She comes to see you, not too often, at this place, zigzagging down the mountains on a Saturday visiting day in that white Grand Prix with its bumper hanging off, the grand prize which is all she got out of it. So in the end you got the magic car for a night, drove it off a bridge and ended up here, she got the decrepit Grand Prix and it's still going. And she's still going. She's back writing recipes for that Winchester rag for a yard a week. A couple times you found an old Thursday Mail lying around the dayroom, perused the recipes, FOR SATURDAY SOCIAL, TRY AUNT MARGARET'S 4-BEAN SALAD and like that, for secret messages, but either her oracles have gone so deep they're beyond even you, or without you she's lost it. Lost her magic. You prefer to think the latter.
She wanted to know how your face got split. Even she couldn't miss the stitches down the edge of your cheek and up one side of your nose-you look like a fucking tooled wallet, like the lifers make in the shop downstairs in this place. She wanted to know what happened so you tried to tell her.
Finally everything came together. The deep blue car with a silver top was a magic car, you were called to go different places and it was there to take you. You had your pitchfork, to symbolize your victory over the forces of darkness. And you had your book-it was the scrapbook of her recipe columns, Menus by Margaret. You could refer to it for anything. Sometimes it seemed to be making fun of you, new pages kept appearing every time you opened it, new lines, but on the whole it was on your side.
But why didn't you ever tell me it was a magic book? That's why I don't exactly trust you, you don't always tell me everything, do you, Maggie? So it's good I've learned to get along without you now.
You had your book and your pitchfork and you drove and drove in your magic car. In a dark woods you came to a road that went over a bridge with a lion on each side of it and you knew, because you looked in the book and saw MARGARET MEETS THE KING OF THE JUNGLE (it was a recipe for barbecue sauce) that you should turn here. You came to a big barn and went in. It was full of animals lying down sleepy and almost dead-calves, bulls, cows, even a couple of goats. You touched them and they rose again. One by one they came back to life. A man opened the door with a bird gun in his hands, wearing a striped robe. Prometheus? he said, and you knew he was right. I am, you said. Then he disappeared and possibly he called the cops because when you came to the lions again in your magic car the police were blocking the road. You knew nothing could hurt you. You drove off the bridge. You woke up here. You think the cops might have put something inside your brain when they sewed up your face.
But it isn't a bad place. Well, there's something queer about the toilets, a funny green light in them like they're trying to draw your guts out. (And the cigarettes she brought you-this you didn't tell her-they were another way of sucking your insides out. You had to throw them away.) But you can live here for now. You have a lot to think about-why you were chosen for various things, like the trip that landed you here. After what you've been through, you need rest.
And you can go now, Maggie, since I see you don't believe me. I'm only telling you a hundredth of what happened. But it doesn't matter what you think. I was there! I heard! I know! The one good thing is, I'm a complete person now, both halves, which I never was before. I'm a finished man, at home in my skin-but tired, so tired I might sleep till the world ends or they let me out-whichever comes first.