“Enough!” Pensive shrieked, like she actually expected this maniac to stop beating him.
Daryl took a two-step running start and kicked him again. Out of reflex, John wrapped himself around the leathered foot.
“Fuck you, fat bitch!” Daryl snarled, trying to shake John loose.
“Fuck me?” Pensive said, obviously having heard that sentiment one too many times. “No, fuck you!”
John heard the release of an aerosol can and felt his throat close. His eyes seared shut. Daryl screamed, falling onto him like a soldier on a live grenade.
“Fat bitch?” Pensive said, losing her usual California-Quaalude-speak. “Don’t you ever judge my body.”
She began punctuating her syllables with her own kicks, despite the fact that she was wearing sandals. John coiled up tighter. Daryl flailed at his side, trying to climb over him.
“Don’t judge my person, my being, my spirit, based on my body,” Pensive said. “You have no right to do that to me or any woman.”
Daryl continued to curse, but John didn’t hear the word “fat” amidst the litany of insults. Bitch, stanky, hippie, whore, yes. Fat, no.
“I am a radiant being filled with light and love!” Pensive proclaimed, Daryl tasting the back of her Birkenstocks. “I am an open channel of creative energy! My life is blossoming into total perfection! I accept both the size and shape of my breasts!”
After a dozen more affirmations, John heard the spray of the aerosol can again, followed by a blood-curdling yelp from Daryl.
“That’s enough physical release for one day,” Pensive said, yanking John from beneath Daryl.
John’s eyes were burning, blood trickling from his head and arms. He was barely able to breathe let alone stand. Pensive was huffing too. Disoriented, he leaned into her, sinking into the gelatinous expanse of her breasts.
“C’mon,” Pensive commanded. “We need to get you some water.”
Water? John thought. Ambulance.
“Have you ever done any creative visualization?” Pensive asked, carrying him. “It helps actualize a more progressive situation.”
“I have no vision at all,” John whined.
“Good time to start,” she said. “Beethoven created his greatest symphonies completely deaf. Repeat after me, higher-self surround me in a wall of mirrored light.”
John was frightened of this new age voodoo, afraid Pensive was attempting some sort of karmic mouth-to-mouth. He was also concerned that somehow during the melee he had swallowed a mouthful of napalm. His face was on fire, body throbbing with the heat of a hundred bruises. He couldn’t stop shaking or dry heaving.
Pensive chanted for guidance as she dragged him off the street, up a flight of stairs and inside a building. John was placed in a chair. Pensive asked someone for water and a wet towel. When the most minimal of medicinals arrived, she forced John to drink from a glass while dabbing at his eyes with a cloth.
“Didn’t anybody teach you how to duck?” she asked, wiping a compress against a gash near his temple.
“I only got one chance,” John blenched, wiseass mode clicking to automatic pilot. “Lately, my reactions have been a little slow.”
“I don’t believe in violence,” Pensive said, hitting John with another pat of the washcloth.
John winced, seeing static. Molecular activity. Pensive’s snowy electric outline disappeared. His brain fired random synapses, signal flares for self-preservation. He saw Grandma. She was administering care to him while giving a lecture on nonviolence.
“Civil disobedience can be effective,” Grandma explained. “But so can a left hook. Getting beaten for the cameras is one thing, fighting back is another. Malcolm X said, ‘I am not against violence in self-defense. I don’t even call it violence when it’s self-defense. I call it intelligence.’ So, if someone hurts you, John, and you’ve tried nonviolent tactics and they’re ineffectual, kick your enemy square in the nuts. Just don’t throw the first punch, unless they leave themselves wide open.”
Grandma touched his face, fingers tracing wounds he didn’t remember receiving. Birthmarks. She rubbed her thumb against the side of his nose, then across his swelling cheek. She wiped a tangle of hair from his forehead. Taking his hand in her own, she kissed his fingertips and pressed them to his bruise.
“‘Surgeons must be very careful/When they take the knife,’” Grandma quoted. “‘Underneath their fine incisions/stirs the culprit, life.’”
The lines swam in John’s head, somewhere between a lesson and a lullaby. They were words spoken in alphabet soup letters on Fats Waller Sundays. Grandma’s dusty anthology of Emily Dickinson and a bottle of Gilbey’s gin. Soup and sermon. He never wanted to visit her, and once in Grandma’s house, never wanted to leave.
He began to rock on his haunches to the rhythm of his own affirmations: “I am in charge of my own destiny. I will outlast this affliction.” The static cleared. He saw Pensive staring at him as if something even more than the obvious was wrong. He stopped rocking.
“John?” Pensive asked. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” John replied, not believing it for a second.
“You’ve given me quite a scare,” she said. “And I’m out of Mace.”
“Mace?” John’s voice was a panic, worried chemicals would cause him permanent brain damage, more flashbacks. Grandma would stroll into his head whenever she wanted to recite poetry and dime-store philosophy. He would be like David Carradine in Kung Fu, convinced Squirrel Boy was a name given to him in a martial arts monastery, every bar he entered, someone yelling, “Hey, Chinaman!”
“The stuff flies,” Pensive told him. “In my rage, I shot the whole can.”
John felt a rash rising on his face. His heart was beating double-time. The rest of him was numb with shock and adrenaline. But nothing felt broken. On the other hand, nothing felt. He was one dull ache, trying to put an arm back into a shredded shirt sleeve. He tried to move his leg to balance himself in the chair, but he couldn’t bend his knee. Shifting his weight, he tried to find a position he could live with.
It might be easier to just stop breathing, he thought.
“You should be thanking me,” Pensive said. “Of course, your ego’s bruised. Men are so ashamed when they can’t defend themselves. But when you pay for the groceries you dropped, I’ll call it even.”
John held his tongue. He dabbed at his eyes with the washcloth he had been handed. The first couple shots Daryl had landed were to his face, adding to the general swelling. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, but found himself looking through fly eyes, a kaleidoscope of confusion multiplied by a thousand.
“Every time I deek on you, you’re lookin’ a mite worse,” said a voice John recognized as Hap. “Next time I’ll be tossin’ orchids at you in the Boont Dusties.”
“He’ll be fine,” Pensive promised. “Would you take care of him for a minute while I see if I can save my acidophilus?”
“Should I call Cal?” Hap asked.
“I think he’s outside,” Pensive said, John able to consolidate his sight into a single smear to follow her figure to the door. “I’ll tell him John’s here.”
Wiping his nose, John smelled food, pizza, lamb, wine. Blood pudding. He realized he was back in the Boonville Hotel and wondered if customers were gawking at him. He could have used some backup from the man he had met at the bar here last night, the one with the earring and gun, Balostrasi. He had said the locals in these parts weren’t tough, a bunch of hippies and rubes. He didn’t mention giants and psychopaths. Would Daryl have backed down from Balostrasi’s gun?
“Gettin’ to meet the whole town, Squirrel Boy,” Hap said, interrupting John’s thoughts. “This here’s Deputy Cal.”
“So, you’re Edna’s grandkid,” Deputy Cal said. “My heartfelt condolences.”
Deputy Cal was as tall as he was wide, and as wide as he was deep, dressed in shorts and a brown shirt from which stretched impressive arms and an imposing beer gut. He wore a must
ache beneath a pug nose and reflective sunglasses. Out of uniform, he could have been mistaken for a PE teacher or marine gone to seed. In John’s condition, he could have also been mistaken for Imelda Marcos or Sonny Bono.
“It’s unfortunate Edna ain’t here to show you the ropes,” Cal said. “Boonville can be chaotic at times, but out of chaos comes a kind of freedom.”
Deputy Cal was the first law enforcement officer John had met to openly promote anarchy. But John came from Florida, the only state in the union where chain gangs were legal and there was a movement to bring back the guillotine. Cops in Miami collected hollow points like bottle caps. Every week an officer of the law was shot, usually walking the thin blue line to serve a simple citation; a Dade County citizen sitting on a million-two worth of AK-47s in the trunk of a stolen Buick Skylark, a Ziploc of coke in the glove box, couldn’t stand the suspense, facing twenty years hard time because he didn’t know enough names to get into the Federal Witness Protection Program.
“We got a different way of livin’,” Deputy Cal explained. “We don’t like folks meddlin’ in our business, public or private. This town literally has its own language.”
“I think I heard Daryl grunting it,” John said, beginning to regulate his heartbeat.
“No,” the deputy corrected him, “it’s called Boontling and it was developed by locals suspicious of outside influences. Hap here can speak it.”
“I know,” John said. “Leek bee’n.”
Hap grinned. Deputy Cal was unimpressed.
“Point is, we do things our own way,” Deputy Cal said. “We don’t appreciate people pokin’ their noses where they don’t belong.”
“So, because I talked to this guy’s ex-wife,” John said, looking at the bloodstains on his compress, “I deserved to get my ass kicked?”
“I’m sorry it happened,” Deputy Cal said. “Tell you the truth, Whitward looks worse. I think Prairie Mama broke a couple of his ribs. The damage has been done.”
“But what?” John asked, trying to see himself from Cal’s point of view, a city boy ground into country sausage. He had got what he deserved. His grandma was a nut, John couldn’t have fallen too far from the tree. He should get out of town while he could and save everybody a lot of trouble.
Balostrasi was wrong, John thought. These people were tough.
“If you don’t press charges, there’s a lot less paperwork,” Deputy Cal told him, smiling as only certain rural cops could. “I’m certain Prairie Mama ain’t got a license for that mace. You could save folks a lot of hassle. But do as you please. Remember though, everybody who has lived in this town, includin’ your grandma, has taken a few punches. But they’ve also thrown some.”
John watched his knees bleed. He hadn’t skinned them since he was a child, sliding on asphalt in a game of kickball. His parents had yelled at him, Father complaining about ruined clothes as he spanked John’s butt. His mother warned about overcompetitiveness while she soaked him in Bactine. John was sent to his room to “think about what he had done.” Lying on his bed, he stared at the picture of Pete Rose his father had tacked to his wall. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, what were you supposed to do?
“The other thing,” Deputy Cal said, “Daryl says he won’t start nothing again if…”
“If what?” John asked, but knew what the deputy was going to say.
“If you stay away from Sarah,” Deputy Cal finished.
No wonder he isn’t wearing a uniform, John thought, anybody relaying threats of violence from a sociopath shouldn’t be on the force. Maybe I should ask to see his badge?
Fuck it, John told himself. Fuck it all. Fuck being hung over and getting beat up. Fuck Daryl and Pensive Prairie Sunset, this idiot deputy and pressing charges. Fuck Sarah with her blue eyes and fuck Grandma with her faulty DNA. Most of all, fuck Boonville.
“I won’t press charges,” John said. “I don’t plan to be here that long. But tell Daryl if he comes near me again, I have my grandma’s shotgun and I’m not afraid to use it. So if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I’m going to sleep for about a week, and when I wake up, I’m calling my girlfriend and getting out of this shit hole.”
John stood to make a grand exit, but his legs forgot the basic one foot in front of the other. They buckled, veering him toward a wall that he mistook for a door, and after reaching for a nonexistent knob, he hit it squarely with his face. John found himself looking up from the floor.
“Maybe you should have another glass of water,” Hap said.
“God damn!” Billy Chuck said, entering the hotel, looking exactly as he did the night before, no better, no worse. Not a hair in or out of place.
His children will be born with scales, John thought.
Deputy Cal and Hap seemed to expect John to reseat himself and order a beer now that his drinking buddy had arrived.
“This one’s a draw,” Billy Chuck announced. “I ’bout fell over Whitward at the Pic ’N Pay. I needed aspirin, but these boys need body bags. We should count to ten and whoever can stand, we’ll call winner.”
“Squirrel Boy was standin’ a second ago,” Hap informed him.
“There we go,” Billy Chuck laughed. “Now I can collect on my bets. I got five-to-one from Kurts on a buck and ten-to-one from Melonie on a beer. I knew you could do it, Squirrel Boy, you ain’t no tourist.”
They were betting on me, John realized. But there came a point when things were at their fullest and could hold no more. He was beyond that now, the number that followed infinity. Everything rolled off, part of the same extreme.
“Hold your horses, Meyers,” Hap told Billy Chuck. “Our boy had help from Prairie Mama. Doubt your bet was on a tag team match.”
“My bet was Daryl wouldn’t put his head on a stick by noon today,” Billy Chuck said. “Did Prairie Mama put all that hurt on Daryl?”
“She’s one mean hippie,” Deputy Cal admitted. “Off-duty, I wouldn’t mess with no feminist weighin’ three-fifty.”
“It’s the organics make ‘em jimheady,” Hap offered.
“And the world that makes them mean,” Pensive said, returning to the bar.
“No offense, Pensive,” Hap excused himself.
“None taken,” Pensive said. “By living life as a holistic experience, you find untapped strength in yourself and the world around you. By not indulging in the artificial, you remain pure, spiritually and physically.”
She paused.
“What’s John doing on the floor?” she asked.
“Taking in the seminar,” John answered, pain too intense to bother with. “When are we going to hold hands and burn incense?”
“We don’t go for that shit in town,” Billy Chuck told him. “That’s what the hills are for, personal expression.”
John tried to get to his feet again, latching on to Pensive, who was the only one in the group extending a hand. He stood for a moment, and then decided the floor was a better idea.
“Boy’s jake-legged,” Hap said.
“Anybody got any painkillers?” Billy Chuck asked. “This dog can’t hunt.”
“Horn of skee?” Hap offered.
John felt ready to faint. On top of everything else, he was dehydrated. He took a sip of the water that Pensive had gotten for him.
“Hell,” Billy Chuck said, “I got a .22 in my truck.”
“It might come to that,” Hap admitted.
Pensive offered to mix a batch of linseed oil and herbs at her house, adding that she had some mushrooms she used as a relaxant.
Suspicions confirmed, John thought. But I don’t need any Pensive Prairie Peyote. This is the last place I want to start hallucinating. Isn’t there a doctor or hospital? We are in America, aren’t we? This is the twentieth century?
“We could take him to Doc Testicles,” Deputy Cal suggested, reading John’s expression. “But when Big Jack cut off his thumb, Doc just gave him a lozenge. One of those cough drops for sore throats. Said, ‘Suck on this, maybe it’ll take your mind of
f the pain.’ Big Jack stuck it in his mouth and put his thumb in his shirt pocket. I drove him over the hill to Ukiah General.”
“You boys call him Doc Testicles ‘cause he holds on too long durin’ physicals,” Hap asked, “or ‘cause he wears those fruity jogging shorts without underwear and you can see all the way to Boulder?”
“Don’t talk that way about Dr. Goldberg,” Pensive told Hap. “He’s a fine doctor and a natural man.”
“‘Au natural,’” Deputy Cal said, and Hap and Billy Chuck sniggered.
I’m at death’s door and they’re making puns, John thought. This is funny to them. Something to tell the boys at the Lodge, the one about the tourist who was killed his second day in town. Knock, knock. Who’s there? My cowboy-boot up your ass.
“I could take him to Ukiah General.” Deputy Cal said. “Personally, I’d rather die in a ditch than check into one of those rooms. I visited Cloris there when she rolled her Bronco. I asked a nurse for her room number and the Grim Reaper himself pointed me down the hall. Makes the morgue look like a dance hall. But we could take John there.”
Put me out near the road so a tourist can find me, John wanted to say, his pain receding along with his consciousness. Hee and haw all you want, but get me to the curb. I need my bed. Get me to Christina. She’ll make everything all right. I don’t even hurt anymore. I just want to leave this town.
“What about Blindman?” Hap asked.
“He has good Valium,” Pensive said.
More suspicions confirmed.
“But I heard Blindman beats his wife,” Pensive said, reconsidering. “I don’t have the kind of forgiveness in me to do business with a wife beater. It would be giving approval to his actions, saying commerce is more important than conduct.”
“We organizin’ a boycott or tryin’ to help Squirrel Boy?” Billy Chuck said. “Get a petition going on your own time. I don’t pity any woman dumb enough to let a blind guy hit her. She should be quiet and stand still. He’d never find her.”
“The visually impaired often heighten their other senses,” Pensive countered. “Didn’t you ever see Wait Until Dark?”
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