Downtown Owl

  “What did you just do?” asked the Dog Lover. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST DO?” He was shaking. Everybody could see this. He was stunned. The Dog Lover finally pointed one finger at Ted, who was unconsciously checking to see if he still had his wallet. “You! Ted! Get this crazy fucking slut out of my bar. Get this crazy fucking slut out of this bar before I break both her fucking arms.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Julia. Jesus, she was so drunk. Had this really happened?

  “Shut up,” said the Dog Lover. “Quit talking. You’re crazy.”

  Julia felt two masculine hands upon her shoulders. “Let’s go,” said Ted. He backed her up like a grain truck and directed her toward the door. He pushed forward; eventually her feet moved as she intended. Every step took effort. It was like walking through the kill zone of Everest. Behind her, she could hear Naomi talking to the Dog Lover, saying something along the lines of, “We’re really sorry about this, you goddamn pigfucker.” Julia fell out the front door with an unfathomable, zombielike slowness; it was as if she were wearing a parachute. She landed on the sidewalk. The fall did not hurt, but she could feel the dry snow on her palms and on her knees. Ted put his hands under her armpits and dragged her vertical. It was a night devoid of dignity.

  “He tortured that cat,” said Julia. “I know he did. I know it. I heard it dying.”

  “I’m sure he did,” said Ted. “He seems like the kind of bartender who tortures cats.”

  Main Street was empty. They both stood there, looking at the ground. Julia began to cry drunken, nonspecific tears that symbolized nothing beyond abstract regret. This is not uncommon behavior.

  “Are you all right?” Ted asked. “Do you need to make yourself throw up? Sometimes that helps.”

  “No, I’m okay,” said Julia, crying harder. “I just don’t…I mean…I just don’t…oh, why do I act like this? This is so fucking…juvenile. What’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing is wrong with you, Julia.”

  “I’m not supposed to act like this anymore. This is unacceptable. I teach things to children. I teach them about geography and George fucking Washington.”

  “Julia, this is only one night. You’re usually a really amusing drunk. A happy drunk. Everybody thinks that.”

  She cranked her neck backward and woozily looked toward the bulb of the streetlight. The falling flakes were random and without purpose; the snow was drunker than she was.

  “I need to change my ways,” said Julia. “I can’t keep doing these things. I can’t keep living like this.”

  Like all self-destructive creatures, she completely meant these words, but only while she spoke them.

  “You can do whatever you want,” said Ted. “It doesn’t matter. Everybody around here loves you. You’re totally normal.”

  Just as Julia was able to tell that the Dog Lover had been lying, she was equally able to tell that Ted was not.

  The door to Yoda’s swung open, its glass banging against the outside wall. Naomi charged through the opening like a black rhino with a bad haircut. At moments like these, Naomi was constructed of inertia. “You are a legend now, Jules.” She said this in mock admiration, but that did not mean she was kidding. “You are a legend forever. That was, in all probability, the greatest event of my lifetime.”

  “I’m so embarrassed,” said Julia, her tear ducts closing. “I’ve never done anything like that in my entire life. How much am I going to have to pay for that mirror?”

  “Who cares,” said Naomi. “Tonight you became a different kind of person. Your life will never be the same. Now make yourself puke so we can finish getting drunk in Ted’s heated garage. I have some schnapps in my trunk.”

  Without hesitation, Julia jammed her middle finger down her esophagus until she gagged. It was the best decision she made all night.

  JANUARY 23, 1984

  (Horace)

  He sat in the dark, drinking a ceramic mug of room-temperature tap water. The TV was on, so the room glowed aqua. Joan Rivers was talking to Charo, making puns about her bosom; it was slightly titillating and completely undignified. Joan was no Johnny Carson. Carson was from Nebraska, and that mattered. Johnny would be back tomorrow.

  The living room hadn’t changed in twenty-five years, except for the television (replaced by a better model in 1976) and his reading chair (replaced in 1981—he was still getting used to it). There was a wall of books, most of which he had read twice. Two hundred and nine of them were about wars and espionage. Forty were about agriculture. Fifteen were about American history, seven were about horses, three were about college football, and the final fifty-five addressed all remaining facets of existence. There was no fiction; he had not read a novel since high school (Tom Sawyer).

  Above his davenport was a Terry Redlin painting of two hunters shooting at mallard ducks, moments before twilight. The carpet was abysmal. There were no plants. There was a stack of newspapers, there was a Time magazine, there were twenty issues of Western Horseman, and there was a TV Guide. There was a framed picture of Alma with gloves on her hands and a red handkerchief on her head, working in her garden, smiling (but annoyed that she was being photographed). There was a window that overlooked the yard and his neighbor’s ninety-acre field; four months ago, the field had been filled with sunflowers. Now it was filled with moonlight and winter and unplowed dirt.

  Horace’s pajamas made him clownlike. He was not aware of this.

  Sometimes, after the Tonight Show ended at 11:35, he would manually turn off the television and his reading light and the floor lamps before returning to his chair. Within minutes his eyes would adjust to the darkness, and he could vaguely see the photo of Alma from across the room. She never got old. Unlike Horace, Alma would have despised growing old. It would have made her apoplectic. She couldn’t even wait in line at the post office.

  Sometimes Horace felt like she was still watching him, quietly judging his actions. He did not mind this. By dying, she had earned the right to judge him. Late at night, it sometimes felt as if she were still roaming about the house, clichéd and predictable as that might sound. One of the books on his wall was titled Beyond the Boneyard. It was a Time-Life book about the Spiritualist movement that had swept America during the middle-nineteenth century. The trend had been so widespread that even President Franklin Pierce held several séances in the White House during the 1850s.

  Horace fantasized about holding a séance in his living room.

  It was absurd, but he thought about it a lot. He imagined lighting candles and burning incense and wrapping a rosary around his hands, asking Alma if she was there. His eyes would be closed. The room would grow inexplicably cold, but he would be unafraid. Any outsider would see and hear nothing; Horace alone would connect with Alma’s ghost. She would communicate with him through telepathy. Her voice would just emerge.

  “Horace,” she would say from inside his brain. “Why are you doing this?”

  This was the point where the fantasy always faded. There was nothing else to fantasize about.

  Horace wanted to talk to his wife, but he had no idea what he wanted to say.

  Her deadness notwithstanding, he did not want to waste her time.

  Joan Rivers said goodnight to her audience. Tomorrow the guests would be Eddie Murphy and Jack Hannah. Joan reiterated that Johnny would be back. Horace lifted himself from the chair, turned off the TV and his reading lamp, and sat back down. He finished his water. His eyes began to adjust to the blackness. He would be seeing Alma soon. He was not drowsy.

  JANUARY 26, 1984

  (Mitch)

  “It’s going to happen. I have proof.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s gonna go down.”

  Zebra was whispering to Mitch, who was listening over his shoulder while trying to remember the difference between sine, cosine, and tangent. They were in trigonometry.

  “What are we talking about?”

  “Grendel and Candy,” said Zebra. “It’s going
to happen. Apocalypse Rock City.”

  “What? Seriously? Why?”

  “No one knows. But Grendel told Candy he was going to kill him.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “When did they agree to this?”

  “No one knows,” said Zebra. “Last night, probably. Or maybe this morning. Three days ago? No one knows.”

  “How did Candy react when Grendel threatened to kill him?”

  “Apparently, he said: ‘Enjoy work, robot.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What does it mean? It means Candy is bonkers. That’s what it means.”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Mitch. “I don’t see how this situation could be upon us.”

  “Nobody knows why,” said Zebra. “Things came together.”

  This is what happened:

  1) Grendel departed Owl High School after the basketball game against Hankinson. He got into a car with Dudley Stonerock, a cousin of Rockwell’s and a recent graduate of Owl who had found employment as an arc welder. They planned to go to Stonerock’s rented four-room house to drink a fifth of lime vodka, watch professional wrestling (specifically the Iron Sheik), and speak in short sentences.

  2) On the drive over to Stonerock’s, Grendel mentioned that someone in the locker room had claimed that Cubby Candy was (apparently) suggesting that Grendel was gay for playing basketball. Stonerock said that this seemed like something Candy would say. Dudley added, “That’s fucked-up.”

  3) Grendel said he did not care about Cubby Candy, but agreed that what he said was fucked-up.

  4) Dudley asked, “Are you going to accept that shit?”

  5) Grendel didn’t initially respond to this, but he realized it was a valid question.

  Around 11:20, they climbed back into Stonerock’s Camaro and cruised Main, looking for people to ignore. They saw Wendy Black and Allison Crowley parked under the water tower, smoking cigarettes, listening to REO Speedwagon’s Hi Infidelity, and talking about God. Stonerock pulled up alongside them and manually rolled down his window. He said, “Why aren’t you in bed, Witch Tits?” This was what Stonerock called Wendy. She was fifteen.

  6) Wendy told Dudley to fuck himself and asked if they had any beer or wine coolers.

  7) Dudley asked if anyone cool was driving around Owl. Allison said, “Just your boyfriend.”

  8) Grendel heard this.

  9) Grendel said, “That guy is so dead.”

  10) The girls did not know what Grendel meant by this, or whom he was supposedly referring to. Allison’s remark had been arbitrary and meaningless. She knew nothing of consequence.

  Grendel opened the passenger door of the Camaro and walked across the street. “What is he doing?” asked Wendy. Dudley said, “I don’t know, but I think I know.” Grendel walked over to a tree suffering from Dutch elm disease, its trunk bulbous with a wooden cancer. He punched the tree three times. The lumber splintered. He grabbed the trunk like a child’s throat and shook it back and forth, snow and ice falling from its upper branches. He screamed something about liars and fuckwads. Allison laughed so hard she dropped her cigarette. After thirty seconds of public rage, Grendel recrossed the street and pounded both his palms on the hood of Allison’s car. “Cubby Candy is a corpse,” he said. “Somebody tell that faggot he is going to die.”

  “We’re all going to die,” said Wendy.

  “But not at the same time,” said Grendel.

  “Why hate on Cubby?” asked Allison. “He’s a loser. But kind of cute. Kind of.” Allison didn’t have a father.

  “He’s a dead loser,” said Grendel. “I don’t care how cute he isn’t.”

  “Why do you keep talking about killing people?” asked Wendy. “It’s seems like the only things you ever say always involve somebody getting their brains mashed. You’re like a robot.”

  “He is,” said Dudley. “That’s some truth. Witch Tits speaks the truth. You’re a robot, Grendel.”

  “Shut your teeth.”

  “Why are you pissed at me?” asked Stonerock. “Do you disagree, robot?”

  “I should kill all of you,” Grendel said robotically. “You all deserve to be killed. After I kill Candy, I’m going to kill the rest of you dirtbags, one by one. I will build a pyramid with your dead bodies.”

  “That sounds like a lot of work, robot,” said Wendy. “Enjoy work, robot.”

  Wendy turned her ignition key forward and drove away. She had a lot of phone calls to make.

  Nine days later, the news finally reached Mitch’s eardrums during fifth-hour trigonometry. Within the casino of his imagination, he immediately made Grendel a four-to-one favorite, assuming the weather held and Cubby did not have access to rats.

  JANUARY 29, 1984

  (Julia)

  She didn’t go to the bar anymore. Instead, she took walks. Julia would put on her mittens and her fake cashmere scarf and sneak down the rear stairwell of her building, terrified of bumping into the Dog Lover living downstairs. She had become a prisoner of war. It was an uneasy existence, perpetuated by awkwardness and remorse. It sucked. Yet the moment she escaped from her rented four-plex prison barracks, her confidence returned in full; she walked with tenacity around the perimeter of Owl, completely alone. Each lap took eighteen minutes; she usually made three of them, unless it grew too dark or too cold. Sometimes she listened to Kissing to Be Clever on her Walkman, but the device used up its AA batteries almost instantaneously. Rewinding Boy George cassettes was like smoking clove cigarettes inside an oxygen tent: diminishing returns.

  Julia would stride past smallish white houses and pretend she did not notice all the elderly people watching through their picture windows and speculating over how goofy she must be to walk for pleasure on a winter afternoon. (The idea of walking recreationally would not become popular in North Dakota until the summer of 1987.) She could see her breath when she exhaled, but only in wisps; the mercury had hovered above thirty-two for most of the week. She stared straight ahead and dwelled upon the calories she was eliminating, imagining them as spherical units of translucent lard being shoveled into a wood-burning stove by a leprechaun. Whenever she passed her own apartment building, she visualized what the living room looked like without her inside (two-dimensionally, as if it were the stage for a play without actors). She always assumed that the phone was ringing, and that it was Naomi on the other end, and that Naomi was trying to convince her to return to Yoda’s. This made her remember why people take up walking: It is because they no longer have anywhere to go.

  Vehicles moving in the opposite direction passed her, the drivers nodding upward and raising two fingers off the steering wheel to gesticulate their hellos. She could see the sun disappearing when she walked toward the west, its orange light turning the distant leafless trees into bipedal allosaurus skeletons. Sometimes Owl could be a scary place, she thought. She also thought about the bar, and the people she had not seen for a week, and how unnaturally long that week had seemed, and what it would be like if Vance Druid suddenly pulled up alongside her in his Silverado pickup and tried to make conversation. She mentally scripted the dialogue they would exchange and the things they might discuss. It would be a pleasant, plausible interaction.

  And then it happened, almost exactly as she had imagined.

  “Why are you walking?” Vance asked after rolling down the driver’s-side window, his engine still chugging. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” said Julia. “I’m just walking for the sake of walking.”

  “That’s different,” said Vance. “You have been MIA this week. You didn’t even come out on Friday. What did you do instead? Were you reading a magazine or something?”

  “I can’t go back there,” she said. “I can’t go to the bar anymore.”

  “That’s what Naomi told me,” he replied, “but I disagree.”

  “I pretty much lost my mind the last time I was in Yoda’s.”

  “That’s what
Naomi told me,” he replied, “but I disagree.”

  “I’m too ashamed to show my face back there. It was mortifying. I can’t believe I did that.”

  “It was one glass. You threw one glass,” said Vance. “Everybody throws at least one glass in their life.”

  “I don’t. Although I guess I did.”

  “Can’t you just go to a different bar? There are plenty of bars in town. Yoda’s isn’t even the best one.”

  “That’s not the point,” Julia said. “The bar is not the point. That’s not the problem.”

  Julia could hear the stereo inside Vance’s pickup, even though he had turned it down to chat. She recognized the song: it was “Waiting on a Friend.” She noticed that Vance still did not look directly at her when he spoke. Maybe that was something he couldn’t control. She wondered if she liked him less than she originally believed.

  “So, what are you doing tonight?” asked Julia. “It’s Sunday. The bars are closed.”

  “I’m just driving around. Nothing to do today. I didn’t feel like watching the Pro Bowl.”

  The pickup truck continued to idle. Nobody said anything for what seemed like a long time, but it was only a few seconds. How do sober people talk? That was a hard thing to remember.

  “Well, I have four beers in my fridge,” said Julia. “Do you want to come over and hang out for a little while?”

  “I would do that,” said Vance. “But four beers isn’t very many.”

  “You can have three of them,” she said. “I only want one.”

  “That sounds reasonable. Jump in here and we’ll cruise over.”

  “Oh, no need for a ride,” said Julia. She pointed north. “I live right there.” Her apartment was three blocks away. She could see her living room window.