The Night Neal Downer Died
"I Just Saw The Funniest Thing," Harriet Gasped, "Aye! Aye! Aye!"
Chapter 6
Harriet Tupperells saw the funniest thing the night Neal Downer died. Harriet worked as a guidance counselor at Clemson University where she specialized in the administration of personality inventory and aptitude tests. Harriet was a liberal, which is one way of saying Harriet was white and believed persons of color were just a little bit better than she was. This was probably true, although her belief was no more valid than that of her first husband. He was also white and believed he was just a little bit better than anyone whose genes were not as recessive as his. Harriet’s first husband was a bigot, a Grand Kleagle at that. His favorite saying was: “If God hadn’t meant for us to kill niggers and spics, He wouldn’t have put them on earth.”
***
Harriet was most proud of her children, next proud of her own selfless devotion to her second spouse, Lacey, a Korean War multiple amputee victim, and least proud of her accent which, despite extended visits to New York, London, and Boston — despite voice lessons and cosmetic thoracic surgery — remained too Southern for her tastes.
***
Lacey Tupperells was strapped in a tubular stainless steel contraption when Harriet first saw him. He was face down, his chin and forehead supported by canvas straps. Lacey once described the apparatus this way: “It’s like they mated a mechanical cradle with a hoagie, and I’m the luncheon meat.”
Every four hours, the ward nurses slapped the other hero shaped hammock frame over whichever side of Lacey was up, strapped the edges of the hoagie closed, flipped the hero over, and removed the stained canvas frame from the side now up. This was done to assure the food Lacey was forced to eat would continue its way through his stomach, down his intestines, and exit into a clear plastic pouch. If this didn’t happen, Lacey would die.
Lacey himself often said: “I don’t think it’s that important to keep me alive. It’s not like I matter. But what can I do? They have the arms and legs to resist.”
***
Lacey was face down when Harriet first saw him, his eyes staring intently into a mirror angled in such a way that his gaze shot to a second angled mirror, then a third, and a fourth, until it finally arrived at a book. The book was held by an apparatus that would be directly in front of Lacey’s eyes when the cradle was flipped over. Directly in front of Lacey’s mouth was a thin square panel studded with several small buttons, which was matched by a similar panel above the cradle. Harriet watched with rapt amazement as Lacey’s tongue flicked out at one of the buttons, and a click was followed by several clunks and kerchunks and whirrs as the apparatus holding the book turned the page.
It was at this point Harriet heard the first words her second husband ever spoke to her. “I really have a bad time with garlic,” he said.
***
“I built it myself,” Lacey said, responding to Harriet’s praise for his reading apparatus. “Well, I didn’t really build it,” he admitted, “I don’t have any arms.”
“I understand,” said Harriet.
“I mean it was my idea,” he said.
“Of course,” said Harriet, “You don’t have any arms.”
***
“I see,” said Harriet at one point, “We all have our problems. I have this spastic colon, and the doctor says I shouldn’t eat spicy foods, but I have this absolute craving for garlic.”
“I see,” Lacey said.
“I foul the wind both ways,” Harriet went on, referring to a vocabulary question on one of her favorite personality inventories.
“I know what you mean,” Lacey nodded, his eyes watering.
“I love sensitive men,” Harriet said. “Whatever are you reading so intently?”
“Why Children Fail,” said Lacey, “It’s about…”
“Oh, you wonderful beast you,” said Harriet Tupperells, as she buried the back of his head in her ample bosom. “It’s one of my absolutely very favorite books. If you only knew how long I’ve waited for this day. Marry me, Lacey.”
“Well,” Lacey wheezed, “I don’t know what to say, Harriet. I don’t know if…”
Harriet’s eyes met Lacey’s in his reading mirror as she said: “What’s there to know?” and smiled her professional counselor’s smile. “You stay right there, and don’t move a muscle.”
***
Within a week, Harriet Hare became Mrs. Lacey Tupperells. She continued to visit her stricken husband religiously every Tuesday for twenty-five years until the onset of the current ice age, but it is the children, all adopted, of whom Harriet is most proud: Rahmut, the martyred son, who succumbed to massive kidney failure following South Carolina’s first successful sex change operation; Ophelia, the martyred daughter, whose self immolation on the steps of Tillman Hall in protest of the administration’s policy of no pets in the dorms has been documented elsewhere in the Hall of Records; and most especially MacGregor, the martyred hermaphrodite, whose kidnapping by the Calhoun Liberation Army, its subsequent conversion to the teachings of that revolutionary terrorist group, and its explosive demise while attempting to appropriate 13 pairs of Adidas for the cause from I. M. Ibrahim’s Clemson Sport Shop, assure it a place in American folklore.
The night of Neal Downer’s death, Wanda, Fast Ed, and Neal were watching Monday Night Football when Harriet stumbled through the doors, holding her stomach and howling. Harriet had the kind of laugh that made icebergs shatter into bite sized cubes. When Harriet laughed, all she could stutter was: “Aye! Aye! Aye!” and if she were allowed to go on long enough, any enclosed area became a potential death trap from oxygen depletion.
“What’s so funny?” asked Fast Ed the Bartender.
“I just saw the funniest…” Harriet gasped, “Aye! Aye! Aye!”
***
No one has ever heard Harriet’s version of the funniest thing she ever saw. All Harriet was ever been able to say about it is this: “I was just coming through the parking lot of Fort Hill Federal Savings and Loan when I saw this woman whose poodle,” she would say, suddenly sucking an enormous quantity of barroom atmosphere into her liberal lungs. Then her cheeks bulged like a cartoon wolf’s, and she’d go “Pfff, pfff, pfff,” and “Aye! Aye! Aye!” until someone put a paper bag over her mouth.
***
“You think that’s funny?” Neal Downer asked. “I know lots of funnier stuff. You know those personalized cards you get from Kodak? You send them a picture and this form and they send you back a bunch of cards and envelopes with the picture and your name and address printed on them with some crappy Christmas message?”
“Yeah,” said Fast Ed, “My brother had a bunch of those done up with his kids on the front.”
“That’s the shit,” Neal said, “only what Battle did — it was Battle did it, sent in the picture I mean — it was Battle, Coppola, and Schaeffer in the picture, but Battle sent it in, and what is was was these three guys, right? And they’re in fatigues, and Battle’s in the middle with his arm around Coppola’s shoulder and Coppola and Schaeffer each got an arm around Battle’s shoulder and here they are smiling in the camera, right? And each of them’s holding up a gook’s head by the hair.”
“Gross,” said Harriet Tupperells, who was recovering from a laughing jag, much to the relief of everyone in the bar.
“Down at the bottom, you could see they was standing on a pile of bodies. What a fucking mess. What Battle sent to Kodak. Checked a box on the form said: ‘Peace On Earth,’ right? And sent it to Kodak.”
“No shit,” Fast Ed said, shaking his head. “My brother works for Kodak.”
“I’m not shitting you, man,” said Neal. “Battle got a hundred of those fuckers. Sent them off to everyfuckingbody — congressmen, neighbors, old teachers, the Pope. His folks got run out of Bellrose when the story got picked up on NBC. His old lady even killed herself.”
“That’s not funny,” Wanda said.
“Maybe not to you, but I notice Fast Eddie’s got a smile on,” Neal said. “What you mean is you think it’s sick.”
“I mean exactly what I say,” Wanda answered.
“War is not funny,” Harriet said in her profoundly professional and serious tone, “War is sick. Violence is a disease.”
“Hey, fuck you, lady,” Neal Downer hissed, the dark beast inside him snarling to the surface, “I didn’t start that war. I didn’t print those fucking cards. Battle didn’t print them either. It was Kodak printed the cards, bitch. It was you that started the war. We were there, while you were drinking beer. I mean we were really there, and Battle was a funny guy,” he said, turning to Wanda as if he expected she’d approve what he had said.
“Okay,” he continued, “So maybe it wasn’t that funny, but let me tell you what happened to Battle. That was funny. I promise.”
“Hi,” said Wayne, taking a seat, “Anybody sitting here?”
“No problem,” Neal said, “So Battle was…”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” said Neal, cutting a glance at Wayne, “Battle was on point…”
“Mind if I sit here?”
“Who the fuck are you, man?” Neal spat, whirling on Wayne, his pupils shrinking back into cold black dots.
“That’s Wayne. The insurance salesman,” said Fast Ed the Bartender. “Don’t mind him. He’s fucked up.”
“My friends call be Bo,” Wayne smiled.
***
Just then, a girl came in with gift carnations from the Universal Life and Happiness Church. The carnations were free, she said, to those who wished to donate. Donations were tax deductible, but, no, she was sorry, she couldn’t give receipts. The suggested donation was one dollar.
“You going to school now?” asked Wayne.
“I don’t think so,” said the girl.
“Married?”
“You proposing?”
“Got any roommates?”
“Look, Mister, I don’t like where this conversation is heading. You want a flower or not?”
“Not really,” Wayne admitted.
“Then buzz off, asshole,” the girl said.
“So what happened to Battle that was so funny?” asked Harriet, smiling her professionally attentive smile.
“You’ll never believe it,” Neal chuckled, letting a belch escape, “Nobody ever believes what happened to Battle.”
“You don’t say,” said Wayne Bo Trout.
“Now listen, cocksucker,” Neal Downer growled, flashing his claw of an index finger in Wayne’s honeydew melon of a face. “If you’re looking for trouble…”
“Leave him alone,” said Wanda, “That’s just the way he is. I promise.”
Neal whirled on Wanda Japan.
Wanda, Wanda, Wanda Japan. Neal looked at Wanda and wondered why the knife had been invented, wondered why his life was full of jagged edges, blood gutters, body bags, wondered why he so often sizzled with rage — because as he looked at Wanda Japan, Neal knew what he was wanted only Wanda and that what he was was an insult to Wanda, Wanda, Wanda Japan.
O, Wanda, Wanda, Wanda Japan, Neal Downer sang in his jungle silence, I talk because I want you and when I am still I still want you. I wanted you before my mother learned to breathe, before my father came, before the spring stood still, O Wanda Japan. I let strangers drag me into this world to find you. Why did you leave me all those ages ago that now I am the stranger — we are both strangers — and the only way to know you is to take you?
Neal Downer never sang another song.
“Hey, let me tell you,” Neal Downer said, “We were out on patrol — pacification. We’re going in to trash this ville high command says is harboring symps. So we got a rifle company out on a piece of shit cake mission against some farm wimps.
“Master Sergeant’s 26, and this is like the oldest dude we got. Louie’s 23. Battle pulled point, and he’s maybe 40, 50 meters out front when he comes on a herd of Ho Viets. Now nobody like to fuck with Ho Viets — symps? Cong? — you can kick butt on starving assholes whose best shot was storming with pitchforks, cans, and cowshit. You ever see a firefight between a guy got chopsticks and a platoon with M-16s? No contest. Trust me.
“Those Ho Viets, though, were lean, mean, murder machines, hardassed cruel motherfuckers. The whole fucking country was crazy, most of them fighting from before they were born. Hell, the symps and Cong believed the Ho Viets could make themselves invisible, and for all I saw, they could of been ghosts. Doesn’t surprise me they won the war. Doesn’t surprise me one bit.
“But there’s Battle on point, and he’s signaling for us to lay low and let Charlie pass, when this tiger walks out of the bush and grabs Battle around the neck and shoulders like a catnip mouse and starts walking off with him.
“Let me tell you a tiger is one huge fucking cat. Battle stood five-ten, weighed 150, 160 pounds, and there he was trying to keep up with this 600-pound tiger that’s got his upper body in its mouth. Battle’s holding his nuts with one hand and beating on this tiger’s head with the butt of his M-16, because we’re still hot. He doesn’t want to give our position away, not with maybe a battalion of Ho Viets less than a football field away.
“So here we are hunkered down, when up comes this tiger with Battle in its mouth, and Battle’s trying to cope with this shit. ‘Nice kitty, pretty kitty,’ he’s saying, ‘Put the Corporal down.’
“Couldn’t help it, the whole crew broke up. ‘Please, little kitty,’ he was saying…’”
“Well,” said Wayne as he finished his beer and got up to leave, “That’s interesting, but I’ve got work to do,” but nobody paid any attention as he walked out the door.
Fast Ed, Harriet, Neal, Rapid Ray — even Wanda — were laughing so loud somebody yelled from across the bar: “Hey you guys! Turn up the jukebox!”
***
It was Harriet asked Neal: “So what happened to Battle?”
“What happened to the bunch of us, lady,” Neal answered, still chuckling at the picture inside his head of a catnip corporal in the jaws of a half-ton kitten, when he abruptly slammed what was left of his right hand against the bar with such force the jukebox skipped and the laughter stopped.
It was more quiet in the bar than anyone could ever remember. “What happened to the fucking world?” Neal said, as though it were the question he’d been practicing to ask, day and night, since he first learned to talk.
“I hear you, bro,” said a guy with a beaded eye patch on the other side of the bar, lifting his mug. “I hear you talking.”
“Tell us,” Harriet insisted, as Neal Downer allowed a brief smile to loosen the muscles of his face, satisfied at last that he had asked the right question, “Tell us what happened.”
“What’s to say?” Neal said. “Battle’s dead, and the tiger — I don’t know.”
“Was it the tiger killed him?”
“The war killed him. Like it’s killing me and all of us.” Neal said, wearily. “Forget it. It was a story. Just a joke. That’s all it was.”
“Not really, when you stop and think about it. It was pretty violent. I wouldn’t want to tell it to a child,” Harriet said.
“That’s your problem, lady,” Neal said, “I don’t see no kids in here.”
“That’s not the point,” Harriet stressed. “The tiger killed him. Didn’t it?”
“You know,” Neal sighed, “It’s getting to where I hate the truth, because you fuckers make it seem so trivial, so stupid.”
Wanda said: “To hate the truth is not unreasonable. To face the truth is painful. To deny that pain and hatred is wrong.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that,” Harriet chimed in, “but I do know that I don’t appreciate Mr. Downer’s appraisal of the truth.”
“Listen, bitch,” Neal hissed, “I don’t fucking need you in my face. You want to know what happened? What really happened? What happened was the Ho Viets drew a bead on us, on us laughing. That’s what happened. We were so fucked up laughing we couldn’t even lock and load, so our louie calls for air support, but what the fuck does he know? He’s just in from Jersey. Can’t even read a map, the asshole. The fucking asshole.
“We lost three-quarters of the company to our own fucking napalm. How do you think I got this, and this? And this?
“Once the shooting started, who knows? I figure Battle managed to get his 16 turned around and blew the brains out of that cat, but it went down with its jaws locked on his shoulder and neck. Maybe Charlie killed the cat, but I put my money on Battle. Coppola and me found him. Coppola smashed some teeth, and it took both of us pulling on our rifles to pry that tiger’s mouth open, but we finally got him loose and out to the LZ in time for dust off.
“He was pretty fucked up, but he made it. The MP’s nailed him at the field hospital for collaboration and desertion under enemy fire. The Army courts martialled him, found him guilty, and sent him back to the states. He got shot trying to escape from the Fort Benning stockade. Shit,” Neal Downer grumbled, “The last I ever saw he was strapped to a chopper strut. Makes me want to…”
“It would be better to laugh and be silent,” said Wanda Japan. “You said as much yourself. If I laughed at Battle and the tiger, it was because it could not have happened, it should not have happened. Since it should not or could not have happened, it did not happen, there was no harm in it. What there is no harm in is funny, Neal. What is sick is everything else. To be funny, the laughter must die of itself, like holy fire. No tale should be carried to its conclusion. You knew when to stop but could not, which is better than not knowing at all.”
***
These are the actual words of Wanda Japan, verified by every Palace resident who heard them. No one in the bar that night admits to believing the story of Battle and the tiger. “It didn’t really happen,” “He said it was a story, right?” and “A bunch of bullshit you ask me,” are three typical responses to the survey question: “How much faith do you place in the tale of Corporal Battle’s being carried off by a tiger?”
On the other hand, when the same sample was asked: “Was Corporal Battle really shot to death by his comrades at Fort Benning?” the responses were: “Sure. My brudder got blown away like dat,” “He said he was trying to escape, right?” and “The scumbag got what he deserved.”
Most bar patrons were steadfast in the opinion that the tale Neal Downer wove was but a cover story he’d contrived to protect the memory of a childhood friend. One respondent suggested the tiger stood for a hooker in Saigon with whom Corporal Battle was shacked up while his company went out on its ill-fated patrol.
***
The way Neal Downer died was this: a couple of six packs later that night, he walked out of the bar and saw a black cat cleaning itself on the double yellow line on the street between Judge Keller’s Hardware Store and the bar. Neal weaved over to the cat, bent down, and patted its coal black head, saying: “Hey, you crazy little fucker. You can’t take a bath in the middle of the road.”
“Wacka wacka,” said the cat, just as a Jeep Commando screeched around the corner and caught Neal Downer square in the seat of his denims and pinned him against the wall of Judge Keller’s, his feet doing a spastic tap dance on the crumpled yellow hood, his shattered chin flattened against the sidewalk, his eyes fixed on the cat still cleaning itself on the double yellow stripe.
“Crazy fucking cat,” Neal mumbled, “You could get yourself killed,” and then he closed his eyes for a moment, as Harriet Tupperells rushed up, knelt down, and asked: “Don’t move. Tell me where it hurts.”
—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