Beth gazed up. She saw Euchrid. She saw the angel, chiselled from marble. She perceived the uncanny echo in their attitude, of pose, of purpose. She saw one, winged, bone-white and suffused with grace, and she saw its fleshy manifestation, impennous and wretched and covered in muck. And she saw his wounds, his long hair, his naked feet, his palpitant breast. And she saw a faint, new evening moon slung in the sky and a syzygy of sickles, upraised high, and Beth lifted one trembling hand to her mouth. And staring up at Euchrid’s mad face, she spoke.
And Beth woke up at that point and swung around. She fixed me with her eyes and then she spoke.
’ At last, Jesus, you have come.’
And it was as if those words sprang a trigger inside of me, because mah heart just burst. And such was the rush of blood to mah head that ah started to reel on mah heels, spinning wildly, and ah could feel the blood pouring from mah nose, smell it, taste it, feel all mah wounds opening up, hear the chanters going, going, feel the nerve running from mah hand – mah sickle hand – so that it began to shiver and shake and ah stumbled and ah steadied mahself and ah put mah sickle inside her.
Ah had placed mah boots on the crushed and eaten body of a lark and they were teeming with a family of tiny red ants, so ah left them there beside the hedgerow, and wearing nothing on mah feet but the dust from the road ah took off down Maine, heading north.
Back inside Doghead silence prevailed. Everyone was lost for words, it seemed. Ah had demonstrated the effectiveness of direct action and suddenly words seemed futile – idle confabulation, mere procrastination.
Mah Kingdom was one very fucking hushed arena, that is true, but it was far from being asleep. Expectancy and anticipation charged the air with muted urgency, like everyone was holding their breath, and walking across the yard ah could smell the electricity in the atmosphere, taste it. The booby traps trembled with restrained energy. All about me things pended release. Pitchforks, skewers, snares, saw-teeth, nets, all seemed ready to leap, impale, plunge, slash, stab, rake, or drop. Ah made a quick check of them and then climbed up into mah turret.
Ah manned the scope.
The air was warm and windless. The fields had ceased smouldering and although most of the smoke had drifted from the valley the sky appeared tainted and the underbellies of the clouds discoloured.
Pungent wafts of rot drifted up through the trapdoor, and ah pinched mah nose lest ah gag, taking the air orally, and reluctantly. Ah wondered how the beasts could stand it, living like a lot of pigs.
Ah foked the scope on the Town Hall, and just as ah had expected the townsfolk were still engaged in their feastings. But ah calculated that it would not be too much longer before the great oaken doors would swing open and the enemy would saunter down the front steps and into Memorial Square.
Ah pointed the scope at the Memorial Gardens, drawing it down toward the blurred white shape that ah recognized as the monument. Ah screwed it into focus, dragging the structure of stone neatly into mah one super-eye, sizing up the scene in its entirety before zooming in for a more detailed appraisal. In this moment of clarity ah was struck by the effect of the new addition to the tableau and the sight of the angel and the child, and by the sublime relationship set up between the two, as if the one depended upon the other, like good and evil, Heaven and Hell, and indeed, life and death. Each illuminated the other by virtue of its essential difference. And ah pondered that idea for a moment as ah studied the monument – the very embodiment of this notion – the flesh and the stone – the erect and the super-incumbent – the upraised sickle and the sickle brought down – the pooling shadows and the puddling blood – the Heavensent and the Hell-bound – the caducity of flesh and the endurance of stone – the frailty of one and the other’s enduring might and, y’know – well, ah don’t really know how to say this, but – well, ah mean, that thought – yes, that idea seemed to me, at the time, like one very fucking bright and beautiful thing to think – yes, it did – and what with the living proof of the simple beauty of it there before me, ah found mahself getting hot in the face and kind of puffed up and ah bit mah lip and ah found mahself choking back the tears, and saying to mahself, ‘ Stay brave, Euchrid. This is not the time to come apart.’ Saying, ‘Unner no circumstances will ah cry. Unner no circumstances will ah…’ And ah sobbed but once, then embarked on such an unbridled bout of weeping that ah thought mah heart would explode, so fucking God-swollen up with – not sadness – O no, not that, no – the tears ah so furiously wept were tears of – of – of pride. Yes. Pride. And you know, it is mah guess that this is the unique feeling enjoyed by those who exist only to achieve Greatness, to achieve greatness despite the odds, even if they must pursue it to the grave. This day ah had proved mah rightful existence beyond the petty dictates of ordinary men, and ah wept proud waters, tears of greatness, rivers of salt and glory.
Up jumped mah heart! For now the gardens were swarming with people! All about the monument, yes, all about her, all about and all around and all over the fucken place they gnashed their teeth and raged and wailed and beat their breasts, and ah saw a man, sharp and dark, his face all twisted up and frenzied, lift Beth’s limp little body from the steps and draw the sickle from her body.
Ah knew that it would be only a matter of minutes before someone recognized mah trademark, mah sickle. And indeed even as ah looked a figure swung around, and stretching out its arm dramatically pointed its finger straight at me, at mah eye – and all the mob turning, all, and all the mob looking up at me and screaming for blood, all, all screaming at me for blood, and ah said, and ah said it’s time, and ah said it’s time to move, ah said, it’s time for me to move.
And even as Euchrid climbed from his turret and scrambled through the garbage and filth that covered the shack floor, a dozen rattling utilities and bucking pick-ups careered down Maine toward him. In each vehicle men crouched and bounced and grimaced into the gritty rush of speeding air. In each hand was an implement held as a weapon.
*
Ah bade mah Kingdom farewell and the silence in there told me mah subjects were fit to tangle – ready to rumble.
And suddenly there was peace in the valley no more.
Suddenly the air was hijacked by pirate violence – every sound amplified and infused with threat. All the infernal static – all their shrieks and shouts and oaths, the roaring, the gunning of motors, the rush of their coming, of their coming in outrage – rang terrible in the air. Terrible. Even the clamour of mah retreat was like thunder-drums. Mah breaths were rushing, ringing clouts to the ear. Mah heartbeats – why, mah heartbeats were outrageous.
Having crawled through a hole in the wall, Euchrid paused a moment, looked once to the vehicles that came charging along Maine, then once again took flight. Bootless, he tramped through the marshlands, following a vague trail already coursed. Bulrushes knocked at his knees and he left them rocking in his wake, inverted pendulums anchored in their reeky, paludal bottoms.
Reaching the outer boundary of the swampland Euchrid turned and took one last look at the wall of red dust that moved steadily toward the shack. He removed his jacket and hung it from a tree. From the same tree he untied a length of rope and followed the line of wire, string, strips of sheet and chain into the trembling spissitude of the swampland, reeling in the line as he went.