Word Made Flesh

28

Gilrein parks on the fire road at the rear border of the Brockden Estate. He reloads the Colt, gets out of the Checker, walks around the taxi and opens the trunk. In the moonlight he looks in at this vault of grimy remnants that testifies to his father’s life: the mismatched tools, the burlap sack filled with oil rags and dozens of lengths of rope, the khaki duffel still loaded with an emergency change of clothes, and the wooden crate, glossy pine, studded with knotholes and packed with brittle, worn-out paperbacks. They are all western novels, brief adventures in the bloody lives of moral cowboys. Stories of frontiersmen who dispensed a perfect and lasting brand of justice.

Shoving the crate to the side, he grabs the paper sack that contains Alicia’s book. There is a density to the bag, a sense of compressed weight that tells you it holds more than someone’s lunch. He unrolls the top of the bag but does not look inside. Instead, he eases his hand in, slowly, as if he were blindly reaching for a cobra. And he touches the cover of the book, strokes it once, feels the buttery coolness of the binding and recoils immediately. He withdraws his hand and closes the bag, tucks it under his arm and eases the trunk back into locking.

He heads for the orchard, cutting through to the rear of the main house, moving in a moderate jog, looking through the line of dead trees, trying to see if there are any lights on inside.

He doesn’t have a plan so much as a schedule of movements. A plan implies a progression toward completion and resolution. Gilrein thinks that’s just too much to hope for. He’ll settle for distance and time to sort through the confusion of the past few days.

He needs to make sure the farm is secure. He needs to leave a short note for Frankie and Anna. Something about moving his life forward. Putting the past away. Some kind of comforting lie that will allow them to forget about a bothersome friend. The idea right now is to simply gain some space. To evacuate the city, leave it to Kroger and Oster, to their creatures and their unique methods for discerning information and disposing of witnesses, techniques that involve blowtorches and pharmaceuticals, customized screwdrivers and tall buildings, steroid-fed guard dogs and all the horrible secrets of human anatomy. Procedures refined by years of studious experimentation, cold and precise observation of the limitless ways the fear response can be prodded, manipulated, turned against a weaker and ultimately help less victim.

Given the needed abilities — the power, the money, the political sanction, the access to large tracts of private burial ground— Gilrein thinks that what he’d most like to do with the rest of his small life, from tonight forward, from this moment, walking through this barren orchard, is to spend his days methodically eliminating individuals like Kroger and Oster from the planet. To eradicate their existence. To wipe out not just their careers of terror and control, not only their physical presence, but to exterminate any sign that they were ever here, to grind away even the most minute trace of their being from the collective memory of Quinsigamond.

Isn’t this both the best and the worst you can do? Somehow erasing all evidence of a person’s existence is so much more heinous than simply executing her, involving, in some not fully explainable way, a darker and more hideous human impulse. Who could hate this much, at this level of energy and expense, with this breadth of control, wanting to author not just history but reality itself, wanting to make over the universe in the design of one’s own unique and egomaniacal imagining?

He’s at least intelligent enough to know that this would transform him into the kind of monster that even the most ruthless of the neighborhood mayors only dream of being. But how large a sacrifice would that be, becoming the killer angel of all things wicked and cruel? Maybe in the landscape that this city and its people have arrived at, there’s a need for exactly this kind of definitive monster. A beast not just of destruction, but of obliteration. It’s not a new argument. He’s had it before with Ceil and maybe he played devil’s advocate just a second too long, even after she’d spoken the forced cliché that should have changed the course of their discussion.

You ’d be turning into the thing you despise most.

You would become them.

It isn’t completely true and Gilrein had said so at the time. Ceil countered that it was true enough to be the only point that mattered at the end. But Gilrein couldn’t stop himself from arguing that there is a distinct difference of motivation. Kroger and Oster kill for money and power and ideas and the rush of sadism that comes from slaughtering the weak and the different and the innocent. But the monster who went after the killers was acting on another impulse, was responding from a sense of retribution and righteousness, of cold, Old Testament justice. The monster was trying to end the slaughter, not perpetuate it.

But the problem with monsters, Ceil had said, in a voice that still, in memory, sounds both disappointed and resigned, is that they always come to love the process and forget the reasons for their actions.

He comes to the clearing at the end of the orchard and looks up at the farmhouse. And again he calls up his dead wife’s voice. Ceil had once said that the best place to hide a book, any book, would be among other books. Gilrein can no longer remember the context of the discussion in which this was spoken. He can’t even think of why they would have been worrying the question in the first place. But his instinct says that Ceil was right and immediately his plan is to jam Alicia’s story on some shelf of Brockden’s library, then get on a highway before Kroger and Oster can make their moves. Because he knows that he just doesn’t have the abilities he would need to become the eradicating monster. That he’ll never have those abilities and that he should be thankful for that deficiency.

He enters the house and stands in the kitchen trying to calm himself, trying not to telescope, not to think beyond the next few actions: plant the book, grab a few belongings, and drive away. Everything else can be sorted out later. He walks under an archway and into the first-floor library, heads for the stairwell in the center of the room, feels around until he grabs a banister and starts up the spiral. He has no idea why he wants to hide the book up in the chapel.

When he gets to the top, he heads for the stacks opposite the stairwell. He lifts his free arm, lets his hand run along the spines that rest on a shelf set at eye level. At some point he simply stops and forces two volumes apart, creates a tight space, a gap in the line of leather bricks. Then he begins to insert Alicia’s story into the gap.

It’s a tight squeeze and it gives him a vague but uneasy feeling. And that’s when the lights go on and he turns to see August Kroger. Kroger is standing at the mouth of the aisle. And Wylie Brown is gathered in his arms, tape across her mouth and around her wrists and the huge, glinting blade of a buck knife pressed against her throat.

“Bring it here,” Kroger says.

Gilrein stands still, Alicia’s book hovering in the air.

Kroger lifts the knife from Wylie’s throat to her cheek and runs it along the surface of the skin as if brushing dust from a fragile artifact.

“Stop it,” Gilrein says, trying to keep his voice even. “You can have it.”

He takes a step forward and both Raban and Blumfeld swing into sight from the left and right side walls of the book stacks. Raban has an automatic in each hand. Blumfeld is leveling a Calico machine pistol, which he now rests on his shoulder as he extends a free hand to accept the book.

“Let her go,” Gilrein says, looking past the meatboys to Kroger.

“You,” Kroger says, “do not use this tone of voice with me, taxi-boy.”

“I’ve got your book—”

“Exactly, Mr. Gilrein, my book. My property.”

Blumfeld takes a step forward, but Gilrein doesn’t release the book.

“Take the knife away, let her go, and I’ll hand it over.”

Kroger looks to Blumfeld with raised eyebrows. He moves the tip of the blade back to Wylie’s neck as he stares down the aisle and says, “Mr. Gilrein, you are embarrassing yourself and you are annoying me. There are two guns pointed at your head and I have a knife at the woman’s throat. Now you give me my property or I will slice her open. And then we will deal with you.”

“It’s just a goddamn book,” Gilrein says.

“You did not read it, did you?” Kroger asks and it sounds like a genuine question. “All the time it was in your possession and you never opened it?”

Kroger shakes his head like someone’s disappointed father.

“You are a banal people,” he says in a lowered voice. “You did not even look inside. Do you know what that says about you?”

Gilrein tries to focus on Wylie’s eyes. He says, “You know you’re not the only one looking for it. You think you can really beat Hermann Kinsky on this?”

“Kinsky is an old man in dirty pajamas. His glory days are over. And this book means nothing to him.”

Gilrein makes himself say it.

“What does it mean to you, Kroger?”

“It’s a scrapbook,” the voice unfazed, maybe even amused, “of my former career.”

Everyone stays silent as the words take hold and when Kroger is satisfied with the impact of his announcement, he says, “Now give me my book.”

“And then you’ll let us go?”

Raban and Blumfeld actually turn and smile at each other, then the Censor of Maisel says, “No, Mr. Gilrein, then I kill you for being the weak and illiterate worm that you are.”

And as Gilrein starts to respond, Stewie Green steps into the aisle behind him and fires half a dozen rounds into Raban before Blumfeld can even raise the Calico. Then Green jumps back around the corner of the stacks, but Blumfeld begins returning fire anyway and Gilrein throws himself on the floor as the books on either side of him start to pop and burst and the echo of the assault takes on a ridiculous volume. Gilrein starts a spastic elbow-crawl to the end of the aisle. Blumfeld finally releases his trigger and flails backward until his spine is pressed against the end of the shelving. Kroger is squatting with his back against the far wall with Wylie pulled in front of him as a shield against a suspected blitz.

Gilrein pulls his Colt. Blumfeld repositions and tilts the gun down at him. Gilrein rolls around the corner into the next aisle as a crater is blown into the floor. He gets to his feet, starts to run for the end of the aisle when Danny Walden appears in front of him with a sawed-off extended, braced low for firing.

Gilrein goes back to the floor.

The sawed-off explodes, misses Blumfeld at the opposite mouth of the stacks. Blumfeld returns the fire and blows up Walden’s chest, then sights down on Gilrein. Gilrein gets off a single round, which goes high. He escapes the aisle just before it’s sprayed with assault fire, runs toward the stairwell, breaking into the open to try and get to the opposite bend of the room, buy himself a margin of distance and time to figure out just how many people are in the library and where they’re positioned.

But halfway across the floor, Stewie Green pokes out of a stack aisle and lets two blasts fly in Gilrein’s direction. Both charges burrow into century-old vellum and leather. Instead of diving for cover, this time Gilrein stops, extends arms and fires the last four rounds in his cylinder. One of them catches Green in the face and throws him over onto his back. An arm jerks upward, the hand quivers as if reaching for something, then falls back onto the chest.

Running for the nearest aisleway, Gilrein instinctively reaches into his pocket to reload and comes up empty. He thinks about going back for one of Raban’s automatics, but he hears movement along the outer rim of the wall, someone coming at him from the right side.

He stays low, walks to the edge of the aisle, sticks his head out and immediately back as a short blast of artillery pop ignites. Blumfeld wants to play with him for a few seconds before ending it.

“Mr. Gilrein,” Kroger’s voice, echoing from an indeterminate position, “step into the center of the room this instant or I am going to cut the woman’s throat.”

He does what he’s been ordered to do. He steps into the center of the room and stands still and waits. Blumfeld appears first with the Calico held high, up at shoulder level. Kroger follows, pulling Wylie along, an arm wrapped around her waist and the buck knife pointing in toward her navel. They position themselves across from one another, separated by the open mouth of the stairwell.

“The book?” Kroger asks.

Gilrein gestures back toward the aisle where the shooting began.

“I dropped it,” he says.

“Put the gun down,” Blumfeld says and Gilrein lets the Colt fall to the floor.

Kroger releases Wylie and walks to the aisle where his servant Raban has bled to death. He steps over the body, bends down to retrieve and inspect the book. And Bobby Oster steps from the shade of the exterior wall, his Smith and Wesson already extended and sighted, and shoots Kroger twice in the head.

Blumfeld panics and runs to his master and Oster, ready for the meatboy, now down on one knee and sighted on the mouth of the aisle, opens fire as soon as he appears. Blumfeld takes the assault in the chest and then the head, goes down backward, firing the whole time, the Calico blasting another shelf-load of books, tearing down the line of their spines, shredding binding and paper until at last falling silent.

Wylie crumbles to the floor and Gilrein runs to her. In a second, Oster appears in front of them with Alicia’s book in his hand. Gilrein ignores him, begins peeling the tape from Wylie’s mouth, expecting the echo of artillery to be replaced with hysteria. Instead, Wylie tips into his arms and he feels the noiseless sobbing, the quake of her body as it slides toward shock.

He goes to work on the tape wrapped around her wrists, ripping out tiny hairs as he frees the skin from the adhesive. Oster comes to stand in front of him, gun in one hand, Alicia’s book in the other. Gilrein sees that several bullets have passed through the volume.

“Hermann Kinsky,” Oster says, “is going to be pissed.”

Gilrein pulls Wylie into him, hugs her as tight as he can, and asks, “Now you kill us, Bobby?”

Oster shrugs, draws some air through his nose. The noise makes Gilrein look away.

“People disappear, Gilly,” Oster says, closing one eye, lining Gilrein’s head up along the barrel of the.38 and cocking the hammer.

Then he eases the trigger back into the cradle and lowers the gun. Gilrein stares up at him, still unsure of what’s about to happen.

“I’ve got the product,” Oster says, wagging the book. “My job’s all done, I guess.”

He moves for the stairwell and adds, “And nobody paid me to whack a brother officer.”

Sweating, his breathing labored, Oster kisses his own fingers and brings them to the lips of his comrades before rolling the bodies of Walden and Green into their makeshift grave. The boys shared everything in life, Oster reasons, so this interment shouldn’t trouble them. It’s a natural thing to do. As organic as these fat, red worms swarming in the bottom of this hole, waiting to help decompose the bodies back to the bone, to devour the flesh, transform it into energy.

Gilrein and the woman are long gone by the time Oster finishes filling the trench in the deepest part of the orchard. Oster knows he should be leaving too, getting down to that cafeteria in the Wing and delivering the book to Kinsky. Begging off the assorted innards in the glazed pear sauce and trying to save his bonus. Then maybe heading back to the Houdini and putting in a few hours with the needle if Mrs. Bloch is feeling inspired. Maybe Mrs. B can work Walden and Green into her map of the city. Some kind of representation. A symbol of his fallen brothers etched right into the skin. Something fitting.

He knows he should be going and yet he lingers in Wormland. Tamping down the already smooth grave with his boots. Toeing the pocked ground, the hundreds, maybe thousands of worm holes. And then Bobby Oster finds himself doing something wildly uncharacteristic. He feels his own forehead and wonders if he might be ill.

He sits down, gingerly, in front of the grave, his back against the base of one of the desiccated trees. And he opens Alicia’s book. He opens it randomly, somewhere in the middle, and brings a finger to a crumpled page. He’s shocked to find it’s not even a real book. The paper is cheap and thin, like notebook paper you might buy at the corner store. And there’s no fancy printing, just this terrible handwriting. Some of the lines are practically illegible. The letters don’t look familiar. But even if they did, getting the whole story would probably be impossible. All those bullet holes.

Oster is in the process of pushing his finger through one of the holes when Mrs. Bloch approaches from behind and pulls the blade of Kroger’s knife across his throat until the jugular is severed. It’s like slicing soft bread and she knows this is exactly how she will describe the act at some later date. She’ll turn slightly on her stool as one of the prodigies colors in some background. She will study the face of the child she has chosen and say, “Laik der vei du kaht entu frisch bred, gest oot uf der ufen, steel ahl meizt aend stemink.”

The spurt of blood paints Alicia’s page. Obliterates a long passage that might describe the death of Rabbi Gruen or the young mother and infant who dissolved within the bottom of the Ezzene mob. The blood hides the words that took those events and transformed them into something else, into a language that could hold the meaning of the Erasure and convey it across space and time and culture, across the gulf that separates primary from secondary experience, being from the lack of being. A language that could manage to keep the event pure and whole enough to make the child quake, even if only for a moment, with the immensity of the loss.

Though her job is to give the story to everyone who needs it, Mrs. Bloch is unconcerned as she pulls the dripping book out of Oster’s spastic hands and listens to the Magician thrash toward death.

She’s aware that she can never fill in what has been covered over or expunged. There’s just too much she doesn’t know. But she can hold on to whatever is left. She can become a constant and creative reader, even without her vision. And if her inherent ignorance of the author’s final intentions will always prevent her from delivering the complete narrative, still she possesses accounts of her own. Details which can be bound and spliced and grafted to Alicia’s tale. She can make a hybrid myth. A mutant legend. And in this manner, she’ll rebuild the book. In the end, that might be sufficient.

Because, if you want to badly enough, there are probably many ways to tell a story.