by David Ohle
"That certainly explains everything I've ever wondered about, sir."
"You may clean me now."
"Yes, sir."
A scant month after the renovations were finished and Hooker returned to the Templex, he decided that he could no longer be seen in public. "I'm going to be a different man from now on. I'll assume another identity, a more satisfying one. I'll step out of my self for a while as actors are known to do. Even my nervous tics may disappear. Perhaps that is the answer. I will take it under advisement."
"Would you like me to draw you a warm bath, sir?" Roe asked that evening.
"Yes, and get me some willy and a Jake. Nothing warms me better."
"Only Jake, sir. That's all they're letting you have. No more willy."
Hooker lay in the warm tub for hours, drinking Jake and thinking up new policies, while Roe sat on the closed commode playing the saw and occasionally taking up a notepad and pencil.
"Take this down," Hooker said, sloshing Jake in his mouth. "I'm afraid if we send up a medical moon it will be too magnetic, that it will lift junk from junkyards."
"Got it, sir. Shall I soap your back?"
"Oh yes, by all means."
Roe knelt beside the tub and applied floating soap to a sponge. "Shall I go ahead and lance these boils while I'm at it?"
"Leave them alone. They come and go. It's not a bother. I like them."
"Yes, sir."
"I don't think I'm long for this office, Roe. I've lost control. Was it the shifting programs?"
"I think they're a shining success, sir. Look at me. Would I have been here with you otherwise?"
"Roe, boy," Hooker said one day, "You're as close to everyman as any man I've ever known. That's why I try out my ideas on you first."
"I'm honored, sir."
"Without periodic Chaos, a society like ours would surely fall into a slump. Don't you agree?"
"There's no doubt about it."
"I'm soon going to propose a five-year moratorium on all productive activity. We shut down the factories, we board up the banks. Commerce grinds to a halt. And out of all the resulting Chaos and suffering, maybe we'll come to some kind of agreement as to what's worth doing and what's not. I give you the example of the legendary old boll weevil. Any cotton farmer could have told you, the best way to get rid of weevils was to stop growing cotton for a few years."
"Solid logic, sir," Roe said, "almost geometrical in its simplicity. That's the kind of idea that can't be denied or aborted. I've got goose-bumps, frankly. I've heard of cotton, but I don't know much about it. I do know that my grandmother has a dress made of it. She showed it to me once. It was soft to the touch."
A month later, in the middle of an icy January, during a night of fitful sleep, Hooker encountered what he claimed was the ghost of a stinker. The frightening stranger was discovered in a clothes closet when Hooker decided he needed warmer bed clothes. Reaching in for his woolen pajamas, his fingers glided across a grizzled cheek and he nearly collapsed. He tried to call out for help but his voice box was paralyzed. As in a nightmare, his mouth merely shaped itself around the words but he couldn't speak them.
"Don't be afraid," the stinker said. "I'm Joseph Lovell, builder and owner of the building. I've lived here two hundred years tomorrow. I don't know where in the building I stay. It's a dim, damp place, perhaps the cellar. I don't know how I got into your closet. I may have been there for a decade. How would I know?"
Hooker closed the closet door and heard no more from Lovell the rest of the night and in the morning related the episode to Roe. "I tingled after meeting this Mr. Lovell. I'm still tingling all over. Like a mild current running under the skin. It's maddening."
In the days after Lovell's first appearance, Hooker's condition worsened. He didn't trust the ice they brought him from the kitchen. He suspected the staff of putting chemicals in the water. Arsenic, he thought, would explain why his stomach boiled like a vat of acid without relief, and why he was acquiring a greenish glow.
Roe recommended that an aquarium be placed in Hooker's oval office, filled with seaweed, urchins, a bubbling diver and a baby hagfish. It was an effort to keep him amused and therefore calm. But once the aquarium was installed, no further attention was paid to it. The water dried up and all the creatures died while Hooker watched with intermittent attention.
On a nocturnal visit to Hooker's bedroom, after using the toilet, Lovell said, "Excuse me, but the bowels of ghosts do move, despite the popular notion to the contrary, rather frequently as a matter of fact. But what's produced is just a squirt of ectoplasm and a little gas."
Hooker asked to be allowed a pet or two and he was given a mating pair of miniature imps. He named them Harvey and Marina. Harvey sickened and died fairly quickly and Marina ran off. "They were a fine pair," Hooker lamented to Roe. "I miss them a lot."
Later the two imps were found. First Harvey, when the Reverend fell against an office sofa, moving it a few feet and exposing the imp, long dead and completely desiccated. Hours later the same day Roe spotted Marina from his window. She was frolicking with a stinker child near the fountain.
Some mornings Hooker made a modest effort to look presentable, but usually managed to over-tonic his hair or put on a wrinkled suit. No one came to see him anyway. He had a model motor car on his desk and he liked to play with it. Lunch was always something he looked forward to. He was served a variety of things he called for, like skrada-kaka, marrow pudding, tanfy and friters, all favorites of his childhood.
"I'll stage my death," he whispered to Roe during an enema session. "Then I'll be spirited off to a hideaway in the Fertile Crescent where I will live out my days in a simple home of my own design. The public will forget me quickly. Word will go out that I'm ravaged by parasites. I'll linger until I fade from public consciousness, then I'll be laid to rest in a private ceremony. It would be an official death, not a real one. I'll be augmenting dull reality, giving it a mythical feel."
One night after hearing Hooker's screams, Roe found him nude in the bathroom, standing on his head, trying to pass a kidney stone. "I learned this trick from an old stinker," he wheezed.
When the stone failed to pass, Hooker's physicians were kind enough on that occasion to give him willy. The pain was greatly eased and the stone passed in his sleep. "Save it," he told Roe, "it may be a valuable relic some day."
Roe placed the stone in the pocket of his rags and promptly forgot the instruction. Some weeks later it would be pulled from the pocket unnoticed while he reached for a key to the china cabinet. It would roll along the floor and come to rest beneath the cabinet, never to be found or thought about again.
With scarcely a month remaining before his fatal disease was scheduled to strike, Hooker reminisced to Roe, "The people wanted a Reverend who could deceive enemies and charm friends, or vice versa. That was my public appeal. I had lain among the hopeless and desperate. I was a bum with panache, unshaven but dignified. Street-wise, blunt-talking, cynical, not happy, a long history of unemployment, a leader who'd spent time on the Purple Isle. That's what people were crying for. `What you see is what you get' was my campaign slogan. I faced the public au natureL I hung out my dirty laundry with pride, exorcised my demons in full public view. I humiliated myself for the common good. I got in trouble, I got arrested. I was always in the news. I said outrageous things. It was the politics of the actual. Now look at me. I'm all washed up."
Roe was trusted with getting the Reverend ready for travel. Arrangements had been made for the renowned pilot, Buster Knabenshue, to fly him to Bum Bay. From there he would get a ferry to the Crescent. It was thought unlikely he would be recognized, and if he were, he would be ignored.
"You may dispose of my things when I'm gone," he said to Roe, who heard the clink of cables and chains as Knabenshue's orbigator was tied to the Templex flagpole.
"I'd best get going," the Reverend said, "but I'll be back when the dust settles. You've been a good servant, Roe. I do hope your next shift is as
fortuitous as this one. Goodbye."
"Goodbye, sir, and good health."
Roe's heartbeat quickened as Hooker dashed out to the flagpole with his luggage. Letting out a yodel, he belted himself into the lift harness and was hoisted up to the orbigator, where he threw his luggage into the aircraft's luggage bay and took one of the two remaining seats. "Very snazzy craft, Mr. Knabenshue," he said. And so spacious."
The craft was propelled by a galvanic motor, steam vessel, and two balsa screws more than three yards in diameter. There was, in addition to the cockpit, a sleeping area with seven stacked cots and a fully equipped kitchenette. Mrs. Knabenshue baked bread and cakes as the orbigator flew The aroma was enticing.
When the craft reached a good altitude, Knabenshue relaxed his controls and let it drift. The screws turned with remarkable quiet. The canvas wings stiffened and cut like table knives through the ozone, the metal ailerons rat-tatting like tin drums.
As the orbigator passed over a stinker refuge, Knabenshue said, "This is rich. Let's go down," and landed near a field. Some sort of fair was taking place. The stinkers were cooking nineteen thousand pounds of fattened imps over a great trench. They explained that the fire was started yesterday in fifty cords of ironwood and urpflanz brush, laid in a trench seven hundred feet long. A stinker barbecue artist was on the grounds to direct a corps of assistants in the stoking of the fire, so as to reduce the wood to the proper kind of coals.
The feast was to be given in honor of the birthday of the oldest stinker, Prester Jack, who established the first stinker settlement and ruled over it for a century and a half. It was called Arden. A herd of imps broke through the fence, legend has it, and ate all the corn. Famine ensued, until an imp was trapped in a burning barn and roasted. Prester Jack, they say, took the first bite. Then the others joined in eating the tasty meat. Thus the famine was ended.
A stinker docent took charge of Hooker and his party. "Look," he said, a thin arm thrust outward, the hand gloved in chamois, "There's no reason for you Yanks to be bored here. I can take you to our amusement park. We have the Aerial Swing, Box Ball Alleys, Automatic Shooting Gallery, Palm Garden and Cafe, German Village, Roley Boley, Ice Cream Parlor, Airchairs, and the Mystic Mesh. If that isn't enough, we have games like policy and craps, poker and spades, whatever tickles you. And the well known Doolittle girl is appearing nightly."
The smoky air was filled with the scent of barbecue. As Hooker and company ate platters of meat and urpmeal bread, they were entertained by watching young stinker males attempting to mate with the Doolittle girl, who lay on a bed of grain sacks, in a gingham dress raised to the waist. With her vaginal opening illuminated by a gel can held close, those positioned for a clear view saw the pearly pink laminations of the complex organ exude a whitish lubricant just before the first male made his attempt with a clumsy, misdirected thrust that did not achieve full penetration.
Hooker said, "I could do it. I'm getting in line."
No, no," said Knabenshue. "I don't like the look of the sky. We should fly out before the bad weather hits."
The party made for the orbigator and flew out of the area and above the coming storm. That evening, as the craft flew, Hooker and the Knabenshues passed the time playing hearts, liar's dice, and double solitaire. When that grew dull they amused one another with recitations of facts and figures. Hooker said, "Oysters lived in fluid that contained about one part salt to twenty-seven water. You could have raised them in your home."
Knabenshue said, "It has been frequently noted by orbigator pilots that the barking of an imp is always the last sound they are able to hear from the ground when they are ascending, even to an altitude of four miles."
Mrs. Knabenshue said, "Parasites can live for years in the carcasses of buried stinkers. Imps rooting through old lime pits have been infested. The parasites are brought up to the grass by worms."
A little before dawn, Hooker awoke, looked out the window, and saw the streetlamps of Pisstown. To the south was the royal blue glow of the National Canal. Schools of hagfish grazed like buffalo on the bottom. There were pedal wagons already making deliveries of urpmilk and urpmeal bread to the restaurants catering to pain du perdue enthusiasts. There was a Jake wagon piled with kegs, an American pedaling a waffle van and tooting a kazoo to attract a clientele.
Knabenshue set the orbigator down in Hooker Park, where the Chatterjee Brothers were putting on a twilight concert, plinking twin pianolas in the band shell. Hooker took a pedal cab directly to the Tunney Arms, booked a room and went out for supper at the Palace Orienta.
When he entered, kidneys sputtered on the grill, brains bubbled in hot fat and a cricket fiddled on a window sill. A husky young American male sitting at a back table drinking a cup of urpmeal, stared at him. The American's fingers tapered carrot-like from thick hilts to infantile points and one foot, shoeless, much larger than the other, rested inside a drawstring bag. The young man wore a shawl and a heavy coat, yet still shivered.
Hooker was shown to a small, two-seat table near the kitchen door.
"The special tonight is imp steak, Mr. Reverend, served on a bed of urpflanz sprouts," the waiter said.
"I'm sorry, but I was told no one around here would recognize mc. You did."
"Frankly, sir, I didn't. That American who's waving at you. He told me who you were."
The young man raised a finger and forced a smile, gesturing in a way that indicated he wanted to sit with Hooker, who nodded in the affirmative. The American's progress to the table was remarkably slow. Every tiny step pained him greatly. Sensing this, and thinking the man might fall over and hurt himself, Hooker stood and gave him a shoulder to lean on.
"Thank you, sir. Thank you. It would be an honor to dine with a sitting Reverend."
Once situated at the table, the man spoke obliquely for a while about the origin of Pisstown. "The north-south and the east-west pedal trams go through here. It's a hub of gray-market trading in imp jowls, frozen heads, Jake powder, organ meat, imp pelts, anything anyone might want. And it's in the Fertile Crescent, so the weather is mild all year round."
"Yes," Hooker said. "I plan to retire in these parts."
"Despite all that, I feel sick unto death," the young man said. "My mother abandoned me a long time ago, left me with a band of nomadic stinkers and this horrible foot. Now I've got a bad case of parasites. Can you help me?"
"Yes, but how?"
"They say you have a license to kill."
"Not any longer. I've stepped down. I'm just a citizen, like everyone else."
"Please. Show a little mercy. There's only one way to cure what I have." From a pocket within the folds of his coat, the young man took a small-caliber pistol. "It would be a comfort to die at the hands of a great man like yourself."
"I'm very sorry, but I can't do that. They'd send me to Permanganate Island."
"I'll do it myself, then." He touched the barrel gently to his temple and fired. But because that shot failed to deaden his pain, he shot himself in the eye. Within a few moments, he fell lifeless to the floor.
Guards appeared on the scene, questioned other diners and the waiter, and made a swift arrest. The following morning Hooker was sentenced to ten years in the Permanganate Island prison for malignant neglect.
There were side-shifted innocents among the guilty at the prison facility, confined to their cells after curfew, but permitted to stroll along the violet beaches during the day. Owing to the toxicity of the sand, however, these strolls were limited to a hundred steps in one direction, then a hundred back. Otherwise, shiftees could wander about the greener central parts of the Island as they wished.
In his cell, Hooker had a gel can that sat on a tiny table near his cot and he used the black soot that collected on a stick held above its flame to do arithmetic problems on the wall, long numbers times other long numbers, the results divided by small fractions. Also he used soot to mark the days with streaks on the wall and to draw simple stick figures with perfectly round heads. The g
el can's light was sometimes used, as well, to project shadow figures for amusement.
Standing on tiptoe he could see a high stone wall and a four-seat latrine. Prisoners lined up all day and night in the rain to use it, the red-tinged water running down their faces and off their hats like blood. Sometimes the rain stopped suddenly and when it did the sun baked the Island ferociously. Hooker stood in the potty line one day for three hours, forced by regulations to go naked. By the time he got relief, he was covered with blisters and his flesh burned red.
During year four he shaved his mustache, grew a goatee, and refused all nourishment for forty days. At the end of this period, Guards have testified, he was transparent. "If he stood before a candle," one said, "you could see the flame flicker behind him, and the outline of his spine."
Year five it never stopped raining and thundering outside. Violet-tinged water seeped through the prison wall and flooded Hooker's cell to a depth of six inches. When it receded, months later, his feet were deeply wrinkled, soft, stained a shade of purple and impossible to walk on for days.
Year six, prisoners were given haircuts. Hooker didn't want one. If you had long hair you could play with it. You could plait it, twirl it, wrap it around your head. It gave you more things to do with your time. So Hooker fought with the barber. He slammed him in the throat with his boot. When the barber yelled, the Guards came in. They slapped him around until they could no longer lift their arms.
