Made Men (2 page)

Spring, 1963:

H
e was late.

They
sat quietly. The room consisted of the bare minimum. Anything extra they had
ever experienced or seen, He brought with Him when He came.

He
was the Creator.

There
was a small toilet and a sink that dripped. Seven drips of paint, each a domed,
dried tel rendered in bas-relief on the concrete, lay on the floor near the
door. One of them was a soft-sided square, five others the size of holes
punched in paper, and the last was the size of a coin (although none of them
had ever heard that word). Each of them had a small cot with a wool blanket on
top that held, within its fibers, the patina of war, fear, and the sour stink
of captivity. No paper to wipe with. There never had been. It had never been
created and so it was not known. If thirsty, they drank from the sink. The
faucet was weak and flowed slowly; each of them suckled at the thin spigot in
the dark when they needed to. Bathing was done in the small sink, wiping was
done with one’s hand, rinsed in the sink. It was the only sink in the world.
There was no soap. No soap existed in the world: He, the Creator never had need
of it. Nothing He brought was ever left in the room when He left, except food.

There
was no light when He was gone; there was no reason for light.

There
was no time. There was no need for time. However each of them had learned to
count in their own ways—mostly to estimate when He might return. The
words they had heard the Creator use were inadequate to describe the passage of
time, so the Two Who Were Alike found ways to communicate their understanding
of the concept. The One Who Was Different was not an outsider. There was no
reason for him to be. He chose not to engage, but listened. The Two Who Were
Alike heard him, sometimes,
move
about in the dark and
would watch when they could, but he was good at being quiet and moving only
when the sink dripped. It was so quiet in the room when the Creator wasn’t
there that the drips seemed deafening. The Two Who Were Alike each felt the
other’s pulse in his wrist. Each time, their heartbeats matched. The same pace
and cadence.

How many heartbeats until the Creator
returned? How many sink-drips?

There
was no food until His return. There was no food anywhere, nor was there
anywhere for food to be. They ate what He brought. He created what He brought
just outside the door … food and books … before using his key in the lock. That
was what He told them.

Why was there a lock? He was
alone—it was only Him … it was only them. If there existed nothing else,
w
hy did He leave? There was nowhere to go.

They
did not ask for millions of heartbeats.

Where did He go?

He
must go somewhere … He disappeared behind the door each time, out of sight.

He required, at intervals, a break from
them.

That
is what He told them when they finally asked.

Don’t ask stupid questions.

T
hey concentrated on
what they knew for sure.

If
the question
wasn’t
stupid, and there
was
an anywhere, they would find out.
There was one other place they knew about for sure, but there was no food
inside: a door in the room led to an even smaller room. The paint inside the
smallest room was a different shade of green. There existed, inside that room,
a locked cabinet and a device of some sort perched upon a metal desk. He kept
the door to the smallest room locked. Their creator carried the key to the door
leading to the smallest room, the cabinet inside, and to the door through which
He left with Him always.
With the other keys.

Why were there other keys? Was there
nothing for them to open? Where were the locks for the other keys to turn? Did
He make keys to open locks He had not yet created?

They
did not ask.

T
he light flickered.
He was just outside.

In the nothingness.

They
heard the key He shouldn’t need turn in the lock on the other side of the door
which led nowhere with a gritty sound—one they all knew bothered the
Creator very much.

He was a scientist and not a locksmith.
There was nothing He intended to do about it.

“What
is a locksmith?” one of the Two asked.

A locksmith is someone I thought up to
tell you about. One day I will create a story for you about a locksmith, and
you will understand. For now, eat this rice. Put the gravy on it. Here is an
apple and some dried horsemeat.

“What
is a horse?” the other of the Two asked. The One Who Was Different never asked
questions, but the Two Who Were Alike knew the boy listened to the answers the
Creator gave.

It is an animal, a horse. Like
yourselves, only a horse is an animal that I created for you to eat.

The
horse was good. They ate the horse often—it always tasted of salt. Salt
was one of the Creator’s masterpieces.

Why doesn’t He create full stomachs
without eating? Or perhaps, animals similar to us, but that do not require
food?

They
did not ask.

The
One Who Was Different did not eat when they ate. Nor did the creator. They had
asked Him, but the Creator did not eat. He did not need
to.

He always was and always would be. He
was too busy to be bothered with silly questions like theirs.

T
he Two Who Were Alike
sat up. It was not necessary to greet
Him
as He
disliked salutations of any sort. The One Who Was Different covered his eyes to
shield himself from the light, which buzzed, flickering. The Creator had
rewired it. It was not as strong as before.
It
was a turning point—an important timestamp in their lives. After He
screwed up the light, the time before stood out noticeably.

It was better before.

Sink-drips,
heartbeats, and now before: when the strong, white light had shone from the
bulb that got hot when He turned it on. And then after: when the weak amber
bulb flickered cold shadows about the room. The new bulb didn’t emit heat,
which The Two Who Were Alike used to bask in when He visited.

Why didn’t He create better wiring?

They
had never asked.

The
Creator rolled His chair from the smallest room, where they were not allowed.
The One Who Was Different uncovered an eye to watch Him unlock the door and
then hid his face again. The Creator sat under the flickering amber bulb and
opened a bag.

Inside was … an apple?

No.
It looked different. Not an apple. It had flat spots in a pattern and was a
deeper red. The Creator put it in the sink, and The Two Who Were Alike went to
inspect it, noting on the way that the door to the smallest room was unlocked.

Did He forget to lock it?

The
key the Creator should not need had only turned the lock once.

They
watched. He went inside and turned the key He should not need in the door to
the cabinet full of His creations and pulled out the book to read to them. On
His way back, He turned the key in the cabinet but had failed to lock the
smallest room, which was His usual sequence.

Was it a test?

He
sat in the wheeled chair and the Two Who Were Alike peered a moment longer at
the bright red not-apple with some flattened sides in the sink then sat at the
feet of the Creator to listen as He read.

Was there no rice? Was there no gravy?

They
didn’t smell those things. The One Who Was Different needed more food than they
did, and they each felt concerned for him.

“There
are no questions,” began the Creator. “I will read now, to you, a story about a
woman named Persephone—”

They
had questions, but there were no questions allowed, so they did not ask. They
divided the ruby kernels of the pomegranate into piles on the floor: two small
piles and one large while the Creator read. The bitter-smelling peel was left
for later.
A pyramid of gem-like seeds for The One Who Was
Different were
left on the back of the sink, where he knew to look for
them later. He would eat them while they slept—once the light was out. He
would not chew them—he had been listening to the two of them chew the
seeds. They knew by the boy’s movements that he disliked the noise. The child
would swallow each kernel like a red pill: timing his
breaths
,
his footsteps. Each of his efforts to live would be masked perfectly by a drip
of water.

They might not hear him at all.

The
Creator had finished His story. He rolled the chair back into the smaller room,
but paused at the unlocked threshold for a moment before entering. Then, with a
shake of His head, unlocked the cabinet, slid the book of stories inside, and
relocked the cabinet. Yanking shut the door of the small room behind Him, their
Creator approached The Two of them Who Were Alike.

Again? A variance. How unusual.

The
Creator had failed to lock the door to the small room. It had happened once
before: they had waited three thousand heartbeats to go in. The twins felt the
things on the desk, the doors of the cabinet, and the small hole in the door of
the cabinet for the key He shouldn’t need. They felt for long-dried drips of
paint on the floor and finding none they next felt the walls. At the angle
where the walls met the floor, they found a beetle, passing it back and forth,
speculating, until the insect oozed something musky which they licked from
their fingers in the dark. Then they ate it. The beetle was divided in half,
thumbnail to thumbnail, shared with each other, but not with The One Who Was
Different.

Did the beetle come from the cabinet?
Were there more?

They
never asked.

He
knew what they had done, of course, the Creator being omniscient. He had
obviously planned for them to find the insect. The beetle and their adventure
into the small room were the same as the rice and horse meat. The beetle was
the same as the book: His creation. Therefore, they had taken their time. In
the dark they felt along the edge of the floor—where it met the
wall—for more beetles, finding none. One of them found a small hole.
Suddenly they’d heard the same sound the first beetle had made with its feet.
One showed the other where the hole was and they captured a second insect. One
of them held the creature in his fist. They would give it to The One Who Was
Different. He needed it.

Had the Creator made the hole?

They
decided not to ask.

T
heir Creator patted
one of the Two Who Were Alike on the head.

“You
are five years old now and should have a name. I will give you one when I return.”
Then He patted the other of the Two Who Were Alike on the head. “You are also
five. You were the first I created. I’ve named you Ryker. Ryker, I have a
question for you: why, when you and your brother divided the seeds of the fruit
into piles, even after I read you the story about the woman named Persephone,
did you not hesitate to eat the entirety of your pile of seeds?”

“You
are the Creator,” Ryker replied as he contemplated his name. “You are neither
locksmith, nor the enforcer of your own stories.”

“Good
boy.”

Turning
one of the keys He should not need in the door that led away from them, the
Creator paused, then turned the key again: relocking the door. He strode back
to the door of the smallest room, frowned, then locked it with the key He should
not need and returned to the door that led away from them—but also to
nowhere—and turned the key and stepped out into nowhere and
—(standing nowhere?)—
turned
the key in the gritty lock.

The
light popped. Again, it was dark.

Ryker
and The One Most Like Ryker sucked water carefully from the faucet that dripped
so not to disturb the pile of crimson seeds they had left for The One Who Was
Different then reclined on their cots, murmuring questions back and forth but
offering each other no answers.

T
he One Who Was
Different could smell the juice of the pomegranate. The others could see him in
the dark and he knew it. He uncovered his eyes and listened, blinking into the
darkness at their questions. He knew the answers, but speaking them aloud would
not help any of them. Not yet. The pain of his intellect was unbearable. Any
additional stimulus at all was excruciating.

He’d
seen what he’d needed to see.

The patterns on the
teeth of each key.

T
heir creator was
there, rustling, just outside the door to nowhere.

The
amber light stretched in short bursts as the worn-out circuit warmed. Some
seconds passed. The bulb began to function—but barely.

The
seeds were gone. The One Who Was Different must have swallowed them. Although
they had each strained to hear him do it, they hadn’t. The Creator burst into
the room. He carried a brown bag. It was the same material the books were made
of, but with looser fibers. The bag looked easy to rip and was the color of
gravy. When the Creator turned the bag, it flexed and warped. If left behind,
the twins would eat it.

Did the sounds the bag made please the
Creator?

He
would not have made it otherwise.

Why did He not create things there in
the room?

They
dared not ask.

He
touched The One Most Similar to Ryker on the head. “I’ve decided. Your name is
Rickard and I have two questions for you. Rickard, when you look at Ryker, at
his body, which is like your own, and compare your size to his, then your
hands—very nearly identical to Ryker’s—do you wonder if your face
is like your brother’s face? Since there is no way for you to see your own
face, do you assume that your face is identical to his? Although that seems,
already, to be two questions, the two are combined as one. Consider your answer
until I put the key in the door to leave. You will, however, answer my second
inquiry immediately: I have now read you eighty-two stories. Through them you
and Ryker have, no doubt, learned what feelings are. From
Aidos
you learned modesty—an offshoot of which is shame.

If
I tell you that you are
not
the
likeness of Ryker, but inferior: That your hands are smaller, frailer. That the
space between your great toe and your second toe of your left foot grew a web
overnight to spite me after I created you—that I found it necessary to snip
this atrocity, to correct it in order for you never to doubt your likeness to
your brother—that the web grew from your weakness … as you are the weaker
of the two of you in all ways. That you were the first I created, yet I
nurtured a falsehood to study your nature when I named Ryker first, but that I
used your body as a template to make him—with my improved
technique—and that your weakness extends to your face?

You
have
no way to know these things, of course, nor
awareness
of the inferior nature within your every cell. If all of this
is
true, would you feel shame? This, too, is a question of
two parts. Though I see you earnestly preparing your answer, as I told you that
you must, the balance of the inquiry is this: If all I have just said is true,
do you wish to cover your nakedness to hide it?
And if so,
from whom?
Are you aware now, that all who exist, or have ever existed,
know your true, feeble nature?”

Rickard’s
eyes sought his brother. Ryker clicked his inner eyelids, open and shut,
quickly.

A message.

Although
The One Who Was Different shielded his eyes from the amber sputtering of the
tired bulb, he had certainly seen it too.

The Creator had a spot on His shirt.

It
was a shirt He had created ninety thousand sink-drips ago and the blemish had
never been there before. The ramifications of the stain astounded Rickard.
Another flick of Ryker’s eyes confirmed his thoughts.

It was not their food.

The
Creator had not created their rice, bread, and gravy—just outside the
door—only to have it mar His shirt. Rickard looked into the adult’s eyes.

Was it a test?

Had
the Creator put the crimson blight there on the shirt—the shape of the
soft-sided circle-drip of paint near the door? Or did gravity drag the spot of
sweet, red juice onto His collar as He bit into the fruit, unaware?

The
grandeur, character, and safety of the man
was
suddenly in question. Did He place—paint the speck there—create the
discoloration for Rickard to ask about it? Or was the second thing true: was
the creator
unaware that one of His
inventions had dripped on His clothing as He ate, in which case, if He did
require food …

The
cascade of deductions—processes of reasoning—hissed into the room.
Myriad new questions shifted all things known or believed, slithering
confidently toward Rickard beneath the door that led—if the fruit-blood
was not placed there by Him, but by
him—
somewhere
ELSE.

Rickard
decided. He blinked twice at the liar, then once at the door, for his brother.

Past that door, other things existed.

Horses,
pomegranate trees, and salt mines.
Huge vats of gravy.
Rooms full of apples and foods they had not yet seen. Stains on shirts made by
someone other than the common man before them, who was neither locksmith nor a
maker of stories.
The man who created a weaker light to
replace the first stronger, warmer light.

Regardless, it was time to answer the
question.

“I
would.”

“I
thought so,” said the perjurer. “And now I will tell you—you were born
second. Your likeness is identical to Ryker’s. Your face is the same as his
face. You are as strong and are equally as intelligent. Never did a web grow
between any of your toes to spite me or otherwise. Now a third question, one
you will answer immediately: do you want a cover for your nakedness, although
the cause of your shame has been discounted?” Rickard turned, face slightly
toward Ryker, and flicked his lids with moth-flap speed.

“I
do.”

“Interesting.”
The quibbler lumbered to the door to the smallest room.

Did he feel the sudden scrutiny? He
must. Ryker appeared sodden with the new information. Floating, but with
intense focus.

Then
he purred.
A low oscillation.
Only Rickard could hear
the declaration; the flare of his nostrils would give the tone away if the
slovenly fool knew to look for that nuance, but he did not. Clumsily shifting
the brown paper bag, he peered at the ring of keys resting in the palm of his
left hand, the hand he used most often to touch his slowly decaying face.

The hand with which
he wrote things down for himself to remember; the imposter was increasingly
forgetful.

The
charlatan did seem to sense something had gone wrong. Rickard smelled the fear
that prey emits. It oozed from the man as heavily as it had from the beetle,
from his nose with each breath: the smell of fruit that had turned—a
tangy, heady smell. The kernel of a stone fruit kept in water, a rubbery film
for a blanket. The puff of an iron-rich
breath
.
Instinctively, Rickard straightened his spine. The glands beneath his tongue
shot jets of extra saliva into his mouth. Ryker’s eyes were slits—the
inner lids at half-mast. Rushed, the trespasser attempted to fit the wrong key
into the lock. It was the key that did not fit anything.

Anything
here
.

Forced
to put the bag on the floor, nervous, he pushed up his glasses.

A novel movement.
Never before had he placed anything on the
floor.

He’d
always employed one of them to hold things. Rickard oscillated his own low
tone. They hadn’t worked out the language behind their sounds, but Ryker gleaned
his meaning. Something new happened as the cheat jiggled the key in the lock,
murmuring,
then
held the ring up to finger each tool
in the popping amber light. Rickard felt his tongue flatten and elevate. A thin
membrane popped inside his mouth and a tube the diameter of his thumb took over
his breathing. His mandible sent him signals: pulses. He could feel the
scientist’s movements in the air—small vibrations—even the clicks
and hums of the physician’s heart. He took a step forward, his core tight, legs
and arms loose and fluid. He led—with his face.

The urge to bite was overwhelming
.

Finally,
the swindler identified the correct key. Rushed, he fumbled to penetrate the
lock. It took some time, but eventually he managed to slide the tool in, turn it,
and pull it back out. Lathered with sweat as though he had been running, their
self-professed creator stooped exactly like a mortal to retrieve the bag from
the floor—made an indecisive, false start for the main door and murmured
something. Indelicately, the soft, white biped shoved his hand in the bag and
threw things onto the nearest cot.

Ryker’s
.

Thoughts
derailed his instincts. Rickard loosened his tongue and his torso and both he
and Ryker slid their lids wide to watch. Shirts: three. Pants: three. Socks:
six. Short white pants that they each had questions about but would not ask:
three.

“I
expect the two of you with names to wear these things. Have them on when I
return. Keep them clean. Ryker, how many stories have I told you from the
book?” Ryker opened his jaw wide for a moment, loosening his tongue in order to
talk. He, too, had been breathing through his newfound tube.

“Seventy.”

“Good
boy. I said eighty-two to test you. Are you the first or second I created?”

“I
am the first.” He flicked his lids. Ryker had discovered he could make the tone
even
around
words—deep beneath
his speech. Rickard gave his own eyelids a flick, fast as the tail of a jay.

I can hear it.

“Are
you stronger, weaker, or identical in all ways to Rickard?”

“I
am identical to Rickard. In every way.”

“Why
do you think so?”

A lower tone.
One of menace.
Of malice.
The tone
girders in tall buildings make in jolting gusts of wind.

“You
created us. You told us so. You are beneficent and would not create doubt to
amuse yourself as a common man might—you are above amusement. You require
us only to study ‘the palette of your art,’ as you have said, in a tangible
fashion—as the lack of all things: gravity, time, calculable
space—had become lonely for you, and we are the paint on your brush and
the strigil in your hand. We are only necessary to scrape the filth of life
from ourselves because you do not live. You do not create filth as we do.”
Ryker’s eyes flicked, for a millisecond, to the pomegranate juice on the
lummox’s collar. “You simply are. Because we are the canvas you wove to study
yourself—you who always was and always will be.”

“Good
boy.”

They all knew—Ryker, Rickard, and
The One Who Was Different—there had been seventy-five stories.

Their
caller bloated with the compliment. His fear-smell was replaced with the thick
musk of confidence as he regurgitated—yet again—his own myth. “I
will read another story to you. I think it is one of my best.” The Rabelaisian
carny fumbled through the ring of keys to identify the correct one.
Confused by the absence of the tool, he patted
each pocket of his
trousers as a clown might.
Consternation pocked his brow
,
his liver-colored lips stretched thin
. Consciously,
Rickard knew the odorous buffoon only stored his keys in a certain pocket.
Beneath Rickard’s conscious thought, a natural play had begun—an earthy
drama older than written words. He started to estimate the strength of the
absurdly professorial pile of flesh and bone, the flank of whom was exposed to
him like a Mayan offering. He was too big, but only just.

Why does he search where the key could
not be?

Befuddled,
the fatted ape straightened, patting each pocket again. Pockets that had never
contained a key of any sort, but instead other items he likely used—
needed
—frequently.

Of course he needs things.

“There…”
stooping again to pick up the loose key at his foot “…it fell off of the ring,
of course. None of you saw that, but I did.”
Back inside the small room, the eater of fruit scratched open the
lock of the cabinet.
He removed the book he shouldn’t need to tell the story he didn’t write. The
vibrations his life and movement caused, Rickard thought, were blunted when the
intruder was out of direct sight.

The
man held up—with an unusual flourish—a picture he did not draw.
They played along, more focused on new possibilities than the story. They
allowed the tale to be told, all the while studying the tall, warm, meaty mimic
who was—as had never happened before—nearly acting out the scenes.
Rickard and Ryker donned convinced expressions but hummed low messages to each
other. The animal sat, sweating fear and musk, blathering, until it was time to
flip the book. The next illustration was of a beautiful woman. Turning the
portrait for them to see, it appeared to Rickard that the man tried to read
Ryker’s thoughts, eyes dancing back and forth, and then his own. A pause. The
fear smell thickened.
Old apples and offal—the spill of
an animal’s intestines, alive but losing heat, drying in the wind.
He
held the book to his face—a shield, as though ashamedly covering his
genitals from view—and turned to the next page. He hid behind each
illustration—gauging his audience from the thicket of pages. The new
picture was the same woman, aged, skin cracked and cankerous. Her hair had
become serpents.