The Complete Drive-In Page 35

  “But, I think on that, and I think, shit, to believe that, I got to make a real leap of faith, and finally it’s just so much guess work.

  “Yet, here I am. Some goddamn place. The inside of a fish, that much I know. But, this world, can it be? Why yes, I tell myself. It can be. For here I am. So I be, and you be, we all be.

  “But still I wonder, and the wonder confuses my head.

  “It also causes me to veer from my story. I’ll throw out a mental lifeline and tug it back. I should know how to tell a tale better than this, a tale that ends up with me inside a fish’s tail, which makes a hell of a tale indeed.

  “So there we sat on our boat inside this branch of the multiverse, or wherever the fuck we are, and finally we got some wind.

  “We had been becalmed for some time, and we had prayed for that wind, begged for that wind, longed for that wind. And when it came, we didn’t want it.

  “It started out calm and cool and fine enough, but in short time it was less calm and turned cold. The water frothed like meringue on a pie, and then it was not so much frothing as foaming, then not so much foaming as white with fury, like a mad dog frothing.

  “At first, before it went psycho-wind on us, it filled the sail in a single puff, and we decided to turn the boat, for no good reason than the bulk of us voted to do that, thinking we had come from that direction, but not really knowing, you see, just guessing.

  “But we decided to turn it, gentlemen and two ladies.

  “And the boat began to move. The wind picked up, and the boat moved faster, and then an interesting thing happened, and this was even before the wind turned savage.

  “Parts of the boat began to fall off.

  “The glue we had made to stick between the boards, after being damp for so long, was coming apart. Noah had designed the boat in such a way that not all of it was tightly pegged. Some of it, heaven forbid, was held together by no more than resin and hope. This sort of shit, my gathering of little dirties, is exactly why Noah should have been eaten.

  “He had duped us.

  “He didn’t know glue from cow shit. And hadn’t that motherfucker ever heard of a nail. A bunch of nails. Not just a peg or two, but real nails. Maybe we would have had to have made them from wood, but they should have been made. Some kind of way. Hear what I’m saying?

  “Glue is okay for paper hats and homemade valentines, but it’s shit for holding together big-ass boats after they get good and wet and end up in a storm.

  “The waves and wind lashed us and slammed us, and washed into that weak-ass glue and made it thin, made it come undone even faster. We rode the waves, this way and that, and our sail got wadded up like a snotty Kleenex. Folks were going crazy, they were so scared. They were fighting and yelling, fucking, leaping over the side of the boat. It was like someone had touched us with a crazy wand.

  “Finally, I took control. I didn’t know I had it in me. I had to stab a couple folks, make them quit running around like assholes, make them shut up, but pretty soon, I’m yelling ideas, and then the ideas are orders, and folks are listening.

  “Stabbing a motherfucker or two will bring another fella’s mind around quick-like.

  “I yell out about the lifeboats, say let’s get those goddamn lifeboats filled.

  “About the time we’re trying to do that, the whole goddamn great boat, or ship, or whatever the fuck it was, came apart. Just collapsed like a Republican tax cut. Looks good on the outside, and works fine up front on the short run, but boy do you pay for it in the back end. And, my little dirties, we were paying for it.

  “Thing was, the lifeboats had been filled. About a hundred and ten of us in those boats. There were a few folks left over. We had to give them our best wishes and a couple of knife wounds to keep them out of the lifeboats. When the big boat came all the way apart it left us floating, and those unfortunates who hadn’t been fast enough to get their nasty asses in the boats, that hadn’t been stabbed, well, they were just out there, hanging to lumber or going under, or getting finished off by boat paddles to the head. It sounds cruel, but it was better than just leaving them there. Especially the little ones. The three- and four-year-olds who were struggling so hard. You can’t stand to see that, I will assure you, so we beat them down.

  “The wind kept up, and we had to bail water out of the lifeboats, and there wasn’t much room to bail, so we put some of the mothers and children over the side and wished them luck. We had to stop hitting them with the paddles, due to the fact we had shattered one and cracked another. That wouldn’t do.

  “I know that sounds cold, and I suppose it is. I got to come back to that, me saying how cold it was, but how necessary it was. You see, for the bulk of us to survive, we had to rid ourselves of the weak. And most of the mothers and children were weak. We hung onto the stronger women with the plumper babies (food should always be considered), and kept at it.

  “The night came and that was bad, but at least the wind had stopped and the moon had come up. During the night, some of the folks in the boat disappeared. I don’t know what happened. I think someone must have cut their throats and drank the blood and put them over the side. It had to have been seen by just about everyone (not me, though), but no one was complaining. Not when the bailing buckets had warm blood in them to drink.

  “When the sun came up, we checked our boat, took a head count, and determined how our survivors were doing. There were some who had been injured when the big boat came apart, you see, and now, in the daylight, we could see they weren’t doing so good, so we put them over the side.

  “Except for one. We cut him up and ate him.

  “I might also mention, that the ones we put over the side that morning we didn’t let drift and we didn’t bust them with boat paddles. We drowned them, pulled their bodies close to the side of the boat, and tied them off with rope. They were our larder. We had come to that, and thank God we were wise enough to do just that. I only regretted that we had thrown so much fine meat over the side the night before. I remembered one of those women quite well, seeing her ass in the wet moonlight, bobbing up and down like a round-ended barrel. She would have provided us with rump roast for days. She had been a volunteer. Someone who just couldn’t take it anymore. She bobbed about for awhile, that ass up in the air, and then she dove in and went down with hardly a splash, and didn’t come up. My guess is she swam down till her breath played out and the water filled her.

  “The other boats floated nearby, and they too had gone through a thinning. I suppose with our experiences in the drive-in, this kind of ruthlessness was to be expected. Sentimentality had long passed us by, and though for a time, there in Fort Drive-in, I thought we might be gaining our humanity, I learned quick-like we had not, and thank goodness for that, or I, and the bulk of us, would not be here today.

  “Considering we’re all inside a giant fish, that might not be such a good thing in the long run, but I suppose the best any of us can hope for these days is extension of life, and not quality. In the past I often thought, quality, not quantity, is what’s important. Until I was faced with the big sign-off. The idea was unappealing to me. I didn’t have the courage of the fat-assed woman who went over the side and swam deep down.

  “I am still ready to grab at whatever bit of life I can get, no matter how sour it might taste, how foul it might look. I still wish for better food and cleaner pussy and having my ass outside of this fish and back at my house in East Texas.

  “Hell, I’d settle for being back at Fort Drive-in. It was a pretty good deal. You could bathe regular, fix meals that didn’t stink so bad you had to hold your nose, or worse, just get used to.

  “But, I was telling you about the boats.

  “Drifty, drifty, drifty, that’s me.

  “We went a couple of nights and some days, and then one night, in the moonlight, all of the boats floating close together, the dark water rose up high and broadened. We thought it was a freak wave. But it was not.

  “The darkness froze for a m
oment, then opened up into greater darkness, and the boats, even though we paddled hard to not let it happen, flowed into the big ole darkness of the black hump, and down we went.

  “You know what’s next. You experienced it. We shot out of a gut or throat, or whatever, and landed here on the grid, splashing water behind us, shattering our boats and spilling us willy-nilly, this way and that, breaking some of us up. As a side note, I should add that those poor unfortunates got eaten. That was their unintentional contribution, but, I think, if their ghosts could be here to discuss it, they would tell you they were proud to share, considering they weren’t going to recover from their wounds.

  “The lights that hang above us, went way back. Not to the tail. But way back. They are starting to play out now, but then, they were bright and far. Not like now, where there are almost less than half the lights there used to be.

  “And, so here we were, where you are now. In the fish’s belly, lit up and stinky, all of us lost causes.”

  That was the first part of Bjoe’s story. And we’re going to pause there.

  When he finished telling us all that, Cory rose up, asked for more grog, fainted dead away again.

  I thought, this guy, this Bjoe fella, decided he wanted to eat one of us, or all of us, because he always seemed to find some justification for long pig preparation, and that ladder was going to be hard to navigate with us running all over each other’s asses.

  And, Cory, shit, way it looked to me, he was first on the menu. I wasn’t going to try and drag his big unconscious ass down that ladder. He was on his own. Pickled and ready to serve.

  I said, “So the lights were here?”

  Bjoe nodded.

  I scooted back closer to the ladder, tugged on Reba’s sleeve a little. She looked at me and slid back too.

  I looked at Grace and Steve. I could tell from the way they looked at me, they too were hip. Thinking: this guy could go snacky-whacky at any moment.

  “Wow,” Grace said. “The lights were here, right?”

  “Yes,” Bjoe said. “Yes, they were. Brighter than they are now, and they went way down the fish, and for awhile ... But I said that.”

  “Okay,” Steve said. “Tell it all. Tell some of it over if you have to.”

  Bjoe nodded.

  “We lived back down there as well, at the back, away from the big rushes of water, not up here on the scaffolding and in the caves. But that was before the Scuts.”

  “The Scuts?” Grace asked.

  Bjoe nodded. “Yep. The Scuts.”

  3

  “Oh yeah. The lights were here. And that was a mystery to me, at first. Then I began to put some things together, draw what we like to call in mathematics some goddamn fucking conclusions.

  “I’ll begin with the robots.

  “Don’t look so goofy. Really. Robots. Fuckers made of metal with lumps for heads and a single light for an eye. Tentacles instead of hands. All cabled up and ready to go. Guess there were six cables, flapping this way and that. Reckon there were twenty or thirty of them metal, multitentacled doohickeys. Don’t know for a fact, didn’t count them, but it was in that range.

  “Maintenance.

  “Bless their little electric hearts.

  “Place was a hell of a lot neater then.”

  “So,” I said. “What you’re saying is, the grill was in place, all this was in place before you came.”

  “Do I look like a fucking electrician? A carpenter? A metalworker? And where would I get the tools? Yeah. It was all here.”

  “And you think you know why?” Grace asked.

  “I do, you good-looking thing. And, hey, I’m really talking to all of you. You all look good to me. But, shit, you lady, you’re, I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Begin with why all this stuff was here,” Grace said.

  “All right, doll. You see, I think the robots were finishing up this baby. Making this fish ... Don’t look that way. Let me explain, let me go into what we in the mathematics business like to call one big ole fucking goddamn shit-eating hypothesis.

  “This world is hand and machine made, gents and two ladies. I shit thee not and fuck with you not at all. That’s what I believe. You see, this fish, it was water workable, and the robots, they were here to finish up its insides. Do maintenance while it was operating, and at the same time being built. Maybe whoever was building this fish, having it made, forgot all about it and set it adrift before the robots were all done. They had a built-in wear-out time. Like those dissolving stitches you get in your head. They stay in so long, then they dissolve. That’s what happened with the robots. They were supposed to do maintenance for so long, then the fish was supposed to go obsolete, like a Ford, you know.

  “Why, I don’t know. Maybe there’s no real reason. Maybe it’s just that these work-on-stuff robots can only last so long before they go nutty-bolty. That being the case, they—whoever they is—decided they’d build them with this go-tobutter clause in their wiring. Finish up a certain span of work, then goo-out.

  “Ain’t that a possible?

  “Sure it is. Don’t think on it long. Sure it is.

  “So they got the grid to not get eat up by the stomach acid they made. And they have lights above, ‘cause they’re doing work inside a way-down-in-thedark structure, so therefore gentlemen and two ladies, you got to have some old-fashioned illumination, lest you think you’re sharpening your pencil and it’s someone’s dick.

  “They didn’t even take note of us when we came, those robots. Not so much as a howdy-do, or, oh-shit, you done found out the fish is electric and we ain’t the Partridge Family. They were programmed, hot-wired and motivated, chip-headed and blueprint driven.”

  “But, the fish has flesh,” Reba said.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s got flesh and it’s got veins that pulse with blood. But, I’ll tell you another thing this big old finny motherfucker has got, and that’s wires, sweet baby cakes.

  “I know you must have noted now and again that the dinosaurs seemed to crackle and pop, spark and sputter. Yet, they died or got killed, we ate them and didn’t find wires in our teeth, so, it was like what can only be called one big fucking mystery.

  “My belief, and you can just quote the living dogshit out of me on this, is that the wires were too small. No shit. Too small even in dinosaurs. To understand the wires, how this alien-built world works (I know, I said aliens, and I’ll stand by that remark), is you got to understand the wires are minuscule, as in small little bastards. You can’t see them with the undressed eyeball, and, before you go where I know you’re gonna go, let me run ahead of you.

  “You’re gonna say: Yeah, but Bjoe, we done ate the meat off these critters, and we didn’t eat the wires, and what I’m going to tell you, now grab hold of your balls—I already got mine, and those of you who are ball-less may clutch anything at will—I’m gonna tell you flat out, you did eat them too, my little hungry folks.

  “They’re edible. They dissolve. I mean, shit, they can make women’s panties you can eat right off the snatch and have them taste like fruits and such, so you think some way-advanced alien motherfuckers can’t make some edible iddy-bitty goddamn wires?

  “They can.

  “And inside this fish, in which you could stuff several dinosaurs and our worn-out asses, except you baby blonde, goddamn you are fine and movie-star-like and not even partially worn out—”

  “Tell it,” Grace said. “Just go on and tell it.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Look at the wall of the cave. See the flesh of the fish pulsing. See those cables of veins. Well, when we cut this dude apart, just dug chunks out of it on the inside, touched bones in some cases (the scaffolding is what I call the skeleton), I found wrapped around them, running through the meat, veins, I could see were wires. Red and blue, green and white. You can cut through them and not get shocked. Remember what I said about physics here being bylaws. Things are different. Bring that little thought back to the fore.

  “And now I’m gonna go al
l Serbian guy Nikola Tesla on you, and we’re gonna talk alternating-current power transmission, rotating magnetic field principle, and polyphase alternating-current system and induction motor all over the goddamn place, and let me quote B.A. Behrend, ‘Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said, let Tesla be, and all was light.’

  “That’s from my schooling, gents and two ladies. In math and physics and such, I was just schooled all over the goddamn place, although I regret to say I’m all theory and no action, or not much action anyway. I once fell off a chair screwing in a light bulb. That’s my electrical work career right there, in the proverbial motherfucking nutshell.

  “Now, you’re looking at me funny, like I’ve gone north and am waving at you from afar, shouting out stuff the wind is carrying away. Let me put this where you can fucking understand it. Get your mind jaws around this, gentlemen and two ladies.

  “This electricity comes up from the ground, the water, out of the atmosphere, drawn in by ... Well, shit, I don’t know. Do I look like a fucking Einstein? I just quote people, I don’t really understand them. Except to say, There ain’t no plug-ins, Jack, there’s just the electricity, and it’s on its own, pulsing through the wires, the veins, the edible cables. And the fish, it lives off the electricity, just like we humans live off electricity. At birth, BAM, there’s a spark, jumpercable time, my little dirties. Our batteries are charged. We got that crackly stuff running through our veins. Call it chi if you will, and if you want to go Japanese, call it ki, and, if like me, you want to stay on the planet Earth (though we ain’t, I don’t think), call it elec-goddamn-tricity.

  “Call it string cheese for all I care.

  “You see, the robots, they were finishing up this little fucker, and whoever owned it set it a’sail and a’dive before it was done, and the robots, they were trapped here, and they just kept working while we were here. Not bothering us at all, but restoring lights and fixing stuff, shining the grid.