The Fires of Orc

Sometimes loneliness makes the loudest noise

Aaron Ben-Ze’ev

Within forty-eight hours the final word on the short life of Lydia Black came from a medical examiner who declared her death the result of an accidental overdose resulting from the combination of alcohol and Alexigin. The police found no signs of foul play and no reason to suspect Lydia’s death was anything other than the ledger they suspected it to be. The case was wrapped up and in the dizzying pace of a three-way presidential race it was utterly forgotten. Everything seemed so normal and, for the Markus camp, so deliriously positive, I almost forgot about the Theowulf specter. I couldn’t put him entirely out of my mind but I did delegate the task of tracking him down to another of my henchmen.

Theowulf had gone missing. He was no longer in any discernable physical location. His shack in Connecticut was abandoned. He had not appeared online in weeks, at least not detectably so. He had infinite identities at his disposal and could place himself anywhere by web trickery. So finding out what he was or was not doing was an undoable task if he did not wish to be found. Still, I knew he would want to be found eventually. He would leave a crumb for some nimble mind to detect, a path for the right people to follow. It was just a matter of time before he let himself be tracked down. What good is power if you can’t lord it over the powerless?

At any rate, I had no direct involvement in the Theowulf hunt. I had someone on it. That was the best I could do.

In the meantime, the campaign marched steadily, confidently, unswervingly on. By October 25, the network pundits began to catch on. They could finally see the emerging pattern we had been crafting so carefully for many months. One panel show led with the topic “Can Markus win it all by winning the big cities?” I wanted to call in and congratulate them on their belated perception. The answer, of course, was yes. It’s really the only way he could win and it was about to happen.

But then into each sunny season at least a misty rain must fall and as I sat one afternoon in my office poring over numbers, pointlessly, in walked The Soldier, shutting the door gently behind him. He pulled up a chair and sat across my desk from me, leaning forward on his elbows, his face serious, uncomfortably close.

“Listen,” he said, “I want you to be clear on something. Are you listening?”

“You have my attention,” I replied.

“If we win this thing,” he said, “there’s no room for you on his permanent team. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

It was true to form for The Soldier – brutally direct and crystal clear. I can’t say it didn’t sting a bit, but in all honesty I hadn’t even considered a job with the Markus administration beyond election night. I told him as much.

“Okay then,” he said, “just as long as we’re clear. I didn’t really think it would be an issue. I told him so. It’s just that most of these campaign staff, they think that because they wrote some press releases they should be fucking Secretary of State or some such shit. I know you’re a professional so you know how this works. A hired gun is valuable until there’s nothing left to shoot. Then he’s on his own.”

“I get it,” I assured him. “I’m good.”

“Well he did want me to tell you that he recognizes how important you’ve been in this whole mess. You saved our ass from the dip-shits who had him wasting time in the early days and there’s no question we couldn’t have done this without you.”

It was nice to hear.

“In fact,” he went on, “if you want a spot at Quark Metrics it’s yours, a director spot if you want it. Pick a title. He’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”

“I really appreciate that,” I told him, “but I have plans after this is all over. I’m going to be fine. Nothing to worry about.”

“We’ll that’s good to hear,” he said, “but the truth is I’m still a little worried and that’s another reason I’m here.”

“Okay,” I said, “go on.”

“I’m worried about the situation with the girl,” he said.

“How so?” I asked.

“I need you to look me in the eye,” he said, “and tell me there’s nothing more to worry about with all that.”

I was genuinely puzzled. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me…”

“Oh yes you are,” he interjected. “I need you to tell me we aren’t going to learn anything else about the dead girl that surprises us.”

“I’m telling you,” I insisted, “I know nothing you don’t know and I have no reason to think the official story isn’t the actual story. Lydia was depressed. She fell into a dark place as the campaign was winding down and she made a mistake that many other people have made. It cost her her life and it cost us a co-worker. That’s all I know.”

“You’re damn right that’s all you know,” he insisted, “because that’s all that will ever be known about that matter. We’re clear, right?”

“Crystal,” I said.

“Good then. And there is one other thing,” he went on. “About the black lady.”

“What about her?” I asked.

“I shouldn’t need to tell you this,” he instructed, “but you’re young and I like you. So I’m going to spell it out. When this is over, win or lose, you and she will be the only two people alive who know for certain what happened that day at her home. She’s going to die soon enough. I’m not worried about her.”

“But you’re worried about me?” I asked.

“Do I need to be?” he replied.

“I understand what you’re asking and no,” I promised, “you don’t need to worry.”

“I believe you,” he said. “At least I believe I don’t have to worry about you. But I need you to assure me that I’m right – there’s no one else I need to worry about. You are the only one who knows what you know. Is that right?”

Until that moment I had never lied to The Soldier.

“I’m the only one who knows,” I told him.

“That’s what I needed to hear,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “So tell me – what are these plans you have for after the election?”

I believe he was just making conversation. I don’t think he intended to probe but his easy demeanor in the moments after I lied to his face was disconcerting. Theowulf knew, or at least he might have known. What he might do with whatever he knew or believed terrified me and not because of what it might do to Markus but because of what The Soldier could very well do to me.

“I’ll be traveling,” I said.

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

I relaxed just a bit, “I have no idea actually. But I’m heading out of town and I plan to wander for a while until I come across something I want to do, something to stay put for, wherever I might be.”

“I see. Then I wish you safe travels,” said The Soldier, and he was gone.

“I wonder what it would be like to be your age,” says The Landlord.

“You wonder what it would be like to be old?” I reply.

“Yeah. I mean not just to be old. I know it would be different if I couldn’t move right or if my hips hurt or if I had trouble with my bowels or whatever.”

Perturbed, I ask, “You are aware I’m not dead yet, aren’t you?”

“I don’t mean to insult you,” he says.

“Well that’s a good thing. I hate to think how insulting you could be if you intended to.”

“No, what I mean,” he says, “is I wish I knew what it’s like to have all those memories – to have so much inside you. If you started telling me everything you know tonight, you could never finish. I just wonder what that’s like, to remember more than most people will ever even dream.”

“Ah, that’s not so insulting after all.”

“Good,” he says. “Then tell me something, Old Timer.”

“Very well. How can I enlighten you?”

“Okay,” he says, his eyes narrowing, “here’s what I want to know. With all the things in your head, with all the things you’ve done, everything you remember, what’s the one thing you wish you could change? What would be different in that long, incredible life of yours if you could go back and do it over again?”

“Honestly,” I tell him, “I’ve thought about this before and if I could go back, the one thing I would do is stay put.”

“How do you mean?” he asks.

“I mean I would have put down roots. I’ve been everywhere and I still have nowhere to call my own. If I could change something, I would change that. I would have found my rightful place and stayed there.”

And that’s an honest answer. I don’t always tell the complete truth, particularly not to half-wit inquisitors like The Landlord. But about that one thing I’m certain. I know how my life would be different if I got to live it again. I would not be here in the Friendship Inn in New Pacifica, a half-day’s walk from the grim center of Old San Diego. I would have stopped somewhere else and there I would abide, with someone else perhaps, perhaps alone. No matter what, if I could do it again I would not be here now.

But I has to roam, at least in those days. I had to move about to get out of my own lonesome mind. What a damnable space is the lonesome mind. Don’t venture there, and if you do, don’t linger. It’s not the noise inside, but rather, it’s the silence – the vacuity of nothing, an expanding and consuming nothing, the loneliness at the end, the sickening, hollow aloneness that shrinks a man to a cricket in the cavern of the mind. One moves about to shrink space, to make the limitless measurable, to bind infinity, to constrain the mind from the endlessness of its own engulfing, echoing space. One can run from oneself and one’s deeds. But when the path leads its way back to solitude, a man is present to himself alone.

“You know,” says The Landlord, “I don’t mean to argue with you, but you do have a place to call your own. You might wish it was different, but this is your home. If you want to come with us to the valley, that can be your home too.”

That Landlord, my grief counselor. How has it come to this?