His gut gurgles. The sensation causes a reaction somewhere on the spectrum between curiosity and panic. His anal sphincter suddenly loosens, and for a few seconds he wonders if the sphincter will fail and paint the dirt with the full contents of his bowels. After a moment of intestinal peace, he continues his task of rolling the Harley up the embankment. He then lays back into his earthen nook and closes his eyes. Sleep takes him before the sun creeps over the horizon.
His eyes close, and the dream begins anew.
Chapter 4
Lament for the World Left Behind
This strange new world reeks of cat piss and shame.
I stare at the smudge of gray where the moon should be, tucked between two half-finished spires climbing out of the mud. The inky murk of cloud cover has ruined my view yet again. How I pine for the moon, as she has not made time for me in more than a week. She shows only glimpses of herself, podgy and nebulous, so I conjure a poem about a wrestling match between the shy moon and a selfish god who refuses to share the sky.
Another day of rain and gray, giving my face no reason to tack on a smile. When will this horrid trend reverse its course? A lesser man would succumb to his despair, but not me. I can admit my confidence wanes from one day to the next. Memories of recent events—my final moments with my bride at our farmhouse in Berwick—sometimes lead me to the edge of the abyss.
“Please don’t go, Emmitt,” she told me. “Not yet, at least. She won’t last much longer.”
“Fortune disfavors a man who does not act, my love,” I countered. “And fortune is precisely what I intend to find.”
“Mother will be dead inside of a week. You said so yourself. Not being here when the moment comes … I couldn’t bear it. Just the thought of it fills me with dread. Haunt me forever, the old crone would.”
“All my love to your mother, dear. Come to me when you’re ready to put her behind you. Just follow my trail and put your ear to the ground. What you’ll hear is the riot of a man making his mark. All of London will know the name Emmitt Wells.”
She did not cry, because she never cried, but I know my departure hurt her. My hubris made it worse, no doubt. She simply turned and climbed the stairs, likely to wipe her mother’s fevered brow.
My last vision of her prior to my escape—an ill-fated flight, it seems.
As the weeks have passed, my story has taken a turn.
I wish our parting of ways could have been avoided, or at least been different. I see no wisdom in dwelling on events I cannot change, but I would be lying only to myself. The niggling thought, our unfortunate goodbye, has done its best to drive me mad. What choice did I have but to make haste for the city, where only lightness and plenty awaited me?
“Strong back, good hands, half a brain for following orders—have those to your credit and you’ll own the place.” So they said of London’s promise. Such a shame everything I had been told of the city was a brilliant lie. Sure, I found an abundance of work for a man willing to break his back in a city rebuilding itself yet again atop the muck of a bloody swamp. I have done my best to break my bones and, with dawn only an hour or two off, will do so again in a few more ticks of the clock.
No one speaks of London’s dark side, which shows itself right quick: enough noise to draw the dead out of the tomb, hands against their ears and begging the world to keep the racket down; ever-burning fires, their smoke adding to the gloom of night; packs of glassy-eyed dogs hunting for untaken morsels; roving gangs of pauper children picking pockets from dawn to midnight; plague-ridden whores blessed with certain talents; rats with no manners, also plague ridden, patrolling the gutters of streets they have claimed as theirs; and, if the rumors prove true, at least one supernatural thing, a ravenous hulk with steel blades for teeth and a fondness for the flesh of men, prowling after dark.
Such horrors are alien to Berwick, the pastoral idyll I left behind, a world away. I wish someone had shaken me awake before I dreamed up this nightmare. Not that I would have listened to anyone but my dumb self, with deadened ears, prattling on and on about the virtue of my ambitions.
A man must make his own mistakes.
The newsboys speak of this otherworldy beast roaming the nighttime streets only because every last newsboy likely has a roof over his head. No one else utters a bloody word of it—certainly no one who wanders these streets past dark, scanning the sky for the same elusive moon. It serves no good to think of it, I suppose, because if the end comes, when it comes, it will be my time to go. Besides, only a madman would rob himself of the pleasures of stargazing under a clear sky, no matter who or what is out there with him, watching from the coolness of the shadows.
I turn my eyes away from the gauzy spot in the sky where the moon should be, and get moving. I choose to walk the puddled length of Monument Bridge, as I do every night, until my mind is free of verse, my body no longer capable of refusing sleep.
At the far end of the span, I approach the balustrade and listen for the rush of water I cannot see. I inhale deeply, lungs swollen with London’s stink, and spit. I wish the moonlight would cut through this godforsaken murk so I could see my product—my whitish pearl of spit—sail through the nothingness and alight on the face of the mighty Thames. Monument’s overcrowded twin, London Bridge, looms in the distance. The embers of its torches burn dimly in the fog.
I fear failure might reshape me into something wretched, and therefore I must not fail. The nagging voice inside wants to scream out, “Why bother? Everything your eyes see will turn to bone and dust.” Yet I am stout of heart and broad of back, so this darkness will not take hold.
My moment of weakness will pass.
An icy wind scrubs my back. I decide to walk the length of the bridge once more before settling on a dry place to sleep. Likely I will bed down beneath the eaves of the blacksmith’s, the outer wall warmed by the nest of quiet coals glowing within. As I walk, my eyes will search every doorway, every piss-stinking alcove, for any silhouettes eager to make my demise, be it a bloodthirsty beast or a madman with the worst of intentions.
Chapter 5
The Curse of Speech
A jag in the gut jolts Basil awake. His hands cradle his distended belly, where the gurgling has evolved into a pain he cannot name. It reminds him of the time he scalded his left hand, courtesy of a magma flow leaking from a seam in Our Fiery Home’s floor; the molten rock nearly consumed his smallest finger. This time the lava boils within, taking delight in making a meal of the tender lining of his stomach.
He curls into a ball and whimpers to cast out the pain. The whimpers morph into multisyllabic moans, as if to somehow ward off the ancient evil festering in his ruined gut. His efforts failing, he clamps his eyes shut and simply wishes the pain away. Though he begs for a reprieve from an entity he does not know, the pain goes nowhere. It has made a host of him.
He then resorts to rage. He unleashes a tantrum of screams and screeches, the thrashing of cornstalks and clawing of dirt. Nothing helps. He cares not what his ruckus might attract. Should a proper adversary reveal himself at this very moment and, upon discovering his pathetic self, decide to do him in … well, it would be an acceptable end. At least the pain would cease.
Finally, with tear ducts flowing, he does what comes naturally.
Our days together lit me from within
Each moment a magic trick revealed, a glimmering jewel
A gift worth keeping
Everything precious plucked
From the cask of my cupped hands
Memories linger, night comes swiftly
Clouds choke the midnight sky
Thick and mute and painted gray
Like charred coal
Only the moon
And its halo of stars to warm me
Companions, lovers, brides
Nomads
I lie awake, drunk with their cold comfort
To permit your return, freed from the prison
Of my mind
If only as a brace against
the barbed tongue
Of the bitter wind licking the skin
Down, down, down
To the white bony ridges
Of the spine I no longer need
Cornstalks rustle. Basil opens his eyes and realizes he has company. A small boy in blue-and-white basketball sneakers holds a tortuously bent stick that towers over his head by more than a foot.
“Are you real?” the boy asks.
“Quite,” Basil replies. He coughs up a mouthful of crud.
“You look like something from the kinds of movies my mom would never let me watch.”
“I can assure you I am as true as the soil upon which my carcass lies, rotting before you.”
“Are you hurt? You sound hurt.”
The boy raps his stick against Basil’s right horn. Basil doesn’t stop him, so the boy finds a rhythm: tap, tap, tap … tap … tap, tap, tap … tap.
“I do appear to be in some distress,” Basil says.
Tap, tap, tap … tap … tap, tap, tap … tap.
“Hey, mister,” the boy says. “Did you take a bullet to the gut?”
Tap, tap, tap … tap … tap, tap, tap … tap.
“If I knew I would tell you.”
Tap, tap, tap … tap … tap, tap, tap … tap.
“Did you get struck by lightning?”
“Not that I’m aware of, no. Please stop that.”
Tap, tap, tap …
“Did you fall out of an airplane or something?”
Tap, tap, tap …
“Stop that!” Basil roars. “I beg you. Please.”
Tap.
“Do you have AIDS?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Daddy says some people have AIDS. The bad people, he says, the soulless and gutless people who put their pee-pees in dark and dirty places. He says it’s a disease that makes you go to Heaven sooner than you’re supposed to.”
“It’s only a stomachache, I assure you. A particularly malignant stomachache, but a stomachache nonetheless.”
“It could be AIDS.”
“Forgive me, boy, but I’m hardly of the mind for pleasantries. Now if you could just run along and—”
“When my tummy hurts, I get to drink ginger ale. Well … I used to. My mom used to give it to me. Sometimes I like to get sick because it reminds me of her, but Daddy’s no good at being nice like Mom was. I can go home and get one for you—a ginger ale, I mean. … Well, maybe I’ll get two. You’re a big son of a bitch.”
Basil considers the word: ale. The sole syllable sends a flicker of joy up the internal highway connecting his brain to his ailing gut.
“That’s a good boy.”
“My name’s Elias. I’m seven. …Well, seven-almost-eight.”
“Run along now, Elias.”
Elias disappears into the maze of cornstalks. Basil hears the boy’s young legs rapping against the waxy green stalks. Not far off, perhaps a hundred yards, Basil sees the hint of a structure—a peaked roof bearing a weathervane, the metal mottled green from exposure. Time to make an escape, he thinks. He sits up and leans forward. Immediately, the agony consumes him.
“I’m dying,” he tells himself, mostly to see how self-pity feels.
“You get what you deserve,” the voice says.
How unfair it would be to succumb to something as pedestrian as an intestinal parasite, having come so close to achieving greatness, right to the cusp. To have come all this way only to die alone because he gorged himself on some dirty little beast whose carrion deserved to rot on the side of the road, tire marks checkering its flattened midsection…
Maybe, he thinks, he just needs to take a shit.
When Elias returns, a can of soda in each hand, Basil is on his knees, still moaning, resting his arms on the motorcycle’s front tire. Elias rolls the cool aluminum of a soda can against the back of Basil’s neck, and the reaction makes an unmistakable hiss.
“Here you go, mister.”
Basil turns to accept the sodas. His oversized mitts struggle to open the dwarfish cans. Lacking patience, he bites into the first one, and the carbonated liquid squirts up his nose, into his eyes. He squeals from the unexpected sting.
“Curse you, cherub!”
He hurls the spurting can, slicing a cornstalk in two.
Elias laughs so hard he bends at the waist. He steps forward and takes the unopened can from Basil’s clutch. He pulls back the tab, and the can fizzes open. He hands it back to Basil, who looks pale and sullen—tired.
“Try it this way,” Elias says.
Basil empties the can in one gulp. He studies the can’s painted-on label so he can commit the vessel of this precious elixir to memory.
“This cornfield belongs to Daddy,” Elias says.
Basil burps and adds, “Just your father?”
Elias looks on quizzically.
“It’s a fine field,” Basil says. “A proper field.”
“If you look over there, you can see my house. I live in the attic. Where do you live?”
“A fine question, boy. I’m afraid I’m quite far from where I belong. I suppose you can say I’m a tourist, just visiting.”
“I can ask Daddy if you can stay in our guest room. Maybe the barn—that’s where the pigs and crickets sleep. He might not say no.”
“I appreciate the offer, but—”
“We used to have company all the time, but now Daddy doesn’t like most people he doesn’t know real good. There was this one fella—Mister Smitty, my mom called him—and he would come over to play with my mom when Daddy had to go out of town sometimes. Mr. Smitty doesn’t come over to play anymore. That’s because my mom doesn’t live there anymore. Daddy says she’s a worthless old whore.”
Basil purses his lips, unsure of how to respond.
“What do you know about Chicago?” he asks.
“Daddy says there’s nothing good in Chicago.”
“Of course he does.”
“My Uncle Jules went there for vacation one year and never came back.”
“Meaning?”
“Sometimes people don’t come back. They just go somewhere and stay there, because they like it too much or it likes them and won’t let them go. We used to have a kitten-cat—a real pretty one, all orange and white. Her name was Buttons. She got out and stayed out. Daddy says she made friends with the front tire of someone’s pickup truck. So now she’s gone too. Forever. Just like my mom.”
Basil’s palms start to sweat.
“Do you have a job?” Elias asks. “Daddy has a job, and it must be a real important one ’cause he spends a whole lot of time doing job stuff. Daddy says you need a job in order to have a happy life, but he doesn’t seem very happy to me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, young man.”
“He says a job lets you have money, but he says having a good reason to get out of bed in the morning is even more important than having money. Without a job, a man has no value, he says. A job doesn’t sound like much fun to me.”
“You might be on to something, Elias.”
“What kind of job do you have?”
“None at the moment.”
“Are you a dirty hippie?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Teacher says that’s the best way to learn.”
“Indeed.”
“Does not having a job make you sad?”
“It makes me … confused.”
“There’s a place in town that’s supposed to help people like you find jobs. Daddy says if all the lazy liberals got off their asses and spent more time trying to find jobs, this GD country would be a lot better off.”
Basil’s eyes wander, wondering how he will extricate himself from this situation. He escaped the trap of Our Fiery Home. Now if he can only elude the attention of this chatterbox child …
“Is that your motorcycle?” Elias asks.
“You might say that.”
“I hear some people have jobs where they put on leather pants and ride
around on motorcycles all day. Maybe I’ll do that when I get older.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it.”
As Elias stares all too curiously at the mane of jet-black fur covering Basil’s crotch, Basil anticipates more questions he does not want to answer.
“Say, Elias. I much appreciate your hospitality, but I really should be going. Which way did you say town was?”
Elias stands up, puts his finger to his chin, turns himself in a circle and points left—the direction Basil thinks he came from the night before.
Basil gets to his hooves, unsteady, and rolls the motorcycle out of the cornfield. He pats Elias on the head as he passes.
Just before he fires up the Harley, he hears Elias yell, “Why aren’t you wearing any pants?”
* * *
The town of Beak grows from nothing—a vast sea of cornfields, pastures and farmsteads, carved up with small stands of oaks, chokecherries and silver maples, and then, boom, civilization: one main drag stretching a modest eight blocks, with secondary streets branching east and west. A post office, a diner, a hardware and paint store, a red-and-white CENEX service station, plenty of windowless buildings peddling tractor parts and feed for livestock.
Almost immediately Basil realizes he likes the place, how quaint it seems. Still, he chalks up his good mood to the dry wind and blinding sunshine warming the blood beneath his reptilian skin. A decent night’s sleep has him thinking clearly.
The Harley’s engine grumbles as Basil rolls through town. His testicles bounce off the bike’s leather seat. The spectacle of him catches eyes as he thunders past, and he savors the feeling of exhibition. Partway down the artery of Second Street, he pulls up to the curb and stops in front of a blue mailbox, where a mousy young brunette stands ready to drop a cache of envelopes down the chute. She has a stamp on the tip of her tongue, an envelope in hand, destined for someplace other than here.
“Excuse me,” he yells over the Harley’s ceaseless chugging. “I’m looking for the place where they help you find jobs.”
As if vexed by his impossible appearance, the brunette warily raises her right hand and points over Basil’s left shoulder, toward a single-story building. Boxy and battleship gray, the building bears a rectangular sign advertising, “Beak Unemployment Office.” A vinyl banner, affixed to the building’s façade with a quartet of black bungee cords, flaps in the gentle breeze: “Want to Help Build a Better Beak? Please Come In.”
Burn, Beautiful Soul Page 6
