by Jeff Parker
A sign says Dawg Food Here and the bells on the door rattle me. I see aquariums imprisoning wimpy rattlesnakes, and underneath the aquariums are bags of peanuts costing one dollar, prairie dog food. But I’m hungry for nuts, and go for one. When I take it, a shriveled rattler strikes the glass.
I say, “mirror” to the old man behind the counter but it comes out “mewe” and a spot of blood on his collar. He points toward the back of the store, where there’s a bathroom and another sign, If you find this bathroom a mess PLEASE tell us. The bathroom is stunningly clean—the mirror, though old, recently Windexed.
I stick out the nub of my tongue. I rinse with water, then pop a peanut and the salt wakes up whatever’s dying in there. I rub at the red stains around my lips. The stains fade but don’t come off.
On my way out, stringy old dude asks, “Is the bathroom clean enough?” I thumbs-up and leave. Then I am outside on a corralled field. A hanging wooden sign reads, Little D Guest Ranch. The dogs pop out. I sprinkle some peanuts in the snow at my feet. They mob, chittering like a flock of pigeons.
There’s a yellow Kelty tent—a nice one—over in the corner and someone pops out in the same way the dogs just did. He is bound in skintight Gore-Tex head to toe, arctic gear, the kind that the rich resort people wear to look like ninjas while they ski. He walks toward me, all knees, and puts his hands on his hips.
Suddenly I’m overcome by tired. I try some signing: point at his tent, then put my palms together like prayer and tilt my head onto them.
“Temp arrangement,” he says. “I’m here on business. The old man doesn’t mind. He’s senile on clean. And sure it’s abnatural domestication but you won’t gain anything by setting them free. They’ve got a good thing here, to them. And what the fuck do they know? We’re the ones who are supposed to know things.”
I empty the last of the nuts in the snow and the dogs feeding frenzy. I pull out my chest and the Marlboro tent. I’ve been going around with the chest since I was ten. I keep it in the trunk of the Civvie at all times for precisely a chain of circumstances like this: my escape from an already cold and treacherous environs populated with wealthy skiing ninjas to one colder and more treacherous and populated with small rodents.
“I’ve got a good thing here,” the guy says. “What can you offer in exchange for my letting you share this space?” I set the chest in the snow. I walk around to the passenger side and take the hunting knife. I stick it into the snow to wet it and wipe the blade on my pants. I hand it to him handle-end first. He takes, breathes heavy on it and wipes it again on his Gore-Tex, looks at his reflection in it. “Okay,” he says. “Good. You’re good.”
I carry the chest and Marlboro tent across the farm. The snow is slushy here. I imagine it’s the heat emitted by all the creature bodies below the surface. Their holes are clear and visible in the snow. The dogs pop up and chirp at me. I spit blood at them and they disappear again. I stake at the other end of the farm from the yellow Kelty, find a spot between holes big enough for the Marlboro tent.
“Let me tell you something,” the guy shouts across the farm. “Prairie dogs have a more than 300-utterance vocabulary to identify predators alone. We’re not dealing with dumb animals here. So show some respect or I’ll have to knife you. We’re in their space.”
I unload the contents of my chest on the floor of the tent for insulation. There’s a checklist taped to the inside lid. It’s from my summer camp, a slightly modified list of the camp’s recommendations on what kids should keep with them. Nowadays I’m good with a slingshot, I know how to bust up dogfights, I rile like a motherfucker, but still hold to it:
wash cloths 2 flashlight 1 underpants 8
slingshot 1 T-shirts 12 PJ boxers 3
pillows 1 flannel shirt 1 sleep shirt 1
pillow cases 2 flip-flops 1
sheets 4 camo shirt/pants 1 water hose 1
slingshot ammo 2 packs shorts 8 high-tops 2
blanket (brown) 1 Marlboro tent 1 cords 1
sleeping bag 1 rain poncho 1 jerky sticks 2
laundry bag 1 socks 8 skateboard 1
I climb into my PJ boxers and the sleeping bag. I snack some jerky, which burns what’s left of my tongue, and roll around on my bruises through the night, occasionally waking to watch my breath hanging in the air.
Next the guy is clanging a pair of trowels outside the tent-flap, and it is morning. “Chores,” he says. I step outside and he looks at me like he expects me to say something. I point to my mouth and stick out the nub of my tongue. Then he walks a line in the snow—wide, deliberate steps—bifurcating His Side from My Side. He gives me a little more, but I accept since I’m the rookie. “It’s their home,” he says. “The least we can do is dig them out.” I notice a thin layer of snow has fallen overnight. I watch what he does as he walks around the farm, tapping his foot in front of him until he finds a prairie dog hole. Then he kneels down and carves out all the snow with the trowel. As he goes, the dogs pop out behind him, looking calm and reassured. I turn to my own tent, the top of which is sagging slightly under an inch of snow.
“Things don’t even know to hibernate anymore,” he says. “They come out in this freezing fuck cold weather ‘cause someone presents them a high-fructose trans-fattening cookie.”
I follow his lead and dig out some holes. Most of the snow falls into the hole when I stick the trowel through, and I wonder if we’re doing them much of a favor at all. When we’re done he waves me over to his Kelty.
“These are my things,” he says, unzipping the Kelty and pointing to a neat arrangement of objects across the floor of the tent. “Don’t you get any ideas.” He opens a shoebox and sifts through some vials.
He possesses the following items:-a one-person yellow Kelty pup tent shaped like a cocoon
-shoebox full of vials
-a Toshiba laptop with cellular modem
-two trowels
-a fish-shaped wooden cutting board
-the bearded guy’s hunting knife
He selects a vial then looks back at me, changes his mind and takes another. He turns the vial over in his palm, and there are ten or so white pellets, half the size of BBs rolling around there.
“For your mouth problem,” he says. “Take it.” It’s so much easier to do what he says than to try arguing without words. I touch my tongue to one and it’s straight sugar. The sweet stings worse than salt. I tip my head back and the pellets dissolve all over my throat. He gives me the vial. “Repeat three times a day.”
Then a Westfalia stops on the little route and beeps. He zips up his Kelty, gets in the Westfalia, and leaves.
I say, “mewe” again to stringy old dude. “Yes, son,” he says. “Yes, go on.” Then he comes over the counter. “You know what, son,” he says, “accompany me.” I follow him into the bathroom and he swivels the plastic grommets holding the mirror to the wall. “You know what, take the mirror. Take it.”
I take it. I hold it out and look at myself. It’s a good mirror, thick, heavy, a little magnification. The reflection is rubbed off some at the edges. I can see the black follicles on the outside of my nose and the crusted blood in the cracks of my lips.
“It’s too dirty for me. Impossible to clean. I don’t even want to look at myself in it.”
“Unks,” I say.
“You’re welcome, son,” he says. “Welcome to you.”
I take the mirror back to the Marlboro tent and prop it against the chest. I refill the Taco Bell cup with snow and cram in the ziplock baggie and the tip of my tongue. Then I watch myself, but all I can see is that image of Brick and Patsy curled up in the sheets. I clip Patsy’s feather roach clip to my ear and it pinches. When I get sick of pinching my ear, I sit in the open tent-flap. Cars pull up and little kids bundled up like croissants flick peanuts at the dogs. Sometimes the kids point at me. The dads put hands on the kids’ heads and lead them back to their cars. For a long time I watch people before I start feeling queasy and crawl back into the sleeping bag.
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br /> I get the sensation I am sleeping on a decline, like I’m slipping, but I know the ground’s perfectly flat here. Plains. I walk outside and around the tent to make sure, then lie back down and the slipping starts again. I get these moments of panic, when I slide and jerk. This goes on for hours. I feel dizzy and tired, but when I close my eyes, a few seconds go by and I jolt awake, dizzy and tired again.
Later, I leave the prairie dog farm, walk as far as I can see into the distance, hop barbed wires. The flat state goes on and on, covered in a thin layer of snow. I remember that resort trainer’s pitch our first day at Big Sky. “Welcome to Montana and sustainable employ under the biggest sky in the continental fifty.” Me and Patsy were impressed by this, that we were working under the biggest sky. Standing here though, you can see how at the edges the Earth curves. This is bigger sky.
On the way back, some wind gusts swell up and something blows into my eye. At first I think it’s just snow, but when I blink it all out, there’s this black speck at the corner of my vision. I try to rub it off my face but can’t seem to find the speck with my finger. Back at the tent, I check it in my mirror, and there’s nothing other than my wet red face.
Then I realize the dot I’m looking at is not exactly on my face but between the edge of my peripheral and the top of my cheek, hovering there. I check the mirror again. Nothing on the eye or my face. Impossible, I think. Maybe it’s on my eye. But if it were on my eye it would move as my eye moved. I sniff the sugar pills. Then I lie down and I don’t slip or slide or jolt awake.
Later, I sense a presence and poke my head out. It is dark already. One of the dogs has opened a burrow at the door to my tent and a perturbed sneeze echoes from down there. The guy pecks at his Toshiba by a fire in front of the Kelty.
I join him, sit on a log by the fire. His tent has a flap that comes out and covers us and the log. It’s comforting to sit under a flap. I unsheathe a jerky for myself. He glares.
“It doesn’t bother you that creature’s guts were killed for your consumption?” he says.
I shake my head no. Then I gesture for the computer. He hands it to me. On screen he’s still logged into a chat room called Loggerheads, where he’s typed, I’m talking anvil-educating teat, pinhead. He scoots beside me so he can read as I type.
I like animals, I type. I just don’t see the problem with eating them.
“What’s your cause then?” he asks. “Me? Recovering ecoterrorist.” With the hunting knife, he shaves a hair off the part of his arm showing between his glove and the sleeve of his coat.
My motto is ‘Pave Earth.’
“That’s not a cause,” he says. “Posture maybe, at best.”
I type, I’m seeing a black spot orbit of my cheekbone. This afternoon I thought I was falling while I was asleep. What do you have me on?
He checks me out. Moves his head all around my face. “Point to the black spot,” he says, blinking. I have to turn to the fire to locate it in the dark. I put my finger to where it appears in the glow on my fingernail.
“That’s not unexpected really. Our bodies are in a trepidatious state of balance,” he says. He says there’s something wrong inside of me, that an ordinary doctor would treat the symptoms, doing me no good, and that his stuff is going after the problem. “There’s bound to be some misfires as it works out your real malfunction.” He pops into his tent and returns with a new vial of sugar pills. “Take the exact same amount of these as you did the other ones.” He pauses, then says, “Except double. It means you’re getting better.”
I type, No symptom. Problem is I bit off the tip of my tongue.
“Don’t kid yourself. You wouldn’t have bit your tongue off if there wasn’t already an imbalance somewhere. That you did it was a symptom. Never treat the symptom. It only encourages it.”
He takes the Toshiba back and tells me his name is Minnow. He tells me as a kid he ran away from charges of plunking firecrackers into gas tanks. He ran to an Indian reservation somewhere in California. There was a marsh on the reservation, which he slipped into when the cops showed. It was filled with minnows, Minnow says. The Indians didn’t really hide him, but they didn’t give him up either. They walked the police around the whole reservation, including the marsh. The minnows nibbled at his ears the whole time, he says. When the police left, he came out and the Indians anointed him Minnow. They allowed him to live with them for the next few years because they admired how long he could hold his breath.
“That was the start of it all,” he says. “Me and those slim fish hovering under the water together, hiding out.” I reach for the laptop, but he donks my hand with the compass on the hunting knife. “Don’t talk,” he says. “Listen.”
He tells me that he spent the day picketing a housing development in the forests just northwest. He says one year ago he’d have napalmed the whole block, but now he chants and holds hands with other protestors.
“I’m getting better too,” he says.
The dogs are more active at night. We can’t see them but they paw in the snow around us.
“Watch this,” he says. He touches his throat and a sound, a cross between turkey gobble and suction cup, comes out. The dogs scramble for their holes. He laughs and says, “P-dog for owl.”
I try and remember that sound, but I find the image of Brick and Patsy in my head again and by the time I’ve remembered what it was I was trying to remember, I’ve forgotten the sound. Then I silently vow to myself never to do any of the things Patsy and I used to do together ever again. Like counting the deer carcasses on the highway as I drive. And like laundry. I vow to never do laundry again. It reminds me too much of her. I convert that vow into a silent prayer. I spend the whole night thinking, “God, please help me to do no more laundry, ever again. I know there is that thing about cleanliness next to godliness, but it will give me great pain to wash clothes, because I feel I can never do that without thinking of her.”
Back in my Marlboro tent, I admire Minnow because he stands for something. Except for Patsy, I stand for nothing. I have no cause. So mine must be to forget her. I drift to sleep watching that black speck hovering like a defector beauty mark.
When the speck disappears and my left elbow sprouts a wart, I throw away my dirty sleep shirt. Minnow gives me sugar pills from a new vial. I keep the Taco Bell cup packed with snow. The tip of my tongue and roach clip are frozen in there. When the wart disappears and spider veins emerge along my left thigh, I plug up a high-traffic burrow near my tent-flap with the PJ boxers I’ve been wearing for a month. Minnow changes the sugar pill prescription again. When the spider veins fade away, a patch of leg hair falls out on my right calf and the bald spot tingles for a week. Minnow explains that he is chasing down my real problem, and he’s almost got it.
The leg hair returns—what looks like sprinkles of pepper on my calf. And after, as it sprouts into hair, nothing happens for a few days. Then the strangest thing, I wake up one night to a scratching at the tent-flap. The wind is wilder than usual but the snow is beginning to melt, signaling the beginning of the end of the resort season. I unzip the tent-flap and see the Dawg Food Here sign tumbleweeding across the snowy plain in the wind. A chirp makes me look down and there is a dog halfway out of the burrow. I’d swear it’s the exact burrow that I plugged up with the PJ boxers, and I wonder if it ate them or maybe used them for bedding.
“Your tongue will grow back,” it says in a squeaky voice. “You may think it’s something magical, but it’s not. It’s basically just skin. Meat and skin, and it will grow back. It will heal, not unlike a wound, and then you will go find me—I mean her. Give me a jerky stick.”
It’s looking at me. I recognize her by her grey eyes.
“Okay, so you’ve found me out,” the prairie dog says. “I was never good with deception. Never even bothered with it. I’m sorry about the thing with the local. He was a big man and sometimes big men woo me.”
I hold out a jerky. The prairie dog snatches it with its teeth.
&nbs
p; I want to ask it if it’s a hallucination. And how is it halfway out of the burrow? Is it levitating there? Or does the burrow curve such that it can stand like that? I say, “Are you a symptom?” and it replies, “Please.” I toss another jerky and eat one myself. I sit there with the tent-flap open watching the prairie dog, and the prairie dog sits there half out of the hole blinking back at me.
When it finishes the second jerky, it disappears down its burrow and I zip up the tent-flap.
In the morning, like every morning, I stick out my tongue at the mirror. I see something new and open the tent-flap to let more light in. Tiny buds all along the severed edge, small pinkish buds and buds on top of buds on top of buds, mini-cauliflower clusters—regrowth.
Minnow tosses a trowel through the tent-flap. I stick out my tongue and emerge pointing at my face, but he doesn’t pay attention. “There’s an emergency, Scoma. Hurry.” He’s ignoring His Side or My Side. He’s running and digging out burrows. I’m slower, feeling hung-over though I haven’t drank since Montana.
I trowel a hole and a dog pops out, spooking me. The prairie dog makes a laugh sound and disappears again.
“Bitssss,” I say.
“I need a big favor, Scoma,” he says. “A chicken farm was wrecked by freak winter tornados last night. Now they’re going to slaughter them. If you can drive, we can run some recon.”
