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Subject: {ASSM} TxM6: The Genesis Murders: Chapters I to III
Date: Thu,  9 Jan 2003 07:10:13 -0500
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(c) 2003 Sean Farragher
sfarragher@nj.rr.com

File Name: 00010txm6 The Genesis Murders
Chapters I-III
TxM6 Taxi Murders Hyperfiction: Sexual Oceans
Angela Leven: Diary Notes from August 22, 1991


http://www.seanfarragher.com
http://www.seanfarragher.com/hyperfiction
http://www.seanfarragher.com/txm6
http://www.seanfarragher.com/poetry
http://www.seanfarragher.com/Joss


Synopsis
[FORWARD: In 1992, Vietnam Vet Henry Whitman, 49, relives
two tours in Vietnam when his lover the pregnant 26-year-old
Laurie Fallon is kidnapped and held captive by the Genesis
Killers, Abel and Lilith.]



TxM6: The Genesis Murders
Chapter One
SCREAM:

Laurie Fallon raised the intelligent alarm. Her whole
being bore down double sharp notes, peeling glass with
her shriek.

                        * * *

TxM6 is just like the movies. Bet you don't remember
how Peter Lorre's character murdered Myrna Loy in the
never finished 1932 movie Taxi Murders Express.

The director Josef Von Sternberg finally stopped
production when Myrna Loy's stand-in stunt double was
strangled on the movie set. No one was ever charged
with the crime although some suspected Lorre.

It was a murder that would leave scars for sixty
years.



The Gables Pub
1090 River Road
Edgewater, NJ
11:20 PM -- Friday, April 10, 1992

Outside the Gables bar, set almost on the curb the
music blasted along River Road almost to the Hudson
River edge. It was an old, not too fancy but popular
bar that featured live rock music and Wednesday
through Saturday night female and once a month Friday
night male strippers. It was a pick up joint and a
place for lovers.

Six foot tall, seven months pregnant, twenty-six year
old Laurie Fallon walked slowly from the bar to her
car swinging the keys. A one-time exotic dancer and
barmaid at the Gables, she often returned to chat with
the affable owner, Lilly, and several of the regulars.

Laurie was sad that night. Having fought with her boy
friend, Henry, who was now out of town, she didn't
want to return to their empty apartment. Not even the
swagger of the male strippers lifted her spirits.

Standing with one foot on the curb, she looked back at
the Gables as if she might return. Laurie hated being
indecisive. Staring into the headlights, she pinned
her natural red hair up off her face.

Reflected against the red and ochre neon lights of the
bar, she waited for a lone truck to pass, and then
stepped slowly between the parked cars to cross.

Suddenly a strong young man wearing a black ski mask
grabbed her neck and mouth from behind. Stalking her
from the damp spaces between his van and the cab of a
truck, he had missed her mouth with his gag. She
screamed and bit his fingers. He pulled back, almost
frightened.

Laurie caught his face with her nails driving furrows
from cheek to chest. His scream was pity by
comparison.

Laurie grabbed the man's ski mask, pulling it quickly
over his head while suffering his kicks and shrieking
curses. Falling down against the curb between the
street and the parked cars she scraped knees and
elbows; twisted by her legs, her easy dress split
wide, riding up to expose her neatly trimmed pubic
hair.

Laurie pushed the wool mask between her legs. As the
short but solid man beat and kicked her with his boot,
she refused to release it. Turning her back to the
man, she twisted her body, leaning into the curb,
protecting the child she carried from the blows.
Laurie drove the disguise deeply against her skin.

As the earthquake continued inside, outside the man
had stopped, wondering what he could do next now that
the gag and ether were discarded.

In that second pause, Laurie reached for his balls.
Holding them in her palm, she squeezed. He caught her
mouth square with his boot. Laurie let go.

He kicked her endlessly in the back. Grit under her
nails, the man's blood on her mouth, Laurie realized
how much she wanted to live to save her child; she
fell back short of victory, breathless, sabotaged by
instinct. At that turn in the battle she submitted,
wondering why no one had helped her.

Quickly taping arms, legs and mouth, he gathered the
almost unconscious woman into his dirty white van. The
man, later identified as one of the infamous, "Genesis
Killers" did not notice that his ski mask had dropped
from between Laurie's legs to the street.



THE DIRTY WHITE VAN

Inside the van, bound and gagged, Laurie could not
watch the neon lights of the Gables exotic dance club
shimmer in yellow and red slivers against the cloud of
the river and New York City's skyline.

Just before the man pulled out into the traffic, a
dazzled movie clouded her eyes. Captured by rough
tape, she refused to concede and her arms pushed and
pulled, almost throwing the man off balance.

Laurie did remember that she had screamed silently
"No" as he shot her full of shit to make her ass
collapse. He didn't hear, "don't hurt the baby."

Laurie would be held captive for the next ten months.
She would suspend her life within an odd assortment of
dreams and fixations conjured to keep her sane.

Later, when she replayed her two-minute skirmish,
Laurie marveled at the failed strength she had struck.

No Joan of Arc burned at the stake. She might survive.



NEXT MORNING: Missing Person

At 0932, Edgewater police reported that an eyewitness,
known only as Rose, had come forward to describe a
crime outside the Gables the previous night. Without
this witness no one would have immediately known
Laurie was missing.




TxM6 Chapter Two
My name is Laurie Fallon.

Someday, I will meet you on the Internet in some cyber
sex chat room. Maybe it will be AOL or ICQ. Maybe we
don't meet online. I could have been walking without
looking, like I usually do, half assed, and you bumped
into me, just to say, fuck me.

Of course I kicked your ass. Don't worry, I won't tell
your wife that you got laid. I won't tell the bitch
that I, not her, reminded you of that 13 year old
auburn haired babe at the Paramus Roller rink that
Friday night when you were 17 and such a big deal. You
know the old rink that was at Midland and Rt. #17 for
fifty years.

Yes, that's the one where my mother got fucked in the
washroom. Rink's not there any more, I heard.



FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 1992: Laurie Fallon

One question you could ask right up front. Am I am
alive? I know you read how I was kidnapped and raped.
Shit, no way I make that shit sound sexy.

I get it. You think I am full of shit. Haven't you
heard of a séance? Why not? I could be my own medium.
Why should I give the fucken plot away before some sad
cocksucker pays me for my bleeding story? Yeah, I like
the Brits too. Ever see that fox, Chili Bouchier? She
could have fucked Hollywood all up if given the
chance. Oh, you think I am fucking with your head now,
diverting you from the real fucken story. What the
fuck? You telling me not to curse. I'm a fucken
college student and I can talk like a Lady if I want
to give it up for nothing. Yeah, I do know what the
fuck "divert" means. You're a real fucken shit. Why
you always cut me off.



LAURIE FALLON DOB: October 20, 1965

Today is January 8, 2003. My crime story began
eleven years ago.

That longer time-maze, my life, began when a
married PA State cop named Malachi Mac Donagh
fucked my fifteen-year-old mother, Helene. They had
a child, named Sheila. She's the famous novelist,
Sheela-na-gig you've read about.

Sheila's seven years older than me -- and thinks she has
known everything. Malachi and his wife adopted
her and she attended the best schools. She even
graduated from the U of Pennsylvania. I grew up with
Helene first in Gainesville and then in Ridgefield, NJ
USA. I gave my first professional blowjob when I
was ten, and they say I set a fire that killed two of my
brothers and a sister when I was eleven.

Was Sheila lucky? I know her. She's a stuck up
so what?

Mother loved Malachi all his life. He was a good man.
At least he never sexually abused me like my step-
fathers Billy and Huw.

Mama lied. First, she told me Huw was the one who
knocked her up. Another night, drunk on her ass, she
whispered, Billy's the one. The night she retched in
my ear, I had Billy's come inside. Later, I learned
she had fucked all three men the same night.
How the fuck did she know? Shit, I've done worse.
DNA tells the truth. I had it done twice. Malachi was
the one. For once I got lucky. Mack turned out to
be a righteous man.

On April 10, 1992, I was kidnapped and held captive for
eleven months by a man and woman, half brother and
sister, the self-named Able and Lilith. You will never
guess what the shits had me do to stay alive. I had to
fuck them of course, but get this, I had to use a
computer and write about my sex life, and how I was
abused as a kid. In 1992, my word processor had a
screen with a sick green color. It made me think of
puke. It was not this fancy piece of shit with fifty
million stars and bars and the new Jet Ski operating
system. Watching letters pour over the screen with
your life in some code is like watching Picasso porn.
You know the scrambled pay TV loops where the guys and
gals suck cock, get fucked, raped, and beaten every
hour of the day. Yeah, I've done porn. Billy sold my
ass into it when I was twelve.

Some newspapers call me the star struck murderer
because I love Myrna Loy. They claim I was guilty of
the same crimes that Abel and Lilith did. There is no
defense for murder when the murderer enjoys the crime.
That is what the prosecutor said, citing Patty Hearst
and war crime tribunals like he was before the fucken
Supreme Court.

I didn't murder those freaking geeks. I executed them.
When I cursed the judge, she sentenced me to five to
ten years of sucking prison pussy. Sure Able and
Lilith were brother and sister. Sure I had sex with
both of them and after I gave birth to Molly had a kid
with Abel. Lilith also had Abel's kid for Christ sake.
That's when I murdered her. Incest didn't bother me. I
don't care if Abel always said it was his half-fucken
sister. Can you believe that shit? I acted in self-
defense. My mistake was to give a news conference that
told the truth. "When I murdered that freak
and his pimp of a sister, I loved it. I'd do it
again. It felt wonderful to live. Abel killed my
father. Why lie? I'm just another sister made
notorious by some funky murders. Big deal. They say
when I get that pardon I will make ten million
from this.

Later, you will read more about Myrna and Peter Lorre
and how that sub plot grew like a boil. Daily News is
publishing her story in seven parts. They say I am
just worth two. I don't care. I love Myrna. She
could stare down any man before sucking him
up and spitting him up. She didn't even have to
sex with them. In those days America believed
everyone slept in twin beds. I loved Myrna more
than a sister. I have seen all her films many times.

When Myrna died in 1992 I was being held
captive. I couldn't pay my last respects. You know
what I loved best? When it came to men, she was
always in control.



FIVE YEARS EARLIER: Chapter Three
Walkabouts: Herrig Estate, Friday April 17, 1987

HENRY WHITMAN

Henry Ezra Whitman, forty-five years old, bespectacled
with an easy smile and cleft chin labored 70 hours a
week driving a taxi for Hudson Street Cab Fleets. In
the remainder of his daily life he wrote poetry, loved
his many children, and madly drove his life beyond
even the memory of limitations.



TAXI YARD 6:00 AM:

Before Henry left the taxi yard, he clipped his watch
to the sun visor, stepped back out of the cab, and
inspected it for spare, jack, tire-iron, dents, and
any dings.

Climbing in the back seat, he examined the back seats
for semen stains. Pulling the back seat out he checked
for change and bills or anything else that might have
fallen through the seat. He once found five hundred
dollars in twenties neatly folded with a rubber band.
There was no ID so he kept it.

While Henry ran his mental checklist, he added another
item: get some fresh coffee to kill the taste of last
nights burnt coffee and the fermented OK he drank by
accident.

God, the air smells of shit today. Not much I can do
about that except get the fuck out of here.

Before Henry left, he adjusted the mirrors, and then
looked back at the rows of yellow and beige cabs lined
up as if a ruler had been used on both sides of the
narrow parking spaces. Henry pulled straight back,
breaking clear twirling in half circles before a clean
exit out.

Riding the ovals of the steering wheel, he began his
day with change box, maps and one stale buttered roll.
On the floor in a cloth bag, Henry carried a camera,
tape recorder, two books of poetry, a novel and a
notebook for those scribbled images digested on the
taxi stand.

At 6:04 am Henry passed the taxi stand on his way to
the time call. Smiling at the long faces of the
drivers, he passed them, knowing he could be there on
the stand tomorrow bullshitting with them how much the
driver had paid off the dispatcher for the long time
call.

Don't have to be there until 8:00. Take the easy way
to make sure. Morristown is about an hour from Fort
Lee. Anything can happen on Friday.

Henry decided not to stop at the diner for an egg and
bacon sandwich. Driving one handed, he wolfed the
stale buttered roll that tasted like taxi, throwing
half of it out the window when the traffic stalled.

Henry usually rode the back roads to avoid the terror
of morning traffic around the GW Bridge.

Falling down Central in Palisade Park, he turned left
on Broad and right at Route 46. He was not surprised
that broken-down Route #46 already had construction
crews lined up on both sides of the road. One old
timer told Henry that he remembered when Route 46 had
opened. "I was a boy," he said, "in 1931. Same year
the bridge opened. It was just the same then. It had
those same bumps and the worst accidents. No one knew
how to drive then."

Looking at his watch and forward at the merging
traffic, Henry relaxed. Congestion wasn't that bad.
Maybe I will have some time to really look at this
place all the drivers claim is fancy. Like Joe said, a
piece of fucking work.

Henry intended to get off route 80 and back on 46
before I-287 traffic stopped up like traffic outside
the Meadowlands complex after any sports event.

Forty minutes early, Henry pulled up to the gate of
the Herrig Estate. One solitary guard, dressed in what
appeared to be a historic Nazi uniform, stopped him at
the checkpoint. Raising his hands in that grand
gesture of STOP, the guard frowned when Henry ran his
cab to one inch of the white wooded halt sign. It
actually said HALT, with the rest written in German.
It looked as if it was a prop for a Nazi movie.

Henry laughed. What if I had just ran this son of a
bitch mother fucking Nazi border guard down. Should
have done it to Adolf Shickelgruber in 1923. Henry was
irritated and his mind leaped to other violence.

I hate fascists. They made the world more horrible
than it really is. Maybe they didn't. Who the fuck
knows? I hate what I think when I meet them. Fucken
Nam.

Sometimes, when driving in New York City, Henry
imagined losing the brakes and plowing into fifty
pedestrians at the cross walk.

Henry was never fully reasonable or predictable. He
was, however, peaceful. Worn down from Nam, he did
think the unthinkable and he wondered why, when it was
over and the outburst done, did he feel uncomfortable
with himself.

Many taxi drivers hoard mysteries. One of Henry's was
public. In 1986, just a year earlier, Henry had been
caught fucking an eighteen-year-old college freshman.
She had been a student in one of Henry's creative
writing classes at City. She claimed when caught (got
pregnant) that although she loved him, she had fucked
him for good grades. Henry simply said she had earned
it by her writing and he paid for the abortion.

"I can't help it," Henry told his best friend Aaron
about that time. "She refused the money and had the
kid. She claims she never told the school. She said
they found out from another student. She called the
kid Henry. Wrote me that she wanted to always remember
what I had added to her life besides the child. It was
a gracious letter, but I didn't answer it. I figured
she would line up for her support payments like
everyone else. She didn't, but then her family lives
in the Hamptons and she drove a vintage Thunderbird."

No one really cared why Henry had fucked her. Henry
accepted responsibility and didn't argue or whine
about it. "I was stupid for getting caught," he told
Aaron.

Despite the lunacy of sex, war and the failure of
profit in a cab, Hudson Street taxi drivers liked and
respected Henry. Henry was a down to earth man with
brains, Frank had told him. The guys like you because
you don't make them feel like shit. They just don't
understand why you are a cab driver.

Elected President of the union one year, Henry lost it
the next when he won the union-held grand lottery and
kept the prize. Some members claimed he had fixed it.
The charge was never proven.

Henry was a war hero. Served in Nam as a combat medic
for fourteen months. Volunteered to train "cherries"
for two extra months to get out of the Army early.
Local VFW and Legion hated that he turned the medals
back to the grunts who had earned them with their
lives. They also hated that he refused to participate
in the marches and the benefits. He told them, I go to
East Orange on Vet days. I am there once a month. Send
your boys down there with me, and I will show them the
heroes. "

Vets like Henry made the pilgrimage to the wall to
leave the medals there. Henry rarely talked about Nam,
but when one asshole questioned his service there,
Henry grabbed the fuck by the neck and screamed in his
face, "I know fucken death. I stuck it, I cleaned it,
and I bagged death almost every day. Get the fuck out
of here before I forget I can go to jail for blowing
your brains out!"

Looking at the Gestapo guard talking on the phone,
presumably to the fare, Henry hoped he had not made
this fucked-up trip for nothing. Using the double
speak lingo of cab drivers, Henry thought, Shit I will
wait. I don't really care how long it takes. I am here
on time. Even if they cancelled, I would get paid. At
the same time he was pissed and complained every few
minutes, hitting the steering wheel but not the horn.

Henry often made it through his driving shift
balancing patience with irritation. Driving himself
out of madness, he would punch the dark period at the
end of a softer line as he rolled within his taxi
toward his own mind. These odd thoughts he called
walkabouts after the tennis player Yvonne Goolagong.

Using this blank time Henry filled himself with these
flights of insanity. As they were sometimes self
destructive, Henry wrote them in the margins of his
poems as lonely images forlorn and graphically
violent. They give tension to the poem or story, he
once told a student. Why do I find it hard to lie and
stay insane? Why can I not lie like anyone else?

What's kept me sane? Certainly not this fucked up job.
Perhaps it's my equal desire to be left alone and to
be involved.

Stalled, almost at zero time, the gatekeeper leaned
too far into Henry's driver side window and said.
"About two miles as the crow flies."

"Get the fuck out of here, your breath stinks." Henry
rolled up the window.

The rent a Nazi cop had no sense of humor. Mumbling
through the closed window he told Henry the obvious;
he would have to wait but the family wanted him to
wait up by the house.

"No shit." Henry laughed.

Hitting the gas too hard, Henry raced through the gate
but not before the wooden barrier slammed down into
the rear deck of the taxi, just missing the rear
window.



THE PROMISED LAND

Carefully, Henry drove down through the walls of trees
that formed the hallway to the sacristy of the Herrig
palace. From the outside, the mansion resembled
successive tree lines held abstractly one after
another with only the crimson sky of morning or night
to intervene.

Henry drove even slower now. At one point he saw the
ledge of a bare road next to a deep crevice. A fucken
moat, Henry realized. These folks are more paranoid
than I am. I can't believe there is no fence --nothing
to prevent you from tumbling into the bloody pit.

Henry rode slowly into questionable domains. His
natural caution was rewarded.

Captured by the juxtaposed planned and natural
foliage, Henry smiled at that improbable irony.
Imagine living in a world both peaceful and violent.
Don't have to go far, he thought.

This call is just like some secret ops mission deep in
Laos. The landscape there made me think of the Garden
of Eden. Here I will reach Nirvana. Like Laos or
Cambodia, you knew you were in shit before you knew if
you had actually crossed the line.

Could great beauty ever become ordinary? Answering: It
is good that we have hundred million year islands to
set us apart from the tedium of watching the folding
and revival of the earth. Someday god will present
evolution and historical geology as a musical theme to
accompany death.


THE TEXTURE OF REPEATING CURVES

As Henry rode deeper into the rings of the driveway
(finding layer upon layer) the splendor silenced him.
Almost too perfect, he thought. Something's dead
inside. Not flesh that is dead, but an age and its
mind. All the details of some theme or era were
duplicated. I could imagine Victorian house parties
and the sexual games folks played. This is a perfect
place for an orgy.

Henry had always respected the dark side of the
Victorian landscape. Imagine that difficult but proper
duality: innocent sexuality and licentious modesty
gathered in one woman, man or threesome.

Pushing at the walls, Henry assumed the point. The
roadway wound in concentric collapsing ovals towards
and inside a maze. To reach the center you had to know
the mansion was there. Why would anyone continue after
so many layers? Perhaps that is the point. No one
except the welcome would know there is a destination
here. Who would continue after so many firefights or
rescues from LZ red?

Entering the estate by the nose of his cab, Henry
crept along the road as a peaceful horse and rider
searching for easy ground and a safe entry. He had
heard about the Herrig mansion from other drivers and
had anticipated the expanse of its landscape. This was
larger, more formidable. Like walking inside Louis
XIV's private garden. It was the forest primeval.

Imagine what you would encounter, if a man had
transported plants and buildings whole from his past
in Germany.

Advance driver gossip as usual had underestimated the
place. If it didn't have tits and ass, most of the
drivers were not interested. They might even think you
were queer if you collected wild flowers and read
philosophy and poetry while in the holding pen called
the taxi stand.

Living within the plastic taxi, pines crossed and the
images flickered. Henry marched back to the late 1940s
English movies of Alfred Hitchcock. Rebecca and
Notorious were the fare that made you think and want
to fuck almost at once. These movies, unlike the
Herrig mansion, seemed a misplaced metaphor. Imagine
walking into a stranger's sexual obsession. What might
you discover about yourself.

If I walked inside too long, Henry laughed, I might
discover the year 1887. It could just as easily been
2088. Inside anything, you never seem to understand
all of it at once.

What did I expect? Should I have imagined foxes
running after hounds? Might be wonderful if I could
make what I do in these next few moments last longer
than good sex or a bad movie.

Why does this place remind me of death? Why do I think
of myself falling under the thunder of horses? There
is that gasp of fraud I felt in Nam. Something here is
also a lie. When I jumped off the transport plane,
dropping easily onto the tarmac, I thought I was
already dead.

Knowing that heat Henry felt the rot within death
before dying. Perhaps if I die, I will not die, he
told one Sergeant who laughed at the medic
philosopher, as Henry was called.

Opposite I know, but that could be the way out of
becoming another blind statistic.

Some wag started calling Henry Plato until Henry
smacked the fuck alongside the head and they rumbled
in the usual fist up your ass army kick him in the
balls street fight. Fear never stopped Henry. He
stepped into it. Death is that moment when you have no
thought. You are there pissing and moaning and in the
next breath you are spit stains and a hand full of
paperwork sent back to headquarters.

I do not want to leave, Henry thought. Gathered it all
in breathing the scent of rare flowers and happy
insects, he knew he must walk in this garden and
possess at least a moment at its center.

Turing progressively inward, Henry felt the pull of
circle and its gravity. He wondered if the turning
would end. Or was this a romantic heaven and a hell
around the corner. Where is perfection?

She was magnificent. Henry intentionally used the
female pronoun to describe the Herrig place.

Just like a great showgirl: this place is just too
fucken beautiful for any ordinary man. How can you
imagine fucking her? Yes, at that moment she going
down on you and your fingers are milking all parts of
her at once.

Imagine a remote wilderness just off a major
interstate highway. Also imagine that every square
foot had been planned. Each tree, shrub and weed had
been bought, nurtured and backed up, replicated
hundreds if not thousands of times. What a marvelous
obsession, Henry thought. How many beautiful details
can one person know?

Stopping the cab again, he leaned outside and upward
looking at the sky. Hearing a small plane, Henry
imagined flying over the place in a Cessna. Yeah, he
thought, like bloody Alice in Wonderland.

What if magical fountains, sprites, and fairies
emerged from beneath the grass carpet?

Alice would be tame. This place, like Through the
Looking Glass, was not of this world. I do not feel
invited and yet I have absolute privacy. Why am I not
lonely here?

"Will the center hold?" whispered aloud. Shit, I'm
becoming a vast cliché . Better lock my head up this
time.

His circle decomposed, Henry rode the peaceful loops
inside the vestibule of the flower to the main house.

Henry was a captured serpent thrown into a large fish
tank. He felt every hidden eye record his position. He
played each step stage by stage.

Drunk on multiple colors of green and red, umber and
sienna, Henry stopped for a second time along the side
of the road to ride himself backward out of the
quagmire.

Far beyond the gate now, Henry rode for what seemed
like miles without change or any sense of destination.
Turning around, he backtracked. Everything old inside
the foliage seemed new.

Lost in green texture, he stepped out of the cab,
amazed that he could be lost on a road without turns.

He took five, military style. Squatting by the front
tire, he sucked on long grass and watched two rabbits
fucking. Who will believe that? Who ever notices when
rabbits fuck? Am I dead? Could this be nightmare
heaven?

Looking up at the gray, thick April sky, Henry
shrugged his shoulders as if to ask for directions or
more of anything, but his request didn't include the
rain that had started. It was a cold shower.
February's still here. He turned lights and windshield
wipers on at once.

Driving again, pumping his foot from gas to brake,
Henry turned at the sign he had missed the first time.



GARGOYLES

Driving up to the stables set back from the road,
Henry memorized the carved wood gargoyles that
decorated the window frames. He would transform them
later into magical characters with their own language
and original vocabulary. Henry took it all in, saving
it as he did images written in notebooks. If I didn't
drive a cab, Henry mused, I wouldn't know, would I?

Poetry had odd sources. Henry saved the images for
other reasons. He wanted those subtle textures that
make light into film and words for display. (Henry
shivered). Death lurks out about that tree line there.

In this place of mind, Henry accepted that he might
never know more about it what he would experience in
the next few minutes. I don't want to leave before I
have one chance to at least know it from the inside. I
don't want to be a cab driver here. I don't want to
serve these folks and their palace guard. I want to
live here and keep it all.

The year is 1887, not 1987. I can't write this down. I
would have to stop the cab and turn on the tape
recorder. I might reverse the spell if I stopped even
for a moment.

Henry feared that he would never understand this place
from the outside. Taking a chance on changing the
present, Henry pulled his tape recorder out.

Marking his life there, he replayed it, laughing and
tense when he heard his past speak, carefully and with
precise diction, his wonderful off center lecture.

Something important would happen. Later, when that
turned out to be true, he realized while listening to
the tape that he predicted it.

Yes, I want a cascade of trumpets and a flourish of
drums as I enter. Henry loved grand entrances. At that
moment, he smiled and started to sing the Stars
Spangled Banner in full voice, laughing at the way the
ground and horizon waved him unsteady. Stopping the
song before the finish, he realized if somebody saw
him now they might think him drunk.

Under his breath, Henry said without bravado to
himself, please sacred father, let me live again what
I feel right now. Just like Vietnam, I want to be lost
and found in the same instant.

Suddenly jerking the cab easily around three-
construction backhoes directly in his path, Henry saw
a sick headline: TAXI DRIVER ARRESTED FOR DRUNKEN
DRIVING ON HERRIG ESTATE.

I never step in shit like this. Henry laughed at his
good fortune. He saw the spectacle of this call in all
its parts at once.

Yes, I know I was fucken lucky. I'd tell anyone that.
This is how I get through life. Turning away to run
home to the winding stairs of Coole and Yeats, driving
his mind deeper into the Herrig maze, he would
rediscover with his Darwinian and pagan architect not
the origin of the species but rather a future tense --
imperfect passion -- for indescribable disorder,
incest and abuse.

How did Henry know any of this before it happened?
Good question. He did. What is anyone's origin after
all, Henry mused. How is this seemingly perfect order,
disorder or stew for robins and rodents?

What the fuck do drivers know about the delicacy of
paranoia mixed with art. Edvard Munch. That fucken
scream and then he was back feeling his hands while he
screwed himself into the final assault on the Herrig
driveway.

Lingering in that space, the present, he quickly
leaped forward to Nam again and back to NYC and that
last drug run, and the need to know that all are the
enemy especially the asshole woman he took there for
drugs who knew more bullshit than any cabbie.

Henry loved people who accepted risk. Every time I
drive this fucken cab, I am at risk. Not like Nam of
course, but sometimes when I am doing a drug run with
some asshole over the bridge in Washington Heights at
3AM. It feels like Nam again. I assume the same
positions; stand guard over the perimeter and follow
the receding lines into an away from the objective,
rushing the hidden corners only when about to be
overrun. When dark approached, using a night scope
watch the rear, pretending that the gooks are there,
waiting to cut your fucken throat.

We are always cock-sucking racists, Henry mocked
himself. Just like Nam, there are the cops, the ARVN,
the fake Republic of Nam, the chicken gooks, cowards.
Yes, you know them. They are the fucks who throw their
enemy from slicks and count the seconds laughing
outline while the sad fucks fall. The body dies in
flight they say, disappearing into the canopy in the
orgasmic after shock.

Yes, just like cops and the spooks, Henry was getting
a head of steam up. When he reached what was obviously
the front of the mansion, he stopped thinking of the
absurd and waited for impatience to tempt him again.
Jumping back and forth, Henry realized.

Yeah, I hate cops. They either are on the take or too
used to the routine. They just pass by the white cab
driver with NJ plates sitting on a street corner at
149 and St. Nicholas Ave.

Waiting for an executive to go to the airport, one cop
told him once. Get the fuck out of here the cop had
said. "We're waiting for your fucken airport call.
Hope you got paid up front."

"Of course I did," Henry said. What else? Who the fuck
wouldn't"

Cops sometimes waste more words than the ARVN captain
did who liked to pull the fingernails from VC. He did
it even after they talked. He did it before he blew
his brains out. Once, Henry remembered, I made him
stop and he grabbed my throat in a chokehold. He
wouldn't let go. My squad leader told him to fucken
stop. Second time he told him to stop he put his
weapon to the officer's head and when the ARVN captain
cursed us out he put a round across his forehead,
cutting a scar that would last for life.

I should have killed the fuck, Sgt Bushnell said, I
tried to. He was a fast motherfucker. Moved just at
the right moment to save his sorry life.

"Fuck," the Sgt said, "I hated his gook ass. Would
have been worth a court-martial."

"No," I said to him. "Who the fuck would have turned
your ass in? Me? You fucking kidding."

Driving slowly down the back of the circular driveway,
Henry remembered that joking, feeling the suspense,
not as the danger of a hot LZ but in the anticipation.



FRONT DOOR

No one saw the Herrig place as a whole. Henry flashed
back to his driving and the present. I will write
about it. Make it into a corrupt movie about porn
stars and political tricksters. Perhaps I can find a
unique president to be the principal John. No, wait.
Why do I want to turn the classic into the prurient?
Henry gripped the steering wheel and expertly turned
the paths as they closed. Nothing will change here no
matter what I write. Beauty is as innocence corrupted.
This place is more than a collection of living
objects. Nothing I do will alter the sequence of their
incorporation. Yes, I can say that. It is more than
any illusion or trick.

Just like the paintings my friend Aaron paints. He
created grand abstractions based on natural forms. He
sometimes used a model, but never painted her surface,
but rather the interior. He said he saw it as a
contrast of forces. Making these floor to ceiling
fifteen foot long constructs and larger, he bound his
models inside the case of paint and paper. They were
there, but not there. I caught their eclipse, he said.
The Herrig place reminded me of how and not just what
he painted.

I loved watching Aaron create the first steps, Henry
thought as he watched the falling maple pods litter
the lawn. First he coated the stretched canvas and
then, marking the rectangular border with black and
white papers, he decorated the wet plaster paint like
footsteps caught in the middle of a sudden volcanic
eruption. Aaron said about his painting: I am the
recording engineer. He happened fifty million years
ago.



APRIL 17, 1987

Stopping the cab fifty feet from the main gate, Henry
took one look back to watch for magical tree lines and
claymores in the boughs of maples and oaks. If the
fare had noticed him lurking, they might think he was
having trouble with the cab and call the company.
Henry moved forward and lurked closer to the LZ.

Henry always said he never cared what people thought.
He realized that was a lie. Just before pulling up to
the front door of the main house he decided that he
liked being there and didn't want to fuck up the
possibility of future calls. He knew he was a taxi
driver. That was his obvious role. He knew he had
little control over when he could leave and where and
how far he could travel.

Finally, when he moved up, took his place at the front
door, he saw that the Herrig place was uncorrupted and
authentic. How could such a man love the Third Reich?
It did not fit any model of the world outside. Yes, it
is not a collection of objects but form and force
compressed into one scheme with multiple plots and
infinite varieties of color and value.

Like Matisse, Henry recalled, the impossible in art is
before and after the mark on the margin to note
accident. Is any great art without accident?

Am I always at creation, Henry asked? I know how death
tastes. Copper blood and iron masks wrapped around my
forearm while I fought death in every firefight at
every LZ. I lost too many rounds by default, but I
survived somehow.

The man was already dead but I was too stupid to know.
There are steps in death. Knowing them as absolutes is
too difficult for one person to decipher. Sometimes,
it takes two or more. Then there are arguments, and no
one knows any answer.



HENRY WHITMAN

Taxi drivers are great with the canned lines. Yes,
sir. Henry laughed as he continued to drive down the
rich man's driveway expecting to find some old couple
arguing about a diseased heart monitor that needed its
batteries changed.

Pulling into another circle, Henry settles down for
the millennium wait.

Any yesterday, Henry was alone and mad. April 17, 1987
might change that, but then again perhaps not. Being
fulfilled would certainly not corrupt his cynicism.
His questions made for his answers. Henry would not
accept that extension and not limitation for five
years. It would take love to excite that capacity.
Love would start today. The journey from gate to house
might be considered his first test. Why is art
important and questions about art more significant?
Henry believed that the visual mind knew more than the
verbal. That transformation from object to thought was
the one act of genius.

Genius may be the chance recognition of any accident.
When we select a word or a hue and place it in a frame
and note its combinations and layers, perhaps that is
like the selection of people in our lives. We never
know what we will find inside where we complete the
puzzle. How it will be later is always the last
question.

Henry did not know today he would meet Laurie Fallon.
She had requested him when she called for a cab. She
knew that he thought she was much too young and had
avoided her. She also knew from Angela that Henry had
no idea that her family was rich and decadent. She
didn't care about that except as a mental aside.

Laurie was depressed, strung out on cocaine and H,
uppers and downers, acid and relaxants, lying and
fucking. She wanted death as she wanted a new coat.
Make my life whole, she thought. How did Laurie know
that Henry would save her life?

Henry was startled when he saw her walk down the steps
of the Herrig estate. No one was with her. No one
helped with the bags.

The land had bewitched him. That was it. Laurie lost
no time and gathered him into her pocket.

Five years later the man called Abel and woman called
Lilith would kidnap her. During that time, Henry
taught Laurie poetry. He called her God: said she
spoke in tongues. He taught what all the others had
missed. At the beginning and the end he loved her
poetry. He called her poem, Camera of Myself, the
perfect poem. He knew because he was jealous of it. He
often had said in the past that he could only be in
love with a woman if he loved her poetry more than
his. Henry loved Laurie.

When they were stoned he would call out to Laurie,
insist that her name was Christ Tina or Saint Chrissy
or Spirit Faith. He said that she was the fourth
daughter of God. He would refuse to name the other
three when Laurie challenged him. You're all four, he
would answer.

Five years later, Henry's hand reached up for Laurie.
This time, she was not there. Abel held her captive.









for more TxM6 Hyperfiction http://www.seanfarragher.com








XXX

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