A Normal Night
NEW FRANCE ©ped
Twelve
Côte D’Azur. Kent studied the lithograph in the guest bathroom every time he stood above the toilet. There was the powder-blue stencil of a sailboat, a man in a top hat, cane and tails, a yellow crescent moon, a Pratt & Whitney limousine, a wall of bougainvillea, seventeen blue and yellow balloons, two champagne flutes and the bizarre juxtaposition of a blueberry-hued raven in flight. The last postcard he received from his mother and father came from the very same place. As he emptied his bladder, he thought about the throngs of wayward, wealthy skin cultists basting in cocoa butter and the delicately jazz-infused tiffany sunsets; he could picture his parents toasting him from their moon-dappled veranda, their venal faces awash with material denial. The boy dashed a dribble of his urine on their bathroom wallpaper before flushing the toilet.
____The estate was dim and roiling in dust. To Kent, the place had only represented a warehouse of comforters, art books, and copper cookware. Beds and blankets notwithstanding, the place was a vast and empty reminder of another fortress of denial—one of many on this road. The last phone message he heard from them intimated an extended withdrawal to the South Coast. Apparently, the larder was full and the Riviera sang for the swans of a dead age. No matter, he thought. His finest memories of his parents were from the days when he could hardly speak or use a toilet. He shook his head and smiled from the reality that he rarely spoke or used a toilet correctly, still. At least he held the shelter together in the icing storm. The roof was sturdy and the stained wood was free from carpenter ants, termites, or mold. Kent walked around in a parka and a wool cap, waiting for nightfall and wanting nothing more than a long night of unconsciousness. He checked his lawn bag of hooch in the basement, a sack filled with ancient fruit, a gurgling pile of slimed out peaches, nectarines, apples, and strawberries. There was a quarter cup of shine in the catch; Kent tossed the rank ethyl down his throat and waited for the prelude of a comforting stupor to dance through his mind-body-spirit.
____Returning to ground level, he watched the lights from a distant car dance across the walls of the house. The light from the late afternoon had vanished, and the freezing rain began tapping against the windows like hundreds of manic finches. The headlights grew closer—very close—and then hooked away in the opposite direction with the sound of a full and hollow thud following the spectacle. Kent walked to the living room window and beheld a squad car in his front yard, its trunk sidled up against the great red oak. Inside the car sat his new friend, Franklin, behind the wheel. A woman, his neighbor, Sam, was laughing and waving to him through the back rumble seat window. A young woman sat next to her, her eyes widened and expectant in the chaos.
____“Hop in front, Kent,” said Sam. “We’re having CHICKEN tonight!”
____Kent obeyed and slid into the shotgun seat as Franklin crawled away from the oak in first gear. The young woman in the rearview mirror, Thea, introduced herself to Kent with a knowing smile of comfort; Kent understood the smile—it was issued to him as a manner of relief that she was now accompanied by someone of her age. The boy was quickly taken with Thea’s brightening eyes and her sound energy. A quiet passed between them that was both awkward and carbonating. Kent looked away from the mirror and asked his peace officer friend what engendered such an ad hoc event for the night.
____“We’re all disgusted by the emptiness, K,” he said. “Doc Sam is taking us in, tonight. We’re going to have a regular old dinner party. You game?”
____Kent nodded. “I didn’t have anything planned,” he offered.
____“Bring your camera,” said Sam. “You should go back for your camera.” Samantha leaned forward and grabbed Franklin by the shoulder. “Stop for a second, okay?”
____The squad car stopped for twenty feet.
____“No,” said Kent, now gripped with self-scrutiny. “Let’s forget it.”
____“But you could chronicle the event for post—”
____“To hell with that. I suck at it. It’s a fucking waste of time.” The basement hooch had offered the verdict, and Kent was surprised by the relief he found as the words fell through his mouth.
____“Have…have you tried sketching, or maybe watercolors?” said Thea.
____Kent looked into the mirror. The girl’s eyes beamed with a fearless and loving mockery. He reached for a reply, and then stopped. Exhaling, he smiled and shook his head. “I’m okay at it, the FOTO-GRAFF-EY. I’m just out of stock and solution, and all the gear is just a pointless luxury. I just get ashamed about it, sometimes.”
____“Watercolor pencils…charcoal…I swear, guy. You’ll get into it. It does most of the work for you. You just need to search for the setting, and, done and done. You’re lost in it. Trust me.”
____“Fine,” he surrendered. “I’ll sketch everyone at dinner tonight.”
____Sam turned to Thea. “The boy’s been running a little lean and grouchy for awhile,” she said. “Don’t think he’s not listening to you, because he—”
____“I am! I’m listening!” Kent shook his hands in front of him.
The car rolled another mile in quiet.
*
<<…keep your canned goods in a cool, dry place. Here’s Bob Seger with Against the Wind.>>
Marc was begrudging the radio and steaming beets in a pressure cooker when he lifted his head to greet the brights in his yard, bearing for him. The lights swept away and to his right, followed by a thump as the vehicle nuzzled into a stubborn Dutch elm by the north study. His beets were done, and he killed the heat. Unfazed by the black-and-white in his yard, he walked out with a torchlight and found his wife in the backseat.
____“Marc, this is Franklin, and this is Thea,” said Sam as she claimed her crampon-free footing in the yard. She then threw her hands toward the sour face in the shotgun. “And Kent, you know.”
____“I know Kent, that I do,” said Marc. “Hello and welcome, Franklin and Thea. Get inside. There are miscreants afoot. I just heard you were AWOL at the gym, today, Sam. What happened? Didn’t the crampons get you there in time?”
____“They’re in my locker at the gym. And, yes, I was there in time.”
____“Chris split out early with some looters and plundered the hospital,” shared Franklin. “We’re the leftovers.”
____“What are you doing home so early?” wondered Sam.
____Marc shrugged. “There was a fire.” His eyes drooped. “A granary collapsed and two houses and a stable got torched. Six more, gone. My then assignment, followed by my new assignment, well, they’re put off until this storm passes. Once it does, I can go back, collect and burn away whoever’s not crispy already, and shoot their class photos like it’s all part of the great and natural rhythm of things. Yea, sweet Lord.”
____“You said something about miscreants, Marc?” said Franklin.
____“Sure, on the radio just now, and on my drive back. New Pirates. They must’ve tapped a fuel station west of here, because there are chains of them around. Some polite, others not so.”
____“Christ, they don’t even issue a point bulletin anymore,” Franklin sighed, reaching into his cockpit, retrieving the shotgun from the dash rack. “Would you mind too much if I brought this inside?”
____“Beats any alternative,” said Marc.
*
Lyle, Lyle’s Magnum, and Pig Pig skated across the road and joined the dinner party as the darkening ice sheets enshrouded all forms above the earth. Fork-pulled chicken tacos with pineapple and mole sauce disappeared in minutes, followed by a tray of warm rice pudding and a tin of tobacco and rolling papers in lieu of a constitutional on the ever-wetting rink outside their walls. The family rolled and puffed a cherry tobacco using the dinner candles. It was a dandy fiasco of falling embers and air pockets and the laughter of futility—only the young pair, Kent and Thea, could master the integrity of crafting an honest cigarette. Marc looked about him without a trace of forlorn sentimentality, but the sight of a full table and some childish antics stocked his soul with an unexpected comfort. Seeing the smiles on Sam, hearing vulgarity and cackling in their nook, shielded and warm, now, from the latest mire of God, he felt whole and immune from the whisking hearse of time. It was a new kinship, one born from candor and ancient need. And it was a timely reprieve from comforting the endless bereaved around him. He wanted more of this. He looked at Sam and gave her a wink. He thought about spending more time at home.
____“So, Franklin,” said Lyle, “are you a proud relic, or a reluctant one?”
____Franklin laughed and whisked a hand across his uniform. “To be honest, Lyle, I just do it for the free winter coat and the secure vehicle, the w—”
____“Weaponry, no doubt,” interrupted Lyle. “But, still, how many of you are left in the village? Six?”
____“Heh, me. It’s just me, now.”
____“What the…where’s your command center? Who’s at dispatch?”
____Franklin shrugged. “All my hardware calls in to the Center, now. I don’t even keep tabs, anymore. They keep me on as a Public Safety Aide, and they give me a wide berth. Chris Shockley told me directly the other day that I’m still around to provide a ‘standard appearance’ for those who pass through. If they see an old Crown Vic with cherries on top, they’ll either keep driving or lay down roots and invest. I’m wrong about being the only one, though,” he confessed, “There’s an old sergeant from evidence who rides around on a mare on the milder days, but he just spits profanities and throws taffy at the people on the lakeshore. So, you’re looking at the village’s last public enforcer. At least the last one who hasn’t tossed out his marbles like so much taffy.”
____“Fuckin’ Chris, with his sweeping changes bullshit,” moaned Lyle. “People think he’s a genius, or worse, a change agent, but he’s just throwing turpentine around and blurring the lines, skimming his margin off the confusion. His cut. That’s all he cares about.”
____“Chris mentioned something about building a resort in Leopold Station on the radio tonight,” said Marc. “He wants us all to pitch in.”
____Lyle held the bile just beneath his jaw line. “Fine. That sounds just fine.” His incisors began to draw blood from his lower lip. “Tell you what, I’ll go help him myself. Just me. The second he needs someone to spot his ladder, you can count on me. ‘Oh, fuck the gods, I told him to tie off, I told him it was dangerous.’ Yeah, no problem. I’ll even show him how to work the nail gun and the hydraulic shovel. Noooo prob…”
____Sam leaned into Franklin. “He’s presently involved in an unseemly entanglement with Chris,” she said. “Lyle is understating his animosity for the man, for our benefit.”
____“What did he pull on you, Ly?” said Franklin. “What’s the skinny?”
____Lyle picked up his Pig Pig and scratched the boy’s jowls, pulling him closer. “There’s a woman…” he trailed off before composing his answer. “Let’s just say he’s better for her than she is for me, y’know, that old story.”
____Franklin nodded and narrowed his gaze. “I understand,” he consoled.
____“Listen, guys,” Marc offered. “I agree that this Shockley fellow is the pied piper to hell, and I agree that he’s oblivious to the harm he’s wreaking right and left, but you must know he’s here for the long haul, and we’ll have to live around that fact. He’s the living, breathing example of the anti-prophet. Our delicate world is dissolving into a fetid pool of waste and garbage and Chris, CHRIS, is the crushingly handsome usher who’ll hold our figurative hand as it happens. I agree, the man is the emblem of our irredeemable momentum, but I don’t think he’s going away. No one will even attempt to kill him, not even with the sacrament of all of our support. He’s too damn…likeable.”
____“I disagree,” said Franklin, looking to Lyle. “I’ve seen this before. A man can walk right into his own hole. I think, with a little work, we can get this man to kill himself.”
____Lyle smiled and rubbed his chin. “You think he’s that brilliant?”
____“And then some,” confessed Franklin. “His fun is gradually becoming stale, and he’s bound to start turning toward a higher purpose. And you know, the only man who wishes, hell, craves to die with honor is the man who believes he is a savior.”
____Lyle smiled again.
*
The dinner party soon elevated into a sleepover; with the steady icing rain outside, and the notion of New Pirates becoming a visible emergence around the village, the guests found accommodation in the safer corners inside.
____Kent and Thea took flight with pillows and sleeping rolls, bounding for the attic and the charm of its rafters and spy windows. Thea lit a chapel candle and curled sideways on her left, searching north through the window at the grim activity. Kent tucked himself behind her, thoughtlessly.
____“I’m not expecting to roll around with you tonight, Kent,” she said. “In fact, I’m not entirely sure I’m into boys.” Her face was solemn, but controlled.
____Kent was relieved. He liked her too much already to be clouding up the night with his bodily needs. “I’m not a monster, Thea,” he said to her with clear and understanding import. “I’m friends with anyone I feel natural around. So, what, so we romp ‘n’ chatter like kids? No sweat. Just don’t wiggle in your bag, or you’ll creep me out.”
____The two peered through the spy window as a pair of campervans lighted at the top of the northeast yard. Three young bodies emerged from the lead van and scoped around for activity. One young body, spying the squad car in the yard, froze in place; his feet—however and against his will—began to skate toward the house, and the young body flailed and flapped his arms like a hummingbird. From beneath the houseguests’ attic lookout, the sound of unguarded laughter rang out, followed by the unmistakable cannon crack of Lyle’s firearm. Franklin’s shotgun spat into the night like shuddering thunder. The three young bodies scrambled for the campers and led the pirate caravan, slowly and ploddingly, to another dale.
“Tell me a story, Kent,” said Thea. “I want to fall asleep to the sound of a story.”