Sea Monkeys

by Kris Saknussemm

  POWDER MONKEYS

  Frank’s furtive, simian behavior certainly did concern me, but I was keeping close tabs on him with my hand on the trigger of a dry-chem fire extinguisher. He was actually starting to appear vaguely crustacean.

  Meanwhile, I seemed to have lost control of my forehead. It kept furrowing and unfurrowing. Two weeks of pure methedrine had taken its toll on both of us, and his girlfriend seemed headed for the loony bin (but we were philosophical about this, because she’d seemed like an excellent candidate for that from the start).

  I was on the verge of either laughing hysterically or weeping at virtually anything I thought of (including the panic of not having a clear thought to mumble), while Frank was obsessed with an old Dinah Washington song on a record he’d found in a junk shop, called “I Sold My Heart to the Junk Man.” He played it continuously, and I mean continuously, because he was afraid that if he didn’t, the world would end. (I was somewhat sympathetic to this reasoning, having only a month before been similarly fixated on the Steely Dan song “Babylon Sisters.”)

  Outside it was snowing softly, and the flakes looked like .17 Remington shots colliding with raindrops.

  I don’t know how I managed to pry him out of that room and away from that damn record. He’d become convinced his heart would stop beating if the needle slipped off that one song—and given the amount of crank we’d snorted, the Vegas money might’ve backed him.

  We were in that paralysis mode of the wire—just after a hyperspeed light trail Ping-Pong duel down in the basement of the dormitory, where it was warm from the oil heater, so we’d both broken out in a blood sweat and had worked off the first edge of the rush. Muscles had started contracting since then, and the desire for movement wasn’t connecting with the nerves to make that comfortably possible.

  Once we got out into the cold, though, I knew we’d start throwing snowballs and darting around like fools behind the trees, dilated eyes wide for narcotics agents and those creepy shadow men who are only as thick as plate glass that you often catch sight of on a speed freak. I thought it was worth the risk.

  We stood under the halo of an antique-looking streetlamp in the falling snow for about two hundred years. I was bawling my eyes out about dead family and friends—and how hot Frank’s sister looked when she wore that fluorescent green leotard. Frank had his head thrown back, catching dirty snowflakes on his tongue and snickering like some demented crab lord—his afro silver with snow crystals like a luminous dandelion.

  Earlier, he’d planted an idea related to eating—something we hadn’t been doing a lot of lately, but which was now moving up on our priority list. Unfortunately, he’d introduced the topic in the context of a pineapple ham steak at the Village Green, which struck me as the most ridiculous idea I’d ever heard of (knowing that the place had been closed for more than four hours), and set me laughing so hard I might’ve burst a vein had he not zinged me with an iceball that hit me in the forehead (that was still wrinkling and unwrinkling of its own accord) with such force I thought the streetlamp had exploded.

  This prompted a recommendation on my part that we borrow the car of a guy we called The Big-Mouth Bass for a high-speed run down to Manchester and Dunkin’ Donuts. We knew for a fact the Bass was blacked out from a keg party and wouldn’t miss his keys until noon the next day. We, on the other webbed hand, still had another gram. Having almost knocked me cold with the overly compressed snowball (Frank was, after all, a former all-city pitcher in high school and had been scouted by the pros), he could hardly refuse.

  I think I handled the swerve on the interstate to avoid the deer with great finesse and that highly tuned amphetamine alertness we both so enjoyed. I also brought my diplomatic skills to bear in Dunkin’ Donuts when Frank collapsed in an unsightly cackling fit at the word cruller (which he made sound like it had five syllables). And I humored his craving for a pineapple and ham pizza (which was not easy to come by at 3 AM) to complement his toffee cream butter-horn for the drive back.

  What I’m particularly proud of to this day is my deft, determined crossing of the snowbound, grassy median when I realized I’d somehow gotten on the wrong side of the interstate (the backs of the signs was my clue). I thought that not to have gotten us hopelessly bogged or skidded out of control was a fine effort on my part, but all Frank could say was, “You want a peeth of piztha?”

  So it is with friends. They get used to us, and take our shining moments for granted. A moment later he asked, “Do you know why the sun’s rising?”

  I thought of the cosmology class I was nearly failing for lack of attendance. “I have a general idea,” I said.

  “It’s because I left the record on,” he said proudly. “I jammed the needle. It’s been going the whole damn time we’ve been gone!”

  Aha, I thought. So it is with friends. We get used to them, and take their shining moments for granted.

  SENTENCED TO DISNEYLAND

  Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy—the magical portals to the Magic Kingdom.

  “This was the American dream, a prayer for the future. But that golden goal was not to be had without cost. The American Way was not gained in a day. It was born in adversity, forged out of conflict.”

  Conflict?

  Let me tell you about conflict. It’s watching two of the Seven Dwarves kick the shit out of each other in costume in one of the backstage areas and hearing one rant, “You gave me herpes!”

  Conflict is on one of your days off thinking it would be very funny to drop a hit of acid with your craziest friend and toodle around the park as if you were a civilian . . . only to find yourself peaking on the “It’s a Small World” ride, which gets stuck, while the song keeps playing over and over, the animatronic dolls representing all the cultures of the world squeaking, “It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all . . . ” while the world does indeed get smaller as the drug comes on harder, a pregnant claustrophobic woman begins to sob, children become dangerously excited—and your lunatic friend rises and begins singing the song at the top of his voice.

  We were very fortunate not to have been taken away in a net on that one—and when you get expelled from the Magic Kingdom, before you find yourself in lockup in downtown Anaheim, you get a special debriefing by park security behind closed doors, a prospect that was considerably more hallucinogenic than I could cope with.

  Remarkably, we escaped the small world, and beyond a minor incident on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride (where I found it necessary to physically restrain my friend Steve), I was able to return to my normal duties two days later, although normal was always a relative term.

  I worked as a “cast member” captaining the Amazon Belle on the Jungle Cruise in Adventureland . . . and here verbatim is the spiel (which we were taught to refer to as “the preset narrative”) that I’d recite. After you’ve delivered this little speech three times, you begin to get the disturbing impression that you’ve been turned into an animatronic character yourself.

  Here we go deep into a tropical rainforest. Yeah, it rains 365 days a year here. Over on the other side there’s old Smiley, one of my favorite jungle residents—and also one of the craziest crocs in these parts, folks. Nobody’s seen him move for over thirty years. What a croc!

  And that there is a Bengal tiger, folks. He weighs over five hundred pounds and can jump up to twenty-five feet from a dead standstill. Oh, look at this, the little headhunters! Watch out, folks! And beautiful Schweitzer Falls. Named after that famous African explorer, Dr. Albert Falls. Uh-oh, a huge African bull elephant. For those of you with short memories, that there is a huge African bull elephant.

  Hang on now. Hippos! Got to scare them off. Cover your ears. We’re back in headhunter country now. Not a good place to be headed. Those are spears—and those are poison arrows. If any of them hit you folks, you throw them right on back—you’re not allowed to keep any souvenirs. Now let me take this opportunity to point out some of the rare tropical
foliage to you. There’s some. And there’s some more over there.

  And there’s old Trader Sam, the head trader for the area, folks, but business has been shrinking a little lately. He’s got a special deal going—two of his heads for just one of yours. And folks, you don’t wanna miss this. This might be your only opportunity to see a rare African mallard. Oh, what do you know, we’re returning to civilization. This could well be the most dangerous part of our journey. You have to careful. Not all the animals are in the jungle. Ha-ha.

  Yes, this was the American dream, a prayer for the future. Where the Matterhorn rises over Frontierland next to the Enchanted Tiki Village. Now a thrilling adventure cruise through dark, mysterious caverns where dead men tell no tales. Clear the decks, lad! Remember, the American Way was not gained in a day. It was born in adversity and forged out of conflict. Strike your colors, you bloomin’ cockroaches! By thunder!

  (That bit about the mallard was my improv, by the way. You couldn’t always count on the ducks being in position to have them written into the script. Funny about that.)

  HEAR THE WIND BLOW, DEAR

  Back—to the summer nights sweltering with chocolate from the Peter Paul factory—back to the stinking aurora of the sugar refinery poised at the railhead beyond the black field of beets.

  My friends and I drove drunk to the top of Mount Toro in full moonlight. We were gulping Guinness Stout, which was hard to come by then, and I was in love—with the warm air on my bare chest, with cigarettes, and the rich foam, with some seventeen-year-old girl whose name I don’t even remember—and we staggered to nostalgic rock ’n’ roll under the giant television tower that dominates the peak.

  We gazed out over the luminous irrigation canals that artery the land where Steinbeck set his novels of ice and lettuce and imaginary rabbit necks broken by big hands.

  Far across the valley, the lights of a long tanker truck crept south down the interstate. I cracked another beer and stared at the moon, my nerves tingling into kindling—into cattails—into particles of light beamed from a satellite.

  Suddenly, I began to rise, leaving my friends straggling and kissing on the dry grass below. I wanted to holler down—Hey, look at me, the Man Drinking Beer in the Moon. But my eyes were drawn to a dark gully that lay beyond their field of vision.

  The hull of an old Chevrolet and the stripped chassis of some other anonymous car lounged in the cleft where only the moonlight could find them. They might’ve belonged to our parents—kids of an earlier generation who came, like us, to the top of the mountain, to neck, pet, spoon, spark—whatever people under the influence of adolescence feel compelled to do. Maybe the drivers of those cars never returned. Maybe they’re still here, I thought.

  I saw the girl I was with, down below. She was sneaking off to take a leak, her big white breasts puffing the gauze of her shirt. I saw her father’s merchant marine hands delicately spinning a screwdriver in the back of a TV repair shop. I saw her father and mother kissing in the front seat of a hot rod.

  Sweethearts have always come here, I realized. Now their children born of bourbon and a slow dance flee the air-conditioned houses to follow their young ghosts—but we can’t drink with them or dance or watch new satellites creep across the sky. We’re too grown up to know we’re all here together. Soon a new generation will come to look for us just when they’re trying to escape. And I sank back down to join those of my age.

  But if I had known that night what I would one day lose, I would’ve listened more intently to my old young friends. I would’ve kept a closer watch on the lights of that tanker as we swallowed the thick stout that night. And I would’ve given up the dream of rising above the skeletal transmitter and the abandoned Chevrolets of love.

  Faith. That was the girl who wandered off. Faith Harding.

  ONE LONG WHISTLE

  We could hear a train coming long before we’d see it, so there was almost always plenty of time to tightrope on the trestle rails—to tense the watch-springs in our legs and leap into thirty-five feet of pure July—because nothing sounds as beautiful as a freight train heard underwater.

  At first we were scared to dive down with a mask. There were headless corpses decomposing in the mud—better vague shapes seen through blurred eyes. But the mystery of what was really down there beckoned. So, one by one we spat in Michael’s scuba glass, pretending we were frogmen mining the bridge.

  We found a cash register, filled with snail shells, that came from a robbery at the Liquor Mart. We found the obligatory bottles and shoes. But beyond even our secret expectations—we found a Pontiac parked permanently like a Matchbox car in a murky aquarium.

  Here was a heaven for escape artists and archaeologists—to fill our lungs with sunlight and wriggle through the eel grass, to swim through the splintered windshield and slip alone behind the wheel.

  We even found a doll trapped beneath a seat. Half tadpole, half Chatty Cathy—each of us attempted the rescue—slithering up a rope of bubbles to break the surface with the body of the baby clutched in one hand. It became a game of hiding and seeking and saving. But we always returned her, so that she would be there waiting.

  On my last birthday, I returned to that town for the first time in a million years and found Michael married to a pretty girl who was getting fat. We drank a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Then some obese truck driver with a Rip Van Winkle beard showed up with a couple of kilos of Mexican gold he’d smuggled back in a shipment of birdseed.

  We cleaned some and rolled it, and eventually smoked it. Then we sat back in an afternoon stupor and talked inevitably of the old days. We covered the important subjects like drunk driving and sex in cemeteries. We spoke of jobs we hated, dead parents, kids, computer games and the downward trend in the quality of cartoons.

  Suddenly, Michael’s eyes glazed over with what looked like an idea, and he disappeared—only to burst back in the room with a big eureka grin on his face.

  Very slowly from behind his back, he revealed the doll I thought we’d decided not to save. She’d been cleaned up, but there was no mistaking who or what it was. He looked at me as if to say, “Remember?” and I just smiled.

  I couldn’t explain how disappointed I was. Seeing the doll should’ve meant something, but as soon as I did, I realized she should’ve remained in the drowned car. She didn’t belong in a bungalow—she belonged down with the catfish and the empty Fanta cans.

  And if she’d managed to survive on the surface, the believer in me expected her to have grown into a pretty girl with a new car—maybe even children of her own. It was time for me to leave.

  Rip was eyeing Beth’s big tits and Michael was on the nod. But he staggered out to the car with me, and as I sat behind the wheel in the dry early September air, I asked him, “Do you remember what that sign said at the end of the trestle? You know, the big yellow sign we passed every time? The instruction for the engineer?”

  He thought about it—scratched his chin, smiled sadly and said, “Naw.”

  I’d been gunning the engine, and when I pressed the accelerator to the floor, I took one last look and saw him still wondering—and wondering what I meant.

  So I pushed my hand down on the horn and held it there, green willows weeping slowly gold in both mirrors when I crossed the bridge.

  THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA

  You know what I miss most, Anna? Watching you try to fold maps.

  And the way you always waited until you were in the car to spray on your perfume.

  Do you still drive out through the oil derricks when you need time to think? Can you still drive? My father says he can, and he’s been dead as long as you.

  I miss the smell of your skin when you got hot dancing—sitting in those cane chairs, listening to that stupid parrot of your aunt’s.

  My old man comes back at night to drink Old Crow with me. Old man, old crow. He knows. Why did I ever pity him?

  Come back and smell like limes and White Shoulder perfume and we’ll drink Tanqueray and ice. Com
e back to me and we’ll count mirages all the way to Enseñada. Please.

  I have one arm out the window—and one hand on the wheel. I’m about to cross the border in a haunted car, with two arrests and no convictions. Someone to declare.

  ALLIGATOR WISHES

  If for no other reason, I’m proud to live on a planet that was once ruled by reptiles.

  You can call my pilgrimage a tribute to those ancestral origins or just a private crisis, but I had to return to the scene of our foggy morning field trips—to the smell of peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and the echo of speakers explaining luminous sponges.

  For some, the highlight of the Steinhart Aquarium—next door to the Tea Garden and the de Young Museum—was the dolphin tank. For me, the essence was the slick stone pit that would’ve made an evil Oriental genius envious.

  Below lurked the supreme monsters—serene in their scales, with yellow eyes, teeth and tails for thrashing. Many were the discussions held against the iron fence about what would happen should one of us fall amongst those distant relatives. They seemed so sleepy and aloof. What would it be like when the slippery rocks suddenly came alive?

  Like all children, we thought we were the first to ever gaze down on the jaws and armor in the moat. Yet even a casual glance revealed this wasn’t the case.

  Other children on other field trips had made of the pit, a wishing well. Pennies, nickels, dimes, even one silver dollar glistened in the water, and if you looked through the opera glasses that Jenny Lehman, the smartest girl in our class, had snitched from her mother—you could at least think you saw coins embedded in the umber leather of what we reckoned was the oldest lizard of them all.