Lucky Alan : And Other Stories (9780385539821) (8 page)

SPARK’S FIZZUM (caffeine-reduced)

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN???

TWENTY DOLLARS PER CASE

DINGBATS WE MISS U!!!

*

Ten-year-old Spark Dingbat wandered the beach at midday, wearing an inverted bowl of woven palm fronds, a sun hat fashioned by Keener, his mom. Spark had left his family and Peter Rabbit at the campsite they’d improvised, a ring of crappy lean-tos encircling a presumptive fire that his dad, Theophile, had serially failed to light. His sister, Lisa, having forged a twee, cooing alliance with the terrified hare, Spark was left somewhat on the outside. Now, obstinately solo, he strolled at the shell-strewn beach’s exact margin, where the wiper blade of surf just dyed the pinkish sand a wetter hue, where his eight toes were teased by a fringe of bubbles.

Rounding the top of a rocky knoll, a view unfolded below of an inlet sheltered from the harder surf of the surrounding beaches. Two fat figures splashed there. Large Silly and King Phnudge. Spark clambered past the spit of rock and eased down the sand embankment, to stare from the inlet’s grassy ridge. The clown had removed his shoes and clothing, all but his jet-black underwear. His feet were enormous, his white body both fleshy and firm, like the ripest fruit. King Phnudge remained fully dressed,
or perhaps he was painted. His crown and beard seemed to flow into his collar, and his collar seemed to be one with his belt and his boots, less accoutrements than fancy outcroppings of his smooth, pudgy whole. Armless, he splashed excitedly side to side in water that came to what should have been his knees, while beside him the clown beat maniacally in the water with a large forked stick, a dowser who’d discovered the sea. The two made a natural pair in Spark’s eyes. Their other strong resemblance was to his father, but Spark suspected no one among the islanders would ever remark it. His father was famous. Large Silly and King Phnudge were nobodies.

“What are you doing?”

Large Silly and King Phnudge wheeled, completely surprised.

“What’s it look like, boy? Poacher said he saw some sea bream in this pool.”

“Fishy splishy wishy hup huzzoo!”

“How are you going to catch them?”

“With nets of vapid questions and sarcasm. In our teeth. With that headgear of yours—hey, there’s a notion. Cough up the fedora, lad.”

“Use the king’s crown.”

“Crowns, if you hadn’t noticed, have a hole in the middle. Besides, I don’t think it comes off.”

“Stuckity pluckity pizzazz—hooble hoo!”

Spark sighed and passed his hat to the eager clown, then watched as it was thrashed to fragments in the
hopelessly clumsy attempt at fishing. Spark never saw evidence of a fish. If there had been any, king and clown had certainly frightened them off. Keener’s meticulously woven palm fronds were borne off with the seaweed and foam in the pool’s gentle tide.

*

C’KRRRARN TEARS OFF THE TOP OF A PALM TREE AND FEEDS!!!

C’Krrrarn is staying within himself.

C’KRRRARN TEARS OFF A CORNER OF THE VOLCANO AND FEEDS!!!

C’Krrrarn is staying within himself.

C’KRRRARN TEARS OFF A CHUNK OF THE OCEAN AND DEVOURS IT!!!

C’Krrrarn sits perfectly still and tries to empty his mind.

C’KRRRARN SLURPS THE BLOOD OF THE DINGBATS!!!

Long study has demonstrated to C’Krrrarn that the other person is himself.

C’KRRRARN TEARS OFF A PORTION OF THE HORIZON AND DEVOURS IT!!!

C’Krrrarn gazes into the horizon and the horizon gazes into C’Krrrarn and each is calm and free of desire.

*

From
Poacher Junebug, an Index

*

From
The Journals of C. Phelps Northrup

July 27

Decline sets in. Tempests wreak havoc on our poor dwellings every third day. Between, corrosive sunshine. Despondent over prospects of rescue. We find little and less to eat. Eighteen days and we come to know some of our companions too well, others not at all. Murkly Finger roams the shore at night, cackling. In sunlight
he retracts like a rodent to his hole, around which he has erected an array of sharpened sticks dug in pits of sand, disguised with flimsy leaf cover and more sand, and which would collapse inward at a footfall. The clown floats on his back in the spring where we would drink, moaning snatches of merry song, muttering wry punch lines without any jokes to them. He has forsaken his hygiene, enclothed in only his undergarment and a purple island hyacinth, its stem wended in his loopy tufts of hair. His feet are rotting. Poacher Junebug, I now understand, catches nothing, fulminates only. The rabbit is in no danger, except from himself. Like the derelict clown, the hare has abandoned clothing, shedding his red waistcoat and bow tie. He now goes on all fours, heeding some natural call. Lisa Dingbat, that former exemplary tot, follows him everywhere, and she too presently goes au naturel. I tried to confabulate with her one recent afternoon and she only sniffed and nibbled at the air, issuing a rabbity wheezing sigh, perhaps believing herself a sibling to Peter. The other Dingbats remain largely hidden from view. They must be hungry.

One seldom thinks of C’Krrrarn these days.

King Phnudge, unexpectedly, makes good companionship. We freqently embark on foraging walks together, gleaning nothing of consequence or edibility but nonetheless conveying if only to each other a heartening tone of decorum and kinship. King Phnudge alone, besides myself, retains the outward dressing of his former self (I should say: apart from my top hat, which
was stolen and presumably devoured by a monkey). He cleaves to good cheer at all times and acts as though bounded, as we all once were, by the strict gutters and panels of decency. Despite his gormless patois, I find myself understanding his highness better and better.

*

Phnudgesong

*

“I’m better than this. I’m better than these people. I don’t belong here!”

“Try this on, dear.”

“I don’t want to try anything on. I don’t need another hat. I want my family, nobody’s even listening to me. Where are the children?”

“It’s not a hat. Lisa’s playing with the rabbit, and Spark is out exploring the island.”

“Quit crafting stuff out of palm fronds and frogskins and pond scum, Keener. Nobody needs that shit.”

“Just see if it fits, Theo.”

“How could they send me to a place with monsters and hunters and clowns and theater critics? The clown and the theater critic, they’re not even in color and I want to go home! They make me feel old!”

“Nobody sent you, honey. Our plane crashed.”

“It’s a setup. It’s always a setup. What were we even doing on a plane with those types? What is this, some kind of wicker hockey mask? I can’t breath through this thing.”

“Oh, that looks silly. It’s not for your face. Put it down … there.”

“You wove me a thatched codpiece?!?!?”

“I’m working on breastplates and a helmet. The samurai often wore wicker armor, you know.”

“What good is wicker armor on an island?!?!”

“I’m just trying to get you prepared for a new life, lover.”

“!@&$%#! I don’t want a new life! I want my old life!”

“You’ll eventually have to lead this island, Theo. Nobody else is going to do it. Peter Rabbit isn’t going to do it. The black-and-white characters aren’t suited for it. Poacher Junebug’s discredited himself. King Phnudge, well, he’s just not right. And Murkly is a villain.”

“That’s another thing, I don’t want to go around there anymore, I don’t like the way he looks at you!”

“He can’t help himself, Theo. I just wanted to bring him a sun hat.”

“Did he let you into his little hiding place?”

“Yes, we sat and had a very nice talk.”

“I don’t want you to have a very nice talk!!!!”

“Yes, dear. I won’t in the future.”

“How can I lead the island when I can’t even keep tabs on the Dingbats?!?!?!”

*

Spark Dingbat ascended the volcano easily. It had steps. Near the top he passed a small pyramid of skulls in various shapes and sizes—a skull duck with giant ovoid eyes, a skull robot with antenna ears, a skull pig with a tiny bone beret incorporated into its cranium.

C’Krrrarn perched at the rim of the volcano, seeming bigger than he had in the plane, looming like an outcropping of the rock itself. As the tiny beret was to the pig’s skull, so C’Krrrarn was to the volcano. Beyond C’Krrrarn, Spark saw trickles of steam seeping from between burnt-umber rocks, the undersides of which glowed orangely, like enormous briquettes. Seagulls massed on C’Krrrarn’s brow and shoulders, their dried liquid droppings striping him in the manner of a jailbird character, perhaps some crow or weasel standing before a parole board of bulldogs.

“I hope I’m not bothering you.”

C’Krrrarn did not speak.

“You didn’t look like you were doing anything.”

C’Krrrarn did not speak.

“Are you waiting for something?”

C’Krrrarn did not speak.

“My mom says you could just probably swim off this island any time you wanted, or else maybe walk along the
ocean floor, but then where would you go, because it’s not like you have a home somewhere, and maybe in a way this island is as much like a home as you’ve ever known, and maybe we even crashed here because you were sort of attracted to the island from the airplane, like you felt some kind of geomagnetic tropism or maybe you glanced down and it reminded you of your mom and dad, do you think that might be right?”

C’Krrrarn did not speak.

“Are you going to kill us all? Just kidding.”

C.D.N.S.

“How can you sit like that in the same position for so long? Don’t your legs or your butt fall asleep?”

C.D.N.S.

“My mom is weaving you a tatami mat out of all this crud from the beach. Do you know what a tatami mat is? She said you would.”

C.D.N.S.

“Do you mind if I sit here for a minute?”

*

Note to artist: Everywhere along the bottom gutters of the pages now, muddy footprints, rabbit droppings, and Dingbat spoor (
ed.: What does that look like?
), forming an abject trail of smeary pictograms spelling out an unknown future.

*

Page forty-two, panel one, King Phnudge, alone in the woods. The island’s sole monkey has approached him from underneath a fern. The monkey carries a hand-cranked music organ and wears a top hat. King Phnudge raises his eyebrows in delighted surprise.

Page forty-two, panel two, a campfire in a clearing. Large Silly and Poacher Junebug and King Phnudge and C. Phelps Northrup devour shreds of the monkey, whose scorched remains still hang from a spit over the fire. The monkey’s carcass still clutches the organ. Northrup wears the top hat.

Page forty-two, panel three, in the brush at one side of the clearing, Peter Rabbit and Lisa Dingbat stared wide-eyed at clown, hunter, king, and critic as they eat the monkey. The rabbit and the girl are unseen by the others.

Page forty-two, panel four, moving on all fours, the rabbit and the girl silently slip into the woods, where they resume nibbling on ferns.

Page forty-two, panel five, night, the campfire, now abandoned by the others. Theophobe Dingbat tiptoes up to the extinguished fire, where he locates a charred monkey rib. He sucks at it thoughtfully.

Page forty-two, panel six, Murkly Finger. He crouches in his cavernous shard of airplane hull, reading a comic book, which is opened to a splash page showing C’Krrrarn towering over an alpine village.

*

From where he sat beside C’Krrrarn, Spark Dingbat could see into the island whole, as if he sat within a camera obscura. He saw his mother, now outfitting Poacher Junebug and King Phnudge and C. Phelps Northrup in thatched armor, adjusting the palm-frond breastplates over their torsos while they stood at awkward attention, trying not to disappoint.

He saw Large Silly covered in baked mud, with dried grasses stuck to his arms and legs, sitting beside the creek masturbating.

He saw his sister and the rabbit hiding in the grass watching Large Silly.

He saw his father standing on the beach angrily punching his agent’s number into a wicker cell phone and listening for a signal.

As though with X-ray vision he saw, too, into Murkly Finger’s lair. Murkly Finger sat surrounded by suitcases from the wrecked plane. Alongside the clothing Murkly Finger had laid out as a pallet on the ground was a neat row of reading materials. Among them was Spark’s own collection of
Dingbat Family Cavalcade
and
Dingbat Collectibles Catalog
. Murkly Finger also had a set of limited-edition clothbound
Tennyson Trolley Sunday Pages
, taken from C. Phelps Northrup’s luggage, a Dover paperback of
The Seventh Voyage of the Phnudges
, a copy of
The Oxford Treasury of Comic Strips
, and a stack of
HORRENDOUS TALES OF C’KRRRARN!
, issues number one through thirteen, sealed in plastic sleeves.

He saw the grave his sister and the rabbit had dug for the blackened skeleton of the monkey.

He saw the island’s birds and bugs.

He saw himself, too, seated beside C’Krrrarn on the rim of the volcano.

Spark Dingbat saw the island whole.

*

Poem