The Gospels of Mad Americans

By: Logan Gardner

Chapter 1: The Pretty Faces of the Burgeoning American Monarchy

The Duke picked up his hat and put it on his head. It was an average hat, navy
blue with a Yankees logo on it. The Duke wore it some places, except to the barbershop,
and to church if he ever went. This was because, once upon a time, he’d worn his hat
into a church and an old woman had given him the meanest glare he’d ever experienced,
as if God’s own holy wrath was pouring from her rheumy eyes. Another time, he’d
worn his hat into a barbershop and had forgotten to take it off. The woman who’d cut his
hair was attractive, and the Duke thought he might love her at the time. She’d laughed at
him and shook her head the whole way through because of his imbecility. He could still
hear her talking in his ear on cold nights when he was alone in bed.
“How could I cut your hair while you were wearing that hat?” She whispered
from his subconscious. His ears still reddened.
The Duke had tipped her generously, because he loved her, although he never told
her or saw her again.
Now, right now, this may not look like much of an epic. Most epics do not begin
with some schmuck putting on a hat. Once upon a time, there was a man named
Odysseus, begging his donkey to pull his father’s plow. They all have to start
somewhere.
The Duke of Arizona is the subject of this epic. The Duke was a sighing, bleary-
eyed man with dark hair and pale skin who often, it seemed to some, sleepwalked
through life.
The Duke of Arizona had not always been The Duke of Arizona. His name had
not always been Duke, and he’d never set foot in Arizona. But Arizona was his. Arizona
was his because it had been given to him by the King of America, who was the only one
who could give something like that.
The King of America had the one thing that anybody really needs in life:
charisma. He was a perfectly sane and perfectly self-assured lunatic who was allowed to
exist because he was harmless and because nobody would ever dare lay a finger on the
King of America.
The Duke loved his hat less than he loved his wristwatch but more than he loved
his ex-wife. His ex-wife had fallen in love with him after watching several romantic
comedies that indicated to her, through subtle psychological suggestion, that she needed
somebody who was “quirky” but whose heart was in “the right place.” It wasn’t until
she’d married the Duke that she’d realized she needed just the opposite. The Duke, for
his part, had set her hair on fire and killed her cat and fled the country after a fairly
sizeable crime spree that nobody ever found out about. They’d only been married for
three months, had only known each other for four, and their love affair was something so
brief and inane that the Duke barely even remembered it happening.
The Duke opened the door of his car and climbed out of it. His car was a green
station wagon that he was sleeping in on a semi-permanent basis. This was not because
he was poor; it was because he didn’t like houses.
The Duke was poor, but even if he had money then he wouldn’t use it to buy a
house. He’d use it to buy some gasoline, a passport, a gun, and a bottle of whiskey. He’d
take these things to the border and he’d cross the border and then he’d shoot the gun and
drink the whiskey and who knows what he’d do after that.
The King had summoned him to the bar at dawn, and the King did not like to be
kept waiting. The sun was just poking over the horizon, which would’ve been a problem
if the Duke wasn’t so close to the bar. The bar, being only twenty paces away, was more
than reachable in the time before the sun was fully over the horizon
The bar looked like most of Canada’s bars. There was a stuffed moose head
mounted on the western wall and a boxy television that broadcasted something about
hockey 24 hours a day without fail. The booze was cheap and the nuts were stale and the
whole place had a musk that was unmistakably of beaver pelts and old beer.
Most Canadians go their whole lives without ever seeing a beaver, and yet they
smell like they live in dams. Don’t ask me why that is. I’m not the King of Canada.
The King of America was sitting at the bar.
“You’re late,” He said. The King looked like the product of a Nazi breeding
program: eyes as clear and blue as a couple of marbles and long, curly hair that would’ve
been a pure and handsome blonde if he ever washed it but was slightly less lustrous as a
result.
The King always was wearing this red leather jacket that he’d swear to any living
soul was bequeathed to him by the late great James Dean himself. He wore a bandanna
around his neck and fancied himself a true outlaw. He’d never committed a crime, other
than pissing in public.
“The sun rose as I walked here,” The Duke replied.
“I know. I could feel it,” The King said. The King claimed to always know when
the sun was rising. The King made many claims.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Today’s the day, Duke,” The King announced.
“Is it?”
“I’m quite sure it is.”
“How can you tell?”
“Somedays you can just hear the call, and today the call is comin on the southern
zephyrs and it’s just making me so lonely I can’t even stand it,” The King said.
“Get the King a drink, Sherry.” The Duke was always somewhat wary of the
woman. Mostly, he was wary of her because she was an oracle of some potency. She
could see the future. Or so the King of America suspected, and the Duke couldn’t help
but agree.
She had inherited the bar from her father, and she’d been doing her best to keep it
afloat. She loved the King of America. She let him sleep in the bar and drink there for
free. Free liquor for life isn’t something you should ever give to someone you love.
That’s a good way to destroy a liver and a better way to destroy a mind.
“No drinks today, Duke. If we drink then we might feel less lonely and more apt
to sit on our asses and drink more. I think alcohol might be our problem Duke,” The
King of America said as he poured himself a glass of something amber-brown. He was
just about to drink from it when he realized what he was holding. He threw the glass
against the eastern wall and it shattered with a tinkling sound.
Everything the King of America did was crazy and elegant. There was this
spontaneous, beautiful energy that emanated from him at all times. Perhaps that was why
he was so good at love. There wasn’t a girl on the planet who didn’t dream of being
loved by such a debonair madman. He did it the right way, suave and psychotic all at
once.
“How do you plan on getting to America, King?” Duke asked. Sherry had
scurried across the floor and was sweeping up the broken glass. The King took no notice
of her.
“On a scooter, most likely. My uncle has one to sell me. It’s old and blue and
will travel two hundred miles with only dreams for fuel,” The King said proudly. “Just
the steed I need to reclaim my throne.”
Duke had never asked the king how he’d been exiled from his kingdom. He
suspected it was for something like murder or drug-running or serial insurance fraud.
That wasn’t it though. Like I said, the King had only ever committed one crime: pissing
in public.
“Where is the throne of America?” Duke asked. “Washington?”
“Washington,” The King snorted. “Washington is where the president is found,
and don’t get me started on that pretender. No, the true throne of America is nowhere
near there.”
The Duke didn’t bother asking again. One of the first things anybody should
know about the King of America is that he is a verbal gymnast. He never says yes and he
never says no. He uses words how most people use tap-dancing shoes and karaoke
machines.
The Duke adjusted his cap tiredly, “So I suppose I’m going to be needing a motor
scooter as well then.”
“That depends on whether or not you plan on being present for my glorious return
to the country that is rightfully mine,” Said the King.
“Well…I’d hate to miss that.” The Duke sometimes wondered why he stuck by
the King’s side. It had to do with loyalty, affection, pity and boredom, for certain. Also,
the Duke knew that the King would likely die if there wasn’t somebody a little more
levelheaded looking out for him.
Mostly, though, it was because he believed that the King knew the secret to
finding happiness. The Duke himself had been everywhere trying to figure that out, and
he hadn’t done it yet. He chose to be the King’s disciple because he believed that one
day, the King would either show him or tell him how it was and what it was to be happy.
He was sticking around for that day.
He remembered the first time he’d ever met the King. The Duke had just arrived
in Canada and was walking briskly down a street called Canuck Court. It was frigidly
cold outside, and he was out of gas so he couldn’t run his engine to keep the car warm.
So he walked, to stay warm and try to find some luck.
He’d had nothing to do and no one to see, when he’d spotted a lone figure roaring
and stumbling through the bitter, lonely night.
“Let’s fight, you dirty old bastard you!” The King had said when he’d reached the
Duke, and flung himself into the Duke’s bemusedly open arms.
“I would, but there’s a problem. You’re drunk, and I’m not. So that means I’d
win,” The Duke had said. The King looked up at him in amazement.
“You’re an American,” The King had observed.
“Yeah.”
“Thank God. Help me up and get me to the bar and I’ll make you the Duke of
Arizona.” The King spoke with absolute clarity at all times, even when heavily
intoxicated, so the Duke had been unsure of just how drunk he’d been. He hadn’t really
grasped what the King had meant by the “Duke of Arizona” (taking it at this point for
mere drunken ramblings), but he’d known the man would likely die of exposure if not
cared for, and he knew that he had nothing better to do, so he helped the drunk get to the
bar.
At the bar, the King and Duke had then gotten even drunker together and had
talked all night of things real and imagined. The next morning, both men had woken up
with their heads on the bar and with hangovers of mythic proportions. The Duke didn’t
know how the King remembered, but the stranger woke up calling him the Duke of
Arizona and the Duke had never questioned him on it. They’d been inseparable ever
since.
“So I suppose now we’re going to get that scooter?”
“Yes, but there is a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I seem to be out of money,” The King said, checking his pockets apologetically.
“So am I,” The Duke replied.
“Well let’s get into your station wagon and we’ll go and see what we can do to
swipe that magnificent machine out from under his nose.”
“I’m awfully low on gas, and I have no money for more,” The Duke informed
him.
“Are you? How low?”
“Maybe three gallons in the tank.”
“That will be sufficient,” The King said as he hopped into the passenger seat of
the station wagon. Not knowing what else to do, the Duke shrugged and got into the
driver’s side and started the car up.
The King of America’s true uncle lived somewhere in Iowa. The man that the
King of America called his uncle lived just on the other side of town in a rather large yet
poorly kept home made of bricks.
“Hello, uncle,” He said, clasping the other man’s forearm.
“I’m not your uncle,” the man growled.
“Like hell you aren’t,” The King laughed. “Can we see that scooter you were
telling me about just the other day?”
“You want to see just one of them or both of them?” Uncle asked.
“Well, I suppose that the Duke here is also in the market for a scooter if you
happen to have another on hand,” The King told his uncle.
“You know I do, King,” Uncle responded. The King had gone to his uncle for
scooters because he knew that his uncle had once been an avid scooter enthusiast, but had
become disenchanted with that mode of transportation in his later years and had been
trying to get rid of his old playthings for some time.
The King’s Uncle wheeled out the motor scooters one at a time. The first one
looked sleek and was painted a glossy black.
The second one was, as the King had said, painted baby blue. It was a
considerably older model, with handlebars that swooped first down then up like
burnished silver wings. The thing definitely wasn’t new, but then it didn’t look shabby
either. The Duke thought it looked…timeless. Like it was the same in the beginning as it
would be at the end.
“So these are them,” The King admired, stroking the rubber grip on the handle of
the blue scooter.
“Yep. They’ll run you roughly two-thousand a pop,” Uncle said.
“Two thousand? But Uncle we’re family! You can’t expect your own nephew to
pay more than a grand!” The King cried.
“You’re not my nephew. It’s still two.” The Duke thought that the King’s uncle
was being unfair. It wasn’t as if he needed the scooters for himself.
The King threw himself upon the ground dramatically.
“Woe is me! Without my stallion I shall never cross the threshold of my kingdom
again! I will die an exile, forgotten and unmourned by my cruelly blinded subjects! I am
a King no longer and…” The King carried on like this for some time. The Duke thought
this was most undignified behavior for a monarch.
Finally the uncle said, “Oh would you shut up. You’re not…”
“I’ll give you my car,” The Duke interrupted. The King looked up at him with
shiny eyes.
“No, Duke, I couldn’t ask you to do that. I couldn’t.”
“I don’t need it anymore. We’re taking our scooters, remember?”
“…I suppose you’re right,” The King acknowledged, biting his lip. He knew how
much his friend and subject loved that car. That car was his home, even though Duke
swore that he didn’t have a home.
The Uncle agreed eagerly.
“Not so fast,” said the Duke. “This car is worth at least three good motor scooters,
not one good motor scooter and hunk-of-junk scooter.”
“Hold on now. I don’t sell junk. That scooter’s got good bones,” Uncle argued.
“It does. No uncle of mine would sell me a lemon,” The King declared. His
uncle nodded. The Duke noticed he wasn’t denying his nephew now. The Duke sighed
at his friend’s gullibility.
“We’ll take both scooters, and another five hundred dollars. And the gas in the
station wagon’s tank,” The Duke bartered. Uncle looked away like he was considering it,
and then nodded.
“Deal. I’ve got a pump you can siphon with.” And with that it was done. The
King of America rode away on a monstrosity the color of the faded sky and the Duke
followed behind, shaking his head at the strangeness of life.
The King wanted to use the money that his subject had won to buy some alcohol
and some pot and some other stuff, but the Duke refused. Instead, they went to a sporting
goods store and purchased the kind of sleeping bags that will keep you warm in a blizzard
and some weather proof pillow cases. They had about a hundred-and-five dollars left
after that, which were for “travel expenses.”
The pair returned to the bar feeling like new men. No longer were they listless
drunks living off the loneliness of a homely heiress. They were on a mission that at least
one of them believed was issued to them by the Almighty. They were going forth to
reclaim the kingdom that they had fallen so far from.
The King gathered his things. He had three of them. The first one was an old
opium pipe that he never used that had belonged to his Chinese uncle. The second was a
stone dagger that belonged to his Navajo great-grandfather who had died of alcoholism.
The last was bottle of vodka from his Slavic friend Yuri. Those three things, along with
his jacket, bandanna, and insanity, made the King of America who he was.
“You’re actually leaving,” Sherry said. She sounded more hollow than usual.
Taking care of the King of America had given her a sense of purpose, much the same as it
gave the Duke. Without the King and Duke, she was basically alone except for her
employees and customers.
“Yes,” The King said. Before he knew it, the Duke was the only one in the room
not crying. The King and Sherry clung to and kissed each other in mad histrionics.
The Duke sighed. The King was really far too handsome for her. His eyes were
too blue and his hair had too much sheen and his aquiline face had far too much royal
blood in it. But he also knew the King really could hardly help himself.
After some time, the King stood up straight and looked deep into Sherry’s eyes,
one of which was very slightly lazy.
“I swear I’ll return for you one day,” he swore.
“You will, in your own way.” She said, and that’s when Duke knew that it was
true. “Listen to me, King. You must not end up in jail.”
“Why is that, my dear?” the King asked.
“Because the next jail cell you are thrown into is the one you will die in,” Sherry
informed him. The King nodded awkwardly. This was not a happy prophecy for the
King. There is nothing the King hates more in the universe than jail. Being in jail for the
King is akin to not being allowed to wear his own skin. He saw the world as his skin, and
he wore it every day he could. In jail, he could wrap himself only in gray concrete and
bemoan the loss of the many-colored robe he wore in freedom.
The pair disengaged without another word, and then the King of America walked
out. There was an awkward silence while the two stared at each other.
“Goodbye,” The Duke said.
“Take care of him,” Sherry said. “Promise.” Duke nodded in agreement. She
addressed him once more,
“There’s not a lot I know about you, Duke. I don’t know where you came from or
how the hell you ended up here. I don’t know how a man as beautiful as that could find
you to be such compelling company, nor do I know why a man as sane as you would
follow behind that dog chasing cars. But I do know that if there’s anybody that can get
that fool where he’s going it’s you. So just don’t fuck up,” was her final instruction.
Not knowing what to say, the Duke nodded. He exited the bar.
“Any regrets?” The King wondered as he leaned against his scooter.
“More than I can count,” The Duke said as he handed the King a bottle of Jack
Daniel’s. He rubbed it appreciatively.
“Thank God. I’m not nearly drunk enough to drive.”
“Earlier today you were ready to swear off liquor forever,” The Duke reminded
him.
“I’ve been born and died six hundred times since then. You expect me to
remember the promise some dead man made to you this morning?” The King asked.
Duke shrugged,
“Guess not.” They were quiet for a time, just passing the bottle back and forth.
The King of America was waiting for everything to start making sense again. For his
bride Lady Liberty to cry out to him across the lonely miles of farmland and cookie-
cutter suburban communites and water and city that separated them.
“I think I know why we get along so well, Duke.”
“Why is that?”
“I like you because you’re made of regrets, and you like me because I have none,”
The King said as he took a swig.
“There might be something to that, but maybe not,” The Duke answered after
some time. They sat there for another five minutes. The Duke became absolutely certain
that the King was going to get off his motor scooter, return to the bar, and drink himself
under the table.
The wind changed. It carried with it a salty smell, the smell of the ocean in the
middle of the day when the tides rise to bring the fish from their secret places and out into
the shimmering tropical daylight. The King took another shot, threw his head back, and
screamed,
“I’m coming baby!” He wrenched the throttle, and was nearly thrown from his
bike. The thing, for being a dinosaur, had a surprising amount of kick. The Duke
watched him go for a moment, and then he realized that he’d almost forgotten something.
He went back into the bar and grabbed an umbrella. It’s always good to have an
umbrella, in case it rains.
He was almost out of sight by the time the Duke hopped on his own vehicle and
took off in pursuit, laughing as he did. It’s good to be a young man.

Chapter 2: Leaving the Great White Wilderness and Finding a Forgotten Home.

They stood about a hundred yards away from the border between chaos and order.
They were standing next to a river too wide and too fast to swim, and the King was
pissing in it like he didn’t care who saw. The Duke watched him in awe. The Duke had
known the King too long to be taken aback by the King’s lack of shame. He behaved as a
royal, and did only what he felt ,with little regard for how others would perceive him.
“We need to get to America,” the King said as he zipped up the fly on his blue
jeans. The King believed in blue jeans. They were the only pants that America had
specifically invented, he often said. It just so happened that he was wrong, but nobody
wants to tell a king that he’s wrong so no one ever did.
“Of course we do. We did ride all these ways on scooters to get here,” the Duke
reminded him. He was a little drunk and a lot tired.
“Do you think that person on the castle walls will let us across?” He was speaking
of the bored-looking people sitting in the toll booths at the customs station. The customs
station was a medium-sized building of steel, plastic, and concrete. No part of the
customs booth came from the earth. It had been placed there, by aliens from a
government that did not belong.
The Duke wondered where the customs workers lived. Were they Canadians,
Americans, both, or neither? He couldn’t be sure, but he was sure that the customs agents
were the saddest, most jaded-looking group of people he’d ever seen in his life. Maybe it
was because they didn’t live in a country.
“I highly doubt it,” the Duke said after a pause of assessment. “But we might as
well try.”
The pair mounted their vehicles and drove up onto the bridge. This was the
bridge that would take them into the state of Michigan. The King claimed to know the
Archbishop of Detroit, but the Duke didn’t really believe that and wasn’t sure how he felt
about going to Detroit anyway.
People in Canada were always saying nasty things about Detroit. They said it was
a home for crackheads and retired auto workers and gamblers with nowhere else to go.
 They rode up to the booth that was second to the right. If you were to hand Van
Gogh a canvas and some paints and tell him to craft an abstract image of a low-level
governmental administrative professional, then the painting would almost definitely look
like the slumped figure sitting in the booth, but with more swirls and textures and such.
He was a gray, middle-aged man with not enough hair on his head and too much
in his nose. He was quite obviously near-sighted and had never taken a risk in his life.
There was a sparkle in him that was obscured by the dust of time, which had collected on
his skin and in his eyes. He wore a nametag that said “Cliff.”
“We’d like to go to America now, please,” the King said.
“Do you have the proper documentation?” The man replied. Duke did not know
the answer to that question. Duke was too exhausted for any of this business. He thought
that he’d just let the King handle it, who seemed fresh as a daisy.
“Listen, man. Does documentation make a person an American?” The King
wanted to know.
“Yes,” Cliff replied, condescendingly patient. “Do you have any?”
The King was, for a moment, taken aback.
“You know nothing about being an American, if that’s what you believe,” The
King declared. “Being an American has nothing to do with papers or place of residence.
It is a state of mind, an unassailable belief in one’s insubstantial superiority even in the
face of overwhelming reality. It is fierce patriotism that defies every sort of reason or
caution. I am the most American being in existence. I am made of fireworks and ten-
gallon hats and apple pie. Not letting me in would be to deny America its one true king.”
“America has no king. It’s a democracy,” Cliff stated bluntly.
The King doubled over as if somebody had punched him in the stomach. His face
was turning purple.
“Now you’ve done it,” The Duke told Cliff. Cliff looked at him confusedly. The
King snapped to his feet and lunged at Cliff, grabbing him by the lapels.
“You are a fool with no sense of history, imagination, or reality. You are a lamb
willingly led to slaughter, allowing a corrupt system to blind you and fuck you mindless.
You will dwell forever in a state of apathy and bureaucratic monotony. You will never
make love to a beautiful woman in a drive-in movie theatre or be called a hero. Life will
pound every ounce of masculinity from you, so that by the time you’re dead the only sign
left of your manhood will be a tiny, shriveled up, useless…”
“That’s enough of that,” The Duke said, dragging the King away by the back of
his red leather jacket. He shouldn’t have let the King handle it. The King had a real
problem with authority.
Men in blue coats were coming to Cliff’s aid, and Duke didn’t want to be there
when they arrived. The King noticed these approaching denizens of the border control
agency, and was of similar mind to the Duke. The pair ran back to their scooters, jumped
on them, and disappeared the same way they’d come, weaving through the traffic.
Eventually, they found themselves in a clearing where the grass was tough and
wispy, like that which grew in the cracks in the pavement of old church parking lots.
Crickets chirped amongst the empty beer cans and discarded ancestral rosaries. This
clearing was the place where Dreams came to die. The Duke felt strangely at home.
“I don’t think that we’re going to make it past that Cliff by his knowledge. He
beath one of the great adversaries which haunt the hallowed halls of the American
highway system: a gatekeeper of the tollbooths. These men are anesthetized to reality, so
trained are they on the falling of small change that it robs them of blessed humanity,” The
King of America swore.
“Well what do we do?” The Duke asked. The King of America didn’t answer.
Instead, he started walking away from the field.
“I hate this field,” The King said. “It is a place for people who are staying, not for
those who’ve left.”
The pair sat on the side of the highway for awhile. It was fairly busy. The Duke
thought about his old gal, not for the first time that day. When he was thinking about the
past, he was usually thinking about her. She and the Duke had been in love, once. The
Duke had always been a sort of Byronic loner, and there isn’t a single woman on the
entire continent who hasn’t at some point wanted to be in love with one of those. But the
Duke lost his girl, just the same as he’d lost everything he’d ever had.
The Duke wasn’t lucky in love. He was an excellent conversationalist but wasn’t
good at saying the things that needed to be said at the right times, and that had often left
him alone for long periods of time. Sometimes, he’d idly worry that he’d be alone
forever.
“Why did you get so upset when Cliff said that America has no King?” the Duke
asked.
“I’m sick of all these people, and the things that they know,” the King said. “There
are so many things to know. So many things to know that we haven’t even discovered
yet. And everyone thinks that, locked inside their skull, are inescapable and unbending
truths that apply to everyone. And they’re wrong.”
“People are scared of the truths that exist outside themselves,” the Duke said.
“The fear makes them angry, the anger makes them hateful. It’s a vicious cycle.” The
King nodded in agreement. He dug the Duke deeply. He liked that the Duke reserved
judgment until the end. He thought more people should adopt this practice.
“He’s wrong you know,” The King burst out into the silence. The asphalt of the
highway was fresh and unbroken. It was slick with rain that had fallen gently for a few
days. Its wet surface reflected the lights of passing cars, like shadows of another plane
peaking out from the black face of the road.
“About what?”
“Wrong about America. America has always had a king,” Said the king himself.
“America’s first king wasn’t even a man. It was a buffalo. The buffalo ruled here until
men arrived, and then the buffalo were gone. The men loved the buffalo, but they killed
them anyway.”
Another set of headlights rushed by them, into the rapidly fading American
daylight.
The King continued, “The second European king of America was the admiral of
the British slaver fleet, a man named Justin Churchwood. Then it was a French fur trader
in northern Michigan who liked to call himself L’ours. Another you might know was
named Elvis Presley. Another was named Walt and another was named Walt. They were
all kings. Not many people knew it, but they were.”
“What happened to all of them?” The Duke wasn’t sure it wanted to know.
“Time treats kings the same way it treats all men. And time is never, never kind,”
The King said. He’d been holding his thumb to the sky for the duration of their time on
the side of the highway. The sky had not answered this silent question.
 The King drank the last drops from their final bottle of whiskey, and was suddenly
taken with just how awful it tasted. It tasted like a oak trees and listless dreams and
delirium. He swore then that he’d never let another drop of whiskey pass his lips. This
vow, as all vows, would die unmourned and forgotten.
“You know what the biggest shame of it all is?” The Duke asked the King and the
sky and everything in between.
“What?” They all answered in unison.
“That we have to die at all,” The Duke replied. “How many times have you cursed
someone for telling you the ending to a great story?”
“More than once,” replied the things the Duke addressed.
“Well that’s what life is,” The Duke decided. “A great story that has been ruined
by the fact that I already know the ending. There’s nothing I can do to unknow the
ending and there’s nothing I can do to change it, so it’s just…just ruined.”
“Ah, but who says we have to die at all? Why don’t we live forever, my Duke?
You and I, always waking up to chase scary shadows like love and fame and glory. I
agree with you, my friend, life is good. So why don’t we just do it forever?” The King
wondered. One of the many things that had made the King what he was were his parents.
They hadn’t told him “no” nearly as often as they, in all estimation, should’ve.
This, combined with the King’s brilliant and stubborn imagination, had forged a
being who either forgot, refused to acknowledge, or didn’t deign to accept, any of the
many limitations that existence put on him.
The King believed fervently in the perfectibility of all things, including his own
immortality. That was one of the many things the Duke thought made him exceptional.
“You are absolutely right, my regal acquaintance. Let’s live forever as men,” The
Duke agreed.
The two sat by the road. There was something strange about that time. They
were both lucid, without any alcohol in their blood, and the thoughts that ran through
their mind were clear and cold.
The hiss of airbrakes woke both men from their sober reveries. They stared up at
the diesel-drinking monster that was parked in front of them. The truck had eighteen
glorious wheels, and was spattered with the grime of travel. It had an animal musk to it,
but neither men thought anything of it. All of Canada has the same odor, to some extent.
“Where are you boys going?” The driver asked. He was a bespectacled man,
wearing horn-rimmed glasses with bright blue eyes underneath. Ever notice how you
never see a truck driver wearing glasses?
“That’s a loaded question,” The Duke said.
“America!” The King used the word like an incantation that could end all evil and
bring about a new age of enlightenment. So far, there was no evidence of it doing either
of those things.
“Well then you’re going the wrong way,” The driver informed them. The driver is
a practical being, who travels where the economic tradewinds doth blow him. America,
Canada, Mexico are all words that mean nothing to him.
The only country that he knows is a dirt-and-asphalt kingdom called The Road.
The Road fills his spirit, and he only is lonely when he isn’t coasting along it, with spit
cup in hand and a shotgun in the passenger’s seat.
“That’s not how you get into America, not the America I know anyway,” The
King said sadly. “My kingdom is one of gamblers and outlaws, with men on horses who
aren’t afraid to die without a home. That’s the gateway into some other America, where
people never grow wings and never grow roots and just sort of drift, singing dirges of
listlessness as they wander in and out of chain restaurants and television screens.”
The Duke and the Driver stared at the King, who seemed to have disappeared in a
small way. The Duke became certain then that the King was nothing more than a ghost,
and he himself just a child in an amusement park with a red balloon tied round his soft,
chubby wrist.
“You’ve meandered into the abstract,” The driver informed him. The driver, of all
people, understood the direction of things.
“If we want to find the throne of America, then we must enter it like jackals,
digging beneath the razor wires of complacency that most people endure,” The King
determined. The King had this strange, star-gazing sense of reality. It was all about
symbols for him, and principles. The King had principles that were based mostly on his
sense of poetry and his desire to live life with eyes open. Nothing else really mattered to
him.
“So you want us to break the law?” The Duke asked, already knowing the answer
he would receive.
“What law? I am the law, so long as I’m in my country, which I soon will be,”
The King said.
“He some kind of nutjob?” The driver inquired to the Duke apathetically.
“Some kind,” The Duke confirmed. The King was lost in his thoughts, so he
didn’t hear the Duke say this. The Duke sometimes wondered, on idle days, what would
happen if he were to confront his friend about the condition of his sanity. He expected
that the King would either abandon him, or return to reality. The Duke had already had
enough of reality, though, which is why he left the King to his craziness and followed
behind in its wake.
“Would this be a time to alert the proper authorities?”
“That depends on your definition of proper,” The Duke responded.
“I think we ought to head for the Mississippi. Every great American who’s ever
lived has seen and reflected upon the Mississippi, and I haven’t yet,” The King said to
himself.
“I’m goin’ towards America,” The Driver said. “Might be able to put you two in
back, if you wanted. I’ll be wanting a reward, though.”
“I will make you one of my advisors,” The King offered. “I could give you a nice
fiefdom somewhere in Missouri.”
“No thanks. What I would like is one of those scooters.”
“What’s a long haul truck driver going to do with a scooter?” The Duke wanted to
know.
“I don’t drive this truck everywhere I go, you know,” The Driver said. This was a
lie. The driver drove, and that is all he did. He really wanted the scooter in case he ever
felt the need to run away. At the moment, he knew that he would have to walk away
from his truck if it ever let him down. The scooter would act as an escape pod.
“It’s a deal. You can have a scooter in exchange for a ride to America,” The King
decided.
“I feel like we ought to think this through better,” The Duke suggested.
“Nonsense! Thinking things through is for miserable people who go nowhere
because they can’t decide what somewhere they want to go to. I myself would rather go
anywhere than nowhere,” The King said.
The Duke considered this, and decided it was for just this sort of saintliness that
the Duke was the King’s disciple. It was madness, yes, but it’s better to go crazy from
living too much than from not living enough.
The driver opened the trailer of his car. The animal noises and sounds that the
Duke had noticed before were amplified a hundred times in the tinny storage space.
The trailer was a prison of thick sheet metal, with the sour, earthy reek of animal
shit and the heat of warm bodies giving it a humid nausea. The animal noises were,
specifically, the baahs of sheep. The entire truck was packed solid with them. They
bleated out their lives in individual cells not large enough for them to stand straight in.
This storage container was a very specific vision of hell designed just for the King. The
King thrived in open air, where he could act out his expansive craziness with the world
for an audience. It was hard for the King to imagine an existence consigned to a single
space.
“I changed my mind,” The King said suddenly. “We’ll take our scooters and
make our own way to America.”
“What? Why go back on your deal now? I’ve crossed this border thirteen
hundred times; I know every agent by name. They trust me. Nobody else is getting you
across this border; I’ll make sure of it,” The driver threatened. Good business was one of
the only things the driver understood. Understanding business is mostly just
understanding how to be an asshole.
“Come on, King. You’ve written your poem; now you have to recite it,” The
Duke said. The King looked at the Duke. He knew how much the Duke hated
hypocrites. The Duke didn’t believe in much, but he believed people should mean what
they say.
“Alright, put us on,” The King agreed grudgingly. The driver dropped the ramp
and the two men guided their scooters onto the hell trailer. The sheep courtier instructed
them to place their machines in one cell in the back and themselves to share another. It
was cramped; the two men leaned against the wall, breathing in the bovine fumes of the
sheep’s lives. Each cell had three holes to let in light and air, which wasn’t nearly
enough, so the room stayed dark and sweaty.
“Hey, King?” The Duke began.
“Yes?”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“A hundred, thousand times. I live in love, in love with the world. In love with
everything that is noble and pure and innocent and beautiful and ugly and honest and
kind. I dig the crazy brand of sanity that this messed up world of ours subscribes to. I
love it all,” The King claimed.
“You are my friend, and I think you’re a genius, but I also think you’re very, very
full of shit. Your kind of love is cheap and easy and half-baked. I’m not talking about it;
I don’t want to,” The Duke said, troubled.
The King didn’t hear his friend like this often. The Duke rarely contradicted the
King. The King suspected this was mostly because the Duke didn’t think he knew any
better, most of the time. Most of the time, he didn’t.
“Well what kind of love are you talking about then?”
“I’m talking about the American kind of love. The picket fence, family-of-five
kind of love. The kind where a lawyer marries an elementary school teacher and they
live happily ever after because they’re perfect for each other and don’t want or need
anything else,” The Duke said.
“You think that’s the American kind of love? What do you know about American
love? Americans love like forest fires and jet engines. Our love burns and our love
consumes everything. Our love always leaves us empty and spent, lying in the junkyard,
because we’ve been living so hard for so long that we just can’t go on,” The King said.
“Well I’ve got what I think and you’ve got what you think. My point wasn’t to
argue with you about what sort of love is the American sort. I’m asking if you’ve ever
been in love that makes you want to stop doing all this hectic stuff you’re always doing
and just be with another person,” said the Duke. Usually, he didn’t try this hard to break
through the reality distortion field that the King dwelled within. But he really wanted to
know this. It was an essential thing to know about someone. Being in love is a
massive chemical reaction. Once it gets going, nothing can stop it. And once it finally
dies out, it leaves the components transformed totally and irreversibly. The Duke knew
this, because he’d been in love before.
“I suppose that I haven’t. Love has always struck me as something for somebody
else. Somebody more easily satisfied,” the King replied thoughtfully. “I don’t think
there’s any one thing in the whole universe that I could be in love with so absolutely that
I wouldn’t want anything else. I want. That’s what I do.”
The Duke thought the King was being honest with him, as much as the King
could be honest about anything.
“So what about you, dear Duke? I’ve seen you with as many women as you’ve
seen me, and I don’t think you’ve loved any of them. Where is your beautiful curse?”
“She’s somewhere in America. You want to know what the worst part about being
in love is?” The Duke asked.
The King nodded.
“The worst part about being in love is when you realize that it really has nothing
to do with itself. Love really is just a combination of the right time, the right place, the
right mood, the right amount of money, the right sort of wine,” the Duke said, kicking a
turd in disgust.
“And what’s wrong with that?” the King asked.
“You realize that most of love goes away as things get less right. You’re always
talking about how you’re always being born and dying. Eventually, I think everyone’s
died and been born so many times that the only thing left of love is this little kernel of
memory that reminds us what we used to be,” the Duke reminisced.
“And what did you used to be?”
“Happy,” the Duke sighed. “Happy, and very stupid. You know time.”
“I do know time,” The King agreed. They stopped talking as the great eighteen-
wheeler came to a halt. They couldn’t hear the words that Cliff and the driver exchanged.
The sound of their voices was drowned out by the lamentations of sheep who could go
nowhere and do nothing.
“We’ve been given up,” The King hissed.
“How could you possibly know that?” The Duke whispered back.
“I’ve got ears like a hawk,” The King said.
“Hawks are generally better known for their keen eyes than their hearing,” The
Duke responded.
“I stand by my claim,” The King insisted. “They’re going to come get us. We
must prepare for our dramatic escape scene.”
“Do you think this is all some sort of action film in which you’re the star?” the
Duke asked.
“You say that like it’s a bad sort of thinking,” said the King. “Try to have a little
more imagination. Start opening the sheep’s pens.”
Figuring that the worst case scenario was that the King was right and the best case
scenario was that they’d have to round up a few dozen sheep, the Duke decided to do
what the King had told him to. He ran around, throwing open the gate to every
containment unit in the trailer. He counted twenty pens, all with the three sheep crammed
inside with unceremonious cruelty.
“You should be free anyway,” He told the sheep. From what he could tell, they
agreed.
“Get on your scooter, quickly!” The King urged his subject. The Duke obliged,
mounting the vehicle. He figured that his contract with the driver had been broken when
the driver had decided to double-cross them. He’d sort of liked the driver. He’d seemed
atypical, at least.
A blinding wall of light was thrown up as the hatch opened. Cliff’s slouched
silhouette was visible, and there were two others beside him. He saw him recognize the
Duke, who grinned at him. After that, the sheep poured from the container with baahs of
fury, their cloudy wool not enough to soften the hard bones and hooves underneath. They
charged onto Cliff and the others
“How…”Cliff sputtered before being overtaken by a sea of sheep. The King
laughed and laughed, and the Duke followed along. It felt good to see those sheep have
their revenge, both men thought.
Moments after the wiry-haired tidal wave had cleared from the truck, the King
screamed, “Stay on my tail Duke! To America we go!” and twisted the throttle with the
force of a farmer breaking a chicken’s neck. The vehicle roared and bucked forward,
surging from the darkness and shit and into the fresh gray light of southern Canadian
spring.
He threw the handlebars to the right and executed a perfect hairpin turn, and then
was back to flying as fast towards the gates of America as his faded blue zipper would
take him. The Duke stayed behind him the whole time, barely managing the same feats
of daredevilishness that the King performed with impossible ease and relish.
The gates had already been opened for the driver, and the pair shot through them
without resistance. They could hear Cliff screaming behind them. The King just stuck
his middle finger in the air and kept laughing and driving and being his crazy self.
And the Duke could only watch and smile breathlessly while the King did what he
did. The Duke was in awe of that man, that perfect specimen of life that believed in all
the things that most people are afraid to believe in. The Duke knew that he was breaking
the law, but the Duke couldn’t support any legalities that would keep the King out of
America. The King needed America, and America needed the King. As long as they
were apart, it was sinful.
The Duke would come to see himself as a ragged sort of saint for helping the
King get back to America. It was his mission, given to him by the Almighty, to take care
of the King and to watch him exist. He didn’t know where this mission would take him,
but he hoped that it would make him happy. That was what he really wanted the whole
time. Nothing complicated. He just wanted to be happy.
 They zoomed and they zoomed, travelling as fast as the small, dependable motors
of their old uncle’s scooters would carry them. The King had a plan in his mind, and the
Duke didn’t really care what it was. All that mattered was that they were going. So long
as they kept going, nothing in the entire world could touch them. The land would protect
them as long as they were Americans, and they were at least Americans for the day.

Chapter 3: In Detroit, Angels Have Red Wings.

Somehow, they were not pursued for very long. The reason for this, the Duke
guessed, is that picking up a couple of lunatics from the fringes of society didn’t really
appeal to the esteemed members of the Port Huron police force. The King, however, was
certain that it was because runaway kings are incapable of meeting their ends in such
short order.
He didn’t really know why they were going into Detroit. The King kept going on
about how he knew the Archbishop. When the Duke asked why he wanted to see the
archbishop, the King murmured something about the Ming dynasty and the mandate of
heaven. The Duke wasn’t surprised that he didn’t understand a word of it.
They got gas at a mom-and-pop somewhere outside of Port Huron, on I-94. They
were just following signs; the King did all of the navigating.
The mom-and-pop store looked badly bruised. The shingles on the roof were
falling off and the blue paint was peeling like a Dutchman who’d been working in the
fields in summer for too long. The gas pumps didn’t work right; they were clogged up
with nasty petrol remnants.
The King picked up a pump and inspected it for a moment before setting it in the
tank of his scooter.
“This place is probably the greatest flaw in how time passes in America,” The
King told the Duke sadly. “In America, nobody ever wants to fix anything that’s broken.
Put in something more advanced, more energy-efficient, something with less emissions.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I think that the mark of a decaying civilization is when they stop trying to fix
things that are broken. One day, some big chain with ten-million employees worldwide
and more money than God is going to decide they can make money here. So they’ll clip
this little societal hangnail and they’ll build one of their fluorescent monstrosities, and
that will make money for awhile. Eventually, there will be an entire world full of big
buildings that sell a lot of things cheap,” The King said. “Only then do we realize what
we’ve done. And that will be so damn funny and so damn ironic that we’ll all hang
ourselves laughing.”
“What will we realize?”
“We’ll realize that we’ve been slowly destroying our own souls,” The King stated
dully, tossing the rusty nozzle to the ground. “We’ll realize that every weird little quirk
we ironed out made us what we are. You can’t have a soul made out of the same
building, a hundred times over. Souls are mosaics.”
“And what a boring mosaic our soul would become,” The Duke finished.
“Not even a mosaic at all,” The King huffed in agreement. He hated it when
people stole his thunder, but he allowed the Duke some grace. The King thought his
friend needed all the thunder he could get.
They hopped back on their scooters and began travelling southbound down the
interstate. The King travelled by faith, and he put his faith in the Duke, and his faith was
not misplaced. Their surrounding steadily began to look more and more like Detroit as
time passed.
Detroit has a grim exterior that covers up a good soul. Or perhaps bleak is a
better word than grim. There are vast swaths of the city where it looks like the world
ended early. Storefronts are boarded up and places of residence are burnt out, their black
interiors ugly parodies of what a home is supposed to be. They were on a street called
Schoolcraft, riding side by side and taking in the sadness that is downtown.
“One day, I think angels are going to come down and save Detroit,” the Duke
said. He didn’t know what it was about this city that just made his heart break. He had
never seen such a big thing look so dead before. Dead cities are even sadder than dead
friends.
“It won’t take anything less,” was all the King could say. Detroit was broken, and
in America, nobody wants to fix things that are broken. A city can’t be replaced, though.
So Detroit is abandoned.
Beady eyes in dark faces watched them. The vagrants all wore big coats and big
beards and quizzical little frowns. These were the unfortunate hoboes of Detroit, the ones
who stuck around not out of love or duty but because they didn’t have the imagination or
the money to be anywhere else. Duke thought that their lot was even worse than a
customs worker’s.
People who know Detroit from the windowseats of locked cars are probably
wondering how the pair weren’t robbed. This is a stupid question. Detroit still has a
sense of justice like no other city in America. The Duke and King looked to be on hard
times, just like the rest of the city, and nobody in Detroit would sink so low as to rob a
couple of hard-timers on motor scooters. There’s plenty who will rob a wealthy person in
the town by the river, but only because it suits their hungry-man’s sense of morality.
“Where are we going?”
“We are in the Detroit that is dying. We are going to the Detroit that has
transcended death,” The King informed him, and sped up slightly so as to avoid further
questioning.
The Duke wondered if the King was from Detroit. The King would never admit it
if he was. If anyone ever asked the King where he was from, he would say “America”
and refuse to be anymore specific than that.
As they continued to drive, the Duke noticed a curious desolation begin to grow
around them, until the only sound that filled the open air was the whir of their machines’
engines. He became aware of just how small he was as he drove through the remains of
the city. The buzz of his vehicle, it seemed to him, was just like the helpless buzz of a
mosquito’s wings. He was only realizing how tiny he was because now he was no longer
surrounded by the other rushing particles of humanity that usually occupied the spaces
adjacent to him. He had never felt quite so awkwardly alone as he had when driving
through the ruins of Detroit.
The King smiled. In America, he never felt alone.
“Detroit is perhaps the best modern example of a great American tragedy: the
boomtown,” The King said. “In the old days, someone would find gold in a creek and in
three days there’d be thirty thousand people pitching enough canvas to blanket the entire
state of Arkansas. Then, the gold would run out and the prospectors would run away and
leave a shell where humanity used to be and a few hangers-on that were probably there
from the start.”
“Detroit didn’t have gold,” The Duke said. His voice echoed and he was
suddenly taken by the feeling that he was actually not in Detroit. He was in a western
canyon, chasing a swift river towards the sea.
“No, but it did have manufacturing, which was the gold standard of that time.
Detroit became rich. Rich in money, rich in people, rich in culture, rich in everything.
Nobody would’ve guessed back then how fast and how far it would fall.”
“You know what’s kind of funny?” The Duke asked.
“What?”
“How nobody ever sees the end coming.”
“You’re right. That is kind of funny,” The King said.
“I didn’t really mean that kind of funny.”
“Yeah, I know. You meant the sad kind of funny,” The King agreed. “But living is
a lot easier if you can find that little fragment of divine humor at the heart of all life’s
miseries.”
“That’s kind of a bleak way of looking at it.”
“I know,” The King said, with a strange little chuckle. He turned his head. “Ah,
there they are. Look at them all.”
“Who?” Right after the Duke asked, he knew who he was supposed to be looking
at. There weren’t very many of them, but every one looked absolutely magical. One man
was wearing a bowler hat and had a junkie quiver to his left hand. Another, older man
wore a thick woolen coat with three battered medals on his right breast. He walked with
a limp and used a cane.
There was a beautiful woman playing with a pearl-handled switchblade and the
blackest man the Duke had ever seen, humming as he played with the strings on a
mandolin. They seemed larger than themselves, filling the echoing silence of dead, dead
Detroit. The sight of these strangers filled the Duke with hope and apprehension.
“Who are they?” The Duke wondered.
“Why, my Duke, can’t you see?” The King asked with a smile. “This is my court.
They too have felt the call of the Archbishop. They too have heard the trumpets of
heaven blow and have rushed to return their soundless summons. It is good to see you
again, my family.”
“Welcome back to America, King,” The woman’s voice was an unwavering and
even tide of honey. It seemed to run into the Duke’s ears, turning to cement in his
memory. She addressed him with a coquettish, smirking kind of affection. The snick of
the switchblade punctuated the end of her sentences.
“My dear departed Lady Sonia. I was fearfully hopeful that you would choose to
abandon us this time,” The King said.
“Still speaking in paradoxes, I see. You never have been able to make a damn
commitment,” She sighed with another snap of the blade.
“I’ve tried to tell you before. Nothing is just one thing,” The King argued. Sonia
didn’t seem to care.
“Who is this strange man you’ve brought down from the land of Maples? I
thought you hated Canadians, even Canadians as handsome as this one,” Sonia cooed.
Sonia was as beautiful a woman as the Duke had ever seen. Her eyes were an
evanescent, tawny brown. Her hair was black and her skin was pale and the contrast
between the two made her eyes look like molten gold. Her lipstick was a deep red and
the curl of her lips was cruel and kind at the same time. The Duke knew exactly what the
King meant by fearfully hopeful. She drew the exact same feeling from the Duke’s chest.
“I do. This is the Duke of Arizona, and he too was a wayward American, and
together we have carried ourselves home,” The King said.
“Arizona, where rattlesnakes slither into every blanket and the sun never sets?
You chased the King all the way down here for Arizona?” The man with the medals
pinned to his chest asked.
“I…I guess I never thought much of it,” the Duke said. “I just kind of came along
for the ride.”
“I think I know this man, yes I think I do. I think this man might be looking for
something else, in the company of such lunatics as we. I think this man, yes I think this
man is looking to go a little crazy himself,” This was the man in the black bowler hat.
He was Sicilian, by the look of him, a romantic gangster of the roaring 20’s, or
some such time, who had been trapped in this too-fast era of bullet trains and guided
missiles. There was a bitterness to him that none of the others seemed to share, a
bitterness and a want. The want was especially apparent in the way his eyes whipped
about and the way his fingers danced on air in perpetual anticipation.
“So what’s your taste?” The Duke asked the man. “Cocaine? Heroine? Or is it
just cigarettes?”
The Italian’s eyes snapped into focus, angry and black. His stare was like a
shark’s, dilated and hollow.
“I think that this Duke, this Duke can see only what he knows to be there. You do
not live in a simple world, my Duke, and we are not simple things with simple wants.
You should know that now,” he said. The Duke couldn’t tell if he was angry or just
intense, but there was something in the man that burned. He was sure of this.
“LaRose, stop badgering him. He hasn’t even met the Archbishop yet. How can
you expect him to understand?” Sonia said.
“Yeah, give him a break, Rosey-Boy,” The black man said, and then went back to
his humming. LaRose looked back at the musician and nodded grudgingly. “We’d better
be getting along then. The Archbishop don’t like to wait.”
With this, the musician rose to his feet, and began to walk and whistle happily
while he strummed his instrument. It seemed to the Duke that this man was the leader,
despite the fact that, according to nomenclature, the King was in charge.
“That’s the Jester,” The King whispered. “He keeps the mood light.”
They walked through the decrepit streets, filling them with sound. The Duke
understood why the Jester was needed. There was a tension to the dynamic of this
strange court. The flick of Sonia’s switchblade, the click of the gimp’s cane, and the
occasional shudders that wracked LaRose were all constantly occurring and reoccurring.
Without the strum and hum of the Jester, these things would’ve wracked the Duke’s mind
from the beginning.
They came upon a great, destroyed factory. It was covered with splashes of
obscene and beautiful graffiti, pastel letters towered on the red brick walls. There wasn’t
a windowpane left in the building.
“They couldn’t leave one window,” The Duke marveled.
“There’s too much hate in this world for a thin sheet of glass to withstand on its
own,” the Jester stopped playing to respond, and then broke back into his song with equal
gusto. He seemed utterly unaffected by his surroundings, so consumed was he with his
intricate, broken melodies.
Duke kept re-estimating the size of the building as they approached it. At a
distance, he thought it looked to be the size of a Wal-Mart. By the time he was standing
at its great metal shutters, he was sure it was larger than an airplane hangar.
The doors that guarded the entrance had once been some of the most powerful in
America, about a hundred years ago. They were iron with iron bolts as big as golf balls,
and had probably started out strong enough to withstand a freight train. But time and
chemicals and the decay of the city had worn them, and now only one hung from its great
hinges. The other door, well who knew what happened to the other door? It was gone,
probably in the river or something like that. The door that still stood was so brittle with
rust that it looked like a good kick would send it crumbling down.
“Ah, the Citadel, how I love the Citadel,” The King said in a song-song voice, to
himself. “One of the holiest places in America, Duke, the spiritual center of the Midwest
right here.”
LaRose pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. The sound he made as he
sucked in reminded the Duke of someone who had been held underwater, a gasping for
air. The Duke wondered if LaRose was drowning.
They walked amongst the dusty remnants of the assembly lines. It looked like
there had been a fire here, sometime in the building’s history. The Duke could see signs
of ash on the walls and on the floor and everywhere. The place even smelled like a fire.
“No one has used this assembly line in almost a century,” Sonia told him. She
flipped out her knife and scraped it slowly along a piece of machinery. She held it up,
admiring the thick layer of dust and black ash the gleaming steel had picked up. She
wiped the blade and put it away, only to flip it out again just a moment later.
“Is it safe here?” The Duke asked. The King laughed.
“Safety is the refuge of the insecure mind,” quoth the King gaily. This did not
make Duke feel any better.
They crossed the main floor and exited through a backdoor that somehow was still
attached to the rest of the building. They entered the dreary daylight of the city and what
must’ve been the place the workers would’ve taken their lunchbreaks. The backyard of
the factory was surprisingly small in comparison to the rest of the building. It was
dominated by a structure that was, oddly enough, made entirely of windows. The yard
reminded the Duke of the place that they’d ended up in Canada after running from Cliff.
It was a place where Dreams came to die, guarded only by a rusty chainlink fence and the
desolation of the city.
“What is this place?” The Duke asked, pointing at the great glass building.
“The robber barons of American industry have this interesting complex that
originated specifically in Americans. It’s one of the reasons that Americans are so hated
by the rest of the world.”
“The need for the absolution of our ever-guilty conscience,” the Jester picked it
up without pause. “It began when the Europeans really started to arrive in America in
force. Once they’d filled up all the good farmland that they’d staked out and didn’t want
to go out of their way to go find more, they began roping Indians into contracts they had
no way of understanding. They did this, not because it made any difference, but because
it helped absolve their god-awful consciences. They then put them on special plots of
not-so-good land they called ‘reserves.’ Then they kicked them off those reserves once
they needed those ones and put them in worse ones. All the while, they managed to feel
as if they were doing something good for them.”
“Fast-forward three centuries, and this piss-on-the-little-guy-and-call-it-rain
philosophy is so ingrained into the American consciousness that nobody even realizes
how unethical and hypocritical it is,” the war veteran jumps back in for the big finish.
“Ah, America!” The King laughs. “how I love the myriad ways your messed-up
moral compass doth lead you astray.”
“But back to the here and now,” LaRose redirected. “Whoever ran this factory felt
bad that it was underpaying its employees. So they built this sun garden and grew
flowers and fresh produce within it for the employees to take home to their dinner tables.
Fresh produce and flowers don’t pay heating bills to keep babies warm at night. The
stiffs had a strike, the executives hired strikebreakers, the strikebreakers broke the strike,
as strikebreakers are prone to do.”
“But they broke it just a little too well, because they didn’t just break the strike,
they broke the bodies of a couple dozen honest workingmen,” the war veteran jumped in.
“Sixteen dead men, and another thirteen hospitalized.”
“So the strikebreakers got sued, and the strikebreakers argued that they were only
blunt instruments and pointed their fingers at the executive, and the executives waved big
rolls of cash under the noses of the right judges, and they all walked free.”
“That’s not okay with the people of Detroit,” The war veteran interjected semi-
approvingly. “Not okay at all.”
Right on cue, LaRose picked it back up, “Nobody really knows who did it, but it
was the middle of the night, in the dead freeze-your-balls-off Michigan winter. They
threw buckets of water on the wheels of the fire trucks so they would ice up and be
unable to move. Then, they set this place on fire like they damn well meant to. And did
it burn!”
Jester: “Like the city of Rome, this massive factory burned from the inside out
until it was only a shell. And once it burned all away, the executives were too disgusted
or too poor to try and rebuild it. So it sat there. It sits here, all dead.”
“And, because America has an ironic streak a continent wide, the sun garden was
the only thing to make it through the fire,” LaRose finished the story and his cigarette,
with a mighty, weary cough.
The Duke was amazed at how the war veteran and LaRose and the Jester had been
as they told the story. It was so strange, as if they were parts of the same mind. It was as
if they’d practiced it all a hundred times, which of course they hadn’t. They were just
theatrical and very anxious to be through with the place. Nobody in the group really
liked visiting the Archbishop of Detroit. But then it did, like all things, have to be done.
“And that is where the Archbishop of Detroit currently and permanently has
chosen to reside, which is what has brought us to this place that even loveless vagrants
spurn,” the King closed.
“Why do we even need to see to the Archbishop of Detroit?” The Duke wanted to
know.
“Ah, Duke, you and your questions. He asked them all the way from Canada,
never pausing.”
“We both know that isn’t true.”
“Are you calling your King a liar?”
The two were about to begin to bicker, when the mandolin player abruptly
stopped and the whole crazy cavalcade fell silent, waiting for the player to floor them
with his unornamented profundities.
“We go to the Archbishop of Detroit,” the Jester said, “because you need a divine
blessing to go on a quest. And boy do we have a hell of a quest ahead of us.”
He then went back to his song, which became ponderous and mournful, and the
assemblage marched into the Archbishop’s home to just this beat.
The Duke couldn’t believe that he didn’t hear the chimes from outside the
sunroom. They were chimes of every material imaginable, some of copper piping and
some of broken beer bottles and some of teacups. They clinked and they clanked in the
wind that blew through the broken panes. There were surprisingly few of these. It
seemed to the Duke that this place was relatively untouched by the looters that had
broken every window in the factory. It seemed that people, out of fear or respect, seemed
to avoid the Archbishop’s home. The Duke wondered what kind of man this Archbishop
was, to inspire such awe.
There were so many windchimes that at first the Duke didn’t see the Archbishop,
although he is hard to miss.
He followed the King along a winding path along rows of pots that had been
overgrown with every sort of plant. The potted plants didn’t look at all well-kept. The
Jester’s mandolin was perfectly discordant to match the sounds of the chimes, and the
duet that the wind and Jester played stirred something different in the memory of all that
heard it.
The Duke remembered a time when he’d been drinking away the sadness of a lost
love. Sonia remembered a time when she’d taken a diamond ring off the finger of the
only man she’d ever loved. The King remembered sitting on his grandfather’s knee. The
man with the medals on his chest remembered dropping a grenade into a bunker full of
Vietnamese teenagers. LaRose couldn’t remember anything but a tiger in a cage and the
flip of a coin.
“How does the Jester play like that?” The Duke whispered to the King.
“The chimes do most of the work,” The King said.
“Who made them?”
“The same person who made the Archbishop of Detroit. The same person who
made us all.”
“Who is that?” The Duke wanted to know, but the King held a finger to his lips
and gestured forward. They were now looking at the Archbishop. He was wearing a
sharp suit. The Duke didn’t know that Archbishops wore suits.
The Archbishop was taller than any man the Duke had ever seen. Also, he had
wings, great brass wings that spanned over fifteen feet wide. He held them aloft, as if
prepared to take off and fly all the way to heaven.
All around his feet and on his body were hung the marks of those who had come
to him. Ivies grew at his feet and climbed up his great legs. A crown of Rosemary
perched on his smooth temples. The Duke could not count the number of rosaries that
hung from his thick neck.
His face was made of soft wrinkles and frozen folds of metal. The smile he wore
was somewhere between Mona Lisa and the Buddha. The Duke was certain that the
Archbishop knew something that no man could know. The Archbishop, however, was not
a man.
“That’s not the Archbishop of Detroit,” the Duke declared.
“Hold your tongue!” hissed LaRose. The wind picked up, and the chimes rang
out like a gong on a killing field at midnight. They were overwhelming and ugly and full
of wrath.
“Yes, there is another man who calls himself the Archbishop of Detroit, a man
with blood in his veins and breath in his lungs. But this man is not in touch with any
power, greater or lesser. He sits all day in robes and with folded hands, but God does not
hear him,” said the King. “God hears only the true Archbishop, the one who the poor and
the broken people of Detroit pray to.”
“And this is him?” The Duke asked doubtfully.
“Look at the flowers and signs of worship that adorn him,” the veteran said.
“They are hung there by those that come and pray with him. He is the last one left who
loves this city and the last one left who is loved by the city. As long as he remains, there
will always be hope for Detroit.”
“But how can I talk to a statue?” The Duke asked the court in frustration.
“You ask him a question, and you wait for an answer.”
“And what if he doesn’t answer?”
“Then you have no quest, and you will have to leave us,” The King said sadly.
“You will have to go your own, questless way.”
“Ah,” The Duke acknowledged. Everyone needs a quest, everyone who wants to
mean something anyway. After this, the group fanned out around the statue. The Duke
spent a moment watching them all. They were all silent, except the Jester, who
fingerpicked on his mandolin just loud enough for the Duke to listen to if he strained.
The Duke figured that he should try to talk to the Archbishop. He’d come this far,
so he might as well see.
Why am I here? The Duke asked. He stopped, sat still, and waited for an answer,
staring at the Archbishop’s kind smile. He was wearing wire glasses frames with no glass
to hide his gently molded eyes from view.
He could hear the tinkling of broken glass, and he remembered a day that he tried
not to think about usually, during his time with a gal he thought he’d loved, the same gal
that had left him with nothing but a suit and a bookful of sad love poems to his name. He
lost her once, and he was unwilling to accept defeat. He didn’t want to walk away
without a fight, as he’d done so many times throughout the course of his life. He wanted
to, just once, make a stand.
I’ve mentioned the Duke’s gal before, and trust me when I say she was really
something. She was made of southern coffee and Midwestern wheat and Montana sky.
She moved with a naïve self-assurance born from the attention that men lavished upon
her, and without ever admitting it to anyone including herself she loved the longing she
saw in men’s eyes when she walked away from them.
That day, hours after she’d broken his heart, the Duke walked into her apartment
and found her curled up with a Sicilian lone shark named Carmine. She was naked, and
he’d just been wearing a pair of black slacks to match his slick black hair and his slick
black manners. He informed the Duke that he was deeply in debt, and that he should skip
town if he wanted to keep his kneecaps
The Duke had considered killing them both. The Duke was made of regrets, and
not ending their lives passionately was certainly one of them on some days. In the end,
all he’d done was knock her favorite glass ballerina onto the floor and watched her watch
it shatter with hateful eyes. Carmine had seen the Duke’s hate and laughed. Carmine
hated and hated like nobody else, which is why he was so good at loving.
 The Duke took Carmine’s advice, tore up all his roots, and never set any down
again. There was no smell the Duke was so familiar with or abhorred so much as that of
bridges burning.
So I guess you can talk. The Duke said to the Archbishop. The Archbishop just
smiled as the windchimes sang their song.
Who are these people? The Duke asked the Archbishop, and again the wind
awoke and whistled through a set of curtains hanging on a hook some feet away. The
Duke could suddenly see what was happening behind the scenes. He could see the way
that the sun was just a great spotlight and the Archbishop and the chimes were just props
and the whole thing was just some sort of strange cosmic drama that kept going and
going. But mostly he noticed the way that everything looked so slapdash and out of
place, except for the characters that surrounded him. They were all just playing a part,
but they at least seemed to know something of the script.
What is my quest? And he didn’t even have to wait for an answer this time. The
wind abruptly changed directions, and suddenly he could hear the call coming to him
from the west, calling out to him with the endless yearning of Manifest Destiny. Yes, he
said to himself, that’s where I need to go. I’ve spent too much time under rainy eastern
skies. I need to see mountains and deserts and that great big blue Pacific. I’m going
west, as sure as the sun I’m going west.
He looked up and saw that the King was looking at him with that enthusiastic,
salesman grin plastered to his face.
“So let me ask you,” the King began, “can the Archbishop talk?”
“I think so,” The Duke responded slowly. “But maybe it’s just that you’re rubbing
off on me.”
The King didn’t need to consider whether or not this could be true. The King was
entirely certain of everything that had happened, was going to happen, and was
happening, so he never slowed down to question motivations or reason. He just kept
living and let the rest fall by the wayside.
“How about you let me test him, King?” Sonia offered.
“I don’t see why not,” The King agreed.
Sonia turned to him, flicked out the switchblade, and gently placed it to the major
artery that ran through the Duke’s neck. He shivered with the cold of the steel, and knew
that she could kill him without so much as a sigh of remorse.
“Where are we going?” Sonia wanted to know. The Duke didn’t know the right
answer, so he just went with the one he knew.
“We’re going west,” the Duke said. Sonia looked at him for a moment, and the
Duke was sure he’d answered wrong. Then, without warning, she leaned in and kissed
him breathless. Sonia was sweeter than anything else he’d ever tasted. His head swam
with the taste of her. The Duke had taken his fair share of hallucinogens, depressants,
opiates, and all combinations of the three, but he was pretty sure that he’d never felt quite
so high as he did off the touch of Sonia’s lips. He was hooked.
“You sure know how to pick em, King,” She said, and turned away.
“I didn’t pick him,” the King called after her.
“That was something,” The Duke said dumbly when she was gone.
“Yes, it was,” The King agreed. “I’ve never seen her give one out for free to
anyone else.”
“What does she usually charge?” The Duke asked, but he’d lost the King, who
was skipping away. As he did, he said,
“Come now, dear Duke, this is a place for those who are waiting on a revelation,
not those who have already had one.”
The Duke, being who he was and not being anyone he wasn’t, followed the King
away. They were going after the throne of America, and the throne of America was in the
west.

Chapter 4: Navigating the American Highway System and the Latticework of a Broken
Heart

“We’re going to go to this bar that mixes good Manhattans and let’s people play
blackjack in the back,” The King told him. The Duke shrugged.
They drove through the city of Detroit at night, drove clear through and observed
the ghosts haunting it with trash bags and cigarette butts. Sometimes these husks looked
up at them with their unseeing eyes, not wondering anything but if they would manage to
stay warm another night.
When they arrived, the Duke was certain that he’d seen enough of the Midwest.
There were too many seasons, and they all depressed. The King was still high on the
feeling of being in America and so he took them fast through the flurrying night of early
spring, whooping at liquor stores and declaring how badly he wanted to gamble. The
Duke rode behind him, certain that they were going to crash or never find the place and
freeze out in the cold. But of course, they made it to the poker room.
The owner was a Hassidic Jew who kissed the King on both cheeks and
whispered a few words of Yiddish before running off to mix the King something strong.
They headed to the backroom, where another forelock-wearing man was dealing cards to
strangers of every ethnicity. The King sat down at the table and bummed a cigarette off
of the dealer and began to play. There was no more open seats, so the Duke sat back and
watched the game progress.
The King and LaRose had spent a few months as card-counters in Vegas a million
years ago. They’d been quite successful at it, until LaRose had gotten greedy about
money and had sold out the King, who’d been forced to leave town penniless without
ever finding out why. But the point is that the King was pretty fine at blackjack. Also,
the point is that LaRose will forever get the better of the King.
After awhile, the King was winning, but the Duke was frustrated with the sitting
and the waiting so he went up and asked him,
“What are we even doing here?”
“We’ve got a long road west, dear Duke, and I would like to have some change in
my pocket for the way. Also, it’s good to visit old friends sometimes. Go sit still, be
quiet, and have Malloch mix you a cocktail,” He said, handing the Duke a few dollars
from his sizeable stack.
The Duke took the money wordlessly and went to the bar. The bar was clearly
one for the Jewish population. It was full of men energetically debating in Hebrew and
thickly accented English around cherry wood tables, drinking everything under the sun.
The counter itself was relatively empty, except for a man in the far left corner with his hat
on the table and forelocks nearly dragging on the dirty surface the bar. The tender that
had kissed the King on his cheeks was cleaning glasses and staring at his wizened
reflection in the bottom of the glass.
 “So you are travelling with Solomon,” Said the man whose name was Malloch.
“Solomon? He’s never told me his real name,” The Duke said.
“Ah, Solomon. Tell me, would you believe that our King of America was once
himself a Hasidim?” Malloch asked, finishing his polishing and pouring the Duke a good
whiskey over ice.
“...I suppose anything is possible.”
Malloch looked up at the Duke through his wrinkles. Malloch had pale blue eyes
that didn’t look quite so world-weary as the rest of him did. He was wearing a simple
white Kippa that did little to cover his bald, wrinkled head.
“No, you’re right to doubt. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Solomon did not come from
us. But I do love him, and I like to think I know him better than nearly anyone who still
lives,” The old barkeep told him. He had a delightfully raspy sort of old man’s voice, one
matured by singing and laughing rather than ravaged by smoke or grief.
“Where did he come from?”
“He used to swear that he was born in the Florida Everglades where he was taught
by swamp people to catch fish with his hands and talk to alligators, but I think he’s
changed his story since then,” Malloch said affectionately.
“Do you think anyone really knows who he is?”
“I’ve wondered that a few times myself, and I think the answer is no,” Malloch
said lightly, and then changed tones. “Do you ever get tired of spending all your time
with someone that very well could be a figment of our collective imagination?”
The Duke thought about it, “Not really. That would just mean I’m living in a
dream, and who wouldn’t want to live in one of those?”
Malloch laughed, “I think Solomon was lucky to find you. You seem…
grounded.”
“I don’t think I’m grounded enough to keep him from making both of us float
away. We will, you know. This all ends with us floating away and never coming back,”
The Duke said, compelled to give away the ending.
“I would be disappointed if you didn’t float away. Solomon, since I’ve known
him, has always been floating. It’s as if the weight of life never settled on his shoulders,
so he just lives easier than we do.”
“Is there anything I should know?” The Duke asked.
Malloch nodded, “You should know that Solomon is not the King of the America
that we live in. The America we live in has no king.”
“Then why should I follow him if he isn’t my king?” The Duke had already
known this. He was more needling the older man than anything else.
“Because there is more than one America, and Solomon just needs to find the
America that he is king of,” Malloch said. “Once you find that America, then things will
be okay.”
“And what if we don’t?”
“Then that America will never have its king,” the old Hasidic Jew said sadly.
“Solomon will probably die a raving lunatic in a foreign land and you the lonely idiot
who believed in him.”
The Duke considered how he felt about that. He really wasn’t sure. The pair
drank in silence. Malloch thought about the Talmud and a titty bar on the freeway that he
kind of wanted to go to and then he thought of his LSD days on the boardwalks and then
he started going all the way back to thinking a lot about his days in the school and he
wondered where all the time had gone and he realized that it hadn’t gone anywhere. It
just disappeared in smoke.
The King came crashing back into the room, helter-skelter happy with bills flying
out of his pockets, “Duke, there you are! We’ve hit it big, and now we’ve got money for
a few hundred miles.”
“And what do you plan to do after that?” Malloch asked, amused by the whole
thing.
“Who needs to worry about those sorts of details? It’ll work itself out. You know
time,” The King said.
“I do know time,” Malloch agreed. And he did. The Duke looked at Malloch.
He had a feeling that the old man knew things that the Duke himself did not yet know,
and he was okay with that feeling. He tried to hand the tender a few bucks, and the old
man held up a hand in refusal.
“I like to think I taught Solomon many things, but I could never teach him
frugality,” Malloch admitted. “You keep those dollars. You’ll need them by the end of all
this.”
“Thanks,” said the Duke.
“Yes, and goodbye Malloch. We have many cold miles of highway ahead of us,
and I’d like to get underway,” the King said, pulling a handful of dollars from the pocket
of his red leather jacket, “A bottle for the road, please.”
Malloch pulled out a fifth of whiskey and the King slapped the fistful on the table
triumphantly.
“Like I said, you’ll be needing every cent if you want to make it where you’re
going with this one,” Malloch said. “Shalom.”
The Duke thought it was a funny way for the Hasidim to leave things. Shalom,
the Hebrew word for peace. He knew there was no peace on this road for the Duke or his
Solomon. Maybe he just didn’t know what else to say.
They blew out of the bar and the Duke walked briskly through the night after the
King, who was skipping towards their scooters.
“It’s a bitter night to drive,” the Duke commented. “Why don’t we wait until
morning? Get a motel room, get some rest.”
“I am only at rest when I am on the move,” the King declared, “for my mind can
only be tranquil when I am running towards the only place where I will ever be content to
truly be still: the throne of America.”
“But you must sleep sometime,” The Duke insisted. “You used to sleep in
Sherry’s all the time.”
“Ah, but there I was like all other mortals. I was not a king on a quest but an
urchin without hope. You must know this. You have seen me change,” said the King.
“How can I sleep when I have felt the divine call of my kingdom so strongly?”
The Duke didn’t really know how to answer that.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that your name is Solomon?”
The King paused, “Because it isn’t.”
“Why lie to the old man?”
“Because the truth is relative and I’m sick of everybody saying it’s not.”
“Do you have an actual name?”
“Of course. Do you?”
“Yes. Do you want to know it?”
 “Not really. You are the Duke of Arizona. Whatever else you are is of little
consequence to me.”
The Duke wasn’t sure if he felt insulted by this or not. He didn’t think he was
meant to, so he decided to let it go. He was distracted from his tiredness by the odd little
conversation. He grabbed the whiskey bottle from his companion and took a shot from it.
It warmed him all the way through; it was far too good a bottle for the paltry amount the
King had paid for it.
“I won’t make it through the night. Even if it means you leaving me in the cold
without a dollar or your friendship, I won’t be able to make it through the night,” the
Duke vowed.
The King looked at him with an unfamiliar glimmer of sympathy in his clear blue
eyes and said, “Poor Duke, so suddenly carried off by the crazy hurricane winds of my
destiny. I could never leave you behind, my most loyal subject, and if you need warmth
and the comfort of a mattress then how can I help but give you that small reward for all
you’ve done for me?”
“I don’t know,” the Duke said uncertainly.
“I can’t is the obvious answer, so we’ll ride for a couple hours and then we’ll get
you a nice motel room and I’ll go out and take care of some other business while you’re
asleep,” the King suggested kindly. The Duke didn’t really trust the business that the
King wanted to do while the Duke slumbered, but then the Duke was also profoundly
grateful for the existence of that business because he knew otherwise he was never going
to get any shuteye. He nodded, climbed onto his scooter, and began to drive.
He followed behind the King, who, of course, knew the exact direction he wanted
to go although he didn’t know why or where. Apparently Malloch had arranged for
someone to refill the tanks on their scooters for the road so they were set to drive for the
night and some of the next day.
Something occurred to the Duke about forty-five minutes into their drive, and he
sped up to ride alongside the King, who was waving the bottle of whiskey at the sky as he
hummed the notes to old French nursery.
“Where did all the others go?” the Duke asked.
“Others?” The King’s voice reverberated across the skin of the black drum of the
midnight road, slipsiding into the darkness. “There are no others. There’s only me and
you and the night and the whiskey and the lonely sky.”
“Where is your court, my King?” The Duke wondered.
“We go where we are needed, and then we go our separate ways,” the King said.
“We will find each other again.”
“What if we don’t? How do we make sure that we find each other again, in this
too-big world that we’re all trippin’ through at our own pace?” The Duke challenged.
“You’ve got to have more trust in the wind,” said the King. “You’ve got to trust
that it’s gonna blow you where you need to go. If you don’t have any faith in the wind,
then you’re never going to put out your sails.”
The Duke thought about his sails. He thought about the ways they’d been torn
and strung out and broken through everything he’d done. He wondered if he even could
catch a wind anymore.
The King thought about the way that things rushed by and he wondered if he was
ever going to fall in love and get the chance to partake in all the hopes and fears that men
who were not him seemed to live with. He was so hopelessly jealous of the Duke’s
uncertainty. It left so much room for happenings. The King was so sure of how
everything was going to occur that it left life a little boring sometimes.
As they drove, the King of America wondered what the Duke was thinking about.
It was so hard to tell sometimes. He just sat there and let the storms of his psyche rage
impotently against the curtains of his eyes.
“Why did you leave America?” the King asked.
The Duke was silent in thought for a moment as the road and whiskey rushed into
him.
“I left because I was heartbroken for one too many times and I didn’t think I was
any of the things I needed to be. I guess mostly I was just lonely.”
“And are you lonely still?”
The Duke had to consider how to phrase this answer, “I think I’m always going to
be a little bit lonely. I spend too much time in my own head to not be.”
The King nodded in understanding, “The mind is a forlorn place. I’ve felt
considerably less lonesome since I lost mine.” The highway rolled beneath them like the
beat of a timpani, keeping time with the roar of their motors and the din of existence.
“Cars,” said the Duke as one passed, “I think cars will be the end of us all.”
“You climb into one and it’s like you’re no longer part of the world. You’re stuck
in a capsule that keeps you from feeling what you see. Cars may well be the end of us
all,” the King said with a nod.
“Isn’t it funny, the way every heart beats to such a different snare? And how
fickle the cadence is, changing its rhythm and soul with the direction of the wind?” The
Duke asked.
The Duke was drunk by now, and in his intoxication he could clearly see how
discordant the world moved in every way. He could see how we are all colliding,
stepping on each other’s toes and bumping into each other’s lips and never knowing why
or how. Everybody on their own trajectory and nobody really worried about who or what
they were hurting as they plowed forward into the uncharted mountains and valleys of
time. The sheer senselessness of it all pushed the Duke ever closer to the brink of all.
“I feel a strange sense of hope when I look at all the abstract geometry of
American life,” the King said. “I see the chaos of it all, and I think of what a great soul
this country has.”
“What makes America’s soul so great?” Asked the Duke.
“A soul is never just one thing. It is a mishmash of all things, trying to come
together and be a whole, a perfect union of ill-fitting puzzle pieces. America’s conflicts
may be great, but think about what a soul we’ll have when we finally figure out how to
wise up and come together,” The King decreed.
The Duke had never been so sure of the King’s saintliness as he was in that
moment, driving towards God knows where in the bitter starry night of Michigan spring.
It seemed to the Duke that the very clouds stood still, stopping for a moment to shake
their heads at the pair of wanderers as they travelled towards what would be one of the
darkest nights of their lives.
They arrived at a motel in the small town that the King wanted to visit. The town
was called Hustonville. Hustonville was, once upon a time, not half bad. It had been
occupied by a number of people employed in the local tourism industry and in the coal
mines of yesteryear. But it had been swallowed up by the bleakness that always follows
an economic downturn, and now there was only a breakeven diner, the motel, a video
rental store, and a bunch of black windows on main street.
“What could you possibly have to do here?” The Duke asked.
“I know it doesn’t look like much. But everything that lives is alive for a reason,
so don’t be so harsh.”
The Duke shrugged.
The pair parked their scooters outside the lobby of the motel and walked into the
office. The room was thirty dollars for the night. The King pulled the money out of his
pocket, in the process dropping two twenties on the floor.
“I think I’ll hold the money from now on,” the Duke decided. The King, seeing
the logic in this, on the spot handed him all three hundred and fifteen dollars that the King
miraculously had to his name.
The lunatics returned to their scooters and took them to the southeast corner of the
medium-sized, two-story motel, which is where their room was. The motel was powder
blue and it was called America’s Best Midwestern Motel. The Duke wondered if it was
really the best.
“It is,” the King confirmed as he opened the door.
The Duke couldn’t help but agree. This was not because the America’s Best was
in any way outstanding, but rather because the Duke was so damn crashed out on
whiskey that any ditch in a desert night would probably have felt just so warm and
comforting.
He peeled off his road-soiled jacket and T-shirt and collapsed onto the bed, still
wearing the dirty blue jeans and sneakers that had taken him from America to Canada and
back to America again. The Duke was breaking one of the cardinal rules of drinking:
never fall asleep with your shoes on. It’s bad luck. And the Duke needed all the luck he
could get.
The King noticed that the motel had forgotten to include a blanket on their stained
mattress, so he ripped down the pink, fish-patterned curtains on the bathroom window
and tucked them all nice around his companion. The King then slipped a ten-dollar bill
out of the pocket of the Duke’s thin jacket and crept lightly out the door.
The Duke would later swear to himself and God that most of what would happen
that night was dreamt. So would the King. But the King would also know that the line
between dreams and reality is not nearly so thick as most of us would imagine.
Stars Movie Collection was the mark of a past that was not so long dead. The
Duke remembered a time when DVDs were the wave of the future. He had been only
about sixteen at the time, but even he remembered his wonder when the player had
whirred to life in his uncle’s living room.
He felt a little pang of sadness when the bell jingled and he walked into the Stars.
These days, people didn’t want to see stories all lined up on shelves.
LaRose sat behind the counter, looking bored and smoking a cigarette. The King
was not surprised to see him. LaRose often showed up uninvited.
“You can’t smoke in here,” the King told him. “Tobacco is such a foul vice. So
passive, so easy, so stupid. People who use it die like they live: unremarkably. Probably
of cancer.”
“You’re in quite a state tonight,” LaRose said, taking one of his enormous
coughing hits, “I think, I think I know what might have you by your royal balls. Your pal
the Duke, he’s made you stop. You know what happens to us when we stop.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” King asked. “I promise, it’s not because I want to
be. But this isn’t my show. It’s his, in the end.”
“So why’d you stop here, of all places, in this insubstantial little flicker of human
civilization?” LaRose inquired. He already knew why, but the dramatic part of him
needed to hear the King say it.
“Because this is the one sad town along our route that has a video rental store, and
I need to watch that video,” the King declared.
…
The Duke awoke to a gentle knock-knock on the door to his motel room. He was
shocked he’d even heard the sound, so deep was his respite. The knock was a decidedly
familiar one. It reminded him of just the way that Grace had knocked on his door that
first night she’d come up to his apartment. It was a sweet, sexually-charged knock that
the no man, including the Duke, could help but answer.
What was standing in that doorway blew the Duke away. Sonia looked good in
literally everything. She could put more erotic appeal into a parka than most women
could muster in a bikini. So when she showed up in a red silk cocktail dress and red
lipstick at the Duke’s door (approximately two months and nine days since the Duke’s
last romantic encounter with a woman) it was all he could do to stay conscious.
“It’s cold out here, do you want to come inside?” The Duke managed to say after
several moments of inner floundering.
“That would be lovely,” Sonia said with a smile designed to sell lingerie.
The Duke had never been terribly lucky or terribly good at love. He wasn’t at all
like the King. The King understood women, or at least he understood as much as any
man can understand women. The Duke was in so very far over his head.
The Duke looked around for something to offer her, as was customary in
courtship rituals. All he saw was the bottle of whiskey he and the King had been passing
on the ride here. It was a little less than a quarter full. He snatched it off the bed.
“Would you like a drink?” He asked her.
She grabbed the whiskey, uncorked it with her teeth, spit the cork into the trash
can, and drained the bottle. The Duke had never seen anything half so beautiful in his
entire life.
“I’m exhausted,” She said with a catlike yawn, falling back gracefully onto the
bed at looking up at the Duke with her playful, tawny eyes. “The road is hard on us girls.
And the King so rarely lets us stop.”
“Why do you have to wait until the King stops?” The Duke asked, his dark eyes
clouded with equal parts desire and confusion.
“Because he’s the King of America,” Sonia purred. “He tells us the rules, and we
have to follow them. That’s how being on the court works.”
The Duke hesitantly sat down on the bed next to her, half-expecting her to jump
up in horror and disappear in a cloud of smoke. The Duke was not a bold man; he didn’t
know how to make the first move.
“This is your bed, Duke, you can lay down if you want,” She offered, amused and
exasperated. The Duke hesitated for a moment, and then laid down next to her. She
curled around him like a serpent round an olive tree, intertwining herself with him until
he could no longer tell the difference between himself and her. She was so warm, like no
person he had ever felt. And she smelled indescribable, like lilacs and coconut and
Original Sin.
“Have you ever been with the King?” The Duke asked. He was expecting some
kind of indignation, some resistance. But instead, she just melted into him even more.
“Yes,” She whispered. “He is the best lover I’ve ever been with. He imbues
every moment with a passion that no other human could possibly match. But he has a
weakness.”
“What weakness is that?” The Duke asked, his voice a murmur.
“He can’t give himself to another person. He loves himself and the world too
much to ever understand what it means to be one half of a whole,” Sonia explained. “He
used to understand, a long time ago. But he forgot, and I don’t think he can ever
remember. Even if he met a woman twice as beautiful as me.”
The Duke heard genuine sadness in her voice. It wasn’t attractive. It was too
vulnerable and small.
“I don’t really think that’s possible,” the Duke said, trying to lighten the mood.
“You’re sweet,” She said, slapping him lightly on the chest. It worked.
“I’m honest,” responded the Duke, and he was. She looked up at him with those
tawny eyes, and he just had to kiss her because when you get special things you need to
enjoy them while they’re yours because nothing is permanent and that’s the way things
are.
The Duke was obliterated and sublimated by the force of the kiss. Sonia had held
back before. Now, her mouth and his connected like two lives wires. The Duke’s heart
hammered like it was about to grow wings and fly out of his chest. His gut twisted,
unable to handle the amount of dopamine that was flooding through his system, and his
pupils dilated to great black depthless circles beneath his closed eyelids. When the kiss
ended, the Duke was horribly, horribly in love.
“You would love me, wouldn’t you?” Sonia pleaded “That’s why you’re better
than the King, because you can love really love me and he can’t.”
“I would. I do,” the Duke managed to gasp. “I could lay hear with you til the day
I die and never even worry about the world outside this mattress.”
“What about the King? What about the throne of America?”
The Duke thought about this, “Who needs them? I’m happy here and now. I
don’t need the King to show me how. I need you and nothing else.”
She smiled at him innocently, “Do you?”
“Yes,” He said, and he leaned in for another kiss. But now she stiffened. Now
she bit her lip, unsure. The Duke didn’t know what to do. How had he failed? Why was
she pulling away? His mind raced.
She was so close, the Duke thought numbly. He didn’t know why he was already
so terrified.
“What’s wrong?” He asked.
“Nothing,” She lied, giving him a look that broke his heart. “I just need something
from you. So I know you love me.”
The Duke didn’t have to think about his answer.
“Anything.”
…
The King found the Duke laying face down on the bed the next morning. He was
almost entirely motionless, save a slight rise and fall to his chest. The pink fish curtain
was damp with sweat and stained with blood. The King walked briskly toward the Duke
and rolled him over. He wasn’t sure what was more horrific: the look on the Duke’s face
or the marks on his body.
 “She left me,” the Duke whispered, his lips cracked. The King sighed and went to
the bathroom, filling a glass of water.
“She always does,” the King replied, handing his friend the glass. The Duke sat
up, silently marveling at his skin and the devastation he’d let her inflict upon it. The cuts
were all perfect, thin, and symmetrical, running horizontal from belly button to chest,
with only about a finger’s width in between. She’d cut him with her switchblade, which
was one of the coldest, sharpest blades in existence. The Duke remembered the coldness
of the blade more than he did the pain of the cuts themselves. The chill seemed to go
straight through his skin and cut deep into the marrow of his bones. But then she’d kiss it
away and the Duke would get lost in her warmth until the terrible steel returned to take its
toll once again. Love always has its price.
Sonia knew what she was doing. Every cut, the King knew, drew exactly three
drops of blood. Sonia didn’t kill her victims, unless they never asked her to stop.
“What is she? Like a vampire or something?” asked the Duke.
“Not a vampire, no,” the King said. “Come on, you’ve lost a lot of blood it looks
like, and I’m positively famished. We can grab a bite in the diner.”
The Duke pulled his shirt on. He couldn’t feel the sting of the cuts. There was
just a collective burn that he felt everywhere her hands and lips had been, and an
emptiness in his heart that felt bottomless and incurable.
The diner was the kind of place that a town was proud of. It had classic black-
and-white tile on the floor, about fifteen booths and a bar with an additional eight
spinning chairs.
All the seating was red vinyl, and all the tables were particle board covered in
fake granite print. It was the kind of place that you could walk into and feel instantly at
home, like you’d been eating there your entire life. It is places like these that give hope
to the hopeless, and by God was the Duke hopeless.
The Duke took a barstool. He looked up at the waitress, who was an elderly lady
with a kind face and glossy silver curls, “A slice of cherry pie and a cup of coffee with
cream and sugar.”
“Sure thing, hon,” She said sympathetically. Living in an impoverished
Midwestern town, she had come to recognize the broken men, the ones who’d lost
everything. And the Duke certainly fit the bill.
The Duke had ordered the most comforting things on the menu. It is important to
take solace in small comforts when the world does what the world does.
“I’ll take bacon, scrambled eggs, and three slices of white toast with butter” the
King ordered precisely. The waitress scribbled down the orders in cutesy, curly
penmanship and took the order to the cook.
“This place is charming,” the Duke said.
“Yes, yes it is,” the King agreed.
He didn’t want to tell the Duke what he knew, given his friend’s fragile state.
What he knew was that this place wouldn’t last the winter and soon the owners
(who’d been running the place since their marriage in 1974) would retire to Fort Meyers
Beach where they would never manage to obtain the same happiness they’d found in the
diner and the man would get fed up with the woman and the woman would cheat on the
man and the man would run because that’s what men do when there’s nothing tying them
down. Love is built on common ground.
“She said a lot,” the Duke said. “I believed all of it.”
 “You’re not the first, and you certainly won’t be the last,” the King said. “You
want to know what I know about women?”
The Duke didn’t think this was going to make him feel any better, but he nodded
anyway.
“There isn’t a woman out there that doesn’t know what she wants, and there isn’t
a woman out there that doesn’t want to want something else,” the King said. “What I
mean to say is, don’t feel bad about not being enough. There isn’t a man out there who
is.”
“That did actually make me feel a little better,” the Duke admitted.
“And try to, if you can, take it all with some serenity. Anger and misery have no
place on the road, especially a road so rife with destiny as our own.”
“How do I do that?”
“All you have to do is remember that you know time,” the King said. “You know
the way that this life ebbs and flows and you know that everyone goes disappearing
eventually, but you also know that it’s all one hell of a ride and you laugh and love it for
being just that. Do that, and I promise you’ll never be just another beaten-down bastard
who lets life get the best of him.”
“You know, King, that’s some damn fine advice. I still feel like I’ve lost the best
thing that life can ever give me, but I also kind of am starting to laugh because I know
that the best thing life can give me is itself and everything after that is just noise so I
guess that I’ll learn to live with this burn on my skin and this hole in my heart and find
myself on the road to see if I can fill that hole in and stop myself from feeling so
torched.”
The King watched the Duke, unsure what sort of revelation he was witnessing.
Most revelations don’t hold up under the test of time. They buckle as we remember how
difficult living actually is. But he figured this revelation was at least powerful enough to
get the Duke back on the road, and that’s all the King wanted at this point.
The waitress brought the food, and the Duke attacked the piece of pie, and then
ordered a cinnamon roll. The King pushed the food around on his plate, ate the bacon
and a slice of toast, then passed the rest to the Duke who accepted it gratefully. The King
found himself better sustained by dreams and whiskey.
The Duke walked away from the diner feeling ready for the road. The pair
hopped on their steeds and gunned them off towards the west, which still felt so very far.
“Where are we going?” the Duke asked after awhile.
“Chinatown,” said the King.
“Why Chinatown?”
“Because that’s where the dragons live,” the King laughed. And the King
continued to laugh, and his laugh grew ever greater, until finally he threw his head back
and he guffawed at the sky because he knew the sky was laughing at him and he wanted
to join in. The Duke watched the road for both of them.

Prologue: Doldrums Come and Doldrums Go, Yet Still I Do Remain.

Daniel shook out the umbrella as he ducked into the Den. Everyone agreed that
the Den was the best bar on the planet. It had warm lights and cold taps and pretty
women and ugly tenders and everybody there was the best of friends, and they talked
about Existentialism as much as they talked about romantic comedies and everything was
perfectly light and bubbly, like champagne, so everyone felt as if they were just floating
away.
Daniel would later wish like hell that he’d met Grace at some other, less
heavengoing bar. He couldn’t walk into the joint without longing for the day he met her,
when she’d bought him that drink and they’d talked all night. She’d poisoned the Den,
poisoned it with her bright brown eyes and strange, lion’s mane rivulets and the soaring
sweetness of her disposition. That, out of everything she’d done to him, was probably the
worst.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We meet Daniel at the absolute zenith of
where any man can ever be, around the end of the third month of his courtship with
Grace. On this night, he found Grace sitting in one of those brown leather stools, making
idle, happy chat with the bartender, smiling as if being happy was easy.
For the past few months, Daniel and Grace had been meeting at the Den, where
they each order three pints of Guinness and would talk about the gonest parts of their
pasts and the most visible parts of everything else and both would leave feeling a little
happier for having been together. On a good night, they’d buy a fourth pint each.
“Hey,” Daniel said, sitting down at the stool.
“Hey,” Grace said, and the smile became smaller. That was when Daniel knew
something was wrong. It didn’t disappear, but it would take nothing less than the
slaughter of puppies to make that smile disappear. It just shrunk.
“So what’s going on tonight?” Daniel asked.
“The usual stuff,” Grace replied. The bartender brought the pair their beers, and
Grace sipped hers.
“What’d you get on that Shelley paper?” Daniel wanted to know. Both of them
were attending NYU, and both were in the same class on Romantic Literature.
“Eighty percent,” Grace said.
A phantom smile haunted Daniel’s lips, “That’s good. Can I be honest with you
and myself for a moment?”
“I would be offended if you weren’t.”
“I only asked so I could brag about my perfect score.”
She laughed and shook her head at him. Daniel loved that she thought he was
funny when he told her what he was thinking. Grace loved that she never knew what he
was thinking unless she asked.
“Danny,” She began, suddenly more serious. As usual, the talk had gotten away
from where she’d wanted it to be. The boy was a good conversationalist. He had a way
of sweeping the conversation back and forth, until she’d entirely lost what she wanted to
say.
“Yes?”
“Where do you think we’re going? I mean all of us. I swear it seems like we’re
all going to finish school and disappear into oblivion,” she admitted. “I don’t really know
if I’m ready for us all to leave.”
“Well then let’s not leave each other,” Daniel proposed. “We both know where
we’re going. You’ll go to Engineering school and I’ll go find someone to write for and
we can do this forever and never have to…”
Grace’s smile disappeared. So did Daniel’s. For a moment, Daniel would forever
swear, every light in the entire world disappeared, sucked into the black hole that was
Grace’s face on the rare occasions that she didn’t smile.
 “You know I can’t do that,” Grace said.
Daniel was silent. He hadn’t known that. He didn’t see why she couldn’t.
“Don’t you believe in all of the things we’ve been talking about? About how love
should be something simple and kind and carefree? Aren’t we simple and kind and
carefree? We get on,” Daniel said.
“We get on,” She agreed, “and you’re right. I did agree that it should be all that.
But the thing I realized is that it’s not. If it was, then I could be content to settle down
with you and never think about all could’ve-beens. But I can’t. I know that now.”
“But why not? What’s changed?” Daniel was barely treading emotional water by
this point in the conversation.
“Well, the other night I was in a jazz club in Brooklyn and I was listening to this
player piano who played this song that I felt was the answer to everything. It had a soul
that poured into me, slow and deep and swinging like a pendulum.”
“Get me a whiskey,” Daniel begged the bartender, “A whole bottle of whiskey.
I’m going to need it.”
Grace didn’t stop the story, so captivated by the bluelight memory, “And then I
saw this man on the dancefloor, and he was moving in exactly the way that I was
thinking. Exactly how I wanted to move, like the hands of a clock or the tides. So I went
out there and I moved with him, and we danced for hours, until I could no longer tell
which of us was doing what. And then we went in the backroom.”
“How could you do this? How could you do this?” Daniel moaned deeply to
himself, drinking as he acknowledged the feeling of his heart crushing like a tin can.
“I like you Daniel,” Grace said, “but I know that I am never going to dance like
that with you. And I know I could never dance like that with him again, whoever he was.
That’s why I can’t just follow some easy plan. Because I’m stuck on finding more
moments like that, and I don’t think we’ll have any.”
Daniel was becoming certain that the entire last few months had been an illusion
concocted by someone who hated him deeply. He wanted to try to make her see how
wrong she was. He wanted her to see that there was absolutely no reason she should base
her entire philosophy for living on a one-night stand with some stranger in a jazz club.
They were silent for awhile, both of them. Daniel cast about desperately in his
mind for some combination of words that would bring things back to the way they were
supposed to be. He was a writer, for God sakes, a writer who put words to paper in
combinations that could make people think and feel and take them away.
“Say something,” She prompted him gently. He didn’t, so she repeated herself,
“Say something.”
Say something! He screamed to himself In the name of whatever might be out
there for you, say something!
But Daniel realized, at that moment, that there weren’t words in any language that
would make Grace see why she was wrong. Daniel lost faith in words altogether once he
realized that.
Daniel grabbed her gently by the chin, and then cupped her cheek in his hand and
went as deep into her eyes as he could.
“I want you to know,” he said, whiskey breath washing all over her face, “that you
are incredibly, incredibly stupid.”
Grace wrinkled her nose at him. She’d hoped Daniel wouldn’t be such a sore
loser about the whole thing, but then she wasn’t really surprised either.
 “And you’re a pretentious drunk,” she replied, “so have a nice life.” Grace then
walked out, and Daniel watched her go like he watched the horizon swallow a sailboat.
Grace pitied Daniel. Had Daniel known this, he would’ve hated her more. There
is nothing worse than pity. Other than her pity, the brief time she spent in the company of
far-dreaming Daniel did little to change the course of her life, at least not until much later.
The same could not be said for the boy.
Daniel would drink himself near death three times in the rest of his time at NYU,
flunk out, and stop believing in the power of his words. He’d emerge from his New York
Doldrums a borderline alcoholic and a melancholy candle-in-the-wind.
These things happen, though. It’s all going somewhere. In spite of everything,
Daniel believed that, because so do I.

Chapter 5: The Fairytale Marxist Revolution That Chinatown Is Afraid to Dream Of.

The King of America sprinted towards a folding table perched next to the choked
street and purchased a samurai sword with an ornate crimson handle and a bamboo
sheath. It cost him nine dollars.
There was a tag on the product that read “authentic” followed by a series of
Chinese characters that were meaningless even to one who read Chinese fluently. The
Duke was glad to know that sword was authentic. He thought authenticity was important,
especially when buying swords from elderly Chinese women for less than the price of a
deep dish pizza.
“Do you like it?” the King asked.
“Yes,” the Duke said, and he did. The King beamed.
“I think that you must do your best to recall the stirrings within your soul that
brought you here, to this moment, and you must follow those stirrings to a place where
we can each get a glass of Sake to give us courage to face the dragon,” the King
suggested.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Most of our money is gone, you know.” The
Duke had not known that money could be spent so badly. It was thrown away on little
things: fireworks, fried duck liver, wine fermented from snakeskin.
They’d even gotten a couple of massages from the famous Chinatown
parlorwomen with hands like electric coils that could awaken muscles who’d lain
dormant for decades. The Duke barely felt the woman’s strong hands on his body. He
was afraid that Sonia had forever destroyed his ability to feel sensory pleasure.
All the money seemed to evaporate the moment it touched the King’s feverish
fingers, thrown at this oddity or that extravagance like a cure.
“Of course it’s a good idea, comrade, why we’ve battled our way to Chinatown
like a pair of old Vikings and now we must celebrate in the Nordic way before we meet
our terrible maker,” The King declared, pushing through the throngs to where he saw a
glowing neon Chinese character in the distance.
Occasionally, the King had been exchanging guttural Mandarin curses with the
people of Chinatown. The Duke had asked the King where he’d learned these words, and
he responded by saying that he’d always known them, from the beginning of time, when
he’d condensed in the atmosphere and hurtled to the earth.
The pair stood outside a Sake bar. Neither man had any particular taste for Sake,
but they both had a taste for getting drunk.
“I should point out that this place is culturally inconsistent,” the Duke pointed out.
“Sake is a specifically Japanese alcoholic drink, and we are in Chinatown, so this doesn’t
make much sense.”
“The only country on Earth whose culture I wish to know anything about is
America,” said the King in disdain. “I don’t care where Sake’s from, so long as it will
quench my thirst before I meet the dragon.”
So the pair shoved their way into the Sake bar, and the King immediately declared
his everlasting love for a curvy waitress and took her to the backroom where he swore he
would tell her every last secret of the universe, including the ones about how to kill
immortal dragons.
The Duke just sat there, and drank his rice wine, which he disliked, and thought
about the bad taste that America had left in his mouth so far. He watched the fishmongers
and the knockoff peddlers exchange words and he wondered why their ancestors had
gone through so much to be here instead of there.
It is silly, the way people run, like the next place over is so much better than the
one they currently are in. People are always looking to blame their lack of happiness on
something other than themselves.
The Duke heard a familiar clanking of metal on metal, a sound that somehow rose
above the din of the Sake bar and the gasping memories of two nights ago in the Duke’s
grim mind.
“Whatever that is, get me three of them,” the war veteran grunted, sitting down
heavily beside the Duke. The waitress that had replaced the curvy one was a thin,
graying chinaman who looked devoid of anything but discipline and existential near-
sightedness.
“What are you doing here?”
“Surprisingly few places to get drunk in Chinatown,” the grizzled old man said.
“It’s almost inevitable we’d find each other eventually.”
“Almost,” the Duke agreed, and suddenly felt ready to explode with words. “I’ve
been wondering something.”
“Shoot. But not really,” the war veteran said with a coughing laugh.
The Duke paused. “So can I ask?”
“Sure. I was just making a pun. Ask the question; don’t shoot me.”
“Okay,” the Duke agreed. “I don’t have a gun anyway. I couldn’t shoot you.”
“You could have a bow.”
“I don’t.”
“Well good, ask the question then.”
“I will. What the hell is your name?” the Duke finally asked. “I haven’t known
this entire time, and it’s been driving me nuts.”
“If it was really driving you so crazy you should’ve asked earlier,” Frank
suggested amicably.
“You’re probably right,” The Duke agreed, and, after Frank failed to offer any
further information, the Duke asked uncomfortably, “So what is it?”
“None of your damn business, private,” the war veteran said. “I guess that if you
have to call me something then I’d say you can call me Frank.”
“Why should I call you that?”
“You ever been to Vietnam?” Frank asked, scowling and squinting like Clint
Eastwood in a cowboy movie.
“No.”
“The thing about Vietnam is that it crawls inside your head. All the boys who
fought in World War 2, in Germany and Africa and Japan, they all got to go home after
the war. But you can never really leave Nam,” Frank said.
The Duke looked into Frank’s bloodshot eyes, and he realized that he could see
Vietnam within them. He could see every nightmare scenario in every war movie ever
made, stretched out into half a decade of hell on Earth.
“I believe you,” said the Duke.
“And the scariest thing about that godforsaken jungle are the godforsaken monster
men crawling through the underbrush. Americans call themselves patriots, but those
Congs taught us what patriotism really was. Every one of those chink-eyed bastards
hated every one of us absolutely, just because we were on their little patch of misery. I
once saw a little Vietnamese toddler with Rabies bite an American doctor who was trying
to treat him. The kid survived, but that doctor died young, raving and foaming at the
mouth like he wasn’t even a goddamn person anymore.”
“It was just a kid,” The Duke tried to say.
“That’s the biggest lie I know. When someone hates you like the Congs hated us,
that crawls into your head too. What hate makes you do is feel like a monster, and once
you feel like a monster it isn’t so strange to be one. And so I was.”
Frank drained his third glass and ordered another round, “I won’t bore you with
my sins. They’re horrific, but they aren’t original. Everyone is always thinking they’re
the first one to suffer or cause suffering. We’re all so narcissistic about it.”
“I guess so.” The Duke thought on his own sins, and the way they’d driven him to
this batshit quest he’d fallen into. He wondered if God would forgive them, and he
realized that there was nothing he could do about it so he just shrugged and kept on
taking it all in.
“I’ll tell you when I hit my low, because I’m no Catholic and even Nihilists feel
the urge to atone,” old Frank said. “We were doing a raid on this village, and I saw this
one little almost-naked brat, and she was just sitting on the ground and staring at this little
straw doll, and that was all she was doing.
“She was the last one left; we’d killed everyone else. And I just had this sick
fucking desire to make her look. To make her see what me and the boys had done to
them. I don’t know if I wanted to hurt her or I wanted to hurt myself, but I just wanted
someone to hurt for all the things we’d done to each other, us people just tearing each
other to pieces over some rathole jungle. So I took that doll from her grasp and I threw it
in the dirt in front of her and she looked up at me and she looked around at everything
hate had done and she…” Frank stopped and stared into the liquid in his ceramic.
The Duke waited, afraid of what would happen next. He would never know, and
part of him was glad for that. It was a long time before Frank continued.
“The next morning I stepped on a landmine and the thing obliterated my left leg
and my heart stopped from the shock and awe of it all, and all I could think about was
that straw doll. I died.”
“But you came back,” the Duke guessed.
“Dying for good would’ve been too easy for someone as damned as me. You ever
read Frankenstein?”
“Yes.”
 “Well that’s what I am. I’m Frankenstein. Some monster that got a shot at a life
he didn’t earn or deserve.”
“Frankenstein was the name of the doctor.”
“Well then I guess Vietnam is Doctor Frankenstein and I’m still just some
nameless abomination it created. But you can call me Frank just the same.” With great
effort, he pushed on the cane until he got to his feet, looking like a man walking off the
edge of a cliff.
The Duke wanted to reach out to him in his misery, to tell him somehow that it
was all going to be okay in the end. But when he looked at the shambling, broken thing
that the war veteran had become he no longer felt hopeful.
“Aren’t you going to wait to say hi to the King?” the Duke wondered. Frank
looked to the employees only door in the back, where the King was sharing his most
intimate notions with a woman who would never see or forget his bright blue eyes again
as long as she lived.
“He probably won’t be done with her for awhile. And I have a feeling that I’m
going to see our blessed King real soon now anyway,” Frank said, a mocking wink and a
flash of teeth crossing his scarred countenance. He turned away and headed for the door,
swaying on his cane.
Frank was not incorrect in his assumption that the King was not yet finished with
his final woman when the two men were finished with each other. When he finally did
return, he found the Duke in a black mood and very drunk on Sake.
“Jesus man, have you just been sitting here the whole time?” the King asked.
“What else would I do?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Go find yourself a girl and tell her you’re about to die and press
her up against some dirty brick wall and try to remember that you’re both alive and you
might not be for long,” the King had a funny way of looking at sex. He romanticized the
existential significance of the act itself rather than the emotions surrounding it. The Duke
knew his logic was completely flawed, but women were fooled by it, mostly because they
wanted to be.
“Frank stopped in for a drink while you were gone.”
“Did he? That explains the defeated look on your face,” the King said, ordering a
round that he knew he couldn’t pay for, from the woman he’d just finished screwing. She
giggled as she passed by him; he paid her no mind.
“Where do you put your worries?”
“Behind me.” The King then grabbed the Duke by his arm, and dragged him away
from the sitting and drinking. The Duke ran with the King, ran from his fears and his
miseries. They lit off firecrackers in a grocery store and were chased out by an angry
woman with a sashimi knife. The Duke clapped his hands as the King danced with a
beautiful street performer, his red jacket whirling and his feet like roman candles and his
entire being shimmering like he could disappear if he were to snap his fingers and click
his heels.
And then he jumped away like a fencer and he grabbed the Duke and they went
and carried on conversations with penniless immigrants in languages neither of them
knew, but they found they understood everything the immigrants said in their body heart
and mind, and language meant so much less than eyes and ears and hands did.
The Duke wasn’t entirely sure how they ended up standing breathless in front of
the dojo. It had something to do with time and energy and fate.
 It was much like other karate studios across the nation, with a sign out front that
had a painted silhouette of a man kicking high into the air, with a red sunset in the
background. There was also a serpent painted crudely onto the sign, presumably by
someone else. The serpent was coiled around the silhouette’s leg, and it was smiling
cruelly.
“What are we doing here?”
“This is where the dragon lives,” the King panted, drinking from a bottle that he’d
procured from a vendor at a flea market in exchange for a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“We’ve got to slay it.”
“Why do we need to slay the dragon?”
“Because he has long plagued the fine people of Chinatown. Back in the day, I
protected Chinatown from his cruel powers. But he has again gained strength in my
absence. I must remind him who rules this country.”
“Hey King,” the Duke asked. “How do you kill immortal dragons?”
“By hitting them with something heavy or sharp,” the King said, drawing his
sword from its bamboo sheath. The Duke searched his person, and realized he didn’t
have something heavy or something sharp. He walked down an alley, saw a man
sweeping a dead rat off the back porch of his Ramen house, and grabbed the broom,
handing the man two two-dollar bills wordlessly. The man watched him walk away,
bemused. He’d never seen a two-dollar bill before.
“How’s this?” the Duke asked, holding up the broom.
“I’ve seen better, but we’re pressed for time so that will do. I’ll probably be able
to handle him myself anyway. You don’t need to worry.”
They entered the dojo, heavily armed. They walked down a fluorescent hallway
until they reached a door with an intricately-painted dragon snaking its way around the
door frame. On its belly was painted the words: “The Dragon’s Lair.” The King took a
deep breath, and turned to the Duke.
“I can trust you, can’t I Duke?”
“So far,” the Duke said.
“I need you to, if I get in over my head, to save me. The dragon is not a merciful
monster, as few monsters are,” the King said. For once, he sounded genuinely afraid.
The Duke nodded, and the King smiled at him.
The door to the Dragon’s Lair was like a portal to a Kurosawa film. The entire
room was made of translucent paper walls, with dragons, maidens, and other mythic
things painted on them. Bamboo mats covered the floor, and there were perhaps two
hundred candles bathing the room in a warm glow. Minimalistic, oriental strings were
being played in the background. The dragon, whatever he was, knew how to set a mood.
Two shadows flickered behind the paper wall opposite the door.
“Come forth, dragon,” the King commanded. “It is I, the King of America,
returned to save Chinatown from your vicious presence and to claim the petals that will
one day be the salvation of me and mine.”
The music didn’t stop for a moment, but one of the shadow began to move slowly
forward. The Duke was surprised that he was surprised when the shadow emerged.
“You dare challenge me?” Frank asked. “I, who have ruled over Chinatown
undisputed for thirteen generations? You are one of the greatest fools who has ever
lived.”
The Duke thought about asking what the hell was going on, but instead he chose
to sit still and let everything play out.
“Too long you have enslaved the Chinese to your fearsome will. They have
accepted me and my man with joy, because they know that we are their liberators, that we
herald the coming of a new day for this nation, while you have brought only grief,” the
King declared.
“What you do not understand is that the joy they feel is only a construct, for
misery and conflict are the only things that man will let rule him,” Frank said, leaning on
his cane. He was wearing a white karate training uniform, with a red and green belt
wrapped around his waist.
“You will never see the happy ending that is in store, for I will defeat you, thus
returning harmony to the tortured streets of Chinatown.”
“Enough talk,” the dragon stated, “let’s fight.”
The King made the first move, lunging at Frank with his katana swinging. The
King’s strike was wild, and Frank sidestepped it easily. He lashed out with his hawthorn
cane, striking the King hard on the rear end with one of the wood’s hard knobs. The King
yelped, but didn’t give up. The Duke noticed that Frank was standing easily on both feet,
without any use of the walking stick.
The two danced, sword and cane clashing in the light of the candles, neither man
striking the other. The tension in the room was real, however, a feverish battle between
the ultimate good and the unspeakable evil. The pace of the strings picked up, rising and
falling with the action of the battle. The Duke saw the Jester poking his black head
around the corner, and he gave the Duke a little wink as he observed.
As the battle progressed, the Duke found reality becoming ever more blurry. The
candlelight that danced on blades and skin became fire, and slowly Frank began to look
more and more like a dragon.
The Duke feared for his friend, who clearly was no match for the dragon’s
superhuman speed and strength. The King was not a warrior; he fought passionately but
did not protect himself well. The King cried out as the dragon laid a blow to his
forehead, and then knocked the katana from his grasp. It went spinning to the opposite
corner of the room, knocking over several candles.
“It is as I have always said,” the dragon said. “Hate and greed rule this country,
and so a man like you can never be its king.”
“Hate and greed are not all of anything, and I know there are those who are
willing to defend the goodness of things too.”
There was an awkward pause then. The Duke, mesmerized by the scene, had
almost forgotten that he too had a role to play. The King shot him a look. He jumped
forward, triumphantly brandishing his broomstick.
“I don’t know about goodness, but I’m the King’s man so I’ll defend him,” the
Duke offered the dragon. He found that he could no longer see any of Frank in the
dragon. Instead, he saw a great, many-armed serpent with flashing red and green scales
and fire pouring from his gaping maw. He didn’t question this.
He danced around the dragon, swinging his broomstick and trying to find an
opening. The dragon’s fire breath was heating up the room, and flames were crawling up
the paper walls. The King cheered and the music rose to a fever pitch and the room
slowly became an inferno around him.
The Duke dodged a swinging claw and thrust his broomstick into the creature’s
exposed underbelly. He found that his broomstick had become a silver sword, and the
blade of it easily penetrated the beast of Chinatown. The Dragon keeled over and shrunk
down, tongue lolling, the floor of the dojo turning red.
“You’ve done it!” The King cried. He then rushed forward and pulled something
from the mouth of the creature. He held it up. It was a black velvet bag.
The Duke looked down in a daze. Now that the creature was dead, he realized
that nothing that had come to pass made any logical sense. He’d just slain a mythical
creature, who had been a crippled man just minutes earlier, with a flashing sword that had
been a broomstick.
“What’s going on? Did I just kill Frank?”
“No, you just killed the dragon.”
“Is Frank the dragon?”
“Sometimes.”
“Jesus Mary and Joseph. I killed Frank.”
The Duke collapsed to his knees, feeling entirely overcome by the madness that
he always managed to stay one step ahead of. He had, as far as he could tell, just
bludgeoned an old man to death with a broomstick. This is a low.
“Hey young Duke, this ain’t the time to grieve for a dead monster,” the Jester
said, putting a rough hand on the young man’s shoulder. “We got to skedaddle on outta
here.”
“He wasn’t just a monster. He was a product of his circumstances,” Duke said
defensively. “And why do we have to leave him?”
“Because the blaze is making it structurally unsound, and it won’t last much
longer,” the King broke in. He didn’t sound concerned, just matter-of-fact.
“It probably wasn’t such a good idea to put hundreds of candles just inches away
from flammable paper walls,” the Duke said.
“Live and let learn,” the King said. “Jester, would you mind giving us a little
piece of escape music?” The Jester nodded, and his fingers began to dance frantically
along the fretboard of his mandolin. “Much obliged, now let’s go.”
The King grabbed the Duke by his collar and dragged him to his feet, pushing
himself up underneath the limp man and forcing him to stand. By this time, they were all
getting light-headed with oxygen deprivation, and the Jester’s music took on a loopy
quality in the Duke’s head.
The King pushed the door open, and burned his hand on the handle. The pair
stumbled out of the lair, and found the next hallway equally ablaze. The Jester bounced
ahead, supplying the perfect desperate quality to his strings. The King collapsed, unable
to support the Duke on his own.
“Why don’t you help us?” The Duke demanded to know, coughing forcefully.
“Can’t you see we’re going to die?”
“I make the music, boy,” the Jester replied without looking away from his
instrument. “Saving your sorry ass ain’t my job.”
The pair laid there, and each man thought his last thoughts for some time. The
King thought about America. The Duke thought about Sonia, but then he started thinking
about Grace, and, amazingly, he became even more miserable than he already had been.
The Duke closed his eyes.
“Get up,” a gruff voice said. When he didn’t comply, he could feel himself being
turned over and slapped hard in the face. It seemed to the Duke that this was happening
to someone else, someone who was slightly more alive than he was.
 Two slaps later, he opened his eyes hazily. Three more, and he was on his feet.
The King was leaning against a wall, and once he saw the Duke was up he smiled at him
lazily.
The Duke leaned against the muscular stranger, and the King leaned against the
Duke. One step at a time, the threesome fought towards the light that they could see in
the doorway at the end of the hall. Here, they knew, there was a magical place where the
air was breathable and the heat couldn’t make the blood in your veins boil.
The music became more and more hopeful, and they followed it where the smoke
obscured the light totally. The music is a lantern, Duke thought blearily, and if we just
keep following its voice then we will be okay.
The Duke would sometimes wonder if he died in that fire. The King suspected
that he did, but the King also knew that everyone was always being born and dying so it
wasn’t a cause for concern. Neither man could be sure, but they awoke next to each other
behind a grocery store several miles away, and their savior was nowhere to be found.

Chapter 6: Riding Bareback On the Ghost of the American West.

“Faster,” the King demanded. This was the most serious the Duke had ever seen
his friend be about anything. “If we were seen, then the police could be looking for us.”
Throughout the careening course of the King’s life, he had spent sizeable amounts
of time locked in jail cells of varying comfort and security. Some of these, he’d escaped,
others he’d been freed from willingly. But, once upon a time, a prophet named Sherry
had told him that if he was locked up again, it was going to be forever. He was very
much against this, and the thought of it was making him somewhat antsy.
“They almost definitely are,” the Duke said numbly. “We did kill a man and burn
down a karate studio in broad daylight. They’ll catch us; I’ll bet my hat they do.” The
Duke loved his hat.
“I won’t tolerate that sort of negativity in my presence, Duke. I simply won’t
allow us to be caught,” the King insisted.
“Why is that?”
“Because the current government of usurpers told me, once upon a time, that if
they ever caught me setting foot in America again they would lock me up and throw away
the key,” the King said.
“Is that so? That’s probably the sort of thing you should’ve mentioned to me
when you told me you wanted to go to America,” the Duke said. “Had I known you were
a high-profile fugitive, I probably would’ve stayed the hell away from you.”
“I would’ve been doing you a disservice,” the King said. “It is never morally
upstanding to allow legality to keep one from chasing their dreams, or, in your unique
case, the dreams of the king to whom one is loyal.”
“That could not be less true,” the Duke observed.
“Oh shut up. Do you wish to end up doing twenty-five-to-life in the slammer
while America falls to pieces on the outside without its true king?” The King himself
snapped.
The King had been rather on edge ever since they’d made it out of Chinatown.
This was because some witnesses had, allegedly, seen himself and another man stumbling
out of the smoking wreckage of the karate studio, and there were a number of people who
wanted to ask him questions that he would have some difficulty answering.
 “Thank God,” the King said, breathing a sigh of relief as he saw the place he’d
been looking for. They continued to drive towards it. There was a great chain-link fence
blocking their path, but the King pushed on it and swung out of the way easily. LaRose
had got there ahead of them.
The King let his hands guide his scooter to the place where they knew he had to
go. The Duke followed behind, the shaking of his own hands making it difficult to keep
his vehicle steady.
The King had taken them to an elderly railyard of yesteryear. Red-brown rusted
rails were imbued in ugly gray earth, like great veins pulsing with decay. There was
nothing in sight for a long while, nothing except dust and trains. And the trains looked as
dead as the ground. The great, empty steel bellies of the dead cargo cars and locomotives
sat side-by-side, oxidizing in the apocalyptic landscape of the once-great industrial hub
that the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Rail Line had once been. These cars had
become canvases for graffiti artists of every sort, and most of the trains were so covered
that hardly any rust poked through the crude paint.
“Why are we here?” the Duke asked.
“The roads are no longer safe for us, now that the government has found the wide-
echoing trail of footfalls we’ve put behind. America is changing, and they know we are
responsible,” the King called back, halfway between fear and satisfaction.
The Duke remembered the feeling of Detroit, the way that his scooter’s motor had
filled the air that was so devoid of anything else. He got much the same feeling in this
railyard, only the Duke found nothing in the yard that he thought was worth believing in.
“We haven’t done anything, really. How can we be changing America, and how
can the government think to place blame on us for anything that is occurring?”
“You’d be surprised, the way things spiral and collide. The ripples of what we
leave in our wake cut deep to the marrow of this country. We leave truth, wholeness,
hope, and America can feel these things. But so can the men in Washington, and they
fear us because of what we bring.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone, from the poor to the president, believes that good things have
to come from a stellar economic climate or favorable meteorological patterns. When it
comes from two gone fools making havoc in the Midwest on motor scooters, well the
government gets uproariously confused and calls them fugitives and tries to lock them
up,” the King explained.
The Duke didn’t know whether or not to believe what the King was saying. He’d
seen too many things, done too many things, to discount everything the King said that
sounded a bit unfathomable.
“How can the government fail to find us, in this world of camera phones and
satellites?”
“In this America, it is almost impossible to shake the hounds of the digital age
from one’s trail,” the King said, his voice a reverent hush, “which is why I am taking us
to a different America.”
The Duke was again silenced by the King’s words. Rather than ask questions, he
decided to simply sit back and wait to either be amazed or disappointed. For the first
time, he expected the former and not the latter.
They drove their scooters into the misty latticework of rails. Their scooters
handled the bumps surprisingly well. It seemed to the Duke that the journey lasted a long
time. The Duke noticed fewer and fewer rails as he travelled, until finally they reached
the place where the many connecting rails flowed into a single rail, and on this rail sat a
great black steam locomotive.
“All aboard,” the conductor called to them, his voice husky.
The Duke followed the King wordlessly onto the platform, where they walked
their scooters onto the hindmost storage caboose. It was dark back there.
“So what do you think? Quite a getaway vehicle, isn’t she?” the King asked the
Duke with a laugh.
“I need whiskey,” the Duke responded.
“Me too. That rice wine they served in Chinatown didn’t do any favors to my
stomach,” the King said, laughing. “I assure you, they will have whiskey on this train.”
They moved through several more storage cars. The first one was full of rocking
horses, the second full of manure, and the third full of tall boxes. The King opened one
up, and pulled out a ornate maroon-colored rug. He unraveled the rug and found that in
its center were a dozen bottles of whiskey.
“Moonshiners used to transport their goods along these lines quite frequently,” the
King told his friend. “Might seem like dishonest work, but most moonshiners back then
did more honest work in a day than Americans today do in a lifetime.”
Each man grabbed two bottles to sustain him, and then the King pulled open the
passenger car and walked into it. The lights were bright and warm and there were
probably a hundred strangers sitting in every open seat, wearing old-fashioned clothes
and gabbing about a million things. The Duke found this to be too abrupt and too
exhausting, so when the King grabbed a blushing, blonde eighteen year old by the arm,
the Duke grabbed him by the back of his jacket and kept walking.
“Hey, come on! Just let me go back! She might’ve been the one,” the King
protested.
“You always say that, and she never is. There is no ‘one’ for you, and you know
it, so you might as well just come find a quiet car with me and drink with me for awhile,”
the Duke said.
The next cart was only about half as full. The last car was empty except for a
single man and woman. This man was wearing a black suit and a black bowler hat and a
pencil-thin black mustache that suited him perfectly. His eyes were just like his suit:
black and sharp.
His arm was wrapped around a woman wearing a glittering gold dress that hugged
her perfect body like a blanket of half a million stars. The Duke wanted to blind himself
at the sight of her. The wounds she’d given him just a few days ago burned freshly.
“Sonia,” the Duke said, struggling for air.
“There they are,” said LaRose. “A little late and right on time. And they brought
their own drinks to our little get-together. How polite of them. Sonia, dear, get us some
glasses and ice for our drinks while we sit here and wait for time to pass.”
The music that played was discordant and full of tension, the strings of the
mandolin screeched. It was the first time the Duke had noticed the Jester, who was sitting
in a corner seat with his back against the window, head turned lonesome to the stars as he
played.
“So did you bring it?” the King asked.
“Only if you brought yours,” LaRose replied.
“Every great mind that has ever been has ended up going crazy,” the Duke said
absently, “maybe I’m going crazy too.”
The King pulled the bag of purple petals from his red leather. The Duke wasn’t
exactly sure where it had come from, but he could sort of remember the King pulling it
from the mouth of the dragon that Frank had been.
“I’m willing to bet Frankie didn’t give those up so easy,” LaRose said. “He told
me once he got them from some witch woman in Vietnam. What’d you have to do, kill
him for them?”
The King was silent. The Duke broke down sobbing.
It was in this interim that Sonia returned. She brought three glasses full of ice on
a tray, which she set down on a table next to LaRose. He poured three glasses from a
single bottle and handed two of them to the King, continuing the conversation as he did.
“Man, Kingsley old pal, that’s a dark one even for an unhinged sonofabitch like
you. Killing a man for a pocketful of petals, even purple petals with properties such as
these ones, well that’s just a step in the wrong direction,” LaRose said.
“Just play the video,” the King told him.
“You call the shots, maestro,” LaRose said. “Sonia, bring in the TV.”
And Sonia, right on cue, wheeled in the TV. It was on a cart, like in an eighties
high school, and it was one of those box sets from the early days of color screens.
LaRose held up the tape. It was the same tape that the King had failed to procure several
hundred miles back, in Hustonville. He popped it in.
“What does it play?” the Duke asked.
“It plays the truth,” Sonia whispered in his ear.
The Duke watched the screen mutely. The screen fired up, and the first thing that
the Duke heard was music. The Duke knew that it was the sound of a piano, but he could
hardly compare it to any other piano he’d ever heard. It was the sound of life passing,
every note the perfect emulation of a heart beating or a lung drawing breath or an eye
blinking. It was the whole thing, being played right there, on a piano. The Duke longed
to know who it was that was playing those beautiful notes, but the camera wasn’t
watching the pianist. It was watching a lone figure, standing on the dance floor, wearing
a black bandanna and a red leather jacket, blonde curls bright beneath the bluelight. The
figure snapped his fingers several times, and then began to dance.
The Duke was hypnotized by the movement of the man on the floor. He spun,
strutted, collapsed, tapped his foot, all in perfect time with the music that was everything.
In a sense, he became the music, and therefore became everything.
When the woman leapt into his arms, he barely missed a beat. He twirled her,
stepped with her, dipped her, and soon the Duke could no longer tell where the pair began
and the music ended because the three things had disappeared into each other.
They danced until the were both dripping in sweat. The girl kicked off both her
heels, and tied her curls back into a tight little bun. This was when the Duke first
recognized her.
The Duke had managed to go well over a decade without ever laying eyes upon
Grace. He had done this partially out of stubbornness and mostly for the sake of his
sanity. Seeing her for the first time in so many year, in the context of this shocking and
horrifying revelation was, suffice to say, a little too much for his already supremely
addled mind to handle.
“That’s Grace.”
“No, that’s me,” the King said.
 “The girl,” the Duke replied numbly.
“The girl? You know her?” the King asked in confusion. “How? Who is she?”
“Ah, now this is an interesting development,” LaRose said, hands forming a
steeple and a Cheshire grin spreading across his face. “It seems that the King is the one
who stole the Duke’s girl, and both were unaware of this until this moment of truth
came.”
The Duke thought for a moment, and realized there were too many things to think.
He didn’t need to think; he couldn’t. So he ran.
The Duke tore from the room. He shoved his way through the party that was
going on in the next car. The King followed him, forcing himself to tear away from the
video that would tell him everything.
“Duke! Where are you going? We haven’t watched the whole thing yet!” The
King shouted.
The Duke didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything the King had to say
anymore. All he wanted to do was be as far away from every ounce of insanity that the
King had ever said to him. All he wanted to do was the kill the bloody bastard for ruining
his life with the one greatest chance at happiness he’d ever been given. But mostly, he
just wanted to run. To run and be done with it.
The King didn’t give up the chase. The Duke stopped to grab another bottle of
whiskey for the road, which gave the King a moment to close the gap. The Duke
continued to back towards the door, a shaking hand raised in sheer emotion and defense
shielding him from the King.
“I don’t understand what’s upset you so, my Duke,” the King said confusedly.
“That video really made very little sense to me, although it’s not nearly done.”
“You…don’t…remember,” the Duke said slowly.
“Not at all. Please enlighten me, dear Duke,” the King asked of him. “Preferably
over a drink, back in the nice warm passenger’s car.”
“That woman you were dancing with, and later sleeping with, back in the video. I
loved her. Her name was Grace. She never knew your name, and you never knew hers.
But she left me because of you,” the Duke said, his voice shaking.
The King fell quiet and thoughtful for a moment and then sighed, “Well this is
awkward. But this was all inevitable, I suppose. I guess it had to happen this way. He
said it did.”
“What are you talking about? No, you know what? I don’t care. I’m finished
with your fragments of nonsense and you half-truths and your psychosis. I’m done with
it all,” the Duke declared.
“You know time, and you know me, and you knew what you signed up for when
you did,” the King shouted angrily. “You wrote the poem, now you have to recite it.”
“No, I didn’t write the goddamn poem, you did. I just followed along. And look
where that’s gotten us. All you do is blunder towards what you want, smashing
everything innocent and good along your path,” the Duke said. “Until everything’s laid to
waste. And now it is, even me, the only one who loves you.”
He turned and ran then. He was faster than the King, and he made it to the back
car before the King caught up to him. He threw open the door, and he saw the American
night rushing beneath him.
“You can’t jump,” the King said, two steps away. “We’re not even in the America
you know anymore. If you jump, then we all disappear.”
 The Duke looked at the King for a moment, threw himself into the man’s arms,
and embraced him. The King hugged him back. The Duke slipped his hand into the
King’s pocket, and took the petals. They were his; he’d been the one to kill Frank.
The King let him go. Their eyes met for a moment, the King’s bright blue and the
Duke’s earthy brown.
It is difficult to know how to say goodbye, especially to something you believe in.
It’s like getting up from a craps game the moment before the dice fall. You just never
think it’s going to be the right way. So the Duke just did it the best way the Duke knew:
silent.
He turned and he took a step and this step led him closer to the precipice that was
higher than he could ever know or understand and then the next step led him straight off.
And the King couldn’t stop him even though he’d wanted to because he didn’t have the
authority. He could only watch, sad as his best friend tumbled into the murky depths of a
different world.
…
It was still night when the Duke awoke. He found himself unharmed, which was
surprising, considering that he’d jumped from a train going full-speed onto a bed of
gravel and iron rails.
He got up. He was very glad that he’d thought to stop and grab himself a bottle of
whiskey. He would’ve felt very much alone if he hadn’t. He uncorked the bottle and
took a swig. Only then did he realize that the purple petals were still clutched in his left
hand. He put them in his pocket.
With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, he walked. He walked and
walked, following the rails and drinking and feeling glad for the time to do both. He’d
been running too much.
He was in a prairie, which he thought strange because he’d only been on that train
for maybe forty minutes and it seemed unlikely that there were prairies of this magnitude
forty minutes outside the city of Chicago. They were prairies like he couldn’t believe
still existed in America, swathes of grass that stretched far into the darkness, swaying and
undulating in the quiet cool spring winds that came up from the south.
The Duke would’ve expressed some form of concern, had he not been so taken
with the calmness of the land. He’d never felt so perfectly fit into everything else that
was around him. He felt like the grass, he could feel the wind blow against his skin and it
made his chest rise with this one emotion that is difficult to describe but might just be
wholeness.
The moon shown over everything like the eye of a sleepy god, and it seemed to
the Duke that this was the one thing that every piece of art he’d ever seen had been trying
to capture. This, this was America.
He kept on a-wandering, drinking and following the rails until he realized that the
rails had disappeared and then he followed the moon. And when the moon disappeared
he followed the sun as it climbed rosy from its cradle.
And then when the sun fell down so did the Duke, and by this time he was pretty
sure that he hated the prairie and he was out of liquor and his belly rumbled and he even
missed the King a little bit.
“Where did the rails go?” He asked the sleeping god with one eye open.
The god didn’t answer. He was asleep. The Duke got back up again and he kept
walking. He got bored and he smashed the bottle and he stared at the sharp glass and he
thought of stabbing Frank and being cut by Sonia and he threw it away in disgust,
hugging himself and shivering.
An old man wearing a bearskin pushed through the grasses and found him. The
man was leaning on a great staff made of Hawthorne. The man glared at him from
underneath a long, iron-gray beard.
“What in the name of green goddamn Earth are you doing?” his voice was
gravelly and familiar. The Duke smiled. He thought he’d never hear it again.
“Frank?”
“I told you before, that ain’t my name boy,” Frank said, wrapping the bearcloak
about himself. “Think you can just shatter a glass bottle in my kingdom and nobody’s
gonna notice?”
“Your kingdom?”
“You’re way behind the eight ball, aren’t you boy? You’ve got yourself real,
cosmically lost. How the hell did you do that? And the better question is why.”
“The King was the one who took Grace from me, and he didn’t even mean
to. He just did it on a whim,” the Duke replied. “I’m done with him. Done for good. So
I just got off the train.”
“The King took your girl so you go on and hop off a train. You’re melodramatic
as they come, I swear it,” Frank said, spitting. The Duke was glad the old man was alive.
Not because he liked him, but because it meant he wasn’t a murderer. “You hop off a train
that’s travelling through my kingdom, so now I’m the one who’s got to try to save you.
And you’re the one who killed me. Ain’t that ironic?”
The Duke was silent. Frank looked at him for a second, spat, then grumbled,
“follow me.”
Frank and the Duke began to walk. The Duke found that the prairies were far
more alive where Frank walked. Crickets chirped louder, the grass stood up straighter,
and the earth made an effort to be a little loamier.
“Is this place in America?”
“This place is America,” Frank replied. “My America. This is the America of the
beginning, when Man was just coming here. I was the first one here. Sonia got here
next, then the Jester, then the King, and LaRose came last.”
“Think you’ll ever leave?”
“That’s a good question. My kind are like the clap. We’re hard to get rid of,”
Frank said. “My guess is that we’ll stay as long as you do. Do you think you’ll ever
leave America again?”
“I might have to. I am wanted for your murder,” the Duke reminded him.
“That’s right. You really had no right to go murdering me,” Frank responded.
“And for what? A pouch of goddamn flower petals?”
“It was an accident. I know it’s a poor excuse, but I just got caught up in the
moment,” the Duke said. “I thought it was all pretend. I mean, I killed you with a broom
handle. I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Just a broom handle,” Frank shook his head. “You’ve got to learn that with us it’s
more about what you see than what’s actually there. In the times when we meet, realities
tend to collide in ways that are uncomfortable for everyone. It’s hard to tell what’s a
broomstick and what’s a silver sword. It’s hard to tell when you’re a person and when
you’re a dragon.”
The Duke thought about all of this and decided to ask the question that he’d been
too stubborn to ask this whole time. He’d been trying to accept it all for what it was, but
that had left him knowing none of the rules in a game where it seemed that not knowing
the rules could have some rather serious consequences.
“So what are you exactly?” the Duke finally asked.
Frank whistled low to himself, “That’s a loaded question. I guess we’re mostly
just trying to figure out what the point of it is.”
“What do you mean, ‘the point?’” The Duke asked.
“You see everyone chasing their things, chasing them like they’re trying to shoot
them and kill them and hang them on their wall, and you realize that none of them things
are worth a damn. So we spend most of our time trying to figure out what is,” Frank
replied.
The Duke thought about this, and he realized that he didn’t really know. Love, he
supposed, was probably worth a damn. After that, the Duke realized, the list got really,
really short.
“Is that why the King is always running? Is he just trying to make his life worth
something?”
“Sonia fucks, I go to war, LaRose gambles and swindles, the King runs,” Frank
said. “And the Jester plays his mandolin. We’re all just trying to cope with the fact that
we’re very lonely and we don’t really know what else to do.”
“And where do I fit into all this?” the Duke said.
“I guess that’s what you need to figure out, kid,” Frank said. “If I’ve learned one
thing, it’s that the King has his reasons for what he does. I think he might know
something that I don’t even know. But there’s a reason you’re around. Trust me.”
The Duke was going to respond when he stubbed his toe. He looked down, and
he saw the railroad track. The prairie had disappeared without him noticing. The Duke
strongly felt that it was behind him, in a way that geographic distance could not entirely
measure. A ways off, he saw a train station.
“I guess this is where I leave you,” Frank replied. “Can’t come with. I’m dead, in
this world.”
“I’m sorry about that,” the Duke said. “I know it’s not much, but do you want
these back? They’re yours.” He held out the packet of petals. They were in a black satin
bag.
Frank looked down at them and shook his head, “You don’t know what you’re
giving to me. Those leaves are probably the most important thing in the world.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think any of us are really sure. But one day they’re going to come in
handy, and whoever has them then is going to be one lucky sonofabitch.”
The Duke looked at Frank, “Thanks for telling me the truth. At least a little bit of
it.”
“The truth is one of them things, the important ones. I try to tell it when I can,”
Frank said. “And I’m from simpler times. Haven’t been all confused by the speed of
things. Take care now, and try to have a little mercy next time the King asks you to kill
me.”
The Duke nodded, took a step, and the first America was gone, just like that. The
Duke knew that everything was always being born and dying, at least he knew that was
what the King thought. He wondered if America was the same way.
The King was sitting on the ledge of the platform, his long legs dangling and his
throat humming. It was a warm spring day, for once, which made the Duke think that
they’d finally broken through the curtain of rust that separates the Midwest from the rest
of the country.
He didn’t know where they were, but his heart told him that he was closer to his
destination than he had been so that was all fine and he felt ready for whatever jaunt the
King had next in his heart.
“Hello,” the Duke said.
The King looked up and smiled, “Ah, there you are my Duke of Arizona. You
have gotten us in quite a fix, but that’s fine because everything’s fine when the weather’s
fine, isn’t that right?”
“I guess in some sense of the word,” the Duke said. “Where are the others?”
The King jumped down and walked to the Duke, “When it became apparent that
you were going to take some time getting back and that I was no longer in possession of
the bag of flower remnants, it was decided that everyone would go their separate ways
and we’d all reconvene at a later time and place,” the King explained.
“How long was I gone?”
“By my estimation, it’s been at least two weeks, which means you made
surprisingly good time,” the King half-hummed. The Duke couldn’t tell what song it
was. He thought it was an ancient mariner’s hymnal, but he wasn’t even sure where he
pulled that suspicion from because he knew no such songs.
“And you’ve just been waiting?”
“You know time,” the King responded. “How was your walk?”
“Refreshing.”
He wondered if he should confront the King with all he knew, but he remembered
that he still knew almost nothing and suspected that the King would only muddy the
waters more if he attempted to get information from him so he kept it to himself.
“Well I suppose we should get underway. I filled up our scooters, bought us each
a fifth of whiskey, and wrote you an apology note for sleeping with your girl and not even
knowing her name,” the King informed him.
“That all sounds grand. Where are we going to next?”
“There’s this little town that I’ve been to once or twice, and it’s full of whores and
blackjack dealers and wasted old conmen, but it sure is a hell of time,” the King said.
“We need to catch up with LaRose and I’ll bet my soul and a dime that LaRose will be
there.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Because it’s his town,” the King said. “And we’ve got to get there if we’re going
to watch the rest of that video.”
“What’s on the video?”
“The truth,” the King said. “The truth of you and me and the Throne of America
and the whole thing. We can never be sure of anything until we watch it. And certainty
in one’s path is the greatest blessing there is.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Oh I know so. Think about people, and think about the things that people cash
themselves in for. Good jobs, wives, religion, all those things that people want the most
in life. They’re all sound-income securities that guarantee some form of stability until the
day we die,” the King said. “Everybody gives up on life to get their hands on wellbeing.”
“Do you think it’s a good trade-off?” The Duke said.
 The King thought about this.
“I’m not one to judge the look of the road from the eyes of another man,” the
King said slowly. “Whatever everybody else does they do because they have to. What I
have to do is something different, at least for now, and so I haven’t made the trade
myself. I guess you’ll just have to take from that what you will.”
“That’s all I ever do,” the Duke responded. “Let’s go.”
The Duke swung his leg over his shiny black motor scooter, with its comfortable,
padded seat, and wondered, not for the first time, why the King had chosen to give it to
him. The King’s scooter was far older, as was apparent by the condition of the paint and
the wear of the leather of the seat. He shrugged, and thought it was just one of those
things he’d probably never know and shouldn’t keep asking after.
“Hey King,” the Duke shouted ahead. “I know that you didn’t mean to ruin Grace.
I know that you never meant to do that, so you can sleep easy on that.”
The King looked back at the Duke, and the Duke remembered how wild his blue
eyes really were. How brimming with energy and madness he was at every single
moment. He couldn’t imagine that wild-eyed man sitting at that train stop for two weeks,
doing nothing.
“Don’t you remember me at all Duke?” The King hollered back, his mouth a
gaping smile as he uncorked his whiskey. “I won’t rest easy until I rest upon the Throne
of America.”
The Duke supposed that he did remember the King, and he remembered him
better than he thought. He found it felt good to be going fast, to be travelling at the speed
of light, following the King as he chased his dreams with the certainty of a dog after its
own tail.
He drank and it felt good to do that too. The King was right; everything was fine
if the weather was.

Chapter 7: 40 Days and Nights in a Desert Casino Where Nobody Ever Dies.

The Duke had never had much of a stomach for gambling. This was because it
required a level of commitment that the Duke was simply not willing to give to most
things. How was he supposed to risk it all on a number, when he couldn’t even risk
giving a little bit of himself to a girl?
The ghost train of the CB & Q rail line had ended surprisingly close to the desert.
The King had said it had left them there because there were never any rails in the desert,
and although the Duke doubted this was true he still allowed the King to lie to him about
it.
They’d driven straight through the desert night, with the King singing forlorn
nonsense dirges about dead Indians and a barmaid he loved in Minnesota and the Duke
trying to pen the Next Great American Novel on the pages of his intoxicated mind. Any
sober person who would’ve heard these ramblings would likely think them pointless, and
any drunk would’ve wept at their beauty.
The Duke had spent nearly the whole drive thinking about a curly-haired girl he’d
loved in simpler times, and, at the end of the night, the only thing he had of his novel was
a title:
Grace
He was pretty sure the plot had something to do with mountains, and the only
scene he could imagine was that of himself conversing with a giant eagle as he dangled
from a cliff.
The King had insisted that they stop before entering the city, for reasons the Duke
failed to grasp likely because he was too drunk and was just fine passing out on a piece of
cardboard behind a Taco Bell just outside the city limits. He’d woken with a tongue like
snakeskin and a headache that could’ve killed lesser men.
The desert sun rays went through his bloodshot eyes and buried themselves in the
back of his skull. He noticed that the light particles came in waves, which is a flawed
observation because light is not a particle or a wave, but rather something between the
two.
“How did you sleep?” the King asked. He stood over the Duke, his face cast in
shadows and his blonde curls like a halo of light around his head.
“Pretty good, I think. It’s hard to remember,” the Duke admitted.
“Well you look awful, so that probably means you slept okay. Put these on.
You’ll never survive the walk without them.” He tossed the Duke a pair of aviators that
looked like they’d been stolen from a gift shop. The Duke was grateful for them anyway,
and put them on. Without another word, the King began to walk.
The Duke stood up slowly, managed to find equilibrium, and tottered after the
King miserably.
“How does a hangover never slow you down?” The Duke asked, breathless.
“There are far too many greater enemies on my heels to allow a hangover to lay
me low,” the King responded. “Also, I forgot what a hangover was back in 1929, when I
drank a full barrel of moonshine and quite nearly died of alcohol poisoning.”
The King and Duke passed by a room of slot machines that was advertising for a
“Triple Win Night.” Everywhere they went in the city, someone told them to win big just
by walking in the door, or to become a millionaire with the pull of a lever.
“This entire city is a glamour,” the King went on. “Beneath three inches of neon
and gold paint is layer after layer of the vilest human filth in existence. But America is
all about appearances. Most people would rather get caught up in a pretty lie than think
about the anorexic hookers and desperate, indebted addicts that the city produces en
masse. You never hear about the loser in Vegas. They either leave and never come back
or they get swept into the sewers to live out the rest of their lives in darkness.”
“I’ve never been to Vegas before,” the Duke said.
“Where have you been Duke?” the King asked.
“I grew up in the east. Since then, a few places. I spent a handful of years in
London, until I couldn’t take the weather, and I went to school in New York, until I
couldn’t stand myself, and then the rest of the time I’ve just been bouncing around. I’ve
always been kind of restless.”
“And why would a drifter come to Vegas?” the King asked himself. “It’s in the
desert. Why would they insist on building a city so bent on consumption in a place with
nothing to consume? America, my dear, you break my heart and steal my wallet with
your senselessness.”
Here’s a secret about the King of America: he loves Vegas. Vegas is illuminated
by the burning spirit of capitalism that America has been in all the best and worst. It is
the Big Dreams Palace; the place where people are not afraid to risk it all on the spin of a
wheel or the turn of a card. The King thought that all of life should be as simple and
clean as Vegas, with everything riding on fate in cavalier disregard. He only hated Vegas
out of bitterness; because he had lost her to LaRose in what was, perhaps appropriately, a
game of chance.
“So we’re in Vegas…?”
“Geographically, yes, but not in the sense that we need to be. Like I said, Vegas is
a glamour, and at the moment we are sullied, and therefore not a part of what the city
intrinsically is. To truly be in Vegas, we must look the part,” the King said.
“You didn’t let me finish my sentence.”
“You weren’t going to solve any of life’s enigmas with it anyway. And besides,
we’ve arrived,” the King announced suddenly. He spun on his heel and the Duke
stumbled as best he could behind him. There was an old-fashioned barbershop with old
men wearing glasses handling straight razors keener than death. Next door was a tailor’s
place called The Sartorius. There was a cigar shop in it as well, and what appeared to be
a store that sold exclusively jarred goods of a confectionary nature.
“This is the one place in the city where it’s been decided that filth will not be
tolerated,” the King said. “This is the alley of decorum, of fair play, of honest service. It
is here that we will prepare for war.”
“I thought we were making a trade with LaRose,” the Duke said. “It was going to
be the petals for the truth. What’s this about a war?”
“You haven’t known LaRose as long as I have. He lives for these sorts of times,
when he gets a chance to use a little sleight of hand to ruin my day,” the King said sourly.
“And we’re coming into his town, which means he’s going to be very on edge already.”
“LaRose doesn’t seem like a particularly stable individual,” the Duke said.
“Stable is the last word I’d use to describe him. He’s got acetone in his veins. He
once robbed a bank and then set it on fire because they bounced one of his checks,” the
King responded.
“We should probably get guns,” the Duke suggested.
The King looked sidelong at the Duke in surprise, “Guns? What do you know
about guns, Duke?”
“I know that they do wonders when it comes to helping unstable individuals
cooperate,” the Duke said.
“I like your enthusiasm, but you’re in over your head here and need to slow your
roll,” the King said. “First, there’s no way we could ever get a gun close enough,
especially in Vegas. Second, I’ve never known LaRose to shoot second. Third, that’s just
not the way we do things.”
“What is the way we do things?”
“Like gentleman,” the King said. “That’s why we’re here. To go from roadworn
ragamuffins to a couple of young whales that demand the attention of every casino we
enter.”
The King threw the door to the barbershop open and was immediately greeted by
an old Greek man who grabbed him by the forearm and ruffled his curls all in one
strange, easy motion.
The Duke somehow remembered to take off his hat, which wasn’t all too easy
considering his circumstances. Things were blurry for the Duke as a smiling black-haired
Greek grabbed him laughing by the arm and sat him with gentle firmness in one of the
black leather spinning chairs.
The Duke didn’t ask questions. The man’s hands were soft as they held his neck
still. He applied the shaving cream to the Duke’s face. The Duke had been clean-shaven
when they’d left for America, and his beard had already gotten long and dark. His beard
was the only way he could judge how long he’d been in the prairie, but his seemed to
have about two weeks of growth.
The Duke allowed himself to slip into unconsciousness as the barber cleaned the
road from his face. The Greek asked nothing of him, cradling his head as he worked.
The Duke had never been so grateful to anyone.
The King chatted sociably with the older man as he cleaned up his curls. He
asked questions about the old country, asked about the blue water and the Athens
marketplace and a fisherman named Emile. It seemed that Emile had ended up a martyr
in Chile, which was unfortunate but unsurprising to the King. Emile had always wanted
to be a fisher of men. The boy was too young though, too young, and his grandfather
wept for him still.
The Duke had almost forgotten the look of his own somber brown eyes staring
out at him from a mirror. His reflection smiled and ran a hand along his jawline,
marveling at how smooth the vorpal razor had left his skin.
“You look good,” the King said. He was standing already; his cut had taken less
time because the King’s face grew no hair.
“You too.”
“We’d better move along.”
The pair then walked to the barbershop next door, which was owned by a
fastidious man of Hellenic origin who talked in clipped tones and licked his lips often.
The man took their measurements rapidly, and began babbling about the current
chromatic trends for suit-and-tie combinations. The pair were ushered into dressing
rooms and asked to strip to the bone, which they did. The Greek’s assistant threw about
two million different articles of clothing over the door of the changing room, demanding
that each man try on this shirt or these suspenders until the Duke was sure that they
must’ve put on everything in the store.
In the frenzy of all this activity, the Duke found himself dressed in a charcoal gray
pinstripe suit with a lavender shirt and a thin black tie.
“Is good,” the owner said, licking his lips compulsively.
The King was surprisingly finicky about his dress, and he argued with the tailor
on several different outfits. The only thing that seemed to satisfy the King was a red-and-
white checkered bowtie, which the tailor insisted was not at all in vogue. But the King
would not budge, and so the tailor worked around it, putting him in an intensely red shirt
and a white jacket.
Frankly, even on his mangiest days the King still possessed two of the most
beautiful eyes in human existence and the self-assured charm and swagger of a movie
star. Just a shower would’ve made him irresistible to most every woman in America.
The result of his high-class transformation would no doubt win him passage to whatever
night club or casino he desired.
“What do you think?” the King asked.
“Eye-catching,” the Duke responded. The tailor nodded in agreement, and the
Duke was glad his response was acceptable.
The pair walked out not looking the least bit homeless, which shocked the Duke
immensely. The King never offered to pay for anything, and the tailor never asked for
compensation.
“I will pay him when Vegas is mine again,” the King said. “He knows I always
take care of my friends.”
It was nighttime in the desert when the pair finally were walking the boulevard
that led to the Strip where everything and nothing would come to fruition simultaneously.
The King’s eyes were full of the neon that buzzed over everything, and the Duke was
entirely overwhelmed.
“This is what I need now,” the King declared. “This is the place to prepare for the
great cosmic games that are to come.”
The King was speaking of a strip club that was lit up brighter than anything else
on the street. The Duke hated strip clubs. He saw them as an irritating corruption of the
love that he still remembered so dearly. But the King said this was the place to prepare,
and America was the King’s land so the Duke was willing to let the King do as he would
and not worry so much about his own feelings.
The King and the Duke walked in, and both were swept up by the same current of
pulsating music that seemed to drive everything. There were no words, at least none in
the language that the Duke spoke. It spoke to the women though. The women danced as
if they were not people. He could find nothing familiar or intimately human in the ripples
and curves of their skin. He could find only lust, and lust was all he was meant to find.
The King was chatting with a group of Vietnamese men who were getting
lapdances from girls with names like Ebony Flower and Candy Apple. The Duke sat still,
watching all of the one-time immigrants with their faces pressed into the warm bosoms of
women who had dreams and pasts and fathers and he felt so alone, alone in a dissatisfied
sort of pounding stupor that clung to his heart and rattled with the beat of the music.
“God, save Las Vegas,” the Duke beseeched him. “I think it needs you even more
than Detroit.”
“God is Korean,” a Vietnamese shouted at him drunkenly. “If you want him to
hear you, then you have to go there.”
“I don’t really believe that,” the Duke said, “but I have no proof otherwise so I
really have no choice but to remain silent on the subject.” The Vietnamese examined him
with half-closed, glassy eyes and smiled dully.
“I like this one!” The man roared in a gladlife voice. “Get this one a drink and a
girl and answer all of his prayers, and put it all on my tab.”
The Duke didn’t think the Vietnamese man had enough money to answer all his
prayers, but he did make good on the promise of a girl and a drink and soon the Duke
found himself, against his own will, having quite a nice time. He was dancing with a girl
named Siren, or rather allowing a girl named Siren to dance with him. He drank some
absinthe, and its bitter blackness coated his tongue and filled his head and put his
hangover gently to bed.
The Duke wasn’t sure if it was the lights or the drink or the night, but he couldn’t
even see Siren’s face anymore. He wasn’t even sure if it was her at all. Her face had
disappeared. Sometimes, he thought it was Sonia who he was with, and sometimes he
thought it was Grace, and sometimes he thought it was Lady Liberty, her stoic mouth and
eyes unmoving as she pulsed with him.
The dream became terrifying; the Duke felt trapped beneath the woman’s strong
hips and was sure that he couldn’t breath. A white-sun reflection radiated from the
ceiling, and the Duke was sure that he was actually in the desert and not in a Las Vegas
strip club at all. Then he was sure that this light was actually a silver dollar, flipping end
over end for all of eternity. He wanted to be away from Vegas, more badly than he could
ever say.
“Did you ever know a man named Frank?” The Duke asked his acquaintance,
whose money he’d been spending on drinks without frugality.
“Sure I did!” He yelled back. “Great man. Great man!” The man seemed to be
incapable of any form of communication besides shouting.
“He killed your people by the dozens in the Vietnam War,” the Duke informed the
Vietnamese grimly. A shadow of doubt crossed the man’s face, but then the smile
returned to his face and obliterated all uncertainty.
“Bygones,” The Vietnamese cried with vim. “Bygones!”
The night at the strip club came to an abrupt halt when the King got into a fight
with one of the others about a specific girl and the right level of friskiness that should be
allowed the bar’s customers. As far as the Duke could tell, the King was defending the
girl, which the Duke thought admirable but pointless. The Duke’s friend became quite
irate when he realized that he’d been paying for the Duke’s drinks and dances, and the
pair left the bar before anyone had a chance to rough them up.
They then made their way to the strip. The Duke found his head was far clearer
without the perfume and music and exposed breasts to make it all foggy. He felt entirely
lucid when he looked up at the stars and breathed the cold air of the desert night. He
wondered what it was like to spend forty days with only the desert for company. He
suspected there were things to learn in forty desert days that couldn’t be learned
anywhere else.
The King took the Duke by the shoulders, adjusted his tie, gave him a couple of
gentle slaps on the cheek.
“Are you with me, Duke?” The King asked loudly.
“In body, heart, and mind,” the Duke replied with a silly grin. He didn’t know
why he felt so good. Usually liquor didn’t have the power to qualm the worries and
regrets that clung to the Duke’s mind. He considered the possibility that somebody had
slipped something into his drink at the club, and decided that the odds were relatively
good.
“Hey King, I think that somebody drugged me,” the Duke said.
“Somebody did,” the King replied.
“Oh,” the Duke acknowledged dumbly. “Well okay then.”
The King began skipping, and the Duke joined him out of solidarity, and together
they skipped down the strip towards one of the most fanciful places the Duke could ever
imagine. They saw a pyramid and a tower and a man walking down the streets wearing
stilts and juggling, and the Duke laughed like a moron when he saw that.
They were headed towards a hotel that went approximately halfway to the moon,
that was lit up like a Christmas tree, with a penthouse suite for the star.
“What is this place?” the Duke asked in awe.
“This is the throne of Las Vegas,” the King replied. “Well the top of it is anyway.
LaRose will be up there, basking in the neon glory of this wasteland kingdom. We’ve got
a ways to go before we’re ready to go up there and meet him and play his game til the
playing is done.”
They entered the casino, and immediately the eyes of the hostess lit up. She could
see money, at least she thought she could, in the cut of the King’s suit and the sparkle of
his eyes. He looked like nothing short of a million bucks, although in reality he was
worth both infinitely more and considerably less.
 “Good evening, gentlemen,” the woman said with her brightest greeter’s smile.
She was gorgeous, of course. She was the bait for the trap. That’s what Vegas is: a trap.
And some mice might escape with the cheese, but most mice didn’t.
The King smiled at her, gave her his dreamiest bedroom eyes, and kissed her hand
with a sweeping motion. The Duke was shocked she was still breathing from the look on
her face.
“Can you direct us to the roulette, milady?” the King asked.
“Absolutely.”
“And we may be in need of some credit, as my driver here forgot our platinum
card and I would hate to have to ask the valet to obtain it from my Lamborghini,” the
King lied with sweet certainty.
The Duke felt bad for her. She would undoubtedly lose her job for extending
credit to a completely unidentified and unannounced stranger. He’d recalled how it had
felt to be duped by Sonia, and he could still feel the burn of his long-healed lacerations
from the night they’d spent together.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” she murmured.
The casino was a room like the Duke had only ever imagined. It was like a
carnival, full of joyful shouts as people rode the spinning wheels or the flips of cards like
rollercoasters. The lights were warm and stately and the Duke felt perfectly safe to spend
all the money he didn’t have here. This feeling of security scared him, especially when
he looked around at the gamblers’ hungry faces and realized how entirely lost they all
were to their games of chance. But he still barely had any clue what was going on so he
didn’t let it bother him.
He followed the King to a roulette, and he watched the ball fly around the circle,
skating without a care or gravity to hold it down. He watched the people throw chips
down madly, fighting over this piece or that piece of random action. The King put a
finger to his chin, and then threw a stack of chips onto number 38. The ball fell gently
into the 38 spot, and suddenly the King was the center of everything. The intense joy of
victory was, for a moment, the only thing that anyone could feel. A beautiful woman
threw her arms around the King and kissed him on the cheek. Men patted him on the
shoulder as he somberly filled his pockets with chips. The King refused to let himself be
caught up in the win. They still had a long night ahead of them.
The Duke watched as the King played game after game, throwing himself from
craps to blackjack to roulette. His brow dripped with sweat, his pupils were tiny and let
in no light. His expression never changed from intense focus. The Duke had never seen
his master so immovably intense in his entire life. Sometimes he lost, but more than most
he won, and every time he won the celebration became more intense. The others in the
thrall of the casino lightshow could sense something special within the King. He drew
them to him like a Messiah, rocketing them away from their own imperfections and
bringing them to him. The Duke was no longer the lone member of the retinue of the
King of America.
The King did not kiss women in between victories, nor did he drink to his own
successes. Part of the reason he’d drugged the Duke was because he didn’t want him to
remember this night. This night was a war, and the Duke had already seen enough of war
for his time.
“Why are you being so serious, King?” the Duke asked between tables.
“Because, my friend,” the King said. “This is a serious night. This is the night
that I save lost Vegas and discover the truth simultaneously. I do not know if I will live
through this night. But I do know that I must do this sober. It means nothing if I don’t.”
The Duke did not understand. Nothing in the King’s manner had anything to do
with what the Duke knew to be true about the whole crazy life that he’d been living in
America thus far. The King didn’t need to win. That was what was beautiful about him.
He only needed to live. Why did he need to win now?
“There’s only one game left to play, my friend, and then they will come for us,”
the King reported. The Duke smiled blissfully, and the King gave himself a moment to
smile back. He was glad his friend was enjoying himself. Somebody had to be.
The King sat down at a poker table that was a great deal more important than all
the other poker tables he’d sat at throughout the course of time and space. There was a
single, brilliant beam of light that was shooting down from somewhere in heaven, and it
illuminated the table but nothing else.
The Duke found a chair in the back of the room and watched. This was the
King’s battle; he knew that. A mandolin played in the background, and he let the music
keep him company where human companionship failed.
“I’d like to buy in,” the King said.
“Okay. Buy-in is four million,” the dealer said.
The King nodded. He threw a bag of chips on the table like he was an old-
fashioned Western outlaw who’d been on the lam for some time. The Duke could hardly
believe his ears or his eyes. He was aware that the King had been doing well, but didn’t
see how it was possible that he’d made four million dollars in one night. Nobody else in
America could’ve.
The Duke couldn’t really figure out what was happening in the poker game. He
could tell two things. First, he could tell they were playing Texas Hold ‘Em. Second,
they were all playing for their lives or the next closest thing. Every card flipped, every
chip dropped, every hand revealed seemed to mean either death or salvation for one of
the shadowy faces that sat around the card table. They sat at the table for hours, and one-
by-one the men fell.
Whenever one of the impassable statues of the card players ran out of chips, they
began to weep. They cursed those who remained, and they cursed the King most of all,
until they were dragged away by the one of the men in black suits that seemed to rule
everything. The Duke watched how Vegas chewed them up and spit them out, and he
wanted to leave all the more.
The King remained long into the night. He was a good player who had a great
destiny that he refused to be denied to him. It was mostly through willpower and good
luck that he remained at the table. His chip count ebbed and flowed, but he remained
stoic throughout, thinking of Vegas and LaRose and the truth and the Duke. It was the
Duke that kept him faithful whenever he lost faith in his cards, and the faith kept him
afloat.
It didn’t matter who the second-to-last face sitting at the table was. The King had
already won, or for the most part he’d already won. He had about forty million dollars in
chips sitting in front of him, while the other man had less than ten. The King played
conservatively, slowly leeching away the chips by winning small pots and calling easy
bluffs. The last man didn’t cry out when he lost everything. He just put his head down
on the table and didn’t say a word. The men in black coats dragged him roughly away.
The King stood up and walked over to the Duke.
 “I’ve won,” the King said. “I’ve won every game in the gauntlet so far.”
“But why have you had to play all these games?”
“Las Vegas is all about games. It’s not about reality. If you want to be the King
of Las Vegas, you have to prove that you are the master of every game in the city. You
have to prove yourself to transcend luck, and therefore transcend the city itself. That is
how you reach the throne of Las Vegas. But there is still yet work to be done.”
“And what work is that?” the Duke asked.
“No man is greater than luck. I must do what I failed to do in the past: accept that
sooner or later it comes down to fate and there’s nothing I can do about that,” the King
said.
The Duke wanted to ask what was going to happen next. He was afraid. And he
was right to be. Fate is a scary thing, mostly because it isn’t real and yet it dictates so
much of everything without even being physically substantial.
The Duke didn’t have to ask what was going to happen next, because what was
going to happen next happened quickly. A man in a black coat approached them. He was
very nondescript.
“Mr. LaRose would like to see you,” the man said.
“Yes, I suspect he would,” the King agreed. “Let’s go.”
…
The Duke remembered staring up at the casino and thinking that it was large.
Now that he was staring down, he appreciated it even more.
The gentlemen in black suits had led them to a glass-bottomed elevator that
would’ve made the Duke feel terrified in less inebriated moments of time. He marveled
at the desert; it was so empty. Practically just another sky made of sand. He almost
couldn’t see where the horizon separated the two in the lonely twilight that enveloped
everything outside the City of Sin. He found it comforting, that just outside the city was
such a wonderful, sprawling quietness. He was glad that this pacific mass of
undevelopment dwarfed Las Vegas so totally. The city, however overwhelmingly bright
up close, was nothing but a blip of fluorescence in the face of the arid, mountainous wild
that surrounded it.
“This is quite a palace,” said the King. “I don’t seem to remember it being here
the last time I was in town.”
“LaRose had it built,” the black coat told him. “This is a good time for building
up. Business is booming.”
“How could business be booming? I thought this country was experiencing an
economic downturn,” the Duke said.
“America rarely responds how you ask her to,” the King said, that wistful twang
of love so clear in his voice.
The elevator took them up and up, rocketing towards the penthouse with the
certainty of gravity or magnetism or some other implacable power of physics. The
penthouse was the ceiling of everything; the point at which it all came to a head. The
King wasn’t sure if he was ready for the climax to come, and yet it was coming.
The elevator door opened and the Duke stepped into an enormous space. There
were lights twinkling down from somewhere, although the Duke couldn’t tell if the place
had a ceiling or the light was just from stars that seemed closer than usual. There was a
single chair, in the center of the room, an old red leather armchair that looked like it had
come from a different world. A spotlight beamed down on it, and LaRose sat on it,
slumped over with his hat covering his eyes and a lit cigarette hanging loosely from his
lips. There was an ashtray on the chair’s right arm, that was overflowing with butts. On
the ground around them was scattered dozens of empty packs.
To the right of the chair was the same TV that had been on the ghost train. It was
still on the roller cart, and static buzzed on the screen, projecting a phantomlike glow
onto the penthouse.
“This isn’t like any penthouse suite I’ve ever seen,” said the Duke.
“A throne is a lonesome thing,” the King said. “There’s no celebrity to it. No
fame, no wealth, no popularity. You only sit in one because you have to. Because
someone has to.”
A dark little chuckle came out from under the bowler hat that hid the old gangster.
LaRose snubbed one cigarette and pulled another one out of his pocket, lighting it as he
spoke,
“So you finally caught up with us, Mr. Duke. Personally, I didn’t really think you
were gonna, but Kingsley here had faith in you.”
Somewhere, a mandolin began to play with a screeching hum, sounding like a
love-lost cricket. LaRose hummed along. The Duke couldn’t tell if the man was drunk
or just bitter and crazy. He supposed it didn’t really make much difference.
“Everything finds its way, LaRose,” the King said. “We’ve come for the truth.”
“And the truth you shall have, my King,” LaRose snapped his long fingers, and
two men in black coats appeared with folding chairs. They opened them, and
disappeared with ingratiating gestures.
“But first I believe you owe me something,” said LaRose. “Something purple.”
The King nodded, and he held out the black velvet bag of petals. A black suit
appeared, took the bag, and brought it to LaRose.
“The truth for the leaves,” LaRose said. “That was the deal.”
The pair sat down, and another spotlight popped up. It was on Sonia, who was
wearing a black silken gown trimmed in fiery red. She walked over to them, the spotlight
following her. The Duke saw the videotape in her hand.
“What are you doing here?” He asked her, trying to keep himself from feeling
resentful at the way his skin burned at the sight of her.
“I have many duties,” Sonia said. “Holding onto the truth is one of them. It is the
most difficult. The truth is mercurial.”
The Duke could tell she didn’t pity him. This was a relief. Pity is a shrinking
emotion, and there is nothing American men hate more than feeling small. Sonia, for all
her cruelty, had left him a small fragment of his pride. This was more than Grace had
done.
Sonia popped the videotape into the player, and it picked up exactly where it had
left off. The Duke was glad he didn’t have to watch himself lose Grace again. That was
never going to not be painful.
The next scene was a man standing on a podium. He cleared his throat in a
dignified way, and then began to read a speech. He was in, as far as the Duke could tell,
the House of Representatives.
“My fellow Americans, I struggle to express the gratitude that I feel to you for
everything you’ve helped me do in the last four years. Together, we have weathered the
economic doldrums that have plagued our stock market and the threat of terrorism from
sources across the ocean, across the border, and in our own backyards. We have emerged
from these difficulties as America always has and always will emerge: stronger…”
A mandolin strummed a gently patriotic march as a man wearing a red leather
jacket and a bandanna walked onto the stage, somehow unopposed, in the midst of the
inaugural address. The president looked bemusedly at him.
“Who are you?” the President asked.
“The opposition,” The King answered. There was a resounding sound of a zipper
being unzipped. It could be heard perfectly in the ancient legislative silence of the House
building.
The Duke stared in wonder as a steaming stream of yellow came from the King’s
impressively large member and landed squarely upon the shining black leather of the
president’s shoes.
The King of America only ever committed one crime: pissing in public. But even
pissing in public can get one exiled from one’s country if it is done in the exact wrong
time and place.
“Pause,” the King said. “I have to explain a couple things.”
“I’ve spent years trying to figure out what the hell you did,” the Duke said. “And I
never even considered that it could be that.”
“That bastard wasn’t the popularly elected leader of America any more than I am.
The people didn’t choose him. They chose what the advertisers told them to choose, and
the advertisers told them to choose what hates them. I just had to do something,” the
King said.
“And that’s how the King of America lost his crown,” LaRose said, somber but
still amused as his shark’s eyes glittered in the cold light of the throne room. “Does it feel
good to know your King is a lunatic?”
“I’m not sure,” the Duke said. “I’ve known that from the beginning, so this
doesn’t really change anything much honestly. He peed on the president’s shoes. That’s
more bemusing than upsetting.”
“Unpause,” said the King. “Apparently my actions need no explanation.”
LaRose pulled out a revolver and pointed it lazily at the King, “Pause. I need to
know, Kingsley, I need to know why you did that. Out of all the crazy things that you
could do. You could’ve strapped a bomb to yourself and blown him halfway to hell. You
could’ve stabbed him, shot him, hit him on the head. Why did you pee on his shoes?”
The King smiled at LaRose. “You are a thoroughly fascinating enigma, my friend.
You are a magical being who doesn’t even believe in magic. You think that shooting that
man would’ve cured a thing? No. America isn’t an army, or a geographic area, or a
political system. It’s the hearts and minds of its people. Everyone is always forgetting
that, even you, a product of those very dreams that you put so little faith in.”
LaRose’s face darkened, “I’m not the one who doesn’t know what we are. You
are. You think that America is the same place that you remember from before you left?
The America that believed in things is dead, and it’s been replaced by the America that
wants things. And we aren’t anything, if America doesn’t believe. We’re relics. All we
have left to do is die.”
“Show us the truth, LaRose,” the King said.
“Forget that damn tape,” LaRose said, his voice rising. “That tape doesn’t tell us
anything. The truth is right in front of us, plain as day, and that truth is that you came
here to take my throne.”
The King looked sad. He hadn’t wanted it to come to this. He was sad for
LaRose, sad for that poor man who had so totally lost faith in everything, down to the
fibers of himself.
“I have come here to take this throne,” the King said. “Because I have to set
America free of you. I have to set America free of its despair and its self-loathing. I have
seen how America bleeds, and I don’t even know if taking this throne will change
anything. I don’t pretend to understand the workings of the Fate I chase, the one that
spoke to me through the Archbishop of Detroit and continues to speak to me when I look
to the stars or into a glass of whiskey or the eyes of a Chinese waitress. But I know that
time leads me down a road that will find me along the way, and until then what can I do
but do my best to try and keep faith when the dark clouds circle?”
LaRose was sad too. He was scared to win, but he was terrified of losing.
Winning meant loneliness, but losing meant falling. LaRose knew there was only one
way he could fall: hard.
“So we play the game?”
“The only game we can play,” the King nodded.
He pulled out the revolver. He snapped out the cylinder in a single fluid motion,
and examined each of the six chambers. They were all fathomless pits of blackness,
except one. One was full of unrelenting steel and gunpowder. The gunpowder would
detonate and send the steel shooting out of the barrel of the weapon faster than sound, if
the hammer struck the gunpowder. This is how guns work.
He kissed the barrel of the revolver, spun the cylinder, and snapped it shut,
completely uncertain of what chamber was aligned with the barrel. He put the barrel to
his temple.
“What are you doing?” the Duke asked.
“Luck be a Stone-Hearted Bitch, break the hearts of the Winners and Losers
alike,” LaRose said, and pulled the trigger. The hammer snapped against the anvil with a
dull thud.
The Duke didn’t understand. He was aware that the game of Russian Roulette
existed, but had never heard of anyone crazy enough to actually play it. LaRose handed
the King the revolver. His forehead glistened.
The Duke could only watch in speechless horror as the game went on. This was
why the King had drugged him. The King had known that his friend would never let him
play such a costly game under any other circumstances.
The King did not sweat as he pulled out the cylinder and spun it. That was
because he didn’t believe that Russian Roulette was a game of chance, because the King
didn’t believe in chance. The bullet did not enter his skull when he pulled the trigger.
Sonia bent down beside the Duke, her breasts distractingly close to his face.
“Do you want to get out of here, sweetie?” Sonia asked. She sounded strangely
nurturing as she cooed to the Duke. The Duke latched on. He felt scared and alone as he
watched the two men take turns risking their lives for a broken-down leather chair. He
didn’t understand why. He just wanted a world where things were simple and clean and
made sense. He was tired of the world he had.
“Yes, take me out of here,” the Duke requested, and Sonia obliged him.
Sonia and the Duke were sitting in an old-timey picture house with red velvet
curtains and the sound of a film reel running. They sat in cushy movie theatre chairs that
smelled like popcorn and cigarettes. The Duke found it comforting.
“Thank you,” he said. “What are we doing here?”
 “We are here because I want you to see the truth,” Sonia said. The Duke sat,
transfixed, as the video from the penthouse continued to play on the grayish screen of the
movie theatre. Well, it was almost the same scene, except this time in a different setting.
The King zipped up his fly, and the scene ended. The next scene began with the
King and LaRose sitting in a small saloon in an Old West mining town. LaRose was
dressed in the style of a Comanche Indian, with tattoos on his face and his chest bare and
strangely brown. The King was wearing a set of cowboy boots, a rancher’s hat, and a
black bandanna.
LaRose passed a gun across the table to the King, and his hand was shaking as he
picked up the revolver. The Duke saw the King as he’d never been before: afraid. He
took a long moment to inspect the shiny ebony bone that was the revolver. He pulled out
the cylinder, spun it, and pushed it in. He raised the weapon to his temple, and the Duke
could see the way the sweat poured down his brow. He closed his eyes for a moment,
and the Duke thought he was going to pull the trigger. Another moment passed, and the
King’s blue eyes snapped open. He threw the revolver down on the table.
“You win,” the King said on the screen, and he sounded like he didn’t believe the
words himself. The Duke wasn’t sure how he felt when he saw the King admit defeat.
He became more human in that moment, all those long years ago.
The theatre’s screen went to black, and the warm dark theatre lights came on. No
credits rolled.
“That was how the King of America lost Vegas,” Sonia told him. “You see, Vegas
belongs to the man who trusts fate. It may seem like luck that rules Vegas, but it isn’t.
Everything that happens in Vegas happens because it’s meant to. Everything does.”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” the Duke said.
“You have to believe in something, I guess,” Sonia said. “Why have you chased
the King in all his ways, if you don’t?”
The Duke supposed he did believe in something. He remembered the night that
Grace had walked out of the bar all those nights ago, and he tried to trace the path that his
life had taken from that very point. He concluded that it must all be headed somewhere.
“Sonia, why did you love me for a night and then leave me shivering and alone in
that motel room?” The Duke needed to know. Sometimes a question is asked that will
yield an answer, although there’s no way of controlling what answer will come from that
question, which is the main problem of life.
Sonia thought about this.
“What if all of life had ended after that one night? Would you have felt so
miserable?” She asked him.
“I suppose I wouldn’t have,” the Duke responded.
“Everything changes, except for those one-nights you spend with strangers.
Leaving might’ve hurt you, but try to remember what a good night it was. You gave part
of you, and I gave part of me, and that exchange was a beautiful thing preserved forever
in the amber of time. That’s why.”
The Duke could understand this, but never accept it. He was still searching for
something perfect that would last a lifetime, which was why he was always going to be
so unhappy.
“Sonia, you are the one who keeps the truth,” the Duke said. “What is the truth of
the Throne of America?”
“The Truth of the Throne of America is that there is no Throne of America,” Sonia
said. “It is not a place that any of us have dared venture, least of all the King of America.”
“A Hasidic Jewish bartender in Detroit told me that the King of America isn’t
really the King of America,” the Duke told her.
“Nobody knows if they are the King of America until they’ve sat in the Throne.
The King himself has no idea whether or not he is the king. All he knows is that the
Archbishop told him to go to the Throne, and that’s where he is going,” Sonia said.
“And what if he’s not?”
“Then I will keep searching until I find out what I am,” the King declared wearily
from the backdoor of the theatre.
The King sagged into one of the springy leather chairs a few rows back. He was
glad that Vegas possessed enough of a sense of nostalgia to keep at least one film reel
movie theatre. It gave him hope for the rest of his city. He needed a moment to rest, for
once. He’d put himself through something greater than hell.
LaRose is the part of the King that he hides in the deepest recesses of his soul. He
represents everything about the King that the King wishes he could change. That is why
the King had to watch him die. Killing part of oneself, even an ugly part, is never simple
and rarely results in any sort of peace but an unquiet one. So the King was tired, and so
the King did rest. He closed his eyes, and listened to the susurrus conversation in the
front row.
“Don’t go to him yet. He needs a moment,” Sonia cautioned him.
“Has the game already ended?” the Duke asked.
“The game will never be over, although I have already won,” the King said. “I
will keep playing until I lose and another takes my place at the table. That is my curse.”
They all sat still for a moment. The King watched himself as he watched LaRose
die in his mind’s eye, and the Duke examined the King and saw a new sort of fogginess
to the King’s blue eyes. Sonia watched the Duke, and wondered how long it would take
before he saw the truth, the real truth, that only the King and his court knew.
“I’m sick to death of Las Vegas,” the King admitted. “Now that I have won her, I
can’t imagine anything I could want less. I have realized what everyone of every breed
eventually realizes in the desert: that the price, whatever it may be, is just too high.”
“I’m sorry,” Sonia said, “I truly am.” She loved him, and it hurt her to see what
time had done to him.
“I guess that there’s naught to be done about it. It’s my cross to bear, and it’s a
good thing that we’re so very west because I’m not sure how long I can bear it before I
must lay it down,” the King said. “I need a drink. Come now, my Duke, I do believe that
it is time for us to leave this woman and to once again take our scooters to the road.”
The King rose from the leather chair, trying and failing to look as triumphant as
he wanted to feel. It simply wasn’t the same. But it was, and it had to be, so he put on a
grin, walked up to Sonia, planted a maverick kiss on her perfectly rosy cheek, grabbed
the Duke by the arm, and spirited him away from the sad jewel that is Las Vegas.

Chapter 8: A Nocturne for Rainshadows

The Mountain That Rises From The Desert is not charted on any sort of
topographic map. That is not because it does not exist. It is not on the maps because no
map can tell a full story, because no story can ever be fully told.
They left their scooters at the foot of the mountain and stared up at its great
expanse. The Duke did not know that mountains could soar, and yet the mountain soared
from the wasteland, an enormous column of red rock and moss that stretched its cloudy
appendages out into the desert and over the plains.
The road crawled up the side of the mountain like words scrawled to paper. It led
nowhere but up, and the Duke could not see where it ended. He thought that it might end
in heaven, but he couldn’t be sure.
The King no longer seemed certain of where they were going. They’d gone from
the movie theatre to the alleyway, where they’d reclaimed their bum rags and had been
given each a fifth of scotch for the road.
After Vegas, the King had lost his sense of purpose, and his sense of direction.
The Duke had suspicions that he’d come upon the mountain completely by incorrect
navigating. His suspicions were only correct in the sense that the King had not gone
where he’d intended to go, instead finding the place that time said he had to be.
“It’s embarrassingly simple, our problem,” the King began to tell the Duke around
the base of the mountain. It was the first time he’d said anything since they’d left Vegas.
He’d tipped the tailor with a suitcase full of cash and put a few whispered words to his
ear in Latin and then told the Duke to change into his old clothes. They’d left the city in
pauper rags with the daylight glaring down on them.
“What’s our problem?”
“Ego,” the King said. “It’s a distinctly human phenomenon. We are the only
creatures who believe in ourselves. And I often wonder why we do. Everything else is
doing a far better job of existing than we are.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well look around. Everything else makes perfect sense, from the stars to the
beetles. It’s all running with perfect jewel movements, and we’re just right in the middle,
throwing everything entirely out of whack. We’re not happy, and we make everything
else so unharmonious with our bull-in-a-china-shop sort of living. How many other
creatures in the animal kingdom will put a gun to their own damn skull and pull the
trigger?” the King asked.
“None,” the Duke said.
“Exactly my point,” the King said, and he began to weep.
Out of everything that happened to the Duke on that strange journey that was so
many things and so few, nothing was half so shocking to him as that moment in which the
King began to weep. The sobs shook him gently, like a mother waking a sleeping child,
and the tears landed upon that mountain road like the soft, quiet showers of late April on
wilted grass.
The Duke could never again see the King as the great roaring enigma that he’d
always thought the King was. He could never shake the King’s intimate surrender to
grief from his mind. It showed him that even the King was lost and confused and just
fighting to find some sort of meaning in the whole thing himself.
The King did not stop crying until the tears became too cold on his skin and he
was forced to pull his bandanna up around his nose to protect his face from the frigid
thinness of the air. There was a wintry glow to the mountain that the Duke remembered
from that first night he’d met the King. It was halfway between moonlight and sunlight,
but it seemed to come from the air and from the torch of time that they were trying to
follow. For once the Duke didn’t wonder where they were going. He was just happy to
find a place that was so very far away from the corruption of falseness that had perforated
the land he knew.
He began to hear drums when they reached the summit. The drums were unlike
anything he’d ever heard: primal and vast and containing the entirety of the America that
had been drowned out by the America that the Duke lived in. He wanted to find the
drums.
The road became insubstantial as they drove, and at some point the pair
dismounted their vehicles and decided to make the rest of the climb on foot.
The Duke’s road shoes were wearing thin, and they offered little protection from
the rockiness of the mountain. There were trees that grew stubbornly among the cliffs,
brittle pines with few needles that refused to be budged by freezing climes or nutrient
starvation. More common were soft mosses and lichen that carpeted the rock and saved
the Duke from much of the unyielding sharpness of the loose stones.
Worse than the hardness of the rock was the papery chill that bit through his
windbreaker and wormed its way into his pores. They were still finishing the scotch
given to them by the tailor as they’d left, and that helped numb him, so he didn’t worry
about it too much.
The King trudged upward with the single-mindedness that made him what he was,
hugging his jacket around him. He was, for once, entirely at a loss, only hoping that
there would be answers at the peak without being certain it was there. Even he didn’t
remember the mountain, which meant that it was older than white men in America by a
great number of revolutions of the earth around the sun. The drums grew louder as they
climbed.
They climbed over a rocky outcropping and they found themselves staring up at
one of the most solemn faces either man had ever seen. He was a young man, wearing a
black leather jacket, with a hairless bare chest visible underneath, and a pair of jeans that
ended in enormous cowboy boots. His hair was earthy umber and tied into a ponytail.
He was smoking a corncob pipe.
“It’s been a long time since white men have found our mountain,” the young
Indian said. “And longer still since we haven’t thrown white men off our mountain.”
“Maybe we should go back,” the Duke suggested.
“So easily dissuaded, my Duke, you must grow more comfortable with feeling
unwelcome. The conqueror rarely is,” the King said.
“We don’t take kindly to talks of conquering in this part of the land,” the young
man said. “I think your timid friend may be better suited to keeping his head on his
shoulders.”
It began to snow, in enormous clots, but lazily and furtively, in silent, solitary
suicide. The King shivered. It occurred to him that it had grown very cold, and the only
reason that he and the Duke were not more concerned by the chill was because they were
both too drunk to feel it.
“I apologize for the ill choice of words,” the King said quickly. “I should be more
careful. The fact of the matter is that we seem to be up a rather frozen creek, and unless
you have a paddle I see no way that we get back down.”
Sam Hazel was the Gatekeeper for many reasons. One was because he was
young, two because he was strong, and three because he didn’t get cold easily. He didn’t
like being the gatekeeper, but he was glad he was because he didn’t trust anyone else to
be it.
“You’re lucky you are who you are,” Hazel said. “because if you weren’t then I’d
throw your asses down this mountain and let the wolves have you. But I have no right to
deny you passage, so I will not.”
Sam offered each of them a hand and they clambered over the outcropping. The
wind was beginning to grow more angry, and the man’s black hair whipped wildly behind
him as he walked swiftly away from the place where the two outsiders stood. Not
knowing what else to do, they followed him.
“I’m the King of America,” the King introduced, struggling to keep pace.
“I know who you are,” Sam said. “I am Sam Hazel, the Gatekeeper. What I don’t
know is what you’re doing here. White men always bring trouble.”
“Quite frankly I don’t even know what we’re doing here, and my woebegone
compatriot is as confounded as I am,” the King said. “What are you doing up here?”
“That’s a loaded question, probably better answered by someone beside myself. I
haven’t entirely figured out what I’m doing here either.
“Where do you come from?” the Duke asked.
“That’s the best question you can ask someone,” Sam said, “especially one of us
old Americans, who remember the America that used to be but is now so gone, gone,
gone. We love to tell our stories; it reminds us that they are real, or at least that they used
to be.”
The Duke could hear wolves howling below them and above them and it seemed
all around them. He did not feel afraid. Somehow he knew that nothing would harm him
so long as he walked beside Sam Hazel.
“You know what happened to us old Americans. You know we lost everything to
you white men. Most of us have figured out that our day’s done. We’ve figured out that
we have to deal with you whether we want to or not. I know how time’s made all this go,
but I never did back then.”
The Duke then noticed for the first time that there was a faded patch on the back
of the leather jacket that covered almost the entire back. The lettering on the jacket had
faded, so only the graphic was visible. It was a wolf. Half of its face was white with a
blue eye and the other half was black with a yellow one.
“We were a bunch of angry kids on a reservation who didn’t understand the
cruelty of men. They didn’t teach us to hate white men, but we knew we had to. And
why shouldn’t we?” He seemed to genuinely be wondering
The Duke didn’t have an answer.
“We started a motorcycle club. We called ourselves the True American MC. We
wanted to take back America, one town at a time. Started small time, stealing from
farmers who felt too far from the law to do anything about us and robbing gas stations
along the highway. Pretty soon we were carjackers too, then drug dealers, then pimps.
We were getting rich on the suffering of the weak. It all seemed to make so much sense.
It was beautiful, because no matter how much wrong we did, in our eyes it still paled in
comparison to what the white men had done to us.”
The Duke thought he could hear a strange sort of wistfulness in the Indian’s voice.
It wasn’t that he wanted to return, but rather that he wanted to believe in something as
simple as justice again.
Smoke rolled from the top of his pipe and cast Sam’s reddish face in shadow.
He began to speak again.
“My family distanced themselves from me. They despised what I’d become.
They knew I didn’t give a shit about the tribe. I didn’t care about anything but myself,
about being someone that mattered. I could no longer bear to hear even a perceived
insult, or accept the slightest rejection. My hatred became my life, until I no longer knew
what I hated or why. I hated out of sheer animal satisfaction.”
“It’s funny how revelations always seem to appear so suddenly. You’ll see the
world one way, and then in the blink of an eye you’re a different person and all the
reasons for the things you used to be don’t make sense. You die, in a sense of the word,
because everything you were is gone,” the Gatekeeper said. “This happened to me while
robbing a liquor store. We did this often, because being a criminal is thirsty work and we
were all trying to drink ourselves away from the misery of being hateful. That’s the
funny thing about hate. It feels good, but it still makes you miserable.”
“I think love is the same way,” the Duke observed. The Gatekeeper didn’t know
enough of love to agree or disagree, so he went on as if the Duke had never spoken.
“Well it was this tough old broad behind the counter. My friend had a shotgun on
her, and I guess he was a coward, because while I was loading the car she grabbed it from
his hand and shot him straight in the chest with it. I turned around just before he fell,
when I could see straight through that ragged hold that the shotgun had left in his chest.
He fell with his eyes open. I tried to close them, but I couldn’t. I still have dreams that
I’ve got that same hole in my chest, but I can’t die because my eyes won’t close. I wake
up clutching my chest and gasping for air.”
He shuddered, but not from the cold. The Duke wanted to reach out and touch the
big man, but he was too afraid of him to do so.
“I rode for days and days. I drove through the plains and through the desert and I
didn’t stop until I ran out of gas, and then I left my bike on the side of the road in the
desert and I walked, because I didn’t love my bike anymore and I wanted to be away
from it. So then eventually I came to the other side of the desert and I saw this mountain,
and I didn’t know what else to do so I just began to go up the side of it. And then I
reached the top.”
“What happened when you reached the top?” the King wanted to know.
The wolves answered the question, and the Gatekeeper did not.
“…I guess you’re just going to have to see that for yourself.” Sam said. And the
King thought he was right.
Finally the climb ended, and the Duke could hear the drums above the din of
humanity at the top of this strange mountain. There was a great yawning entrance at the
top of the mountain, and the Duke could see the shadows of firelight flickering within,
dancing on the walls like puppets. A single, lonely torch stood beside the entrance,
battered by the wind and the snow.
They entered the wide mouth of the cave, and rush of warm air completely
obliterated the tundra that raged outside. The drums dominated the room, bouncing off
the walls and becoming a single, thunderous echo that seemed to come up from the throat
of the world. The people danced to the drum. They danced with a lightness of being that
the Duke had never before seen. They danced as if there was nothing else in the world to
do and nowhere else in the world to be. Their skin was red like Sam’s. There were
hundreds, perhaps thousands of them in this room. They sat in circles, wearing tribal
garbs and passing pipes full of tobacco and peyote and other, stranger herbs. Everyone
laughed, everyone sang, everyone did everything and the drums filled the room
completely. They weren’t loud, but they were thrumming with power.
“What is this place?” the King asked. For once, he didn’t know. This was not an
America he was familiar with.
“This place is a what and it is a when,” Sam said. “It is called the Indian Summer.
It is the home of all the old Americans, the place where our souls go when they tire of
holding to the America you know.”
The Duke thought about this. He was witnessing an afterlife. Also, he was
having an afterlife. That was okay with him. He was beginning to feel that Las Vegas
had been a kind of afterlife too, and so had Chinatown, and so had Canada, and so was
everything.
“Where are the drums coming from?” the Duke asked.
“White men always question,” Sam said. “The drums rise from the earth and they
fall from the sky and they vibrate from within every one of us. We have always heard the
drums. In your America, they don’t even know the drums exist.”
The Duke couldn’t imagine living with the drums in his ear. They made
everything look so very small and far away and silly. They made Sonia’s body seem
wooden; they made forty million dollars in poker chips seem worthless; they made
whiskey seem unwholesome. And still the people danced, although they were so small.
The scene drew the pair, and drew them in exactly opposite directions.
The Duke began his journey by going and sitting down next to a crippled chieftain
of the Sioux tribe who told the story of the first buffalo ever killed by men. The buffalo
was grazing in a field somewhere in Montana when it saw a hairless little runt creeping
toward it through the tall grasses of an eon ago. He laughed, when he saw the little
thing. It looked so somber and insignificant. It had no hair, no claw, nothing! The bison
believed he had more to fear from a thornbush. He didn’t see the stone until it was
crashing into his skull.
The Duke only assumed this what was being said, because nobody in the circle
spoke English. The Duke didn’t care. He smoked a pipe as it was passed to him, and he
was sure he could understand every word. The words were in the smoke and in the
drums and in the dance, rather than in the warm lips of those who spoke.
He began dancing with a beautiful girl with rich cherrywood skin and good
cheekbones and golden eyes. Their feet pounded the ground as they circled each other,
like birds of paradise, the lights of summer flashing on their young skin. The Duke found
that he didn’t want to, in any part of his soul, sleep with her. He found that he’d rather
just dance with her and look at her and think of what a thing it was to be alive.
As the night progressed, the Duke learned that being in the Indian Summer meant
having no name. He tried to ask people what to call them, but he found that there were
no people in the cave. The people were nothing more than stories, or collections of
stories, and their stories were everything they were. They told them constantly. They
told stories about a road they had to walk, a road of human misery that they didn’t
understand or accept. The Duke wanted to explain it to them, but he knew it would be
like trying to explain the rock to the buffalo.
There were other stories too. An old Cherokee medicine woman told him about
dipping her hand into a river and pulling out a shining stone that became a talisman for
the tribe, a talisman that protected them from a great sickness of sunless winter. Another
woman asked if the Duke had seen her husband, and of course he hadn’t. She then went
on to tell him that her husband had been the first of his people to ride a horse, and he’d
become a chieftain and had sixteen loving wives. “He sounds like a lucky man,” the
Duke said. The lady laughed and laughed, her formless joy mingling with the smoke
above them.
The Duke wandered about, and then he found that he was, somehow, going
upward. He looked down at the gathering beneath him, and he saw how very few Indians
were even left. Sure, there were hundreds in the Summer, but compared to the vast
number that once roamed the land it was a paltry number.
The Duke didn’t condense again until he had reached the top of the mountain. He
found himself standing in the moonlight, across from LaRose, who was wearing the skin
of a wolf and wearing warpaint on his face.
“I thought you were dead,” the Duke said. LaRose thought this was funny. He
chuckled.
“No rest for the wicked,” LaRose said. “Although I’ll admit I’m sleeping much
better since Kingsley took Vegas off my paws. That silly old starchaser didn’t know half
as much as he thought.”
The Duke thought about this.
“You wanted the King to win,” the Duke said.
“I’m Tom Sawyer painting fences,” LaRose said gleefully. “And I got the King to
take the brush.”
While they spoke, the smoke rose in great billowing clouds from the heart of the
Indian Summer. The Duke thought about questioning LaRose’s motives, but he knew
that LaRose had no motives. LaRose was nothing but a wild card.
“What are you doing here?” the Duke asked.
“Believe it or not, I’m here for you,” LaRose said. “I’m here to tell you the truth.
What’s left of it, anyway.”
“I thought that was Sonia’s job.”
“Sonia’s in charge of a certain kind of unshakeable truth. The rest of us can offer
guidance, which Sonia cannot do. The rules surrounding this are complex and
unnecessary.”
“Who makes these rules?”
“America.”
“You’re trying to con me,” accused the Duke. “You’re always trying to con
everyone. Why should I ever trust anything you say?”
“You raise an interesting point. Yes, you may be correct in saying that I am
always trying to con. But you are incorrect in saying that I am always trying to con
everyone. Everyone is not worthy of my time. In fact, there is only one who is. And you
refer to him as the King of America.”
The wind was picking up the smoke faster than the mountain could spit it out,
making it disappear into the starless abyss of night above.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to the Indian Summer to do what all Indians do: disappear,” LaRose
said. “I’m dead, if you haven’t heard yet. The Indian Summer is the place where dead
Indians go.”
The Duke looked down the chimney to the warm glow beneath. He watched the
smoke reach for the moon and be carried off by the wind.
“They stay in the Indian Summer until they’ve told all their stories. Until they’ve
found peace with every aspect of their lives, and then they rise up with the smoke and
they go on to the next place,” LaRose said, his voice sad and haunted.
“What’s the next place like?”
 “It’s okay,” LaRose said. “Less humid. More conifers. Better coffee.”
“Sounds lovely,” the Duke said. LaRose didn’t say anything for awhile. He
smoked a cigarette, taking big gulps of the chemical smoke . The Duke thought he was
scared to die. And he was, but he’d done it enough times that he didn’t let it cloud his
judgment as much.
“Listen, Duke, I came here because I made a deal with the King of America. And
I didn’t keep it. I told the King that I would give him the truth if he gave me the leaves.
And I never did give him the truth. I got angry and I went back on my word. I can’t die
with that on my conscience,” LaRose admitted. “I believe in fair play. That might be the
only thing I believe in.”
The Duke thought this was true, on some level. One could only really win the
game if he played by its rules.
Soundlessly, a wolf bounded onto the mountain next to LaRose, with a small
container hanging from his black jaws. The Duke jumped. He had a phobia of wolves.
LaRose took the jar straight from the beast’s mouth and handed it to the Duke. The
Duke opened it, and contained within were the leaves, the very leaves that the Duke had
slain the dragon to obtain.
“Why did you put them in a clay jar?” the Duke asked.
“Ask Paul,” LaRose replied. The Duke didn’t think he knew a Paul.
“Well I guess there’s just one more offer to make, Duke. It’s getting time for me
to get on with the next part of dying. I’m just wondering if you want to come with me,”
LaRose asked.
The Duke didn’t understand what LaRose expected him to say. “Why would I
want to die?”
“Because it would be simple. Trust me, kid, no matter how things go from here
you’re never going to get an easier out than this one. All you’d have to do is turn into
smoke. Sometimes, an easy death is the best thing life can give you,” LaRose said. “And
your life doesn’t get easier from here.”
The Duke thought about this. It would be nice, to just become insubstantial and
never worry about substantial things again. That was hardly even a death. Once, he
described life as a good story ruined by the fact that he already knew the ending. Dying
now would be, to the Duke’s poetic mind, a neat little twist.
The wind died down, and the violent locomotion of the smoke became a gentle,
peaceful upward wafting. The Duke found himself tempted by this tranquil movement.
He took a step toward the rising smoke, knowing full well that, if he stepped in, it would
take him with it.
But then he remembered telling Malloch back in the bar in Detroit that his story
could only end with him floating away. This would only be confirming that sad
statement. In the end, he knew that he couldn’t die now just because he couldn’t let his
pessimism win. It had won too many times already.
“I appreciate the offer,” the Duke said, “but I don’t think the King will make it
without me. You and I are the only ones who have ever tethered him to this world.
Losing both of us would end him.”
LaRose smiled slightly, a twisting of his mouth. He lit another cigarette.
“All things end,” LaRose said. The Duke nodded. He was okay knowing that.
He was okay with everything, even though he knew so little about what it all was.
“I suppose now we depart,” the Duke said.
 “I go up, and you go down, but somehow we all end up in the same place,”
LaRose said. “Wonder why that is.”
The Duke had no answer, and he could only stare at LaRose’s scarred gangster
face as the distance between them increased and finally made both disappear down their
separate paths.
The Duke was again amongst the party. The meaning of this gathering took on a
more bittersweet tenor as the Duke considered that this was the last time any of these
people would see each other as they were. This was the last stop before the great blue
yonder that the afterlife might be. This wasn’t the finish line, although the Duke was
beginning to think that there was no finish line, anywhere.
With nothing else to do, the Duke of Arizona decided he had better go find the
King. He began looking around, and quickly realized that the King was nowhere to be
found in the gathering. He went looking for Sam Hazel, and realized that Sam had
probably returned to tending the gates. He wandered around for what could’ve been an
hour and what could’ve been a year, calling for the King. Nobody paid him any mind.
The drums overwhelmed completely, and the Duke lost his wish to do anything
but listen to them. For awhile, he slumped into a corner and listened. But the drums
compelled him to move, and he found he could not dance, so he walked. He walked to
the rhythm of the music, in spite of himself.
He wasn’t entirely sure if the path he walked was a physical one. He saw
paintings on the walls, more paintings than he could possibly remember or understand.
There were paintings of things that had happened and things that were going to happen
and things that never would. It was all in black ink, all in certainty, all as immovable as
the words on the pages of this book. The Duke tried to remember some of the paintings,
but he couldn’t. There were too many, and they said too many things. All he could do
was look at them.
The drums were louder in this hallway than they’d been anywhere else. They
bounced off the walls and magnified into a deafening roar, like passing beneath a
waterfall. The Duke wanted to cover his ears, but he couldn’t.
The Duke found relief at the end of the hall. It was surprisingly small and
acoustically perfect. There was a man sitting on the floor and banging on a small drum.
Long black dreadlocks hung in a curtain around him, and sweat ran down them
perpetually. The rhythm was familiar; it was a part of everything that happened in the
Indian summertime. This was, as far as the Duke could tell, the source of the drums.
The King stood enraptured before the drummer, watching his hands weave the
music of America. A small, steadily glowing pile of embers sat in a pile, casting enough
light to see the smooth surface of the King’s face.
“This is it,” the King said. “This is the thing we’ve all been missing. If we knew
about this damn music, then we’d all understand the inherent pointlessness of our own
existences. We’d understand how worthless it all is, but we’d also understand how to
make it worth something.”
“How can we ever make it worth something?” the Duke asked. The King
didn’t turn.
“There is a single beat,” the King said. “A single rhythm that we all share. We
just can’t hear it. If we could all just get our hearts beating in unison, then I think we
could be anything we wanted.”
The Duke walked up to the King, and tenderly pressed the black velvet bag of
leaves into the King’s hand. The King looked down at them.
“The leaves,” the King said. “I’ve died more times than I know for them. And
why? I have killed my brothers, I have lost my way. I think you should have them, my
friend. You know where they need to go. You’ve always known.”
The King set the leaves down in front of the drummer, and walked away from the
room with his head high. He looked like he knew where he was going again. The Jester
looked up, and smiled his blinding white smile, and kept playing.
“It’s you,” the Duke said.
“Why so surprised?” the Jester asked.
“I’m not. Can I confide in you?”
“I’ve never been much for lyrics,” the Jester said. “And most people can’t talk in
music.”
The Duke decided that this was good enough for him.
“I chased the King of America all the way here because I thought he knew how to
be happy,” the Duke said. “And all along the way I’ve been realizing that he doesn’t
know a thing about it. So I picked the wrong horse. I failed.”
The Jester kept playing, ignoring the Duke’s self-sympathies with the passion and
wisdom of a shaman in a trance.
The Duke looked down at the leaves.
“What are you going to do with them? Everyone says that they’re important,” the
Duke said. He reached down, wanting to examine the bag. The Jester’s hand shot out,
snatched up the bag, and tucked it into the calfskin pants he was wearing.
“Listen here, boy,” the Jester said. “Forget what everyone says is important. You
want to be happy, then be happy. It’s already wrapped up inside. You find the things that
make you smile before you even realizing you’re doing it, that make your lips crawl into
it real slow. And once you’ve got those things, then you stick to them and take care of
yourself and marry some pretty thing that loves you and that’s all you really need.”
The Duke stared into the Jester’s warm brown eyes, and he realized that he was
looking at the last American messiah, who would come down from the mountain and
save its people when the irradiated land is nothing more than burnt-out Wal-Marts and
NRA disciples wielding small arms.
He knew then, simply and unequivocally, that there was something that connected
the Jester to the Duke and the Duke to the King and the King to everyone else, and this
something had been conceived by a God who, on some level, had a plan. He supposed
that this was enough for him.

Chapter 9: A True-To-Life Account of a Dream of A Wayward Atomist in 1955

The King and the Duke barely managed to crawl from the desert. Their motor
scooters, neither of which had ever shown even the slightest sign of wear, both abruptly
collapsed along a stretch of Mojave highway where only hard-skinned Gila Monsters
with poisonous fangs could live, and the lizards thrived on the festering corpses of
diseased cattle left to die by heartless ranchers.
The Duke was certain that they would die, and the King was certain that they
would not. He knew that in the biblical days men would last over a fortnight in the
desert, and would survive great dust storms and Arabian marauders with flashing
scimitars. This was not because God protected them. The King did not believe that God
cared for the prophets any more than he cared for the washerwomen or hypocrites.
The prophets were like the King. They could be sustained by dreams alone, if it
came to it, and men with dreams clutched tightly in their right fist are the hardest animal
to kill. Dreams are talismans that free the mind from the trappings of the body. And
the mind is far more resilient than the flesh.
The King knew he was going to live. And the King knew that, as long as he kept
moving, so would the Duke. The Duke was like that.
So they traversed the desert with their dreams and little else. The King talked
deliriously the whole time about God’s artistic nature. He was a Deist he revealed, who
believed that the entire world was some sort of work of art created by a conscious being.
He believed that this higher being had created the world accidentally, and likely as not
had no idea what he had done. Likewise, he believed that humans were doing this very
same thing on a near-daily basis.
The Duke found his mind occupied, as it was in nearly all quiet moments, about
the injustice of endings. He kept imagining the moment that his body would give out and
crumple into the desiccation of the pavement. He, in an almost earnest way, wanted it to
happen. He wanted to know what it would feel like for this all to end. He was just trying
to die in a way that he believed acceptable.
When they made it through the desert, they walked into a cowboy bar. It was
called the Last Stop Saloon. The Duke guessed that it was the Last Stop Saloon because
it was the final restaurant before Interstate 15 became a lonely, desolate stretch of
highway populated by only reptiles and roadrunners.
The pair plopped down into two barstools. There was a time when the bartender
would’ve greeted them warmly and asked sympathetically of their troubles. But the time
of kind-hearted bartenders was gone in America, and with the kind-hearted bartenders
had gone the kind heart of America, plastinated by the advent of credit cards and Chinese
goods.
They were out of money, but both were in wonderful, magical spirits. They had
made it through the desert, officially, and the feeling that took them was one of serious
joy that can come only from climbing over a hill and finding rest under a shady tree.
The pair ordered water. They drank it with slow relish. They let the cool engulf
them, washed over their bodies and through them, the currents replenishing all that had
been lost on their road.
As they drank, the King chatted to the Duke, “This is one of the greatest things
about America. Anywhere you go in America, you can ask for a glass of water. And the
person who you ask has no choice but to give it to you. Water, in America, is
acknowledged as an inalienable right, like liberty. In Africa, people kill each other for a
glass of water. How glad it is to be in America, where water is free and plentiful no
matter where you may be!”
The bartender listened to this chatter resentfully. He was beginning to be certain
that these people had no currency to part with. He was a fool; he believed that money is
the only currency. Had he asked for another currency, like wisdom or secrets or simple
stories, the King would’ve told him things that would make him rich and contented for all
time. But he only believed in money, and so money would be all he would ever have,
and not enough of it to satisfy him.
“My Duke, we have been in great distress over the nearness of death and the
infinitesimalness of the American desert. But we have survived both, and I think this
calls for a celebration of some magnitude,” the King said.
“I can’t help but agree with you, and yet look at how broke and broken we are
now. We can’t even buy a drink,” the Duke said. The Duke wouldn’t have bought drinks
if he had the money. Alcohol leeches water from the blood, and the Duke had been
thirsty far too long to return to that state just yet.
“How can we move forward, when our future is so sadly dependent on the
contents of our wallets?” the King asked.
The Duke thought about this. It was then that he remembered that he had a
family. He had not thought about his family since he’d been in the desert. They seemed
so far away then. Home is something unfamiliar in the desert. But now he was taken
with a sudden lonesomeness for his family.
Things were always square with his family. Or they had been, before he’d lost
them to his own selfishness and their own selfishness. The Duke thought it had been a
sad inevitability to lose his family. Now, he thought it a happy inevitability that he would
find himself so desperately in need of one to find them so close.
“I have family in Los Angeles,” the Duke told the King. “They might be able to
wire us some money. Just enough to get us where we’re going.”
The King beamed at him. The King was somewhat curious about what people
had created the implacable Duke of Arizona.
“Ah, the Duke has family in Los Angeles! He travels behind me across the
greater part of a continent, watches me do battle with all natures of myself, and drinks in
sentimentality with me for years, yet he never mentions the strangers of Los Angeles who
spawned his sweet salty soul. Only now, in the heat of our direst need, does he tell me
about his family in Los Angeles,” the King cried gleefully. “You are the funniest man to
ever live, Duke.”
“Should I call them?” the Duke wondered.
The King dug around in his pockets. He’d carried his red leather jacket all across
the desert, often using it to shield himself from the red blaze of the daytime star. Now, he
found a quarter and a dime in his pocket.
“You should call your family,” the King said. “Tell them they have been called to
your aid only a few footsteps from the door to the Throneroom of America,” the King
suggested.
The Duke knew his family, and he knew that if he said that then they’d think he
was crazy, which he was. But he didn’t want to appear crazy, so he picked up the meager
remnants of their combined wealth and he set off to a payphone, which was in a dirty
corner of the Last Stop. This was the last of the last, the final thing that could spirit the
Duke and King away from the desert and into a place that made sense.
The Duke dropped the coins into the chromium-colored abyss where all coins
disappear to. He was surprised the payphone still worked. He thought all the payphones
in America had lost their jobs to pocket-sized machines that could call the other side of
the world free of charge. Payphones were relics of an age of inconvenience and
provincial simplicity, where a call was paid for by the dropping of metal disks into a
chute.
“Hello?” A nondescript familiar voice answered. The voice could’ve belonged to
a middle-aged woman or a boy at the door of puberty or a man who was genetically
predisposed to having a high-pitched voice. The Duke supposed it was anyone’s guess.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. White,” the Duke requested politely.
 “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the voice responded with equal courtesy. “Mr.
White is no longer with us. He contracted a rather twitchy sort of pancreatic cancer that
ended his existence with frightening alacrity.”
The Duke stared for a moment, and noticed, without consternation, that the wires
connecting the telephone to the booth were frayed nearly to the. With a single, swift yank
of the cord he could sever everything that connected him to this harrowing news and
return to the bar and tell the King that, unfortunately, the call hadn’t been answered and
they’d have to make it where they were going another way. He began to pull, gently, and
the cord strained to hold to the life it had been given.
But then he realized that, if he did rip the cord, the payphone would probably
never be fixed. And he wasn’t sure that he could take the death of the payphone on his
consciousness, which was already so heavy with the life he’d live thus far.
“I see. Who are you?” the Duke asked next. He didn’t recognize the voice on the
other end of the phone, which was not alright because it was his home phone.
“I am Mr. Newcastle. May I ask who’s calling?”
“Daniel White. The Duke of Arizona,” the Duke responded.
“Oh. I see.” The voice was perfectly prim and entirely wrong. The Duke’s father
would always answer the phone cursing and moaning and demanding to know what his
son had gotten himself into this time. There wasn’t a trace of this lachrymose charm in
the voice of Mr. Newcastle.
“Why are you answering my home phone?” the Duke asked.
Mr. Newcastle was not a bad man. He was a man who did not know how to
handle confrontation, and what was confronting him was a confrontation with the son of
the man who he had essentially, for all intents and purposes, replaced.
“I’m coming home,” the Duke
Mr. Newcastle was completely at a loss on how to broach this subject, so he did
what all cowards do when overwhelmed; he hung up the phone.
The Duke slammed the phone into the receiver. His father was dead, and Mr.
Newcastle, a confusing new development, had just hung up on him. This was not the day
he’d wanted to have. His father was dead.
The Duke had loved his father. His father had been a passionate, frightening
scientist of the new frontier. He would come home babbling about scientific laws and the
breaking of such laws for the importance of twisted reality and the falseness of time. He
loved his son, but was equally terrified of the implications that this love entailed. He
didn’t know how to repent of this love in the face of the raging chaos of all things that he
so desperately failed to understand.
The Duke’s father was a paranoid schizophrenic who knew how to hide it very
well. He lived in a distorted reality that he could only explain on a level of metaphysical
morality to a person that didn’t exist.
The Duke’s father didn’t spend enough time with the Duke, and the Duke tried to
know why but never could. He fought with his father about the usefulness of truth and
the necessary loneliness of life. He didn’t understand his father, because his father didn’t
understand himself. They fought hard over everything, and that was maybe the reason
that the Duke left. But it wasn’t. The Duke always left, because it was in the Duke’s
nature to leave.
The Duke returned to the bar and sat down heavily next to the King. He found he
desperately wanted to get drunk and had no way of doing so.
 “Are we getting the money?”
“No, my father’s dead. And there’s a man named Mr. Newcastle answering my
phone,” the Duke said. The King took a pensive sip of water.
“Sounds like you missed a lot,” the King observed. Wordlessly, the Duke nodded.
He suspected that he had.
“The good news is that I just remembered that I know a cabbie who can get us
where we need to go. He owes me a favor for hiding him from McCarthy’s cronies
during the Red Scare,” the King continued.
“That’s fortunate,” the Duke said, not sure if he believed it.
The pair got up and left the bar. They went and sat on a bench that was located in
the small, gravelly parking lot of the dive. The Duke hated the bar. He missed the Den.
He missed Grace. He missed sense. He missed his father. But he tried not to think about
it too hard, for he couldn’t allow the things within to engulf him. The feelings would still
be there when he had a soft bed to lay in. He could wait til then to deal with them.
“Can this taxi driver get us to L.A.?” the Duke asked. “I have some things to sort
out.” The King nodded thoughtlessly. He was telling the truth. The driver could get them
to L.A.; he could get them to the moon if he needed to. But he wasn’t going to get them
to L.A, at least not right away.
The King didn’t want to go back into the desert, but sometimes you don’t have a
choice.
The taxi rolled up. The King smiled to see the Marquis de Louisiana smoking a
cigarette in the front seat, with the window rolled down.
“You’re hustling me, King,” the Duke said.
“Yes, I am, but I don’t see what the taxi driver has to do with it,” the King replied.
“He’s exactly who I said he was.”
“You never said who he was. You only said that he immigrated when McCarthy
was in congress. That guy barely looks old enough to know who McCarthy is,” insisted
the Duke.
“…The truth is that I don’t have any friends in this America. This America has
been quite unkind to me, with the exception of your delightful company. I called the
Marquis de Louisiana from a different America, one that had more time for its King,” the
King said sadly.
The Duke thought that the King was telling the best truth he knew how to tell. He
started walking over to the taxi. He took the backseat. He resolved to get some sleep in
this cab. He knew there was going to be precious little time for sleep once he reached
Los Angeles.
“You are the Duke of Arizona?” The taxi driver asked. The man spoke English
with the slightest Slavish hue. It was not mellifluous, but it wasn’t entirely harsh on the
ears either.
He was a pale man, with a shock of platinum-blonde hair shooting from his head
without order or reason. His eyes were colorless, the perfect lucid gray of January ice
“According to some,” the Duke responded.
“The King named me the Marquis de Louisiana. I’ve still never made it there,”
Yuri said. “Sometimes, I think that all it would take would be to go to Louisiana. That is
the place where all my problems would be solved.”
“Why don’t you go there?” the Duke asked.
“It’s one of those questions with no single good answer,” the Marquis de
Louisiana said. “It’s got a lot of half-baked ones, answers that satisfy no one, me least of
all, and together they somehow make a single legitimate excuse. This job is one of
them.”
“Ah the taxi,” the King said, opening the door. “The cross of the American
immigrant to bear. The breakeven paradise.”
“I swear America will keep me chained to the wheel for eternity,” the Marquis
said, sharing an ironic little smile with the King. The Duke looked back and forth.
“I don’t get the joke,” the Duke said.
“You will, someday,” the King responded.
The Duke shrugged and closed his eyes. He listened as the King and Marquis
reminisced. This is the story he got from what he heard.
The Marquis de Louisiana is one of the most beleaguered figures of American
history. He was born in one of those Eastern European fragments of Yugoslavia where
everyone is always fighting and winter lasts longer than every other season combined.
His name, originally, had been Yuri Stanislav.
Yuri Stanislav heard the legends of America come whispering to him from across
the ocean. He heard the stories of black men smoking cigars while laying in the branches
of peach trees and he heard the stories of little blonde-haired children living in high rises
in New York City and he knew, unequivocally, that America was the place that he
belonged.
The first time he came to America he had a fistful of foreign coins, a carpet bag,
and a wild-eyed sense of wonder when he stared at the great green bosom of Lady
Liberty. He made it ashore, and was immediately told that he was in the correct
demographic to be a Communist spy. He tried to explain that he was in love with
America and would rather die than betray it to Stalin, but he couldn’t speak English.
America has little love for those who can’t speak her tongue. Yuri was told to get back
on board and go the hell away until he wasn’t so obviously a Communist spy.
Yuri, being the fiery heart of America itself, refused to be told “no” by bureaucrats
who didn’t no his soul or his mind. He climbed through a porthole and dove into the icy
Atlantic, having faith that the magnetism of the universe would guide him safely to the
place he belonged.
He crawled ashore on the verge of hypothermia and in a state of total exhaustion,
but triumphant in the face of those who had opposed his fathomless will. He found
warmth in a train station where he made his plan to travel down the coast working for
various farmers until he made it to Georgia, where he would attempt to find a permanent
residence there, doing whatever work was in season until the day he died.
He made it through two towns, and then was picked up after a xenophobic
shopkeeper called the police on him when he tried to buy a loaf of bread with his foreign
coins. The Marquis had lived a long time, and he never forgot the woman’s flinty little
eyes daggering out at him from behind that counter. It was the one time he regretted
coming to America, and it was the one time he’d ever felt alone.
They threw him in a prison. Consequently, the King had been doing a stint in the
slammer at the same time. Yuri had found him reading a book of poems by Robert Frost,
and had rescued him from a pair of Latino shiv-packing queers, trying to explain in an
extremely sparse English vocabulary that the men did not mean the King well.
The King and Yuri became friends quickly. They forged a pact. Yuri, a big and
strong man, would protect the King, and the King would teach Yuri to speak English and
would name him the Marquis de Louisiana. Yuri hadn’t understood what this meant at
the time. He knew next to nothing about America. What he did know was that the King
of America believed this was a great honor, and the King of America seemed to be a man
that knew what honor was.
They carried out this pact for a few years, until the King made parole. The King
knew that prison would not be the last time he saw the Marquis de Louisiana, however.
He told the Marquis to find him at Yellowstone.
Yuri broke out of prison and was put on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. He was
flattered. He found the King living in the Rocky Mountains and stayed with him there.
Here the King taught the Marquis things that only those who have smelled the purple
flower can know, and the Marquis left the mountains with an understanding of
everything, an understanding that bordered on enlightenment.
When the Duke woke up, the cab was idling.
“We’re here,” the Marquis said.
The Duke looked around. He had lived in L.A. for only a brief period of time, but
it certainly didn’t feel like this. Los Angeles has a smoky kind of heat to it, a haze of
warmth that rests on the skin. The heat in this place felt drier, more cutting. It was a
desert heat.
Also, Los Angeles is a city that, as far as the Duke’s knowledge went, did not
have any nuclear power within its city limits.
As far as nuclear power centers went, this one looked rather humble. A great river
of white steam poured from a single chimney that stood above the plant. This chimney
was made of red brick, and was, compared to the concrete behemoths the Duke generally
associated with nuclear power, quite unimpressive. Vines crawled up one side of the
chimney, and they crawled from a larger building of sorts. It looked more like an old
factory than a power plant. The buildings were equally antiquated. There were just two
small of them, with aluminum siding, and they sat between a larger structure which
presumably contained the reactor. They were windowless, barely larger than trailers, and
wouldn’t have comfortably housed a family of four.
“Where have you taken us?” the Duke asked.
“Ah, that is a good question, comrade. But a better question would be when I
have taken you,” the Marquis said, a big Cheshire grin spread-eagled on his pink lips.
The Duke couldn’t decide if he liked the Marquis de Louisiana. He had a feeling that he
wasn’t necessarily a person to like or dislike. He was a person who was what he was as a
result of what had been, and so to feel anything towards him would be unproductive. Can
you really like a glacier? Can you like a mountain? The Marquis de Louisiana was
exactly like that, a natural formation of certain and ineffable character.
“When have you taken us?” the Duke asked.
“He’s taken us to exactly the place I think that you need to be,” the King said. “I
have always sensed a desire within you, Duke, to understand your own origin. The
Marquis de Louisiana died in 1975. He is, however, aware of how to manipulate certain
elements that are crucial in time travel. He came to our time at my behest, so that I could,
in turn, take us to where your soul wants to go at your behest.”
The Duke supposed that time travel was not far outside of the King’s wheelhouse.
He had seen stranger things than time travel. In fact, he had done stranger things than
time travel. So it made sense that the King could twist the fabric of the universe to his
desires.
 “What is this place?”
“This is a nuclear research facility, as I suspect you have already guessed. It is
one of the first to exist in America, and it existed a long ways off the books. I would tell
you where, but I don’t see why it’s important. What’s important is that your father
worked here, early in his career. It is here that he was exposed to the radiation that is
scheduled to kill him in about…five and a half decades,” the Marquis checked his watch
as he said this.
“Why am I here?” the Duke wondered.
“You are here because your father is in one of these two buildings. He is in the
midst of scientific revelations that will change the way that humans understand their
universe. The next hour of conversation will determine how he lives the rest of his life,
and will in turn determine how you live the rest of yours,” the King said.
“…Am I supposed to go talk to him?” the Duke said. The King looked at him and
nodded silently. The Duke shook his head in wonder.
“Aren’t their rules against this? Couldn’t this distort the timeline in an
uncountable number of ways, causing disasters that will ripple throughout the continuum
of everything?” the Duke asked.
The King and the Marquis looked at each other, “Well, yes, I suppose it could.”
The King said, somewhat sheepishly. “We’re both fairly certain of that.”
“Aren’t their rules against something like this?” the Duke asked. “LaRose said
there are rules that you have to play by. Isn’t this one of those things that simply
shouldn’t be allowed to ever happen?”
The King thought about this deeply, “LaRose wasn’t lying when he said there are
rules. Everything has rules. But the person who makes these rules isn’t against this
action. If he was, then we wouldn’t be here.”
“Who makes the rules?” the Duke asked.
The Marquis and the King looked at each other uncomfortably. The Duke
realized, for the first time, that they might not have any clue who was making the rules.
Either that, or they couldn’t put his identity into words.
“He’s the one telling the story,” the King finally said.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” the Duke said.
“You have to.”
“Why is that?”
“Because we can’t leave until you do. I don’t blame you for your reluctance, my
dogged Duke of Arizona, but trust me when I say that everything that comes to pass
between you and your father has to happen. If it doesn’t, then nothing else that comes to
pass will do so in the way it’s supposed to,” the King insisted.
The Duke thought about the concept of how things were supposed to pass. He
wasn’t sure that there really was. But he guessed that if there was any kind of true way
things were supposed to go, it was buried in the madness of men who couldn’t even see
things the way anyone else did.
“The madness of the King haunts its people,” quoth the Duke, gentle in his
release. He pulled the handle to the door, and pushed the cab open. The desert air rushed
into his lungs, uncomfortable in his mouth and on his tongue.
The next moment was full of walking. It was a moment that the Duke wanted to
remember forever. Things moved slowly, the dust danced in the wind, and round and
round and round the planets moved through space and time. It was something in the way
things moved that made the Duke want to remember.
He knew where he would find his father. He didn’t need to be told. He walked up
to the building on the right and he found the door was open.
His father was bent over a table full of papers. He looked to be at war with the
paper, feverishly scribbling, cold sweat pouring from his face. The Duke didn’t know
what dark and terrible prophecies of science the paper might hold, but they looked as if
they tormented him deeply.
“What are you doing?” the Duke asked. His father turned and looked deep at
Daniel. It was a familiar sort of gaze. His father was a deep-looking man.
“How the hell did you get in here?” the man asked. He’d never seen his father
like this. His father was a dark-eyed man just like the Duke, but he’d always worn his
graying hair combed into a perfect order. The man slept well, worked well, and lived
well, and, as a result of clean living, looked young.
The young man who stared at the Duke from beneath a head of matted black hair
hardly looked to be from the same species as the respected university professor that the
Duke knew his father would be. He wore a sweat-stained Grateful Dead T-shirt, had eyes
like kicking mustangs, and spit fire with every breath.
“I was brought here by a taxi,” the Duke responded.
“Where did you come from?” the young father of the Duke asked.
“The better question would be when did I come from.” The Duke hated himself
for saying it, but at the same time it felt too much like cool science fiction not to say.
The father looked at the man who his son would be, “So I suppose you’re here for
the express purpose of murdering me. It seems I have discovered something that has
warranted a person returning to me from the future and cutting off my head and burning
whatever else remains.”
The King’s father was sweating madly, and his voice had a round-the-bend
hysteria to it that usually was hidden far deeper below the surface.
“…You’re correct in that I have come from the future, and incorrect in everything
else. Of all the things I am meant to do, murdering you is certainly and inescapably not
one of them,” the Duke responded. “Truthfully, I don’t know why I came here. I was
brought here by a Slavish immigrant in a time-travelling taxicab at the order of the one
and only true King of America.”
The father calmed considerably at this news. He sat back into a chair, and put a
coat on. He observed the Duke for a moment through half-closed eyes.
“Well that is good news. Truthfully I always expected that I would be visited by
someone from the future. The physics of the time-space continuum make it so that it is
very easy to go backwards in time, but nearly impossible to go forwards.”
“You know time, don’t you?” the Duke said. His father knew time, although he
knew it only in its cruel cold scientific capacities. “Tell me, man, what are you hunting
for out in this desert? What have you found in this strange and terrible moment that has
called me back to you?”
“What I have found is the secret of how to unmake. I have found that the
elements that our universe is composed of are frightfully unstable and easily separated
from one another. I have found that reality is not nearly so stable a construct as we have
always believed, and that is can be manipulated with nothing more than a burning
incantation sent out into the cosmos,” the scientist was sweating, and the Duke knew
why.
 “You have discovered the secret of The Bomb,” the Duke said.
“Yes, The Bomb, is that what you will call it? But The Bomb is really nothing
more than a single word in a language that we cannot yet speak,” the father said. “We can
translate our words into things, and any word we can say in turn has its meaning in the
language of the universe.”
“But what is the relevance of this language if we cannot speak it?” the Duke
asked. He was becoming enthralled.
“We have ideas, don’t we? And eventually we will have the means to transform
any idea we have into truth, no matter how great and terrible such an idea may be,” the
father said. “You see, that is why I thought they would send someone to kill me. Because
I believe I am the very first to understand how very thin the line is between our
imagination and our universe. How very soon we shall break any law we see fit to break.
This revelation I have had essentially nullifies the entire lie of the universe as something
immutable. What is the relevance of God, when we ourselves are so terribly powerful?”
The Duke thought about this, “But if we are God, then we have created God, and
God is us, creating ourselves for the express purpose of us being what we are meant to
be. God is simply the aspect of us that exists to the goal of being what we are, or what
we should be. So if we are God, then how does this change his importance, or our
importance?”
“I, once upon a time, had a girl and we were together. All I needed to separate us
was a word. All you need for anything is a word to describe it, and once the word exists
then so does the thing, or so the thing will, and once the word becomes the thing then
there is no stopping it.” The father said.
“So reality is something mercurial and shifting,” the Duke allowed. “You are
frightened because you are the first of people to know how fragile things are. But I think
what really you must realize is that this only adds to our responsibility to hold it together.
We can no longer merely trip along and trust reality to keep itself as what it has been. We
have to hold it together,” the Duke declared, “with our hearts and with our minds and
with our souls, knowing that somewhere deep down there is a bedrock.”
“A bedrock?”
“Yes, a bedrock, and this bedrock is contained in our dreams and in the past and
in the wings of dragonfly and also everything in between. God exists in this bedrock, and
God is this bedrock, and we know the bedrock is there. So we must hunt for this
bedrock, and build ourselves upon it and make the universe what it should be. The truth
is that it’s not what we can do that matters, but more what we should do. I think we all
know that there is embedded deep in our DNA is a ‘should’ that we must search to find,”
the Duke said, the finality of this truth resonated in his bones and in the thrum of The
Bomb and in the hum of the idling time machine perched in the desert outside.
The Duke’s father looked at him, “I guess there is some truth to that. But it
doesn’t change the secret of The Bomb.”
“There are more secrets out there then you or I will ever know. I think the King
knows a few more than most of us, but I don’t think that they’ll do him much good in the
long run. In the end the things we never had to be told are more valuable than the things
we never will be,” the Duke said.
“Can I ask who you are?” the father asked.
“I’m your son. You’re my father. You’re the same man who stood on my
doorway screaming black-and-white at me while I walked away from you in a blood-
washed sunset: the smartest, blindest man in the entire world. You’ll think I’m just an
arrogant upstart who only knows how to leave the things he loves and kill myself one
moment at a time, but I hope you can remember that I’m really trying to be something
else entirely. I’m trying to be a wandering voice for the soul of humanity, trying to
overcome my own sad heart for the sake of good stories and a better, sounder-lived life. I
hope that you remember that when you look into my blackened eyes, try to find the
memory of the road-worn minstrel that stands before you, and try to find some pride or
some sympathy and some love for both of us.”
The father’s eyes were transfixed on the son, and they looked haunted by visions
of incomprehensible time, and they were. The Duke suddenly felt awful. No wonder Dr.
White would have such a strange time dealing with his son.
“In future hindsight, this conversation is likely the thing that will drive you mad,
if nothing else has thus far, but do know that I don’t blame you for anything, and know
that it had to be all that it was and will be and shall forever become,” the Duke said.
The Duke’s father looked at him with his eyes shining like chipped marbles in his
stretched skull. He wished his father would say something to him, but deep down knew
that he could stand there until the future became the past and still his father would have
nothing to say. Some words just haven’t been dreamed of yet.
“Good luck,” he finally said. “I guess I’ll see you soon then.”
The Duke shrugged, “Guess you will. Goodbye now. And I know it may seem
soon to be saying this but try to remember it: I miss you.”
He walked out then, bemused and gloomy in the Death Valley sunlight. The
King and the Marquis had been waiting in the car. The Duke opened the door and
climbed in, grateful for the air conditioning.
“Did you say what needed to be said?” the Marquis asked.
“I don’t know,” the Duke said numbly.
“Of course he did,” replied the King. “The fabric of the universe hasn’t unraveled
entirely, so the Duke did a fine job of saying exactly what needed to be said. We haven’t
even entered a single Quantum Paradox, near as I can tell.”
The King sounded pleased by this. And the Duke supposed he had every right to
be. The Duke himself didn’t feel the same. He was glad he’d been given a chance to say
goodbye, but found the time travel had greatly confused his image of his father. He
didn’t want to remember the crazy young man in the Grateful Dead T-shirt. That man
was many things, but he was not the Duke’s father. The Duke needed to see what his
father had left behind.
“Can we go to Los Angeles now?” the Duke asked.
“You know, Duke, I really think we can,” the Marquis said, and he checked his
mirrors. The Duke was somehow already drowsy again. Something about time did that
to him. He supposed he didn’t want to learn the secrets of time, not yet anyway, so he
closed his eyes and he dreamt he was in a hotel. He was in the lobby, and somehow he
knew exactly where Grace’s little sister was.
“Hey, King,” he yawned at one point. “Riddle me this. How do I know my ex-
girlfriend’s sister is on the sixth level?”
The King answered, but he fell too deeply asleep to hear the response.
It was a long road back to Los Angeles, but the Duke did not have to drive it
alone. The Marquis and the King chatted amicably the whole time. They discoursed on
the truths of their mad existence and attempted to reveal to one another the hidden secrets
of what they held within their own minds and the secrets that populated the confines of
the groaning American continent. This was not unusual talk; these were the things that
occupied the deepest roots of their souls, unanswerable questions that they attempted to
work out over glass bottles in smoky backrooms and in hotel rooms at midnight. These
answers inevitably eluded them, dancing from their grasps with heartless ineffability.
They did not stop chasing though, never stopped chasing, and the chasing was the thing
that led them endlessly forward.
“The thing that always catches me up when I think about eternity and
predestination is the contents of my own strange mind,” the King shouted over the din of
the raging wormhole. “I have determined myself, and in turn have determined which
dominoes I strike, in this life that is like a long chain of dominoes.”
“I dig man, I dig, and in spite of my own inhibitions concerning my own rationale
for my decisions I still feel that their must be some truth to the creationism philosophy,”
the Marquis said.
“But then we must return to the question of why we’ve never made contact with
our great Holy-Roller if he is so interminably present,” the King said.
“And I would say that Mr. Holy-Roller, if he does in fact exist, must be
communicating to us in a language that we haven’t the tongue to speak,” the Marquis
argued back with perfect affability.
“Yes, yes, I suppose you must be right,” the King said, “but…” and so it would go
on. The Duke barely heard any of this. He preferred to sleep, the road rocking him better
than any mother has ever rocked her child. The road went through space, and then it
went through time, and finally became space again, in a perfectly ordered and logical
sequence of events. The Duke fell asleep in one time and awoke in another, as everyone
always does.
When he awoke, the taxicab was idling in the familiar choking light of the foggy
Los Angeles day. He could see a stretch of land with brilliant emerald green grass, and
great gray obelisks stretched skyward from this life. The Duke thought that it was
strange, the way that the grasses were so green and the gravestones so gray. The Duke
didn’t know why the grasses were so hungry for the gallows-soil. He supposed that it
had to do with the circle of life.
He stood in the back during the funeral. He no longer had any taste for the
emotional closeness that human suffering inevitably created. He saw the black threads
hanging from his mother’s shoulders like cobwebs, and though he yearned to comfort her
he found that he could no longer see himself as the one that was meant to do so. The
King was his family, and so was the Jester, and so was the road. Beyond that, he had
begun to feel estranged from the trappings of humanity. They all thought so small, and so
terribly focused on a single bright light that was inevitably named “The Future.”
The preacher said good things about his father. But they were the same good
things that preachers always say at funerals. They were words about the great honor and
esteem of being a scientist while still managing to find time for the simple pleasures of
paternity and domestic life. The Duke thought it was somewhat sad, how mundane these
funeral partings were. The Duke hoped that there would be something unique said or
done when the preacher read to the assembly his parting speech. He wanted somebody to
walk into his funeral and immediately know that it was his. That was what the Duke
wanted, although he never would know for himself if he got it.
“Are you ready to go?” the King asked.
 “Almost,” the Duke said. They’d been standing next to the grave for an
indefinable stretch of time. The breeze had blown, the leaves had fallen, and the clouds
had drifted over their bare open skulls. The Duke just wanted to think of something to
say. In the end, he realized that words didn’t matter much where his father was going.
But he was going to say something, just the same.
“I know that you didn’t understand me, or maybe I didn’t understand you, but I
think that it’s a good thing that we found each other through the matrix of genetic
selection. I never could’ve existed without you, obviously, but, I think, that you likely
never would’ve come to exist without me. We are all tied to each other, by a great
circular thread. I hope there’s something out there for you, and I hope it’s something
better than what we’ve already got. Goodbye now.” The Duke said. It wasn’t the best
speech, but it was enough.
The Duke took the last swig of his Jack, and then left the empty bottle next to the
grave. It was the best tribute he had. He then walked away, his bum rags blowing in the
wind. The sky was reddish overhead, and it felt like any good Hollywood movie sunset.
That was a sufficient goodbye for the Duke.

Chapter 10: Sansara, the Almost Past and Never Been.

The Duke of America still knew people in Los Angeles, and he thought that it was
likely that he could find transportation for them. After wandering around town for a
couple days, visiting the home of various acquaintances of the Duke, it became clear that
the people who the Duke knew in Los Angeles either had forgotten of his existence or
had never liked him that much to begin with.
The Duke thought it was a bad sign in Los Angeles that people looked at old
friends like inconveniences rather than as blessings. Inconveniences are usually
blessings, in this too-fast world of ours it is always good to have something to slow us
down.
The Duke then decided that there was only one option that remained to them, and
that was to come into contact with a person that the Duke knew only as a polite
disembodied voice. The voice had a name, and the voice’s name was Mr. Newcastle.
“Yes, hello?” the voice asked. It was equally clipped and polite as it had been in
their first conversation, which had either happened a week or five decades ago, depending
on how one views the timeline.
“Hello Mr. Newcastle, this is Daniel,” the Duke responded. “I said I was coming
to Los Angeles, and I am a man who means what I say. Therefore, I am in Los Angeles,”
the Duke responded triumphantly.
“And what is it that you want, Daniel?” Mr. Newcastle asked.
“I want to speak to my mother,” the Duke decided. “I don’t know why all of my
calls have been forwarded to you, but I am tired of it. Put her on the phone.”
“…I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Mr. Newcastle said, a contrite resolve in his voice.
The Duke attempted to remain calm.
“And why is that?”
“You see, I have some knowledge of you Daniel. Your mother speaks of you
quite often, and frankly much of what she told me disturbs me,” Mr. Newcastle spoke as
if apologizing.
“What did she tell you?”
 “She shared with me parts of your…tumultuous past. She told me your history of
destructive disobedience to both her and your father, your times in reform school, and
your tendency to appear and disappear.”
“That’s enough.”
“Well you must understand Daniel, why I can’t let you talk to your mother on a
whim. She is facing a very unstable time with the death of your father, and I feel that
your subsequent arrival could do further damage,” Mr. Newcastle said.
“Look, I don’t know who you are, or what you heard about me, but you need to
believe that I’m perfectly sane and mean my mother no harm,” the Duke insisted. It
tormented him to be put at the mercy of this strange voice.
“And I’d be happy to allow that. But I would like to humbly request that we meet
briefly, just the two of us, so that I can be certain that you are here only in the interest of
repairing things with your mother,” Mr. Newcastle said.
The Duke agreed, and Mr. Newcastle gave him an address in Hollywood to go to.
The Duke didn’t want to make the trip, but the polite voice rushed off the phone and gave
no opportunity for the Duke to object further. He hung up the phone, and announced to
the King that they were headed to Hollywood.
Hollywood made the Duke feel small and disenfranchised, overwhelmed by the
great breathing mouth of the American entertainment industry. How could he ever hope
to be heard, when there were so many voices already shouting through satellites and
megaphones and telephone wires? He thought that, if everyone were to quiet down, they
would find that there was something out there that was actually worth listening to.
They walked amongst wistful waitresses trying to look beautiful on the
boardwalk. The Duke was taken with how their eyes filled with hope anytime a well-
dressed man passed by. He saw the way they batted their eyes and pushed up their bras,
begging any stranger to pick them up from the gutter and make them a star. The Duke
was afraid of the way the women hoped. He was afraid of the bright dreams that haunted
them, transformed them, and finally became their downfall.
Mr. Newcastle was sitting at an outdoor café as he checked his phone
compulsively and sipped a latte with an air of disquiet. He was, by the Duke’s
estimation, a very well-dressed man. He wore a bright orange tie and a sharp black suit.
There were fat beads of sweat on his forehead that occasionally would decide to run
down his thin face. He dabbed at these with the paper napkin that had come with his
coffee. The Duke sat down at other chair at the table.
Mr. Newcastle looked up, “You must be Daniel.”
“I am,” the Duke said. “And you must be Mr. Newcastle.”
“That is me. I must say, Daniel, that you don’t seem to be in the state that you
suggested on the phone. You look like you haven’t cleaned yourself up in months. Your
clothes are ragged, your walk is pseudo-drunken stumble, and you haven’t shaved or
showered in some time. You are in, to say the least, poor condition physically.”
“I’ve been travelling,” the Duke responded.
“Clearly not in style.”
“Who are you?”
“Daniel, when your father died, he informed me that he was quite certain you
were going to appear. I am in charge of handling his affairs for a while in his passing.
He asked that I keep you away from your mother, at least until things had settled. He was
always very adamant about that.”
 The Duke supposed he understood this.
“Did my father leave me anything?” the Duke asked.
“I anticipated that the subject of inheritance may be relevant to this conversation,
and so I brought you this,” Mr. Newcastle pulled out an envelope. In it was a plastic card
and a letter. When the Duke saw the letter, his heart skipped a beat. “This card connects
to an account in your name. The contents of the account is exactly ten thousand dollars.
The letter is, as you will note, sealed.” Mr. Newcastle said.
“What about my mother?” the Duke asked.
“I will contact you when I believe that she is prepared for you to reenter her life,
and if you wish to do so I would be happy to arrange it. But that is, I believe, a ways
down the road.” Mr. Newcastle said, sympathetic but matter-of-fact.
“I guess I don’t know what to say.”
“I believe you’re a good man, Daniel, but this isn’t the time for you to reconcile
your relationship with your mother. She’s sad, and you’re clearly not in the most
organized of states to deal with that sadness. Believe me when I say time will be better
for both of you,” Mr. Newcastle offered.
“Goodbye Mr. Newcastle. I wish you luck in taking care of my family for me.”
The Duke got up and walked away without another word. The Duke liked to think that
he was good at walking away, but in the end nobody ever really is. The Duke was always
worried that he would never reclaim what he had lost. And if he did, then the thing he’d
lost would never reclaim him.
He found the King smoking an opium pipe on top of a dumpster in a back alley
fire escape. The wind blew, and the Jester sat on a rooftop playing an adventuresome
little riff on his mandolin. It reminded him of a scene in a play by Tennessee Williams.
“So we’ve got the money. Where does it take us?” the Duke asked. He was
impatient to be out of the city.
“Let me ask you a question, dear Duke of Arizona,” the King said, inhaling
midsentence. “What is the highest point in the entire body of the continental United
States?”
The Duke thought about it for awhile.
“Well, if we’re not including Alaska, which houses the first ten at least, I suppose
the highest would be Mt. Whitney of the Sierra Nevada,” the Duke concluded.
“Very impressive. May I ask how the hell you knew that?”
“Only if I may ask why we’re going to the highest point in the continental United
States,” the Duke replied.
“We’re not. I was just testing you. You passed, with flying colors.
Congratulations.” The King jumped down from the dumpster and clapped the Duke on
the shoulder and grinned at him like the face of a watch with both hands on midnight.
The Duke shrugged, “I guess anywhere is better than here. You don’t have to tell
me where we’re going until we get there.”
The King didn’t think the Duke would ever fully realize where he was going, and
certainly wouldn’t know when he got there. The King certainly never had. He decided to
let this pass though; arguments with the Duke never really came to fruition in the way
that the King’s royal palate found pleasant and so he decided that he wouldn’t deign to
partake in one.
The pair walked unobtrusively through the city, away from the Pacific Ocean.
The King said goodbye to the great blue maternal shaman of the west, and assured her
silently that they would be reunited soon.
They walked through half of America’s culture to reach the place the King was
looking for. They walked through ghettos rich and poor, bodegas and chain restaurants
and old broken-backed cathedrals. They walked until the Duke had never been so sure of
what America was in its entirety.
They didn’t talk anymore. The King was beginning to run out of words. He was
tired and had been tired since slaying his brother in Las Vegas. He still didn’t know why
it was his lot in life to kill the things that he loves. He supposed it was because that’s
what America is all about.
They arrived at a Greyhound station. The King asked him to buy each of them a
ticket to Orick. The Duke didn’t even ask why. He was simply too tired to care much.
The driver of their bus was a washed-up country singer who warbled away to the tune of
Johnny Cash at all hours, but was decent besides that.
“That’s a place to go that I don’t get asked for often. Sightseeing?” the Driver
asked the King.
“You could say that,” the King responded, flashing the driver a brilliant smile.
“Although I hardly think we’ll see in the way you’d expect us to.”
The driver thought that, if he took a shower, the young man with the blonde hair
could have any role he wanted in the entire city. But the King of America had a larger
cosmic role to play, and no amount of money could equal his odd reward.
“Bet I wouldn’t,” muttered the bus driver. He closed the door. The bus was
empty of real people besides the Duke and the King, but full of ghosts who couldn’t pay
their way. Bus drivers are often unwary shepherds of ghosts, who often rely on them to
fulfill their empty travels.
The silence, once it remained unbroken, dried upon them like concrete. Later on,
the Duke would regret those moments of silence more than any other moments in his first
American quest. He didn’t understand that he had been given a chance to ask his
questions, and drink in the bittersweet half-truth of the King’s cart-wheeling lyrical
speech. The King was too busy wondering if ghosts are the same things as souls, or if
they were in fact mere memories of souls, which are in facts things far more permanent
and essential.
They got off the Greyhound as it lumbered to a halt in the gateway of the final
tribulation that the King of America would ever face.
The Duke of America took the steps off the bus one at a time. It occurred to him
that he had not been paying even the slightest dose of attention to where he was going.
He had been thinking, mostly about useless things, and direction and location had both
eluded him. These things had often seemed small to the Duke, but there smallness was,
in fact, an illusion. There was nothing larger.
The Duke believed this as he stepped off the bus. The first instinct he had was to
look up. He could see nothing. There was a thick and cloying, indescribably familiar
mist that hung in the air. It was white and it was wispy yet deceptively thick. It cast all
into shadow, plunging the world into an ethereal formlessness that was almost as
frightening as it was intoxicating.
The Duke heard a hiss and the Greyhound disappeared. The ghosts dissipated
into the mist as easily as dye into water, coloring the mist slightly with their odd agendas.
The floor of the forest reminded the Duke of the Indian Summer, with its red raw
earthiness that felt so entirely western, like the rust on spurs in the rain or the cowboy
sunset. The red forest floor was a soft carpet, however, so much softer than the bare rock
of the Mountain That Rises From The Desert. A pleasant aroma wafted upward, a smell
of pure, easy decay; death taking its own leisurely pace and taking it without qualm or
curse.
“Where did your Greyhound take us, King?” the Duke asked. The King was
looking elsewhere. He was staring off into the distance, eyes fixated on some unknown
object in the misty distance.
“Everything that we’ve done on this journey has had to happen. You, my Duke,
have done what you’ve done because you’ve always had to do them. It’s circular, you
see, as unending and as unbreakable as time itself. I can only interfere as much as I’m
meant to, and no more,” the King said. His voice echoed in a cosmic way that called
back to the ruins of Detroit.
It was then that the Duke noticed the trees. He had seen a lot of trees, of various
shapes and sizes, yet he had never experienced trees of this magnitude. They were
dauntlessly vertical and disappeared in a halo of mist before the Duke’s eyes could reach
their canopies. They seemed to him almost godlike, and certainly mythical in their scope.
He looked for the King, and found him to be standing in the exact same spot as
before. But this time his shadow had grown to stand amongst the shadow trees. The
Duke wasn’t shocked or disturbed by this sudden change in stature. On the contrary, it
almost suited the King better.
“Where are we going, King?” the Duke asked, a strange feeling of calm washing
over him and through him, coating his mouth and his eyes and trickling into his stomach,
coursing in his blood. “I think that you’re trying to tell me that I have to make it there on
my own.”
“What I can tell you is what you’ve always known, what the Archbishop told you.
We’re going west, and nothing is so west in America as the throbbing leviathan soul of
the Pacific Ocean. Find it not by sight,” The King’s voice rolled like tectonic machinery.
He sounded almost like the drums of the Indian Summer, coming from everywhere and
everything. “But by the wind. You cannot see the wind, and yet you know it is there.”
He watched as the giant columnar shadow of the King disappeared into the mist
without a single sound. His footsteps fell soft on the woodland carpeting.
“Where are you going, King?”
“This is your story, Duke, I have to go find my own,” the King said. His voice
was rapidly fading away. “I will find you once you’ve made it to the coastline.
Remember where you’re going, and remember where you’ve been.”
The King’s voice disappeared, and the Duke didn’t see any reason to bother
calling after him. He had already informed the Duke in the solitary nature of this
particular stage of the quest that he had not signed up for and did not understand.
The Duke stood still for awhile. He figured that eventually the wind would show
up. He never used to have faith in occurrences like the wind. He had learned this from
the King, who always seemed able to rely on things coming in their time. He needed to
be more like the King if he wanted to make it to the coastline.
The wind blew gently, and with it came a waft of salty air. The Duke picked a
direction and began to walk.
The mist stayed wrapped around everything. It reminded the Duke of steam-
powered locomotives from a different era. When their engines would fire with coal, and
the pistons would turn, water vapor exploded from the various exhaust chambers within
the engine. For a moment, this moment engulfed the platform in a veil of steam that was
totally impenetrable. The mist reminded the Duke of a train leaving the station.
“I’m coming. Don’t leave without me,” the Duke said, unsure of whom he was
pleading with.
The Duke saw the silhouette from a distance away. It was a hunched silhouette,
hunched over a cane. It looked like it had once stood taller than the King, but its spine
had sagged under the weight of its burdens.
When the silhouette came closer, the Duke expected it to begin to look more
substantial. This was not the case, for the silhouette was, in fact nothing more than a
silhouette made of mist. It was clearly outlined as separate from the rest of the mist, but
only barely. Occasionally, part of the silhouette would be peeled off from the rest of the
foggy mass by a particularly strong saline breeze.
“No matter how many times I see you die, Frank,” the Duke began, “you just keep
coming back.”
“Wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t,” Frank said. “And I told you, my name ain’t
Frank. Ain’t Francis neither.”
“What is it then?” the Duke asked.
“Can’t say,” Frank said. “But I promise you’ll find out some day, if you make it
far enough.”
“We’ve almost made it to the Throne of America, or at least that’s where I thought
we were going. Where’s left to go after that?” the Duke asked.
“That’s the problem with the leadership in this country,” Frank said with the
consumptive cough of the dead. “Everyone’s so focused on getting to sit in the goddamn
chair and nobody has a clue what to do once they get there.”
There was a sound of birds in the trees above. The chirps and the flutter of wings cut
through the fog. The Duke looked up. When he looked down, the shape of Frank in the
fog had swirled and dissipated. He could still see where Frank had been, but the
recognizable ghostly form was gone.
“Frank?” the Duke shouted. He received no answer from the fog or from the forest. The
fog had risen slightly, so the Duke was able to make out a pathway. He scented the air.
The smell of the salt came with breezes at his back, so he knew the path was leading him
the right way.
Soon the another fogbank rolled into the woods, this one even thicker than the last, and
the Duke found that the only companionship he had in the woods were the trees. The
trees and the sound of the mandolin in the background, playing an adventuresome little
riff that sounded like something played at a pirate’s funeral. But the Duke found that the
mandolin no longer could move him in the same way as it once had. It was a part of him;
played by his own soul as well as by the Jester, who skipped gleefully through the trees,
as lithe as a grasshopper, watching as the mist wrapped itself around the Duke.
“Do you want to know where the King was born?” the mist said. It had yet to
form another silhouette. “He was born on the island of Roanoke in 1585. He was the son
of a witch doctor. He awoke from slumber one day and he found that everyone around
him was dead. For two centuries he wandered the coastline, cannibalizing those persons
who were easy prey. When the British came, he enlisted in their army, but when the
colonists decided to take control he took their side, and poisoned an entire regiment of the
British army with use of the knowledge of secret poisons that his father had passed onto
him.”
 “That seems pretty far-fetched,” the Duke stated, not breaking stride.
“Believe whatever you want to,” the mist told him, its voice monotone. “It’s
probably true anyway.”
The Duke found himself thinking of his mother. Throughout this whole strange
adventure, he’d never thought of his mother like he was now. He supposed this was
because he had never felt quite so alone.
After quite a lot of walking, the path forked. The breeze had died down, and the
Duke found he could not decide which direction would take him closer to the coastline.
As a result of travelling with the King, the Duke had come to possess a certain intuition
of what life expected from him, and for some reason he became quite sure that, in that
moment, there was nothing he needed to do so urgently as sit down. So he picked a giant
tree that looked comfortable and he nestled himself between its roots.
The next apparition formed directly in front of him while he stared into the
impenetrable fog. The Duke’s stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten since Los Angeles. It
formed from bottom to top. The curviness of the ghost’s outline was oddly alluring to the
Duke. At first, he didn’t recognize whose outline was taking shape. But once he saw the
ringlets of fog attach to her head, he was certain.
“I have to say, I wasn’t expecting this,” the Duke admitted.
“Why not, honey?” Grace asked him. Her voice sounded almost the same, except
it was more distant, hollow, tinny, like she was speaking through a megaphone from a
long ways away.
“Well, I didn’t think you were dead,” the Duke said. “So naturally I didn’t think
that your ghost would come to haunt me in a geographic location that I have suspicions
may be the Redwood Forest but may be somewhere else.”
Grace laughed her tinkling little laugh. The Duke liked her laugh. He also found
that even when her ghost laughed it still tore at the fibers of his heart on a microscopic
level.
“Don’t worry, Duke; I’m not dead. Actually, I’m the furthest thing from it,”
Grace said. “And I’m not a ghost. Well, I’m not a ghost in the sense that I’m the ghost of
Grace. I’m the ghost of something else.”
The Duke knew very little about the paranormal. It seemed to him that the mist
he was dealing with was not quite a ghost. And since it wasn’t a ghost, the Duke had to
assume it was a demon. Probably some sort of shapeshifting Boggart from the fifth circle
of hell. He didn’t really know why the King had decided to leave his closest friend at the
mercy of such a creature. The King always had his reasons, the Duke supposed.
“Why did you leave me, Grace?” the Duke asked.
“I wish you wouldn’t put so much gravitas behind the action. The time was
wrong and that’s that. I know it hurt, but it wasn’t even supposed to. Why do you think
you love me so much, Duke?” the mist spoke with a candor that the Duke had never
known Grace to possess. He did recognize that this voice was not, in fact, Grace’s,
although that did not necessarily mean it was not speaking the truth. He suspected that,
whatever the mist was, it was not here to lie to him.
“The thing is that I wasn’t ever really sure if I loved you. The first time I saw
you, I had this sense that there was something….there between us. When I was with you,
I didn’t know what it was. I thought about it a long time, and eventually I realized that
the thing was symmetry.”
The shadow didn’t respond, which he took as a license to keep talking, “You
know how much I always hated numbers. We used to talk about it all the time. Well
there was one day, after I’d seen you a couple times, when I was sitting in Linear
Algebra, watching numbers fly onto the board, and I finally understood the entire
language of mathematics, in a single, blinding moment. I understood that mathematics
has nothing to do with order. It’s about symmetry, which is an absence of a need for
order. It’s about the perfect and total completion of one thing by another. It’s the feeling
that two things can fit together in such a way that there is no need for anything else. It’s
the most romantic notion in all of humanity. It’s hopeful.”
“You really think that it’s all that simple? I’ve never known anything to be that
easy,” the mist said quietly. It was beginning to sound strangely more human. Its
glamour was dropping. For a moment, the Duke confused it with the sound of a
mandolin, but the moment passed as he began to speak again.
“I think that’s what I would tell you if I could go back. I really think that the
straightest, happiest road my life could’ve taken would’ve been with you. I really never
should’ve let you go, and now I’m afraid that it’s going to haunt me forever that I did.” It
felt good to admit that.
The Duke remembered a rainy night in New York, with the din of the city’s
grandiose apathy ringing in his ears. He remembered hailing a cab, and he remembered
the cab he’d hailed had been driven by a war veteran with three medals hanging from his
rearview mirror. He remembered getting on a plane for South America without ever
telling a soul. This was three nights after Grace had left him in the Den with whiskey on
his breath and a new hole in his heart. He remembered wanting to run away from Grace.
But what he realized soon after that is that, no matter where he ran, he always expected to
find Grace there.
“The beautiful thing about being alive, dear Duke of all, is that there’s always
time to find that happy road again,” the Grace-shaped mist told him. “The illusion of the
world is that there is too much distance that separates one from the Road. But the real
and true is that all you need to do is forget the distance and start going and you’ll find the
happy road.”
The Duke had been on the road. He wasn’t sure if it was leading him to the place
that he needed to go, but if he trusted the mist then he supposed that he should eventually
find that happy stretch.
The wind blew again, and it was laced with the scent of salt and the scent of hope.
The Duke remembered sitting next to the King on a motor scooter, outside of a bar that
belonged to a delirious sad oracle of the north. He remembered that the King had been
waiting for the wind to blow. The wind had been the one to instruct his mad path. The
wind had carried him from the bitter drunken north to the coastline. The Duke figured
that maybe that was the key to happiness in itself.
“Follow the wind,” he whispered to himself. He stood up. Grace’s silhouette was
in front of him. He thought he could feel a smile in the mist.
“Follow the wind,” Grace agreed, and she disappeared back into the formless fog
of the story.
The Duke let the wind carry him through the forest. In time, the man found that
he could see a great deal more through the fog than he’d originally thought possible. He
could feel the fast skitter of a red-furred squirrel up the side of a trunk, hunting with
endless and godlike patience for something palatable. He could feel the undulations of
the enormous trees that surrounded them, so imperceptible that they were like glaciers or
continents.
And then, as soon as he was beginning to feel attuned, the forest abruptly fell
away from him and he was standing in a clearing where nothing grew but purple flowers.
Trusting the path, he began to walk into the field. He looked down as he walked through,
keeping his nose to the aroma of earth and greenery in his nostrils. They were
perfect, eight-petaled flowers that let off the most intoxicating perfume the Duke had ever
smelled. It was a dangerous, heady smell that made the Duke want to never leave the
meadow. It filled his stomach, his skull, his heart, the marrow of his bones, the lining of
his intestines, his entire body and soul. He saw that the flowers closest to the path were
in fact the least beautiful. They were wilting at the stem and the petals barely held on.
The Duke decided he wanted to remember the smell, so he decided to pick the best, most
potently aromatic flower he could find.
This decision, though an impulse, had to be made. Take comfort in that.
So he began to wander away from the path. He got on hands and knees and began
to search for the brightest flowers he could find. He breathed more deeply than he
imagined possible, every breath taking the odor more fully into his mind.
He picked flower after flower, but he always found one that was more beautiful
than the last he’d picked. In disgust, he would discard the flower in his hand and pick the
newer, more beautiful one.
The Duke didn’t realize that he’d lost the path until he was irreversibly wrapped
in the depths of the meadow. He began to try to retrace his steps, but the delirious
inebriation of the flowers had left him without any memory of his steps, and the soupy
mist rendered his eyes useless. He wandered and wandered, a dull panic palpable in the
back of his brain.
After a while, he decided that he would use the wind to find his way, as the ghost
of Grace had instructed him to do. He sat down and waited for the wind to blow. When
it finally did, the Duke found that he could no longer detect the ocean on its breath. All
he could feel was the flowers.
The Duke had never felt so trapped. It was not a claustrophobia of space; there
was plenty of room to roam in the meadow. But the meadow was too close. He could
see nothing but mist and flowers in every direction, and as far as he walked there was
nothing else to be found.
Finally, he laid down in the loam and was still. He found that he could think of
nothing but the purple flowers, and see nothing but flowers, and flowers were the only
thing that was real. He was swimming in unwilling ecstasy that could not be escaped or
relieved. It was exhilarating and relaxing and euphoric and apathetic and sickening and,
most of all, overwhelming.
He thought for a long time about dying there. It wouldn’t be painful, of that he
was certain, or at least it wouldn’t be a sharp pain. It might ache a little bit to die, but that
ache was better than other deaths. The purple flowers had given the Duke his best case
for suicide in quite some time.
Somewhere in the state of Delaware, a woman named Grace was listening to a
concert mandolin player in a high-school auditorium. He was playing a song that Grace
had never heard before, but it reminded her of a poet who had loved her in New York
City for a few weeks straight. A breeze blew through an open window, carrying
something that made her long for the ocean.
There was no singular moment in which the Duke realized that he couldn’t die.
There was no blinding flash of light that brought reason back to him. He was nagged
back to life by his hardly functioning instinct for self-preservation. Dying here meant
dying alone. It meant dying unfulfilled. In the end, the Duke’s evolutionary drive would
not allow that.
When he looked up, he saw a shape in the mist. It was not one of the mist
wraiths. It was a silhouette of something very real in the physical world. He could see
an orange circle in the distance. This was a new hope that the Duke latched upon, and he
began to walk to it.
“So you still haven’t given up,” a familiar voice said. “I’ll admit; I’m a little bit
surprised. But I guess the Jester saw something in you, and who am I to argue with what
the Jester sees?”
This was not the voice of the mist. This was something substantial and resonantly
human. It was a sardonic, flippant, raging voice that cut through the fog. It filled the
emptiness, rather than speaking from it.
“I don’t know who you are, LaRose. But I do know that you are very hard to
kill,” the Duke said. The curtain of mist pulled back a few feet, and the Duke saw that
there was a table amongst the flowers. It was an unadorned wooden table that looked like
it belonged in every kitchen in America. LaRose was sitting at it, wearing a fedora at a
jaunty angle and a suit vest with a white button-down underneath. The orange circle the
Duke had seen earlier was the lit end of a cigarette.
The Duke looked at the surface of the table. There were two objects on it. The
first was a quarter-dollar. It still shone despite the lack of light. The second was a black
plastic ash tray. There was a small mountain of cigarette butts sitting in it, some of them
smoked down well past the filter.
“You’re right about that, Dukey old pal. You can kill me like you can kill anyone.
I can always come back though. All it takes is a long memory and knowledge of the
odds. I know the odds. I know time,” LaRose said.
“Ever worry that one day you won’t?” the Duke asked.
“Can’t go through life like that. Gotta roll with the dice,” LaRose said, “and
know that sometimes everyone ends up on the bum side of things. Even me.”
“Am I supposed to believe that?” the Duke asked.
LaRose’s shark eyes glinted hungry in the gray, shiny as the coin on the table.
The Duke shivered, without knowing exactly why.
“Well there’s only one way I can prove it to you, cousin,” LaRose said, sliding the
coin across the table. It came to rest directly in front of the Duke. “Flip it, and call it in
the air.”
“Go to hell.”
“Okay, I can call it, if that’s what you prefer.”
“I’m not playing with you.”
“I’m not sure I like your tone, and you don’t want to test my patience.”
“The King played one game with you and it broke him,” the Duke said. “I’m not
going to let you play me like you played him.”
“The King challenged me to a game of Russian Roulette, and I lost. That alone
proves that Lady Luck ain’t got my ring on her finger,” LaRose argued.
“But you wanted to lose, which means you won. I’m not naïve like the King.
You can’t pull me in,” the Duke said determinedly. He was, in fact, incorrect, but this
should come as no surprise.
 “Look, Duke, I feel like I’ve been a little bit misleading. Well, I’ve definitely
been a little bit misleading about a lot of things, but I feel like I’ve been especially
misleading about this game. The truth is that you don’t have an option. You have to play.
You made your choice when you went searching for the Purple Flower.”
“What do you mean the Purple Flower? I can see more purple flowers right now
than want to think about. What’s the difference?”
“Oh man, these things have less in common with the Purple Flower than you have
with the Hawk-headed sun god Horus who rises in the east every morning and dives into
the desert like a fish every evening. The Purple Flower is perfect catharsis and
understanding of everything. A single whiff brings about enlightenment in the nature of
the universe,” LaRose said. “Subconsciously, you ventured away from the path because
you yearned for the flower. But the Purple Flower is gone; picked long ago by a person
whose name and face you know but whose true soul you have not even come close to
discovering.”
“Who has it?”
“That depends on when. I’ve had it, the King has had it, Sonia has too,
thousands over the course of time have held it. Even you, if I’m not mistaken. It is kept
in a black velvet pouch.” LaRose said. “But you didn’t realize what you held, so you gave
it foolishly away. It’s okay; nothing to feel bad about. But that’s not the point. The point
is that this field, without the flower, is nothing more than a rabbit snare. A trap of world-
weary ecstasy that will never reach fruition, that can only be escaped by a handful of
people who truly know time.”
“I know time,” the Duke said.
“You say that, but if you did then you could walk straight back to the path without
a step out of place. But, since you can’t, I would propose that you don’t know time. It’s
harder to know than you think.”
The Duke heard the mandolin begin to chirp in the background, playing with a
swashbuckling country lilt that sounded as if it should be in a Spaghetti Western. The
Duke took this as a sign that the game had begun.
“Well then that’s the bet. Heads, you take me back to the path, tails you leave me
to die,” the Duke decided. He didn’t want to beat around the bush.
LaRose laughed, “Oh now that is a very bad bet indeed, my Duke. You stand to
gain salvation or lose everything, while I stand to gain nothing, and lose nothing. In a
game of true Sansara, the win-loss ratio should be as close to the odds as possible.”
“Well I have nothing else to bet,” the Duke said. LaRose allowed himself another
mirthful peal at the Duke’s ignorance.
“Oh my Duke, you have a world to bet! How about this: I will bet my experience
as a heistman for several different crime families against the memory of your last time
ever seeing your mother,” LaRose declared, tossing the coin up in the air.
The coin landed on the table with a hollow little jingle and danced a couple circles
before LaRose slapped his palm down with divine authority.
“Heads or tails?” He asked the Duke with a wild grin. The Duke decided to stop
asking questions and start playing the game in this moment. The game was all he had,
and he figured it was time to play.
“Heads,” the Duke said.
As soon as LaRose moved his hand, the Duke could feel time begin to move
faster around him. It began as a cyclone, a holy halo cyclone around LaRose. And then
the cyclone dispersed and became a single blast of time, concentrated into a laser. This
laser shot straight through the Duke, and he suddenly remembered leveling a
submachinegun at a bank teller and demanding that he empty the contents of his vault.
The was a wash of tobacco smoke as his mask filled. He was smoking a cigarette,
to calm his nerves, because even he couldn’t totally dismiss his fear of capture, and his
fear of not being captured. He never would’ve wanted to get rid of the fear. The fear was
what made it all that much more fun.
He remembered the mask he’d worn; it was a mask of Mother Theresa, the
countenance of perfect tranquility and joy and compassion. He thought it was funny, as
he pointed the gun skyward and riddled the ceiling with bulletholes, that he was wearing
her face.
He’d stolen a lot of money in his day, and he’d done it just so he could throw the
money away, on nothing but gambling and boozing and guns and women. The Duke had
wanted the money so he could lose it. He saw money as a sort of nihilistic ritual, useful
only for the sake of its own destruction.
LaRose was sweating.
“Well looks like you won that one,” LaRose said. He looked angry, but also
delighted by the loss. He was delighted by the game, delighted by how easily everything
could be thrown away on a coin toss.
“What’s next?” the Duke asked.
“How about your night with Sonia in the hotel room for my knowledge of the
stock market?” LaRose asked.
“I don’t care about the stock market. Money is there to burn,” the Duke said, and
knew it was true. “You can’t ask me to trade love for money.”
“Very well. Your night with Sonia for a conversation I had with a Zen Lunatic
over freshly brewed tea in the Tibetan peace of the Rocky Mountains.”
“Heads,” the Duke said. LaRose flipped the coin, and again it was heads. The
time moved less perceptibly this time, but the Duke suddenly realized that he had sat
upon a great boulder on Maroon Peak.
“It’s all empty but awake,” the Zen Lunatic told him. The Duke nodded. He
understood. He dug it all deeply. He sipped the tea and saw that the entire universe was
an illusion, and therefore so was time, and therefore so was this game. It gave the Duke
confidence.
“I will wager the prophecy that I was given by the Archbishop of Detroit…” the
Duke began.
The game went on for a while. The Duke stopped remembering the bets, and he
stopped remembering himself, and he stopped remembering LaRose. It was as if LaRose,
in his many lifetimes, and the Duke in his were thrown into a great iron pot and mixed
together. The Duke lost as much as he gained, but he found it no longer mattered what he
won and what he lost. It was the game, the Sansara, empty and awake.
Finally, the Duke began to realize that he was betting his soul. His soul had been
born from the things that had happened to him, and by losing some of these things he was
losing fragments of his self. He felt that he had lost nothing, and at the same time that he
had lost everything. This was true; he had lost a great swath of himself, but he had
already forgotten these areas so it was as if they had never existed. It was a very great
paradoxical and frustrating loss that the Duke was afraid to understand.
Finally, the Duke knew what he would wager to free him of the field. He had
come to know enough of LaRose’s soul to see what his greatest wish was.
“What you lack, LaRose, in all of your memories, is love. You know so much,
can do so much, and yet everything you do exists hollowly because it is done without real
intention. You do it for yourself, but you know that you do not love yourself, so why for?
You are raging in the void,” the Duke said.
“Ah, your Dukeliness has stumbled upon the hovel where my soul resides, so
loveless and misty gray,” LaRose cackled, entranced by the warpspeed coinflips and dead
in his heart to all else.
“I will bet my love for Grace for freedom,” the Duke declared.
At this LaRose paused, “Now you’ve given me pause, Duke. I don’t think I can
allow you to make that bet, because I stand to lose nothing. If I don’t put something on
the line, then this is an unbalanced bet and everything we’ve done here is null,” LaRose
said, troubled.
“Well how are you going to even up then?” the Duke asked.
“There is only one thing I possess that is equal in value to the love you hold for
Grace, and that is my knowledge of death, so I suppose I’ll put that on the line,” LaRose
said. He wore a grimace that was both fearful and delighted. “Duke, I want you to know
that I admire you. There aren’t many mortals that would put their deepest and most
personal human connection on the line in a bet, but you clearly are crazy enough to do
just about anything at this point so I’ll humor you and flip the coin,” LaRose said, and he
threw the coin up in the air.
LaRose had to look away as the coin soared upward. He really had put it all on
the line with this one. If he lost this bet, then he would die fully in every world for all of
eternity, without any chance to return. He knew that he still had considerably less to lose
than the Duke. Immortality, or partial immortality, couldn’t even compare to what the
Duke had put on the line. The love that the Duke felt for Grace was something so heavy
that he believed it was a cross. It was not a cross. It was an anchor.
The coin fell on the table and the Duke knew he’d lost before even looking at it.
He could feel the darkness descend intrinsically, without a need for any perceptible
change in the air occurring.
The other losses didn’t hit the Duke like this one. The other bets had been taken
from the superficial areas of his heart. This one was quite foundational. The Duke felt
like the entire universe was pulled out from under his feet. He reeled, unable to
remember what he was supposed to feel or live for. He now realized that, in his world,
there was no longer any sense of True North. There was no longer anything that looked
like completion available to him in America. There was nothing that could make him
whole.
“If it makes any difference,” LaRose said. “I would be just as lost as you are now
if that coin had landed heads-up.”
The Duke gasped for air. His body systems were in a state of momentary shock.
They were now figuring out how to adjust to the change in the Duke’s psyche. They were
not having an easy time doing so.
How to explain the impact of losing love? Love, even in an unrequited form,
lends itself to a belief in a universe where things can fall into place. Without love, on any
level, it is not possible for one to foster dreams, and without dreams, there can be no
hope.
“Wh…what do you want?” the Duke asked. “A final bet. Anything and
everything on the line. You can have the rest. Just give her back.”
“I’m afraid not, my Duke. You see, I have to cut the game off here. You’ve lost
enough, and so have I. It’s time for me to take you back,” LaRose said. The Duke felt a
powerful pounding in his head. It was the purple flowers; their scent was becoming like a
hangover to him. He considered ripping a few from the ground, but in the end he knew it
would only be a demonstration of his impotence so he just looked LaRose dead in his
shark eyes and tried not to vomit.
“Tell me, LaRose, what do you do with everything you’ve taken? You burn
money, you burn cigarettes, you con, you die, you come back and you do it all again,” the
Duke asked. “What do you do with everything you’ve taken?”
LaRose put out a cigarette and lit another, “Truthfully, most of the time I just sit
around and smoke and wonder if I’ll ever be forgiven. There’s not much else I can do.”
The Duke didn’t know if he’d ever heard a villain sound so sad.
They didn’t say anything else to each other. LaRose got up from the table and
stood, waiting for the Duke. The Duke wished that he’d asked the King what it meant to
lose everything. He hadn’t asked the King half the things he should’ve. The Duke was
unwilling to move. If he got up, then he’d have to move toward something. And he had
no idea what direction he was supposed to go anymore.
LaRose waited patiently for a few more breaths. When the Duke made no sign of
becoming any less despondent, he said, “Look, here’s the deal. I’m going to begin to
walk away, and you’re going to follow me. You’re going to follow me, or you’re going
to die of despair in this field. Your choice.” LaRose understood apathy towards life. He
could empathize with apathy, if nothing else. That was the only reason he gave the Duke
a warning.
“Does it get easier? Being this empty, I mean,” the Duke asked.
“I can’t guarantee that. But in my experience time heals more than you’d think.
And dying never solves as many problems as you’d guess either,” LaRose said. The
Duke supposed he would know. Stiffly, he pushed himself out of the chair and followed
LaRose. He felt as drunk as he’d ever been. The 50/50 game had considerably changed
his outlook, and by this time his mind was totally corrupted by the scent of the purple
flowers, both of which threw off his coordination considerably.
For some reason, he kept imagining disembodied golden eyes.
LaRose found the path right where he’d left it. Maddeningly, it was far closer
than the Duke ever could’ve imagined. But he was too tired to be upset.
“Hey Duke, I’ve got something for you,” LaRose said, and he tossed the Duke the
same quarter he’d used to play the 50/50 game. The Duke turned it over, and saw that it
was a state quarter from Arizona.
“I’m going to get her back, one way or another,” the Duke vowed.
LaRose smiled, “Luck be a heartless bitch.” Was all he said. And he meant it. He
then lit a cigarette, slipped his Zippo into his pocket, and then disappeared the same way
he’d come.
The Duke watched him go, then followed the path. He found that he was afraid to
take even a step away from it. The Duke had learned his lesson, almost too well.
He stepped straight from the field and onto the sand. As soon as the Duke felt
sand beneath him, he could smell the sea. A strong breeze obliterated the fog and the
flowers both, and in the blink of an eye the Duke was standing on a rocky shoreline with
the sun hazy in the clouds above, occasional beams of light filtering through to mingle
with the lustrous granite shores.
“So I guess this is the coastline,” the Duke said.
“The coastline it be, Danny-boy,” the Jester said. The Duke turned around and
looked down and found him in a meditative position in the sand, not three steps from the
Duke. He was wearing a button-down shirt the color of sea foam with a brilliant multi-
colored flower pattern printed on it. The sunlight gave his brown skin a healthy glow,
and shone in his cropped silver hair. He was holding a ukulele, and there was sack on his
back.
“Where’s your mandolin?” the Duke asked.
“It’s in the bag. Sometimes I want to play a different tune,” the Jester explained,
strumming the little instrument a couple times. The Duke hated how his heart jumped
and his mood lightened with the chords. How dare a little music try to cheer him, when
he’d lost so much?
“Where’s the King?”
“He’s waiting for us on the boat. It’s just a little ways down the shore,” the Jester
said with a warm smile. “I’ll walk us there; don’t you fear Danny-boy.” The Duke
nodded, and the Jester began to lead. The Duke quickly fell a few steps behind. He had
no time or patience for the Jester’s music or his exuberance. He was currently trying to
think of something else in life to care about, and was not having much success.
“I saw figures in the fog,” the Duke remembered. He wasn’t really meaning to
ask a question, only to retread the parts of his memory that still remained the most intact.
“What you just experienced back in those woods is quite a phenom,” the Jester
said. “Them woods are chocked full of potential moments. Interactions that never came
to fruition, turns in the road not taken. They all swirl together in that cauldron and spit
themselves out at hapless travelers like yourself,” the Jester explained. The Duke was
nonplussed by this explanation.
Of course there was some strange machinery in place that would force him to
confront things that would never be or could never be. That was just the strange game
that the King of America had turned his life into.
“You seem troubled,” the Jester called back.
“Do I?” the Duke asked dreamily. He was dreamy because his perception was
twisted and his mind was shattered. His entire life was beginning to take on a surreal
quality that he was not comfortable with at all. “I’ll admit that I’m a little scared right
now.”
“What are you scared of, kid?” the Jester asked. The little brown grasshopper
sage had fallen dead quiet. His feet stopped in the sand and planted. He was no less
twinkling, but perhaps a margin more stoic.
“A lot of things,” the Duke admitted. “I’m afraid that I’m going to die alone. I’m
afraid that I’ll never pick up a pen again and be proud of what that pen creates. I’m
afraid that Detroit is going to implode because of how empty it is. I’m afraid that
corporate America is going to eliminate the need for a soul. I’m afraid that the King is
going to wake up from his dream and we’re all going to disappear,” The Duke looked out
at the ocean, admiring how vast and hollow its azure belly was. “But mostly, I’m afraid
that Judgment Day is going to come and God is going to forget that we were all supposed
to be forgiven.”
“You got good fears Duke. But I think that maybe we’ll discover that God really
never had any plans to forgive us at all,” the Jester said. “And that really we’ll figure out
that this whole thing was just one big joke played on us, and big brother in the sky was
just trying to entertain himself.”
“What’s the point of all this then?” the Duke asked.
“Well, I’m just an old music man, but if you asked me, I’d say the point is to see
if we ever manage to forgive ourselves,” the Jester said, and began to hum in tender
harmony with the instrument in his grasp
The Jester led the Duke behind a large rocky outcropping, and into a small cove.
The cove was ringed on all sides by great granite shields that protected it from the wind,
and inside the cove the water was a perfectly lucid, mineral-rich mixture of fresh water
and salt water. There were thousands of creatures living their lives beneath the surface of
the crystalline water. In particular, there were thousands of tiny silver fish darting
frenetically about, chasing dreams so small and so immediate that the Duke could barely
even fathom them.
He saw the King, and he felt that all the events in his misty memory became
surreal, and the emptiness inside of him was something more abstract and less immediate,
and he wanted to know where the King’s journey would take him next.

Chapter 11: No Rest Upon The Throne

“Ah, Duke, Jester, my friends, you’re early!” the King greeted them warmly. “Our
vessel has yet to arrive.”
“We’re waiting for a boat? Where is it taking us”
“Rather, a boat has been waiting for us, just not in the place we needed it to. And
we are taking it to the throne of America,” the King responded. “And the boat’s name is
Mary.”
The King sat down for a while. And the Duke sat with him. The Jester played his
ukulele gently, compassionately. He knew that it had been a long night for the Duke, and
he knew that there would be long nights for him ahead.
“I played a game with LaRose,” the Duke said. “And I lost.”
“It’s bound to happen,” the King said. “Everyone loses something to LaRose at
some point. Most people don’t even realize it’s happening. At least you know you lost.
Try not to beat yourself up about it. There’s nothing you can’t get back, except time.
Time is gone.”
“How do I get it back?”
“That’s your quest, not mine,” the King said.
“Well I’ve been helping you with yours, so why don’t you return the favor?” the
Duke asked angrily. He had done too much for the King for the King to deny him some
advice.
“LaRose can only lose when he’s supposed to,” the King said. “You need to play a
game with him that he’s supposed to lose.”
This was when they saw the boat come in behind one of the breakers that
funneled into the cove. It rode wave bravely into the shallows, and beached itself with
quiet efficacy on a sandbar midway into the cove.
“There she is,” the King gestured grandly in the boat’s direction. “Mary. Endless
travelling maiden of the sea. She has come as time dictated she would.”
The boat rested upon the rocky western shore on that warm, quiet, hazy morning.
It was large and painted blue, but the blue had mostly chipped and faded to become the
color of the first clouds to roll over a large body of water following a storm: sheepish and
wispy, tinged with the pinkishness of a new day.
It had a big, flat bottom, a single mast with the sail furled neatly in, and a set of
four oarlocks for days when the winds lay still beneath the waters. It was large enough to
sit four people comfortably, but had no cabin and was terribly exposed.
The King removed his travel-worn sneakers, rolled up his blue jeans to above the
knee, and began to splash toward where the boat had come to rest. He beckoned the
Duke to do the same, and the Duke complied. Together, they pulled the boat deeper into
the cove.
The Jester smiled when the King and the Duke brought the small boat to him. He
leapt in agilely, sat down on the gunwale, and continued to play his instrument.
“Mary, it is good to see you again girl,” the Jester said with a little whistle, resting
a gnarled palm on the weather-beaten steel of the hull. The King started pushing the boat
towards the mouth of the cove, and the Duke again began to help without complaint,
despite the fact that the water was deepening towards the middle of the inlet and was
lapping at his thighs and soaking his jeans uncomfortably.
“Why are you both so affectionate about this tub?” the Duke asked dourly as a
wave caught him badly and threw salt water into his eye. The King shouted the story of
Mary as the pair pushed the boat closer and closer to freedom.
“She was once the property of the Viscount of San Francisco, who had used her to
sail up and down the coast, preaching about the astrological significance of Ursa Major to
crowded beaches in the 1930’s. The Viscount believed that heaven was located in Ursa
Major, because its coordinates in the night sky coincided with some sort of secret
message he believed he’d discovered by reading the Bible, in the chapter of Revelation.
He was attempting to drum up support for the construction of a super telescope that, if
made with the correct specifications, would give humanity an opportunity to see what
awaited them in the afterlife.”
The King’s voice bounced off the granite and circled back around, filling the
lagoon. Without warning, he grabbed the gunwale and pulled himself into the vessel.
His first action was to go to the other edge and haul in the Duke. He did all this
practically without pausing his story, and continued to tell it without taking a breath once
Duke was in the boat, chest heaving with the exertion of breaking free of the cove.
“The Viscount was a highly religious man. He named his boat Mary for obvious
religious purposes. He lived mostly by fishing or scavenging, and he only stopped when
his arthritis made sailing impossible. He left the shore, settled next to an inland lake in
Vermont, and lived the rest of his life in peace. He scuttled Mary in a lagoon in Florida,
but somehow it was freed, and it floated through the ocean’s currents for many decades,
battered by storm, occasionally utilized by vagrant sailors for myriad purposes great and
small. But she’ll always be here when you need her; she’s different from most women
like that,” the King said.
By the time the tale was finished, the King had lashed together the sail and was at
the tiller, steering Mary to exactly the place that she needed to go.
The King smiled at the Duke. The Duke couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit
rejuvenated when he saw the King’s indomitable grin, the very same grin that he’d
chased across the American continent for no better reason than the entertainment of it.
“You made it,” the King said. “We’re on our way to the very thing that we talked
about finding in a bar in Canada however long ago. We have arrived at the completion of
our journey.”
“Not all of me made it,” the Duke said. “I left a few important things back in
those woods. And I don’t think I can get them back.”
“You’ve still got your name, so there’s still hope for you yet, my dearest friend.
Nothing is ever really lost,” the King responded. He clasped the Duke’s hand in his own
for a moment, and the Duke couldn’t find a regret in his heart, for once. He just wasn’t
sure if it was because he’d gambled away all his regrets or if he really was so glad to be
back beside the King.
Mary bounced from crest to trough with little trouble, evidently a craft with a
strong sense of purpose. It was not an entirely smooth ride, but it was smooth enough for
the Duke, who was the son of the son of a sailor. He saw a rocky, blackish point in the
distance. It was, by his estimation, still miles away, but was by far the closest landmark
that could be seen in the vast blue expanse.
The Duke chose not to wonder where they were going. He talked to the King
about the past for a while, and about the ghosts that haunted the forest. The King
believed that the forest was a refuge for all the stories that were never written but
could’ve been. The Duke didn’t understand the need for such a place, and the King said
that this was because the Duke still didn’t understand how thin reality actually really is.
“How thin actually is reality?” the Duke asked patiently.
“So thin that if I gave you an accurate metaphor for it then reality itself would
realize how thin it is and would subsequently tear or unfurl,” the King explained
patiently. The Duke was about to argue, but then the Jester began to sing and the Duke
fell silent on the subject of his own perception, which he believed to be microscopic in
significance, especially when compared to the Jester’s song. He hadn’t known the Jester
to ever sing aloud, although he hummed often enough.
The Jester’s songs, so often perfectly crafted and played, were always consigned
to the background of the story. This is by the Jester’s own design; he is not the
protagonist and does not wish to be treated as such. However, every so often, the Jester
sings aloud. When he sings aloud, he creates new worlds in the minds of his audience,
quite literally. It is impossible not to feel or think exactly what he desires. His range is
limitless, his tone flawless, and his vibrato godlike. He can sing outside the range of
human hearing, and somehow one can still hear him perfectly. The skulls of lesser men
collapse and melt upon hearing him; greater skulls sprout wings from their ears and soar
away from their bodies like eagles. The Duke, to his good fortune, was thoroughly
average, so his head stayed put.
The Duke had learned when to be quiet. That is, for some, the most important
lesson of all.

“Do not forget St. George’s Reef

As you tumble through time and lose belief
In the protection offered by dragon scales
And the peace contained in fairy tales

St. George stood upon the shore

Looking at the ocean roar
Upon the rocks and reefs and wrecks
Of the ships of men whose loss reflects
 The need for a light in order to brave
The cunning currents and crashing waves
So a perch was built with lamp to keep
The ships from sinking to the deep

And St. George was called to ignite

The lamp for the ship’s clear sight
And for many years he was alone
Entombed in the past and future Throne
Lighting the lamp and watching the way
For those who came and went each day

And then one day he began to feel

As if the world wasn’t real
Nobody was there to tell him straight,
He forgot the truth and filled with hate

He hated the ships with their singing sails

Their hollow bellies and false details
And so he led them with a turn of his hands
To be slaughtered upon the rocks like lambs

He watched the vessels as they died

Along with the men who’d lived inside
The depths filled with shattered arks
And men filled bellies of many sharks

St. George jumped from the lighthouse peak

Silenced himself before they made him speak
Of his inhuman and terrible crimes
There are no answers; you know time.

The Jester held the final note, then paused for a moment. He looked at the King
and Duke, two men torn asunder by the steel cords of fate, and he smashed the ukulele
into the past. Its fragile frame shattered into a brilliant collection of matchsticks that spun
in all directions across the deck of the little ship. The Jester then took his seat, pulled out
his mandolin, and returned to his place in the background, supplying a pensive
Shenandoah hymnal to the voyage.
The Duke looked down and picked up one of the fragments of the instrument.
“I feel a little bad for it,” the Duke said.
“You must understand there is a price to be paid for songs like that,” the Jester
said. “Every house is built on the bones of another.”
“I suppose so, but I still feel bad.”
They were now more than close enough for the Duke to see where they were
bound. The imposing point of blackness appeared to be a tower. The tower was built
upon an enormous rectangular concrete obelisk that obstinately resisted the waves
smashing against its hardened flanks. The concrete was weathered and pockmarked by
erosion and sealife, but the Duke was certain it would be many years until the tower
tumbled into the ocean.
The water was becoming angrier beneath them, swelling and bucking and
twisting. The sky snapped into a rage for reasons unknown, becoming a swirling pot of
black cumulus and electricity. Gravity and air pressure conspired to aggravate the waters;
they seethed and frothed and boiled like living things.
The King stood alone at the tiller. The Duke thought he looked like a grim Viking
prince in the midst of the storm: water streamed from his lank blonde curls and ran into
his beard, which had become scraggly. His blue eyes glinted with a steely determination
the Duke believed belonged as much to his forebears as it belonged to him. The King
was nearing the throne that fate dictated was his, and the ocean, in all her might, was
unable to deny him.
The Duke had never been ill on the water before. It didn’t occur to him that love
was the thing that had once protected him from seasickness, and that without it his
stomach was nothing more than a bowl of churned food that would spill over at the
slightest hint of turbulence. He threw his head over the edge and let everything go into
the ocean, saltwater mingling with tears that he couldn’t explain.
The Duke was not afraid to die anymore. Looking back, he didn’t know why he’d
always been so afraid. It was probably because he’d been overestimating his own
importance. Or maybe he’d been underestimating it. He figured it would be better to
stop questioning his own mortality. Dwelling wouldn’t change a thing.
Somehow the he could feel through the twisting of his guts that they were still
moving in the right direction. The ship did exactly as the captain wished. No matter how
much water it took on, no matter how the winds blew, no matter how the tiller creaked
and groaned in protest, the little craft continued on.
His stomach settled again, now that it was empty, and he collapsed back into the
bottom of the boat, sitting in several inches of bilge water and not caring in the least since
he was already soaked to the bone. He slept, dreaming of golden eyes.
“I think that me and this boat are very much alike,” the Duke said, to no one in
particular. “We aren’t pretty, and we aren’t saying much, but we both trust the King. And
at the end of the day we’re either too sentimental or too stupid not to stay the course he’s
chosen for us.”
“It’s not my course,” the King yelled above the din of the sea. “One day you’ll see
that America chose me, and it chose you too. We have all been chosen, by someone. If
you know that, then you can steer any craft, through any storm.”
The Duke was about to respond, but was interrupted by an urgent need to empty
his stomach into the Ocean once again. After doing so, he passed out. The King smiled
through his physical exhaustion and well-disguised terror. The Duke had done all he
could. Now it was up to the King to get them the rest of the way.
The Jester stood at the prow, his bow flying on the strings as the waves pulled the
nose of the boat through waves after wave. The Jester’s frame was immovable. He
could’ve been dancing and it would’ve made no difference. He was not going into the
ocean, and if he did then the King thought he would probably walk on water. The Jester
wouldn’t want to do that trick, though. That trick had already been done, by another
Jester in another time. The King wished they could still hear the music, but it drowned in
the conflagrations of the sky and the steady drum of the rain.
 At first, when they neared the base of the lighthouse, the King was worried that
one of the swells would snatch them up and plaster them unceremoniously to the
concrete, but the King was cautious. About a mile out, he turned slightly north and began
to carve a wide ellipse around the lighthouse.
The hours that followed were the most stressful of the King’s existence, which
stretched across countless lifetimes lived sporadically in different periods of American
history that only rarely overlapped.
The King watched as the Pacific pounded St. George’s Reef with an elemental
fury that was normally reserved for adult Polar Bears in heat. He knew that he somehow
had to use one of those waves to take Mary over the concrete and to the tower, where the
Throne of America awaited him. He would have one chance to ride the wave. He
wouldn’t get a second.
He forced himself to go blank as he watched the surf. The King of America was a
man with a lot on his mind, so this was easier said than done. For the first time, he
wished the Duke wasn’t with him. He wished the Duke was sitting next to a fireplace,
opposite a pretty girl with green eyes that the King had taken from him. That was where
the Duke belonged, truly.
Mary was through her first lap when the King finally identified the place where
the waves were overtaking the concrete. It was a small window, approximately fifty
yards from the lighthouse. He would somehow need to predict where the wave would
pick him up and be in that area as the swell grew.
“Wouldn’t it be a little bit funny, if we died here?” the King asked the Jester, who
was the master of all comedy.
“Sure would be damn ironic. But the folks in the audience would feel cheated,
and we got to make sure they get their money’s worth,” the Jester called back.
“Hey Jester, do you ever pray?” the King asked.
“Sure I do, I play all the time,” the Jester responded. “Haven’t you been listenin’,
Isaac?”
“Don’t call me that, and I said…ah, never mind,” the King shook his head and
returned his thoughts to the ocean. The storm had thrown Mary off-course. She was now
cutting a path almost directly at the lighthouse. The King’s arms bulged as he wrenched
the tiller away from the lighthouse. After resisting for a moment, Mary returned to her
original course. The King breathed easier.
The King zoned in on the spot he’d chosen. He was the King of America, and his
one and only task was to know how to get to his Throne. Something inside him wanted
to pray, but the King would not allow it. The King had his own destiny, and it was not
issued to him by God, at least not the God he’d prayed to in the Irish Catholic ghettos of
New York, 1937.
A strong wind blew and the mast was torn away and thrown into the water before
the King could blink. Part of him wanted to jump in after it, out of sheer consternation,
but his pride wouldn’t allow it.
A shaft of daylight fell upon a stretch of water not far in front of him. The Jester
began to play a familiar tune. The King suddenly was no longer himself. He was a man
dressed in a Late-Victorian fashion, paddling over a completely still ocean, with a sky
above dressed in stars. He docked his boat gently against the rocks and set his leather
boots to the ground. He made the walk to the lighthouse at a brisk pace. He used his key
to unlock the heavy iron door, and he couldn’t help but run up the several flights of
circular stairs to reach the lantern room.
He ran his hand along the steel astragals that supported the windows, making a
full circle of the room before he turned to inspect the lantern itself. It was the most
beautiful piece of glass he’d ever seen. He pulled a book of matches from his pocket and
turned to grab the torch from the wall. He lit a match with a single, clean stroke and
touched it to the torch, which was engulfed in a matter of moments. He pulled the torch
from the prongs and examined it for a moment, entranced by the flame. He then stuck the
torch into the lantern, and the room flooded with light. The room was brighter than
anything imaginable, brighter than the sun but not half so burning. All the man could feel
was the wash of light. Everything else sublimated from his conscious in under a second.
Then, he sat down on a simple wooden chair, and he watched the sea.
The King shot straight for the beam sunshine, and as soon as Mary touched it, the
wave began to grow. It happened quickly. The ocean spit them out. By the time the
King realized a wave was building underneath them, they were practically halfway there.
When the Duke woke up, the storm was beginning to break up. It had been a
meteorological blip, not even large enough to make the evening news in San Francisco.
They had landed cleanly on top of the concrete and slid into the lighthouse, which
was not any more forgiving than the day it had been built. Mary had taken all of the
impact directly on the nose. The result was that the craft had been split cleanly in half.
“Well it looks like we don’t have a ride back to shore anymore,” the Duke said
drily, sitting up. The King smiled at the Duke, shaking water loose from his curls. The
Jester was already on his feet, looking unscathed.
“Wasn’t sure we were going to make it,” the King said, between deep breaths.
He’d gotten the wind knocked out of him, but nothing more serious. The Duke, thanks to
his limpness, was entirely unharmed.
“You got the key?” the Jester asked.
“You know I do. I’ve always had it,” the King said, pulling the same key from his
pocket that he’d used in his vision. It was a heavy piece of iron, just like the door, which
was made to withstand the full force of the ocean against it. The King tried the key.
Unsurprisingly, the mechanism didn’t budge, so rusty with time and lack of maintenance.
The King tried a little harder, and didn’t have the slightest bit of success.
“Why don’t you let me try? I’ve got a good little touch with these sorts of
things,” the Jester offered amiably.
He handed it to the Jester, and the Jester inserted it into the lock and turned. The
door swung open without protest. The inside of the spire was dark, smooth, and dusty.
No cobwebs hung in the doorway, for no spider could find such a secluded little island.
There was a white rime of salt covering everything that was cast in the dim half-light of
the fading day.
When lightning from the storm flashed, the room would, for a second, become
blindingly white, leaving flecks of color imprinted on the Duke’s eyes. The King was the
first one to step forward into the chamber. The step bounced off the of steps, instead of
just one King taking one step.
He looked back at where the Duke and the Jester stood, took a deep breath, and
then plunged into the ivory darkness. The Duke followed behind him, muttering about
Nero fiddling while Rome burned and the consequences of post-traumatic stress for
veterans of the Vietnam War.
The King flew up the staircase, propelled by the same dynamo that had awoken in
his soul on that Canadian dawn and carried him all the way across the continental United
States. He moved faster than should be humanly possible, not knowing what ecstasy
would find him at the top.
The Duke traipsed upward. When he’d set out with the King, he’d never
imagined that he would actually arrive at a physical destination called the Throne of
America. Because, in spite of supporting, and even sharing, in some of his friend’s
delusions, he still knew that there was no Throne of America, even if there really was a
King. But the Duke was also very prepared to be wrong.
When he finally reached the top, he found the King standing very still. Nightfall
had descended upon the ocean, and the storm system had dissipated. The lantern room
was illuminated, clear and cold, by the stars. The stars, the Duke realized, were casting
the very same light that they’d cast on the side of the Canadian highway. The Duke knew
that, if you had enough mirrors, you could pipe a reflection from St George’s Reef to that
very spot, and see, without the use of a single electrical device, the sky from that
viewpoint. It was a pointless thought, but it gave him comfort, to know that place was
still real.
The Throne of America wasn’t much, now that the King looked at it. It was a
simple piece of wooden furniture, almost completely unadorned. On the top of the
backrest was embossed a purple flower. The sight of it sent a shiver down the Duke’s
spine.
“Duke, I’ve just realized what a very good friend you are,” the King said, absently
smudging the window glass with his finger. “You’ve followed me a long, long way, and I
never even told you why.”
“You told me that you felt a call coming from the southern zephyrs,” the Duke
reminded him.
“Yes, I did say that, but I never said what the call was,” the King said. “When I
felt the sun rise that morning, I felt as if I was looking at a totally new world. It was a
world saturated with opportunities for magical transfigurations, for drastic paradigm
shifts, for perspectives blown wide open. I saw a world where anything was possible.”
“That’s a good way to see things,” the Duke said.
“Yes, it is. Isn’t it? But there’s one problem that I’ve realized with this vision.
The world hadn’t changed. It was the same sluggish, jaded place that I had to drink glass
after glass of whiskey just to repel. I think that I was given a vision on that morning. It
was a vision of a country with a king,” the King said. “Now I don’t mean a lawmaker. Or
a figurehead. I mean a real, honest, King of America, who could, just by living in his
own way, change the way that everyone else saw themselves. A flagbearer, a believer, a
truth, a lie, a legend that we could all be proud of. I realized that it was time to stop
hiding from America. It was time to wade through all the sickness in myself and find the
Throne, where I could shine down on my people, a star to guide them,” the King said. He
touched the lantern lovingly.
“Is that what you are, my King? A star to guide us through the long night?” The
voice echoed from up the hall, but the Duke still recognized it. It still made his arms
tingle; this feeling was the blood fleeing his extremities to find warmth deeper in his
circulatory system.
“Sometimes I think so,” the King said. “And sometimes I think that I’m nothing
more than a victim. But you have so many victims, and I like to think that I’ve risen
above being one of them.”
 Sonia stepped delicately into the room. She was wearing a floor-length white
dress, with strands of silver and gold woven through it. Her body was as perfectly shaped
as it had ever been, but her face was far less polished. Her long black hair was soaked
through, and it was plastered to her shoulders. She was, as far as the Duke could tell, still
wearing makeup, but still didn’t look quite as inhumanly beautiful as she had on other
appearances she’d made.
Seeing her set something off within the Duke. He then realized whose golden
eyes he was imagining. Then he realized what an incalculable amount he loved Sonia.
He saw her, and he felt as if he was staring into a supernova. He would do anything, be
anything, just in order to be near her. He looked out the window. He silently began to
weep.
“How can you call yourself a victim of mine? I loved you, and you walked away
from me,” Sonia said, shaking from cold or emotion. The lighthouse, even in the warmer
months, was always chilly and dank on the inside.
“I walked away from you after you’d taken everything that I had. You took my
secrets, my identity, my soul. And then LaRose freed me from you. I had to gamble with
him for a century to make him take away my love,” the King said. “And once he did I
could finally live. I could finally be the King of America, as I was always meant to be. I
saw love as it truly is: a egotistical, pointless, short-lived, exercise in procreation that
leads only to self-indulgent misery and sloth.”
The Duke’s head was spinning. He wanted to feel Sonia, as he hadn’t felt anyone
in all his life. He wanted to kill the King and sit upon the Throne, so that she might find
him worthy. He wanted to write her a poem that could rewrite the past and future, so that
he could spend every moment of his entire existence with her. He wanted to…
“And now what’s your plan, King? To stay here forever, lighting the way for a
country that ignores you? This is a cold place, a lonely place. To stay here would be a
kind of hell, and could only end in your downfall,” Sonia tried to persuade.
It hurt the Duke to listen to Sonia fight for him. For the King. Why wouldn’t she
fight for him? Why had she cut him, then left him that night in the motel? He let her cut
him, and the only thanks he’d gotten was a cold bed. He sunk into a corner, but the King
was too transfixed by Sonia to notice.
“Don’t listen to her,” the Jester said, appearing in the room at last. “She is doing
all she knows how to do: lead you astray. You have battled your way across the groaning
continent, and you have both lost so many things. Make sure it is not for nothing,” the
Jester commanded. “Sit upon your Throne. Fulfill your destiny as the King of America.
If you fail to do so, then you can never again return to America.”
“America doesn’t love you. I do. Leave with me. Forget about this place, forget
about your Throne. There is a world out there to see that stretches far beyond what
America can offer you. And we could see it together,” She pleaded, her eyes a well of
unshed tears. She had long awaited this moment, and she was not going to fail.
The King’s blue eyes fired back and forth between the Throne and the woman.
The only feeling he could muster about either was ambivalence. He felt that, no matter
which path he chose, he would feel alone.
The King had lived an incalculable number of lifetimes. He had wandered,
adventuring, looking for new horizons that could excite him. He’d sought America; he
met its forefathers, its robber barons, its minstrels, its peasants. He’d seduced its
princesses and snuck out the backdoors of their castles in the dead of night. And through
all these journeys he’d learned the soul of his country.
He became angry with America after a time. He became sick of the solitary road
that came with being immortal and unbound by the constraints of reality. He lost too
much, and gained too little, so he left.
There is a catch to being the King of America. As long as the King doesn’t leave
his country, he is immortal and unbound. But outside the accepted borders of his nation,
a King is as powerless as anyone. This is why the King went to Canada. So that he
would no longer have to deal with the burden of being King.
Then he met the Duke, and he was once again hopeful. The Duke brought him
home, and restored his faith in the land. The Duke had braved the trials of kingship
alongside the King himself, and had survived, for the most part. If there was anyone that
the King could trust to help him decide what was right, it was the Duke of Arizona.
He turned away from the Throne and from Sonia, and he went to sit down next to
the Duke. The Duke was staring at the ground, looking a touch paler than usual.
“Still feeling a bit under the weather from that ride in?” the King asked him
conversationally.
“You could say that.”
“I’ve got a serious question to ask you, Duke. I know that we travelled all this
way to find the Throne of America. I could sit upon it, and I would be King not only in
name, but in action as well. But Sonia has propositioned me. She says that she does, in
fact, love me, and wants me to choose America instead of her. And what I’m wondering,
is what you think I should do.” There was no pretense here. There was no hidden
meaning, or ulterior motive to the question.
The Duke was facing a dilemma. On one hand, he desperately wanted to tell the
King to take the Throne and leave the girl. But, on the other hand, he was aware that this
feeling was originally the King’s, because he had given it to LaRose, who had, in turn,
given it to the Duke.
So the Duke was absolutely certain that, if the King actually had all his feelings in
his own possession, he would choose Sonia in a heartbeat, and be very happy he did so.
But his mind was far too full, and he had no idea how to explain what had come to pass
to the King, so he decided to say something more simple.
“I think you should flip this coin,” the Duke suggested. He then pulled the
Arizona state quarter from his pocket.
On it was a shiny representation of the Grand Canyon, with the sun peaking over
the lip of the desert and filling it with warm light. The King was silent for a moment, so
shocked to see the coin. He then understood what was coming to pass. He looked at the
Jester, and he tried not to smile. He got the joke.
“Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon, Duke?” the King asked his friend.
“No, I haven’t,” the Duke responded, trying to keep from staring at Sonia. It
wasn’t easy to do, by any means.
“Well I’ve got one request. No matter what happens when I flip this coin, the first
place you start making your way to when you leave this lighthouse is the Grand Canyon.
It’s yours, just so you know, it always has been,” The King told him. Then he took the
quarter from his palm, and he held it up so that the Jester and Sonia could inspect both
sides.
“Heads, I go with Sonia, and I never return,” the King declared. “Tails, I sit upon
this Throne and reside over America for as long as the Throne remains.”
 He tossed the coin up in the air, and he allowed it to clatter on the ground. He
knew what it would be before it landed. Not because he had rigged the toss, but because
he finally understood the Jester’s strange sense of humor.
George Washington looked up at him. The King smiled down at him. From one
king to another, the quarter seemed to say.
The Duke felt time begin to move strangely, as it had in the field of purple
flowers. He had never imagined that it would feel so easy to lose love. It wasn’t like
when he’d lost his love for Grace. Loving Sonia was not something that was meant for
him to do, so it came as a relief when he looked into her beautiful eyes and saw nothing
he desired.
When time began to move again in the normal fashion, the King realized how
bright Sonia truly was. He realized that she had been taking and taking for so long
because she was trying to fill a hole, just as he was, and that through one another, both of
their holes could be filled.
“You are beautiful,” the King told her. “But your hair is still a mess.”
Sonia smiled at him, “You’re still an irredeemable bastard, you know that don’t
you?” The King turned to the Duke for one last time. He took off his red leather jacket,
and he draped it over the Duke.
“Goodbye, my Duke of Arizona. Thank you for bearing with all of this. I know
that it may have felt like madness, and it was, but that’s okay. Even if it was, it was still
all very carefully orchestrated madness. It’s all going somewhere, at least. You’ll learn
that, one way or another,” The King said. He took the Duke’s hand for a second.
The Duke wasn’t sure how to feel about his journey. He’d never really gotten the
chance to evaluate it while it was happening, and so he had mostly just stuck to it out for
the sake of a will he hadn’t entirely known he possessed. He remembered that, at the
beginning, he’d expected to learn how to be happy from the King. He supposed that if he
judged the trip by this measure alone, it had been nearly fruitless.
The King hadn’t taught him to find happiness, or at least not really. In the end,
the King had found happiness right where the Duke expected he would: in love. So the
Duke had chased the King across America to learn something he’d already known when
he started. But that’s usually how quests go. The Duke couldn’t say that he regretted it
though. He couldn’t say that he regretted a day he’d spent with the true King of America.
The Jester began to play something that sounded like a lullaby. It was the Duke’s
favorite of all the songs the Jester ever played for him. He felt his eyelids begin to grow
heaver.
“I suppose I’ll just have to take your word for it. That’s all I’ve ever done,” the
Duke said. He was feeling sleepy. It had been a long quest, and a lot had come to pass.
He was ready for a nap.
“Now that I’m no longer the King of America, do you want to know my real
name?” the King asked, sounding a little melancholy. In spite of everything, the King
still loved America, only a little less than he loved Sonia.
“I don’t think so,” the Duke said with a yawn. “You’re the King of America.
Whatever else you are doesn’t matter to me.” The King nodded. He supposed it was
better that way.
“You’re the best friend I ever had. Thanks for bringing me home,” the King said.
“Now go to sleep. You’ve earned it.” The King stood up as the Duke’s eyes closed and
he began to snore gently.
 He turned away from the Duke, walked over to Sonia, and kissed her, deeply and
without pause, for as long as he could before needing a breath. She returned the kiss
without thinking. When they broke their embrace, they were still holding hands.
“So this is how it ends?” the King asked. “I have to admit that it isn’t really what I
was expecting, but maybe it’s a little better.”
“It usually is,” the Jester responded, without ceasing to play. “You’ve been a good
king. You kept to the path, you played the games of chance when they needed playing,
you paid your dues to the Archbishop, and you never let fear or doubt keep you from
moving forward. You earned her.”
He stopped playing when he looked at Sonia. He knew that he had played
Orpheus’s lullaby long enough to make sure the Duke slept fitfully for a good, long time.
“I know this hasn’t been easy for you either. Being a Queen never is. But I
admire your patience, and I hope it was worth the wait.”
Sonia nodded, “It was. Have you chosen the next queen yet?”
The Jester smiled, “That’s not your business anymore. You’re off the clock,
remember?” Sonia shrugged. She didn’t really care who came after her. She was free,
and that was what was important.
“So I guess we’ll be on our way then,” the King decided. He took another look at
the Duke. It had been a long road already, and it was bound to only grow longer. “I’ve
only got one last question for you, Jester. Is this story a comedy or a tragedy?”
The Jester gave the former King his toothiest grin, “Well they do call me the
Jester, don’t they?”
The former King nodded, bowed slightly in respect to the oldest, blackest being
he’d ever known, and took his leave, with Sonia willingly following behind. The last
thing the Jester ever saw of the pair was the shimmer of Sonia’s dress, disappearing into
the salt-enameled darkness.
He watched the Duke sleep for a while. He watched the dreams and nightmares
of the future-past dance on his unconscious features. He wondered what the tomorrow
would hold for the last remaining member of this King’s court.
The Jester looked at the Throne for a long moment. The King had made the
correct choice, of course. The Throne of America is not a comfortable place to sit. Sonia
would keep him far warmer than the Throne ever could. The hardness of the Throne
serves a purpose. If it was any more forgiving, then maybe the King would choose to sit
in it. But the King always leaves the Throne, and then disappears soon after.
The King of America is always forgotten. Perhaps forgotten is not the right word.
“Forgotten” implies that something was once known. The King of America has never
been known. Which is even worse than being forgotten.
The Jester picked up the Throne, and he threw it through a window. The window
shattered, and the Throne smashed upon the rocks below. He always liked the Throne to
die with its King. It suited his sense of poetic justice.
The Jester left then, without a backward glance. He would be seeing the Duke of
Arizona again soon enough, no need for nostalgia yet.
Interlogue: A Short, Behind-The-Scenes Look At the Machinery of Fate

Grace had been having what she believed to be an early mid-life crisis. She was
aware that she was far too young to have one, but that didn’t stop her life from feeling
very much in the middle, and very much in crisis.
 The mid-life crisis had begun when Grace’s fiancé, a stylish Italian businessman
named Carmine, had invited her to attend a concert of one of the premier orchestras in the
entire world. Within this concert had been a solo performance by one of the top 3 cellists
in the entire world. The cellist had been an old black man, and she couldn’t remember
his name, but he’d played a song that had reminded her of the happiest weeks of her life.
When the song had ended, she’d gone into the bathroom and wept for the remainder of
the concert, inconsolably, while she texted excuses to an impatient Carmine.
She realized that the happiest weeks of her life had been spent with a kind, lonely
writer named Daniel. He had loved and understood her in a way that nobody else on the
entire planet ever could. Her fledgling love for him had been erased by the right
combination of blue lights, good wine, and good music in an extremely sexy jazz club
with an extremely debonair madman. She had forgotten how much she’d loved Daniel
until hearing the cellist play in the auditorium with her future husband.
The morning after the concert, she began making calls. She found that Daniel had
been a very busy boy. He’d been on the move, literally from the moment she’d broken
his heart up to falling asleep in a lighthouse in the Bay Area.
She spent months searching fruitlessly for Daniel, behind her fiancé’s back. She
tracked down everyone she knew who’d known him. She even tried phoning his mother,
whose number she’d gotten from the friend of a friend. This had led to a conversation
with Mr. Newcastle, who informed her that he had gone completely off the reservation
and she would do well to forget that anyone had ever lived named Daniel White. This, of
course, only strengthened her resolve.
After months of searching, Grace was at the end of her rope and completely mired
in despair. She was only a week away from her wedding date, and terrified to confront
the groom-to-be’s volcanic temper with her concerns. He was already growing upset
with her obvious distance in the bedroom, and she didn’t know how he would react if she
broke off the wedding. She feared the worst.
She was walking down the Greene Street when she heard a familiar sound coming
from a back alley. She saw a black man, sitting on a trashcan, playing a mandolin. She
recognized him immediately.
“You’re that cellist from the auditorium,” she exclaimed, her green eyes widening.
“What are you doing here?”
“Yes, I am that cellist, and I am also a player piano in a sexy jazz club with blue
lights, and I am also called the Jester,” the Jester said, continuing to play. The music
sucked her in. Grace couldn’t have walked away if she’d wanted to.
“What do you want with me?” Grace asked.
“It’s not what I want with you that matters. It’s what Daniel wants with you,” the
Jester said. Grace’s breath caught when she heard the name.
“You know Daniel?” She whispered. “Where is he?”
“I don’t think he would want me to tell you. You see, he doesn’t love you
anymore. He can’t,” the Jester said, almost apologetically. Grace wasn’t aware how
thoroughly this news would break her heart. She lost all sense of purpose and future.
The closest possible emotion would be how the Duke felt when LaRose took his love for
Grace away.
“Why not?” She asked hoarsely.
“For many reasons that are not easy to explain. There is a way that you can make
him love you again,” the Jester told her. Grace began to breathe easier again. So there
was a way.
“Tell me what to do,” she demanded. The Jester smiled.
“I’m afraid it isn’t up to me. It’s up to this gentlemen,” the Jester said. He then
turned and pointed at the shadows. LaRose emerged from them. He looked ghastly. He
wore a long, black coat, and half of his face was blown off.
She gasped when she saw him. It was an understandable reaction.
“I lost a game of Russian Roulette,” LaRose explained, his voice ragged. He lit a
cigarette and sucked down half of it in a single breath.
“I know that he isn’t pretty, but right now he holds the keys to Daniel’s heart.
You’ll have to learn to live with him if you want to get him back,” the Jester explained.
Grace closed her eyes for a moment, and she saw Daniel, smiling at her from a barstool
in the Den.
“I’ll do it,” She agreed, without flinching.
“Good,” the Jester said. “Follow him, and do as he says. He’ll show you the
ropes. And I know he’s ugly, but I think he might have a heart, somewhere deep down.”
Grace wasn’t so sure. And neither was LaRose.
“Also, here’s a couple more things that might help,” the Jester said. He handed
her a switchblade and a small velvet bag. “Smell the leaves of the purple flower and give
them back. Hold on to the switchblade.”
She opened the bag and smelled the flowers. She closed the bag, and handed it
back to the Jester. After that, she knew time. The Jester stood up, put his mandolin in the
case, closed it, and disappeared into the flow of people.
“So where are we going first?” She asked LaRose.
“You have a fiancé, don’t you?” he asked. “Likes to gamble?”
“Sure does,” she responded.
“Well that’s a good place to start,” LaRose said.
“What are you going to do to him?” She wondered, almost apathetically.
“We’re just going to play a friendly little game,” LaRose said, smiling in a way
that didn’t touch his horrid hollow eyes. She nodded. LaRose put on a hood, and
rejoined the crowds of the city. Grace was only a step behind him.
…
Frank woke up in a dumpster in Chicago’s south side, with a red dragon graffiti’d
on his jacket. That pissed him off. He thought that people should have more respect for
the dead than to go spraying paint onto them.
He was glad that they hadn’t buried him, at least. Digging oneself out of a coffin
is one of the most arduous tasks a person can be subjected to. But even that was better
than when they burned him. That presented a wholly different set of problems.
He had climbed out of the dumpster and cleaned off his medals. He then set off
for the nearest payphone. He found one. He had to make a call. He searched his pockets
for a coin. Eventually, he remembered that he’d left one in his left shoe, the one with the
fake foot inside of it. He went through the arduous process of removing his leg, scowling
at a passerby while he did. When he finally had the quarter, which was battered and
minted for the state of Massachusetts in 1806, he tried to put it into the payphone. It
wouldn’t go in, because somebody had stuck an enormous wad of gum in the coin slot. It
was a pale, slightly pinkish gray, and it looked like brains to Frank. Frank had seen them
enough times to know.
He was about to try his best to punch out one of the Plexiglas windows in sheer
frustration when the telephone rang. Frank picked it up.
“So I’m guessing it all happened correctly?” the old war veteran said.
“Did you ever have a doubt?” the Jester’s voice was grainy on the other end. He
sounded like he was in a car with the windows down. Frank chose to ignore this.
“I’ve seen a lot of wars happen in a lot of ways, but never one quite like that,”
Frank replied, choosing not to answer the question. There was rarely a reason to answer
one of the Jester’s questions. He almost always already knew the answer.
“Variety is the spice of life,” Jester said.
“All’s well that ends well,” Frank said.
“That’s the truth,” Jester concurred.
“So why are you calling then?”
“Because when one story ends another begins,” quoth the Jester.
“And where did one story end?”
“At a decommissioned lighthouse in the San Francisco bay.”
“Okay,” Frank said, and hung up the telephone. He liked the Jester. They’d been
together almost since the beginning, which meant they had the longest working
relationship in the history of existence. But sometimes the Jester unnerved Frank. Frank
didn’t understand him, even slightly. This is a strong statement about what kind of
enigma the Jester is. The kind that even other enigmas find enigmatic.
Frank left the phone booth. He had a long way to go, and not much time to get
there. He hailed a cab. The first one he saw stopped for him. He opened the door and
got in.
“You’re a little behind schedule,” the Marquis de Louisiana said.
“Don’t talk to me about schedules. You don’t even know what decade you’re in,”
Frank growled. He didn’t like the Marquis. He didn’t think it was natural that he should
be given so many responsibilities when he hadn’t even smelt of the purple flower.
“Point taken. Where to?” the Marquis asked mildly.
“San Francisco.”
“Same time?”
“A couple days from now,” Frank amended. The Marquis nodded, turned the key,
and started the cab. Frank fell asleep. He didn’t like being awake when they travelled.
It made him nauseous.
When he slept, he dreamt of a seed that he’d planted amongst a forest of
Redwoods. It was peaceful, but it didn’t last long. Then he dreamt of disarming a
carbomb in Pakistan and then of interrogating the leader of a Socialist organization based
on the campus of Dartmouth University. He saw the defiance on the young man’s face,
but he also saw the urine soaking his pant leg. He dreamt of these, and a million other
wars fought on every scale across history. He hated to dream. That’s why he preferred
being dead.
Frank has three medals pinned to his chest. The first one is the first Medal of
Honor never issued. The second is an American flag, in the shape of an isosceles right
triangle. The third is a purple flower.

Chapter 12: Schrodinger’s Cat and the Secrets of a Universe Unbound

The Duke awoke from his long sleep at the same time that Mr. Newcastle was
informing his mother that he was dead. Mr. Newcastle was very sure he was correct, and
for good reason. Everyone believed that Daniel White was dead. Nobody was sure where
they’d heard it, but everyone heard it, and accepted it as true. The rumors passed
something like this:
“Hey, did you hear about Daniel White?”
“No, I most certainly didn’t. What happened to him?”
“Dead as a doornail. And in the Underworld.”
“The Underworld? Is that a real place?”
“It must be. Daniel White’s there.”
“But I thought he was dead.”
“Precisely.”
“Ah. That makes sense.”
Mr. Newcastle tried to have this conversation with Ms. White. Daniel’s mother
didn’t believe it. But Daniel’s mother was a grieving woman, so nobody bothered to ask
her why. They just assumed she was grieving privately, and left her well alone.
While rumors of his death were circulating, the Duke of Arizona slept. He slept
without stirring or caring. He was trapped in the deepest siesta since Admiral Pascual
Cervera slept through the naval bombardment of the Puerto Rican capital in 1898. The
American fleet dropped 1,360 shells on the city of San Juan before the Admiral finally
awoke and put an end to the madness by running out onto the pier, in pajamas and a robe,
frantically waving a white flag of surrender.
The new King’s red leather jacket protected him from the elements, and his hat,
which was pulled down, kept the sun from his eyes. He was curled up in the corner of
the lantern room, not letting a limb stick out too far, as if he was afraid of being bitten by
the world.
The Duke dreamt fairly often. He dreamt not of events, but of places. He dreamt
New York for a while. He dreamt the pulse of the city’s countless lights and the whir of
its engines and the rush of water through its pipes. He dreamt the imperfect clockwork of
the streets, the jostle of one body against another in a rush to board the 5 p.m. subway
leaving Manhattan.
The Duke was dreaming of the Great Lakes when the medium-sized motor boat
collided lightly with the rocks below the lighthouse. It was the middle of the day, and
the ocean was at low tide and balmy. The water flashed brilliantly in the sun, the waves
lapped at the shore like an obedient Labrador, and the breeze came politely in through the
windows for afternoon tea and biscuits.
If there was a time when Frank forgot his problems, it was on the beach. He got
plenty of vacation time, and he spent most of it traveling along the Pacific Coast Highway
in a sea green VW van, smoking reefer with anyone who would sit quietly and listen to
his war stories. Somehow, telling the stories made it more okay that they happened.
Frank dropped out of the boat and lashed it to a rock with a master hand. His
prosthetic leg was very well made, but Frank still grunted when he landed. He could tie
any knot in the book, and liked to show off. He had a Corona in his hand, was wearing
Tommy Bahama flip-flops, and generally was not dressed for business.
It hadn’t been hard to get the boat. Frank knew a lot of people on the west coast
in this time period, so he made two calls and he had everything he needed: the boat, the
beer, and a long-handled fishing rod with line strong enough to take the weight of an
adult Tiger Shark.
Of course he’d let the Duke sit tight for a while. After all, he certainly wasn’t
going anywhere. The Jester had sung him a lullaby, and nobody wakes up from the one
of the Jester’s lullabies without considerable effort. So Frank drank his beer, fished his
fill, and then meandered towards the lighthouse.
The Duke was dreaming about the New England countryside when the flood hit.
He was sitting with his hands folded in a colonial church when suddenly liquid broke
through the stained-glass window and sloshed throughout the historic building. The
Duke stood on a pew and looked down as it rushed beneath him. He reached down and
dipped his hand into the deluge, and pulled it out. He tasted it. It tasted like beer.
The Duke coughed and sputtered when he awoke.
“Thanks goodness you’re awake,” Frank said, shaking out the last of the bottle on
the Duke’s head. “Thought I was going to have to go get more beer.”
The Duke blinked up at Frank in irritation, “You could’ve done that a little more
pleasantly, don’t you think?”
“Nonsense,” Frank said. “You’ve been asleep so long that intelligent people have
begun to consider you deceased. You needed that. Believe me.”
The Duke rubbed his eyes. Had he really been asleep for that long a time? He
wasn’t sure he believed it. The world looked the same as when he’d left it.
The events that had come to pass before he’d fallen asleep all came rushing back
in a single, blurred sequence. He found that if he closed his eyes, he could picture
everything but the King’s face.
“The King…”
“Is gone. And so is Sonia. You remember everything exactly as it happened,”
Frank informed him. The Duke nodded. It had not been his imagination. The King was
indeed gone. Floated away, picked up by the breeze and carried straight off the face of
his country. And he had left the Duke alone, on a deserted island, with only a coat to stay
warm.
The Duke didn’t feel sad, really. He just felt a little bit lost. He’d been looking to
the King for direction for years now. He wasn’t used to the feeling of being in charge of
his own fate. It made the world feel wider.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going on vacation,” Frank said.
“Aren’t you dead?”
Frank never liked to answer that question. It wasn’t an easy one to explain.
“I was, in a different America,” Frank replied. “But now that America has been
replaced by a different America, and thus the old, dead me is replaced with a new, living
me that is in every way identical to the old one.”
“Ah. So I’m guessing that the last America died when the King left it behind?”
“You’re starting to catch on now.”
“About time,” the Duke said. “Does this America have a King?”
“Not yet,” Frank said. “The Throne of America has moved. Whoever is the next
man to sit in it will be the next King.” The Duke thought this was a rather ineffective way
of choosing a King. But there seemed to be little about the electoral process for the King
of America that was based on efficacy.
The Duke got to his feet. For a moment, his legs felt weak when he stood up, and
he had to lean on a railing to keep himself from falling over. Frank grabbed him and held
him steady. He knew what it felt like to need a helping hand.
“Don’t go so fast. You’ve been asleep for quite a while. Let me help you down
the stairs,” Frank offered. The Duke conceded. Frank slid his arm underneath the Duke
to support him, and together they walked down the steep spiral staircase that way. The
Duke felt lightheaded the whole time, his vision spotty in the semidarkness.
“How long was I out?”
“Three days and two nights,” Frank said. “It’s kind of mandatory.”
“Oh.”
They came out of the lighthouse. The Duke’s head snapped away from the
unfiltered sunlight. He closed his lids as hard as he could, waiting for his eyes to adjust
to the light of day. Frank grunted, but held him steady. The Duke kept his eyes down,
allowing Frank to lead him to the boat. Frank got him into the boat and then undid the
ropes that had tethered the craft to the insubstantial shore. There was a canopy shielding
the driver’s cabin from the sunlight, and the Duke headed for the shade. It was only then
that he would risk slowly opening his eyes.
“You hungry? Thirsty? Of course you are. Here,” Frank handed him a loaf of
bread and a bottle of water. It was in one of those disposable water bottles that came
from the same companies as all the other beverages in plastic bottles. The bread was
wheat, and it came in a bag. Somehow, the Duke expected more. But he ate the bread,
drank the water, and felt more alive for doing so.
“You said you’re going on vacation,” the Duke said. “Why?”
“Because I’ve earned it. Dying ain’t easy kid. Living ain’t much easier. A man
needs a vacation from both sometimes,” Frank said. When the bread and water was gone,
Frank offered the Duke a beer. The Duke took it, and twisted off the cap. Frank did the
same with his own. Both men drank their beers in silence, admiring the glimmer of the
sun on the water.
Frank’s favorite moment in a war is when the hull is breached. When the sirens
sound, and everyone is told to leave their guns and their swords on the deck and save
themselves as the water rushes toward them, huge and gaping and hungry.
“Frank, why do men go to war?” the Duke asked. Frank grinned to himself. The
Duke was asking the right guy.
“There’s an interesting misconception about that. We think that one man kills
another because of the differences between them. Palestinian bombs Israeli, white
lynches black, rich and poor steal from each other. We think these things happen because
we’re all different. And we’re not. We do this to each other because we’re the same, in
that moment of conflict,” Frank said, watching the water.
He knew that one day this entire bay would be engulfed in radiation. He knew
that, one day, not a single fish would swim within twenty miles of the bay. It made him
sad, but he knew that was the way things went sometimes.
“And what are we, in the moment of conflict?” the Duke asked quietly.
Frank laughed bitterly, “What indeed? We certainly aren’t human anymore.
We’re pitiful, blind creatures that can only feel a deep-seated fear of our own
inadequacies. We’re Frankensteins, ugly because of our hollowness and hollow because
of our ugliness. We’re pointlessly angry, pointlessly hurtful, and just so damn pointless,”
Frank’s voice level was rising above the sound of the motor. He was beginning to sound
hysterical. The Duke didn’t interrupt. It seemed that Frank had a lot to get off his chest.
He went on, “The funny thing is that we’re all so identical, and we realize it in the
moment but the realization is too painful so we kill our reflections and our reflection kill
us and we all die before we can do anything else. And then we’re reborn and we do it all
again, and we take a vacation from it every once in a while to forget what we’re doing.
And once the vacation is done…it all starts over again.” Frank sounded exhausted. The
Duke understood why.
“The King told me once that life is a lot easier if you can find the small kernel of
humor at the heart of all miseries,” the Duke said.
Frank shook his head, “I guess sometimes it’s easier to laugh than cry. But there’s
nothing funny about all the hurt. Nothing funny at all.”
Looking back, the Duke couldn’t help but agree.
Frank left the Duke on a beach next to the Golden Gate bridge. He didn’t say
much when he left. Frank wasn’t too big on goodbyes. He said them too often to really
feel them anymore. He didn’t ask him where he was going. This time, Frank was too
tired to even care.
He told the Duke good luck, and he asked for a push away from shore, and the
Duke acquiesced. He rolled up his pant legs, so they wouldn’t get wet, and then he
guided Frank out into the blue. He wished him a happy vacation and waved to him as he
shot out into the bay. He planned to head for Alaska. That was a place to forget.
The Duke sloshed into shore feeling emptiness inside. It was an emptiness that
felt very much like rock bottom. Everything was gone from him. Grace disappeared.
The King and his strange, magical court, all disappeared. He sat down for a while. He
wished he had time to sit here all day and wait for the sun to set.
When he was a small child, he had watched the sun set on Hollywood with his
father from the boardwalk. Perhaps he’d watched other sunsets before this one, perhaps
not. But this was the earliest that stood out.
“Have you ever heard of the green flash, Danny?” He’d asked. Young Daniel
shook his head. Mr. White’s eyes illuminated. Dr. White had a deep fascination with the
workings of the universe, and he tried to pass this sense of wonder onto his son.
“Well, sometimes, when the sun sets, some of the green rays of light are visible
for a fraction of a second before they disappear completely, resulting in a flash of green
light,” he explained.
“Do you think the green lights feel bad, to be left behind like that?” Young Daniel
asked. His father shook his head in bewilderment and looked away. Young Daniel was
always asking questions like that: questions without answers. Most parents find this an
endearing and adorable quality in their children.
But the tendency disturbed Dr. White, partially because Daniel asked these
questions with an intelligence and seriousness that well exceeded his years. Even worse,
when Dr. White tried to explain his way around these unanswerable questions, Daniel
became inexplicably sullen and cold. Dr. White could never figure out why. Neither
could Daniel. But he did.
The Duke wanted to sit all day on the shore and wait for the green flash. Because
if he did, then it would mean that somebody would bear witness for the lonely rays of
green light that the sun left behind. But he had a reason, just like everything, and his
reason could not afford to wait for the light.
As the Duke stood, he patted his pockets to take account of his possessions. He
found, to his surprise, that there was a small plastic card in his back pocket, the same one
that Mr. Newcastle had gave him back in Los Angeles on the boardwalk. That piece of
plastic was engraved with a sequence of numbers that connected it to thousands and
thousands of dollars, which was more money than Duke had possessed in years.
 For once in his life, Duke had fallen into circumstances where all of existence was
at his fingertips. He had time, money, and nothing much to do with either of them. It
occurred to him that it was a rare treat to find oneself in this position. He was free.
There was a surreal feeling of relief associated with this realization. He had long
been clinging to the King’s coattails. But the feeling of being tethered, Daniel realized,
was something that had accompanied him throughout his entire life. He had always been
a servant to another will: a friend’s, or a parent’s, or an institution’s. He had never
stopped to ask himself the question: is this really what I want? Now that he was finally
past the Throne, he was discovering the question in a way that he never had before.
The Duke decided that the first thing he needed was to go to a bar. He needed to
sit very still and sip a few pints at a leisurely pace and have himself a good long think.
“I need to take some time, weigh my options, and then pick a direction,” the Duke
mused to himself. Almost automatically, his conscious mind was adjusting to its new
solitude by speaking aloud to itself. Daniel didn’t question this in the least. He had
always found himself to be splendid company, and the sound of his own voice in his ears
had an amusing little ring to it.
What the Duke was forgetting, what we all tend to forget upon occasion, is that
subverting the direction of fate, the arrow of time, is not so simple. As he made his way
to that nearby liquor store, and picked up his two 40oz’s to drink on a park bench
somewhere, the Duke was already feeling the strings tug him along.
He found an oak tree in a park with a cozy little hollow where he felt he could rest
his soul. The air was scattered with lazily humming fireflies, painting halos in the
twilight. The earth was cool, and just damp enough that the Duke could feel his jeans
absorb it but not so damp as to be uncomfortable. Cracking his first beer, the Duke
realized that he was not yet so free as he’d imagined. He realized that it was the King’s
quest that had ended at the top of the lighthouse, not his own. And so, the Duke,
grudgingly, admitted to himself that he was still in chains. His chains came in the form of
the title, namely its modifier: “of Arizona.” Arizona, as the King had told him that first
night, was his. And he had still never been there. There was something about this that
nagged him. He was going to be the Duke of Arizona for the rest of his life. He felt that
he somehow had to earn the title. He was almost done with his first beer by the time he
decided what he would do.
He was going to go to the edge of the Grand Canyon, lean just far enough
forward, and urinate. This was the primal significance of urination, the Duke understood,
to take ownership. The King, in peeing upon the president’s shoes, had informed the
whole world of his dominance over him, and the government with which he was
associated. That was why he’d done it, the Duke realized as he killed the first one.
“You brilliant bastard, King, you brilliant bastard,” he murmured to himself. He
wasn’t drunk, but the brew and the solitude was bringing out a dormant giddiness in him
that he hadn’t known for a long, long time.
As the Duke stared up at the stars, it occurred to him that there really was some
sort of plan behind all of existence. Some sort of blueprint contained in every form of
matter, which could be obtained if it were only viewed from the right angle, with the right
eyes. He wondered if the King could see it too. He thought he could, but figured he’d
never find out either way. The King was hurtling off in a different direction, a different
life.
And so it was that the Duke awoke when the sunlight came filtering through the
canopy, and set about finding a way to the Grand Canyon. It was, the Duke decided, far
too easy to get where he was going with money in his pocket. Money, it seemed to him,
shouldn’t provide a person with an answer to so many of life’s questions. When one
thing became the answer to so many questions, it was easy to make the logical jump that
it was the answer to all of them.
In the end, he jumped on the first flight to Phoenix, and from there he rented a
sedan, which came equipped with a GPS, and drove the 420 miles through the desert that
it took to get to the south rim. It was a shocking feeling to drive through the desert, with
his air-conditioning going on full blast the whole time.
When it suited him, he put the windows down, but even then he couldn’t
overcome the feeling of separation that he could feel between himself and everything
else. He consoled himself with the radio, which he hadn’t listened to in what felt like
years.
“Country road, take me home, to the place, I belo-ong,” he sang. The Duke liked
the oldies. Back in the day, people listened to songs about things that actually mattered.
It was nearing midday when the Duke saw the sign informing him that the Grand
Canyon was only five miles away. The drive had felt almost unsettlingly brief. The Duke
wished that time was not a thing so elastic.
It was a mere stroke of luck that the Duke came to canyon during a time when
visitor traffic was in a lull. He parked his car, which was covered in rust-colored dust,
and made the track to the edge.
The Duke had believed that he had a pretty good idea of what the Grand Canyon
looked like. For the most part, he was right. It looked like a giant, hand-carved bowl of
red rock, with sparse foliage at the bottom sustained by the trickle of the once-mighty
Colorado river. But what he hadn’t anticipated was the sheer volume of empty space in
the Grand Canyon. It was an emptiness so large that it had a physical presence of its
own.
He was parked at a particularly secluded lookout with only a thick cord of rope
stretched between a few poles to separate him from the yawning expanse of open air that
laid on the other side of the edge of the cliff. His stomach dropped when he poked his
head over. For a moment, his mind returned to the memory of watching Looney Tunes
on Saturday morning. He wondered what it would feel like to be Wiley Coyote, to have
only half a second to contemplate his fate before gravity took hold and sent him
plummeting to the canyon floor.
With this on his mind, he took a step back, pointed upward, and began marking
his territory. He marveled as the golden arc shimmered in the daylight and disappeared
from view, dispersing with the force of the air pressure. It was one of the most beautiful
things he’d ever seen.
“What the hell are you doing boy?” An irate voice called from behind him. The
panic of humiliation sparked in his brain; he hadn’t prepared himself mentally for his act
being witnessed. Hastily the Duke pinched his bladder, tucked, zipped, and turned to face
his accuser, his face red.
“I was just…” he trailed off as he turned to face his accuser.
The Jester was laughing at him. He had changed since the last time Duke had
seen him. He was wearing a poncho and a sombrero and was saddled upon a burro, like a
strange immigrant revolutionary from another, simpler time. The burro looked as
immovable as if it was made of gray rock. The only part of it that moved was its jaw,
which was working very hard to chew something. It didn’t so much as sway when the
Jester jumped from its back. He looked at the Duke with a friendly little squint.
“You’re a desert man, ain’t cha Duke?” the Jester asked.
“You could say that. But you could say a lot of things.”
“I could, and they’d all be true,” the Jester said with a wheezy little old man’s
laugh. “Have I shaken you up yet?”
“Oh, this is getting to me a little bit. I just don’t want to give you the satisfaction
of letting it show,” the Duke responded. “Why have you brought me here?”
“I’ve brought you here to deliver the punch line,” the Jester said. His mandolin
was in his right hand. He raised the instrument and plucked each string once, plaintively,
starting with the lowest and moving to the highest.
Then, he pulled a small pair of pearl-handled scissors out of his pocket and cut the
strings, one at a time. They each snapped with a discordant squeak, like mice in protest.
He reached into the belly of the instrument and plucked out a small scroll, which was tied
up in purple ribbon. He handed it to the Duke.
The Duke pulled on the ribbon and it came undone easily. He unraveled it, and
read the words. There were six of them, engraved on the page in black lettering.

You Are the King of America

The Duke looked up, “So I’m the new King of America?”
The Jester laughed, “You could say that. Technically, you’ve been the King of
America this whole time. But you just weren’t ready to know it yet. We’ve been
preparing you, trying to get you ready to know the truth. And now you know it.”
“I’m the King of America.” The Duke repeated slowly. He chose his next words
carefully, “So what?”
“Well, Daniel, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but America is sick,” the Jester
said. “Its sick in the heart, sick with apathy and shame and cynicism and hunger. And
nobody’s coming to save it, because this isn’t a disease that plain old people can cure.
No, to cure the thing that’s ailing us, you need something more powerful. You need an
idea.”
“And the King of America is that idea?”
“One might say that,” the Jester said. “But you are the King of America. That idea
is whatever you make of it.”
“That’s awfully confusing.”
“No, it’s awfully simple. You’re the King of America. That’s it.”
The Duke nodded hesitantly. He supposed that this was not such a hard thing to
know.
The Jester gave him one last grin, then jumped back up onto his burro. Once
again, the animal did not so much as budge, until the Jester touched his heels to its flanks
and it began to move with continental speed. The Jester appeared unconcerned by its
pace.
“Where are you going?” The Duke asked.
“My job’s done,” the Jester said. The Duke opened his mouth, but before he
could speak, the Jester said one more thing:
“Oh wait, I almost forgot, there’s one more thing,” the Jester said. He reached
again into his travelling sack and pulled out a black velvet pouch. This he tossed to the
Duke, who could only stare at him, mouth agape.
The Jester put the stringless mandolin in the small pouch on the burro, and pulled
a key-of-C harmonica from beneath his poncho. In this way, the Jester descended down
into the canyon. The vacuum filled with sound, and the Duke could hear the Jester for a
long time. He stayed rooted to the spot, soaking in every note the Jester played. When
the music disappeared, the Duke stepped out to the edge of the canyon and looked down
and considered jumping.
He had all the time in the universe, it seemed, or none of it, depending on one’s
point-of-view. As usual, part of him felt sure that jumping was the right thing to do. But,
also as usual, that part wasn’t strong enough to make his feet move. He blamed Wiley
Coyote for this.

With nothing else left to do, the Duke opened the bag that contained the last petals of the
true Purple Flower, and brought it up to his nose.

Epilogue

The former King Isaac had seen a lot of sunrises, but he could never find one he
liked better than the one on the morning of his departure. The horizon was blushing a
soft pink that preceded the sun itself.; the same blush that crept across the cheeks of a
self-conscious bride at the altar. The ocean cradled the sky like a baby, its old motherly
instincts apparent in its calm demeanor. The King was glad to have that sunrise to
beckon him away. In spite of everything, it had been hard to leave.
His hands were balled into fists in the pockets of his blue jeans. He shivered in
his white t-shirt, missing not for the first time the comforting weight of the red leather
jacket on his shoulders. His blonde curls had become a lion’s mane, pulled back to make
sure his bright, wild eyes were still visible.
They were on a boat that was usually chartered for fishing by large groups, but
instead was driven by a Slavic ex-con time-traveler who had strict orders to get the pair
of lovebirds out of America. And the Marquis de Louisiana always did what the Jester
told him. It was a two story boat, with a captain’s deck where Sonia and the Marquis
were making easy conversation about time travel.
The familiar ache that he’d felt for her in his youth had returned, an ache that
could only be love. He could think of no better reward for his tenure as the King of
America than to get to run away with her. His love had been taken from him to allow
him to do his duty.
“Where’s your coat, Isaac?” the Jester asked. His mandolin was nowhere in sight,
although Isaac knew it was likely nearby somewhere. He hadn’t known the Jester was on
the boat, but he had come to expect the Jester where he shouldn’t be so he didn’t even
register surprise.
“The King of America should have a crown,” Isaac replied. “I didn’t have a crown
to give the Duke, so he had to make due with the jacket, which is enough for any King in
my opinion. It’s strange to hear my real name again.”
“It is quite a jacket,” the Jester agreed. “You were wise to leave it behind, with
your title. You’re free now. No matter where you go from here, you are Isaac alone.”
“That’s quite a feeling, being free. I have to admit, it’s good to see you. I didn’t
think I was going to anymore,” Isaac said.
“This’ll be it. I just couldn’t resist trying to give you one last spook,” the Jester
said jokingly. Isaac laughed. They both looked off on their own for a little bit, admiring
the beautiful potential of a day in the sunlight in comfortable silence. Isaac saw a dimple
of land appear on the horizon, still many miles away. He guessed that it would be there
destination.
“Hey Isaac,” the Jester said. “I’ve been wondering something.”
“What’s on your mind, Jester?” Isaac replied.
“Why’d you leave? You made it all the way to the Throne. You climbed the hill,
and then you decided to roll back down the other side. Why?”
Isaac paused, and looked up at the sound of Sonia’s laughter, “You ever been in
love Jester? I’ve gone a lot of ways, but I’ve never found a madness trickier than love.
It’s a lot like walking on a tightrope that’s only about five feet off the ground. You fall
and you fall, and then you get back up again. Sonia makes me want to get to the other
side.”
“You’ve got a way of making no damn sense at all,” the Jester said. “Now just
one more question: what did you learn from all this?”
Isaac wasn’t sure he wanted to say it. Too often, he found, that once things were
said, they lost their power. However, he believed that the Purple Flower was one of the
few things that could become more powerful by being defined, so he ventured forward:
“Eventually, I think I learned the true purpose of humanity,” Isaac said. “What’s
funny is that when I look back, I realize that I never needed the Purple Flower to see the
purpose at all. It was right there in front of me, everywhere I went in time. It was on the
front lines of every war, written in the pages of every book, spoken from the lips of every
leader, to the tune of every creed.”
“And what is this purpose?” the Jester asked, a wide smile on his lips.
“Love,” Isaac said. “Love is the basic unit of human interaction. It is the only
thing that can give real meaning in a world that has been scientifically proven to have,
numerically, almost none. Love is the seed of everything good and bad. We sacrifice
everything for it, base our actions upon its name, and then, inevitably, we die for it.”
“You’re right,” the Jester said. “But everyone knows that.”
“Well the Purple Flower carries the scent of Universal Love. The scent of a world
in which humanity has abandoned their pointless banners of greed and wrath and all
decided to simply love one another. It’s a world where we’ve accepted that, with love, a
little less is just enough. Where we’ve realized that, although we’re all different, we’re
really all chasing the same thing and might as well stop getting in each other’s way all the
time.”
“That sounds like a dream,” the Jester argued for the sake of argument.
The dimple of land was growing larger. Isaac was now certain they were shooting
for it. It was good to know that they weren’t just going to maroon him and Sonia in a
lifeboat or something like that.
“But it’s not,” Isaac replied. “It’s a memory, that was born in the Indian Summer
and in the Cradle of Life itself. It’s a memory that begins with all people dancing around
a fire, with a single drumbeat and smoke rising to heaven. It’s a memory that’s embedded
in the DNA of all men, but has been lost to things like Frank and LaRose and the
switchblade of Lust. But I know we’ll remember, eventually. I think America may be the
place to remember first,” Isaac hypothesized. “And, I think the King will be the one to
remind them.”
“And here’s the problem, Isaac,” the Jester said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a
King that knows what you know, Purple Flower or no Purple Flower. And you can’t tell
them, because you’re gone.”
Now it was Isaac’s turn to smile, “Am I?”
The Jester gave Isaac a puzzled look, “I sure hope you are, because if you aren’t
then I’m going crazy.”
“You’ve got your mandolin to tell your stories with. I’ve got something else,”
Isaac replied, still smiling. The Jester looked at the once-and-future King’s little smile
for a long moment. Then he thought about Isaac, and all the things Isaac had seen, and
everything that was hidden behind those clear blue eyes and he began to shake.
At first, Isaac thought he was having a seizure. But then, the Jester broke out into
enormous, heaving guffaws. This wasn’t the same as the Jester’s wheezy chuckle. This
was hysterical mirth that was born from a feeling that the Jester was not at all used to:
surprise. He loved Isaac for surprising him. He didn’t think anyone else could’ve.
The Jester didn’t realize that he was weeping until he saw his tears staining the
deck. He didn’t know why he was crying. He had just been a comic for a long time, and
it felt good to weep for everything that wasn’t all that funny. He cried as long as he
needed to, and no longer. When he was done, he recomposed himself quickly, taking a
single deep breath and wiping away the wetness on his face, leaving his eyes with a little
extra shine.
“You wrote it all down,” the Jester stated.
“Sure did,” Isaac confirmed.
“How’s it look on paper?”
“About as crazy as it was.”
“Good. Think anyone will read it?”
“I think that someone will, eventually. You know time,” Isaac pointed out.
“I do know time, like I know the strings of my mandolin. Now I hate to point it
out, Isaac, but I think this is your stop.”
The Jester was glad he got to see the once-King Isaac’s face when he turned. It
made him glad to know that there were still mysteries for on the road for the traveler.
The former King of America, so caught up in his conversation with the Jester,
hadn’t been paying attention to the approach of the island. Without his knowledge, the
boat had pulled in to the small harbor. The inlet wasn’t too wide; Isaac guessed that most
commercial watercrafts larger than this one wouldn’t make it in. There was a small,
rocky beach that the waves pushed and pulled on half-heartedly. The sand was white
with salt. Past the small beach, there was dense jungle. Isaac guessed that the plantlife
was too dense for even the most adventuresome tourists to traverse. He and Sonia were
guaranteed, at least for a time, solitude.
The Marquis and Sonia descended from the Captain’s deck. Sonia’s thick black
hair was pulled back into a ponytail. There was an upward turn to her lips: a patient
curve, seasoned by endless, heartless waiting. She was wearing a pair of hiking boots,
some khaki pants, and a blue shirt made of cotton. Isaac preferred her this way, far from
the adornments of her time as the Queen.
“So I guess this is it,” the Marquis said. “Out of everything that’s happened to me,
I still haven’t gotten used to saying goodbye.”
“There’s really nothing like it,” Isaac conferred. He turned to the Jester, “I guess I
should say thank you.”
“Yes, you should. And you’re welcome. Now go. On the other side of that jungle
is a fishing village with a port where you can get a ride west. You know the drill. No
going back.”
“No going back,” Isaac repeated in marvel. He jumped down into the water,
carrying his shoes in his left hand, and offered Sonia his right. She took it, and leapt
down, unable to keep the exclamation of joy from her lips when her bare feet touched the
water. The Marquis threw her a machete, and she caught it easily and handed it to Isaac.
Then, she threw the Jester the pearl-handled switchblade. It was no longer her burden to
bear.
Not having or wanting to do anything else, the pair went and sat down on the
beach, their hands clenched tightly to one another. Almost as soon as they were sitting,
the mandolin began to sing sadly. The song almost could’ve been a hymnal, had it not
had the brightness of reggae and the melody of a river song. They watched as the
Marquis maneuvered the fishing boat out of the cove with deft movements, and listened
to the song of the old man. When the boat disappeared, they continued to sit in silence
for a time, neither one willing to break away from the reverberation of the Jester’s string
in space.