by David Herter
Mom rubs between her eyes. “You going to make Clarissa rewrite this bill?”
“Chocolate with chocolate syrup drizzled on top, okay? Double dose for the kid.”
“None for me. Wilson, when did you get so well-to-do?”
Clarissa smiles and strolls to the counter.
“Here and there and everywhere. And tomorrow, we’ll drive up to Pelican Bay.”
“And Dr. Moreau. Right, Mom?”
She sighs. “If you’re polite to everyone and do your chores without complaining. Then it’s Dr. Moreau, Bally. If Wilson can get us there. Bally?”
You sit back, assured that the bearded man at the counter isn’t the Doctor.
* * *
On the way home Mom asks Wilson to stop at Beach Market for cigarettes and a bottle of Empirin. He offers to go in and declines her five dollar bill. “Want to come with me, champ?”
You do.
You feel older, somehow, walking into the buzzing bright store with Wilson towering beside you. You point out where the aspirin is, and the cigarettes, but Wilson says he wants to shop on his own and leaves you at the comic book rack, where you look for any Archies or Star Treks, then at the last minute you spy the new Ragnar the Robot Slayer. You snatch it up. The cover shows Ragnar in a rowboat fighting giant blood-red robots. The Doctor’s island looms in the background, smoke rising against a setting sun.
Wilson chuckles. He juggles the six-pack of Coors and the box of True 100s into the crook of his elbow and takes it up. “You know what this is, Ballou?” He grins, and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes have never been deeper. “It’s junk for the mind.”
“Can I get it, Uncle Wilson?” You feel for a moment that you’ve sold something to him you can never get back, simply by calling him Uncle.
“Buy it later,” he says, and replaces it in the rack. You nod, disappointed, and walk to the checkout feeling the sting. Maybe Wilson senses this and that’s why he says, “Here.” He plucks up a stick of Bubs Daddy apple gum from the jar on the checkout counter and drops it down with the beer and cigarettes. It’ll do, you guess, and at the same time you’re wondering if he’ll really take you and Mom to see the movie the next day.
“Your mom say anything about me, Ballou? Other than I died in ‘Nam?”
You shake your head.
Just as you’re approaching the Dodge Dart from behind he pulls the Ragnar the Robot Slayer from under his jacket and shoves it into your hands.
“Hey, tough!” The pleasure of that cover, the promise of what waits inside, is enough to drive away any shame.
“Tuck it in your coat,” he says, removing the bottle of Empirin from his coat pocket and tossing it into the bag. “Don’t say anything to your ma.”
* * *
“When one has an adversary,” the Doctor told you on your third visit to his laboratory high above the sea, “one rarely gets the adversary that one deserves, or desires.” He stands against cloudy jars lined up on the counter. His white coat, crisp as though cut and assembled with paper and scissors, is no paler than his face and hands. “My robot minions are mindless. They roam the sea around my island with orders to destroy any intruders. For them the act is as simple, and as empty, as flipping a light switch.” Here he pauses to do just that, the lamplight revealing further jars in which float the shadows of shearwaters and birds ever smaller and darker.
You wear your C-3PO pajamas with booties, still warm from the blankets.
“With Ragnar I am almost deliriously well-matched. I loathe him, I admire him, I pity him, I will destroy him.” Here, a wistful sigh, as he uncaps one of the jars. An instant later the tang of chemicals tickles your nostrils. “Yet when I’m away from this laboratory and my island, when I’ve left my single-minded pursuits behind here, I always find myself asking, are there not others I hold in lesser esteem? Others I would wish my adversaries instead?” He crouches, so that his black beard with its fine strands contrasts vividly against the deathly white of his skin. “Tell me, Ballou. Your nosebleeds. Have they’ve stopped, now that the ghost is gone?”
* * *
When you get home Wilson strides to the Winnebago and unhooks the garden hose from the side.
While he coils it, you crouch, pretending that you see something on the gravel, but you’re really looking at the underside. Whatever dropped down isn’t there. You look around the porch and the rock garden.
Mom wearily ruffles your hair. “Why don’t you go play upstairs?”
“You got some good stuff to read, I bet.” Wilson winks.
You feel the comic book under your coat, against your stomach. You hold it tighter with your pocketed hands. But you’re remembering the thing dropping to the ground. “Can I stay outside?”
“It’s late for that, Bally.”
“Just in the yard.”
“It’s cold.”
You zip the Windbreaker up to your chin. It makes her smile, and you’re happy to see her look so beautiful.
“Okay. In by nine.”
You avoid looking at Wilson and retreat to the yard; they shut the door behind them. As you take out the comic book you feel the breeze on your face and hands. Re-zipping the coat, you wonder if it was wise to stay out here rather than go to your room.
You gaze up at the house, which looks like a painting in the fog. With the comic book under your arm, you take out the long stick of Bubs Daddy, nudge the gum through the end, and bite off a good mouthful of the sweet-and-sour apple gum with its powdery dusting. The combination of sweetness and sourness makes your mouth water, and you’re chewing enthusiastically and swallowing. You bend the rest of the stick in half and shove it back in your pocket. The fog carries the salty tang of the sea, and just about is the sea, on nights like this, rolling like a tide up the cliffs and through the ramshackle yards.
Ho, Ballou, says the surf. Ho, Ballou.
You walk around the mobile home, pausing to look under, peering out at the yard. WIN EBAGO says the grille, and you feel that great rush of movement as it chased up the drive. Now it seems as solid as the house, and as permanent.
At the back a ladder goes to the roof. You can’t help but think of the Doctor’s tower and the ladder that Ragnar had once climbed. Up top you’d find the flat wide surface under moonlight with the sea all around.
It’s his home, you think, staring up. And it’ll roll off and away. You remember Mom and Wilson looking at one another and their look leaving you out. Crouching slowly, you look once more at shadows which are solid and unmoving.
Whatever it was, the thing dropped down and left for the grounds or the house.
You crinkle your nose at the scent of plasticky, stagnant water from the water tank. Straightening, you resume looking, listening.
Ho, Ballou. Ho, Ballou.
The side door to the garage is partway open. You walk toward it, certain it had been closed that afternoon. Sand dollars and seashells glued to the frame seem to float, faintly glowing in fog. When you pull the door open all the way, it creaks like something out of a Halloween sound effects LP.
Inside, the darkness is clotted and fuzzy, becoming varied tones of deep gray the longer you stare. Everything hesitating, as if you’ve walked in just after the sawhorses and stacks of wood and boxes were dancing like in a Disney film, and now they’ve stopped. For a moment, you cease chewing your gum. The cord for the bare light bulb is farther in, to the left. You take another step. Near your foot is a battered bucket full of sand dollars and mussel shells you brought back from the beach and haven’t cleaned up. Beyond the bucket is the big brass pot taller than you that Mom calls a samovar. Next to that are rattan chairs where mice had made a home the previous summer, until Mom and Clarissa set traps.
Everything stands still. And not at all like they were dancing, you decide. Rather that they’re all hunched up, like the tomcat that hissed at you when you ventured into the neighbor’s distant yard.
Then you hear a brittle scuffle, ahead of you, left to right against th
e wall.
As your chest goes cold you remember the shape somewhat like a spider’s, somewhat like a crab’s.
But this is something larger than either, brushing against the brick, accompanied by the slither of heavy chain on the concrete.
The hairs stand up on your arms
The previous summer, in the similar darkness of the crawl space, you had heard the same sound, and now here’s the snuffling that went with it, alive, behind the disused planking.
While searching for whatever had dropped from the Winnebago, you’ve found instead the old ghost, the one that was driven off. Wilson, by his arrival, somehow broke the barrier that kept it out.
You’re rooted to the spot, frozen in place, heart pounding against your jaw. And the ghost is moving now like it’s decided you’ve left, brushing against planks which slowly teeter as it trudges along the wall, and into the open.
The glow of embers are the ghost pig’s eyes, and the scent of burning flesh its aura.
A moment too late, you feel the warm blood coursing down your left nostril. You lift your hand to your nose and tip back your head. As you stagger the blood spreads across the webbing of your first finger and thumb. You taste copper in the back of your throat. You shove your way through the open door, unable to look down to see if something’s climbing your jeans. You swallow and feel the blood drying on your hand and upper lip.
Outside, you assure yourself nothing followed you and close the door, then retreat to the gravel. You crouch down, fingers pressed against your nose. You tell yourself to calm down, just like the counselor in Austin taught you. You press hard, fingers trembling, eyes fixed on the garage door, and wait until you’re sure the pressure has stopped the blood, and even then you wait a bit longer, letting up slightly with your tired hand and waiting for the blood to reappear as it so often did.
But apart from the coppery taste that infuses the gum in your mouth, the bleeding has stopped.
The door is still shut. You wait, and listen, and begin doubting what you saw. Or trying to.
You don’t want Mom or Wilson seeing you bloodied, so you find the spigot for the hose. You spit out the gum, turn the water on just barely, then lift the end from where Wilson coiled it, wait for the water to gurgle out and run it over your hand and rub your hand across the dried blood on your nose. Just as quietly, you return the hose and shut off the spigot.
You retrieve the comic book from where you dropped it.
Above, at the window, fingernails tap the glass. Not like they’re trying to summon you, more like they didn’t mean to. It’s Mom’s hand. Through the window and the box fan’s grille, you see her hand, then Wilson’s shaggy head. You boost yourself up on the foundation block, carefully, and peer in. Mom is on the couch, her head on the pillow, her arm crooked, and Wilson—Wilson kneels down on the carpet beside the couch, his back to you. You go cold, all the way down to your toes. He’s like a prince slipping a ring on the princess’s finger. You move a little to the right and see Mom’s eyes squeezed shut. Then Wilson moves away. He rises up tall as the Doctor or taller, and Mom brings her arm closer to her side.
Her fingers clench.
* * *
You force yourself to walk around the mobile home three times.
You think about the Robot Slayer and Dem Bien Phu then Wilson saying I went under.
You check the garage door once more. It’s still shut. Not that that ever stopped the ghost from moving from the crawl space to the kitchen to the backyard; the backyard most of all, where you’d glimpse it on a moonlit night turning over and over in the crabgrass.
When finally you step into the house—into blazing heat and a pall of cigarette smoke—Mom is nowhere to be seen. Wilson crouches next to the TV fiddling with the antenna, and Alice is yelling at Mel with the snow getting so bad you can barely see them. A green mug sits on the coffee table beside his flask. The mug says Stepping Out.
“Your mom’s asleep. Don’t wake her.” He jiggles the antenna. Finally he lurches up and goes to the kitchen while you survey the couch and drop the creased comic book onto the cushion. He returns with tinfoil. For the next five minutes, while you think about Mom and her clenching hand, and the ghost pig that had once been a living pig chained up in the backyard, Wilson applies tin foil experimentally around the antenna’s base and up the left antenna. The picture comes and goes, until finally Alice is back, and you can see Flo sneering at Mel and she says, “Kiss my grits.”
Wilson steps away, arms held out like he’s done a miracle. He looks at you but you say nothing.
“You tell Lila I did that,” he says quietly, ruffling your hair as he steps past. “Okay?” He fetches a beer from the fridge then sinks down onto the sofa, getting the blue-and-red macramé all messed up.
“It’s better now, isn’t it?” He cracks open the beer and tosses the pull tab toward the dusty mop bucket.
“Yeah.”
“You like living here, Ballou?”
You say nothing, hoping that everything can be caught up in the TV’s small, clear image. Wilson burps under his breath. With his free hand he reaches for something on the other side of his chair. He comes up lugging one of your and your mom’s favorite books, Mysteries of the Pacific Coast. When you had first found it in the cubbyhole off the kitchen, you’d both spent days paging through it after dinner, the book on her lap and you snug against her shoulder, peering at weird pen-and-ink drawings of the early coast, of the first dwellings in Capitola.
“That’s not yours.” You’re startled you’d said it.
So is Wilson, though the beer blunts his reaction. “I ain’t taking it, Ballou.” He grins, opening the cover. “Jeesh, man. You like the pictures, I bet.”
You want to leap up, grab the book, and hide with it.
“Funky town, Capitola.” He starts riffling through the pages. “You ever have any weird dreams, Ballou?”
Your shoulders stiffen.
“Ever see anything wild, huh? Scout?”
He won’t stop asking, you know. He’s not like the Doctor. But you don’t want to tell him the truth. “The ghost is gone,” you lie.
When Wilson looks over at you with that cowboy squint, you find yourself adding, “Mom got a woman who drove it off.”
“Lil’ mentioned something at dinner.”
You remember the fiery coals of the pig’s eyes and the reek of its charred flesh.
Wilson uncaps his flask and pours some whiskey into the green mug.
Steppin’ Out.
He returns to the book, turning the pages with one hand, head tilted like he’s listening to the pig, too. You both listen. Wilson drinks deeply from the mug.
You watch the end of Alice, the part where everything’s back to normal and they have a few more insults. When the music comes on, Wilson says, “Hey, you like that funny book?”
You barely nod.
“That was a Happy Birthday. I missed it, didn’t I? Two days late. You’re ten now, right?”
“Yeah.”
Wilson sets the book beside him. “And that gum. That was a Happy Birthday, too.”
After a pause he rises on creaking knees, approaches the TV and switches the channel, then walks into the kitchen. You consider racing over to the book, hiding it. Instead, Columbo starts up, already in progress. The picture is clearer than you’ve seen in a long time, though you resolve never to mention it to Wilson. He returns with most of a six-pack for him and a Pepsi for you. You watch the TV with the sound turned way down. Wilson tosses his pull tabs toward the mop bucket, missing all but the first one.
He chuckles quietly whenever Columbo scratches his head and says to the murderer he has one more question.
* * *
Troubled, you climb the spiral stairs, at first no faster than any night as you leave the kitchen behind, around and up, around and up; past the second floor salon with its upright piano and old-time pictures, pausing to flip the switch on the rail—lighting your room above—then continuing to climb around a
nd up toward a blue ceiling bright as a blue sky. The green shag rug is level with your eyes, a forest for your soldiers, smelling of socks. Then you’re above it and the room smells more of the vanilla scent of paper and the wads of Bazooka Joe in the garbage can. The odd corners and the sloping roof that had so enchanted you your first time up here say hello; walls now decorated with your Six Million Dollar Man and Wonder Woman posters, your bed with its C-3PO covers and the wooden chest of drawers and the bookcase and the blue beanbag chair. From the bookcase, Centurions and Saracens hail you in their formations, in front of sand dollars and starfish. You feel your uneasiness lift, briefly, seeing them and your Matthew Looneys, Beetle Baileys ,and Knowledge Through Colors.
Beside the bookcase sit three big-mouthed jars as tall as your knee; jars Mom hadn’t let you touch until she’d washed them and washed them again. Now they’re filled with your beach rocks.
You remember what you clutch in your hand. Ragnar in his rowboat; the island looming in the background, on fire.
It’s never looked so much like itself before.
Bold yellow letters across the bottom of the page read, “The Death of the Island Doctor!” You should be thrilled, but you think once more of Mom, and of Wilson.
An old GE fan sits on your desk. You switch it on and it starts its radar sweep of the room.
Though you can’t hear him, you know Wilson is snoring on the couch, just as you left him. He’s here for the night and he brought something—somethings—with him. And he’s welcomed back the ghost of the pig you’d driven out last year.
When you first heard the story—Once upon a time, Ballou, a pig lived in the backyard chained like a pet—you thought the idea of its ghost was more funny than scary, dragging its chain after itself like a ghost out of A Christmas Carol, until you listened to Clarissa’s stories of the agonies that ended its life, and continued. When one night you heard its chain clinking on the gravel and you saw it for yourself beneath the eucalyptus—a dim black shape rolling from belly to spine—you began to fear it. Its eyes had flickered like embers, remote and unaware of you.
