Janwillem De Wetering - Just a Corpse at Twilight

"POW!" shouted Flash.

Ishmael came in. Aki pulled up a chair. "How're you doin', Ishmael?"

Ishmael was doing just fine. He'd been flying up till a few hours ago. Until his plane got shot down. He'd almost got shot down himself. Ishmael held up a leg to show a graze mark on his boot.

"Bullet," Flash said.

"Terminated the Tailorcraft," Ishmael said. He smiled bravely. It had been an adventure. Of course, he never thought he could land a disabled airplane against a hillside, at a forty-five-degree angle. Who had done the shooting? Ishmael wasn't too sure but later, after he scrambled down the hill's slope and reached the highway, there was friendly Hairy Harry offering a lift, and there was a scoped rifle in the Bronco, the nine-millimeter Mauser the sheriff was so fond of. Hairy Harry had been target practicing that afternoon. He told Ishmael he particularly liked hitting flying targets.

"Warning shots," said Beth, who had cooked up another lobster for Ishmael, even though the kitchen was closed.

Lorraine thought so too.

"Warning who?" Grijpstra asked.

"Warning you?" Aki asked.

Ishmael wondered what to do without an airplane.

"You get a new plane," Flash Farnsworth said. "Poverty is a state of mind."

Ishmael agreed that a spic-and-span, spanking-new Cessna, feather light, fast even at impulse speed, was what was needed here. But say, for argument's sake, that he actualized himself an aircraft, wouldn't he still be a flying target?

"POW!" shouted Bad George.

They were still laughing when Billy Boy stopped his jeep in the twilight outside the diner, raised his wrist, studied his watch.

"Can't serve beer after closing time," said Beth.

"My place?" Ishmael asked.

Loaded in de Gier's Ford product and Beth's bus, the party drove to Ishmael's old canning factory at the Point. Kathy Two sat on Grijpstra's lap, sticking out her braid-ears, looking out the Ford's side window, her twenty muscular toes massaging Grijpstra's thighs pleasurably. Grijpstra wondered how he could get Nellie and de Gier's cat Tabriz to agree to have a Kathy Two look-alike share their castle.

"Just ask them," de Gier said.

Grijpstra never liked it when de Gier was telepathic.

The abandoned canning factory, de Gier had been told by Flash Farnsworth, contained the complete collection of What.

"Of what?"

Little Flash, weighed down by his bird-nest hairdo, deranged leprechaun in green coveralls and boots, rolling about on a damaged pelvis, might have embellished. "But he's close enough," Grijpstra said, following Ishmael, in charge of the tour. The cannery was square. It hid behind tall brick-faced cracked walls, and peered at the visitors out of half-shuttered windows, like half-glasses on an old man's face. The bigbuilding was overgrown with ivy, turning red at autumn's approach. There was a yard surrounded by sheds. The sheds contained cars, same make: Ford, same model: Pinto.

"Nobody wants Pintos," Bad George said. "He got them all for free."

"Because their gas tanks were supposed to blow up," Flash said. "Not that they did."

Ishmael explained his "theory of contrariwise": Collect out of fashion, be rich on no money.

"Why collect thirty-two identical giveaway motorcars?" Ishmael asked rhetorically. Ishmael explained his "theory of magic multiplication": Placement of identical objects achieves a magical effect. In multiplication possibilities increase magically. Ishmael pointed out the splendor in the placing of identical Pintos facing each other, in four Pintos diagonally arranged, in Pintos mounting another, in upside-down Pintos underneath themselves, in Pintos resting on their sides, tires touching.

"Like making love to twins?" de Gier asked Lorraine.

Beth thought the idea exciting. She suggested going to Hawaii to find identical Akis.

"Identical Beths too?" Aki asked.

There were other demonstrations of multiple magic. Ishmael showed them three objects, overgrown with dried seaweed and lichens. The objects were identical, nonidenti-fiable, and had been brought up by divers salvaging a sunken freighter in Jameson Bay. There was a light bulb illuminating the arrangement displayed on a trestle table.

"Untitled," Ishmael said proudly.

There were also collections ofthe similar nonidentical: rusted bird cages hung in the yard, some with toy birds inside, all with open doors. "Predicament in Birdland," Ishmael said. "Free to go, but where to? Like the crazy man in the Eastern Maine Mental Hospital. Kept in a cage near the nurses' station. He's being good so they open the cage, but he won't step out. He does step out when prodded, but he sits outside, one hand clutching a bar behind him. That's the way he feels safe.

"That was you?" Grijpstra asked.

No other, Ishmael explained. He had given up on religion at the time, had been institutionalized (due to odd behavior), while trying to deal with nothing. But he wasn't ready yet: no free rail for Ishmael while still holding on to his cage.

"It ain't easy," Beth said. "Makes some people fat."

Once inside the cannery there was a doll collection, arrays of tools, masks, neatly labeled boxes on shelves containing nails, screws, washers, nuts, handles, and hinges, writing implements, brushes, pens, fittings, light bulbs and tubes, cutlery, assorted hardware. Ishmael liked sorting through cast-ofls, leftovers after yard sales that he would pick up in a Pinto. Not that he intended to save waste. The entire universe might be waste. The universe could save itself.

"You give this away?" de Gier asked. "Suppose somebody needs something?"

"Come and get it," Ishmael said. "Step right up."

"Art," Grijpstra said, admiring more Pintos. "This is Art."

Not really, Ishmael said. Just something to do inside on rainy days. Or outside, weather permitting.

Kathy Two, woofing, asked Grijpstra to carry her up a flight of narrow steps, too steep for her to manage. The cannery's second floor displayed bookend owls, of stone and other materials, ugly and moody looking, and models of flying dinosaurs suspended from ceilings-some were skeletons that glowed in the dark, some had leathery wings.

"Uselessly wise," Ishmael said. "Beautifully extinct."

There was also an obstacle course that Kathy Two used for performing tricks: leaping through hoops, sitting on a swing pushed by Ishmael, jumping across bars, finishing up by sitting patiently on a stool, both paws up, looking expectant. "Good Kathy Two," everyone said. There was applause. The dog smiled shyly.

"She's learnin'," Flash said.

"Kathy One was rude," Bad George said, "never even gave you the time of the day."

"Not so easy," Ishmael said. "Living on food stamps in a burned-out trailer, keeping a drunk bum of a husband, having Flash for a son."

"She had excuses," Flash agreed, "but never good enough. I told her she'd have to come back as a dog. There she is." He kissed the dog.

Kathy Two snarled.

"I'll be a dog next time I have to come back," Beth told Aki. "You can say you've been there but you don't live long and you sleep most of it."

The music room was part of the third floor, with arrangements from the thirties. Ishmael pulled out picture books to show Art Deco sources. The music room's waint coting was dappled maple out ofa lumberyard fire sale. The higher part of the walls was lizard leather, peeled off a shipment of waterlogged ladies' shoes. Tulip-shaped lamp shades were glued together from colored stained-glass shards.

"You just run into this?" Grijpstra asked.

"It just runs into me," Ishmael said.

"What if you lost the collection?" Grijpstra asked.

Ishmael thought that might be nice too.

Musical instruments were everywhere, centered by a set of drums that Grijpstra arranged around himself, a valve trombone that Beth could play, a saxello, three sets oftablas, a doussn' gouni, and a lyricon that Bad George tried but couldn't do all that much with, a dented and dirty trumpet that de Gier picked up, pods of various sizes, a gourd guitar that Flash put down because ofbroken strings, Ishmael's own upright piano. They couldn't play yet because Flash and Bad George still wandered about, trying things out. A melodica? No. An acoustic bass? Bad George claimed the bass. He found Flash a tuba.