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Enlightenment
By
Doug Mort
Meyers sat alone at the bar, reeking of a rotting soul. He had tried to regale the regulars with his tales of hunting big game on the Serengeti, but they had joined the rest of the fair-weather world and abandoned him tonight, shaking their heads and filing out the door, waving him off as if he hadn’t dazzled them countless time before, as if he hadn’t given them reason to live. With hope of winning them back he had stumbled from his stool, thrust his son’s wrist-rocket out of his back pocket and proclaimed that unlike lesser men he no longer needed the big guns, that the police could have them; after which he raised the weapon up and harangued his fellow fuckups to flush a lion from the bush. When even they looked perplexed by the hallucinatory quality of things, Meyers pointed to the back door into the alley, where feral felines were know to roam. “Cancha hear ‘em! Let ‘em at me!” he hollered, but once again they waved him off, mumbled the slip and slide gibberish of the profligate and sidled for the door, each of them keeping one eye on Meyers as if
he were the crazy one. One of them, Old Man Arlo, the spiritual grandfather of the Starlight Room, even mustered a semi-coherent, parting shot. First he warbled nonsensically, his jowls jiggling, his jaundiced eyes excreting a milky substance; then he piddled on himself as he finally spit out to Fats, the bartender, that he and the others were headed for a new watering hole, to let them know when it was safe to come back. Meyers couldn’t believe his ears! Overnight they had changed! What had happened? Only one thing, as far as he could figure: Annie had beaten him to the punch and filled his faithful flock full of her fabrications. And his sweet, sweet soul mates of the Starlight Room had bought it lock, stock and barrel, leaving him all alone on his bar stool, where his schizoid spirit now tumbled even further down that velvet well of misanthropic self-pity. He was so deep and perversely comfortable that when Fats finally spoke to him, it was a wonder Meyers could hear any voice other than his own.
“Why don’t you get out of here, Meyers. I’m sick of lookin’ at ya.” He had his back against the back counter, the newspaper in front of his face as he read the ponies and tried to forget about his own pathetic life.
Meyers shot him a look of shock. “Get outta here? I got nowhere to go, Leroy!” Then, sounding somewhat incredulous, he cried,
“She changed the locks!”
“Can’t imagine why,” said Fats, who didn’t like being called Leroy, and who was anything but overweight. He was pale and malnourished, a pencil-thin mustache the only sign of perpetuating life.
“You can’t?” Meyers said, his voice lilting with hope, as if somebody finally understood his plight. “Well…well, imagine how I feel? According to her I’m a drunk who shoots neighborhood pets. No, I’m worse than that; I’m a nut who killed and ate the kid’s Peter Cottontail! I’m tellin’ ya, Leroy, it’s like a goddamn war without rules with this woman!”
“So build a cross,” Fats said. “Better yet, light yourself on fire.”
Meyers went all agog, as if he and Fats suddenly had some type of divinely-appointed rendezvous with fate. “You saw that too?”
Fats stomped the ground and lowered the paper. “Goddamnit, Meyers, saw what?”
“That show about them Buddhist monks that burned themselves up protestin’ the Viet Nam war. I saw it on TV last week.”
Fats’ mind began to churn.
Meyers said, “I’ll bet that made some people do some thinkin’, huh?”
A little more silence, Fats’ thought – a little more rope.
“They said the ones that weren’t right flopped around like a fish and screamed bloody murder. The ones that
were right, though? They sat there and took it like a man.”
“You’re right,” Fats said.
“Goddamn right I’m right. Got a razor?”
“Got a Buck knife. Got a gas can and some gas too.”
“Hand ‘em over,” Meyers said.
“Gladly,” said Fats.
An hour later, Meyers walked toward the place of Annie’s impending awakening. He would have ridden his bicycle, but the police had impounded it weeks before for drunk biking (they’d had his car for over a year). But injustice was now nothing to Meyers, for it would soon be dealt with. As he shuffled along he carried a two-gallon can of gas Fats had bought at the gas station next to the bar. Twice over, he had reminded Meyers to give himself a liberal dousing; he even gave Meyers his lighter. Matches, he had said, were known to fail.
It was late– almost midnight. Blood ran down Meyers’ ears and nose and cheeks and pooled in his long, unkempt beard. Fats’ Buck knife had been dull and chipped, and Meyers’ scalp was now anything but as smooth and soft as the Buddha’s. Instead it resembled the last throes of a hapless reign of terror. Here and there a few remaining hairs reached skyward through the gore, looking like stunned survivors beseeching the heavens to explain all of the senseless slaughter. Meyers, on the other hand, had never felt more hopeful.
He walked a little further and came upon a phone booth.
“Hello?” Annie answered then yawned.
“12:15” Meyers said, putting a hand over his mouth to muffle his voice.
“Excuse me?”
“Look out the window at 12:15. Kids – you can’t trust ‘em these days.”
“Oh no you don’t!” Annie said and hung up.
Got ‘er, Meyers thought then thumped his chest in self-acknowledgement, told himself he was the man.
Shortly thereafter, he leaned against a lamppost in front of his old abode. Above him the light hummed a song of calmness and tranquility. Meyers was having none of it, however, for there were two new lawn chairs side-by-side on the lawn. On either side of the chairs were tipped-over cups, as if Annie and her new friend – the Fem-Nazi from the Al-Anon meetings he’d been forced to investigate, the woman who had told his wife to make a decision and stick to it – had been living it up and celebrating his murder with the even more complicit neighbors, the ones who had started all of the noise about missing pets. So it goes in a commie-infiltrated neighborhood, Meyers thought, huffing with indignation.
His eyes followed the lawn up to the house proper. Underneath the picture window was a fresh row of flowers. “Plant your own garden!” he recalled the Fem-Nazi barking out as she goose-stepped around the front of the room, and it suddenly occurred to Meyers that she was a lesbian, no doubt – a contemptuous transgressor who had invaded the neighborhood to corrupt and destroy the good old-fashioned American family.
He looked at his watch. He moved to the center of the sidewalk and set the gas can and the red plastic rose he had purchased at the Starlight Room on the ground. He tried to assume the lotus position but the pain was unbearable. When the pain subsided he fell straight on his back and stayed there.
He reached for the gas can and saturated himself. The wounds on his head screamed with terror. “Did the Buddha have it any better with that goddamn thorny head of crowns?” he reminded himself.
He put the plastic rose upright between his teeth. Tears welled in his eyes and he wondered why life had dealt him such a low blow.
Perturbed at the thought, he slapped the tears away. Like a defiant child he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the lighter and thrust it a few feet above his body. For a moment, the lighter’s red plastic body shimmered in the lamplight and reminded Meyers of the contemptible commie police. They had escorted him out of his house three days ago, and now he regretted that he had not invited them to the immolation. Lord knows they too could use a lesson in self-awareness. Perhaps they and his wife could comfort one another when they realized what they had done.
He checked the time again. “Showtime,” he told himself. Then he closed his eyes and waited for the first cry of contrition.
Three or four minutes passed. Nothing. Then another minute or two. But still there was no rushing from the house, no repentance for crimes committed.
Meyers checked his watch. Annie must have heard him wrong; she must have thought he had said 12:15
p.m.
“Gas-soaked man with torch outside his rightful home and property!” he called.
Still no answer, unless one took into account the calm hum of the street lamp and the indifferent chitchat of the crickets and frogs.
“Annie!” Meyers pleaded, only to be finally met with a roar that chilled him to the bone. That roar was the quiet indifference of Annie and the neighbors – all of whom were finally enjoying a deep, peaceful sleep.
Copyright © 2007 Doug Mort
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