Yanks

conclusion

by Byron Bailey

Table of Contents
Part 2 appears
in this issue.

I thrashed, feeling like I would split down the middle from the sound. Yank vehicles! I staggered to HOR, my fingers trembling, slammed a feeble fist into the hood.

The hood flew open on its own. My instincts were quick. I threw myself to the ground. The rusty deck felt cold against my belly. The captain wasn’t so lucky. I could see his vacant gaze. An emptiness blossomed inside of me. Poor bastard. I didn’t even know his name, probably never would.

Suddenly the wailing stopped to be replaced by silence. It wasn’t a natural silence with waves in the background, mayhaps the distant squawk of a gull. Instead, the silence was total like nothing else mattered, not the sea, not the sky, certainly not some idiot from Tennessee. I closed my eyes — the common delusion that the removal of one sense strengthened the others — and tried to hear anything. Nothing. Not even the raspiness of my breath. It was an arrogant silence that made shivers crawl up my spine. Maybe the silence’s arrogance was justified in its totality.

I opened my eyes again. HOR was gone. So was the sea and the sky and everything in between. Nothing but the ship surrounded by endless glowing violet. It was a sickening dark violet that made my stomach queasy with its constant yet almost imperceptible shimmering.

“Welcome to my humble conception.” The voice oozed oil. I recognized it immediately. Yank used car dealer.

“Where are you,” I screamed. “I want my twenty-five bucks back.”

“I’m in the engine room. Come and visit me. We can discuss your refund. And while we’re at it, I have another car you might be interested in. Only ten dollars for such a loyal customer as yourself.”

“Drink bad whiskey,” It wasn’t the most original thing to say but nothing else quite captured my sentiments.

“Are you sure you won’t come see me? We could have a most interesting conversation. I bet that you have a lot you want to say to me.”

Traps. Yank used car dealers were full of them. There was no way in the entire Yank North that I was going into that engine room. My mother wasn’t drinking no shine when I was conceived.

“Come on and drop by. I won’t bite.”

I stared beyond the rails, tried to hold back the queasiness from looking at all that violet. I craned my neck overboard, looked down hoping to see water. Once again only violet. Weirdness probably happened a lot around Yank used car dealers — the slimy scum-slurping son’s of polecats! But this violet thing was beyond Yank weird. It was downright strange. Ultra-yank maybe like Boston?

“You better hurry and get down here. Unpleasant consequences. You know what they are? They’re the bullets that rip into your flesh when you fail to live up to your responsibilities. If you don’t get up here quick, then a few of those unpleasant consequences are going to start ripping into you.”

Hearing a Yank used car dealer spouting off about responsibility made me want to upchuck. What did any Yank, let alone a used car dealer know about responsibility? Nothing! Absolutely nothing.

“You must live up to your responsibilities,” that pope fellow said.

I rubbed my eyes a few times hoping to dispel the image. It wouldn’t go away. I wasn’t in Boston anymore. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

The pope fellow’s weathered face bunched up like he was about to pounce. “I am dead. It’s all your fault. Blessed Virgin, I should throttle you. Make you say a million Hail Marys. Have mercy on your soul. Go to the engine room. Live up to your responsibility.” He chanted to me in a high-pitched singsong voice.

The words of the pope fellow didn’t mean anything to me. As a loyal Southern Baptist, I knew all about the Popish plot, how the Catholics and the Jews were conniving together to take over the world. Or was it the Arabs and Hindus? Mormons and Gypsies? Well, someone somewhere was conniving with someone else to take over the world and that Pope fellow probably knew a whole lot about it.

“Walk the path of righteousness. Come with me to the engine room and repent, oh ye sinner.”

I laughed in the pope fellow’s face. It wasn’t the most well-mannered action to do. I could have said, “Drop dead, your highness,” or something similar but he was still the pope, not accustomed to people talking to him all regular-like. Maybe he would explode. I didn’t know. But I always heard how the pope fellow had such a wonderful sense of humor. Therefore I laughed.

“Are you mocking me, boy? You dare! You who killed me. You who said that your car was demon-possessed. You have the effrontery to mock me! How dare you!”

He grabbed me by the ear and pulled. “Off to the engine room with you.”

I grabbed the pope fellow by the wrist and twisted, breaking his hold on my ear. “I ain’t going to no engine room so leave me alone.”

Uncle Bart suddenly stood beside me, grabbed my shoulder. “You are going to the engine room, nephew.”

I couldn’t argue with Uncle Bart, not with family. Therefore I kicked him in the shin hard, scraping the side of my shoes against the bone. He just glared and tightened his grip on my shoulder. “You’re going to the engine room.”

I kicked him again. Then I started punching him in the face. He looked like my uncle, talked like my uncle, and even had hands that left greasy stains on my shoulder like my uncle. But he wasn’t my uncle, at least not the Uncle Bart I knew. My uncle was never that strong.

He pulled me towards the engine room, down a rusted flight of stairs that swayed precariously. “Live up to your responsibility like a real Grabinson.”

I clutched at the wall. Rusted metal never did provide much of a grip. Didn’t know why I expected it to now. My fingers slid impatiently across the wall as Uncle Bart took another inexorable step forward. The pope fellow walked behind him, a stupid grin on his face as he gave me a bony wave of his arm. Beyond the pope stretched a long line of others, men, woman with stern lips that made my spine shrink. I knew them all, the victims of HOR.

I didn’t know how such a tiny corridor could hold so many people and not feel crowded. The air stung me with its coldness, not at all like air that had been warmed by two hundred and more lungs.

“We’re here,” Uncle Bart said. “Time to go in.”

He opened the door, pushed me in. Instinctively, I shut my eyes tight.

“Welcome,” the used car dealer said. I couldn’t see him but that oily voice like sour honey, was unmistakable. “You should open your eyes when I’m speaking to you. Your mother should have brought you up a little better mannered.”

I kept my eyes closed.

“No matter. You’ll open them eventually and when you do, you’ll see reason.”

“I don’t think there’s any reason in this room.”

“We’re not in a room. You should open your eyes and find out. But you’re too smart for that, aren’t you? Well, just keep your eyes closed. Your people are very proficient at reveling in ignorance.”

“I think I will.”

“I’m sure. In a way, I should probably thank you. My parents couldn’t handle living here. Too much for their systems to overcome.”

“Oh, our Southern germs got the better of your parents. Ain’t that a shame.”

“Phaa! I‘m not talking about pathetic little microbes that cause your little diseases that should be crushed under any reasonable sentience. I’m talking about the bigger threats. The IRS. Country music. Mandatory voluntary service. Sewage spills. Bus schedules. All those insidious pockets of irrationality that your people manage to endure without collapsing in a husk of blathering idiocy.”

“It’s called life. The thing you took away from all those people.” I always knew them Yanks lived in a different world. Sure, they could march south and kill a bunch of decent folk without loosing their winning Yank smile — blast and sizzle-tar Sherman! But the moment they had to step into the real world, they belly-upped and died.

“I didn’t take away their lives. I only took away the manner in which they gave meaning to the meaningless and incorporated it into my own being. After I did that, they killed themselves.”

It was just like a Yank to take and take and take and take and when the taking got so bad that the honest citizen sliced a wrist, to then blame the citizen.

“I have over seven hundred ways of dealing with the nonsensical. An impressive number, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not really.” Bragging bastard.

“You are wise not to be impressed. Seven hundred sounds like a lot but almost five hundred of those come from my mother’s contribution. I know she meant well, wanting me to be able to survive comfortably in the water. This planet, after all, is more covered by it than not. To put it bluntly, though, beaching myself and then waiting for the sun to bake me to death just might not be the most effective strategy — even for an obese sea mammal on the verge of extinction. At least I know what to do when the sharks start making trouble.”

“Ain’t you special.” Just like an arrogant Yank puffed up on his own hot air to brag about what his parents done. A real man talks about what he himself has done.

“Yes, I am special, thanks to my father’s contribution and you.”

“Thanks,” I said, stifling the urge to throttle him.

“Don’t mention it. You truly do deserve a great deal of credit for making me who I am. Think of it. I have the pope inside of me. I have forty-seven police officers. I have many ways to cope. My father was very wise to sell his contribution to you. I am going to honor him by taking full advantage of the new life he has given me. A new life and a new planet for the taking, isn’t that how the saying goes?”

Now I remembered! It was the Yanks who were conniving to take over the world. I should have known.

“I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m not all that special. Yes, I do have many ways to cope. But actually, all the effective methods are really nothing more than a variation of one wonderful theme. I’m amazed my parents were unable to figure it out.”

“That’s because your parents were stupid.” I figured he needed a little of the air squeezed out of him with all that cock-a-doodling about his parents.

“No. Not really. Maybe they’re a little dense but that’s just because they lack the imagination to envision the irrational. What rational being would do as your people have? Utterly amazing! You take something insignificant and mentally elevate it to a level where all experience is filtered through the elevated object, thereby giving the irrational the illusion of rationality.”

When a Yank started speaking all complicated and fancy-like, it was time to hold on to your wallet and run. Too bad I didn’t have anywhere to run.

“Thanks to you, I have a police officer inside of me who interpreted existence exclusively through his favorite high school basketball team: the Heathland High Headhunters. It’s pathetic but it worked for him. When he was doing well and the Headhunters weren’t, it was because the team was sacrificing itself for him. If he wasn’t doing well, it was because the team wasn’t doing well. I don’t know what he would have thought if he was doing well and the team was doing well because frankly, the Headhunters never did well.”

Just like a Yank blathering about sports when there were important issues to be resolved. I wished I had a baseball bat so that I could homerun his head.

“Anything can give meaning to the meaningless. Insane ramblings on the nature of the universe. A pretty face. And my personal favorite, cherry icecream with green mint sparkles. I can certainly see how the irrational might make a little sense after a few scoops of that! I am very curious. What is the thing that gives your life meaning? I will be complete when I know. Now open your eyes.”

“Drop dead.”

“I will be very disappointed if you’re one of those bible pounders. I’d expect something a little more original out of someone who has endured what you have. Come on. Open those eyes and tell me what you have inside of you.”

“It’s responsibility,” I said. “There. I done told you. Now I’m going to show you.” I lunged towards the voice, felt my fingers touch rubbery flesh.

The rubbery flesh touched back with a vengeance. Rib crunching blows landed against my side, knocked the air clean out of me. I tried to punch back, felt my fists flail feebly against flaccidness. A cackling Yank laughter sent an icy tremor up my spine. Then I felt his fingers prying at my eyelids.

I clutched at his fingers, strained to pry them away. I wasn’t opening my eyes! A finger slid pass the eyelid, touched my eyeball. I shook my head fiercely. A fingernail scraped across my eyeball then the finger was out. Suddenly my hands felt a length of fabric. I clutched and then pulled.

“Ghaaaaaghaaaaa.” It was a beautiful sound.

I pulled harder.

“Ghaaaaaaagh.”

The thrashing began, wild like a trapped bobcat hissing and spitting for its life, its claws shredding anything and everything in reach. Suddenly, I found myself thrown forward. A slackness came to the length of fabric.

“You fool,” the Yank hissed.

I looped the length of fabric around my hand a few times and lunged backwards with all of my strength. I could taste blood dripping into my mouth. Suddenly, I heard a satisfying crunch.

The water came rushing all around me, first in a cooling wave then a crushing wave. I opened my eyes, saw the blackest blue surrounding me. My lungs ached then burned. Then I saw a patch of lighter blue. I swam towards it. I longed to breath and quench the fire in my lungs. Then I broke surface and gulped air. The fire in my chest slowly died.

* * *

“We near ran you down,” the coast guard ensign said. “Didn’t even know you were there until you started waving that tie wrapped around your hand. That thing’s kind of hard to ignore, what with its bright red background and all those vomit green sparkles. Must be Italian or something.”

“Or something,” I said.

It didn’t take them long to figure out who I was. As soon as I touched shore, I found myself kissing pavement. A burly police officer read me my rights as another wrenched my arms behind my back and placed the handcuffs on.

They should have never gotten rid of the death penalty — damn Yanks! A man deserved to die when he had no purpose and I had no purpose, HOR gone and all that. My responsibility was over. I wasn’t accomplishing nothing in maximum security. The only excitement I ever got was the two times a week they let me out of my cell to take a shower. Even then I had those guards peeking in on me, never giving me a smidgen of privacy like I was some horrible criminal who killed a couple hundred people or something.

With all the time spent in my cell, I thought about everything. All them brookies growing fat in the creeks. All them glossy-lipped women in braless tanktops I would never meet. All them classes at the community college I would never take — bye bye basket weaving. When I was finished thinking about everything, I started thinking about nothing in particular. That was when I started thinking about what the Yank said about making the irrational seem rational.

A man can laugh for a very long time in prison and not have anyone ask him what’s so funny. I did have one guard look at me all anxious-like and ask if I needed to see a doctor, though.

When I stopped laughing, I savored the freedom of being able to choose my own way of dealing with the irrational. If I had a hankering to, I could fall on my hand and knees and start bawling to God. Ma would love it that I got all religious-like. But I knew that wasn’t me. Believing in a god wasn’t possible after HOR. Besides, the prison had so many different gods to chose from — not at all like back home — that I’d never be able to decide on one.

I needed a cause I could really believe in. Better food in the prison system? All the grass they were feeding me — salad they called it — needed fixing bad. What was wrong with decent, normal food. Pork jowls and grits? It was those damn Yanks trying to starve me by making me eat cow feed.

Then I realized that my responsibility wasn’t over. Sure, one Yank used car dealer might be dead. But there were others and their rules and regulations were everywhere. National testing standards. Fluoride in the drinking water. A national speeding limit. I stood up, my courage rising. I could fight to remove the ban on the death penalty!

Once again, my life made sense. Those Yanks would regret the day they ever put Bart Grabinson behind bars, yes they would. All I needed was a little research to get my bearings, scope out the enemy, that kind of thing.

“I need to get to the library,” I told a guard.

“Shut up and eat your salad. Library day isn’t until Wednesday.”

I could wait.