Something Is Going to Happen

The next month it happened and no one knew what was coming.

How could we imagine such a thing was going on in inBOIL's

mind?

It had taken years to get over the tigers and the terrible things

they had done to us. Why would anyone want to do something

else? I don't know.

During the weeks before it happened everything went on as

normal at iDEATH. I started working on another statue and Margaret

kept going down to the Forgotten Works.

The statue did not go well and pretty soon I was only going

down to iDEATH and staring at the statue. It just wasn't coming

along which was nothing new for me. I had never had much luck

at statues. I was thinking about getting a job down at the Watermelon

Works.

Sometimes Margaret went down to the Forgotten Works by

herself. It worried me. She was so pretty and inBOIL and that

gang of his were so ugly. They might get ideas.

Why did she want to go down there all the time?

Rumors

Toward the end of the month strange rumors began coming up

from the Forgotten Works, rumors of violent denouncements of

iDEATH by inBOIL.

There were rumors about him ranting and raving that iDEATH

was all wrong the way we did it, and he knew how it should be

done and then he said we handled the trout hatchery all wrong.

It was a disgrace.

Imagine inBOIL saying anything about us, and there was a

rumor about us being sissies and then something about the tigers

that no one could understand.

Something about the tigers being a good deal.

I went down to the Forgotten Works with Margaret one

afternoon. I didn't want to go down there, but I didn't want her

to go down there alone either.

She wanted to get more things for her forgotten collection.

She already had more things than were necessary.

She had filled her shack up and her room at iDEATH with these

things. She even wanted to store some of them in my shack.

I said NO.

I asked inBOIL what was up. He was drunk as usual, and his

gang of burns was gathered around.

"You guys don't know anything about iDEATH. I'm going to

show you something about it soon. What real iDEATH is like,"

inBOIL said.

"You guys are a bunch of sissies. Only the tigers had any

guts. I'm going to show you. We're going to show you all."

He addressed this last thing to his gang. They cheered and held

their bottles of whiskey up high, reaching toward the red sun.

The Way Back Again

"Why do you go down there?" I said.

"I just like forgotten things. I'm collecting them. I want a

collection of them. I think they're cute. What's wrong with

that?"

"What do you mean, what's wrong with that? Didn't you hear

what that drunken bum said about us?"

"What does that have to do with forgotten things?" she said.

"They drink the stuff," I said.

Dinner That Night

Dinner that night was troubled at iDEATH. Everybody played

with their food. Al had cooked up a mess of carrots. They were

good, mixed with honey and spices, but nobody cared.

Everybody was worried about inBOIL. Pauline didn't touch

her food. Neither did Charley. Strange thing, though: Margaret

ate like a horse.

There had been a longish period of silence when Charley

finally said, "I don't know what's going to happen. It looks

serious. I've been afraid something like this was going to happen

for a long time, ever since inBOIL got involved with the Forgotten

Works, and took to making that whiskey of his, and

getting men to go down there and live his kind of life.

"I've known something was going to happen. It's been due

for a long time, and now it looks like it's here or will be shortly.

Perhaps tomorrow. Who knows?"

"What are we going to do?" Pauline said. "What can we do?"

"Just wait," Charley said. "That's about all. We can't threaten

them or defend ourselves until they've done something, and

who knows what they are going to do. They won't tell us.

"I went down there myself yesterday morning, and I asked

inBOIL what was up and he said, we'd see soon enough. They'd

show us what iDEATH really was, none of the false stuff we have.

What do you know about this, Margaret? You've spent a lot of

time down there lately."

Everybody looked at her.

"I don't know anything. I just get forgotten things down

there. They don't tell me anything. They're always very nice to

me."

Everybody tried hard not to look away from Margaret, but

they couldn't help themselves, and looked away.

"We can take care of anything that happens," Fred said,

breaking the silence. "Those drunken burns can't do anything

we can't handle."

"You bet," Old Chuck said, though he was very old.

"You're right," Pauline said. "We can handle them. We live

at iDEATH."

Margaret went right back to eating her carrots as if nothing had happened.

Pauline Again

I was very angry with Margaret. She wanted to sleep with me

at iDEATH, but I said, "NO, I want to go up to my shack and be

alone."

She was very hurt by this and went off to the trout hatchery.

I didn't care. Her performance at dinner had really disgusted me.

On my way out of iDEATH, I met Pauline in the living room.

She was carrying a painting that she was going to put up on

the wall.

"Hello," I said. "That's a lovely painting you have there. Did

you paint that yourself?"

"Yes, I did."

"It looks very good."

The painting was of iDEATH a long time ago during one of its

many changes. The painting looked like iDEATH used to look.

"I didn't know you painted," I said.

"Just in my spare time."

"It's really a nice painting."

"Thank you."

Pauline kind of blushed. I had never seen her blush before or

perhaps I had not remembered so. It became her.

"You think everything is going to be all right, don't you?"

she said, changing the subject.

"Yes," I said. "Don't worry."

Faces

I left iDEATH and started up the road to my shack. It was suddenly

a very cold night and the stars shone like ice. I wished I

had brought my Mackinaw. I walked up the road until I saw

the lanterns on the bridges.

They were the lanterns of a beautiful child and a trout on

the real bridge, and the tiger lanterns on the abandoned bridge.

I could barely see the statue of somebody who had been killed

by the tigers, but nobody knows who it was. So many were

killed by the tigers until we killed the last tiger and burned its

body at iDEATH and built the trout hatchery right over the spot.

The statue was standing in the river by the bridges. It looked

sad as if it did not want to be a statue of somebody killed by

the tigers a long time ago.

I stopped and stared at a distance. A little while passed and

then I went to the bridge. I crossed through the dark tunnel of

the covered real bridge, past the glowing faces, and up into the

piney woods toward my shack.

Shack

I stopped on the bridge to my shack. It felt good under my feet,

made from all the things that I like, the things that suit me.

I stared at my mother. She was only another shadow now against

the night, but once she had been a good woman.

I went inside the shack and lit my lantern with a six-inch

match. The watermelontrout oil burned with a beautiful light.

It is a fine oil.

We mix watermelon sugar and trout juice and special herbs

all together and in their proper time to make this fine oil that we

use to light our world.

I was very sleepy but I didn't feel like sleeping. The sleepier

I got, the less I felt like sleeping. I lay on my bed for a long

time without taking off my clothes, and I left the lantern on and

stared at the shadows in the room.

They were rather nice shadows for a time that was so ominous,

that drew so near and all enclosing. I was so sleepy now that my eyes refused to close. The lids would not budge down. They were

statues of eyes.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 746