Busy Monsters

by William Giraldi

  “Romp,” I said, “what do you know of the giant squid and its many arms?”

  And he said, “One monster at a time, please.”

  The day inched toward the purple gloaming while Romp navigated and I munched on peanut butter crackers and nonperishable camping snacks. We were heading to a place Romp called Bitch Ravine because “the bitch was spotted there” by his crafty associate within the past ten days. I assumed Romp could erect a tent at moonless midnight with the same ease another man finds the bathroom in the dark, and so I said nothing of the clock. Miles Davis seeped through the SUV’s speakers and the melody performed calming magic on Romp, who said that after he was finished massacring some Sasquatches in juicy retribution, he would also tame a few and teach them to tap their feet to R&B.

  “I’m like Don Quixote,” he said. “I don’t trust men with ponytails,” and he did not explain.

  We drove for well nigh six hours into some serious green guts; Romp was contemplative and at peace. I slept in the bucket seat and my pilot was a gentleman and let me snore. Even in my sleep I could feel the minutes stacking up into hours, the leaky passage of tick-tock, every mile more distance from Gillian. When we finally stopped, I woke with a jolt and took a minute to remember how hurt I was.

  We were in the heart of the heart of some massive, man-neglected wilderness; the ravine made its monotonous water-roar down to our left, and I heard interrogative owls off to our right. The scent out there was piney, almost prayerful; a man could get pleasantly high on that untampered-with air; it reinvigorates the lungs and makes one feel born. Romp kept the headlights burning; bugs did a wingéd dance around them. We both were kind to our bladders, and then he began unpacking. I zipped my jeans and joined him at the hatch of the SUV, saying, “I’ll take a rifle and be right back.”

  “Pardon?” he said, stopping to glare at me askance. “Was that English?”

  I thought it was and told him so. “I’m gonna walk into the woods now and bring back a Bigfoot. Then we dial Mr. Dan Rather out of retirement for him and his news crew to come see.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “That sounded like mathematics or maybe Pekingese. I’ll be right here when your words once again make sense,” and he resumed preparing the tent for pitching.

  “Romp, they are a race of giants, not ants. If a race of giants lives here in these woods, right out there”—and I pointed into a wall of black—“then I will nab us a fresh specimen. Provide me with a floodlight and weapon and I will do thy bidding, kind sir.”

  Here a disgusted sigh reserved for retards. “Charlie,” he said, “I’m gonna provide you with an ass-whupping if you don’t shut your hole and help me pitch this tent. Let your tomfoolery take leave of you. Have respect for the hairy wild man of this region, he who the Tsimshian natives called Ba’oosh. You are dealing with powers both ancient and Fortean. Here’s your sleeping bag,” and he whammed the softness of it into my chest.

  Romp’s fondness for the firmament and hinterlands was about as important to me just then as the ozone is to oligarchs. I, Charles Homar, from a mid-sized Connecticut suburb, had my own mission to accomplish irrespective of the stars or the lunacy loose in another man’s blood. But the shine just then in Romp’s eye was cannibalistic and crazed; some self-control was in order and so I mustered it. He seemed to me a combatant capable of roasting another man on a spit while considering the finer points of barbecue marinade.

  You should have seen the two of us out there in that before-the-fall real estate, under those dime-sized stars, the forest noises like chitchat Adam and his dame Eve first heard, our tents and weapons and various battery-run doohickeys set up like a military HQ. Romp’s fire-building talent would have impressed sad Jack London or some career arsonist; the blaze had girth and stature both, cracking into the cool mossy air beneath canopies of colossal trees. We slurped water from canteens and wished we had had the forethought to include marshmallows among our cargo. Romp petted the high-tech scopes, sniper rifles, radios, satellite phones, and GPS tracking devices, and I mostly just sat slumped at the mouth of my tent, feeling opportunity flutter away, visited by the same thoughts that had clobbered me in prison for three months straight: my Gillian in the mitts of that mustachioed scallywag.

  Then the dubiousness settled in on me. “Romp,” I said, “there’s something that bothers me about Bigfoot and his brothers. Why hasn’t anyone ever brought back a body? The things must die of old age.”

  Annoyed, he glanced up from the box of bullets he was counting from. “Nature takes care of decomposition: scavengers and microorganisms. Sasquatches bury their dead Stone Age–style, if you ask me. You could count on one hand the found corpses of black bears or cougars. Don’t be a Doubting Thomas, Charlie. Their habitat is a mass the size of Europe. Plus they have cunning, like Huck Finn and the true Nigger hero of that yarn.”

  Vis-à-vis his word choice, I once again attempted to explain to Romp my moral and demographic coordinates, but it was like talking hermeneutics with a Hun. Fall asleep, I thought. Fall asleep so I can prowl away, arrest the indigenous, infernal furball with my own cunning, and quick call Dan Rather to put me on prime-time television with a new haircut and designer threads from JCPenney. We two sat silently by the fire and let it transfix us with its searing magic as it had our Homo ancestors so long ago. Romp and Charlie, sipping instant coffee not half bad: we were merely denizens of a habitat for those with faulty frontal lobes. What was I doing out there with that Abrahamic madman? I thought of the words happenstantial and phenobarbital and wondered who had had the craftiness to coin them. Vampiric mosquitoes harassed my ear hole and fuzzy bugs crawled across a boot; all around us the forest made its night noises, the temperature tumbling every twenty minutes. Romp commenced razoring a ten-inch bowie knife on an oiled block of stone.

  “Listen, Charlie,” he said after a while. “In all seriousness. Why is it so important that you get Gillian back? Man, there’s lots of honeys out there, just waiting for a dude like you. You ain’t an ugly dude, got an education. Why you want this one honey back so bad?”

  I nearly laughed out loud and then nearly did it again. “Romp, if I have to answer that for you, then you’ll never understand.”

  “Explain it. I want to understand. Seriously.”

  “I love her.”

  “So? I love lots of honeys.”

  “I don’t.” And I let him stew over those two words for a minute or more until I said, “You get it, Romp? That’s the difference. I don’t.”

  “I’m just saying, man, if you can’t be with the one you love, you know…” and he sipped his coffee.

  “Yeah, I know. Thanks, Romp. That means nothing,” and I sipped mine.

  “Listen, let me tell you this story. This is true, every word of it. Listen, now. After I fucked Florence Ballard that first night—”

  “Must you say fuck? It’s so crass. In my experience women don’t appreciate that verb.”

  “Ain’t no women here, Charlie, but all right, fine, fine. After I made love to Florence Ballard that first night, she was hard in love with Romp, wanted Romp twenty-four/seven, was willing to forget about her career and all that, all those dreams of making records, everything. You couldn’t blame her. I pounded that pussy so hard—”

  “All right, that’ll do. Women are not walking pussies, Romp. I’m a Democrat from New England and—”

  “Now you listen here,” and he pointed the sharpened bowie knife at me, my head region, before flinging it into the nearest tree—bingo, point-first, perfect—then stood up for emphasis. “We’re men, out in the forest, sitting around a fire, about to go hunting. There ain’t no women about. I’m getting goddamn tired of your bullshit liberal routine. Because we’re men, Charlie, get it? And you know what men talk about deep in the forest before the hunt? Pussy. So let me tell my story without you interrupting and giving me goddamn pointers on how to talk. If there’s one thing I don’t need any advice on, it’s the ladies.”

&nbs
p; “Fine,” I said, reclining on my camper’s pillow, “go ahead. Just know that you’re perpetuating the stereotype that the black man is a ravenous sexual predator, King Kong looking for a Fay Wray to ravish.”

  “No, I’m not, stupid. That’s all in your sick head.” He knocked on his own head even though he meant my head. “I’m talking about pussy because that’s what dudes talk about. Stop being such a goddamn sissy and start being a regular dude. Your artificial sensitivity isn’t fooling anybody. It’s like you’re constantly talking to a camera. What’s so decent about denying yourself pleasure anyway? You’ve been so brain-scrubbed by ironic feminists at them liberal universities, now you think it’s wrong to be a man. I mean, when that honey in the orange dress went to visit you in jail, all ready to do it up, and you walked away? Fool, you crazy? A man is not better than biology.”

  Okay: I had to admit that I indeed felt sissified after Romp’s retort. He did seem like a chap who scored manifold points with manifold women, but still, I was about to tell him the difference between pleasure and exploitation, a little tirade I had on hand for just such occasions, when he said, “And I won’t be perpetuating anything if you don’t tell anyone about it. You better not write about this excursion, Charlie. This shit is all top secret. Now, can I finish my story or not?”

  “Fine,” I said, giving up and about to cry from homesickness. “Sorry. You were saying,” and I thought that a cigarette would make a good prop at this point.

  “Precisely. Now…let me see, where was I? Umm…”

  “Florence Ballard’s pussy.”

  “Oh, right. So, she was hard in love with Romp. Made that sister see Gawd, no joke. Sister got beatified by Romp. She wanted every day to feel next to that divinity I showed her. Now, that’s real love, Charlie, when you’re willing to give up your dreams for another person. But look, look what happened. Romp said no can do, Romp had other pink to plunder, and look what happened.”

  We stared at each other over the jagged top of the fire, he waiting for an indication that I understood, I waiting for him to clarify his loopy logic.

  Finally I had to say, “Romp, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Romp said no to her love and Florence Ballard loved me. And then accomplished great things. You see?”

  I tried very, very hard to see, but it was so dark out there.

  “No, actually, Romp, I don’t see. Didn’t Florence Ballard die depressed and alcoholic at the age of thirty-two?”

  His face was not pleased with that remark. He said, “You’re the thickest white boy I ever met. You can go on to accomplish great things because Gillian said no to your love. Maybe write the Great American Novel—”

  “Memoir.”

  “Whatever. Or maybe capture Sasquatch, or maybe meet the real woman of your dreams, the one who will not say no to your love this time. Maybe some sister with sexy green eyes. That’s what I’m talking about, my brother,” and he yanked his bowie knife from the bark.

  Some sister with green eyes? Bless his heart, he was trying to cheer me up, give me perspective, calm the rowdy within me, and I appreciated the effort, said thank you, and yes, smiled, not believing him in the least, but grateful for his sober Christian trying.

  “By the way,” he said, seated again, “I like your choice of a Jew gal. Jew gals are some fine pussy.”

  “How is that by the way, Romp? How?”

  “You know I’m Jew right?”

  “Yeah, right,” and I had to sit up to see if he was serious. I kept myself from telling him that Jew isn’t an adjective and takes an indefinite article everywhere beyond the Wiener schnitzel line at a Nuremberg rally.

  “Seriously,” he said, “Romp is Jew.”

  I was looking at him in a way that made him say, “Why are you looking at me like that? You don’t think a brother can be Jew? Ever heard of Sammy Davis, Jr.?”

  “Actually, Romp, I wasn’t thinking anything religion-wise.”

  “Well, that would be a first for you, Charlie. You Catholics can’t never stop thinking religion.”

  “Lapsed Catholic,” I corrected him.

  “I’ll tell you this: as for the top four ideas of all time, Jews are four for four. Jesus, Marx, Freud, Einstein. And that’s why I converted.”

  If I had been able to gather the proper incentive I would have reminded Romp that campfires, the wheel, indoor plumbing, and antibiotics were all fair contenders for the top four ideas of all time. What was the point, though? Look at us out there: two cowboys who were no longer boys and who had never owned a cow between them. Besides, I could see that speaking about female genitalia had caused rigmarole within his braincase and rib cage. He was a stranger now to comprehension, as far from good sense as a day off is from an off day. I made like Paul McCartney and let it be.

  SHORTLY AFTER OUR hem-and-haw, I crawled annoyed into my tent, wondering about this little war I had chosen with myself, and wondering, too, about soldiers—the soldiers of, say, Alexander, all those Macedonian middling men who trailed him across the known world spreading around the Greekish. But why? They marched and marched again for years on end. Why couldn’t they simply say, “Alex, listen, babe, we know you want to be king of the universe, but we’re tired and hungry here, we miss our families and farms, we’re fed up with dying and being maimed, half of us are sick with infection, and so we’re just going to lay down our swords and turn around now, see you later, bye-bye.” If each of them had said that to the Great, then the Great wouldn’t have been so great at all. Forging on in the name of glory and honor should last about twelve hours tops, and when fatigue and starvation and the cold wet weather bite into them, and when missing the brides and kids clamps down hard around their hearts, then those men should have said no more, said to hell with the knife wounds, arrow holes, and ubiquitous scent of horse shit. But they didn’t.

  If you want to know what had forced thoughts of Alexander and then of how women are fundamentally the stronger sex because they give birth through that minuscule rictus, you’ll have to ask a critic with her nose in the air of academe.

  I drifted into a weighted sleep of the sort every insomniac yearns for, the sleep that feels as if some benevolent force is pressing you down into the mattress, a generous paralysis. I snoozed that way for several hours and then was joggled awake by semi-human noises I could not identify. Romp was performing some tribal, shamanistic boogie between the fire and my tent; his shadow gyrated on the fabric and had me worried. I emerged to find him day-one naked, pythonic phallus whacking against his sprinter’s thighs, his face adorned with crimson war paint the origin of which I could not guess, and in his grip a sharpened spear made from a surprisingly straight tree branch. Around the blaze he danced the dance of some almost-noble savage; from his throat emanated the primal hoots and howls you hear so clearly on the Discovery Channel.

  I think I wiped the sleep from my eyes. “Romp,” I said, “pray tell, what are you doing?” And when he didn’t respond I repeated the question.

  “Out there,” he said, in a slow growling whisper, “past those trees. I see you!”

  He released a formidable shriek into the night, and, I swear on my own seed, a formidable shriek was returned.

  “He’s there! He’s there!” Romp said. “Not pleased we’ve invaded his sanctuary.”

  Pay attention, stranger; from this point on events unfolded speedily, as they are wont to do when courted by crisis and uproar. Just as I was about to glance around for a gun, fist-sized rocks began bombarding us from inside the dense bush.

  “Incoming! Take cover,” Romp yelled, and we both dived into the pine-needled grass near our tents. This Sasquatch had studied the throw of Roger Clemens; he could have no doubt won prizes from the dunking tank at any town bazaar. When the bombardment stopped not half a minute later, Romp got to his feet, unafraid of another possible projectile, and yelled, “Ba’oosh, my brother! I’m coming to get you. Ba’oosh! Attack, Charlie, attack,” and he darted naked into the fore
st with the aforementioned hoots, spear, and primordial know-how.

  Now, in such a predicament, one’s trusty neocortex takes a backseat to the simian brain that was our battery for about five million moons. That is to say, one behaves like a lower primate instead of the cognitive human he evolved to be and purportedly is. Instead of taking up firearms, machetes, flashlights, I impulsively darted after Romp into the wilderness with nothing but my idiotic nerve and the trouble-causing chemicals we’ve dubbed adrenaline. If I hadn’t fallen asleep with my boots on I probably would have given chase in my socks. So into the darkness I plunged, my thinking parts no better than oatmeal, my heart in riot, stray twigs stabbing into my shirt, my feet stumbling over various forest floor matter, and my voice beckoning Romp to halt, halt. Of course, I couldn’t see where I was thrashing but only followed the foliage-pranging sounds in front of me, Romp’s cries and some ungodly snarl I took to be the distress call or battle cry of the Sasquatch we had so upset.

  In that thickness the ancient, werewolf moon was about as much help as your decrepit aunt in a motor vehicle accident. Branches and bushes whirred by my hair; my extremities flailed about in mockery of someone trying to run. When I landed on a not-so-trodden footpath I gave chase in a more respectable fashion but still could not see Romp or the thing in retreat, the pulse in my ear like the gut-borne tribal drums Romp had been grooving to around the fire. Shouts and yowls off to my left; then yowls and shouts off to my right; then an irreligious wail right in front of me about fifty yards, Romp in ecstasy or peril, triumphant or defeated. Racing forth toward the twig-snapping, bush-riling ruckus, all I could ponder was the possibility that Romp, not I, would capture the hominid and thus spoil my only chance at regaining Gillian. This was selfish, yes; I should have considered his safety, his flesh being rent by a woolly heap three times his weight. But—every man for himself and et cetera.

  The footpath I raced along degenerated into more impenetrable depth as I shouted Romp’s name over the insults he and the beast were exchanging. I heeded Romp barking, “Take that, bitch, and that, and that,” and then his victim retaliating in a tongue I’ve been told the Assyrians used, his honor tampered with. But the cacophony seemed to be coming from all around me; I spun and spun, trying to get a bearing. And then—the death yelp of one or the other, a blood-gurgling resignation—and silence. The quivering crutches my legs had become didn’t plan on motion for at least a minute or more, and so through the mass in my throat I called out Romp’s name and received not a reply, nor could I locate him once my limbs decided to cooperate again. He was, as they say, disappeared. I crouched in the darkness trying to regain control of my lungs, frightened by the sudden midnight hush, and, yes, asking myself once again: what in the world are you doing?