Thrill-Bent (15 page)

As I approach Furry’s hut, I see Bob, Ken, and Mike slip through the front door and close it quickly behind them. I knock, but there is no answer. “I know you’re in there!” I whisper. I hear a couple of yelps and some attenuated scuffling. I walk around to the side of the hut, looking for a window, but Furry’s house seems to be utterly sealed up. I start to make a loud, sarcastic comment, but just as the words are pressing out of my mouth, I spot a crack in the doorjamb where the front door isn’t quite flush. Through it, I glimpse a thin slice of activity: the guys are pulled into a huddle. I spot another person, a stranger, in the clutch of the intimate group. A short man, well-groomed, sweaty and immense, is swiv-eling and gesturing. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but his hands are flying fast, tugging and adjusting something. I can’t tell what it is, the object at the center of the gathering, but I think I see a flash of ears and a pink felt triangle of nose.

“Furry?” I call out. The commotion halts. All heads swivel toward the door. Finally, the sweaty man steps to the side, and I get a full view of the group. Bob is wearing bunny ears; Mike has on a pair of white fur boots, and the beast at the axis of the hub is in fact Furry, and yet it is wholly fauna—a Furry-sized, protean rabbit. He looks more like a feral hybrid you’d expect to see in a circus sideshow (“Half-Man-Half-Hare”) than a theme-park mascot or a Jimmy Stewart sidekick. This costume must be expertly home-sewn, certainly not something off the shelves of a novelty store, and his face is exposed but whiskered and pink-nosed. What is frightening—no, disconcerting—is that the specter is so utterly Furry-like, as if this lapine creature is the
real
Furry.

“May we help you?” Furry calls out, fake-friendly and tart. He sounds like a clerk at a Brooks Brothers store. He takes a half-step toward the door and stares at me hard. Does he know it’s my eye he’s looking at through the crack?

“Oh, no. Sorry ... I just ... lost an earring, and I thought this might be the lost and found.” I shrug, nodding my head to somehow emphasize my lie. As I nod, my eye catches a distracting shine from my own chest, where the puff-painted tabernacle on my new sweatshirt gleams in the sun.

Furry doesn’t smile. Our affiliation, dubious as it may be, seems lost on him for the moment. He is caught between worlds, teetering on the cusp between animal and key-jangler. “No earrings,” he says loudly, twitching his pink nose vigorously. “Come back in a while, and ... we’ll see.”

My mother used to say
We’ll see
when she meant
No.
But Furry wouldn’t say to come back if he were banishing me forever, would he? I send one last meaningful hook into the unreadable ocean of his eyes, hoping to reel in something profound. Mike, Bob, and Ken do not change their expressions. They stare toward my face but not into my eye, as though they are trying to memorize my features in case they’re required to identify me in a police lineup later on. I slowly turn and walk away, still nodding unconsciously in that vague way that communicates complete bafflement.

Dejected, I head for Mormontown. Its location on my map of the park is in “Pioneer Village,” a sort of Knott’s Berry Farm without the jam, as far as I can tell from the promotional blurb. I’m sure it’s going to be one of those theme-park homages, like Dollywood, or like Southern Heritage Park in Georgia, which pays tribute to a historical era by recreating the details (porch swings on real wood verandas, mint juleps at $12 a pop) and leaving out the messy controversial crux of the thing (slavery). I know when I’m getting near it because I hear cannon fire—a bewildering audio accompaniment to couples in Gap walking shorts and Bass weejuns strolling hand-in-hand along “rustic” wooden sidewalks. As I hone in on the booming, I notice that, with the exception of a few cobblers, millinery shoppes, and doll museums, the aspect of pioneer life that gets the most play here in Pioneer Village is the buying and selling of small arms. Guns, slingshots, crossbows, cannons—no stone has been left unlaunched in the historical approximation of weaponry’s divine enterprise. Replicas of turn-of-the-century rifles and revolvers are perched oiled and shining in storefront windows like tanned girls sunning poolside. Ye olde ammo shed is crouched barrel-like between gun markets, its hand-lettered sign promising “the finest powder, wicks, and genuine lead pellets to protect your kin.” I pass a street stand where dozens of heavy pistols are lined up like toy soldiers, hoisted upright on tooled leather racks. Kids are gathered around, begging parents for dollars, excited to get their little digits on a pewter trigger. “Be forewarned, li’l shooters, gunslingers and outlaws have been known to frequent these parts!” crows an early settler in a cocked hat and breeches. Some of these kids are in gangsta clothes, probably bought at the Tweeners section of a suburban Walmart, but I doubt if anyone in this quaint village has ever witnessed a gang shooting or a drive-by, been mugged or held up, or had any experience to tarnish the giddy, ghetto-lite connotation from the pairing of flying bullets and unpredictable youth. Of course, the bullets in these pistols have been replaced by caps, and the explosive sound of cap guns being detonated punctures the air all around. I can’t help but accelerate my pace a little when I spot the Mormon Visitors Center, where a statue of Brigham Young stands at its entrance, butt flat as an empty paper bag, head pointed full speed ahead, one cocky arm curled high to exhort the masses to follow him to salty, beautiful Utah.

The Visitors Center looks like it was made from Lincoln Logs, a fake-wood cabin safe from minimum-wage gunslingers. The angel Moroni presides over the center’s front doorway. Seeing me pause at the sight of a hand-painted banner that reads “Mormons: Our Journey,” a middle-aged thespian in a granny gown slowly flaps her hideous papier-mâché wings and gestures me toward a dark room in the back of the building. “Follow the Father and the Son,” she recommends eerily. Squinting, I see a bustle of beings huddled in the rear hallway. An awed murmur spreads through their ranks as God and Jesus voraciously trot through the center, all but pushing people down in their rush to inspire a feverish hallucination in the sweaty soul of one Joseph Smith. The Almighty, who’s wearing a fanny pack over his robes, checks his watch as he hustles. “Showtime, folks!” he yells good-naturedly. “Let there be light!” Jesus purses his lips and holds his beard to one side as he takes a last sip from his can of Sprite. Then he expertly finger-rolls it into a metal trash can, mumbles “Two points!” and enters the Chamber of Visions.

I, along with a dozen other docile tourists, follow.

The chamber is a windowless room painted in bruise-purple blacklight paint, spangled with hundreds of wobbly silver stars. It’s basically an extremely poor man’s planetarium. Whoever was responsible for mural-izing the universe didn’t bother to sand down the remarkably uneven plaster walls, so when the lights snap off and the wondrous depths of the five-sided universe glow silver and spectral, the crack of light flowing in from under the double doors reveals numerous spooky ruts and gullies, giving the entire cosmos an acne-scarred complexion. Plus, as my gaze wanders around the room, I notice the mural’s lack of adherence to astronomy as we know it. Stars are clustered together in unrecognizable cliques and blobs, and none of the planets I do manage to spot have moons or rings or gauzy haloes. The Milky Way—the only familiar cosmological flagpost—was done with gray paint and a roller, more of a milky stripe than a way, really, careening down the rocky terrain of the ceiling like an arduous bike path.

A kid in a fedora and suspenders steps out into a spotlight to tell us that it’s 1820 and he’s confused about the true church. The costumery budget for
Mormons: Our Journey
appears to be sorely lacking; the fedora is a couple of sizes too big and the suspenders are too short. Unfortunately, the disparate sizing only serves to exacerbate the teenager’s teenagerness—his head is comically childlike, bobbing balloonishly on his spindly neck, while his torso is burgeoning. It is all but impossible not to stare at his crotch, as the whole area has been unwittingly hoisted front and center like a shipmate’s small but tightly packed duffel bag. The script is awkward and long-winded, emphasizing the young man’s quivering ineptitude in the face of religious revivalism, peppered with phrases like “God’s treasures” and “corrupt living” (according to the
Lonely Planet Guide
I’d brought with me, Smith’s chief source of income as a youth was hiring himself out to local farmers to help them find buried treasure by the use of “seer stones”). Finally, he decides to pray to the Lord God, asking guidance in the matter of what church to join.

The Lord, sans fanny pack, answers his call faster than most 911 operators, bringing along his bitch, Christ. When the two make their entrance, the fluorescents are cranked back on abruptly via the wall switch by the door, and I have a flashbulb-popping vision of my own. Let there be light, indeed. The stark and sudden illumination of the pockmarked heavens leads us into an interrogation scene, in which Smith is cross-examined rigorously and with much lively eyebrow action. Dad and Junior tag-team Joe pretty harshly, upstaging each other with community theater euphony and a penchant for sweeping, Biblical gestures. Eventually, they are satisfied with his alibi (“I always suspected I was a prophet, but no one ever confirmed it!”) and forgive him for being such a lousy servant.

“You, Joseph Smith, are an augur and a seer! You alone will bring forth the true church!” they shout in unison while jamming onto the youth’s wincing face a pair of granny glasses God had apparently stashed in one of the many folds of his voluminous robe. “Your eyes will read my words,” stage-whispers God, with a catch in his voice, “and translate my truth.”

Just then two kids scurry to the edge of the stage holding what appear to be styrofoam tombstones. They throw them onto the stage and then, looking sheepish, kick at the prophetic tablets until they creep nearer to the silvery lines of reflective tape placed on the floor.

“Ah,” says Smith, after a brief time-out to yank and prod at his suspended groin area, “What’s this?” He walks over to one of the white “stone” slabs and picks it up with one hand as though it’s a box of Cheeri-os. He even tosses it back and forth between his hands nervously for a moment. Examining the spidery black nonsense Sharpied onto the sides of the tablet, the boy adjusts his John Lennon specs and declares, “Hmmm, strange-looking words ... ‘The Book of Mormon’ ... well, I’d better get to work!”

Across the stage God and Jesus give each other a satisfied “our work here is done” high five, and someone hits the wall switch, plunging us back into faithless semi-darkness.

Furry is sitting alone on the front step of his hut, head in hands, when I walk by. He’s back in his orange coverall, bunny-earless. His hair has been pulled out of its slim Willie Nelson pigtail braids, and it spills in a crimpy gray curtain over his forearms. I can’t tell whether he’s asleep or just meditating, so I stop short a few feet away from him and whisper, “Furry?”

His head lifts off of his fingertips for an instant, alert to the sound of my voice, and he glances at me with a half-smile. Then his head falls back onto his arms of its own accord. He moans a little, acknowledging my presence in a friendly but exhausted way.

“Furry, I just came by to thank you. I wanted to say good-bye before I took off.”

I sit down beside him on the long cement step. It is hot. I am hot. I can smell Furry’s mousy sweat and his metallic antiperspirant mingling to form a new aroma that is more folksy than either scent alone. His back and shoulders shiver as though he is silently crying or laughing under his orange carapace of arms. I bend down, trying to get a peek at his face, but his triceps clutch in agitation. He is vibrating fast, practically giving off sparks.

I try to discern whether there is anyone inside the hut. I have to tune out the continuously piped-in Osmond music (the selection of the moment: “One bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl!”), the sounds of teenage screaming on the nearby Tumbler, and Furry’s throaty rumbling. I stand up and squint through the door crack, but I don’t see Bob, Mike, or Ken. Unless they are in there, out of range, silently vibrating like Furry, or quietly crouching once again over some beaver-shot centerfold (or is it a bunny-shot?) spread out on the bungalow’s messy floor. Or perhaps the guys went off to participate in some blundering, Tarantino-esque high-stakes bunny-suit deal. They could probably get some realistic-looking cap guns cheap from Pioneer Village. I sit down again to ponder this until I realize with a start that Furry has swiveled his head to look at me with a curious stare, like a pet watching you take a shit or weep.

“Hey, Mister!” I almost shout. “You freaked me out! I was afraid you weren’t going to make it back to earth there for a minute.”

He narrows his eyes. “So you’re as scared as the rest of them,” he says.

This is worse than I thought. I touch his hair, which is really soft. He winces. “Come on,” I say. “Give me a break, Furry. This place is depressing the hell out of me.” I raise my arm in a sweeping gesture reminiscent of the fanny-packing Lord. “You know, all the ... the ...” I struggle to find the exact noun to represent the squalor, the mediocrity, the desperate addiction to distraction that I am searching for.

“The
people?”
he offers nonchalantly, like a man who has had more than his share of run-ins with shoddy homo sapiens.

I laugh. “Yeah ... sort of.”

I can feel my scalp sweating under my hair. Each pore sprouts a fountain of sweat, a ticklish little effluvium of moisture that bonds my several hair products together into a sticky, untouchable skein. I wipe the two parallel drips that are traveling down my forehead toward my eyes. After about thirty seconds of sitting silently I am convinced that I will leave a damp imprint on this cement when I get up to leave. The one memento of my visit, the detail that will be remembered and shared, will be the bulbous, Rorschach-inkblot stain of buttsweat that remains when I rise from this step.