Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (26 page)

As they drove along Harpy Creek, Heff finally whistled and said, “All that money. Wow.”

“Just think of it,” from Jack, accelerating. “You’d need a Univac.”

There was a full minute’s silence. Then Gnossos asked, “All what money?”

“Really out of the question, when you give it a little thought.” She was coming out of a curve and couldn’t hear with the top down.

Gnossos was busy stuffing flowers into the rucksack, his hair whipping in the wind. “
What
money?” he tried again, louder.

“Real spooky,” said Heff, who also couldn’t hear. “Like bread was the only thing keeping him in the small time. He’s really home-free.”

“Where’ll they go?” asked Jack.

“Fitzgore figured Monaco,” from Heff, while Gnossos moaned and pounded his knees. “No tax problems, close to international borders, easy access to Switzerland, mountain hideouts, all like that.”

Gnossos controlled the tantrum, waited for Jack to brake, going into a curve, then leaned over the front seat between them and screamed, “What money, goddammit?!”

Heff looked back. “Her oil bread, man. What do you mean ‘what money’?”

“Her oil bread,” repeated Gnossos weakly.

“Didn’t Fitzgore tell you? He introduced them, you know.”

Silence.

“The Watson-May Holdings,” explained Jack, accelerating again. “She’s the only heir.”

“Heiress,” corrected Heff.

“Eighty billion dollars,” from Jack.

“Something like that,” from Heff. “In gold.”

“Think of it,” from Jack.

Gnossos near collapse on the floor of the back seat, his fingers kneading the almost moneyless rucksack, musing idiotically to himself:

I’m thinking.

Boy, am I thinking.

Still, he was in love.

And love was a consolation. Like a sideshow panacea for symptomatic ills, it soothed anxiety, pain, and doubt; eased fear and insomnia, purged the more accessible demons, and apparently acted as a mild laxative. Above mach 1, of course, control systems were likely to reverse. Anxiety might come clawing back on six prickly legs, pain might return with a prodigal scream to the inner ear, fanged demons might drop from the darkness, doubt might creep whispering from a mildewed closet, insomnia might collapse weeping between his eyes, constipation might close insidiously in. But speeds were still relatively moderate and Gnossos liked it down where he could hear the sound of his own exhaust.

Dreaming, but still tangibly aware of the Epiphanal Defloration to come, he wandered in the country alone. The Impala had long since continued to the Dairy Queen without him, and he walked along the swollen, puffy mudbanks of Harpy Creek. In the air were odors of increase. In the wind were sounds of narcosis. He continued on an invisible arc of magnetic flux, more ionized than he had a mind to be, until he found the swampy, stump-punctuated acreage behind the Blacknesse house. Even with the bright sun above, the land was somber and chilly under the pines, and one of the stumps turned out to be not a stump but Calvin Blacknesse in the full lotus. He was under a tree, gazing at nothing, his eyes turned over in his brooding head. The creek, still charging from the thaw, roared and gurgled twenty feet below, carrying branches, bits of spongy sod, erosion, and stone. Gnossos approached him quietly, tired from his walk, not wanting to disturb, but there was no reaction. He sat down nearby and ate a flower, waiting. In a while, the silence of the surroundings was overwhelming.

“Calvin,” he tried.

But in his trance Blacknesse failed to answer. A small circular weight was attached by cord to his head. It pressed against his brow where the third eye would be. His fingers were formed in graceful loops and ellipses, palms up, and he made a humming sound. This sound was in harmony with the extraordinary silence, it was the frequency of a thousand insect wings. When Gnossos looked, there were bees and wasps falling from the buds, dropping stunned out of the sky, winging dizzily from an infinity of directions. They swarmed and collided, they bumped pleasantly together, they swam in the modulation of their own flight, they hovered in a fluid dance until Blacknesse broke off with a sudden shriek. Then they scattered and vanished. Two eyes came leisurely open.

“No,” he said, his fingers making circles of the ellipses. “It is not right.”

Gnossos leaned forward, his mouth hanging open, to ask what. But Calvin’s eyes had again revolved and the blind whites stared at nothing.

Another sound commenced, a chirping inflection, a feathered clack. The head rolled slightly, describing small curves, and Gnossos feared (but only remotely) for the man’s sanity. Then two kingfishers came, answering the sudden call. They whirled about one another, they spun as if hinged to some common center, fluttering on the circumference of an invisible pinwheel. Before they could be drawn to the vortex, Calvin’s voice faltered and broke. The birds dropped like stones into the rushing creek, splashed furiously, then rose with gleaming fishes wiggling in their beaks.

When their cries could no longer be heard and the earlier silence again commanded the air, Blacknesse shook his head slowly, opened his hands in a gesture of futility. Something seemed to have failed. Gnossos, not daring to move, waited for him to speak.

“No,” he said finally. “It seems useless.” His eyes returned and he removed the weight from his forehead. An oval indentation remained, fading.

“What’s going on, man?”

“Useless,” repeated Blacknesse.

“Useless?”

“How long have you been here?”

“Not long. Since just before the bees.”

“Ah.” He dropped the weight into his shirt pocket.

“Calvin, man?”

“Umm?”

“You’re okay?”

“What?”

“Are you all right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind, it’ll keep.”

Blacknesse looked momentarily at his hands, paused, then said, “Don’t blame yourself.” He spoke the words as if they were part of some longer, more complex conversation, and not out of context.

“Hunh?”

“For Mojo.”

“What?”

“It was none of your doing, Gnossos. Evil,” he paused a moment, nearly sighing, “evil needn’t be conjured to be manifest. It often functions on its own. You’ll see.”

“I’ll see what?”

Another long, quivering pause.

But when Gnossos arrived at the house with the Swiss drolleries and entered the apartment, he found Fitzgore with his red head in the commode.

Scattered all over the floor were pewter pots, brass plates, copper hunting horns, and nineteen empty bottles. The bottles had until recently been filled with aspirin, Bufferin, Anacin, NoDoz, Miltown, milk of magnesia, mineral oil, paregoric, rubbing alcohol, Coricidin, Super Anahist cold pills, Pepto-Bismol, calamine lotion, baby oil, Bromo Quinine, Lavoris, Old Spice toilet water, after-shave lotion, and Dr. Brown’s
Cel-Ray tonic. Fitzgore was wearing his Navy ROTC uniform and had left a note. It read:

The place stunk of vomit. Fitzgore was still semiconscious.

A dull moment of panic. “What the hell did you
do?!
” bellowed Gnossos, jerking the head out of the commode. “Did you
swallow
all that shit?”

A limp-necked nod: “Rrrggffd,” came the answer.

“Holy Christ,” he implored the ceiling. He let the head snap back and rushed to the baby refrigerator, whipping up a horror of egg whites, mustard, and warm water. When Fitzgore saw and understood he was meant to drink it, his eyes swam. He closed his hands over the top of his head in numb protest. His once white ROTC hat was inverted next to him on the tile floor, already full of regurgitated, semi-digested suicide stew.

“C’mon mother, drink it, drink it up!”

“Rrrggffd.”

Gnossos forced the unwilling head back and poured the slimy mixture into its mouth. When he was satisfied with the amount swallowed, he ran to the phone and called for an ambulance, impressing the terrified switchboard operator with the false fact that the victim had turned blue and was hemorrhaging. She failed to doubt him and promised instant action. When he again returned to the bathroom Fitzgore was retching with astonishing violence. Gnossos held him so he wouldn’t choke.

After a while the spasms subsided and he tried speaking, but the words emerged in a soapy mumble. “I . . .  grrfrder . . .  unnerstans? I’ve never . . . ”

“Shut up and vomit. Christ.”

“. . .  Squeeeze . . .  rrI wanna squeeeeeezee . . . ”

His stomach muscles contracted violently and he threw up again, this time returning better than a dozen of the Miltown. Sure thing, thought Gnossos, keep her coming.

“. . .  betrayal . . .  all atime awake . . .  you jerk.”

“Quiet, man, just heave.”

“And me affer . . .  her . . .  ass . . .  anall that . . .  rrmonieeeee . . . ”

“You could’ve killed yourself, you cabbage. Come on, upchuck!”

“. . .  an I hadda innerduce em . . . ” he went on, his face the color of the bathtub, his hair matted, without life. “Me . . .  meee. I hadda innerduce em allright . . .  allright
. . .  hehehe.” He began to laugh, then stopped abruptly, went cross-eyed, and threw up again.

“Easy, baby, there you go, zippo-bang.”

“. . .  married . . .  hehehe . . .  just like that . . .  urp.”

“Married, man?”

“Urp.”

Something devious occurred to Gnossos.

“Introduce who?” he asked. “You feeling any better?”

“Hehehehehehehehehehehehehe . . . ”

“Go slow, man, stay loose. Who do you mean?”

“. . .  rrgfdallatime . . .  awake . . .  an you thought I was sleeping . . .  hehehehehe.”

For a moment Gnossos stopped trying to help. It’s not possible, came the thought. What I think he’s talking about could not truly be possible.

“Hehehehe . . .  an I heard every . . .  fuckin’ word he said, Paps . . .  him an that one-eyed creep. Egh.”

“You mean Mojo, baby?”

“Hehehehehe . . . ”

“That morning when he was here?” Gnossos held the pale head up by its ear.

“Ggrrfd.”

“When he was in
here?
”

“Hehehehe . . .  youdumbjerk . . .  yousweetdumbgreekgreekjerk . . .  hehehe . . . ”

Gnossos looked at the bare wall, slapped his forehead, and whispered to himself, “The loft party. How else would everyone have known?” Then he considered the vomiting figure, who was as limp as a marionette with the strings cut away. Fitzgore somehow managing to grin and nod, finally blurting:

“Oh, she’s beautiful, Paps . . .  allbeautifultwat an no boobs, I know, but beautiful, wow . . . ”

Gnossos in his mind’s eye looking again at the small door in the loft, through which had come so many sounds of wet flesh. A delicate phthisic hand reaching across the threshold to guide the drooling Mojo; but this time pegging its owner, zeroing in like a Zoomar lens on those same fingers which had once wrenched the enema bag. Pamela.

“You scheming little bastard,” he said softly.

“Hehehehe . . .  I wanna die . . . ”

“You fetid, mangy bastard.”

“Ggg . . .  but I loved her, Paps, see? . . .  egh did I love . . . ”

“You fixed it all!”

He belched.

“The whole contaminated scene, man.”

Fitzgore nodded, gulping for breath, trying to look up, the serge lapels of his ROTC uniform smeared with drool. “Only way . . .  I could make her, Paps . . .  Paps baby . . .  Paps man . . .  the only way she wanted . . .  little orgy action . . .  little lucky Pierre thing . . .  me on bottom, man . . .  beautiful, oh so beautiful. But how could I have known, sweetheart . . .  tell me . . .  oh, lemme die, man.”

“I’ll let you die in a minute, mother. Just tell me what you couldn’t have known.”

“Couldn’t know, man . . .  how could I? . . .  ol’ Mojo on top with his bullwhip, man . . .  just rollin’ around . . .  oh, Paps baby, she went for it. She liked him an’ that bullwhip, man. Oh, she liked it all, man . . .  gone now . . .  all gone.” Fitzgore began to weep pathetically. “She went away. Gonegonegone . . .  all gone. Rrrgffd. Pamela-honeybaby . . . ”

Gnossos felt revulsion like a moldy bacterial growth in his mouth. “Oh, you corrupt little bedsore,” he said. “Die, why don’t you? I mean, just go rancid and expire.” He let the head clunk down against the inside of the commode, then searched frantically in the medicine cabinet for bottles that could be saved for another try. But everything had been used. He stormed into the living room and called the infirmary.

“That’s right, lady, cancel the goddamned ambulance.”

“But it’s on its way, Mr. Pappadoo.”

“I don’t give a shit, right? Intercept it, stop it, he’s okay, believe me. Not a thing wrong with him.”

“But he had a hemorrhage not twenty minutes ago.”

“Amazing recovery, all better, all cool. Don’t worry. He’s not here, anyway. Out having a drink to celebrate.”

But it was useless. The ambulance came while he was still talking, and a team of attendants led by Nurse Fang carried Fitzgore away, weeping, giggling, vomiting on his uniform with brass buttons.

That very same night, to atone, he abandoned his body without care to the girl in the green knee-socks. The time for Epiphanal Defloration seemed to be upon them and there was no use fighting the metaphysical weather.

“Really,” she said, disrobing. “Pretending to be asleep.”

“It brought me down, baby. Do I look down?”

“And then he just planned the whole thing with Mojo?”

“I’m sick, dig? I’m sick all over.”

“Was he really in love with Pamela? It’s a bit difficult to believe.”

“And I never saw it, not a bit of it. Rub my back a little, will you?”

“I brought a book along, a special one.”

“Read to me, baby, put a little something in my head.”

“God though, when you think of it. Just to be in bed, couldn’t he have asked her? I mean, some other way?”

“American, baby. The country is diseased. Little lower. To the left more.”

“‘Wherever I am,”’ she read, “‘it’s always Pooh,