The Troupe (60 page)

There are houses in Wink where no one ever sees anyone going in or out, yet the lawn is clean and the trees are trimmed and the beds are full and blooming. And sometimes at night, if you were to look—and of course you wouldn’t—you might see pale faces peeping out of the darkened windows.

In the evening in Wink, it is normal for a man to take the trash out to the back alley, and as he places the bag in the trash can he will suddenly hear the sound of someone speaking to him from nearby. He will look and see that the speaker stands
behind the tall wooden fence of the house behind his, and he will be unable to discern anything besides the shadow of the speaker’s figure and the light from his neighbor’s windows filtering through the pickets. What the speaker is whispering to him is unknown, for it will be in a language he has never heard before and could never mimic. The man will say nothing back—it is
crucial
he say nothing back—and he will walk away slowly, return to his home, and he will not mention it to his wife or family. In the morning, there will be no sign of anyone having been behind the fence at all.

In the morning in Wink, people frequently find that someone has gone through their garbage or left footprints all over their lawn. On discovering this they will set everything to right, either by replacing the garbage or smoothing over the grass, and they will not complain or discuss it with anyone.

There are very few pets in Wink. Almost all of them are decidedly house-trained. Outdoors, wandering pets are unpopular, for they have a tendency to never return home in the morning.

On the outskirts of Wink, where the trees end and the canyons begin, people often hear fluting and cries from down the slopes, and, on very clear nights, one can see flickering lights of a thin, unnerving yellow, and many dark figures standing upright and still on the stones.

And sometimes, maybe only once a year, the people who live near the park at the center of town will glance out their window at night and see a small crowd has silently assembled on the grass. They all stand motionless with their heads craned up, watching the night sky. What they are looking at would be difficult to determine from any angle, but most residents understand that they are looking at one black corner of the sky. It is unusual, naturally, for anyone who has such a beautiful night sky before them to focus on the one part that has no star
at all. Yet this starless part is all that they care to stare at. Or, perhaps, it has no star anymore.

The residents of Wink know about all these things, in a peripheral fashion. They tolerate them as one would a rainy season, or some pestering raccoons. Because, after all, no neighborhood is perfect. There’ll always be a few problems, at least. And besides, everyone can make an arrangement, if they want.

Comes he walking windy-ways, wandering under spruces and through canyons and across shadowy glens, hands in his pockets and head bowed as if all the weight of the world lies teetering on his slumped shoulders. Which it is, in a way, and this is a change of pace for Mr. Macy, he who is so often the delight of Cockler Street, always there sweeping off his store’s front steps and waiting to favor passersby with a wink or a smile or a piece of bawdy flattery. The very idea of merry old Macy ever falling into a gloomy spell is preposterous, inconceivable, for Macy is indomitable, unchanging. Were the town ever washed away in a freak flood Macy would remain, still ready with a snippet of gossip or an idle joke. Yet here he is, making a lonely crossing through the desolate countryside, the pink moon lazily swimming through the purple skies above him, and though Macy may tell himself his midnight perambulations serve some deeper, more secret purpose, he cannot deny that partially they serve to relieve his mind of its many burdens.

As he winds around a staggered cliffside he glimpses a flash of lightning over his shoulder. He stops and watches the blue luminescence bloom in the clouds above the mesa, its eldritch light strobing the mountains, the pines, the red rocky flats beyond that seem

(so much like home)

queerly threatening recently. The lightning is soundless, but his ears imagine quiet thunder rolling across the countryside. It will gather around the tip of the mesa (it always gathers at the tip of the mesa) and disperse, trailing north and east to fade to nothing.

Then he cocks his head. His eyes go searching, curious, tracing over every line of dark on the mountain. He saw something, he’s sure of it, not the brilliantine blue of lightning, no, but a flat box of dull white light, like a window. But what could lie yonder on the mesa save the remains of the lab, with its twisted tunnels and blackened antennae (all sticking up from the ground like barbecue spits)? And he is sure there is nothing else there,

(except the door)

nothing at all, for they would know about it, wouldn’t they?

He looks. Waits. Sees nothing. Then continues home.

His manner of walking is counterclockwise and peripheral, approaching the town always from the side, crossing empty playgrounds and parks and isolated intersections. It is good to move through the forbidden places, the halfway patches. He’s spent too much time in the havens at the center of Wink, far too much time puttering around his store and among his neighbors. Here at the edges, in the cracks and at the crossroads, stepping from shadow to shadow in the river of darkness that runs through the heart of Wink, he feels much more at home.

As he walks under one tree a harsh buzz sounds out from above. He stops, peers up. Though the tree is dark he can see the form of a man standing at the top, balanced perfectly on a single branch. The buzz increases, wheedling and reedy, like it is telling him to clear off. It is not a sound any human could ever make.

Macy watches for a moment, but soon grows impatient. He has no time for such mannered gestures. “Oh, shut up,” he snaps.

The thing in the tree falls silent. Mr. Macy glares at it a moment longer, then continues on.

Mr. Macy can go anywhere he likes in Wink, anytime,

(except beyond it)

and no one knows more about the town than he does. Except, perhaps, for Mr. Werthing. But Mr. Werthing is dead, dead as a doornail, dead as dead can be. Whatever that means.

And what does it mean? he wonders as he walks. What could it ever mean? Macy does not know. What a foreign concept it is: to die, to cough up what you are as if it were no more than mucus pooled at the back of your throat and perish. Where is his friend now? What has happened to him? Where has he gone? Still he wonders.

It is this death—and the answers about it he so desperately desires—that has sent Macy on these midnight errands, visiting the hidden residents of Wink and telling him his news and thoughts: have you heard and what did you do, who knew before you and how, and why, why? Why did they know, why did they not know, what has happened, what is happening? Do you know? Does anyone know?

No. They do not. They, like Macy, like the town, are alone now.

He misses Werthing like one would miss a limb. Werthing was always the stabilizing force in town, the rudder steering their little ship across dark, unsteady seas. It was his idea to use the names of the town’s residents. “And are we not residents of the town?” he said to them. “Are we not these people now? I feel that we are. We are part of a community. And so we should be named accordingly.”

Part of a community… Macy badly wishes this were the case.

For now the unthinkable has happened: one of them has
died
. No, more than that—he has been
murdered
. How can such a thing occur? Do the seas sometimes float away into the sky? Do the planets crash into one another in their orbit? Can one hold the stars in the palm of their hand?

No, no. And so they cannot die.

But Macy has a few ideas about how this happened. He knows those men at the truck stop had something to do with it, such weaselly little things with small eyes and cautious movements. He can smell it on them, a heady, reeking perfume of guilt and malice. It’s as if they went rolling in it, like dogs. Macy’s started scaring them out of town ever since, and oh, how he’s enjoyed doing that, especially the last one. He’s never toyed with the natives like some of the others do, but how fun it was to rouse one of the slumbering ones to join him in his little jest. And that was all he wanted

(kill them)

to do, really. Just a joke. After all, he is forbidden to do more.

Yet how often had he said that they should remove the roadhouse entirely? It was a threat, a taint to their peaceful way of life. Especially after they started bringing in that drug, the heroin. But it was Werthing who always talked him out of it. “Let them be,” he would say. “They’re little people making little fortunes off of little vices. They’re no concern of ours. And were we to do anything about them, I’m certain it would attract attention, and that we do not need.” How ironic that those he defended should be the very ones who took his life.

And that is the crux of it, the howling, snarling, silly old crux of it. How could
men
—and poor, stupid, foolish ones at that—ever manage to kill one of
them
? Hadn’t it been said
from the start, even decreed, that they were not to die? That they should never harm another or perish

(oh, mother, where are you)

so long as they waited here?

Of course, the answer came from the very last person Macy wanted it to. Nearly all the hidden residents of Wink reacted the same way to the news: they trembled, quaked, asked many questions themselves, before finally admitting they knew nothing, and begging Macy to please let them know once an answer was found.

(yet how troubling were those he visited that did not answer his call, those caves and canyons and old dry wells he came to and spoke into, and though he expected them to emerge [with the sound of rustling scales, or the burbling of deep waters underground] and turn their attentions on his being and join him in parley, they did not? he now wonders—were they gone? had they fled? or were they too terrified by what had happened to even poke their heads out of their makeshift domiciles?)

And Macy expected old Parson to do the same, or perhaps he
wanted
him to, for Macy has never liked old Parson, so contemptuous of everything they try to accomplish in Wink. But to his chagrin, Parson did none of those things. Instead he went still, thought, and said:
It’s true that none of us are allowed to kill any other. Or, rather, we promised so before we came here. But did we all make that promise, Macy?

Macy said:
Of course we did. We wouldn’t have been allowed to come if we didn’t. We would have been left behind. So every one of us did, naturally.

And Parson said:
But what if there was someone in Wink who… what is the word… stowed away with us when we came?
Someone who’s been living here in secret, or who’s unable to get out of wherever it is they are?

Macy said:
That can’t be. There’s no one else besides us. There’s always been us, only us, and no one else.

Parson said:
But that’s not so. There was another. Before all of us. Even me and Mr. First. Wasn’t there?

Mr. Macy was confused at first. What jabbering was this? Silly old fruit, the loneliness and isolation has gotten to him. But then he realized what the old man was getting at, and as the thought trickled into his brain he turned white as a sheet. And Macy said:
No… No, you’ve got to be wrong.

Parson only shrugged.

Macy said:
You have to be wrong. It can’t be here. It just can’t be.

Parson said:
Many things that couldn’t be have happened recently. But if it was here, wouldn’t it have a very good reason to want to hurt us? And I don’t think She would have ever extracted a promise from it. I doubt She even knew it came with us. That is, if I’m right. It is only one possibility.

Yet the idea resonates in some dark, awful corner of Mr. Macy’s heart. It would confirm so many of his worst suspicions that it must be true. What can one do against such a

(woodwose, wayward and wild)

thing? They would be helpless. Such a being is beyond comprehension, even for them, and they comprehend a great deal.

Macy looks up as he walks, and is a bit surprised to see what he has come to.

A sprawling modernist mansion is laid out against the hillside before him. It is done in the style of a Case Study House, with long, flat levels and glass walls, and a sparkling blue pool dangling over the mountain slope. Its steel posts are lit up by track lighting running along the base of the house. Though the
house is currently dark, one can see white globe lamps hanging from the ribbed steel roofing, and white womb chairs are lined up against an elegant Japanese wall screen. It is a house that has absolutely no business belonging in Wink; it is more suited to Palm Springs and the Palisades than a sleepy little town in northern New Mexico.

And Macy says with a slight sigh: “Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.”

He pulls a set of keys from his pocket, takes a winding path through the perfectly manicured cypress trees (each paired with its own spotlight), walks up to the front door, unlocks it, and enters his home.

The entry hall is white, white, terribly white. White marble walls, white marble floors, and what few unwhite spots there are (tables, pictures) are simple black. This is because Macy does not care to see color when he comes home; he is unused to the sensation, and it aggravates him so.

Yet there is color, he realizes. There is a splash of color at his feet, screamingly bright. It is the colors called pink and yellow, and once Macy gets past this irritation he realizes he is staring at a gift-wrapped present sitting in the center of his entry hall. It also features an extremely large pink bow, and attached to this is a white tag. Upon examination, it reads:

BE THERE SOON!

M