by Edward Lee
White Shirt said nothing more, but that subtle smile never left his face, almost as though it were part of his spirit.
Courtney looked up, alarmed, when Stu gently shoved the guy into the booking room.
"Well what have we here?" the woman enthused. "You shore don't look like a bad guy."
"I'm a speculative novelist," the man said.
"Shut up," Stu ordered. "And sit down."
"What he do, Stu?"
"Ripped off a credit card and tried to buy gas with it."
White Shirt opened his mouth to object, but Stu pointed at him.
White Shirt closed his mouth.
"Oh," Courtney added, "and look. The chief's tickets to the Testicle Festival were in the mail."
"Good." Stu stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. "Now he'll be in a good mood tomorrow, and a better mood when he sees that I got a bust. Shit, I haven't had a solid arrest in a month."
"Good work, Stu... " But Courtney, now, seemed to be looking at White Shirt with some scrutiny. "Ain't I seen you before, on TV? Some show on one'a them weird cable channels?"
White Shirt beamed. "The Signatures show, on Ovation Channel, yes! I was interviewed last year about my most recent novel, The NEW American Tragedy."
Stu paused between puffs, looking cockeyed at the guy.
"This guy's a famous book writer, Stu—"
"Not actually famous in the popular sense but critically acclaimed," the man interrupted. "Raymond Carver wasn't terribly popular either; nevertheless, he remains perhaps the great American prose writer of the century, modernity's answer to, say, Sherwood Anderson."
"Shut up," Stu told him again. He rubbed his temples. Maybe this guy ISN'T bullshitting. Stu looked right at him. "What the hell is a critically acclaimed novelist doing in Redneckland?"
"Searching for errant truths, Officer. See, I infuse relatable modern fiction scenarios with charactorial demonstrations of the existential condition. Allegorical symbology, it's called, rooted in various philosophical systems."
Both Stu and Courtney stared.
The guy kept it zipped as Stu rolled an arrest report in the typewriter but before he could even begin to ask the prelim questions, Courtney peeped, "Uh, Stu?"
"Yeah?" he grumbled.
"I gots somethin' ta tell ya... "
Stu frowned at her. "What?"
She seemed sheepish. "Them Testicle Festival tickets weren't the only thing that come in today's mail... "
Stu snapped his gaze on her. She was holding up an envelope.
He gulped dryly. "Is it... "
"For Sergeant Stewart Cummings, from the Richmond Field Office of the Bureau of Alcoholic, Tobacco, and Firearms... "
"Speaking of tobacco," White Shirt interrupted again, "would it be all right if I smoked?"
"Be quiet!" Stu yelled but kept his gaze horned in on Courtney. "Aw, shit, I'm sure it's the rejection letter. If ATF was going to hire me, I would've known weeks ago," and then his hand reached over to take the letter.
But she didn't give it to him. "Stu? Don't be mad, but—"
"But what!"
"I, uh, well, see... I was so curious... I opened it... "
Stu's face reddened. "You had no right—"
Her broad peaches-and-cream face broke into a grin. "They hired ya, Stu... "
Stu snapped the letter away, read it, then jumped up and shot his hands to the air. His chair flew back against the wall, and he shouted, "I'm finally out of this no-horse town! I'm finally going to be a REAL cop!" Maniacally, he ran to Courtney and gave her a big wet sloppy kiss.
"Hate ta see ya go, Stu," she said, tearing up, "but I'm happy for ya."
"Thanks, Courtney!
White Shirt offered a warm smile. "Congratulations, Officer. I'm sure you'll make an exemplary federal agent, and I share in your exuberance."
Stu continued to hoot and holler, doing an awkward moonwalk about the booking room. Then he stopped abruptly and stared at White Shirt.
"You! Stand up!"
White Shirt did so, and Stu took off his handcuffs.
"Hit the road!"
The man turned. "Thank you very, very much, Officer... "
Stu pumped his fist in the air and did a Rebel Yell worthy of any redneck this side of the Mississippi. "Courtney? Gimme the key to the chief's office! He's got a bottle of Jack in there, and you and me are SURE AS SHIT gonna party tonight!"
White Shirt lit a cigarette and quietly left the station.
(XI)
"We gotta get out'a here and dump this U-Haul ‘fore that cop comes back," Dicky panicked in the front seat. He dug in his pocket and pulled up some change. "I gots seven cents! How much you got?"
"Fuck me and the horse my mamma rode in on!" Balls yammered, searching his own pockets. "Shee-it, look! Two quarters on the floor!"
"That's enough to get us out'a here!"
Balls ran in, paid, and pumped fifty-seven cents worth of regular unleaded into the car.
Dicky hauled out of the lot, engine screaming. "I cain't believe that shit, man! Of all the fucked up thangs!"
"Fuckin'-A... "
"We gotta bury this U-Haul in the woods somewhere—deep, Balls! Can you imagine if he'd opened it up and seed that thing back there?"
"Ya ain't gotta tell me, brother. But ya know... " Suddenly a calm settled into Balls. " I ak-shure-lee don't thank we got anything ta worry 'bout."
Dicky slowed down, staring. "What'cha mean? The Writer's gonna finger us to that cop!"
Balls stroked the goatee. "Naw, Dicky, I bet he don't... 'cos it ain't lodger-kul."
"We abducter'd him, man, and we was fixin' ta kill him! We made him help us rob a house and then he watched us sacker-fice Cora! That's murder, Balls! We'se'll get the death penalty!"
"Ain't gonna happen, Dicky."
"How ya figgure that?"
Balls let his long black redneck hair blow serenely out the window. "If the Writer was gonna finger us, he would'a done it right in front of the cop. He would'a showed him what's in the U-Haul and he would'a sung like a canary 'bout Crafter's house. But he didn't do none'a that."
Dicky seemed to chew on the speculation.
"Instead? He took the credit card rap and let hisself git arrested so's we could get away."
"Well... yeah," Dicky said in a slow drawl. "Now that I thank about it, I reckon yer right."
"Ya know, Dicky? The Writer's a geek and a tubesteak but he's also a stand-up guy."
"Dang straight—"
CLANK!
Dicky weaved in startlement. The sudden sound caused them both to flinch.
"Did you just throw a fuckin' rod?" Balls asked.
"Naw, man—" Dicky looked over his shoulder. "Sounded like it come from the back."
"Somethin' must'a falled over in the U-Haul. Pull'er over... "
Dicky idled the ‘Mino to the shoulder and cut the big engine. They both jumped out and ran back—
They stood.
They stared.
They slumped.
The U-Haul's door had been busted open from the inside, its steel latch bent and unseated. Inside, there was no sign of the Minotauress.
"That magic cum-spell must'a wore off!" Dicky exclaimed.
Behind them, in the woods, they heard a thrashing laced by vicious snorts. The sounds seemed to dim and eventually disappear as their source receded.
"There goes our million bucks," Balls lamented, hands on hips. He half-laughed to Dicky, then said, "Ain't that just a great big kick in the behind?"
But Balls had pronounced the word behind as "bee-hand."
EPILOGUE
It took the Writer two hours to walk back to downtown Luntville, yet he did so with a lively step and a studied joy on his face. The warm night's caress accompanied him, along with the gibbous moon and the aural sweep of crickets. Along the way, he pondered everything that had happened to him today and realized that the entire ordeal nearly existed as an allegorical masterpiece. Yes... Intrigue and advents, epiph
anies and a resultant actualization, all wrapped up in an ever-important anti-climax. All necessary ingredients for fiction of literary worth—especially the latter component. Like Pope's Rape of the Lock, Melville's Bartleby, Lewis' Main Street, and—the best always last—Sartre's monumental "The Wall... " A gentle satisfaction swept the Writer, because he knew that the truth of his own life reflected the greatness of classic fiction along the same lines as A Tale of Two Cites and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn... Back at the Gilman House, he stepped into proverbial pin-drop silence. He thought of Poe's quintessential protagonist stepping across the threshold of the brooding House of Usher...
Up the stairs, then. Was there a bizarre vibe in the air? On the darkened landing, he paused at a barely audible hum. It was coming from behind one of the girls' doors. A marital aid? he suggested to himself, but then a feisty young-voiced woman yelled, "Git out'a there, ya little bugger! Git out!" and he thought he had a pretty good idea what the sound was. Behind another door, bedsprings creaked insanely, and a crotchety man's voice railed, "Aw jeezus-ta-pete! Kilt a dozen commies in Korea'n now I cain't even get a load'a jism off! Ain't good fer nothin' ‘cept sellin' tater chips ta immer-grints'n crackers! What I fight the war for?"
The Writer had a pretty good idea who the client was.
Another door clicked open deeper in the hall. It was darker back there; the Writer could barely see.
"Is someone th—" he began, but the formation of a figure began to sharpen. Must be one of the girls, he reasoned. The semi-silhouette took more shape: a stunningly curvaceous woman but with—
God help me...
—a peculiar V spreading wide from atop her head... like horns.
The Writer's heart seemed to stop.
"Haa!" came the chirpy voice, and finally the rear-hall's darkness disgorged the woman and her identifiable features. It was Nancy.
The Writer made a rare departure from his avoidance of profanity. "Nancy. You scared the living shit out of me."
She cracked a hick laugh. "You're afraid'a l'il ole me?" and then she came close enough to be seen.
All she wore was her exquisite nakedness. Even in the murky light, that young, raw beauty raved, so intensely that the Writer's knees nearly went out. The ripe breasts and sleek, perfect flesh left him helpless and in awe.
I could... marry her, the outrageous thought swept halo-like round his head, and scarier still was the immediacy with which the impression had arrived.
But then the oddity registered in his brain. On her head she wore a facsimile of bunny ears, which he'd first feared were the horns of the dread Minotauress.
"What's that on your head?"
Her eyes bloomed at the afterthought. "Oh, tarnations! I plum fergot ta take 'em off after my last trick. The fella likes me to wear bunny ears 'cos he said his daughter was a Playboy Bunny long time ago, and I'se guess he wants ta pretend that I'm... Well, you know."
"Ah, yes." There's aberration everywhere, like evil, but after another moment's thought, he added, but also like good. Certainly mankind's sin must pave the prospect for its redemption. Kierkegaard proved that. The hope of the surmise brought him an instant well-being.
Downstairs, the clock tolled three. "Dang, it's so late," the nude girl commented. "Don't seem like it, though."
"Time is simply a form of intuition, relative to space. It's not so much time that passes with each tick of the clock but experience and, hence, truth."
Her adorable little nose scrinched up. "Huh?"
"Sorry, I'm philosophizing. But how was your evening?"
She glowed. "Aw, it was just dandy, it was. Got me over a dozen tricks'n made probably five hunnert bucks!"
"That's superb. You're quite industrious, Nancy, and quite the entrepreneur."
She took another step closer. "And how was your evenin'?"
"Wonderful," he breathed. "It was an evening of advents and revelation, of anticlimaxes and dichotomies. Indeed... an evening of signs and wonders."
The remark fuddled her. "Well we'se could all hear ya typin' away in yer room all night long. You must'a got a lot'a yer book wrote tonight."
Strange, he thought. I barely wrote a word today, and I've been out of the house for hours. She probably heard the air-conditioner rattling. "The book's coming along just fine," he bluffed.
She took another step... The Writer's eyes continued to shudder over the immaculate physique. Moments of silence passed, the two of them gazing at each other.
Suddenly, he wanted to weep. "My God, Nancy... "
"Yeah?" she giggled.
"You're so beautiful it's killing me... "
At last the space between them collapsed, and that warm, paragonic body was pressing him against the wall. Feminine heat and redneck perfume blanketed him; it seeped into his nostrils and through his pores like the most indulgent narcotic. When her hands slid up his chest, he felt pleasantly electrocuted. He moaned, then, nearly convulsing when she licked up his neck, sucked his earlobe, then stuck her hand inside his shirt to his bare skin. "I just got such a fixin' fer you, I'se all in a tizzy," she whispered. She'd opened his shirt fully now, and pressed her bare breasts against him. The sensation catalyzed him in a rapport of euphoria that he could only describe as heavenly. Her nipples seemed to sweetly brand him and then she licked along his neck again, giggled, and finessed a delectable tongue into his mouth. The Writer's arms wrapped around her as if holding onto an abstraction that would prevent him from plummeting to his death—a death that he might even welcome in the midst of this ephemeral bliss.
Suction pulled his tongue into her mouth. Her hand cradled his crotch, squeezing in pulses and inciting an erection that was suddenly so hard it hurt. Carry me away, he thought to the Fates. He convulsed in the gentle jaws of this penultimate contradiction—Evanescent permanence, he mused. Cacophonic silence. Fleeting immortality...
"I belong to you body'n soul," a delicious whisper twanged in his ear.
She's Thomas Pynchon's V, he knew. She's the woman I want the most but, alas, the woman I can never have, because to have her is to beckon chaos.
The Writer could barely breathe as he gingerly pushed away from her and the rest of her world-tainted perfection.
"You're the woman of my dreams, Nancy," he returned her whisper, "and that is the reason I must go now... "
Her smile lit up every corner of his psyche as she daintily backed away, bunny ears pitching. "I'll'se get you one'a these days... "
"I know," he croaked. "Goodnight... "
"See ya tomorrow, Mr. Writer!" she said and slipped back into her room, and—yes!—she'd pronounced the word writer as "ratter."
Shuddering, his mind a schism now, the Writer entered his own room and turned in the feeble light.
Did a shadow move?
A ghost, perhaps?
After a night such as this, could his spirit now be a beacon for apparitions?
No, I'm just tired and exhilarated at the same time. So much happened tonight: portents, marvels, the sheer unfathomable...
His lighter stalled beneath the cigarette he'd just put in his mouth. He was staring down at his desk. Beside the Remington Standard Typing-Machine No. 2 was a veritable stack of paper.
A drone filled his head when he picked it up. Three hundred pages at least, and every single one filled with type-written words.
My God, my novel... He stared further, as if over a cliff. It's finished...
He looked at the first page and gulped. The original title, WHITE TRASH GOTHIC, had been typed over with X's, and a line below it, a mysterious new title had been typed. The new title was this: THE MINOTAURESS.
THE HORN-CRANKER
PROLOGUE
The high sun beamed in the sleepy South Dakota summer, and its light painted the boy's already well-tanned arms. This was all part of him, part of his rich and hardy upbringing. The grazeland scent, the whipping wind, and the sun.
The day's beauty sang across the endless land.
"Their horns are
their power, son," the boy's father warned. Rugged, overalled. Kind-eyed but resolute. "So ya gotta take that power, take it right away from 'em. Otherwise, they'll gore ya; they'll ram their horns right up your ass. I seen it happen to a man once, and it weren't pretty. He died like a dog 'cos his shit mixed all up with his blood."
Wow! the young boy thought. Shit... mixed with blood!
"He got to pukin' too, throwin' up his own shit right there in the cattle-gate."
Wuh—WOW!
The boy was but nine years old at the time of this crucial indoctrination. He didn't know what dick hair was, nor sex, nor did he even know what the infrequent hardening of this dinger meant. It was just something that happened. The boy was innocence unspoiled. Until now.
"So here's what'cha do—" The boy's father grabbed the instrument—called a torque-plier—and raised it in the sun. "Handy as a pocket on a shirt, boy—this here pair'a horn-crankers." He took a strong, hard huff, and fit the queer tool's clamps over the steer's horn.
