He showed up about a month later. Once I passed him on the street when he didn’t see me. The next day I ran into him, angry, sick, and strung out, running after some black guy down Tenth Avenue as I was walking up, trying to get the guy to trust him ‘…for the other ten bucks, man! Come on! Please!’
In an ancient, funereal suit, the black guy tried to move away.
‘Come on, Chip! Tell this guy he can trust me on anything! You know that! Tell him!’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘He’s a good guy. You can trust him and walked on, as Joey ran off after his recalcitrant connection. I doubt it did much good.
Still a couple of weeks later, while I was riding the M-104 bus on Eighth Avenue, I glanced out the window to see him sitting on the steps beside the comic-book store, with another friend, the two of them laughing over something as if they were having the time of their lives.
What’s hardest, in the end, for me to accept is that none of these emblematic images fixes Joey’s life. Rather, it’s the movement between them that the text does not capture—or document—a movement that may, at least in part, be as bewildering to him as it is to me.
13. That night I walked home through our unaccountably cold wet spring. (The day of the Breakthrough announcement three weeks ago, the windchill factor was twenty-three degrees.) Now and again the weather had given way for a half a day or so to something warmer, but always with a nip at either end.
Somehow I found myself walking an almost deserted Riverside Drive, on face-sized hexagonal pavings. Beside me over the waist-high wall, Riverside Park was a shadowy darkness, fronting the river. Above me, trees shattered the mercury-vapor lamps under a theatrically black sky.
Muggers? They’re too scared to wander in this part of the city after sundown.
Almost a block ahead, beyond the park wall, I could see a fire flickering in among the bushes. I turned between the stone newels and into the park itself, strolled past the brilliantly lit water fountain and moved away from the playground. As I climbed the brush and tree grown slope, the river cleared to my right and a canyon face of apartment lights—many out now—rose with me at my left above the trees.
He’d built his fire up on the rocks, using some old crates, fallen branches, and newspapers. Sitting on the log beside it, he was waiting, I guess, for the police to come and make him put it out. But the cops are almost as scared of this section of the park as the muggers. He had on a thermal vest, torn over the stuffing at one side, and no shirt under. The muscles on his arms and shoulders were hard and defined. The fire burnished his small, sharp face, much browner than I’d thought it would be.
Around his upper arm he wore a studded leather strap, of the sort that, five years ago, you’d have to buy in some specialty leather shop but which, these days, you could find in any record store with a reasonable punk selection; like his vest, it had probably come from a trash basket. There was something dark around his neck. A leather collar? But from what I could see of it under the vest, it was the wrong color, the wrong texture. In the firelight I would have sworn it was blackened iron.
One eye gazed at the flame. Where the other should have been was shadow. He was small enough so that, looking at him, I thought about midgets, and tall enough so that after a moment I forgot them. His hands hung over his knees—one pants’ leg was torn from calf to cuff. He had the rough, thickened fingers of someone who’d done mostly physical labor. Looking at them, you kind of suspected maybe, with another life and another diet, he might have been big; but as it was, his hands were all that had reached full growth. The pants were a lot too large and rolled up so they didn’t hang all over his shoes. At first, I thought they (somebody’s discarded size twelve runners) were too large too, till I saw his toes coming out a rip in the front. No, like his hands, his feet were just big. He’d knotted a belt with no buckle around the bunched material at his waist.
Standing across the fire from him I finally asked, ‘How you doing?’
He looked up at me and, after a while, nodded a little.
‘You been here long?’ I asked.
He shook his head, with a gesture just as small. ‘No…No. I just come, see? Not long.’ (I’d been thinking Puerto Rican, or Caribbean. But the accent recalled something Middle Eastern.) ‘Couple of days.’
I dropped down in a squat.
He blinked at me with his single eye, curious, as fire flickered between us. Raising one hand, he scrubbed the heel on his mouth.
‘Why did you…leave?’ I asked.
‘I can’t stay there.’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘He don’t need me now, no more. Why I stay? I go away, I run—far. Very far. Here, you see?’ He looked down, considering a moment. Once he moved his head to the side, reached for some rock or pebble and flipped it away. ‘Naw, he don’t need me, now. He big man. He all in there with those big…I can’t go in there, be like that. With him. There. Now.’ Hair, black, stringy, hung in greasy cords at the side of his head. It would smell of dogs and wet leaves. ‘So I stay, see? On the bridge. Have me some fun.’ He glanced up, with a quick, gappy grin. ‘You understand?’
I nodded.
‘Then, on the bridge, somebody tell me about…and I go to that…’ Lost for the word, he gave a little shudder. ‘They try to scare me there at…’ Frowning again, he took his hand and mimed pushing something down. He said: ‘Down. Under the ground, see? When they make the…the bones. They walk around. And they try to scare me.’ Suddenly his hand came back against his chest. ‘I’m a murderer, you know? I’m a bad man! I’m no good! The bones, they move—like he still alive or something! I’m down there in the dark! The bones, they go here, there, you know, comin’ at you, and you can’t look back or turn, see? I’m gonna piss all over myself in a minute, you know? I’m that scared! Only I think, shit!’ He grinned again, over an assortment of rottings and holes. ‘But I move, real quiet, to the side. And I see, there, behind this…’ He ran his hand, flat, up and down.
‘Screen…?’ I offered.
‘Yeah! Behind this…’ He made the gesture again—‘I see this woman. This woman, you know? She real big—here.’ With both hands he made curving gestures out from his hips—‘and she playin’ this drum, and this harp, and these…’ With hands before his face he mimed some fingered wind. ‘And this other one, younger, she giving them to her, first this one, then that. So I think: she’s there, playing’—nothin’ too bad gonna come.’ He pursed his lips tightly, then said: ‘Not to me. Though I still don’t look back, you know?’
I nodded again. ‘Then what happened?’
He bent his head to the side. ‘I come here. Later. After it finished with, see? I leave the…’ He threw his hand out. ‘I leave, I run away. From the…’
‘City?’
‘I leave the city. North. The next day. I go north, on a wagon. And I…’
After a few moments, I decided his thoughts had lost themselves among memories. ‘But how did you get here?’ I asked. ‘From there?’
‘Here?’ Grinning now, he jabbed at me with his forefinger across the fire. ‘You wanna know? No, you don’t believe me. But it’s true. I…’ The grin dropped away. His little shoulders went back. He looked up. ‘I fly! Yes. Flying, on a…’ The eye came down, the white stained and bloodshot, the rim of the iris not so definite on the ivory. ‘You believe that? That hard, I know. For you. But I fly.’
I waited. The fire flapped.
‘I go to the north, and I fly on a…’
This time when he stopped, I said: ‘Tell me in your own language. Go on. I’ll understand.’
He bent his head the other way, so that the blank skin, sealed and sunken in the socket, filled with light.
Three moist and silvery days I waited in the mountains for a wild one, he explained over the fire in the softly singsong syllables of that long-ago distant tongue, but the single beast I saw through overcast summer green had wings as tattered on the spines as all the leaves around, a ground-bound belly bloated with small deer, eyes rheumy as sma
shed clams; it was a fair decade beyond flight. I climbed to the corral, then, wedged my nose and eye in the finger width between the boards, and—phew! they grow musty when they muster in groups of more than three, fetid in fives, noxious in nines. There, they were a gaggle to gag on. But one: I saw it spread, rear on its hind haunches. Sweeping away its fellows with a scaly tail and swaying, he hawed like a mule, as beautiful as the sky we both lusted after. Him! I said to myself, or her—for I could see the egg troughs ranged beyond another fence (such little fruits, with shells like wrinkled leather, to hatch them!)—I’ll have it! I climbed inside that night. It’s rumored in the Makalata holes that some men long for the small-breasted grooms that care for and curry the beasts, dormed now down the slope. Some have broken in. Seldom have they come out. Monsters, say the good and decent men, hearing of such horrors, meaning the men. Or the girls. Believe it, they deserve whatever they get. But my own desires start at the monstrous: I’m a little man and do not lust after what’s little. As I haltered that green neck, jaded with the moon, however, as I beat that scaled side into motion with the flat of my hand, as claws scrabbled on the moonlit dust and the dragon craned to see who’d roped it, I felt, I confess, desire tumble among my body’s centers. ‘Move, you winged worm!’ I hissed. ‘Come on, you four-footed serpent!’ And smacked it again, as one might urge on the right sort of lover. It was easy enough to lift the locking beam from its hook. I stuck a stick between the boards and lifted—though when it fell loudly to the rock outside, I started, waiting for guards to fall from all around. (They, no doubt, were elsewhere, busy protecting their glorious store of delinquent virginity that could not have interested me less.) Not even in a shed, but merely under a long, thatched awning on wooden rails, the light, leather gear was ranged and racked. I stood some time in the moonlight, my mount beside me, worrying how I might saddle her for the night. But I’ve had a hand with horses. And after some moments I simply stalked forward, pulled one set of stirrups free, returned with the saddle and flung it over the sharp, high back, cinched the creature, pinched its cheeks to get the bit back in its beaky gums—while it near hauled me off the ground, tossing its head on a neck half again as long as a taller man than I. A ledge? Where was a ledge to launch from? But it had already started forward, as if, with its gear, it had put on the whole of its habitual flight pattern. Holding on, I had to run after it, trying to haul myself up that heaving side, my feet dragging on the rocks and ruts it made its way along. Yes, finally I got myself on, my leg over, when, reaching forward for the reins, I saw the edge of the world. And moonlit mountains beyond, thrust among clouds. For the whole corral, you see, was built along a ledge! We moved toward that precipice with a motion as inexorable as that with which time takes us toward our death. ‘Halt!’ some distant woman cried—a guard, certainly, strolling between barracks on her midnight, moonlight watch. ‘Halt, I say!’ Down wherever she was, there was more confusion. Then something whizzed by, behind my shoulders. A spear? An arrow? I only know that, inexorable as that lumbering gait had seemed a moment back, it seemed now just as unchangeably slow, as we made for the stony rim. I kicked, I clucked, I rattled its reins, and, without hastening or hesitating, the maddening monster craned its head around to see what I was up to! I looked aside at the incensed women running toward us: the corral guards. Another spear hurtled before me. Something hit my dragon’s leg, but at such an angle—fortunately—that the arrow bounced free of the hide lapped with its little armors. I looked ahead again—and realized that the rock we moved across was, now, the last between us and the sky.
We went over!
The broad wings gathered and opened beside me, and in a roar of air we were caught up on the night. The force of it nearly jarred me loose! I glanced behind, to see the harridans, dancing and shouting on the brink, hurling spears and shooting arrows, some of which I saw fall under us.
Below dark Ellamon lay in moonlight.
But now I turned forward. For with the night roaring at my ears and rushing up my arms to beat my chest, with the beast’s wings laboring behind my knees, I put my mind to my journey. How long, I wondered, could I glide here aloft? The rumor was that the animals could fly only a stade or so, and that in an upward draft. But I’ve never been a man to believe in limits, borders, boundaries. I’ve lived beyond them all my life, and I swore I’d get us off now, even if I had to throw the reins and beat my arms in air.
The dragon labored.
The night roared.
I hardly dared breathe.
And we rose awhile under the moon.
Was it minutes? Was it hours? The beast’s head began to jerk. Fables all over the land tell how such a motion signals the height of the glide. Well, then you know, I truly began to urge us on. ‘Up, you low-bellied lizard! Up, I say! Fly for the sun and morning! Don’t you dare go down on me yet!’ I howled out every curse I knew and then some. I kicked my heels against the wing joints, again and again, to keep them flapping. I knuckled the neck and jockeyed us on through cold air. And for a while, at least, we seemed to move ahead. ‘You fly, I say! And keep on flying!’ Did you know a man with one eye can weep tears hot as a woman with two? Did we cross a desert? Did we cross a seal? I wept and cursed and kicked. ‘Go on! Go on! Keep flying!’ And, believe me, we flew! Somewhere below, I know, we crossed a river. And there were many little lights on both its shores: hundreds of lights, thousands of lights, in orderly rows and lines. At first I thought there must be two vast armies camped, with myriad fires each, on the opposing banks. We swooped, and moonlight sheeted wide water. I pulled on the reins to make her head for some dark among those little flames, where I thought there’d be trees and we might hide from that immense, encircling war—for that is all I could think such lights might mean. But I was exhausted, and once I’d fixed our course I could only fall against the neck and hug it. We fell. I heard the upper twigs tear at the wings. I remember it flapped and trumpeted, banking, back-beating like a bird, attempting to break her flight. Then something struck me, struck at me again, and finally knocked me, numb, from her.
When I came to, in leaves and dirt, I had cuts and abrasions all along one side…
He sat up to hold back the vest’s torn edge, so that fire lit the scratches and scabs on his ridged, brown flank. ‘The animal…? I not find,’ he said, again taking up infantile English. ‘I look. But she gone, now.’ He shrugged. ‘It not fly, now, anyway, no more.’ Shaking his head, he let the vest fall to and leaned again on his knees. ‘The wings, now, be all…’ He made a few tearing motions.’ But I…am here now. You see? Flying. All the way here. All the way. I come from a far when…’ He paused, lifting one hand to indicate something vast and inexpressible. ‘A distant once…across never…’ Frowning, first he, then I looked toward the Hudson, at Jersey’s massed, Imperial lights. ‘Across the river,’ he said, then looked back at me. ‘You believe that?’
I smiled, shrugged, and shifted in my squat.
We stayed a little longer, while the flames lowered among bits of old board. He blinked his eye and joined his hands, waiting for me to suggest we go somewhere, that I buy him something to eat, perhaps, or that we stay, or whatever.
‘Tell me,’ I said at last, ‘since you’ve only been here a little while, how do you find our strange and terrible land? Have you heard that we have plagues of our own?’
Curious, he looked at me across the fire, turned to the river, glanced at the city about us, then looked at me again.
And I would have sworn, on that chill spring night, he no longer understood me.
—New York
May 1984
Appendix A: Postscript
1. I BEG MY READERS not to misread fiction as fact. The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals is, of course, a work of imagination; and to the extent it is a document, largely what it documents is misinformation, rumor and wholly untested guesses at play through a limited social section of New York City during 1982 and 1983, mostly before the 23 April 1984 announcement of the discovery of a viru
s (human t-cell lymphotropic virus [HTLV-3]) as the overwhelmingly probable cause of AIDS.
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a disease in which the body’s immune system ceases to function, and the body becomes prey to many opportunistic infections, including, among the most common, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, an otherwise rare form of pneumonia, and Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), an otherwise rare form of cancer of the capillary linings that often manifests itself as purple skin lesions, frequently on the legs. In the last five years, over six and a half thousand cases of AIDS have been reported. There have been no recoveries, and forty-five percent of those to contract the syndrome in these five years are now dead as a result.
There is no evidence that AIDS is transmitted by casual contact (that is, it is not spread by air, food, water, skin contact, sneezes, or the handling of exposed clothing, bedding, or objects). The evidence is overwhelming, however, that it can be spread by sexual contact in which bodily fluids or secretions (semen, saliva, urine, feces, or blood) pass from partner to partner—though it has not been determined how these secretions must enter the partner’s body for infection to take place (that is, it is not known if lesions, tears, or small cuts must be present in the mouth, body skin, rectum, or vagina for infection to occur). To date, approximately seventy-two percent of those to get the disease have been homosexual men. The great majority of the men to get it live in, or frequently visit, large urban centers, with New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago far in the lead. The next highest-risk group is intravenous drug abusers: unsterilized and infected needles going directly into the bloodstream are apparently an indisputable point of contagion. Approximately four hundred women have gotten AIDS, the vast majority of whom are either I-V drug abusers, or the sexual partners of men who are I-V drug abusers. AIDS symptoms include unexplained loss of weight, unexplained bruises or lesions on the body (particularly on the legs), swollen lymph nodes (particularly in the neck), along with malaise and general weakness. At the onset of any these symptoms, singly or in combination, especially in someone in one of the high-risk groups, medical attention should be sought immediately. To date, no adults who have contracted the disease have lived with AIDS beyond three years; and death may come as quickly as six weeks after the onset of symptoms, depending on what opportunistic infections settle in and how they are treated.
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