Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

“That must have scared you, Arty.” I grinned.

A slow smile spread gradually across his rubbery mug. He wriggled his forehead at me, for all the world like Papa dancing his eyebrows. “Poor Leona. She just went to sleep one night and never woke up. Mama was just about crazy when she found her the next morning.” Arty’s round, wide head did its snake dance, turning on his neck in mock grief, and I knew the taut slide of his skin over tendon and meat, and loved the shadow dip of his bones underneath and the wide smooth roll of his lips.

What I felt was fear. Arty saw it in my face and slid into his whip-master act fast. “Onward, Jeeves,” he snapped. “To the dogs!” I scuttled back to push, wading through the sawdust and keeping my butt muscles clenched to avoid filling my pants.

“Is it O.K. if me and Arty play with Skeet?” I asked. The dog reek from the trailer door might have been Mrs. Minuti’s breath. She swallowed and tried to focus through her hangover. Her hair was short and spiky with a clot of last night’s supper caught above her ear. She pulled her nightgown out from her chest and belched softly. “Sure,” she nodded. She didn’t complain about the hour or the fact that Skeet was her star poodle because we were the boss’s kids and dog trainers are easy to come by. She disappeared inside the trailer and Arty stared tensely at the open door. The dog came scratching around the doorway and jumped down beside me, with his long leash trailing up to Mrs. Minuti’s shaking hand. She gave me the leash and told me not to let him wander loose.

I hooked the leash on a back post of Arty’s chair and wheeled him toward a hard-packed grassless stretch behind the booths. The dog bounced along nosing everything, pissing ten times in two minutes.

By the time we got to the clear spot the dog seemed to have calmed down a little. “You just stay close and be quiet,” Arty told me. I sat down to watch. Arty called the poodle to him and the silly dog put a paw up on Arty’s chair and cocked its ears at him, wagging the pompom on the end of its skinny tail.

Arty hadn’t explained what he had in mind. I sneered, “Arty the wild-beast trainer,” to myself. On the other side of the booths the camp was just beginning to wake up. An occasional trailer door slammed. A voice or two sounded faintly. A mechanic turned over one of the ride engines and let it sputter to death.

Arty looked the dog in the eye. The dog sat, obediently alert, directly in front of Arty, watching his face. Arty froze with his eyes open, focused on the dog, but his face sleep-smooth, expressionless. At first the dog was happy as an idiot — short confidential flips of tail against ground, a swiveling of sharp ears, tongue-dripping grin. Gradually the dog lost confidence, licking its chops and closing its mouth, tilting those ears questioningly forward at Arty. An anxious burst of tail rapping. Then Skeet shoved his nose forward, sniffing worriedly at Arty, letting a thin, high whine out through his nose, skootching his ass nervously against the dirt. Arty sat with his fins curled and still, his face thrust slightly forward and down. The poodle didn’t dare look away from Arty’s face but began to lick his own nose repeatedly, stand up, then sit down fast with his tail under him, letting his ears droop. Finally, whining, ears flattened, head down and wobbling moron eyes wincing at Arty, the dog slid to the side with a yelp as though he’d been kicked.

Arty threw himself against the back of his chair, breathing deeply with his eyes closed. Skeet backed to the end of his leash and did his best to slink out of his collar. Arty sat back up and looked around for the dog.

“Skeet! Come here!” he ordered. The dog bolted to the end of the leash, snapping himself into the air. He flopped onto his back and lay there, belly up, and began to yowl. Arty laughed a little to himself and said we could take him back. “I can practice my hate thoughts on the norms in the midway, too,” he said.

Arty never bad-mouthed Chick openly. Anything that obvious would have shocked Papa and Mama into the blue zone. But I knew. I was the one who did the most for Arty. I spent a lot of time with him and a lot of time thinking about him. I loved him.

Privately I thought that Mama and Papa loved him only because they didn’t know him. Iphy loved him because he wanted her to and she couldn’t help it. Elly knew him and didn’t love him at all. She was afraid of him and hated him because she could see what he was like. I was the only one who knew his dark, bitter meanness and his jagged, rippling jealousy, and his sour yearnings, and still loved him. I also knew how breakable he was. He didn’t care if I knew. He didn’t care if I loved him. He knew I’d serve him absolutely even if he hurt me. And I was not a rival to him. I didn’t have an act of my own. I drew the crowds to him rather than to myself.

I was supposed to listen for Chick. He was asleep on Mama’s bed and I was supposed to stay inside and wait for his waking squeak. I would change his diaper and give him some apple juice and play with him until Mama was finished with the twins’ piano lesson.

But the sky was blade-blue, the windows were open, and the redheads were spinning tales just outside. I could hear them laughing. They were lying on blankets in the sun, drinking soda and slathering themselves with oil. The whiff of coconut and lanolin came drifting in through the window.

I was supposed to sit inside by myself and read but Peggy’s soft voice began a story, and the other redheads quieted to listen. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I went out through the screen door and around the van to flop on the grass beside the blankets. With the window open I thought I’d hear Chick as soon as he woke. I picked and chewed grass stems as Peggy talked.

It was about a very young boy, fourteen or so, and Peggy claimed it was true. He died for love, she said. His family was poor. He was cut out for heavy work and bad pay, but he was a sweet kid, and he loved a cheerleader in his school. She wouldn’t even look at him, of course. Her life was different. But then she got sick and the doctors said it was her heart. She would die, they said, unless she could get a new one. The word went around the school that she was waiting for a donor. The boy was terribly sad for a while, but then he told his mother that he was going to die and give his heart to the girl. His mother thought this was just his sweetness talking. He was healthy. But a few days later he dropped dead. Instantly. A brain hemorrhage, they said. Surprisingly, the doctors found that his bits actually were compatible to the cheerleader’s, and they transplanted his fresh heart into her. It worked. Now she dances and cheers again with the poor boy’s heart.

The redheads were impressed. Vicki said it would be weird to feel your life pumping through this heart that had loved you. Lisa wondered if the cheerleader would be haunted.

“He was probably worth three of her,” said Mollie. “A heart like that.”

Then from the bedroom of the van just behind me came a single loud slam like a twelve-pound hammer on sheet steel. In the fading echo Chick was screaming.

I was halfway around to the screen door before the redheads even started telling me that my baby brother must have fallen out of bed. Peggy and Mollie were up, following me. By raw luck the screen door latched behind me as I whipped through.

Chick was on the bed, purple-faced and howling. I jumped up beside him and pulled him into my arms. He was shaking and gasping between shrieks. He couldn’t make so much noise if there was anything stuck in his throat. I felt for his diaper pins. Were they sticking him? Then I saw Arty.

He was crumpled face down on the floor in the narrow crack between the bed and the wall. He wasn’t moving.