Sipping coffee and running a big hand through his blond bangs, Harmon explained the origin, ethos and crew of the Tom Pudding to Tug.
“So Galliard owns this floating commune, but Vasterling is the boss?”
“Right. Insofar as anyone is. Call Ozzie the ‘Prime Mover’ if you need a more accurate title. Frankie just wants to be left alone with his collection.”
When Tug eventually met Franchot Galliard, he was instantly reminded of Adolphe Menjou in his starring role in Where the Blue Begins, lugubrious canine makeup and all. Galliard’s penchant for antique eight-millimeter stag films, especially those starring the young Nancy Davis, struck Tug as somewhat unhealthy, and he was glad the rich collector knew how to operate his own projector. Still, who was he to criticize any man’s passion?
“And he doesn’t care who crashes here?”
“Not at all! So long as it doesn’t cost him anything. But you know, not many people find us here. And even the ones who do don’t always stay. The hardcores are special. Particularly since Pellenera showed up.”
Mention of the enigmatic Nubian Pied Piper sent mystical frissons down Tug’s spine. The story of her origin lacked no complementary mystery or romance.
“It was a dark and stormy night. Really. About six months ago, sometime in May. Ozzie announced that he was gonna power up his brane-buster for the first time. Bunch of us gathered down in his lab around midnight. Boat was rocking like JFK trying to solve the Cuban Seafloor Colony Crisis. So Ozzie straps himself in and starts playing the keys of that electronic harmonium thingy that’s at the core of the device. Weirdest music you’ve ever heard. Flashing lights, burning smells, the sound of about a dozen popping components self-destructing simultaneously— Then the inside of the booth part of the gizmo goes all smoky-hazy-like, and out pops this naked African chick! She looks around for a few seconds, not scared, just amazed, says a few words no one understands, then runs off into the night!”
Tug’s erotic imagination supplied all too vividly the image of the naked ebony charms of Pellenera—conjured up a picture so distracting that he missed the next few words from Harmon Frawley.
“—Janey Vogelsang. She was the first one Pellenera led back here, a week later. Marcello named her that, by the way. Just means ‘black hide.’ And you’re, oh, about the tenth.”
“And she never speaks?”
“Not since that first night. She just plays that demon ocarina. You ever heard the like?”
“Never.”
Harmon scratched his manly chin. “Why she’s leading people here, how she chooses ’em—that’s anybody’s guess.”
“Does she live onboard?”
“Nope. Roams the city, so far as anyone can tell.”
And so Tug entered the society of the Tom Pudding as one cryptically annointed.
He came now to a darkened TV room, whose walls, floor and ceiling had been carpeted with heterogenous scavenged remnants. An old console set dominated a couch on which were crowded Iona Draggerman, Jura Burris and Turk Vanson.
“Hey, Tug, join us! We’re watching Vajayjay and Badonkadonk!”
“It’s that episode where Vajayjay’s relatives visit from India and have to go on a possum hunt!”
The antics of Kaz’s animated Hindi cat and Appalachian mule, while generally amusing, held no immediate allure for Tug.
“Aren’t you guys playing the part of quarks tonight? Shouldn’t you be getting your costumes ready?”
“We’ve got hours yet!”
“We don’t dance every time Ozzie pulls our strings!”
Tug moved on, past various uncanny or domestic tableaux, including the always spooky incense-fueled devotional practice of Tatang, the mono-named shorebird from the sunken Kiribati Islands.
At last he found Sukey Damariscotta, sitting all bundled up and cross-legged in a director’s chair on deck, sketching trees upon the shoreline.
Only twenty-four, Sukey possessed a preternatural confidence derived from her autodidactic artistic prowess. Tug had never met anyone so capable of both meticulous fine art and fluent cartooning.
Sukey’s heritage included more Amerind blood than most other Americans possessed. In her, the old diffuse and diluted aboriginal strains absorbed by generations of colonists had recombined to birth a classic pre-Columbian beauty, all cheekbones, bronze skin and coal-black hair, styled somewhat incongruously in a Dead Rabbits tough-girl cut repopularized recently by pennywhistlers the Pogues.
Tug was more than a little in love with the talented and personable young woman, but had dared say nothing to her of his feelings so far.
Dropping down to the December-cold deck, Tug admired the drawing. “Sweet. I like the lines of that beech tree.”
Sukey accepted the praise without false humilty or ego. “Thanks. Hey, remember those caricatures I was working on?”
Sukey’s cartoon captures of the cast of the ongoing Tom Pudding farcical drama managed to nail their personalities in a minimum of brisk, economical lines. Tug had been a little taken aback when she showed him his own depiction. Did he really look like such a craggy, aged misanthrope? But in the end, he had to confess the likeness.
“Sure. You added any new ones?”
Sukey tucked her charcoal stick behind one ear and flipped the pages of her sketchbook.
Tug confronted an image of Pellenera in the guise of the enormous demi-barebreasted Statue of Marianne on her island home in New York Harbor. The statue’s fixed pose of torch held aloft had been modified to feature Pellenera cradling all the infantilized Tom Pudding crew to her bosom.
When Tug had finished laughing, he said, “Hey, you ever gotten interested in bande dessinée? With an image like that, you’re halfway there.”
“Oh, I can’t tell a story to save my life.”
“Well, what if we collaborate? Here, give me that pad and a pencil, and I’ll rough something out.”
“What’s the story going to be about?”
“It’ll be about—about life in Carrollboro.”
Tug scrawled a three-by-three matrix of panels and, suddenly inspired, began populating them with stick figures and word balloons.
Sukey leaned in close, and Tug could smell intoxicating scents of raw woodsmoke and wild weather tangled in her hair.
9.
“More ocarina!”
Tug had never been subjected to a one-on-one confrontation with Oswaldo Vasterling before. The circumstances of their first dialogue added a certain surreal quality to what would, in the best of conditions, have been a bit of an unnerving trial.
The two men stood in a semi-secluded corner backstage at the Keith Vawter Memorial Auditorium, illuminated only by the dimmest of caged worklights that seemed to throw more shadows than photons. All around them was a chaos one could only hope would exhibit emergent properties soon.
Don Rippey was bellowing at people assembling a set: “Have any of you guys ever even seen a hammer before?!?”
Janey Vogelsang was trying to make adjustments to two costumes at once: “No, no, your arrow sash has to go counterclockwise if you’re a gluon!”
Turk Vanson was coaching a chorus of ocarina players. “Why the hell did I bother writing out the tablatures if you never even studied them!?!”
Crowds of other actors and dancers and musicians and crew-bosses and directors and makeup artists and stagehands and techies surged around these knots of haranguers and haranguees in the usual pre-chautauqua madness.
But Ozzie remained focused and indifferent to the tumult, in a most unnatural fashion. His lack of affect disturbed Tug. Despite Ozzie’s youth and a certain immaturity, he could appear ageless and deep as a well. Now, with Sphinxlike expression undermined only slightly by the juvenile wispy mustache, he had Tug pinned down with machine-gun questions.
“You’re sure you know all your cues? Did you replace those torn gels? What about that multiple spotlight effect I specified during the Boson Ballet?”
“It’s all under control, Ozzie. The
last run-through was perfect.”
Oswaldo appeared slightly mollified, though still dubious. “You’d better be right. A lot is depending on this. And I won’t be here to supervise every minute of the production.”
“You won’t be? I thought this spectacle was going to be your shining moment. Where are you going?”
The pudgy genius realized he had revealed something secret, and showed a second’s rare disconcertment. “None of your business.”
Oswaldo Vasterling turned away from Tug, then suddenly swung back, exhibiting the most emotion Tug had yet witnessed in the enigmatic fellow.
“Gingerella, do you like this world?”
Tug’s turn to feel nonplussed. “Do I like this world? Well, yeah, I guess so… It’s a pretty decent place. Things don’t always fall out in my favor, or the way I’d wish. I lost my job and my home just a month ago. But everyone has ups and downs, right? And besides, what choice do I have?”
Oswaldo stared intently at Tug. “I don’t think you really do care for this universe. I think you’re like me. You see, I know this world for what it is—a fallen place, a botch, an imperfect reflection of a higher reality and a better place. And as for choices—well, time will tell.”
On that note, Oswaldo Vasterling scuttled off like Professor T. E. Wogglebug in Baum’s The Vizier of Cockaigne.
Tug shook his head in puzzlement at this Gnostic Gnonsense, then checked his watch. He had time for one last curtain-parting peek out front.
The well-lighted auditorium was about a third full, with lots more people flowing in. Ozzie might make his nut after all, allowing him to continue with his crazy experiments….
Hey, a bunch of Tug’s old crowd! Pete, Pavel, Olive—essentially, everyone who had helped him move out of The Wyandot. Accidental manifestation, or solidarity with their old pal?
Wow, that move seemed ages ago. Tug experienced a momentary twinge of guilt. He really needed to reconnect with them all. That mass o-mail telling them he was okay and not to worry had been pretty bush league. But the Tom Pudding experience had utterly superseded his old life, as if he had moved to another country, leaving the patterns of decades to evanesce like phantoms upon the dawn….
Tug recognized Lee Smolin in another section of seats, surrounded by a claque of bearded nerds. The physicist’s phiz was familiar, the man having attained a certain public profile with his CBC documentaries such as The Universal Elegance….
The voice of Harmon Frawley, director-in-chief, rang out, “Places, everyone!”
Tug hastened back to his boards.
He found Sukey Damirscotta waiting there. She wore purple tights and leotard over bountiful curves. Tug’s knees weakened.
“Doing that bee-dee together this afternoon was lots of fun, Tug. Let’s keep at it! Now wish me luck! I’ve never portrayed a membrane before!”
Sukey planted a kiss on Tug’s cheek, then bounced off.
Glowing brighter than any floodlight, Tug turned to his controls. He tilted the monitor that showed him the stage to a better viewing angle.
And then “Mystery Mother and Her Magic Membranes” was underway.
Under blood-red spotlights Pudding person Pristina Immaculata appeared, raised from below through a trap, an immense waterfall of artificial hair concealing her otherwise abundant naked charms, Eve-style. Pristina’s magnificent voice, Tug had come to learn, made Yma Sumac’s seem a primitive instrument.
Warbling up and down the scale, Pristina intoned with hieratic fervor, “In the beginning was the Steinhardt-Turok model, and the dimensions were eleven…”
A rear-projection screen at the back of the stage lit up with one of Franchot Galliard’s B&W stag films, the infamous orgy scene from Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, involving Irish McCalla, Julie Newmar, Judy Holliday and Carole Landis.
Low-hanging clouds of dry-ice fog filled the stage. Tug’s hands played over his controls, evoking an empyrean purple realm. A dozen women cartwheeled across the boards. The imperturbable South-Pacifican Tatang wheeled out on a unicycle, barechested and juggling three machetes.
“I shift among loop gravity, vacuum fluctuations, and supergravity forever!”
After that, things got weird.
Tug was so busy at his boards that he paid little heed to the audience reaction, insofar as it even penetrated his remove. Retrospectively, he recalled hearing clapping, some catcalls, whistles and shouts of approval. All good reactions.
But then, at the start of the second hour, the riot began.
What triggered it seemed inconsequential to Tug: some bit of abstruse physics jargon, recited and then pantomimed by a bevy of dancers wearing fractal-patterned tights. But the combined assertion of their words and actions outraged Lee Smolin and his clan. No doubt Oswaldo Vasterling had penned the speech with just this result in mind.
On his monitor, Tug saw the performance come to a confused halt. He abandoned his station and raced out front.
The staff of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics had jumped to their feet and were shaking their fists at the stage, hollering insults.
Others in the audience told the dissenters to shut up and sit down. This enraged the unruly scientists further. Some bumrushed the stage, while others engaged in fisticuffs with the shushers. Gee, those guys could sure punch surprisingly hard for a bunch of electron-pushers.
The brawl spiralled outward from the principled nucleus, but without rhyme or reason. Soon the whole auditorium was churning with fighters and flighters.
Turk Vanson rushed onstage followed by his stalwart ocarina players. “We’ve got a fever, and my prescription is—more ocarina! Blow, guys, blow!”
The musicians launched into “Simple Gifts,” practically the nation’s second anthem ever since the tenure of Shaker Vice-President Thomas McCarthy during President Webster’s second term. But the revered music had no effect.
Someone uncorked a fire extinguisher or three, and Tug caught a blast of foam in the face.
Tug cleared his vision just in time to dodge a flying bottle that clipped Vanson’s head and sent him reeling, the projectile then tearing through the movie screen and passing right through the image of Bunny Yeager’s split beaver.
A woman collided with Tug and they both went smashing down. Sukey? No? Where was she? Was she okay…?
Tatang rode over Tug’s legs with his unicycle, causing him to grunt in pain and to forget anything else.
Sirens obtruded over the screams….
At the adamant urging of Ozzie, Franchot Galliard reluctantly posted bail for all the Tom Pudding arrestees the next morning.
Tug met Sukey outside the police station. She had sheltered on a catwalk during the worst of the fracas, dropping sandbags on rogue quantum theoreticians.
Back on the barge, Tug took a shower, then went to one of the galleys to rustle up some breakfast.
A copy of that morning’s Whig-Chronicle lay on the table. The main headline, natch, concerned the debacle at the Vawter.
But buried inside the paper lurked an even more intriguing lede:
“Authorities report a break-in last night at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics….”
10.
American Splendor
Tug and Sukey worked on their bee-dee throughout December. Projected as an anthology of several tales, some just a page, some many pages, the nascent book chronicled a bare handful of anecdotes from Tug’s colorful years in Carrollboro. Events and characters came welling up from memory in a prodigious rush, producing laughter and incredulous head-shaking from his collaborator. He knew he had enough material for years of such books. And things always went on happening to him, too.
“You’ve led quite a life, Tug.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I have.”
Tug had never been happier, or felt more creative. He blessed the day miserable bastard Narcisse Godbout had kicked him out of his comfortable rut, the day Pete had pointed him toward the Tom Pudding, the night alluring Pellenera had ap
proached him, and the day he had impulsively snatched Sukey’s sketchpad.
The cartooning team paused in their intense work only long enough to celebrate the birthday of Roger Williams on December 21st, along with the rest of the nation. Watching the traditional televised parades with Sukey, with their cheesy floats celebrating what had come to be known and worshipped as the Williams Creed, in all its archaically glorious phrasing—“No red man to be kept from our hearths and bedchambers; no black man to be imported to these shores against his will; no gods above the minds and hearts of mankind”—Tug experienced a simple national pride he had not felt in many years.
During these weeks, Tug and the rest of the barge’s crazyquilt crew braced themselves for some new manifestation of Oswaldo Vasterling’s brane-buster. The day after the catastrophic chautauqua, Ozzie had radiated a certain smug self-satisfaction at odds with his usual semblance of lordly indifference. Whatever he had purloined from the PITP must have promised immediate success. He immured himself in his lab, and the power levels aboard the craft wavered erratically, as evidenced by flickering brownouts from time to time, accompanied by noises and stinks.
But there had ensued no visible breakthroughs, no spontaneous generation of a second Pellenera, for instance, and Ozzie, when he finally showed himself to his followers, radiated a stony sense of humiliation and defeat.
By the end of January, Tug and Sukey had something they felt worthy of submission to a publisher. Tug found the contact info for an editor at Drawn & Quarterly, an imprint of the global Harmsworth Publishing empire. After querying, he received permission to submit, and off the package went, Sukey’s powerful black and white art deliberately left uncolored.
Nothing to do but wait, now.
Deep into the bowels of one February night, Tug was awakened by distant music from beyond the spheres. Blanket wrapped haphazardly around himself, he stumbled up onto the frosted deck, finding himself surprisingly alone, as if the rest of the ship had been ensorcelled into fairytale somnolence.
The Paul Di Filippo Megapack Page 48
