The Bear in a Muddy Tutu

by Cole Alpaugh

  “Stolichnaya,” Flint read, but his initial excitement was tempered with the thought that it was probably just a used box from the liquor store. No way had the little turd dropped three hundred bills on the good stuff. But Hooduk lugged the sealed case up the steps and gently placed the box next to the game warden.

  “You’re a good man.” Flint actually meant it. In fact, the little fart of a preacher had kept his word when it came to ridin’ his people to pick up their trash, and makin’ sure the port-o-potties were cleaned out regularly.

  “Well, I’m a fair man, at least.” Hooduk took a seat on the top step, the case of vodka between them. “I wanted to let you know we’re stayin’ on a bit.”

  “I figured as much when I seen the lumber roll by. You just keep them people on a short leash. I see them kids pluggin’ gulls with pellet rifles again and I swear to God.”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  A little investigating by Flint had uncovered that a pair of boys had dismounted and unchained what was actually one of the dollar-a-try automatic bb guns from the target shooting game. If a player was able to completely annihilate the red star at the center of the target with a hundred pellets, they won a stuffed prize. The boys had swiped the rifle, hooked it up to a bottle of helium they’d come across in one of the storage trucks, then headed down to the edge of the inlet for some live target shooting.

  Mrs. Rooney had not been a happy barker when she discovered the weapon missing from one of her more profitable attractions. It didn’t take her long to locate the two piece-of-shit boys using the long, birdshot-filled tubes to load the rifles, blasting away at the dumb birds. The boys had either maimed or killed four seagulls and had just finished another reload.

  “You little sons-of-bitches!” Mrs. Rooney snatched away the freshly loaded weapon. The boys were kneeling in the wet sand, laughing and having a good old time taking turns, but now they cowered below the nasty old witch. And the nasty old witch was pointing a loaded automatic pellet gun at them.

  “You nutless little cretins got any last words?” She took aim at one of their foreheads.

  “Run!” one of the boys shouted, and they did just that. First scrambling to their feet, old sneakers sliding and not getting an immediate grip, the two boys made their cartoonish getaway back toward the circus tents. Mrs. Rooney picked up the helium tank and began pursuit, her blue housedress flapping in the wind, her mass of gray hair bouncing all around her head. A group of circus folks, Billy Wayne included, had gathered watching from next to the kiddy coaster, as the two boys ran for their lives.

  * * *

  Warden Flint had discovered the dead birds later that afternoon, and he wasn’t the least bit happy. It wasn’t just a matter of a few dead seagulls. Hell, there were little balls of dead gulls all over the place. So many, that you started not even seeing them after a while. They were along the highway, washed up on shore, and here and there out in the marshes. Seagulls were probably the least endangered bird on the planet, and the world could certainly do with about a billion less of them. But once one showed up dead from birdshot, the proverbial shit was headed straight for the fan. You could drive over a flock of them with a goddamn Sherman tank and the State wouldn’t blink an eye or bother to lend a shovel to scrape them up. But shoot even one of the mangy fuckers and you had a full-fledged federal case on your sorry hands.

  Flint went back to his truck to grab the shovel out of the bed and very quickly buried the birds before tracking down Hooduk.

  The expensive case of vodka went a long way toward smoothing things over, but it would only take one little fuckup to kick the legs out from under an arrangement that currently suited everybody just fine.

  “It’s all of our asses on the line,” Flint told Billy Wayne. He ran a long, dirty thumbnail down the top of the case, cutting through the tape seal and removing a bottle. The warden cracked the screw top and took a hard sniff of the clear, faintly-scented alcohol. “Like water.” He tilted the bottle up and drained a third of it.

  Everything after that was just bits and pieces of grainy images. Flint had a vague recollection of trying to take a punch at Hooduk, but also had some memory of hugging him really hard, telling him he loved him, maybe even kissing him on the mouth. There was also something about his truck keys and having a hardy need to run his poison-mister around the marsh. Something about being bitten on the ass had sent him into a rage. Alcohol was a wonder drug, but it sure could fuck you up something fierce. It got to the point—after years of practicing the art—that as long as you didn’t wake up in the slammer, then all was fine in the world. Feeling like an asshole about what you did when you were under the influence was a waste of time and easily cured by cracking open a fresh bottle.

  Waking up under the truck, Flint’s first sensation was that of feeling the need to adjust his balls, and something was making his ass itch. The head-thumping pain rushed at him when he shifted his body to scratch. Where his clothes had gotten to was a mystery to be solved later, but he figured he’d at some point taken refuge under the truck to get out of the sun.

  If only they’d quit that friggin’ hammering.

  Chapter 34

  The hammering that was so evil to Warden Flint’s throbbing head was music to Billy Wayne Hooduk’s sunburned ears.

  Step number forty-five in How to Become a Cult Leader in 50 Easy Steps: “Make your cult a home away from home. Whether it means splurging on the good toilet paper or hanging pretty flowered curtains, a successful leader must recognize that the failure to provide the small touches of home can lead to mutiny, or at the very least, to unpleasant griping. A subscription to Better Homes and Gardens is highly recommended for lasting happiness.”

  Walls were framed out, while concrete pilings were poured. Pilings to support my temple, Billy Wayne thought, giddy with joy, a stark contrast to the dark nights of uncertainty and dread he often sweated through.

  Billy Wayne’s desperate search for approval had left certain pages of his stolen cult leader guide book dog-eared and smudged. He was a man raised on shortcuts, general malaise, and an easy willingness to allow others the spoils of their own hard work.

  Billy Wayne had clung to the glimmer of hope shining from late night television infomercials. His past efforts to follow each guaranteed guide telling how to go from rags to riches had not failed due to some inability on his part, but rather due to flaws in the programs. Billy Wayne was certain of this.

  Once, for ninety-nine dollars, Billy Wayne had received two VHS tapes and a thick packet of literature on how to buy foreclosed houses and resell them for astronomical profits. The fine print mentioned things like mowing the lawn and a coat of paint as part of the secret to success. Paint and a lawn mower? Curb appeal? Before they had your money, they told you over and over how simple it was to get rich. Then, you started reading things about how the amount of effort increased the amount of return. Weren’t they just describing some sort of job?

  And each program was remarkably similar once you started watching the tapes, even though the actors were changed around, and what you were expected to sell was different.

  As Billy Wayne drifted off to sleep in his bed at home one night, he experienced one of the few epiphanies to ever streak across his semiconscious mind. Billy Wayne got the idea to star in his own infomercial, in which some Joe Six-Pack became rich enough to own a mansion in Florida and park a Ferrari out front. The idea was shear genius, Billy Wayne thought. He would have taken notes about it if he had a pencil and paper on his nightstand, instead of all the way across on his dresser. It was a perfect, totally foolproof idea and he couldn’t for the life of him imagine how he’d never thought of it before. It made selling foreclosed houses and collections of yard sale junk seem like the dumbest ideas ever.

  Billy Wayne’s thoughts turned philanthropic. When the money from the infomercial started rolling in, he’d hand-deliver a check to the church, showing those spiteful people how he was someone to look up to. Wearing his Sunday
best, he’d rise from the pew, smiling down at all his neighbors who had talked all nasty about his momma, and stroll right up to the Pollack minister. He’d pull the fat check out of his inside pocket and hold it out to show the congregation. Billy Wayne could picture how they’d stand up, cheering and clapping, saying bless you over and over. Little kids would tug on their mothers’ skirts, asking who that man was.

  “That’s Mister Hooduk,” the mothers would say.

  Mister Hooduk, Billy Wayne thought, smiling. Everyone would know his name in a good way, instead of as “the fat woman Hooduk’s kid.”

  The Pollack minister would take the check, telling him what a generous man he was, shaking his hand and not letting go.

  But then Billy Wayne drifted off to sleep. Whatever brilliant, sure-fire concept he’d realized, discovered, or invented never saw fruition, and he forgot about it completely. Maybe just a brief, hazy glimpse passed by him while he sat sulking over his morning bowl of chocolate puff cereal the next morning, but it was gone forever.

  The failure Billy Wayne experienced from trying to follow every infomercial program was perfect and complete. If it was during the day and his mood was good, he could almost laugh at the perverse perfection he’d clearly mastered, his absolute incompetence at everything. He was successfully batting zero. But late at night, the utter failure closed in on him. He became a befuddled little boy, bereft of hope or purpose.

  In those lonely hours, Billy Wayne lost what little feeling of control he sometimes managed during his good days. Even as an aspiring cult leader and circus shepherd, he would feel fear and loneliness sweep over him and assume a fetal position—as much as his fat stomach would permit. And just as he had as a child, he would stifle the sobs that racked his body, worried that someone would hear his pathetic sniveling.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, Momma,” Billy Wayne sometimes whispered to the side of his tent, tears and snot making a wet circle on his filthy pillow.

  Billy Wayne’s main comfort was the sound of the lion’s struggle for breath, its painful, emphysema-induced hacking that copycatted the sounds from his own tent. Billy Wayne knew the pain the lion felt. Not from whatever diseases the old animal suffered, but from being stripped of its dignity. What has life for a mighty lion become when respect is replaced by pity? The thought made Billy Wayne’s melancholy even worse, but at least something else understood this kind of suffering. Perhaps it was best that he didn’t know the lion was born in a five-by-six foot cage in Pontocola, Mississippi, the product of an illegal exotic animal breeder.

  Billy Wayne had heard the teasing his entire life. The kids had been ruthless right up until he stopped going to school. He did his best to run his mother’s constant errands while school was in session, when it was less likely for Mister Fatty McLard Pants, or just plain old Queer Boy, to be spotted and chased, have his ears flicked, and titty twisters administered.

  Billy Wayne had memorized a passage from page sixty-six of his cult leader book. He whispered it under his breath over and over, like a prayer, or a nervous tick: “It is only their weakness that makes them sour. Your calling is to the wretched for a higher purpose. Remember that Jesus had a really thick skin.”

  At thirty years of age, Billy Wayne was a newly emancipated man and de facto leader of a traveling circus that had recently grown roots. Despite his importance, he still heard the snarky remarks. He did his best to be deaf to them, dismissing each as a stern teacher would a challenge from an undisciplined child. It was the difficult art of turning the other cheek, patiently waiting for a better teaching moment. There were opportunities in each of these hurtful instances, and Billy Wayne took solace in the knowledge that he was developing as both a man and a leader.

  Billy Wayne Hooduk was learning to solve problems by artfully dodging any real advice or decisions, despite the nonstop counseling sessions he held each evening with half-drunk followers. He was learning that life had a way of working out however life was meant to work out. Trying to change things was nothing more than interfering with an inevitable force, as his book confirmed.

  “You can nudge an elephant all you want. You can get right up behind it and put your shoulder to its flanks. You can push with all your might. But unless that elephant suddenly feels compelled to move, it is just as likely to lift its tail and shit all over your head,” Billy Wayne’s book warned.

  Late at night, done masturbating to the images of Amira Anne’s steamy, twisting, spandex-clad body, Billy Wayne often grew morose over the countless episodes of failure in his relationship with his mother. He might be sleeping on a cot reeking of an old man’s urine, in a tent out in some dark mud flats, but had Jesus’ path been any rosier? His mother would have to understand his journey, just as Billy Wayne now recognized what he could have done better for the woman he’d come to see only as oppressive and demanding.

  In the morning, a paper plate filled with scrambled eggs blunted the edge of the night-suffering. The rising sun glimmering over the inlet really did signal a new day. There was a cathedral, Billy Wayne’s cathedral, being hammered together by the roustabouts who had eaten during first shift. The ragtag group of men were lustfully swinging hammers not for some temple, Billy Wayne knew, but for the idea of indoor plumbing. And for a real kitchen and a chance to take turns standing in front of an air conditioner turned up to full blast. Motives, like building permits, didn’t really matter to Billy Wayne, as long as he got what he wanted. He gobbled the last of his eggs and wandered out to watch the progress, careful not to get too close; someone might offer him a hammer or something.

  Truth be told, circus workers were not all that used to constructing permanent structures, and the building plans scribbled up by the two mechanics looked like they might result in a rather complicated tree fort. Instead of something pegged down or strung up, Billy Wayne’s permanent cathedral was to have a large meeting room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and an office big enough to double as a bedroom for Billy Wayne.

  “It’s gotta sit on pilings,” one of the mechanics had said.

  “What if it don’t?” asked the other.

  “It’ll sink under the mud or wash out into the ocean.”

  “So we should go with the pilings?”

  The concrete pilings were hardening while walls were being framed out. None of it made sense to Billy Wayne. It was like one of his mother’s giant jigsaw puzzles she spread out on the kitchen table before she got so fat. Billy Wayne had wandered by as she plucked a piece from here and there, some fitting, some not. Billy Wayne tried to help but never once had he gotten two pieces to snap together. He quickly grew impatient, and with the television free, he clicked on cartoons and flopped onto the couch with a bag of chips.

  As Billy Wayne watched, four of the circus trucks arrived, stuffed and overflowing with building materials. Plywood, two-by-fours, big pieces of wood that must be for holding up the floors or the roof, a small mountain of shingle bags, coils of wire, and rolls of pink insulation that looked like cotton candy. The fact that he hadn’t signed off on more than five hundred dollars didn’t raise any red flags for him. He had no clue what these materials cost, so it was easy for him to pretend they hadn’t been stolen. He also ignored the fact that his men were returning before any stores were open. Perhaps it was a case of an “immaculate” transaction, a little like the “immaculate conception,” which meant Jesus’s Mother Mary had somehow gotten pregnant without sinning. Billy Wayne was also fine with pretending not to hear the wagers on who would get what first, as well as the whispers about such and such construction sites they’d recently driven past.

  “Comin’ along just fine.” The lead mechanic startled Billy Wayne enough that he sloshed hot coffee on his wrist. Billy Wayne had learned the man’s name was Happy, or just Hap, because of his general good disposition. He’d learned it from a routine the two mechanics went through each time there was cause for an introduction. The other mechanic’s name was Dick and claimed to be named for his genitals, or just b
ecause he acted like one. Billy Wayne hadn’t really been able to follow the joke through to the punch line, but he now knew that one was Happy, the other, Dick.

  “It’s going to be a fine building.” Billy Wayne didn’t bother to mask his outright joy, despite the new burn on his wrist he was licking and blowing on. He wanted to use words like temple and cathedral to describe it but knew he shouldn’t get carried away. Each time he pictured the word “shrine,” the corners of his pudgy mouth curled up, and his eyes drifted far away. He’d also had the words “pantheon” and “tabernacle” reach the tip of his tongue, but he wasn’t certain what exactly they were, just that they also sounded formidable, worthy of this project. They were words his Pollack minister had used in his preaching.

  “I never seen these boys work so hard,” Happy said, as the current crew was joined by those from the second breakfast shift. There were now more than two dozen pairs of hands setting huge pieces of wood on the pilings, which one of the mechanics decided had set enough, using those things with bubbles in them to make sure everything was level. “Especially not this early in the mornin’.”

  “I imagine it’s the sense of community that has them so motivated. Like an Amish barn raising, you know?”

  “Yeah, could be the Irish, or maybe just most of them boys really lookin’ forward to usin’ an indoor shitter.” Happy took a long pull off a can of Old Milwaukee. Billy Wayne noticed he also had a can in each front pocket of his jeans. “Them port-o-potties get mighty hot, and we ran outta chemicals years back. They didn’t used to smell so bad.”

  The two men stood in the shade of one of the main tents, Hap with one foot up on a stake, while Billy Wayne leaned one arm against the angled rope it was anchoring. Billy Wayne turned back toward the New Jersey mainland. Squinting into the morning mist, he could make out one of the pickup trucks with the Pisani Brothers Circus name painted on the driver side door. It was coming fast and hard toward the Fish Head bridge. Several men stood in the truck bed, whooping and laughing, holding on with one hand, beer cans in the other.