The New and Improved Romie Futch (35 page)

“Come on, Jarvis,” I said, trying to muster a stern look. “He'll bring down the whole stand if we don't pull him back in. You ready to die?”

“I'm not afraid of death.” Jarvis laughed. “I have a prescription for that.”

I took note of Hogzilla, hurtling toward us with the cool brutal look of a bestial robot. Out popped his wings and the monster was airborne—nine feet, twelve feet, eighteen feet above the ground, almost high enough to graze Chip's foot with his tusk before his crazy-ass descent into brushwood. Roaring like a laryngitic bear, Chip kicked his legs. A loose board tumbled to the ground.

Now Hogzilla was back on his runway, his jog giving way to a full-throttle gallop, and again he was airborne, higher than last time, his tusks pointed right at the puffy target of Chip's beer belly.

Clear as truth, I saw the vulnerable spot beneath the hog's left wing, where the flesh was tender, protected from cold, heat, rain, humidity, sun, snow, frost, and mosquitoes. I took myself through the Instant Calming Sequence, swept a wave of relaxation through my body, and stood breathing deep breaths of hog-scented air. I emptied my mind and focused on that square inch of baby flesh beneath Hogzilla's left wing. My firearm melded with my body as I took the archetypal stance of the warrior. I felt my last bullet surging with life, bursting with energy like a ripening berry. Electricity gushed from my heart chakra, sizzled along the meridians of my right arm, and poured into my trigger finger. I was one with the gun and the bullet and the pulling of the trigger. “Hai!” I shouted at the moment of release, watching the bright red billowing of my visible consciousness.

And then I slumped, happy and sad in my emptiness, awaiting the outcome of this action.

•  •

When my bullet hit Hogzilla in the clammy spot beneath his left wing, wedging itself into the callous tissues of his heart, the stricken hog unleashed a pterodactyl shriek, flapped his wings, and, just before his tusks would've plunged into Chip Watts, veered leftward, glided over a briar patch, and tumbled into a copse of baby pines. The monster flailed and squalled and flattened a dozen saplings.

Meanwhile, Chip Watts squirmed and cussed. He kicked and writhed until several more rotted boards came loose, and the ATV salesman fell like Satan from hubristic heights, roaring as the bloody knob of his left femur protruded from his knee like a new-born baby's head.

Whereas Jarvis scurried down the ladder before Hogzilla had ceased to twitch, muttering scraps of biblical prophecy as he went, I did not descend until I was sure the beast lay still. And even then I feared the crafty animal might be faking it, that just when I ventured near, he'd hop to his feet with a lusty snort and finish me off.

A hush fell upon the forest as I approached the beast. There lay the mountainous corpse, darkening the earth before it with its vast shadow. I stepped into this shade. Squatting, I held a pocket mirror to the animal's blood-crusted mouth. No mist collected upon its surface.

Flies were already frolicking upon Hogzilla's filth-smeared hide. The bored buzzards that had been languidly picking last bits from the FDA agent's cadaver perked up and flapped over to inspect the fallen monster.

There I hunkered, carcass of a mythic beast lolling before me, my ex-wife's one-time lover groaning and cussing up a storm five yards over, my souped-up head addled from sleep deprivation, dehydration, and hunger. I had no idea what to do next.

“See if you can pick up a cell signal twenty yards west or so,” said Jarvis, pricking me out of my stupor. “And, son, I'd contact the press if I were you. Whatever it takes to get credit for this. No telling what kind of shit will shake down from the FDA and GenExcel.”

“And I suppose we ought to get some medical aid for that asshole.” I pointed at Chip.

“I reckon so.” Jarvis Riddle sighed.

•  •

Before the Food and Drug Administration, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, and GenExcel Incorporated arrived on the scene, before the sheriff and his goons showed up, before paramedics appeared with a stretcher to haul Chip Watts to the emergency room, before I quenched my rabid thirst and appeased my gnawing hunger, I got Jarvis to snap a pic of me, the epic antihero standing upon the gargantuan pig corpse, heirloom rifle held aloft in triumph.

My E-Live status update, the quintessence of sprezzatura, read
Romie Futch just slayed Hogzilla, y'all
. As the old woodsman had uncannily divined, I'd picked up a signal about twenty yards west of the deer stand, and my update received over two hundred comments within thirty minutes, after which a reporter from the
Hampton Herald
arrived to seal the deal.

The reporter, who resembled Bill Gates with a bob, had no time to laugh at my porcine puns. She squatted under a cluster of hemlock, furiously typing on a micropad. Before you could say
jackrabbit
, she'd posted a five-hundred-word article on their website. As I devoured Choco-Chip Energy Bars, courtesy of Hampton County
Emergency Services, the reporter disseminated a YouTube clip of me standing behind Hogzilla's outsize cadaver. I answered brief, burning questions about my quest as winter wind flirted with my filthy hair. Dripping with machismo, I spouted hog lore and hunting tips, played it cool while Chip Watts, drugged up and strapped into a rescue stretcher, bellowed in an envious frenzy.

Now a helicopter roared above the clearing, poised to whisk Chip off to Hampton Regional for repairs.

“You poached my hog,” he yelled, flailing at the poor paramedic who was attempting to hitch his litter to a cable. At last, Chip's spew of threats and obscenities was drowned in helicopter thunder. I felt a surge of elation as the chopper lifted the aging athlete up into the clouds.

“Good riddance,” hissed Jarvis, who stood in the forest gloom, eating a Fruit Roll-Up.

Before GenExcel showed up for damage control, the YouTube video had five hundred hits. The story had been retweeted eighty-six times. As I watched my E-Live page blow up with notifications, messages, and friendship requests, my blood ran high. At last, I was trending. After forty-three years of virtual nonexistence, I was surfing a zeitgeist wave.

“I know you're tired,” said the GenExcel agent, also an eerie variation on the Bill Gates type (Anglo, bespectacled, deceptively innocuous), which made me wonder if I was dreaming again. “But I need you to answer a few questions.”

I sat in a folding camp chair and answered questions as the winter day waned. Cold fog oozed out of the darkening woods. Portable halogen lamps popped on, shrouding Hogzilla's corpse in theatrical light. Other agents crept from the darkness into the surreal orb of light: reps from the FDA, SCDHEC, SCDNR, and GenExcel.

Exhausted, I negotiated with various parties as Jarvis stood in the limbo between light and darkness, Merlin-like, his face scrunched with wisdom.

My story was already a viral YouTube clip before the various agencies began to butt heads over what to do with the colossal rotting biohazard of Hogzilla's body. I'd already raised two thousand dollars on Kickstarter.com before Hogzilla was transferred by refrigerated truck to some remote facility arbitrated by the FDA and SCDHEC, which, pushed by the clamor of the masses, signed a contract with me, giving me the funds to stuff the gargantuan beast, which would, thereafter, become state property to be displayed at such illustrious institutions as the South Carolina State Museum for the edification of the taxpaying public. I even managed to negotiate a clause allowing me, upon completion, to display said taxidermic product as an installation piece in various arts venues for a period of up to three years, after which I'd wash the hog stench off my hands for good and the state would take possession of the stuffed marvel.

PART THREE

ONE

It was February already, sunlight deprivation taking its toll, vitamin D reserves low, postholiday malaise thickening into an absurdist indoor drama with no exit, the skeletal trees downright existential. But I was gearing up for my debut show in Columbia, a high-concept taxidermic installation that would be displayed in a gallery called the Bomb, a renovated Confederate ammo warehouse—not the Columbia Museum of Art, alas. But at least I had something lined up, and according to the gallery manager, my show was building a considerable amount of hype.

I was in my studio with the space heater cranked, sipping green tea, toiling Jonah-like inside the huge corpse of Hogzilla, hollowing out his form to make him lighter, prepping the monster for flight. Technically, the creature I tinkered with was not Hogzilla per se but a modified polyurethane rhino form upholstered with Hogzilla's hide. The pig's hot-pink hue had faded to mauve, despite the double oiling I'd applied, but I'd touched it up with some Life Tone paint. And the razorback was coming to life. I stepped out to take another look.

Posed in the charging position, right hoof lifted, Hogzilla roared at me, mouth agape as though caught in a condescending guffaw.
His bug eyes protruded ferociously. I tweaked his left tusk, which I hadn't yet glued into place, and fluffed the whiskers around his maw. I'd had to saw off the rhino head and reattach a form I'd molded from Hogzilla's skull, installing a jaw set I'd sculpted myself, accessorizing with original teeth. When I got the wiring hooked up, his eyes would roll; his slaver-slick tongue would quiver; spumes of foam would spurt from apertures tucked between gum and tongue. Most important, his weird wings would spread and flap as the uncanny beast lurched into clumsy flight.

The monster was currently wingless; however, his patagia hung from a hook on the wall, original bones in place. Just as I'd suspected, the wing bones were light, hollow, aerodynamic like a bat's. I'd tanned the original membranes with a softening oil, and they gave off a fleshy gleam. Pretty soon I'd get down to the intricate business of wiring Hogzilla's wings, a tedious process involving the consultation of electrical manuals and constant Googling. But I was done for the night, ready to crack open a beer and hit up HogWild.com, see if I might, at last, hear a peep out of PigSlayer.

When I'd conquered Hogzilla, the cyber hog-hunting scene had exploded with chatter. Every hunter in the state had put in his or her two cents about my colossal kill—whether it was real or fake, whether it was possible for a taxidermist to preserve an animal that huge, whether the beast was a mutant or a genetically modified creature hatched in a mad scientist's lab. And I, like an emperor disguised as a beggar, had swelled with pride as I crept among the envious mortals whose lives had not been transubstantiated by heroic adventure. Feeling bold and confident, I was itching to pounce upon any e-encounter with PigSlayer, ready to bring it to fruition in the three-dimensional world.

But just after my conquest, PigSlayer mysteriously vanished from the hog-hunting message boards, making me wonder if she was
some kind of agent after all—a flesh-and-blood human, maybe, but not a woman keen to solve the masculine mystery of Romie Futch. Nevertheless, I still kept a weak flame guttering in a leathery hollow of my heart. Though I occasionally hit the message boards with a flirty smile, I eventually stopped trying. I tried not to dwell on Helen, avoided the thought of Chip Watts's bloated mug rendered into fetal flesh, and threw myself into my work.

Thinking with a clear head again, I spent my days tinkering with Hogzilla's deconstructed parts as experimental music tootled cerebrally from my iPod speaker, jams recommended by my old friend Trippy, who, alas, was still AWOL, still running from the wireless range of the Center, as far as I knew. Having suffered zero blackouts or phantom voices since my hunting adventure, I theorized that some remote connection had been broken by my three-day dalliance in the boondocks. I hoped against hope that Dr. Morrow would wash his hands of me and leave me to my own devices.

And now, as I took one last look at my masterwork, I felt an old familiar sensation within me, queasily alive with hope:
the future
squirming with larval potential in my chest—a feeling that zipped me back to high school, five days before graduation at Swamp Fox High's awards day ceremony.

After toking up in my Camaro, Helen, Lee, and I sat in the gymnasium, tucked into a corner near the door, poised for an easy exit. We sniggered as geeks, grade grubbers, and the occasional golden jock strolled to the podium to accept some plaque or certificate: the James Marion Sims Biology Award, the Strom Thurmond Ethics Scholarship. The herd around us stamped its hooves and bellowed its approval as Swamp Fox High's elites, bound for fancy state schools and the lesser Ivies, plucked the fruits of their academic toil. I watched with interest as Mrs. Breen approached the podium and adjusted the mic.

“Swamp Fox reynards and vixens,” she said, “I congratulate you on your honors. With pride I announce a new award for excellence in the visual arts: the Frida Kahlo Golden Paintbrush Award. This year, I am privileged to present this award to Roman Morrison Futch.”

There I sat, blanched of blood, unable to move, suspecting that my stoned mind had hallucinated the whole thing. But there was Helen, kicking me in the leg with her patent-leather pump. There was Lee, his palm raised to receive a high five. I slapped his hand feebly and stumbled from my bleacher seat. Descending the tricky stairs, I almost tripped. The podium looked impossibly distant.

The principal stood there sternly, his iron-gray buzz cut evocative of military and police officers. He sniffed. I wondered if he could smell the pot on me. But there was Mrs. Breen, beaming maternally, trying to hand me some slender, twinkling thing: a gilded paintbrush with my name on it, what appeared to be a check rubber-banded to its shaft.

My heart surged as I accepted the award. I made it back to my chair without incident, catching sight of my mother and father among the crowd. After a covert telephone call from Mrs. Breen, they'd been smoldering with the secret for an entire week—not only the gold-plated fetish object but also the three-hundred-dollar check. At last, they could release their elation. My father slapped his palms together, his lips pulled from their habitual scowl into a smirk. My mother held her clapping hands over her head. And the crowd erupted: thugs and heshers and losers, lurkers and dorky rappers, border rovers and freaks, all the kids, black and white, who didn't fit into the academic or athletic sets. As they howled in unison like some hive-minded monkey species, I felt it too, bursting up from my heart into my throat: the spontaneous desire to ululate.