Often he would see a family watching the box, perhaps visible through their open curtains, and the sight never failed to mesmerize him.
“—a way you can earn up to a million dollars a year just by letting your friends and neighbors in on the secret. And best of all—"
“—order before midnight tonight and you'll not only get those wonderful steak knives, but you'll also get, absolutely free, and at no charge, this marvelous potato peeler as well—"
“—remarkable low price of only twenty-nine ninety-nine. With these spectacular new miracle wipers, you will never again have the problem of—"
“—earn while you learn this richly lucrative business from the ground up. In a moment we'll introduce you to the man who pioneered the dynamic no-money-down method of purchasing—"
“—Gabe, I want you to go ahead and rub it all over the hood. That's right. Just rub in anywhere on there. Now, Margo, you rub your side. There you go. Start in anywhere and cover those hoods with wax. We're going to let both coats set under the hot lights, and in a few minutes we'll come back and take a look at—"
“—lost over a hundred pounds with this amazing new product. There was never any between-meal hunger because of the—"
“—many who wished they could play but didn't have time to study the piano. Now you can start in playing songs right away! It only takes—"
One scam after another. Political scams. Snake oil scams. Art scams. Music scams. Costume jewelry scams. Every greed-targeted con job, bogus shuck, and jive sting that had ever been conceived of was right there on that weird tube.
The monkey people scammed each other all day, scammed themselves all night, and in between they watched people scamming one another on a little box. They were idiots!
He turned the channels. Puzzled somewhat, as always, by the obvious insincerity of the hair-care hucksters and car salesmen and televangelists whom he perceived as parts of the same great network of con games:
“God says we must wage war against Satan! We must take back what the devil has stolen. Our ministry must spread to the far corners of the world.” The strange, extremely earnest-looking evangelist spoke with a voice that rose and fell like ocean waves, but now he hardened his pitch and spoke in no-nonsense tones. “Here is what it will take to reach out and take back what belongs to the Lord. It will take ... fifty-two million dollars!"
He switched to another channel where a beautiful dancer moved across the small screen to a driving hard-rock audio track. An incredible montage of graphic images blinked above and behind her. The combination of the music and the imagery was intensely compelling and he turned the volume up. It was sensual, somehow, the way the pulsing rock pounded in tempo with his own strong heartbeat, and without thinking, it brought him to his feet and he was aping the movements of the dancer—Chaingang Bunkowski was dancing to MTV! Almost five hundred pounds of lard and muscle bouncing and boogieing across Mrs. Irby's floor. Another first! Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski rocking out stark naked. What a sight!
He didn't like the next video and he switched channels again and got a man extolling the virtues of B-12 spray packets, switched again and a woman, an actress on one of the daytime soaps, sat sobbing for the camera's eye.
Chaingang had all the actor's gifts, among them observation and memory, talents that he had in enormous abundance. An actor prepares by observing, for example, and his powers of observation were unequaled, but he hated those humans who were the object of observation—yet he found them fascinating. Even when he was not incarcerated, he preferred to spend most of his time alone, having little stomach for personal interaction—and yet so closely had he observed his fellow humans, and so painstakingly had he filed away the memory of their behavior patterns, that he could mimic them precisely—and on cue!
The soap opera actress wept, and Daniel Bunkowski allowed himself to remember the sadness of his past, contorting his fat, rubbery mask of a face in a mocking parody of the close-up on the screen, holding his huge head as she held hers, shaking with sobs the way she was, as he opened the fawcett on a waterworks of weeping. He killed the audio of the television set, and the sound of his crying filled the Irby home.
It was strangely pleasant and he gave in to the emotion, milking it at first as an actor would, enjoying the fact that his dimpled cheeks were covered in real tears and not glycerine. He soon realized that this thing he had never done in his entire adult life, this inarticulate expression of pain or distress known as crying, whether ridiculous or not, was tinged with genuine sadness that such an act was a rare outpouring from all that remained of his humanity.
At precisely 0600, almost to the sweep of the second hand, Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski was up like a shot, charged with electrical energy, moving, quickly waddling through the Irby house doing his cleanup chores. The kitchen spotless, the empty mason jars cleaned and stored out of sight, the shelves re-dressed and rearranged, the house restored to its pristine state, his clothing cleaned and dried, he shaved meticulously, showered luxuriously, and—having made a last top-to-bottom sweep of the house—was out of there by 0800.
The dancing clown bear made its way across the road without incident and deposited his heavy gear in the same patch of wild honeysuckle where the baby mice once lived. He watched the road for a while, halfway hoping to see a vulnerable motorist chug by in a nondescript pickup. Watching the house where he'd taken such a pleasant R & R.
The Bunkowski one-man family picnic had stored fuel away the way a camel stores water for the desert: and it was all he could do to tear himself away from the basement. Mrs. Irby's boned chicken and dumplings, baked beans swimming in brown sugar, barbecued spare ribs in hot sauce, corned beef and cabbage—he didn't need a vehicle, he probably had enough gas to fart his way to his destination. What a feast!
By noon he was well around the long curve of Willow River Road, and nearing Waterton's city limits. The blue feature was marked “Jefferson Sandbar."
After the preceding day's heavy rains, the new day had turned bright, and although the weather was cool, the sun felt good. By midday the breeze had abated. He could see the sandbar now. The river was still as a flat desert of brown glass. Voices carried from around the curve.
He kept moving through the trees, parallel to the blue, taking his time, keeping the brown-colored blue to his right, the road to his left, walking softly and carrying a big stick.
The chain would not come out to play today. Today he had other needs. Other priorities.
There were three of them, and he could see them now. Their voices were clearly audible.
“—wanna go with John when we run ‘em?"
“I don't know. Where y'all a goin'?"
“Jes’ goin’ out to the levee. Nothing to it, ya know? Jes’ turn ‘em loose up there on the top of the levee."
“Mel goin’ with you?” a third voice asked.
“Yeah."
“Okay. I reckon so. When you wanna go?"
“Oh, I dunno—"
He had the SKS out of his duffel. Four magazines, each with about a three-quarter load. This wasn't the Swiss job, but a crude Chinese copy, and he'd had some trouble with the springs in the magazines. But the SKS was light, and he knew the piece. He knew precisely what the 7.62s would do and what the range was. He knew the trigger pull. The recoil. The way it had to be held a hair high and to the left.
Twisting the suppressor onto the threadings, tightening it down with a grip that liked to close the prison shower handles so tight, the washers would split in half. Closer now. Hearing the monkey men discuss their dogs.