Follow the Devil / Follow the Light

This is part five of Follow the Devil/Follow the Light. Read all the previous parts here.

Desktop 2002

The spring after Paul Muggeridge died, Wendy bought Joe his first desktop computer: a Dell OptiPlex GX240. He was drawn to it immediately, with its Windows XP operating system, 1.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of RAM, and high-speed modem. Over time, it became a study in contrast to everything a twelve-year-old boy had lost in his short life. Computers were upgradeable. People only appeared to downgrade. Computers were controlled systems. People were chaotic systems. Computers needed good ventilation and a steady stream of electrical power. People needed love, a quality Joe Muggeridge had become increasingly ambivalent toward of late.

Joe opened the box in his room with scissors and was greeted with the smell of Styrofoam and plastic. A black tower housed the motherboard, floppy / CD-ROM drives, and two newly christened “industry-standard” USB ports. Equally wrapped in plastic were the speakers, mouse, and a QWERTY keyboard. Wendy had purchased Joe’s first LCD flatscreen monitor (impossibly lighter than the bulky CRT) separately. The entire rig felt like a glimpse into the future: his very own command console on the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Joe had been fascinated by technology from an early age. When he was six, Paul scolded him for taking apart the Discman to figure out how it worked. When he was ten, Wendy lost an hour of finance work on the family computer when Joe had closed her program without saving to install a Nazi-slaying first-person shooter. The emerging digital frontier was tailor-made for escapism, and Joe was just beginning to comprehend its vistas. The world outside could be in disarray, but inside, before the soft glow of an obliging screen with rational binary code, before a keyboard of reliable keystrokes and commands, all was right with the world.

He connected the mouse and keyboard to the tower, coupled the monitor with a VGA port, and plugged the included AC power cables and phone line into the wall. Joe pressed the “on” button. There was the promising whir of a CPU fan. Indicator lights blipped on and off. He navigated his way through the installation prompts until he was greeted with a factory default chime and wallpaper screen. So much faster than our old one, he thought to himself. He immediately replaced verdant rolling hills with a screenshot from Aliens, a movie forbidden in the Muggeridge household that he had watched anyway.

He would set up the internet connection later. After today, he needed music. Once again, middle school had only confirmed his suspicions. First, that his mother had knowingly or unknowingly lied to him about the prospect of friends. Granted, Joe hadn’t made much of an effort. Joe ate lunch in the hallway alone. When the final bell rang, Joe made a beeline for home and then to his bedroom until dinnertime. Sports were anathema to every fiber of his being. A good day was not being hit in the back of the head with the pennies students shot at him with rubber bands. A good day meant his teacher hadn’t asked him to conjugate verbs aloud in Spanish. A good day meant not being called “faggot” when he had refused to answer an eighth grader who mockingly teased “You do bitches?” during gym class. A good day was a day Joe felt invisible.

The second realization was that Joe’s public education had little interest in education at all. This was self-evident to any perceptive student, but Joe sensed that many of his teachers knew it too – that the faculty invested a great deal of energy toward the project of saving face, keeping the façade legit enough to avoid scrutiny. Curriculum followed a predictable regimen of “Fill out this Scantron” conformity. The law of the boot eclipsed love of neighbor. Serious investigation into the humanities and sciences was abandoned for inchoate platitude and pop psychology. John Lennon’s “Imagine” was actually taken seriously.

Even at a young age, Joe recognized a fundamental tension between the blasé “be yourself” rhetoric espoused by Principal Barker and the terrible truth he had learned from Socrates via Wendy’s penchant for reading. Namely, that the “unexamined life is not worth living.”^[1] She recited the proverb often, usually when Joe announced that he was bored or that there was nothing on television. It was this lack of examination, of enchantment, that troubled Joe Muggeridge most.

It troubled Wendy as well, but few alternatives presented themselves. Private schools were havens for the elite and unobtainable with the medical bills that had accumulated during Paul’s chemo. Wendy had inquired at St. Mary’s, but Joe had resisted immediately.

“I get enough religion when you drag me to Mass,” went the argument.

Even so, the evening reports Wendy received at the dinner table were distressing for a parent bathed in the classical liberalism of yore.

“What did you learn today?” was met with, “Nothing,” or “We watched another movie during sixth period,” between mouthfuls of blue box mac and cheese.

“In science class?”

“It was about bears.”

“What does …?” but further inquiry wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t Joe’s fault that his teacher hadn’t prepared for the day. It probably wasn’t the teacher’s fault either given the demands of lesson prep, rubrics, grading, impromptu counseling, classroom management, and meetings hosted by Gorgias.^[2] Public school, however at odds with Wendy’s convictions, however pervasive its shortcomings, would have to suffice for the time being.

This made the purchase of a Dell OptiPlex GX240 a sort of penance, a compromise to help Joe endure his middle school internment. It was preferable to the dross of cable television, and it answered the “what to do?” until Wendy got home from work. The computer appealed to Joe’s interest in technology and engineering. She liked that it suggested a viable career path for her bright, introverted, and tech-inclined son. And if she was honest, it made her maternal heart worry less about Joe’s glaring lack of friends.

Joe opened the CD-ROM tray and inserted the first album he had ever bought with his own money. He plugged headphones into the auxiliary jack, used the media player to select track twelve, and dissolved into the sonic stream. The opening guitar arpeggio took his mind to an incident that had happened last weekend. Synapses are strange conductors of memory, and Joe had no idea why this song would associate itself with a bizarre encounter with a stranger in aisle nine.

* * *

Joe had gone with his mother to one of the warehouse behemoths to buy groceries and browse the electronics section. He decided twenty dollars of his allowance was worth a newly released cyberpunk JRPG. Wendy asked Joe to grab a bottle of ibuprofen last minute as she pushed an American-sized shopping cart full of frozen meals, snacks, vegetables, and a “Prepper” supply of toilet paper over to the checkout line.

“Hurry,” she said. “I can barely hear myself think.” Over the intercom, a pop Siren assaulted shoppers with auto-tuned vocals, muddied synth compression, and a recycled techno beat. A toddler threw a hellacious fit over the wrong brand of fruit snacks. A grown man wearing a tank top that said Go FU Self scratched his belly next to the magazines and greeting cards. Humanity had reached critical mass, and after an hour of shopping Joe and Wendy had reached critical tolerance.

Joe ran over to the pharmacy section and noticed the man as soon as he turned into the aisle. Number nine. He was sitting on a bottom shelf that needed to be restocked between cold remedies and cough drops. The shelving was high enough for him to sit upright and cross-legged. To Joe’s dismay, the ibuprofen he had been asked to retrieve was directly above the man’s head. He sat motionless. A sentient shrine. A praying guru.

The man wore a red bathrobe with cigarette burns along both cuffs. An azure flame was expertly embroidered onto his left breast pocket next to a VOTE VERITAS button pin. A salt and pepper beard was tucked into his robe making the visible tangle of hair bulbous below the mouth. His face was a constellation of freckles, deep set eyes, with eyebrows that didn’t match the red auburn of his hair. Yellow flip flops adorned his two bare feet.

“The way up and the way down is one and the same,”^[3] the man said.

“Excuse me?” Joe asked nervously.

“Vineyard workers receive equal wages.”^[4]

Joe clutched his PC game, took a step back, and tried to chameleon himself into the antacids and proton-pump inhibitors behind him.

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”^[5]

Joe was too conscientious to leave without his errand, but too naïve in diplomacy to know what to say in reply. Fortunately, no response was necessary. The man climbed out of his hovel and yawned, stretched like a new morning.

“Nothing to worry about,” he continued. “You tell that grieving mother of yours there’s more to discover than maps. More to heal than eyes can know. More to sustain than what they stack on shelves, deliver in boxes, display in windows … or wrap in plastic,” he said, looking down at the video game in Joe’s hand. The man then reached above the spot where he had been sitting, selected a box of medication, and handed it to Joe. Ibuprofen. 200 mg. 80 count.

“Now be a sport and take this to your mother.” He gave Joe the most genuine smile the boy had seen in years and then walked, bathrobe, beard, and all, down the aisle away from him, flip flops like castanets on the concrete floor.

Joe stared down at the medicine. It was the brand his mother used. Without a word, he ran back to where Wendy was waiting in line.

“Everything okay?” she inquired from the look on his face.

“Fine,” Joe said. “They had exactly what you wanted.”

“They always do,” Wendy replied.

* * *

Music infiltrated every distractible province of Joe’s mind, every anxious nook and worried cranny, until he believed in the lyrics enough to sing them out loud. Just as a person can love without complete understanding, Joe would not grasp the significance of what he was singing for many years to come. Thirteen years from now he’d be visited by a demon named Morte Magari, but seventh grade provided enough malevolence for the present moment. The mindless imposition of homework, the humiliation of co-ed kickball, not to mention Joe’s budding awkward awareness of girls, was sufficient terror for now. Besides, Joe was too busy singing along with his Dell OptiPlex GX240 to care about any threat that might lurk beyond his bedroom door, supernatural or no. He clicked repeat. He clicked repeat again.

This machine will not communicate

These thoughts and the strain I am under

Be a world child, form a circle

Before we all go under

And fade out again

And fade out again

Immerse your soul in love

Immerse your soul in love.^[6]

The Failed Artist

Fear chased Joe Muggeridge like a predator on all fours. His legs protested the sprint, but Joe had no intention of slowing down. He could only guess how Magari and The Engineer would retaliate. Wait to pounce at the edge of this wreckage of wood? Orchestrate a search party of blood-besotted devils to scour the countryside until they caught hold of his scent? Or would they merely hand him over to a confederacy of aboriginal stomachs eager to swallow him whole?

The woods were endless in scale and dimension. They rivaled the evergreens of Washington State: the ones that persist like charred monoliths in the aftermath of fire. The landscape wore the monochrome of an old black and white film. A fine ash covered sedges and sword fern, lichen and wildflower, dissipated like smoke as Joe ran waist deep through the underbrush. He cut his way in zig-zag formation, hoping to throw his assailants off course. He traversed a knee-deep stream of dead trout, belly-up toads, climbed over a fallen tree housing a commune of mushrooms, and arrived at a proper trail.

The crows of The Weltschmerz remained high above: a constant reminder that he was being watched, surveilled until the designated brute squad arrived on foot. Their caws reverberated off the tree trunks, shook Joe’s rib cage cold. He had never held a gun in his life, but he would have gladly filled the sky with buckshot to silence their mockery. He continued along the path, hoping it would lead out of the forest, out of harm’s way, and into some calm for his badly shaken nerves.

As the trail veered sharply to the right, Joe encountered a dozen men congregated around a series of small campfires. One man roasted a rat upon a spit. Two men fenced with branches for swords. Men drank broth from wooden bowls, cleaned “Brown Bess” muzzle-loaded rifles, and changed bloody dressings on wounded comrades. Joe observed the scene until he was accosted by a shock of white hair. An old man staggered from behind a tree, grabbed the front of Joe’s shirt, and pulled him toward a face wild with intent.

“Brother Samuel!” the face exclaimed. “News from the living. Pray Samuel, what news?” The man’s clothes. Eighteenth Century? It was impossible to know for sure. Pre-Modern. That much was certain, from the powdered wig and saber to the breeches and boots. He could have walked off a Broadway musical or abandoned his post in a Fourth of July parade. And why Samuel? Joe had no idea.

“Pray sir, rest,” the man insisted. “You’ve got the look of the living about you. Tell us what you know. We hear reports. Is it true that flying machines circumnavigate the globe like birds?

Joe pulled away from the man’s grasp. “Sorry. I can’t stay here.”

“That the sick are no longer subjected to bloodletting?” the man went on undeterred. “We hear consumption and cholera have met their abolition in your time. That you cook your food in metal wave boxes. Electricity, yes? What is “nu-clear?” We know “in-ter-net” but haven’t the foggiest what it means. In your future history, does Hobbes or The Cambridge Platonists hold greater sway on the populace? Has Daniel’s prophecy been fulfilled in your time?^[7] Pray tell, what is your system of government? Are the Neo-Classicists still among you? Speak thus, who sits on the throne in your fair country?”

“I have to go,” Joe reiterated. “I’m being followed. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He looked back several times to see if the grave silhouette of Magari was fast on his heels. Nothing. Only the crows.

“Gossip is our only grace,” the man insisted. “Speak. Give succor.”

Joe looked at the men huddled around the fires, soldiers by all account. They had the look of battle: bodies wan with defeat. Had they died in some past conflict? Marched in military formation into the halls of death? What brigadier had led them to this mired estate? For what possible good and untimely end? Melancholy permeated the encampment like an atmosphere. Faces carried regret. Feet shuffled about from one fire to the next. Hands trembled until they were willed to go on with the cooking and fencing, the field dressing of wounds and the care of aging rifles. There was also a quiet dignity to the scene that stood in stark contrast to the other souls Joe had encountered along the way. If compassion existed in Hell, it ministered its virtue among these men.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Joe replied.

“But there is advancement? A progress of nations?”

“Of course. But not in the way you probably think.”

“Meagre consolation.” The man fell to his knees in genuflection. “Anything. I beg of you. We must know our sacrifice was not in vain.” Joe took a step back, embarrassed by the man’s groveling. The soldier fumbled about with the buttons of his red coat until it opened to reveal a mortal wound on his chest. “If you cannot,” he continued, “if the conflict that cost us our lives is folly, then at least send word to our kin.”

“To Bonnie my goodly wife,” one of the soldiers hollered.

“To my children. William and Anna. Sweet Thomas. Eliza,” one of the fencers called out before delivering the coup de grace to his opponent.

“And that yellowbelly King of ours,” the rotisserie man with his rat called out. “Don’t forget about him. I have half a mind to drag his varlet soul down into this accursed pit.”

“Hear, hear,” a voice called out to second the motion. “Death to King George!”

“Death to King George!” rose from the assembled crowd.

“British soldiers,” Joe said knowingly. “American Revolution.”

“The same,” the old man replied, returning to his feet. “Upon her dominions the sun never sets,^[8] or so our martial reason was inclined to believe. Our duty was to uphold the stipulations of the “Intolerable Acts” after insurrection in Boston destroyed three-hundred forty chests of His Majesty’s loose-leaf tea. Anno Domini. 1773. Late December as I recall. Gladly did we take up arms in the conflict that cost us our lives. Only here, in a realm of phantasm, have we learned from other incorporeal souls that the American colonies have since won desired independence from sovereign British rule. That militia of such ill breeding and bastard stock should now control the American continent in the name of self-government with Jefferson for a propagandist, Franklin for a diplomatic courtesan, and Washington for a wannabe king … ‘tis worse than the garish French.”^[9]

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Joe replied.

“To whom do you owe allegiance?”

“We don’t talk like that where I come from.”

“From what nation do you hail?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Joe said awkwardly.

“Speak, name thy colors.”

“America, I suppose.”

“You suppose?” the man said with alarm. “Am I speaking to an offspring of colonial insurrection?” Three soldiers who had overheard the conversation nearby ceased their industry.

“I guess so, although we’re friends with England now. You’re one of our allies.”

“One of our allies?” The man let the word roll around on his tongue like an impossible lozenge.

“Sure, we fight wars together. We like the same shows. I’d watch Dr. Who any day of the week. Speaking the same language probably helps, and we’re secretly jealous of your accent.”

“How is this possible? Do citizens owe fealty to both flags?”

“It’s not like that,” Joe said. The chasm of history between them asserted itself. “Talk of nationalism is problematic. Colonialism is a bad word, so our politicians use phrases like “national interest” and “foreign policy.” PC rhetoric like that. Sure, I’m an American citizen, but the individual is more sovereign as you say than any sovereign government.”

“Does this account for your manner of speech, lack of decorum, and, er, dress?” the man inquired. Joe sported his usual: black jeans, sneakers, and a screen tee beneath a slim fit plaid button down. His head was a sandy tussle of unwashed skater hair. He had slouched since high school given the number of hours logged in front of a monitor, and he was surprisingly lean given his lack of exercise. Not athletic.

“I suppose so. We wear what we want. Informal is the norm.”

“How is this indicative of your people?” the man asked. “Your custom? Your civilization?”

“We’re on vacation,” Joe confessed knowingly. “Not from work, never from work, but from a story bigger than ourselves. If we belong, it’s to a sports team with a dumbass mascot or another brain-dead IP with a dozen sequels, toys, and a breakfast cereal. We name our pets after fictional characters. We pilgrimage to Disneyland. That sorta thing.”

“So, you are a Secular State?”

“Sure,” Joe replied. “If by secular you mean no king, less religion, pro-science, all changes I welcome.”

“You welcome a nation with no king? No figurehead?”

“Monarchs are for tabloids. People cast allegiance to a political tribe here in the States. That’s about it. It’s pretty binary. There’s always the threat of America going fascist with its “God on our side” theocrats and personality cults.”

“I see. Has the American Republic avoided foreign entanglements? Has it maintained the treasury? Averted the ambition of despots? Achieved the equality and idealism espoused in its Declaration?”

“Not really,” Joe said thoughtfully. “All men are created equal is difficult to say, much less believe, in a nation built on slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation. The gap between rich elites and the working class grows every year. We’re classic oligarchy fronting as democratic republic. It’s why I never bother with politics and go libertarian like most in the tech world.”

“Is your present state analogous to the French Revolution with its guillotines and Napoleonic ventures? We learned of this from a mannered Canadian not long ago.”

“Sure, if you like. The death of one system makes room for another. You don’t have to read much to see that. The French Revolution gives rise to Napoleon. The Weimar Republic lays track for Hitler. Czar Nicolas II is assassinated. Lenin’s Soviet project is born. Progress is rarely upward and onward if you know what I mean.”

“You speak of some future history. And where are your Americas in this sad lineage?”

“In 2015? Hard to say,” Joe said. “America is ripe for an authoritarian mob boss. A populist. Democracies are destined to fail anyway. At least, Plato thought so.”^[10]

“You read Plato?”

“No, but my parents talked that stuff all the time when I was young. I never understood it. They were bookish nerds, but they came by it honestly.”

The soldier buttoned up his coat, adjusted his tricorn, and turned to look back at his men. “We find ourselves in a state of eternal contemplation,” he said. “I loathe the arithmetic of such earnest dead, the demise of well-meaning souls, and I’d die again for every man you see before you.”

“Yeah, what about that?” Joe asked. “What good was your allegiance to King George anyway? I mean, all it got you was dead.”

“Greater love hath no man than this.”^[11]

“People don’t believe that anymore,” Joe replied. “At least, not the people I know.”

“There is a rumor of soul in every human heart. And death shall have no dominion.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You will. The designation of your rank and uniform is not yet fixed, but you’ll emerge from these woods eventually.”

“I’ll just have to take your word for it,” Joe replied.

“You know,” the soldier continued, “there is a woman from your time not far ahead. You should make haste to see her.”

“Really? Which way?”

“Through camp a hike and a bit. Look for the clearing. A dried riverbed with waters that ran westward forever ago.”

“Thank you,” Joe said. He turned to leave and paused. “I hope you and your men find peace.”

“Gramercy,” the man said. “May your soul land on fairer shores than the souls that stand before you.”

* * *

When Joe found the clearing the crows had abandoned their choir, and all was silent save for a mournful wind about the trees. The riverbed cut a serpentine trench through this acreage of wood. Leaves like crepe paper, fossilized driftwood, and the bones of weird fishes embedded themselves in the parched mud of its floor. A tusk white willow tree found root along the steep embankment. Black vines crisscrossed around the trunk and leafless branches. A young sapling was nursed along its posterior, and a ragged hollow stood at the trunk’s base as though a bear had clawed its way into the tree’s marrow. Joe peered into the cavity to find a woman huddled inside the dim alcove. She wore a threadbare dress and was barefoot. Her hair was the color of autumn wheat in Whitman County. Her face, distressingly pale. Lime green glasses from the fifties set with two rhinestones outlined goth circles for eyes. Eight feet of rope ending in a hangman’s noose strangled a disfigured collar around her neck. Her body looked human in utero, so thoroughly hemmed within the tree, so cramped within this wooded monk’s cell.

The woman held a spotted fawn, crowned in a circlet of dried flowers woven from the surrounding wood. The animal nuzzled itself against her breast and had a wound like the soldier’s back at the encampment. Blood trickled from the fawn’s sternum, down the back of its front leg, and off the delicate hoof to form stains like cranberries on the houndstooth pattern of the woman’s dress. The creature’s breathing was labored. The rib cage was visible with each forced exhalation. The eye facing Joe opened and closed, opened and closed.

“What are you doing in there?” Joe asked. The woman hesitated before making eye contact.

“Writing a poem,” she replied. “Not that it matters. Has promise they said. Family was supportive but baffled by the …” Her voice trailed off into a whisper.

“How long have you been in there?” Joe continued.

“All my life. At least, the part of life worth remembering. I felt the confinement of expectation years before I acknowledged it myself. It’s often that way, don’t you think? One knows indigestion before the meal. The threat of addiction that preludes the pill.”

“Can’t you just climb out?”

“There’s nowhere else to go once you’ve seen the pantheon. Once you’ve decided to make the attempt (however Sisyphean) to join that cloud of witnesses. Nothing else matters. That’s the real devastation. When it becomes obvious you’ll never compete, let alone qualify. Not with Glass composing symphonies and Frida painting self-portraits. I remember the first time I read Neruda. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Do you know it? I found a copy on mother’s shelf of books years ago. And then there was the accountant for a father who wanted a practical major for his practical daughter. He liked that story best. It didn’t have to be true. My therapist gave me the phrase I couldn’t find on my own. Do you know what she said?

There’s no place in his imagination for you to exist.

Yes, I thought. This be the verse.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Joe replied.

“What to say is exactly the question after so much has been said,” the woman continued. “How does one write after Nabokov, Plath, Faulkner, Szymborska? What note follows the final note of Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto? Who but the mad among us would dare write a play after Shaffer or feign fiction post-Morrison? Tell me, have you ever felt the anxiety of influence?”^[12]

“The anxiety of … I design web pages,” Joe confessed. “There’s an aesthetic to the work I do, but I’m mainly writing code. JavaScript. That sort of thing.”

“I tried art school for a year,” continued the woman. “Joined a sustainable commune of artists in Northern California. Grew cannabis. Organic produce. Moved to Oregon as an understudy with a theatre company. Headed south to Frisco with a folk trio. Sold hemp bags, crystals on street corners. Dated an artisanal coffee roaster in Mission District. “Found god” as they say with a self-proclaimed Astral Projector. Found Jesus for a sweet season. Found Buddha for a spell. Purchased a used easel and a set of oil paints. Experimented with mushrooms. Had a bad trip. Became a political activist. Lost myself in books. Learned French. Renewed my interest in theater. Wrote a play. Published three poems in a distinguished literary journal. Broke up with the coffee roaster and married a physicist on a whim with his own startup. Divorced him a year later when I found him in bed with an underage girl. Hiked in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Wrote half a short story. Took a pilgrimage to Joshua Tree. Attended Burning Man in ‘09. Left a message on the Fire of Fires. Found a stable job to focus on my art. Created mixed media sculptures that didn’t sell. Had my confidence betrayed by two trusted friends. Slept with a guy who turned out to be a cocaine addict. Had my identity stolen online. Found myself alone and unemployed in an apartment I couldn’t afford. Lost my work-sponsored health insurance. Drank more than one should. Received two rejection letters in the mail on the same day. Ignored calls from mother. Drank more. Hung from a water pipe next to the bathroom ceiling until I knew it wouldn’t give. Learned how to tie a noose on YouTube. Bought rope online. Free shipping. Wore this dress. Stared at the glossy red tile wall in the bathroom until I no longer saw my reflection. Stood on the edge of the bathtub barefoot and found myself alone in this tree moments later.”

“Sorry.” It was all Joe could muster.

“I lived more than most.”

“Then how’d you end up here?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? And what’s with the fawn?” the woman asked with a tart smile. She looked down at the animal in her arms. Its breathing had become rapid. Blood continued to flow from the wound. Undeterred, the woman began to stroke it behind the ear. The fawn’s eyes closed with contentment.

“Beauty is the only constant,” the woman continued. “It’s everywhere. You can’t escape it. Even here, even this fawn, although it feels more residual, nostalgic, irrevocably hitched to sorrow somehow. At Beauty’s altar I neglected boyfriends and holidays. Upon her altar I left a weekly tithe of all disposable income. I adorned her sanctuary with garlands of my own making. I cast my vote for her in every election. I wore her bathrobe to breakfast. I felt her absence in warehouses and public bathrooms, freeways and tract housing. I sought counsel from Beauty like a pagan priest. I prayed to Beauty like a supplicant.”

“And what did she give in return?”

“A beautiful life,” the woman confessed. Her reply ached with an inconsolable longing. “Full of wonder, discovery, but it wasn’t enough. I had to join that elusive club, make a name, leave my mark like an indelible black tattoo.”

“And who says you didn’t?” Joe asked.

“I was never anthologized. I won’t be taught in schools. My art isn’t for sale in galleries or on display in European museums. My work doesn’t inform the work of others. I’m “Does Not Exist” on Wikipedia. I’m not even a decent Google search.”

“I thought true artists didn’t care about shit like that.”

“Oh, but we do. We just mask it with words like influential and notable. It’s the only immortality we believe in.”

“And what about those who aren’t particularly talented?” Joe continued. “Bad karma? Tough break?” He thought of Nora. “What about people who die too soon?”

“I don’t claim to speak for them,” the woman said defensively, “but I suppose we all end up here anyway.”

“That’s a dark story.”

“Yes. It is a dark story. Life’s a dark story. And when the dark story of my art didn’t take off, when it wasn’t influential, notable, there was nothing left to stave off despair. I came so far for Beauty. I left so much behind. My patience and my family. My masterpiece unsigned.”^[13]

“Well, tell me your name. Maybe I’ve heard of you.”

“Don’t patronize me. I am The Failed Artist.”

Suddenly the fawn, without provocation from either Joe or the woman, bit her cruelly upon the hand. The woman tossed the creature from her arms as though it were a treasonous snake. The fawn stumbled about on its four spindly legs, bleated a curse at the woman, burst past Joe into the clearing, staggered headfirst down the steep trench, and turned somersault to lie in a quivering contortion of death on the floor of the riverbed.

“What have you done?!” the woman shouted as she clawed her way out of the tree on all fours. She looked in horror at the dead animal and clambered down the trench to hold it in her arms.

“This is your fault,” she said. Her eyes glared at him accusingly.

“Me? What did I do?”

“You took her from me.”

“You took her from yourself.”

The woman held the fawn close. “Get out of here! You made me say too much.” She began to cry, clutched the deer like an awkward sack of lentils as she stroked its coat head to tail. Joe was angered enough by the accusation to walk away. Good riddance, his parting salutation. That was the Joe Muggeridge before Morte Magari, before The Worm King and Engineer, before brotherly love for a sister had progressed him this far in Hell. He looked down into that riverbed of wasted potential (leaves like dead hands, driftwood left to rot, fish with jawbones agape or missing) and thought of his own disconsolate life. The lucrative position he didn’t get at Microsoft. The projects he had labored on only to abandon months later. His relationship with Sarah gone awry. The years without Nora. Without Dad. He looked at the woman, dead fawn in her arms, until virtue blossomed (like a wound he could not name) in the exact center of his heart.

“Let me help you bury it,” Joe said meekly.

“What?” the woman asked.

“The fawn.” He offered to help the woman out of the riverbed. He attempted an earnest half-smile. He waited patiently for the woman until they were on equal footing. Level ground.

The Failed Artist took a deep breath, blinked the remaining tears from her eyes, scanned the clearing to make sure no one was watching, and continued to stroke the still warm coat of the dead fawn. “Next to the tree?”

“Wherever you think is best,” Joe replied.

“You dig the grave,” she said. “I’ll make the garland.”