The Albuquerque Turkey: A Novel (29 page)

The road climbed up the canyon to a ridgetop, where a line of prefab ticket booths slowed traffic to a walking pace as each vehicle
stopped to hand over cash or printed tickets. Chipper ticket takers greeted each carload with enthusiastic approval for their artistic efforts. When it was our turn. Louise rolled down the window and a multiply pierced kid leaned in. “Welcome to Mirplopalooza,” he said. “Be the show.” As he took money from Louise, he glanced back and noticed my leash-and-chain ensemble. “Nice,” he said. “I like it.”

Great. Now I’m art.

The kid waved us on. We drove around a small hill and descended into the basin beyond.

And I was moved. Just like a train.

S
ome places in the natural world, you look at them and can’t imagine how they possibly came to be. Your rational mind offers a scientific explanation: tectonic this; oxidized that. Your spiritual mind argues otherwise: “Well, God’s no slouch with aesthetics.”

God, nature, ancient astronauts wielding laser chain saws, whatever, they sure did good work here.

A wall of red cliffs leaped a thousand feet from the desert floor, topped at the plateau with a line of small pines that ran along the lip like stunty green teeth. Striations of color ranging from pale coral to deep sanguine bespoke the variable presence of iron in the original sandstone. Laser chain saws (or erosion) had carved away the base of the cliff, leaving it with a vertiginous overhang. The cliff formed a soaring curtain of stone that ran halfway around a flat basin of sand, itself giving off a soft glow the color of sunset. Opposite the cliff curtain stood a line of stone towers,
^*
a dozen pink pinnacles of tuff, each bony finger topped by a knob of harder stone—basalt, most likely. Some had lost their capstones and eroded down to nubs, not much more than head high. Others rose majestically, and these had been fully Mirploed: wound around with sheets of linen and strung between
with flags of shiny Mylar that flapped in the breeze and refracted light like oil slicks in sunshine. Kites filled the air around the spires, hand painted with strange flying beasts, some loosely based on myth—your dragons, your griffins and such—but most pure Mirplovian invention, and you didn’t know exactly what you were looking at, but you knew what it meant: The good guys were the good guys, the bad guys were the bad guys, and say, fellas, who’s up for a kite fight?

Between the stone fingers and the red cliff lay the broad expanse of the basin, bare as an airfield, and aptly so, for there stood a fleet of helium balloons tied to stone anchors on the desert floor. These were Mylar too, but hardly like you’d find in the hospital gift shop. For one thing, they were huge: giant floating sausages. For another, they had control surfaces—stubby wings and rudders—plus propeller packages aft and stilettolike spikes up front. Like the kites, they rocked the livery of heroes and villains, and once again you had no trouble knowing who the good guys were. Teams of young men and women tended taut tethers as someone somewhere tested the blimps’ remote guidance systems, making them fight their handlers like fish on a line.

From walls of loudspeakers, music filled the basin, a sonorous blanket of tranquility that reminded me of new-mown grass, of nap time in kindergarten, of the night before Christmas. I recognized Vic’s signature tonalities, and found my spirit rising to the sound. It changed, though. Subtly and by degrees it shifted through neutral into uncomfortable, then heaving and joyless; ultimately, a dirge. Intellectually I understood that this was the mere manipulation of major and minor chords, of finding certain disharmonic combinations that strike the ear the way clashing reds and greens strike the eye. But when is music understood intellectually? I suffered until it stopped.

Attendants directed us to a parking area apart from the basin, and here a party had broken out, as arriving festivalgoers poured out of cars, vans, and buses wearing costumes of every level of complexity, from thrift-store throw-ons to grandiloquent Rio regalia. The most ambitious displays were not so much costumes as constructions. Here
you’d see a walking castle, and there its counterpoint, a trebuchet that fired balls of dye-soaked sponge, so that the castle became, over time, its own terrible history of conflict. And more than a few guests wore the homage of elaborate papier-mâché Mirplo heads. Whatever he was selling, these avid fans seemed to have bought in bulk. And credit the infosphere for getting the word out so well and so quickly; back in the day, it took legwork and luck to create such fads and ride their fast-burn trajectories. Hits, as we know, have a life of their own, but it never hurts to goose them with a little flash-mob APB.

Judging from available evidence, Mirplopalooza was a hit.

I, meanwhile, was still a dog on a leash. After we parked, Martybeth opened the cargo door and tugged me out of the Segue by my neck. To my choke chain she now added garlands of red peppers, face-painted whiskers, a sombrero, and a faded wool poncho. “If anyone asks,” she said, tugging again on the nylon line to show my neck who’s boss, “you’re a Chihuahua. Say
sí.
”

I said,
“Sí.”
As a costume concept, it was wholly hokey, yet you had to admire the job it did of hiding a kidnap victim in plain sight. I hardly stood out, for I wasn’t the only visitor in light bondage drag. And whatever protest I might voice would be interpreted as just an overamped actor getting carried away with his role.

Between the parking lot and the balloon harbor lay the heart of Mirplopalooza, an explosion of tents, soundstages, food stands, carnival games, and strolling entertainers. Given the “Be the Show” sentiment of festivalgoers, you’d be hard-pressed to figure out where the paid entertainment left off and the penny public began. But the public was certainly forking over. Witness the abundant souvenir stands, where hawkers hawked Mirplovian artifacts: CDs, prints, models of the installation, T-shirts, hats, books of poems, even a quickie novel, self-published, self-illustrated, and each copy a signed original. And the stuff was selling. Mirplo the Golden Goose?
“I’m telling you, Radar, you gotta get in on this art shit. Easiest goddamn money you’ll ever make.”
To all appearances, yes.

Martybeth led the way, threading through the crowd with me on her leash. Louise trailed behind, one hand thrust deep in the pocket of her cargo pants, and she didn’t figure to be fingering a good-luck charm. But was her gun a bluff? I mean, what if I just yanked the lead out of Martybeth’s hands and took off? Would Louise have the nerve to shoot me down as I ran? I decided not to find out. The thing about going all-in is, you have to not care whether your opponent calls your bet or not. In this case, a call would grieve me deeply.

Out of the teeming throng of stilt walkers, jugglers, henna tattooists, and strolling troubadours came someone wearing the full-body costume of a ferocious Kodiak bear. He loomed quite close—feinted toward Martybeth, in fact, so that she flinched and gave ground—and he reeked of clove cigarettes. So Honey was here. And Woody? Was he likewise orbiting close? And how would I know if he was? A harlequin to begin with, he could be anyone in this gymkhana from Madame Lola Reads Your Fortune to the guy with the tofu hot-dog cart.

I caught a glimpse of Zoe striding through the crowd with purpose, consulting her Geoid and barking into the microphone of a wireless headset. I read her lips as she said, “Places, people. He’s two minutes out.” She headed off toward the balloon area, and my attention went with her until an ungentle tug brought it back to Martybeth.

“This way,” she said. We flanked a bank of Jon’s Johns and followed a row of craft stalls to a big round tent, a yurt, really, but updated with postmodern eco-fabrics and emblazoned with the logo of the Gaia Casino. We were just about to enter the tent when suddenly …

… everything stopped.

The bands onstage ceased playing. The vendors stopped vending. The strolling acrobats and clowns turned serious and still. Even the trash pickers stopped picking trash. Like robots with drained batteries or zombies under mind control, every single event staffer went slack. It wasn’t mind control; more likely Zoe’s command, transmitted first via Geoid or radio and then out among the masses through a series of hand gestures or prearranged signals. Moving in a loose choreography,
the hirelings all shifted to gain lines of sight to the sky overhead, an open invitation for the patrons to do likewise. Martybeth tried to tug me into the yurt, but I stood my ground. This I wanted to see.

And here it came, an ultralight aircraft motoring in at a stately pace, pushing a high, whining engine sound before it. As it reached the festival grounds and circled there, low above the gawking crowd, it revealed itself to be an Aeroprakt Foxbat, but stunningly reimagined as a dragonfly, with the undersides of its boxy wings painted to emulate that insect’s gossamer double-blade configuration. A long, trailing windsock created the illusion of a posthensile abdomen. Two metallic green crosshatched bulbs—the dragonfly’s compound eyes—covered the cockpit and obscured any possible view of a pilot inside. Manifesting Vic’s passion for duality, the dragonfly was at once inspiring and distressing: lyrical, poetical, yet potentially monstrous. I contemplated all the good-guy/bad-guy kites and balloons and understood that this creature completed the picture in a fundamental way. In the morality play of Mirplo’s imagining, here, at last, was the protagonist. And yes, he was right, it’s all art, including planes.

The ultralight described lazy figure eights overhead. There was a nacelle or pod slung low under the Foxbat’s monocoque fuselage. Evidently remotely controlled, it opened now like a tiny Enola Gay and spewed forth a stream of … what? Dragonfly eggs? Light, fluffy somethings that swirled in the plane’s prop wash, then drifted down behind it in a diffuse pink cloud. People scrambled to gather them, for no more reason than folks chase beads thrown from krewe floats at Mardi Gras. I plucked one out of the air and found it to be an origami bird—a tiny, tiny Albuquerque Turkey—handmade, lemon-grass scented, signed, and absolutely stunning. Prompted by I know not what urge, I turned to a stranger and gave my treasure away. I saw others in the crowd likewise inspired to this small generosity.
Art is something that moves you
. Maybe it moves you to act.

The ultralight now spiraled upward, like a hawk riding a thermal, and flew off toward the red cliffs. It crested the line of toothy pines and
disappeared behind them. The engine sounds softened and died as, apparently, the plane touched down. Nobody moved. Long moments later, just as impatience began to ruffle the crowd, a figure appeared on the cliff top, dressed in coveralls and holding a helmet. You knew it was Mirplo. You could tell by the swagger in his walk.

A chant broke out, softly at first but quickly growing louder: “Mir-plo, Mir-plo, Mir-plo!” Fans pumped their fists in the air in time with the chant. When it got loud enough to reach Mirplo’s ears, he acknowledged it by putting on the helmet and spreading his arms in benediction.

Or for a swan dive.

And as five thousand people watched, none more surprised than I, Vic Mirplo plunged off the cliff.

H
alf a heartbeat later, Vic’s BASE jump parachute opened, and he floated down beneath its big Mirplo logo like an origami bird, coming to rest out on the sandy flat, near the balloons. The surge of delirious fans in that direction suggested that the myth of Mirplo was about to get kicked into higher orbit.

Louise had had enough. She impatiently prodded me into the tent, Martybeth hustling along behind, lest I accidentally throttle myself. The yurt was spacious, party-size, big enough for a portable bar with keg taps and well drinks, and half a dozen play-money gaming tables. Hundreds of Gaia-logo zipper duffels lined the perimeter, two and three rows deep, presumably filled with Gaia-logo swag and ready for distribution to the masses when the hospitality tent opened for business come nightfall.

Louise kicked a plastic folding chair in my direction (the Jeff, an IKEA bestseller) and ordered me into it. Martybeth stood behind me, keeping the rope slack and, oddly, stroking the back of my head, smoothing the grain of my hair. Something so weird about this chick. Was she gay? Straight? Bi? All evidence indicated,
Reply hazy, try again
.

We waited.

I passed the time by thinking about Mirplopalooza. For a first-time venture, it was manifestly a grand slam. I saw it getting bigger and bigger in the years to come, the sort of cash cow that a savvy investor could milk and milk and milk. If Jay saw it the same way …

The tent flap fluttered. Allie stepped in.

She’d shed the Plowright drag and reverted to simple loose jeans and a pockety blouse. I liked her much better this way.

Martybeth said, “Why, Ms. Plowright, you’ve changed.”

Louise didn’t bother with such niceties. She skipped right to “Where’s the money? I don’t see it.”

“Oh, it’s here,” said Allie. She indicated the formidable line of swag bags. “I stopped by earlier and put it in one of these.”

Louise sputtered her anger. “If you think I’m going to waste my time searching a hundred—”

“Relax,” said Allie. “I’ll tell you which one it is, once Radar’s safely on his way.” Louise just rolled her eyes. “No, huh?” said Allie. “Okay.” She pointed to a bag in the back row. “It’s that one. The one with the TSA lock.” She produced a key from a pocket and dangled it in the direction of my locked collar. “We’ll swap keys.”

“No,” said Louise. “You’ll give me
your
key and I’ll check out
your
bag. If what’s supposed to be there is there, then you can take this shit-for-brains and get out of here.”

Allie shrugged, caught between bad choices. She tossed Louise the key. Louise handed it off to Martybeth, who clomped over to the bags, grabbed the one with the chartreuse Transportation Security Administration lock, and unlocked it. She looked inside. “Holy crow!” she said.