Sam Lipsyte - The Subject Steve

"Picador," said Heinrich from the porch, "I think the bull is ready."

He stood at the balustrade in a stained dinner jacket and a wire-fastened beard, Odin emceeing a varsity football banquet.

"Dig the beard?" he said. "Had the thing in my closet for years. I was God one Halloween, if you can believe it. Costume contest. Some Little Orphan Annie cunt won. Mr. Beach, it's an honor to finally meet you. You're a storied figure in our later gospels, so it really is a privilege. 'A huge fucking killer,' if I remember the text correctly. Well, maybe not so huge. What do you go, one-forty, one forty-five? But then again, Abraham didn't live hundreds of years, either, did he? Mythology is beyond fact-checking, I'd say. Wouldn't you? Did they tell you why you're here?"

The man moaned.

"I didn't hear you," said Heinrich.

"I told them," said Beach. "There was nothing in the container, I swear. I went on board myself. It was empty."

"What container?"

"The container."

"All day," said Naperton, "about the container. The foredeck container, he says."

"Thank you, Notty. I do believe I understand. Clellon, are you thinking you're here because of some dirtbag job you botched? Some double-cross you cooked up in a Norfolk flophouse? These are things of Clellon Beach the man. We don't give a rat's ass about him around here. We are solely concerned with myth. And you are myth, Mr. Beach. You are the demon who stalks our beloved Gold. Through no fault of your own, I might add. Nonetheless, now there must be a reckoning. Can we get some drum?"

Dietz walked out of the crowd doing paradiddles on a fur-bound Indian tom.

"This isn't a fucking Krupa show," said Heinrich. "Slow it down."

Now Old Gold stepped out to the porch, shirtless, in festive pantaloons. He gripped his terrific knife. Bobby was there, if he was still Bobby, pulped a bit around the eyes, the Tenets open in his hands and him nearly davening as he recited: "Behold, subsequent diagnostic procedures proved it so, and subsequent forays into the abyss revealed these things to me: Your soul is made of deeds. Your thoughts, your fears, your whims, your doubts, are sand. Moreover, you can't make an omelet without perpetrating some serious fucking atrocities. Mama, Papa, Caca, Pee-Pee. You are you. Article Seven, Redemption Tip Number Five."

"Don't go off book," snapped Heinrich.

"I am book," said Trubate.

"I am me," shouted Old Gold. He bounded down to Beach, cut his cuffs away, chased the air with elegant swipes of his knife. He had the bearing of some highborn reaper, a cruel dandy. He caught a piece of Beach's face and Beach snatched his wrist, judo'd his arm around, bent it to some inhuman parameter that got Old Gold howling. Beach took the knife now, put the blade to Old Gold's neck. Was he awaiting thumbs from Caesar's skybox? What a soldier, sailor. A shot boomed down from the porch, spun Beach, put him on his knees. He pawed at the hole in his shoulder, the wet epaulette of blood blooming there.

Old Gold laid his boot on Beach's back.

"Look at my fucking demon now!" he said. "Little Sissy demon! I am a cloudwalker and I rain my rain of piss down on your meek inheritor ass!"

Old Gold took his cock out, pinched it down towards Beach's skull. We waited for a while.

"No flow," said Old Gold.

We heard another shot and tiny flecks of Old Gold's ass went twirling into the lights.

"For real?" he said, and fainted. Heinrich tucked his pistol in his dinner jacket, started down the steps.

"And the moral of the story," he said, "is never mock your demon. A corollary to that moral would be never postpone square dance night. Now let's put this fiasco behind us. Tend to the wounded. Beach will be our brother, if he so chooses."

Most of us made to leave.

"You," said Heinrich. "Come walk with me."

We walked out toward some power lines. Past the lit perimeter was a night of huge near stars. They were greening themselves up there like those stick-on galaxies my mother used to buy for my bedroom ceiling, those stars that came with charts I was too lazy to learn.

"That's okay," she'd said, "just use your imagination. Make your own constellations. Gods and animals. Heroes and bears."

I had no idea what she could mean. I scattered the decals around in a way I thought looked natural, random, skylike.

"Just want to stretch my legs a little," Heinrich said now.

We walked out past the last of the cabins to the treeline. A breeze blew over the field. I wanted to hear ghost voices on it, bog plaints, heath pleas. Please Note, Please Note. A serious fucking prizewinner, that. But Wendell was still dead. And I was still dying, wasn't I? Who would note? What had I ever noted? I'd taken my pleasures, of course, I'd eaten the foods of the world, drunk my wine, put this or that forbidden particulate in my nose until the room lit up like a festival town and all my friends, but just my friends, were seers. I'd seen the great cities, the great lakes, the oceans and the so-called seas, slept in soft beds and awakened to fresh juice and fluffy towels and terrific water pressure. I'd fucked in moonlight, sped through desolate interstate kingdoms of high broken beauty, met wise men, wise women, even a wise movie star. I'd lain on lawns that, cut, bore the scent of rare spice. I'd ridden dune buggies, foreign rails. I'd tasted forty-five kinds of coffee, not counting decaf.

I hadn't put things off, I'd done them, just done them blind. Steady rain of ruin. Steady dark. You see too much and you can't see anything at all. You lose your beautiful wife to your cousin, or the sun. You beget hooligans. Or maybe you're the old man in the hospital, giving thanks to the Elks, the Black Kids, pressing the button, pressing it, but the girl never comes.

All my pretty ones.

Fuckeroo'd.

"Have you changed your mind about leaving?" said Heinrich.

"No," I said.

"No, he says," said Heinrich.

I heard noises behind us. Someone was squeezing me to the dirt. Someone was stuffing my head into a sleeve.

"Wait," I heard Heinrich say.

Wires poked my neck, my ears.

"What are you doing?"

"Notty, look how funny he looks with the beard."

Naperton stood near me while I stripped.

"Wish we had a boilersuit," he said. "We used to have a boilersuit. I don't know where the hell it's got to now. Can you see through the hood? Be honest."

"No," I said.

Something cracked at the back of my knee.

"Can't fault your honesty."

I curled up to the thatch.

"Have you ever seen those pictures of Chet Guevara all shot up to shit?"

"Che," I said.

"What?"

"Che Guevara."

"I'm not talking about him."

"Is this part of the mothering process?"

"This would be idle chatter," said Naperton. "Get up."

He bent my arms around a pole, cinched my wrists. I heard the thatch swish, a new pair of boots in the room.

"I'll take it from here, Notty," said Heinrich. "Better get on the road, beat traffic."

"Right."

I hung there sucking hood, listened to Heinrich putter around the hut. He moved quietly, methodically, like some neighbor in the next apartment on a Sunday afternoon. Tin pots, the dull hammering of picture hooks. I heard Heinrich stab at the fire, spread something out in the dirt, a tarp, perhaps, lob what sounded like a sack of metal on it.

"They sure were big on gadgets back in the bubonic days," said Heinrich. "The Breast Ripper. Purpose self-evident, I guess. Or the Branks. A sort of pierced tongue brace for the nagging missus. The Pear. Goes up your ass like a piece of fruit, splits open in your prostate. What I wish we had is a Judas Cradle, but those are a bitch to rig."

"What are you going to do to me?" I said.

"Judas Cradle. Sounds like one of those rock bands."