Begin to Exit Here (15 page)

This was the mental disorder called journalism. But I couldn't say that to Lisa. I had to try to honor her authority, even though I didn't honor it, and use tact and guile to avoid writing about some goddamn roads.

“Road,” I said. “Dead pig. Dead pig on the road. I sense a union of ideas.”

She smiled at me with annoyance. “Can you do
both
stories?” she said.

“If I'm coerced.”

“You are.”

“You're an evil woman. Do your sins ever upset you?”

“Not at work,” she said.

An old realization visited me again as I went to my desk. We frequently didn't select stories because they had some obvious or immediate effect on the public. We selected
them because we felt like it. This was important, and I composed it on my typewriter:

Another maxim of journalism:

News is anything we say it is.

That went up on the bulletin board. Then I went to my desk to try calling various vegans named in a press release about the meatless Fourth of July picnic, which the vegans were calling Independence-from-Flesh-Day. On the third call, I reached a woman named Kathi. Her last name wasn't listed in the press release. When I told her who I was and that the press release didn't list her last name, life became strange again.

“A last name is a yoke to the past, a form of cultural and spiritual bondage robbing you of genuine identity,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, since I thought it was the safest remark.

“My last name is gone,” she said.

“That's an interesting last name,” I said.

“No. I'm afraid you misunderstand me.”

“Not really. You gave
up
your last name, and now you only have a first name.”

“That's correct.”

For a while, I invaded her privacy and her life, asking her any questions I cared to think up for any reason, without justifying any of them, because that's what reporters did.

“Why do vegans think it's wrong to put dead animals in your mouth?” I said.

“Because animals are sentient,” she said.

“Not dead ones.”

“No, but animals shouldn't be killed for food. They have an awareness of being alive. We believe it's immoral, actually, to kill animals for food.”

“Then if a catfish eats a crawdad, the catfish is immoral?” I said, taking notes.

“No. Catfish don't
have
morals,” she said.

“I know. They're probably promiscuous. But that's not really the point. The point is, if it's immoral to eat animals because they're sentient, then couldn't you say that half the animal kingdom is immoral because they eat each other?”

“No, you can't say that,” Kathi said without her last name. “Animals don't have morals, so it's not wrong for them to eat other animals.”

“Oh. Oh,” I said. “So if a Bengal tiger killed and ate me, that's okay, but it would be immoral for me to eat a Bengal tiger, because he's sentient.”

“I think you're twisting my logic,” she said.

“No. I think it was kind of curved when I received it. Let's quit using the word ‘moral' and just use the words ‘good' and ‘bad.'”

“All right,” she said kind of warily.

“Okay,” I said, because that's how all classic intellectual
arguments begin. “It's bad to eat animals because they're sentient.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well then, when all the animals in the world eat other animals by necessity, it's bad.”

“You're trying to
trick
me into saying that nature is wrong, aren't you?” she said.

“Well, I wouldn't say a trick is necessary. If vegans say it's bad to eat animals, then they
are
saying nature is wrong.”

“Mr. Clausen, I did
not
say that,” she said peevishly.

“No, but your reasoning says it.”

“I refuse to be interviewed,” she said, hanging up the phone.

Still, I had a legitimate story to write, one that would piss off all the vegans and vegetarians in Vermilion County. Sometimes reporting was fun. To add balance and depth to the story, I called an ethics professor at the university to chat about vegans.

“Is it immoral to eat hot dogs?” I said.

“Hot dogs aren't sentient,” she said. “Is that the answer you're looking for?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. “Then I can quote you as saying ‘Hot dogs aren't aware of themselves?'”

“They don't even know they exist,” she said.

“That's a wonderful quote. Thank you.”

In the morning, as I ate breakfast with Janice, we both
looked with delighted astonishment at my front-page story in the paper. She read the first few sentences aloud:

“The hot dogs people will eat by the thousands this Fourth of July once were aware of themselves.

“‘Yes, you could say that putting part of a slain pig in your mouth, in the form of a hot dog, is the same as eating a creature that once was sentient,' said Kathi, one of the local vegans planning an Independence-from-Flesh Day picnic in Vermilion County.

“Kathi (who legally abandoned her last name) is among a growing number of vegans and animal rights activists who believe it's wrong or immoral to kill animals for food.

“‘Animals are my friends, and I don't eat my friends,' Kathi said, attributing the quote to George Bernard Shaw.”

“That sounds sexual,” Janice said.

“I know. I don't eat my friends. I don't even lick them,” I said.

“You lick
me
” Janice said.

I was embarrassed, then leaned over and licked her nose.

“That's not usually how you do it,” she said, grinning.

“I was raised not to have sex during breakfast,” I said, staring back at her.

Her eyes narrowed a little bit as she grinned. Putting
her spoon down, she stood up in her peach nightshirt, pushed the table away and stood over me in the chair, straddling my legs and pulling up her nightshirt high enough to lower it back over my head, like a tent. By standing on her tiptoes, she arranged it so her warm stomach was right in front of my face.

“This is the best tent I was ever in,” I said.

“I'm the mysterious circus lady. See what I have for you?” she said. She sighed when I kissed her stomach, and didn't say anything when she rolled her white panties down and stretched up higher on her toes. She was always a new gift.

O
ne day, for no defensible reason, which was often how life progressed, the Ku Klux Klan decided to have a parade in St. Beaujolais to promote white pride and piss off all the liberals. I called Mayor Havelock in Small.

“There you are being overshadowed by St. Beaujolais again,” I said. “I bet you were pretty disappointed when, one more time, St. Beaujolais gets the parade.”

“It's an honor to be snubbed by the Klan,” he said.

“Sure. You don't even have any hotels or convention centers for them,” I said.

“I don't have time to be bothered by you all day.”

“It doesn't take that long.”

Harmon was nearly elated that sullen Klansmen with
guns in their pickups were coming to town. “If everything works right,” he said, tapping his forefinger thoughtfully on his lip, “angry blacks and lunatic college students will call the Klansmen motherfuckers and failed descendants of the apes. Rocks and Molotov cocktails will be thrown. Innocent people will die needlessly in a bloody horror that'll be shown on the ‘ABC Evening News.' I hope it doesn't rain.”

St. Beaujolais Mayor Barbara Sartor issued a formal statement saying although the Klan was not welcome in St. Beaujolais, their presence couldn't be forbidden without violating their civil rights.

“On the day of the parade,” her statement said, “I urge all residents of St. Beaujolais to stay away from downtown, granting the Klansmen a parade and no spectators. To be greeted by a ghost town would be the welcome they deserve.”

Harmon and I were assigned to cover the parade. Harmon said if I got killed, he'd write about me. I said if he got killed, I'd steal his car. Janice reacted to the parade with mild anxiety and depression, telling me to always stay as far away from the crowd and the Klansmen as possible, and to please not die on her. “You come home to me, dammit,” she said, staring real hard into my eyes; not that I was in any known or likely danger, but that when she even imagined me dying, it scared her. I told her I'd always come home to her.

On the afternoon of the parade I wore basketball shoes, in case I had to run, and jeans, a black, short-sleeve shirt, sunglasses, and my Cleveland Indians cap. Captain Trollope, who was accustomed to seeing me in a dress shirt and necktie, squinted at me with amused uncertainty.

“You look like a drug dealer,” he said.

“It's just a weekend job,” I said.

He and I stared off down West Jefferson Street at about forty or fifty of his uniformed officers standing along both sides of the street for several blocks. They all wore helmets. Trollope said another thirty-five or forty officers from Small and the county were available, on standby, plus some highway patrolmen. Barricades had been put up at both ends of the parade route to keep cars off the street. Pedestrians were allowed to walk on the sidewalks, but only a dozen or more people were out.

“Is everyone staying home?” I said.

“I hope so,” Trollope said.

It was an extremely hot, sunny day, and Trollope had a bottle of Dr Pepper. I had a Coke.

“I've never seen a Ku Klux Klan parade before,” I said. “Do they have batons?”

Trollope glanced at me and looked away. “Well, in the old days they didn't,” he said. “They just wore sheets and carried crosses and things. But they're always trying to change their image. Maybe now they have batons.”

I drank some Coke and smoked some of my cigarette, then said, “Will they be driving go-carts?”

Trollope sniggered and wiped some sweat from below his eyes. “I think they'll just be walking,” he said. “They don't have a permit for go-carts.”

“Oh. This is a pretty primitive parade,” I said.

“Yeah. Pretty basic.”

“Do you think any of them will bring musical instruments, like accordions?” I said.

Trollope put his fingers over his mouth and laughed.

“They wouldn't seem so sinister if they played accordions,” I said.

“Then I wish they would,” Trollope said.

It was about quarter of two. The Klan was supposed to assemble and begin the parade at two. It looked as if maybe another five or ten pedestrians were on the sidewalks down the street, but there was really hardly anyone gathered, except cops. I saw Harmon. He was sitting on top of one of the one-story buildings down the street, shaded by a tree big enough to do it.

“Well lookit there,” I said, pointing at Harmon. “There's Harmon, on top of a building.”

Trollope stared at him. “What's he doin' up there?”

“I think he's hiding. He wants to see a violent parade, but evidently doesn't want to be in it. Could you get one of your snipers to shoot a limb off over his head?”

“I could ask,” Trollope said, holding up his walkie-talkie.

“Or just throw some tear gas at him,” I said. “Harmon loves tear gas. It's his favorite fragrance.”

“Tear gas is expensive,” Trollope said. “It would be more economical to just shoot him.”

“Well, if that's all you can afford, okay.”

It was sort of fun, waiting for the Klan. Kind of like a party that shouldn't have been happening. The television camera crew that had been standing in the shade of the Pizza Hut awning walked over to Trollope and me with the refined or unavoidable look of self-importance that most TV news guys had, as if reality didn't matter unless they got it on tape. The reporter was Cindy Kudzil, who everyone called Cindy Kudzu. As Kudzu approached Trollope with her microphone, I said to him secretively, “Don't talk to her.”

“Why?” he said quietly.

“Just to piss her off.”

The camera guy aimed the camera at Trollope as Kudzu asked Trollope where the Klan was. He delicately dabbed some sweat from his forehead with a paper napkin from his shirt pocket, then said, “Well, they're scheduled to show up pretty soon. But we don't insist that they do.”

“Do you anticipate much trouble or violence?” Kudzu said.

Trollope shook his head. “We have some background on these boys, from the State Bureau of Investigation and so on,” he said. “I estimate they'll be less dangerous than a crowd of well-bred, law-abiding college students overturning cars after a big basketball victory. Generally, the Klan behaves better than college students.”

I was writing that down and smiling. To show my grasp of the severity of everything, I said to Trollope, “What if the Klansmen start playing basketball?”

“I hope they don't become that violent,” he said.

Kudzu seemed irritated by my presence. Looking at my black shirt, sunglasses, and Cleveland Indians cap, she said, “Are you with a paper?” Actually, she meant, “Get the fuck out of here.”

I wondered what lie to tell her.

“I'm an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fireworks,” I said, then looked away, as if preoccupied by the seriousness of everything. Kudzu and the camera guys walked down the street, probably saying bad things about me. Trollope and I immediately resumed standing there pointlessly, waiting for some ignorant dickheads in sheets to hold a parade in a town that despised them.

“Do you think they'll wear sheets?” I said.

“I don't know. Sheets, or those army camouflage clothes. I think the sheets are a little dressier.”

“Yeah. They're more formal. At work, we were wondering where the Klan gets their robes. It was suggested that they bought them at the KKK-Mart.”