Quirks and Charms

by Tom Schimmel

  QUIRKS and CHARMS by Tom Schimmel

  CHAPTER ONE

  Life on Earth

  The bus stopped in front of Hubert T. Exerhoff and the rear door opened. Having commuted for seven years from the same street corner, the drivers were accustomed to his daily presence on their route. This is why Hubert T. Exerhoff rarely had to pay a fare. He stepped up onto the platform and made his way to a nearby seat at the rear of the bus.

  It was 4:48 PM. The motions of existence continued unabated, as they had for the past seven years. Exerhoff had left his desk at 4:32 PM without a word to anyone. Working in the lower vault of the Health Department archives was a job that requires no direct contact with other humans. To fulfill the obligations of his employment, Exerhoff filled requests for birth, death, and dental records from the basement.

  Upstairs, his unseen co-workers placed completed request forms into clear acrylic tubes which fell gently into the bowels of the Health Department. The archive system was closer in appearance to the guts of an abandoned Soviet space station than it was to say, a drive-thru bank. While the tube way had indeed been salvaged from a local bank in the eighties, the installers had covered it with flexible dryer duct in an effort to protect the system from excessive dust, rats, mold, and anything else that lurked between the walls of the old building.

  The decades passed and the passage of time begun to show its effects. The ductwork had long ago begun to shed its aluminized coating. Each and every one of the tubes which arrived in the basement did so with a whoosh, a mild thump, and a small cloud of dust. The particulates were inevitably speckled with aluminum. A small hand broom and dustpan hung on the wall next to his desk to deal with the settlements on his desk.

  Hubert T. Exerhoff was both a bank teller and a dungeon keeper. Precise, methodical, and mostly immune to the constant assault of airborne inhalants in his stank workplace. The air filters were reserved purely for the records storage area. It was a low-ceilinged concubine of data storage with aisle space sufficient enough only for a single upright human. After shuffling through his dungeon, Hubert T. Exerhoff would locate the matching records and return to his desk. The request forms were folded alongside the corresponding documents and placed neatly back in the clear acrylic tube. Then he would slide the lid shut and flip a switch to send.

  Shortly after its installation, the previously-owned vacuum system had failed. An inspection revealed the electric motor had overheated. Heavy dust had suffocated it. Banks tended not to have this problem. The building superintendent had demonstrated his aptitude in improvisational engineering by replacing the electric fan system with a Shop-Vac brand wet/dry vacuum cleaner.

  The Shop-Vac Corporation claimed on the product labeling, that their machine produced three horsepower. Hubert T. Exerhoff would sometimes imagine the three horses inside the Shop Vac. They were an invisible equine posse whooshing up the ductwork like a twenty-first century perversion of what had once been real. Hubert T. Exerhoff was not a man who cared for aesthetics. His choice of profession and personal appearance stated the obvious. For the most part, he passed through life unnoticed by those around him. He was a plain looking man in a plain brown suit during the day. In the evenings and on weekends, beginning at 5:13 PM when he would exit the bus and turn the key of his apartment door, no one knew what Hubert T. Exerhoff looked like.

  Dinner was always delivered. Like most major cities of the world, Boston was full of small restaurants eager to please. When the delivery person would show up with his evening meal and knock at the door, Hubert T. Exerhoff would silently slide a twenty dollar bill under the door and wait. Over time he had trained them all. Take the money, leave the food, and walk away. His choice of restaurant did not interrupt the unspoken protocol. Word had gotten around. To him, they were all just a knock at the door which signaled that dinner was ready. To them all, he was but a door which spat out twenty dollar bills. Hubert T. Exerhoff was a man of physical gesture. Words could go away completely without his loss of self-expression. He was not dashingly handsome by any means; but his position as a pariah and a hermit had little, if nothing, to do with looks.

  The bus moved from the curb with a lurch and resumed its participation in the flow of traffic. The movement, as always, produced a small dollop of methane from his anus. The sound was inaudible over the diesel purr of the bus engine. The smell however, was ripe, thick, and nearly instantaneous. The young man seated next to him went pale and groaned, turning towards the window and burying his face in his backpack. He was, concluded Exerhoff, most likely a student at nearby Saint Catherine’s. Most of the passengers seated around him began to shift uncomfortably in their seats. Nosed wrinkled and a familiar murmur of olfactory discontent seeped through the air. These were sounds and mannerisms which had accompanied Hubert T. Exerhoff throughout his life. They were the mirror of his existence. The sounds which made him certain that he was, in fact, alive. Early into his sophomore year of high school, Hubert T. Exerhoff had withdrawn from school and elected to complete his studies by mail. It was quite surprising he had lasted so long. It had been homecoming weekend when he was jumped in the hallway and dragged into the bathroom. The cooperative effort between members of the football and wrestling teams saw to it that his face and body were riddled with cuts and bruises.

  The boy who led the charge was unsurprisingly the starting tight end for the football team. His girlfriend had accused Exerhoff’s odiferous outbursts in the hallway of being an aggressive act of social non-compliance. She had of course, worded her distaste, with far less eloquence; but the effect on her brawny boyfriend was the same.

  The group had held Exerhoff down on the bathroom floor. While some punched and kicked, others managed to cover him with liquid soap from the hand dispenser. He was wet, dirty, soapy and being tortured against his will. Thus had the bowels of young Hubert T. Exerhoff charged themselves in an act of self-defense. The beating had stopped almost immediately. The offending athletes had lurched all over themselves and the bathroom floor. A young teacher had entered the bathroom to urinate and found himself upon a surreal disturbia. Young men covered in suds and water and vomit. Slipping and sliding to the floor as they tried repeatedly to stand up. The bathroom was closed for two days and word had spread like wildfire to stay the hell away from Exerhoff. He never had another conversation with a fellow student.

  Rumors fly and rumors die. Having had his entire life to acclimate to his noxious cheese-cutting, Hubert T. Exerhoff then began to take a grim pride in his abilities. A few days after the incident found him in a counselor’s office with a state licensed adolescent psychologist. The woman had suggested the phrase

  “Gastrointestinal Irreverence”, in her initial report to the school principal. After she listened to his end of the story, and gotten a slight whiff of his peculiar abilities, she had simply advised him to leave school. Psychology had no place to help this boy. Simply put, the farts were coming out Hubert T. Exerhoff one way or another.

  It was at least encouraging that he had chosen to embrace his abilities as means of both adaptation and survival. The school board wished him well in a letter sent to his mother explaining the school’s position on her boy. He was capable and intelligent. His capacity to break wind would likely cause more damage in social situations. The school district followed up a week later with supplementary material on passing the equivalency exam.

  Time went by and Exerhoff had his diploma by age seventeen. He had spent about a decade destroying atmospheres in clothing store dressing rooms, sandwich shops, and movie theaters. Time passed, and he began to see his stink bomb status as a gluttonous trapping of youth. More time went by and he discovered that there were certain perks to be had with his position, if he were to become more strategic with his do
ody burps.

  Not paying bus fare was a prime example. The drivers had all learned quickly to open the back door and allow him free passage. It was an unspoken symbiotic arrangement. The odors never seemed to make it to the front of the bus. You could identify the regulars on his route. The all sat as close to the driver as possible. Some would even stand when otherwise unnecessary. The back of the bus belonged to the inexperienced, the uninitiated, and the gas master.

  All of this having been said; it never failed to amuse Exerhoff that newbies to the route would leave their comfortable internal worlds to voice their displeasure at an invisible enemy. His ears located the target. Female. Caucasian. A lot of flab and an overdeveloped permafrown. Hubert noticed that she was not yelling, and yet had a noticeable talent for broadcasting obscenities at the local population. Fat ugly mean white trash. The woman was a likely participant in a regular sofa orgy between Jerry Springer, Cool Ranch Doritos, Taco Bell, Mountain Dew, and cheap menthol cigarettes. What a bitch. He smiled and got to work.

  Farting was the only thing in the world that gave Hubert T. Exerhoff true pleasure, albeit a selfish and noxious one. But as he had told his mother as a teenager, he felt he had little else in this world to enjoy. She had died of colon cancer seven years ago. Shortly after her passing, he had been hired on at the Health Department to service the archives of Boston.

  The Moroccan curry that he had enjoyed last night had completed its passage through his superhuman large-intestine. An even twenty under the door and it had been waiting. Now, twenty-two hours had passed. The cumin, cardamom, coriander, and hot peppers had bounced and bobbled along splendidly as his body digested nutrients from the rice, lamb, and vegetables. Now the food was gone. There was only spice remaining. The Moroccan curry was as jittery as stallions come race time. The sphincter gate opened and Hubert T. Exerhoff smiled with a vague pleasure. This was going to be good. Contained in the dense weave of his suit trousers and with nowhere else to go, the immense fart snuck around his testicles and into the fabric below his belt. Under fantastic pressure from his curried air biscuit, the frayed seam on his zipper gave way and the crotch of his pants exploded. Everyone heard the noise, but the noise was too sudden and bizarre to produce a familiar reaction from the crowd. No one could see his pants under his trench coat. Only Hubert T. Exerhoff knew what had just happened.

  It had sounded, by his best analogy, like the final croak of an Amazonian bullfrog which has swallowed a live grenade and then wrapped itself in a wool Army blanket. The breeze on his crotch added to the sheer reverie of the moment.

  The Fart God hath spoken. Let the people smell.

  His methane bullfrog hopped slowly up the aisle on the left and began its assault. A middle-aged Asian woman clutched at her throat. She looked Korean, thought Hubert T. Exerhoff as he watched her writhing become pronounced, and then horrific. He had truly outdone himself. The white trash bitch was frozen and wide-eyed with terror. Cries of alarm became terrified screams as his flatulence circulated the middle of the bus. The Korean woman fell into the aisle. Her nose was bleeding. For the first time in a very long time – if ever at all – a red flag was raised in the mind of Hubert T. Exerhoff. Never before had he caused a nasal hemorrhage. It had never gone this far. Never. Not once. Not with the jocks in high school or even the time he had eaten two quarts of kimchee. The Korean woman on the floor appeared to be dying before his eyes. There was a lot of blood. He couldn’t even see her nose anymore.

  A fart is still just a fart right?

  The bus had stopped. Looking down the aisle into the large rearview mirror, the Fart God saw the form of the driver slumped over the wheel. Hubert T. Exerhoff saw his own countenance looking back at him. Was his the face of a murderer?

  Then something blocked his view and he felt a very strange sensation from underneath his trench coat.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A Long Long Time Ago in a Nearby Place

  The planet called Earth is a very old place. It has a rich history of ice ages, global warming, giant floods, volcanoes, and polar shifts. These cataclysmic events are partitioned by periods of relative stability. The stable times allow the resident species to proliferate.

  The evidence for these multiple histories of living things on Earth exists largely within layers of sedimentary rock and miles and miles of ice. The current period of relative stability has allowed for a diverse genetic pool of humans to create and refine scientific methods to access and analyze and interpret the clues that are hidden. Geologists, archeologists, and oceanographers have all discovered congruent bits of information. Antarctica once had trees. Pompeii had been a prosperous city. Humans had survived the last ice age. Long before that, the Mississippi River Valley was underneath a warm ocean, along with part of Canada.

  One thing is certainly true about planet Earth. Things come and go. Where the evidence no longer exists, there are many myths to rouse our thoughts. The lost city of Atlantis, the Biblical Flood, pyramids in Egypt, Aztec temples, Stonehenge, the Loch Ness Monster, dragon lore, and – as an extra dash of spice – Area 51.

  The origin of Earth has always been a favorite subject of curious people. Many spiritual vocations, academic disciplines, and zany religions have been formed in a basic effort to provide explanations to a deceivingly simple question.

  How did we get here?

  This question has proven incredibly elusive. Countless wars have been fought over ideologies and theories which did not agree and/or vilified the opposition. Following these wars, periods of acceptance followed; and then led into new ages of war. The fighting followed the flux and flow of human thought, which in turn followed the flux and flow of planet Earth. Again, the question in question has proven incredibly elusive.

  Very old places tend to carry with them multiple histories of proliferating species, separated by global cataclysmic events. In fact, scientists are now reluctant to call them cataclysmic. Ice ages, polar shifts, and global melting occur on a cyclical basis. Seamless flux and uninterrupted flow are the ways of the Earth machine.

  Also, the lower crust slowly falls into the furnace, where Earth melts it down and spews it back up somewhere else. The planet appears truly, to be a reconstructive spacecraft serving as home to zillions and zillions of living organisms. It is also a very beautiful place. This is life on Earth.

  When times are free of the wars men wage about God, life on Earth can be a wondrous and satisfying experience. Families of all species are raised and thrive.

  If you should be lucky enough to be alive during those times, you will find life on Earth to be a very satisfying experience.

  Or, at least until the next war about God, which will cause us to work very hard at not thinking about things again.

  Many humans on Earth are troubled in various degrees by the misleading concept that knowledge can lead to God. The concept of knowledge – even a general one – has caused a tremendous amount of discontent. Simultaneously, knowledge has spurred most growth in human awareness. Quid pro quo. A very old story in a book written about God tells the tale of a man and a woman, naked and oblivious in paradise. The woman gets coerced by a talking snake into eating the ovary of a fabulously intelligent tree. She offers her man a bite. He takes it. Awareness kicked in immediately. They felt shame, guilt, and the very sad feeling of not knowing what you have until it’s gone. Paradise looks much different from outside the gates.

  That is one account of this very old story. There are many more. For the most part, people have gotten sick of debating whether the woman slept with her sons or copulated with a snake. A lot of people feel sorry for the man. They don’t really know why God would stick the No-No tree in the garden if not-eating the fruit was so important. Forget these unanswerable questions, the secular world proclaims. Life on Earth is happening now. Just let us live and shop in peace. Long before Earth was created, humanity was living in the same solar system. The events that precede life on Venus remain a mystery. The star called Sun once had only nine planets in
its orbit. The earliest historical records were kept by the lone survivor of these times. His story marks the edge of known human history.

  The one who would survive was born to a human mother and father on the Northern continent of Ishtar Terra. The loving couple named their new child Epemelius. He had a brother and two sisters; and the family was very happy and loving toward one another. His father was a merchant who traveled the south extensively, gathering medicinal plants and sea vegetables from tidal pools and along the floor of the boreal forest. Venus at the time was spectacularly wealthy with life. The air was clean. The water was mostly calm. Everyday in his work, there were surprises. Some days a new kind of phosphorescent moss which had chosen to blink. Other days a group of giant redwoods would dance when there was no wind even high above. Occasionally there was a scary moment with the dragonflies, which were the size of pigeons on modern Earth. Fortunately the dragonflies were not hostile, they were just very large. Ancient Venus was so beautiful that it was really a lot of fun even for moss and mushrooms and sea vegetables. The environment was so pristine and full of life that even the flora and fauna had the luxury of learning how to do neat things like turn blue and blink. Life was very interesting and full of surprises. His family loved to gather at their father’s return to marvel at baby monkeys, telepathic fish, dancing plants, an occasionally, a gem for Pleida, his wife.

  Pleida specialized in genetics. She worked from a home laboratory to be near her children. Their family made a comfortable living providing care and sustenance to those who required their growing skills in the healing arts. Their home was powered by the tidal generator anchored off the beach. Geothermal vents in the surrounding lands were used to heat the floors and stave off the chill of the cool rain forest mornings. The land and sea were clean and abundant. Epemelius loved his family and his home. They swam together in the cool crisp ocean and walked many steps through the wooded hills behind. From an early age, Epemelius learned a deep respect and awe for the world around him. He shared a blissful early childhood with his siblings. From the time he learned to talk, the boy began to state out loud various species of flora and fauna and ocean life. His parents were of course, delighted. Adobe designs for the time were similar among other Venusians. The society was collectively prosperous at a level which respected their planet. Love, awareness, and understanding had allowed them to live equally and well. People respected one another and the world around them. Technology was progressive and the air was clean. At his young age, the boy had no reason to contemplate the question of his existence. There were too many things to discover to wonder how he came to be. Well things changed, as they always have and will. Life is motion and motion leads to change. Motion is change. As Epelimus neared his eleventh birthday, his father returned home from the southern continent in a state of anger and concern that the boy had never seen on his father’s face. Pleida served a meal of fish, quinoa, and fresh fruit; and his father provided his wife and family with a number of disturbing observations about the southern landscape. Large wetlands were becoming arid. Fish were in many places, nonexistent.