The Rake Magazine

Prentice had changed so much in twenty years. You could stop by the little local historical society at the County Fairgrounds and look at photographs of the way the town used to be, but pretty much every striking thing you would encounter on the walls there had been knocked down –the old courthouse with the ornate cupola, the Prairie School bank downtown, and the beautiful turn-of-the-century railroad depot: all gone—and the place was now just another anonymous town comprised of nothing but squat, rundown neighborhoods surrounded on all sides by retail colossi: superstores, multiplexes, giant warehouses full of everything from office supplies to pet food to hardware to electronics. All sorts of useless 24-hour everything.

Some people, of course, were appalled by all the change, and galled by the complicity of their fellow citizens. It went well beyond complicity, in fact; for the most part the townspeople seemed to love this acknowledgement from the outside world that their dollars were important, and they were excited to suddenly have so many shopping and dining options, including many they had always associated with the big cities.

The downtown saloons and corner taverns had been all but abandoned, and many of them had closed entirely, most of their old clientele having taken their business to the sports and motel bars that were prominent features of the commercial strips just outside town. Increasingly the community’s more churlish and entrenched residents found themselves drinking alone at home and watching movies that they found at the only locally-owned video store still left in town, a Mexican place that rented American films that were likely pirated and often subtitled or poorly dubbed in Spanish.

Even with all the new development you still couldn't properly call Prentice a city. Its population had been stalled at around 20,000 for almost thirty years. Yet in the not-so-distant past Prentice had been a town of distinct neighborhoods and ethnic character. There was a time when every neighborhood had its own market, its own church, bakery, and bar.

A man named Martin Ankeny had once owned all the little markets around town, as well as the dairy that supplied milk and cheese to his markets. He also had some kind of deal worked out with the German brothers who owned the slaughterhouse in town, and would get meat for his markets every day, fresh from the abattoir. Ankeny had butchers on the premises, cutting steaks and roasts and churning out sausage and hamburger for the neighborhood customers.

All the men who worked in the slaughterhouse --the Germans, Italians, Irish, and Poles-- had their own little sections of the town, but they all lived within walking distance of one of Martin Ankeny's markets. Over time Ankeny had also acquired a great deal of other property in and around Prentice. He owned many of the taverns, or the buildings in which they conducted business. Most people in town assumed that Ankeny was a tough businessman, but he was also a highly respected member of the community and was generally regarded as honest. And though he was widely suspected to be among the community's wealthiest residents, he lived quietly and simply, in a modest house across from the big Catholic Church downtown, a church to which he contributed large sums of money.

Ankeny had never married, and he had long shared his home with his severe and pious old mother. She eventually died, and Ankeny stayed on in the house alone. Then one day, quite unexpectedly, the managers of Ankeny's many businesses received letters informing them that he was embarking on a long journey, and was appointing a mysterious stranger by the name of Lester Nightengale to oversee his little financial empire.

So far as anyone in town knew, Nightengale had only recently arrived in the community. He'd been seen in conversation with Martin Ankeny, and had apparently spent several afternoons accompanying him on his rounds. Nightengale aroused some suspicion right from the start; something didn't seem quite right about the man. He had a lean, almost starved-looking face and a prominent cleft chin and high forehead. He also wore eyeglasses that were too big for his face, and, with his shiny wingtips, smart fedora, and long cashmere coats, dressed like someone from the big city.

Not long after Ankeny left town on his journey, Nightengale announced that he was closing several of Ankeny's neighborhood markets. No explanation for this decision was offered, but a short time later a brief item appeared in the local paper noting that Nightengale had acquired some land for a new development just outside of town and had made known his intentions of building a giant market and car wash complex on the property.

Almost immediately after breaking ground on this project, Nightengale announced plans to expand the development to include a multi-screen movie theater and several national restaurant franchises. This news was once again accompanied by the closing of several more of Ankeny's neighborhood markets in town.

The reaction of much of the local citizenry was one of initial trepidation tempered with a sort of helpless bumpkin excitement. Their town was growing so swiftly; these new businesses that were going up in what was all of a sudden being referred to as "the Nightengale Development," were big city things, and this notion did something irresistible to the townspeople's concept of their little community.

In the midst of all this excitement there was mounting speculation regarding Martin Ankeny's prolonged absence. What sort of journey had he undertaken? And when was he expected to return? Lester Nightengale offered no answers to these questions, and it appeared that Ankeny had told no one of his intentions or destination.

One day, then, after Ankeny had been gone many months, Emil Schenk, who was the old janitor at the Catholic church, became suspicious and was surprised to find the back door of the Ankeny home unlocked. He ventured inside and made his way through the murkily lit home. As he moved from the kitchen and into the living room he saw nothing amiss, and he proceeded down the narrow hallway to the back bedrooms, both of which he found absolutely tidy, with the beds made up and nothing out of order. Just to put his suspicions entirely to rest, Emil flicked on the light switch in the bathroom at the end of the hall, and what he found there --a pair of eyeballs floating in the toilet bowl, still trailing rusty streamers of blood-- drove him yowling from the house, and touched off the biggest scandal in the little town's long history.

Emil Schenk, upon discovering the eyeballs in Martin Ankeny's toilet bowl, ran back across the street to the rectory behind the church. Father Petrick, who was officially retired and spent most of his time alone and lost in rambling flights of dementia at the picnic table in the back yard, was the only priest home at the time. The younger priests, Monsignor Dunn and Father Stryken, were downtown, playing racquetball at the YMCA.

Emil Schenk was incapable of making any sense, and Father Petrick could not have understood him even if Emil had somehow been able to communicate his dismaying discovery. Laura Halvorson, who did some housekeeping for the priests, happened to come along just as Emil was going through his traumalogue--complete with hysterical pantomime-- one more time. Emil took Laura by the arm and led her across the street and through the open back door of Martin Ankeny's house, where he steered her down the permanently crepuscular corridor to the bathroom and directed her attention to the horrible evidence in the toilet bowl.

Shocked as Laura Halvorson was by this sight, she nonetheless calmly made her way back across the street to the kitchen in the basement of the church, from where she placed a call to the town's emergency services.

By evening half the town was gathered outside Martin Ankeny's home, inside which virtually the entire Prentice police and sheriff's departments were sequestered. At some point Lester Nightengale arrived at the scene and was shepherded through the throng by two deputies.

By the next morning, of course, speculation was rampant. The local police tore up Martin Ankeny's house looking for further evidence of foul play, but turned up nothing. Though the entire town by this time had concluded that Lester Nightengale was surely guilty of some crime, and perhaps even murder, the authorities could apparently find no evidence linking him to the mysterious chain of events. There was also the thorny matter of the letters Ankeny had written before his departure, authorizing Nightengale to run his business concerns in his absence. Frank Drake, a local lawyer who had had a long professional relationship with Ankeny, vouched for the authenticity of these letters, and also produced another document that Ankeny had drawn up and had notarized before his disappearance, granting Nightengale full power of attorney over his estate both in his absence and in the event that something should happen to him.

The eyeballs were obviously seized as evidence, but this was before the days of scientific testing that might have proved that they had, in fact, once belonged to Martin Ankeny. After a lengthy investigation Nightengale was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, immediately after which he announced the closing of the remainder of Ankeny's businesses, and began to sell off sub-developments in his growing tracts of land outside of town.

A year passed, and then two years, and eventually virtually all of the businesses in town were either closed or relocated to one of the sprawling new developments that now surrounded the community. These developments were in short order cut off from the town proper by a growing system of highway interchanges and freeway ramps that funneled traffic to the new strip malls, restaurants, and super stores. There was no longer a single compelling reason for anyone passing through to actually drive into Prentice, and the town became a dark and moldering afterthought, huddled in the shadows of the slaughterhouse.

Though widely reviled, Lester Nightengale became fabulously wealthy and built a giant mansion in the country outside of town. He also had a private jet, which he used to make frequent and increasingly longer visits to a home in Florida.

And then one day early in the summer, several years after his initial disappearance, Martin Ankeny was found wandering along a road not far from the little municipal airport. He was blind, of course, and where his eyes had once been were now terrible, puckered scars. Ankeny was neatly enough dressed, but terribly confused, and almost completely deaf. He was transported to the hospital downtown --where there was now a new wing that bore Lester Nightengale's name-- and was interrogated at frustrating length by doctors and local authorities, who determined that he was suffering from some form of dementia with amnesic complications. He was unable to shed any light whatsoever on his whereabouts over the last several years, and was also unable to say with any certainly what had become of his eyes. They'd been poked out, he would occasionally offer, but he could proceed no further than that with an explanation. It was clear enough that he'd suffered some terrible trauma, and he quietly lived out his days in the local ElderRest center, where despite occasional outbursts of nonsense he apparently never strayed any nearer to offering up a satisfying resolution to the sad mystery of his last years.

Upon Ankeny's death, Lester Nightengale saw to it that Martin's remains were housed in the largest and most ostentatious sepulcher the local cemetery had ever known. Engraved upon the monument were the words: A Great Friend to the Community.

Come on, give a rat's ass, would you, you fuckers? Give it the old college try.

Take a good look around and tell me what you see.

Don't lie to me.

My kingdom is a laughingstock. I've let myself go, grown fat on the sautéed kidneys of disc jockeys and dickweeds whose gross ambition offended my eroding sense of decency. I've eaten other things I'm not proud of. So-called professionals.

What I wouldn't give for a second chance.

What I wouldn't give, you fuckers, but it's too late for that and I have nothing left to give.

This confusion of dialects, poverty, and heat. I can't get any more naked, have no more grease left to sweat.

From my window I can see the laborers dragging bodies across the dirt courtyard and stacking them on a flatbed truck. It's not a pretty picture, but I am incapable of painting a prettier one.

Near as I can tell the engineers have cobbled together some sort of crematorium in the laundry room of the Super 8 across the courtyard. Three tin smokestacks that weren't there yesterday are belching out clouds of thick black soot, an additional layer of grime that is trapped beneath the over-gloom.


Mine is now a kingdom of branded cattle swilling 3.2 beer, feral dogs in shopping malls, brain-damaged lab rats shuffling along in flip-flops and ridiculous sunglasses, and genetic monsters with perfect teeth. Dime-store dollhouses and teetering castles made of recycled plastic sand. The fine bones of dead roses. Fields of loud pastel crows, screaming for attention. Almost trees. Burned-out rocket ships that never left the launch pad. All our dreams, dreams written in invisible ink and nightmares etched in the more permanent kind.

When night falls I draw the shades and listen to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings over and over as I imagine --or cannot imagine-- the next crippling blow, the next wave of sorrow, the inevitable endlessly repeated slow-motion montage of flag-waving catastrophe. You can bet, by God, that when again this world begins to fall down around me they'll once more dust off the old reliable Barber.

Didn't any of you remember to bring a flashlight? Did it not occur to a single one of you that it would be dark in the belly of a whale?

You tricked me into this covenant, but I have no one to blame but myself.

These words --the last I have left-- are the ghosts of dead snails. I give you my word: you haven't been haunted until you've been haunted by the ghosts of dead snails.

Come on, let me have it. I'm ready for my medicine. Give me my bitter pill.

I am waiting, my little sparrows, to hear from you.

I'd say it's a decent idea, Thanksgiving, even if it's one of those old, decent ideas that means almost nothing anymore. Still, it does strike me as a worthwhile thing, the notion of taking time out of your life to give thanks for whatever the hell you have to give thanks for. And surely you have something to be thankful for --come on, pull your face away from that bong for a moment and think about it.

I know I do. A few for instances:

Microwave popcorn.

Tabasco sauce.

Canned chili.

Willie Nelson.

Cold beverages.

Dune buggies.

The Colonel's blend of special spices.

The grand-fetuses --if I'd known the little bastards were going to be so much fun I'd have had them first.

The troops, which I nonetheless feel strongly should be spending the holidays with their families at home.

Zigaboo Modeliste.

Al Jackson, Jr.

Air hockey.

Paper boys, even --or perhaps especially-- if they're middle-aged men working three jobs just trying to get by.

Grasshoppers.

Formaldehyde.

Mutterers.

Television evangelists.

A good cat mystery.

Robert Goulet.

Vespers.

U-turns.

Pre-history.

Mason jars.

The down-on-his-luck hippie magician.

The spinster librarian.

The smooth Lothario.

This sneaking suspicion.

This magic moment.

That tragedy narrowly averted.

Nose-diving birds.

Twizzlers.

Dumplings.

Nancy and Sluggo.

The great hearts gone, and those still beating.

The ink I still, astonishingly, feel compelled to use.

Unexpected eruptions of pleasure and recognition.

Mercy.

This life, what it helplessly is, and what it yet could be.

Would you say?

I would say, yes.

Say what?

That is the question.

Yes, that's the question.

No, that is the question. No question mark.

What is the question?

Say what?

I said, "What is the question?"

And I said, "Say what?"

I heard you the first time, but I still haven't heard your answer: What is the question?

That was the question.

That?

Yes, that.

That?

Yes, goddamit, that is the question.

What?

Yes.

Yes what?

I just said: that is the question, which is exactly what I said at the beginnning.

That isn't what you said at the beginning. You said you would say.

I said I would say, yes.

And I said, "Say what?"

I understood you perfectly well, and if I'm not mistaken I answered you quite clearly.

In that I'm afraid you are badly mistaken.

Did I not respond, "That is the question"?

You did.

Then where is the misunderstanding?

You said you would say, and when pressed on the matter asked, "That is the question?" At which point I said, as would any reasonable person in my position, "Yes, that is the question."

I did not ask. I said.

Said what?

That is the question.

What?

Yes, precisely.

But what is your answer?

That is my answer.

May I have a biscuit now?