Swallowing a Donkey's Eye

by Paul Tremblay

  “The fence isn’t electrified for the animals,” Jonah says and shuts off the ATV. He lets that one hang for the obvious implications. I nod and inwardly lament the loss of my dive-through-a-hole-in-the-fence ambitions.

  Jonah says, “The animals have their own invisible fence and a chip in their backs that delivers a small shock if they get too close to the perimeter fence. This one must’ve bolted through the shock, or maybe his chip stopped working, or something.” Jonah drones on with more theories of our fried animal.

  I’m too beaten and tired to argue with him and the oversized and electrified picket fence. In fact, I’m making it official. Farm has broken me. I’m done, fried, zapped. For the tenure of my now extended work contract, I’ll open my mouth and say nothing, like the rest of the animals, and wait until I’m upgraded, cancelled, terminated, replaced.

  He says, “I think this thing was a donkey.”

  Too small to be a horse, its mouth is open but silent, tongue halfway out, caught trying to escape: a swollen, pink slug, bleeding. Its lips are burnt, rolled back and over its yellow teeth. Smoke blows through the chimney nostrils. One fleshy eye-socket is empty. I step toward the beast, extend a foot out, ready to nudge it with my boot.

  “Whoa, stop. Don’t touch. This ass’s ass is still touching the fence. You wanna get fried?”

  He’s right. The donkey’s backside is still on the fence.

  Jonah goes back to the ATV and calls in on the two-way cell. He says, “We need the juice cut on the fence between posts 3658 and 3659.” I have no idea how he knows the post numbers, but my dive-through-the-fence plan is alive again.

  “The idiots are shutting off this part of the fence. They’ll beep us when they’re ready.

  I notice angry-proletariat-guy Jonah is back. But I don’t say anything, I just nod, and stare at the fence. Wonder how far I can run before security nabs me; nabs being a more pleasant word than the phrase summarily executed. Let’s pretend I’m able to make it past the initial hurdle of the fence and Farm security, how would I make it through the checkpoints and into City?

  Jonah says, “What a fucking mess, huh? We’ll have to wash the blood and shit off the fence, and look, his belly split. We’ll have to shovel all that fucking goo up, too. Goddamn donkey. My mother used to call a shit-job, ‘swallowing a donkey’s eye.’ Anything that you had to do but was the last thing you or anyone else wanted to be doing, she’d say, ‘I guess you just gotta swallow the donkey’s eye.’”

  Then he winks. Jonah actually winks at me. I hear the first piece of any real information about the guy who I’ve shared more hours with than anyone this side of my mother, and then he gives me a smart-ass wink. I want to punch him, render him unconscious, then maybe hug him before I jump through the fence.

  “No shit. What did your mother do?”

  Would Jonah try to stop me from running through the de-electrified fence, or will I have to knock him in the head with my shovel?

  “She was my first BM,” Jonah says, and then breaks up laughing; bends over, slaps knees, and eyes shut.

  I have no idea if he’s making this up, or if it’s real. But it doesn’t matter because I laugh too. And hard. We slap each other and the ATV. Jonah tries to say something, but the words break up and tear apart. We laugh and laugh and laugh.

  The cell beeps. The fence is clear. I stagger past the ATV and to the back of the trailer to grab anything that might help me once I’m outside the fence. I’m still laughing. Laughter brings more oxygen into the body, and laughter gooses the release of adrenaline and other feel-good chemicals only the body can produce, and I’m feeling better. I feel like this can work and even Jonah will understand my defection. I’ll get to City and find my mother. It’ll all be okay.

  Then there’s this sound.

  16

  L IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER

  Back when I returned to my dorm room, I didn’t tell Jonah the whole story about the elevator. I don’t feel guilty about it, because people never give the whole story. I didn’t tell him about the elevator breaking.

  After it broke, Dad-the-psychic told me he knew it was going to break, which was why he didn’t use it. Mom, she told me later that the elevator had never been inspected and that the lift lines, supports, and breaks were rusted and rotted due to mould, due to too much moisture in the shaft. I knew they weren’t telling me the whole story and that my spitting into the shaft had nothing to do with the excess moisture and the elevator breaking. I still believed it was my fault, though.

  Mrs. Lopez was going to leave her apartment by herself for the first time in a decade. I’d only ever seen her when I went upstairs to visit them. She’d had her hip replaced years ago and needed a walker to get around. The stairs were impossible. Mr. Lopez convinced her that the elevator worked just fine, he’d been using it himself, a nice smooth ride, and she was plenty safe walking to the corner market to play her numbers if she wanted to. Mrs. Lopez loved her numbers, and Mr. Lopez had bought tickets for her every Tuesday and Saturday. He wrote her numbers in blue ink on the back of his hand, a temporary tattoo that was always there. But on that Saturday morning, Mrs. Lopez was going to pick her very own numbers, buy her own tickets, try her own luck. She had planned for a week. She picked a new, special set of numbers just for the occasion, telling me each one and what significance they had. I can’t remember what they were anymore. Like her husband, she wrote them on her hand. It was practical; she wouldn’t have to fumble through her pocketbook for them. She wore her nicest blue dress, nicest orthopedic shoes, and nicest hat, although, I was told she’d tried on at least five other hats before deciding on the blue one that looked like a curled up scarf on top of her head. Mrs. Lopez filled her pocketbook with change and she kissed Mr. Lopez on the lips. At the funeral, he told my mother after that the smile she gave him before leaving was a horizon, or maybe it was a sunset. Maybe it’s something my mother made up to make me feel better.

  Mr. Lopez watched her work her way down the hall, that walker’s rickety and squeaky wheels barking and chirping the whole way like an excited dog going for a walk. He watched her horizon-sunset disappear.

  Mrs. Lopez crept onto the elevator on the eighth floor, and then everything broke. The elevator was in free-fall for most of its trip. It crashed in the lobby.

  Mr. Lopez used to tell a story about his youngest son, one I never met and who had long since moved out. His son thought that “L” for lobby was the real number one because 2 always came after L on elevators. I don’t know if Mr. Lopez was full of shit, but it didn’t matter. All the kids in the building loved to hear that story. We never failed to oblige with laughter at the end and someone would mock sing L is the loneliest number, and there’d be more laughter, comfortable laughter as if the L-to-2 story would always be there for us, would always be funny, warm, and safe.

  I saw Mrs. Lopez’s body. I was in the lobby. There was a ding after the crash, and the doors simply opened like they were supposed to, like nothing was wrong. Her crumpled blue hat rolled out onto the linoleum, along with other debris and some blood. Before I turned away and ran outside, I saw her legs. Her nicest dress was hiked up a bit. Her orthopedic shoes were still on her feet and somehow her legs were propped up, resting on the lower of the two bars on her mangled and squashed walker.

  I had been playing in the lobby, rolling quarters up against a wall with my friend Jimmy and three other kids. The closest to the wall won the quarters. I was up three dollars. I was playing, but I was also waiting for Mrs. Lopez. I was supposed to keep an eye on her for Mr. Lopez, and help her out if there was any trouble. Not that I would’ve been able to stop trouble from happening.

  On that day, there I was, with a fistful of quarters. The elevator was behind me. Then there was this sound. Not a crash really, but a roar. An animal roar: a giant, angry, confused, violent, dying animal, roaring its last and loudest. It leaped on and through me, and forced me to the floor.

&n
bsp; Now, on this day, Jonah and I, we’re laughing and I’m standing behind the ATV and at the back of the trailer, reaching for the shovels, and when there’s this sound. I hear that animal. It’s a new one, but the same. It lifts me off my feet and forces me to fly.

  17

  MARKING TERRITORY

  My face is in the grass. I hope it isn’t there all by itself.

  I try and push myself up, but I fall back down. Things are hazy with smoke. My ears ring, but the whoosh and crackle of fire is somewhere behind me, and close. The skin on my forearms burns. My neck is sore. I roll over and sit up.

  I’m at least ten feet away from the overturned, bent, smoking trailer and ATV. The perimeter white picket fence has a large, jagged hole. The wood around the hole burns. White paint turns black, wood turns to ash, and entire panels of the fence collapse. Translucent threads of filament hang and curl around the hole and the fire.

  There’s blood, hair, and skin on my body and on top of my clothes. Not my blood and skin and hair, at least, I don’t think. I stand up, wobble, then throw up. But I can walk. And I do.

  There’s a body on the ground, on his back. His head is all twisted around, face pointed up at that gray sky, looking behind him for something, not at the ground. His eyes are open and not blinking, even with ash landing on his face.

  I remember there was a donkey here. There was a donkey and it didn’t have an eye. Someone must’ve swallowed it. That makes sense to me. Only, there’s no donkey here anymore, just a charred, black spot on the ground in the shape of something, an outline, a disappearance. I fall on my ass.

  Voices, shouts, and engine revs come from outside the fence and from behind me. A Jeep explodes through the fence hole, knocking out some of the white teeth, pushing through the ruined electrical circuit. The Jeep has no cover. Its passengers wear animal suits, but some of these look homemade, not the professional stuff we have here at Farm.

  I think a dog is driving. Its eyes are offset, and cartoonish, and a goose or a swan is next to the dog, and behind them, two cows. The cows stand, gripping the rollover bar. Their udders are saggy, impotent. All those animals have guns. Big ones. A second and third Jeep follow the first.

  The animals shout and make noise. The animals point their guns at me and then there are a couple of real loud growls and buzzing flies around my head but the flies don’t stop to land on me. The third Jeep runs over Jonah’s legs. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t mind. The Jeeps circle and I scoot over by our ruined ATV and sit, leaning my back against its dead body.

  I try to shake the cobwebs out of my concussed head. What am I going to do next? Screams and gunshots echo in the not-too-far-away distance. I feel a warm liquid on my head, and it runs down my neck and onto my back. It’s very warm. Am I bleeding? How injured and messed up am I? If it is blood it seems I’ve suddenly sprung a catastrophic leak because it runs everywhere, soaking my front and back and arms. I focus on my pounding head, the source, and now it feels more like blood is landing on my head instead of pouring out, and underneath all the smoke and ash, there’s this new stink, a pungent Barn kind of stink, a familiar-everyday-disgusting stink. And then a splash on my face, and a taste.

  “Fuck!” I scramble away from the ATV into the open, the sudden movement making my head hurt worse.

  There’s that tour-leading, middle-finger-waving Duck standing on the ATV. And there’s the back of his mallard head. That Duck straddles and hovers above where I was sitting, with its duck-leggings around her ankles. Her ankles. Those are definitely a woman’s ankles, legs, and heart-shaped ass.

  I put a hand on my soaked head and it comes back clear and wet and stinking. The Duck just pissed on me.

  “You should’ve come back to my room that night. I told you I was going to piss on you,” Piss-girl says. Lower Duck-half pulled back up, she shakes her tail feathers at me, flips me the finger, then shoots the ATV grille and console with double-barreled shotgun. She jumps to the ground and points the gun at me. “I must say that was sooo good.” She squeals. It’s a sound that shouldn’t come from a Duck. “I think I just came. We have to do this again. Looks like I might have to come back for you when this is over. Keep you as my darling pet. Oh, I’m getting tremors just thinking about it, momma’s boy.”

  She grips her shotgun like a baseball bat, swings, and connects behind my knees, buckling my legs. I go crashing to the ground again. Maybe I should stay there. The Duck runs and jumps into the lone remaining Jeep, idling behind me, and zooms off. I watch her and then other Jeeps in the distance, the drivers wearing the bulky animal uniforms, waving their guns and driving in a migratory formation, going south for the winter.

  18

  BEING A CHICKEN IS NO WALK IN THE PARK

  Jonah isn’t breathing. Not that I expected him to be exchanging any oxygen for CO2 at this point. I stare at his tattoo-face. Those ink-eyes open and expressive. There’re no lids to pull down. Maybe I should roll him over onto his back, but I really don’t want to see the damage. I can convince myself that he’d prefer to have his fake face up like this. It’s only fair, that’s how he lived. No, that’s not a nice thing to say of the dead, especially since the dead is someone who I lived with for more than three years. But I’m done with nice. Looking at the hole in the fence and Jonah’s body and smelling like someone else’s piss, I’m so done with nice. I want real. I want true. Nice has nothing to do with real or true.

  Another Jeep approaches. I hear it before I see it. It’s too close and I’m too hurt for a quick dive and dash through the fence hole. I pick one of our shovels off the ground, then crouch and hide beneath the flipped ATV trailer. I just hope that whoever is in the Jeep didn’t see me. They’ll probably be able to smell me, though.

  The Jeep pulls up and stops next to Jonah’s body. Everything is quiet. It’s the Chicken driving, and he’s alone. He hops out of the driver’s seat and surveys the scene, muttering to himself.

  He walks slowly around Jonah’s body, and I wait until he stands with his back turned to me. Then I attack. I scrabble out of my hidey-hole brandishing my shovel. The Chicken turns to face me, but he’s too slow. I whack him in the arm, maybe breaking a wing, then hit him like the Duck hit me, behind the knees, sweep out those chicken legs. He cradles his bum wing, screams, and goes down hard. An effective technique, but I’m not going to piss on him.

  I grab a fistful of feathers, pull him close enough that my spit will land on his beak. “Did you come back to make sure I was dead?”

  “Yes. I mean no, no, I came to help you. Jesus!”

  I want to hit him with the shovel again. He looks like a piñata. “What the hell is going on here, Chicken?”

  “Look, man, I didn’t want any part of this, I swear. I didn’t help them, but I had to keep quiet. Just about all of the tour leaders were in on the attack. They spent months trying to get me onboard. I don’t agree with Farm’s policies, but I wasn’t willing to kill over it. I told them no way.”

  “Who’s them?”

  “Farm Animal Revolution Today. But I left the group before the attack, I swear.”

  “This didn’t all happen from within, did it? I saw Jeeps coming from outside the fence.”

  Chicken says, “There’s a camp out there, in the woods. They’ve probably shut off the Farm access road by now. Dammit, you broke my arm!”

  We’re running out of time. Sirens sound and blue lights flash on the perimeter fence. That hole won’t stay open forever. “All right, get up and let’s go.” I pull the Chicken up by his beak and push him up against the back of his Jeep. “You’re driving.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “City.”

  “What? There’s no way. Even if we get past Farm security, how are we going to get by the revolutionary’s roadblock and camp?”

  The Chicken blabbers on more and I’m having trouble focusing because I see a Duck suit stashed in the back of the Jeep. Same as piss-gi
rl’s. A mallard duck.

  I say, “Somehow I think getting through the camp is the least of our worries, Chicken.” I wiggle out of my wet overalls, take the duck suit, and quickly put it on. “Just so you know, I fucking hate ducks. If I ever see a real one, I’m going to crush its skull.” I hold up the shovel to show that I mean what I say.

  “Hey, being a Chicken is no walk in the park, either.”

  We climb into the Jeep, roll away from Jonah’s body, the ATV wreckage, toward the hole in the fence. Once we’re through that ring of fire and onto the access road and grassy field beyond Farm, the Chicken says, “So why do you smell like piss?”

  19

  A GOOD COMPANY MAN

  It’s eerily quiet on the access road. Not much out here between Farm and City. Open fields give way to granite and rock quarries along with other industrial-excavation type monstrosities. Everything looks abandoned, but the mechanized and automated diggers and trucks do their thing on their own access roads that run parallel to the Farm road.

  I expected security and SWAT vehicles to swarm, or helicopters to buzz us. But there’s been nothing. Maybe the attackers have taken over Farm without anyone else knowing. We’ve been driving for a while now, with the bumps and potholes rocking me toward sleep despite my headache.

  After I land a few more swipes on that bad wing of his with my shovel, the Chicken volunteers the following information. “I thought they were going to kill me today, because I was a tour leader that wouldn’t help them. But they left me alone, completely ignored me as they overran Farm. It was kind of weird. My ex-girlfriend probably saved me. She’s one of the biggies in the group.”