Удушье (Choke)

Denny's last day at work, at his banishment, His Royal Colo­nial Governorship stood at the doors to the Customs House and read from a little leather book. His hands almost hid the little thing, but it was black leather with the pages edged with gold paint and a few ribbons dangled from the top of the spine, one black, one green, and one red ribbon.

'Like the smoke vanisheth, so shall thou drive them away and like as wax melteth at the fire,' he read, 'so let the ungodly perish at the presence of God.'

Denny leaned closer to me and said, 'The part about the smoke and the wax,' Denny said, 'I think he means me.'

At one o'clock in the town square, His Lord High Charlie, the Colonial Governor, was reading to us, standing with his face bowed into his little book. A cold wind pulled the smoke out sideways from every chimney pot. The milkmaids were there. Cobblers were there. The blacksmith was there. All of them, their clothes and hair, their breath and wigs reeking of hash. Reeking of reefer. All of their eyes, red and wasted.

Goodwife Landson and Mistress Plain wept into their aprons, but only because mourning was in their job descriptions. A guard of men stood with muskets braced in both hands, ready to escort Denny out into the wilderness of the parking lot. The colony flag snapped, lowered to half mast at the peak of the Customs House roof. A crowd of tourists watched from behind their video cam­eras. They're eating popcorn out of boxes with the mutant chick­ens pecking crumbs at their feet. They're sucking cotton candy off their fingers.

'Instead of banishing me,' Denny called out, 'maybe I could just get stoned?' He said, 'I mean, the rocks would make a nice going-away present.'

All the wasted colonists jumped when Denny said 'stoned.' They looked at the colonial governor and then looked at their shoes, and it took a little bit for the red to drain out of their cheeks.

'We therefore commit his body to the earth, to be turned into corruption . . . ,' the governor read as a jetliner roared low, coming in for a landing, drowning out his little speech.

The guard escorted Denny to the gates of Colonial Duns-boro, two lines of men with guns marching with Denny between them. Through the gates, through the parking lot, they marched him to a bus stop on the edge of the twenty-first century.

'So, dude,' I shout from the colony gates, 'now that you're dead, what are you going to do with all your free time?'

'It's what I'm not going to do,' Denny says. 'And I'm sure as hell not going to act out.'

This meant hunting rocks instead of jacking off. Staying so busy, hungry, tired, and poor he won't have any energy left to hunt porno and wham the ham.

The night after he's banished, Denny shows up at my mom's house with a rock in his arms and a policeman beside him. Denny wipes his nose on his sleeve.

The cop says, 'Excuse me, but do you know this man?'

Then the cop says, 'Victor? Victor Mancini? Hey, Victor, how's it going? Your life, I mean.' And he holds one hand up with the big flat palm facing me.

I figure the cop means for me to high-five him, so I do, but I have to jump a little, since he's so tall. Still, my hand misses his. Then I say, 'Yeah, that's Denny. It's okay. He lives here.'

Talking to Denny, the cop says, 'Get this. I save a guy's life, and he don't even remember me.'

Of course.

'That time I almost choked!' I say.

And the cop says, 'You remember!'

'Well,' I say, 'thanks for bringing old Denny here home safe and sound.' I pull Denny inside and go to close the door.

And the cop says, 'You doing okay now, Victor? Is there any­thing you need?'

I go to the dining-room table and write a name on a slip of paper. I hand it to the cop and say, 'Could you arrange to make this guy's life a living hell? Maybe you could pull some strings and get him in for a rectal cavity search?'

The name on the paper is His Lord High Charlie, the Colo­nial Governor.