Pig: A Thriller (34 page)

Well bore readings…routine…must do a dozen a week…find the right well hole, then assign it a sequence number from where the last reading left off…SHIT …he’d been looking under the wrong well number … okay, never mind, here it was … FUCK …was he looking at the first or the second one? Had he closed the earlier one? He couldn’t remember…best to go right out of the system and start over again…there, he was at the start…what was he filing again?... well bore readings, right…which well number?... SHIT…he had to go back and check on the document again… okay, got it…his thoughts drifted off for a minute and when he became aware of what he was doing again, he saw his reflection in the monitor screen
…
what did he see?... a round, non-descript face that looked like a pumpkin left on the outside porch for three months after Halloween … jowly, thinning greyish-brown hair slightly receding... eyes dead … the plodding ennui of a man who had long ago given up on the world …someone who had spent most of his adult life trying to get a divorce from himself … the broken-backed slouch of a beaten man … what did Magda see, he wondered? …how could he fool himself that she could see any more …probably less… why was she bothering with him?... it was obvious…a charity case…pity, that’s all it was…he was pitiful, not popular
  …
hopelessness staining him like a thick film on a glass shower curtain, so omni-present he sometimes forgot it was even there…

But Pig wasn’t confining his surveillance of Snow to work; he followed him home, first out to the Mess Hall, then to his squalid porta-cabin. It was there that he could see even from the outside that Snow was going off the rails. The effort of holding it together for eight hours in public was making him implode. At lunch, during dinner, he took the first entrée that was offered to him in line, eyes staring dead ahead, pushing the different portions around on his plate, then nodding to the bus boy that it was okay to dump it into the bin largely uneaten.

Pig watched him plod through the ruts of mud back to the porta-cabin, not bothering to look up and see the Northern Lights or constellations, ignoring those walking to their own trailers, not making eye contact or nodding in return. Pig listened as he himself phoned the room using his cell, listening to the rings … nine, ten, eleven … both through the phone and the thinly insulated walls, then hearing the connection cut the same time Snow screamed and Pig could hear the phone cord being ripped out of the wall.

Silence from inside the cabin, just the ghostly image of television shadows flitting across the windows, the voices of Tom and Jerry barely discernable through the fog. Snow wasn’t even tempted by that night’s porn offering,
E3:
The
Extra
Testicle
. After a decent interval, Pig sent someone to knock on the door, but it went unanswered. He waited there in the rapidly cooling dark, toes starting to tingle, until he saw the
shalava
– dirty slut –first knock then push her way in through the door when Snow refused to answer. The conversation was one way, the
shluha
vokzal'naja
– train station whore --
speaking and either nothing or a grunt or a monosyllabic reply in return. When Magda left for the night, so did Pig. His work here was done.

             
6:34 p.m. Lying alone on his thin mattress cot once again. New stains were forming on the wall from the condensation that came from the nightly cycle of frost forming, then melting, then freezing, then melting ad nauseam, obliterating the stain of Baffin Island Magda had pointed out earlier. But Snow was too torpid to give a damn and notice. More interested in pouring vodka down his throat. It didn’t work. Tuning the TV to the first channel it came to, not bothering to even notice what was on. Thoughts of Kolya and how it was his fault he had ended up that way tumbling over and over in his mind like clothes in a dryer. The shrill sound of the phone ringing. Finally noticing it on the third or fourth ring. Trying to ignore it for another four. Still another four until he was able to find the telephone cord and rip it out of the wall. Lying on the cot still more and staring up at the ceiling thinking of different ways to call himself useless. Lying there for an eternity. Looking at the clock again. 6:38 p.m. Tuning his senses onto the TV again. Star Trek. Wishing he had an off switch on the back of his like the android Lt. Commander Data did. Tuning out the TV again. Staring at the ceiling. Wondering if the light fixture would hold him if he strung a rope up there; knew he’d never have the focus and concentration to try. Realizing that he’d been fooling himself the last little while, thinking things were getting better. Sure, he could pretend he was alright when things were smooth, there was no stress, no need for him to actually get up and do anything. The first bit of stress and he’d relapsed back into his vodka shell.

Trying to think of all the swear words in Russian that applied to him:
chuvak
; meathead …
koshka
; piece of shit …
zarasa
; pain in the ass …
pit’ zapoem
; hopeless drunk …
dolboeb
; fuckhead … bakapor; dumbass …
Hooy
morzhovy
; walrus dick …
Perdoon
stary
; Old Fart …

…. Sudden loud knocking the door; easy to ignore, even when it continued on relentlessly … he couldn’t stop that by ripping anything out of the wall … couldn’t bring himself to get up and answer it either … that simple act was beyond his capacity to act; the amount of effort it would require was beyond him. Instead, he stayed there with pillows blocking out the world, rocking himself, trying not to think … to help himself, he repeated the swear words that applied to himself over again…finally, the knocking stopping…6:41 p.m. … some knocking again, then Magda pushing her way in through the door… gently placing a hand on his shoulder to get a reaction  … his only reaction, no reaction … concern in her voice … monosyllabic grunts from him in return …. Somehow he’d lost the key in his back that could be wound up and keeping him going … the only part of him that was left was the part left on the cutting room floor … Magda leaving … smashing the vodka bottles on the ground on her way out … Scrotum climbing up on his chest to sit and purr …

… finally, a deep and long sleep … he came to with a start thinking he’d been under forever … 8:24 p.m. … Scrotum was still sitting on his chest staring at him … Snow stared back …Scrotum stared more … Snow blinked … Scrotum yawned, opening his mouth wide and snaking his tongue out to lick back his whiskers … “Hey, I know,” said Snow. “Let’s lick our bums.” But his heart wasn’t in it … neither was Scrotum’s … he never even gave his ass a look, much less a lick …

… an eternity later,  Snow looked at the clock again … it still read 8:24 …

… the easiest thing to do … the hardest thing … the only thing he could do … was … nothing … just lie there … waiting for … for … what? ... he didn’t know …

             
“I have secluded myself from society and yet I never meant any such thing. I have made a captive of myself and put me into a dungeon, and now I cannot find the key to let myself out.”
             

             
             
             
             
             
             
-- Nathaniel Horne

“Perfect,” Pig exclaimed, rubbing his calloused knuckles together in satisfaction. Doctor Bandar, of course, had been called in to give a professional opinion on Snow’s mental condition after he’d cleansed and disinfected the unconscious Kolya’s bullet wound.

“I could take him off the job,” offered the Doctor. “Say he’s medically unfit; send him to a sanatorium and get him out of our hair. Even lay him off completely. Put him on disability and buy out his contract.”

“No,” Pig disagreed. “Then he’s out of my control, too. Who knows what he’d remember or who he’d start talking to? Better to have him here: silent, impotent. Vulnerable  Weak. Tell you what, doctor his medication. Replace the depression medication with a sugar pills or something that will make it even worse. Like I said, it’s perfect. We got two birds with one stone: the stubborn Commie and the stupid capitalist, both of them stopped, neither able to find the documents we had to steal.  Face it, we were stupid. We left paper behind to reveal our crimes. Now, it’s fixed. Our paper trail is covered. The paper’s stolen, no longer exists. It’s perfect: no paper, no crime.”

“I am alone; all round me drowns in falsehood;