Zombie (3 page)

This is why: seeing the Universe like that (& that a replica of something billions of years extinct!) you see how fucking futile it is to believe that any galaxy matters let alone any star of any galaxy or any planet the size of not even a grain of sand in all that inky void. Let alone any continent or any nation or any state or any county or any city or any individual.

The idea came to me at that time too because I was having trouble keeping my dick hard with guys’ AWAKE EYES observing me at intimate quarters.

I was living in a two-room place on Twelfth Street at Reardon, back in Mt. Vernon after spending some time in Detroit & this address was known to Dad & Mom & I was working at Ace Quality Box Co. (Dad thought as a clerk, in fact it was loading & unloading trucks) or maybe I’d just quit or been fired that time Dad dropped by. A few days after the lecture in the amphitheater I think. It was mixed up in my mind that Dad had seen me there in the dark HIS EYES PENETRATING THE DARK but maybe that was not so.

Aged twenty-seven & time to be ON MY OWN I told them. & I meant it.

(Except: Mom gave me $$$ when I was in need, not checks but cash. So Dad wouldn’t know.)

The week following Thanksgiving 1988. BUNNYGLOVES had been missing twelve days but there was never anything in the
Mt. Vernon Inquirer
or on local TV, why would there be? Set out from Detroit to Montana & not a trace.

How many hundreds, thousands in a single year. Like sparrows of the air they rise on their
wings & soar & falter & fall & disappear & not a trace. & God is himself the DARK MATTER swallows them up.

Dale Springs pop. 8,000 is where the P__’s live & where their son Q__ grew up. A suburb of Mt. Vernon beside Lake Michigan & many tall trees & a meridian of green planted in geraniums in summer when you drive in crossing the (invisible) border from the City of Mt. Vernon. Six miles west & north of the University now a big sprawling campus. Downtown Mt. Vernon, this shitty neighborhood where I was renting my place is five miles to the south so go figure. Dad said he’d DROPPED BY to visit me.

The rapping at the door. My eyes flew open breaking the sticky lashes apart & my heart beat in a cold panic because NOW WAS NOT THE TIME.

Called out stammering & was up from the bed stumbling pulling on my trousers. Zipping up. Dragging the khaki blanket up over the mattress. The stained sheets, the sweet-stale smell. I was used to it by now & should have tried to open the window but didn’t.

“O.K.,” I said, “—I’m cool. O.K.”

And it was Dad. My Dad. DROPPED BY to see how I was!

The chain latch was on the door. There was Professor R__ P__ smiling wearing his sand-colored corduroy face & his tweed asshole for his mouth & his black plastic-professor glasses riding the bridge of his nose. I fumbled opening the door. I tried to say
the door wouldn’t open any further, the latch was stuck. But DAD’S EYES a few inches away through the crack.

Out of a horny dream of BUNNYGLOVES, & fondling. His voice so clear in my head like it was before the change in it. & his eyes muddy-brown as KNOWING deepened in it & the pupils shrank to pinpricks.

“Quentin, hello! It’s just me! Am I disturbing you?”

My hand moved & the chain latch was off. & Dad filled the doorway staring & breathless from the stairs. When R__ P__’s professor-goatee went from glossy brown to gray filings he shaved it off out of pride but there is the shadow of the goatee on his face still. That edge in his voice. “Son?”

The two of us the same height if I stood up straight which is hard & lifted my head to confront
him. Asked how I was like always, & I said. & how was he, & things at home? & Mom & Grandma send their love. Yes & Junie. All wondering why I didn’t call & didn’t drop by & worrying (you know how women are!) maybe I’m sick. & DAD’S EYES darting as I had known they would fixing on the one thing. A pause & then asking, “That locker, that’s new isn’t it?” & a pause. &, “What’s in that that requires a lock, son?”

I turned to see the five-foot metal locker leaning in the corner. Between the bed & the bathroom. Like I had not seen it before & was myself surprised.

“Just some gym things, Dad,” I said. I said at once. “Jogging shoes, socks. Towels & stuff like that.”

Dad asked, so reasonable, “But why does it require a lock?”

It was a combination lock like for a high school locker. I had memorized the combination & thrown the slip of paper away.

I was saying, “A lock came with it, Dad. From the Salvation Army. It was a real bargain at $12. It’s a part of it. It’s a way of getting the full use of the locker, I suppose.”

“You wouldn’t need to use it, though. Why would you?”

Distinguished Professor, Mt. Vernon State University. Dual appointments in Physics & Philosophy. Senior fellow of the Michigan State Institute for Advanced Research.

DAD’S EYES behind his shiny glasses. Looking at me like when I was two years old & squatting
on the bathroom floor shitting & when I was five years old playing with my baby dick & when I was seven years old & my T-shirt splotched with another kid’s nosebleed & when I was eleven home from the pool where my friend Barry drowned & most fierce DAD’S EYES when I was twelve years old that time Dad charged upstairs with the
Body Builder
magazines shaking in his hand. “Son?
Son
?”

“W-What?” I stammered. “I’m listening.”

Dad was frowning. Fifty-seven years old with hairy black nostrils widening & pinching. “Why would ‘gym things’ require a special lock, son? Why would ‘gym things’ emit such a
smell
?”

It came to me: Dad thinks I am drinking again & taking drugs again, is that it? & indulging in unclean habits again risking my health?

Of BUNNYGLOVES what could Dad know?
Could
he know?

Between the bedsprings & the skinny mattress was the fish-gutting knife & the ice pick & the .38 nickel Smith & Wesson pistol but I was paralyzed & could not make a sudden move to protect myself. Staring at my hands which were trembling just slightly as if the building was vibrating from beneath. I did wonder, Could I strangle Dad? But he would resist, he would put up a struggle, and he is strong. & in a struggle we would be so
close
. I was staring at my hands as if I had never seen them before, like learning my name is Q__ P__ & that is who I am, & there is nobody else for me to be, the fingers were stubby like a kid’s & the knuckles
scraped & the nails with queer milky half-moons uneven & broken & edged with grime. How many times I had scrubbed my hands with the gray soap from Ace & cleaned under the nails with a knifeblade & yet it had all come back.

& then the answer came to me.

I said, “—I bet I know what it is, Dad. A dead rat.”

“A dead
rat
?”

“Or a mouse. Maybe mice.”

“There are dead
mice
in here?”

Had he been thinking maybe food, spoiled food. Oh shit.

Rapping on the locker with his knuckles. The locker was painted army-green & badly scratched & wobbled when he struck it. Dad’s corduroy face creased with disgust.

I said, “I k-know it’s not the way I was brought up, Dad, or Junie. I’m sorry.”

“Quentin, how long has it been like this in this room?”

“Not long, Dad. A day or two.”

“Aren’t you bothered by the smell yourself?”

“I’m going to do some cleaning this weekend, Dad.”

“You’ve been sleeping right here beside this locker, this smell, & you’re not bothered?”

“I am bothered, Dad. I just don’t get uptight about it.”

“It’s very disturbing to me, son, that you might be lying to me.”

“Well, I don’t mean to lie, Dad. I just don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking why this locker is padlocked, and why it smells. You know what I’m asking.”

“Apart from the mice, Dad,” I said, “—I don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Your mother is worried about you, and I’m worried about you,” Dad said, “—not just your future, but right now. What is your life right now, Quentin? How would you describe it?”

“My life ‘right now’—?”

“Are you working at that box company?”

“Sure. Only today’s a day off.”

“What were you
doing
in here when I knocked on the door?”

“Taking a nap.”

“A nap? At this time of day? With this—smell? Son, what has happened to you?”

I shook my head. I was looking at the floor but not seeing it.

If he looks in the bathroom, I thought, I’m fucked. The tub I didn’t have time to scrub. The shower curtain so stained & speckled. BUNNYGLOVES’ underwear wadded and soaked with blood & the pubic hairs I’d scraped off on the floor.

“Son? I’m talking to you. How do you explain yourself?”

“Well,” I said, “—apart from the mice, I don’t see what’s the problem.”

It went on like that. DAD’S MOUTH shaped certain words emerging like balloons & my mouth shaped certain words & it was familiar to me & there was a comfort in that. For finally Dad gives up for
he does not want to know
& wipes his face with a
handkerchief & says, “Quentin, the main reason I dropped by is—how would you like to come home with me for dinner tonight? Your mom has made banana-custard pie,” & I said, “Thanks, Dad, but I’m not hungry I guess. I’ve already eaten.”

Twelve years old & in seventh grade & now I was wearing glasses & long-armed & skinny & hair sprouting under my arms & at my groin & their eyes sliding onto me & even the teachers & in gym class I refused to go through the shower refused to go naked moving through them & their cocks glistening & scratching their chests, bellies & some of them so muscular, so good-looking & laughing like apes not guessing except if seeing me & my eyes I couldn’t keep still darting & swimming among them like minnows if seeing me they knew & their faces would harden with disgust QUEER QUEER QUENTIN’S QUEER & that time Dad charged upstairs to get me where I was doing homework in my room & yanked me by the arm & downstairs & into the garage & showed me the
Body Builder
magazines & the naked Ken-doll from the playground I’d brought back hidden behind stacks of old newspapers & he’d found his face splotched & furious & at that time Dad did wear a goatee like Dr. M__ K__’s & this too livid with outrage. Twisting the magazines in his hands like wringing a chicken’s neck to spare him
self the sight of the covers & the drawings somebody had done on them in fluorescent-red felt-pen ink. Nor the insides with more such drawings on centerfold models of male muscle-bodies & the young guy who looked like Barry might’ve been in a few years & many pounds heavier & a shiny pink upright banana lifting from his groin & parts of certain photos scissored out.
This is sick Quentin
Dad’s mouth worked, panted,
this is disgusting I never never want to see anything like this again in my life. We won’t tell your mother
starting to say more but his voice gave out.

Together we burned the evidence. Back behind the garage where Mom would not see.

This page, I razored out of the textbook. Back behind the psych library stacks where nobody could see. I COULD ALMOST SEE MY
ZOMBIE
MATERIALIZING BEFORE MY EYES.

Another book even better,
Psychosurgery
(1942) by Dr. Walter Freeman and Dr. James W. Watts of George Washington University—

I was excited getting a HARD-ON razoring out these pages, I knew this was a TURNING POINT in my life. How many thousands of
transorbital lobotomies
these guys performed in the 1940s & 1950s & how easy to perform, the author of
Principles of Psychosurgery
stated he did as many as thirty sometimes in a single day using only a “humble” ice pick as he called it!

Dad & Mom had hoped for me to become a scientist like Dad, or a doctor. But things had not turned out that way. But I knew I could perform a
transorbital lobotomy
even if it was in secret. All I would need is an ice pick. & a specimen.