The Fritz Act rollout went wrong from the start. Doubtless some part of it was mismanagement by the Joan A. Wales Psychiatric Institute. JAWPI was meant to cut the loonies loose, yes, and it must be admitted, there was a practiced lack of interest in the regulations for what might happen to them after, in favor of bottom-line savings. What did happen though…well, that was never planned for, even if in hindsight the ensuing madness seems inevitable.
There was no way the criminal element wasn’t going to get involved, see. The Island was largely a criminal operation—still is—and on the Island, crime meant Ralph Mayor. Ralph himself I never saw, but I heard plenty. A kingpin in hiding, so powerful his name was enough to keep the gangsters in line. Everywhere you looked, you saw the shape he’d left behind. By my time, the “Mayor” of Loony Island had, like so many other officials, moved away from his constituency—although most of those others were elected. Mayor Mayor? He elected himself.
Julius’s buddy Daniel “Donk” Donkmien ran it for him by proxy: the “deputy mayor,” Ralph’s indispensable appointed right hand—a sentimental appointment, some said, given what had happened in bygone days with Ralph’s old partner Yale. Yale was Donk’s big brother, long dead, and his death was ruled an accident—officially. All I know is, sentimental appointment or not, Donk ran it frighteningly well, and reported it all back to the boss.
All? Not quite.
Donk claimed he reported everything, sure, but Donk had eyes and ears that were also “off the books,” so to speak. Just two eyes and two ears, just one informant, someone Donk knew from old times. But this wasn’t just some paid mole or nosy neighbor tattling on disgruntled workers or power-hungry gangsters—he was Donk’s man all the way. And skillful. It’s no accident Donk’s sneak was the first to discover that the Fritz Act was being used to front a larger plot, and it may be he sniffed it out even sooner than Donk wanted him to.
Because sure, Fritz may have gotten the ball rolling, and JAWPI may have been willing to implement—but the way it actually happened? That was all Donk, acting off the books and behind the scenes. He did it so secretly, most people never guessed it—and even though he told me about it direct, I still have to guess as to why.
Ralph may still be guessing for all I know.
Sardines are naturally social animals, which fortunately makes the can less of a horror. In the sea they require large numbers of their fellows close about, the better to dash around confused predators; spheroid masses of silver darts piercing the blue, slipping past the poor flummoxed barracuda, who catches one of them just often enough that the toothy sap keeps trying. It’s well known underwater that the barracuda is a big joke to the sardine—barracuda jokes are scrawled on the Great Barrier Reef from Sydney to Tasmania in slight silvery letters—yet the illiterate barracuda gets the last laugh, for when the fine-meshed net, that predator undodgeable, finally comes trolling, those little silver wiseacres are hoisted up into the dry choking void of upper space, where they die uncomplaining collective deaths, and where they shortly find themselves packed into mass graves, crammed closer to one another than barracuda teeth, billeted together by the thirties in low rectilinear tins, stacks of ten, three deep, eyes unblinking in the dark with only foul-smelling oil and their fellows as company.
A sardine who makes it to Slanty’s conveyer belt has had it rough already. First, you’ve got the whole drowning thing. Add to that the horror of disorientation—the sky is absolutely terrifying to a fish. Then you’re brought into the hold and frozen solid. Your eyeballs will never be the same. Once you’re thawed, you get chuted onto the belt at Slanty’s Cannery, and there your real troubles begin. Tiny knives remove your entrails. All of these knives used to be hand-operated, but now, depending on which belt you’re shunted to, you may get machine-knifed, like Sister Nettles did. An ingenious suction device removes any remaining viscera, and you and the rest of your little silverdart chums are flumed down the line to your stamped, numbered, and bar-coded cell, stuffed alongside whomever is nearest until the tin is full. You’re squirted with noxious oil serving as food coloring and preservative, and then the lid goes on. And then you wait, perfectly preserved. You might wait forever, subject to the vagaries of a capricious and cruelly ironic fate. For example: One can only assume thousands of sardine cans have been purchased through the years by sailors, and brought aboard merchant ships. It only stands to reason, then, that a few, a very few, of these tins must have slipped accidentally overboard, or their ship sunk beneath the waves, thirty sardines returned to their natural home without ever knowing it, all hoping through long preserved centuries, all waiting for the turn of the key, blinding light, mastication, oblivion.
All this goes through Boyd Ligneclaire’s head as he slices the fish at the conveyor and sluices them down the chute, then uses a plastic suction snoot to whisk the entrails to parts unseen. His fingers work brainlessly, while his mind roams the deep sea. He’s decided his work will begin with an epic tour-de-force written from the point of view of a sardine—from egg to can and then (herein lies the genius) beyond the can, into the great deceased with twenty-nine of his closest friends. They’ll be one of those unlucky overboard cans on the ocean floor, and, as they wait, each tells their own tale. A piscine Canterbury! Not a novel but a poem! Which our main sardine records, Dante to a whole school of Virgils. The sea entire, encapsulated in that very can. Sardine Descends, the title poem in your collection, which will be nothing more or less than the entire Island mapped in poetry, told in ink on the page, captured between covers.
Think of the titles, then think of the poems. “Apse Street Blues.” “Neon Chapel in Daylight.” “Self-Portrait in the Blade of a Cannery Knife.”
Boyd slices and suctions Boyd slices and suctions Boyd slices and suctions.
He rarely misses a fish. Nimble.
Those dexterous digits have kept him employed at Slanty’s through grim layoffs, and this same dextrosity landed him his other paid gig—part-time, by far more lucrative, and brokered by Donk: information-gathering, spying, even the occasional burglary. Boyd prefers the burglary. High-end merchandise, highly technical thefts, no tracks left, no evidence created. In quick, out quick. The occasional picking of a particular prosperous pocket. The job at the cannery keeps the authorities from sniffing out the secret job, while the secret job keeps him flush. But his third occupation keeps him sane, sets him apart. Occupation number three is writer. Yes, the litterateur of Loony Island, the keeper of its flame, the immortalizer of its story, air father, the artistic sheen of the word made real in the flesh of the cranium, ah! It’s occupation number three he lives for. It’s his inner glory. It’s his secret strength.
He’s shit at it.
This is Donk’s opinion, and as Donk’s one of Loony Island’s few readers, it should be Donk’s opinion Boyd most values; however, in matters literary, Boyd remains unflappable. Donk expounds, but Boyd’s expression alters little, and his confidence not at all. There’s no arguing with Boyd. There’s no not arguing with him, either, at least for Donk.
“You’ve written three pages in your whole life.”
“Well.” Boyd, leaning against a wall, striking what he hopes is a devil-may-care pose. “Three pages, yes. But. Three perfect pages.”
“They’re junk.”
“You have an imperfect understanding of my intent.”
“I’d hate to think I had anything approaching understanding of your mind.”
“Someday, you’ll sing a different tune. I’ll join a writer’s colony and make contacts.” Boyd’s conviction—that his preordained path to life as a famous and renowned author involves joining a writer’s colony to make contacts—comes from well-thumbed copies of Wheatgrass Tea, a writers’ and poets’ periodical Donk gave him once as a gift (though, as Donk has frequently grumbled since, if he’d known it would turn Boyd into a such a goddammed poet, he’d never have done it).
The whistle sounds, ending the night shift. Boyd hits the locker room, exchanges fish-sloppy dungarees for civvies—aged jeans, white tee, leather jacket—and piles out the back exit with all the other cats, pondering rhyme schemes—Iambic? Iambic is classic; it has its appeal, but iambic is so military in its cadence, so rigid, so daDAdaDAdaDAdaDA-yadda-yadda-yadda. Iambic is railroad tracks, the speed limit, the Farmer’s Almanac, poetry’s good citizen. Iambic pays its bills on time. Iambic turns all the clocks back for Daylight Saving Time. Iambic will make a solid husband, but it ain’t going to get laid on spring break. You may as well go with rhymed couplets while you’re at it. Boyd preens a moment, fires up a smoke. Cutting across shuttered factory yards, ducking through the well-known gaps in fences, working through acrobatic rhyme schemes, trapezoidal metaphors—Come on now, Boyd, let’s grab this poem by the balls, do it in an ABBCBAACBCABDDDDDCDDDDA, something like that. They’ll never see it coming.
Pulls out a battered notebook, jots: rhyme scheme; grab balls.
Ahead in the dim of dawn the dingy lights of Domino City twinkle, but for now he’s enshrouded, a counterculture prophet, the Poet Unknown yet to be revealed. He pauses, savoring the romanticism, wondering if any of the lights spread before him glow from a room fated to be the next he’ll break into, and what he’ll take from that place. Things I Have Stolen. That’d be a good title for your memoirs, Boyd thinks, reclining into the comforting habit of imagining his as-yet-nonexistent career in retrospect. Suddenly it strikes him—iambic rhymed couplets, hmm…might they not be…perfect? So jejune, so out-of-fashion, might they not have come back around to be considered avant? The least-expected thing? Sui generis? Yes! Hoe. Lee. Shit. Wheatgrass Tea won’t know what to daDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDO with itself! He claps his hands together once, Eureka!—pulls out the notebook, jots: couplets; hoe lee shit—then freezes.
Someone is standing nearby, staring at him.
It’s still too dim to perceive features, but the interloper’s tall and thin, and male, wearing a suit that shows up powder blue in the spots where the light reaches. Though his face isn’t visible, Boyd knows the stranger’s looking right at him. Seeing him. A little red coal dot dances up near the stranger’s head. Boyd waits for this figure to move, but the stranger just stands, takes a leisurely drag of his cigarette.
Professionally stealthy, Boyd is unused to being seen, and certainly unused to being seen first, in the creeping morning dark no less. The stranger makes no movement, no sound, no acknowledgment; he simply stands and watches Boyd and blows smoke. Unnerving as hell; Boyd’s nape hair stands up. How to proceed? Run? Saunter past? Say “Howdy”?
The stranger speaks, very clearly.
“Boyd,” he says.
“Do I know you?” Boyd asks—and oh mama, are his hackles prickly now. Something in this fellow’s voice is…deep. Not low, but deep. It holds more secrets than an ocean trench.
“Do you know me?” the stranger replies. “Interesting question. No. I’d have to say you don’t. But clearly I know you.”
“Are you looking for a hire?” Boyd asks. The time to scamper is near. It’s occurring to him—This might be one of the people you’ve burgled recently, Boyd. Somebody with fancy security who caught you on camera and has decided revenge is a dish best served right now. If you don’t scurry, you may find yourself duct-taped to this guy’s basement pipes, listening to the unmistakable sound of a bone saw being sharpened.
“I’m just checking in.” He puffs, expels a wreath of smoke. “I’ve been ‘checking in’ on all sorts of people. But I haven’t yet stopped by to see you, old friend. I’ve mainly been dealing with Gordy, and believe me, Gordy’s a handful. An armful. It’s kind of odd for me to see you like this—here, now—though I don’t expect you to understand.”
“I don’t understand anything you’ve said so far, to be honest with you,” Boyd says, edging back, getting ready to run.
“You’re not going to run,” the stranger remarks.
“Of course not,” Boyd freezes again, gives what he hopes is a devil-may-care-and-not-at-all-hysterical laugh. “Why would I run?”
“Because you think I might hurt you. But I won’t.”
“I’d feel more confident about that if I knew your business.”
The stranger says nothing for a while, then: “Curiosity. The itch of ages, the prime addiction, the killer of…” He stops and chuckles. “Hm. Probably the wrong idiom. I suppose I’d better tell you some things that might help. First, tell Julius he’s got to make his move soon with the flickering man. He’s got hours, not days. Second, you really ought to come check out what I’m standing on. You won’t be sorry.”
“Who are you?”
The stranger says what might be a word, or might be a name, and then, as if from a vertical crease running from the top of his head to his pelvis, the Deep Man folds himself in half, then again, then again, reducing himself by halves until there’s nothing there anymore. It’s the damnedest thing.
Boyd stands breathing until his pulse reaches normal and his pelt smooths down. Then he gives a low whistle, his brain on-tilt and humming, desperately trying to catalogue the experience—There might be a story in it. Boyd wanders over to where the guy had been, searching for mirrors that might have been used to effect the trick. There was something about that guy. He was…he was…Boyd searches for the word.
Vivid? Yes. He was vivid. Even in silhouette, he was more present, more particular, more finely attuned somehow, than anything else Boyd’s ever seen. As though he’d been provided an extra measure of reality; as though he’d been sketched with a finer-tipped pen, drawn by a surer hand. Boyd looks down at his own self, which seems real enough. It had been only in comparison with the stranger that he’d felt diminished—Oh yes, there’s a story in this, if there’s opportunity to tell it…tell Julius…hours not days…you know, you should tell Julius…stop over at the Neon in the evening at his barbecue, catch him after he gets back from his rounds…and then he, he folded? God, what a spookshow
Landrude…That’s a name? Maybe a…title? You’ll have to look it up in the dictionary.
Shaking himself all over as if to rid his skin of unwelcome pests, Boyd tosses the butt half-smoked and grinds it out with his heel, noticing at last the perfect circle upon which he’s standing. It’s a manhole cover—a remarkable thing in itself. Most of the manhole covers in the Island have long ago been filched and sold for the raw pig iron. Part of the neighborhood’s theft epidemic, the manhole covers. Everything not nailed down. These days, moving around the Island requires a level of attention that recommends sobriety if you want to avoid a lost tire or a bad fall into raw sewage. But this manhole’s cunningly concealed, painted approximately the same color as the pavement, hidden among the abandoned factories; it seems thieves and vandals have thus far overlooked it—Well, Boyd, are you a thief, or aren’t you? Roll this sucker home.
He feels at his belt for the tiny zippered pouch—lockpicks, screwdrivers, glass-cutter, safe-cracking tools—and from this he draws a thin aluminum rod, folded up in thirds, which opens on locking hinges to form a tiny but sturdy crowbar. Inspecting closely, Boyd whistles appreciation: this lid appears to be a commissioned job, some art deco thing probably ordered by a local robber baron back in the industrial-boom times. An imprint Boyd’s never seen before bears the legend:
LOVE FORGEWORKS, LLC
(Pigeon Forge Division)
There’s a striking spiral pattern of corrugation around the edge, and upon the center the craftsman’s etched a triptych of images: a blacksmith at his forge, a fountain, a pigeon by a stream. Damn, Boyd thinks, I bet I could hock this to an uptown collector for a thousand. He slides the sharp end of his bar into the pick hole and pushes hard, expecting the weight of iron, but to his amazement the lid lifts smoothly on hydraulic hinges. Wide brackets set into the wall at two-foot intervals down the hole form a ladder, leading to a complete lack of gloom.
Taking the first few rungs, Boyd blinks, snow-blind. He descends into a tunnel that stretches horizontally to indistinct dots in both directions. It’s endless. There are no doors or branches, just this one artery. But it also looks new and well kept, as if the damn thing is recently built and modestly used.
What. The. Fuck.
As if today wasn’t weird enough. And what had the vivid folding man said? You’ll really want to check out what I’m standing on.
Why am I obeying a folding man, Boyd asks himself, climbing downward. Why, why.