He turned on the radio and swerved when he heard Stinky Wiggler’s voice—but it was just a disc in the sound system. He tuned in the news instead.
American Pirate Radio was reporting that a powerful earthquake had caused a catastrophe in South Dakota. What was puzzling to scientists was the select damage done by the quake, which had been dubbed Crazy Horse. From the Black Hills in the west, all across the state, go-kart tracks, instant-food franchises, casinos, motels, and tourist trading posts had all been leveled, while aftershocks were felt as far away as the Vitessalith in Minneapolis. Most noticeably, the presidential heads of Mount Rushmore had cracked and fallen into a heap, which many people described as resembling a composite bust (referred to thereafter as the Unknown President).
In other news Minson Fiske, now the wealthiest athlete in the world, had reappeared following his strange disappearance during the “Red Out” of LosVegas, as it had come to be known. Apparently, the gay heavyweight had been treated for an unspecified head wound in a veterinary clinic, the best facility that could be found given the disaster. It was believed that the champion had been overrun by his adoring fans and inadvertently injured. What the media didn’t know was that the real cause of the damage was the shock of discovering his long-lost and presumed dead homosexual father wearing a mint-chocolate evening dress and having intercourse with his mother on the table of a Chinese salamander restaurant.
The media also didn’t know that upon regaining consciousness, Minson’s first thoughts were of the three Chinese men he’d seen in his dream—warning him about the rise of the Gay Bully Movement, an unfortunate side effect of his victory. And as to the future, the media could only speculate, but with a fortune now at his disposal Minson would soon retire his parents to an island in the Caribbean where Eartha Proud would become a powerful Voudun leader.
Aretha never went back to Manhattan. He gave up his dreams of societal revolution and reinvented himself—sharing a beach house with Eartha and a slovenly iguana named Flip Wilson, teaching island children while dabbling at fashion design. His days with the Satyagrahi faded out of his mind as completely as his time as a lawyer. Very rarely, early in the morning, would he dream of the tunnels again—or of Clearfather—and only once more did he ever see a personal manifestation of Dooley Duck and Ubba Dubba—strolling in the moonlight along the beach with a child, part duck, part orangutan. But almost daily he felt their presence, that peculiar transparent connectedness that he’d experienced on Ronald Reagan Boulevard. He never discovered the truth about Finderz Keeperz, which was just as well.
What the media did know all about was Wynn Fencer, or at least his official persona. The brain-dead multitrillionaire had expired in a private facility in St. Paul, leaving behind a hologram will. Complete control of his estate and the CEO-ship of the Vitessa Corporation fell to Julian Dingler, who was at that moment considering relocating corporate HQ to Pittsburgh—to a new complex to be built on the old site of Macropotamia.
On his way back from a whirlwind visit to Vitessa offices in Europe, Dingler stopped in New York to give a press conference, where he outlined an agenda of deep-tissue reforms. Yankee Stadium was chosen as the venue and was packed to capacity for the occasion. Among the major commitments put forward, he promised to disband the secret facilities and to open all R&D projects to public scrutiny. “We will air out the labyrinth that Vitessa has become,” he said. “We are putting a ban on the release of all new psychoactive medication produced by any of our subsidiaries and will be inviting a team of independent experts to assess and report on the efficacy and/or danger of all products currently in circulation. We will also be drastically revising the structure of our businesses. We intend to reinstate the distinction between business and government and to eradicate the distinction between business and humanitarian values. Vitessa has the personnel, the intellectual property, and the financial resources to develop a new definition of Quality of Life that is sustainable around the planet. The grotesque greed is going to end. Wholesale destruction of ecosystems and enslavements of people will stop. We’re going to prove to the creatures of this planet and to ourselves that humanity is not an ending but a beginning.
“And now, to commemorate this pledge and to lead us in a kind of prayer, are Dooley Duck and Ubba Dubba—who have a very special announcement to make.”
The enormous cartoon creatures were greeted with thunderous applause—reportedly heard from Flatbush to Palisades Park—as they led the crowd in an old-style rap version of “Back in the U.S.A.” before announcing that they were about to become the proud parents of a new kind of creature—and that they were inviting all people of the world to help in deciding on a name. Everyone could make a suggestion. All the names would go into a draw to be held on the Fourth of July, where the momentous selection would be made by Ariel Sturt, the brave leader of the children’s pro Duck + Dick movement, who’d been paralyzed from the waist down in an attack by Christian fundamentalists.
Listening to the ceremonious goings-on as the SPIRITCRUISER toodled north, Clearfather wondered if perhaps he too was a decoy, a backup. Maybe the real Messiah Upload, if there was one, was Dooley Duck and the mutant gift that he and Ubba Dubba were about to bring forth.
Cannon blasts ended the festivities in Yankee Stadium, after which Julian Dingler, as part of his promise to be more visible and accessible, shunned a limo or copter and took the subway to Harlem for a run through the streets to Central Park. His bodyguards vehemently opposed this move and Vitessa Intel was standing by with plenty of street-level support—but Dingler chose to be accompanied only by Dooley—and the sight of the enormous blue duck huffing and puffing alongside him was something that New Yorkers would never forget.
Without knowing it, Dingler and Dooley veered close to Fort Thoreau, where the entire compound was gathered on the other side of the Mirror Field to watch them pass. The Satyagrahi were celebrating the announcements Dingler had made—certain that Parousia Head must’ve had a hand in them—especially since she’d at last made contact after her long silence and appointed Beulah Schwartzchild as the new leader of the community, a decision greeted with initial surprise and then profound enthusiasm, in keeping with the new mood of healing and reinvention.
It was an eye-opening experience for Julian Dingler. He saw things that he wouldn’t soon forget—but the one that would stay with him the longest was a bizarre white man muttering amid the black people and the broken glass shining like broken glass in the sun. The skinny derelict was dressed in tinsel and cast-off rags—laughing to himself—with a huge ugly dog rolling along beside him. The mongrel’s back legs were built into a golf buggy with rusted wheels. Something about the way they moved made Dingler imagine that the trembling man and the broken-down dog were really one creature, cackling and creaking off into the obscurity of the city.
Meanwhile Clearfather’s thoughts were as calm as the pages of Wiggler’s book—and as open as the highway that took them over the Cimarron River.
The SPIRITCRUISER had a full tank of fuel, and he kept the shining blue-and-silver vehicle humming at an even speed, past a shotgunned old billboard rising out of a ragged field of cow corn.
HE THAT SHALL PERSEVERE UNTO THE END, HE SHALL BE SAVED.
—Matthew 10:22
Blind Lemon was strumming his guitar and singing . . . I’s up this mornin’ . . . blues walkin’ like a man . . .
“Yoo all right?” Maggie asked.
“Just a headache,” Clearfather answered. “Hey, you know what? We’re in Kansas.”
About the Author
KRIS SAKNUSSEMM’S work has appeared in the Boston Review, River Styx, The Hudson Review, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Kansas Quarterly, the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, Prairie Schooner, the Southwest Review, and Rosebud. He lives in Australia with his dingo and can be reached at www.saknussemm.com/dev/.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Villard Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2005 by Kris Saknussemm
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Villard Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
VILLARD and “V” CIRCLED Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Marge Crumbaker: Excerpt from “Boot Hill” by Marge Crumbaker and Pat Wilson. Reprinted by permission of Marge Crumbaker.
Edward B. Marks Music Company: Excerpt from “Bat Out of Hell” by James Steinman. Reprinted by permission of Edward B. Marks Music Company.
Hal Leonard Corporation: Excerpt from “Dust in the Wind” by Kerry Livgren. Copyright © 1977, 1978 EMI Blackwood Music Inc. and Don Kirshner Music Inc. All rights reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation on behalf of EMI Blackwood Music Inc.
Sony/ATV Music Publishing: Excerpts from “I Am the Walrus” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Copyright © 1967 (renewed) by Sony/ATV Tunes LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Universal Music Publishing Group: Excerpt from “Wichita Lineman” by Jimmy Webb. Copyright © 1968, 1996 by Universal-Polygram International Publishing, Inc./ASCAP. International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Universal Music Publishing Group.
Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc.: Excerpt from “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” by Steve Nelson and Walter Rollins. Copyright © 1950 (Renewed) Chappell & Co. (ASCAP). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc.
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