Ether (11 page)

He doesn't answer.

“Are you reading it?” I ask.

He still ignores me, so I reach down and take the paper from him. But he's sitting in the middle of the couch and I just have this tiny corner here beside him, so I tell him to move over, but he doesn't acknowledge me and doesn't move at all. I elbow him a little, but it's like he's cast in bronze and welded to the cushions. I read the first page, skim the rest. It's not today's. I bought it yesterday and forgot it on the floor. My fingers smudge the headlines. The usual catalogue of horrors. A monsoon somewhere unpronounceable. Twelve thousand dead. An earthquake buries eight times more. These are estimates: the only people left to count are busy digging. A photo of a dusty leg. Something about a flood. Fires raging through slums. Bridge collapses. TV star gets drunk. Tidal wave. Ferry sinks with all aboard. Corpses ruin beaches, tourists complain. Aerial assault flattens ancient city. Again. The dead are dark and poor, oddly attired, too numerous to count. Sixty die in ambush. Line 'em up. Suicide bomb kills ninety-four as they kneel at worship. To whom should we pray now? survivor asks. Movie star is fatter than before. Tanks flatten village, house by crumbling house. Headless toddler declares self non-combatant. President auto-fellates and toasts to human misery. Husband cheats on wife. Man in fancy car farts, gets paid. Rain falls on the fields of the rich. Blame the starving that they have not to eat. Cop declares torture fun. These are fine lines, pundits agree. Is it genocide or just mass murder? Build more walls, public demands. A new vision for the nation: A cage for every soul. Race-sickness transmitted through blood and blood alone. But we all have blood, sighs expert. Don't panic, government advises: Famine kills only the hungry. Superstar actor swears fealty to humanitarian ideals. This world of washboard ribs, rheumy eyes, lies and lies, sick pussing lies.

I throw the paper on the floor, kick it away, try to crumple it with my heel. But newspapers are unwieldy beasts. It won't fight back, but it flaps open again, spreads itself wantonly at my feet. I kick at it again and rest my elbows on my knees. I cradle my head in my hands. The newsprint rustles lewd whispers at my toes. The stranger looks up at me and laughs.

“Nothing's funny,” I say.

He chuckles, cracking the knuckles on his right hand one by one. “I know,” he says.

“Is that all you have to say?” I ask him.

“To say?”

I nod toward the paper. “To say. For all of this.”

He doesn't answer at first, just sits there and stares at me, his eyes dripping slow contempt. At last he speaks. “You're being childish. You don't really mean to blame me?”

“Who else?” I ask.

He smiles, almost politely, but doesn't answer. I didn't mean to, but I think I may have flattered him.

“Move over,” I tell him, and elbow him again.

“No.”

“I'll get you.”

The stranger snorts and feigns a yawn. He doesn't move at all.

“I will,” I say. “Just watch.”

Barely a hundred yards down the tracks from where the corpse had lain, three men stepped out from the bushes, buttoning their trousers. Behind the bushes was an old tin-roofed railroad shack, and the men had just finished painting it with their urine, which coursed down one wall in terraced stains at different heights. For though the men all three had shaved heads and all wore black dungarees, black nylon bomber jackets and shiny boots with thick, red laces, they were of markedly different statures. One was tall and skinny, another tall and fat, and the third was short and fat. They blocked the stranger's path.

“Looky looky,” said the tall and skinny.

“What have we here?” said the tall and fat.

The short and fat said nothing, but only cracked his knuckles, scratched himself and spat.

“Good afternoon,” said the stranger to the men.

“Afternoon?” snickered the tall and fat. “He thinks it's afternoon.”

“Afternoon!” echoed the tall and skinny with a guffaw.

The short and fat fished a silver pocket watch from the pocket of his jeans. “It's three p.m.,” he said.

The tall and skinny flexed his brow, impressed. “Good afternoon,” he said, and bowed.

The tall and fat stepped forward. “This afternoon there is a toll.”

“A toll?” the stranger said.

“No,” said the tall and skinny. “Not a mole. A toll. You have to pay to pass.”

“And what is the toll this afternoon?” the stranger inquired, a grin spreading across his face.

“No, no,” said the short and fat, cracking the knuckles of his right hand. “A vole is a small, defenseless critter, blind and hairless, like a mole but with a
v
. There is no vole this afternoon. And no mole. You can't get out of this so easy. There is a toll. You have to pay.”

“Yes,” the stranger said, loosening the binding of his package. “I understand. But
what
do you want me to pay?”

“This is a thick one,” the tall and fat sighed to his companions, shaking his head in disbelief. “No one said a word about a ray. A ray is like a fish, but flatter, and with a spiky sort of tail. The point is, smart boy, you have to pay.”

“He didn't say ray,” chuckled the tall and thin. “He called you gay.”

“He did not call me gay,” answered the tall and fat, stepping forward to grab a twist of the stranger's shirt in his fist and lifting him by it so that his shoes dangled just above the dirt. “He's not dumb. He's just confused.” He shook the stranger slightly. “He'll straighten out.”

“Listen,” said the stranger, his voice calm despite his newly precarious position. “Perhaps we can help each other. How would you boys like to be of some use?”

“Did he say what I thought he said?” asked the tall and thin.

“He couldn't have,” said the short and fat.

“He did,” said the tall and fat, excited. “I heard him clear. He called us Jews.”

The tall and fat closed his free hand into a fist as large as the stranger's head, and with it pounded him hard in the face. When the stranger's head snapped back, the tall and fat hit him again. The stranger's body slackened. His package dropped from beneath his arm. The tall and fat opened his other fist, and when the stranger crumpled to the ground, all three fell upon him, a stomping storm of red-laced black boots, harder than they looked, tall and short and fat and skinny, digging into ribs and skull and gut.

When the stranger regained consciousness, the three men were a quarter mile down the tracks. He could just barely hear them singing, and could see them silhouetted against the white sky, tossing something merrily between them: a package. His. He let his head fall back into the dirt, and did not open his eyes again that day.

In the lots that sprawled at the edge of the city, not far from the underpass where the bagman and the stranger had together passed a night, the bagman and the preacher came across another man. High reeds grew out of the broken concrete and shattered glass, and swallows dove among them. The man's back was to them. He was an old man, white-haired, bent at the waist, all sagging flesh and brittle bone. He walked as if he were carrying a cane, though he had none. And he spoke as if he had an audience, declaiming loudly and enunciating with great care, though he showed no sign that he was aware that two men had paused behind him.

“Above the clouds there are other clouds,” the old man said, and jabbed a crooked finger at the sky. “They are whiter than these ones, and softer, and above them is the sun. Between the sun and this second tier of clouds is the ether. They don't have elevators to get there. You can't take a plane. This is the ether, people.” The old man kicked a rusted beer can to accentuate his point. “That's why they call it ethereal. Up there, there are no bugs or birds. There are no angels flying around. It's thinner than all that. Bugs can't even breathe in the ether. It's pure. It's clean. It's pure of living things. Only ghosts can live up there. That's where things go when they're done being what they were, and things that never were, but might have been. It's not heaven. It's no dreamland — this is science, people. This is physics. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change its form. So where does it go? What form does matter take when it's not matter anymore? Where did Mount Saint Helen go?”

The old man paused in his oration to sniff at the air. He'd caught the bagman's scent. He turned around and saw them standing there: the fat, dingy-bearded man, his grimy belly hanging out from under a grimier reindeer sweater, a tall, skinny man almost swallowed by the sandwich board he wore, and three stuffed bags behind them. The old man winked at his watchers, and went on, “There was a whole mountain there, a big one. We all saw it. Not any more. It's not there. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change form. I have seen so much. So many things I can't account for. Where did my wife go? What form is she taking? Once upon a time I intended to become a highly paid shortstop in the major leagues. Where is the man I meant to be? What happened to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? The stains I've left on the sheets of the world, hundreds of sheets, thousands of stains — where did they go? Where is the soap that washed them? Where does the soul go when the body dies? Where did your momma go? Where does the stinking body go? Where did the love go, people? Shit, it all becomes a ghost.”

The old man hobbled over, smiling slyly, pleased with his performance. The bagman greeted him with a nod and hoisted up his bags. The preacher resumed walking. The old man fell in with them. Despite his age and his broken gait, he had no trouble keeping up, and talked as he walked beside them.

“I worked at the dog track over there,” the old man said. “You'll pass it up ahead. Twenty-six years. I did every job there was to do. When the track closed — it was at least ten years ago, I'm not counting — but when it closed they told me and another fellow to take care of the dogs. I mean kill them. The other fellow had a little .38 and we took turns shooting them. They were half-starved so it did feel more like mercy than meanness. When we ran out of bullets we crushed their skulls with shovels. Greyhounds aren't pit bulls. They're delicate dogs. Their heads aren't that hard, but still they could take a few good whacks, some of them could. Nothing likes to die. It took hardly an hour to finish them all. I've done worse things than that in my life but nothing's ever made me feel so bad.”

The old man studied the words written on the preacher's signboards. “Why do you hide your face?” he read aloud and laughed. “If only he did hide it. I've seen it enough. Ugly old bastard.”

The preacher shot the old man a hard look. His nose flinched and his blue eyes flinched and he seemed to be about to say something, but he didn't. The bagman did. “Where did you see it?” he asked. “His face?”

The old man inserted an index finger into one ear and twisted it about. “Let me put it to you this way,” he said, frowning as he inspected the harvest on the tip of his finger. “Nowhere nice.”

He grinned and switched ears. “Where you fellows off to, you mind if I ask?”

The preacher and the bagman looked at one another for a long moment, as if trying to decide which one could speak with the least effort, or if they should speak at all. At last the bagman answered. “We're looking for him,” he said.

“Him?”

“I saw him,” the bagman nodded. “We're gonna find him.”

The old man twisted his face to one side and then the other. “Him, huh?” he said. “What do you want to find him for?”

The preacher turned and regarded the old man with his best schoolmaster's sneer. But the old man would not be shamed. He winked at the preacher. “Seek and ye shall find,” he said. “Ain't that how it goes? Ask and ye shall receive. Merrily merrily merrily merrily, gently down the stream. Something like that right? That's a funny necklace. You make it yourself?”

The old man did not wait for an answer, but went on: “Satan, Jesus and Mohammed walked into a bar, you know that one? Satan was wearing a backpack, stuffed full. Jesus had two Jews in a cigarette box in his shirt pocket and Mohammed had a Buddhist sitting on each shoulder, meditating like they do, Indian style. The bartender's standing there drying glasses when they all come in and he puts down his bar-rag, grabs the bat he keeps beneath the bar and says . . .”

The old man stopped mid-joke. “You two are serious, aren't you?”

The bagman shook his head, then nodded, correcting himself.

The old man spat. He kicked dirt over his spittle. He twisted his face again, then untwisted it halfway. “You think you can just wander about and find him. Like he's a golden retriever escaped his leash. Like maybe he just went to the library, will be back in time for lunch. Pizza!” He tried to spit again but his mouth was dry, so he made a thin, hocking sound and said, “Shit. I've done stupider things.”

The three walked on. The old man's mood improved. He finished his joke and told another about Saint Francis making love to twin canaries and a third about a blind priest seduced by his own colostomy bag. They skirted the sand pits and the truck yards. They passed the dog track and the old man fell silent. Without noticing it, the old man stepped on a praying mantis and smashed the only thorax its creator had thought to give it. The preacher's black sneaker crushed an anthill, killing or crippling two dozen scrambling insects and undoing the labor of a thousand more. A mosquito drained blood from the folds of flesh beneath the bagman's ankle. A toad ate the mosquito, and grew fat off the bagman's blood. The old man whistled a melancholy tune. The wind accompanied him, sissing through the grass.

They surprised a little, brown-skinned boy dashing across the tracks. The boy stopped like a deer caught out in the open. He stared at them. They were, they realized, a minor spectacle. The preacher stuttered for a while, but it was the bagman who ultimately got out the words. He asked the boy if he had seen a tall man in a white suit pass by, holding a package wrapped in brown paper beneath his arm. The boy didn't answer, but ran off, head bobbing as he disappeared into the brush.