With and Without Class (11 page)

Casey jerked his head up. Something was different. His computer screen was blurry and he couldn't see the doorway. His eyes focused on his watch: 3:40. The doorway was empty. Silence. A sensation shot through his spine as neck hairs prickled. He spun, knocking the chair, jarring the table and pointed the flashlight, clicking the switch. Nothing. He clicked it again, and again. Darkness. He tried to make out counters behind the streaks of moonlight separating the room. The clicking sound came from the far side.

He stepped backward into the cellar door, slamming it close. “Gotcha.” His barrel rose as he walked toward moonlight in the center of the room.

It ran the perimeter, springing from counter to floor like a pile of deformed bones tumbling and twitching around a shell body that seemed to roll over waves. Casey followed the card-shuffling with his barrel, spinning circles until he wasn't sure what direction it moved. The shuffling of two-clawed legs over tiles quickened. Dangling bristles flashed past in the moonlight and he spun to where it had been. It ran behind him as he spun. It came forward, curling-finger palps quivering around fangs, wet eyes glinting. The barrel rose. The hammer clicked. Misfire. It darted to the right and scurried behind him. Casey spun, head dizzy as he pictured the deflated possums on his lawn. He turned the shotgun over like a club with the tangle of white bristly legs lunging. The stock crashed onto its back, thin legs prodding and pushing him about like swords. A bang issued, his leg burning furious pain as he fell and the spider dashed and leapt onto the sink.

“It shot me!” Casey cried, crawling toward the kitchen's back door, dragging the shotgun. He staggered onto his good leg, bursting through the door.

The thing had shot him. As if it had known the second cartridge wasn't rain-soaked and had deliberately crammed its leg inside the trigger guard. He stumbled across the dining room into the family room and waited with his back against the front door, his hand warm with blood. The buckshot had grazed the outside of his right thigh. He unlatched the barrel, ejecting shells. The room spun and his pulse beat his neck. His hand dug into his pocket, shaking shells onto the floor. He clenched a shell and fumbled in the darkness to stuff it into the breach as shuffling came from the dining room, darting about chaotically.

Casey opened the front door and closed it behind him, dropping the open-breached shotgun in the grass near the Porsche. He found the magnetic key compartment under the wheel well, then climbed into the driver's seat.

“The morning. Wait till the morning.” The woods seemed so still. There had to be a way to kill that thing. He wasn't sure. He couldn't force the idea out of his mind that it had shot him. It didn't matter and there was no way it could get inside the car. Still, he checked to make sure the doors were locked before resting his eyes.

He awoke to a hand tapping the windshield. The man wore a white terrycloth bathrobe. As Casey tilted his head, he noticed a white robe wrapped around his bare shoulders as well. He got out of the car and recognized Sergeant Mavers' broad strong features but the sergeant's hair was long and wet, his thick neck was flushed and beaded with water like he'd just finished a shower.

“Sergeant Mavers?” Casey looked around at the woods and the house, bewildered. “Why are we wearing Holiday Inn bathrobes?”

Mavers stared at the full silver moon and the brown and silver ridges of limestone bluffs. “Not much time left before sunrise.”

Casey walked closer to Mavers but something stopped him. He felt brimming strength within Mavers. As if he might swell up and fill the sky. “Sergeant… what happened to your hair?”

“You've got a job to finish. Don't you, Mets?” Mavers looked at him. His pupils dilated, flooding fear and wonder into the pit of Casey's stomach.

Casey flinched and steadied himself on the hood of the Porsche. His leg burned and blood from his thigh soaked through white terrycloth. “It shot me, Sergeant.” His lips trembled. “It's smart.” He clenched his eyes.

“This is bigger than you, Mets. You've got obligations. Did you forget, Mets? Did you think I would let you forget? Obligations: To Country. To men, Mets. That thing in your house is an abomination. It's gone against God. The God we both love!”

Casey shrunk closer to the car. “I—”

Mavers raised a clenched fist. His voice boomed like thunder, stealing into the depths of Casey's heart and lifting up on low shimmering soot clouds. “Genesis 1:26… God said, ‘I made man in my image so he shall have dominion and rule over all creatures!”

His starry eyes fixed on the Sergeant, mouth gaping. “Dominion…” he said while in the Sergeant's starry-eyed trance as he pushed from the car and blinked.

Mavers went to him, his face full of fake sympathy, corners of his mouth fighting a grin. “Don't you love this country God's given us? Don't you want to be a man? Don't you deserve that house?”

Casey touched the blood of his leg and looked to dry skin resting over a possum's ribcage. Mavers grabbed his head and turned it away. “Don't look at that!”

“It's my house,” Casey said. “Not the bugs'.” His head drooped to the ground. “I could get help in the morning. There could be someone in town who knows how to take care of it.”

Mavers looked irritated, like his time was being wasted. “Mets. What's your best weapon? What's your best weapon, Mets?”

“My mind.”

“Use it. We both know damn well this house ain't selling to anybody out of town. But that's okay. Hill-jacks got money. It spends just the same. You let word out in Shukley's there's a White-Daddy running loose on your property—you'll never sell that house.”

“Gotta sell the house.”

“That's right, Mets. Gotta sell it.” Mavers led him to the other side of the car. He walked to the shotgun lying in the grass. “What's this?” He picked up the gun and his face flashed red. “You let your weapon get away from you?” He snapped the breach close.

“It's a hundred-years-old, Sergeant.”

He held the shotgun out toward Casey. “BULL-SPIT! She's a sweet lady. She'll clean house like a Mexican.”

Casey limped over, took the gun and examined it. He looked behind his shoulder to Mavers walking toward the woods. “Where you going, Sergeant?”

“We've both got things to do, Mets. It's checkout time for me but you've still got twenty minutes before sunrise and you're getting blood all over that ridiculous car you love so much.”

Casey arched his neck, mumbling, “Sunrise… sunrise. Before sunrise.” His eyes opened and his watch showed 4:22. His thigh didn't seem to be bleeding but it burned as he climbed out of the car.

The shotgun rested in the grass and he pulled five shells out of his pocket, holding them to the moonlight, dropping darker red casings into the grass. It was quiet outside as he hobbled and grunted up the porch stairs with the barrel bouncing in front.

The door swung inward with a creak and Casey peered inside at darkness. Listening for the scuttling, he cocked hammers and tried to make out folds in the drop cloth he knew draped over a couch in the middle of the room.

Casey crossed the threshold and pulled the door close against his back. It was dark except for rectangular grids of moonlight cast over the left side of the room by windows. He limped away from the door, listening. It was quiet. He heard his breaths and slowed them as he fanned the barrel slowly across the room. He stepped toward the center, feeling it in there. It had its white legs folded up in a ball somewhere. The air stirred. Smooth fangs scraped his shooting hand. The thing was soundless. One of the hammers fell with a click. Another misfire and he pushed his arm out, dropping the gun, pushing underneath the slick head as bristly legs beat over his face and back. Its legs shuffled and he fell to his hands and knees. Groping for the gun. Waiting for fangs in the back of his neck. His fingers found the rifle stock and the shuffling began in erratic fits and starts. He stood, limping backward just outside the light of the windows.

It grew quiet as he rested his finger on the unspent trigger. He wondered about the toxicity of its venom and felt over his shooting hand, unsure if its fangs had broken skin. His neck muscles burned. It was so quiet. It waited. He wished he could see his hand. His finger and wrist seemed tight and his heart pounded against his chest as sweat crept into his eyes. Contours and shapes were almost visible in the darkness. He pointed the barrel at them and groaned, needing to switch hands—shoot with his left before the venom cramped up his right. It was waiting. He stomped his foot. “I'm here! Right here.” Shuffling within the darkness moved it closer, closer—farther, maybe.

If it paralyzed him, it could devour him slowly. Clock-like movements as it loomed. Dead inhuman eyes. His deflated corpse tugged slowly into the lawn.

The smiling crescent of eyes bounced as it rushed him and he stepped into the rectangular moonlight of window casements. He passed the shotgun to his left hand, stumbling on his right leg, falling backward, finger squeezing along the unspent trigger.

It turned sideways, running along the wall as Casey kicked backward into the corner and propped the gun over his knee. White legs pattered along window panes like a gale of raindrops. Casey followed the welded BB at the end of the barrel as it wobbled toward the white flurry, pulling the trigger with the muzzle flashing red as the stock kicked into his bicep. Buckshot punched a tennis-ball-sized hole where the head fused with the thorax. Its right legs collapsed, bringing it to the floor as legs kicked and bounced it randomly, clear fluid spewing, flapping chunks of white shell around the hole.

Palps buzzed and motionless eyes glared as it dragged toward him with one front leg while the rest went berserk like discordant arms. They stopped suddenly while the last leg pulled closer, staring. Casey brought his heel down on the leg, cracking and bursting its hot fluid, seeping through jeans and sock. He looked into its huge wet eyes. Inside its simple mind, it still crawled toward him. It had won somewhere deep inside there.

He laughed forcefully, rolling his head between windowpanes and feeding eyes, laughing until his throat hurt and tears rolled over his cheeks.

His palms pressed over the walls as he stood, then he kicked the carcass along the floor. It was heavy. He considered jumping with both feet onto the soft hairy abdomen and bursting it but he didn't want the memory of what it would feel and sound like burned into his brain. Casey opened the front door and kicked it several times, bouncing its lifeless legs before getting it over the threshold and onto the porch. “Get out, bug!”

He inspected his right hand in the moonlight. The fangs hadn't broken skin, only scratched the surface in a red streak.

Casey was surprised to find himself tired. He had to get a few things set right before trying for a couple hours sleep. Like closing that cellar door, reloading his shotgun, inspecting the wound in his leg; he'd at least need to put some iodine on it, eventually. He pulled the curtain off and took a short watchful shower.

The bedroom door closed behind him. He slept on his side, facing the door with the shotgun. Casey closed his eyes and thought about throwing cement in the hole in the basement. Then he could finish the repairs and get the hell out of Shuckley's. With some white paint, new carpet, a new toilet, he could show the house to a real-estate agent. But a notion occurred to him that seemed half-inspired by stubborn pride. The house had a certain feel to it that he was beginning to like. Maybe he wouldn't sell it after all. Maybe he needed to slow down for a while and enjoy the country. Hell, it was his house after all; not the bugs'

 

 

The Natural Celebrity

R
oy wasn't a
big guy. That was the mystery of it. How could something so big come out of a 145 pound guy with a black crew-cut and skinny bird-like hands? Sure, in the duration of his thirty-four years, he'd looked into the stool from time to time, thinking, “Hey? that's really big,” but he never thought it could take him anywhere. He'd grown to accept his mediocrity, his failures. I mean, after the divorce, being fired from dry-walling and the dishonorable discharge from the army for insubordination, he understood he was the guy that worked the telemarketing job, the one that wanted to leave the mobile homes but would die in them like his father had, regardless.

Until his friend sent him an email. It had a link to a listing of websites of the world's strangest competitions and there were thousands. How could that be, right? Thousands. But there were the kind-of weird ones: grape-eating, professional videogame playing, and the sadistic ones: finger-cutting, lifting stuff with parts of your body, and the supernatural ones: mind reading, vampire dueling. Towards the bottom, something caught Roy's eye: 14th Annual International Stooley Tournament. It was hard for Roy to believe at first: an international competition with prize money in the hundreds of thousands where the winner only had to have a stool outweighing all others? Roy's first thought was there was finally and definitely much too many people on this world. His second thought was maybe… just maybe. He found an eight-hundred number at the bottom of the Stooley webpage and dialed.

A grizzled old hag answered. “Hello, International Stooley Registration.”

“Yah… in the competition, you just measure how big they is?”

“We measure the competitor's stool-weight in ounces. Heftiest wins. It's that simple buck-o.”

“I makes ‘em big.”

“How big?” she inquired, dubiously.

“You'll see.” And he hung up the phone right there, merely providing the courtesy of letting them know he was coming.

The single elimination tournament was a grueling fourteen-day undertaking. Each day an Offering was made to the twenty-person judging panel and the ranks of the original four-hundred competitors were thinned considerably. The amount of people that came to see the competition seemed a little strange at first. But people had always worshiped each other for strange reasons, reasons that got stranger all the time. Reality TV celebrities by the dozens, vapid runway models, heiresses and socialites: they all had the ear of the press and the public.

It was all a little intense for most, but not Roy. He'd always eaten as much as he could. Food hated him, refused to stay with him, like oil and water. But he loved food and it was all free. He first met Dr. Vickers in the contestant's cafeteria. The Doctor sat by himself as usual.

“Anyone sitting here, mister?” Roy asked.

“Clearly there isn't. And it's doctor.”

Roy sat. “What you a doctor in?”

The doctor stopped worrying and masticating a barbeque chicken leg and slapped his hand to a thin aluminum box about the size of a TV remote with buttons. He eyed Roy suspiciously, “Quantum Mechanics. You won't steal my invention!”

“What's a Quantum for?”

“Oh, you know. Possibilities. Maybe an electron's here, maybe it's over there. Maybe your brain is normal and healthy like the rest of us or maybe, perhaps my boy, it's full of marmalade, about to burst, owing to the pressure.”

“Hey, jerk. I just wanted to talk to you. Ain't my fault you some freak that sits by hisself every damn day.”

“You won't defeat me, boy. I've watched you advancing through the rounds, watched you like a spider that spins his web and waits. I've won the Stooley seven years in a row. And you won't stand between my rightful place in history. You haven't the stomach nor the girth. It's a sport of kings, you see, and I'm sorry.”

*

In the finals Roy was pitted against Dr. Vickers. Both competitors were assigned opposing blue stalls within the amphitheater. Dr. Vickers had emerged a half-hour earlier, weighing in at a confident 565 ounces—a world record. He relaxed in the waiting room, getting a neck massage, posturing, chatting-up reporters. But his eyes flicked occasionally to the TV screen with its image of Roy's sweat-beaded forehead and that look in his eyes like Roy was going somewhere—somewhere—yes—perhaps never returning.

But Roy emerged from the booth two hours later, pale and disheveled. Vickers pushed his huge bulk through loiterers and spectators back toward the stage. Cameras zoomed in on Roy's floating birth, projecting it to the huge panoramic grid of screens for the capacity crowd's eager inspection.

“We're getting the weight,” the announcer said. “Hold on. It's coming. 569. 569!”

The crowd cheered. Vickers stopped and hung his head.

“We have ourselves a new International Champion!” the announcer said.

“Hold on,” another announcer said. “Zoom in on it. Zoom in, damnit. Zoom! There. There! It's—it's Abe Lincoln. You see. That top hat. That chin, the eyes. The eyes, man! My God! It's him… It's him.”

“My God!”

That alone wouldn't have been enough. No. There was a predestined culmination. Roy stood, tired, swaying, head swimming, he said into his microphone, scanning the oceanic crowd of hushed faces, with such deadpan, such poise, “For score—seven plops ago.” The crowd blazed laughter. And a new star blazed there on that stage. The commissioner rushed the stage and extended with straining arms the Stooley to him. Both men raised the platinum sculpture of a man perched atop a toilet with sculpted chin resting in a tiny hand's palm—a look of stoic grace in the statue's chiseled silver features.

Roy knew then he had something. Not a gift or calling but a talent. And it was more than he'd ever asked. No one could take his talent from him. But that didn't stop some scientists from trying. They claimed the 569-ouncer was impossible for a man his size. They said he had to of brought matter with him into the stall, kept it warm in a tube strapped to his leg—long-legging they called it. These allegations were, of course… bullshit.

The public adored him. He didn't train, he didn't strive or yearn. He wasn't in-shape or intelligent or passionate. But he was exceptional. The fact couldn't be contested. He was pure and he was simple. He dropped his pants and did what he was born to do. It was abundantly clear for the first time in history that absolutely anybody could have it all and for no apparent reason. Kids looked up to Roy. Standardized test scores dropped. Parents encouraged their kids to eat like Roy. Graduation rates faltered.

And the endorsements rolled in for Roy. But Roy refused to change his diet, to eat what the science of the sport prescribed. With the fiber-switching and the starches, the purge/binge cycles. He let the companies of the foods he already ate sponsor him. With checks rolling in he could afford to move out of the mobile homes. But he'd grown comfortable. So he bought-out all the residents and had the modules connected in a chain. A coiling chain that from aerial view some said looked just like, well, you know.

Dr. Vickers dropped out of the competitor's circuit after his defeat and Roy won the Stooley year-after-year. So much so that some wondered if he should even bother to let the platinum statue leave his palace of coiling mobile units.

Roy worked his way into the mainstream of pop culture a little at a time. Television discussion panels invited him on for the simple comedic juxtaposition of him sitting amidst veteran journalists and political pundits. While discussing the nuclear proliferation of Second-World countries within the context of an unregulated information age, Roy chimed in, “Reckon if President just close his eyes and sticks to his business, everything comes out fine.” The tone of discussion never recovered. The show was cancelled to make room for one about torturing friends for money.

Roy looked back over his seven-year career and realized he had amassed considerable wealth. He had sufficient funds so that he could sail himself, his entourage and his band of well-wishers comfortably through retirement. This would be his final International Stooley Tournament. Win or lose he would pass the Stooley on to the next generation of feasting competitors. In the weeks prior to the competition, he went about his business fairly calmly, confident in his decision, when the telephone rang.

“Hello,” Roy said.

“I made one bigger than you this morning.”

Roy cringed. “Who this is?”

“I made one bigger than you this morning, as I have every morning. You fool, did you think the spider had stopped spinning his web.” The phone clicked. Roy thought to check his caller ID, but he knew who it was. Dr. Vickers had come out of retirement for one last fight.

Roy paid a member of his entourage to pose as a journalist. The false journalist hid among a cluster of reporters waiting outside the amphitheatre during the commencement ceremony. When Dr. Vickers arrived in his limousine and walked up the red carpet, this spy pushed past the others to ask, “Dr. Vickers! Dr. Vickers! Is it true you came out of retirement for the soul purpose of exacting revenge on Roy?”

Vickers brushed his way through the bustling reporters undaunted.

“Dr. Vickers!”

“My dear lad, I don't get caught up in the politics. I came here to poop.”

The spy reported back to Roy. Roy glanced up in a daze before hurling his champagne flute against the wall and pulling his ruby embroidered bathrobe close. “Damnit!” The pedicurist looked down. “That Doctor's up to something! He never believed it were real. He never believed in Honest-Abe.” He rubbed his hands over his temples, “I—I just can't think.” Well-wishers encircled with back-patting and flattery.

But at the competition, the Doctor was eliminated in the third round. Still Roy was not appeased. He had his people try to follow Vickers but it was as if he had vanished.

Roy advanced through the tournament as expected—virtually uncontested. In the finals he sat in his stall beside an Italian opponent of greatly inferior skill.

“Well,” the announcer began, “Do you think we'll see another Honest-Abe out of Roy tonight.”

“No. I fear we'll never witness sportsmanship of that caliber again. You know… wait a second. What's happening with Roy?”

“That's the look. He gets it right before he wins each Stooley.”

“No. It's something else.”

A woman in the crowd stood and screamed, “He's dying!”

Roy's face twitched. He groaned and slumped over before the final plop. A plop echoing over loudspeakers through the silent amphitheater that faded to the sound of Dr. Vickers as he clapped slowly, walking up the empty center aisle. Vickers reached the stage and snatched an idle hand microphone. “Good evening,” he addressed the mute crowd. “I say again, good evening. Has it been so long, my friends, that you don't recognize your own, Dr. Vickers? Very well, your beloved Roy has died of aneurism. A failing common to the profession. We can add a lack of staying power to his list of crimes, the greatest of which being the forgery of his talents. Roy never birthed Honest-Abe. This is a matter of fact. And this other remaining competitor isn't a shadow of what I was in my prime.” He scanned over the crowd.

The sound rose up slowly from somewhere in the nosebleed seats, like a soft thrumming, “Roy. Roy. Roy,” growing—reaching its way to the stage.

“And yet you loved him. Despite his false prowess. You stupid, stupid lemmings. No man that size could make something like that.”

“ROY! ROY! ROY! ROY!”

Security guards in gray shirts encircled the stage, encroaching on the doctor.

“Ah, but wait!” the doctor's eyes flashed bravado, “Wait and see what, with your blessing, I propose.” The doctor stepped toward the center table where the platinum statue rested. His eyes grew. “Simply give me back my prize. And all—all is forgiven.” Guards rushed him, restrained him as his open hands strained toward the stoic face of the gleaming man atop his stool.

“ROY! ROY! ROY!” The crowd stood, pumping arms to the ceiling.

The doctor lurched forward and a guard strangled around his thigh. “Roy, you… you long-legging, imposter-ing son-of-a-bitch.”

An elderly woman in the front rows jeered him. He retorted, “You wouldn't know talent if it sat on your own stool!”