“Where exactly are we going?” asks a petulant Flawed on my right whose name tag says Leonard.
“Great question, Leonard!” Ventor says. “You said to yourself: Look, I want to know where I’m headed. I like that. Good directedness. Also good assertiveness. Perhaps you weren’t quite as sensitive to my feelings as you might have been, given that I should have told you where we were headed right off the bat and so therefore feel at the moment a little remiss and inadequate for not having done so, but what the heck, a good growth opportunity for me, and a chance for you, Leonard, to make yourself the center of attention, which seems to be one of your issues, not that I’m in a position to make that judgment, at least not yet. The answer, Leonard, is: southern Utah. Here, take a look.”
He passes around snapshots of his ranch and we sit oohing and aahing while holding our lemonades between our knees. It’s beautiful. The skies are blue, the cottages immaculate, the mountains white.
On my soft seat I say a little prayer:
Let this be real.
We ride in style through Joplin and Miami and Vinita and Big Cabin. Ventor passes out sunscreen and shoots an antelope from the wagon and gives us each a big chunk and a side-salad with croutons. He laughs at our jokes and praises any initiative we take and tells us about the summer picnics on his spread, which will feature badminton and ice cream and bluegrass music and pretty Flawed girls from other ranches who really know how to dance. We make Tulsa. We make Sapulpa. We make Chandler, Warwick, Luther, and Arcadia. A thousand-member dog pack has just swept through Oklahoma City and distraught cabbies are sprinkling lye on their dead oxen while trying to trick beggars into the yoke. West of El Reno there’s a wide river and a collapsed bridge. A chalked sign on a plywood scrap says: Neerest ferry 200 miles south.
“Ouch, this isn’t good,” Ventor says. “Not that it’s bad. Not that I’m trying to predestine our failure via negativity or manifest an Eeyore paradigm.”
We start off south along the river. Kids fishing from rotting docks turn to call us Flawed pigs. In a tent town there’s a bingo game proceeding under a filthy awning.
Hidden away in a patch of reeds is a rowboat.
“Wow, talk about willing one’s own reality into being,” Ventor says. “Here I was just wishing we had a boat and one basically materializes! Super. I admit it’s not the exact boat I was visualizing, but still it’s a boat, and I for one am going to try to focus on its boatness, and not on those kind of huge gaping holes in the sides there. And while it’s true we’ll have to abandon our wagon and our horses and our supplies, I intend to put these losses behind me and work on viewing the fact that we now have to walk to Utah as a particularly challenging challenge I’ll someday look back at while laughing sagely.”
“So we’re stealing this boat,” Leonard says.
“No, Leonard, we’re not stealing the boat,” Ventor says. “We’re borrowing the boat, albeit leaving it on the far bank once we’ve finished borrowing it.”
He tells Leonard and Gene Sinclair and me to go across first and tells Leonard to row. Gene’s a former schoolteacher with tremendous armpit goiters who’s constantly measuring them with calipers.
“Good luck, men!” Ventor yells across the water. “Remember, I trust you implicitly!”
When we reach the far shore Gene and I pile out and Leonard starts back across.
“I have to admit this freedom would be kind of exhilarating if my goiters didn’t hurt like the dickens,” Gene says. “We could just walk away. Boy, wouldn’t that be nervy! A guy tries to give you a nice cottage and some dignity and you bite him in the ass.”
I think of Connie. I remember the autumn before the purge, when the Flaweds in our grade school were fitted with bracelets during a surprise Assembly. Connie and I stood there blinking madly as a Normal janitor named Fabrizi fired up his welding tool. At home Connie decorated her bracelet with glitter glue. Dad called her a trooper and praised her gumption, then broke down in sobs.
I get up and start jogging towards the trees.
Gene begs me to come back and swears that if it weren’t for his aching goiters he’d teach me a lesson about ingratitude by beating my brains out. I cut across a granite ledge and drop into a canebrake. I hear Gene shouting to Ventor. Then there’s a gunshot and some dirt kicks up at my feet and a little pine splinters to my left.
Free again, for what it’s worth.
That night I sleep in a ditch. I dream that Mom’s stroking my hair while reading me a comic book. I wake at dawn in the middle of a street market. There are jugglers and men expertly carving up big dogs and a few feet away from me a tall balding Normal selling pancakes from a cart. A couple of militia teens walk by with an entourage of eight Flaweds and a weeping Normal farmer.
“What did he do, boys?” asks the pancake guy. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Educated his Flaweds,” says one of the teens. “Let them read whatever they liked. Now they’re so educated they don’t listen for shit and we have to keep whacking them.”
“Yeah,” says the other. “They want to debate every little point.”
“No we don’t,” says a Flawed geezer, who promptly gets a gun butt in the midriff.
“So we burned down his farm,” says the first teen.
“Do I ever endorse the wisdom of that decision,” says the pancake guy. “You fellows are awfully youthful to be so insightful.”
“You should have seen Todd pouring gas on the beets,” says the first teen.
“I couldn’t believe how hard you kicked that one kitchen chick who was shrieking while crawling away,” says Todd.
“Chick was like shrieking at me,” says the first teen.
“Then she bites his leg,” Todd says. “I was like: Brad’s hating this. He thinks this sucks.”
“I was hating it,” says Brad. “I did think it sucked.”
“And yet you responded with remarkable restraint, by merely kicking her?” the pancake guy says. “I find that really, you know, great.”
“We were going to respond by doing her in the barn,” Brad says.
“But then the lieutenant comes up and goes no, because she’s a virgin,” Todd says. “I was like: dang.”
“I was like that too,” says Brad. “I was like: dang.”
“We were both like: dang,” says Todd.
“So we went out and wasted all the cows,” says Brad.
“Your delts looked so killer when you were slitting their udders,” says Todd.
“I’ll bet your delts looked killer as all get-out,” says the pancake guy.
“Then asswipe here started the barn on fire when he was supposed to be flamethrowing the ducks,” says Brad. “Lieutenant was pissed. Asswipe freaked.”
“I didn’t freak, I was bummed,” says Todd. “I was bummed because the lieutenant thought I was a dick.”
“You were a dick,” says Brad. “You were a dick and you freaked.”
“For my part,” the pancake guy says, “I doubt very much that you were either an asswipe or a dick, nor do you strike me as the type of boy inclined to freak, not that I’m trying to be difficult or contradict anyone.”
Then he tosses a pan of hot grease into the ditch and steps square on my chest and I start screaming bloody murder.
Brad puts his gun in my ear and drags me out.
“Congrats, dude,” he says to the pancake guy. “You just copped a free slave.”
“But I don’t want a slave,” says the pancake guy. “I can’t afford one. I can barely keep myself in batter as it is.”
“Tough bones,” says Todd. “The regs require local resale by the finder. And that’s you.”
“God forbid I should appear neurotic or recalcitrant, boys,” the pancake guy says, “but I have no idea where one sells a runaway slave.”
“Try Tanner’s,” Todd says.
“Tanner’s is a hoot,” says Brad.
“Ooh la la,” says Todd.
Tanner’s is a brothel in a former Sa
feway. A wiry Normal in a jogging suit is counting crates of condoms in what used to be Produce.
“Don’t tell me,” he says. “You’re in the mood for love.”
“Actually I’d like to sell this Flawed,” the pancake guy says, blushing.
“New flesh, Artie,” the wiry guy says, and a pudge with a stun gun steps out from behind the crates. “What do you think, son? Think he’d make a good addition to Staff?”
“You know exactly what I think, Dad,” says Artie. “I think that it’s not very nice, forcing someone to become a prostitute against their will.”
“Artie, sweet Jesus, why refer to our people as prostitutes?” the father says. “That’s not a fun term. That’s not a term that makes people want to let their hair down. That’s a sad term. That’s a term that, if anything, makes people want to put their hair back up, which means I eventually close up shop and you hustle your ass home from college sans degree. Sheesh. My son the philosophical sourpuss. Looks down his nose at my line of work but sucks up the tuition like it’s going out of style. Would it violate your principles too much to keep an eye on this guy for a few minutes, O Pure One? Think you could fucking manage that?”
“Fine, Dad,” Artie says. “Whatever.”
“We’ll be in my office talking price,” the father says, and steers the pancake guy into a former walk-in freezer now wood-paneled and decorated with framed posters of sweaty nude Flaweds sucking their fingers.
“Boy, I don’t envy you,” Artie says. “If you think Dad’s mean to me, you should see how mean he is to his whores. I mean his Personal Pleasure Associates. PPAs. You should see how mad he’ll get if he comes back here and finds you talking to me. He doesn’t go for the idea of his whores chatting with Normals. I mean, if you want to pretend to groan in ecstasy or compliment some John’s pecker, that’s fine, but just talking for the sake of talking, no, he doesn’t go for that. Which is exactly why I’m taking Physics at the community college. I’m getting out of the family business. Physics is hard. Really hard. But it’s not at all hard compared to helping Dad beat the snot out of some PPA for accidentally calling an AR a John. Dad makes us call them ARs. Affection Recipients. Are you going to be one of the PPAs who dresses up like a girl? Or one who gets gagged and bound? Do you know yet? I guess you wouldn’t. I hope you’re neither. You seem like a nice guy, so I’ll go out on a limb and say I hope you’re just a regular old whore.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“This one time Mack in Security had to stun-gun this AR for getting too rough with this fragile PPA named Kurt,” he says. “Mack told the AR, he said, look pal, you want to get rough, go to the Rough Room, there’s no need to brutalize a tiny PPA like Kurt. But by that time the AR had a big old hole in his neck courtesy of Mack and had forgotten all about Kurt. You’d be amazed what a big old hole in your neck will do to your sex drive. My point is, did Mack ever catch it from Dad on that one! You should have seen Dad burning a corresponding hole in Mack’s neck while I held poor Mack down. Did I like doing that? Of course not. But what was I supposed to do, contradict Dad in front of Mack? To tell you the truth, Dad scares me. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday he didn’t hold me down and burn a hole in my neck. Gosh, we probably shouldn’t be going on and on like this. If Dad comes back and hears us, you’ll get the pipefitters’ convention for sure. So we’d better stop talking.”
“Fine,” I say.
“Last year at the pipefitters’ convention Dad made this PPA named Earl wear a poodle suit,” he says. “That was one room I did not want to go into, except I had to, because Earl had forgotten his fake bone even though it was clearly marked on the Work Order. Last thing I wanted to see was Earl in a poodle suit going woof woof woof under a big pile of naked pipefitters, but I had my instructions from Dad, the heathen. After I dropped off Earl’s bone I went back to my room and studied Bernoulli’s equation while sobbing quietly. People look at me and think, he’s lucky, his dad’s Max Tanner the rich pimp, but I tell you it’s no picnic. Sometimes after writing a poem about the beauty of the stars I have to go around and change all the sheets. You think that’s uplifting? You think that kind of activity nourishes your sublime nature? Well it doesn’t, believe me.”
Tanner and the pancake guy come out smiling.
“Artie, super news,” Tanner says. “The price is right. All we need now is the physical exam.”
“Great, Dad,” Artie says weakly.
They examine my privates and make me hop in place so they can check my heart rate. They count my teeth and test my grip by making me squeeze a can filled with sand and have me read one of their brochures aloud to check for speech impediments.
“These feet worry me, Artie,” Tanner says, tapping my claws with a Sharpie. “These little fuckers could be serious showstoppers. What if in the heat of passion this guy claws the crap out of some AR’s leg and the AR gets gangrene and sues? Jesus. Although I suppose I could put him on drive-through hand jobs. Would you be in favor of drive-through hand jobs, Artie?”
“I’d be in favor of setting him and every other PPA in this dump free, Dad,” says Artie.
“All right, smart guy, I’ll do that,” Tanner says. “Then you can swap your slide rule for a fucking shovel and join your peers in the sewage trench. Hah? Hah? Is that what you want, Einstein?”
“No, Dad,” Artie says.
“Then let’s have some thoughtful input here,” Tanner says.
“He seems well suited to drive-through hand jobs,” Artie says through clenched teeth.
“That’s more like it,” Tanner says. “Now go get him a sexy smock and some baby oil.”
Then the lights go out and something blows up and suddenly Flaweds in lingerie are rushing by screaming, and swearing Normals are hopping over fallen beams with their pants around their knees. I grab Artie’s stun gun and make for a hole in the wall. Outside are sycamores and clouds and tongues of flame devouring the words GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS on a fallen paper banner. A guy in a ski mask is sitting on a parking bumper trying to get a jammed gun to fire and a brothel security guard is sneaking up behind him with a billy club. So I stun the guard and drag the guy in the ski mask to a kind of clearing, where a bunch of other guys in ski masks pat me on the back and push me into a van as the Safeway collapses like a house of cards.
I’m bleeding at the knees and choking from smoke and have no idea who these people are or where I’m going, but at least I’m off the hook in terms of the hand jobs.
I lie all night in the back of the van with three weeping rescued whores in nun costumes. When we finally stop we’re rushed past some swaying denuded mesquites into a cave, where we’re given bedrolls and wooden bowls of cold mush.
“Where are we?” one of the nuns asks.
“Texas,” somebody answers, and lights a candle.
Outside the cave two Flaweds in ski masks sit on rocks near a campfire.
“Quite a mission,” says one.
“Yes, Mitch, quite a mission,” says the other, who’s half the size of the first.
“Thanks to my leadership, we really exceeded our project goals,” says Mitch.
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” says the other. “We only rescued four crummy Flaweds. On top of which you left Frenchy at the scene.”
“I beg your pardon?” says Mitch.
“Oh, come on,” says the other. “First you got lost, then you attacked a brothel rather than a work camp, then you drove off in a panic, leaving Frenchy at the scene.”
“I did no such thing,” says Mitch. “Why do you insist on making up lies, Jerome? Frenchy and I had talked before the mission, and at that time he said that he might want to, you know, undertake some additional activities subsequent to the primary mission. It was a secret talk. No one else heard it. We even arranged a secret signal. As we were leaving the site, Frenchy gave me the secret signal, so I kept driving. Simple as that.”
“What was the secret signal, Mitch?” Jerome says. “Begging you at the top of his lun
gs to please please slow down while he sprinted alongside the van weeping? You lie, Mitch. I saw the whole thing. If I hadn’t been so busy putting a tourniquet on Lance I would have wrested the wheel away and saved Frenchy myself.”
“Some tourniquet,” says Mitch. “The cassette player in the van is ruined with Lance’s blood, thanks to you.”
Then they hop to their feet and put on their caps.
“Hello, Judith,” says Jerome.
“Good evening, Judith,” says Mitch.
“What’s all this about?” says Judith, a tall woman with a sawed-off shotgun and a clipboard.
“Mitch left Frenchy at the scene, Judith,” says Jerome. “The wrong scene, incidentally. We never got anywhere near the work camp.”