by Colin McAdam
He learned to get used to the rinjy feeling of grass between his toes and that trees could be useful and fun. Those trips stopped long ago, but he was one of the few who had these early visions.
He did not see Dave at night anymore and there were no longer vodka and smokes.
Fences of plekter arose in the Hard after Podo attacked the Fool.
But the Hard also finally opened to grass and monkey bars.
They were no longer led from their bedrooms to the Hardest or the playroom. They walked on their own through tunnels and emerged in various places. Their bedrooms grew.
New Visitors arrived. One was a black-brown yek who looked like he could reach across the length of any room.
Dave, from the other side of the plekter, said
That Jonathan.
Mama liked him and wanted to look after him like her doll that had one ear.
He had tremendous balls.
He sat and pressed his balls against the plekter and Mama felt a strange flush of oa when she touched them through the grid.
Podo and Jonathan screamed at each other from either side of the plekter and Podo tried to hit him. They were all kept apart from him until one day Dave put Mama in the room with Jonathan while Mr. Ghoul and Podo watched from the other side.
Mama’s rosé was pink as a mouth and she let Jonathan clean her neck and pin her
¡Hoo!
And Podo and Mr. Ghoul were hanging from the plekter and screaming and mounting each other for comfort.
Dr. David watched through windows.
When Jonathan hung from his side of the plekter he looked like a wall of thorns and threats. Mostly he sat in the corner.
They soon emerged in the playroom together.
Jonathan and Podo groomed each other after bloning and bluffing, and it was grooming like a conversation between men is a test, not a connection; it was touching like you touch a suspect tree—not to sit in it but to see what it will take to push it down.
Jonathan was bigger than Podo.
He learned nothing in the Hard. Instead of learning how to dip the skinny stick into the honey, he begged for the honeyed stick. If the honeyed stick wasn’t passed to him he would pleen and pleep and make annoying faces, and Mama would always pity him.
This was not admirable.
But Mama seemed to want to please him no matter what he did. And Mr. Ghoul and Podo wanted to please Mama.
Mr. Ghoul would feel drawn as much as obligated to groom Jonathan because awful people are strangely compelling.
Strange smells are sniffed at not once, but thrice.
Podo was good at getting food.
Whenever they worked in the Hard, Mr. Ghoul would wait for Podo, defer to Podo, just as he did for Dave sometimes. Dave wanted Podo and Mr. Ghoul to identify faces on a screen, match a man in a hat with another man in a hat. Dave would try to get Mr. Ghoul to go first, but Mr. Ghoul wouldn’t go unless Podo went first. Podo sometimes wouldn’t go unless Mama went first, especially when she was pink.
Dave played Pac-Man and sometimes looked swollen and sadder.
Mama had a birthday.
Dave gave her a cat.
Mama loved the cat and said on the keyboard
That red.
Cats are quiet and soft and can twist around the room like a lie.
She learned how to hold it without the cat getting sharp, and soon it rode her back like a little one. She shared food with it.
Jonathan and Podo never learned the keyboard or the machine. Mama and Mr. Ghoul were the only ones who knew the pictures with Dave, and Mama only wanted to play with her cat.
Everything was changing.
sixteen
Looee ate more often than he thought about eating, and played more often than he thought about playing. He swung more often than he thought about swinging and the swinging was more than swinging, it was training and claiming and delighting and boasting, and was more than he really knew.
The man who knows his mind is not a man who knows his mind, he’s a man who acts and feels good for it.
He liked the smell of his house whenever he walked through the door. He looked at magazines and tried to sing like Judy, and there could be no telling that singing was what he attempted.
He masturbated in ten-second bursts, a puff of flavour in the middle of his eyes as he looked at pretty pictures.
Sometimes he waited without knowing he was waiting. And when he was lonely he rang the bell without dwelling on the fact that he was lonely.
He loved jackets these days, and he really wanted to meet certain people. He loved anything to do with Mr. Wiley—his house, his wife—and he was curious about any car he saw slowing down near the Wiley house.
And he loved tall dirty-blondes, like Susan.
He loved his walls and yearned to get out of them. He hated strangers and needed people to visit him. He was bored and spent agreeable hours looking out the window and dreaming.
Judy had bought him a snare drum which he loved so much he tore the skin. He tried to make it loud again by putting his trumpet inside it. He banged the trumpet-filled drum against the wall, and Larry walked in with a six-pack of Michelob.
We’ve got to get you a girlfriend said Larry.
They clasped hands by the thumb and Looee panted with passion and care, you’re my brother, you’re here, let’s begin.
They sat on the hairy plaid couch at the end of the room and drank beer. Larry had just had a rye with Walt, who had been with Looee earlier.
Looee listened to Larry talk and picked up on a few words like girls, beer and movies.
Larry stared up at Looee’s high platform bed and remembered younger days.
Looee got up often and occasionally swung from his bars.
I’m not saying that romance is everything. You get used to other things, find other things to put in its place. Between you and me, Elizabeth and I haven’t really said more than goodnight for over a year.
Looee wanted to watch a movie with Larry in Walt’s house, but Larry didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. Looee pushed the trumpet-filled drum along the floor and wished he could drum it for Larry.
A hobby can work for a while, sure. You’ve got your music, your magazines, but you’re young. It’s not enough.
Looee got back up on the couch and made grooming noises without knowing he was making them. Larry chatted while Looee groomed, and there was no difference in kind.
Looee’s days seemed sad to Larry, sometimes, and he would feel angry with Walt for taking him from wherever it was he belonged. He looked around the high concrete room.
There was a scab on Larry’s bald head from banging it on the doorframe of the car the other day. It made Looee sad for Larry. He picked at it and it bled. He hugged himself in apology.
Would you call yourself happy, Looee. You seem like a happy guy.
Looee made his happy smile because he thought Larry was telling him to be happy.
It takes a while to get over how you look, buddy, you know, thinking you’re not old or some rotten son of a bitch. That funny face of yours. You’ve got an old-looking, mean-looking face. Don’t get me wrong. You don’t see anybody smiling much. We’re supposed to be happy all the time. You make a guy talk more than he wants to.
Looee opened another can with his teeth.
It got dark outside and Larry thought about going home.
What do you think you’ll do tonight, young man. You need a new drum. Are you going to be all right.
Looee nodded and Larry thought I think that he just nodded.
They clasped hands by the thumb, their palms made the sound of a pact, and Looee had a shallower sense of the future.
Larry started his car and looked up at Looee in his lighted window. Larry waved at him, knowing that Looee wouldn’t wave back.
Looee watched the car reverse.
He wanted to watch a movie in the dark.
Larry drove and looked at his hands on the steering wheel.
Loo
ee felt itchy in a place he couldn’t scratch.
Larry didn’t feel like going home.
Looee rang the bell and Walt came and got him.
Larry drove around Mount Wilson and illuminated the eyes of deer. He took the long way home and wondered what would have happened if he had married someone other than Elizabeth.
Looee, Walt and Judy sat on the couch with the lights off. They watched 60 Minutes and Dallas, and Judy and Looee ate pie.
Summer waned and Looee sat on his high bed, looking out the window at the driveway and the black-and-yellow trees. Walt had asked Looee if he wanted to watch the game but he turned his back.
He watched the rain slap leaves near the window and some of them fell off the tree.
There was a ball on his bed but no one to throw it at.
Walt took Looee on a hunt the next day. He bought him some small man’s camouflage and thought he would enjoy sitting in a tree stand or a blind with him and Larry. Looee loved being out in the woods and was lousy at sitting still. Whenever a deer came near he screamed and ruined every shot.
His relationship with bigger animals was of fear and fascination—the fear was diminished if the animal was penned in. He was terrified of cows if he was in the field with them, but if he was outside the fence he would taunt them, throw Walt’s hat at them, let them know he was their master.
Deer and gunshots made him lose his bowels.
Mike shot a twelve-point buck. Looee saw it lying on the roof of Mike’s Volvo in the parking lot at Viv’s. Looee was scared of it at first and then its tongue hanging out of its mouth made him laugh, and then he wanted to be at home with Judy and hot chocolate and felt afraid of cars and the sky.
Mike couldn’t stand the sight of Looee in camouflage, it was like a chihuahua in a tuxedo or a nasty comic telling jokes at Mike’s expense. Mike had said earlier I don’t know why Walt doesn’t let that poor animal go back to where it belongs.
When Walt and Looee were sitting at the bar, Mike came over smiling and said hey Walt, hey Looee.
Nice buck said Walt.
I got lucky.
Looee here wasn’t the best spotter for us said Walt.
Well he looks good.
Mike was smiling when he said so.
Looee stared at Mike.
How’re you doing Looee.
Mike just asked a question of a chimpanzee.
Looee kept staring at Mike.
How’s he doing Walt.
He’s good. I’m just not sure I’ll take him hunting again.
Mike slid a bowl of peanuts towards himself and Looee watched him.
Looee was still feeling uneasy from the deer he saw on the roof of the car outside. He was sensitive to how everyone was acting, how Mike was smiling.
Mike reached for the peanuts again but they weren’t there.
Looee held the bowl and ate and stared at Mike.
Mike smiled at him.
There’s something I’d like to talk to you about this week said Mike.
You bet said Walt.
Larry came into the bar and grabbed a handful of peanuts from Looee’s bowl. You’re the worst hunter I ever knew said Larry.
Looee felt good having Larry around. He put his arm around him and made him sit on the stool on his other side.
Mummy taught him sharing.
Looee pushed the bowl of peanuts along the bar with the back of his fingers, towards Walt and Mike as he had often seen others do.
Mike found it offensive.
Mike was forty-one years old.
He thought vaguely of Vermont.
He had felt proud of his kill and proud of his state when he drove to Viv’s, proud that there were no billboards, that wildlife and trees abounded, and he said to Viv we have the best syrup, the best game and the best local government in the United States.
He looked at Walt and said how does Tuesday sound.
There was something about the simplicity of Looee, his forthright behaviour, that Walt unconsciously bonded with from the earliest days. You knew where you stood with Looee, and people said the same about Walt.
It wasn’t a calculated or carefully expressed philosophy, but Walt was drawn to people who made mistakes. There was something honest about it.
He always had a good eye for buildings and he had a talent for knowing whom to fill them with. He had an equal knack for acquiring land—for spotting future access roads and lots that were ripe for development. But every now and then he chose to fill a space with a person or business with little chance of success: a physician nowhere near any conceivable patient. His partners had often complained, but Walt could appease them with the profits of other endeavours.
Sometimes Walt carried the rent for them or helped them out directly. He liked driving the roads and seeing tiny signs of hopeful businesses—Bath and Radio Repairs, Boyz Toyz for Girlz; places where people were being themselves but reaching out at the same time in whatever way they knew.
He couldn’t stand people who instructed but didn’t create. Legislators, bureaucrats, journalists. He couldn’t read newspapers or listen to talk shows—people always explaining after the fact or predicting what will happen. Fifteen years ago he came home expecting stew for dinner and met a state trooper who said his wife was killed. Even this day right now could not have been predicted, you prognosticators, it’s your own entrails you’re blind to. People will go on expecting, but making money from telling them what to expect seemed like a cheat.
Make something. Make a mistake.
Mitch Randall was one of Walt’s long-time beneficiaries, a man with brown teeth who had suffered the pursuit of some of the stupidest ideas that had ever taken bloom. Walt had loaned him more than ten thousand dollars over the years and housed him for free, and he was just such an innocent and honest man that Walt saw him as neither a caution nor a nuisance but an animate speculation on the accident of days. He was a brother. We could all be Mitch.
We could all be Looee. What upset Walt about the incident with the landscapers last year was not the violence but the mockery that had set Looee off. You don’t make fun of a sensitive little fella, even if he looks like a child-sized grandpa and dresses like a moron.
He fixed the pickup with Looee on a cold day in the fall, Looee tightening some of the lugs. They both caught a terrible cold.
Looee and Walt sat on the couch and Judy made them both better.
She and Walt made love that winter with an unexpected sense of novelty and thrill that made them both quietly think that after all these years, who would have thought.
And Walt felt himself growing ever closer to Looee.
He named himself father and Looee son, and we can ponder the novels, cities and excuses based on the carriage of those words. We can say that paternal or filial pride comes naturally or sometimes must be willed, or that without the bond of blood there can be no father and son. And when it comes to connection, the attraction of one body to another, friend, lover, guardian or admirer, the names and certainties can accrue all the more, and we can spin in bewilderment when a friend marries the wrong man, a man leaves the perfect woman, a daughter refuses to call her own mother and a dotard wills his fortune to a boy he barely knows. The names and bewilderment won’t stop, and the connections will equally gather. A woman will walk into a room and others will believe that she literally brought light in with her, that they had known her all their lives, the friend they always wanted, the endless golden fuck they never had.
All who drew the warmth of Walter Arnold Ribke; all who opened his eyes to lover, friend and son—the hundreds over the decades who drew fantasies and smiles, and made what we call connections; all were members of the scattered tribe of Walt.
There were Walts long before him and Walts long after, they were bald and gorgeous and brown and pink, and some were tyrants and some so tender, and they liked each other equally, knew each other well and never met at all. And no matter where their yearnings took them or what their mistakes were called, the
y were never able to do other than they did, and, because they were Walts, they did it for each other, did it for themselves, and felt no real need in the surge of the present to explain their peculiar joys.
So look through the window at the man and the chimpanzee, sitting on the floor together doing a puzzle. The man instructing, the chimp in a T-shirt that says MY DADDY DRIVES A FORD. Look at the chimp years later handing the last of his milk teeth to the man who says I am not going to give you a treat for that, there is nothing more useless than a tooth outside a mouth.
Call him father.
Call him son.
Walt’s heart was warm, his house was his, he was happy with the questions of his days.
seventeen
Burke grabs a squirrel.
It is hissing in his hand and is weightless. Its tail is twitching and Burke squeezes to calm it down. A surprising flower of meat, grey and purple, comes out of the squirrel’s mouth. Burke puts it down and thinks he wants to see that again.
Burke picks up the squirrel and takes it to the foot of the electric tree. The squirrel doesn’t move so Burke tries to scare it. He sways back and forth on his thick black legs, but the squirrel lies still on its side. Burke touches it with a finger. He picks it up and ponders its limpness more deeply. He begins to walk with the squirrel between his knuckles. He walks towards Podo to show him what he has done, for explanation, for admiration.
He stops and feels he does not need the admiration of Podo. He feels alone, and wants to be alone.
Bootie watches Burke walking back and forth. He watches Burke wave the squirrel at him. The squirrel’s little goon flies off and Bootie walks near it and sniffs.
eighteen
Word had got around last year about Looee and the landscapers. They talked about it at Viv’s and at church. Mike heard about it.
He had paid Walt a few visits when Looee was much younger, before his house was built. Looee brought Walt and Mike a couple of cans of Coke—one in his mouth—and Mike said it’s really amazing what you’ve trained him to do.
Walt said it’s not training. I haven’t trained him at all. He just watches and learns.
