Louse (4 page)
Authors: David Grand
Ms. Lonesome turns away.
I could, at this juncture, inquire if she knows anything of Mr. Blank. But I generally find that the obvious questions are always the questions that never have answers. So I refrain from asking.
Ms. Lonesome leans over the kitchen wash basin. She lifts a scrub brush and applies it to the can of peaches. She turns on the water and scrubs. Her motions, like her language, are confident and reassuring. She scrubs the metallic container until all remnants of the adhesive once holding the wrapper are gone. She scrubs until the canister is shining. She wipes. She polishes with a fresh paper towel and places the can on the tray next to the other can. She goes to the stove and with one hand removes the package of rice with a pair of tongs, and with the other wipes the water from the plastic with a paper towel. She carefully molds the hot package of rice onto the bottom of the Pyrex bowl, and then walks about the kitchen collecting all the paper goods, which she disposes of in the incinerator next to the sink.
The tray is prepared, all but for the beverage.
Ms. Lonesome walks to Refrigerator Number Three and removes a sanitized bottle of grape flavored NeHi. It is the only beverage Poppy will drink. Ms. Lonesome places the bottle onto the tray, takes hold of the silver handles and walks toward me and then past me into the obscurity of the western wing. She delicately steps on the linoleum floor so as not to make noise with her heels. Her posture is very good and her uniform is crisp. She really is the most outstanding staff member by all means, a good example to us all.
Poppy's euphoria has worn off by the time Ms. Lonesome and I enter his chambers. He is in the very center of the bed curled into
a tight ball. Upon seeing us, he struggles to his knees, sounding a barely audible groan. I retreat to the shadows of the northwest corner of the room as Ms. Lonesome places the tray of food on the eastern night table and proceeds to slip on a pair of rubber gloves. Meanwhile, the package of rice collects condensation and steams through the dull red streaks of the surveillance cameras.
“Now, Ms. Lonesome,” Poppy says in a broken voice.
“Yes, Mr. Blackwell.”
Ms. Lonesome removes the pot from the tray and places it before Poppy. She hands him the box of Kleenex, from which he grabs two large fistfuls of tissue. Ms. Lonesome takes hold of Poppy's frail arm and shoulder as he secures himself over the silver rim. I can see Ms. Lonesome hold her breath as Poppy takes one, and I can see her continue to hold it as Poppy, in one retch, vomits a tablespoon of black bile into the pot. Ms. Lonesome continues to hold her breath as Poppy waits for the pain to subside. He positions himself in anticipation for more. But tonight no more comes.
His muscles go slack.
Ms. Lonesome pulls the pot away.
Poppy falls into his pillow.
Ms. Lonesome, with pot in hand, silently exits the chambers.
Herbert Horatio Blackwell was born into humble, but dignified, beginnings. His family resided in the oil town of H., located near the Buffalo Bayou, the marshy tributary linking S. and T. His father was a sheriff and fortune seeker, his mother, a refined debutante from D. who longed to return to her family home. Although Mr. Blackwell's mother found H. uncivilized, barren, and desperate, she dutifully stuck with her husband and child. She remained silent as the town fell into a postboom decline, when H.'s brackish waters became contaminated with decomposing cattle rejected by the stockyards. Small pox and typhoid fever spread and became recurrent epidemics killing many young children. She watched as yellow fever quarantines appeared on doors across the district and black rot, canker, and elm disease denuded the landscape. Incinerator fires burned all day and night as the noise of drills wound around in their derricks.
Mr. Blackwell's mother became so affected by these conditions, she was terrified of all small and large animals
alike and obsessed with the perils of mosquitoes, roaches, flies, and beetles. She locked herself away from the stench of sulfur rising from the tidal marshes, the odor of mud, silt, and oil. Only on crisp winter days would she take the young Mr. Blackwell out walking, during which time she made him write down all the miserable sights she saw, including the sickly children wandering through town with fever in their eyes. Her lists of abysmal visions grew long and tedious and she began dreaming of mice carrying plagues that crept into her food. She dreamed the oil from the fields rained down on her house. She dreamed of typhoid and tuberculosis, yellow and scarlet fevers, dripping through the roof tiles.
Meanwhile Mr. Blackwell's father enforced order on H. He chained his prisoners to trees and let them wait in the rain for the prison wagons to arrive. During his idle time, he staged cockfights with outlaw wildcatters and spent days whoring around with his brother, gambling away small fortunes, falling over drunk in saloons. In his spare time, he conceived inventions. He patented designs for oil derricks, machine shops, and tools. His greatest conceit was a drill bit that revolutionized the oil industry and made his family wealthy for as long as there is a future. The drill bit was nothing anyone had seen beforeâa small ribbed device with one hundred sixty-six edges that turned both clockwise and counterclockwise. It easily burrowed through the layers of earth separating the rigs from the oil.
The young Mr. Blackwell's mother, unfortunately, never enjoyed this wealth. Her nerves grew worse. She
longed more and more to return to D. to be with her mother. And then one day, when she went for an examination, her doctor discovered a growth in her womb, which she was convinced was caused by the cattle and the vermin. Before the doctor determined whether or not the growth was cancerous, she insisted that he remove it. Every night she was having nightmares of larvae infesting her body. Once the doctor heard of this, and after Mr. Blackwell's father and uncle exerted their influence, the doctor agreed to perform the surgery.
Mr. Blackwell said good-bye to his mother. She was dressed like a lady. She remained indifferent to his crying and patted him on the head and kissed his cheek farewell.
His mother's womb hemorrhaged in the middle of the procedure. With her weak heart, she died on the table.
Several years later, the nightmares of Mr. Blackwell's mother found their way to his father. His father was more silent about what he saw, nevertheless he died as abruptly as Mr. Blackwell's mother. Mr. Blackwell was eighteen at the time. He inherited the family tool business and took it on only long enough to make arrangements to leave H. and go west, away from the torment of his parents' ill fate. He left the business in the hands of his uncle, sold the family house, and boarded a train bound for L. where he began flying and designing planes, a lifelong dream he acquired while patiently attending to his mother. From her bedroom window he enjoyed watching the biplanes lift into the sky from the distant airfield and fly over the town of H.
Shortly after arriving in L., he began racing his planes in land speed competitions across the desert. He flew entire lengths of states, then two, then three. He broke land-speed records everywhere he went. Eventually, he designed a plane for great distances and traveled the entire width of the North American continent nonstop. People fell out onto the streets to celebrate his arrival. They had ticker-tape parades for him in all the great cities. By the time he traveled back across the country he had become a household name. He was visited by dignitaries from around the world and entertained by all the celebrities and movie moguls of the day.
After so much hardship and suffering, such success was a Gift from God!
As he had become interested in planes, he soon was interested in the technology and spiritual effect of cinema. He began financing films for EKG Productions and eventually bought the studio outright. In the early years, he directed and starred in
H.A. 13-3, Trails of the Golden Horde
, and
Custer's Last Stand;
he later produced scores of others. Simultaneously, he continued designing planes and airports and constructed the ubiquitous Transit Air from the bottom up. He carried passengers and cargo to the outer reaches of the world. In times of war his planes carried bombs and armaments to our steadfast soldiers.
Mr. Blackwell was a great triumph! A Patriot! A Hero!
EKG Productions grossed more money than any studio in the history of studios! Transit Air was the most successful commercial airliner in the history of airliners! And
so, of course, it came to pass that Mr. Blackwell, a man not meant to rest easily, moved on to his next incredible feat: the Resort Town of G.! Our home and refuge! The most triumphant triumph Mr. Blackwell has ever triumphed!
God Bless Herbert Horatio Blackwell!
God Bless Him!
The first night I arrived in the Resort Town of G., I was held in a small cell whose walls were draped with burgundy velvet curtains. There was no furniture other than the metal folding chair in which I was sitting, a metal folding chair across from me, and a claw foot oak table between me and the chair. Sitting in the center of the table was a VCR whose wires ran to a corner of the room, around the back of a large television. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling and garishly illuminated the sheen of the velvet wall-cover. My vision, at this point, was impaired. Everything appeared as if it were submerged in water.
A man dressed in a gray flannel suit and a white dress shirt pushed back the curtain and walked in. He was carrying a briefcase, which he set down beside the VCR. From an inside jacket pocket he removed a plastic bottle, opened it up, and walked over to me. He placed one hand on the nape of my neck and with the other hand delivered the pungent bitter smell of the bottle's contents to my nose. A great force rushed to my head, snapping it back into his palm. In a moment, my vision cleared and I could see the man's severe countenance. He was middle-aged; his skin was tight, rippled
with thin pink lines. He looked weather-beaten, but not from the sun. Rather it was the lack of sun that gave him his appearance-capillaries surfaced on his dry and pallid complexion, deep crow's-feet fanned the corners of his eyes. What's more, a thin scar, inflicted by a fine knife or a wire, circled his throat. It ran just above his shirt line and over his Adam's apple, which looked like a fish skimming the surface of the water. His Adam's apple swam up and down as if tethered by the scar, which gauged the rise and fall of his voice's tonality.
“Do you know why you're here, Mr. Louse?” he asked.
“No,” I said. My voice sounded hoarse. I realized it was because I was parched. “May I have something to drink?” I asked nervously.
All of a sudden another man, much larger than the man sitting before me, walked from behind the curtain. He was gripping a glass of water in a hairy fist. He too was wearing a gray flannel suit with a white dress shirt and looked as weary as his colleague. He placed the water on the table and walked back behind the curtain. With my hand trembling uncontrollably, I reached for the glass and gulped it down. I coughed some up and spilled some on my clothes, which, I realized at that moment, were exactly the same as these two men's.
“Do you know where you are, Mr. Louse?”
“No,” I said. “Where am I?”
He ignored me.
The man opened his briefcase. He dabbed his finger tips with his tongue and started shuffling through papers. He then removed a notebook and began to take notes.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Bender. Internal Affairs. That was Mr. Godmeyer, my associate. You've dug yourself into quite a deep hole, Mr. Louse.”
“Am I dead?” I asked, feeling frightened that I was, in fact, dead. My body felt numb and Mr. Bender, who was directly across from me, sounded as though his voice were traveling from a great distance away. In addition to this, it occurred to me that I had no recollection of being brought to this place. As hard as I searched, nothing surfaced.
Mr. Bender looked at me curiously as if pondering my question. “In a manner of speaking.”
“In what manner of speaking?”
“You owe us a lot of money,” he said flatly.
“I do?”
“Maybe you think you'd be better off?” he said, his pen poised as if he were ready to write my response.
“If I were dead?”
“Let me be the first to tell you, it's just not the case, Mr. Louse. Not at all. I've got terms here. Terms I think you and any other reasonable man would appreciate,” he said, tapping his briefcase.
“How much is it exactly? The amount that I owe you.”
“The figure isn't important, Mr. Louse.”
“I just can't remember. How is it I owe you this money?”
“Mr. Louse. We both know the trouble you're in. I don't need to make it more obvious than it needs to be.”
“Please, if you don't mind telling me.”
And then he started talking faster than I could follow. I didn't know what to say. I didn't understand why he was doing what he was doing. It merely made me look into his eyes, which were dark and full of my reflection, which I didn't recognize. He continued speaking
but I didn't listen to him. The sounds caromed to places in the room other than my ears. I leaned over the table and tried to look deeper to see myself. I felt very weak and passive. I remembered nothing at all, other than my name.
“Mr. Louse,” he said, snapping his fingers at me. “Mr. Louse. You entered our casino three weeks ago and showed proof of your holdings in a B. bank account. We confirmed this information with the bank. Based on this, as well as a credit report⦔
“Did I authorize a credit report?” I asked.
Mr. Bender reached into his briefcase and took out an authorization form.
“Is this your signature?”
I recognized that it was a signature of my name, but I didn't recognize it. I answered with what must have been a puzzled look. He placed the paper back in his briefcase.