by Jeffrey Ford
“If they have anything to drink besides soda, bring me a glass,” said Lynn, and I was off, wending my way through the crowd, happy to have a purpose. On the way, not really knowing where I was going, I spotted a good-looking young woman with a pile of blond hair, holding a plate with water chestnuts wrapped in bacon. “Not bad,” I thought, and hoped there’d be spareribs or maybe shrimp. I got jostled by the crowd, excusing myself a dozen times for every few feet traveled. It was the sight of someone holding a beer that gave me the fortitude to continue.
Within that sea of bodies it got really hot and I started to sweat. The deep rumble of conversation washed over me from all directions, snatches of dialogue differentiating themselves for a moment and then melting back into the general hubbub. “I told her, don’t try it, bitch.” “Peter did so well on the SATs they had to invent a new score for him.” “The dog is old, it craps on the rug every day now.” “It’s supposed to snow later.” When it felt as if I’d been on my pigs-in-a-blanket search for a half hour, I finally went up to a woman I vaguely recognized from the grocery store in town where she was a cashier.
“Hi, do you know where the food is?” I asked.
She shook her head, and when she did, right on the spot, she turned into Dornsberry. He gave me a look of contempt. “We’re all Christians here,” he said and took a long swig of his beer. “What religion are you?”
“Where’d you get the beer?” I asked.
“You’ve been asked a question,” he said and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the back of his beer hand.
“I’m a product of the age of reason,” I said. “Where’s the food?”
He shook his head as if in disgust and pointed behind me. I turned around, the crowd parted, and there was a long table with bowls and plastic cups and a crystal punch bowl half filled with a yellow liquid. As I walked away from him, I heard Dornsberry hurl the insult, “Clown,” at me. Any other time I might have pounded his face in, but instead I just laughed it off.
The food table, in the state I found it, held a bowl with three pretzels in it and five other bowls of a tan dip that had crusted dark brown at the edges. A live fly buzzed in the middle of one bowl, unable to free itself.
“That’ll be a fossil someday,” said a voice behind me.
I turned to see a thin man in a black tuxedo. He had a wave of slick dark hair in front; big, clunky, black-framed glasses; and a thinly trimmed mustache.
“Pretty appetizing, huh?” I said to him.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said. “I’m the smartest man in the world.”
I shook his hand and told him my name. “If you’re the smartest man in the world,” I said, “how’d you wind up here?”
He gave a wry smile and told me, “I only answer questions for money.”
I felt in my pants pockets for a crumpled bill. Taking it out and flattening it for him, I said, “Five bucks if you can tell me where I can get a beer.”
“Five won’t do it,” he said. Now he had on a top hat and a cape and looked like Mandrake the Magician with glasses. “But five will get you half an answer.”
I handed him the bill. “I’ll take it,” I said.
“You’ve got to go through the kitchen, that way,” he said and pointed. “Once you’re there, go out the side door onto the patio. That’s all I can afford to tell you.”
“A steep price for some pretty thin shit,” I said to him and couldn’t believe I was getting belligerent with the smartest man in the world. There was something exhilarating about it.
“When your wife asks her question later,” he said, “after I answer it, I’m going to kiss her and slip her the tongue so deeply I’ll taste her panties. She’ll see God, my friend.” He tipped back his top hat and laughed arrogantly.
I picked up a crusted bowl of dip. “Touch my wife and you’ll be the deadest man in the world,” I said. Then I threw the bowl at him. He ducked at the last second, and the bowl flew into the face of a heavyset older woman in a sequined gown. Tan goo dripped from her jowls and the bowl hit the wooden floor and shattered. For a moment, I wondered where the carpet had gone. The woman I’d hit had been standing with an aged gentleman wearing a military uniform and sporting ridiculously thick muttonchop sideburns. “Preposterous,” he shouted and his monocle fell from his eye. He reached for the sword he had in a scabbard at his side. Meanwhile the smartest man in the world had lived up to his name for once and had split. I didn’t see him anywhere. I followed his lead and merged into the crowd, moving fast, sweating profusely.
In the kitchen, there was a fire-eater. He was performing in the corner by the range. People had gathered around to watch and it was impossible to get through to the patio door, which I could glimpse occasionally between heads in the crowd. I had to wait for him to finish his act and hope the logjam broke up.
I watched him. He had two little torches that he held with the middle finger of his right hand. He’d pour lighter fluid on them and then turn on the range and light them off the burner. He had a small blond ponytail and a beat-up face, broken nose, and scar tissue around the eyes. He was a lackluster showman. His approach was to say, “I’m gonna eat fire now,” in a low, placid voice, and then he ate it.
After you’ve seen someone eat fire once, there’s not much else to it. I watched him eat fire five times, and by the fourth time, even though nobody left, nobody was clapping, either. I had cold beer on my mind, so, after the fifth time, I said in a loud voice, “All right, let’s get on with it.” To my surprise, people started leaving the kitchen. The fire-eater tried to see who’d said it, but I kept my gaze down and pushed gently forward.
I found the cooler of beer out on the patio. It was filled with ice and Rolling Rock. I took one and sat down at a glass-topped table, on a wrought-iron chair with arms my fat ass barely fit between. I was alone out there in the dark. The night was cool but pleasant, and I could feel the sweat drying. Someone had left behind a pack of cigarettes, Lucky Strikes (I didn’t know they still made them), and a lighter. That beer tasted like heaven, and the cig wasn’t far behind. I took out my cell phone and dialed Lynn.
It rang and rang, and then she answered. “Where are you?” she said.
I told her, “I’m out on the patio, having a beer.”
“The show’s going to start any minute,” she said. “I got us a table.”
“You can’t believe how big the place is,” I said. “How many people are here. It took me forever to get to the food table.”
“Bring me a beer,” she said.
“Will do. And listen, if I don’t get back in time and the smartest man in the world answers your question, don’t let him touch you.” There was silence from the other end of the line. I said her name a couple of times, but it was clear that either we’d been cut off or she’d thought we were through and hung up.
I put the cigarettes and lighter in one jacket pocket, and then took another beer and put that in my other jacket pocket. I put my smoke out in a planter at the edge of the patio and then turned to head back in. As I moved toward the house, I saw the smartest man in the world’s face at the window of the door. He smiled at me and waved before looking down, as if he was going to open it and come out. An instant later he was gone. I tried the doorknob and realized that what he’d done was lock it. When I knocked on the door, I looked inside and saw the kitchen was completely empty.
I heard a window opening above me on the second floor. I backed onto the patio and looked up. The smartest man in the world poked his head out. He was again wearing his top hat. “Perhaps like in Chaucer’s ‘Miller’s Tale’ you can climb up here and kiss my hairy ass,” he said.
“Let me in,” I said.
“There’s a reason they call me the smartest man in the world,” he said. “The show starts in ten minutes.”
“I’m going to call the cops,” I told him.
“Dornsberry says you’re a pussy,” said the smartest man.
“I’ll kill you b
oth,” I shouted.
“No you won’t. Now hurry around front and pay again to be let in. You might catch me answering your wife’s question.” I heard Dornsberry’s laughter in the background. The window shut with a bang.
I took out my cell phone, but when I flipped it open it was dead. “Shit,” I said, and headed for the edge of the patio. Only then did I notice that the side of the house butted up against the edge of a forest. In the moonlight I could make out tall pine trees in both directions. There was a path that went either around the back of the place through the trees or, in the other direction, to the front of the house. I was just about to head for the front when I realized that had been the smartest man’s advice. What were the chances he was going to tell me the best way to go? I stepped onto the path and headed toward the back. There were stretches of perfect night where the pines blocked the moon completely.
I walked fast for a ways, but soon I was out of breath and my Achilles tendon was aching, so I slowed down. Just then I noticed something like a lectern, on the side of the path. I stepped over to it. It was a chest-high stand with a plaque on top situated at an angle. There was something written on it. I took out the lighter, flicked it, and quickly read the plaque. It said: BEWARE OF OWLS! MULLIONS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR DEATHS CAUSED BY OWLS.
I flicked the lighter again, and this time noticed that beneath the writing there was an etching of a large owl in midflight, grasping in its talons the severed head of Jenny, the Mullions hostess. “Killer owls?” I said aloud. A stiff breeze blew the flame out and it felt more like autumn than spring. I noticed the path was strewn with fallen leaves. “That’s ridiculous,” I said, and started walking again. Two minutes later, I wrapped my hand around the neck of the beer bottle in my pocket and took it out to use as a club.
“Fuck those owls,” I told myself, “I have to get back to Lynn.” I put on as much steam as I could manage, and with almost every step, the tendon in my left heel got worse. “She’ll never let him touch her,” I said to myself. “If he tries, she’ll punch him in the face and break his glasses.” I hobbled a few more yards, and then thought, “Or will she?”
That’s when I happened to look up and notice the pairs of yellow eyes trimming the trees like dull Christmas lights. They were everywhere. My knees went weak and my heart began to pound so hard I could hear it in my right ear. I desperately wanted to run but knew I wouldn’t get far. Instead, I crept forward, trembling, praying they hadn’t noticed me and wouldn’t. In whispers, like a novena, I recited the theme song to the afternoon television cartoon of my youth, “The Eighth Man.”
I got only as far as, “The F.B.I. is helpless. It’s twenty stories tall,” when a shrill screech tore through the dark. An owl’s flight is silent, but I heard the beating of their wings in my mind as they swooped after me. The breeze picked up and I pushed against it, trying to run, waving the beer bottle over my head and ducking. It was like running through water. I felt their talons at my back and what hair I have. Feathers whipped my cheeks. I tried to scream, but it came forth a long, breathy fart.
Just when I thought I was finished, I collided with another person on the path, and for some reason the owls miraculously retreated. I lit the lighter to see who it was, and only when I saw it was Mrs. Krull did I realize she’d been talking the whole time. There was a glassy, vacant stare to her froggy eyes. Her lips were moving and she was in the midst of the story of her one-legged aunt. I gathered my wits, walking alongside her, and said, “Mrs. Krull, what are you doing out here?” She moved steadily forward, staring straight ahead, as if in a trance. All the time the words spilled out of her.
It came to me not as a thought but as a feeling that it was precisely her grim tale that kept the owls at bay. They were above us and to the sides everywhere, but they didn’t stir from their perches. Occasionally one would hoot in the distance, a feather would fall, but they wouldn’t attack. When she was finishing up the story of her aunt’s demise, for the first time in my life, I hoped she had another one ready.
There was a mere half-a-breath pause before the next pathetic tale was born. She spoke about a couple she knew from her old neighborhood. Nice people. They had three kids. They all went on a vacation in upstate New York. They drove all day and into the night. Here, she went into the details of the family, and time seemed to pass in a whirl before I again picked up the thread of the story with the father pulling over on the side of the road to take a piss. They were on the interstate. He got out, told his wife he’d be right back, and then, mounting a small hill, disappeared over the top.
“Some time passed,” said Mrs. Krull. “The wife started wondering, how long will my husband piss for? Finally, after almost twenty minutes, she told the kids she’d be right back and to stay in the car. She went to look for her husband. Up the hill she went in the dark. The kids were alone in the car and probably eventually got scared when their mother didn’t return.”
I noticed that all around us, as Mrs. Krull ground out her story with relentless persistence, the owls were keeling off their branches and falling to the forest floor. I knew in my heart that it was my neighbor’s tragic droning that rendered them insensate. “Right over the rise of that small hill, unbeknownst to him and her, was the edge of a cliff. Both hadn’t seen the edge in the dark and had fallen two hundred feet to their deaths,” she said.
The owls fell like pillows, hit the ground with muffled thuds. Every now and then there was a weak squawk. “Then the kids,” said Mrs. Krull, “one after the other. First the oldest, a boy, Kenneth, who was in my Robert’s grade (he was a mean-spirited kid), and then the middle one, the sister, she was adorable. They each went looking in their turn and each fell to their death. They probably screamed in terror but no one heard them. Maybe they landed on their parents, but it still killed them.”
Mrs. Krull’s story was making even me dizzy. It appeared that she had subdued the owls, so I worked up the courage to escape her. “Then the last child, little Freddie, I have a photo of him in shorts and a collar shirt with a small bow tie. I could just bite those cheeks. He went next up the hill in the dark. But he was my little genius and figured out what had happened. He ran to get help.”
“Well, at least little Freddie made it,” I said, and veered away from Mrs. Krull, right off the path and directly into the trees. At the moment, I didn’t care where I was going. I stumbled in a rut between two trees, still light headed. The last thing I heard Mrs. Krull say as I groped blindly through the underbrush was, “He ran out onto the highway to flag down a car, and the driver didn’t see him till it was too late.”
I tramped unsteadily forward, kicking downed owl carcasses, like empty birthday piñatas, out of my way. Mrs. Krull’s sad bullshit had sucked out their life. It struck me that the potential of her drivel was like a terrible superpower, and I had a brief vision of her walking through the sky on a blue day, dressed in white robes, with a halo, a six-foot uprooted sunflower chained to her ankle, gliding along behind her.
It was a fear-soaked hour or more, submerged in the dark, skinning my shins, taking branches to the face, before I returned to the patio. Sitting in the wrought-iron chair at the table, I popped the beer I’d been carrying and lit up a smoke. I noticed that the house was perfectly silent and dark.
“I missed the whole goddamn thing,” I thought. “I never got to ask my question, Lynn has long been tongue-kissed by the smartest man in the world and seen God, and I’m a castaway in Owl Forest. What the fuck?”
After finishing the cigarette and half the beer, I got up and checked the kitchen door. To my surprise and elation, it was unlocked. I opened it and stepped into the silence of the dark house. Without even closing the door behind me, I was off on a beeline for the front door. Who knows how long it took to cross the kitchen, to reach the entrance to the living room, which, itself, was vast. Only when passing the occasional window did the moonlight allow me to see where I was going. Otherwise, I slammed against furniture and at one point might
have tripped over a body.
My tendon was acting up badly, so I stopped after a long while by one of the windows and had another smoke. While I rested, I looked outside and saw that it was snowing. As soon as I saw the snow, I heard the wind howl. “Great,” I said. I put the cigarette out on the windowsill and left it there. No more than a dozen limping steps later, I collided with the edge of the food table and got a thrill to know I was making progress. A little ways after that I saw small intermittent bursts of flame in the distance. That flame was my lighthouse. For some reason I believed it would bring me to the front door and my escape. So entranced was I with the rhythmic fire that grew ever more prominent with each painful step that I was almost upon the source of the phenomenon before I realized what was causing it. The scene suddenly materialized out of the dark, no more than six feet in front of me.
There was Jenny, completely naked, her sagging yet emaciated body perched in the throne of the smartest man in the world with her legs spread and hooked over its wooden arms. Kneeling in front of her was the fire-eater with his head between her legs, only this time it wasn’t fire he was eating. I watched as Jenny glowed from inside like a jack-o’-lantern, saw the silhouettes of her ribs and spine and heart. Then she gave a slight moan, opened her mouth, and a burst of flame shot out. I took a step back and stared in amazement.
I was afraid they’d see me there, but I was also afraid to move. Finally—I don’t know what possessed me, it was like some kind of momentary insanity—I yelled, “I see you.” The fire-eater never even turned around but kept working like he was nonunion. Jenny lifted herself a little and turned to look at me. She reached up to her chin, and then grabbing it, literally pulled her face off like it was a rubber mask. The jaws of her skull head creaked open. There came a moan and then she shot a long burst of fire at me. I ran, but felt the sting of her flaming tongue on my left earlobe.