by David Ohle
The Dutchman lifted a pants-leg and shook out a few drops of urine. "Now look what I've done. I've pissed myself. Damn it to hell. I've got it on my shoe. I'll be laughed off the tram. Oh, well, what can I do? Those are your cases, now, Miss Balls." With a click of his heels and a victory sign, the Dutchman jerked the door open and left, leaving a small puddle behind.
Ophelia decided the puddle would dry of its own accord. She was finally able to sit down and have a look at the cases, to engage her mind in serious matters. The one recorded on the top form detailed the finding of a corpse in the street-"Clothing worn backward, clogs on the wrong feet. It is my thought that she had been dumped from a moving conveyance. A postmortem on the female subject was inconclusive as to cause of death. No identity could be established nor next of kin located. Her body was eventually committed to one of the lime pits at the Stinker Rest landfill."
The next case was that of a Pisstown physician, Dr. Elliott Massengil. The Dutchman had written: "As do certain fungi, Dr. Massengil fed on material already dead, often illegally obtained final-stage stinkers. He stacked them in his barn like cord-wood, drawing canvas cloth over the pile, the summer heat hastening their decomposition. Whenever the doctor vacationed, one of the stinkers went with him in a speciallymade carpet bag lined with pure, sterile para rubber.
"At some well-defined point in Dr. Massengil's evolution, the line between parasite and predator was crossed. It happened the day his neighbor's wife was found dead. She had been throttled by someone missing a middle finger. Later, poring over Dr. Massengil's photo album, I was suddenly struck with a furious urgency when a snapshot flopped onto the rug in his home, one of Massengil stripping the trigeminals from a cadaver. His hands were plainly seen. He was missing a middle finger. Here was my man. Case closed."
The watchman appeared at the door of Ophelia's office at 9:10 exactly. He was a pudgy, ill-tempered American with thick cascades of oily black hair.
"Who arc you? You must be new. Where's van Vliet? Is he gone to Permanganate already?"
"He left just a few minutes ago."
"You sure?"
"Yes, absolutely."
"He was always pissing in his pants, that thick-headed son of a bitch. I hated him so much I juked him between the eyes with my pick." The watchman displayed the pick lying flat in the palm of his hand. "You his replacement?"
"I'm taking over his cases. They shifted me here."
"I'm Karl, night watchman. They used to call me Cowfoot. I've gone barefoot all my life. Never once had on a shoe. Winter, summer, fall, never a shoe. My feet got awful tough, you know. Now they're numb and cold as the ground they step on."
"I'm Ophelia."
"That's not a Dutch girl's name, is it?"
"No, no. It isn't at all."
The watchman shuffled his way down the hall. "I guess I'll go on down to 144 and catch a short nap." Ophelia saw the ice pick sticking out of his pocket. "I like you," he said. "I can tell you're an honest person. That's why I'm not going to stick you. Soon as I saw the Dutchman, I knew I'd be pulling the pick on him."
Shortly before twelve, when Ophelia was about to leave for the night, she was startled to see someone standing in the office door, a disfigured young woman with a single, blond braid as thick as a ship's rope. Her eyes were crossed, her nostrils widely flared, her lower lip sagged, her gums were blue, her fingers all the same length. Some of her dull, green teeth had small patches of algae growing on them. Ophelia couldn't look her in the eye.
"Is this the Home Guard office?"
"Yes, it is. But we're closed. We've been closed for hours."
The woman drooled, then wiped it away with a wet bandana. "That Dutchman, van Vliet, is he here? I'm looking for that Dutchman."
"I've taken over his cases. He's doing time at Permanganate Island."
"That can't be. I'm supposed to mate with him. We were going to have some babies after I recover from my genital surgery. All the organs come from a donor stinker, but they swore the kids would be normal. They guaranteed it. Who are you?" She drooled again and wiped it away.
"Ophelia, his replacement .... It's interesting that you have the same condition he had."
"Yeah, what's that?"
"Excess saliva."
"I always had it, since I was born."
"They say the shifting is random, but I sometimes wonder. The two of you, the same condition."
"What am I supposed to do? They shift me here to mate with this Dutchman, who's got the same saliva problem. I reserve the bridal suite at the Gons, and they send him to Permanganate Island before I get here."
"Let's go see the watchman. Maybe he knows what to do."
The door to 144 was closed, with carpet scraps stuffed under it. Ophelia knocked repeatedly. "Are you in there, Karl? I just wanted to tell you there's someone here by mistake." She put her ear to the door. "Karl?" She could hear hoarse breathing.
"Don't make me open the door, girl. I've got a bad case of the black twirlies."
"There's someone here. Some kind of mistake. She was supposed to mate with the Dutchman."
"Is she cock-eyed?"
"Yes."
"Off-putting face?"
"Some would think so."
When the carpet pieces were pulled away and the door swung open, there Karl sat, cleaning his ice pick with an oiled cloth.
Ophelia turned to the disfigured girl. "I'd like you to meet Karl, the watchman."
Karl held the pick out of sight behind his back. "Come closer, girl. Let me get a good look."
The girl stepped closer to the watchman, who stood up and examined her face closely. "Ophelia, it looks like we've reeled in a big fish here. She's a carrier. What's your name, girl?"
'Daisy.-
"Daisy who?"
"Doolittle." Her voice faltered, her eyes blinked rapidly.
"She carries the parasite. I can tell by that face. And I'll wager she's been spreading it around, infecting hundreds."
"She was shifted here," Ophelia said, "to mate with van Vliet."
"Get her out of the building before I stick her." The watchman disclosed his freshly-oiled pick and placed its sharp point on the girl's breast bone. "You've infested people. And those people have infested other people. I'm almost in the mood to send you off to another world in the name of the Reverend, for better or worse."
Ophelia turned away, thinking she might hear the pick shhhump into the girl's chest, but Karl, instead, took a lump of willy from his top pocket and are it. "All right, Daisy," he said, flinging the pick into the wall, "The old willy just reprieved you." He looked at Ophelia. "Take her out to the alley. The City'll pick her up."
Ophelia grasped the young woman's hard, cold hands and dragged her by fits and starts to the freight door, down the loading-dock steps and into the alley. A pedal truck was parked close by, workers flinging stinkers into the bed.
"She's a carrier," Ophelia said.
"Don't matter. We'll take her anyway. Night, Ma'am."
Two workers lifted the Doolittle girl by her hands and feet and flung her into the bed, where she landed atop a pile of put-down stinkers collected from Bum Bay alleyways.
"You'll all be sorry for this. It's not the last you'll hear from me. My next stop is Pisstown. I'll find the perfect mate."
Out of sympathy, Ophelia waved half-heartedly. "Good luck, Daisy."
His face as red as a berry, Karl was sitting in Ophelia's chair eating a starch bar stuck on the end of his pick when she returned to her office. "Just a warning, kid," he said. "I'm feeling restless, a little explosive. The willy does that sometimes. If you're here much longer I may fall into a rage and stick you twenty or thirty times."
Without a second thought, Ophelia left the building and walked one block to the old hotel. Crumbling with neglect, its awnings were shredded and flapping noisily in an icy wind and there were patches of brown lichen on the brickwork. But inside, a glowing pellet stove kept the lobby warm and the candles of a small cafe tucked into a
corner shone brightly.
Ophelia bought a City Moon and sat down to have a late supper there. It wasn't long before she noticed a man in a back booth staring conspicuously at her while he dunked a johnnycake into a bowl of Canal fish stew, then kneaded it like dough with fingers that were thick at the hilts and tapered to small, sharply pointed nails. He then stuffed it down in a fit of clumsy swallowing.
Ophelia ordered the stew and a Jake before opening her City Moon to look for news about the Chaos in Pisstown. But the man watched her continuously, coughing, clearing his throat, puckering his lips, blowing her kisses, tapping his tin spoon on the table to get her attention, all the while holding a clove-scented urpflanz cigar clenched in his front teeth. It was impossible for her to concentrate on the news. She turned away from the annoyance and looked out at the street. Workers shuffled wearily along, heads bowed to the wind. The streetlamps were running low on fuel, some completely out. Others crackled and glowed dimly blue.
One of Hooker's Guards came into the cafe out of the cold. A crust of ice had formed on both his epaulets, just above the obvious bulge of a pistol in a holster abreast of the armpit. After conversing briefly with the rude man in the back booth, during which the subject seemed to be Ophelia, he came to her booth.
"He says you bother him. Are you looking to do some time at Permanganate?"
"I was just reading the newspaper. What have I done to bother him?"
"He wanted to kiss you. You spurned his advances."
"Hasn't he heard? It's against the law. And that isn't the only reason."
"He has heard. That's the Reverend himself."
"It is him. Now I see. I'm sorry."
The Guard returned to the Reverend's booth for additional consultation, after which he beckoned to Ophelia with a wave of the arm and the Reverend said, "Come on over here, you..
A kiss from the Reverend seemed the better of the choices facing her and she went to his booth.
"Let me give you a big juicy smack on those pretty lips, Honey Pie," the Reverend said. "I'll hand you a ticket to the best show in town."
"The Moldenke show," the Guard said.
She leaned over, closed her eyes and waited. After a few moments, the Reverend's dry lips, along with the spiked hairs that surrounded them, passed across hers, then returned, this time with protruding tongue, which he forced into her mouth more than once in rapid succession.
When it was over, she opened her eyes. The Reverend was holding out the ticket. "Here, Honey. Enjoy the show. That Moldenke is something to behold. He and I were friends for a while."
"You'll like the show," the Guard said. "Moldenke says things you'll find hard to believe. He'll play tricks on your mind."
The Reverend stood up to leave. "Excuse me, now, Honey, but my Q-ped is waiting."
"Come with me," the Guard said. "We'll take a pedal cab to the show. It's at the Radiola Theater."
The closer the cab approached the Radiola, the more elusive the theater became in the frozen night-mists that had settled over everything. Without visible landmarks to steer him in the right direction, the stinker cabby circled the same blocks, re-crossed the same intersections over and over again. His apologies and excuses were effusive. "My vision is going. I can see nothing in this fog. You mustn't hate me. I've taken hundreds of fares to the Radiola. I beg you to believe we're getting closer."
"Stop!" the Hookerite said. "Let us out. We'll find it on foot." To Ophelia, he said, "Pay him a buck or two."
Ophelia paid the fare without complaining.
There was no one on the street to ask directions of, but Ophelia eventually spotted the white beam of an arc light searching the sky. "That's the Radiola," the Hookerite said. "It has a searchlight on the roof."
Crossing a soggy, abandoned lot overgrown with urpflanz, then navigating muddy, unlit alleyways for almost an hour, Ophelia and the Hookerite finally came to the theater. A red arrow under a flickering bulb angled downward, indicating the entrance.
The Hookerite said, "This wasn't always a theater, you know. It was a school, back in the time of Sinatra. Have you heard of schools?"
"I've read about schools in books I have. It's good that we don't need them now. They would be useless, wouldn't they?"
"This one was closed after the first Chaos. It was the wise thing to do. Don't you agree?"
"It seems reasonable."
"Follow me. I've been here before."
Once inside, they were in an ink of darkness. Ophclia followed the Hookerite to reserved seats in the front row as the host took the stage. "Ladies and gents, let's welcome Moldenke to Bum Bay. Call him a stinker, a death traveler, call him what you will, but one thing we know for sure. Moldenke's been gone and come back and all he wants to do is tell us how it is over there."
With a stinker's gait and using a cane, Moldenke took his place center stage. He wore black rags and a wide-brimmed white hat that kept his face in shadow. When he turned his head to assess the size of the audience, Ophelia observed an inch-long tube of flesh protruding from just below his ear. It had the general appearance and shape of an infant's finger, but lacked a nail. In the end of the tube, a small hole leaked a clear, gelatinous fluid. To Ophelia the protuberance looked like some kind of shunt, or drain, not a natural growth, something done surgically. --- - - -- - - - - - -- - - -
"I don't recall that the place had a name," Moldenke began. "It may have been illuminated from within, like a lantern-bug. Stars? Moon? I don't know. I never looked up much. We were mostly focused on what was in our own bailiwick. At first I lived in Bailiwick 246. That's not far from Indian Apple, a heavily populated city. There was anywhere from a hundred to a thousand of us, depending. The bailiwick population fluctuated fiercely. Everyone lived in a trailer.
"My neighbors were the Rosenbergs, Ethel and Julius. If we opened our respective doors at the same time, they would bang together. The trailers were side-by-side and front-tofront all the way to the end. If I wanted to go down to the well for a bottle of muddy water, I had to walk sideways about a half mile. It was so narrow a passage that if you met somebody coming the other way, one of you would have to crawl under a trailer till the other one could pass.
"Beyond my bailiwick, there was nothing but wide, open spaces. I guess it was best to live as near the well as possible. This one wasn't a very good one, though. The water was foamy and mud-flecked, but it satisfied thirst enough and didn't rot your teeth like some of the waters in some of the bailiwicks.
"That's what would start a bailiwick, drilling down and getting water from anything you could tap into. Sometimes old swimming pools underneath would have water in them. But it tasted like bile. And sometimes, little pieces of bone might get sucked up in the pump and land in your sink. Somebody would get lucky and tap into a frozen-over reservoir. And that bailiwick might last a few years, maybe a hundred. Some of them, they would go dry in six months. Or they would drill into a big cesspool and get nothing but a gush of sewer water, mixed with alkali and radium. So, when somebody drilled a good, clean well, the trailers would come.
"Holly Island had a lot of bailiwicks because of all the swimming pools down below to tap into. That's also where they were digging up frozen heads. It seemed that anyplace where there were a lot of swimming pools, you'd find a lot of frozen heads. The surface soil on Holly Island was soft and dark, mostly rotted cloth, straw, old ground-up bones and worm castings. It looked rich, like the best soil you've ever seen, and it was loaded with worms, but nothing would grow in it except urpflanz, brambles, touch-me-nots, and camphor bushes.
"When the water source went dry and it was time to go look for another one, we all got together and helped one another move our trailers. We moved in three groups, one behind another, like a train, the ones in front pulling, the ones in back pushing. It was hard work and it took forever. But what are you going to do when the well runs dry? We did try to train boar hogs to pull the trailers, but that was a failure. No matter how many of them you hitched up, you couldn't
get any organized pull out of them. It was pandemonium. We gave up on that project.
"Later on I stayed in Bailiwick 212, which formed over an old hand-dug well fed by a natural spring, which was a lucky find. It was where the old town of Harpstring had been. That was before the Chaos I think. It was just some old wooden buildings where some early stinkers lived. They told me the Harpstringers used to grow grain and eat big pancakes. Then came the hundred year drought. Nobody could farm anything. If they could raise any grain at all, the grasshoppers would eat it. So the hardy Harpstringers ate grasshoppers. They roasted them, boiled them, ate them raw and pickled them."
Here Moldenke, seemingly disoriented, took a sudden step backward and fell squarely on his head. He lay there a minute, with no one in the audience offering help, then sat up. When he removed his hat it was easy to see that the back of his head had been crushed when it hit the stage floor, yet there was no blood, nor did he show signs of distress or pain.
The host took the stage. "That's all, folks. That's the show for tonight." He lifted Moldenke's feet in his hands and dragged him off the stage.
At the same time, a small company of Hookerite Guards went up and down the aisles, holding gel cans in front of certain faces and looking closely at them. When the can was held in front of Ophelia's, one of the Guards said, "Ophelia Balls?"
"Yes."
"It looks like some strings have been pulled, Miss Balls, by your grandmother. I hear she's being released from Permanganate. You're being sent home."
The news parted Ophelia's lips in a broad smile as two Guards escorted her out of the Radiola, one holding onto each of her elbows.
As she waited for the 9:30 to Pisstown, delighted to be going home, she saw the Reverend blow her a kiss and wave as his pedal car passed by.
Five.
William Parker Yockey, adolescent leader of the Hookerites, wants the goods and assets of final-stage stinkers distributed among the less fortunate. Its an old idea with a new twist. Needs are few for stinkers reaching the fourth stage. All the senses dulled, no hunger, no thirst, limited excretory functions. To build remote encampments, where stinkers would simply wait, would not be a costly proposition, say the Hookerites.
