Piggleyland: Chapter 12

 

12.

     I had to run about six blocks and then I came to an apparently abandoned factory building, surrounded by drooping rusty walls of barbed–wire fencing. I hadn’t been able to call ahead, but the fresh motorcycle tracks that rutted the muddy ground around the factory told me that my old friend Max was still in residence.

     Max was the drummer in a punk band that I used to do sound for back in the eighties. He had since renounced music, and meat, and all gainful employment, and lived on the top floor of an old deserted slaughterhouse and meat-packing plant. He cared for little company save the company of the hundreds of thousands of bovine ghosts, and listened to little music save the mournful music of their moos.

     He’d been a really great drummer, until the hamburger started talking to him one night after a gig in a bar in Wyandotte. Me and Max and Greg, the singer, were at this diner and I was talking to Greg, when suddenly Max said, “Wow. My hamburger forgives me,”  then he looked at Greg and said, “Well, at first I thought it was my hamburger talking, but that’s crazy. It’s one of the contributing cows from my hamburger. This cow had the most beautiful eyes. I can see her, you know, standing right there behind you. And she forgives me!”

     Greg looked over his shoulder. I also looked in the direction Max had indicated, but neither of us could see the ghost cow. Max flipped his long blonde tresses over one shoulder, and brushed a French fry crumb off the bosom of his red satin gown, and fluffed up his feather boa and said, “There must be five thousand ghost cows standing around this diner. Inside, outside the windows, looking in, pale and transparent and silvery under the streetlamps, all of them looking straight at us and our hamburgers. Nothing moving but the swish of their tails. And sometimes they blink -do you hear the cowbells? Faintly?”

     Greg and I looked at each other and then back at him.

     “You know, they mix the flesh of thousands of cows together in vats during the industrial …hamburgering process. Every mouthful is like a hundred scraps of soul,” said Max, powdering his chest, “They sure can stare at you, cows. It’s hard to tell what they’re thinking.”

     “So, can I have your hamburger, then?” Greg asked.

     “I’m moving to Chicago,” Max said, and pushed his way through the herd of cows out to his motorcycle. That was how he quit the band.  

 

     I walked into the factory, calling his name. He jumped from some dark rafter, landing directly on top of me like a bag of bricks, and held a huge knife to my throat. His hair was in two ponytails, tied with blue ribbon, and he wore a blue gingham schoolgirl’s pinafore with white tights and sparkly red shoes. Kind of like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, but 270 lbs and not so well shaved.

     “Hi, Max. Can I borrow your motorcycle? I gotta get back to Ann Arbor,” I said, calmly.

     “Oh, hey, Fang! Great to see you! How’s Vampirella?” he picked me up.

     “I don’t know. I gotta get back to Ann Arbor and find out. I’m sorry Max, but I’ve got no time to lose. Can you loan me your bike? I’ll make it up to you.”

     “Can’t! Gotta be in New York City tomorrow for the annual Transvestite Vegan Anarchist Motorcyclists Communing with Cow Ghosts support group. There’s only three of us, so I can’t miss it. I could drop you off on the way, though, I suppose. Here, have a coat. It’s twenty-seven degrees outside, and you’re dressed like you’re in Florida or something,” he gave me a hot pink narrow chinchilla coat  with a big fluffy collar and cuffs.

     “Can we go right now? Otherwise I have to go steal a car. I’m sorry to impose on you.”

     “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ special that I can’t leave now. Lemme just grab some negligees and ball gowns,” he pulled a big armload of silk and taffeta from a closet, “…and I’ll just say goodbye to the cow ghosts. Goodbye, Elsie! Goodbye, Clarabelle! Goodbye Mabel! Farewell Glossie! Goodbye…”
   “Max, right now, please,” I said.

     “Goodbye, all the rest of you! Especially Helga!” he yelled, and escorted me to his motorcycle. He loaded his saddlebags with clothes and got on.  I climbed on behind him and he started the engine up and we roared out through the city streets and back up onto the freeway. The motorcycle was huge and earsplittingly loud and it shook like crazy. I held on with freezing hands as best I could, while Max’s long blonde hair lashed me savagely across the face.

 

     I have never made it from Chicago to Ann Arbor faster. It was just over three hours later when Max brought his motorcycle to a halt in front of my Quonset. The sun had set behind us as we travelled between Battle Creek and Jackson at 110 MPH, and the darkness was deepening.

     My guts felt like a prune-flavored milkshake. Not only because of the tremendous sustained vibration of the motorcycle’s engine, but also because I was looking up and down my street for the yellow Penetrator. I didn’t see it. Nor did I see our car. Sprinting up to the door, it was evident that nobody was  home at all. A yellow post-it note was stuck to the welcome mat at the front door, and I picked it up and read it.

     “4:30 PM seriously need your services again, you’re the best “The Boss” Brick. Will pay for babysitter or whatever,” my stomach lurched like I’d just fallen down an elevator shaft. I think I actually said “AAARGH!”

     Max walked up behind me, “Everything OK, Fang?” he said, concerned, and applying new lipstick.

     “I have to go somewhere Max. Thanks for the ride.”
     He surveyed me doubtfully, “You look like hell, you know. With the clothes all shredded and filthy, your hair looks like a tortured tumbleweed, your sideburns don’t match. You’re covered in bruises and dirt and cuts, you’ve got a black eye and a long scratch down one cheek. You look starved and insane. Stop and rest and clean up for a minute. What are you, nuts? What’s going on? Have you seen yourself?” he held up a compact mirror. I looked a lot worse than he made it sound. I gave him back his fur coat.

     I still had my house key in my wallet. I opened the door and looked into my dark and empty house. The kid’s toys were scattered around, I looked at the red velvet curtains that Vampirella had stolen from an abandoned theatre, the coffee table where we’d often had sex. It seemed cold in there.

     It was cold, because the electricity was still out, which was why Vampirella and the kids had gone to her parents house to sleep, first thing in the Morning after Brick Marrow’s Penetrator took out the telephone pole. But I wasn’t smart enough to notice that, nor the note on the coffee table from Vampirella that read:

 “Fang, darling, Moe stopped by to tell us that Handwich had your flight changed. I asked him when you were supposed to get back, and he said “maybe sometime by Tuesday night, or something, probably.” I sure hope he’s right! Seemed drunk. Whenever you get home, come over to get your beautiful kids and me from my Mom & Dad’s house (power’s out-long story). We love you! –V.”

     There was also a P.S., wherein she made a delightfully indecent proposal.

 

     But it was dark, and I didn’t see the note. I  walked in, opened the door of the fridge, barely noticed that the light was out in the fridge, and handed Max a beer. I grabbed my leather jacket, and went back out the door to my bike.

     “I’ll lock up your house, Fang! Take it easy, man! I gotta keep goin’ East!”  I waved over my shoulder, and pedaled hard into the cold and dark, through a thin veneer of slush towards Brick Marrow’s apartment.

 

     I knew where Skeetch lived, of course, because I’d often had to send drivers around to his apartment to pound on the door until he woke up from one or another type of stupor. It was only   two miles away. I was no more than a block and a half from my house, riding downhill fast on the sidewalk, when I noticed the idling cement mixer at the curb ahead of me and I realized, too late, that the sidewalk ahead was wet cement. My front wheel plunged into it, the bike stopped, and I went soaring directly through a large and spiky juniper bush, then rolled through a patio, somersaulting through a pile of smashing terracotta flowerpots, then I fell through another juniper bush at the other side of the patio, to land on my back in a rock garden. I got up, covered in scores of small fresh cuts and gashes, and ran back to my bike, half submerged in wet cement. I don’t think the guy in the cement mixer expected me back so soon, but when he saw me he gunned the engine and backed up so he could roar up on the sidewalk. By the time his front wheels were plowing through the wet sidewalk I was running back through the patio, with the dripping, heavy bike held over my head. I ran through the juniper bushes again and wished I had taken the time to change into long pants. I shook the wet cement off the bike as best I could and climbed back onto it in the rock garden, and got it rolling back down the hill and then back on the sidewalk, beyond the wet part. The Cement truck blasted through the patio, front grille full of juniper branches, but then swerved, toppled and fell over with a terrible noise on its left side in the rock garden, which was steeply pitched.        

     The bike was sluggish, with all the cement caked in the treads and gears and spokes, but as I pedaled harder some of it was loosening up a little. I turned a corner and coasted for a moment, still on a downhill, catching my breath. I was coming up to an intersection and I saw two dumptrucks full of asphalt emerging fast from both directions on the crossing street to block my path.

     I leaned down over the front fender and pedaled hard to make it through the intersection first, as the gap narrowed between the two huge cabs. The drivers, seeing that they weren’t going to be able to get in front of me, both steered to the center of the road to try to sandwich me, and so collided head-on noisily just as my rear wheel cleared their bumpers. Hot asphalt rained down on me, but I kept going and turned another corner on my bike. Only about a mile to the apartment building now. 

     I turned another corner, now in the downtown of Ann Arbor, and a metermaid was waiting there and nailed me in the chest with a hurled bucket full of coins. It knocked me over, but I kept ahold of the bike and rolled over with it down the road a little piece. When I slid to a stop, lying in the street on back with my bike, I found myself directly behind a salt truck, promptly dumping its full load of salt directly over me, and my bike, and my one thousand lacerations. I swam forward, trying not to scream, through the avalanche of salt to emerge under the truck. I dragged my bike after me and crawled out between the wheels on the passenger side of the truck. I remounted and was rolling again before the truckdriver and the metermaid realized I wasn’t buried in the pile of salt.

     I was somewhat invigorated because of all the salt packed into my wounds, and covered the last seven blocks in very little time, dodging through alleys and the wrong way up one way streets to lose any further pursuit.

 

     The apartment building was a nondescript three-story rectangular brick building from the 1970’s. I examined the mail boxes in the vestibule of the building: B. Marrow Apt. 317. I threw my bike through the plate glass window next to the locked security door and ran up the stairs.

     My heart was going BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM like it was trying to punch its way out as I took the three flights three stairs at a time. My throat was dry, my eyes were wet, I was probably in excruciating pain but I couldn’t tell from the roaring in my ears, my vision was down to pinpricks and bursts of fireworks, my teeth were clenched.

     I could hear some kind of pop metal band blasting from behind Skeetch’s door, 315. He was probably trying to drown out the sex noises from Brick Marrow’s apartment, I assumed. I stopped at the door to 317 and raised my fist to pound on it. I froze, suddenly, terrified.

     Then I kicked the door in. Well, first I ran into it with my shoulder, which just hurt my shoulder, but several kicks split the hollow-core door in half, and I burst through it, wild eyed, covered in blood and salt.

   “Aha!” I screamed.

     Brick Marrow stood agape before me, dressed in slippers and a smoking jacket. He had a highball in his hand. Then the highball was hanging there alone in the air as Brick Marrow’s body followed the face that I’d just punched back into the living room.

     I ran over his fallen body to search the apartment for Vampirella, but almost immediately came up short when Sam Handwich walked out of the bathroom, in a lime green leisure suit.

     “Sam? What are you doing here?”

     “Fang?” he said, doubtfully, “Fang! You’re alive? How did you find out about this? Holy Christ, what have you done to Marrow?”

     “Jealousy, that’s all it is, Sam,” said Brick, crawling up the side of a chrome and black leather chair and holding his jaw, “he had it, and now I got it, and he’s lost it, and he can’t accept it, but he didn’t deserve it,  because he’s not actualized in excellence like you and I. You’re a SUPERLOSER, mister!” he shouted, pointing a finger at me.

     Sam went extremely orange very fast, “Marrow’s right, Fang. I don’t know what kind of shenanigans resulted in your shirking the mantle of tragically dead patriot, but I can’t approve of it. There’s something mighty fishy about this whole thing, and I’m reporting you to the Department of Homeland Security as soon as I get done firing you!”

     “Firing? Where is…” I said, disoriented.

     “Yes, firing! You’re fired! Frankly, ever since you refused to fuck and eat that sexy pig I’ve been deeply, deeply disappointed in your work performance. I need team players only on my team, which is why I called Brick Marrow and gave him your job last night, just before I heard on the radio that you were dead. I’m really happy you’re not dead, because now I can fire you. You’re fired!” he was delighted.

     Brick Marrow was still pointing a finger at me, “Yeah! And you can bet I will totally do whatever perverse bonding exercise my supervisor chooses, with relish, because of the team! I hope you enjoyed knocking me down, but I’m taking consolation in everything I just took from you, you superloser. Because of you, I’ve got an exciting new career, working for a dynamic boss, and a new car, and soon I’ll have my house back, and between you and me, I spent last night getting some mighty good lovin’ from a hot little woman who appreciates a man for his business acumen! Yeah! I’ve got it all! I’m the Boss! It’s my Birthday! You’ve been majorly marginalized! Slam Dunk!” 

     There was this building crescendo of rage screaming in my ears. My left eye was twitching, my fang cut into my lower lip, my hands were contorted into two claws, electric shocks were radiating from the bundle of nerves at the base of my skull, I said, “Where is…”

     “Look at him go, Fang! He’s an excellated businessman at a level that you could never hope to achieve, full of dynamical energy and vigorosity, as I’m sure your wife will confirm.” Sam waggled his eyebrows at me, “I gotta tell ya, Fang, when I had to fill your position, I figured I should go for a spunk-pumped leader that I knew wouldn’t mind stepping in and taking the carnal opportunitiative, eh, Brick? How is she, anyway?” He winked at Brick, and put up his hand for a high five.  Brick looked at him strangely. He was confused by the reference to my wife, but he still high-fived him. It was not in Brick’s nature to fail to high-five.

     “Where is my wife?” I growled through my teeth. Really growled. Barked, even. And then I looked out the window of the apartment building, at the night sky, and the full moon just coming up over the treeline in the distance.

“It’s not Tuesday already, is it?” I asked Brick and Sam, who were regarding me with new respect and increasing apprehension. 

 Was it Tuesday already? I’d kind of lost track of time, which turned out badly for Sam Handwich and Brick Marrow both.

     I ate them.