Jonathan Lethem - The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

The trees quickly give way to a delicately organized garden laced with paths, and the bushes and flowers, like the trees before them, are covered with razor blades. The paths wend around to a clearing, and in the middle of the clearing are the shrunken homes. They’re built into a huge dirt mound, like a desert mesa inhabited by Indians, or a gigantic African anthill. Hundreds of tiny doorways and windows are painstakingly carved out of the mound. Found objects are woven into the structure; shirt buttons, safety pins, eyeglass frames, and nail clippers. But no razor blades.

The shrunken humans are just visible as I approach. Tiny figures in little cloth costumes, busily weaving or cooking or playing little ball games on the roofs and patios of the homes. I never get any closer than that before the storm hits.

It’s another part of Hell’s program. The witch storm rises behind the trees just as I enter the clearing. The witch storm is a tiny, self-contained hurricane, on a scale, I suppose, to match the shrunken homes. A black whirlwind about three times my size. It’s a rainless hurricane, an entity of wind and dust that roils into action without warning and sends the shrunken humans scurrying for cover inside the mound.

With good reason. The storm tears razor blades from the treetops and off the surface of the paths and sends them into a whirling barrage against the sides of the shrunken homes. By the time the storm finishes, what was once a detailed, intricate miniature civilization is reduced to an undifferentiated heap of dust and dirt.

There’s nothing I can do to stop it. I tried at first. Planted myself between the shrunken homes and the witch storm and tried to fend it off. What I got for my trouble was a rash of tiny razor cuts on my arms and face. By the time the storm retreated I’d barely protected a square foot of the mound from the assault.

The storm is associated with the witch. Don’t ask me why. There are times, though, when I think I see a hint of her figure in its whirling form.

If I forget the mound and run for cover I can usually avoid feeling the brunt of it. Running away, I might take a few quick cuts across the shoulders or the backs of my legs, but that’s it.

This time I ran so fast I barely took a cut. I ducked underneath a bush that was already stripped clean of blades; its branches protected me. I listened as the storm ravaged the mound, then faded away. A smell of ozone was in the air.

When I looked up again, I was looking into the face of Colonel Eagery. The Happy Man.

The only thing that’s not predictable in Hell, the only thing that doesn’t happen according to some familiar junction of time and locale, is the appearance of The Happy Man. He’s a free operator. He’s his own man. He comes and goes as he pleases, etc.

He’s also my ticket home.

When Colonel Eagery is done with me I go back. Back to home reality, back to Maureen and Peter and the radio station where I work. I get to live my life again. No matter where he appears, no matter which tableau he disturbs, Eagery’s appearance means I get to go back.

After he’s done with me.

Before I left the support group the counselor — the one who’d never even been to Hell — told me to focus on what he called the “reentry episode.” He told me that the situation that triggered return was usually the key to Hell, the source of the unresolved tension. The idea, he said, was to identify the corresponding episode in your own past.

I could only laugh.

There’s nothing in my life to correspond to Eagery. There couldn’t be. Eagery is the heart of my Hell. He’s Hell itself. If there had been anything in my life to even approximate The Happy Man, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it. I’d be a wimpering, sniveling wreck in a straightjacket somewhere. Nothing I’ve encountered in the real world comes close.

Not in my reality.

Frankly, if something in the real world corresponds to Colonel Eagery, I don’t want to know about it.

The Happy Man lifted me over his shoulder and carried me out of the Garden of Razor Blades, into the dark heart of the woods. When we got to a quiet moonlit grove, he set me down.

“There you go, Tom,” he said, dusting himself off. He’s the only one in Hell who knows my name. “Boy, what a scene. Listen, let’s keep it to ourselves, what do you say? Our little secret, okay? A midnight rondee voo.”

The Happy Man is always urgently conspiratorial. It’s a big priority with him. I feel I should oblige him, though I’m not always sure what he’s referring to. I nodded now.

“Yeah.” He slapped me on the back, a little too hard. “You and me, the midnight riders, huh? Lone Ranger and Tonto. What do you mean ‘we,’ white man? Heh. I told you that one? It’s like this…”

He told me a long, elaborate joke which I failed to understand. Nonetheless, I sat cross-legged in the clearing, rapt.

At the end he laughed for both of us, a loud, sloppy sound that echoed in the trees. “Oh yeah,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “Listen, you want some candy? Chocolate or something?” He rustled in a kit bag. “Or breakfast. It’s still pretty early. I bet that goddamned witch didn’t feed you kids any breakfast, did she?” He took out a bowl and a spoon, then poured in milk and dry cereal from a cardboard box.

The cereal, when I looked, consisted of little puffed and sugar-coated penises, breasts, and vaginas, floating innocently in the milk.

I tried not to gag, or let him see I was having any trouble getting it down. I wanted to please Colonel Eagery, wanted to let him know I was thankful. While I ate he whistled, and unpacked the neckties from his bag.

I watched, curious. “You like these?” he said, holding them up. “Yeah. You’ll get to wear them someday. Look real sharp, too. Like your dad. World-beater, that’s what you feel like in a necktie.” He began knotting them together to make a set of ropes, then looped them around the two nearest trees. “Here,” he said, handing me one end. “Pull on this. Can you pull it loose?”

I put down the bowl of cereal and tugged on the neckties.

“Can you? Pull harder.”

I shook my head.

“Yeah, they’re tough all right. Don’t worry about it, though. Your dad couldn’t break it either. That’s American craftsmanship.” He nodded at the cereal. “You done with that? Yeah? C’mere.”

I went.

This is my curse: I trust him. Every time. I develop skepticism about the other aspects of Hell; the witch’s overdue breakfast, the robot maker’s pathetic creations, but Colonel Eagery I trust every time. I am made newly innocent.

“Here,” he said. “Hold this.” He put one end of the rope in my right hand, and began tying the other end to my left. “Okay.” He moved to the right. “What do you mean we, white man? Heh. Cowboys and Indians, Tom. Lift your leg up here — that’s a boy. Okay.” He grunts over the task of binding me, legs splayed between the two trees. “You an Indian, Tom? Make some noise and let’s see.”

I started crying.

“Oh, no, don’t do that,” said The Happy Man, gravely. “Show the Colonel that you’re a good sport, for chris-sakes. Don’t be a girl. You’ll — ruin all the fun.” His earnestness took me by surprise; I felt guilty. I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s fun. So I managed to stop crying. “That’s it, Tommy. Chin up.” It wasn’t easy, lying there like a low-slung hammock in the dirt, my arms stretched over my head, to put my chin up. I decided it would be enough to smile. “There you go,” said Eagery. “God, you’re pretty.”

The last knot secured, he turned away to dig in his bag, and emerged with a giant, clownish pair of scissors. I squirmed, but couldn’t get away. He inserted the blade in my pants cuff and began snipping apart the leg of the corduroys. “Heigh ho! Don’t move, Tom. You wouldn’t want me to clip something off here, would you?” He quickly scissored up both sides, until my pants were hanging in shreds from my outstretched legs, then snipped the remaining link, so they fell away. A few quick strokes of the scissors and he’d eliminated my jockey shorts too. “Huh.” He tossed the scissors aside and ran his hands up my legs. “Boy, that’s smooth. Like a baby.”