The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering

by Jeffrey Rotter

  It was always much past midnight when Umma’s calico dress finally appeared on the firelit roadway. She would look up and wave before vanishing around the side of our building. Faron always met her in the lobby to keep her safe from the Stairdwellers. They were a special sort of edgy after midnight, but so was Faron. He got himself stabbed in the arm once with a coat hanger.

  Sometimes Umma liked to stop at the bonfires to comfort herself with her fellow commuters, and that comfort might stretch on for hours. Some nights I’d nod off before she made it home. My eyes would swim out over the Dixie Hiway and the shadows that pressed in around its bonfires, over the ruins of Old Miamy all pink and lit up for the nighttime tourists. I’d wake up smelling wood smoke and know our mother had come home. She would bind me up in the hot wires of her arms. I would burn in the folds of her calico and fall asleep.

  * * *

  Me and Faron did our Vocationals in Mining. Your uncle took to the dirt like a regulation earthworm. He could crawl on his belly down seepholes with no clue where he might emerge. The earth would close around him, he said, like a big mineral hug. It made him feel like a part of something.

  Me, I felt like dinner down there. Stepping into a mineshaft was like feeding myself to a giant. Tight spaces, thin air, total darkness: what separated mining from the grave was a paycheck, and you earned almost as much dead.

  As the months wore on and I missed Pop more and more, I started playing hooky from Vocationals to ride the tour bus through the Old Miamy Ruins. I liked the sun and wind and the smell of lotion. The tour was gratis because the Bosom Chiefs considered those ruins a history lesson. I learned by heart the haunting names of Old Miamy’s landmarks. Civil Center, Bass, Arse, Jungle Island. Before long I could parrot back the whole boilerplate script.

  Whenever a tourist asked me to take her picture in front of the Four Seasons, I felt it my duty to oblige. Hundreds of people had contributed to that shell of a building; thousands had enjoyed its ice machines, imported bedclothes, and heated lap pool. I owed it to them to tell their story. Their dissolution held promise for us as a society. It is a comfort to know how swiftly and thoroughly a civilization can crumble when nobody wants it anymore.

  The highlight of every Miamy tour was Pork & Beans. This was a gated housing compound built by the famed Commie Gunt called Roserfelt. He was a Chief in his own way, stinky rich and hitched up to the finest families, but old Roserfelt had a deviant attachment to the poor. It may have been sexual. He wanted to see them pampered and put up like sultans, so he gave them Pork & Beans. He gave them police and water at no extra charge. Men addicted to drugs and women hooked on pregnancy got free sirloin and sedans and potable water. Swimming pools, in-unit toilets, a doctor that made house calls in a hi-tech van: Pork & Beans was paradise for do-nothings. I paid special attention to getting this part of the tour just right and would practice it every chance I got.

  Pop had always been one to encourage my hobbies; he would have listened patiently to my Pork & Beans speech, clapped me on the back, and narrowed his earnest eyes. “You will amount to something, boy.”

  But in Pop’s absence Faron was in charge. That we were twins and should have been equals made no difference. (Umma told us after Faron was born it took me a full hour to work my way out of her tubes.) My brother decided I should not entertain any dreams as lofty as Old Miamy tour guide. He said mining was a safe bet for both of us.

  One morning in late summer, after Umma went to the clinic and before we were to report for Vocationals, I made the mistake of practicing Pork & Beans on Faron. He stood behind the kitchen bar making steam patterns on the laminate with his toast. I hung my legs over the edge of the top bunk and started in.

  As I laid bare the terrible history of the Pork & Beans housing complex, I could sense my brother’s rising irritation. He ground his toast to dust on the counter. When I reached the end of my speech—“The tower blocks were painted a cheery pink to match the flamingo, a narcissistic bird that eats garbage”—he leaned forward and blew a cloud of crumbs across the living room.

  He stalked over and kicked his lower bunk flush against the wall. Though I didn’t get it at the time, the implication was that I needed to be crushed a little myself. Faron always meant well. He was my protector, especially when it came to disappointment.

  “You want to be a tour guide so bad?” he said. “Get down.”

  I followed him into the stairwell, awed by his tone. He was our man of action and I loved him dearly, even when he went too far. Only one Stairdweller dared to give us trouble. She was a ropy gal in a handcrafted shirt made out of Fatty Meats takeout bags. She wagged a sharpened prybar and told us to open our rucksacks. I offered her a sandwich but before she could take it Faron punched her in the neck. The girl hacked so hard I thought she might die, but then she coughed up something and spat at me.

  The next landing was where the Stairdwellers kept rabbits. As I often did, I stopped to poke a finger in the hutch, but it wasn’t a bunny that sniffed me. It was a boy. Dry blood colored his mouth. The surviving rabbits huddled in a back corner, ears down. Their eyes were asking for help, same as the boy that had eaten one of their kin. “Don’t dwell on it,” said Faron, advice he gave me often, though it never stuck.

  At the third floor we hopped over the windowsill and onto the overpass. We took the Dixie Hiway till we reached the deco gate of the Ruins. A fat boy with cornrows tried to shake us down for five hundred dollars each, but he didn’t force the issue. Soon as Faron touched his shoulder, we were let inside free of charge.

  While we waited at the bus kiosk, my brother’s attitude softened. He sprung for sno-cones. I got grape and though the syrup tasted like a tin spoon, I sucked the ice till it turned brittle and white.

  The bus, when it came, was done up like an old-time trolley. The paint job was flamingo pink. Said FLAMINGO FLYER on both sides.

  “Goddamn ’mingos,” said Faron. He was racist about birds. Meaning his contempt for birds was disordered and based on ignorance. I thought there were good species and bad. Even turkey vultures have their virtues if you are looking for a dead body.

  I recognized the bus driver. Ross Carnation was one of my favorite guides. He was a star because he put a little music in his voice, like he was singing quietly to the passengers. He sang about arrogance, about collapse and decay, without cruelty. Ross lived a few floors below us in Tower C, and was a revival dancer of some note. Saturday nights he’d gather in the courtyard with a bunch of guys to dance to trad music like Miamy bass and salser. Sometimes they put on a floor show for the whole Gables, which was a pleasure to attend. I always thought Pop would have liked to sit in with his Roland AX and make them dance to some of those gloomy sweet songs from his Texas forebear, but he never got the chance.

  We climbed on through the back of the bus like I always did. I never wanted to be a nuisance. But Faron pushed his way to the front and I followed through a gauntlet of varicose knees. Thursdays was for geriatrics, come down in their Vansters from Hiya City.

  Ross reached for the mic to announce our next stop. It would be the zoo, one of my favorites. Faron was quicker than the dancer. He snagged the handset and passed it to me. “Do your thing, brother,” he said. “If you want it so bad.” Ross gave me a pointy look and said something that had no trace of music in it.

  I could have made the announcement easy; I knew all my lines, but why make trouble? Ross was all right; he could dance.

  “Start talking,” said Faron.

  The geriatrics were getting impatient, too. It started up like gas, a rumble in the springs of their seats. The Hiya City crowd came here on a weekly basis. They were old and had no trouble doing the same thing over and over again. At the ends of their lives they had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Patterns were life itself to them. When a pattern changed, they were forced to consider broader shifts in being.

  “I’m dying,” somebody moaned. “Just do the god-durned speech!” She was joined by several
of her peers: “Let’s hear some talking points!” an old frog hollered. A girly voice kept saying, “Make it talk, make it talk, make it talk.”

  Ross grabbed at the mic, but Faron intervened. He yanked open Ross’s waistband and dropped the sno-cone inside his gym shorts. Ross hopped into the well shaking ice out of his crotch like a snow turd. Faron yanked the lever that made the door open, and we watched Ross bounce off toward the front gate.

  “Oh man,” I said. “He’s going to tell.”

  Faron sucked his teeth and swung into the driver’s seat. “This is your big shot,” he said. “If you want to be a tour guide so damn bad, brother, start talking and see how much you like it.”

  I don’t know how I felt, only that I didn’t want to be a tour guide quite so badly anymore. If Faron was trying to kill my dream, it was working. I wanted to get off that bus, bolt down the Dixie Hiway, and never come back. I wanted to hide in the rabbit hutch with that bloody-mouth boy. But Faron was looking at me and so were the old people.

  “Next we come to the place the ancient Floridayans called Zoo Miamy,” I began, too quietly. Soon, though, the words began to flow, and despite my fear I could not shut up. “It is widely known that Gunts and their subjects were Christian animists who elevated the lower species to the respect level of gods. They built temples in their honor, fed them gourmet. Animals that would eat you if you gave them a fork and knife the Gunts coddled like Chiefs.”

  We paused under the ruined signage, rebar and clods of cement that hardly formed the word Zoo.

  “Beyond this gate,” I continued, “citizens would pay a tithe to gigantic rats, long-neck horses in pokey-dots, and virus monkeys. Excited with sugar drinks, children gave in to the rapturous worship of beasts.” It was a hell of a speech, and today I can’t believe I delivered it so straight.

  I praised the Chiefs, in whose wisdom the facility was shut down and all the useless species exterminated for the security of mankind. “Many of these creatures would appear fantastical to us today. Great big kitties they painted like fire, a fake man in an orange fringe jacket who lived in a tree. They called him the Orange Tan.…”

  This was as much of the script as I could manage before the bus surged forward and I landed in a bony grandpa lap. At the bleat of a siren I looked back to see that we were being pursued by an enforcement sedan.

  Tour buses were forbidden entry into the zoo proper. Officially it was because the footpaths were too narrow for vehicular traffic. But the real reason, I had been told, was the presence of certain dangerous species that had survived these many years since the park’s closing. They had thrived in a state of wildness for centuries, growing more resentful of their former captors with each generation. If the Chiefs had believed in Darwin, they might have called it natural selection, the evolution of spite.

  But Faron did not know this. Or perhaps he did and was figuring the cops would never follow us into so dangerous a place. We crashed through a cyclone fence, bouncing around pylons and derelict ticket booths. Just inside the gates stood a pack of flamingoes. The flamingo is not a flightless bird, only unmotivated. Faron flipped on the wipers to clear away the blood and feathers, just in time to reveal a gift shop directly in our path. To the left lay a broad marsh that must have been artificial when it was built but was now very real. Faron swung hard to the right, landing the front wheels in a moat.

  Two squad cars braked behind us and a third piled into our rear bumper. Our more ambulatory passengers made for the back door, but there was no time to escape. After much cursing Faron found reverse. He backed onto the footpath in a spray of gravel. There was only one way to turn. We hit the marsh at a high rate of speed, but it wasn’t fast enough to carry us across. The bus mired in about two feet of water and the engine died.

  Back on the path the cops killed their sirens like it was mission accomplished, suspects apprehended, roger that. I heard nothing but the chatter of cranes and car doors opening. Two officers, pistols drawn, approached the edge of the marsh. We were, I believed at that moment, done for. But then the cops turned and ran back to their squad car. From the rear of the bus I watched two gators slither onto the shoal. I checked the side windows. A long bull swam underneath us and emerged with a hiss on the other side.

  Cops were one thing. We had survived their interventions before, but I was ill prepared for gators. However, they proved to be a blessing. The engine turned over, and Faron stomped the gas. The wheels caught and the bus bolted up onto the far bank. Mud must have flooded the brake drums because there was no stopping us. Dead ahead stood a tremendous column of bark, a tree so big, so fleshy, it looked like the leg of an out-of-shape giant. We struck it head-on. I watched Faron float through the shattering windshield and slam against the tree before I was buried under a pig pile of old folks. Nobody moved, though there was much groaning and the odor of ruptured bladder bags.

  The girly voice said, “Pee-ew!”

  I elbowed myself free and crawled over the dashboard to save my brother.

  In the mangrove I found him, insensible but more or less intact. I looked him over. One foot was turned perpendicular to the other. He appeared to be growing a second forehead on his first one. I got under one arm and tried to help him across the savanna. Not an easy task; Faron was all muscle and half awake. I didn’t have time to check on the geriatrics piled up inside the bus, but they had the look about them of a mass grave.

  Across the marsh two cops with shotguns pumped rounds into the gators. The beasts did not go down easy. They opened their jaws like they could eat the shells.

  The nearest hidey-hole was a low silo of concrete. I found an opening overhung with kudzu and pushed Faron inside. The door was marked with a skirted hieroglyph: the ancient symbol for ladies. I dragged my brother inside the bathroom. Sunlight bore down through the roof. It gleamed across a row of basins loaded with shit. Animals are basically decent but they do not know better than to take their dumps in the sink. It may be true what Smart Man Tolemy said, that plumbing is the divide between man and beasts. But that fool said a lot of things.

  I stuck two fingers in the knob hole and pulled the door tight behind us. Faron blacked out with his head in a basin of white scat. I cleared a patch on the counter and settled my brother atop it. There were leaves in his hair and crap on his nose. His pupils kept trying to size up the light. Cold scum covered his face. His head lolled against the backsplash and he kept saying the word ponies with great emphasis, like he meant something by it. If we hoped to get out of this shithouse I needed my brother at least semi-functional. Maybe, I thought, a splash of water would revive him. When I turned the tap, a centipede spooled out of the faucet.

  Kneeling down, I inspected his ankle. Faron’s foot was so swollen that the straps of his flipper-flop trussed it up like a pork roast. I pried away the foam sole and just held his leg to my chest. Maybe I could will it to repair. Maybe I had Umma’s touch. We only had to reach the clinic, find her. Umma would know what to do. I found the wallet in my back pocket and gnawed on it, listening to Faron breathe.

  His ragged breath seemed to echo through the lavatory. From somewhere in the room I heard a congested sort of panting, a snuffling laugh. I thought: we are not alone. I thought: some joker is making fun of my brother.

  This old bathroom had two narrow stalls for the able and one wide for cripples, who were rewarded for their inadequacies in those days with roomier commodes. The breathing came from behind that handicap door.

  I saw movement in the gap above the floor. A baggy nose, shining with snot, appeared and then withdrew. The door banged open to reveal a specimen of unprecedented ugliness. It was pig-based, but beyond that I can say little more. Its head was black and burred all over like a charred cactus. Tusks curled up in a handlebar mustache of villainy. The tail stood upright, and Cactus Pig charged.

  Its hooves slid across the tiles. I ducked under the sink to make a shield of Faron’s shins. Cactus Pig stopped, sniffed us, put its tail down, and waddled toward the exit
. When it butted the kickplate, the door would not budge. Cactus Pig was displeased. The tail rose up again and he turned a tight circle, squealing. Poor guy. He was as trapped as we were, and I’m afraid he blamed us for his predicament. Faron must have sensed danger for he slid to the floor and dragged me to my feet. Together we edged toward the exit as I apologized to the pig.

  Outside on the savanna we hit the grass at a sprint. Even on that busted foot, Faron still outpaced me. Cactus Pig emerged behind us and bolted into the marsh. I heard a shot and turned to see a cop fire on the animal. The bullet bounced off its horny head and Cactus Pig made his escape.

  Now the pistols were drawn on us. “Over here,” Faron shouted. He must have been in immense pain, but he didn’t let on. (He told me once that pain is only a circuit; all you needed to do was find the kill switch.)

  Back in Gunt times a monorail shuttled visitors around the zoo. It soared above the enclosures in a graceful arc, giving an aerial view of nature’s bounty. But the monorail was now a shipwreck. One end had collapsed and the three cars of the train had nosedived into the dirt. Faron climbed in through a busted windshield and we picked our way over the seats until we reached the level rail. This was a rounded beam thirty-odd feet off the ground. Far below I saw gazelles spray out across a meadow. They could not have been more graceful than my brother. Faron danced down the line like a housecat with a busted paw.

  I fell to hands and knees. (In addition to my claustrophobia, I am also afraid of heights. The only comfortable place for me is on firm ground with plenty of open space.) I managed to hug my way forward, but Faron decided this was not a manly way to comport myself. “Up,” he screamed.