Big Hungry: A Novel

by John Clausen

  These rumors were made considerably more appealing by the fact that Droop’s next youngest brother, Eugene, was the Sheriff’s Deputy assigned to Tulleyville. Less than 30 minutes after Droop untangled himself from the folding lawn chair, he was in Eugene’s office.

  “He sucker punched me, Gene. Hit me real hard in my head for no reason.”

  “Somebody knocked the shit out of your head, that’s for sure. But it could have been anybody, Droop. You got any witnesses?”

  Droop was a little peeved when his own brother called him that name, but he let it go for now. Eugene had gone to community college, regularly read books, and, Droop figured, considered himself a good bit more high-toned than the rest of the family.

  “Sure. They all seen it, but the chicken shits probably won’t admit it.”

  “Well, then you’ve got jack shit for a case. I’m not even sure I believe you myself. You do something to piss him off?”

  “Just talking about California is all. Who knows with a guy like that. I’m lucky I’m not dead.”

  “Yeah, well, the best thing you can do now is go home. Put some ice on that lump. I got to go, anyway. You caught me on my way out.”

  Eugene put on his hat and left the office before Droop had time to offer to ride along. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have minded taking Droop along just for the company. A typical shift of law enforcement in Tulleyville wasn’t really all that challenging…a continuing struggle against teenage drinking mostly, interrupted by the very rare domestic violence call, or an opportunity to give the drunken mayor or some other city official a ride home on a Saturday night. Mostly, boredom was the enemy. Before he’d taken the deputy job, Eugene had been a mechanic at the John Deere dealership owned by Harlen Ackerman. He’d also been a military policeman in the army, a two-year stint served mostly in Okinawa that had qualified him for his current job. At age 36, he was still relatively young and fit and was considered a good man in a scrap, a reputation that allowed him to handle almost any confrontation without resorting to actual violence.

  The situation on that particular night, however, was a bit different. Two separate and equally disturbing reports had reached him and required his immediate attention. One was the attempted shooting of his former employer, Mr. Ackerman. The other was a claim by Pooch Eye Ziegler that there was a dead woman floating on the Big Hungry River near Paff’s Pond.

  Sliding into the Dodge Durango that served as his squad car, Eugene decided it would be a good idea to investigate the shooting incident first. Pooch Eye was at best a dubious witness to anything. Besides, Eugene liked his old boss and enjoyed the old man’s company. For a rich guy, Eugene always said, Mr. Ackerman was all right.

  Chapter 9

  The view from the Empire State Building was everything Furman Potter had always thought it would be. Ant-sized taxicabs squirted through traffic far below and New York City seemed to stretch as far as he could see.

  Furman, unlike the non-deceased tourists milling around on the observation deck, was sitting precisely on the very highest point of the venerable building. At least that was the point from which his view originated. Who could say if he was actually there? That was a question for theosophists and intellectuals, and Furman was having way too much fun to worry about such things. Being dead was turning out to be more fun than he had ever had as a living, breathing human being.

  At first, back on his porch, Furman had been a bit tentative in his travels, trying first to transport himself out to the sagging mailbox in front of his house. He’d even looked to see if there was any mail for him before he realized that he was beyond such concerns now. From there, he zipped across a barbed wire fence and stood with three Shetland ponies that lived there. Then, with his spirit of adventure beginning to grow, he visited the top of the Tulleyville Grain Growers Association grain elevator, easily the tallest building in town and the highest place he’d ever been.

  He discovered that he liked high places; especially he enjoyed the radically different perspective it gave him. For a good half hour, he transported from one Tulleyville landmark to another. While taking a breather on top of the Tulleyville State Bank and Trust, Furman had a new thought. He could go anywhere, without permission and totally unseen. This thought occurred simultaneously with a mental image of Lucille Nordstrom, a rather doughy, middle-aged woman who ran the Dime Store in town. Furman had always admired her ample proportions, and the notion that he might visit Lucille undetected stirred him in ways he had almost forgotten.

  He imagined himself sitting in Lucille’s bedroom and immediately felt full of foreboding and dread. He could smell decaying meat and noticed a harsh chemical odor. He felt a hand gently grip his shoulder and turned around to see the man with the red boots, whom he had come to think of as the Cowboy Angel.

  “Better settle down there, Furman,” the Angel said. “I forgot to tell you that you’re not allowed to do that kind of thing. Don’t feel bad about it, though. It’s tempting, I know, but…well, it just isn’t done. I’m sure you understand.”

  “What’s that bad smell?” Furman asked him.

  “I guess you could call it a warning shot. Believe me, when you smell that, it’s time to think of someplace else to go. Why don’t you forget about old Lucille and try something on a bigger scale. You ever been to the Grand Canyon? Or how about the Amazon River? Lots of folks enjoy that sort of thing. I call it the National Geographic tour. Hey, maybe the Washington Monument? One guy awhile back went to Vietnam to see where he’d lost his arm. No limit to the places you can go…you just can’t do anything low. You know, like peep on old Lucille, which I got to tell you doesn’t strike me as a good sight-seeing alternative to the Grand Canyon. Anyway, have a good time and I’ll be back to get you as soon as I can.”

  That’s when Furman decided to skip the Nordstrom bedroom and head straight to New York City and the view from the Empire State Building. He’d always been fascinated with Manhattan, although most folks back home in Tulleyville considered it to be a combination of Sodom and Disney World. People live like rats there, they’d say, right on top of each other, muggers and drug fiends and homos all squeezed together and hostile as all get-out. Furman had reserved judgement on New York, though, mostly because his neighbors disapproved of the town and Furman almost always took a view contrary to the things his neighbors said.

  So here he was alone, invisible, and completely mobile with one of the most interesting cities in the world all laid out before him…a smorgasbord of new experiences. He’d always heard about Greenwich Village, thought it sounded sort of medieval and quaint. Immediately, his thoughts transported him to Christopher Street and deposited him in front of a small novelty shop not far from a pub called The Lion’s Head Tavern. The shop window displayed several posters made from old-fashioned photographs, the most prominent of which featured a stout, naked, middle-aged man hanging upside down from a rope in the center of what looked like a dungeon or torture chamber. The man’s back was to the camera showing his massive buttocks and a back striped with what looked like whip marks. At the bottom of the poster, Furman read the words, “Congratulations on your new position.” He wondered briefly why he was allowed to gawk at the poster but not Lucille Nordstrom. It must be a matter of taste, he reckoned.

  As he was pondering that question, a large, muscular black man wearing a safari outfit – complete with pith helmet and epaulets – walked by on the sidewalk leading a skinny white man on a leash. The white man, who looked rather like an accountant or perhaps a dentist, was wearing a leopard-skin leotard. Furman found this far more interesting than the poster, so he tagged along behind the pair as they promenaded down the street. No one seemed to pay them much attention, but Furman thought they were fascinating. When they ducked into a bar called The Brass Ass, he followed them.

  The bar was dark and smoky and filled with colorfully clad young men dancing with each other or flagrantly fondling each other at the bar. The safari man took a table near the far wall and ordered his tethe
red companion to sit near his feet. Furman sat on their table and studied the pair. This was something completely different. He wondered how they met and how they ended up in this relationship. He thought perhaps they might sometimes change roles and the skinny white guy would get to be the mighty hunter and the black man would be the beast. It seemed only fair. He noticed they were both drinking Budweisers. The white guy was drinking his out of an ashtray the black man had put in front of him.

  The leash and the African theme of the two men reminded him of an article he’d read once about the Bronx Zoo. Immediately, he felt a rush of dizziness. When it cleared he was standing on a bench in front of an aviary at that the zoo. The speed of the transportation made him feel motion sick, like the time he had gone out on a fishing boat on Lake Metigoshi. The feeling soon passed, allowing Furman to take more careful stock of his surroundings. He enjoyed looking at the birds, but the birdcages reminded him of jails, which made him think of criminals, and an instant later he was alone in a cell on Riker’s Island. Once again, the quick traveling was making him dizzy for a moment. This made him think of the old baseball player Dizzy Dean, which, in turn, made him think of ballparks and, in the next instant, he was perched on the back bar of a beer-and-hotdog kiosk at Yankee Stadium.

  Collecting himself, Furman looked at the line of baseball fans lined up at the kiosk. The third man in line was Cowboy Angel. He was wearing a Yankee cap and a pin-striped baseball shirt. He stepped out of line and tipped his hat to Furman.

  “Getting too weird for you yet, Furman,” he asked as he dipped a finger into the relish tray.

  “I can’t stop traveling,” Furman said. “Everything makes me think of something else and then something else there makes me think of something else…and there I go again. It’s making me a little sick, I think.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it, man. It happens. It’s a little bit like ice-skating. At first, you’re all over the place, falling down, spinning around…but then, after a little while, you get better. And then you get even better at it…and before you know it, you’re doing figure eights and jumping barrels. Just give it some time…and you might want to practice a little closer to home. This town is full of distractions. Hey, speaking of skating, why don’t you head back home and stop by the Big Hungry Roller Rink? You used to be quite a skater back in the day. Saw it in your file. How come you quit?”

  “Too dangerous. Thought I might get hurt.”

  “Well, old friend, those days are over…you’re never going to get hurt again. By the way, I got to tell you…you’re looking pretty good. Much better than when we met.”

  Furman noticed for the first time that he no longer looked like the man whose corpse he’d left on the porch. His legs were much thicker and his chest was bigger, even though he felt light and buoyant and moved with no effort at all. The fact was, his whole body looked like that of a man no older than 25 or 30. And there was a soft blue glow emanating from his limbs and torso.

  “Quite a change, isn’t it?” the Cowboy Angel said, “But it really suits you. You can pick a new color later on if you want to, but for now let’s just stay with the blue. Goes with your eyes.”

  Furman, speechless, was staring at his hands.

  “Well, I got to go. We’re still swamped. I’ll see you later.”

  Furman watched his celestrial friend walk down the aisle toward the stadium seats. As the angel turned the corner and disappeared, Furman heard the sound of roller skates on hardwood.

  Chapter 10

  About once a week, Jonas Johnston would ask Charlie Taylor to give him a ride to Big Hungry River Park. It was only a 20-minute ride each way and Charlie was not, himself, opposed to going to the park. Jonas was quiet and not bad company for the trip…especially once Charlie learned to deal with the wet, brown stream of plug tobacco juice he periodically launched out the passenger-side window of Charlie’s pickup. Most of it made it out of the truck and only a little of it found the rear fender. Recently, Charlie had taken to wrapping an old plastic pop bottle with duct tape and giving it to Jonas as a spittoon. The twist top made the operation a good bit more secure and the tape obscured what could be a fairly nauseating sight by the time they arrived at the park.

  Big Hungry River Park was built on a meandering piece of the Big Hungry River a few miles downstream from Paff’s Pond. It was home to a troika of popular summer businesses: the roller rink, the beer garden, and the café. Scattered around the business section of the park were a few dozen summer homes of varying sizes, descriptions, and degrees of luxury. The Taylor family, for example, owned a small lot about a hundred yards from the roller rink. Inherited from Mrs. Taylor’s father, the lot remained undeveloped and for the most part unused. Charlie would mow the grass several times during the summer just to avoid being a bad neighbor, but the family didn’t use it for picnics or camping or much of anything. In fact, the lot was located on a stretch of river bank that was steadily eroding at the rate of about two inches per year. Other landowners in the area had taken heroic steps to slow the erosion, but Charlie and his wife figured to let nature take its course.

  “A few more years, and I won’t have a thing to mow down there,” was how Charlie put it.

  On the evening after Pooch Eye’s encounter with mystery and mortality, Jonas and Charlie arrived at the park and unloaded the mower. Once Charlie and the machine were busy chewing up the ragged grass on the Taylor property, Jonas made his way quietly to the beer garden. Once there and settled into his favorite chair – the one closest to the open back-wall window and therefore most convenient for spitting – Jonas ordered the draft beer he would nurse until Charlie came to fetch him home.

  It would take about 45 minutes to trim the Taylor property, after which Charlie would walk to the café and dawdle a while over a cup of black coffee and maybe some chocolate cake. He wasn’t much for drinking and seldom visited the beer garden for any reason than to let Jonas know it was time to go home. Every time Charlie walked across the café parking lot he thought about a small carnival that had played there several years before on the Fourth of July. The show’s main attractions had been a smallish Ferris wheel and a bumper-car ride. That evening, as the assembled crowd watched in horror, one of the gondolas at the top of the wheel broke loose. Two very young children – Charlie could never remember their names, but he thought they were from Canada – had been left screaming and dangling about 35 feet above the rides steel-plate deck. Without so much as a second thought, Charlie had scaled the ride and held onto the children as the ride operator returned the broken gondola to the deck. The crowd broke into a spontaneous round of applause as Charlie’s feet touched the ground. People still talked about it whenever there was some kind of ride or carnival set up at the park. “Better wait ‘til Charlie Taylor’s here,” they’d say. “Make sure he’s got his climbing boots on.” It was all in good fun, and Charlie took the ribbing with his typical good nature.

  Charlie was well into his second cup of coffee when Pooch Eye Ziegler walked into the café. Pooch Eye had, of course, been drinking. In fact, he’d been drinking steadily ever since he’d seen the floater in Paff’s Pond. He’d also been telling everybody he met about the body he had seen, which was why Deputy Hornsby had asked him to meet him at the café to make a complete report. No one really believed Pooch Eye had seen a human body in the river. Most figured it was a deer carcass or perhaps a calf that had fallen in and drowned. Johnny Sorenson, one of Pooch Eye’s drinking and fishing buddies, had remarked that it had been so long since Pooch Eye had seen a horizontal female that he really shouldn’t be held responsible for any misidentification. Nevertheless, the incident had come to the attention of the law and the system required some sort of investigation, no matter how unreliable Pooch Eye might be as an eyewitness.

  Charlie nodded at Pooch Eye before walking to the counter to help himself to a third cup of coffee. Pooch Eye, a little unsteady on his feet, but not yet thoroughly drunk, followed Charlie back to his table.

>   “You hear about it?” he asked Charlie.

  “Hear about what, Pooch? I’ve been working.”

  “I seen a dead woman up at Paff’s Pond. Floated right by me bigger’n shit.”

  “The hell you say. Anybody we knew?” Charlie didn’t really believe him, but it wasn’t in his nature to call a man a liar over such a thing. And besides, Pooch Eye seemed very sincere.

  “Never seen her before. Big old gal. Jeez, I betcha she’d go 210 or 220 easy.”

  “You fish her out?”

  “Nah, the river was moving too fast. She was around the bend before I could get to her. Tell you the truth, the whole thing shook the hell out of me…but it was a woman all right. I seen that plain as day. Gene Hornsby is supposed to meet me down here tonight…get the whole story. Maybe they’ll drag the river.”

  Charlie seriously doubted that the deputy would mount any elaborate rescue operation on Pooch Eye’s word. Unless it was a really slow day at the sheriff’s office.

  “Well, Gene’ll know what to do.”