The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1

by Daniel Kraus

  John Quincy gave me a concerned look. I could not tell if he was sharing in my discomfort or if his belief in my status as non-Devil was beginning to founder. The old man wagged an accusatory finger.

  “I REMEMBER YOU!”

  Every person in Xenion, Georgia, seemed to have formed an opinion of Mr. Stick before taking in a single performance. It struck me as unfair.

  “We have not met, General. My name is—”

  “GIVE ME NO FALSE NAMES! I KNOW YOU, DEMON! FIRST YOU CAME FOR ME IN THE GRASS! THEN YOU CAME FOR ME IN THE MUD! THEN YOU CAME FOR ME IN THE SOOT—THE SOOT THAT DRIED THE BLOOD! BUT YOUR HOOVEN CLUTCH SHALL NOT TAKE ME! I BELONG WITH HIS LORD ON HIGH!”

  Suffice it to say that this ranting continued along the same lines for hours, though I admit exaggerating time is easily done when one is being assailed as a diabolical reaper. Around noon, a deputy slid beneath the cell’s lowermost bar a tray holding three bowls of stew and as many hunks of stale bread. The General yielded his filibuster, snatched up his share, and retreated to his corner to pour the stew down his gullet. John Quincy took his bowl and bread and dipped the latter in the former, eliminating the food at a pace that betrayed neither hunger nor relish.

  I, of course, had no interest in my portion and instead looked up to find the deputy still standing there, giving me injurious consideration. After a time he plucked a folded newspaper from his back pocket and tossed it through the bars.

  “You made the papers, Stick.”

  The Atlanta Constitution included on its front page an item about the sellers of patent medicines. The author treated these bottlemongers harshly, but so too were the denizens of Xenion, called out by the journalist as “shameful” in their unjust jailing of an apparent innocent. Even more notable was a full-page advertisement on the following spread taken out by none other than the Barker, who must have scrambled all night long and spent stupefying amounts of cash to turn this nightmare scenario into a publicity coup. I managed to pocket the relevant page and would you believe it has survived with me all these many years? Here I insert the yellow, crackled evidence for your pleasure.

  Not since the days of reading aloud Black Hand headlines to Wilma Sue had my heart so happily hammered. (A figure of speech; my circulatory organ is a wad of hamburger.) Here was a legitimate newspaper with cross-state influence. At that very moment, my stage name might be on the lips of thousands!

  Vigorous rereadings of the advert commenced. Only after a time did I become conscious of a growing commotion—shouts, thrown objects, and so forth. The jailers delivered warnings for the crowd to disperse, but the screwballs did no such thing. By sundown the jail was under siege. We smelled the smoke of a great many torches and our concrete box began to fill with heat and ash. John Quincy and I cowered in corners as one does during such unpredictable events. The General, though, paced in circles, patting at his belt as if expecting to find pistol or saber. As night fell, the chants became organized and I was shocked to pick out the refrain:

  “FREE! STICK! FREE! STICK!”

  A tear or two might have dropped, had my reservoir not gone dry.

  The commotion must have sounded to the General like the charge of the Union Army. He wailed and dropped to his knees. Duly chilled, the colored fellow and I looked at each other for clues of what to do next. As it happened, there was no time for plotting. The General scrabbled about so that he was facing me, and then—horrors, it was a distressing sight!—began to spider-walk in my direction, eyes bloodshot and rolling, saliva flowing in multiple strands from his lips. I secured myself into my corner but there was no avoiding this feculent, broken-clawed hobgoblin who looked to have slithered from the bowels of Hell.

  Of course he thought the same thing of me! When he was but a few feet away he pounced, wrapping his muscled arms around my thighs. I thought he meant to wrestle me to the floor to, for instance, put out my Devil eyes with his righteous thumbs, but instead his fingernails dug into my slacks as if afraid that we might be separated before he could say his peace.

  “JUDGE THE PENNYWORTH OF MY BLACKEST GUTS, DEVIL! TELL ME NOW IF I MUST JOIN YOUR OGRE CIRCUS SO THAT I MAY STRIP AND PREPARE MY FLESH FOR THE FLAYING! OR—PLEASE, I BEG YOU!—SET ME FREE SO THAT I MIGHT YET KNOW SOFT DANDELION FIELDS!”

  What strange things worm their ways into the human brain at the oddest of times! Beset by a mob’s bedlam and facing down a filth-encrusted madman, my thoughts hopped to Little Johnny Grandpa. My most recent sighting had been a typically morose one: he falling to the dirt, me a mile away yet extending a hand as if to catch him. Just as vivid was my memory of the lad hunkering against my cage years prior, whispering through tears some piffle about whether I might have been sent back to Earth as an angel to guard him. A preposterous idea; the General’s assessment of me was closer to the mark.

  Perhaps that is why I reached out to the raving old-timer. I took firm hold of the General’s wrists; his pleading dribbled away. I brought him closer. I knew not what I was doing. Soon the fronds of his matted hair were batting my face. I relinquished his wrists and his hands took my shoulders for balance. My own hands, freed, found themselves holding the old man’s grubby cheeks. Things had turned out badly for Johnny, and it had been my fault. In the little boy’s honor, if for no other reason, I owed this man absolution.

  Outside, noises raged. Horses screamed. Gravel rained from our walls. I lowered my chin so that my cold forehead touched the General’s sweltering one. Our eyes were but inches apart and his lashes, when he blinked, interlocked with mine. Again: I did not know what I was doing.

  “You fought bravely,” said I.

  Where was this coming from? I grimaced, fearful that I had spoken flapdoodle.

  “I ran,” replied he, “while they died like dogs!”

  His bludgeoning rout had withered to a timid whine. It gave me hope.

  “What else could you have done?” asked I.

  “I could have died! I could have poured my guts like a proper soldier.”

  A hurrah shook our walls. Some victory was being celebrated. John Quincy rushed to the window and I wished to do the same, but the General was in a piteous state. My nerves, too, had shipwrecked among waves of turmoil equal to anything happening outside. I let myself be the old man’s anchor.

  “Look at how you eat,” said I. “Clearly you do not wish to die.”

  “I slop like a hog because of bed-pissing cowardice! My men cradled their livers in their laps like newborns, do you understand? They held their eyeballs like doubloons for me to admire! Yet I ran because you, Devil, were there and your legs are so very long. This time there is nowhere for me to run.”

  There came gun blasts, nicks of stone rebounding from the jail facade. I surprised myself by slapping the General’s cheek to keep his attention. Because, what was this? Yes, I could feel it! The shuttling backward through the years, the lifting of my soul like garbage caught in a storm, the marvelous dimming of the physical world—’twas la silenziosità rolling like dribbled honey just out of tongue’s reach!

  The General’s buckram beard became cotton in my hands. The sooty cell walls took on a whitewashed splendor. The slick, sliding, swirling re-entry into the Uterus of Time lifted me upward before I was caught like phlegm in a throat, allowing me no more than a few seconds of pure Death to show to the General before my focus was broken by sights of my own reflected revelations.

  Unlike the Barker, who’d been forced to acknowledge his incurable malevolence, la silenziosità gentled the General’s distress—it was not for me to understand how. He pulled from me until we clung but to each other’s forearms, his pink eyes blinking to reveal a startling clarity, his lunatic fever washed away. His lips worked into an unpracticed smile and he nodded, first once and then a hundred times, his gray locks dancing about his shoulders.

  “I will not forget you, Devil.”

  “The name,” said I, “is Finch.�
��

  Our strange embrace was interrupted by an affrighting crash. The cell door was thrown wide. The General shaded his new, clear eyes and John Quincy lifted a shoulder as if expecting the lash. I turned toward the door and saw a big, round silhouette throttling a key ring. This was it, thought I, the scene where my soft corpse was rent, bit by bit, by noisome little projectiles of metal. Another man, taller and hatted, was moving into position behind the first.

  “Stick, Aaron, whoever.” Sheriff Nelson spat on the floor. “It’s your lucky dingdonged day.”

  The second man leaned into the light with a smile as silken and cunningly knotted as his scarf, lifting a finger to touch the brim of his hat. I recognized the gesture all too well. I stood and followed, just as I always had, throwing one final look at the strange cellmates upon whom I was sure I would never again lay eyes.

  But the planet is not so big as it seems when you’re still new at being seventeen.

  XII.

  THE BARKER AND I WERE directed to a chaw-spattered chamber no different from the cell except that the barred window had been upgraded to glass, which, regrettably, had been shattered at some point during the day’s uproar. I was relieved to see that the door, at least, had no locks. Sheriff Nelson closed it anyway after telling us to wait as he did some dingdonged paperwork and spoke to the dingdonged crowd so that we could get our butts on our dingdonged way.

  In a reversal of our act, I stood while the Barker took the seat. He brushed dust from the bench and collapsed upon it with a great sigh. It was no act. His eyes were scarlet and his energy sapped. He took a meditative moment to catalogue my torn slacks and scuffed jacket, the topsy state of my shirt and hair.

  “How like our first meeting, eh, Stick? It is quite a challenge, you know, reconciling this ignoble jailbird with the proud martyr of my invention.”

  “I am sure you are up to it,” said I.

  “Tut tut. Do I detect a lack of gratitude?”

  “Impossible. You have been so good to me.”

  He chuckled.

  “Mr. Stick. Even at this hour, you think so little of me.”

  “It is a talent of mine.”

  “Do you know how much sleep I have slept since your arrest?”

  “I was not aware that vampires slept.”

  “I’ve had not one wink, haggling with news editors and papering the town with handbills and whipping up the requisite frenzy. Do you care to know how much money I have generated for my trouble?”

  “Enough to line your coffin with silk?”

  “Money has been lost, Mr. Stick. What these rubes are interested in is an overthrow of the local government, not buying what I have to sell. I did nothing more than pat their asses to encourage them to action. Hundreds of dollars, Stick. Those are my losses. In a single day. And I have done it willingly in exchange for the publicity. Publicity for you. Can you not appreciate that?”

  “Which hand shall I kiss first?”

  The Barker withdrew from his jacket a cigar retarded with piebald skin and a midsection crease. He showed no mercy for its birth defects. He bit off the end. A match was struck across his heel. He gestured his chin at the window as he puffed the cigar to life.

  “Take no satisfaction in their arousal. You bring an animal to meat and the animal eats.”

  He closed his eyes and relished a deep mouthful before letting the smoke slither out like blue eels. The cigar was the prize he’d saved until the completion of his thankless mission.

  “You friendly with history, Mr. Stick? No? You have heard, though, of George Washington? The founding poppa of our fair democracy? Good boy. It’s his wooden teeth you likely know of. His chop-chopping of yon cherry tree, all that hokum. But the story of Washington that stirs me most is lesser known. Listen, Mr. Stick, in these few moments we have. See what you learn. About your country. About your place in it.”

  “My place, I thought, is beneath stage light, behind bars—”

  “Your mouth. Trained at last, it hops about like a dog after treats. Now. Cast your mind. Washington lays suffocating at Mount Vernon. Men of medicine are gathered, those with the know-how to carve tunnels through mucus, those with hands steady enough to lop off the president’s tongue if it comes to that. Together they release their combined powers. They practice phlebotomy, bleeding thirty-two ounces from our brave leader. Special jars are on hand to catch the blood, maybe keep it, examine it. They pour into him mercury to vacuate his bowels; there are special jars to catch that, too. Finally they blister the man, applying ungodly amounts of heat to scald away the sickening spirits. Washington dies, of course, a hero. And these men who lanced and emptied and burned him, unafraid of taking the most extraordinary of measures? Why, they are heroes, too, each of them the recipient of a kiss from the mournful Martha.”

  With a shirt cuff the Barker blotted at his still-closed eyes.

  “What these unsung heroes performed, in short, were stage acts, the same end-of-life celebrations we, too, perform. Our sleights of hand, all of them, are offered in appeasement of Dionysus, or, if you prefer, the One Gød Almighty. He appreciates a good show, too, if that play upon Calvary Hill was any indication.”

  His exhaled smoke was the exact color of ennui.

  “It is not long for this world, this showmanship of ours, this unbound creativity, all of it so much more satisfying than the rote pokings and sewings demanded by”—and here he snarled the word—“science. Lives in the future will be saved, or not saved, like beads slid this way or that across the abacus. But life itself? I think it shall not be worth living. One day, Mr. Stick, our brains and hearts will be but engines powered by steam and only because that is the latest innovation engineers have come up with in their drab, dull-minded colleges.”

  His eyelids split, revealing coruscating orbs.

  “You hear them out there? Ask those people about me and they will rush to answer. Dr. Whistler, why, he can cure anything. And, in my own way, I can. Anything except, I think, you.”

  “I wish that you could.”

  Instantly I recognized my words as the truth.

  He pushed them aside with an impatient hand.

  “Save me your melancholy. You are not the first to feel it. The paper this morning said fifteen percent of our men are jobless, a fact born out by the townspeople outside these very walls who have nothing better to do than pelt the local jail with rotten vegetables. These same men, in better days, would have paid a full day’s wage to gaze upon those worse off than they. No more. Now the only way into their wallets is to raise doubts about their livers. I do it. I am happy to do it. But the thrill, the sheer thrill of discovery, the heroism of it . . . it is not nearly the same. My lot, for better or worse, is here with you, Mr. Stick.”

  He raised an eyebrow and waited to see if I would do anything but play with the tin ring around my finger, and when I did not, he smoothed his beard in distaste. From the other side of our wall we could hear Sheriff Nelson address a hissing crowd. The Barker took to his feet, slapping the dirt from the seat of his pants and adjusting his hat in the surviving window glass.

  “They fear you and that is good. But anymore you do not seem to fear them. If that is the case, this jail is only the beginning. Some advice, if you will accept it. You have got to have fear in your heart.”

  Those were his exact words!

  So shaken was I by this repeat of Testa’s most indubitable counsel that when the door opened and Sheriff Nelson beckoned, I could nary move. The Barker apologized and gave permission for the sheriff to drag me. Just short of the front door, Sheriff Nelson turned to block our exit. His prodigious, damp belly bumped into my own.

  “You walk through those dingdonged doors, you ain’t my concern. All right, Mr. Astonishing? If there’s any shootin’, if there’s any killin’, we plan to be on the winning end.”

  Two deputies turned their heads to their boss
and drew their revolvers, and no wonder, for outside awaited a field of torch-wielding Xenionians shouting in anticipation of my release. Here, this hooting aviary of jubilant hillbillies, was the Barker’s publicity. I went through the motions of inflating my lungs with air in case the inhalation might steady me for our victorious march. Despite what the Barker had suggested, this was fame. How could it not be?

  XIII.

  IT WAS AN UNREMARKABLE DAY in December when I met the man who would shape the next hundred years of my life.

  I was meditating upon my cot several hours after that night’s performance when I heard a scraping in the dirt outside my tent. Were it an attempt at ambush, it was a clumsy one. I could have fired upon the creeper with leisure enough to fashion a smiley-face pattern from the holes, provided I still had my good old 1873 Peacemaker.

  Instead I said, “Do come in.”

  The sly noises stopped, there was a pause, and then the curtain parted to allow the curt entry of a short, fresh-faced man of the most unexpected trappings. He wore a top hat of distinguished altitude and a silk frock coat tailored to such specifications that he looked as well-folded as an envelope. He wore black gloves, fine buttoned boots with white uppers, and carried a leather doctor’s valise. More striking than any of this was that his cheeks were shorn of hair, a style you did not see on Pageant grounds unless upon a child, woman, or, well, me. He was twenty-six, twenty-seven—no older.

  He cleared his throat and offered me a polite grimace. Where were my manners? It had been some time since I’d shared space with a nobleman.

  “Please,” said I, nodding an invitation.

  He took all sorts of liberties at once, snatching a crate of salve to sit upon. The top hat came swooping off, the valise went between his seated feet, and one of his hands dove into his coat pocket to retrieve what I identified straight away as my favorite edition of the Atlanta Constitution. He slapped it smartly against his opposite palm and gave me a thin-lipped smile.