Gojiro

by Mark Jacobson

  The monster rolled his eyes. He hated when Komodo went PBS on him. Besides, the reptile wasn’t about to concede that a brace of gnarly Joshua trees and a couple of frightwig ocotillos silhouetted against the pinkish sky amounted to any kind of bounty, except to raise the ante of the one Fate had conspired to place upon his head. The night came up fast, took its big gulp with striking suddenness. The blackness assaulted, laughed out loud. Go ahead, it seemed to say, cocky and aloof, fill me up . . . if you can.

  Wasn’t that the riff when you stared into a vacuum—that there’s something in the Universe that can’t abide a blank? Certainly it had been so back on Radioactive Island, before their sun, their moon, before Budd Hazard. And how magnificent it had been to respond to that emptiness! To forge, out of nothingness, somethingness. A pure act, as if the creation of Cosmo was reflexive, instinctive, involuntary, Prewire.

  But this wasn’t Radioactive Island. This was the Mojave, the Sonoran, the Sangre de Cristo. This was a cavity of another kind, a mocking, foreign void. It enveloped that hermetic limo, flaunted its emptiness. Gojiro glanced over at Komodo. He was sitting there, jotting in his diary, the shadows playing across his sad countenance. The monster was beginning to worry about Komodo; how long could he keep dredging hope from despair, how long would his faith continue to fly in the face of fact? What, really, did he expect to find out here in this alien night? Even if Sheila Brooks had seen something in Komodo’s stereopticon, what effect could it have on the Triple Ring Promise? Their great Vow grew from Cosmo, was defined by Cosmo, could only be consummated in Cosmo—Radioactive Island Cosmo. How much could Budd Hazard’s philosophy be worth here?

  Gojiro looked out the window again, shivered. Sure, they say Ideas spread like wildfire, that there’s no containing them once the fever starts. But think about it: How much hay would those padres have hoed without the clank of armor and the come-on of capital’s dropped handkerchief? How deep into the heart of Asia would the sultans have swayed sans the scimitar? No, man, the only way to get a square peg through a round hole is with an M-16, and that don’t even work most times. Maybe Helen Gurley Brown is coast-to-coast, but Cosmo, stripped down to Thought and Thought alone, don’t travel, first class or otherwise.

  Cosmo was really a small-town thing, the monster thought, a sweaty hedge against oblivion, a fragile conceit in need of perpetual custodial care. You had to know what your Cosmo knew, what it could do and what it couldn’t, never ask it to jump through any hoop it hadn’t jumped through a million times before. Back on Radioactive Island, this was easy enough. The Island was a cosmologic safe house, a closed experiment. It wasn’t like some wildeyed debunker, some revolutionist contra-Darwin, was about to beagle through the Cloudcover spouting heresies at any moment, crack the tablets of Beam and Bunch. On Radioactive Island, a million questionable checks could be written: The piper would never be coming ’round, looking to get paid.

  But out here, in this mournful desert pressing toward the Arizona line, nothing was safe. Here there were no stage-manageable questions, only the sixty-four-thousand-dollar kind that can turn even the most well-prepped Cosmo into a cow, a big-bottomed bovine standing walleyed in the onrush of an eighteen-wheeler’s fog lights.

  “Duh.”

  Komodo turned away from the window. “Did you say something, my own true friend?”

  “Yeah. I said duh.”

  “Duh?”

  “You do it good. Like a regular Big Moose. Duh. That’s what happens when you twist a Cosmo’s arm hard enough. You make it say duh. You turn it into a Duh Cosmo.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The monster almost chortled. “You hear that one about those Paiutes. They was from around here somewheres. They looked out on this very nothingness and were spurred to come up with a fully self-sufficient system. They built themselves a millennium over at Walker Lake. Pantheons of gods, the whole scene. Then, zoom, the military-industrial complex is knock, knock, knocking on their bit o’ heaven’s door. Killing their buffalos and worse. And the Paiutes is freaking out ’cause their Plan don’t got a contingency for John Wayne.”

  “What did they do?” Komodo asked with concern.

  “What else could they do? Not exactly like you can change central metaphors in midstream. They went into a state of crisis. They pushed their Cosmo to the wall, made it say something, anything. So what’s it do? It spits out a Vision. A secret Vision. It talks through shaman, says dance all night, call back the ancestors, go out the next morning wearing shirts painted white. Then every Colt’s bullets be turned away.”

  “But what happened?”

  “What happened? What do you think happened? They got their asses shot off. They don’t exist no more. They’re out of the picture. Don’t even got a bingo wheel to turn. That’s what happens when a Cosmo goes past the Duh Point: You beg disaster.”

  “That’s very sad, my own true friend,” Komodo answered sincerely.

  “Sad? I dunno. It’s hard for a Cosmo to keep up these days. The Trans-Amazon be littered with corpses of dead religions. Petered-out cults for days. The Modern World’s a hammerlock. Every hour it makes a million macrocosms sing a screechy harmony of duhhhh. Call that sad? Maybe it’s just in the way of things. You can’t be sad about the implacable.”

  Komodo looked at Gojiro with piercing eyes. “What are you trying to say, my own true friend?”

  “I’m trying to say you can’t lay the heavy litmus on a bunch of campfire stories. I’m trying to say that we’re out here in the middle of nowhere looking for a needle when we don’t even know what a haystack looks like. I’m trying to say I got a bad vibe about this, like we’re past the Duh Point, heading into big trouble.”

  The moonlight was on Komodo’s face now, like through a scrim. He seemed different, far away. “I understand your feelings, my own true friend. There is much truth in what you say. But, tell me, is this land really so foreign to us? What is to say that it is not as ingrained in our souls as Radioactive Island itself? Is it not possible that there are Universal landscapes, terrain that is known by all, whether they have actually dwelled within it or not? Could it not be the same with Ideas? Perhaps there are some Ideas that are not hemmed by time or space or country of origin. Is it not possible that, through the vagaries of history and fate, an idea becomes the Idea, the single Way to Salvation?”

  Gojiro narrowed his lids. “I don’t believe in Ideas like that.” Then he turned to look at his friend. Komodo did not return his gaze. “Anyone who does is a dangerous gambler. A potentially crazy man. I think he should think twice before he imagines himself fit to walk on purple carpets, unless he’s ready to unleash a whirlwind.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, my own true friend,” Komodo said, the shadows deepening his eye sockets. “But what choice do we have?” Then he turned to look forward, into the onrush of the night.

  The Big Picture

  WHEN GOJIRO FIRST SCOPED THAT BIG PICTURE he figured it had to be the Varanidid. What else could that fabulous beast be, hologrammed against the black velvet night, dancing, shimmering, shifting from ghost to flesh and back again? The V-did! Esteemed Hero of Zards, Peerless Champion of Lavarock! Sometimes, during his recurring dreams of the Precious Pumice, Initiates would speak of the Varanidid, always in hushed and reverent tones. Of course, the conversation was nothing he, a youngest zardplebe—not yet immersed in the Black Spot—could understand, but an essence could be gleaned. He’d been big once, this Varanidid, bigger than big; back in the chaotic times he performed an act of unimaginable greatness, without which the Line could never have come into being. But the details of that matchless feat had faded from the collective brainpan. Not even the oldest and wisest could remember exactly who the Varanidid was, what he looked like, what he’d done. All that remained was the reverence, and the conviction that should the life-giving connection of Bunch and Beam ever again be thrown into the swell of Crisis, the Varanidid would return.

  “What big thing did this Varanidid do?” G
ojiro once asked Komodo, in those early days. “Think he ranks?”

  Komodo looked up from his book, rubbed his chin. “In my readings, I have encountered other figures who are believed to have accomplished an essential service—one Great Act—and then receded from view, leaving only the dimmest memory of their achievement. As time goes on, even that memory ebbs, leaving the knowledge of their feat to burrow ever deeper into the unconscious, where it may be accessed only by the incalculable workings of Myth.”

  Gojiro lay back, watching the Radioactive Island sky swirl above him like so much creamer spooned into a coffee cup. “A Hero from beyond remembering. Vague, past knowing. I like this Varanidid.” After that, the idea snowballed, drawing impetus from the persistent flow of boys’ books washing up on the coastlines. Stuffed between dogeared and waterlogged covers were stories of boy detectives, boy world travelers, boys in outer space, Hardy Boys. Gojiro could never get enough of these sagas. “Read it again,” the monster called, “the part about how he dedicates his life to be a friend to those who have no friends.”

  One night, moved by the tale of White Fang’s indomitable fortitude, Gojiro jumped to his feet. “I’ve got it—who the Varanidid is! It ain’t like he’s any particular masked man, a specific tights-wearing paragon. He is a wellspring of bravery and pluck inside any and all beings. His courage is etched into the heart of those who accept him.”

  Then, thrusting forward the Triple Rings on his chest, the monster gathered Komodo up in his great claws, looked toward the Cloudcover. “Wherever lurks the black mouth of night, ready to gobble up the slight, I’ll be there! Wherever the Heater’s scald is near, menacing the infirm with its sear, I’ll be there!

  “That’ll be me—the Modern Age Varanidid. A ronin lonecat, a beacon in the night, fighting for right!

  “This is my purpose in life! I know this now!”

  * * *

  Didn’t exactly turn out that way, the monster thought, the limo’s stale air-con clammy on his leathers. He thought of all the time he and Komodo had spent casting about, looking for the model of the Varanidid he might become. The current heroic landscape was barren, chocked with nothing but screwfaced cops in screeching Corvettes, whisks of hair showing through their open shirts. So they looked to the past, to old Aeneas, who crossed the threshold of the Underworld, dragged his dad on his back, founded the City. In Virgil’s weathered pages, Gojiro saw light. To enter a cavern, profound, wide-mouthed and huge, to stride boldly past gods and ghosts, this sounded more like it. “No barking dog keep me back, don’t care how many heads he got.”

  Komodo was hesitant. “But my own true friend,” he said, “within the Evolloo, there is no such thing as an Underworld, no gods with whom to curry favor or defy.” Gojiro saw Komodo’s point immediately. Maybe once upon a time Persephone purloined a pomegranate beneath the surface of the earth, but if you went down there now it would be nothing but a deserted subway tunnel, a taxpayer’s boondoggle crawling with sneering rats and Morlocks. A Hero, the monster realized, could only be a Hero in the context of his Cosmo. Fail to heed that dictum and even the most sharpsnouted of Redeemers might find himself lost in a labyrinth of T-mazes, take a wrong turn, and wind up getting shot by a squinting pig farmer. What kind of swath would he cut across all imagination then?

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Gojiro told Komodo. “Later for Aeneas. We don’t even look Italian.”

  They kept looking for a heroic model, finding every Beowulf and Grendel somehow wanting. The Varanidid’s mantle remained unfulfilled.

  Except now, out in that desert. Who was that Beast, that spectacular flicker stitched against the night? It was so huge! So magnificent! The way it stood on top of a mountain, beating its fists on a jutting chest spoke of Power itself. But it was a Power tempered with depthless Mercy; you could see that in the crimsony eyes. What a commanding presence! Just beholding such grandeur made Gojiro dizzy.

  It was then, however, that he felt that limo door slam shut. “Please stay here,” Shig barked. Gojiro wasn’t dreaming; he wasn’t even asleep. That image in front of him—it wasn’t any timeless Varanidid, it was only a picture on a piece of sleazy celluloid projected onto a giant drive-in movie screen. That prodigious being, that hallucinatory champion, was nothing more than the above-the-title player in the idiot film Gojiro vs. the Enigma-Inking Squid at the Rock of Knowledge.

  “Fuck!” Was there ever a joke he wasn’t the butt of? The reptile buried his head in the plush seat. “Desert be a bitch. It even makes a mirage of your delusions.”

  “My own true friend. You are awake.”

  “Yeah. I’m awake,” Gojiro replied dismally. “Why we stopping here?”

  Komodo motioned at Shig, who was walking toward the screen, a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. It was a box-office check. Shig had been at it ever since they got to America. Every time they passed a theater where a Gojiro movie was playing, the hardeyed martinet marched into the manager’s office and demanded to see the books. He knew the nut of every house, kept a running account of exactly how much each outlet owed. His collection methods exceeded any smashnose thumb-breaker; he tolerated no song, no dance. Just two days before, he had detected a minor fudge in the figures of the Arcade Theatre, a wino joint downtown where they doubledated Gojiros with kung fus. The cigar-chewing manager tried to give guff, but Shig drew his sword and started slicing up the theater’s screen from the back side right in the middle of the Will Rogers appeal. The cash came. That’s where, Shig was going right then, to the box office of the Desert View Motor Cinema, to make them pay.

  “Least he could do is bring back some popcorn,” the reptile muttered.

  Komodo didn’t answer. Staring up at the picture on the drive-in screen, he was choked up. Even after Shig’s treachery had been discovered, there wasn’t a single Gojiro movie, no matter how inane, that failed to bring a lump to his throat. “You look very . . . impressive, my own true friend.”

  Gojiro allowed himself a peek. It was bizarre; he’d never seen the supposed King of Monsters this way before, in his silvery screen natural habitat. Sure, he’d checked those stolen flickers on the Dish—how could he resist?—but compared to this, the Dish was a postage stamp. This was tremendous. In fact, at four hundred feet (a near one-to-one ratio between the actual size of the star and his representation), the screen of the Desert View Motor Cinema was the highest point in the whole southeast section of the state. It was the tallest drive-in in the Free World. At least that’s what the theater’s original owner, a former assistant night manager at South of the Border, claimed when he opened it years before. Even now, with half its listening poles bent to crazy angles by assaulting fenders, its towering screen pitted by termites, and dozens of 12-gauge shells pumped through its SWAP MEET EVERY SAT. sign, the Desert View dominated the otherwise empty skyline. There was no doubt about it, Gojiro acknowledged—with a head as big as Goodyear blimps, eyes that whirled like runaway ferris wheels, and a mouth ringed round with razortop teeth, he cut quite a figure up there. A garish monolith amid all that black, he was impressive.

  Besides, even if he’d never admit it, he kind of liked Gojiro vs. the Enigma-Inking Squid at the Rock of Knowledge. It made him laugh thinking back to when they shot the film. What a sideshow it was, coaxing that brainless giant squid up Disinformation Hill, getting it to clutch its deca-legs around the massive fortune-telling eightball. Komodo didn’t have much time for costuming, so all those “Press” fedoras the Atoms wore were the same size, meaning they were way too small for the hydrocephalics and fell down over the eyes of the pinheads. As usual the Atoms blew their lines. It must have taken a hundred drool-showered retakes before they were able to say, “Gojiro, this Squid obscures the Truth with the vile spew seeping from its every eclipsing eye! Please help us! We’re on deadline!” Still, Gojiro recalled, it had been exciting, storming up that hill, Radi-frying that squid, affirming freedom of the press by restoring that eightball to the City Room. The only real drag came much later
, after Shig’s iniquitous dissemination of the film, when Gojiro turned on the Dish and saw that grinning moron of a presidential candidate stealing his best line. “Calamari for the cephalopod!” the scum shouted, raising his pocketpicking hands above his head—as if identifying himself with the King of Monsters would enhance his cheap political person. How the monster longed to make that mother-raper’s day—it figured that the thick electorate fell for his act.

  Suddenly, it was too close inside that limo. “Think I’ll stretch my legs,” Gojiro said, pushing open the car door with his snout. Jumping down, his claws sank into the soft sand. Vehicles whizzed by on either side. Shig hadn’t even bothered to pull over to the shoulder; he’d parked the limo on the median strip, beside a couple of straggly creosote bushes. The howl of the night wind melded with the clamoring of semis and the racket of low-flying military cargo planes. Gojiro could barely hear Komodo’s warnings to be careful lest some traveling salesman pull into Phoenix jittery with a story about the strangest-looking armadillo that ever got sieved through the grille of a Buick Riviera.

  It was just time for the next show. Pickups and beater Fords were turning off the interstate, lining up at the cashier’s booth, which resembled a checkpoint on the border between two remote and dissolute countries. From the looks of the weatherbeaten marquee—the cracked letters of which spelled out only GOJIRO VS. SQUID—the picture had been playing for some time. “My fans,” Gojiro mumbled as he watched a gear-gnashing lowrider chocked with Mexican teenagers skulk by. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. It was absurd, watching these poor deluded souls, seemingly from every nook and cranny of the demographic dart board, come like lemmings to sit silhouetted before his elephantine visage. Subteens crawled through holes in the rusted wire fence, grizzled rednecks spit tobacco from their four by fours. What were they doing there? Why weren’t they down the road, nursing beers in topless joints? Then came carloads of baggypanted black kids, all fly and feral, their twitchy faces the tableau of every old lady’s terror. How’d they get out there? Make a wrong turn at some dread Harlem intersection, get teleported? The monster couldn’t figure it; like the spawn of Cadmus’s tossed dragon teeth, his fans seemed to spring from the forsaken hills themselves. Plus, there were so many of the fuckers, walking need machines, zealots decked out in the leathery finery of their sect.