The New and Improved Romie Futch (32 page)

At last, I unburdened myself. Let it all spill out in drunken convulsive heaves: Helen and her silver-fox paramour; Hogzilla, the monster who'd maimed me for life; Scovel Boughknight and his recombinant
rats; Jarvis Riddle's mysterious ravings; and the recent appearance of two FDA agents, who'd invaded my house like TV goons.

Trippy winced and emoted, but he didn't seem surprised by any of it.

“The world is a surreal clusterfuck.” He sighed.

And then we hashed it out until well past midnight, soaring into the old high talk again, ascending into the heady altitudes of philosophical abstraction and tumbling into the marshlands of scatological wit. We soon found ourselves talking Art with a capital
A
, plotting an elaborate collaboration, an animatronic Hogzilla diorama with original music composed by Ernest L. Jeffords, aka Trippy J.

“Man,” said Trippy, “I can hear the overture now, a slow hog trot thickening into thunderous hooves.”

“Killer,” I said. “And when that bastard takes flight, some kind of cosmic whoosh, a leap into something interstellar.”

“Teleportation to Saturn via Sun Ra.” Trippy tapped on the tabletop. “A dash of Harry Partch, all cloud-chamber bowls and harmonic canons. A hint of Miles Davis,
Bitches Brew
.”

“And a full range of porcine sounds: grunts, squeals, roars.”

“You on it, dog. I'm thinking field recordings,” said Trippy. “Combined with eerie electronica, à la Delia Derbyshire. Girl did the theme for
Doctor Who
.”

We schemed deep into the night, plotting the collaboration of the century, thinking Trippy could hang at my place while we worked it all out. We switched from beer to liquor and enjoyed a joint, worked our way through three plates of microwave nachos, dished on the literary traditions of epic beast slaying, the epistemology of monsters, the deconstructable polarities of science and sci-fi.

We found ourselves picking at corn-chip crumbs in the wee hours, surrounded by crushed cans—red-eyed, raspy-voiced, clawing at epiphanies that were always an inch out of reach.

“You think we can change the world with art?” Trippy said quietly.

“I don't know,” I said, “but at least we can try.”

“Always already commodified.” Trippy sighed. “And I don't know, maybe art versus action is a false dichotomy, but I still got a mind to track down those motherfuckers and—”

“What? What can we do?”

“I don't know, Romie. Let me sleep on that. My brain will be more functional tomorrow.”

My friend stood up. We embraced again, a quick manly pounding of backs, and then I led him back to the old bedroom that Helen and I had once shared, hooked him up with sheets and a blanket, thinking we could get started on our masterpiece the following morning.

Trippy was the closest thing to a brother that I had, both of us mutants with newfangled minds. And as I fell asleep on the couch, I envisioned a golden era of collaboration, evenings spent pursuing our artistic visions, dallying in the kitchen with beers in our fists, our eyes aflame with the feverish speculation of visionaries.

•  •

The next morning I made grits and eggs with bacon to vanquish our hangovers, took two Excedrins, opened the blinds, and braved the sun. I tiptoed around in sock feet lest I waken my slumbering friend. My ancient coffeemaker gasped. Thick-cut pork belly crackled cheerily. And dust motes sparkled in the sunny air.

After a few gulps of coffee, I almost felt like singing. Thought I might take Trippy down to the swamp, introduce him to the great pink beast; maybe we could take out the monster together. But when eleven o'clock rolled around, I could no longer ignore the free-fall tug in my gut. I went back to the bedroom and found
Trippy's rumpled nest, proof of a restless night, the window wide open.

I shot him a couple of texts, suspecting that he'd ditched his phone again. But still, I kept at it all day, firing scraps of impotent language, volleying useless signifiers into the void.

•  •

I kept texting Trippy over the next week, kept my ears pricked for invading voices, though I refused to cloak my skull in a stainless-steel dome. I distracted myself with HogWild.com and fanatically consulted online lunar charts.

According to the charts, the moon would ripen on Tuesday at 2:36 PM, which meant that Hogzilla would be in homing mode, casting his snout toward GenExcel and rooting his way back toward his origins—unless Jarvis Riddle was full of shit.

My firearm of choice, a Savage .270 Winchester, sat dead center in the gun cabinet, its deep mahogany grain a shade richer than that of its peers. I'd oiled the gun and cleaned its barrel and scope. I'd loaded it up with a four-round stainless magazine. I'd fortified the old Iron Maiden flask I'd bought in a head shop back in high school. It featured the mug of the band's mascot, Eddie—a ripped, futuristic zombie, his skinless muscles pulsing with fury, his rotted face wrenched open with a fuck-you snarl.

FOURTEEN

Tuesday was a milky winter day in the midforties, the sun a wan smear in the sky. My phantom pinkie finger throbbed from the chill. Spectral birds cawed in the forest fog. I'd started my hike from Jarvis Riddle's abandoned campsite. On the lookout for a wallow, I'd meandered down a creek bed and found myself on boggy ground, cold ooze trickling into my leaky left boot. Stooping to inspect it, I caught a flicker of movement in the brush. A gangly human being darted behind a puny clump of fetterbush. I aimed my gun right at him, heard a nervous cough, the brisk click of a handgun safety release. We stood poised, intent on mutual destruction. A woodpecker was going at it somewhere, tapping for a spot of rot.

The hiding man couldn't keep still. His ridiculous hat—a green felt toque with a feather that might be dubbed, by a catalog,
the fairy-tale woodsman's cap
—bobbed above the bracken. When he moved again, I recognized his fox-like mug, his thin, reptilian lips. The FDA agent who'd invaded my home a week ago wore a red plaid shirt, a sweater of bright evergreen. Behind him was his seal-like companion, peering at me through binoculars.

I wondered if they'd been following me or if I'd just happened to stumble upon them out in the bush, where they were chasing recombinant rats and other unholy species from GenExcel. I had the eerie feeling I'd blink and see them melting back into vapor. But they stood their ground, gun hoisted and ready to blast.

When a billow of fog rose from the creek bed, I darted down a side trail and scrambled over a piney hill. At the base of an uprooted tree, I found a hollow to crouch in. I practiced my circular breathing. I swiped creeping things from my neck and shifted my weight from leg to leg to ward off cramps. My ears pricked, catching birdcalls, soughing leaves, and finally, the splash of gauche boots in the creek bed. The buffoons were scampering away from me, north toward Scovel Boughknight's double-wide. I wondered if they'd already questioned the poor man, if they'd break into his house now, looking for me. I wondered if Scovel would find them sitting smugly at the bar in his sad bachelor's kitchenette.

•  •

Deep in the swamp, a mile south of GenExcel, I found it, the quintessential hog wallow, a basin of rich red mud swathed in clouds of primeval mist. The clay-and-sand wallow, big enough for a triceratops to roll in, was littered with telltale turds. I felt myself go light with fear—feet and hands numb, a sensation of bodily buoyance—as I picked up something beyond the sense of smell.

I was ominously close to the beast's musky lair, that intimate indentation where the pig lay down to dream his murderous dreams. Not far from the wallow, I found slash pines ringed with mud where the hog had rubbed his mammoth flanks. I saw tusk gashes in tree trunks, vast expanses of rooted ground, huge swathes of
forest floor overturned, chunks of chewed wood strewn higgledy-piggledy. I found a scattering of ten-inch hog tracks, cloven hooves pressed deep into the mud. And I thought I could make out a hog trail, tunneling into thicker cover.

Upon closer inspection I discovered, tucked behind a tupelo, an ancient deer stand teetering up in the pine boughs. I couldn't resist the boyish urge to climb the ladder that was nailed to one of the tree trunks.

Pressing the floorboards for signs of rot, I crawled into the stand. A square, rough-plank box with a rectangle of lookout window, the stand overlooked the wallow, offering the perfect shot should Hogzilla come snarling forth in a whirlwind of foam and rage. As a gust of wind blew through the structure, its old wood creaked, and I recalled tree houses from my childhood. Chickadees chittered in the boughs. And then a raw human voice jumped out of the forest texture like a loose thread.

I recognized Chip Watts's nasal whine before I saw Jarvis Riddle staggering across a clearing with a nicotine inhaler in his mouth. Chip was right behind him, toting a .338 Win Mag in a sling, waving a camo hat in one hand while tearing at his hairdo with the other.

“I'm on to your ass, Jarvis. You're leading me on a wild-goose chase 'cause I'm paying you by the hour.”

“Takes patience to track a boar, Chip, and how many times I got to tell you to quit yelling?”

“I'm beginning to wonder if Hogzilla's real.”

“You are, huh? Then check out these tracks.”

Chip squatted to take a look.

“Holy shit. Look at that toe spread. Even a charging five-hundred-pounder ain't gonna leave that kind of impression. Sure you're not scamming me, Jarvis?”

“You think I got the wherewithal to mark up the swamp with fake boar tracks?”

“Maybe. You got lots of time on your hands.”

“Smell that hog scat?”

“I don't smell nothing.”

“Except your own cologne, insect repellent, and hair spray. How many times did I tell you not to come out here reeking?”

“I put on some cover scent, as you advised.”

“That won't do squat if you stink to high heaven of civilization. Better pick your tree.”

“What you mean pick my tree?” boomed Chip.

“I mean,” rasped Jarvis, “your ass better not hesitate for a millisecond if that bastard comes charging through here. Now, don't say another word. Holy motherfucking Jesus! You smell that?”

“Smell what?”

Straight from hell's latrine, the shit-cheese stench of wild boar hit my nostrils, flushing my brain with corticotropin and jump-starting my rickety heart. Before I could blink, the creature itself materialized: a ton of grunting muscle, jaws popping the biggest cutters in the history of hogdom. The razorback spit enough foam to fill an industrial sink. And there they were: the famed wings, stunted and bald, smooth like the patagia of a bat, and flapping in a useless fit that sure as hell wasn't flight. In a flash, the wings vanished—tucked, I gathered, into some nifty dorsal niche. Two seconds later, the hog was bounding full throttle toward Jarvis and Chip.

I aimed my piece and fired a full clip. Though my bullets did little more than knock some dried mud off Hogzilla's hide, the pig roared and veered leftward into brush.

“What the hell?” shouted Chip, scanning the treetops for hidden assassins.

“Up here!” I yelled.

As Jarvis Riddle tugged him toward the deer stand, Chip dropped his rifle. With a dopey look on his face, he stooped to fetch his Win Mag.

“Fuck the rifle,” yelled Jarvis, “climb up this goddamn ladder.”

The old forest bum was already halfway up when the sound of pounding hooves once again disturbed the woodland peace. Meanwhile, Chip clawed at a lower ladder rung, smiling his dreamy fool's smile.

“Climb, you idiot!” hissed Jarvis.

Chip mounted the first few rungs. He'd made it a third of the way up when Hogzilla rammed into the tree trunk on which the ladder was nailed, bashing it with his tusks and upsetting Chip's foothold. My old friend dangled by his hands for a few ominous seconds before stepping back onto the ladder. At last, a shudder of realization seized him, and he scooted on up with every ounce of energy his old athlete's body had left in it.

•  •

“Let's draw straws to see who gets eaten,” I said, and Jarvis laughed—a rich croupous chortle—and then spat a dark loogie out into the abyss below. Jarvis took another suck of his nicotine inhaler, then slipped the device back into the pocket of his grubby raincoat, a coat of many colors—sun-faded in spots, stained in others, tinted with bold streaks of its original royal blue.

We'd been treed for some twenty hours by Hogzilla, who at that very moment was tusk-battering one of the pine trunks supporting our deer stand and foaming like a broken washing machine, snorting and rooting and making a general display of his fierceness. At first, every jolt of the thousand-pound feral striking one of the four trees that upheld our little box made us double over in fright. By
now, we'd almost gotten used to Hogzilla's ruckus—but not to his stench, which tainted every molecule of the air we breathed.

Between the three of us, we had two half-empty flasks, three canteens boasting various quantities of water, and a sprinkling of odd pharmaceuticals that Jarvis had scored from a medical-park dumpster. Although I possessed a half-eaten bag of SunChips in my rucksack, I kept this knowledge to myself.

Neither my Oracle3 nor Chip's Oracle6 would pick up a signal, so we turned off our phones to save our batteries. We'd gotten little sleep the night before, enduring a cold, damp stretch of darkness complicated by waste-disposal dilemmas and Jarvis's apocalyptic muttering. Deep in the night I thought I heard a few bleeps in my head:
Looks like he's off-grid
, said a mellifluous manly voice.
Ah, there's a flash. Damn, we're losing it
. The voice lapsed into a purr of static and faded away.

I remembered what Trippy had said about heading out to the boondocks to escape the Center's wireless web, which probably depended on an intricate combo of satellites and cell-phone towers. And we were definitely in the boondocks, way out, with nobody in earshot and a fiendish hog rampaging below.