The New and Improved Romie Futch (17 page)

I dressed the lovers for nuptials, in Victorian doll clothes I'd won on eBay. The canker-cheeked groom sported a coat with tails, an ascot, a top hat. The bald bride wore a diaphanous gown of dry-rotted lace that matched her sallow skin tone. I coated their mounting rock with Quick-Stick snow and encased the couple in a glass dome, installing a miniature blower to keep sparkling flecks of hydrophilic polymer whirling in the air. A black light added to the eeriness.

At last, just before midnight, I was ready to activate the motor that put them in motion. After an anxious sip of beer, I pressed the button on the back of their platform. The lovers jerked toward each other, rubbed their snouts together, and then groom embraced bride. Tilting his beloved back to feast upon her lips, he let his eager mouth travel down her throat into her delightful décolletage. The wedding march, piped from a microspeaker and rendered spookily in electronic cello, played on an endless loop.

The bride's hyperthyroid eyes glittered like rubies, matching her lips, which I'd dabbed with a touch of crimson. The groom's cheek canker gave him the air of an old statesman, à la John McCain.

It looked pretty killer for my first attempt at an absurdist animatronic taxidermic diorama.

When I stood back to inspect my handiwork, I could feel my mother's presence in the room, congratulating me on my artistic
vision. I could almost hear her taking nervous sucks off her cigarette as she sized up my work, offering constructive criticism, just as she used to for my high school masterpieces.

“Sure is ambitious,” she'd said about one of my sculptures, “which is wonderful. But I think you need to work on those hands some more. Take a look at some actual hands. Hands are pretty strange, you know.”

I could see her kind, sly smile, her tousled hair, her beautiful eyes pouched from a sleepless night. She bore her insomnia stoically, hiding an undertow of anxiety and depression with bright chitchat.

I grew teary-eyed, popped another Miller, and felt a chemical headache coming on, so I walked out back onto the patio to get some fresh air. I gazed down at the gulch where the primordial jungle grew. I could see the stained roof of our old ranch house, the house I'd dwelled in from birth to age twenty-two. It was now inhabited by a crew of Trident Tech students, the rotting deck littered with beer bottles.

When Dad had decided to sell the house, he'd asked me if I wanted it. Said he'd let me have it dirt cheap. But the thought of dwelling in my boyhood home, spooked by ghosts from the past, particularly the phantasm of my mother, who'd eked out her last demented days there, had made me balk. When Midge Silverfield died of chronic obstructive lung disease, and the bungalow on the other side of Noah's Ark Taxidermy came up for sale, Helen and I snatched it up. We refinished the oak floors and painted the rooms “interesting” colors. We retiled the bathroom and half updated the '70s kitchen. For about six years our domestic enterprise was imbued with the mellow rose light of casual optimism. We were building a nest, hunkering down for the arrival of a tender being, a repository for our combined DNA, our love rendered into flesh. We actually talked about the hypothetical child back then.

“If we have a girl, I won't paint this room pink,” Helen said about our then-computer room. “Green would be a good neutral color for a girl or a boy. I won't let Walt Disney raise my child.”

“But a kid's got to have a little bit of toxic culture,” I said. “For immunity, right? Isn't that how vaccines work?”

Helen trotted out her science know-how, explaining how vaccines were manufactured from a weaker or dead form of the microbe in question, her voice upbeat, not yet bilious with defeat.

We never decided on a color for the computer room, which was still a dingy yellow, still littered with outmoded equipment, including a fat Dell from the turn of the century that contained thousands of digital photographs I'd never transferred to my laptop.

“We need to print some of these up,” Helen insisted one night, “in case of a nuclear holocaust.”

“Like you'd be comforted by old pics in a nuclear aftermath?” I said.

“I don't know. In a warped way, maybe.”

She'd even burned the pics onto a disc (perhaps she still had it?), but as far as I knew, she'd never printed up one picture. Now the old computer seemed like a plastic sarcophagus, chock-full of dead memories.

I gazed down at Helen's flower garden, currently lit by a fat white moon.

Things rank and gross in nature possessed it merely
.

I felt a headache creeping up from the base of my skull, a throbbing affliction that spread from my ears to my widow's peak. It seemed to intensify around those spots where my BC transmitters had once been installed. Tracing red webs of pain in my mind's eye, I still saw my brain as a hologram. Saw blobs of crimson diffusing as the pain grew fierce. I rubbed my temples and groaned. I hightailed it into my house, made a beeline toward the medicine
cabinet, tossed three Advils into my mouth, and stretched my wretched body out on the couch.

THREE

By the time my boys Lee and Chip came over to catch up, September was pretty much spent. I'd finished three of my mutant dioramas: the squirrel wedding, an Odysseus versus Cyclops battle enacted by a one-eyed possum and an albino bullfrog, and, to celebrate my brand-new life, a Phoenix diorama featuring a three-legged blue jay rising from a pile of ashes. I displayed the pieces on a marble-topped pedestal table I'd scored on Craigslist for a hundred bucks. I'd also installed a mini fridge in the lobby of Noah's Ark Taxidermy, plus a fancy speaker for my MP3 player, which resembled a 1920s radio. I'd painted the walls a dusky color Home Depot called Mad Monk and repaired Lord Tusky the Second's bashed snout, restoring the boar to his former glory above the old vinyl sofa. I'd also garnered a modest customer base of late, had made it through the day headache-free, and was feeling pretty damn good when I heard the buzzer announcing the arrival of my old friends.

Almost two months had passed since my return from the Center. I'd seen Lee but once (tanking up on Sun Drop at the BP station) and Chip not at all. We greeted one another with hearty
slaps upon the back, those bearish bursts of manly affection that can sometimes knock a little wind out of your chest.

“You look great, Romie,” said Lee. “And the shop does too.”

“Yeah.” Chip ran his eyes up and down my physique. “What you been doing to stay in shape?”

“Mostly jogging. Been dabbling in Ashtanga yoga this past week, mastering some pretty wicked Indian wrestling moves.”

“Yoga.” Chip drew his leg up into the tree pose and chuckled. “My ex-wife used to mess with that Chinese shit.”

“Which one?” quipped Lee.

“The Cooter Queen,” said Chip.

“Actually,” I said, “yoga's an ancient Indian discipline, though a Taoist tradition does exist.”

There was a blip of awkward silence as both men blinked at me.

“Good to have you back, Romie,” said Lee. “We brought you a case of O'Doul's.”

“We didn't know what was up in the drinking department,” said Chip. “So we thought, well, you know.”

“And we don't want to be, what's it called?”

“Enablers,” said Chip.

“Don't worry,” I said. “I still indulge in spirituous beverages. Got me some Miller Lite in the mini fridge, in fact.”

Relief washed over their faces as we fell into old ritual, popping our brews, settling down for a round of shit talk.

“What the hell are those?” Chip pointed at my dioramas.

So I gave the boys a guided tour, activating each unit with a remote control, discoursing on the ironies of postnatural specimens. I fell smoothly into a stream of pomo clichés as my magical animals danced. My squirrels kissed. My froggish Odysseus crept up to the sleeping Cyclops and poked out his eye with a stick. And most inspiring of all, my three-legged Phoenix rose from a pile of
ashes to spread its cerulean wings just as “Voices in the Sky” by the Moody Blues kicked in.

“You talk different, Romie,” said Lee.

“Yeah,” said Chip. “What's up with the SAT words?”

“Nothing much,” I said. “Had lots of time to read while I was in the clink. Speaking of which, let me show y'all my Panopticon.”

“What the hell's a Panopticon?” said Lee.

“You shall see.”

I took them back to the studio to see my work in progress. I flicked on the overheads, hand-pounded a mock drumroll on the table, and whisked aside a poly tarp to reveal my pet project: a four-foot reproduction of Jeremy Bentham's eighteenth-century prison. I explained how its central “inspection house” enabled guards to potentially check in on any given prisoner at any minute of the day or night, thereby instilling a compulsive fear of perpetual observation.

“An obsessive motif,” I said, “of the French philosopher Michel Foucault.”

“Jibber-jabber,” said Chip, who'd rather skinny-dip in the fecal lagoon of an industrial hog farm than admit he doesn't know something. I longed fiercely for the company of the
BAIT
crew, the ideal audience for my work, men who understood the psychological fallout of hierarchical surveillance on more than one level.

“It's all good,” said Lee.

I'd stationed a squirrel guard in the central tower, and I was still working on the inmates. Each cell was a mini diorama containing one or two prisoners doing their thing: reading the Bible, pumping iron, checking a hidden stash of Jack, or slitting his wrist with a shank. So far, all of the prisoners were mutant frogs, mostly albinos, one-eyeds, and amphibians with stunted flippers, though I'd lucked out on two rarities: one poor fucker with three eyes, another with an extra leg.

“Damn,” said Lee. “That's pretty genius. I'll never forget that piece you did in high school. The one with the mermaid.”

“Preesh,” I said. “I'm trying to get back to my roots as a sculptor.”

“That mermaid looked just like Helen,” said Chip, smiling malevolently, well aware that mentioning my ex was bound to tamp down my exuberant mood.

“Yup,” I said.

“Where'd you get your specimens?” said Chip.

“Shot 'em myself.”

“Didn't think you hunted that much.” Chip drowned his frown with a gulp of beer.

“When the situation calls for it.”

“What kind of ammo you been utilizing?”

“My grandfather's Remington .22, mostly. Good luck charm. Been practicing with a target out back.”

“For real? Want to try a few rounds?”

“Why not?”

Chip pulled forth a Baggie of weed and smirked. “Y'all wanna burn one before playing with dangerous firearms?”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Lee, but his grin petered out when he looked at me.

“Why not?” I shrugged.

“You sure?” said Lee. “We don't want to be—what's it called again?”

“Enablers,” Chip and I said in unison. And then I took Chip's little one-hitter, a metal cylinder cleverly disguised as a Camel cigarette.

“This is not a pipe,” I said.

The boys blinked at me.

“That s'pose to be a joke or something?” said Chip.

“Inside one, I guess,” I said, longing for the rich, troubled laughter of the
BAIT
crew.

“Well, ha-ha,” Chip said. “Even though it ain't funny.”

•  •

Stoned, we stepped out into the evening. The world was still green, a few blighted leaves spotting the trees. Birds twitted fussily, winding down, hustling toward their nests. I'd set up a few targets at the edge of my yard, just where the lawn tumbled into the jungly ravine that overlooked the roof of my old familial home. On a pine trunk I'd nailed a cardboard cutout of our buffoonish president, his Baptist bulldog face already pocked with bullet holes. Lee couldn't stop laughing. But Chip, shrimp pink with hypertension and chagrin, clutched at his collar.

“I will not shoot the president of the United States,” he said.

“It's a cardboard facsimile,” I said. “One of many in the house of images pumped out by the media-industrial complex.”

“It's illegal to threaten the commander in chief's life.” Chip pressed his lips into a line.

“That's not what we're doing here,” I said.

“Whatever,” said Chip. “You could've put up Sahib Omar Rashid or Pee Wee Gaskins. Why you got to shoot the president?”

“
You
don't have to shoot him,” said Lee. “Just stick with the bull's-eye, Chip.”

“We gonna shoot this firearm or just talk about it?” said Chip.

So commenced our target practice, which quickly morphed into a competitive sport, with a score scratched in the dirt and shots of Jäger between each blast. While Chip and I were stuck neck and neck, Lee lagged good-naturedly behind. The sun sank behind my ancestral ranch house. My neighbor's blinding security lamp
popped on, and his hound dog barked. When our game finally ended in a stalemate, we relocated to the patio and opened fresh beers. Discussed hunting seasons, coyote migrations, the mysterious habits of interdimensional deer.

“Never knew you were such a gung-ho hunter, Romie.” Chip sneered.

“Didn't used to be,” I said.

“You're such a good shot, Romie,” said Lee. “You ought to try to bag Hogzilla.”

“Hogzilla?”

“You ain't heard of Hogzilla?” said Lee.

Chip emitted a groan of disdain. “I don't think that hog exists,” he said. But his eyes looked shifty. He scratched his nose.

“The feral hog that's been raising hell in Hampton County,” said Lee. “Started up a few months ago.”

Right then I knew I had to bag that fucker. A sacred feeling washed over me, akin to the time Ahab got wind of that legendary albino Moby-Dick, before the sperm whale destroyed his boat, chomped off his leg, sent him spiraling inwardly toward monomaniacal doom. Ahab, strutting jauntily on two legs across the fresh-scrubbed deck of his ship. Ahab, sniffing the briny wind that sang of poontang. Ahab, thinking of other things besides the accursed fish—the red night sky, for instance, or his supper of salted beef and stale biscuits, his future dalliances with the brassy lass who talked smack at the Mermaid Tavern.