Since Nobody Asked
Nobody Is One Of My Favorite Pseudonyms When Cave Painting; Nearly All Known Cave Paintings Have Been Attributed To Nobody Making It Hard To Tell Us Apart
Trout’s Tale is a book about living in a huge manmade cave to preserve America’s greatest resources until the surface is safe enough to support human life again. It was completed to honor our nation of miserable fuck’s great Bicentennial, when we began our death spiral into time management and team-building.
Chapter 3
Wayne was the kind of guy whose foster parents were killed by a meteorite the size of a Bi-Lo bull. They had just picked up Wayne’s birthday cake (It was Wayne’s 14th birthday, but only his 7th cake.) and were stopped at the one traffic light in Clemson, South Carolina, when the huge white-hot rock hit. The impact split the car in half. The trunk sailed to Tillman Hall where a gaily-wrapped package popped out and landed at the feet of the Thomas Green Clemson Memorial Statue. The package had a tiny card attached to it that said: “Wishing you the happiest of birthdays, Wayne. With all our love, Mom and Dad.” Inside the package, under the card, under the paper with pictures of cowboys shooting at Indians and Indians shooting back, wrapped in the soft white tissue stuffed in the strong brown corrugated box, was a telescope.
Wayne was the kind of guy who gave real meaning to absurdity.
***
Of the 161 people who began arriving at the Palace on August 19th, roughly 100 survive.
Of these, only Wanda Japan, Paul Bare, Sean Locke, Harriet Tupperells, Gottlieb Goforth, and Cindy Gnomoure have resisted reprogramming. The one thing these people have in common is their quest for the funniest thing. One day Wanda Japan stumbled into the bar hacking so hard her eyes were the color of a watermelon heart. Melon juice streamed down her cheeks. No one had ever seen Wanda laugh that way before or since. “Oh God,” she gasped, collapsing against the bar, “I’ve just seen the funniest thing.”
“Hi,” said Wayne, taking a seat beside Wanda’s heaving form, “Anybody sitting here?”
Only one person has ever heard Wanda Japan describe the funniest thing she ever saw, although many have tried to coax her into revealing that unquestionably most ludicrous of events. The only person she ever revealed the funniest thing to was Wayne Bo Trout. Since Wanda only told the story once, it might as well have never been told at all.
***
The commandos are armed and dangerous. Materex has issued orders that all six be boggled on sight. Field Marshal and President for Life Idi Amin Dada has not been reprogrammed, nor has the Life Protector. Materex cannot be reprogrammed, since Materex’s equivalent of 20,000 terrestrial years have been prepared millisec by millisec so that as each immeasurably minute moment of time slips through its circuits, Materex simply forgets it. The past disappears. The future grows smaller, for Materex exists solely in the present, and any attempt to alter the big program will either:
be completely ignored
be acknowledged and politely rejected
be acknowledged and adamantly rejected (see the file: “The Death of Fast Ed the Bartender”)
temporarily short circuit Materex until Dias the Mechanic can re-trip the breakers,
or blow the Palace and a good bit of southwestern Missouri subsoil clean to the glaciers of the current ice age.
***
Materex maintains, as has already been mentioned, but Materex also creates. Materex evolves, and Materex destroys.
Materex produces the fare for the Palace radio and television networks without benefit of human assistance. These media present new material 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and will continue to do so for 20,000 years, despite the fact that life on the surface has already become so scarce it retains scant news value. Still, Materex keeps the Palace populace informed of the latest armed conflicts, baseball scores, crises of conscience, drug abuse, economic indicators, and fabulous fads as if more than 5 billion people were still getting up every morning and commuting to work at dismal jobs in distant cities.
The secret of the Aldo Ray, the most devastating weapon ever devised — and yet so simple to construct even a child could put one together in a matter of minutes — was divulged by Materex.
Consider this: each day, Materex prints one copy of The Wall Street Journal for Wayne Bo Trout to roll up and stuff under his arm.
Consider also: the Palace is constructed like a gigantic time vault and was built on orders from the President of the United States to store the nation’s most valuable species for a period of 20,000 years. On a small metal plaque at the bottom of a phony well in southwestern Missouri are these immortal words:
Progress Means Everyone
Pushing In The Same Direction
Materex puts it this way: “You are either for or against me.”
If everything goes according to The Plan, in 20,000 years the huge vault doors behind a phony brick wall at the bottom of a phony well in southwestern Missouri will slide open, and the nation’s most valuable species will scramble up a ladder and onto the surface to set itself up in business again.
The first thing the nation’s most valuable species will see is a sign on the proposed preglacial route of an interstate highway.
Paving The Way For A Better Tomorrow
that sign says.
***
One of the things on the gray steel walls on one of the stalls in the public restroom down the hall from the Life Protector’s Office says: “What do Field Marshal and President for Life Idi Amin, Saint Paul, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Adolph Hitler have in common?” This is almost directly below “Henry the Eighth took great head,” which is slightly to the right of “The Life Protector couldn’t teach you how to find your ass using both hands.” The half-devoured body of Steel-Eye Wannamaker was found in this same restroom.
Why Materex brought Idi Amin to the Palace is anybody’s guess. Of the 57 people who have died in the Palace since August 19th, Idi has killed six of them and eaten portions of each. According to Materex, Field Marshal and President for Life Idi Amin Dada cannot be held responsible for his actions. Despite suffering from tertiary syphilis, he is the sovereign leader of a sovereign state and, as such, is immune from prosecution.
***
Wayne’s parents didn’t leave a will. They had named each other as beneficiary on their life insurance policies. Neither had suspected both would die, but they did, and each left several siblings who did more than wonder who would get the house in Cateechee, the chalet in Highlands, and the bungalow at Murrell’s Inlet. Within days of Wayne’s 14th birthday, the Trout estate was encumbered with nearly 100 probate claims, and Wayne returned to the orphanage with only the clothes he was wearing and a telescope. The next time he left the orphanage, Wayne had joined the Marines.
***
“Hi,” said Wayne, taking a seat, “Anybody sitting here?”
“Hi Wayne,” said Wanda Japan. She was drinking and reading the paper. She had already finished the crossword puzzle, which was an easy task once she realized that a “Saintly outhouse (sl.)”, eleven across, was a PRESTERJOHN. She had already read Gil Thorp, where football season was underway, and the question was whether or not Huey Baugh, a cerebral palsy victim with asthma and a harelip, could convince the assistant coaches, his teammates, and fans alike that he was the best there was at cornerback, though his father had murdered his mother’s siamese twin.
Wanda was reading about Field Marshal and President for Life Idi Amin Dada who had just eaten a liver which once processed carbohydrates, fats, and proteins while helping assure the normal production of red blood cells in the body of Uganda’s former Minister of Finance. Idi’s cook, who once worked at the Betty Crocker Kitchens, had prepared foie d’homme a la moutarde, which was broiled and refrigerated during the early afternoon, then later reheated in a G.E. microwave oven for an 8 p.m. supper.
“I was just reading what happens when you give a cannibal technology,” said Wanda Japan.
“Really?” asked Wayne.
“For Christ’s sake, Wayne,” sighed Wanda Japan, “It’s no wonder no one talks with you.”
“Mind if I sit here?” Wayne asked.
***
Wayne joined the Marines intent on becoming a first-class radio repairman or an astronomer. After nine months in Basic Training and AIT, Wayne spent two years in Germany where he met and married the former Isolde Schiene. She lived with her parents for the first 9 months of their marriage while Wayne lived in the barracks. From Germany, Wayne was shipped to Vietnam where, through an error in paperwork, his telescope was destroyed during a demonstration of how to dismantle a Viet Cong booby trap. He spent 13 months with a demolition team near Khe Sanh, until he was dishonorably discharged for following orders. “Shoot anything that moves,” Lieutenant Allred had told him.
And turned to walk away.
***
One time Wayne got very drunk and sat at the bar not talking to anyone while the bar filled up and emptied. During one of the filled up periods, Fast Ed the Bartender was wiping down the counter when a girl bounced in and yelled: “Hey Ed, anyone seen my boyfriend?”
“What makes you think you lost him here?” asked Ed.
“Funny,” said the girl, bouncing back out.
Wayne lifted his head off the bar and started yapping into Fast Ed’s face: “You know what tomorrow is? Tomorrow’s the first day of the rest of your life. It’s global begin a new life day. It won’t matter what you’re doing today. Tomorrow you’ll wake up and say hi to somebody you were talking to today and whoever it is will tell you ‘I’m afraid we haven’t been properly introduced’. And you’ll say: ‘How impolite of me. I’m Soandso, Knight of the Third Door on the Right’, and whoever it is will say ‘That’s amazing. I swore you were an asshole’, and you’ll get mad and want to forget whoever it was forever, but it’s worse than that. You’ll try to remember who it was and who you used to be and there’ll be nothing there. Just a hole, a black empty hole with nothing at the bottom. So you’ll think about the future and you’ll tell yourself, ‘Calm down. Things will get better. Tomorrow I’ll get it nailed down’, but there’s no way to be sure.”
“Wayne?” whiffed Fast Ed the Bartender, asking the question second most frequently put to Wayne Bo Trout: “Just what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Wayne admitted, “I can’t get much beyond tomorrow.”
***
The biggest mistake Materex ever made was trying to reprogram Wayne Bo Trout. Wayne was a monument to the status quo. He was everything Materex wanted everyone to be. He was the model for the Palace Guard and the Palace Government and the Palace Farm. He was the kind of guy who did anything you told him to and asked: “What do you want me to do now?” Three months after he entered the Palace, the Life Protector had a conversation with Wayne Bo Trout in the Heart of Materex.
“Hi,” said Wayne, taking a seat, “Anybody sitting here?”
“I’ll come right to the point, Wayne,” the Life Protector said, “You have been performing your duties in a manner both exemplary and beneficial to The Palace. You are to be commended as a model citizen.”
“Really?” said Wayne Trout, blushing slightly.
“But,” said the Life Protector, dropping his smile. The Life Protector looked slightly menacing as he leaned forward, his left hand clutching the arm of his chair, his right hand obscuring the mesh in his mask’s mouthpiece. “But,” he said, “it has also come to our attention that you have been mating with Wanda Japan.”
“Mind if I sit here?” Wayne sputtered, his face as red as an Ozark Premier plum.
“Well, Mr. Trout, is this information correct?” snapped the Life Protector, leaning forward even further, until Wayne could feel the muscles in the Life Protector’s neck stiffen, the square jaw set itself, the cheeks tighten — he could feel the thick black eyebrows arch and the puffy eyelids widen, until Wayne swore he saw the Aldo Ray crackling in the cat black pupils of the Life Protector’s eyes. “Ah Jack,” Wayne moaned and went rigid, tumbling backwards out of his chair and onto the rug in the Heart of Materex, where he flopped around like a salmon pitched from a stream by a young black bear. Wayne was also epileptic.
***
Wayne never saw a funny thing in his entire life. This is not to say Wayne had a deadly sense of seriousness. It is quite possible Wayne was born with no sense at all. The day Wanda Japan finished telling the tale of the funniest thing she ever saw, Wayne could only mumble:
“Jack would have loved this.”
***
One night Wayne was sitting in the bar not talking to anyone while the bar filled up and emptied again. During one of the empty periods, a woman came in holding a red wooden box shaped like a house. She looked like a cornhusk doll dressed in a meter maid’s uniform. “Salvation Army, Salvation Army,” she said, as she moved around the bar, shoving her small box in front of the few steady drinkers and pinball players slumped around the place. As each coin dropped into the red wooden house, the cornhusk lady said: “God bless you, God bless you,” until she stopped beside Wayne who lifted his head off the bar, a quarter pinched between the thumb and forefinger of his good hand.
“You know what tomorrow is?” he started twaddling, “Tomorrow’s the day you have to go to war with water. It’s global go to war with water day. That’s what it is. Tomorrow you’ll wake up with an alcoholic on your porch selling war bonds. You’ll put a quarter in his box and he’ll give you a little pamphlet condemning water. ‘Water is a poison,’ the little booklet will say, ‘so caustic and detergent that only water, among all commonly known solvents, has been chosen for washing one’s underwear, scouring one’s pots, and flushing one’s shit,’” Wayne said, dropping his quarter in the slot of the lady’s little box. “Tomorrow God will come down from His heaven to separate the men from the beasts, and the only thing He’ll have to go on is who has gone to war with water and who has not.”
“You’re Wayne, aren’t you?” the Salvation Army lady said. “The insurance salesman?”
“My friends call me Bo,” Wayne said.
***
After his discharge, Wayne returned to Cateechee. His foster relatives had grown old or died trying to find out who got what. What Wayne got, much to everyone’s surprise, was the house in Cateechee and an income of $1500 a month. Wayne’s wife took one look at the house and said: “So this is America.”
“You don’t say,” said Wayne.
***
One time when Wayne was sitting at the bar not talking to anyone, the bar ebbed and flowed. During one of the floods, a guy came in and stumbled into Wayne, who slid off his bar stool and collapsed on the floor like a handkerchief. Laughter was general as Wayne was carried to a booth where he dreamt he played with Jack E. Black, flinging a sequined catnip ball down the grooves of Saturn’s rings.
—30—
Epilog In Media Res
It occurs to me that some straggler might want to read all of Trout’s Tale in its God-given order, assuming I live long enough to publish all of it. I guess I could start another stack and publish it in order there, but where’s the fun in that?
Instead, what I’ve currently decided to do is add this epilog as an index to previous posts in the order in which they were not written, but in the most recent order they have appeared in the Hall of Records. Links will become active as new URLs are generated.
Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions.
Trout’s Tale thus far…
Frontal Matter And Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33