The Festival of Rot

 Our mother was always a source of mental pain. But we were curious enough about her to stick around at least through high-school, so: we stuck around for the average amount of time a youth stays with a single parent. But in our formative years, between serial trips to fast food drive-thrus and midnight piracies at the milk plant over in the next town (Maepleton, I think it was called), she would be sitting in the driver's seat with its grey computer-aided textile design, soiled and bored through with cigarette burns. And she would go on and on about the "Festival of Rot." I never did figure out if this was supposed to be some yearly event like the RenFest or something, or if she had some intention of taking us there one day. But she spoke enough about the "Festival of Rot" to fill a small vanity-published book on the subject, that's for sure.

Here are a couple of details I remember about my mother's words pertaining to the "Festival of Rot":

* it took place at the beach.

* you must bring a shovel to the beach.

* you must bring a hammer to the beach.

* the beach is where the rot started.

* you will find the Festival of Rot on Saturday.

* the Festival of Rot is not in celebration of anything, but it is a place where you can find the Rot, the Rot you need to dig up.

* this Rot you will then have to bring back to your house.

* you must have your hammer and your shovel with you at all times when going to the beach.

One day she brought us to the beach, where the Rot had just happened and we were to find it. This sounded like something she made up on the spur of the moment, but we bought it for a dollar, so I guess we could have asked her if it was just a joke.

She took us up the road a ways to the big house of the man whose name was Jack. She told us that he was a strange old man, but she told us he would be the one to help us.

She took us to the back door and rang the bell, which opened to a kind of living room with a big rock fireplace and more books stacked everywhere. There was also a big TV that was on, but its screen bore nothing but a sheet of howling static.

Jack came up to the door. He said hello and then he asked how I was, how my leg was and then he asked where my brother was.

She said "I don't know" and I think she lied when she said that. I had to wonder if she wanted to be sure that she wasn't caught telling Jack things about me she shouldn't have, especially after that day when she told us that I had polio.

Jack came into the living room and sat down and asked my mother if we could talk. He looked like he was trying to act cool about what was happening, but I was starting to realize he was old and scary, as my mother said.

He asked if I had been playing with my brother, which I didn't remember doing but I didn't want to lie and that was probably the wrong thing to say.

I didn't think I should tell him about the dog though because that would have been a lie. I didn't want to. It sounded like a big deal and I would have felt bad about that, and my mom, well, my mother would have just gotten in trouble if this in any way were linked to the reason we had come: that is, the Festival of Rot.

Anyway, Jack got down to business. He told my mom that his son, who was seven years older than me, had died. And now that he was gone, Jack didn't have any reason to live and had decided to kill himself. He started to talk about my brother and how he had died and I could see why my mom had felt that he was being a bit uncouth about the whole situation. I, for one, was trying to manage the hammer and shovel, holding them in my two hands while attempting to balance on my lame right leg. 

At some point during this whole boring conversation that I couldn't have understood, even if I had really honed in on it with sincere attention, Jack got down on his haunches and went silent. My mother was also observing a harrowing sort of expectant silence. Both of them had been staring at me for about five minutes when I finally realized that they had stopped talking. 

Jack cleared his throat and said, "Looks like you've figured your way around the gear. You've got your hammer, and you've got your shovel. And it's a lovely, breezy Saturday here on the Island."

Then my mother, actually turning away from me, which - and I couldn't tell you why even if you shakily pressed a 9mm pistol to my forehead and threatened to pull the trigger - gave me the violent urge to piss my pants on purpose. 

"It's time to go dig up the Rot, son," said she.

"Let's go find out where the Rot is today, son," said Jack, who was not my father.

"Oh, let's just let them both dig," said my mother. "They'll be just fine together."

"Why don't you go out and help them dig up the Rot, son?" said Jack.

So it was agreed. 

The shovel was found. And it's true - I had already started digging. 

When we returned to the porch of the house where Jack had first dropped me, I looked up at him with the shovel handle in my right hand and the blade in my left and said, "Jack, I think there's something in me. A seed that needs to get into the soil and take root."

Jack stared down at me with genuine concern, and even when he knew that I knew he was looking down on my face. I could see him thinking. He was thinking about all the ways in which he had failed me and his own children. 

"Is there any way for me to turn that into a shovel?" he asked. 

"No, Jack. There's nothing I can do about it now. There's only one thing I can do."

Jack had a knife in one hand and the shovel in the other.

"Go home, son," he said. "Just go home and sit there on the porch. You can do all your digging from there."

I shook my head. "No, Jack. I'll go home and sit there on the porch with you. But it's a small little box of a home. I'm not going to sit out there in the sun and in the wind. I'm going to stay inside and sit there in your office. Where the papers and the pens are, and the typewriter. I don't want to sit on the porch, Jack." 

"It's too early in the day for your kind of digging," said Jack. "It's not going to take any time. A minute or two at most, maybe less. The thing is, I got to get to it, too. It's the only chance I've got, and now I know it. I'm going to try."

"Let me stay here and talk to you," I said. "I'll just sit here and talk to you for a minute."

Jack shrugged and stepped back. I took his arm and led him inside. When he had closed the door behind us, he threw his arm around my shoulders. I led him back to his desk and sat down in the chair. He came around to the desk and sat down on the swivel chair behind it. We faced each other across the desk. Jack pulled off his work glasses and set them down on the edge of the desk. He looked across at me and smiled for the first time. I smiled back at him.

"I'm proud of you, son," he said.

But this was the point at which my mother came rushing into the room with her purse swinging in the crook of her arm and her goldish keys chiming in the grip of her cherry-red hand. She was pomidoro-red in the face.

"Why did you two leave the beach. Did you even TRY to find the Rot? It's right there under the sand, and you know that's why we came, goddamnit." 

I began to sweat. Jack placed a hand on my shoulder, standing slightly at my back.

"Ellen...," said he, "I think there's a seed in you that must be planted and take root in the ground. I believe this must happen soon." He looked into my eyes and said, "You understand this, don't you, son?"

I nodded.

"How do you feel about it, now?" he asked me.

"I feel very special," I told him.

"And what will you call this thing?" he asked.

"The Seed of Immortality," I said.

"That's right," said he. "The Seed of Immortality. The Seed is something you must have inside you all of your life."

Jack held his hand out to me. I put my hand in his. He squeezed. My heart leapt.

"And you will find this great power within yourself, the Seed, and you will use it wisely. But you must do so without letting this power control your life. You must learn to let go. Do you understand?"

I nodded again.

"You will lose your fear," he said. "It's a sign of false consciousness to feel fear. You must learn to identify your special seed with the Great Rot by the Seaside. Do you know what the Rot looks like and do you see how you are a part of it?"

My mother's expression softened and she neared us, dropping her purse and keys to the floor. She touched my hand.

"What will I see?" she asked.

"The Great Rot," said Jack. "The whole world will seem to die out on the horizon. Everything will be gray, black, and a cold, cold blue. The oceans will be covered with an icy sheet, then all the icebergs will come floating down and land in the rivers and lakes. You will feel your breath being drawn away. The air will become a thin, cold fog. You will see it in the world around you. And in your own heart."

The fog became thicker.

"You'll go blind," said Jack. "You will feel every moment of this and feel all that you have given up — all the love that has died in your heart because you had to grow up fast, all the hopes that weren't fulfilled — because you couldn't wait, because you always had to be first and get the answer right, and all the anger you felt, and all the joy and sadness, that selfsame joy and sadness, and all the love you have made because you can't wait for love, you can't wait for the end, the darkness, the void. And then, when you die, there will be nothing left."

The fog thickened.

"I'll wait," said my mother. "I'll wait to die."

"Do it now," said Jack. "Do it now."

The fog became thick, but instead of a dark gray there was light inside, an inner blackness, not quite darkness, but not yet light.

"Do it," said Jack.

My mother turned to Jack, then she turned to me.

"I want you to listen to me," she said. "You know that I have always wanted a girl. And that I didn't want you. You could have gone out and found any little girl and I wouldn't have cared, and you could have picked a pretty baby and I would have liked that, too. But you picked a girl with your heart in her eyes, and her heart in your eyes. And you wanted a girl who looked at you with her eyes full of love, and who felt that love in your eyes. But there's only one girl in this world with your heart in her eyes, and it's my daughter. My daughter, who came into this world with her heart in her eyes. My little girl, you can't take away, you can't take away. You can't."

The fog thickened, and became an evil brine.

My mother spoke louder, and though I heard what she was saying I didn't understand a lick of it. Her voice sounded like it was coming from far away.

"You can't take away what I give you," she said, "because it's your gift."

The fog thickened, and became a torpid cobweb.

Then I noticed that my mother was standing in front of my dead brother, who was obscured behind her gauche skirt. She saw that I saw, and when Jack also became aware of my awareness, he stepped away from me with a sneer. All of those avuncular words for nothing. I hate my mom's boyfriends. Now the three of them were on the other side of the room, pointedly alienated from me, both physically (in terms of space) and spiritually. They crouched around my dead brother, who was fidgeting with a sodden paper bag full of Sonic's wrappers. His eyes were gone, and the humid sockets were filled with french fries, packed closely in the two orbits with the economy of a submarine's torpedoes.

It was then that I realized I had not for one second understood what the Rot was or why it was my task to dig it up. It was a revelation in which the understanding took the form of a blinding flash of pain. I cried out and clutched my head, where the pain was centered in my scalp, and then I sat down on the floor with my elbows over my head. The Rot was the pain, and the pain was the Rot, and I wept like a baby.

When I was finished crying, my mother knelt beside me. Her face was as soft as the cotton I'd used to wipe my face. My eyes were brimming with tears. 

"It's okay," she said, "it's okay."

She wrapped her arms around me and rocked me back and forth. She murmured "Shh" and "Hush" and "Sweetie" and "It's okay" and "There, there." I began to weep again. The tears ran down her face and down my cheeks, a river that I would have swum through, had I not such a rabid loathing of water in all its forms. It took hours to stop crying and a further hour to stop sobbing, for I felt very alone. I hadn't touched a woman in years, and the experience of being touched comforted me. My mother comforted me.

That's when I knew I couldn't possibly go on digging the Rot out of my head with my bare hands. I would have to be carried out. That's when I understood what the Rot had done to me and that I'd done it to myself. I don't know how the Rot enters the world; I can't say exactly how it works, but my own experience was that when it goes to work it works slowly, stealthily, like a burglar breaking into a house. It doesn't break in through the front door or burst into the kitchen. It isn't a bolt gun; it isn't a bomb. Instead it creeps down into the living room, into the kitchen, under the bed, behind the TV. Then, it moves along the floorboard and twists around on its back like an unhinged pet, its eyes two pellets of utter filth.

As I considered this truth, I heard the sound of a power drill rasping against the deadbolt which held the door to Jack's study fast in its jamb.

"I am the enemy," I told the door. "I am that."

So I had to stop. Not for the sake of the Rot or the world; they're too big to stop. But in a small, particular way, for me. I couldn't keep going on like this. I could only go on if I could find a way to leave the door open, and even though I had no real wish to be found out, I also had no real wish to lose the one place in this house I could go where I'd never have to see anybody.

At least not anybody but me.

My head felt hot, and this was the only part of my body which was hot. The rest of me had become very cold.

And then the drill stopped, which was very odd, because the hole I was making in my door was about the right size for the deadbolt to fit into, and I was making it with two fairly efficient power drills.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the face of the woman who was standing in front of me, her mouth open in an O of horror.

There was something in her hand. I saw a scalpel. Or maybe it was a kitchen knife. It was long, its blade shining like new silver.

I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before, but when I looked down and saw that my coat and shirt were covered with blood, I realized that she had slashed them. The blood had seeped into the seams.

Not far away, on the counter, stood the bucket full of tools. The drill had been set down so that it was close to hand.

Even though I was only partly conscious, I was still enough of a scientist to know that if I'd had the presence of mind to think straight, I would have known that the most likely cause of the blood was the drill itself.

But I couldn't be assed to think straight, it seemed, as my first impression of the woman was that she was like a demon.

Even as I looked at her, the drill's motor slowed, and stopped. The tool in her hand became a weapon in her hand. It wasn't a scalpel any more. It was a knife.

She swung it at me.

I saw the knife and swatted it away. Then I swatted away her hand that held the drill, and grabbed the drill with both hands and twisted it. The woman, who was almost as tall as I, let go of the drill.

I grabbed the drill and slammed it into the counter so hard I could hear the wood crack. I was shaking. I heard the woman's teeth grate against each other and then I heard her curse me. I was still shaking, but not as badly as I had been before.

I had won.

"I know," I said.

The woman was standing next to me, she seemed to have recovered from her shock. I could smell the blood on her, but I don't think she was going to try to kill me any time soon.

"You know what?" I said.

I swung the drill again.

This time I made contact, driving it deep into the counter. I thought I heard something smash, and at the same time saw a large chunk of wood fall to the floor. I was sure the chunk of wood was going to be too big to fit into the woman's mouth, but it turned out I was wrong.

She pulled it out and took a big bite out of it.

I was feeling much better.

"Can you fix it?" I said.

The woman was still chewing, and making the sound of crunching food.

I tried again.

"Yes," she said.

"Oh, good. Thank you so much."

"You're welcome," she said.

She sounded surprised.

"What's your name?" I said.

"My name's Jenny," she said.

"Thank you, Jenny," I said, as I walked toward the door.

"I hope you're the last crazy one in the house," she said.

"I hope you're going to be a great host," I said.

...

...

...

But her name wasn't Jenny, really. I am forced now to admit to the fact that I am either a pathological liar or an innocent oligophrenic. In either case, I'm just a kid sitting in the back seat of a car for poor people. My brother is in shotgun. My mother is putting out her cigarette on a wad of hardened gum that has permanently joined the petrified reef of the dashboard. It is nighttime now, and it's starting to get cold outside. The air has that first chill of fall in it. 

My mom turns the keys in the ignition, takes way too long to back out of this parking spot in front of some large, abstract real estate building in some industrial business corridor. Not sure why we came here, but now it looks like we're going back home to the duplex. To our white-trash next-door neighbors, Tony and Francine (who are actually nice people; they helped us steal cable and, last night, came over with some homemade breaded shrimp. They microwaved it and came back to retrieve the bowl after we'd scarfed it down. The shrimp was our dinner that night, there had been no initiative to have a meal until that gift had been ferried to us from 'the other family in this stucco building'). 

At home, it smells of roach bombs. I can't tell what color the carpet is, because its innumerable stains are vast and timeless. At first, after my mother sets all of her rattling paraphernalia down on the welted, waterlogged counter, I figure I had just been having a reverie, but then she sits my brother and me down beside her on the couch and just goes right back to the whole thing that I was trying to tell you about:

"There's something I have been waiting only until this moment - one can only speak of such things after midnight - to tell you boys. The Festival of Rot, as you may recall, was the first truly major event of the summer, the largest and most elaborate of all the annual fetes, the biggest party of the season."

It turns out that she has been saving it up all year, and she's about to blow the walls down.

She's not a large woman, but she's a good bit larger than either of her sons. She's a hard-headed, hard-cider, hard-eyed, and hard-hearted woman who doesn't tolerate fools or weakness.

"The festival," she continues, "is almost exclusively the domain of the working class, the disenfranchised members of our society. The festival occurs once a year, every Saturday (each Saturday having its unique occurrence in a given year), in this very building - on this very street - and it has been going on for some time." She pauses, and just looks at us, her head cocked slightly to the left. "The festival is where it all comes together for us. It's the only place that'll afford me a full night's sleep all year. I'm tired, boys. So fucking tired, so sick to death of it all. Do you know what I think about all night long?"

"No, ma'am."

"I think about what I might do to you. I think about who I might kill, and then what I would do to the bodies. I think about the possibilities. About the pain. And then I think about how that could make me feel. And I cry myself to sleep with this image on my mind."

All of this - everything I am presently relating to you - is delivered with an absolutely deadpan demeanor, as if she's talking about a dog that bit her instead of her two kids.

And then it hits me. I finally get it. This woman is crazy. 

And here's the part that really gets me - her sons are there for her the whole time. We're sitting cramped up against her knees, eyes watering. We're preening her arms, at a loss for inner feeling. Nothing short of her bare bodily warmth can give us enough impetus to perpetuate our own vital functions.

But not only is this woman crazy. She is not our mother, either, and suddenly it dawns on me that she never was. She's the arbiter of the Rot. She's the one who, just last week, ripped all of the shelves and drawers out of the refrigerator, sending a volley of soft, mealy donation apples toward us while we were watching cartoons on our old coax trailer-park TV. She did that just to make room for nine or ten shovels and a post-hole digger. 

At this moment, as we crowd around this person we have erroneously mistaken for our mother, I realize that I haven't been allowed to sleep for over 72 hours. I'm sweating ice-water. 

"Grab a shovel," this woman says, "and we'll get started."

So that's it. She's out of the Rot. 

I shove the shovel in the post-hole digger, and start to drag the box out the front door. I know this woman is waiting. She's always been waiting. But it's different this time. This is not our first visit to the Rot's. This is our second. She's out of the Rot, but she's not going anywhere. It's not over yet.

At least, not for her.