Silas O'Bedlam

Here's something I just started on. These two pieces take place at different times in the character's life. They're first-drafts, so don't expect anything to fancy. I guess this has three main things going on. 1) It's me thinking of the south of my grandfather, and all the craziness there contained. 2) It's me riffing on McCarthy and Faulkner. 3) It's the first time I've tried a deliberate experiment with modernist techniques. There are basically two narrative voices, one of the author/narrator, and one of Silas' internal monologue. I see them as totally different, and I plan on having them wrestle for control of the text. This may not be totally apparent now, but it will (hopefully) flesh out more later.

***

“Who gives anything to poor Tom whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and flame…”

Silas O’Bedlam tipped his hat and turned, jingling change in his pocket. Thirty-five cents. Enough for supper maybe, or a bottle.

A thunderhead fist gathered above a tent that pierced outwards in imponderable angles and abutments, and festooned with garish decorations The sounds of fiddle and mouth-harp snaked outwards from the folds, and he heard the bustling of the dancers inside. The music modulated and rose before stopping, and he heard a great cry: Hallelujah. Hallelujah! Lord Hallelujah! The joyous sounds of those in rapture, doing the Lord’s work. He put a cigarette to his lips and struck a match on a sign that read, in dripping red letters:

TENT REVIVAL

On to the bar. Stir up a bit of trouble. No tent show for him, not tonight. Religion brought the fits, and the fits always set him back aways, stripping away the barriers and making the world seem knife-edged and minatory. Fuck that, squirming on church floors in an inverse evocation of those other’s rapture. Fuck that. His eyes were wet with curse.

Grids of rain pulsed in the light before fragmenting against the macadam.

He spat and tossed the cigarette end into a piece of wire mesh from which a paper throwaway hung, twisting like a trapper’s pelt.

Heading towards the bar he passed waifs and wanderers standing hipshot in alleyways and on street corners, rakes and gamblers and whores all moving like ink splotches over brick-dust and cobblestone.

The bar was full of moonshine ruckus. Drunks and beggars and fishermen lounging about, issuing boasts from mouths toothless and blackened. Faces wan in the lambent and flickering bulb-light, looking like death terrified, friendless and crowded in turpitude most holy. Hunched over the bar, seated on a crudely hewn stool, an ageless fishermen sat motionless, staring at the woodgrain beneath his hands and mumbling soundlessly. His face was covered with an intricate arabesque of twine-like hair, which floated in the pale breezes of passerbys. Silas felt sick. The man’s face held a febrile pallor, like a fire smothered by wax paper. It seemed that even the slightest movement of that old mannequin head would cause the flesh to rip with a horrible wet sound, spilling viscid curds of contagion and filling the room with the buzzing of locuts. Silas looked away, he did not want to be witness to such a thing.

The man was drawfed by a huge black that sat to his right, drinking a Coca-Cola and dealing himself cards. He looked carved out of obsidian, the shine on his skin illuminating sharp angles and sleek glacial planes. His fingers were thick and calloused, but with deft motions he made the cards spin in his hands. The man grinned big and wide like the crazy ones do. Silas recognized the look instantly. Wild ones always know their own.

As Silas passed by he nudged him and said: How you farin at them there cards?

The man rolled a quarter across his knuckles and said: Shit, I can’t complain. I’m winning every hand.

How’s the competition?

The man fanned the cards out over the bar and shrugged. Trickier than you’d think, he said.

Silas smiled. I hear that, he said.

A knacker by the name of Bloodhound was motioning him over to his table. He slowly turned a glass of milk, his fingers ebon and spiderlike. A high collared shirt only partially covered Bloodhound’s neck, which was ringed by sutures and scars that seemed like adornments and jewels poured in wax. To Silas’s knowledge no one had ventured to inquire about the origin of his wounds.

Silas, he said. What’s up youngblood? Haven’t seen you round these parts lately. Why don’t you have a set and rest yerself up, I ain’t going a damn place, and I suspect you ain’t either.

Silas sat. Sitting from Bloodhound, one leg draped over the other, he saw his reflection in the jaundiced yellow of his friend’s eyes.
So where you been?

Hospital, said Silas. Not the regular one, but the special one. My folks put me up there.

In hope of remedying what ills?

For the fits.

You still getting those, asked Bloodhound.

Silas shrugged. Eh, you know, he said.

Ain’t that a damn thing, said Bloodhound.

Ain’t a thing damnder in my book.

Shit, said Bloodhound. I ain’t never trusted none of them quacks, selling snakeoil and naught else. I’ll tell ye…

Silas closed his eyes and kneaded the pain beneath his temples. Everything so clamorous, a tune he could not silence nor escape. Like the whole teeming swarm of people were a plague feasting on his vitals, not only causing grievous harm but also draining any cognizance of the damage wrought. Wounds so deep that the nerves are destroyed, and they celebrate as you corpse-walk unflinchingly into the new world. The Black Grail, Cup of Abominations. How the urge you to drink. God, that fucking madhouse. Temple of Snake and Surgical Steel. They wore it proudly, that snarling caduceus pinned to their lapels. Ain’t but a damned fool trust a man who keeps the company of serpents. Their faces above him, peering down his gullet. Cruel experimentation. Generator crackle and that piercing light, hanging unreachable in the sky like an alabastrine moon. Sanctum of straightjacket and neutral tones. Baptistery of electroshock. A crisis of vultures, locking him away because his body danced on its own from time to time. Si’, you listening?

Silas?

Shit, sorry. I was jus’ caught in a reminiscence.

Damn boy, he said, shaking his head and laughing. You’re saint-touched ain’t you? One of them special types. Crazier than hell.

Silas half-assed a grin and sat for a moment, before noticing that his fingers were locked tight onto the table, his fingernails scaring the baize covering.

The owner hobbled over, a fearsome slattern nearing sixty years, who seemed locked in the process of a perpetual shrinking, as if she could escape into the nothingness of herself. She wore her skin like a sketchpad—horrible experiments in shade and shape gone wrong—and her pinched eyes fought a doomed battle against the shapeless dough of her face. Her fingers were icy and glaucous and slick with grease.

Mr. Silas, she said. What’ll it be?

What youse got in the ways of comestibles?

Ham and greens and not a damned thing else. Take it or leave it, don’t matter none to me.

Silas grunted. I ain’t got much of a hunger, no how. A whiskey’ll do me just fine.

Her eyes tightened like a noose, and she eyed the crowd. I’ll serve you, but you don’t be causing no trouble, you hear?

Silas spread his arms, glanced at Bloodhound who was grinning crazy, and said: You know it ain’t like that.

She spat on the floor. I know damn well what it’s like.

A blind halfman sat in the far corner, coaxing his cheap guitar into a sliding, jagged blues. He wore a pair of ornate brogues at his hipline in some grim bluesman irony, the shoes resting between him and his moving-board. The halfman’s milky eyes caromed and stuttered back and forth in mute parody, and as he sang he rocked back and forth on ball bearing wheels.

And the days keeps on worryin’ me
there’s a hellhound on my trail

***


Silas found him by the river. His shape suddenly accruing out of breaths of fog, a scumbled wraith gaining heft and form.

William Tintamar, Silas called. How goes it, ye magnificent bastard?

Silas, where ya been hidin’ at? Come to sit a spell?

Willie stood knee-deep in dross and riverscum, with a cane fishing pole stuck in the mud to his left. He wore a pork-pie hat and was drinking white lightning from a mason jar. Silas could smell the tang of ethanol.

I brought you a gift Willie. Little something was passed to me in a card game.

Did ye now? He squinted at Silas, his mouth hanging open and an amoeboid of spittle and mucous glistening in his beard.

Silas tossed him a small sackcloth purse. Some pipe tobacco for ye, he said.
Damned fine too. It’s Turkish.

Willie burrowed his nose deep into the bag and sniffed. When he raised his head a few light brown wisps hung from his nose and he sniffled and sneezed.

That’s damned fine of you, he said. Might be just the thing to help me clear out this long rot been plaguing me.

Might be.

Willie smiled, sniffing again at the votive offering. Turkish, he said. Amazing what you can acquire these days.

Silas motioned for the moonshine and took a pull. It had a kick like a mule and he coughed and sputtered. Burnt all the way down and kept on burning. He swayed a bit and took a seat on the hardpan. He made it a habit of plying Willie with gifts, just to hear the old scoundrel talk. Willie was of the persuasion that there was no crime worse than a telling a boring tale, and in accordance to that notion he made no distinction between stories true and false. He molded the past’s clay into new shapes daily, little golems and figures that bore no pretense of actuality. Histories dancing.

Willie, you never did tell me how you lost that eye of yours. What happened? Some no-good Yankee take to slicin’ you from scalp to jawbone?

Willie looked appalled. Sheeyit no, he said. There ain’t a goddamned Yankee ever been born that could lay a hand on me with any device of harm. And many have tried, let me tell you. No suh, not this fellah.

Silas grinned. So who was it? Some jealous lover you spurned?

Careful young buck, said Willie. I may be heavy on the years but the day I can’t whip your ass is the day I retire to the charnel house.

Then how’d you come to be inflicted so?

Well I’d tell you if you could just silence that yammerin.

Silas nodded, his brow furrowed and his face serious as the grave.

Bout goddamn time, said Willie. He paused for a moment to check his fishing line, which still hung languid and limp and absurd, drifting through the riverbank spume. Alright, he said. Now listen up, ain’t telling this story again. It weren’t no Yankee, and it damned sure weren’t no spurned woman, though the Lord knows I’ve left many in that condition.

The jar was raised and Silas took another drink, then motioning for him to continue.

Willie took in a great, deep breath, arched his back, and said: It was those fucking dirt-worshiping heathens, fucking Sioux nation. Made a damn determined venture to part me from my scalp. Near succeeded too, damned good fighters the Sioux. I held my own of course. Turned that hardpan into a morass of blood, I did. Some newly christened widows crying on that night, you can be sure of that. Fucking dirt-worshipers.

Jesus, said Silas. The Sioux uprising, that was, what, 1860 or so? You couldn’t been more than a youngen.

I was fifteen, and a dangerous fucking fifteen at that. That was my baptism, and immediately following I spent two years fighting for the Confederacy. Willie bit his bottom lip and stared past wave crest and past long pine and past the hylic brushstrokes of the horizon, an for a moment he seemed incapable of anything but truth.

Has it been an easier road since? Silas asked.

Willie tugged at his fishing pole but the string lay slack. An easier road? Fuck no. One’s inclined to think that some advancement has been parsed out of the whole teeming mess, but that type of thinkin’s a fool’s game. Only progression I’ve seen is that towards the grave. Naw, it ain’t gotten easier. What, with man being man history is naught more than a clusterfuck with more horrors waiting in the wings. A thousand men naught more than a thousand oddities drifting in accordance with a thousand different maps.