Contents
Part One
Chapter 1: Point Elizabeth
Chapter 2: Fires
Chapter 3: Dillon
Chapter 4: The Circus
Part Two
Chapter 5: Cinteotl and Gold
Chapter 6: The Schedule is Ephemeral
Chapter 7: Spring Rain
Chapter 8: Rebellion
Chapter 9: Explorations
Chapter 10: Celebration
Part Three
Chapter 11: An Interview
Chapter 12: A Map
Chapter 13: Advice on Love
Chapter 14: Metal
Chapter 15: Movies
Chapter 16: Missed Performances
Chapter 17: Ex-Wives and Crackpot Theories
Chapter 18: Visitations and Outside Air
Chapter 19: The Circus Performs 96
Part Four
Chapter 20: Improvisation
Chapter 21: Costumes and Encounters
Chapter 22: Rehearsal 122
Chapter 23: A Promising Place
Chapter 24: Scheduling Conflict
Chapter 25: Flood
Chapter 26: Immaculate Conception
Chapter 27: Dictates of the Locale
Chapter 28: Further Adventures under the Mall Town
Chapter 29: Precautions Must Be Taken
Chapter 30: Desolation and Disharmony
Chapter 31: Comfort in the Midst
Part Five
Chapter 32: Everywhere Green
Chapter 33: Cybele's Land
Chapter 34: Rider in a Parched Land
Chapter 35: The Cave
Chapter 36: Return
Acknowledgments
~
Bonus material
Robert Freeman Wexler interviewed by Jeff VanderMeer
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Circus of the Grand Design
Robert Freeman Wexler
Published by
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© Robert Freeman Wexler 2004, 2011
Cover design © Robert Freeman Wexler 2011
No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.
The moral right of Robert Freeman Wexler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
Other Books by the Author
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Part One
Chapter 1: Point Elizabeth
Commuter trains always cut through the ass-end of things, wastelands of urban and suburban sprawl. Lewis stared out the window at a surrealist cast-off, juxtapositions of crumbling warehouses, vacant lots, ornate brick apartments, junkyards piled with crushed automobiles. Farther out (he had been assured), Long Island becomes an oasis of vineyards, organic farms, and quaint fishing villages. And why were fishing villages always described as "quaint"? Fishing had to be one of the hardest jobs on the planet.
A sign proclaiming Tucci's Auto Salvage flashed past. The train jangled to a stop at a town called Wantagh, and several passengers got off. Lewis hoped his destination, Point Elizabeth, was well past this swamp of over-congested desolation.
Picturing fishing boats and clam bars with nautical names, he had rented a house in Point Elizabeth for a few days as a refuge from the city. The only thing he knew about the place was its reputation as a center for scallop harvesting. The house belonged to an artist who called himself Are No; Lewis had found it through an ad in an arts newsletter.
Across the aisle, a woman leaned over to kiss the shoulder of the man beside her.
"You're kissing my fabric again," the man said.
Romantic fishing village weekends weren't meant to be taken alone. Lewis thought about Martha, seeing her face and long blond hair spray-painted across the back fences of the houses that the train shook past. Instead of coming with him, she had taken an extra assignment for her magazine, an interview with a famous underground film director's mistress. November was a stupid time to go to the ocean anyway, she said. They had argued about it and hadn't spoken to each other since, now two days.
A young girl behind him bounced in her seat, squealing, "Wanda wants a wild wombat, Wanda wants a wild wombat." Did the kid's mother think everyone wanted to hear? Haughty Martha would have turned around to glare at them.
He and Martha had met in college. They dated some, shared a house with several others, and split up after graduation. She moved to New York and he wandered, living for six months to a year in successive cities, uninterested in permanence. They had reunited at a party in New York a couple of years ago and decided to try living together. In arguments, she always claimed that her New York apartment was the reason for his being there.
Paths, journeys, destinations...sometimes moved in harmony, sometimes not. His life (peripatetic was the word his mother used in a letter forwarded by one of his sisters), his life wasn't governed by the places he went to or the jobs he found there, but by the act of going. What then, this dismal passage to the place called Point Elizabeth? Beyond the fences and hedges, anything could exist. He had always made these journeys alone—and that formed the root of his present discontent. Journeys intended to be solitary could be enjoyed in solitude or in the company of chance companions, but solitary journeys planned in tandem begin with a loss, a void difficult to fill on one's own.
Wombat girl and the mother got off at Fanshaw's Leap. The fabric-kissers remained for several more stops, then he was alone in the car. The sun set, and the sign for each stop became difficult to make out. The conductor wandered up and down the train, calling out names, but he didn't make it to every car in time to warn the passengers, though most seemed to sense theirs by instinct or ingrained repetition. Worried that the conductor wouldn't warn him when they reached Point Elizabeth, Lewis pulled out his train schedule and checked each time they stopped.
And finally, the conductor called "Point Elizabeth!" It beckoned, mysteries to be explored, charms like soft merino blankets to soothe his city-induced tensions.
~
Stepping down from the train, Lewis shivered. After the three hour ride, the sodden landscape depressed him. Rain had been falling all day in the city, but he had somehow expected it to be different here. Worse, the temperature was supposed to drop below freezing that night.
Two taxis waited in the parking lot. He got into one and gave the driver the address. Though Are No had said it was a ten minute walk, he didn't feel like trying it in the rain.
They turned down a dark street, and the pavement ended, giving way to gravel. The only light came from the cab's headlamps. The road began a gradual upward grade that soon steepened. When the cab reached the summit, the driver yelled and braked, the unexpected force throwing Lewis against the door. The car slid sideways and stopped. Sudden thoughtless random action interposing molecules of surprise, fear, heart speeding on to unknown destinations, farther farther. Where to, brave heart? Don't leave a poor man alone...not here, amongst the debris, the detritus, the unwashed ass-end of nowhere.
The driver's face appeared, wrapped in fog, framed by blue and orange lights that clung to his eyebrows and oozed from his nostrils. "Sorry. Sorry," the driver said. He reached toward Lewis as if to comfort him.
Lewis yelled—"What the fuck are you doing?"
Looking out the window beside his cheek, he saw that the street ended in the sea. Droplets of mist flo
ating above the water glowed in the beam of the taxi's headlights. Across the inlet a red light blinked star-like on the end of a dock.
The driver backed the car away from the water. "Never taken this road to the end before," the driver said. "They oughtta have a barrier here." He pulled into the driveway of a white stucco house with the number twenty-three, which he had somehow failed to see as he sped past. Lewis paid and got out.
Are No's house appeared to have no front door. Lewis walked up the driveway, passing a two-seater sports car, to a back porch overlooking a wild yard of high grass and twisted trees. He knocked on the glass door and Are No opened it.
Are No stared at Lewis, blinking, as though he had been sleeping. "Yes?"
"I'm here to rent the house?" Two weeks ago he had met Are No at a bar in the East Village, giving him a deposit to reserve the place. Are No should have been expecting him. And after nearly getting dumped in the ocean he wasn't in the mood to get screwed around by some fake-named artist.
"Oh. Come in then." Are No continued his blinking stare, but backed up to give Lewis enough space to enter.
The interior of the house felt colder than the damp night outside. Lewis asked about the heat.
Are No looked offended. "Didn't I tell you? Heater's broken. Plenty of firewood though." He pointed across the one-room first floor to the fireplace, where a charred log sat on a grate over a pile of ash. A moose head with purple antlers hung over the mantle.
"I'll show you the bedroom then," Are No said; they walked to the far side of the room, past a floor-mounted photo collage, larger than a king sized bed and covered by a sheet of Plexiglas. The photos showed alternating views of sky and the surface of the water. A green armchair stood beside the collage, and beyond the chair, a narrow staircase led to the second floor.
Lewis followed Are No up the stairs.
"That's the bedroom," Are No said, pointing to the right. "The other is my studio. It gets the best light, but I don't want you in there."
The studio smelled of oil paint and turpentine. Untouched by the fireplace's inefficient heat, the upstairs rooms were colder than below. Are No picked up a suitcase from inside the studio, and they descended the stairs.
"Now, do you know how to start a fire?" he asked.
Lewis answered yes of course, but Are No kept talking.
"There are certain tricks learned through years of experience." Are No removed the screen and squatted in front of the fireplace. "You've got to punch up through a shaft of cold air. The heat on the bottom has a lot of wood to go through, so you put paper on the bottom and more paper on top to raise the heat."
Enough already, Lewis thought. Leave...he would handle things. He knew how to make a fucking fire. No way he would sleep upstairs though, too cold. He looked around the room at the paintings crowding the walls. Are No probably wouldn't approve of him sleeping in front of the fire, but he would be gone soon.
"Are you watching?" Are No said. "I think its ready." He struck a match on the fireplace bricks and lit the newspaper. When he stood up, he looked around the room, nodding, as though inspecting each piece of art, then turned to Lewis. "One of the burners on the stove works. You can use the table, but I'd appreciate it if you sit on the near end, where I've put the place mat. I told you no meat in the house, right? I don't have an answering machine, so if anyone calls, take a detailed message. There's a guidebook on the desk you can look at, but don't remove it from the house."
This must be the closing speech about leaving everything in the condition he found it. Fine, he wasn't destructive. He handed Are No several twenty dollar bills.
Are No laid them on the desk and stared at them, then looked at Lewis. "This isn't enough."
"We met...I paid half in advance—"
"No-no-no. You paid the deposit. You still owe for the rental."
Are No gathered the bills into a neat stack and stared at them, as though he could make the money increase. "I don't like this. I can't have you staying here unsecured. You're going to have to give me the full amount, or leave."
Unsecured? Ridiculous—the guy never said anything about a deposit. "Look, you checked my references, you know where I work. I'm paying you plenty for a place with no heat."
"I have valuable artwork here."
Lewis looked around, avoiding Are No's eyes. The house was too dark. He would turn on all the lights as soon as Are No left.
"Do you have your checkbook?"
He would have to pay—only way to get rid of this fucker. Lewis reached into his backpack for his checkbook, filled one out, and handed it to Are No.
"Great then, we're all squared away." Are No picked up his suitcase and opened the door. "Enjoy your stay. After my inspection we'll talk about return of your deposit."
Lewis remained in the doorway, listening to the thump of Are No's trunk shutting and the rumble of his sports car engine. The car backed down the driveway, and Lewis moved to the front room, looking out one of the small, round windows that bracketed the fireplace until the lights of Are No's car faded from view.
Chapter 2: Fires
Sometimes, Lewis wished he was more like his older sisters, one a medical doctor like their parents, the other a biochemist for a pharmaceutical company. Their lives had stability, predictability, and income. He had always been able to find work when he moved to a new city, but never for much money. School had never interested him, and being like his sisters would have required an early commitment to academics. The sisters, they thought him feckless—one of them, he couldn't remember which, had once used that word to describe his life. Feckless and peripatetic. Aside from the amorphous bond of having grown up together, they had little to keep them close.
Perhaps while he was here, at Are No's Fabulous Beach Resort, he would write to them, something he usually did at least once a year.
~
Deciding to go down to the water before bed, Lewis rummaged through Are No's kitchen drawers and cabinets (noting assorted serving utensils, corkscrew with a fish-shaped handle, empty box of candles, plastic dishes painted with scenes of purple fish and orange kelp) until he found a flashlight.
The truncated road, where it met the shoreline, reminded him of an amputated leg. Looking out across the dark water, an inlet of a larger bay to the northeast, he wondered what had happened to the rest of the road. He remembered dreams of highways entering the water and continuing past submerged homes, graveyards, churches. His father had told him stories of burial mounds flooded when the government built the dam in the hills near their old family homestead. Lewis's grandmother's house likely still stood somewhere below the surface of Clearwater Lake. Catfish inheritors nosed through the rosebushes and up the stairs.
Pale gray mist drifted on the surface of the bay. Mist flowed from his mouth when he exhaled. "Here we are. Here we are," he kept saying, as if the words lent some affirmation to his surroundings, and the cold air he took into his lungs reinforced his sense of being adrift in an unknown and unknowable land of severed roads and mist.
The wind picked up, chill penetrating his clothes and inadequate coat. Rain had turned to ice, which made a slithery sound falling among the ragged grass.
He returned to the porch, where the thermometer hanging from a beam showed twenty degrees, and despite Are No's claim of expertise, the fire had died. Leaving the door open, Lewis made several trips to the woodpile, stacking logs beside the fireplace until he thought he had enough to last the night. Only a few pieces remained on the porch. Tomorrow he would need to find more.
Still wearing his coat, he squatted on the cold Plexiglas surface of the collage to rebuild the fire. From this position, he could see that each photo showed a different view of sea and sky, not the same two photos duplicated. At the bottom a label said: Project Poseidon.
The flames took hold again, and he went up the stairs to the bedroom, each step of ascent bringing him deeper into a hungry maw of ice, lying in wait, splayed across Are No's second floor...the two rooms repulsed him, a tact
ile force of cold his body could not penetrate. He wouldn't sleep up there, but the mattress on Are No's brass bed would be impossible to move. In the studio though...a futon couch. He dragged the thin futon mattress down the stairs, then returned for a down comforter and flannel sheets he had found in the bedroom closet (though Are No had instructed him to bring his own bedding).
Thinking it would be nice to sit up in bed, before the fire, and write in his journal, he pulled the notebook from his bag and looked around for the light switches.
"I don't believe this crap," he said.
Every light in the house was already turned on, but aside from a lamp on Are No's desk and an overhead in the kitchen, they were all low-wattage bulbs and fixtures, mounted under the artwork and pointing up at it.
He sat at the desk and opened his journal to begin a letter to one of his sisters—didn't matter which, he would say the same thing to both, but after a few sentences, Are No's guidebook distracted him. He picked it up. A red tab marked the section referring to Point Elizabeth.
~
The coastal area near Point Elizabeth is a maze of saltwater marsh and narrow inlet. Farther out on the island, of course, one can find the flashy summer homes of the Hamptons, where old and new money clash, fighting for ascendancy in stores selling designer clothes and foods, but in Point Elizabeth, life moves at a different pace, the pace of scallop and lobster fishers and their traditions.
Point Elizabeth was first settled in 1649 by the Dutch (though England was already in control of the former New Amsterdam, it still drew settlers from The Netherlands). Hendrik Hemmen, a minister who came to the area in 1731 left this record, "Game and Wildlife abound, as well as Mosquitoes in even greater numbers, but the good soil and fine weather will likely draw many. I can see this settlement expanding far beyond the size of Boston and other meager cities of the mainland."
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