Weatherhead Read online

  “There aren’t any. A testament to our greatness.”

  “Then I’ll make up my own,” and she shook her little white fist at him.

  “Seriously, Mags, you let some random dude kiss you in the middle of the woods? Sounds like a recipe to rape to me. I see shit like this come up at work all the time—“

  “No, don’t be stupid. It wasn’t like that—“ she stared over his shoulder, her lighter made lumen in her seeing mouths, “—it was more like—I won—and he was handing me his sword—“

  ⧜

  He’d gone back to the stones, not realizing she’d followed. He scowled, went down on a knee and tapped a stone. Then she knelt by him and whispered, Shenanigan and with a thin, white finger she touched the edge of the stone that had the answer on it, the one that read I play the fox.

  (15 Down) I Try on Ashes in the Rain.

  The town slouched down and sighed that morning. The streets were more starved than usual. The strings of meat that counted as people here were thin in their ranks. Usually the streets and debris-clotted boulevards of this city under perpetual siege were choked with people, people imbued with that air-raid siren hush-now that hastened errands and appointments and whatever passed for jobs here, demanded that these things be done as fast as possible before she blitzed the populace again.

  But where was everyone today? He saw only a few walking frowns, nodding into their bony arms, muttering into their scarves limpid paeans to their empress-slayer. Maybe they were at one of her fights? Another poor citizen who’d made storycrime against her? Or maybe she’d summoned them all for one of her ultramarine sermons and they’d be wringing around the collars and out of hair down at the mortuary today, that’s for sure—

  Quiet. Too quiet, like they say in dooms. But for the first time in a long, long time—he felt calm. It wasn’t just the sudden peace of the city and its ghostless avenues. It was the notion that something resembling his dead wife lurked nearby somewhere in this quiet place, for this was where she truly deserved to be. No flash or flare or fist or fuck, but just clouds, rain—maybe sun from time to time—streaming down over her like a virgin’s mane. Rot would only be deluding itself. She would not decompose—outside or inside—in Weatherhead only the latter had occurred anyway—she would flutter like a scarf that your love wears on bridges surrounded by kisses and caresses and nothing else.

  He thought of foxes and puzzles. He thought of cages and getting lost in St. Louis and, for the first time since that cold, half-bright, lite-brite March when all the illuminated bits of her had been pinned to a white board, he, with great weariness, wept a little. A vast oppression rang out in his parade-less blood, and not his former compulsory self-scarring, but more an immense tiredness that had been ambling along just behind the hollows of his heart, a fatigue of the heart, an ungreased engine in the arctic, oil for a gun now locking up in the ice, the sleep-crush of winter’s weight on the hopeless, all leaving streaks of black on the extremities—tears freeze shut the eyes—impatience spent by the lack of warmth—a battle in the blood whose only victor could be jolt-pure despair.

  He simply no longer wanted to be without her. Even his clothes felt scarred.

  There were times when Maggie Mechaine bit sharply at the reins of life, time tempted him. He wiped his eyes on his dust-pelt. Time re-wove that dream-hour of chin on chest, and it warmed him, this memory, which so sweetly lingered beyond the snow-fields, the other woman, the barrenness—he still felt a child could’ve unchained her—all his limbs could be broken and you could use Maggie Mechaine as the splints, pin her to him. His eyes had never been full of the whole world of her. It was only now, in this empty narrow valley in a city on the edge of everything and everything had stopped, it was only now that, blackened with her former light, that beast-faced as he was, he let her crowd out what had once been his blood and flow through him and, unable to stop himself, for the first time in a long time, he felt like a child’s nursery rhyme in lockstep twain with a palm pressed to the navel of the crimson lady who needed to be saved.

  With a new sense of purpose, he purged his face of woe. He walked on.

  Now, there weren’t any trees in Weatherhead, he’d noticed, save for her precious ash for bats, and the only leaves he’d ever seen her in this violent grey-stroked autumn were sheaves of graph paper. So there just weren’t many things up, per her ruling. But today, as he sauntered like a heap of troubles through the narrow lanes, he kept seeing things adrift in the Up, up among the windows, up where there should’ve been only the ghosts of windows. At first, he thought it a trick of his sick vision. Or had she gotten all the red-smelling bibles aloft, too, for if anyone could quell that age-old trickery, it’d be her. But—no, these weren’t the tops of trees, bibles, or eyes blinking noiselessly down out of the clouds from where the sky waged its war against the ground, truce over. Whatever they were, they were moving. Moving. He leapt atop a lamppost and swung himself up onto a small, ravaged coffee kiosk. From there, he squinted. At first he thought, birds, but Maggie Mechaine had been deathly afraid of birds. He watched the dancing down and up and realized they were inexplicable kites.

  Odd. Kites usually signified joy and there was no joy in Weatherhead. Perhaps she had pinned infants to them? But infants usually signified joy and there was no joy in Weatherhead. He watched this dalliance of the wind and after staring intently for a while, he traced the sources of these flappable joys, rigid shadows on the rooftops. That’s where everyone was, the multitudes were on the low roofs, flying kites! He made a slow circle. They dotted the air above the city, driftwoods from the wombs of gravity, black diamonds against the sky, bridled with nothing like lavender or the fuse-scents of sex, just distant dagger-murmurs of inconstant happiness, symbol of a flop-flop death on the floor of the sky.

  Every so often, as he watched, a kite would plummet. As he walked towards the main cluster kite-fliers, around the central square, periodic reports reached his ears. Someone was shooting at the kites, tearing them to pieces with shot. The victim would watch his or her diamond flutter down and its wood would clatter against the rocks and masonry. Head hung, they’d deroof themselves, some with a twitch of the eyelids and then the ankle that made them twist just so and fall just unright, break an arm or wrist or something. It was from one of these fallers, a thin, reedy man with a red wick for a face, who he ran to help when he pitched himself off a low wall and landed right on the end of his nose, and a few others, that he learned the truth.

  Today was a joyday, they told him. Periodically since her conquest, to placate the low rumbles and rumors of moves against her rule, she’d allow the people of Weatherhead brief respites from their misery. Sometimes they were given balloons, anesthetics, buckets of dolls, once even an assortment of rock candy carved into boats that sank when placed in water and turned yellow under one’s drool revealing their true, urinary nature. This morning, he was told, there had been allotments of kites handed out at stations around the city so the people took to the high vacancies to fly them. But someone was shooting them down. She was, at times, brutal, they cautiously reminded him, eyes cast about, for she was red-veiled everywhere and they didn’t trust him. He was now seen by many as a kind of favorite to her, someone who enjoyed the graces of their conqueror. Her anger kept them low, her interest in him pricked their castrated curiosities. Perhaps he could put in a word—

  Why are we still being punished? A new voice cried from above. Someone should do something—He was moving amongst a group of would-be fractured people, checking limbs for breaks, when this cry went up. Another joined it. Do something! Do something! Still alive! Still alive!

  A row of heads peered down into the square where he stood triage by a mutilated fence. Her war, they told him, against their city had never really ended.

  Uh-huh. Where was she, then? A chorus of hands shot up. There. Crouched on cloud, firing through one of the castaway frames. He found her reloading the rifle. She was in the UnTower, leaning on one of the empty window frames.
She greeted him coldly.

  Why are you shooting down those kites?

  She fired off a shot without turning. Ever consider that I didn’t want to go up?

  What are you taking about? Do you ever not talk in riddles?

  Did you know that birds are forbidden in Weatherhead? She slid the bolt back into place and raised the rifle. It was strange to see her with a gun. Have you ever killed anyone?

  Not in cold blood, no. That was a lie. But he wanted nothing in common with her just then.

  A shame. Life can teach us so many things which you didn’t know before, but so can death—teach you what no one knows. How long does the soul last after death?

  Her talk was toothless threat, but perhaps he could distract her, prolong the kite-life. He told her of some of the distant magic of his land, of the eyes that pierce breasts and wrists like knives. Sight beyond sight and sigh beyond sigh. On the question of souls, he told her of the fossils of tiny demons called viruses—he’d once read of this—the sister of his friend Mal was the source, being a priestess of the cult adjacent to these demons—these viruses attacked one, ravaged the self and, long after they were destroyed, they lived on, emptied, lifeless, but their shells remained, insteps to the trod of man through time, the drunk spirals meted out during love-making, piggybacking on the great white crescents that could make the most undivine woman shudder holy with their impact, these husks, fossils, were ever-present, always there, informing the Code.

  Is this the soul? An infection? She rested her chin on the muzzle of her rifle, barrel pressing under her jaw, her pale blue eyes flitted out past him. He wondered about reaching out and casually pulling the trigger. How dark was the dark under her clothes? How cold her hips? Her cruel mouth wasted the innocent air? Those people below wanted to be saved. But what if her menace was their virus? She was all red animal anyway. He could just as soon kill her again as drown on the back of one of those kites. The soul is a sickness? Love is a disease? She laughed. A sound notion, though they’d take up arms against the theory, I reckon. In one fluid movement, she turned and without even aiming, brought down a kite. He jumped at the bark of the shot. Without looking at him, she handed him the rifle. Take a shot.

  He did the worst thing ever and did. He took many.

  ⧜

  “What was your best time together? Multiply it times ten,” Silver had told him. She was always so choked with goodness and good things and she adored Maggie Mechaine when other sisters wouldn’t.

  They’d been together for a couple of years and they were already married. She stored her excess frames at home. She often made much more than she required, got ahead of herself. He was of the mind, like his father, that domestics were best left to the feminine declination, so, as long as she left his movies and his basement alone, she could do with the place as she liked, he felt. Eventually it got out of control, though. There were piles and piles of empty frames spilling out across the floor everywhere. It was as if the floor had been turned into clinking holes shorn of memories, abandoned spouses, early deaths.

  “Ridiculous,” he told her. He was going to take the weekend off, he went on, and help her organize the mess.

  “You’re ridiculous,” she snorted, “I don’t need your help.”

  It was one of the happiest times he would ever have with her. She watched him in alarm as he left and returned with several cases of beer and a stack of movie tapes. He taped several pizza place menus by the wall phone in the kitchen which he then unplugged. From the basement, he produced all the fixings for the imminent organization and ascension of her amassed rectangulars. He popped open a beer and admonished her for her lack of wisp. “Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em,” he told her face. He even joined her. She looked at him with fear and bemusement.

  Later, he wondered, “What are we listening to?”

  “Death.”

  He blinked. “Okay.”

  “It’s the band’s name.” Her armpit pressed into his face as she reached across him.

  “To the point. I appreciate that. It’s not really very erotic, is it?”

  “We didn’t do shit with those frames today, do you realize that?”

  He raised his head and stared past his feet. “Nope.”

  “We could make a baby instead.”

  “I’m more worried about the frames right now.”

  “A baby’d fit nice in one.” She climbed on top of him. “What’s my name?”

  “Maggie Mechaine,” he sighed, “what’s mine?” She hadn’t taken his name.

  She ignored him and squinted at him. “What’s my middle name?”

  “You don’t have a middle name. It’s a trick question. What’s my middle name?”

  “Danger,” she cackled. “When’s my birthday?”

  “September, 30, 1973. Monday.”

  “Very good. Favorite color?” To Maggie, favorite was to be always be singular.

  “Stupid. Your favorite color is stupid.”

  “Then you are color,” but she disproved this by putting her place of voiceless sighs around him and finding white only white. The hiss she made when he illuminated her dark spaces reminded him of the panicked attempt air made to escape tire. Her hips weren’t cool that weekend, oh no, they burned with her animal, her blossom parried his thrusts with shudders then surrenders.

  “Yankees and the Braves.” She had long had his taste under her tongue, but they’d long left the primal stage, were dressed and on a day trip for her birthday.

  “You sound very sure of yourself.” He knew nothing about baseball, but this was a day of indulgencies sold to all the souls of Maggie Mechaine.

  “Am, not sound,” she retorted. Never and always. She stared out the window. They’d been driving all morning. “Where are we going? This is Connecticut. Aren’t we supposed to be cleaning the house?” But all he’d offer her was a warning to stock up on highs ‘cause it was gonna be a long day in a place where they were forbidden. She did, half-out the window blown and blowing.

  Her rhythms changed when they pulled into the parking lot of the puzzle factory and she owed all the wonderful strangeness of this birthday to him. He’d called this place the day before and humbled and made fealty to the cut and the edge and secured the owner’s permission-on-the-sly to visit this place and see what kind of gods and goddesses can just cut up the world and force man to raise something out of rune and wood. She stumbled through the day, speechless, rapt. They cut their puzzles by hand, out of thick cardboard, they explained to her. She was shown the cutting dies for the mass-manufactured puzzles, the printers for the images, the entire process. Then, headlight-stunned Maggie Mechaine was given an apron and a pair of gloves and led off to be shown lithography, the printing, the impression and gluing, and the actual physical cutting. This place specialized in hand-cutting old-school style with electric saws and the old fellow, Dogson—wasn’t that his name?—kept Maggie Mechaine for four hours as his apprentice. He, her husband, had made it so.

  A coin under her tongue rusted her voice when rushed with afterglow she reappeared late in the afternoon. Per his request, they’d made a customized puzzle of her hair off a photograph he’d supplied them with. She loved impossible puzzles and he thought her reds as impossible as they come. They gave her this puzzle at the end of her apprenticeship. Happy birthday, young miss, the old cutter told her as she stood, astonished, clutching the box in both hands like a baby. He patted her hands and told her grinning husband what a natural she was. If she ever wanted a job—

  To him, the old cutter handed the puzzle she’d made herself. He stared at it curiously. It was ‘The Lady of Shalott’. He knew this painting.

  In the car, she disintegrated. She hadn’t spoken yet but was suddenly full of nevers and always again, just like she always was, except this time it wasn’t mute and neither were her fingers touching the ends of her hair.

  She made the sunset audible with the lull of her rose-red voice. They’d never make it back to the city by midnight so by
the roadside in a cheap, single bed naked, skinny southern girls charmed snakes the way ships tease the docks, the way the promise of wool teases the winter out of the ram. If her loins were a prison, then they were overcrowded with him, riots broke out, the guards trampled and overwhelmed, the walls torn down.

  In the dark air of falling can be lift. Call it love, if you must.

  (16 Across) I am She Who Sleeps Inside the Piano Strings.

  Today the high voice had two parts, one high puckish, silverish pink, the other low and brown: the pitch of Weatherhead had split!

  Someone was standing on an overturned crate, expositing in a cracking but voluminous face to a small crowd gathered about her feet. It was an older woman, leathery and squint and pine. She looked so familiar. He stood looking up at her. She was speaking in a cracked, cough of a voice of the devastation in the countryside around Weatherhead. People of the city would seize on blow-ins, those who, through some unspoken code, made it clear this was only a way station on a longer journey—who in their right mind would winter in Weatherhead?—and demand news of Weatherhead’s hinterlands. A crowd stood around her now, listening anxiously.

  Who was she? And then he remembered. She was the one whose son had died. The one he’d fucked. Somehow she’d followed him here. No. Passing through Weatherhead, she told him when he asked after her. She had stepped down from her crate and was attempting to slip unnoticed through the crowd. He’d grabbed her by the edge of her filthy raincoat. She didn’t seem to know or recognize him. She had a chipped and scuffed toilet plunger as a bindle. I stopped here to provision.

  You came down out of the mountains like me—did Love bring you here?

  She cackled. Her teeth all bent inwards now. Love? I came alone, giant, down from the mountains—Love ain’t got no time for the likes of me.

  Please—she had turned to leave. Please—can you tell me—what is the name of the place you came from?