Grower's Market

by Michael Baughman

  “A parody. Sophistication. Levels of complexity. I think I might understand where you’re coming from. Tell me, Shakespeare, don’t you suppose superheroes in a complex story, in a parody, or for that matter a nonparody, can fuck? Multifaceted people in complicated situations do it too, don’t they? And—I’ve done a fair amount of research myself—I’m certain we can safely assume that LBJ did plenty of fucking.”

  “I guess so,” Shakespeare said after another pause. “Yeah. Sure they do. Sure he did. Yes, sir. Sure they could. I guess.”

  “Well then why shouldn’t Supercock fuck?”

  “Yeah. Yes. I see what you mean, sir.”

  “Let me make myself clear. The original Shakespeare wrote racy scenes centuries ago. His characters fucked, though I grant not onstage. But they did indeed fuck. We live in a freer era now. Here in America we have the First Amendment. And consider some modern examples. I’m speaking of real people, in life, not literature. Consider any number of American presidents as public examples. Obviously we have European political leaders as well. If fucking was good enough for all of them, why can’t it be good enough for Supercock?”

  “Yeah. Yes. I guess I see what you mean, sir.”

  “Well if you see what I mean I’ll proceed. Our readers like to read about fucking. Your character, Supercock as we’ll call him now, suggests myriad possibilities. We’d very much like you to take advantage of those possibilities.”

  “Myriad?”

  “With an endlessly stretchable plastic cock, anything would be possible. Things that aren’t even remotely possible on videos or in film. That’s the real point here. We’re a competitive market. Your character could give us an edge over our various competitors. That’s what makes the hero appealing, what gives your work its possibilities. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah. Yes. Yes, sir.”

  “Here then is exactly what we’d like you to accomplish for us. For the time being. Please think this over carefully. Take your time. Take, let’s say, three or four weeks. In about a month we’d like you to send us four scenes featuring your character, Supercock, in sexual scenarios. In plain language, we want him to do some serious and imaginative fucking. We want to see what you can come up with fucking-wise. Get me? I could make suggestions, but I’m assuming you understand me. Am I correct in that assumption?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Meat. I guess I could have him fuck ten or twenty times if you want. Thirty or forty. Sure I could!”

  “Eventually that will be just fine, if this works out. For now—in about a month that is—you send us four sex scenes, four fucking scenes, with Supercock in action. We’ll evaluate your scenes and proceed from there. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “He can continue to function as a hero, a superhero. If you choose to regard your story as parody, feel free. Those ideas needn’t necessarily change, but the central focus must change. A stretchable plastic cock is an inspired idea! Genius! But we’ll worry about all that later. Tell me, Shakespeare—tell me if you don’t mind—what do you do for a living way out west?”

  After a thoughtful pause Shakespeare answered, “A farmer. I’m a farmer out here.”

  “A farmer? In other words you grow things?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Interesting. But what?”

  “What?”

  “What do you grow?”

  After another pause Shakespeare answered, “Crops. Different crops. All kinds of stuff. Stuff people want.”

  After yet another pause Meat changed the subject. “Where exactly do you live?”

  “I’m way out in the sticks, sir. Way out. Lots of mountains around! Rivers and lakes too!”

  “I see. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-three! Thirty-four I mean.”

  “Have you lived way out there in the sticks for very long? Tell me something about yourself. Were you born and raised there?”

  Shakespeare welcomed the question. Most of his friends had heard him talk about the few parts of his life he cared to acknowledge but only Toon knew the truth and here now was an editor three thousand miles away who he could freely lie to. This was his chance to invent a life a manly writer could be proud of.

  “I think I was born in San Francisco,” Shakespeare began, speaking almost breathlessly now. “At least I heard I was. I guess my parents were hippies, you remember them, sure, everybody does, or at least heard about ’em, but I never met my parents, I never even knew who the hell they were, ’cause I got raised in a commune. Different communes I mean. I got raised by, like, about a hundred different folks, mostly women, but some men too, at least, like, a few men. I heard about different people who might’ve been my parents but nobody knew for sure, an’ I heard my mom was like stoned all the time after some dude knocked her up but nobody knew for sure. I heard my old man was a poet who was stoned all the time too but I never saw his poems if he really ever wrote any. How could I see his poems? I never knew who the hell he was. I grew up all up and down the coast. I spent lots of time down in Mexico. Some time up north, but all I remember up there is it was cold an’ rainy but Mexico was, like, beautiful! I mean, like, we lived on beaches down there in the sun! I went to some high schools though and read books, you know, growing up an’ all. I was a tough kid in high school. I was tough anywhere I went. I was so big and strong everybody was scared of me. Still am big and strong. But what the hell, I even read Shakespeare! The only reason I joined the army was I couldn’t find me a respectable damn job. I wanted to go to college and study creative writing an’ the army promised me money to do it so I joined up and damn near got my ass blown off but afterwards, after I got set loose from the hospital, I went to a college an’ they taught me how to write there an’ now I got me my superhero Supercock! My parody!”

  When Shakespeare paused for a breath Meat broke in. “Very interesting,” he said. “Very intriguing. Your level of prose seems potentially adequate for our Firm Core imprint. But do remember! Supercock has to do some serious fucking! Is that clearly understood?”

  “Yes, sir! Serious fucking, sir!”

  “All right then, Shakespeare. We’ll expect to hear from you in a month. Good-bye.”

  “Yes, sir, good-bye,” Shakespeare said.

  He felt his heart pounding as he lowered the phone from his ear and looked at it and then hung up.

  Thinking over the conversation with Mr. Meat he walked across the cluttered room and back out the open door and before he reached his spinning rod lying among the tall weeds that grew at the edge of the pond he had his first misgivings.

  Bachus Books with their Firm Core imprint wanted him to sell out. That was exactly what it amounted to. That was what the retired porn star Meat had told him he had to do. A senior editor named Meat wanted him to change Superpenis’s name to Supercock and he wanted his character changed from a superhero in a parody to a sex fiend with a plastic cock.

  Shakespeare bent over and picked up his rod. The Tap Dancer plug at the end of the monofilament line was still snagged on the tree trunk and he grasped the reel handle and backed up toward the cabin until the tightened line snapped. He threw the rod down and stood there staring out across the pond at the black and green Tap Dancer dangling from the tree stump a couple inches above the waterline.

  The twenty-first century needed a parody about superheroes and big penises and war and politics but Meat told him he had to write four serious fuck scenes in a month. He didn’t know if he should do it or even if he could do it if he wanted to. The world needed a superhero parody about wars and businessmen and politicians and now Meat and his Bachus Books with their Firm Core imprint wanted him to sell out.

  Fuck no he wouldn’t do it.

  Shakespeare picked up the spinning rod and threw it down again harder than he had the first time and he turned and walked back to the three rickety wooden steps that led up to the cabin door. He sat on the top step with his boots in the weeds and his elbows on his knees and looked back across the pond at the snagged
Tap Dancer and wondered what he should do.

  If he turned his superhero into nothing but a dude with a stretchable plastic cock who fucked he was damn sure nothing but a sellout. But if he didn’t change Superpenis into what they wanted the book might never get published. If he compromised he’d be a sellout and if he didn’t compromise nobody would ever know about Superpenis, and that would definitely suck. He’d already mailed dozens of letters with chapters out and this was the first time anyone had responded and now he had to figure out what he should do.

  SHAKESPEARE’S COVER LETTER

  Dear Mr., Mrs., Ms., Editor, whatever:

  I’m currently working very hard on a serious novel that I believe deserves your consideration. The first two chapters are included with this letter. My story is not only fast-paced and exciting but extremely meaningful as well. As you will see when you read this submission, my extraordinary hero confronts and bravely and resourcefully overcomes the sorts of people who are making life difficult, sometimes impossible, in the U.S.A. today.

  I’ve been a student, a soldier, and a worker. My travels and experiences have allowed me to observe the villains my novel’s hero contends with, the kinds of people who need to be understood and overcome if citizens hope to live free and satisfying lives. The plain truth is there are too many corrupt political leaders around, and greedy businessmen, and power-hungry military officers—in short, too many swindlers, thieves, con men, hypocrites, rich scumbags, and low-life motherfuckers.

  I definitely believe that the way my hero thwarts these despicable people can be appreciated by readers of all kinds.

  Sincerely,

  Shakespeare

  NUMBER 4 THOR

  TOON

  For as far back as he could remember Toon had been infatuated with comic books and the Sunday funnies and movie and television cartoons. Then as a twelve-year-old he began researching characters that were popular before his time. He read everything he could find about Popeye and Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie and Joe Palooka and Li’l Abner and The Katzenjammer Kids and Jiggs and Maggie and Gasoline Alley and Mutt and Jeff and Superman and Spiderman and Plastic Man and Captain Marvel and more. He firmly believed that sooner or later cartoons would be accepted as the one truly great American art form. Jazz might be accepted too but cartoons would be for sure. On a field trip with a high school class he visited American Indian dwellings and the etchings and paintings he saw on the walls of lava rock caves changed his life. He found himself imagining the way the Indians had lived with their hunting and fishing and dancing and chanting and drumming and warring. Sometimes he dreamed he was an Indian living a life of freedom that now was gone forever from earth. He especially envied the men who had made the cave paintings. While most of the braves brought down deer with their bows and arrows and speared fish and fought battles there remained the lucky creative few who stayed home and painted scenes celebrating these activities. Toon wanted to paint in caves but no one lived in caves so of course no one painted in them anymore. One night as he sat alone in a bar drunk on tequila the answer hit him. He downed one last shot of Jose Cuervo and then walked six blocks down the street and got his first tattoo depicting Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny across his chest. He had been born too late to paint in caves so he would become the cave himself.

  Finally Toon decided to go ahead and have Dagwood Bumstead and Mr. Dithers tattooed on the cheeks of his ass. Once the tatts had been applied an observer behind him at a place like the Cedar Creek hot springs where everybody swam nude would see Mr. Dithers wearing a bright blue business suit and an orange shirt and a yellow necktie on the left cheek and Dithers would be running hard holding an upraised meat cleaver with a furious snarling look on his old man’s face. On the right cheek would be Dagwood Bumstead wearing a tracksuit and fleeing in wide-eyed panic with his skinny arms outstretched. The tracksuit would consist of a black-and-white striped singlet and shorts meant to suggest a prisoner’s outfit.

  Under the warm morning sunlight Toon sat on a Coleman camp chair beside a fire pit encircled by large rocks and containing a charred black log resting on a gray bed of ashes damp from recent rain.

  There were two daddy longlegs standing motionless next to each other on the damp ashes next to the log. Toon looked from the pair of spiders back at the sketchpad on his lap. For nearly an hour he had been laboring hard over a pencil drawing of Dagwood. When he had the drawing right he would fill in the colors with felt pens and start on Mr. Dithers. But he was far from satisfied with Dagwood whose head seemed too big and fat for his scrawny body. Toon couldn’t even get the hair right. The two tufts that stuck out looked more like horns than hair. And Dagwood’s legs that were meant to be running looked like limp spaghetti noodles sticking into oversized shoes. Despite their Nike “swoosh” emblems the shoes looked like dead fish.

  Toon couldn’t remember if swooshes appeared on both sides of Nike shoes or only on the outsides. He wasn’t sure because he didn’t wear Nikes himself and had nothing at hand to go by. He tried to envision runners he had seen and finally guessed that the swooshes appeared on the outsides only so he erased the swoosh from the inside of Dagwood’s left shoe and decided it looked better that way. The swooshes were crucial because they identified the Nike company that paid its overseas workers shit wages and treated them like slaves in order to produce their overpriced junk.

  Toon glanced at his watch and saw he had barely an hour left to work on his sketches before he would have to leave if he hoped to reach Marlene’s Tattoo Valhalla on time. He knew Mr. Dithers would be tougher to draw than Dagwood and he couldn’t allow Marlene to work on him until he was able to give her sketches of exactly what he wanted and he had to sketch from memory because last week’s Sunday funnies had been burned three or four days ago in his woodstove.

  For now Toon concentrated on Dagwood’s spaghetti-noodle legs. He erased what he had and tried again and erased again and tried yet again. No matter how tough this was he knew it would be more than worth the work. Dagwood getting bossed around and treated like shit by Mr. Dithers was the same way enlisted men got bossed around and treated like shit by their NCOs and officers. Toon’s tattoo would express what he wanted to tell the future about the way life used to be on planet earth.

  Toon knew a good deal about the history of tattoos. Decorative body images had existed for thousands of years and were observed for the first time by white men during south sea voyages. Captain Cook had seen tattoos in Hawaii or Samoa or maybe it had been Hawaii and Samoa. He didn’t know for sure about Captain Cook but long before Cook’s time tattooing had been practiced by Germanic and Celtic tribes in northern Europe. In modern times it was sailors who had made tattooing popular. Soldiers on both sides in America’s Civil War sported tatts and soldiers still liked them and Toon had known men who used tatts to record permanent records of battles and kills. He had known a corporal who had a checkmark tattooed on his right arm for every enemy soldier he killed and an X on his left arm for every civilian he needlessly murdered, and he had accumulated almost twice as many Xs as checkmarks when a sniper killed him with a bullet through the throat.

  After taking some of the bend out of Dagwood’s legs Toon was finally satisfied with them but now the Nike shoes at the ends of the legs looked more like dead fish than ever. The swoosh mark on the right shoe looked like a horizontal gill slit. He erased both dead fish and started over on them.

  Toon thought with satisfaction about Marlene’s colored ink injected through his epidermis into his dermis. Since his army days he had regarded the world as nothing more or less than a gigantic slaughterhouse. Earth was a globe spinning through space and crowded with creatures constantly tormenting one another. If it wasn’t an animal like a coyote hounding a bird like a roadrunner or a first sergeant screaming at a private first class it was an asshole businessman like Mr. Dithers making life miserable for a hopeless innocent nerd like Dagwood Bumstead.

  Toon’s butt cheeks would show what he thought about what he’d ex
perienced and seen. Researchers and archeologists discovered dead bodies thousands of years old and sometimes the dug-up bodies had tattoos. If there was anyone around to dig Toon up in a thousand years or ten thousand years or twenty thousand years he wanted his tatts to prove he’d seen what was happening on earth and had recorded it during his lifetime on his own skin.

  There. He believed he finally had it. Dagwood’s Nikes were okay including the swooshes. Next came the hair and when he got that right he could start on Mr. Dithers.

  If everything worked out he’d get the tattoos this afternoon and keep bandages on them for two or three hours and then peel off the tape and gauze and let the fresh air do its work. He’d have to keep his ass dry for at least two weeks and keep it out of the sun for three weeks. Keeping his ass out of the sun would be easy enough. For a few days sitting down might be a problem but he could use soft pillows even on the toilet seat. He’d sleep on his stomach and during the days he’d be working on his feet so he could still do his job at the grows.

  No sooner had Toon begun work on Dagwood’s hair than all his plans for the day were ruined. He heard the ATV coming from half a mile or more away and his shoulders slumped and his eyes narrowed and he stopped his work and listened as the harsh mechanical sound grew gradually louder. He knew it had to be somebody from last night coming to give him some bad news.

  Shrimp came riding out of the trees and roared straight across the clearing and skidded to a stop a few feet from the fire pit. He wore a zipped up black leather jacket and a black New York Yankees baseball cap.

  Suddenly the cool air stank of exhaust fumes.

  “Hey, Dude,” Shrimp said with a casual wave.