Regis
Fiction
I.
Fenton, first summoned, summons me (meaning: reaches across cracked-white plastic table, taps me on shoulder, says, “We are summoned”). I summon Agustin (“The King commands”: Anger (I assume) at Sat afternoon upheaval (but know better soon)) to drive and speak (though Fenton insists on driving (even three deep-pours deep)) who (Agustin) says will pick us up in 15 (3:42) which (quickness) means he has taken the truck off plant to home (bad), but Fenton and I (both on call) are three deep on Sat afternoon (worse), so immediate, wordless, cross-national pactum is reached. 15 minutes is another deep pour (or two), so when Agustin pulls up in dirty-blue pickup (ATLANTIC OILFIELD PRODUCTS stenciled, vandalized, stenciled again (F looking precarious)), Fenton holds hand over heart to entire bar (ten drinkers and keeper (drunkest)), “I am, now, in that condition of mind, ladies and gentlemen, when the road is not apart from the very blood, but is, instead, a part of the very blood.” Rig-pig in pale green jumpsuit grins death at us. And I (to Fenton and Agustin), “So long as I am in the dirty-blue truck with you, gentlemen, road and blood should never meet.” And Agustin, from truck in best stop-wasting-my-Sat voice: “Colleagues (Fenton winces), I have summoned the Marimalena doctor; he will meet us there (both road and blood permitting).” (Hours later I realize the Marimalena doctor never appears: “El Rey keeps him long afield,” Agustin discloses.) Fenton slides in and over, forcing Agustin to slide out driver’s side (thus Fenton claims the wheel); Agustin comes around the truck to me still on cracked-gray slab of crooked concrete (sidewalk); I don’t move; I stare; Agustin sighs and slides in next to Fenton (per over-egalitarian upbringing, this dynamic always rankles. But who wants the hump-seat?); I slide next to Agustin, window seat secure. It is 3:44.
II.
Fenton (of us, the best driver) upshifts and wheels through thick afternoon: rain, several days overdue (swells the stray lumber in back of truck and the lumbar of window-seat passenger); the continent (better: The Continent) slides by as slabs of fern and mantis undergrowth with slabs of moss and myrtle overhang. Fenton sighs and downshifts: Nariamos, Sampaka, Alongasse: towns of tarpaulin shacks strung with speaker wire (because Sat afternoon, even here (“especially here,” Fenton undertones)), dirty-white plastic tables (cracked, awobble) in intersections. At the first, Fenton sighs; two happy men at table make drink-cheap-whiskey hand signals. Agustin sighs; I slide out; Agustin goes to table with five sodden not-happy men (my stomach pits), but two obvious drink-motions, then whispers among, now, all happy (?) men, and table is moved. A happy (mock?) man bows sinister, waves us through (no escaping the dynamic; Fenton is oblivious). Even so, I get out to let Agustin slide in (“We have two more towns,” Fenton exhales, awake). Agustin stares; I stare, then slide in next to Fenton; Agustin slides in next to me, and we are away. “They will be less happy later,” Agustin whiskey-breathes. Now, 4:45.
III.
“Who?” finally asked.
“No idea,” Fenton upshifts, “forgot to ask.” Or oblivious (obliterated?).
“Where?”
Agustin (in the window seat, secure) half-mouths ruthless syllables.
“Yeah”, Fenton fails to upshift: engine whinges, “what he said.”
IV.
Two further intersections stocked with tables and Sat afternoon happy men; Agustin’s eyes go liquid-wandery. Then, a final intersection (The Final Intersection? (wonder I) Last crossroads before the jungle Cimmerian shades the world? (this: whiskey-brain shimmy? Too much Conrad?), no table, no (mock) sinister-happy men. Fenton wheels the wheel, wheels it again, downshifts over bridge (kind you don’t look at before you re-cross) to slough of a mud-slide stop: “We are there,” burbles Agustin. Four shacks on four corners of a jungle crossing, a bridge, a river. Village built around the signpost: RIVER PECES (clever trickster has painted over part of the P. It is 5:39.
In the smallest shack, thin strands of a long word (“Responsables”) slide among the mouths. Still, we are disregarded. Good: mind and tummy turned swampy; Breath hangs, merges into bricks of exhale; moisture beads on every surface; walls go slippy, fecund. Outside, I vomit into underbrush.
Inside, faces stacked edge-up to the sickbed; I breathe through my teeth. Better. A kind of focus; don’t know the Him stretched on bed (better: broke-down gurney), arms up-pinned (“for cooling,” Agustin sees my sick-pall, steps close), cracked-white napkin sweat-staining over eyes (“To guard from the light,” Agustin whispers), and bitter smoke awhirl among the cord-wood bodies (“To chase The King’s Men,” Agustin confides).
“We are here,” Fenton lifts the sick-veil:
Malange.
(She. Our very colleague; behind her trainee’s desk, fierce-eyed, Monday to Thursday.)
V.
After six, the phantoms settle in (me: whiskey-sick? Deathwatch sick?). Regardless, sudden effigies: murk without depth, pupils without eyes, fingers without nails: angels inversed. At leisure in the crowd, one (pending violence) carries summons stacked on a silver tray (“not for me, sir, am extralocal, en-quinined,” babble I); others (violence past pending) rip the jagged roof tin, roll it tight, drive it into her chest (deep), smile and nod (“more to come, dear folk”), force chunks of sun through ears, hold them frying in her brain pan. I must breathe through my teeth to see, and Fenton is mouth-closed. Or pretending (or whiskey-blind). Agustin, seeing me see all (or whiskey-blind), says nothing, open mouthed.
When we are completely awed, they withdraw.
Not long now, Malange shudders sweat. We sweat, shudder heads at each other. Her breath thickens, moistens slippy walls. Us, men, sweat; others, women, keen. Someone says “6:47” in three distinct languages.
At 6:48, Malange is a husk, flaking.
Agustin breathes finally, through his eyes, sees the daughter.
VI.
Back in the city, watered-whiskey (better: whiskeyed-water (our shame (mine?): a company bottle) drunk from much-rinsed Styrofoam. Tattery balcony, stopped mid-lurch over the city, over the tin roofs (going tick-pop), over the rusting people: shambling and wormy into their Sat night. Malange’s third-cousin (on whose balcony) says nothing without looking at us. We drink. Malange’s third-cousin’s husband says all: “my balcony” glare over his whiskey-water. We drink again. Car, unmuffled on the street below; another, then none. Agustin fidgets: we drink, look at the daughter (no Malange in her toddler face). The third-cousin’s husband glares: “take that girl I cannot (will not?) afford; take your watered-cheap-whiskey.” We drink, peer into city: alleys, stairways, doorways, unmoving (tire-less) hatchbacks. Refill Styrofoam. There, across the street (under our eyeteeth), peeling green paint on peeling tin in a husk of a city, peeled, ashambles: MARIMALENA CLINICA DEL REY (busy man, that doctor: we never saw him). But the water (whiskeyed) chases the wraiths (mine): into lanes, portals, stairwells, immobile (unhorsed) phaetons.
VII.
Two (roughly) more hours in the truck (11:01), toddler adream on Agustin, to find old man on three-legged stool beneath cracked-white and cracking wall (that separates (seemingly) nothing from nothing). First, walk past him to go around the wall across courtyard (better: latrine) into over-lit room to talk to the Jefe to find out, for sure, the old man on stool is father of Malange’s father, so Malange’s daughter’s last blood.
Doesn’t move (old man) when we speak: English first, then Spanish, then Agustin in language like a fat-bodied spider afraid of light. Dirt at his (old man) feet: soft-cool, smooth-dark as his toes. We take off our shoes and twist feet to get at the coolness. Tiny, white hairs (old moppet’s wig) on old-man shin bone and his knees loose and gray. He bends at the waist, sudden, more contraption than man, forehead almost in the dirt. Face sags forward, bottom lip depends: his eyes drip rheum (wrath?) which puddles, makes mud at our feet. Finally, it is 11:09.
Bats stay out late (Sat night, even here), trace black zags against the sloe-banked sky. Dogs bark. A man screams for Maria. The city exhales in the mock-cool: a semblance of breath for the common folk. In the white dot from the fizz-pop streetlamp, two finches (one: vest of gold, one: high-collared-suit of purple) hop lightly. The old man on stool watches, holds the hand of the daughter of his son’s daughter whose (granddaughter’s) eyes go (suddenly) ferocious as we make the payout. Among all this, empires upon empires rise to fall, storms roar to go silent, and the city and the people, broken by the King, break again.
Edward Feighny is based in Katy, TX.
