Linda Perdido: A Novel

One. A book begins:

linda perdido 1 One. A book begins: linda perdido linda perdido linda perdido. in one eye and out the other. at the WalMart in Troy doing something awful to the lettuce and cabbage. eyes bright, like something that lives, insane, way up in a high tree. A tall, sky-filling Nutt tree, or a nutty one, not a nut-bearer—pizenous in the opinion of many locals (like Horace Ginkel). She blackens a tooth with a child’s crayon and runs screaming down aisles toppling as she goes ziggurats of cheap canned food, rushes past astonished clerks and a scatter of fat people. Then she is gone, as if never deed were done. This is her story, and how all became so fixed in our low squalid time in Set County by the Zion river that smells like creosote. More like coal and wood tar than real water. linda perdido doubles up in laughter at the WalMart at Silo Heights, new delaware, just across the state line. inside are the fat people, faces pressed to the window like blind suckerfish. Slowly the place is filling up with black oily smoke from an evilish 2 MaC WellMan detonation, largely non-lethal, of her design, action and double action. Lost to public standards, fiery Linda whose gray-green eyes flicker maddest impudence at the thought of civil order and civil duty has a fast low car of unknown make. a Mako probably of the kind assembled at far distant radom, in the disestablished (formerly socialist) Sultanate of Fantantistan. Makos are most rare in these parts, Spider would later allege. rare as cold reluctance among the hot gospelers. and: You would think her plates would be easy to trace, but no. and: That is what people think, but no. later linda changes her appearance: now short, now tall. Her face can surprise even those who know her well: a comic triangle when she chooses to be a child; a violent square in her wrathful aspect. Hair a nest of bright red snakes piled high; next day all goldenrod and spiderfine and winnowy. She is assuredly a surprise to herself as well, people suppose. They are always thinking on what they think they know which is not, not much, which is why they can never not ever find her out. This being the case she reverses field, returns in her newest disguise to the first WalMart crime, the one at Troy, parks the Mako behind a dumpster and sees something pretty, very pretty. Something pretty, prettier, prettiest. For there, next to the WalMart is the Chisolm Street Diner with a FedEx truck parked outside and no one in it. Driver gone, perhaps on a coffee break. Wicked perdido sees a wicked opportunity and hops in, slams the door behind her. off she goes, in a frame of mind that pops all frames, aglow. She takes the first left fully atilt, the second and third more so, perilously, on two left wheels. no one has seen her because she is invisible to herself. at Carborundum, on the county line, she faces a choice between linda perdido 3 hollow and high ground, then recalls the grievous harm done to her by the Sisters of Mercy at the Catholic School of Saint lydia’s. Pedal to the floor, she is not thinking but is as thought aflame. The place is not so far, only a few miles over hills spattered with poplars and dead elm, crabapple and beech. Cows appear planted for all time, black and white nimbuses, each at one chosen spot as if for all time. She notices the sun for the first time all day. Oblate and orange and as big as a human head. as big as the letter K in Kmart. an instant later she is inside Saint lydia’s. She arrives in a cloud, enters, grabs any package (the truck contains packages abounding) to deliver to anyone she meets. astonishment in the faces as she flies past, as if she were a person in a dreamscape nightmare. She gives one package to a bright-eyed young girl student with a pink face and black braids. pink face cries out and does not know what to do, but perdido has already brushed by and elbowed past nun after nun till we reach the office of Headmistress. Here, sad to say, crime happens, crime upon crime. The Headmistress is raped repeatedly...