Blameless in Abaddon (52 page)

They laid him on the Waupelani's eastern bank, in the shade of a weeping willow. The creekbed was empty, sucked dry by the hemorrhage. And suddenly he was ten years old, wading through the water in galoshes, turning over one flat rock after another. Often as not, the anticipated payoff followed: a confused crayfish, sitting beneath a cloud of water-borne dirt and wondering what God-like entity had deprived it so unjustly of its home.

“It's good to be back,” said Martin, becoming fifty-three again.

“I'm fond of Abaddon, I truly am,” said Randall. “My classmates tried to kill me, but that would've happened no matter
where
I was living—Cheltenham, Lower Merion, Philadelphia.”

“In Philadelphia they would've succeeded,” said Martin.

“Your bedroom's all ready,” said Patricia. “Fresh sheets, clean pillow cases, a morphine drip. Just say the word.”

Willow leaves fell everywhere, narrow green blades dropping
hira hira
through the August air. “I pulled the plug,” said Martin. “I made Him bleed all over Holland.”

“Yes, Martin—your popularity has never been lower,” said Patricia.

“Listen, friends, I was right all along. I got this straight from Yeshua. The only solution that works is the Manichaean heresy.” The crab was on the move, Martin realized, making ready to attack his sacrum. “God wasn't completely evil, of course, not even
mostly
evil. I mean, look at my mother's roses, and the oceans, and all those stars—
none
of us could have brought that off. Nevertheless, His worshipworthiness remains problematic and—
aaaiiihhh
!”

The spasm abated as quickly as it had arrived. He closed his eyes, sucked in his breath, and told his friends what they were doubtless expecting to hear.

“I'm ready for the drip.”

 

The room was radiant with memories—and far more crowded than Martin had expected, the most densely populated deathbed scene he'd witnessed since the time he married two AIDS patients, Trevor Hood and Richard Erwin, in a Chestnut Grove hospice. The Idea of Siobhan Candle stood by the nightstand, arranging red roses in a green cut-glass vase. The Idea of Jenny Candle leaned over the edge of the mattress, offering her brother a steaming cup of Constant Comment, but it was a hopeless proposition: the man who'd failed to swallow God could no longer even swallow tea. The Idea of Vaughn Poffley sat astride a palomino rockinghorse, meticulously lettering
MARTIN CANDLE FOR MAGISTRATE
on a piece of Bristol board with a green felt marker.

“It's time we started planning your comeback,” he said.

Martin shifted his gaze. His ex-fiancées fidgeted near the bureau, randomly removing and then replacing his Superman pajamas, Bugs Bunny T-shirt, Phillies baseball cap, and Mickey Mouse Club beanie.

“Every night we got together and watched the replays on Court TV,” said the Idea of Robin McLaughlin. “You were
terrific
.”

“Sensational,” said the Idea of Brittany Rabson.

Lifting his head, he saw that his tissues were being hydrated, his cells nourished, and his spasms managed by three different IV drips. He felt like a UFO abductee whose captives had dissected him alive, hanging his organs all around their spaceship on aluminum poles. Gradually the morphine worked its miracle, flowing through his veins like warm butter, transforming his pain-racked bones into an enchanted and uncharted archipelago. He flopped his head to one side, surveying the precious geegaws of his youth. A cyclopean teddy bear named Warren stood in the corner. Martin's Revell plastic models—a Messerschmitt, the HMS
Bounty
, the aircraft carrier
Forrestal
—sat atop the bookcase. Below lay
The Hobbit, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Through the Looking Glass
, and a dozen Hardy Boys reprints; his passion for jurisprudence, he realized, had emerged at an early age. The floor was strewn with dominoes, checkers, Monopoly deeds, and murder implements from Clue.

At some point Hans De Groot must have entered, for an ominous metallic sound now filled the room, keys jangling against keys. Seconds later Martin heard the police captain's gravelly voice, informing him he was under arrest. With unrestrained glee De Groot specified the charges. Evidently half the population of Scheveningen was suing Martin for damages, and that was the least of his troubles: in a rare collaboration between Catholicism and Calvinism, the Holy See and the Kingdom of the Netherlands had petitioned the World Court to put the ex-JP on trial for deicicle. Preliminary hearings would begin in two weeks.

Martin cranked his head in De Groot's direction. The police captain sported the same pinstriped suit he'd worn on the day they met. “Are you . . . truly De Groot . . . or merely . . .?”

“Don't worry, Candle—I'm real as a stubbed toe.” The captain rattled his keys. “In my opinion we ought to extradite you right now, but some important people sent telegrams, including Dr. Lovett, so for the moment we're leaving you alone. Enjoy that soft bed while you've got it—your next stop is the gallows. I hope they let me tie the noose.”

“You can't talk to my son that way,” said Siobhan Candle, swabbing the
Forrestal
's flight deck with a feather duster.

“I'm . . . not guilty.” Sweat covered Martin head to toe. He felt like a marathon swimmer greased in preparation for a shot at the English Channel. “Ask . . . Yeshua. God is . . . duality.”

“Hear that, Captain?” said Siobhan. “A duality—so there.”

A vicious and voracious truth bored its way, wormlike, into Martin's mind. His illness had attained a new level of iniquity, breaking its morphinian bonds. “Ontological . . . doesn't . . . hold up,” he gasped.

“You're absolutely right,” said his sister.

“Lousy defense,” said Randall.

“No damn good at all,” said Vaughn.

“Free will . . . doesn't . . . either.”

“Swindle,” said Robin.

“Flimflam,” said Brittany.

“Stop . . . humoring me!” cried Martin. The crab had procreated, releasing thousands of progeny into the farthest reaches of his flesh. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop! Stop!”

Randall's mouth opened. His lips moved, but his words were overpowered by an unexpected noise: a rhythmic
clop-clop-clop
resounding throughout the fire station.

“Horses,” moaned Martin.

Patricia bent beside him. “Horses?”

“Horses . . . from . . .” From where? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse carousel? No. “Stables.”

“Stables?”

“Executioners' stables. I'm . . . regicide, Patricia. I killed . . . King . . . it's . . . not . . . working.”

“What isn't? The free will defense?”

“The morphine.”

The mattress dissolved, the room dissolved, the fire station dissolved. March 2, 1757. The Place de Grève. He lay face-up on a scaffold, dressed only in a loincloth, each of his limbs roped to a different horse. De Groot crouched near him, a saw-toothed knife locked in his palm.

Grinning, the police captain slipped a black linen hood over his head. “The Devil made this for me,” he explained.

A second executioner leaned into Martin's field of vision, his crimson irises blazing through the eye holes in his hood. “A perfect day for an
amende honorable
, Monsieur Damiens!” said Sarkos a.k.a Yeshua. “The nightingales are singing in the belfries of Notre Dame!” The torturer held up his knife, its serrated blade glistening in the morning sun. “Hardly a cloud in the sky!”

“I'm not Damiens,” moaned Martin.

“Forward!” shouted De Groot. “Forward!”

The four horses moved, straining against the ropes. Cancer pains tore through Martin's joints.

“Forward! Forward!”

“You've got the wrong man!”

“Oh, dear,” said Sarkos a.k.a. Yeshua mockingly. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, he's not coming apart. Whatever shall we do?”

Acting in tandem, the executioners went to work with their knives. They operated methodically, precisely, cutting the cancer from Martin's hips along with considerable quantities of muscle, sinew, and bone. The pain was explosive, relentless, beyond excruciation. He screamed until he thought his throat would rip.

“Dualism!” cried Martin. His left leg vanished. “He's guilty!” His right leg deserted him. “Dualism!”

“Tell it to the judges,” said De Groot, savagely hacking into his prisoner's left shoulder.

Martin was about to reply when a great knot of half-digested chicken rolled upward from the depths of his stomach. Free will, he thought, clamping his jaws shut. Blocked by his
liberum arbitrium
, the rising tide of vomitus lodged in his gullet. He sat upright, lungs pleading for air, teeth locked in suicidal defiance.

As his left arm flew off, he fell back on the mattress—just like Duncan Elder, he thought, poor little Duncan, murdered by cystic fibrosis. In a great thundering rush everything poured out of him: his dinner, his bile, his blameless blood. The vomitus smelled like Job's dung heap. The bile bubbled like the waters of Leviathan. Steam rose from the blood.

And so it was that on August 28, 2000, Martin Candle of Abaddon Township, Pennsylvania—legless, one armed, naked, supine—flung his remaining hand toward Heaven, splayed his fingers, and respectfully returned his ticket.

 

Unlike yours truly, Candle never stood trial for his crimes. After leaving eighteenth-century Paris he entered oblivion forever. It was the Idea of Robin McLaughlin who first noticed. To the assembled vigil keepers she said, simply, “He's gone now. I know it. Our dear, sweet Martin is gone.” The official certificate from The Hague coroner's office read “disseminated metastatic prostate cancer,” but in fact he'd succumbed to an acute case of hopeless causes.

As for the future faced by myself, Yeshua, Isaac, Lot, and the rest of us, I must say it looks desolate. Between the coma and the hemorrhage, we've probably got about a week. Much as I hate to admit it, humanity will get along perfectly well without me. Any species that could invent the twentieth century entirely on its own doesn't need a Prince of Darkness.

Right now we're throwing a party, the blowout to end all blowouts, a combination Mardi Gras, New Year's Eve celebration, and Roman orgy. Eat, drink, and screw Mary, for tomorrow we die. Schonspigel's kick-ass heavy-metal band, the Bulgarian Horrors, is providing the entertainment. You should see Saint Augustine break-dancing. Blind. The noise is so loud, I can hardly hear myself think. Writing these last few paragraphs will drain me, sapping away energies I might otherwise have employed in making sampler number fifteen,
Amende Honorable.

At least I know how it will end.

Patricia Zabor has our hero's corpse cremated in The Hague. The ashes are delivered to her sealed in a white porcelain urn no larger than one of Siobhan Candle's flower vases. Zabor spends the entire flight home—Amsterdam to London, London to Philadelphia—holding the urn in her lap.

Once back in Abaddon Township, she arranges for Candle's remains to be buried in Hillcrest Cemetery, right next to Corinne Rosewood. His funeral is as well attended as was his swan song in Jehovah's brain, and it attracts the same audience—with the exception of Brittany Rabson, laid up with the flu. It rains throughout the service. Placing him beside his one true love is the hardest thing Patricia Zabor has ever done. The marker reads
A BLAMELESS AND UPRIGHT MAN
, though I believe he would have preferred
A PASSIONATE STUDENT OF LIFE'S DEEPEST MYSTERIES.

On her way out of the cemetery, Zabor visits her son. For a full hour she kneels beside the grave, weeping in the rain. The stone says, as always,
I MISS YOU SO MUCH . . . ALL MY LOVE, MOMMY
.

Later that day she goes to the Federal Express office in Perkinsville and ships the completed, camera-ready paintings for
The Insect Insurrection.
Her editor at Apex Novelty Company is ecstatic. He gives her a thousand-dollar bonus.

The following Sunday, Zabor and Randall Selkirk end up at the same matinee performance of a Broadway play—a revival of Archibald MacLeish's
J.B.
—and soon afterward they begin dating again. Before the year is out they are married in a simple ceremony conducted by the Abaddon Township justice of the peace, Barbara Meredith. If Candle had gotten to know the woman, Zabor decides, he wouldn't have liked her very much. For Meredith it's just a job.

In a few minutes my better half will take over and perform a minor intervention. With a wave of his hand Yeshua will cause five hundred thousand dollars to vanish from the coffers of Sargassia, Incorporated, and reappear on the books of an equally worthy but far less profitable enterprise, the Kennel of Joy.

Somewhere out there, a happy dog is barking. Can you hear her? I can. She's a feisty Border collie, born and raised in the concrete heart of Pittsburgh. Her name is Crumpet, and she is dying of ovarian cancer. For the first time ever, Crumpet has been permitted to assuage her genes. Ears flapping, eyes flashing, she is herding two dozen sheep across the south meadow of the Hostetler farm in central Pennsylvania. Not ordinary sheep, mind you: large, serious sheep—sheep as big as Gordon the ram. And all of them, Crumpet notices as, darting and swerving, she brings the flock safely home . . . all of them are doing exactly what she wants.

J
AMES
M
ORROW
was born in Philadelphia in 1947. Besides writing, he plays with Lionel electric trains and collects videocassettes of vulgar biblical spectacles.