How Bizarre, How Random, How.....

Chapter VII-- We all need to get something out

And the kid puked all right. He sent up one and two and three and four trails of brown and yellow. Charlie the Hillbilly had to step back, so his clothes wouldn’t be ruined, but if his clothes were only moderately soiled because he stepped away in time, his truck, whose interior once existed in a pristine state, wasn’t so lucky.

He watched as every yellow arc originated from the kid’s mouth, flew a good distance, then a splotch would form on the wall of on the back of his seat, a big, yellow irregular shaped stain, from which come, like a river out of a mountain lake, a viscous yellow trail, and this would keep flowing till gravity beckoned and the river stopped flowing to simply become globs of yellow that fell down on the ground like fresh rain.

When the kid stopped puking, he started coughing. One or two pieces of undigested matter came and hit McGraw on the forehead.

“Goddamn it,” he said, flicking them away. “Goddamn it, but I don’t like to look at my own barfing, and it looks like, it looks like……..”

He held his stomach so prophetically that everybody knew what was going to come.

The first to shout was Flaherty.

“Get away, Graham, get away. He’s going to shoot us a big one…..”

Graham didn’t need to be told and dived totally of his own convictions.

As to the midget’s appetite, that wall of puke told all. The kid’s four attempts were like a moderately powerful faucet turned to its full power, but McGraw, McGraw, Flaherty thought later, was a water-cannon.

Flaherty had full right to think that way. Because, while it was true he was the first to realize what a force that was held in McGraw’s belly was about to come out, and he was the first issue an urgent warning, he wasn’t the first to duck. In fact, he didn’t duck at all. Nope. Stood where he was. Why? And the water cannon came straight at him. And he saw it come and something rumbled in his own stomach.

He got caught straight in the face. Oh, he who’d been worried about a mouth stinking, what sweet revenge Graham felt in watching him get his full dose of Charlie McGraw’s undigested matter. And McGraw went on and on, and it might have been five full seconds before the water cannon was switched off.

But no one was watching the kid, who was using his now open mouth to untie his knots. How expertly he bent his legs so that his mouth met the knots. But no one was watching him. Flaherty had begun not only sobbing and hiccupping but also puking on his own. Of that it must be said that the force was not at all like a water pump, or even a moderately powerful faucet, but it was more like a burst pipe in which the flow is mild. The result was that to Charlie McGraw’s already substantial contribution to him he added his own. With every hiccup, what came out, but a slimy yellow trail, to add to what was already there…….

“Oh, is there a less lucky man on this planet?” cried he.

Graham gave him a smirk. He was still not above thinking Flaherty had received some sort of divine punishment.

“Oh please, tell,” he bawled, “God, Ireland, me ancestral homeland of County Mayo, on whose behalf I’ve composed several lusty poems, tell me, were there ever any who suffered like the Irish, and of the Irish, were there ever any who suffered like me? Tell, I demand to know. Tell.”

“Who’s he talking to,” asked someone, and Graham turned to see it was the kid, who by then had completely untied himself.

The one with the broken teeth, that’s who he was. But now he was free, and Graham was too tired to worry about him. Let him go, let him do anything. Someone would find him sometime or the other. Justice would be served, at some date or another, by him or someone else.

“Hey, you,” asked the kid, getting up now and dusting himself, “who’s he talking to?”

Charlie McGraw turned around one eighty degrees and lunged for him, but the kid saw what was coming and calmly raised his leg all the way up. That caught Charlie on the jaw and he fell down, groaning.

“He’s talking to his beloved County Mayo, Ireland,” replied Graham, worried that if he didn’t furnish an answer, he too might meet the same fate as McGraw.

“Well, tell him he’s in America now,” said the kid, and jumped over the seats and went out of the truck. This time, all the way down without falling, or catching his clothes in some projecting bit of metal that would have him hanging and swaying two and fro. Nope, he went away handsomely all the way to his car, which some genius had towed to one side, and then he waved to them all, as if they could see. Then he stepped into it and was gone.

Flaherty’s bawling was growing loud, real loud. It was apparent he was intent on making a real noise. But then its not everyday that a cop finds himself covered in a mingling of puke.

“Quite a stink in it,” said Graham, holding his nose between his fingers daintily, “ and I can definitely tell that what came later, that’s to say what Flaherty threw up, smells a lot worse. I can definitely say that.”

McGraw didn’t seem to think much of the compliment, and merely nodded and grumped. What was he saying? Whom was he addressing his litany of complaints to? He sounded like an ill-tempered pony.

Seeing that Graham, who was the one he was addressing his complaints to, hadn’t heard a word he was saying, he made himself louder.

“Unlucky? He complains he’s unlucky? What’s he got to do but go home and get himself a good bath. But look at this. This is home. Its gone stink like this for ages. And look at that,” he pointed to one of the four splotches, “ what’s gone be done about that? I’m gone have to go to a garage, pay a ton of my money to get that off, and get this here stink off too.”

Flaherty, meanwhile, had become so disgusted with life that he’d begun to compose poems. To bad luck, and to his ancestral country, all that…..and it went like this.

“My troubles are mine own, this I fully appreciate,
Its not the mere luck of the Irish that I’m in this state,
Oh, wicked life, how much have you thrown on my plate,
And in five years, ten, where’ll I be at the oncoming rate,
Oh, but this tinny voice commands me, hand yourself to fate,
Or with every new day you’ll be caught in evermore self-hate…”

At this point, he stopped his lamentations to lift his palms to the sky, of which he could see a slice of through the window and began sobbing even more.

“What’s he about to do,” asked McGraw.

“What do you all think I am, his nanny? How do I know what he wants to do and what he doesn’t? He does things that he couldn’t have predicted five minutes earlier….”

Flaherty closed his eyes. He seemed to be faraway, far, far away….

Puke dripped still, landing on the padded ground with only a faint sound. Graham still held his nose between his fingers. None seemed to want to go away. Both seemed too curious about what was going to happen on account of their meditating friend Flaherty.

Who might have been dreaming of County Mayo and its endless rolling hills of green for all they knew, or who might have been wondering about that busty blonde that had crossed his path. If it was the latter, then you had to wonder how he was that he still considered himself the unluckiest man in the world.

And he gave off not a clue so that McGraw, who'd had enough of the smell and enough of Flaherty standing still in the face of it all, went over and tapped him on his shoulder.

No response. It was like Flaherty was in a trance.

He tapped harder. The way cops tap drunks who don't seem to give a damn.

No response still.

"Hello," he tiptoed and said sing-song like with his hands cupped into Flaherty's ear. He made his lips very round indeed.

Still nothing. This was getting tiresome.

Now of course, the stinking was quite terrible, and Charlie McGraw saw no reason to get any closer to the vomit-veiled Officer Flaherty than he had any reason to. The part about him making singsong noises to Flaherty's ear? Admittedly, he was a little guy, it
wasn't so easy to just jump up and grab on to an ear or something. But somehow, anyhow, without grabbing on to Flaherty's ear, he managed to whisper into it. The incredulous, ever curious reader may just take it for granted that he did it. Some things are just not explanable.

Also stretching beyond the bounds of explanation was the placid expression on Flaherty's face. How such a calm look when around him all was puke and more puke? Only Flaherty knew, and he wasn't talking. And McGraw had given up trying to probe him.

McGraw thereupon caught sight of Graham, who was sitting around as if all this meant nothing to him, that he had greater worries on his mind, that while puke and pus might piss some people off, he wasn't that kind. McGraw and Graham for a moment looked straight into each other's eyes.

"What?" asked McGraw. Or maybe he didn't ask. He just said. Commandingly. As if Graham was bound to tell him what was on his mind.

"Nothing," said Graham, and then turned his head away, as if he was the little sissy always being picked upon by the class bully. Even a bully as midget-statured as Charlie the Hillbilly.

"Don't you feel the whole place stinking?" asked Charlie.

Graham nodded.

"You do?"

"Yes, I do."

"Look, we better leave. I don't know where to go to. But the more we do nothing, the more this place is going to stink. And its my truck, damn it. I can't believe it. Here's my truck, stinking with three different kinds of vomit, and I'm just standin' here looking at it all as if it were some kind of art, you know, like it was some kinda modern art, art that you could smell as well as look at."

"That's a good idea," said Graham unwaveringly.

"What?"

"Modern art. We could take this truck to wherever those guys like modern art, and show it to them, and maybe they'd like it and buy it. I mean, all this puke must appeal to them so much. I've never really understood modern art, but this might be just what they're looking for."

"Maybe you could join in too."

"No, maybe not. I don't really want to. I don't like the act of throwing up, and anyway I've no reason to."

"Do it for the sake of art."

"No, I think three kinds of puke are enough. They certainly smell enough."

"You know what Officer?"

"What?"

"I don't know, maybe its what you police boys go through, but I really don't think you mind the smell so much."

"Of course I do, what do you think, I thrive on them?"

"No, no, I don't mean that. I mean, what's thrive mean, that you can only live well on it, right? No, I don't think you thrive on the smell of puke, but you certainly don't seem all that much disturbed by it. Why?"

"Oh, come on. Who likes the smell of vomit? To answer your question, why do I seem not offended by the smell, I can only answer I don't know why. You're right, maybe it was basic policework that got me accustomed to strange smells. I have handled a few drunks, addicts, so maybe that's where my tolerance is coming from. Where's yours coming from?"

"Me, tolerant to this smell? The only reason I'm not barfing again's because I already emptied my load. Now my stomach's empty."

At which point Flaherty thought fit to interrupt with this:

"Would you people stop talking about barfing and puking please? Look at me, look right here. Hillbilly Charlie, you want to ask Graham his ideas about the place of puke in modern art. Before that look, look, look what you've done to me. On my face, your puke, on my shirt, your puke, I smell of your puke, and as if that's not enough, you keep talking and talking about it. Puke, puke, puke, like there's no other topic in the world, especially as you're the one who emptied himself on me."

"Stop," said Graham, "now you're making me quesy."

"See," said Flaherty, "see what you did. Now you're making him all queasy, with all your puke talk."

"But he just told me before he's got a strong stomach on account of all his police work."

"No he doesn't. Look, there, he's going on at it. Graham, look towards Charlie."

"Look towards me...? Why, why that is..oh I..oh Goddamn it...."

Graham wasn't quite the water cannon, but he was pretty powerful too, and he came out like a pipe that had burst due to strong pressure. He sent a stream of yellow that landed on McGraw with splashes.

Graham took a long time emptying his stomach, and McGraw, who escaped being doused thoroughly by moving to the side, watched helplessly as more of his truck was used as canvas for some fine art. Actually, he'd prodded Graham just for fun. He hadn't intented he'd actually join his buddies and start puking. But that's what he was doing now, God, even now, how long would he take, Oh Good, he was finishing, Oh God, look at that long line, finally, finally, there now, he'd finished.

"That felt good," said he.

"I'm sure it felt good, barfing your bowels out on someone else's truck."

"I'm sorry about it, but I have to admit, it felt good. Very good. I wouldn't mind trying it again. On second thoughts, no. I don't want to try it again, but the first time, or the first and only time, should I say, It felt good. Very much like I was being cleansed, that the dirt was being taken out of me."

"I bet it felt therapeutic," so said McGraw.

"Yes, it did. With all that puke gone, a feeling is coming into me that I'm healing, in some sort of way."

"Yes, yes," Flaherty added, "you're healed. Do you see why I went into that meditative trance? That's because I too felt that I was healed. Its very healing, this vomiting. I'll certainly say so."