Johnny America

 

The Dream of Giraffe

by

Fran­cois Gi­raffe pressed his hands against his flanks to keep them from shak­ing. He clenched his jaws to keep his teeth from chat­ter­ing. He said he was calm, but he wasn’t calm.

They spooned him cher­ry syrup be­fore bed­time and it helped him sleep for a while. He dreamed he was cross­ing the blue-green wa­ter of the Ni­a­gara Riv­er, hang­ing over with his legs hooked to a wire. A breech­es-buoy op­er­at­ed by an ape in white over­alls winched across the riv­er to save him. A tick­er-tape pa­rade en­sued. A huge bill­board il­lu­mi­nat­ed by a gold­en sun por­trayed his tri­umphant vis­age. Then he awoke to the sound of scrap­ing. A man in a yel­low tu­nic stood at the win­dow with a met­al scraper, scoop­ing out filth from the sill. His shoul­ders rocked as he worked. The back of his head looked like the face of a beast. Fran­cois want­ed to ask him what he was do­ing but be­fore he could the man put his scraper in his pock­et and saun­tered out of the room, the back of his head bark­ing. Fran­cois fell back asleep.

Some­one brought him yel­low flow­ers and they looked love­ly against the bone white wall. Who brought them? A lit­tle man with big hands and feet. Some­one else brought a book with a black cov­er, writ­ten by a man with a black beard and beady eyes. Fran­cois tried to read it that morn­ing, in the ear­ly light, but the words bored him and his eye­lids closed. Then he dreamed he was danc­ing with a long-necked woman wear­ing a gown with black flow­ers and yel­low stripes.

The top of his head nes­tled un­der her chin. She asked him where he had learned to dance so well and he said Mo­roc­co. When she reached down and bit his ear he awoke to the sound of a train rush­ing through his room. He pound­ed the bed and screamed but the train drowned him out. Then a green gas hissed from the vents and filled his room. He could bare­ly see the walls. What rot­ten luck to miss an­oth­er sun­rise. He took his pills, blue and white. He took them un­der the pre­sump­tion that they helped.

He pulled out a blue vel­vet sack from the bed stand and re­moved from it an or­ange. He peeled the or­ange and sep­a­rat­ed its seg­ments. Or­anges held sun­light in their core. Sun­light pow­ered the world, fu­eled its slow green lifeblood. Oth­er­wise all would be mud and rock, inan­i­mate and ster­ile. Fran­cois liked to watch the sun­rise on oc­ca­sion, but usu­al­ly he did not. He put an or­ange seg­ment in his mouth and sucked the juice from it with­out chew­ing. Then he spit the mush in­to his hand. The or­ange tast­ed warm and too sweet for his lik­ing so he stopped eat­ing it and chucked it in­to the trash.

His feet sweat­ed un­der the blan­ket so he rolled it off his legs. His feet looked like aubergines, his toe­nails like chips of char­coal. Good thing the doc­tor planned to vis­it him that af­ter­noon. If he failed to come Fran­cois would hold him ac­count­able. Last time he came late he blamed traf­fic, the tourists and so forth. Why did Fran­cois have to suf­fer be­cause of a traf­fic jam or be­cause of some bloody tourists? What did he care about tourists? He had seen a hun­dred mil­lion of them in his life, more, more.

“Don’t ar­gue with me!” some­one yelled in the hallway.

“Get baked, you fuck­ing retard.”

“Say one more thing!”

Sounds of scuf­fling and slap­ping erupt­ed and Fran­cois sat up in his bed and cocked his ears. They had worked bet­ter be­fore, his ears, in the past, when it mat­tered. Now he heard the sound of rush­ing wa­ter all the time. Was that okay? He had lived in the Falls too long. The cataract and its in­ces­sant din had near­ly deaf­ened him, among oth­er things. He had once dreamed of go­ing over in a bar­rel. The idea of it made him smile. Go­ing over in a bar­rel! Maybe he still would. That would draw the crowds. Then they would sure­ly erect a bill­board with his smil­ing face on it. The light looked rough this time of day — what time of day was it? Oth­er peo­ple pass­ing talked in street tones, curs­ing and drag­ging their feet like zom­bies. Fran­cois had no tol­er­ance for ret­ro­grades and drug ad­dicts. Were it up to him he would com­mand a score of marks­men to load their guns and open fire on any­one who vague­ly fit the de­scrip­tion. But Fran­cois knew that this would nev­er happen.

A woman in a pale green tu­nic wear­ing her hair very short han­dled his wrist and looked at her watch. This wasn’t the first time she had done this. In­deed she of­ten came. Some­times an­oth­er woman came, wear­ing pink, her hair not short. Her teeth re­mind­ed Fran­cois of the gorge. The one in green nev­er showed him her teeth. She nev­er said a word, breath­ing calm­ly through her small black nostrils.

No one said a word, sleep­ing through the end­less days with open eyes. Vi­o­lins whined and oboes moaned and noth­ing made Fran­cois sick­er to his stom­ach than tepid mu­sic. Why not drums? Give every­one a heart­beat. Thump a lit­tle. Trash the joint. Fran­cois smiled as he imag­ined all the noise.

“Let’s go see the scow!”

“Fuck the scow, it ain’t nothing.”

“It won’t hard­ly stay there.”

“Fuck the scow.”

Fran­cois re­called the day he went down to see the steel sand scow and its rust­ed con­di­tion de­pressed him. He could hear the voic­es: “We’re go­ing over, we’re lost!” Peo­ple rush­ing to and fro. Nev­er a dull mo­ment in the Falls. Dare­dev­ils were com­mon in these parts, test­ing nature’s fury, seek­ing ac­claim and in­famy, some­times dy­ing but dy­ing well as it were. He had read of peo­ple fish­ing bod­ies out of the Whirlpool to har­vest the or­gans. Oth­er bizarre schemes for mak­ing mon­ey. It was all about the money.

He spent the rest of the morn­ing read­ing the black book, mak­ing nei­ther heads nor tails of it, and cough­ing up black phlegm. Then every­one came to play in the eu­chre tour­na­ment. They hud­dled round the ta­ble crack­ing their knuck­les and gri­mac­ing. The deal­er wore a red vel­vet tux for the oc­ca­sion but his sleeves kept catch­ing on the felt of the card ta­ble and he mis­dealt at least ten times. Fi­nal­ly they gave him the boot and brought in a liv­er-lipped woman wear­ing a yel­low turtle­neck with black de­signs. Hands squeezed. These peo­ple had spent time in the casi­no. They knew their cards, even though they lived in­side their heads now. They filled up on grape-juice and count­ed their cards, then re­count­ed them, then again. They slapped trumps on the ta­ble top with skill and fury. Some­one steeped Eng­lish break­fast tea and served it with stale bis­cuits. All good.

“He’s cheat­ing!”

“No, I’m not.”

“Take him out.”

Some­one took Fran­cois by the arm and led him in­to the hall. Af­ter yesterday’s fall his face looked like road kill. He felt no dif­fer­ent, though.

He sat in his room and count­ed the cows he could see on the near­by farm. Twen­ty-four. No, twen­ty-five. A lit­tle black one gam­boled away from the herd. Had a wolf ap­peared, great harm may have come to the calf. But lat­er, the cows slept un­der a tree, shad­ing them­selves from the sun, yet so crowd­ed their ris­ing va­pors pro­pelled a hawk in­to the heavens.

Where was Fran­cois then? For a time he sat there by the win­dow think­ing of noth­ing at all. Then he thought of how much time had passed when he had not been think­ing but quick­ly lost his train of thought. He stalked around his room in a pa­per hat he made that af­ter­noon in crafts class. Once a week a la­dy came from Ni­a­gara Col­lege and gave them lit­tle projects. Fran­cois talked a lot to her but she nev­er more than nod­ded. Her aloof­ness both­ered him, but then that is the way with artists. They while away the time, cru­ci­fy them­selves to their work with noth­ing but fire in their souls and steel in their hearts.

A splash of co­gnac would have served him well in the dense af­ter­noons when his eyes re­fused to open and his limbs felt like molten lead, spread­ing over his bed and pool­ing in its folds and wrin­kles. But where could he get co­gnac now? It was an impossibility.

“Shut the fuck up!”

“I’ll shank you, motherfucker!”

“Go ahead and try!”

Some­one screamed.

Then a herd of an­te­lope clat­tered down the hall, cleared out the ob­struc­tions, and then it went qui­et again. This hap­pened fre­quent­ly. These lit­tle bursts of vi­o­lent sounds. Fran­cois cocked his ear. He heard some­thing creep­ing through the vent. Was it his friend, Mau­rice? Mau­rice, a wee man, came to vis­it him on oc­ca­sion. He was odd. Nev­er stayed long.

“Fran­cois!” cried a squeaky voice from the vent.

“Mau­rice! You came again to vis­it me. I am delighted.”

“You’re de­light­ed? No, I am! I am!”

“How are you doing?”

“Sim­ply su­perb! And I must say you look very fit! Well, must be leav­ing, the lit­tle lass and so forth.”

“Won’t you stay for tea?”

But he was gone. Fran­cois had nev­er ac­tu­al­ly seen the chap but he knew he could trust Mau­rice with his life if need be. You can tell with some folks. Civ­i­liza­tion it­self de­pends up­on the ef­fi­ca­cy of these hu­man bonds. A blue jay flapped across his nose, just miss­ing. It van­ished in­to the mir­ror over the sink. The brain is but a tool, Fran­cois re­flect­ed. Man­i­fold in func­tion true, but a tool nonethe­less. Peo­ple go to school for years to sharp­en their tool. The same holds true for peo­ple who bet­ter their minds liv­ing life di­rect­ly. Nev­er rule that out as vi­able al­ter­na­tive to years in dusty li­braries and lec­ture halls lis­ten­ing to pro­fes­sors bark like seals.

Peo­ple lose their mar­bles all the time and rarely know. But some­times sad­ness gets mis­tak­en for mad­ness. Fran­cois knew his heart had blown a tire. It was a long sto­ry that he could no longer re­mem­ber. His life had gone rea­son­ably well un­til… see, he could not re­mem­ber. But the truth was that hap­pi­ness elud­ed him and this made him blue, not de­ranged. Still, they for­gave him for the fire in the bel­fry. They ig­nored his turgid let­ters of com­plaint. They tol­er­at­ed his phlegm.

All this. All this.

True or not, he killed a bird the oth­er day, while he gar­dened. Knocked it from the sky with a hoe, a bird with gold­en wings and blood-red eyes. One of the oth­er fel­lows start­ed whistling like the dol­phins at Marineland when he saw the bird. Then he start­ed hit­ting him­self in the face. This fel­low of­ten hit him­self in the face, he was al­ways look­ing for a rea­son. Fran­cois wept when he re­al­ized what he had done, but his tears made no dif­fer­ence to the world. Noth­ing al­tered for their falling. And every­thing must die; no one gets away from the chap with the scythe. Scream all you want.

Af­ter a mo­ment a man in yel­low pa­ja­mas ar­rived with a portable blue blow­torch. He fired it up and put on a pair of gog­gles. He aimed the rush­ing flame at the yel­low flow­ers on the win­dowsill, car­boniz­ing them in an in­stant. Fran­cois want­ed to ask the man what busi­ness he had torch­ing his flow­ers, but he didn’t want to make a fuss. The man killed the blow­torch, re­moved his gog­gles, and de­part­ed with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing Fran­cois. This ges­ture, or lack of one, of­fend­ed him more than any­thing else.

Two gi­ant pan­das es­cort­ed Fran­cois to the yard for recre­ation. They were new to the fa­cil­i­ty, or at least he did not rec­og­nize them. He liked to walk in cir­cles un­til he faint­ed. The pan­das kept their eyes on him while he wheeled around the yard, pump­ing his arms. It was fun. I feel alive, he thought, for the first time in… he lost his train of thought again. But he didn’t have to think to keep walk­ing, right left, very nice. He felt alive. This was fun! Then he ran in­to a tree stump and his fun came to an end. The pur­ple skin of his feet burst, re­leas­ing a yel­low goo that reeked like cheese.

They wrapped his feet with io­dine-soaked ban­dages and sup­pressed his screams. He watched the sky out­side, in­di­go through the tint­ed glass, the mist from the cataract whirling like a cy­clone. Be cool, they said. Be cool. He tried to hide but where? Every cor­ner held a cam­era. A cam­era over his bed had been film­ing him from the be­gin­ning. He could hear it swiv­el­ling as some­one with a re­mote made adjustments.

We be­lieve what we want to be­lieve, that’s what Fran­cois be­lieved. The con­crete of re­al­i­ty had noth­ing to do with it. If you drove your head hard enough in­to the wall it would come out the oth­er side or be crushed. In the lava­to­ry a man with a very long neck was shav­ing his face with­out cream. He scraped his ra­zor along his bris­tles, pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly shak­ing it over the sink. Scrape, scrape. Blood flowed from his nos­trils in two red stripes that carved in­to the mu­cous cov­er­ing his up­per lip and chin. Fran­cois frowned and en­tered a stall. He squat­ted but main­tained sep­a­ra­tion be­tween his cheeks and the toi­let seat. When he fin­ished he not­ed the long green ba­nana jut­ting out of the bowl.

The shav­ing man now tow­eled his head. He stood there wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen or some­thing to end. Fran­cois want­ed to tell him to fuck off but re­con­sid­ered. He padded back to his room. On his bed he spread the down-filled com­forter, smooth­ing out the cor­ners. As night fell, Fran­cois felt bizarre. He glanced out the win­dow and not­ed the moon, al­most full but not quite. He could see the face of it, cheer­ful, serene, and smiled.

At dawn dark blotch­es whirled around the room. Fran­cois blinked his eyes hard but the phe­nom­e­non con­tin­ued. It fright­ened him. He hud­dled un­der the com­forter. He heard wa­ter rush­ing, and voic­es, We’re lost! We’re lost! Then a siren start­ed wail­ing. Was a fire burn­ing? He sniffed for smoke. He had heard of a man down the hall who set fire to his hair. He ran out of his room scream­ing, turn­ing and turn­ing in circles.

Filed under Fiction on December 11th, 2006

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