Gelt’s arrived. That, ear to the ground, is the word: having heard about these Refuges lately cropping up, not as much blossoming as rotting away from a wither, an invocation of Scripture, its manifestation on the map, organic but foreign — he’s flown in from Mormondom via Wyoming to investigate. How exactly he found out Ben here’s a mite misty, unscholared: intuition smokesignaled, or arrived upon the wings of an eagle, following the sand, the trample of shrubs. Whatever the source, the intelligence that is hope indicates his quarry’s below, must be, and so every rise of the sun he rims the valley again to the opposite hill, the mound topped with that large leaning oak, to ensconce himself at its summit in privacy from his fellows waiting, sitting, standing, more often than not up in the tree, hidden amid the dense naked wood. It’s Scripturally illegal, not to mention otherwise inadvisable, insane, for him to venture into the Refuge: officially, there’s no admittance; he’s not running from any rap, hasn’t left a passionately unsanctioned assassination deep in his past — and while he can attempt to pass himself off, obfuscate you know the darkening drill with all the militant prowess he mightn’t possess, they’ll know, they’ll beat it out of him, he’s sure as the night. Also, the Garden’s issued orders to respect the new Law of the land, derech eretz: wait it out’s the idea, and we’ll have Him; it’s inevitable, intended…like how am I expected to work, Gelt thinks, for an organization so goddamned mystical, when times get troubled by facts. Ask the birds, most of which are flown or dead, icy wings. How, he’s patient is how, full of schemes to subvert, pass the time, the gestatory pneumonia if it’s not already onelunged to pleurisy: flying any pigeons he succeeds in branchcapturing, netting in leaf, claycolored ill squabblers sent out high over the wallpeople, carrying his notes folded then tied with the midribs of leaves to the tips of their talons; the vein of the texts offering lavish rewards for turning Him over, Gelt makes the sums up out of thin air, windy figures. Then, when they palm and pawn the pigeons on the inside for food or eat them, Gelt still without sin throws over rocks, again with his notices attached just with sloppier scrawl: stars shot without heed across night as if to effect an impertinent sky; he tosses in strained arching lobs.
Gelt standing out on the westernmost rise of the arrhythmic atrium of the heartland it is, the beating bursting organ of the valley below, hurling his finds over walls of shrieking freakpeople, shirkers and droppers, back-sliders knocked out cold on the freeze, sinners and even, if rare, the goodly Godless, too, beatitudinally crazy they are, wild with love, even if only of themselves — stones strung with scraps of shirt unwound he writes on in blood, which is his, too, then sitting to wait, lying in wait, up in a bare bough and peering over the encampment, stretching his arms out to hurl as if in a benediction or blessing foretold: the stones he throws hit people, people with memories, egos and aches, knock out more eyes and teeth to be traded for favors inside; the notes attached are brought to Ben to read but He can’t really make them out, the smudge or His incapacity to believe the worst, His inability to take a hint, or perceive a threat, and most of the others except the elders here have forgotten how to make sense of words at all, have allowed themselves to go rusty.
WANTED ALIVE
A Refugee Among Refugees
Purse Offered Weight of Suspect in Gold
Significant
Description Fat Glasses Robe Unpleasant Odor
Answers to Name of Israelien
Top of Western Slope
You Know the One I’m Talking
With the Tree
Reward Upon Receipt of Above
Purse Includes Purchase of Apprehenders Silence
[Signed] F Gelt
Unethical, declares an elder, the never made good son of a patent attorney who’d done, the son, two years in juvie before hitting the road as a trucker, and a singer in search of a band or a song…illegal, is how another of them whose mother still writes, sends cards and carepackages never received she just retired six months out of the judicature, weighs in: while not in violation of the letter of the Law per se, apparently, an action like this most definitely violates its spirit, and as such any persons or information obtained in this manner would not be acceptable to, nor admissible in…this is going too far, says yet another of them just tuning in (male, female, both, any gender’s lost in its hair nappy down to the knees); even my ex’s father never resorted to this — says the son of a mayor and medic, inlaw to a certifiably cruel public accountant — and that goy, he’s a schmuck-and-a-half.
