You clean your gun. The carnival music keeps playing, eternal and creeping up and down your spine, but your gun is warm against your palm and the sun is peeking out from behind the clouds. You never imagined, back in that book depository, sitting on a wobbly crate, taking aim. How could you?
John Wilkes Booth sits down next to you on the dusty ground, and your life is flashing before a young girl's eyes. She is taking aim, just so, she is planning it all as you sit and oil your .38 Special Smith & Wesson Victory revolver right here on the fairway. Next to her, on the nightstand in her dingy rented room, sits: Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, Right or Wrong, God Judge Me: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth, a TIME Magazine with your face on the cover, a notebook with "Sic semper tyrannis" written across it in bright green ink. In three days, you will stand in a circle and serenade her until dawn, singing "We're the other national anthem" as your voices join into something too big to imagine.
You finish with your gun. Booth rolls a cigarette and lights it. You take it from him, hold it to your mouth and inhale; the tip is damp, and it tastes faintly of mint and wax. Booth blows smoke rings, the show off, and traces circles in the dust. Behind you, someone takes aim. Misses. Not even close.
"Tomorrow," Booth says.
"Maybe," you answer.
"Next year," Czolgosz adds. He is carrying three bottles of pop and a bag of caramel corn. The three of you sit, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, and watch the contestants as they take aim and fire. ("You wanna kill a President," the barker is asking, and "Yes!" follows "Yes?" follows "You gimme gun.") You wipe your hands against your thighs, leaving behind a trail of sweat and grime. The sun is hot today, and high, and you squint against the brightness.
"Half-blind." Czolgosz points to the balding guy pushing his way to the front of the line. "He'll never even make it onto the target."
"Fuck," you say. "Can't anyone even hold a gun right anymore? It's not like it's rocket science; anyone can do it. Just look at the United States Fuckin' Marine Corps."
Booth gets that pissy look on his face, like he's sucking on a lime and there's not a bottle of tequila in sight. Like Reagan's just popped up in front of him, saying, "Honey, I forgot to duck" like there was nothing to it at all, like none of you ever existed, like he's the movie star he used to be.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident," you say, "that all men are created equal, but that some are more equal than others: fact. So what do you do about it? You cry to your mommy, whine to your girl, or you do something about it?"
"Right," Czolgosz says, "Only you're not exactly inventing the wheel there. My mentor, Emma Goldman, said the same thing years before you were even born."
Booth stands up, bows, and begins to recite. "Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answered blows, Strength marched with strength, and power confronted power. Both are alike, and both alike we like. One must prove greatest. King John, Act II, Scene I, William Shakespeare."
And the history books call him the sanest of you all.
"Stuck-up ass," you say.
"As Emma Goldman once said," adds Czolgosz, "I refuse to sit here and listen to you any longer."
*
Nights are hardest here in the in-between. The music never stops-- it slows and quiets until you think it has to either end or drive you mad, but it never quite manages either-- and the lights never dim. Shots ring out at all hours. Squeaky cries all night, and Sarah Jane talks to her goldfish; Hinckley has a tape of Taxi Driver playing from sundown until dawn.
Guiteau prays. He's strange and sincere and he sings about "my lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen, who brought forth on this Earth all life and flowers and the birds that fly above." He prays and ties knots in the grass, and sometimes you wish you could see into his head. Figure out what makes him tick. Sometimes you don't.
When you first arrived, you thought you'd gone mad. Tonight, you sit outside the dunk tank, and everything smells like fried dough and spun sugar and guns going off. You watch yourself as a young man reflected in the water:
"Zdravstvuite," you were saying, "Menia zovut Lee Harvey Oswald." You were smiling.
"Oh, this is my favorite part," Czolgosz says. "Right here, where you revoke your citizenship and pledge allegiance to the mighty totalitarian regime. Now this is true comedy, the likes of which may never be seen again."
You spit. "Bastard. Where the hell'd you come from? I thought you and Booth were out recruiting for the cause or something too 'sensitive' for the likes of me."
"We were. Came home early. Wound up in a time of prosperity, of all the bad luck to have, and everyone was too busy singing love songs to capitalism to hear the message."
"Aren't they always? I mean, you go to the wrong intersection, and-"
"-Lee here kills himself instead of that playboy. Go to the wrong theatre, and the tyrant lives on. Call it what you will: fate, kismet, it is all as Shakespeare wrote, 'If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me.' Such it is for all of us."
You're thirsty. Dry-mouthed and chapped lipped, and you ask, "So, anyone for a drink?"
"What have I here," Booth says, doing some swooping thing with his coat, "but a bottle of the finest Tennessee whiskey. Care to join me, boys?"
He brandishes the bottle, and it reflects the lights of the fairway like a fireworks display. You follow him out behind the ferris wheel. The music is faintest here, the squeaking metal of the gears tends to drown it out, and it's almost private. You can't see the shooting booth. No one can see you. You grab the bottle from Booth, swallow. Czolgosz wipes a piece of hair from your eye, and you grab his hand. It's hot. You lick the sweat from your upper lip and pass the bottle.
"Marxist fool," Czolgosz says.
"Crazy anarchist," you counter.
"Patriots," says Booth. "American patriots." He takes a large swig and grins.
The constant buzz of the fairway flickers in and out; your head spins and you think you must be laughing. "We really are," you say, "Fucking patriots. Except for Hinckley. He's just pathetic. I mean, 'I did it for Jodie'?"
"He's a romantic. 'The course of love never did run smooth,' and all that."
You think you must be a romantic, too. "That's Shakespeare. I know that one."
"Right, and Emma Goldman was a nun. It's just that the vainglorious actor there always quotes Shakespeare." But he's smiling when he says it, and there's a callous on his trigger finger. You want to punch him; were he a girl, a pretty Russian thing with great tits and child-bearing hips like your Marina, you'd want to kiss him. You push him to the ground. Rub dust in his hair.
"Boys," Booth says. "Stop it, or I take the whiskey back to my tent."
The first swallow burnt going down, but the second is soft as butter. You hold the bottle against the back of your neck for a minute before thrusting it into Czolgosz's hands. It begins to rain.
"Let's make a joyful noise," you shout. "A joyful fucking noise!"
*
The thing that the history books invariably miss is this: you are part of something bigger than yourself, something huge and massive and awesome and forever. People still know Brutus, still recite, "Et tu Brute;" they remember John Wilkes Booth and curse his name. And you are part of that now. Part of all of it. And sometimes you forget how to breathe in the face of all that. That. That something. You've never been good with words, and this is too big for even the longest Russian tongue twister.
On Thursday, you sit around the big table that appears specifically for such occasions, eating foot longs and grilled corn with pop and ice cold beers. Booth sits on your right and Czolgosz is on your left, and the food is slightly burnt. You can't stop bouncing your leg, and Booth keeps glaring at you.
"Not the king of me," you say. "Tonight's the night."
"Tonight," Czolgosz repeats. "Tonight."
"Tonight," Booth says, standing up on the bench. "Tonight, we shall once again make history. 'So every bondman in his own hand bears The power to cancel his captivity.' Let us go collect our newest sister."
Squeaky spins around, and Guiteau dances what looks almost like a jig. You form a circle and join hands; the carnival melts around you, staining the ground in puddles of yellow and red and green. Czolgosz's palm is sweaty, and you clasp his fingers between yours.
"Hang on tight," you yell, "It's going to be a bumpy ride." Hinckley laughs. The real world coalesces around you. You are standing in a small room, a circle with a young girl at its center.
"Who the fuck are you people?" the girl screams. Her name is Annie; she is listening to the radio and clutching your biography against her chest. Her gun is on the bed. Tonight, she is going to kill the sixty-fourth President of the United States of America. "What the fuck do you want with me?"
Booth smiles, and it's like a spotlight's suddenly hit him just right. He picks up her gun and twirls it. "I'm so very glad you asked," he says. "So very glad indeed." You grin. Squeeze Czolgosz's hand. Everyone begins to sing.
*fin.
[once more into the fray]