Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1)

by Shane Norwood

  “And then what? Charlie becomes so ecstatic that they stop fighting? They are too busy fucking each other to fuck with us?"

  “No, man. That’s only part of it. The seriously freaky part is this. Machine Gun Jelly insinuates its way into the testes, and infiltrates the seminal fluid. The motherfucker seeps into your balls, man, you dig?”

  “So it’s chemical castration?”

  Shaking his head, Hazy took another deep toke from his reefer and stared at Baby Joe.

  For a second Baby Joe thought he had lost him, but his voice followed the smoke into the room, softer even than before. “You could say that, man. Machine Gun Jelly is audio sensitive. It responds to a specific frequency, or rather a specific combination of frequencies.”

  “And does what?”

  “It fucking explodes, man!”

  “It what?”

  “It explodes. It blows your fucking balls into the outfield. It’s a chemical Bouncing fucking Betty, man.”

  Baby Joe stared at Hazy, who stared back from out of his cloud, sitting under his beret with a sad smile. It was such an unbelievably outlandish story that, coming from anyone else, Baby Joe would have dismissed it as the imaginings of a drug-addled mind. But something in Hazy’s eyes, in his ingenuous expression, something in his matter-of-fact delivery, something in what Baby Joe knew about the man who had once been Jack Doyle, told him that it was true, or at least that Hazy believed it to be true.

  “Jesus H. fucking Christ. That is un-fucking-believable. What about the frequency? What about the delivery system?”

  “This is the truly wonderful part, man. You have to dig the irony in this. The detonation signal obviously has to be something unique, something that won’t trigger this shit by accident, right. So, you know at the end of ‘A Day in the Life’ on Sergeant Pepper there’s thirty seconds of white noise, inaudible to humans, a kind of sonic practical joke, yeah? Well, that’s it.”

  “You have got to be shitting me, man.”

  “No, man. That was the plan. Wait till every gook in the ‘Nam is hopped up to the eyeballs on MGJ, and half of them are getting it on with their mama-sans down in the paddies. When every hut and tunnel in the ‘Nam is crammed full of incendiary slope nuts. And then send in the cavalry, man. Air Cav in squadrons of Hueys, specially equipped with state-of-the-art hi-fis and massive multi-megawatt speakers, flying all over the country, blasting out Sergeant Pepper, and it’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Dick’s Load.’”

  Baby Joe sat back, shaking his head, and reached for another beer as Hazy temporarily disappeared behind his smoke screen. He listened to the sound of Hazy exhaling.

  “So, what went wrong?” he said.

  “Dig this, bro. One night, some Lurps came in from the shit and were in town on furlough. They got FUBAR. The compound had a heavy-duty MP guard, and the Lurps decided to fuck with them by breaking in. These mothers had their shit wired so tight, man, they were in and out without anybody knowing, except this one guy loses his chevron patch. They found the MGJ and, not knowing what it was, decided to boost some. As soon as the brass found out the next morning that some of the shit had been scaled, by Americans, they had to eighty-six the operation. Imagine every head between San Diego and Venice fucking Beach surfing round with no nuts. Hanging ten, with none hanging. Only a little had been made at the time, so they shut down production, and ordered a controlled detonation. But before that could happen, some dipshit second lieutenant, just arrived from the boonies, called in an air strike and fucked up the coordinates. He greased the compound, man, and all the techs that worked there, which was all very convenient for the brass.”

  “So Machine Gun Jelly was history.”

  “Yeah, man. Except for what the Lurps took. Nobody knows what happened to that.”

  “How do you know all this? I was here, and I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Well, you know, man. We moved in kinda different circles. This story was going round among the heads. You know, just one of those bullshit stories like the incurable pox, or the Vietnamese girls with broken glass up their pussies. Then, after I got hit, and I was in the intensive care in Saigon, they moved a guy in next to me who had been seriously torched, on account that the burns unit was full. This poor bastard was higher than fucking Telstar on morphine, baby. One night he starts talking to me, like, babbling in the darkness, and he tells me this whole thing. He was one of the techs that bought it from Lieutenant Dipshit. Next morning he was gone, and I heard later that he didn’t make it. I also heard later that Lieutenant Dipshit got fragged. Draw your own conclusions, man.”

  They sat together in companionable silence listening to Hazy’s sounds, drinking beer and smoking, Baby Joe trying to get his brain around what he had been told and Hazy slowly fading back into the ether after his moment of lucidity. When Baby Joe left, an hour or so later, after kissing Hazy on the forehead and telling him he would be back to see him, Hazy wasn’t really paying attention. He had removed his beret and was busy rolling another joint and listening to the directions to the Shores of Orion.

  Monsoon knelt down and frantically scrabbled at the quarter-century’s accumulation of dust, spiderwebs, and bat shit that covered the wall of the outhouse at Wal’s Outback. Behind him lurked his cryptozoological cousin, holding a twenty-pound hammer as if it were a lollipop.

  “Think you can break this wall?” Monsoon asked, realizing the stupidity of his question even before the Sasquatch pulverized a significant section of plasterwork with a seemingly effortless flick of the wrist. From where the plaster had fallen away came a faint gleam where the hammer blow had scraped the grime off some kind of foil-covered package.

  “Take the walls down. See what’s inside, take it out.”

  Sasquatch moved bricks like a child destroying a jigsaw puzzle and began to lift out oblong packages. Monsoon snatched one up and rubbed it frantically with his shirttail.

  Despite the steaming humidity, and the passing of the years, the letters were clearly visible. His ears were ringing. They were ringing with the same kind of strident clanking that silver dollars make spilling into the well of a slot machine. His almond eyes were round for the first and only time in his life, stretching like ardent moons to encompass the immensity of the wealth lying before him. He was hyperventilating like a scuba student with a constricted O-ring. His hand touched the cool silver. He felt an electric tingle run up fingers.

  “Got a knife?” he managed to say, through a larynx constricted by dreams of excess and revenge, excess against the years of struggle, of nickel-and-dime sleepless worry-sick poverty, revenge against bitter years of disdain and humiliation. Sasquatch produced a malevolently glinting sickle-bladed knife and handed it to Monsoon, blade first, looking at him as if he would rather be sticking it into Monsoon’s liver.

  With as much care as he could summon, Monsoon made an incision in the corner of the uppermost brick, and carved the merest sliver from the corner of the claylike substance within. He held it to his nostrils and inhaled deeply.

  He closed his eyes and indulged himself in the sweet, sweet glow of success and relief. At last. At long, long last. This was it, baby. This was the gentle kiss of Venus, Aphrodite’s sensual caress, the golden shower of Danaë, and Cleopatra’s great, gaping, glistening, Greek minge, all rolled into one.

  He stood up. Sasquatch reached around and snatched the knife from his grasp.

  “Yes?” said the Sasquatch, in a passing semblance of human speech. “You find what you look? Is it?”

  “Damn straight!” replied Monsoon, as if from somewhere far away.

  Suddenly, Monsoon felt as if he could not breathe and needed to sit down. The reason he felt as if he could not breathe was because of the slender silken cord that was wrapped around his throat like a rock python with cramp. The reason he needed to sit down was because the Sasquatch had kung fu’d him in the kneecap and traumatized his patella and, in a continuation of the same movement, kicked him in the groin. Pain is only a vague description of what
he felt. Nauseating, unbearable, box-jellyfish, fires-of-purgatory, Prometheus’s-eagle-eating-your-liver agony would be more like it. The rock python recovered slightly from its cramp attack. Monsoon lay panting like a dog eating a habañero, and only the lack of volume in his windpipe prevented him doing a Tarzan-with-piles impression.

  Something glinted at the corner of his eye and a tiny pricking added to the symphony of soreness that his body was conducting, and then he heard swelling violins and a smiling, buxom angel kissed him tenderly on the lips, and the last thing he saw, as his eyes rolled into the back of his head like a great white shark at suppertime, was the Valkyries coming to carry him off to Valhalla.

  Mrs. Mary Rose Muffin was just hanging up the telephone as the doorbell rang. She liked to call home, every day, and make sure that everything was fine and dandy and just the way it ought to be. Now she glanced at herself in the mirror on her way to open the door. She looked very nice, even if she thought so herself. Her pretty blue frock was just the right length, and her blue-rinsed hair was curled and tidy, and her sensible shoes were neatly polished.

  She had decided against the gloves, since it was just so stifling hot over here, but she had kept the hat with its white brim and nice satin band, fastened into place with a long antique hatpin with a real pearl at the end. Satisfied, she opened the door and smiled a big welcome to Bjørn Eggen, who was looking very smart in his pale gray suit and holding a dozen roses.

  “Oh, my,” she said, “just look at these beautiful flowers. And you look so handsome and distinguished. Come in. Come and help me pin one of these lovely roses on my dress.”

  Bjørn Eggen stepped over the threshold and did as he had been bidden, fumbling with the pin with his veined, old hands.

  “There, now,” Mary Rose Muffin said, admiring herself in the mirror. “Now, how would you like a little drink before we go?”

  “Ja. Very much I would like that. Beer if you haf.”

  “I’m sure we do. And if not, I shall ring down.” She fumbled in the mini bar and came out with a bottle of imported beer and a miniature of gin. “Would you? My old hands are not strong enough, I am afraid.”

  When Bjørn Eggen had prised open the bottles and poured Mary Rose’s gin into a glass with tonic and ice, she patted the bed next to where she was sitting and said, “Now, come and sit next to me and tell me all about what you have been doing since we saw each other last.”

  Bjørn Eggen was happy to see her. He liked her and she was cheerful company. After leaving the others the night before he had lain for a long time in the darkness, thinking. A strange melancholy had come over him, a sadness and longing he could not shake, as if he were coming to the end of something. He had wanted to go home, where things were simple. It wasn’t just the disappointment that his grandson had not shown up to see him. Knowing that something was going on he had half-expected it, and he didn’t really know the boy anyway.

  It was what it signified. Maybe the story about his son being found was not true, either. Maybe that was it. Maybe he secretly knew that he had come all this way for nothing, and that he wasn’t going to take his boy home. Maybe he had known it all along. Maybe he was just a foolish old man messing about on the other side of the world on some wild goose chase. And maybe somewhere in all that was the fear that he would die in some foreign place before he could get back where he belonged. Before he could get home.

  He had finally drifted off to sleep, and in the morning he had felt much better. Baby Joe had had somewhere to go, and Wally had been busy, so he had a couple of beers by himself and talked to Wally’s kids, and decided that since he was here, and couldn’t go home until the situation was sorted out, he was going to enjoy himself. So he had found the piece of paper on which Mary Rose Muffin had carefully written her number in a neat hand with looping letters, called her, and asked her to dinner. And she had said, yes, she’d love to.

  And now here he was, telling her about Wally, and the coincidence, and about Monsoon, and about his adventure with Rodney—although he censored that story a little bit—and Mary Rose Muffin laughed until tears ran, and she had to wipe her eyes with a handkerchief. And then she said she would have to go and redo her makeup, and Bjørn Eggen took his beer onto the balcony and looked down at the bright and chaotic city until she reemerged.

  “Come along, Bjørn Eggen,” she said, “it’s time we should be going. I asked that nice, young man at the reception desk, and he told me the very best restaurant to go to, and he made us a reservation and ordered us a taxi, and I’m so looking forward to our evening together.”

  “Ja, me too. I also look forward.” Bjørn Eggen offered Mary Rose Muffin his arm and she took it, and he escorted her out of the room and down the long corridor, past brightly colored panels, to the elevator.

  “You know who lose you war?”

  Unless he had a wager on the outcome the result of a war was of no interest whatsoever to Monsoon, but he feigned interest for diplomatic purposes. “Er, the fucking politicians, right?”

  “Wrong. Fucking Beach Boys lose you war.”

  Monsoon had more or less come to his senses and was without actual pain, although he could feel it pacing at the periphery of his consciousness, waiting for the opium to wear off like a predator waiting for its prey to grow weak from loss of blood. He was tied to a chair under the obligatory sinister naked bulb in a damp stone cellar. To either side stood two standard-issue evil henchmen, their bare, oiled, muscular torsos girdled by fully laden bandoliers, staring unblinkingly at him with implacable hostility. The Sasquatch squatted beside a dais, upon which stood a seriously heavy, ancient teak chair.

  On the chair sat Generalissimo Long Suc, and the cellar lay beneath the Long Suc Extravaganza of Exotica.

  “Fucking Beach Boys lose you war, American,” the generalissimo repeated.

  Even for someone as disinterested in military strategy as Monsoon, and under his current circumstances, this was an intriguing theory, which deserved attention.

  Long Suc had, since his retirement from the military, become a purveyor of items not generally available. And he purveyed them to people of discerning and discriminating tastes, people with unique appetites, people unperturbed by such intangible and inconvenient concepts as extinction, deforestation, pollution, exploitation, et cetera. So General Long Suc’s shelves were stocked with such trinkets and delicacies as ivory, rhino horns, whale meat, tiger’s dicks, and a few dozen drug-addicted Cambodian teenagers of both genders.

  Also on display were such practical items as land mines, rocket launchers, automatic weapons, Agent Orange, and a few canisters of Chinese nerve gas. Being a shopkeeper, the General saw it as his entrepreneurial responsibility to make sure the merchandise his customers wanted was always available at a competitive price. So if a couple of herds of elephants got wiped out in Thailand by an off-duty game warden entertaining himself in his spare time, it was all done in the name of commerce. And if the odd whale got harpooned in the lungs as part of ongoing scientific research, it was just the free market economy at work. And if a few kids happened to end up hopping round on one leg, or with no legs at all, the General didn’t see how he could be held responsible for the use his customers made of the goods he sold them.

  Long Suc was inordinately proud of the name of his shop, which he had plagiarized from the title of a hardcore porno mag he had once read in Sweden while part of a peace delegation, and he enjoyed entertaining his clients—such as the young man in front of him—with stories of his war experiences, as part of his marketing strategy.

  “What the fuck have the Beach Boys got to do with the war?” Monsoon asked, somewhat understandably.

  “Okay. I show you. American start bomb Hanoi. Okay? Very bad. Many kill. No food. No medicine. Everybody start think this too hard. Better we quit. We have big meeting try decide. All top people. Then one guy he say, ‘If surrender, American make us listen Beach Boys all time.’ So we decide keep fighting. And we win.”

  “That’s an
interesting theory, General,” said Monsoon, not really knowing what else to say.

  It was either the grinning old Mongol-looking fucker’s idea of a joke, or he was not playing with a full deck. Sitting there laughing at his own story the General looked like Genghis Khan enjoying a rare lighter moment, taking a break from conquering the known world. He had dark, almost black, almond eyes, peering from between high cheekbones. The skull was shaven, save for a long braid extending from the back of his head and down over his shoulder into his lap, and an incredibly long, wispy, white Fu Manchu mustache completed the picture. Monsoon was half expecting a maniacal cackle.

  “I agree,” said the General. “Now we make deal.”

  “Oh, good, yeah, okay, great,” said Monsoon, with genuine enthusiasm.

  Long Suc indicated with a slight movement of his hand a neatly stacked pile of briquettes, about a foot long by six inches wide by an inch deep. There were stencil marks on each package, very badly faded, but just legible:

  Government Property. Top Secret. MGJ. Strictly Authorized Personnel Only.

  There was also a little motif, just visible, of a yellow skull and crossbones, like the small flag of an optimistic pirate.

  “Deal we make as follows. You tell me what is merchandise, what it do, what you plan do with it, how much it worth, and I don’t cut both you Achilles tendon and drop you off in gay leper colony.”

  Monsoon weighed his options. They didn’t weigh very much. He decided to come clean. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you everything.”

  Long Suc assumed his best inscrutable oriental expression and nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Monsoon laid out the whole story in all its labyrinthine complexity, ending on a note of legitimate indignation with the part about how his own auntie had set him up with the Sasquatch, who had obviously turned him over to the General.