Swallowing a Donkey's Eye

by Paul Tremblay

  I shimmy up the lamppost, then onto the rusty fire escape. My mother’s bedroom window is open. I crawl inside, take off my duck head, and put it and my shovel on the floor. Even in the dark, I know the room is empty. No bed, no furniture, no pictures on the walls. I feel around for a light switch, find one, but it doesn’t work. I don’t need the light on to know that I’m in the right apartment. There’s no way Mom would’ve moved without contacting me. Empty apartment and terminated bank account can mean only one thing. She’s gone. More than gone, Mom is homeless. It’s only a matter of if she’s been shipped below City to the Pier or not.

  I flick on the lighter and walk into the hallway, and I’ll admit that faced with her homelessness and the what am I going to do now? circling through my head like a vulture, I wish I’d stayed at Farm where I was safe, where I was kept.

  A flashlight joins my weak lighter flame in the hallway. There’s a man holding the flashlight. He wears all black with a white collar. He’s a priest. A father. My father.

  Dad says, “Hey, kid! How the fuck are you?”

  23

  HERE ARE THE FOND

  AND QUAINT MEMORIES

  Here are the fond and quaint memories of my father:

  24

  ALL THAT ANYONE NEEDS TO KNOW

  Did you blink? Did you miss all those warm and fuzzy Daddy memories? If I could regress my memory to the moment of conception, daddy-sperm poking into mommy-egg, then that might be the sole fond memory of dear, old Dad.

  Is that fair? Probably not. But I don’t really care.

  Honestly, I no longer harbour any active resentment toward the man. I understand he was a young adult when he made the decision to leave me and Mom. Was the decision right or wrong? Depends on who you ask. Probably for him, it was the right decision. For Mom and me? Didn’t work out so good.

  He’s a father in name, and of course by vocation, but I really don’t think of him as the person who filled the role of ‘my father.’ The thing of it is, shortly after he left I simply chose to remember very little about the man.

  So here’s all that anyone needs to know:

  He’s a Catholic priest and amateur psychic who left his wife and twelve-year-old child so he could be more priestly.

  25

  CONSCRIPTION CONNIPTIONS

  My father says, “Nice suit. I’m so proud.”

  I still have my shovel with me. I should whack him once or twice with it, for old time’s sake. I walk toward him and say, “Where’s Mom?”

  “Don’t really know to be completely honest with you.” He looks the same. Tall, thin but solid, anglo, short hair, close shave, big blue eyes hovering above an I’m-smarter-than-you smirk. He’s the guy who’ll always be older than he looks.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you want. Faith, some say it’s a beautiful thing. Saps, mostly. But I’m just telling you that I found her apartment empty two weeks ago.” He stops, then adds, “It’s paid up for another two weeks,” like it matters.

  “She’s homeless.”

  “Eh, I don’t know about that. Not getting any of those vibes.” He waves his fingers in the air like he’s tossing around pixie dust.

  I flash to some broken down church half-full of people attending his sermon, listening to gospels and his psychic vibrations, and I wonder which is more appealing. I wonder which gets more Amens and Hallelujahs.

  I say, “Her bank account is terminated.”

  “So is mine, I think. Who am I kidding? I keep my dough inside a mattress. Interest rate blows, but it keeps the tax man and those pesky where’s-this-money-coming-from questions away, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  Oh, I know all about his mattress bank account and how because of his religious status he wasn’t required to pay any child support. “I don’t really fucking care about your situation,” I say.

  “Such disdain for your fellow man.”

  “I’d say I learned it from the best, but that wouldn’t be accurate, would it? You didn’t stay around long enough to teach me anything, father.”

  “Have you considered she could have a different, new account? You gotta consider all the possibilities before you jump to conclusions, man. And don’t forget about my vibes now, I’m never wrong.”

  “I’ve considered the possibilities and of course I know it’s possible she won the lottery or she ran away to Never Never Land. It’s possible she hopped the back of a cow and jumped over the moon, too, right? Yeah, it’s all possible.”

  “No need to get snippy with me, kid. I’m just saying she might not be where you think she is.”

  “Look, I try to deal in reality. She would’ve told me if she switched accounts and moved.”

  “Maybe.”

  There’s a silence, and now it’s time to ask the obvious. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you, my man.”

  “Wow, you really must be psychic then.” I say it with all the sarcasm I can muster, hopefully so loaded on to make the sentence heavy enough to inflict bodily damage.

  He takes the flashlight off himself and shines it in my face. The battery-powered yellow blinds me and throws him into deep shadow. There could be other people behind him, I have no idea.

  “There’s that. And City was watching you ever since you left Farm. Nice touch dumping that guy in the Chicken suit, by the way. He looked like a square and he’s already been picked up, and dealt with, if you catch my drift. Sorry, but there was nothing I could do to save him.”

  There’s no bluff calling here. I knew it was too easy getting in to City. My father must work for City now and wants something from me, wants to make some sort of deal. No way. It’s time to make a mad dash out of this apartment. But after that, where to?

  He says, “Ease off the paranoid thoughts, kid. I don’t work for anyone but myself.”

  I say, “Not that I care, but I find it painfully fitting that the psychic priest who left his family presumably to save more people is telling me he couldn’t save someone.”

  He shrugs. At least, I think the movement was a shrug. It’s hard to see with the flashlight in my face. “Hey, I do what I can. Can’t save them all. I’m just a working stiff, and all that jazz. But you, my fine feathered friend, I can save. Or at least, I can save you from the other dude’s fate, or worse.”

  I stop myself from questioning worse. I already learned that lesson.

  He says, “You’re in deep dung, me boyo. This ain’t gonna make you click your ruby-red shoes together, but there is a way out. That way out is me.”

  “You as my guardian angel.” I can’t stand it. My well-being, whatever that means, depends on this guy? No, he doesn’t really care about me, he wants me for something, and whatever it is I don’t want to do it. Instead of telling him to fuck off, I’m trying to be rational, weigh those proverbial options. I’ll only get out of this mess and find Mom if I stop to think on my feet. Fighting the urge to run away screaming, I lean against the wall. “I’m listening.”

  He laughs. The fucker laughs at me. Now I think maybe I was too harsh on my old BM. His fraudulent camaraderie, his pretending that I was actually a human being was in fact preferable to honest, bald-faced hostility. My father’s open and unfettered mockery is worse.

  He says, “I’m not gonna lie to ya. What I have to tell you is nuts.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “No really, it’s off-the-wall, looney-tunes, pass the ketchup, around-the-bend nuts.”

  Like I said. I’m sure it is. I’m sure it’s as ga-ga as animals living secret lives as ventriloquist dummies, as gonzo as Farm and City poisoning the environment with behemoth gas and oil consuming machines because those machines and fuel sources boost the economy or at least boost the economy of some, as crazy as City’s bureaucratized version of a higher moral power deciding to ship its homeless below City and into the Pier without any means of
survival is somehow right and just and for the greater good.

  I say, “Get on with it.”

  “I’m here to recruit you.”

  My turn to laugh. He wants to turn me into a priest or a monk or Igor or something, which of course, would mean forgetting about Mom. “What? Into the Church? So how is Catholicism treating you, anyway? Those no-meat Fridays must be tough.”

  “Jesus. Please. Don’t be an asshole. I know you aren’t white collar material. Trust me on that. You wouldn’t last a day. It’s City who wants you.” Father Deadbeat-Psychic-Fraud-Dad dances a jig and points a finger at me, posing like one of those old Army recruiting posters.

  “City wants me for what?”

  “City wants and needs you to run for Mayor.”

  I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. What he tells me isn’t making any sense.

  “I told you this was nuts. But it’s gonna work out, trust me, kid.”

  Okay, listen to this:

  A few hours after the elevator had crashed and Mrs. Lopez had spilled out, my mother and I were in my room. I was crying and she tried to soothe me with attention again. It wasn’t working. Then Dad came flying into the room, all hustle and huff, and said, “What a shame. Sorry you had to see that, kiddo. Shit, I knew it was going to happen too. I tried talking to Mr. Lopez about it the other day. Wouldn’t believe a word I said. I guess I probably should’ve told you yesterday about the crash. You know, you could’ve prepared, or the very least, made sure that you weren’t in the lobby to see the damn thing happen.” My mother wouldn’t look at him and didn’t stop the attention. My head kept bobbing, my father’s form shaking in and out of my vision. I thought about Mr. Lopez and how he must’ve felt knowing Dad was right. I thought about what I would’ve done if Dad-the-psychic had told me. Then I wasn’t sure if I believed him, if I believe he had tried to warn Mr. Lopez, or even if he’d had a vision of the elevator crashing. I wondered if all of everything he said was a lie, or if just part of everything was a lie, which would be worse because I didn’t know what parts were lies. Did the truth matter if it was unrecognizable? Dad left us a week later. Neither Mom nor I saw it coming.

  And right now, I feel like I did then.

  He points the flashlight to the floor and says, “Yo, talk to me. You’re starting to freak me out.”

  “Mayor?”

  “So you did hear me. There’s an election in two weeks.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I to be totally honest. I’m not one for politics. Fucking crooks and liars the lot of them, but we’re supposed to meet with your campaign managers and they’ll connect the dots for us.”

  “Campaign managers? Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me you don’t know the whole story?”

  “Right now I’m just a messenger boy. Now you know as much as I do, almost. Congratulations.”

  “What about Mom?”

  “If you’re elected Mayor you can find anybody you want, shithead. We gotta get you out of this mess first, then you can worry about finding Mom. Christ, I wish you’d believe me when I say that I sense she’s fine. She’s okay. She’s Jim and Dandy.”

  I look around the obviously abandoned apartment. She’s gone and my father is here speaking nonsense about becoming Mayor. Do I think about this? Do I really think about all of this? Or do I just play along. I know what’s the easier of the two options. It’s always the easier of the two options.

  I say, “What if I tell you and City to go screw?”

  “Then you and your duck suit will be picked up and dealt with within twenty minutes. Sorry, kid, this running for Mayor gig is the only thing I could work out, and it will work out. I’m getting those kinda vibes.”

  “I don’t believe a goddamn word of it.”

  He shrugs then rubs his hands together like a craps shooter looking for his seventh seven in a row. He walks toward me and says, “I can’t remember the last time we were in this apartment together.”

  “I do. It was the same day you left.”

  “That’s the spirit. Now put this stuff on.” He tosses a small pile of clothes onto the floor. On top is a baseball hat with shoulder-length hair sewn into the brim. Inside the hat there’s two balls of fur that look like dead mice. “Your clever, inscrutable disguise. Mustache and beard. I’m jealous. Could never grow a real one myself, kept falling off.”

  “Humour me. If I’m running for Mayor, why do I need a disguise?”

  “A little slow, aren’t you? Your mug is all over City TV and on the ’net. You’re not a Mayoral candidate yet. You’re still a dangerous FART terrorist; a bona fide villain who killed his way out of Farm and somehow managed to break into City. I’ve seen a preview vid of your escape, thrilling Bond-type stuff, man. If you weren’t so goddamn ugly, you might make a good action hero. Regardless, when the rest of the public sees the vid, we’ll be lucky if you aren’t gunned down in the street.” He bends down and picks up a long coat off the floor.

  I can only imagine what the vid shows. I hope it doesn’t show the Duck pissing on my head. I’d like to think the censors wouldn’t allow something like that, but you never know.

  He pats my back and says, “All right, let’s go to church, kid. Then we gotta meet those people in the Zone. Heh. I know you’re thinking that order is kinda screwy, right? Should probably hit the Zone first then church, you know what I’m saying?”

  I want to say something cool, mean even. I’ve only spent ten minutes with my father-the-father and I want to hurt him, but goddamn me, I want to impress him too. It’s all so fucked up. This is what I come up with: “You have no idea what I’m thinking.” My timing is terrible. He’s already walking down the hall, toward the front door of the apartment. I didn’t say it too loud either, so I don’t know if he even heard me.

  He says, “Take your thumb out of your ass and let’s go. We gotta get to the church on time.”

  26

  TO NOT BE SEEN IS A SKILL

  We stop in the dark and empty lobby of Mom’s apartment building. I can’t see much, but like the sidewalk out front, there’s debris and used drug paraphernalia.

  I say, “Before we leave, can’t we ask people in the building if they know what happened to Mom?”

  “There’s no one here. Can’t you tell this building has been cleared?”

  Lovely. The building has been cleared and he’ll still tell me he has a good vibe about Mom.

  He says, “She’s fine, kid. I’m not going to say it again. We’ll get through this, too, but only if you do what I tell you.” He talks low and fast. “A nice side-benefit from years in my cozy confessional booth is a lesson in how to evade City’s Eye. As far as them law abidin’ citizens know, there’s vid cameras everywhere in City, in streets, alleys, public buildings, and even the cabs and buses, and they’re constantly monitored. But I know where the hidden cameras are positioned and even where some don’t work right. I know how to walk along the facades of certain buildings or along the left hand or right hand side of curbs and sidewalks and along the gutters of certain streets. I know when to cross to another sidewalk, when to merge with a crowd, when to walk under the shadow of a lamp. To not be seen is a skill. One that I have. So you just stay close behind me, so close we could be playing grab-ass.”

  I want to try and make a cool and smart-ass comment again. But we’re out the door, and there’ll be no talking now. It’s brighter out than it was earlier, but most of City is still asleep. There’s very little traffic, and the streetlights, lampposts, and the holo-boards wink on and off in cycles; City employs dead-of-night rolling blackouts to try and take the pressure off their energy grid. We walk underneath one holo-board that changes its ad with each flash. A tough guy smoking cigarettes with mostly-naked women draped on him, then a tough guy (might be the same actor, he looks the same) drinking beer with mostly naked women (and yeah, the women look the same too) draped on him, then a
tough guy in jeans with clothed women draped on him, the women showing off tight asses in tight jeans, then a recruitment ad for Farm with those women somehow mostly naked in their Farm overalls, then a public service announcement decrying domestic violence and it features one of the previously almost-naked ad-women as a battered and bruised heap, then back to the cigarettes and booze and jeans and Farm and domestic violence.

  There’s a breeze and it moves my fake hair around. I wonder what Jonah would’ve thought about my disguise. I’m on El Priesto’s tail and he leads us on a route that isn’t very populated. He walks fast, and with purpose, doing as he said he would, crossing streets at seemingly random points, then cutting through some industrial parks and then ducking into dank alleys and garbage-strewn side streets I didn’t know existed, which strikes me as damn odd. I thought I knew City, but I’m lost already.

  Overflowing Dumpsters and orange City trashcans are everywhere. Blackened windows and a sooty film on so many of the buildings and parked or abandoned cars we’ve passed, and there’s this smoke and chemical combo smell that I imagine will only get worse when the work-day kicks in.

  We walk like this for an hour, then two. There’s more light, but not much. Still dark out, and I get the sense today might be one of those dark City days. Clouds, ocean fog, and exhaust act like sun-block for City. Buildings that line the street disappear into the inkblot sky. We walk down more alleys and past buildings I don’t remember. More and more lefts and rights and rights and lefts and City must be growing. I’m exhausted and hungry and lost. Now, we’re passing people as we walk, but no one pays attention to us.

  We’re through another garbage-lined alley behind some broken-down tenements and liquor stores and emerge onto a cobblestone street. We’re in Annotte, the government-sanctioned historical section of City. Holo-boards and vid screen advertisements aren’t allowed here. The buildings in Annotte are the oldest on record in City. Some have claimed its Longesian Library even pre-dates Pier. The buildings here, even the tenements, are tall, brick and mortar, and cylindrical shaped, like posts; it’s all very Pier-like. I know his church borders Annotte and it gives me hope we’re getting close.