DON’T BOTHER
By Jeremy Martin
For Lauren, forever.
‘Cause when it’s my time to go, I’ll wait for God with the four-four.
-Nasir Jones
Table of Contents
THESAURUS MAROON
ALL THE TIME
COOKIE THEFT
INTERRUPTING COW
(BLOODY MARY)
ANIMAL CRUELTY
HOG HEAVEN
Thesaurus Maroon
On the third day of summer break, Thesaurus opened his office for business, raising the garage door and setting the markered posterboard sign in front of his old metal desk.
Thesaurus Maroon
Private Investigator
25 cents plus expenses
Solved in 24 hours or your money back
Hugh Munculi, Thesaurus' classmate, walked in, rapping his knuckles once on the doorframe before entering.
"Well," Hugh said. He opened his fist, revealing a quarter.
Thesaurus pulled a manila envelope from a drawer and tossed it onto the desktop.
"You were right, Hugh," he said. "Your mother is having an affair."
Hugh grinned, grabbing the envelope, making to squeeze the brass brads.
Thesaurus waved a preventative hand. "Save the Freudian scene for the counselor. It's proof enough to get you new sneakers. Maybe a video game system, if you play it right."
Thesaurus produced another envelope from the drawer, sat it on the desk.
"What's that one?" Hugh asked, reaching for it.
Thesaurus leaned back and propped his feet on the desk, right on top of the envelope.
"My copies," Thesaurus said. "I need new sneakers, too."
Hugh grew pale.
"You do like having both your parents living in the same house, don't you, Hugh?"
Later, Bags Douchely, 13-year-old leader of the Knifewound Gang, walked in, producing then pocketing what appeared to be a wooden nickel, which was probably worth more than a quarter, when you thought about it. He wore ripped denim and a black Jughead cap. Thesaurus cupped his hands around his crotch.
"Easy, Yancy," Bags said. "I'm here to hire you."
Thesaurus' hands didn't drop. "That so?"
"Yeah," he said. "I need you to solve the mystery of why your breath always smells like my dog's nutsack."
Thesaurus closed his eyes a moment. "Nice try, Bags," he said. "But we found out in 'The Case of the Unscooped Poop' that your dog is neutered."
Bags was already ten feet down the sidewalk now, and laughing.
–
Janie Corruthers walked in, wearing a long black dress. Until the Thesaurus Maroon series was revamped in the mid-1990s, Janie had been Thesaurus' secretary. These days, she was the school's star athlete and had two fathers.
She slapped a quarter, sweat-slicked and shiny, onto the desk. One of her fathers had been killed the previous weekend.
"I need you to find god for me, Thesaurus," she said, and rubbing a red-rimmed nose. She wasn't the best looking girl in fifth grade, but she could fill out a training bra, sure as heck!
"What should I do then?" Thesaurus asked, looking for nothing in an empty drawer. She'd caught him looking at her chest before.
"Nothing," she said. A tractor-trailer had slid off an overpass in a rainstorm onto an SUV driven by Dad #2. "That's just between god and I."
"Between god and me, you mean," Thesaurus corrected. "Me meaning you, of course."
Janie blinked moist eyes.
The coin was damp and ungrippable, requiring Thesaurus to slide it off the desk.
–
Thesaurus made an appointment that afternoon to interview the pastor of the local non-denominational congregation, the First Church of Christ the Unspecified.
"What can I do you for?" the pastor asked, extending a wan hand over a rack of aborted-fetus fliers.
"I need to find god in the next 24 hours," Thesaurus said. The pastor had a thin, cold grip.
"That should be easy enough," he said. "I talk with Him every day."
"Great," Thesaurus said and flipped open a Big Chief Tablet ($1.99 before tax). "Mind if I listen in?"
The pastor's laugh could be accurately transcribed as follows: "Ha, ha."
"God rarely speaks in words, my boy," he said. "More often in feelings, the majesty of nature."
Thesaurus closed the pad. "That hardly seems transcribable."
The pastor nodded. "But that's faith. The evidence of things unseen."
"But my client's paying for proof."
"Faith should be proof enough for him. A faithful prayer can move a mountain into the sea."
"Her name is Janie, and one of her fathers died."
The pastor tapped neat-clipped nails on the pamphlet rack.
"Janie has two daddies?"
"Had."
The pastor thumbed at a fetus flier.
"Well, you might say that the AIDS virus is God's punishment for the sin of sodomy. Sounds hard, but the believer can find the work of the creator in it."
Thesaurus rubbed the quarter's rough edges in his pants pocket. "Does god ever kill enemies with falling trucks?"
"His ways are often strange, but our mere existence is proof of His existence."
The pastor began walking Thesaurus toward the exit. "A scientist would tell you the same. Nothing spawns from nothing."
Thesaurus closed his eyes a moment. "Maybe, but after the creation what ensures continuance?"
And on a burnished throne sat god, dead as hell, not-watching the masterwork through rigor-mortised eyes, twitching only from the tunneling of interdimensional maggots. Decided deicide. That'll be a quarter.
–
Clarksville Community College's general science professor had her back to Thesaurus. With a shredded rag she erased a physics problem from the dry-erase board, sporadically spraying an ammonia-based cleaner.
"The concept isn't essential in the operation of the known universe," she said. "And it's therefore not scientifically relevant."
Thesaurus opened the tablet and unperched a sharpened #2 pencil (75 cents) from behind his ear. "If you can't observe it, it isn't there, in other words?"
"Not exactly, Thesaurus," her graying ponytail pendulated with the ever-widening erasure arcs. "Many subatomic particles are assumed to exist purely because other observable data indicate it." Her every movement jingled tiny tin bells on her out-of-season holiday sweater.
Thesaurus closed his tablet. "So god is like a non-reacting, unobservable, theoretical particle?"
The board, now clean, smelled faintly like a wet bed. Still the professor continued wiping. "If you like."
The rag squeaked on the board.
"What's inside a quark?"
The professor did not turn around. "Have you considered meditation?"
–
"Ohhhh-mmmm," Legs crossed, eyes closed, Thesaurus sat contemplating on his desk. Infinity in a grain of sand, the slight dilution of the ocean's saline by one salivary gob. A single tractor-trailer tumbling over an interstate guardrail. The vastness of space. The unknowable nature of god. The refunding of money. The universe was a complex entity in which Thesaurus was a single cell. Against its thick stone walls he scraped a contraband spoon.
–
The DayGlo sign outside of Goat's Head Soup promised "Spirituality. Tobacciana. Stuff." Thesaurus pushed open the door, clanging a cowbell duct-taped to the jamb. The barefoot man behind the counter hopped from his stool, shaking auburn dreadlocks.
"No one under 18 allowed on the premises." He tapped a sign saying the same.
"Sir," Thesaurus said in a deepened voice, "I suffer a pituitary problem."
The man nodded. "Oh, you're some kind of dwarf. My bad, dude."
"I need to know if god exists," Thesaurus said. "I need to prove it scientifically."
The man peered past his wire-rims. "Midget science fair, huh? I heard about that." Somewhere within the store countless incense sticks competed to determine whether the store would smell like balls or balls dipped in putrid garbage water. "You picked a tough project though, little man."
Thesaurus nodded, concentrating on breathing through his mouth. "I talked to a pastor today."
The man snorted. "Religion is necrophilia." He set a black nailed hand on Thesaurus' shoulder.
Thesaurus moved, but the hand did not. "Then I talked to a science professor."
With his other hand, the man dug into his pocket. "Science is the Warren Commission." He extracted a small cellophane pouch of dried leaves labeled "Salvia Divinorum" and handed it to Thesaurus. "You got to look for god the one place you can trust.” He tapped his temple slowly with an index finger for a really long time.
–
With homemade construction-paper fliers (a 500-count multicolored pack – $5.99) and an e-mailed chain letter (free), Thesaurus advertised an emergency prayer vigil that evening. Despite a forecasted thunderstorm, Clarksville's faithful assembled to pray that Mt. Sianide, the county's sixth largest point, be raised up and cast into the sea – nearly 300 miles away. Through a red plastic megaphone ($15.99, receipt attached), he reminded the true believers that only salt-water submersion would be acceptable for the poor lymphatic boy who'd requested the prayers. Simply dunking the mountain in a nearby lake or reservoir would be inconclusive and might even depress him to the point of lowering his T-cell count. So in English, Latin and imbecilic angel tongues, with folded palms raised, hands clasped, eyes both closed tight in reverence and opened wide in ecstasy, the prayers were offered while lightning burned the sky. From beyond the mountain, clouds appeared and ruptured. Soaked, the faithful departed, the mountain no visibly closer to the sea. Thesaurus pulled his jacket over his head and began walking home.
Behind him, size 14 sneakers slapped the sidewalk. Bags! Before Thesaurus could spin around, a drop-shouldered charge sent him sprawling. His hands slapped the wet concrete.
"Oh, Thesaurus, it's only you," Bags said, not trying to sound surprised. "You really should be more careful. With that jacket over your head, I thought you were an Arab."
Near Thesaurus' face, a thick nightcrawler throbbed. By the time he stood, Bags had managed to cross the street.
"You'll prove nothing, Thesaurus," Bags said, holding his hands behind his back, his rain-soaked hat leaking streaks of black dye down his face. "Your obvious bias toward a Judeo-Christian deity is close-minded, and the way you've stereotyped and simplified Eastern religion is unforgivable." He nailed Thesaurus with the hard-packed mudball he'd had hidden – a ten-point headshot. "Ya ignorant homo!"
Thesaurus spit mud. "Nice try Bags," he said, "but city council banned Arabs last fall." Bags, now retreating, appeared not to hear above his own guffaws.
–
Thesaurus was saturated and clammy when he got home, and he abandoned his muddy shoes on the porch. A parent watched TV through the closed bedroom door. In damp socked feet he climbed loudly upstairs to open the tub's hot-water tap, then quietly downstairs to gank his father's pipe and matchbook from the den.
Naked in the hot water, he packed the pipe with salvia divinorum and pulled deeply, instantly regretting it. He nearly dropped the pipe in a coughing fit. He pushed his face under and drank from between his legs. He pulled again, holding in the hot, cruel smoke. In his throat he saw pus-filled pockets sprouting. He felt the pipe sink to the tub's bottom. Inside himself grew forests where anything could hide. His face was a camping tent the rain could not soak through. Somewhere distant water splashed. Janie was in the tub, just beyond reach. She splashed again, and her hand nearly grazed his peepee. Janie was not in the tub, he told himself. In his parents' bedroom, someone giggled. Thesaurus coughed again. It was his mother.
–
His sneakers encased in crunchy mud, Thesaurus walked out to his office the next morning. He'd forgotten to close the garage door. Janie sat cross-legged on his desk, waiting for him. Behind her stood Bags, rubbing her shoulders.
"Time's up, Yancy," Bags said. "You owe this girl an answer."
Thesaurus removed Janie's quarter from his pants pocket, holding it encircled in his thumb and forefinger. In the United States, this means "everything's OK," but in many countries, it's considered an obscene gesture. He slapped it down on the desk beside Janie, causing her to flinch.
"Well," she said, "where's god?"
Thesaurus flashed a too-knowing grin.
"Man, motherfuck this horseshit!" he said.
SO SERIOUSLY, WHAT IS THE DAMNED ANSWER?
For the solution to this case, hold the page upside down in front of a mirror. Upon discovering there is nothing written at the bottom of this page, glance up at your own reflection's eye – recognizably human-looking, sure, but, a centimeter beneath the smooth surface, a brick wall.
All the Time
They buried Rachael in the wedding dress she never saw, custom-cut to fit the casket. To save the bridesmaids from the weight of pall bearing, the casket sat atop a wheeled platform, easy to roll up the aisle.
He’d written his own vows, a disgustingly useless gesture he’d come to resent himself for over time. The groom in the pictures lining his bedroom wall could’ve been anyone at this point. The dress must be crackling like rice paper underground while the girl he married continued to decompose, continued to cave in on herself.
Once it had been different. Touching her skin, even through her clothing, had made him buzz. He became a hollow endorphin conduit when his fingers traced the outline of her denim-encased calf muscle. Unbuttoning her fly pin-cushioned his spinal cord. Her hot bare thigh spasmed against his pinkie. Her panties’ elastic-lined leghole yielded easily to his forefinger. Just the scent made him painfully hard against his thick pant leg.
But they should’ve heard her bedroom doorknob turning.
Rachael’s mother held the door open just a crack, an opening just big enough to put her eye to. The boy, she saw, shifted awkward on her daughter. His right hand was tucked beneath him, out of sight but clearly inside of Rachael’s pants and underpants, inside of Rachael herself. Rachael, eyes closed, bit her bottom lip and inhaled hard through dilated nostrils. The boy ground his pelvis into hers, moaned. Rachael opened her eyes then and put her forefinger on the boy’s lower lips. She shushed like a snake in tall grass until he was silent. She giggled then and finally looked up at the cracked bedroom door.
Her mother flung the door open then, so hard the knob dented the drywall. Rachael shoved him off of her. The boy looked up at the mother, trying to feign innocence though his hand glistened.
Her mother, shaking, pointed. “You,” she said. “You.”
The bridesmaids wore dresses of black lace, mother-of-pearl elbow-length gloves, and short-brimmed hats with attached veils. The boy, now a groom, watched them wheel the bride up the aisle. Eric Clapton played.
What had his face been like that day, he sometimes wondered. What had it been like on the day Jerrod Harris had asked him if Rachael had lived through the bus crash? “What bus crash?” The boy, soon to be a groom, had asked.
The bride’s forehead, people would agree in private after the wedding, looked like it had been molded together with Silly Putty.
The boy he’d been then had no relation to him now, when Rachael’s mother would come to bother him in the pool house. “We’re planning a picnic party for the Fourth,” she’d say. “Do you remember what Rachael’s favorite soda is?”
“Cherry,” he said, but had no idea. He seemed to remember her hating ginger ale, but he hadn’t really been paying attention.
For more than a year, he reassured people he suffered constant nightmares about the crash. It’d really been just over a month. Her bus, sideswiped by a meth-head-operated tractor-trailer, smashed into a cliffside
guardrail, causing it to unspool and snap. The front tires dropped into open air. Did the girls – some napping, some playing cards, some gossiping – have time to shriek before the van full of chaperones rear-ended them? At what point did Rachael’s mother realize the van had pushed the bus over the edge? Did Rachael’s head hit the bus ceiling on impact, breaking her neck (as he hoped) or did she watch the bus totter over and plummet? Did she watch herself drop toward the rocks that killed her? Adrenaline slows the heart-rate, he’d read, stretching time. Had there been a brief moment in which Rachael had seemed to float?
She’d come to the pool house once, Rachael’s mother, after he’d taken the pictures off the walls and before he hung them back up. Rachael’s mother sniffed the air. Through the closed door leading to the back room came the squeaking of bedsprings, a girl stretching and groaning. “I forgot what I was going to ask you,” Rachael’s mother would say.
Rachael was supposed to move into the pool house when she came home from her church’s weekend campout. He thought about that whenever he came home from the bar to lie awake regretting mixing too much caffeine into his alcohol, when he brought a woman to bed, only to wake up and drive her home at 5 a.m. He was between a woman’s legs once when he heard the bedroom door squeak. The woman flinched, clamping her thighs around his ears until all he heard was her heartbeat. He walked out to his car the next day and found a yard-long crack in his windshield. Closed windows opened themselves in the night without waking him.
His eyes open in absolute darkness, and he is unable to sit up. Someone somewhere laughs. His arms and legs will not be moved. He wills his head to levitate from the pillow. His forehead rises two inches and strikes an un-sanded plywood board. He tries to roll over and can’t. His chest and the backs of his hands are restrained by those same un-sanded plywood boards. His fingertips brush quilted cloth, and he realizes that he has woken up inside his bed’s box spring. The bedsprings above him squeak, a sound that, after several minutes becomes indistinguishable from female moaning…
He opens his eyes, finally. He extends his arms above him and waves them around. The open air is colder than he expected. He stares up at that ceiling he can’t see until he sees it, and he thinks about when he was much younger.
Don't Bother Page 1
