Geek Love (15 page)

I found this clipping years later in the private papers of the reporter Norval Sanderson, who joined the show sometime after Dr. P. Norval had resources that we Binewskis lacked. When he wanted info on someone's past, he could tap records and microfilm files from any newspaper in the country.

(UPI) A coed at the University of New York was admitted to St. Theresa's Hospital today after having performed abdominal surgery on herself in her dormitory room.

University authorities revealed that Phyllis Gleaner, 22, a third-year bio-chem major, pressed an alarm buzzer in her dormitory room, which summoned the building's custodian at 4:30 A.M., Tuesday. Responding to the buzzer, custodian Gregory Phelps found the student lying on a sterile table, wrapped in bloody sheets and surrounded by instruments.

“She was weak but conscious,” said Phelps. “She told me not to touch anything in the room but to call an ambulance. She said the room was sterile and she didn't want me touching anything. She was very strong on that. I could see blood all over and from what I saw in the mirrors around her I didn't want to upset her so I went and called the emergency number.”

Police surgeon Kevin Goran, M.D., examined Gleaner's dorm room after she was removed to the hospital. “It was a makeshift but functional operating theater,” said Goran. “She had instruments for fairly major abdominal surgery, and an ingenious arrangement of mirrors, which allowed her to work inside her own abdominal cavity.”

Emergency staff at St. Theresa's reported that Gleaner was conscious and coherent when admitted, but was very fatigued. “She was not really in shock,” said Dr. Vincent Coraccio, staff surgeon at St. Theresa's. “What was remarkable was the competence of the work. She'd gone all the way in and was finished, evidently, but she got too tired to close the incision. That's when she called for help. All I had to do was stitch her up. A very tidy job.”

Gleaner administered local anesthetics to herself throughout the surgical procedure. Her statements to the hospital staff indicate that Gleaner believed a remote-control device had been implanted next to her liver by an unnamed undercover organization. Gleaner believed that the device was being used to monitor and direct her activities. She performed the surgery in an effort to rid herself of the device. No such device was found by police in searching Gleaner's dormitory room, nor by the medical staff in treating Gleaner.

The clipping was stapled in Sanderson's notebook. One page of his sprawling hand revealed the rest of his Doc P. research.

In an article appearing two days later, the same reporter revealed that university officials attempting to contact Gleaner's family discovered that the background on file was fictitious. She had not attended the schools that she claimed. Her records were forged and falsified. No relatives or friends could be located in the small Kansas town -- Garden City -- she claimed as her home. The university was embarrassed, particularly since Gleaner's academic record at that institution was brilliant. Her professors acknowledged that she was a reserved individual and denied any knowledge of her private life. They affirmed that her work had been consistently excellent. Classmates claimed little knowledge of Gleaner. She was aloof from everyone.

Gleaner has consistently refused to make any statement or to answer any questions about her self-surgery or her falsified background. Her only comment, relayed through a nurse's aide, was that the university had no cause for alarm since her tuition and fees had always been paid.

Blood, Stumps, and Other Changes

The twins turned fourteen in Burkburnett, Texas, during a Panhandle sandstorm as red as a drinkers eye. Birthdays were the only holidays the Binewskis noticed and we celebrated them with all the gusto we could muster. But that fourteenth for the twins was in a rough spot. Wichita Falls had denied us a permit and the front man -- new to the job, and a reptile anyway -- was scared to tell Al. We didn't find out until the police met us at the lot and escorted our cavalcade out of town, with Al cursing melodically all the way to our next scheduled stop, which was Burkburnett. Burkburnett hadn't decided whether we could have a permit or not. We put up in the railyard next to the slaughterhouse and slept with the whish and thunk of the oil pumps for night music.

There were oil wells everywhere. The soil had been abandoned to dust and lizards, and the backyard of every wind-blistered bungalow in town had thrown over ideas of shade or geraniums in favor of the whiskey promise in the mutter of those green grasshopper pumps. Every pump was set in concrete and snugged in by a barb-topped chain-link fence eight feet high. There were pumps in the parking lot of the twenty-four-hour liquor store. There were three pumps on choice plots surrounded by the artificial turf that covered the Terra Celestial Memorial Gardens boneyard. A dozen ravenous steel insects sucked at the shit-caked loam in the mile-square meatfield of empty pens where the beeves, when there were beeves, milled waiting for the knife. The white board fences of the paddocks were guarding only oil pumps that week. The packing plant was closed down.

Past our corner of the meat yard the town began, or ended, in a blasted heap of storefronts leaning on each other to face a million miles of Texas rushing straight at them over the mindless, moundless plain.

The twins woke up bickering. I could hear Elly's harsh whispers behind the screen. Then Iphy, who never really learned to whisper, “Not better than you. It's different, Elly. Please. Just for our birthday.” It was the same old quarrel. Iphy wanted to sit next to Arty at breakfast. Elly always insisted that they sit in the left side of the dining booth so that she was between Iphy and Arty, who always sat in his special chair at the end of the booth. Elly hated the giggling that hit Iphy when she sat next to Arty. Arty didn't seem to care. I was the one who helped Arty with his food.

I crawled out of my cupboard and tiptoed into the toilet cubicle. Elly was grumbling. She must have given in. She'd given in on Arty's birthday the year before and sulked the whole day. The pink joy from Iphy's smiles had twisted me up. I looked in the mirror trying to see the fear on my face. It was in my liver and invisible.

Arty would rather have Iphy cut his meat than me. The blinds squeaked open in the twins' room. Their voices came out together. “A horse!” they said, and then a paired sigh, “Poor thing!”

They left the van door open and, when I came out, they were standing on the bottom slat of the board fence peering through.

“Many happy,” I said, and hugged their long beautiful legs. Then their hands were pulling me up by the arms and I grabbed at the top rail and peered over. Iphy said, “Hang on to her,” and Elly's arm clamped under my hump.

“He's sick,” said Iphy, who thought all unfamiliar animals were male. “She's old,” said Elly, who assumed that all living things were female until proven otherwise.

The horse had been orange once but a grizzle of white had paled its coat. Its white muzzle drooped to the ground on a thin, tired neck. Its ears were loose and hanging. Its eyes were nearly closed. Bones jutted through spine, ribs, sharp cow flanks. The tail was so long that it dragged in the muck.

“The feet!” said the twins. The horse was not sleeping. It moved half a step forward. First a rear hoof and then the opposite forehoof lifted slowly out of the black mud that covered them to the fetlocks. Then the horse stopped, lifting again that rear leg, holding it curled so the hoof was above the mud. The hoof was long and curved forward like a human shoe worn over on the outside. The legs were muddy to the knee and bowed oddly.

The sun leaked up over the edge of the plain. The horse stood in shadow in its tiny pen. “Its feet are rotten,” muttered Elly. Iphy began to sniff in sympathy.

I could feel the faint thunk in the fenceboards from the pumps far off in the middle of the tight maze of paddocks. The sun's yellow knife slit the air, not yet reaching the ground or even the fences, but just touching the heads of the pumps as they rose and then losing them as they bobbed down into the shadow again. The feeble horse stood sunk into itself. Not an ear twitched. Not an eyelid flickered. An early-morning fly crawled over its hanging lips.

“Happy birthday,” Arty said.

Iphy sat next to Arty at breakfast. Al had gone to the sheriff's office to get the verdict on our permit for Burkburnett. Lil hugged the twins every time she passed them and made elegant little melon salads for breakfast. Elly didn't talk. Iphy mourned for the horse all through the meal.

“I want my chair.” Arty was brisk, up to something. I dragged the chair outside and set it up in front of the door. He clambered into it from the top step and looked around. “Over by that horse.” And I pushed his chair through the dust to the fence. He leaned forward and peered through the slats. The horse hadn't moved. Arty's face rumpled in disgust. He sank back against the chair and looked at me speculatively. “Well. Go get the doctor. Bring her here.” I ran.

The doctors big van was by itself at the end of the line with fifty yards between it and the last trailer. She never parked close to the others. Her blinds were open. The twined snakes painted on the van's side held the intercom in their mouths. I pushed the button. The sun was up now, slanting warm and yellow over my hands. The intercom speaker hissed and then her voice came out calmly. “Yes.” I delivered the message. “One moment,” she said. The speaker hissed again and went silent. I climbed down off the step block to wait for her. I didn't like to think of her door opening too close to me.

The air was still and dry with a musty, thick taste. The only familiar smell was the faint tang of fuel from the van. We hadn't opened up yet. We hadn't put our mark on the air. I tried to see past the cluster of vans and trucks and trailers to home-to the place at the other end where our van sat, with Arty out front next to the near-dead horse in its pen. Everything was in the way. I pulled my cap down over my ears and jigged anxiously in the dust. I didn't want to look in the other direction toward the dry slut town with its dark windows shaded against us. I bit my tongue when the door opened. The antiseptic smell slid out first. Then I saw her thick-wedged white shoes with the ankles leaping from them. “Lead the way, please,” she said. And she stepped down toward me. I scuttled.

Dr. Phyllis should have had a nice voice. It was cool and high and always controlled. She never ran off into the ragged edges of sharp like Lil or Iphy. But it still wasn't pleasant. It was monotonous as a sleepwalker. Her words came out cleanly, nipped off surgically with a slightly heavy breath where an r should be. She spoke Lil's old tongue, the long, smooth one from the right side of the hill in Boston. Though, when Lil asked her, Dr. Phyllis said she'd never been there. That talk made Lil want her to stay. Lil thought it would be good to have a woman with the show who spoke that way -- as though she and Lil might drink tea in the van and talk about home. But it never happened. I didn't mind Lil liking her. Lil was silly about who she liked. But Arty was different.

The dust puffed up behind me as I ran. I hoped it would settle on her white uniform. I wished she wasn't wearing the mask so she would breathe my dust and cough. But she never came out without the mask over her nose and mouth. The white cap was always pulled down tight over her forehead and completely covered her hair. In between were the big thick spectacles. She was completely protected. She didn't speak to me, and she kept up with me easily, walking fast.

Chick was leaning on the arm of Arty's chair as we came up. The two of them were watching something in the dust.

I heard Arty say, “Push them together.” Chick's head nodded and a small grey snake rose a foot into the air, suspended from its middle like a shoestring, and then dropped back into the dust.

“They're not paying attention,” said Arty.

“Good morning,” said Dr. Phyllis in her high, perfect voice. The snake and a horned toad rose quickly and flew away together into the desert. Chick hid his head against Arty's chest.

“Doctor!” said Arty. “Take a look at this horse.”

She walked stiffly past me, her hands folded in front of her crotch. “I am not,” she said calmly, “a veterinarian.”

Arty jabbed his chin into Chick's wheat-colored hair. “Scat!” he snapped. The child jumped away from the chair and turned to run. When he saw me, he reached out his soft hand and ran up to me.

“Let's go see what Mama's putting in the birthday cake,” I said. He smiled and we climbed into the van.

Chick sat on the counter, still except when his mouth opened to receive the gobbets of chocolate frosting that would occasionally lift from the bowl that Lil was dipping from. “Stop it, Chick,” Lil would murmur. And he would smile sweet chocolate at her, and the curl that dropped in front of her ear would stretch out in a soft caress over her cheek and then spring back. I crouched on the floor with my hump against the cupboard door and watched Arty and Dr. Phyllis through the open door.

Her white skirt was stretched tight over her thick legs and square hips. She was pushing her hands deep into her front pockets and rocking on her wedge heels. She gazed through the fence at the decrepit horse. Arty leaned back in his chair and looked up at her, smiling. I couldn't hear what they said.

A brown blob danced in front of my nose. I opened my mouth. It dipped, circled in the air, and zipped onto my tongue. Frosting.

“Thanks, Chicky,” I mumbled. My cap slid forward onto my nose and then back to its original position. Dr. Phyllis leaned an elbow on the top board of the fence and turned her mask and spectacles toward Arty. She propped a white-gloved hand on her hip and nodded. I licked the last of the frosting out of my teeth and let it trickle down my throat.

“I wonder where the twins are,” said Lil. The cake was beautiful. Lil had cut it into the shape of two hearts that interlocked.

I gave the word to Horst and he went right away. He took a pair of musclemen along to help pull the little trailer. I sat on the step of the cat van, smelling the Bengals and waiting for Papa. There were a few cars moving on the distant street now. A barbershop had its door open and a curtain of red and white fly strips hung limp. The guards were drinking from big Thermoses at the end of the lot. It felt odd to be parked without the gates and the booths and the tops going up around me.

After a while Dr. Phyllis marched by, followed by Horst and the two bullies pulling the covered trailer. She had them park it next to her big van. Then she went inside her van. Horst came to me slowly. He dropped heavily onto the step beside me. “Horse thieving now!” he said.

“Papa will find its owner and pay for it.” The men were grunting and cussing inside the little trailer. The old horse would not get up.

“I wouldn't feed that critter to an alley cat. Grey meat and little of it.”

One of the young men jumped out and stood at the tailgate to pull. With his hands wrapped in the dung-fouled tail he crouched and crab-walked backward. The pale, gaunt flanks hove into view. The flabby hooves and rear legs fell out onto the ground. The blond man inside the trailer was pushing from the other end. The horse rolled out and lay on the ground. Its head flopped down on the end of the long neck and lay still. The white flapping nostrils flared and drooped. The blond man hopped out of the trailer with a rope hackamore and fitted it onto the limp head. He clipped a rope to the chin ring and ran it to the axle of Dr. Phyllis's van.

The guards were moving slightly, standing up, putting their Thermoses behind their stools. A big man crossed the street and walked across the rutted stubble of the lot. Papa. The two guards walked halfway to the vans with him and then went back to their posts. Papa came on. He looked angry.

Burkburnett had forbidden our opening on Sunday. We'd have to wait until the following day. Al was pissed off. He was cursing the cowardly advance man who had done a bunk the first time he ran into a snag. “Missing Friday and Saturday in Wichita Falls and having to open on the slowest day of the week in a town that couldn't buy a week's worth of toilet paper for the crew!”

I told Papa what Arty wanted. Al groused but then went off to look for the owner of the horse.

At lunchtime, Lil realized she hadn't seen the twins since breakfast. She flew into a panic and went jittering around on her high red heels with her hands clutching her own shoulders. She teetered from guard post to guard post questioning the big blank-faced men. “Ain't seen 'em, ma'am. Couldn't miss 'em if they'd come this way.” And they'd switch their chaws and wobble their eyes anxiously as she skittered away, hoping that the little freaks hadn't slipped by them while they were swapping lies about hot nights in Baton Rouge.

Papa was somewhere talking to a man about a horse and I trailed after Mama piping, “Maybe so,” and “Ah, they're all right!” and “Maybe they're buried in the meat yard, shall I get some shovels?” in my most reassuring way as she burbled through her Mom's-All-Purpose-Adjustable-List-of-Horrors that might have happened whenever a child is out of sight. Lil had got to the finger-twisting stage and all the red-haired girls turned out to look. We opened all the empty boxcars on the rail siding and examined all the padlocks on the big sliding doors to the packing plant and were on our way back through the camp line, stopping at every van, trailer, and truck camper. The whole show was on hold because Papa hadn't given the set-up order yet, and Arty was occupied with something else.