by Ron Charach
—Henry darlin’, it’s ma. Be a honey and help me out for jest a minute. Ah’m awe-fully sorry to wake you. Ah need a hand liftin’ a case o’ Red Bull out of the cold larder for tomorrow.
It’s obvious why she don’t try wakin’ one of the more trigger-happy members of the eight, but that don’t stop henry from grumblin’ a bit as he pulls on his pants—ma havin’ discreetly left the room to pry open the huge deadbolt on the steel larder door out back. It’s dark an’ cold, and more than once it’s been used as a quiet room—to help one of the eight chill out for half an hour after blowin’ their stack over somethin’ or t’other.
ma in a night robe that’s like a whole bunch of oven mitts stitched together, wearin’ purple eyeshadow even though her gray hair is comin’ undone, looks as drained as you might expect her to at this late hour.
—Funny time to fuss with drinks—ain’t it ma?
—Well you know what they say cowboy—about a woman’s work... ma opens the door to the enormous bone-chiller where galloway stores the next decade’s worth of bottled, canned, boxed and de-hydrated food.
ma says —With your bare chest, in jest yore buckskins—why, you jest might catch yore death... Why don’cha tayke mah quilted robe, Ah have a flannel nightie underneath…
Needless to say he ain’t takin’ it... If one of the eight ever chanced upon him dressed like that there’d be a fairy-hangin’ fo’ sure. He also ain’t in no hurry t’look over at ma in a state o’ near-un-dress, though she can be a tad MILF-y in jest the right light.
—It’ll only take a minute—you did say one case didn’t ya? He steps in, gives a bit of a shiver, walks over and bends down to lift the case she’d pointed to—the proper way to lift, knees well bent ’n lower back nicely curved—and jest as he hoists it and gives her a “nothin’-to-it” grin he sees the door closin’ on him.
He lets the case fall—gassy bubbles to yore work—an’ hollers —What the heck maaa, c’n you hear me? his voice ringin’ tinny in the con-fined space.
But the door is locked from the outside by a Schlage deadbolt. Suddenly it dawns: after all these years o’ self-denying service—service perhaps in the name of savin’ her adopted daughter Arlene and herself—ma Rosemary Seeton is every inch a galloway.
—Rose! Open the goddamned door! A joke is a joke! Ah ain’t got no shirt on and Ah’m frrreezinn’ mah balls off...
Loud and angry as his voice is, the voice that comes back through a little viewin’ window in the steel door is deliberate an’ measured. —Wait just a bit…cowboy, while Ah turn on the white noise machine in the dorm down the hall. Be back in a jiff.
Breakin’ out in gooseflesh, he covers his chest with his bare hands. Doesn’t dare yell much louder for fear of the sound carryin’ through the larder walls to where the rest of the eight are cotton’d out.
—Very funny, Rose! I get it, I get it… Silence.
—Look, whadda ya want? Just tell me. So I can get outa here and head straight back to bed...with no r-r-recriminations.
—henry, dear. Are you in any shape to dictate terms to me right now?
—You nuts?! Do you know how freezin’ cold it is in here? You want to kill me? Could you live with that?
—Hang on a minute, cowpoke, while I flip a coin. I’ve watched plenty of good folks die around here—the latest two of which were some townies I thought you were partial to.
Talkin’ through her teeth like a fuckin’ ventriloquist. Has to keep her voice down so they don’t hear her. He considers puttin’ his mouth to the window and screamin’ loud as he can: —cabaaa-nnnahhhh!!! This is no time to plead his special case.
—Cabaaa-nnnaaahhh!!!
And she slides shut the little window, as it dawns: She’s trying to—is willing to—kill me.
He knocks twice on the heavy metal—knocks mind you, not pounds—just so she knows he’ll cooperate. No answer. He takes to doin’ a few jumpin’ jacks—keep the blood circulatin’—but bumps his head on a low beam. God-damn!
In a moment the crack to the outside world reappears. —You scream one more time, cowboy, one more time, and this window slides shut and stays closed forever, her voice clear and unnervin’ in its calm.
—Spoken like a g-g-galloway, he grits through clackin’ teeth despite his sore head, resentin’ her use o’ the word cowboy as a taunt. —Waiitt! Wait! I’m only kidding! Oh, please don’t close that little window again!
—Relax, cowboy. There’s plenty of air in there. Cold air, mind...
—Please! I’ll die of—of h-h-hypothermia if you k-k-keep this up…
—Spoken like a former medic, she says. —Not to worry, henry, this larder ain’t a freezer—though it’s cold as desert night in there and then some. I reckon you could spend a night in it and still survive—least, if you keep active...
—What do you want from me? I’m not twenty-fuck’n-f-f-five any more.
—You’re not? You mean you’re near-f-f-fifty and maybe then-s-s-some, but you just act twenty-f-f-five? Or is it more like f-f-five?
Silence.
—What do I want? What do I want? I don’t know any more, henry; I keep asking myself that. Maybe I’m just tired of waiting for the real Dr. Henry Morganstern to make an appearance.
—Just let me ou-ou-outa here and he’ll return—s-s-sooner ’n you think!
Again the window closes. Its heavy slidin’ metal gives a slight creak before it shifts shut. henry gives it all he has pushin’ at that motherlode of a door, but it won’t give.
He hugs and slaps at his arms and sides, his nose and mouth now dry and his lungs achin’ with each breath. Knows that panic’s only makin’ things worse. But the pitch-blackness whenever she closes that window don’t provide much encouragement.
It feels like a half hour before she slides it open it again. He jumps for the openin’ —Th-th-think of what you’ll do to C-C-Claire! Do you h-h-hate her that much!
—No, far from it. She used to be nothing but a druggie—but she’s coming ’round...
—You think b-b-brother harold will let you get away with this?
—harold? harold? Why, I haven’t heard you use that name in ages. Don’t you mean “galloway,” Mr. Morganstern? Or, what were some of those names you used to call him when he was just the unpopular fat kid in the class?
—Bitch, I’m not d-d-discussing fine points with you. Just let me out of this freezing hell-h-h-hole. I swear there’ll be no—re-re-retaliation.
—Freezing hell hole, oxymoron, anyone? And my, look who got his letter g’s back. You are adaptable. Be back soon, henry—you just chill out. Maybe think about what going along with my brother has brought you. What pains me, henry, what’s pained me all along, is how happy you seemed when the bombs started falling, how almost relieved you were to ditch your old life—patients and all. I always knew you and that wife of yours were never suited to be parents—or full-fledged adults.
—Oh, so that’s why you were up for s-s-stealin’ another w-w-woman’s eggs. Fuckin’ philanthropist! Fuckin’ barren bitch philanthropist!
Again the window bites shut. henry resigns himself to sittin’ on a case o’ dry goods. Then tries doin’ isometrics against a particularly heavy box. The intensity of his shiverin’ is gettin’ painful. He reckons he could crack ribs.
M-M-Maybe she really doesn’t want to k-k-kill me. Though he knows she could do it—certainly from a practical point of view, no one but no one except Rose herself uses this particular larder, and it was very recently re-filled from galloway’s central stores. But could she go through with it?
The prison window opens a trace.
—W-W-What about your daughter? You think you could live with her f-f-finding out that you m-m-murdered me?
—Don’t you mean our daughter, henry? Oh, you are getting paternal in your sunset years, a
ren’t you? Did you know that for the past while she’s had the strangest feeling, like she was being watched? Why, in her own bedroom and bath... late at night, even in the morning...
—That b-b-bastard b-b-brother of yours told you that! Oh, this is r-r-rich! I don’t believe...
—Aha, so it is the two of you who are violating her privacy! She told me she thought she’d heard voices through the mirror. Muffled, mind you… Lowest of the low, child-abuse low. I guessed she was right, but thought it too sick to believe. harold, on the other hand, well, we know harold’s got people issues—why else would he have set up this goon-show? Anyway, henry, your low-down lewdness is strike two...
And again the window to freedom slides shut.
Baseball? galloway’s always been a baseball freak—but his sister? galloway always drones on about man’s inhumanity to man, about man’s unwillingness to restrict his natural competitiveness to the playing field. Because in life, as in baseball… But a deeper shudder pushes through the shiverin’: there are only three strikes in baseball.
Next time there’s an openin’ of the judgment day gate he’s got the ice cream headache from hell. She tells him —Look at it on the bright side, henry, at least you’ll be well preserved. Isn’t that how you always describe me? A well-preserved woman?
—I p-p-promise, henry rasps. Anything—anything you w-w-want—J-j-just n-n-name it.
—Ah yes, Martin Luther in the lightning storm: save me, Lord, and I shall become a monk!
—Is that what you want Rose—for me to become a monk? I’ll do it or anything else...Just d-don’t let me f-f-freeze to d-d-death...j-j-just s-s-say the word…
But who can convince through chatterin’ teeth? What a way to have to say your last words. —S-S-Sadistic b-b-bitch! D-D-Dirty anti-S-S-Semite! he hears himself leak out as the door makes things black again and henry morgan, like those in the endless line of losers who choke in the last innin’ of the final game of the World Series—strikes out.
a visit to harold galloway
henry morgan gives a deliberately annoyin’ shave-and-a-haircut knock on the heavy steel trapdoor of harold galloway’s bunker—a door so thick that from inside it must sound more like a tip-tappin’ sound. As always there is the obligatory three-minute wait while he is checked out on the monitor.
He turns his face upward and to the side to present an insistent and menacin’ profile. He had socked back a few beer at ma’s despite a little agreement with himself to always be the most sober cowpoke in the saloon—a survival measure that usually comes easy given how prone he is to nasty hangovers. Damn Judaic genes.
He is finally admitted by galloway in robe and slippers. He can practic’lly smell the man’s aftershave through the door.
—Oh it’s just you, says Liz Claiborne tryin’ to look Hugo Boss. —Give me a second while I switch off the surveillance.
Even though henry has been down here a hundred times he can scarcely believe his eyes. The peach lighting from the tinted pot lights bathes the sunken living room in a Palm Beach Worth Avenue glow so that you always look tanned. There are the paintings, several Rothkos and Jackson Pollock’s early Night Mist, which henry had urged galloway to include in the memorial cache—these along with older museum pieces galloway had picked on his own on the basis of which were the most famous. If they’re good enough for the curators...
Actual house plants thriving under fluorescent grow-lights. After all these years the ficus and schefflera still give off the deep green shine of life and light so strongly it could blind a man inured to the sagebrush and cactus outside the complex. True, a few hardy plant species that double as trees survive on the town streets—mainly locust trees like the ones that used to survive the pollution on busy city streets, but they look for the most part like anorectic girls. Only thick blades of coarse grass and faded dandelions can grow anywhere outside the dome, which makes galloway’s hoard of livin’ things all the more a miracle. Like Monsanto, he now owns the life forms. —It’s all done with mirrors, he gloats with false modesty.
—So, mister morgan, to what do I owe this honor? He sounds distracted.
—Hiya, Zwyxy. Just here to gawk at your buried treasure.
—Have you come to insult me or merely to imbibe, as usual? Perhaps you’d rather visit later and return, for now, to the animal kingdom outside. galloway must have been lazin’ around in his Zegna pyjamas cum bathrobe, watching Casablanca, which is still playin’ on his antiquated DVD machine. He is in no mood for a visitor, especially one in need of humorin’.
He ignores the Zwyxy reference since he has no memory of his troubled childhood.
—Remember how we kids concocted that Zwyx Wyhollymer nickname for you? henry taunts. —As far back as third grade we called you Zwyxy cause a group of us agreed you were such a bottom-feeder you deserved a nickname made up of the very last letters of the alphabet. Remember? Course, you were a couple years older than me and in fifth grade—which is the only reason I allowed you the honor of trailing after me and my fellow third-graders... No one your own age would have you.
—I choose to forget the past, thank you. Unlike you, I outgrew it, surpassed it. As for being a bottom-feeder, mister morgan, aren’t you the one who goes to ballet performances and makes sophisticated remarks, such as: —The men in the ballet are the ones with the asses? galloway turns his back to morgan and flicks the remote control to his old-fashioned Blu-ray machine—playing the same image on screen as the ancient Toshiba HD. galloway pumps up the volume of Bogart and Bergman’s eager voices to transport back into his movie. Now and then the image fades or the actors’ words cut out due to generator surges. With his eyes still on the screen he adds blandly —Your Zwyx has come pretty far in life, don’t you think?
—Ya figure? challenges morgan, humorless.
—Yeah. A bit farther, I might add, than the rest of that same “Pride of ’59” who are, by now, I should think quite thoroughly incinerated...
—Bastard!! henry lunges at him and—despite a little twistaway motion by galloway—soon has him tangled up in his entertainment system wires, his large bowl of popcorn knocked over on the rug. —I’ll wipe that smug little smirk off your face.
—You crazy?! I didn’t do the incinerating! Lighten up! I didn’t take the goddamn fish out of the ocean!
henry’s knees dig into galloway’s softly padded arms as he savors pinnin’ this magnate of high finance like some oversized bug. —It may not have been you Zwyxy, but it was your kind! The least you could do is have a little...
—The least I could do is exactly what you’ve been doing, morgan! I do plenty around here. Now, get off me!
—Tell me what the power source is!
—God, God alone is the power source! Ask John Gideon—
—Don’t fuck with me, aphid!
—What d’you care what the power source is? Let me be! Do you want to supervise a small cadre of townies in a machine shop? Dull, deadly dull, I assure you. They work on their own; they’re like the Morlocks in The Time Machine.
—What is it? Turbines on an underground river? A portable nuke reactor? What does the grand power cable connect to? Ans’er me!
—It could connect to my ruby-red asshole for all you need know. There’s a pocket reactor—DARPA came up with it, there are two back-ups, and everything, but everything’s, encrypted to the max. Now let me be!
morgan lets the bug crawl free. He throws down the gauntlet —It’s your contempt for human values that produced this B-movie world—and you’re gonna pay for it.
—So that what—so you can run things around here? Fat chance.
henry isn’t up for runnin’ much. More eager to dish out retribution than to actually try to change things. What’s the point? Ever since retiring from the thoughtful medical life, he’s ceased being a details man. No drudgin’ in galloway’s technosphere for him.
—For God’s sake that was buttered popcorn, you galoot—what a mess... Let me remind you, morgan, that this country elected a B-movie star who super-saturated the world with nukes, and then eventually followed him with a dyslexic governor cowboy with a back-firing missile shield. Then came a two-term bi-racial prez—followed by an ass-ass-ination and the new Republican clown-prez. Those class acts went a long way towards hastening the end. So for fuck’s sake: Don’t Take It Out On Me! Why not just get nostalgic and watch a movie with shots of the World Trade Center? Then maybe you can make the switch to the present tense. You hopeless romantic...
morgan flops into the plush couch that forms two sides of the sunken living room, looks down at the exhausted galloway nursin’ mighty sore arms and surveyin’ an Exxon Valdez of a popcorn spill. A genuine BP Gulfer.
—Relax, galloway, it’s not crude oil... Remember that stuff, all the grief it caused…? Remember Hiroshima—Chernobyl—Fuk-you-shima?
—I suppose you think I can pull a rug-cleaning company out of my hat too.
—You could pull one out of your ass, I’m sure. You know, harold, I remember our days together in elementary school—mygod we go back a ways...
—Don’t remind me, says galloway, reachin’ for the remote. —I’m in no mood for this...
—Yup, you were just another unpopular fat kid, about as poor as my own dad was, and we were bussed up to that snooty little parochial school from our working-class neighborhood. Yup—designated gifted.
—Finished?
—Not at all. I remember the two of us in the boys’ washroom of Richview Elementary. We had both gone in to take a leak, but you decided, with only a few minutes left to recess, that you had to take a crap—and you asked me to stand guard for you.
—What on earth would compel you to remember such a detail—other than a generous dash of the latent homosexuality we’ve come to suspect in you, dear friend and poet-without-tights, master henry bates?