She says, “No. But I think it’s close. I think I can be happy eventually.”
There needs to be something important said. Damned if I know what it is.
She says, “I am . . .” Then her voice cuts out. Unplugged.
“Mom? You still there?”
No answer. Nothing feels quite as alone as being in a room with a giant mirror. I bang on the mirror and call to her some more, and nothing. I pull out the Batphone and it isn’t glowing red anymore. Power button doesn’t work. No dial tone, no beeps when I press buttons. I’m getting the Titanic-sinking feeling that the vote is in and I’m no longer City’s Mayor.
I have to leave. I hope that she’s still there watching and listening. She as the Impotent-Omniscient behind the one-way glass, this time not rendering a decision, this time not expelling me from Eden, this time powerless to help or hurt me. I never realized how much she and my father are alike.
I want to leave her as happy as she can be. I’m going to give her a gift that isn’t a puppy. I say, “This book is for you, Mom. Goodbye.” I open the book to a special page. It’s not at the beginning, or end, or middle. But it’s in the book somewhere. That counts for something. I hold the book up to the glass. What I see are jumbled and backwards letters that fit together to make up a word that I know but still don’t understand.
Here’s the page:
The book gets heavy quick, and I put it down on the table, face up, still opened to the special page. I leave the sandwich-pen in the spine to mark the place. As I walk away from the desk, I wonder if she’ll come into the room right away and take the book, go after the thing madly, busting through a mirror panel to get in the room because she just has to have it and then tear out the page and clutch it to her bosom, weeping and convulsing. Unlikely.
I leave the conference room and shut the door. If I wait a moment or two and go back in, will I find her there collecting the book? I really don’t know and I won’t know, because I jog down the hallway to the elevator, taking care not to stop and chat with the people calling to the Mayor, even taking care not to make eye contact. The elevator is full so I run down the emergency stairwell.
Is Mom not allowed into the room by supervisors? Is she sending someone to get the book for her and then devastated when they won’t give it to her?
The stairs dump me outside and, bless that Chicken 2.0, he did leave the tram for me. I get in and start the engine, and here’s what I think:
Mom is still behind the glass. She hasn’t moved from her position. She hasn’t called or talked to anyone. She’s replaying our conversation and replaying our lives, finding what fits and what doesn’t. She’ll get the book eventually, but for now, she’ll just sit and watch from behind the glass, safe for now because the book can’t look back. And I’m okay with this.
67
I’M JUST GONNA GET YOU AGAIN,
MOMMA’S BOY
I drive the tour tram back to my old Barn. Back to my stall. The tram must’ve tripped some a-tour-is-a’-comin’ switch somewhere, because . . .
Animal noises fill the air, and they make me tense up, like something is going to happen to me. 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. Yes, the Muzack-quacks, and it’s the same as it ever was.
So I pick up a shovel and, well, I shovel. I’m going to do some work. It’ll be easy, and a comfort. I’m going to do what I know, even if it’s only for five minutes before the Farm storm troopers pick me up. Just five more minutes of what I used to be. Five more minutes of letting the faceless Farm conglomerate make all my decisions. Five more minutes of life without thought. It’s just so easy.
Still in my tieless Mayor-suit, you’d think I’d look as misplaced as a yellow penguin in Barn. Apparently, I’m not. A Duck rolls by on an empty tourist tram, stops next to my stall, and she says, “Told you I’d get you. And I’m just gonna get you again, Momma’s boy.” She hops out and gives my groin a squeeze, then jumps back in the tram.
Over there is BM. Bowtie, handlebar mustache and a smile as fake as silicon breasts. He waves from his office window, and gives me a thumbs-up with no thought given to Duck’s sexual harassment or my current status as impeached-Mayor and reinstated terrorist. Would you think I’m crazy if I say this place feels like home?
The animal sounds fade out. I don’t miss them. I’m tiring of the shovelling faster than I thought I would. Maybe I don’t need those five minutes after all. So much for home. I drop the shovel and walk out of the stall. Another Chicken jumps into the tram before I do and takes it away, and here come ATVs with sirens echoing in the Barn and flashing their important blue lights. The animals don’t like the commotion and stir in their stalls.
The ATVs form a wagon train around me, and one jackass in his blue security overalls, straw hat with the mini-blue sirens on the brim, yells into a megaphone even though he’s only ten feet away. There’s too much amplification to his voice and I don’t understand him.
But I understand guns being drawn. I understand guns pointed at me. There’s a good chance I’ll be shot. Because I’m not going with them.
The ATVs screech to a synchronized halt, filling the air with dust, hay, and exhaust. Jackass still screams at me through a megaphone. His mouth is a wide funnel of white plastic. I look beyond security to see BM close the shades on his office window. Duck leans against the rickety staircase up to BM’s office. Duck sees that I’m looking and gyrates into some over-sexed celebration dance, rubbing Duck ass up against the railing and wings pawing the Duck chest.
That wide funnel of white plastic mouth details my crimes in a wash of static. The men and guns shrink their circle.
I say, “No need to see me out. Me and the bomb strapped to my chest were just leaving.” I pull my suit jacket closed and the reaction to my bomb-bluff is appropriate given my re-documented terrorist history. Someone yells, Jesus Christ! and the rest of the men-and-guns circle breaks apart, losing its regimented set of points.
I say, “Tell the Ass-May they can have City and they’ll never hear from me again.”
There is a regulated and trained grumble through the security ranks. There is two-way radio chatter and there is listening to invisible earpieces. There are instantaneous high-level, government and military discussions. There are decisions. There are orders to be taken. I won’t let any of it affect me.
I walk and they don’t stop me. I walk past Duck, still dancing the Duck dance, humping the railing now, faux-masturbating with one hand and giving me the finger with the other. I think I’ll miss Duck most of all.
I walk out of Barn. No one seems to be following, which doesn’t mean anything. They could still shoot me, especially once me and the imaginary bomb are safely beyond the perimeter of Farm and on the access road.
If they shoot me, twice in the chest and once in the head it means I’ll end up in that lost place among the lost, in my father’s personal library. I’ll become words. I’ll be a story in one of my father’s books. The title will be “Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye.” It’ll be perfect. The ultimate final gesture. Fantasy becoming reality. I’ll be part of all those books, part of all those stories, the stories of nobody, but somehow the stories of everybody, everybody but him, everybody but my father. He should have a story too, so I’ll give him one now, a story for Father-my-father: he is a god, one who knows what is going to happen but doesn’t like it, a god who means well but who actively works to forget his creations, a god who only collects stories, an archivist god, a librarian god doomed to know these fantasies replacing realities, these stories of the forgotten that will one day be forgotten as well. He’ll be another impotent-omniscient god, another god who only sits and stares at his own burning bush; they’re everywhere if you look hard enough.
That won’t happen, though. Here’s my true Kreskinesque reading of the future. They aren’t go
ing to shoot me. Well, I’m pretty sure they won’t shoot me. My newly flexed ESP muscle, my psychic vibes tell me it’s 80-20 I don’t get shot. Umm, maybe 70-30.
They’re not going to shoot me. I’ll leave Farm. I’ll leave my mother and her bungalow and her garden and her one-way glass and her impotent-omniscience. I’ll leave my mother, again, because I don’t need to be here anymore. I know she’ll be okay. She’ll get used to it.
Me and my imaginary bomb will just keep walking, a one-man exodus, a one-man walk across the desert. I’m going to do like Melissa did and try and help the person in front of me. If they don’t shoot me, me and the imaginary bomb are still going back, not to him, but to Home.
So listen. Like father like son, I am going to tell you all about the future.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This weird little book was a long time coming. Aren’t you glad you waited? I know I am. Always thanks to Lisa, Cole, Emma, and the rest of my family and friends who put up with and support donkey-me. I know it ain’t easy.
Special thanks to everyone who pitched in and bailed some considerable hay for this one: Susanne Apgar, Shawn Bagley, Stephen Barbara, Allison Carroll, Kurt Dinan, Steve Eller, Jeffrey Ford, Jack Haringa, John Harvey, Sandra Kasturi, Louis Maistros, Helen Marshall, Laura Marshall, Paul McMahon, Erik Mohr, Stewart O’Nan, Brett Savory, and Lucius Shepard.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Tremblay is also the author of the novels The Little Sleep, No Sleep Till Wonderland, and the short story collection In The Mean Time. His essays and short fiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Five Chapters.com, and Best American Fantasy 3. He is the co-editor of four anthologies including Creatures: Thirty Years of Monster Stories (with John Langan). Paul is currently on the board of directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards. He fears many things, including the return of his banished uvula.
www.paultremblay.net
www.thelittlesleep.com
ALSO BY PAUL TREMBLAY
FROM CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
IN THE MEAN TIME
978-1-926851-06-8
“PAUL TREMBLAY'S STORIES SNEAK UP ON YOU QUIETLY AND THEN . . . WOW! YOU DON't KNOW WHAT HIT YOU, BUT YOU LIKE IT. AND YOU WANT MORE. POWERFUL, EMOTIONAL AND UNFORGETTABLE; THESE ARE STORIES THAT WORK THEIR WAY INTO YOUR BRAIN AND INTO YOUR HEART. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.”
–ANN VANDERMEER, HUGO AWARD-WINNING EDITOR OF WEIRD TALES
Swallowing a Donkey's Eye Page 21
