Amnesia Moon

by Jonathan Lethem

  Gif and Glory sat watching him, waiting.

  “Why don’t you eat your kid?” he said. “She looks like some kind of animal.”

  He stalked out before they could reply, back out into the brutal sunshine. The Self girl was gone from the steps. Then he saw her kneeling at his car, sucking at his gas tank through a plastic tube. He backed into the shade of the porch and watched unseen as, squatting there on her furry haunches, she pulled her mouth away, spat disgustedly, and turned the open end of the tube down into a plastic container.

  Finally he jogged out across the lot. She turned, frozen wide-eyed, the gas still trickling into the jar.

  He stepped up beside her. “Keep it going, kid. Don’t spill the stuff.”

  She nodded in fearful silence. Chaos saw her hands trembling. He reached down and pinched the tube in the middle.

  “You talk?” he said. He raised the tube above the level of the tank.

  She glared up at him. “I talk fine.”

  “You remember before?” he said. The meaning was clear.

  “No.”

  “Your parents tell you about it?”

  “Some.”

  “Well, little girls didn’t used to do this kind of shit,” he said, and then immediately regretted it. Preachy, nostalgic. “Forget it.” He threw the tube. It spiraled, flinging drops of gasoline, and landed on the deck of the empty pool.

  He got in the car. The girl stood up and brushed dust from her gray jeans. She cocked her head and stared at Chaos, and he wondered what she saw. A bat. A cave dweller.

  “Well,” he said.

  “Where you goin’?” she said shyly.

  He thought of his last advice to her parents, wondered if they were capable of it. “Get in,” he said on impulse. He reached over and pushed open the passenger door. The girl jumped, and he thought she was running away, but then she appeared on the other side of the car and climbed in beside him.

  They didn’t speak again until they were on the open highway outside town. He wasn’t sure where he was going. The sun was low now, and they drove into it.

  “You have a dream?” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said brightly. “Kellogg was a whale—he swallowed me and I was in his stomach. There was also a lot of fish-men—”

  “Okay,” he interrupted. “Where’d you learn about whales?”

  “From a book.”

  “You ever meet Kellogg?”

  “No.”

  “He’s an asshole. You want to meet him?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  He wondered if she understood that Kellogg was someone she could actually meet. He turned and caught her staring again. “Your parents want me to ask Kellogg for more food.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “They don’t know the first thing about it,” he said.

  The girl went back to watching the barren expanse roll by, as though she found something there. He adjusted the rearview mirror so he could watch her. He noticed that she had miniature breasts sprouting under the ragged tee shirt, found himself wondering where the fur stopped. If it did.

  He watched her watching the desert. He sometimes thought that the reason Wyoming didn’t get hit was that it didn’t need it. It already looked bombed-out. Wasted.

  This could be my escape run, he thought. I could drive right past Little America, take this highway out. But no; he’d need food. Water. And he wouldn’t have the kid in the passenger seat. No, truth was, for better or worse, he was going to visit Kellogg.

  They cruised Main Street. A mistake. The Little Americans looked hungry today, no better off than the mutants in Hatfork. They tumbled out of their buildings at the sound of Chaos’s car, to stare hollowly at his unusual passenger. The pretense of activity seemed to have broken down; the town looked degenerate. A fire had gutted the old hotel since his last visit.

  The girl was leaning out of the window, staring back. “Get in the car,” he said, and tugged her down to her seat. “Kellogg cleared you people out,” he explained, not bothering to be delicate about it. “They forget.”

  He heard someone shout his name. But they weren’t calling to him so much as raising the alarm. In the dreams, Kellogg used him as a scapegoat figure; Chaos was supposed to lead the mutants in rebellion. Or sometimes he already had, and been defeated; it wasn’t always clear. There was a famous banishment scene: Kellogg and his deputies walking Chaos to the edge of town. It played over and over, so that Chaos could no longer remember whether or not it had actually occurred.

  He rolled up his window and sped through town, towards the park and City Hall. The public square must once have been kept green, but now it was like a patch of the desert transplanted to the middle of the town. A dog trotted along the edge of the park, nose to the ground.

  Another car drove out of the sun ahead of them, on the wrong side of the street. Edge. Chaos braked. Edge stopped his car just short of a collision and jumped out, waving his hands. He ran up to Chaos’s window.

  “Wow,” he breathed. “What are you doing here? Does Kellogg know you’re here?”

  “Did Kellogg tell you to drive on the left-hand side?”

  “Sorry, man. Don’t tell him, okay?”

  “Sure.” Chaos wrestled his steering wheel to the left and pulled around Edge’s car.

  Edge skipped alongside. “You going to see Kellogg?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he ain’t there. He’s with a bunch of people. I just came from there.”

  “Where?”

  “Out by the reservoir.”

  Chaos drove to the reservoir, tailed by Edge. He pulled up at the end of a long line of parked or abandoned cars, and the girl jumped out before he’d even stopped. He ran to catch up with her. A moment later Edge ran up from behind and joined them.

  The reservoir was dried up. What remained was a vast, shallow concrete dish lined with steps, like a football stadium that lacked a playing field.

  Kellogg had a pit fire dug into the sand at the bottom. He sat beside it in a lawn chair, surrounded by twelve or fifteen people. The sun was setting across the desert. As Chaos, Edge, and the girl made their way down the steps, it sank out of view behind the lip of the reservoir.

  “What’s your name?” asked Chaos.

  “Melinda.”

  “Okay, Melinda. We’re going to try and talk to Kellogg. Whatever happens, just stick with me, okay? We’ll be back in Hatfork tonight.”

  Melinda nodded. Edge said, “Why would anyone want to be back in Hatfork?” Chaos ignored him.

  The crowd parted to give Kellogg a view of the newcomers. He turned in his chair, smiling broadly, his stomach creasing like a twisted balloon, and plucked the cigar from his mouth. “Well, hello, Kingsford,” he said. “I see you brought some guests.”

  “C’mon, Kellogg. Call me Edge.”

  “What’s the matter with your Christian name? I think it sounds very noble. You descended from royalty?”

  “C’mon, Kellogg,” whined Edge. “You know where I’m descended from. You made the name up yourself. Call me Edge.”

  “Call me Edge,” Kellogg parroted. “Call me Ishmael. Call me anything, but don’t call me late for dinner. Or what’s that other one? Call me a cab, okay, you’re a malted.” He laughed. “What tidings do you bear? Ill, I suppose. Beware, Kingsford, we may kill the messenger, just this once. We’re a hungry bunch.”

  “Cut it out, Kellogg. I don’t bear tidings. I just came from here.”

  “So I recall. It’s your company that’s new.” Kellogg furrowed his brow. “Behold,” he said, his tone changed. Now he was playing to the gallery. “Chaos has arrived. Uncalled, uninvited, as usual.”

  The crowd stared dully, as if trying to match Chaos’s shambling arrival with the drama of the words.

  “With him walks a monster,” Kellogg continued. “A mutant, an aberration. Hold, Chaos. Stand your ground, advance no further upon this company. Heh. Bring you a curse on our humble celebration?”

&
nbsp; Beside the fire, strapped to a spit, was a reddened carcass, a dog or goat. A few empty cans lay discarded at the fringes of the circle.

  “I want to talk to you about food,” said Chaos.

  There was a murmur in the crowd of Little Americans.

  “Shortly we shall suckle at the fount of nutrition,” said Kellogg. “The bitter sea will at last embrace her suitors.”

  “Where are the food trucks?” said Chaos.

  Kellogg waved his hand. “Listen, Chaos: if I were on the surface of the ocean, floating, and you were standing on a bridge, with a rope attached to my belt, would you be able to lift me?” He raised an eyebrow to punctuate the riddle.

  “The belt would break?” volunteered Edge. He’d abandoned Chaos and the girl and elbowed his way into the crowd beside Kellogg.

  Kellogg ignored Edge’s guess. “You wouldn’t,” he said. “But if I were at the bottom of the ocean and you were on a boat, would you be able to lift me to the surface?”

  “I don’t see any of your Food Rangers, Kellogg,” said Chaos. “What’s the matter? They take off with your trucks?”

  “Buoyancy!” shouted Kellogg. “Man’s burden lifted!”

  The crowd seemed cheered by Kellogg’s confidence. Someone had been sawing the lid off a can of beans, and now this was passed forward into Kellogg’s hands. He plunged a finger into the can, lifted it out, and sucked up a glistening mouthful of beans and sauce. Chaos experienced the fantasy that this was literally the last can of food in Wyoming. It followed that it would be consumed by Kellogg, the last fat man anywhere, as far as Chaos knew.

  “The ocean calls,” said Kellogg, chewing.

  “The ocean’s a thousand miles away,” said Chaos. He allowed himself to feel that his stubbornness was courage. Maybe it was.

  “Ah,” said Kellogg. “But that’s where you’re mistaken, Chaos. The planets are in alignment. The continental plates are in motion. The ocean’s on its way.” There was a rustle of approval from the crowd. They’d presumably heard this prophecy before. Or dreamed it.

  “Alignment,” repeated Edge reverently.

  “All I’m saying is consult the charts,” said Kellogg. “That’s the difference between us, Chaos. I follow the stars.”

  “Hatfork needs food, Kellogg. I don’t care if it comes from the ocean or the stars. We do what you want, we listen to your dreams. Now give us food.”

  “No taxation without representation,” said Kellogg. “Very good. I may have to change your name soon.”

  “Change his name,” seconded Edge. He helped hoist the meat into position above the fire. The girl scurried out from behind Chaos to watch.

  Kellogg furrowed his sunburnt brow. “Your problem, Chaos, is your failure to come to grips with the new order. We’re a whole new species now, since the bombs. We’ve got a whole new agenda.” His tone had grown intimate, and the crowd switched its attention to the roasting.

  The only thing Chaos liked less than Kellogg’s hamming was when the fat man got sincere.

  “Willful evolution is the first task of an intelligent society,” Kellogg lectured. “We’ve inherited a grand tradition, admittedly, but we can’t let that tradition hold us back. We need to transcend the past. For starters, we’ve ignored the aquatic intelligences of our planet for too long. What’s worse, we’ve shunned our own aquatic origins. Evolution is cyclical. Chaos. Can you see it?”

  “What happened to your trucks, Kellogg?” It was more than a brave stand. Chaos’s hunger was killing him now. “No more food in Denver?”

  “We’re gonna repopulate the garden, Chaos. I’m here to show the way. It’s got to be done differently this time. The bombs robbed the world of meaning, and it’s our job to reinvest. New symbols, new superstitions. That’s you, Chaos. You’re a new superstition.”

  “Not anymore,” said Chaos, surprising himself. “I’m leaving. I don’t live around here anymore.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Kellogg. “Don’t talk crazy. You can’t leave here.”

  “It can’t be any worse somewhere else,” said Chaos. “Radiation fades.”

  “I’m not talking about radiation . . .”

  The crowd suddenly backed away from the fire, and someone groaned. Edge tapped Kellogg on the shoulder. “Hey, Kellogg,” he said weakly. “Take a look—”

  The chest of the animal had split open in the fire, and it was alive with pink-white worms. As they spilled out of the cavity, they sizzled and hissed in the flames, streaking the meat with their juices.

  “Shit,” said Kellogg quietly, to himself.

  Melinda Self came running back, and curled one finger shyly around Chaos’s beltloop. There was muttering in the crowd.

  “Well, shit,” said Kellogg, more expansively. He drew in a breath, and the crowd seemed to hang on it. “Hmmm.” His eyes flicked up to Chaos and Melinda, then he lifted his hand and turned to the crowd.

  “Grab them.”

  Before Chaos could react, his arms were pinned behind him, a knee in his back. Edge pulled the squirming girl away and pushed her down in the sand in front of Kellogg. Chaos kicked at the men behind him, uselessly. Knuckles dug into his back. He struggled more, and was thrown on his face in the sand.

  “You want to know what happened to my food trucks? Sabotage, that’s what. Five miles out of town, somebody blew them up. Survivor said they got hit from the sky. Some kind of air strike. That have anything to do with you. Chaos?”

  “No.”

  “Well who do you think it could’ve been, then?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Well I think it’s something you dreamed up, my friend. Fact, I’m sure of it. This morning an old woman picked up a shoe lying by the highway; the shoe had a foot in it. We’re gonna make you pay for that, Chaos. We’re gonna eat your ladyfriend.”

  The crowd responded to this shift in Kellogg like well-trained dogs. Utopian dreams forgotten, they grew vicious, began pulling at the girl’s limbs. “Whoa, there,” said Kellogg. “Don’t ruin her coat. I want it for my wall. We’ll do this right, put together a little marinade.”

  Melinda Self began crying, and one of the men put his hand over her mouth and wrenched her head back. Chaos tried to get up, but someone planted a foot on his shoulder.

  By the fire, they were prying the charred, rotten meat off the spit.

  “Stop this, Kellogg,” said Chaos. “It’s too much.”

  He felt cheated. This wasn’t in the cards. There hadn’t been a cannibalism dream, ever.

  “Too much, huh? Not enough, I’d say. Maybe we ought to fatten her up first. Let’s see, she could eat you . . .”

  “Where does it stop?” said Chaos. “You’ll run out in the end no matter what you do. When that happens, they’ll eat you.” His voice cracked with the strain. “You bastard.”

  Kellogg grinned for a long minute, milking the scene. Melinda Self twisted her head free and spat into the sand. The crowd waited. They were in the palm of Kellogg’s hand, as ever.

  “Hokay, Chaos, you called my bluff. I’m pulling your goddammed leg. You make it too easy, you know? I’m disappointed in you. You don’t even spot my references.” He reached up and took Melinda’s chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I wouldn’t eat a beautiful little child. Are you kidding? You know me better than that, pal.”

  “I know you’re insane.”

  Kellogg flared his sunburnt nostrils and curled a fist, then opened it again slowly, finger by finger. “Don’t tempt me,” he said. “Nobody’s eating anybody around Little America, Chaos. I don’t know what you folks been up to back in Hatfork, but that don’t happen here.”

  “Then let her go.”

  Kellogg shook his head. “We need to talk, Chaos. Long overdue. She’s my way of making sure you’ll listen.” He leaned back in his chair. The desert sunset glowed behind him, an aura. “Take her back to town,” he said. “Edge, you take her. Keep her alive. And here.”

  He dug in his pocket and emerged with a key, w
hich he handed to Edge. “My stash. Go ahead and open some cans. Everybody eats. The girl too. Furry or not, we’ll show old Chaos here we know how to treat a lady.”

  A heel crashed against the side of Chaos’s head. He fell. The crowd rushed Melinda Self up the steps of the reservoir, towards the cars. Engines revved. By the time Chaos got to his feet and worked the grit out of his mouth, he and Kellogg were alone. The fat man stood at the edge of the pit, urinating into the fire.

  He looked over at Chaos and smiled, then zipped up his pants. “C’mere, Chaos. Step into my office.” He turned and strolled away from the fire, to the first tier of the reservoir.

  Chaos shrugged the sand out of his shirt and jogged up after Kellogg. He had an impulse to launch himself onto that broad, smug back, but he wasn’t sure he could bring the big fool down. He felt thin and faded as a piece of driftwood.

  Kellogg sat on the edge of the concrete. He fumbled in his shirt pocket and brought out a half-smoked cigar, which he put into his mouth unlit. “Why you always need an incentive to come talk to me, Chaos? Don’t you like me anymore? We’re in this together, pilgrim. You know that, don’t you?” He grimaced, the cigar dipping downward. “Sorry if I got a little crazy back there, pal. When you said you were leaving, it just about broke my heart.”

  Chaos marveled. Kellogg was trying to make him feel guilty.

  Then he remembered the gossip he’d picked up at Sister Earskin’s the week before. “Is it true what I heard?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You were nothing but an auto parts salesman, driving around in a pickup full of free-sample spark plugs?”

  Kellogg smiled sarcastically, unfazed. “The honest truth, Chaos, is that I don’t actually recall. But suppose I was. What’s it to you?”

  Chaos didn’t say anything.

  “You’re way too concerned with before, sport. As if anyone cared. I mean, do you remember before? Really remember?”