Cockeyed

by Richard Stevenson

  ChAPteR seventeen

  As I drove out to Cobleskill, low clouds moved in and soon I turned on the wipers to deal with a light drizzle. Swoosh, two, three — swoosh, two, three. Nissan, the waltz king. Did windshield washers Argentine tango? The temperature was up in the eighties, even with the rain. So if somehow Rita Van Horn was stuck out of doors she would not likely suffer too much from exposure to the elements, provided she was found soon.

  Except, it seemed more and more likely that Hunny’s mom had not just wandered off but had been picked up by someone, perhaps whoever had phoned her fifteen minutes before she tottered out the front door at Golden Gardens. It didn’t make sense that whoever drove Mrs. Van Horn away had anything to do with the Brienings. Their investment was in keeping her in a spot where social pressure and the threat of humiliation would underpin their extortion scam. But their recent implicitly threatening phone call to Golden Gardens suggested that they might hold to their Wednesday deadline, whether or not Mrs. Van Horn was back at the home, and I needed to talk to them and buy time if at all possible.

  Cobleskill looked fresh in the benign light rain, although Crafts-a-Palooza, lightly patronized on a Monday morning and smelling of what I took to be New York Thruway-restroom-scented candles, gave off a less welcoming vibe.

  “You know what this is?” Clyde said, pointing a metal object at me. “It’s a glue gun, and believe me, I know how to use it.” He yelled at a curtained-off area in the back of the store, “Arletta!

  Arletta, that goon working for Hunny Van Horn is back.”

  She came through the curtains wielding her own weapon, a Mike Huckabee-brand crown of thorns. The wreath was still in its plastic wrapper, so if she came at me with it I would not likely be injured.

  “So,” Arletta said, “did you bring Clyde and I a big fat check 126 Richard Stevenson

  from Rita’s drunken son?”

  “Drunken?”

  “Oh, don’t think we didn’t see him on Bill O’Malley last night making an ass of himself and of every one of his sorry ilk.”

  “Then you must know that Rita Van Horn is still missing.

  Hunny is so upset he can’t deal with anything else right now. I’m sure you understand that. Put yourself in his place.”

  Clyde said, “Mr. O’Malley thinks this missing-Rita shenanigan is all a hoax. He has proof, he said.”

  “Did he? I just heard a lot of wild speculation based on nothing at all.”

  “It’s all about some reality TV show,” Arletta said. “I would no sooner believe anything any of the Van Horns told me than I would believe Barack Obama.”

  I said, “Hunny turned down the offer of a show on All-Too-Real TV. His entire life has turned into a reality TV show, and he doesn’t like it.”

  This caught Clyde up short. “Why would he say no to that?

  Don’t those people on those shows get paid a lot?”

  “Since we’re so important in Hunny’s life right now,” Arletta said, “and Rita’s, also, maybe Clyde and I could be on the show, too. Of course, then it would have to come out that Rita is an embezzler. No, I can see why they would try to exclude us.

  Anyway, we’ll have plenty of money when Hunny splits his lottery winnings with us. Which will be just a couple of days from now, won’t it? What’s your name again?”

  “Don Strachey.”

  Clyde said, “But, Arletta, after we get the half a billion from Hunny, then we wouldn’t have to mention the embezzlement on the TV show. That stuff would be all squared away. We could just be there as Rita’s former employers. And as well-wishers.”

  She screwed up her face. “That’s true.”

  I said, “Let me run this by Hunny and get back to you CoCkeyed 127

  later in the week. There is also the possibility of Oh Look! TV

  doing a biopic of Hunny. His winning the lottery, plus dramatic episodes from the first Gulf War and probably some stuff about vampires.”

  Clyde and Arletta perked up even more. Maybe they thought they could play the vampires.

  Arletta said, “Just make sure Hunny pays us the half a billion by Wednesday. We need to put a deposit on space at Crossgates by the end of the week, and we’ll need time for Hunny’s check to clear.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. You understand, of course, that at this point Hunny’s first priority has to be getting his mother back in one piece. If you think about it, that will be in your best interests, also. If anything happened to Rita — if she were to suffer a fatal stroke or heart attack, say, or become a victim of foul play — I guess both of you would in that case have to accept the fact that you are royally fucked.”

  “Watch your language in the presence of my wife.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, what are the police doing, anyways?” Arletta asked.

  “Are they investigating the hoax theory? Bill O’Malley is a man who knows what he’s talking about.”

  “I know that the police are following every lead they can. The East Greenbush sheriff is coordinating with the Albany Police Department. The State Police are on the case, and there’s talk of bringing in the FBI.”

  “The Van Horns are getting the celebrity treatment,” Arletta said, and sneered.

  Clyde looked puzzled. “Why shouldn’t they?”

  “Just because he won the Instant Warren? He’s a pervert and she’s a thief. This is what we’ve come to!”

  Now Clyde grasped what his wife was getting at. “More of the same,” he said. “Just more of the same.”

  “Obama’s America.”

  128 Richard Stevenson

  I said, “The threatening letter you sent to Mrs. Van Horn was found in her room. So we know she received it. Probably on Saturday, the day before she walked out of Golden Gardens and has not been seen since. It does seem possible that your ultimatum

  — Hunny pays you half a billion or Rita faces exposure and humiliation — might have triggered some desperate act by Mrs.

  Van Horn. If so, are you prepared to accept moral responsibility for that?”

  “Desperate act, like what?” Arletta asked.

  “We can only guess. I suppose she might try to kill herself. Or has already done it.”

  “Oh!” they both cried.

  “I’m not saying this just to frighten you, but there is also the possibility that she might try to get rid of the two of you. She is known to be distraught, and it was probably your letter that pushed her over the edge. What is your security situation here and at your home?”

  Arletta was aghast. “Do you mean shoot us or something?”

  “There’s a shotgun missing from the office of Mrs. Kerisiotis, the administrator at Golden Gardens. There is no evidence that Mrs. Van Horn took it. In fact, she has no history of violence.

  All I’m saying is, the two of you might want to kind of lay low for the time being. And don’t do anything more to provoke Rita Van Horn or her son.”

  Clyde had gone pale below his A-1 hairdo, but now Arletta was looking suspicious. “It sounds to me, buster, as if you are threatening Clyde and I. Trying to spook us and make us back off. Well, if you are, you just might want to try some other tact.

  We are both stubborn, and when we are in the right we stand our ground. We have our principles, and they matter to us more than life itself.”

  It was all I could do to keep from wrenching Clyde’s glue gun out of his hand and gluing his wife’s mouth shut. But I knew that that wouldn’t help in the long run. I said, “I’ll report back to Hunny what your current position is — that you all will be CoCkeyed 129

  in touch again later in the week to try to work something out.

  Meanwhile, you’ll be giving Hunny some breathing room to deal with his missing mom, who we all hope hasn’t done violence to herself or is perhaps somewhere planning to bring grievous harm to others.”

  Clyde still appeared shaky, but Arletta’s look hardened even more. She said, “Behind this curtain is a lockbox containing Rita Van Horn
’s confession of a major felony. It is a confession that will put that dirty old embezzler behind bars where she belongs unless Hunny Van Horn makes good on his mother’s theft by noon on Wednesday. I said not Thursday, but Wednesday. Ya got that?”

  ChAPteR eighteen

  Hunny and Art had driven across the Hudson to East Greenbush, where Hunny had gotten into a sniping match with Lawn over Hunny’s Bill O’Malley public psychodrama. I learned this during a phone call from Nelson as I was driving back from Cobleskill. I told Nelson the Brienings seemed not to have had any direct connection with Mrs. Van Horn’s disappearance but that they were going to be a continuing threat, and we needed to get Hunny’s mom back as soon as we could so that she wouldn’t still be missing if and when the Brienings went public with their wacky charges and demands. Nelson said there was still no sign of his grandma, and both the sheriff ’s department and the search volunteers were becoming increasingly frustrated.

  I arrived back on Moth Street just as Art and Hunny were parking the Explorer, and now another vehicle pulled up in front of me and shuddered a few times before its driver shut the engine off. The driver’s door of a tiny gray Fiat opened, and a small man climbed out. The old car had a dinged and grainy finish, like the one on Hunny and Art’s Explorer, and the driver also looked as if he had some mileage on him.

  “Yoo-hoo! Anybody home on Queer Street?”

  The man waved at Hunny and Art, who peered back at him quizzically. Most of the TV crews had not yet arrived for their daily stake-out, but a lone cameraman peered over at the little man. The two bruisers from Gray Security, camped on the porch swing, also took in this strange new arrival, something else for them to think about.

  The man was ectomorphic and gaunt. He was mostly hair from the neck up, frizzy and white. He wore sandals and knee-length cargo shorts, though oddly he also wore a button-down oxford-cloth dress shirt and a large necktie with an image on it that I was not yet able to make out.

  The man crossed the street as the security guys watched him, 132 Richard Stevenson

  and Hunny and Art squinted at him warily. I caught up just as the man reached the sidewalk and cheerily introduced himself as Quentin Shoemaker and said, “And I’ll bet you boys are Hunny and Art, Albany’s richest cocksuckers. Am I right? I can spot one a mile away.” He beamed.

  This is when Hunny noticed that the necktie Shoemaker was wearing was identical to the one Hunny had worn on the Bill O’Malley show, a hand-painted image of Jack Wrangler’s head and naked torso.

  “Hey, girl,” Hunny said, “that’s my tie! You stole my Jack Wrangler necktie, you rapscallion you! You know, I saw His Royal Highness Missy Jack Wrangler in the back room at the Mine Shaft in 1978. Even got to touch it briefly, although there was an awful lot of pushing and shoving in that block-long queue.

  Maybe you were there, Quentin, unless, of course, you hadn’t even been born yet, ha ha ha.”

  “Oh, I missed all that urban cuddling and cooing, Hunny. I’m a country boy. I was in Oregon rolling around in the mud with the other mountain fairies. As for not being born yet, I’ve been born so many times I’ve completely lost count.”

  Art looked apprehensive. “So what are you? Born again?”

  “Yes, again and again and again and again and again.”

  “But not a born-again Christian, if I’m not mistaken,” Hunny said. “Most of them are not as enthusiastic about cocksucking as you seem to be. Unless I misunderstood your greeting and you actually disapprove of that ever-popular activity.”

  “No, in fact if all those senators arguing about health care and the public option and the trigger and so on would just take off their clothes and give pleasure instead of pain to one another, we’d have a single-payer system like Canada’s in place in no time at all.”

  “Hey, you should write your congressman.”

  “I did. I got a nice note back, too, saying he would be considering all sides in the health care debate and he valued my input.”

  CoCkeyed 133

  Hunny and Art had a good laugh, and they introduced me, and we all walked into the house. The rain had let up, and patches of blue sky were breaking through, good news for the volunteer searchers across the river.

  “You’re a private detective?” Shoemaker asked. “I never met a real one. I sense that you are not like many of the men in your line of work. You are freer.”

  “Apparently. At any rate, today I am comfortably in the company of two men who own Jack Wrangler neckties. That must mean something.”

  Hunny led us into the kitchen and said, “Art, just one. I would like just one itsy-bitsy snort.”

  “No.”

  “My mother is missing,” Hunny told Shoemaker. “So we are all very stressed. Oh, I suppose you know that. Mrs. Whitney told me you called. That was so nice of you to take an interest.”

  “It sounded to me as if you could use a few queer friends.

  Some of us at the RDQ commune saw you on TV, and we all just stood up and cheered. I said, ‘Boys, behold! Can our eyes be deceiving us? He’s on TV, and he is an unassimilated gay man!’ Generally the gay people who appear on television are so assimilationist they might as well be het.”

  Hunny and Art stared at Shoemaker. Hunny reached for a cigarette, then changed his mind and just fiddled with the ashtray.

  Hunny said, “I’m glad somebody thought I was fun. An awful lot of people sure didn’t. That’s all I aim to be, Quentin — friendly and fun. What’s the point taking everything so seriously? At least when you don’t have to.”

  “Yes, grown-up activities are necessary to making the world go round — plowing the earth, harnessing the energy of the waters, milking the goats. But acting grown-up all the time is utterly soul-destroying, and I could see immediately that you were not a man who had anesthetized or even strangled his inner child.”

  Art said, “Hunny wouldn’t do that.”

  134 Richard Stevenson

  “Gay spirit is being crushed at every turn in our society equally by small-souled straight people who can only stand us if we act just like them, and by gay people who’ve lost their connections to the great spirits of the earth and the universe that made us large and free.”

  “Hunny is definitely large and free,” Art said.

  “Well, I am honored to know you. Both of you.”

  “Thank you,” Hunny said, glowing. “Thank you so much.”

  Again, Hunny reached for a cigarette but then thought better of it.

  “So, your mom left the nursing home and she still hasn’t been found?” Shoemaker asked.

  “No, and it’s been over twenty-four hours. We think she went off with somebody, but for the life of us we can’t think who.”

  “What is her birth date?”

  “January twenty-eighth. Why do you ask?”

  “One of our members, Savion Davenport, can do her chart and see if we can get a handle on what lies ahead. What time of day was she born on January twenty-eighth?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that.”

  “She’s never had her chart done before?”

  “Well, just Medicare.”

  “Savion is highly intuitive, so he’ll figure it out.”

  Art said, “So you live in Vermont? We were over there one time several years ago.”

  “In Ferrisburg, near the lake. Most of the back-to-the-earth folks who moved to Vermont from New York in the ‘60s have semi-assimilated. A lot have regular jobs, and I can’t argue with that. Not everybody can afford to swim with the dolphins, or needs to. A lot are doing righteous work — teaching, medicine, traditional healing, energy work, what have you. However, Dennis Bower, who was one of the original radical faeries on the West Coast in ‘71 is now a deputy assistant secretary of defense.

  CoCkeyed 135

  We may have to levitate the Pentagon again, ha ha, and reclaim Dennis’s spirit!”

  “Are there porpoises in Lake Champlain?” Art asked.

  Shoemaker chuckled. “Aren’t t
here porpoises everywhere?

  The thing is, not everybody can see them. Or is willing to. The Native Americans near Ferrisburg tell stories of porpoise-like creatures filling the lake like carp in a farm pond before the coming of the white man.”

  Hunny said, “There was an Indian on the Van Horn side of the family, a Mohawk. My sister Miriam claims that’s just a story, but my mom said Dad admitted that it was true. About a hundred years ago. Some kind of Song of the Loon type of situation, except the Indian must have been straight.”

  “That may help account for your free spirit, Hunny. And don’t be too sure your ancestor was straight. He could well have been a berdache. ”

  “What’s that?”

  “Berdaches are Native Americans who are free of gender straitjackets.”

  “We saw an Indian drag queen one time at Foxwoods Casino,”

  Art said. “But I guess you’re talking about something historical.”

  “Not necessarily. Drag queens are very much in the berdache spirit. Like your friend Marylou Whitney. I could tell even just talking to her on the telephone that she was deeply real and she was deeply special.”

  Art said, “Yes, in Palm Beach Marylou is famous for being the most glamorous woman with a dick in South Florida.”

  Hunny gave Art a look. “That is not funny, Arthur. Marylou would not be amused. She is somewhat self-conscious about her penis.”

  “I didn’t mean it to be funny. I was just stating a fact. Anyway, on Bill O’Malley you defended Marylou’s right to have a dick if she wanted to. You practically said it was in the Bill of Rights. So don’t tell me, Hunny.”

  136 Richard Stevenson

  Hunny went for his cigarettes again, and this time he got one out of the pack. “I don’t remember any of that O’Malley stuff at all. Oh Lord.”

  Shoemaker eased his chair back a foot or so as Hunny lit his Marlboro. “Hunny, you were just wonderful on O’Malley. You were the truth-teller. You were the free spirit. You were the unassimilated queer restoring the Whitmanesque joy of being free and gay and alive and at one with nature in a setting where gay people generally act defensive and bitter and defeated by the soulless and puritanical strictures of the medium.”