The Sea Beast Takes a Lover

by Michael Andreasen

  The tracks of his people lead beyond the carnival into a dense wilderness of gray birch and red cedar.

  Come, the bear says, gesturing back toward the midway. I have something to show you.

  * * *

  —

  Deep in the Cul-de-sac of Fun. The Viking ship. The King of Retired Amusements aboard, seated, displeased. The steward frowning at the controls, pulling the lever fruitlessly, fingering buttons with little confidence.

  He has dreaded this moment since the night Rudy Vermiglia, the royal engineer, absconded with the queen. In between consoling the inconsolable king in the starlit parking lot of the La Quinta Inn and coaxing him onto his feet and back into the motel room before his cries of cuckolded anguish drew the attention of the other guests, the steward had envisioned with trepidation this precise scenario. Machines had a history of disobedience in his presence, and the scout could barely be counted on to stay within shouting distance, let alone to troubleshoot technical difficulties. Now, here in the terrible present, the steward stands engineerless, brow creased, hands slick with perspiration, his lord and employer seated in the mock longship, perilously unamused.

  “We wish to feel the rock of the waves,” the king says, impatience agitating a stomach already on the verge of sedition, “to know the kiss of the wind. We wish to command the horizon, to see it bow and rise before us, as is our sovereign right.” The flag atop the faux mast crispens in salute. The faux rigging is at the ready.

  “What,” the king inquires, “is the goddamn holdup?”

  “I beg your indulgence, Majesty,” the steward says. “The device is uncooperative.” He reaches into his attaché case and consults the diagnostic checklist that accompanied Rudy Vermiglia’s letter of resignation.

  Is there power running to the mechanism? the checklist asks.

  A light is on, so yes, one would assume, power is being received.

  Are any of the lights red or green?

  The illuminated light is yellow, which suggests little by way of either readiness or lack of readiness. Caution, it seems, is the message. But caution against what? The pulling of the lever? The steward has already pulled the lever several times, so his hope is—no, not that. The depressing of buttons? One of the red buttons has already been depressed, and has remained depressed.

  Is/are the safety system(s) engaged?

  Could this depressed red button represent the safety system(s)? If he pressed it again, would it undepress, thereby disengaging the safety system(s)?

  The steward presses the red button again. It does not undepress. The light does not change. It is still yellow, the color of abeyance, unease, hesitation.

  Is there a hard lock, and, if so, has the proper key been inserted and turned, releasing the lock?

  In an interior panel, nestled under a muscle of wire, obscured by a misinstalled switch cover, a secret hidden behind secrets, small, unassuming, bashful in the sunlight: a hard lock. One might look for hours and still miss it. Digging into the pocket of his velvet coat for his key ring, the steward wonders how many small answers like this he has missed over the years, discreet solutions to life’s puzzles that can be found only by those who know precisely what to look for. He wonders, was this ride, maybe even this entire carnival, abandoned simply because someone could not find the right metaphorical lock? And if he had discovered a different metaphorical lock years ago, and fitted it with the correct metaphorical key, would he be standing here now, on this gray autumn day, in this livery, serving this king?

  The steward inserts and rotates the appropriate key, releasing the lock. The machine howls to life. The yellow light turns green, indicating satisfaction, announcing readiness, recognizing authority, command, control.

  The steward pulls the lever, and at once the Viking ship is pendulous.

  The king, however, has been rocking for a while. He is the victim of food poisoning. His skin is pallid. He sweats. As the ship’s arc widens, the king is made to feel the physical force of today’s mistake, followed quickly by the psychic force of a lifetime of human error, his gaffes, his royal miscalculations. As sky and earth swap seats, he is visited again by his catastrophic failures. The purchase of Humbolt’s Puppet Theatre in Barksdale, for example. The decision to walk the ten miles to Greavesport, Michigan, in January, without properly insulated footwear. The hot dog. The queen left alone with Rudy Vermiglia while he inspected Gizmo’s Giant Go-Getter. These regrets float above him now in the faux rigging, unaffected by the Cuisinarting of the world. They mock and assail him, call him a disgrace, a punch line, a pretender-king.

  It was in moments like this, when his guts were in tumult and his brain felt unmoored from his body, that the queen would take his head in her lap and say to him, “Quiet now, just quiet.” Would whisper to him, “Just shut up.” Would say to him, “You’re shitfaced,” or “You smell like total ass,” or “Jesus Christ, when will you learn?” And her fingers, soft as daffodils, would set aside his crown, twist tufts of his sideburns into knots, and pull the hairs of his ears from their tender follicles until, red and swollen, he slid into dreamless sleep. And later, when he left their motel room to survey a new park or arcade, she would say, “Bring back cigarettes.”

  “Bring back cigarettes,” her eyes lost in contemplation of the television, her fingers delicately balancing a butt above the ashtray, or the Bible, or the cigarette-burned silk of her slip. “Bring back cigarettes,” with the distraction of a goddess. “Bring back cigarettes,” and he would marvel that words so holy had ever been uttered.

  He brought back cartons. He showered her with menthols and ultra-lights, filtered and unfiltered, and, for a time, they were happy.

  * * *

  —

  The fun house. Animatronic vampires and ghouls. The rattling of chains, or perhaps just a recording of it. The moaning is almost certainly on a loop. The jolting screams are too earnest to be real.

  The scout has been led by his animal guide through the maze of mirrors to a room made to look like a graveyard. Their entrance triggers a sensor that activates the smoke machine. The bear stands upright on his ball, which now glows a night-light green, filled with what looks like a swarm of fireflies. With a giant paw, he swipes at the rubber bats dangling from the ceiling. Though they are indoors, there are trees, grass. The tombstones are Styrofoam, the skeletons glow-in-the-dark Plasticast. Hovering above an open grave with an exposed casket is the incorporeal spirit of one of the scout’s ancestors.

  “Hail, John Bennington, son of Bryce and Courtney, who walks the Unmanicured Path,” the ancestral spirit says. “And to you, Sage of Boyhoods, who rolls the world beneath him.” The spirit wears an opalescent-white golf shirt over tan chinos. A salmon pink cardigan rests on its shoulders like a mantle. Its spectral hair is handsomely thinned, and its sockless, loafered feet hover just above the floor. At the lip of the open grave, the ghost of a Pekinese lies napping.

  The dancing bear yawns grandly, maneuvering on the ball until he is flat on his belly. Hail, great spirit, he says. Our meeting is fortunate, for John Bennington has many questions to ask regarding the ways of his people.

  “Then he shall ask them,” the ancestral spirit says, “and be answered.”

  But the scout says nothing. Hearing the spirit speak the names of parents he has never known has caught him off guard. For a moment, there is only the sound of recorded moaning and the leaky-tire hiss of the smoke machine. The ancestral spirit clears its throat. The bear is irritated. The dreaming Pekinese rolls over on its back and bicycles the air with its paws.

  For example, the bear interjects, John Bennington may wish to learn the wisdom of the Homeowners Association. Tell him how a strict observance of yard-waste disposal guidelines helps to maintain harmony with nature.

  “And property values,” the ancestral spirit says.

  That, too, the bear says.

  “No,” the scout sa
ys, finally finding his voice. “Tell me why my people left me at the Gavin’s Point boardwalk to guess the weights of drug addicts.”

  The ancestral spirit looks momentarily cowed. It pretends to check an e-mail on its cell phone. “Are you sure you would not rather ask another question?” the spirit asks. “About your place in this world, perhaps? Have you no wish to access the volumes of cultural insight bequeathed to you by your people?”

  Tell him the parable of the independent subcontractor and the hornets’ nest, the bear says.

  “Yes,” the spirit says. “That’s a good one.”

  “No,” the scout repeats. “Why was I abandoned?” The Pekinese suddenly stirs. This exchange is unexpected, and worth being awake for.

  It is not your people’s way to ask such direct questions of their ancestors, John Bennington, the bear says. It makes them uncomfortable.

  “I do not know our ways,” the scout says.

  “That is why I am here,” the ancestral spirit says.

  “Why do they flee?” the scout asks. “Are they in danger?”

  “Ours is a story of constant discomfort, of inconvenience that knows no end,” the spirit proclaims in a voice meant to carry over the crackle of backyard terra-cotta fire pits and the chewing of caprese-salad skewers. “Dilapidation makes us uneasy,” it explains, “and passé architecture offends us. We search for new exclusive and ergonomically designed recreations as one might look for a sun that has already set, a moon that is always new, for no place is ever truly ours and ours alone, to lounge in as we please in safety and in peace. And so, we are restless wanderers, nomads ever in search of richer, more authentic distractions. We demand the very best from life, which sometimes means leaving things behind.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” the scout wants to know. But he knows.

  “You must not ask in this way,” the ancestral spirit says. The Pekinese has returned to its nap. The bear is also asleep, snoring hard into the green glow of his ball. The artificial smoke hangs low in the room. It smells sterile and chemical. It is nothing like real smoke, heavy with vaporized sap and hot with embers. When the boy departs, it will not cling to his clothes and linger in his hair.

  “Screw it,” the scout says. He leaves the room, its skeletons and its ghosts. He leaves the bear asleep on his ball. A mannequin dressed like a menacing clown knife-points the way to the exit. The boy does not startle as the fake guillotine blade falls inches from his heels. He escapes the imaginary perils of the fun house in one piece, but outside, with the sun mostly gone and the day growing colder, he is not sure which direction to follow. His compass is attuned only to absence. Outside the fun house, the needle inside him pirouettes, unable to locate anyplace more lonesome than the ground upon which he stands.

  * * *

  —

  Full tilt. The good earth perpendicular, then parallel, then perpendicular. A universe upside down. Vomit on the royal ermine. The Viking ship is a swing possessed, a cradle gone mad. This, the king knows, is what comes from trusting engineers. This is the fruit of their handiwork.

  “God in heaven!” he proclaims between barfs. “Deliver us from this evil!”

  The steward returns the lever to its first position. The arc of the ship acutes. The King of Retired Amusements collapses onto the boarding platform and dry heaves through the grate.

  “Perhaps a respite,” the steward says.

  “You are sent from hell to destroy me,” the king says.

  The steward offers his sovereign a handkerchief and, with great deference, hoists him onto his feet.

  “There is a bench,” he says.

  “Unsuitable,” the king wheezes. He points to a nearby attraction. “There.”

  “Your Majesty, I must protest.”

  “Not to ride,” the king says, the handkerchief over his mouth, in case. “Just to sit.”

  The teacups. Minus waltz, and whimsy, and passengers, save for the king, who growls and retches against the pastel floor of the ride, and the steward, who apologizes ardently, but only to a point. When the hot dog is mentioned, he says nothing. When the engineer is mentioned, he says nothing. When the queen is mentioned, he readies another handkerchief. It is not his fault, nor the king’s, nor the engineer’s. It is the fault of a world in constant motion. Even here, in the stillness of the teacup, its shifting is too wild and too unpredictable for any to move safely within it.

  The dancing bear rolls up to the ride. His ruff has the crumpled look of having been slept on. His fez hangs low on his brow. Every few minutes he sniffs the air, redirects his muzzle, sniffs again, whimpers.

  “Is that the boy?” the king asks from the floor of his teacup.

  “No, sire,” the steward says, “the animal.”

  “That little twerp had better show up soon,” the king says, “or he can stay lost.”

  But the threat is a hollow one. The King of Retired Amusements, lord of salvage and recoup, is not in the business of leaving things behind. He will not lose another member of the cortège if he can help it, and when he can no longer help it, when it becomes clear that the scout will not return, and the bear will not stop grieving, and the steward will not survive another winter with his fealty intact, he will press on alone. Absent cape and crown and royal retinue, he will wander the earth in search of those joyless cavities crying out for the last remaining attention the world has to offer. He does not choose the things he keeps, but keeps all he can. There is no good or bad. For him, any carnival will do, any hot dog, any queen. It is not that he prefers the worn and discarded. It is that, in the end, he cannot tell the difference.

  The steward gathers his velvet coat around him and scans the area for proper shelter. He knows they will not make it back to the motel by nightfall. They will go to sleep hungry on the floor of the Independence Day Gazebo in the middle of the All-Holiday Promenade. That night, the steward will wake to the sound of weeping. He will reach for his last unsoiled handkerchief before realizing that it is not the king, but the bear atop his ball, sobbing in his sleep. The sound will be great and low, like the crying of a mountain, and into that sound the steward will smuggle his own small grief, his own ruings and regrets, which he knows have no place in a world of such delight.

  He Is the Rainstorm and the Sandstorm, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

  The puddle has a strange shape, like a continent. The rain falls into it in little blips, and for a while I imagine I’m looking at a map of the world, and that each drop is a person being born somewhere. It’s happening about that fast, people being born all the time like little blips, most of them better than me. Prettier, I think. Or nicer. I wouldn’t like to guess how many, though I imagine it’s a lot—the number of people being born this very moment who are prettier or nicer or smarter. Better somehow.

  My aunt had one a few months ago, our beautiful Paul. Paul, I can already tell, is in that group of better people. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Paul ended up being better than most everyone, including his mother and mine, and the people in our neighborhood, and even all the really good and wonderful people living in other countries and everybody. There’s something about him. He’s more than just our baby, and he knows it.

  His nose and eyes are perfect. Everything about his face is. He smiles uncontrollably, and when he stops, you only have to rub his cheeks gently with your finger to get him to start smiling again, and he laughs at nothing. He laughs by himself in the dark. He is so beautiful, with a little bit of brown hair growing wild from the top of his head, and you know he’s going to grow up perfectly, and you could almost hate him for it, and you could almost do something terrible to him if he wasn’t always smiling at you every time you tried to lay a finger on him—a bright, trusting smile that freezes you in your tracks.

  My mother says that they abandon babies in some places. They leave them in forests or on mountains to die, to be eaten by animals or d
rowned by rain or starved to death, crying out with their little lungs until something stops them. But this could never happen to Paul. It wouldn’t work on him. If anyone ever left Paul to die in a forest or on a mountain, someone kind with a good heart would find him and take him in, and if no one did, God would come for him, and assume him into heaven the way he did with the Virgin Mary, his whole body and everything, and it would be all of them up there, God and Jesus and the Virgin and Paul, all sunny and smiling down at us.

  I feed him with a bottle when my aunt, Connie is her name, lets me. She’ll give me a bottle filled with her breast milk, one that’s a little warm, and though I don’t want to feed him with the bottle, when she’s watching I don’t have a choice. When Aunt Connie’s not watching, when she’s in the backyard or napping on the sofa, I roll up my shirt and lean over Paul and press my bare nipple against his lips and try to feed him that way, but mostly he just laughs and won’t take it, I think because he knows he’s better than me. He’s better than Aunt Connie, too, but he takes her nipple because she’s his mother. Mine are small and pale and don’t pucker, but I know that if he would only try, milk would come, and he would understand that I can help, that I have something to give.

  I finish putting the white trash bags in the bins beside the house, and my mother, everyone calls her Fab, calls me in out of the rain, away from the blip-blip of little babies being born everywhere, littering the puddle map like the helicopter seedpods in our lawn, which are wet now and sticking to my bare feet. Our house is three stories but small. It moans like a ghost on windy days like today. We moved here with Aunt Connie a few months before Paul was born. I track seedpods into the house and Fab is mad at me for being wet and strips off all my clothes, which are soaked through. Then she slaps me on my bare bottom—but not in a mean way, more in a get-going way—and tells me to go up to my room and put on something dry.