by Tom Robbins
“You’ve taken to that chair like a worm to tequila,” Bobby marveled. “How long’s it been your mode of transport?”
Switters patted the blue Naugahyde upholstered arms of the lightweight, foldable Invacare 9000 XT, pride of Elyria, Ohio. He patted its plastic-coated, chrome-plated hand rims (used to manually propel it), kicked with the side of his foot its pneumatic “flat-free” tires, squirmed his rump about on the “contour plus” cushion that topped the “drop hook solid folding” seat. How such a brand-new deluxe-model wheelchair had ended up in the Boquichicos infirmary, he didn’t know. Part of a foreign-aid package, presumably. He did know that he had failed to send it back with Inti as promised, and he felt a prickle of guilt over that omission, even though he’d wired the clinic a thousand dollars his second day back in the States.
“It’s flame resistant.”
“That’s handy.”
“And bacteria resistant.”
“Smart. Furniture on wheels, you don’t know where it’s been.”
“Oh, I keep a watchful eye.”
“And lock it up at night, I hope. Person can’t be too aseptic in this day and age.” In a characteristic gesture, Bobby tossed a pompadourlike tussock of inky hair out of his eyes while simultaneously patting down the cowlick that coiled like a busted bedspring farther back on his head. Switters had recently turned thirty-six (his birthday had passed unheralded—except by the migraine-makers—on a flight from Paris to New York), which meant that Bobby must have been at least approaching his thirty-third year, but he seemed, if anything, to have grown more boyish—Huck Finnish in stance, Tiger Woodsish in build—since Switters had seen him last, and also more foredoomed. Small wonder Maestra or any other woman would find him worth a flutter. “Fine piece of engineering, but you’d think they’d figure out a way to plumb the damn things.”
“To accommodate a wet bar or . . .”
“Naw,” Bobby went on, shaking his raven mane as if rejecting his previous thought, “that’d never work. But I’ll tell you, son, what’d throw my happy heart to the wolves if I was to have to park a bony Texas butt in one of these suckers every day is the trial and tribulation of just taking a whiz. I mean, don’t you have to off-load yourself onto a customized throne and wee-wee sitting down like you was queen of the May?”
“Such unlucky gentlemen do exist,” said Switters, “but behold the masculine ease with which I can perform the rite of the void.” In demonstration, he bolted boldly upright and stood on the footplate as if before a public urinal. “Of course, you have to make sure the brake is set, and balance your weight, or you could pitch face-first into the fixture.”
Bobby looked like a buffaloed rubbernecker at the Lazarus show. “You can stand?!”
Grinning, Switters hopped backward up onto the seat, where he then began to jog in place, raising his knees almost as high as the scarlet T-shirt he wore under his double-breasted navy pinstriped suit. The wheelchair shook. It teetered precariously. For an instant, he seemed to panic. He throttled the trot.
“What the? . . .” Bobby’s face was changing expressions faster than Clark Kent changed underwear. He went swiftly from astonishment to relief to annoyance to amusement to imagined comprehension. “Okay. Alrighty. I get it. Even a maniac like yourself wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to mock the afflicted or play a cruel joke on your ol’ podner. So’s I reckon you’re fixing to go deep cover, and you’ll be trying to convince some alleged bad guys somewhere that you’ve been crippled by the forces of imperialism. The CIA and Actors Studio: telling them apart has never been simple. Did you know Mata Hari’s real name was Gertrude? But hey! Anyway. I’m gladder than shit you’re not actually stoved in ‘cause I was hoping we could hit a dance club or two this evening.”
Switters reseated himself. “It’s not like that, Bobby,” he said quietly. “It’s not a cover. I really am confined to this contraption. Indefinitely, if not permanently.”
“Then what the? . . . You were bouncing around like a poot in a microwave.”
“Why don’t you take your bandanna, if you don’t mind, and dry off one of those patio chairs.” Switters lifted the lid of the Styrofoam cooler. There was a rattle of ice shards as he removed a pair of glistening bottles. Sing Ha. “For old times’ sake,” he said. “Only four of these in stock, I wasn’t expecting you so soon. But there’s a Thai restaurant a mile from here, and they deliver. Good. Have a seat. You’re not chilly, are you?”
“I live in Nome,” Bobby said. “Nome, Alaska. And in case your Langley-trained powers of observation have completely deserted you, I happen to be wearing my leathers. You’re the one liable to get cold.”
The sun had muscled through the oyster frappé for the first time in weeks, but a light breeze was blowing off the water, and it was raw around its edges. “The state I’m in, I’m impervious to climate. So make yourself comfortable. I’ve got a story to relate . . .”
“I should hope.”
“. . . and you’re going to find it harder to swallow than a cat fur omelet. It’s hard for me, too, so be patient, if patience is among your virtues . . .”
“You could fit all my virtues in Minnie Mouse’s belly button and still have room for Mickey’s tongue and their prenuptial agreement.”
“. . . because it’s going to take me some time, even to get started. Maybe while I’m gathering my wits, as the maître d’ used to say at the Algonquin Hotel, you could fill me in on what you’ve been up to.”
Noticing Switters’s untypical solemnity, Bobby said, “Sure. Take it slow if you need to. But you’ve got to tell me one thing up front. The question that’s burning a hole in my tortilla is . . . well, is or is not the affliction that’s landed you in this senior-citizen dune buggy the result of a sexually transmitted disease? I mean, I hate to be blunt, but if you’ve been bit by something of that nature two years after Bangkok, there’s a chance that I might . . .”
Switters had to laugh.
“Well, we were plowing the same fields, you know. Extracting ore from neighboring shafts. So to speak.”
The word relax was on the tip of Switters’s tongue when the memory of Sailor intervened. Instead, he said, “Not it at all. Nothing remotely in that category, I promise.” He removed a cell phone from the side pocket of the wheelchair and ordered a dozen Sing Has from the Green Papaya Café. Then, without waiting for Bobby to file his Alaska report, he began—first haltingly, bumblingly, then, gaining silver and fizz, dramatically, almost with heedless relish—to recount the events of the weeks just past.
The sun, as if wanting to listen in, as if there might be something new under it, after all, fought off the curdling stratocumulus and moved in closer. By the time Switters finished his hour-long account, the deck was awash in afternoon sunlight; mild, respectful, autumnal rays, bright enough but lacking any sear in their beam. The sea breeze persisted throughout, but so restrained, finally, it could give the impression that it, too, had been mesmerized by the tale.
If the sun was enticed and the breeze engrossed, Bobby Case was those things and more. The former Air Force officer was literally transfixed—whether with amazement, awe, disbelief, sympathy, or scorn, it was impossible to ascertain. Many minutes passed, however, during which he could not raise his beer to his lips. When at last he spoke, his voice was taut from the strain of trying to sound normal and unimpressed. “So, that ol’ boy? That limey? He really bought the farm?”
“Muy muerto.”
“Damn shame.”
“Yeah. Potney was a fine fellow. An aristocrat, I suspect, although the kind inclined to wear black business shoes and dress socks with Bermuda shorts.”
“Every country club in the state of Texas has got a few of them. And you believe the Indian’s curse killed him?”
“Well . . .” Switters, too, was making an effort to behave matter-of-factly. “I believe he chomped an apple he couldn’t—”
Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “An apple?” he asked archly.
“Yea
h. Eve’s apple. The fruit of the tree of knowledge.”
“Oh? Thought for a second you were referring to the head of your—”
“Bobby! For Christ’s sake! No, no tooth marks on that fruit, which, anyway, I would’ve modestly described as a crab apple or a plum. Jesus, pal! He only jabbed it. What I’m saying is that Potney took a bite out of the old forbidden Winesap and could neither assimilate it nor eliminate it. A cruel dilemma. As Hesse said, ‘The magic theater is not for everyone.’ “
“Bought a ticket to a show his rigid background hadn’t prepared him to handle? But once seen, couldn’t forget? Alrighty. How, exactly, did that kill him?”
Switters shook his head silently, slowly.
“More to the damn point, you? You’re a horse of a different feather.”
Switters just kept shaking his head.
Some gulls screeched by, sounding, as usual, in a state of barely controlled hysteria. Wondering if his friend wasn’t close to being in the same condition, Bobby decided he ought to experiment with empathy. “If it was anybody but you, podner, I’d say you were haunting your own house. Like that uncle of mine in Jasper who still thinks Fidel Castro’s hiding under his rose bushes. Raggedy ass roses, too. Never prunes ’em right. But knowing you’re telling the truth, and after the crazy shit you saw down there, well, I’m trying to put myself in your place, and I have to say, if it was me who went through it and saw what you saw, I reckon I’d be lying on my back with my feet in the air like some upended June bug. At least, ‘til I figured it all out.”
Switters lit a Havana panatela, Cuban cigars being an occasional perk of CIA employment. On the out-puff (he never inhaled), he said, “Figuring it out is the rub.”
“Yep, and I don’t know if I can help you much with that end of it. For the time being, at least, I’m going to let you wrassle with the psychological aspects. As for me . . . we’re in agreement that you’ve got good reason to be keeping your tootsies off the pavement. You got no choice right now but to scoot around in that wheelchair. The first order of business is to find a way to get you out of it.”
“That would probably entail lifting the taboo.”
“There you go.” Bobby sucked on his beer bottle like a tot on a lollipop or a tout on a pencil. After a minute or two, he said, “We’re both company men. Even if I am just a contractual flyboy and you’re stuck below supergrader because of your personal proclivities. We’re still company. So let’s approach this problem like company. How would the geniuses back at the pickle factory deal with it?”
“Depends on the level of White House involvement.”
“You got that straight, son. President’s men the biggest damn cowboys on the planet, and we take the heat for ’em. Democrats bad as Republicans.”
“Worse, maybe.”
“Yep. That beloved JFK. More dirty tricks than a whore in a coal mine. By the time he supposedly ate acid and saw the evil truth about Vietnam, his karmic boomerang was already winging home to roost. Live by the cowboy, die by the cowboy, I reckon. But we digress. Now. The company. First thing, they’d dispatch some Joe to meet with that would-be giggle box of a shaman and buy him out. Bribe him to call off the bugaboo. Right?”
“Quite likely. But End of Time—or Today Is Tomorrow—has no use for money. In fact, I can’t imagine what you might possibly bribe him with.”
“Everybody has a price. ‘Cept for you and me. On second thought, ‘cept for you. I know all too well what mine’d be. But, alrighty, let’s say we can’t buy him off. Next thing, the company would send in some disinformation Joes, plant evidence, try to discredit him. Rile up the populace against him. Pressure him, blackmail him, get him run out of office.”
“Near as I can tell, except maybe for a noninfluential outsider named Fer-de-lance, he has no rivals. If he ever had any, I suspect he may have eaten them.”
Bobby burst out laughing.
“I’m not so sure that’s far-fetched. You find it amusing?”
“Nope, nope,” said Case. “I was just thinking about you eating granny’s parrot.” He grinned from sideburn to sideburn.
“Shhh,” Switters shushed him, glancing around furtively.
“Sorry. But we did sweep for bugs. Which in itself is pretty funny. Anyhow, if all else failed, company’d dispatch an operative to smack the witchman. If the cowboys had a hand in it, they would.”
“Well, they don’t. And in the Amazon forest? I’m not sure they could. They couldn’t even smack Castro. In seven attempts.”
“All they had to do was go to Jasper, spray Uncle Jerry’s roses.”
“Besides, who would do it?”
Bobby didn’t hesitate. “Me.”
“You must be cartooning!”
“Nope. Not if it came to that. Not if it was the only way to release you.”
Simultaneously touched and appalled, Switters asked, “You’d actually? . . .”
“If it came to that. As Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, it’s permissible to—”
“I know what Krishna is alleged to have said in the Gita: ‘If your cause is just,’ et cetera. And like the ‘eye for an eye’ crap Yahweh is alleged to have thundered in the Bible, it’s been twisted to excuse and justify every vile sort of opportunistic bloodletting. Anyway—and I sincerely appreciate your offer—the threat of death, or even death itself, is unlikely to produce the desired results. Today Is Tomorrow and his pals have a different slant on mortality than we so-called civilized types. The overly oxygenated who like to think all peoples are the same have never crossed paths with a Kandakandero.”
“Hell, they’ve never crossed paths with a Frenchman. One-worldism is just a disguised brand of xenophobia. Even your cousin Potney from cousinly Merry Olde laid a bodacious cultural difference or two on the table. Otherwise, you mighten not be in this mess. Now, as for getting you out of it . . . I see your point. Eliminating the laughing shaman wouldn’t necessarily eliminate the taboo.”
“Not unless he died in some arcane manner that you and I couldn’t even guess at.”
“Hmm.” Bobby filled his throat with Sing Ha. Switters followed suit. Out on Puget Sound, an aging freighter filled its stack with steam. The noise, long and mournful, set a neighbor’s dog to yowling a canine version of a country western tune, which in turn set off the gulls, those graceful but grabby scavengers who wouldn’t have hesitated to pick Hank Williams cleaner than a Cadillac full of agents and a courtroom full of ex-wives. Then, everything went quiet again, the sun let itself be bound and hooded by strato-terrorists, and Switters returned to shaking his head. As the ambience, sky and water alike, gradually turned a single shade of teal, Bobby slumped low in his patio chair, his battered boots propped on the ice chest. He appeared lost in thought.
Teal is an unfriendly color, and the air had an unfriendly feel. Chill, at last, found Switters’s bones. He tapped the toe of Bobby’s left boot with the toe of his own right sneaker. “Park Place, Illinois Avenue, and a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card for your thoughts,” he said.
“Make that a Boardwalk hotel full of blondes and fried chicken and you got a deal.” He bolted upright and grinned his boyish hardpan grin. “I was thinking,” he said, “that wheelchair or no wheelchair, I’m taking you dancing tonight.”
They did go dancing. Even Switters danced, after a fashion, careening his Invacare 9000 around the floor of the Werewolf Club, more or less in time to the energetic rock of Electric Baby Moses, moving, more or less in concert, with one of the several young women Bobby had attracted to their table. Or, perhaps, Switters had attracted them on his own. “Women love these fierce invalids home from hot climates,” he practically shouted at one point in the evening.
Even so, they taxied home alone. Alone, and more than meagerly intoxicated. So intoxicated, in fact, that an incautious Switters sang in the cab a medley of refrains from Broadway shows, included among them a seemingly poignant rendition of “Send in the Clowns.” Bobby, fortunately, thought his friend was merely waxing iron
ic—and to a certain extent irony was involved. The stiff-witted and academic seem not to comprehend that it is entirely possible to be ironic and sincere at the same instant; that a knowing tongue in cheek does not necessarily preclude an affectionate glow in heart.
They awoke the next morning wound in the rusty anchor chains of hangover, but Maestra fixed them a delicious late breakfast of ham biscuits with red-eye gravy, surprising because they’d roused her noisily at 3 A.M., Switters lacking a key to the house, and because Maestra never had been what she contemptuously referred to as a “kitchen chicken.” Bobby told her she made the Galloping Gourmet look like he was stuck in cement and kissed her on the cheek, and although she waved him off as if he were some kind of hopeless lunatic, Switters could tell she was pleased.
Arriving on the side deck just as the mist was lifting (they’d paused on the way to admire the Matisse), Switters suggested a tuft of hair of the dog. “Nope,” countered Bobby, “nothing doing. First, we’re gonna sit. I have a sneaking suspicion you haven’t sat in a coon’s age.”
“However the hell long that is,” said Switters. “I don’t believe small arboreal carnivores are exactly famous for lavish longevity, not judging from the frequency with which they show up as road kill.”
“Mock the folk wisdom of your ancestors if you must, ain’t no concern of mine, but I can sense you haven’t been sitting, son; and while meditation wasn’t designed as therapy, it might do more for you than gravy does for biscuits—at this weird troubling time in your life.”
They sat.
They sat for nearly two hours, in the course of which Switters lost himself so that his essence passed into what some are wont to call, perhaps unrealistically, the Real Reality: that realm of consciousness beyond ego and ambition where mind becomes a silver minnow in a great electric lake of soul, and where the quarks and the gods pick up their mail on their way from nowhere to everywhere (or is it the other way around?).
Afterward, tranquilized and centered by the meditation, and enheartened by the previous evening’s coed recreation, Switters felt better than he had in a fortnight; felt so good that he came to an optimistic decision concerning his next course of action. His instinct, however, was not to share this with Bobby immediately. Instead, he focused on loosening the last remaining loops of hangover’s iron turban. “Young buck like you might not notice,” he said, decapping a beer, “but I find piper inflation to be on the rise.”