The guards had fallen asleep. Their excuses were muddled. Had they heard a sound? How long were they asleep? Had they felt drugged or some spell come over them? They just couldn’t say. They were stupefied and furious with the thief. Had somebody put a potion in their coffee? Who brought the coffee? Talented Sylvan Morgan, whose father owned Morgan’s store, and was planning any day to leave town and go to a City and get in a show. Well, find Sylvan Morgan! But apparently he had suddenly decided to leave earlier than he’d planned, for he was nowhere to be found. A real suspect! the papers declared.
Had the guards waked up with erections? Yes, but they always woke up that way. Had the guards, who by now had turned upon each other in rage and guilt at having lost the treasure, not been protected, the town would’ve stoned them to death, or seized them and hanged them. There were threats of castrating them. The guards were locked up in jail, and themselves put under guard—the very guards of Mr. de Persia were guarded! Even then, one of them, a young, excitable and fanatic worshiper of Mr. de Persia, committed suicide in the night.
Now there was an uproar, not only in the town but nationwide, and there were repercussions worldwide. So many questions swarmed: had the sorceress come again and spelled Mr. de Persia away? Had his body been stolen by bigtime thieves, Mafia, gangsters, people with plans to make a lot of money off him, or had Mr. de Persia simply waked up and slipped away? The glass tub had lost its light, and, beautiful an object as it was in itself, fell desolate and lifeless-looking without its fantastic occupant. The town fell into grief and bitter rage—it was torn apart.
What stirred the magic sleeper? What disturbed this figure of splendor? What broke his enchanted dream and started Mr. de Persia up into life again? Where had he gone? A light went out in the world and in the glass tub. It now stood there drab as a woodbox in the forlorn field. A glory was gone from this old earth.
There was a fast and militant organization of forces. A squadron of searchers was formed to ferret about on foot, searching every corner of the town. These were meticulous and cunning old people who knew how to comb and pick through. The kind that—God deliver you from them if you’re a sales clerk—leave nothing unturned. Such stealthy old ones pick up the sense of a dark scene like a rat. A furious posse of chasers, young buck studs, was put on horseback, one mass of rearing, stomping, shouting man and animal, and they thundered out of town towards where nobody was sure; and a mixed band of young and old who knew the mysterious Thicket went into its wilderness and began flushing out with dog and stick, blazing trails, and unlocking locked brambles with hatchet and knife. They saw the old bearded hermit—the Gregarious Recluse—always seen by hunters and adventurers. Some still insisted that he had horns. To be such a hermit who had made the decision to remove himself from social intercourse, he always came very easily into the hands of strangers, like an easy woman or a wagging puppy and would talk your right arm off if you let him, sentimental old soft lovable slob.
A pair of people, an ungodly duo made up of a fake priest and a transvestite, were spied on the highway in a pickup truck and seized near the Louisiana line, transporting and smuggling a dummy of Mr. de Persia, so lifelike that it was astonishing, out of the State. “We were just having some fun,” the transvestite, only in half-drag (he wore denim pants and cowboy boots but was in heavy stage eye and face makeup and filled out a flimsy blouse) declared. “We were just moving a little magic along Highway 6A through this ugliness of billboards and Pig Stands where the barbecue is all fat,” said the young transvestite. “To bring people some magic.”
“And a little Jesus Christ for their hearts,” chimed the priest.
“Come on,” the policeman said firmly. “Follow us. You’re under arrest although we don’t know what for yet.”
“The Mann Act?” asked the young man in his half-drag. “Ha!”
“Buddy you wouldn’t know a man from a towsack.”
“Don’t kid yourself. But in this instance you’re no use in helping me recognize one,” lisped the young transvestite. The cop looked closely at his giant clashing eyelashes, the gleaming wet-orange lips, the sooty mascara, and chuckled out like an oath, “Cheesuh Christ!”
“What’s your problem now?” asked the drag queen.
“Because I recognize you as Sylvan Morgan!” gasped the cop. “I oughta whip your ass!”
Then Sylvan Morgan suddenly jumped into the pickup and lifted the stuffed replica of Mr. de Persia, unzipped his trousers and released an immense organ of rubber that bobbed and waved thickly above huge hanging testicles and did obscene acts with it, screaming with delight, while the fake priest held his raised eyes toward heaven and clasped his hands, from which a long rosary hung. This was their Act, a piece of early pornography in Texas. The highway patrolman did the only thing he knew to do and that was to confiscate the straw-and-rag Mr. de Persia. What a superb joy Sylvan Morgan had done; he was talented, no question. The policeman seized the dummy and in the struggle clasped it to him in a sort of dancing position. “Oooo!” shrieked Sylvan Morgan, “may I cut in, ha!” and the two began a tug of war on Mr. de Persia’s replica. The poor phony priest was running up and down and calling out to the Saints. Whoever was crossing the Louisiana state line that day you’d have thought would have kept going, seeing such a crazy sight in the back of a pickup truck. But no, of course highway travelers stopped, and seeing what it was, joined in the tug of war. That was how the dummy Mr. de Persia was torn to pieces (cotton wads, newspapers, excelsior straw) and scattered by the wind over the Louisiana line. Some found pieces and gobs of him floating on the Gulf at Biloxi, even; and the fake Mr. de Persia was picked out of trees as far as the Valley. The two thieves fled, in the commotion, and were lost; who cared. The rubber phallus—which of course everyone was after—people have no conscience—was seen floating on the river through several towns, and there was seining and there were nets and devices of all kinds to try to capture the floating organ of Mr. de Persia, said, now, to have supernatural and magical powers. But it reached the river’s mouth at Boca Chica, was detected among garbage and sewage, swirling into the foul Gulf at Brownsville, where a lighthouse keeper reported to Associated Press that he saw a seagull carrying it away toward Mexico—people in Mexico did see a UFO, but who knew?—a tanker going from Houston to Balboa, Panama, telegraphed sighting it among a company of dolphins who were having themselves a time with it; and finally there was silence, it was seen no more. Mr. de Persia’s rubber private had disappeared forever.
The town was left with the empty tub of glass. Though it couldn’t be moved, of course, and was therefore not in danger of being stolen, the round-the-clock guard continued. A famous lawyer and a famous detective came to try to solve the case. More people poured in. So many journalists and press reporters were there that they had to set up a special tent for their headquarters. There was a blue balloon always over the town, buzzardlike, radio-broadcasting, photographing, advertising. It rose from and settled in a pasture behind Rose Field. It flew out a streamer that unrolled like a paper whistle and it advertised various commodities—“Eat,” “Drink,” “Chew,” “Buy.” The balloon also took photographs of Mr. de Persia for publicity releases to newspapers all over everywhere and for local sale. Thousands of photos were sold. A framed picture of Mr. de Persia in his glass tub was on the walls of most houses and in stores and offices along with the Pope, the President, and Jesus Christ, in many instances. Poor Mr. de Persia! He was truly on everybody’s lips and in their prayers, that no harm would come to him, asleep or awake, wherever he was.
Suddenly he was seen walking in the river bottom, by some early morning fishermen. Two men swore they saw him walking in the dawn river-fog along the riverbank. Instead of calling to him, they fled. At the Jake & Lou Diner (Jake was a woman) by the crossroads, the fishermen called in to the newspaper. A search was rushed out and put to foot in that area but nothing was found. A bullhorn was even used, calling, “Mr. de Persia! Mr. de Persia!” It resounded through the river woods, and sounded very eerie. Birds flew up and there were crashing sounds of animals leaping away.
One fear was that the sleeper might be walking around in the trance that had laid him low. This thought was horrifying to some, as though he might have been a human monster, stalking at night. Naturally there were more and more visions of the walking sleeper—at windows in the night, in orchards by moonlight, in trees out by the lake. One person saw him sitting in the barber chair at the hotel barbershop around two in the morning. If he was mobile now—“ambulatory” was the word they were using—was he still in erectus?—a phrase used by some newspaper writers or Time or somebody. (We were all getting quite an education and our vocabulary was enlarged and enriched. Mr. de Persia’s condition was affording us fast, free experience. We would never be the same; we knew too much now. In this way the town was corrupted by Mr. de Persia. Our innocence had departed. In this way Mr. de Persia had raped the virgin town of Rose, Texas. We had eaten his apple; as they said in the cities, we’d been fucked. Both ways.) My God, many a bedroom occupant thought it had a visitor in the night. Local daydreams were rampant, now that Mr. de Persia might be accessible.
In the absence of the very man himself, the ghost of Mr. de Persia took over the town. His absence possessed the town as powerfully as his presence had. There was no escaping him. No wonder people said he was a magic man and gave him supernatural powers and qualities of a wonder person. There were sudden sights of him, and at the oddest times, and in the most unlikely places. Sometimes he was naked, a huge godlike figure resembling a statue in a museum, with his great stob of a phallus stabbed into him, and his testicles like a fat apple between his thighs. Once he was carring young Jesus on his back. Another time he was strolling with a woman, and then somebody again had that same sight of him, and then one more. Who was this woman? All those who had seen her described her the same. She was tall and dark-headed and veiled! How? Hooded, almost, with lots of white veils over her dark hair and face, burning eyes, glowing behind the silken folds. But the woman remained a mystery and nothing ever materialized. False alarm! Blind alley!