"That man Wendell who had my cabin," I said. "What happened to him?"
"He died."
"Heinrich says he hanged himself."
"You know you splooge in your pants when you do that?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Guess everyone knows. I'm finding that the older I get, it's not that I learn new things, it's more like I find out how much of what I know is common knowledge."
"That's a good way of putting it."
"Don't condescend."
"I'm not."
"Don't deny your actions."
Lem was truly a child of this place.
"Did Wendell leave a note? An explanation?"
"Yeah. There was a note. It said, Please note."
"Please note?"
"Please note."
"Damn," I said.
"That's what I said. Want some of this?"
"Yes," I said.
I hardly noticed Lem leave. I hardly noticed anything except the helium panic of the pot, the warp of the world, the fissuring. I decided to give the shit-free zone one more shot. No more boat. No more no-more-boat. I thought about nothing. I zeroed in on nothingness. Nothingness rose out of the ether to greet me, to embrace. I heard music now, horns, a brassy vamp. Flashpots, fireworks. The nothingness dancers chorus-kicked through smoke.
"Please note! Please note!" they sang. Kick-turn. Kick-turn. Balcony gels, leotards, hip jut. This was not for nothing, I thought. Then the weed wore off. The garter belts fell from the trees. The sun was going down.
I did not hate twilight.
I went to fetch Renee.
I rolled her out to the milk barn to see the calf twins born last week. Romulus and Rimjob, Old Gold had named them. They were dark and frisky in the moonlit pen, big sweet pups. They nuzzled our knees at the rail. Renee put her hand out and one of them took it with a soft sucking sound up to the wrist.
"Oh, my God," she said.
"I'm sorry," I said, "about those things I said the other night."
"You have to try this," said Renee.
"I need to tell you something," I said.
"You really have to try this."
I stuck a loose fist out for the other calf. It made a rough warm womb of its mouth for me.
"Jesus," I said. "That really is something."
"Isn't it? No wonder cows are sacred in Japan."
"I don't think it's Japan," I said.
"I hate you," said Renee. "Let's have a hate fuck."
"Over there, then," I said, "behind the hayrick."
"That's called a hayrick?" said Renee.
"Sure," I said.
"Sounds like Heinrich," said Renee.
"Don't say that," I said.
There were no dessert speeches that night. We bused our plates and marched out of the dining hall. Portable lights lit the lawn outside, night-game bright. There was a chop in the air and the lamp casings hummed. Somewhere behind us an engine gunned. The glow of brake lights parted us.
Naperton slid down from the van, popped the hatch, reached in to struggle with some kind of ungainly parcel. The thing seemed to twitch in its plummet and when it hit the lawn we saw what it was-a man. He wore a blindfold, handcuffs of clear plastic. Blood had dried on his shaven head. Naperton pulled the blindfold off. The man just stood there and blinked for a while. The lights were probably putting a wildness in his eyes but he looked a tad touched anyway, the type who spends his childhood plucking butterflies apart, or Scotch-taping patriotic ordnance to gerbils, only to make his way up the living chain in a great pageant of abuse.
But who am I to talk, mastermind of the Moth-O-Caust?
He had tattoos. A steely anchor on his sternum tipped into a fat black heart. A target spiraled out from the top of his skull. The bull's-eye read "C.B." There was a logo on his shoulder that looked familiar. I nearly retched when I read the legend beneath it: Tough Cookies-Deal or Die.
Now we all watched as Clellon Beach rolled to his knees and made to somehow stand.
Naperton kicked him in the hip.
"Fuck you," said Beach.
"Fuck me?" said Naperton. "I'm old enough to be your grandfather. You wouldn't want to fuck me."
Naperton kicked him in the mouth. Tooth bits stuck to Beach's lip.
"That all you got?" he said.
"For now," said Naperton. "Try our sales representative tomorrow. Unless you'd be interested in this."
Naperton kicked him in the stomach. Beach puked through his teeth.
"Picador," said Heinrich from the porch, "I think the bull is ready."
He stood at the balustrade in a stained dinner jacket and a wire-fastened beard, Odin emceeing a varsity football banquet.
"Dig the beard?" he said. "Had the thing in my closet for years. I was God one Halloween, if you can believe it. Costume contest. Some Little Orphan Annie cunt won. Mr. Beach, it's an honor to finally meet you. You're a storied figure in our later gospels, so it really is a privilege. 'A huge fucking killer,' if I remember the text correctly. Well, maybe not so huge. What do you go, one-forty, one forty-five? But then again, Abraham didn't live hundreds of years, either, did he? Mythology is beyond fact-checking, I'd say. Wouldn't you? Did they tell you why you're here?"
The man moaned.
"I didn't hear you," said Heinrich.
"I told them," said Beach. "There was nothing in the container, I swear. I went on board myself. It was empty."
"What container?"
"The container."
"All day," said Naperton, "about the container. The foredeck container, he says."
"Thank you, Notty. I do believe I understand. Clellon, are you thinking you're here because of some dirtbag job you botched? Some double-cross you cooked up in a Norfolk flophouse? These are things of Clellon Beach the man. We don't give a rat's ass about him around here. We are solely concerned with myth. And you are myth, Mr. Beach. You are the demon who stalks our beloved Gold. Through no fault of your own, I might add. Nonetheless, now there must be a reckoning. Can we get some drum?"
Dietz walked out of the crowd doing paradiddles on a fur-bound Indian tom.
"This isn't a fucking Krupa show," said Heinrich. "Slow it down."
Now Old Gold stepped out to the porch, shirtless, in festive pantaloons. He gripped his terrific knife. Bobby was there, if he was still Bobby, pulped a bit around the eyes, the Tenets open in his hands and him nearly davening as he recited: "Behold, subsequent diagnostic procedures proved it so, and subsequent forays into the abyss revealed these things to me: Your soul is made of deeds. Your thoughts, your fears, your whims, your doubts, are sand. Moreover, you can't make an omelet without perpetrating some serious fucking atrocities. Mama, Papa, Caca, Pee-Pee. You are you. Article Seven, Redemption Tip Number Five."
"Don't go off book," snapped Heinrich.
"I am book," said Trubate.
"I am me," shouted Old Gold. He bounded down to Beach, cut his cuffs away, chased the air with elegant swipes of his knife. He had the bearing of some highborn reaper, a cruel dandy. He caught a piece of Beach's face and Beach snatched his wrist, judo'd his arm around, bent it to some inhuman parameter that got Old Gold howling. Beach took the knife now, put the blade to Old Gold's neck. Was he awaiting thumbs from Caesar's skybox? What a soldier, sailor. A shot boomed down from the porch, spun Beach, put him on his knees. He pawed at the hole in his shoulder, the wet epaulette of blood blooming there.
Old Gold laid his boot on Beach's back.
"Look at my fucking demon now!" he said. "Little Sissy demon! I am a cloudwalker and I rain my rain of piss down on your meek inheritor ass!"
Old Gold took his cock out, pinched it down towards Beach's skull. We waited for a while.
"No flow," said Old Gold.
We heard another shot and tiny flecks of Old Gold's ass went twirling into the lights.
"For real?" he said, and fainted. Heinrich tucked his pistol in his dinner jacket, started down the steps.