Every Inch As Real

Ghosts haunted Sam Dent’s boots as he walked through the town chewing a pink wad of gum, and they took him to many strange places. The old funeral parlor, to relive the spine-tingling death of the old tycoon! Or the boarded-up old barber shop, where local

 

farmhand Cartwright Claypoole got the center-part he wore in his famous speech denouncing Chairman Mao from the courthouse steps so many years ago! The story was he’d conscripted whole teams of his neighbors to track down the commies with blackjacks and crowbars, without any mercy, whatever the outcome, wherever they were─”and what better gangster to lead the town killing spree, eh?” Sam Dent chuckled about it. His town was full of lore. As a teen he’d briefly considered going on a killing spree himself, and he always carried hidden weapons, but he still hadn’t used any. Sure he’d come close many times, but something always got in his way. It was a kind of unrequited love.

He decided he needed a haircut himself, took the wad of gum out of his mouth, stuck it onto the striped pole outside the barber shop and walked in. The prices there were very reasonable. During the cut, his barber, Floyd, said, “Seems like kind of a shame, Sam, the way people still think their votes count, when we all know it’s really a rigged game anyway . . .I mean when you consider the electoral college and all . . . sort of sad and funny in a way somehow at the same time, isn’t it?”

Floyd was always moping like this, but Sam Dent told him, “Oh Floyd, you cheer up now.”

“Alright . . . alright then, Sam . . . it’s just that sometimes I don’t know why people still run for office these days . . . sometimes I wonder why they even bother attempting anything when they know their every endeavor is specially designed to always hold the germ of failure and therefore predestined to always fall short of the─”

“Now Floyd, that’s enough,” said Sam. He was full of notions too, but he never showed them in public. He gave Floyd a three dollar tip and strode out of the barber shop. He peeled his gum off the barber pole, stuck it back into his mouth and decided to walk all the way to the old flea market and try to sell or trade the boots. “These boots are haunted,” he advertised to several locals in pickup trucks parked beside the old railroad tracks. “That means I deserve a fair price. You’re walkin’ around wearin’ these,”─he held them up─“that means you’re walkin with ghosts.” He knew he could get a good price. They could use those boots to train their pets or scare their kids or anything. Sam didn’t want the damn boots. If being the town cat-burglar all these years had taught him anything, it was this: to really case a joint, you had to see it with your feet. And these boots made his feet feel blind, plain and simple.

Pretty soon an old Indian lady offered him twenty bucks, so he handed the boots right over. He walked home barefoot and got drunk again. In the morning he woke up and ate some more oatmeal. Then he walked to the sink for another glass of water and decided to give all the piled-up dishes a quick super-spray. Every time Sam went to the sink these days, he wondered if the super-spray nozzle would work. Some days it did, some it didn’t. When it did, you had to keep pressing down a long time, as if to prove by your persistence that you really wanted it to spray.

After it sprayed a few seconds, a strange moaning noise seemed to come from the pipes, or somewhere else invisible you knew was there somewhere, as if all that spray shooting out was a real sacrifice. Sam Dent knew about sacrifice, that is he felt he understood. For instance, he thought, the war keeps happening, and I just sit here watching the war on TV. It kills people. And after a while, it gets into my soul and it rots, all that watching the war on TV. A part of me gets sacrificed just watching it happen so passively.

He couldn’t think straight. “Get ahold of yourself, Sam!” he snarled, pressing down on the lever and aiming the super-spray nozzle right into a big purple stain on the side of a plate. This time the water came out right away, slowly building in force as Sam pumped the lever a few times to ensure the most powerful spray. The whole experience made him smile. Using the regular tap, he poured himself a glass of cold water and sat down in his armchair, tugging at his necktie. The town where he lived, Culchack Corners, was a Byzantine warren of houses and tacky apartments and tarpaper shacks on a hillside in the American Southwest, less than a mile from the river, where the unhappy ghost of a poor drowned woman kept prowling the banks every night just trying to find her poor drowned kids or mourning them or trying to settle a score with the undertow of life or something else. On Halloween night, all these kids from the town wearing ghost and vampire suits would come to his neighborhood and clumsily knock over all the luminarias reverently placed in emulation of local custom and ask him for licorice snaps and candy bars. "All I have is Tootsie Rolls," he shouted at them. "Tootsie Rolls!" Halloween used to piss Sam off.

The next time he saw Floyd, it was down at Ju Ju Sim’s on Holiday Street, and this time he was drunkenly raving full force. At work he could usually keep a lid on it, but this was a Sunday, and everyone knew the striped pole didn’t spin on a Sunday in Culchack Corners. That was Floyd’s day off.

“And Little Joe─that’s what they call him, the Widow’s Son, Little Joe, Joselito─is the designated pharmakos ─that’s a Latin word meaning ‘scapegoat’─or I guess it could be Greek, it sounds Greek, but that’s what it means, he’s the designated scapegoat─of a plot that’s been going bump in the night if you know what I mean for seventeen goddam centuries . . .” He turned around briefly when Sam came in─“Hey Sam,” he said, lifting his glass.

“Floyd.” Sam Dent walked up to the dark red bar and threw down a tenspot. “Scotch on the rocks, Pedro.” The bartender was a young cornball with lambchop sideburns wearing a red vest over a Black Sabbath T-shirt. He turned around and started mixing Sam’s drink right away.

“So that’s who George Bush junior is, they call him Joselito . . . his daddy’s prouda him, that’s why he never says a word. Little Joe’ll take his lumps for the ‘team,’ if you catch my drift, and they’ll get their dirty payoff in the end like they planned it all seventeen centuries back. So maybe he gets impeached in the end, he’s already done so much DAMAGE . . . and compared to him, whoever gets in next’ll look much better, see, anybody looks better than him, see, so no matter what goes on behind the scenes, the public won’t protest ‘em anymore, they’ll be so grateful it’s not Little Joe anymore, see? . . . it’s all part of their PLAN! You see? You see?”

There was no one else inside the Cantina that night except Sam, Floyd and Pedro, and Floyd was pretty drunk. Sometimes he could really cut loose on a Sunday. Pedro turned around and handed Sam his drink. “Well you’re right,” he said good-naturedly, “Bush senior never says anything, that’s kind of weird.” Sam pulled up a barstool.

“Exactly,” said Floyd. “Exactly. Cause he’s so proud! It goes all the way back to the days of ancient Egypt, all those legends of vampires and ghosts, all those magical occult ceremonies─it’s nothing new, it’s ancient magic! And it’s real! But they’ve got everyone else convinced it was all just a primitive fantasy thousands of years ago, right? There’s no such thing as magic, right? We know that. So no one believes it’s around anymore . . . then Bush II just fakes that drawl and says some shit about Jesus Christ on TV and convinces the people he’s just some Jimmy Swaggart hayseed . . . and Joselito, Little Joe . . . gets in unnoticed, see . . . his own little brother’s already the governor of Florida . . . that’s how bad it is right now, Pedro . . .”

“He tell you about the embalmers yet?” said Sam as he knocked back his drink, slamming down the empty glass.

Pedro picked it up and turned around to mix another. “Not yet,” he said over his shoulder. “Who’s that, Floyd?”

“The embalmers, well . . .” Floyd licked his lips. “That’s the name of a secret society, see? You’ve heard about the whole Skull & Bones thing, right? . . . well, that’s a secret club for the Yale rich kids with sort of a juvenile frat-boy haunted house theme, Bushes I and II were in it, John Kerry was in it, and they say it’s some sort of a coven, you know, like a secret school for black magicians . . . anyways, the embalmers, it’s that kind of thing, only real . . .”

“John Kerry was in Skull & Bones too?”

“I’m afraid so, Pedro,” said Floyd. “I think even Bill Clinton was . . . but my point is this may or may not be true, what I’m telling you now. This is just my speculation, see . . . there have been these allegations made, but never with anything more specific than just the Skull & Bones thing . . . and an educated guess about the CIA connection, but ah . . . ah . . .” Floyd licked his lips, “I’m lookin' at you guys right now . . . and I don’t even wanna talk about it anymore really, not really, I mean . . .”

“But Floyd,” said Pedro, “why do they call him the widow’s son─Barbara Bush isn’t a─“

“Because Bush senior isn’t alive anymore!” exploded Floyd, almost falling out of his chair. “It’s a metaphor, alright? The whole thing is! He sold his soul to the CIA or something! He’s probably the one killed JFK, too! Look it up! But the thing is . . . these guys have a whole secret history, you know, and it’s every inch as real to them as the one they make us believe in . . . and even though what they’re doing right now seems evil to us, it’s the best thing they know how to do right now, based on that secret history . . . it’s so crazy, man . . . and anything anyone says about them only deepens the whole bizarre mystery of who the hell they really are in the first place . . . they’re so secret no one can mention them now because. . . fuck . . . because anyone who claims to know about them at all anymore is automatically suspected of being an insider spreading more disinformation or something . . . that’s how private it is . . . but they’ve been in plain sight all along. There are points of connection all down the line, man! George Bush─”

“I think you better take it easy on that Brandy there, Floyd,” said Sam Dent, raising his hand for another beer. He never knew quite what to say to poor Floyd so he always kept it simple. Pedro slid over his second drink then went back into the kitchen.

“Well, the thing is, Sam . . . the thing is . . .”

“Yeah . . .”

“You might say none of this exists. You might say, ‘Aw Floyd, it’s not that bad. The thing about you is, you believe in conspiracy theories. But the sad truth is that nobody really controls the world now but the big corporations, there’s no more conspiracy now, Floyd, everything’s out in the open . . . the world’s gone mad and it’s run by greed and the whole thing’s out in the open now. Your secret clubs just don’t exist.’ You could say that, Sam!” Floyd widened his eyes.

“Yeah, okay . . .”

“And the thing is─you’d be right─and wrong. Both at once!”

Sam threw back his second drink. “Tell me about it,” he said.

“These embalmers, see . . . they’re in so deep these days the normal laws of cause and effect don’t apply anymore . . . those big corporations you’re talking about are really just fronts for all these giant entities and psychic . . . principles . . . but at the same time they’re all still just big corporations . . . just chasing the bottom line or whatever, and they don’t even know what they are beyond that, almost all the employees, so . . .”

“Floyd?”

“So in one way none of it’s true but it might as well be true, ‘cause then at least there’d be some kind of order to it all, it’s like a blueprint . . . so maybe it is true and how could it not be true? It’s so obviously true, all the signs add up . . . but there’s no way of knowing for sure . . . and sometimes it feels like the forces of good and evil are playing a game of chess with your soul! Even Bush I keeps silent, so it’s really a matter of . . .”

“Watch out, Floyd . . .” said Sam, standing up and reaching into his coat for the blackjack, getting ready to crack this cob right on his nob, by cracky, he’d─

Just then, Pedro emerged from the kitchen wiping his hands on his apron and said cheerfully, “Well boys, I’m closin’ up early tonight. Gotta date with Loo Loo when she gets back from teachin’ her class.” Loo Loo was Pedro’s girlfriend, the new dance teacher in town, a beehive hairdo with glasses on top of a pair of soft wax legs. Sam was planning to break into her house next.

Floyd gave Pedro a cheese-eating smile. “Thanks for listening to me tonight,” he said, “I know it seems hard to believe, and for all I know it isn’t even true, but it helps me . . . I’m glad when you listen. Thanks, Pedro.”

“No problem,” said Pedro. He smoothed down his handlebar mustache.

“I believe I’m gonna walk home tonight!” Floyd went on cheerfully, as he buckled his calfskin jacket. “A long walk home beside the river’ll do me good on a nice cool night like this!” He started across the room.

“You watch out for that ghost, Floyd,” Sam told him, discreetly removing the wad of gum from his mouth and pressing it underneath the bar in a single smooth motion. “It’s a full moon tonight, she’ll be prowlin’ again.”

“I’ll be careful,” Floyd called back as Sam climbed down from the barstool. “You comin'?”

“I’ll be right along,” said Sam. “I gotta use the restroom first.”

“You’ll catch up to me!” The door slammed behind Floyd.

Pedro made a face at Sam. “That guy gets on my nerves,” he said, wiping down the bar where Floyd had been. “Seems I gotta be nice to the customers, though. Hardly anyone ever comes in here these days.”

“This’ll take care of Floyd!” Sam Dent hissed fiercely, whipping out a small blowgun. “Or maybe these!” He flourished a few razor-sharp throwing stars. ”Or this!” He pulled out a small noose and shook it.

“Oh Sam, you idiot,” said Pedro. “You know you’ll never kill that guy. All you are is a poser. Admit it. Poser.”

“I will kill him,” said Sam. “He’s seen his last sunrise, you mark my words. I’m leavin’ right now, and you’ll see.” He took out the deck of chewing gum and stabbed a fresh stick into his mouth.

“Leave then.”

“I will leave.”

“Do it then. Loo Loo’s waitin’ for me.”

“Well I will.” Sam got up and walked out scowling.

When he got outside, he took a piss in the thicket of pampas grass outside the Cantina. There was a big full moon and the air was dark blue. A gentle breeze was blowing. He walked alongside the river for almost an hour but never caught sight of that barber at all. Maybe that ghost did get him. Either that or it was just Sam’s luck to be a star-crossed murderer. ”Poor me,” he sighed. But at least he got rid of those haunted boots. And the super-spray nozzle was working fine just now. He smiled to himself as he walked through the woods behind Loo Loo’s house chewing his gum and hearing the crickets make that noise with their legs. He started humming.