The News of the World: Stories

  THE NEWS OF THE WORLD

  FOR

  CAROL HOUCK SMITH

  CONTENTS

  I

  THE GOVERNOR’S BALL

  THE H STREET SLEDDING RECORD

  SANTA MONICA

  OLYMPUS HILLS

  LIFE BEFORE SCIENCE

  II

  BIGFOOT STOLE MY WIFE

  I AM BIGFOOT

  MADAME ZELENA FINALLY COMES CLEAN

  THE TIME I DIED

  THE USES OF VIDEOTAPE

  PHENOMENA

  III

  HALF LIFE

  MILK

  BLOOD

  MAX

  THE STATUS QUO

  ALSO BY RON CARLSON

  COPYRIGHT

  THE author wishes to thank the National Endowment for the Arts for its generous support.

  “Bigfoot Stole My Wife” and parts of section II were performed at the Sundance Playwrights’ Institute, thanks to David Kranes and company; at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York, thanks to John Rothman and company; at the Philadelphia Festival Theatre, thanks to Carol Rocamora and company; and at the Salt Lake Acting Company, thanks to Ed Gryska and company.

  I

  THE GOVERNOR’S BALL

  I DIDN’T know until I had the ten-ton wet carpet on top of the hideous load of junk and I was soaked with the dank rust water that the Governor’s Ball was that night. It was late afternoon and I had wrestled the carpet out of our basement, with all my strength and half my anger, to use it as a cover so none of the other wet wreckage that our burst pipes had ruined would blow out of the truck onto Twenty-first South as I drove to the dump. The wind had come up and my shirt front was stiffening as Cody pulled up the driveway in her Saab.

  “You’re a mess,” she said. “Is the plumber through?”

  “Done and gone. We can move back in tomorrow afternoon.”

  “We’ve got the ball in two hours.”

  “Okay.”

  “Could we not be late for once,” Cody said. It was the first time I had stood still all day, and I felt how wet my feet were; I wanted to fight, but I couldn’t come up with anything great. “I’ve got your clothes and everything. Come along.”

  “No problem,” I said, grabbing the old rope off the cab floor.

  “You’re not going to take that to the dump now, are you?”

  “Cody,” I said, going over to her window, “I just loaded this. If I leave it on the truck tonight, one of the tires will go flat, and you’ll have to help me unload this noxious residue tomorrow so I can change it. I’ve got to go. I’ll hurry. You just be ready.”

  Her window was up by the time I finished and I watched her haul the sharp black car around and wheel into traffic. Since the pipes had frozen, we were staying with Dirk and Evan.

  The old Ford was listing hard to the right rear, so I skipped back into the house for a last tour. Except for the sour water everywhere, it looked like I had everything. Then I saw the mattress. I had thrown the rancid king-size mattress behind the door when I had first started and now as I closed the front of the house, there it was. It was so large I had overlooked it. Our original wedding mattress. It took all the rest of my anger and some of tomorrow’s strength to hoist it up the stairs and dance it out the back, where I levered it onto the hood of the truck by forcing my face, head, and shoulders into the ocher stain the shape of South America on one side. Then I dragged it back over the load, stepping awkwardly in the freezing carpet.

  The rear tire was even lower now, so I hustled, my wet feet sloshing, and tied the whole mess down with the rope, lacing it through the little wire hoops I’d fashioned at each corner of the truck bed.

  There was always lots of play in the steering of the Ford, but now, each time it rocked backward, I had no control at all. My fingers were numb and the truck was so back-heavy that I careened down Fifth South like a runaway wheelbarrow. The wind had really come up now, and I could feel it lifting at me as I crossed the intersections. It was cold in the cab, the frigid air crashing through the hole where the radio had been, but I wasn’t stopping. I’d worried my way to the dump in this great truck a dozen times.

  The Governor’s Ball is two hundred dollars per couple, but we went every year as Dirk’s guests. The event itself is held at the Hotel Utah, and the asparagus and salmon are never bad, but holding a dress ball in January is a sort of mistake, all that gray cleavage, everyone sick of the weather.

  I was thinking about how Dirk always seated himself by Cody, how he made sure she was taken care of, how they danced the first dance, when the light at Third West turned green and I mounted the freeway. As soon as I could, I squeezed way right to get out of everybody’s way, and because the wind here was fierce, sheering across at forty miles per hour, at least. The old truck was rocking like a dinghy; I was horsing the steering wheel hard, trying to stay in my lane, when I felt something go. There was a sharp snap and in the rearview mirror I saw the rope whip across the back. The mattress rose like a playing card and jumped up, into the wind. It sailed left off the truck, waving over the rail, and was gone. I checked the rear, slowing. The mattress had flown out and over and off the ramp, five stories to the ground. I couldn’t see a thing, except that rope, snapping, and the frozen carpet which wasn’t going anywhere.

  The traffic around me all slowed, cautioned by this vision. I tried to wave at them as if I knew what was going on and everything was going to be all right. At the Twenty-first South exit, I headed west, letting the rope snap freely, as if whipping the truck for more speed.

  The dump, lying in the lea of the Kennecott tailings mound, was strangely warm. Throwing the debris onto the mountain of trash, I could smell certain sweet things rotting, and my feet warmed up a bit. By the time I swept out the truck, it was full dark. I still had half an hour to make the Governor’s Ball.

  I hit it hard driving away from the dump, just like everybody does, hoping to blow the microscopic cooties from their vehicles, but when I got back to Ninth West, I turned off. I didn’t want to go retrieve the mattress; it was nine years old and had been in the basement three. But I had lost it. I had to call Cody.

  The first neon I ran across was a place called The Oasis, a bar among all the small industries in that district. Inside, it was smotheringly warm and beery. I hadn’t realized how cold my hands were until I tried for the dime in the pay phone. The jukebox was at full volume on Michael Jackson singing “Beat It!” so that when Cody answered, the first thing she said was: “Where are you?”

  “I lost the mattress; I’m going to be late.”

  “What?”

  “Go along with Dirk; I’ll join you. Don’t let anybody eat my salmon.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The mattress blew out of the truck; I’ve got to go get it. And Cody.”

  “What?”

  “Behave.”

  It was not until I had hung up that I saw the dancer. They had built a little stage in the corner of the bar and a young girl wearing pasties and a pair of Dale Evans fringed panties was dancing to the jukebox. Her breasts were round and high and didn’t bounce very much, though they threw nice shadows when the girl turned under the light. I sat in my own sour steam at the end of the bar and ordered a beer. My fingernails ached as my hands warmed. All the men along the row sat with their backs to the bar to see the girl. I sat forward, feeling the grime melt in my clothes, and watched her in the mirror.

  When the song ended, there was some applause, but only from two tables, and the lights on the stage went off. The barmaid was in front of me and I said no, thanks, and then she turned a little and said, “What would you like, Terry?”

  I realized that the dancer was standing at my elbow. Now
she was wearing a lacy fringed pajama top too, and I could see that she was young, there was a serious pimple above one of her eyebrows. I didn’t know I was staring at her until she said: “Don’t even try to buy me a drink.” I started to put up my hands, meaning I was no harm, when she added: “I’ve seen your kind before. Why don’t you go out and do some good?”

  The barmaid looked at me as if I had started the whole thing, and before I could speak, she moved down to serve the other end.

  It was a long walk to the truck, but I made it. January. The whole city had cabin fever. She’d seen my kind before. Not me: my kind. The old truck was handling better now, and I conducted it back along Ninth West to Ninth South and started hunting. I’d never been under that on-ramp before, except for one night when Cody took me to the Barb Wire, a western bar where we watched all her young lawyer friends dance with the cowboys. In the dark, the warehouses made their own blank city. It was eight o’clock. Cody and Dirk were having cocktails in the Lafayette Suite. She’d be drinking vodka tonics with two limes. Dirk would be drinking scotch without any ice. He would have the Governor’s elbow in his left palm right now, steering him around to Cody, “You remember Cody Westerman. Her husband is at the dump.”

  I crossed under the ramp at Fourth West and weaved under it to the corner of Fifth, where I did a broad, slow U-turn across the railroad tracks to scan the area. Nothing. Two derelicts leaned against the back of a blue post office van, drinking out of a paper sack. I cruised slowly up beside them.

  “Hi, you guys,” I said. It was the first time all day I felt fine about being so dirty. They looked at me frankly, easily, as if this meeting had been arranged. One, his shirt buttoned up under his skinny chin, seemed to be chewing on something. The other had the full face of an Indian, and I was surprised to see she was a woman. They both wore short blue cloth Air Force jackets with the insignias missing.

  “Have you seen a mattress?”

  The woman said something and turned to the man.

  “What did she say? Have you seen one?”

  The man took a short pull on the bottle and continued chewing. “She said, what kind of mattress is it?” He passed the bottle to the woman and she smiled at me.

  I thought: Okay. What kind of mattress is it. Okay, I can do this. “It was a king-size Sealy Posturepedic.”

  “King-size?”

  “Yes: King-size. Have you seen it?”

  He took the bottle back from the woman and nodded at me.

  “You have? Where?”

  “Would this king-size postropeeda fly out of the sky?” the man said. His eyes were bright; this was the best time he’d had all day.

  “It would.”

  “What’s it worth to you?” he said.

  “Nothing, folks. I was throwing it away.”

  “You threw it all right!” the woman said, and they both laughed.

  I waited, one arm on the steering wheel, but then I saw the truth: these two were champion waiters; that’s what they did for a living.

  “Where’s the mattress? Come on. Please.”

  “It’s not worth anything.”

  “Okay, what’s it worth?”

  “Two bottles of this,” the man said, pulling a fifth of Old Grand Dad from the bag.

  “That’s an expensive mattress.”

  The man stopped chewing and said, “It’s king-size.” They both laughed again.

  “Okay. It’s a deal. Two bottles of bourbon. Where is it?”

  For a minute, neither moved, and I thought we were in for another long inning of waiting, but then the woman, still looking at me, slowly raised her hand and pointed over her head. I looked up. There it was, at least the corner of it, hanging over the edge of the one-story brick building: Wolcott Engineering.

  Well, that’s it, I thought. I tried. Monday morning the engineers would find a large mattress on their roof. It was out of my hands.

  The woman stepped up and tapped my elbow. “Back this around in the alley,” she said. “Get as close to the building as you can.”

  “What?”

  “No problem,” the man said. “We’ll get your mattress for you; we got a deal going here, don’t we?”

  I backed into the alley beside Wolcott Engineering, so close I couldn’t open my door and had to slide across to climb out. The woman was helping the man into the bed of the truck, and when I saw it was his intention to climb on the cab of the truck to reach the roof, I stopped him.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Then I’ll catch it,” he laughed.

  The roof was littered with hundreds of green Thunderbird bottles glinting in the icy frost. They clattered under the mattress as I dragged it across to the alley. For a moment, it stood on the edge of the roof and then folded and fell, fainting like a starlet into the cold air.

  By the time I climbed down, they had the mattress crammed into the pickup. It was too wide and the depression in the middle formed a nest; the man and the woman were lying in there on their backs. “Two bottles,” the man said.

  “Don’t you want to ride in front?”

  “You kidding?”

  The Ford’s windshield was iced, inside and out, and that complicated my search for a way out of the warehouse district. I crossed sixteen sets of railroad tracks, many twice, finally cutting north through an alley to end up under the Fourth South viaduct. I heard a tap on the rear window. I rolled down my window.

  “Could you please drive back across those tracks one more time?”

  “What?”

  “Please!”

  So I made a slow circuit of our route again, rumbling over several series of railroad tracks. I adjusted the mirror and watched my passengers. As the truck would roll over the tracks, the two would bounce softly in the mattress, their arms folded tightly over their chests like corpses, the woman’s face absolutely closed up in laughter. They were laughing their heads off. Returning to the viaduct, I stopped. The man tilted his chin up so he looked at me upside down and he mouthed: “Thanks.”

  I cruised around Pioneer Park, a halo frozen around each streetlamp, and eased into the liquor store parking lot.

  “We’ll wait here,” the man told me.

  Inside, I was again reminded of how cold I was, and the clerk shook his head looking at my dirty clothing as I bought the two bottles of Old Grand Dad and a mini-bottle for myself. He clucked as I dropped the change. My jacket pocket had gotten ripped pushing the mattress across the roof; the coins went right through. My hands were cold and I had some difficulty retrieving the money. When I stood, I said simply to the clerk: “These bottles are all for me. I’m going to drink them tonight sleeping under the stars and wake up frozen to Third West. You’ve seen my kind before, haven’t you?”

  Outside, I laid the bottles on top of my passengers, one each on their stomachs.

  “Many thanks,” the man said to me. “It was worth it.”

  “Where can I let you off?”

  “Down at the park, if it’s no trouble.”

  The woman lay smiling, a long-term smile. She turned her shiny eyes on me for a second and nodded. The two of them looked like kids lying there.

  I drove them back to the park, driving slowly around the perimeter, waiting for the man to tap when he wanted to get out. After I’d circled the park once, I stopped across from the Fuller Paint warehouse. The man looked up at me upside down again and made a circular motion with his first finger, and then he held it up to signal: just once more.

  I opened the mini-bottle and took a hot sip of bourbon. The park, like all the rest of the city was three feet in sooty snow, and some funny configurations stood on the stacks of the old locomotive which was set on the corner. The branches of the huge trees were silver in the black sky, iced by the insistent mist. There were no cars at all, and so I sipped the whiskey and drove around the park four times, slowly. It was quarter to ten; Cody would have given my salmon to Dirk by now, saying something like, “He’s been killed on an icy overpass, let’s eat hi
s fish and then dance.”

  I stopped this time opposite the huge locomotive. I stood out beside the bed of the truck. “Is this all right?”

  The man sat up. “Sure, son; this is fine.” They hadn’t opened their new bottles. Then I saw that the woman was turned on her side. Something was going on.

  “What’s the matter? Is she all right?”

  “It’s all right,” he said, and he helped her sit up. Her face glowed under all the tears; her chin vibrated with the sobbing, and the way her eyes closed now wanted to break my heart.

  “What is it? What can I do?”

  They climbed over the tailgate of the truck. The woman said something. The man said to me: “We’re all right.” He smiled.

  “What did she say?” I asked him.

  “She said thanks; she said, It’s so beautiful. It’s so chilly and so beautiful.”

  THE H STREET SLEDDING RECORD

  THE last thing I do every Christmas Eve is go out in the yard and throw the horse manure onto the roof. It is a ritual. After we return from making our attempt at the H Street Sledding Record, and we sit in the kitchen sipping Egg Nog and listening to Elise recount the sled ride, and Elise then finally goes to bed happily, reluctantly, and we finish placing Elise’s presents under the tree and we pin her stocking to the mantel—with care—and Drew brings out two other wrapped boxes which anyone could see are for me, and I slap my forehead having forgotten to get her anything at all for Christmas (except the prizes hidden behind the glider on the front porch), I go into the garage and put on the gloves and then into the yard where I throw the horse manure on the roof.

  Drew always uses this occasion to call my mother. They exchange all the Christmas news, but the main purpose of the calls the last few years has been for Drew to stand in the window where she can see me out there lobbing the great turds up into the snow on the roof, and describe what I am doing to my mother. The two women take amusement from this. They say things like: “You married him” and “He’s your son.” I take their responses to my rituals as a kind of fond, subtle support, which it is. Drew had said when she first discovered me throwing the manure on the roof, the Christmas that Elise was four, “You’re the only man I’ve ever known who did that.” See: a compliment.