By Jon Wesik
The night they killed the dogs I finished a twenty-two-hour
shift at the Army Crabgrass Warfare Station in Suitland, Maryland. I’ve always
believed idleness is the devil’s lunch pail, so I foreswore snacking on furious
cookies and sharpened all the mechanical pencils under the grand portrait of Ho
Chi Minh, whose wispy beard hung like a MiG-17 contrail from his chin. Before
starting the bleary ride home I snuck a Samantabhadra from the
chocolate-covered Buddha and bodhisattva assortment and parade marched with my
coworkers through the decontamination station.
Outside a very long satellite skewered stars that glittered
like spilled sugar on the velvet tablecloth of night. Pausing in the parking
lot I said a brief prayer for the cosmonaut trapped inside with only vodka and
blood sausage. Through my surplus night-vision goggles I located the infrared
reflection from my Toyota Raptor’s radar-absorbing finish. The ground crew had
stenciled a small wheelchair below the driver’s side window with the others,
even though CENTCOM had yet to confirm the kill. After arming the heat-seeking
missiles and cracking the breeder valve to start the flow of nitrous oxide, I
fired up the Pratt and Whitney hybrid turbofans and set the throttle for
supercruise. By stabbing the big red button that fired the Gatling gun until my
index finger grew blisters, I kept my path clear of slow-moving vehicles.
Within minutes I roared through the Coopertown speed trap before my sonic boom
alerted Sheriff Johnson by shattering his contact lenses and sending his
wide-brimmed hat tumbling into the sugarcane.
As usual the parishioners at St. John the Blasphemer were
lashing the Catamite priest to the rack with bicycle chains and Kryptonite
locks. They raised their torches and pitchforks in salute after my tracer
rounds mowed down the Sunday school class and set fire to the big cross. I turned
left on Elm and pulled into my driveway, where the drag chute stopped my car within
millimeters of the garage door. From the cockpit I heard wind chimes sing
psalms to the god of upright demons as I disarmed the missiles. I’d become more
conscientious with the heavy firepower since my homeowner’s insurance had
stopped paying. I climbed out of the car and skipped toward the front porch. Violent
petunias brandished M-16s and swung machetes at my ankles, as I made my way
through the thicket of botanical experiments gone horribly wrong.
Wearing a sweater that clung like plastic wrap, my Filipina
mail-order bride met me inside the front door, where I inspected her post-office
box for signs of illegal entry. It wouldn’t be the first time. Her thighs had
been known to bankrupt captains of industry and lead KGB agents to their doom. Before
I could take clay impressions of the scratches on the lock, the jeweler’s loupe
fell from my eye and she dragged me to the dining room, where a macaroni-and-trees
casserole sprouted from the white-pine table. At least I wouldn’t need a
toothpick after dinner.
“Umm, the salad
tastes like a briefcase of hundred-dollar bills,” I said, reasoning that
flattery could prove the key to her chastity belt.
“An old friend left me the recipe.” She dialed the
combination on the wall safe. “Care for some more?”
“It’s a little rich for me. How about some cheesecake?”
“I had to use tofu.” She removed the dessert from the Norge.
“Wombats ate the gorgonzola again.”
Wombats! Our kitchen was infested with them. I could deal
with the platypus in the bathtub and the bandicoots in the toaster, but the
wombats strained my patience like an enlarged prostate. The monthly bills for
their imported grass and chocolate biscuits ran to over three hundred dollars.
Resolving to remedy the situation I fed my uneaten salad to the koala in the
garbage disposal and retired to the living room.
A volume of Julio Cotisol’s stories lay unread on the coffee
table, but the Argentine writer always left me feeling stressed. Fortunately,
the public TV station was showing the Mercury Players’ adaptation of Immanuel
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. When
Orson Welles began his monologue on the a priori knowledge of space and time, I
heard the unmistakable drone of a C-130 flying overhead. Moments later the first schnauzer landed on
the corrugated roof. I snatched a nuclear umbrella from the elephant foot and
dashed outside into the rain of Pembroke Corgis, Rottweilers, and Yorkshire
Terriers. A Newfoundland thudded like a hamburger-filled Hefty bag onto the
driveway and coated the concrete with pet dander. Its dying lips curled to
reveal fangs that had yellowed as if he’d been fed an exclusive diet of coffee
and tobacco.
The petunias fired assault rifles wildly into the air making
the scene resemble Desert Storm Baghdad without the domes and minarets. A lucky
round caught the C-130 in a starboard engine, and the big plane crashed into
the neighbors’ duplex taking out the tree house, swing set, and sugar refinery
in the process. Snarls and gunshots came from the cargo hold, as the captives
fought the flight veterinarian in a desperate struggle for survival. Within
minutes the victorious canines descended the cargo ramp and scratched at the
Andersons’ picture window in hopes of Purina Dog Chow, Topol Smoker’s Tooth Polish,
and cozy spots on the living room carpet.
The satellite passed overhead again, this time resembling a
fish hook caught in the ear of an unsuspecting moon. I yawned and stretched. It
was only 9:00 but with so little excitement, I went to bed.
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BIO: Jon Wesik has this to say about himself: I host of San Diego’s Gelato Poetry Series and am an editor
of the San Diego Poetry Annual. I’ve
published over two hundred poems in journals such as The New Orphic Review, Pearl,
Pudding, and Slipstream.
I’ve also published over forty short stories in journals such as Space and Time, Zahir, and Tales
of the Talisman. I have a Ph.D. in physics and am a longtime student of
Buddhism and the martial arts. One of my poems won second place in the 2007
African American Writers and Artists contest. Another had a link on the Car
Talk website.
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