Soon the show was over.
Billy’s parents breathed a sigh of relief.
But it was only the first of many telecasts.
Over the next few weeks, Billy appeared on every show of consequence. The culmination of his television career was the Oprah Winfrey Show. Ms. Winfrey assembled the parents of other anencephalics—whose children had of course all perished at birth—to accompany Billy and his folks in a discussion of the problems related to having such children.
It was not long after this that a disturbing fad began to manifest itself.
Teenagers were seeking to emulate Billy and his mystical serenity through surgical procedures.
It was uncertain who first conceived of the operation. All that was known was that initial attempts were not successful, resulting in death or total catatonia. However, after some experimentation, surgeons learned just how much of the brain they could safely excise to leave the patient in a prelapsarian condition of mental diminution that approached Billy’s state.
Part of the conversion involved leaving the top half of the skull off, so that the person’s newly diminished brain would enjoy the atmosphere just as Billy’s did.
Sales of the type of hat Billy wore also skyrocketed. So did the sales of a special antibiotic ointment for anointing the wounds.
At first this phenomenon caused much parental concern. Parents fruitlessly forbade their children to spend their allowance or discretionary income on the operation. Campaigns were started to outlaw it. Preachers and role models spoke against it. However, all the anti-Billy sentiment could not contend against the real desires of youths to emulate their new hero.
Clinics specializing in the operation opened to accommodate the swelling demand for “Billyization.” More and more people—not just the young—signed the consent forms allowing the removal of their gray matter. Recognizing the futility of their fight against the tide of disavowal of sentience, all but the die-hard protestors gave up.
Two years passed. Hundreds of thousands of Billys had been artificially created. Billy himself turned eighteen. The parrot, rat and spider, fat and confident from two years of high living, embarked on the next step of their master plan.
Billy announced that he would run for the House of Representatives to become a voice for his people. He established residency in a district where anencephalics were a majority. He won handily.
In the next few years, Billy, under the direction of his cranial riders, managed to push through much legislation granting special privileges to anencephalics, claiming that they needed extra dispensations due to their unique disability, self-administered though it was.
Many people began to envy the anencephalics their easy lot. However, unlike elites of the past, it was easy to gain entry to this class. Billy’s final legislation in the last year of his first term was to establish public clinics where anencephaly was produced free of charge.
Billy did not neglect his parents in this busy time. Like a good son, he brought them to Washington and established them in a luxurious Georgetown house, where they arranged entertainments that served to advance Billy’s career.
Billy won re-election to his seat easily.
At the end of his second term, Billy stepped down to campaign for the presidency. He had previously succeeded in lowering the minimum age for that office.
Billy had his own political party now, the Decorticates.
The campaign was very grueling, more so than the three creatures inside Billy had anticipated. The parrot was kept busy making speeches, and found sometimes that he had to talk faster than he could think. The rat had improved his synaptic manipulations to the point where he no longer needed the spider to assist him. This freed the spider to sit in her web and plot the details of the campaign.
It was touch and go in the polls right up until election eve.
But when election day itself was over, Billy had won.
On inauguration day, the celebratory cortege featured a squad of a hundred Billy-boys and Billy-girls, newly decorticated for the occasion, attempting precision marching. They blundered into each other, and the parade had to be stopped while they were untangled.
Billy’s career had reached its apex.
One day well into his third term, Billy sat alone in the Oval Office.
He had removed his hat, so that the inhabitants of his skull could enjoy light and fresh air.
The parrot was fat as a pigeon and had developed the habit of continually puffing out his chest feathers and preening.
The rat was sleek as a guinea pig, his cheeks always bulging with food.
Only the spider, being something of an ascetic, retained her old proportions, albeit in a self-satisfied manner.
They filled the confines of Billy’s skull nearly to bursting.
The parrot said, “We must begin to think about the next election. Perhaps we could just do away with it. I’m getting tired of masterminding these things.”
“You’re getting tired!” demanded the rat. “What about me? You have no conception of how hard it is to goad this lump properly. I’m the one who really suffers during these campaigns. I think I deserve the lion’s share of the credit.”
“Come, come,” the spider admonished. “Don’t argue. Remember, if I hadn’t discovered this place and invited you both in, you’d be nowhere today.”
“Oh, shut up,” said the parrot.
“Yeah,” chorused the rat. “Listen to Fathead and go back to your spinning.”
“Who are you calling ‘Fathead’?”
“You, you second-rate ventriloquist!”
Enraged, the parrot bit the rat’s tail.
The rat responded by sinking his teeth into the parrot’s wing.
The parrot sought to escape by beating his free wing wildly. He managed to half-flutter, half-fall out of Billy’s skull, dragging the rat with him.
They rolled on the floor, clawing and biting.
The spider emerged and walked across the floor. Attempting to act as mediator, she was crushed to death by her co-conspirators.
In a moment, the parrot’s beak had sunk through the rat’s eye to his brain. At the same instant, the rat managed to bite out the parrot’s throat.
The three corpses lay cooling on the rug.
After many hours, the Decorticate advisors summoned up the initiative to enter the chiefs office.
They failed to notice the insignificant corpses oil the carpet. They went up to Billy and peered curiously into his skull.
“It’s empty,” said one.
“So it is,” agreed another.
MOLOCH
1
The car was a ’73 Marauder the color of dried blood, and showed all its age. Its driver’s side door was unopenably buckled by some ancient impact, revealing the harsh metal beneath the cosmetic paint. The rust pitting the steel corrugations nearly matched the paint, as if nature had sought to hide the damage in a kind of protective mimicry. The car’s hood was partially sprung, its trunk secured with clothesline.
The sound of its big engine as the car ascended slowly up Mount Tophet, in western Pennsylvania, was a deep but sickly roar, like thunder heard by a man in a fever. The car seemed to have muffler problems as well as engine troubles.
The car was alone on the road. The sky overhead was a seamless, variegated grey, like felted lint from a dryer vent.
Inside the car on the rear seat, riding backwards, strapped into a child carrier which was in turn held down by a seat belt, was a male infant. He wore a blue acrylic sweater, cap and leggings, and white booties. The cushioned pad of his carrier was patterned with anthropomorphic cartoon sunfaces, each smiling in a corona of spikes. Regarding the landscape he swiftly left behind, the infant rode placidly, apathetically, like a small bored commuter.
Andrew Stiles was driving, his wife Dawn beside him. Each wore jeans. The extra material inside Dawn’s pant legs at the hem had been let down without restitching, and was now coming unraveled. Andy wore a grey hooded sweatshir
t; Dawn a patchwork rabbit fur coat.
Andy’s brown hair was longish, and brushed the hood of his garment. His beard was adolescently sparse. Dawn used no makeup, and her skin was clear.
“Look at that sky,” said Dawn. “Something’s going to happen.”
Andy said nothing. The concentration he exhibited while driving was immense. Dawn tried a different topic.
“Do you think your parents will mind? I mean, we never even called. I know I’d mind if some relative just dropped in and said they were staying for a few weeks. Although maybe it’s different when it’s your son. It’s hard to imagine Peter really grown up, so I can’t say. He’s too new to me yet. Don’t he feel too new to you too, Andy?”
Dawn smiled timidly at the unintentional string of assonant syllables. She turned to look back over the seat at the baby, then swiveled back to her husband.
“I mean,” she continued, “it ain’t like we got a choice. When you can’t pay the rent, you got to move on. We got to live somewhere till you find a job. It’s no fault of yours you got fired, nor of mine that I got to stay home with Peter. Your folks will understand that, won’t they, Andy?”
“Do you know what it is, Dawn?”
“What what is?”
“That sky.”
Dawn ducked her head to peer intently at the sky through the windshield. “Some storm brewing, I guess.”
Andy shook his head. His knuckles on the wheel were bloodless, the color of quartz. “No, it ain’t no storm. That sky is too empty. There ain’t nothing behind it, Dawn. No stars, no sun, no moon, no weather. That sky is the sky of hell. Plain and simple, it’s the sky of the devil’s kingdom. Somehow we took a wrong turn. I been thinking it for some time now. We’re lost, Dawn. We are trammeled in Satan’s snares. This ain’t Mount Tophet. We are in hell.”
“Andy, please, don’t start talking that way again. Not now—”
“It’s right for you to be scared, Dawn. There’s plenty to be scared of in this world. But you done good to notice what happened. When you mentioned the sky, I knew my feelings was right. There’s no point in trying to hide what you noticed. Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe we can get away. If we just drive fast enough—”
The car had reached the summit of Mount Tophet. Off to Dawn’s side, far below an unrailed edge, the land spread away in forested chaotic acres broken by the infrequent incongruous geometric insults of civilization, all illumined by a dull stoic light which seemed to have no source.
Beginning its descent, the car entered the first switchback.
Andy pressed the accelerator to the floor.
Dawn was forced back into her seat by gravity’s deific hand.
Andy’s arms were braced straight and rigid, locked at the elbows. “Hold tight, Dawn. This is the only way out.”
The car swayed back and forth between lanes, its cranky steering linkage fighting commands, its engine running fit to burst. Veering far to the right, its front tire bit gravel, seemed at times almost to hang suspended, spinning uselessly, and clipped runty saplings and weeds. Veering to the left, its front fender scraped crumbling escarpments.
Entering the first curve, the car barely slowed. It smashed a headlight on the rockface, which went by in a blur, before rebounding.
Dawn screamed. The baby began to cry.
Andy said nothing. He seemed barely conscious of the road, his eyes fixed on the sky.
The speed of the car seemed a manifestation of Andy’s will, an impulse which flowed out of him, down his rigid arms and into the vehicle.
Dawn shut her eyes and crumpled to the seat. This did not stop the car. The baby’s carrier jerked back and forth, fighting the restraint of the seat belt like a wild thing caught in a trap.
Andy said, “Dear Lord, I’m listening, just tell me what to do. We’re weak, but we can serve.” It was not apparent if he received an answer.
The child wailed, Dawn sobbed, brakes squealed.
Eventually they reached the end of the steep and treacherous road, having encountered no other cars, nor plunged over a precipice.
Andy stopped the car in the middle of the road, slewed across the yellow line. He crawled over Dawn to get out on her side. He stood on the pavement, feet spread, arms raised.
“It’s a miracle!” he shouted. “Lookit that sky! We did it! We outraced hell!”
Dawn forced herself to stop crying. She sat up and looked out.
“Andy,” she said, sniffling, “that sky ain’t changed at all.”
2
“Andy,” Dawn said, “you got to take the boys out. They are driving me right up the wall.”
Andy lay on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. It was a false ceiling, dirty grey acoustical tiles suspended below older hidden plaster. The acoustical tiles seemed to hold an infinity of tiny pits, each horrible in its circular perfection. Andy was trying to count them. His lips moved.
In one corner of the room the tiles were stained a dingy yellow, like an old bandage on a leaking wound, where the upstairs neighbors’ overflowing toilet had leaked through. Andy was saving those for last.
Andy’s booted feet rested on one arm of the couch. Over the months they had worn the fabric away, revealing dirty white stuffing that was surely nothing natural.
“Andy,” said Dawn, “are you listening to me?”
“I’m listening.”
“Will you take the kids off my hands for a few minutes then? Supper needs fixing.”
Andy turned his head away from the tiles. Dawn stood in the kitchen doorway. Peter, three years old, was holding one corner of her stained apron. Simon sat in a swing suspended from four wobbly aluminum legs. The swing had a small windup motor which propelled it back and forth like a metronome. It made a monotonous ratcheting click which neither Andy nor Dawn heard anymore. Simon’s bare feet brushed the matted pile of the rust-colored rug in two parallel tracks.
“All right,” said Andy, “get ’em dressed. I’ll take ’em to the park.”
Dawn dressed the boys in light jackets for the seasonable April afternoon. She shod Simon and stuffed him into a collapsible stroller. Andy had swung his feet to the floor and stood up. Peter had transferred himself from Dawn’s apron to his father’s shirttail, which hung outside the man’s trousers, a pair of green work pants.
Dawn saw the trio to the door. She seemed to remember something then.
“Did you take your medicine today, honey?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good. You can’t forget now, not one day. That’s what the doctor said.”
“You been telling me that for six months now.”
“Well, it don’t hurt. And Andy—”
“Yeah?”
“While you’re walking with the boys, will you think some more about getting a job? Your benefits are gonna run out soon, and even if they wasn’t, it might do you good to be working. You know, meet some people, make some friends …”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” Dawn kissed him on the cheek. Andy left with the boys. Dawn watched him as he bumped the baby’s stroller down three front stairs rather roughly and set off down the cracked walk.
There was one steel mill left in the town, out of the many that had once offered employment. It was enough to fill the place with a seeming infinity of soot and cinders, piles of clinkers and ash. When there wasn’t a strike, there was a layoff. Surprisingly, they were actually hiring now. Andy thought about applying. It seemed like an impossible chore, a task for Superman. But then again, since that day when he and Dawn had outraced hell, on through the long stay in the hospital, right up to the present, so did any little chore, from getting up in the morning to tying his shoes to brushing his teeth at night.
Maybe he would do it. Lord willing, he’d try. It might make Dawn happy. He wanted her to be happy. But she had to realize that sometimes it just wasn’t possible, here in this vale of tears. …
The park was half an acre with a duck pond, a few vandalized benches
and a children’s playground where the swings either hung uselessly from one chain only, or were wrapped around the crossbar in inextricable snarls of rusty links.
Andy wheeled Simon in his carriage to the edge of the pond. He brought it to a stop and removed his grip on the handle. The carriage began to inch forward, and Andy realized the ground sloped away, down to the water. He halted the carriage and set the brakes. The carriage stayed put. Peter bent clumsily down for a pebble, which he shied at the ducks who had already swum over, anticipating bread. Andy did not attempt to stop his son when he reached for another stone, and another after that.
The grass was very green. The trees were very green. The shrubs and hedges were very green. The color began to hurt Andy’s eyes after a while. It was too aggressive. He sat down and closed his eyes.
After some time, he felt Peter by his side. The child must have wandered off before returning, because Andy could not remember feeling him standing there before. Andy opened his eyes.
Peter said, “Daddy, come look at what I found.”
Andy got up and let Peter lead him to the base of an oak.
The squirrel must have died during the harsh winter and remained buried under the snows. With the coming of spring, it had begun to decay. The corpse lay on its back, split open. Some sort of scavenger had cleaned most of the meat and organs from it, and it was little more than a furred shell. It was missing its tail and a leg. Ants crawled among its ribs. The squirrel’s small teeth were exposed in a rictus, and they were amazingly white.
“What’s the matter with it?” asked Peter.
“Nothing’s the matter. It’s just dead, Petey. It comes to all of us, sooner or later, death does. It’s the way the good Lord made life work. Look at it up close. Go ahead. Don’t be afraid.”
Peter obediently squatted and stared.
“Now touch it.”
Peter extended a pudgy finger. An ant in its single-minded travels immediately crawled onto this bridge from dead squirrel to living boy. Peter jerked his hand away.
Little Doors Page 5
