Going For a Beer

by Robert Coover

  Or maybe I somehow wished them away, reversed them out of my life like a rejected fairytale, a shabby dream, just as, for all I knew, I might well have wished them here in the first place. I was far from home; anything seemed possible. Certainly they vanished like shadows, leaving these strange streets bathed in a fresh light that lifted my spirits. I knew time was passing because I could hear my hands and feet tick-tocking away below, but the sensation I had was of a languorous serenity, a delicious pause between clocked anxieties. My life was changing, but for a moment it was standing still.

  I may have got carried away a bit by the sheer enchantment of it, for, alone now, I could feel my body shed its weight suddenly and burst into an almost uncontrollable spasm of hip-twisting exuberance. Perhaps I meant it as an affront: their tails hung down, mine had to fly! Even as I dutifully planted my walking stick, my feet—I seemed to have at least four of them, all rattling at once—kicked it away. The stick took on a life of its own, whirling me giddily round and round as it whipped at the hard ground, sliced the air. I’d never known anything quite like it. I felt like I was about to blow my doggone hat off.

  I knew that I had come to this place to change my life. Or that, somehow, because my life had to change, I had come to this place. The invitation seemed to suggest this: it was a special occasion. But, even as I found myself suddenly spinning dizzily around my rooted walking stick, I could not imagine what the nature of that change could be. Perhaps it had to do with the old men (I seemed to remember old men), or perhaps with the place itself, a place that seemed to be there and not to be there at the same time, like an unwritten melody, more an aura than a place, barren and seductive and overhung with melancholic storm clouds. And growing ominously dark. . .

  Wait! I stopped, staggered drunkenly, spread my legs to keep from falling. What place was this? What exactly was I doing here? I tucked my elbows in. I’d taken that invitation for granted: but who had sent it? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps I’d never known. I looked up at the louring sky, gripping my walking stick with both hands, feeling bereft, forgotten. Yet liking the feel of the stick. The streetlamps had come on. And under them, a girl stood. “I suppose,” she said, staring at my feet, which were, though I had little to do with it, still on the move, “it’s some kind of affliction.”

  “Yes, yes,” I stammered, “it’s—it’s an affliction . . .” I lowered my walking stick. Her caustic twang, so far from home, had startled me. She had genuine melting-pot lard in her cheeks and hips, her negligee was swank, but it was also vulgar, straight off Main Street, and she had the crusty don’t-number-two-me worldliness of the girl-next-door. I felt I had seen her somewhere before. I began to perceive the nature of my trial.

  I was in a foreign place. The light was bad but I could see plain enough this guy was not one of the locals. The fancy duds were right but they fit him funny, like he was growing into them and out of them at the same time. He was playing with that swagger stick of his like he was trying to jerk it off, and I had the impression from the way he gaped at me that about all he could register for the moment was two tits and a tongue. Right away he starts mooning about his nursies, by which I supposed he meant his old lady, this john being strictly backwater, soup and fish notwithstanding—I mean, he had some pretty fancy moves, but all that nimble-footedness looked to me like something he mighta learned tippytoeing through the cowshit. It was my guess that the nearest he’d had to a nursemaid was some old Gran out on the prairie who’d spooned him baked squash, rhubarb pie, and get-up-and-go marketplace fairytales, but bull’s wool or no, the message was clear: this guy wanted his mommy.

  The weird thing was how he couldn’t stop jiggering about. It was like somebody had wound him up, then thrown away the key. Was it those old guys up in the balcony? I’d come on him spinning round and round his planted stick like he was in love with it. His dick, sure, I thought, but more than that: it was like some hole in the middle that he could circle round all day but never get inside of, and it was driving him crazy. “I’m free, that’s me,” he was hollering, and it was scaring him spitless. When he finally tucked his stick back in his clothes, he was staggering so he could hardly stand up—yet his feet kept ticky-tocking away under him like he had the St. Vitus dance or something. So I spoke up. I said I supposed it was some kind of affliction, and he said it was and in fact he really shouldn’t be left alone. I could see that, and suggested a couple of guards. I had to admit there was something attractive about him, though, in spite of his being a wanker and a loony. Maybe I was just homesick. Or tired of trying to get by in these hard times as a rich dressmaker’s whore: there’s a side to this kind of glamour that most people don’t see. And it ain’t the front side. Whatever the reason, when he launched into a little birds-and-bees number about “a clumsy cloud and a fluffy little cloud” (was he kidding? maybe all he’d had to shag till now were sheep . . .), I found myself thinking, oh well, what the hell, though I don’t know the yokel from Adam, I just might let him scud up to a pap if it’d make him feel any better. If only he’d stop weewawing around like that.

  And that was when these guys showed up.

  Don’t ask me who they were. I’m not even sure what they were. They came rising up out of the ground like from you-know-where. And you could tell these greasers meant business. Fluffy little clouds, my fanny, I thought, that boy shoulda stayed home on the farm! He looked like he was about to poop marbles, hunkered down there with his willow between his legs and his hat squashing his big ears out. Even his twitchy feet had gone dead on him. I figured the rube was done for and was just starting to feel sorry for him, when whaddaya know! he suddenly rears up, turns that little white-tipped stick of his into some kind of magical popgun, and starts mowing down the lot of them! Rappy-tappy-tap, down they go, blood and brains blowing everywhere, it’s a fantastic rub-out! Hey, I thought, this guy is good!

  They return as they left: as though compelled. Arising like plants from the soil. Have they been called back because of the girl? To present her perhaps with a moral alternative? Or to recall him to the world of men? They bring with them, certainly, the aura of purpose, of culture, law, of subjection of the will to the greater beauty of the whole, but this aura rests upon them more like an affliction than a promise. Or perhaps it’s just those preposterous squared-off hats.

  They pause, standing in a row like soldiers at ease, their walking sticks planted between their legs, their white-gloved hands clasped at the heads as though protecting their genitals. Or pointing to them. They seem ready to serve, yet uncertain as to the nature of their service. Is he to join their ranks? Is she to embellish them? Or are they mere witnesses to a drama from which they are—ontologically, as it were—excluded? He provides an answer of sorts: he raises his walking stick and, pointing it like a fairground rifle, shoots one of their number: p-tang! The man crumples and falls, clutching at the sky.

  Nothing changes. And everything changes. The outsider, it seems, is here to kill. And they his hosts, are here to die. Possessed suddenly of an amazing and exemplary grace, he executes them one by one, but after the first surprise, there is no other: p-tang! p-tang!—down they go, grabbing at their breasts, their faces, reaching desperately for the darkening sky.

  The girl meanwhile is falling madly in love—or perhaps is at last being rejoined with her true love—her face lit up now with a kind of mystical ecstasy. She falls into step with him, moving in adoring concert, yet never touching, discovering—or rediscovering—an essential affinity, a zest for life and art—p-tang! p-tang!—innately shared. He fires from over his head, drops them two at a time from the hip, even lifts his leg and shoots from under it, as though to deepen the humiliation of their ineluctable and spellbound deaths. She moves among the victims, her heels rapping out a pitter-patter of termination, flouncing her skirts like the dropping of final curtains.

  He knocks another one down, shooting blindly over his shoulder, then, holding the stick at his belly—ruckety-tackety-tuckety-tack!—impatiently m
achine-guns the lot. The dying men whirl and writhe, blood jetting from their bodies like the release of some inner effervescence. Their executioner, grown tall, staggers momentarily as though drunk with pleasure, turns wide-eyed toward the girl. She draws near to complete their final figure, which would seem, by the expression on her face, to be nothing short of orgasm (perhaps it is already overtaking her, as his arms reach out she is rolling to her back, her eyes closed, mouth agape)—

  But wait! there’s one still standing! This one seems smaller somehow, or else more remote, planted at the foot of the iron tower like a flaw in the visitor’s own character, hands clasped soberly at the head of his stick. The visitor drops the girl (she gasps, grabbing herself as she falls), draws himself erect, and, his boyish grin frozen on his face, fires: the man leans to one side, ducking the shot, and says: I know what you’re trying to do my friend, and I don’t want to take the wind out of your sails, but perhaps, in your pursuit of untrammeled happiness, you have been a little imprudent. For there are dates that cannot be broken, and words, you know, that cannot be spoken. This is more than a clash of taste, a bit of a tiff. You are seeking, through murder—”

  His executioner, sweating now though still grinning widely, teeth clamped in what is either manly determination or unbridled terror (the girl, groaning, convulses ambivalently at his feet), fires again: the man calmly leans the other way and continues, “You are seeking, as I say, through murder, to overcome that ambivalence at the heart of your quest, but what you are killing is merely something in yourself. Indeed, it is unlikely that, when the killing is done, there can possibly be anything left. You cannot celebrate, my friend, what does not exist. There is no Adam, for all your wishful thinking, and there never was; those treacherous brothers just made that up to account for their discontent. Yours is a grave misapprehension, with consequences far beyond your hasty actions here. Believe me, a few technical skills, gutsiness, and a silly smile will not resolve—”

  Enraged, the newcomer bounces his swagger stick off the street and, as though to argue the case for personal ingenuity and pluck (it’s not just technology, blast it, it’s a whole new spirit—!), grabs it on the rebound and raises it like an Indian’s bow. “Wait!” cries the man at the foot of the tower. The overhanging globes are so aligned as to seem to be pointing to his chest. “Hear me out!” The girl can be seen crawling away into the shadows in her glossy negligee, perhaps to sleep awhile, and dream. “I admit your instincts are sound, but your methods are ingenuous! It’s not whose hats, but who’s—!” His opponent draws the bow—or seems to: there is a mystery about the arrow—and lets it go. There is a crack like a rifle shot, the man at the tower cries out: “No, no, damn it! SHOOT THE OLD ME-e-e-e-ennn—!” and, flinging an arm in the air, crumples, his face falling into shadows.

  The intruder is alone now on the street, except for all the bodies, those bitten apples, heaped about like cairns, like gates for a dance routine. The night has deepened. He tucks the stick under his arm, straightens his white tie, brushes off his tails, as though recollecting an old code. He looks at his feet: they are quiet at last. He grins at this, and shrugs, waggles his hips. In the heavy silence (he will never, never change), he doffs his hat and takes his spidery bow.

  INSIDE THE FRAME

  (1987)

  Dry weeds tumble across a dusty tarred street, lined by low ramshackle wooden buildings. A loosely hinged screen door bangs repetitiously; nearby a sign creaks in the wind. A thin dog passes, sniffing idly at the borders of the street. More tumbleweeds. More dull banging. Finally, a bus pulls up, its windows opaqued with dust and grease. The creaking sign is heard now but not seen. Down the street, a young woman opens a door and peers out, framed by the darkness within. There is a furtive movement on a store roof, martial music in the distance. The door of the bus opens and two men step down. After a brief discussion, one of them shoots the other. Meanwhile, a matriarchal figure waits at the gate of her house like a mediating presence, somber yet hopeful. The sound of a cash register suggests a purchase. In the distance, a riderless horse can be seen, its flanks trembling and glistening with sweat. More martial music, steadily approaching. The figure on the roof is an Indian. A tall man is holding a limp woman in his arms before a window. A couple swirl past, arms linked, singing at the tops of their voices. There is something startling about this. The sky darkens as though before a storm. A richly dressed lady exits the bus, followed by her Negro servant. The Indian leaps, a knife between his teeth. Someone is crying. It is a man, seated at a dinner table with his family, seen through an open doorway. The martial music augments as a marching band comes down the street, trumpets blaring. The Negro servant lifts down several valises, trunks, and hatboxes. Watched by the gunslinger, four men stride vigorously out of one building, the door banging behind them, and enter another. Beneath the back wheel of the bus, the pinned dog lifts its head plaintively, as though searching for someone who is not present and perhaps could never be. A boy with a slingshot takes aim at an old man delivering an unheard graveside soliloquy. Before this, the distant horse was seen to neigh and shake its mane. And then the martial music abruptly ended. Now, the rich lady enters the dilapidated hotel, surrounded by attentive bellhops and followed by her Negro servant, struggling comically with the baggage. A card-player, angry, throws his cards in the dealer’s face: trouble seems to be brewing. Somewhere a garbage lid rattles menacingly in an alleyway. All of this is surrounded by darkness. The singing couple swing past again, going the other way, dressed now in identical white tuxedos, crisply edged. Thunder and lightning. The surviving member of the marching band retrieves his battered trumpet and puts it defiantly to his crushed lips. The gunslinger turns to reboard the bus, but is held back by the grizzled old sheriff. What occurs between them is partly hidden behind six young women who, flouncing by, turn their backs in unison and flip their skirts over their heads as though to suggest in this display the terrible vulnerability of thresholds. Is there laughter in the brightly lit hotel lobby? Perhaps it’s only the rain beating on tin roofs. The sheriff has shot the Indian. Or an Indian. The bus has departed and several of the doors along the street have closed. Behind one of them a tear glistens in an upturned eye. A strange-looking person walks woodenly past, crossing the rain-slicked tar, staring straight ahead, his arms held out stiffly before him. Down the street, the door opens again and a young woman peers out: the same door as before, the same dark space within, a reassurance that is not one. Beneath the creaking sign, visible once more, a man now pulls a hat brim over his eyes and steps provisionally down off a wooden porch. There is the sound somewhere of suddenly splintering glass, a piano playing. The dog with the broken back, its search forsaken, lowers its thin head in the pounding rain. And the banging door? The banging door?

  THE PHANTOM OF THE MOVIE PALACE

  (1987)

  “We are doomed, Professor! The planet is rushing madly toward Earth and no human power can stop it!” “Why are you telling me this?” asks the professor petulantly and sniffs his armpits. “Hmm. Excuse me, gentlemen,” he adds, switching off his scientific instruments and, to their evident chagrin, turning away, “I must take my bath.” But there is already an evil emperor from outer space in his bathtub. Even here then! He sits on the stool and chews his beard despondently, rubbing his fingers between his old white toes. The alien emperor, whose head looks like an overturned mop bucket, splashes water on the professor with his iron claw and emits a squeaky yet sinister cackle. “You’re going to rust in there,” grumbles the professor in his mounting exasperation.

  The squat gangster in his derby and three-piece suit with boutonniere and pointed pocket handkerchief waddles impassively through a roomful of hard-boiled wisecracking bottle-blond floozies, dropping ashes on them from his enormous stogie and gazing from time to time at the plump bubble of fob-watch in his hand. He wears a quizzical self-absorbed expression on his face, as though to say: Ah, the miracle of it all! the mystery! the eternal illusion! And yet . . . It�
�s understood he’s a dead man, so the girls forgive him his nasty habits, blowing at their décolletages and making such vulgar remarks and noises as befit their frolicsome lot. They are less patient with the little bugger’s longing for the ineffable, however, and are likely, before he’s rubbed out (will he even make it across the room? no one expects this), to break into a few old party songs just to clear the air. “How about ‘The Sterilized Heiress’?” someone whispers even now. “Or, ‘The Angle of the Dangle!’ ” “ ‘Roll Your Buns Over!’ ” “Girls, girls . . . !” sighs the gangster indulgently, his stogie bobbing. “ ‘Blow the Candle Out!’ ”

  The husband and wife, in response to some powerful code from the dreamtime of the race, crawl into separate beds, their only visible concession to marital passion being a tender exchange of pajamas from behind a folding screen. Beneath the snow-white sheets and chenille spreads, they stroke their strange pajamas and sing each other to sleep with songs of faith and expediency and victory in war. “My cup,” the wife gasps in her chirrupy soprano as the camera closes in on her trembling lips, the luminescent gleam in her eye, “runneth over!” and her husband, eyelids fluttering as though in prayer, or perhaps the onset of sleep, replies: “Your precious voice, my love, here and yet not here, evokes for me the sweet diaphanous adjacency of presence”— (here, his voice breaks, his cheeks puff out)—“and loss!”

  The handsome young priest with the boyish smile kneels against the partition and croons a song of a different sort to the nun sitting on the toilet in the next stall. A low unpleasant sound is heard; it could be anything really, even prayer. The hidden agenda here is not so much religious expression as the filmic manipulation of ingenues: the nun’s only line is not one, strictly speaking, and even her faint smile seems to do her violence.