlanta suburb of Buckhead this Thursday morning. One car is parked in front of the copy center, and another at the card shop. One bicycle, missing its seat and front wheel, is chained to the bike rack. It's been there for weeks. The falafel place is still closed, and the laundry mat is deserted.

Bill Perry notes the eeriness as he unlocks the front door at the Electric Banana music store. He locks the door behind him, sweeps together the stack of mail on the ground under the mail slot. In the cubby hole office in the back of the store, he dumps the mail on the desk, quickly sifts through it--some catalogs, some bills.

He removes the cash drawer from a compartment in the desk and carries it to the cash register, which clunks and jingles when the cash draw is secured in place. To break the quiet, he puts on the stereo behind the register counter, the mp3 player set to random.

This guy is looking into the glass door, maybe early to mid thirties, a young face, prematurely gray, a little wild-eyed. Bill thinks he might be an agent of some kind, but he's not wearing a suit, just khaki pants and some sort of t-shirt that doesn't look quite right on him. Recently, there have been a few agents in suits, browsing and taking notes. No real trouble with them so far. Bill unlocks the door and lets the guy in.

"Can I help you?"

"Ever heard of Billy Wayne Carter?"

"Yeah. Ever heard of Elvis Presley? Ever heard of the Beatles? Actually, you're listening to Carter's new one right now." The guy looks at Bill quizzically. Bill looks back at the guy incredulously. Where's he been for the last twenty years? There isn't anyone between here and Timbuktu who hasn't heard of Billy Wayne Carter.

"Do you have anything by him?"

"Carter? There's a whole section over there by the wall." Bill points over in the general direction of a sign that says "Rock A-C." The guy goes and flips through the CDs, all rapid fire, like he knows what he's looking for, all the while sort of mumbling to himself. Then suddenly he stops and turns back toward Bill.

"There's so much here. What would you recommend?"

"River is the most recent one. That might be a good place to start."

The guy goes back to digging through the stacks. A few minutes later, he comes to the register with a pile of CDs. "I decided to just get one of each."

He puts it all on a credit card and then slinks away. Whatever.

Right after the guy leaves, there's a brown out. The music stops abruptly and the lights flicker off and then flicker back up again. The stereo has to be restarted manually. Bill starts it up and then goes to sit in the office to smoke a bowl, leaving the door cracked in case anyone else comes in before the lunchtime rush.

*

Dear FF,

As I see it, our popular music and literature are full of archetypes that come from a folk tradition. Why is rock music considered a "low" art then? There seems to have been no distinction between high and low art before the middle ages. If you read the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Bible you see it. I mean, probably up until Erasmus, the Bible was the only thing studied in the Academy. Furthermore, the Academy was a sector of the Church. And, God, how can anything be more of a folk literature than the Bible? How can anything be more anonymous than God?

Well, it was the Restoration and the so-called Age of Reason that stratified art. Shakespeare and Milton both had crossover hits, but look who reads those guys now. It's not the groundlings.

In the forties and fifties, the cutting edge of classical composition was atonal, free form, what they called experimental. In the sixties, that stuff started to come out in rock music. But rock and roll, and I guess any art, has a way of purifying itself when it gets too decadent. There was the blues resurgence, the folk resurgence, punk, the punk resurgence, and then there was Billy Wayne Carter. People always think they are doing something new, but it's really all in the epic. The thing about Carter is that he knows the epic, knows his own role in it, and he uses it as a tool. He's not using little technical sleight of hand tricks to carry his ideas. His toolbox is the history of man, and he somehow knows how everything in the toolbox works.

Sincerely,

TH2

*

Thom paces in circles, through the living room, dining room and kitchen, talking into a mini-cassette recorder. "Being on Time is finished. I emailed the manuscript to Vanessa this morning. I'm not yet certain what I'll be working on next. But a book tour seems unlikely this time around. It's just too unpredictable out there. Millie hasn't been able to return to school, which is alright for us because she can help take care of Anna."

In recent weeks, SOPHA has scaled up its attacks, firebombing the National Endowment for the Arts, which sent the government into a full-blown state of emergency. Billy Wayne Carter publicly endorsed the terrorist activity. Then SOPHA coordinated simultaneous incursions at several state capital buildings, and suddenly it was war. Luckily, the insurgency hasn't yet affected his publishing contract. Although the government has declared eminent domain on the airwaves, the print media is harder to control and has so far remained privatized.

"He pauses in the living room to look out the window. Along the arbocured streets of his pristine suburban neighborhood, national guardsmen are constantly on patrol, sometimes in the midst of shoot outs with "rebels." Just the other day, he heard a scuffle outside, and he saw that a man was hiding in his shrubs as officers trotted down the road. Someone spotted him, and they leapt on him, nearly uprooting one of his cherry laurels.

Another day, someone had knocked on his door, a giant, over seven feet and with a scruffy orange beard. Thom had peered at him from the upstairs window. It looked like someone seeking shelter. Thom had enough problems without inviting them into the house, so he pretended not to be home.

It no longer matters much what the war is about; once things escalate into violence, the question becomes only how do they get through it. Thom continues into his recorder: "At times, it seems as if I have come from nowhere at all, that I'm little more than a stray mark from an unseen pen. I know I am not the first person to think of God as an author--Joyce says 'the playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly'--the work in which I myself am written consistently strikes me as overly selfindulgent, and I resent the lack of control that I have over my own existence."

Simply going to the grocery store has become an entire ordeal. Checkpoints at every intersection, and always the threat of improvised explosive devices. You could accidentally drive through the middle of a fire fight with no warning. But everyone sort of pretends like nothing's happening, like they can just go on and have their normal lives, just with a little extra hassle.

He notices a square yellow sticky note peeking in from under the front door. It contains a phone number and the word "Reservation." He puzzles over it a few moments and then decides the only way to solve the mystery is to call the number. It's a voicemail message, which asks him to punch in his own number. A couple of minutes later, the phone rings.

"Hello?"

"You wanted to make a reservation?"

"What am I making a reservation for?"

"A refugee area, away from the fighting."

Thom crumbles the post-it note in his hand, then smoothes it out again. A helicopter flutters by overhead, blowing back the foliage in the backyard like a swift storm. A hummingbird lingers undisturbed by the feeder outside the kitchen window.v "Hello? Still there?"

"Yes. What do I have to do? Where is it?"

"Can't disclose the location. All you have to do is be home when we show up to get you. If you're able, you might be asked to pitch in at the camp with some light labor. How many are in your party?"

"Um... I guess it would be three."

"OK, brother. We'll see you tonight, some time after midnight. Pack in advance. Plan to travel light."

"Wait..."

The line is disconnected, and Thom resumes pacing the floor.

Thom is asleep on the sofa when he's shaken awake. A man is standing over him, that same gargantuan, red-headed beggar that had come knocking on his door earlier in the week.

"C'mon brother. It's time."

Groggily, Thom puts up no resistance, grabs the suitcase that he packed earlier, and leads the man to Millie's room. Demure as ever, she takes only a small backpack with her.

And then there's Anna.

She will not be separated from the bed even to be carried or placed in a wheelchair. The only way to move her is to strap her to the mattress in such a way that both she and the mattress can be carried out of the house as a unit, angled and bent with as much care as can be afforded to fit them through doorways and down staircases and into the awaiting vehicle, an ancient yellow school bus. They have to stand the mattress upright in the back.

The bearded giant drives the bus. No on else is aboard. Along the way, the giant mentions that his name is Mangoat and that he's lived at the camp for a couple of years, since before the war. As best he can manage in his addled state, Thom digs for more information as they wind down a long series of State and County roads.

"What kind of place is it we're going to?"

"It's just a community, a spiritual community you might call it."

"What does that mean? Are you part of some kind of cult?"

Mangoat laughs, a series of sharp exhalations through his great nose. "I wouldn't call it that. But some people might see it that way. Basically, the history is this. The Chief moved out there in the woods a few years ago as a place to meditate, and gradually, people asked if they could go out there and meditate with him. Over time, there were maybe fifty of us, living on his land there and meditating with him. Recently, we realized that our location was so remote that we were in a unique position to offer refuge to a select number of people, so we decided to reach out."

"And I'm one of those lucky few. Why me?"

"You'll have to ask the Chief about that one."

"Who is this Chief? Does he have an actual name?"

"You might know him as Jack Hinderson."

So that's it. He wonders what that fat hippie Hinderson wants from him. He wanders back to his seat and tries to sleep. After an hour and a half or so, the journey is over.

With a flashlight, Mangoat shows them to their quarters, a large cabin they may eventually have to share with some other families, but for now, they have it to themselves. They clear a space for Anna and place two other cots nearby.v "Can I speak to Hinderson?"

"In the morning. Get some sleep. You must be exhausted."

*

The universe is etched on the backs of her eyelids. The bed at her back, the catheter—these are part of her self now, the external self, the vessel. The bed has been moved, and it's dark on the other side. The shapes, the shadows, the silhouettes have ceased to dance. Earlier there was such a commotion, and then she had a floating sensation, a twisting and a diving. It was nauseating, but she held fast. Now things are settled again, but dark--darker than she's ever remembered.

Anna doesn't know where they've taken her, where they've taken the bed. She doesn't much care, though somewhere the thought came across that they'd go to Albuquerque. She's never been there, but her idea of it is exotic, romantic, like Scheherazade's Baghdad. If they'd only go to Albuquerque, she has a feeling everything would return to normal, or at the least, would be ok, manageable.

She takes herself there. This is the advantage of her position, remaining here on the internal side. The sun is bright, but not burning, and everything is made out of sand, enormous castles of white, white sand, packed tight. No grain is shifted by the constant cooling breeze.

She climbs up winding white stairs, twenty, maybe thirty flights, and her feet float over each step, exerting no pressure, leaving no mark. Finally, at the top of the turret, she looks out the window, and the horizon is funnel shaped, concave.

There is a sinking near her hip and a soft, quick suction on her cheek. There's a murmuring. It's Thom saying good night. Thom. What an arcane, muttering fool he's become. The great scheduler, the saver of time, is nothing but a quack and a fraud. How could she have been blind to it? She whispers something to him in return, but she can't quite hear herself because she's listening to the sound of the sand.

*

Thom doesn't sleep. He lies in his cot with his hands folded over his chest, staring into the blackness. When he sees the sun peeking in through the window, he rises and takes a short walk around the premises.

There are a number of other buildings, at least a dozen, all virtually identical to the one where they slept, each with a garden. One building is just a huge kitchen with several picnic tables outside it.

In a circular clearing, surrounded by tall pines, he encounters some members of the flock engrossed in a group meditation. Hinderson, wrapped in his usual bright orange robe, sits on a raised platform much like the one on the television show.

"Let everything else get blurry. Focus on your inner being and the energy that flows through you."

Thom stands by respectfully until the it's over, then walks over to where Hinderson is sitting. "So it's Chief now, is it?"

"Thom Hawkins! Welcome. Thanks for coming. I'm glad you could join us."

"I didn't feel like I had much of a choice. What sort of a hokey show are you running here? What are you 'chief' of?"

"Oh, don't get your chinos in a wad, Thom. The 'chief' thing is just a term of endearment. I don't make anybody call me that. As for the hokey show you refer to, I'm just doing what I've always done. If the meditation sessions don't appeal to you, you don't have to do them. It's enough to me that you're safe and sound, and you're free to go if you don't want to stay. I simply thought you might be happier here."

"What fucking right do you have to make guesses at what would make me happy?"

"None at all."

At his last comment, Hinderson emits a girlish giggle. Thom can't think of any response to this, so he just stares, the confusion and frustration building. Hinderson gestures for him to follow, so he does. Hinderson's private cabin is down another wooded path and around a corner. He has Thom wait outside.

He returns a minute later carrying some photographs.

"I'm sorry to make you wait. My daughter is working on some sort of project. It's a mess in there. Anyway, when I moved out here a few years ago, I found a house, a shack really, that had been abandoned for some time. I took some pictures. Recognize it?"

Thom takes the stack of photos and flips through them hurriedly. It could be almost anything. The pictures are close ups of the broken in front door, a nest of possums in the corner of a room, some torn and rotted out furniture. He catches Hinderson searching his face.

"The road you took coming in... there used to be a mill at the end of it. Some people call it Old Mill Road. A couple of miles down, there's a house that used to be owned by a fellow named Dixon."

It hits him.

"You're telling me that..."

"That's right... As you may know, Dixon owned all this land, including where your father's farm was, but the bank foreclosed on him. The only reason I connected it to you is because there was a bit of contention over whether the bank had the right to sell it to me. Some people thought it belonged to someone named Thomas Hawkins, but eventually the paperwork was found proving that Dixon was the real owner. Anyway, for some reason I remembered all this when I read on the back of your book that you were originally from somewhere around here."

"This is all a little hard to believe, a little overwhelming." He doesn't mention that the hardest part to believe is that Hinderson has actually read his books. "Is the house still here?"

"Unfortunately, no. We had to make room for housing of our own, and nothing was salvageable at all." Hinderson pauses and looks at Thom all wide-eyed. "Welcome home, Thom! Quite a coinkidink, eh?"

"There's no such thing as a coincidence."

Hinderson suddenly turns serious. "You know, I believe that too."

*

Still soaking in what Hinderson told him earlier in the morning, Thom walks up the road toward what had been Clyde Dixon's place. The road, which has been paved since he last walked along it, absorbs the heavy heat of the day. Nothing about it seems familiar--not even the trees, the squirrels, the sky. Even the clouds are misshapen, like wads of cotton plugged into holes. God knows what is leaking from those holes. The buzz of crickets distorts as if synthesized and pushing the limitations of the speakers. When he stops and listens closely, there's a faint drip, the leaking drip of time slowly running out of itself.

The manse creeps into the distance, majestic and alabaster at first until Thom begins to see how sections of it have rotted away, as if bites have been taken out of it, how the chips of paint are like wrinkles on an ancient face, the antebellum columns like decayed teeth.

There's a metallic flash, but no thunder. Then a couple of seconds later, it happens again, and Thom finds himself knocked down, face toward the unwelcome above, a visitation, a swirl of multicolored lights that fades into the sun in an instant. In the sky, a guitar chord crackles like thunder; a voice whispers non sequiturs amid the pine needles. The clouds appear to be spelling something out—a T and a 2, four or five other shapes in between.

By way of the sky, knowledge is imparted to him, or knowledge he had all along is awakened. He can now make sense of the chaos. Now he understands everything that's happened to him. Now he knows that he's home.

*

Dear FF:

I've long acknowledged that there is a medium, a power greater than ourselves you might say, that moves the narratives of our lives from scene to scene. I sometimes suspect that it is the CIA, but more recently, I suspect that it might be aliens. And yes, this is where you come in, faithful friend.

I don't think BWC is an alien. I do, however, think that he is controlled by aliens, perhaps without his knowledge. My guess is that these aliens have found a way to harness time, and they are sending messages about this to the people of Earth through BWC and his art. There is a natural progression of the epic story that began with creation and continues through the music of BWC today. Possibly, this alien race has been in charge of the epic all along. Maybe they and the anonymous God of creation are one and the same.

I've taken up the habit of my mother, writing letters to the anonymous God who created me and who continues to write my life without permission or justice.

Yrs. Trly.,

TH2

*

Daybreak again, and Thom is awake. The slowness of life here still irritates him, but he's getting more accustomed to it. A week and a day into it, and he's already developed a new routine. Water use is closely monitored, and so he showers on Tuesdays and Fridays. Today being Thursday, he just lies awake, letting the time wash over him. In a few minutes he'll wash his hands and face in the sink. There's also a pond a mile or so through the woods, but it's no use for bathing, full of algae and other muck. Anyway, by the time you've hiked all the way back, you want to bathe again.

He's made a habit of joining the communal meditation in the mornings, though he still isn't convinced of the benefit, and he often nods asleep. He does it in the interest of trying to keep an open mind and because it gives him an opportunity to prioritize his plans for the day, of which there are usually few. After the meditation and a light breakfast, he goes to tend one of the vegetable gardens until lunch. He'd almost forgotten what it's like to work with one's hands, and he finds it satisfying.

He's beginning to feel a much deeper connection with his father, with his ancestry in general, through the simple and focused human mechanics of farm work. Also by reflecting on the prophetic experience he had his first morning here, which he feels was pivotal. The moment hasn't yet come for him to act, though, and he's not entirely sure what he'll do, when he finally does something. But until then, he's just biding his time here.

Millie works in the kitchen with Mangoat (when he isn't off on some rescue mission). When she isn't working, she follows Mangoat around like a pup. Yesterday, he saw them canoodling under a shade tree.

When Thom arrives at the family's quarters one afternoon to deliver Anna's lunch, he is imperturbed to find that Anna had not survived the afternoon. Consciously and coldly, he contemplates what his proper response should be, and he decides to lay her bowl down beside the bed. It unnerves him to let the food be wasted, but he can't imagine eating it himself, much less anyone else taking her forfeited last meal. He pulls the sheet up over her head and then turns his face away.

His heart beats hollowly as he brushes his teeth. Afterward, he looks around the empty cabin. The white lump in Anna's bed catches his eye again. He supposes he should notify somebody.

Hinderson's yard and entrance are always open. The smell of burning incense welcomes Thom into a hallway decorated with eclectic religious articles from around the world--crucifixes, Buddha statuettes, African masks, bug-eyed space aliens, you name it. Hinderson appears, not suddenly, from behind a sheer curtain. "I am sorry. Of course, we'll give her a proper burial."

"Yes, I don't doubt that, but what exactly would that mean? I haven't got the foggiest idea what a proper burial is supposed to be any more than I know what a proper unicorn looks like."

The discussion makes Thom uncomfortable, and his voice croaks as if he's fighting tears. He realizes it would seem perfectly natural to cry, though his invisible tears aren't of grief; but of some kind of great catharsis that he cannot explain and isn't sure is moral.

"Very much like small horses, I think," says Hinderson. "With a horn, of course. Would you like to see a movie?"

"Movie?"

"Oh, you will like this movie. Yes, it's very good." While he's speaking, Hinderson searches for and locates a video cassette. He opens a sliding panel, revealing a large television screen. Thom is suspicious about this entire situation, but it's been so long since he's seen television that he becomes hypnotized by the electric glow. It reminds him of his father.

The movie begins with a computer-simulated explosion, flashes of multi-colored light. A voice explains that everything in the universe is made of stardust. The universe began as a very small, but dense, ball of energy, pure, homogenous, and literally extremely hot. As it cooled, it expanded and broke down into more complicated structures. Before a second of time had passed, the universe had already gone through violent changes. At one point, the universe was creating so much matter and anti-matter at once that it inflated quickly like a huge balloon to many times its size, and the matter and anti-matter at the same time were going through a series of rapid changes. Then suddenly, the matter and anti-matter collided and annihilated each other, but somehow there had been slightly more matter than anti-matter, and a tiny bit of matter survived the collision. Out of this handful of stardust, came the rest of the universe.

That's it. A simple classroom reel about astronomy.

When the movie ends, however, Thom is surprised to find himself refreshed. He returns to his own quarters where a crowd has gathered. People begin rushing up to hug him, offer condolences. Some bring gifts--wood carvings, bowls of nuts or berries, meat, or cigarettes. He can't help but wonder what motivates them, being that none of these people ever knew Anna at all, and few have ever even seen her.

They burn the body--along with the bed--in a giant funeral pyre. Perfumes and incenses are used to cover the odor of burning flesh. The tribe sings, dances and feasts around the fire until dawn begins to peek over the horizon, and there's nothing left of the great celebration except the twisted, blackened heap of metal that was Anna's bed frame.

Thom sits watching the embers fade until he's alone with Anna's ashes.

He sees a form in the trees, maybe a bobcat or a wild dog, drawn to the odor of the dead. He soon sees that it's a man in uniform, and he tenses up more even as he leans in for a better look. There's something hauntingly familiar--the stringy brown hair, the mustache, the boots. It looks dead like his father. The man turns toward him, and his feet freeze to the ground as a white light of fear bleaches his skin. He looks more like Old Tom with every step. They stare into each other's eyes about three feet apart, and then there's his father's voice. "Bubba, s'that you?"

He doesn't answer, just sort of nods. The man laughs and leaps to embrace him. Before he knows it, the ghost is hugging him, and he doesn't know how to react.

Finally, the ghost lets him go, stares purposefully into his face. "Do you know who I am, Bubba? It's your brother, Jason. I'm your brother, man."

"Jason?"

"Yeah, man. It's me, Jason."

Out of all the questions that Thom wants to ask him, only one doesn't bring out the years of repressed resentment that he feels, and that's the one that he finally decides to ask. "Are you hungry?"

Thom leads Jason into the cabin. In the light, he looks less like Old Tom. He still has bad teeth and shaggy hair and smells of hickory smoke, but the details become distinctly his. They sit down on the floor over a bowl of mixed nuts and some bottled water.

For a few minutes, nothing happens. They stare at each other uncomfortably. Jason begins rolling a joint, and after lighting it, passes it over to Thom. Then Thom breaks the silence. "How the hell did you find me?"

"I wasn't even looking, but I always knew we'd cross paths again. Congratulations by the way."

"On what?"

"You're famous, man! I actually avoided tracking you down because I didn't want you to think I was there just to mooch..." They pass the joint back and forth a couple more times. Jason suddenly notices Millie asleep in the corner of the room. "Christ in a kayak. Is that?"

"Yeah, we should, uh, wake her up I guess."

Thom tiptoes over and gently shakes her awake. As if sleepwalking, perhaps believing that she's merely continuing a dream, she rises, looks at her long lost brother for approximately two heartbeats and then silently embraces him.

Time passes, and relatively few words are spoken by any of the three. The overwhelming strangeness of the moment outweighs the sentimentality and other frenzied emotions that Thom's sure they all feel. After several minutes of the common mood alternating between giddiness, seriousness and mere shock, Jason nervously, inevitably asks about the fate of Old Tom. Millie and Thom both pale.

"He got pretty crazy."

"Man, he always acted crazy."

"No. After you left, he got...well, I don't want to go into it, but he got a lot worse."

"Whad'you mean? Come on, man. I want to know... I ought to know."

"For a while, he was just like a plow horse that did some of the simple heavy work, but the planting, picking, cooking, and other house chores were left for Millie and me. Eventually, he stopped working. Millie and I had to do everything."

"Shit, man."

"Any time we left the house, even to go to school, he said he'd probably be dead when we came back. He'd mope around all day in his underwear, yelling to no one in particular that he was cursed by God. If he wasn't threatening to kill us, he was threatening to kill himself. One day, he handed Millie a gun and asked her to kill him, like a sick horse, he said."

Jason stands up and paces the room, clutching his head as if trying to keep it from falling off his shoulders. He stares at the wall until he can summon up the courage to turn to his sister. "What'd you do?"

"Kaboom."

*

Thom wakes later than usual, and Jason is asleep in a pallet on the floor. "Jason, you awake?"

After a moment, Jason rolls over. "What is it Bubba?"

"You know anything about Billy Wayne Carter?"

Jason smiles. "That dude is amazing. I've seen him thirty seven times."

"The afternoon before you ran away, do you remember that we helped some people out of the sand?"

"Yeah, that rings a bell."

'The guy? Didn't he say his name was Billy Wayne Carter?"

"I don't know.... I mean... Let's think about this." Jason then digresses into what he knows about Billy Wayne Carter, his approximate age (early 40s), that he may have roots somewhere in the Southeast, but he's kept his background mostly out of the public domain, that he lives in New York with his girlfriend Jennie Mae Crosby, a painter or sculptor or something. "You got any coffee around here?"

"Yeah."

Thom leads Jason outside, past the morning yoga class on the lawn, to the common kitchen building. Somebody has already brewed two large pots. Thom takes a couple of mugs from the sink and quickly washes them out.

"There's sugar in there, and there's milk in the fridge."

"Thanks. You know, me and you ought to hit the road together and have some times. If we can make it up to Anchorage I've got a buddy who's starting a nightclub there. I can always bartend; I've been doing it since I was sixteen, and if you've got a little money, maybe you could buy into the business."

"Anchorage, Alaska? No thanks. Too cold. Besides, I might have a little money in the bank, but not enough to invest in a business venture."

"Well, think on it. Anchorage is looking pretty good to me. And there ain't really a war there because there's no culture to speak of."

"Why don't you stay here a while. After all it was once your home, at least the land was."

"Hell, I'll give it a try for a while, but I'm a restless sort. I'll probably have to move on before long. I wouldn't be averse to company, but I understand that you have a life here."

"Well, I'm not planning on staying here forever either. I'm thinking about maybe going to New York."

He's been thinking about it since roughly the night before. In fact, "thinking" about is perhaps not the accurate phrase. It's more like the thought flashed through his mind two or three times non apropos, and when Jason mentioned that Billy Wayne lives there--of course he does--that seemed to seal it. Suddenly, it seems imperative that he go, to reclaim his own will, a bold fuck you to the whimsical power above that moves him around like a pawn, or more like a bishop, diagonally. And maybe, if he does a little research, he could get a little closer to that Billy Wayne Carter and find out what he's all about.

Maybe Vanessa can arrange a place for him to stay.

*

Dear FF,

My sources tell me that BWC lives in a luxury building on East 12th Street on the once-great island known as Manhattan, if such an existence can be called "living." I'm determined to go there when I can.

I had a message from Vanessa today. She wants to talk to me about my next book, but I'm not going to have it for her. The so-called "self-help" industry where I've made my living these last few years is a travesty. People can't help themselves. Everything happens at the whim of the universal creative urge, represented in the art of Billy Wayne Carter, and controlled by aliens or angels, or maybe the CIA. Both my agent and publisher are already talking about suing me for breach of contract if I don't churn out another life-affirming program and panacea for the manifest spiritual malaise of everyman. Those NAZIS have even tried to force me to see a psychiatrist. They think I'M crazy.

They don't understand, refuse to believe what's happening, what the aliens or the CIA are doing, stealing away time.

They harvest time like crude oil, squeezing it out of pockets where its abundance is well-hidden. They scoop it up in enormous nets. They pull it off of vines. They harvest it from fields. Honestly, I don't know how they do it, or what they do with it. I just know that the more they take, the less there is for us. Perhaps they use it as food, as fuel, as fabric.

Things are already becoming compressed. I'm already older than I should be. I don't even know how old I am. I should be thirty, feel at least twice that.

Eventually, inevitably, what will happen is everything at once.

Ys trly,

TH2

*

After getting off the train at Penn Station, Thom wanders through the halls. Many vendor booths have been shut down, and through the metal gates he can see crumbs of what was there before--some abandoned kitchen equipment, a few tourist knickknacks left on a shelf. Armed guards walk the floor, especially around the picketers gathered near the 34th Street entrance. He sets down his two suitcases and rests against the wall opposite the ticket booths. Vanessa is going to meet him here. She's arranged a sublet for him uptown somewhere. He's still a half hour early, so he sits down on the ground and starts looking through his map of Manhattan. The grid system makes sense to him in theory, but it gets a little wacky in places, such as the Greenwich Village area.

He feels a tap on his shoulder, and it's Vanessa in a teal business suit. She's thinner and paler than he remembers from the only other time he's met her in person, a couple of years before. Also more beautiful, child-like in stature and with dark hair and lips like slices of ripe melon that are moving inaudibly in a wondrous dance.

"How was your trip? You look exhausted."

"It was long, but I kept myself busy."

"That's what you do best."

She helps him with his bags and leads him through the throngs to the subway where they catch the A train uptown. A transient wanders through the car handing out pamphlets and asking for alms. Another passes through while making a speech about the government media takeover while a small group of young hipsters in the corner cheers him on.

Through all this, Vanessa patters on about how excited everyone is that he's decided to come up here and work seriously on another book, about how he's going to love it here, about how even though there's still a war on, the city has so much to offer and there's lots to do. She talks and talks without him saying much of anything until they get off the train at 181st Street and walk a couple of blocks to an apartment building where they take a very oldlooking elevator to the sixth floor and then enter a one-room apartment, furnished with a twin bed and a small desk with an office chair.

"I know it's small, practically a walk-in closet by Atlanta standards, but this is what $1000 a month can get you in Manhattan these days, and it's a bargain at that."

"It's fine. I have a pretty Spartan lifestyle these days, you know, since Anna..."

Vanessa touches him affectionately on the arm. He supposes she thinks he's going to get emotional. He makes like he's shaking it off.

"Out this window, you can see the George Washington Bridge. If you walk a couple of blocks West, there's a park by the Hudson River that's actually quite pretty. If you walk East a few blocks, there's another river, which, uh, isn't as pretty."

She reaches into her pocket book and pulls out some cards and papers, which she hands over to him.

"Here's my home phone number. You have my office number. And here's your new number, and a metrocard, which you can use on the subway or on city busses. There's a small grocery store on the corner, which you saw by the subway, and there's a larger store up Fort Washington Avenue. Do you need anything else?"

"No, this'll be fine."

"I live in the neighborhood too, so I'm close by if you have any questions, or if you just want to talk."

"OK, I'll call you later. Maybe we can have dinner."

"That'd be great. I hope this will be a good work space for you."

He shows her to the door. When she leaves, he stretches out on the bed. He doesn't think he'll need to talk to her, although he wouldn't mind fucking her. Not that fucking is trivial in the grand scheme of things. What grand scheme of things is that? This cycle: all from nothing of the anonymous God, a physical law of the preservation of souls--soulenergy, eroticism as the celebration of the propagation of soulenergy, decadence and decay, spiritual rebirth into anonymity.

*

Dear FF,

Each day, for the past four days, I wake up early and walk from 181st Street down to the East Village. It takes about two and a half hours. There are checkpoints at most of the major intersections--125th Street, both ends of Central Park, 42nd Street, 34th Street, and 14th Street. You show your ID, and they let you through. I don't know what they're looking for, but presumably, they'll know it when they see it.

Times Square and Midtown are largely peaceful, almost free of tourists these days. A lot of the theatres have closed down. Incidentally, I've noticed that a lot of people seem to think that it's Time Square, rather than Times, as if it's supposed to be the vortex of time itself. If only it were--that would obviously be of extreme interest to me.

I arrive at East 12th Street a little before 11 am. The rest of the day, I sit with my notebook in a sidewalk café across the street from the building where I understand Billy Wayne Carter lives. I have lunch and dinner there at an outdoor table, and I pretend to write. I write these letters, but I haven't even attempted to work on a book. Obviously, that's just a ruse so I have an excuse to be here. I haven't yet caught a glimpse of BWC. Like the guardsmen at the checkpoints, I'm not sure at all what I'm looking for, but I know that I'll know it when I see it.

Yrs. Trly.,

TH2

*

The rain pummels the sidewalk, purges it, floods the gutters with litter. Traffic on the GWB stands still, and the sky is dark though it's still early afternoon. Thom watches the lights go out in the surrounding buildings, hears the radio announcer advise everyone to stay indoors. Then his own power goes out.

He writes by candlelight.

He feels at once the wandering, exploring instinct of Jason and the purification instinct of his father. He feels the weight of derelict generations on his consciousness, and he sees no direction that he can recognize.

He signs his initials, and then one by one, he neatly removes each of the perforated pages from his notebook, crumbles them, and makes a pyramid in the metal can. He dips the candle into the mouth, and there's a flash.

It is in virtue of light that we can see the world, but is it really the world?

The radio comes back on, and New York City is relit. The announcer says that it is the worst rain in the city for forty years, and the water continues to fall.

*

Outside the throng grows and pulses, generating a rumbling, growling thunder underneath the outer lights of the amphitheater. At times, a cackling chatter transcends the cloud of people then disintegrates into the air like a spark. Between pockets of cigarette smoke a lighter, less toxic smoke drifts and rises. Closer to the ground the stale smell of wine slowly evaporates. The doors open, tickets are torn, bags are examined, and turnstiles creak and snap. Organizations are represented in booths on each floor of the stadium. Quasipolitico factions protest the performance.

Reactionaries scream amorality and blasphemy holding up their No Art signs. Behind them, screaming and shackled in loose chains, Mangoat pelts them with cashews and pistachios. Military police patrol the scene, noticing nothing but the strangeness of kids' clothes and hair. No one knows what to expect.

"He has a sixty-piece orchestra and choreographed dancers."

"He's playing a mostly acoustic set, by himself."

"It will be a dramatic overblown extravaganza."

"It will be all new songs."

"It will be all old songs."

There's an opening act. Some people have heard of them, the Lost Expletives--psychedelic punk band from Birmingham, Alabama. A small crowd gathers at the foot of the stage and dances to them. A smaller crowd gathers in the bathroom to get stoned. Some people remain seated in the back. Some stand around with impatiently crossed arms.

"They suck."

"I like them."

"They used to be good, but they sold out."

"Who are they?"

The band thanks everyone for coming, thanks Billy Wayne for letting them play. Their singer joins the crowd anonymously. The lights dim as stagehands rearrange the set. Technicians tune guitars and check microphones. The crowd cheers as ramps emerge from either side of the stage, and a team of angels on roller skates come gliding down. Everyone recognizes them from the album cover. After a couple of laps, they disappear offstage. Behind them Billy Wayne appears with his guitar--a white Stratocaster, white as light itself. He wears clean work shoes, blue jeans and a tee shirt. The crowd cheers even louder than before.

"A'ight."

He silences everyone by playing a chord on his guitar, an open fifth, the paradigmatic rock and roll chord.

In a bed at the back of the auditorium, with her legs spread and feet strapped, Mildred Hawkins gives birth to an idea. Complications ensue, and she dies. The idea is that time is a fiction. Thom turns his face away then runs to hide in the woods. A blue neon river runs through the middle of the audience, carrying Billy Wayne's voice. A drum beats out a tribal message. Electric strings translate the rhythm into harmony. A team of melodies dive into the river with Billy Wayne's voice, which interprets and narrates the epic of the drums. The epic of history. The epic of time.

Jason lights a fire by the edge of the river and lies back on the concrete grass. The smell of urine and wine almost lulls him to sleep, but he's startled by a vision. He looks back to the bed and sees blood and shit splattering the walls. Kids dance around him, covered in rotten smelling bile. Clyde Dixon laughs.

"Get your money's worth?"

Get your money's worth, the river echoes. Get your money's worth. Cherry Hinderson reaches out to him, and they dance. Spinning around the room while the drums beat out the epic, they dance the dance of the end of time.

"Time? Did somebody mention time?"

Time, the river answers. It's about time. Billy Wayne looks sternly out to the crowd as an instrumental segment begins. The roller skating angels reappear with a blaring blazing guitar solo. Old Tom stops dragging his plow across the floor to look up at them.

"It's God's curse on me. God is testing me."

He turns his head back to the ground and resumes his plowing, stepping lightly as if he's resisting the urge to dance. Dance the dance of the end of time. It's about time. Time to get your money's worth. Tom gets tired and takes a seat by the river. His body begins to bulge strangely, and a giant ravenous possum tears its way out of Old Tom's stomach.

Still dripping, the possum stands on its hind legs in front of Old Tom and speaks. "Focus on the energy that flows through you. Let everything else get blurry."

Get blurry, the river says. Anna climbs out from the river, kisses the possum on top of the head, and then gets in bed. The sky opens up into a white light. Billy Wayne begins to sing again.

Anna, Millie and Jennie Mae Crosby sit around a table drinking coffee, black.

"I never listened to him much, but it reminds me of when I was young. It's very traditional in a way I guess."

"Traditional? Well, I suppose everything is somehow."

"He isn't traditional. He's tradition."

"Well, he's certainly energetic."

Billy Wayne bounces frantically around the stage. He swings from the rafters, dives into the crowd, swims into the river and disappears. The river dries up, and everyone gathers around, staring into the abysmal hole.

Thom looks up from his letter writing, staring into the eye of God.

"God, you just can't hear it, can you?"

*

The evening begins to spend itself into the debts of morning, and it continues to rain until the next day. Thunder crashes above the displaced greenery of Manhattan. Billy Wayne sits in the window of his penthouse in the East Village, watching the rain, strumming some jazz chords on an acoustic guitar. Something about a major ninth chord seems to compliment the downpour in a pleasing way.

Jenny Mae is working on a sculpture downstairs. She says that it will be titled Chaos giving birth to the Universe, but she will tell him nothing more about it.

Everyone thinks he's the great artist, the genius. He just looks at what's happening in the world and copies it. His new music doesn't have the bite of the old stuff; he knows that. His recordings have become like vacuum cleaners. They clear away the dust in people's minds. When people want to pretend like they're free, like they have some purpose, they can listen to his music and feel justified.

He doesn't know if anything makes a real difference in this world, but there isn't enough time in life to take chances on not making a difference. And now that the government is tapping his phone lines, parvenu journalists are writing unauthorized biographies to expose his "dark" side, high school marching bands are covering his melodies, and glazed over freaks call out his name in the street to get him to sign his name on plastic discs that play the songs he's a little embarrassed that he wrote, decorated dirgical poems about isolation, desperation, mortality, and hope.

In those days, he still believed in something called Truth with a capital T. That's what had led him to Jennie Mae. She was it.

They had left the bar at about five o'clock that summer Friday afternoon, headed for the beach. They had discovered along the way that they had very similar ideals and dreams, which neither had pursued. They were both starting from nothing, so they made a pact to begin a new life. They pulled down a winding dirt road to make the pact official with a quick round of love-making. That day was one of the fondest in his memory. They had known each other for less than twenty-four hours when they decided to screw everything, drive to California and live together at the beach. They got meager jobs while he concentrated on improving his skill as a guitarist and she studied sculpture. Anyway, he's filling his mind with rot, reminiscing like this. He decides to go for a walk.

He walks past his childhood where he had been lonely and misguided, but also arrogant and condescending. The same street leads up to his teen years. He sees himself fantasizing about turning back time and changing the course of history. He watches himself climb in to his long ass blue car and speed down country roads. The odors of cow dung and honeysuckle filter through the air-conditioning vents, and he rolls down the window to let it in more. Huge farmhouses overlook cast tracts of green fields. He thinks nothing is as beautiful as early morning dew and fog shimmering and blurring the too-green grass. A dilapidated water mill sinks down into a slimy morass covered with mosquito larvae. He thinks nothing is as beautiful as an afternoon moon in the late summer shining down on those post-rainstorm swamp weeds.

This brings him home again.

He hears someone call out, and he turns around. The guy, who's skinny and looks like he hadn't slept or shaved in a while, gives him two disks to sign, rare ones. The guy asks him to sign the disks to "Thom" with an 'h'. Billy Wayne doesn't even remember recording them; so much has been done through all these years, and he never goes back and listens to them afterwards. He looks up after he finished signing to see the guy pointing toward him, armed.

But there's no gunshot. Instead, the sky splits open blindingly and everything around him seems to move in fast forward, traffic, pedestrians, birds, clouds. The fan puts his gun down and shuffles away with a Chaplain-esque lilt. Steadily, it gets faster and faster. Day and night blind together into one, flickering like a strobe light, but all over the world. The ground begins to spin and lift him up toward the source of the light, dark, light, dark, until he is face to face with the unknowable, the unseeable, chaos itself, in labor once again, with Billy Wayne on the receiving end, ready to catch the new baby universe in his arms.

***

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***

The Office Party

(1) IVAN WURKINONDA REILRODE

Ivan is alone, the first to arrive. He turns on the lights and walks over to the punch bowl. Empty. Green and yellow streamers hang like cobwebs from the ceiling. The garbage cans are overstuffed with paper plates and broken styrofoam cups. He bends down to feel the dark stains on the carpet--still wet. Moving closer to the floor, sniffing like a hound, he stretches his tongue out for a sample of the offending liquid. "Piss," he says to himself. He springs to his feet yelling, "Piss! Piss!" He loosens his tie and takes off his shirt. "Piss!" The tiny gray hairs on his chest stand on end from the sudden chill. He growls. He takes off his shoes and throws them the left one at the punch bowl and the right one at the fax machine. The machine falls with a clank to the floor, and a note flies from it like the last feather of a gunned-down bird.

He puts his shirt back on and walks into the kitchen. Someone is there, waiting in the dark.

(2) ALDA LIVELONG DAY

"No one is bringing any sweets," Alda laments as she scans the volunteer list. "Everybody is bringing salties. What's a Christmas party without sweets?" She gazes around in wonderment, ignored. She turns to Kent at the next desk. "Excuse me, Kent."

He turns around.

"I hate to bother you, but do you think you could bring something sweet to the party instead of this?" She points on the list to an item, Dill Weed Oyster Crackers, next to Kent's name. "I know your wife makes wonderful chocolate cake and rum balls--you brought them last year. I wondered if you could bring something like that instead, 'cause everybody's bringing salty things, and nobody's bringing sweets."

Kent shrugs. "Well, I'd have to call her and ask, but I hate to do that since she's moved out of the house and all."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know. I'll ask somebody else--don't you worry about it."

"Oh, no. Wait. I'll ask her. Really."

"I couldn't ask you to do that, Kent. Just don't worry about it. I need to ask other people anyway. Dinah, are you off the phone? Good. Now tell me, just what the heck are Creamy Weenies?"

(3) IVAN WURKINONDA REILRODE

Everything he hates. Why he condemned himself to this purgatory, he can't remember. First time he's been around average joes since he was in high school--never had to deal with people like this in college. Forgotten how warped their values were--how susceptible to television culture they were. Disgusted, he quietly leaves the party. He can't even bear to look at them.

As he turns the corner, he passes a newsstand where three men in suits are talking on cellular phones. "Stand firm," one of the men says into his receiver. "Don't let them talk you into doing anything you don't want to do." Ivan enters a coffee shop on the left side of the road. His head begins to itch.

Something he was supposed to do. People on park benches. A slip of paper in his pocket, which he now decides to read. "Shit," he says, and he turns back toward the office. For a few seconds he runs, then he walks.

(4) JUSDA PASDA TIMAWAY

"Every Friday we have mahi-mahi. Grilled mahi-mahi, baked mahi-mahi, barbequed mahi-mahi, blackened mahi-mahi, broiled mahi-mahi with lemon pepper sauce. Mmmmm."

(5) KENT YAHIR DEWISSELBLOEN

"Rhiza, this is my roommate, Ben DaCapenschouten." Rhiza is so butch. She's his idol. Lord, it's warm in here, he thinks. "Good to meet you, Ben. My, you both have such unusual last names. How funny that you would end up as roommates. What do you do?"

"I'm in the food distribution business, in management," Ben tells her, smiling. He points to his necktie, motifed with the Taco Heaven emblem.

"That must be interesting," Rhiza says wryly.

(6) RHIZA NUPP

"I can't stay too much longer. One of the girls on my soccer team is having a period party tonight."

Alda says, "Is that similar to a costume party?"

"No."

(7) EARL E. N. DE MOURNE

Earl finds a slip of paper that has drifted onto his desk. He looks around to see who had left him the leaflet, but he can not determine the distributor. Shyly, he reads it.

Earl folds the memo and places it in the breast pocket of his corduroy jacket.

(8) KENT YAHIR DACAPENSCHOUTEN

"Earl, do you have a minute?"

"Sure, Kent. What's up?"

"Well, I need to have my name changed in the computer system. Since Ben and I got, you know, married, I had my last name legally changed to his."

"Sure, Kent. Just fill out this form, and I'll take care of it."

(9) DINAH BLOYER-HORNE

"What are these called again?"

"Creamy Weenies," Dinah says with a sigh.

"Gee, they're good," says Alda. "Before you leave, I'll have to get the recipe from you."

"Sure, Alda. No problem. They're really easy." Dinah walks toward the kitchen and waits.

***

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***

Funeral Music

IN THE PINE BRANCH CEMETER out on County Road 14, the air tastes chalky with a hint of citrus, like children's chewable vitamins. There's a plant a little further down the road that manufactures them. Fifteen year-old Daniel Birch plays "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" on the accordion as they lower his musical mentor Charlie Woods in to the hole.

Daniel is saddened by Charlie's passing, but the death came as no surprise. Lung cancer. As he squeezes out the hymn, he thinks of Charlie's voice wheezing out harmonies when they sang old tunes together on Wednesday afternoons. He looks out at the sober mourners in their metal chairs and suddenly feels as still and flat as a photograph. After the service, Daniel shakes hands with a few people and then discreetly slips away, hops on his bicycle with the accordion strapped to his back, and heads home for supper.

As he bikes away, across the green, Daniel can make out the shape of the widow Ballard sitting adjacent to her husband's monument, where she can be found most evenings (weather permitting), knitting and listening to a battery-powered radio tuned to a nostalgic station. A string of multi-colored Christmas lights, not plugged-in, wraps ivy-like around a stone statue of St. Vincent rising above Dr. Ballard's headstone.

The Ballard funeral was Daniel's first. Charlie was supposed to play it, but Charlie fell ill just before the ceremony, and so his most talented pupil was sent in his stead. Daniel played "Galway Bay" and "The Wind Beneath My Wings." When the service was over, the widow Ballard shook young Daniel's hand and told him everything had been perfect.

Ever since then, Daniel's known throughout the town as the go-to guy for pretty much any type of funeral music. Always bespectacled, his long blond bangs combed back, and wearing on oversized gray suit handed down from his stepfather Dick, Daniel plays bugle at military funerals and organ at church funerals. All the funeral directors in town have his number and will call him. He plays "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on trombone, "Nearer My God to Thee" on the banjo, and "Amazing Grace" on the harmonica. He gets paid between fifty and a hundred dollars for these performances, and he frequently gets out of school for them.

*

On a humid Saturday afternoon, Daniel plays piano for the residents at the Village, where his mother works as the social coordinator. He's starting to get used to the antiseptic smell of the old folks home, but he's still struggling to remember all their names. He does enjoy the attention he gets. The old folks ask him questions about all of his instruments. He plays almost anything he can get his hands on, and he loves the same old-timey tunes that they do. When he plays, the old folks all sing along with him, and the more spry among them dance.

"Do you know that one, 'I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire.'"

"Sure do."

He plays and sings, drawing out 'fire' as 'fiyaah,' which makes the old folks laugh.

"What's that thing on your notebook there?"

He keeps his sheet music in a folder on which there is a picture of Jar Jar Binks. He learns that most of the old folks have not seen a single one of the Star Wars movies, but he can discuss older movies with them, including Casablanca and His Girl Friday, which are two of his favorites.

When he leaves, as always, Jack Finley jokes darkly with him about where they might next meet. "See you next week, if not here, at Pine Branch."

*

Daniel reads the paper over a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, finds out who he might be playing for soon, a way of preparing for his gigs. On his way to the obits, in the regional news, a story catches his eye. In a nearby town, workers were clearing out some abandoned buildings. In one, they found a skull and hands in a refrigerator. In another, there was a corpse whose face had been chopped off with a hatchet. There is something remarkable about that description to Daniel. Perhaps the funeral business is changing him. He's not even sure what it means to have had one's face chopped off with a hatchet. He supposes they mean the skin on the front of the skull, which would include the nose, the lips, and the eyebrows. To have ears, but no lips. Why not take all of me, as the song goes.

Back to the obituaries, he is struck dumb by a picture of a young Italian immigrant named Josephine. She is only 19, dark, closely cropped hair. Most of her family is still overseas, but for some reason the funeral is to be here. And she is a beauty, a classic dark goddess with that cow-eyed sense of tragedy that befitted the queens of the silver screen. Instinctively he caresses her cheek through the newsprint murmuring to himself, ah, sweet mystery of life.

Clay Davis is directing. Clay is one of the younger funeral directors in town, in his twenties. He inherited the business from his family and started running it straight out of high school. Sometimes the two of them get high afterwards, and then Daniel helps him put the chairs away.

Daniel tears the page out of the obits, folds it gently, and places it in his music folder. He walks to school, still thinking of the brooding pout of the Italian beauty, Josephine. He tries to sketch her face during homeroom, but he's soon frustrated by his incompetence, crumples the paper and tosses it.

*

Josephine's address, according to the obituary article, is in a quaint subdivision called the Duck Pond--by chance across the street and a couple of houses down from his Aunt Jessie's place. He asks Jessie if she knows of Josephine, if she knows how she died.

"Nope. I never met the people who live in that house. I think they just moved in a few months ago. Military people I gathered."

It's the night before the funeral. Daniel sits on Jessie's front porch and watches Josephine's house, waiting to see what friends and relatives may stop by. Maybe they know some of the same people. But no cars arrive, and around ten, he gets tired of waiting, says goodnight to Jessie and walks home.

*

He is to play an old hymn called "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, I'll Be There" and "I Will Always Love You" by Whitless Houston, or more correctly by Dolly Parton. Anyway, it's all wrong. It can't be what she would have wanted. The attendees also are wrong--beehived Baptist women with too much eye shadow and middle-aged men with crew cuts and tobacco stained shirts. The obit spoke of a mother and two brothers in Italy, but he can't identify anyone that makes sense in that role. Especially wrong is the one Daniel presumes to be her father or guardian--a wooden jarhead with squinted eyes. The jarhead sits in the front row, and the preacher keeps looking at him when he speaks about "the loss."

Afterwards, Clay lights up a joint and passes it. "That wasn't the dad, dude. It was the widower."

"Aw, man. Don't tell me that. He's too old."

"If I'd known you were infatuated with her, I'd have let you see her get embalmed. You could have helped even."

"There's this dream I keep having. I know it's corny, but it's just her face. I'm curled up next to her and I can't see her body, only her face. She says things to me in Italian, and I understand because it's close to Latin, and I took Latin, in the dream I mean, not in real life. They don't have Latin at my school."

"Even your dreams are dorky. So what did she say?"

"I don't remember. We just talk, you know, about stuff, about whatever."

*

It's been a couple of weeks, but he is still obsessed--no smitten--no obsessed is more like it.

To think of her name--Josephine--somehow begins to seem too crude. Now he calls her simply "the Face," which is what they used to call Garbo. He and the Face communicate often through his accordion, his trombone, his banjo. Not the bugle. On the family's upright piano, he sings "They Can't Take That Away From Me" at the top of his lungs while gingerly working around the two busted, dissident, polyphonic keys--the A below middle C and the Bb above. The mother asks him not to hit the keys so hard. Something in the kitchen smells delicious, but he cannot imagine eating.

*

He feels the malady of love festering in his heart and stomach, and he is not at all stoic. After he tastes a tear on his lip during "Abide with Me" at the Glen Yarborough service (a drunk driver, no open coffin for this one), he confesses again to Clay.

"Dude, you're not in quote unquote love. Let go of that. You're in quote unquote lust--with a woman who is not only spoken for, but dead. And I suspect the colonel is a force to be reckoned with. She's already buried, man."

"I have to find out her story. I'll talk to him. I'll tell him I'm writing a paper for school. On cradle-robbers or something."

*

Weeks pass during which Daniel does little but study and rehearse, and nobody new dies. The now crumpled Face lives in a desk drawer, but within arm's reach of the bed. An unfortunate incident with a bottle of grape soda nearly destroys it, so he makes a few backup copies from the microfiche at the library. In a temporary lapse of good judgment and taste, he wastes one of them, using it as receptacle and tissue. The others he safely tucks away in a manila folder.

Clay calls to request his services for the Finley funeral. Bone cancer. They've requested "We'll Meet Again." Vera Lynn. He already has the sheet music. No problem.

"By the way...saw your girlfriend's husband last night at Poplar Head. He's got a new one already. This one's Asian."

"Hmph."

*

He walks in the late afternoon by the duck pond in the eponymous neighborhood, and he sits emptying his thoughts into the water. Ducks become accustomed to him and consider him one of their own, duck-like. At times, one will stand next to him staring where he is staring, puzzling over what he puzzles over, but offering no answers.

On returning homeward, he passes her house, although to him it was never really her house. It's just some retired army colonel lives there with his young Asian wife.

The Finley funeral is a morning service, so he misses his first three classes. However, he has to get back to school for a trig test in the afternoon, so Clay gives him a ride in the hearse.

"Dig this. They're digging up your girlfriend. Someone suspects foul play. There might actually be some story to this story after all."

"Who told you that?"

"Coroner."

He searches his vocabulary for a response. It's so much easier knowing what to say when the song has already been written for you. Now he's simply stunned, stung, stumped.

*

The workers dig in the night like robbers because he goes before school the next day to check, and the hole is unfilled. There is a ladder, and he climbs down, lies on his back, breathes. He can only smell dirt, but he imagines that there is some other essence there, a connection.

Above, the sun is not yet awake, and the sky is damp, red, swollen, inflamed. The moon is white, not at all like a big pizza pie, but more like the pus-filled head on a pimple or boil. His lovesickness is coming to a head. He lies--horrified, fascinated, relieved--beneath the infected sky until he hears morning birds and then thunder. Fearing discovery more than the rain, he lets the mud, her mud, washes over him. The rain will soak his soiled clothes and cleanse him. He emerges from the grave, prepared to begin anew.

Across a thick fog, the widow Ballard softly warbles "Embraceable You" with an arm around Harry's headstone. She's probably been there all night.

***

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***

Bertrand Russell Sees a Man

I. A Man Viewing a Sunset

Let (x is human and x is male) be true where (x=x) is always true and (x has the name "John") is sometimes true. Let (s=the visible atmosphere of the earth) be true if and only if the sun appears from position(x) on the surface of the earth to rest on the edge of the western horizon such that s:x is fragile and delicious as a warm cookie.

II. A Man in Love

Let x have the property L(x) where (L=the certain combination of active neurons which results in giddiness) is always true. Let (g is human and g is female) be true where (g=g) is always true and (g has the name "Mary") is sometimes true. Let L(x) occur if and only if x:g results in the property B(x) where (B=an intensional relation [belief] that L(g):x reciprocally) is always true. If L(x) is true and B(x) is true then LB(x) results in the property F(x) where (F=the certain combination of neurons which result in the intensional relation [feeling] that L(x):g is fragile and delicious as a warm cookie) is sometimes true.

III. A Dead Man

Let L(g):x be false if and only if x:g results in the property D(g) where (D=the intensional relation [disgust] that L(x):g) is sometimes true. If L(g):x is false then not x.

***

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***

The Art of Invisibility

AMANDA HAS ALMOST PERFECTED the art of becoming invisible. She began to obtain this skill at the request of Gregory, to whom she refers without irony as her boyfriend. She can strip down completely naked in a public place, like a restaurant or shopping mall, and nobody will notice. She has also done this at dinner parties, concerts and once at a Mets game.

Today, they're in a restaurant with a large group of people, all their most talkative and rowdy friends—artists, musicians, actors, some people Gregory grew up with in New Jersey. She wears a loose sundress, nothing underneath, wood-soled sandals on her feet. She sits with her feet up on the seat, sometimes curled up under her ass, and sometimes flat with her legs bent in front of her torso.

There are so many in their group that they have to squeeze tightly together to fit them all around the table. The group is loud and makes a lot of jokes, and they laugh at their own jokes. They order food, bar food like chicken wings and mozzarella sticks, and they get a couple of pitchers of beer. After the food is served, she casually slides the left strap of her dress off her arm, exposing a single pomegranate-sized breast. She never looks around the room to survey people's reactions, and the group she is with continues carrying on as if nothing happened. Gregory, in particular, never acknowledges this or even looks at her.

In a little while, she exposes the other breast, letting the sundress fall wherever gravity leads it. And then, a little while later, she just slips the whole thing down over her legs. One has to watch carefully even to notice when she did it, it's so graceful and quick. The group continues talking and laughing until the plates and beer pitchers are cleared away. And then, as blithely as she undressed, she pulls the sundress back on. The check is paid, and the group leaves.

*

On Tuesday night--post-coitus--Gregory counts from ten backwards, holding Amanda against his chest. He sometimes he gets to five and starts over. Amanda told him that sometimes she says the Lord's Prayer to kill time, although she'd never use that phrase. Kill. Time. He likes that it (the Lord's Prayer) is almost as meaningless as counting, at least for him, being a man who has never affiliated himself with any organized religion. But the pure abstractness of counting is more appealing to him.

He also counts when he punishes her. The punishment is always at her request, and she even instructs him about what he should do to her. They both know that if she left it up to him, he'd never think of anything. Learning to become invisible, also, was her idea really. She put the words into his mouth. She led him to the idea with increasingly blatant hints like, "I bet you'd like it if you were the only one who could see me, like some kind of ghost..."

He had to admit that he thought the idea was rather ingenious. But he's not that possessive. Like now, he would like to be let free, literally, so he can sleep. His sinuses are clogged, and he's having trouble breathing, lying on his back like this.

Gregory wonders how many times he will count to ten, counting slowly, before Amanda releases him to roll over into slumber. Midway through the seventh count, he feels her grip loosen, and he loosens his own grip likewise. His right nostril is clogged with dry, hard mucus. He turns over. Hoping she won't notice, he digs out a portion of the mucus that is loose enough to pick and flicks it behind the bed. It does not really help him breathe any more easily.

Sometimes Gregory feels he is overly self-conscious about counting in his head, murdering time, flicking mucus into the crevice behind the bed.

*

When she started seeing Gregory, Amanda was working as a stripper. Sometimes he made jealous comments about her flirtations with the other girls and her clients, but she shirked it off, flaunting the fact that it was how she made her money, and he wasn't bringing any in at the time, having been laid off from the print shop. She didn't tell him that she often had dalliances with some of the other girls outside of work as well.

A lot of the women at the massage school are cold to Amanda now that they know she used to be a stripper (she mentioned it casually to somebody one day, and word got around quickly). Apparently, that's too similar to being a prostitute, and licensed massage therapists are too often mistaken for prostitutes. She understands that they're protective of their reputations and the values of their profession, but she can't change the past, nor does she wish to.

Maria is the only one that goes out of the way to be nice to her. The students partner up for practice, the two of them end up together. They always seem to end up together.

Maria says, "Don't let those bitches bother you." It makes Amanda laugh, mainly because of the way "bitches" sounds in Maria's youthful voice and Cuban accent. "I think the human body is beautiful. You could make some money by showing it off, and you did. There is no shame in it."

When they've only known each other for a couple of weeks, Maria invites Amanda and Gregory to spend a weekend at her boyfriend's parent's cabin in the mountains. Maria's boyfriend Charles graduated from the massage school a couple of years ago.

"It's about a three-hour drive," Maria says.

"Absolutely. Of course we want to go."

*

Gregory isn't sure he wants to go. He doesn't like meeting new people. But Amanda rubs up against him like a cat, purring, "Pleeeease! I like these people sooo much. They're sooo cool. You'll like them too. I promise."

At first, he doesn't answer. He stares out the window at the rain misting over the George Washington Bridge. The morning rush hour traffic is at a standstill, and the Palisades hang over the Hudson River with austere authority, like some kind of totem. As a boy in Fort Lee, New Jersey, he'd played in the woods atop those cliffs, which everyone recognizes from the old movies filmed there, a damsel in distress hanging from a tenuous crag.

He doesn't hate nature. He just doesn't trust it.

Perhaps it would be a relief to get out of the city for a couple of days. He'll rent a car.

"OK," he says finally. "But we'd better bring a lot of booze."

*

Amanda is invisible again in a restaurant with a large group of people. This time, she wears a loose pair of overalls, which slips off easily. Right when she's about to put her clothes back on, she accidentally makes eye contact with a man at a table across the room, which breaks the spell, if only for a second. He's about 30, with longish curly black hair and glasses. He looks like a librarian or a book editor.

Suddenly she's fixed in his gaze, and she knows that she's sharing her gift with him, and that he won't say anything for fear of losing it. He faces away and things return to normal, just in time as far as she's concerned.

After dressing, while her friends are paying the bill and gathering their belongings to leave the restaurant, she follows the man into the men's room, where she finds him washing his face. He looks up, and looks at her in the mirror without turning around. She tugs the sleeve of his shirt so that he's facing her. In another quick motion, she grabs his face, leans up, and kisses him deeply on the mouth, and then she leaves without saying a word.

*

Gregory takes the bus to New Jersey to pick up some old clothes from his parents' house. He'll try to sell them later to one of the vintage stores in Manhattan. Afterwards, he passes a building where he remembers there used to be an illegal massage parlor. He went there with friends a couple of times when he was younger. It's a lawyer's office now, or at least that's what it says in the window.

Before heading back into the city, he stops at a supermarket because in New Jersey, he can buy liquor and groceries all in one place, and he needs to get supplies for their trip to the mountains this weekend. Also, they have better selections than the grocery stores near where they live.

The check out girl is stunningly gorgeous, a Hispanic girl with long, straight, chestnut hair and huge sweetheart eyes that stare longingly into the distance. Perhaps, he thinks, she is unaware of the longing that her eyes communicate. Her nametag says Maria. When she passes items over the scanner, gracefully and without hurry, Gregory wishes he had bought more things so that he could watch her a little longer.

*

Amanda has to ask Gregory to punish her, but she doesn't tell him why.

He gives her a few reluctant spanks and that's that. She's disappointed. She'd hoped for something a little more creative and maybe a little more cruel. He could have tied her to the bed, could have done anything he wanted. Maybe something even more impossible than asking her to become invisible. But in the end, she thinks it was fair enough, considering the offense, and she figures they're even.

Still, she wishes he'd show a little more interest, and a little more spine. It must be difficult to be that...she doesn't quite know how to describe it...jaded, cold, bitter, and so deeply buried inside himself.

When she's invisible, she isn't sure whether Gregory can see her or not. He's supposed to be able to see her. That's part of the deal. Otherwise, it's mere self-indulgence, or pointless self-denial, which is basically the same thing.

*

In the car, Gregory is annoyed because Amanda rolled her window down. He has a pet peeve about that. He doesn't like the noise or the wind. He knows it's irrational, so he tries to hide the fact that this behavior bothers him. To empty his mind, he counts to ten slowly then repeats the exercise, not aloud, but in his thoughts as he stares stiffly at the road ahead. By the time he has done this five or six times, she has rolled the window back up. Did she sense his tension? He expects he'll spend the rest of the trip silently brooding over it.

The mountain road is narrow, and it makes him nervous. A truck blows by them in the other lane, and his arms tense up on the steering wheel. He notices that he is holding his breath. Amanda always has to remind him to breathe when she practices massage on him.

Periodically, he checks the odometer against the clock, noting when either revolves into the next digit, timing it against the other one. He gets a spasm of mathematical joy whenever a new mile and a new minute arrive simultaneously. Mileage markers along the side of the road also cause him to pause, recalculate their estimated time of arrival.

*

While Gregory drives, Amanda leans in to look at his eyes. The 1/8 Cherokee in his blood shows only in his eyes, the eyes of a gaunt bobcat. He drives forward, up the steep mountain road, carefully lining up the tire's edge with the painted road lines. To their right, just past her bare shoulder, the mountain falls in deep evergreen waves into nothingness. The mountain would appear completely disconnected from the cities and towns across the horizon, behind and below them but for the telephone cables that accompany them along the road, linking them inside the fence of the civilized world. The road itself also reminds her of this.

She masturbates with a blow pop. She has rolled up the window because she sensed that Gregory was irritated. She is hoping to make amends. She says, "What are you thinking about?"

"Numbers."

Our Father who art in heaven, she thinks as she swirls the sticky blow pop against the lips of her vagina. A sign ahead indicates that they are nearing the campground where the cabin is. She wonders if he will respond crankily if she mentions this. She pulls the blow pop out and offers him a lick.

*

At the cabin, they drink and listen to music, and Gregory keeps to himself as the others talk about fibrositis and fibromyalgia. The music is from some local soft rock radio station. Gregory imagines that there are not many radio stations that you can get up here in the mountains, but he would prefer silence above this bland and arthritic fare.

In a lull, Gregory says, "Charles, how did you and Maria meet?"

"We met a couple of years ago at the supermarket where she works."

Of course, he'd recognized her right away, but he didn't say anything. He looks for her to finish her drink, vodka and tonic. When she has only a sip left, he quickly gulps what is left of his whiskey sour. He motions that his glass is empty and asks if she would like something from the bar.

"Sure," she says. "Another vodka and tonic?"

He returns and gives her the drink. She thanks him innocently and then returns to her conversation with Amanda.

*

Amanda kisses Gregory on the cheek, tries to kiss him on the mouth, but he acts like he doesn't notice it. He is busy staring at Maria, leering even. Maria is oblivious, flirting with her own boyfriend. When Charles and Gregory make eye contact with each other, Gregory smiles widely. Charles shifts in his seat, looking uncomfortable. Amanda watches all this with interest, wondering if Charles is the jealous type.

Charles excuses himself, presumably to go to the bathroom, and Amanda mixes herself another screwdriver. Gregory is unreachable, lost in some fantasy. She is almost certain she knows what he is thinking, but Charles and Maria don't seem to her like the swinger type of couple--not that she knows a lot of swingers. And even if they were, she doesn't think Gregory's skeletal frame, or even her own figure as voluptuous and cute as she knows she is, would be suited to their standards. They're both so athletic and toned.

She almost lets herself get caught up in this fantasy too, the one she imagines Gregory is having, but then Charles returns wearing some kind of African mask, looking like a witchdoctor from an Abbot and Costello movie. This seems to break the trance for both of them. Soon, everyone claims to be tired, and the two pairs split off toward the two bedrooms of the cabin.

Amanda doesn't sleep.

*

Gregory doesn't sleep. He considers masturbating, but he is afraid of waking Amanda, or worse, waking Maria. Amanda is actually awake.

"Do you think I didn't see the way you were looking at her?" she says.

Feigning drowsiness, thinking this might somehow avoid talking about this, he says that he didn't think it was something he needed to hide from her.

"Do you want to fuck her," she says. "It's okay with me if you do, okay if you fuck her I mean."

Her tone is playful, not confrontational, and her hand wanders down his body. She coos and giggles when she feels him stiff and warm in her grip. "Of course, you'd have to ask her," she says. "And I don't think you have the balls to do it."

"You're right," he says. "I don't have the balls."

"Do you want me to ask her?" With another giggle, she disappears under the sheets.

*

Invisibility, Amanda thinks in the haze of just waking up, isn't just a matter of not being seen. It's not just being perfectly still. You have to leave something behind, something that signifies that the invisible thing was really there. Otherwise, it's no different than being imaginary. Being invisible is far more powerful than being imaginary.

It's like pick pocketing, like touching somebody who doesn't know they are being touched. It's more than not being noticed. You are noticed, but you are accepted, even when you make yourself absurd, when your very naked presence makes the entire situation absurd.

Morning mist fills the room, accompanied by the aroma of fresh coffee. There's a knock at the door. "Are you decent?" It's Maria.

"Come on in," Amanda says.

Maria opens the door, peeks, smiles. "Hey, you're not dressed, you little exhibitionist."

"You only asked if we were decent," she giggles. "What time is it?"

Maria laughs. "It's early, but Charles and I are going for a walk before it gets too hot outside. It's really beautiful this time of day. Wanna come?"

"Oh, but we're so comfortable." Amanda turns over toward Gregory and curls up her knees, hugging the duvet against her breasts.

Maria crawls atop the covers, placing herself between the Amanda and Gregory, and the two women lie face to face. "Hey, Maria... Somebody has a crush on you." She points to Gregory, who's hiding his face under a pillow.

"Ooh. I'm flattered. Gregory is cute. But you're not jealous?"

"Kinda. But I can handle it, and he can like whoever he wants to. I'll get even with him later."

*

There's a whoosh and thwack outside. Gregory sits up. "What was that?"

Maria is blasé. "Oh, that's Charles with his bows and arrows."

That's it. He can't take the flirting any longer. He jumps out of bed before he remembers that he's naked, and he pulls on some boxers and a black t-shirt as the ladies coo at him. "Did you say there's coffee?"

"In the kitchen," Maria says. "Help yourself."

Through the window, he can see Charles shooting sleek arrows at a target affixed to an ancient oak tree. His shirtless back is dewy with sweat. Gregory half expects the rabbits, deer and whatever else is out there to come out and gather around Charles, cheering on his marksmanship.

With coffee mug in hand, Gregory walks toward the living room looking for a newspaper or something to distract his mind. Perhaps he'll do a crossword puzzle. As he passes the bedroom door, though, he sees Amanda and Maria making out on the bed.

Is this an opportunity? A threat? He isn't sure, but he decides almost immediately how he'll react.

He goes straight on into the bathroom, sets his coffee on the back of the toilet, and starts jerking off. He finds a bottle of hand cream next to the tub, and he adds a dollop to his cock as he kneads it. If he looks in the mirror at the right angle, he can see himself from the chest down to his cock, his hand working away. He sucks in his stomach a little and tries to flex his pecs. After ejaculating into the sink and rinsing his jism down the drain, he washes his hands.

He returns to the kitchen and adds a shot of bourbon to his coffee; then he goes outside and sits in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch. He counts.

*

After Amanda gets dressed, she joins the others outside. The trees and sky are beautiful. Maria is beautiful. Charles and Gregory are beautiful. As the four of them penetrate a stamped out trail, the greenery quickly closes in on them.

She pulls Gregory aside away from the group. "I need to ask you something."

"What is it?"

"When I'm invisible, can you see me?"

He doesn't respond right away. Sometimes he does that, and she doesn't know if he's formulating some kind of overly-complex answer or just refusing to acknowledge her question. Maybe she's slipping away from him. Maybe she excelled too far in the art of invisibility and crossed some barrier and can't cross back.

"If you want me to see you, I can see you."

"Dammit! You're so frustrating."

She punches him in the arm, playfully, not too hard. She couldn't hit him hard enough to hurt him even if she wanted to. He runs to catch up with Maria and Charles. Amanda stays behind, suddenly interested in a pale bluster of pink mountain laurels. She hears Gregory ahead making conversation with Charles.

"Saw that bow you had earlier. You ever hunt with that?"

"No, I'm not into killing things."

"That's cool. Me either. I was just wondering."

Their voices drift into the distance, but she stays, studying the wildflowers and their majestic presence.

> ***

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***

The Year of Myself

ONE MORNING I AWOKE to find my future self walking out of my bedroom closet. He appeared stark naked--for reasons related to the time travel and also because he knew he could just wear my clothes upon arrival. Since my future self and I shared a mind, I always knew what he was thinking, and we didn't have to talk, though we sometimes did talk just to pass the time. I knew without his saying anything, for example, that he had come from exactly one year in the future, that his goal, my goal, was to have a year long love affair with me, and also that I would soon begin building a time machine in my closet.

I ran my hands over the body of my future self, which gave me a déja vu sensation that was comforting in its familiarity yet glorious in its novelty. I stripped off my own clothes and compared my current body to the body of my future self. It was very much the same, but my future self was more fit. I guessed all the sex I was going to have with myself for the next year would provide a consistently intense physical work-out. I got on my knees and took what looked exactly like my cock into my mouth, something I'd been attempting to do since puberty but I'd never had the flexibility. My future self and I made love through the night. At dawn, I finally collapsed for a few hours, exhausted, while my future self spooned me from behind.

When I awoke, my future self explained to me how the time machine would be constructed. That very day, I began building it, which was not as complex as I might have imagined, once I understood the principles, though it took several afternoons of my future self drawing me diagrams and explaining the math before it all sunk in. The main parts were old metal coat hangers, vacuum tubes, and canned yams.

I was able to devote most of my days to the project. I didn't have a regular job during that year, and I was making an easy living off the money I'd made acting in a television commercial for a popular brand of chewing gum—which incidentally, was also one of the parts used in the time machine. When we talked, it was about silly things mostly, like television shows we used to like. Sometimes we would act out scenes from them. Every night, I was having marathon sex with my future self, the pornographic particulars of which are, I daresay, mind-blowing, but not especially relevant to this account.

Before I knew it, the year was up, the time machine was complete, and I faced a dilemma. If I went back, as the future self and had an affair with my past self, I had no idea what would happen at the end of that year. What would he do next that I would be doing a year from now? I had other questions also that were even more vexing. I realized that, two years prior, in his own time, he must have experienced everything I had just experienced in the past year with some other past version of myself, unless there really were, as some say, multiple universes in which the same events can unfold differently or not happen at all. I mean, how many versions of myself were out walking around in the world now? Would this pattern repeat indefinitely? I asked my future self about these things. For some reason, I couldn't intuit the answers from his thoughts, perhaps because the questions themselves were nearly imponderable.

However, my future self said that I would learn the answers to these questions in time and not to rush things. As for his immediate future plans, he was thinking of going down the block for a slice of pizza.

***

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***

Backstroking

BROOK HAD NEVER STOPPED MOVING, although she felt settled enough at the moment. She had an excellent view of New Orleans--especially at night, and her bathtub was huge. While she let the water work its way to belly button level, she read her letter from Wayne--the invitation to his wedding and volleyball tournament in Lyonness, Mississippi. It might be interesting to see some of her old friends again, some of whom she hadn't seen in ten years.

She pulled her long, chestnut hair out of its ponytail and let it swish over her back. She took off the oversized black T-shirt that she slept in and looked herself in the mirror thinking this is what it is to be Brook Stephenson, pure, underneath the hood--dark skin, small breasts, square feet, knobby knees, green eyes, and the quirky smile that blows all cover of sophistication, but who wants to be sophisticated? Miming a backstroke while still peering in the mirror, she noticed that she still had some of the right muscles for swimming. She missed the water in Lyonness where she would skinny dip by moonlight with Wayne and some of the other wilder kids, drinking cheap beer and leaving the cans out there in the grass.

The door buzzer interrupted her reminiscence. She intentionally neglected to look through the peephole and see who it was. It turned out to be Hedge, whom she was expecting anyway because they were supposed to go see some band that their friend Fran knew. He came in and paced around then looked out the window for a minute before he finally sat down on one of the many piles of throw pillows that were scattered around the floor. His nervous intensity and deadpan voice were endearing qualities to her. "Do you realize that you're naked?"

"Yeah, so?" She winked half-seductively; she liked him. He had pretty hair--blond, shoulder length, bangs hanging into his cherubic face. She didn't know if she could ever seduce him, though. Seduction required too much of some kind of egoism that she had trouble facing.

"Is that what you're wearing to the club?" he asked.

"No, stupid." She went into the other room to find some clothes. She yelled through the wall, "Do you want to drive me to Mississippi in a couple of weeks?"

"What for?"

"Some old friends of mine are getting married. There will be free food and music."

"Sounds great." She couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic. She would just have to bring it up again later.

Brook came out of the bedroom in a black tank top and a colorful skirt, her hair up and glasses on. She saw her reflection transposed over the New Orleans night in her window and it did not remind her at all of her friends whose utopian dreams had drowned in Golden Lake years ago. She had spent a lot of energy being angry and frustrated with Wayne and others for not living up to their ideals that their friendship had spawned. But something drew her backward, just as the current her arms created in the backstroke drew her toward an estimated point behind her head.

She could not see this point between her timed and limited glances, but she trusted in its existence. Touching base with that point healed the stretched out wounds that time and distance had poked in her heart. She followed Hedge downstairs and into his pickup truck, and they rolled.

*

Fran had frantic black ringlets of hair and wore paint-splattered white overalls. She had a curious talent for imitating animal noises. She used one of these, a horse's neigh, to greet Brook and Hedge. After going to the bar and getting a beer, she came back and sat down with them. "What's up?"

"My best friend is getting married."

Hedge said, "I thought I was your best friend."

"Sorry, Hedge. I meant my best friend from high school."

Fran sat back with her drink, and Brook knew this meant she was about to give one of her lectures, "C'mon Hedge. You know people like us have many best friends because we're incapable of singling out one person above all others. We think too critically, and we approve or disapprove of many aspects of people. We also have many favorite books, many favorite writers, many favorite songs, movies, and so on. Right, Brook?"

She agreed although she had a better idea. Some people have best friends that they met at an early age, maybe they lived next door. They do everything together for all their lives: scouts, school, sports, college, etc. She, Fran, and Hedge, and Wayne too, were different--part of transient tribe of people who become engrossed in each other's lives for brief periods and then one or the other moves on somewhere else. They rarely write because they know they will see each other sometime even if it takes a couple of years. This is how she could forgive Wayne for not calling her for so long. This is how she could forgive her own detachment from people to whom she had felt so close. To call someone, anyone, her best friend was just to acknowledge that person as one of her tribe.

The band started to come on the stage. Hedge said, "What's the name of this band again?"

"Crispy Scab," said Fran. "They want me to sit in with them later on."

*

The band started playing noisy, inarticulate punk rock. Fran commented in fragmented shouts about the texture of this or that guitar tone and how the bass player could achieve a certain kind of sound because he knew his electronics so well. Hedge and Brook watched and nodded occasionally to Fran's observations. After the first set, Hedge said he had to leave and asked Fran if she could give Brook a ride. Everything was settled, and Hedge left.

The singer of the band came to talk to Fran, and Brook went to look for the bathroom. She searched every corner of the club for it. As the pressure built up inside her bladder, she thought about Serrano's photograph of a crucifix submerged in a tank of urine. The paradox of that picture had astounded her. One the one hand, it was a radical statement in favor of Catholicism, identifying Christ with the fluids of the body. On the other hand, it was the ultimate degradation. She recalled that during the crusades, infidels had Europeans prove their rejection of Christianity by forcing them to piss on the cross.

Brook wandered behind the stage and found a locked door marked by a hand-written sign as "unisex restroom - out of order."

She decided she would persevere, and if it got to be a burden, she would walk down the road to a gas station.

The second set was about to begin, and Fran was getting on the stage. The band started playing a slow dirge, and Fran chirped, howled, and whinnied in the background. Someone sitting at the bar got Brook's attention by yelling practically right in her ear, "Hey, honey. Y'like whishkey?"

The intrusion seemed to come from a fuzzy gray orb of hair, half-hiding an inexplicable smile, and flattened underneath a baseball cap that advertised a brand of chewing tobacco. He said, "Come 'ere and sit in my lap."

She said, "No." She looked at his protruding belly, hardly hidden under a pinstriped short sleeve button down shirt that was half tucked into his brown polyester pants. He smelled like whiskey, cigarettes, and puke.

"Aw, come on. I won't bite."

As quick as a splash, she had an inspiration, and she edged toward him, and playing coquettishly with his collar. She said, "What's your name?"

"Reggie." He giggled absurdly. She made eye contact with Fran who gave her a quizzical look. Brook sat on Reggie's lap, continuing to watch Fran sing. This was the moment that marked the end of her stay in New Orleans. She felt Reggie's erection pressed against the lower part of her back. She made sure Fran saw the stream of water dripping down her leg, darkening the brown polyester of Reggie's pants. As she released the urine from her body, she felt free to move on again to reaffirm her membership in the transient tribe. Reggie suddenly realized what was happening. Fran could not sing any longer because she was laughing too hard.

Reggie yelled, "Hey, bitch, what's this?"

Brook stood up in the midst of his exclamations and cutely said, "I thought you would like it." Fran stepped off the stage, and the both ran off to her car, laughing hysterically. Fran was her best friend.

*

When Hedge and Brook arrived in Lyonness, Brook told a couple of people about the pissing incident. A few people found the story hilarious. Others were simply confused or disgusted. When she saw Wayne later on, the first thing he said to her was, "I hear you like to pee on people now."

She said, "Well, it was just one incident. It was a spontaneous joke." She knew it was more than that really. But she could not explain that it was just like the photograph of the crucifix in the tank of urine. She didn't have to explain. Wayne might make a sarcastic comment about it, but he would not judge her.

Anyway, it was Wayne's wedding, and he didn't have time to judge her. He had too many relatives pulling him aside to take his picture or to ask him about his plans. Brook and Hedge walked around the Fields, occasionally bumping into Brook's old friends. She introduced them to Hedge, and conversations were not as awkward as she predicted they might be.

Hedge got involved in the volleyball, and Brook walked by herself down to the lake. Half-crushed aluminum cans nestled in the weeds on the edge of the water. Inhaling the mystical smell of the lake and its muddy age, she felt herself back at the finish line. She undressed.

***

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***

The Boy Who Cried Wolves

IT BEGAN WITH a growing sensation in the lacrimal sac. The boy's was named Daniel Ledbetter. His peers called him Bedwetter--not due to any actual or even perceived incontinence on his part, but simply because of the sound of the words. Nonetheless, the teasing of the peers caused him heaviness of heart, as well as stomachaches, migraines, a recurring and violent revenge fantasy, and a muttering tic.

After some years of this treatment, Daniel's tears became lupine. The wolves were microscopic, dogpaddling in his superior and inferior canals and exiting through the lacrimal ducts, like the ramp at the end of a waterslide. Those that survived being wiped from his reddening cheeks began to grow, forming tiny packs in the plush carpet. It was a difficult life for the wolves, but still many persevered. When they grew large enough to be visible to the human eye, they stayed hidden in the back of the pantry behind a long-forgotten box of falafel mix. They fed on a box of dried beef bouillon for protein. They bit a hole in a large water jug, stopping it up with hair and sucking at it when they needed hydration.

Eventually, they were fully grown, the size of field mice. Only four of them had managed to live through the endless trials of being a tiny wolf born from the tears of a 9-year old boy, and they made themselves known to Daniel, declaring in their allegiance to him in the best lupine pantomime they could manage.

Daniel kept them hidden for a few weeks, feeding them bugs and grubworms. Then one day, he brought them to school in a shoe box with holes in the top so they could breathe. Telling the teacher he had something to show the class, he opened the box, and the wolves burst out, rampaging through the class, biting several of them on the ankles. Most of the children began to cry. The teacher seemed frozen in confusion. Daniel called the wolves back. He knelt down, and they pounced back into the box in his arms. Daniel laughed.

Everyone remained stunned and left him alone the rest of the day, which he found quite satisfying. Later that evening, his mother entered his bedroom, round and ubiquitous, with her hair piled in a bun the size and color of a Louisiana yam. She had spoken to his teacher on the phone, something about him bringing wild animals into the school.

He showed her. The wolves were sleeping, curled up together like a finger puppets in a fist. She said he shouldn't bring the wolves to school anymore. But Daniel ignored her.

He kept the wolves with him everywhere he went. They snuggled into bed with him at night, and they leapt into their shoe box first thing in the morning. At school, nobody called him "Bedwetter" or even spoke with him for that matter.

Then came a day when the wolves began to feel the walls of time collapsing in. Their life spans were coming to a close and soon their species would be extinct. Their own conception having been immaculate, they instinctively knew that the traditional mammalian methods of progeneration would not apply, and weren't even sure which of them were male or female, if they had any sex at all. And so they devised a plan, though it was repugnant to them all at first, to torment their benefactor, to collect and harvest as many of his tears as possible, in hopes that the miracle would repeat itself. Then, perhaps, they could take charge of their own destiny and the destiny of their race.

Nipping at Daniel's toes and ankles made him irritated and angry, but no tears came forth. Next, they tried ignoring him. Instead of curling into bed with him at night, they curled up in his shoes in the closet. Instead of waking him up with a lick on the nose, they let the alarm clock wake him. Instead of loyally taking to the shoebox when he got ready for school, they hid under his bed.

However, the boy was stoic and dry as a stone. In the absence of affection from the wolves, he returned to long forgotten playthings--the television, the internet, the Nintendo Wii. He was beginning to grow bored with the miniature wolves, and they in turn were growing weary of their service to him. The wolves began to suffer from a stifling malaise, which then metastasized into exhaustion.

But beneath that malaise and exhaustion, deep inside of each of them, a single photon of light yearned to be released, and, in due time, it was released. In the middle of the night, the boy was stirred awake by the growing light that soon filled the room, consuming him.

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Pineapple Tie

BERNARD WIPED THE RED salty rain off his brow, and he began to tell himself the story as if he had not been there. He had been walking down Bellview Street, been at Mister's Bar with some friends to see this silly punk band, Donkey Stripe. The crowd was younger than him, but he liked to keep up with the new music. The band was bad as bands generally are at Mister's. He wanted to leave before his friends did, and it was a nice night so he decided to walk home.

Well these two guys, teenagers, but big redneck fellows, had come out of that pool hall down the road and were coming toward him. They both had long stringy hair and a rugged weariness. He had long hair once, and it had somehow been meaningful to him. He wondered why they. One of the guys was huskier than the other, but they both looked mean, not scary, but malicious. It had been about eleven, he remembered, because he had heard the clock in the bell tower chime a few moments before. Not too late, but it was Tuesday, so there weren't a lot of people out, and anyway, he had on a tie because he felt festive. It was that tie with the pineapple pattern that he got in Florida at the outlet mall. Not fancy at all, just a fun sort of tie. One of the redneck guys, the skinny one, made some inarticulate comment about the tie as he passed. Bernard didn't quite catch it, but it was clearly an aggressive statement. Bernard had proceeded to walk on by. The drunken redneck, seeing that Bernard had no reaction to the first statement, tried another after he passed. He said, "You ought to listen to Crispy Scab."<

This was a reference to a heavy metal band meant to alienate him, but it didn't work. He had their album in fact. Did he seem that old? Or that square? Do people say square anymore? Maybe it was a mistake to respond at all. Definitely it was a mistake to say what he said, "I just saw the Lost Expletive in Atlanta with Crispy Scab, and it was bad as shit." After all he was only trying to relate to the guy, not make fun of him. He meant to say, "Hey, I listen to all sorts of music. That doesn't make me better than you. I'm a musical person. When I was your age, rock music was an important part of our philosophy and our culture." But the guy turned around and got in his face, in that aggressive redneck position, chest cocked, arms bowed, face distorted in a weird attempt to appear frightening.

"What did you say?" the guy said. "Say it again."

"What do you want?" Bernard said, avoiding the question because he thought it impertinent. "What do you want?" That was when he heard the pop. The guy just punched him. Just right out of the blue, punched him, in the middle of the sidewalk, on Bellview Street, on a Tuesday. He had not been punched since grade school, and then it was a ten year old punch and never unexpected like that.

Maybe he should have hit the guy back. He was regretting it again. He was making himself feel worthless again by going over it, fantasizing. He felt exhausted suddenly, so he sat down on a bench. This road, he thought, Bellview Street, is chocked full of benches. Benches and parks. Grass and swings and birdies that sing. He hummed, as he made up a little song about Bellview Street. And always, he thought as he continued to hum, the ever so faint smell of doggydoo.

Joggers jogged by in dangerous trampling hordes, sweat dripping from their designer sweatsuits. Cars were beginning to rush by on their way to work. Work. He would have to call in sick or something. God, what would he tell people? That he was attacked, mugged, that he had gotten in a fight with two rednecks outside a bar. They would wonder if he had called the police. Why didn't he call the police? Only because he thought it was partly his fault. Maybe, just through misunderstanding, he had inadvertently antagonized the guy. He could say he had an accident, but that would be so vague. They would want more details. If only he could be home. But he was daydreaming again.

Definitely it was a mistake to say what he said, "Now that was quite antisocial." What kind of thing is that to say when you've just been punched in the face? The phrase turned around over and over in his head. Sometimes it sounded like a good and noble thing to say, but mostly it sounded corny or wimpy or silly. And then he had turned around and walked off, blocking out the redneck's yelling obscenities at him and trying to coax him to fight. He almost had done it, but he knew it would have been stupid.

Supposing he managed to defend himself against the one guy, the other guy was right there to take his place, and what if they double teamed him? Then the guy, still the skinny one, had run up and tackled him from behind. Bernard had heard him coming, and with a move that he guessed he had learned subconsciously from television, he threw the guy against a wall and said, "All right." That was when he lost his temper. He had rolled up his sleeves and loosened the pineapple tie. He put his fists up, and so did the other guy.

But when he looked in the other guy's eyes, he couldn't be violent to him. It was quite antisocial. He looked at the friend. It also was quite unfair. And ridiculous. It was so good vs. evil, Luke against Darth, it disgusted him. He simply could not take part in something that reminded him so much of bad fiction, and so he tried to talk his way out of it again. But that began the part that he really didn't want to think about. That was the part where he really felt like he should have been able to do something, no matter how incredible, to save himself. To be saved by the bell, the god in the machine. To suddenly pull an uzi from his front pocket. To grow wings.

So he had decided for sure that he didn't want to fight this guy, and the guy was still there holding his fists in the air calling Bernard a pussy. What is it about a pineapple tie that could lead to such a situation? The guy had tried to punch him again, Bernard, being more sober and being ready for it this time, avoided it. The redneck fell on the ground in missing his target, and the fatter one that before had only watched and occasionally put in an encouraging word for his companion, pulled out a knife and started swinging it at Bernard. It reminded Bernard of West Side Story, and he almost laughed or started tap dancing, but then he was afraid again. Bernard got scraped once across the stomach, and then the rednecks forced him into a nearby alley and up against a wall. It had not occurred to him what they might try to do. He noticed a beer bottle on the ground out of the corner of his eye, and he thought that if he could get to it, he might be able to use it against them. But one of them saw him looking at it, and picked it up. The guy said, "Well if you're too much of a pussy to fight, maybe you'll like this better."

Sirens screamed in the distance. The rednecks got scared and ran away. Bernard staggered off again down Bellview Street. That was the last thing he remembered.

He saw that his stomach had started bleeding again. The scrape was worse than he thought. What is it about a pineapple tie? He stared at the sky. The rain had stopped, and its shadows dripped silently from leaves onto the sidewalk. Why would a drunken redneck who is into heavy metal music be insulted or threatened by a pineapple tie? Was it too effeminate? Was the redneck's conception of masculinity challenged so greatly by the tie that he set out to destroy its wearer? Bernard looked to the clouds for some mystical answer as the misty wind bathed his chin with the leftovers of the storm. The cool drops trickled down his neck. Two more blocks to go. It's not far. Cheering himself on with an optimistic mantra, you can do it, he pulled himself upright.

Each pulse of his heart felt like a new universe being born, expanding and contracting through his arteries and veins. Outside his earthly vision, matter rotated and bounced in electromagnetic ballet, and this is how he convinced himself to move. Amazing, he thought, how one foot is placed in front of the other, weight is shifted slightly, and suddenly one is mobile. Mobility is key, he thought. Key. He started in the right direction.

Bernard's neighborhood loomed above him in it's historic sobriety. Old houses with stone porches and nice, new foreign cars parked out front. Trees hovered over him in silent company. A large dog barked. The dog chased after him, forcing him to run which was a little painful. A some certain point, the dog seemed to reach the end of an invisible chain, and it turned back around to stand its regular vigil. Finally, Bernard reached his own house.

No mail, he instinctively checked. He felt around in his pocket for his house keys which were buried in there underneath the pineapple tie. Why did he wear a tie, anyway, he thought. He had never felt so much like an old lemon. It hadn't been what he said to the guy at all; it had been the damn tie.

He went immediately to the bathroom to tend to his wounds. He removed his shirt and threw it on the dirty clothes pile in the corner that had overgrown and taken over his little laundry basket. The slash on his stomach stung when he washed it off. He hoped that it would not need stitches. He decided to take a nap and then drive himself to the emergency room. He didn't have the energy to drive just now. He called his office, and told them briefly that he wouldn't be in that day.

A pineapple tie is not a sign of weakness, he told himself. It is a festive tie. That was why he wore it. It was a festive decoration for a festive occasion. He liked wearing ties. It had become part of his look. He walked into the bedroom, safe at last. He pulled down the shade and turned off the light. He took the tie out of his pocket and put it away in its drawer. In the silence, he heard the rhythm of his pulse in tempo with the world beat. He expected at any moment to hear trumpets.

END