Mighty Unclean

by Cody Goodfellow

  The 8mm Bell and Howell Lumina also features a retractable power cord and full auto-focus. It is quite a good movie projector.

  The test movies are all samples from Castle Films, Inc. (I am sorry, you will not get a sample film with the purchase of the 8mm Bell and Howell Lumina projector. If you wish to purchase Castle films, they are sold at camera stores or may be ordered from the Castle Film Catalog.)

  Castle films run three minutes each. I like that. In three minutes, you get the whole story. Some Castle films are in color, cartoons like Woody Woodpecker in Fowled up Falcon or travel films like Hawaii: Enchanted Isle (#9138), and some are in black and white, like the Abbot and Costello films (these are very funny three minute movies and I think I would laugh very hard at them but when I start to laugh, why, I sometimes think Lou Costello reminds me of someone and I get to thinking about who and so I don’t laugh after all), and Chimp’s Last Chance (#855). There are many Castle films about chimps and apes and gorillas: I think it was Tom who told me that chimps and apes and gorillas are not the same except for apes and gorillas.

  There is one three-minute Castle film called Mysterious Dr. Satan. In it, the hero is the Copperhead and he wears a mask and fights a robot. It was so interesting I even told Johnny about it but I do not think he understood.

  When I click the master switch all the projectors show all the movies together on the wall (except for the 8mm Lumina projection lamps that go POP) and Abbot and Costello meet Chilly Willy and there’s the chimps and Coney Island and The Three Little Bruins and Audie Murphy and W C Fields and a robot and Lon Chaney the Man-Made monster. It’s like a stew of movies on the wall.

  Projectors with popped bulbs I put on the FAILED shelf and the rest I pack up and put on the three-tiered cart.

  That is what my job is, and now that you know, why, you see why I felt bad I had to take half a day off when the school called about Johnny.

  This time it was not just a note home. Mother Cordelia said the school needed to talk to me and that meant she needed to talk to me.

  So on Tuesday, I put on my hat and gloves and went to school. Christ the Comforter is a very good school with statues and pictures and flags. Mother Cordelia is principal. When she talks to me, she turns her head in a way that makes me think she will just keep turning it and turning it and it will go around and around and around. “Johnny runs up to the other students and blasts them in the face with bubbles.” Mother Cordelia laughs but I don’t because Mother Cordelia doesn’t look like anything is funny. Laughing is not always about funny. “I guess you could say he’s forever blowing bubbles,” Mother Cordelia says, “but he’s shooting them from that toy, that ray gun.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Well. Then. Yes.” That is the kind of thing I say when I need to put words out there but cannot be certain of what to say. It is strange, almost like being underwater, or getting secret messages from outer space, but just then, I can see in my mind Chilly Willy and gorillas and bubbles of light going pop-pop-POP!

  Mother Cordelia says when Johnny “blows bubbles at the other children, he yells he is CAPTAIN RAMJET of THE ROCKET REBELS and he will destroy them all with his bubbles of death. We do not like children to make this sort of threat, even playfully. And, frankly, I do not think Johnny is all that playful.”

  I tell Mother Cordelia Johnny has no father.

  “But Johnny has a Father.” She points to the Crucifix on the wall by the window. She say, “Johnny’s Eternal Father is always with him. Our Father who art in heaven.”

  I nod my head. Woody Woodpecker. Mighty Mouse. Fatso Bear. Chimp on the Farm.

  “It’s the comic books,” Mother Cordelia tells me. “Johnny is obsessed by comic books.”

  These are Johnny’s comic books: OUTER SPACE INVADERS. BEYOND THE GALAXY. DARK DIMENSION 12X. SPACE MONSTERS. BUZZ COREY. ATOMIC MENACE. CAPTAIN RAMJET OF THE ROCKET REBELS. ROGUE STAR. FLASH GORDON. PIRATES OF THE STRATOSPHERE. ROD BROWN OF THE ROCKET RANGERS.

  “You must take the comics away from him,” Mother Cordelia says. “Get him away from the comic books.”

  “All right,” I tell her.

  “No more comic books,” Mother Cordelia says, “because you know what is good for him and right.”

  “Yes,” I say. Chilly Willy is so silly and now the Mt. Everest Woodpeckers return on the Gorilla Show …

  “I further advise,” says Mother Cordelia, “that you have a serious talk with him and then give him … You. Know. What.”

  “All right,” I say.

  “And I advise still further that you give it to him right on the … You. Know. Where.” Now Mother Cordelia smiles.

  “All right,” I say.

  “I am sure … You. Know. How.” Now Mother Cordelia winks.

  I know what is right and good for my children. That evening, I tell Johnny and Carla that Alice I am taking them on a picnic.

  I like picnics.

  THREE

  Ro-man set up headquarters and base of operations in a cave in the Valley of Bad Shaped Rocks. (Coincidentally, this was the exact cave site where Johnny and Carla had come upon The Professor and Roy practicing archaeology.) Though he was but a lone warrior, and a hairy one at that, Ro-man had been ordered to destroy all of humanity.

  Check and double check, Ro was up for the gig. Ro-man was equipped with a Calcinator ray, a bubble machine, a Televisory Vidscreen and a card table. Wouldn’t take much more than that. This was before the Star Wars missile defense system.

  No declaration of intent, no cheeseball speeches like THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Ro-man royally Japs the planet. Fired up the old Calcinator ray and, brother, that’s all she wrote.

  Reports via viewscreen that he has put the kibosh on the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle. It’s a wrap. Case closed, Mabel, and I’m coming home.

  That’s what Ro-man brags to The Great Guidance, who more or less tells Ro-man, “Bubbe, you are so full of prunes.” Cram this into your noggin, Ro-man, there are SIX PEOPLE still alive on the planet so let’s get calcinating.”

  Little did Ro-man know that Johnny had been spying, picking up on the two-way interplanetary gas session and bombast between the Great Guidance and Ro-man.

  Johnny beat feet back to the ruined house: all that was left was the basement level. Strands of wire buzzing and crackling with electricity – a primitive but effective means of blocking Ro-man’s Televisory Probes – surrounded the open air bunker of the last human beings on the plant, who were—

  Pop: (who had been the Professor but … Hey, change happens) and

  Mom: (ding-dong ding-dong)

  and

  Carla (ain’t she sweet?)

  and

  Roy, who was now the scientist boy-friend

  of

  Alice, who had become a scientist in her own right.

  And of course … Here’s Johnny!

  Johnny threw himself into the sanctuary and says, “I know where Ro-man is. Let’s go and kill him.”

  Alice: Perhaps we could find his weak spot.

  Mom: Do you think it will rain today? It could. I wish we had a roof. I don’t think we have an umbrella and we are not fish.

  Roy: Maybe it’s … his ass. We could jam some fissionable materials right up Ro-man’s old wazoo …

  Pop: Don’t talk like that.

  Alice: Roy, your levity is inappropriate. We are confronting certain death.

  Roy: Oh … Alice, will you marry me?

  Carla: I thought you were already playing house.

  Mom and Pop: Ha-ha.

  It was agreed then. Alice and Roy, having in common both science and a penchant for kludgy banter, would wed.

  Roy: … we were wondering how you’d feel about performing the ceremony.

  Pop/Professor: You want me to—?

  Alice: Oh, yes!

  Professor: In that case, let’s do it! And I want you to know this is the biggest social event of the year! The whole darn town will turn out!

  Pop/Professor is really a big tickle. Har
-de-har-har. But okay, if Jackie Leonard he ain’t, leave us not to forget he was the cat who, with the invaluable aid of scientists Roy and his own daughter Alice, invented an ANTIBIOTIC SERUM capable of curing all diseases, even the common cold.

  And upon whom did he experiment with the first injections? Turn around, drop your pants, and a little shtoch in tuchus for his family and Roy and of course, Himself.

  Interesting side effect, one which The Professor had no time to learn from FDA trials. The antibiotic also provided complete immunization to Ro-man’s death ray!

  Which fact gets glommed onto by … Ro-man.

  Ro-Man: Great Guidance, I have discovered the secret of our failure to destroy the remaining humans! Our Calcinator death ray cannot penetrate them. They have been made immune through the antibiotic serum, which I believe is the same as our formula X-Z-A.

  The Great Guidance had new commands.

  Ro-Man: I am ordered to kill the humans. I must do it with my hands.

  ««—»»

  Professor: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to… Dear Lord, You know I am not trained for this job. But I have tried to live by your laws. The Ten Commandments … The beatitudes…The Golden Rule.

  I have always believed in the Brotherhood of Man. I have always believed that one day, the working peoples of the world would unite to throw off the yoke of Oppression. The working class is the class that works and thus, we, the last survivors, reach out to any other last survivors who might have survived in Russia.

  (When you’re a Red, you’re a Red until you’re dead.)

  Professor: Father on high, I would like you to give your blessing to Alice and Roy. Even in this darkest hour, we have kept the faith. In your grand design, there may be no room for man’s triumph over this particular evil that has beset us. If by any chance, we workers of the world emerge in strength and victory should be on our side, I want You to give a long life to Alice and Roy, and a fruitful one. But no matter how it ends, Lord, watch over them this night … Watch over us all.

  Amen.

  And now, I pronounce you Man and Wife.

  Roy, do you have the ring?

  Roy: Why, I didn’t think about that.

  Johnny said, “Oh, brother.” Johnny thought, Stupid a-hole. Freame supreme. And he’s a swish.

  Mom took off her own ring and handed it to Roy. “Rings go around and around,” she said.

  Roy: With this ring, I thee wed.

  Professor: The only thing to seal it now is a kiss.

  They kissed. Johnny asked, “Where are you going on your honeymoon, Niagara Falls?”

  Roy (laughing): Lad, you are just chockful of scintillating wit. To tell the truth, we hadn’t thought about that.

  Professor: Wherever you go – be careful. And I want you back first thing in the morning. After all, there is a war going on! And now, more than ever, I don’t want to give up!

  Roy: Thanks for everything, Dad. Most of all, for having raised Alice. You too, Mom.

  Alice: I’ll go get my things, and then we’ll go.

  FOUR

  ALICE

  And so, heigh-ho and off I go, a’hand in hand, a’honeymooning with Roy, lah-de-dah, Roy, dunce-in-residence. “Alice,” says he, “we really need to talk.” A pause, then, “I need to talk.”

  I’d wager a dollar to your Aunt Nellie’s discount diaphragm that Roy is struggling with a confession concerning the “love that dare not speak its name” – or even lisp it.

  But why should I make it easy? “No, my dear, my darling, my one and only tutti-frutti. What we need is FORNICATION. The future of the human race depends on it. As soon as we find a little out of the way nook or cranny, you’re going to jam your beef bayonet into my yummy gummy and ride me like a carnival tilt-a-whirl. We are fucking for the future, Roy, a better bet than US Savings Bonds.”

  A sidelong glance shows me red-face Roy about to have a cow.

  Do the dirty with Roy? Please, My Ain True Love is a Magnificence of Savagery and Intellect. He is Unpredictability and Contrasts. He is Cruelty and Confused Gentleness. Fate has brought him to me and me to him. He’s one hotcha-hotcha and I’m totally gone for him. As Blaise Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.” And as Dale Evans stated, “Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.”

  So, Merry Christmas to me, as we continue on, Roy trying to talk and me following my unreasoning heart.

  Then behind us, Carla calls out. “Roy, Alice, wait for me!” And we stop, turn, and here she comes, cutey-pie in Keds.

  Alice: Carla, what are you doing here?

  “I didn’t get you any presents,” Carla says with reach-for-the-insulin adorability, holding out a droopy flower.

  “How lovely,” Roy says sourly, perhaps thinking of his own pointdexter, likely to droop when summoned to report for duty.

  Carla’s following us was unexpected, all right, but perhaps it is better this way, I think, as I gush appropriately. “Oh, you little rascal! Thank you very much. Now, you’d better run right on home!”

  Roy: Quickly, Carla.

  Very good, fly away home, little birdbrain, fly away home.

  FIVE

  She runs and runs, puffs of dust trailing her. She is afraid now and she tries to think of things that will make her not afraid. Maybe Johnny will play house with her. Maybe Mom will sing her a song: “Chilly Willy cooked in a stew, with a penguin and a monkey and a girl like you.” Of course, maybe she will be in bad trouble. Maybe Dad will be mad and yell and spank. Then for no reason she thinks, Maybe this is all a dream. Maybe she is drowning – little girls do drown – and in her drowning she is imagining this.

  Suddenly, Ro-man blocks her path. Beneath his dull gray helmet, he has a broad and thick body like the hairiest of apes, although he stands easily erect, not even a hint that he’d feel more comfortable with knuckles on the ground. He looks like his feet hurt badly and you can tell he doesn’t want to run because he is more the lumbering than the running type. Ro-man’s face (what you can see of it through the misty none-too-clean glass visor of his helmet) is something like Lon Chaney’s in Phantom of the Opera, if in addition to his other physiognomic misfortunes, the Phantom had been badly burned in a fire, or had decided to don two silk stockings to rob a currency exchange. Ro-man’s space helmet sports one bent antenna and one straight one. Reception is pretty good, considering.

  Ro-Man: What are you doing here alone, girl-child?

  Carla (sans cuteness): My daddy won’t let you hurt me.

  Ro-Man: We will see!

  It seems she was right to be afraid. She is neither drowning nor dreaming and she is in bad, bad trouble.

  SIX

  Ro-man contacts the Great Guidance on the Televisory Vidscreen. Ro-man’s got plans. Ro-man’s got dreams. Ro-man’s gotta be cool and just mayhap, Mr. Ro-man, Esq. might have it made in the shade.

  Ro-Man: Great Guidance, I have a favorable report. I have already eliminated one of them. It was a simple matter of … strangulation. That leaves four for me to kill.

  The Great Guidance: Error again! Five.

  You can hear the Great Guidance’s exasperation: What’s with you, Schmuck? You’re coming on like Goof Majorus. You a numbnuts or what?

  Ro-Man: Four, well … I have made an estimate in relation to our strategic reserve: The plan should include ONE LIVING HUMAN for reference, in case of unforeseen contingency.

  The Great Guidance: Do you question the plan?

  Ro-Man: No, Great One. I only postulate—

  The Great Guidance implies, Hold on just one chicken-pluckin’ second! Oh, Ro-man, I’m tuning in and the picture is clear! You’ve gone APE for the female HUMAN, the one with the classy chassis and the outsized nay-nays. ‘Fess up, you got a case of the trottin’ hots for the babe.

  Ro-Man: I …

  Great Guidance: Proceed on schedule! Destroy the others. ALL OF THEM!

  Ro-Man cuts the Vidscreen.

  Ro-Man (goes all existential a
la Hamlet’s “to be or not to be,” only with more hair and a space helmet: I cannot, and yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do must and cannot meet? Yet, I must.

  But I cannot.

  SEVEN

  ALICE

  Believe it or not, despite the rock strewn terrain, we found a small patch of grass, spread out the blanket, and then, just for the hell of it, I surprised Roy with a sudden and fierce kiss.

  He did not surprise me in the least. He pulled back, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Alice …”

  I said, “Our obligation to the future generation is to create it, so let’s get propagating.”

  “Yessss,” Roy said super-sibilantly. “I take our responsibility seriously, but it will be difficult, because my natural inclinations …”

  “You’re light in the shoes? You’re a bigger fairy than Tinker Belle? You really love FRUIT cake and NANCY comics and JUDY GARLAND, too? Aw, you nutty nob jockey, you flying flit, you silly shirtlifter, you fucky-sucky Stoke on Trent, I knew you were a ragin’ HOMO ever since I first saw you. There’s as much chance of my making humpity-bumpers with you as there is my diddling Dwight D. Eisenhower in the window at Macy’s during the Thanksgiving Day parade while Mamie farts ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in three quarter time.”

  Color Roy confused. “You don’t love me?”

  I smiled.

  Enter … RO-MAN!

  Enter … My Own True Love!

  … who gave Roy such a zetz stars orbited his head like in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. Ro-man said something along the lines of “Alice and I are going steady, pal, so you’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’”

  Ro-man, my Romantic Ro-man!

  So that’s all she wrote, Roy. Off to the Great Fruit Stand in the Sky. As William Shakespeare had it, “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.”

  “C’mon, Big Guy,” I said, and Ro-man picked me up in his great, long arms, My Big Loving Monkey Man, and held me tight against his powerful hairiness as he carried me off to our cave.