The Canal (23 page)

Joe got out of the car. He banged on the roof
and said, "Best not waste time." Drive away from this knowledge,
drive away.

Alan lingered, maybe to say something, but
then he leaned over and pulled the passenger door shut. Joe waited
as the car swiveled back down the street and then shimmied quickly
away. If things went well, Alan could be back in half an hour.

Joe looked at the ground. He was standing on
a manhole cover; it was thick and gray like a melanoma. He started
walking toward the water. There was no bulkhead here; the canal had
chewed it away. Instead a lopsided stairway of cement boulders led
straight down to the hissing river.

The canal was already swollen with rain and
it smelled weirdly of the sea: moldy docks, sailors in semen
stained wool, fish left to sour in the sun. Joe slid most of the
way down, causing little mudslides of bottle caps and glass. He had
to climb over the unraveling frame of a shopping cart.

Unfortunately, this evening a hand in the
canal wouldn't be sufficient. Joe needed to make a much bigger
commitment. It was the only way he could navigate the tangle of
underground tunnels, the only way he'd know where to look.

In the water, a school of condoms darted into
the depths. He reached out one nicotine-spotted hand and cupped it
in the river. The water was blood temperature, gooey like snot. "To
health," he said. He brought the tingling liquid to his mouth and
drank.

The water congealed in his mouth like an
oatmeal, scratching when he swallowed, which he had to do often,
because it kept coming back up. The taste was immediately
recognizable from long ago -- entirely inappropriate, its vintage a
very, very, very bad year. Joe gagged and sobbed. The end of the
world was intimate in his throat and stomach, and it had the flavor
of crotch.

He lolled awhile in the sickly weeds, canal
water leaching across his bodily membranes, ravaging the tissue,
harassing his health. He began slithering back up to the
street.

At the manhole cover he worked the chisel of
the crowbar down into the edge and then put his weight behind it,
forcing the lid from its cavity. He dragged the cover aside and
celebrated by vomiting down the sewer shaft. He could already feel
the tickle of fever, the heat in his throat and nostrils. Joe swung
his legs inside. Fast running water rumbled from below -- storm
drains had engorged the tunnels, inflating them into canyon rapids.
A warm tornado of septic stench whistled past Joe's face, blowing
rain from his eyelashes.

Joe briefly looked around him. Mostly the
world was a foggy swirl of water -- a Venus atmosphere -- shadows
mostly, and shapes. He started down into the sewer one rung at a
time, but slipped. The ground closed up around him as he fell
several feet onto the cement below. He hardly noticed.

Beside him, sewage stampeded through midnight
capillaries with low, arched ceilings. Misdirected tree roots poked
through the brick walls. Everything was shaggy with algae, which
flourished here in the human, tropical steams. Runoff splashed on
Joe's sleeves, fizzing like soda. As he stood up there was some
swaying, a tentative jitter, before he powerfully retched, spraying
a luminous yellow paste, like a man shooting sparks. Bright reins
of dreck spilled from either side of his mouth and stuck to his
coat.

Meanwhile dim fireworks were pitching across
the inside of Joe's eyelids. His head was a hissing vent, his brain
the steam. Down he went, into the underbrain with ease. That was
the canal's bounty and its bane; it showed the way into the dark,
where the waking mind couldn't find you, where everything forgotten
was remembered, where everything remembered found form, where the
future was waiting to become.

He wanders here, in this underground of
imagination. That dank, watery place. With vast beaches. And a
twilight sky, the surf crunching at your feet. The glinting edges
of aluminum cans poke through the sand. Naked skin as far as the
eye can wander. Joe's tan going to black.

Dear friends, am having fantastic time. What
a lovely beach. What a paradise. PS, dear friends, there's an
island I see made of ginger colored fog. Lets bury ourselves to the
necks and wait for the tide to come.

This island, it surfs from wave to wave.
There's dragon's breath there. Friends, I feel a close fear... The
fog parts and closes, peeks and winks, revealing kudzu veins that
feed cysts dark as squid ink and blond abscesses that drape the
shoulders, mounted like armor. There are colonies of chancres that
squirm and suck madly at the air. The dragon at bay. The honking of
a baby.

Joe was close.

But the water, the thickening, reddening
water. It was coming ashore, pulling at Joe's feet, kicking up bits
of ears and legs and bodies. Joe began to entertain another fierce
request to purge, from down in the digestive quarter.

Dear friends, the sea, I fear the sea may be
watching me. Not having wonderful time. Want come home. I fear, I
fear it already knows...

From the island a cry emerges. And then a
shock -- the dragon in full, lying in tatters of brimstone cloud.
Teeth everywhere, sticking through lips and cheeks, a beard of
blood-smeared hooks. Behold, the assassinator of the light.

A voice comes to him, from the creature, a
voice that has no right being in this place. The same voice from
the top floor.

"Pee-yuu, right pop?"

Oh, Please no. Let it lie...

A red balloon. The churning ocean.

Please, let him be!

On wings the dragon flies, dear friends,
across the water. And it laughs, a tinkle of bullets impacting
flesh, of swishing guillotines. Dear friends. Scream if you want
to. Why not? Eyes roll back in head. One arm out, for protection
maybe, or as an offer, take me finally, kill me finally. Arm out,
saying, kill me...

>> CHAPTER SIXTEEN <<

The car wreck ward was to be avoided. As were
the burn wing, the poison unit, the anemia dome, the senior center,
and the maternity corral. There was to be nothing genetic. No
blindness and no burst appendices, no dropsy, no tumors, no kidney
stones, no eczema's. Rather, it had to be contagious, transmittable
across the air like radio waves, or through fluids, or the
electricity of touch. Give her your meningitis, your measles, your
influenza, your pox, your person-to-person, friend-to-friend,
what's-mine-is-yours affliction. She'd take all of it from if you
if you'd like. She'd prefer to...

Rose was planning another excursion amongst
the ailing flock. She hoped that in the small hours of two, three,
and four AM she would find space to move -- a gap in doctor
routine, a lull in medicinal activity -- so she could stealthily
climb from room to room, testing the air, foraging amid the get
well sentiments, the scentless flowers, and the gift shop teddy
bears still bearing their price tags.

In this room was...colic. In this room
was...failure, all kinds of failure, poor, poor thing. Here
was...brain blisters. Here was...kidney cramps. This one's awake,
with the television. And in this room...hepatitis -- ah, yes,
transmittable, passable, hepatitis. Rose was a gourmand, lovingly
inspecting the latest produce -- the more bubbling sores,
parasites, and scars the better.

But hospitals were a sellers market and these
germs knew it. Last night Rose had only two serious suitors before
she succumbed to wellness and was forced back to bed -- a promising
bacterium that ultimately left her for a recuperating
tonsillectomy, and a virus, possibly mumps, which had expressed
interest but was only leading her on, having already devoted most
of its resources to, of all people, the policeman then alertly
dozing outside of Rose's room. Even more disappointing was that
these elusive pathogens would make for unworthy fuel -- this wasn't
the canal after all. But she still had to try; she was desperate to
stay the hand of health and the loss of her one memory...

It was still there but getting weaker all the
time, less accurate after every hour. Details had dropped away: the
bridge now stood in her mind as a medley of geometrics, hash marks
and solid underfoot. The neighborhood was reduced to flashes of
cast-iron, playground chatter, skinny avenues, porch steps. The
canal was hurt and hate and gross. Damn these medicines and
benedictions -- she had to keep remembering the heat, the heat was
her guide. It had been late in the day. Peripheral molecules.
Rattles in the trees. There had been no warning, no gut feeling.
There had been no difference that day in Henry, walking in his
chest-out way, fearlessly cutting into the world--

"Rose."

She was being shaken and not softly. This was
not part of the memory; it was an intrusion from that other
stubborn world, the one that refused to forget her, that in spite
of everything was always waiting, insisting on itself. What did
they want? She would do no more penance. She would take no more
pills. She would give no more names.

Wet hands roughly pried open her eyes. Rose
gradually oriented on a face: stubble, rubble, trouble. That man
again, wanting something, his expression belying a panic rarely
seen here (solemn religious reverence being endemic, along with the
imported chatter of daytime TV and the beige greenery). But this
one, he looked about to turn messy.

Rose listened closely to his skin and
temperature, sounding him for bugs. She came away disappointed --
barely a microbe to bother with. Although he'd be one to watch,
there was definite promise...poor diet, much duress (it was there
in the urgent heartbeat and the rigid eyebrows). Give him a few
hours...

"Joseph said to he's going to kill it. The
thing, it has my son. He's going to kill that...that animal--"

A sudden agony. He said animal. It is not an
animal. He said Joseph...

A chain reaction started in Rose's outer
extremities. Cell after battered and startle-eyed cell emptied its
stores, transferring energy hand-to-hand, tissue-to-tissue. Kill
it, he'd said Joe was going to kill it. Rose heaved upright,
savagely grabbing the detective by the arm. It was NOT enterprise.
Why couldn't they see this? It was NOT a monstrosity. She'd tried
to show them. She'd wanted to take them to it, to see. All you had
to do was go backward. The origin was easy enough to trace. It was
NOT the enemy.

The man tried to pull away. But she had him,
the horn of her thumbnail pressed into the soft underside of his
wrist. She could feel the pulse tingling just at the edge of her
nail. Good. Hurt him, make him feel pain. And Joseph. Of all
people. He'd killed already hadn't he? If you had to make someone
accountable -- he had already let Henry die, hadn't he? He had
wanted to leave Henry alone with the bridge. How stupid of her, how
naïve of her, HOW had she listened to him. And now he was going to
kill again.

The detective was pulling her. Her feet
touched the refrigerated floor. She was being ripped from the
beside machines and he was bringing her to Joe. He was making her
run.

She'd kill Joe if she had to. Joe. She
wouldn't mind. If that's what it took, she'd do it gladly.

>> CHAPTER SEVENTEEN <<

In the mouth of the dragon Joe fought with
great disvalour. He battled with tremendous unbravery. He faced the
withering fire poorly, and dumbly. He cringed for the most part,
and then gave up rather easily.

Or so it was to a point. All had been lost.
It had his arm all the way to the armpit. Sucking every last bit of
juice, sucking it to jerky. The score, canal: everything, Joe:
nothing. Or so it was to a point.

*

Either Joe was still alive or death was one
big failure, one big limp dick. Because it stank here. It was loud.
And that just wasn't right. Don't even...don't even tell me death
is also a piece of shit. Don't even tell me that death can't find
Joe, that old wash rag, all rung out, can't find him a mere ten
feet underground in the city's guts.

No, Joe decided. He was still alive. It hurt
too much. And he was still too...angry. That's what it was, that
had been the turning point -- anger. He'd survived because of it.
He'd found himself -- of all things -- not wanting to die. And not
because life was a blessing, with rainbows and greeting cards, or
because of religion, or art, or for all the downtrodden, or for
anyone else. And not because he was a coward, which he was. But
because he was furious. He wanted to survive so that he could
destroy, so he could punish, because nobody cared, because nobody
gave a damn, because he wanted to live OUT OF SPITE, for FUCK ALL,
because life was one poorly conceived principle, man, any concern
for its participants being cursory at best. Let's see, first you're
born, hurled into the unknown, and well, you should know ahead of
time that the world is kind of like...like a big house of mirrors
laced with about a billion booby traps -- you've got your poison
darts, your dung smeared spears, your mines designed not to kill
(thank God) but to politely turn everything below your waist into
wind, and so on -- and the only reliable thing in evidence will
seem to be your own general insignificance, and eventually you'll
go die and in those last few moments you'll realize what a
beautiful opportunity you'd been given, this thing called life, how
absolutely gorgeous and sublime it all is, so stunning really,
breathtakingly so (no, breathobliterating, no, no, its more, its
just plain obliterating, it's just obliteratingly beautiful),
utterly terrible and fantastic and humbling, and how you, yes you,
you really fucked it all up by spending so much time being scared
absolutely shitless.

So be furious. FURIOUS. For once Joe would
not be the one to suffer. For once Joe would not be the one made to
pay.

He opened a brittle eye and saw his foot
dragging in waste. Rain squeezed through the open manhole and
patted his face. He hadn't even moved, he'd been here the whole
time. For a moment, he even thought it had all been a
hallucination, a byproduct of feverish delirium. Except that his
left sleeve was gone, ripped at the shoulder. The arm itself, well,
it was barely there. Incisions corkscrewed around it, studded with
heavy beads of blood; the cuts were skinny and deep and there were
far, far too may of them. The skin, puffy, pastry-like, had a very
temporary quality, a very
soon-to-be-leaving-you-and-dropping-away-in-tracing-paper-strips
sort of feel, repulsively unanchored, alarmingly mobile.