Swallowing a Donkey's Eye
Page 1
PRAISE FOR PAUL TREMBLAY
“How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve read Paul Tremblay’s hysterical comic dystopia, Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye? Great characters, sharp dialogue, and a story crazy enough to tell the truth.”
—Jeffrey Ford,
author of The Shadow Year
“Paul Tremblay’s Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye is a powerful statement, both a scathingly funny black comedy and an unflinching view of a very possible American future.”
—Lucius Shepard,
author of A Handbook for American Prayer
“Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye is fine, ribald work. There’s a futuristic wackiness and bitterness that reminds me of the best of George Saunders’s longer stories. It’s brutal and hilarious, and Tremblay's narrator holds it all together with an ironic grimace.”
—Stewart O’Nan,
author of Emily, Alone and Last Night at the Lobster
PAUL TREMBLAY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
SUSANNE APGAR
ChiZine Publications
COPYRIGHT
Swallowing a Donkey's Eye © 2012 by Paul Tremblay
Cover artwork © 2012 by Erik Mohr
Interior illustrations © 2012 by Susanne Apgar
Interior design & Animal Parade graphic © 2012 by Danny Evarts
Author photographs © 2012 by Allison Carroll
All rights reserved.
Published by ChiZine Publications
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
EPub Edition AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 978-1-92685-172-3
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
Toronto, Canada
www.chizinepub.com
info@chizinepub.com
Edited by Helen Marshall
Copyedited and proofread by Samantha Beiko
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.
For Mom, Dad, Erin, and Dan
“Underneath the bridge the tarp has sprung a leak and the animals I’ve trapped have all become my pets.”
—Nirvana, “Something in the Way”
“When asked whether he was not happier now that Jones was gone, he would say only, ‘Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey,’ and the others had to be content with this cryptic answer.”
—George Orwell, Animal Farm
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 - HERE A QUACK, THERE A QUACK, EVERYWHERE A QUACK, QUACK
2 - YOU'RE NO CHICKEN
3 - LET'S-GET-DRUNK-AND-INSEMINATE-NIGHT
4 - PISS-GIRL AND MOMMA'S BOY
5 - A GOOD BM IS EVERYONE'S FRIEND
6 - THE APPLE OF HIS EYE
7 - LAW AND ORDER
8 - A LITTLE CITY IN THE HOLE
9 - NO US IN HER ME
10 - YOU GOT MAIL
11 - ARBITRATOR, APPLES, AND EVE OH MY!
12 - HATE BEING WRONG
13 - SPITTING IN THE SHAFT
14 - A CUCKOO IN THE CLOCK
15 - SWALLOW THE DONKEY'S EYE
16 - L IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER
17 - MARKING TERRITORY
18 - BEING A CHICKEN IS NO WALK IN THE PARK
19 - A GOOD COMPANY MAN
20 - DON'T CALL ME JONAH
21 - GETTING ATTENTION
22 - LOOK WHO CAME TO DINNER
23 - HERE ARE THE FOND AND QUAINT MEMORIES
24 - ALL THAT ANYONE NEEDS TO KNOW
25 - CONSCRIPTION CONNIPTIONS
26 - TO NOT BE SEEN IS A SKILL
27 - GROWING LIKE A MELANOMA
28 - IN THE ZONE
29 - PERV LIKE ME
30 - A LETTER ABOUT A FRIDGE
31 - SHIT END OF THE STICK
32 - A SPIDER WITH YELLOW WEBBING
33 - WHEREVER IT IS WE'RE SUPPOSED TO GO
34 - FIVE NUMBERS DEEP INTO THE CONFIRMATION NUMBER
35 - COMMON DECENCY COMPELS ME
36 - STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS
37 - SWEEPING IT UNDER THE RUG
38 - TUNNEL OF LOVE
39 - CAUGHT CLIMBING DOWN
40 - HOME IS OVER THERE
41 - BLESS YOU, FATHER!
42 - MORE THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY KNOW
43 - 23UI4900-1
44 - HANGIN' WITH QUAZ
45 - COME ON AND SEE THE SHOW!
46 - SOMETHING BLUE FOR PUSSY
47 - WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK
48 - THE MORNING AFTER THAT NIGHT (BUT BEFORE SHE CAUGHT ME IN THE ELEVATOR SHAFT)
49 - THE LONG SLOW GOODBYE
50 - ALL COMING DOWN
51 - ON THAT NIGHT
52 - BLOW UP EVERYTHING
53 - PANDERING WINS BABY
54 - WORD FOR WORD
55 - THEIR STORIES INSIDE
56 - EVE'S STORY
57 - TOE-MAY-TOE, TOE-MAH-TOE, LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF
58 - CINDERELLA WANTS THE PUMPKIN BACK
59 - IT MEANS SOME ASSHOLE WAS JUST THERE
60 - MAYORAL MANIFESTO RHYMES WITH PESTO
61 - KING FOR A DAY, FOOL FOR A LIFETIME
62 - THE NOTE I SHOULD'VE WRITTEN
63 - FILLING THE BOOK OF EMPTY
64 - TAKE A FARM TOUR AND SEE CLETUS
65 - HOW ABOUT SUPER-MASSIVE-BLACK-HOLE HATE
66 - A MOTHER AND SON REUNION IS ONLY A MOTION AWAY
67 - I'M JUST GONNA GET YOU AGAIN, MOMMA'S BOY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY PAUL TREMBLAY
1
HERE A QUACK, THERE A QUACK, EVERYWHERE A QUACK, QUACK
Animal noises fill the air, and they make me tense up, like something is going to happen to me, even though nothing ever has happened to me, at least not in the sense I’m trying to get at. I’ve been trained, just like that Russian guy’s dog. Funny how I remember the guy was Russian, but not his name, or even what kind of dog. No one ever remembers the dog.
The noises:
You’ve got your moos, whinnies, snorts, squeals, oinks, grunts, growls, ruts, barks, meows, mewls, bahs, brays, clucks, cock-a-doodle-dos, and quacks. The quacks are my favourite. This sector of Farm hasn’t seen a duck in my three years, seven months, three weeks, two days, and roughly five hours of employment. I am counting.
Nothing is perfect, of course, and the tourists don’t complain or even notice the ducklessness, the automated Muzak-quacks notwithstanding. Just like the dog, no one remembers the duck.
I say, “Oh goody, the hills are alive with the sound of music.”
My co-work
er and roommate Jonah bails hay next to me, and he grunts. His grunt fits right in. I lean on my pitchfork, wipe my brow, and watch him.
Here’s what I see:
Two unblinking blue eyes and the harsh, dark lines of a cartoon face that drips a shaggy black mustache and beard. It’s a face etched to give a think-ponderous-thoughts vibe, or maybe entrenched annoyance, depending upon the face viewer’s mood. This mood-ring face perches above his muscular back. Not his chest, but his back. His legs and arms work in the wrong direction like he’s a ruined insect.
But like the animal noises at Farm, this is also fake. Jonah’s tattoo is a second face, a second skin on the back of his bald head made of blue and black ink, the curly black hair at the base of his skull fashioned into a mustache and foot-long beard. It’s all sculpted to look exactly like Jonah’s other face, his real face.
Jonah turns, ditching his tattoo face for his flesh one, and there’s appallingly little difference between the two. He says, “For fuck’s sake, another goddamn tour coming,” and points his pitchfork at my chest. “That’s it, I’m gonna poke out my eardrums, or yours.”
We’ve been cleaning up cow stalls all morning and now we’re in the corner of Barn 5 bailing and forking a mountain of hay. I say, “Please, be my guest.”
Jonah is older than me, but not geezer old. That said, I can’t imagine him ever having been young. He had to have been born with that shaved-bald head, tattoo, and black beard.
He pulls a tattered blue baseball hat from his back pocket and slaps it on his head, covering up the tattoo. This is something he has to do whenever a tour comes by.
I say, “Isn’t it ironic that when the fake animal sounds come on, you have to cover your fake face?”
“No.”
“No?”
“What’s so fake about my face, asshole?”
Jonah turns the pitchfork away from me and harpoons the hay. He means it harm. He mutters more swears and epithets, which are barely audible beneath the symphony of fraudulent animal voicing, and he bales, and he bales, and he bales. His arms are tan and taut, seemingly moving of their own accord, like they’re his friends instead of his arms.
A quick electronic beep echoes in our stall. Only thirty seconds until a tour rolls by.
I say, “Get it all out of your system now, Jonah, and smiles, everyone, smiles!”
If we don’t smile, if we don’t follow the tour Protocol to the capital P, if we break any rules, if we’re late for any shifts, if we swear at supervisors, if we swear at the animals, if we’re caught having sex on the job with co-worker or animal, if we’re caught stealing or eating or sabotaging the animals, we’re contractually and severely punished.
Listen to those sounds. I still don’t know how Farm does it, how they make it all sound so life-like. You’d think you’d be able to tell the difference between animal sounds pumped through speakers and sounds coming from real animals. But I can’t, and apparently no one else can either. I’ve yet to see or find any speakers in the barns, stalls, pens, or peeking from beneath suspicious hay bales or manure piles, and not from a lack of looking. I can’t describe it any better than to say the faux-animal sounds exist although I know they don’t.
How do I know? Here are my first official five minutes at Farm:
The blood-red ink hadn’t coagulated on the contract that gave Farm my next six years when the Barn Manager, the good ole BM, said, “All Farm animals are engineered.”
I said, “Really? Don’t you, or we, have an advertisement campaign built around our ‘natural stock’?”
BM held up a stop hand, smoothed his waxy handlebar mustache, tossed me an unreadable facial tick, and said, “All animals are engineered for silence. No vocal cords, kid. When civilian tours come by, we pump in computer-generated sounds. Keeps the folks happy, reassured, consumer-esque if you will.”
Reeling from the engineered-animal revelation, and ever the bright-eyed, fresh-from-City-newbie, I said, “Why not leave the vocal cords in?”
He said, rapid fire, “Because we don’t want to.”
I was getting a little cranky with this conversation. Cranky because he called me ‘kid,’ which is a micro-step above calling me ‘boy,’ and cranky because I was already having second-third-fourth-fifth thoughts about the Farm gig. Thoughts like: Should I have left City and my mother behind for six years of labour at Farm? Would Mom be okay? Would she ever speak to me again because of how I left her?
So, suitably cranky, I kept at it with BM. “Sorry to be a pain, but that doesn’t make sense. If you left the animals’ voices alone you wouldn’t have to waste money on the fake animal sounds.”
BM, with his hair like a comb and a neck-wattle to rival a cock-of-the-walk rooster, looked at me like I told him his son and/or daughter was a good fuck. He said, “Kid, I like the cut of your jib. And I think we’re going to be work pals. I can just feel it. But a little advice: if you have any more helpful comments or suggestions, bright ideas, solutions to life’s little problems, keep them to yourself unless you want me to stuff a silo up your tight little ass.”
Ah, the country life. I often marvel at my own stupidity for ditching City and signing my tight little ass to Farm. And I just as often try not to think about it.
2
YOU’RE NO CHICKEN
Sometimes, when I watch the animals closely, they all seem to lip-synch to their fake noises, like the fuckers are trained, like they know how they’re supposed to sound and they play along. I’m probably just projecting. Sometimes I think Farm does the animal-noise thing just to mess with us, the workers, and sometimes I believe BM: they do it simply because they want to and they can.
Maybe it all sounds so real because this lifelong City dweller has never heard a real barn animal. I’ve only heard those animals on TV, the ’net, in movies (usually animated movies), and now through Farm’s speakers. For all I know, a real chicken and duck could be capable of singing barbershop quartet tunes. All of which gets me to thinking about how much I think I know is fake and fantasy. How am I supposed to know what’s real or not?
A tram full of clueless gawkers from City rolls on by. Tourists. I used to worry that I’d see my mother or somebody I knew on the tours. But I haven’t seen anybody from back home and I doubt anyone has seen me. Speaking of which:
Jonah talks through the side of a fraudulent smile. “Sorry I didn’t wake you for your Calling Time last night, man. Really. My fuck up.”
Missing Calling Time means I can’t call Mom for another month and she’ll be pissed or worried, likely both. I’m not mad at two-face Jonah, though. I knew he’d forget to wake me. It’s why I asked him to be my alarm instead of actually setting one. I used Jonah as a built-in excuse to miss my Calling Time session. The last half-dozen or so phone conversations with Mom have been awkward. It’s not all her fault. Mom puts on a solid everything-is-fine phone act and doesn’t blame me for anything. The problem is, after talking with her and after I hang up, I feel guilty for leaving her alone in that shit-neighbourhood of ours and for not being able to send enough money home to help her out. You see, yesterday was a another shit-day in a years-long string of shit-days, and I didn’t want to deal with the guilt. I couldn’t face that monthly reminder of how dumb and damaging my decision to come to Farm turned out to be. So I slept through Calling Time. Son of the year, I’m not.
I say through my own sunny-side-up smile, “Don’t sweat it, Jonah. No big deal.”
Today, the Duck is the tour leader. Duckie’s suit is brown, but with a green head, which makes it a mallard and male. Don’t know why I’ve bothered remembering what kind of duck it is, since it doesn’t exist, at least not here, and if it’s not at Farm it might as well not exist for me anywhere. What matters is that I hate the fucking Duck. Somehow that duck fucker hasn’t been caught yet, but when his tour isn’t looking, he grabs his duck-crotch or wipes his duck-ass with a wing pointed in our general direction, or he
shoots us a feathered middle finger. We’ve tried to find this guy in the dorms, but no one admits to knowing who the Duck is.
The Duck points and quack-speaks into a mini-mic clipped to some chest feathers. I have no idea what Duckie says, and I don’t really care.
Jonah says through gritted teeth, “I hope you moult, motherfucker. I’ll stick that mic up your cloaca.”
Jonah said the same thing about the Chicken tour leader last week, but the Chicken is okay. He’s a little weird—spends most evenings in the dorm cleaning his feathers and comb and practicing his clucks—but okay. I think Jonah hates the Chicken because he tries to bring a little professionalism to his job. I don’t know, I admire his effort, but clucking and preening away his nights smacks of the ultimate in uselessness, of why-bother, and it depresses the shit out of me.
There he goes again. That Duck prick just shot us the finger. Goddamn bastard will get away with it too, and there’s nothing we can do to retaliate.
I have the strange urge to yell, “You’re no Chicken, duck-ass!” like it would be some cool insult Duckie would never live down.
Duckie flaps that fuck-you-finger-waving wing at us again, this time trying to get his tour to look in our direction. Most of them ignore us. A few kids giggle and wave. The kids wear expensive designer Farm gear: overalls, flannels, and shit-kickin’ boots made to look inexpensive but authentic, like they’ve worked six years of their lives in those little boots, and the crazy part of it is their boots look more worn, more authentic than mine. More fantasy versus reality, reality versus fantasy, and maybe by the time I’m done with my indenturetude at this place I won’t care about which is which because no one else seems to.
The kids shout to me and Jonah, telling us we’re so cool, telling us they want to be big strong Farmers when they grow up. Their parents pat their heads and laugh at such silliness, while throwing us the look.
The look:
Our little cherubs, the ample fruit of our ample loins, the family egg-mixed-with-ejaculate will never ever ever ever be Farmers, they’ll never be fuckups like you, and if you look and smile and wave back at the kids too long we’re going to report you to the supervisor and insist that you are gelded.