Soothing the Savage Swamp Beast

by Zakary Mcgaha

  Junior’s mom got shipped off to the looney bin, as they called them in those days (everyone agreed, even Junior, that she desperately needed to go there), and Junior got sent to his aunt’s house down the road from his old home.

  His aunt, oh, she was glad. “I knew that lady was a loon. A crazy, good-for-nothing loon. I can’t believe she put you through something like this. And at such a young age.” The rest of his childhood, surprisingly, was awesome. No complaints from Junior. Sure, every now and again he had a dream about his mom poking around a shower curtain with a butcher knife, but other than that, times were awesome.

  Still, though, the idea of death fascinated Junior, because he believed his ball-lacking father to have merely changed forms. No, not like a ghost, like something different. Like a lump of coal that’s there and not there at the same time.

  Later, in high school, he learned that there’s a finite supply of matter in the universe. Though he didn’t relate it to his father at the time, he did relate it to the soul. “If you die, where does the ‘you’ go if your body turns back to dirt? The part of you that ain’t body?” The question bugged the teenaged Junior. At that time, he was having your typical existential crisis. He often yelled at “god,” pleading for an answer to the age old question: “Are you there?”

  Of course, no answers came his way, and his existential crisis fluttered and was gone. However, one thing remained: the whole soul-made-of-finite-matter notion. This stuck well into adulthood.

  It was so prevalent that, after reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, he decided to make discovering the answer his life’s journey.

  ***

  Early adulthood was full of searching. Junior Hicks went out of his way to find people who’d show him the path.

  “I need that damn path,” he’d yell to people. “I need the path to me. I need to know who I am . . . what I am!”

  People told him things.

  And he believed them.

  CHAPTER 7

  Young Ole Junior Learns the Way

  Twenty-one. That’s his age at this past point in time.

  Junior Hicks decided to live up to the family name and skip college, but that’s not all that unusual, considering a good majority of Cadesville residents never go themselves. However, he didn’t stay in Cadesville; a change of scenery was the most necessary thing in the world, given his condition.

  His condition was one of longing. One of needing. One of striving.

  And so he worked and hitchhiked his way around for a while. He was popular among nice old citizens because he was that strange, but nice, country boy from some town no one ever heard of.

  Everyone picked up on the strangeness of Junior Hicks. They labeled him an eccentric right off the bat, every single time, but as one typically finds out, eccentrics are accepted by people who do a lot of road travelling.

  In time, Junior Hicks found himself in a small college town nestled in medium-sized mountains in the eastern part of Tennessee; a town called Johnson City, even though the “City” part should have been excised from its name.

  He found it to be a quaint little place with a good location. For one, it was home to East Tennessee State University, so there were a lot of college kids around, and plenty of opportunities to find jobs. Also, it was pretty close to the borders of North Carolina and Virginia.

  One thing he noticed: cultures change quite a bit from state to state, city to city, even if it is among southern areas. In Cadesville, most of the people looked regular. They were either super-country or super-normal. No one acted like anything different. But in Johnson City, although most of the people were normal, there were a few weirdos who looked . . . freaky. People who, it seemed, woke up every day and dressed thinking about how much attention they were going to attract.

  Soon enough, even that got normal, and Junior began to see how run of the mill said freaky people were; they simply dressed in abnormal ways.

  He settled into life in Johnson City.

  He started developing theories.

  To be continued . . .

  CHAPTER 8

  Vogel’s Rehab; Learning of Junior

  Vogel says, “Fuck the world,” when her alarm clock goes off. She rolls flat on her back, stretches her hamstrings (bottom of tootsies pointed to the ceiling), rubs her hand over Aldert’s nuts, and says, “I need some lovin’ before I go out this morning.”

  Aldert responds with a no, then he’s out of the bed, getting ready for work.

  As Vogel’s sitting there, running through sexual fantasies, she realizes something: neither of them have talked about the dog incident in a little while. It seems as if things more important have sprung up.

  Mainly, she’s been consumed with thoughts about her life and work. She hasn’t a clue what Aldert’s been up to. He’s been off by himself, thinking to himself; probably thinking about his life and work.

  She’s cool with this. It’s all evidence of the gradual settling down after an incident of hysteria.

  She’s been in love before. She was in love with a boy before Aldert, but that was in high school. That boy, he hadn’t left her unsatisfied. Thing was, he was stupid. Aldert, now, he’s no genius, but he’s got his priorities in line. That boy, no priorities whatsoever, save for simple, animal needs.

  She figures Aldert’s the better of the two, but who is she to judge? Currently, she doesn’t think she holds that right; she’s considering herself lucky Aldert likes her.

  There was a time when she thought she was cool, awesome; a keeper.

  That time has passed. Now she thinks she’s a person living without dreams, without ambitions. The world is no longer fruitful; she’d better get used to the mundanity of banal existence because soon, nothing will matter, everything will be dead, and, looking back, nothing will ever have mattered.

  Thinking in this direction, she knows she’s fucked, but that’s okay. The best of people (the most valiant of souls) do do do do do, only to end up worthless to themselves and others.

  She thinks maybe this is worth causing a scene over, but she decides otherwise. Everything’s already lost, who would a scene benefit?

  She goes to the kitchen and fixes herself a cup of coffee. She cuts a piece of pound cake from the fridge.

  Outside, the world’s kind of pretty, but below her line of sight (too close to the house), the dogs are waiting, decaying, silently snarling.

  The thought of this causes great unease.

  But she eats her cake and drinks her coffee anyway.

  ***

  In the shower, Aldert can’t help but think of the green slime he will obtain a sample of. What will the folks at the college say? Will they say, “Hey, this is cool. There’s somethin’ weird goin’ on in your neck of the woods,” or will they show him the door without consideration?

  Not too long ago, nothing like this would have mattered. Things would have been cool.

  Now, things are still kind of cool, but they’re also stressful, and he can’t help but thinking the world would be better if this stress was absent.

  ***

  “Fucking with you, I say. Fucking with you, messing with your mind, making you feel better. Because when your mind is messed with, there’s an odd kind of glee rising up from wherever in your body your soul is located. Personally, I think it’s behind the stomach, but I could just be talking outta my ass.”

  The old man sitting on the stump saying all these things is wearing a white cowboy hat and a gold watch (or at least gold colored) and he’s shoving his wrinkled finger at people.

  The people standing around are kind of afraid of him, because he’s obviously senile. Everything he says is with the utmost conviction.

  “Boys, girls, women, men; all of you. I’m gonna say some things that are gonna make you rethink where you’ve been all your life. Here, sniff. You smell that?”

  A woman in the crowd raises her hand and says: “That’s the ole slaughterhouse.”

  “Yep. That’d be correct, Miss Missy. That’
s the old slaughterhouse. And you know what goes on at the old slaughterhouse?”

  “Yeah, I know,” says Miss Missy, although her name isn’t really Miss Missy (it’s Janet). “That’s where they take animals and bash them in the head with big metal things, and then they turn those animals into food for other things, like us.”

  “You’d be right about that, Miss Missy. They take animals, strip ’em of their possibility for growin’ them intellects we tout around so frequently. They STRIP ’em. Then they take their lives and use ’em to feed ours. They feed our lives with their missed opportunities!”

  Miss Missy sighs, shakes her head, and says, “Harold, do you really think them cows and pigs and chickens they kill could do somethin’ like that? Do you really think they could get smart like us?”

  “Why, ma’am, I knows it! All animals could! Ya see, our ancestors were no different from them. We were just able to grow and evolve quicker. If you gave them precious little cows, birds, and pigs the time, they could outsmart us all and make us look like blamed fools! Fools, I tell you! Fools!”

  Harold closes his eyes and presses into the lids with his fingers. Tears sponge out. Then he reaches to his side and retrieves an acoustic guitar from a case. “Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now, and start doin’ exactly what it is you came here to see me do.”

  What the people came to see Harold do is play them some nice, country-tinged music. Most of them know him as a “mountain man,” for they believe he lived in them thar mountains and learned the ways of chicken-pickin’ and the like as a kid, but the truth is this: Harold grew up in California. Over there, on the beaches, he heard of all this cool bluegrass music coming out of the mountain-places, so one day, he bought a ticket on a transportation mechanism and came over. He’d already learned guitar from some punk-ish fellows who couldn’t make it in the real music biz and had resorted to taking money in exchange for lessons at the local, beachy music store. When he came over, he adapted to the style, and soon enough, was accepted by fans of the scene.

  “I’m gonna sing ya a little song I wrote about all this I’ve been talkin’ about today. Here it goes.” He takes a deep breath and begins playing the twangy chords.

  The song he sings is as follows:

  “Ole, them hills,

  Nestlin’ the killin’ mill,

  Makes me wanna cry.

  Makes me wanna weep,

  Instead of belly up and eat.

  I’ll ask for double-fried,

  Chicken pot pie,

  Without my feathery friends,

  Havin’ to die.

  They give me their eggs.

  I give them my love!”

  The crowd is stunned, to say the least. They’re looking at this man who’s so passionate about being so strange.

  Most of them leave when it looks like he’s about to start another rant about the whole bird/pig/cow thing.

  ***

  Thirty years, he writes in the journal in penmanship that’s barely readable (but still readable; that’s important, you dumb fuck), for thirty years I’ve lived in this campground. They consider me the most permanent fixture of this establishment. They say they’ll have it in the contract when they sell the place, which they a darn-tootin’ will do, they’re gonna say to the new owners that, in order for them to become new owners, they’re gonna have to keep me on the property for as long as I want, even if I get too old to be the groundskeeper. That’s gonna be in the contract, and I’m gonna be damn proud and act like I own the place to the new owners. Them newbies won’t know how to handle me, but they better in case they don’t want their butts sued off ’em.

  Harold is happy with his job. He gets to live comfortably in the south, do manual labor, and play his bluegrass music to anyone who hankers for a listenin’. People, they’ve been hankering for the listenings for as long as he’s been here. He’d stand atop a stump (or, now that he’s old as fuck, sit on one) and play like he was never not playing, and people would scream. Mostly, since this is a campground and people come here to relax and get away from it all (and you’ve got to have money to do those things), the clientele is very tame. Nothing too out of the ordinary going on. However, there’ve been a few times, a few incidents he’ll never forget. One time, a girl, she flashed him. Titties out in the open, and wow, he had to stop playing because his erection was jutting out like a front pants-tail.

  Too bad the girl didn’t expose more than that, though. Truth is, Harold is a virgin.

  Capital “v.” He’s a Virgin.

  It’s not like he hasn’t tried changing it. It’s just . . . it doesn’t work. Eventually, he got used to being alone, whacking it by himself, and living in his head.

  From day to day, the most important thing, for years, has been music.

  Music. Music. Music. Music. Music. Music. Music.

  Play this chord, sing about something cool, and it becomes obvious: His body is an instrument that’s controlling the wooden instrument, and the main controller is his soul.

  He knows what his soul smells like: oatmeal with brown sugar and cinnamon.

  And no one else, no one else has that soul-smell. He’s been living up to it for years and years, so who cares if he doesn’t get vagina; that’s not as important as honoring his soul-smell. Not in the least.

  It’s not like he hasn’t given back. People have been MOVED. MOVED like crazy all-caps.

  His function in the world is to give pleasure to both himself and others, to enlighten both himself and others. He doesn’t take from people who aren’t him; he’s the giver all the way around. Hell, the only people thus far who’ve given him anything are the campground owners, and they only gave him a space he could use to give to others.

  So when he hears that there’s this crazy other giver in the area, he’s annoyed. “Junior Hicks? Who the fuck is this Junior Hicks?” But the world can’t have but one person who gives. He gets this.

  Still, it gets under his skin; some investigating will be necessary.

  ***

  Walking up to the school building again, Vogel runs into Chad. He’s smiling his confident, doughy smile, yellowed teeth hard like wood. In his eyes is a knowing, a hint at manipulation. When upon looking into those eyes she gets the shivers, her defense springs upward. Must protect myself, is what her inner monologue says.

  “Well hey there,” says Chad. “Jensen been givin’ ya any more troubles?”

  “Sometimes,” she says, straightening out her clothes, making her posture better (because that’s what you do; professionals aren’t slouches). “Sometimes . . . he sleeps and daydreams in class, but I reprimand him. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, I was just a’ curious, seein’ as how we agreed he was the most . . . interestin’ kid. I mean, he is pretty interestin’. Sometimes, I wonder what he’ll be like when he grows up. Ya know, what path is he gonna take? Is he gonna end up doin’ somethin’ nice with his life, or what? Wonder if he’ll find the lord’s way.”

  “The what?”

  “Oh, nothin’. Guess it ain’t too politically correct to push the lord on kids these days.”

  Here it is . . . a chance to say something . . . a chance to show my intellect to someone who’s obviously functioning at a lower level than me! “Well, that’s because most people are wising up to the fact that god isn’t there. That nothing’s there. They don’t want generations of adults pushing fairy tales on today’s youth. If anything, people today need to know best how to separate fact from fiction.”

  “Wha . . . wha . . . I guess this ain’t gonna be a conversation we’ll ever have again. I can tell ya that right now. Well, uh . . . you have a good day, ma’am.”

  Vogel nods her head and walks away feeling a bit snippy.

  But not confident.

  Not satisfied.

  ***

  In her classroom, she’s still feeling snippy. She’s feeling the snippiest she’s been since . . . geez . . . her teen years!

  “Control yourself, girl,” she says to hers
elf quietly, massaging her temples. “Control yourself girl.”

  One classroom kid says, “Mrs. Vogel, does your head hurt?”

  “Um . . . yes. Just a little bit. Thank you for asking.”

  “Do you know what my daddy says to do when I have a headache?”

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Shut up and suck it up.”

  “Well . . . ”

  Vogel decides not to say anything else to the comment. Let it be. Also, it’s probably true. Parents in this neck of the woods aren’t known for raising the best of children, mainly because they weren’t raised the best themselves.

  She thinks of it as something that’s not going to end. Perhaps it will progressively get worse, perhaps it will mellow out a little. Either way, she’s just a piece in the puzzle; no use getting high and mighty.

  She’s tired, that’s it; she’s tired. They’ve been keeping on like this for so long. Kids being stupid when they should be smart, parents being the same. For a while, she thought they needed fixing. Now it’s the other way around.

  She needs fixing.

  For the rest of the day, she drudges. That’s her word for it, “drudges.” She does what’s required. She pushes the kids out of her head, because if they stay in, she’ll go CRAZY.

  When the bell rings and she’s sitting alone, she thinks back to that notion of fake magic.

  The fake charm of childhood.

  “This is reality, Vogel, and you’re just now waking up to it,” she says to herself quietly.

  ***

  When she gets back home, it looks like sunset even though it isn’t. Lying on the couch as if it were a bed, she watches a splotch of light invading under the bottom corner of a throw rug acting as a curtain.

  “Oh, god,” she says. Life, what the fuck’s it been doing to her? “Sucking, that’s what it’s been doing.”

  In time, she’s having weird dreams about college, but she’s already graduated in all of them. It’s like she’s making a nostalgic pilgrimage.