Zod Wallop Read online

  Harry lifted the receiver. “Yeah?” he said.

  “Lord Gainesborough!” the voice shouted. “This is Raymond Story. Don’t give up! We are on our way. I’ve got to free Lord Allan from the dungeon, and that will delay us some, but we are definitely on our way. And have I got a surprise for you. Boy! Uh oh.”

  The phone clicked, the buzz of a dial tone returned, and Harry replaced the receiver.

  It began crying again, and Harry snatched it up and shouted, “Keep away from me! I’ve got a gun!”

  A woman’s voice said, “Harry?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “This is your agent, Harry. Remember me? Helen Kurtis.”

  “Oh. Helen. Hey.”

  “Yeah, me. Well, how you doing, Harry?”

  “Oh I’m okay.”

  “I bet you are. I bet you are jogging five miles a day and taking vitamins and boffing the college girls down at Elgin’s and writing—just writing your ass off up there in the woods.”

  Harry didn’t say anything.

  “Hey, you still on the line?” Helen hollered. “Look Harry, I’m coming to visit you. I’m taking my life in my hands and driving down to that hell-and-gone briar patch you’re holed up in. I should be there tomorrow evening, so look decent. You don’t have to dress up, but I don’t want you answering the door in your underwear. Let my own example inspire you. I’m an old, fat woman who’s going bald and God, for his own good reasons, has given me bad teeth and a spine that’s nothing but a rope of pain, but I put on the business suit, the makeup, the perfume—I get up and go out into the shit storm.”

  “Maybe you could save all this for when you get here,” Harry said.

  A small, hurt silence, and then: “Sure. Okay. Oh, and Harry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They want to make a movie of Zod Wallop.”

  “No.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” Helen said. “It doesn’t hurt to talk about it. I’ll see you.” She hung up.

  Harry walked outside. He was still in his underwear, but he had a little over a day to get dressed.

  The sun-glared surface of the pond made Harry’s head ache. He had started drinking again about two months ago, and he hadn’t gotten around to stopping yet. If Thoreau had been a drinker, Walden would have been a different book. (“Damn birds shrieking like hyenas this morning; I have nailed boards to the windows to keep the sunlight out.”)

  The phone began crying again, but Harry moved away from it, walked to the edge of the porch and pressed his face up against the screen. You old fraud, he thought. It was a sentence that sailed in and out of his mind and had no precise meaning. It was the sentence of his discontent, his self-disgust.

  He had come to this small North Carolina town to teach children’s literature at Elgin College, and he had come with some vague notion that it would be a way to re-establish contact with his fellow humans. Lord knows he didn’t need the money. Two years after its publication, Zod Wallop was still on The New York Times’ best-seller list, and the other books were doing almost as well.

  “Life goes on,” Jeanne had said, and Harry agreed with that. Harry hated self-pity. In his book, The Sneeze That Destroyed New Jersey, a little boy becomes bloated with self-pity, growing so large that he attracts the attention of aliens who use self-pity to power their spaceships.

  Although Harry and Jeanne were no longer married, they still talked, and he had called her on the first day of classes and said, “I was wrong. They want me to talk about my books, and I can’t do that.”

  “Maybe it will get better,” Jeanne said, her voice coming through the wire from upstate New York without much hope that it would, neither of them owning enough of hope to feed a winter sparrow.

  Harry said, “I don’t even write children’s books, Jeanne. You know that.”

  She said nothing.

  “I write Amy books,” Harry said. “That’s all I write…wrote. Amy books.”

  Harry had stayed at the cabin. He’d already rented it, signed a year’s lease. It was as good a place as any.

  Harry watched a lizard run quickly across a weathered railing, pause, do a few staccato push-ups like a jogger at a red light, and race on.

  Busy, busy, Harry thought. He went back inside and dressed, donning a camouflage T-shirt, baggy gray slacks, and tennis shoes. He sat on his rumpled bed and regarded the room from a visitor’s viewpoint. Various slivers of pizza, melting into the wooden floor like irradiated slugs, would have to go. The hordes of empty beer cans would have to be disposed of. The pot of soup that had caught fire and apparently exploded—there should be some sort of warning on really volatile soups—would have to be tossed. There would have to be a general marshaling of renegade laundry. A shorted-out floor lamp that lay on the kitchen table in preparation for surgery would have to be repaired or dumped in a closet.

  All that stuff was easy. But what if the room had acquired an inherent lunatic character that mere “straightening up” would fail to address? Would Helen find the bulletin board covered with photos of Amy a bad sign? Perhaps he should take the photos down, or at least the one of Amy in a bathing suit. Would Helen attach some special significance to the bloodstain on the throw rug (which was nothing more dramatic than a fall, a broken glass, a few stitches at the local emergency room)? Would she stare unblinking at the empty shelf and ask, “Where are your books, Harry? Didn’t you bring them?”

  And would he, Harry Gainesborough, crack like the last witness in an old “Perry Mason” and blurt it out: “All those damned books are at the bottom of the pond! I was drunk, okay? There was a full moon. I rowed out to the middle of the pond and heaved the whole goddamn lot of them over the side, and I was sobbing my eyes out while I did it, like a TV evangelist up on a morals charge. It was just one of those melodramatic gestures drunks make, and I’m going to have my publisher send me copies of all my books again. I’m going to stop drinking. I was just off balance when I got here. I’m all right now.”

  Harry wanted Helen to approve of his mental health. She was a good friend, but four years ago she had overreacted and single-handedly wrestled him into Harwood Psychiatric. No doubt the experience had been a bracing one and good for him, but he did not wish to repeat it.

  Harry slapped his thighs. “Gotta get moving,” he said, standing up. He began walking around the room, stooping to pick up vagrant socks and T-shirts.

  Harry was unaware that he had just spoken the second line of his children’s book, Zod Wallop, a book that the reviewer at The New York Times had called an instant classic.

  This is how Zod Wallop begins:

  Rock yawned. “Gotta get moving,” Rock said. A couple of hundred million years went by. A rock is always slow to take action. A rock watches an oak grow from a sapling to a towering tree, and it’s a flash and a dazzle in the mind of a rock.

  What was that? Rock thinks. Or maybe, Huh?

  Chapter 3

  THE GIANT'S NAME was Paul Allan but nobody called him Paul, because he did not like the name and would react violently.

  “It’s your fucking name, you should get used to it,” the orderly named Baker told him.

  “You should get used to me hitting you,” Allan said.

  Allan had been in and out of Harwood Psychiatric since he was thirteen. He had a problem with violence. He was now twenty-three years old.

  His mother, Mrs. Gabriel Allan-Tate, came to visit him the day after Raymond Story’s wedding.

  “I’m afraid he can’t see visitors right now. He’s in the quiet room,” the nurse told her.

  “You are new here,” Mrs. Allan-Tate told the nurse. “No one has told you that I can see my son whenever I wish. The oversight is theirs, not yours. Just get Dr. Lavin on the phone and tell him Gabriel is here to see her son.”

  “I’m sorry. Dr. Lavin gave specific instructions that he not—”

  “Really,” Mrs. Allan-Tate said. She grabbed the phone, deftly punched four digits, and waited. She tapped the desktop with
a long fingernail while the phone rang. “Theo,” she shouted into the receiver, “This is Gabriel. I’m here to see my son. Shake the lead out of your ass and get down here. Yes.” She replaced the receiver. Her breathing was labored, and she took an inhaler from her purse and brought it to her lips.

  The nurse, who was indeed new, studied this small, elegant woman with the high white forehead and dark, flashing eyes. Mrs. Gabriel Allan-Tate replaced the inhaler, smiled at the girl, and leaned forward. “I’m a rich patron of the mental-health professions,” she said, and suddenly she giggled, as a child might, and put a hand to her lips.

  Dr. Theodore Lavin came bustling through the swinging doors. He would have had to run to reach the lobby this quickly. He was an overweight, red-faced man, presently wheezing from his exertions.

  “Gabriel,” he gushed, rushing forward, arms outstretched. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “Don’t actually hug me,” Mrs. Allan-Tate said, and Harwood Psychiatric’s director came to an abrupt halt.

  Well, well, the nurse thought, as she watched her boss struggle to regain his composure. The tone of Mrs. Gabriel Allan-Tate’s voice suggested that she was every bit as capable of violence as her troubled son.

  When the door to her son’s room closed behind her, Gabriel Allan-Tate stood in the middle of the room and screamed, throwing her head back and emitting a series of shrieks as though auditioning for a horror film.

  She stopped abruptly, smiled demurely at her son who sat on the bed regarding her with a steady gaze, and said, “Excuse me, Allan. But quiet rooms just bring the lunatic out in me.”

  “That’s a pretty good joke,” her son said, although he did not smile.

  Gabriel Allan-Tate sighed, her shoulders sagged, and she came over and sat beside her son on the bed. He stiffened a little when she patted his knee.

  “I don’t wish to blame you for this incident, Allan. I wish to file it under high spirits, a lark. I’m told that your companion, this Raymond Story, is a very convincing lunatic. But I believe you could say I have had my fill of your pathological behavior. I will do my duty as a mother, of course, but I will not empathize or attempt to follow whatever convoluted logic you might offer for stealing a van and jeopardizing the lives of your fellow patients. Since your father’s death, I don’t have the energy I once had, so you will just have to excuse me.”

  “It would be a waste of time, anyway,” Allan said. Allan’s voice was flat and seemed to shift around inside his chest, like a bored tour guide in a cathedral. Allan was a half-inch under seven feet tall, and he sat straight-backed on the bed, hands on his knees. He was wearing black jeans and a T-shirt that said THE UNIVERSITY OF LIFE and had a cartoon picture of a tennis-shoed foot about to step on a dog turd.

  “A waste of time,” his mother said, nodding her head slowly. “I don’t know how you can say that. I have found all my dealings with police and mental health professionals wildly enriching. I have learned such a lot about the ways the human brain malfunctions. And it has been especially enlightening to have strangers tell me that my son’s terrible behavior is all my fault. I might have gone through life foolishly assuming that I was a good mother, utterly oblivious to my monstrous nature. I thank God daily for the insight these people—who have never even met me—have so generously offered.”

  This speech seemed to cheer Gabriel up, and she leaned forward and kissed her son on the cheek.

  Her voice turned gratingly bright. “Where is your friend? Where is little Raymond?”

  Allan shook his head from side to side.

  His mother stood up. She touched the back of her son’s neck, and his eyes widened, as though her finger were the cold muzzle of a gun.

  Gabriel continued, “Dr. Lavin is afraid this Raymond Story will do himself harm if he isn’t found. And that poor, helpless girl. My God, my stomach turns when I think of her fate. The minister who participated in that travesty of a wedding should be—what’s the word?—disbarred, excommunicated, something. Do you suppose this Story will attempt sexual intercourse with that poor, crippled, mindless child? There are limits to where my imagination will go, and I draw the line there. But it is hard not to think—”

  Her son interrupted. “Mother,” he said, “it’s not like that at all. You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “I’m sure I do,” she said. “Just tell me where they are, Allan, and Dr. Lavin can bring them back here, and they can explain everything.”

  “I can’t do that,” Allan said.

  “Why not?”

  “They’ll kill her,” Allan said, lowering his voice.

  Without another word, Mrs. Gabriel Allan-Tate walked to the door. Standing on tiptoe, she knocked on the small, wire mesh window, waited, and, when the door was opened, turned back to her son.

  “Allan,” she said, “I told you I was not listening to crazy talk, and I am not. I will visit again when you are more lucid. I might remind you that the only one I know who wants to kill anyone is you. I am sorry to have to be so confrontational, but I want you to reflect on that. It is your own violence that you fear. Dr. Lavin suggested I never bring the subject up, but I am convinced he is wrong. You need an awakening. I suggest you stop worrying about your precious friends and concentrate on your own problems. I suggest you think about how you tried to kill me, your own mother. Twice you tried to kill me, Allan. That’s what you should be thinking about.”

  And she left before he could reply, although he had no intention of replying.

  And what, he wondered, did she mean by twice? He had tried to kill her once, yes, and he regretted that, was sincerely sorry because he did love her—every bit as much as he hated her. But twice?

  Allan closed his eyes tight and thought. It came to him immediately. How could he forget? She talked about it all the time. He had tried to kill her when he was born.

  Later that afternoon, the orderly named Baker unlocked the door to the quiet room.

  “Hey asshole,” Baker hollered, “Time to stop counting your farts, time to move!” Baker’s bandaged nose gave his voice a muffled-megaphone quality that Allan found comic.

  Allan smiled. “You got sinus problems?” he asked.

  “Your pal Ray-boy is gonna have finding-his-balls problems,” Baker said. There were dark circles under Baker’s eyes, which contributed to the gloomy-clown look.

  Back in his room, Allan lay on his bed and studied the ceiling. He remembered that he was in love, and he got up and went into the dayroom to see if he could find her. Hank and Jason, both of whom had been on the van when Allan commandeered it and drove it to the wedding, waved to Allan from the sofa. They were holding hands—furtively, since such displays of affection were frowned on by the staff and could result in the instant revoking of privileges like television watching.

  Hank and Jason weren’t queer—that had been Allan’s first thought—they were just dim-witted and fond of each other. Hank had small, raisinlike eyes in a round face, and when he laughed his body got away from him, arms flapped, his shoulders jumped, his nose was inclined to run. Jason was a thin, acne-scarred boy who didn’t talk much. His pants were always sliding down so that you could see the crack in his ass, and when he did talk he’d say things like “Have a good day,” or “Fine, thanks,” kind of nothing sentences, other people’s cast-off words that he’d picked up.

  Allan waved back at them. Rene wasn’t in the room, so Allan walked back down the hall and pushed the door open on the courtyard, and walked out into the late afternoon sunlight and Rene was sitting there, next to the stone gargoyle, on the edge of the goldfish pond. Yesterday’s bathing suit was replaced by pale blue overalls and a yellow tank top.

  She looked like she had swallowed the sun, and now light was pouring out of her skin. Most of the trees in the courtyard were leaning toward her.

  Allan felt dizzy and oddly angry, which always confused him. He didn’t want to hurt Rene, but sometimes it seemed that the thing he hated hid inside her.

  She looked at hi
m and smiled and waved a hand that held a cigarette. He didn’t smile back, but he walked over to her and said, “Hi, Rene.”

  “No,” she said, “I’m not high. This is just a regular cigarette.” She laughed. Allan thought of reaching out and touching the tattoo on her upper right arm. It was a red and blue tattoo of a rainbow in the clouds and when he’d asked about it, she’d said, “Cause of my name.” He’d felt stupid because he didn’t get it. “Gold,” she had said. “You know, Rene Gold.” And she could tell he still didn’t get it so she had said, “Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” stretching the word gold out. Allan had nodded then.

  She was smiling today, her mouth displaying small, white perfect teeth. She leaned forward and touched Allan’s arm. She grew serious.

  “I saw a Ralewing last night,” she said.

  Allan stared back at her, not saying anything. His heart was beating fast.

  “I woke up and there it was, on the ceiling,” Rene said. “At first I thought it was a shadow, but then it started flying around the room, real slow, and I could see two little pins of red light—those were its eyes—and I got scared. I thought it would land on my face.” She stopped speaking, her eyes wide.

  Allan didn’t like to think of waking in the night with a Ralewing in his room. A Ralewing looked a little like a sting ray, except that it had a head like a snake on a long stalked appendage and could travel the air as easily as it traveled the underground waters of Mal Ganvern. Ralewings ate the faces from people, stole infants, and vomited a volatile fluid that burst into flames. Ralewings were the creatures of Lord Draining, king of the Less-Than.