Can and Can'tankerous (8 page)

O
ne would think, with an IQ of 236, that Troy Newsome could’ve found a less criminous occupation than second-storey cat burglar. But as he began his ascent to burgle apartment 4C, 129 Lenox Avenue, the aliens came from space and sought him out. He was only two feet off the alley floor between buildings, his back and feet wedged to provide traction, when the first rubber duckies parachuted onto Lenox Avenue.

“Why me!?!” Troy hystericaled, when the MasterDuck advised him that they’d come two-and-a-half million light-years to turn over Planet Earth to him. “Why
me
!?!”

Don’t Miss the Thrilling Part Two!!

B
ecause, telepathed the MasterDuck,
when we were engaged to seed this planet
,
we picked two species for highest intelligence. Since we can’t locate a dolphin at the moment
,
you being the
second
most intelligent creature on the planet
,
we’ve come to turn over ownership.

Our contract is fulfilled. You’re as good as humans will ever get. I’d do something about lima beans
,
though
,
if it were my planet.
And every last neoprene one of them absquatulated.

The trouble with godhood is…first they give it to you,
then
you have to figure out what the hell to do with it.

The day I had the stroke was 

the Monday following the Saturday night 

of the first manifestation. 

I was being the best man at 

Josh Olson’s bachelor party. 

It was a bad night. 

I came home in an Uber cab. 

I walked in, got undressed. 

Susan was out at The Thrilling Adventure Hour. 

She came home, said “How was the evening?” 

I said, “I felt a little woozy and came home.” 

She said, “If you don’t feel well tomorrow, stay in bed.”

“O
ne more goddam sanctimonious sound, and I swear by the Demiurge, I’ll snuff out that mealy-mouthed spark,” said #7, sipping cold coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

“Easy…easy…” #12 said, rewinding his penis. “You’d better be grateful this cell is lead-lined. The Old Man hears that kind of bitching, you’ll be sweeping out the eyes of hurricanes for the next ten thousand years. Remember, kid, it’s just a job. When you’ve gotten as old in the game as I, well, all the hosanna and selah and blessed-be-His-name rolls off your carapace like Sterno off a bindlestiff.”

The Archon oozed off the wall of the detention cell, dissolved into a puddle of sludge in order to rid himself of an annoying itch in his upper eyeball sphincter, and reformed beside the little tv table bearing the last of the doughnuts. He studied the pastries remaining, and muttered, “Glazed. I hate glazed. Serves us right for sending a
goy
to buy them. You say
raised
, they hear
glazed.
Feh.”

The other jailer, the younger, #7, made a retching sound and sent an extrusion of holy greenish flesh across the stone floor of the cell, to tap #12 on his third leg. “
Now
who’s complaining? This coffee was wretched when Hector was a pup.”

But he drained off the last of it, set the Styrofoam cup on the metal bunk, and watched as it cornucopially refilled itself. With cold, bitter coffee.

“So, listen, 12, how did you get into this line of work?” He was young, perhaps only an eon and a half, and still naïve. As if one “got” into this line of work. All but the freshest arrivals knew that in the realm of divine light beyond the universe through the divine emanation (usually referred to on the Celestial Ephemeris as RDLBUTDE, which was a strictly noxious acronym, unpronounceable even to the most linguistically accomplished seraph) pulling guard duty over the divine spark was shit detail reserved for Archons who had somehow royally cheesed off The Old Man.

#12 grimaced. Spending a century or two with this pimply-pricked kid would undoubtedly make him unfit for decent service anywhere in the universe when his tour was up. He thought once again, as he always did when he was a short-timer, of opting for rebirth. But when the time came, and he checked out the condition of the Real World, it was always dirtier and dumber than he’d left it, so he inevitably re-upped. Six hundred and eleven times, to date.

In the corner, glowing fitfully, the divine spark of the human soul reeled off the totality of public utterances once spoken by Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson, and began to make in-roads on the private ruminations of Oral Roberts.

#7 threw the Styrofoam cup at the divine spark. “Will you, in the name of all that’s holy, shut the hell up for just
five
bloody minutes!?!” The divine spark paid no attention, cranky as usual, and more than a trifle meanspirited, and footnoted its Swaggart sayings with minutiae from Anita Bryant, one of the latter day saints.

“Well, kid,” #12 said, preening his pinfeathers, “I
got into
this line of work by creating okra.”

“Say what?”

“Okra. You know, okra. It’s green.”

“I thought she was black. Well, dark-brown, actually.”

“Not
Oprah
, kid! Okra. The vegetable.”

“You pulled divine spark jailer duty for creating a
vegetable
?”

“It wasn’t a reward. It was a punishment.”

“For a
vegetable
?”

“Clearly, kid, you have never tasted okra. It was purely not one of my best ideas.”

The kid, #7, sighed. “Oh,
now
I get it,” he said. “This is The Old Man’s way of kicking me in the ass. I thought I was pulling down cushy duty, something that’d look good on my resumé. Boy, talk about not knowing what’s happening.”

#12 was intrigued. What could this young Archon have done that could equal the nastiness of okra? He asked the kid.

“Beats me,” #7 said. “I’ve only done a couple of things all told. How long, uh, does one figure to be on this detail?”

“Well,” #12 said, “I’ve been watching this stupid spark for eight hundred thousand years, Real World time.”

“For a
vegetable
?”

“I’m up for reassignment in about sixty-five years. I’m short. I can do it standing on my head.”

“Holy…The Old Man must’ve been really honked at me. I saw my dossier. I’m on this duty till Hell freezes over, which I understand doesn’t happen for another million and a half years.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I created the mail order catalogue. Junk mail.”

“You’re in it, kid. For a long time. Well and truly.”

In the corner, the divine spark droned on, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and on and on and on. After six months, #7 asked the elder Archon, “What are we supposed to do to pass the time?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I did for most of the time I’ve been here with this imbecile. And I’ll be gone soon—which is, I suppose, why The Old Man brought you in—so you can practice with me, if you like.”

“Yeah, sure. Of course. But…what is it?”

“Gin rummy. Three across, Hollywood style, tenth of a scintilla a point, five hundred per game for schneider.”

In the corner, for the first time since the younger Archon had entered the detention cell, the divine spark shut up, perked up, and began making warm, expectant sounds.

“The divine spark plays gin rummy?”

“For eons.”

“Well, that’s a little better, I guess.”

“Not really,” said #12.

“Why’s that,” #7 asked.

“The divine spark of the human soul cheats.”

In the corner, the glowing ball chuckled nastily. As Archons went, there was one born every second.

B is for BANSHEE

Just outside Belfast, the heavy metal ripper punk snake-oil rock band that called itself The Fluorescent Stigmatas had been booked into Castle Padveen as the opening night attraction. The ninth Earl of Padveen—Skipper to his friends—had been offered the options of selling the great stone structure for back taxes or developing some commercial use for the ancestral home, though it was known throughout the land as the most annoyingly haunted edifice in Ireland. Skipper had decided to turn Castle Padveen into a night club. And on opening night, as The Fluorescent Stigmatas launched into their second set, opening with “Don’t Woof in Mah Haggis, Bitch,” the Fender bass player, Nigel, had a massive coronary, pitched over dead, sent the packed audience into paroxysms of anger at having the music stopped, and brought forth the redoubtable banshee of Castle Padveen, acknowledged the noisiest and most off-key wailer of all those ghastly haunts.

The banshee materialized just over the bandstand, her one great nostril blowing air like a bagpipe, her long red hair smoldering and sparking, her empty eyesockets on fire. And she began her dirge, her horrific caterwauling, her teeth-jarring threnody of fingernails down a blackboard…and The Fluorescent Stigmatas nodded, listened, vamped for a minute, then fell in behind her.

Their first album went platinum last week. With a bullet.

C is for CHARON

Among the poster advertisements on the Staten Island Ferry is one that shows a terribly thin, extremely unhappy looking man in black cape and cowl, poling a garbage scow bearing the legend Phlegethon, around Manhattan Island. The poster reads: I Got My Job Through the Times

The lonely figure has a copy of
The National Enquirer
sticking out of his back pocket.

D is for DYBBUK

The
dibbuq,
in Jewish folklore, is a disembodied human spirit that, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds safe haven in the body of a living person.

It is well-known that the French love the work of Jerry Lewis.

If you look long enough, and hard enough, there is an explanation for even the most arcane aberration.

E is for ECHIDNA

Downunder, in Oz, there is a small, awfully cute monotreme known as the echidna. If you startle this Disneylike animal, it will roll into a spiny ball, belly-up, seemingly comatose.

If one looks up echidna in the BRITANNICA, one learns that the name comes from the Greek for snake: a creature half-woman, half-serpent. Her parents are variously alleged to have been the sea deities Phorcys and Ceto, or Chrysaor—the hideous son of Medusa—and Callirrhoë—the daughter of Oceanus. Further, one learns that among Echidna’s children by the hundred-headed Typhoeus were the dragons of the Hesperides, the Hydra, the Chimaera, and the infernal hounds Orthus and Cerberus. Which makes Orthus’s progeny, the Nemean Lion and the Sphinx, the Echidna’s grandchildren.

The echidna lives faraway at the bottom of the world, mostly rolled up in a ball. Is it bothered? Certainly not.

But not
one
of those ungrateful kids calls, sends a card, even during the High Holy Days. But, hey, listen, like a Brillo pad, that’s what’s got to be a mother’s heart. I’ll just lie here belly-up in the dark.

F is for FENRIS

The deep core rig went down five miles into the Ross Shelf. When the fiber optic snorkel cameras ringing the drill burned out, they withdrew. At the base of the core sample, in the block of ice eight feet across and fifteen feet deep, they found what had blinded the instruments.

Frozen in ice was a gigantic wolf.

When they swung the section overhead on the gigantic pneumatic crane, they understood what had scorched the optics: the beast, trailing a broken chain, was giving off heat and light. Its body glowed from within, and the ice melted, showering on the drilling crew and geologists. The block slipped its moorings, crashed to the ground, and shattered. The wolf shook itself massively, its evil green eyes surveying the terrified crew. Then it threw back its head, howled at the bright sky, and loped away to the north.

But if this is Ragnarok, and Fenris has swallowed the sun…

Whose eye continues to burn down upon us?

G is for GOD

GOD is an acronym for Good Old Demon.

This good old demon’s name is Bernie.

Bernie is your basic good old boy demon.

Bernie owns Texas.

They say there is no god in Texas.

Boy, are they wrong.

H is for HIPPOGRIFF

The metaphor. From Virgil. “To cross griffins with horses.” Meaning: to attempt the impossible.

The metaphor. A small, unruly beast with paper breath and bones of conjecture. The metaphor, like the hippogriff, of mixed parentage. The date-rape of logic by surmise. When the metaphor takes wing, it is with a rush of sound such as one hears only when phantom locomotives play sackbut, lyre, and symbol.

The hippogriff slides through the tawny waters, warfling and wobbling. Hear the song of the hippogriff: etymology in the key of skeleton.

I is for ILITHYIA

It was in all the papers. In Minnesota, the midwife Ilithyia was brought up on charges for performing unlicensed abortions. The trial was a sensation. The jury was composed entirely of men. When they brought in the verdict
guilty,
and the members of the Right to Life League stood up to cheer, Ilithyia said, “Ah, screw it,” and smote them hip and thigh with bolts of chartreuse lightning.

This year, Minnesota goes Pro-Choice.

J is for JACKALOPE

Texas, again. Land of myth and wonder. Home of a million private lives. The choking Doberman. The kitten in the microwave. The jackalope.

Yankees think the jackalope was the invention of a guy who wanted to sell big brag postcards—here’s one of our oranges, it says, and it’s a painting of a watermelon-sized Navel—the crossing of a jack rabbit with an antelope. Huge hind legs that permit the beast to go like a sonofabitch on fire! Huge ears flattened by the wind as it races eighty miles an hour across the Panhandle.

That’s a lot the damned Yankees know.

Down here in Nacogdoches we know better. Just ask Joe Lansdale. Joe was stalked and damned near killed by a rabid jackalope maybe two, three years ago. Only saved himself at the last moment by using the one weapon that can kill a jackalope.

He stabbed it through the heart with a Stuckey pecan praline.

K is for KELPIE

It was late, well past the hour in which they closed the pool. But Hester had gotten special dispensation from the building’s management. Not only because she was an administrative assistant at Chicago Sky Tower, and thus entitled to a few minor privileges, but because she had spent the past three days, almost without break, reorganizing the database: the condo owners on floors fifty through ninety-five, their dependants and hired help, anyone cleared for access to the dwelling storeys; the offices from twelve to fifty, all staff members down to the last wage-slave in the typing pool; the galleria shops and their sales force from ground level to twelve…the data fields went on and on.

It was little enough for them to key her in for a late night swim in the warm, silent Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Hester floated on her back, auburn hair trailing on the surface like a Portuguese man-of-war. She had turned on only the valance lights; their soft blue-white glow cast a calming, almost ethereal luminescence across the gently rippling water.

There was the sound of a door closing on metal jamb.

Hester swam quickly to the edge of the pool, and pressed herself against it. She was naked.

The man was tall, and dark. She could not tell whether he was Caucasian or Negro. His skin was almost the shade of teak, a golden hue that gave no indication of heritage. But it wasn’t suntan, genuine or salon-produced.

He strode toward her, and looked down.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said. His voice was buttered toast. If she had ever trusted anyone in her life, she trusted him. His smile, his manner, the way his hands lay along the seams of his pants. Kind eyes and honest speaking.

“Well, the pool is actually closed,” she said, not wanting to offend him, afraid of losing him even before he had had a chance to discover her. “I’m staff here at the Tower. They let me use it after hours sometimes.”