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Bombelujah

Steve Davenport

Bomb's an outsider.
     Bomb's not from Inwit. Despite his sidekick obligation to play audience to Mackey Rottler's dramatic explanations, Bomb knows it hardly matters what started all the Inwit shit. There's always shit, and good thing for Bomb there is. Bomb's an agent of change, professional disturbance.
     Bang.
     He needs the work. Bomb's happy when Bomb's got a job to do, yes, and he does it, bang, but it's not like he chooses the job. Bomb's not ownership or administration or management. Bomb's no culture-warlord or ballisto-visionary social architect. Bomb's a grunt, a worker.
     Like any worker, Bomb worries about turf. Most days what Bomb wants to know is who's got his back? Bomb knows, for instance, who's got Gun's back. Rides to and from Mt. Airy, Rottler's hometown, have taught him that. Up and down Rte. 67, nailed to fence posts, white signs sing Gun's praises. They testify to one after another in phrases that depend on each other for meaning.

     Big Fat Washington Lobbyist makes big fat bucks doing the work of corn and beans and fence posts and white signs. Aside from the basic observation, or maybe jealous complaint's more like it, that no one will ever watch his back like that, Bomb avoids taking a position on Gun matters.
     Bomb leaves the culture wars and politics to others.
     Shit came way before Bomb, and when approached with a problem or a solution, Bomb's officially indifferent. Bomb's a tool.

Bomb knows something you don't.
     Inwit won't survive the shit coming down Memorial Day.
     Inwit's going to burn, baby, burn to the ground. Bang and swoooosh of flames in more than one location's what Bomb knows.
     What Bomb knows and you don't is the number of hot spots around town, most coordinated, a few not, all wired to go off Memorial Day.
     Bomb hasn't seen this many bombs outside of a bomb convention. Something about this much activity, the buzz, the shit about to blow that strikes Bomb as way sexy.

Bomb's an insider.
     Bomb knows one thing for sure. World without Bomb's not possible. In that way then, Bomb's a citizen like any other, an integral part, here from the beginning, if there is such a thing.
     There isn't.
     There's no beginning. There's Bomb. And there's story.
     Once upon a time, not far from St. Louis, sat an Illinois town, a place like any other, a regular joint, insiders and outsiders, disputes and alliances and mucked-up waters.
     Way of the world.
     Big Fuck.
     Welcome to Inwit.
     Once upon a time in that town, before it went up in flames, turned to char, blew away in the wind that followed, disappeared, before all of that, before the body wars, before the mystery whistling, before the marches, before the boatload of McKillimy Geniuses sank in the Aegean Sea (Bomb has an airtight alibi, but he knows stuff he shouldn't know, he knows that), before Mr. Little was burned, before Medea got her car blown up and Aggenbite, Medea's son and owner-operator of Ye Olde Bookmonger, caught one of Sukey Tawdry's penis tiles upside his head and Elvet Velvis cut off his fingers for his art and Marion Crane got the jitters and took a pile of Bookmonger money to a motel where she fucked a Bible salesman named Bates because he looked like Jesus and told her she had a pretty singing voice and Mackey invented Bomb, before all of these convenient, story-friendly occurrences occurred, Inwit was as it was: a place where shit happened.
     Big fuck.
     Way of the world.
     What's different about Inwit, what sets it apart from other shit-stirred towns, is the particular mix of things, the ingredients, the way the town finally catches fire, burns to the ground, becomes local legend. Though no one but Mackey Rottler knows anything about Bomb's presence or work in Inwit, Bomb knows that that's about to change, that with one grand gesture at just the right moment he'll be given his due.
     Bomb knows that afterwards people will be talking about him. They'll say he survived, that he's dangerous, that he's buried somewhere under the burning rubble rehearsing his version of events, using a stash of cell phones and 1000-minute calling cards to negotiate book, tv, and movie deals. They'll say that Bomb has the explanation, the definitive story, that only Bomb can explain Inwit's shit.
     Bomb can live with the publicity. In fact, Bomb's ready for it. Celebrity. Bomb will be, Bomb chuckles, the bomb.

Bomb doesn't know everything, but he knows enough.
     Bomb doesn't know a thing, for instance, about Grandpa Rottler that Mackey doesn't tell him. Bomb doesn't know if Grandpa Rottler will survive long enough to die in the fire that will rage through Inwit.
     Bomb does know which bomb blew up Medea Davenport's car and the names of the supremacist punks who put it there, but then the cops know their names too.
     Bomb doesn't know that Medea's suspicious her long-gone daughter, Caligula, has something to do with the mystery pickup truck, the one seen at every drive-by shoot-em-up, that she's probably the driver. What Bomb does know is that if he wants to know the name of the driver all he has to do is ask around. Bomb has bomb contacts. And, boy, do bombs talk.
     Bomb doesn't know that Elvet's thinking about selling his house, quitting his job at Bookmonger, keeping only those belongings he can comfortably pack in his car, and head off in search of Sukey, artist-in-hiding and departed lover.
     Bomb does know that a couple of months ago Elvet, Mr. Little, Lizzie Borden, and Aggenbite formed a four-member cell (terrorists to some, culture warriors and heroes to others) that calls itself Third Arm of the Lord Which Is for Coffee and that Aggenbite's the least powerful member not because he isn't sincere about the group's mission but because he has no particular talent for it. Bomb knows that Third Arm's responsible for the recent killing of the pro-life protesters outside the women's health center. (Bombs talk.)
     What he doesn't know is that Third Arm is meeting at that very moment in Mr. Little's hospital room, but he'll know soon enough the gist of the conversation if they enlist the services of a bomb or do business with a bomb-related enterprise.

Bomb's an equal-opportunity employee.
     Here are two of the many things Bomb doesn't give a shit about. One way or the other. Most of the victims of the body wars afflicting Inwit. Third Arm of the Lord Which Is for Coffee.
     And not because he doesn't think Third Arm necessary. Bomb believes many things are necessary, including the occasional small-group terrorist or hero cell. And if not necessary, inevitable. Part of the mix, way of the world. He simply at the moment, as he squats there by the box of manuscripts, has no interest in Third Arm's doings. He has his own things to think about, things that are sucking up all his attention and concern.
     Mackey, for instance. Mackey Rottler.
     There it is.
     Bomb speaks his heart. Mackey's Bomb's main thing.
     Though someone else might just as easily have reinvented Bomb, it was Mackey who did and with such an explorative innocence, the rookie's naiveté, that Bomb had no choice but to fall in love with most of his problems. The impending death of his grandfather. The ongoing separation from his daughter. His magnum-opus-in-the-making, aka Big Book of Fucking and Dying. His desire to do right by a buddy and that buddy's business by siccing Bomb on the most major of competitors, the here-today, gone-tomorrow, leave-nothing-in-its-wake megachain bookstore at the edge of town: ABLE®, short for All Books and Lifestyles Emporium®.
     Loyalty means a lot to Bomb. Mackey's loyalty to Aggenbite. Bomb's to Mackey. Mackey's to Bomb. Nothing Bomb hates more than being tied in a gunnysack and abandoned by the edge of a field.

Bomb goes bang.
     Bang.
     Once upon a time, two weeks before the Memorial Day meltdown, Mackey did his best to blow up the Inwit ABLE®. By himself. With Bomb's encouragement.
     Bang.
     Friday evening, during store hours, Mackey Rottler walked into ABLE® and put Bomb in a spot that struck both him and Bomb as a funny place to pull a who-done-it joke. Early Saturday morning, the giant store empty, there in the Sherlock Holmes Library, smack-dab hidden somewhere in the middle of the Dr. Watson Spittoon-and-Virtual-Reality-OED station, actually, for what it's worth, in the exact center of Dr. Watson's head, Bomb relaxed, followed the timer's lead, exploded, and set the place on fire.
     Mackey couldn't believe it when the first part went off exactly as planned. He carried Bomb right up the stairs in a Richard Wright book bag, stashed the bag inside the head, and left.
     Early the next morning, he heard the sirens.
     At six Mackey clicked on his television and waited. There it was. Over a live shot of a smoldering second floor that was really only a part of the second floor, Mackey heard the early-bird St. Louis news reporter describe the pre-dawn explosion as a wake-up call ABLE®'s national headquarters was taking very seriously.
     She read the official corporate response: "The people have made it clear they want an ABLE® in that community. ABLE®'s just thankful that no one from the community was hurt. ABLE® will close off and heal only the part of itself that was damaged because ABLE®'s a part of that community. ABLE®'s what the people want."
     Mackey Rottler clicked off his television, poured himself a cup of coffee, and waited for Bomb's return. Bomb taught him a lesson about community he'd forgotten: personal obligation. They might not have blown the fucker up, but they tried. Local patriots going national, like Inwit will soon enough. Big time. Memorial Day.

Bomb's a dangerous thing to talk about.
     Better, some say, to ignore the topic altogether, lock your door, stay home.

Copyright © 2010 by San Diego State University.

Authors of individual works retain copyright, with the restriction that subsequent publication of any text be accompanied by notice of prior publication in Fiction International.