Alligators of Abraham (14 page)

And your father stored infant alligators in mason jars of formaldehyde and ancient fragrances, their mouths floating open in dreamy snarls, their eyes bulging as if outsized for their skulls, slit and horrified. Your father clicked his fingers against the glass, watched their faces bob, whispered unto them for the secrets of immortality.

And your father cast infant alligators into tin tubs, and there they swam and darted as if young tadpoles; their infinitesimal black claws, the prick of their miniscule teeth. And your father strung alligators from the cobwebbed beams of his basement, by chains and ropes, the bodies of alligators and the skins of alligators, the husks of alligators, and these your father salted and smoked as he stared into the fog of their dead eyes.

Your father's eyes followed the back and forth of infant alligators along the length of the tub, and he said unto the atmosphere, “Every creature begins life as something impeccable and tiny,” and he dangled an alligator by the tail, saying, “Most creatures will die; this one may not.”

And the banks once clogged and thriving with the ancient madness of alligators now lay silent but for the seldom hissing of a few. And your father tossed nets onto alligators, and the alligators tore free, and they ate the nets, and they hissed, and your father did not murder them with a mallet nor with a bolt gun, nor did he attempt to strangle those young enough for a man to wrap his hands about. For your father wanted them alive. He yearned to study their processes.

And your father wandered the gloom of houses, the lightless atmosphere of houses, crept along the floorboards, the Oriental carpets, the dust and webs and wallpaper peeling, and your father lugged his bolt gun along the hallways of these abandoned houses while the boards creaked beneath his boots, these houses dilapidated, the doors unhinged and smashed in, these houses as nests for alligators, and your father listened for their hissing, and he peered into abandoned rooms, and he prayed for alligators fat and healthy and crawling along each other, their yellow eyes stilled and waiting.

And your father lit kindling beneath his tin tub while infant alligators darted within, and soon the slow boil of water, and your father said into the absence, “I believe their hide impervious.” And when these alligators bobbed lifeless in the bubbling, your father said, “They must become stronger with time.”

And your father said unto the dust and char and absence, “If they will grow—someday—or if we may find one large enough—perhaps we could live inside of it. Perhaps we could be warm there, together—you and your mother and I.”

And there came a day when millionaires strode along the mud-lawn in their silk top hats and black overcoats, and they came with cigars and pipes readied, and their patent leather shoes blurred with mud as they stood in the shadow of what was once your house. And when they surveyed this corpse of rotten wood and flaked paint and wearied shingles, they found not your father but the petrified corpses of birds and the thriving colonies of beetles, and along this mud-lawn they pressed handkerchiefs to their mouths, and through these they wheezed, and they found the front door fallen away and into the lightless parlor they called out your father's name, called out, “General?” and within the next they found alligators shrouded in dust and cobwebs, the hallways clogged with alligator heads and legs, the hollowed out bodies of alligators. And they found the splintered bones of unpaid children. And they found the bones of rabbits, and the bones of militiamen. And they found the bodies of adolescent alligators swinging from beams, and they found the mature bodies of alligators draped over velvet footstools and sofas, the eyes hollowed into sockets and the mouths emptied of all flesh, until there remained only the prick of their teeth.

These men called your father's name and his name echoed back as if they now wandered a cavern. And they continued into a cellar and upon the floor the fragments of mason jars lay with the strewn, gelatinous bodies of infant alligators, and these men stood silent in the huskiness of their breathing, and these men wandered the dirt floor while their shoes crunched shards of glass and the miniscule bodies of alligators.

These men called your father's name into your bedroom, and into your parents' chambers, and they found nothing other than musty stuffed toys and long unused beds. Inside the washroom they found a tin tub filled with the scalded and boiled bodies of alligators, and into this mess they dipped their hands, and how cold were these once throbbing waters.

And finally some of these men said, “The General has become a maniac,” while others insisted, “He has always been so. This is why he was so effective.”

And how these millionaires found your father on the back lawn, nesting inside an alligator belly slit open and pulled apart, in his hands a knife slick with gore. And the alligator's mouth lay open, and the pink tongue flopped into the mud, and the air smelled of peat and fish, and the tongue was covered in ants and flies, and the eyes of the alligator gazed outward. These millionaires found your father with one boot inside the alligator and one boot outside, and half his figure seemed within and half his figure without, and he said to these men who stood before him, “This was the largest, but it is still not large enough.”

And these men said to your father, “We've come about politics” and your father said, “This one I killed with a bolt gun, you can see the hole there” and your father gestured to the upside-down alligator's skull, the black blood puddled in the mud. But these men continued, “This country needs a man of strength and accomplishments, one who will not pander to the unpaid and their sympathizers” and your father replied, “I believe I will find one, someday, large enough to hold me within its husk. But it must be an enormous animal” and these men continued, “A man who inspires fear and awe,” for in those days many presidents assumed office too drunk to speak, or too stupid to write, or too corpulent to remove his body from his bathtub, and insurrectionists simply murdered these men, shooting them in the open street, or while making a speech, or while exiting a train.

And your father replied unto these men, “Such a monster will likely kill me first” and these men said, “We need you, General” and your father said, “I have spent years within these creatures,” and your father gestured to his skull and said, “Up here.”

*

Your father wandered the flaming streets, the charred avenues, the shantytowns. And the unpaid were by now fled, and militiamen holed up with each other, with the women they gathered, and there your father stood with his bolt gun while they played poker, half-blind with alcohol while they fornicated with their fingers and their cocks, while they pressed gasoline soaked rags to each other's faces. And he crept behind them while they pissed under the moonlight and soon their bodies mounded and spilled blood into the soft dead soil. And your father prodded them with his boot, and your father stood before the gathered mass of the dead militiamen, their pants to their ankles, their members yet slick and warm. And your father gathered the bodies of militiamen in wheelbarrows and dumped these along the river banks where they putrefied in the open air, where the flies and gnats swarmed, where the wild dogs sneered and dripped foam and tore at their yellow flesh. And from his position along the river, your father shot these in the mange, in the throats, and the bodies tumbled and gathered with the others, and there your father sat amongst the fly-swarmed and decaying bodies, and there he awaited the return of the alligators.

 

And they had alligator for stone, and slime for mortar. And they said Let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. And the Almighty came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had built
.

“Do you know the way of the spirit?”

And the Almighty said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do
.

 

In those times you lived in a city rimmed red with flame, rocked by the explosions of pipe and gasoline bombs, the echoing cries of “Dynamite! Dynamite!” And there were nights you attended parties and balls in the brownstone homes and country mansions of millionaires, the tuxedoes and plumed masks, the fog of cigars and sifters of scotch, the graying tufts of whiskers and mutton-chops, and these parties were more and more often haunted by the voices of the dead, channeled from tin horns, and there were those who whispered of commercializing such a technology. And there were those at these parties who led you through their Persian and Oriental rugged libraries, who gestured to their rare bibles covered in lamb-skins and calf-skins and translated into extinct languages, and here the original manuscripts of Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, and the etchings of Rembrandt and Rafael, and along the walls the portraits of curved women in diaphanous robes, their heaving bosoms, their hair flowing in unseen winds, and it was said by these millionaires, “We men of great means must take up the burden of educating our fellow countrymen in certain Old World ideals, in regards to art and culture” and these millionaires puffed their cigars while the faint whine of dead voices wafted from outer rooms. And these millionaires, perhaps by now billionaires, exhaled their smoke and felt dutiful to explain there was even more, and they gestured to the floor and said, “The cellar is filled with many such examples” and “I'm told they will be worth an even greater fortune in years to come.”

“I lay awake in the glow of the florescence”

And at parties in brownstone homes millionaires talked of your star on the rise while you drank their scotch and watched the shanty towns burn. And some nights you fornicated with their daughters to the explosions across the river. And some nights you began with these women and could not finish for the dullness of the meat slapping against meat, for the pungency of their fumes, for the loneliness within your breast. And these women you bade leave while you continued with your scotch. And when the scotch was gone you found the bourbon and when the bourbon was gone you gazed out the window into the vacant night and watched the flames of the nearby towns ablaze and throbbing in their discontent. And in the light of those explosions, in the burn of the liquor, you wrote letters to a woman you did not know and a son you had not yet conceived. You considered her on some imagined evening, the immense bulge of her bustle, the strands of her hairs caught in the glowing twilight. You considered the boy, with his eyes that seemed your grandfather's eyes, watching you, in awe. And into the light of a world gone to ruin, you said the name of your father.

And millionaires watched the flash of explosions and blamed those who lived in shanties, in hovels, those who lived in crumbling brick buildings scurrying with rats and lice and disease. And there were those who said the paying of the unpaid only “enhanced the unnatural expectation” of every worker, no matter their race or creed or national origin. And there were those who said foreigners in yellow pantaloons and heavy beards agitated the lowly paid into riots and insurrection. And there were rumors of anarchists dressed as soldiers who planned to waylay the president's carriage with shotguns and crowbars. And there were those who said the lowly paid lost themselves in alcohol, in opium, in cocaine. And there were those who sniffed until they reached a frenzy and these took to the streets in search of well-mannered ladies. And it was said now that these raving cocaine fiends started riots and shot into crowds, and many said that they half-expected some cocaine fiend to murder the president while he shook hands with the faithful.

And there were those who insisted if the unpaid were sent away, forcibly migrated or conned to distant and frozen shores, as Abraham had long ago dreamed, perhaps calm would again settle along the land and again harmony between master and servant would reign.

And you sat before these statesmen in their offices, smoking cigars and drinking scotch until you could scarcely see or breathe for the burn, and often millionaires or the emissaries of millionaires joined. Such was the case when Robert, the son of Abraham, suggested you lead the expedition establishing new and lasting colonies along unforgiving wastelands. He unfurled maps and read decrees. He said that his father had often extolled the virtues of colonization. And when you said you knew nothing of ships, they replied, “There will be men along who know a great deal of ships,” and when you said you knew nothing of leading an expedition of men they said, “It is in your blood,” and when you said you knew nothing of establishing a settlement they said you would have much time for reading on the ship. And when you said you cared nothing for the unpaid or the plight of the lowly paid worker they said, “My good man, no honest fellow does.”

*

Soon you leaned upon the rail of a ship in the moaning of ropes and boards, the slapping of water against the hull, gulls swirling and shrieking. You leaned against the bulwark while these other men milled and smoked on deck, while they mimed shots at the gulls darting and plummeting past the sails, and soon the captain touched your shoulder and said quietly, “Look alive, man” and in a voice meant for the rest of your men, he said, “Ready yourselves.” And soon soldiers led the unpaid to their compartment below while you waited in your cabin. And you watched your eyes in the mirror and these seemed the eyes of a different man, and you sat on a velvet cushioned chair with your boots upon your desk, smoking, listening to the rocking of the ship, to the twisting of the ropes, the wind beating against the sails, and you thought, “I have not always been here” although this now seemed the only moment you had ever known.