The Subject Steve: A Novel

by Sam Lipsyte

  "Sounds like kitchen duty."

  "Hardly."

  "I guess I'll have to ask Bobby about that."

  "Mister Fucking Melodrama. You love this stuff, don't you? You loved it when those quacks told you you were dying and you love thinking I have some awful plan for you. And here I was banking on the idea that your cowardice was just a surface ploy. You really are addicted to your existence, aren't you? You'd be better off strung out on smack."

  "I just came to say goodbye."

  "Goodbye."

  "And thank you."

  "For what?"

  "I don't know."

  "There's going to be a reckoning tonight. Old Gold will face his demon. I think you should stick around. Maybe you'll change your mind about all of this. If you don't, wait outside your cabin. Naperton's making a cheese run tonight. He'll give you a ride."

  "I'll be there."

  "It's too bad," said Heinrich.

  "What's that?"

  "I was hoping you'd be my entree into a whole new market."

  "I'll recommend you at the racquet club."

  I did the day. I did the rest of the day. I went to the kitchen for my bubble dance. I did big hellos.

  "What are you grinning about?" said Parish.

  "These all the dishes?" I said. "Bring it on! Greasy platters, gunked spoons, the dried ketchup of martyrs! Bring the shit on, Parish! I am the cleanser."

  "Who gave you permission for giddiness, you little shit? Listen, I'm in a funk. I'm in no mood."

  "I'm all moods," I said. "In and out of them."

  "I'm the boss of you," said Parish. "I set the mood."

  We squared off. I got up on boxer's toes, popped Parish in the tit. He dropped me with a whisk handle to the mouth. I got up, got quiet, rubbed my teeth.

  "Oh, don't be sulky," said Parish. "I think you're charming. I'm just having a day. Too many peepers on the potatoes. I don't like to be so seen by tubers. I'm sorry. You're the cleanser, okay?"

  "I'm the cleanser," I said.

  "That's my boy. Now don't forget to punch out."

  My rye'd gone green.

  I went back to the cabin to check on Trubate. The room was dark and stank of balm. He was sitting up, the drip ripped from his arm. He stared up at the rafter beam.

  "Bobby?" I said.

  "Bobby died in a fire," he said.

  I walked out to the trance pasture, saw Lem Burke sitting in the punk weeds, smoking a joint, gerrymandering an ant colony with a stick.

  "Got some of those in my cabin," I said.

  "What?"

  "Ants."

  "What kind of ants?"

  "I don't know. Black ants."

  "These are red ants."

  "Communists."

  "I wouldn't say that," said Lem. "They just do what seems right."

  Lem whipped the stick. It careened off my knee.

  "Sorry," he said.

  The weeds were high. I could only make out the top of the kid's head. He was so long and scrawny, weedlike himself. It seemed like he'd always been here, sitting, dreaming, playing Hitler with dirt life.

  "Hear about Old Gold?" I said.

  "Poor fucker," said Lem.

  "You don't like it here, do you?"

  Lem said nothing.

  "How's your continuum awareness coming?"

  "Why do you ask so many questions?" said Lem. "What are you trying to hide?"

  "Sometimes people ask questions just to find out things."

  "My continuum awareness is coming along fine," said Lem. "The past present and future are entirely saturated with one thought, one image, one sensation. My mom knew what she was doing, tell you that."

  Smoke was rolling off the ridge. Both of us sniffed at the sky. Wolves, I thought. Rabbits, I revised.

  "That man Wendell who had my cabin," I said. "What happened to him?"

  "He died."

  "Heinrich says he hanged himself."

  "You know you splooge in your pants when you do that?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Guess everyone knows. I'm finding that the older I get, it's not that I learn new things, it's more like I find out how much of what I know is common knowledge."

  "That's a good way of putting it."

  "Don't condescend."

  "I'm not."

  "Don't deny your actions."

  Lem was truly a child of this place.

  "Did Wendell leave a note? An explanation?"

  "Yeah. There was a note. It said, Please note."

  "Please note?"

  "Please note."

  "Damn," I said.

  "That's what I said. Want some of this?"

  "Yes," I said.

  I hardly noticed Lem leave. I hardly noticed anything except the helium panic of the pot, the warp of the world, the fissuring. I decided to give the shit-free zone one more shot. No more boat. No more no-more-boat. I thought about nothing. I zeroed in on nothingness. Nothingness rose out of the ether to greet me, to embrace. I heard music now, horns, a brassy vamp. Flashpots, fireworks. The nothingness dancers chorus-kicked through smoke.

  "Please note! Please note!" they sang. Kick-turn. Kick-turn. Balcony gels, leotards, hip jut. This was not for nothing, I thought. Then the weed wore off. The garter belts fell from the trees. The sun was going down.

  I did not hate twilight.

  I went to fetch Renee.

  I rolled her out to the milk barn to see the calf twins born last week. Romulus and Rimjob, Old Gold had named them. They were dark and frisky in the moonlit pen, big sweet pups. They nuzzled our knees at the rail. Renee put her hand out and one of them took it with a soft sucking sound up to the wrist.

  "Oh, my God," she said.

  "I'm sorry," I said, "about those things I said the other night."

  "You have to try this," said Renee.

  "I need to tell you something," I said.

  "You really have to try this."

  I stuck a loose fist out for the other calf. It made a rough warm womb of its mouth for me.

  "Jesus," I said. "That really is something."

  "Isn't it? No wonder cows are sacred in Japan."

  "I don't think it's Japan," I said.

  "I hate you," said Renee. "Let's have a hate fuck."

  "Over there, then," I said, "behind the hayrick."

  "That's called a hayrick?" said Renee.

  "Sure," I said.

  "Sounds like Heinrich," said Renee.

  "Don't say that," I said.

  There were no dessert speeches that night. We bused our plates and marched out of the dining hall. Portable lights lit the lawn outside, night-game bright. There was a chop in the air and the lamp casings hummed. Somewhere behind us an engine gunned. The glow of brake lights parted us.

  Naperton slid down from the van, popped the hatch, reached in to struggle with some kind of ungainly parcel. The thing seemed to twitch in its plummet and when it hit the lawn we saw what it was-a man. He wore a blindfold, handcuffs of clear plastic. Blood had dried on his shaven head. Naperton pulled the blindfold off. The man just stood there and blinked for a while. The lights were probably putting a wildness in his eyes but he looked a tad touched anyway, the type who spends his childhood plucking butterflies apart, or Scotch-taping patriotic ordnance to gerbils, only to make his way up the living chain in a great pageant of abuse.

  But who am I to talk, mastermind of the Moth-O-Caust?

  He had tattoos. A steely anchor on his sternum tipped into a fat black heart. A target spiraled out from the top of his skull. The bull's-eye read "C.B." There was a logo on his shoulder that looked familiar. I nearly retched when I read the legend beneath it: Tough Cookies-Deal or Die .

  Now we all watched as Clellon Beach rolled to his knees and made to somehow stand.

  Naperton kicked him in the hip.

  "Fuck you," said Beach.

  "Fuck me?" said Naperton. "I'm old enough to be your grandfather. You wouldn't want to fuck me."

  Naperton kicked him in
the mouth. Tooth bits stuck to Beach's lip.

  "That all you got?" he said.

  "For now," said Naperton. "Try our sales representative tomorrow. Unless you'd be interested in this."

  Naperton kicked him in the stomach. Beach puked through his teeth.

  "Picador," said Heinrich from the porch, "I think the bull is ready."

  He stood at the balustrade in a stained dinner jacket and a wire-fastened beard, Odin emceeing a varsity football banquet.

  "Dig the beard?" he said. "Had the thing in my closet for years. I was God one Halloween, if you can believe it. Costume contest. Some Little Orphan Annie cunt won. Mr. Beach, it's an honor to finally meet you. You're a storied figure in our later gospels, so it really is a privilege. 'A huge fucking killer,' if I remember the text correctly. Well, maybe not so huge. What do you go, one-forty, one forty-five? But then again, Abraham didn't live hundreds of years, either, did he? Mythology is beyond fact-checking, I'd say. Wouldn't you? Did they tell you why you're here?"

  The man moaned.

  "I didn't hear you," said Heinrich.

  "I told them," said Beach. "There was nothing in the container, I swear. I went on board myself. It was empty."

  "What container?"

  "The container."

  "All day," said Naperton, "about the container. The foredeck container, he says."

  "Thank you, Notty. I do believe I understand. Clellon, are you thinking you're here because of some dirtbag job you botched? Some double-cross you cooked up in a Norfolk flophouse? These are things of Clellon Beach the man. We don't give a rat's ass about him around here. We are solely concerned with myth. And you are myth, Mr. Beach. You are the demon who stalks our beloved Gold. Through no fault of your own, I might add. Nonetheless, now there must be a reckoning. Can we get some drum?"

  Dietz walked out of the crowd doing paradiddles on a fur-bound Indian tom.

  "This isn't a fucking Krupa show," said Heinrich. "Slow it down."

  Now Old Gold stepped out to the porch, shirtless, in festive pantaloons. He gripped his terrific knife. Bobby was there, if he was still Bobby, pulped a bit around the eyes, the Tenets open in his hands and him nearly davening as he recited: "Behold, subsequent diagnostic procedures proved it so, and subsequent forays into the abyss revealed these things to me: Your soul is made of deeds. Your thoughts, your fears, your whims, your doubts, are sand. Moreover, you can't make an omelet without perpetrating some serious fucking atrocities. Mama, Papa, Caca, Pee-Pee. You are you. Article Seven, Redemption Tip Number Five."

  "Don't go off book," snapped Heinrich.

  "I am book," said Trubate.

  "I am me," shouted Old Gold. He bounded down to Beach, cut his cuffs away, chased the air with elegant swipes of his knife. He had the bearing of some highborn reaper, a cruel dandy. He caught a piece of Beach's face and Beach snatched his wrist, judo'd his arm around, bent it to some inhuman parameter that got Old Gold howling. Beach took the knife now, put the blade to Old Gold's neck. Was he awaiting thumbs from Caesar's skybox? What a soldier, sailor. A shot boomed down from the porch, spun Beach, put him on his knees. He pawed at the hole in his shoulder, the wet epaulette of blood blooming there.

  Old Gold laid his boot on Beach's back.

  "Look at my fucking demon now!" he said. "Little Sissy demon! I am a cloudwalker and I rain my rain of piss down on your meek inheritor ass!"

  Old Gold took his cock out, pinched it down towards Beach's skull. We waited for a while.

  "No flow," said Old Gold.

  We heard another shot and tiny flecks of Old Gold's ass went twirling into the lights.

  "For real?" he said, and fainted. Heinrich tucked his pistol in his dinner jacket, started down the steps.

  "And the moral of the story," he said, "is never mock your demon. A corollary to that moral would be never postpone square dance night. Now let's put this fiasco behind us. Tend to the wounded. Beach will be our brother, if he so chooses."

  Most of us made to leave.

  "You," said Heinrich. "Come walk with me."

  We walked out toward some power lines. Past the lit perimeter was a night of huge near stars. They were greening themselves up there like those stick-on galaxies my mother used to buy for my bedroom ceiling, those stars that came with charts I was too lazy to learn.

  "That's okay," she'd said, "just use your imagination. Make your own constellations. Gods and animals. Heroes and bears."

  I had no idea what she could mean. I scattered the decals around in a way I thought looked natural, random, skylike.

  "Just want to stretch my legs a little," Heinrich said now.

  We walked out past the last of the cabins to the treeline. A breeze blew over the field. I wanted to hear ghost voices on it, bog plaints, heath pleas. Please Note, Please Note. A serious fucking prizewinner, that. But Wendell was still dead. And I was still dying, wasn't I? Who would note? What had I ever noted? I'd taken my pleasures, of course, I'd eaten the foods of the world, drunk my wine, put this or that forbidden particulate in my nose until the room lit up like a festival town and all my friends, but just my friends, were seers. I'd seen the great cities, the great lakes, the oceans and the so-called seas, slept in soft beds and awakened to fresh juice and fluffy towels and terrific water pressure. I'd fucked in moonlight, sped through desolate interstate kingdoms of high broken beauty, met wise men, wise women, even a wise movie star. I'd lain on lawns that, cut, bore the scent of rare spice. I'd ridden dune buggies, foreign rails. I'd tasted forty-five kinds of coffee, not counting decaf.

  I hadn't put things off, I'd done them, just done them blind. Steady rain of ruin. Steady dark. You see too much and you can't see anything at all. You lose your beautiful wife to your cousin, or the sun. You beget hooligans. Or maybe you're the old man in the hospital, giving thanks to the Elks, the Black Kids, pressing the button, pressing it, but the girl never comes.

  All my pretty ones.

  Fuckeroo'd.

  "Have you changed your mind about leaving?" said Heinrich.

  "No," I said.

  "No, he says," said Heinrich.

  I heard noises behind us. Someone was squeezing me to the dirt. Someone was stuffing my head into a sleeve.

  "Wait," I heard Heinrich say.

  Wires poked my neck, my ears.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Notty, look how funny he looks with the beard."

  Naperton stood near me while I stripped.

  "Wish we had a boilersuit," he said. "We used to have a boilersuit. I don't know where the hell it's got to now. Can you see through the hood? Be honest."

  "No," I said.

  Something cracked at the back of my knee.

  "Can't fault your honesty."

  I curled up to the thatch.

  "Have you ever seen those pictures of Chet Guevara all shot up to shit?"

  "Che," I said.

  "What?"

  "Che Guevara."

  "I'm not talking about him."

  "Is this part of the mothering process?"

  "This would be idle chatter," said Naperton. "Get up."

  He bent my arms around a pole, cinched my wrists. I heard the thatch swish, a new pair of boots in the room.

  "I'll take it from here, Notty," said Heinrich. "Better get on the road, beat traffic."

  "Right."

  I hung there sucking hood, listened to Heinrich putter around the hut. He moved quietly, methodically, like some neighbor in the next apartment on a Sunday afternoon. Tin pots, the dull hammering of picture hooks. I heard Heinrich stab at the fire, spread something out in the dirt, a tarp, perhaps, lob what sounded like a sack of metal on it.

  "They sure were big on gadgets back in the bubonic days," said Heinrich. "The Breast Ripper. Purpose self-evident, I guess. Or the Branks. A sort of pierced tongue brace for the nagging missus. The Pear. Goes up your ass like a piece of fruit, splits open in your prostate. What I wish we had is a Judas Cradle, but those are a bitch to rig."

  "W
hat are you going to do to me?" I said.

  "Judas Cradle. Sounds like one of those rock bands."

  "Don't," I said. "Please."

  "Don't what?"

  "Please," I said.

  The hut was a furnace now.

  "Falanga," Heinrich said. "I love that word. Falanga. The beating of the soles of the feet. Submarino is water torture, near drowning. Very big in Uruguay when I was down there. Fellow up at Harvard or someplace, he did a study, took regular people, housewives, students, told them to shock someone in the next room. He'd have actors in there pretending to be in agony. Most of them kept turning up the volts. Even with the screams, the pleas. What do you think of that?"

  "Doctor's orders."

  "That's right," said Heinrich. "But now it's all about deprivation. That's the thing nowadays. No light, no air, no sleep, no food, no water. Or just food. Dry food. Stale peanuts. Stale saltines. No water. Cotton mouth. Or kick a blindfolded man off a chopper. How could he possibly know he's only a few feet off the ground? The complex of emotions when he hits, that's what breaks him. These are the techniques. The state of the art. Make somebody stand for days. Fluids collect in the feet. Believe me, you can't conceive of the pain. You can't conceive of the fluids. It's not about violating the body anymore. It's about putting the subject in a situation whereby the subject's body violates him. Betrays him. Do you get this distinction? It's kind of subtle."

  "It's not so subtle."

  "You're a subtle man. How did you like tomorrow? I used to see that on billboards when we made cheese runs. Somebody wrote that crap, I always said."

  "Me."

  "Yes, you."

  "So, that's the deal?"

  "What's that?"

  "Deprivation?"

  "No," said Heinrich. "You've already been so deprived."

  What he did to me now he did for a good long time. He did it maybe with some of the tools he'd talked about, the ones from the tarp, the grand antiques, the hooks and prongs and pincers I heard him pull from the fire. Sometimes he did it with his hands. The lulls were the worst part. Too much time to smell the cook stench.

  I blacked out, came up into some throb of wakefulness. My hood was slipping and I saw pieces of the room. Heinrich knelt in the corner with an old Army-issue hand crank telephone. He clipped leads to it, ran the wires back to where I hung.

  "Steve," he said, "I'm really thinking you've earned a phone privilege."