The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan (6 page)

Edwin became a filmmaker for a year when he received an unexpected, jokingly-applied-for federal grant. In return, he was to produce three short propaganda films for the political party in power. The films were to depict attempted assassinations of the party leader. The propaganda was designed to depict resistance to despotism as traitorous. Each film depicted one of the three largest minority groups organizing in armed resistance. The minorities, one would assume, were building an unholy triumvirate and would carve up the body of the leader and feed him to their dogs.

These films would instill enough fear in the commoner that the commoner would embrace the leader again and despise instead the plotting minorities. The films were successful, and violence against these minorities doubled in the cities. The leader retained his hold on his office.

When Thoth is dead, we’ll peel the film from his eyes. That way we can see what he saw. Various federal agents have been by, looking for Thoth. When the President himself came by, some stupid redneck song, "Drown in the Chattahoochee," came on the radio. I smiled at the coincidence.

I told them all, "I hope you get him."
The last two agents seemed particularly bright and good-natured. They returned later to tell me they’d gotten Thoth.
"Good," I said. "It was inevitable." I watched the three of them, Thoth in shackles, walk away through the tall grass, back up to the locked gate by the highway. Too bad they wouldn’t be able to hold him, I thought. Drown him in my pond, Pause Lake. Hecho en USA. I’d have to sell the property of course, now that everyone knew where it was and connected it to good o’ Chattahoochee Edwin. Oh, well.
I was free of him for a while immediately thereafter. I moved, got a job as a night watchman at a resort, and was left alone. I had a radio, books to read, and a putt-putt course. My first night, I remember, I scored a 58 for 18 holes. Take that, Edwin! His golf obsession was legendary. Here I was practicing my putting game every night and getting paid for it! That made me a professional, right? It was the perfect job for an insomniac isolationist like me. My gasping for air because of my sleep apnea would no longer disturb my wife’s sleep. Nor would my snoring.
Dad wouldn’t be grumpy in the morning when my kids woke up because by then I’d be home and have had a couple of beers already, and then I’d be asleep. I’d still have afternoon time and supper with my wife and kids. But what was attractive was I’d never have to deal with Lubjec, who was certainly diurnal.
I asked him if he’d golf with me once, years ago. He laughed and said, "You’re just a beginner. Why would I waste my time golfing with a beginner? Take some classes or something and tell me when you break 80." I assume he meant for 18. What an ass. What a bare-assed baboon! I already had a 58! And a 62 later that night! That’s 120 for 36 holes! In one night! I don’t want to hear about breaking 80 ever again!
My second night at the resort I brought several crossword puzzles. I had completed the Sunday
Los Angeles Times
puzzle the night before, and I enjoyed it. The second night I tried the
New York Times
Sunday puzzle, but it was much more heavily drawn from pop culture than the L.A. one. The L.A. paper had more history and geography questions, which I’m better at. I don’t know much about Broadway stars or TV divas. I shot a 57 at 1:30 in the morning. Those poor suckers who wake up at 5:30 only to shoot an 80—what slobs! What rank amateurs!
My second round that night I shot a 59, but I had a 25 on the front nine. Fifteen hung me up—I started getting back spasms and double-bogeyed the hold and then bogeyed sixteen. I had to forego the third round that I’d been planning on. Normally, 54 holes shouldn’t be a problem.
Meanwhile, Lubjec had kept himself busy. I saw him on the news. Daniel Noriega was giving a press conference, and there, right behind Noriega’s left shoulder, stood a bespectacled, bearded Lubjec. Whether he was working toward Noriega’s overthrow or against, I have no idea. Lubjec may not even have known himself. When I was an industrial operative with Lubjec, that’s the way it was— after a while we had no idea if we were working for or against our employer. I suppose you could say we did both. Lubjec, especially. He’d volunteer to birth a cow and then deliver a stillborn. He’d help roofers carry squares up a ladder, but then he’d kick the ladder away.
I figured it out when we played chess. He had no endgame. He would attack, and if black, he’d overtake. But he lacked a final plan. Frequently, even if he was ahead by a couple of good pieces, I could stalemate him by getting him on the run. His essential flaw was, perhaps, that he was purely reactive. One could bank on it.
My third night on the job I recorded a 66 and a 59. I had back spasms, though. I had a 24 on the front nine on my second round. The first round of 66 I put off to the incredible distractions. I was working on a Friday night, an entire YMCA fellowship was occupying one of the four camping areas, and people kept coming by the guard shack to get their assigned campsites. The nerve of some people! Couldn’t they see I was golfing? I took some painkillers and decided to try a third time shortly before dawn. My third, round, though, also yielded a 59. I had a 52 going into 18, but my spasms were so bad that I got a 7 on that last hole. Perhaps my endgame’s not so good as Beckett’s either.
The fourth night the fifth hole led into a periscope of a decommissioned Russian submarine. A frightened old man was on the other side. His wild white sideburns quivered when I asked him about Lubjec. He placed an exploding scone on the sixth tee and blew himself up with his driver rather than answer my questions. Perhaps I was getting close to the truth. When the brine flooded the sub, I knew I was in a pickle. I figured this was a hell of a way to lose weight.
I made my way to the surface and began to notice my sentence structure. Fragments everywhere. Was it true that Lubjec existed only on paper?
Debriefed by the naval officers who picked me up, I felt naked. My pen was taken from me and broken.
I saw Ed...win.
I was sunk. I was bottled in, and I was in the drink.
I was the gin djinn, and only the reading of my tale would let me out. So, Lubjec, what will you do with me now?

Nin and Nan sat at the top of the hill together and observed the goings-on below. Nin's mind was sufficiently empty. Nan's was insufficiently so. The future was never not far enough away. Enough that neither of them would never know.

Nin liked straw. Nan liked Styrofoam. The hill obviously disliked the straw because the hill did all it could to free itself of the itchy stuff: it begged the winds to come and blow it away, it enraged the fireflies and it shook itself fiercely. It didn’t mind Styrofoam, which was just fluff, but everyone else did, especially the bugs who came to rest on the hill, and because the bugs were such terrible whiners, the hill decided not to tolerate Styrofoam either.

Nan looked around. True—the beanfields seemed much closer than they had just a few months earlier.
"No, not those beans," said Nin, pointing to the beanfields. "
Those
beans." Nin pointed at a newly constructed billboard alongside the not-too-distant highway.
Nan at first did not see it and imagined a different billboard: "Coca Beans—put some toot in your toot!" But Nan quickly dismissed the idea as too silly to even mention to Nin, and by then Nan saw the offending blot on the landscape, a billboard so enormous and gaudy that why Nan hadn't previously noticed it was worthy of some psychological investigation perhaps. But that would have to wait for another time, for at the time the only item being investigated was the billboard: a fifty-foot wide by twenty-foot tall luminescent green-and-pink lettered atrocity featuring a photo of a smiling, dancing string bean in top hat, tails, cane, can and spats. The bean was ascending a spiral staircase. The advertisement text read, "Dance up a stair to good health with Rogers' brand beans."
"Oh, that has to come down, Nin," said Nan.
"Exactly, Nan," replied Nin.
Nan rolled down the hill, across the highway and along the shoulder up to the billboard. Fortunately, it was cheaply constructed of soft pine. That gave Nan an idea for the moral justification for the destruction of the sign.
Back up the hill, Nan said, "Nin, they've killed the trees that went into the manufacture of that sign."
"True, Nan."
"And they've drained the trees of their life energy." "True again, Nan."
"Would it be wrong... wouldn't it indeed be a holy thing for us to restore to the trees their energy?"
"Yes, indeed."
"And what are the spirits of pine called?"
"Why, turpentine, Nan. We have some at home."
"Yes, we should get it."
"Yes, and then we'll soak the sign in the spirits of pine and restore the life energy."
"Yes."
"But Nan?"
"Yes, Nin?"
"That may not be enough. For this to be a
holy
transformation, we need more. Do you remember the holy transformation of Christ's disciples?"
"Of course, Nin. The Pentecost."
"Wasn't the spiritual transformation described as taking place in tongues of fire? Hasn't it been depicted so by artists for centuries?"
"Ah, yes! So after we douse the sign, we must ignite it with the spirit of the Lord."
"Yes, Nan. You get the turpentine. I'll get the matches."
When Nin lit the fire, Nan was reminded of Abednego's surviving the flames of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace in Babylon. From the German
abend
, or "evening"; the English "a-bed," meaning "to take oneself to bed"; the Hebrew
neg—
, meaning "south" [to the Hebrews, of course, the black races lived south]; and the Latin
nec
, meaning "not," a statement of contrast. Abednego's surviving the flames contrasted the darkness of night yet also upheld it. That it was both things contradictory simultaneously was inherent. All things confirm their opposites. The atheist is as dependent upon the concept of God for hir (i.e. "his or her") self-definition as the theist is. By standing in opposition to theism, the atheist acknowledges the existence of theism. Indeed, the atheist
needs
the existence of theism in order to exist hirself.
Of course, unlike Abednego, the billboard did not emerge from the fire unscathed. Coca the dancing string bean shriveled and writhed as the bill separated from the board. The wood was freed to dance according to its grain, and as Nin and Nan watched, it danced itself away completely. The billboard turned dark as it was consumed by fire, and then, in turn, fire gave way to the darkness of night. The spiritual transformation of the wood was complete. Nin and Nan watched the last embers give way before returning to the home inside the hill.

Days passed, and Nin and Nan enjoyed the return of the landscape to the state it had been in before it had the sign: the purples, yellows, reds and blues of the wildflowers on the heath, punctuated by thickets of gnarled black oaks, weeping willows, scarlet buckeyes, and Eastern cottonwoods, and connected by a two-lane road that reticulated through the countryside like an unwelcome python. The hiss and smoke from the occasional automotive parasites crawling along its skin was repulsive. Both host and parasites had to go.

"We should do something about those pesky cars," said Nin, pointing again.
Nan expected to see a billboard advertising automobiles. A celebrity, perhaps, someone like Imogene Cocabean, holding open the driver's side door to the newest Studebaker, the Studebaker Hawk, and welcoming the viewer into the seat. And something lewd to connect image and purpose—a double entendre: "Come inside," perhaps.
"Where?" Nan asked Nin. No new signage had been put up to replace the obliterated one. The liberated one, that is.
In the distance, a dark Lincoln Continental was approaching. Even at a distance, it seemed to be moving quickly.
"I don't think we'll be able to catch it, Nin. It's moving too fast."
"True, Nan. And to be fair, they wouldn't even be coming along here if there were no road for them to travel on."
"I agree. But we can't get rid of the entire road, can we? It's not as easy as a billboard."
"You are correct that it won't be easy, but I know we have to do it."
They sat quietly, gathering their thoughts.
"Nin?"
"What, Nan?"
"I know why we have to do this."
"Why, Nan?"
"Because the road is a false god, and we must tear down all false idols."
"Exactly!"
"Jesus said, 'I am the way,' but the road pretends
it
is the way."
"
Via
in Latin can mean 'road' or 'path' or 'way,' so you are correct, Nan."
"But how can we remove a road without being noticed?"
"Like Hadrian said: 'One brick at a time,' Nan. We must determine the vanishing points on either horizon and begin there, gradually removing a narrow strip of pavement from alongside the shoulder and then, eventually, from the road. This way, gradually, the road will become narrower and narrower until it just ceases to exist."
"But, Nin, do we have a maul?"
"Yes, we do."
"Do we have a spade?"
"Yes."
"Do we have a wheelbarrow?"
"Yes."
"Okay, so let's go find the road's horizons."
On one end, the road came over a hill and was lined by huge willows on both sides. At the other, the road vanished into a valley between two hills dotted with enormous granite boulders. The road's sacrilegious alpha and omega had been easier to define than Nin had anticipated. Very good, thought Nin.
They began mauling and shoveling the road into the wheelbarrow. Load after load they carted off over the horizon and buried in a field. Many days, weeks and months were spent by Nin and Nan in this pursuit. They were vigilant and successfully avoided detection by all occasionally passing cars.
Nan figured they had moved enough wheelbarrow loads and carried them far enough that, if the moved material were laid lengthwise in a one-inch wide strip, it could from where they were reach Point Barrow, Alaska.
Nin said, one day, "Every time we finish a strip, the road seems just as wide as before."
Nan replied, "Remember St. Cyril of Jerusalem's famous Parable of the Holy Trinity."
Nin asked, "No—what was that?"
Nan said, "In the 4
^th
century, St. Cyril wrote that St. Augustine was walking along the beach one day and met a child who had dug a hole in the sand and who kept carrying water from the ocean to the hole, only to see the water disappear. When Augustine asked the child what he was doing, the child said he was trying to put the entire ocean into the little hole. Augustine said to the child that it was impossible to fit the ocean into that little hole. The child replied that he'd be able to fit the ocean into the hole before St. Augustine would be able to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity."
Other days saw Nin encouraging Nan not to despair. By bucking each other up, they finally saw the day come when they could see their progress. It was a day of joy, and that night they celebrated. They feasted and drank wine. The road was certainly more narrow than it had been!
They ordered a couple of "Road Narrows" signs for the horizons and placed them just beyond where they could see. This would avert the passing drivers' suspicions. Even the occasional trooper would suspect little more than an incompetent DMV. These signs would suffice until the road became too narrow for two-lane traffic. At that point, the "Road Narrows" signs were replaced with "One Lane Road Ahead" signs. When the road had narrowed to within that proportion, the signs were replaced with signs stating, "Road Closed for Repair," and a week later, with railings and "Road Ends" signs. Exhausted but satisfied, Nin and Nan collapsed into their hill and slept for the better part of a week.