Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread

  You onstage with the TV cameras and lights, all the Zeta Delts call-waiting you, you cup your phone to your chest and go, “My mom wants to know, do you have anything nicer I could maybe win?”

  You show your mom those potatoes on video, and she asks: Did the old host guy buy them at A&P or the Safeway?

  You speed-dial your dad, and he asks about the income tax liability.

  Probably it’s the Hello Kitty, but the face of this big Dracula clock just scowls at you. It’s like the secret, hidden eyes, the eyelids open up, and the teeth start to show, and you can hear about a million-billion giant, alive cockroaches crawling around inside the wood box of it. The skin of all the supermodels goes all waxy, smiling with their faces not looking at anything.

  You say the price your mom tells you. The United States Marine says one dollar more. The rocket science guy says a dollar higher than him. Only, this round—you win.

  All those potatoes open their little eyes.

  Except now, you need to guess the price of a whole cow-full of milk in a box, the way milk comes in the kitchen fridge. You have to guess the cost of a whole thing of breakfast cereal like you’d find in the kitchen cabinet. After that, a giant deal of pure salt the way it comes from the ocean only in a round box, but more salt than anybody could eat in an entire lifetime. Enough salt, you could rim approximately a million-billion margaritas.

  All the Zeta Delts start texting you like crazy. Your in-box piling up.

  Next come these eggs like you’d find at Easter only plain white and lined up inside some special kind of cardboard case. A whole, complete set of twelve. These really minimalist eggs, pure white…so white you could just look at them forever, only right away you need to guess at a big bottle like a yellow shampoo, except it’s something gross called cooking oil, you don’t know what for, and the next thing is you need to choose the right price of something frozen.

  You cup one hand over your eyes to see past the footlights, except all the Zeta Delts are lost in the glare. All you can hear is their screaming different prices of money. Fifty thousand dollars. A million. Ten thousand. Just loony people yelling just numbers.

  Like the TV studio is just some dark jungle, and people are just some monkeys just screeching their monkey sounds.

  The molars inside your mouth, they’re grinding together so hard you can taste the hot metal of your fillings, that silver melting in your back teeth. Meantime, the sweat stains creep down from your armpit to your elbow, all black-red down both sides of your Zeta Delt T-shirt. The flavor of melted silver and pink bubblegum. It’s sleep apnea only in the day, and you need to remind yourself to take the next breath…take another breath…while the supermodels walking on sparkle high heels try pimping the audience a microwave oven, pimping a treadmill while you keep staring to decide if they’re really good-looking. They make you spin this doohickey so it rolls around. You have to match a bunch of different pictures so they go together perfect. Like you’re some white rat in Principles of Behavioral Psychology 201, they make you guess what can of baked beans costs more than another. All that fuss to win something you sit on to mow your lawn.

  Thanks to your mom telling you prices, you win a thing like you’d put in a room covered in easy-care, wipe-clean, stain-resistant vinyl. You win one of those deals people might ride on vacation for a lifetime of wholesome fun and family excitement. You win something hand-painted with the Old World charm inspired by the recent release of a blockbuster epic motion picture.

  It’s the same as when you felt sick with a high fever and your little-kid heart would pound and you couldn’t catch your breath, just from the idea that somebody might take home an electric organ. No matter how sick you felt, you’d watch this show until your fever broke. All the flashing lights and patio furniture, it seemed to make you feel better. To heal you or to cure you in some way.

  It’s like forever later, but you win all the way to the Showcase Round.

  There, it’s just you and the old granny wearing the sweatshirt from before, just somebody’s regular grandma, but she’s lived through world wars and nuclear bombs, probably she’s saw all the Kennedys get shot and Abraham Lincoln, and now she’s bobbing up and down on her tennis shoe toes, clapping her granny hands and crowded by supermodels and flashing lights while the big voice makes her the promise of a sport-utility vehicle, a wide-screen television, a floor-length fur coat.

  And probably it’s the acid, but it’s like nothing seems to add up.

  It’s like, if you live a boring-enough life, knowing the price of Rice-A-Roni and hot dog wieners, your big reward is you get to live for a week in some hotel in London? You get to ride on some airplane to Rome. Rome, like, in Italy. You fill your head full of enough ordinary junk, and your payoff is giant supermodels giving you a snowmobile?

  If this game show wants to see how smart you really are, they need to ask you how much calories in a regular onion–cheddar cheese bagel. Go ahead, ask you the price of your cell phone minutes any hour of the day. Ask you about the cost of a ticket for going thirty miles over the speed limit. Ask the round-trip fare to Cabo for spring break. Down to the penny, you can tell them the price of decent seats for the Panic at the Disco! reunion tour.

  They should ask you the price of a Long Island Iced Tea. The price of Marcia Sanders’s abortion. Ask about your expensive herpes medication you have to take but don’t want your folks to know you need. Ask the price of your History of European Art textbook which cost three hundred bucks—fuck you very much.

  Ask what that stamp of Hello Kitty set you back.

  The sweatshirt granny bids some regular amount of money for her showcase. Just like always, the numbers of her bid appear in tiny lights, glowing on the front of her contestant desk where she stands.

  Here, all the Zeta Delts are yelling. Your phone keeps ringing and ringing.

  For your showcase, a supermodel rolls out five hundred pounds of raw beefsteak. The steaks fit inside a barbecue. The barbecue fits onboard a speedboat that fits inside a trailer for towing it that fits a massive fifth-wheel pickup truck that fits inside the garage of a brand-new house in Austin. Austin, like, in Texas.

  Meantime, all the Zeta Delts all stand up. They get to their feet and step up on their audience seats cheering and waving, not chanting your name, but chanting, “Zeta Delt!” Chanting, “Zeta Delt!” Chanting, “Zeta Delt!” loud enough so it records for the broadcast.

  It’s probably the acid, but—you’re battling some old nobody you’ve never met, fighting over shit you don’t even want.

  Probably it’s the acid, but—right here and now—fuck declaring a business major. Fuck General Principles of Accounting 301.

  Stuck partway down your throat, something makes you gag.

  And on purpose, by accident, you bid a million, trillion, gah-zillion dollars—and ninety-nine cents.

  And everything shuts down to quiet. Maybe just the little clicking sounds of all those Las Vegas lights blinking on and off, on and off. On and off.

  It’s like forever later when the game show host gets up too close, standing at your elbow, and he hisses, “You can’t do that.” The host hisses, “You have to play this game to win…”

  Up close, his host face looks cracked into a million-billion jagged fragments only glued back together with pink makeup. Like Humpty Dumpty or a jigsaw puzzle. His wrinkles, like the battle scars of playing his same TV game since forever started. All his gray hairs, always combed in the same direction.

  The big voice asks—that big, deep voice booming out of nowhere, the voice of some gigantic giant man you can’t see—he demands, can you please repeat your bid?

  And maybe you don’t know what you want out of your life, but you know it’s not a grandfather clock.

  A million, trillion…you say. A number too big to fit on the front of your contestant desk. More zeroes than all the bright lights in the game show world. And probably it’s the Hello Kitty, but tears slop out both your eyes, and you’re crying because for
the first time since you were a little kid you don’t know what comes next, tears wrecking the front of your red T-shirt, turning the red parts black so the Greek omega deals don’t make any sense.

  The voice of one Zeta Delt, alone in all that big quiet audience, somebody yells, “You suck!”

  On the little screen of your phone, a text message says, “Asshole!”

  The text? It’s from your mom.

  The sweatshirt grandma, she’s crying because she won. You’re sobbing because—you don’t know why.

  It turns out the granny wins the snowmobiles and the fur coat. She wins the speedboat and the beefsteaks. The table and chairs and sofa. All the prizes of both the showcases, because your bid was way, way too high. She’s jumping around, her bright-white false teeth throwing smiles in every direction. The game show host gets everybody started clapping their hands, except the Zeta Delts don’t. The family of the old granny climbs up onstage—all the kids and grandkids and great-grandkids of her—and they wander over to touch the shiny sport-utility vehicle, touch the supermodels. The granny plants red lipstick kisses all over the fractured pink face of the game show host. She’s saying, “Thank you.” Saying, “Thank you.” Saying, “Thank you,” right up to when her granny eyes roll up backward inside her head, and her hand grabs at the sweatshirt where it covers her heart.

  RED SULTAN’S BIG BOY

  The horse looked huge, at least eighteen hands at the withers. A bigger issue was Lisa. She had her heart set on it: a purebred Arabian three-year-old the red-brown of polished mahogany. From its bloodlines, the horse had to be priced thousands out of their reach. Randall asked if it wasn’t too much horse for a little girl.

  “I’m thirteen, Daddy,” his daughter stated indignantly.

  Randall said, “But, a stallion?” That she’d called him “Daddy” wasn’t lost on him.

  “He’s very gentle,” she assured. She knew this from the Internet. She knew everything from the web. They were standing outside the rail that enclosed a paddock. As they watched, a trainer worked the Arabian, using a rope to guide him in circles and figure eights. Beside them, a livestock broker looked at his wristwatch, waiting for a decision.

  The horse’s name was Red Sultan’s Big Boy. Sired of Red Sultan and the dame Misty Blue Spring Meadows. Lisa’s own horse, a pinto gelding, had died the week before, and Lisa hadn’t stopped crying until moments ago. She coaxed her father. “He’s an investment.”

  “Six thousand,” interjected the livestock broker. The man seemed to be sizing up Randall and Lisa as if they were a couple of hayseeds who wouldn’t have two dimes to rub together. The broker said that since the housing boom had tanked, people were scuttling cabin cruisers or setting them adrift because they couldn’t afford mooring costs. The price of hay was sky-high, and boarding fees were making a horse something plain people could no longer afford.

  Randall had never seen the ocean, but the broker’s statement brought to mind a flotilla of yachts and cabin cruisers and speedboats. People’s dreams and aspirations, all cast adrift. A Sargasso of abandoned pleasure craft, banding together in some empty expanse of open water.

  “I’ve seen a lot of deals,” the broker added, “but six grand is dirt cheap.”

  Randall was no expert in horse flesh, but he knew a deal. The stallion was so docile it ambled over and let Lisa stroke its muzzle. Using her thumb, she lifted its lips and inspected its gums and teeth—the horse equivalent of kicking the tires. Randall’s common sense told him to keep looking. To check as far afield as Chickasaw County, visiting breeders and stables, and to keep looking at teeth. Compared to what he’d seen in his life, this horse ought to sell for thirty thousand dollars, even in a depressed market.

  Lisa tested the smoothness of its coat against her cheek. “He’s the one from the video.”

  If she meant the Black Beauty video or the Black Stallion or National Velvet, Randall couldn’t decide. There were so many sappy stories about girls in love with horses. As of late, she’d acted so grown-up. It felt nice to see her excited, especially since her horse, Sour Kraut, had taken sick so fast. She’d been riding the pinto only the weekend before. Cherry leaves could poison a horse, too many of them, with their arsenic. Or eating nettles. Even wet, red clover. During the week Lisa lived with her mother in town. Weekends, she came out to his place for visitation. The pinto had looked fine Sunday night. Monday morning, when Randall had gone to feed him, poor Sour Kraut had been collapsed, foam gushing from his mouth, dead.

  Lisa didn’t say as much, but her father suspected that she blamed him. She’d called Tuesday, a pleasant surprise. She almost never called midweek. He had to tell her the gelding was dead. She didn’t cry, not at first. Probably on account of the shock. On the phone she’d sounded quiet and faraway, maybe angry. Already hating him. A teenager desperate to place blame. Her silence worried Randall more than sobbing would have.

  The next Friday, he’d driven into town to collect her, and by then she was full-out bawling. Little girl wailing. Halfway back to his place, she’d dashed away her tears and brought out the phone from her overnight bag. She’d asked, “Tomorrow, can we go to the Conway Livestock Brokers? Please, Daddy?”

  Lisa didn’t waste anybody’s time. Saturday morning, she made him hook up the trailer to his rig. Before they’d even seen a horse, she’d nagged him to drive faster, demanding, nonstop, “Do you have your checkbook? Are you sure? Let me see it, Daddy.”

  The Arabian didn’t toss its head or paw the ground. In the paddock, it stood passively as Randall and the broker walked around it, lifting and inspecting each hoof. It seemed so even-tempered, Randall had to wonder if it was drugged. It seemed depressed. Almost defeated. To his way of thinking, they needed a vet to check out the animal. An Arabian this subdued had to be sick. Lisa didn’t want to wait.

  The divorce settlement had left him with the home place, which was only right because it had belonged to his family ever since the land had belonged to anyone. He’d gotten the acreage, the barn and corrals. He had Lisa on weekends. And until last week, he’d had Sour Kraut to look after. Randall would’ve paid thirty grand to see his child this giddy. Lisa glanced from the horse to him and back, back and forth, speechless. She was so clearly smitten.

  Randall wrote the broker a check while Lisa was already leading the horse into their trailer. Red Sultan’s Big Boy was theirs. Hers. The stallion followed her with the tame obedience of a loyal dog.

  This was the first time in a long time Randall had felt like a good father.

  If the stallion was drugged or sick, they’d find out soon enough.

  That first weekend, Lisa was happier than he’d seen her since before the divorce. She’d signed up for dressage lessons at the Merriwethers’ stable down the road. Randall’s neighbors lived in houses barely visible to one another across vast, dark green fields of alfalfa. School was out, and cliques of teenage girls rode their horses together along the gravel shoulders of the quiet county roads. Meadowlarks sang atop fence posts. Dogs trotted along at the horses’ heels, and the irrigation sprinklers tick-ticked long rainbows of water through the sunshine. When such a group arrived at his door, Randall stood on the porch and watched his daughter join up. Red Sultan was beautiful, and Lisa was obviously proud, preening. She’d braided the stallion’s mane, and it had stood, patient and steady, while she’d threaded a blue-satin ribbon through the braids.

  The girls clustered around the stallion, in hushed awe, lightly touching him as if to prove to themselves that he was for real. The scene reminded Randall of his own childhood. In those days, every couple of years a traveling sideshow outfit would roll into town towing an enclosed auto trailer. Painted down both sides of the trailer in old cowboy writing like twisted ropes were the words “See it! The Bonnie and Clyde Death Car!” They’d set up in the parking lot of Western Auto, or they’d off-load the car near the carnival midway at the county fair. It was a rusted two-door coupe riddled with little holes, streaked with rust, the windows b
usted out. The flat tires shot to shit. Headlights exploded. For the price of two bits, Randall would go shiver at the sight of bloodstains on the seats and stick his fingers in the bullet holes. That grim relic from the darkness of history. Somewhere, he still had a photograph of himself standing next to the car with Stu Gilcrest, both of them the age Lisa was now. Him and Stu, they’d argued over which caliber each of the little punched-in holes represented.

  The car was evil. But it was okay because it was a piece of American history. That part of the big, real world had come into his life to prove the lessons he’d been taught were true. The wages of sin were death. Crime does not pay.

  Today, the girls swarmed the horse just as Randall and his pals had swarmed the Death Car. One year had brought the James Dean Death Car or the Jayne Mansfield Death Car. Another time, it was the JFK Death Car. People flocked to touch them. To snap pictures. To prove to their friends they’d touched something terrible.

  While the local girls came to crowd around her, Lisa pulled her phone from her back pocket, saying, “Of course it’s him. I’ll prove it.” She keyed something. From the porch, Randall could hear a few tinny sounds from the phone. The girls watching with Lisa exploded in groans and laughter.

  Whatever they’d just witnessed, now they were petting the red-brown muzzle and flanks. They sighed and cooed. They held their own telephones at arm’s length and snapped selfies of their faces, their lips puckered, kissing the horse’s cheeks.

  The group wasn’t gone two hours before his phone rang. He was in the kitchen checking email, watching the progress bar on his monitor not budge. Their service provider was a satellite company, but lousy Internet access wasn’t tragic, not when a single keystroke could bring all the filth and degradation of the world into a person’s peaceful, bright kitchen. These days it took real effort to keep purity in a child’s life. High-speed connectivity wasn’t worth Lisa’s innocence. That was a fact her mother wouldn’t accept. One of many.