Futile Efforts (30 page)

Maybe it works, or maybe the savage mass-murdering dude comes back in a sequel with a tiny scar on his belly.

Where are you?

Someplace with stalks of corn waving in the breeze, a burst of crows rising and circling before settling again.
 
Out on the farm there's a scarecrow with a sackcloth face with a livelier grin than you're capable of now.

Now.
 
Now, it's time to think of this:
 
You're walking across the parking lot with Mariel towards the Planned Parenthood building.
 
The protesters are shrieking, pumping their signs in the air.
 
They're screaming about Jesus and damnation and the death of innocence.
 
One woman really lets loose from the bottom of her diaphragm, the well of her soul, her voice traveling in a straight line like a bullet, telling Mariel not to kill her baby.
 
You actually agree, in your heart, but the course has been set and there's no way to back out.
 
Mariel is sobbing and suffering, the circles under her eyes like four-day old bruises.
 
Anybody who didn't know better would think you've been beating her for months, punching her in the face.

There are fields going by.
 
For a second you have the startling notion that you're actually asleep at the wheel and about to drive off the road.
 
Your hands flash out and you whimper in fear, awakening the child in the seat in front of you.
 
That's right, you're on a bus.
 
You've been on a bus for most of your life, it seems.
 
This is just another cliché story about hell where the man in the tale doesn't realize he's already dead and in hell until the very end, which is exactly the same as the beginning of the story.
 
Badump
-bump.
 
It's the same dumbass movie that your father took you to see when you were seven, and somehow you're stuck in the center of it.

The kid peers over his headrest and says something designed to anger or annoy you.
 
Children are supposed to be the bastion of purity but this kid's got a pair of steel cajones, glaring and really making an effort to get under your skin and make you feel him seething.
 
Is this what you really would've wanted?
 
One of these critters ruling your household?
 
His mother snores softly beside him and eventually the kid gives a self-satisfied grimace and sits again.

Leaning your head against the window you witness the crows following for a time before veering off.
 
Acres of cabbage and melons whiz by and the muffled noises of tractors and trucks accompany the bus driver's downshifting as he smoothly
 
sails through an empty intersection.
 
The sun's only been up for about a quarter hour and the sloping redness of dawn is beginning to retreat.

You've gone through your closet and realized, with remorse, that you don't even own a decent suit.
 
Your mother used to crack wise about that, asking what you were going to wear to her funeral.
 
A T-shirt and sneakers?
 
And sure as hell, the night you got the call you wound up having to run your ass off around town to find something off the rack that fit.
 
Jacket didn't match the pants and the ninety dollar JC Penney shoes were a half-size too big, but at least it got you over.
 
The rest of the family stared in embarrassment, and you stared right back.
 
If she could've, Ma would've leaned up out of the coffin and rapped you in the back of the head.

Maybe she did.
 
You feel as if she did, and you've been feeling that way every day since.

The miles rush past as you gaze out the dirty window, sitting in the next to last seat, directly across from the small rest room.
 
The stink of shit and piss wafts by, the familiar and nauseating smell somehow calming you.
 
It reminds you of your grandfather's colostomy bag, the last days of your father as he sat in the middle of a hospital bed, wearing the little blue patient's gown, weeping in shame.

We all need to get back to the sewage of our pasts eventually.

It's been five days since you've last eaten or slept.
 
Your heart rate is up around 120, pulse hammering in your throat and wrists.
 
Life is toxic and you need to flush your system.
 
Just being awake will kill you, and that's not quite as ironic as it sounds.

Mariel's only twenty-two, slim-hipped and weighing ninety-five pounds, a tiger in bed but fragile as love.
 
She's willing to go through with it, have the kid, for your sake because she knows how much you want to be a father.
 
It's one of the very few natural instincts you had never questioned, but Christ, you should've.
 
What is it about holding a blanketed bundle of your own lineage that means so much?
 
Is it really nothing more than ego?
 
Or are you tapping into the generations of myth that have descended through the ages from the deserts of your people?

Do you just dream too much?
 
That's probably it.

So you sit in the waiting room while a sharp-faced nurse steals Mariel away in a cloud of secrecy and regret.
 
You do penance in a plastic bucket chair with the insipid smiles of celebrities beaming at you from the magazine rack.

There's crying going on but you're not certain if it's yours or Mariel's.
 
Or your father's or your son's or the guy sitting three seats over.
 
You take another look and the soft, colorless never-to-be-father is sniffling into a blue bandanna.
 
He glances up and catches your eye, leans forward a touch, and you can sense he's asking for forgiveness and understanding.

Perhaps you hate him only a fraction less than you hate yourself.
 
The two of you are, after all, conspirators scheming against your own sons and daughters.
 
You've sent the knives of your paid lackeys against your children.

How can you be expected to excuse or acquit him?
 
If this was a DVD you know the commentary would have the director explaining this as an establishing shot, discussing how he framed the scene: Going on at length about the expression on your face, and how many takes it took you to get right.

The pale
pudge
turns away in sorrow, and a heavy silence slices between the two of you like a guillotine.
 
You've had friends who used to come through these doors every six months with a different girl, and they never had anything but grins to show for it.
 
Like it was a badge of honor.
 
Some of them would offer you a beer and say that you're making too much of it.
 
Maybe you are.
 
But that doesn't change anything.
 
You still want to kill the
pudge
, and then of course yourself.

Doors open and click shut.
 
Employees drift by like oblivious wraiths.
 
Mariel eventually finds you again.
 
She looks stronger and more stable than she has in weeks, but a little tearful too.
 
A straight-backed older woman with a skull-cap of white hair takes your credit card and makes you fill out more paperwork.
 
She smiles with dull gray dentures and you have to grab
 
hold of the wall before you go over.
 
You sign your name to your deed.

The glare slashes through the window and strikes like a scalpel.
 
Mariel actually smiles.
 
You take her hand and usher her back to the car, roaming past the protesters who are still doing their thing.
 
They've all got nice tans from standing so long in the sun without any shade.
 
You wonder if any of them ever hurl bombs.

Turning, you tighten your arms and face them, waiting for a Molotov cocktail to hit you squarely in the chest.
 
You close your eyes, lost in the fantasy of your execution, your willingness to follow your own flesh into death.
 
Light it up.
 
When in doubt, set everything on fire.

Mariel calls and the moment passes.
 
A couple of the protesters have seen your kind before and almost show a hint of pity.
 
You get in the car and drop it into fourth, burning rubber, the front lurching forward like the horsepower of your hatred, barely missing a priest holding a dolly covered in red syrup.

Mariel has regrets but assures you this is the right thing to do.
 
Now that it's over she's put it behind her, at least for the time being.
 
She's stronger than you ever will be.
 
She'll make a wonderful mother, because when she's ready to bring a child into this life she'll love it totally, without any ego.

You, however, are wrapped up in the images of your Dad's war photos, the man strong and handsome and a hero.
 
Perhaps there's no other reason to exist except to somehow make a dead man proud.

On some days you feel so alone that you can't accept the reality of other people.
 
They're tricks of illusion you play on yourself.
 
They're no more than wisps of daydreams fading as you awaken back into the world.
 
Could you ever have gotten off the barge at Anzio the way your old man did?
  
The answer is clear: You would have shot yourself in the head the second day of boot camp.
 
You have a tendency towards depression.

Sure.
 
They make medication for sensitive types like you.
 
A couple of pills in the morning and suddenly the day fills with beautiful prospects and possibilities.
 
They also make funny cigarettes for you.
 
Alcohol for you.
 
Dirty magazines.
 
Whatever it takes.

You drop Mariel off at her mother's house and watch her nearly sashay up the walkway, the burden gone from her life but left in your lap.
 
It's the way it should be, really.
 
You're the one who forgot to get a pack of rubbers and decided you never liked the damn things anyhow.
 
Diving into bed and drawing your teeth across her throat and pummeling home-giggling at first and then laughing, and then actually guffawing as you rode between her legs.
 
You starting to get the picture?

You soothe your febrile mind in Asian martial arts flicks.
 
There's a certain hypnotic intimacy to the measured action and motion.
 
You watch them up their doing their wire-fu in mid-air, kicking and swinging like dancers, spinning, diving, rolling, so enigmatic and exquisite in their precision that you start gasping in the middle of the night and hyperventilate until you pass out.
 
Sometimes you've just got to thank Christ for the small favors.

When you wake up you throw another DVD in.
 
The master has been poisoned by his favorite student and now the second-rater has to get revenge for the honor of the school.
 
He's got to raise the tablets.
 
You don't know what the tablets are or why they have to be raised, but you go with it.
 
He's got to learn new skills and there's nobody who can teach him except the drunken bad-tempered monk, and he won't just come out and do it, he's got to train the kid by duping him.
 
Getting him to wash the pots and pans a certain way, carry these
bigass
jugs of wine, fix the roof with bamboo poles, cook dinner with big vats of rice and stirring the soup with a big oar that looks suspiciously like a sword.
 
Little by little the kid becomes a master fighter without even knowing it, and eventually throws down against the traitor and kicks his ass across Buddha's holy temple.
 
All these guys covered in oil and no chest hair and their shaved heads shining angelically.

The final move is always out-thrust fingers into the throat or eyes.
 
It's not as easy as kicking over the drum of gasoline and tossing the Zippo, but when it comes down to it, sometimes you've just got to crush somebody's esophagus or poke their eyes out.

It gets you pumped.
 
You figure maybe somebody's been teaching you kung fu but you've been unaware of it.
 
You clean pots and pans, you wax your car, you paint the fence.
 
So now you start running around the apartment and doing this pretend karate, making all the right grunts and screeches, imagining yourself breaking boulders with your fists.
 
If you didn't have a television you wouldn't be able to do a damn thing.

The bus pulls into the station and you realize you've arrived.
 
Again.
 
The name of the city flashes by and people are talking about restaurants, tourist spots, juke joints, the civil war cannon in the park.
 
You listen intensely for a few minutes and still can't figure out where you are.
 
It doesn't matter.
 
It hasn't for the last five days and won't tomorrow, either.