The Subject Steve: A Novel by Sam Lipsyte

Sell it down in the city. Have you ever put your hand in a newborn calf's mouth? It's amazing. Sensuous, yes. Erotic, sure. But not dirty. Not at all. And up there through the hill trail is the mothering hut. I wouldn't worry about that now. Your time will come. We're all very excited about the project."
    "What project?"
    "Sorry, that's the old me talking."
    "I don't see the fence," I said. "Where's the fence?"
    "What fence?"
    "You were there last night. At the gate. With a lock."
    "Yes, I was. I signed up for gate duty last week. Penance, I guess. Not that I'm religious, just a fucking pig."
    "So," I said, "if there's a lock, and a gate, where's the fence?"
    "Why in the world would there be a fence? We're not convicts."
    "But there's a gate."
    "You've got to have a gate. What else are you going to arrive through?"
    Down below us the dining hall door skidded open. People made their way across the lawn to Heinrich's porch. We jogged down the slope to join them, fell in with Old Gold. Nearby a woman and a teenage boy who shared enough odd jut of nose and jaw to pass as mother and son talked heatedly. Others poured in now from all parts of the compound, some limping, some severely bent. The Infortunate seemed to specialize in warped bones and voided stares. They rolled out straw mats on the grass or just squatted there, diddling the moss, decapitating dandelions, muttering at the sky. A man in a derby kneaded the neck of a young woman in a wheelchair. She was fat and beautiful with a swoop of henna'd hair. The man caught me staring, tipped his hat brim up. I saw the berry-colored stain on his cheek.
    "Dietz," I called to him.
    He looked at me darkly.
    "Dietz," I said. "Do you remember the message?"
    "Who's that?" the woman asked him.
    "A people," said Dietz. "A people who needs to relax."
    "How's the clusterfuck?" I called.
    "Cool it," said Trubate, slung me toward a patch of grass.
    Now the porch door swung open and a man in a hunter's vest angled up to the rail.
    "Naperton," I whispered.
    "You know him, too?"
    "He knows me."
    Naperton drummed his clipboard, peered up at the sky.
    "Good morning, morning!" he said.
    "Good afternoon!" said the gathering. They spoke as one in a somewhat feverish singsong. Here and there, perhaps, were hints of sedition, or at least drill-weariness, but most of the Infortunate sounded sincerely joyful, near exultant, insane.
    "Evening is upon us somewhere!" said Naperton.
    "Good morning, evening!"
    "The past is before us!"
    "We're coming, past!"
    "The future is gone!"
    "Fare thee well, future!"
    "Now is . . ."
    "Now!"
    "Now is . . ."
    "Now!"
    "Iam. . ."
    "Me!"
    "Iam. . ."
    "Me!"
    "And who are you?" called Naperton, pointed out to the crowd.
    "I am me, me am I!"
    Old Gold jammed his head into the earth, jerked himself up into some kind of ecstatic teeter. He stabbed out his hands and made banshee noises. Some clapped in time to his spasms, his war whoops. It was hard to tell if this was encouraged. Others pinched their eyes and puled. Dietz looked out from beneath his hat with an expression of bored expertise. Trubate rocked beside me, rapt. Old Gold tipped back to the grass, sunlit beads of spittle on his lips.
    "I am me," he said. "Me am I. I ma me. I me ma. I ma me ma I."
    "Well done!" called a voice.
    There was a new man at the rail. He had hair of wavy silver, thick country arms, wore dungarees, a dirty dress shirt. He looked like a midwestern math teacher, a professor with a hobby garden. I knew at once it was Heinrich. Some calm of the high ordinary pulsed out of him, soft, metronomic, a charisma of reduced noise.
    "People," he said quietly now, "I have something to impart to you. A fable, if you will. It concerns a lonely zookeeper and the beautiful, fiercesome tigress who fell into his charge. When I say lonely I mean lonely, okay? The zookeeper, I mean. So picture it, an anonymous little fellow, no friends, no family, no love. Nothing. Picture a poor little man whose most intimate