The Bewdley Mayhem

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The Bewdley Mayhem Page 37

by Tony Burgess


  As soon as he could crawl, the Mayor made his way out to a small town of overturned canoes, stacked and neglected by his father in a sheltering clump of trees near the water’s edge. The forest here held a number of crackling and splintered depots, merchandise abandoned by the restless entrepreneur: a greasy black pyramid of small engines, the lunar lichen carpets of a Mini Putt, the crumpled backs of batting cages and slug wet boxes where the stringy-bodies of baby emu had once jerked to life — before freezing to death. The canoes, now no more than a small bag of brown pea pods, had been meant for rental to vacationers; however, in the first week of operation, two young children were pulled to their deaths by the relatively calm claws of the harbour. The Mayor’s father moved on quickly to the Mini Putt project, leaving the canoes to rot in the cool shade.

  This was the Mayor’s first home.

  He scuttled back and forth there, on his hard, scabby, two-year-old knees, and collected his droppings to throw at the ankles of intruders. Bits of food that he foraged from the garbage cans in his father’s shed were stored away for winter. He bears, to this day, a series of etched scars across his back where screeching raccoons had leapt on him while he scrounged in the cans.

  The worst scar, however, is a dime-sized knot of tissue just under his left shoulder. That was a result of a surprise run-in with his father. Always trying to tempt people to buy his neglected inventories, Robert’s father one day brought a man into the woods to discuss purchasing the stack of canoes. When he overturned one, the mud-streaked little boy shrieked, wrapped his tough fingers around the man’s ankle, and then bit straight through to the bone. The father panicked and flipped a plumb bob out of the leather holster on his hip and plunged its heavy tip into his son’s back. The prospective buyer watched horrified as the father kicked the underside of his son, sending his skinny naked body up into the air and directly into the trunk of a large tree. It wasn’t until he was nearly five years old that his parents let the Mayor sit out in the open in their backyard. As they grew accustomed to his feral form they began to toss him food and, eventually, once they were confident he wouldn’t attack, invited him, with hand slaps and tongue clicks, to eat at the picnic table.

  One night, while his mother was squatting beside a flashlight, collecting night crawlers on the wet front lawn, the Mayor slid out of the rain-slick shrubs. He presented himself as a son — at the rim of her light — to his mother.

  “Awright, ya little toad, why don’t ya help me with these here wrigglers?”

  The boy squatted beside his mother and silently the two pinched at the curling tails of worms until the sun rose and warmed their frozen fingers.

  “OK, thanks for your help, ya little bug, now I gotta go take these inside, I ’spect you outta run on home now.”

  The little Mayor rocked back on his haunches, and squinted up at his mother, hoping, wondering if in fact she even knew he was her son.

  He knew.

  And he wanted this house to be his home. Suddenly, the sun inflated a long ribbon deep down in the boy’s bowels and he farted, sharply, once, and then eased out a chain of smooth round droppings. Shocked and embarrassed, his mother lifted him clear off the ground by the wrist.

  “Oh Christ, that’s no good. You’re not leavin’ shitters all over my lawn. That won’t do, no sir. You better come inside and sit on the commode for a bit. Lord almighty, you’re a dirty little beast.”

  That was the day the Mayor came home. From then on he was accepted, after a fashion, as a member of the household. The years preceding his adolescence were jacked by beatings and slavery, to which he took enthusiastically, feeling the harshness of his parents as a keen and pleasurable edge that was always ascending. He would grow, and grow hard and wary. The hard and wary part, however, was more fantasy than reality. In truth, he grew thin and nervous and pale. His teenage years were remarkably normal, given his childhood: he was not an unintelligent young man, though quiet and remote socially. Robert was enrolled in school and he learned at an acceptable rate; however, he was utterly incapable of initiating anything with other students. In fact, the only real skill he had as he entered young-adulthood was an unwavering will to capitulate. What made this a skill, ultimately, was the strange cheerfulness with which he allowed anyone to do and say anything they wanted to him. He simply did not care if he was kicked or spat on, and was happy to drink urine or chew glass — as long as there was someone to tell him what to do next.

  When he graduated from high school his small village also graduated to the status of small town, and Robert was voted in as the very first Mayor. He has been the Mayor of Caesarea for twenty-nine years, as much out of a common concern for his future, as his infinite usefulness as a pliable public figure. So now, as the late afternoon sun burns at the grey trim of the town hall, the Mayor who stands at the edge of the parking lot, near the town’s crossroads, need only greet traffic with his thumbs up and fishing cap tilted; what they see is everything that he has, a coin-of-the-realm disposition, shining out and singing, and a cumulative psychic burden of absolute zero.

  One of the Mayor’s most pressing duties is ribbon cutting, and in this town ribbon cutting has been something of a mania for many years. It’s not just new schools and boat-launch sites that are ribboned. No, everything from the new cologne counter at the Shoppers Drug Mart to the addition of a new chair at the local barber shop is made into a full photo op, with the grinning Mayor snipping through the town’s endless supply of narrow red cloth. He is trying to remember, as he stands with one foot pressing tall weeds against a concrete pylon, where exactly the next taut and perfect ribbon is going to be drawn. Out of the corner of his eye, leaning off the deep crease in his cheek, the Mayor sees a man and a woman approaching from across the parking lot.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, but I was wondering if I could have a word with you?”

  The woman, dressed in bright blue denims and a baggy white cotton T-shirt, pushes the short, prematurely grey man at her side, as she points her finger at the Mayor’s shoulder. The Mayor turns to her stiffly, his firm hair held in its casual style against the wind that crosses his face. He grins, or rather, he doesn’t stop grinning, when he faces her. He has seen her before, and somewhere in his striped, raccoon heart a flight response is triggered.

  “Well, it’s not a good time. If you have business you can bring it to the town meeting.”

  “Listen to me, Mr. Mayor, and listen closely. Last week you approved the sale of Spencer Island for a residence, isn’t that right?”

  The Mayor feels a grin migraine out from the point of his chin.

  “Well, I don’t recall …”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Yes. I do, but …”

  “Yes, you do, but did you know that that is an illegal use of land? Zoning bylaws exist to prevent that island from ever being sold as a residential lot.”

  “Oh sure, I think if you go back far enough, pretty much all town land was intended to be something other than what it is today.”

  “Uh-uh, Mr. Mayor. No. No, that little island is absolutely unsuitable for any sewage system. And it’s not feasible to put it on town water. So, any resident of the island is going to pump shit directly into the river. That’s why the bylaw is still in place.”

  The Mayor puts two fingers to his lips. The gesture is meant to make him appear thoughtful but also to communicate that she should stop talking, that he will not talk. The conversation is over.

  “This is interesting, but, I’m afraid, I have no time. Unfortunately, I have to go … to … to go cut a ribbon over at the … uh, the new zoo.”

  The Mayor turns suddenly and sprints toward the front doors of the town hall. Halfway across he calls out someone’s name. The woman can’t hear the name and, really, it doesn’t matter, because there is no one left in the building, or around it, who might answer to the Mayor’s muffled greeting. The Mayor turns around once in the doo
rway and quickly slips inside.

  “Awright. Son of a bitch. Awright, there is no fuckin’ zoo. Fine, now we take everything up a notch.”

  FOUR

  The front of the Mayor’s house is overgrown with mangy trees and shrubs. Weeds that are nearly human grow at such a fierce unchecked rate that they appear to be walking through the front yard. The only tree, a heavy dark oak, is deeply wounded by dozens of ancient nails and spikes that had once held planks of wood upon which the Mayor’s father had advertised his many, many exotic sales. Above this raw pattern of abuse in the bark is a basketball hoop; probably twenty years old and swallowed by the liquefying effects of time is the metal ring of its mount. It sits within the body of the tree. The hoop appears like a large red-rimmed bubble being blown by fat cracked lips swelling out lewdly around a metal stem.

  There is one window, long and dark, that hides behind the tall weeds growing in what was once a rock garden between the house and the walkway. In the window are reflected the bright colours of a yacht parked in the driveway directly opposite the Mayor’s house. At the north side of the building the only patch of true lawn is yielding a waist-high crop of fine bright grass. In the middle of this odd citrus-coloured grass are two young people. Lying in wait, they plan to ambush the Mayor when he pulls into the driveway.

  The man is squeezing the roots of the grass between his feet, feeling the rich soil warm with his fingertips. The woman is on her knees and peering over the top.

  “You wanna know something, Kathy? You wanna know something cool?”

  Kathy crosses her ankles behind her and grinds a long hard beetle into paste. She shrugs.

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Well, just something I heard about ole Mr. Whiskers.”

  “Who?”

  “You know. Ole Mr. Whiskers.”

  Kathy sits down on her heels and swats the air in his direction.

  “No. No, I don’t know who Mr. Fuckin’ Whiskers is. C’mon, I got a lot on my mind. Don’t play games.”

  “Well, Mr. Whiskers is none other than Mr. Catfish. And you wanna know what’s so cool about Mr. Whiskers?”

  “No.”

  “Awright then, I’ll tell. Fish are funny creatures. Their senses aren’t as separated as ours.”

  “You mean theirs ain’t up their ass, like yours?”

  “Well, no. In fact, having sense up the ass is a kind of fishlike thing. Here, I’ll explain.”

  “No. Don’t, Jack.”

  “OK. Fish senses are distributed all over their body. In fact, their skin is a sense organ performing, like, running tests on the content of the water around them. A combination of all our senses, except more.”

  “If we let this bastard move onto that island there’ll be a lot of shit in the water around Mr. Whiskers, he’ll be swimmin’ up an ass.”

  “Yeah, but … I guess. But this is cool. Ole Mr. Whiskers has developed a sense of smell all on his own, you see.” Jack crinkles his nose and sniffs his fingers. “A one-pound bass has a little olfactory chamber with about forty folds in it, right? Well, Mr. Whiskers, when he’s about the same size, very small catfish, really, he’s got about four hundred of those foldies up his nose! And he’s got big nostrils like a hog!” Jack pushes the tip of his nose up, and curls his upper lip inward over his orange teeth. “If you were to fart in a bathtub, you’d have to dilute that water about two million times before Mr. Whiskers felt safe enough to breathe again.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “No, really. About one ounce of substance, like a fart, in two million bathtubs full of water can still be detected by Mr. Whiskers.”

  “Stop saying Mr. Whiskers.”

  “Huh? But, that’s his name.”

  Kathy flops back in the grass and looks at her wristwatch.

  “Where is that guy? He should have come home hours ago. Christ, I’m getting hungry.”

  “This grass smells neat. Sort of sweet smellin’.”

  “Yeah, well, Ms. Whiskers can smell a fuckin’ rat, even when he’s not home. And it’s getting late. Why don’t you go up to Decka and get us some fries?”

  Underneath Kathy’s cold, rocking buttocks is a foul heavy nugget which consists of sixty years of defecate. The porous, orange pipes that had once distributed every prickled and gleaming injection into the ground are now a nearly dissolved tiger stripe swirling in the dark muscles of the buried body. She feels the soft subterranean sacs give slightly as she curls against the ground. The slight flex of putrid ligament raises and lowers her resting head. She cannot sleep, and she’s thinking angrily about the people who injure the earth: industrial criminals, corporate rapists, and the casual pollution of tourists. She can picture them smiling as they wash their hands and play with their children, utterly unpursued, without guilt. Never anxious about a reckoning, they’re free to ruin, without limit, the frail, perfect network that joins the water, sky, and earth.

  Kathy decides to picture, while she waits for Jack to return with her fries, the avenging good. At first she mails pipe bombs to the most evil CEOs, but recognizing the unfortunate infamy of the gesture, she opts instead to take hostages at a prestigious Boys’ School, where all the most precious resources of the rich are cultivated. She plots out an elaborate fantasy. First, she forces children out onto the ledges, a sort of human shield. No one would attempt anything with a hundred little boys teetering at the literal edge of death. Then she would have to — just to show that she was serious — shove one of the boys off. She pictures the guns raised suddenly, the gasps, the frightened sobs of children, the inevitable negotiator, holding up a calming hand, stepping forward into the circle of white stones around the school flagpole. He lifts a cell phone and dials. Kathy answers the phone.

  “OK, shut up you maggot and listen. I will release one child for every demand you meet. If you do not meet a demand in the allotted time then one lucky set of parents will have a ringside seat to the sudden tragic death of their precious baby boy. My first demand is that all the major banks deposit ten million dollars each into the account of Misinformation Inc.”

  Misinformation Inc. is an organization that exists on the internet, and it networks with only the most radical environmentalists, as well as other extreme fringe groups. The seemingly diverse organizations — anarchists and right-wing militia bands — are bonded, mostly in chat environments, by two things: an insatiable appetite for the hardware of resistance, and the assumed freedom to air paranoid theories in a safe, buzzing community of smart enablers. It is in one of these chat rooms that Kathy is now coordinating her fantasy, responding in her imagination, with scrambling fingers on the keypad, to Neo-Nazi Environmentalists and Eco-Racists she knows only as Dan and Alice and George.

  “Hey, Ms. Whiskers! Hey cat woman!”

  Kathy can’t resist smelling the air for french fries and when Jack parts the wall of green behind her she catches a sharp whiff of vinegar.

  “God, what took you so long? I’m starving, here gimme.”

  She snatches one of the little brown boxes out of from between his gripping fingers. He flutters his hand out to protect it from upending.

  “Easy, easy. It took a while. I don’t know why … just took a while. Hey, guess who I thought I saw?”

  “Who you thought you saw? Who you thought you saw?”

  Kathy attempts to open three ketchup packets at once and sends a red flow across her knuckles. She wipes the back of her hand against the box, plucks out a fry and rolls it in the web of her thumb, collecting the ketchup there.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think it was him, but I thought I saw the Mayor sitting in the park.”

  “Christ. Are you stupid, or what? Was it him or not?”

  “Uh, no I guess not. Probably not, huh?”

  “I don’t fuckin’ know. It’s like midnight and he isn’t home so he’s gotta be somewhere.”
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br />   Jack bundles five long french fries in his fist and reaches over to Kathy. He stabs them against the back of her ketchup-splattered hand.

  “OW! Fuck! Ouch, Jack! Are you nuts?”

  Kathy swipes upward, hard into his outstretched hand, knocking the fries into the air.

  “Soooorry Kath. Man, I forgot to get ketchup. Can I just dip a little in there?”

  “No.”

  “Here, I’ll let you do it. Look there’s a whole bunch right there, on your thumb. Here you take the fry.”

  Jack holds out a single french fry and he smiles innocently, raising his eyebrows. Kathy lifts her hand abruptly, palm up — halt — and Jack flinches as if she is going to hit him. Jack withdraws the fry — swinging it to let it cool — and hangs his head down to bite off the tip.

  “This is a bit strange.”

  “I’ll say. Anybody sees us here, we’re in big trouble.”

  “No. No. I mean the Mayor’s not coming home. It’s like midnight. What the hell’s he doing?”

  “I don’t know. Hey, you wanna know something interesting?”

  “No.”

  “Ah c’mon. Awright. Can I have like five minutes? Just five minutes. I’ll tell ya something, then I’ll shut up.”

  “No.”

  “OK. Awright. This is the coolest thing about Mr. Whiskers. OK. Ya gotta picture it though. OK, picture this. It’s the bottom of the river and it’s pitch black. Along comes Mr. Whiskers, like a dark, orange shark. Maybe he’s three feet long …”

  “They don’t get that big.”

 

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