Dedicated to linaelyn ::GLOMPS::
Title: Riddle of the Blackbirds
Fandom: OUaTiM
Disclaimer: don't own and not making money.
"Our extent in space, as well as in time, goes only as far as the blackbird goes..."
Helen Vendler (On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens; Longer Poems)
The sunlight was pale, the curtains were beige, and even though the walls were technically a sickly off-white, it could've just as well been monochrome. The man leaned a hip against the table, carelessly skidded his sunglasses towards the middle. He has a practiced aim.
With the leather doctor's kit clunked on a chair, the nylon garment bag sagged on the bed, the Beginner's Spanish-English dictionary clasped against a white slip of paper; with these he identifies himself.
-
1: townsperson
He's
seen the man strolling his claim down the streets, garish pale to the
land's golden brown reds. The gringo moves like one striking ownership,
with the threat of an American's power.
This makes his teeth ache; and he realizes that he's clenching his jaw.
He
doesn't look the man in the eye because he's heard of the bodies left
behind. He believes the tales even though he hasn't seen any himself,
because he knows there are ways to hide these things. And he knows,
with a look over his shoulder, that the strange American is the least
of his worries.
He believes, and is defined by his beliefs, that the land will set things right again.
But, as he looks at this leech of a tourist, he finds he doesn't know when.
Among twenty snowy mountains
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
-
2: cucuy
"...or are you a MexiCAN'T?"
Cucuy
snarls and they both hold themselves thrummingly still in each other's
personal space like a challenge, their wills scaffolding their bodies
in place where otherwise it would wish to crumble in on itself.
Cucuy
knows broken when he sees it. Such things resonate because like meets
like and he knows wanting to take up space instead of being taken, he
knows wanting to be striking instead of being unheard, he knows wanting
to be something other than small and to scrawl his own dramatic line
across the sands.
It's too much to say that he's sympathetic; it
is recognition, silent acknowledgement. No use for complaints when what
had happened to them happens still; it's how the world is. He wonders,
idly, how old Sands was when.
His eyes slide along the boy-figure in yellow, biking by, and he makes a note in his mind.
It won't be too hard to find where he lives, Cucuy thinks.
I was of three minds
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
-
3: belini
The world doesn't go flat unless he gets too close, so he takes care to keep things at a distance, to see them properly.
What
he sees today is ludicrous, a boy-child playing Spy with his back
undefended and with hands soft and empty. Or perhaps Sands thinks to
stab him with a butterknife? Belini hid his sneer with an easy smile.
It
rankles, that Americans think so little of Mexico that they send this
boy to represent them; and Belini must indulge the child because of his
powerful parents. He tells Sands a story to pass his time and, truly,
no nanny has been paid so well to weave the folktales.
And that
is all he'll feed Sands: tales, myths, and legends. Everything
important he'll keep in his head and Belini grins at the irony and
feels safe in his knowledge.
The blackbird whirled in the autumn wind
It was a small part of the pantomime.
-
4: waitress
She
sees the American in black coiled in the chair, and she's afraid to
approach, but does so anyway. She replaces a waiter that displeased
this man who tips well, comes often, and controls his territory with a
half-cocked gun. Retaliation means that more men disappear and the
ground seems to quake as he walks and.
In Mexico's warmth he is cold and he is powerful and he makes her shiver and nervous and.
She
spills the coffee, dark and oily and steaming and hot, and apologies
cough out of her mouth like blood and her fingers try to absorb the
boiling wetness and her nails try to claw it out somehow and she looks
into the man's eyes and--
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
-
5: jorge
Sands is not quite famous in the intelligence community for being a loose cannon. (he
is not 'particularly' famous for near failing his psych exam and he is
not 'really' famous, and this in careful whispers, for slipping things
away from under HQ's finger) He is not the first, on all counts; and he is not the only one who wants out.
Jorge thinks that eccentricity is all part of the job description sometimes (often), a specific mentality in the business with a prediliction towards trenchcoats, (voices), walkie talkies, and sunglasses and the specific feel of Death's cold flat edge on one's skin (like a living-metal kiss). Sands may want out but Jorge knows that habits would've sunk deep by now (wire trap, and sprung), and you can never really release yourself.
He watches how obsessively Sands tries to play others on their leashes and how tightly he tries to rein himself. (tries) And Jorge knows (guesses) that none of them, none of the brilliant ones (and he could admit that of Sands), can control their own bounds.
The best you can do is exchange handlers or, perhaps, find a new one somewhere safe.
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflexions
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
-
6: HQ
It has become an issue; his missions are completed, but his methods are crude and laughable.
Too
much of their resources have been bled out to haul his operations
straight, into some semblance of stability. Which he insists on
accrediting to his own skill.
They are never quite sure how much
he believes his own ego. They are never quite sure if he truly believes
his schemes are hidden from them. But they are sure that they'd
never let him north, near Alaska's pipelines; Sands is like a match and
they'd rather he burn out than be anywhere near the oil.
So he's
been stationed in Mexico, a post which doesn't require a delicate
touch; the country is already well trained, at heel. And if it slips
from the leash?
It will be regrettable, to be sure.
Icicles filled the window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The Mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
-
7: ajedrez
Little Sheldon takes her, she thinks, like it's something rarely given and she?
She takes it with a coyote grin.
Barillo
believes in the old ways like most men and despite being his daughter
she is still viewed as little more than a woman. This shadow
performance with Sands plays out a glorious golden tale where he
manipulates and controls and schemes and she is powerful and respected
and revered, and they both escape with none the wiser.
But that? It is a dream. She is the token female, for the AFN; she is a decoy, for her father. She lets herself be a convienient hole and a pretty face and she listens to Sands' charming story.
She
wonders where Sands fucked up that he wants to run so badly. She
imagines too many plates set spin and shattering under him too many
times.
But this is how it will go, he insists: the plates
will spin to a balanced stop, the cartels diverted, their countries
confused, and they will be off somewhere safe. Them. Plural. She doesn't understand why; she has been cold to him for all their acquaintaince and still he says he would share this with her. She, of course, doesn't believe him.
He spins such pretty dreams, but she remindes herself of the truth.
She reassures herself that her father will never betray her.
She tells the doctor where to stand.
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
-
8: barillo
It
would be laughable if it wasn't so annoying. This agent of the U.S. has
all the markings of a spoiled and pampered heir, someone who has never
known difficulty.
Barillo will change that.
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
-
9: advisor of the land
The
only reason he sleeps at night is because Machiavelli's words gives him
pardon. (Because a sitting president is much like sitting fowl.) He
wonders how others fare. He's heard of this agent, from here and there,
who controls more of Mexico than he himself does and isn't that just
rank. (The man absorbs all that is foul and fetid and runs the fecal
mess slimy-smooth.) Having him around, Nicolas feels clean in
comparison. His hands feels less crackled with blood and the vomit he
can't keep down isn't for himself. (Everytime a coup occurs his stomach
revolts too, and it reassures him.)
History will repeat, and new powers rise up. (And the generals never know how to run a country, so Nicolas' duty is to live.)
Generals.
And cartel. The sour taste grows even now and he thinks that if instead
this Sands becomes Mexico, it will not be so bad.
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
-
10: one right nut
He
will always feel a phantom pain, left there after Barillo's daughter
ripped his sack in half and tore out the left side. Any mention of
torture makes him wince, and realize again how his underpants are just
a little too loose.
He stares at the stumbling man and feels his
lack and knows from experience that they don't usually get this far
after having their eyes scooped out. Or any other body part for that
matter.
And it's only the eyes; they should collect him. Ajedrez Barillo will come to claim this man again.
She'd left him intact after all.
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
-
11: chicle
He
feels vaguely as if he's following Don Quixote, but he gladly squires
for this bone pale pistolero. He's old enough to understand the breaths
of dead and death and dying that float through the plaza and is too
aware that they are hemmed in as much from the guerilla fighting, down
on every block, as from this blinded man's will and stubborn hopes.
He
is not exactly afraid of dying because he is already dead. He has
helped this man the cartel maimed, he was spared when he was used as
shield, and he is probably now known to them.
He was told to run, but he will stay nearby, because he has nowhere else that he needs to be.
His Don fought to find the windmills and doesn't quite succeed as such, in this tale; but he watches the downed man still breathe through the dust, and he can't help but count it as victory.
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
for blackbirds.
-
12: el
He is not fully sure how he'd aquired this foulmouthed
compatriot, who crashes headfirst into things with no sense of bounds
and awkward, like something newly born and stumbling, throwing himself
against walls and El and other immobile objects, like a toddler that
has no better sense.
He knows that Sands have long since been jaded, so the lack of self-preservation cannot be from not knowing how. He distantly wonders why part of Sands seems to want to die; because all considered, eyes are not so much. He should know.
But.
Perhaps the lack of them is enough to tear a mind apart. That, he
thinks, must be prevented. So he systematically hauls Sands together
again, pressing meager patchwork bits of spirit back through his skin,
breathing in what life he could imitate, and chaining Sands to him with
silver.
He pockets first the heart, because that was not for him
to give. He fully believes that Sands would have preferred it without,
anyways.
But he plans to ask the man, when they next wake up, just to satisfy his curiosity.
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
-
13: townsperson
He's
seen the men striding along the streets, and at times he can't tell
them apart from the mirages, swaying like a storyline, merging with the
landscape.
There is a song in the winds.
He doesn't look the men in the eye because (eyes are missing)
they are both dead. He believes the tales even though he hasn't seen
any himself, because he knows there are ways that legends travel.
Sometimes, even, on foot. He knows that perhaps he might worry a bit
less now.
He believes, and is defined by his beliefs, that the land will set things right again.
It has started that stanza, in any case.
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar limbs.
The white slip is filled, rolled up, and burned. (He grimaced; El-Jingle-All-The-Way got the wrong papers. Again.)
The dogeared dictionary is marked with highlighted typos and commentary and there is copious advice scrawled in green around the swear words. It's to be a gift.
The expensive garment bag contains five cheap t-shirts, all airy cotton and vulgar ink. The leather doctor's kit contains a bloodless arm and a bloody fork.
And even though the sunlight was weak and the curtains were drab, and even though the walls were a sickly non-color, it doesn't matter. Sands can't see it himself anyway.
And he never did trust other people's descriptions.
-end-
author's notes: the answer is "NONE OF THE ABOVE."
credits: Much MUCH love to linalyn, inkbug, and lilneko who beta-ed and supported and inspired like whoa. The centered poem is from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens). The fork is from circetigana and ignited. The room-image is from slodwick's The Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Challenge...though I violated the word limit by about a thousand words...::covers eyes::