The Indian watched him, nodding. “I know what you’re thinking. You think it would be good to tell the world of these things, to spread the cause. You think you can carry the message to all humanity, instead of letting it die here in the dark. But I tell you… it thrives here. Those who are oppressed, those who are broken and weary of spirit, they alone are the caretakers of liberty.”
Grant smiled inwardly; there was a bitter taste in his mouth.
“I think you underestimate the worth of all this,” he said. “You do it a disservice to hide it from the eyes of the world. I think everyone can gain something from it.”
“Yes?” The Indian looked thoughtful.
He led Grant toward a table where several old books lay open, their pages swollen with humidity, spines cracking, and paper flaking away.
“Perhaps you are right,” he said, turning the pages of one book entitled The Undying Patriot, edited by a Parson Weems. “It may be as Doctor Franklin says….”
Grant bent over the page and read:
“Let no man forget His death. Let not the memory of our great Chief and Commander fade from the thoughts of the common people, who stand to gain the most from its faithful preservation. For once these dreams have faded, there is no promise that they may again return. In this age and the next, strive to hold true to the honor’d principals for which He fought, for which he was nail’d to the rude crucifix and his flesh stript away. Forget not His sacrifice. His powder’d wig and crown of thornes. Forget not that a promise broken can never be repair’d.”
“I think you are right,” said the jeweler. “How can we take it upon ourselves to hide this glory away? It belongs to the world, and the world shall have it.”
He turned to Grant and clasped his hands. His eyes were afire with a patriotic light. “He brought you to me, I see that now. This is a great moment. I thank you, brother, for what you will do.”
“It’s only my duty,” Grant said.
Yes. Duty.
And now he stood in the sweltering shadows outside the warehouse, the secret museum, watching the loading of several large vans. The paintings were wrapped tightly in canvas so that none could see them.
He stifled an urge to rush up to the loading men and tear away the cloth, to look just once more on the noble face. But the police were thick around the entrance.
“Careful, Grant,” said David Mickelson at his elbow.
News of the find had spread throughout the city and a crowd had gathered, in which Grant was just one more curious observer. He supposed that it was best this way, although he would rather have had his own people moving the paintings. The police were being unwontedly rough with the works, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that.
Things had gotten a little out of hand.
“Hard to believe it’s been sitting under our noses all this time,” said Mickelson. “You say you actually got a good look at it?”
Grant nodded abstractedly. “Fairly good. Of course, it was dark in there.”
“Even so… what a catch, eh? There have been rumors of this stuff for years, and you stumble right into it. Amazing idea you had, though, organizing a tour. As if anyone would pay to see that stuff aside from ruddies and radicals. Even if it weren’t completely restricted.”
“What… what do you think they’ll do with it?” Grant asked.
“Same as they do with other contraband, I’d imagine. Burn it.”
“Burn it,” he repeated numbly.
Grant felt a restriction of the easy flow of traffic; suddenly the crowd, mainly black and Indian, threatened to change into something considerably more passionate than a group of disinterested onlookers. The police loosened their riot gear as the mob began to shout insults.
“Fall back, Grant,” Mickelson said.
Grant started to move away through the crowd, but a familiar face caught his attention. It was the Indian, the jeweler; he stood near a corner of the museum, his pouchy face unreadable. Somehow, through all the confusion, among the hundred or so faces now mounting in number, his eyes locked onto Grant’s.
Grant stiffened. The last of the vans shut its doors and rushed away. The police did not loiter in the area. He had good reason to feel vulnerable.
The jeweler stared at him. Stared without moving. Then he brought up a withered brown object and set it to his lips. Grant could see him bite, tear, and chew.
“What is it, Grant? We should be going now, don’t you think? There’s still time to take in a real museum or perhaps the American Palace.”
Grant didn’t move. Watching the Indian he put his thumb to his mouth and caught a bit of cuticle between his teeth. He felt as if he were dreaming. Slowly, he tore off a thin strip of skin, ripping it back almost down to the knuckle. The pain was excruciating, but it didn’t seem to wake him. He chewed it, swallowed.
“Grant? Is anything wrong?”
He tore off another.
“His Powder’d Wig, His Crown of Thornes” copyright 1989 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in Omni Magazine, September 1989.
THE NINETIES: FIRST-PERSON READER
Looking at the stories I published in the first half of the Nineties, I see an almost smug confidence, a swaggering sense that I knew where I was going with my fiction and was in full control of my career. At times I would like to slap myself. But I know now that nature itself would soon be doing the slapping.
Within a few years, we had a child, and then another. I could no longer think of my stories as my children, having real actual children. Like many others before me, I found it very hard to focus on writing. My greatest ambition was to sleep.
In my search for more options, not to mention pure escape, I took to playing and reviewing videogames. Fascinated by overlooked possibilities for storytelling in games, I found myself (and my family) soon transported bodily into the game industry. Most of my writer friends seemed puzzled by the move. Seeing it from their point of view, it probably didn’t make much sense to give up a quasi-literary career to engage in a form of entertainment as disreputable in the ’90s as comics had been in the ’50s.
But its very luridity made it irresistible. As the child of teachers, who had made his living in such respectable fields as typing and filing, writing and selling books, I had finally found a career of which my parents could disapprove!
WARTORN, LOVELORN
It was summer in the wine country, in the cleft of a hilly vale steeped in green heat. I had a noseful of dust, pollen and sex. Our sticky bodies separated slowly as we sat back in the remains of our picnic, the white cloth dirty and disheveled. Carcasses of roast game hens and rinds of soft cheeses were strewn about. The dry, greedy earth had drunk most of the vintage from a toppled bottle, and what remained we quickly swallowed.
My companion rose, gathered her cast-off skirt and blouse, and went into the trees while running a hand through her blonde locks and smiling back at me. As I twisted the corkscrew into the mouth of the last bottle, I heard a muted whine, a soft explosion, the beginnings of a scream—all in the shady confidence of the forest.
I called to her without remembering her name. She did not answer.
I started to rise, then remembered my own nakedness. My gun lay out in the dust, tangled in my trousers. As I scrambled over the tablecloth, twigs broke and leaf-mould crackled in the woods. I claimed the gun and turned to face the forest. Where were my guardians?
A shadow moved between the trees in hazy webs of light. I saw a glint of red-gold, like the heart of a forest fire. No one had hair like that except my hosts, the royal family.