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InterText Vol 03 No 03
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InterText Vol. 3, No. 3 / May-June 1993
=======================================
Contents
FirstText: Episode 13: He Asks for Money..........Jason Snell
Short Fiction
Epicenter_.........................................Jon Seaman_
Innocent Bystander_................................Mark Smith_
Mercy Street_.................................Ridley McIntyre_
Post-Nuclear Horrifics_............................Eric Crump_
The Nihilist_....................................Kyle Cassidy_
....................................................................
Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@etext.org gaduncan@halcyon.com
....................................................................
Send subscription requests, story submissions,
and correspondence to intertext@etext.org
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 3, No. 3. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
(either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1993, 1994 Jason
Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1993 by their original
authors.
....................................................................
FirstText: Episode 13: He Asks For Money by Jason Snell
==========================================================
Two months _already?_
Yikes.
Part of me wonders what I'm doing here now, writing an
introduction to the issue of _InterText_ which I've worked the
least on ever. Because of an extremely busy schedule --
designing and laying out a magazine and several newspapers at
school, in addition to taking a final exam -- Geoff Duncan did
far more than his share of the work on this issue, including
multiple copy edits of the stories and lay-out of the issue.
But, yes, I _have_ read the stories in this issue, and I'm glad
to say that I'm impressed. We lead off this time with Jon
Seaman's chilling "Epicenter." We're also lucky to have the
quite odd "Post-Nuclear Horrifics" by Eric Crump, along with new
stories from regular contributors Mark Smith, Ridley McIntyre,
and Kyle Cassidy.
During the time when these stories were percolating through the
electronic veins of _InterText,_ I was also busy securing
employment for this summer. I'll be working at a large computer
magazine located here in the Bay Area, and that's all I'm
saying. Scan the staff boxes if you really want to know which
one -- suffice it to say that it sounds like a good job, and I'm
looking forward to starting it.
This job searching has also gotten me to thinking about the
future of the magazine, since I'm a little under a year away
from losing network access altogether. (The way I figure it, my
accounts at Berkeley will be good through August 1994 or
thereabouts.) After that, I'll do everything I can to retain net
access, which means I'll probably pay for an account on a public
access UNIX system.
This means money. And this leads me to propose something that
Dan Appelquist proposed for readers of _Quanta_ more than a year
ago: a system similar to "shareware" software.
_InterText_ is and will always remain free. But if you enjoy
_InterText_ and have some money to spare, please feel free to
send a $5 check to keep the magazine going in the future. Hey,
most magazines cost anywhere from $12 a year to way beyond that.
Consider us a bargain at $5!
All money will go toward _InterText_: paying for network
accounts, paper and toner for all the _InterText_ copies Geoff
and I print out, magnetic media to safeguard our back issues,
connect time to upload our issues to other computer networks,
etc. Though the temptation is there, I won't be putting any of
the $5 checks in the Jason-n-Jeff Maui Condo Retirement Fund.
If you'd like to contribute to InterText, send your check (made
out to Jason Snell) to: 21645 Parrotts Ferry Road, Sonora,
California, 95370. I'm planning on moving to a new apartment in
the next month, and so the above address seems the most stable.
Oh, and one last note -- for those of you viewing the PostScript
edition of InterText, you'll note that our cover art this issue
is by Jeff Quan, who was last heard from when he did the cover
of our _first_ issue. We're glad to have Jeff, who works for the
_Oakland Tribune_ and does some freelancing for _MacWEEK_
magazine, aboard again. He'll likely be doing our covers for the
foreseeable future.
That's all for this brief note. Heck -- you're not here to read
this column, anyway. You're here to read stories, and we've got
some nice ones. Get to it.
Jason Snell
-------------
Jason Snell recently finished his first year at UC Berkeley's
Graduate School of Journalism, and has a coveted Communication
B.A. from UC San Diego. Between school, work, and editing
InterText, he sometimes considers writing more fiction and
enjoys using his Macintosh PowerBook. He also likes to drink
iced tea and mention monkeys as often as humanly possible.
Epicenter by Jon Seaman
==========================
...................................................................
* Sometimes life is a force of habit: eat this, do that, go
there. And sometimes experiences let us see our habits for what
they are. But larger experiences can do the same thing... *
...................................................................
It's four a.m. I'm riding the subway. I'm drunk. There are three
people in my car. I'm watching them.
Particularly, I watch the man in the leather overcoat. I watch
that man because he carries a heavy gym bag. I watch that man
because he has silver eyes. I watch that man because he is
watching me.
"Midnight Meat Train," she says, lighting a candle.
"Midnight what?"
"Midnight Meat Train." She pours more wine into my glass. "It's
a horror story."
I drink. "Sounds more like a porno."
"Very funny." She sets the bottle on the nightstand. "I want to
read it to you."
"You do?"
She inches closer. "Yes, I do."
"Why?"
She smiles. She skates the tip of her index finger in figure
eights down my neck and onto my chest. "So on the subway home
tonight, you'll think about it."
I drink and after a moment say, "Tonight? You aren't asking me
to stay?"
She pauses, slides away, and pulls the sheet over her head. The
candlelight makes a dark outline of her body. "You've never
stayed once. Not one time. Even if I beg, and I'm tired of
begging."
Her voice bounces all around me. For a moment I feel cold. I
crawl above her, pulling at the sheet, trying not to spill my
wine. I choose laughter. "Not even a little? I like it when you
beg."
Her face is pressed taut against the fabric and I watch her lips
shape words beneath it. Her voice drifts up to me like black
smoke, stinging my eyes, choking me.
"No, I'm not asking you to stay ever again."
I let the cover go. I try to stare through the sheet and into
her mind.
Eventually she drags the cover away from her face and looks up
at me. "If you stay, it has to be your decision."
I take a big swallow of wine. I take another.
Her lips tighten. She is waiting.
I turn my head toward the window. "I can smell pizza from that
place across the street. You hungry?"
There is silence. She reaches around my knee and takes the
bottle from the nightstand. She tugs the glass from my fingers,
tops it up, and pushes it back to me.
I look down into her eyes. I should explain. I should apologize.
But I say, "Why the hell would you want me to think about some
horror story?"
Her eyes close for a moment and then open slowly. She smiles.
The man in the overcoat uses every second slowly, murdering me
with his eyes, his expert butcher-knife eyes. I feel naked
except for the wine on my breath. I'm forty-five minutes from
home. The train is slow and old and scrapes through the dark
tunnels on its hands and knees. I should move to another car. I
should get off at the next stop and escape to the surface of the
city. I don't move. I can't. His eyes magnetize me. I feel
naked. I need a slice of pizza. The train stumbles and stumbles
and stumbles. I start to shake. Between two ceaseless motions I
am epileptic. I need a slice of pizza.
She sets the book carefully on the side of the bed. "What do you
think?"
With my big toe, I push the book until it falls onto the floor.
"It's the most repulsive story I've ever heard."
"Don't you believe it could be true?"
"Some guy cutting up people on the subway... to feed his
deformed children that live under the city?" I gulp down the
rest of the wine. "It's fucking ridiculous."
"Does it bother you?"
I take a long purple crystal from a basket on the nightstand.
"What do you keep these rocks for?"
"They're crystals. They channel power from the earth. You didn't
answer my question."
I hold the crystal up to the candle and follow a reflection
along its geometry. "You don't believe that bullshit, do you?"
She leans close to my face and says nothing for a moment. I turn
my head and look at her. It's like staring into arc welding. Her
face is a river of current and sparks. Her voice burns quietly
into me. "It bothers you, doesn't it?"
I try to study the rock, but I can't break focus from her
radiation. She has me and she knows it. She pushes her hot gaze
inside me. The momentary fusion slows time and for a second my
body pulses and tingles. "What bothers me?"
"There are things you don't understand, things you can't
control." She gently reaches and takes my hand. She closes it
around the crystal. She smiles.
There is perspiration around my collar. It feels like the train
stops every ten feet. I'm comatose drunk. I feel at the edge of
spinning and my vision begins to tumble. I want to close my
eyes, but the subway butcher is watching me with eyes like
boiling mercury, waiting, his hands on the glowing zipper of his
bag. Two cheese slices with fresh oregano and parmesian. Why
couldn't I stay with her? My eyes are changing to heavy puddles
of lead. Why am I on this Midnight Meat Train? Why did she do
this to me?
She dresses me by the front door. We are quiet. There is a
comfort to this ritual, a childlike comfort I desperately need.
My fingers are alcohol-blunt and I can't manage my shoelaces.
She patiently ties them while I stare down at her. A pink light,
spilling through the curtains, exposes the naked length of her
back. I follow the light with my eyes. A single thought erodes
through the gossamer layers of wine. She gives and I take. She
gives and gives and I take.
She rises and adjusts my jacket. With each careful tug on the
fabric, I feel her need. I should stay. I know I should stay,
but my hand touches the door knob. I feel a snap of static
electricity, a realization, and the fading sting of both. Her
scheme didn't work. I didn't pass out. I've drunk like a
champion and I'm standing, ready to walk out the door.
This is when she begs. This is when she begs and I kiss her
softly on the forehead. This is when I say I'll call, and walk
out into the night.
"Wait..." she says.
She's going to beg. She'll beg and I'll know everything is not
changing. I am relieved. We will complete the ritual.
"...You forgot your tie." She hurries to the bedroom.
Her voice is like chloroform. I am sensationless, anesthetized.
I am hollow.
She puts the tie in my jacket pocket. She straightens the clasp
of my belt. She smiles. She softly kisses my forehead.
"I'll call you," she says.
Suddenly, I'm outside in the night.
I'm King of Pizzaland. I'm oily and fat. She's my Anorexic
Queen, feeding me each bite, never taking one for herself until
I remember to nod at her. But I don't nod, I eat. That's my job
as Pizza King: to eat, to gorge myself, to become a round planet
while everyone around me starves.
Somewhere far in the distance, on the opaque fringe of this
dream, I feel a scratching -- a faint sound of a heel scraping
the ground. It begins to move closer, echoing louder with each
step. Then I feel him. He's coming for me. A thin windshield
explodes into my face, a subconscious detonation.
Abruptly I wake. Every cell in my body oscillates and collides.
It's not a dream, I feel him coming. A dim, pale light trembles
above me. I feel him.
He emerges from blackness in the back of the car. The trembling
light strobes his movement. All I see is the bag, swinging like
a pendulum at his side, and his silver eyes.
In my mind, I see the husk of my body hanging upside down from a
meat hook.
I look at the other passengers for help, but they ignore me.
Then everything stops. I am too numb, too fucking drunk to move.
He is standing over me. I can't take my eyes off the bag.
"You were sleeping. That isn't very smart."
His voice is a cold, thick fog that envelopes me.
"You were staring at me. You know who I am, don't you?"
I can't answer.
He crouches down. We are face to face. His sliver eyes are
dissecting me. He whispers, "You know what I do, don't you?"
I nod slightly.
"I'm flattered. Not too many people recognize me. I'm usually
finished before anyone notices I was there."
I feel dizzy. I mumble, "Why me?"
"It's my gift, you understand, to show how people look on the
inside. I'd say right now you're pretty much inside-out. It
won't take long."
I understand. I understand I'm getting exactly what I deserve.
He unzips the bag. I squeeze my eyes shut. I hear him take
something from the bag. I wait.
"Open your eyes -- just for a second. Open your eyes."
My eyes fall open. I am blinded by a flash, and then another.
After a few seconds he presses something into my hand.
"This time it's free, because you knew me, but next time it'll
cost you. I'm getting famous, you know."
My eyes adjust and he stuffs the object back in his bag.
"I always keep one. I figure you owe it to me. Hell, you never
know, someday you just might buy it back." He stands just as the
train stops. The doors slide open and he steps onto the
platform. The doors close. He is gone.
I look down at my hand. It's a Polaroid. As the image solidifies
I see my face, but I don't recognize myself. I see a man
drowning in fear. A man with desperate, lost eyes. A man who is
still a child.
At the surface I find a phone booth. My hands feel like paws as
I search my body for change. I bat my jacket pocket, feeling the
shape of my tie when I hear the clink and hiss of metal. I claw
my tie out and coins tumble in a streak onto the ground.
The tie unravels like a snake in my hand, and wrapped in the
center of its coils is the long purple crystal.
I stand with my forehead against the glass for ten minutes
before I dial her number. I can feel a train pass beneath the
street. It feels like an earthquake and I am the epicenter. I
have a hard time holding the receiver to my ear. It rings six
times and she answers. Her voice is quiet and soggy from sleep.
"Hello?"
I don't speak, but grip the crystal until it bites into my hand.
"Hello?"
For some reason I am sobbing.
"Who is this?"
"I think I love you," I say.
She is silent, but her silence is warm.
Jon Seaman (jes@unislc.slc.unisys.com)
-----------------------------------------
Jon Seaman says he turned to technical writing rather than face
jail, but who are you going to believe: him or us? He has a BFA
in Theater and is a published playwright whose works include
"Lenses" and "Autumn." "Epicenter" originally appeared in
_Shades_ magazine.
Innocent Bystander by Mark Smith
===================================
...................................................................
* When researchers get too close to their work, they risk losing
their objectivity. But as one sociologist discovers, there's no
such thing as an "outside observer"... *
...................................................................
The thing that gets me about what happened is this: I didn't
have to do my wash at the laundromat.
I make a good living. We have a big house with a laundry room
complete with a washer and dryer. My wife always thought I was
crazy for going out to a laundromat. But then, my wife would
never leave the house if she didn't have to. That's how we're
different, how we each cope with all the free time there is in
our lives. We never got around to having children and now we're
both too set in our ways to consider it. And living in a Texas
town full of nothing but unemployed redneck racists -- with whom
we have nothing in common -- we have learned to take our
entertainment where we find it. Which is not usually at the
Twinplex in the Target Mall.
So now my wife's idea of fun is to sit in front of the
television all day watching soap operas and reading paperback
novels. She says it's escape, pretends she's slumming, but I
think it's more than that. She's an expert on the soaps, you
might say. Even reads _Soap Opera Digest._ She knows the private
lives of all the stars, why so- and-so really left _Days of Our
Lives_ and that sort of thing. I find that depressing. I told
her that's just a superficial fantasy world driven by
sentimentality where the only emotions are lust and jealousy and
even those ring false.
I prefer the theater of real people I find at the laundromat.
Real people are my specialty actually, my vocation. I'm a
sociology professor at the teacher's college in town so watching
people, studying them, is sort of an ongoing lab for me. And
there's no place I've found -- except possibly bus stations --
better than laundromats for watching people. I tell this to my
students all the time. I try to get them to go out and watch
people, learn why they act the way they do, how their lives are
a factor of their environment. I give them research assignments
to go to laundromats, bus stations, thrift stores, soup
kitchens. They look at me with just about the same expression as
my wife when I head out the door with a load. Their idea of
field study extends to bars and coffee shops in the immediate
campus area.
I don't care. I never know what I might find at the laundromat.
It's like an avant-garde play where the props stay the same, but
the cast and script change every week.
I went down to do my laundry with a small basket of clothes
(after all, we do most of the real wash at home). I go to the
Kwik Wash in the Piggly Wiggly strip shopping center over on
Woodland Avenue. Woodland is something of a dividing line
between two parts of town. On one side are mostly blacks and
some Mexicans. On the other side there are mostly whites who
feel very threatened by the blacks who have begun to make enough
to buy houses across the avenue. To add to that, the city's just
come along and put in a low-to-moderate income housing project
on the Avenue right beside the laundry. It's a little tense in
that area, but you know what they say about how fools rush in.
I had tried other laundromats but none of them seemed to have
quite the same mix of people as the Kwik Wash. There are plenty
in our neighborhood, for instance, but we live close to campus
and most of the people who use those are students. You can see
them any hour of the day scratching their hung-over heads or
burying their noses in fat textbooks, clutching their pink and
yellow highlighters. I figure I see enough students during the
week to become intimately familiar with their habits.
That morning I got to the laundromat at around 11. I was a
little disappointed that there weren't many people there yet. Of
course, the owner was the same as ever, doing his usual
business: wandering around, checking the soap boxes in the
vending machines, putting the lids up on the washers nobody was
using, checking the dryers for those anti-static things that
always get stuck to your clothes. He nodded at me when I went
in. He was a gruff sort, though I never had any trouble with
him. His usual outfit was a greasy undershirt and thrift store
pants a couple of sizes too big for him. He had an unshaven
grizzly look and he chain-smoked in spite of his "no smoking"
sign. His sign was a variant of the ones with a circle and a
slash: inside it said "smoking, soliciting, loitering, pets" and
underneath it "Please supervise your children."
All things considered, he ran a good clean laundromat and I
figured that was all that mattered. In my book, there are way
too many people who don't give a damn about quality anymore.
They slide by with as little as they can and then expect to get
paid for it. The way I see it, you take the money, you do the
job, regardless of how little you make.
Aside from the owner there were only two other people in the
laundromat. One was a huge black woman -- she must have weighed
400 pounds -- sitting in one of the plastic chairs by the window
with her basket on the floor between her legs. As she folded the
laundry out of the basket she made neat stacks in the chairs on
either side of her. She didn't look up when I went in.
The other was a white man with one leg who was hard at work
banging on one of the two video games. He was a lanky
middle-aged fellow with a deep tan and horn-rimmed glasses who
looked like he had seen some hard living. He had his crutch
propped up against the side of the machine and the empty leg of
his blue work pants was neatly folded and pinned up. He leaned
against the machine and concentrated on working the joystick and
levers. The machine made exploding noises and machine gun
rattles that sounded like they were coming from the other side
of a thick door. Every couple of minutes he would pound his fist
on the machine and say, "Son of a bitch!" and then reach into
his pocket to pull out another quarter and keep going.
I set my basket on the floor beside the first available machine.
I put all the clothes in, dump in some detergent I carry in a
yogurt container, and put three quarters in the little vertical
slots. I love the _chung-chung_ feel of the coin slot when you
slide it into the machine and then out again. It makes me think
of the bolt action of a rifle, though I have to say I've never
worked one.
I had just gotten my load going and was leaning against the
machine when two Mexican men came in. One of them had his
clothes in a pillowcase with a faded flower print pattern on it.
The other was carrying an olive drab duffle bag like army
surplus stores sell. They were about the same age --
mid-thirties, I guessed -- and they were dressed similarly in
faded jeans and boots, though one wore a Sea World T-shirt that
had a picture of Shamu and the other had on a plaid western
shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps for buttons and on the pockets.
They were talking their Spanish ninety miles a minute and
laughing up a storm. After they started their clothes they
leaned against their machines and kept right on talking. I'm not
afraid to say that it bothers me when Mexican people speak
Spanish in public. It's rude and, besides, I have never
understood how Mexicans can live in this country and not learn
the language. You'd think they'd want to so they could compete
for jobs. But competition is an American trait and I guess they
live by a different standard.
Slowly they worked their way over to the vending machine area.
There were two vending machines, one for snacks and one for
cokes. The snack machine had a heavy grating in front of the
display glass to keep people from smashing it in and stealing a
bag of Tom's Cheese Doodles or a peanut plank. The coke machine
had big bars across it, though there was an opening for the coin
slot and where the drinks came out. The Mexicans both bought
cokes and stood there drinking them while they jabbered on in
Spanish.
Just then, the glass door on the west side of the laundromat
flew open and two black kids ran in, a girl and a boy, no older
than seven or eight. They were laughing and yelling really loud.
They chased each other under the big high tables with metal legs
you use to fold your clothes. They didn't seem particularly
destructive, but I could see the owner get nervous right away.
He stopped in the middle of one of his little chores and waved a
fat sausage finger at the kids and shouted across the room.
"Hey, now, y'all git on outta here, an' keep out lak I done told
you already."
The kids paused in mid-step and stared at this big, rough white
man who looked about as friendly as a pit bull. I couldn't see
that he had any grounds to be so upset, but I figured it was his
joint and he seemed to have some gripe with these kids, so who
was I to say? Maybe he'd been chasing them out ten times a day
all week.
Whatever the case, the kids stood there staring at him, all of
their fresh bluster and banter gone, evaporated in a wave of
fear of this white man who was older and bigger and maybe a
little crazy.
The owner took a step toward the kids. They broke and ran for
the door, disappearing back toward the apartments next door.
Everyone in the laundromat--me, the Mexicans, the lady folding
her wash, even the guy playing the video game--had fallen silent
and watched with careful interest. When the kids were gone, the
owner looked from one to the other of us and said to no one in
particular, "Goddamn kids. They come from that projec' yonder.
They ain't got no sense. They're in here all the time. All the
damn time runnin' up and down the place. They don' never do
nothin' but scare off my good customers." He shook his head in
disgust. "Goddammit!"
The woman folding her clothes stared at him like she couldn't
figure out what planet he'd fallen off of. The Mexican men
didn't seem to understand what he'd said and the guy playing the
video game pumped in another quarter and nodded his head
sympathetically.
I nodded too because I understood what the guy felt like. He was
clearly a redneck full of hate, but he was trying to run a
business and he felt abused. I could see that. He must have
thought I was the most agreeable to his position, so he shuffled
over to me and kept talking in his too-loud voice:
"Them damn people don't want nothin' but a hand-out. They want
someone to take care of them. They ain't working and they ain't
watchin' their damn kids either. I'll tell you somethin': them
kids ain't gon' 'mount to nothin'. Them people's just a bunch of
trash is all."
I kept on nodding, though more out of politeness because I felt
what he was saying was out of line. They were children, after
all, and children are supposed to be rambunctious. I figure they
all act a little wild once in a while. That doesn't mean they're
bound to grow up bad. But I kept my mouth closed. I'm not one to
argue with someone about their point of view. They're entitled
to that, aren't they?
All the same, I was glad when the woman who had been folding her
laundry spoke up, erupted in fact, like a volcano: "Hey,
mister," she said, looking up at him from where she sat. "You
ain't got no right to be sayin' that noise 'bout them kids.
Huh-uh. You got a right to keep 'em out your place if they ain't
bein' cooper'tive, but you don't go sayin' they trash or none of
that talk, now. You could jinx those children you go talkin'
that way. And the Good Lord knows they got enough against 'em as
it is."
The woman delivered this speech with one arm akimbo, her hand
doubled against her vast hip, using her other hand to point a
dimple- knuckled finger at the owner. He stood looking at the
woman with something between awe and dismay. No doubt he was not
used to being talked to this way, especially by a black woman.
The laundromat was very quiet. The Mexicans had stopped talking,
the computer game had stopped exploding. The only sound was the
low churning rumble of the washing machines and the clicking of
buttons and snaps in the dryers. We all seemed to share an
uneasiness, I guess because we regarded the owner as a
temperamental man, easily capable of violence if provoked.
The owner seemed about to respond to the woman, his mouth
starting to open, when the door of the laundromat flew open
again.
I knew there would be trouble as soon as I saw the man coming
in, his eyes glaring with the fury of years of pent-up anger. I
don't believe I saw his gun until later, but I knew something
was going to happen. His face was mask-like, stiff with hatred.
Without so much as a glance at anyone else in the laundromat, he
stalked straight over and jammed his face into the owner's like
an indignant ballplayer confronting an umpire.
"Hey man," he yelled at the owner. "What the fuck did you say to
my kids?"
The word "fuck" shot out of his mouth like a bullet. I would
have been even more terrified than I was, except the owner just
looked at the guy with his same old laconic, half-lidded
expression. The owner must have to deal with crazies all the
time. He'll know how to handle this guy.
"I told your kids the same thang I tell 'em ever' damn day. I
told 'em to get the hell outta my laundry-mat 'cause they ain't
up to no good."
"You got my kids all upset, man. My wife is upset, too. I don't
need you upsettin' my family." I thought I could hear a
plaintive tone beneath the father's anger.
"Go home an' calm down, hoss. You ain't got nothin' to be all
hot 'an bothered about."
"Nothin'?" said the father, his voice so high it seemed to
squeak. "Nothin'? Hey, white man, you call this nothin'?"
It seemed to me I saw the gun earlier, but I don't know how
because at that moment the father stepped back one pace and as
he did, pulled up his shirt and yanked the thing out of his
pants. He held it in both hands, pointed stiff-armed at the
owner's chest. The owner looked down at the thing like it was a
fifty and the guy wanted change. His eyes never lost their
sleepy look.
So much of our disposable culture -- movies, television, pulp
novels, comic books -- depends on this drama of random,
unpredictable violence. But for all of that, how many of us have
ever seen someone point a gun at another person, much less at
ourselves? I was unable to respond. I couldn't escape the denial
that it wasn't happening, that I was watching this scene in a
movie or on TV. I was locked there, unblinking, numb with fear.
My heart was beating fast. I heard a humming electrical current
of self-preservation telling me to move, run for the door, hide
behind something.
But I didn't. I did something else, something very
uncharacteristic and stupid. Since that day I've wondered why I
did it, and the only thing I can figure is that I knew if I did
nothing the father would shoot the owner and the owner would be
dead. I did not want to see a man die. So I spoke the only word
I could remember, the only word in my vocabulary at that precise
moment:
"No."
That was all: just "no," just once. It shattered the moment as
though someone had thrown a rock through the laundromat's front
window, except for the sound because it was dead silent. In that
silence, I could see the sound of my one syllable register in
the head of the father. And when he heard it, he moved without
thinking. I could see that. He just pivoted toward me in a
single plane, his outstretched arms wheeling in an arc in front
of him like the turret of a battleship.
He shot me once in the chest.
The doctors said that he just missed killing me. That may be,
but I was dead. I knew it unequivocally in every part of my
mind. I don't remember falling, only being on the hard floor of
the laundromat looking up at the fluorescent light tubes on the
ceiling, pushing myself along on the floor with my heels, the
redness closing in around the edges, knowing I was dead and
thinking only one final absurd thought: who's going to dry my
load?
I don't remember anything after that. They tell me the owner
grabbed the gun from the father and I guess no one else got
hurt. I stayed in the hospital for a few weeks and by the time I
got out the father had been sent to Huntsville for two years. I
didn't care. In fact, I didn't want him to go to jail at all.
Who can say which of us could get desperate or crazy enough to
do something like that? He hadn't meant to do me any particular
harm other than a general rage I imagine he probably felt toward
society.
My wife never told me I shouldn't have gone to that place, that
I didn't have to go, that I had no business trying to peek into
those people's lives. She just came every afternoon while I was
in the hospital, and sat in my room and watched her soap operas
on the TV over my bed. The same ones every day:
_Days of Our Lives,_ _Another World,_ and _Santa Barbara._
Watching every day, I began to feel myself tugged into the
rhythm of the endless ebb and flow of the characters and their
small world, like watching a tiger pace in a zoo cage. I became
lulled by their perfect, trivial lives unscarred by any tragedy
worse than failed love.
I haven't been back to the laundromat since. In fact I haven't
been out of the house much at all. The college gave me a
generous leave. At first some of my colleagues and students came
by to visit, but they don't much anymore.
My wife still watches the soaps, but I'm onto something better.
Her brother got a job in a place where they make copies of the
tapes from security cameras. You know, the ones you see when you
go in banks and Circle-Ks, braced on the walls, panning from one
side of the room to the other. He can get me as many as I want
and I take a lot. All the interest of watching people with none
of the danger: the best of both worlds, and it's all real.
Eventually I'll get a publishable study out of them, but for now
I just watch them for hours at a time. People coming and going
in a black and white world, choosing cans of beer, filling out
deposits slips, buying lottery tickets. And all the time I'm
watching: miles away, weeks later, over their heads, out of
their lives. And they never have a clue.
Mark Smith mlsmith@tenet.edu
-------------------------------
Mark Smith is a regular contributor to _InterText_. He has been
writing fiction and non-fiction for over ten years. His fiction
has appeared or is forthcoming in _Window_, _Spectrum_,
_Malcontent_, _Epiphany_, the _Lone Star Literary Quarterly_,
and _Elements_. Mark is also the author of a collection of short
stories titled _Riddle_ (Argo Press, Austin, Texas, 1992).
Mercy Street by Ridley McIntyre
==================================
...................................................................
* Technology advances faster than our laws or common morality.
Clever as we are, can we support the human costs of our
ingenuity? *
...................................................................
This street is hollow. A tube full of nothing. Empty. Lonely.
Like a star. Neon so bright and shiny that it dazzles in the
sunlight. Concrete sparkling diamonds across my eyes. Stars in
the sunlight.
Sees other stars and believes in friends. Lies. There are no
friends. No enemies. No souls. The sky is full of holes. Hollow
holes like this street.
Hollow boy he cries. Shedding water as if a skin. Sheds until
his eyes burn and he's a ball, wracked with pain. Pain inside.
Wearing a grief mask, or some pale reflection. There he stays.
Lost in a maze. A wilderness of empty soul. Every twist and turn
a dead end of the mind. A riddle that doesn't matter. Never
makes sense.
"Understand me. Do you understand?"
Despite the one way connection I have with him, I have to shake
my head.
"Then learn."
There's a camera-eye view of the world. Looking through a
kaleidoscope. Fish-eye technicolor tunnel-vision of this street.
The car is sleek. A joy rider. Young boy full of old ideals.
Gonna join Metropol, this kid. Gonna be somebody.
He's too small. His feet barely reach the pedals and he can't
see where the hood ends and the nightlights begin. Company car.
His friends laughing and screwing around in the back.
"Faster, man! Push it to the floor." They goad him and he
smiles. Two feet on the accelerator pedal, he closes his eyes.
Senses the danger. The wall races to the car and the car is
still. The hood crushes. His face smashed against the steering
wheel. The crash bag inflates above his head. The engine burns.
He can hear his friends screaming as they go over him. Through
the glass. Out into space. Then he hears no more.
Lost in what he was, memory falls on him from on high. Raw bile
history burns his throat. Burn in red flames, friends. So-called
friends that never were. Just like they burned him. Just like
the nearest star burns his skin. Hardens him. Turns him to ash.
He crumbles before its gaze. Nothing but a void of chrome and
electronics. A brain lost to technology. And there he stands, a
living corpse shell of a boy. Sweet smile, spike hair, baby eyes
no more. The past has burned the chaff away.
Now something inside him has died. The part that washed against
the shores of life but could only grab sand, torn away. Rip
tide. World now an empty space. A world without feelings.
Nothing but fast strong currents leading to deep-water holes.
Hollow holes like this street.
"You really don't give a shit, do you?" Dirt runs down his face
in thin lines. Greasy smears across his silver skin. "You really
don't care who I am."
I'm silent. Utterly silent.
He never really wakes up. Not in the physical sense. They switch
his eyes on and he can see. They don't let him have a mirror.
They don't let him touch himself. Through digital hearing he
listens to the doctors. Full prosthetic rehabilitation. A
technological marvel.
Don't want it. Want to be dead. Want to be anything but this.
The doctors reassure him. They tell him that he'll get used to
it. That the bad feelings and the nightmares will pass. Others
have and so will he. Sterile tasteless hands show him off to
students. Look at what we made. Once a dead boy, now a living
machine. No one cares. No one there wants him to be alive. They
just want to look. Look at what we made.
Once a whole person. A young boy with old ideals. Now hollow.
Like this street.
This street is salt. Transforming. Tears raining down across the
concrete. Like blood. Like a red storm -- purifies. Constantly
changing. Warping in and out in a continuous heat haze.
Evaporates into nothing. And the salt trails behind. A bug swarm
on the tail of a scirocco wind. Leaving behind only the sound of
crying. Echoes in the darkness. Empty voices. Lonely. Like a
lost boy.
Sees other boys. Ghosts of memory. Across the street. The street
is full of them. Consumed by them. They are everything. And he
believes in friends. Convinces himself. They're real. They're
all real. And so am I.
"I care." I take his link from my head and my dreams are my own
again.
Kiss him and he tastes of mercy. Rain salt mercy washing me
clean. Dry. Soul desert kiss. But warm lips. Warm steel lips and
I close my eyes to him. Warm him. Warn him. Convince him.
You're not so alone.
Ridley McIntyre (gdg019@cch.coventry.ac.uk)
----------------------------------------------
Ridley McIntyre was born in London, England and now studies
Communications as Conventry University. His ambitions are to
escape to Canada before he gets conscripted and to make some
sense of the Real World.
Post-Nuclear Horrifics by Eric Crump
=======================================
...................................................................
* If you believe the world is coming to an end, does it actually
matter if the sky is falling? *
...................................................................
1.
----
The morning paper was covering part of his eggs. Banking
scandal. Arms talks. Crumbling empires. The waitress was
standing right behind him, reciting to the two men at the next
table the same list of specials she had recited to him a minute
ago, the same she had recited, recited, recited all morning
long. Wilkie was nervous. Civil unrest here and there. Cold war
over. A photo of four geese crossing a road. A gunman on the
loose. He clenched his fist under the table. Unclenched. A child
was under a nearby booth banging two spoons together. The men in
the next table were arguing. A photo of a burning man falling
from a burning building. Wilkie tipped his head to get a better
listen.
"Who said I wanted to be happy?" one of the men said. "Who said
happiness was the purpose? You haven't been around much have
you?" He snapped his magazine, folded it back on itself, and
held it up to his face. Wilkie picked up his doughnut. He
stopped at the same cafe every afternoon, drank two cups of
coffee, and took notes in his journal. He jotted descriptions of
the weather, bits of dialogue overheard, and speculations about
the characters who frequented the place.
The second man leaned forward, chewing hard on a piece of bacon.
"You can't just give up like this. The only person who can
defeat you is you. Don't you see?"
The first man put the magazine down, buttered his roll and
shoved it, whole, into his mouth. "Thmph mphmm mffmth." Bread
bulged from the man's mouth, and crumbs tinkered down his shirt.
"Phmmth mphthmm!"
"You're pretty funny for a chronic depressive," the second man
said.
The man gulped the wad of bread and turned to Wilkie. "Mind if I
borrow your paper for a second?"
The headline on paper said Arms Agreement Bombs! The man tossed
the paper at his companion. It landed on his scrambled eggs. The
other man began to harangue and harangue. Wilkie looked out the
window. A woman with a baby carriage strolled past. A kid on a
bicycle passed her. The sun was bright. The waitress was
reciting the specials again. The child was crying. The cook
shouted "Order up!" The man at the next table began to
crescendo. Someone somewhere broke a glass. Wilkie lifted his
doughnut halfway to his mouth and paused. Something was
unraveling, something he couldn't see was unraveling. Or about
to explode.
2.
----
Mr. President still had his dark glasses on, even though he'd
made it to the underground shelter well before the blast. He bit
his fingernails ferociously.
"I hope Number Two got to the launch sequencer in time," he
said. "I hope everything from Beijing to Baghdad is smoking."
"Sea of flames, sir. I'm sure of it," said Wiggins. He felt
compelled to be agreeable. He had made the mistake of stopping
the limo as a light turned from yellow to red and as a result,
Mr. President had not been able to make it to the Presidential
Command Bunker, but had been forced to take cover in an
auxiliary shelter originally designed for neighborhood
bureaucrats.
Mr. President was known on Capitol Hill as The Veto King. He was
secretly proud. During one session he vetoed fifty-seven percent
of the measures enacted by Congress. All but five of his vetoes
were overridden. He had VK stitched into his monogrammed towels.
The bunker had plenty of food and water in it, but no strategic
command communications facilities, not so much as a walkie
talkie. They'd been in the shelter for twenty minutes and the
time had been spent in eerie, uncomfortable silence, punctuated
only by Mr. President's occasional lament that he hadn't gotten
to initiate the firing sequence. Finally, Mr. President changed
the subject.
"Awfully quiet in here, don't you think, Wiggins?"
"Yessir." Wiggins was standing at attention. Mr. President was
sitting on a cot.
"Don't you think it would have been noisier? I always thought it
would be pretty noisy."
"The shelter is no doubt designed to keep the noise out, sir."
"Ah. You're probably right," Mr. President said. "Say, are you
getting hungry? What have we got to eat here?"
Mr. President put Wiggins at ease and ordered him to find the
inventory list. The list reported a six-month supply of canned
ham, canned tomatoes, canned peaches, canned yams, canned
asparagus, and soda crackers. Wiggins found cans of butter beans
on the first shelf. On the second shelf he found cans of butter
beans. He was reaching for a can on the third shelf when he
suddenly realized that history, if it still existed, would hunt
him down, bag him, and mount his name over the toilet. He had
hesitated. He'd driven the leader of the free world to a
second-rate bomb shelter. By the time his hand touched the can
of buttered beans he knew that his only hope was that history
had perished in the apocalypse.
3.
----
Wilkie shook his head. A puff of dust surrounded him. He spit
twice and looked around. He was standing in the middle of a
blacktop road. Just in front of him was a small store. He had no
idea where he was. A few seconds earlier he had been sitting in
a Kansas City coffee shop. He was dunking a bagel in his coffee
then he was dusting himself off in front of a country store,
feeling a little dizzy. He hoped the place had a phone.
"Do you have a phone?" he asked the big woman behind the
counter.
"Pay phone," she said, and pointed to a relic on the wall. "Cost
you a nickel."
"A nickel?"
"Hey, buddy, you don't get something for nothing," she said. "By
the way, your hair's smoking."
Wilkie had been to college. For a while. His second course had
been The History of Technology. The professor was a personable
fellow who smiled as he described medieval medical technology
and its effectiveness in combating the plague. "Death got better
reviews back then," he said. His motto was "Progress through
technology," which he admitted he'd swiped from an Audi
commercial. He laughed at the students who pointed out that
technology was causing pollution and other world problems.
"Luddites!" he said. "If you hate technology so much, why don't
you turn off your air conditioners and sell your cars. Give the
money to the poor! By God, old Ned Lud must be smiling now,
wherever he is." It was the last history class Wilkie took. He
left it with a healthy fear of the past.
Wilkie flinched and looked up. He didn't quite catch sight of
his hair, but slender noose of smoke curled down around his
nose. He batted his head. Masochistic slapstick. Slappity slap
slap slap. The woman frowned. Slap.
"Here." She tossed a damp rag at him. He patted his hair with it
until the smoke seemed to stop flirting at the edge of his
vision when he moved. He was out.
"Want me to call an ambulance? They got a new one up in Platte
City," she said. "They'd probably love to take it for a spin."
"No. I think I'm OK," Wilkie said. He walked out the door, stood
on the porch for a moment and considered: he didn't know exactly
where he was. He didn't have a car. He'd been through something,
he didn't know what. He walked back into the store.
"I guess I do need a little help."
"Tell you what," the woman said. "I'll call the sheriff. He's
new, too. Just elected him last month. He needs the practice."
4.
----
Little girls in big girl poses. They looked uncomfortable, their
smiles oddly frozen, their eyes directed off-camera. Were they
looking at an adult, searching for the crinkle around the eyes,
any sign of approval? or for permission to relax, for permission
to get dressed, to go out and play? Mr. President leafed through
the pictures twice. He couldn't think of anything to say at
first.
Wiggins placed a small trash can next to the bed. Mr. President
let the photos drop into the container.
"Aren't these shelters supposed to be secure?" Mr. President
asked. "I think we've got a security problem here. Did you check
that door?"
Wiggins assured him that the door was locked.
"What kind of scum would... Jesus," Mr. President said. "My
brother had a daughter. If he saw those --"
Wiggins said nothing. He had two daughters, one of whom grew up
and had two babies of her own, boys. Wiggins had once taken the
boys fishing in Maine. One of them fell out of a tree and landed
in the lake. The boy's brother had pulled him out. He was OK. He
hadn't even stopped breathing. But their mother never let them
go fishing with him again. She said no offense, Dad, but there's
just too much of them in me.
Wiggins found peace through tomatoes. He grew them in plastic
cat food buckets he got from his neighbor. He spent hours
pruning the leafy growth on the theory that if the plant had
fewer leaves to mind it could apply more of its energy to the
fruit. His tomatoes turned out fine every year.
5.
----
The sheriff's car reminded Wilkie of a hippopotamus, round and
wallowy. Some guys could identify the make, model and year of
every car built between 1940 and 1985 (after which they all
started to look alike), but he wasn't one of them. This car
wasn't like anything built in his driving lifetime. The sheriff
flicked his cigarette out the window and pulled the car into a
Standard station. He told the fat boy to pump her full. The gas
pump rattled like an old clothes dryer. Wilkie asked the sheriff
if he could use the restroom.
"It don't bother me any if you do."
The restroom door was at the back of the building. Wilkie
rounded the corner and came upon a mountain of worn out tires,
leaking batteries, rusted tailpipes, and bent chrome molding. A
boy was peeing on the tires.
"Restroom out of order?" Wilkie said.
"Holy shit!" the boy said, and lurched backward, struggling with
his zipper. "No sir, just go on in there, it's fine." The zipper
wouldn't slide.
When Wilkie was nine he had been sent against his will to summer
camp. He knew he would be bored, and he was. When he saw a copy
of 1984 sitting on the counselors' table, he took it and spent
the rest of camp hiding behind the john, reading. He went home
without having learned to canoe or play volleyball, but he had a
acquired a dread of the future.
"Can I ask you something?" Wilkie said. The boy looked to be
about eight or nine. Probably still fairly honest, he figured.
"What town is this?"
"Weston."
Weston was about 25 miles north of Kansas City. Being in the
general vicinity of where he thought he should have been was
comforting. He'd read about Weston once, a feature story about
antebellum homes and quaint wineries and old tobacco barns and
herds of tourists. It was a place that had for so long not
bothered to change that it had become valuable. People came from
all over to buy Korean knickknacks displayed in refurbished old
buildings. People paid money to wander through 150-year-old
homes that had been restored to their original condition and
decor, only cleaner.
"Just curious. How old are you?"
"Ten." The boy was still fiddling with the zipper. He picked up
a piece of wire and was using it to prod the mechanism.
"When were you born?"
"January."
"That makes you four months old," Wilkie said, winking.
The boy looked at Wilkie and frowned. He dropped the wire and
counted off five fingers, silently reciting.
"Five months," he said. "That makes me five months old. Except
I'm ten, really."
The kid not only lacked a sense of humor, Wilkie though, but he
apparently didn't know the difference between May and June.
"What year were you born?"
"Shit," the boy said, and dodged quickly through the junk and
around the corner of the building. Wilkie turned around. The
sheriff was standing, legs spread, hands on hips, cigarette
hanging from mouth, eyes squinting.
"You done with your business yet?"
The restroom no cleaner than any other he'd ever been in. The
blue paint was peeling from the cinder block walls. The toilet
was choked with paper and cigarette butts. Someone had emptied
an ashtray. There was a spare roll of toilet paper in the
urinal, soaked. Wilkie found this reassuring. He thought it went
a long way toward supporting his theory that nostalgia was
essentially dangerous and wrong. He knew he wasn't where or when
he was supposed to be by a few miles and a few years. It was
good to know that gas station restrooms were dirty,
nevertheless. What was most unsettling was the missing month.
6.
----
Mr. President and Wiggins sat on opposite sides of the shelter.
Wiggins had dragged one of the cots over near the door and was
looking for a pillow when the lights went out. Both men felt
their stomachs clutch and each turned, eyes as wide as they
could go, toward the other, unable to see anything but the
shapeless night. But only Mr. President said anything.
"Shit."
Mr. President drank too much at his inaugural celebration. He
looked like he was going to tip over at one point, so his aides
suggested that he take a break to freshen up. He said sure why
the hell not and walked into the women's restroom. He tried to
retreat, but a bottleneck of Secret Service agents had formed at
the door. News photographers swarmed, jaws snapping their gum.
Mr. President and Wiggins remained quiet, barely breathing the
dark air, for some time, waiting for the emergency generator to
come on and return the light. Finally, Mr. President observed
that if the lights were out, the ventilators were not working.
Another extended silence ensued. Both men watched the dark air
for signs of thickening. Soon both were convinced that the air
was becoming soupy. They labored for breath. They panted.
Wiggins felt the panic of the end in the sluggish air. He wanted
to get past the panic and die peacefully. He wanted to feel the
liberation of no return. Wiggins had driven for Mr. President
for eight years. One night, when Mr. President had only been Mr.
Governor, he inadvertently signaled right and turned left. He
never forgot the terror he felt when the limousine came to a
stop, wounded and rocking gently, and he never forgot Mr.
President's kindness and understanding. "Could have happened to
anyone, old boy," he'd said and patted Wiggins on the shoulder.
Now Wiggins would be glad when nothing could be done and nothing
would matter, when Mr. President would be nothing more than his
twin, a pile of bone and flesh not distinguishable in any
important way from his own.
Mr. President seriously considered making a run for it. Panic
scared him more than death. The thought of twisting on this
concrete floor, clawing for oxygen was more horrible than any
violence. If the blast had not been too close and if there
wasn't a firestorm outside and if the car hadn't been
incinerated or vandalized, they might be able to make it to
another shelter without exposing themselves to much radiation.
If they held their breath. If they made good time.
"I'm not going to just sit here and choke on your breath,
Wiggins," Mr. President said. "I think we should head for the
Command Bunker, where we should have been in the first place."
Wiggins considered for a moment. The outside death or the inside
death. "With all due respect, sir," he said. "Go to heck."
Mr. President was too shocked to move.
7.
----
The sheriff drove through town, past the police station, past
the bank on the corner, past the Hotel Weston, which was still a
hotel, and past Rumpel's Hardware. Weston used to be a river
town. It was just about to blossom with prosperity, like all the
other river towns did in the mid-nineteenth century, when along
came the flood of '51 and the Missouri River, the spastic snake,
lurched three-quarters of a mile west. Weston was too stunned to
grow. Mr. Rumpel was sitting on the front porch. He was already
old, which was somewhat reassuring to Wilkie, who had wandered
into his store during his one visit to Weston. Mr. Rumpel was
ancient then, his eyes watery and clouded. Mr. Rumpel waved as
the sheriff's car went past. The sheriff drove around the block
and cruised through town again.
"Where are we going?" Wilkie asked. "I thought the county court
house was in Platte City."
"I got some business to attend to here. You aren't in any rush
are you? Don't got any appointment to get to, do you?" He
laughed and flicked another cigarette.
"Nice car," Wilkie said. "New?"
"Nope. Had it two years," the sheriff said. "Guy who was before
me paid too much for it, which is one of the reasons he ain't
sheriff anymore. I'm thinking about trading it. Forty-nine Fords
don't last. Friend of mine had one that shucked a trannie at
10,000 miles."
On the third trip around the block he looked up and down the
street quickly and pulled into the driveway of an old white
house. He drove the car into the back yard and parked it behind
a shaggy lilac clump.
A woman who looked very tired and very sane answered the back
door. She was leaning toward the sheriff as if to kiss him but
stopped short when she saw Wilkie.
"Who's this?"
"Just some guy who wandered into Martha's store with singed
hair, lost," the sheriff said. "Don't worry. He'll stay in the
kitchen." He turned to Wilkie. "You just stay put. Don't forget,
I can arrest you if I want."
"Arrest me for what?"
"Vagrancy. And don't think I won't."
"Good Lord, Ray. Being burnt and lost doesn't make a man a
vagrant," the woman said. "Did you even ask him where he lives?
He's new at this, mister. Don't take it personal. Besides,
honey, the boys are still here. Their Aunt Donna woke up with
cramps."
"Christ, Ruth Mary, when am I going to get a break? Life's a
crap game and I just rolled snake-eyes."
"Oh, don't be a cry-baby. What's your name, young man? Come in
and I'll get us some cokes. Don't have any ice, I'm afraid, but
it'll help some. Wet your whistle. Supposed to hit 90 today, I
hear."
Ruth Mary sometimes hid from Ray and the boys in the storm
cellar behind the house. It was a comfortable place, stocked
with canned goods and candles and cases of Coke in case a really
big storm or some other disaster came along. She also had hidden
there, behind the shelves, books. A Tolstoy, two Henry James,
and Gone with the Wind. She thought Ray might marry her someday
and she wanted to get her reading done.
8.
----
Mr. President stood at the top of the shelter stairs, the last
bolt in the last door in his hand. He was trying not to breath,
trying to pick up any hint of what was beyond the door. What
would the devastation look like? Would there be bodies all
around, broken and ghastly, or did the fire consume them? Would
the ash of human remains be in the air, coat his throat, choke
him? He almost returned to the shelter. He couldn't hear
anything. That could be good, could be bad, he thought. I might
be about to die. He pushed the door open.
The sun was shining. The limousine was where they'd left it,
sans hub caps. Mr. President was glad, for a moment, to be
alive. He called to Wiggins and told him everything was OK. Then
he realized that the worst possible thing had happened. It had
been a false alarm.
He was going to look like an ass on CNN.
He passed Wiggins, who was grinning giddily at the sun, on his
way back down the steps.
"Have someone send me something that goes well with butter
beans," he said.
"But, sir. But, sir, everything is fine," Wiggins said. "Oh, I
see, sir." He climbed into the limousine turned on the radio.
Nothing. The battery was either dead, or missing.
9.
----
"Are you sure you've never been in an asylum?" Ruth Mary said.
"You sound like you came right out of one of those science
fiction comics my boys read."
Ray's hand was resting on his gun. He was squinting through the
smoke from his cigarette. He hadn't said much, but he'd muttered
a little while Wilkie told his story.
"I think it's odd that you were in May there and you ended up in
June here," Ruth Mary said. "Don't you think that's odd?"
Wilkie agreed. That was the oddest thing from his perspective,
too. Ray stabbed out one cigarette and lit another. "He's a
fruit- cake, Ruth Mary. How am I going to explain something like
this? I'll be impeached."
Two boys came running through the room. One of them was chasing
the other with a six-shooter aimed at the back of his brother's
head.
Ruth Mary's eyes narrowed. "You're not going to wake up all of a
sudden and realize that this was just a dream, are you? That's
been done, you know."
"Yeah, and where would it leave us?" Ray said.
Wilkie said he didn't think waking up was the answer.
"I don't know if there is an answer. I've either stumbled back
through time, or I'm nuts, or I'm dreaming. There's no way to
tell which it is, near as I can tell."
The boys came charging back through the room. This time they saw
Wilkie and stopped.
The one with the six- shooter carefully aimed it right at
Wilkie's nose.
"This is an atomic ray gun," he said.
"Stop it, boys."
"ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZam!" the boy said. "You're fried."
10.
-----
Mr. President and Wiggins sat on the same cot in the shelter.
Light from the doorway above fell on rows and rows of butter
bean cans. The two men were so completely unable to choose
between joy and despair that they had given up trying to decide,
opting for silent reflection inst
ead.
Finally, Wiggins cleared his throat.
"We could go get some chili dogs and beer."
Mr. President considered for a moment.
"Yes, I think that would be the best thing to do."
Eric Crump (LCERIC@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu)
-------------------------------------------
Eric Crump helps run the writing center at the University of
Missouri, where he moonlights as a graduate student in English.
He continues to write short fiction -- even though people
discourage this sort of behavior -- and his wife and daughter
love him anyway.
The Nihilist by Kyle Cassidy
===============================
...................................................................
* We're part of a living web, intricately bonded to others and
the earth. And when we can't understand the point to our lives,
sometimes we understand the bait on our hooks... *
...................................................................
1.
----
It's midnight and Dominique wants to go to The Rat. She wants to
be around a lot of people.
"Yes, go out," she says, "like to a bar or somewhere. I'm tired
of hanging around here... and I have a baby-sitter."
We meet a bunch of annoying people and a horrible band is
playing good songs. I run into this guy whom I used to live
with; I haven't seen him in a long time and we start talking.
Dominique buys me a beer in a plastic cup. I listen to the band
and I'm relatively happy. We're there for an hour and they turn
the lights on. It's pretty late and the bar starts to close.
Nivin and Sandy's friends are sitting in the corner, maybe
twenty of them. It was dark before and I hadn't noticed them.
"We're going over to Nivin and Sandy's," says one of them.
I ask Dominique if she wants to go back there, and she says
"Yes," and that she'll wait outside for me. She is talking to
some guy at the door. I sit down with a small woman with black
hair, dressed in overalls. "I'll see you guys over at Nivin and
Sandy's then," I say, and wave.
Dominique is sitting outside the bar watching television. We get
up and walk back to the car.
"Do you want to know what our problem is?" Dominique says
suddenly. "Do you want to know why I don't love you?"
"No. I don't want to know," I say. I get out of the car and slam
the door. "It's pointless. I don't care. I really don't
anymore."
I start back across 322, heading for my house. She's yelling at
me across the street: "Remember this! You're walking out on me!
You're the one who's walking away from this relationship!"
I get home and it's about two o'clock. I sit around the
apartment for a while holding my face in both hands, like I'm
trying the Vulcan Mind Meld on myself, and then I call my sister
in Oak Park, Illinois. She's not home and her answering service
gives me a number in Florida. I call her at the Holiday Inn in
this town called Stuart.
"Hey, what's up Big Bro?" she says. That's what she's called me
since she was about five. Before that she called me "Beehee,"
which was her best attempt at enunciating the difficult
collection of consonants and vowels in my name. She doesn't
sound as though she were asleep.
"Nothing," I say. I haven't talked to her in a long time; apart
from holidays I haven't seen her in seven years and I hardly
know what to say. "What are you doing?"
"We're busting a firm here in Stuart," she says. My little
sister is a secret agent. She works for the government in the
Department of the Treasury. I say it like that because it sounds
glamorous. What she does is pose as a naive investor with a lot
of money and go to brokerage firms and get defrauded and then
pull out a gun and a badge and a calculator. A bang and a crash
and a whole squad of SWAT accountants come in and take over all
the best offices in the building and start to dismantle the
place by paperwork. There is a lot of sweating going on and
sometimes, I suppose, people jump out of windows or run to
Paraguay or call their mistresses and tell them to get the hell
out of the condo before the accountants find out about it.
"Are you okay?" she says.
"Okay? I'm fine."
"You sound listless."
"I'm always listless. I'm having a crisis."
"Oh. Well, hey, why don't you come down here?" she says. There
is genuine concern in her voice. "The weather's nicer and it's
therapeutic."
"No money."
"Ha," she says and there's some giggling. I think that maybe
there's somebody else in the room. She says, "Hold on." A click
and a mechanical silence and I'm on hold for what seems like an
hour. She comes back on the line. "You have five hours to get to
the airport for the 7:20 to West Palm Beach. It's USAir and the
flight number is 302. Is that okay?"
"Okay? That's great."
"Do you have any classes?"
"Classes? I don't need no stinking classes. Hell with classes."
I'm really glad I have a sister.
On the plane ride down I sit next to a zombie who sleeps the
whole way and keeps retching, like he's about to hock up a
hairball. I eat a lot of Eagle peanuts and write a letter to
Dominique on the barf bag.
West Palm Beach: I'm going down the escalator towards baggage
claim and I can recognize my sister by her feet because she's
wearing really stupid shoes. The rest of her comes into view and
she sees me and runs up the escalator and throws her arms around
me and almost knocks me down.
"Hi big bro! I missed you! I really have!"
"I missed you too, little sister."
"What's your crisis? You sounded so awful on the phone. Want to
talk about it?"
"I don't know how. It's a moral crisis. I think. Maybe it's a
generation thing. Are you suffering from angst, nihilism,
boredom, and depression?"
"Ah, no," she says, "I suffer from Lawn Doctor, condo payments,
and inadequate tax shelters." My little sister makes a lot of
money.
"How long can you stay?" she says.
"I don't know. Until I go back."
"Won't they miss you at school?"
"They'll survive," I say.
She squeezes me really tightly and we walk outside. I'm blown
away by the weather which is amazingly warm, while I'm dressed
for New Jersey where it's about two degrees above freezing. We
talk on the car ride back about stupid things, and then she
says: "How's Dominique?"
I sort of grunt and look out the window.
"Is that your crisis? Did you guys break up or something?"
I think about this for a while. "We broke up, but I don't think
that's my crisis."
"Do you and Dominique get along?"
"No. Not really."
"Wow. It's been how long now?"
"Off and on, five years."
"And it's not getting any better?"
I laugh. "Ha. It's never gotten any better. I've spent five
years in an unrequited maelstrom of emotion and panic."
"You're being melodramatic."
"Of course I am."
"And you're not being fair."
"Of course I'm not. Dominique? No -- she's not even part of it
-- it's me, there's something inside me, like a magnet, or a
black hole that's pulling everything into this singularity -- I
have a feeling that my universe is about to implode. But that
has nothing to do with..."
"With what?"
"With anything," then I add, "I don't know if it's me who's
crazy, or if it's the people around me."
I look out the window again and I'm wondering what's wrong with
me, or if there's anything wrong with me. I figure that there's
nothing wrong with me.
We don't talk the rest of the way back to the motel. When we get
there she introduces me to the Attack Accountants, David and
Joe. David has red hair and freckles, so does my little sister.
Joe is a stocky guy with black hair and glasses.
"He's a republican," my sister whispers in my ear as I shake
hands with him. His hand is slimy. The two of them are sitting
in Joe's room, watching some basketball game. Joe is talking
about The Symposium and gets into a fight with my sister about
absolute beauty and homosexuality, or five armed lovers, or
something weird like that. I'm sitting on the edge of the huge
bed not really paying attention, staring into the upper left
hand corner of the television picture. Joe accusingly calls my
sister Cartesian, and somebody says something about breakfast.
As we get up my sister is saying: "Cartesian? Me? You stink,
therefore you are."
Though I'm full of peanuts I go along with them to Denny's.
About a billion old people live (expire?) in Stuart, which
boasts an enormous billboard which bears only the isolated word
RETIREES! in huge white-on-black letters just as you enter the
town. All the old people are bloated and they keep looking at my
long hair and calling me "ma'am." They are also all at Denny's.
This doesn't put me in a good mood. But then David buys a paper
and gives everybody a part of it while we're waiting for our
food. I end up with the Lifestyles section which has a big
article on Ernest Hemingway teaching F. Scott Fitzgerald's
daughter, Helga or whatever, how to fish. Picture of him
standing on the back of a boat with a machine gun. The caption
says that he used the machine gun to shoot sharks while fishing
in Key West.
"You know," I say, "while I'm here I'd like to go to Sloppy
Joe's, that bar that belonged to Hemingway."
"You know," says my little sister, "Ernest Hemingway was born in
Oak Park. His house is right down the street from mine, like a
block away."
"That's cool," I say, "I never knew that."
"Yes," she says. "He called Oak Park 'the land of wide lawns and
narrow minds.' "
"Ha ha. What did Oak Park think of that?"
"They named the library after him."
After breakfast I fold up the Hemingway article with the intent
on taking it home and reading it, or at least hanging up the
pictures on my bulletin board, but the maid is going to throw it
out the next morning when she cleans the room.
My little sister and her squad of Stormtrooper Bookkeepers run
off to work to make peoples' lives miserable, and I sit by the
pool reading a tattered copy of The Fifth Column, which was on
the night table, a spy thriller by Paine Harris called Thunder
of Erebrus, as well as a rather quaint little book called The
Abortion by Richard Brautigan. I'm so bored that I read about
six pages from each at a time and then switch.
The sun broils down upon me and old people thrash around in the
pool in front of me and I can never tell if they're drowning or
not. Every couple of minutes I look up over the pages of the
book and pick out the ones worth saving if they do start to
drown. I figure that I probably wouldn't save any of them. But
then I could be wrong.
On the ground by the pool tiny lizards dart out and snatch up
huge, black, radioactive ants off of the concrete, chewing with
thoughtful pause. The lizards are very swift and disappear
beneath the sheltering branches of low shrubs.
I pick up my journal and write down some observations about the
people in the pool. I think these observations are pretty shrewd
and fairly articulate (if not disquietingly misanthropic),
though unfortunately very Hemingway. My delusions of literary
grandeur will however be put aside a week after I get back; the
good people at Coma get extremely upset when they read these,
especially a strange young girl with straw-yellow hair who for
some odd reason thinks I am insulting her grandmother.
By four of the clock I have finished both The Abortion and The
Fifth Column, but of all the things I was reading the one that I
found most entertaining was the spy novel. I wonder about this
and go back to the room.
I take a shower and notice that I have a pretty good burn
started on my front and back. As always, my sides have not
tanned, neither has my neck nor the underside of my chin. These
white spots are in collusion with the iron shaped white patch on
my chest. It's the 'I was reading a book' sun tan -- the only
kind I've been able to get.
I watch TV for a while and then write in my journal about an old
woman and her granddaughter I had watched fighting at the
airport. The woman was so old that she had forgotten that she
was once young and the granddaughter was too young to imagine
getting old. They sat facing one another, despising one another,
and making no attempt at understanding one another's position.
Nothing there on television, so I grab my books and wander back
to the pool, thinking to do a few laps or something. The pool is
too small to do laps, but I want to get in the water for a while
if only to justify my being in Florida.
2.
----
"Hello?"
"Hello Dominique."
"Oh, hi. How are you?"
"Well, I'm under the delusion that I am Ernest Hemingway. I'm
warning you now."
"It's the fair thing to do. Thanks. Hey, about last night--"
"I'd rather not talk about it."
"Sure, of course."
"I mean I'm sure you've got your reasons and all... I don't
know. I just can't think about anything."
"Do you ever think of anything?"
"I am the architect of my own destruction. Sometimes I just
can't do the right thing even when I know what it is, when I
know I'm doing something wrong, something that I'll regret, I
just go on and do it anyway. I mean, sometimes, well, most time
I guess it looks like I don't care, but I do, I mean about
everything. I care, I'm just not... there. Hey, I was a poet and
was unaware of it..."
"I think that sometimes you don't know what you're looking for
and that sometimes you don't know how to get it. I think that
sometimes you won't talk to anybody and that pisses people off
and they think you're a snob or something."
"That's not it at all. I mean, sometimes I won't talk to
anybody, but that's because nobody knows what I'm thinking. And
I can't articulate myself to anyone. Sometimes I'm not even
thinking about anything, sometimes I'm just there and people
look at me like I'm out of my tree or something. I feel like
I've got to be doing something all the time or I'm letting
someone down. Hey, have you read "Everything Always Reminds You
of Something?" It's about this boy whose father is a famous
writer. Not only is he a famous writer, but he's good at
everything else too; everything he touches turns to gold. He's
especially fond of sports, he shoots pigeons -- they shoot clay
ones now, but these were real -- and he shoots them really well,
like 99 for 100, and the last one limps, ya know?"
"Yeah, I know. Right."
"So the kid's got to live up to this father, who has tremendous
expectations of him. The father's not pushy or anything, well,
actually he is... just by being so great at everything, he's
pushing his kid to be really great at something. So the kid
starts to shoot pigeons, and he's really good at it, and the
father marvels at how great the kid is at this and he's proud
and happy and all."
"Yeah.... A football dad."
"And so one day, the kid brings his dad this story that he's
written and the father is cowed, completely floored -- the story
is fantastic! It's amazing, the father has never seen anything
like it, he's sure his kid is a genius, and he starts pushing
him even more, slowly, subtly, like he's trying not to, but he
is..."
"Yeah...."
"And the father keeps saying to the kid, 'Why don't you write
something else? You can show it to me, and maybe I can help you
with it. If you want to.' And the kid says, 'Yeah, sure dad, I
will.' And the kid goes back to boarding school, and like two
years later the father is in the kids room at home looking for
something and he finds a book of short stories by somebody and
the story that the kid says he wrote is in there, he plagiarized
it, word for word, including the title, just to impress his old
man."
"So what are you saying?"
"I don't know. That's my point, I'm not saying anything. Do I
always have to be saying something? I can't be profound 24 hours
a day. I mean, it's just a good story, and I've been thinking of
Hemingway and of, you know, crashing through the waves and
catching marlin and harpooning them and machine-gunning sharks
that attack my catch.... I think like that sometimes. It's in my
universe."
"This is pointless. Look, Bradley, I don't want to talk about
this anymore. Maybe you think like Hemingway, maybe Hemingway's
in your universe. It's nice to know that somebody is. But you
don't have any space in your universe for me. You never have --
you've always been alone with yourself and in love with
yourself. I've made up my mind. We're through, you know.
Forever. There's someone else in my life now, someone who
doesn't fill me with empty spaces and dread and nihilism. I've
given this a lot of thought. I don't love you. I've never really
loved you. I'm sorry. I don't want to talk to you anymore."
About an hour later I hear the carload of economists pull up
outside and three doors slam in rapid succession. Joe is talking
about some contraceptive device they've been testing on
chickens, he'd read about it in some agricultural magazine. It
was some sort of body condom. Then I hear David remark: "For the
hen-pecker?" They all laugh, and I can't help but snort myself
from where I'm sitting on the bed, dripping wet hair into my
journal.
My little sister comes into the room and I say "Hi," and am very
glad to see her. She is smiling; we look for movies on T.V.
There is one on with Adam West, the guy who used to be Batman.
It's a campy thing about some race of aliens trying to recruit
high school kids to go back to planet Mung with them or
something. I'm not really paying too much attention, but it is
funny and sad in parts. We watch this movie for a while and then
my little sister wants to go out to eat. These attack
accountants, they eat out a lot. We go. I am not hungry, but I
eat an omelette stuffed with mushrooms anyway.
My little sister had three books on her night table, the
aforementioned Fifth Column, which I'd since thrown into the
pool, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and
Foucault's Pendulum. When we get back to the motel, she sits
down on her bed. I've always held that you can learn a lot about
a person by knowing what books they're reading.
"What the hell are you reading Catcher in the Rye for?" she
asks. She is going through the books on my night stand.
"It's a good book. Aren't I allowed to read good books?"
"Brad," she says heavily, giving me a sort of serious look. "I
trust you, big bro, really I do, more than anybody else in the
world, and sometimes when I think that I've done something
really clever, I look back and think of something even more
clever that you've done."
"Yeah?"
"Sometimes though I'm afraid that you're deluding yourself."
I frown at her. "Of course I'm deluding myself. I am deluged
with delusion. All of it self-indulged. Of the most deluxe
varieties. How am I deluding myself?"
"You're an idealist."
"Yeah."
"You're an anarchist."
"So?"
"But that doesn't work. It doesn't work outside of Walden Pond
and it'll never work as long as there are more than thirty
people on this planet. The vanguard is gone and the current
leaders are deranged."
"I'm not really an anarchist." I can't think of anything to say,
any way to explain anything to her. I suddenly feel very
inarticulate. "I used to know this guy named Bateman, he was a
chess player, still is -- it's weird, all these things that have
happened to me that you don't know about. It's been a long time.
The thing is, he's crazy as a loon -- Bateman that is --
excellent chess player, but he talks to leaves -- I mean the
kind that fall from trees. He's crazy, completely, but we used
to play chess all the time together. Anyway, he admitted to me
once that he didn't like to play chess. He couldn't stand it,
but he liked the way people looked at him when they knew that he
was a professional chess player."
"What are you saying?"
"Nothing. Whatever I'm saying I guess I'm not saying it very
well. I'm not really an anarchist. I don't believe the
anarchists. They just dress really well."
When it gets late we turn out the lights, but the curtains are
open a little and the light pours in yellow and bright and stark
in a manner which is particular to motels. We're both sitting up
in our beds, and the entire place feels like a motel. Even if I
closed my eyes and shoved my fingers in my ears and pinched off
my nose, I'd still know that I was in a motel somehow. The bed
feels like a motel bed, the sheets feel crisp and cheap like
motel sheets. I've already stolen the Gideon's Bible, which I do
every time that I'm in a motel for some reason. I've got dozens
of them. I don't know why, I suppose it's a character flaw. It's
a lousy translation anyway.
My sister bounces a couple of times in bed and starts talking
about the form of Zen she's been practicing, how she's been
sitting zazen in the full lotus position with her legs bent up
all crazy around her neck like pretzels. No one in my family was
Zen before her, it requires far too much discipline. My sister's
really practicing hard, though. From the way she's talking, I
doubt that she's searching for, or even believes she will attain
any form of enlightenment -- whatever that may be -- but she's a
lot more peaceful than anyone else I know. My little sister is
considerably more relaxed within self than I am. She's more
forgiving and less cathartic. She's been able to forgive me in a
way that I never have and let dead things pass.
We talk about what we want to do tomorrow. I say that I want to
go snorkeling or go to Sloppy Joe's. She wants to go deep sea
fishing.
I plop down on the bed, still laying on top of the covers. It is
quiet for a long time. Then my little sister says in an
amazingly quiet voice:
"Brad?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, really."
"You sounded so bad on the phone, you sounded awful."
"I'm sorry about that. I just got carried away, I mean, I
overreacted to everything I guess. You know how I always
exaggerate stuff... nothing happened and I made a big deal about
it."
"You sounded like you lost... everything."
"Heh, no. Really I'm sorry, sis. Nothing happened. I'm okay.
Okie- dokie. Sometimes I just get pissed at the world because
it's not what I want it to be. That's all. No cause for alarm."
"No."
"Ya know..."
"What?"
"This is the first time that I've known you as a grown up. Like
you're a real person now. I haven't really seen you since you
were in high school."
"No."
"This is the first time I've ever met you, it seems like. I'm
really sorry. I must have sounded like a wreck on the phone, but
really nothing's wrong. I'm fine, though I'm afraid that I'm not
a very likeable narrator."
Sometime during the course of the night I fall asleep.
The next morning we eat at Denny's again. The place is packed
with octogenarians who all look at me weird. I'm getting tired
of this so I start looking weird back at them. David tells us
that his older brother Rob played Oingo or something on The
Banana Splits Show, back in 1968 or whenever.
"Like sports?" he says to me.
"Nope," I reply, looking up into his sort of thin red face.
"There was this one guy, he owned a baseball team, I shouldn't
say who he was, but we busted his parent company -- when?"
"February," says Joe.
"Yeah," says David, "February. Joe and I went in, he had a seat
in the futures exchange, and -- "
"I don't understand any of the economics stuff," I say, "it's
all over my head."
"Oh," says David, looking disappointed, as though the best part
of the story had to do with decimal points and pork bellies.
"Well, uh, after we busted him, like there were cops and
treasury department agents crawling over this guy. He had a
hundred and ten safes in his building and we pulled all the
papers, everything and this guy was rotten, let me tell you,
every scrap of paper we looked at, even the toilet paper, it was
all adding up: this guy was crooked as a corkscrew. He was
lookin', just from a preliminary standpoint mind you, at six,
seven million dollars in fines. Your sister just threw him the
hell out and set up in his office. He was sitting in this
meeting room across the hall with two treasury police just
shaking like a leaf and your sister was calling him in every ten
minutes for files -- she even sent him out for doughnuts -- and
he couldn't take it. He just hit the bottle, got completely
sloshed. Plastered, this poor guy was, drinking whiskey or
something, sloppy all over the place and when we closed up for
the day to come back to the hotel he asks your sister if she
wants to go out to some bar with him -- what one?"
"Scaramuchi's," my sister says.
"Yeah," says David. "Scaramuchi's, ever heard of it?"
I shake my head.
"God, killer expensive this place. Well, anyway, she says yes,
and they go out to this bar and he's there, young guy, maybe
thirty five, watching his life going down the toilet. I guess
she felt sorry for him or something."
My sister shrugs.
"And there's a couple other people from his company there, his
golf buddies or what-not, and they start doing these drinks
called Flaming Liberties."
"Statue of Liberty," says my little sister.
"What?"
"The drink is called a Statue of Liberty."
"Oh, right, yeah. Well anyway, this drink it's like a shot of
Everclear, grain alcohol, like 190 proof or what-not, and you
stick your two fingers in the shot glass, your index finger and
your middle finger, and then you hold them over your head and
somebody sets them on fire with a match. You hold them over your
head like the torch on the Statue of Liberty and you do this
shot, like you drink the grain, and then you put your goddamn
fingers out in your mouth and drink a chaser of fruit juice. And
they were doing these things and this guy was already drunk, I
mean, wasted, and here he was doing shots of Everclear.... Well
anyway, 'bout his third shot he dips his fingers in the glass,
holds them up in the air -- your sister sets them on fire,
right? So his fingers are flaming... he throws the shot into his
mouth but he forgets to swallow it, shoves his fingers in there,
and BOOM! Blows his face off."
"Not really," says my sister.
"Well," says David, "there was this huge fire ball and he burned
all the hair off of his face, like his goddamn bangs and his
eyelashes and his eyebrows, and they took the poor guy to the
hospital. That's about the funniest damn thing I ever heard of."
"Pretty funny," I say. "The world's a dangerous place."
"Hey, you wanna go deep sea fishing today?" asks David.
"Fishing," I say. "Sure. Sounds good."
A map is produced and over breakfast some decisions are made as
to the why's, where's, and how's. By the time the check comes we
pretty much know what we're doing and we head out of Denny's
into the Stuart sun, aimed for coastal waters.
Captain Joe is a scruffy looking character who ought to have
been in Jaws. He sits in the fighting chair on the back of his
boat the Lady Skids -- whatever the hell that means -- burned
almost black by the sun, squinting at us through creviced eyes.
He is probably fifty or sixty and he looks us over as though he
knows we will never amount to anything like what he has -- even
if we live to be a thousand.
"Are you Captain Joe?" asks David as we get out of the car. "You
charter, right?"
The captain nods.
"My name's Joe, too," says Joe with an idiot grin. The captain
nods again.
"Hi," says my sister, squinting back at him. "I'm Rachel."
The captain says nothing, looking us over warily with a creased
face like worn leather. His eyes are white-blue, like a pale sky
and they are incongruous on his dark face, like that girl on the
cover of that National Geographic. He seems strong yet tired and
in his hands he is absently tying and untying a piece of twine.
"I'm Ernest Hemingway," I say, stepping forward and staring
solidly into his eyes. The captain's face slowly splits in a
huge grin and thirty teeth like white doors clap together in a
mastication of a laugh.
"HoHoHo!" he bellows like a jolly Florida Santa Claus, slapping
his leg. "Well by all means then, come aboard, Papa! What you
after? Spoonbill? Swordfish? Sailfish? or Marlin? Cobia?
Dolphin? Kings maybe? Blues? Grouper? How about Spanish
Mackerel? We got it all, it's all out there, in the water.
Water's blue, like your eyes are blue. Barracuda! Sharks! Eat
you whole they will, won't they Papa?" he says, looking down at
me with a stern but manageable eye.
"Splashin' and hollerin'," I say out of the corner of my mouth,
looking back at him, "and the eyes roll white when they bite
down..."
Captain Joe laughs again and holds out his hand. I take it and
he pulls me on board and the others after me.
My sister gives the captain two hundred dollars, which he
counts, first wetting his thumb on a wide slab of tongue, then
counting the fifties out loud.
"We got the two mates comin' aboard and then we're off." He
clambers up the stairs and a few seconds later a loud boat
whistle sounds. The captain returns and shortly a pair of even
scruffier- looking characters approach and board the boat. The
first is tall with long, curly brown hair and sunglasses. He
introduces himself as Bayan. The captain jerks an impatient
thumb at him and he immediately climbs the stairs. The second
individual is a seasoned salt named Matt, who has short, poorly
groomed hair and a beard almost two feet long. He is wearing
blue overalls and one cotton work glove on his left hand. His
eyes are permanently lost behind dark wire sunglasses and I
wonder if he even had any eyes.
We get under way and Matt starts explaining how we're going to
be fishing, what we're using for bait and all. Basic crap like
that. All I'm worried about is not getting seasick, which is an
experience I had once at the age of twelve. It is not one which
I would care to repeat.
As we are crashing through the waves at speeds which can only be
considered reckless, a flock of pelicans flies along side of the
boat, flapping their wings easily and remaining motionless in
the air, stationary ten feet away from where I stand at the
rail. Matt throws things at them and curses. And I start to
think, somewhere in the dank recesses of my head:
The pelican begins with its vengeance,
A terrible curse of thirst has begun,
His shipmates blame bad luck on Matt-the-Mate,
About his neck, the dead bird is hung....
3.
----
Joe -- the accountant, not the captain -- is sitting on a bench
upstairs looking rather green. I sit down a few feet from him,
mostly because there's less wind up there behind the flying
bridge and it's still outside. My sister and David are inside, I
think, where somebody is handing out small orange bags of potato
chips, that they may be thrown into the ocean and choke whales
or something. The boat continues in this heedless manner for
about half an hour, after which time the captain drops anchor --
no doubt after consulting his sonar rig or something.
Matt-the-Mate comes around and throws a bit of squid on
everybody's hook and we drop them over the side. No sooner has
my bait struck the bottom than something hits and my pole bends.
"Hey!" I call, "I got one on!" There is a sudden rush of
exhilaration and Matt-the-Mate comes to stand beside me. I reel
the line in. There's not much resistance and I can tell that
it's a small fish. Looking down I can see an insignificant
silver shape, maybe ten or fifteen feet down. This is my fish. I
watch it as it gets closer to the surface. It breaks and I lift
it out of the water. It is a sea bass, about nine inches long or
so.
"I'll get that for you," says Matt-the-Mate.
"It's too small for anything -- " I am saying when he grabs the
fish in his gloved hand and removes the hook.
"Good for bait," he says laying the fish down on a table and
cutting into it with a long knife. He cuts down behind the
dorsal fin and then drags the blade along its spine, fillets the
flesh from its body. The fish flops madly but Matt-the-Mate
ignores this. He flips the fish and repeats the procedure. There
is very little blood. He chops the meat into chunks, sticks one
on my hook and walks away.
The fish looks up at me with that wide, round, black, unblinking
eye for a long time, flapping slowly. His mouth gasping air that
goes to nourish nothing; all that is flapping seems to be a
spine and the visible row of thin ribs. His body is gone -- to
tempt and be consumed by a dozen other fish before that eye
winks out, black within black.
"I'm sorry," I say to the fish. I am horrified and I can't stop
looking at it. I know that this is my fault, that if I hadn't
dropped my line into the water this bit of the world never would
have been disrupted. I wish that I had not come.
"Ha!" says Matt-the-Mate, when he sees me staring at the fish
finally. "That's nothin. I seen 'em live hours after ya cut em
up. None of the organs is in the parts you use for bait. We just
throw 'em back in -- blood's good in the water." He picks up the
fish and flings it into the sea. The fish floats, a white patch
on the blue surface for a while, wiggling slowly. It is unable
to right itself and swims sideways. From beneath it rises a
long, brown, torpedo- shaped shadow -- there is a flash of white
and a furious splash and the fish is gone.
"Barracuda!" shouts Bayan from the bridge. "Big ol 'cuda!" I
look up and see him pointing into the water. Later we see them,
there are two, slowly circling the boat just below the surface,
each maybe five feet long.
"Anybody feel like a swim? Hahaha!" cackles Matt-the-Mate. This
breaks him up and there is much knee slapping on his part. A few
minutes pass like this and then Matt-the-Mate notices that I
haven't put my line back in the water.
"Hey," he says, slapping me on the back with his gloved hand,
"can't catch 'em if you ain't got your line in the water. Gotta
get your end in. Hahaha!" This sends him off on another laughing
tirade. He shakes his head and walks around the corner.
Bayan comes down the steps half way and sits down, setting a can
of Coors between his legs.
"You folks doin' all right?" he asks.
"Yes. We sure are," says David. "You do this every day?"
"Do what?" says Bayan listlessly, looking over at David.
"Fish, out on the water. Like this."
"Most days," says Bayan. He looks out into the water.
"Some days there's no customers?" asks David.
"Some days. Some days there's no charter."
"What do you do then?"
"Cut bait, drink beer," says Bayan.
I'm standing in the corner, holding onto my rod. The bait is
swinging freely on the hook as the boat rocks up and down. It
slaps me in the side of the face. I can feel the wet flesh and
the metal of the hook in that instant. I touch my face and there
is blood on my fingers: not my blood, it is mixed with scales. I
tuck the hook into one of the eyelets on the rod.
About three minutes pass and David hooks a small green fish
which has swallowed the hook and he looks at it helplessly, then
around for Matt-the-Mate.
"Just rip it out," says Bayan from his seat on the steps. "Don't
be afraid to hurt them fish, there's one fact about this world,
and it's that organisms eat other organisms. So don't worry
about that hook, don't worry bout them fish, just tear it right
out. Nature is not pretty." He sits with his elbows resting on
his knees, which are spread far apart, in a wide "V." He leans
his shaggy head across us like some grizzled guru instructing
neophytes.
I look away from the boat into the water and wonder if I could
swim to shore. I can see the buildings plainly, but am not sure
how far away they are. The sea is flat like a table. I guess
that it is about half a mile. In the distance a school of
porpoise pass, their backs moving out of the water in a
semi-circle and then disappearing like the pistons of some
Atlantean engine.
Meanwhile my little sister hooks a fish and we watch her fight
to reel it in. Her rod bends and she is shouting and laughing
with her mouth open. She has put white zinc sunblock on her
nose, which protrudes incongruously from the dark lenses of her
sunglasses. The butt of the rod is wedged high in her armpit and
she pulls up and cranks down in turn. We all look over the side
and finally a fish breaks the surface.
"Red snapper," says Matt-the-Mate, "good eatin' fish." He eyes
it a bit. "Too small to keep. They gotta be thirteen inches ta
keep. Ya gotta throw this one back. But let's ya catch somethin
really big...." He takes the fish from her hook and sets it
down. With his knife he cuts the fins from its body and then
forces the hook through the spine and casts it back into the
water.
"Watch this," he says. The snapper flaps in the water and swims
in circles, trailing blood. Only twelve feet away we can see the
circling shapes of the barracudas, two or three feet beneath the
surface. They seem to notice a difference in the water almost
immediately and begin to swim towards the snapper. One of the
barracudas sinks out of sight and the other noses slowly towards
the injured fish. There is a flash and a spray of foam and a
harsh buzzing. Rachel shrieks as line begins to run from her
reel.
"Hit him," says Matt-the-Mate. "Hit 'em hard, pull up, pull up
now!" Rachel pulls back and the hook sets. She grabs at the reel
but Matt-the-Mate is right behind her.
"Don't waste your time. You won't be able to pull him an inch.
Let him run. Let him tire himself out. Hoo-Hee, you got em on!"
Then he calls up into the air, "Got a 'cuda on down here!"
Everyone begins to crowd around my little sister, Matt-the-Mate
keeping them at a healthy distance, giving her room to move.
"All lines up!" he shouts. "Lines up! He's moving, he's moving.
Follow him around, little girl. Walk him around the boat." The
fish has begun to pull towards the bow of the boat, dragging my
sister along she walks around and a crowd follows her. I climb
the stairs and look down. Her line disappears into the water at
a sharp angle; the fish is diving. Along the other side of the
boat the other barracuda keeps swimming as though unaware of its
companion's absence.
Rachel fights the fish in the hot sun for forty-five minutes.
Sometimes she is on her knees, laying against the bulwark. Twice
she tries to give the rod to David, but Matt-the-Mate won't let
her. He makes her hang on even though there are tears streaming
down her face. After three quarters of an hour she has brought
the fish to the surface and it swims alongside the boat,
exhausted. Matt-the-Mate has her walk it to the back of the boat
where a gate is opened and Matt- the-Mate and
Bayan-the-Other-Mate gaff it through the side and pull it into
the boat. The fish is huge, amazingly large. Five feet long,
shaped like a loaf of bread, it is brown and silver and its
teeth are many and curved into an evil looking smile. It lays on
the deck of the boat, its mouth moving slowly. Once it starts
flopping and smacking its mouth shut and people scream and jump
back. But Matt- the-Mate puts his foot on its head and holds it
down while Bayan takes a picture of Rachel and the fish. Then
Bayan kneels down in front of the fish and slits it open from
its throat to its tail. Entrails begin to slip from the thin gap
which looks like the cut of a razor blade through smooth, thick
rubber. The fish flops tremendously but Matt-the-Mate keeps a
good hold of its head and they shove it back over the side.
"Watch this," says Bayan, and leans over the railing to watch.
"They're gonna tear each other to pieces. Heh heh."
The barracuda swims slowly in a tight circle, trailing blood and
moving its head from side to side as though searching for
something. From beneath the boat rises the second barracuda in a
shimmering cloud. It bites down hard on its companion's side,
quickly tearing a piece of flesh from it. Matt-the-Mate points
and laughs.
"Now it'll get good," he says, but I am no longer watching.
Rachel has come up the steps and is sitting on one of the long
benches. She is covered with sweat and is resting her head in
her arms. She breathes heavily and below I can hear splashing
and laughter.
"These people are not nice to fish," I say.
"No," she replies, looking up at me. She looks at me for a long
time without saying anything and then puts her head down on the
rail.
Kyle Cassidy (cass806@elan.rowan.edu)
----------------------------------------
Kyle Cassidy is still 26 and still at Rowan University. He tries
to divide his time evenly between his Macintosh and his
motorcycle -- but we also understand his mother would like him
to get a haircut.
FYI
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