Swallowing a Donkey's Eye

by Paul Tremblay

  “Sorry, I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “How long has your mother been missing?”

  “Four, maybe six weeks, I guess.”

  “You’re guessing?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know the exact amount of time, but it has been substantial. It’s a long story, alright?”

  There’s a measure or two of silence on the other end. I feel the guy’s eyes roll. He says, “We need your contact information.”

  I say, “Is there just some homeless list we can check or something?”

  My father groans and says, “My God, throwing your own mother under the bus like that. Glad she’s not here to see this.”

  I mouth a silent shut-the-fuck-up at him.

  The secretary says, “We do not give out that information over the phone or to the general public. For your missing persons report to be activated I need your contact information.”

  I lean away from the phone and say to Melissa, “Psst, what’s the number on this phone?”

  She gives me a thumbs-up again. I don’t like Melissa.

  I can’t tell this guy I have no address or number, so I give him my mother’s old address and a dummy phone number, and a dummy name, too. The police won’t be able to contact me, but maybe I can check back with them.

  He says, “Your report will be processed in three to five business days. Take down this confirmation number.”

  I dance around the limo, frantically signing my name in the air.

  My father, Mr. Supposed-to-be-ESP says, “Why is he asking for the check? This ain’t no restaurant.”

  The secretary is five numbers deep into the confirmation number before Melissa tosses me a pen. The limo starts with a jerk and I fall flat on my face, the phone still pinned to my ear. I write the thirteen digit and letter code on the back of my right hand. The secretary repeats the number and I got it right. Then he says, “You can enter this code on the phone or on our website and check the case’s progress. Thank you for calling City Police.”

  I hang up, roll onto my back, and toss the phone back to Melissa. It rings the instant she catches it. She checks the number and answers it. She only says, “Hello,” then listens for about ten seconds, then hangs up.

  My father says, “Police tapped the phone?”

  “No. Turn on one of the TVs. You’re going to be on the CBC.”

  35

  COMMON DECENCY COMPELS ME

  The news anchor says, “Farm has just now released a video of the terrorist attack. Common decency compels me to say that the following video contains disturbing images and I invite you to look away.”

  What the news anchor really means is: Come one come all and look at the glorious and gore-ious death and destruction because I know you want it and the only thing that I could do to make you possibly crave it more is to feign through that hoary old decency and dignity sermon-on-the-mount and tell you to look away.

  Then there’s a dead donkey on the screen. Full colour. It’s missing an eye.

  My father says, “That’s icky!”

  The camera zooms in on the empty socket, for what effect, I don’t know. Maybe security camera-guy was a wannabe film student, focusing on the gritty realism and nihilism of the moment: the empty eye socket of a dead thing that some might argue was never really alive in the first place. All I know is that Jonah was right. I’m swallowing that donkey’s eye.

  The news anchor talks over the video, giving names and places and times and other stats, but I don’t really listen. I focus on the video. After the eye-socket zoom, it gets choppy, full of cuts, showing obvious signs of editing. There’s a flash of Jonah and I getting out of our ATV and walking to the donkey. We get a clear shot of the back of Jonah’s head. Then the front.

  My father says, “That schmuck has two faces! Brilliant stuff.”

  Another cut. Jonah and I are laughing. Then I walk to the back of the ATV. Camera zooms on my face and freezes. I’m looking over my shoulder. It certainly looks like I’m waiting for something to happen. Then something does happen. The explosion tears into the ATV and Jonah. The donkey and Jonah are on the right side of the screen, and then they disappear, exiting stage right. The video rewinds, then goes slo-mo. A spot shadow highlights the explosion’s epicenter; the donkey’s ass. Then the explosion grows. At this slow speed it creeps, like suds leaving a washing machine. It hits the front of the ATV. The hood peels back like a banana, then tears up into shrapnel, and the shrapnel slides into Jonah’s head and body before Jonah jumps off screen. Then another edit, showing me putting on a duck head then climbing into the Chicken’s Jeep and driving away. That escape scene fades into a mug shot of me that fills the TV. They animate it and rotate my head so the viewing public can get a 3-D image of my fugitive ass.

  My father says, “Well, that wasn’t too bad, now was it? No such thing as bad publicity.”

  The androgynous anchor comes back on, but is brief, sending the live feed out to the Mayor’s press conference.

  36

  STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS

  I look out the limo’s tinted windows. We’re cutting through the financial district. Stone and brick and mortar buildings buried beneath neon signs, holo-boards, and giant vid screens. On every board and screen is Mayor Solomon’s press conference. There’s an army of him. He has a handlebar mustache. Just like BM’s. Melissa tells me that the mustache is relatively new. He’s Teddy Roosevelt without the Teddy part. He’s the late-in-life, bloated version, replete in what looks to be vintage clothing, a costume community theatre might stock. He checks the time on his gold pocket watch, then slips a hand inside his vest, somewhere between his barrel chest and beach-ball stomach. His podium is outside, standing at attention on the marble stairs of City Hall. Filling in behind him are assorted men and women in suits.

  He starts his speech with “My fellow country-men . . .” then stops to shake the hands of everyone standing behind him. We get a wonderful view of the Mayor’s cotton-wool-blend-covered ass as he does this. Then we get a shot of a large, boisterous, presumably appreciative crowd cordoned off at the bottom of the City Hall stairs. Upon returning to the podium, Solomon waves at the crowd, then continues, “Myself and the assorted City Selectmen you see standing with me, acting as your tireless servants, have petitioned and scheduled a recall election, complete with a number of referendums, the details of which will be made known to the public via the various media outlets.”

  On cue, a news ticker at the bottom of the screen rolls by, detailing the ballot questions, date and time, polling locations for the various City sections and districts.

  “In two weeks, we will add a glorious new day to democracy, a day that has been long overdue.” He pauses. We, the TV-viewing audience hear an ovation. There is only polite applause in the background. “After years of running unopposed, I’m recalling myself. Political muscles must be exercised, or like any other muscle they will atrophy and wither. I intend to whip our collective flabby and cellulite-ridden political bodies into shape.”

  He stops and goes for another round of handshaking with his cronies. We see another shot of the penned-in crowd. There’s a bomb explosion somewhere in the middle and bodies go airborne. The camera doesn’t linger. When Solomon returns to the podium, he doesn’t offer any further explanation or reason for the recall election (the first such recall in sixty years according to the news ticker). I wonder if anyone at the press conference will be allowed to ask, or care to ask for a better reason for the big recall to-do.

  The Mayor goes on to detail the prosperity under his many years of leadership. Then he drops my name. The crowd boos and there are more bomb explosions.

  He says, “This man is the candidate found, funded, and backed by an exhaustive City-commissioned search for the fledgling Opposition Party. Under ordinary circumstances I would refer to the OP’s man as a worthy candidate. After all, I oversaw the commission to find the bloody fellow. But these are
extraordinary times, my friends, and in this early round of political competition, I’m here to declare the OP candidate is scum. An accused terrorist wanted for the heinous, treasonous crimes most recently committed at Farm.”

  The rest of his spittle-flying, fist-pounding-on-podium speech rails against FART and all other terrorist groups, and vows to go forward with the recall election and all other City functions and events despite their horrific and unabated acts. It all sounds so very reassuring. Wild applause and a few more bombs, then Mayor Solomon leaves the podium without taking any questions.

  My father is asleep. The empty glass of scotch leaks out of his hand. It lands on the shag rug and rolls with the limo’s momentum. Melissa’s smart phone rings. All she says is hello, then hands the phone to me.

  The CM.

  “Congratulations, Future Mayor,” then, “Game on.”

  37

  SWEEPING IT UNDER THE RUG

  The limo parks behind BankCity Center. There’s some sort of sporting event going on, or maybe the Ice Capades. We wait for the semi-random police check point at Cedar Street to go away. The CM tipped us off. I don’t know who tipped them off.

  While waiting I’ve seen my mug up on the stadium’s holo-boards. There’ve been two ads for The Candidate. Simple ads: black background and a red logo, the letters fashioned from governmental-looking documents, the C might be the Declaration of Independence all twisted and rolled up, but I can’t be sure, and good goddamn the show starts tomorrow night, primetime, and every night at primetime until the election. I’ve also seen three campaign spots. Apparently, I’m the candidate for change, taxing the upper class, better schools, and environmental control.

  See. That proves it. The CM are in the bag. There’s no way I’ll win on that platform.

  Apparently, I’m also the candidate who thinks that Solomon’s two billion dollar cuts or outright elimination of social programs like school lunches, food stamps, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children are bad. My political spots are full of all those nice Solomon administration stats, but nothing about his magic fridge. At the end of each spot you get my mug and canned voice telling everyone that I approved the message. And you know what, I find myself wanting to vote for that guy up on the screen; he says some nice things.

  We’ve been sitting for forty minutes. Melissa has forty minutes of me doing nothing on tape. So I spice it up, and dial the police again. Plug in the thirteen-character case code, feeding it through the automated system to see if they’ve started work on my mother yet, even though I know they haven’t. The automated verdict: case approval pending.

  My father is still asleep. I pick up the empty scotch glass and balance it upside down on his crotch. Melissa doesn’t film that. She gives me a small hand-cam, the size of my palm and tells me to go do a confessional while we have the free time. Melissa climbs out of the limo to go chat up the driver.

  I take the camera, sit it on top of a mini fridge, and stare into its eye. Here it is. This is my confessional. I open my mouth.

  What is there to say? You know, I feel pressure to make an impressive opening. There’re so many ways I could go with this. I could talk about Mom and how the summer after Dad left, I’d come home after a day of running through hydrants or stealing candy from the sidewalk markets in Annotte and find Mom napping in my bed. Door and windows closed, shades drawn. It’d be so hot in the room and the smell of her sweat was a door behind my door. Sometimes she stayed there, sleeping through until morning. I’d eat cereal for dinner and watch the TV shows I wasn’t usually allowed to watch. I never left the apartment though. I pretended she was sick and I had to protect her. I’d stay up late and end up sleeping on the couch, or the floor in front of the couch, but never her and Dad’s bed.

  I don’t say any of this in my confessional. I let the camera run and tape me and my silent open mouth. It feels right.

  When the limo finally starts again, we drive through the one section of City I’ve never seen, the North End. The North End extends the farthest out over the bay. It used to be City’s industrial and textile center but fell into ruin over sixty years ago, so the history goes. After ruin came the fraternal twins of abject poverty and epidemic crime rate.

  It’s harder to see out the limo’s tinted windows because there are no neon signs or Coke ads or newswires here. Only one in four streetlamps even seem to be functioning. Outside the limo is a graveyard of slums and empty factories, the skeletons of City’s closet. Broken glass on the sidewalks, dented but full garbage cans, chairs without legs or backs, an overturned baby carriage, burnt out cars. Rats and anorexic dogs dart out of the limo’s path. This is where some homeless try their luck at evading police sweeps, where fringe gangs have their wars.

  When I was a kid, the parental threat was if you didn’t clean your room, you’d be shipped off to the North End. And that parental threat is finally coming true for me, since it’s where my father is taking me.

  Speaking of that fraud, I’ve appointed him to be my deputy campaign manager. I think it suits him well. He now answers the phone and handles almost all the communiqué with the two-headed CM monster. So far, they’ve called every minute on the minute. After our quick pit stop at the BankCity Center, it has been a steady stream of Dad-relayed numbers and stats and ratings and polls and projections. Right now he’s giving me the latest on what TV talking heads and bloggers have to say on everything and anything relating to me. He gives me the CM’s suggestions on changing strategy and tactics. I wave my hand like a seasoned Caesar and let Father Politics decide for me.

  Without warning or ceremony, the limo stops. Dad says, “Last stop, folks.” He pulls out his pistol, says, “Safety first,” opens the door and gets out.

  Melissa doesn’t say anything. Since my confessional she’s gone quiet and ensconced herself and her camera into the background.

  I climb out into a stiff, salty wind, and my feet hit dirt. On the other side of the limo is a lumpy boardwalk with a rusty railing. We must be at North End Point. I jog onto the boardwalk and lean on the railing, rust flakes off at my touch. I’ve been told that at one time this was a beautiful place with a small grass park and a spectacular view of the water. I don’t see much now because of the omnipresent smog and cloud cover but I hear the ocean below and beyond. It sounds gentle and far away.

  Our fleeing limo breaks my reverie. I’m not above admitting I’m a little sad watching the cruise-ship comfort on its thirty inch rims back up and leave me standing on poverty’s decaying boardwalk while holding a crumbling railing.

  Father ESP says, “Might as well be holding your dick. Come on, no time for sight-seeing. Over here.” Just ahead of where the limo is parked is a thick, one-bar iron gate that stretches across the street. Anyone can step over or under it, like my father is doing now.

  We walk down the middle of the street with the boardwalk on our left and condemned factories on our right. Two blocks down we hang a right onto another street. No name but a sign says Dead End. There’s nothing okay about this corral. Decaying buildings are on all sides now. I’m afraid to look behind me. I start thinking about how this whole mayoral campaign is really bullshit and I’m going be left here in this industrial graveyard to rot.

  “Jeez, lighten up, kid,” my father says.

  I’m getting sick of his ESP stuff.

  He says, “I’m taking you where I said I was taking you. I might be a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them.”

  Can’t say I ever dwelled on the whole hiding-out-below-City aspect of the campaign, but I’m dwelling on it now, and it’s scaring the piss out of me. Mostly it scares me because I believe that I’ll find my mother down there and won’t be able to do a thing for her. It doesn’t help that the wind funnels into our quaint dead-end street and makes those carnival fun house sounds that are only scary when you’re not in a fun house. Father ESP whistles a circus tune now.

  Up ahea
d, only fifty yards or so away, is the dead end. A hollowed-out office building, its front façade missing. Still damn dark out here but there are more functioning street lamps on this end of the street. Inside, flaps of insulation and stripped wiring hang from lumpy ceilings and there are black lumps that look like tumours but must be the old office furniture.

  “Watch your step.”

  I didn’t notice my father had stopped walking and I had gone ahead. Three steps away the street disappears. A huge rectangular hole that spans across the street and to the frontage of the hollowed out building.

  “What is this?”

  “The Old Dump chute. Or I should say, the new one. This is a temporary chute that connects down below with the old one.”

  “They still use the Old Dump? I thought that was illegal.”

  My father laughs at me. I’m sure I deserve it.

  I say, “Using the Old Dump makes about as much sense as me running for Mayor. I mean, I snuck into City by stowing away inside a garbage truck on its way back from Territory Dump.”

  He says, “Actually, it makes more sense. Territory Dump is miles outside of City. Think about how much more gas one truck uses on a ride out there. Now multiply that by how many trips a day a truck needs to make, and multiply that by how many trucks City uses. Take that figure and multiply it by the number of days in a year. Add on top the cost of running the environmentally regulated processing and recycling plants because we gotta keep Farm and the breweries and, of course, the golf courses clean, and you get the picture. So much more cost effective to just sweep it all under the rug, don’t you think?” He pats me on the back. “Something you’ll need to consider when you are Mayor. Walk this way.” He walks to the left, following the perimeter of the chute.

  I crane my neck and take a peek down the gaping hole, and there is a definite garbage stench wafting up. “Don’t people see full garbage trucks coming out here to the North End and then leaving empty?”