“Or maybe you’ve been leading me down an alley so you can bonk me on the head and leave me for dead in the middle of nowhere while you take my son and do God knows what to him!”
“That makes absolutely no sense,” Danica says. “We don’t do things like that.”
“You lie!” I say, my confidence finally beginning to rally. Maybe the power of her hiccups are wearing off. Maybe I am about to overcome them. “Gimme back my son!” I scream, reaching back into my past to channel the violin screech of my old drama teacher.
In answer to this, Danica goes back to the well for another hiccup, but it’s much more like a burp this time, which is neither adorable nor sexy and therefore ineffective. Yes, it’s beginning to feel like I’ve got the wind at my back again, and, to this much more gastric singultus, I smile.
“Not even your hiccups can save you, bitch-demon!” I snarl.
But then I am interrupted.
By music. From my phone. Which is ringing.
Oh, man. Not now.
“Eye of the Tiger” intruding on your day when you’re in line at the grocery store, out for a Sunday drive, or raking leaves is fine. “Eye of the Tiger” when you’re trying to keep your wits about you as you hold a pistol to a young Jane Fonda lookalike’s head while you fend off her gorgeous eyes and hiccups—well, it can shift whatever wind you’d been thinking was at your back to something approaching gale-force right in your face.
Suddenly, I feel like a dork, and dorks don’t do anything with guns.
Danica, hearing the song as well, is rising to her feet, and from the look on her face she also seems of the opinion I’m now a dork who won’t do anything with a gun.
“Hey now,” I say, backing up a step. “W-watch it.”
I do my best to right the ship by keeping the gun on her with one hand while slapping at the phone in my pocket with the other, hoping against hope that I’ll hit the button that shuts the phone off—but of course my smacks only succeed in turning up the volume.
The control, the menace, the power I’d felt coursing through me seconds ago has all but vanished thanks to this unjust turn of events. If I were to call Danica a “devil-whore” or “bitch-demon” now, I’d probably sound like a wuss.
“Okay,” Danica says. “Is this a joke? Did the Rev put you up to this?”
“Who’s the Rev?” I say, shrinking back further.
“That gun’s not even real, is it?” Danica says.
“It sure as crap is!” I say, cocking and un-cocking the hammer. “See?”
“Uh, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think I’m gonna go now,” Danica says, turning. “And if this isn’t one of the Rev’s pranks, you’ve got about two seconds before I call the—”
But then she is interrupted.
By more music: a single voice singing from the far end of the alley. I know that voice. You know that voice. It’s the same little boy voice we’ve been listening to all day.
Peering into the shadows at the end of the alley, I can just make out Sparky standing on his tiptoes as he sings softly in front of a small window.
To be honest, I can’t decide whether I’m relieved to find him or overwhelmed once more with a yoke I hadn’t noticed was so heavy until I’d thought it taken from me. Part of me wishes Sparky hadn’t turned up, but the other part of me, the talking part, says this: “Oh, thank God.”
Danica, still with me for some reason, arches an eyebrow. As much as I might like to, I’ll probably never be able scare her with a gun again unless I do go ahead and shoot her a little. Nobody arches an eyebrow at somebody with a gun unless they aren’t scared of them anymore.
Neither do they attempt to correct the verbiage of the gunman.
“Hail Satan,” she says.
I’m gonna be the bigger person this time and let that one slide, though, like most people, I don’t like being corrected.
Also, “Hail Satan” sounds ridiculous.
Taking care to mask the sound of our footsteps, we creep up on Sparky as he sings, as though approaching Pan at play in a quiet wood.
Why we are sneaking I have no idea. Maybe there’s some instinct in adults that causes them to advance with caution so as not to disturb children when they are singing alone. Why Danica is following suit and not tearing down the other end of the alley to alert the police is either yet another testament to the spellbinding power of singing children, or she’s going above and beyond to show just how different Epistemological Emendationists are from other religious peoples.
You can make me get on my knees and put a gun to my head and I’ll still help you find your stupid kid. You think one of those Presbyterian dickheads would do that?
Or it could very well be that this is still part of an elaborate Satanist scheme that I am not working out fast enough, that will end with a bonk to my head and my body dumped in the middle of nowhere.
We’re close enough now to hear that Sparky is singing along with a Doris Day recording playing through an open window a level above the alley floor. Here’s the song:
Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
And here’s Sparky:
I like to go POOOOP and PEEEE
Que sera, se—
And then he is interrupted.
By me, by Danica…and by a forty-something-year-old Asian lady perched on a toilet, screaming, very much aware that she is being ogled by the three of us standing outside what has turned out to be a bathroom window.
Which means it’s probably time to get going.
9
The three of us tear out of the alley and stop at the mouth. My bit of stomach heaves in and out, Danica is holding a stitch in her side, and Sparky is coughing like, well, a little old man.
As we catch our breath, we look at each other. What to say? Kind of uncomfortable here.
I consider apologizing for the gun business, but I’m sort of hoping Danica’s forgotten about it in all the excitement that followed. One thing that might help would be to figure out a way to tuck the gun back into my waistband without her seeing.
Feigning additional fatigue (not really all that feigned), I back up against the doleful red brick of the Lawrence P. Fenwick Building and angle my body away from Danica, sliding the gun down the small of my back and—
“No way, Mr. Horvath!” Danica says. “You drop that right this instant or I’ll scream bloody murder!”
Sigh. Bloody murder. Just like my beloved wife used to scream.
Defeated, I drop the gun. Danica runs over and kicks it down the alley. Then, with her hands on her hips, she shakes her head in disbelief before looking at two bald, skeletal men who have just appeared next to her. The men are dressed in all black, like roadies, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that’s about the last thing they are.
“All right, boys. What are you waiting for?” Danica says to the men. “Get them!”
PART SIX
There I was, twenty-five years old, and like so many fathers before me, my life was over.
1
We’re back in. Sparky, me, and Danica makes three. Well, five, if you count the two goons from the alley, but I’d rather not. They just got here.
I must say, getting back in the offices of the Church of Epistemological Emendation feels like an even greater accomplishment than getting in the first time. This is because of all the crafty manipulation (begging) I had to employ in order to convince Danica to ignore the criminality of the incidents in the alley and against all logic give the boy and I another chance.
All we had to do the first time was walk in the door.
The second time has not come without a price as I am no longer in possession of my nine, and to further foot the bill I had to yield to a thorough search of my person, which was not pleasant. If it had been Danica conducting the search it might have been pleasant, but
the goons were doing the honors and, with all the attractiveness of Irish potato famine victims, conducted the search with nightsticks and penlights; if they left stones unturned, it was at the molecular level.
I protested to certain aspects, such as the numerous sharp jabs at my scrotal region, but Danica said, “You can leave anytime you want. You’re the one who thought it was a good idea to bring a gun here in the first place.”
I protested again, reminding her that Satanism’s reputation precedes itself, only to have that painfully underscored when the second Epistemological Emendationist goon covered his nightstick with plastic wrap and barked at me to drop my pants and grab my ankles.
Naturally, I found such a demand hilarious and laughed accordingly (and fearfully): “Ha ha ha.”
“Oooooookay, weirdo.” Danica said. “Careful, boys. He might actually have something up there.”
*
After my rectal probe, which I took like a man, I was allowed to join Sparky on the nice comfy couch and was handed a stack of pamphlets.
I have been informed I will not be allowed to proceed any further in my quest until I digest them, and that could take some time. There’s a lot of tiny print on these pamphlets.
I mentioned to Danica I was already familiar with most of Satanism’s beliefs, even quoting the admittedly attractive one about the public obliteration of bothersome people, but I was ordered to read anyway.
“There’s a lot more to it than that,” Danica said.
So here I am: reading, reminding myself the important thing is that we got back inside, that getting back inside is quite the achievement.
I should be in cuffs in the back of a police cruiser. I should be pondering my impending arraignment, guessing as to the number of years it will be before I breathe free air again, and totting up all the great men who have overcome felony convictions. Needless to say, there aren’t many.
I wouldn’t dare say this out loud, but what the Church of E has done could be labeled an excellent example of Christian charity. I can tell you right now that if I’d pulled this stunt at Little Hat Pentecostal, I would have been hauled away and prosecuted to the limit of the law.
Not able to fully get around this irony, I asked Danica why she hadn’t brought in the authorities. (Note: I did not frame things in terms of Christian forbearance.)
“If it were up to me, we’d have torn you limb from limb in accordance with our laws, but it wasn’t my call,” Danica said.
“Whose call was it?” I asked.
“The boss.”
“Ah, right. Mephistopheles. Old Gooseberry. Mr. Scratch.”
Danica snorted. “You’re such a tool. I’m talking about the boss of the church. The Reverend.”
“You guys really have reverends?”
“If we feel like it.”
“So why did the Reverend let me back in?”
“Beats me. But if it makes you feel better, this is not the first time some whacko has come charging in here with a gun.”
“Maybe if you called the cops every now and then to haul some of these gun-nuts away, they wouldn’t keep showing up,” I offered.
“Do you want me to call the cops, Mr. Horvath?”
“No, thanks. Just on the ones after me.”
“It’s a deal. Now shut the hell up and read.”
2
Once more, and not for the last time, back to the past.
My wife was sort of screaming.
It looked like she really wanted to scream sans the sort of—her mouth was wide open and trembling, much like the Asian Toilet Princess had been at the sight of Sparky, Danica, and me—but the sound coming out was the same unnerving sound the old man makes when he’s putting his thoughts together.
You know: “Hee! Hee! Hee!”
Considering how I can’t stand that sound, I wasn’t really attuned to what my wife was going through. Being her loving husband and all, I suppose I should have been in a state of mental and spiritual anguish commensurate with her physical pain. I should have been contemplating the Doctrine of Original Sin and the mystery of how, via the seemingly trifling whoopsie of the ill-advised consumption of a single piece of fruit, all women must now endure the cruel and unusual punishment of childbirth. I should have rushed to her side and clutched the bed sheets, yelled at the doctors to help—Oh God, do something!—torn my fingernails out, slit my own throat, whatever. Instead, I was watching the wife from the corner of the room with a numb, hollow dread. The nurses would mistake this for poise and courage and tell me multiple times throughout the birth how impressed they were with me.
To which I can only say I’m glad they were better at the baby delivery business than they were at divining the mood behind the blank expression of a deeply resentful father-to-be. One of the nurses was so blown away with my demeanor she had taken time out from tending to my wife to get me a cup of water. If she had known what was really going on inside my head, she probably wouldn’t have gotten me something to drink. She probably would have stared daggers at me.
What was bringing on the numb, hollow dread was the series of memories my brain was disinterring, rotted cadavers long thought forgotten and gleefully marched through the thoroughfares of my soul, a procession of ridicule, a parade of disgust, created by me for me.
I was remembering my twelfth birthday with the old man and the human pyramid; I was remembering how he had damned me to a life of no consequence; I was remembering all the vows I had made to beat him, vows that I now saw as naïve and foolish. I was remembering everything that had happened since then, the monument to zilch my life had been, and how I had betrayed that proud, defiant boy who had dared to reject the meaningless life that had been thrust into his face as his inheritance—all while my father’s greatest wish came true before my eyes, all while hearing his horrible wheezy-hees come out of my wife, as though his spirit had somehow possessed her to mock me with his victory, which at that moment felt to be complete, absolute, and unbreakable.
There I was, twenty-five years old, and like so many fathers before me, my life was over.
3
So how did things continue to go so wrong for me after high school? How did I not find a way to overcome the trials before me and take my rightful place as the Great Horvath?
For starters—and raise your hand if this sounds familiar—I went to college.
And to no one’s amazement I’m sure, not the sort of school one associates with the molding of great minds.
As middling grades tend to do, mine had garnered tepid interest at best from most of the universities across the fruited plain, while a proficiency in any sort of athletic or musical skill had eluded me. Thus, with the majority of my fellow Kokomo County comrades-in-blah narcotically preparing themselves for the Life Not-So Fantastic—everlasting minimum wage edition—and with my father nudging me toward an entry-level spot at the hardware store in the Hose and Tubing department, I unhappily realized that if I was going to wage successful war against all mortal and spiritual forces conspiring to keep me of low station, I would have to accept reality and attempt matriculation to a lesser school.
The good news is, once I lowered my standards to a notch below community colleges and a tick above ventriloquism seminaries and badminton academies, I discovered a school willing to give me a chance, a school I could practically see from my father’s backyard, a school as undistinguished as myself (though no less ambitious); a school that was tickled to death I would want to join what they called, “Their little engine that did and was doing.”
That school? The barely accredited Gremio of rural Midwestern colleges: The Southeastern Kokomo County Institute of Technology and Pickle Farm.
A little story about SKCITPF:
Like other universities, it interviews its prospective students. Unlike these other universities, it does not conduct these interviews on campus in the offices
of undergraduate admissions, nor in the comfort of its more desirable recruits’ living rooms.
Waffle House is the preferred location for the SKCITPF admissions team, though rumor has it, for the candidates they aren’t too bullish about, the interviews are conducted in the parking lot.
For the record, I got to go inside. I even got to sit in a booth.
*
The admissions team was something of a motley crew. It consisted of Elden, a scabrous, wind-burned septuagenarian in overalls and wading boots; Clarell, a rotund, beehive-coiffed, bespectacled woman in a dress patterned after Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans; and two unidentified SKCITPF students, boy and girl, painfully constricted by matching school sweat suits that, in addition to being the color of canned spinach, appeared to be roughly toddler-sized.
The interview itself wasn’t altogether grueling. I was asked almost nothing in the way of my personal history other than to confirm my name was indeed “Horvath” and not “Horsebath.” My Strother Martin transcript, which I was surprised to see among us, was not pored over line by line but used by Clarell Campbell Soup to vigorously flag down our waitress for more toast. A speech I had prepared about my plans for greatness was interrupted by periodic winces and moans from Elden Overalls, who eventually cut me off by putting his greasy napkin over my mouth just as I was moving from my future distinguished tenure as a presidential cabinet appointee to my plan to spend my golden years touring with a Woody Herman-esque big band.
“Boy,” Elden Overalls croaked, showing me his last remaining tooth. “We cud keer less ‘bout all dat gunk. You git in-tu ar skule, and I gare-un-tee yule get yore edgy-kayshun. Wut we wunna nowe, wuts most impor-ent to us, iz how yew feel ‘bout pikklez.”
“To be honest, sir,” I said in a small voice, astonished these were the people SKCITPF thought were its best hope to attract students. “I-I don’t really know.”
“Well dat, boy, iz sum’thin yu gone hav tu figger out,” Elden said. “At ’dis skule, pipple nowe wut dey tink ‘bout pikklez.”
“As you’re already aware, Mr. Horsebath,” Clarell Campbell Soup interposed after swallowing her entire side of hash browns in one bite. “We’re a developing university that has to keep tuitions low so as to compete with the big boys. Our innovative work with pickling is a primary source of funding. It’s one of the main reasons why we’ve managed to keep accreditation.”
The Antichrist of Kokomo County Page 14
