The Life of Hope (36 page)

“Just don’t feel much like talking,” the potbelly mumbled.

“Oh.”

“Me neither,” admitted Big Bernie.

I realized, with a certain amount of disbelief, that the Bernies were asking me to leave. I turned away, but knew that it wasn’t that easy. “Bernie,” I said, “Jonathon died.”

“That was a stupit thing for him to do, wasn’t it?”

Little Bernie added a snicker and a sardonic, “Shit.”

“Well, you know, I was the Contactee, that’s all. See you around.”

Bernie seemed to soften. “It’s rough being a Contactee,” he said. “I’m not looking forward to it at all.”

“Me neither,” put in his potbelly.

“I’ll buy you a drink,” Big Bernie decided. “We’ll drink a drink to Jonathon. He was a good guy. Owed me about ten thousand bucks. Hey, Ted.” Big Bernie waved his pudgy index finger in the air. “More martoonis and shit.”

“Is it your wife?” I asked quietly.

“Is what my wife?”

“Is your wife ill?”

“Not as far as I know. My wife lives in Bolivia with a guy named, get this, Chichi.”

I nodded knowingly. “Mine’s taken up with someone named Helmut.”

When the drinks came Bernie threw a few bills in Teddy’s direction. “Keep it.”

Teddy bowed subserviently. “Thank you, Mr. Updike.”

Little Bernie muttered, “Grovel, dog” and was hushed by Big Bernie.

“How’s business?” I asked.

“Business is business,” said Bernie, sticking his fingers into his drink to retrieve the olive. “As long as there’s fish, people will try to catch ’em. So, okay, here’s to Jonathon. He was a good guy. He used to say a poem about when he was gonna be dead. It went, um …

“ ‘Nor shady cyprus tree,’ twat-face,” corrected Little Bernie. “Right,” agreed Big Bernie, and then he proceeded. “Um …

His stomach finished it for him. “ ‘If thou wilt, remember. And if thou wilt, forget.’ ”

“I know the poem,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was such a big hit in barrooms.”

“Jon-Jon used to talk about dying sometimes,” said Big Bernie, “on account of …” He fell abruptly silent, biting his lip. After a few seconds Bernie pointed at his stomach and whispered to me, “Little Bernie has cancer.”

“I don’t have cancer!” countered the belly. “
You
got it! How many times do I have to tell you?”

Big Bernie humored his stomach gently. “Whatever you say, Little Bernie.” He winked at me through his sunglasses.

“That’s why you’re bald,” I realized.

“I take the Little Bern to get his radiation treatments,” said Bernie, taking off his four-dollar toupee to demonstrate his gleaming bald pate, “and what happens? All my hair falls out.” Big Bernie giggled glumly. “It’s not fair, but hey, who said anything was fair?”

“True,” agreed his stomach.

“Let’s get pissed,” I suggested urgently.

“Now there,” said Little Bernie, “is a novel idea.”

Gretel Dekeyser stood on some rocks, her head tilted backward so that her face could be slapped by the sun. Gretel was naked. Joseph Benton Hope, standing across the water and angling for pickerel, studied her body with some slight interest. Gretel’s body was teenaged; swelling breasts and hips hung on ribcages, elbows and slightly bowed legs. Joseph felt a tug on the end of his line, so he took his eyes off the young woman and fastened them to his rod-tip. The fish, apparently, was gone away; Joseph sighed and raised his eyes again to the rocks across the way. Gretel had turned around so that J. B. Hope could see her backside. Joseph loved the geometry of buttocks, he loved their fleshy simplicity. Gretel’s other end was small, the cheeks hung rather low. Joseph wondered if his bait had been stolen. He raised his pole, flipped some line about the end, and saw his minnow wriggling. He sat it back in the water.

Now Gretel decided to go for a swim. She held her nose and jumped from the rock, her body twisted awkwardly and shattering the surface of the water. Gretel and Hope were separated by some fifty yards of lake, but Joseph was still irritated, sure that the little girl would put the fishes off their feed. Remarkably, Hope felt a nibble at the same moment, so he pulled skyward, setting the hook, and flipped a little fish onto the ground behind him.

He heard Gretel’s voice, “Too schmull.”

“You’re too small,” Hope croaked. Joseph took the hook out of the fish’s mouth and looked at his catch. Joseph pretended he was judging its size, but secretly he was simply admiring the fish, the coolness of its skin, the mystery of the seemingly blind eyes. Hope returned the fish to the water.

Gretel climbed out of the lake and fluffed water out of her hair. Gretel’s hair was a dull but healthy blond, the color of wheat. Joseph watched her breasts bounce. Gretel’s nipples were extraordinarily small, and very dark given her fair Dutch coloring. Hope was reminded of something, but he knew not what.

Gretel lay down, on her stomach, her little rump presented to the sun for bronzing. Hope wandered over to his bait-bucket and grabbed a minnow. The fish writhed desperately, trapped by Hope’s bent fingers. Joseph ran his hook through the minnow’s back and then tossed it into the water. He looked down and saw Gretel roll over, her legs unfolding, revealing all. Gretel’s genitalia were large and frightening. Hope concentrated on his fishing.

This was the first time Gretel had come so close, but she was invariably near the water when Hope went fishing. She never wore any clothes. When Hope saw Gretel he often recalled days from years ago, when the Perfectionists would go about naked. In those days, Hope recalled, they were indeed Perfect. He conjured mental images of Mary Carter De-La-Noy, Cairine McDiarmid, Abigal Skinner and Polyphilia Drinkwater. Young and perfect. Now, Polyphilia was wasted and shriveled, ghostly rattling bones; Abigal was fat, her breasts hanging down almost to her waist. Mary De-la-Noy was still pretty, but in a hard, chiseled way; and Cairine was dead, mauled by a bear, and Joseph often wondered whether she was worse or better served by nature than the others. Hope looked at Gretel Dekeyser. She was touching her own breasts.

“The left,” said J. B. Hope, even though he knew that Gretel, like the other Dutch, spoke only a few words of English and understood less, “is the site of the propagative spirit, while the right houses the amative soul.” Joseph felt suddenly giddy. He stumbled a couple of feet, dropping his fishing pole, and sat
down beside Gretel. The world was suddenly made up of old sea charts and alchemistical formulae. Joseph Hope laughed. “What could be simpler?”

“Hmm,” Gretel purred, agreeing. Gretel took Hope’s hand and pulled it on to her chest. Her nipple was erect, hard as a pebble. The sea charts disappeared, eaten away by emptiness.

“The amative soul,” Hope continued, “is, in my opinion, almost universally undernutritioned.”

Gretel moved Hope’s hand to her other tit. Joseph remarked to himself that this breast was slightly smaller. Gretel took one of her own hands and placed it over her mound.

Hope wanted to tell her about phrenological sites, how they connected hematically with her intromittent organ. He opened his mouth and began to weep.

The tears alarmed Gretel, and she made a motion to sit up. Hope pushed her back roughly, and Gretel was still. Hope worked at his trouser stays, and soon his root was free, standing out of his heavy, black pants. Gretel touched her fingers to it, and Joseph brushed them away. Tears spilled from Hope’s eyes onto the head of his penis.

Joseph Benton Hope turned Gretel Dekeyser over and pulled her up onto elbows and knees. Hope noticed that her little breasts, tugged earthward by gravity, long and thin like a bitch’s, were off-putting. Hope drove himself into Gretel’s boyish haunches and was done not many minutes later. Then he lay on his back and gazed into the sky, which was empty. It was empty of clouds and alchemistical formulae.

I managed to get very drunk. Note I say, “I managed” as if getting drunk was somehow irk- or ugglesome. It was, of course,
rather facile. In two hours I toppled from my barstool in The Willing Mind, thereby setting up Little Bernie, who delivered this old zinger: “Well, at least he knows when he’s had enough!”

I flipped about like a fish in the bottom of a canoe, and it may have been this piscatorial activity that gave me the following idea. “Hey! I think I’ll go buy me a Hoper—a real Hoper, mind you, not one of the tourist variety—and then go fishing for—bum
bum
bum
bum
 …”

“Ol’ Mossback?” guessed Big Bernie.

“Right first pop out of the box! Ol’ Mossback, he of the silvery eyes and tongue!”

Teddy, the dwarf bartender, was eyeing me with suspicion. “Aren’t you a little drunk for fishing?”

“Hey!” I shrieked. “You sounded just like Elschpett!” When one is intoxicated, “Elspeth” is quite a mouthful. I contrived to climb to my feet. “Fare thee well!” I saluted them. I was for some reason under the impression that a war was being fought outside the door. My leave-taking was courageous and beautiful; it brought a lump to my throat. I charged, full tilt and wobbly, into the streets of Hope.

I allowed myself the following hallucination. (Some portion of my mind had gone into the Hallucination Production biz, and was constantly pitching one or another of the products to the rest of my sensibilities. We went for this one.) It was a hundred-odd years ago, and The Willing Mind was a Fourieristic phalanstery, and the road was dirt and rocks, and women floated about, naked and beautiful. Polyphilia Drinkwater drifted near, and I saw how foolish I’d been to think that she and Mona looked alike. Polly was more delicate and much fairer. Cairine McDiarmid marched by, her freckled breasts pumping like a red fire engine. Mary Carter De-la-Noy stood off to one side, and her bosom was pitching. It was awesome, Mary’s bosom-pitching was. And finally I saw Abigal Skinner, a heavy, splay-footed woman who none the less possessed certain charms, not the least of which was a rear end that was a magnificent globe, a world of flesh.

I ran into one of the Elmer Fudd-hatted geezers that seemed to make up half of Hope’s population. He shook a gnarled, liver-spotted
fist, advising me, “Keep your mind on your business.”

Sound and sage advice, I thought. I went to Edgar’s Bait, Tackle and Taxidermy.

“Big Guy!” said Edgar, and then he trained his evil black eyes on me. “Big Guy,” he said, “you been drinking.”

Edgar, I recalled, was AA and therefore skilled at detecting drunkards. That, and the fact that I’d fallen on my face as soon as I entered his shop, trip-wired by invisible hobgoblins.

“I feel lucky, Edgar! Real lucky!” My nose, I noticed, was bleeding profusely. “So I am going to purchase one HOPER, and note that I do not want one of those whatever it was you fobbed off on Benson. Furthermore, Edgar, if that’s really your name, I am willing to pay up to six dollars and eighty-three cents for the Real McCoy.”

Edgar reached below the counter and produced a Hoper. A beauty.

“Wow!” I exclaimed, leaping to my feet.

“That is not
a
Hoper,” said Edgar, gingerly touching the gleaming treble-hook. “This is
the
Hoper.”

I took it into my hands. The Hoper was lovingly carved from fine wood. It was a yellow that put the sun to shame. This Hoper didn’t remind me of either a finger or a penis; instead, it looked like something that a huge, monstrous fish would love to eat.

“Who made this?” I demanded in a whisper.

“Isaiah. While he was in prison.”

“Isaiah? Why? He loved Ol’ Mossback.”

“He thought it might come in handy someday.” Edgar stared at me intently. “I guess you could have it.”

“Six dollars and eighty-three cents?” I offered, trying ineffectually to jam my fingers into my jeans pockets.

Edgar waved his huge hand in my face. “It’s on the house,” he said, and then he laughed. “ ’Least, it’s on the Fourieristic Phalanstery.”

I turned to leave, but ended up spinning a complete 360 degree circle because a) I lost control and b) I had my responsibilities as Contactee. “By the way, Jonathon Whitecrow …”

“Who?”

“Jonathon Whitecrow.”

“Don’t know the name, Big Guy.”

“Come on! The old, gay Indian? ‘Visions’ and such like?”

Edgar moved his mountainous shoulders in bafflement.

“Anyway, he died.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Yeppers,” I nodded. “He was a very good friend of mine. He was approximately 174 years old. The good die young.” I left Edgar’s Bait, Tackle and Taxidermy.

I had another hallucination. George Quinton materialized in front of me on the sidewalk. I walked squarely into him, squashing my face against his lower stomach. George Quinton said, “Sowwy!” and then vanished, leaving behind a huge hole in the fabric of the universe.

“Am I ever gunned!” I bellowed at God.

In retrospect, I’m glad I did this. I sincerely believe that my bellow attracted God’s attention; He looked down from the clouds just in time to see me jump on a little blue moped. “Oy,” muttered God, and His mighty hand guided me safely home.

As soon as I got back to the homestead, I realized that I was sobering up, or at least parts of me were—my great toes for example. To catch Ol’ Mossback it was necessary that I be as drunk as possible (to lower my body temperature) so I raided the liquor cabinet, discovering a bottle of tequila, my personal favorite. And then I noticed that my poor heart had become disattached from the cosmos, so I decided to listen to the “Vocalise.” I started the turntable running, bounced the needle off the opening bars, and soon the night was magical.