The Postmortal (20 page)

The Bowie car yard was nothing like that. When Ernie and I showed up in the plug-in, we got out of the car (Ernie grabbed a duffel bag with two shotguns and his closing equipment) and surveyed the landscape. It was a fairly small car yard, maybe a thousand vehicles total, with various cheesy rock songs blasting out from each one. Prince George’s County made from concentrate. Steakheads wore wifebeaters and drank cheap vodka while trying to hook up with any chick in sight. I saw at least two touchfootball games going on. It was a perpetual tailgate party without any real game to play, which I found to be a solid concept.

Matt told us to look for the microbus. It was the only one of its kind in the lot, once white and now the color of a quail’s egg. We spotted it in short order and advanced. We knocked on the door. A soundboard recording from an MMJ show blasted from inside. The whole thing reeked of hydro. We knocked again. Someone inside turned the music down a bit, then a voice said, “Hello?”

“Someone ordered an ES?” Ernie asked.

“Dude, if this van’s a rockin’, don’t . . . uh . . . like, don’t come in.”

“Your van isn’t rocking.”

“It isn’t?”

“Nope.”

“Damn. Feels like it is. Crap.” The door slid open. Out popped a skinny, pale fellow with long, stringy red hair. He was shirtless, with dirty white jeans, dirty white sneakers, and patches of bright-red eczema all over his chest. He beckoned us in. “I’m Chuck. Get in the van. Everyone steals my hydro whenever I come out.”

We stepped in. The bottom of the van was cut out, and my foot sank into the soft earth below. The entire inside of the van reeked of sewage.

Ernie looked at his feet. “What am I stepping in?”

“Mud. I swear, muchacho. I use the Lincoln five cars over to do my dirty work. When it gets hot, you can smell the seepage. Shit’s not so bad today though, right?”

He offered us gummy bears, which we politely declined. He signed the paperwork and filled out a will form. I fired up the recorder on the WEPS, and off we went. Chuck rattled off a list of reasons why he’d called: He was bored, he had nowhere to go, everyone at the car yard was trying to bogart his hydro, etc.

“Why not move away from here?” I asked.

“Move? What’s the point? Anywhere I move, there’s someone else there, man. This is my little space, and that’s about all I can get, brother. One time I went down to Bonnaroo for three days. I smoked all the shit that was lit. I drank every cup that was filled. I sucked all the acid that was printed. It was
wild
, man. Wild. But after three days, shit’s over, man. That’s what makes a party a party. It’s a special occasion. That third day, it isn’t so special anymore. You get that itchy ass. That’s what I feel like now. I feel like I’m trapped at the show. I need to experience something way beyond that now.
Way
beyond. That’s why I called you.”

“How do you want this done?”

“All right. Good. Are you ready for this shit? Cause I’m about to blow your nuts off. Come on, back door.” He opened the opposite side of the van and escorted us out. He led us, through the mud, all the way to a scrap heap near the back of the yard. I made out lots of old circus equipment. There were faded red tent canvases, trapeze swings that were tough to recognize at first glance because they weren’t taut, and old trampoline springs. Then Chuck maneuvered around the pile and showed us a giant metal pipe painted with red, white, and blue bunting. He nudged me.

“Huh? Huh?”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Human. Cannonball.”

“You want to be shot out of a cannon?”

“Just like Hunter S., amigo.”

“Okay, Hunter S. Thompson shot himself, then was cremated, then had his
ashes
fired out of a cannon. He wasn’t blasted out of a cannon while still living.”

Chuck thought about it, then had a revelation. “Then I got him beat!”

“You’d need a team of engineers to figure out how to do something like this. Now, I know there are a lot of ex-NASA people out there with nothing to do, but I don’t know them personally.”

“Just WEPS it, brother! Find one to ‘face with. Can’t be that hard.”

Ernie cut in. “Custom specializations incur additional fees.”

“That’s fine. I got a little bit of money. This is my last splurge. And I want this shit posted.”

“Endcasts are an extra hundred dollars.”

“That’s cool! It’s cool, dude! I can scrounge it!”

Ernie and I excused ourselves for a moment to discuss the situation. We brought Matt up on the WEPS, and I told him that Chuck wanted us blow him out of a cannon.

“Does he have the money for it?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Then blow his ass out of a cannon.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Figure it out. That’s your job. Now go away. I’m winning an auction for a new hood ornament.”

He signed out. I looked to Ernie, befuddled. He patted me on the shoulder. “The thing you’re gonna learn about Matt,” he told me, “is that he likes to spend lots of time buying shit he doesn’t need. Also, he’s a fucking psychopath. But that’s why he’s fun to work for.” Ernie led me back to the van, opened his duffel, reached in, and took out an explosive charge. “I’m told this has a blast radius of twenty feet.”

“You always keep that on you?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes you find yourself in situations where you gotta blow some shit up.”

I had to draw up additional contracts and liability waivers. While I tended to the grunt work, Chuck came back to the van and took out a small red blanket, which he then tied around his neck as a daredevil’s cape. He also had an old motorcycle helmet that he’d scavenged from the heap. As a final touch, he donned an old pair of red plastic women’s sunglasses. I estimate he spent at least five whole minutes planning this extravaganza. When he was finished getting in costume, he stepped out the front door of the microbus to address the crowd.

“Who wants to watch me blow up? Anyone who helps gets the last of my hydro!”

Instantly, dozens of steakheads and tramps descended upon us, ready to pitch in. We led them to the heap where the old cannon lay prone on the ground. It was upright and pointing northwest within seconds. If douchebags are useful for anything, it’s performing brainless displays of strength to impress everyone else around.

Someone brought in a ladder from the campground. Ernie wired the charge and dropped it in the bottom of the tube. After that, Chuck reemerged from the van to thunderous applause. He put on his helmet and advanced toward the human-missile silo. He turned to Ernie and me.

“This is gonna work, right?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Ernie lied. “That thing’ll shoot you right to the heavens, kid.”

“Sweet. What happens if it doesn’t go the way I want it to?”

“Well, you could ask for a refund, but you’ll probably be too dead to claim it.”

“Right.”

Chuck began scaling the ladder. Ernie turned to me and shrugged. He had no real clue whether the charge would have the desired effect. At the top of the cannon, Chuck took a last hit of hydro, which was met with more clapping and hooting. He jumped into the barrel and slid down to the ground. I made everyone sign a waiver. Ernie asked Chuck if he was ready.

“Let’s fly, muchacho!”

Everyone took cover behind a row of cars fifty yards away. Ernie set his WEPS on the hood of an old truck and began streaming a shot of the cannon. He grabbed the charge remote and leapt behind our row. He opened the switch. Suddenly, the entire vibrant mood of the scene flicked off, an aura of unease and tension taking its place. But Ernie didn’t allow it to linger for more than a split second. He plunged the button down, and the bottom of the cannon made a loud sneeze. A few stray bits of Chuck flew out of the top and landed on some of the surrounding windshields. The top of the cannon began to smoke, like a novelty-sized Marlboro. We rushed to the cannon, fire extinguishers in hand, borrowed from a nearby camper. I wrapped a rag around my fist and knocked on the side of the cannon.

“Chuck?”

There was no answer. Three steakheads pushed on the side of the cannon until it fell back to the ground. We looked in the opening at the bottom. Some of Chuck remained. The rest was ash, never even close to touching the sky.

There have been times over the years when I didn’t feel all that much like living anymore. When Keith and I spent 2047 in Guatemala, I’d stay up every night and stare at the Texan’s gun, daring myself to use it, before I eventually passed out drunk. I’ve never had the guts to put my money where my mouth is. When I was a kid, I was always told that suicide was the coward’s way out of life. I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel the exact opposite. Chuck may have been a burnout and a hippie living in a van, but at least he had the balls to think of an exit and see it through without hesitation. I don’t have that inherent bravery, chemically enhanced or otherwise. I’m not courageous enough to die now, nor have I ever been. I just keep on hanging around.

The first week of the job went according to Matt’s description. Mostly older people, many disabled and in pain. There were a couple of exceptions. There was an alcoholic woman with a cure age of only thirty or so. Very attractive. But she had been in and out of AA for three decades. She hated it. Called it a rest home. She didn’t want to live without drinking, but she knew she couldn’t stay alive if she stayed on the bottle. She chose the third option. Ernie gave her the shot while she downed one of her own. Then there was a gamer who asked for us because he had grown despondent over the fact that Omni-Warrior: Dhuria had become too overpopulated for his tastes. None of these clients wavered in their decision making. All of them appeared to be at peace—a peace that has eluded me for so long that I’m not sure I would even recognize it if it came around again.

So that’s how I justify this new gig to myself, I suppose. I know other people don’t particularly agree. I went around the cloud and found plenty of disparate voices ready to sound off on the issue.