Outer Banks by Russell Banks Read Free Book Online Page A

the dwarf Genghis? He claims you are responsible for his having been fired from his job.
    J OHN D OE:       I do know him, and I’m glad he’s being treated more fairly, but no, I can’t claim responsibility.
    I NQUISITOR:     Okay, answer this one correctly and you get all the prizes. How did you kill Prince Orgone?
    J OHN D OE (PROUDLY): Blood poisoning. You’ll recall that he broke a bottle of body cologne in the shower a few days ago and stepped on a piece of the broken glass, cutting his left foot slightly. He should have stayed away from those public showers until after the cut had healed, but he knew he’d go crazy if he skipped a workout. He was trapped by himself, like the others.
    I NQUISITOR:     Well said, Mr. Doe. But just for the hell of it, why these three young princes, each in the prime of his life? Why these young fellows? Why not the king?
    J OHN D OE:      I’ve got a thing about princes, I guess.
    S UMMATION:   We’ve got our man. We’ve got his plot.

8

    1.
    The Loon, because of his job as janitor, or custodian, for the Star Chamber, a position obtained for him by the king, had no difficulty in keeping abreast of developments. He knew more about what was going on than did the king himself. Unlike the king, however, he didn’t care about what was going on, which is why the king had appointed him to this somewhat delicate post in the first place. The king had many faults, but he knew how to maintain security. He knew that every morning, after a night of cleaning up the inquisition rooms, the Loon would go home to his tree house in Central Park and forget practically everything he had seen, heard, or smelled. The Loon was much too self-absorbed to be a busybody.
    2.
    The Loon was like a bat. He slept all day long, from sunrise to sunset, regardless of where he was or what was expected of him. He would, as the sun rose, simply fold whatever piece of cloth there was at hand, a drapery, a rug, a coat, around him like a shroud and drop off to sleep, usually positioning himself in a foetal heap in a corner. The only thing that could wake him was the sunset. In many ways, the habit was inconvenient and sometimes embarrassing to others, but it was a habit he had formedearly in childhood and thus he was devoted to it. Actually, all his habits were formed early in childhood, and he was devoted to all his habits. He had not formed a new habit or broken an old one since his fourth birthday.
    3.
    People in positions of power seemed to fall in love with the Loon, through no design or effort of the Loon himself. There were the director of the nursery school he had attended, the cop on the block, the mayor of the small town in the South where he had spent his middle childhood, the president of the University of Virginia where he had matriculated, the governor of a large industrial state in the northeast, the head of a television network, a Latin-American dictator, a Greek shipping magnate, a U.S. Secretary of the Interior, and, most recently, Egress the Hearty, a king. Only coincidentally were all these powerful persons men, but as a result of that coincidence, most people thought the Loon was a homosexual. They did not, of course, think it of his lovers.
    4.
    Often, on late-night TV talk shows, he was asked by the host to talk about whether or not he was, as the host put it, a “homosexual.”—Are you, Mr. Loon, a “homosexual”?
    â€”Way-yell, Dick, the Loon would drawl (he had a pronounced southern accent, especially on TV),—since you put it “that way,” ah, not really.
    The audience and Dick the host would roar with laughter, winking and elbowing each other fiercely.
    5.
    When the Loon learned, one by one, of the deaths of the three princes, he was surprised but not particularly saddened. He had never thought of them as high-quality persons. All three of them had, at one time or