Laughing Man (32 page)

Only a boy had gotten into his house, and that boy was having fun, that boy certainly was having fun, laughing, certainly laughing...

But he wasn't. The boy wasn't laughing. He
wasn't
laughing.

"Show yourself, goddamnit!" Vertris shouted, and got the words back, in his voice, from the corners and walls and the ceiling and the floor of the dark room.

Something touched his face quickly, lightly. And his chest, too, at the same time. And his genitals. His legs. His buttocks. His back again, his neck, his arms. All at once. This was not just one boy, he realized. It was several boys. Several pairs of hands.

"Jesus Christ!" he screamed.

"Jesus Christ!"

"Jesus Christ!"

"Jesus Christ!"

"Jesus Christ!"

"Jesus Christ!"

P
atricia and Erthmun were staying that night in Room 13 of the Wee-Welcome Motel, a couple of miles from South Oleander. They had gotten to the motel at 1:00 A.M., and though both of them were beyond exhaustion, they couldn't sleep, because the incredible events of the day just passed wouldn't allow it, so they had sat up—Erthmun on the bed, with his back resting against two pillows propped up against the headboard, and Patricia in a blue club chair across the room—and they had talked. Their talk was not about the incredible events of the day; that could wait. Their talk was about inconsequentials, about the motel, which Erthmun called the "Wee-Welcome Roaches Motel," and about Patricia's family—three brothers and two sisters; father dead, mother ailing—and Erthmun's predilections for Western literature (Louis L'Amour was his favorite) and ghost stories, particularly those of M.R. James and Peter Straub, which, he said, "have entertained me into fright on many a night"; the comment made Patricia smile: "I didn't know you were a poet," she said. And he said, "I'm not. My mother was."

Which, Patricia thought, seemed to invite her into a topic that she was not up to at that moment.

After a long silence, after it was clear to Patricia that she was at last ready for sleep, but that Erthmun didn't seem ready yet, and, she supposed, that he'd require her company until he
was
ready, Erthmun said, "Something is happening around here."

After a moment, Patricia said, "That's very cryptic."

"I mean," Erthmun said, "around these woods and fields, in these hills that the people here foolishly call mountains, in some of these houses. I feel that something is happening."

"Do you know what it is?"

"Yes," he said. "Somehow I do. In some way I do. But I know so little. It's clear to me, now, that I have never known anything very much at all. If you were to let me loose in the deep forest, I would die." He adjusted the pillows, then looked at Patricia again. "I think they got these pillows from a highway project."

She smiled.

He said, "But the thing that's happening here is a very small thing. It's not a meteorite blasting into the atmosphere, or a global conflagration, or a virus that makes us all into morons."

Patricia smiled again.

He smiled. "I've discovered my sense of humor only in the past few years. Before that I was as taciturn and unfunny as a roofing tile. Now I know what humor means. Even in the worst of times."

"Like these?"

He cocked his head. "Are you asking, Patricia, if these times we're in are the worst of times? No, I don't think they are. Do you?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

He shrugged, as if in imitation of her. "Every generation's times are the worst of times. Don't you believe that? Every generation looks around and crows about its problems and troubles and grievances."

"Yes, I understand. I agree."

"Someone's going to knock at the door," Erthmun said.

"Huh?"

"Not now. Not right now. But in a while. Someone's going to knock at the door and they'll be agitated."

"Jesus, did you suddenly become a psychic?"

He smiled. "Yes. Just now. A few minutes ago."

"I like your smile," she said, surprising herself.

"I've practiced it," he said. "It used to be a smile that was no more entertaining than ketchup. Now it's the smile of a man who likes to smile."

"I'm sorry, Jack." She looked away a moment, looked back, caught his eye. "I seem to be flirting with you."

He shrugged once more. "And I with you. It's the setting, the hour. The people." He smiled once more.

She smiled, thought it was inviting, thought that was okay. "Yes. People flirt. It's one of the things they do, isn't it? If someone is even mildly interesting or attractive . . ."

"Meaning?" Erthmun interrupted.

She looked embarrassed. "Oh, no, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. No. You're more than mildly attractive, Jack. I'm sure you realize that."

There was a hard double knock at the door.

Erthmun said, "Continue."

She looked questioningly at him. "Jack, someone's knocking at the door."

"They'll wait. They'll have to."

She got up, started for the door, said, as if as an aside, "Later, Jack. Much later." The hard double knock came again. She opened the door.

A tall, stout man dressed as if for hunting, in a red and black checkered jacket and orange pants, who had a rifle slung over his shoulder, and whose eyes were wide and dark, as if he had just heard something that was beyond startling, said breathlessly, "You got to get outta here right away!"

"Sorry?" Patricia said.

"I mean now!" the man said, turned quickly to his right, and, in a moment, was knocking loudly at the door to Room 14.

Patricia leaned out her door and called to the man, "What are you talking about? Why do we have to leave?"

Erthmun came up beside her. "Get back inside, Patricia. I think he's right. I think we have to leave."

"Jesus H. Christ, Jack! What in the hell is going on?"

"I'm sure that even that man doesn't know," Erthmun said.

V
etris Gambol watched through his living room window as the children scattered as quickly and as soundlessly as cats into the early morning light. It did not seem unnatural to him. What seemed unnatural was looking through glass at them, caught in his house the way he was, in his comforts, in his skin. He did not question this way of thinking. He realized it, accepted it, watched the children scattering into the morning light. And when they had scattered and were gone, he knew well that they weren't gone, no more than the pines on the hill behind his house were gone, or the blue sky that had arched over his civilized landscape a day earlier was gone, or Villain, his beautiful and psychotic black cat with golden eyes, was gone.

Nothing, he realized, was ever gone in this place, on the earth, a dreaming ground for life and magic. He smiled. Had he actually thought those words? He'd never thought that way before. Why now?

He'd have to think about it.

Or maybe not.

He looked down at himself, looked out his big window again as the naked morning twilight became morning in full dress.

In time, he thought, he'd hang some clothes on himself.

W
illiamson the Loon was certain that there was no
never
and no
ever
and no
not
and no
possibility
or
probability
or
perhaps
anywhere in the universe he breathed in and fucked in and ate in and died in; and he was certain that there was no
died
either. Ever. Never.

For the first time in his existence he smiled a true smile.

So many non-possibilities among the possibilities and improbabilities, and impossibilities brimming with nots and serial magic and the lasts of nothing. He might as well have been a flower blooming underwater or a planetoid caught in an hourglass or a blade of summer grass contemplating Nietzsche. Because he was the nothing that was all. He was the poet. He was the mother and father of poets and magic. He was the child of sandstone and night music. He devoured the soulless and became another evening or another afternoon.

He was Williamson the Loon. Great evaporator. And resurrector. A small part of the bacterial whole. The bacterial whole turned to crude language and cruder gestures and a need for exposition.

He was Williamson the Loon holding spleens in his teeth. He was Williamson the Loon following the blood around his body like a lover. He was Williamson the Loon needing to recreate. Himself. And all the whole. The subterranean bacterial self of himself that slipped naked through fissures and openings in granite to bustle about on streets built by that other species, the one transplanted on the earth from stardust and Mars meteorites.

He was Williamson the Loon who, like that other species, had gotten it all wrong, and so needed to return and resurrect on another day. On the long day that was night and day. In the long year that was decade and century and millennium.

What could end what?

He slipped away, smiling his first-ever true smile. Knowing he slipped away to nothing from nothing and so became everything. In the long day, in the long year.

T
his is what Jack Erthmun said to Patricia as they drove away from the Wee-Welcome Motel in the naked early morning twilight: "It is the magic of being."

Patricia was driving. She liked to drive. Erthmun didn't. He found artifice in it that he couldn't understand or explain. If he had thought about it, he would invent this metaphor to describe it: That it was like a snail riding a bicycle.

Patricia glanced confusedly at him and said, "Again, cryptic?"

"Yes," he said. "Of course. People enjoy it. People enjoy cryptic. They need to know and not know all at the same time. They want answers but are always unsatisfied."

"Not always," Patricia told him.

"At the end, I think."

"The end?"

"When the earth comes alive again and swallows them up."

"Oh."

He said, "It is the magic of being. It is all the magic of being."

She glanced at him, said nothing, watched the twilight change to something grander and less interesting.

Erthmun said, "A rock might see us flexing our toes and declare that it was magic. But it would be magic only for the rock."

"Jack, it would be magic simply for the rock to speak."

"Oh, yes, wouldn't it," he said.

She said nothing. She had no idea what he was talking about. But she thought that he knew what he was talking about.

He went on, "Chocolate murders are an aberration, Patricia."

"I think I know that."

"They are such a thing as
we
do. Do you understand?"

"On the face of it, yes." She turned the headlights off. Morning was upon them.

"As if a rock were to come along and flex its toes," Erthmun said. "It would be magic for the rock to do that. But it would be a magic that needed to pass away. Do you understand?"

"No."

"Because only creatures such as ourselves flex our toes. Rocks don't. And shouldn't."

Patricia came to a stop at a red light that seemed to have been placed, she thought, in the middle of nowhere. A semi loaded with car parts whizzed around her and through the light. "Jesus," she breathed. "He'll kill someone."

Erthmun said, "He already has."

She glanced at him. "Huh?"

"Or someone else has. Someone also with a brain between two ears and genitals waiting to be put to their proper use and hands to caress and also to do murder."

She glanced at him again. "Good Lord, Jack, you're being almost . . . Shakespearean this morning."

"I wouldn't know that," he said.

"Read him, you'll understand."

Jack shrugged. "I will."

Patricia leaned forward, noted that the light was green, looked right, left, went through.

Jack said, "We never stay. Patricia, we never stay. We always come and go. We always try to get it right."

"What do we try to get right, Jack?"

He looked out his window. "Living on the earth," he said.