Snake Girl VS the KKK

by Peter Joseph Swanson

  Tired of Chuck’s dirty looks, Michael spoke in a fearsome accent, “I am a high German priest of Dushanbe! I was left on the steps of a mountain monastery steps as an infant and my hair has never been touched, according to Old Testament law!”

  Chuck looked shaken. “German? Wow. Awesome.” He bowed. “German stuff is so cool. They are the best people on Earth!”

  Michael just stared imperiously at the man.

  Chuck returned to the back of his car to put his perfume bottles away.

  Joanie grabbed Michael’s arm and led him up to her apartment, saying, “At least my makeup isn’t bullshit, and my starter kit probably cost less than his. What a rip off. That perfume he’s peddling smells all alike… just like watered down cherry Kool-Aid. I bet it’s all alcohol. And that was too funny with you being a German priest like that, for him. Could you see how it really shook him up? Chuck is such a white supremacist asshole and anything German is just the bee’s knees to him. His best selling flags are KKK flags and vintage looking Nazi flags. The only books he reads are positive ones about Hitler. He tried to convert me once. Bullshit is so boring.”

  “There are some books around like that? I was just thinking fast about being a German priest. Thanks to Hogan’s Heroes I have the accent down super good. I can also do Marlene Dietrich perfectly but she sounds more like husky gin-soaked baby talk, so that’s not really German. Anyway, I had to be somebody. I couldn’t just be a fag. I’m too tired to always be myself around every single person I come across.”

  She eyed him, dubiously. “Shouting like that isn’t any work? Always playing make-believe isn’t any work? God it must be crowded in your head.”

  He laughed. “Dushanbe is actually in Russia near Tibet. I used to have a record of the monks singing from a monastery there. It was so haunting. They sounded half Gregorian Chant and half like those Tibetan horns just going off like a bunch of sad cows. But that record is gone now. How sad that I lost all those cool records like that to a bunch of pig shit throwing Nazis.” Michael tossed his backpack on Joanie’s couch.

  “Sad that Wizard of Oz scarecrow poster I gave you got ripped up. That cost me a lot of money.”

  “Oh! You were the one who gave that to me? Yeah, that was soooo cool! Thanks for that… belated.”

  “You were drunk that birthday, for sure. I should have put my name on it so you’d remember. I thought you’d be impressed that I knew you have a scarecrow obsession, in your long list of obsessions.”

  He looked at her kitchen window. “I see your aloe plant is growing so tall and nice since Alex gave it to you.”

  Joanie picked it up and blew on it to dust it. “I think of my poor brother every time I see it. I still miss my brother so much.” She blew on it again and then she blinked away tears.

  * * * * *

  Joanie left the apartment to go back to work.

  Michael took a walk. Under a giant shady Oak tree he saw a sign that advertized a flea market. He didn’t have any money but thought it would be fun to look at other people’s stuff so he followed the big red arrow. Along the way, a sweaty girl on a bicycle with a banana seat and sparkly handlebar tassels rode by him and then started to ride circles around him.

  He said hello to her.

  “Hey!” The girl giggled. “You not a girl!”

  “Nope!”

  “I thought you were a girl.”

  “Nope. Not right now. And this is getting old. Why is it important to everybody all the time to know the boys from the girls at first glance?”

  She looked puzzled. “I don’t know. Is your hair real? Is it a wig?”

  “Right now it’s real.”

  “It looks like a wig!”

  “It’s all mine.”

  She said, “That’s weird. It’s sooo long!”

  He shrugged. “So. I like weird. It’s good for you.”

  She giggled louder. “Nooooo…you might go straight to hell if you go around like that.”

  “Why do some people always need to know who’s going to hell or not?”

  She giggled. “I dunno.” She rode away, sailed off the curb wrong, and wiped out, scraping the side of a parked car. It freaked Michael out to see her embarrass herself like that so he kept walking, not looking back, picking up his pace. He crossed a vacant lot and then hopped down a crumbling retaining wall to another vacant lot and he went down Cherrywood Street that was paved with red bricks. At a big sign that read “Flea Market” he found out that it was just three families having a garage sale together. He nodded a hello as they stared at him. As he regarded a large white fiberglass fishing boat under a blue plastic tarp, he asked, “How much is that going for?”

  A woman gave a bawdy laughed. “That one ain’t for sale. I think if I sold it then my husband would kill me. I’m sure he values fishin’ more than a wife these days. The other day he slugged me in the mouth when I told him he went fishing too much and didn’t catch anything.” She laughed again as if that was funny. She added, “And while you’re here, look over in that pile of clothes back there. You look like you need a new pair of jeans. Did you fall out of the back of a pickup truck at a hundred miles an hour?”

  “No. I only fell off my rocker going thirty.” Michael chuckled with her, and then went into the cool shade of the garage. Along the back wall was a long rack full of clothes. He looked at a few dresses that were too small for his chest and shoulders. He went to a card table that had a box of records. He was amazed that The Captain and Tennille had come out with so many albums. He thought about all his long lost records. He began to hum ominously as David Bowie did in the Cat People soundtrack. He tried not to get too loud.

  He went out in the yard past a row of four kitchen chairs with torn seats. He spotted a box of framed pictures. “Cool. Movie stars.” He jolted. They all looked familiar. He picked one up and sniffed it. It still had the slight smell of pig shit on it.

  The woman said, “Those pictures all came from an apartment that was found abandoned.”

  “Oh? How did you get them?”

  “My husband is a building manager for a few downtown apartment buildings. He said there was this one apartment that was completely trashed and pig shit was everywhere.”

  Michael shook his head in consternation. “Oh. It’s just terrible how tenants don’t clean up after themselves anymore. When they move on they should leave the place smelling like bleach and ammonia.”

  “They say this tenant was murdered.”

  “What?” Michael got goose bumps.

  The woman nodded. “But they found no body. They say he must have been dumped in the river.”

  “The river?” He rubbed his arms.

  She nodded. “That’s where everybody else who is murdered and is never heard from again, goes. Right? They say if you cut the body up small enough the catfish will eat it all. Some of the catfish down there get as big as a canoe.”

  “They do that? Toss bodies in the river? Who’s they?”

  “They say this guy got caught up in some shady business with drugs. That’s what happens to people who only go out at night. They don’t live long. They end up in the river. And you never see them again. They end up catfish food.” She gave a sinister wink.

  Michael smiled. “I’m glad I’m out in the day.” He looked around to see where the sun was.

  “My poor husband had to clean up that mess. The police looked it over first. But they didn’t like the smell so it wasn’t a very long investigation. They didn’t even look in any of the closets or under the bed for clues. So now we’re selling what we can of the place to make some money. After all the extra work my husband went through to get that place fit for a new tenant, we deserve it.”

  “Sure.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And I don’t say this to everybody… but he deserved it!”

  Michael was startled. “Deserved to be murdered?”

  She nodded. “He was a sick man. He had the filthiest magazines in that place.” She winked again.

&nbs
p; Michael wanted to correct her that it was only one porno magazine in the place and it was all Alex’s fault. He didn’t say a word.

  She continued, “You know. Homo. I can’t even say the whole word… it’s all so filthy. My husband said he’d never been more afraid in all his life! He expected to go on and find the bones of children in the back closet. He expected to find dead children stuffed in the mattress. He was so horrified!”

  “Did he?”

  She looked scared. “No, but he was afraid just the same! He said it was all bad voodoo and he’s still expecting something horrible to happen to him because he was in there! He wears a cross all the time now. That homo who lived there was sick! There was Satan worship! There was horrible sacrilege against Jesus! Horrible sinful unspeakable things happened in there!”

  Michael’s eyes were wide. “How can one tell?”

  “He had devil books! Occult books! Books about all sorts of evil religions. A book about the occult and art! There was a book about evolution! We’re not trying to sell any of those here. We burned those with the help of our pastor! People who are into devil worship are able to eat children, after they’ve done all sorts of unspeakable acts to them, I’m sure. That’s what they do. That’s what makes them different from us, for starters.” She folded her hands in prayer. “We’re all safer when devil worshipers are all at the bottom of the river! The Bible says they should be thrown in with a millstone around their neck!”

  Michael wished he could think of something witty to say. He just smiled and walked off toward downtown. He stood in front of an empty shop. Above it was his old apartment that had been trashed with pig shit. He hadn’t been murdered nor dumped in the river—but he slowly warmed to the idea of it being a new tall tale in town. He had become a Milldam urban legend. He said to one of the parking meters, “So now I’m famous! I’m catfish food! How punk. Fuck the funeral homes. They didn’t get a penny out of me.” He chuckled. “Snake Girl has been fed to the fish.”

  Then his heart dropped. He remembered why he was even in town again, in the first place. The farm sale would be so much bigger than that garage sale and it would also be horribly personal. He thought about how he was in no mood to sort through Mom and Dad’s stuff. He wondered if he’d find anything scandalous. He hoped so. It would maybe make his parents seem human to him.

  Michael walked a few blocks closer to the river to go to the ghost town that was the Milldam downtown. He popped into a used clothing store. He saw an orange parachute draping down the wall. He thought it would make a great Diana Ross dress. He passed a closed music shop, the kind that had sold pianos. A harp used to be in the window in front of a gold curtain. That was all gone and now he could see all the way to the back wall. He went down a ways to the closed gay bar and sadly looked at the padlock on the door. If it wasn’t for the new lock, things wouldn’t look any different. The building always looked this bad from the street. Other than the drama of the jutting crumbling garland cornice, the fascination was always inside.

  A young man walked up to him in a busy heavy metal t-shirt. “You a rock star?”

  Michael spoke with his more manly voice, “Eh? Why?”

  “You have long hair, dude, like a rock star.”

  “Yes I do. And I’m a star. Yes. In Europe, I am.”

  “Really?”

  Michael lied, “I was on the top 10 in England.”

  The guy’s jaw dropped. “A rock star?”

  Michael switched to a nelly voice. “I’ve been known to dress up like Lauren Bacall and shoot people with my water pistol.”

  “What is that? A girl?”

  “If you have never heard of Lauren Bacall then you can go play with yourself someplace else.”

  “Fuck you, man!” He left, adding, “Freak!”

  “Michael!” a woman yelled.

  He looked across the road to the park and saw a woman sitting on the edge of the old dry fountain but he didn’t know who she was. He looked around for somebody else.

  “Michael! It’s me!”

  He gasped. It was that woman. “Hey!” he yelled back.

  “Yeah. It is you! Don’t you recognize me? I permed my hair!”

  “Your hair! Oh my god!” He quickly crossed the street, almost getting hit by a car, and ran to the fountain. “Fuck the hair! You lost so much weight. You look gorgeous!” He grabbed Annie Bea’s head and kissed it loudly, burying his face in the fried hair of her perm. “God damn you! Look at you! My eyes! My eyes can’t behold such fabulousness! I’m going to be struck blind!”

  “My name is Annie Bea, remember. And I wasn’t gorgeous before?”

  “No.”

  “Oh shut up.”

  He laughed. “I remember your name, silly. Joanie had just mentioned that you were on your own two feet working someplace… the newspaper. But she hadn’t mentioned how gorgeous you are!” Michael shook his head. “Wow. Look at you.”

  “She didn’t? That bitch.”

  “It brings out your eyes. How did you lose so much weight?”

  “I don’t look like Madonna?” Annie Bea said in a way that meant she didn’t want to. “She always looks like such a skank.”

  “You look great!”

  Annie Bea poked at her hip. “I still have a lot more to lose. I’m only part way there. It’s going to be a long haul.” She smiled proudly. “I got a job! A real job! At the newspaper. I write for them! That’s why I’m here right now! My office is just down that way a few blocks. On my lunch break I walk here and chew my fingernails. I chew slowly. I’m on a diet.” She laughed at herself.

  “That’s great! Wait a minute. That’s a diet? How does working at a newspaper make you lose so much weight? You used to weigh a million tons! What do you do? Eat newspaper? Is that the secret?”

  “Watch it jerk. I never weighed a million tons. You could have had all my fat and not looked nearly as huge as I did in it.”

  Michael looked down at his pants. “Why?”

  “You’re so much taller than me. I’m short like most women are. So I had nowhere to hide it. So I just went sideways. I see a lot of men with big bellies and they really don’t look so terrible because they’re so tall and it all stretches up instead of out. Pisses me off. Women are always so short. Women always get the raw deal.”

  “How did you do it? Look at you! You went from the look of a goddess of BC times… a circle. And now you have the pop goddess look of the ‘80s… all full of heroin and puking your dead liver out. You look so well! Pretty soon you’ll look so hollow and haggard, like a dead giraffe, that you can win all the beauty pageants!”

  “Thank you. I think. I still have a looong way to go but thanks. I’m hungry all the time. Not really. I’ve figured out you can wait out hunger pangs. They come and go. And when I feel them I just tell them to fuck off, they’re so stupid. Pain like that, that is just a false pain, makes me so angry now that I know better… now that I’ve figured out I don’t have to be a slave to false pain. Just because you feel hungry doesn’t mean you’ll drop dead. God it took me a long time in life to figure out what is what.” Then she looked at him surprised. “Hey! Wait a minute. Forget my fat ass. What the hell are you doing back in town? Oh my god! I read about it in the paper! The bull! Those were your folks! I didn’t put it together until just now. I always forget that you came from a farm. It seems so unlikely. I’d have thought you grew up with Las Vegas showgirls, not on a farm around here. What happed to you to make you this way? What makes you so gay?”

  He laughed. “Vegas showgirls? Funny. Yeah. I’m a stupid farm boy. I’m back here for a funeral. Farm sale. Shit like that. My brother called me and told me to. It creeps me out. How can I go back to that church and sit through a funeral. The last time I was at that church it was with Mom and Dad. They were alive singing bad songs. I pretended I was Diana Ross to get through it all. It all seemed so phony.”

  “Bitter bitter bitter.”

  “Seriously!”

  “Speaking of being phony at chu
rch… why were you Diana Ross?”

  He grinned. “Usually I just get by being Cher. She’s pretty laid back. But when I’m in big big trouble and I’m about to have a complete panic attack it only works to pretend I’m Diana Ross. The last time I needed to summon her was last year when I went to church with them all. It gave me strength to hide behind all her sass. Anybody who goes to church on purpose is stupid.”

  She stiffened. “I walk to the Presbyterian Church down the street every Sunday morning. I don’t think I’m stupid. Nor is my friend who goes with me.”

  “What? You? How can you believe in all that hymnal and communion wafer stuff?”

  Annie Bea put her nose up. “I believe what I want and I don’t care if you believe what I believe, or not. And I don’t know why you’d care what I believe. I don’t know why you’d think it has anything to do with you.”

  Michael said with all seriousness, “Well I want everybody to believe like me.”

  Annie Bea looked at Michael in alarm. “You? If we all believed like you we’d all be hung over all the time and nothing would get done in the world.”

  He thought about that one for a second and then responded sheepishly. “Maybe not. Maybe I’m just mad because I’m expected to go to church while I’m here. My parents are dead but they can still make me go to church.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that they’re dead.”

  “And it creeps me out that a bull did that to them. A bull! His horns just ripped their guts out. That kind of super gross-out stuff is supposed to happen to other people… in other countries…in other centuries. Not now and to me. It’s like a horror movie with a bull out there stabbing everybody. It could be a movie. I can see the poster. In big letters it reads, BULL! The music is like JAWS.”

  “The paper says the bull was killed. The sheriff shot him. An eye for an eye.”

  “It’s still like a horror movie. I wonder how it happened. It’s a mystery. How were they both in the field together with a bull who wasn’t supposed to be there? My brother told me that some gates had been left open that weren’t supposed to be. It’s a mystery. It’s a murder mystery.”