by Brian Short
“You heard that?”
“I hear everything. Everything. The voice, the mind, the snake… it’s the snake that hears everything. Not I. No, not I – I know that now.” The sheriff tapped his head: the mind. “But… Yes, we see it here; you’ve found it again, haven’t you? It’s found you. These are the same thing, the same thing. The snake coils in on itself. It winds as it unwinds. These are the same thing. Very good. Yes, there is power in objects.”
“Magic?” I said.
“Ah, yes, that. Magic. That is very good.”
“I don’t know that it’s the same gun.”
“No matter. It is, but… no matter. Yes. But why did you…? Oh. Here we go.”
Somebody’s head peeked up over the edge of the mountain, round, bald, eyes and nose, and stopped there, and the eyes rolled and looked from the one to the other of us, observant. A paper plate rose up to appear next to the head to its left, and it was stacked with lumpy doughnuts in a pyramidal pile. And to the right of the head (or half of a head, as it were) a shiny thermos was hoisted, shiny metal, inch by inch, with an extra red plastic cup tied to its neck. All these were set, set they were, set so delicately to the ledge. This done, there, the head, what there was of it, disappeared, down again, gone.
“This is the food I eat now. Only this,” declared the sheriff. “I once thought there was other food. But why would I think that?”
“You were saying something about a… a voice?” I asked, my own voice sounding hollow in my ears.
He ignored my question, or perhaps hadn’t heard. “I used to eat like this before, you know,” he continued. “It is… an inadequate response perhaps, but just the same. I’m glad to see it. There is something perfect about it. The form. It’s a ring, you see. It connects to itself. There’s no beginning or end to it. It connects – it is the same. But what is most important is what’s not there, the missing part in the middle of it. You know? Yes, of course you know. They make it. They make it. Them. There once was a time… what a ghost will eat, you see. You know about that too. When its hunger is just –”
“Tell me about the voice,” I shouted, surprising myself, and waited.
“That? The voice?” He looked up again, his face suddenly cold and stern, his eyes drilling into me. “I TOLD YOU TO GO AWAY, OLD MAN!” he bellowed, so forcefully it caused me to jump. His words echoed through the valley. “You are the voice. You’re the voice. What can I tell you about that? I thought I’d scanned off that channel. I thought I’d tuned you out. But you keep coming back. But where are you? Where’s your body? You want to do the work of the body? But you can’t. Where is your body? I know where this is going, and you can’t make me think it’s… not… Everybody else gets a body. They take theirs wherever they go. Oh, but not you. Not you. You think you should just have mine, don’t you. Well, you can’t. It’s mine. I’m keeping it.”
“But you’ve taken everything from me. Everything I had, everything I wanted, everything that brought me back to the world – you took it. You.”
“Taken? No, you’ve given me… You’re a voice. And you’ve given me bad advice.” He walked to the platter and thermos, set them to the center of the summit’s brief plateau, filled both cups with the dark stuff, then put one down by the doughnuts and backed away with his own, back to his side again, where he hunched into a crouch, lifted the cup to his lips and held it there, stopping short of drinking from it. “I didn’t want you in my head,” he said, tapping manically at his skull with his free hand. Then he spread his hands, indicating the plate, the coffee (spilling his own), maybe the whole of the valley too. “Here is the place where the work is,” he said. “Your work. This. Here. This is the work of the body. If you approach the center, here is your work. But you’ll still be a voice, won’t you? I’ll never be rid of you.” He looked aside, staring off into the valley.
By this I took his meaning as: I should help myself. And so I did. I stood and cautiously approached the middle, watching him closely for any response. He only remained where he was, crouching low. Was this a safe radius for me? Perhaps it was, or perhaps it wasn’t. Would he suddenly lunge at me, and make me go away, like all the others? But he didn’t. Nothing happened. He only stared out into the distance and I wasn’t sent away anywhere. At the center of the plateau I crouched down also. I picked up a couple of the greasy doughnuts – or rather, doughnut lumps (they were pretty irregular) – from the paper plate, and also the coffee he’d poured, and returned to my own side, safe. Safe enough.
“She’s still in love with you,” I said, “I think.”
“Who? In love? Her?”
“Amanda.” I bit into a doughnut. Chewed. It wasn’t very sweet, but it was oily. It left grease all over my fingers. “Whenever she looked at me, she would see you. She wouldn’t talk much about that, but I could always tell. And now that I’ve read –”
“Love? Amanda…? Is that what that was? I thought, so far as she knew me, I was just an idea to her. That was how she kept me – a thing of the mind. But that was you, wasn’t it? You’re a thing of the mind, in the mind. And once the mind changes, the idea changes, then she… then she changes. She looks away, and it’s different. A different thing. There was always that distance. And she won’t see you anymore…”
“Now that I’ve read all your notebooks, I understand how it was that… whenever she looked at you, she would see me.”
“It seems to me that you know this. Uh-huh, see, you…” He squinted at me. “You already know this. Because now I do remember when we met before, you and I. It’s been a while, oh yes, it’s been a very long while, but I remember. I remember where we met before, too, and it… Is that what happened to your body? Is that where you were all that time, where you are right now? Right now? No, that’s not it. It’s not a real place, is it? That’s why I thought…”
“I always wondered who the ghost was…”
“It took me a while, too. Sure. To figure it out, see. Because there was so much time. All that time. But the thing is – look – there isn’t any time. You know about this, how it is, when there’s no time. I know you do. You’ve been there – that place. You go up high enough, and there’s just no time, where there isn’t any, so you know. And the time… that separates us, between it and us, from here to there… it seems like a long time. Yes, I’d say it does. It is a long time, but none of that happens. It connects to itself. No beginning, no end. Never. Nothing. So the difference…” He looked troubled, confused, if just for a moment, but then he shook his head suddenly, violently, and with this, shook away the uncertainty. “At first I couldn’t see it. Because of what seems like the difference. But there is no difference, is there? No time, no difference. You know that. I’ve seen you, and you know that.”
“You’ve seen me.”
“Yes. You know that.”
TWENTY-ONE
From the Journals of Sheriff Friendly
[Early Spring, 2004]
I will try and identify the moment when I first realized I had stopped being myself. No, wait – that comes across all wrong. “Realized” and “myself” are words too imprecise, and assume a certain stasis of definition. And I never stopped being myself, insofar as I ever was myself, but I did stop being myself only. There was this entity called “myself” and there was this other as well; this other within me, a mind alongside my own, positioning itself as an observer, another who lent commentary (which was mostly unwelcome) and guidance (which was typically ill-conceived, often outrightly malicious) and whose voice I was obliged to listen to, if not compelled to follow. This thing I provisionally call “myself” was, prior to this dual condition and perhaps by design, a very loosely-defined entity lacking coherence, without stability, without clear edges, yet which I could, at least for a time, still call me. I believe it is as a result of this inherent instability and lack of coherence that this me, this person, was able to be partly supplanted, to be superimposed over by this other, but this is only speculation. And “realizing” that
this had happened was, on the one hand, only to come much after the fact, while on the other hand, was hardly something to become clear all at once, but only by slow degrees. The voice of this other, though not only foreign but also largely incompatible with my own, was complicit in the deception – the deception being that it somehow belonged in (or near) my head – masking itself and making the realization of its invasion difficult, almost impossible.
But so far as I can pinpoint it, focus it down to a moment, the moment came in 1994, I don’t remember the month or the season (because what meaning can seasons have in a place like Hollywood anyway, when everything is the same? When there may come a day, once, when there is rain, and then not again for months afterward, when the days are hot, and then they’re hotter still, and then somewhat less so?) but I do remember the doughnut shop well, and I remember looking first at my hands, thinking, these are my hands? THESE ARE MY HANDS? [the remaining text in this entry is unreadable]
TWENTY-TWO
The World
[Early Spring, 2006]
Beneath us, in the flatlands below, the horses were running. Beyond the perimeter of camp, the men were racing, riding on the backs of their animals across the steppe, trailing fantails of dust in their wake as they tried to outdistance one another, while above us in the flat gray sky clouds slowly gathered, grew dark and heavy, promising rain, though none yet fell.
“There’s been no rain in the valley for more than six months, I’m told,” said the sheriff. “I’ve certainly seen none since I’ve been here. Clouds, like this, they come all the time. They gather, they grow black with storms. But the rain never falls. The storm just hovers and waits, and then passes without ever letting go. Something prevents it. We’re able to get potable water driven in, but it costs. The goats, too, they’re delivered to us, but they need something to eat if we’re to maintain the herd. The grasses here are all dried up and won’t grow. Normally, I’m told, these steppes by this time of year are covered in green, though you certainly see none of that now. If the rain doesn’t fall, and fall soon, we’ll need to move to somewhere else, as will the local families. Maybe that will be our sign. That we need to move.”
“Families?” I asked. “People live out here?”
“Oh, sure. The nomads. There’s a lot of space between them, but you’d be surprised how populated the area is. Not by so many numbers, but it is inhabited. We’re only here because they tolerate us. Our work is… is what? Sacred? I guess you could say it’s sacred. We say that. We’re respectful. We make less of an impact on the land than the gold mine does, which is only a short distance off. We don’t tear up the ground. But it’s an impact nonetheless, and we need their blessing to continue. This is holy land, after all. Everything is alive, even if you can’t see it.”
“You mean, that woman… she really does own a gold mine?”
He ignored my question; instead, he poured himself more coffee, replacing what he’d spilled before. In my own plastic cup, I swirled cold dregs around the bottom.
“The police…” I started, looking over the ledge at the bustling encampment beneath.
“These are thoughts of the mind…” he finished. “Police are thoughts. In the mind of the Law. You must know that.”
“What are you going to do with them all?”
“Me? Not anything. I’m empty, I’m nothing. I don’t do things. They’re not here for me. The Law directs them, as it does myself. We…” He looked off into the distance, maybe into several distances at once. “We’re see-through. We’re invisible. Finally, we’re invisible. We… we’re transparent to the dictates of Law, don’t you see? This is the mind. This is what it does. We’re here because we form ideas – collectively, we form ideas, each one of us a hieroglyph, a new picture-word in the mind’s articulation… of the Law, of what it can encompass, of what it wishes to encompass. If we compose ourselves carefully, if we’re arranged carefully, we can make anything that’s necessary. We can make the sun – we’ll make it from nothing, from ourselves. And we’ll make it the right way this time, as a new and proper expression of Law, the new… the new sun. The better sun. Orderly, correct. We… You know about this, you remember… you… Because we got it wrong the last time, didn’t we? And we kept getting it wrong every time after that. But this… this will be the right way this time. Maybe. I don’t really know.”
I said, “But I thought they were all here because of you.”
“But I’m nothing. Don’t you see? I’m empty.” He got that faraway look again. “I’m not even here. They’re not here for me. They’re not… for me? No, nothing is for me.”
“Well in that case –”
“You’re not either,” he interrupted.
“I’m not what?”
“Not here. You’re not here. It doesn’t matter. I have… the one hand… And mine… mine is the one hand. The Law provides comfort. If not comfort, then correctness. If not correctness, then… emptiness. Some might call it the snake, but is that what it is? The Snake? Yes… It is the perfect emptiness of the void. But there’s no comfort in that, is there? And you? You’re not here. And… and you’re not me. But you are. Goddamn it, you are. And nothing is happening. And everything is the same…”
“Don’t say that.”
“But it is. I can’t help it. Everything… is.” He held out his arms, his hands: everything. “The same.”
Lightning cracked the sky at the near-distance, and in a moment, thunder followed. Cheers and howling swelled collectively, a single voice from the encampment in a slow and raucous wave – many voices, made into one, carried up, carried forward in spontaneous celebrations of the fact of weather, of this new development; in wonder, at this, the signal of the change, a unified gasp and intake of breath, and then a long sigh afterwards. Horses, camels, goats – all were made nervous by the noise and electric air, and started, most having nowhere to run. It was easy to see the movement of these gathered police men – men and women – from up here, as all a single thing, one body, articulate. They really did seem to express a singular intention, and thereby gather force, making thoughts, like he’d said, thoughts in the mind of Law. Though from the ground, I knew, it was quite different. It was a perspective that, from up here, he would’ve not seen. Yes, I’d felt, on the ground, that everyone was part of something, all in on the same joke, if not laughing much, speaking, as such, with the backs of their busy minds, speaking into the wind and dust in the language of the dust, the scrub, the sun; a more subtle language, themselves the living words. But despite this, everyone had still seemed individual and self-possessed, going about as they liked, doing as they liked. It had at least seemed so. Now I wondered, because from up here…
“No,” I said at last, wanting more coffee, maybe another doughnut, “whatever you may think, however you may deny it, they’re here because of you. You sent the word. You came out here, by yourself. Law or no, they followed only after they knew that someone or something was here for them, waiting, giving the signal, gathering them in. If it weren’t for you, they would all have stayed at their jobs.”
“But this is their job…”
“You know what I mean. They never would have come here. They would’ve had no reason to. You brought them here, whatever it is you say speaks through you. Why? What do you want with them? Your police?”
He looked confused. “Their place,” he said, “their position, their movement is sacred… They…”
“What? They bring order to the world? They protect and they serve?”
“Yes. They are the body. And this is the work of the body, to serve. The work… movement… circulation and expression. Service. Deliverance. They are a means of conveyance and conveyance itself, an expression. The body is the medium of movement, don’t you see? To carry and to carry along. They… they…”
“Are alive?” I suggested.
“Yes! No, wait – not alive. That isn’t it. But they’re not dead either. No…” he trailed off, looking up at the sky. “They are t
he same, either way.”
“Dead Tom said as much.”
“Who?”
“Dead… never mind. He said much the same thing. Dead and alive.” I held my two hands out – dead in the one, alive in the other. “Since he was dead too, but he still walked around and talked like that, like he wasn’t. He was very articulate.”
“Yes, he would need to be.” Sheriff Friendly looked away. Distantly now.
The bald head appeared at the edge of the plateau again: forehead, eyes, ears, nose, just like it had once before, floating, as such, halved by the line, and its eyes rolled back and forth, from the one to the other, from the other to the one of us: the sheriff, myself. Then it, the head, delivered another object, lifting it up slowly from below, setting it there at the rim, on the rock: it was my camera, my beloved Nikon, so old – old glass eye on a blank, flat face. Or… or: it was a camera, one, that is, so very much like mine as to defy any difference. I knew that this time I’d left the thing back at the tent. The fates had returned it – or the face had, or this half of a head. Blinking, then blinking again, the head lowered away and disappeared once more and so was gone.
“Objects,” I said, “are determined.”
The sheriff had nothing to say to this. He only stared off into distances scarcely related to the landscape.
“Could we maybe get more coffee?” I called after the fugitive head, but got no acknowledgement from below either. I crawled to the ledge where the camera had been left, looked over and down, saw no sign of the person who’d brought it – no body, no head either – so I picked the thing up in my dusty hands. Familiar. There was no question that this was my camera, and the film inside it held latent images of what I’d seen so far in this valley. I turned it over and looked at the back, turned it sideways, then sideways again, then once more sideways, then faced it front. Nikon. I looked into the lens wrong-ways, saw glass and the dilating machinery of the aperture and, gleaming back at me, the reflection of my own eye. I held the apparatus away from my face. “Well,” I said to no one. “What do you know,” I said to myself.
