The Canal (15 page)

Their relationship encountered many
milestones. The first had come after Paul had been badly injured --
where or how he no longer recalled, although it must have involved
the stairs or bath, one of those innocent seeming fixtures that
secretly harbor a hunger for the sick and elderly. It was
afterwards, while Paul recuperated, that he stopped cooking and fed
the creature food that was raw.

This was a fortunate circumstance, well worth
the cost of any injury. Because Paul discovered that the treacly
insect actually preferred its meat uncooked -- the fresher the
better. 'Enchanting' was the word he'd choose to describe his
beloved visitor savoring these slick, bleeding meals, caressing
them with its tongue, kissing them with its intestine lips, then
sucking on them like candies, savoring every last crumb of
protein.

What came next was practically
inevitable.

Eventually, Paul found a dog. The stray had
followed him, stumbling and hungry, a regal breed brought low --
German Shepherd, maybe. Paul had just come from the butchers. The
dog whined as Paul untied the bundle he carried and pulled out a
lump of hamburger, letting the dog lick it from his fingers. The
canine followed Paul into his house, where he laid out the
remaining meat on the living room floor. He then closed the dog
inside. He went to the hardware store where he bought rope and a
three-foot length of metal pipe.

The old Paul began pleading in earnest with
him then. Old Paul had been vocal before, but never like this. He
threatened, he debated, he intimidated and appealed. He went
ignored.

When Paul returned from the store, he found
the hamburger eaten and the stray hiding beneath the coffee table,
where it had pissed. Paul took his toolbox out from under the sink
and got his hammer. He tied the rope around the dog's neck and
pulled it into the backyard. Paul then nailed the pipe into the
ground, sinking it about halfway, and then he tied the dog to it.
The dog didn't protest, mostly it sat with its head slunk, watching
despondently -- these castaways, they knew better than to keep high
hopes.

By this time the sun had begun its last
stand, begging the clouds to lift it high again, flaring them
orange and red in shameless flattery. So pathetic. So futile. Paul
watched the inevitable rebuke, and just as the sun finally began to
vanish...his guest arrived. When it noticed the animal, tied and
shivering, Paul saw it do something he had never seen before: it
smiled.

And this smile, it was a triumph. Were there
ever to be a night-rise, if dark ever dawned, this would be it --
skewed fangs and inflamed gums worming across the horizon, not just
extinguishing light, but hunting it, encircling the sky until all
was lost in darkness, the usual nighttime chatter of owls and
crickets now replaced with the shuddering, whetting stone sound of
teeth against teeth.

The creature pinned the dog in its arms and
grazed, whimpering in ecstasy as it mowed free the rubbery
epidermis and whatever else popped loose. This was the milestone of
all milestones. And now Paul finally knew what it was that this
creature loved more than anything else, even more than raw,
scarlet, meat. And that was skin. Most of all, the creature loved
skin.

The insect went on to make slow work of the
canines outer layer, taking extra care to find the stubborn bits
and ends, savoring them, regurgitating just to prolong its
enjoyment. It would do this with all the animals, would sate itself
on their skin and then lose interest in the now exposed and
sometimes still kicking carcass. It would then grab onto a limb of
bone and drag its prey back to the canal. Paul didn't know where it
took these corpses, but he guessed that the creature had found a
place to stash them until its hunger returned. After such a meal,
usually he wouldn't see the insect again for another couple of
nights.

That had been an amazing time. The creature
began transforming at an incredible pace, radiating ever more heat
and incubating parasite hatchlings in its armpits. Its webbed
fingers curled and hardened, lengthening into hollow razors. Paul
started feeding it canines whenever possible. Sometimes he
purchased live chickens or pigs. Rats and pigeons were easy
catches. Paul would adopt any pet, be it lizard, hamster, rabbit,
anything at all, and he'd answer any classified ad ("Kitty
explosion -- help"). He'd ride the bus to the animal shelter where,
until they got suspicious, Paul would be happily obliged with the
nasties, the unrulies, and the child biters.

But animals eventually became scarce. In his
eagerness to please, Paul had overharvested the supply. And
eventually, Paul began to accumulate more hurts, more falls, more
age, more illnesses (so many of those, uncountable), leaving him
almost entirely homebound. Eventually he had to revert back to
butchered meat. Of course, animals would still come around now and
again, but only rarely -- most creatures sensed that they should
stay away, they could smell the fright of their predecessors, an
invisible warning that marked Paul's home as a place of death.

The new Paul blamed himself. He'd let his
dear friend down. And he desperately wanted to make amends, to once
again accomplish something special, to once again see the
creature's smile. He felt he owed it to that sweet, marvelous
monster. He owed it to that bug who, until Ray and his suit
arrived, hadn't had a living meal in over a year.

*

"Installment plan," announced Ray, presenting
yet another different brochure. "We can do easy payments."

Paul showed him the fork.

"What is this, now?" said Ray. He lamely
watched the metal rise even with his face.

The day of reckoning, thought Paul. It most
certainly does not abide.

Paul struck. He aimed and kept aiming. There
were no shouts from Ray, no pleading or prayers or wild shrieks. In
fact, he seemed almost resigned, like he'd been expecting this,
content to let Paul finish his work. Maybe this was how all
salesmen went -- they worked the pavement for years, possibly even
centuries if they had to, looking for their natural predator, the
murderer, at whose hand they were finally allowed to die.

It was over when the blood stopped. Ray now
wore red -- as did the walls, the couch, and Paul. He had about
half an hour to get the body ready. He dragged Ray onto the floor,
reaching under the arms and pulling him toward the patio. In death
the man put up a much more convincing fight. He stuck to the
carpet, he snagged on the coffee table; none of his many, now
silent pounds would cooperate. It seemed that the harder Paul
tugged, the heavier Ray became. Paul had to call on all of his
strength, all of his deteriorating energy, all of yesteryear's
muscles. His call went deep...maybe too deep.

It was a dirty, swearing tug-of-war getting
Ray into the yard. The salesman lay stretched out, feet pointed
toward the house, arm draped affectionately around the stake. Paul
removed the suit and most of the undergarments, but there wasn't
enough time to get it all -- a shoe stayed.

With dusk imminent Paul staggered back to the
patio and fainted into his chair. Struggling with Ray had left him
feeling flimsy, as if something vital piece of anatomy had jiggled
loose, something essential. But then came the gurgle of canal
water, right on time, and Paul forgot all about himself. The night,
as he had hoped, would prove to be another milestone.

*

From the floor, Paul considered that
evening's options. He had some old steaks in the freezer. And there
was chicken, from that woman... He hated to say it, it being a
rather sore subject for him, but over the past lean year the
creature had developed quite an eager fondness for those leftovers
of hers. Cooked food, nonetheless. This did not please Paul. The
creature's affection was his and his alone, he would not tolerate
sharing it with anyone.

The policeman. If only. That would have
changed everything. Paul could have shown him the backyard and
gored him once his back was turned. Of course, things couldn't just
stop there -- he'd have to find others. People sometimes slept on
the canal banks, he could feed them liquor until they went to
sleep. They'd make a fine meal. And then there were travelers.
There were deliverymen. There were women bearing leftovers. There
were children. All this time Paul had been feeding his visitor
lunchmeat when he was surrounded by top sirloin.

Although maybe...maybe tonight Paul would
prepare a classic dish, something meaningful. It would have to be
steak. But what if he barbecued it? What if he prepared it just
like that first time, when the insect first came into his life, a
gift, canal-sent? Surely the grub would appreciate such a
gesture.

Intermittently, gradually, Paul managed to
gain his feet. He lurched through the house and into the
yard...where he immediately faced a dilemma. The barbecue needed
charcoal. The charcoal was in a bag. The bag was on the ground.
Paul would have to bend, lift, carry, and pour. In his current
condition these things seemed like an act of madness, or rather
they held the misty aura of fantasy, of childish wishful thinking.
Paul squatted anyway, then hugged the bag and grimly started to
rise.

About halfway the bag dropped from his hands.
Paul felt as if he'd been hit in the chest with a hammer. An urgent
telegram was humming through his veins: buddy, it's over. By
overwhelming majority. Finished.

When Teresa had died she did it in her sleep,
silently, gently. The next morning Paul had lain there thinking how
unusual it was for Teresa, the early riser, to still be in bed. He
had enjoyed it, to be warm under the covers, resting next to the
still, sleeping form of the woman he loved. Only she wasn't
sleeping.

Paul toppled away from the barbecue and onto
dirt. He crawled toward the stake and curled around it in agony.
Amazingly, there wasn't a single word from the old Paul -- here it
was, Old's big moment, death in the air and everything (Paul could
smell it -- metallic, like spent fireworks) and that nag was
nowhere to be found.

Paul's life didn't flash before his eyes.
Although he probably wouldn't have minded that, a decent summary of
what he and Old had done with all their years. But apparently that
sort of thing didn't actually happen, like those stories about
simultaneously dying couples. Or at least, it didn't happen to
Paul. What he found was that he couldn't recall a single thing,
like the significance of the rapidly darkening sky, or the faces of
his daughters. Instead, as his pulse quit carrying, there was only
one thing on his mind, one thing repeating relentlessly into the
void. A single question.

"What have I done?"

>> CHAPTER ELEVEN <<

The police station was supposed to be Alan's
gleaming stronghold of law and order. But it wasn't gleaming
now.

In truth, it never had.

It gasped instead. It wheezed for oxygen. The
forces of justice, they swirled clumsily here, and slowly, and
sometimes reluctantly. It had never been what Alan envisioned, but
he had borne it. There were cops here -- not all, but some -- who
were clinically inept or angry or unfair or biding time for a
paycheck and a pension. There were people like Joe. People who
didn't believe what Alan believed. And always, Alan bore it. The
work, Alan's work, when you examined it cleanly -- it was like all
work. Which is to say it was mundane and it was mean and there was
no real glory here. The building was weary, like the work was
weary, its corners and edges rounded smooth from decades of too
much noise and heat and traffic, it was being erased before
everyone's eyes, molecule by molecule, turning to Acropolis. It
wasn't uncommon to find the men here slumped onto their desks, or
supine in their chairs from accumulated fatigue -- crushed by the
deep sea pressure, the constants fathoms, the ruinous weight of
unceasing human folly.

It was too human, is what this place was. And
yet Alan bore it all. And the place might not gleam, but Alan's
desk would gleam. Alan himself would gleam. And eventually that
shine would spread from him. It would blast the grit from these
men's faces, turn their eyes clear and alert, the weariness and age
sloughing from them like an old skin.

But not even Alan gleamed now. Not even he
could bear this burden.

Because his day, it was trash. It was 9:25
PM, and what had he accomplished? Problem #5, the problem of the
messages, that was subtracted. Finally, peace and order: restored.
But Problem #6, the problem of the problems, that had grown in
proportion out of simple neglect. Because Alan had trashed a lot of
time for #5. All the time he had.

The trouble with the messages was that they
didn't stop. They were out on the telephones pro-creating. For
every one Alan answered, two more would take its place, delivered
by some creep clerk, some oily eyed operator.

And then there were the interruptions. Of
course there were, in this imperfect place. People were forming
several single file lines:

"Say Alan, since Bleecker said to ask
you--"

"Since Bleecker's not here--"

"Since he told me--"

"Since you're the guy--"

And then there were all the others. All the
ones who suddenly wanted to know how Susan was doing. Suddenly
wanted to know how Eugene was doing. Suddenly wanted to know if
Alan saw the game last night; if Alan could recommend a dependable
dentist; if Alan wanted to hear about that trip to the shore; if
Alan ever noticed how reliable pants were, how in all the times you
bent over they never really tore apart at the ass; if Alan had
heard the one about the nun, the rabbi, and the severely dehydrated
oncologist, oh he hadn't, well sit back and listen close brother,
'cause it's a doozy...

And then came the real bums -- men in
handcuffs, dopes who had turned themselves in.