Insomnia
Sleepless Bear
Sometimes I can't sleep. Crumbs dig into my back, my legs get restless, birds chirp outside, I start thinking about Richie Groder, a kid I slugged in the sixth grade, or my brain, awash in a frantic, radioactive soup of images and ideas, drives me out of bed so that I might wander the hallway, kitchen and living room, a ghost in my own house.
One night my patient, long-suffering wife told me to take Soma Siesta, a little blue sleeping pill. Ignoring the advice of doctors and psychic healers who say that bears should stay away from such medications, I put the little blue pill in my mouth and then drank, according to directions, a glass of water.
At two in the morning I slid out of bed, looked out our bedroom window and saw The Grim Reaper Himself standing across the street looking like a gawky, bored teenager in an overcoat two sizes too big for him.
Death never looks swanky, like someone out of Death takes a Holiday or Meet Joe Black. Even in the old days, when everyone used to see him, death always looked, in his black cowl and leather sandals, grungy and poor.
We saw him but do you think that prevented people from being careless? Oh no. Many the time I saw someone pulling a kid by the arm screaming, "What's the matter with you! Didn't you say you were going to watch him! I turn around and there he is, almost shaking hands with the damn Grim Reaper!"
So there I am at two in the morning watching Grim and this really begins to burn my hide. What business does he have standing there staring at my house! I put on my robe, march across the street and confront this punk.
"Get off my street!" I say. "We're not planning on going anywhere thank you very much."
"Hey man," the kid says, reaching into his pocket for something I can't see but know is long, black and sharp. "I go where I want."
"I'll have you arrested!"
"Yeah, right," he snorts.
Darn it. He's got me there. Death under arrest? That does sound pretty stupid.
I'm not going to dignify the situation with another word, so I storm home, sit in the living room with the lights off and turn on the television.
King Kong is showing.
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Looking for a Few Hours of Sleep?
Ask Your Doctor (or psychic healer)
if Soma Siesta is Right for You!
Possible side effects most commonly experienced are night sweats, morning sweats and afternoon sweats; hallucinations involving dead relatives; spontaneous combustion; wandering naked through the neighborhood; driving like a Kennedy; weird ideas about space travel and extra skin.
Do not take Soma Siesta if you are pregnant, were pregnant, know someone who is pregnant. Do not take on a full stomach or before mealtimes. Try to follow all instructions. If you experience sudden catastrophic inability to breath contact your doctor.
I know that Death is across the street but I can’t get my eyes off King Kong. He’s rampaging around New York, a sort of hairy, hulking version of The Grim Reaper. A train is wrecked, a screaming woman is dropped from a skyscraper and planes are torn from the sky as bullets slam into the enraged body of the mighty gorilla.
Why, I ask myself, is there so much fascination for this ridiculous movie?
“Bear?” my wife says behind me. “Why are you starring at the TV? It’s not even on.”
“Of course it’s on,” I murmur.
“Come to bed.”
“In a minute,” I say.
The walls are as bright and green as neon seaweed and the eyes of Kong, big as truck tires, peer mournfully through them. It’s at that moment, as I gaze into those luminous eyes, as soft as the first measuring look of a delighted baby, that the answer comes to me.
White men leave the safe confines of civilization, go to an uncharted island filled with black natives who hop around half-naked in a trance-induced state bordering between ecstasy and terror, and come back with a giant, ungovernable monster who wants nothing more than to dote on a tiny white woman. The implication is pretty clear. Leave laws and the rule of Western society behind and if you survive, which is a pretty big if, you will return ready to destroy that very civilization for the delights of the most transitory of all physical pleasures.
It’s no accident, then, that Kong is killed by airplanes, for what better way is there to express the triumph of the spirit (delicate craft, lighter than air, products of reason) over the crazed beast of fleshy desire? Yes, beauty kills the beast but it’s not the beauty of mortal woman but of that which transcends our own rather poor and shabby natural state
King Kong is a morality play about the dangers of uncontained male sexuality.
"Bear!"
I better get to bed.
A town, Gold and a Clock
No sooner does my head hit the pillow than I’m up and at work, talking to Brad, a man who has the gall to be unhappy with what I do for a living.
What do I do for a living? I remember now. I install sprinklers.
Brad is a fat man whose tire-hard blubber is entirely in his middle, making him look as if he is always just about to tip over. I want to punch him in the face to see if he’ll wobble back and forth like one of those inflatable dolls weighted down with sand at the bottom.
“The damn water shoots all over the sidewalk,” he nearly screams. Thick veins on the side of his head swell and quiver and little brown and white hairs stick out of his nose, the back of his neck, shoulders and chest. He has the large, angry mouth of an animal that cracks, chews and sucks on the bones of its prey. Women who would sleep with such a man, I think, are the kind who would find hyenas and junkyard dogs attractive.
“What you gotta do,” I say, wishing that I could just smash a soccer ball into his groin. “Is get an NDS, or nozzle directional specialist.”
“You’re making that up you asshole.”
The man wastes no words, that’s for sure. He flares his nostrils, hunches his back and balls his fists. I’m about to be murdered by this pea-brained, cigar smelling yahoo but then I discover that it’s really two in the morning and I’m awake, twitching and shaking. I should be asleep since I took a Soma Siesta just before I went to bed, and we all know that Soma Siesta has been proven to be medically safe if used by people who don’t file lawsuits or shoot their big mouth off to the media.
.........................advertisement......
Looking for a Few Hours of Sleep?
Ask Your Doctor (or local drug dealer)
if Soma Siesta is Right for You!
Possible side effects most commonly experienced are dreams about having to take all of your college finals over again even though you haven’t studied for them, erections lasting more than four minutes, a sudden urge to buy Mexican jumping beans.
Do not take Soma Siesta if you are a religious fanatic or panhandle while wearing boxer shorts. If you experience sudden panic inside of a phone booth contact your physician.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I roll out of bed, throw a robe on and then stumble out of the bedroom and into the hallway. I hear the flutter of papers, books slapping desks, pencils bouncing off linoleum and the Bronx accented voices of kids.
It is a classroom, and the man at the head of it is no other than the writer Frank McCourt.
“Take a seat, Mister Bear,” Teacher Man says to me in his Irish accent.
I take my robe off and sit down on one of the empty chairs in the back of the room. This causes me a tremendous amount of embarrassment. What if I just sat on a piece of gum?
“Does anyone have a good recipe today,” McCourt asks. He sounds surprisingly polite, unlike the teachers I had.
A girl stands up and recites a recipe for lasagna. I don’t know if this is from Frank McCourt’s book or not but it sounds delicious. The way she says “onions” and “garlic” makes me tremble like a boy in love.
I’m so hungry, I could eat boiled cabbage.
“Mr. McCourt,” I say, timidly waving my hand in the air. “When you were writing Angela's Ashes, the famous account of your miserable childhood in Ireland, were you planning on writing about being a teacher in New York during the fifties?”
“I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about,” Teacher Man says wearily, looking around at the other students as if to confirm that I am certifiably crazy.
“I won’t write so much as a letter until after I retire. In the meantime I’m desperately looking for a way to relate to these kids so that I can get through to them, something no one else is doing, I might add.”
A light bulb goes on over my head. Literally. I can see all the way to the blackboard now. There’s a stick figure of Teacher Man on it that looks as if his hair is on fire.
“I have an idea that may help us to relate to these kids,” I say.
For the next fifteen minutes I get everyone busy moving chairs and tables to the sides of the room. Kids bring in fire wood, paper is balled up and then inserted between the logs, and soon a little fire is blazing on the floor. I turn the lights off and invite everyone to sit round the cozy campfire.
“This is a story about a small, poor village a long, long ways away and a long, long time ago,” I say. “So there’s no sense doing any fact checking. The people of this village were very poor but happy the way poor people often are in stories.
“But one day someone who was fishing in the nearby river discovered gold, and pretty soon the villagers had a good income. New houses were built, a hotel went up and there was even talk of a spa, the kind with fancy mud baths and mineral water treatments. Everyone was happy and one day the mayor, a fat man by the name of Brad, said to the people, ‘Since we have money now and are prosperous, the town should have a large, handsome clock tower. We should also get the damn sprinklers fixed.’
“Everyone thought that this was an excellent idea. Not about the sprinklers but about the clock tower, and so they voted overwhelmingly to select someone for the job.
“That was when Frankel, a spindly spider of a man with a shrewd face and a hunchback, a man no one had ever liked, a jeweler by trade who charged too much for his work and gloated about it, came forth and said that he could build the clock tower and for a good price.
“People wanted to go home to admire their brand new leather bound books, eat smoked salmon and drink imported whiskey, and so they said, ‘yeah, okay, let Frankel do it. For once his offer seems reasonable.
“And so for the next three months Frankel, with a group of men he had hired from some other village where people spoke some kind of weird Eastern European language, worked night and day on the clock tower. Hammering and sawing, clinking and clacking, the men toiled night and day seven days a week, not even taking Easter off.
“At last Frankel grandly announced that the tower had been completed, and the town gathered on the appointed day for the unveiling. There were balloons and bands playing, children in their best clothes and ladies with hats and gloves on. The air was electric with excitement and suspense!
“When the clock tower was revealed a hush fell over the crowd. What a stupendous, marvelous, gorgeous and maybe just a little overdone example of workmanship there was for all to admire. And how proud everyone felt to have such a clock tower in their town, a town that could afford leather bound books and imported whiskey. How there were cheers, clapping, hooting and hollering! A picnic was held afterward and then, at night, fireworks lit up the starry sky.
“The next day Frankel was the toast of the town. He couldn’t pay for a meal and everyone wanted to treat him to a drink. Everyone said that this was the beginning of big things for the town. Frankel felt confident that now things would really be different for him, that he would never be despised or looked down on again. Cynical people say that’s the way losers think but I withhold judgment.
“But something was not right. Sorry kids, but in fairy tales there always has to be a problem. You see, the mayor had promised to pay Frankel for the clock tower as soon as it was completed, but after two weeks no one had shown up to give the weird little jeweler anything. Finally, Frankel went straight to the mayor.
“’Perhaps the check got lost in the mail?’ Frankel said, holding his hat by the rim.
“Brad, the mayor, who had a mouth you wouldn’t want to get near to, got up from his desk and said to Frankel, ‘It’s like this Frankel. The city is having a little cash-flow problem at the moment but we expect to clear it up shortly. We’re all proud of your work and so believe me, my good man, you will be paid soon. The city counsel even voted to give you a Christmas bonus. So don’t worry.”
“And so Frankel went home but, day after day, nothing arrived, not a penny. This made him depressed. He had to pay the workers from what little money he had saved up. And that created his own cash-flow problems. Frankel had trouble sleeping, working, getting customers, and every time he looked at the clock tower he felt enraged, helpless and sick.
“He felt like a bitter little hunchback. Which he was!
“’I am a man and I need meat and drink,’ he finally shouted one day at the mayor. ‘You cannot treat me like this and get away with it.
“The mayor said, ‘I won’t be talked to like this you deformed little weenie. Get out of my office before I have you arrested.
“That’s how people in power talk to you when they think they can get away with it.
“’I will…I will have my meat and drink,’ Frankel sobbed, trembling with rage and mortification. ‘You’ll be sorry you did this to me.’
“So the funny little hunchback put on his hat, hobbled home, and everyone forgot about him. He was just a jeweler, and what the hell can jewelers do anyway-put a curse on your Timex?
“Then, three weeks later, at the stroke of midnight, little Hans, a nine year old boy, awakened when he heard a voice at the window. He got up on his knees, put his nose to the cold, frosty glass and saw a grinning clown on the back of a gaily decorated elephant. ‘Come to the fair, boys and girls,’ the clown called out. ‘All the ice-cream you can eat and clowns to make you laugh. Come, Hans, oh come to the fair by the clock.’ This struck even Hans, who was only nine, as weird but there was that mention of ice cream and he had never seen clowns before in real life. And so he put on his robe and slippers, then crept like a mouse downstairs.
“Well, we all know how things like this turn out in fairy tales. Not good. Little Hans was never heard from again, of course. Soon others disappeared and before you know it, the whole town is in hysterics as people go up and down the streets with torches, calling out frantically for their children.
“At the mayor’s suggestion a tough bunch of men break into Frankel’s house. At first they don’t see anything out of the ordinary except for a boiling cauldron of soup. Well, you know, it’s just soup, maybe Campbell’s vegetable or something like that. Frankel no where to be found and so one of the men gets up enough courage to look down at the soup itself. Just hot, thick, steaming soup. He picks up a spoon and stirs. Ah, onions and garlic. Makes him feel like a boy in love. Then he sees bits of carrots, tomatoes, potatoes. It’s vegetable soup, all right. Vegetable soup with beans, rice, cabbage, part of a nose, zucchini, an eyeball…
“Jesus H. Christ, what a scene! People are screaming loud enough to drown out a jumbo jet. Everyone in town, the whole ugly mob, is now hunting for Frankel with bent razors, pikes, pitchforks and dental picks.
“He’s eventually spotted hiding behind some ridiculous poster for a circus and is escorted, kicking and screaming, to the center of town. He’s punched, beaten and spit on and then carried to the clock tower, where he is dragged inside and up the rough, stone steps to the top.
“Just imagine what it must have looked like, children. At night, by torchlight, as the town screamed and howled at the base of the clock tower, Frankel hanging upside down by chains from the massive, iron big hand that he himself had made.
“’You got it all wrong,’ the hunchback pleaded, his face turning red from him being upside down. ‘I was boiling a sheep’s head. I had nothing to do with the children.’
“But no one could hear the little man who dangled up so high! All the people in town wanted to do was to get their revenge, and so they scattered hither and thither, gathering wood and straw.
“They piled the wood and they stacked the straw so that it circled round the clock tower, and then they soaked it in kerosene. An old woman with a shaking hand lit a match.
“The flames rose higher and higher, setting sparks adrift over fields and rooftops. Frankel’s hair and clothes ignited. He shrieked and howled, jerking on his glowing chains like a melting puppet. The clock tower crackled, blackened and then, caving in upon itself, crashed to the ground.
“The maddened crowd had to back away to escape the flaming debris. But they were so insane with grief and hatred that they soon scattered in all directions again to gather more wood for the fire, chanting, “Burn, devil, burn in hell.”
“A bell in the very midst of the inferno suddenly clanged at such a high pitch that it sounded like an animal screaming. People held their ears as the unholy sound pierced ear drums and sent needles of pain shivering through teeth and cheek bones.
“When the night of carnage of was over at last people staggered like soot covered drunkards through the streets as the sun slowly rose in the east, warming the fields and rooftops as if nothing had happened.
“The next day a doctor was sent for to inspect Frankel’s house. Nothing was found except boiled vegetables and the remains of a sheep.
“Nothing could convince the people of the town that Frankel was innocent, and so the doctor was promptly sent packing.
“Try as it might, however, the town could not go back to the way it had been. At night people awoke screaming in pain as the fire bell clanged in their head. As days dragged on without sleep, people took drastic measures, like puncturing their ear drums with sharpened sticks or even cutting off their ears with butcher knives. But nothing worked. Soon some people drifted off into the woods to be eaten by animals. Others smashed their head into stones. And there were others who bought rope and took it home.
“It’s said that one day a stranger came to the village and found it empty. Curious, he knocked on doors and looked through windows. Finally, in a desperate attempt to find somebody, he entered a house and found a skeleton hanging from the ceiling.
“In most of the houses he went into, he found the same thing. A skeleton or two hanging from the ceiling.
“Well kids, how did you like the story?”
“Mr. McCourt,” a girls says. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Jesus, Mary and the saints,” McCourt roars at me. “What in the hell possessed you to tell such a God-awful story to my students?”
“I thought it was pretty cool,” one of the boys says.
Another boy asks me why I made Frankel into a hunchback.
“I didn’t make Frankel into a hunchback,” I say, walking around the campfire. “The town did that.”
A black girls says, “What do you mean? How could they do that?”
“He was a hunchback,” I say, “because he had unpopular politics, because he was disabled, because he belonged to a different religion, because he spoke another language, because he questioned authority, because his skin was a different color, because he was gay, because he was educated or not educated enough, because he lived on the outskirts of town, because he was different in some irritatingly indefinable way that always bugs small minded people.”
“What does this have to do with my book Teacher Man?” Frank McCourt says. “I was trying to write about my attempts to teach, to truly bring culture and the life of the mind to my students.”
“The people of the town,” I say, “stopped being parents when they found gold. And when they lost their kids they blamed anyone other than themselves. I liked your book Teacher Man, just as I liked Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis. But when you write about education in America you don’t ask the most fundamental of questions. What happened to these kids that gave them such an allergic reaction to learning! Children love to learn by nature. What turned a generation of kids in the richest nation on earth- a nation that had just won the biggest war in history- into such a bunch of immature, asocial, nitwits who came to school without so much as a molecule of curiosity about anything ? How could we have allowed ourselves to turn into a nation of mentally lazy, semi-literate boobs?
“Is it because we were seduced into thinking that the answer to life is money, buying, being consumers rather than citizens? We are constantly killing the monster who dares to stand up against us but all we are left with is a fire bell clanging in our head and we would rather destroy ourselves and the whole planet than find a different way of living that puts people and life ahead of profit and ego. You, Mr. McCourt, had the misfortune to grow into a man of courage and character who then thought he could somehow give it to a people who had thrown theirs away for rubbish.”
As I leave I say to the students, “Teacher Man, a Memoir, is published by Scribner and is available on Amazon.com.”
On my way back to bed I can hear Brad screaming at me from across the street. From the way he sounds it’s my guess that he’s standing next to Death.
“I’ll get you for this!”
Yeah. Good luck. I tuck my cold feet into bed and then turn off the light.
“Bear?” my wife says.
“What dear?”
“What were you telling those kids?”
“You must have been dreaming,” I say, yawning. “Go to sleep.”
My life with Sooperman!
No sooner does my head hit the pillow than I’m up and, to my astonishment, fully dressed. I smell daffodils outside. Don’t ask me what daffodils smell like but I know they’re out there.
The sun is up. Mouse comes in wearing a bright yellow sun dress and hands me a fresh brewed cup of coffee.
“Going to work, Bear?” she says.
“Why yes of course, off I go,” I announce, sipping my coffee and adjusting my tie.
What do I do for a living?
Well, no matter. I brush lint and cat hairs off myself and march to the door.
“Bye Mouse!”
“Bye Bear!”
What a stupendous day. Airplanes are writing ads in the sky. Children, their head nearly shaved, race by on low, sleek bicycles. A man across the street, unshaven and almost starved to death by the look of him, pees on a lawnmower. Or is that gasoline I smell?
Firecrackers, or gunshots far away, pop like gravel spit from a truck tire. The bright yellow sun burns little holes in my retinas and I wince and shiver in delight at the pain.
Ah yes, it comes to me now. I’m the famous-not famus-author of that fabulous best-seller, My Life with Sooperrman, and I’m off to give a televised interview.
I don’t remember driving to the studio but here I am! People waddle around with earphones plugged into their head and clipboards jammed into the palms of their plump, ham colored hands. Wires crisscross the floor like lazy, malnourished snakes. Monitors display my face, the back of my head and x-rays of my skull. A man who looks disgusted with his own boredom and fatigue sits on a stool and looks at me with his arms folded across his chest.
The name plate over the pocket on his white shirt tells me that this is “Brad”.
I say hi to “Brad”.
“You can call me Bob,” he says.
“No thanks,” I say.
He shrugs, tells me it’s my funeral.
“So,” I say. “Uh, are you the one who’ll be interviewing me?” I say.
“If that’s the way you want it,” he says with another shrug.
“Okay.”
“Well in that case,” he says, looking at the gold watch on his left wrist. “We’ve been on the air for almost forty eight seconds and I haven’t asked you anything yet. Why is that?”
“Is that the first question?” I say, looking nervously around for the camera.
“No. Tell me about the book. Tell me about living with Sooperman.”
“Never lived with him,” I say. “But I did know him quite well when I worked as a secretary at the League of Justice.”
But then I’m no longer giving an interview, but looking at the movie of me as a young man in an office.
Sooperman saunters in. He’s wearing the full costume, of course, which, I’m always embarrassed to notice, makes him look fat. But what should I expect from a guy who wears tights, who wolfs down three boxes of donuts a day and drinks a pint of scotch before lunch?
“Hey hey Jimmy boy,” he snorts, putting his feet up on the desk. “Ready for the big day?”
He likes to call me Jimmy, which I find irritating. He pulled Jimmy Alsen’s head off in a fit of rage and now thinks that the whole thing is some kind of hilarious knee-slapper. Or it’s his way of intimidating me.
“Right boss,” I say.
“Ah, I feel especially good today, Jimmy ‘ole boy. Get me one of those pink donuts and pour me a drink. Two fingers, two ice cubes.”
“Coming up boss.”
“Every big shot mayor is going to come crawling in here in…” He cranes his head in the direction of the clock on the wall.
“Fifteen minutes. I’m excited. How do you feel, Jimmy boy?”
“All a tingle, boss,” I say, handing him his drink in a cut crystal glass and a pink donut on a napkin.
I sometimes have fantasies of poisoning him with kryptonite but the viewer can’t see this in the movie.
“I think it’s just going to give me the biggest hard on in the universe to see them file in here hat in hand. Bring me another donut. What? Doesn’t matter, you pick it. You know what I did last night? Flew out the window at three in the morning, naked as a jaybird, and took a dump right over Times Square.”
He laughs until his face turns as bright and pink as the last donut he stuffed down his throat.
The moron thinks this is a big joke but forgets that he does it almost every day at three in the morning. The viewer, I guess, is supposed to find it amusing in a mildly disgusting way.
I remember how people used to run all over the city looking for Sooperman turds to sell on E-Bay.
“That’s pretty funny, boss,” I say, handing him a glazed donut.
“Well,” he sighs, wiping his eyes. “Try snorting coke all night long with about thirty drop-dead gorgeous women and see what that does to you.”
“In my dreams, boss,” I say. “In my dreams.”
The intercom sounds.
“Are they here?” Sooperman says around a mouthful of donut.
“Yes sir, the delegation just arrived,” Jackson, a member of security, says over the intercom.
“Excellent,” the muscle-bound oaf shouts. “Have Shelia escort them into the Arizona Conference Room. Make sure those assholes are all screened, Jackson.”
“Yes sir!”
If Sooperman has any fear, it’s that one day someone will try to poison him with kryptonite.
“Well,” I say, standing up. “I’ll go upstairs.”
“And I’ll make my usual entrance,” Sooperman says, stroking his crotch and grinning like a cat.
“I’ll see you there, boss,” I say.
Five minutes later, as I stand in the back of the crowded Arizona Conference Room, Superman swoops through an open window and lands on stage. The delegates rise to their feet and politely clap.
“It’s Soooo-per-man,” I scream. Part of the job.
God how I wish this jerk were dead.
Superman struts around like General Paton. There’s even an oversized American flag behind him. When everyone starts to sit down Sooperman talks (without a microphone, of course).
His voice sounds like the biggest, scariest school yard bully in the universe and it makes my scrotum scrunch up.
“Thank you,” Sooperman says. “Thank you. Please be seated. I see a lot of old friends out there in the audience. Good to see all of you. I’m deeply honored that you could all come at such short notice. You are the true heroes of this nation, serving your cities with such hard work and devotion to duty. I’m always humbled to be in your presence.
“Because you have such important duties to attend to I’ll get right to the point. A discovery of vast magnitude has been made, and because it could spread panic, has been kept from the public. Two days ago Doctor George Carroway at the Royal Observatory called me with startling news: a meteor the size of Texas is speeding toward earth and, if nothing is done, will impact the surface of the earth in less than two years.”
Groans are heard from the audience. Everyone knows this is bullshit but they also know what’s coming next.
“Now I don’t want anyone here to be unduly alarmed. Sooperman can take care of this but, as you all know, maintaining this magnificent organization, The League of Justice, is not cheap. I can help you but I also need your help.”
There is a moment of silence. Sooperman grins at his blinking audience. This is his favorite part of the shake-down, what he calls “squeezing the balls.”
Finally someone stands up, hat in hand, coughs and asks the Man of Steel how much averting this disaster will cost them.
“I’ll be blunt,” Sooperman says, looking down at his feet as if embarrassed. “I’d say, forty-five million dollars.”
The room is filled with the sound of balloons deflating. I hear angry muttering. “Jesus H Friggin Christ” and “The bastard!”
A slender young black woman who is the mayor of a large Southern city stands up and cries, “We don’t have enough money for our schools, hospitals, affordable housing and, and our infrastructure, Sooperman! Where is this money going to come from?”
“Where is the money going to come from!” Sooperman screams. It’s deafening, like a sonic boom.
“I’ll tell you where the money will come from. From your cities not being engulfed in tidal waves! From your buildings not burning to the ground! From your children not being smashed to pieces in front of you just before cars spinning in the air take your own head off! That’s where the goddamn money will come from! Any more dumb ass questions?”
At this point the movie stops and I look at Brad, who is trembling and purple faced.
“And so, and so,” he says, spraying me with spittle. “This is how you repay an American hero who has saved millions and guaranteed our most cherished freedoms! Is this some kind of sick, twisted joke! It’s because of Sooperman that you can drive to work in a car made in Japan. It’s because of Sooperman that we can enjoy cheap fuel and build factories overseas!”
“Well, I guess that’s my point,” I say.
“Shut up! Shut up! You’ve had your fifteen minutes. If you don’t get off my show I’ll tear you to pieces with my own bare hands!”
Well! I don’t want the poor guy to have a coronary, so I meekly shuffle off the set. When I walk back into the lobby I discover, however, that I’m back in my own bedroom.
“Bear!” Mouse says. “Come to bed.”
I sit on the bed and think about kryptonite.
Welcome to Meerkat Manor
To get that stupid blockhead Sooperman out of my head I turn on the television. Meerkat Manor is on. I turn the volume down low so as not to wake Mouse up, then lean back on a thick stack of pillows to enjoy the antics of these crazy little animals.
Meerkat Manor depicts the real life and death adventures of a group of wild Meerkats living in the Kalahari Desert, the screen announces.
War.
The Whiskers, who are the stars of this epic docudrama, are about to be attacked by their arch rival the Lazuli.
Pups are herded underground by their babysitter, the dreaded enemy nears; and the tribe, led by ferocious, alpha female Flower, makes its way to their ill-defended burrow.
What will happen next? It is a pivotal moment in the show, for brave little Shakespeare, the burrow’s sole defender, is about to single-handedly initiate the greatest leap in the evolutionary history of his beleaguered species.
History is literally about to begin.
Big Cy, the biggest Meerkat anywhere in the Kalahari and the deadliest member of the Lazuli Clan, invades the burrow of the Whiskers.
Shakespeare advances to meet him in combat. This will be, we expect, a fight to the death; and we’re prepared for who the victor will be. After brave little Shakespeare writes his last act, the helpless pups will be next.
Is this yet another sad chapter in the natural world, the abode of creatures born to do nothing but suffer and die?
Shakespeare’s tail is up! His teeth are bared! His courage is screwed to the sticking point but something lies between him and the Goliath of Meerkats.
A bone.
Bones are not normally found in the tidy burrows of meerkats. These little creatures, cousins to the mongoose, eat, among other things, scorpions and beetles. Yum!
So how does a bone wind up in a Meerkat condo? Perhaps it was accidentally kicked into the lobby by Big Cy. Or perhaps it was placed their by some mysterious, higher power.
The viewer is left to decide, I suppose.
But a bone it is, and in a moment of genius or brain addled panic, Shakespeare hits it with his foot, watches it rock back and forth on a pebble, then swiftly picks it up with mounting murderous intent.
It will be said, in years to come, that Big Cy never knew what hit him.
Shakespeare races outside, then tosses the bone into the air, throwing the rest of the marauding Lazuli into mayhem.
The bone goes up, up, up and then down, down, down, knocking brave little Shakespeare unconscious.
“What’s happening, Bear?” Mouse says drowsily.
“The meerkats have developed their first weapon,” I say, scarcely able to contain my excitement. “Big things are going to happen now!”
In the next five minutes the meerkats have invented stone tools and a method for starting fire.
Some of the larger and tastier insects are now roasted over open flames, and predators are kept at bay by torches and sharpened sticks.
They have the hands of tool makers now, and their vocal utterances have become more nuanced.
“Mouse, Mouse!” I say. “I think they have a rudimentary language!”
But Mouse, her head half buried in pillows, gently snores.
Stone circles dot the landscape. Meerkats work together in cooperative teams, giving all the food they raise to the Sisterhood of Sooforafillacus, the meerkat word, I think, for Flower. The food is then evenly divided so that no meerkat goes hungry, and all are assured of a meal in times of scarcity.
Words are carved into stone tablets.
Kroon upna rakkna (From many one)
and
Ip kretaopnon epia fanloona (No meerkat is an island)
“Well, Mouse,” I say, digging into a can of mixed nuts. “Looks like they’ve got a well functioning society now.”
But all is not well. A group of male meerkats, led by Domminumpater, meet in their own secret burrow to howl, beat stones with sticks and bite each other on the neck as a form of initiation.
They call themselves Yaknoid Rakkna Loodna Aso Givtne (Brotherhood of the One True Faith).
On the skins of their enemy the Lazuli, they write their sacred script with sticks dipped in blood and various plant compounds.
The first words are, “Lectosal eeto kramtoom fris kretaopnon ogna kretaopnon” (Pay attention to Me! For I am Meerkat above all meerkat).
When the great Book is finished Domminumpater kicks one of the stone circles down to get everyone’s attention, then shouts, “The Big Meerkat of meerkats has spoken through ME. Bow down to Him or die!”
Meerkats look at each other in mute, wide-eyed astonishment, then do as they are told, for they have never been commanded to do anything that isn’t right or good.
One of the Sisterhood dares to ask a question, but when she is struck on the side of the head by a rock she quiets down like everyone else.
Domminumpater gives his first order.
“Destroy the stone circles, for they are a jerky abomination, an insult to the Meerkat of meerkats. The stones will be used for something else.”
“Bear?”
“Yes Mouse?”
“What are the meerkats doing now?”
“Well, by the look of what they’re doing with the stones,” I say. “Like putting them around large plots of land, I’d say that they’ve just invented private property, a church and government.”
“That was fast,” Mouse murmurs, rolling over and then going back to sleep.
“Yeah, it all seemed to happen at the same time,” I mutter to myself.
Everyone has a different job to do now. Most meerkats gather and raise food, some march around with a sharpened stick, the females stay home to raise the young, a few speak for the Meerkat of meerkats, and a still smaller number attend to the head meerkat, Domminumpater, now known as King Pater the First.
King Pater the Second ascends to the throne, then King Pater the Third. Drought and hunger spark a revolt, however, and the last of the Pater dynasty is killed by a troop led by Oompohforous, who promptly declares himself King Forous the First.
In the meantime the Meerkats have learned how to build above ground dwellings and have killed off most of their predators. By the time King Forous the Fifth has been poisoned by his concubine, the Whiskers have established a small empire, discovered iron and the first method of printing.
What is assembling before my eyes in a dazzling flood of pixels is the Sooforan Empire.
“Are you still watching Meerkat Manor?” Mouse says as she pads back to bed from the bathroom.
“I can’t stop!” I say, looking at nuts that have been in my hand for the last several minutes. “The Whiskers, well, they call themselves Sooforans now, are rounding up the Lazuli and turning them into slaves.”
“That’s too bad,” Mouse says, snuggling into bed. “They used to be such cute little varmints.”
I can’t stand it anymore. My legs are jumpy, I’m thirsty and the mad-dash evolutionary exploits of the meerkats swishes and swirls around and around the pastel colored walls like a blurring, burning merry-go-round in the feverish brain of a lunatic.
“Lunatic?” Mouse mumbles. Only it sounds more like, “Loomatic.”
“How’d she know that?” I think. “I haven’t even written anything yet.”
I go to the bathroom, take a Soma Siesta, then wash it down in the kitchen with a diet root beer. The little blue sleeping pill gives me a pleasant erection for about two minutes and then I’m back to my usual limp noodle self.
Goddamn Death is outside somewhere, I can practically smell the sonofabitch, but I resist the temptation to wander outside in my bathrobe just so that I can have the satisfaction of flipping Him off. I mean, how childish can a grown man be?
I go to the window and give him the finger instead.
The walls move away from me in all directions and I stagger back to a bed that seems to float in space.
On the flickering tube the meerkats kill the king and his ministers with bows and arrows, set up a senate and round up the rebellious Lazuli slaves for mass execution.
“Savage little beasties they are,” I say through a long yawn.
The Lazuli who don’t escape are cut to pieces. Their heads are stuck on sharpened stakes along both sides of a long road, the Via Sooforan.
“I am the Master of all I survey!” boasts the dictator Zaphodius, a clever and daring general and political operative who has managed to bribe or threaten most of the senate into submission.
But far away, in another part of the Kalahari Desert, the battered but surviving Lazuli who have managed to escape the Sooforan Empire are busy setting up their own sovereign nation.
They call it Lazonia.
In the meantime a thin white haired meerkat doodles on the sand with a stick and discovers zero; a plump, bespectacled Meerkat waddles outside during a storm to fly a kite; a young female meerkat (and secret student of forbidden Sisterhood lore) discovers how to treat infections with plant compounds; a meerkat with a bad leg shows everyone how a wheel can be moved by steam; a blind meerkat teaches that everything is made of things called atoms; and now meerkats dig up coal to burn to make steam to turn wheels to make rope to haul coal to make paper to write books and books about books about steel to make buildings to make offices to make businesses to make money to make laboratories to make glass and wires and cogs and springs to make electricity to make light to make engines to make trains to make cars to make radios to make televisions to make planes to make guns to make tanks to make stuff, stuff, stuff and more stuff until nobody knows what to do with all the stuff!
Meerkats are once again digging underground to keep themselves safe from other meerkats. Only this time the enemy comes in the air.
The first bombs are relatively harmless-more like jokes, really. A few bags of shit, rocks and some live snakes.
Then the explosives come.
Wars are interrupted every so once in a while by peace. A few daring meerkats preach that the Meerkat of meerkats loves everyone and doesn’t like war; but most meerkats only half-heartedly agree. An even smaller group of meerkats say that if the instruments of war keep getting more and more powerful, soon all meerkats will be wiped off the face of the earth.
In the middle of one long and spectacular war between the Sooforan and Lazonian Empires both sides are griped by the fear that the other is in the process of developing the Really Big Bomb.
And so they promptly go about making their own Really Big Bomb.
“Mouse,” I say. My heart beats so hard that it makes my ribs ache. “Mouse.”
“Um?”
“Somebody has to call them, warn them,” I pant. “Somebody has to…”
Before I can finish what I’m saying the meerkats and everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve are gone in a flash of light, a blinding touch of sun on the surface of the desert.
I awake screaming in bed.
“Bear!” Mouse shrieks. “What’s wrong?”
For a minute I can’t breathe. When I can bring myself to look at the screen I see meerkats scampering about, looking for food, raising their young, defending their territory, snuggling with each other at the end of the day.
“Mouse,” I groan. “I’ve just had the worst nightmare.”
“Oh poor Bear!”
“I think I need to cool off,” I say as I put my robe on.
I stand on the porch and look up at the white, pitted face of the moon. And then I see Him, Death, standing on the other side of the street, flipping a bone into the air and then catching it.
As he laughs.
I fell asleep for a few minutes before being awakened by the sound of voices coming from our living room. Dreamless, blood-thickening sleep had so dulled my brain that I was unaware of having been asleep; and I couldn’t have even comprehended the fact that two different states of consciousness exist and that I was now in one and not the other. Danger did not occur to me either. I was simply curious about who could be in our house and what they were talking about.
While the floor lurched underneath my bare feet I crept unsteadily through the hallway and into the living room. Darkness swirled in front of my face like the electrons of cave air and laced brain waves. I could make out the outline of the coffee table and the long plastic curtains that hung like strips of uncooked pasta against the sliding glass door to the left.
“And remember.” a warm, mid-western voice told me in the dark. “Roma wines bring so much pleasantness into your home, yet cost no more than ordinary wines. Ask for Roma wine at your favorite wine merchant this holiday season. That’s Roma wine, R-O-M-A.”
“What idiot doesn’t know how to spell Roma?” I grumbled. “Hey, who’s here?”
“This is the Man in Black,” a voice, tighter and colder than the other, announced. “From the makers of Roma wine, to bring you another tale well calculated to keep you in…
suspense!”
I got down on my hands and knees in terror. Somehow I had gone back 50 or 60 years in time. Either that or I was listening to an old time radio show. I couldn’t tell in my state which explanation was more fantastic.
Ruth Hollister meets The Devil!
Keys jingle in a lock, a door opens, the light clatter of footsteps and a woman’s voice.
“Here Bootsie Bootsie. Mama’s home.”
A cat meows.
“Oh there you are silly girl! How are you? Did you miss your Mama? We’ll have a nice diner we will old girl, just the two of us. Mama has to sit down first. That walk from the bus stop got stretched. I think it must be ten miles away now. I didn’t think I had so many bones and joints in my body. I didn’t think pain could come from so many places all at once. There was a time when they had to stand in line like everyone else and wait their turn but not anymore, no sir, they charge in like gangbusters. And today’s only Tuesday and...You know what that means. I gotta walk all the way to the high school before it gets too late, worse luck!
“Poor Bootsie. You’ll have to fend for yourself once your old Mama can’t work no more. Uh! Just a year to go, wouldn’t you know. A year to go and I can see a doctor. But it hurts so much now, old girl, I can hardly stand it, sitting all day, that needle feels like a lead pipe sometimes and there’s only aspirin to take the edge off. And those chemicals are in my lungs for good now. Pretty soon I’ll be dragging an air tank behind me like Charlie.
“Oh, aren’t you glad I’m home so you can listen to me whine? I’ll make us a nice dinner old girl, that’ll fix us up. Mama… Mama just has to rest a spell and catch her breath.”
We hear, from outside and far away, the tolling of church bells.
“Six O’ clock, old girl, six O’clock. Don’t it feel like midnight!”
“My sentiments exactly, Mrs. Hollister,” a man says.
A short scream, unshod feet rushing to the door, frantic tugging at the knob, weak cries for help.
“It won’t open, Mrs. Hollister. Or can I call you Ruth? Mr. Hollister, that champion of family values, used to call you Ruthie and you always hated it. But, being the good and ever dutiful wife, you never complained. Go-along and get-along has always been your style of thinking. Ah, but what sad times we find ourselves in now. Living alone in this second rate, cracker box of an apartment for seniors with a mangy cat who showed up at your door one day. Thirty years of marriage up in smoke. The good, kind hearted Herbert tells you, with genuine tears in his eyes, that he has to have his freedom, that he doesn’t want to hurt you. And five months after the divorce a woman twenty-five years younger than you moves in and a year after that they have the first of four girls. Why, what a miraculous testimony to the sanctity of holy matrimony!”
“Wha…what do you…want?”
“I’m not interested in any of your pathetic possessions, Ruth, nor am I interested in harming so much as a single dyed hair on your saintly head. Indeed, I’m here to make you an offer. It’s the kind of offer once reserved only for uninspiring presidents, less than truthful prime ministers and CEOs who keep their company’s money in little off-shore banks, the kind Joe Sixpack never hears of. But such is the times that I must now deal with, well, let us say ordinary folk, salt of the earth, like you, Ruth.
“Oh please sit down. I know that your back and feet are killing you. Like I said, I won’t harm you. I never harm anyone. That’s someone else’s department. In fact, I can do you a great deal of good. If anyone deserves help and a little kindness it’s you, Ruth. All that infernal pain. You sit hunched over day after day in that smelly dry-cleaners and for what? You can’t afford to pay for medical
insurance and the rent. You’ll have to wait a whole year before you’re eligible for Medicare. By that time you’ll be so crippled by arthritis that you won’t be able to work; and you’ll never get enough from social security to even pay the rent.
“It wasn’t always like that, though, was it, Ruth? You had a husband who took care of everything while you stayed home, looked after the kiddies, cleaned and cooked. And there was even a time when someone loved you in return. You don’t like to admit it even to yourself but Andrew was your favorite. Four years old and God in His infinite wisdom decided to take him from you. The other children-the ones you tried so hard to love-turned out pretty much the way you thought they would. Not so much as a Christmas card or a telephone call to wish you a happy birthday! The other ones he had with that Barbie Doll look-alike dress like tramps and regard you as the family joke. Poor Papa! They coo and sniffle. Had to live with that awful woman for so many years! You know, the one who took care of everyone else, stayed faithful and practically wiped everyone’s butt.
“Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about the past but there’s plenty I can do about the future. That’s good, I’m glad you’re sitting down. Now listen, Ruth. These are desperate times but I’m willing, as I said, to make deals even with, well, people like you. You see, as you know, today is election day and I know you plan on voting. A good citizen, you vote in every election, don’t you? Not that those votes have ever
gotten you anywhere. For some reason even I can’t figure out you people always vote for politicians who turn around and leave you in the dust, since, let’s face it, you don’t own the banks, factories and insurance companies. But, that’s another matter. Today’s the big day and after dinner you’ll trudge as usual to the polls, a hobbling old Girl Scout. If your mother had been able to be proud of anything she would have been proud, I’m sure.
“Now, there’s a candidate I’ve taken a special interest in. His name is Percy Stibson. Not much of a name, I’ll admit, but I admire his otherwise regrettable lack of character. I’ve always been on the side of ambition myself. Show me a man of drive, who isn’t too smart, and I’ll show you a man I can get behind! And when I get behind people, believe you me, Ruth, they can go a long way.
“You mean, you want me…I should vote…”
“It’s going to be a close election, Ruth. And as they say, every vote counts. If you vote the right way-no pun intended- I’ll take every miserable ache and pain away, Ruth. The pain that keeps you awake, that makes you hold your breath when you drop a needle and have to bend down to pick it up. You’ll awaken the next morning feeling forty years younger. And all you have to do is mark a space next to the idiotic name of a rather mediocre man. Why, I’m giving miracles away-I must be out of my mind! No need to even decide right this second, but polls are only going to be open a few more hours, though. Don’t bother to show me out.
“Good night, Ruth.”
“He’s gone! Where…”
A knock on the door.
“Who…who is it?”
“It’s Charlie, Ruth. Are you all right?”
“Oh Charlie! I’m coming.”
The sound of a door opening.
“I saw you walking up the steps and you looked so tired. Are you all right?”
“I just had… I think I must have fallen asleep just now.”
“Oh, geez, I’m sorry if I got you up.”
“No, I was, I’m sorry, it, it must have been a bad dream. Come in. Charlie, please come in. I could really use the company.”
“Well, just for a second or two. I don’t want to intrude or nothing. Say, you’re sure you’re okay? It must have been a pretty fast dream. You just walked in the door not more than two seconds ago! I waved but I guess you didn’t see me.”
“Well I. I closed my eyes and, I don’t know what came over me. There was a man and…It’s all mixed up in my head, now, Charlie. I must be more tired than I thought. Maybe I can make us a cup of tea.”
“Oh now I don’t want to put you to any trouble. I know what you’re saying. You should quit that job. Those chemicals they use aren’t doing you any favors. I read an article about them in Prevention.”
“I got to pay the rent, Charlie. And feed Bootsie!”
“Don’t I know! Forty years I work, never miss a day and then poof! There goes my pension. Ah, but what are you going to do? My knees are killing me and on top of that I got to drag this bottle of air with me everywhere I go. Some world, isn’t it, Ruth?”
“It don’t care for people like us, Charlie. You working forty years and no pension, me married to a man who tosses me out after thirty years. I got no money and I can barely pay the rent, what with it going up every year.”
“Well, maybe things will turn around, Ruth. There’s going to be a big bash on the other side of town, I hear, one of those campaign headquarters. I hear if you go over they’ll give you a free hot dog. This guy Percy. Everyone’s talking about him on the radio, saying what a great guy he is, but I never pay much attention to politics any more. Still, it’d be nice if the people we put in office remembered the people who put ‘em there, don’t you think?”
“I think so, Charlie.”
“Well, I gotta go. Tomorrow my grandson’s coming over for a few days. Nice kid. I want you to meet him. Just got out of the navy and he’s going to school to become an engineer. I hope he makes good money because I might have to live with him one day!”
“You’re proud of him.”
“Yeah, I sure am, but I better let you go, Ruth. I just wanted to see how you were doing. I hope you feel better.”
“Thanks, Charlie. I’m glad you came by.”
Footsteps, a door opening and then closing.
“I must be losing my mind, Bootsie. That’s the plain truth. Your old Mama is nuts.”
Laughter, which slowly gives way to audible tears.
“What are we going to do, Bootsie? What are we going to do old girl?”
A pause, and then the announcer.
“Roma wines are made to be enjoyed the whole world over. In sunny Havana you’ll hear people say, ‘Roma wine es muy bueno! And remember, Roma wine costs no more than ordinary wine. That’s Roma wine, R-O-M-A.
And now back to Ruth Hollister Meets the Devil, a tale well calculated to keep you…
Suspense!”
Keys jingle in a lock, a door slowly opens.
“Ruth!”
“Charlie. Why, you’re practically running! And where’s your tank?”
“Don’t need it. Woke up this morning and never felt better in my life. It’s a miracle. I haven’t been able to breath like this since I was a boy.”
“That’s wonderful, Charlie!”
“Man, it sure is. Maybe things are turning around like I said. Say, why don’t you come over tonight and meet Robert, that grandson of mine I been telling you about. We’re gonna fry up some steaks and open some beers, you know, nothing fancy.”
“Thank you, Charlie. If it’s no bother.”
“It’s no bother. We’ll have dinner ready by six. That okay with you?”
“That’s okay, Charlie. I’ll be over at six.”
“Hey, that’s swell, Ruth.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted to ask you, did you vote yesterday?”
“Why do you…yeah, I…sure.”
“It’s because…don’t you think the lines were long this year?”
“Oh, yeah! They sure were. Well, I’ll see you at six.”
The door closes, tired feet walk slowly, a cat meows, then purrs.
“Mama’s plum wore out, Bootsie. Plum wore out. You want to know something, you old mangy girl? I was going to vote for that man, I was this close to doing it, and then the funniest thing came over me. There I am in a voting booth, people waiting in line behind me, and I start thinking about Andy, my little boy. And then I made up my mind to vote for the other guy. Maybe I had a chance after all, but I threw it away. What do you think about thatl?
“It was just that…I couldn’t do it to Andy. I felt that somehow I’d be letting him down. Isn’t that the funniest thing you ever heard of? I never thought anything like that before.
“The pain got so bad today I almost cried like a girl. I guess he was right, Bootsie cat. In a year Mama won’t be able to work and then what? I’ll be in the poor house and you’ll be catching mice.
“Ah, that’s the trouble with the world today. Even when you do the right thing it still feels like you should have done something else a bit more sensible. But I reckon I’d rather live in a bad body than with a bad conscience.
“Charlene at work today told me that I should eat cherries, said they’re good for your aches and pains. So you want to know what I did soon as I get off work, old girl? I got me cherries, two cans. I think I’ll make a pie and take it over to Charlie’s. I think that’s just what I’ll do.”
“This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System,” one last voice announces.
I reach up to turn the radio off, only to discover that I’m sitting on the bed, in a dark room filled with the quiet sound of my wife’s breathing.
mailto:jamesth2@earthlink.net
James Hazard
Copyright 2006
All rights reserved
Posted by james-hazard
at 12:03 PM PDT
Updated: Monday, 23 June 2008 6:22 PM PDT
