Mr. Eternity by Aaron Thier Page B

yet. I logically assumed that he was crazy also, and this was because of the unimpeachable reason that he said many crazy things. Chaotic messages came pouring out of him in a ceaseless unbridled torrent. But I soon learned that he was only trying to stay upright and gain an advantage if he could. I discovered this one evening during a feast with officials and dignitaries. As usual during such affairs, the conversation just simpered along, rife with banalities. My father couldn’t stand it and called upon Daniel Defoe to tell us a story.
    “Then I will tell you about the Lewis and Clark expedition,” he said. “The relevance of this topic is that the expedition began right here in St. Louis. Back then, St. Louis was truly the last settled place on the wild frontier. There were herds of wild camels as far as the eye could see. There were stands of cashew trees where the central square is now. There were also large earthen mounds, and these were the mounds of Cahokia. I traveled with the expedition as far as the mountains, where General Clark was killed by Indians in a kind of ambuscade, and then I went south. It rained so much that I had to fold myself in long sheets of plastic when I wanted to sleep.”
    I knew that imperial St. Louis contained no camels, so I cast a look at Edward Halloween and raised my eyebrows. He was sweating copiously from the heavy and delectable food. It was his favorite meal of spicy ginger beef with cornbread and jute leaves, mashed green banana with pig, and trembling custard. He grinned at me.
    But then I perceived that Daniel Defoe was looking at me with a smile of his own. In fact, I had an impression he would have winked, except all eyes were riveted upon him. What did this mean? His own plate was empty because, as we had been interested to learn, he never ate anything. Much later I learned that he never voided anything either.
    “Later I was in a place where hot water erupted from the ground and everything smelled like sulfur,” he continued. “It was my private hell. After that I was in Las Vegas, which was a Mexican city built in a beaver meadow. It had many brothels and casinos. Eventually I found my way back to the river, which the Indians called the Pirahao, and I paddled down the whole length in an old bathtub and reached the city of New Orleans just in time for election day, where I got drunk with a writer named Edward Ellen Poe.”
    This was the end of his story, but I could not banish that smile from my mind. After dinner I seized a chance to confront him. I said, “Do you really believe the stories you tell?”
    “Well, I exaggerate them a little bit to entertain your father.”
    “I thought just as much. But why? You’re not a slave anymore.”
    “And yet I’m forbidden from leaving the city. I have to ingratiate myself and make myself indispensable, so he doesn’t oppress me or enslave me again. But it’s okay. I have some experience in this zone of endeavor.”
    “Interesting,” I said. “This is not so different from how I live. A slavish way of being free. But tell me the truth, in that case. Where did you emerge from and why were you wandering the desert?”
    “I will tell you. A long time ago I was ejected from Europeland because it was illegal to be a Jew, which is what I was and am. The woman I loved stayed behind. Later I learned that she’d been sold as a whore by her own people. Ever since then I’ve been looking for her. That is my whole story. It’s a story of unrecanted love.”
    I considered this with grave thoughtfulness. Christopher Smart pushed his head against my leg. I said, “But this happened to me also. My father sold me as a whore. Did you know? I have to marry Anthony Fucking Corvette in four months.”
    “I heard something about it, yes. It’s like you say. It is a slavish way of being free.”
    “It makes me extremely furious. I think I’ll never forgive my father.”
    “But you never know. Life is very long.”
    “Longer for