The Futility Experts

by Margaret Broucek

  “Begin.”

  Tim strained. “Hold my legs a little bit; take some weight off.”

  Miles bent and wrapped his long arms around his father’s knees.

  “You’re pulling! Lift! Lift!”

  Tim managed to clear the bar twice and then let go and fell onto Miles, taking him down.

  “You need to count them off each time.”

  “Two,” the boy said, propped up on his elbows.

  Tim flopped onto his back and let his arms and legs splay. His chest heaved like a felled horse. “I only need to get ten times better. You think you can beat two? Why don’t you see?”

  “Not interested, I told you.”

  “Okay, sit-ups.” Tim remained inert. “In Marine sit-ups, you cross your arms over your chest, sit up until your elbows touch your thighs, then lower yourself until your shoulder blades touch the ground. You count off.”

  “You’re gonna need me to hold your feet.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Just to start.” He bent his knees, and Miles knelt on his shoes. Tim gutted it, heaved himself up for one, then dropped back down and that was it.

  “One!” Miles shouted.

  “I’m done.”

  “Good. You’re not gonna run around the football field now. There’s kids out there.”

  “No. Let me just run back to the car. Better yet, you drive a few blocks away first.”

  “By myself?” He only had his learner’s permit.

  “Just a few blocks.”

  Miles strolled off toward the car.

  “I’ll wait to start running till I see you pull out. Turn right and go a few blocks—five or six blocks.” The kid lifted a hand. Tim shouted, “Tomorrow we’ll get backpacks and gear to weigh ’em down.”

  “I’m not interested!”

  Finally, Tim reared back and then set off. His stomach bounced as he jogged, like a turkey was taped to his front. He made it to the street and then walked, rubbernecking for the car. After a block, he took up jogging again. He pictured himself running over to help Blondie, who was being dragged out of a car by her father, and he picked up speed so he could nail the guy and—ow! Maybe he should try landing on his toes so the impact wasn’t so jarring. He walked the next block backwards, hands on hips. No Miles. Tim took off a shoe at the corner and peered into it. Finally Miles drove up from behind and honked.

  “I said to go this way!” Tim pointed the shoe in the right direction. “Did you turn the wrong way? I wasn’t quite done,” Tim panted as he opened the passenger door and lowered himself in, “but this shoe isn’t right. Tomorrow I’ll have another new pair and we’ll stretch out the distance.”

  “There’s probably an app that helps you learn to run and shit.”

  Tim looked at him. “I need a drill instructor, Miles. I need yelling and threats and disparagements against my mother. Can you do that?”

  “Take me to the gun range every day that we do this, and I’ll agree.”

  Tim flicked his hands in a forward direction to get the boy to pull out. Then he clicked on the FM classical station, which was playing the hard-hitting, triumphant brass and timpani fanfare of Janáček’s Sinfonietta, classical music’s Death Metal.

  # # #

  Since Tim had known him, Marcel Aubert had always sported a weirdly thin mustache, but today, as he drove Tim to the hospital to see Angela, the few whiskers had been waxed up into a threadlike smile.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he told Tim, “Lesley is a great school and all, but when Rachel graduates and works as a teacher, how’s she going to pay off all the loans? She’ll be so overburdened. That’s what concerns me.”

  Tim wondered why the man didn’t help his daughter with the tuition rather than buy this new Camaro they were riding in.

  “Yeah, well, I won’t have to worry about anything like that. Miles will be the doofus you call when your Internet conks. The kid who tells you to turn it off and back on again.”

  Tim and Marcel had waited days to visit Angela, hoping she would be truly past the talking stage. If they could have come to the hospital with some women, they would have been more comfortable. Men don’t have any idea what to do with a dying person unless they need to be carried somewhere or their doctor needs telling off.

  “I just had the cable company out to my new place. I told you I’m on my own now?”

  “Aw, hell, you’re separated?”

  “Yeah, but it’s good. I’m getting to know myself again.” A double smile, one beneath the other. “You really don’t know how much you’ve compromised away until you’re on your own again, Tim. For instance, I like decorating my own space. Seriously. I love selecting the furniture and the art. I just bought an enormous old highway sign telling you to come visit the Esther Williams Living Pool—it’s a seven-foot-long blue sign. My wife would’ve hated that thing. I love it! I mean how evocative can you get? The pool is alive! Or maybe Esther is alive. I’m alive, I can tell you that.”

  Tim was fully informed as to the extent of his marital compromises. He’d had to endure the continual presence of Mona’s family members, none of whom he would ever choose to be around. He had to care about bar noise, parking spaces, home values. He lived in fear of the future, whereas for a sniper, now is the only time. The sound of the wind, the bobbing of bushes, birds lifting off a roof.

  “You waited for your daughter to leave the house?” Tim asked.

  “Yeah, but then when she found out, she said she wished we’d done it long before. You know, the fights and everything.” Tim rocked in agreement.

  When they could see the hospital on the corner, Marcel said, “Hope she’ll still be there.” The report from Angela’s husband was that she was out of it, and it wouldn’t be long.

  Dread, dread, dread, as the men emerged from the car in the parking lot. They moved like woozy bears just out of hibernation, lumbering in a zigzag, trying to figure out which hospital door was the right entrance. Then they asked about the room number and had to find the elevator, and they deliberately made slow progress—because they knew when they got to that room, their lives would never be the same. They jockeyed for the rear position as they walked down the final hallway. If she was awake and aware, she would hate that they were there. She had asked that no one come. Screw it. Tim went in first. “Hey, guys!” he whisper-shouted to her husband and sons.

  Handshakes all around, but the boys’ were just limp. Fourteen and twelve years old, they told him when asked. The younger one had been the ballot box, Tim recognized, as he watched the boy return to his mother’s side and rest his hand on the top of her head. At the kid’s silent urging, Tim and Marcel finally really looked at her. Gaunt—her face just hollows and bones, her jaw slack but teeth bared, her eyes stuck open, although they did not follow. She suddenly thrashed to one side, grabbing for the bar, but her grasp fell short. When she tried again, Marcel and Tim both rushed in to help her turn herself, but the husband shook his head, “She does that all day. If you move her onto her side, she falls back, and it’s all day long.” They stared until they couldn’t. Then they backed into the walls.

  “You were a ballot box for Halloween once,” Tim said to the younger boy, who gave a quick nod.

  After a while, the husband said, “Tim, she took a call on Monday if you can believe it. Said to ask you for a piece on Trembone Slide Oil.”

  “Tremblay,” said the younger boy. “Tremblay; that’s the brand, but it’s for trombones.”

  At that, Angela lurched again for the railing.

  Tim winced. “Sure, no problem.”

  “And she was worried her commissions wouldn’t come through to us. After the fact,” the man said.

  “Oh, they’ll come through.” Tim put a stop to this concern with his hand. “I’ll make sure they all come through. That’s taken care of.”

  They held up the walls until Angela’s sisters swooped in. The women sucked right to her, fondled her feet, and carried on about trifl
es and fussed with the bedding. Tim was glad her sons would have so many others to mourn with. When his father left them for Florida, Tim was the sole mourner. He thought he saw Angela nod to the younger kid in answer to his question—nod that, yes, she would like a sip of orange juice—but then she didn’t suck on the straw even though the boy waited an eternity. Was she in there? In the silence, they heard the new age music from the television, and it seemed the perfect soundtrack for Angela’s scary mask, a body on interminable hold.

  DAVIS

  Davis sniffed the envelope again. Not too bad. Certainly not the proper way to send a biological sample, but the lab wasn’t so far away, after all. He’d purchased the entire creature’s carcass, which was now in one of the department refrigeration units. The highway worker had been an easy mark, even though he’d said he knew it would be worth something and had kept it in his family’s freezer. Davis would have paid triple the agreed-upon hundred. That would be a good story for later. And Davis knew of a miraculous taxidermist, a real genius who could make the animal’s shape conform to drawings that Davis would provide, but first he’d wait for the lab results. His job now was to get his theory out there before the DNA analysis was completed so his authority could be established once and for all. Toward this end, he turned back to writing in the comments section of the online article, since the reporter had not yet returned his call.

  As past president of the International Association of Cryptozoologists, I would like to comment on one possible, and I would even add probable, identification of the Glenwood Monster. I have studied the photos that accompany this article, and it is readily apparent to a trained eye that the creature is a hyena. Hyena, you say? There are no wild hyenas in this entire country! Well, we actually have proof in the fossil record that doglike hyenas did colonize North America, and though they have been considered extinct for quite some time, there are still reports of hyena-like animals occurring throughout the U.S. The Ioway Indians knew the beast well and called it the shunka warak’in. The fur is most often reported as being black with a shaggy ridge along the spine. The animal is described as having a higher front half and walking with the neck in a downward curve. Ears stand up, but are rounder than a dog’s. One of the

  The text box would take no more letters. He had to hit Submit and then continue in a new box.

  Well, I evidently reached the character limit for the comments box, so here I will continue my thoughts: One of the interesting things about the hyena is that while many of its behaviors are similar to those of canids (such as the fact that they are cursorial hunters, meaning they are built to be on the run; they use their teeth rather than their claws to grasp their prey; they are hurried eaters; and their paws have blunt, nonretractable nails well suited to agile running), they are actually more closely related to cats (they groom themselves with their tongues; they purr; they don’t mark their territory with urine; nor do they lift their legs to urinate, among other things). Despite all of this, however, hyenas don’t share enough genetic material to mate with dogs or cats. And the females have such complicated genitalia that it is not likely any other animal could

  Next comment:

  Now, again, I was stopped from typing. (I would look closely at the character limit in this field if I were employed by the Greenstown Daily News.) Let me close here with my prediction for this poor creature who has met his demise. The animal will be found to be a hyena. I am in possession of the animal’s carcass and will be sending a sample to the lab for DNA analysis. Stay tuned!

  As he clicked again on Submit, he relaxed a bit and began to hear Dr. Lindstrom in the adjoining office, not Lindstrom’s words, but their cadence and tone, which seemed urgent. Was he badgering someone? It was a girl who answered, mewling. Davis rose and stood near the wall but got no more clarity. He decided to go out into the hall to see if perhaps Lindstrom’s door was open or if the gaps around it allowed some of the higher wavelengths through.

  The department bulletin board next to Lindstrom’s door provided a plausible reason for Davis’s loitering while he tuned in to the sounds. And then, quite clearly, came his daughter’s voice, unmistakable in its unmodulated pitch and volume. “I just don’t want it to happen again,” she blurted, followed by Lindstrom’s calming murmurs.

  Davis reached for the doorknob, but he decided instead to simply remain in the hall where he would be seen by both of them when Megan left. If Lindstrom was the perpetrator of whatever Megan didn’t want to happen again, his expression would give him away. Otherwise it was some Megan shenanigan, as usual.

  While he waited, no further sounds emerged. He pulled the pin from a card on the board that asked for a ride to Portland, and he held it toward the light, which forced a move even closer to the door. Cooings. Was that what it was? Deep, male cooings. Perhaps Lindstrom had cornered her on the sofa, his finger lifting her chin to meet his approaching lips—

  Then the door was yanked open from the inside, and Lindstrom sprang back in apparent alarm at the sight of Davis in the doorway.

  “Oh, Megan!” Davis said, leaning in to find her behind Lindstrom. “I was clearing off the board and I thought I heard you in there. These offices have just the thinnest paper walls, don’t you find, Dr. Lindstrom?”

  “No, I don’t hear anything,” Lindstrom said, almost to himself.

  # # #

  Jenny never wanted the little amuse-bouche Brant set before them when they sat at the sushi bar. She always slid it over to Davis, who then had to pretend to relish two servings of the oddity while Brant watched, smiling and nodding. They didn’t know how the sushi chef’s name was spelled, but they thought he had pronounced it Brant when they’d asked for the third or fourth time, and it finally stuck with them. This was once-a-week date night for Davis and Jenny, as mandated by Dr. Peggy. For the past months, they had left Megan alone at home, but up until then, their neighbor, who had an autistic grandchild and was used to a challenge, would come over to stay with Megan. Jenny had been appalled at his request, but Davis had asked the woman to read and sign the ever-growing lists of behaviors Megan was not to engage in. They were paying her, he’d argued, so they could ask her to train. Still, when Davis and Jenny returned from their date, they usually had to pull Megan away from an inappropriate movie or, more often, the computer, or after getting back in the car, they’d find her along the roadside on her way to pick something up at the store, supposedly. Now, she was on her own at the house, and that unsettled Davis even more than the rubbery, tentacled amuse-bouche.

  They were typically nontalkers on a date, except they always had a great deal to say to Brant (though how much he understood, they couldn’t fathom). If the television had a sports game on, Davis would bray over some play and ask Brant, “Did you see that? Dear God!” If the news was on, Jenny might carry on about a social issue and beg Brant’s opinion, which was always an agreeable, grinning bow. Too much attention was afforded the sushi chef in order to compensate for the paucity shared between them. But on this evening, Davis opened with a line directed toward his wife. “So I’ve been worried about the tenure thing, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I’m surprised you haven’t picked up on it.”

  “But you haven’t said anything.”

  “Well, I’ve been nervous, and now I’m feeling less so because I’ve made a discovery, soon to be published.”

  “Davis! How wonderful! Shall we get some champagne?” She quickly looked around for the waiter.

  “Did you see a price?” He put a hand on the menu.

  “We can just get two glasses.”

  “Sure, then.” He signaled to the waiter and ordered them.

  “Fun!” Jenny said, bouncing her clasped hands on the bar top.

  “It’s the identity of the Glenwood Monster—did you read about that?”

  “No…” She let the word trail upward.

  “Killed by a car recently. A true cryptid in North America, a hyena.” He leaned back to give his pronouncement roo
m.

  “It was a hyena? Had it escaped from a zoo?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head. “None of Maine’s little zoos have a hyena, but they may be living among us.”

  “Hyenas?”

  “People have reported seeing them around for a very long time.”

  “But who are these people?”

  It amazed Davis that Jenny could believe in the biblical tales and yet not in contemporary eyewitness accounts.

  She unwrapped her chopsticks and then twisted back to Davis. “So, you’ve tested something and it came back that it was a hyena?” She sounded a bit panicked.

  “The testing is going on now.”

  Brant set their sushi plates on top of the glass case and fashioned a big, toothy smile, as though the meal were a surprise gift.

  “Thank you, Brant!” Davis said too loudly. He retrieved Jenny’s plate and set it before her. “I sent a biological sample to the lab, but I already published my identification so that it’s clear the ID came from my experience and knowledge, not from a blanket DNA search.” He switched the soy sauce bottles so that the white, low-sodium one was near her. “Do you know that they asked Lindstrom to ID the thing? Someone at the paper needs a bit of an education on expertise.”

  “What did he say it was?”

  “A wolf-dog hybrid. And Jenny, if you saw the pictures of that head, the round ears?” He took his own plate down from the case, smiling again at Brant. “Lindstrom’s off his game.”

  “How long does the testing take?” She still had not broken her chopsticks apart.

  “Two weeks, minimum. I’m saving some money by having it tested at a place that does dog-breed IDs for your pet. Then when they say it isn’t any breed of dog, I’ll pay for the further testing.”

  “So, if it is a dog, what will happen to the journal that’s publishing your piece?”

  “No, it’s in the paper.” He pushed one piece of a maki roll into his mouth and then talked around it: “Don’t worry. It’s a hyena.”