Exit Kingdom

proper name anyway?
    The harlequin straightensup and puffs out his chest, announcing himself with military seriousness.
    My name is Albert Wilson Jacks, ain’t it?
    Moses observes the expression on his brother’s face collapse.
    Albert? Abraham says. Albert? Your name’s Albert?
    Albert Wilson Jacks, the little man repeats.
    I guessed that name. Albert – that’s one of the goddamn names I guessed back there.
    Is it? says AlbertWilson Jacks with a bashful smile.
    It goddamn well is, Abraham confirms.
    That’s a lesson to you, ain’t it? Justice and hearts – they’re naught but busted machines.
    *
    So Moses and Abraham Todd leave Albert Wilson Jacks the harlequin there in his solitary fortress – and when they will think of him in the future, they will think of his
hands that never stop tinkering andof his words that are spoken only to himself and to the myriad crevices of madness that mark any lost space.
    Back outside in the desert sun they cross the vast runways between the rusted corpses of the massive airplanes. If technology has a life, and from what they’ve seen of the
harlequin’s workshop the brothers believe now that it has, then this is a place of lost souls. A graveyard ofmachine corpses. Their stillness is a beautiful betrayal.
    They arrive at the car and climb in. They roll down the windows to release the hot air baked stale and stifling by the sun. But Moses does not turn the key in the ignition. He keeps his hands,
unmoving, on the wheel.
    What is it? Abraham asks.
    Where are we goin?
    What do you mean? We’re goin west.
    That ain’t what I meant.

    What’d you mean then?
    I mean what are we doin just wanderin hither and thither across the globe?
    We’re surviving. We’re warrioring our way through life. We’re doin the best we can. Doin better than most if you ask me.
    It ain’t enough, Moses says and looks grimly through the windshield. In front of them is a road that leads only two directions: the nowhere they came from and thenowhere they
haven’t yet been.
    Well, what’re you lookin for then? Abraham asks his brother.
    I don’t know. How bout a direction? A destination. How bout a purpose? It ain’t quite livin without a purpose to shape the action. Even the slugs’ve got that.
    Abraham considers for a moment. He is fifteen years Moses’ junior. An accidental birth given way to an accidental life. Five yearsold when everything went to hell, he only barely
remembers the time before. He grew wrong somehow – Moses doesn’t know how. But the only thing he seems to respect in this world is his fraternal bond with Moses. And that’s worth
something. It counts.
    Okay, Abraham says finally.
    Okay what?
    Okay, then, let’s find ourselves a purpose.

Four
    White Dove of the Desert » Acolytes » A Saint and the Virgin Mary » Ignatius » Supper and Appetites » A Measurement of Saints and Sinners while a
Mission Sleeps »
Interlude
» The Canoness » A Demonstration at a Grotto » Where the Vestal Came From » A Job of Work » Treachery » Escape
    Purpose is sometimes a building. The architecture of order.
    Two miles from the graveyardof the Tucson airport, they discover the Mission San Xavier del Bac. Long ago, someone built a high stone wall around the whole place, but there is a painted sign on
the arching gate doors:
    TRAVELLER
    YOU ARE WELCOME
    RING THE BELL
    High up on the wall, a rope has been tied around a cleat in the adobe. Moses gives the rope a tug, and above them a copper bell soundsits tinny note through the desert heat. A
few minutes later, they are greeted by a woman who without speaking bows to them, her hands folded in prayer to her lips, then beckons with her hand for them to enter and shuts the big gate behind
them, securing it with a whole series of iron bars slid through huge hasps.
    The mission itself is a wash of whiteness towering against the cloudlessblue of the sky. Two octagonal towers rise up on either side of the façade, and between them is an ornately carved
stone entrance that looks to Moses like a massive holy book with a door in it – as though you were being asked to step into the very illuminated manuscript of faith. Three wrought-iron
balconies protrude from the front of the structure, and in one of them sits a young girl, maybeseven years of age, her legs dangling over the edge, her hands gripping the bars. She watches the
Todd brothers enter below, and in her expression is there more manuscript than in all the building