by Drew Ford
Bobby talked for hours—more hours than I have. But the upshot and the result were both the same: the stuff in the mayonnaise jar.
“We’ve got our own still in La Plata now,” he said. “This is the stuff we’re brewing, Howie, pacifist white lightning. The aquifer under that area of Texas is deep but amazingly large; it’s like this incredible Lake Victoria driven into the porous sediment that overlays the Moho. The water is potent, but we’ve been able to make the stuff I squirted on the wasps even more potent. We’ve got damn near six thousand gallons now in these big steel tanks. By the end of the year we’ll have fourteen thousand. By next June we’ll have thirty thousand. But it’s not enough. We need more, we need it faster . . . and then we need to transport it.”
“Transport it where?” I asked him.
“Borneo, to start with.”
I thought either I had lost my mind or misheard him. I really did.
“Look, Bow-Wow . . . sorry, Howie.” He was scrumming through his tote bag again. He brought out a number of aerial photographs and handed them over to me. “You see? You see how fucking perfect it is? It’s as if God suddenly busted through with something like ‘And now we bring you a special bulletin! This is your last chance, assholes! And now we return you to Wheel of Fortune.’ Or something like that.”
“I don’t get you,” I said. “And I have no idea what I’m looking at.” Of course I did; it was an island—not Borneo itself but an island lying to the west of Borneo identified as Gulandio—with a mountain in the middle and a lot of muddy little villages lying on its lower slopes. What I meant was that I didn’t know what I was looking for.
“The mountain has the same name as the island,” he said. “Gulandio. In the local patois it means grace, or fate, or destiny, or take your pick. But Duke Rogers says it’s really the biggest time bomb on Earth . . . and it’s wired to go off by October of next year. Probably earlier.”
The crazy thing’s this: The story’s only crazy if you try to tell it in a speed rap, which is what I’m trying to do now. Bobby wanted me to help him raise somewhere between six hundred thousand and a million and a half dollars to do the following: first, to synthesize fifty to seventy thousand gallons of what he called the high-test; second, to airlift all of this water to Borneo, which had landing facilities (you could land a hang glider on Gulandio, but that was about all); third, to ship it over to Gulandio; fourth, to truck it up the slope of the volcano, which had been dormant (save for a few puffs in 1938) since 1804, and then to drop it down the muddy tube of the volcano’s caldera. Duke Rogers was actually John Paul Rogers, the geology professor. He claimed that Gulandio was going to do more than just erupt; he claimed that it was going to explode, as Krakatoa had done in the nineteenth century, creating a bang that would make the Hiroshima bomb look like a stick of dynamite and the squirt bomb that depopulated three quarters of London like a kid’s firecracker. The debris from the Krakatoa blowup, Bobby told me, had literally encircled the globe; the observed results had formed an important part of the Sagan group’s nuclear-winter theory. For three months afterward sunsets and sunrises half a world away had been grotesquely colorful as a result of the ash whirling around in both the jet stream and the Van Allen currents, which lie forty miles below the Van Allen belt. There had been global changes in climate that lasted five years, and nipa palms, which previously had only grown in eastern Africa and Micronesia, suddenly showed up in both South and North America.
“The North American nipas all died before the turn of the century,” Bobby said, “but they’re alive and well below the equator. Krakatoa seeded them there, Howie . . . the way I want to seed La Plata water all over the earth. I want people to go out in La Plata water when it rains—and it’s going to rain a lot after Gulandio goes bang. I want them to drink the La Plata water that falls in their reservoirs. I want them to wash their hair in it, bathe in it, soak their contact lenses in it. I want whores to douche in it.”
“Bobby,” I said, knowing he was not, “you’re crazy.”
He gave me a crooked, tired grin. It wasn’t until then that I saw how tired my brother was, how badly he needed a place to sleep, to vacation from himself a while.
“I ain’t crazy,” he said. “You want to see crazy? Turn on CNN, B—. . . Howie. You’ll see crazy, in living color.”
But I didn’t need to turn on Cable News to know what Bobby was talking about. The Indians and the Pakistanis were poised on the brink. The Russians and the Chinese, ditto. Half of Africa was starving; the other half was on fire. There had been border skirmishes along the entire Tex-Mex border in the last five years, since Mexico went Communist, and people had started calling the Tijuana crossing point in California Little Berlin because of the wall. The saber rattling had become a din. On the last day of the old year the Scientists for Nuclear Responsibility had set their black clock to fifteen seconds before midnight.
“Bobby, let’s suppose it could be done and everything went according to schedule. You don’t have the slightest idea what the long-term effects might be.”
He started to say something, and I waved it away.
“Don’t even suggest that you do, because you don’t! You’ve had time to find this calmquake of yours and isolate the cause, I’ll give you that. But do you remember thalidomide? Or that nifty little acne stopper that caused cancer and heart attacks in thirty-year-olds? Or the AIDS vaccine in 1994?
“Bobby?”
“It stopped the disease, but it turned all the test subjects into epileptics.”
“Bobby?”
“Then there was—”
“Bobby?”
I stopped and looked at him.
“The world,” Bobby said, and then stopped. His throat worked. I saw he was struggling with tears. “The world needs heroic measures, man. I don’t know about long-term effects, and there’s no time to study them because there’s no long-term prospect. Maybe we can cure the whole mess. Or maybe—”
He shrugged, tried to smile, and looked at me with shining eyes from which two single tears slowly tracked.
“Or maybe we’re giving heroin to a patient with terminal cancer. Either way, it’s an end to the whole mess.” He spread out his hands, palms up, so I could see the stings. “Help me, Bow-Wow. Please help me.”
So I helped him. So we fucked up.
I don’t give a shit.
We killed all the plants, but at least we saved the greenhouse. Something will grow there again someday. I hope.
Are you reading this?
My gears are starting to get a little sticky. For the first time in years I’m having to think about what I’m doing. Should have hurried more at the start.
Well, of course we did it: distilled the water, flew it in, transported it to Gulandio, built a cog railway up the side of the volcano, and dropped over twelve thousand five-gallon containers of La Plata water—the brain-buster version—into the murky, misty depths of the volcano’s caldera. We did all of this in just eight months. It didn’t cost six hundred thousand dollars or a million and a half; it cost over four million, still less than a quarter of one percent of what America spent on defense that year. You want to know how we razed it? I’d tell you if I had more thyme, but my head’s falling apart so never mine. I raised most of it myself if it matters to you. Some by hoof and some by croof. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know I could do it muself until I did. But we did it, and somehow the world held together and that volcano—whatever its name wuz, I can’t remember and there izzunt time to go back over the manuscript—it blue just when it was spo Wait
Okay. A little better. Dilantin. Bobby had it. Heart’s beating like crazy but I can think again. The volcano—Gulandio, by God—blue just when Dook Rogers said it would. Everything when skihi and for a while everyone’s attention turned away from whatever and toward the skies. And bim-deedle-eee, said Scarlett!
It happened pretty fast like sex and checks and special effex and everybody got healthy again. I mean wait
Jes
us please let me finish this.
I mean that everybody stood down. Everybody started to get a little purs perspective on the situation. The wurld started to get like the wasps in Bobbys nest the one he showed me where they didn’t stink too much. There was three yerz like an Indian sumer. People getting together like in that old Youngbloods song that went cmon everybody get together rite now, as in Shop-Rite where mom took me when I wuz in the babby seat and wt
More Dilantin. Big blast. Feel like my heart is coming out thru my ears. But if I concentrate every bit of my force, my—
It was like an Indian summer. Three years. Bobby went on with his resurch. La Plata. Sociological background, etc. You remember the local sheriff? Fat old Republican with a good Henny Youngblood imi-tashun? How Bobby said he had the prelimminary simptoms of Rodney’s disease?
concentrate asshole
Wasn’t just him; turned out like there was a lot of that going around in that part of Texas. All’s Hallows disease is what I meen. For three yerz me and Bobby were down there. Created a new program. New graff of cirkles. I saw what was happen and came back here. Bobby and his to asistants stayed on. One shot hiself Boby said when he showed up here.
Wait one more blast
All right. Last time. Heart beating so fast I can hardly breeve. The new grafp, the last graph, really only whammed you when it was laid over the calmquake graft. The calmquake grafp showed acts of vilence going down as you approached La Place in the muddle; the Alzheimer’s graft graph ghowed incidence of premature seenullity going up as you approached La Place. Peeple there were geting very silly very young but bubby wasn’t there long enough to see it or even how dogs got silly very yung altho he remebered something later if I had time to tell you. We didn’t take any water but botled three years and wor big long sleekers in the ran. so no war and when every-bobby started to get seely we din and I came back here because he my brother I cant remember what his name Bobby
Bobby made me sick what he had dun only when he come here tongit crying I sed Bobby I lov you Bobby sed I’m sorry Bowwow Ime sorry I died it the world the hole world ful of foals and dumbbels and I sed better fouls and bells than a big black sinder in spaz and he cryed and I cryed Bobby I lov you and he sed will you give me some wadder and I sed yez and he said wil yu ride it down and I sed yez an I think I did but its if I cant remember I see wurds but dnt no what they meen bt I uzed to no
I have a Bobby his nayme is bruther and I theen I am dun riding and I have a bocks to put this into thats Bobby sd full of quiyet air to last a milyun yrz so gudbo Im goin to stob gadbo bobby i love you it wuz nt yor falt i love you forgiv yu
love yu
sined (for the wurld),
TIGHT LITTLE STITCHES IN A DEAD MAN’S BACK
JOE R. LANSDALE
For Ardath Mayhar
From the journal of Paul Marder (Boom!)
THAT’S a little scientist joke, and the proper way to begin this. As for the purpose of this notebook, I’m uncertain. Perhaps to organize my thoughts and not go insane.
No. Probably so I can read it and feel as if I’m being spoken to. Maybe neither of those reasons. It doesn’t matter. I just want to do it, and that is enough.
What’s new?
Well, Mr. Journal, after all these years I’ve taken up martial arts again—or at least the forms and calisthenics of Tae Kwon Do. There is no one to spar with here in the lighthouse, so the forms have to do.
There is Mary, of course, but she keeps all her sparring verbal. And as of late, there is not even that. I long for her to call me a sonofabitch. Anything. Her hatred of me has cured to 100% perfection and she no longer finds it necessary to speak. The tight lines around her eyes and mouth, the emotional heat that radiates from her body like a dreadful cold sore looking for a place to lie down, is voice enough for her. She lives only for the moment when she (the cold sore) can attach herself to me with her needles, ink and thread. She lives only for the design on my back.
That’s all I live for as well. Mary adds to it nightly and I enjoy the pain. The tattoo is of a great, blue mushroom cloud, and in the cloud, etched ghost-like, is the face of our daughter, Rae. Her lips are drawn tight, eyes are closed and there are stitches deeply pulled to simulate the lashes. When I move fast and hard they rip slightly and Rae cries bloody tears.
That’s one reason for the martial arts. The hard practice of them helps me to tear the stitches so my daughter can cry. Tears are the only thing I can give her.
Each night I bare my back eagerly to Mary and her needles. She pokes deep and I moan in pain as she moans in ecstasy and hatred. She adds more color to the design, works with brutal precision to bring Rae’s face out in sharper relief. After ten minutes she tires and will work no more. She puts the tools away and I go to the full-length mirror on the wall. The lantern on the shelf flickers like a jack-o-lantern in a high wind, but there is enough light for me to look over my shoulder and examine the tattoo. And it is beautiful. Better each night as Rae’s face becomes more and more defined.
Rae.
Rae. God, can you forgive me, sweetheart?
But the pain of the needles, wonderful and cleansing as they are, is not enough. So I go sliding, kicking and punching along the walkway around the lighthouse, feeling Rae’s red tears running down my spine, gathering in the waistband of my much-stained canvas pants.
Winded, unable to punch and kick any more, I walk over to the railing and call down into the dark, “Hungry?”
In response to my voice a chorus of moans rises up to greet me.
Later, I lie on my pallet, hands behind my head, examine the ceiling and try to think of something worthy to write to you, Mr. Journal. So seldom is there anything. Nothing seems truly worthwhile.
Bored of this, I roll on my side and look at the great light that once shone out to the ships, but is now forever snuffed. Then I turn the other direction and look at my wife sleeping on her bunk, her naked ass turned toward me. I try to remember what it was like to make love to her, but it is difficult. I only remember that I miss it. For a long moment I stare at my wife’s ass as if it is a mean mouth about to open and reveal teeth. Then I roll on my back again, stare at the ceiling, and continue this routine until daybreak.
Mornings I greet the flowers, their bright red and yellow blooms bursting from the heads of long-dead bodies that will not rot. The flowers open wide to reveal their little black brains and their feathery feelers, and they lift their blooms upward and moan. I get a wild pleasure out of this. For one crazed moment I feel like a rock singer appearing before his starry-eyed audience.
When I tire of the game I get the binoculars, Mr. Journal, and examine the eastern plains with them, as if I expect a city to materialize there. The most interesting thing I have seen on those plains is a herd of large lizards thundering north. For a moment, I considered calling Mary to see them, but I didn’t. The sound of my voice, the sight of my face, upsets her. She loves only the tattoo and is interested in nothing more.
When I finish looking at the plains, I walk to the other side. To the west, where the ocean was, there is now nothing but miles and miles of cracked, black sea bottom. Its only resemblances to a great body of water are the occasional dust storms that blow out of the west like dark tidal waves and wash the windows black at mid-day. And the creatures. Mostly mutated whales. Monstrously large, sluggish things. Abundant now where once they were near extinction. (Perhaps the whales should form some sort of GREENPEACE organization for humans now. What do you think, Mr. Journal? No need to answer. Just another one of those little scientist jokes.)
These whales crawl across the sea bottom near the lighthouse from time to time, and if the mood strikes them, they rise on their tails and push their heads near the tower and examine it. I keep expecting one to flop down on us, crushing us like bugs. But no such luck. For some unknown reason the whales never leave the cracked sea bed to venture onto what we formerly called the shore. It’s as if they live in invisible water and are bound by it. A r
acial memory perhaps. Or maybe there’s something in that cracked black soil they need. I don’t know.
Besides the whales I suppose I should mention I saw a shark once. It was slithering along at a great distance and the tip of its fin was winking in the sunlight. I’ve also seen some strange, legged fish and some things I could not put a name to. I’ll just call them whale food since I saw one of the whales dragging his bottom jaw along the ground one day, scooping up the creatures as they tried to beat a hasty retreat.
Exciting, huh? Well, that’s how I spend my day, Mr. Journal. Roaming about the tower with my glasses, coming in to write in you, waiting anxiously for Mary to take hold of that kit and give me the signal. The mere thought of it excites me to erection. I suppose you could call that our sex act together.
And what was I doing the day they dropped The Big One?
Glad you asked that Mr. Journal, really I am.
I was doing the usual. Up at six, did the shit, shower and shave routine. Had breakfast. Got dressed. Tied my tie. I remember doing the latter, and not very well, in front of the bedroom mirror, and noticing that I had shaved poorly. A hunk of dark beard decorated my chin like a bruise.
Rushing to the bathroom to remedy that, I opened the door as Rae, naked as the day of her birth, was stepping from the tub.
Surprised, she turned to look at me. An arm went over her breasts, and a hand, like a dove settling into a fiery bush, covered her pubic area.
Embarrassed, I closed the door with an “excuse me” and went about my business—unshaved. It was an innocent thing. An accident. Nothing sexual. But when I think of her now, more often than not, that is the first image that comes to mind. I guess it was the moment I realized my baby had grown into a beautiful woman.