Stages of Grief: Boundless Contempt
Even Hnossi Icegaard’s lips parted at that outburst. Even more than Power Grrrl, André Parker, HKA the Brotherfly, was the most fun-loving, unflappable, and glibly superficial member of the group. Because no one could have expected his reaction or even his capacity for deep feelings, no one spoke—not even Kareem or Festus, at whom the intense psychemotional verbalization was targeted.
“André?” I asked. “You just psychemotionally verbalized intensely, targeting Kareem and Mr. Piltdown. Can you tell me about that?”
“I mean, bzzzt, Doc,” said André. “Look, I’ont know about them fools, but fuh real, the King was the shit, knawm sayn?”
“So…you disliked him, then?”
“Naw, Doc—the shit, see, that means ‘good’—”
The Flying Squirrel: “Then for the love of Greenspan, could you simply goddamned say that?”
“Festus, please. André, continue,” I said. “You were saying that in your view, Hawk King was ‘the shit.’ ”
“Damn skippy, Doc,” he said. “I was actually blessed to meet the King when I was just a shorty, like, back in ’82? I was one of twenny-fi schoolkids—our class won a contest for essay writin—‘Why would you like to meet Hawk King?’, you knawm sayn? I mean, he’d already been up in his self-imposed exile an shit for, like, seven years by then—ain’no kids getting to go t’see the King no how, but, like, we was, son. Just about to turn thirteen, an I get to meet the King!
“So us an Miss Jackson, we take the ferry over to Sunhawk Island, his Ka-Sentinels guiding us through the gates, then through the portal of the Blue Pyramid, down the shafts, up the shafts, right up into his Celestial Chamber…all them turquoise hieroglyphics on them black-silver walls, movin like they alive, like they talkin to each other an the stars.
“An he sittin there right in the middle, right on his Sapphire Star Throne, like a sunrise in space, knawm sayn? Golden beak, black body, hands holdin on to his maces an shit…but the eyes. Never forget them eyes. Whole room was hummin, vibratin, an them eyes, like radio transmitters beamin inside my spine.
“Changed my life, dawg, goin there. I still dream about it, every week since I was a kid for like thirteen-fourteen years, of havin the chance, the blessin, you knawm sayn? to go back. But…y’know, thangs don’always work out how we want.”
He cleared his throat.
“Anyway, I made up my mind right then—” he said, crackling an electrical charge between his antennae for emphasis without even saying bzzzt!, “I was gon be a superhero. Man changed my life. I owe him. We all owe him.
“An now…he’s dead. An my aunt, she’s, she just—look, it’s like, after my…my uncle died…the King was the one thing in the world she could count on that would always make things right, knawm sayn? But now she caint stop cryin. You hear me?”
He shook his head, then jutted one antenna each in the directions of Flying Squirrel and X-Man.
“An these two fools is gon sit here ying-yangin bout some muhfuckin unknown, unknowable, invisible ‘conspiracy’? King’s body ain’even cold, funeral still three days away an them superbrains caint shut up outta respect for a coupla kot-tam hours? Tryin t’get my grieve on here, knawm sayn? Should be honorin his life, not squawkin like vultures over who gets to autopsy the muhfuckin corpse!”
Kareem shifted forward, facing his younger teammate.
“Listen…André.” I’d never heard Kareem’s voice contain such—I won’t say gentleness, but—lack of antagonism for André, or for anybody else. “It’s absolutely essential that right now, we—”
“No, you listen, dawg,” said André, standing up and shouldering his thick, lobed, translucent wings behind him. “The man aint no ‘debate topic,’ knawm sayn? People die. You got that, son? They just die. An aint nuthin you can do about it, not with all your theories an your Afro-ballistics an your muhfuckin maãxeru magic words, knawm sayn? So stop stickin an stabbin the man’s body with your Detecto-Junior Crime Kit an let im have some muhfuckin dignity, my ‘brutha’!”
Kareem’s jaw muscles bunched.
“André,” he gritted, “we’re all. Tense. Now. So I’m gonna let that—”
“Whatever-whatever, Mista Mystery. Right now whyonchu let us feel the sadness and regret we all gots to feel. Specially since y’all don’know the meaning of the words!”
At that, André unfurled his proboscis, snapping at the rotating rogues gallery, and three of the Superheavyweights smashed into obsidian shards. Then André hopped over to the window and proceeded to tap-tap-tap his head again and again against the glass.
After Festus finally suggested wielding a can of Raid against the noise, André stopped, putting his hands and feet against the wall and with a splippetty-splabbatty sound, crawled up toward the ceiling and stuck himself, glowering down through his two complex and three simple eyes.
Kareem whispered, and the shadow-sculptures of Gil Gamoid, the N-Kid, and the remaining rotating supervillains and the shards of André’s tongue casualties dispersed into dark mist and disappeared.
Wally excused himself to go to the restroom.
I suggested we move on. “Would others like to discuss their own experiences of Hawk King?”
Syndi snapped her gum, raised her hand halfway.
“Like, I didn’t really know Hawk King? An like, hello-o, I get it: ‘sad!’ But does the whole city have to go spaz-mode? Like, I couldn’t even get a table at Chez Guevara because they closed early last night? And I was gonna take my crew to Dance-Tronics, but, yeah, clo-osed!”
I asked her how she spent her night in lieu of her usual frolicking.
“I, like, stayed home, cut that Hawk King single, and answered fan mail.”
“You—!” choked Iron Lass. “You awnser fan mail vile all uff Midgard cries out viss agony unt tears?”
“Like, no-o. I had my PA do it. I am so like stressed, you know? So I got Brianna to do me—you know, massage? But now, today, the stress is all back! Thank God for André’s strawberry tarts—they’re better than Prozac.” She craned her neck and smiled up at him sweetly. “Thanks, P-Dawg.”
“Babydoll, when ain’nuthin funny, eat what’s sweet. That’s my philosophy,” said André from overhead. “Glad everybody liked em. Cept Kreem, who aint tried pastry-one. Shoulda made him suh’m with cherry, chocolate, an kiwi. Only red-black-and-green for the great Marcus Garbage. My man wouldn’even dream of eatin no angel food cake, knawm sayn?”
Kareem reached for the plate, popping into his mouth a piece of crystalized ginger covered in nougat and chewing defiantly.
“And yet, Syndi,” I said, “despite listing rather trivial issues such as answering fan mail or being denied access to trendy restaurants, perhaps to imply that you’re entirely unmoved by the death of Hawk King, you did ‘cut that single,’ as you put it, which means—”
“Which means she exploitedt ziss great beingk’s passink to make a qvick morbid buck!”
“I think it means more than that, Hnossi, although perhaps Syndi wants us to think otherwise. How about that, Syndi?”
I looked between the two women, waiting for either of them to respond.
Facing their silence, I resolved to put the two together for a later session, to spelunk the depths of the psychemotional stalactites and stalagmites they perpetually aimed at each other. But at that moment I changed directions.
“You’ve been rather quiet, Festus,” I said. “How did you spend yesterday evening?”
I expected him to unleash a blistering denunciation of Syndi, but instead Festus Piltdown III delicately swept lady-finger crumbs from his tunic pants. “Like Hnossi,” he said quietly, “I went to my post.”
He irradiated everyone with his glare.
“The F*O*O*J Fortress. Scanning for threats. Doing my duty to our country. Our planet. When a champion of such magnitude falls, criminals become an opportunistic infection poised to contaminate us all.”
“Festus vuzn’t simply vaatchi
ng ze monitors in ze Situation Room, Frau Doktor,” said Hnossi Icegaard, smoothing her raven mane. While speaking to all of us, she looked only at Mr. Piltdown, who stared at a part of the ceiling where the Brotherfly wasn’t then crawling. André was removed from our sight-line; the only indication he remained in the room came from a soft, high-pitched buzzing near the lamp.
“Festus spent last evenink unt all last night comfortink ze heroes unt heroines who’d assembult at ze Fortress, like a vize unt gentle faazer or feutal lordt, offerink his shoulder or knee for zeir tears. Unt vile shelterink our soldiers viss his…his moral leadership, he spoke viss everyone, softly. Uff honor, unt diknity, unt true heroism, from a life devotedt not to self, not to glory, not to personal revardt…but to justice.” She sighed lengthily. “Unt sroughout all ziss, vhere vere you, Kareem?”
Kareem stiffened in his chair, goggling at her.
“Where was I, Hnossi? I was in Stun-Glas! Walking the streets, talking to my people! My people, the ones you people always seem to forget about, the ones you were gonna let CycloTron crush. I was down with the people praying in the AME Church on the corner of Cowan and McDuffie, down with the folks stuffing fried mock-chicken and corn bread down their mouths at Dark Star, down at the QRIB with the League and patrolling Stun-Glas to keep people cooled out and safe! What I wasn’t doing was pulling any fake Churchill act, covertly campaigning for DOO on the grave of a real hero!”
Mr. Piltdown: “Why you invidious, usurping, cork-faced hypocrite, accusing me of exploiting the death of our leader!”
“Nothing stabs like truth, does it, Goebbels?”
“You are out uff line, Kareem!”
I held up my whistle until the combatants stood down emotionally, and then asked Festus to explain his claim that Kareem was being hypocritical.
“Miss Brain, I’ll tell you this just once: Whatever your mawkish, liberal, multicultural self-delusions, you cannot trust this individual. He’s already launched his plot to exploit Hawk King’s death by seeking the post of Director of Operations for the F*O*O*J.”
All eyes fell on the X-Man.
His mouth opened silently.
Stages of Grief: Reckless Adventurism
Well, deny it, Edgerton,” said Festus, “if you can!”
“Kareem, is ziss true?” asked Iron Lass. “You’re standink for election after beingk a F*O*O*J member for only two years? You don’t sink zat’s presumptuous?”
“Hnossi—” Festus chuckled “—this fraud couldn’t get himself elected head of a chain gang.”
“You shoulda told that to Hawk King, Fester,” said Kareem. “Because I’m submitting nomination papers signed by him!”
Silence settled on the room like fog.
And then came the lightning.
“You’re a goddamned liar, Edgerton!” yelled the Flying Squirrel. “How dare you, you blaspheme the holy name of our departed mentor like that!”
The X-Man closed his eyes and whispered the word pamphlets. Instantly, rectangles of darkness congealed in each of our laps.
I had difficulty reading what Kareem had given us; the logogenic tracts were black only, with empty space where the letters went. I spread his literature out over the thighs of my pantsuit so the pamphlet’s holes could be read in contrast (fortunately I’d worn beige that day).
Above a shadow cutout image of the white-shirted, black-tied and -suited X-Man exhorting an implied, adoring crowd beyond the picture frame, were the block letters
ELECT
X-MAN
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
A BETTER F*O*O*J
FOR A
BETTER WORLD
On the next panels of the material was Kareem’s “Five-Point Platform for a New F*O*O*J”:
1. Shift the F*O*O*J’s investigative focus to corporate crime, now that the Götterdämmerung is over
2. Rewrite the Concord of Heroic Duty to prevent the F*O*O*J from intervening in the affairs of sovereign states
3. Defend and extend quality-of-life security for ordinary citizens—security from predatory corporations, landlords, polluters, etc., not only in disaster relief but in prevention
4. Deploy F*O*O*J technology toward public service and job creation
5. Liaise with schools, community organizations, and other nonsupergroups to promote safety, freedom, and public responsibility
“Damn, Kreem!” said the Brotherfly, fluttering down to snatch the pamphlet from Power Grrrl’s lap, then laughing once he was stuck back on the ceiling. “You gots to be insane in the hindbrain if you think you gon win gainst Squirrelly-Man! He gots the money, the experience, the money, the money—”
“I’m more concerned,” I said to Kareem, “by your campaign literature’s lack of attention to the very problems that brought you and your colleagues here in the first place. Nowhere in here do you acknowledge the importance of confronting the internal supervillains, such as the Crisis of Infinite Dearths, id escalation, depression—”
Kareem rolled his eyes.
“Your delusion is truly tragic, Edgerton,” said the Flying Squirrel, “even beyond this nonsense about Hawk King having ‘endorsed’ you. Even if, due to some thermodynamic miracle combined with an unforeseen alignment of the voodoo chicken bone stars, you actually somehow got elected as DOO, you’d be nothing but a legless mule. Piloting the F*L*A*C means navigating the interpolitical high seas relationships of six highly willful—”
“Six positions, plus Chair,” said Kareem, counting them off on his fingers. “Chair, Merry Mac, AKA Mitchell Morgan McDonald, age sixty-three. Retiring. Director of Personnel, the Manipulator, AKA Emory Dogstale, age fifty-nine. Retiring. Director of Finance, the Downsizer, AKA P. Martin Klein, age fifty-eight. Retiring. Director of Operations, Colonel Strom Flintlock, age one hundred seventy-three. Retiring.
“That’s the old guard. They’re gone.
“But there’s a new crew up in this election, Festus. Gagarina Girl’s vying for D-Personnel against your girl, Major Ursa, I believe—”
Festus spluttered. Kareem breezed on.
“—and she’s got a better chance than does Earnest Beaver. Dynamiss is going to take on your boy Dow-Man for D-Finance—”
“Neither of those nattering neophytes stands a chance against Team Squirrel!”
“Be that as it may,” said Kareem, smirking, “three positions aren’t up for election this round. The Spectacle’s D-Investigation, age forty-three. Periodic Man’s D-R&D. He’s forty. Shockra’s D-External Affairs. She’s thirty-six. That’s a young bunch, Festy. Digital Age heroes looking for change, looking to deal a better hand than they were dealt. And even if neither Gagarina Girl nor Dynamiss wins, the three incumbents plus me’d make a majority on the F*L*A*C. Wouldn’t even need the Chair to break ties. You and the rest of the old mother F*L*A*Ccers’re history, Squirrel!”
Iron Lass: “Kareem! Langvicht!”
Everyone quivered in their chairs anxiously, clasping their hands about their ears in anticipation of my blowing the Mind Whistle™ either at Kareem’s epithet or to circumvent the inevitable Flying Squirrel retaliation.
But apparently retaliation was not inevitable. Festus simply sat silently staring at Kareem, hurling neither invective nor his chair. Instead, he methodically bent and tore the logogenic Elect X-Man pamphlet into a primitive origami squirrel.
Dissecting the Flying Squirrel
Festus,” I probed, seizing the moment, “shredding that tract isn’t helping you to focus your psychemotional microscope upon the slide of your pain. What, precisely, do you feel—you personally—right now?”
“What do I ‘feel’?” he sneered. He tore at the remains again, erecting two snubby ears on the paper squirrel’s head. “Did you actually ask me what I ‘feel’? I ‘feel’ I’m surrounded by morons!”
“Festus,” I said, tapping my whistle. He grimaced and shoved his palms against his eyes, rubbing hard enough to make me wince. “I’m asking not for your assessment of the rest of the group, but o
f your psychemotional state. Try using an ‘I-statement.’ ”
“An ‘I-statement’?” he snorted. “If I use an ‘I-statement’ you’re just going to sic that goddamned dominatrix whistle of yours on me!”
“No, I’m giving you permission, because right now we’re not in a free-for-all. You have the floor.”
Festus glared. Grunted. Glowered.
Finally: “I feel frustrated. There. Have I satiated you?”
“That’s good, Festus. Talk about that.”
“It’s good I’m frustrated?” he said. I raised an eyebrow at his playing dumb.
“I feel frustrated,” he begrudged, “because I’ve devoted my entire adult life to this organization, tending to it like a Shinto priest to a desktop grove of bonsai, cherishing it, protecting it…and now that I’ve arrived at the correct time, the appointed time, the right time for me to lead it…a—a goddamned dilettante lindy-hops his way in here with lies about a Hawk King endorsement and a sense of entitlement bigger than his Afro and acts as if he has a right to lead. I feel nobody has the ‘right’ to lead. You earn that goddamned right by investing decades of service—not milliseconds of presumption—earning interest and building capital of public confidence, collegial respect, and heroic loyalty, which I was intending to reinvest right now, in the traditions of our noble fraternity originally enacted by Hawk King.”
Wally returned from the rest room. Perhaps because of the anxiety level in the Verbalarium, the air seemed almost to tingle. “Excellent, Festus,” I reinforced. “You’ve done a fine job of—”
“I’m not done, Miss Brain. Bad enough to have our election turned into a midway freak show, but since the end of the Götterdämmerung to have to bear witness every day to what the slugs in the slime-trailing liberal media are saying about us—”
“Bor-ing,” said Syndi. She got out of her chair, turned on her hip-speakers to the thump-whumping tune of her spring Top 40 hit “Boom! I Hit It Again,” and, activating her Power Pumps, began high-speed rocket-skating/dancing around the room.
Minister Faust Page 5
