by David Ohle
Peters said, "I'll go into town and get a breeding pair. We'll raise them in cages. "
"What will we feed them?" Red asked.
"We'll just have to find stinkers that want to be put down. That's all they eat nowadays is dead stinkers. They lost their taste for grass somehow."
"Putting down a stinker is dirty business," Red said. "I won't do it."
"Heck, all you have to do is tie them up. I'll put them down."
"All right then."
Peters walked to the far edge of Pisstown, taking circuitous routes to avoid the still-smoldering fires of the Chaos. The city abattoir always had a pen reserved for sickly imps that were sold cheaply. Peters picked out the two best-looking ones and told the clerk he wanted a pair of breeders. "We've got shiftees up to the neck out at the Balls place. They've got to have some meat once in a while."
"You don't want those two. They're old, half-spent. I've got a much better deal for you. This is a one time offer, for your ears only."
"I'm listening."
"How many bucks you got?"
"I got ten."
"Come over and look at these little experimental imps I've got here. It's a mating pair. The Reverend's raising them on a commercial basis. Not only will the female bear six young a year, they'll re-meat. You go in there, in their pen, and you say, 'Dinnertime,' they'll come right on over and show you their butt end. You cut off whatever you want. There's a little bleeding involved, but even that can be used in making bloodwursts. And by the next morning the same little imp can give you enough fresh bacon to feed twenty or thirty."
When Peters leaned over the pen to look the imps over, they were lying still, side by side, asleep. He saw raw places on their hindquarters in the process of re-meating. "What's their weight?"
"Twenty each right now. They'll top at a hundred or so when they grow up. The Reverend guarantees them for twelve years. If one fails to re-meat, I'll refund your money or give you another pair."
"How much you want?"
"Ten for two. This is an introductory offer. Like I said, they're not really on the market yet. That's why they're cheap."
"What will we feed them?"
"That's the beauty of this new kind of imp. You don't feed them anything. They feed on one another. And they'll eat their own feces, too."
The clerk stunned the two imps with a mallet and put them into sacks, which Peters carried across his shoulders at the ends of a wooden yoke.
Before starting the long walk back to the mansion, he stopped to drink a Jake or two at the Zig Zag Lounge, just down the road. As soon as he entered, having left his imps in the alley, he saw Roe sitting in a bright cone of smoky afternoon light that poured through a jagged hole in the roof. His once-blonde hair was a dark, tangled mess, yet his face had been scrubbed raw with pumice-soap and he'd doused himself with an odor retardant.
"Hello there, young Roe. Long time no see," Peters said.
"Who arc you?"
"Peters, the yard man. Don't you remember me?"
"Oh, yes, Peters."
Roe ordered a pitcher of Jake and an extra glass. "I'm dying of thirst. I've already had three Jakes and I haven't quenched it yet."
"You look a bit rough, Roe."
"I might have the parasite. I'm not sure. I'm weak. And I've been shifted again. This time to Witchy Toe. I'll be working in a willy plant. Back breaking, probably. I thought I d rest up at the house for a few days."
Peters drank the last of the pitcher, rinsed his mouth with Jake, then spit it on the floor. "There's no room there, Roe boy. We're up to our necks in shiftees. Not a bed left. Things up there are as sorry as things can get. The septic tanks overflowed a while back and leeched into the well. The only thing that comes out of the faucets is a sticky drizzle of yellow algae. So we sure could use some rain. The pond is so dry the fish have died. Your poor grandmother, she's going to faint away when she sees what happened while she was gone."
"Thank you for the information, sad as it is. I'll get a room at the Orienta."
"I better get going," Peters said. "I've got a pair of little imps to carry back."
"So long, Peters. Nice to see you again."
"Ditto, old friend." Peters crumpled a few bucks onto the bar and left through a side door, letting in the sound of imps squealing, chirping and barking.
Roe asked the barkeep if there was a public privy in the area.
"Down the street a couple of blocks, past Hobson's stable and through the Heritage Area. It's kitty-corner from the Impeteria."
There was a heavy fog in the air when Roe stepped outside. He could see the dull glow of a street lamp in the distance and headed that way, tripping on curbs, stepping on slugs, but eventually finding the privy. Lighting a candle and sitting on one of the two holes, he counted his bucks. There would be expenses in getting to Witchy Toe.
When the counting was over, he had sixty-two bucks, barely enough even if he pinched his pennies every step of the way. He rolled the bucks into a manageable wog and in the process of trying to stuff it back into his pocket, let it fall into the other hole. He heard a single plop as it landed on top of the waste. He quickly wiped himself with one of the urpflanz leaves provided by the city and lowered his candle into the hole. There it was, the roll of bucks, stuck in the waste.
Those of a different mind than Roe's perhaps would have abandoned the bucks or devised a safe and clean way to retrieve them. But Roe chose to extend one arm into the hole along with his head and a shoulder. That position left him short of the bucks by only a few inches. The candle's light shining through the other hole was enough illumination for him to judge the distance and gain confidence that he would be successful if he squeezed himself a little further in. When he tried to reach the bucks this time, he fell in head first. After righting himself, he remained there, standing with his arms folded through the long summer night in waste up to his navel.
After Guards pulled him out with a block and tackle the next morning, Roe had just enough time before his arrest on charges of "privy dipping" to splash himself with water from a stagnant puddle before being taken to the lockup and placed in a cell. When the wig's assistant came to take his deposition, she presented him the paper and pencil tied to the end of a thin pole. "Don't come any closer," she said. "You stink like the devil himself."
"They pushed me in here and left. I haven't had food or water for three days. My clothes are stiff with this dry waste. My candle is burning out. Please, help me. If I had a tub of water and some floating soap I could clean myself. I need water and food, badly."
"Yes, indeed. Just give us a deposition. Write down what happened, how you ended up in the muck, and I'll see if I can get the charges dropped. I don't see any criminal intent here. Your name is?"
"Balls. They call me Roe."
"Oh, one of the Balls heirs. That puts a different light on all this. The Balls family was negligent in helping finance the Reverend Hooker's consolidation of power, and that may close all the loopholes."
"Really. I didn't know that. I was often kept in the closet. That's why I'm so pale and pasty, even now. Mildred had a cruel streak. Grandfather was a lush, a spendthrift and a bore. I've had a bad life. I do love my sister, though. She made sure I had my colonics every day."
"I feel sorry for you. I'll still talk to the wig. I'll still see what I can do."
"That's decent. I'm grateful, but a little weak. I'm delirious."
"I'll get you some food and water. Hurry and write before your candle gutters."
Roe wrote:
It is not fair that I have been charged with the crime of privy dipping. How I came to be in that place was certainly a regrettable accident. There was no pleasure intended, nor was any enjoyed. The second time I tried reaching down to get my bucks, that's when I went in. I had my head, my right arm and shoulder down through the hole and I was holding on to the rim of the hole with my left hand. I needed that money to get to Square Island. I was going to pick the bucks up between my ring finger
and my pinkie. I actually got my fingers on a corner of it and I was starting to lift it up, away from the waste, when I felt myself start to slip. I tried to pull my body back up, but I couldn't do it. The hand that was holding me up had gotten numb. The next thing I knew, I was in the hole. Head first. Straight to the bottom. The top of my head hit the hard mud and I fell over backwards. But I wasn't hurt too badly, except I'd scraped my hip on the way in. It's a good thing I didn't go unconscious. When I stood up I shook the waste off and wiped it away from my eyes and I was glad there was a bottom to stop me and that I was still alive, that I hadn't drowned in the waste. I was completely covered. My whole body had been under. The splash from my fall put out the candle and I was in total darkness. I stood there a few minutes trying to understand what had happened, and think about how to get out. The stuff was about four feet deep. I couldn't tell how big the pit was. But it was all mud, sides and bottom. It was about the size of a small jail cell, only underground and half full of waste. I held up my arm and I could touch the edge of the hole, but I couldn't get enough of a grip to pull myself out. I tried to jump up and reach through the hole and get a better grip, but it was impossible. I had hit my collarbone hard on the edge of the hole going in and I couldn't do any jumping. That's when I got sick and vomited the first time. After that I walked around to see if there might be something under the waste I could stand on. The waste was thick at the bottom and the top was liquid, the top foot or so. I kept my arms folded all the time. That way they weren't dangling down in the waste. I couldn't tell how fast time was passing. I started screaming for help. "Help me, I'm stuck!" It sounded loud in the pit, but I don't know how it sounded outside. Then my throat got sore and I had to stop yelling. I think I yelled for about two hours, but no one came. Then I started pacing around. I took a couple of steps in one direction, then a couple of steps in another direction as if I was in a cell. It must have been a hundred and ten in that hole. I was sweating. It was a steam bath. I was hot and I was nervous. I was in a state of shock. But there wasn't anything more to do. I just stood there with my arms folded, leaning against the side, waiting for the sun to shine through that hole. My legs got tired, but I was too frightened to get sleepy. If I had fallen asleep I might have drowned. What's odd is, I got sick a couple more times and the stink subsided. All I could smell was my vomit. Finally the waste on my face hardened enough that I could brush it off with my hand. Then I worried I might not get out of there at all. I was hallucinating. I thought I might deteriorate if I stayed in there too long. I thought that the waste might start rotting my skin. I worried about catching diseases. But the main thing I started worrying about was, what will Grandmother think when I get out? I was humiliated, extremely shamed. I was mortified. I thought about suicide. It might not be worth getting out if Grandmother was going to tease me and make fun of me. And I knew she would. I felt like ending my life right there. It wasn't worth coming out. I figured they wouldn't find my body, that it would just rot away in the muck. They would think I'd been kidnapped or something worse. Or if they did retrieve my body, it would be a black mark on the Balls family name. But I didn't kill myself. I waited, and I cried until the dawn finally came and I saw the first light through the hole, the hole that led up to life, real life, not life in the pit. There wouldn't have been much air coming in without that hole. I stood under it all night and breathed. With morning I thought someone might be walking by and I started screaming again, "Help me, I'm stuck." In a while two Guards strolled by and heard me. One of them came into the privy and said, "Where are you?" I said, "I'm down here! Look in the hole." I held my hand up so he could see it. It was still a little dark in the hole. He said, "Oh, I'll get a chain." In about an hour he came back with a chain and a few stinkers and they pulled me out.
The assistant appeared with a bucket of water, a chunk of floating soap, a starch bar, and bad news. "Well, Roe, I hate to tell you this, but the deposition won't do you any good. The charges will stick, the wig said. You'll appear before her right after you eat some starch and wash up. More bad news ... this wig is a strict Hookerite. She doesn't listen to reason and she has no pity. I think your goose may be cooked. I'll be back to get you in ten minutes."
The words of the chief wig were intended to educate as well as rebuke and frighten. "Privy dipping is nothing to laugh at, Mr. Balls. You could be hanged for this. We could strip off your flesh and drop you in a tub of vinegar. Or we could let you off easy and send you to the Ice Palace for a public spanking."
"That would be my choice, the latter."
"These public spankings are conducted for a reason, and that reason is best exemplified by the words of Reverend Hooker, to wit, 'Humility is the mother, nurse, foundation and bond of all virtue.' You understand that?"
"Yes, Miss."
"But this is far too grievous for a spanking. I could send you to the prison at Permanganate Island. I could say, `Off to the Purple Isle with you.' Do you want that?"
"Not at all, not at all."
"What did the Reverend's Book say about all this?"
"I don't know," Roe confessed.
"'We die that we die no more!'"
"Yes, I've heard that. I just didn't remember."
"As the chief wig in this area, I say you will move yourself and all your possessions, lock, stock and barrel, to the town of Witchy Toe. You'll be leaving tonight." The wig turned to an assistant. "Do we have a job for him there?"
"Yes, we do. He'll be working for the Reverend."
The job awaiting Roe was folding parachutes at the Reverend's Parachute Company. Some of them were intentionally folded so that they would tangle, it was explained in training, and the jumper would experience a fatal fall. Chutes with this intentional flaw were specially made for one of the thrill clubs in Pisstown, whose members, thirty or forty at a time, would jump from an orbigator. Most of them were victims of parasite infestation who wanted to be put down in an exciting way. Certain chutes failed, usually a third of them, others didn't.
"It's Russian roulette with a twist," the trainer explained, "The thing is, we don't want the chutes getting mixed up. Because of their intended use, we won't be putting labels on them. Once they reach the end of the line, no one can tell which is which. The ones who survive can then look forward to the thrill of the next jump."
During this shift, Roe lived in a frigid, tin-roofed lean-to behind Zeus Bologna Company and worked long hours at the parachute factory. His supervisor, Mr. Enso, a proud and proper Hookerite, often tried to convert him. "All right, Balls. You're a good worker. I'll grant you that. But you're the only one here who hasn't joined up. Why don't you go on down to the Templex and put your Jerry Hancock on the dotted line?"
"I would, Mr. Enso, but my grandmother would never approve."
"Your grandmother?"
"It would kill her to know I'd become a Hookerite. Sorry, I can't do it."
"Go back to work, you uncooperative shit, you!"
"Yes, sir."
On Mondays, the only day the P.P.C. was closed, Roe would sit in Witchy Toe's Hooker Park and feed starch bar pieces to banty imps. Several of them would perch on the back of his bench and stroke his hair as he fed them. Aside from this small diversion, Roe's life had become a dreary, humdrum drag, a damper on his already guttering spirit. Then the Chaos came. It was small-scale, but violent and disruptive. Factories were shut down, including the P.P.C. People wishing to be reasonably safe remained behind locked doors, venturing out only to get whatever food and water was available. The starch bar factory fast became a charnel house. In great numbers the severely wounded and the sick-andtired were taken there and left to die. There were so many, a five-acre meadow east of town was commandeered for use as a burial pit.
When winter came, this Chaos, like others, lost its momentum for a time. The carnival came to Witchy Toe for its winter engagement in the midst of the period of relative order, of the type that always foreshadowed a period of intensified Chaos. Shops were doing business, the streets were
being cleaned, the corpses burned. Vendors offered Jake by the glass, starch bars, gel cans, matches, candles, bundles of urpflanz and limited supplies of Willy.
Roe ventured out for the first time in months. He went into the post office and stood in line at the General Delivery window. "Anything for Balls?"
"We've been closed for a while, my friend. But that name, Balls. I remember that. There was something for you. It looked like shifting orders to me." After a half-hour's search through seven or eight mail sacks, the clerk found the orders. "Here they are. I was right, it's from the shifting office."
Roe opened the crisp, white envelope by sliding his thumb along the seal, cutting himself slightly. "I hope it's an up-shift for a change."
The order read:
SUBJECT: Order to Relocate
Dear Mr. Balls,
The Reverend requests that you report to the Balls summer estate on Square Island by Aug. 10. There you will serve under the head of mining operations. Additional instructions will be conveyed to you upon your arrival.
Your faithful servant,
Reverend Herman Hooker
Roe took the orders with him into the street and bought a glass of Jake from a vendor. "Looks like I'm going to the old Island place," he said. "It's more or less home. Hallelujah. Now and then the shiftings make sense."
The vendor filled a glass with water and stirred in Jake powder. "All we got is water. No urpmilk. Big Chaos. But the ice house opened up yesterday, so the water's cold."
Roe drank the first glass down and asked for another. "I'll leave right away. I'll take the pedal tram tonight. But may I ask you something?"
The vendor served the second glass. "Certainly, ask away."
"It says I'm to work in a mining operation. I wonder what they're mining."
"Probably teeth. They're finding veins of them all over the place. Hooker needs gold for all those altar pieces, the gold thread in the vestments, all that."
