Sensing the futility of his enterprises both flying and lobbing, Gelt ties himself off to the trunk of the oak, waisted with woolen rope he purposes in unwinding his trousers; with its ripping assurance, giving him slack every footing, he sidles slow down the hill down its slope to just outside the grasp of the wall, passing his message to outsiders in gestural hoots, people passing the word to each other in shouts, in screams amongst, whispering in a massing roar the information onto the interior, related from the periphery deep into the pulsating middle, toward the flaring thorn in the heart of its heart that is Him: some try to grab Gelt despite his caution, their care not to be pulled themselves out, to become exposed, to pass him on in, warming flesh; others push their ways inside to find Ben, to prod Him hot to the edge, to betray, and connive, to give Him over to the wilderness, the season of open territory left for dead and in recompense, Gelt — attempting to arrange His handingover and in doing so further deserving their settlement herein…but thank a God not many here in this Refuge believe — in that the elders, Fathers, selfappointed, the oldest being the most religiously averse, don’t approve: such specific action would violate the ideal of Refuge, the entire concept of a city such as this, its rules interpreting regulations anciently set out in the book of Numbers, within the sunstilling book of Joshua, too, providing for these cities laidout as sanctuaries, sites of Refuge once delineated upon the plains of Moab, at the Jordan at Jericho transplanted, relocated to this desert these lesser, designated asylums for the menschlayer, the unintentional murderer, you’re killing your mother — the beady lustcrazed, trippydip outcast, the misfit, the degenerate gone to dreck then sent away; a halfway house halfway home, in which to sit in, to lie in, to protest by presence alone their own guilt…to stay until their deaths, in one interpretation, or, in another, until the death of the reigning High Priest, whoever he is nowadays; a voluntary prison this valley, a penitentiary metropolis of the unrepentant, and willfull — refugees from retributive death who’ll probably never leave, who’ll probably die here, fleeing angry fathers-inlaw, brothers-inlaw, and the like overacheiving, both the pursued and pursuing arriving to live together in the harmony that is the knowledge of their mortality impending, of everyone’s end: salvation, like if hell was truly heaven, and no one could tell the difference between.
And you’re Him, aren’t you? asks an elder, a Refuge father, meaning one of us and also, not quite.
Explain yourself — why here?
Summering in refuge, Ben says, same as anyone else.
As if to say, don’t think I think I’m better than any of you — it’s just my glasses, they do that to people.
You don’t understand, another elder says, you’re Him, you have to be, the High Priest, that’s who, you can’t deny it…and when you die, we’re all finally out of here. Free at last, praise whatever provision almighty. Can’t wait. Yet another adds, we’ll admit failure, give up and go home. We’ll relent and assimilate, try out a new life — get haircuts and shoeshines, jive straight & narrow, the briefcase that comes with the bedroom set, that sort of thing.
A bummer, let’s book, we’ve had enough!
But I’m no Priest, Ben’s saying, not a Levite, and not even an Israel, just an Israelien…a ghost haunting boo, a bargain dybbuk, or basement beheymah — probably no one at all.
Forget me, forgive…I had a veil, but it got lost in the shuffle.
But even if all that’s for real, you’re still the one after the Priest, the only next-in-line — the nearest thing we’ll ever have’s what I’m saying; we don’t get much priestly material in these here parts, can you dig?
He means what, my own grave.
Here’s how it’s going to happen…this a palepocked, needlelimbed mensch who’d asserted himself as a leader, an oldtimer with the scars and scarlike tattoos to prove, he’s hollering hoarse and wavery. Quiet already, everyone howling sh and hush up, farout like spaced winds their whisper, here’s how it’s going to work. You pardon us, all of us, and in return we’ll get you out, too: we’ll smuggle you out, as one of our regular nightly dead (there are a handful of these, how should we put it — the first elder adds, the one with the burly beard and the halflensed sunglasses and the whites at every knuckle of his last left pinkiefinger that once rung the insides of his rings that were gold — disease prevention measures, we’re allowed…though the Law’s damnably vague on it all); an offer you’d be at a loss to refuse: we’ll pall you out on the night of the new moon, you with me, pitch dark, right under that Gelt’s little sniveling schnozz.
What? I should pardon you, that’s what you want, that’s ridiculous.
