by Bill Gaston
“Marty oh Marty oh Marty!” Ott shrieked, imitating Lulu’s voice. It sounded like Olive Oyl in Popeye. “How could you how could you how could you . . . ?”
Theo thought of problems at work. Funding cuts for low enrolment courses. A tedious faculty in general, older types who talked Chaucer and Pope even in the lounge. Lately Theo had been admitting to himself that he didn’t much like his job. To admit that about his life’s work was, well, horrible. But how many people truly liked their work? In their heart of hearts how many? The word itself was tiring. Work was synonymous with struggle. Struggle was onomatopoeia for work. Work was anathema to play. By definition work should not be liked.
One-thirty. Oooh, he’d be tired tomorrow. He had to prep a lecture. Virginia Woolf. Stream of . . . Jesus, he should just bring the class here, this loon would probably still be at it. Ott looked depressingly fresh.
“. . . No, I said, ‘Lulu, will you MARRY me?’ That’s what I said. I didn’t say, ‘Lulu, you scare me.’ Why the hell would I say that? Because I do I do I do want to marry you . . .”
At a quarter to three Theo jolted upright at a crash behind him. The fellow in the track suit had toppled, chair and all. He lay on the floor and didn’t move. Perhaps he was dead.
Theo announced in wonder, “Just me now,” somewhat helplessly stating the obvious.
“Please don’t interrupt,” Ott hissed at him, glaring before turning back to his paper. “So Marty decided to read a book. What to read was always a problem because his library was so vast, taking up four walls in one room, and six walls in another . . .”
“Come on!” Theo yelled, out of anger and fear both. “What the hell! Let’s go home!”
“Be quiet or I’ll ask you to leave . . . Books stacked on the toilet back, up to the ceiling. Books filling the cellar, inured to the cold floor. Last time he was down there he’d plucked an obscure Tolstoy from the mouse dust and shouted Da! like an overt Russian and curled up with it, on the spot, for two days and nights . . .”
Theo flopped back into his seat. He was sweating. It was the middle of the night. Rain pattered on the roof of the church. His dog would be whimpering in his spot under the eaves. His class tomorrow would be a disaster.
Theo stared at Ott. The writer was clinging to his lectern for support. He was holding his chin up, fighting gravity. He was definitely tiring.
“. . . the King of Persia had amnesia,” Ott trilled in a raspy attempt at a little girl’s voice. “. . . and tried to rob the store. Apackalips, apocalypse, he went back again for more . . .”
The lunatic was rhyming again. Theo stood up. He waggled a finger, groping for words.
“You just made that up. It doesn’t count.”
Ott stopped and looked up at Theo. His brows rose in supercilious innocence.
“This is my novel-in-progress. Please don’t interrupt.”
“A novel? You’re saying this is a novel? Okay, where does that Persia thing fit in? And what does it mean?”
“It was Lulu’s rhyme. She is a child and she’s skipping. You think a child’s rhyme must . . .” Ott pronounced the next word as if it crawled with maggots “. . .‘mean’? You an English professor?”
Theo said nothing.
“Be quiet or I will be forced to stop.” Ott paused like a shark before the fatal bite. “Would you . . . like me to stop?”
Two very distinct sides of Theo’s mind had a quick, shocking fight, and the perverse side won.
“Of course not.” Theo had his own sense of timing. “I came all this way.”
He watched Ott for a sign of disappointment or fear, but saw nothing. Ott merely continued. He wore the tiniest smile.
“Lulu wound her skip-rope in a tight figure eight and went in for lunch. For fuel. For the past ten minutes her nostrils had been wide and ripe in anticipation of her daily Velveeta . . .”
Oh, but Theo was hungry. Ott must be too. Expending all that energy. Look at him, still bobbing his head for emphasis, still gazing out at a crowd that wasn’t there. The rain had stopped. His voice rang louder in the silence.
Oh, my. Crazy, crazy. Ott, Ott, wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop and wouldn’t drop, talking till his head went pop. There, put that in your “novel.” I can do drivel too, Mr. Writer. Why am I listening to you, not you to me? Old old Anthony Ott, drops his trousers on the spot. Behind the dais lurks a penis. Against the podium he bumps his scrotium.
Why the hell had he given up on writing, anyway? Maybe he should try again, quite the analytical maze. Right, quit his job at his age. He was thinking crazy. Oh, it was late.
“Would you like to go for coffee?”
Ott had spoken to him. He had stopped reading and asked a question. He had distinctly said, Would you like to go for a coffee. Theo sprang to his feet and punched his fist in the air.
“Yes! Coffee!” he shouted. “I win! Me! I win!”
Theo stood teetering. He grinned, puffing. Ott was watching him. A smile rose like sewer water.
“Please shut up,” Ott said calmly, smile peaking in a sneer. “Don’t interrupt. MARTIN has just asked LULU if she cared to join him for coffee. It’s pivotal.”
Theo stood breathing through his mouth. He stared past Ott into the velvet-curtained gloom of the empty stage. Ott cleared his throat and continued.
“. . . ‘Java preference where we go?’ Martin asked of his love. ‘It shouldn’t mocha lot of difference . . .’”
Theo quietly took his chair. It was getting light out. The door opened and he turned to see a janitor enter, take a fearful look at them, and begin sweeping. Ott’s voice gained volume.
“. . . Marty suggested that in their role as custodians of truth, the lumpen should never jumpen to conclusions . . .”
Theo couldn’t quit, couldn’t let the bastard win. Ott looked too content, in a bliss of his own making. Somehow he knew he had in his grip a professor of literature.
During Ott’s pauses, Theo could hear birds out on the eaves. Beaky gibberish. Parliament of fowls. Nature mocking him too.
Such noise. Theo opened his eyes to darkness. He could hardly breathe. Where in hell was he. His spine arched in pain.
Awareness limped in. Theo discovered that his face lay on his knees, his nose pinched between them. His arms hung down, knuckles scraping gritty linoleum. The noise was a dreadful monotone voice. Theo remembered where he was.
“. . . Phenomenology is a body of heavily thought thoughts aimed at that beyond thought. While we work hard thinking, Phenomeness dances with her girly grin, singing Nya nya nya nya nyaaa nya. We can hear her tune, some nights, issuing from the stars . . .”
Anger fuelled a burst of adrenalin. Trailing a wire of saliva, Theo’s head lifted off his knees.
“Bullshit!” Theo croaked. “You’re babbling!”
“. . . that’s what Phenomeness sings, SAID LULU, AS MARTY WOKE FROM HIS NAP.”
“That’s a trick. Doesn’t count. You’re just making it up.”
Ott sneered joyously. “Tolstoy ‘just made up’ War and Peace, you insignificant bugger. Go back to sleep and don’t interrupt me or,” the pause, “I’ll have to ask you to leave the reading.”
Theo let his head fall. He rolled his eyes under his lids in an attempt to relubricate them. Behind him, a crash. He turned to see the janitor stack the last chair, save Theo’s. He rammed it onto the top of the stack with unnecessary force, glaring at Ott all the while. Then he began sweeping the cleared space, over-clomping his work boots.
“. . . so what the hell and what the heck, they swept the house and then went camping, a final attempt to love nature before either it was gone or they were. Lulu was the one who figured out both the tent and the camp stove. Marty angrily stacked firewood. Next morning, they woke in sleeping bag grunge and shrieking clouds of mosquitoes, surrounded by the snoring, still-drunk bodies of local hot-car teens, who used the provincial park for phenomenal parties. Perhaps, Marty thought, they were nature lovers too . . .”
Th
eo relaxed his muscles and tried not to think about food. He hand-helped himself up and stiff-legged it to the bathroom for a fierce morning pee. The temptation to just carry on into the sunny street was almost impossible to resist. Food. Sleep. Life. His class was beginning in twenty minutes.
But so what. There would be other classes. Other jobs even. You could only beat Ott once.
He returned. He continued to listen and not listen. The janitor shouted something in a foreign language and left, trying but failing to slam the heavy church door. Around noon a gaggle of old people poked their heads in, perhaps to convene a meeting. Ott’s now-robotic delivery and lone scowling disciple made short work of them.
Theo had become aware of an interesting part of his mind. It was as if some of it would let go, into delirium or sleep, simply not caring what happened. Thoughts would take off, roiling, jumping, goofy — but strangely knowing. Story lines and rants and scenic descriptions. The oddest part was that for entire minutes he’d be unclear exactly whose voice he was hearing, his own or Ott’s.
“. . . he tried and tried to find the bird beautiful. To love it. Marty decided that unless he loved it within the next ten minutes, he was going to build a slingshot and kill it . . .”
Theo found himself not so much criticizing Ott’s story as adding to it, making it his own. I can do this too, Theo told himself. I can make stuff up too. And, ha ha, I don’t even care.
Theo looked quickly up at Ott. That was it. Ott was working hard to stand up, certainly, but he wasn’t working at telling his story. He was just telling. And he didn’t care.
That was it. Not care. Not work. Just let it go and tell whatever came, just tell, now, as it arrived, as it came in its fresh and bright —
“Would you like to have some breakfast with me?”
Theo went stiff. Very slowly, he lifted his eyes to Ott.
Ott was staring at him. Smiling kindly.
“Would you care to get breakfast at some café?”
Theo closed his eyes and smiled at the world. He stretched his arms wonderfully, glory bursting in every joint.
“Okay,” he said. “Sure. It’s been quite a long —”
“YES, I WOULD LIKE BREAKFAST, SAID LULU. ANYTHING BUT THESE TENT-BEANS ‘N’ SHIT WITH SAND IN IT.”
Ott’s eyes bugged out, full of contempt. He smiled like a panting dog. He enunciated carefully, as if to a child, “If you don’t stop interrupting, I’ll have to —”
Theo launched himself. He went for Ott’s face, but Ott was surprisingly quick, manoeuvring the podium as a shield against Theo’s clawed swipes. Ott looked surprised but pleased.
Theo could hear himself actually growling. He might have broken a knuckle on the podium. He didn’t care. He wanted Ott. Dragging the podium, backstepping, huffing, the bastard still wouldn’t stop talking.
“. . . by now, it was clear, Marty didn’t like, nature. The tides, the dirt, a cold blast of wind, on his, city-ass, face. Poor schmuck, couldn’t take it . . .”
Theo tried kicks at Ott’s feet. He smashed his ankle on the podium base.
“. . . soon he’d flee, back to civilization, and sterility. Nature would continue without him . . .”
“Shut up!” Theo screamed, hopping, still advancing, holding his ankle. “Shut up!”
“. . . without him, without him, without him. Lulu, standing in the wind, outside her tent, wouldn’t even remember his name . . .”
“Shut up! Fake!”
“. . . Ah, memories of Lulu, memories of the carnal tent, no-holds-barred sweetness and spit . . .”
“Cheat!” Theo shouted, hoarse. “Chimp!”
“. . . O sex of rain on the face, O lust of raw food for the famished . . .”
“I know what you’re doing!”
Theo suddenly stopped pursuing. Standing, breathing hard, he gave an exaggerated shrug, his palms ending up level with his ears. “It’s no big deal, Ott.”
Anthony Ott paused where he was. He set the podium upright and leaned on it.
“Marty faces the wind and has an idea,” Ott said quietly. He looked intently at Theo, one eyebrow raised.
“Marty’s not me,” Theo said, approaching, not knowing what he was going to say until he said it. “And Lulu does whatever you tell her to.”
“Nope. Too bad. Seems Marty’s still trying to think his way out if it.” Ott stood his ground as Theo came closer. “Maybe some day he’ll be brave enough to tell a story.”
“Oh, bullshit, Ott,” Theo said through his nose and teeth. They were now face to face, foreheads an inch apart. “I’ve been telling myself a story all my life . . .”
“Marty’s been masturbating in the china cabinet?”
“I don’t spew it at everyone. You have no shame.”
Nose to nose, Theo could see wild crimson veins on Ott’s eyeballs. His eyes were beady and savage, amoral. There was sleep goo in the corners. Theo saw dirty pores, and single hairs coming crazy out of his cheeks. He could smell his breath, coffee and meat and stale liquor.
Looking into Ott’s eyes, Theo suffered a strange shift in perception. For a second, he thought he was looking at himself. For a moment, Ott was him. He Ott. It felt wild and frightening, a rude wind building out of nowhere.
“Shame is constipation, said Lulu. And embarrassment is sin.” Ott tilted back his head in a pose of grand arrogance. Theo could see up his nostrils.
“Lulu’s egomania,” Theo found himself saying, “is boring.”
Ott brightened. “Shyness turns smart people into dweebs.” He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against Theo’s. He hissed. “DWEEB.”
Theo grabbed Ott’s neck and squeezed. “Lulu’s gonna die, SAID MARTY.”
“Dweeb,” Ott croaked. “Thinker. Pick-apart.”
They fell to the floor and rolled, Theo still choking Ott.
“Marty squeezed harder,” Theo said through his teeth, “and Lulu turned red. The smile fell off her like the leprous wings of a ...”
“Yeah. Tell a story, Dweeb . . .”
“. . . rotting flying dinosaur.”
“Fancy pants . . .” Ott could hardly speak.
“Animal.”
“Anal . . . brain . . .” Ott’s voice trailed off into silence and his eyes closed.
“Pig,” whispered Theo. “Child.”
Ott said nothing this time. Theo thought he might be dead.
Suddenly Ott rolled to the side, out of Theo’s hands.
“Nya nya nya nya nyaa nya!”
Ott leapt up and Theo chased him. Gasping, their arms hanging sloppily, they limped around the empty church, Theo following Ott’s zigzags. Finding bizarre final energy, Ott tittered like a young girl. Once he stopped, spun to face Theo, and roared like a monster. Theo hesitated a second, and Ott loped away again laughing.
When Ott tried to climb the stage, Theo got a hold of a leg. He pulled Ott, whimpering, to the floor. Again they wrestled, Theo ending up on top.
“It’s never gonna stop!” Theo screamed.
“You’re right!” Ott screamed back. And then stopped struggling. Both of them gasped for breath. Theo sensed that something was over. Looking into Ott’s eyes, which were passive now, he again felt the awful shift, that Ott’s eyes were his own.
Ott smiled, and nodded once. For some reason Theo got off. Ott climbed to his feet slowly, helping himself with his hands. He limped to Theo’s chair, which had been knocked over. He set it on its legs facing the stage and, groaning, sat down.
“It’s your turn,” Ott said quietly. He shifted in the chair to get comfortable. He settled, took a breath. Then lifted his face — sober now and all business and frighteningly neutral — to meet Theo’s.
“Tell me a story.”
HONOURING HONEY
They’re not staying the night but Marta wrenches open windows so the cabin airs. Ray is around back turning the water on — she hears the pipes hiss and clank full. Here in the kitchen, her son, Jeff, finally does as he’s been asked and gets the
broom. Marta waits for him to start sweeping before she speaks.
“Wet it like I told you.”
“There’s no virus here. You saw the magazine.” He doesn’t look at her but he has stopped sweeping. He’s tall and lanky, wearing his tight white T-shirt, and the bend of his body looks to her like the sound of his whining.
“Wet it.”
“Deer mice don’t even live around here.”
“Wet, the, broom.”
Article or no article, there’s no telling when a disease might arrive. Marta watches Jeff wet the broom in the sink. She tells him to sweep small, especially if he sees any black rice, which is what they’ve always called the droppings.
Outside, the rain has stopped. Marta arranges the picnic on the porch table while her daughter, Alison, grumpily wipes down the plastic chairs. Honey lies next to the table, his nose angled way up and nostrils working. For a startling second Marta sees the dog as repellent and alien — it’s in the way he’s let go of his cloudy old eyes so that his shiny flared nose is the only vital thing about him, a mucousy periscope aimed twitching at the food. Marta looks elsewhere. Overhead, the maples stand in early leaf, their green fresh and tender. This is usually, thinks Marta, the happiest time of year, her secret Thanksgiving, when nature gives itself to her despite her failings. But there, up on the back knoll in sight of everyone, Ray is getting that damnable gun ready, wiping it with a cloth, and Marta wishes he would at least go do that out of sight. He hasn’t washed his hair in what looks like days. She doesn’t recognize his shirt and hates it, a red-and-black check, a lumberjack shirt. She wonders if, like the rifle, he has borrowed it as well. She hopes not, because that would be just too odd to understand.
