GO, I told the copter, LEAVE US ALONE, it sped away.
Ofcourse he couldn’t look me in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed and shook, “I’m sorry I’m sorry, I’m so f freaking sorry.”
He was about doublescale still, no longer elevenyearsold though, nineteen already now.
Not a roundfaced chubster anymore, looked pretty different from the kid who stepped through the roof of our little alleyway milkcrate house.
SHHHHH, I shushed. LOOK AT ME.
He couldn’t though, he was so weak and trembly, he knew I was going to kill him.
Where do I begin, Jasper, what do I need you to hear before you die.
WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN, I told him, STILL LITTLEPOOR, I SHOT A GUN A COUPLE TIMES. IT WAS TO PROTECT MY SIS, NO ONE GOT HURT. BUT THEY STILL SENTENCED ME TO PRISON FOR EIGHT YEARS.
He shivered and cowered.
STOP SHIVERING, STOP COWERING, I said, JUST LOOK AT ME AND LISTEN. YESTERDAY I ATTACKED ABOUT FIFTY PEOPLE, PROBABLY KILLED ATLEAST ONE SO FAR. AND IT WASN’T TO PROTECT ANYONE, IT WAS JUST WHAT I WANTED TO DO. THIS TIME I’M NOT GOING TO PRISON AT ALL THOUGH.
He tried to nod.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT.
“I don’t know,” he chattered. “I d don’t ’t know w.”
I held him closer to my face, hard to hear his little voice.
COME ON, THIS IS NOT HARD, I helped. OFCOURSE YOU KNOW. JUST TELL ME THAT’S NOT RIGHT.
“That’s not righ ht,” he agreed.
GOOD, I said. GOOD.
He said nothing, his shaky terror was a whispery tickle in my palm.
NOW, DO YOU HAVE A DAD, I asked.
“Y yeah,” he sobbed.
WHAT ABOUT THAT, IS THAT RIGHT, I asked.
He couldn’t answer, just wept bitterly, I knew it wasn’t fair for me to ask.
NEVERMIND, I said, NEVERMIND. JUST TELL ME THIS. IS HE A GOOD DAD.
As I said it, deep inside myself, a slow earthquake started.
“Yes, yes he’s good,, he’s a good d dad,” the kid hiccuped.
I sucked fresh sea air, breathed it out rotten and ruined.
WHAT DID HE SAY TO YOU AFTER YOU KILLED MY DAD, I asked him.
“He said it wasn’t my fault,” he wept, “he said it was a terrible, terrible thing, but not my fault.”
DO YOU THINK HE WAS RIGHT THOUGH, I asked him, feeling slow huge tremors begin.
“I don’t kn know,” he shuddered. “I mean y yes. I think so. I got p pushed. I’m so sorry, I was getting pushed around d b bythosekids, I j just didn’t ’t see wh, where I was going g.”
I breathed long and hard, tried to keep my hands still, not jostle and snap this kid’s spine, atleast not yet.
“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed again.
His eyes screamed Please don’t kill me, he didn’t say it though.
He must have known the moment he said it, I would, I’d bunch my fists and mangle him like a napkin.
I breathed again, closed my huge eyes, saw my father’s face.
CAN I TELL YOU ALITTLE ABOUT MY DAD, I asked.
Jasper, he called me little redfish, psst, wake up little redfish, that was how my days began.
His name was Robin, always weird to hear people call him that, Robin can you fix our broken stove.
He smelled like oil and rubber always and his hands were huge, I mean littlepoor huge, long strong grippy fingers stained with black grit.
He was best at fixing old brokendown middlepoor gadgets, didn’t own a workshop though, had to pay to use shopspace and tools, bounced around between rentalspaces owned by jerks.
Always hoped to own his own shop, own his own tools, just need to get a few clinky clanky little tools and then we’ll start scaling up, funny redfish, that’s our way out.
Prayer was rubymouse and I was redfish, at night we played with him by creeping our hands closer and closer to his until CHOMP, his big strong hands chomped ours, we shrieked and giggled like lunatics.
He teased my mom always about the Lord King God, wonder what that big godly fella’s doing right now, hey Rosy you think He’s watching some sportsgames or what, what do you think He likes on his hotdogs, he knew how to tease so she wouldn’t get too mad.
But Dreamworld was where he was most himself, Dreamworld was where I loved him best.
My dad could dream anything, stars and suns and cityblocks, his favorite was the ocean though. He saw oceans and water in everything always, he called good things wet, bad things dry, I do it too sometimes, it feels true.
I talk like him, Jasper, I know I do. I talk in his long listy sentences, words all piledup, and do I ask myself questions the way he always did, yup, forsure.
When you hear my voice you’re hearing the voice of the dad you killed.
And before jail I dreamed the way he used to dream.
He dreamed ripply fish, chubby seals, nibbly sharks and squiggly squids, jellies, crabs, thousandcolor corals and seaflowers, rippling pages of kelp. He made dreamzones for me and sis, adventures of redfish and rubymouse, after you killed him I tried to keep making them, when I dreamed myself into the ocean it was to feel like a babybrat again.
In Dreamworld he played the game of Make Stuff Out Of Other Stuff, Jasper he was the one I learned it from, whoelse. I learned it from my clever funny dad, watching him dream pools of cloud, mountains of teeth, accordion palaces, whale buses. Winking humming Dad drawing the vines of road on brickwalls, pulling the churning orchards of rivertrees from the ground with the gritty grippy hands.
And when I dreamed them too onenight to show him that I could, he glowed all proud and happy, he told me he loved me so much, amazing redfish.
I asked him did he love me more than Prayer, did he love me the most, he bellylaughed and tossed me in the cloudpool.
He tried to tell me something after you crushed him, Jasper, rememberthat, he moved his mouth and tried to talk.
Couldn’t push the words out though.
• • •
Okay. It’s time.
Shut up. Shut up and listen.
Jasper, can you swim.
Do you think you can swim a mile.
Jasper, we’re a mile from shore, a mile from Lossy Indica.
Go swim back to safety, Jasper, swim back to your good wise dad.
I placed Jasper in the water, watched him paddle away from me frantically, furiously, rat leaving a sinking ship.
I stopped my shaking, stilled my quaking, drifted north, and gazed again at Balustrade.
And knew what had to be done,
sorry Usher,
sorry Prayer.
Sorry Yewess, sorry Hue.
But listen.
The world is sick, the world is sad.
If I don’t bash some bigs then no one will.
• • •
Even if they bomb me, go ahead. Let me put my giant smoking stinking carcass on their shore, sicken them, sadden them, choke them on the fumes.
And if they don’t bomb me, great, I’ll eat them.
Char their skin, roast their muscles, gulp their blood, slurp their fat. Kill them, cook them, eat them, turn their flesh into my flesh, scale into my scale.
You are meat that I will eat, I thought, watching the limping rich.
It’s time.
LIFEWORLD
But I floated,
and floated,
and didn’t swim to shore,
just kept watching, floating, feeling very still.
And prettysoon I began to hear a song,
imagined by my giant head.
SONGWORLD
The song was shrieks, chirps, giggles, hoots,
hums and laughs, barks and whoops,
whatshappenings and isthisreals,
notes made out of notes.
I was hearing littles, in twos and threes, families and crowds,
coastguard stationfulls,
growing.
My mind heard every littlepoor in Lossy Indica,
allofasudden breathing in a littlebit more air,
with allofasudden a littlebit bigger lungs,
gasping the moreandmore air back out with roars and
croons, chuckles and squeaks.
It was a thousandvoice orchestra to teach someone to sing again,
a well to wash a dusty dry Dreamworld.
And something fountained up in me,
some wet enormous need.
OKAYWORLD
OKAY, it screamed out of my mouth,
the ocean shuddered,
OKAY, OKAY, it roared in my voice,
boomed and echoed off the cliffsides,
HUE, PRAYER, USHER, YES, I’LL SIGN, I sobbed,
so loud that even sleeping Kitty must have heard me,
faraway,
like a coward, I chose life.
(WHATHAPPENSNEXT)
(And what happened to that coward next, well let me tell you, gather round for the Remaining Story of Warner as Told by Also Warner, keep your eyes on that gigantic bawler heaving in the sea.)
Surenough the bankers were listening, surenough they heard him, rightaway they began their magic work of Drain His Muns.
No time to prep his body, ohwell, whatcanyoudo, the shrinking kingkong grit his teeth, the weakening godsilla squinched his eyes, then finally he began to scream a little, then a lot, then basically nonstop, also wept and thrashed while his skin hugged his bones, bones squeezed his heart, frantic heart had nowhere to put its blood, body’s trash strained his guts and stretched his veins, ribs pricked his lungs, gashed his livers, kidney, tum, his cramping tightening skull closed in and bruised his woozy brain, his innerears shrieked and shrilled and his eyeballs flashed and popped and dimmed and he told his brain to think, whocares, I’ll live.
He bled and vommed and crapped endlessly in the pinking sunsetting ocean, went under a few times, gasping, shuddering, it all went dark and then it found ways to get even darker than that and then it went nightdark, deathdark, dark as nothing.
But he must have failed to die somehow, the bloodsalty sea got bored of him I guess or maybe pitied him, bitbybit a kindly tide coaxed him back toward the citylights undercover of night.
And finally it pushed this lifeloving coward onto the damp sand where he slumped like a corpse.
Prettysoon the morningsun was creeping over the mountains to touch him, his eyes twitched open, one was milkydull but the other had a little light left.
He crawled off the beach and onto the boardwalk, pavement, citystreets, his one good eye wandered and searched for a good place to just collapse somewhere outofsight forever but the dumpsters were too small, the sewerdoors too low and narrow, no holes in the wall could fit this middle littlepoor.
So your coward stumbled, shambled, shuffled, up into the hills, on one bad leg and one worse, hearing mostly ringing, behind his ribs his organs were already switching off.
And after a longtime he was in a familiar sweetsmell paradise, homes like humming mountains, gentle sprinklers misting, treebranch cathedral overhead.
He was a crippled animal with a pushing heart, telling him with nudges, here, thisway, keepgoing.
And after some more bloody shuddery miles he stopped in front of a house.
He stood, and swayed, then suddenly sat down, couldn’t stay on his feet for one more second.
He sat there naked in the yard, ignored by joggers and soundless zooming doublecars, ignoring the trickly spreading death inside him, just watched the house and waited for its dreamer to wake up.
So wake up, please. I’m out here waiting.
Please save my littlelife just one last time, because heresthedeal, then I promise to save yours.
Let’s belong to each other, howaboutit,
let’s be reasons to fix stoves, patch roofs,
clean and heal our idiot town, our old dumb brokendown world,
let’s be why we love this stupid life too much to die,
Kitty whatdoyousay,
here’s what happens next,
let’s make each other weak.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thankyou firstofall to my wise witty endlessly patient editor, Maggie Lehrman, as well as Susan Van Metre, Michael Jacobs, Chad W. Beckerman, Andrew Smith, and the rest of my partners in crime at Abrams. Thankyou for encouraging me to take risks, reining me in when I am being obtuse or insane, letting Warner be Warner, and agreeing to a title that is a madeup nonsense word.
Thankyou to Nate Marsh for his perfect artwork.
Thankyou to my tireless brilliant agents, Claudia Ballard, Laura Bonner, and Anna DeRoy, for always acting in my best interests so I don’t have to.
Thankyou to the incredible Cassilhaus residency ay kay ay Ellen Cassilly and Frank Konhaus, who hosted and fed and entertained me in their beautiful castlehouse in North Carolina while I wrote the final third of this book.
Thankyou to my genius friends and fellow writers who gave me their invaluably thoughtful notes and insights: Greg Atwan, Emily Carmichael, Kyle McCarthy, Joel Steinhaus, Nic Stone, Ben Urwand, Han Yu, and ofcourse Sean McGinty, the first person I ever discussed this idea with, one talky night in downtown Ellay.
Thankyou always and forever to my family of Mom Dad Lena Eve Grandma for making me who I am.
Thankyou a secondtime to my dauntless librarian Mom inparticular for all the conversations and encouragements and pushbacks with this book, and a thirdtime for each of the hundreds maybe thousands of books she gave me growing up, especially the ones she read me outloud, especially Dickens.
And thankyou mostofall to Tamara for the daily reminders that this book is the most important thing in my life, but letsbehonest, it’s a distant second.
Jesse Andrews, Munmun
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