David Ohle - The Pisstown Chaos

Through upper-level windows, Roe saw stinker males stacking sacks of grain in the attic space while stinker females made grasshopper pies in the galley below. In an even lower room, young first-stage males pedaled the heavy, cumbersome machine along. For each of the ten wheels, twenty or thirty pedalers were required to keep up momentum, even on ground that appeared to be as flat and featureless as a skillet.

Roe felt a sense of purpose here, a recognition that important experiences lay ahead. An inner voice revealed that a job awaited him and that he would have to get to a city of some size to find it.

Over glasses of Jake, a table of third-stage stinkers welcomed him aboard and saluted him with cries of, "Sharife!"

Roe repeated the cry without knowing what it meant, then gargled his Jake before swallowing, as the elders were doing.

"I'm Roe Balls. I just arrived. I don't know much about what goes on here."

"There's nothing much to know about."

"I have the sense that a job awaits me in a city around here. I think my experience may be in the service sector. I can't say for sure. Where is the nearest city?"

"That would be Pisstown. When we get to the end of this field, get off and head south by southwest."

A female brought him a slice of grasshopper pie, freshly made and piping hot.

"I don't have a compass, or a sense of direction. The terrain is unfamiliar."

"Look at the leaves, the way they blow. Prevailing winds are out of the north by northeast. The leaves will point southwest. Once you have been in the city and found your job, you will begin to see why we do things the way we do, how we make the best of what the Reverend gives us. We work with what we have."

Without warning, the great harvester bounced into and through a land-subsidence. The jolt made Roe reach out to catch his bottle of Jake before it tumbled off the table.

"These sinkholes give off gas," one of the stinkers said, "sometimes with a hellish odor and capable of killing. That one has weak gas. When we reach speed again, the wind will take it away."

The air filled with a sulfur-scented gas. Roe pinched his nose closed. Stinker females opened windows and placed stops under doors as the harvester sped along in front of a strong tailwind.

When the edge of the vast field approached, the pedalers slowed down as much as momentum would allow, giving Roe the opportunity to jump without breaking bones. He landed feet-first, then tumbled into a bramble thicket. By the time he made his way out, only his face and hands were cockleburfree. A passerby would have thought he was wearing a suit of thorns.

It was a long, prickly walk to Pisstown, which was busy, noisy, and very congested. They were letting imps run in the streets and a festival was going on, a celebration of some kind. When Roe asked, he was told it was Coward's Day, an annual event to honor those who refused service during the first Chaos. Hundreds were in parade mode, males and females together, marching half-clothed up the boulevard with their backs painted yellow.

The mayor addressed the crowd by saying, "Cowards die many times before their death, you know, and the valiant only taste it once. In the stinker mind, cowards, having suffered most, deserve a day and a parade. As to the Chaos, not a soul remembered a thing about it. It was long gone and best forgotten. There is an old pharmacy in the Heritage Area, though, nicely preserved, which historians believe was the site of Hooker's arrest for stealing a tube of unguent cream."

When the speech was over and the awards were handed out, Roe went directly to the first employment office he saw and was immediately given a job serving Reverend Hooker, who, while his Templex underwent renovation, was staying at a seedy boarding house across the way as workers made perfunctory, lazy progress on the Templex.

Scaffolds had been erected and a few workers puttered about the premises. A pair of architects sat at a table under a persimmon tree, studying blueprints, sipping Jake and nibbling pickled roots. It wasn't a bombed-out look the Templex had, but one of neglect, of a plantation house gone to wrack and ruin.

In the early days Roe's duties began with giving Hooker his morning enema and seeing that he took his willy. Starching and ironing his shirts came next, then keeping his nails trimmed and polished, shaving, trimming his van Dyke and, if it was desired, masturbate him over the sink.

When Hooker learned of Roe's saw-playing gifts, he insisted on hearing it three or four times a day. "What a mournful sound it is," he observed. "It resonates with the soul."

On a typical morning, after playing his saw at Hooker's bedside to wake him, Roe would say. "I am very glad to serve you this morning. What would please you for breakfast, sir?"

Most often it would be a simple one of urpflanz tea, grasshopper pie, and an imp steak. Sometimes he would forget about all the shortages and request cocoa spiced with vanilla and marzipan, too. Roe would have to remind him. "It's the Chaos sir. Those sorts of things won't be coming over from the Crescent, or so they tell me."

"Listen to me, Roe. Out of the Chaos will come a future of abundance and joy. We'll be swimming in cocoa, choking on marzipan and singing praises to you know who."

"Yes, indeed, sir."

In his bathrobe, Hooker would open his day's first bottle of Jake and hobble unsteadily to the grimy window, crank it open, and air his first thought of the day, most often a complaint, a curse or a gripe. "When are they going to finish with that renovation, when I die and start stinking?"

When spring came, Hooker coated himself in scented oil to prevent sunburn and ventured out to his garden plot behind the hotel. Here he demonstrated to Roe the principle behind a National Socialist garden. "You see, you dig it in the shape of a swastika. Can you think of a better way to lay out a garden? Every part can easily be reached with a hoe, without having to step in any dirt."

Hooker's temporary office and quarters in the Tunney penthouse became a scene of remarkable squalor and disarray. Roe offered many times to bring in the cleaning crew and have the place cleaned, but Hooker stubbornly forbade it. "I own ten imp farms," he said each time. "I've learned the pleasure of wallowing."

There were stacks of newspapers rising from the floor in waist-high columns. Imp bones and Jake bottles were strewn about. One of the flags that flanked his desk was partially burned. The Reverend had set it ablaze one day with a cigar. Roe had put it out by urinating into a jar, then dousing the flames with it.

The windows were boarded over, the floor covered with newspapers. A five-gallon slop bucket sat in the corner with a cloud of blackflies buzzing over it. A large nail had been driven directly into the plaster wall to hold a roll of wiping paper, a rare and expensive commodity during a Chaos, always in short supply otherwise.

There were bullet holes in the wall, falling plaster, spider webs. The Reverend kept saying to Roe, "This is a big country. Its inhabitants have never lived in walled cities or had to defend themselves against warring princes in neighboring states. After the first Chaos this country was so sparsely populated that neighbors were something to be longed for and were not fenced out. A new face or new arrival was a cause for rejoicing."

Most mornings found Hooker passed out at his desk, looking sorrowfully un-Reverend-like, his head, arms and shoulders buried in the desktop clutter, a bottle of Jake sitting near his fisted hand. Day and night there was a light film of perspiration on his balding head. Even though he looked puffy and ill, he was never without a fat urpflanz cigar, handrolled, which he pinched between two fingers, held at a distance and never puffed on or brought near his lips. He let them burn until they were almost spent, then spat on the burning tip, or doused it in Jake, and ate the butt.