Percival Everett - Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

11

Billy,the absence of balls notwithstanding, showed little if any fear in the faces of the orderlies, who, outside the view of family visitors and any caring staff, could be anything from mildly neglectful to physically abusive. Those of us who could still communicate effectively were spared the extreme treatment, but the mild neglect could be employed in such a way as to discredit our accounts, anything from miraculously locating missing items in places where we claimed to have looked to the more basic having one of their stories corroborated by another orderly. The brotherhood of orderlies was in fact a tight order, but Billy was resolved to destroy them. I did not need much convincing to join his cause and as the younger of the two of us, I knew that I would be called upon to perform the trickier missions. The precise speculative tenets of the brotherhood were not available to us and the workings of minds so primitive and brutish were just plain mystifying and therefore it was not only difficult to predict what they were going to do, but downright impossible to even comprehend the motivating principles behind their seemingly involuntary, automatic cruelties. There was, at the very least, a pecking order within the herd of ruffians, if not a formed and ritualistic scale of rank. I can name them for you here in disposition of power.

Harley.Could I have chosen a better name myself? He was the shortest of them but easily the most vicious, but probably not the most dangerous, at least in close quarters. I am hard pressed to say that this is a necessary trait of a leader, but I would listen to any argument supporting the theory. He was nearly as wide as he was tall, not fat, but built like a front-loading washing machine and, as with such a machine, it was easy to see that things were turning within, though one would be challenged to identify any one article of clothing, save for perhaps a shoe. Unlike the bleached white smocks and slacks of his comrades, he was clad in powder blue, a distinction that quite discernibly pleased him. He, at times, could appear almost handsome, or at least not ugly, no doubt a function of his functional, if only utilitarian, intelligence. His head was square, in thematic concert with his body. His hair was receded and regrettably long in the back. He had meeting eyebrows, not so much almond as Brazil-nut-shaped eyes, large and round and closeto-his-head ears, a large convex nose with turned-down nostrils, a short mouth with straight lips, a square and jutting chin, and no facial hair to speak of. I suppose the same is true of all of us, that a mere catalog of our physiognomy sounds rather unprepossessing and repulsive, but somehow all of his features were worn in the right places and in more-or-less standard proportion and so the overall effect was not too terribly bad. He walked with a slight but conspicuous limp; the favored side seemed to change periodically, leaving Billy to conclude that his shoes were too tight and hurt his feet and that particular pairs caused diversely distributed pain. I admonished Billy about his tasteless alliteration but had to concur. Harley was complex enough that the mere acquisition of the property of others was not the sole motivating principle behind his odious behavior, though it was in no way insignificant. It was the power dynamic within his herd that drove him and I believed that it was finally sexual, that lording over his subordinates actually gave him a boner. What came of that erection, and for that phrasing I apologize, I did not know and I did not care to imagine. Harley was also fond of a particular cologne, the name of which I did not know, and it was either extremely potent or he bathed in it.

Tommywas a beanpole with two left feet. Literally, he had two left feet. When he faced north both of his big toes pointed east. It turns out that it is true what they say about the clumsiness of dancers so endowed. Merely walking was a challenge and made for a sideways, crablike gait that was both noisy and profoundly ugly. I believed that his constant shuffling and stumbling kept him in his nasty, contemptible mood. On his most pleasant days he was dismissive and scornful. On his worst he was hateful, black hearted, and monstrous, rolling over slippered toes with wheelchairs that he was shoving at life-threatening speeds through congested hallways. It may well be that there was not an honest bone in his sinister, leftleaning body and I never once heard him say anything that was factual, even in response to the most mundane and seemingly simple questions, even when the facts were unmissable, staring him and whomever else in the face. When asked by a day nurse if Abraham Chen’s prosthetic leg had been left back in his rooms, he responded, No, I put it on him before we left, leaving the nurse and Abraham Chen to exchange confounded glances. But I’ll take him back so that I can tighten the strap, Tommy then said. If such a thing was possible, I was of the opinion that the man had two left eyes as well, a condition that manifested in a barely perceptible but constant pull of his face to that direction. There was a rumor that Tommy liked to sneak sly ganders at the old ladies when they were being bathed or taken to the bathroom. Though I never (Allah be praised) saw him doing so, it was easy enough, however sickening and repulsive the picture, to imagine his depraved and salacious, distorted, lefteyed squint around this corner or that.

Cletus.Cletus was a troll of a man, Nordic in appearance, with a patch covering, I think, his good eye, and he possessed upper incisors that presented like tusks. His hair in troll fashion was thick and uncombable and Billy thought on more than one occasion that a tail was hidden in his white britches. He wore a gold cross on a cheap gold chain around his neck, no doubt the source of his power. He had lived near humans long enough to have learned many of our ways and so he was conscientious about pleasant greetings but always managed to make us regret it in short order. Though not as short as Harley, he was far slighter, weighing perhaps as much as a woman of equal height, his protruding ears like wings. If he had not been so repugnant in appearance, he might not have been frightening at all, but there was a sneakiness about him that one could almost smell. It wasn’t that it seemed he wanted something, but it seemed he was going to take something. Though none of us carried wallets or purses, we clung to them anyway in his presence. He smelled vaguely sweet but not good. Whenever he skipped down the corridor, and he often did, I could hear Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King. Now, I knew that trolls are not naturally evil, only misunderstood and, of course, primitive, but he was, if not evil, then he might as well have been evil.

Leonwas truly the brute of the lot. At over six and a half feet, he lumbered about like the giant he was, broadshouldered, deepchested, stronglimbed, and brawnyhanded; his ridiculously large feet, hard like hooves in the most padded of gym shoes, announced his approach in oddly syncopated whumps upon the linoleum tiles. He always sounded as if he’d just stopped and then another footfall would shake the floor. Whether he was Fafner or Fasolt, it didn’t matter; he could have been both, but he would never have been lithe enough to catch Freyja. He was ungainly beyond reasonable belief; so inelegant was he in movement that Harley would not allow him to be in the same space as Tommy and his two left feet, perhaps for consideration of safety, more, I like to think, for aesthetic reasons. Leon’s hands were too large for many common tasks, though he was strangely adept at threading needles, which I saw him do twice. Once for Regina Brown, who was working on an embroidery, and then for a temporary night nurse upon whom he held an obvious crush and with whom he held not even the slightest chance. His head was shaved, but he was lazy and so his head was only nearly smooth, but not smooth enough to appear clean, plant matter and lint and dust seeming to find its static charge irresistible. Six cubits and a span in height, Billy would say of the man, referring to biblical Goliath. I used to be a religious man, a real scripture reader, he said, and then my balls were excised by German shrapnel. My faith went with them. Leon, like Tommy, could sneak up on no one. In fact, none of the already-mentioned thugs had stealth as a weapon, Harley being always announced by his fragrance and Cletus being subject to involuntary fits of giggling.