“Oh yeah, oh yeah,” he said with closed eyes and mouth, “sharp inner feeling of aggression, length of the arm, forwardness, it's all going right in through the portals of my mind sans mediation of consciousness. Continue.”
â“She walked me through a contiguous series of equally fragrant and gossamerly decorated windowless rooms until I was met by the enormous Official Blindfolder or whatever he is, at which point I begged Ms. Ratcliffe not to let me be blindfolded. She said I could keep the blindfold off until just before we reached the lobby, but then she'd have to put it on because the lobby had windows. I asked her if she'd put it on me herself. “If you like,” she said.
â“In the next room I was surprised to encounter Chris Newportâwhom intelligence has confirmed was the captain of the Godspeed, the armored bus in which they transported their men to the Chesapeakeâwhose left arm, you may recall, Sir, you severed with your Glock on the last day of the Battle of Joralemon Street. He was seated on what looked to be a throne or executive chair, but more clinical-looking, and to his right on a similar contraption was seated a thin teenager, remarkably red in hue, a weird-haired hayseed despite the well-cut suit of lightweight linen, which he wore as if he'd never worn a suit before. As I went to shake Newport's remaining hand, a big, rough-looking woman in a navy smock interposed herself between him and me on a low stool, also clinical in feel, and seemed to be about to service his feet in some way I was surprised to be in the room to witness. At the interruption of our handshake Newport made a face to me that signaled an apology that thinly disguised an arrogance that covered up for a lack of intelligence and competence. The boy next to him, before whom a second rough and besmocked woman had taken up position on a stool, seemed startled by each move everyone around him made. “This is Prince Mammoncock, son of King Powhatan of the Chesapeake,” Ms. Ratcliffe said to me, pointing to the boy.
â“I understood this all was being staged for me. She'd counted on my asking not to be blindfolded quite yet so she could bring me to this room for this show, as if inadvertently. This Mammoncock was no prince but a wide-eared, odd-haired bumpkin of the first order. The women on the stools were merely pedicurists, I'm somewhat sad to say, since one always exults in the sexual depravity of one's enemies, of which I'm confident there's an abundance, though none was on display at this time, but only an incompetent charade of a strong southern alliance I'm sure does not exist. The boy, “the prince”âin a panic as the pedicurist removed sliver upon sliver of the calcified skin of his lower foot as if dicing cold cutsâshouted “I need those!” I'd guess these were migrant pedicurists from the wilds of eastern Long Island's north shore, big, square-jawed, strong-armed women with a rough and no-nonsense approach to footcare I can't say didn't interest me. We should consider hiring them away or kidnapping them, Sir. I laughed, and was led from the room, blindfolded, knocked unconscious, and awoke with blood in my mouth and a brutal headache on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street. All for now. Respectfully,' etcetera.
“You awake now, Daddy?”
“No.”
“I guess he didn't buy Namontock as prince.”
“No.”
“Night-night.”
“Night.” He seemed to be asleep. “That fat, one-armed, gray-haired, bearded fuck,” he said as if in a dream.
“Newport?”
A minute went by. “He hasn't left yet, has he?”
“No.”
“Don't let him go back till he talks to me.”
“I won't.”
“Does he think there's oil down there?”
“Yes.”
“He's full of shit, there's no oil. This trip is gonna result in a net loss of oil but I'll be damned if it results in a net loss of everything. That corn the kid brought, they must have some way of eradicating the toxins from it, that we have to find out. And trees. Are there trees down there?” The question oozed like oil from his sleep-softened lips.
“Yes.”
“Good. We're running out of trees. Ninety-eight percent of Central Park is denuded and the other two percent is under armed guard. Have Chris hack down trees and send them up. And he should set up a small glass manufacturing plant.” He peeled back the lid of one eyeball, which rolled toward me. “Why aren't you writing this down?”
“You're asleep.”
“I make my best decisions in my sleep.”
“Glass manufacturing,” I said.
“We need windows.”
“What else?”
“Are you writing this?”
“I'll remember.”
“Deputize their guyâwhat's his name?âPow Hut Tan, as honorary Virginia Branch vice president of the Manhattan Company. Give him a gray three-season suit, a bed, a desk, a chair, a sink, a set of pornographic shot glasses, and some shoes.”
“I assume we'll discuss these agenda items at the board meeting tomorrow.”
“Sure, just before the members of the board line up and blow me.”
“How will we know what size shoes?”
No response.
“Jimmy?”
Deep and peaceful breaths.
My boyfriend is asleep, has been asleep for hours, while I lie awake and think of my son, about whom Chris Newport made an inscrutable face when I asked after him.
Glass manufacturing and shoes.
Lady poets though there may not be on God's gray earth, I shall now compose a verse, which I'll call “Men”:
Men are shits, say it loud!
They come on strong, they're never clean,
they have no rhythm, they're fragile.
Think of a thousand men at the bottom
of an ocean. Men are mirrors of women,
reversed bottom to top, not side to side.
The stars are outâmen
are puzzled by their beauty and seeming
lack of organization. You could blow men
over with a mirror. What's that mournful sound?
It's men, trying to put a woman
in the sky as if it were the rind of which she
were the fruit, or she the skin whose wart they were.
A Couple of Fops
“How did we get here?”
“By bus.”
“No, I mean how did we get to the end of the world.”
“By bus.”
“I mean metaphysically.”
“By bus.”
“Do you ever wonder what did it, finally, what killed civ?”
“What's civ?”
“Civilization.”
“You have a nickname for civilization?”
“We were close before it died.”
“I really do like youâ”
“And I you.”
“And I you, but should we not make one last ditch effort to obtain clean water before we give in to lying around and contemplating civilization and metaphysics?”
“When does one need metaphysics more than at the end of the world?”
“I suppose you have a point.”
“In any case I can't get up.”
“Nor can I.”
“Nor can I. Is there even still an I, or am I just a mind that blithely carries on as its former makeshift casing turns to dust? Seriously, what do I look like now?”
“Don't ask me, I went blind on Tuesday.”
“What do I sound like then?”
“Don't know, I'm deaf too.”
“Or I'm hoarse.”
“Nor can I smell or touch or taste.”
“What are you then?”
“A quiet ball of want.”
“Are you angry still?”
“Why should I be?”
“Look what's happened to you.”
“I told you I can't see.”
“Think what's happened to you.”
“I think anger leaves the body when the senses do.”
“Why won't wanting leave it too?”
“Warning's everywhere, and so has nowhere to go. Wanting's what there is when nothing else is there, the indivisible substance of which the world is made. Before there was a world, there was a want. After the world, the want will remain.”
“Shall we contemplate the end of civ, then?”
“I've always liked you.”
“I've always liked you too.”
“How shall we contemplate it?”
“Don't know.”
“How shall we honor it?”
“Not sure.”
“It's nice to talk.”
“It feels good to talk. Talk takes the edge off the want.”
“When it doesn't put it on.”
“Indeed, it sometimes puts it on.”
“Mostly puts it on.”
“Causes it.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“It feels good to agree.”
“What would you say was the chief cause of the end of civ?”
“Airplanes.”
“And its pinnacle?”
“Airplanes.”
“Are you just being clever?”
“Never.”
“You know who is still civilized?”
“The Indians?”
“You read my mind.”
“Your mind is my only reading material.”
“The Indians are nice.”
“Or not.”
“We'd do better to live with them than with the fellows into whose midst we were born.”
“Should we go live with them now?”
“Let's.”
“Let's.”
“Let's.”
“Let's.”
Jack Smith
At dawn I parked the car at the edge of the dank and malodorous swamp my guys had picked to build our makeshift town on, had built half or less than half and stopped. I grabbed a pot of corn from the car and carried it through the ten-foot-wide gap where the palisade they meant to build around the town didn't meet itself, so if I'd been a local with a weapon and a gripe instead of one of their own with a carload of locally grown grain I could have walked in and killed five of themâusâbefore the wan guards who lay asleep at the gap in the wall would have awakened and tried to lift with bone-thin arms guns they likely hadn't learned to shoot. I'd been gone a month. Summer's heat and wet weighed down the air, the trees' leaves, the dirt on my skin. I looked at all the small brown tents whose worn stained cloths might well have been the souls of the men whom they didn't quite protect from the animals, other men, and elements; each tent lay in its own soft defeated concavity on a plot where a hard house should have stood by now. These men had never been robust or skilled but now they were inert and had done nothing. Were they dead? I kicked the narrow place where one tent's old cloth jutted out near the groundâsome man's knee or bony assâand heard a howl inside: that one wasn't dead. I kicked such parts of other tents and got the same noise, so some if not all of the guys were still alive. I flicked on my flashlight and stuck my head inside one tent, then the next, then the next. There's no word for the stink in them but there's a word for the men who were the living source of the stink: thin; or half the stink in any case, the other half the swamp.
I moved the round clay pots of corn one by one from the car to the sad shack they called the mess. They're three feet across and ready to go, is the beauty of them. You put them on fire, add water, and stir. Each one comes with a packet of spice I wouldn't put in my mouth if you paid me, not now that I've seen what they spike a guest's food with if they want him softened up for hell knows what.
In my fatigue I'd left the keys in the car and when I came back through the hole in the palisade to get the third of the eight pots Ratcliffe was in the driver's seat and had started it, with Martin riding shotgun. “Sayonara!” Ratcliffe said, and Martin slapped him in the head as if to say “Why'd you say that?” Ratcliffe jammed it into first and headed down the dirt road toward what's left of I-64âenough if you've got an all-terrain car like the one he and Martin were fleeing in with five big pots of corn. I ran toward them. Martin shot at me and missed. I shot at him and got him in the arm and ran. Martin fell into Ratcliffe, who swerved and hit a tree. A pot of corn burst and swamped them. They jumped from the car with blood on their heads and tried to run but fell down. I took the gun from Martin's hand and held my gun to his head. Ratcliffe sat on the ground in a daze. He had no gun and posed no threat. He'd put on weight, the only man of the dozen I'd seen who hadn't grown bone-thin. And though he hadn't put on weight, Martin looked in good health too, to the point Martin could, which wasn't much, and anyhow to put on weight he'd have had to interrupt his quest to get chipped away by beast, man, and tool, to shed all non-Martin parts till what's left is just the vital him; if he succeeds in getting down to that core Martin under all the excess non-Martin, he'll be a baby-sized beast you'll never want to meet.
I said, “Where were you going?”
“Up your ass,” Martin said. He's good to have along for a laugh if you don't mind getting stabbed in the heart when you turn your back. Against his will I scrutinized his arm, from which my bullet had removed a thin patch of flesh and nothing more.
“You pussies meant to go back to New York without telling anyone, and now you're going to unload the corn for me.”
Ratcliffe said, “My head hurts,” and Martin said, “Fuck you.” I put Martin in the driver's seat, sat next to him, and made him back the car up from the tree they'd run it into. While pressing my thumb into Martin's newest wound I aimed the gun at Ratcliffe and told him to stand up, unload the corn, and bring it to the mess.
“I told you, I was just in a car crash and my head is killing me.” I shot at the dirt in front of his feet to make it spring up and hit him in the eyes. He got up and came toward the car with a sad look as if I'd said the kittens his cat had just given birth to weren't cute.
The barrel of my gun supervised their work. By the time they'd transferred all the pots of corn from car to shack and scooped up what they could of the corn that had spilled from the burst pot, the fifteen living skeletons that now made up the Virginia Branch of the Manhattan Company were out of their tents and standing around us. Each stared out at the corn from the pair of dark hollows in the middle of his head.