Ringing the valley, pulsing, on the hilltop, are obscurant forms, establishing, establishment shadows — businesstypes, respectables, former congress-menschs they look or talk like, MD-PhD’s, editor/esquires…people in waiting. Mandated to remain outside the Refuge, they wait to exercise their right to exact punishment from the refugee should he, she, or it ever take leave of the city and so, its protection, should they ever quit the company of their sins: ever prepared, dysnfunctionally vigilant and yet patient to win such vengeance with axes, splinterhandled, incomplete sets of kitchen knives, with swords of elaborate letteropeners, factorysecond nailfiles, cactiburrs made maces, found hunks of masonry, unfinished railroad spurs, ties, rocks, meltsharpened icicles, wormlengths of scrapwood. Passing the time, dust from sand they sieve with their mouths, hanging open, panting, not shocked at the valley but impatient for its opportunity, when — for a future not to be occupied so wastefully; their ties slung heroically over their shoulders, the sleeves of their suitjackets rolled up as if for heavy lifting, for toil.
After rimming the valley thrice, circumambulations conducting him down and up hills, a goy rare to these parts arrives at the hill further to wait amongst these revengers revenant in their eminent labcoats and lawrobes, others legitimizing in the uniforms of the police, fire, and military, finally takes a seat on an outcrop, down next to a mensch who’s palming a pipe.
Waiting for anyone special?
The schmuck who knocked up my daughter, that’s who, the mensch says, and the moment he gets smart, takes one step out from the group…
And what’s your spiel? asks a mensch sharpening a butcher’s cleaver with the thick of his thumb.
I’m out for a mensch who, Gelt’s thinking…He killed my father — let’s leave it at that.
Gelt’s arrived. That, ear to the ground, is the word: having heard about these Refuges lately cropping up, not as much blossoming as rotting away from a wither, an invocation of Scripture, its manifestation on the map, organic but foreign — he’s flown in from Mormondom via Wyoming to investigate. How exactly he found out Ben here’s a mite misty, unscholared: intuition smokesignaled, or arrived upon the wings of an eagle, following the sand, the trample of shrubs. Whatever the source, the intelligence that is hope indicates his quarry’s below, must be, and so every rise of the sun he rims the valley again to the opposite hill, the mound topped with that large leaning oak, to ensconce himself at its summit in privacy from his fellows waiting, sitting, standing, more often than not up in the tree, hidden amid the dense naked wood. It’s Scripturally illegal, not to mention otherwise inadvisable, insane, for him to venture into the Refuge: officially, there’s no admittance; he’s not running from any rap, hasn’t left a passionately unsanctioned assassination deep in his past — and while he can attempt to pass himself off, obfuscate you know the darkening drill with all the militant prowess he mightn’t possess, they’ll know, they’ll beat it out of him, he’s sure as the night. Also, the Garden’s issued orders to respect the new Law of the land, derech eretz: wait it out’s the idea, and we’ll have Him; it’s inevitable, intended…like how am I expected to work, Gelt thinks, for an organization so goddamned mystical, when times get troubled by facts. Ask the birds, most of which are flown or dead, icy wings. How, he’s patient is how, full of schemes to subvert, pass the time, the gestatory pneumonia if it’s not already onelunged to pleurisy: flying any pigeons he succeeds in branchcapturing, netting in leaf, claycolored ill squabblers sent out high over the wallpeople, carrying his notes folded then tied with the midribs of leaves to the tips of their talons; the vein of the texts offering lavish rewards for turning Him over, Gelt makes the sums up out of thin air, windy figures. Then, when they palm and pawn the pigeons on the inside for food or eat them, Gelt still without sin throws over rocks, again with his notices attached just with sloppier scrawclass="underline" stars shot without heed across night as if to effect an impertinent sky; he tosses in strained arching lobs.
Gelt standing out on the westernmost rise of the arrhythmic atrium of the heartland it is, the beating bursting organ of the valley below, hurling his finds over walls of shrieking freakpeople, shirkers and droppers, back-sliders knocked out cold on the freeze, sinners and even, if rare, the goodly Godless, too, beatitudinally crazy they are, wild with love, even if only of themselves — stones strung with scraps of shirt unwound he writes on in blood, which is his, too, then sitting to wait, lying in wait, up in a bare bough and peering over the encampment, stretching his arms out to hurl as if in a benediction or blessing foretold: the stones he throws hit people, people with memories, egos and aches, knock out more eyes and teeth to be traded for favors inside; the notes attached are brought to Ben to read but He can’t really make them out, the smudge or His incapacity to believe the worst, His inability to take a hint, or perceive a threat, and most of the others except the elders here have forgotten how to make sense of words at all, have allowed themselves to go rusty.
WANTED ALIVE
A Refugee Among Refugees
Purse Offered Weight of Suspect in Gold
Significant
Description Fat Glasses Robe Unpleasant Odor
Answers to Name of Israelien
Top of Western Slope
You Know the One I’m Talking
With the Tree