David Ohle - Motorman

83

Dear Miss Roberta,

Once they said there was nothing to do about the weather, then there was, then too much was done, and now it's out of control. Keep yourself warm, Roberta, no matter what comes down from up. Hide your thinking in the clouds where artificial winds do not exist. I'm sorry, Cock. Excuse me. I've strayed from the middle.

I will tell you about an interesting thing I saw in the papers, last nigger dies in great Chicago.Cock, the very last one is gone. Roosevelt Teaset. The article says they'll clean him up, prepare him, and show him in a case at Preservation Hall. I don't doubt they'll also sell popcorn, and put him next to a banana plant. They had stuffed him with twenty odd hearts before the blood rush drowned his brain.

I am wired today, Roberta. I may go on. My feelings are greatly improved. I find it hard to acquaint myself with the new condition, but I don't hesitate to take advantage of it.

Roberta, do you remember the morning I scattered sesame on the window sill and the mock birds came along to feed and woke you up? Remember the night we slept in a rubber house at the edge of a marsh in the worst of summerfall? I showed you foxfire and we watched it follow an army train across a bridge.

Cock, it seems that whenever I'm looking for you, you're out, and whenever you're in, I'm never looking. It reminds me of the ghost crab relationship. He'll crawl to her hole with his claw raised, she'll be gone, and he'll crawl away, his claw trailing in the sand. Then she'll return to the hole, wait for him, grow impatient and leave. Then he'll come back to the empty hole. That's the way they do it, Roberta. And we have doorbells and telephones. I suppose, judging from the younger ghost crabs I've seen, that eventually their periods of being at the same hole do coincide, although I've never seen it happen. Nor has Burnheart.

I don't remember much about the mock War, Roberta. I do have a recollection of being found by a lost dog. Because I could feci the heat of the earth I knew I was in a hole. There were government noises over the ridge, loudspeakers broadcasting airbursts. I looked up from the hole and saw the dog's face, his teeth showing ricelike in the battle light. I pulled him in with me and we shared fleas and heat for the night. In the morning I followed him back to my tent, then lost him in the smoke and confusion. At one point someone opened my tent flap and said, "Go home, Moldenke. Your war is over. The injury qualifies. Please don't mention the particulars. Say you were away at camp and you fell in a chuckhole." Don't ask me about the War, Cock.

I'll close now. I've been writing on my lunch break for a change. I have to get back to my weevil butter and cream of ips.

Some time I'll find your deepest hole.

With feeling,

Moldenke

84

Dear Moldenke,

I'm sorry to say they warehoused all the pianos. I would love to hear the Buxtehude again.

When I go to my Doctor with shivering, he recommends a coat. The nurses read my thermogram and tell me how cold I am, as if I didn't dream an icestorm every night and watch my fingertips freeze against the lookout pane. I would not like to grow any colder than this, Moldenke. Do something.

Love,

Cock

P.S. They say my punctuation improves, period.

85

"?"

"Yes?" Roquette half-slept, perspiration dripping from his toes to the floor.

"My hearts, Roquette."

"Change the subject, son. That one bores me. You act like the only man on earth with heart pains."

"I'd like to leave the hot room."

"No!" Roquette's eyes apparently melted and drained down the cheeks. His whiskers flared and burned to small, glowing stumps. Moldenke blinked the apparent illusion away.

"I should see a Doctor, Roquette. You mentioned before that I might see a Doctor."

"Did I? Who installed those hearts?"

"Burnheart."

"Is he the family Doctor?"

"I can't say. There's no family."

"I see. Then I don't know what we can do. All of our Doctors are family Doctors. They wouldn't be able to help you. I'd go back to the original mechanic if a vehicle went bad, wouldn't I? You should get back to Burnheart, shouldn't you?"

"Yes." Another heart fluttered. "I may not have time to get to Burnheart. They're going at a clip. When will we be in Burnheart's neighborhood?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't guess about that."

"Let me off the boat."

"Let him off the boat, he says."

"Off the boat. I'd like to get off the boat."

"He'd like to get off the boat. You'd freeze yourself. Stay on the boat. You'll meet the folks. We'll take a walk through the arboretum."

The fire whistled.

86

The taxi man had turned to Moldenke and said, "Excuse me in the back. Don't yell if I stop and pick up that couple there by the stadium. The lady looks like she's in a spot." His teeth had been ricelike, his face doglike. Moldenke sat middled in the back seat, feeling diminished.

The k-taxi pulled out of the flow of traffic and stopped near the couple. Moldenke said he had his doubts about them. The taxi man said, "I like silence in the back." Moldenke fell quiet, doubtful.

The woman knelt over a puddle of jelly in the gutter beneath her, favoring her stomach. The man, professorlike, approached the k-taxi, asking to be taken to a drugstore for a tin of "charcoal tablets" for the woman's stomach.

The taxi man said, "Is it raining?"

The professor said, "The weatherman said it was."

The taxi man said, "Good enough. Get in."

Moldenke sat forward. The taxi man said, "No yelling from the back. I always pick up extras in the rain." Moldenke said it wasn't raining. The taxi man said, "And who are you?" Moldenke said never mind, sliding over in the seat.

The professorlike man pushed his woman into the back seat, sat himself in the front, his breath filling the k-taxi with the suggestion of peanuts. When the k-taxi made a curve in the boulevard the woman, in a stupor, leaned over on Moldenke, vomiting a jellylike substance into his trenchcoat pocket, her eyes like the eyes of boated fish. In the front the professor went to sleep.

The taxi man said, "You in the back. What do you think of these two?"

Moldenke said he wasn't thinking.

The taxi man said, "Watch this." He peeled off one of the professor's eyebrows as he slept, threw it into the rear seat. "Check that, jocko. I don't like the way these two champs smell." The eyebrow fell to the floor, lost itself in chewed pinegum, dirt, and flattened popcorn puffs.

The jelly soaked through Moldenke's coat and stuck one of his shirts to his chest.

The taxi man said, "The k-rules are clear on this point. I'll have to take these champs for a ride through the bottoms. No yelling in the back."

They drove out of the city, down mud roads, down narrow roads of oyster shell, reflecting white, far from any suggestion of architecture. Mock pollen dusted the road hedge.

The professor continued to sleep, his lips hanging on his tie by a strand of latex.

At the end of roads the k-taxi stopped. The taxi man opened the glove box and took out a screw driver.

Moldenke said, "What now?"

The taxi man said, "Now we'll take a walk. You carry the woman."

They walked into a grove of ethers, Moldenke carrying the woman over his shoulder, jelly dripping down the back of his trenchcoat. The taxi man pushed the professor along in front.

Two suns were up, close together.

They stopped walking, Moldenke put the woman down. The taxi man said, "Now you take a walk and never mind what I'm doing."

Moldenke walked aimlessly under the ethers, snipes whistling above him. He sat on a log and waited. He heard the k-taxi drive off. He chewed a stonepick and forgot.