Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

“No.”

“Because I am giving you a gift much more valuable than toothpaste. I’m allowing you to make a choice. Do you remember the baboons?”

I did. A year ago a pack of them appeared on the fence. Perched along the razor wire. They croaked and spit and scratched. At first Base Omega was excited, thinking we could trap and eat them. But then the baboons started throwing excrement. Which was watery and neon red. Also, they all had both sex parts. And weren’t shy with the flashing and fiddling. Larry said it meant they were a bad omen, pumped full of toxic effluent. He said Base Omega might as well cram down a plate of Fukushima fajitas. Twee Rob, a former kindergarten adjunct with a passion for artisanal cheese and locally sourced vests, disagreed. He twirled his mustache and said, “Au contraire, mi amigo!” He said he could prepare the beasts correct, just like how sushi chefs serve blowfish, which are poison if you don’t know exactly where to slice, but are otherwise this prized delicacy. Twee Rob managed to impale one of the healthier-looking baboons with a sharpened galvanized pole and then slow-roasted it for many hours.

“See!” he said, crunching through the first chunk, as wonderful-smelling juices ran out the corners of his mouth and dangled from his beard.

Everyone laughed, wanting some too, and began to fight over Omega Plate and Omega Spoon.

Until Twee Rob screamed. Until foam bubbled from between his teeth. Until his eyes flipped inside-out.

And then he exploded.

So, maybe Larry Our Leader knows what he’s talking about. Maybe he’s the person who’s right for once.

“I choose you,” I whisper.

His grin is a dissertation on the Tartar of the Future.

“Good. In the end we must all follow our heart. For it is a very lonely hunter.”

“Flannery O’Connor?”

“No, Carson McCullers. But I always get them mixed up, too.”

He takes another huff of Freon.

“Now get the fuck out of my yurt.”

12. No one leaves Base Omega. Ever.

I knock softly on the Citroën’s window, but Young Nick Drake is already awake.

“I knew you’d come.”

His guitar is slung over his shoulder, some trinkets tied into a square of rag.

“Now what?” I whisper.

“Now we carpe the diem, baby.”

We cross the compound in a running crouch, from Audi to Peugeot to Pinto. We loop behind the latrine to avoid Pink Lady, who’s on watch, and to avoid Jeff, who watches Pink Lady. The moon is up and full. Its light feels irradiated. There are few places to hide, long shadows cast in every direction. But we’re lucky and make it to the spot where the kidney-gnawers once attacked, where the razor wire is bent and slightly lowered.

I throw a blanket across the spiky rampart, grab two links and flip myself over, land cleanly on the other side.

Young Nick Drake winks, goes next.

WE’RE FORCED TO KNEEL, arms tied firmly behind our backs.

Larry Our Leader yawns.

“Spin that shit.”

“Spin the wheel! Spin the wheel!” Base Omega chants, as the wheel is dragged to the middle of the compound. Torches are lit. Everyone gathers around the colored triangles and rickety axle and clackity stopper, which apparently once topped a tricky par 3 at North Vegas Mini-Golf.

Dorsal Vent gets a good grip on the pegs and sends the disc whirring.

Clackity clackity clack clack. . clack. . clack. . clack.

The pointer almost lands on CRUCIFUCKTION.

Just barely makes it past WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE.

Neither are good options.

But both are better than GRIEVOUSLY BETRAYED REDRESS STEW, where it finally stops.

There’s twenty seconds of horrified silence.

And then Base Omega begins to chant.

“Grievously Betrayed Redress Stew! Grievously Betrayed Redress Stew!”

“And so it shall be,” Larry Our Leader says.

The Sanctifying Salt and Pepper are quickly found. A fire is lit. For the next simmery twelve hours, Base Omegans who are otherwise squeamish close their eyes and hum ditties, tell themselves that if you looked at it less factually and more like cartoons hallucinated during an unmedicated fugue state, Young Nick Drake could really be a lean little billy goat found frolicking in the desert.

Which is probably to some degree accurate.

In the end, I didn’t get to have any stew.

Mainly since I spent the next seven days in the Box.

I don’t think I could’ve eaten anyway.

All week, late at night, as I lay there with arms and legs numb and tongue swollen and flecked white, Larry leaned against the Kia trunk and whispered.

“As we evolve beyond the sort of people who once fetishized cell phones and spent their lives revenging playground slights by acquiring powerfully red cars, we have to decide who we are going to be now. Right this moment. Here in the irradiated zone. Behavior does not change. People do not change. History does not change. Only the weather changes. Are you prepared to be the weather, Krua?”

“It’s like, I am literally about to die of thirst here.”

LOL chuckles. “Yes, but assuming you don’t, you tiny chunk of meat, what are you going to be from this point forward? A filet that I can trust? Or one that I need to debone with malice?”

“So totally trust. I swear.”

When they finally let me out, I drink a ’77 Impala’s worth of crankcase water and sleep for a week. Then, when I can walk again, I have to learn how to do everything all over. Left-handed. Like write and wipe my asshole.

Also, now I’m comic relief at Tribal Caucus, because I keep dropping the parchment.

Larry Our Leader laughs and says, “You’re my left-hand man.”

The rest of Base Omega laughs with him.

I go to give them the finger, realize I’m giving them the stump.

GOOD ONE, Dorsal Vent writes in the sand.

And then we do roll-call, announce our names and purposes.

When it’s my turn I stand in front of all of Base Omega and say, in a clear voice that rings out across the desert morning, “I am Krua, Keeper of the Dictates.”

6:12 A.M.

The peeling Victorian sits north of Cesar Chavez and south of a Safeway lot, on a street called Guerrero, which means “war,” three lanes of nonstop traffic and no good bars to speak of. Two flats, two stories. Connected by a wobbly staircase, by the ever-present smell of wet rug and spilled soy and unstable neighbor. There’s a crayoned wall and a stack of detective magazines and a fireplace piled high with dead flowers. There’s a dozen roommates who call each other flatmates, an apartment they call a commune. I hear them all from my center room, the laughter, anger, orgasm. I feel them from my spot on the floor, vibrations rising through the joists, random lives under cheap planks and the rusty nails that run the length of my spine.

8:40 A.M.

Johnny, who lives across the hall.

“Good morning.”

“Hi.”

Johnny, with his beard and slippers and trucker’s belly, looking down at me, worried.

“Why are you lying on the floor?”

“No reason.”

“Aren’t you cold without any clothes?”

“A little.”

Johnny, depressed, on my couch with a crumpled tissue, telling stories, boyfriends come and go, have come and gone.

“You’ll be all right,” I say.

He nods, flips through my record collection, the last eight or ten left, a Human League and a Ramones, some other stuff.

“You mind if I play “Fever” again?”

“Not at all.”

He lifts the needle.

Johnny, who loves Peggy Lee.

9:12 A.M.

Susan, who collects the rent and arranges house meetings. Who drapes a towel over my hips before she can speak.