Last God Standing (4 page)

“Livin’ on borrowed time.”

(Response to the question, “What are you doing?”)

God’s Twitter Page

In the twenty years he’d owned and operated Cooper & Sons Auto Supply, Herb Cooper had skydived on camera while playing an accordion, and waterskied across the Chicago River towed by a speedboat covered with tastefully nude pictures of himself. Once, he attempted to ride a bull in front of a screaming crowd during a rodeo at the United Center. He’d actually stayed on for four seconds before the bull, a bovine killing machine named Assassin, bucked him off and nearly trampled him to death while he screamed at the camera crew to “…keep rolling! No matter what!” The bull hurled Herb over the retaining fence. He landed in the lap of the Governor of Illinois.

From his hospital bed Herb convinced local stations to run the footage the next day, complete with a sped up rendition of Dueling Banjos playing underneath. The stunt cost him a broken leg, three cracked ribs and a concussion… and made Cooper & Sons a household name. This was back in the early Eighties, before cable made local broadcasting a thing of the past. New York had its Crazy Eddie. LA had its Carl Worthington. And Chicago had Herb Cooper.

When I walked into Cooper & Sons Westside Auto Supply on Monday morning, my father was humping an ostrich. Someone had affixed a saddle to the ostrich’s back, and Herb, who was wearing a white cowboy outfit complete with tengallon hat, chaps and spurs, was attempting to mount it. The ostrich had other ideas. Herb grabbed the bird’s long neck and tried to throw one leg over it. The ostrich stepped lightly to its right, pivoted, and flipped Herb over its back.

“Ow! Goddammit!”

I fought back a wave of wooziness and silently counted to ten. I still struggled with the compulsion to damn things when people demanded it. If I hadn’t curtailed the practice at some point during the Civil War, the whole country would have been damned before the Battle of Bull Run.

Chick Flaunt, Herb’s second in command and co-star, sprang out of the aisle between GPS Options and Satellite Radios.

“Come on, Herbie! Get your bony butt up and tank that bird sonofabitch!”

Flaunt, a smallish barrel of a man, was wearing his “Old Elvis” costume: white spandex unitard with sequined armpit wings, oversized sunglasses, elevator shoes and plasticene black pompadour. The shiny hairpiece sat slightly askew atop Flaunt’s actual hairpiece. As the camera crew dodged around them, Flaunt herded the ostrich toward Herb. Herb was on his hands and knees gasping for air.

“Herbie! Heads up!”

While long on personality, Herb was a deceptively small man. On a heavy day, after a weighty meal and a stroll through a pounding rainstorm, he topped the scale at a buck fifty. His balding pate shone through the thin spots in his dyed black hair, which he wore long, combed backward and slicked down to within an inch of its life. During his more frenetic commercials his hair would spring up around his head, the long comb-over bouncing furiously; a demented Cab Calloway in cowboy chaps. In another life he might have been one of the godfathers of rock & roll; a contemporary of Chuck Berry or Fats Domino. In this life, he was the lunatic who wrestled live anacondas on late night cable access.

“Herbie! We’re burnin’ daylight!”

Herb hopped to his feet and advanced, lunged, grabbed again for the ostrich’s neck while trying to sling his leg over the saddle. The ostrich swung itself around, dragging Herb along, and whipped him across the room. Herb slammed into the vending machine and shattered the glass front, sprawling among the chocolaty treasures inside.

Flaunt threw an improvised “lasso” (an orange outdoor extension cord from the service center) over the ostrich’s head. The ostrich chest butted him into the magazine rack. Issues of
Autotrader
flapped skyward.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Guys, wait!”

But both men leaped to their feet, Herb bleeding now from a shallow cut across his forehead.

“Flank him, Chick!”

“Yeah! Just like the ’Cong in the Ashau Valley! July 10th, 1969!”

Herb circled around behind the ostrich, who was rooting through a bucket of Puppy Chow. Flaunt countered, ducking and weaving like the referee of a crackhead kickfight.

“That’s right, Herbie Boy! I’ll get him on his blind side!”

They’d reconnected at a Republican VietNam veteran’s reunion/gambling boat trip up the Mississippi River in 1982. After bonding over tales of their heroic exploits (which included dawn patrols in a Honolulu whorehouse), Herb invited Flaunt to help him run Cooper & Sons Automotive International LLC. They’d been best friends and conjoined pains in my posterior ever since.

“Flank him, Herbie! Flank his black ass good!”

Despite what some fundamentalists claim, I didn’t hate anyone. When you’ve seen the ugly scars that mar the majority of mortal souls one is much the same as any other. But Chick Flaunt could rupture the patience of Job. My Old Testament Self would have gleefully burned him alive just to resurrect him and feed him to starving bears.

“That’s it, Herbie! Now coldcock the bastard!”

Sensing its imminent violation, the ostrich hissed and raised one massively muscled foot, its killing claws extended. A healthy adult male ostrich can weigh over two hundred pounds, run at thirty miles per hour, and gut a lion with one kick. Herb and Flaunt tensed for one final, mutually destructive pounce.

“Stop!”

Herb glared at me. Flaunt scowled, one oily lock of his Elvis pompadour dangling between his eyes. The ostrich glanced over at me, its deadly foot held at the ready.

“You know these people?”

“Yes. They’re harmless.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You’re right. They’re idiots.”

“I don’t have to put up with this. I’ve done television.”

“Why don’t you take five?” I said. “I’ll smooth their feathers.”

The ostrich – whose name was Sauwk – hissed a reluctant assent, and spread its wings in a threat posture intended mostly to intimidate. The big bird was exhausted. I sympathized: long experience with Herb and his passions could wear down the Rock of Gibraltar. I stroked his neck while silently appealing to his professionalism with compliments and offers of future employment.

“Hey, Jacques Cousteau, why don’t you marry the bastard if you love it so much?”

Do it. Reverse his digestive system. No one will notice.

I untwisted the orange extension cord dangling from Sauwk’s neck and invited him to enjoy more Puppy Chow. Sauwk released six eggsized fecal pellets in Herb’s general direction and strutted back to his food bucket.

“What’d ya have to stick your nose in it for?” Flaunt sneered. “Herbie and me would’ve got the situation under control just fine without you, Mister Save the Whales.”

“You know, Chick, if you’re trying to insult someone, pointing out their better qualities is pointless unless you’re trying to make them feel really great.”

“Oooohhh, somebody flunked out of his fancy graduate school. Hey, Emily Post, how ’bout pitchin’ yerself into that saddle? Then Herb can ride you around for the commercial!”

Flaunt laughed in the irritating way he did when he thought he’d scored a point. I reconsidered burning him alive just to make a bigger one.

“We’re doing a new spot for the website,” Herb said. “That damn pelican has thrown us off schedule. We’re gonna have to do it tomorrow: I got meetings.”

“Hey, Pop. Can I borrow some money?”

“Jesus H The Christ,” Flaunt moaned. “Kids today, ingrates… every one of ’em. Hell I remember…”

“Give him a break, Chick.”

“Herbie this kid’s had more ‘breaks’ than a mirror with a million cracks. Back in the day…”

“Chick…”

“…my old man would’a kicked my ass harder than Chinese algebra. I mean if you ask me…”

“I didn’t ask you, Chick!”

Flaunt threw up his hands in a “why do I bother” flutter of exasperation, his Elvis pompadour flapping like a detached scalp. Then he turned on one elevated heel and stomped off to annoy the camera crew.

Herb turned back to me, shaking his head.

“I suppose I’ll be paying for that till Judgement Day. Why the hell do you need money?” (Herb could switch conversational gears faster than a newly-avowed lesbian at a Texas prolife rally.) “Don’t I pay you enough to mismanage this place?”

“I want to take Surabhi somewhere special Friday night. But I need a minor advance.”

“Hey! You thinking about poppin’ the question, son?”

“Well…”

“You are, aren’t you? You’re gonna ask Sonoma–”

“Her name is Surabhi for the seventy-eighth time this week. And there’s not going to be any wedding.”

Herb’s face fell. “No wedding?”

Herb loved the institution of marriage. That was the problem: he loved the institution more than the woman he married. He could also smell imminent weddings and pregnancies like a bloodhound on the hunt.

“I see,” he sighed, laying a smallish hand on my elbow. “Step into my office, son. Time you and me talked mano to mano.”

“I have to watch the front desk. The customers…”

“What customers? We don’t open till ten.”

“But...”

“Come on.”

We entered the Fortress of Gratitude: Herb believed that every employee who entered his office should do so with “An Attitude of Gratitude.” He’d even had the words inscribed on a little plaque on the wall behind his big mahogany desk; right between his autographed poster of Ronald Reagan and the life-sized standup of himself dressed as “Super Herb.”

“Sit.”

I sat in the small chair in front of his desk. Herb rifled through his drawers and came up with a wrapped sandwich.

“You hungry?”

“No thanks.” Two days after the fight with Zeus, the thought of food still made me slightly delirious.

“You look like a damn scarecrow. You need to eat if you’re ever going to get your full growth.”

Herb munched thoughtfully on his turkey and tomato wrapped in lettuce. He’d been on a low-carb diet for half a decade. Because of long-term glycogen deprivation he was sometimes subject to erratic behavior. Sometimes, at night I would catch him waltzing with a box of Raisin Bran, crooning “I’m gonna eat you. Oh yes… I’m gonna… eeeat…”

“Lando Cooper… I know who you really are.”

“What?”

“The jig is up, son. I’ve uncovered your big, cosmic secret.”

He chuckled again, his eyes round with a kind of conspiratorial wonder. “God Almighty.”

From my dimensionally sensitive multi-mind, several Aspects tossed up suggestions.

Sky Daddy: “Rewrite his memory.”

Father Flies: “Erase him from the spacetime continuum.”

Burning Bush: “Give him a stroke, then if he recovers you can tell him it was all a hallucination.”

“If you think I haven’t been paying attention, son… you’re wrong.” Herb reached up with one mayonnaise smeared finger and tapped his right temple. “These eyes don’t miss a trick. As a student of the Human Animal… I see all.”

Herb arched his brows. “Look at me, Lando. Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you.”

“I am looking at you.”

“No you’re not.”

“I am.”

“Unflinchingly?”

“You’re insane.”

Herb stood. “Lando… a steady, unflinching gaze…”

“‘…establishes interpersonal tactical dominance.’ I know, Pop.”

“That’s Herb’s Rule of Engagement Numero Uno, son. First thing any effective negotiator learns… if he intends to make something of himself someday.”

“I’m not interested, Pop.”

“Lando, I know that you’re struggling with certain elements of your personality. And although I don’t claim to understand it...”

“Pop, I just want to borrow some cash.”

“Son… you’re gay.”

“Pop.”

“It’s OK, Lando.”

“I’m not gay.”

“Well I think you are.”

“I am not.”

“Admit it now. Get it off your chest.”

“No.”

“Denial. That’s sad, boy.”

“I’m not gay!”

“Twenty-first century, son. Liberation done come to de plantation. I may not approve of your lifestyle, but I’ll die to support you. That’s why we all marched, back in the Sixties...”

“Pop…”

“…why my generation took to the streets while ‘Mister Charlie’ was burning school children and night-bombing churches…”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I marched so that you and your brothers could be as irresponsible as the White Man’s children...”

“I’m not doing this with you, Pop.”

“…waste your lives in whatever meaningless pursuits you see fit, no matter how much it might break the hearts of those who sang freedom songs while Klansmen hounded us with dogs and torches.”

“Torches? Were they chasing black people or Frankenstein’s monster?”

Herb chuckled again. “Deflect and Distract: another useful negotiating strategy. When you take over the store…”

“I’m not taking over the store, Pop.”

“…when you take over from your ailing old man, you’ll have to be strong, son. Stronger than those early pioneers.”

Herb reached into his pocket and produced a thickish wad of cash from the billfold he’d had surgically grafted to his hip. He thumbed through the wad and peeled five one hundred dollar bills.

“I want you to take Sabrina out Friday night. Show her a good time. Grab a hotel room in the Loop. Do the deed, for Christ’s sake. You’re not still a virgin are you?”

“No! Not that it’s any of your business.”

Herb held up his hand. “Just be sure to take your gal out for a ‘test drive’. Nobody wants you puttin’ your money down on the wrong horse. You know… genderwise. One thing about me and your mother… we were sexual dynamite.”

“Awkward for me, but thanks for spoiling my appetite.”

A glint of calculation ignited in Herb’s eyes. “So when are we gonna meet this ‘young lady’ of yours?”

“Soon,” I said, relieved that I wouldn’t have to excise him from the spacetime continuum. “I gotta get back to work. Inventory today.”

“Hmmm, yes. Interesting concept: inventory.”

I reached over and grabbed for the money. Herb yanked his hand back.

“Lando, you know if there’s ever anything you need to get off your chest, you can always come to me, right?”

“I know.”

“I’m much more open than your mother. God knows how we ever produced four healthy sons...”

“Pop, please.”

“Sorry. It’s just, living like we do… well things with Mom and Dad aren’t as rosy as they seem.”

“Rosy’s not the word that springs to mind.”

Herb smiled. But a flicker of sadness glimmered in his eyes.

“True, son. Very true.”

He extended the handful of bills toward me again. I reached for it, and he jerked his hand back once more as if he’d just snatched it out of a furnace.

“How about you mow the lawn Saturday morning?”

“Pop...”

“Come on now. I pay you for working here to show you the value of a buck, not to take the honeys out for a tour of Boy’s Town.”