Night Train

by Thom Jones

On television he saw a report about twelve hundred people drowning in Bangladesh. He reached for the remote and turned up the volume. There were scrawny women in saris sitting in trees, shots of people on rooftops, and pictures of skinny white cows floating in the muddy flood-waters. When the camera panned through a major city, Matthew took great satisfaction in seeing that the floodwaters had submerged two-story buildings. That twelve hundred drowned in a far-off land somehow comforted him. Better they than he. In fact, when God reached out like that, He got something off His chest—some level of celestial wrath that just as well might have been directed at Matthew. It was like an Aztec sacrifice or something. A good way to blow off steam.

  Oh, it was too true that all was one, and that if he personally knew any of the drowning victims, he would be heartbroken by their plight, but suddenly his mind had been delivered from his troubles and he could feel himself about to drift asleep again. A few more hours of sleep would complete his REM cycle, fostering revival. And he was close to snoozola. He was on the verge. He could almost get it. But then he had to piss with a vengeance, and to piss meant leaving the sanctuary of the Green Room. Go out; venture forth with the fiend of Fordham Avenue on the loose. Shit! Suddenly Matthew found that he had to squeeze his legs together to hold his urine. There was a nerve in the bladder, a kind of natural gas gauge like the one located on the dashboard of a car. Once it hit the danger mark, the signal became hard to ignore. But to go out there? She would be on him like a peregrine falcon. Suddenly Matthew spotted a discarded Burger King coffee cup in his wastebasket. It was a pretty seedy thing to do, but he retrieved the cup and let go. He had to piss so badly his eyes were watering.

  “Take a memo,” he reminded himself. “Empty cup at the first opportunity.” Heh heh. Man, how low can you go? Well, lay around unemployed for two years and you could always limbo a little lower, now—hey dere! Heh heh heh. Suddenly the cup was filled to the brim and warm in his hands. He didn’t know where to put it. Finally he set it along the wall next to his bed. With that done, he assumed the position and within moments was in deepest slumber.

  Matthew awoke at seven the next morning clinging to fragments of a disturbing dream—a virtual night terror. Still, no matter how bad it had been it wasn’t as bad as the scourge of raw dawn. He found himself in a tight fetal ball but rolled over. His stomach roiled with the corrosive acids and bile of inhuman stress. He might have to vomit. He had a nuclear meltdown of a hiatal hernia—either that or this was it. The big one. Heart attack at forty. The American Way. Goddamn them!

  Matthew closed his eyes again and tried the deep-breathing exercise. No need to get in a shithouse panic. If he did that, he would start generating beta waves in his brain pan and once that happened the adrenaline would begin to flow. He’d wake up for sure. Peace, brother. Just back off and try a little more of that free-floating action. Come on, man. Don’t freak; just slide back into slumber. Breathe.

  Frightful thoughts raced through his brain. He was certain that the pain in his upper chest was heart pain, particularly when he recalled the shortness of breath he experienced after the struggle with his mother. His saliva tasted peculiar and he wondered if pus was festering in his throat or if he had brought about a bleed from so much screaming. He endured an age of agony and managed to fall asleep nonetheless.

  Matthew awoke at four-thirty in the afternoon. He came to in the full layout position and stretched luxuriously, arching his feet as he scissored his limbs and made little snow angels under the covers of the Slumber King. Except for the interlude with his mother, Matthew had pretty much put together a near-twenty-two-hour package of sleep from the last twenty-four. A commendable feat! He continued to savor little dream fragments as he walked into the kitchen for coffee. His pride and self-satisfaction vanished when he saw that the carafe under the Mr. Coffee machine was completely empty—treason and high tyranny on her part. Shit! As Matthew fumbled through the cupboards looking for coffee filters, the memory of their argument last night came back in rich detail. It had been an ugly scene. Still, it wasn’t like her to hold a grudge or not have some coffee going. When he finally found the filters and the package of ground Starbucks, he filled the machine and hit the switch. He put the biggest cup he could find under the fount since he didn’t want to wait for an entire pot to fill before he got some caffeine in him. He could do a quick switch once his cup was loaded. Jesus, what a hassle! He wasn’t the kind that could casually wait for coffee. When he had to have it, he had to have it. Furious over this inconvenience, he impatiently drummed his fingers as he waited for the coffee. Then Matthew spotted a full bottle of morphine tablets sitting across the room next to the Cuisinart—morphine tablets that his mother always kept locked up in the three-hundred-pound safe in her bedroom.

  Matthew took a deep breath and listened for the least hush of sound. Suddenly thought and action were one. He closed the distance between himself and the drugs with the stealth and silence of a trained Mohican stalker. He quickly dumped a dozen of the tablets into his palm, shook the bottle to fluff it up, and then returned to his station next to the coffee machine. The entire action was completed faster than Superman making a phone-booth costume change. He had been reckless with the morphine tabs on earlier occasions. The rustle of pills was a sound both mother and son were attuned to, and as careful as Matthew was, the twelve morphine tablets sliding into his hand sounded exactly like what it was—drug theft. A herd of buffalo storming through the living room would have been more subtle. Matthew felt exposed—caught red-handed—yet to his astonishment, the quiet held. Un-fucking-believable! Making casual, he walked back to the Green Room. In his excitement to stash the pills, he bumped the Slumber King and overturned the brimming cup of urine. He scarcely gave it a thought—hell, it would dry on its own practically without an odor. Well, maybe. Anyhow, this was no time to worry about a little spilled piss.

  Matthew hurried to his mother’s bedroom and peeked inside. When he saw her form under the covers, he went back to the kitchen. God! What a score! That fluffing-up procedure was amazing. He rubbed his hands together in delight. The perfect crime. He watched the Mr. Coffee machine sputter. Molasses in January. He had half a notion to unleash his expertise as a design engineer one last time and make a six-second Mr. Coffee, but the world that had treated him so badly didn’t deserve such a prize.

  Suddenly Matthew realized that he had understolen. An opportunity like this came once in a blue moon. He slid across the room and shook out another twenty tablets. The container held 200 count. Twelve and twenty—that was thirty-two total—hell, round it out to forty. At forty, the fluff-up job looked suspicious. Reluctantly he returned four tablets to the pill bottle, replaced the lid, and went back to the coffee station. He wondered if he had gone too far. His moves were mechanical and the word guilt was written all over him. He needed to get back into the Green Room. His coffee cup was three-quarters full when he made the switch-over to the pot. He quickly opened the fridge and poured some half-and-half into the cup and knocked down four of the morphine tablets. He needed morphine. His baby toe was throbbing like a bass drum. In a more humane society, pain would be treated in a less Calvinistic fashion. Jesus! He took the remaining pills back to his bedroom and hid them with the others. With his coffee he took two Xanax from his stash and swallowed them to accentuate the high that was about to come any time soon. He slugged the coffee down to dissolve the pills faster and then got on the Slumber King and assumed the position. It was like being at the opera or some gala affair awaiting the greatest production of pleasure life could deliver. Ensconced in the Slumber King, Matthew Billis, who had been so tormented by relentless depression, who had come to feel so bad that not even taking a shit felt good, and who was bereft of a single endorphin, waited for the buzz of a lifetime. It was a buzz with a wow factor of ten. He bore witness to a glorious lotus blossom of joy opening in his stomach that sent out radiant orange tidal waves of orgasmic ecstasy—waves that pulsed up through the base of his brain, to the roots
of his hair, and back down his spine to his arms, legs, fingers, and heels. In every fiber and place of his being, Matthew felt bliss—bliss that he realized had been lying in wait all along. Oh! Whoa! Daddy!

  Suddenly he felt he was on to the whole game of existence, and what a great inward laugh he laughed as he thought of it all. Love. Bathed in a shimmering white light and healed of every ailment and affliction, physical or psychological, he knew at last that love was the answer. It had seemed so…far away, but there it was, right in front of him—all about him, in his every pore. In and out, he breathed it. It existed in himself and in all things, for all things truly were one. Matthew had been those women left like driftwood in the trees of Bangladesh. He had suffered their suffering but, fuck, what did it matter now? Now everything was double jake. Sooooper Fraj-A-Lizzz-tik-X.B.-Al-eh-doe-shuz! All right now! Yah-sir! Hahaha. He hovered peaceably under the lime green canopy of the Slumber King for the next hour and a half sending out love vibrations—not only to the drowning in Bangladesh, but for souls that suffered everywhere. It never occurred to him to beam one out to his old lady.

  By and by Matthew became hungry. He found himself magically padding out to the kitchen with another four and two (four morphine tabs and two Xanax). He gulped these down with coffee and then started rooting around in the refrigerator. He soon whipped up a tray of steaming biscuits and a cheese omelet with green onions. Fucking-A, was it ever delicious. Even doing the dishes was fun. After he had them squeaky clean he began to wonder about his mother. Shit, where was she? Surely not in bed still, she was the insomniac of all time. Funny though, her car was in the driveway. When he got the paper he noticed that she had not brought in the mail. That wasn’t like her at all! He went back to her bedroom and quietly opened the door. “Ma?”

  She didn’t move. Matthew moved closer. “Ma, yo! What are you doing? Are you okay, babe?”

  He moved closer, sensing something was terribly wrong. There was a splatter pattern of blood and sputum on her pillow. He pulled back the covers and reached for her neck, to pull her up. It was too late. She was cold and blue, and as dead as a doornail. It was odd, he thought, standing there, her condition seemed neither good nor bad; dead was just what it was. Nothing more and nothing less. He wondered if he was in some egoless state of Nirvana. Beyond his mother Matthew spotted the door of the three-hundred-pound safe. Jesus H. Christ, it was wide open. He turned on the bedside lamp and pulled it to the floor for a look inside. There was another bottle of 200-count morphine tablets and an 8-by-14 canvas sack. He unzipped it and dumped the contents on the mattress. Fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills floated to the bed. He soon counted out a sum of fourteen thousand dollars. In addition to the cash there were several stock dividend checks and a social security check, all signed and ready to be countersigned. Matthew got down on his knees to see what else was in the safe and was shocked to find a half-carton of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Mrs. Billis, to his knowledge, had not smoked in years. He threw the cigarettes to the floor and looked for more secrets. There were several cloth-wrapped Hummel figurines—her treasures. Crass stupid-ass junk really. As he was removing these from his safe a recent prescription for 200-count morphine fluttered to the floor. A script for morphine! Lord, have mercy! What a stellar find!

  He took the cash, the pills, and the prescription back out into the kitchen and set them on the table next to the mail and the newspaper. Did she know that she was dying and leave the safe open on purpose? With all of that blood on her pillow, it was unlikely. She had simply died of natural causes.

  Matthew’s initial sense of objective detachment began to deteriorate. He turned to the Rolodex and began to spin through it looking for her doctor’s number when it dawned on him that she didn’t need a doctor, not really. Not anymore. Well, who to call then? There wasn’t much family left, just cousins. Fuck them. He went back to the room and studied his mother’s body. A look of horror was affixed to her face. She had seemed to diminish in size a good 20 percent. He pushed her mouth closed. Her limbs were still pliable. He wondered how long she had been dead. She had somehow scrunched down low in the bed, and when he pulled her forward, her mouth dropped open and a gush of blood oozed out. Matthew quickly rushed out of the room and went to the kitchen sink to wash the cold and slimy blood from his hands. Suddenly he was into hand washing in a big way. Lady “Matthew” Macbeth.

  At last he opened the phone book and turned to the yellow pages looking for mortuaries. Did you just call them, or did you inform the doctor first? If he informed the doctor, he wasn’t going to be able to cash that script for morphine. It would be null and void. A waste of ambrosia. Man, she was still pliable! She must have somehow been hovering, clinging to life until only just recently. Matthew wasn’t sure how long it took for rigor mortis to set in. He could drive to the drugstore now, cash in the script, and then make phone calls. Who was to know? He took another four-and-two combination and went back to the safe. He removed a pack of Luckies from the carton and sat in the kitchen, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee as he thought things over. Matthew quit smoking when his mother first came down with cancer and now he wondered why. It was such a pleasure to smoke. It was pure enjoyment. That she was able to sneak cigarettes behind his back seemed amazing to him, but then, given his sleep habits, it wasn’t surprising at all. But why did she sneak around about it? To fool herself! Yes, that was it! Denial. His analytical powers were most acute.

  An inspired plan evolved. Matthew finished his coffee, snuffed out a cigarette, and retrieved his old Boy Scout sleeping bag from the spare closet. He unrolled it on the bed next to his mother. It had a musky smell. He reached under her arms and slid her body over onto the bag, careful not to let her head slump forward. Once he had her in the bag, he zipped it shut and then hefted her up, carried her out to the garage, and placed her corpse inside the freezer. Fit was not a problem as the freezer was only half full. He returned to the bedroom and got her Hummels. He placed these into the freezer with her in case she might need them in the Happy Hunting Grounds—she had plenty of frozen food, that was for sure. Heh heh.

  One of the Hummels depicted a small boy with a beagle. Matthew had given it to her when he was eleven out of money he had saved mowing lawns. He remembered that the statue had cost thirty-five bucks. It had been a lot of money at the time, but he wanted her to have it. He wanted her to have something really nice. Jesus, what kind of shit was he pulling here? He didn’t know, he was just playing things by ear. He went back into the kitchen and pulled some candles out of a drawer. He set them on the freezer and lit them in her honor. The morphine was kicking in nicely now. Matthew said, “Look at it like this, babe: you aren’t really dead until I thaw you out and call the doctor. In the meantime, as long as I can forge your signature, I’ve got all the job I need.”

  He thrust out his narrow chest and began to strut before the freezer, his movements suddenly fluid and rhythmic. Released from the morass of his neurotic fears, he was suddenly a kinetic art form as he popped his fingers and jived about in the garage. The Panasonic was airing a commercial in which a phalanx of ants was carrying off a bottle of Budweiser: “Do a little dance; make a little love; get down tonight! Get down tonight!”

  Matthew was in a “get down” mood. He said, “ ‘Get a job’? Who, me? Baby, you’ talkin’ to the kid! Get a job? Shee-it, man! Anyhow, why in God’s name should we drag this through probate and take it up the ass from the government? Those fascist bastards! Why?”

  Yes, why? Matthew retrieved a Diet Coke from the refrigerator in the garage. Back in the Green Room he shook out another four-and-two combo and slugged it down with Coke. Then hopped into the Slumber King and assumed the position. Dateline Monday was coming on and Matthew Billis felt absolutely, positively, right-on-the-money cap-ee-tal.

  Tarantula

  JOHN HAROLD HAMMERMEISTER arrived at W. E. B. Du Bois High School with grand ambitions. Harold loved to work, thrived on challenge, and could scarcely contain his excitement at the pros
pect of a new and difficult assignment.

  Postings such as these were like the great wars: they provided one with opportunities for distinguishment. There was another thing, too—hard work took Harold’s mind off the inner turmoil resulting from so many recent life changes. He had been racking up big numbers on the Hans Seyle Stress Scale. In less than two years he had weathered a divorce, suffered the death of both parents, and then, with the last of his inheritance, had come down from Canada—come down to Detroit to polish off the course work on a Ph.D. Now everything was done except for the thesis. It was just one last detail. A little trifling. Why, he would have it out of the way faster than you could say John Harold Hammermeister.

  The principal who hired Hammermeister was scheduled to retire in a year, and Hammermeister, with his doctorate all but finished, had a “feeling” that the principal’s job was his. All he needed was to whirl like a dervish for one year, a mere two hundred and twenty-six school days—dazzle them senseless—and the kingdom from on high would be his. And Harold was most definitely in contact with the kingdom. Before falling asleep each night Hammermeister tuned into the Universal Cosmic Broadcast. He was a psychic radioman who not only transmitted but received. He was connected, on the inside. It was beautiful, wonderful, mar-ve-lous!

  Yeah, eyes closed at night, in red flannel pajamas, Hammermeister lay in the ancient Murphy bed of his studio apartment and created the future—and in that future he saw himself in the principal’s office, in full command, in one year’s time, a mere two hundred and twenty-six school days. The principal’s office was just a little pit stop on the way over to district office proper, and he would most certainly ascend the ladder there. From the Murphy bed he created glorious visions of supreme success. He watched himself climb from the modest position of junior vice-principal all the way up to the summit of State Superintendent of Public Instruction! Why not try that one on for size? Heh heh.