The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering (3 page)

We climbed on through the back of the bus like I always did. I never wanted to be a nuisance. But Faron pushed his way to the front and I followed through a gauntlet of varicose knees. Thursdays was for geriatrics, come down in their Vansters from Hiya City.

Ross reached for the mic to announce our next stop. It would be the zoo, one of my favorites. Faron was quicker than the dancer. He snagged the handset and passed it to me. “Do your thing, brother,” he said. “If you want it so bad.” Ross gave me a pointy look and said something that had no trace of music in it.

I could have made the announcement easy; I knew all my lines, but why make trouble? Ross was all right; he could dance.

“Start talking,” said Faron.

The geriatrics were getting impatient, too. It started up like gas, a rumble in the springs of their seats. The Hiya City crowd came here on a weekly basis. They were old and had no trouble doing the same thing over and over again. At the ends of their lives they had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Patterns were life itself to them. When a pattern changed, they were forced to consider broader shifts in being.

“I'm dying,” somebody moaned. “Just do the god-durned speech!” She was joined by several of her peers: “Let's hear some talking points!” an old frog hollered. A girly voice kept saying, “Make it talk, make it talk, make it talk.”

Ross grabbed at the mic, but Faron intervened. He yanked open Ross's waistband and dropped the sno-cone inside his gym shorts. Ross hopped into the well shaking ice out of his crotch like a snow turd. Faron yanked the lever that made the door open, and we watched Ross bounce off toward the front gate.

“Oh man,” I said. “He's going to tell.”

Faron sucked his teeth and swung into the driver's seat. “This is your big shot,” he said. “If you want to be a tour guide so damn bad, brother, start talking and see how much you like it.”

I don't know how I felt, only that I didn't want to be a tour guide quite so badly anymore. If Faron was trying to kill my dream, it was working. I wanted to get off that bus, bolt down the Dixie Hiway, and never come back. I wanted to hide in the rabbit hutch with that bloody-mouth boy. But Faron was looking at me and so were the old people.

“Next we come to the place the ancient Floridayans called Zoo Miamy,” I began, too quietly. Soon, though, the words began to flow, and despite my fear I could not shut up. “It is widely known that Gunts and their subjects were Christian animists who elevated the lower species to the respect level of gods. They built temples in their honor, fed them gourmet. Animals that would eat you if you gave them a fork and knife the Gunts coddled like Chiefs.”

We paused under the ruined signage, rebar and clods of cement that hardly formed the word
Zoo
.

“Beyond this gate,” I continued, “citizens would pay a tithe to gigantic rats, long-neck horses in pokey-dots, and virus monkeys. Excited with sugar drinks, children gave in to the rapturous worship of beasts.” It was a hell of a speech, and today I can't believe I delivered it so straight.

I praised the Chiefs, in whose wisdom the facility was shut down and all the useless species exterminated for the security of mankind. “Many of these creatures would appear fantastical to us today. Great big kitties they painted like fire, a fake man in an orange fringe jacket who lived in a tree. They called him the Orange Tan.…”

This was as much of the script as I could manage before the bus surged forward and I landed in a bony grandpa lap. At the bleat of a siren I looked back to see that we were being pursued by an enforcement sedan.

Tour buses were forbidden entry into the zoo proper. Officially it was because the footpaths were too narrow for vehicular traffic. But the real reason, I had been told, was the presence of certain dangerous species that had survived these many years since the park's closing. They had thrived in a state of wildness for centuries, growing more resentful of their former captors with each generation. If the Chiefs had believed in Darwin, they might have called it natural selection, the evolution of spite.

But Faron did not know this. Or perhaps he did and was figuring the cops would never follow us into so dangerous a place. We crashed through a cyclone fence, bouncing around pylons and derelict ticket booths. Just inside the gates stood a pack of flamingoes. The flamingo is not a flightless bird, only unmotivated. Faron flipped on the wipers to clear away the blood and feathers, just in time to reveal a gift shop directly in our path. To the left lay a broad marsh that must have been artificial when it was built but was now very real. Faron swung hard to the right, landing the front wheels in a moat.

Two squad cars braked behind us and a third piled into our rear bumper. Our more ambulatory passengers made for the back door, but there was no time to escape. After much cursing Faron found reverse. He backed onto the footpath in a spray of gravel. There was only one way to turn. We hit the marsh at a high rate of speed, but it wasn't fast enough to carry us across. The bus mired in about two feet of water and the engine died.

Back on the path the cops killed their sirens like it was mission accomplished, suspects apprehended, roger that. I heard nothing but the chatter of cranes and car doors opening. Two officers, pistols drawn, approached the edge of the marsh. We were, I believed at that moment, done for. But then the cops turned and ran back to their squad car. From the rear of the bus I watched two gators slither onto the shoal. I checked the side windows. A long bull swam underneath us and emerged with a hiss on the other side.

Cops were one thing. We had survived their interventions before, but I was ill prepared for gators. However, they proved to be a blessing. The engine turned over, and Faron stomped the gas. The wheels caught and the bus bolted up onto the far bank. Mud must have flooded the brake drums because there was no stopping us. Dead ahead stood a tremendous column of bark, a tree so big, so fleshy, it looked like the leg of an out-of-shape giant. We struck it head-on. I watched Faron float through the shattering windshield and slam against the tree before I was buried under a pig pile of old folks. Nobody moved, though there was much groaning and the odor of ruptured bladder bags.

The girly voice said, “Pee-ew!”

I elbowed myself free and crawled over the dashboard to save my brother.

In the mangrove I found him, insensible but more or less intact. I looked him over. One foot was turned perpendicular to the other. He appeared to be growing a second forehead on his first one. I got under one arm and tried to help him across the savanna. Not an easy task; Faron was all muscle and half awake. I didn't have time to check on the geriatrics piled up inside the bus, but they had the look about them of a mass grave.

Across the marsh two cops with shotguns pumped rounds into the gators. The beasts did not go down easy. They opened their jaws like they could eat the shells.

The nearest hidey-hole was a low silo of concrete. I found an opening overhung with kudzu and pushed Faron inside. The door was marked with a skirted hieroglyph: the ancient symbol for ladies. I dragged my brother inside the bathroom. Sunlight bore down through the roof. It gleamed across a row of basins loaded with shit. Animals are basically decent but they do not know better than to take their dumps in the sink. It may be true what Smart Man Tolemy said, that plumbing is the divide between man and beasts. But that fool said a lot of things.

I stuck two fingers in the knob hole and pulled the door tight behind us. Faron blacked out with his head in a basin of white scat. I cleared a patch on the counter and settled my brother atop it. There were leaves in his hair and crap on his nose. His pupils kept trying to size up the light. Cold scum covered his face. His head lolled against the backsplash and he kept saying the word
ponies
with great emphasis, like he meant something by it. If we hoped to get out of this shithouse I needed my brother at least semi-functional. Maybe, I thought, a splash of water would revive him. When I turned the tap, a centipede spooled out of the faucet.

Kneeling down, I inspected his ankle. Faron's foot was so swollen that the straps of his flipper-flop trussed it up like a pork roast. I pried away the foam sole and just held his leg to my chest. Maybe I could will it to repair. Maybe I had Umma's touch. We only had to reach the clinic, find her. Umma would know what to do. I found the wallet in my back pocket and gnawed on it, listening to Faron breathe.

His ragged breath seemed to echo through the lavatory. From somewhere in the room I heard a congested sort of panting, a snuffling laugh. I thought: we are not alone. I thought: some joker is making fun of my brother.

This old bathroom had two narrow stalls for the able and one wide for cripples, who were rewarded for their inadequacies in those days with roomier commodes. The breathing came from behind that handicap door.

I saw movement in the gap above the floor. A baggy nose, shining with snot, appeared and then withdrew. The door banged open to reveal a specimen of unprecedented ugliness. It was pig-based, but beyond that I can say little more. Its head was black and burred all over like a charred cactus. Tusks curled up in a handlebar mustache of villainy. The tail stood upright, and Cactus Pig charged.

Its hooves slid across the tiles. I ducked under the sink to make a shield of Faron's shins. Cactus Pig stopped, sniffed us, put its tail down, and waddled toward the exit. When it butted the kickplate, the door would not budge. Cactus Pig was displeased. The tail rose up again and he turned a tight circle, squealing. Poor guy. He was as trapped as we were, and I'm afraid he blamed us for his predicament. Faron must have sensed danger for he slid to the floor and dragged me to my feet. Together we edged toward the exit as I apologized to the pig.

Outside on the savanna we hit the grass at a sprint. Even on that busted foot, Faron still outpaced me. Cactus Pig emerged behind us and bolted into the marsh. I heard a shot and turned to see a cop fire on the animal. The bullet bounced off its horny head and Cactus Pig made his escape.

Now the pistols were drawn on us. “Over here,” Faron shouted. He must have been in immense pain, but he didn't let on. (He told me once that pain is only a circuit; all you needed to do was find the kill switch.)

Back in Gunt times a monorail shuttled visitors around the zoo. It soared above the enclosures in a graceful arc, giving an aerial view of nature's bounty. But the monorail was now a shipwreck. One end had collapsed and the three cars of the train had nosedived into the dirt. Faron climbed in through a busted windshield and we picked our way over the seats until we reached the level rail. This was a rounded beam thirty-odd feet off the ground. Far below I saw gazelles spray out across a meadow. They could not have been more graceful than my brother. Faron danced down the line like a housecat with a busted paw.

I fell to hands and knees. (In addition to my claustrophobia, I am also afraid of heights. The only comfortable place for me is on firm ground with plenty of open space.) I managed to hug my way forward, but Faron decided this was not a manly way to comport myself. “Up,” he screamed.

We ducked under a canopy of foreign trees, bark-stripped mutants that probably pined for Madagasser or Chine. They had filthy green toes for leaves and instead of squirrels they sheltered angry little virus monkeys that shrieked at me to fall.
Fall, you little coward, fall
.

I held on until I reached the next depot. There I found Faron crouched on the platform peering through an open window. Below, a squad car idled in the bamboo.

“End of the line,” said Faron.

“What?” I thought we should keep going. “Let's keep going.”

“No, for real—end of the line.” Faron was right. Beyond the depot the rail just stopped. He called me back to the window. Among the squad cars stood the fake man himself, the Orange Tan. He was just as they said, a potbellied child in a fringe jacket. He gazed up at us with those baleful eyes, just the hint of a smirk on his lips. End of the line, he seemed to say, for all of us.

I heard a shot and the Orange Tan sat down. The cop hadn't even bothered to get out of his car.

 

3.

When she returned from the clinic at midnight, was Umma surprised to find our unit vacant? Had she paused on the elevated roadway searching for my face in the eleventh-floor window? Did she wait nervously in the lobby for Faron to escort her up the stairs? Did she lie on my top bunk, as I had done so many nights, watching for two wayward boys walking up the Dixie Hiway? Did my mother already know we were not coming home?

Faron had been heading for trouble all his life, and I had followed my brother every poor turn he took just to hide behind his back. Our mother had seen this night coming for a long time.

Later she confessed how she'd return from the clinic each night half-expecting her sons would be kidnapped, dead, or shipped off to join Pop in the cane fields of Cuba. So she entered our darkened unit having anticipated everything we had done or endured. Every rude exploit and petty tragedy she had already imagined on those haunted walks home.

She lowered our bunks slowly to hear the springs expand. Her own lungs were no less pinched. Panic fed by the teaspoon, tiny gulps of air. Should she go back downstairs? Ask around the courtyard? Corner a couple of Stairdwellers and shake them down for information? Had she done so, Umma might have run across the tour guide Ross Carnation and learned from him just how fathomless the shit was that me and Faron had stepped in.

Instead she boiled water not intending to drink tea. Changing states of matter, liquid to gas—this business was almost like doing something. The stove clock passed 2:00 a.m. and we were certainly not coming home now. She stood at the kitchen bar all through the swamp-hot night, not sleeping nor moving.

Morning brought no relief. No sooner did the sun come up than a pair of thunderheads rolled in to smother the light. She opened a window and climbed my bunk to feel the rain on her face. Substitute tears. There is some wisdom in what Smart Man Tolemy said, that weather is a circulatory system of emotion, that the sky absorbs high feeling and disperses it as rain or sleet or lightning.