Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman
Wonderland.
It’s the only word he can think of. This hall, this whole place, is like a studio. From the echo chamber to the fine wood walls, the cords in disarray, and, ahead, what Philip thinks must be the control room.
He calls out for his platoon because he doesn’t care about being heard, needs to find them, needs to know they’re okay, alive, that Duane isn’t dead down here, that Philip isn’t going to have to face Larry’s parents back in Detroit, tell them he lost Larry in a hole in the desert.
Because Philip still believes he’s going home.
The thing about the Path is, once you step on it, there’s no stepping off. Even if you think you have.
He passes another juvenile drawing of a goat.
How far is the door from where he limps? One hundred, two hundred yards?
Space is just as disorienting as sound down here.
“LOVEJOY!”
Loud. As if, by virtue of volume, he’s proving he’s unafraid.
“DUANE!”
He expects footsteps behind him, the sound of a man thundering toward him. Maybe a man with an ax, maybe with cuffs, or maybe with a mind to drag Philip screaming to a cell of his own. He expects lights, too, a flash, a beam, not his own, the man who lives down here coming for him, finding him, showing himself.
Peekaboo.
Philip continues. The hall descends, deeper into the earth. It’s getting hotter, and Philip can’t quit the idea that he’s approaching something nuclear, something terribly hot, a thing capable of erasing large parts of America, one at a time, all of New York City, all of San Francisco, all of Detroit.
“GUYS!”
Philip is running. Despite the unbelievable pain, the heat, the lack of security, the lack of knowledge of where he’s going and what waits for him there.
He searches the walls for more cells.
“LOVEJOY!”
The sergeant. The Mad Blond. The former general who was demoted for defying the army when they said no, but who did not leave the army red with embarrassment; did not take his demotion to mean he had failed, was unneeded, was left to rot in the hierarchy of such an institution. No. Lovejoy goes on.
This means something to Philip. Even now. Running, racing, screaming, scared. It means something.
Lovejoy goes on.
Philip goes on.
Maybe Lovejoy still believes in what the military should and could stand for: a nation’s safety and protection; the magic words that help people sleep at night; the things civilians desperately assume the army must hold dear.
EVERY GOOD BOY DOES FINE
Christ, the sergeant’s armband is acting as a mantra, propelling Philip closer to that rectangle of light.
Philip passes red pennants nailed to the wall. Flags featuring the same ghostly white creature.
Goats.
But Philip saw the costume.
No.
Not goats.
Rather, a nuclear weapon on the other side of that door.
What do you think the musicians found down here, Philip?
The voice of the ghost of World War II barrels toward him, restrained accent and all.
They were down here six weeks. And by the end of it, the two of them could no longer sing. There was enough dust and dirt down their throats to age them forty years, and by the end of it they sounded more like old seamen than the fresh-faced troubadours they once were.
As they were playing their songs, the man who’s still down here heard other voices. Someone was singing along to the chords he and his associate were playing. A phantom harmony, he called it.
He races toward it.
Whatever it is (nuclear?), Philip can put a stop to it. He can see it unfolding, can see himself turning off the bomb, the wars, the endless gibbering squawks of Greer’s wheel of history repeating itself; the same war over and over, no matter who’s fighting it.
Philip trips hard.
He falls to his face, chin first.
When he rolls to his side, as the blood begins to trickle down his neck, when he shines the light back to the ground, to the dirt, to what tripped him, he expects to see a goat.
But it’s a body on its side in the center of the hall.
It’s a black man. Philip can see that much.
“Duane,” he whispers.
Then he scrambles to the body, knowing it’s dead before touching it.
49
Ellen screams and knows nobody can hear her because everyone she is worried about is dead.
The color red is so profound in here, so strong, she can’t help but remember fastidiously coloring a drawing for Philip, the negative space surrounding a white goat with the same hue she sees.
She wants to look away, she should look away, but it’s hard. She’s never seen anything like this. The crumpled human forms; stretch marks where hidden crushed bones tested the limits of the skin. In fact, the faces are so wide, so flat, it’s as if they’ve been run over, and for a count of two Ellen thinks that she’s responsible for it, that if she looked closely at each of the heads, she would see the tire tracks of her very own New Yorker.
It’s the thought of the New Yorker that snaps her back. Yes, she has a car, yes, waiting outside, yes, to take and her and Philip away from this place.
But where is Philip now?
Just as Ellen turns from the wreckage, can look no longer, stiffens herself against the hall wall, she hears the delicate, sprinkled notes of a song.
Eyes wide, trembling, she looks down the length of the hall.
The truth is, the music matches how she feels. As if she’s put on the exact right record for the occasion.
Ellen walks. She does not call his name. She does not say, we must hurry, we must GO. Instead, she listens. For the very first time she’s hearing the live inner music of the man she nursed for six months, the man who has changed her life in so brief a period of time. It’s a chilling, black melody that echoes crisp through the hall like cold, dark wind. Yes, Ellen thinks, whether Philip is writing it now or wrote it long ago, this song is pain, this song is loss, this song is Philip having finally pushed back.
She passes the Medicine Unit and reaches the small hall that connects the two mains. Francine was the worst of it, for Ellen, the way the old nurse seemed to be looking to the ceiling, half the bones of her face unsupportive, her mouth wide open, able to maintain undiluted astonishment to the end.
When she turns right and sees the front door, she does not consider leaving. Does not even imagine herself exiting this place, returning to her car, driving west. Instead, she turns right once more, faces the office, Unit 1, and the music escaping from within.
That wasn’t the janitor outside, she knows. It was Philip.
She passes the office. A meaningless square now, a useless room.
She arrives at Unit 1.
She enters.
At first, she can hardly see him, his silhouette, his back to her, sitting at the piano at the far wall. She crosses the unit without speaking and sits on the edge of the cot. She faces him, watches him play.
The music moves her to tears. She cries.
She leans back on the cot and rests her head against the pillow. Swinging her legs over the side of the mattress, she lies in the exact position Philip once lay, for six months, as Ellen herself watched over him, nursed him, and irrationally hoped for a day when he would be able to walk out of here on his own.
That day has come.
But for now, Philip plays.
By turns the music is rage, resolve, acceptance, hate. Some phrases are so dark that Ellen imagines the shadows in here speaking. But there are moments of promise: major chords from the mist, brief melodies that let her know that no matter how dark Philip is feeling, there is more of his story to go.
Ellen closes her eyes but does not sleep.
She hears.
His story. His plans.
His soul.
She listens.
50
Philip doesn?
In the Hundred Years’ War, the uniforms worn by the soldiers changed many times. And yet the English maintained their St. George’s Crosses; a red cross upon a white background, woven into flags, painted upon shields.
The man is black, yes. But he’s definitely not Duane.
Philip shines his light onto the man’s chest; no emblem. Yet, his face. Old. Not old in age, old in time.
Routiers were paid soldiers, mercenaries, soldiers of fortune. Rather than siding with fealty or faith, routiers warred for profit alone. They were hired by the English to help terrorize the French, in England’s attempt at capturing the French throne. They were nasty, dirty fighters, who didn’t wear any crosses at all.
Philip should get up. Should go. Reach the door. Save Detroit from something worse than nuclear.
The Hundred Years’ War could, of course, be called the Million Years’ War, Greer said. Because, though they claim it ended in 1453, it’s pretty much been going, in one form or another, forever.
Forever, Philip thinks, getting up at last.
He shines the light ahead.
There are dozens more bodies lining the hall. As though each were clamoring for the same rectangle of light.
Philip counts ten, twelve, twenty different uniforms. Costumes to him, a theater company slaughtered.
In the first Anglo-Dutch war, both sides were dressed like how we might think kings and queens once dressed. Long frock coats ballooned out below the belt; white tights were eventually swallowed by black shoes. Their elaborate hats look regal to us now, but they were killing one another, after all. All wars are fought for the same reason, Greer said, Greer said often. Because of this, they’re all one war.
Philip sees that now. Greer’s Wheel. The repetition of the past. All these dead soldiers of the same living war, stretched over time, pulled like putty by unseen, childish fingers; maybe Fate is a little boy, working with what little knowledge he has of the world. Over time things change, dress and speech, language and weaponry, but not motives or meaning or the music war makes; it’s the same argument fought, over and again, until, like Greer said, it rolls like a wheel, Time, a Ferris wheel, every seat occupied by a dead soldier; all together (all in one hall, all on one wheel) the uniforms look festive, so many colors, the carnival come to town, flags attached to the wheel. Only it’s no carnival but Man on a loop, over and over again, believing each revolution is wider, covers new ground, means more than the last.
It doesn’t. Philip sees that now.
Some of the bodies he comes to are crushed, beer cans by the cots in Wonderland. Others are readable, no different from the faces at funerals, the dead bodies to be viewed.
Limping, dragging, he tries not to look down, but he can’t resist. He might see one of the Danes there, dead; Lovejoy with his hands to his chest; a camera still held up to Stein’s unseeing eye.
And as he passes each body, steps over some, drags his bad ankle over others, he experiences a three-dimensional history of war’s wheel in the thin, meager beam of his army-issued light.
A Roman sandal.
The black-bearded head of a Hun.
Felt hats, blue helmets, crosses, medals, and muskets.
The flashlight flickers, dims, and Philip knocks it against his other, open palm.
Greer once spoke of the “end of nobility in war.” When the uniforms went from being opulent declarations of rank to the dull grays and greens of today.
Greer called it “the End of Bright Colors.”
By 1914 the world wised up. And you know what we got out of it? Do you know what thousands of years of military uniforms have delivered us? Camouflage. With the advent of camouflage came the inability to distinguish between armies. More soldiers died of friendly fire than at any point in military history. It was like a fun house out there, soldiers facing distorted images of themselves, firing half out of fright. It’d become a matter of hiding, surprise, not unlike using a deer blind to hunt. Surprise was the word of the day. And rightfully so. Everything was an ambush. Can you imagine meeting another army across an open battlefield today? Can you imagine waiting for our generals to formally inaugurate that battle? Shaking hands?! No. Now we hide. We hide because they hide, and they hide because we hide, and everybody’s hiding because nobody wants to be out in the open anymore.
The End of Bright Colors.
Philip leans against the right wooden wall to slip past what looks like an Asian man, once a soldier in white, now crushed fruit in the dirt.
Philip told Greer he was wrong. But he sees it now.
You don’t agree? Greer retorted, smiling under the desert sun. There are five thousand species of insect and animal who are hidden, watching us, listening to us right now. And we figured out how to blend in with the trees. Is that our big achievement, Private Tonka? We’re finally as smart as the bugs?
Philip’s flashlight flickers again and he cracks it against his thigh. He’s shivering but it’s not cold.
“DUANE! ROSS! LARRY!”
It’s almost as if Philip is afraid to call Greer’s name, to make truths of all the theories the historian lives by.
Philip looks down, sees the crushed skull of a man with long hair.
LARRY?
No, not Larry.
But why not Larry, just ahead? Why not the whole platoon?
Philip senses a wave, a tear in the air. He braces himself, expecting the sickening sound.
“Guys,” he says, his voice quiet now, as though the exposure to death, with Greer’s words in tow, has taken something from him, a vital piece, an inner strength, propulsion, the engine that runs him.
No force comes, no further ripple, no sound.
He advances.
Ahead, the low rectangle of light looks no larger.
How far ahead? Philip doesn’t know.
He advances.
He throws up. The sound, then, a little louder now.
It passes.
Philip bends and grips the splintered handle of a heavy club. No gun, but armed again. The sound comes subtle but steady, wave after wave, black surf, like he’s approaching the living center of this place.
He opens his mouth to call out and feels once again the glue, his lips like thick honey.
He moves.
He limps.
He grips the club.
Behind him, death.
Ahead, a door.
Because the hall slopes at such an extreme angle now, Philip expects the bodies to tumble with him, to pile up at the foot of that door, to block the thin rectangle of light.
He uses the club as a walking stick, drives the studded head into the gravel and pulls himself forward.
Drives. Drags. Drives. Drags.
When he reaches the door, the light from within shows him a naked form inches from the threshold.
Because the man looks familiar, Philip crouches. But it isn’t that Philip might know this man; his features don’t spark a memory. It’s that Philip recognizes the time this soldier comes from.
He looks like every boy did during World War II.
Dog tags are all that remain to cover his body. Philip reads them.
ROGER KINGMAN
Roger Kingman, Roger Kingman, Roger Kingman . . .
Does he know this name?
When Philip rises and touches the door, he finds it is unlocked, open, and the wood under his palm easily falls back, away, illuminated, leaving him standing, exposed, at the threshold of a fully lit room.
The hum persists. But from where?
Philip looks left, looks right, sees red, at the far wall, centered, a red rectangle, no, a shape he recognizes immediately because it has meant so much to him in every phase of his life.
It’s a piano.
Painted red.
The piano looks ready for a concert. Surrounded by microphones, it looks ready to record. Or as if the piano might suddenly speak, might explain everything to Philip at last.
He enters the room.
Above the piano, on the wall, a big band bass drum.
Red.
A white long-haired goat is painted on its center. And beneath it, the words:
GOD OF ALL THINGS SMALL
GOATS.
Philip touches the F key around his neck. The F of his own world play.
Every Good Boy Does Fine.
When Philip reaches the piano he leans the club against the bench. He eyes the keys and thinks of Detroit. Being in the cellar himself, just a boy, learning the piano alone. Hears Mom’s feet on the stairs. Feels Mom’s hand on his shoulder.
Up close, the red paint looks old. Flaked.
His first recital. Meeting Ross. Learning their favorite songs from the radio. Writing songs of their own. The Danes. The Danes in Larry’s garage. The Danes playing Martha’s Pub the night before heading out to war. The Danes in basic training. The myth of the Mad Blond in camp. The war, and talks during the war, the four of them, the Danes, humming ideas, voicing dreams, saying WHEN WE GET BACK oh WHEN WE GET BACK won’t we start something WHEN WE GET BACK TO DETROIT. Then doing that. And doing more. Recording a hit, “Be Here,” a song that changed Philip’s life as it validated the life he was already living.
“Be Here” became Philip’s soundtrack on the Path.
And now, the Path has led him to a piano.
Again.
Philip breathes deep and exhales slow.
Then, as any musician would do, having just entered a room with a piano, Philip lifts his right index finger with a mind to absently play a note. He holds it, briefly, above the keys.
Which note?
An F. Of course. Like the key around his neck.