Exit Kingdom

Let him go? Why? Why would Fletcher let him—

Moses, please. Please let’s go – the whole place is comin down. We’re gonna die, Moses. I don’t want to – not here.

Why? he says, his voice booming down on her now.

She shrinks back. In her eyes there is a searching, but he does not know for what. She does not wish to say what she says – but her reluctance could mean anything or nothing.

Cause of me, is what she says.

Cause of you how?

She just looks up at him now with an expression that could be hatred or shame or simply goneness.

I acquired his release, she says. I purchased it. From Fletcher.

He looks at her. There are sounds outside the thinwalled structure, clambering echoes of moribund hordes, foolish humanity balking against its own beginnings and its own ends. Half dead. That’s the phrase that throbs in Moses’ brain. Half dead, half dead, half dead. He says nothing to the holy woman in front of him.

It ain’t nothing, Moses, she says. It’s cheap currency. It ain’t a thing of meaning.

No, Moses says.

He shakes his head. He feels the handle of the cudgel in his hand, and it feels right and true and hefty and thick with the logic of order and reason and purpose and all the concrete yeses and nos that could end all the ambiguous sentences on all the pages of the world’s manuscript.

No, he says. It ain’t true. You’re a prevaricator is what you are. You already shown it. You ain’t to be believed.

It’s true, Moses. I’m tellin it to you true. He’s – he’s in that garage. I’d bet my whole real self on it.

Your whole real self, he says with disdain.

I’m done with misdirection, Moses. I swear it. I got nothing. Nothing at all.

You just want taken out of here. You would say anything. You would thieve my aid with your deception.

No, Moses, no. It ain’t that.

Then what? Then give me to understand why you would of purchased his life, his freedom. The life of a transgressor. A reprobate who for two decades has been only my obligation to keep and defend – and that only cause I’m his blooden kin. A transgressor. The world seeks to correct him and it’s only my duty to exempt him from his rightly course – succeed or fail as I might. And succeed I have, over and over. Except I will fail. One day. A man, he can’t hold on for ever – his fingers loosen. And who are you to intervene on this transgressor’s behalf?

But it wasn’t for him, Mose. Don’t you see how it wasn’t for him?

Then what? For the cheapness of the price? The ease of credit granted you by your sorry lot in life?

No, not that either.

Now he says nothing, because he can tell what she will say next. There is a look in the eyes that precedes some words – as though the foundation for language is laid with look. You roll it out with the eye and then you utter it with the tongue. He is already recoiling from it. The calamity of a lie so big it devastates decency itself. For in lies such as these there is the unbearable possibility of truth.

She gazes up at him. So small. Her pale skin. Her chopped red hair. Her eyes gone wet.

It was for you, Moses, she says. For you.

*

Impossible, says Moses Todd. You got to know what it is – to hear such a thing and crave for it so to be true but also know at the same time that it ain’t. The more wished for some words are, the more unlikely they are to carry truth when finally uttered. Language is criminal that way. As though your wishin for something is the very thing that makes it impossible. We should none of us ever wish on anything – shootin stars or dandelions or eyelashes or pennies in wells. I say no more wishing. That’s my covenant and my directive. Life comes. It comes willy-nilly. It’s best to open your eyes to it and cease the buildin of lofty castles in your head – or you could blind yourself with earnest prayers.

Eleven

A Christening " Fletcher’s End " The Destruction of the Gasworks " An Identification by Boots " A Death " The Compass of the Self " Nature " A Dream of Dolphins " A Search " A Vision

It ain’t true, he says and shakes his head in absolute refusal. My brother’s still here. I can feel it.

Then the Vestal spins on her heels and unleashes her full fury, like a poison capsule broke into a cup of water.

Goddamn you, Moses, she says. Why don’t you just for once in your life shut up about your piss-ant brother. You want to die here, then die here. What’s happening out in the world ain’t nothing compared to the civil war you got in you, Mose. Jesus, you’d follow those little codes of yours straight into your grave. You don’t always have to take the bait, you know. Sometimes you can just let it go.

She walks to the door, still talking as her back is to him.

I ain’t dying here, Moses. I’m dying all right – but it ain’t gonna be here. And if it is, I want it to come from the back as I’m boltin to get the hell out. See you in heaven, Mose – I hope it’s designed to your specifications.

She is nearly out the door before Moses Todd calls to her.

Hold up, he says.

She stops, but she does not turn to face him. Her back is to him, and she grips the handle of the door.

Your name, he says. What is it?

My name?

I know it ain’t Amata. And I know it ain’t that other name Fletcher calls you. So what is it? Your true name.

You want to know my name?

She says the words to the door in a voice so small he can barely hear. He wonders how long it has been since she has last said her own name – how long since she has been simply herself.

Yes, he says. Your name. I’d like to – I’d feel privileged to know it.

There is quiet for a moment – a brief interim in which even the sounds of the battle outside seem suspended – as though the whole world takes a breath and waits on the exhale. Everyone is heartbeats in their ears.

Then she says something, but it is so low and mumbled into the door that he can’t hear it.

What? he says. I couldn’t—

Mattie, she says, turning towards him and showing him her painted, sparkled face one last time. Her eyes are wet and shot through with pinpoints of brightness – as if all her fears, so many of them, bleed out like trapped light. My name’s Mattie.

He opens his mouth to speak, but there are no words. He would like to take the name and affix it to his cudgel as another blade to rip and tear at the world – and then he could feel the whole true talon sharpness of it.

The only thing he can say is her name, a repetition that is just as questioning as it is confirming: