My, my, isn’t that interesting?
What fantastications are these?
I ignore the insults and the jeers from the balconies that continue to rise higher behind me, across the road, in the darkness of the cornfield. Kate is magnificent and beautiful, if not a queen then a princess, repatriated into the wood and the water and the starry sky and the cold ocean abysses broiling beyond the continental shelf, just beyond the rise, through the trees, not presiding but naturalized. Yes, I think, this must be her first pageant, an equinoctial communion, restoration after a satisfactory yearlong trial as a member of the deceased.
A menagerie of horse and pony skeletons prance around the stage in exaggerated, ambling gaits, draped in caparisons made from their own former hides.
A pillar of fire erupts from the top of the hill and towers miles up into the night until it breaks against the invisible ceiling of the atmosphere and fans out across the sky in flaming traceries. A great crown of fire burns miles above Enon, bejeweled with Ursa’s stars.
Kate watches the fire from her mark onstage, in front of the whirling shutter of bones, which seem to rotate within their revolutions, alternating between the reliquaries of legends and dinner-plate leftovers, one instant the remains of leviathans and saints, the next drumsticks and short ribs. Kate cranes her neck to follow the fire up into the heights and I see that the rest of her does not move, that beneath her gown she has been clamped into some sort of frame. Her arms are raised to shoulder height and bent at the elbows so that the tips of her fingers nearly meet in front of her chest. She cannot move her arms. They are confined by some kind of armature beneath the gown and only her hands are free at the wrists. This confirms why there is stiffness in how she moves her head to look up at the fire. She cannot rotate her shoulders or her torso or her hips, or turn on her feet to get a better look at the braided column of flames roaring behind her. I can feel its heat from where I sit. She is much nearer to it, and although I have the thought that she is no longer subject to burning, I also have the sense that she is burning, and that she cannot move herself back from the heat. I can see now — not actually see with my eyes, but see in my head, know — that Kate has been fixed to some kind of rigid frame made of wooden strapping and hammered iron rivets, not so much to restrict her, perhaps, but to insulate her from the weight of the costume, a lesser kindness within a greater cruelty, sponsored by an ultimate benevolence, possibly if not probably, which I now see is laden with clots of gems and strings of pearls and made from bolt after bolt of silk brocade and lace, douppioni and zibeline, and trussed and knotted with leagues of silk ribbon, and mounted on a series of concealed panniers that spring out and upward, elevating Kate to a preposterous height just as it occurs to me that they are present beneath the fabric. Kate rises and the skirts of her dress cascade from beneath her and across the green. I can hear pulleys and winches turning and squeaking. Kate’s ascent illuminates a system of fine silk threads, tied to the tips and the joints of each of her fingers, which rise above her and disappear in the upper darkness and lift and lower her fingers according to elegant but predetermined pattern. I squint to get a look at the darkness above Kate’s head, certain there must be a scrim of black velvet, perfectly lit to blend in with the real night, that conceals a rotating brass drum bristling with stubs that pluck the tines of a metal comb. Each of the threads connected to Kate’s wrists and fingers is looped around one of the tines. As the drum revolves, her hands perform an intricate set of poses. I am terrified that Kate is going to be immolated. I panic and try to rise but I cannot move. The crowd roars with laughter.
The music accompanying the spectacle is stilted and fractured. It lurches from wheezy calliopes to pennywhistles to ground-shaking brass to sour, scraping strings to air-raid sirens. At one point, I catch an oompah pattern sounding on an accordion deep inside the din. I tap the triplets on my thigh with my ring, middle, then forefinger, grateful for something recognizable, almost reassuring. I begin to sway my head back and forth in whole notes behind the rhythm. When I look back at Kate, she is raising and lowering her right arm and her right leg and tilting her head to the right, along with the beat I’m playing. I frown and stop tapping my fingers and Kate’s arm and leg and head stop, too. I tap my right ring finger once. Kate’s leg raises and lowers. I tap my middle finger once and Kate’s arm raises and lowers. I tap my forefinger and Kate’s head nods. I repeat the pattern with the fingers of my left hand and Kate’s left limbs rise and fall and her head tilts left. I look up into the darkness above her and see that the brass drum and the metal comb are not the mechanisms that control Kate behind the curtains but props, meant to be seen, meant to be seen within the play on the stage. I tap my fingers in a little march and Kate jerks along with it.
I gasp when I realize what is happening and a wall of flames bursts behind Kate and her grotesque costume ignites. She is enshrined in fire and the entire production gives way. All the staging and framing and cables and gears and winches collapse in an instant, with Kate disappearing underneath it all, and the wreckage is yanked back behind the hill without a sound and without a trace. The last I see of Kate is her pale face before it is gulped into the fire and collapsing rubble. The whole spectacle has the appearance of being staged to look like a disaster, as if the beautiful girl perishes in a catastrophe, but that, of course, is always a part of the trick. I cry out for her.
That’s right; chuck your girl into the furnace, palooka!
Huzzah!
Hip, hip, hooray!
He burns her at the stake every single night!
And look at him crying over her — what a baby!
Boo hoo hoo!
Just wait until we get ahold of you!
13
A HURRICANE STRUCK THE EAST COAST AND SWEPT THROUGH Enon in early August, right before the anniversary of Kate’s death. I would not have known that it was coming if I hadn’t walked to Stonepoint to try to find Frankie Shuey at the Ironsides Tap Room, so I could buy more drugs. When I arrived at the bar, Frankie and another guy were the only ones there. The guy sitting next to Frankie looked vaguely familiar, as if maybe I’d seen him on other landscaping or painting crews over the years. He was thin and his shoulders so slouched it looked like he might snap in two. His complexion was pale gray and the sharp bones in his face looked like they might split through the skin. He had thin black hair and a black mustache up under which a burning cigarette had been stuck. I could tell by how sunken his cheeks were that he had no or very few teeth left. Overall, he had the appearance of a body long abused but not especially strong in the first place. I had a sense that he was always sick, always had a cough, always had asthma or bronchitis, always needed bed rest and hot soup and a good drying out. He and Frankie sat side by side, each with a boilermaker. The already dim bar darkened more and I looked over at the two high, wide, narrow, smoked windows in the wall that faced the harbor. One window was already blacked out and I watched as someone outside fitted a sheet of plywood over the other and began pounding it into place with a hammer and nails. The guy Frankie was drinking with sat on his left, so I pulled out the bar stool to his right.
I said, “Hey, Frankie.” Frankie turned to see who I was and turned back to the bar.
“Hey,” he said. The guy on the other side of him looked at me and crunched up his nose.