The Bear in a Muddy Tutu (27 page)

The hammering
that
was so evil to Warden
Flint
’s throbbing head was music to Billy Wayne Hooduk’s sunburned ears.

Step number forty-five
in
How
t
o
B
ecome
a
Cult Leader
i
n 50 Easy Steps
: “Make your cult a home away from home. Whether it means splurging on the good toilet paper or hanging pretty flowered curtains, a successful leader must recognize that the failure to provide the small touches of home can lead to mutiny, or at the very least, to unpleasant griping. A subscription to
Better Homes and Gardens
is highly recommended for lasting happiness.
”

Walls were framed out, while concrete pilings were poured. Pilings to support my temple, Billy Wayne thought, giddy with joy, a stark contrast to the dark nights of uncertainty and dread he often sweated through.

Billy Wayne’s desperate search for approval had left certain pages of his stolen cult leader guide book dog-eared and smudged. He was a man raised on shortcuts, general malaise, and an easy willingness to allow others the spoils of their own hard work.

Billy Wayne had clung to the glimmer of hope shining from late
night television infomercials.
His past efforts to follow
each guaranteed guide
telling how to go from
rags to riches
had not failed
due to some inability on his part, but
rather due to flaws in
the programs. Billy Wayne was certain of this.

Once, for ninety-nine dollars, Billy Wayne had received two VHS tapes and a thick packet of literature on how to buy foreclosed houses and resell them for astronomical profits. The fine print mentioned things like mowing the lawn and a coat of paint as part of the secret to success. Paint and
a lawn
mow
er
? Curb appeal? Before they had your money, they told you over and over how simple it was to get rich. Then, you started reading things about how the amount of effort increased the amount of return. Weren’t they just describing some sort of job?

And each program was remarkably similar once you started watching the tapes, even though the actors were changed around, and what you were expected to sell was different.

A
s Billy Wayne drifted off to sleep in his bed at home one night, he experienced one of
the
few epiphanies to ever streak across his
semi
conscious mind. Billy Wayne got the idea to star in his own infomercial, in which some Joe Six-Pack
became
rich enough to own a mansion in Florida and
park
a Ferrari out front. The idea was shear genius, Billy Wayne thought
. He
would have taken notes about it if he had a pencil and paper on his nightstand, instead of all the way across on his dresser. It was a perfect
, totally foolproof
idea and he couldn’t for the life of him imagine how he’d never thought of it before. It made selling foreclosed houses and collections of yard sale junk seem like the dumbest ideas ever.

Billy Wayne’s thoughts turned philanthropic. When the money
from th
e infomercial
started rolling in, he’d hand
-
deliver a check to the church, showing those spiteful people how he was someone to look up to. Wearing his Sunday best, he’d rise from the pew, smiling down at all his neighbors who had talked all nasty about his momma, and stroll right up to the Pollack minister. He’d pull the fat check out of his inside pocket and hold it out to show the congregation. Billy Wayne could picture how they’d stand up, cheering and clapping, saying bless you over and over. Little kids would tug on
their
mothers
’
skirts, asking who that man was.

“That’s Mister Hooduk,
”
the mothers would s
ay.

Mister Hooduk, Billy Wayne thought, smiling. Everyone would know his name in a good way, instead of as
“
the fat woman Hooduk’s kid.
”

The Pollack minister would take the check, telling him what a generous man he was, shaking his hand and not letting go.

But then Billy Wayne drifted off to sleep. Whatever brilliant, sure-fire concept he’d realized, discovered, or invented never saw fruition,
and
he forgot about it completely. Maybe just a brief, hazy glimpse passed by him while he sat
s
ulking over his morning bowl of chocolate puff cereal
the next morning
, but it was gone forever.

The failure Billy Wayne experienced from
trying to follow
every
infomercial
program was perfect and complete. If it was during the day and his mood was good, he could almost laugh at the perverse perfection he’d clearly mastered, his absolute incompetence at everything.
He
was
successfully batt
ing
zero.
But late at night, the utter failure closed in on
him
. He became a befuddled little boy,
bereft
of hope or purpose
.

In
those
lonely hours, Billy Wayne lost what little feeling of control he sometimes managed during his good days. Even as an aspiring cult leader and circus shepherd,
he would feel
fear and loneliness swe
ep
over him and
assume a
fetal position
—as much as
his fat stomach
would permit
. And just as he had as a child, he
would
stifle the sobs that racked his body, worried
that
someone would hear his pathetic sniveling.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Momma,
”
Billy Wayne sometimes whispered to the side of his tent, tears and snot making a wet circle on his filthy pillow.

Billy Wayne’s main comfort was the sound of the lion’s struggle for breath, its painful, emphysema-induced hacking that copycatted the sounds from his own tent. Billy Wayne knew the pain the lion felt. Not from whatever diseases the old animal suffered, but from being stripped of its dignity. What has life for a mighty lion become when
respect
is replaced by pity?
The thought
made Billy Wayne’s melancholy even worse, but at least something else
understood
this kind of suffering. Perhaps it was best
that
he didn’t know the lion was born in a five
-
by
-
six foot cage in Pontocola, Mississippi, the product of an illegal exotic animal breeder.

Billy Wayne had heard the teasing his entire life. The kids had been ruthless right up until he
stopped going to school. H
e did his best to run his mother’s constant errands while school was in session, when it was less likely for Mister Fatty McLard Pants, or just plain old Queer
Boy, to be spotted and chased, have his ears flicked
,
and titty twisters administered.

Billy Wayne had memorized a passage from page sixty-six of his cult leader book. He whispered it under his breath over and over, like a prayer, or a nervous tick: “It is only their weakness
that
makes them sour. Your calling is to the wretched for a higher purpose. Remember that Jesus had a really thick skin.
”

At thirty years of age, Billy Wayne was a newly emancipated man and de facto leader of a traveling circus
that
had recently grown roots. Despite his importance, he still heard the snarky remarks
. H
e did his best to be deaf to them, dismissing each as a stern teacher would a challenge from an undisciplined child. It was the difficult art of turning the other cheek, patiently waiting for a better
teaching
moment. There were opportunities in each of these hurtful instances, and Billy Wayne took solace in the knowledge
that
he was developing as both a man and a leader.

Billy Wayne Hooduk was learning to solve problems by artfully
dodging
any real advice or decisions, despite the
nonstop
counseling sessions he
held
each evening
with half-drunk followers
. He was learning that life had a way of working out however life was meant to work out. Trying to change things was nothing more than interfering with an inevitable
force, as his book
confirmed
.

“You can nudge an elephant all you want. You can get right up behind it and put your shoulder to its flanks. You can push with all your might. But unless that elephant suddenly feels compelled to move, it is just as likely to lift its tail and shit all over your h
ead,
”
Billy Wayne’s book warned.

Late at night, done masturbating to the images of
Amira
Anne’s steamy, twisting, spandex
-
clad body, Billy Wayne often grew morose over the countless episodes of failure in his relationship with his mother. He
might
be sleeping
on
a cot reeking of an old man’s urine, in a tent out in some dark mud flats, but had Jesus’ path been any rosier? His mother would have to understand his journey, just as Billy Wayne now recognized what he could have done better for the woman he’d come to see only as o
ppressive and demanding.

In the morning, a paper plate filled with scrambled eggs blunted the edge of the night-suffering. The rising sun glimmering over the inlet really did signal a new day. There was a cathedral, Billy Wayne’s cathedral, being hammered together by the roustabouts who had eaten
during
first shift. The ragtag group of men were lustfully swinging hammers not for some temple, Billy Wayne knew, but for the idea of indoor plumbing. And for a real kitchen and
a chance to take
turns standing in front of an air
conditioner turned up to full blast. Motives, like building permits, didn’t really matter to Billy Wayne
, as long as he got what he wanted
. He gobbled the last of his eggs and wandered out to watch the progress, careful not to get too close
; someone might
offer
him
a hammer or
some
thing.

Truth be told, circus workers were not all that used to constructing permanent structures, and the
building plans scribbled up by the
two mechanics looked like
they might result in
a rather complicated tree fort. Instead of something pegged down or strung up, Billy Wayne’s
permanent
cathedral was to have a large meeting room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and an office big enough to double as a bedroom for Billy Wayne.

“It’s gotta sit on pilings,
”
one of the mechanics had said.

“What if it don’t?
”
asked the other.

“It’ll sink under the mud or wash out into the ocean.
”

“So we should go with the pilings?
”

The concrete pilings were hardening while walls were being framed out. None of it made sense to Billy Wayne. It was like one of his mother’s giant jigsaw puzzles she spread out on the kitchen table before she got so fat. Billy Wayne
had wandered
by as she plucked a piece from here and there, some fitting, some not. Billy Wayne tried to help but never once
had
he
gotten
two pieces to snap together. He quickly
gr
e
w
impatient, and with the television free, he
clicked
on cartoons and
flopped
onto the couch with a bag of chips.

As Billy Wayne watched, four of the circus trucks arrived, stuffed and overflowing with building materials. Plywood, two-by-fours, big pieces of wood
that
must be for holding up the floors or the roof, a small mountain of shingle bags, coils of wire, and rolls of pink insulation
that
looked like cotton candy.
The fact that he hadn’t
signed off on more than five hundred dollars didn’t raise any
red flags
for him. He had no clue what these materials cost, so
it was easy for him to pretend the
y hadn’t been
stolen
.
He also ignored the fact
that his men were returning before any stores were open. Perhaps it was a case of an
“
immaculate
”
transaction
, a little like the “immaculate conception,
”
which meant Jesus’s Mother Mary had somehow gotten pregnant without sinning
.
Billy Wayne was
also
fine
with
pretending not
to
hear the wagers on who would get what first, as well as the
whispers
about such and such construction sites they’d recently driven past.