The Antichrist of Kokomo County

by David Skinner

  “Bes got-dam pikklez in the hol’ got-dam state of Indee-anna!”

  “Hush, El, you’re gonna scare the boy off,” Clarell said, now pouring alarming amounts of strawberry syrup into her coffee.

  “Who are you accredited by again?” I judiciously thought to ask.

  “That’s confidential, Mr. Horsebath. I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you. Ha Ha. Now, you were saying something about a clarinet?” Clarell said.

  “Um, there’s not much to say, ma’am,” I replied, wondering if Elden Overalls might tackle me and sink his tooth into my neck if I tried to make a run for it. “I play the clarinet.”

  “Gosh, isn’t that something?” Clarell said, nodding to the boy and girl students whose contributions to the proceedings had so far been to stare unblinkingly at the twin lakes of ketchup they had submerged their eggs in. “Isn’t that something, kids?”

  One of the kids, the girl, broke her scowl at an insolent yolk that had refused to yield to the moat of tomato goo around it, put her eyes on me, and sneezed.

  “Maybe you could put a little band together, Mr. Horsebath,” Clarell said, holding my transcript to the girl’s nose as a tissue. “We like music.”

  Considering the school’s name (and that interview), perhaps the oddest thing about SKCITPF was how ordinary it was. The hope that I would be a lone wolf of the mind with only my burgeoning wits to ward off legions of Elden Overalls’ torch-bearing, pitchfork-wielding pickle hicks was dashed the first day of orientation. A quick look around the room revealed a bunch of eighteen-year-olds in circumstances identical to mine: students of unremarkable academic record and limited financial means, rejected by almost every other college of note. All of them, like me, looking to parlay strong starts here into transfers to better universities and, with a bit of luck, better lives.

  Even the pickle part wasn’t as bizarre as I expected. Every student had a partial scholarship that involved some kind of job with the enterprise. Some worked in the cucumber fields on the outskirts of campus, some in the pickling sheds nearby.

  My job turned out to be the least interesting of all: I worked in the call center, taking pickle orders for five hours twice a month.

  I wish I could say the experience taught me a practical thing or two about working in the real world, about how to interact with people on a professional level, or at least given me an amusing pickle story or two, but all it did was help me slowly, almost imperceptibly, lose heart.

  Little by little, semester to semester, year to year, my resolve eroded.

  My plans to earn top-notch grades and transfer to a better school never panned out. To my flourishing disenchantment, I found that even with a change of scenery, even with my mother dead and the old man out of sight, I could not reach a higher plane of accomplishment. Regardless of effort, attitude, or prayer, my place in this world simply would not budge, and over time, as mediocrity established itself in every facet of my collegiate career, the weight of it began to wear me down and I was forced to switch over to the miserable task of figuring out how to be okay with it all, how to forget the promises I had made to myself and silence the voice still alive in the core of my being, telling me without ceasing that I was meant to do something extraordinary in this world, that I was intended for more in this life than what all the evidence screamed to the contrary.

  That I was still to be the Great Horvath.

  Days of frustration, these were. Days of confusion. Days of stupor, insentience, and fog.

  That said, there was one notable development during this period. Even though these were the days I first lost heart, I did somehow manage to replace it with someone else’s.

  Believe it or not: Penny Turney’s.

  She, too, had matriculated to SKCITPF and had, against all reason, decided I was the cream in her coffee, the salt in her stew.

  Another surprise: she also decided the same thing about Jesus Christ. Starch in her collar, lace in her shoe, captain and crew. Sometime after that disastrous prayer session we’d had back in high school, Penny up and became a Christian, a Pentecostal just like me.

  I wish I could say the seed for Penny’s salvation had first been planted in that prayer session she had fled in terror from, that I had played an unheralded, but invaluable role in her eventual conversion, but one thing she remained adamant about to her dying day was that my actions did more to delay it than anything else.

  So despite my lost heart, my lost way, my determination in shambles, staggering through what would be the first of many fogs in my life, Penny Turney unaccountably fell in love with me. And I was pretty okay with that. Wandering in fog isn’t so bad if there’s somebody there to wander with you.

  Especially if that someone is known for putting penises in her mouth.

  4

  As I sit here, reading devilish brochures, Sparky is drawing with pens on some printer paper Danica has given him and, glancing over, I see he’s sketched—abysmally, I might add—what appears to be a bright, sunny field, along with a man and a small boy holding hands and smiling wide.

  How boring.

  As for myself, I am about one third of the way through the pamphlet stack. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

  First, there are the Six Emendationist Edicts.

  The Church of E stands for the ENJOYMENT of the ENTIRETY of life, NOT the EVIL of self-EXPROPRIATON!

  The Church of E stands for ENERGETIC ESSENTIAL being, NOT ENERVATING, ENFEEBLING fantasizing!

  The Church of E stands for the EMBRACE of EXACT truth, NOT the ENTRAPMENT of delusion!

  The Church of E stands for ESTEEM for those who prove their worthiness, NOT EMOTION EXHAUSTED on whiners!

  The Church of E stands for an EYE for an EYE, NOT useless EMPATHY!

  The Church of E stands for ENDOWMENT to the EFFECTUAL, NOT ENSLAVEMENT to mental parasites!

  Next, there are the Eight Emendationist Laws of Existence.

  Shut up! Do not offer thoughts or guidance to others unless they ask!

  Shut up! Do not complain about your life to others unless they ask you to unburden yourself!

  When on another’s property, display proper ESTEEM or ELSE get out!

  If a traveler on your property aggravates you, tear him limb from limb!

  Do not attempt to mate with anything unless you are clearly given the go-ahead!

  Leave little children alone!

  Leave animals alone unless you are hungry or must defend yourself!

  When traveling on common ground, keep to yourself. If someone inflicts themselves upon you, tell him to mind his own business. If he refuses, bash his brains in!

  Finally, we have the Seven Emendationist Evils.

  Un-ENLIGHTENMENT!

  Un-EVENNESS!

  Un-EXACTING!

  In-EFFICACIOUSNESS!

  In-EFFECTUAL EGOISM!

  Anti-EMANCIPATION!

  Anti-ESTHETIC!

  5

  Back to the birth.

  In addition to the awful pageant of depressing memories, I did have another reason to keep my composure as Penny pushed out what would end up being our one and only son: the gaggle of Strother Martin High School students watching us through an observation window.

  Leaving aside other concerns and troubling thoughts, I did not want to lose my cool in front of them, as they were already making fun of the wife’s wheezy-hees, and I just knew they were looking for any pretext to do the same to me. I’m not proud to admit it, but even with my teenage years well in the rearview, I was still scared to death of being mocked by high school students.

  The reason the students were there to begin with was to fulfill the field trip requirement of their Sex Education class. The birth they were about to witness was the coup de grâce, the climax—if you’ll pardon the pun—of the semester.


  And the wife, as I’ve said, was having a rough go of it. This was why she had resorted to those wheezy-hees over what she had been doing prior: loud swearing punctuated with cries of woe. This was also why when the doctor pulled the sheet off her legs—so the students could see the crowning—she had pulled the sheet back, and, get this, emitted something like a giggle.

  It seemed now that it was finally showtime, she didn’t want these kids watching her anymore, and especially not the creepy doofus with the eyes as wide as sunny-side eggs and his nose mashed against the glass. Penny didn’t want him to get one look at any part of her womanhood.

  She even asked for him to be removed from the window.

  To which one of the nurses said, “Hey, can we get rid of that kid?” One of the other nurses said, “I’m on it!” And nobody did anything.

  That doofus so happened to be Fred Tecumseh Custer Hoover Jr., who, down the road, would end up with me in silverware design at Dagwood as a co-worker, a competitor.

  Or, to be totally honest, my archenemy.

  A couple of years ago, he came up with a fork with tines on both ends that was long in the middle like a spear.

  He called it, “The Warrior.”

  It’s not practical but it sells sells sells. Schoolboys love it.

  Mothers love it too, because now they can get their schoolboys to eat almost anything they put on their plates.

  The Warrior helped Fred win the Dagwood Corporation’s Best Innovation in Design Award—the year I thought I had a good shot at winning it. It also helped Fred woo his wife, the runner-up to the Miss Indiana Pageant.

  Odd what impresses girls sometimes.

  On the other hand, The Warrior is an impressive piece of forkery.

  I wish I’d thought of it.

  As Fred would tell me during the Dagwood Christmas party that year, blitzed out of his mind on whiskey-fortified punch, still on cloud nine from receiving the Best Innovation in Design Award, he had never seen a vagina in real life until Sparky’s birth.

  For most of his teenage years he had been too shy to take his dates’ pants off and had endured much derision and scorn for it, to the point where Fred had convinced himself that if something didn’t change for him soon, sexual humiliation would ruin his life.

  This was why he’d had his nose pressed against the window that day, waiting with bated breath to see my wife’s vagina. He was hoping that by seeing it up close and personal in this unthreatening setting, his life would change. Like the rest of us, he was looking for a miracle.

  “And bro, after seeing that shit with your kid coming out,” Fred said. “I don’t know, it just hit me! What the hell am I so scared of that thing for? That ain’t no holy of holies! That thing is nasty!”

  That was Fred’s problem. He had been brought up to believe the vagina was divine and, like most gods, expected impossible things from him.

  “That day changed my life, dudely,” Fred said, bear-hugging me, lifting me off the ground. “Thank you.”

  To my own dying day I’ll never understand it, but when the hospital offered Penny the chance to give birth in front of teenagers for educational purposes, she had fallen all over herself to sign up. She pooh-poohed my objections, even the ones made on what I’d thought had been pretty irrefutable grounds, such as the potential destruction of the sacredness of one of the most cherished moments in parenthood, as well as potentially bringing upon us the wrath of God, whom I felt was of the opinion kids didn’t need to see this kind of stuff for educational purposes, but would, like everybody else in the thousands of years before the advent of Sex Ed, figure it out on their own.

  “C’mon, hon,” the wife had said. “These kids see sex only as something to satisfy lust and wield power over each other with. Together we can show them how beautiful and sanctified it is and how, through its proper use, life is brought into this world.”

  “Somehow I don’t think they’re going to get that message, babe,” I’d said. “I think they’re going to laugh, and I think we’re risking God’s disfavor by being indecent here.”

  “Oh, Frank. Don’t be such a prude.”

  This from the girl who had steadfastly refused to put my penis in her mouth anymore once we’d gotten married.

  “You know, sweetie,” Penny had said the night of our honeymoon. “I think you were right after all. It is dirty.”

  “But sometimes it can be kind of fun, right?” I’d said. “Please?”

  “No, not fun at all. I don’t think God likes us doing it.”

  Therefore, it seems to me the blame for the events of that day, my wife’s good intentions notwithstanding, fall squarely on her shoulders—by which I mean the giggling, swearing, and wheezy-heeing, but above all the tug of war between her and the nurses over the blanket covering her lower half that had prompted cascading waves of impudent laughter from the teenagers, something we’d both been desperate to avoid.

  The view during the tug of war was as follows:

  Vagina! WOO!

  No vagina...

  Vagina! WOO!

  No vagina...

  Vagina! ACK! With part of a baby’s goopy head sticking out!

  The verbal exchange between the wife and the nurse during the struggle:

  “Mrs. Horvath! Please!”

  “Hee! No, stop, I don’t—hee!—wanna!”

  “You signed a form, Mrs. Horvath. You signed a form!

  “I—hee!—don’t give a FUCKITY FUCK! Hee!”

  “But you’re cheating these kids!”

  “Screw those little cockbags! OH GAWD! THIS HURTS SO BAAAAD!”

  “Don’t look now, ladies, but I think we’ve got a head!” the doctor interrupted.

  At which point the wife relented, released her grip on the sheet, her vagina was revealed for all to see, and Fred T.C. Hoover Jr.’s life changed forever.

  6

  I’m done reading. The scary font, the E fetish, every one of the too many exclamation points, read and seen by me.

  What a sad little religion.

  They apparently don’t even believe in an actual, honest-to-goodness entity called Satan. To the Epistemological Emendationists he is nothing more than a symbol, an idea, an excuse.

  The rest?

  GIMME! GIMME! GIMME! MINE! MINE! MINE! ME! ME! ME!

  That is the best they could come up with?

  It could be this pamphletry is nothing more than a front, a way to disarm the usual suspicions and allure all those enjoying the GIMME GIMME to keep going further.

  Scientologists do this. They deny up and down all that stuff about space aliens and the billion-year contract, stressing nice, clean, confident living until you get past a certain point, and then they spring it on you. Mormons do this as well with their notion of becoming the god of your own planet (something that, in addition to being silly, also sounds like a pile of work).

  I’m thinking it’s gotta be the same thing here.

  “No, there’s no Satan,” they say at the beginning. “It’s all about being free to be what you want without the constraints of namby-pamby Judeo-Christian morality to bring you down with lame-o guilt!”

  But later, when you’ve gone too far to turn back and have gotten used to doing whatever you want without the constraints of namby-pamby Judeo-Christian morality, they pull you aside.

  “You know that business about there being no real Satan?” they say.

  “Mmm-hmm,” you respond. “No Satan.”

  “Well, we were kidding about that until we thought you were ready. There is a Satan.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Yeah. AND HE’S RIGHT BEHIND YOU! “

  7

  “So what’s your kid’s name?” Danica says, looking up at us from her desk. To pass the time as she waits for me to finish the pamphlets and for her boss to get us out of her
sight, she has been ferociously typing on her computer. About what I haven’t the slightest clue. No blog post or email could require that much intensity. Whatever it is she’s written, I want to read it. It must be hot stuff. Maybe about me. Or the boy.

  “Uh, you gonna answer me there, Mr. Horvath? Or are you just gonna stare at me like my question blew your mind?”

  “Er...Sparky...his name,” I blurt, surprised and annoyed to be ripped out of my musing in such a discourteous fashion.

  “The hell kind of a name is Sparky?” Danica asks.

  “The hell kind of a name is any?” I say.

  “Touché,” Danica says. “Is Sparky the name on his birth certificate?”

  “No, but it’s what I’ve always called him,” I say.

  Danica chuckles. “I suppose it’s cute.”

  “Cute?”

  “Uh-huh. Cute cute cute.”

  Danica then regards the little old man. “How you doing there, Sparky?” she says. “What’s your real name?”

  Blushing, Sparky looks away, slumps his shoulders, and mumbles something inscrutable while poking holes in the paper he’s been drawing on.

  The drawing, by the way, has taken on morbid tones since last I checked. It still features the same father and son holding hands in a field, but what I had thought had been a friendly, warming sun was actually a destructive fireball that has set everything on the page ablaze. Additionally, the man’s facial expression has taken on a different meaning. Upon further review, that wide-mouthed smile of his is much closer to a full-throated scream of agony. The only thing that has not changed is the child, who, even though the fire rages around him, is smiling wider than ever.

  In contrast, Sparky does not resemble the happy boy in the drawing. He looks instead like he wants to crawl into the flames he drew and die.

  For reasons I can’t explain, I am seized by an urge to rip the paper out of Sparky’s hand and yell at him: “Boy, stand up, look the lady in the eye, and answer her question!”