Hell of a Book

by Jason Mott

  The men all took turns trading what-if scenarios about all of the things that could happen to their children and how that loss would gut them if it ever came and took root in their lives. They all agreed that something would have to change. They cited Sam Cooke and Martin Luther King. Then somebody called Cooke a liar and they called MLK a failure. They said, “Ain’t shit changed and maybe it’s time that we do.” Then somebody went to their truck and came back with a cooler full of beer left over from a long day of fishing on the river and the stories rolled on.

  It was all anger, and fear, and sadness, because that was what their lives had become. Perhaps that was all they had ever been.

  Outside the church, the men grew tired of talking and the men grew tired of drinking. And now that it was all over, Paul came back into the church and picked up Soot and carried him to the truck in his arms.

  The next day, Soot woke up early and found his uncle sitting sleeplessly on the couch.

  “Come with me,” he said in his dark, booming voice. Paul led Soot out into the driveway beneath the dim glow of the rising sun. They went over to his truck and Paul reached into the glove compartment and took out a small pistol.

  “This world ain’t gonna take care of you, so you need to know how to use this. It’s the only thing they respect, the only thing that will ever get you heard.”

  Here’s an experiment that everyone should do:

  Go to any bustling public place—make sure it’s one with a nice, flat floor and lots of foot traffic—then toss a good, high-quality marble onto the floor. Now, you might think that you know what’s about to happen, and maybe you do. And maybe you even think that it’s not really possible. You might think that dropping a marble onto the floor won’t actually cause people to take a good tumble. After all, this isn’t an episode of the Three Stooges, it’s real life.

  But, again, just trust me on this one.

  Take that marble and drop it into the crowd and wait. Eventually, it will happen. Someone will step on it and, if you’re lucky, they’ll actually take a fall. But the thing about it is, if you’ve chosen your time and location properly, it won’t be just them that takes a fall. It’ll start a chain reaction as the first person falls and tries to grab someone in order to break their fall. And then the second person goes down. Maybe a third. Fourth. And so on.

  Before long you’ll have laid waste to a whole team of individuals.

  But then the interesting part happens. After everyone has taken their spill, after they’ve checked to be sure that they’re okay and gotten over that sense of embarrassment that we all feel after such a thing . . . they’ll go right back to their lives. They’ll re-enter whatever conversation they were having. They’ll continue on to the bathroom, game room, out the front door, wherever they were going before it all happened.

  You see, the thing about people is that we’re all creatures of habit. We like order, routine. We struggle to make a pattern out of our lives in order to mitigate the deep-down belief that there is no order to anything, that we’re all just marbles banging off of one another in a cold, infinite expanse.

  So when something comes along and upsets the norm, the first thing we human beings do is reestablish our routine and get back to our lives. And ain’t I a human being?

  So that’s what I did after Kelly. I went back to what I knew.

  I got back out there on the road. I got back to beating the metaphorical and literal concrete. I sold some books. I did some interviews. I drank some exotic alcohols. That’s what a Joe like me does. He digs routine. Makes a schmuck feel like they’re in control of something. And there’s nothing better than feeling like you’ve got Life by the horns rather than being the used sucker glued to its bootheel. I been there. And there’s no way I’m going to let something like a little psycho-emotional instability send me back there. Know what I mean?

  But the problem with a vivid imagination is that it doesn’t know when to go kick rocks. So next time I’m on an airplane I have what you might call a strange encounter.

  It started with Magdalene. She was a flight attendant from Tulsa and she had a smile that could break a man in half if he wasn’t ready to stand up against it. We met somewhere above the West Texas stratocumulus and, from the moment I saw her, I had visions of her and me bodysurfing the bedsheets until dawn. But she’s not the story here.

  This was just after the snack cart had come and gone by for the last time and everyone else was down for the night, dreaming at thirty thousand feet. I was sitting there, minding my own inconsolable business, when I got a soft tap on the shoulder. “You look familiar,” Magdalene said, rolling out that million-dollar smile of hers.

  “We all have to look like someone,” I said, smiling like I have in every other interview. “And it’s very possible that I’ve been this way before. I lose track of things pretty easily. I’m an author.”

  “I knew it!” Magdalene said, her eyes lighting up like Roman candles. She turned on her heel and ran down the aisle and when she came back, she had a copy of Hell of a Book in her trembling, non-wedding-ring-wearing hands. How could I refuse her when she asked me to sign?

  I haven’t talked about it much, but signing books is trickier than you might think. When you get right down to it, signing a book is akin to etching a piece of yourself into the soft stone of another person’s memory. When you sign something, people remember it. The item in question becomes a totem, a symbol of a moment in time that meant something but that will never come again. The person on the other side of the equation wants you to give them physical proof that their chaotic lifepath crossed yours. They want something to be able to show their friends. They want something to hold over their heads when Life shits on them from a great height—figuratively speaking. They want to be able to pop open that dusty tome and find wisdom, inspiration, a timeless monolith full of stars—again, figuratively speaking.

  And all of it hangs on you inscribing something meaningful.

  It’s a lot to hang a hat on.

  So a while back I just decided on one thing to write in every book I signed.

  I was halfway through this signature of mine when I got politely interrupted. “Do you mind if I get one of those too?” a deep voice asked from across the first-class aisle. It was a voice I knew, but didn’t believe. Know what I mean? One of those voices that fires up synapses in parts of your brain that you’d forgotten were there. “Eerily familiar” is the easiest term for it.

  “You betcha,” I said, finishing up Magdalene’s book.

  I couldn’t yet see who was talking to me on account of Magdalene still standing between us, reading the inscription I’d just left her. When she was done reading, she was all red-eyed and sniffly. She wiped a tear, took a breath, fixed her mouth for words, but all that came out was a sorta half-sob sigh.

  Sister, I been there.

  She ran off down the aisle, barking off that choky sob sound.

  Once she was gone another copy of Hell of a Book got shoved in my face. “I really appreciate this,” the voice from across the aisle said. “It really is a hell of a book.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said, and I finally pulled these brown eyes of mine up out of the mud to take a look at who I was talking to. Eye contact goes a long way in this business. One of the many things I learned in media training is that you need to connect with your readers at every opportunity. You need to look them in their eyes and make them feel like they’re the center of the world, you know? Like they’re your old friend that’s been lost among the many savage existences of the world for decades and now, at long last, they’ve slogged their way back home to your waiting arms. Makes people feel good to believe they’ve been seen.

  So I looked up, planning to give this Joe all of those good feelings, and that’s when I saw that the man on the other side of the aisle wasn’t just some anonymous book buyer destined to be forgotten even as I locked these pr
etty browns lasers with his. No. This fellow traveler was special. It was, and you gotta believe me when I say this, none other than the one and only Nicolas Kim Coppola.

  Better known to the layperson as Mr. Nic Cage.

  That’s right.

  Nic Cage.

  Mr. Leaving Las Vegas. Mr. Raising Arizona. Mr. Windtalkers. Mr. Mandy. Mr. Face/Off. Mr. The Rock. Mr. Joe. Mr. Color Out of Space. Mr. Ghost Rider. Mr. Vampire’s Kiss. Mr. Bad Lieutenant. Mr. Snake Eyes.

  You might not know it to look at me, but I’ve always thought that Mr. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was the greatest thing since somebody got the idea to put corn sweat in a barrel and call it bourbon. Hell, if I could have a spirit animal, it would be Mr. National Treasure. Maybe he didn’t do everything my father and Fred MacMurray did for my life, but he damn sure filled in the gaps. Just something about the man. You never know what he’s up to now or what he’s going to be up to in a week’s time. It’s like he rebuilds the world in every movie, rebuilds his reputation, rebuilds his outlook on sunshine. And if that don’t speak to someone like me, I don’t know what the hell does.

  “You can just write anything,” he said. “You’ve already written so much, ya know?” He flashed that smile that you and I have seen for 109 feature-length movies—and counting—and all I could do was sit there for a moment, Cagestruck, trying to find words that wouldn’t come to me. All tapped out. At the end of my brain’s bank account, reaching for syllables and coming up with not even verbal pocket lint. Little more than a slack jaw and a slow drool.

  Mr. Con Air wore tattered designer jeans and a pair of old leather boots, an Al Green t-shirt, and a jacket covered in zippers and buckles. He looked exactly the way I always imagined he would.

  “It’s okay,” Mr. Bangkok Dangerous said. “I know what you’re thinking right now. But, for the record, I’m not who you think I am.”

  It was a mystery that snapped me out of my stupor. “You’re not?”

  Of course he was. Mr. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans couldn’t put himself across the aisle from me, look me in the eyes, and tell me he wasn’t who he was.

  “You’re not understanding me,” he said, leaning in a little. A classic move that sends across the message of intimacy. “Don’t get caught up in this,” Mr. Gone in 60 Seconds said, making a motion with his hands. “Any of it. None of it’s real.” I couldn’t tell if his motion was pointing to his duds, the man beneath them, or maybe even yours truly.

  Needless to say, this was the kind of talk that made the wool on the back of my sport coat stand up and salute. Did he know about my condition? Or was he a part of it? I hoped for the former. I mean, I wanted to be able to say that I actually met Mr. City of Angels.

  “You know what’s really crazy?” Mr. Wicker Man asked.

  “What’s that?” I asked, certain that my thoughts were being shot out into the belly of deep space and—by mystical, tele-Cagic means—funneled into this SAG Award winner.

  “Expectations,” he began. “That’s what’s crazy. The notion that we, every single day, expect things. We expect things from the universe. We expect it to behave a certain way, you know? Bibles and scrolls and laws, all dancing the same dance, arguing they know how it all goes down. We expect things from ourselves—and we’re almost always wrong about those things, by the way.” He clucked another quick laugh, as if maybe someone else’s memory had just burst into the orbit of his mind, which I could pretty sure believe.

  “But even more than all of that,” he continued, “we expect things from other people. Take, for instance, this particular moment. Right now, you’re sitting across from me, right? And we both know who I am—or, rather, we both think we do. You know me from a fistful of big, forty-foot-tall poly-cotton screens in a chain of dark rooms with sticky floors spread out across decades of your life. Or maybe you know me from that little rectangular box that sits in your living room telling you what to expect from this whole spinning world. And you believe it because you have no other point of reference.”

  I was being pulled into quicksand and I knew it. I could feel my mind being deconstructed, swallowed up by the gaping maw of some creature reaching out from time immemorial. I wanted to call for Magdalene, just to help me find my bearings, but I couldn’t break eye contact with Mr. Fire Birds. He had me in a death grip. I was stuck in this Cage.

  “You can’t get to know a person until you’ve, well, gotten to know them,” he said, his voice gentle all of a sudden, like he knew I was about to drown and wanted to have a little mercy on me. “Your book talks about that a little so I know you know what I’m talking about. But you know what your book doesn’t talk about? It doesn’t talk about how you can’t get to know someone by believing what you see on television. Or by driving past where they live and drawing ignorant conclusions. Or by dancing to cherry-picked pieces of their music because you want to feel counterculture. You ever noticed how the people who do that make sure to leave out the songs that point fingers? The songs that secretly imply that, maybe, the very people you don’t know might know you better than you know yourself. Like, the people you judge remember all your secrets and you resent them for it. That’s horrifying for somebody to face. It’s a mirror nobody wants to gaze into. It’s easier not to. So you know what you do about it? Not you, in particular, but national socio-political identity, I mean.”

  I shook my head.

  He reached across the aisle and poked a finger in my chest. “Americae excommunicatus,” he said. “You know that term. You know what I’m talking about. You and the Sioux.”

  “I . . . I do. But I’ve never heard anybody el—”

  “Don’t interrupt me,” he said, sounding like an apology. Then he brushed my shirt where he had poked me with his finger. “You want to know what else?”

  “I severely want to know what else,” I said, spellbound.

  “You’re terrified right now. Scared all the way down to your socks. Because at some point you saw yourself on that little box in your living room—the same one that brought me into your world—and you started to believe the things you were told by people who truly didn’t know you and were terrified of you. You saw pictures of yourself in prison, in riots, shooting other people who look like you, sacrificing yourself to the bloodthirsty monster just to save the hero—who looks nothing like you, by the way. And when you saw it all it built up a story in your brain, a story so convincing that it eventually swallowed up reality itself. And you started to think: ‘Shit. Maybe that really is who I am. Maybe I really am the socio-narrative villain.’ And that’s when it happened.”

  “What happened?” I asked, breathless.

  “You became terrified of yourself. You became afraid of your own voice. And I think you still are.”

  “Holy shit,” I managed.

  “Damn right,” he said. “See. That right there. That’s the thing. That’s the moment! You just realized that maybe what you heard about me isn’t true, which means I’m an unknown. And you also realized that maybe what you’ve heard about yourself isn’t true, and maybe you’re an unknown, even to yourself.” He shook his head. “That’s some terrifying shit.”

  “So what do I do about it?” I asked.

  In my gut, I was on my knees. It had finally happened. The universe had given me a guide. My very own Virgil, willing to lead me out from the underworld of my existence.

  And then Mr. Drive Angry did the worst thing ever. He just sat there and said nothing. With that tall, smooth forehead, with those slightly sunken eyes that know how to go crazy like nobody else’s. He sat there and waited for me to unravel whatever in the hell he’d just told me all on my own.

  If I’m square with you, I hated him a little bit right then. He had one job: be who I expected him to be. Let me feel good about myself. But, shit, that doesn’t seem to be the theme of my life when I get right down to it. He had single-handedly spoiled my me
eting of him. Had put the full kibosh on my entire Cage-view. It would have been easier if he’d just let me sign his book and let me have what I thought I knew of him.

  Because he was, apparently, still picking up my thoughts from deep space, Mr. Cage motioned toward the book in my hand. “Go ahead,” he said. “Write anything you want. I got to catch a little catnap before we land. Filming a new movie.”

  “Can I ask you—”

  “No,” Mr. Cage said. “Don’t do that. Don’t waste this experience by asking questions I can’t give you answers to. You’re better than that. Life’s too short for that sort of thing. We could die right now. Hell, we might already be dead, you know? In fact, if you want to get philosophical, we are already dead, somewhere down the timeline. Everyone is. We’re all just chasing after the moment when the timeline catches up to us and we blink out. So don’t waste any of this, for God’s sake!”

  Mr. Family Man punctuated his rant with another poke in the chest. Then he fixed his jacket and sat back in his first-class seat and exhaled a satiated breath. “I think I was a dragon in another life,” he said to himself—at least, I think he was talking to himself. Then he closed his eyes, his sights set firmly on copping a fistful of winks before Texas came and grabbed both of us by the ankles.

  There I was, at thirty thousand feet with my very own Golden Globe–winning Oracle of Delphi . . . and I did not know what to say. Something sharp and glib to cut through the cigarette smoke of confusion buzzing around my head. But I knew that he was already onto whatever I was thinking. One doesn’t have to speak when the universe already knows your thoughts.

  “It’s scary,” he said, half-asleep. “But you’ll find your own way. In the meantime, take care of yourself and I’ll see you on the next one.”

  “The next what?”

  “You think this is over?” he asked, opening his eyes again. He looked around his seat as he spoke, searching for something. “This is just book one. Just an introduction.”