by Hob Broun
“And that’s so awfully trite,” says the moderator, beginning in the middle, as usual.
The tight skin and the lax mouth, lower lip swollen as if from a blow, hair awry. Her beauty, as usual, opens me like a dagger.
“But we know he can’t help it.”
Her face dissolves into the dark rippling underside of a pier and applause overcomes the noise of surf. I race up the beach in lawyer’s pinstripes, closer and closer until my face fills the screen.
“Just like his father,” the moderator says heavily.
Cut to—
Nineteen forties New York. Prim brownstones on the sunny side of the street. Women in cloche hats and men in long overcoats maneuver around one another. They seem on the verge of dancing.
Moderator: “Suspicious as hermits, both of them.”
I slide to the edge of the mattress, peeling myself. “Not so.” Heat thick as cream inside the pod.
Rain falls now, the stoops shiny with it. A cortege of black sedans and a voice like paint blistering. “Students of swingology, class is now in session. From the Chatterbox Room of the Endicott Hotel, it’s Professor Chester and his Horns of Plenty. Turn it loose!”
Camera pulls back to reveal moderator on high stool. A man in hospital whites kneels on the black studio floor to shave her legs with a piece of copper flashing dipped in grease.
“Our topic?” She thoughtfully taps the foam-padded microphone against her chin. “Subterfuge. Machination. Some people,” pulling a minstrel’s cakewalk face, “well, some people think that’s what power means. But really, they never go through with anything. Hermits, varmints, who needs ’em? I say, strike up the band!”
“Adeste Fideles” by muted brass.
Talking heads in extreme close-up—
Violet: “Did you bring me a present? I thought maybe, for a change…”
Opatowski: “Wide open spaces could mean like bomb craters.”
Sabra: “Quit it! It’s late and I’ve got to get out of here. Stop. My shoes…”
Delvino: “A numbers cruncher? A guy in a tie? So fuck you, I read Moravia in bed and listen to Scarlatti tapes in my car.”
Andrea: “You can be like a thug if you want, but I know…”
Gordo: “I’d give all that I own if I could but atone to that silver-haired daddy of mine.”
Tasha: “Did you bring me a present?”
Rain falls big and hard on the surface of a swimming pool, splats on turquoise cement like newts shot from guns. Then rain forming in a cloud, each step textbook-labeled. Then rain melting the streets of a frontier town, falling on black gangster raincoats, ship decks, parade grounds, cathedrals.
Darkness with ugly mob hubbub, industrial grinding.
Fade up on—
A moiré of the beautiful moderator, like unprocessed data from a compound eye.
“We are back,” she says, assembling very slowly into one. “And want to thank the Abbey of Captain Video for supplying footage. Because we can’t do it alone.”
Her head falls forward with exhaustion, bobs up again, and the skin looks so tight it could rip.
“Would you like to know what we think?” She draws on her throat with a finger. “We think ambiguity is so exciting.”
I profuse.
“Believe nothing you hear,” says my immoderate sister. “And only half of what you see.”
Pure signal. Carla’s stubborn angel face coruscates behind gray strings of semen on the cold glass screen.
53
ROSING WAS GOOD, FIBROUS but succulent. The cookfire burned all day. I mounded books, clothes, shelving, the writing desk, my director’s chair, and sprinkled on my last can of fuel. The flames went high as a house. I skinned Rosing without skill, wasting a lot of meat. The way the sand sponged up blood made me think of snow. Lovingly, as an Eskimo would, I stroked the yellow fat. Birds were circling, getting too excited. While the fire was too hot to get close to, I tipped the Airstream on its side and pulled one of the axles to use as a spit. I ate the heart and liver first, roasting them in foil. I mounted Rosing’s head on a stake. His eyes were still soft and resigned. Days have passed without my counting. Someplace far behind me, many miles, ants and blowflies perform the final cleaning of the bones. Rosing’s eyes have been pecked out. Wind stirs up from one direction, now another, and the burial of blackened remnants has already begun. Here the wind is hardly noticeable, an afterthought Or possibly this has everything to do with the unreceptivity of my skin, which feels old on me and makes me think of dry gray boards. Here even the shortest distances blur, or possibly my sense of sight has dulled as well. I experiment, holding two fingers over the flame of my lighter, relieved when the pain doesn’t go away. But why don’t I feel hunger or thirst? I lie on my stomach, bracing my chin on both fists. Ahead of me are tall sandstone stacks. They’re always ahead of me and I can’t seem to get any closer. Or possibly with just a few more steps they will be close enough to touch. I lie on my back, looking at colorless sky. Suppose I were not alone. Suppose I had someone along who had known me all my life. I might say something like this: In our allotted time, it’s supposed, we do no more than compete in the passing on of our genes. But suppose the competition is actually among genes and we are merely the temporary receptacles in which they find themselves? Part of me is glad there’s no one here and that I don’t have to say anything. Part of me wishes to say and say and say until I’ve used up every word. Still another part perceives these other two but dimly, and very vaguely understands the act of saying. I stand up, brushing myself clean. There ought to be plenty of daylight left, travel time to continue on toward the tall stacks, though they might only be abstractions. Travel time, just walk along. The only things I have to carry with me are the canteen, my lighter, and a knife. Walking along, like I was designed to do just the one thing. Keeping my eyes down, away from targets. Here are dry yellow flowers in three U-shaped clusters branching off from a woody stem. Each flower is a sloping tuft, its longest and brightest bristles at the center. Here is flat red stone furred on its underside with some pupal housing. Here are flapping strands of spider silk, thorny seed containers, rabbit droppings, flaked lichen, chewed husks. Here, even here, is a piece of glass, clear, roughly triangular, deeply scratched along its shortest edge, a vestige. In examining it, I seem to have cut open the pad of my right index finger. The little knob of blood swells to its tensile limit and breaks. I catch the drips on my tongue. I taste like metal. With my other hand I scoop a little hole, put the glass in the bottom and cover it over. Walking along, I can’t remember if the cut finger is one of those that I burned. No matter. Vestiges are all buried, just that easy. When I lift my eyes to those stacks, they don’t make me remember or think of anything else. High rocks all by themselves, unconnected. No images and no figures, not one. Solid uncompromised rock, and still no closer. Possibly they recede in proportion to my advance. Possibly they echo with remembering while I do not. But I’m going along in my own way, not pulled by anything, roadless. I drink from the canteen even with no thirst in me, unable to remember how other liquids taste even while my mouth can make their names: sweet vermouth, sour mash, bitter tea, salt water. I walk my way, eyes down. Here are insteps rising and falling, toes and heels firmly printing themselves. Here are scallops in sand that could be recognized. No matter, I’m no more pushed than pulled. This is a trail that someone who’s known me all my life can’t follow. They can’t catch up now so as to say something like: What if we’re all empty of genes? What if competition’s done and the end designed right in? So I keep trailing along, eyes soft, and resigned that if someone caught up I’d make them all juicy at the end of my knife. And that would only seem to be the end. There’d be juice in the sand beside my fire with its trail of smoke, and I’d have to make a mark for the grave, something to remember. Colorless sky, blank. I am somewhere between close and far. I see the blood dried on my fingers, still no thirst in me. Inside, possibly, elements hide, pretending to have been emptied out. D
ry heart, stony glands, and refuge in the crevices and crannies. I can still be fooled, even here. Unpulled, unpushed, eyes down, I still find myself asking. Here are the things I carry with me. What if? Possibly. My arms in the air, antennae, pick up whispers that die against unreceptive skin. There is so much daylight left to keep going in that I can stop here. I can lie down, folding slowly. Stacks ahead and footprints behind, a closure in between. The ground must be full of heat and that heat must be expanding into me. I must want to sleep. With no hunger to dream, I have pictures on my eyes even so. The pictures go by and they are colorless as the sky. I do not recognize any of them.
About the Author
Hob Broun was the son of Heywood Hale Broun and the grandson of Heywood Broun, the newspaper columnist. After publishing his first novel, Odditorium, Broun underwent a spinal surgery that saved his life but left him permanently paralyzed from the neck down. By blowing through a tube connected to a specially outfitted keyboard, Broun was able to complete his second novel, Inner Tube, and write the short stories of Cardinal Numbers. He was at work on a third novel when he died at age thirty-seven in 1987.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1985 by Hob Broun
Cover design by Kelly Parr
978-1-4804-5261-9
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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