Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

Mama stood calmly beside the big bed. The soft pink light from the gauze lamps made her look lovely. Her face was bright and tender. Her hair drooped charmingly. Her robe and fluffy high-heeled slippers were oddly tidy; the sash of the robe, for example, was tied in a neat bow.

The twins were hunched in one corner of the bed. Iphy was blinking dazedly at Mama and wincing as Elly heaved her private sector of their guts out onto the carpet.

The Bag Man lay dead and pantsless on the filth-smeared bed. His long naked legs looked bony and floppy at the same time.

“Mama,” Arty said. She turned and nodded at us.

“I finally remembered where I’d seen him before.” She looked down at the dark gun in her hands. “Oly, dear, this looks like your Papa’s gun. Would you be so kind as to check the shelf next to my bed? And would you ask … Oh, here’s Al now.”

I’d been asleep when I heard the creaking. Peeking out of my cupboard I saw Mama, white hair glowing in the moonlight, passing through the twins’ unguarded door. I was pulling on a robe to follow her when I heard the shot. I jumped to get Arty.

From the files of Norval Sanderson:

Crystal Lil’s story, as told to investigating officers (transcribed from tape):

“I couldn’t sleep. The moon affects me. I was sitting up in bed, looking out through the small window on my side. Al has always insisted that I sleep on the inside, and he sleeps nearest the door in every bed we’ve ever shared. It’s his protective instinct. He feels that if an intruder were to come through the door he, Al, you know, could defend me. But I had lifted a corner of the curtain so I could look out

.

“The moon throws a new and sometimes more attractive perspective on familiar objects, I’m sure you know. But that was how I happened to see this person approach the steps up to the platform. He strode past the window fairly close and the silver light of the moon on his shoulders let me really examine his gait. Gait and carriage, I always tell the children, are such powerful indicators of character. Suddenly I recalled where I had seen this man before, with his stooping head crouched down on his bent neck

.

“

I thank the merciful stars I was in time. My poor girls. But there, they’ll be all right. Quite a miracle that the gun had fallen to the floor where it caught my eye. The Bag Man must have stolen it. Imagine threatening those helpless girls. I meant to strike him in the heart, but it was an awkward angle with him on top of the girls, naked below and his shirt unbuttoned so it flopped and I couldn’t tell where to aim, exactly. I had to shoot from the side or risk the bullet piercing him and going on to injure the twins. Al always loaded a soft slug, though, for stopping power. Al was right as usual.”

Papa hunched over his hands as though his chest was ready to explode.

“Son, Arty, did you know that this was the guy who tried to kill you all? Did you know this was the guy from Coos Bay?”

Arty, grey-faced even under the warm gold light of his reading lamp, shook his head. “Of course not, Papa. We’re very lucky Mama remembered him.”

“Sweet, frosted globes of the virgin,” breathed Al. “Imagine him haunting us all these years. I’ll go batso thinking. All that time. All those chances. Me and my half-assed security.”

Arty leaned against his chair arm, head drooping in fatigue.

“Well, Mama was just in time.”

Elly’s face, twisted by revulsion: “But she wasn’t in time! He came when she pulled the trigger. He spurted like a cockroach oozing eggs as it dies!”

Iphy, calmly: “Normally we use a spermicide in our diaphragm, but we weren’t ready for him and he wouldn’t let us put it in.”

The police wore green wool uniforms. They came in large groups. The ones who were not actually taking notes, photographs, or fingerprints, or asking questions, took the opportunity to stroll the colorless midway at dawn. When two patrolmen discovered the redheads’ dorm trailers, three more cops sailed in to question these “important corroborative witnesses,” who happened to be making large pots of coffee while wearing various interpretations of the nightie, negligee, shortie pajamas, and so on.

The coroner drove away in the back of the ambulance with the medical examiner and the Bag Man’s body. The officer in charge of the investigation was a heavy, deliberate man with more cheek than neck, and small, steady eyes. He spent a long time with Crystal Lil in the sea-green/sky-blue living room of the twins’ van. Lil sat, ladylike and calm on the sofa, while the plainclothes officer leaned over his knees on the chair in front of her, listening, nodding, taking notes on a small spiral-bound pad. Speaking very little, checking his cassette recorder occasionally.

When a uniformed kid came in to hand him a typed sheet, the big man read it slowly, folded it carefully, and tucked the thin paper into his breast pocket.

“Mrs. Binewski …”

“Lily, please, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, Lily. We’ve just received confirmation from Oregon. The fingerprints match those of Vern Bogner, who was convicted of attempting to murder you and your children almost ten years ago. My report will say that Bogner was killed while attempting felonious assault, specifically rape. No charges will be brought. Oregon’s been looking for this guy for eighteen months. He left his mother’s custody and didn’t report to his caseworker.”

“Is this Utah?” Lil asked. “Are we in Utah?”

“No, ma’am, Nebraska.”

“Why, I could have sworn Utah to look at your troops. So tidy. So disciplined. I would have thought Utah, with their boots polished just so. You must be very proud.”

Papa, old in his chair, and Mama, crocheting and dreaming with her eyes open, as we all pretended that this was a night of children and stories like the old days. Only Arty was missing, off alone in his van. The twins held Chick, who was reading aloud to them, and I sat on the floor with my hump warm against Papa’s bony leg.

“What makes you look so white, so white?’ said Files-on-Parade.

“ ‘I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch,’ the Color-Sergeant said.”

Chick’s voice, sharp as glass in its chanting, stopped abruptly as he sprang off the twins’ lap and whirled around to look at them.

“Did a pin stick you?” The twins’ surprised faces opened. Chick shook his head, frowning.

“Ah, the boy’s tired of hanging Danny Deever. Too glum!” growled Papa. “Let him cremate Sam McGee instead. Come, boychik, begin, ‘There are strange things done!’ and give it a roll this time! Breathe from your crotch up!”

But Chick wouldn’t recite and he wouldn’t crawl up on the twins’ lap anymore but came and sat by me while Papa boomed through Sam McGee and we all did north-wind noises, dog-team yappings, and the ghostly voice saying, “Close that door!”

Papa tottered off to bed soon afterward and Mama went in for her shower. That’s when the twins pounced on Chick. He blushed and stammered. He hadn’t meant to hurt their feelings.

“But why did you look like that?”

“I just didn’t know you had that little guy in there with you. It surprised me. Then I didn’t want to lean on him. I thought it might hurt him.”

The matching faces were as grey as old meat. “What little guy?”

“That one, asleep there,” and Chick pointed. Which is how the twins discovered that they were pregnant for sure.

“We’re not going to sit waiting in that fucking infirmary tent with all those slimy norms drooling at us!” So Elly said. Iphy pointed out that Doc P. refused to see them otherwise, and they had no choice.