Mac Wellman is Distinguished Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College, USA and the recipient of three Obies. He is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. He is the author of the novel Q’s Q: An Arboreal Narrative, the story collection A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds, and the collection of plays The Difficulty of Crossing a Field: Nine New Plays. His poetry collections include Miniature, Strange Elegies, and Left Glove.

LINDA PERDIDO

a novel

By MAC WELLMAN

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Mac Wellman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57366-173-7

CHAPTER 1

A book begins:

Linda Perdido Linda Perdido Linda Perdido. In one eye andout the other. At the WalMart in Troy doing something awful tothe lettuce and cabbage. Eyes bright, like something that lives,insane, way up in a high tree. A tall, sky-filling Nutt tree, or a nuttyone, not a nut-bearer—pizenous in the opinion of many locals(like Horace Ginkel). She blackens a tooth with a child’s crayonand runs screaming down aisles toppling as she goes ziggurats ofcheap canned food, rushes past astonished clerks and a scatter offat people. Then she is gone, as if never deed were done. This isher story, and how all became so fixed in our low squalid time inSet County by the Zion River that smells like creosote. More likecoal and wood tar than real water.

Linda Perdido doubles up in laughter at the WalMart at SiloHeights, New Delaware, just across the state line. Inside are thefat people, faces pressed to the window like blind suckerfish.Slowly the place is filling up with black oily smoke from an evilishdetonation, largely non-lethal, of her design, action and doubleaction. Lost to public standards, fiery Linda whose gray-greeneyes flicker maddest impudence at the thought of civil order andcivil duty has a fast low car of unknown make. A Mako probablyof the kind assembled at far distant Radom, in the disestablished(formerly socialist) Sultanate of Fantantistan. Makos are mostrare in these parts, Spider would later allege. Rare as cold reluctanceamong the hot gospelers.

And: You would think her plates would be easy to trace, butno. And: That is what people think, but no. Later Linda changesher appearance: Now short, now tall. Her face can surprise eventhose who know her well: A comic triangle when she chooses tobe a child; a violent square in her wrathful aspect. Hair a nest ofbright red snakes piled high; next day all goldenrod and spider-fineand winnowy. She is assuredly a surprise to herself as well,people suppose. They are always thinking on what they think theyknow which is not, not much, which is why they can never notever find her out. This being the case she reverses field, returnsin her newest disguise to the first WalMart crime, the one at Troy,parks the Mako behind a dumpster and sees something pretty,very pretty. Something pretty, prettier, prettiest.

For there, next to the WalMart is the Chisolm Street Dinerwith a FedEx truck parked outside and no one in it. Driver gone,perhaps on a coffee break. Wicked Perdido sees a wicked opportunityand hops in, slams the door behind her. Off she goes, in aframe of mind that pops all frames, aglow. She takes the first leftfully atilt, the second and third more so, perilously, on two leftwheels. No one has seen her because she is invisible to herself.At Carborundum, on the county line, she faces a choice betweenhollow and high ground, then recalls the grievous harm done toher by the Sisters of Mercy at the Catholic School of Saint Lydia’s.Pedal to the floor, she is not thinking but is as thought aflame.The place is not so far, only a few miles over hills spattered withpoplars and dead elm, crabapple and beech. Cows appear plantedfor all time, black and white nimbuses, each at one chosen spot asif for all time. She notices the sun for the first time all day. Oblateand orange and as big as a human head. As big as the letter K inKmart.

An instant later she is inside Saint Lydia’s.

She arrives in a cloud, enters, grabs any package (the truckcontains packages abounding) to deliver to anyone she meets. Astonishmentin the faces as she flies past, as if she were a person ina dreamscape nightmare. She gives one package to a bright-eyedyoung girl student with a pink face and black braids. Pink facecries out and does not know what to do, but Perdido has alreadybrushed by and elbowed past nun after nun till we reach the Officeof Headmistress. Here, sad to say, crime happens, crime uponcrime. The Headmistress is raped repeatedly and treated to foullanguage, some of it human, some of it American, some of itfrom a steepled place on the far side of Doom, a town in NewDreadful, the Scare Me State. (Rape, in old church law signifies theact of merely touching a woman of the cloth in such a way as tosuggest aggravation.) She has set the office aflame with woodenmatches, piled chair upon desk upon couch upon file cabinet. Ablaze begins to roar and flames slither up the gray wood walls outsidethe chalk white windowsill, spattered now with burnt plastictwists. People are running, shouting, colliding with each other andbanging into huge walls, boilers and wardrobes they would have,on a happier day, had no trouble dodging. Perdido blackens anothertooth as she unblackens the first. Disguise. As she reaches,however, a point two miles past route Route 23, the old LeveretPike to Reginald, an idea, an idea with hair occurs to her and shewheels about abruptly in a cloud of dust and wrath.

The FedEx man, Donn Morocco, is no fool. He is apprisedof true reality by the disappearance of truck. What is a uniformwithout a truck. Damnation. The packages will suffer a loss ofinnocence not to mention shameful, non or late delivery. Thisreasons Donn Morocco is parallel to the feat he once witnessed,back then in the innocence of grade school, of daddy’s cousinDaryl stomping in the rain puddle as the elderly persons passed.Donn Morocco wonders what to do. Other people from insidethe WalMart stream out, like colored marbles, bouncing intoone another: They carom and clack. FedEx Central will not bepleased. FedEx Central will want to know the cause whereby thetruck came to be lost to Donn. Whatever the hell has happened?He scratches his head and sits down upon the sidewalk, stares atthe little black bugs that gyrate and twiddle, unaware of the loominggiant fate overhead. The analogy is clear. Donn Morocco getsup with a groan and says:

What a hell and go figure that.

And someone next to the light pole says, she had this notright in the head look in her eye, and I think she got to be the onethat and that one too. These days a person cannot be too carefulconcerning what is what and that is too. Mean that that is too.She why she whanged down the aisle toppling the cans of tomatoesand peaches and the baked bean as if it was a terrible goodfun. Hell yes I say and golly who is going to bug up and set it allright with the can guy who is responsible I say it is a thing the likeof which and what I do not and cannot describe in a name butas a well er a whichever you can go and call it. Criminal liability.Lia-bility. Just plain lia-ble. Kids these days. They just. They justtalk dirty and play those games as though as it it it all one hotdamn virtual reality. Ha.

Virtual reality, thinks Donn Morocco as he gets up andthrows his FedEx hat as though it smelled bad. As though itsmelled bad but the hat pops back. Throws it again but the hatpops back. Throws it again but darn the darn it it just goes popand hello hat. Re-hello hat. Throws with all his might but oldFedEx hat plops him in the nose part of the face. (His own.)Now he sees it is a sticky gum attached both to him to the thathat, but where?

Donn, someone says who knows him and can read name tagsthereby, asks a question. Is there a police presence hereabouts?Donn has already resolved that, and squints at the person whonamed him to see if he who knows knows how rightly, and ifso correctly. The person is Spider Getuli from the drinking barcalled Prehensile (and the other one called what oh what The ToyWorld right near here off the Interstate at Silo Heights). Over inSet County. He has not up to now seen Spider Getuli aside fromaround the bar and after hours and at night and during the neonhour.

Looks up, day moon looks cracked, cruddy.

Donn has a funny thought, takes off his shoes, begins towalk, just like that, his FedEx cap bouncing along behind, as if itknew. He walks slowly across the parking lot, does not hear thewhistles and fiddle-faddle of crisis that is all around, a turbulenceof human sympathy and scare. The orbit of scare circles aroundthe apex of lines drawn (or drawable) between the two WalMarts,the FedEx truck which by the agency of the Unseen has beenremoved, and the spot where Donn Morocco had been standingwhen the absence of his truck was revealed. But all this passes byDonn unnoticed. All he thinks about is, cruddy, how cracked andcruddy the day moon looks, all cracked and cruddy.

Spider Getuli looks after him, not quite knowing. SpiderGetuli lifts a hand as though it were not quite attached to anything,could fall off and break like a piece of crockery. His handis held out, as though to wave at the dwindling figure of DonnMorocco, and make a sign to him and signal of hope. This it cannotaccomplish as Morocco’s head is now just level with the topsof the hedges, hog weed, giant hog weed, wild corn and otherheathenish vegetation behind the WalMart at Troy, in the deepand obscure undertow of the overpass of Route 23 which runsall the way to Cain Lake Park. Other people from this WalMartare arranged in circles and squares, the squares transforming byemotional morphosis into circles, and the circles squaring themselvesby a similar translation from octagon to pentagon. A policemanhas screeched up, and another and another, each car adifferently emblazoned rapture of authority: The car from Palmyrais scarlet and white; from New Dornier green and black;the car from Set County, a radiant gold and silver. All are sobright they confer the joy of the holiest of specked anomalies—justlike the church of names over in Lake Prosper Tony, or is itLake Macmeegabush?

Spider Getuli has rarely seen much of this kind of thing.Rather than a story it is a splatter. How would he recount, well,the whole damn matter, to Mel his sister in Hoopoe, much lessto the four-eyed denizens of The Toy World, a place not conducive.This feels like part of a story, but frighteningly not likeone also. Where did the guy go, Getuli wonders. Maybe down tothe center of the earth where the metal-spirits sit on cobalt bluemushrooms, and talk of the ways of Providence and the manifolderrors in the periodic table. He scratches his face and replaces hissunglasses which in the sudden emergency he had unconsciouslyfolded and slipped into a shirt pocket he did not know was there.

Pop Roody shuffles up, looking pink and puzzled, his facetwisted in a circular vortex around the central controlling fixtureof his nose, not a pretty sight as noses go. He too, muses SpiderGetuli, was once someone’s blue-ribbon boy. We all start up inthe Vale of Merryland and do thereafter plant our asses shithellwhere else.

Spider, says Pop, did you catch a glimpse of that girl? She’sthe one, I know, I mean, I know I’ve seen her. Buzz-cut redheadwith the red check shirt and a black tooth in front like this. Poptries to do something he cannot, in the black tooth mimicry department.Life’s gift’s are unevenly dispensed and the rest of us,like poor Pop, go abroad dressed in Folly. Spider Getuli does notthink these exact words, but if he’d been more a man of the longview he just might’ve.

Just who do you mean and what the hell’s going on here,says the Officer from New Dryad over in New Dynamo, a placenot so favorable to an extensive inner life, no. Some girl comeup here with a Tommy gun and pointed the thing, says anotherwitness with a low straw hat and a broken tooth. She devastatedthe canned food section, adds another, either an employee ofWalMart or a devotee of the Proclamation Church over in Weaseland in all probability both. That was not she, says another,a small woman with a sad, big-eared quadruped in tow. A dogyou would guess, but not because it looked like any dog you hadknown. Feet like a bear, nose flared and scarlet nostrilled, andthe rest of the creature covered with disturbing hair more likethistles and quills. Oh, and the most large and sensitive eyes. Thatwas not she, that was some other one. The creature rolls her eyes,perhaps in embarrassment over her mistress’s inarticulation ofthe knowable facts, as they have occurred in the current spacio-temporalarray. What is that, says another Officer with a featheron him. Called a Saluki, the animal’s owner answers, and theygrow them over in New Doily, by the Black Donut. Well, canyou get it to not look at me that way, he continues, adjustinghis clanking cop-belt with slow unease. Qwoof, she says, Qwoof.Whatever the creature is, she pulls herself up in calm and palpabledisdain. Why must my quote unquote caregiver make sucha spectacle, oh, the humbugery of it all. Life’s road is one longrotation of cast down, bring down, put down, pull one’s nose outof joint. That’s better, says the Cop, who takes one step forwardin some kind of inexpressible vindication.

She was not not only that, she was who? Adds a kid with abluebird-bright plasticky derby that says, Gbooop. Who was she,she was not not only that but an aeroplane. Aereoaereoplane, hebuzzes. Cut that out Philip, suggests a nearby Large and dampperson, presumably a relation.

We are getting, mumbles Spider Getuli as he turns away fromthe sun, with seventy-two goldish gleaming arms.

Nowhere, he says. And it was so.

CHAPTER 2

Nowhere.

And it was true. Meantime Linda Perdido Linda Perdido LindaPerdido. Linda Perdido has had a further thought and reversedfield yet once more. She rides up and down the narrow road tothe north drunkenly crisscrossing the dotted line in a mood of setin mind and maximal deliberation. But her drunkenness is onlya seeming. She has gotten as far as the town of P—, the nameno one can pronounce near the White Russian River, far far in aremote and dispopulated archipelago of Set County, where SetCounty is surrounded on three sides by the old and tired DromedaryRiver which is the unofficial and official border of OwlCounty, a place no one visits unless they have relations holed upin the State Penitentiary at Semiporcelain, the town time forgot toremember and hence remembered to forget.

Linda Perdido has a photo replay in her head of possibleworlds to come (on YouTube), and the one most likely is the onefeaturing her as prize inmate on death row in the condition of keythrown away. This possible world is not one she much likes, butlife is life and once the tooth is blackened all hell must, perforce,sharpen her wicked, wicked knives.

Alas, the selling point of human life is not possible worlds.She guns the big square FedEx truck as though it were her ownsharkish vehicle, but the thing does not respond, and gauges indicatea tendency to overheat. But now Linda Perdido has recalledanother list of insults she had forgot to impart at the Sisters ofMercy or whoever they were. The incomplete task fuels her ire,and she is mindful that in this state she is not to be messed with.Not to be messed with until such time. Her mind is moving fasterthan all the rest of Set County, in fact. She wills herself to be inmultiple places at once, almost.

She is both far away and close at hand.

She is, therefore, difficult to grasp.

Meanwhile … The slow and reptilian belief-system of PoliceCaptain Underwood has filed an obligatory report with authoritiesin Kandahar, and served notice to the victims at the Sisters ofMercy that justice will be fast and slow and final. His black visorsuggests a final logic, logic of the penal system, ineluctable, tirelessand absolute.

The Headmistress and her Secretary and the Dean of Studiesand the other Dean and the Latin Teacher and the TheologyTeacher and the Custodian are assembled in the Rectory countingtheir blessings and drinking camomile tea. The low hum oftheir communications is not much more than a low backgroundsussuration. Captain Underwood observes the spires of SaintLydia’s diminish as he considers: He must now fight Terrorismor her lookalike at the WalMart we have already visited someminutes ago, at Silo Heights. (Or was it her sister at Troy? Thetopless towers of Ilium….) A terrible ruckus has occurred there,he knows. What is worse, he fears, there is a palpable confusionin which the various accounts tabulated thus far by Police Centraldo not constitute a picture of reality as she is commonly known,as dramaturgically sound. He floors it, and as the summery fieldstreaks by in a blur, in one eye and out the other, he notices fora half second a solitary man lurching along oddly, as though ina trance, through an endless field of corn. This man’s hair is indisarray, wind blown, almost a sign of something not right inthe head. What could a FedEx man be doing walking with odd,purposefulness through an empty cornfield at this time of day?Beyond odd.
(Continues…)Excerpted from LINDA PERDIDO by MAC WELLMAN. Copyright © 2013 Mac Wellman. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS.
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