Hummingbird Salamander(72)

But no sign appeared, nothing was revealed to me, and I feared it would not happen, that I would become lost in this purgatory, or, worse, become comfortable within it.



* * *



At some point, I turned off the pathetic, entombed space heater embedded in the wall and let the room freeze. It made my bones ache, but it numbed the rest. Along with a couple shots of bourbon. The go-bag money would be good for another couple of years if I made it stretch, along with what I’d gotten early on from maxed-out credit cards. Then what?

Increasing desperation made me go over Silvina’s journal again, like I always did when I began to panic, only to find nothing new. Just iterations of the same. Was it smoke in search of a fire or was it something that would change the world? I didn’t know anymore.

“I want to abandon words for action. I want to blow up a dam. I want the world without us in it, but to be invisible eyes and ears and breath gliding over that world. To demolish all of it. But not even that—to be rid of this illusion of consciousness, to be a tree or bush or algae on the surface of a pond. Not even a fish’s quick nip of a water glider. Not even that level of intent, but some other intent altogether. And by the time you read this, I will be, my body will be … in the ground, eaten by beetles, eaten by maggots, distributed in a hundred ways, laid low and made mighty … while you remain behind and have to deal with all of this. I’m sorry for that, but it had to be.”

And:

“Democracy is not enough because it is never really Democracy. The -ism that will fix this has not been written down because it exists in what remains of the world beyond us and we cannot read that language. So we are left with flawed ways of thinking, mechanical ways, that work against the very organic nature of our brains. We have built so many toxic constructs, we cannot see through the latticework. We have built so many mirrors, there are no windows to shatter. But still we must try.”

Furtown, like the poison to the antidote, lingered because Shovel Pig was so big, I’d shoved the book in there like it belonged. Unlike my passport.

“We are flattered when the mixtures of your advanced chemistry dye us in every shade of nature’s picturesque rainbow, thereby harmonizing with the color schemes of the apparel of milady. We are convinced that these operations must be completed if we are to be your colorful fur gems of trading. So be it, Mr. Fur Man!”

I was happy the author was dead (1985, stroke), even happier it was his only book. I wondered sometimes where Fusk had found it, whether Fusk was even alive or had been crushed underfoot by greater powers.

In my weaker moments, when I felt like I’d made no progress—and I was never making any progress—I almost called Fusk. One day I would, when I had the perfect question. But that question eluded me.

I kept the half-burnt salamander on the floor beside my nightstand, too. It was the first thing I set out in each new motel room, before I’d had the anchor of the houseboat. No numbers behind the eyes. Nothing hidden inside it.

But I’d discovered the type almost immediately due to the two yellow stripes. “Road newt,” the common name. Plethowen omena. Family: Caudate. Genus: Plethowen. Species: omena. Extinct. Formerly found in mature forests of the Pacific Northwest. Only thirteen to fifteen centimeters in length. A fragile membrane covering the tail. An expandable tongue to probe for prey along the forest floor.

But there was a complication. The obvious.

The one I had was a giant subspecies, never before recorded. By anyone.

Had Silvina really discovered one in the King Range? Perhaps Fusk had fudged the truth and she’d bought the taxidermy. Perhaps she had found it in a shop like Fusk’s: dusty and worn. A curiosity no one else had known the significance of. Perhaps it was a fake.

Burnt, mangled, it could not argue for its own reality.



* * *



I guess I went a little off then. Maybe it was the pain. The salamander made me think of Fusk, and looking at Furtown again, I devolved into a paranoid loop. The alcohol didn’t help. Nor the isolation.

Why did Fusk switch copies of Furtown on me?

He could’ve charged me five hundred dollars for the thirty-dollar copy. But he’d switched them. Then I was cursing myself, throwing things. A cup. A plate. A knife, which surprised me by embedding itself in the wall. Realized I was screaming.

Shut up. Put my hands over my mouth. Like I was two different people. But, in reality, I was a lot of different people, like everybody. And a few of them were really fucked up.

I spent a good long, silent time tearing up Furtown looking for something hidden in it. I removed the clear plastic protective cover, held it to the light looking for etch marks on it. Microfiche. Anything. Nothing.

I tore the hardcover boards off like the stiff wings of a bird, pried up the endpapers. Nothing. Then took a pocketknife to the spine, cut the cloth binding. A good spot to hide a piece of paper with a message. Nothing. No page where I’d missed a soft pencil mark or circled letters.

Until finally the whole flayed copy lay in ruins on the floor. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

Fusk was just fucking with me. I was fucking with myself. The only reason he hadn’t made me pay five hundred bucks for a thirty-dollar edition was a kind of rough honesty. By his standards.

I should’ve put Furtown back together best I could. Until it looked like a bad attempt at taxidermy. Or the state of my mind.