by Andrew Fox
I was walking through a shabby, garbage-strewn neighborhood when I saw that the street had been blocked off by police cruisers. A large crowd of neighborhood residents, pushed back from orange barricades by police, had surrounded a candied popcorn factory. Media vehicles were just beginning to pull up, large vans topped with telescoping satellite antennae, magic wands pointed at the collective subconscious of an audience of billions.
I asked a young black woman what was going on. “They got him trapped inside,” she said. “The Good Humor Man.”
“Who?”
She sighed impatiently. “You know. The guy who burns up junk food. Hud Walterson.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard him called that. I joined the crowd and waited for things to happen. Negotiations were not going well. Every few minutes a police captain with a bullhorn repeated his demands that Hud come out; the captain promised Hud would not be harmed. The crowd eagerly scanned the factory’s windows, hoping for just a glimpse of the gargantuan outlaw. The entire cordoned-off area took on a carnival air.
The SWAT team fired tear-gas canisters through the factory’s windows at nine o’clock. The crowd tensed as we heard the soft chuffs of the canisters being fired, the tinkling crashes of the windows breaking. Something would happen now — Hud and his followers would appear on the roof; they would rain flaming candied popcorn down on the heads of the police before escaping in a helicopter playing calliope music…
Black smoke billowed through the broken windows. The smoke had a strangely sweet, nauseating odor, like burning motor oil mixed with caramelizing maple syrup. The SWAT team used battering rams to break down the doors, but the fire quickly grew too intense for them. Fire trucks arrived quickly. Soon dozens of hoses were spraying the building down, but the inferno refused to be quenched. We waited for Hud to appear. Surely he would find a way to escape. All around me, people gulped their cheap wine and chewed their greasy, fried snacks while they watched the doors.
Suddenly, all eyes (and video cameras) darted to a large window on the third floor. He was there, flames backlighting his mountainous silhouette. Would he try to climb out? Would he jump? He didn’t move, even as the fire came closer. It was inhuman, that he could stand so stock-still. He stared down at us, a weird look of triumph on his face, as if he’d transcended all failures, all pain. Then there was a sound of beams breaking. He looked up at the roof that was poised to collapse. When he looked down at us again, the triumph in his face was gone, replaced by a despair that chilled me.
The roof fell. A collective gasp went up from the crowd. Hud wouldn’t be coming out. This time, he was burning with the hated snack foods. We looked at the flames, and then we looked at each other. I had the eerie sense of the crowd seeing itself, truly seeing itself for the first time. More than half of them held bags of potato chips or fried pork cracklings in their crumb-coated hands. Next to me, the young woman I’d spoken to earlier shriveled under accusatory gazes — her mouth was stuffed full of candied popcorn, the same brand that had been packaged at the burning factory.
At first, she seemed embarrassed and afraid. But then her eyes acquired a new determination, a fiery conviction that I’d seen before, in Hud Walterson’s eyes. She spat out her mouthful of candied popcorn, then threw the box on the ground and trampled it. She stomped on the box, each leap more furious than the last.
Her gesture spread like wildfire through the crowd. Soon dozens of people were throwing down their bags of fattening snacks, spilling high-calorie beers into the gutters, stomping on chips and pies and pork cracklings until the crumbs were ground into the filthy asphalt. Even though I had no junk food of my own to destroy, I joined in the destruction, caught up in the communal electricity, feeling my blood run through my veins for the first time since Emily had died.
And a hundred TV cameras captured our savage celebration of Hud’s mission, our annihilation of our artery-clogging enemy. Captured it and broadcast it to a nation of people hungry for an easy victory, for a foe they could smear into the dirt. Hungry for something to set fire to.
I hear the children clapping in my meeting room. According to the story they’ve just seen, poor Hud Walterson won a posthumous victory far larger than any he’d ever achieved in life. A happy ending for us all. The makers of this little fat-umentary, as if abruptly realizing that they’ve spent too much time obsessing on Hud Walterson’s martyrdom, manage to squeeze the following quarter-century into less than four minutes. The establishment of hundreds of local Good Humor Men chapters, officially sanctioned by state governments eager to rein in health care spending; the chaotic mass layoffs that followed the breakup of most multinational corporations during the trade wars… All of this races across the screen as quickly as a commercial for Leanie-Lean meats.
Now the lumbering fatties from the first segment return, only this time they’re greeted by smiling cartoon MannaSantos scientists carrying platters of fresh fruits and vegetables. Eating this bounty, the fatties magically morph into glowing, toothpick-thin demigods. As the music swells, all the children applaud again, even louder than before.
“So never forget — you ARE what you EAT! The Fat Monster can’t hurt you unless you INVITE him into your mouth. And avoiding the Fat Monster has never been easier, thanks to the MannaSantos family of fine food products — Lep-Tone fruits and vegetables, Leanie-Lean meat products, and the NEW Metaboloft line of fresh corn, corn sweeteners, corn starch, and other corn derivatives.”
The program’s over. Normally, this would be the time for my grand finale, my unveiling of my “show-and-tell,” a preserved example of the program’s archaic societal nemesis, my method of permanently imprinting the children’s impressionable minds with an enduring horror of the Fat Monster.
But I’ve been the monster. How could I have done that thing, so many, many times? Make children scream at the sight of what is more precious to me than anything else left in this world?
I won’t do it. Not ever again. I’d rather rip out my own bowels and eat them in front of those kids, if traumatizing them is so imperative. How could I have blinded myself so completely? How could I have let myself become something I should have despised, some foul-smelling bit of excrement I’d scrape off the bottom of my shoe?
“Lou? I need to finish up the class. Where’s the jars of fat?”
It’s Mitch. His request ignites a blush that burns my whole body. I shake my head with all the force I can muster.
“C’mon, Lou, the jars of human fat. I want to knock those kids dead, just like you always do. Where are they?”
I force myself into a sitting position. The room swims around me. “No,” I say. “You can’t… I won’t let you touch them…”
“What’s the matter with you? All I wanna do is the same thing you’ve always done —”
“No! It’s — it’s obscene! A desecration of her memory!”
“What are you talking about? Are you out of your head, Lou? Pipe down, the kids’ll hear you —”
“The whole, the whole world should hear me! Should hear me damn myself!”
Mitch grabs my shoulders and forces me back into a prone position on the couch. “Yeah, you’re out of your head, all right,” he says. “Damn. I knew I shouldn’t have let them discharge you so fast. They patch you up and shove you out the front door, bad as it was in the Army —”
“Get them out of here!” I scream. “The children! Karen Dissel! I won’t have them absorbing any more poison in my house!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll clear ‘em all out. Then you and I are going back to the hospital, pal —”
“I don’t need to be in a hospital! I need to be in the innermost circle of Hell! Just — just let me be, Mitch!”
“Lou -!”
He tries grabbing me again, but I pull away. “Just, just leave me alone, Mitch. Just go. I’m all right. I… I need some time. By myself.” I stare into his worried face. “Really, I’m okay, Mitch. But I need to think. Everything that’s happened recently… I have t
o sort things through. As my best friend, can’t you give me that? Just a few hours to think?”
He chews his lower lip, then nods his head. “All right, Lou. I’ll leave you alone awhile. But I’m coming back later to check up on you. Whether you like it or not. Get me?”
I nod. “Thanks, Mitch.”
I hear him usher the school group out, then he closes my front door behind him. I want to look at them again… the jars of human fat I’d refused to let Mitch touch. I need to beg Emily’s forgiveness.
I sit up again, more slowly this time. There’s a bandage on my nose. I touch it, lightly. Owww… no need to try that again anytime soon. My nose isn’t the only thing that smarts. I discover two large bruises, one on my right hip and the other on my lower rib cage. There’s a dull throbbing at the back of my skull. The room goes out of focus.
I wait for the colors behind my eyes to clear, then try to stand. I fall back onto the couch. I’m a doctor; I should give myself hell for trying to stand so quickly.
I’m a doctor. Right. I’m a healer, and I killed a man today. Not by plunging a pen into his neck. No, that was just the proximate cause. I killed that man twenty-five years ago, the day I convinced the California Legislature to deputize the Good Humor Men.
I see the Mexican’s face again, his eyes rolling up in his head, his broad, tanned face turning red as a ripe tomato. I see Emily’s face, impatient for the local anesthetic to kick in, eager for the touch of my cannula, my magic wand. And then, suddenly, I understand.
That night in Los Angeles, the night Hud Walterson burned to death… maybe it wasn’t junk food I was stomping into the asphalt. Maybe it was cancer. Maybe it was cancer I was trampling, and guilt.
My God. I’ve never let myself make this connection before. Of course. Everywhere, in the journals, in the newspapers, there were stories about the correlation between significant weight gain and various types of cancer.
Our private game. Emily’s serial weight-gain, followed by tender, erotic sessions of liposuction. It was a game that evolved over time, that we groped toward and embraced in a mostly wordless fashion. It wasn’t something I made her do. But she helped invent the game and eagerly surrendered her body to it primarily for my pleasure.
I wasn’t willing to smash myself into the concrete. So I took out my vengeance on the implements some part of me believed I’d used to kill my wife. And I’ve continued on my path of vengeance for the last twenty-five years. Trying again and again to slay the dragon, but never getting it right. Because the dragon I was really trying to slay was me.
Me.
My front doorbell buzzes. It’s probably Brad or one of the other squad members, not realizing I’ve just pleaded with Mitch for some privacy.
It buzzes a second time. I wait for them to go away. They don’t. Another buzzing, followed by a prolonged knocking. I hear footsteps retreating down my driveway, but just as I’m on the verge of relaxing, the knocking begins anew, this time at my kitchen door outback.
Crap. I’ll need to tell them to go away myself. I make another attempt to stand. This time, I stay up. The nausea’s still there, but not as bad. I slowly walk to the kitchen, steadying myself against the walls, irritation building with every difficult step.
I peer through my back door’s spy glass, stealing myself to give Brad or whomever a radioactive piece of my mind. My persistent visitor is a dark-skinned man, and a stranger to me. I’m surprised, and that surprise reminds me how much America and Southern California have changed since I was young. He’s dressed in a conservative dark gray suit, wearing some kind of government ID badge, which he holds up to the spy glass. Turning away from the door now would be too rude, even given my condition.
I open the door partway. “Yes? May I help you?”
His intelligent, intense blue eyes immediately connect with mine. His half-smile is neither kindly nor antagonistic, but somehow detached, and a bit superior. First impression: I don’t care for this young man.
“I am seeking Dr. Louis Shmalzberg. Would you be he?”
His accent lets me place him. He’s Indian, or from one of the nations of the Indian subcontinent. I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with many Indians these last twenty-five years. We haven’t been a land of immigrants, or a land friendly to visitors, since before GD2.
“I’m Dr. Shmalzberg,” I answer cautiously. “What can I do for you? I’m afraid this isn’t a good time —”
“I am Ravi Varuna Muthukrishnan, from the United States Department of Agriculture. My office is the Agricultural Research Section of the Food and Nutrition Service.” He stiffly sticks out his hand. Just as mechanically, I shake it. “I have traveled all the way from Alexandria, Virginia, to see you, Dr. Shmalzberg. I believe you have an artifact in your possession which my office would be most interested in examining, and perhaps acquiring.”
“An artifact?” My heart jumps — my initial, absurdly paranoid thought is that he’s referring to those Nestle chocolate bars I pilfered during the first of yesterday’s raids, the ones I lost in Mex-Town. “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re referring to —”
He smiles a cool smile. “Of course.” He glances into my kitchen. “Is there somewhere private where we may talk? I waited until after your visitors had left.”
“Look, Mr. Muthnoo -”
“Muthukrishnan.”
“I’m not well. I, uh, I was in a car accident yesterday. Got pretty badly banged up. Can’t you come back another day?”
His smile loses some of its forced wattage. “I am afraid that I am not at liberty to wait very long. My staff and I are working on multiple projects during our stay in California. The project which concerns you, it is of a highly speculative nature, but it also has potential national security implications of the greatest magnitude. If you would telephone me as soon as you are feeling somewhat better —”
“I could do that.”
“We are staying at the Hotel Nixon, in San Clemente.” He removes a business card from his breast pocket and writes a telephone number and room number on the back. “Can I expect a call from you later this evening?”
I don’t like being pressured, not even for “potential national security implications of the greatest magnitude” — he’s from the goddamn Department of Agriculture, so how vital can this be? “I truly doubt that. Look, I can hardly stay on my feet right now. I’ll get back to you when I can —”
“Please do so as soon as possible.” He hands me the card. “This is a matter of great importance, Dr. Shmalzberg. Both to your government, and to you, personally. You see, I am not the only party who is seeking this artifact. And I believe you will find the others to be much less polite than I am.”
“If you would just tell me what it is you’re looking for, I might be more helpful.”
He glances over his shoulder, taking in the hedges and trees which surround my patio and garden. “I’m not at liberty to discuss specifics in an unsecured area such as this. We must follow proper protocols. I will leave you to your rest. But I trust I will be hearing from you soon, Dr. Shmalzberg?”
Dizziness assaults me like a swarm of gnats. I manage a weak nod, then close the door.
I sink into one of the chairs at my kitchen table. What on earth could the Department of Agriculture want with me? And who’s to say this Muthukrishnan fellow is even from the Department of Agriculture? Phony business cards are easy to come by. Judging from his accent, he’s not native-born, and America’s had a strict anti-immigration policy since the time this snot-nose was in diapers.
What could he be after? An artifact… What do I own that could be called an artifact? My Sony CD player, circa 2002? I suppose I could qualify as an artifact, being an ex-practitioner of an extinct medical art.
I don’t want to think about it, but the thought refuses to go away. There’s only one “artifact” I ever owned that was really worth the title. My father’s bequest to me. The Elvis (or, as I named it when I was little, “Elvis-in-a-Jar”). And if tha
t’s what Muthukrishnan’s after, he’s shit-out-of-luck; I haven’t had the Elvis in my possession in twenty-seven years. I sold it back to its place of origin. In return for a truck-load of cash, most used to finance Emily’s cancer treatments, I promised never to reveal that it had ever existed. They didn’t tell me what they planned to do with it. In all likelihood it’s been locked away in a bomb-proof vault, more secure than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hidden away from America’s memory forever.
I stumble into my study, managing to make it to my desk. I pull my keys from my pocket and open the credenza cabinet. And there they are, the two glass cylinders, each filled with between four and six pounds of human fat, stabilized by xenon gas. Mottled, yellow, oily lipid tissues; to an unfamiliar observer, they’d look somewhat like tubfuls of margarine, partially melted in the sun. In some spots, the yellow fat is stained pink by the blood that was unavoidably extracted along with the lipid tissues. Fat and blood, all of it protected from the corrupting air, preserved forever, so long as I keep it free of ultraviolet rays and heat.
Those two cylinders are why the school board relies on me for health education. No one else can show the children what I can. I wasn’t always a humble General Practitioner. I’m a rare bird. My specialty, like my father’s before me, was liposculpture, also known as body sculpting, or liposuction: the surgical extraction of excess fatty tissues.
I place the two cylinders on my desk, handling them as gently as I would the golden eggs of a phoenix. And when I look at them, my heart soars higher than any fantastical bird of legend. The precious tissues preserved inside are all I have left of my Emily.