T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

Calvin doesn’t know what to say, his head crowded with numbers all of a sudden. Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, a hundred and twenty pesos in a dollar, sixteen men on a dead man’s chest, yo-ho-ho and one-point-oh-five quarts to a liter. “I … I—” he stammers.

“The nerve,” Mrs. Tuxton says.

“Well?” The German woman is poised over him now, just as she was on the day she slapped the soda from his hand — he can smell her, a smell like liverwurst, and it turns his stomach. “Do you know anything about this, eh? Do you?”

He does. He knows all about it. Jewel knows, Lee Junior knows, Ormand knows. They’ll go to jail, all of them. And Calvin? He’s just an old man, tired, worn out, an old man in a wheelchair. He looks into the German woman’s face and tries to feel pity, tries to feel brave, righteous, good. But instead he has a vision of himself farmed out to some nursing home, the women in the white caps prodding him and humiliating him, the stink of fatality on the air, the hacking and moaning in the night—

“I’m … I’m sorry,” he says.

Her face goes numb, flesh the color of raw dough. “Sorry?” she echoes. “Sorry?”

But he’s already backing out the door.

(1983)

There has been a collision (with birds, black flocks of them), an announcement from the pilot’s cabin, a moment of abeyed hysteria, and then the downward rush. The plane is nosing for the ground at a forty-five-degree angle, engines wheezing, spewing smoke and feathers. Lights flash, breathing apparatus drops and dangles. Our drinks become lariats, the glasses knives. Lunch (chicken croquettes, gravy, reconstituted potatoes and imitation cranberry sauce) decorates our shirts and vests. Outside there is the shriek of the air over the wings; inside, the rock-dust rumble of grinding teeth, molar on molar. My face seems to be slipping over my head like a rubber mask. And then, horribly, the first trees become visible beyond the windows. We gasp once and then we’re down, skidding through the greenery, jolted from our seats, panicked, repentant, savage. Windows strain and pop like light bulbs. We lose our bowels. The plane grates through the trees, the shriek of branches like the keen of harpies along the fuselage, our bodies jarred, dashed and knocked like the silver balls in a pinball machine. And then suddenly it’s over: we are stopped (think of a high diver meeting the board on the way down). I expect (have expected) flames.

There are no flames. There is blood. Thick clots of it, puddles, ponds, lakes. We count heads. Eight of us still have them: myself, the professor, the pilot (his arm already bound up in a sparkling white sling), the mime, Tanqueray with a twist (nothing worse than a gin drinker), the man allergic to cats (runny eyes, red nose), the cat breeder, and Andrea, the stewardess. The cats, to a one, have survived. They crouch in their cages, coated with wet kitty litter like tempura shrimp. The rugby players, all twelve of them (dark-faced, scowling sorts), are dead. Perhaps just as well.

Dazed, palms pressed to bruised organs, handkerchiefs dabbing at wounds, we hobble from the wreckage. Tanqueray is sniveling, a soft moan and gargle like rain on the roof and down the gutter. The mime makes an Emmett Kelly face. The professor limps, cradling a black briefcase with Fiskeridirektoratets Havforskningsinstitutt engraved in the corner. The cats, left aboard, begin to yowl. The allergic man throws back his head, sneezes.

We look around: trees that go up three hundred feet, lianas, leaves the size of shower curtains, weeds thick as a knit sweater. Step back ten feet and the plane disappears. The pilot breaks the news: we’ve come down in the heart of the Amazon basin, hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles from the nearest toilet.

The radio, of course, is dead.

Evening

We are back in the plane. They’ve sopped up the gore, switched the seats with palm fronds, buried the rugby players. Air freshener has been sprayed. The punctures (sardine tin, church key) have been plugged with life preservers, rubber life rafts. This then, will be our shelter.

Andrea, her uniform torn over the breast and slit up the leg, portions out our dinner: two of those plastic thimbles of nondairy creamer, a petrified brioche, two plastic packets of Thousand Island dressing, a cup of water and Bloody Mary mix. Apiece.

“Life has its little rewards,” says Tanqueray, smacking his lips. He is a man of sagging flesh, torrid complexion, drooping into his sixth decade. There are two empty gin bottles (miniatures) on his tray.

The professor looks up at him. He pages rapidly through a Norwegian-English dictionary. “Good evening,” he says. “I am well. And you?”

Tanqueray nods.

“I sink we come rain,” the professor says.

The allergic man rattles a bottle of pills.

The mime makes a show of licking the plastic recesses of his Thousand Island packet.

“Foreigner, eh?” says Tanqueray.

Suddenly the pilot is on his feet. “Now listen, everybody,” he booms. “I’m going to lay it on the line. No mincing words, no pussyfooting. We’re in a jam. No food, no water, no medical supplies. I’m not saying we’re not lucky to be alive and I’m not saying that me and the prof here ain’t going to try our damnedest to get this crate in the air again … but I am saying we’re in a jam. If we stick together, if we fight this thing — if we work like a team — we’ll make it.”

I watch him: the curls at his temple, sharp nose, white teeth, the set of his jaw (prognathic). I realize that we have a leader. I further realize that I detest him. I doubt that we will make it.

“A team,” he repeats.

The mime makes his George-Washington-crossing-the-Delaware face.

Night

Chiggers, ticks, gnats, nits. Cicadas. Millipedes, centipedes, omnipedes, mini-pedes, pincerheads, poison toads, land leeches, skinks. Palmetto bugs. Iguanas, fer-de-lance, wolf spiders, diggers, buzzers, hissers, stinkers. Oonipids. Spitting spiders. Ants. Mites. Flits. Whips. Mosquitoes.

Morning

The gloom brightens beyond the shattered plastic windows. Things are cooing and chattering in the bushes. Weep-weep-weep. Coo-hooo, coo-hooo. I wake itching. There is a spider the size of a two-egg omelet on my chest. When I lift my hand (slowly and stealthily, like a tropism) he scrambles across my face and up over the seat.

Tanqueray (buttery-faced, pouchy slob) is snoring. I sit up. The cat man is watching me. “Good morning,” he whispers. The lower half of his face, from the lips down, is the color of a plum. A birthmark. I’d taken it for a beard, but now, up close, I see the mistake.

“Sleep well?” he whispers.

I grunt, scratch.

The others are still sleeping. I can hear the professor grinding his teeth, the allergic man wheezing. Andrea and the pilot are not present. The door to the pilot’s cabin is drawn shut. Somewhere, a cat wails.

“Hssst,” says the cat man. He stands, beckons with a finger, then slips out the door. I follow.

Things hiss off in the vegetation and rattle in the trees. We slash our way to the baggage compartment, where the cat man pauses to lift the door and duck his way in. Immediately I become aware of the distinctive odor attaching to the feline body functions. I step inside.

“My beauties,” says the cat man, addressing the cats. They yowl in unison and he croons to them (“little ones,” “prettyfeet,” “buttertails”) in a primitive sort of recognition rite. I realize that the cat man is an ass.

“Let me introduce you to my wards,” he says. “This”—there is a cat in his arms, its fur like cotton candy—“is Egmont. He’s a Chinchilla Persian. Best of Show at Rio two weeks ago. I wouldn’t take ten thousand dollars for him.” He looks at me. I whistle, gauging the appropriate response. He points to the cages successively: “Joy Boy, Roos, Great Northern, Peaker, and Peaker II. Roos is an Aroostook Main Coon Cat.”