So many years ago, I said.
Ah, God, Mr. Vollman said, and his flesh grew thin as parchment, and tremors ran through his body, and his form began to flicker between the various selves he had been in that previous place: Fresh-faced apprentice in an ink-stained smock; Young widower, wiping away tears for his first wife, fingernails blue-rimmed with his work, despite an obsessive pre-funeral scrubbing; Lonely middle-aged fellow, with no hopes at all, who only worked and drank and (in a depressed state) occasionally whored; A heavy-set, limping, wooden-toothed forty-six-year-old printer, glimpsing, from across the parlor, at the Wicketts’, upon New Year’s Day, a radiant young woman in a lime dress (little more than a girl, really), and in that moment, he felt himself no longer old, but young (interesting, vital, dashing), and, for the first time in years, felt he had something to offer, and someone to whom he hoped he might be allowed to offer it.
roger bevins iii Shall we? Mr. Bevins said. Shall we go together?
And assumed his various future-forms (forms he had never, alas, succeeded in attaining): A fine-looking young man on the prow of a ship, gazing off at a row of yellow and blue houses just coming into view upon a distant shoreline (and on that voyage he had been fucked and fucked well by a Brazilian engineer, who had taught him much and given him much pleasure) (and now Mr. Bevins knew that that life was for him, whether it be good or not in God’s eyes); The contented lover, for many years now, of a gentle, bearded pharmacist named Reardon; A prosperous, chubby, middle-aged fellow, nursing poor Reardon through his final illness; An old geezer of nearly a hundred, blessedly free of all desire (for man, food, breath) being driven to church in some sort of miracle vehicle, before which stood no horse, and which went about on rubber wheels, loud as some perpetually firing cannon.
hans vollman Yes, all right, Mr. Vollman said. Let us go. Together.
roger bevins iii And it seemed we had passed the point of choosing. The knowledge of what we were was strong within us now, and would not be denied.
hans vollman And yet something held us back.
roger bevins iii We knew what.
hans vollman Who.
roger bevins iii Of one mind now, we flew-skimmed east (erratically, caroming off boulders and hillocks and the walls of stone homes, like wounded birds, feeling nothing but urgency to reach our destination), flickering on and off, weak and growing weaker, sustained, barely, by some lingering, dissipating belief in our own reality, east and east and east, until we reached the edge of that uninhabited wilderness of some several hundred yards.
hans vollman That ended in the dreaded iron fence.
roger bevins iii
CIII.
The Traynor girl lay as usual, trapped against and part of the fence, manifesting at that moment as a scaled-down smoking wreck of a rail car, several dozen charred and expiring individuals trapped within her barking out the most obscene demands as Miss Traynor’s “wheels” turned mercilessly upon several hogs, who (we were given to understand) had caused the crash, and possessed human faces and voices, and were crying out most piteously as the wheels turned and turned and crushed and re-crushed them, giving off the smell of burning pork.
hans vollman
We had come to apologize.
roger bevins iii
For our cowardice at the time of her initial doom.
hans vollman
Which had always, in every minute since, gnawed at us.
roger bevins iii
Our first huge failing.
hans vollman
Our initial abandonment of the better nature we had brought with us from that previous place.
roger bevins iii
Standing outside the burning car, I called in.
Can you hear me, dear? I shouted. There is something we wish to say.
hans vollman
The train shifted a bit on its tracks, and flames leapt up, and several of the hogs who had caused the crash turned to us and, in a beautiful American dialect that came out of their perfectly formed human faces, told us, in no uncertain terms, that she could not and would not be saved, and hated it all, and hated us all, and if we did, indeed, care for her, why not leave her alone, for our presence aggravated her already considerable torment, reminding her, as it did, of the hopes she had held in that previous place, and of who she had been upon first arriving here.
roger bevins iii
A spinning young girl.
hans vollman
In a summer frock of continually shifting color.
roger bevins iii
We are sorry, I shouted in. Sorry that we did not do more to convince you to go, back when you still had the chance.
We were afraid, Mr. Bevins said. Afraid for ourselves.
Anxious, I said. Anxious that we might fail in our endeavor.
We felt we must conserve our resources, Mr. Bevins said.
We are sorry this happened to you, I said.
You did not deserve it, Mr. Bevins said.
And sorry, especially, that we did not stay to console you, as you went down, I said.
You did rather slink away, said one of the hogs.