by Don Webb
Curtis managed a grim smile, “Hi. I’m Dan Curtis.”
“Ragan Haggard.”
“So you’re trapped on Baptista’s Island. Do you drink? Drinking’s about the only entertainment unless I get something good on the shortwave. Come on into my building, I’ll see about getting us some dinner.”
“Won’t we be eating with....”
“No. The doctors eat alone, engrossed in thoughts too deep for us lowly mortals.”
Curtis was quiet during the preparing of the pork and beans, which with the tasty side dish of Saltine crackers proved to be the evening’s fare.
Curtis made a pot of coffee afterward, the singularly most bitter, oily and vile coffee that Ragan had ever tasted. During small talk, they discovered that each of them belonged to the fraternity of divorced men, that great and brooding brotherhood that always has something to talk about amongst themselves.
Time went along a little more quickly after that. Ragan talked about his daughter in Austin, Curtis mentioned a son in Dodge City. They talked about the bad habits of their ex’s.
“Yeah,” said Curtis, “Marie was bad enough, but I could have been bit a lot worse. Dr. Baptista’s daughter Kate was the worst shrew I ever met. I fell in love too, that was when it was just me and Dr. Baptista and Kate here. You always fall in love based on opportunity, you know. Thankfully Pete showed up, and she fixated on him. Everyday she gave him all kinds of grief, but she was the only woman on the island.”
“She still lives on the island, doesn’t she?” asked Ragan, “I haven’t seen her.”
“Oh, she’s around. If you’re lucky you won’t run into her. You don’t see her much for the first couple of days after the supply ship docks.”
The conversation wandered back to Ragan’s life for a awhile, then weather on the Gulf, then dumb jokes.
It had grown quite dark. There was a rustling sound in the trees beyond the stockade, or perhaps the whirring of a large group of insects. Curtis seemed a little nervous, and broke out a bottle of rum to season his coffee. Ragan tried one cup figuring it would taste better. He had figured wrong.
There weren’t many books in Curtis’ cabin. Ragan had worked as a book buyer years ago, and always read the titles of any house he stopped at. Curtis’s taste ran to techno-thrillers, Stephen King, three or four old pornographic titles and P. D. Ouspensky’s A New Model of the Universe. Ragan had never been attracted to Gurdjieffian/Ouspenskian thinking, but a few of his friends in Austin had been quite taken with it.
“You much into this?” He asked Curtis tapping the green-colored trade paperback.
“Me? No, it was a big thing for Dr. Ruchio, part of his research, so he gave me a copy to ‘educate’ me. There was some good thinking in it though.’
Ragan didn’t really care what the thinking was, but he figured making conversation was the only way to kill time.
“Such as?”
“Well the multiplicity of “I’s”. The argument that our natural state is one of being a lot of different people. Like you’re waiting behind some woman in the grocery store. One ‘I’ wants her to just evaporate so you can get checked out, one ‘I’ wants to screw her, one ‘I’ wonders where she found orange juice in sale, one ‘I’ wonders what she thinks of you, one ‘I’ is already lighting the charcoal fire for the cook-out that night, one ‘I’ is off fighting with the boss from two days ago. There is no Ragan Haggard, unless all the ‘I’s’ are working from some common center. I think that pretty much describes the normal human state.”
Ragan smiled at the truism, and then asked, “What did that have to do with Dr. Ruchio’s research?”
“Dr. Ruchio took a different stab at it. Instead of trying to unify all the ‘I’s, why not get rid of those you don’t like? Separate them and kill the bad parts. He had some luck with monkeys. He called it his taming process.”
There was more coffee and more rum and more chit-chat, and then Curtis unfolded an army cot for Ragan to sleep on. Ragan’s last thoughts before falling asleep were wishing that Curtis had an air-conditioner that worked for beans, and thinking that he would never fall asleep on such an uncomfortable cot.
* * * * * * *
He dreamed a little dream. He was back in his mom and dad’s house with his brother Clyde, and they were watching Iggy Twerp’s Monster Theatre and everything was in Black and White. Mom and Dad were gone and there was something bad outside the house, something very bad, and it was running and gnawing and trying to get in the house and it was very scary and very bad.
Suddenly they got in and they were a lot of dogs who were wearing costumes with big fangs and long shaggy tails and they were in black-and-white and they ran really fast, all these dogs and they were biting Clyde with their big teeth and then of one sank his teeth into Ragan’s leg...
* * * * * * *
Curtis had grabbed Ragan’s leg.
“Wake up, they’ve broken through, we’ve got to run.”
“Who?” said Ragan confused and still half in his dream. A high shrill chorus filled the night. It was like the voices of children screaming, but very tiny children.
Curtis pushed him to the window. Some army of insects had gnawed its way under the wooden gate. They were big for bugs, maybe six to eight inches high, but it was hard to see in the dark. Ragan could see their eyes, thousands of eyes like stars in the night.
No, they weren’t bugs. Rats maybe. But rats don’t run on two legs.
They were swarming toward the laboratory. Their screams were in English.
They were screaming for Dr. Ruchio.
“Pete Ruchio! Pete Ruchio! It’s all your fault.”
Dr. Ruchio opened a window of the lab.
“I’m working on a solution, you got food today, what do you want? Go away. There’s someone here. Someone that will see you like this.”
Some of them were carrying little iron rods. They began tapping on the door.
“Go away!”
Curtis pulled him back from the window of the cabin.
“We’ve got to get you out of here, when they find you, they’ll kill you. They don’t like anyone seeing them the way they are.”
“But what are they?”
“They are Dr. Baptista’s daughter Kate. Dr. Pete Ruchio tried his process on her. He made a hundred of her, and they’re all shrews. There was no good ‘I’.”
The door to the lab began to break, suddenly they were inside. There was gunfire. But guns don’t quell the sea.
“Come,” said Curtis.
Curtis and Ragan ran out of his cabin and straight for the fence. One of the little women grabbed Ragan’s ankle and bit him. He flung her off, she yelled to her sisters, but the violence in the lab was too loud.
Curtis got the gate undone.
They ran into the night, toward Captain Sly.
A sudden burst of orangish light filigreed the vegetation. The lab was ablaze. Ragan thought of running back but the sound of the Kate’s tiny victory calls was too frightening.
They made the boat. Captain Sly could see the burning complex.
They cast off.
The captain dressed Ragan’s leg.
“What the hell did that?”
“A rat,” said Ragan.
“A shrew,” said Curtis, “a killer shrew.”
“I didn’t know there were things like that on the island,” said Captain Sly.
“More things than are dreamt of your philosophy, my friend,” said Ragan.
(for Howard Waldrop)
COMMON SUPERSTITIONS
On his thirtieth birthday, Mike Jaynes experienced a Vision. It had been a disappointing birthday. His wife had been drafted into housekeeping for her bedridden sister. The secretary who arranged the office parties had transferred to Pubs last week—so no one at work said anything. His mother’s card wasn’t in the mailbox. Gout attacked his left big toe. The refrigerator coughed up smoke and died an hour after he came home.
Mike threw out most of the food (and the ex-
margarine containers which held it). He hobbled down to the dumpster, heaved the plastic in; something gray and vile splashed out. He hobbled back up. He sprayed the shirt with Spray-N-Wash and wadded it in a corner. He took a six pack out of the warming refrigerator and four fresh peaches. He turned on the teevee. The cable was out. Natch. Mike had two choices. KAYS was rerunning a Lost In Space episode—the one where Dr. Smith demonstrates an Interstellar Vending Machine to Will despite the Robot’s objections. Mike bit into the peach. KACC offered a short middle-aged woman explaining Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. She said, “‘Esse est percipi.’ To be is to be seen. What does it mean to be seen?” [Mike opened a beer, threw a peach pit at the trash can, missed.] “Sartre offers us the wonderful example of the voyeur.” [Mike switches over to KAYS.] “Warning! Warning! Alien life form approaching!” [Mike switches back.] “who is suddenly seen as he watches through the keyhole. Suddenly he is become thing-like, for the Other now has notions concerning his behavior. He is seen as a voyeur. He has lost his freedom.” [Mike switches.] “with Lee Press-On Nails” Mike turns the set off. He remembers his gout medicine and hobbles off to take twice the usual dosage to counteract the beer.
Mike drinks another beer, eats another peach and begins to sing the Birthday Song. Two more beers. Mike nestles into the couch and sleeps. Around midnight the television comes on.
“MIKE”
“What? Who’s there?”
“IT IS I THE LORD”
Mike opens his eyes. A face of unsurpassing beauty and holiness fills the 19-inch Sony Trinitron. It is a human face but surpassing all in its perfection. After all it is the model. Mike wonders what it’s advertising.
“I ADVERTISE NOTHING. I AM THAT I AM. I AM CALLING YOU TO BE MY PROPHET AND SPEAK TO THE CITY OF DALLAS.”
Mike thought they’d got rid of the Draft. He says, “Dallas? Like in Texas?”
“DALLAS AND ITS METROPLEX. GRAPEVINE, IRVING, PLANO, DUNCANVILLE.”
“O.K. I get the idea. Why?”
“THEY ARE IN GRAVE NEED. SO ARE MANY OF MAN’S CITIES BUT DALLAS HAS BEEN RATED MOST CREDIBLE BY MY RESEARCH TEAM. A MISSION STARTED THERE HAS GREATEST CHANCE OF SPREADING.”
“Why me?”
“YOU HAVE TWO WEEKS PAID VACATION THAT YOU MUST TAKE BEFORE THE END OF THE FISCAL YEAR. YOUR WIFE WILL REMAIN IN ORLANDO AND THIS WILL SAVE YOU FROM A GREAT DEAL OF BOREDOM.”
Mike remembers the double dose of medicine. That explains it. Mike relaxes.
“How are they supposed to repent?”
“DOESN’T MATTER. I’VE SENT TEACHERS TIME AND TIME AGAIN. THEY HAVE MANY PATHS TO ME. SIMPLY TELL THEM TO REPENT.”
“Oh. Why don’t You send Your Son to do this?”
“SOFT DRINKS”
“?”
“MY RESEARCH DIVISION INDICATES THAT IF JESUS WERE TO APPEAR HE WOULD BE FORCED INTO MAKING A SERIES OF ‘TASTE TESTS.’“
“Could you leave me a Sign You were here?”
The Face darkens, “SURE.”
The teevee goes off.
Mike goes to bed.
Mike sleeps late. The next day is Saturday.
He walks into the front room for breakfast. He stops.
The teevee has changed into a teevee shape of lime jello. It quivers. Mike stands and watches it for a long time. He goes to the phone.
He arranges for a flight to Orlando.
* * * * * * *
The flight leaves Phoenix at 3:45. Mike buys one million dollars worth of flight insurance from the vending machine. He’s wearing dark glasses. He slinks about. Half the security force of the airport is watching him. He figures he’s safe if the video cameras don’t focus on him. He avoids glancing at the monitors showing flight times. He ducks into a cafe. The salad of the day is bananas in lime Jell-O. Each of the green cubes seems to stare at him. He runs out nearly decking an orange-haired punker.
Mike waits at his gate sweating profusely despite the air conditioning. If he can get to Orlando to his wife to weekends of garage sailing he’ll be safe. He’ll beat this rap.
He begins to relax as the jet leaves the runway. He enjoys flying over the Rockies. Somewhere over New Mexico an engine conks out. The castor oil voice of the pilot assures everyone not to worry. Everything’s under control. The plane will make an unscheduled stop at the Dallas- Ft. Worth Air Terminal and passengers will de-plane during maintenance.
Mike needs to go to the john. Prayer begins everywhere about him. Sitting on the tiny seat Mike cries. Jean-Paul Sartre appears in the mirror and shrugs. Someone knocks on the door anxious for the pot. Mike recovers himself and returns to his seat.
In the Dallas terminal Mike makes his way to a pay phone. Someone presses a key in his hand. It’s a locker key. Mike makes his way to the lockers. No. 1703 contains a suitcase. The suitcase holds a black friar’s coat, car keys, registration, insurance, and parking receipt. All are in Mike’s name.
Mike thinks the illusion of free will is wearing a little thin. He goes to the short-term parking lot and finds the car, a thirty-year-old red convertible in mint condition. He has trouble with the standard transmission and jerks his way to the toll booth where he pays $0.75. He declines a receipt and heads out to the highway.
He drives around Dallas and Irving and Hurst and Duncanville. He pulls into a Holiday Inn. Registers, finds his room, showers, puts on the monk’s robes, drives out.
At a traffic light not far from Dealey Plaza, Mike spots some conspiracologists in deep debate. He yells, “Repent!” They look up stunned. The light changes. He drives on. He passes a gaggle of lawyers leaving a tall glass box. “Repent!” A stylish young black couple entering a Chinese restaurant. “Repent!” A group of kids on ten-speeds in University Heights. “Repent!” A man in a chicken suit in front of Eco-Taco. “Repent!”
He makes for the 1959 Texas State Fairgrounds site of Edward G. Ulmer’s Beyond the Time Barrier, one of Mike’s all-time favorite films. He makes four passes. “Repent!” “Repent!” “Repent!” “Repent!” He’s getting good at it—really rolling his “R’s” and really projecting.
Sun’s going down. Mike returns to the Holiday Inn. He changes into his civvies and eats at Coco’s. He returns to his room, watches teevee, gets ice from the ice machine, decides to drink orange juice since he’s on a mission of God.
He makes the ten o’clock news. To his surprise he isn’t dismissed as a crackpot. The anchorman is solemn—asking “Who is this man?” “What is his message?” “What can we learn from him?” Drawings of the Mystery Monk are shown. He is tall, bearded, blue-eyed, authoritarian. Mike is short, dumpy, balding, and brown-eyed. This may be easier than he imagined. He leaves a wake-up call for 7:00.
The next day he hits church crowds. Baptist, Catholic, Quaker, Methodist, Lutheran, Orthodox, Reformed, Primitive, Southern, Scientist, Four Square, United, every flavor the phone book lists.
Monday it is public buildings. The Tarrant County Courthouse, the Dallas Civic Center, the Grapevine school board, a fire station in West Lake, the various Federal and State offices—F.B.I, D.O.E., D.H.R., E.P.A. He parks his convertible and shouts until people came to the windows. Some are surprised, some annoyed, some fearful, some angry.
Tuesday he choses orthodontists’ offices. He’d worn braces and hated them. Perhaps the orthodontists, their staffs, and their patients don’t need to repent more than anyone else—but certainly not any less.
By Wednesday, the Mystery Monk is featured on page one of the Dallas Morniing News. Police are said to be looking for him. Liquor and cigarette sales are at all-time lows. Wednesday night church attendance is predicted to reach new heights. Mike hits the shopping malls. For the first time his “Repent!” is greeted by “Amen!” He makes national news at 6:00.
Thursday he hits the two airports, the bus stations, the police stations, and the high schools.
Friday morning he makes four funerals, three weddings, an outdoor birthday party, and a company picnic. He drives back to the Holiday Inn for lunch. As
he changes he decides he should be eating trail mix or something on account of his mission. He’s already forgotten his attempt to flee to Orlando. In fact, he’s forgotten most of his past life. The past seldom leaves room for the present—let alone for the future. One of the benisons of working for the Lord is the ability to live in Present Time.
He drives to Ralph’s All-Natural Food Bar. The parking lot is full so he parks behind the yellow brick building.
He eats a sandwich shaggy with sprouts and drinks a peach smoothie. After paying he lets one of the most satisfying belches he’s let in years. Everyone in the food bar looks at him. He smiles nervously and leaves.
A group of punks are working on his car prying chrome off with crowbars. He charges them yelling, “Repent!”
“Repent yourself motherfucker!” A crowbar lands on his right shoulder. They are all over him. Feet to his groin, pulling his ears, spitting. He opens his mouth to yell and a red oil rag is stuffed in. His last sight is a crowbar heading for his nose.
* * * * * * *
He didn’t know he could hurt so bad and still be alive. It’s twilight. He’s in a different part of town. Wallet and keys are gone. Mike stands up slowly and with great difficulty. He hears construction nearby. Some workers are putting up a condo. He staggers down the alley to them. He can’t be heard over the sound of saws. He collapses again.
* * * * * * *
He wakes in the shadow of the completed building. It’s a big one. He’s grateful for the shadow at least—the Texas sun’s a real killer. It is too painful to move. He will lay here until he dies.
Sunday comes and he crawls over to the dumpster and finds a half bottle of Gatorade and bits of sandwiches. He consumes these slowly in the shade and cries out to the Lord to save him.
On Monday the Lord sends a wrecking crew to demolish the condo. Mike moans for his lost shade, he coughs because of the dust, he groans at the loud tearing noises. A garbage truck comes and Mike cries out to the men but they do not hear him. They empty the dumpster and drive away.