World Made by Hand: A Novel

by James Howard Kunstler

  The other dwellings were fancifully cobbled out of all kinds of materials, from turquoise enameled metal panels off old highway strip office buildings, to cinder blocks, to plate glass, to rustic timber framing, with a lot of inventive, storybook-like bays, turrets, and balconies. The lack of county code enforcement had a positive effect on the creative side of things there. Many of the trailers and cottages had totem poles in front too. Totem pole carving was something that seemed to have taken the place of TV and motor sports for them.

  The buildings were arrayed on a modest street-and-block pattern like a classical Roman castrum. Over the years, in their endless quest for firewood (and totem pole stock), Karp's people had pushed the forest back about two hundred yards from the periphery of the tight little village. In the zone of cleared land between the forest and the village, they grew mostly corn, which they roasted in great quantities in season. Their food growing efforts were otherwise rudimentary compared, say, to Bullock's. But Wayne Karp's position in the region was such that his operations enjoyed a substantial income in barter, and most of that was food, since he could scrounge everything else he needed on his own.

  When we entered Karptown that evening, the sun was finally down but plenty of rosy light was left in the sky. It was a mild evening. At this time of year, a lot of their living took place outside, especially cooking. Dozens of smoke columns rose up in the breezeless air. The aroma of marijuana joined with that of grilling meat. Voices, laughter, and some shouting resounded around the village. No dogs barked. They didn't keep dogs. They didn't need them for work, and whatever meat they had, they wanted to eat themselves. Most of the villagers kept chickens, and they roamed freely pecking bugs out of the weeds. The horses they required for their daily endeavors were kept down the road on the grounds of the general supply. It was unnecessary for them to keep cows, since milk was the most abundant commodity in our corner of the world.

  Inside the gate, as you first encountered the place, was something akin to a town square: a weedy quadrant with a wooden stage at center, sunken slightly, with split log seats rising in a semicircle of twelve rows above it-in essence, an amphitheater. When we came in, a man was onstage playing guitar and singing to an audience of a dozen others, who came and went languorously, some of them smoking their pipes. They ignored us.

  "What's that song?" Loren said. "It sounds familiar but I don't remember the name."

  "Me either. Are you ready for this?"

  "Well, we're here," Loren said. He looked a little green.

  "Okay, then, let's go."

  Wayne's Place was on this square to the right. It occupied most of the north side. We stepped up to an elaborately carved door under a rustic wooden portico that had been appended to the central trailer of Wayne's complex. The door carvings depicted a lone tractor-trailer on a highway, with an eagle soaring above it. Between the truck and the eagle hung a brass door knocker in the shape of a clenched fist. I rapped on the door smartly with it. The door swung open right away, startling us. Inside stood a woman around forty, in a turquoise halter top and cutoff blue jeans. Her frizzy brown hair was bunched up on top and sprayed out as though she were some kind of tropical bird. She had wings tattooed above her eyebrows in the clan's customary way.

  "Who're you?" she said.

  "I'm the mayor from down in Union Grove and he's the constable."

  That made her smile.

  "This ain't the Grove," she said.

  "We know," Loren said.

  "What do you want, then?"

  "We want to talk to Wayne. Is he here?"

  "Oh, he's here all right."

  She stood there giving us the hairy eyeball.

  "Can you tell him we're here and we'd like to talk to him?"

  She sort of stiffened her back and said, "Wait here."

  After she closed the door, Loren said, "Where else would we wait?" He seemed to be growing grumpier by the minute.

  "I think I know what that song is after all," I said.

  "Are you going to tell me?"

  "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

  Loren turned to look at the guitar player, who was finishing his number with a flourish of strenuous arpeggios.

  "I fucking hate that song," Loren said. "But his arrangement isn't bad. For a while there, I thought he was playing a folk song, you know, one of the old standards."

  "It practically is, now, after all these years."

  "Wouldn't it be wonderful if the world could just forget some of those really awful songs?"

  "Apparently the oral tradition is still in force," I said as the door jerked open again.

  "Come with me," the woman with the topknot said.

  We followed her through a series of dimly lighted rooms full of velour furniture and bad art until we arrived at the back end and came outside again to a kind of broad patio facing the cornfields at the edge of the woods. A trellis overhead supported grape vines. The fruit was just forming in miniature bunches. Wayne was entertaining three other men and five women, arrayed over a full complement of rustic furniture. Chicken quarters sputtered over a grill on a halved fifty-five-gallon steel drum. A big waterpipe made out of a laboratory flask sat on a wooden side table, and the smell of marijuana lingered on the still air. It was like a scene out of the old days. Wayne was half supine in a rustic lounge chair. He had a slingshot, the powerful kind they used to sell in outdoor catalogs, and was firing at crows out in the corn. On the slate paving beside him was a plastic bucket full of pebbles. As we stepped out he let one fly. It missed.

  "If that was a ball bearing, that crow there'd be a dead crow now," he said. Then he noticed us. "Well, got-damn. If it ain't Fiddler Joe. Been a while."

  I could practically see the machinery in his brain working as he recognized who I was and what happened last time we met. He seemed to have a pretty good buzz on. There were jugs and pitchers on a long table and everyone held a glass of something.

  "Which one of you is the mayor?" Wayne said.

  "That would be me," I said.

  "Since when."

  "A few weeks ago."

  "Well, if they had a got-damn newspaper around here, maybe some of us hillbillies would know what the hell is going on," Wayne said, before turning to Loren. "That'd make you the other one, I suppose."

  "Right, I'm the constable."

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I know you. You're the preacher down there to the Grove, right."

  "I'm the minister of First Congregational."

  "Since when you church types become law enforcement types?"

  "It's the new thing," Loren said.

  "You don't say? Like a fad?"

  "Just around here."

  "Oh? Well, come on in and take a load off your damn minds. Mi casa es su casa. Bodie! Tiffany! Let these fellas sit down. Come on! Move your asses. In fact, all you all git. The shooting gallery is temporarily closed. Go on, git."

  The others downed their drinks, picked themselves up resentfully, and left, except the woman with the topknot.

  "Brenda, why don't you give that chicken a turn and offer these boys something to drink?"

  We declined.

  "Aw for shit's sake, you must be thirsty," Wayne said. "It's a four-mile walk from the Grove, ain't it?"

  "We got whiskey, cider, and beer," Brenda said, like a waitress in an old-time roadhouse.

  "You want to shoot the shit with me," Wayne said, "you better be prepared to drink with me. Go on, sit down. I didn't pitch all that riffraff out for nothing."

  Loren surprised me and asked for whiskey. I said I'd have a cider. We sat down.

  "You know, I'm kind of getting to like it with the electric off," Wayne said expansively "We seen every got-damn DVD in the county and there ain't no more cable anyways, whether the 'lectric's on or off. I do miss my music, though. How are you all getting on down in town?"

  "Mostly pretty well," Loren said. "Except when we get breakins and crimes and stuff."

  "We don't have any crime problem here." />
  "Why's that?"

  "Because I rule with an iron got-damn fist," Wayne said, and then brayed energetically at his own joke.

  Loren took some papers out of his shoulder bag. "I've got some warrants here."

  "You don't say."

  "I think this chicken's done," Brenda said.

  "It ain't done until I say it's done."

  "Come have a look at it."

  "Just leave it and shut the fuck up."

  Brenda now left the patio area in a bit of a huff.

  "Lemme see those things," Wayne said. Loren got up and gave him the warrants. "Well, I got to hand it to Mr. Bullock in the penmanship department-no pun intended. Look at those Ws and Gs. These are as pretty as the got-damn Declaration of Independence. And the wax seal there, that's a nice touch. Almost enough for me to take seriously."

  Wayne picked his slingshot off the slate floor and let fly at a crow perched on a cornstalk. To the amazement of us all, including Wayne, I think, the crow folded with the impact of the stone at the same time it emitted a particularly harsh and plaintive death cry and fell off its perch into the shadows.

  "Score that Wayne one, crows zero," Wayne said. "Mind refreshing my glass? I'd ask Brenda, but she's not here."

  "I think your chicken's getting away from you," I said.

  "Well, don't just sit there. Get up and turn it."

  I was nearest to the grill, so I got up and turned the chicken while Loren poured Wayne another whiskey-and another for himself.

  "You fellas are good guests," he said. "Maybe you'll come back some night with your wives. And you," he said, meaning me, "you bring your damn fiddle. We'll have ourselves a time."

  "What do you say about the warrants," Loren said.

  "I admire them. They have the right look and all. Can I keep them? They'd make nice silveneers."

  "Are you going to let us search for stolen goods?" Loren said.

  "Of course not."

  "Are you going to surrender and come on in with us?"

  "Are you crazy?"

  "Are you going to turn over Bunny Willman."

  "Hell no."

  "Then your position is that you're above the law?" Loren said.

  "That ain't my position, it's my reality. How are you going to enforce this got-damn nonsense?"

  "You'll be surprised," I said.

  "Tell me. I really want to know."

  "If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise, would it."

  "Got me on that one," Wayne said. He pointed my way and made a show of cracking up. "Well, as I see it, we got nothing further to discuss. But you did a nice job on the chicken there, Fiddler. If you want to run out into the corn and fetch that crow, I'd throw it on the grill for you."

  "No thanks."

  "Then I'll take over from here."

  Wayne finally lifted himself out of the lounge chair and, in his catlike way, slunk over to relieve me of the grilling tongs.

  "Oh, one other thing before you leave," he said.

  "What's that?"

  "Have another stiff drink on me for the road. Night's falling and you're going to need it."

  We hadn't gone a quarter mile down the road when we heard the footfalls behind us. Wayne's men captured us effortlessly. The gang of six he'd sent down included Bunny Willman. We didn't try to run. They tied our hands behind us, hobbled our ankles, and marched us back to Karptown-not without quite a few kicks in our asses along the way. Night had gathered by then. Stars blazed above the candlelit village and the moon was rising. The amphitheater on the village square was crowded with bodies. The same guitar player was still at it onstage, furiously scrubbing his strings, now in the glow of a dozen tin candle lamps arrayed around the lip of the stage.

  A couple of wooden armchairs were set up at both extremes of the stage. They put Loren in the one on the left and me in the one on the right and bound us into them so we couldn't move. The haze of marijuana was so thick that I might have gotten high myself if I hadn't been so overwhelmed with dread. The audience was passing jugs around. They evinced the same chatty excitement that crowds always do before a public spectacle, whether it's a musical or a comedy show or a hanging. Of course, I worried about what part we were going to play in the evening's entertainment. Eventually Wayne emerged from the front door of his compound, along with several cohorts, and made his way down an aisle to the stage. He hopped up fluidly with a clipboard under his arm like the recreational director on a cruise ship. The guitar player stopped bashing his strings and ambled off stage. A hush fell over the audience as Wayne began to speak.

  "Let's give Woody a big hand for putting out so much positive energy. Woody always brings a smile," he said, presumably referring to the guitar player. The crowd responded with some feeble clapping.

  "As you can see-hey, pipe down out there-as you can see, we got some special guests for the main part of tonight's show." This provoked a mix of cheers, jeers, catcalls, whistles, and raspberries from the crowd. Someone threw a hunk of something-corn bread perhaps -at Loren. It bounced off his temple harmlessly. "Hey, watch out there, Mojo," Wayne said, wagging a finger. "It ain't up to you to start in on that." The audience laughed knowingly. "Before we get underway with the feature presentation, we have a couple of warmup acts I hope you'll all enjoy, including our special guests." Wayne glanced at his clipboard. "First, we got Ricky Z, Potato, Tracy Ballard, Jesse, Pinky, and Little Eric doing highlights from episode sixty-six of The Sopranos, starring Potato as Tony. "Won't you please give them a big hand."

  This mummery went on at considerable length. A few of the "actors" were good mimics. The story was incoherent. I barely remembered the TV series anyway. That I even got sucked into trying to follow it, though, was a testament to their earnestness. Their antics elicited a lot of laughs, though I don't think the dramatic events depicted were necessarily funny, since they mostly involved the characters abusing each other verbally, when someone was not getting shot or beaten up.

  When the long piece concluded and the actors had taken their curtain calls, Wayne came back out. An insect changing of the guard had occurred with nightfall: deerflies hack to headquarters, mosquitoes out in ravening swarms. With my hands bound to the chair, I could only endure their bites. My shoulders were killing me, and I had to pee so badly I was sure I'd have to go in my pants sooner or later. Loren looked like he was suffering too.

  "Next up, give a nice welcome to Casey Zito, Torry Zito, Jarrod Zito, the fabulous Zito brothers, doing one of your old favorites, "Creeping Death" by Metallica. Give 'em a big hand."

  Three teenage boys came out, bearing an obvious family resemblance, ranging from perhaps thirteen to eighteen. The oldest one wore a braided goatee and had the tribal tattoos over his eyes. He carried an acoustic guitar. The middle brother came out with what looked like a yard-square piece of aluminum roofing material, and the youngest had a big conga drum. They took an eternity setting up and tuning. The performance itself consisted of the middle brother making a thunderous racket by bending, warping, and banging the square of sheet metal while the youngest boy furiously slapped his drum. The guitar player thrashed his strings and struggled to be heard singing above the din his brothers made. I thought it would never end, and then I thought the audience would never stop clapping. The oldest boy said, "We'd sing another one, but we ain't practiced."

  After they got off, a couple of men brought out a mattress and laid it in the middle of the stage. Then they brought out a sofa and put it behind the mattress. Wayne came back out, exhaling an impressive cloud of smoke in the footlights.

  "Okay, okay, hush up, now," he said. "This next act, the last time we tried it, the man upstairs sent us a young one, and you know we need a little help that way lately, so give a big hand to Skooch and Melinda doing this scene from that old triple-X favorite, Teacher's Pet."

  A nubile woman perhaps in her twenties came out and sat on the sofa. She was wearing a white blouse and a short plaid skirt with knee socks.

  "I'm a schoolgirl," sh
e said and giggled. Then she opened a big book, like an atlas, and pretended to study.

  "Ding-dong," a voice cried offstage.

  "Oh, gee, somebody's at the door," Melinda said. "I wonder who it is."

  She got off the sofa and went to the side of the stage, right in front of me, actually.

  "Why, Mr. Skooch. What are you doing here?"

  Skooch entered, a powerful young man with his long black hair tied up in a ponytail, wing tattoos over his eyebrows in the Karptown style, and braided beard too. He was costumed in a shiny old suit jacket and a necktie, but no shirt.

  "Why, hello, Melinda," he said. "The principal, Mr. Dingus, has a new policy of sending us teachers out on house calls to our favorite students, and you're my special pet."

  "Really? What a coincidence, Mr. Skooch, because you're my favorite teacher," Melinda said. "But it seems you forgot your shirt."

  "No, this is our new official summer school attire."

  "Gosh," Melinda said, "maybe I should get more comfortable too."

  This launched the old scenario familiar to those of us who had lived through the age when recorded pornography was a bigger business than Hollywood proper. Except it was a live stage show, being played out about ten feet from my chair, not an image on a laptop computer or a hotel TV screen. Soon the two performers crossed the line beyond playacting into the realm of raw animal instinct. I watched the audience as they watched the show with uniformly rapt attention, including the five or six children present. Loren followed the action with an unreadable blank expression, though his face looked unnaturally flushed. As the tension mounted on stage, the audience members took up the chant, "Go, go, go, go . . ." and when Skooch concluded his exertions, a wave of sustained applause swept the amphitheater. Then it was over, though the odors of procreation lingered on stage in the still, moist air. The performers seemed to rapidly recover their decorum. They declined a curtain call and bustled efficiently off stage.

  The stagehands struck the set. Wayne came back on.

  "That was great, Melinda and Skooch. Just like the real thing-" Shouts from the audience. "Yeah, I guess you're right, Roy, that was the real thing. We sure hope that brings a little magic for you especially Melinda-that the man upstairs will smile on you and start baking a little bun in your oven. Thank you both. Now, onto tonight's feature. We have a couple of visitors on board tonight. They came out here earlier to talk to me. I did my darndest to be nice. Gave 'em drinks. Grilled up some pullets. And I got to say, they were just rude. Sassy. Impolite. Served me with papers. Imagine that! It's an old-time thing, for those of you too young to remember. A government agent serves you with papers andI don't care which way you cut it-it comes down to this: they want to take away your property or they want to take away your freedom. No, don't argue."