Falling Platypus - Chapter 2

“I sure do love cntry ’n’ roc!”
—Joey Brunoe

Hi. It’s me again.

By morning light I’d reached a little town in the swamp called Potango. The people of Potango grew the swamp potato and cabbage. Together those two ingredients made a soup called “potango soup”. Tourists often mistook it for “potato soup” and were shocked when they tasted it. I tasted it. It tasted like briny water with the texture of strawberries.

The people of Potango also distilled a liquor from the swamp called Swamp du Vinegére. It was supposed to sound French. The label said it contained 99% alcohol, plus vinegar. I didn’t try any, but I did trade tickets to a concert at The Slab for a bottle, as a souvenir.

Potango was a real throwback to peasant times. It was a bona fide sticks and mud sort of village that rose out of the swamp on one of the few solid pieces of ground in the area.

The other solid piece of ground held the helicopter pad, where the supply helicopter landed. Potango was smack-dab in the very middle of the swamp.

I won’t bother explaining how I got there in the first place; the important thing is that I got out again on the next supply heli­copter. The pilot told me he’d take me to Crescent City, also called Tatadun. From there I could build myself a new life.

As the helicopter lifted off and Potango grew distant below us, smaller and smaller until it was just a speck, and the only thing we could see of it anymore was the Swamp du Vinegére bottling factory—a grey cement slab that was so heavy it was sinking into the swamp (it wasn’t built on solid ground), and where everybody in the village worked—I felt a strange feeling. It was almost, but not quite, regret, mixed with déjà vu. I felt that if life were plotted on a great roadmap, I’d come to a fork in the road, and by getting in the helicopter, I’d forever altered the course of my life.

This was in fact what I had done, I just didn’t know it yet.

* * *

In Crescent City or Tatadun, I said goodbye to the pilot and gave him my packet of Kleenex as a thank you. I found some change on the street and bought a postcard for Joey Brunoe. I told him about Potango. “Don’t visit,” I wrote.

My closing line was: “By the way, I won’t be there in time for Sunday service, but you’ll have figured that out by the time the postcard arrives.”

At the post office, a poster caught my eye. It had arrived the day before and a post office worker was just now putting it up with sticky tack. He told me so himself.

It said:

CALLING ALL PEOPLE!

Are you looking for a change? Is your life topsy-turvy?

Are you looking for stability in an unstable world? Do you want to make a difference in other people’s lives? What about your own? We have “opportunities” abroad for you.

Come to the
Charity Food Recruiting Office
to learn more.

“Where’s the Charity Food Recruiting Office?” I asked the post office worker. He pointed out the window.

“Take Bus 33,” he said.

* * *

An hour and a half later, Bus 33 deposited me and other re­spondents to the poster at a nondescript little building 60 miles from Crescent City in the dusty desert. Straddling the road were two pubs: The Grail on one side, and The Shanty on the other. The Grail’s headlining attraction was “Midget Wrestling”; The Shanty didn’t have a sign.

We filed inside the nondescript building in a slow shuffle. A man behind the desk looked up and held up his hands, as if warding us off.

“No, no, no! No more applicants! Please, no more appli­cants!”

Most of the people looked cowed by the outburst and shuf­fled back to the door. I stood my ground.

“That poster only went up today,” I said. “How many appli­cants can you possibly have had?”

The man behind the desk looked from side to side and finally down at the floor. “All right, sonny,” he said, dejected. “You win. Come sit here.”

I took a seat opposite him at the desk and he gave me a stack of papers. “These are your volunteer paperworks,” he said. “Should you agree to the conditions, sign at the X.”

I didn’t even read them. I signed.

“You’re bold,” he said with a shudder. “Now we just toss this in the automaton and see what it comes out with.”

He put the papers into a metal robot standing at attention be­hind him. Its mouth was a tiny monitor, like the ones in hospitals that go blip-blip-blip­ with your heartbeat.

Blip went the screen, and the automaton printed a length of ticker tape from its index finger.

“Congratulations!” said the man behind the desk. “Your as­signment’s Africa! And you leave tomorrow!”

* * *

I walked over to The Shanty to read my mission briefing, which the man behind the desk gave to me in a manila folder. I was to deliver bananas to the local Charity Food deployment. And I was to have a partner. It didn’t say who that might be.

Behind me, a few of the other volunteers trickled in. They clutched mission briefings in identical manila folders. Most of them looked as put out as they had when they first arrived. I didn’t think they were cut out to be volunteers.

I hoped none of them was to be my partner.

The door burst open and the light of the setting sun illumi­nated a handsome fellow in his twenties. He pulled up a barstool next to me and said immediately: “I’ve been assigned to Africa. What about you?”

“Me too,” I said.

The other volunteers behind us murmured. They’d all been assigned to Africa. It looked like there was only one assignment.

“I’m Dan Denny,” said the young fellow next to me. We shook hands. “Do you want a drink, or do you want to go see the midget wrestling at The Grail?”

“Midget wrestling,” I said.

“Right!” he said, pushing away from the counter with force. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand!”

He headed back out the door, and since I had somehow agreed to go watch midget wrestling, I followed. The rest of the volunteers stayed behind.

I soon learned that Dan Denny was very bright—as in per­sonable—but not very bright—as in smart. Midget wrestling was right up his alley.

“I used to own my own team,” he explained, as we cheered on the midget Dan Denny was rooting for.

“A team of wrestlers?”

“Absolutely. Top quality, too. YEAH! Go go go!” he shouted. “Aw, god dammit, look at that.” He went to the bar and bought everyone a round. “So what do you think so far?”

“I didn’t think they liked to be called ‘midgets’,” I said.

He had a think about that, laughed, and clapped me on the back. That was Dan Denny.

* * *

“So what did you do before you became a volunteer?” Dan Denny asked me over a beer at the bar, in between matches.

“I was a human vending machine,” I said.

“No kidding,” Dan Denny said, and he sipped his beer. “No kidding!”

* * *

“What did you use to do?” I prompted after the silence had dragged on.

“I used to sell tornado shelters,” Dan Denny said offhand­edly. He was looking at sports statistics on TV. “You know, where people can go when there’s a tornado.”

He took out his wallet and showed me a picture of a wooden box about three feet tall, three feet wide, and three feet deep. Apart from the frame, you could see right through it—that is to say, there were no walls. I didn’t know what use it could possibly have had, but certainly not a tornado shelter.

“I can’t imagine there was much of a market,” I mused.

“You’re right,” he said, and downed his beer with a satisfied Aaaaaah. “That’s why I had to get out of it, you know?”

* * *

The picture of the “tornado shelter” had been lodged in the spot in Dan Denny’s wallet where most people kept photos of their girlfriend, children, or dog. I asked him if he had any of those.

“No,” he said sadly, and tapped the photo. “This is it.”

* * *

Drunk, I went to the kitchen to see if I could get a pizza or something greasy to eat. The chef was scraping behind his ear with a spatula, the same one he stirred the soup with af­terward. A limp cigarette hung between his pouty lips, dropping ash everywhere, including the food.

“Can I get you something?” he demanded, catching sight of me.

“That’s all right,” I slurred, and went to the toilets to throw up, instead.

* * *

The next morning, nursing a headache, I stumbled down from the room I’d man­aged to secure above The Grail and out into the sunshine. I stretched and blinked sleep from dry eyes. Across the way, the other volunteers were just filing out of The Shanty.

Not surprisingly, Dan Denny was already up, looking fresh and bright and not at all as if he’d drunk twice as much as me. His face beamed like a lantern. “Have a sandwich!” he said, handing me a BLT.

“Did it come from The Grail?” I asked.

“No. I made it myself,” Dan Denny said.

I wolfed it down.

“Nothing like a BLT,” Dan Denny said sagely. He polished off his own and took another one from a brown paper bag. “More where that came from!” he added, giving me a friendly jab in the ribs with an elbow. “Just holler!”

* * *

At ten o’clock, a cloud of dust rose on the horizon. It stretched and snaked and presently a monster of an overland truck trundled into view with the dust in tow. It was painted a sandy tan to blend in with the desert, which it did admirably. Except for the dust and the noise and the double logos of Charity Food and something called the Africa Kit Society, I could almost believe I hadn’t seen it.

The volunteers peered at it suspiciously as it ground to a halt between the two pubs. The driver turned off the engine and hopped out, heading for the Charity Food office. He came back a moment later with a list.

“Hi, fellaws!” he said. “You must be the volunteers! Is everybody sure about this? We don’t want to get you all the way to Africa only to have some of you change your minds.”

Everyone nodded glumly, except for Dan Denny and me.

“There’s some enthusiasm!” the driver said, relieved. “The rest of this lot, you’d think someone was making them go! Now, everyone got your things? Remember, just one bag. Everything you’ll need is provided on site.”

I held my cardboard box awkwardly under one arm—still unopened—and my bottle of Swamp du Vinegére in my free hand. It was still unopened, too.

Dan Denny had a blue backpack slung over his shoulder.

“What’s in the paper bag?” the driver asked him, pointing.

“Sandwiches!” Dan Denny said, and he gave the driver a BLT.

“Not bad,” the driver said, munching. “All right, fellaws, let’s get aboard!”

The glum lot proceeded into the vehicle, some of them sitting in back with the cargo, some in the seats bolted haphazardly to the floor behind the cabin. Dan Denny sat opposite the driver in the passenger’s seat, and since there weren’t any spaces left, I got squished in between the two of them.

“Do you know much about midget wrestling?” the driver asked the crowd at large as he started the engine. We watched The Grail’s sign flash past the window as he turned around and drove out of town, not stopping when he came to the edge of the road, but driving straight into the desert.

“Do I!” Dan Denny exclaimed.

It was going to be a long drive.