by Jan Carson
‘He didn’t piss himself,’ yelled Malcolm, leaping to his friend’s defense. ‘I just cried and it got on his pants.’
‘And I’m not a big one for stalking,’ added Cunningham. ‘I’ve listened through the letter boxes of six other chalets before I found you.’
‘Bloody hell, you two are a pair of prime weirdos,’ concluded Sorry.
‘I’m just worried about Malcolm. It’s not like him to make such a scene. I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help. I could maybe call an ambulance or something, see if they can do anything about the disappearing. I’ve got insurance if he needs it.’
‘Sounds like a plan, gramps. I’m guessing the ER people don’t see that many disappearing children. Malcolm’ll be a bit of a novelty for them.’
‘Or,’ continued Cunningham Holt, ignoring Sorry, ‘I had another idea. Something I heard back in the big smoke. It’s a long shot, of course, but anything’s worth a try. We’d have to get Malcolm really drunk and—’
‘Now you’re talking!’ exclaimed Sorry and with little regard for his crumbling joints, dragged Cunningham Holt sharply by the elbow deep into the darkened belly of Chalet 5. Malcolm Orange, who remained adamantly and personally opposed to teenage drinking for any reason, even the purely medicinal, followed reluctantly, closing the door behind them. He took a cautious seat on the carpet at Cunningham Holt’s feet. Mr Fluff curled around his naked heels like a bad-tempered foot-warmer. Soren James Blue positioned herself on the sofa beside the older man and demanded to be told everything, especially the bit about getting really drunk. As the details emerged, Sorry quickly lost her skepticism, switching stance from an adamant denial of Malcolm’s condition to an unshakeable belief that all three should, with extreme urgency, partake in Cunningham Holt’s cure, lest Malcolm disappear entirely. As the old man’s story unfurled, Malcolm Orange, realizing that the proposed cure was simply an adaptation of his own Scientific Investigative Research, became more and more willing to give it a go.
‘It’s like this,’ began Cunningham Holt, positioning a sofa cushion on his dampened lap, lest he piss himself for real in excitement. ‘I used to know this fella back in New York. He went by the name of Haircut Molloy, though I think his real name was Harold, or possibly Henry, something starting with a letter H anyway.’
‘Get on with it, gramps,’ urged Sorry, once more prodding him deliberately in the shoulder.
‘Anyway, Haircut Molloy was a bit of a legend on our block. He lived in the apartment directly above mine, used to come down every Friday evening for the weekend tips. Brought a six pack with him most every time. He was a good sort, old Haircut. We became real tight pals. So after a few months of passing on the tips and drinking his Bud I got up the guts to ask after his name. “Where’d you get a name like Haircut from? Was your pappy a barber or something?” I asked. “No sir,” he says to me. “My pappy was a lot of things to a lot of folk but never a hair man. I’m the only Haircut in the family.” “Oh,” I said, suddenly catching on. “Is it on account of some crazy hairdo you have? Or maybe a joke, like you’re bald as a coot? Something that a blind fella might miss.” Haircut Molloy grabbed my hand and pulled it to his head, forcing my fingers from the tip of his crown all the way down his back to his waist. “Did you ever feel anything like that before Mr Holt?” he asked. “Four foot of jet black hair and I’ve not even got an ounce of Indian blood in me.” It was a rare thing to feel, Malcolm. The man had hair like a rope, thicker and longer and, by my imagining, shinier than a high school girl’s.
‘“So that’s why they call you Haircut, on account of your long locks,” I said. Haircut Molloy laughs back at me and I can hear the swoosh of him flicking his hair behind his ears. “Oh, it’s a lot more complicated than that, Mr Holt,” he says. “It starts way back in the good old days before the Depression. My pappy ran a sideshow outfit down in Atlantic City: bearded ladies, Siamese twins, girls that lived in tanks of water, all the usual stuff. He was a great man for the magic too. Pappy’s own act was the talk of the town. It wasn’t trickery or hand sleight stuff. It was actual proper, honest-to-God magic. He’d done all this reading up on psychology and how the head works and got to believing that the mind was a heck of a lot more powerful than the body ever would be. By the time I was toddling about the sideshow in short pants my pappy had trained himself to walk on fire and lie on nails and stick a fencing sword right through his belly and out the other side. It wasn’t rocket science. It was all mind over matter stuff. He trained hard to get his head to work a certain way and then made a fortune fleecing the folks that came to see him.
“When I was about five years old pappy upped his game. Another fella in town had cashed in on our success and was eating light bulbs and hanging off the pier by his ponytail. Pappy needed a new gimmick. He knew it would work in theory but the first night he actually done it in public my mama clean passed out with the nerves. In front of a crowd of two hundred vacationing folks and locals pappy took a butcher’s knife and chopped off his wedding finger. Holding it up to the audience, still dripping blood he shouts, ‘mind over matter folks! Tonight I’ll take a long hard look at my good hand before I fall asleep and I’ll dream me up a brand-new finger. Come back tomorrow evening and see for yourself, Old Magic Molloy’s nobody’s liar.’ Well it took a stiff drink or six to get my pappy to sleep that night on account of the throbbing where his finger had been and mama fairly gave him the sharp end of her tongue, but when I woke up the next morning he had two full sets of completely functioning fingers and my mama had the old finger on ice to prove it was no gimmick.
“We made a fortune that summer. Pappy chopped each of his fingers off in turn, downed a bottle of Jack and dreamt them back into being by six o’clock the next morning. By the time school started that fall we had enough money for the down payment on a Model T and pappy couldn’t get past breakfast without a pint of whiskey. On the first October, three weeks before my sixth birthday, pappy was three sheets to the wind with the butcher’s knife, missed his baby finger and went right through the artery on his right hand. Though my mama held their wedding photo in front of his nose as he drifted out of consciousness, and kept on yelling, ‘Look Davy, look you old bastard, dream yourself back to normal,’ he never woke up. Mama got me through junior school eking out the last of my pappy’s savings and loaning the bearded lady out to the five and dime set-ups down by the casino. It wasn’t glamorous living but we got by. When I turned thirteen she gave me a butcher’s knife and I knew it was my turn to start pulling my weight. I couldn’t bring myself to do a finger but I found folks were just as taken with the hair. I’d chop it up to my ears each evening, go to bed with a bottle of Bushmills and a picture of Rapunzel cut out of a library book, and each morning I’d be swimming in my own hair. It wasn’t long before I got the name Haircut.”
‘“Good Lord,” I said. It was a fantastic story but I didn’t believe a word of it. “Fantastic story, Haircut,” I said. “But I don’t believe a damn word of it. You’ve to be wild skeptical about miracles when you can’t see for yourself.” “I understand, Mr Holt,” says he, “I am in retirement now, but for you, seeing as you’ve been so generous with your tips, I’ll get the butcher’s knife out one more time.” Off he runs upstairs and comes back five minutes later with four foot of hair in one hand and a dome like a plucked turkey. I had a good old rub of his head just to be sure he wasn’t duping me. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning and let you feel for yourself,” he says and sure enough the next morning he’s back on my sofa with a thing like a lion’s mane pouring over his forehead. “What do you think of that, Mr Holt?” he asked. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” said I, quick as you like. “And don’t it look like the Lord gone and giveth it all back again while you were sleeping.” “More’s the pity it wouldn’t work for you, Mr Holt.” “Why’s that, Haircut?” “Well you’ve not the eyes to be looking at any pictures before you go to sleep. It only works if you dream about getting fixed and the o
nly sure fire way to set your dreams is to look at a picture before you go to sleep.”
‘Seems old Haircut Molloy was right, Malcolm. Mind over matter doesn’t work so good if you can’t picture what you’re after. But for you, son,’ concluded Cunningham Holt, ‘it might be just the ticket, you know, for fixing the disappearing bits.’
It was a long speech for a reasonably silent man and the delivery had sucked the pith right out of him. He settled back on the living room sofa and sandwiched the cushion against his rib cage, clutching it like a last-ditch life preserver.
‘What do you think, Malcolm?’ he asked hesitantly.
‘Let’s get wasted!’ whooped Soren James Blue. Cunningham Holt ignored her enthusiasm.
‘What do you think, Malcolm?’ he repeated.
Though the afternoon’s events had turned Malcolm Orange skeptic as a lapsed Presbyterian, he truly, honestly wished to believe everything that Cunningham Holt had said.
‘What the hell,’ he replied. ‘I’d already started thinking about dreaming myself better. Maybe the whiskey will make it happen quicker.’
‘And the pair of us will get drunk for moral support,’ added Sorry, who was all of a sudden overenthusiastically anxious to ally herself with Malcolm’s cause. ‘Nobody likes to get drunk by themselves. You just feel tragic.’ This last sentiment, Malcolm suspected, was spoken from recent experience.
‘Well, Malcolm, if you’re up for it, there’s no time like the present. I’ll just go and get the beer,’ suggested Cunningham. ‘I’m afraid the funds don’t stretch to whiskey these days but I have a shitload of Corona Light I got cheap with coupons. It’ll do the same job if we drink enough of it.’
‘Right,’ said Sorry, standing to take control of the situation. ‘You get the beer, and cigarettes if you could stretch to it, I can’t drink on an empty stomach. I’ll round up a few pillows from the fat woman’s bedroom – make it look like a proper burglary if I can – Malcolm, you run back to yours for a picture of yourself without holes, preferably naked if you have one, and we’ll meet back in the middle in five.’
Thus it came to be that Martha Orange, returning from her afternoon shift at the Center, stumbled across her eldest son, piss drunk and snoring over a paisley scatter cushion in the middle of the cul-de-sac’s turn circle. To his left sat Soren James Blue, cross-legged and coercing the last dregs from a Marlboro Light, slightly tipsy but nonetheless awake, for, even at fourteen, her tolerance for alcohol was ungodly. To his right Cunningham Holt slept thickly with Mr Fluff curled like a bicycle clip about his ankle. A dark wet patch was drifting from his groin, due south in the direction of his knee, gaining ground with every second. Martha Orange placed her hands on her hips and observed the situation from a distance of fifteen feet. The inclination to bolt was strong but Sorry had already spotted her. Holding Mrs Orange’s gaze with what the older lady wrongly assumed to be an alcoholinduced bravado, the girl rose unsteadily to her feet.
‘Poof,’ she said, flinging her arms to the sky with the exaggerated swoop of a magician’s assistant. ‘I’ve made him disappear.’
And Martha Orange, noting the absence of her younger son, quite naturally assumed she meant Ross. The relief was palpable.
– Chapter Ten –
Junior Button
Martha Orange no longer believed in anything higher than the Portland City Grill. However, the moment found her, backside wedged against the Rite Aid bus shelter, formulating a prayer of absolution.
‘Forgive me my trespasses,’ she began. The trespasses lay heavy on her tongue, a set of second-hand shackles she could no longer claim nor carry.
She switched tactics. ‘Forgive him his trespasses,’ and, having let the sentiment settle in silence, clarified, ‘I mean Jimmy of course, not Malcolm, though I could scalp the boy for his stupidity.’
With consideration she withdrew the request. ‘That bastard doesn’t deserve forgiveness,’ she muttered and, as the number 39 appeared on the horizon, front grill grinning like an orthodontist’s nightmare, offered up a mouthful of frantic little prayerlets.
‘It’s not my fault.’
‘They’ll be better off without me.’
‘It’s him you should be hounding, not me.’
The three steps ascending to the driver’s feet formed a kind of altar. Martha Orange climbed wearily. She shoved her monthly pass under the driver’s chin and, looking into his sun-blushed face, begged, if not for forgiveness, then the smallest condescending flicker of grace.
‘Expired yesterday,’ he barked. ‘Dollar fifteen or get off my bus.’
Martha Orange set her bags carefully on the floor; a pair of grocery sacks containing the vague necessities required for a weekend away. The doors swooshed closed and as the bus, without so much as a whispered warning, began its rickety stagger through the rush hour traffic, both bags toppled, belching pantyhose and make-up remover, tampons, shower gel and a single mandarin orange across the dirty laminate floor. Martha Orange buckled. Even the details were conspiring against her now. On hands and knees, stuffing underwear and toiletries into a Fred Meyer grocery sack, she felt for a moment the deep mortification of a repentant soul. Rising, she thrust a handful of shrapnel – far too many coins for a single fare – into the driver’s lap and without pausing to retrieve her ticket, took the only free seat in the front section of the bus.
‘Cheer up,’ said the man sitting to her left, ‘it might never happen.’ She did not punch him. Retaliation required energy and Martha Orange was spent. Wedged as he was against her thigh, she observed the man in profile, noting the faintest shadow of beard, the nauseating stench of patchouli oil and a Jesus fish bracelet belted around his hairy wrist. He was exactly the kind of man she found easiest to despise.
‘It’s not my fault,’ she snapped defensively and the man, well used to the meth addicts and un-housed crazies who rode the Trimet, managed to maneuver his arm into a cold shoulder. Martha Orange had long since quit worrying about the opinions of others. Whilst the number 39’s passengers passed silent judgment and the man to her left raged like an icehouse wall, Martha Orange quietly got on with the process of unraveling. Pinching her worldly possessions between her ankles, she fished a Kleenex from the sleeve of her work shirt and began to sob vociferously. Neither grief nor guilt could be blamed for the deluge. Martha Orange wept a waterfall of sheer, undiluted relief.
Malcolm was drunk on a turn circle. Ross was asleep in his sports bag under Bill and Irene’s coffee table, a formula-filled bottle tucked into the waistband of his diaper. And Jimmy, well God only knew which far-flung drinking parlor Jimmy Orange was currently calling home. Standing on the edge of the Baptist Retirement Village, Martha Orange had seen her exit sign flash like a last-chance Texaco and, with little consideration for the binding ties, had taken the opportunity to bolt. She was neither surprised nor particularly bothered by the ease with which she’d unstitched herself. Martha Orange had been anticipating this moment for a terribly long time. The act of holding still – three months resident and bound to a four-walled house with closing doors and children – had almost killed her. Cul-de-sac living had been a crucifixion of sorts and she was immensely proud of her own perseverance.
Martha Orange was not built for permanence. She had been itchy since the point of conception. For thirty-seven years she’d carried her feet like a pair of nervous pigeons, compliant for the most part, permanently coiled in anticipation of flight. Lately this itch had intensified. She’d dreamt of trains and boats and state borders as slight and steppable as a sidewalk cracks. With Jimmy’s departure the need to bolt had grown volcanic. Though she’d resented the Volvo – and the pay by the week motels with their itchy blankets and wall-mounted televisions had come to feel like an iron lung – the static world had forced Martha Orange to admit she felt closest to possible in the open spaces between departure and arrival. The fleeting road offered a clarity she could not approximate in stillness.
Lately life had begun to unravel.
She’d felt the nauseating thrill of a floating thing – a Zeppelin or submarine – suddenly untethered. The children were not the anchors they’d once been. Television had become preferable to conversation. Words failed her. Occasionally she forgot the English word for certain things, mostly emotions, and was not yet fluent enough to substitute the Spanish. Everything, even expensive restaurant dinners, had begun to taste exactly like ramen noodles. Sex, when she very occasionally remembered its existence, seemed like a ludicrous thing for one person to do to another. Every day the weighted drag of good sense seemed a little lighter, a little less inclined to succeed.
For the sake of saving face and Malcolm, Martha Orange had battled through her first six Portland weeks, resisting the temptation to take off. The need to fly never once quit pinching. She drowned it daily, prescribing black coffee and Mexican soap operas for all her flightiest thoughts. On the seventh week things took a turn for the bolt, blue sky. Oklahoma finally caught up with Martha Orange and though she’d dreaded this moment for almost fifteen years, the reunion was just the justification she’d been hoping for.
On the Sunday morning of Martha Orange’s seventh week at the Baptist Retirement Village, an elderly black man had been admitted to the Center. His name was Junior Button; a middling sort of name for a man built like the un-sunk Titanic. The Center’s standard issue beds could not contain him and, as all the outsize beds were already occupied by morbidly obese patients, Junior Button had been folded into an ordinary bed, knees drawn into the recovery position like a baby giant busting to get born. His medical notes were limited. Two Post-it notes and a single file page informed the Center staff that Junior had arrived on their doorstep via the Good Shepherd Mission and previously the Burnside Bridge; that he either could not, or would not, recall a permanent address; appeared to be allergic to mushrooms and penicillin; and suffered from both diabetes and various diabetes-related complications, no doubt exacerbated by his penchant for Irish stout.