THE M.D. A Horror Story

by Thomas M. Disch

  How much will my quarter buy?

  A sty, a sty, beneath your eye.

  There shall it swell until the day

  My second quarter takes it away.

  Then he returned to the store and bought himself a bag of potato chips.

  BOOK FIVE

  55

  Launce Hill was sitting on top of his black sample case on the shoulder of State Highway 32, some twenty-five miles southeast from Crookston and almost exactly a hundred miles south of the border. He was waiting for a ride, without any immediate hope of getting one, but that didn’t matter. There’d be more traffic later in the afternoon. Meanwhile, counting his blessings, he figured he was beyond the range of the border patrols, plus he’d managed to keep down the breakfast he’d eaten at the truck stop outside Crookston: dry toast, oatmeal, and skim milk. Each swallow of milk had felt as luxurious as slipping on a cool silk pajama top after a hot bath. All the time now he felt he was burning up. Not his skin, he’d been careful to keep from getting a sunburn, but inside, as though his flesh were slowly being roasted in a microwave.

  A car appeared at the far horizon, and Launce hauled himself to his feet and held out his thumb. The car didn’t even slow down. The fat woman behind the wheel knit her brow and squinted dead ahead, so intent on the highway that she didn’t know he was there. If her husband had been driving, he’d probably have given a hitchhiker the finger. Men have an easier time expressing feelings of hatred and naked aggression. It’s their early training with toy guns. As the car sped by, Launce shot the fat woman with his trusty fingertip .45, then sat back down on his sample case. Even as small an effort as that made him wheezy, and the dust raised by the car attacked his eyes like a swarm of gnats and released a slow trickle of poison tears.

  The Minnesota weeds were beautiful, higher and bushier than Canadian weeds, and the tears in his eyes acted like lenses to bring far-off flowers into focus. The splinters of death in his soul gave them a gleam of ineffable beauty. Everything turned to poetry when you knew you were dying, even the road kills.

  But—he had to keep reminding himself—he wasn’t dying. He had survived AIDS, despite testing HIV-positive for six long years, and he would survive ARVIDS, for which AIDS had been merely an appetizer. He’d hung in till they’d come up with a cure, at which point along came mystery plague number two. But Medical Defense Systems had cured cases more advanced than Launce’s. All he had to do was get there. Another 250 miles.

  A mud-spattered yellow pickup with an unmatched gray left fender approached from the south, slowed as it passed by Launce, and executed a U-turn fifty yards up the road. This time as the pickup drew near, it came to a stop.

  Launce picked up his sample case and approached the window of the pickup with misgivings.

  “I’m only going down as far as the turnoff to Ada,” the driver announced in a tone of challenge. He was a squat, red-faced old fart with a visor cap that advertised Chippewa Bait & Tackle.

  “Uh, that’s okay.” Launce set his case down on the shoulder of the road. The guy had a mean face, and it didn’t make sense, his changing direction to accommodate a hitchhiker. Only a highway patrolman would do that. “I’m going a lot farther.”

  “Into the Cities?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, you’ll have a better chance getting a ride going south after Route 200. So get in. Just be careful with the coffee can on the seat there. It’s full of worms.”

  Reluctantly Launce got in the cab of the pickup, setting the rusted Folger’s can on the floor, positioning his sample case on his lap, folding his hands atop the sample case. Without prompting, he began to reinvent the story that had already served to allay the suspicions of three earlier drivers: the family reunion at the Agassiz Wildlife Refuge, the fishing accident, the dead battery, a plausible, slightly farcical mix of family crises and automotive treasons leading to his present carless dilemma.

  His audience didn’t seem amused. From time to time the driver would swivel sideways to glower at Launce, but never cracked a smile or said a word in response, not so much as “Is that so?” As a salesman, Launce was familiar with the type. Someone like this who combines raw ugliness with other social disadvantages must actively resent smiles and small talk. The man was probably only happy at a lynching. Add to that the incalculable element of pheromonal response: some straights had a nose for gays that was like a bird dog flushing out pheasants from the corn stubble.

  When they reached Route 200, the driver took a right turn and kept on driving.

  “Hey,” Launce pointed out. “That’s where I get off.”

  The driver didn’t say a thing, just gave Launce another sideways glance and stepped on the gas. The speedometer needle edged up to its high-noon position of 50 mph.

  Launce knew, without the driver’s announcing his intentions, that he was being escorted to the local health authority, who would only have to test his saliva and Launce would be on a greased slide to the nearest plague camp. He sighed.

  Then, since there was no real alternative, he dipped his hand inside his jacket pocket, thumbed off the safety of the Lady Winchester, a pretty little handgun manufactured at the end of the eighties for the defensive needs of the fair sex, and held it up to the plastic webbing of the visored hat. “I think you’re driving too fast!” he shouted into the old fart’s ear. “I wish you would drive more slowly.”

  When, instead, the old fart floored the gas pedal, Launce pulled the trigger, and the bullet went right through the man’s skull and out the open window of the pickup. The hands did not at once lose their grip on the steering wheel, and the foot continued to bear down on the gas pedal. This went on long enough for Launce to wonder if he’d fired a blank, and then the head drooped to one side and blood seeped out of the bullet hole and dripped on the bib of his overalls.

  Launce got hold of the wheel just in time to keep them from going into a tailspin. He was as much concerned to keep his jacket from getting bloodied as with keeping the truck on the road. He didn’t have a second suit with him.

  As the pickup coasted round a bend, the water tower, trees, and rooftops of the town of Ada came into view. Launce managed to nudge the corpse’s foot off the gas pedal and toed the brake. The pickup rolled to a stop beside a sign welcoming Launce to Ada, population 784.

  Make that seven hundred and eighty-three, the eternal proofreader in his soul corrected.

  He got out of the cab and, after he’d unloosed the corpse from the safety belt, he tugged it to the passenger side of the car, grasping only the unbloodied bib of the overalls. In the process he overturned the can of worms he’d been warned not to spill. He’d always had a horror of worms, and these were nightcrawlers, fat as garden snakes, and all in a frenzy of hope now that they were out of the coffee can. Launce could sympathize with them—who better?—but he could not bring himself actually to pick them up in his fingers and drop them into the ditch beside the road. He positioned the corpse’s booted feet carefully on the floormat so that none of the worms were injured, then slammed the door shut, and went round to the driver’s side of the car.

  The engine was still running, and the road was clear in both directions. For the first time in his life since taking his driver’s license exam at the age of seventeen, he executed a perfect K-turn. The corpse tipped first to the right and then to the left. Launce pulled to the side of the road, fastened the corpse’s seat belt and his own, and headed back to State Highway 32 at a moderate 45 mph.

  This was the first time in his life he’d ever killed anyone, and he felt a rush of pit-a-pat hyperkinetic coming-of-age glory, which was also, like an inappropriate hard-on, a little embarrassing, since theoretically he didn’t approve of the machismo of homicide. He’d been sincere, in his draft-dodging days, in wanting to make love, not war. It occurred to him that the corpse beside him might well be (or rather, the proofreader amended, have been) a Vietnam vet. He was the right age and social class and the kind of good citizen who follows the rules, su
ch as the rule to report suspicious strangers to the health authority.

  It further occurred to him that he ought to find out who his victim was (had been) and what (such as money) he might have on him. In any case, not to show some curiosity at such a time would add insult to injury. He had not yet sunk to the subhuman level of some mass murderer who just sprays bullets willy-nilly, killing anyone in his path. If he killed someone, he should at least know his name.

  His name was Ray Bonner, and he was, like Launce, a Leo. Which figured: it’s never wise for one Leo to thwart another. Now he knew.

  Forty-six dollars in cash. Two useless credit cards. And a Gas-O-Mat credit card with the confirmation number written right across the back, just the way you’re warned not to do.

  There were sunglasses in the blood-sodden pocket of the overalls bib, and these Launce fitted over the corpse’s nose and ears. From the same pocket he took a pack of cigarettes and lit (his fingers were beginning to tremble) two, one for himself and inserted the other, dangling, into the corner of the corpse’s mouth. It seemed a proper sort of funeral pomp for someone like Ray Bonner.

  After the foolish indulgence of the cigarette (but when you think you’re dying it’s hard to just say no) Launce unwound, focusing on the muscles of his neck and shoulders, humming his own private mantra he’d paid one hundred and fifty dollars for at the start of his TM course back in the lost paradise of Toronto 1975: Shamoo Urmee Zama! The fellow who’d run the course had been a perfect charlatan but a perfect hunk as well, and Launce hadn’t in the least regretted spending one hundred and fifty dollars for three nonsense words. Indeed, they’d always worked quite well for him: Shamoo Urmee Zama! His spiritual leader had chanted it along with him, his fingers digging into Launce’s trapezius muscles. Shamoo Urmee Zama: it always did the job.

  56

  On the Sunday before Memorial Day, it had rained all day long, and the rain had continued through the next day, and the next Sunday it had looked like rain again, and Madge had said she had a headache and disappeared as soon as the sun came out, so here it was, two weeks after Memorial Day, and Mrs. Obstschmecker had yet to visit Mr. Obstschmecker’s grave at Veterans’ Cemetery or even make it to Mass at OLM. For the first time in how many years? She took down the notepad from its holder beside the phone on the kitchen wall and did the arithmetic: 1999 – 1970 = 29. Twenty-nine years she had faithfully visited Mr. Obstschmecker’s grave, bringing him irises from the backyard, and now there wasn’t one iris left. She felt peeved. It would mean buying flowers at a florist, and the price of even a small bouquet these days was outrageous. Not that Mrs. Obstschmecker had been to a florist recently, but Madge was always bringing home these gigantic arrangements and claiming to have paid fifty or sixty dollars for them. For flowers! Mrs. Obstschmecker suspected that she was making off with them from the clinic and that these were the bouquets of patients, who were all vegetables like Ned and so couldn’t really have appreciated them, and they did make the house look lovelier, so why make a fuss? That was Mrs. Obstschmecker’s philosophy.

  The boy was supposed to arrive at nine o’clock, and it was only seven-thirty now. Madge was still asleep, but Mrs. Obstschmecker always awoke once it got to be light, which meant six-thirty these days. She blamed the early sunrise on daylight savings time, though Madge said it was the other way round. Maybe she was right. In any case, six-thirty was just too early to be waking up if you didn’t have a job to go to or somebody’s breakfast to make. Already the dawn had brightened to full morning, and the X’s of the security gates were sharply defined against the lowered window blinds.

  Now a new silhouette appeared on the blinds. A squirrel! It scampered up the iron lattice and paused at the point from which it could best launch itself toward the bird feeder hanging from the lowest limb of the elm. “Shoo!” Mrs. Obstschmecker called out. “Shoo! Go away!” She shuffled in her slippered feet toward the window, but before she could get there to raise the blind and rap a protest against the glass, the squirrel made its leap.

  And there the nasty little thief was, when the blind was up, clinging to the swinging plastic cylinder, stuffing himself with birdseed and staring back at her with his beady little black eyes blazing defiance. She rapped and shouted for the squirrel to go away, but of course he stayed right where he was, shoveling the seeds out of the feeder. She wished she could have opened the window and thrown something at him, but at her own insistence the windows were sealed up tight with caulking at every crack, though Madge insisted it didn’t do a bit of good. Still, Mrs. Obstschmecker felt safer knowing the outside air was outside, just as she felt safer with the security bars in place, even though they provided the squirrels the ladder they needed to get to the feeder. And there was nowhere else the feeder could be hung, she and Madge had gone through all the possibilities and there was nothing to be done. You couldn’t poison the seed, because that would kill the dear little birds as well as the squirrels.

  Lisa Michaels had remarked some time ago that Mrs. Obstschmecker could solve her problem by thinking of the bird feeder as a squirrel feeder. Weren’t squirrels just as cute as birds? she’d asked in that superior tone of voice. Lisa was Jewish. Whenever she came visiting with her twins (which wasn’t that often, thank goodness), Mrs. Obstschmecker had to remind herself that the woman was no relation. Not an Obstschmecker, not even a Hill, only Madge’s stepson’s wife. Madge said it was un-Christian to point out that Lisa was not family, but a fact is a fact. Just because William had become Mr. Big Shot with a Cadillac car and had his picture in magazines didn’t mean Mrs. Big Shot hadn’t grown up with the last name of Schechner.

  But there was no need to dwell on unpleasantness. It was the fault of that squirrel. Mrs. Obstschmecker turned away from the window and turned on the TV. “Fill in the Blanks” was on, and for a while Mrs. Obstschmecker tried competing against the contestants, but they played too fast, and the solution of the first puzzle, SNUG AS A RUBBER, was supposed to be a popular saying. Mrs. Obstschmecker had never heard such a saying, but she could guess what it meant. There was dirty talk everywhere these days—on the TV, in newspapers, and the boy who was coming to take her to church, though he was otherwise the politest young man and claimed to be a born-again, even he used four-letter words like he’d never been taught any otherwise. And with a nun for a mother! Not that that made a speck of difference these days, not with a lesbian nun running for the state assembly right here in the Twin Cities and conducting kneel-ins at the cathedral so they could be lesbian priests instead of lesbian nuns! And all of it discussed on the TV like it was today’s weather!

  She blipped off the TV. And sat and stewed.

  Upstairs the toilet flushed. Madge was up. But that didn’t mean she’d come downstairs any time soon. She had a microwave in her bedroom and her own separate phone line, which connected to the computer, and the computer connected to everything else, so Madge could lock the doors at night without leaving her bedroom. She could even talk to Mrs. Obstschmecker on the television set, since there were gizmos now that let you do that, though Mrs. Obstschmecker wouldn’t let one be connected to her TV. How would you know when someone was looking at you and when they weren’t? Sometimes Madge left the camera on in her room and Mrs. Obstschmecker could see her on the TV screen walking around without a stitch of clothes. The computer revolution! Progress!

  Mrs. Obstschmecker pressed the intercom button. “Madge,” she shouted into the little microphone, “do you want me to make breakfast for you?”

  “No, Mother, thanks just the same.”

  “That cantaloupe you brought home last week should be ripe by now. I’ve had it on the windowsill.”

  No reply.

  “That squirrel was back at the feeder again.”

  Nothing.

  “There’s still time for you to change your mind and come along to Mass and the Veterans’ Cemetery. You haven’t visited your father’s grave for I don’t know how long.”

  “I took you there last year, Mother, if
you’ll recall.”

  “What’s that? You know you have to talk into the microphone if you want me to hear you.”

  “I said, ‘No thank you!’”

  “You took me there, but you stayed in the car the whole time.”

  Silence.

  “I don’t think it’s right I should visit your father’s grave on Memorial Day with a stranger.”

  “Judge is not a stranger, Mother. He’s a member of our family.”

  “He’s the illegitimate child of someone who is no relation to any Obstschmecker, so how is he our family I’d like to know!”

  “Mother, you know very well William and Lisa have adopted Judge as their son.”

  “And they’re no relation either.”

  “Mother, really. After all that William’s done for us.”

  “And what about all we did for him? Who looked after him after his mother killed herself and that Winckelmeyer man went to prison for murdering his own little baby? Family! And the daughter’s just as bad. A nun with a son in reform school for setting buildings on fire. And that’s who you’re getting to take me to see my husband’s grave because you’re too busy to take five minutes to honor your father’s memory. Well, I guess that tells me what I can expect!”

  Another silence, but this one Mrs. Obstschmecker interpreted as abashed. At last Madge said, “As to who’s going to bury who, that remains to be seen. You’ll probably outlast me, the way you’re going.”

  “That’s because I take care of myself,” said Mrs. Obstschmecker, who prided herself on doing without extra salt on her food and for limiting her intake of cholesterol.