Just a Corpse at Twilight

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Flash Farnsworth—between tearing his lobster apart and going through the motions of tipping his bottle to keep Bad George company—presented his Bunny dream to amuse hosts and guests. "The Walt Disnah Bunnah." The Disney Bunny hopped through Flash's dream, being ever so cute wearing a red ribbon, singing away, until Kathy Two picked it up quietly and shook the bunny until it was dead.

  "Don't need no more bullshit bunny," Flash said.

  "No bullshit about Mr. Bear," Grijpstra said. "I met Mr. Bear on Jeremy Island, eating a lady."

  Bad George wasn't listening. He told the tale "Bears at the Dump," which had to do with a younger, less bad George, whose then-still-living wife bought him a camera for his birthday. Next day George was going to get himself some bears on film. The bears, at daybreak, were sorting garbage, and Bad George was focusing his Kodak, not noticing that the bears were between Bad George and Bad George's vehicle, and were closing in.

  Flash Farnsworth had heard Grijpstra.

  "So what did you do, Krip, when you saw Mr. Bear eating the lady on Jeremy Island??"

  "I sat down," Grijpstra said.

  "What else did you do?"

  "I gave up on everything."

  "Got to be respectful," Bad George said, listening now.

  "Always talk nicely to Mr. Bear. From the heart. Like me, at the dump." He pounded his own heart. "Krip?"

  Grijpstra looked up, lobster claw in hand. "Yes, Bad George?"

  "Krip, you weren't trying to take that dead lady away from Mr. Bear, were you?"

  Grijpstra cracked the claw, pulled out white meat, dipped it in butter, filled up most of his mouth, chewed, swallowed, looked pleased. "Aaaaah."

  "Were you, Krip? To see what she looked like? Her hair and feet and all?"

  A silence kept stretching. Everybody ate lobster, cracking, sucking, digging, dipping, chewing.

  Grijpstra looked at de Gier. He half-dropped an eyelid.

  "A bazooka?" de Gier asked on cue. "Kathy Three really was hit by a bazooka?"

  Bad George looked at Flash. His head bent forward briefly.

  "Hairy Harry don't like us much," Flash Farnsworth said, "on account of what we know, taking Kathy Three out all the time, seeing things at sea. He don't know we don't tell nuthin'. No use telling when nobody don't do nuthin' nohow." Flash nodded solemnly. "But the sheriff keeps seeing us watching those salt bags hitting the sea near Rogue Island and he worries. So he sinks our tub." Flash shrugged. "No boat, can't see nuthin', don't tell nuthin'."

  "Scarirf us like that," Bad George said. "Sinking the Kathy Three"

  Aki brought more sour-dough biscuits to go with the lobsters. Kathy Two pushed a wet nose into Grijpstra's hand. Grijpstra dropped a biscuit on the floor. The dog pushed it around for a bit. "Got to sop it in butter first," Aki said, giving it back to Grijpstra. Grijpstra dunked the biscuit, apologized to Kathy Two, handed it down again. Kathy Two wagged her tail once, accepted the biscuit by gently holding on to it, front teeth only, before backing away, sitting down, dropping the treat, sniffing it in a careful and appreciative manner, picking it up again. She ate delicately.

  Grijpstra commented on the dog's dignity.

  "Been working on her some." Flash looked fierce.

  "She's learned a bit this time around, hasn't she?"

  "You don't beat her, do you?" de Gier asked.

  Flash hid his hands in his beard. "Can't expect a man to beat bis mother nohow."

  "So," de Gier said, in between sucking meat out of a spindly lobster leg, "Hairy Harry or Billy Boy put a missile through the Kathy Three?"

  "Them fellers will do anything," Flash said. "Them fellers got the weapons."

  "Who knows what they did exactly?"

  Bad George explained that he and Flash had left the boat on a mooring in Jameson Harbor with the tide going out. He himself caught the bus to visit family, and Flash was doing town things, getting supplies, stopping off everywhere, socializing, "fixin' up the world." But you can't fix the world, Bad George explained. You could, maybe, try to survive a while. "Like them dinosaurs when they heard the meteor was comin'."

  "Ain't easy survivin' without the Kathy Three," Flash Farnsworth said.

  Grijpstra, wanting to hear Aki's song again—the waitress's chant, as de Gier called it: "Buddah . . . Mikkekh . . . Heineka"—ordered more beer. He asked Bad George to elaborate on the loss of the Kathy Three.

  "Like with the Macho Bandido" Bad George said.

  De Gier knew about that. Released from his guilt now that Lorraine sat next to him, her thigh touching his, de Gier reported on work done in his new capacity, that of assistant to Private Investigator Grijpstra. De Gier had rowed out to where the yacht was anchored, fished up the anchor with a dragline, ascertained that the anchor cable had been cut. "Snipped, probably with wire cutters. That cable never broke from natural causes."

  "Sheriff saw you fishin' for that cable?" Flash asked.

  "Billy Boy was driving by," de Gier said.

  "Might be getting in the bazooka's sights yerself," Flash said.

  "Sheriff just used a regular hammer," Bad George replied to Grijpstra's query. "Kathy Three was so rotten, all she needed was a tap on a waterline board. The cracked board would sink her once the current sucked her out of the harbor."

  There was a moment ofsilence, a wake, to thank the old cabin cruiser for having been around so long, so usefully, and pleasurably. The company sent sympathy toward DeLorean Ledge, where Kathy Three was a wreck now, being slowly crushed by easy flowing waves, three miles out of Jameson, where Ishmael had located the dying vessel, looking down from his plane, radioing the message into Bern's Diner, adding that he would be joining the party shortly.

  "What to do?" Flash asked.

  "Buy a new boat," Grijpstra said. "What else?"

  How could Mr. Moneybags Eurodollar, asked Bad George, sit there and make such an exaggerated statement? A new boat the size of the former Kathy Three, a pleasure cruiser built as sturdily as a work boat, a new boat made out of new-fangled fiberglass (for no one used wood now, there wasn't any left), a new comparable vessel would cost over a hundred thousand dollars.

  "Here's what you do, Bad George," Grijpstra said. "You get yourself one hundred thousand dollars, say a hundred and twenty thousand dollars' worth of new vessel, complete with radar and loran and radio and depth finders and whatnot, rafts and dories, cabin heater, a refrigerator full of Buddah . . . Mikkelah . . . Heineka," Grijpstra sang, "a water heater for the shower...."

  "Flash Farnsworth don't shower much," Bad George said.

  "Don't you agree, Bad George?" de Gier asked reasonably. "Isn't poverty just a state of mind, an attitude, if you will?"

  Bad George, exhilarated by another beer, agreed that he and Flash would welcome an elevated state of mind producing the right attitude providing creative thinking that would have him and Flash boating about in Kathy Four. But just say, for argument's sake, that a fairy godmother granted the wish you were thinking of—this is America, ifyou don't have it, you import it. . . .

  Flash wanted to know if Catherine Deneuve could come along.

  De Gier smiled. "That's better."

  They were all cruising nicely at fifteen knots an hour, at five gallons of fuel an hour, to Eggemoggin Reach, Merchant's Row, and other magic thoroughfares south of the Twilight Zone, remote waterways the Kathy Three could never quite get to, when Flash pointed out that they hadn't done away with the sheriff's bazooka.

  "POW!" shouted Flash.

  Ishmael came in. Aki pulled up a chair. "How're you doin', Ishmael?"

  Ishmael was doing just fine. He'd been flying up till a few hours ago. Until his plane got shot down. He'd almost got shot down himself. Ishmael held up a leg to show a graze mark on his boot.

  "Bullet," Flash said.

  "Terminated the Tailorcraft," Ishmael said. He smiled bravely. It had been an adventure. Of course, he never thought he could land a disabled airplane against a hillside, at a forty-five-degree angle. Who had done t
he shooting? Ishmael wasn't too sure but later, after he scrambled down the hill's slope and reached the highway, there was friendly Hairy Harry offering a lift, and there was a scoped rifle in the Bronco, the nine-millimeter Mauser the sheriff was so fond of. Hairy Harry had been target practicing that afternoon. He told Ishmael he particularly liked hitting flying targets.

  "Warning shots," said Beth, who had cooked up another lobster for Ishmael, even though the kitchen was closed.

  Lorraine thought so too.

  "Warning who?" Grijpstra asked.

  "Warning you?" Aki asked.

  Ishmael wondered what to do without an airplane.

  "You get a new plane," Flash Farnsworth said. "Poverty is a state of mind."

  Ishmael agreed that a spic-and-span, spanking-new Cessna, feather light, fast even at impulse speed, was what was needed here. But say, for argument's sake, that he actualized himself an aircraft, wouldn't he still be a flying target?

  "POW!" shouted Bad George.

  They were still laughing when Billy Boy stopped his jeep in the twilight outside the diner, raised his wrist, studied his watch.

  "Can't serve beer after closing time," said Beth.

  "My place?" Ishmael asked.

  Loaded in de Gier's Ford product and Beth's bus, the party drove to Ishmael's old canning factory at the Point. Kathy Two sat on Grijpstra's lap, sticking out her braid-ears, looking out the Ford's side window, her twenty muscular toes massaging Grijpstra's thighs pleasurably. Grijpstra wondered how he could get Nellie and de Gier's cat Tabriz to agree to have a Kathy Two look-alike share their castle.

  "Just ask them," de Gier said.

  Grijpstra never liked it when de Gier was telepathic.

  Chapter 20

  The abandoned canning factory, de Gier had been told by Flash Farnsworth, contained the complete collection of What.

  "Of what?"

  Little Flash, weighed down by his bird-nest hairdo, deranged leprechaun in green coveralls and boots, rolling about on a damaged pelvis, might have embellished. "But he's close enough," Grijpstra said, following Ishmael, in charge of the tour. The cannery was square. It hid behind tall brick-faced cracked walls, and peered at the visitors out of half-shuttered windows, like half-glasses on an old man's face. The bigbuilding was overgrown with ivy, turning red at autumn's approach. There was a yard surrounded by sheds. The sheds contained cars, same make: Ford, same model: Pinto.

  "Nobody wants Pintos," Bad George said. "He got them all for free."

  "Because their gas tanks were supposed to blow up," Flash said. "Not that they did."

  Ishmael explained his "theory of contrariwise": Collect out of fashion, be rich on no money.

  "Why collect thirty-two identical giveaway motorcars?" Ishmael asked rhetorically. Ishmael explained his "theory of magic multiplication": Placement of identical objects achieves a magical effect. In multiplication possibilities increase magically. Ishmael pointed out the splendor in the placing of identical Pintos facing each other, in four Pintos diagonally arranged, in Pintos mounting another, in upside-down Pintos underneath themselves, in Pintos resting on their sides, tires touching.

  "Like making love to twins?" de Gier asked Lorraine.

  Beth thought the idea exciting. She suggested going to Hawaii to find identical Akis.

  "Identical Beths too?" Aki asked.

  There were other demonstrations of multiple magic. Ishmael showed them three objects, overgrown with dried seaweed and lichens. The objects were identical, nonidenti-fiable, and had been brought up by divers salvaging a sunken freighter in Jameson Bay. There was a light bulb illuminating the arrangement displayed on a trestle table.

  "Untitled," Ishmael said proudly.

  There were also collections ofthe similar nonidentical: rusted bird cages hung in the yard, some with toy birds inside, all with open doors. "Predicament in Birdland," Ishmael said. "Free to go, but where to? Like the crazy man in the Eastern Maine Mental Hospital. Kept in a cage near the nurses' station. He's being good so they open the cage, but he won't step out. He does step out when prodded, but he sits outside, one hand clutching a bar behind him. That's the way he feels safe.

  "That was you?" Grijpstra asked.

  No other, Ishmael explained. He had given up on religion at the time, had been institutionalized (due to odd behavior), while trying to deal with nothing. But he wasn't ready yet: no free rail for Ishmael while still holding on to his cage.

  "It ain't easy," Beth said. "Makes some people fat."

  Once inside the cannery there was a doll collection, arrays of tools, masks, neatly labeled boxes on shelves containing nails, screws, washers, nuts, handles, and hinges, writing implements, brushes, pens, fittings, light bulbs and tubes, cutlery, assorted hardware. Ishmael liked sorting through cast-ofls, leftovers after yard sales that he would pick up in a Pinto. Not that he intended to save waste. The entire universe might be waste. The universe could save itself.

  "You give this away?" de Gier asked. "Suppose somebody needs something?"

  "Come and get it," Ishmael said. "Step right up."

  "Art," Grijpstra said, admiring more Pintos. "This is Art."

  Not really, Ishmael said. Just something to do inside on rainy days. Or outside, weather permitting.

  Kathy Two, woofing, asked Grijpstra to carry her up a flight of narrow steps, too steep for her to manage. The cannery's second floor displayed bookend owls, of stone and other materials, ugly and moody looking, and models of flying dinosaurs suspended from ceilings—some were skeletons that glowed in the dark, some had leathery wings.

  "Uselessly wise," Ishmael said. "Beautifully extinct."

  There was also an obstacle course that Kathy Two used for performing tricks: leaping through hoops, sitting on a swing pushed by Ishmael, jumping across bars, finishing up by sitting patiently on a stool, both paws up, looking expectant. "Good Kathy Two," everyone said. There was applause. The dog smiled shyly.

  "She's learnin'," Flash said.

  "Kathy One was rude," Bad George said, "never even gave you the time of the day."

  "Not so easy," Ishmael said. "Living on food stamps in a burned-out trailer, keeping a drunk bum of a husband, having Flash for a son."

  "She had excuses," Flash agreed, "but never good enough. I told her she'd have to come back as a dog. There she is." He kissed the dog.

  Kathy Two snarled.

  "I'll be a dog next time I have to come back," Beth told Aki. "You can say you've been there but you don't live long and you sleep most of it."

  The music room was part of the third floor, with arrangements from the thirties. Ishmael pulled out picture books to show Art Deco sources. The music room's waint coting was dappled maple out ofa lumberyard fire sale. The higher part of the walls was lizard leather, peeled off a shipment of waterlogged ladies' shoes. Tulip-shaped lamp shades were glued together from colored stained-glass shards.

  "You just run into this?" Grijpstra asked.

  "It just runs into me," Ishmael said.

  "What if you lost the collection?" Grijpstra asked.

  Ishmael thought that might be nice too.

  Musical instruments were everywhere, centered by a set of drums that Grijpstra arranged around himself, a valve trombone that Beth could play, a saxello, three sets oftablas, a doussn' gouni, and a lyricon that Bad George tried but couldn't do all that much with, a dented and dirty trumpet that de Gier picked up, pods of various sizes, a gourd guitar that Flash put down because ofbroken strings, Ishmael's own upright piano. They couldn't play yet because Flash and Bad George still wandered about, trying things out. A melodica? No. An acoustic bass? Bad George claimed the bass. He found Flash a tuba.

  "Good," Grijpstra said, stirring soup with brushes on the snare drum, sideswiping a ride cymbal, setting up an up-tempo groove for everyone else. He worked the crash-cymbal too. "'Bemsha Swing'?" The bass drum thumped. De Gier blew the trumpet. "Beh."

  The beh didn't go anywhere, not even when Bad George matched it on bass.
Grijpstra never left the groove, singing Theloniouss tune to help things along. Bad George caught on, walked the changes, supported the groove. Ish-mael came in too. He had heard "Bemsha Swing" on de Gier*s sound equipment, had tried it before, repeated the theme now, in high note clusters on the upright piano. Flash's tuba put in a hoot that hit it right, encouraging Beth to come in on trombone. Aki sang. Lorraine rang some cowbells.

  The ensemble was off then, without de Gier. De Gier shook debris out of his trumpet—a previous player's solid saliva (it was a wonder he didn't get sick), a rats nest—risking bubonic plague just for a little music; what he wouldn't do for others, he said later.

  Waiting for de Gier to front on his horn, the ensemble produced waves of rhythm, held steady by Grijpstra on brushed cymbals and snare drum. Trombone and voice harmonized, structured by Bad George on the bass. Flash, barely breathing into the tuba, helped shape the duet. Ishmael trilled more piano notes.

  De Gier kept trying. "Beh."

  "Tuh TAH! the trumpet sang finally. They all had it then. Lorraine too, shaking the theme on a tambourine.

  After "Bemsha Swing" came "Endless Blues," de Gier's own composition. The trumpet cried some. Aki's voice cried too. Grijpstra rolled his toms ecstatically, for he was back in the dory, facing Nellie, and Hokusai waves. He played the waves on cymbals. Bad George sounded Mr. Bear's slow footsteps on the bass. Aki sang the loon's chuckle. Coyotes wailed again on the trumpet but there were also the lava beaches of Hawaii's Kona Coast, mostly in duets oftrombone and voice, with long subdued notes to indicate sunsets, volcanos glowing at night, sun-shot froth on cresting waves. Little intricacies on piano and dry ticking against the side of Grijpstra's snare drum supplied contrasts between scenes, also discipline to contain melodrama. A solo by Bad George on the bass, which he brushed gently with an almost hairless bow, impressed Kathy Two so much that she rolled over to display a pink belly, before jumping up to bark sharply. There were car engines growling outside, cutting out when Billy Boy's voice shouted commands. Then there was Hairy Harry's posse stamping up the cannery's stairs.

  Chapter 21