I went walking down by the aqueduct. That’s a good place to walk. The aqueduct is about five miles long, but we don’t know why because there is already water every place. There must be two or three hundred rivers here.
Charley himself hasn’t the slightest idea why they built the aqueduct. “Maybe they were short of water a long time ago, and that’s why they built the thing. I don’t know. Don’t ask me.”
I once had a dream about the aqueduct being a musical instrument filled with water and bells hanging by small watermelon chains right at the top of the water and the water making the bells ring.
I told the dream to Fred and he said that it sounded all right to him. “That would really make beautiful music,” he said.
I walked along the aqueduct for a while and then just stood there motionless for a long time where the aqueduct crosses the river by the Statue of Mirrors. I could see the light coming from all the tombs in the river down there. It’s a favorite spot to be buried.
I climbed up a ladder on one of the columns and sat on the edge of the aqueduct, up about twenty feet, with my legs dangling over the edge.
I sat there for a long time without thinking about anything or noticing anything any more. I didn’t want to. The night was passing with me sitting on the aqueduct.
Then I saw a lantern faraway and moving out of the piney woods. The lantern came down a road and then crossed over bridges and went through watermelon patches and stopped sometimes by the road, first this road and then that road.
I knew who the lantern belonged to. It was in the hand of a girl. I had seen her many times before walking at night, over the years.
But I had never seen the girl up close and I didn’t know who she was. I knew she was sort of like me. Sometimes she had trouble sleeping at night.
It always comforted me when I saw her out there. I had never tried to find out who she was by going after her or even telling anyone about seeing her at night.
She was in a strange way mine and it comforted me to see her. I thought she was very pretty, but I didn’t know what color hair she had.
Chickens
THE GIRL WITH THE LANTERN had left hours ago. I climbed down from the aqueduct and stretched my legs. I walked back to iDEATH in the dawn of a golden sun which would bring I knew not what from inBOIL and that gang of his. We could only wait and see.
The countryside was beginning to stir. I saw a farmer going out to milk his cows. He waved when he saw me. He had on a funny hat.
The roosters were beginning to crow. Their beak trumpets travelled a loud and great distance. I arrived at iDEATH just before sunrise.
There were a couple of white chickens that had escaped from a farmer someplace out in front of iDEATH pecking at the ground. They looked at me and then they flew away. They were freshly escaped. You could tell because their wings did not work like real birds.
Bacon
AFTER A GOOD BREAKFAST of hot cakes and scrambled eggs and bacon, inBOIL and that gang of his arrived drunk at iDEATH, and it all began, then.
“This is really a good breakfast,” Fred said to Pauline.
“Thank you.”
Margaret was not there. I don’t know where she was at. Pauline was there, though. She looked good, wearing a pretty dress.
Then we heard the front door bell ring. Old Chuck said he heard voices but it was impossible to hear voices from that distance.
“I’ll get the door,” Al said. He got up and left the kitchen and walked through the hall that led under the river to the living room.
“I wonder who it is,” Charley said. I think Charley already knew who it was because he put down his fork and pushed his plate away.
Breakfast was over.
Al came back a few minutes later. He looked strange and worried. “It’s inBOIL,” he said. “He wants to see you, Charley. He wants to see all of us.”
Now we all looked strange and worried.
We got up and went through the hall under the river and came out in the living room, right beside Pauline’s painting. We went out on the front porch of iDEATH and there was inBOIL waiting, drunk.
Prelude
“YOU PEOPLE THINK you know about iDEATH. You don’t know anything about iDEATH. You don’t know anything about iDEATH,” inBOIL said, and then there was wild laughter from that gang of his, who were just as drunk as he.
“Not a damn thing. You’re all at a masquerade party,” and then there was wild laughter from that gang of his.
“We’re going to show you what iDEATH is really about,” and then there was wild laughter.
“What do you know that we don’t know?” Charley said.
“Let us show you. Let us into the trout hatchery and we’ll show you a thing or two. Are you afraid to find out about iDEATH? What it really means? What a mockery you’ve made of it? All of you. And you, Charley, more than the rest of these clowns.”
“Come, then,” Charley said. “Show us iDEATH.”
An Exchange
InBOIL and that gang of his staggered into iDEATH. “What a dump,” one of them said. Their eyes were all red from that stuff they made and drank in such large quantities.
We crossed the metal bridge over the little river in the living room and went down the hall that leads to the trout hatchery.
One of inBOIL’s gang was so drunk that he fell down and the others picked him up. They almost had to carry him along be cause he was so drunk. He kept saying over and over again, “When are we going to get to iDEATH?”
“You are at iDEATH.”
“What is this?”
“iDEATH.”
“Oh. When are we going to get to iDEATH?”
Margaret was nowhere around. I walked beside Pauline to kind of shield her from inBOIL and his trash. inBOIL saw her and came over. His overalls looked as if they had never been washed.
“Hi, Pauline,” he said. “How are tricks?”
“You disgusting man,” she replied.
inBOIL laughed.
“I’ll mop the floor after you leave here,” she said. “Wherever you walk is filth.”
“Don’t be that way,” inBOIL said.
“How should I be?” Pauline said. “Look at you.”
I had gone over to shield Pauline from inBOIL and now I almost had to step between them. Pauline was very mad. I had never seen Pauline mad before. She had quite a temper.
inBOIL laughed again and then he broke away from her and went up and joined Charley. Charley was not happy to see him either.
It was a strange procession travelling down the hall. “When are we going to get to iDEATH?”
The Trout Hatchery
THE TROUT HATCHERY at iDEATH was built years ago when the last tiger was killed and burned on the spot. We built the trout hatchery right there. The walls went up around the ashes.
The hatchery is small but designed with great care. The trays and ponds are made from watermelon sugar and stones gathered at a great distance and placed there in the order of that distance.
The water for the hatchery comes from the little river that joins up later with the main river in the living room. The sugar used is golden and blue.
There are two people buried at the bottom of the ponds in the hatchery. You look down past the young trout and see them lying there in their coffins, staring from beyond the glass doors. They wanted it that way, so they got it, being as they were keepers of the hatchery and at the same time, Charley’s folks.
The hatchery has a beautiful tile floor with the tiles put together so gracefully that it’s almost like music. It’s a swell place to dance.
There is a statue of the last tiger in the hatchery. The tiger is on fire in the statue. We are all watching it.
inBOIL’s iDEATH
“ALL RIGHT,” Charley said. “Tell us about iDEATH. We’re curious now about what you’ve been saying for years about us not knowing about iDEATH, about you knowing all the answers. Let’s hear some of those answers.”
“OK,” inBOIL said.
“This is what it’s all about. You don’t know what’s really going on with iDEATH. The tigers knew more about iDEATH than you know. You killed all the tigers and burned the last one in here.
“That was all wrong. The tigers should never have been killed. The tigers were the true meaning of iDEATH. Without the tigers there could be no iDEATH, and you killed the tigers and so iDEATH went away, and you’ve lived here like a bunch of clucks ever since. I’m going to bring back iDEATH. We’re all going to bring back iDEATH. My gang here and me. I’ve been thinking about it for years and now we’re going to do it. iDEATH will be again.”
inBOIL reached into his pocket and took out a jackknife.
“What are you going to do with that knife?” Charley said.
“I’ll show you,” inBOIL said. He pulled the blade out. It looked sharp. “This is iDEATH,” he said, and took the knife and cut off his thumb and dropped it into a tray filled with trout just barely hatched. The blood started running down his hand and dripping on the floor.
Then all of inBOIL’s gang took out jackknives and cut off their thumbs and dropped their thumbs here and there, in this tray, that pond until there were thumbs and blood all over the place.
The one who didn’t know where he was said, “When do I cut off my thumb?”
“Right now,” somebody said.
So he cut off his thumb, unevenly because he was so drunk. He did it in such a way that there was still part of the fingernail fastened to his hand.
“Why have you done this?” Charley said.
“It’s only a beginning,” inBOIL said. “This is what iDEATH should really look like.”
“You all look silly,” Charley said. “Without your thumbs.”
“It’s only a beginning,” inBOIL said. “All right, men. Let’s cut off our noses.”
“Hail, iDEATH,” they all shouted and cut off their noses. The one who was so drunk also put out his eye. They took their noses and dropped them all over the place.
One of them put his nose in Fred’s hand. Fred took the nose and threw it in the guy’s face.
Pauline did not act like a woman should under these circumstances. She was not afraid or made ill by this at all. She just kept getting madder and madder and madder. Her face was red with anger.
“All right, men. Off with your ears.”
“Hail, iDEATH,” and then there were ears all over the place and the trout hatchery was drowning in blood.
The one who was so drunk forgot that he had cut his right ear off already and was trying to cut it off again and was very confused because the ear wasn’t there.
“Where’s my ear?” he said. “I can’t cut it off.”
By now inBOIL and all his gang were bleeding to death. Some of them were already beginning to grow weak from the loss of blood and were sitting down on the floor.
inBOIL was STILL up and cutting fingers off his hands. “This is iDEATH,” he said. “Oh, boy. This is really iDEATH.” Finally he had to sit down, too, so he could bleed to death.
They were all on the floor now.
“I hope you think you’ve proved something,” Charley said. “I don’t think you’ve proved anything.”
“We’ve proved iDEATH,” inBOIL said.
Pauline suddenly started to leave the room. I went over to her, almost slipping on the blood and falling down.
“Are you all right?” I said, not knowing quite what to say. “Can I help you?”
“No,” she said, on her way out. “I’m going to go get a mop and clean this mess up.” When she said mess, she looked directly at inBOIL.
She left the hatchery and came back shortly with a mop. They were almost all dead now, except for inBOIL. He was still talking about iDEATH. “See, we’ve done it,” he said.
Pauline started mopping up the blood and wringing it out into a bucket. When the bucket was almost full of blood, inBOIL died. “I am iDEATH,” he said.
“You’re an asshole,” Pauline said.
And the last thing that inBOIL ever saw was Pauline standing beside him, wringing his blood out of the mop into the bucket.
Wheelbarrow
“WELL, that’s that,” Charley said.
inBOIL’s sightless eyes stared at the statue of the tiger. There were many sightless eyes staring in the hatchery.
“Yeah,” Fred said. “I wonder what it was all about.”
“I don’t know,” Charley said. “I think they shouldn’t have drunk that whiskey made from forgotten things. It was a mistake.”
“Yeah.”
We all joined Pauline in cleaning up the place, mopping up the blood and carting the bodies away. We used a wheelbarrow.
A Parade
“HERE, help me get this wheelbarrow down the stairs.”
“There.”
“Ah, thank you.”
We piled the bodies out in front. No one knew quite what to do with them, except that we didn’t want them in iDEATH any more.
A lot of people from the town had come up to see what was going on. There were maybe a hundred people there by the time we got the last body wheeled out.
“What happened?” the schoolteacher said.
“They made a mess out of themselves,” Old Chuck said.
“Where are their thumbs and features?” Doc Edwards asked.
“Right over there in that bucket,” Old Chuck said. “They cut them off with their jackknives. We don’t know why.”
“What are we going to do with the bodies?” Fred said. “We’re not going to put them in tombs, are we?”
“No,” Charley said. “We have to do something else.”
“Take them to their shacks at the Forgotten Works,” Pauline said. “Burn them. Burn their shacks. Burn them together and then forget them.”
“That’s a good idea,” Charley said. “Let’s get some wagons and take them down there. What a terrible thing.”
We put the bodies in the wagons. By then almost everybody in watermelon sugar had gathered at iDEATH. We all started down to the Forgotten Works together.
We started off very slowly. We looked like a parade barely moving toward YOU MIGHT GET LOST. I walked beside Pauline.
Bluebells
THERE WAS a warm golden sun shining down on us and on the slowly nearing Piles of the Forgotten Works. We crossed rivers and bridges and walked beside farms, meadows and through the piney woods and by fields of watermelons.
The piles of the Forgotten works were like chunks of half-mountains and half-apparatus that glowed like gold.
An almost festive spirit was coming now from the crowd. They were relieved that inBOIL and that gang of his were dead.
Children began picking flowers along the way and pretty soon there were many flowers in the parade, so that it became a kind of vase filled with roses and daffodils and poppies and bluebells.
“It’s over,” Pauline said, and then, turning, she threw her arms around me and gave me a very friendly hug to prove that it was all over. I felt her body against me.
Margaret Again, Again, Again, Again
InBOIL and the bodies of his gang were put into a shack and drenched with watermelontrout oil. We brought along a barrelful for that purpose and then all the other shacks were drenched with watermelontrout oil.
All the people stood back and just as Charley was getting ready to set fire to the shack where the bodies were, Margaret came waltzing out of the Forgotten Works.
“What’s up?” she said. She acted as if nothing had happened, as if we were all down there on some kind of picnic.
“Where have you been?” Charley said, looking a little bewildered at Margaret, who was as cool as a cucumber.
“In the Forgotten Works,” she said. “I came down here early this morning, before sunrise, to look for things. What’s wrong? Why are you all down here at the Forgotten Works?”
“Don’t you know what happened?” Charley said.
“No,” she said.
“Did you see inBOIL when you came down here this morning?�
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“No,” she said. “They were all asleep. What’s wrong?” She looked all around. “Where’s inBOIL?”
“I don’t even know if I can tell you,” Charley said. “He’s dead and all his gang, too.”
“Dead. You must be joking.”
“Why? No, they came up to iDEATH a couple of hours ago and they all killed themselves in the trout hatchery. We’ve brought their bodies down here to burn them. They made a terrible scene.”
“I don’t believe it,” Margaret said. “I just can’t believe it. What kind of joke is this?”
“It’s no joke,” Charley said.
Margaret looked around. She could see that almost everybody was there. She saw me standing beside Pauline and she ran over to me and said, “Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. None of us do. They just came up to iDEATH and killed themselves. It’s a mystery to us.”
“Oh no,” Margaret said. “How did they do it?”
“With jackknives.”
“Oh, no,” Margaret said. She was very shocked, dazed. She grabbed ahold of my hand.
“This morning?” she said, almost to no one now.
“Yes.”
Her hand felt cold and awkward in my hand as if the fingers were too small to fit. I could only stare at her who had disappeared into the Forgotten Works that morning.
Shack Fever
CHARLEY TOOK a six-inch match and set fire to the shack that contained inBOIL and the bodies of his gang. We all stood back and the flames went up higher and higher and burned with that beautiful light that watermelontrout oil makes.
Then Charley set fire to the other shacks and they burned just as brightly, and pretty soon the heat was so bad that we had to stand farther and farther back until we were in the fields.
Trout Fishing in America Page 19