Going For a Beer

by Robert Coover

  PUNCH

  (2000)

  Here comes Judy. Popping up. Mad about the baby. If you’d been walking by, I say, you could’ve caught him. My bitter half carries on in the grand style. Oh my poor child, my poor child, and so on. What a peach! I kill her with my stick. It’s what I do best. I’m laughing. Roo-tee-too-ee-too-it. That’s the rusty sound I make. They say it’s not natural. They’re right. It’s not natural. Now here comes the law. I don’t get a minute’s rest. No respect for a poor widower. Doesn’t take long. Bop. He’s gone, too. More to follow. I can’t help it. It’s this big finger in my head. It points and says: Kill. I don’t hesitate. If I did, they’d knock my hooter off and use me for the hangman. Anyway, it’s fun. Something like fun. Biff, boff, another corpse. Roo-tee-to-to-toot. The baker: Roo-tee-too. A lawyer. That’s the way to do it. A yapping dog: shut him up. Root-to-too-it. He’s now the dog that everyone’s as dead as. Joey comes to help me count the bodies. Too many. We lose track. Who cares. Stack ’em up. Joey’s my pal. He’s a brainless wall-eyed knockabout but a pal. Not big on the ladies, but it takes all kinds. My werry merry companion, as they say in the trade. I don’t kill him. Probably couldn’t if I tried. In fact, I have tried, but he’s too quick. Straight out of the circus, that peckerless greaseball, and no hump or belly to slow him down. Let’s forgive and forget, Joey, I say, and aim a blow at him, but he’s behind me suddenly with a stick of his own. Ow, Joey, ow! I give up! Come on, let’s go drown our sorrows. Is that like drowning cats, Mister Punch? Like enough, Joey. Well, here, put ’em in this bag, then. All right, Joey, here they are. Very good, Mister Punch. Now give ’em a widdle and they’re gone to glory. The finger’s out of my head and sticking out below and, after I wag it around a bit just to give it an airing, it’s in the bag. Pssshh! Is the sound it makes. That did it, Mister Punch, says Joey, your sorrows have gone out with the tide, they’ve crossed over the waters, they’re on the other side, and he snaps the bag shut around my psshher. Help, Joey, I’m caught! We have to get rid of those dead sorrows, Mister Punch, says Joey, and throws the bag out the window. I nearly follow it out but I don’t. My arse is well-anchored. The bag dangles out there on my psshher, swinging back and forth like a pendulum, making a watery tick-tock sound. You shouldn’t have done that, Joey. Why not, Mister Punch? I’ll be arrested for deceitful exposure. They’ll say I was inflaming the masses. Inflaming them whats? Come here, Joey, you scoundrel. Just look at that mob out there! Shaking their bellies and gapping their jaws! You think they want to eat my sorrows? Joey comes over to the window. I stiffen up and hit him with the bag, send him flying. Got him at last. Or maybe not. He bobs up again with another stick. Maybe it’s mine. We fence in the heroic style, Joey with his stick, me with my stiffened psshher and bag of sorrows. The bag flies off and Joey’s gone. I’m a happy man again. Free and frolicsome. Sorrows gone and psshher tucked safely away between my ears. But I miss Joey. Killing’s no fun without a pal, and before I know it my head’s getting diddled and I’m at it again. Roo-tee-toot, and so on, what I do best, down they go. Corpses everywhere. And now it’s the hangman. You’ve broken the laws of the country, he says. I never touched them, says I. Just the same, your time is up, he says. Up whose? I ask. Ask the devil, he says. I just did. Enough of this impertinence! It’s back to the woodpile for you, blockhead. Sawdust thou art and unto sawdust shalt thou return. And he sets up the gallows, the sanctimonious blowhard. Looks very like a puppet booth, I remark. That’s right, Mister Punch, and you’re going to dance in it, says he. Do you have any last words? Yes. I’m off. Good-bye. But police have popped up and are holding me. It’s not that easy, you villain, says the hangman with a cruel laugh. Prepare to meet your Maker. I already know him, says I. He’s a drunken wanker. That’s enough now, Mister Punch, just put your head in here. I’ve never done this before, I say. I don’t know how. Show me. He does and I jerk the rope and hang him. There’s nothing to it. He’s dancing on air. I whistle a little tune. The mob loves me for it. I’m a fucking hero.

  Oh oh. It’s Judy again. Thought I did her already. Must be her ghost. Probably. I killed her too soon, she wasn’t done with her nagging, she has to come back and finish it. Can’t be sure, though. She’s as hard as ever. Take that, she says. And that. It’s a real thumping I’m getting. Can you hit a ghost? Where’s my stick? Somebody took my stick! She’s got the baby. Or the ghost of the baby. The one I threw out the window. She hits me with it. Blow after blow. It’s yowling fit to be tied. I’m yowling, too. Like a stuck pig. You can hear me for miles around. I’m a real crybaby when it comes to it. The dead brat and I’re into a bawling duet that is sort of like roo-tee-too-it and sort of like boo-hoo and tee-hee. No, the tee-hees are Judy’s. She’s having a party. Her beak is lit up like a lantern, she’s grinning ear to ear, her skirts are flying. Always one to give the mob a glim at her underparts, such as they are. But finally she poops herself out with so much strenuous haunting and, with a final whack that knocks me right off my pegs, she flits off with her squalling cudgel. It’s all right. My hump’s sorely blistered and I’m not likely to rise soon, but I’m not dead yet. Not quite. I’ve apparently got more killing to do. Who’s next? It’s the doctor. We know how this is going to turn out. Well, well, it’s my old friend Punch, he says. Looks to have paid the debt to nature at last, and high time, too, he owed it a potful. Are you dead, Punch? Dead as a stone, I say. Well, that’s good news, but you’re a terrible liar, why should I believe you? Feel my pulse, I say. He gropes about and my knuckled gap-stopper pops out. Zounds! What’s that? cries the doctor with some consternation. It’s my brains oozing out, I say. I always supposed yours were down there in the dreck, Punch. It stiffens up. Great snakes! Now what’s happening? exclaims the learned man, aghast at the dreadful sight. Rigor mortis, says I, and I bat his spectacles off with it. I think all you need, Punch old boy, is a sturdy dose of medicine. I prescribe a rum punch with extract of shillalagh, he declares, and he takes a swing at the offending digit with his cane. But it’s already buried away again, so in remedy he cracks my nose instead. It honks like a goosed gander. I give him a taste of his own medicine with my stick, but it’s evidently not a strong enough dose, for his condition worsens, I must improve on it. He tries to run away but I catch him with that clever thing between my legs and, holding him with it, chin in my chest, apply my therapeutics until he’s physicked to a lifeless pulp. Roo-tee-too-it. Way to do it. The police are back. There’s a law against killing doctors in broad daylight, they tell me. My watch must have stopped, I say. They take me to the judge. You’re incorrigible, Punch, he says. A vile pestiferous reprobate, a murderer, a heartless foulmouthed bully, a course loathsome unrepentant knave without a single redeeming feature. The mob is eating this up. How do you plead? Innocent, Your Honor! The mob boos and laughs. Innocent? Of all what you say, Your Honor, and lots more besides! The mob’s cheering, he’s banging his gavel. I’m feeling eloquent. I’m going to kill him, it’s all I can do in this world except fall down, but I feel a spell of rhetoric coming on, so I rear back and let fly. By my oath, Your Worship, I am but as my Maker made me. His hand is in my head. By the smell, I think it’s the same hand the sodden letch wipes his ass with. So what can I do? Whomsoever he hates, I hate, and he hates everybody. Even me, I think, that’s why he takes it out on me from time to time. And whomsoever he hates, we dispatch. It’s as much a law of nature, Your Honor, as that for which we need boghouses. The judge is immovable. Is that your final plea? Not quite, I say. Here it is. And I let a loud blattering fart that causes my shirttails to ripple out behind. The guards fall back, fanning their faces. The mob howls and I peer out at them and grin my rigid grin. Then I take the judge’s gavel away from him and club him with it until he’s a bag of mushy robes. That might have been Joey wearing a wig, but if so, too bad. I kill the guards before they can recover their senses and all the jury and it’s time for a rest. Maybe I can find Polly.

  And here comes Polly, popping up. No sooner maybe’d than here
she is in all her silks and satins. Life’s like that. A miraculous sequence of joys and sorrows. Punch, says the beautiful pink-cheeked strumpet, you’re looking a touch woebegone. What’s the trouble, my darling? Hemorrhoids again? No, Polly, love of my life, the pain’s not in my arse but in my heart. Didn’t know you had one, Punch, my precious knob, I’m gratified to hear of it. Maybe we can boil it up and have it for supper. Do not make light, Polly, of my little inquietudes. Oh dear, are they swoll up again? No, Polly dear, I speak of my mortified soul. My vexation of spirit. On the subject of spirits, she says, and she reaches into her skirts and pulls out a bottle. This should make you feel better, she says, or if not better, less, and in her loving way she drinks most of it off and hands the dregs to me. Now lie back and pull out that fidgety widget of yours, my dearest darling, she says with a tender burp, and let us dance our dance before your Judy comes round with her vengeful stick again. A sweet innocent child, Polly, still given to euphemisms. It’s out and she’s on it, doing her little gavotte, as one might call it. Perhaps there is music playing. A panpipe. Lovely. But I feel emptied out in heart and head. It’s sad. You know me, Polly, as a happy bawdy fellow without a care in the world. I get to do a lot of killing, it’s great fun, and the mob loves me for it, especially the ladies, whom as you know I never disappoint. I’m immortal and handsome and find the wherewithal for all my daily needs in the pockets of the recently deceased. I should be a most satisfied gent. But something’s missing, I add with a tremulous sigh, my hands clapped to her bouncing bum, and I don’t know what it is. Polly has got carried away with her dance and has nothing to say except: Oh! Oh! Oh! Some pleasure I’m missing out on? If I don’t know what it is, I reply, conversing with myself, I’m not missing it. A reason for being? A tautology, dear heart, if you’ll pardon the French. Meaning, am I missing? Pah! I don’t even know what meaning means. Love? I’m drowning in it. Polly lets out a wild shriek, quivers all over as if caught by a sudden fever, then collapses over the mound of my belly, conking her head on my nose but seeming not to notice. Her little bum continues to rise and fall gently as if trying to remember something. Maybe, I say as her dance dies away, it’s just that everything seems to happen as it must. Even what I’m saying now. Polly grunts in sympathetic understanding and tweedles a pretty fart out between my fingers, perhaps an answer of sorts. Yes, I can always count on wise Polly.

  But no time to contemplate it Her flatus raises the dead. Here comes Judy’s ghost again, mad as ever, swinging the howling baby. The kid’s had a tough life. Or death. I maybe should have been a better father. Judy, bellowing in her termagant fashion, rain blows on the both of us with the poor brat, intent, it would seem, on belting us both into her own domain of the dead. What rage! She’s a real beauty! My sweet duck! For a moment I love her all over again and am sorry I killed her. Maybe I can take it back. Pretty Polly, though, just a wisp of a thing and drained by her dance, unable even to get disconnected from my digit, squeezed up tight in terror as she is, is no match for my Judy, and I worry for her health. She is not part of our little circle and does not understand why she is being walloped by a dead baby. Some things are best kept inside the family. Grateful still for her fragrant little whiffle of wisdom, I ease her off me, and cover her with my hump until she can drop out of sight, being myself somewhat inured to the baby’s blows. More than to its cries. It’s a maddening din. If I could, I’d throw it out the window again and the yowping mother with it. But they’re ghosts. They’d just fly back in again. In the pandemonium, I have forgotten to put Polly’s dancing partner back where it belongs and now dead Judy clamps her jaws on it, trying to bite it off. It’s my tenderest part. It hurts so much I can’t think. Even though she’s got no teeth. All I can do is try to pull her off. She bites down the harder, her nose and chin joining like the pincers of a crab. Having her head there, for all the excruciating pain of it (if I could cry, there’d be tears in my eyes, maybe there are tears in my eyes), reminds me of happier times, though I can recall none specifically. All the melting moments. There must have been some. Where did we go wrong? Better not to ask. Finally, in desperation, I yank so hard, I rip her body away from her head. The body, silent at last, flies away with the baby, but her head, still wearing the Georgian mobcap, remains clamped on my suffering instrument of mercy and thanksgiving, my great animator. Without it in prime and proud condition, I’d be disgraced, unable to hold my head up in public. I’ll have to call for a doctor, if there are any left, or else a carpenter, and have her sawn off. Then I’ll have to kill the doctor or carpenter, roo-tee-too-it, how you do it, et cetera. Because I must. And then I’ll do it all again. As maybe I’ve done it all before. So much happens in this world. I can hardly keep up with it from minute to minute. But then it’s gone. There’s no residue. Ah. Well. Maybe, dear Polly, that’s what’s missing. The price of immortality. When nothing ends, nothing remains.

  THE INVISIBLE MAN

  (2002)

  The Invisible Man gave up his life as a crime fighter, it was too hard and no one cared enough, and became a voyeur, a thief, a bugaboo, a prowler and pickpocket, a manipulator of events. It was more fun and people paid more attention to him. He began inhabiting horse tracks, women’s locker rooms, extravagant festivities, bank vaults, public parks, schoolyards, and centers of power. He emptied tills, altered votes, made off with purses and address books, leaked secrets, started up fights in subway cars and boardrooms, took any empty seat he wanted on planes and trains, blew on the necks of naked women, moved pieces on gameboards and gambling tables, made strange noises in dark bedrooms, tripped up politicians and pop stars on stage, and whispered perverse temptations in the ears of the pious.

  Theft was particularly easy except for the problem of what to do with what he took. To be invisible he had to be naked, and there were not too many places on or in his body where he could hide things which themselves were not invisible. And these places (notably, his mouth and his rectum, which served as his overnight bag, so to speak) were often filled with other necessities. So, except for small jewelry store heists which could be slipped in, he was generally limited to what he could hold in his closed fists or squeeze under his armpits or between his buttocks, his daily spoils comparable then to those of a common panhandler, from whom on bad days he also sometimes stole. Still, there was not much on which to spend his wealth, whatever he wanted he could simply take and he could travel and live as and where he pleased, so he soon amassed a small fortune and, privy to all the inside information he needed, became a successful day trader on the side.

  Though drawn into a life of crime without remorse, and tempted like anyone else to kill a few people while he was at it, he had no place to conceal a suitable weapon, indeed it would be dangerous if he tried, so his new career was necessarily limited to lesser felonies. Of course, he could discreetly misdirect the aim of others, but in fact he steered clear of armed persons, as well as reckless drivers, busy kitchens, operating rooms. He could still be hurt. Stray bullets could wound him, knives could prick. He was only invisible, not immortal. And his insides were not invisible, his excretions weren’t, his blood. What a sight, a wound in view and no wounded! Moreover, if wounded, who would heal him? Perhaps he could find a blind doctor, though probably there weren’t many. And if he died, who would mourn him? Who would even see him there to bury him? He’d become a kind of odd speed bump in the road for a month or two. Such were the handicaps of an invisible person, no matter how rich they were or how much secret mischief they enjoyed.