The woman glanced over, smiled and patted the man on the cheek.
“You need to look at this boy,” she said. “Don’t he look just the spittin’ image of Big Poppa?”
The man glanced at Robbie, and then looked over the room. His smile was wavering from mortification.
“I’ll take her back to her room,” he said. “I hope she wasn’t a bother.”
“Not at all,” Ira’s mother said. “She was a joy.”
The old woman reached over and pressed her dry, trembling lips to Robbie’s cheek.
“Tell Big Poppa his doll said hello, Baby,” the woman whispered.
“I will,” Robbie replied, managing to grin and look at her.
The woman’s dark eyes glistened. She leaned forward, grunted as she got up and followed her son out of the room. She was the first woman who’d kissed Robbie since Angie. He didn’t feel as nauseous anymore.
*******
“So where are you going to church?” Steve asked, as they sat around a table inside the food court of a shopping mall.
They’d left to eat lunch since Robbie was a bit unnerved by the prospect of the woman’s return, though part of him yearned to see her again. If he’d known the question of church was coming up, he would have stayed at the hospital. Marcus smirked at Robbie’s discomfort.
“I don’t go to church, Steve,” Robbie answered. “I’m not a Christian.”
“Since when?” Steve asked, just before taking a big bite out of a burrito that made beans poop out the other side.
Robbie shifted uncomfortably and sighed. He glanced around at the other customers sprinkled through the mall.
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Robbie said.
“Come on,” Steve whined, with bits of burrito falling from his gaping mouth. “We’re all friends here.”
Marcus shrugged, unwilling to save Robbie.
“Fine,” Robbie grunted. “I think God’s a distraction and Christianity is an outdated idea, irrelevant to the modern world. It’s just another artificial division in society.”
Steve frowned, not expecting Robbie to actually answer the question so definitively. He glanced down at his drink while he thought.
“You realize that a large percentage of hospitals are funded by Christian organizations, right?” Steve said. “If anything, our world needs religion as a motivation for charity, and it’s not like heaven has an expiration date.”
“Okay, sure,” Robbie said. “But, there is one big obstacle between me and God, one idea I can’t get past. God is either not all knowing or all powerful or he’s an asshole. I could forgive him if he were a bit incompetent, but if he’s just a jerk, then why would I want to spend time with him?”
“How can God be a jerk when he’s given us so much to be grateful for?” Steve shot back.
“Like leukemia, a friend in a coma? Or maybe unending wars, plagues, rape? And, these are supposed to be the trials we face to prove ourselves to him? If I had a friend or someone from my family who told me that they were going to throw a party, and to get in I had to let him punch me repeatedly, and then worship him because he didn’t punch me harder, then I’d have nothing to do with the guy. Why should God be any different?”
Steve gave him that constipated actor look, when he pretended to be thinking hard about something.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Steve said. “Can I still pray for you?”
“Sure, whatever.”
Robbie returned to his oversized slice of pizza. Robbie neglected to tell Steve that he also didn’t think that God would take him back, after the things he’d done.
“Robbie is actually big into the teachings of Jim Jacobs,” Marcus announced. “What is it you call him, the Prophet?”
Robbie’s head shot up as the pizza still hung from his mouth. Marcus stared back at Robbie, not smiling or frowning. Steve was visibly aghast.
“The cult guy from Norman?” Steve asked.
“As opposed to the cult guy from Jerusalem?” Robbie replied, staring daggers into Marcus.
Steve raised his drink to his mouth, studying Robbie as if he had just devolved into a monkey. Steve took a long drink until he was only sucking in air.
“Okay, what?” Robbie asked. “I don’t worship him, I just think he had a lot of good things to say. I liked what he was about. He was a philosopher, and one day he started taking too many drugs and tripped hard.”
Robbie hated that he was defending the Prophet again. He resented Jim like he resented God. Robbie also knew that if he didn’t defend Jim, nobody would.
“Okay,” Steve replied, just above a whisper.
“And fuck you, Marcus,” Robbie growled, standing up and leaving his pizza behind.
“Did Ira know about this?” Steve asked.
“Of course,” Marcus answered.
“Was Ira part of it?”
“God, no,” Marcus laughed, to which Steve gave a relieved sigh. “Ira actually knew Jim Jacobs though—they were pretty good friends, but Ira was a Christian first.”
“Thank the Lord.”
“Can we go?” Robbie shouted across the food court once he realized he needed a ride back to the hospital.
The Dogbowl
The residents of the Dogbowl spent the day exchanging pleasant glances and even talking to the neighbors they normally despised and distrusted. This time of year always brought the people of the Dogbowl together. That night, they all knew the lonely songbird at 143 Cannery Row would emerge from her dilapidated two-story house for her only appearance of the year. Her massive, sagging and pale body with blue veins and clammy cleavage would struggle down the steps leading to the bus stop bench. The mysterious shut-in would sit down and begin her annual concert.
The residents knew little about the Songbird. She lived alone, her mail was in a man’s name and she dedicated the songs to another man named “Timothy.” She would say in labored, but sharply trained diction, “Timothy often thought this song was sad and he never asked me to sing it, but when I did, he would always stop whatever he was doing to listen.”
No one ever heard the Songbird sing at any other time, though some claimed that if they went to the door leading to her cellar, they could hear her practicing for several weeks leading up to her appearance.
It started twelve years ago, most claimed. It gave a moment of sunshine to the Dogbowl, so named because it sat at the base of several small hills. Every storm emptied its waters into the neighborhood, and the residents would have days where they couldn’t drive through the center of the Dogbowl. In particularly heavy weather, the small pond would stand for so long that it would become a primordial pool with small waterborne insects emerging, darting around the brownish-gray water and giving the children something to chuck rocks at. It smelled like stale urine, probably because there was a good deal of stale urine in it.
Mold was not a problem; it was simply a reality that the residents grew accustomed to. During the summer months, the streets were often empty because of the baking heat of the day and the monstrous mosquitoes that came out at night. That heat lasted into the fall, and this particular fall was still warm, even as Halloween approached.
Everyone came out for the Songbird, regardless of how hot it was. Some saw her performance as the announcement of fall as the groundhog announces the arrival of spring.
The artists from the tattoo shop off N.W. 23rd would close, put a couch in their truck and back up to the bus stop. The employees of a Braum’s Ice Cream Store would stand just outside so they could hear, and then take turns walking back into the store to help customers. The mechanics that specialized in hot rods would sit in lawn chairs positioned just inside the open bay doors.
Many of the residents of the small apartment complex would pull their chairs out to the street, which was closed to all traffic by general consensus. Others would gather in the balconies of the apartments that faced the bus stop. An old woman, named Maddie, would make sure all the children were sprayed with bug r
epellent and stocked up on hard candy, the kind that came in strawberry-shaped wrappers.
The old man with the telescope who lived in the only other house in the Dogbowl would sit on his porch to watch. His telescope, displayed brazenly outside, would focus on the Songbird, though occasionally straying to windows to ensure all residents were attending. It annoyed him if anyone’s attention strayed—he saw it as antisocial. He felt a strong connection to the neighborhood, though he never stepped any farther into the Dogbowl than his front lawn. He used a side street when he went to visit his childless daughter in Moore.
The dance studio would have a barbecue, and though the dancers’ view was obstructed by the commune next door, they would linger all night to listen. They would often have as many as two hundred people—mostly outsiders—in their parking lot. The Dogbowl residents knew, but they were never told, that they weren’t welcome to the barbecue. The studio and its parking lot full of outsiders in turn understood, but they were never told, that they weren’t allowed any closer to the Songbird. She was the Dogbowl’s private treasure.
The commune would even serve beverages and sandwiches free of charge that night. They maintained a deli downstairs that drew in few customers. No one was positive how it stayed open, but the Dogbowl residents all had their suspicions. The various members of the commune intimidated the residents of the apartments, annoyed the tattoo artists and mechanics, and fascinated the old man with the telescope. The old man could see through three windows from his attic, but he never captured photographic evidence of the satanic rituals he was certain they were performing.
The leader of the commune was a thick man with a gray beard and gray ponytail. He never went outside during the spring and summer months unless he was being driven somewhere by his barrel-chested bodyguard. The bodyguard had a long braided goatee and he wore a kilt every day of the year regardless of how cold it was. Many were scared of the leader, but no one was afraid of the bodyguard, especially since he insisted upon people calling him by his jousting name, Sir Vader, the Dark Knight of the Sith. The leader disliked the kilted man and his endless babbling about medieval fairs, but he appreciated the man’s loyalty so he made sure the others at the commune called him “Vader,” for short.
That loyalty came in handy considering the leader’s overwhelming fear of insects. The residents of the Dogbowl witnessed the hellfire debugging operations when Vader dumped buckets of pesticides all along the outside of the building to ward off all manner of multi-legged invertebrates. The few customers the deli did have would avoid the commune during those operations. There were other members of their odd religion that lived and worked outside the commune, but they wouldn’t show their faces either until the fumes cleared.
Members who lived in the commune sometimes disappeared and it was assumed that they joined the others rumored to be living in the woods around Norman.
For the Songbird, though, many of the long-lost members of their cult came back to help serve sandwiches and listen. They’d sit in lawn chairs, drinking a mysterious green liquid they called “Mean Green” and get talkative as the potion took affect. They’d wonder aloud if the Prophet would come to hear the Songbird one day, though he never did. Many promised to go and talk to the Songbird some day and try to help, though they never did. The leader would poke his gray beard up against the screen in an upstairs window to hear. The children thought it was funny that he’d sometimes get so close to the screen that the scraggily hairs would poke through.
Each year, the attendees would proclaim the night’s performance as the best they’d heard, and it would build excitement for the following year. A record store owner usually showed up and recorded the performance, but he wasn’t there that particular night.
The Songbird began with an aria that many claimed to recognize, but none could place until one of the tattoo artists mentioned it was used in an action movie.
She then announced the Billie Holiday song that Timothy loved. She claimed she’d once caught him crying while he listened in the other room. That made the Songbird cry, and other women’s lips quivered as they dabbed at their eyes with the paper towels once wrapped around sandwiches.
On she sang, touching on happy and sad songs, slow and upbeat, funny and somber. She’d sometimes clap with a beat, her jiggly arms shimmering to their own rhythm that would make the children laugh before being hushed by their parents.
The love songs made the lovers hug and kiss gently. The sad songs made everyone smile slimly and whisper. They all loved when she clapped with a quick Spanish flair and made her voice sound like trumpets, drums and guitars. The tattoo artists and their tattooed girlfriends danced, and sometimes others would fill the street, dancing awkwardly and laughing when they stepped on each other’s feet. The tattoo artists would then take charge and teach them the dances their grandparents showed them years ago.
Two hours passed with the Songbird pouring her voice out across the Dogbowl. Her voice seemed endless, as if she could level the buildings with a single note or even blare out to the lonely residents of distant cities. She always finished with a song no one knew, but many claimed it was Italian. Her voice soared and her throat danced and wiggled. The children didn’t laugh, by then they were curled up asleep in laps as their parents stroked their hair.
The woman stood. The crowd clapped and cheered. She smiled, waved and then kissed her fingers and pressed them to the bench. She struggled up the steps and disappeared back into the house. The clapping followed her in. The residents folded up their chairs, picked up their trash, said their good byes and the street was empty again.
chapter ii
Age robbed the old man of his sense of time. Hours melted from his life as he labored at a single chore, whether attending to his small gardens in the front and back yards, vacuuming a single room over and over again, or surveying the Dogbowl to ensure all was in its proper order.
He saw himself as a protector and a collector. Through his telescope, he scanned the apartments, the buildings, the windows and the faces. A cordless phone, a clipboard and a list of officers’ cell phone numbers were arranged neatly next to his chair. The chair sat on plywood laid over the planks of his attic. Dust settled quickly on anything that came into the attic, and the old man would sweat despite the breeze from a small plastic fan next to him. When he would eventually descend, it was common for the old man’s skin to have shifted from a pale peach to a dull brownish gray from the dust. The only unstained skin was the circle around his mouth left from the surgical mask.
He’d missed lunch as he stared through the telescope, surveying the streets and collecting even more secrets. For instance, he was sure that no one else noticed the aged black man emerge from his apartment every day at 12:30 p.m. The man had a thin pasture of black hair on his head and wrinkled, maple skin like a raisin. If they saw, they didn’t care that he would walk from his apartment to the Braum’s Ice Cream Store and sit on the south wall, but never go in.
If anyone did see him, no one knew that just a year ago, before his wife had been carted off in an ambulance, that the same aged man and his wife would emerge from that same apartment at 12:30 p.m. Every day they both walked inside the Braum’s Ice Cream Store and reemerged with double-dip cones. Every day a different flavor. No one would remember, save perhaps the manager of the Braum’s and the raisin-skinned man himself.
The old man and his telescope knew, of course—they knew that and much more. The old man knew that every two months at midnight, nicely dressed adult couples would file into the dance studio. The old man saw those elegant couples strip down, formally bow to each other and begin ballroom dancing. Their bodies swirled and wiggled as they wore only matching silk gloves on their hands.
There was also the dangerous affair between the tattoo shop owner’s perky black-haired girlfriend and the blond greaser mechanic at the hot rod shop. They kept it quiet, met late at night, and the girl never smiled afterward. It was only a matter of time before the tattoo shop owner would find
out, but like a nature photographer, it was not the old man’s job to interfere with the laws of the jungle.
Most of all, the man knew many secrets about the commune. He could see inside three windows clearly, and he also could get a glimpse of the back door where many of the most interesting events happened. The old man discussed the matter regularly with the police officers he knew personally, but they were becoming distant and bored on the phone. They’d once spent a lot of time at the commune, after a young man had been beaten into a coma. The old man wanted to help, but none of the leads ever led to arrests.
The old man decided to record all the evidence on the clipboard, and perhaps after he witnessed enough shipments of small brown bundles, or saw enough young women with missing left hands, or enough men walk into the deli and never emerge, then that would be enough.
There was an apartment across the alley from the commune that often had its shades drawn. The old man could see that there was someone with binoculars on the other side. Sometimes the blinds would move and he could see the two black circles emerge, peering down on the commune. Perhaps the old man and Maddie weren’t alone in protecting the Dogbowl. Perhaps there was someone else that Maddie and the old man had to protect the Dogbowl from, but for now the old man kept his efforts on exposing the commune.
There were certainly many more threats in the Dogbowl aside from the commune. There was the middle-aged man who lived alone and watched children when their mothers weren’t paying attention. There were the prostitutes who infested the apartment complex like cockroaches. There were the drifters who lived inside the abandoned grocery store. The commune was the biggest threat of all, because the old man didn’t know what its residents wanted from the Dogbowl.
He slid his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of sunflower seeds. He lifted up the surgical mask and poured the seeds into his mouth. He replaced the mask as he munched, and noticed Maddie walking out to the corner. Maddie was a retired woman that the old man had grown to love. She spent most of her time in her corner apartment assembling quilts, but every afternoon she walked outside to the corner to watch the children dismount buses and make their way home. She talked to them kindly and made small talk with the parents. The old man never met her, but he could tell the old woman believed the Dogbowl was a better place than it was. She believed in the children, and knew them all by name, and still remembered the names of all the prostitutes who were once the children that she had watched over. She wanted to protect the Dogbowl like the old man did, and the old man loved her dearly. It hurt when the old man realized Maddie would never know.