Keepers

FOUR

Maybe not for you.

(Yeah, but at least now you can’t bullshit yourself into thinking it happened any other way. Good-bye to all the happy pills the doctors have given to you.)

You waiting for me to thank you?

(Like the hero always says at the end of the movie, My Work Here is Done. Doesn’t mean shit to me whether you thank me or not.)

Pulling myself up into something like a standing position once again, I cleaned the blood and disinfected the wound as best I could, applied the gauze pads, put the splints in place with some of the medical tape, then tightly wrapped my hand in the elastic bandage; I was able to move only my thumb and index finger without much pain, the rest of my hand was swollen and useless. I looked down at the Mossberg. I had seven shots left in it and a full clip in the pistol. Sixteen shots altogether. Assuming that I was able to retrieve the shotgun if I dropped it again.

I bent my right thumb and index finger several times to make sure they were still working. Satisfied they weren’t going to lock up on me, I sat down on the closed toilet lid and balanced the Mossberg on my lap. I slipped my right index finger over the trigger and situated my thumb in the proper position on the handle-grip; my other three fingers I arranged as best I could, making sure that the right side of my middle finger was parallel to the underside of the trigger-guard, then I used half the roll of duct tape to bind my hand to the shotgun. No way was this going to come out of my hand or be taken away from me.

That done, I tore one of the remaining gauze pads in two and wadded up the halves to use as ear plugs-if I had to fire again, I wanted some protection against the noise.

After that, I opened the cabinet over the sink where my storage habits are a little more traditional; cough syrup, aspirin, throat lozenges, and… where was it?

There.

The same accident that had necessitated the finger splints last year had also brought with it a prescription for painkillers, most of which I still had left. God bless codeine.

I popped the lid off the plastic bottle and tossed two of the tablets into my mouth, then twisted down so I could drink some water from the tap. All better now (or telling myself I was, anyway), I put the bottle in my pants pocket, ran my good hand through my hair, and looked at my reflection in the mirror. If I saw this fellow on the street, I’d cross to the other side and run like hell.

I turned away and started toward the front of the house.

There was something going on there that Bowler wanted me to see.

The mist was pressing against the remaining windows. I wondered how much longer it would be content to do that before deciding to just smash through the glass-and if I doubted it had the ability to change into something solid, I had only to look at the wreckage of my right hand.

I opened the front door and leveled the shotgun.

About nine of them stood scattered around the front yard, arms folded across their chests, bowlers perfectly straight, goggles shooting out thin red beams that in places formed “X”s when they crisscrossed with those from another Bowler’s. Something about their stances suggested they were waiting for something important to happen.

On the periphery of the thrumming in my ears I began to hear… music. Muffled at first, until someone turned up the volume and the bass began to register in my bones; then a harsh, nasal voice began singing words, something about soldiers, tin soldiers, yes: tin soldiers and Nixon Ohio.

Someone was playing Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “Ohio.”

Three Bowlers who’d been standing beyond my field of vision emerged from the mist and started toward the porch. Their movements were deliberate and exact; dancers executing a carefully choreographed ballet routine. One of them wore an absurd wig of long, straight blonde hair beneath his hat. Another carried a boom-box from which the song was blaring. I leveled the Mossberg and took a step forward, taking care to make sure the screen door didn’t close behind me.

The first Bowler held up a white placard like those used in old vaudeville acts; written on it were the words: THE DOUBLE-DUBYA PLAYERS PRESENT. Then he backed away, bowing his head and parting his arms, taking the boom-box from the second one’s hand.

The second one, using overblown, melodramatic gestures, clutched at his chest and dropped to his knees, then fell face-first against the ground. The third Bowler went down on one knee, arms parted at his sides like a Celebrant blessing the Hosts at Mass; the long straight hair of his wig caught on a breeze I couldn’t feel and blew slightly to the right.

The others began to applaud, but then Magritte-Man came stomping forward like a petulant child, wildly waving his hands in the air, silencing them. He grabbed the two performers and wordlessly moved them into different positions.

That’s not exactly correct. He moved them back into the same positions, only this time facing away from me, frozen in tableau except for the hair of the wig, which now blew to my left.

I couldn’t move.

They’d recreated the Kent State scene almost perfectly. After all, this was the angle from which I’d seen it. From behind.

The song reached its final chorus as Magritte-Man stepped back, examined his players, then threw his arms in the air and bobbed his head with great enthusiasm. The Bowlers already scattered throughout the yard broke into loud and enthusiastic applause, a few even placing fingers in their mouths to whistle.

As “Ohio” ended, Magritte-Man tapped his players on their shoulders and the three of them joined hands to take a bow; first for the overjoyed audience in the yard, then, turning around and clasping hands again, for me.

Behind them, the mist swirled and churned, forming the faces of countless animals; dogs, cats, horses, pigs, cows, swans, bears, and more. Some of them were of species so foreign or exotic they could be seen only in zoos or the pages of National Geographic.

Each of these mist-animals cried out in their own primal language, as if to echo the sentiments of the audience and express their pleasure with this evening’s entertainment. The players turned and bowed to the spectators once again. The applause swelled, heads nodded in admiration, red beams danced and bounced through the glowing silver gloom.

As the applause began to die down, Magritte-Man turned to face me, holding another white placard. He smiled, then pulled the placard away to reveal yet another underneath, only where the previous one had been blank, this one had a word written in large black letters:

RING

He tossed it aside to reveal the next:

ANY

Then the next:

BELLS?

“How did you know?” I shouted, my voice creating heavy ripples of gummy pain inside my skull. “How the fuck could you know? It’s been thirty goddamn years since-”

He tossed aside the BELLS? placard to unveil a new one, then another, then another and another, until he’d said what he wanted to say:

YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHO TOLD US ABOUT IT

I was shaking so violently I thought my internal organs were going to drop out through the legs of my pants. “No riddles- who told you? ”

Another card:

GUESS.

But I didn’t have to. I’d known the answer since WELL.

I moved forward another step. The Mossberg felt like it had fused to my hand, flesh and steel becoming the organic tissue of a new limb.

“Tell me,” I said to him. “I want you to say it. I want to hear your voice, if you’ve got one. If it’s going to be like this, I want for us to have spoken once as civilized men.” I aimed directly at his chest. “So you tell me what-”

He pointed at the Mossberg, then waved his other hand to draw the Bowlers’ attention, as well; as he did this, he moved up to the second step and stood less than two feet away from the business end of the shotgun.

The Bowlers clustered nearer the porch, some leaning their heads to the left, others to the right, all of them evidently fascinated by what they saw.

Magritte-Man pointed to his right hand, then to mine, and that’s when I figured out he was drawing their attention to what I’d done with the duct tape.

Again, the Bowlers began to applaud, except for a trio who moved to the side, conferred among themselves for a few moments, then held up more placards: 9.5, 10, 9.7.

Magritte-Man gestured toward the judges’ scores and applauded soundlessly.

I didn’t know whether to laugh, scream, or just sit down on my ass and cry, so I did the next best thing: I stepped forward and shoved the barrel of the Mossberg under Magritte-Man’s chin.

“Speak to me, right now.”

He shrugged and stepped back down onto the walk, lifting his hands into the air. He bent his fingers down against his palms and began to strike at nothing-no, not strike; paw. He was imitating an animal pawing at something.

At the same time, two Bowlers took up places on either side of him and held up a small barred door taken from a cage. Magritte-Man pushed his arms through the bars and continued pawing while a third Pedestrian-the one who’d worn the wig before-held another placard over his head: SANCTIONED PERSONNEL ONLY. All of them began opening and closing their mouths as if trying to form words – lips squirming in a mockery of communication, sounds that were a burlesque of language – I shook the image of the old man on the highway out of my head and moved back into the front doorway, the Mossberg still at the ready.

They were crowding around the bottom step, their hands pawing, their mouths working soundlessly, the thin bright red beams of their goggles creating laser-show patterns before my eyes. The mist became thicker, the faces of the countless animals within pressing outward like bas-relief masks. I couldn’t lift my left hand to shield my eyes because that would mean letting go of the shotgun and I wasn’t about to give them an opening to rush me-and what the fuck had I been thinking, coming out here like this?

In perfect synchronization, all of them-Magritte-Man included-reached up to loosen their ties and unbutton the tops of their collars.

Every last on of them had a curved scar that ran from one side of their neck to the other. They turned their “paws” toward themselves and began to claw at the scars, all the while still moving their mouths and – when there’s this many, they cut out their vocal cords – Magritte-Man flexed his fingers, and with an overly theatrical flourish reached up to remove the bowler from his head.

Another placard: YOU GET USED TO THE SMELL.

He was bald. Not a stunning revelation, I know, but for a moment that was the only thing I would allow to register. He was bald. He wore the bowler because he was bald underneath. I suspected that all of them were bald underneath. But the old man on the highway, he hadn’t been bald-hair extremely thin and sparse, sure, but not bald. I remembered that. I remembered that clearly. I remembered the way he’d grabbed my shirt pulled me toward him; I remembered his blood seeping into the cotton of my shirt as I lifted the bowler and showed him that it was undamaged; I remembered the way he looked into my eyes, lips squirming in a mockery of communication because his vocal cords had been cut out long ago – no, no, that didn’t belong there, that wasn’t right, it couldn’t be, there hadn’t been any scar running across his neck and throat, right? Right-I was getting confused, the Bowlers’ little vaudeville had thrown me a curve, that was all. The old man on the highway did have some hair-not much, not shining, gleaming, glowing, flowing, waxen, flaxen, wear it down to there hair-but he’d had some. Magritte-Man was bald; shiny, shiny skin covered his head, except for the spots where matchbox-sized rectangles with electrical wires were implanted in his skull. The shiny, shiny skin of his bare scalp was crusty and red where it joined the metal.

Another Bowler began flipping through another series of placards:

CARE ENOUGH ABOUT SOMEONE AND YOU’LL FIND A WAY TO HELP THEM NO MATTER WHAT.

He waited a moment, then flipped through three more.

NO MATTER WHAT!

He wasn’t repeating anything with this-he was issuing a threat.

He tossed away the third placard to reveal one more:

THERE OUGHT TO BE A PLACE

I felt my stomach tighten.

Magritte-Man turned his head to offer his profile, then used his index finger to bend forward his ear and give me a good look at the blue plastic tag attached to it. I didn’t have to be close enough to read what was printed on it to know what it said because at that moment all the tumblers fell into place and the door of the safe swung open and out came everything from all those years ago I’d been forcing myself to forget every second of every day of every week, month, and year of my stale existence… until now.

Until this

(You’re getting awfully close to leaving me with no choice, pal

…) moment.

Until this moment

(You did the wrong routine…) of this day.

Until this moment of

(Dammit, I’ve helped people, you know? I’ve cared for them when no one else wanted to…) this day where I’d watched an old man die on the highway for want of hat and crawled in blood-soaked clothes under the porch to comfort a dying dog as my nephew who wasn’t really my nephew but an angel of Long-Lost because I had no sister Jesus God I had no sister, she was just a trick of Long-Lost’s, something to ensure that I would be the guardian of his little special agent, his angel of the pencil and paper, but that hadn’t stopped Carson from changing into what he should have been all along while Magritte-Man and his troop of players surrounded me and a mist crowded with bas-relief ghost-animals formed an impenetrable dome over my house and shrunk the boundaries of what I laughingly thought of as my world until I

(… might say they’re not from around here…) had to come out and watch my own private production of Godspell On Crack just so these bastards could rattle my cage and jar everything loose and I didn’t want to remember these things about Beth and her aunt Mabel and their Its and what happened to all of them and to me during that terrible sick-making three-hour period the year I turned twenty-one and I only had a few moments to try and shove it all back inside and slam the door before it took over and swallowed me whole but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do because I was hurt and frightened and my house was under siege and so much of it was already out and right there in my face and suddenly I thought

(There ought to be a place) of something I’d read about Nietzsche who’d said there are times when things get so horrible that you have only two choices laugh or go crazy so I opted for the former and barked out a single laugh that sounded berserk even to me and then I did the only other thing I could think of to keep the memories from engulfing me again, like the jaws of some mythic beast – I opened fire.