Justin Taylor - The Gospel of Anarchy

“Listen,” he says, but the words aren’t coming. “Chr — fuck. I don’t know, okay? I’m here.”

Anchor brushes past Liz, throws her arms around his neck and herself into his arms. Hot-blooded thin girl, wild with both vicious independence and seething need, pooled sweat ever present at the nape of her neck, beneath the tied-back thicket of her high-density dreads, the secret nest where he has his face buried. He squeezes her tight enough to break her, to make sure that she knows that he knows that she won’t.

But of course their little moment isn’t happening in some vacuum. Guarded, nervy, edgy Liz is here, watching and processing and just having to cut in.

“Your name means doubt,” she tells Thomas in a dead voice. He pulls his face away from his shuddering girlfriend’s neck.

“Like, etymologically?” he asks, knowing damn well what she actually means but betting she won’t know what he does. It sure is nice to be smarter than people.

But their war or whatever is going to be delayed yet again, because a hush falls over the neglected crowd behind them, and this booming silence can only mean one thing.

They part for her like curtains, the throng, as she approaches. She wears a plain black tee shirt missing its left sleeve, and a dirty-white ankle-length skirt with small floral embellishments at the hem. She’s barefoot, and there’s something different about how she’s walking. It’s not tentative, exactly, but it’s slow. She moves as if through an atmosphere of high viscosity, overlaid upon or coterminous with the plane of being the rest of them are in, but accessible to Katy alone. Her face is purposefully rid of expression, she’s a blank screen, and despite her having napped she looks beleaguered, worn down, as if this thing she’s so long hungered for and expected has turned out to be more burden than she can bear.

Is there anything more terrifying than a dream come true? If so, it’s almost certainly an answered prayer.

After she passes through their ranks they regather. They bunch up and follow behind her like a wedding train.

These “services” began as a joke. One Thomas personally never thought was funny, but still. It was a pointed heresy, an excuse to party on schedule. The model is the Jewish Sabbath, beginning after instead of at sundown, and set on Sunday/Monday, as both an affront to traditional Christianity and as an affirmation of the anarchist principle of Zerowork. Monday as the official Day of Rest — isn’t that hilarious? — to be spent lazy and hungover or else drunk again, while the rest of the zombie world slouches off to another degrading week at the office, the big-box store, the corporate chain restaurant, the capitalist workhouse in all its manifold and secret forms.

The reverence for Parker — not his teachings, but him as a person, this idea of him as a holy man — began as a kind of joke, too. His earnestness, implacability, and penchant for disappearance — Katy respected these things immensely, and yet could not help but laugh at them sometimes. When he was gone in the woods (or on the prairie; whatever it was) Katy had sometimes referred to him as the Hidden Imam of Anarchy. Then he came back all grave, mumbling gnomic “wisdom,” then left again so soon and in his absence the myths resurged, only Katy wasn’t sure she was kidding anymore. And Liz of course was only too eager to salute whatever flag Katy might fly.

Over the months they’ve been holding these meetings, the energy has more than merely maintained itself. The revelry has intensified by exponents, and though the congregation’s numbers creep rather than surge, its growth is consistent. When exactly, during all of this, did the irony begin to dissipate? Was the shift steady, or was there a tipping point? Thomas doesn’t know, because up until today he’s made a mostly successful career of ignorance from all this. If Anchor hadn’t gotten caught up, he wouldn’t even be here now. Ah, but she has been, and so he finds himself beside her, his injured right hand grasping her left one, the two of them stepping back in unison to one side — Liz, alone, steps to the other — so Katy can pass between them and approach the tent.

Katy carries a prayer candle, yet another, from the cache in her closet. This one, Thomas notes, honors St. Sebastian, who was shot full of arrows and yet lived, so they had to kill him twice. The candle is new, virgin wick still white and waxed over. Katy glances at Liz, who steps forward and silently proffers a red Bic. Katy kisses her girlfriend’s hand, then nods at her. Liz steps back to her place. The crowd is gathered close about them in a half-moon. Thomas for the first time notices David among the congregants, wearing a pair of tattered denim shorts and a red tank top. In this getup, and newly bearded, David could be a total stranger. In fact, Thomas thinks, he basically is.

Now Katy turns to Anchor, who squeezes Thomas’s hand once (he winces but says nothing; she doesn’t know about him punching the wall) then releases it and steps forward. The women get close together and lock eyes.

If this isn’t choreographed then what the fuck?

They’re all just on some level.

Time feels as if it’s stopped.

When she’s ready, Katy hands the lighter to Anchor and holds the candle up. Anchor brings the Bic to flame on the first try but it winks out in her trembling hand. She does it again and this time they get the candle lit. Katy nods and Anchor steps back next to Thomas but does not retake his hand. Katy drops to her knees — slowly so as not to snuff the candle — and places the glass in its appointed spot, the small round hole in the earth before the tent. She reaches out and with her left hand grabs the metal tag on the zipper. She zips the tent flap fully open with one smooth movement, a perfect arc.

The candle can hardly be expected to light the scene. Night floods from the tent mouth, the pinky-joint flicker in the dirt like a paper boat set adrift on a lake. But Thomas is close enough to see into the gloom without straining. He sees the notebook standing upright, face out, given pride of place amid the forest of hollow glass, dead-eyed saints and saviors by the dozen, at maximum density across the fabric floor of the low and narrow space. On the tent’s back wall in telltale black Sharpie, slightly blurred because the ink’s bled into the khaki fabric, is the arrow-shot heart inscribed with the anarchist A . Parker’s mark.

Was it always on the wall like that, or is this artwork new?

After unzipping the tent, and bowing low over the candle, close enough to feel its rising wisp of heat, Katy stands up and moves to the side so everyone else can see, too. The crowd knits closer together and edges forward. There’s grumbling as people jockey for position or complain that they can’t see. Katy lets the moment spool itself out until everyone is settled. She reaches into the tent. Her fingers alight on the top edge of the notebook and the touch jostles the tight-packed glass, producing a short volley of unmusical clinks. Chastened by this sound, as if it were a warning, she slows herself down, now working with enormous care to remove the notebook from the tent. At a certain point Thomas realizes he’s holding his breath.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the moment, and let this shit infect you! Can you imagine being raised like this? Poor Parker must have never had a chance.

When the book is finally extracted, Katy takes it to her chest and holds it tight like a teddy bear, then turns for the first time this evening to face her congregation. She opens the notebook without looking at it — still gazing out at them — so either the selection is random or else she marked the page earlier. Absolute faith or absolute artifice — huckster, angel, medicine show, chosen one, confidence scheme — there’s just no way to know, or even guess. Her pupils are enormous, big dark buttons like stuffed-animal eyes as she strains to see in the larger darkness of night, the candle at her back now, she shifts her gaze down to the book in her hands and begins to read aloud.