HE whispered the story.
HE SAID, My daughter was lost to me. That is how I remember. I tumbled through my youth, I knew she was a daughter, I had no recollection of her making and bringing to the world. But she was there. I could feel this. So then: she was lost to me.
I found her in a Santa Fe trailer park, abandoned to a swing set. The mother in with bad people. I left my truck running, walked over. Men came out around trailers. The closer I got to the swing the more appetite they had for me.
I got to her; I knelt to her. I was younger, I could carry this body then, and these men considered that.
I got to her; I knelt to her. I was younger, I could carry this body then, and these men considered that.
Her name was Oneida. Once I took her out of New Mexico, we, together, changed her name to Therese. She was happy that I took her, at first.
It was a man in the service that sniffed her out in New Mexico. A man I trusted. Stephen Witten. Captain Witten. He did me the favor, because of our past. Witten remembered the girl. He remembered when I met the girl's mother; he told me again about these things, and forgave me the bad memory because it was during the time my drinking was bad. He found Therese, and sent me the address. Where I was, then in the north, was a long trip to New Mexico. It provided many hours alone, driving south; days of south, west, south then west, planning the punishment for this woman who had taken my girl from me. I couldn't remember the mother's face.
When I took the girl off the swing the men came. I wrapped her up, within, against my chest. No one spoke. I took the one stride back, and the first one hit me in the back of the neck with a rock. It wasn't much of a hit, I was so tall he fell to the ground overreaching. The next two boys came to tackle me down, but my stride was strong, and I dragged them, four, five feet, before they let go to regroup. I made it to the road before one smartened up with a knife. He stuck me in the back. His force was dulled punching through my leather jacket, (an up north jacket worn down south), and the knife only got into me an inch. I didn't even swipe them away, just kept going. The girl kept quiet, and hugged against me, and when I got to putting her in the truck she let go. She was obedient. I locked the truck up with her inside. I looked over the roof at these men. And I went back on the sandlot with freed hands.
These were peoples if documented at all in the state of New Mexico than by the judiciary. No authorities would be called. They probably cleaned up when I was done. And that was enough. Would have been stupid to wait for the mother to show herself. I left with Therese, and went north. I mean I left with her after three of them died. They had knives, Maggie. And her mother never came for her.
I LOST HER AGAIN at nineteen. A boy. A musician. Worcester. Welding in a machine shop. She met him, left with him. Came here with him, not so far from this place where we are sitting. She was in this phase of remembering. Everything was remembering. She remembered a lot that never happened. Remembering places she'd never been. And this wormy kid gets a hold on her, and tells her everything is true, and writes songs about kidnapping and all this happy horseshit. Writers are perverts. And songwriters are stupid perverts. They brand innocent people with their runaway sickness.
So I lose her this time. I know it's going to be awhile. I know I'll have to live with the worry. I'll suffer it. I can pray for her.
With praying I used to think some people, good people, do get answered; one who's done what I've done, there's no answer for me. But then I think: Why not? Why not answer me? I signed off to do nasty things in life, and will gladly pay for them, but these things were done by your consent. Some men have the ingenuity to bend with and against the word of Him, and come out accredited, to bypass sin, and be saved; then there's the hard men who lie to themselves: I'm under the jurisdiction of a different angel, but he is in the organization. Read the Bible, God's ordered wetwork before. I'm an Army man. He owes me. Protect her, I prayed. Protect her, and don't get cute with putting her with what I've done.
WHEN I KNEW for sure she didn't die here, with this kid who took her here, when the bad day happened, that was many prayers answered. It was ten years to find her again, but these were peaceful years because she wasn't here. Good enough. The musician she was with died here. That's why I looked for her here. A day comes when I'm looking down here for her, and then I look up, and she's there, forty feet high, a photograph. And inside that forty feet she's on a beach, and with her these gypsies around her, and she's done up as some Aryan princess, swarthy jippos bowing and kneeling. Strange juju. I have some responsibility for what Henny had made of her: Those North Star bones she got from me.
HENNY NEWTON stole her out of NY, and had made of their romance a lucrative comeback in the world; when we met he told me he was finished in pictures, and had stumbled badly pitching a picture about Bridge and Tunnel Day. They're still counting bodies, he's painting the re-creation in ninety minutes. Do you know how they got the subways, Maggie? How they hit so many? Bridge and Tunnel. Hack Bridge and Tunnel boys set the explosives. They've covered all that up by now, but that's who did it. Nineteen Tacticals: A, Q, B; ding, ding, ding.
Somewhere, not far from here, a man named Elric Schmidt sang his last song as the Q caved in and sucked him down. The song was "Oneida", about a girl who leaves him for the slick promises of a con artist. Therese was in France with the Henny Newton convoy when the island shit itself.
I MET HENNY NEWTON the day he married my daughter. It was on a beach in Boothbay. It was the middle of January with all the hangers-on dressed like Eskimos. He had invited me, Worcester too close to Maine I guess.
Therese was kind to me. The old bullshit forgotten. And Mr. Henny offered me a job with the circus. Security detail. In those days Henny Newton traveled with a lot of shitheads, all kinds of phoney intellectuals, drug dealers, poets, porno actresses -- feasters. There was this Count Olof who would brag to me about one million acres in Romania, then borrow five dollars to buy a Cola Roba. It was a big tour; all after-party, no show. But see, with Henny, I'll give the kid credit for vision: he was biding his time, he knew something was coming. Because here was this other count, or duke, or something, but importantly he was Russian, not Romanian, and with him Russian money cloudied Henny's way. They wanted Afghan pictures. A trilogy, with the first to take place on the Silk Road, the second to resume the story with the Russians fighting the Taliban, and of this second movie Henny should really do it Gunga Din style, because the third movie would be a tragedy on Marines stomping towels, not nearly as fun-loving as the Spetsnaz. Because these Russians were looking to get PMC contracts for Afganistan -- Maggie, these oil barons wanted to be poppy barons -- they wanted the USA to sell them back the right to waste ordinance in Toar, Boar, and Loar, and Henny would be their sonneteer and heavyweight annunciator. They wanted to burn bullets, and pick poppies.
THE RUSSIANS GAVE HIM all the money, and as you probably know he made one picture, not three, and it was not about Cossacks' right to transact heroin, but US Enlisted men kicking ass in Iraq; a full frontal hymn to American military exceptionalism funded completely by serendipitous Russian oil fortune. Look, Henry is sick. Maggie? Maggie, Maggie, Maggie Mae: He took their money, and made a film everyone saw. It did business. Just the right amount of years to tie a bandana around Iraq, and blow up some buildings. But these were Russians he duped. Russians aren't a good mark for this kind of thing. He asked me to accompany him to New York. He knew I had been down here in the garbage looking for Therese, we had long whiskey sessions, him interviewing me about it. Now suddenly popular again in the country, and these people, your people, finally wanted to hear this movie about the Bridge and Tunnel that had been too soon ten years ago, but two years ago, after the Iraq movie, they were keen for: Henny was the tragedian of the moment . He asked me to come with him. Protection. We met your boss, Alan Marybella, and walked around.
There was something else: Two years ago there was no place safer for Henny Newton to hide from the Russian outfits than right up there. The tower. That's why he asked me so often about the garbage dump, and between the bugs and the cops, he felt untouchable here. But the Russians didn't want their cut of the Iraq thing: they let him know he needed to take this UDP money, the big check Alan Marybella got him, and make their Afghan movie with it. And Henny told them he would. It's an interesting tournament if you take the meanest Russians from every era of cool pale-eyed nasty Russian history, and tried them off against each other. It would be a show. Send some Russians to New Mexico, they won't consider too long the size of their combatant. The best rock-chucker in the business, the Russian.
We put Therese with Henny's friends in Maine. Close enough. Better than France. I went up to visit her twice. She was managing this great house on the ocean, all Henny's people were there. It was nice there. We would walk along the cliffs, and watch the water, that kind of horseshit people do. We talked about New Mexico. We talked about the good years in Mass before that punk Elric wrote her those songs. She would hold my hand, and she was happy. Something of this holiday, for her, was the interim between the stages of your life, and she knew, as she was now Therese Newton, the trotting days would slow down soon enough, Henny would lose his guts for galavanting, and they would do the family thing. She made it clear to me that I should plan to retire up there. To be near the family.
HENNY WAS different when I came back to the Dump. He was cool. By this time he'd spent half the money hiring PMC boys to sit at the tower, and protect him. There was this nice-looking black kid called David who was my favorite. The tower boys would challenge me to wrestling matches sometimes, and David was the only one who could make it a minute with me. This kid liked to tangle assholes; he was tough. When I got back, David was waiting on me down here on the road. We walked one of our routes, and he told me things were going astray with Al Ferez, which was what we called Henny; in the drinking one night, one of the Spanish kids told us alférez was like an ensign, a flag carrier, which is exactly what Henny was: walking around with all these tough kids protecting him, waving the flag, part of the gang -- so, Al Ferez.
David told be, Al Ferez is getting weird, Ollie. We went out with the cameras four nights in a row, and just walked. He wouldn't let anyone shoot anything.
There is a screening room Henny set up very high in the tower. After we shook you guys down for the electricity, he got real luxurious. The screening room is a hallway he's cordoned off, and there was a kid who used to come and trade scavenge with us; his whole strategy on searching out wares must have changed with Henny Newton as a customer, a great business model: while the bugs searched for rations, this kid went looking for art. He came with all sorts of survivors, but the best deal made was this time the kid showed up with three rolled up pages. The first was a drawing of a naked woman leaning over herself, her breasts sagging into her paunch. Henny nodded for the kid to unfurl number two, which was another drawing, a group of farmers huddled around a table for supper, a man proudly holding up a potato. To me, these were just ugly people, and Henny didn't seem impressed either. The third was larger than the other two, and once rolled out, it stretched seven or eight feet by five, and the kid actually yelled out, Shit! It was blank. He'd thought his workday was for nothing. But Henny jumped up from his chair, It's a movie screen, Ollie! We'll tape this one up, and run the projector over it! That'll be neat! To the kid: I'll give you twenty dollars for the three.
Once the kid left, Henny turned to me smiling: Potato eaters, He said.
That kid eats rats.
No. The drawing. The Potato Eaters. It's Van Gogh. So's the chick. Fucking world we're in. I need to tell you something, Ollie. Don't be mad. We can't do this movie. I told the Russians I'd shoot their movie here, make it an allegory everyone would understand -- these rubes think the world knows about them still. Russians. I promised them, but I can't do it. I have a new idea. It has to be done.
You see, Maggie, Henny Newton is the coldest thing I've ever known. Not only did he take your money, and alter the promised service, but he also reneged on the original screwjob he had promised the Russians. And he didn't care. There is always a new bad idea with him. Now an adventure movie. Like the promised allegory, he'd shoot it here in the garbage, but it was to be an ancient tale. Old Gods. Ragnarok was his new love. Let's punch Mjölnir against the garbage. We'll have Odin walk the tunnels interviewing Bugs. Asgard is here, He'd say. He'd run the story by everyone, and we'd all listen respectfully: The Norse Pantheon, an episodic epic of mass suicide. Gods chatting up men, and pulling dirty tricks on them. He'd say, How many cops did they drop on this place? What if, and hear me: what if this were the place they tied the Trickster up, and let him wait for the End to come. And while the asps spit on him, he called all the meanest Fascists to his endgame cause? What if it were the Gods who blew the city up?
The boys said: Henny, baby, cool out with the dope, Baby.
I'm sober as a mule. He'd claim.
YOU WILL SEE ME in the movie. When you go upstairs, Maggie, and get your screening, I'll be there. I am Odin because Henny can be sweet. He hugged me one night, and told me I was Odin. The All-Father. He thanked me for saving Therese. He can be sweet when he needs things, and he needed me to play so he could keep the rest of the boys in line. I know this now.
MAINE. Ocean and crag. The best breeze in the world. The Russians went there for revenge. While I stood in front of a camera-woman for Mr. Henry Newton, Russians went up to that house on the sea. The Fourth of July, and Therese wanted everyone touched by the Eden she had made.
It wasn't a shootout. They walked with the hipsters, and chewed lobster meat. We know what they did because they told us after. They went into the kitchen, and they dusted her Veuve Clicquot with rat poison. So simple. Then they waited. You would like a daughter to meet a good man. A good man can mean many things. It can mean, to many people, a man who cares about more than money, the bottom line. No. Pray your daughter marries a calculator. A robot could calculate, as the Russians did, the Russian loss in their Henny debacle. A robot might compute how Russian money spurned would end. If the money is meaningless, what has meaning? I wish she had died. Maggie. I wish she had died. Henny Newton buys Van Gogh for twenty dollars, and watches his dailies on papyrus. He laughs at money.
I should have killed when I could have. I would have. But he sat by her, and read to her. He tired me out waiting for the right time. And he knew it. That's all, my Dear. That's my story. Tell the boys downstairs my boys will meet you at the tower.
MAGGIE IS SHE.
SHE whispered, What of your daughter?
SHE IS IRREPARABLE. She is parapalegic. Blinded. All that's left of my girl is a voice in a bed. She was completely done in before her brain had caught up and told her body to have children. I killed to make place in this world for new ones. It may be an evil process, but it is process. It makes sense, even if it is a pathetic excuse. They poisoned her because he didn't make a movie about their grandsires. It's fact, but what is it supposed to be? Of anyone, Maggie, I tell you the truth: Every meaningless cruelty is a dull person's Ragnarok.
9july11-1st
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