Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (7 page)

Mal himself is feeling no pain. “Pussies,” he says, trying to keep a straight face.

They all watch as the Snark of the Universe hobbles up to the podium–a white-haired old gentleman decked out in orange suspenders and a string tie under a wrinkled cream-colored suit. He looks like a Kentucky horse breeder gone to seed, or maybe Father Time on a bender. Wayne proposes a toast, all gobbledygook and smarmy good feelings.
Down the hatch
, thinks Mal. A waitress is there with another Imperious Blue Thunderfuck for him before he sets down the empty glass.
I’d like to Imperiously Thunderfuck her,
Mal thinks, even though she’s not all that good-looking–blubbery arms, greasy brown perm, a voice like a pelican. Doesn’t matter. Alcohol-fueled perversity is coursing through his veins. He has a partial boner going
“Hubba hubba….”

“Greetings, fellow Hoo-Hoos,” says the Snark of the Universe in a high-pitched, quavering voice. “Can you all hear me out there? Great. Let me start off by telling y’all that I come tonight bearing prophecies from the Seer of the House of Ancients….”

This guy sounds like somebody’s grandma riding a dildo
, thinks Mal, somewhat uncharitably.
And the Seer of the House of Ancients is probably some senile old fart who runs a True Value store down in Mississippi.

“The Seer tells me grand things are in store for the Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo in the coming year. Yes, very grand things. So be on your toes!”

This exhortation rouses the room to drunken cheers. Apparently those Imperious Blue Thunderfucks are having an effect beyond Mal’s immediate vicinity. “Show us your tits!” someone shouts. It’s unclear whether this request is directed at one of the waitresses or the Snark of the Universe. The latter nervously fingers a button on his shirt.

“Tonight, as you know,” the Snark bravely continues, “we’re initiating nine new members into the Fresno County Sub-Order of Hoo-Hoos. This is a very fine thing you young men are doing. You’ll be on the receiving-end of venerable mystic secrets that must never leave these premises. In fact, y’all must swear to never speak of anything that transpires between these four walls of the Ramada Inn’s very elegant Copacabana Room. Swear it upon the Slithy Tove, who will come to your house in the dead of night and stick its hollow, anteater-like tongue down your throat and suck out all your vital organs if you should so much as breathe of these forthcoming events. Swear it now, gentlemen.”

Mal swears to whatever-it-is, along with the rest of them.

“Excellent. I can tell you really mean it. The Slithy Tove is well-satisfied. We may now distribute the Sacred Jabberwocks. Assume your positions, men.”

The older members of the Hoo-Hoo Club form two straight lines of twenty-seven men each down the center aisle of the room. The waitresses enter from the sides with drink trays piled high with rubber crocodiles–or something like that. Vulcanized iguanas might also be a safe bet. Each man in line takes one of the spiky, flexible creatures from a tray and grasps it by the tail. Some of them experimentally swish the things through the air, like batters during a warm-up pitch.

“I don’t like the looks of this…” says Johnny Hoss.

“Oh crap,” says Mike.

“Initiates,” says the Snark of the Universe with enough sibilance to create a burst of feedback from his microphone, “it’s time to strip down to your undershorts.”

So they strip, knowing what’s in store for them. Mike is the first to run the gauntlet. The sound of all those rubber lizards hitting him is really something, almost deafening. Mike takes it like a gangly toddler–crying and drooling by the end of it, his Hanes athletic briefs bunched up in the crack of his red-smacked ass like a loose diaper. The other initiates follow him.

Some joker starts playing Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of A Thin Man” over the P.A. system. When Dylan sneers out the famous chorus line–
“…something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?”
–Mal, standing there in his Fruit-of-the-Looms, realizes with a shudder that in this case he’s Mister Jones. Maybe he’s always been Mister Jones. He hears something about having
contacts among the lumberjacks to get the facts when someone attacks your imagination.
He wonders:
Is that doped-up folksinger reading my frickin’ mind?

With a head full of Imperious Blue Thunderfucks, Mal finds himself suddenly open to the occult vitality of Bob Dylan’s lyrics. He wonders if there’s any way to shed his Mister Jonesness. He wants to get with it. Become a hep-cat. He wants to–
how do they say it?
–“Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Mal imagines himself smoking a fat cigar of marijuana in Haight-Ashbury, then balling some dirty little hippie chick on a beanbag chair in her patchouli-smelling Victorian attic. After his orgasm, she puts on a tie-dyed negligée and plays the harpsichord for him. Then he goes downstairs and finds the Black Panthers sitting around the kitchen table, making a bomb to blow up a bank or the home improvement section at Sears. He gives them some skin. They slap him high-fives. Mal says, “Who’s the man?” And the Black Panthers say, “You da man, Mal. You, babes. You is one funky-ass muthafucka….”

This tender reverie comes to an abrupt and intimidating end when someone gives Mal a shove. He staggers into the gauntlet and suffers a hail of blows from fifty-four flailing mini-dragons. He finds it oddly comforting, although he knows he’ll be showing some welts later. At least it sobers him up some–maybe too much. He suddenly feels like horking. It’s the smell of all that rubber. It’s expanding up his nostrils, assaulting his sinuses with the too-powerful stench of bicycle tires and new shower curtains. Eyes watering, saliva glands working overtime, Mal grabs Arnie Andersen by the lapels and croaks like a sea lion right into his face
.

Oh, it’s only the dry heaves
, thinks Mal. Nothing’s coming up. The other guys stop whacking him, anyway. No one wants to risk getting puked on.

“Holy cats! You okay there, Mal?” Arnie asks him. Just friendly concern–one guy to another.

“Sure,
yep
,” Mal says through a belch.

Then with a backwoods holler, Johnny Hoss leaps naked onto a group of Mal’s iguana-wielding tormentors. He sends them scattering like bowling pins. It looks like the start of a free-for-all–some wild-assed melee–but then Johnny hops back up on his feet and just stands there grinning, pleased with himself in the same way that a big dog seems pleased when roughhousing with a bunch of pups.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen…” the tremulous voice of the Snark of the Universe admonishes them from the podium. “Let’s all restrain ourselves for a moment. It’s time for the second phase of our hallowed initiation rite. Blindfolds, please!”

Mal, Mike, and Johnny all submit to being blindfolded, along with the other six initiates. Deprived of his sight, Mal feels dizzy, on the verge of passing out. He’s led into a small, warm room where he smells candles burning and hears voices echoing off the walls. He’s told to kneel. Some kind of chanting is taking place. To Mal’s ears, it sounds like a Catholic mass, but instead of Latin, the words all seem to be made-up by Lewis Carroll. Then the Snark of the Universe’s amplified voice rings out, reciting some mystical nonsense, a singsong incantation. Someone forces Mal to drink more of the Imperious Blue Thunderfuck–spiced this time with nutmeg and cinnamon. Then he’s told to stick out his tongue. Cold fingers pinch it and a slimy, hairy thing about the size of a slug is put into Mal’s mouth. He’s forced to swallow. Nearly gags. One last singsong magic spell follows, along with another jolt of Old Thunderfuck to wash the slimy thing down. Mal hears someone retching. He gets a whiff of the tomatoey tang of fresh vomit. Things are definitely getting weird.

The chanting stops. Mal hears people leaving the room. He wonders if he can take his blindfold off now. As if in answer, the Snark of the Universe says, “Our initiation ceremony is almost complete. Just ten more minutes and you’ll all be welcomed into the Vasty Eternal Brotherhood of Hoo-Hoos. But for these next ten minutes, you must leave your blindfolds on at all times, no matter what.”

It’s then that Mal gets hit with the first headbutt.

Somebody in there is acting like a bull gone mad, making grunting noises and running around the room with his head down, ramming into people. That first blow to his solar plexus knocks the wind out of Mal and he falls on his side with a thud. He hears the man-beast tackle someone else. There’s a yelp of pain and the dull collapse of yet another man hitting the floor. Mal thinks the unseen marauder must be Johnny Hoss, drunk out of his mind, making quarterback sacks in pure darkness, just for the hell of it. As Mal gets his lungs back he tries to concentrate. He climbs to his feet with his back against a wall, sending out feelers so he’ll be able to sense where Johnny strikes next.

“What the hell’s going on here?” someone demands to know.

“Holy jeez! I’m ripped to the tits!” Mike Shriver shouts.

A few more bodies go down with various yips and grunts. Then Mal is hit again. This time he takes a headbutt to the stones, but by anticipating it, he’s able to partially deflect the blow. He’s also drunk enough that the sensation is dulled, so he doesn’t fold.
Now’s the time to take action,
he thinks
. What would Joe Garagiola do? No… wait!
In a flash of inspiration, Mal recalls the words of the great Juan Belmonte:
"In order to fight, one must forget the body."
Belmonte learned to bullfight nude, under moonlight. Mal suddenly knows what must be done. He steps out of his enormous white underpants and dangles them at his side like a matador’s cape.

"Toro! Toro!"
he shouts at his invisible assailant.
C’mon, Johnny
, Mal thinks.
Come to Daddy.

A black force ripples the air in front of Mal like a malevolent wind. Now is the time to become the
torero
, to calmly meet the Minotaur on its own turf.
“Toro!”
Mal taunts again, dancing, feinting, a maestro in death’s arena. Who has bigger balls: the bull or Mal Swannson? "Mal!" the audience roars as one.

Then he’s sideswiped. Hamstrung. Mal can’t believe his bad luck. He crumples as frantic, sweaty arms grapple with his midsection. He strikes out blindly and listens for a voice, some identifying syllable, but all he hears is heavy breathing. Then there’s a moment of true horror as Mal realizes it’s no longer just fun and games. A howl of pain escapes him and he urinates like a toad as his inner thigh feels the pressure of someone’s savage, clamping teeth.

At least he missed my ‘nads,
Mal thinks as the lights switch back on and he hears men shouting. He passes out as soon as it seems safe.

THE FALL

F
rom a seven-year-old’s perspective, Gordon’s father looks like the big man in the frozen vegetable commercials–the Jolly Green Giant. Except he usually isn’t green. For the most part, he’s blotchy white and pink–and kind of hairy. Nevertheless, Gordon sees himself, metaphorically, as that gullible commodities trader, Jack, and his father as the owner of a castle at the top of a very tall beanstalk. So it’s as a fallen giant that Gordon perceives his father, when late one night he hears an anguished moaning and follows the sound into his parents’ bedroom, where he finds Mal sprawled across the king-sized waterbed wearing nothing but a grimace and the tattered, bloodied remains of his Fruit-of-the-Loom underpants.

"Gordon, you’re not supposed to be in here," his mother says, rushing toward him. Just behind her, Gordon can see Doctor Brockett leaning over the bed to dress a gaping wound on Mal’s leg.

"What happened?" Gordon asks. He hears Doctor Brockett chuckling.

"Daddy had an accident," his mother says, taking a long drag off a mentholated Marlboro. "A man bit him."

This is terrible news to Gordon’s ears. Grown men aren’t supposed to bite each other. Sure, he and Jimmy do it sometimes, but that’s different. Little boys bite (and throw rocks). Men are supposed to use guns (and knives and grenades and missile-launching Aston-Martins)–just like they show on TV.

Maybe,
Gordon reasons,
it’s a good thing my dad only got bit, after all….

“Who did it?” he wants to know. Gordon furrows his little brow as if he intends to disembowel the perpetrator.

“No one’s sure,” his mother tells him. “It happened at the Hoo-Hoo Club. In the dark. Now off to bed. Scoot.”

“Can’t I tell him goodnight first?”

“Okay. But then I want you to go to sleep and just forget about all this. It’s way past your bedtime.”

Gordon approaches the waterbed and puts his hand on his father’s gargantuan, splotchy shoulder. His father won’t look at him.
“Boojums,”
he mutters, shielding his eyes from the light. His breath smells strongly of Imperious Blue Thunderfucks, which makes Gordon think his father has been gargling with aftershave.

“Hi there, Gordon,” Doctor Brockett says.

“Hi, Doctor Brockett.”

“Your father probably isn’t up for much talking right now. He’s just had a big dose of medicine. But I’ll bet you’d like to see the wound, wouldn’t you?”

Gordon is amazed at how easily Doctor Brockett can read his mind. He only nods his head in the affirmative, afraid that if his mother hears him say “Yes” she might come and whisk him off to bed.

Carefully, Doctor Brockett peels back the bandages and gauze on Mal’s thigh. “It’s kind of ugly, but you can take it, right?”

Gordon nods again. He involuntarily shudders when he sees the bloody tooth imprints on his father’s leg surrounded by a watery brown-flecked stain that looks like Worcestershire sauce. “Gross!” he whispers in astonishment. The imprints aren’t perfectly round, like the bite marks he and Jimmy gave each other last month at the end of a particularly ferocious water balloon fight. Instead, the top bite mark’s semi-circle is broken in the middle, with two deep gouges jutting out in a very distinctive way. Gordon knows only one person who has front teeth like that: Mike Shriver. But he decides to keep that information to himself–at least for the time being.