The Canal (5 page)

Punishment on a plate.

His leftovers, they looked to be quivering.
From palsy, or derangement. And Alan, he had merely to approach a
cutlet with his knife for it to burst open with a wet groan and
release a sickly steam.

But Alan would devour every last gelatinous
dredge. He would not concede this to Susan, would not acknowledge
her insistence on his mortality. Nor could he allow any evidence of
this criminal meal to remain in existence, compelled as he was,
fundamentally obliged by some deep-seated and immutable force, by
the highest principles of justice, to return his plate's porcelain
to its former unsullied grace.

And so, with Susan watching intently, Alan
made his counter-argument. He gouged loose a corner of chicken and
pulled it free. He placed it in his mouth and hoped for the
best...

Texture: disturbing. Aroma: past due. He
detected the taste of refrigerator -- a vague amalgam of Freon and
the spirits of onions past. But that was a gourmet highlight
compared to the overall spoil, which somehow imparted a rather
vibrant and violent memory, that of the original animal itself,
stripped of its feathers, naked and pecking, writhing atop a
blood-drenched chopping block.

Swallowing began to assume hara-kiri
proportion. All his instinct, all the collected wisdom of ancestral
eons begged him not to do it. Alan searched Susan's face for even
the slightest hint that she might be enjoying this.

Rescue came from the telephone. Wondrous,
glorious rescue. Alan immediately dropped his utensils and hurried
into the living room, spitting chicken into his hand.

"Yes?"

"Alan, it's Vincent."

"Oh, Vincent."

"...Yeah?"

"I'm glad you called, that's all."

"Well, I've got news."

Alan listened.

"I was out by the canal like you said. Crack
of dawn. I get to the bridge, I go climbing along the banks, and I
nearly stumble on top of some lady. She's out cold, been drinking
or I don't know. Now see, I think she was here all last night and
for who knows how long. I think we had squads of guys crawling all
over this place, but she was a little too far downriver, none of
them saw her. I barely did -- she blends in like, well she looks
like some old garbage.

"But get this, she was mumbling something
about the bridge. Hard to know exactly what she was saying, but I
definitely heard 'bridge.'"

"And you think, what? She knows something?
Might have seen something?"

"Could be. Who knows. But still."

"I want to know more, crucially," said Alan.
Already, here was a result, the kind of tangible, concrete result
that Joe, with his mystifying non-methods, couldn't deliver. "Have
Womack bring her in. You stay out there and keep looking. I'll meet
Womack at the station."

Alan hung up. Barely a thought of leftovers
to be found. He briskly yelled in the general direction of the
kitchen, "There's a big thing. I have to run." And he was already
out the door, throwing the unchewed morsel down the storm drain,
already wishing he could have at least washed his hands first,
because it would intensely bother him until he did, but on second
thought there were sanitary wipes in the car, so he'd be okay, and
he already had the car door unlocked, had the key in the ignition,
the engine revving, when Susan called after him.

She called his name quietly. Would Alan be
home in time for dinner, she wanted to know. Because if so, would
he be minding more chicken?

*

Repetition was supposed to be the key to
perfection. In Susan's case, repetition took her cutlets to an
opposite place -- each filet was a step backward from the last, a
un-evolution. She was working her way toward the original mother
filet, something so primal it would be unrecognizable to a modern
palette.

Why do it? She could tell that Alan took it
personally, that he saw it as some kind of aggression on her part.
But it was something else entirely. Because it seemed to Susan that
wanting to be the best at something seemed so unoriginal. Susan had
a mostly good husband, a good child, and she was secure, in spite
of the fuss she made. She didn't have anything to prove. So why not
fail at something? It was far more interesting, and in fact, it was
liberating. In failure she could be her true self, free from the
influence of expectation.

Admittedly, she had may have laid it on a bit
thick this morning. But sometimes it was so hard to make Alan
listen. You literally had to have some sort of breakdown to get him
to pay attention. Or more precisely, to get him to start paying
attention to someone other than himself.

Susan pulled Eugene to her chest and stood
up, carrying him to his high chair and plugging him in. The child
slouched, he'd slide right out through the bottom if you let him.
The kid just didn't bother with gravity. Not that she blamed him.
Who, at some point, didn't wish the rules would just get over
themselves? Give us a break, gravity. Lay off, velocity. Time out,
mass.

Susan didn't mind Eugene's so-what posture,
not the way Alan did. Eugene wasn't even a year old, so let the
child have his fun. Those are a rare few years when you can be so
careless -- go naked, defecate on a whim, suckle in public -- why
deny anyone that? Susan even found it admirable...well, in
children.

But Alan, he just wasn't content to let
Eugene be. Lately Alan had been hard at work compiling a series of
educational tests -- meticulous, multi-page documents larded with
arcane math and logic experiments. He argued that mastery of these
tests should be an essential part of Eugene's immediate
development, although clearly the child was too young. But this was
typical of her husband, who tended to be excitable. It was a
predisposition that she had recognized early in Alan -- the
planning, the fastidiousness, the inability to leave anything to
chance. Truthfully, it's what had made him most attractive to her.
She saw how it drove him, and ultimately, how it would push him to
excel. Although it tortured him too, at times. Most women, they
would probably have a hard time dealing with someone like Alan. But
not Susan. She appreciated his quirks, because in the end, they
made Alan predictable. And what was predictable could be
manipulated. She needed that.

Susan began clearing the table, putting the
uneaten chicken back into the bag. She'd give it to the old man,
Mr. Zarella. Zarella was a project of hers, a lonely, destitute
gentleman that she tended to worry about -- he was so skinny, his
clothes so dirty, his hair so unwashed. Zarella lived alone on one
of the bad streets by the river. She went there sometimes to give
leftovers to some of the unfortunates who slept in doorways. Mr.
Zarella was her favorite -- he at least had a home, although he
didn't seem any better off for it.

She collected the Lawnhill pamphlet and threw
it in the trash. She wasn't seriously considering Lawnhill (she'd
already picked Most Holy); she just wanted to remind Alan that he
needed to take the dangers of his situation seriously. Not so much
his situation, as in, he had a potentially dangerous job. But more
so his overall situation as a man. Men were die'ers, plain and
simple. When they weren't killing themselves they were killing each
other, and being shrill about it. Men reminded Susan of certain
attention-grabbing flowers that bloom for a week and then turn
black overnight -- they serve their purpose, draw a crowd, and then
are gone. Women were much more patient. Women were much more in
league with life. And if you wanted to reduce it to something like
childbirth, go ahead -- men with their negligible and superfluous
seed, their role reduced to a selfish reflex, a seconds-long spasm,
with a few cursory chromosomes being the grand result. Can you
blame them for feeling inadequate? So of course it's men who wage
war, with so little else to show for themselves. Now compare that
to a mother's experience. We're talking a nine-month magnum opus, a
hormone intensive evolutionary epic. She creates a child from her
very own physical fabric. Talk about making your mark -- women knew
a success that transcended time, that bridged eons, that tapped
into the very lifeblood of the species itself.

So women, they were life givers. Men were a
means. And violent death was their destiny.

It seemed hard for Alan to grasp this, to
understand the inevitable crash and burn that was male-dom, one
that was waiting for him despite all his manic effort. In fact, he
seemed to confuse death with a promotion. They could be like that
sometimes, men. So misguidedly confident, so blindly boastful. In
fact, men were the biggest boasters around. Read some history --
men have packed it full of themselves. And what's history if not
one big boast? The joke being that history is universal and
accurate, when in fact it's little more than a neurotically
documented experiment in testosterone.

Susan uprooted Eugene from his chair

"Does Eugene want to play?" she cooed. "Want
to play with mah-mah? Mah-mah?"

Recognition flickered in the child's eyes.
She carried him into the living room and walked to the sliding
glass door. The heat stunned back yard lay beyond. Eugene began to
squirm, reaching dainty fingers toward the window. There was
nothing her son loved more than being outdoors. Susan indulged him
with morning and evening excursions, sometimes letting him stay
outside the entire day when the weather was cooler.

She kissed him on the nape of his neck and
slid the door open. Stifling air seeped inside. Eugene burbled an
excited string of gibberish, sounding like a drowning telephone.
Bbbbblllinnng.

"Eugene wants to go outside!"

On the patio Eugene began to struggle in
Susan's arms, frantically hammering at her with weakling blows,
whirling his legs. Alan never partook in these outings; he never
saw this side of Eugene. That was fine with Susan. These moments
were for her alone.

She sat on a lawn chair and lay the child in
her lap. She picked up Eugene's harness, which was slung over the
arm. The harness was made for a small dog, fitting around the chest
and front legs with an attachment for a leash at the back. As luck
had it, Eugene was a perfect fit.

"Lay quiet, Eugene. Lay quiet."

At those words the child went completely
still, his eyes wild, his heart racing, his whole body
trembling.

Susan wrapped the straps around her son. When
the clasp on the back went click, Eugene erupted, twisting out of
her hands, squealing. She kissed him once more on his elusive head
and conveyed him to the lawn, grabbing the cord that dangled from
an overhead tree and hooking it to the harness. The leash set-up
was her idea, it allowed Eugene to play unsupervised in the yard
for as long as he desired within a contained, safe range. Eugene
had long since worn a circular dirt rut into the grass, around
whose trail he prowled constantly.

Susan finally deposited her son on the ground
and laughed, only happiness on her mind. She loved being a mother.
Eugene lunged into action, determined that today would be the day
he'd finally reach the conclusion of that cursed round road. He
crawled and crawled, making endless loops around his mother.

>> CHAPTER FOUR <<

Fever ricocheted through Joe's skeleton,
wobbling the marrow in its tubes. The hairs on his body stood as
stiff as pines and the air filled with the smell of gunpowder. His
gums throbbed, he tasted whisky, he heard the sound of God kissing.
He dreamed.

The bridge was there. The corpse was there,
swinging from the bridge's exposed ribs. But there were worse
things. Like the canal. It breathed -- Joe could feel the ground
tremble, the slush and draw of deep currents through sluggish
channels. Bubbles belched on the water's surface, the whole soup
boiled, spitting froth, yellow steam leaping through the air like
fire.

His hand burned. His brain buckled.

He was being watched. The sewer outlet --
black, unblinking, a cyclops eye wrapped in the sulfuric fog of a
demon fart. There were other eyes within that eye. A predator's
eyes. And they knew. They sensed his fear, savored it, as Joe stood
frozen, the humid wind yanking at his coat...

And then it was upon him. Lunging. This thing
of heat and necrosis. Biting at his face, chewing on his skull.
Ripping the skin free.

*

Joe jolted awake. He cracked his temple on
the underside of a faucet spout. Dazed, he lay back down, resting
his ear against something cold, a drain. He could hear the vacant
whisper of cracked pipes and rushing toilets.

He touched his face, feeling all the familiar
cave-ins and sinkholes -- thankfully, everything was still there,
still in its proper place. He cautiously opened his eyes. He was in
a bathtub. His bathtub. It was spattered with retch. He could feel
the stuff in his mouth, a bitter taste of himself. He reached up
and got the water going. It poured on his face and hair, slipping
around his neck, soaking into his coat. It was almost nice.

The fever had flamed out. All that remained
were the aftershocks, a full-body halitosis, and a general physical
shame. Joe hauled himself up to the side of the tub's basin, giving
the faucet a respectful berth, and peeked over the edge. His
bathroom was a kind of cockroach Valhalla, where the biggest and
strongest of the species enjoyed filth of the highest splendor. The
sink was an ashtray and the toilet resembled a lunch counter soup
kettle, an array of drippings hardened on its chin. The shower
curtain -- half of it collapsed and broken free of the rings -- was
tiger striped with black mildew. In lieu of towels on the rack
there hung ribbons of toilet paper.

Getting out of the tub proved tricky, the
basin was slick with treacherous mold. There was some wobble, some
drama. Until at last: resurrection. Joe -- upright and trembling on
foal-fresh legs. He risked a journey to the medicine cabinet.