 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
by Willie Smith
My name is irrelevant. I work in a greeting card factory. I’m a writer.
Compose the verse. Most of the time, though, I work in the back stacking
boxes, folding cards, mopping floors, loading trucks, taking orders over the
phone; or dealing with customers who wander off the street into our shop up
front, where the boss makes an extra buck retailing overstock, seconds,
discontinued merchandise. You can’t just let a poet sit around do nothing. But
I probably write, on average, call it thirty minutes a day.
Some days I might versify a couple hours at a stretch. Like if the boss gets a
bug up his butt the sympathies aren’t selling, and he wants a new line ready
for tomorrow. Other times I might not write a lick all week; although ideas
perpetually percolate.
I recall this one day, I musta drunk too much coffee maybe, I sold our last
box of baby announcements to this per young lass whom I at first mistook for
Linda Roundstack (before all the cocaine).
She actually bought the last three boxes – her three sisters having
simultaneously entered triplets into the contest, or some such hooey.
Doubtless a spy. Sent by the enemy factory out in Akron. We work for the
same conglomerate; but I guess the boss and his Akron counterpart
compete with each other for reasons of either personal animosity or
corporate greed; I’m too bored with the gossip ever to get it straight.
Next day the boss finds out what I’ve done – sold off the last of the rugrat
doggerel. After smirking in my face a full minute, repeatedly adjusting his
tie, finally under his breath calling me a fucking idiot, he hands me a jar of
Vivarin. Leads me to, locks me inside the writing cubicle.
I musta spent three hours in there eating Vivarin, wrestling with birth verse.
No windows. Thing like a dwarf padded cell with no pads.
My strong suit is get-wells. I also excel at graduations, weddings, bar
mitzvahs. When I’m hot, nobody can top my sympathies. I can as well, upon
occasion, turn out a truly wicked thank-you. But birth announcements?
Just can’t keep my mind on the subject. The birth of yet another human –
who cares? There are six billion of us at this writing. Everytime I think of
another fresh human I wanna burst into tears. Another sucker who’s gonna
suffer, be doomed to foul the next further. Worst case scenario: grow up to
be another Jesus Christ. Preach it’s OK, keep right on multiplying – there’s
infinite room in Dad’s mansion. The earth is the devil’s outhouse – it’s
supposed to be choked with waste. The Gospel According To Gonads The
Optimist.
So I’m in there with the Vivarin and my thermos of Chase & Sanborn
wrenching rhymes into baby butts. Nothing’s clicking. I get hung up on boy-
toy-joy assonance. Dash off clinkers to the tune of: “It’s a girl! Let the gerbil
in his wheel whirl, the sun shine on the ant. Doesn’t it feel fine to be a
brandnew aunt?” Stuff that would never fly. Not that far off the mark; but the
boss is a stickler.
I open the top drawer of the typewriter stand. Remove an amber plastic vial.
With sweaty fingers rip off the childproof cap. Shake four diminutive white
tabs into my quivering palm. I hate to admit it, but this just might be a job
for crosstops. Benzedrine by any other name. I despise resorting to pep
pills. Then I can’t sleep at night; and when I do grab a moment of the fitful, I
glimpse nightmares of stacking greeting card boxes incorrectly.
I chew up the bitter chalky whites. Chase ‘em with a slurp of Chase &
Sanborn.
Now, if you’re wondering, why not use the identical verse on the line I
accidentally sold out? Well, that would be fine; if anybody around here could
remember anything. Nor do we ever take time to create a master file. Why
bother? The stuff is so syrupy it all sounds the same.
Nope, out of the five of us – Bob and Chuck (the regular stackers and
loaders), Jill (regular shop girl), myself and the boss – nobody can
remember squat. Maybe it’s the uppers. Could also be the hectic pace. Or
what doctors – shrugging in ignorance – are fond of labelling stress.
Personally, I suspect some inactive ingredient in the Vivarin. Magnesium
stearate my eye – eats holes in your brain like lye clears a drain. Or maybe
it’s the Yellow #6.
Anyway, thirty minutes later, when the bennies kick in, the coffee’s jazzing
and the Vivarin’s got me oscillating between horripilation and dyskinesia, I
finally hit paydirt. Silver meter, diamond sentiment, opalescent word choice;
exquisitely chased with golden rhyme.
Because of copyright, I can’t quote the inscription. (Show up at the shop
tomorrow, I’ll sellya one; always there from noon to two, while Jill takes
lunch, then craps out on Tuinal in the backseat of her Volvo).
But take my word, this is the McCoy. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Pope, Swift –
all rolled into one. The cramped quarters, the bright fluorescents, my disgust
for the assignment – coupled with being high as an escaped Garfield mylar
helium balloon, wired as terrier hair – produce a masterpiece. The entire
effort done unconsciously in one banzai of 148 key strokes. Through the
medium of my fingers, the Muse spoke.
I’m clawing, screaming, kicking at the door. Till I remember the intercom.
Jump to the opposite wall two feet behind. Tremblingly hit the switch.
The speaker in the acoustic ceiling activates. From his office the boss
acknowledges.
I yell up at the invisible mike, “I got it! It’s here! Archimedes in the bath tub!”
The boss instructs me to stay calm. He’ll be right there. First he’s gotta over
the phone close a deal regarding a truckload of Halloween cards. Then he’ll
refill his coffee, come down the hall, see what I got.
Fifteen teeth-grinding nail-biting minutes later he shows up. Unlocks the
door. Squeezes buns into the cubicle. Off-gasses Seabreeze, while he reads
what’s in the typewriter. His eyebrows arch. He adjusts his tie, mutters,
“Hmm.” A rare utterance of non-disapproval, meaning roughly: “Well,
maybe you’re a writer after all.”
The product circulates the office. Ours is a democratic totalitarianism.
Everybody gets a chance to fudge with whatever the boss thinks has a
chance to make the most dough. Maybe that’s the essence of all democracies.
Anyway, Jill adds her two cents. Points out I misspelled both rennaisance
and placenta. Bob and Chuck persuade me to alter the final couplet –
universalize the appeal. The boss insists I change cherubic cheeks to chubby
cheeks. Screws the meter; but keeps off my neck his fat ass. We wind up
going to press with basically the original work.
Next I know a year or two evaporates. I dunno, I don’t remember. The boss
works staff hard, constantly reminding us we’re pitted against with Akron.
Nothing much changes. Except the shop gal seems to be named Jane, is fifty
pounds heavier, ten years older. Rumor hints Jill overdosed on tooies. But
Chuck claims she walked off the job one day last summer; now raising a
family in El Paso. The boss backs this up with a shrug.
What’s the diff? Actually better for everybody. This Jane takes just an hour
lunch; so I work less in the shop; consequently screw up less; all fine with
me. I’m a writer at heart; am OK with stacking boxes. It’s the customer
contact I can’t handle. Typewriters and boxes I understand.
One item definitely hasn’t changed: we still carry the same birth
announcement. I’d remember for sure if in the meantime I hadda sweat
another eternity grinding out baby tripe. And, as figured, the product has
proved an enormous success. Even today, sales daily increase. It’s the
reason profits have soared.
The boss has lost a few pounds, stopped worrying about his tie. Conversely,
Jane expresses her contentment with the recently instituted bi-annual ten
cent raises by eating extra sweets and getting fatter yet.
Me, I sneak a few more pep pills. Everything’s fine.
Till this afternoon I begin to learn the truth.
The pert young lass from a year or two ago saunters in while I’m tending
shop – Jane down at McDonald’s subjecting herself to grease.
“No spies allowed!” I sneer.
“Oh – it’s you!” she flashes a full complement of perfect teeth. Fiddles with an
earring. “I’m not working for Akron anymore, if that’s what you mean.”
“Actually,” I say, “I mean, Do you want something? This is a store, you see.”
She pulls off a kid glove. Slaps it – as if lost in thought – against her cheek.
“Can I buy you out of birth announcements?”
“Sure. No problem.” I reach under my shirt tail. Remove contents from
pancake holster strapped over right kidney. Jerk out, clack same onto
counter. “This is a snubnose .38. It’s just laying here with my hand over it.
The barrel aimed at your navel. A minute ago I ate six Benzedrines. You
mind explaining why again you wanna clean us outta birth announcements?”
When she’s through pretending to gulp (these spies continually act ), she
gazes down at the mouth of the pistol held flat against the glass counter: “OK,
no more kidding. But you mean to say you really don’t know what’s going
on?”
“I never said that.”
“You probably,” she huffs, “don’t even know why these things are selling
like cocaine. Look – you put that gun away, I’ll let you in on the secret.”
We dicker a minute. Compromise on my pointing the revolver off in some
corner of the room.
I offer a Vivarin. She declines. Eat it myself, gulping hard to get it down. So
preoccupied am I swallowing a tablet without water, I miss her first
remarks. But come in where she reveals people buy these cards because
they skyrocket fertility.
Kinda chain letter deal. You get someone who just had a baby to mail you
666 announcements, and you’ll conceive within the week; some say even if
you don’t have sex. Then, the day you give birth, mail 111 cards to each of
any nine people whom you desire to conceive.
“Whether they like it or not?”
She purses lips. Nods affirmative. “And you must mail the 999 cards –
divided equally among nine women – to assure that your child is born
healthy.”
A shudder ascends my spine. My poem has triggered a pregnancy
avalanche? Accelerated the snowballing of planetwide breeding?
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
She shrugs. Says belief is a personal matter. But the truth is – as far as
science is willing to admit – the phenomenon concerns the rhythm of the
rhyme. Psychological tests suggest the wording itself to be irrelevant; as is
probably the exact number of cards mailed. Don’t I ever read the papers,
watch the news, turn on a radio?
I shake my head. Explain I can’t clutter my mind – need to keep a clean
slate, as new greeting card verse can arrive any time; likewise any time the
boss could demand by yesterday a fresh line of sympathy, get-well, Easter,
birthday, Christmas, whatever. Reason for all the uppers, why everybody
here needs to stay sharp. We’re committed to the business of quality
greetings. How come we’re number one: dedication.
She sighs. Rolls her mascara-ed eyes at the popcorn ceiling. “You’re
number one, dipshit, because of serendipity.” She levels her baby browns
back onto my own crosstop-dilated pupils. “Current research indicates the
onslaught of hundreds of these announcements causes the brain to resonate
with the herky-jerky of the bombastic inscription. Creating a prolonged
memory cramp. Forcing the brain – really only a sort of master gland
routinely secreting much more than mere thought – to throw the body into
hyper-fertility. I imagine you are also ignorant of the parthenogenesis
rumors. Well documented, however, is the upsurge in triplets, quads, quints.
Week by week, less and less rare become even octuplets. Thanks to your
card, all America waxes giddy with birth.”
“So what’s in it for Akron?”
“I don’t work for Akron anymore.”
I snap up the heater. Shove the squat barrel in her smile face.
Her eyes cross, holding the aperture in focus. This time the gulp looks real.
She stutters, O-O-OK, she’ll level:
Eighteen months ago she bought us out because Akron wanted to corner the
market. Even then baby announcements the comer in anybody’s inventory.
They didn’t figure we’d rebound in less than a week with a new line. And
nobody anticipated the voodoo card explosion.
I lower the gun.
She produces a cigarette. Lights it. Replaces the lighter in her blouse pocket.
Says, blowing smoke, “Akron sent me in to try it again. Assuming, once sold
out, you self-isolated spaceballs wouldn’t have a record of the active
ingredient – the verse, I mean.”
“Flattery gets you nowhere.” I stash the snubnose back under my shirt. “C’
mon back – I’ll show you the warefhouse. You brought a truck? You’re
gonna need an eighteen-wheeler if you intend to clean us outta the
bambinos.”
“I can have one here in ten minutes,” she states. “My lighter is a miniature
cell phone. Got a crew stationed around the corner.”
I step out from behind the counter. Lead the way to the swingdoor into the
back room. She comes through close behind, whispering instructions into the
shiny lighter cupped in her palm.
Off to one side Bob kneels stacking sympathies. Only Bob is working today.
Chuck home with diarrhea. (Shit, gotta send him a get-well – have Jill start it
around the office when she returns from lunch).
I approach Bob. “Don’t bother to get up,” I say. Slip the .38 out from the
pancake. Carefully shoot him in the head.
The shot is loud, but muffled by the inventory jungle. Each ceiling-high stack
holds over a hundred thousand-card boxes – 98% of these the famed baby
announcements. The air between the close-packed columns and rows stale
with the odor of paper and cardboard. Almost can’t smell the cordite.
Turn around to check on my vintage Linda Roundstack. She’s ambling down
the aisle, still whispering into her palm. Likely thought the round I put
through Bob’s temple backfire out on the highway.
Her I shoot in the heart. Right between those 34C’s. She topples over like a
bad ad for pantyhose and heels. God I’m good!
Isn’t even my piece. Sent along by a happy gun nut in Alabama, after his
barren wife brought to term sextuplets. Such the rewards of good writing.
Pull out handkerchief. Wipe prints off snubnose. Wrap Bob’s fingers around
the handle, forefinger locked over trigger. Bob always hated Linda
Roundstack. “Evil Bitch Music” he called it. Chuck will testify to that. Or
maybe Bob caught her spying, killed her. Didn’t wanna face the music,
suicided.
Then I remember it’s Jane. Jill is dead, or raising a family in El Paso. The gun
nut, in the note he enclosed, swears the .38 is registered to some Wisconsin
senator (Wyoming?). Anyway, absolutely untraceable to yours totally wired.
I rush into the small windowless art room. Hurry out with solvents,
turpentine, lighter fluid. Splash accelerants on dozens of boxes. Use the dead
spy’s lighter to start six different fires. In seconds the overstuffed warehouse
blazes.
The corpses will char beyond recognition; but any coroner worth his salt will
determine the truth. How Bob shot the girl, set fire to the joint, then shot
himself.
Coughing, retching, stumble back out to the shop.
Nothing wrong with this picture. One less spy (nobody loves a snoop. Nor
did I enjoy Bob’s company – him badmouthing crosstops, calling me
“Poppa” Benny. Best of all – I glance back through tears at smoke curling
around the edges of the swingdoor – the announcements are history, not a
card will survive. Meaning a nosedive in production of the single greatest
threat to life on earth: Americans.
A return to the usual climb in the population that consumes the most, wastes
the most, establishes its taste worldwide. The evangelists of data, the
preachers of speed, whose anathema is everywhere peace and quiet. The
invaders of the retreat, the shrine marketers, the speculators on their own
hyprocrisy.
And if someone releases a pirate? No fear. No American could resist
creating an improved version. Perhaps simply dropping a comma, or
establishing newness by altering chubby to cherubic; democratizing
placenta to afterbirth, remisspelling rennaissance. Thereby, I know in my
palpitating heart, emasculating the magic.
Soon the original will be ashes. And only I could ever hope to sweat out
another such poetic catastrophe. Locked in that cubicle, high on stimulants
and disgust… only I… only…
Spot, through the plateglass, Jane drift up; toss a burger wrapper in the
gutter; pause outside the door. Her nose wrinkles. Detects a hint of
conflagration?
Something beautiful there is about Americans. An independent people
capable of – at the last minute – togetherness. I, what the hell, push back
through the swingdoor.
Into the smoke tramp. Greet the flames.
Fall choking to the floor. Feel the face blister; skin catch; guts about to burst
with heat. This way I for sure won’t be responsible for accelerating hell on
earth.
Will the boss escape – hustle his girth in time down that corridor? Well, he
does, it’s his business.
Shit… forgot to send Chuck that card.
BIO NOTES:
Willie Smith is deeply ashamed of being human. His work
celebrates this horror. He has probably reached the last fibonacci
number of his life and likely will not hang around too much longer. He would
consider it an honor should you be so kind as to read his material while he is
still alive. If you are so foolish as to want to spend money, visit
oneleggedcowpress for his DADA AFTER MATH.
Free stuff is at various other web sites. The chef recommends SUBMACHINEGUN
CONSCIOUSNESS at semantikon.com, various stories at corpse.org, sticky, gooey
sickening little poems at sites like myfavoritebullet.com, zygoteinmycoffee,
thievesjargon, bloodcookies, fifthstreetreview, etc.
For more stories from Willie Smith, click here:
Essay On Wheels
Dumpster Hotel