David Ohle - The Pisstown Chaos

After locating the begonia and collecting the bucks, the officer pried open Mrs. Peterbilt's mouth with a dinner knife. "You got any gold in there?" Finding none, she tossed the knife into the sink. "It's pretty common with these stinks," she told Roe. "Most of them have got some gold in their mouth. Always be sure to check. If they don't pay, you're authorized to pull teeth."

On the pedal to the cafe, Roe wondered whether this move to the Control office had been an up- or down-shift. "So, once more," he said to the officer, "what I'll be doing is taking money from wealthy stinkers and giving it to the Reverend?"

"Correct."

"And inflicting pain if they hedge."

"As much as necessary."

"I understand."

"When we get back to the office, I'll give you a voucher for three nights at the Gons Hotel. After that you'll have to find quarters of your own. Your pay will be fifty a week, on duty sunup to sunset every day. The Office will issue you a pedal car. Come see me in the morning and I'll give you your list for the day."

"A list of what, of wealthy stinkers?"

"Correct, and their addresses. Look in the trunk of the car you get. There're some tools of the trade in there, in a kit. Take it into the properties with you. It's got picks, blades, candles, a mallet, tooth pliers, fish hooks, brace and bit, sulfuric acid-be careful with that-and a ball peen hammer. You'll need to be issued some boots, too, with steel toes. Maybe you'll even want to use that saw of yours to take off a foot or a hand or something."

The Impeteria was crowded for the lunch hour. Dozens of pedal cars and Q-peds were parked side by side in the rear lot. In the hazy, still air, a plume of gray smoke rose undisturbed from a stack behind the clapboard building, and smelled faintly of cooked meat. Stinkers unloaded fresh-killed imps by the basketful from a pedal van parked at the rear. Beneath a sign saying "No Stinkers," a line had formed at the front door.

At seeing the sign, Roe felt a small degree of sympathy. "Things have gotten bad for the stinkers, haven't they?"

The officer placed a wog of willy in her mouth and swallowed it. "Worthless hunks of putrid flesh. You want some willy before we eat?" She pressed another wog of the red, clay-like material into Roe's palm. "It'll turn on your apostat."

Roe rolled the willy between his hands until it looked like a small sausage, then bit off portions and chewed them until the binder dissolved and released prickly little granules that irritated his throat as they went down. The irritation lasted only moments, replaced by an empty feeling in his stomach. "That stew sounds good," he said. "I hope they don't run out before we get a table."

"No tables," the officer said. "It's a stand-up place."

Roe stood tip-toe and looked into the cafe's window. He saw diners standing shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow. There were frequent spills of stew, spoons were dropped, and a noisy confusion of arms and hands was something of an impediment in the attempt to get the stew from bowl to mouth. Servings were being delivered from the kitchen to patrons by passing bowls from one set of uplifted hands to another. "That's mine!" someone shouted. "Over here!" another did, and the bowls changed direction.

"I'm a little claustrophobic," Roe said.

"Wait till the Willy kicks all the way in. You'll be a peopleperson right away."

The line shortened slowly over a period of three or four hours as customers who were finished eating came out of a side door, the backs of their rags spattered with gravy, strings of meat clinging to their caps.

When the last person waiting in front of Roe had been pulled into the dining room and swallowed by the crowd, a cook came around from the kitchen door and addressed the still-waiting dozens in line. "Sorry, folks. We're all out. The stew is gone, the pots are washed, and we're closing up till breakfast tomorrow."

"This happens a lot," the officer said. "I don't know why I keep coming."

Roe said. "Let's go somewhere else. It's almost supper time."

"This is the only place still open." The officer dug her clog into the dirt and took her first step toward the van. "The last Chaos killed off most of the restaurants. The food got contaminated. Don't you read the papers?"

"I don't. I'm print blind. It runs in the family. Words on the page are a blur. My grandmother always read to me, but never the newspaper."

The officer lifted her shoulders one at a time, rotated her arms in their sockets and let out a long, weary breath. "All right, let's go back to the office and call it a day." The officer gave Roe another plug of willy. "Here, this much will turn off your apostat. You'll sleep. Go to your room at the Gons and come to work in the morning."

Roe rubbed the wog between his palms. "That suits me."

His room at the Gons was at street level, a little moldy and damp, but with a bunk bed high off the water-logged floor and accessible by a three-rung wooden ladder. To pass the evening hours, he sat in the top bunk and played the saw until his hand went numb, when he dropped his bow and fell back into a deep, willy-deep sleep.

When Roe reported to the Control Office in the morning, a different officer greeted him at the pedal car shed. "Good morning, Mr. Balls. The officer who showed you the ropes yesterday is no longer here. They shifted her to Permanganate last night. She's infested."

"I was to be given a list."

The new officer searched through a drawer that made a shrill sound when it was pulled out. "Here's a list of loaded stinkers. Is that it?"

"Yes."

"There's your car, over there, the black one. It pulls to the left. Be careful."

Roe put the car in neutral and pedaled in place to wind the spring and warm the sprockets while he looked over the list. There were three names and three posh addresses. The first, on Cherry Avenue, was Arlen Chips, a fourth-stage stinker who had made his fortune selling antique coffin silk to Reverend Hooker's parachute works.

Roe went to the front door with his bag of tools. From within the home, he heard a shrill, wavering sound, which he identified as a saw being poorly played. He rang the bell. When he did, the saw playing ceased and a maid answered the door.

"Good morning," Roe said matter-of-factly, a tone he had been instructed to use at this stage of the collection process. "I'll need to see Mr. Chips. I'm from the Parasite Control office."

The maid turned toward the dim, curtained interior. "Mr. Chips? There's a man from PC to see you..

A tall figure at the far end of a long hallway waved an envelope. "Come on in, son. I'm ready. I've got what you want. It's all right here in this envelope."

Roe looked at his list. "It says two hundred bucks."

"No, no." As the man came closer to the door, Roe could see that he was wearing a cloth bag over his head, which he lifted slightly when he spoke, showing several gold-capped teeth. "My regular payment is a hundred. It's been that way for years."

The maid nodded. "That's right. Is always been a hundred."

"I'm sorry, sir. It says two, as of today. We need another hundred."

"All right, Louise, let him in, then go out to the garden and get another hundred. I'm in no condition for a beating."

The maid showed Roe to a well-padded chair in the library. Mr. Chips came in with his saw and bow, walking sideways, then faced the wall and took the bag off his head. "Forgive me for coming in like a crab. I don't like showing my face to anyone. It'll be just a few minutes. Louise will dig up the bucks. Don't worry."

"That's good enough for me. I don't particularly like to hurt a stinker if I don't have to."

Mr. Chips said, "It's like skinning an imp. You'd rather not have to do it. But if you're hungry, that's an other matter."