As always Shakespeare was a little early. Arriving ahead of time was an old army habit he’d never tried to break. He rolled both front windows down to catch the breeze and sat in the Bronco with both hands gripping the steering wheel as he pondered his Superpenis-cock dilemma. Since his phone conversation with Editor Meat of Bachus Books’s Firm Core Imprint in New York he had thought of little else.
Shakespeare knew he had to invent the requested scenes and probably had to work quickly because otherwise they might well forget all about him in New York. Worse yet would be if they stole his idea and his character and gave it to another writer who would ruin what was rightfully his own. Editor Meat had told him there were three different writers working on Studley Hungwell books. That could mean that three writers or four or five could end up writing Supercock books.
The thought of New York and what went on there both frightened and disgusted Shakespeare. He’d never been anywhere near that huge city that represented nearly everything he thought he hated. When he thought of New York all he could imagine were millionaires and snobs and Wall Street swindlers and conceited bitches in fur coats and East Coast assholes in general. They were all people who’d never pissed in the woods or for that matter ever even been there.
And what if he did what he had to do and it all worked out and Bachus Books—Firm Core—published his novel and he had to actually travel to New York? Well then he’d go there and he’d deal with the New Yorkers when he had to. He’d known four or five New Yorkers during his army time and he kind of liked only one but the ones he didn’t like hadn’t bothered him much. He ignored the ones he didn’t like and never got to know the one New Yorker who seemed all right because two weeks after that one shipped in and joined the company, a skinny little local urchin with explosives underneath his rags blew him and five other soldiers to bloody bits. Shakespeare hadn’t even learned that one kind of decent New Yorker’s name.
So he’d deal with New York and New Yorkers if he had to. There had to be good people there too. What mattered was that even if Supercock had to fuck he also had to be a hero and had to defeat Evil and on top of all that he had to be a parody of all the fake heroes invented by the Hollywooders and New Yorkers. The problem boiled down to why a hero should fuck in a parody and who he should fuck and where and when.
Shakespeare decided maybe Supercock should fuck just because he was a man and it was normal for him to want to do it at least once in a while. For that matter women also wanted to at least once in a while. But with Supercock it had to be because he was making fun of conquering evil. That was the hard part. He couldn’t fuck only because he felt like it. It would be okay if he felt like it but there had to be more. Somehow fucking and defeating evil and making fun of defeating evil had to be neatly tied together.
In the last scene Shakespeare had written Supercock was at a rodeo and used his cock to lasso a steer. But now Shakespeare probably couldn’t use the rodeo scene unless he could figure out a true motivation for Supercock to fuck while he was there. What if some crook or some scumbag was masquerading as a cowboy and had his Russian mistress with him? Make it one of those scumbags they called oligarchs. Shakespeare kept up with the news and knew that oligarchs were rich Russian assholes who put the screws to everybody else so they could make more money the same way rich assholes did it in America and pretty much everywhere else.
When a log truck heading north loaded with old-growth Douglas fir sped along the narrow road past the tavern the roaring blast of wind shook the Bronco. Shakespeare smelled the diesel exhaust and watched the truck and figured you could call the timber company bosses oligarchs. They paid off the politicians so they could rape the public land until it looked like some evil giant had pushed a colossal lawnmower up and down over the mountains. What those timber company oligarch bastards figured was fuck the trees and mountains and rivers and fuck the whole earth because all they wanted was money.
When the log truck disappeared Shakespeare remembered a rodeo he had attended years ago. The state’s fat governor had showed up wearing a big white cowboy hat and shiny black cowboy boots and he made a long-winded speech at the opening ceremonies. It was a typical political speech crammed full of all the standard patriotic and religious bullshit. That was long before Shakespeare joined the army and what he remembered from the governor’s speech now seemed much worse than it had when he first heard it.
But all these years later the fat governor gave him an idea. The Russian oligarch masquerading as a cowboy at the rodeo could own a timber company and be in cahoots with the governor about a modern-day logging rip-off. The governor could be like the asshole politician from back east who said he went hiking on a wilderness trail when he really was off in another country fucking his mistress. Okay. So the timber company oligarch asshole and the governor tell the press they’re having a business meeting someplace secret but they’re really on a wilderness trail fucking their mistresses. Supercock finds out about it and he’s hiding somewhere out there on the wilderness trail waiting for the timber company oligarch asshole and the governor. When they show up Supercock can turn his cock into a rattlesnake and not any normal rattler either but one about fifteen feet long and as thick as a telephone pole. The giant rattler scares the shit out of the timber company oligarch and the governor and they take off running and never look back. When they’re gone Supercock can give it to both mistresses better than they ever had it before because he can make his cock as big as he wants and he can do anything he feels like doing with it. He can use it like a drill or a jackhammer or a high-speed blender.
The jackhammer thought led to another idea. Shakespeare remembered a magazine article he’d read in a dentist’s waiting room about a professional wrestler with an alter ego. An alter ago meant a person had a second self and whether he liked it or not led two lives instead of only one. The wrestler was called the Jerkhammer and the article compared him to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In real life the wrestler was known to be a kind and generous family man but as soon as he climbed into a ring he turned into the Jerkhammer and enjoyed attacking opponents from behind and gouging their eyes and strangling them and smashing their heads with metal folding chairs. So in his novel maybe Superpenis’s alter ego could be Supercock. Supercock could do all the fucking and Superpenis could do the rest and with hard work and deep thinking Shakespeare could figure it out and satisfy Editor Meat and save his novel too.
“Yes!” Shakespeare said aloud and he pounded on the steering wheel with both hands.
Just then two more vehicles pulled into the lot simultaneously. One was an Isuzu Trooper from the south and the other a Subaru from the north.
“Yes!” Shakespeare said again. “Sweet!”
He rolled his windows up and climbed out of his Bronco to say hello to Shadow and Stones.
* * *
Stones stepped out of his Subaru with his good eye strained and watering after a high-speed drive on hazardous roads back from the shelter. With a smile on his face he waved to his friends.
He had driven into town long before dawn and spent the early morning sanding wooden chairs and talking to Lan at the shelter. She sat behind her desk and he worked near the doorway that led to the shower room out back. He told her more about his life than he had ever told anybody. He included the football and the army and the wrestling and the nightclub and his brief time as a cop.
There were periodic interruptions. The phone rang three times and Lan told the callers where the shelter was and what it had to offer. An old man with a white beard came in for a shower and food. He carried his meager possessions in a black plastic garbage bag that was slung over his shoulder the way Santa Claus carries his sack of Christmas presents. While the old man was back in the shower a young couple with backpacks came in for food. They both wore jeans and sweatshirts. The boy was frail and looked troubled and the girl could have been a high school cheerleader. They loaded their packs with canned fruits and vegetables and didn’t want showers.
When Stones h
ad to go Lan walked him out to his car. She barely came up to his elbow.
Somewhere far away a dog was barking.
Stones sat in the driver’s seat with the window open and the motor running and told Lan he wanted to try changing his life. With both hands gripping the wheel he stared down the empty road. He told her he hated being big and strong because that was what had always steered him toward violence. He was sick of it and now he wanted something better.
“I’ll try to help you,” Lan said and she leaned into the car and kissed his cheek and quickly turned and walked away.
* * *
SHRIMP
He worried about the irrational fears that he commonly experienced. Before his war he had lived a carefree life. After high school graduation he made good money in the woods as a logger. In his free time he drank beer and chased women and hunted and fished. Then when logging in the over-cut forests slowed down to next to nothing he enlisted to earn college money. Now he was back from the war and everything was different. Without wasting time in college he earned better money than he’d ever dreamed of making, but he wasn’t happy. When he drank beer he couldn’t keep himself from wondering how beer glasses were made and whether there might be a chemical involved in their manufacture that would slowly poison him over the years. When he went steelhead or salmon fishing and hooked into a big one he feared that the fish would break off and escape because of a flaw in the monofilament line he was using. If he landed the fish he wondered if it might be contaminated with mercury. Wherever he was and whatever he was doing he often found it virtually impossible to acknowledge any form of happiness. If he started feeling good about something he soon concocted an idea to counteract his pleasure. A cold beer on a hot day or a delicious meal inevitably led to the idea that beer and food would make him fat and eventually cause diabetes or a heart attack. More than anything else in his life Shrimp wanted a woman to live with and to love but if he picked up a pretty girl at the Bird of Prey and took her home by the time they arrived at his place he had convinced himself she had to be diseased. He was certain that three tours of combat duty had a lot to do with his problems but he also thought there had to be something more and he couldn’t figure out what it was. But he kept trying.
Shrimp sat staring down at what was left of Uncle Sam lying flat on his back with his clear brown eyes wide open.
“I wish you could understand what I say,” Shrimp told him. “Maybe you can. At least some of it anyway. What I figure is maybe you can hear but you can’t understand but maybe you like the sound of a human voice at least. That’s okay, buddy. That’s fine, dude. Blink if you can understand anything I say. Blink right now. Go on, man, do it!”
Uncle Sam didn’t blink. He breathed slowly and deeply with his chest rising and falling beneath the red sheet with sunlight through the clean window hitting the left side of his pale face.
“Fuck it, dude,” Shrimp said. “I’ll keep talking anyway. Maybe you do like the sound of a voice. Ol’ Shakespeare just pulled up and parked down in the lot. He’s sittin’ there in his rig waitin’ on people. We got a meeting coming up in a while downstairs with Sunbeam. Somebody’s invading our territory but nobody knows who it is. I don’t even see why it matters who it is. I mean, everybody’s territory gets invaded by somebody, right? Take a look at the world, right? Outsiders show up sooner or later everyplace, right? You and me were a couple of the outsiders a while back. A couple fucking enlisted men. I sure do wish you could talk. You always were a smart dude compared to the rest of us. Maybe you could figure out what’s up around here with all the turf war bullshit, all the greed-freaks. Oh yeah, in case you’re hungry Rainbow’ll be up here pretty quick with your breakfast. That’s what she told me. Speaking of food, last night, midnight it was, some dude tried to stuff in ten buffalo burgers in half an hour. Never made it. Nobody ever does. Remember that army chow though? Didn’t that shit suck? I remember those meals out at deer camp though. Sweet! Fresh cutthroat trout fried up in bacon grease. Or some elk tacos. Or maybe some venison jerky from last year’s deer. A joint or two. Cold beer from the ice chest. Hey, Uncle Sam, Shadow and Stones just parked down in the lot too so I guess I got to head downstairs now for the big meeting. Blink for me, dude?”
Uncle Sam didn’t blink.
Shrimp patted his shoulder. He stood and crossed the quiet room and went through the door and started down the stairs. Halfway down he ran into Rainbow coming up. She was using both hands to carry a tray with a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of orange juice and a mug of coffee on it. Shrimp turned and climbed back up to open the door for her.
“Thanks, Shrimp,” she said.
“Looks like a decent breakfast,” Shrimp answered.
“The only trouble is Uncle Sam usually soils himself bad after oatmeal.”
When she walked through the door Shrimp closed it quietly behind her. He knew about Rainbow’s life. How come good people like Rainbow got so much rotten luck? First she had to run off from home and then after a while she met Uncle Sam and married him and here she was now, and Shrimp often thought he could love her if she’d let him. But he knew that now, when he had a deep tan after a long summer, the plastic surgery scars showed on his face and he wondered if it mattered. He wondered if his scars grossed Rainbow out and if they did he knew she was too nice to talk about it. She was married to Uncle Sam and Shrimp thought he might love her and wondered what he should do. Whenever he tried to figure things out he felt like a man who’d got off a train at the wrong station with no idea where he started from or where he was or how he got there.
* * *
After blotting and wiping off the blood and taping the gauze bandages over his wounds Case worked methodically at cleaning up his place. He began by pushing and carrying furniture out of the room and then he walked down to the basement and found an old pair of work gloves and an empty cardboard box and carried the box back upstairs.
Wearing the gloves he carefully removed the jagged shards of glass that remained in the window frame. As he worked, warm blood trickled out from underneath a bandage and down his forehead into his left eye. He wiped it away with his sleeve. His head had stopped ringing and now it ached and throbbed. He noticed that the glass frames of several enlarged photographs had been destroyed along with the window. The photo he cared about most had been taken on a sunny Christmas Day and showed Heather on cross-country skis on a gentle hill down a mountainside. The ski trail ran through old-growth firs and Heather was smiling and the bright blue sky showed behind her.
Case swept glass and debris into a pile in the corner nearest his fly-tying table and then used a dustpan to shovel everything into the cardboard box. The box was nearly full and heavy when he carried it downstairs to the garage.
Back upstairs again he used a wet dishtowel to wipe dust and flakes of paint and tiny glass fragments off the furniture. Every few minutes he had to soak the dishtowel and carefully ring it out and then wet it again and resume work. When everything was wiped down he put the furniture back where it belonged. There were scolding jays in the trees close to the cabin the whole time he worked and they sounded surprisingly loud with the window glass gone.
As he finished the work cruel memories flashed through his mind. There were hot wet jungles and hand grenades and mortar shells and a huge rat that had bitten his neck while he dozed, and the early morning after the rat fourteen of them had been outnumbered and attacked and they ran in panic through rifle fire and mortar explosions and eight of them made it to safety. The next afternoon they went back for their comrades. They went back through the heavy humid heat and the wet green vegetation under the dark sky and the first body they found was Case’s closest army friend. He was a draftee nicknamed Horse and they found him propped up against a tree trunk sitting the way a man might rest in the shade on a hot day. He was naked with two bullets through the pale bloody chest and his hazel eyes were open and his throat had been slit and his nose and his ears had been cut off and his dick had been cut off and stuffed
into his mouth. They soon found four more naked bodies and all had been mutilated in much the same ways. They looked hard for a long time but never found the sixth body.
Horse had been a handsome and quick-witted boy whose father taught high school Spanish and coached baseball. He was a college graduate and had planned to teach math and coach basketball after the army. Now he had been dead for more than forty years. For about half of those years Case had asked himself why men who didn’t know each other killed each other and he’d never figured it out and finally gave up trying. They were men and they just did.
Case heard the silence when the jays in the trees stopped scolding.
Someone with a deep voice yelled from the forest: “Stay home, old man! If you know what’s good for you! If you’re still in one fucking piece stay right where you fucking are!”
Case walked out of the room and down the stairs to his living room where he kept a pair of Bushnell binoculars on the coffee table next to the big window there. He scanned the road that led up over the hill and saw no movement or sign of life and then he scanned the woods on both sides of the road and saw nothing but trees.
Back upstairs he looked again through the opening that had been the window. He saw nothing so sat back down at his table to tie another Thor. When he wrapped the number 4 hook with waxed black thread he was glad his hands weren’t shaking. He knew he wasn’t afraid.
As he worked on the Thor he remembered hiking with Heather across their favorite valley. They had picnicked at the edge of a vast meadow carpeted with wildflowers. He knew he could never again become the man he had been then. The chasm between the man he was then and what he was now was a valley that couldn’t be crossed.
Case tied three more number 4 Thor steelhead flies. Each fly was meticulous and as close to perfect as he could make it. By the time the head cement was applied to the last Thor his headache was nearly gone and he knew that after lunch he’d be heading back to the country he’d been chased through yesterday to search for his abandoned backpack.
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