David Wallace - Broom of the System

“It’s because you’re the one on whom the real brunt of the evil — shall I say ‘evil’?—the brunt of the evil of this family has fallen. Evil in the form of these little indoctrination sessions with Lenore, which I’ve got to tell you I’ve always regarded as pathetic in the extremus. Evil in the form of Dad, who, having totally fucked with our mother’s life, for all time, is trying to fuck with your life in all kinds of ways I bet you don’t even know about, or want to know about. Think now of the circumstances leading up to my own particular birth. The same way Dad’s tried to fuck with my life, everybody’s. Just as he was fucked with in his turn, by fools in old-style hats and coats.” The Antichrist laughed. “That’s a poem. Anyway, you’ve borne the brunt. John was off to Chicago with his slide rule and a whole lot of masochistic baggage by the time he would have been any use to Dad or Lenore; I’ve had a limb and a thing to fall back on; Clarice was clearly inappropriate in terms of disposition — we needn’t discuss all that. But so you’re it. You are the family, Lenore. And in Dad’s case, go ahead and substitute ‘Company’ in the obvious place in the above sentence.”

Lenore reached under and removed a bit of stick she’d been sitting on.

“But Lenore has fucked up your life even further, sweetness,” the Antichrist said, sitting back up with the joint and looking at Lenore. “Lenore has you believing — stop me if I’m wrong — Lenore has you believing, with your complicity, circumstantially speaking, that you’re not really real, or that you’re only real insofar as you’re told about, so that to the extent that you’re real you’re controlled, and thus not in control, so that you’re more like a sort of character than a person, really — and of course Lenore would say the two are the same, now, wouldn’t she?”

“I wish it would rain,” Lenore said.

“You just had a shower a little while ago,” LaVache laughed. “You’re a nervous wreck, sis. Don’t be so nervous. Here. Kiss the bird for a second.” The Antichrist was holding up the joint, which Lenore saw was burning down one side much faster than the other.

“I don’t want any,” Lenore said. She glanced at the sun, which was now sticking Kilroyishly over the top of the gymnasium. “How about if we just spontaneously abort this line of conversation, Stoney, OK? Since, if I were maybe to ask you to help me out with respect to this supposed evil-and-reality-as-opposed-to-telling problem, what you’d do is obviously just tell me something, so that the whole thing would—”

“Don’t call me Stoney,” said LaVache. “Call me LaVache, or the Antichrist, but no more Stoney.”

“You don’t mind Antichrist, which I have to say is just about the most disturbing nickname I’ve ever heard? But you mind Stoney?”

“Stoney is everybody’s name,” the Antichrist said. He spat white again. “Everybody in the family with male genitals is Stoney. Stoney reminds me I’m probably just a part in a machine I wish I wasn’t part of. Stoney reminds me of deeply annoying expectations. Stoney reminds me of Dad. As Stoney I’m more or less just educed…”

“What?”

“… but as the Antichrist I just am, ” said the Antichrist, waving the joint grandly at the red and black horizon. “As the Antichrist I have a thing, and it’s gloriously clear where I leave off and others start, and no one expects me to be anything other than what I am, which is a waste-product, slaving endlessly to support his leg. I’ve also just sort of helped you, here, I think, if you bothered to notice.” With his finger the Antichrist wet the side of the joint that was burning too fast, to make it bum slower.

Lenore wasn’t looking at her brother, but at the gym shadows, which were visibly moving across the fields. A shadow from a different part of the gym began to edge up the west side of the hill, to their right.

“Do you hate Dad?” Lenore asked. “Do you think I hate Dad?”

“Well, now, seeing as how you’re you…,” the Antichrist playfully pretended to punch Lenore in the arm, “I can’t speak for you, but only for me, regardless of what I might say about you. Verstehen?”

“Pain in the ass.”

“I don’t hate Dad,” said the Antichrist. “Dad just makes me millenially weary. I find Dad exhausting. The stump aches, horribly, whenever I’m around Dad.”

Lenore hugged a knee to her chest.

“The one who hates Dad is Mom,” LaVache continued, “or, that is, she would if she were Mom. The person I saw last month resembled a mom in no way whatsoever. John Lennon, yes. A mom, no.”

“You miss Mom.”

“I miss a mom. Mom’s been in that place practically my whole life. Certainly at the beginning. My whole life is to an extent why she’s in there, right? Although I do remember that one year when I was nine. And then Dad and Miss Malig sent her right back again.”

“Well, she was trying to climb again. You can’t just have somebody trying to climb up the side of your house all the time.”

LaVache didn’t say anything.

“But it’s a shame you never got to really know her. I thought she was a good person. Really good.” Lenore moved her head to make the fields sparkle in the half-light.

“I just feel an affinity, is all, probably,” LaVache said. “No, for sure I do. Mom’s head and my leg were taken out in the same dancing accident, after all. At least I got left with a thing. Mom’s thingless.” He picked the sliding-man label up from where it lay on Lenore’s leg near the lacy hem of her white dress. “Interesting thing here is that it looks like this guy is climbing up dash sliding down a sort of sand dune. See the way his feet sink? And see this sort of cactus? I feel the implication of Desert, Lenore. Food for thought, in my opinion — no pun intended.”

“But since his feet sink in the sand, then we know for sure he’s climbing and not sliding,” Lenore said, taking the drawing. “ ‘Cause if he had slid, there would have to be slide tracks all the way down from the top.”

LaVache looked at the label and fingered his red chin. “But if he’s climbing, then there ought to be footprints leading up from the bottom, in the sand, which there aren’t.”

“Hmmm.”

“Looks like Gramma screwed up, unless perhaps the guy was dropped from a helicopter into this exact position; that’s one possibility Dr. W. never fathomed. I guess there were no helicopters back in his day. Technology does affect interpretation, after all, doesn’t it?”

“Hmmm.”

The Antichrist gave Lenore the drawing back. “Can Vlad the Impaler really talk now?”

“You should hear it. His language was getting worse, too, over the last week or so, although I haven’t been home in a couple days. ” Lenore saw that the man in the drawing was smiling broadly, in profile, and had what seemed to be a shadow, unless it was just the sand.

“What does he say?”

“Unfortunately mostly really obscene stuff, because he’s around Candy all the time.”

The Antichrist groaned. “I’m tingling all over. The leg may spontaneously detach.”

“Except we’ve been teaching him stuff out of the Bible, so Mrs. Tissaw hopefully won’t evict me if she hears him,” Lenore said. “She’s already ticked off because Vlad tends to chew the wall.”

“Can’t wait to hear him.”

“My bottom really hurts,” Lenore said. “I think I’d like to go back. Rick might be back at your dorm and wondering where we are. Would you like to come to dinner with us? I predict Rick’s going to want to go to the Aqua Vitae.”

“Let me just gather my resources for the trip back, for a second,” said LaVache. He massaged the leg with a hand. “If I can drive a stake through the heart of Nervous Roy’s Hegel problem without making you guys wait too long, I’ll gladly come.”