Copyright (c) 1994-2004 Daniel Callahan
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"I used to do a turn in the army. I was really mad back then... [a]
loony! I'd never have any music to introduce me, which was a big deal.
Unheard of. I'd hop out on to the stage. It used to take ages.
Hop, hop, hop. As I got nearer to the microphone, they'd hear this
doddery voice going 'Do do do... do do do.' When I'd eventually make
it to the microphone I'd stop and say, 'I must be a great
disappointment to you all.' That's it. There's no joke. It's totally
irrational. A lot of people don't get it. Still don't."
-- Spike Milligan
"What will be is. Is is."
-- James Joyce, "Finnegans Wake"
1. The Dim Bulb
"If you guys don't listen to me, we're going to end up in that box
again!"
-- Davy to the other Monkees, "Head"
The young man (boy, really) played with his fingers in the garish light
cast from the lone bulb hanging in the concrete basement. He scratched
at an imaginary itch on his right hand (just below his thumb) in order
to take his mind off the man in the lab coat who sat across from him at
the beaten, scarred, wood table. It didn't work. And whoever this man
in the lab coat was, he was insistent about paperwork. He had three
inches clipped onto a weathered clipboard which he flipped through with
precision.
"Can I offer you a glass of water?" asked the boy's captor in a calm,
sensitive tenor.
The boy, Kurt, continued to scratch the imaginary itch, which had
leaped magically from his right hand to the left. Eventually the
falseness of the itch would be deduced, and the lab coated man would
disappear out of the cell and return with... God knows what. Kurt had
seen torture hundreds -- if not thousands -- of times on TV, and he was
glumly aware that there would be no commercial breaks for him.
"Can I offer you a glass of water?" The question was repeated without
urgency, as if the speaker was an absent-minded waiter. The itch now
leaped with the dexterity of a trained flea onto the boy's leg, and the
dutiful fingers followed.
He watched as the man in the lab coat, without name tag or company
insignia, studied his stack of papers attached to the clipboard.
Several yellow forms near the top half inch were labeled 27B. The man
frowned and wrote a note on the top page:
Note: Find out who isn't duplicating 27B in Pink.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I wasn't listening. Was that a yes or no to the
water?"
Kurt remained in his chair, almost motionless, except for the
itching-and-scratching routine. It had leaped again, this time onto
his scalp, and the twitching fingers followed. He wondered how long he
could keep this up without drawing blood.
"I'll just write down 'no answer' in your file," the Lab Coat Man
muttered, shuffling his way through the stack of paper, skipping the
yellows and pinks to find a blue. Locating the relevant box on a 43F,
he made a small 'X,' flipped to the front of the pile, and looked back
at the boy. He had stopped scratching his scalp and pushing his
strawberry-blond hair even more out of place, leaving his hands
motionless and his eyes fixed on the table top. Good, he thought; at
least he won't make himself bleed with all that scratching. The man
adjusted his glasses, which didn't help, as his vision impairment was
due to the dim lighting. The singular bulb, being pathetic twice over
(as it was:
A) the only one in the room, and
B) thirty watts too dim),
hung from a cord -- a more melodramatic touch than he would have
employed himself, but from a practical point of view there wasn't much
to see even in a well lit concrete basement. A painting or two would
clear up the problem nicely, although it would take away from the point
of the room: interrogation. Interrogation rooms were not meant to be
pleasant. So, perhaps, they would only fill the room with Dali's? The
man chuckled and coughed to cover his lack of composure. Dali, indeed.
Or Miro. More camouflaged coughing. But the boy, still maintaining
what seemed to be an impression of a sedated vegetable, didn't seem to
notice. So, the lab man adjusted his collar and steeled himself for
the next grim encounter with the unkempt.
"My name is..." he offered. The boy's silent motif continued. He
discouraged a sigh that was building inside him. The boy was obviously
frightened and knew nothing. How could he, the man thought. I'm
junior vice-president, and I have to keep asking Forrester what to do
next. Although no one ever called him by that title, or even his name
anymore. Just because he had unpacked the first shipment of lab coats
and arranged them on hangers according to size, he had been dubbed the
Lab Coat Man. And now, weeks later, the joke dead and buried, the name
had stuck. Was this the brave new world they were heading to?
The Lab Coat Man sighed. What could he do but persevere? The
questionnaire had to be completed. And if the boy was ever going to be
recruited, he'd have to be a lot more forthcoming.
"My name is..." he prompted.
The boy resumed scratching, this time under this first knuckle of his
left hand.
"Well, what's in a name, eh? Ha ha ha!" The subtle wit of a well
executed quote amused the man, but generated no response from the boy.
Discouraged, he dutifully noted this on a blue 42C, adding another 'X.'
This could go on forever...
2. What there's no accounting for
"If that's the best you can do, then your best sucks!"
-- Jodi Foster, "The Accused"
"Because all of you of Earth are idiots!" shouted Tom, wearily wiping
the glass counter and removing coconut oil from the reflections of
overpriced candy bars. Inside the theater the movie echoed him:
"Because all of you of Earth are idiots!"
Tom sighed, not for the first time that evening. The Manager, who paid
in cash every Sunday, had decided to take advantage of the bizarre
tastes of his Gen X clients and offer an Ed Wood film festival. "Bride
of the Monster", "Plan 9 From Outer Space", and "Night of the Ghouls"
ran on the second, smaller screen on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, two
bucks a head. Carloads of costumed goons from Madison assaulted the
theater in droves, throwing popcorn at the screen whenever they saw a
particularly bad moment of cinema history. Which meant that Kurt spent
a lot of extra time cleaning the theater. He had mentioned this
problem to his boss, but his only response had been a toothy grin. The
Manager was making a killing.
Tom, who needed the job in order to move out of his parents' trailer
home, found little about the Ed Wood canon amusing. Even so, he had
been forced to hear the dialog of each film every Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday... The soundproofing between theater two and the lobby was
nonexistent. Thankfully, he only had to watch them once, when he
filled in for the Manager's weasel-featured nephew/projectionist
Neoldner, who had called in sick to buy grass in Beloit. In return,
Neoldner was going to clean out theater two this evening, and Tom
couldn't wait for his shift to end.
One good thing about the Ed Wood freaks - they bought all the popcorn
Tom could make. He always had the nagging worry that the Manager would
increase his profit margin by manning the concession stand himself.
The last two employees in Tom's position had been let go for no given
reason... it seemed only a matter of time before the same thing
happened to him. But the Manager strolled out of the second theater
with a broad grin, revealing his cutting overbite.
"I don't know why," the Manager exclaimed, "but they love it!"
"Most of them are from the 'Ed 9 Film Society,'" Tom replied. "By the
way, I need to restock."
"I brought three boxes up already -- they're by the stairs. And once
you're done with that whatever else needs to be done out here, you can
go home early!"
"A whole five minutes?" Tom muttered, almost inaudibly. "Whatever
shall I do with my time?"
The Manager swung his hands apart and then together in loud clap, as he
always did to change the subject. "By the way, your mother called.
She said to call her back immediately."
"When did she call?"
The Manager leveled a mischievous stare at Tom and quoted the
following: "'He tampered in God's domain!'"
"But that was seventy minutes ago!" The closing line, in fact, of
"Bride of the Monster". Woodian dialog had become part of Tom's
internal clock. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"I had to give Neoldner a hand threading 'Plan 9', and I forgot all
about it. Sorry!"
Tom heard Criswell begin his parting words, figured to hell with it,
and abandoned his post in order to use the phone in the employee's
lounge. It had been a storage room until just recently, when the
Manager had redecorated it with a host of kitschy sale items from Osco.
Good intentions, perhaps, but the room was only big enough for two
people to begin with, and a hypothetical third could only find space
through acts of physical intimacy which would have been rendered
impossible by the decor. He dialed home and his mother answered
immediately, showering him with motherly affection and gratitude that
he was safe and babbling on about some catastrophe that had just
occurred.
"What, mom? Mom, what?! Mom! What?!" Tom repeated his request in
several permutations until he finally received the coherent message
that had so shaken his mother: his cousin Kurt had gone missing.
Tom pondered this for a moment.
"And...?"
3. Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
"Voyaging through the strange seas of Thought, alone."
-- Wordsworth
Justin Nelson, Jr., pounded the last of the stakes of his new cattle
pen into the dry dirt. Like sentinels, they sprouted in a line from
the barn, swerved north of the stream, veered at a right angle for the
stump, and followed Justin to where he stood. The cross-beams
remained, after which he'd finally be done.
He took a white handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped his
forehead. The task had been lengthened considerably, although Justin
refused to admit it, by incessant thinking, an activity which often
stopped him with his hammer in mid-swing. But now, he would soon be
able to think all he wanted from the comfort of his porch as the cattle
wandered from shade to shade. After he bought some cattle, he reminded
himself. Or sheep. He could never decide which.
Under an entirely blue vault of sky, Justin felt something pass between
himself and the morning sun. His leathered face turned up to see
nothing but ubiquitous light, curving toward him in all directions. He
arched his aging back, feeling the popping and hating it more than
usual, before wiping his neck and replacing the handkerchief. He had
that feeling that he'd better drink something and sit down or he'd end
up in that damn hospital again. Twice last year, whether he needed it
or not, he went in for a check-up, and twice a year, some intern
treated him like the village idiot. Truth be told, everyone who knew
about him had treated him that way for nearly eleven years, except his
niece. With a sigh escaping from the bellows of his withering chest,
Justin shuffled back to the porch he had added onto his small two-room
home. In the distance, a plume of dust was billowing off the road.
Mail truck. Must be time for breakfast. About time I ate something.
Tired legs maneuvered Justin's frame to the rocking chair, where both
of his strong, chapped hands gripped the chair arms as he strategically
placed his rear over the seat, then allowed gravity to do its work. As
his ass plummeted, he was reminded that gravity yet to be reckoned with
electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force, the
other fundamental forces of the universe. Strange that he would
remember a detail like that just now. Something he would have taught
to his senior physics class and explained as best he could -- the
one-eyed, cataract patient leading the blind. Gravity, he would
explain, was the odd man out, and would be until somebody found a way
to take the known model of the universe apart and put it back together.
And when they did, he thought, wiping his face and neck again, they'd
make some interesting discoveries. So much so that our explanation of
space and time, the one that was "real" and "true" and had superseded
every other theory since the beginning of history, would itself be
superseded by something new that was more "real" and "true" than its
predecessors. Be hell on all those science-fiction programs, having to
reinvent how those cock-eyed transporters worked.
The dust whirled in the air, passing before the green truck as it drove
up the road. A shadow, a large one, passed beside it. Dust doesn't
make that big of a shadow, Justin thought. There's something up there.
He looked up again, and whatever it was had passed away from the sun.
And then, there was a glint of light, hovering somewhere above the mail
truck. I bet it knows the secret, thought Justin, as he began to rock.
How else can they hover that way? Whether anyone else believed in
them wasn't the point. What was real and true didn't depend on
prevailing fashions - it just was, whether or not it had been
discovered yet.
Still, Justin wondered, how advanced could they be if they needed to
hang out here and what for the mail truck, too?
4. In loco parentis
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
-- President William Jefferson Clinton
Alona Schwatrz's persistent knocking at the door of room 412 went
unanswered for three minutes as she nervously shuffled her feet. Her
book bag was super-saturated with textbooks, notebooks, schedules,
rough drafts, and various other forms of academic paraphernalia. And
itkept getting heavier. She continued to knock, even though there had
as yet been no answer, because the note card tacked to the right of the
door indicated that these indeed were Prof. Turgy K. Sigger's office
hours. She could see the light under the door and thought she had
heard a groan. Just before she decided to give up, slow feet
approached from the opposite side, then silence; with a dramatic turn
of the knob, the door swung open.
"Was this trip really necessary?" asked Prof. Sigger, blinking and
brushing his oily, graying hair back into place.
"These are your office hours," Alona replied. She nervously smiled,
feeling the corners of her mouth twitch. Somewhere in the darkened
hall, a janitor coughed.
"All right," conceded Prof. Sigger. "Come in."
The carpet was smothered by leaning towers of textbooks. Papers lined
the left side of the desk, above which was a small note card which read
"To Be Graded." On the right side, the oak finish gleamed in the
mid-morning light that pierced the Venetian blinds.
"You've come about your final project," Prof. Sigger stated.
"It's only mid-term," Alona reminded him.
"Oh yes, yes," continued Prof. Sigger, without conscious embarrassment.
"Mid-term grade. I think I have it here. Somewhere." His hands
disappeared into the left side of his desk.
"You told the class that we would all get a C if we maintained that
Coca-Cola wasn't a crypto-fascist conspiracy."
"Oh yes," said Prof. Sigger. "We were discussing social issues, as I
remember. I was quoting Marx and some little idiot brought up Rush
Limbaugh."
"That was me," Alona muttered.
"Oh yes, yes," Prof. Sigger continued. "What can I do for you?"
Alona stared blankly back. "You said you wanted to see me in your
office anytime before next Wednesday."
Prof. Sigger finally sighed, sinking a little in his chair.
"Did I say what for? I'm feeling a little low today," he said, hoping
to elicit a small display of feminine attention.
"Oh," came the succinct and neutral reply. Prof. Sigger sighed again.
"It was about my book report," continued Alona. "On..."
"Rush Limbaugh," interrupted Prof. Sigger.
"No."
"Coca-Cola?"
"No."
"I need to find my horoscope. I can't seem to keep track of anything
anymore." He leaned back in his chair and felt his eyes close. That's
it! he realized. That's why I asked her to my office! I have to find
out if she would...
Somewhere in the pit of Sigger's abdomen, a latent piece of conscience
manifested itself as a stomach cramp. He coughed and patted his belly.
Then something lower than his abdomen began to draw his attention. He
closed his eyes for a moment to clear his mind and focus on the art he
had studied for years. With his intentions firmly aligned within (and
without), Sigger opened his eyes but found himself no longer in his
office but in a basement alcove. Across the room sat a pimply faced
teenager who was scratching his scalp under long strawberry-blond hair.
5. Julia & Cecil the Cat, as mentioned in the title (above)
"I've just one step further
from falling behind."
-- Brandy Daniels, "You"
"Did you ever have one of those days," inquired Julia of her cat,
Cecil, who lay in the crook of her arm and was pushing his head into
the moving fingers of Julia's right hand, "when you think you've
noticed something everyone else has missed?"
Cecil didn't respond directly, but instead rubbed the side of his
cheeks against the spine of "Gravity's Rainbow" which Julia held
lopsidedly in her left.
"Pynchon keeps bleating about the preterit, right?" Cecil, who began
licking his paw and washing his face, did not respond. "-- and the
elect who are out to destroy them, but he's the only one I see who's
treating his characters badly. I mean, how can you go off on God for
malpractice when you treat your characters like you treat cockroaches?"
Cecil looked at her for a moment, and resumed washing.
"OK, listen to this: 'Nobody ever said a day has to be juggled into any
kind of sense at day's end.' OK, I can see that. But I don't throw
you against the wall and call the universe evil, do I?" Cecil snorted
a tiny snort through his nostrils.
"But as far as making trying to make sense of everything... I can see
that. That's why I wonder sometimes. Like about Uncle Justin," she
continued, as Cecil stood, arched his back, and attempted to find a
comfortable position on her stomach, "who was a science teacher for
twenty-two years, who gave up everything, because... you know..."
Julia shook her head and returned the book to its level reading
elevation.
As a matter of interest, Cecil did not know, but was content enough to
curl up again, feeling Julia's hand press against his fur, causing his
throat to vibrate with greater volume. That is, until the book slipped
from her hand and roundly thumped Cecil on the head.
"I'm sorry!" apologized Julia, but too late, and Cecil was off her lap,
shaking his the pain out of his head, galloping into the bedroom to
find his favorite orthopedic pillow. "Maybe I should read a shorter
book," said Julia to herself. She waited for some cosmic act of
synchronicity to follow, to confirm her judgment on some level above
human interpretation. Yet the moment of truth that had evaded her ever
since childhood continued to remain conspicuous by its absence. In
lieu of enlightenment, a muffled argument began to emanate from the
college students next door. The plaster made it all to easy to hear,
in terms of volume, but reduced everything to disconcerting roars, in
terms of clarity. As far as Julia could tell, the argument, which was
building to the "throwing objects to accentuate one's point" phase, and
concerned the doctrine of predestination versus free will as well as
whose turn it was to run the dishwasher.
"Well," she said, tossing the hulking tome next to the library's copies
of "Cat's Cradle" and "Waiting for Godot", "I didn't understand much of
it anyway."
6. Unidentified floating objects
"Sucks to be you."
-- Traditional
Old Zeke handed Justin his day's worth of mail and looked longingly at
the cool shade under the porch, half hoping, half anticipating an
invitation to enjoy a cool drink and a few minutes out of the sun. His
state-of-the-art mail delivery vehicle, an old green Ford with busted
air-conditioning, sometimes elicited sympathy from those along his
route, but the ones with beer were the best. However, Justin just
looked through his mail and then began watching the sky.
"You ever think about gravity?" Justin asked suddenly.
"No," admitted Old Zeke, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
Justin sighed a little.
"You ever fall off a ladder?"
"Well," considered Zeke. Damned if this wasn't a round-about way to
offer a fella a drink, but maybe after all this Justin would offer him
a beer instead of that watery lemonade he made. "Yeah."
"How long did it take you to fall?"
Well hell, muttered Old Zeke under his breath. Maybe all those stakes
he was driving in had given Justin a touch of the sun. The thought
made him consider hauling Justin back to town, although the truck might
finish the job the sun had started.
"A second or two," Zeke replied. But before he could load Justin into
the truck, he figured he would have to collect a few things from the
house, and maybe from the fridge he'd collect a few drinks...
"That thing up there hasn't fallen a foot in ten minutes or so."
Maybe Justin had a small bottle of something tucked away under the...
"What thing?"
Justin pointed.
Zeke shielding his eyes with his hands and looked up. "Oh, that
weather balloon?"