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by Killian Piraro | 13 Feb 2007, 0:00
[seeded by Kaitlin]
Larry Poliwaug slumped over a bar lacquered an inch thick with dried tequila spills and beer rings. Matches the rest of the country, he thought. The rooster on the empty can of his seventh Gallo stared him in the face, and the last few dollars in his pocket weighed more than paper should. His clothes were still a little damp from earlier that evening, when he had failed to fish his trailer out of the lake, which he could see from the rough-cut window of the shack/bar. He refused to turn and look at it, though, with its unfamiliar smells and squiggling wildlife that bumped and tickled him in the murk—it wasn't like the one he had spent whole days on as a kid, cool and inviting in the summer. With a whiff of that lake a long chain of happy memories rushed back instantly. This one, gorgeous and sparkling under the moon, had taken his stuff.
A month previous, back in Boise, Larry had perched on a similar barstool at the Fishing Hole, known affectionately as just "the Hole," having had enough liquor to do some real, quality thinking about the world and his place in it. He took inventory of his life and found the stock bleak: He felt a startling indifference and even a mild contempt for his wife, asleep at home; he had changed oil and tuned engines at the same gas station for nearly 15 years; his mother lived with them and caused him no end of vexation; his house would fall over any day now, with its cracked and crumbling foundation. He did have a good friend or two, however, men for whom he felt the only real affection he had in him, and a place he could have to himself, a trailer on cinder blocks in the backyard where he kept his collection of bobble-head dolls and stacks of books.
So there were good things and bad, easy things about his life he could see and touch and change—wife, job, mental enrichment—things he could bear to see float up to the surface of his mind and deal with, one by one. But there was a nagging, a gross dissatisfaction underneath, that had always been too frightening to own up to. Now, in the blue and red glow of neon beer signs, he could no longer deny himself. He felt the snap, and it was over. He couldn't stay.
He made a shuffling beeline home, straight to his backyard. With his complete resolve he only needed twenty minutes to count the money hidden in various books around the trailer, steal some provisions from the kitchen, creep clumsily into his bedroom to grab whatever clothes he could find in the dark and not look at his sleeping wife, and glue the bobble-heads securely to their shelf. After a quick, spin-and-point consultation of his brown-water globe, he hauled the rusty trailer off its blocks and drove off.
He had just filled the tank and was starting the engine when the passenger door opened. "Larry! Where're you going?" His friend Sam looked stricken. "You've never taken the trailer out before."
"Oh, I'm just—going on a little fishing trip, Sam, no big deal."
Sam hopped in and shut the door.
"I'm coming with," he said, and began fidgeting and twisting to get his seatbelt on and situate his six-pack of PBR in his lap.
This was not part of Larry's half-baked plan, but he shrugged his shoulders and figured it might be nice to have a friend along on his epic journey. They drove all night, with Sam passed out against the window.
"Larry! Where are we? I thought you said we're going fishing," he said when he woke up, confused to see the sun rising over a landscape decidedly unsuitable for fishing.
"Well, we're actually going a little farther than that, Sam, although we can probably do some fishing when we get there. We're going to South America."
"You mean like New Mexico?"
"Um, no—more like Colombia. Or Venezuela. I'm not real sure."
"Huh," he said, thinking it over, trying to place where he'd heard of Colombia. "Okay..."
It was in Mexico that Larry lost Sam. Outside Oaxaca, they sat by a fire under countless stars, drinking and talking. This time, the beer made Larry bold.
"Man, I wish we had something besides these beans," he said. "I'm so sick of beans."
"I know, dude, I never feel full on them," Sam said.
"Do you ever—do you ever get so hungry you could just, like, eat your own arm?" Larry said, giggling a little, if men from Idaho giggle.
"Aw, totally, man, all the time!" Sam said, laughing a little more, and hiccupping.
"Do you—do you ever feel, like, maybe you could eat, someone else's arm?" Larry said.
Sam stopped laughing.
"W—What?" Mexican crickets make quite a racket.
"Oh, never mind," Larry said, and got up to put another log on the fire.
"No, wait, do you—are you serious?" Sam laughed a little, nervously, to keep the mood light, ready to guffaw at how gullible he was when Larry delivered the punchline.
"No! Jeez, Sam, come on, of course I'm not serious," Larry said, but Sam was unnerved. Larry got very quiet.
"Larry?" Sam said. "We're buds, man. Do you want to tell me something?"
Larry looked him in the eye and said, "Sam, I have a voracity for human flesh."
Silence.
"I want to eat people, Sam."
"Have you...ever eaten another person?" Sam asked, remarkably calm.
"No, but I've wanted to for a long time."
"Are you...planning on doing this? In South America?"
"I don't know. It scares me a little." Larry saw the stony fear in Sam's face. "I'm not going to eat you, Sam, you're my friend. And I wouldn't want to kill anyone, I think I would just eat someone who was already dead. I think that would be okay, if they're already dead, and I didn't kill them—right?"
"Um, sure," Sam said, not sure at all, really, about the ethics of eating a dead person. No one had ever brought it up.
They slept under the stars that night, with the fire dying out gradually. When Larry woke up, Sam was gone. He waited around for most of the day, calling for him at first, but at dusk he packed up the trailer and headed south, alone.
He snaked down through Central America, winding the trailer along narrow ledges on the sides of mountains, and pushing past buses packed with people and chickens. He crossed the border into Colombia on a Sunday evening, and parked the trailer when it got dark, on what looked like the side of the road. He got out and slammed the door, and a crescendoing creaking heralded the tipping of the trailer off the side of the little cliff he was narrowly parked on and into the lake below. He dove in after it, he didn't know why. The black water closed a silence in around him, and it was peaceful.
He had to relinquish the trailer, of course, and he trudged out of the water and toward a dim yellow light, which turned out to be a bar, exactly the thing he needed in a time like this. He was lonely without Sam, and over the course of several beers and shots of bathtub tequila, he contemplated his flight and the strange urges he had. He took stock of his trip so far and it seemed silly—he thought of his wife, by now completely unhinged with the stress and disorientation of finding a loved one, or at least one you're used to seeing everyday, gone. He wondered what kind of person he must be to leave his life and responsibilities behind to pursue something completely taboo and bizarre, merely on a feeling. He had lost his friend and his trailer, and he hadn't even satisfied his curiosity.
He lurched off his barstool and stumbled outside to piss against the plywood. At that precise moment, Sam ran up out of the darkness.
"Larry! I'm so sorry, man!" he said. "I didn't mean to just leave you like that, without saying anything." He had tears in his eyes, Larry thought, though it could have just been the moon.
"The trailer—" Larry started.
"It's cool, man, I know, it was an accident. Listen, I have something I have to tell you. I wanted to tell you the other night, when you told me about—the thing, but I pussed out, I don't know why. The thing is, uh—I'm gay."
Larry stared at him.
"Huh," he said. "Well, that doesn't seem like such a big deal, does it?"
Sam was visibly relieved.
"I'm really happy you're back," Larry said. They had a good, long hug.
"You're not going to, like, bite my ear off, are you?" Sam asked.
"Not unless you want me to."
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