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InterText Vol. 9, No. 5 / Fall 1999
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Contents
The Door Behind It................................Michael Sato
The Law Enforcer of Eagle Town.................Richard Behrens
I am Retarded....................................Tom Armstrong
Take Us We Bulls.....................................Will Sand
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Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@intertext.com geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
Submissions Panelists:
John Coon, Pat D'Amico, Joe Dudley, Diane Filkorn,
Morten Lauritsen, Rachel Mathis, Heather Timer, Jason Snell
....................................................................
Send correspondence to editors@intertext.com or
intertext@intertext.com
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 9, No. 5. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
(either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
text of the issue remains unchanged. Copyright 1999 Jason Snell.
All stories Copyright 1999 by their respective authors. For more
information about InterText, send a message to
info@intertext.com. For submission guidelines, send a message to
guidelines@intertext.com.
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The Door Behind It by Michael Sato
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....................................................................
He deserves the best care possible. But what that means depends
on your perspective.
....................................................................
1.
----
freedom and equality
since 1982
1/5/96
Mr. Matthew Bottacci:
It's been a while since we've been in contact and I wanted to
remind you that your brother Galen's first annual funding review
is coming up soon, at the end of next month. Believe me, I know
how desks get crowded and things get put aside. If you'll
recall, I included in my last letter to you -- which I sent in
November -- a form for you to look over and sign, which
indicates your support for Galen's present living situation and
your willingness to see that the funding for Galen's program be
renewed.
Because you are Galen's conservator, it is very important that
Harbor Vocational and Residential Services be able to present
this document to the board on the day of Galen's review. In case
you have misplaced it, I am enclosing an additional form with
this letter, along with a prepaid envelope so that all you have
to do is sign it and drop it in the mail -- preferably by the
end of the month, as I will be on vacation from February 1 to
February 15.
I hope this will not be too much trouble.
Sincerely,
Lance Cameron
Community Support Facilitator
Harbor Vocational and Residential Services.
freedom and equality
since 1982
1/11/96
Mr. Bottacci:
Thank you for your letter. I appreciate your frankness. Since
Friends of the Mentally Retarded was formed in 1994 it has been
surprisingly aggressive in promoting its ideology, but I did not
know it had taken an interest in Galen's case. I would caution
you, respectfully, that Friends is a highly politicized entity
whose agenda opposes any interest that works to remove the
anachronistic and unnecessary barriers between mentally
challenged individuals and mainstream society. The claims they
make -- that our programs are unsafe or mismanaged -- are based
entirely on rumor and anecdote, and not at all applicable to
Galen's living environment.
It is true that Galen is very special to us. He is one of our
most important customers, potentially crucial to the future of
the program and to the lives of any number of similarly
challenged individuals. This does not mean that we are using
him. The Residential Support branch of HVRS was founded on the
belief that there exists no reason that the natural right to
learn personal responsibility, to appreciate the value of risk,
and most of all, to express freedom of choice within the
framework of a mainstreamed living environment should be denied
anyone because he or she is mentally or physically challenged.
That is to say, we believe these rights to be transcendental,
inclusive, universal. Despite what Friends or any other voice
may suggest, it is for this reason and no other that we decided
one year ago to become the first residential support service of
its kind to review the applications of those who are situated
outside of the relatively small circle of so-called
"high-functioning" candidates that are considered by other
similar agencies. When we accepted Galen's file, Galen became
the first individual in any residential support service in this
state on whom no criteria whatever regarding his functionality
were imposed.
I see no basis for the charge that by this we are invoking mere
abstractions in order to validate neglect or to allow consumers
to, as you say, "stagnate." On the contrary, we have from the
beginning been supplementing the provision of freedom vigorously
with programs designed to ensure that Galen's progress in the
mainstreaming process continue. To cite one concrete example,
just this week our behaviorist Linda Weber observed Galen at his
home and is this moment working to obtain the loan of a speaking
device that, through cutting-edge technology, should allow Galen
to express his desires even more easily than he is presently
able. Galen's housemate, Andrew, has already agreed to take
primary responsibility for whatever training is requisite to the
effective use of this device.
About the matter of the backyard, I must ask once again for your
understanding and patience, and trust that I am as concerned as
you about the procuring of lawn maintenance equipment, or
rather, our failure to do so. Please be assured that this
unusual situation is an aberration, caused by a budgeting
oversight that was singular and will not be repeated. I
sympathize completely with your observation that the very reason
we chose this house for Galen was that it has a large backyard
that would serve to allow Galen to go outside at will. It is
unfortunate that, over the course of the year, we have been
unable to find the means to landscape the yard to make it a safe
area for Galen. We are certainly continuing, in earnest, our
search for the requisite funds.
Matt, please bear in mind that there are interests that would
prefer that specially challenged people remain separated from
society, and that the true motives of these interests are not
altruistic. Galen's home is one of the most promising and
exciting steps forward in the history of care provision to
challenged individuals, and posterity will be grateful for our
good faith and endurance.
If there is any matter which you would like to discuss in more
depth, please call me at the office until seven or eight, and
later than that, call me at home. And again, as much as I regret
the inconvenience, I will not be available between February 1
and February 15. Had I the choice I would not take the time off
now, but HVRS's mandatory vacation policy has finally, after
five years, caught up with me. At this writing my fiancee, Gwen,
proclaims her interest in going to Hawaii. I have not yet
decided where I want to spend my two weeks of freedom, but the
very utterance of the word _Hawaii_ makes me certain that it is
not there. Hopefully Gwen and I can reach an agreement soon.
Well, you know how it is.
Thank you again for your patience and support.
Sincerely,
Lance Cameron
Community Support Facilitator
Harbor Vocational and Residential Services
compassion, vigilance
1/13/96
Mr. Matthew Bottacci,
Thank you for contacting friends of the Mentally Retarded.
Friends of the Mentally Retarded is comprised of volunteers who
share the common belief that there are issues specific to
mentally retarded individuals living apart from their families
which are not adequately addressed by any other extant
organization. As such, HVRS's rather aggressive mainstreaming
program falls squarely into our field of interest. As
chairperson for the Harbor-Easton chapter of Friends of the
Mentally Retarded, I did know of your brother's "independent
living" situation, but regrettably did not avail myself of the
substance and details of his living environment prior to your
inquiry. I am, frankly, ashamed to admit this since Galen's
living situation seems to be quite unique, perhaps
unprecedented, and therefore of considerable implication. After
spending several hours researching Galen's background and
observing him in his home, that I believe your concerns
regarding Galen are extremely warranted and require urgent
action.
I do not mean to sound hostile. Contrary to what is often
believed, it is not the aim of Friends of the Mentally Retarded
to raise opposition categorically to the work of HVRS and other
new "mainstreaming" residential programs like it. In principle,
we support HVRS's stated mission of providing its customers with
opportunities to exercise freedom of choice and personal
responsibility. Furthermore, I personally would never
intentionally interfere with any program, whatever its ideology,
that made a positive contribution to Galen's overall well-being
and happiness. Neither would I question the basically good
intentions of any employee of HVRS.
It must be remembered, however, that HVRS is a private interest,
and therefore operates within, and is subject to many of the
pressures incumbent to, the private sector. It would be
irresponsible to deny the possibility that such an awkwardly
situated agency might be tempted to extend an attractively
phrased, if sometimes useful, ideology past the breadth of its
real resources in order to widen its client base.
Friends of the Mentally Retarded holds as primary an
individual's right to basic health and safety. One of our
long-standing contentions with HVRS comes from their reluctance
to staff homes with people who are properly trained in their
field, that is, the provision of care to people with
disabilities. As a case in point, Galen's live-in care giver,
Andrew Lee, is still an undergraduate in college who applied for
the job because he needed extra income to finish a degree in an
unrelated field. Not that this in itself is to be held against
him -- he seems sincere in his concern for Galen -- still, he
himself admits to having, prior to this job, almost no contact
with any developmentally disabled or otherwise handicapped
person, and no working experience at all in the field of care
provision. HVRS claims it is part of the "mainstreaming" process
to deliberately hire staff who have had no experience with, and
thus have "no prejudices" toward those with disabilities. We
think this is a provocative and precarious position, and it is
surely unreasonable to argue that there is no connection between
it and the fact that since Galen moved into his home one year
ago, he has been taken to the emergency room, by ambulance, no
less than five times: once, when he stopped breathing during a
seizure; two times for choking on non-comestible objects (a
peach pit, a plastic fork); and two times for injuries suffered
from falling. Both of the latter injuries were to the face and
head, and probably would not have occurred had Galen been
wearing his helmet. When I queried Galen's community support
facilitator, Lance Cameron, as to why Galen did not wear his
helmet, Mr. Cameron answered to the effect that the helmet had
been discarded because it is "socially stigmatizing" and
therefore obstructs the process of "mainstreaming" Galen into
his community.
In the five years Galen spent at the state facility in Easton,
Galen required hospitalization only one time.
HVRS responds to this alarming statistic by propounding the
"value of risk," an idea wherein there is always inherent in
freedom a certain amount of danger, but that this danger is
outweighed by the larger benefits derived from personal
independence. We have very serious doubts about the plausibility
of this line; for us the right to basic physical safety is
paramount and ought not be compromised by abstractions which,
however noble sounding, may amount to something less in fact and
deed.
When I visited Galen's home I asked Andrew about the nature of
the choices that Galen was making and how he was using his
freedom to choose and realize his desires. Andrew's response to
me was so circuitous and vague I had to suppose he did not
understand my question. I therefore asked Andrew if he could
demonstrate for me what he _does_ by way of supporting Galen's
desires. Andrew proceeded to proffer to Galen a number of verbal
prompts regarding daily-life choices (Would you like to listen
to music? Would you like spaghetti for dinner?), to which Galen
seemed to be completely uninterested, if not uncomprehending.
When I asked Andrew if I had caught Galen on a bad day, Andrew
answered flatly that he did not expect Galen to respond to any
of his prompts, and that in fact Galen has in the past year
never once responded, verbally or otherwise, to any of the
prompts that Andrew has on a daily basis given to him. Further
inquiry was to reveal to me that so far as Andrew knew, Galen
has not uttered a single intelligible word since moving into the
home.
I was so surprised to learn this, especially since you told me
that as a child Galen could produce short sentences, that I
consulted Galen's former doctor at the state facility. Evidently
Galen's file does show that when in school he possessed a
vocabulary of some two hundred words, but that by the time he
left the state home he had already been growing increasingly
silent for the previous several years. The doctor believes that
since finishing school it is likely that Galen has forgotten the
words he then knew, or the mental effort required to produce
utterances has increased so much as to be prohibitive. In the
doctor's view, it is very unlikely that without a regimented and
sustained program of education Galen would again be able to mark
gains in this area of his functionality.
I think, Mr. Bottacci, that Galen's silence combined with the
danger connate to his environment raise a near conclusive
argument against the efficacy, if not the basic humanity, of
HVRS's mainstreaming program. That said, I must include a note
about Galen's backyard, if only because the backyard was to me
the most disturbing feature of Galen's home. Galen's
preoccupation with his backyard is very intense, and this
preoccupation is the only exception I saw to his otherwise
complete passivity and disinterest in his surroundings.
Ironically enough, it is finally with the backyard that HVRS
takes up the issue of safety. Not that I would contest; the yard
is a veritable wilderness by now. According to Andrew, the
backyard has not been so much as mowed since the day they moved
into the home. There are numerous large objects, mostly junk,
strewn amongst the weeds, and in the center of the yard a large
hole, perhaps four by four feet, half-filled with mud, that the
previous tenants for some reason dug but failed to fill up
again.
According to Andrew, Galen's daily activity consists largely of
spending hours gazing at this backyard through the dining room
window, and this is in fact what he did through most of my
visit. He knows where the back door is, and frequently goes
there to try to open it. Regrettably, the back door remains
locked, and therefore the one thing that Galen shows an active
interest in, he is forbade. When I queried Mr. Cameron about
this situation, he told me that under the conditions of the
lease HVRS accepted the responsibility to landscape the yard to
meet its safety standards. There had been an oversight in
budgeting, and was therefore no means at all either to rent or
purchase yard maintenance equipment or to hire a professional
landscaping service. Mr. Cameron was glib, but I'm afraid I
don't find the oversight as excusable as he.
I hope this letter proves to be of use to you. In my view, that
the safety standards of Galen's independent living arrangement
are lower than those at the state facility in Easton seems
likely; however, that Galen has benefited commensurately from
his "freedom" is, at best, doubtful. Unless matters change by
February's end, my recommendation to you will have to be that
you seriously consider allowing Galen to return to his home in
Easton, where he can be cared for by trained and experienced
personnel, and the yard is always well kept.
Thank you again, Mr. Bottacci, for contacting Friends of the
Mentally Retarded.
Sincerely,
Ann Pearson
Chairperson, Friends of the Mentally Retarded
2.
----
Sent: Jan 20 1996 2:10 PM
From: Andrewl@aol.com
Re: Galen
Hey Matt, it's Dre. Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I
got a bitch of a term paper to write that's already late, and if
I don't pull a B or better I have to take the whole class over
again. Not a nice thought for someone whose already been in
college for **five fucking years**. And it doesn't help when
your boss is having anxiety conniptions. The backyard, the woman
from that mentally retarded group -- and he was already cracking
up over this vacation of his. A couple days ago he came in here
with a pile of brochures from the travel agency and made me look
at them because he can't make up his own mind where he wants to
go. "I know there's somewhere," he says, "but I just can't think
of the name of the place."
"How about France?"
"No, no. Not France."
"Why don't you go to Mexico?"
"Where I want to go," he says, getting all heated again, "is the
one place in the world where no one will say to me, `Why don't
you go to Mexico?'"
"Then Mexico it is."
"Why don't you go to Mexico? Why don't you go to Spain? Why
don't you go to **China**, for God's sake? This is my first
vacation, my first freedom, in five long years, and I want to go
where **I** want to go. If everyone would just give me a little
bit of space to figure it out."
All the brochures looked the same to me, too. Beaches, pretty
buildings, some white people kissing. I wouldn't be going to any
of those places either, but on the other hand, how do you know a
place before you see the brochure? It's like the pictures on
Galen's new speaking machine -- that's what you asked about,
right? Lance calls it a "want-board." It looks like the latest
contraption from NASA, but actually it's not that big a deal,
nothing more than a kind of tape recorder in the shape of a big
board with some blank squares on it. What you do is put your own
pictures of things into the squares, and then record a different
sentence into the machine for each of the different pictures.
Then, if you put your finger on a picture of a Coke, say, a
recording inside the board says something like, "I'd like a
Coke."
Lance said we should keep it simple at first, so for now,
there's only two pictures on the board, one of a Coke and one of
a 7-Up. "With this machine," he says, "Galen will be able to
talk." I'm supposed to try fifteen times a day to get Galen to
learn how to use the thing. So far, after three days and
forty-five tries, he doesn't get it. I'll tell you the truth,
Matt: I dislike the board. Galen's never going to be able to use
the thing -- not in three more days or three more years. They
brought in the board because they think the reason Galen doesn't
say what he wants is because physically he can't speak. They're
wrong. Galen's got a tongue and a throat and a voice just like
anyone else. What Galen doesn't have, that a guy needs to speak,
is words. The board's not going to make any difference for
Galen, because if you've got no words -- words in your head --
then how can you have pictures? To Galen a picture of a Coke
means exactly what the word "Coke" means: nothing. And you can't
want anything without a picture of it; a want **is** a picture.
Without pictures you can't want anything at all except, maybe,
for what's already there.
I gotta go.
freedom and equality
since 1982
1/24/96
Mr. Bottacci:
Thank you for keeping me apprised.
According to my understanding of the conclusions you reached
from the recommendations of Ms. Pearson, you will not be
supporting the renewal of funding at the end February unless the
following conditions are before that time met:
1) Galen demonstrate, unambiguously, both the willingness and
ability to express his will in some matter affecting the
course of his daily life.
2) The issue of the backyard be resolved.
I would like to urge you, Matt, _not_ to stand by these
conditions. It may be _very_difficult_ to meet these conditions
by the end of February.
Let me remind you that if Galen's funding is not renewed, he
will in all likelihood be transferred back to the state facility
in Easton. Please take a moment to remember the quality of life
at the state facility that compelled you a year ago to seek an
alternative for Galen. The lives of the residents of such
facilities, however secure, are so thoroughly regimented in
every aspect, so inexorably regulated and colorless, the
residents themselves having virtually no opportunity to realize
or even express their own individually conceived desires, that
the lives become nothing more than imposed routines, lives
without _change_, without _plot_ -- without the things that
distinguish the lives of humans. Residents in the state-run
facilities have no choice at all in matters such as when and
what they will eat, where at the dinner table they will sit,
when the meal is over, when they will go to bed, when they will
wake up, when they will shower, when they will watch TV, what
they will watch, or what they will wear. And it is hardly a
secret that, in spite of its illegality, residents of these
facilities are physically forced to comply to this regime.
Residents therefore have no freedom at all, eventually, even in
their own minds. The system in which they participate is
therefore completely dehumanizing, and for a resident of this
system there is _no way out_.
Remember, Matt, that Galen lived in the state facility for five
years. That's five years of what amounts to a kind of
incarceration. It is to be expected that it would take anyone --
even someone who was not challenged in any other way -- some
time to adjust to a life in which he or she was free and allowed
to make choices. I believe that there is inside of everyone a
desire to make choices, and that it is this desire more than
anything else that makes life a fulfilling and meaningful
experience. If you believe this too, then I implore you to relax
your conditions, and give your brother Galen a little more time
and one more chance.
Very sincerely,
Lance Cameron
Community Support Facilitator
Harbor Vocational and Residential Services
P.S. I checked Galen's file. Ms. Pearson is correct. During
Galen's stay at the state facility, he was taken to the
emergency room only once. It seems one of the staff at the
Easton facility broke two of Galen's fingers with a broomstick
on a morning that Galen was slow to wake up for breakfast.
1/24/96
Mr. Matthew Bottacci:
I am writing to you in regard to your brother Galen Bottacci, at
the request of the Community Support Facilitator at Harbor
Vocational and Residential Services, Lance Cameron. My name is
Linda Weber. I am a behavioral psychologist and I specialize in
communication enhancement strategies for physically and mentally
challenged individuals. After observing Galen, I was able to
conclude within an acceptable level of probability that Galen
does not communicate verbally to any recognizable effect. I
therefore recommended that Galen's current program be
supplemented with a Level One Portable Speaking Device. The
device successfully enhances the communicative competence of
about eighty-three percent of those to whom the devise is
prescribed. There appears to be, however, a correlation between
the length of time required to succeed in operating the device
and the operator's measured level of intelligence. Mr. Cameron
asked me to emphasize this point especially.
Sincerely,
Linda Weber
Sent: Jan 24 1996 10:46 PM
From: Andrewl@aol.com
To: Matthew Bottacci
I can't do that want-board with Galen anymore. I told Lance
today. Damn, he was pissed.
Dre
freedom and equality
since 1982
1/29/96
Mr. Bottacci,
I'm sorry that I could not convince you to withdraw the
conditions you set regarding Galen's home and his upcoming
funding review. I know that what we all want is what's best for
Galen, and that sometimes these decisions are difficult to make.
Lance has been with us for five years and he is one of the most
dedicated and able community support facilitators at HVRS. He
will do everything he can in what time remains to see that your
conditions are met.
In the meanwhile, I am enclosing the documents requisite to
beginning the smooth and timely transfer of Galen's sponsorship
from HVRS to the Easton state facility. I'm happy to respond to
any questions you might have regarding these forms.
Sincerely,
Barbara Elfman
President
Harbor Vocational and Residential Services
Sent: Feb 5 1996 3:35 PM
From: Andrewl@aol.com
Re: Galen
Hey Matt, it's Dre again. There are three things that I have to
tell you. One, I was wrong about Galen and the want-board. Two,
I got a C on my paper. Three, I've had it with college and this
job, and I need to move on. The whole situation here gives me
the jeebs.
Hold on. Someone at the door.
freedom and equality
since 1982
2/2/96
Mr. Bottacci,
I'm happy to inform you that the matter of the backyard has been
resolved, and also that Galen has begun to express his desires
in a clear and unequivocal manner. As you requested, I have
already contacted Ms. Pearson, and she will be visiting your
brother's home this afternoon in order to observe him. She will
be in touch with you shortly.
Yours,
Lance Cameron
Community Support Facilitator
Harbor Vocational and Residential Services.
Sent: Feb 2 1996 7:13 PM
From: Andrewl@aol.com
Re: Galen
Sorry there. That was the lady from the mentally retarded group
that came over a while back. She wanted to see Galen do the
want-board. No problem. He does it, and he does it all by
himself. Think that's great? Don't thank me. After I told Lance
I didn't want any part of the want-board we argued like dogs,
but then instead of firing me he just took up the slack himself.
Spent a lot of time -- most of the past week -- here with Galen
and the want-board, trying to get Galen to learn the thing
before vacation (even though he **still** didn't know where he
wanted to go) because after vacation, he said, it would be too
late. Let me tell you, that man has patience. He tried
everything you can think of. He **begged** Galen to pay
attention. But Galen never did anything but stare out the back
window at that old backyard.
At the end of it I didn't know who I felt more sorry for, Galen
or Lance. I came in that last day to find them sitting together
in the darkening living room, quiet and gazing out the back
window, the want-board abandoned on the table. All that time
wasted, I thought. A real shame.
"Hey man, did your best," I said, because I hated seeing the two
of them sit there that way.
"Andrew, do you still have the key to the back door?" Lance
said.
"Yes."
"Go and get it."
I didn't like the sound of it, but I did what he said. It took
me a few minutes to find it; it's never been used. When I came
back out into the living room Lance pointed me over to the door.
He said, "When I count to three, unlock it."
He counted to three. I swear Galen must have been counting
along, because the instant I put that key in the lock and lock
went `click' he popped from his chair and sped right across the
room as fast as I have ever seen him run, grinning and laughing
and waving his arms all over. But Lance popped up from his chair
too, and he moved just a little bit faster. He slipped himself
right between Galen and the little hallway in front of the door,
and stuck that black board up under Galen's face.
I said, "That's not so cool."
"Just leave the door open until I tell you to close it." Lance
nudged the board against Galen's chest, and Galen looked down at
it, surprised, as if after all this time he'd never seen the
thing before. Lance made a gesture toward the two big pictures
of the Coke and the 7-Up, then lifted the machine, pretending to
allow Galen to go through, then right away put the board back in
front of him again. Galen looked over Lance's shoulder, at the
open door, and then he looked hard at the machine for a long
time, maybe two or three minutes. His whole face creased up with
hard thought, struggling, painful thought, and then -- I
couldn't believe it -- he lifted his hand to the board, and he
pressed a button. The machine said, "I'd like a Coke." Lance put
the can of soda to Galen's lips -- not for long though, just
long enough for Galen to get a taste -- and then he pulled the
can away. Then, Lance took one step back toward the door, so
that Galen could move one step closer to the outside. When Galen
figured out he couldn't go any farther, he put his hand to the
board and pressed the button again. The board said, "I'd like a
Coke," and Lance gave Galen another sip, just enough to get the
taste, and took one more step back. Galen stepped forward, and
pressed the button again, "I'd like a Coke," and Lance gave him
another sip.
Lance said, "Close the door." And so I did.
Galen pressed the button again. "I'd like a Coke." And Lance
gave him another sip.
We tricked your brother into wanting Coke.
vigilance, compassion
2/3/96
Mr Matthew Bottacci:
Yesterday I visited Galen's home in order to verify claims made
by Mr. Cameron regarding improvements made to Galen's living
conditions. I will say at the outset that I was very surprised,
and impressed, by the appearance of the backyard. The hole was
filled up, the ground cleared of hazardous objects, the weeds
and brush mowed down. In the driveway was a pickup truck filled
with rolls of sod, and Mr. Cameron was himself spreading one of
them across an edge of the yard. While he did not say so, I was
to learn from Andrew that the material and equipment had all
been purchased by Mr. Cameron with his own means, and that Mr.
Cameron was single-handedly landscaping the yard with donated
vacation time. The work is not yet finished, but I expect the
yard will be quite safe for Galen within several days.
At the time of my visit Galen was using his speaking device with
some enthusiasm. There were six pictures on the board, all
representations of drink or food items. Evidently Galen uses the
board so continuously that he has gained weight, and he did seem
healthy compared to how he looked the last time I visited. He
has even, it seemed, forgotten about the backyard. It may be
that with its appearance so changed, the backyard no longer
holds whatever meaning it held for him previously.
Now, unlike before, Galen is able to acquire some of the things
he wants. Should Galen continue to use the board, we should hope
that Galen's staff over time increase the number of pictures so
that Galen can enjoy an increasingly widening range of choices.
In light of these changes, I am no longer able to advise you to
remove Galen from his current home. Galen will need a new
live-in, of course, by the end of the month, since Andrew has
resigned. I don't suppose HVRS will have a problem finding
someone.
Sincerely,
Ann Pearson
Chairperson, Friends of the Mentally Retarded
Sent: Feb 5 1996 6:42 AM
To: Matthew Bottacci
From: Andrewl@aol.com
Re: outahere
Just wanted to say bye. College was a mistake, cost me five long
years and a pile of money -- I'll be in debt till I'm forty. But
now it's behind me, and fit to be forgotten. I guess you heard
about the backyard. It's finished now, and Lance has been trying
to get Galen to go outside and enjoy the sun and breeze. Galen
won't have anything to do with it. His world is that want-board,
now. There's nothing else.
People ask me what I want to do next, when I leave here. I know
there's something. But everything, when I say it, sounds wrong.
Dre
Michael Sato (michael661@msn.com)
-----------------------------------
Michael Sato spent most of his life in the San Francisco Bay
Area, but now lives in a factory town in Japan, where he teaches
English, dabbles in translation, and waits for the dollar to
weaken so that he can change his money and return to the U.S.
His stories have appeared on the Internet in Eclectica and
AfterNoon.
The Law Enforcer of Eagle Town by Richard Behrens
=====================================================
....................................................................
Standing up for what's right is never without risks.
....................................................................
i. burnt angels, soaring home
-------------------------------
That day the sun was hiding behind the clouds like a wounded
child, but it took me more than a few seconds to adjust my eyes
to the dark interior of the store. First the flour sacks came
into focus, then the glass candy cases, the shelves of baked
beans in their silvery cans, the saddle bags, the harnesses and
the flatboards against the far wall. He was sitting with two
Papal agents, his cane chair creaking against the flatboards
under all that weight. What I remember was a small card table
between them, some papers laid out so they could all read
whatever was printed. Then there was a bird, a small blue-beaked
thing with thin wings and sad eyes, his stick-like foot chained
to the table with a tiny lock. The creature would struggle, flap
madly into the air, turning into a propeller swirl of feathers
and squawks, then flop back down onto the card table, defeated,
abandon freedom for a passing moment, then renew its frenzy with
another mad flapping of wings. It flew up, clopped down, over
and over.
I was twelve and was coming in from the station wagon with my
father and sister that first time and he took us by surprise,
otherwise we wouldn't have gone into the store that afternoon.
His three hundred pounds fell in bags down the side of his seat,
the cushion under him obliterated. His thin white shirt was
folded under him; large pools of sweat were about his arms and
gut, streamers of it coming down from under the yellow straw hat
into the folds of his warty neck. His bug eyes turned toward my
father, scanning his prey before the attack.
My father's hand went limp and cold as he held me about the
neck, then withdrew and fell to his side, now powerless and
obsolete. His hand remembered as well as he did that Shingle had
invisible eyes that crept out into the night, over the onion
fields and locust groves, probing into the bedroom windows and
basement workshops. My father, who in his day had been a
backyard wrestler, was a small mite in the presence of the law
enforcer.
"Even'n, Yardley." The bug eyes were now locked, hypnotizing,
suddenly darker around the rims as if a mist of evil had just
descended over Shingle. His voice was laconic and level,
emotionless without a hint of intention.
"Officer Shingle," my father said, the crack in his voice
betraying fear. "I just came to get some paint for the cottage."
"I didn't ask what you were here for, Yardley. I just "Just one
minute, Yardley." His damned bug eyes cut across the room to my
father standing by the oak counter. "I got a couple of questions
for you, you mind this time of afternoon?'
"No, sir."
"Then pull up a handful of those nuts and let's have a
conversation, you and me." He gestured toward the cane seat next
to him. Hesitantly, my father took a bag of walnuts from
Whinstanley's counter and slid over to the cane seat, sitting
down with the slow measure of a man getting into his final
electric chair. Shingle grinned and slapped my father's thigh.
My father shuddered and then slumped, his head bowed more out of
fright than respect, and his hands cupped before his belly.
Shingle let loose his word horde: "We got some trouble over in
Harvestville again with a couple of Clays. You know them, no?
Well, I was checking up in these here county courthouse records
and it seems you bought some land off one of them. Not one of
them but a Eustace Gamble who married a Clay a few months before
you came to him with those bank notes, remember? Good, its good
to see your memory improving, Yardley. So this Gamble went and
spilled some of his liquor into the river trying to keep the
snarks from getting it and by accident he took a tumble and
cracked his skull on a log, rushed to a hospital, and made some
weird death bed confession about a railroad in some of the
basements around here. You know anything you ain't letting on,
Yard?"
"Mr. Shingle, if I had a story line to tell I'd tell it right
quick, you know that."
"Yeah, I know. We go back a ways, back to when you boxed in the
Sand League and I was going to be your manager. But times
change. I aim to keep to the letter of the law around here, and
these folks from Cedar Crest Division want me to check out some
of the basements around here. I suppose I can start with yours,
now right?"
"Yes, sir."
"You know a man named Brown?"
My father's silence betrayed his fear. It was as if a bullet had
struck him in the knee and he was damned if he was going to let
on about it. His eyes closed tight as if the lowering of the
lids would help avoid detection.
"No need to answer," Shingle sighed. "I know you're scared of
that man. He beat you in mud wrestling back in the Plains and
when you whipped him back he swore to cut your throat and feed
your apple to the hounds. Well, don't worry, we got him up at
the Point and he's behind five rows of steel wasting away and
he'll never come out to beat you or anybody. Caught him sneaking
across the line with a trunk full of clowns from the coast. Oh,
he talked all right -- talked about what you and him were doing
in the Plain and how you got that chain saw motor, remember?"
"Yes, sir." My father spoke from behind those trembling eyelids.
"So, let's take a look at that basement and we'll spin out to
the Point to identify some faces. Sorry to ruin your little
afternoon painting the cottage, but Yard, we got to get to the
letter of the law. Stuff ain't right if the letter's tampered
with, now."
"Yes, sir. I deserve it, sir."
"That's what I'd like to hear. There's strength in that, Yard.
You know there is."
It took three men -- the two Papal agents and Whinstanley -- to
move Shingle out of the cane seat he was stuck in. As he puffed
and heaved, I paid mind to my sister who was terrified, her
little knees shaking, her eyes tearing like someone had just
died. I put my arms around her and she backed off, not wanting
to be touched.
We all piled into Shingle's rambling brown sedan, the man
stuffing himself behind the wheel with a fluid plop, and were
soon cutting down the mill roads past the pump stations and the
irrigation ditches, across the deserted lot behind our
neighborhood, and the thin dirt path we had taken just an hour
earlier to get to the store in the first place. Then, we emptied
out in the front of the wooden screened porch where Mother sat
in a large wicker chair. When she saw us emerge from the Shingle
car, along with the fat man himself and two city folk she
couldn't identify, she got up, her gingham dress falling
shapeless about her, and withdrew into the house, slamming the
door tight.
The car almost overturned with getting the Enforcer out and this
time even my father helped, ironic since he was the one who was
just about to lose everything to this man. I couldn't watch.
"Your woman got a nice welcome for folks," Shingle growled. "So
open the hatch and let's have a look see."
The city folk went to the metal door over the stairs down and
started to fumble with the lock. Mother came out like a raging
fury and threw herself against the red rusted bar with her solid
foot. "No," she said. "You open that door, my life is killed
forever."
Shingle wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his fat
hand. "Look, Lois, you ain't got a pot to piss in here. You
think because you tell me to go away, I'm going to go away and
forget it? It's over already. Just accept that, is all."
"I have children," she said.
"Yeah, and they're going to be just fine. But we got Yardley
here who broke the letter of the law. We don't tolerate the
breaking of the letter. It says even in the scriptures to change
not a letter one jot, or something like that, is all. See, I'm
the Enforcer and I have to come when a rule's been bent or
something's been spelled out wrong."
"You're just an evil man!" she hissed. "With rotting meat in
your belly and a head full of fat lies!"
Shingle lowered his lids for a pause with a sort of lost boy
sadness, then came up again with an angry fist that hit my
mother across the mouth. She fell to the side like a collapsing
house of cards. "Open it," he said to the city folk while Mother
pounded the ground with the force of impotent rage.
The city folk cracked the bar with some special instrument they
kept hidden behind their bodies, but it came apart as if it were
tissue paper, the bar falling to the side and clattering on the
path. They went down into the hole and there was a tense moment
while flickering light danced against the sides of the descent.
"What you got?" Shingle said, lifting a large leg onto the
concrete step leading to the stairs.
"Yep, A.J." came a nasal voice. "We got a stash."
My father heard the voices from down in his workshop and leaned
against the picket post, faint and pale, beads of sweat dripping
onto his flannel collar. "Jesus in Heaven," he said. "Lois, this
is the end."
The snarks removed fourteen clown suits from the basement and
six boxes of orange pom-poms, all of which were faded and
obviously well worn. Some of the polka dotted pants were grease
stained and worn through with many holes, patched together
sloppy and veined with stitching from various rips and tears.
Shingle cornered my father against the slats of the house and
held a pom-pom to his nose like he was trying to stuff it.
"You know where the shit inside these clothes went?"
"I ain't saying," my father said, summoning a bit of courage
that had been absent for the past hour of his ordeal.
"You got a railroad, Yard boy. You don't have no bargaining
power is how I see it. Now I want this thing: why you keep the
threads after the shits were gone? You walking around the house
in your Bozo nose? You want to be a shit clown chromo just like
them?"
My father maintained a stoic silence.
"How many you running for? You paint their faces and fix them up
in dungarees? You can't do that around here, Mister! You know
that from back in the Point! I just don't believe you'd be so
stupid to let all this stuff get moldy down there, guy. The real
slick operators burn the stuff in trash cans and bury the ashes
deep in Rahoon and the Winneskeag. Tell me, Yardley, how many
you running for?"
"I didn't have no railroad, Shingle."
"You like to dress up then? You put these buttons on and make
your little kids laugh?"
My sister who was crying and pulling at her red ponytails, now
spat out, "Leave daddy alone!"
The fat man turned his predatory eyes toward the freckled girl
who receded from him as if she were staring into the face of an
evil spirit that arose from the darkness of her bathroom mirror.
The muscles of her face, already tense, withdrew into a rictus
of terror.
To my dying day, I will not forgive that fat shit for doing that
to her. He didn't have to. He could have ignored her and gone
about his damned business with my father. But he turned to her
and forged into her mind some image that will make her not well
for the rest of her life -- an act that could have been avoided
so easily. But he did it just to spite, just to spread a bit of
his evil about, because he was the man with the badge,
sanctioned by the state, capable of anything including murder, a
man who has beaten children until they bled, who has broken up
more families than death itself. He turned to her with red
furious anger in his demon-haunted face and said with a snarl:
"Your daddy, little girl, is about to get the Point!"
And that's all I have to say about that day. The rest I don't
care to remember.
ii. on this parched earth, in flesh
-------------------------------------
The month after my father was taken, we had a locust sweep over
the fields and most of the farmers were out with their guns
firing the poison pellets into the air and running in relays
back to the gas pumps. Old Man Snaggle had a rusty old
flamethrower he used over the empty lots and got many of them
single-handedly, but at the last moment his fuel pump backfired
and he got a face full of fire. His hair was burned right off
and his eyebrows melted till he looked like a shaven cancerous
egg. He sat in his bed and stared at the walls until he died
from fever two weeks later. Old Man Snaggle is considered a bit
of hero around here because of how he went out and gave his life
to fight the locusts.
The crops were tainted with residue and the farmers got scared.
The next winter a fever killed most of the animals and we were
trying to make do but there was no manure left in reserve.
Collections were taken up to order the pesticides through a
mail-order catalog.
And we, the Yardleys, just gave up. Father was gone. Our land
went to rot, our shed collapsed, we sold our cows in town. There
was nothing left for us.
iii. in the basements, buried dreams
--------------------------------------
Like fools rushing madly in paradise, we took in one more clown,
a dirty little fellow who showed up one night in a rainstorm
breathing asthmatically and coughing blood from his thick red
lips. We carried him half-dead and bleeding to the upstairs
guest room and laid him out on the floor over a large tarp that
stained quickly with his drippings. In his dirty white glove we
found a card with our father's code name on it. This was how the
Chromo found us, a tiny strip of paper thrust into his spastic
hand by some sympathetic ear with a frightened but kind heart
who decided to take the mentally deranged creature, so pitiful
and loveless, and drop into his fingers a tiny bit of hope. The
Chromo had followed, God knows how, and was now safe in our
house.
Mom was cautious. "I think he has a fever and something broke up
in there. Look, the blood has these white flakes in it like his
throat was coming apart in bits."
The clown gasped and opened his dropping eyes. "You folks don't
need no Klappo to worry about. Just put him outside in the dog
pit and let him go to sleep."
"Nonsense," Mom said maternally, wiping more blood from around
his mouth. "We ain't going to let some living thing die like
this. And if you have to go it's going to be in a decent folks'
home, not in a pile of dung in the road."
"But zooks, if you ain't kind to Klappo!"
He stayed with us a few days, shivering on a straw pallet in the
basement, until the bleeding stopped and his eyesight was
restored; then we sent him on his way. We stood at the edge of
the wood and watched his slow haunted form slink into the
mysterious depths of the trees. In his pantaloons he had a
series of coded instructions to the next safe house in
Plainsfield. This time, we were careful to fully burn the
clothes to ash and then to scatter the ashes in a nearby
cornfield. I accomplished this by filling my pockets with the
soot and then strolling through the weeds with streamers pouring
down my leg from a carefully placed hole in one pocket.
Just as I was heading home, I found Jack Webster, the retarded
son of an iron worker, rummaging through some garbage by the
landfill. Under the gray sky he looked sick, his slack mouth was
thick with drool. His eyes buzzed around a bit but he found me
walking through the weeds, my hands pushed hard into my pockets.
"Your daddy was a clown lover!" he screamed, spewing tracers of
spittle. "A clown lover and he liked to put his thing in a jar
of bugs!"
I caught fire, angry at the misfortune my father's operation had
suffered: losing his partners, having his home invaded and being
thrown into a Papal jail, his family humiliated. Years later,
when I was traveling up north near the Point, working on my
history books, I worked hard to convince myself that my father
was good, and although he broke the laws he was justified in the
eyes of the Lord for what he did. But back in those Eagle Town
days, I knew only red anger at having suffered. I wanted my
father home again, sitting by the fire and talking with Judge
Leaton or the anarchist Frencke, fixing trap doors in the
basement and painting the wooden shingles on the roof of the
cottage. Thinking all these scenes and how distant they were, I
stood on the edge of that mountainous landfill, facing that
drooling idiot son of Kent Webster and felt blood-red anger.
I pulled my fists out of my pockets, noticing in the chaos of
the moment that the knuckles were stained deep in the ash, and
dove for his sweaty white neck. I remember a creepy face,
pushing its squat nose toward me, mucous dripping onto the upper
lip, and those cracked teeth yellow stained gnashing up and
down. What I can't remember is the knife wheeling up in an arc
and catching me in the left nostril, ripping out a piece of
nose. I pushed my palms into my spurting wound and held them
there, listening to my own screams.
"Stop saying those filthy things!" I cried. "I'm a good boy
raised by a good daddy. Take those things back!"
In my mind, I pummeled Jack Webster several times in the stomach
with one fist, knocking him flat. He fell unconscious and
spitting blood from lips. His skin was pale white, the lips
darkening to a thick red and the nose glowing with that hideous
malformation of the Chromos in the basement. But, of course, I
never laid a finger on the retard, it was all a fantasy caused
by the stinging pain being driven straight into my skull. For a
moment, before I lost it all, I saw a grinning clown skull with
a party hat and tasted the grimy texture of leather in my mouth,
the sides of my face smothered in the cascading folds of fat
slithering down the edges of a bar stool.
"Ha!" Billy shouted. "Now you got a red nose! Just like them!"
and his leather boots fled across the crunching landfill and
rotting dog bones. He danced at a distance, a dark shadow
against the fading light, then came back laughing. He took out
these three little bamboo shoots that were tied together and
started pressing it to his lips, coming out with these strangely
musical passages that spoke of something beyond reason. It
actually lulled me, despite my pain.
I lay on the garbage heap, a piece of my nose flapping to the
side like the door to some forgotten basement that wouldn't
shut. Billy Webster stood by all that time playing dreamily on
that crazy wooden flute, piping to the mountains of garbage.
When I realized the full force of what had happened to me, I
asked him politely, "Don't your daddy want you home or
something?"
"No, he's all right alone. Ever since Mom died he just sits
there, goes to work, comes home, sits there. He ain't no clown
lover like your daddy!"
He held up the blade, stained a dull red with my blood. "I got
to cut you one if you touch me. I already cut your nose
something gruesome. Now you're red, like them."
"All right," I said, lifting my weakened head to the air above.
"You win this round. What do you know about my daddy?"
The retard smiled and jumped up and down, his knife and flute
clutched in the same tight fist. "He had those clown women and
he went to them like Mom and Daddy used to do after taking
dickweed!"
"Where, when? What are you talking about?"
"That guy who used to pick his head, what was it? The guy, the
one who, he came down with those trucks and gave your daddy a
hard rap about -- the guy who used to make those movies with the
clowns -- what's his name?"
"I'm tired of this. I'm going home to stanch my nose."
I got only a few yards before he called out to me, a thick
slobbering voice lost in its wetness and knotted tongue. "I seen
them, those clown bitches sucking on the roots, getting all
light headed."
He fell to his knees and scrawled ciphers in the dirt, little
squiggles and worms, trying to explain something, some design
from out of the recesses of his damaged mind. Spittle fell from
his lips onto his sketches, obliterating some of the details,
but his wet dirt encrusted fingers would retrace the lines
exactly as they had been, obsessive and definite.
"Say Jack," I said loud over the garbage piles. "What you
doing?"
He giggled, kicked the dirt out with his heels, wiping out all
traces of his work, and then skipped down the path toward the
cyclone fencing, wrapping around the landfill mountain and
disappearing into the brambles and cedar trees of Old Mill Road.
I put a soothing palm to my wounded nose, placing the flap back
as carefully as pulling up my pants in public. Off in the
distance, the low moans of the foghorn blasted from the factory
gates, the evening signal for the workers.
My mind was on fire with thoughts about my father: what exactly
had he been involved with? Who were the men in blue suits who
came to take away the sick and dying clowns from the basement?
Who were those men that Shingle had talked about and why had my
father been so terrified by the name Brown?
The back of my skull knew the answers, saw faces and smelled
liquor on the breath of strangers peering through holes in
wooden planks. When I was just an infant, there were comings and
goings, men in blue, well-tailored folk with just a hint of red
lipstick and white puffs around the eyes, straw hair dyed a deep
purple but carefully combed and tucked under wide-brimmed hats.
They carried suitcases which were never opened, and smoked a
thick root that I haven't seen since childhood. Father seemed
afraid of them, but he never failed to look them in the eyes.
These men were not friendly, but they were in alliance.
That night there was a meteor shower and my mother nursed my
nose on the porch so we could watch the tracers of light cutting
lines through the sky. Sarah was fixing her little tails and she
poked a finger at the stars over and over saying, "I wanna go
there... and I wanna go there... and there... and there... and I
wanna go there."
There was a deep sadness on that porch, three lonely people in
wicker chairs staring at the dome of the sky. It had been made
very clear, all too clear, that we would not get to see daddy
again until his release, a date that was never revealed to us
but promised ("within a reasonable time for such an offense,"
was the official wording that came in the mail). But even if
that reasonable time ever came and my father's body came
walking, somehow, up that garden path, it really wouldn't be
father anymore. There would be no more father inside those
hollow eyes. The Point was known to do that to a man, remove him
from himself until there was nothing left.
We were now alone with our memories and unanswered questions.
iv. across the troubled worlds
--------------------------------
Six years later, I saw A.J. Shingle again. He had just unleashed
a wave of terror against Eagle Town, the worst since the wars,
spreading his thick but long fingers throughout the townships,
along the dirt roads, into the basements, along the cellar pits,
down the chimneys, into people's private spaces and minds,
through the hatches, and blowing lids off with the fury of
tornadoes. The man rolled down Highway 31 in his convertible,
stuffed behind the wheel with a huge cigar stuck in his flabby
face. The tip glowed red and announced his coming like a homing
beacon crying to the night sea. Seventeen special agents drove
in fifteen shiny government sedans, a bizarre funeral procession
jumping the gun and arriving before the death of the
soon-to-be-deceased.
By that time, I was acquainted with Charlie Papp, the kid from
the other side of the Mill who came down in to the fields to
play by the railroad yards. Charlie's family was better off than
most in Eagle Town, well employed by the government for managing
the import of rare foodstuffs like onions and yams. Old Man Papp
used a home computer, the only one in the township, and
communicated with the administration over a long thick cable
that sprouted from the top of the white slated Papp home and
snaked along the otherwise empty telephone poles down the
interstate, off into the dusty distance.
Charlie was white handed and didn't know the first thing about
digging for roots, but he learned quick in the fields by the
landfill. He even helped me get revenge on Jack Webster one
autumn when we stuffed toads down the retard's pants and watched
him hop off down the path screaming that his thing was being
eaten. I felt I was giving Charlie an education in self-defense
he had missed living in his insulated government regulation
house.
When Shingle blew down the interstate, Charlie and I were
digging up roots by the underpass, our hands firm in the dirt.
But we went running when the siren blasted and the cars went
over the rickety wooden bridge dividing the steel mill from the
fields. A lazy seagull, in fifty miles from the coast, careened
and glided over the train of vehicles, the animal familiar guide
to weird caravans, and came to rest on the bridge's head post, a
knotted black eye screaming the scene.
"Shingle," I muttered to Charlie.
We ditched the tuber baskets and fled, pounding the dirt by the
bridge and heading down the road into town. I had tears in my
eyes and started to feel that tense knot in my throat reserved
for moments of terror, visions of nightmarish creatures with
large predatory fangs. I reached down and held Charlie by the
neck, stopping him and pulling him by the side stone marker, a
granite block with a single white arrow pointing toward Eagle
Town.
"We'd better stay here. When I was your age, my father walked
right into the room with that man and I ain't seen him since
that day."
He looked up at me with sad drooping eyes. "I hate him," he
said.
His words cut through me. They were lacking hope, trailing into
thin whispered left unrecognized. They reminded me of Sarah's
pathetic attempt to drive fat Shingle off our father.
"Don't worry, Charlie," I said. "It's like a raid, checking the
basements for clowns. The railroad, like my daddy was doing.
They'll do it and we'll stay here. When their cars came back
over that bridge, we'll go help the others, okay? I promise,
Charlie. I won't let him near you."
Charlie nuzzled his head into my hips and clung to my thighs. He
cried and then sat down on the granite block.
But Shingle and his men never came back over the bridge. The
raid went on well into the night and from our embankment we
could see the lines of white robed citizens being marched off
down the road.
Charlie was shaking. "I don't like this." Red-veined fear was
popping in his eyes.
I put my arm around him and held tight while sounds of people
wailing came drifting over the embankment and highway
underpasses, echoing the lamentations of my people through the
tunnels of Eagle Town.
"Let's go in -- they may need some help." I pulled him along and
felt his shoulder struggling. He didn't want to go, but I forced
him, pulling his little body by the arms, locking my hands under
his armpits. We moved down the highway until we got to Old Mill
Road and then turned into the center of town, which was
strangely deserted, just a few abandoned cars sweltering in the
night heat.
"They all gone, Ben," Charlie was running from store to store
looking in through the windows. "He done something bad to them."
Just then a bright spotlight flashed through the night, came
down on us squarely as we stood in the clearing. It was burning
like the landing lights of some air ship coming down from the
clouds.
"Duck, Charlie!" I pushed him to the ground and buried his head
beneath my chest and entwined arms. Riddles of bullets coughed
up the dust about us, little firecrackers in a mad dance about
our crumpled limbs.
A loud voice announced over a P.A. system, "Just keep still and
lay there 'til we can come in and get you!"
I lifted up my head, keeping Charlie crushed against my chest
and saw, through the dust, the huge shape of Aronius Jay
Shingle, Law Enforcer of Eagle County, moving slowly toward us.
My heart sank and I felt something lift from my body. It no
longer mattered whether I fought or died, or dissolved into the
dust. My only concern was for Charlie's safety, so I hurled
myself from the ground and dove head on right into the wall of
flesh, ramming straight into that stretched white suit with the
vest and watch fob.
"Run Charlie! Run!" And Charlie ran, straight off into the
night, the crack of insects in the air about him, his screams
piercing the blackness. Little kid screams, more horrifying than
anything an adult could make.
Huge arms seized me and I felt a brute strength I would have put
past Shingle. His grip was viselike and I could barely move,
Within seconds I was inert, weeping, muttering my father's name.
"God damn you Yardleys!" came his gruff and disgusting voice. "I
never seen such a determined strain."
And I knew what he meant. He saw most of the human race as a
virus that proliferated whether they were helpful or harmful to
the propagation of the race as a whole. His contempt for
humanity was appalling, and caused him to commit heinous acts,
atrocities without limits.
He chuckled and turned his angry hold on me into a warm, almost
paternal comfort. "You go about your business, Benjamin Yardley.
I already wrecked you, right? That's the way I see it. No use
belaboring the point, is there?" One hand reached up for his
still smoking cigar.
So that was it. The spotlight, the spattering of bullets. He was
playing with us, like he played with my sister eight years back.
He could have let us go, chuckling at two frightened boys
scampering across a town square, but he was determined to dig as
many wounds into our memory as he could, chuckling as he
spattered bullets and then reached for his megaphone. He was an
unopposed wall of irrational power who came to crush families
and land with indiscriminate force. And now he was offering to
let me go, his mission accomplished.
As I shivered in his arms I allowed myself one moment of imaging
he was my father. I dug my chin into his belly and tried to feel
warm love. It was fleeting, barely there, more in my imagination
than in flesh, and hardly sufficient to satisfy my enormous
craving. But it was all I had. For one tiny second, I thought I
could almost see his tender face calling across the lonely
years, telling that he loved me. Then I let myself go and took
off into the night, running faster than time could follow.
Richard Behrens (behrens@pipeline.com)
----------------------------------------
Richard Behrens is a fiction writer and a native New Yorker
posing as a computer programmer and Web site developer. Over the
last ten years his short stories, poems and essays have appeared
in literary magazines, including Chakra, Blue Light Red Light,
Bogus Books, Artitude, Cinemaphobia, Forbidden Lines and
Web-based magazines including Planet Magazine and Dark Planet.
He lives in New Jersey with his wife Sandrea and son Kristopher.
I am Retarded by Tom Armstrong
==================================
My dog is smarter than me.
Recently, when I arrived home from work -- sweaty and tired, my
pockets stuffed with currency and gold nuggets, tips from my
minimum-wage job driving a dynamite truck -- I found Sharik out
on the back porch grilling a porterhouse on the hibachi and
reading the cantos of Ezra Pound.
"Bad dog," I yelled. "Put that book back on the shelf and get
some exercise! Play with your ball!"
He dropped his glasses, came inside, leaped onto his bench and
typed the following on his keyboard: "All the other dogs are
reading Ezra Pound! You're a very mean master. No other dogs I
know have a retarded owner. I want to run away and join a pack!
I want to howl with the wolves and study James Joyce!" He ran up
the stairs whimpering, his tail between his legs.
His words hurt me deeply. Yes, I am retarded. And there are
never fifteen minutes at a time when I can forget.
I feel sorry for my dog. I wish he had a normal person as a
master, someone who could give him a better life and love him
more. And I wish he had a swimming pool, a one-acre glen and a
foul-smells garden in the backyard like his dog friends. But my
wages are meager and it would all be far more than what I can
afford.
Sharik's unhappiness with me made me deeply sad, which was
worrisome for my friends. I called in sick to work for ten days,
staying at home with the shades drawn. I started drinking little
dark-brown cans of Hershey's chocolate and stopped keeping the
currency in my wallet crisply ironed with pleats running down
from the presidents' noses.
My dog stayed upstairs in his bedroom, updating his Web site,
rabidwolverines.com, where he sells books written using software
he's developed. The software combines the minds of dead authors
for collaborations of new book-length manuscripts. His newest
was a cookbook written by Jean-Paul Sartre and Julia Child:
Being, Nothingness and the Perfect Souffle.
A sonic boom startled me into a standing position out of the
La-Z-Boy, where I was sleepily getting grilled and shaken. To my
surprise, I saw that it was nighttime. A Roman candle lit up the
sky in flickering streaks of red. Within a minute, I heard
screeching tires from the direction of my driveway.
A normal person could have assimilated these sights and sounds
without the need of a lot of synaptic activity, but I am not so
lucky. I have to think about what I have just seen and heard and
organize its symbolic meaning. The sonic boom, though it was
heard throughout the neighborhood, was clearly a signal for me.
I am the only retarded person within a square mile, and no one
else would need a clue that is so gauche. It means -- since this
is a Tuesday -- that someone is about to arrive. The red Roman
candle tells me that it is Cthrwsqwz who is coming over. The red
sparks are meant (I think) to suggest Cthrwsqwz's feathery
headdress. The screech on the driveway would provide normal
listeners with a mother lode of clues. My friends could discern
the make of the bike and the exact imprint of the skid just from
the sound. And if they knew the motorcycle, they could tell
quite a bit about the psychology of the rider and anything he
brought with him. But I am retarded; and the most that I can
tell is that it must be Cthrwsqwz who is at my door.
It _is_ Cthrwsqwz, and he's brought Tjrbkspd with him. I'm
delighted. These are my wonderful friends who are especially
nice to me. I can see that they intend to stay for a while since
they are each carrying in a six-pack of Baffin Island Yodelling
Goat, Canada's finest. And Tjrbkspd has a little package of
peanut butter-on-cheese crackers for Hairbrush, my parrot. It's
so thoughtful; those crackers are Hairbrush's favorite. And
Cthrwsqwz has a jar of dill pickle slices. From a tradition
started in pick-up bars, one sticks a quartered slice of dill
pickle into the throat of a Goat bottle while sipping the brew.
We go into the kitchen, where Hairbrush is quick to join us.
It's so much fun for me and my parrot when the guys come over.
Hairbrush walks on our heads and does impersonations from the
movies she's been watching. "Squawk!" she says, and then, in the
voice of Uma Thurman, "the baby tomato is trailing behind as
they walk, so the papa tomato goes back and squishes him. And he
says 'ketchup.' Squawk -- "
We all laugh. The line is from a movie that was broadcast over
the Bird Channel. People don't watch movies anymore. They're all
too plodding and predictable. But we still recognize a lot of
the dialogue.
Hairbrush is lively and animated when the guys are over. It
makes me so happy to see her this way. But when she runs out of
impersonations, I worry that the guys will quickly get bored and
will find excuses to leave. That never quite happens, but I feel
I'm on the spot to try to think about things to say myself. I
try sometimes to tell the guys about explosions that have
happened at work recently, but I talk very slowly and I can
sense that they are antsy for me to get out of my mouth more
quickly what it is I have to say.
Happily, Cthrwsqwz and Tjrbkspd never tire of talking, and
before their spirits have a chance to flag, they are into
friendly fights over their favorite topics, which range from
Beetlejuice to Zen Buddhism.
And tonight the guys get to yammering at full throttle.
Cthrwsqwz begins gesticulating frenetically. His fingers splay
and twitch. He tugs at his shirt and moves about in choppy
steps. The words come like a geyser. "Yicmeatlo uplorpco splek.
Brando as santos de bardo," was a part of what he said.
Tjrbkspd watches in that intensely focussed way he has,
sometimes gesturing in tandem with Cthrwsqwz. Tjrbkspd jumps in
with his siren of melded syllables when Cthrwsqwz pauses. I
could catch only a few disconnected phrases: "optimize breakflow
... phojvolky torpe the younger type... remedial messenger,
zenmar... how were the beefsteak tomatoes... screamers,
tathagalpagarba!... PHOT!"
I listened intently to the conversation, participating as best I
could -- but as we all knew, I understood very little of what
was going on. When they laughed at something, I laughed, too.
But inside I felt fear and embarrassment. What we were laughing
about, I couldn't know.
Cthrwsqwz and Tjrbkspd are very kind to me. And their kindness
is genuine. But it has to be as frustrating for them as it is
for me that I understand only a little of what they talk about.
I was caught off-guard when suddenly their yakking stopped and
they were staring at me. I tried to seem nonchalant, tearing at
the Goat label and poking at my pickle, but it seemed that
everyone's attention was directed toward me. Even Hairbrush, who
stood on the refrigerator, was giving me a stony stare.
At issue was getting me to agree to go with them to a club the
next evening. Apparently I was needed for some research they
were conducting. I agreed to go, for fear of the consequences of
not agreeing to go, and this pleased the guys. Then they told me
that Sariphina-platt was likely to be there, and this made me
very nervous.
When our get-togethers end, they always leave together. I
can hear them starting up their conversation again as they
scruff down the walkway, popping a wheelie and throwing
thunderbolts into the spittoons. I can see that it is easier
for them to get into the flow and excitement of their
discussion when they do not have to try to include me.
Up until a year ago, I was in a spotty, long-term relationship
with the retarded woman Sariphina-platt. Every few weeks, we
arranged to meet at her friend's house where we drank fermented
grape juice and made love in the animal way. This is considered
primitive and silly by average, smart people, but we enjoyed
ourselves. Once, for a solid week, we insulated ourselves from
all the pressures of being retarded. We holed up in an old-style
hotel, talked simply to each other, loved each other, and tried
to forget about other people and the culture we live in that is
so complicated for us. For fun, we played two-dimensional chess
in bed and finished games even if one of us was ahead by a
knight or a passed pawn.
Our bodies are not considered beautiful or sexy, primarily
because we cannot afford all the surgery and tattoos that are de
rigueur. Sariphina-platt has taken care to keep her hands
stylish and heavily tattooed and has a modest job as a hand
model for television commercials.
After our delightful week together, we went back to our jobs and
pretended not to know each other. Time passed, and I didn't call
or e- mail Sariphina-platt. While anyone who comes to know
either of us will quickly be aware that we aren't smart about
anything, we try not to make people uncomfortable, so we pretend
as best we can to seem normal. On those times when either of us
sees another retarded person on the street, we quietly but
quickly turn away.
I don't pine for Sariphina-platt, but I think of her sometimes.
I think of what it must be like to live comfortably in the
world, like real people. And in my dreams, sometimes
Sariphina-platt and I are married with a large family. In these
dreams, when people talk to us, we always understand whatever is
being said. And our infant children are robust and supremely
normal -- jumping off the bookcases and chasing each other
around the living room with firelogs and scissors.
I picked up all the Hershey's cans in the living room, and
generally cleaned up my house. It seemed to calm my extreme
nervousness about the club date with Cthrwsqwz and Tjrbkspd with
its possibility of running into Sariphina-platt. I tried to
think up excuses to get out of it, but in our society, the worst
thing a person can do is be unsociable. And my retardation makes
me very vulnerable.
Last year Cthrwsqwz had a three-dimensional name that was
impossible for me to pronounce. For my benefit, he wore his name
as a medallion on a chain around his neck. But one day he came
over after he had dyed his chest hairs blue and, to be more
stylish, had one of his arms surgically removed. When I saw him
I couldn't recognize him. When word got around about my trouble
identifying him, this bothered a lot of people. For a while
there was talk about putting me in an institution for retarded
people (called a university) where I could get care and lodging,
and with help might get a Master's that would help me to cope
with the people of this world, 99 percent of whom are much
smarter than me.
It remains a matter of intense fear that I might one day find
myself dragged away in a straitjacket to Rutgers or UCLA where
I'll have to do term papers and go to football games.
Sharik came downstairs from his room while I was cleaning. He
had sensed my fear and nervousness -- this wonderful dog -- and
wanted to give me comfort. He had me sit on the couch where he
placed his head on my lap and let me stroke the brown fur on his
head.
That morning, I had bought him the complete works of Proust and
Balzac, setting the books just outside his bedroom door. And
earlier still, I sent him an e-mail saying it would be fine with
me if he read Pound anytime he wanted to.
That evening, chtrwsqwz and tjrbkspd arrived at my house as
planned. Tjrbkspd was wearing a shirt in a color I hadn't seen
before. The new primary colors that the scientists are releasing
are an overload for my sense of sight, but whenever I first see
a new one, it fascinates me. The new color is called frobjnicht.
Tjrbkspd tells me that the color isn't the primary color in its
pure form; rather, it's a reddish yiktatish frobjnicht with
perhaps a hint of yellow and scormeare.
Then, Cthrwsqwz said to me in his speedy way "Validium grenidine
thor _brak!_"
_Validium_ is an old word that will expire in a week. It means
"hop on the back of my bike." I don't know the words "grenidine"
or "thor," but if what he really said was "grenitheen door" it
would mean "the clouds are made of buttermilk." But what _that_
might mean in the context of anything he would have to say to
me, I cannot imagine. _Brak!_ can variously mean "remove your
pants" or "would you like a soft drink with your sprouts
sandwich?" In any case, I hopped on the back of the motorcycle.
I ride as the third person on the bike, hanging onto Tjrbkspd's
waist, smiling stupidly as I stare into his shirt.
We arrive at the club which, like many in town, has a name that
cannot be pronounced. Its name is four dimensional, made from
light and time.
The gist of what I'm told is that it's a gorpfucking club.
Learning this scares me. I'm far too stupid to get involved with
any gorpfucking, but Cthrwsqwz assures me that I needn't be
anxious. He takes me to an anteroom inside the building and has
me strip off my clothes. He places a helmet on my head that is
lined with computer chips and has wires, transistors and metal
plates on the outside. I am reluctant to wear this thing, partly
because I think that anything with transistors must be a cruel
practical joke. But Cthrwsqwz is a genuinely nice person (all
the smart people are genuinely nice), so, with assurances from
Tjrbkspd, I do what I am directed to do.
In the center of the building there is a large hall crowded with
people conversing with each other in small groups. So far as I
can see, I am the only person who is naked or wearing a helmet.
The others are all young and are fully and stylishly dressed.
Many have wonderful tattoos and arms that are attached to their
bodies in interesting places. While I can tell nothing about
their behavior that seems odd, I know from my limited knowledge
of clubs like this one that some are gorpfucking.
I wander about the hall, losing sight of Cthrwsqwz and Tjrbkspd.
I am pretty much ignored by all the people, but several glance
over at me, looking first at my helmet, then at my face and then
quickly at my genitals. This creates in me an odd mixture of
embarrassment and excitement.
After a while, I see Sariphina-platt several yards away. She,
too, is naked and wearing a helmet. I approach her, but when I
am as near as three feet, something magnetic at the front of our
helmets causes our heads to lock in contact so firmly that we
cannot pull away.
My brain is then captured, like a rabbit in a snare. But for
reasons I cannot understand, my sense of fear quickly ends, and
it is as if the clouds have parted, revealing a sky that is a
beautiful blue. And then the sky parts and the sun and stars
come into focus and they are divine. I am in awe of how perfect
it is. The beauty and my bliss are so intense and so complete
that it is both unbearable and unbearable to suppose the feeling
might end and my knowledge of the feeling might fade. I am
hopelessly in love in a universe that is compassionate and just
as it has to be. I am together with Sariphina-platt in a
cavalcade of laughing and weeping. Our thoughts are not coded in
words, but pass like a river flowing between us. It is ultimate
beauty. Serene and delightful. Majestic and ineffable.
It was hard to return to the routine of my life and job after
that night of gorpfucking, but I was able to, and I was glad my
depression had ended.
Sariphina-platt began discussing with me the possibility of our
combining our households. She had in mind the idea of leaving
her apartment above a bowling alley and moving into my house. Of
course, I am gleeful at the prospect.
I had her come over to my house where she met Sharik and
Hairbrush. Sharik played ball with her and, if he wasn't
actually having a good time, he pretended that he was. He told
me afterward that he thinks Sariphina-platt is very, very nice.
Sariphina-platt told me that my dog is wonderful and that my
parrot is a joy. Things went very well. As Sariphina-platt was
leaving, Hairbrush sang " 'Til We Meet Again," in the voice of
Marlene Dietrich, which left all of us in tears.
"There is one last thing," Sariphina-platt told me as she got
into a taxicab. "We will have to get the approval of my
Clydesdale. You must meet him on Thursday."
Her horse. It seems that the horse her parents bought her when
she was small makes most of the decisions for her in life.
Sariphina-platt is anxious, but insists that there is no getting
around the need for our getting the approval of Rising Star
before we can move in together.
"There's something you need to know," she went on to say,
"Rising Star is also Equus Majorca, the leader of the equine
separatist movement."
Of course, I am astonished. While for the most part it is
considered rude for humans to stick their noses into the
politics of other species, all news-aware humans know Equus
Majorca, the author of We'll Take Colorado, a manifesto that
demands that human-run America cede territory to set up an
all-horse republic in the Rocky Mountains. Already, horses have
taken over many of the suburbs of Denver and Colorado Springs.
To further their political agenda, horses have been lying down
on the runway at the Denver Airport to prevent planes from
landing.
The horse demands have recently been strengthened by support
from many other animals. Felines United argues that humans
should be eager to give up a state that is simplistically
rectangular. But as a geometry-wise antelope writer pointed out
in a National Geographic editorial, due to the curvature of the
earth, Colorado is actually more of a rhombus. Others argue that
humans should keep the state because it's a parallelogram.
Congress tried to end the uprising by simply passing legislation
declaring Colorado to be circular.
I am wearing a new frobjnicht-colored suit when I arrive at
Sariphina-platt's apartment. Her living room is large, clean and
fashionable with photographs on the walls showing her lovely
hands holding wrought iron perches and seed dispensers.
"Brak!" she says.
"Yes," I reply. "I _would_ like a Dr Pepper with my sprouts
sandwich."
We have a cordial conversation while seated on her sofa. I can
hear below us the loud noises of bowling balls striking pins.
And from a room nearby I hear the stomping sound of a large
horse walking about.
"I have to tell you," says Sariphina-platt, "that moving in with
you would be a great convenience for us since the bowling alley
is having us evicted for making too much noise."
I smile in reply, gobbling down the last bite of the delicious
sprouts sandwich.
When it is time for the interview my attention turns toward the
slimy feel of sweat covering my body. I loosen my necktie a tad
and worry that her horse will be offended by the placement of my
arms in sockets at each shoulder.
Sariphina-platt leads me to the end of a short hallway where we
stop in front of dutch doors. The top door is pushed open by the
nose of an enormous beige horse who whinnies and then runs
behind a curtain.
It is quickly evident that behind the curtain is where the horse
keeps his keypad, because a Times Square-style Linotype at the
back of the room quickly spells out the word "Welcome."
"Welcome to you, too!" I blurt.
"I hope that we become fast friends," says a line of new words.
"While I am known for insisting that humans call me Equus
Majorca, I would like you to call me by the name Sariphina-platt
gave me at the time of my birth, Rising Star!"
"Thank you, Rising Star," I say. "Please call me Freedjor, which
is my label this week."
"Thank you, Freedjor" says the Linotype. "Can I know you by the
name you were given at birth?"
"Well," I say, "when I was born they just called me
'the baby.'"
"Then I will call you Freedjor this week," says the line of
type. "Greetings, Freedjor!"
It tickles me to see my new name in all those large letters.
This horse is a very nice one. "Greetings to you, Rising Star!"
"You should know, Freedjor, that my activities with the equine
separatists will be ongoing and can only intensify. As much as I
love Sariphina-platt and respect many humans, I cannot forget
that humans have been on our back for thousands of years and
have murdered us to make dog food and glue."
At this point, Sariphina-platt has started to weep. I place my
arm around her shoulder and say, "I would love for you and
Sariphina-platt to come and live with me and my wolf, Sharik,
and my parrot, Hairbrush. Sharik, by the way, is a strict
vegetarian. We will all be close friends."
"Your offer warms my heart. I know that you and Sariphina-platt
belong together and that you can have a normal life. As for
myself, I want to take you up on your offer, but I must go to
Colorado! When we are evicted from our apartment by the bowling
alley, I would like for Sariphina-platt to move in with you
while I go to Colorado to advance the welfare of noble horses.
We can remain in close contact by e-mail. And, of course, we can
visit each other frequently!"
Sariphina-platt is inconsolable.
"I will take good care of Sariphina-platt," I say.
"Wonderful!" reads the Linotype. "Things are being arranged. As
Sariphina-platt may have told you, my hobby is ballooning. What
with the problems at the airports in Colorado, I will get there
by balloon. The launch in scheduled for the 25th."
At the park on the 25th a large crowd gathers. While the
majority of creatures are horses, there are many other animals
including hundreds of supportive humans, many wearing T-shirts
that read "They _deserve_ Colorado! We should throw in Wyoming
for good measure!"
Rising Star addresses the crowd while standing in the basket of
his red-and-blue balloon. The Linotype machine is set up in
front of him. For the occasion, Rising Star is "a horse of a
different color," having dyed his coat a marvelous shade of
splendorfus, a brand-new color that makes people think of
happiness.
Sariphina-platt, Sharik and I are nearby. Hairbrush is fifty
yards away fighting with some other birds for perch space on the
branch of a tree. I am proud of Sariphina-platt, who is holding
up bravely. She dabs at the corners of her eyes with a
handkerchief.
"Greetings to you all!" reads Rising Star's first burst of
words. "I leave for Colorado with feelings of love and
friendship! For me, this is the beginning of a grand adventure.
Still, I am overwhelmed with sorrow. I will miss many friends
and, especially, I will miss Sariphina-platt, who is so dear."
As the ropes are loosened to release the balloon,
Sariphina-platt kicks off her red slippers, breaks from my side
and leaps into the basket of the balloon with Rising Star. The
humans in the crowd cheer and the many horses whinny. Rising
Star bobs his head and Sariphina-platt waves robustly at the
crowd as the balloon ascends into the blue sky. I watch as the
balloon, Rising Star and Sariphina-platt grow dim as a tiny gray
dot. Finally, they disappear behind a solitary white cloud and
leave my life forever.
A month later, there is no sonic boom that precedes Cthrwsqwz's
visit to my home. He carries in several boxes of varying sizes
and introduces me to a woman he has brought with him, a Dr.
Brendafsh who is wearing an official-looking white jacket.
I am scared. Sharik barks at our visitors and I tenderly
restrain him.
The Wednesday before, I was fired from my job after driving
erratically -- some said suicidally -- on the freeway with a
full load of explosives. It was a terrible day; the police
handcuffed me and I didn't earn any tips.
The news that Cthrwsqwz has for me is that he and my friends
have committed me to a university where I am to take advanced
courses in comparative lit and animal husbandry. All this is
meant to help me to cope with the strains of living in a world
that I experience as very complex. The university that has
accepted me is just down the street, so I won't have to
relocate. And thanks to Sharik, there's enough money coming in
so I won't have to get a new job.
At Sharik's Web site, sales of his books are booming. A series
on existential cooking tops the Amazon.com best-sellers list.
One volume released just days ago, co-written by Erika Jong and
Albert Camus, Fear of Frying for Strangers, has recipes for pork
chops that make your mouth water no matter what your state of
angst. The top Religion and Spirituality book is Sharik's The
Son Also Rises, by Matthew, Mark, John, and Ernest Hemingway.
The boxes contain the final version of the gorpfucking helmets
that Cthrwsqwz has been working on. They look very much like
football helmets. Whatever chips and mechanics are involved in
making the machines operate are hidden inside. By their
appearance, the helmets seem made of fiberglass. The inside is
lined with a comfortable-looking padding. A chin strap holds the
helmet in place on one's head.
Dr. Brendafsh places the largest helmet on me and makes several
adjustments with her three hands. My fear melts away. I have
often depended on the kindness of smart strangers.
"_Brak!_" says Dr. Brendafsh.
My heart pumps like mad. I am high above the ground, flying
among the clouds. Sharik is there, his tail wagging so hard that
his hindquarters moves right and left. Hairbrush is flying happy
and free. And the sky is an azure German river; and the stars
are rhinestones, glistening. My dreamy thoughts are not coded in
words, but pass like a river flowing in front of me. It is
ultimate beauty. Serene and delightful. Majestic and ineffable.
I feel like I could live forever. And I am lost in swirling
thoughts that combined my memories and the possibilities in an
unlimited future.
O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson
sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in
the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and
pink and scormeare and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the
jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a boy
where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in
her hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a
frobjnicht shirt yes and how she kissed me in that sad hotel and
I thought well as well her as another and then I asked her with
my eyes to ask again yes and then she asked me would I yes to
say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around her
yes and drew her down to me so she could feel my loins and smell
the whiff of musk and yes and my heart was going like mad and
yes I said
yes
I will
Yes.
Tom Armstrong (TomArmstr@aol.com)
-----------------------------------
Tom Armstrong lives in San Francisco, where he's an unemployed
low-level accountant who's one month behind in his rent. He
writes for and edits Zen Unbound. Articles written by him have
appeared in eDharma and CyberSangha.
<http://members.aol.com/zenunbound/>
Take Us We Bulls by Will Sand
=================================
....................................................................
They came in peace. They left in peace. So now what?
....................................................................
Alone in his ornate office, adjunct aide Douglas drew himself a
brandy. He set the decanter back on the mantle, walked to his
settee, and let out a self-satisfied sigh.
Was it possible to be pompous while alone? He silently laughed
at himself.
He picked up the alien book. The crusty sheen on its cover,
while slightly disgusting, was also a mark of value, of
distinction. The alien leader, by way of autographing, had
sprayed on this copy before he personally presented it to the
human representative who had guided their whirlwind visit.
Stifling his innate curiosity, Douglas had yet to sniff this
veneer, but from a hand-held distance the secretion was odorless
to humans.
It hardly had been the dramatic First Contact envisioned by
either scientists or science-fiction writers. It was thoroughly
anticlimactic. A week ago humanity was ignorant of their
existence; now they were two days gone. And nothing had changed.
They neither took nor left anything. But in those few days, not
much more than a hundred hours, they had visited every corner of
the earth. Douglas had been one of the leaders of the delegation
that had escorted them.
Yet he still didn't know what properly to call them. In the book
they had distributed to humanity in fourteen languages, they
simply referred to themselves as "we the 650 billion." They
evidently defined themselves by their population, presumably
up-to-date and cumulative.
_650,000,000,000_.
It was a bit awkward as far as nomenclature goes. However, as
the only alien species yet encountered, calling them simply and
generically the "aliens" worked out fine.
Douglas found himself unconsciously caressing the book. He felt
a glow: from the brandy, from a job well done, from friends
newly made. The feel of their book, as anointed, aptly mimicked
their alien skin. Some had looked upon that skin as deeply
pocked, a body-wide angry acne. But he saw those flowing red
ridges and brown furrows as a rich leathery meringue. Doctors
had speculated on the benefits of such a vastly increased
surface area. Douglas had just marveled at its multicolored,
textured beauty. It suited the animal health that percolated
beneath their far-seeing dignity.
He opened the book. Its title alone would invite volumes of
scholarly interpretation. Given that any translation would be
imperfect -- even one conducted by such an advanced intelligence
-- the title and various passages were vexing in their
imprecision while haunting in their poetry.
He read the title aloud: "Take Us We Bulls." Bold. Enigmatic.
The book was about them: a primer, perhaps a bible. History,
philosophy, religion, all in one. They seemed to make no
distinction.
There was a dichotomy about the title that appealed to Douglas,
even as he struggled for its meaning. "Take us...." Apparently
they willingly and eagerly give themselves up to the universe,
to forces greater than themselves, forces they see as powerful,
intriguing, and benign. Yet the other half -- "...We Bulls" --
moves from the passive to the active, from humility to pride,
from "us" to "we" to "bulls." With both acceptance and
determination, these aliens engage the universe; they are part
of its scope. They seek the destiny that awaits them, that is
their due. As do we, Douglas thought; there is that bond between
us. _All_iens.
His door intoned: _Visitor_Visitor_. A female voice. "It's me,
Douglas. Victoria."
She sounded shaken and, upon entering, looked disheveled. She
waved aside his offer of an after-hours brandy.
She plopped herself onto his couch, slumped deep into it, and
then, with nervous effort, sat upright on its edge. "You've been
summoned." By way of explanation, she added, "I've been in the
First Office."
Douglas nodded. There were rumors of an affair. Co-workers
everywhere, he thought wryly -- and then, fondly, of Roger.
"Douglas," she said, "Douglas." And began crying.
He started to go to her but she abruptly rose. She paced as she
fought for control. When she turned back to him, she had
regained it, though the battle left her white.
Douglas had been transfixed by her anxiety. Now he found his
voice. "What..."
She cut him off. "We've been getting calls. Reports. It started,
God, less than an hour ago. Hundreds by now; thousands soon."
She sighed, trailing off, "Millions...."
"Come on, Victoria! What reports?"
"From all over the world. Births. Newborns with red and brown...
crusty ridges...." She started weeping again.
"Their skin."
Douglas was frozen in his seat. Finally his head dropped. Take
Us We Bulls. The book was still open in his lap, on the first
page. He gaped and then gasped.
The first sentence now read, "We the 660 billion...."
Will Sand (akawillsand@yahoo.com)
-----------------------------------
Will Sand has had SF published in Aberrations, NeverWorlds, and
Horizons, and is archived in Dark Planet and Ibn Qirtaiba. His
current project is "A New Millennium's Resolution."
<http://www.redshift.com/~wsandtt/>
FYI
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