Gary Fincke ~ The Wrath of God

My cousin Sid Morrow told me he’d wok­en up, just yes­ter­day, from a dream that showed him how to get into a triple-locked box with­out ever open­ing it. To con­vince me, Sid said that he’d bought a crate, locked it, tied rope around it, and sealed it with wax. To resist temp­ta­tion, he’d tied his own hands togeth­er and sat on the box. And then, with no way else to do it, he’d willed him­self inside. “Lucky for me,” he said, “I was able to wish myself out again.” When I didn’t laugh, he offered me a job he called “Shilling and Booking” because, as he put it, “You’re in need, too.” He was pre­pared, for a rea­son­able fee, to demon­strate his skill at enterol­o­gy to an audi­ence of pay­ing cus­tomers. “Tm a human ship-in-a- bot­tle,” Sid said, and that’s how I put it in writ­ing to a dozen small venues in Western Pennsylvania, land­ing him in Uniontown, Dubois, and Punxatawney, home of the ground­hog festival.

The first night, Sid wore a deep blue cape, look­ing a lit­tle like a shy Dracula. As far as I could tell, he had the stage pres­ence of for­got­ten pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, which was why he’d also signed me on as emcee, beg­ging me to work up a lit­tle pat­ter to keep things going with the audi­ence while, with­in a care­ful­ly drawn cir­cu­lar cur­tain, he rema­te­ri­al­ized him­self inside his crate.

He was flaw­less. He did a rou­tine that would have received 10’s from even the Axis of Evil coun­tries. For the finale, he did the lock and rope and wax com­bo with hand­cuffs an audi­ence mem­ber snapped on for authen­tic­i­ty. When I reopened the cur­tain, there he was, still hand­cuffed, curled inside the trunk.

After three nights of that, I cre­at­ed a new intro, start­ing with “Sid Morrow, the King of Enterology,” and added out­right lies like “Never accom­plished by anoth­er human” and “Witnessed by world lead­ers.” Sid seemed pleased, but not for long. Beaver Falls, New Castle, and Butler signed on, but by the time we played Johnstown, mov­ing East, he’d read about Major Zamora, the dwarf who, in 1894, entered a spe­cial­ly made bot­tle of Bass Ale. It was over­sized and Zamora was under­sized, but the crowd loved it any­way. Sid said “hhm­mm” like that was some­thing for a full-sized man to con­sid­er. When I point­ed out the like­ly degree of dif­fi­cul­ty, he shook his head. “I’m bet­ter off not know­ing how I do these things;” he said. “That’s the joy of it.”

Impatient, I men­tioned the Bottle Conjurer, the ad cam­paign from 1749, when the pub­li­cist promised a man would enter a quart bot­tle in full view of the audi­ence, and Sid beamed so bright­ly that I hur­ried on to say, “It was a hoax. Nobody could do that, let alone in plain sight. The hoax­er just want­ed to prove how gullible peo­ple could be. The audi­ence riot­ed. Mark Twain used it in Huckleberry Finn. Every high school kid who fin­ished the book knows some­thing about it.”

Sid did­n’t want to hear about the after­math. He want­ed big­ger towns and larg­er venues. “Make a splash,” he said. “Tell every­body I’ll enter a three-gal­lon bot­tle that’s float­ing in a trunk full of water that’s inside a tank of burn­ing gasoline.”

I had to call bull­shit, but Sid was adamant. “Not in plain sight, of course. Call it The Wrath of God. Tell them I can sur­vive the end of the world by doing the impossible.”

I was more than skep­ti­cal, but I worked up a press release full of dis­as­ters and mir­a­cles that land­ed us a book­ing in Altoona, a the­ater with 3000 seats, every one of them filled by show time. Two atten­dants pushed Sid’s new rig onto the stage. It looked to me as if he’d bought all of it pre-assem­bled, includ­ing the three-gal­lon bot­tle with the wide throat. It struck me as too pro­fes­sion­al, like sil­i­cone breasts. Such man­u­fac­tured equip­ment made Sid’s mag­ic seem dilut­ed and suspect.

After Sid went inside the cur­tain, the fire throw­ing its light, the water slosh­ing as if there were tremors run­ning through the earth beneath us, the audi­ence stood as if they might see bet­ter the mol­e­cules of Sid’s body danc­ing through asbestos and fire and steel and water and glass. More than a few, I sus­pect­ed, want­ed The Wrath of God to fry or drown or smoth­er Sid Morrow exact­ly the way he deserved for triv­i­al­iz­ing the mean­ing of life.

As always, I count­ed aloud. When I reached nine­ty sec­onds, the fire still roar­ing, I took a few steps toward the cur­tain. Hearing a wash of audi­ence doubt lap­ping at the stage, I count­ed slow­er until the fire went out at 150. When I pulled the cur­tain aside, the audi­ence buzzed because Sid, as promised, had nowhere else to be than inside the trunk, pos­si­bly cooked or drowned. I count­ed to 200 as I drained the trunk’s water into the large, open saucer. Nearly knee-deep, I unlocked the trunk. With a flour­ish, I lift­ed the lid and showed the audi­ence that nei­ther the bot­tle nor Sid was inside.

There was a brief hush, the crowd mak­ing up its mind, and then it roared a uni­son, full-throat­ed Boo fol­lowed by all the famil­iar blas­phemies and obscen­i­ties. The main cur­tain start­ed swirling shut like the return of the Red Sea, but not before dozens of half-pint bot­tles bounced and skit­tered across the stage. “Shove your­self in this,” flared as if Sid’s con­trap­tion had rekin­dled. I shoved myself into the near­est hallway.

The fol­low­ing day, no word from Sid, I post­ed a dec­la­ra­tion, com­plete with ani­ma­tion, that claimed Sid Morrow, as promised, had entered that bot­tle but been stolen away by a jeal­ous rival who I left unnamed, even, as days passed, half-believ­ing my con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry while Sid went as viral as any D. B. Cooper clone. Poorer, of course, but leg­endary, what all of us, he’d insist­ed, long to be.

~

Gary Fincke’s lat­est flash col­lec­tion is The History of the Baker’s Dozen (Pelekinesis, 2024). He is co-edi­tor of the annu­al anthol­o­gy Best Microfiction.