Incinerator

22

The back door to the Haunted Castle slammed shut behind us with a deceptively solid sound, and Hoxley located my sacroiliac with the barrel of the automatic and nudged. “Servants’ entrance,” he said, with a wobbly giggle that suddenly veered off in the direction of a sob. It was a new, and not particularly encouraging, giggle. He shoved the gun into me aggressively enough to make imaginary exit wounds bloom on either side of my naval like softballs hit into a screen. “Straight ahead,” he said.

The gun, poised between where I thought my kidneys might be, shook more than his voice did. The portion of the fairgrounds behind the castle was untended and untransformed, a desiccated southern California field of brittle brown weeds. The pageantry, and the comfort of the crowd, were behind us.

“To the catering truck?”

“Don’t get cute,” he said, kicking a heavy shoe against my ankle and clipping my Achilles’ tendon. I stumbled drunkenly. “This isn’t the Age of Cute yet. We’re still poised on the edge of the Age of Discovery.”

“The thirteenth?” I guessed, knowing it was wrong, just wanting to keep him talking, to keep his foot slamming my ankle, if necessary, and his hands away from the trigger and the matches. In my own nostrils, I smelled like a trillion shares of Exxon stock.

“Late fifteenth,” he corrected me pedantically. He came up beside me, one hand still trying to bore the gun barrel- my gun barrel-into my back and out through my navel, and I glanced over at his face, a sweating skull with the death’s-head makeup dripping into vertical smears. He was limping along, perspiring profusely, the sweat carrying the greasepaint along with it in pewter-gray rivulets, and he didn’t seem to be able to keep his eyes focused steadily in front of him. “America hasn’t been discovered yet,” he said, his voice rising in pitch, “and stop looking at me.” I did. “Isn’t that nice, no America? No truncating the rhythms of life into patterns of convenience, no convenience stores, no convenience restaurants, no one-hour dry cleaning, or even wet cleaning, to return to an earlier theme. And yes, the catering truck, perspicacious of you, the late Mr. Moreno’s catering truck. Poor Mr. Moreno. An enterprising gentleman. Catering trucks and a convenient concession license for the wonderland through which we now stroll, although Mr. Moreno didn’t know about the concession license.” He licked his lips with a pink tongue. “It’s amazing, here in America, what you can do with a phone, a checkbook, and the number of someone else’s business license. Mr. Moreno was even more of an entrepreneur than he knew. And newly arrived in the Land of the Free, too. Isn’t immigration wonderful? One of the dynamics that drives America, I always say. Well, I don’t always say it, of course. Wouldn’t that be boring? On the other hand, he served microwaved burritos, Mr. Moreno did, and to his own countrymen.”

We were most of the way to the catering truck by now, and although there were a few people in sight, here on the wrong side of the attractions, no one had even glanced at us. We were just Death and his good buddy Imminent Death hiking through the scraggle of weeds, and Death’s little gun was hidden inside his long black sleeve. Whoever had banged on the door of the Haunted Castle hadn’t followed us.

“So what happened to Mr. Moreno?”

“He got microwaved.” The gun wiggled upward, seeking a soft space between my ribs, and found one. “And now shut up and walk.” Hoxley fell back a step behind me, and I concentrated on doing what I was told.

“How’s life in a catering truck?” I asked as we neared it.

“All the conveniences of home,” Hoxley said from behind me. “Look at the light shining through the window. Here we are, the lonesome travelers cutting their way through the snowdrifts in a Book of Hours, heading for the homely candle.”

“This isn’t going to work,” I said, with more bravado than I felt.

“Oh, please,” Hoxley replied, pityingly. “I know that. This is my swan song. ‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.’ Do you recognize the quote?”

“No,” I said, without thinking.

“Well, it’s a classic, and tough shit,” Hoxley said. “I’ve long given up the idea that you might do anything but disappoint me. To the right, now, and watch the step.”

We’ d rounded the corner of the catering truck, and sure enough, there was a set of fold-down aluminum steps waiting for us to climb up. “Upsy-daisy,” he said, wiggling the gun between my ribs.

“Wilton,” I said. He poked me twice, hard. “Sorry,” I said, “but what happens now?”

“The end of the comedy,” he said. “Up the stairs.”

“This is a comedy?” I was already at the door.

“Comedies, as you should know from your study of literature, don’t have to be funny. They’re just stories that end happily.” He reached around me and fitted a key to the lock, the other hand pressing the gun into my back.

“But you said this was your swan song,” I said as the door swung inward.

“In,” Hoxley said, prodding me again.

“So what’s so happy?” I said, stepping inside. “You’re dead?” I heard him behind me, one foot heavier than the other. “That’s a happy ending?”

“One can get bored,” Hoxley said, pulling the door closed, “even with ecstasy. Hard to believe, but true. Hold still.” An electric light went on, and I found myself looking at a world made entirely of aluminum.

The inside of the catering truck was a single dimly lighted metallic corridor: stoves and microwaves and cooking areas to the left, a counter across the wide door at the far end, across which food would normally have been served. A wooden block bolted to one wall held ladles and long wooden-handled forks and knives, the knives positioned sharp edge out and ready for business. The counter was littered with Hoxley’s possessions, and the black trench coat was tossed into the corner behind the door. The straw-blond wig peeped out from the folds.

“Keep moving,” he said. I heard him lick his lips, a small, dry popping sound that sounded like a snake’s tongue looks. “Between the stoves,” he said. “Then turn and sit on the counter, facing back. Don’t look at me, hear?” I hesitated, and he shoved me again. “I said, hear?” His voice had taken on a tightwire shimmy, a quaver that threatened to broaden into an uncontrolled tremolo.

I said I heard and did as told, facing three quarters toward the rear of the truck. Opposite me was a line of tinted windows. Through them, in the exaggerated dusk, people drifted back and forth on business. Someone moaned in front of me, and in the darkness under the counter at the back of the truck I saw a large black plastic trash bag, two of them, actually, held together by a long spiral of fiber tape.

“You’ve met Mom,” Hoxley said, extinguishing the kerosene lamp. He emitted a burst of sound that turned out to be a laugh.

He stepped to the left. “Okay, sit on the counter. Don’t look at me. Just sit on the counter and be quiet.”

I hoisted myself up onto the counter. Around me, like cosmetics on some grand and peculiar lady’s vanity table, was an apparently random assortment of kitchen and bathroom objects: spoons, knives, heavy frying pans, soap, combs and brushes, deodorant, shaving cream and a razor, hair spray, toothpaste.

“You’ve made yourself comfortable,” I said, sneaking a peek at him.

“It seemed like fun at first,” Hoxley said without turning toward me, gazing instead at the tightly wrapped garbage bags, “like camping. And it was a nice way of getting them out. But, like everything else, it got boring.”

“I wouldn’t think you were the camping type.”

“I’m not. And, because you’re correct, you may look at me.” I did, focusing on the sweat-smeared death’s-head. His eyes were jumping like peas on a skillet.

“Imagine the Grim Reaper as a child,” Hoxley was saying as though lecturing to a class, “way too skinny to be popular, not so much ugly as odd-looking, these terrible clothes”-he looked down and plucked at his robe-“probably hand-me-downs from his uncles, the Four Horsemen. Who’s going to play with him? Too weird even for the Middle Ages.”

I couldn’t keep my eyes on his face, so I turned and gazed through the windows opposite me. Nothing seemed to be happening outside the truck.

“So what was he supposed to do with his youthful energy?” Hoxley mused. Then he coughed sharply. The muscles in my back leapt at the sound. “Auden says, ‘Human beings are creatures who can never become something without pretending to be it first,’ or something like that. I like to imagine the lonely little Reaper when he was still a black-robed tyke trying out his power, knocking on the doors of people’s huts to give them the flu or strolling solo through the woods, obliterating ant colonies with a frown.”

“You’re the Grim Reaper now?” Outside, there was no sudden posse of Canadian Mounties riding to the rescue. No Hammond in his tight suit.

“This is makeup,” he said, “remember?” I looked around to see him rub at his brow, the tight, hopeless gesture of someone with a migraine months old, and his hand spread the paint down the left side of his face, dragging his features down and sideways until he looked like a moon that had been ripped into fragments and reassembled itself amateurishly out of sheer will and gravity. The only things left in their correct places were his eyes, poisoned raisins in a botched Christmas pudding. “I’m the Gay Reaper,” he said through the smear, “or, rather, given the corrupted state of the language at present, the Happy Reaper. And it’s still boring, now that I’ve done it all. Well, almost all.” He jerked his chin at me, an abrupt upward tic. “I’ve changed my mind, turn around. You’ve tried my patience enough in the past. You don’t want to do it now.”

“What about her?” I asked, facing out the window again and gesturing in what I hoped was the direction of his mother.

“I was thinking of cooking and eating her,” Hoxley said, calming himself. “I’ve got all the equipment. How’s that for religious symbolism? Enough to win your poor little psychologist, the one I saw on TV, a second Ph. D. But I’m afraid she’d be tough. She always was tough.” He gave me the laugh again, sudden as a breaking violin string.

“Changing the subject,” he said, “it always amazes me, a society as advanced as ours is supposed to be, playing host organism to psychologists. The most pernicious of social parasites. Paying money to priests and drug dealers I can understand, we have to have some fun, but psychologists? I could outsmart my psychologist when I was ten. He sat there getting off on my aggression at eighty dollars an hour, pretending to take a note or two whenever he remembered, and I made stuff up just to keep him breathing hard. I never burned any little animals, whatever she might have told you. For one thing, I hadn’t thought of it, and for another they’re not satisfying enough.”

“Well, that’s something,” I said. “I figured every time you broke a shoelace, you set fire to a sow bug.”

“That was later,” he said, contradicting himself, “and it was just a phase, like acne. The things with exoskeletons explode, which is kind of cute, but they don’t feel it. No nerves in an exoskeleton. With mammals, all the nerves are in the skin, and that goes first. Besides, most little animals don’t have vocal cords. Vocal cords are essential.”

He paused and looked down at the gun as though he’d forgotten he was holding it. “My head hurts,” he said to the gun.

“Blow your brains out,” I suggested.

He looked up at me quickly, and I glanced away. “Mr. Used-to-Be-Clever. Your paper was really good, you know.”

“What paper?”

“ ‘Faces of God.’ I broke into Blinkins’s office one night and read it. It infuriated me. I had spots in front of my eyes. I knew how little work you’d done. You broke appointments with me, yawned when I gave you facts and even pictures, wonderful pictures, probably cranked the whole thing out the weekend before it was due. And it was better than anything I could have written. Graceful, you know? All airy and light. If I’d written it, it would have taken me months, and there would have been quotes everywhere and footnotes speckled all over the pages like someone sneezed on them with his mouth full. You didn’t even put a colon in the title. Didn’t you know that all serious academic papers have colons in the title? I’d have probably named it ‘The Faces of God: Representations of the Divine Visage in Post-Carolingian Northern Europe’ or something like that. You just called it ‘Faces of God’ and said the hell with it.”

“I barely remember it,” I said.

“You don’t have to tell me that.” His voice was louder, and I could feel him looking at me. “I know that you were more important to me than I ever was to you.”

“And why does that matter?”

“It doesn’t,” he said shortly. “Not any more.”

“You haven’t got much longer,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound wishful. “Sending Eddie out to meet me was like calling the cops yourself.”

“We’re waiting for the cops,” he said. “Have you been shaving points off your IQ or something? Maybe people are right to avoid reunions, they’re always a let-down. Here I’ve been thinking about you for years-not often, but from time to time and bang, you surface in the newspaper, and what are you doing? You’re a detective. Well, I think, could be he’s remained interesting, although so few people do. Aging seems mainly to be a matter of getting duller. Do you think I’ve gotten duller?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, you have. It’s actually funny. You’ve gotten little and pinched and tiny, and I’ve gotten, well, enormously interesting, and you’re the one who doesn’t remember me. Don’t you think that’s funny?”

His mother moaned again. I heard Hoxley’s feet scuff against the floor as he turned toward her, and I put both hands on the counter and swiveled toward him, ready to leap, and found myself looking into the end of the gun.

“Not yet,” he said. Then he smiled, his teeth yellow in the smeared gray-and-white face. “We’ll just ignore Mom for now. I’m sure she’d prefer that to the alternative.” He looked around the truck. “It’s sort of cozy, just the three of us. You never came over to my house when we were in school, did you? No, of course not. I never went over to my house when I was in school. Not with the little Hebe there. ‘What a falling-off was this.’ Another quote. The beast with two backs and so forth. Not much of a quoting man, are you? I should have known from your paper.”

“I’m too dull,” I said. “Quoting requires an original mind.”

“The little greaseball,” Hoxley said scornfully, not listening to me. “He was a bookie, did you know that? A real, honest-to-God Damon Runyon bookie. Took me to the track from time to time, you know, get to know the boy, make like a best pal.” He shuddered from head to foot, and I became aware that the gun in his hand was shaking violently. “A pal. Me and that revolting gob of phlegm. Shame you never came around. What fun the three of us could have had, him spitting numbers at Lady Luck and you writing airy prose with your left hand and me figuring out how to burn a horse. I did, too, finally. Working my way up, I burned one for Eddie.”

“Do horses have vocal cords?”

“Nay,” he said, and released the shrill laugh from its cage again. “That’s a pun, nay. Do you get it? Say you get it.”

“I get it.”

“Then explain it.” His eyes twitched toward the windows. “Never mind. What time is it?”

“Past eight.” I was watching the gun. It was jumping around in his hand like a live fish.

“Okay,” he said. He pulled his eyes away from the windows and slid his tongue over his lips again, as if unsure what came next. “Here’s the deal. I hate to cut this short, just as we’re getting to know each other again, but fuck it. Get off the counter and turn around. Do it very slowly.” He retreated a step to watch me.

I slid my fanny over the edge of the counter until my feet hit the floor and turned my back to him. “Hands behind you,” he said. “Knot your fingers together. Good and tight now, hear?”

“I hear.”

“I want your knuckles to turn white. You’re doing fine. Now over there, under the counter next to Mom. First, get the stool.”

A tall, four-legged wooden stool stood beneath the counter. I went slowly to it, not looking back at Hoxley, unknotted my fingers, and pulled it out.

“Put it behind you,” he said. “Don’t turn around. Just slide the stool around you until it’s behind your back. Good. Now kneel down-try to do it gracefully-and put your hands back between the legs of the stool. You’ll have to unlace your fingers, of course, and you have my permission to do so. Do it now.”

As I knelt, my knee touched Mrs. Lewis through the plastic sack, and she started violently. Then she began to weep. Small air holes had been torn in the bag covering her head.

“Calm down, Mom,” Hoxley said. “Everything’s going to be fine. Simeon, I want one hand on either side of the leg of the stool. The leg farthest from you. Now put your fingers back together. Shake hands with yourself, my little man. Be your own best pal.” I knotted my fingers together, the wood rough and thick between my wrists. My elbows were captive between the nearer legs. Hoxley opened a drawer behind me, a grinding metallic sound.

Mrs. Lewis went on crying, long, gulping sobs that seemed to tear her soul up by the roots and scatter its pieces into the air. She was quivering, the plastic bags rustling and shaking.

“Now I’m going to have to use both hands for a minute, Simeon,” Hoxley said, “but don’t revert to your youth and get clever, because by the time you pull your arms free, I’ll have lots of time to pick up the gun and blow your head off. Clear?”

“Clear,” I said. My voice sounded like a raven’s croak.

“A little fiber,” Hoxley was saying, “can do us all a world of good.” Something thick was being wrapped around my wrists, pulling at the hair. “Of course, I think you’re suppose to eat it.” Whatever it was went over my fingers, and then I felt him reach around the leg of the stool and wrap it around my forearms. “When in doubt,” he said, “wear it. There we are, fiber tape. Tensile strength, three thousand pounds per square inch. Stronger than affection, stronger than the ties that bind. Stronger than hate? Good question. And while we’re at it, shut up, Mom. Did you know that the web of the common garden spider is the strongest fiber in nature?” He paused, and then knocked something against the stool.

“No,” I said promptly.

“Well, it probably isn’t. Anyway, this will have to do.” He gave my hand a proprietorial pat, and I heard him stand up. “Fine,” he said. “Like the turtle, you carry your home on your back. Now turn around, on your knees, so you can see me. I’ve really lacked an audience, did you know that? Here I am, the greatest act since Houdini, and all the people who’ve seen me in action had short attention spans. Distracted by the here and now, although I can’t really blame them. The here and now was pretty diverting. Still, there have been times when I felt like a great painting hanging in a miser’s basement. For whom, after all, does the Mona Lisa smile? Turn around.”

The stool made it impossible for me to shift my weight, and I almost fell as I turned. Only by throwing one knee in front of me could I stay upright.

“Good boy,” Hoxley said as I faced him. He’d shed the black robe and stood in front of me in a white T-shirt and blossoming boxer shorts. His arms and legs were thin and white, filmed with reddish hair, and I felt my eyes being drawn down to the black shoes, the left one thick and heavy, with a brace that stretched partway up his calf.

“Ah-ah,” he said in a warning tone.

“I knew you’d wear boxer shorts,” I said. “And an undershirt. Even in this weather.”

“That’s marginally safer ground,” he said. “But only marginally. You won’t tell anybody, will you? No, you won’t.” He hobbled over to the black rubber trench coat and put it on, catching the wig in midair as it slipped from the coat’s folds. Another coat, the third one Willick said he had bought, lay crumpled at the bottom of the pile. Turning to a polished aluminum surface above the sink, he adjusted the wig until it was perfect and then intentionally knocked it askew. “Jauntier this way,” he said, studying his reflection. “I really should have thought of the makeup earlier.” Satisfied, he spread his arms and pirouetted toward me, pivoting on the heavy shoe. “So. What do you think?”

“All dressed up,” I said, “and no place to go.”

“Wrong as usual,” he said, sounding smug. “Listen, I really can’t tell you what a pleasure this has been.” He leaned over and picked up a long black cylinder that had been hidden by the coat, vaguely familiar-looking, with straps hanging down from it. “We all have to go sometime, of course,” he said, slipping the straps over his shoulder so that the cylinder was cradled against his chest. It culminated at the top in a stretch of flex cord connected to a funnel. “But what a treat to see an old friend again just before Act Five.”

The thing against his chest was a fire extinguisher.

“Cute, no?” Hoxley said. He took the funnel in his right hand and pointed it at me. “Fwoooooo,” he said. I cringed. “Opposites attract, hey? Here I am, with Mom and my friend along for the epiphany. Except, looky here.”

He backed to the far end of the catering truck and pulled out a box of wooden matches. Pulling the box open, he took one out and struck it. It broke, and he swore and struck another, holding it in front of the funnel.

“Prepare,” he said, “to meet your maker.” I was scrambling backward until the stool struck the counter and its edge cracked me on the back of the head, and Hoxley turned a sort of faucet handle at the top of the cylinder and fire spewed out. I think I screamed.

“Wasn’t that dramatic?” Hoxley asked happily, turning the faucet closed. “ ‘Prepare to meet your maker.’ Those nineteenth-century playwrights really knew their audience. Well, your maker is going to have to wait a few minutes. And why shouldn’t he? The bugger invented time, didn’t he?”

The smell of kerosene filled the truck. I felt my eyes slam shut, and I sagged against the rigidity of the stool.

“I’m sorry we won’t have a chance to discuss time,” Hoxley said, and I opened my eyes to see him turning knobs on the larger of the two stoves. “Is it a straight line or a circle? Does it only happen once. Is there some price, as Dylan said, that we can pay to get out of going through all this nonsense twice? Another quote, maybe more to your liking than the earlier ones.” He twisted the last knob and limped to the door, opened it, and stood in it, a tall black silhouette with the face of death.

“There are children out there,” I said in a voice higher than Shirley Temple’s. The stove was hissing.

He shrugged. “Can’t be helped. Everything gets boring. Well, this is new. Maybe I’ll experience a last flicker of interest before it’s over. I think I’d like that.”

“Wilton,” I said.

“Or maybe not,” he continued, oblivious. “It’s so hard to find something one truly enjoys these days.” He gave the faucet handle an experimental twirl and then turned it off again. For a moment he stood silent, head down, as though listening to something. Then he looked up and straightened his shoulders. “ ‘Bye, Simeon,” he said. “And, hey. ‘Bye, Mom.”

The door closed behind him, and a moment later, flames erupted outside the windows.