Downtown Owl

  That was nineteen years ago.

  “I don’t give a shit about what Honda Fugimoto did at Pearl Harbor,” said Marvin. “I’m not impressed by any of that. If he got ostracized back in Japan, it’s only because he deserved it. He deserved worse. It doesn’t matter whose side you’re on. At least the Japanese respect loyalty. Your Jap hero made a living spreading secrets and telling lies. That was his whole identity.”

  “Secrets are lies,” Edgar interjected.

  “Yes,” said Marvin. “Secrets are lies. Secrets are lies.”

  “I suppose there’s truth in what you say,” said Horace. And there was: Secrets are lies. But these people didn’t understand what that actually meant, and there was no use in trying to explain. He surrendered, but he admitted nothing.

  JANUARY 17, 1984

  (Mitch)

  Nobody looked at Grendel’s penis. What was the point? Doing so would have only made them feel like infants.

  All twelve of them showered at once, sharing one bottle of Suave shampoo while guzzling complimentary concession-stand Cokes from six-ounce plastic cups. Steam made everything Amazonian. Music that Mitch did not recognize distortedly blared from a thirty-five-dollar JVC ghetto blaster. The first song was futuristic, churchlike, and boring. The second song celebrated the inherent pleasure of jumping. The third song promoted the nation of Panama. It was almost 10 o’clock, and the Owl Lobos had upset the Hankinson Pirates in basketball. Contrary to preseason expectations, Owl was emerging as a hard-court wrecking crew: No one could physically compete with the Power That Was Grendel. Tonight he had scored twenty points, grabbed twenty-four rebounds, and blocked thirteen shots. He terrified people. He could dunk with either hand, and sometimes he did. Vocal members of the community convinced Walter Valentine to install glass backboards in the gymnasium, solely because it was believed Grendel might shatter one. Everyone agreed that such an event would be thrilling.

  Grendel did not care about any of this. He was still thinking about football season, and sometimes tits.

  Against Hankinson, Mitch had scored nine points while adding five rebounds. On the season, he was averaging 8.9 points and 5.1 rebounds. Mitch didn’t over- or underachieve. He preferred playing defense, especially now that they were letting him wear a T-shirt under his jersey, just like Horace Broadnax. Laidlaw was merely the assistant coach for varsity basketball, so he wasn’t in a position to control Mitch’s life, beyond making fun of his name during practice and accusing him of having a sleeping disorder during English class. The head hoop coach was a new elementary school teacher named Bob Keebler. He wore sunglasses indoors and spoke with a monotone voice, usually about how God and Bobby Knight expected everyone to work harder. Had the juvenile population of Owl not included an illiterate six-foot-eight-inch rebounding cyborg, the Lobos’ record would have stood at 2–8; because it did, they were 9–1. Everyone in town thought Bob Keebler was a genius. The only people who disagreed were the twelve players he coached (who thought he was uncreative and impotent) and his assistant John Laidlaw (who thought Keebler resembled cult leader Jim Jones).

  Mitch stood next to Grendel in the shower. He could feel the water ricocheting off Grendel’s shoulders and landing on his hairless chest. It reminded him that he was weak.

  “Good game,” Mitch said to Grendel. “You ruled the glass, man. That is your glass. You rule it.”

  “Fucking refs,” mumbled Grendel.

  “Who cares about the refs,” said Mitch. “We won by twelve. We could have won by twenty.”

  “The refs didn’t call shit,” he replied. “If I ever see that one fucker with the mustache, I’m going to rip his neck open and watch him bleed to death. I’m gonna skull-fuck his wife and blast my load through her eye socket.”

  “Yeah,” said Mitch. “Yeah. But still…nice game.”

  “Shut up, Vanna.”

  Mitch stepped out of the shower and dried himself with a towel that had not been washed since November. Some of the slacker kids who hated extracurricular activities were planning a postgame car party at the apple grove, but Mitch was not going; it was a Tuesday night, and it was five below zero, and drinking beer made him feel insincere and inauthentic. He asked Zebra if he was going to the party.

  “Maybe,” said Zebra. “Are you going?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mitch. “I’ll probably only go if everybody else does. Are you going?”

  “I don’t know if I’m going. Do you want to go? I’ll go if you go.”

  “I’m not going,” said Mitch. “Unless you decide to go.” They had a lot of conversations like this.

  “Grendel was pretty badass tonight,” said Zebra. Somehow, Zebra had managed to score four points despite playing less than one full minute of the game. “Grendel’s a white Moses Malone.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” said Mitch. “He’s kind of a cockpunch. I don’t like that dude. He’s not cool. He’s the Antichrist.”

  “The Antichrist? Since when?”

  “Since now.”

  Mitch had not appreciated the way Grendel had said, “Shut up, Vanna.” He said Vanna exactly the way Laidlaw had always intended. And the moment that happened, something suddenly occurred to him: Why should he be nice to a person just because he happened to be big and fast and aggressive and Antichristlike? Grendel offered nothing to society. To hell with that dude.

  “Well, whatever,” said Zebra. “But who cares how cool he is? I mean, come on: twenty-four rebounds? Are you kidding me?”

  “He’s not as good as Jelinski,” said Mitch. Todd Jelinski had played for Owl in the late 1970s and had been named to the All-Conference team twice. Last winter he had been killed in an ice-fishing accident.

  “Vanna, are you high? Grendel is way better than Jelinski. It’s not even close. I don’t care how dead Jelinski is.”

  “He’s not as good as Jordan Buhr, either.” Jordan Buhr was a five-foot-nine-inch guard for Pembina High School, a town four hundred miles from Owl. Buhr was left-handed and averaged forty-one points a night. Mitch had never seen him play, but he’d read about his statistics in a newspaper column by Abe Winter of The Bismarck Tribune.

  “You’re crazy,” said Zebra. “Isn’t Jordan Buhr supposed to be a dwarf? Grendel would probably eat that kid with gravy.”

  “If Grendel fought Cubby Candy, Cubby would fuck him up,” Mitch said desperately. He did not believe this, but he still said it. Unfortunately, Curtis-Fritz (who was putting on a tie after not playing at all) was eavesdropping on their conversation.

  “I knew it!” he yelled. “I fucking knew it. Where the fuck is Drug Man? Get his ass in here. I knew it, Vanna, I knew you always secretly agreed with me. I knew it. Cubby Candy would beat Grendel’s butt. I agree completely.”

  The entire locker room could hear this.

  Mitch thought about telling Curtis-Fritz to quiet the fuck down, but it was too late. Everybody knew everything, all the time. And now they knew this.

  “Who is gonna beat my ass?” asked Grendel. He was drying his hair with a towel that had not been washed since 1982. He was completely nude.

  “Cubby Candy,” said Curtis-Fritz. “Mitch says Cubby Candy claims he could kick your ass.”

  “No,” said Mitch. He started to feel waves of nervousness creeping out of his stomach, up into his throat and down into his scrotum. “No. No. No. That’s not what I said. No. That’s wrong.”

  “Then what the fuck did you say?” asked Grendel. His shoulders appeared to be pulsing in place. Mitch felt like he was standing in front of a cobra. His options seemed limited.

  He elected to lie.

  “It was nothing,” said Mitch. “Cubby Candy supposedly said that playing basketball was for queers. And then somebody else said, ‘Well, what about Chris Sellers? He plays basketball and he’s not queer.’ And then Cubby supposedly said, ‘Well, he’s a queer, too.’ So—basically—he did not say he could beat you up. He just said you were a homosexual. But I think the discussion was originally about beatin
g up gay people or something, so maybe that’s how this rumor got started. But that’s all I know about it. Seriously. I was not even there.”

  Grendel pensively stared at the tile floor, water dripping from his forehead. He looked like a Sasquatch pondering an existential paradox. However, this was not the case, because he eventually just said, “Fuck that guy,” and walked back to his locker. He stepped directly into his pants. Grendel never wore underwear.

  Crisis averted.

  Civilian dressing resumed.

  The stereo described the exploits of a socially popular guitarist named Jimmy.

  “Is that shit true?” whispered Zebra.

  “I have no idea,” replied Mitch.

  “Do you still want to possibly go to the party?”

  “No way.” He was now too nervous to be around people who weren’t Zebra.

  “Cool,” Zebra responded. “Me neither.” They wordlessly pulled their game-day sweaters over their heads. Before putting on his shoes, Zebra walked over to the ghetto blaster and ejected the cassette. He jammed it into his pants pocket, sans case.

  “What were we listening to in there?” said Mitch. “Was that supposed to be acid rock?”

  “I just got it,” said Zebra. “It’s MCMLXXXIV.”

  “What?”

  “MCMLXXXIV.”

  “You’re such a longhair. How long did it take you to memorize that?”

  “Almost two hours!”

  “What does it mean?”

  “1984,” said Zebra. “It translates as 1984.”

  “Really?” asked Mitch. “That’s weird. Is it about the book we read in class?”

  Zebra considered this for seven seconds.

  “I don’t know,” he slowly concluded. “I suppose it must be.”

  JANUARY 20, 1984

  (Julia)

  Consumption of gin made her a scarier person than she was. This is not uncommon. It happens to lots of people.

  The three of them were sitting by the window: Naomi, Ted, and Julia. Naomi thought she might have contracted strep throat, so she was drinking vodka and orange juice. Ted was only drinking cans of beer, so he was barely buzzing. But Julia was going for the jugular, one glass at a time. Julia was like a Cadillac with a brick on the accelerator, pointed toward the side of a mountain.

  On the other side of the window, the snow was magnificent.

  It was the best kind of snow to stare at through glass. It was Christmas-card snow: mammoth, ultralight flakes that took decades to reach the ground. The particles were so weightless that any breeze could overtake gravity; as a result, it appeared to be snowing from every direction simultaneously. It was snowing down and it was snowing up.

  “Look toward the streetlight,” said Naomi. “Isn’t that remarkable? It almost looks like a snow globe.”

  “Well, no shit,” said Julia. “That’s what snow globes are supposed to look like: falling snow. Did you think that was just a coincidence?”

  “Be nice to me,” said Naomi. “I have a sore throat.”

  Ted placed his hand on his right front pocket to make sure his keys were still there. He then felt his right buttock to make sure he still had his wallet. He did this unconsciously sixty or seventy times a day. Ted could not understand why these women drank so much. He understood why he drank, but their reasons had to be different. When compared to himself, they seemed both happier and sadder at the same time.

  “Did your kids make you sick?” he asked Naomi. “Did they infect you?”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “I don’t see them enough to share any germs. Ricky spends ninety percent of his life in his bedroom. He quarantines himself when he’s healthy.”

  “I noticed that you never talk about your kids anymore,” said Ted.

  “What would I say? I don’t know anything about them. They never talk to me.”

  “Well, what does Ricky like to do?” asked Ted.

  “I honestly have no idea,” Naomi responded. “What do seventh-grade boys like to do? I assume he just sits in his room and either reads books or jerks off. Although I think he started stealing my cigarettes, so I guess we have at least one thing in common.”

  “Does he get along with Butch?” asked Ted. Butch was Naomi’s husband. He was a sugar-beet farmer, which meant the government subsidized everything he did, which meant he and Naomi were rich. Not rich compared to the rest of America, but rich compared to the majority of Owl. They were “Owl Rich.” They had a satellite dish and an aboveground pool, and sometimes they took family vacations to Florida or the Grand Canyon.

  “Butch doesn’t say anything about Ricky,” said Naomi. “Butch doesn’t say anything about anything. He just likes the TV. That’s his little friend. That’s his little square friend.”

  The conversation was making Julia bored, and that made her feel less intoxicated. “I am going up to the bar,” she said. “What do you want me to get you? More drinks, more drinks, more drinks?”

  They both said they wanted nothing. Julia sighed and left the table. The Dog Lover was behind the bar, hands on hips, Labrador by his side. His intentions for the evening were as straightforward as they were diabolical: He wanted to hurt somebody’s feelings. That singular desire informed every conversation he had. His dedication to anecdotal cruelty was so sincere that it almost seemed admirable; the Dog Lover was like an antihumanist version of Ralph Nader, except eight inches shorter and less interested in seat-belt technology.

  “Gimme a G & T,” said Julia. “Please.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so intent on getting inebriated,” said the Dog Lover nonchalantly. “Your boyfriend isn’t coming in tonight.”

  “Who’s my boyfriend?” asked Julia. But she knew who he was referring to.

  “Your boyfriend was already here this afternoon,” said the Dog Lover. “He said he had plans tonight. He said he had a previous engagement. So mysterious! But—then again—who knows? Maybe he’s two-timing you. Maybe he knows a boozy school teacher in Wishek, too.”

  “Just make my drink,” she replied. The walls of Yoda’s tavern were starting to revolve counterclockwise, but just barely. It reminded her of the summer her family went to Seattle and her dad took her to a restaurant at the top of the Space Needle. What a clean, uninteresting vacation.

  “Maybe you should direct your seductive efforts elsewhere,” said the Dog Lover. He knew he was going to destroy her; it made him feel like he was on amphetamines. He nodded toward the corner of the bar. “Maybe you should unleash some of your Wisconsin romance on old Woo-Chuck over there. I bet Woo-Chuck played some football back in the sixties. Probably six-man football, back when men were still men, except for the ones who were smart enough to go to Canada instead of Southeast Asia. Isn’t that right, Woo-Chuck?”

  “Fuck off,” said Woo-Chuck. “Fix the woman her drink. Do your job.”

  “Sorry there, Woo,” said the Dog Lover, turning back to Julia. “I guess Woo-Chuck didn’t score enough touchdowns for a high-class historian such as yourself. He just shot people in Cambodia. He never made it on the TV like Your Man did.”

  “Why are you like this?” asked Julia. “What is your problem?”

  “You do realize that he’s never going to marry you,” said the Dog Lover. “He only pays attention to you because you’re somebody new. He only talks to you because he’s already talked to everybody else a million times. I’m sure you must realize that. You seem relatively intelligent.”

  These words did not hurt Julia. She knew they were not true. She knew the Dog Lover was simply trying to hurt her, because that was what he did. But it occurred to her that his reason for making this specific attack was (probably) because that was what some people in this bar thought about her relationship with Vance. And if some people thought that, then all people thought that. Because everybody in Owl had the same thoughts about everything.

  This was humiliating. It did not matter that it was untrue.

  Julia felt the blood inside her head, sliding over and a
round her skull. Her body was 111 degrees. She looked at the Dog Lover. Half his face was smiling.

  “You killed that cat,” she said.

  “I didn’t kill any cats,” said the Dog Lover. “Christ, how drunk are you?”

  “Yes, you did,” she said. “I know that you did. For one thing, if you hadn’t killed that cat, you wouldn’t have responded by saying, ‘I didn’t kill any cats.’ You would have said, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ And for another thing, I know you did it. I just do. I heard you killing it. I heard you.”

  “Did you just drop acid or something?”

  “Shut the fuck up, you fucking sadist. You tortured that cat on Halloween. You and your sick bastard friends.”

  “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the Dog Lover. “Go sit down and drink yourself to death.” He slid the gin in front of her. “Two dollars.”

  “You’re gonna burn in hell for what you did,” said Julia. She lost her balance slightly and staggered to her left. It took a moment to regain her composure. “You are going to die alone, you twisted fucking cat murderer.”

  “Duly noted,” said the Dog Lover. “Now leave me alone, hooker.”

  Julia picked up her glass of gin and tonic. In her hand, it felt like the answer to all her problems. It weighed more than dialogue. Julia threw it as hard as she could, aiming for the forehead of a man standing three feet in front of her. She missed; she had always sucked at softball. The projectile flew past the Dog Lover’s left ear, smashing against a Budweiser mirror that hung above the liquor bottles. The mirror became a psychedelic spiderweb. Her eight-ounce highball glass turned into an art project you’d have to keep away from small children. The room instantly smelled like gin and tonic and violence, which transmutes as evergreen trees and ozone and uric acid. Everybody stopped talking. Journey kept coming out of the jukebox. The wheel in the sky kept on turning.

  Three seconds passed. They felt longer than the seven months Julia had lived in Owl.