The precise etching reminded him of Our Fiery Home, of the imaginative klatch of demons who carved designs into their flesh using rudimentary blades and a tarry mash of blood and charred bone. Most of the symbols suggested ownership or privilege, while others were simplistic mutilations to depict an affiliation with a certain tribe or faction. No symbols marred his flesh, though he saw value in the ritual—an act of creation, turning the body into art.
Basil eased the Harley to a stop, at which point he decided to turn around and follow the tractor back toward town. John Deere would know the way. He followed slowly, less than three lengths from the wagon’s rear. The bike sputtered and nearly tipped over more than once. The poison of diesel fumes, and the moist-earth smell drifting from John Deere’s wagon, filled his lungs. In another hundred feet, the tractor veered off the macadam and onto a muddy two-track cutting through a field. Grasses undulated like waves in a storm-stoked lake. He stopped at the two-track entrance and watched the tractor stop beneath the roof of a rusty Quonset hut nearly a quarter-mile into the field.
A familiar uneasiness consumed him. He recognized the feeling as the seeds of panic, about to germinate. Beak, the town he had come to know, had disappeared. In its place: nothing but flat desolation, save thin stands of cottonwoods and a few weathered structures of manmade origin.
He had lost his way.
The light shifted, and the air changed sharply—a smell and a feeling. A chill wind cooled the flesh of his back. As he looked behind him, he saw a massive bank of purple and gray clouds creeping across the sky. Slowly, the horizon swallowed the last embers of daylight. The temperature dropped ten degrees in seconds.
Something bad was about to happen.
Basil leaned into the handlebars and opened the throttle. The bike took off. The sudden acceleration jerked him backward, nearly pitching him off the seat. After steadying himself, he crouched forward and became one with his steed. He squinted into the rising wind.
Darkness ahead of him, darkness behind. Instinct told him to seek shelter.
He crested a slight hill and spotted a path to salvation: a sole ash tree, in the middle of a freshly shorn field. He eased off the throttle and pulled off the roadway. The bike shuddered, battling one trench after another. Before long he came beneath the aegis of the tree. Nearly forty feet tall from the base of its trunk to its highest branch, the tree swayed in the ripping wind. Groaning and creaking, each leaf-swollen branch seemed to sound some sort of alarm. He parked the bike next to the tree and waited.
Roiling clouds stretched east to west, south to north. Only then, in the final seconds of ambient light, did Basil get a sense of the infiniteness of the sky, now violent and furious. No ceiling here, so unlike Our Fiery Home. He found this both comforting and unsettling, because everything must reach its end eventually. Lightning electrified the belly of a storm cloud, and the mere sight of it knocked Basil on his rear end. He scrambled to the tree trunk, his flesh meeting the bark. His mind filled with thoughts of murk and doom. What kinds of malevolent creatures prowled the clouds above? He envisioned a winged and tentacled beast, feathers scraping the barren plains with each flap of its mighty wings, while a great cyclopean eye scoured the earth in search of easy prey to fill the cavities between its mountain-peak teeth.
The rains came a moment later.
Basil shivered beneath the tree, his rear end soaking in an inch-deep puddle. He cursed the creator. He cursed himself. He cursed the rain. And the wind. And the lightning. And the tree. And the unseen beast roaming the sky. And all of humankind. And himself again, for thinking he could survive away from the womb of Our Fiery Home, a place he both loved and hated, but also a place free of the misery that came from being caught in a windswept downpour.
As a thunderclap cracked overhead, a bolt of lightning shot from the clouds. A splintered branch slammed to the earth, all twelve hundred pounds of wood and leaf landing less than ten feet from where Basil cowered in a tight little ball. He fought every urge to flee, to run headlong into the field, but he stayed put, screaming into his armpit. He could not best an invisible monster that hurled its weapons from above.
He wondered if he would ever see the sun again. He retreated into his mind.
The hours passed slowly, unmercifully.
Her image—rather, pieces of her, parts of her—came in fractions. Despite his efforts, he failed to connect the threads, and her image faded from his mind. His failure gave him something to mull other than his sure demise.
Instead he ruminated on the familiar: the forceful taking of Kamala, or any other she-demon he wanted; his choicest poems; the quiet corners of Our Fiery Home; and, of course, Lubos. First, Lubos’s imposing silhouette, then snapshots of his foe’s many war wounds: the milky-white left eye, lolling like a spun marble; the discolored scar running the length of his torso; the yellow canine jutting from a hole in his lower lip; the crooked sneer that came from the joy of watching another creature suffer.
Basil whipped his head against the trunk to shake the images from his skull.
The rains eased over the next several hours, the winds calmed. As the first fingers of dawn reached above the eastern horizon,
Basil lost his fight to keep his eyes open.
He came to a short time later, unsure of who or where he was. All evidence of his horrible night had disappeared. The sky had turned a light gray—the violence over, the monster having moved on.
He craved the sun, to dry him out, but it chose to hide. As he tried to stand, his body felt the depth of its weakness. Water dripped from the fur coating his lower half. Shivers owned him, and the lack of control horrified him. His stomach ached with pangs of hunger. Then he remembered: the job.
“Aw, fuck,” he hissed.
He climbed aboard the Harley, brought it to life and cranked the throttle. Mud kicked up from the rear wheel, but the motorcycle foundered in the dense slop. By the time the front tire touched asphalt, mud that smelled like cow shit—because most of it was, in fact, cow shit—caked most of his body. He followed the roadway, trying to recognize something familiar, something that suggested he was on his way back to Beak proper. He turned down an unmarked road, which showed him familiar sights. Homes and office buildings loomed in the distance—hallmarks of civilization. He smiled at his luck. A moment later the engine sputtered, and the bike died a slow death in the middle of the road.
“Go,” he commanded it.
Nothing happened.
“I said go, you wicked thing!”
Again, nothing.
Rage consumed him. He leapt off the bike and raised both balled fists over his head, happy to smash the infernal machine to bits, but he had the presence of mind to stop himself. Instead, he rubbed his temples to ward off a blooming headache. He would need this steed in the days to come, he knew, so he rolled it to the side of the road and eased it into a ditch filled with rainwater and pollywogs. Having no other choice, he took a deep breath and galloped toward Beak.
He arrived in downtown Beak within ten minutes. Men and women with places to go and appointments to keep crowded the sidewalks. Not a single face looked familiar, but he recognized the building façades. A woman in a yellow sundress hissed at him as he passed, but he had no time to make friends. Not today.
The sound of hooves clopping on asphalt echoed in the dead spaces between storefronts. A man in a short-sleeved shirt, overalls and a blue USA hat called out.
“Hey, big boy. Strap on an applecart and a feedbag and we’ll make a million bucks.”
Basil tensed the fingers of both hands into fists. He imagined the man’s disembodied head—USA cap and all—skewered on a spear. He could practically see it, the dried blood staining the corners of the man’s gaping mouth, clotting his ear canals. The vision inspired him to quicken his pace.
He had no idea what time it was when he approached the office building housing the Savage Communications’ HQ. As he galloped, he detected movement to his left. A well-dressed woman with long brown hair
strode purposely toward the building’s entrance. She seemed to be racing him to the door. Oversized sunglasses with brown lenses obscured her eyes, but a subtle change in her gait suggested she was giving him a wide berth. He reached the door before her and held it open.
“Good morning,” he said.
“It’s ten thirty, ding-dong,” she said. “Only an ape says ‘good morning’ after nine.”
She stepped through the doorway without making eye contact, made a left and kept walking, never looking back.
Basil closed his eyes and committed her perfume to memory. He studied the way her rear end moved in her tight skirt, how her hair bobbed in time with her confident stride. This vision in high heels made him curious, hungry.
Then: Oh, right … work.
He ascended the stairs to the second floor and arrived at the door to Savage Communications. He rested his hand on the knob and watched drops of manure-speckled water darken the carpet beneath him. He took three deep breaths and then turned the knob, wondering just how poorly this day would go.
* * *
“I thought we agreed on nine,” says Bulcavage, clearly annoyed. “You missed that mark by more than an hour. I just about gave up on you.”
“Quite sorry, sir,” Basil says. “Let’s just say I had a long night. A bad night, you might say.”
“Don’t make it a habit.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“You look like dog shit, friend. Smell like it, too, if I’m telling the truth.”
“Like I said, it was a long night.”
“Shit happens. I get it. But let’s not get in the practice of disappointing each other. Agreed?”
Basil nods furiously.
“Come on back.”
Basil follows Bulcavage into the conference room, where red and black balloons float in the corner. Two trays of bagels wrapped in plastic sit on the table, undisturbed, and behind them stand three unopened bottles of pop—one Coca-Cola, one Diet Coke, one Sprite—and twin columns of red Solo cups. Bulcavage claps and then plucks a lighter from the table. He lights a sparkler, and the thermite tip catches. He hands over the lit sparkler. Basil accepts it, reluctantly, and holds it between his thumb and forefinger. Sparks of white light bounce off his mud-caked claws.
Basil eyes a shoddy sign taped to the wall in the quiet space above a dry-erase board. The glittery blood-red letters—W-EL-C-O-M-E—pop against the pane of dingy white. It reminds him of the torched metal sign adorning the cavern wall in Our Fiery Home. An odd feeling builds within him: a combination of anger, sadness and nostalgia, akin to homesickness.
Basil feels a presence behind him, and he turns to see two people standing in the doorway. A tall, skinny man with thin-rimmed glasses offers an unenthusiastic wave before turning and wandering out of the conference room, presumably to go back to his office. The other, a short woman in a ruffled dress buttoned up to the neck, takes a long look at Basil. She wrinkles her nose and then huffs as loudly as she can. She storms off, stomping her feet as she goes.
“Don’t mind them,” Bulcavage says. “They’re just excited.”
“Obviously.”
“So … today. We’ll get your paperwork settled and then brainstorm about the new campaign for one of our longest-tenured clients. They’re undergoing a bit of a change in their approach to the business, so we could use a fresh perspective.”
“Can’t wait.”
“Some backstory: The owner died and now the son is taking over. Dreadful little shit who probably wants nothing to do with us. So, we want to come up with something that’s going to bowl him over, really knock him out of his loafers. Something to assure their current customers that things will be just fine going forward, even though the heart and soul of the business is now six feet into the dirt.”
“It’s nice that the kid wants to take over where his father left off.”
“Here’s the kick in the ass: The damned kid doesn’t want any of it. Not a bit. Truly, that little devil is going to put the screws to every last customer. We just want to get something in front of him so he knows we give a shit, so we can bill them for something tangible before the son of a bitch decides he wants no part of us and pulls the plug because we’re an unnecessary expense.”
“Are we? Unnecessary?”
Bulcavage seems unsure how to answer.
“Anyway, the paperwork,” Bulcavage says as he takes a seat. “For starters, I’ll need a driver’s license and a Social Security card.”
“Uh.”
“And you have neither, right?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Right. Why would you?”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Fuck it,” Bulcavage says. He tears up an employment form and lets the pieces fly like tossed confetti. “We’ll just do it the old-fashioned way.”
The woman in the ruffled dress reappears in the doorway, her feet an inch or two shy of the conference-room carpet’s worn edge.
“I’m here for my bagel, Bob,” she says.
“Come get it. Last I checked we don’t have a butler.”
“I am not coming in there. I don’t know how you could bring him here.”
She storms off again. Her perfume—dead flowers, by Basil’s best guess—lingers like a fart in a closet.
Basil turns to Bulcavage, asking, “Is there a problem, sir?”
“Don’t mind her,” Bulcavage whispers. “That’s Karen. She’s just a little—”
Karen slaps both palms against the glass pane behind Basil.
“This is the worst thing you’ve ever done, Bob,” she yells, though the glass dulls the sharpness of her words. “It’s criminal is what it is! It’s a GD assault! I don’t want to have to stare at his demon dick every day. Tell him to put on some GD pants!”
Basil imagines a fireball in his hand big enough to incinerate Karen.
Bulcavage turns back to Basil and says, brightly, “Okay. Let’s go meet Herbert.”
Chapter 8
Transcending Death
“So what do we have today, Bob?”
The nameplate on the desk reads “Herbert Teak”. The man in the chair behind it looks kind enough: tall, thin and bespectacled, salt-and-pepper hair brushed tidily to one side, dressed in pressed khakis and a short-sleeved madras shirt. He looks put out by the big, black demon taking up the entire corner of his cramped office.
“Hey,” Basil says. “Herbert Teak from Beak!”
“I’m from Des Moines,” Herbert says dryly, without turning to Basil.
“Before we talk about what happens next, let’s catch up on some existing business,” Bulcavage says. “The douchebag from Omaha HVAC was, shall we say, less than impressed with the first proof of the direct mailer you put together.”
“Are we talking tweaks,” Herbert asks, “or a tear down and rebuild?”
“Blow it all up. Frankly, the client said the design sucks. The ad copy too. I’m just telling you because this is what he told me, but he said using it to line the pan of a birdcage would only increase its value. You know, so a bird could shit on it.”
“A little harsh.”
“Don’t get bent out of shape, Herb. What do we do about this?”
“Smash the client’s spine,” Basil offers. “He’ll never walk again. It will humble him.”
“Uh … let’s call that Plan B,” Bulcavage says. “In the meantime, let’s consider a less lethal form of response. Herbert, have three new mockups on my desk by first thing Monday morning.”
Herbert nods, his lips pursed, jaw clenched.
“On to Big Bair Agriculture and Machinery,” Bulcavage says. “You remember Alan Keller was sick …”
“Do I?” Herbert says.
“Christ, he was half-dead the last time he was in here. You must remember. Old, decrepit, sickly guy who brought in the rhubarb crisp that stayed in the conference room for two weeks? I think the dish sprouted limbs and crawled out of here on its own.”
“T
hat horrid thing? Guy deserves to cook in the chair for that atrocity.”
“For chrissakes, Herbert. He died, you know. He’s dead. Kaput.”
“Oh. Shit. Sorry.”
“So, with the kid taking the reins from the old man, we’ve got our hands full. Stupid know-nothing kid hasn’t learned a damned thing. Has no clue what the hell he’s doing. You can guess where we’re going to fall on his list of priorities. Too busy fucking up everything the old man put into place. Likely steer the whole kit and caboodle into a nosedive. But that’s not the story we’re going to tell. No one’s writing any epitaphs here.”
“I mean it, Bob. I’m really sorry. I’m sure Mister Keller was a very nice man. I didn’t mean to disrespect—”
“Herbert. He’s dead, and he’ll still be dead no matter what you say about him. No big deal. Just shut up about it now.”
Basil does his best to listen, but the weight of his sleeplessness—from his nightmarish experience in the lightning storm, from a lifetime of vigilance underground—drags him to the brink of exhaustion. His eyelids want to close. Talons dig into his palms. Teeth sink into his bottom lip, anything to keep from losing consciousness and dropping to the floor like a felled redwood.
“Time’s a wastin’,” Bulcavage says. “I’d like to get something together by day’s end. And, now that we’re fully staffed”—he gestures to Basil—“I’d like to give them live copy. What do you think?”
“Paint by numbers,” Herbert says. “Easy enough: black background, light on copy, shot of a father and a son on a Big Bair combine at the end of a long shift, the day about thirty minutes shy of sunset, the leftover daylight on their faces and the golden wheat field that spreads out before them. Pair the image with some BS about relationships, about making memories, because they’re all we have. Then mention some garbage about Old Man Keller, about how things will stay the same even though he’s no longer with us. You can practically hear the voiceover: ‘Even though the old coot is gone, his spirit will guide us forever.’ Not that we’ll have voiceover.”
Burn, Beautiful Soul Page 9
