David Ohle: The Old Reactor

“I overthink things sometimes, granted. I’m leaving. I really am.”

“And let me say, I find it odd that you care so much for the worker, yet you don’t work.”

“My work is working for the worker.”

“Without pay? The worker is doing better than you are. Don’t you see it?”

“I have to go.”

“I suppose I’m in general sympathy with your fair-wage cause, but I’m afraid it will all end badly. I can see in you and your friends the promise of fanaticism. I’m convinced nothing good can come of it all.”

“Thank you for that strong encouragement.”

“Look in my closet at home for a shoebox. There’s about ten million in there to get me a decent burial. I want to be in Eternity Meadows.”

“All right. I’ll take care of that. But in case you’re not dead by next Sunday, I’ll visit again.”

“When I’m gone, aside from the ten mill for my burial, you’ll inherit my house on Esplanade and a sum of money in trust for the maintenance and repair. As for your personal maintenance, you’ll have to find work, fair wage or not. Dig graves if you have to.”

“I’ll manage.”

She pulled the sheet over her head. “Dig mine if you get the chance.”

“There’s the spirit. See you next Sunday.”

After these visits, Moldenke hurried over to the Come On Inn, a tavern just across from City Park. A few glasses of strong bitters took away the shakes that seeing his aunt gave him. He’d always had a visceral aversion to the sick and dying and wanted no part of it. Dying should always be done alone, he thought, but all too often wasn’t. He and the aunt were the only living Moldenkes. He had no choice but to look after her post mortems.

Jellyhead children with blue teeth were seen roaming aimlessly in City Park. Homeless and underfed, abandoned by frightened parents, they refused all food and drink left for them, preferring to eat grasshoppers and drink water from a drainage ditch. It is known that a type of jaundice related to an infection of the blood can cause bluing teeth and loss of appetite, but nothing can account for the other anomalies in their appearance and behavior. For one, they were hairless and as pale as chalk. For another, their ear valves were unusually well developed and their leg muscles were atrophied, giving them a stork-like gait. They beat one another mercilessly with sticks. The weakest among them were dragged to the park lagoon and drowned. Like goats, they relieve themselves wherever the urge strikes. Park visitors have been hit with slingshot stones and splattered with thrown stool.

A week later, when Moldenke visited his aunt again, she was barely conscious. He didn’t think she would be around by the following Sunday. For the entire week, he devoted his time to more or less arranging her funeral and burial. When he arrived at Eternity Meadows, hoping to find an affordable gravesite near the back fence, some of his pro-labor friends were picketing outside the gate. Their banner read, “A Living Wage for the Living Worker.” One of them, Ozzie, an old friend of Moldenke’s, made no effort to conceal the small caliber pistol he carried in his belt.

A bystander warned anyone approaching, “Don’t cross the line, he’s been threatening to shoot people.”

While Moldenke took the warning seriously, he felt sure his friend would make an exception in his case, which he did, but not without a great deal of bluster and display, even once drawing his pistol and waving it in Moldenke’s face. “Are you with us or against us? You haven’t been picketing.”

“There’s going to be a death in the family, an aunt, my last living relative. After her, I’m all alone in the world. She’ll need a place to be buried. I can’t be picketing anymore.”

“All right, go on in. You can have an hour.”

The cemetery was a pleasant, quiet place to be that afternoon, especially with Moldenke’s pals keeping everyone out. Though the weather had turned cold there were still thick morning glory vines, dying now, that had weaved themselves through and around all the spaces in the chain-link fence. Moldenke recalled summer walks in the cemetery, dragon flies flitting from one tombstone to another and little green lizards atop a few of them showed their dewlaps. For a moment he felt utterly calm, collected, and at peace. But as he looked among the empty plots for one that seemed affordable, he was stricken by a terrible urgency in his abdomen. There would be no time to find a toilet, even if he ran back to his aunt’s house or to a public privy, so he walked, skipped, and trotted as fast as he could to the tallest head stone he could see and squatted behind it to relieve himself.

When he was finished, he used the only thing handy to wipe: a bouquet of withered flowers from the nearest vase. Standing and belting his pants, he bowed his head, clasped his hands, and addressed an apology to the deceased. “I’m so sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me for being such a dog. My bowel can’t be controlled. Don’t worry, the sun will come along and dry it out in a day or two and the wind will blow it away.”

The picketers sat on the ground, handcuffed, bleeding from head and facial wounds as Moldenke was leaving the cemetary. One was being questioned by a police officer who had torn up the ‘living wage’ banner.

Moldenke made a sharp turn and hurried down Esplanade toward City Canal. But before he was across the silver-painted swing bridge, the officer yelled, “Hey! You! Stop!”

Moldenke waited until the officer made his way to the bridge.

“Yes, Officer?”

“Sir, one of the gravediggers says he saw you take a crap on someone’s resting place. True?”

“Yes, but I do have a chronic condition with my bowels. Sudden attacks. Almost no warning.”

“No matter how you sugar-coat it, that’s desecrating a grave. You’re probably going to Altobello.”

“How could I be sent there for this? You’re trying to fill a quota to populate the place. I really don’t mind going, but I’ve got a dying aunt. I’ll have to take care of her body when she goes. I need some time.”

“Don’t smart mouth me and don’t make all those excuses.” The officer cuffed Moldenke. “Shitting on a grave is not child’s play.”

“Who will bury my aunt if I’m sent to Altobello? Who’ll arrange some kind of ceremony?”

The officer hiked up his shiny blue pants. “You’ve got a couple of weeks before you leave. You better hope she goes pretty quick.”

It was reported in the City Moon that in the liberated city of Altobello, a jellyhead woman who lived near the Old Reactor entered Saposcat’s Deli on Arden Boulevard last night with five severed heads in a suitcase, those of her husband, Barry; her twin ten-year-olds, Muffy and Dale; Earnest, the blind and deaf son; and George D. Bennett, an uncle visiting from Bunkerville.

Observers say she sat with a calm demeanor, though her clothes were blood soaked and glistening with gel and her suitcase oozing. She ordered a flash-fried mud fish plate from a trembling waitress. The fry cook prepared the order as quickly as he could. After eating a few bites of the salty fish and drinking a soda, the woman suddenly shouted, “Oh, shit! I forgot about little Timmy,” then dashed from the restaurant.

Shortly, she returned with her youngest’s head in a soaked and dripping cloth bag. Now her family was complete. She finished her meal and called for the waitress.

“I’m through, thanks. You can take my plate.”

“Would you like dessert? We have sweetened kerd, we have—”

“No. I’m leaving these heads here and going. I have some ground to cover in a short time.” She waved in a grand gesture to the entire restaurant, let out a squirt or two from her ear valves, slid from her booth, and left at a slow trot.