by David Ohle
She lifted her Indian dress and dipped a foot in the frog pool.
Two suns were up.
She said her name was Cock Roberta.
28]
The phone rang. It was Burnheart:
“Still constipated?”
“Yes. I tried last night. Nothing would move.”
“Then we'll have to go full, that's all. Nothing ever works exactly right. Luckily, you don't often get to eat. You'll be needing some liquids, though. I have a test ready. Let's get this thing going. When you get here I'll personally give you an enema. Are you ready for the test?”
“Sure. What should I do?”
“Simple. Go to the door, open it, step into the hall, walk to the stairway, make it down the stairs, through the main gate, and into the street. If you get that far, head south for the country. Eagleman and I will be waiting for you with a soft bed and solid food. Come.”
“I can't. Bunce has a man in the hall.”
“Ignore the man. He isn't there, even if it seems like he is. I know Bunce's games.”
“I hear the feet shuffling out there, inflations, deflations. Bunce has a jellyhead out there. I won't make it, Burny. I won't.”
“You're acting fruity. I said to ignore the jelly in the hallway. Put yourself in gear. Move! We'll wait three days for you. After that, no guarantees. Leave when the moons are down and the suns are not quite up. Pick a time when the shadows are confusing. Are you with me?”
“Yes and no.”
“Good. Fill your pockets with gauze pads. You'll need them. The weather is a mess. Whenever you come to a juncture, angle to the right. Follow me?”
“Yes and no.”
“That'll do. Remember, boy. Crossing the bottoms is not so easy. You'll be tried. You'll have to be at your most alert. Stay off the stonepicks.”
“I'm a little weak for a trip like that.”
“Bring cigars. You'll want cigars.”
“What about food? Liquids? ”
“Food? Did you say food, Moldenke? Liquids? Tell me, didn't you pass the survival exams? Haven't you read the book? Consider the first line: Starving at home is a simple matter, and so on. The swamp is a banquet table, son, always set. Kick open a rotted stump. Find it crawling with protein. The right fungus is good bread. It would take a jellyhead to starve in the bottoms. Liquids? Liquids are everywhere in the bottoms. Don't talk to me about liquids. Find a water flower, suck the stem. I fail to see the problem. Take the book along. Besides, I don't think you have the luxury of a choice at this point, do you? ”
“Maybe not. I'm beginning to have fears, Burny, buzzing up and down the spine. What should I do?”
“Nothing. At least you're feeling something. That's enough.”
“They'll follow me, Burny. I won't get away so easy.”
“So will your shadow. I'm not impressed.”
“I don't have any weapons.”
“Wrong, Dink. You have yourself. You and Bunce are equally armed.”
“I might be safer staying here.”
“I doubt that. But go ahead, stay. Wait for the bloodbird to sweep down and pick the bones, show the coyote how soft your belly is. I'll just staple your folder shut and file it away. So long, Dink. Requiescat and so on.”
“No, Burnheart. Don't hang up.”
“Would you be kind enough to leave me your brain, assuming Bunce doesn't get ahold of it? I have an empty jar on the shelf. A memento mori, a first degree relic of the late-—”
“Stop! Burnheart, don't say those things. The hearts are beating funny. I feel cramps.”
“Maybe you'll have a successful dump after all. Why not stop this exchange of jumbo? Are you ready to leave that room? Or shall I tell Eagleman we're dealing with a weak sister?”
“It hurts when you say that.”
“Oh, Moldenke. I pity you. Cry me an orangeade tear.”
“Don't bother to pity me. I'll get by.”
“Thank you for saying that. You think we take no risks in helping you? You think this call isn't being monitored? What do you think Eagleman is putting on the line for you? What are we, a pair of cluck hens? Open your eye. See us as we are. Don't give yourself to Bunce. Give yourself to us, to science, as it were. We have a fireplace, a continuing fire, and a pile of mock wood. Come and sit with us by the fire, eat some of our popcorn. There's an extra laboratory. It's yours when you come. Drink some tea with us. We'll talk about this and that, things. If you get to feeling tight, you can bounce around in the latex room. Everything we have is yours. But our patience is not interminable. Eagleman is not as placid as I am. He's a very busy man, tempered in fire. One day it's the rubber tomato, the next day it's the mystery of autotomy. The man lives always on the rim of a volcano. Be cautious with him. Moldenke? Are you with me?”
“You say I should ignore the jelly in the hall? Is that right?”
“Right. It must be total, though. Out of mind, out of sight. If you think of him even a bit, he'll be on you. You may have to force yourself to think about something else. Get together now.”
“What about the weather? I'd like to get a report.”
“Once you're in it you'll know. Goodbye. See you in three days or not at all.”
29]
During the year previous to the mock War Moldenke was employed at the Tropical Garden as a banana man.
30]
He pulled on his trenchpants and rooted in his closet for Burnheart's old trenchcoat. He stuffed all pockets with .00 gauze pads and cigars, strapped on his sidepack and dropped in flints, a can of k-fuel, a tin of crickets, a handful of prune wafers, and a packet of stonepicks. He buttoned up the trenchcoat. Burnheart had worn the coat in an earlier war and had been wounded in it below the frontal buckle.
In his backpack he loaded old Burnheart letters, blank paper, pens, pencils, and two copies of Burnheart's book, Ways & Means.
He gathered his hair and tied it in the back. Still, several moons were up.
He waited in the chair.
The phone rang:
“Hello? Burnheart?”
“No, jock. I think that nothing measures equal to the Moldenke innocence except the Moldenke presumption. No, this is not Burnheart.”
“Bunce?”
“Yes, this is Bunce.”
“I have nothing to say, Bunce. I'm under different instructions now.”
“Moldenke, are you aware of the hazards in the bottoms? You won't make it. Believe me. Consider the odds. Burnheart is far from perfect.”
“I'm ignoring you, Bunce. You're wasting time.”
“I've been ignored before. I can live with it.”
“I'm going to hang up. I have nothing to say.”
“Fine, we're even again. I have nothing to hear. But let me say a few things before you set the speaker down. Will you grant me thirty seconds? Moldenke, I can build a wall around you with the details of your life. I know all your secrets. One of your nose hairs is deviant, isn't it? It grows away from the others, doesn't it, toward the brain? There, that explains your snorts. Can you see what I'm getting at, jock? I not only know that you snort, but why. That’s the important fact, why. I know you totally. I don't want much from you, Dink. All is what I want, the whole Moldenke. Take off that trenchcoat and get back in the chair. Quit fiddling.”
“No, Bunce. I'm ignoring you.”
“How can you? Test me. Ask me anything about yourself. Try me...pick a hard one.”
“All right, Bunce. Several years ago I was in the crowd along a boulevard watching a parade. Someone tapped my shoulder and I turned to see. It was Cock Roberta. The crowd pushed us close. I felt my crank harden against her leg. She put something into my hand. A wave went through the crowd and we were separated. What did she leave in my hand?”
“A little polished acorn opening on copper hinges, warm with her perspiration. Warm with her perspiration, Moldenke! What do you think of that detail? Little Cock is a hot handed woman, isn't she?”
“All right, Bunce. When I o
pened the acorn, what was inside?”
“The crowd was all around you, pushing at your elbows. You waited until you got home, back to your room. You turned on the lamp and opened the acorn over a saucer and a tightly folded paper fell out. You carefully unfolded it and read it.”
“I assume you know what it said.”
“Ah, the Moldenke assumptions. Yes, I know what it said. It said, 'Capital M, My dear, capital M, Moldenke, comma, paragraph, indent, capital T, They say that I'm beginning to punctuate and that I'll have to seclude myself and rest, period Capital T, They say I shouldn't be looking at the sky when the moons are up, period.' And she signed it, 'capital C, Cock.'
“I don't care what you know, Bunce. I still intend to ignore you.”
“Suit yourself. I tried to help you. You once had a wart on the quick of your thumb. You habitually chewed on it and over the years it shrank and went away, leaving a small oval scar. As a boy you stashed coins and licorice in your cuffs. Nothing escapes me, Moldenke. Nothing.”
Moldenke hung up.
31]
He sat on the seawall, chewing stonepicks, and watched the first artificial sun break apart and burn out. A slow, dry rain of white ash persisted through summerfall. By winter a second sun was up, blinding to look at and almost warm enough.
32]
The moons were nearly down. He would read a final Burnheart letter and then make for the bottoms.
Dear Moldenke,
How many wonders has mother science put to sleep?
As ever,
Your country friend,
Burnheart
He remembered writing back:
Dear Doctor,
I don't know. I wonder. And it keeps me awake. Apologetically yours,
Moldenke
He saw the last flash of moon through the lookout. He went to the door, listened, put his hand on the doorknob. Inflations, deflations. He would have to forget the jelly. He waited, went back to the chair, tried to get his mind to wander off to the acre of weed and pollen. He chewed a stonepick, tied on a gauze pad. He went back to the door, listened. A labored inflation, an extended deflation, and a lull. The feet shuffled back and forth at the door. His major heart thundered, the others ticked rapidly. He imagined himself a bloated fish, dead on a beach. The jelly, still there. He imagined himself a tripodero, racing along the hedgerows. No, still the jelly. He would have to hurt himself. He went to the refrigerator, placed his hand on the door seal and closed the door. The pain was immediate, completely distracting. He wrapped gauze around his swelling hand, left the room. The hallway was empty. He found himself on the street.
33]
She followed the lines in his face with a geographical eye and an imaginary pen, giving each line a name, as though they were discovered rivers.
He arranged a bed of peat bags and they chewed stonepicks. Sounds feathered and nested in silence. She took off the Indian dress and draped it over an elephant plant.
He parted labia with his thumbs.
She said, “What are you doing?” She laughed, peat chips caught in her hair.
He said, “The little man in the big boat.”
She said, “What are you talking about?” She counted panes of glass in the greenhouse roof.
He said, “Never mind. Boat isn't right. Canoe. The little man in the big canoe. Cock?”
“What? What are you talking about? I'm not something to be opened like a grape, a warm vegetable. What are you doing?”
“Cock, the little fellow says he wants a cigar. He's all excited. Shall I give him a blue cigar?”
“Give him anything, Moldenke. Please stop talking. I don't follow.”
“Yes, I'm sorry. I forgot the T.S.R.”
“The T.S. what?”
“The Twenty Second Rule. I've talked about the same thing for more than twenty seconds. I shouldn't do that. My apologies.”
“Moldenke, where are you?”
“Here, by the River Odorous. Can't you see me? Have you gone light-blind? Wear my goggles.”
“Where am I, then? Where is your temporary Cock?”
“Quiet, Cock. Let him smoke in peace. Don't surround him with question marks.”
“Moldenke, please.”
“I don't know what to say, Roberta. I have no feeling.
He smoked a cigar. They watched the suns go down. She said, “You've left me leaking, Moldenke. It's running down my leg.”
He said, “I'm dead, Roberta. I have no feelings. I do like you though, I think. But I can't feel you. My hand passes through the flesh. I see only an outline.”
He bumped the ash from his cigar. A moon fluttered up and settled in its spot.
34]
At one time Moldenke enjoyed the oncome of winter, greeted it with a flourish of ritual activity. He was comfortable in a state of cold. Twigs snapping underfoot with icy reports. The air was never still enough for Moldenke's comfort until it was heavy with frost or wet with sleet. When the new snow came he would go out and piss his name in it. As years succeeded, the rituals went on. He noted the fall of the last leaves, the changing angle of sunslight, the shift of winds. He felt relief when the final evidence of green was gone, when the fur of animals thickened. He would light his k-heater, take down blankets, snap in the storm windows.
Once Burnheart had said to him, “Moldenke, puff out those cheeks, please.” Moldenke had done that and Burnheart had said, “As I thought. Dink, you grow more like a gopher every season. I know it's not the cold you like so well. No, it's the defensive pleasures of remaining warm within the cold. It's that. I know the story, son. Quick to cocoon but slow to change. It's an old tale.”
Summerfall came differently. He would watch the earth dry and crack in repeated patterns. Greenbirds came, land turtles walked over country roads, surly grasshoppers baked in the sunslight. Rising temperatures set Moldenke on the offensive, causing him to speed from A to B, from thought to thought, from one thing to the next thing. “Pace yourself,” Burnheart had told him one summerfall. “Pace yourself or you'll never make it in the army.”
35]
He stood against a building. Occasionally a k-vehicle would pass in the street. The night sirens rang. A woman walked by, wrapped in a dog fur. Moldenke stepped out of the shadow.
“Miss, excuse me...miss?”
She turned and looked at him from the dog fur.
“I'm a stranger in town, miss. Could you point me to the south?” He searched for eyes in the coat.
She turned her head in a certain direction and indicated it. She said, “South, that way.” She walked off in the coat, the dog fur, northward, tokens clattering in her pockets.
He backed into the shadows again, considering things. The first light of a sun ballooned over rooftops. He would go south toward the bottoms. He would cross the bottoms and then sit with Burnheart and Eagleman by the fire, eat popcorn.
A double-dawn. One sun from the west, another northeast. The shadows would be confusing. As Burnheart had suggested, he would move now.
He followed alleyways, climbed fences. Things were thrown at him from windows. The running increased his heartbeats. One heart seemed to beat inside his injured hand. He walked, stopped, leaned against a wall, took shallow breaths. A lookout opened. A jellyhead boy squirted jelly from an ear valve, relieving pressure. The lookout closed. Moldenke walked. Another jellyhead lay deflated on a mock mattress. He crossed a wooden bridge, entered the outskirts of the city, keeping the northeast rising sun to his rear left, heading south. Fewer and fewer buildings, the streets tapering into mud ruts and finally ending. Out of the sirens' sound, city noise behind.
He walked a klick or so into the bottoms and stopped. He would have breakfast. Prune wafers and a cricket or two. He would pull together a mound of leaves and tree bark and cypress knots, build himself a fire, warm his feet.
Had Burnheart said to travel by night and sleep by day, or the other way around, or not at all? His hand hurt badly. He couldn't remember what Burnheart had said
about traveling.
He ate a prune wafer. It gummed in his teeth.
The fire smoldered flamelessly.
He would travel whenever he could, whatever Burnheart had said, if anything. Whenever the opportunity for movement presented itself, Moldenke would move.
No artificial barriers at this juncture. Always to the right, always to follow the natural impulse. The hum and the flow. Everything was tight.
He lay back against a cypress knee, watched the second rising sun overtake the first. In the city k-buses would be taking jellyheads to work, shifts would be changing, the street music would be deafening.
He ate a cricket, spitting the legs into the smoking leaves, took off his coat. The double suns said ten o'clock, although Moldenke read them as eight. He put on his goggles and the refraction corrected his error. It was later than he thought and getting hot. He took off his coat, stirred the fire. A rooster comb of flame burned a moment and died.
Perspiration broke around the goggles and soaked the gauze pad. He tied on a dry one, ate another cricket, dropped his trenchpants, squeezed several turds onto the fire, pissed away the last of the smoke.
He walked south, chewing a stonepick, wondering if he would clash with Eagleman. With the tip of his tongue he rolled the stonepick across his bottom lip.
He reached into a low swirl of ether branches and took down a snipe. He pinched its neck and dropped it into his sidepack. He would have it for supper. It had been weak, hadn't attempted to fly away. “Nothing here but food,” he said. “Burnheart was right.”
Had Burnheart mentioned liquids? He would wait. Somehow there would be water, a trickle from the rocks, if there were rocks.
He would smoke a cigar as he walked. He focused sunslight through a lens of his goggles, held the hot beam at the tip of his cigar until a spark caught and circled. He puffed, put the goggles on again.
