The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

by Jonathan Lethem

  This time I ran so fast I barely took a cut. I ducked underneath a bush that was already stripped clean of blades; its branches protected me. I listened as the storm ravaged the mound, then faded away. A smell of ozone was in the air.

  When I looked up again, I was looking into the face of Colonel Eagery. The Happy Man.

  9

  The only thing that’s not predictable in Hell, the only thing that doesn’t happen according to some familiar junction of time and locale, is the appearance of The Happy Man. He’s a free operator. He’s his own man. He comes and goes as he pleases, etc.

  He’s also my ticket home.

  When Colonel Eagery is done with me I go back. Back to home reality, back to Maureen and Peter and the radio station where I work. I get to live my life again. No matter where he appears, no matter which tableau he disturbs, Eagery’s appearance means I get to go back.

  After he’s done with me.

  Before I left the support group the counselor—the one who’d never even been to Hell—told me to focus on what he called the “reentry episode.” He told me that the situation that triggered return was usually the key to Hell, the source of the unresolved tension. The idea, he said, was to identify the corresponding episode in your own past.

  I could only laugh.

  There’s nothing in my life to correspond to Eagery. There couldn’t be. Eagery is the heart of my Hell. He’s Hell itself. If there had been anything in my life to even approximate The Happy Man, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it. I’d be a wimpering, sniveling wreck in a straightjacket somewhere. Nothing I’ve encountered in the real world comes close.

  Not in my reality.

  Frankly, if something in the real world corresponds to Colonel Eagery, I don’t want to know about it.

  10

  The Happy Man lifted me over his shoulder and carried me out of the Garden of Razor Blades, into the dark heart of the woods. When we got to a quiet moonlit grove, he set me down.

  “There you go, Tom,” he said, dusting himself off. He’s the only one in Hell who knows my name. “Boy, what a scene. Listen, let’s keep it to ourselves, what do you say? Our little secret, okay? A midnight rondee voo.”

  The Happy Man is always urgently conspiratorial. It’s a big priority with him. I feel I should oblige him, though I’m not always sure what he’s referring to. I nodded now.

  “Yeah.” He slapped me on the back, a little too hard. “You and me, the midnight riders, huh? Lone Ranger and Tonto. What do you mean ‘we,’ white man? Heh. I told you that one? It’s like this . . .”

  He told me a long, elaborate joke which I failed to understand. Nonetheless, I sat cross-legged in the clearing, rapt.

  At the end he laughed for both of us, a loud, sloppy sound that echoed in the trees. “Oh yeah,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “Listen, you want some candy? Chocolate or something?” He rustled in a kit bag. “Or breakfast. It’s still pretty early. I bet that goddamned witch didn’t feed you kids any breakfast, did she?” He took out a bowl and a spoon, then poured in milk and dry cereal from a cardboard box.

  The cereal, when I looked, consisted of little puffed and sugar-coated penises, breasts, and vaginas, floating innocently in the milk.

  I tried not to gag, or let him see I was having any trouble getting it down. I wanted to please Colonel Eagery, wanted to let him know I was thankful. While I ate he whistled, and unpacked the neckties from his bag.

  I watched, curious. “You like these?” he said, holding them up. “Yeah. You’ll get to wear them someday. Look real sharp, too. Like your dad. World-beater, that’s what you feel like in a necktie.” He began knotting them together to make a set of ropes, then looped them around the two nearest trees. “Here,” he said, handing me one end. “Pull on this. Can you pull it loose?”

  I put down the bowl of cereal and tugged on the neckties.

  “Can you? Pull harder.”

  I shook my head.

  “Yeah, they’re tough all right. Don’t worry about it, though. Your dad couldn’t break it either. That’s American craftsmanship.” He nodded at the cereal. “You done with that? Yeah? C’mere.”

  I went.

  This is my curse: I trust him. Every time. I develop skepticism about the other aspects of Hell; the witch’s overdue breakfast, the robot maker’s pathetic creations, but Colonel Eagery I trust every time. I am made newly innocent.

  “Here,” he said. “Hold this.” He put one end of the rope in my right hand, and began tying the other end to my left. “Okay.” He moved to the right. “What do you mean we, white man? Heh. Cowboys and Indians, Tom. Lift your leg up here—that’s a boy. Okay.” He grunts over the task of binding me, legs splayed between the two trees. “You an Indian, Tom? Make some noise and let’s see.”

  I started crying.

  “Oh, no, don’t do that,” said The Happy Man, gravely. “Show the Colonel that you’re a good sport, for chris-sakes. Don’t be a girl. You’ll—ruin all the fun.” His earnestness took me by surprise; I felt guilty. I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s fun. So I managed to stop crying. “That’s it, Tommy. Chin up.” It wasn’t easy, lying there like a low-slung hammock in the dirt, my arms stretched over my head, to put my chin up. I decided it would be enough to smile. “There you go,” said Eagery. “God, you’re pretty.”

  The last knot secured, he turned away to dig in his bag, and emerged with a giant, clownish pair of scissors. I squirmed, but couldn’t get away. He inserted the blade in my pants cuff and began snipping apart the leg of the corduroys. “Heigh ho! Don’t move, Tom. You wouldn’t want me to clip something off here, would you?” He quickly scissored up both sides, until my pants were hanging in shreds from my outstretched legs, then snipped the remaining link, so they fell away. A few quick strokes of the scissors and he’d eliminated my jockey shorts too. “Huh.” He tossed the scissors aside and ran his hands up my legs. “Boy, that’s smooth. Like a baby.”

  When he caressed me I got hard, despite my fear.

  “Okay. Okay. That feel good? Aw, look at that.” He was talking to himself now. A steady patter which he kept up over the sound of my whimpering. “Look here Tom, I got one too. Big-size. Daddy-size.” He straddled me. “Open up for the choo-choo, Tommy. Uh.”

  I didn’t pass out this time until he flipped me over, my arms and legs twisted, my stomach and thighs pressed into the dirt. Blackness didn’t come until then.

  Then I crossed back over.

  Another safe passage back from Hell, thanks again to The Happy Man.

  11

  If anyone at the station had questions about my behavior, they kept to themselves.

  I came back on mike again. “—bumper to bumper down to the Dumbarton . . .” I trailed away in the middle of the traffic report and punched in a commercial break on cart. “Anyone got something to drink?” I said into the station intercom.

  “I think there’s some beer in the fridge,” said Andrew, the support technician on shift, poking his head into the studio.

  “Keep this going,” I said, and left. He could run a string of ads, or punch in one of our prerecorded promos. It wasn’t a major deviation.

  The station fridge was full of rotting, half-finished lunches and pint cartons of sour milk, plus a six-pack of lousy beer. It wasn’t Johnnie Walker, but it would do. I needed to wash the memory of Eagery’s flesh out of my mouth.

  I leaned against the wall of the lounge and quietly, methodically, downed the beer.

  The programming was piped into the lounge and I listened as Andrew handled my absence. He loaded in a stupid comedy promo; the words “Rock me” from about a million old songs, spliced together into a noisy barrage. Then his voice came over the intercom. “Lenny’s down here, Tom. Take off if you want.”

  I didn’t need a second hint. In ten minutes I was trapped in the bumper to bumper myself, listening to the station on my car radio.

  Maureen’s car wasn’t in the driveway when I pulled up. She was still at work. N
o reason to hurry home if she thought I was still away, I suppose. But the lights were on. Peter was home. And, as it turned out, so was Uncle Frank. I’d forgotten about the visit, but while I was away he’d set up in the guest room.

  He and Peter were sitting together in front of the computer, playing Hell. They looked up when I came in, and Peter recognized the change in the tone of my voice right away. Smart kid.

  “Hey, Dad.” He made a show of introducing us, so Frank would understand that there was a change. “Dad, Uncle Frank’s here.”

  Frank and I shook hands.

  I hadn’t seen my father’s brother for seven or eight years, and in that time he’d aged decades. He was suddenly a gray old man. It made me wonder how my father would look if he were still around.

  “Tommy,” Frank said. “It’s been a long time.” His voice was as faded and weak as everything else. I could hear him trying to work out the difference between me now and the zombie version he’d been living with for the past few days.

  I didn’t let him wonder for too long. I gave his hand a good squeeze, and then I put my arms around him. I needed the human contact anyway, after Hell.

  “I need a drink,” I said. “Frank?” I cocked my head toward the living room. Uncle Frank nodded.

  The kid got the drift on his own. “I’ll see you later, Dad.” He turned back to his computer, made a show of being involved.

  I led Frank to the couch and poured us both a drink.

  Though I hadn’t seen him since before I died, Uncle Frank knew all about my situation. We wrote letters, and every once in a while spoke on the phone. Frank had never married, and after my father died he and I were one another’s only excuse for “family.” He wasn’t well off, but he’d wired Maureen some cash when I died. In his letters he’d been generous, too, sympathetic and un-superstitious. In my letters I’d unloaded a certain measure of my guilt and shame at what my resurrection had done to the marriage, and he was always understanding. But I could see now that he had to make an effort, in person, not to appear uncomfortable. He’d been living with my soulless self for a few days, and his eyes told me that he needed to figure out who he was talking to now.

  For my part, I was making an adjustment to the changes in Frank. In my memory he was permanently in his forties, a more garrulous and eccentric version of my father. Frank had been the charismatic oddball in the family, never without a quip, never quite out of the doghouse, but always expansive and charming. I’d often thought that my falsely genial on-radio persona was based on a pale imitation of Frank. Only now he just seemed tired and old.

  “You’ve got a nice setup here, Tom,” he said quietly.

  “That’s Maureen’s work,” I said. “She busts her ass keeping it all together.”

  Frank nodded. “I’ve seen.”

  “How long you staying with us?”

  Now Frank snickered in a way that recalled, if only faintly, the man I remembered. “How long you have me?”

  “You don’t need to be back?” How Frank made his living had always been unclear. He’d been a realtor at some point, then graduated to the nebulous status of “consultant.” Professional bullshitter was always my hunch.

  But now he said, “I’m not going back. I think I want to set up out here for a while.”

  “Well, for my part you’re welcome to stick around until you find a place,” I said. He’d sounded uncomfortable, and I decided not to pry. “It’s really up to Maureen, you understand. The burden’s on her—”

  “Oh, I’ve been helping out,” he said quickly. “I’ve become quite a chef, actually . . .”

  The way he trailed away told me I’d probably already eaten several of his meals. “I’m sure,” I said. There was a pause. “Listen, Frank, let’s break the ice. I don’t remember shit about what happens while I’m away. Treat me like a newborn babe when I come back. One who nurses on a whiskey tumbler.”

  I watched him relax. He lowered his eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Tom. I haven’t been around family, I mean real family, for so long. It’s got me thinking about the past. You know . . .” He looked up sharply. “You’re a grown man. Have been for a long time. But your dad and your mom and you as a little kid, me coming to visit—that’s how I remember you. Always will, I think.”

  “I understand.” I worked on my whiskey.

  “Anyway—” He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s good to see you finally. Good to see the three of you together, making it go.”

  “I’m glad it looks good.” I could only be honest. “It isn’t always easy.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean, I mean, yes. Of course. And anything, any little thing I can do to help—” He watched my eyes for reaction, looking terribly uncomfortable. “And Tom?”

  I nodded.

  “I already mentioned this to Maureen and Peter. Uh, you don’t seem to pick up the phone when you’re away, but now that you’re back—”

  “Yes?”

  “If you do pick up the phone, if anyone calls, I'm not here, okay?”

  “Sure, Frank.”

  “I just need to create a little distance right now,” he said obscurely.

  I wasn’t sure whether to press him on the point. My chance was taken away, anyway, by Maureen’s arrival. She walked in and peered at us over the top of a couple of bags of groceries, then took them on into the kitchen without saying a word. She knew I was back. The drink in my hand told her all she needed to know.

  Frank got up and hurried into the kitchen behind her. I heard him insist on putting away the groceries by himself.

  Then Maureen came out. I put my drink on the coffee table and stood up and we stood right next to each other, close without quite touching for a long time. Quiet, knowing that when words came, things might get too complicated again. In the background I could hear Frank putting the groceries into the fridge and the gentle, hurried tapping of Peter’s fingers on his keyboard.

  Maureen and I sat on the couch and kissed.

  “Hey,” came Frank’s voice eventually. “Pete and I were talking about catching a movie or something. We could get a slice of pizza too, take the car and be back in a few hours—”

  “Peter?” I said.

  He appeared in the doorway, right on cue. “Yeah, Dad, there’s a new Clive Barker movie—”

  “Homework?”

  “Didn’t get any.”

  I gave Frank the car keys and twenty bucks for pizza or whatever. I was being tiptoed around, sure, but I didn’t let myself feel patronized. The few breaks I get I earn, twice over.

  They left, and Maureen and I went back to kissing on the couch. We still hadn’t exchanged a word. After a while we went into the bedroom like that, affectionate, silent. We didn’t get around to words until an hour or so later.

  Turned out it was just as well.

  12

  Maureen had closed her eyes and rolled over on her side, curled against me. But the muscles of her mouth were tight; she wasn’t asleep. I put my hand in her hair and said her name. She said mine.

  “How’s it been?” I said.

  She waited a while before answering. “I don’t know, Tom. Okay, I guess.”

  “I wasn’t gone too long this time,” I said, though it didn’t need saying.

  She sighed. “That last one just took something out of me.”

  “What are you saying?”

  She spoke quietly, tonelessly, into the crook of my arm. “I don’t know how long you’ll be around. I can’t trust it anymore. I feel like if I let myself relax I’ll get ripped off again.”

  There wasn’t any answer to that, so I shut up and let the subject drop. “Peter all right?”

  “Yes. Always. He’s going to be on some debating thing now. I think he likes having Frank around.”

  “Do you?”

  She didn’t answer the question. “He’s so different from when I first met him, Tom. When we got married. I thought he was such a buffoon. Such a loud, intrusive character.” She laughed. “I was afraid we’d have
a son like him. Now he’s so polite.”

  “He’s a guest in your house,” I pointed out.

  “It’s not just that,” she said. “He’s gotten old, I guess.”

  “He said he’s been cooking. Is he in your way? He’ll go if I tell him to.”

  “He wants to move out here. Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes,” I said. And thought, As well as something odd about the telephone. I didn’t say it. “But he’s got money, I think. We’ll find him a place—” I stopped. She still hadn’t said whether she wanted him around, and the gap was beginning to irritate me. I was sensitive enough to her by now that I noticed what wasn’t being said.

  And she was smart enough to notice my irritation. “He’s fine, really,” she said quickly.

  “He’s actually quite a help, cooking . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve just gotten used to being alone, Tom. With you gone, and Peter out with his friends. I’ve had a lot of freedom.”

  The skin on my back began to crawl. I took my hand out of her hair.

  “Say it,” I said.

  She sighed. “I’m trying to. I’ve been lonely, Tom. And I don’t mean lonely for some odd old relative of yours to sleep in the guest room, either.”

  “Is it someone I know?”

  “No.”

  I thought I could manage a couple more questions before I blew my cool. “Does Peter know?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Jesus, Tom. Yes, I’m sure.”

  “What about Frank?”

  “What about him? I didn’t tell him. I can’t imagine how he’d guess.”

  “There aren’t any letters, then. Or weird phone calls. You aren’t being sloppy—”

  “No, Tom.”

  That was all I could take. In pretty much one motion I got up and put on my pants. Almost burst a blood vessel buttoning my shirt.

  Then I surprised myself: I didn’t hit her.