Witz

by Joshua Cohen

  Hamm staggers out of the limo, then tugs Him after him by the feet, then the legs and waist.

  I’ll take the kid, he says, spits, and then to Benjamin, better stay close.

  Mada rises to smooth his suit then light a smoke against the weather; asking Heber, how are we for gas?

  Middle of nowhere Joysey—a tongue of asphalt set amid a mouth of pine, gaping as it asks its questions of the sky. What is the nature of all this cement, this concrete and irresponsible tar—explain the modern, will you; its encroachment upon a wilderness despoiled…wherever there’s an interpretation, rest assured there are interpretations, many. And so while some hold that only now is everything the same everywhere the world over, from Joysey to Jerusalem and back, and so that all is a mere litany of simulacra, the bane of difference, enemy of the individual life, or even—say the mystics among us—it’s that we’ve all lived these lives already, ages earlier, eras ago, others hold only that Benjamin’s been here before, this reststop, just last week, this service-plaza, it’s that simple and on a swerve and stop of Wanda’s own discretion, for directions, bathroom’s coffee and a nap—and so explaining His familiarity, the ease with which He adjusts to all this sensing; the plexiamenity, the manicured shrubscrub, the silent language of Parkway plaquery, such signal warning: fluorescent construction, crossedthrough then struckout; and then, the red tree stop, the blue food & lodging, the white flower yield—set deep in snow over a rainbow of mulch He surfaces in His progress to uncover a path with insecure, recovering feet. Benjamin proceeds through the doors into the interior, is processed. A ringing of growths endowed by their Creator, of indeterminate corporation, with diversified outlets of fastfood left hastily shuttered, a newsstand dimmed with tragedy, and a souvenir kiosk, selling to no one the most transient of necessities: stuffedanimals, pins and stickers, maps to hats and shirts and swimsuits, commemorative spoons crazy to sup with, know what they’re worth, what they will be; then, to the right again familiar, its bathroom, the M’s—a week ago, it feels a weak season, that stopover with Wanda to fill up on shrunk food, gas for the rover, to take a seat and weep under the voice of the flush. Emptily immaculate now as then: no one’s used it in a week, perhaps, white as if snowedover, bright, clean, not a leak, a mirror without streak, disinfectant stings. Again, He heads His urge for the stalls, but this visit’s directed by the shvartze to a urinal adjoining.

  You’re going to go? Hamm asks.

  You’re going to stand over me the whole time?

  That a problem…you don’t have those neuroses, do you, one where your kidneys all shrink, when you’re incapable of pissing with anyone present? and he shoves Benjamin up against the fixture as white as a tooth to gnaw at His gut. To pish, He pushes, tenses His thighs, crouches to clench the opposing faces of tush—they’re not on speaking terms, give them time—dimples their cheeks in the briefs of His father, one pair for each leg; then, shuts eyes to imagine: a kitchen faucet gunked green, rain from the tap, Israel pouring wine that Friday, Manischewitz melting a tongue from his lips, a grapeknot, a pinkening urinal wafer; palms His prostate, pulls, tugs each teste, rubs rolls His scrotum around, but there’s nothing doing, without drip, drops His hands, sighs. I’ll show you how it’s done, and Hamm leans a head over the partition of the urinal next, steps back a pace; only you got to be patient, takes a while to get it all out. He slits his zipper then goes rummaging around in his pants and shorts and then, wrangling a wangled grasp, gradually extracts length by majesty and hardening by the tug an enormous member unfurling, slowly, luxuriantly, uncircumcised as if, circumscribed by worms through which vein strained swells, steady pulses, the black beat of a lower heart. I keep it wrapped around the left, he says. Phylactery of the leg. Its roots to be found buried in great bulges, twinned, rising under the tightening pants. I’d take those out, too, he goes on, only they don’t like the zipper none. Teeth for tooth, a mouth. And then with delicate fingers, an expert tact, the ultimate retraction. A fascist helmet. Foreskinned darker. Benjamin’s awed, if awe’s to die amid torture. Angry, martial, there’s that familiar tattoo, a light rustle, tinkling on porcelain, then giving way, to heavy flow, a flood deluged in steam. Hamm fists his shaft then squeezes, shakes, ekes out a last spurt, a final drizzle.

  And Benjamin, breaks.

  Only later, there’s the shame of admission—anyway, it’s all caught on camera…where I was when suspect wasn’t; sir, occupied returning penis to pants, and underwear, which is tight and deliriously striped. Unlike any animal known, or prison: Sing Sing, where he’d supped enough. Hamm turns, spatters drops of stinging piss on his pants, down them to drip below pockets and drear his knees, as if he’s kneeled atop mopping, pitterpuddling through his underwear also to dampen the legs. He gasps his pursuit across the tilefloored veldt, as quick as the sleekest predator though nowhere near its grace, his tongue out to shadow that other massive endowment still wagging, and its even more massive foreskin, too, as if the dark flag for a nation forgotten flapping wildly in the wind of his run, his fast dirty feet in their shoes trampling this foreskin now, liberally powdered, though it might be snow from the floor: how he runs up onto himself, as if his foreskin’s a welcomemat just pulled out from under, tripping, over his unsnipped flesh falling flat, on his face on the slick tile next to the sign that warns Slippery When—is anyone here a lawyer, is anyone else here at all?

  Torque Mada, out in the foodcourt, calmly waiting for assistance, anyone who works here, a sentient pimple popped across the register, pussing the keys. Most of the employees have advantaged the tragedy, taken off, personal days, to mourn strangers at home and that with the screen out, only occasional electricity. He has two hands on a tray stacked with hamburgers a week old, complimented by a host of condiments, wilting fries washed with soda wanting for gas; him wondering whom he should pay and why as Hamm glides risen out of the bathroom and across the floor, his hair and hang still proudly out, his head gashed, two front gold teeth of his loosened, kicked in his slide to skittering flight toward tables at the far end of the glare. An echo, he’s screaming, waving hands, doing semaphores of an unintelligible nature though you do get the idea of Jesus, and even more offensive obscenities shouted, him knocking over tables and chairs, the destruction of concessionary displays of myriad intricacy: pyramidry rendered of chocolate candy, toiletry tombs. Mada throws his tray down the line, off the end just for effect falling, scattering burgers, buns, special sauce, lettuce, tomato, onion, grabs Hamm and steadies, then the two of them run arm-in-arm, toward the exit they’d entered from with Mada and as if no one expects slipping and falling himself over his own scatter, a rogue patty with its melted swiss square, on his face, finally spilling his hat. Hamm, what do you think he doesn’t stop he wants out, toward the doors, pushes where he should pull then pulls out into landscape and lot, to head N/NE as door signage indicates deep into the Kieferöde beyond. Heber left in the limo idling with the inside heat on all the way up, the door open and his tuxshirt, too, its ruffles fluttering in the storming midmorning; his shoes dangling over the ice, pants cuffed high to bare his knees, he’s smoking an unfiltered: flakes of ash fly scattered across his chest, which is hairless, and he breezes them off and their embers with fingers gloved, as Hamm ever so fitfully slides across the wetwaxed hood, to ride shotgun, reaches around Heber’s neck as if to strangle his bowtie, a clipon, drags him by it in and behind the wheel shrieking an approximation of find Him.

  Who? Heber grabs at his tie as he revs up the limo.

  Who, Him, the fatass kike, Jesus the lardy yid I’m talking who else, what’re you thinking?

  You let Him get away, Heber’s yelling, futz me, futz us, we’re dead…still, he flips down the mirror over the wheel, inspecting his hair prior to releasing the clutch. Hamm opens, necks his head out the window, then out the roof for the sun.

  Benjamin’s just down the lot, lumbering over the asphalt, trash, foodwrappers, and icy oil as fast as He’s able, not having been toddling for long and born this out
of shape, making toward the Kieferöde, which is the Joysey forest that trees everywhere beyond the city, anywhere that’s not citybound, set in rings grown concentric, and hung with infernal cones—pining inland to heaven, southwest to hell…

  There! Hamm shouts, pointing, He’s almost at the woods…and Heber shifts a turn, throws the limo madly, aiming its speed at the gross quavering tush. Hit Him if you have to, says Hamm, and hard—wasn’t our fault, dumb luck…just get your fender smack on His hynie! Heber floors, topspeeding at this looming rear…Benjamin only a blur of pants and trunk, then embraced by the branches, comforted in the midst of the boughs. Desperately, the limo goes hurled over the curb of the lot, falls into a sluice, slamming into an embankment of woody decay, icemelt, smoke wheezy from the hood: Heber’s thrown over the eructed airbladder and into the windshield, Hamm tumbles through the door, lands tush over head, flails, his hands grasping at logs dead and wrapped loose in diapers; the limo’s wheels turn up dirt, mud, the severance of weeds, the vehicle entire revving one last, worthless assault, raising itself up on its rearwheels as if posed alongside the Unknown State Trooper for a proud example of municipal statuary, prior to flopping its flab metal down again, finally, what a mess. Hamm surfaces with a used diaper perched as a nest on his head, tries to stand, slips on a log submerged, falls again into the sluice as insects unparticular to climate begin their swarming around him, assemble tightly into nimbi, artfully shifting their shapes—isn’t that an elephant, its trunk hovering about his mouth and nostrils, or a lion, a bestial storm, manelike clouds. He finally rights himself, staggers to the other side of the limo from which he drags Heber unconscious out of the dent shaped like Heber in the shatterproof shield; leaves him on the asphalt, propped against the limo pouring fire, tires singeing his tux. Mada mugs over with one hand denting down his hat, the other holding a pilfered plastic sipper, in which he’s iced Hamm’s two lost teeth, found slushed on the reststop floor, having been spit to slide slip under a chair against the easternmost wall. Limoside, he stoops to enshrine the sipper in Heber’s hands limp, taking a moment to arrange them in a disposition of prayer before he and Hamm make their attempt on the Kieferöde.

  It’s the wind that rustles them in, a gust of rope, a whipping noose—branches snap underfoot and those under them, sog; at lot’s edge, last scattered lungs of leaves still hang from the boughs, breathe uneasy, giving way to the horripilation of needles, sharply incising of flesh, prickling floor. Staying near, they scurry the two of them as one, a mutant rodent now sundered at its gut by the jut of a tree it has to pass as they, on two legs each they hurry, they run; dense stone foliage snaps up against them, whips into their faces as hard as knots, as barbed chains…Mada shouting His name and it echoes in the voice of Hamm, who shouts to echo Mada with them too occupied in the preservation of their status of employment to notice the difference, if any; them running deeper into the needles’ slice, the blistering cones, then having to slow, the forest treeing denser…rimming these immense windquaked piles of leaves, and huddling, too, around widening trunks dark, deepfurrowed, furry with moss; these piles themselves piling into one solemn pile flaming with ice, identified as Joysey in atlases too soon to be made obsolete: they slip into this pile of piles, and into splenic cranbogs, scumponds of sunken, groping root; slicking on slabs of blighted bark, which is the fallen scab of the wound that is the tree, a scar on the horizon known only as white in this weather. Their feet mire in sap, freeze, they fall then right themselves only to lose each other, themselves, nature fills their mouths when they try to scream, what, why, Shalom, Benjamin’s name—echoes echoing wet leaves around tongues, as tongues, down their throats into stomachs, needles, also, that’d slit throats down to navels, spilling their pursuit all over the floor of the forest, amid the dreck and the imprinting paw.

  A wood, the Kieferöde it’s been called, where many of the wealthier residentials of greater Siburbia went to loose their canine companions aged old and useless. When You Won’t Put Them Down, Put Them Here, an old plankside sign offered in the ought tens, bought as a collectible curio summer memories ago by a retired Philadelphia lawyer weekending at an antique market out by the founding of the forge that was Batsto: Jack for Sale, its reverse went on to declare, by the bushel, the basket—Apples—Pumpkins—Golf Course Sand By the Bag or Trap…they’d drive themselves out to this particular weathered marker, maybe driftwood set to demarcate another, more intimate, distance, that of love fallen out of, perhaps, an incalculable exertion; at whichever exit, a tenthed mile, a third, mensurated like mad, amid the wilds of New Gretna, just a shallow inland from Mystic Island, the milchy oyster bay and shoals giving way to the wetlands by which the Absegami first came to settle Absecon, the cattailed marshes turning to cedar, the birchedbeery, dogwooded wade; its exact number, though, if any it had, a secret to be passed around only in whispers at dunch parties and schoolboard meetings from brother to inlaw, a wooden designate standing high and holy menhir, megalithic, ever ancient and older even, as if natural, organic, grown of the earth, in the early light often recommended for the execution of this particular ritual: usually the morning of a Sunday with the kinder all still attractive, intelligent, promising, and unsuspectingly asleep, they’d drive on out, stop for coffee black for him, milked and sweetened with flavor for her, drive then stop again on the shoulder rumbling as if the earth disapproved of their betrayal and would quake in punishment, to swallow and so betray them, throw it in reverse, stop then throw open the hatch doors of their vehicles allterrain, to kiss and kick, slap and punch and, ultimately, to lead by the leash—there to let their unwanted pets loose to the world. And the Top Ten it’s your faults given for this were, drumroll please…Lameness, Rabidity, Old Age, Senility, Newfound Allergy, Unwanted by New Husband, by New Wife, Scared the New Baby, Newly Moved In Dying Parent, Grandparent and the like—don’t get defensive, it just ran away, we’ve been driving around searching for forget its name, it answers to hours, all Reward Offered day.

  And so the Kieferöde’s stumped full of dogs of various breeds, many now regarded as domestically extinct. No longer around for your roll over, sit, stay. In a stark, terrible reversal of the laws of evolution—which reversion seems in the air of late, doesn’t it, an upheaval, an overturning—these dogs had devolved to an existence prior to that of domestication, to an incarnation even earlier: before the morning Shema, according to one rabbi or another, when a dog was nearly indistinguishable from a wolf. All were carnivorous, all ate meat, ate anything providing, though were starving, are always, these what to call them omnivorous, these allaccused, and manynamed: monstermutants, postnuclear primitives, survivors of hearth and home and neglect and abuse and of love, not enough, just wandering around foaming, gnawing hides, rending flesh with teeth sharpened on teeth; rendering their skins parchmentlike, palimpsested, adorned with scratchy symbols and daubed marks the language of an ungardened estate. And not only those still alive: of those lost, their boned carcasses lie everywhere ripped open to dank decomposition its stench vomitous; rot, the mate of disease. Predators swoop down to rend, tear flesh with talons; fleas swarm overhead, maggots teem pleasurelessly in remains. Verily, these are the only known denizens of the Kieferöde, predatory flying things, nibbling pests, and their native dogs, now a newborn and His frustrated pursuit. Mada initially thinks these dogs are dead, have to be, though are they playing, is this only part of the game: whispering at first, here Spot, tear out my jugular, or Hearsay, the Philly lawyer’s mutt, those precious billable morning hours fetched out on the beach in Sea Isle, Hear Say, come boy!—they wait for Mada to approach, then spring at his gut with an imposition of jaws, starry teeth, brilliantly yellowed, though, just prior to the bite, there’s a simper of slaver, they fall, into fur heaps, exhausted; it’s obvious they haven’t had food in a while, wet or dry. Hamm about to pet at their exposed ribcages, their flanks stretched thin, withdraws his hand, himself, with rakes, scrapes; who knows if they’d had their shots, whether Hamm’d had his…
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  Needlemarks covering their matted flanks of one vast scar, slicings through their coats, of which some are merely pilled, and others totally ragged, prophesizing in their motley markings the ineffable, the excruciatingly obscure. Those scrappy slits of weather, nature, and affliction untold loosing, also, the inner jellies of bulging, bloodshot eyes: there’s one eye bleeding, the other hanging out the socket by only a single thinning dangle; noses veined on by a mere shredded nerve, a fringing, a scapular tassel; frayed straps for tails and phylactery ears; hairs skewed in the electric antennal as if their existence shocks even themselves. It’s evident, too, they’d been rolling around in their own dreck, as the reek’s overwhelming, and black, both excremental and fleshified, and fiery, ash, with a whiff of the marshy egg to the east, it’s cold, and it dizzies: Mada’s loafers encased in droppings, these sickening green flecked in red, and pissyellowed, in every color of traffic’s bypass, control—the lanes that divide the forest into forests, the wood into woods, the known into all these many separate unknowns; every three steps or so he lands a foot in a leftover dogdish, overflowing with urine so acidic it scalds through the turd, then his loafers, dress socks, skin; then how he steps into it all over again as if to salve, and shrieks, inhaling remnants of the latest autumn, fall down the wrong throat.

  They bury their burrows in wormy dens, hidden by snow, in pocks emptied by the force of forepawed rain, nests of leaf and needle, piles, logs hollowed for infestation. And then, come the dawn of late afternoon toward winter’s dusk, they crawl themselves out, to prey—what’s left of them, that is, what’s been left, their own stray parts, their lost. As many of these dogs are missing limbs—some with limbs hanging by torn tendons, others dragging themselves on two front legs only, on two rear legs, on one up front one rear left and right, right and left or, one leg or anything less how they’d deal. It’s apparent they’d long ago adapted to cannibalism: once rich dogs fed and watered well, exercised and groomed, even with papers, certificates of bloodline, shots and widely accepted veternary approvals, though now straggling superlean, scraggled scrawny; in their mouths, hunks of other dogs, either gnawed from them or loosed in miscellaneous incendiary, strayed in unfortunate mishaps, lost to accidental deterrence: four legs to stagger into errant leashtripwire mechanisms, you have to be careful, traps set down, concealed, leafcovered; dogs, only a handful, that still have their collars, their tags, by which they’ve been leashed up to treetops, hanging spread for the eagles, the night owls, and noontime hawks: who’d hung them; what, exactly, merited them this punishment—that they’d been coupled in heat on the Ark two-by-two…beware, what’s justice to the dogs?