They Had Goat Heads (9 page)

455

I ran a fingertip over the number. Dirt came off. Or oil. A black substance, in any case. I rinsed the key, blowdried it, polished it with a handkerchief, put it in my pocket, stared at myself in the mirror, blew my nose, and left the restroom.
   Out in the hallway the entire postal staff awaited me in an orderly triangle, as if somebody had lined them up like bowling pins. The manager occupied pole position. He adjusted his belt several times and said, “Give us the key.”
   I looked behind me. I looked at the manager. “Is there a problem?”
   The staff members shifted uncomfortably and traded annoyed whispers. The manager shushed them and readjusted his belt. “You know there’s a problem,” he said calmly. “The key. Now.” He stuck out his hand.
   “I don’t have the key.” I took the key out of my pocket and showed it to him. “I have this key. But this isn’t the key you mean.”
   “That’s the key,” the manager said, pointing at it.
   I returned the key to my pocket. “Anyhow, I’m on my way to the . . . what is it called? The mailbox room? Is there another name for it?”
   “We call it the key insertion room,” said an anonymous member of the staff. The manager glared at her and reluctantly seconded the claim.
   
“Well. That’s all, then.” I walked forward. Carefully I weaved through the postal workers, trying not to touch them, pardoning myself if I did touch them. They regarded me with singular expressions of disapproval and enmity.
   In the last line was the postman who had addressed me in the restroom. He hung his head and stared at the floor. I paused next to him. “What’s in the box?” I asked.
   His eyes pinched shut. He took a deep breath through his nostrils, tilting up his chin. His mouth twitched and compressed into funny shapes.
   He fainted.
   I went to the key insertion room.
   An elderly security guard in a loose-fitting green uniform accosted me at the entrance. “You do it like this,” he twanged, then stuck out his hand and made a turning motion. He demonstrated again. And again, and again. I thanked him and began to search for the right box. “Remember what I showed you!” he exclaimed from behind me, making another turning motion.
   P.O. Box 411 . . . 426, 427 . . . 450, 451, 452 . . . 455. I lifted the key and stuck it in the keyhole. I could feel the guard’s breath on my neck.
   “That’s right,” he said. “You’re doing it. Good.”
   “Piss off, you old bastard.”
   The guard clutched his chest and staggered backwards. “That ain’t nice! How’d you like it if I called you an old bastard?”
   Apologizing, I turned the key and opened the box.
   Inside was a figurine. Nothing else. I removed it. Examined it.
   The figurine was about five inches high and made of hard plastic. It had limbs that swiveled at the armpits and groin, but not at the elbows and knees. No scratches, nicks or cracks. It looked normal enough.
   I showed the figurine to the guard.
   He gasped.
   He pointed at the figurine. He pointed at me.
   He clutched his chest again, staggered backwards again . . . and collapsed like a stack of deadwood.
   “Are you all right?” I nudged his chin with the toe of my shoe. He didn’t move. I kicked him in the ribs. He didn’t move.
   I exited the key insertion room.
   Postal workers either fainted or ran away when they saw me coming toward them holding the figurine in my hand like a PEZ dispenser. The younger security guard tried to punch me, but I dodged the blow, and he fell into an ungainly somersault and tumbled down the hall. The manager got in my way, too, although I clearly disillusioned him. “Are you going somewhere?” he asked. “You can’t go anywhere. You’ve imploded. Every step you take is a step in the same direction.” His Adam’s apple quivered . . . He dry heaved. He went cross-eyed . . . He smacked his lips, motioning at the figurine. “You can only march in place now.”
   The trap door in the ceiling scraped open. We looked at it. It scraped closed.
   I handed the manager the key to P.O. Box 455. The postal clerk tried to snatch it from him. He fended her off and gave me a free book of stamps. I thanked him.
   As I left the post office, I entered the post office. There was a line. I took out my wallet and searched it. No money inside. No credit cards or I.D. Only a key. I removed it, inspected it.
   At the front of the line, a gust of stampflakes shot into the air . . .

HOVERCRAFT

Dad stole a hovercraft and parked it outside the motel. Then he left us.
   There was a note on the door when we got back from the supermarket. It read: “G’bye!”
   Mom dropped the groceries in her arms and clapped her hands together. She dashed over to the hovercraft and hopped into the cockpit. The aft fans roared to life.
   Tossing the motel key at me, mom pulled out of the parking lot and veered onto the highway.
   I picked up the groceries and went inside.
   The TV didn’t work. I ate some cottage cheese with a plastic spork.
   The next morning dad came back. “I was kidding!” he announced. He nodded at me and began to inspect the air conditioner.
   I put on my clothes and went outside.
   Another hovercraft was in the parking lot. I looked in the cockpit. Mom wasn’t there.
   The owner of the motel came out. A freckled, withered man wearing a sandpaper suit, he asked what was going on.
   “Hovercraft,” I said.
   Suspicious, the owner approached the vehicle, leaned into its rubber underside, and began to scrape up and down. His pace quickened. Soon he had sanded a hole in the hovercraft. It deflated.
   I started to cry.
   “I know,” said the owner. He squeezed my shoulder and went into our room. There was a gunshot.
   Dad walked out. He told me he had changed his mind again. He frowned at the hovercraft, hotwired a station wagon, and drove away . . .
   I went inside. The motel owner sat on the edge of the bed, clutching his stomach. Blood dribbled onto crinkled brown legs. He said he cut himself shaving. He stood. He fainted. He stood.
   He staggered out of the room.
   I crawled onto the bed and fell asleep. When I awoke the TV still didn’t work. I followed the trail of blood outside.
   The hovercraft was gone. In its place was an old Mazda RX-7. An anvil had fallen on its hood and smashed it into a calamitous U-shape.
   The blood led across the parking lot to a cliff that fell into the sea. In the distance, a hovercraft jumped waves and did spinouts. The sun felt hot.

GIRAFFE

She had stuffed the shoulders of her periwinkle blouse with socks. She said she never wore socks anyway so what’s the difference?
   I found myself on the street, lying beneath a double-decker bus, staring at a rusty gasket set against an ominous canvas of fiberoptics. I blinked. I crawled out from underneath the bus, hailed a taxi, and told the driver to take me home.
   “Where’s home?” said the driver.
   “Home. Home.”
   “Home,” he reiterated.
   At home, she tried to eat pasta without boiling it. She rested the long, hard strings of linguine onto a plate and stabbed them with a fork. “It’s not working,” she complained. “I can’t pick it up.” She stabbed the pasta with increasing angst until it had been broken into small enough pieces to nibble. “It doesn’t taste the same,” she noted.
   I found myself on a rooftop looking across the landscape of the city. Spires, steeples, mirrored skyscrapers surrounded me in every direction. The sky was blue. On an adjacent rooftop, a giraffe stared at me. Its long, spotted neck buckled in the wind. But its gaze never wavered.
   I jumped off the rooftop and pulled the string on my parachute just in time, although I skinned a knee, and I had to dive out of the way of oncoming traffic. On the sidewalk, I cut the parachute loose and bought a newspaper from a kiosk. I opened the newspaper to the business section. This picture was on the front page:

There was no title, no caption, no accompanying story. Beneath the picture rained the sharp columns of the stock market.
   I walked home.
   She had stripped the hides from all of the umbrellas and stitched together a vast cape. She demonstrated how the cape might also function as a flag, given a tall steel pole. Additionally, the cape could be used as a tent during jungle excursions. She set it up in the living room, using kitchen knives for tent clips, stabbing the fabric of the umbrellas into the carpet, urging me to pretend the walls were deep, dark foliage, a rain forest, full of monkeys and wild things and other preternatural beasts that had existed on earth for millions of years, that were prepared to eat trespassers even if their flesh disagreed with the most sensitive palate.
   I found myself at the zoo. All of the zookeepers had been locked in the cages.
   There were giraffes everywhere, immobile and quiet, loitering. I recognized the one from the rooftop. I tried to get its attention, waving my arms. But it didn’t see me. Or ignored me.
   I stroked the giraffe’s leg. It made a chirping noise.
   The zookeepers pleaded with me to set them free. I said I would have to think about it and went to use the toilet.
   When I came out, she was waiting for me.
   She had climbed atop my giraffe and was trying to ride it. “Giddyap!” she shouted, thumping platform heels against its belly. The zookeepers cheered her on.
   The giraffe swatted her with its tail. She flipped backwards over a fence. A loud crash preceded a tsunami of curses. She climbed over the fence, caught her dress on a picket, and somersaulted onto the asphalt with a great tearing of fabric. She stood, dazed. She realized she was naked from the waist down and tried to cover herself. She yelled at me, insisted it was my fault. Everybody watched her quietly—giraffes, zookeepers, me.
   I told her it wasn’t what I had imagined. She asked what I meant by that. I said she knew what I meant and we should leave it at that.
   She accused me of breaking her heart. I apologized.
   I said goodbye.
   I climbed onto the giraffe and whispered into its ear. It loped out of the zoo.
   The other giraffes followed us. We made our way through the city in a long, proud parade. People gathered on the sidewalks. Soon it was a full-fledged extravaganza, comparable to New Year’s Day. As the applause and cries of joy grew louder, I leaned my cheek against the soft neck of the giraffe, closed my eyes, and conjured images of home.

HOUSEGUEST

I was tossing a boy in the air when the houseguest broke in. The boy fell through my arms and landed on his head. He stopped giggling. He turned pale and went limp.
   Somebody down the hallway screamed like a plane crash.
   I ran upstairs and armed myself with two survival knives I kept in a shoebox beneath my bed for these occasions, then went back downstairs, tentative, vigilant . . . I spotted the houseguest. Tall and lean, he stood in the foyer and held a survival knife in each hand. He wore a weathered veteran’s jacket and had slicked-back gray hair.
   I threw a knife. It sailed end over end and struck the houseguest in the neck. His head snapped back and froze for a moment. He dropped his knives. He waved his arms as if trying to maintain balance on a tightrope.
   Slowly he turned and paced out the front door.
   The boy crawled into the foyer and told me he was going to turn me in to the police for child abuse.
   I said, “You have that right. Good boy.”
   I left.
   The houseguest moved down the sidewalk. Occasionally he tripped over his feet and fell into a parked car, then pushed himself up and slogged on. The knife remained in his neck, plugging a terminal jugular.
   I said, “Stop.”
   He stopped.
   Without turning, he raised a trembling hand and made his fingers into a hang-loose sign.
   All of the neighbors were cutting their yards. They turned off their lawnmowers and stared at us as if we were a car crash happening in slow motion.
   I threw the other survival knife at the houseguest. This time I missed.
   The lawnmowers growled back to life.
   The houseguest removed the knife. Blood fell from the wound like streamers of unraveling crepe paper. He held the knife in his hand for a moment, caressing the worn leather handle with a thumb. Then it slipped out and clanked against the cement.
   I went back inside.
   The boy was gone. He left a note on the floor. “Dear Parent. I’m running away. I took some soup and crackers from the pantry. I will send you a check for these items when I get a job and make enough money
. Auf Wiedersehen
,” said the note.
   Upstairs somebody turned on the shower and flushed the toilet at the same time. The lights flickered. The house hiccupped, shook.
   I opened the guestbook and ran a finger down the guest list. There was only one name.
   The name had been crossed out.
   The doorbell rang. I opened it.
   It was the houseguest. He looked different. His hair had come undone, and there was something about his face. He stood there, pale and limp, clutching his neck. I invited him in. I ushered him into the kitchen. He collapsed onto the dinette table and his hand fell from his neck, exposing a gash that whistled like a deflating tire.
   Snapping on a pair of dishwashing gloves, I carefully dressed the wound.

THE TRAUMATIC EVENT
OR
THE WALRI HOLOCAUST
OR
THE HAIRY DEED
OR
THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED