The Bear in a Muddy Tutu (10 page)

The tiger
looked
impossibly heavy, and bit and bit, and both men were
surely
dead before the single shot rang out and stopped all the biting. The sounds of tearing flesh and splintering bones were replaced by
the screams and pounding steps of
retreating circus goers
as they
r
an
away from the gory scene
in the parking lot—the
dead tiger, the two mangled
corpses
, and
the
crum
p
led
human cannonball.

T
he fat man who had nearly tram
p
led
Acapulco’s
vacuum cleaner up on the fourteenth floor earlier
was
the only live person not
running away
. He was
boldly
stepping forward,
still holding
what looked to be
a .38 Special out in front of him, point
ing it
at the dead tiger. Like frightened animals
after the danger has passed
,
people
began to
pop up
from dark corners, behind tent flaps, and from around the sides of trucks.

The
gunman
strode
confident
ly
up to his kill and nudged the
flaccid
beast with the toe of his right shoe. The bullet had pierced the old tiger’s pelt just behind the shoulder, entering its chest cavity
and creating a large red bloom on the fur over its heart.
The gunman
looked up and greeted the cowering circus folk with his best, most friendly and all-knowing smile, as they emerged
, hollow-eyed
, like zombies from the grave.

“My name is Reverend Billy Wayne,
”
he said in his best, most God-like voice. “I am God and you have all been saved.
”

Acapulco shuffled on to the next window and pointed the bottle of Windex.

Billy Wayne Hooduk acted like he knew exactly what he was doing and exactly where he was leading the caravan
, as
the circus rolled out of the Lucky Dollar parking lot. They left their dead behind.

Step number eighteen
in
How
t
o
Become
a
Cult Leader
i
n 50 Easy Steps
:
“Always act as if you know exactly what you are doing. The more precarious the situation, the more stone-cold absolute you must be in handling the predicament.
Ambivalence breeds contempt; confidence is king!
”

Billy Wayne Hooduk
puffed out his chest
,
feeling
the slight breeze tickle the few hairs not
sweat
-
pasted to his scalp
. If his mother could see him in his shining moment, she’d be reminded of the statuesque men adorning the covers of the romance novels she occasionally read in binges. The idea of ripping open his shirt danced through his mind on wings of
adrenaline
, and he would have done it if not for the seventy pounds of dimpled fat clinging to him from the neck down
, chapter on Successfat or not
.

Billy Wayne’s first
pronouncement was a simple
nine words
completing
the chain of events triggered by the cannon blast
. He stood at the edge of the spotlights shining toward Enrique’s missed net, then took a casual sideways step into their full brightness
.
“I am God and you have all been saved.
”

After the police
had finished
interviewing enough people to confirm it
had
all
been
a tragic accident, they
had given
them a perfectly clear and unmistakable order: “Pull up stakes and get the fuck out of our town.
”

Billy Wayne
re-
emerged from the rear entrance of the Lucky Dollar Casino with his Samsonite in one hand and his gui
de
bo
ok
in the other. He strode up to the lead truck’s passenger door and climbed in as if he owned it
, leaving his
Dodge Dart behind like
a rusty, unwanted
toy
.
He relished the idea that he now had the power to send someone to collect it later.
Billy Wayne
made his
second declaration
from high atop the black pavement of the parking lot
:
“We turn left.
”

And they did.

The remaining loyalists
—
some had grabbed their belongings
and fled into the brightly
lit
A
t
lantic
City night
—
abided
Reverend Billy Wayne’s order and turned onto Ventnor Avenue, slowly rolling northeast up the narrow strip to Atlantic Avenue. They followed the giant green signs toward the Expressway, which took them west, away from the glow of the city. They exited onto a north traveling road, and Billy Wayne watched for signs toward West Tuckerton, where he knew they’d find the road
to take them to their new home.

Great Bay Boulevard was a pavement made of shells and polished stones
that
led travelers almost due south, over dozens of canals and tiny islands, across the marshes and protected wetlands. The road spliced a nearly prehistoric, yet bland
,
ecosystem of bubbling mud and rotting flora toward a piece of New Jers
ey that few people ever saw
,
despite
the
well
-ma
intained
and smooth access.

The black eastern sky over the ocean had broken to purple, as the caravan made a final left turn off the boulevard. The drivers of the largest trucks tested their faith, slowly creeping up and over the rickety bridge onto Fish Head Island.

“Ain’t gonna make it,
”
the driver of Billy Wayne’s truck said, resigned and matter
-
of
-
factly, and just a few hundred yards away, the exact same words might have been spoken with a drunken slur by Warden
Clayton
Flint.

*
*
*

W
arden
Flint
was perfectly happy
sitting on the back step of the shack
that
doubled as an official department office and his home, smoking cigarettes and taking pulls off a bottle of cheap Russian vodka. What brought him joy was the absolute silence he’d caused to go along with the lack of a single flying or otherwise biting bug, despite being smack dab in the middle of what would normally be called bug central.

Flint
was in charge of protecting the fish and game inhabiting
a plot of roughly twelve square miles
of percolating land and water. He was also responsible for a weekly hump out to the county seat to fill up the hundred gallon drum with either temephos or malathion pesticides.
His truck was equipped with a
mist blower
,
whose
powerful blast eject
ed
insecticide into the airstream, killing either the larvae or adult pests.
Some three decades back
Flint
had begun the job with great resolve and ambition, making absolute
ly
certain to treat every square foot of his territory. He even went so far as to check the wind gauges before setting out, ensuring the drift would come from the right direction
and
taking particular care to mist the small eddies and ponds after rains.

As the years wore on, the circle of treatment grew smaller and smaller, until a few months ago, when he stopped bothering to drive the truck anywhere after returning with the poisons. He still had to drive out to headquarters, fill the tank, and then sign and file the required paperwork in order to show he was doing his job. But there was nobody to check how the poison was disbursed
,
nobody to care.

Back at his post on th
e marshes
off Great Bay Boulevard, he simply cranked the
mist blower
motor, opened the valve, and went inside the shack to relax in the
air
-co
nditioning
. He would cozy
up with a magazine
featuring
huge boobs and off-color party jokes
,
while
a deadly fog engulf
ed
the shack and surrounding wetland
.

W
hat difference would it make? Days after you stopped spraying, the mosquitoes, green heads, horse flies, no-see-ums, and black flies
came
back in full force. And the only people he was protecting were the day crabbers
who came down from nearby cities w
ith chicken legs on strings and long handled nets.
T
hese people were unbelievable pigs to the very last one. Every carload was good for a dozen cans or bottles tossed into
the
canal, left bobbing next to the floating potato chip bags and sandwich wrappers. The kids who came down at night kept their engines running, air conditioners and music blaring. They noticed the bugs about as much as they did
Flint
’s occasional
episodes of exhibitionism,
which he only
engaged in
when drunk
a
nd
regretted
when sober.

“People are pigs,
”
Flint
said into the night, taking another swig of Russian vodka, referring to the litterers, and a little to himself. He let the bugs feast away on the city slickers, and it served them fucking right.

When it came to bugs,
Flint
could sit on the back step of this shack naked as a ja
y
bi
r
d at any hour of the day or night, if the urge so took him. With a full hundred gallons of insecticide
injected
into the ecosystem of the immediate area on a weekly basis, not a cricket chirped or a fly buzzed. Any frogs
—
had they been able to tolerate all the poison
—
would have long since
packed up and
moved on for lack of food, as had the fish in the canal and any terns or ducks in the tall grasses. Everything with a heartbeat was dead or driven off, except for the game warden.

“Slow actin’
.
”
Flint
held
the bottle of what he knew was his own poison out in front of him, tilting it toward the yellow light
filtering through the nearest window.

Warden
Flint
had come to love his silence, which was now being broken by a line of slow moving trucks
that
had rolled past the drive
way
to the fish and game shack
. The trucks made
a wide left turn toward Fish Head Island’s bridge.
Flint
watched as one by one the truck headlights tilted up into the black sky, each vehicle crawling across the old wooden bridge that must be shaking and swaying from the enormous load.

“Goin’ in the drink.
”
Flint
took
a long
swig
off the vodka bottle, as each vehicle tested the dilapidated structure.
Flint shook his head each time one made it across, counting one after the other, and then losing track of what and why he was counting.
Miraculously, the bridge survived
, and
nothing but
angry red taillights stared back in the distance, disappearing somewhere behind the tall grasses of
the outermost island of
Flint
’s jurisdiction.

Flint
leaned back against the door of the shack, meaning to close his eyes just for a second, maybe fi
gure out a plan of action for doing
some investigating regarding these new developments out on Fish Head. Lots of things to be done,
Flint
thought, yawning and rubbing his stubbly face. He tilted the bottle in his right hand to see how much was left and then brought it toward his face, sloshing the rest down in one final, wet gulp.

Flint
entered that satisfying spinning time, when all the pains and wo
rries had left his reach, yet he
sensed he was
still
alive. He imagined this was how a man felt when his life turned out good, with a stash of money in the bank, a real house, and maybe a decent woman. It wasn’t so much the alcohol
that
he’d become addicted to, but the chance to
catch a
glimpse
of
this good life, if only for a minute or two before passing out. And what did it cost him? Less than four bucks a bottle, and the occasional han
g
o
v
er to kick him in the balls the next day.

But tonight, his moment or two in the good
life was different. He
was a kid again, back at the arcades he used to haunt with his friends in Seaside Heights, burning through quarters, sharing smokes
,
and passing around French fry filled paper cups drowned in catsup. It was the music,
Flint
decided. His drunken head loll
ed
to one side against the back door, ear turned like a satellite dish to collect the sounds drifting on
the
gentle sea breeze.
A kind of music a kid never even thought of as music. It
didn’t
play
on the radio
or at
birthday parties. You didn’t
hear
it in grocery stores, or coming from behind the band room door at school. It was music
that
meant one place and only one place to
Clayton
Flint.
M
usic
that
smelled of cotton candy and caramel apples, and the baby wipes moms used to
scrub
their kid’s hands. I
t smelled of pepperoni
pizza, sour garbage cans
,
and
cocoa butter glistening on the untouchable skin of the older girls in
stiff
new bikinis.

The music was a link
to the past
. The rising and falling whistles of the circus calliope
became
a lullaby
for
Warden
Flint
in the otherwise silent night.