FRANZ

FRANZ

(First published in The Coe Review, 1985)

Suddenly it’s morning.

The television doesn’t sign on with violins, it bristles to life with a brass band, and I nearly jump out of bed. I turn it off, on. Either way, I can’t get back to sleep, so I go to the bathroom sink to wash up. I have to wait for the water to become clear before pushing the stopper and dunking my head. Pulling back, I see my face in the ripples. Some sight, that. Afterward, I’m still sleepy, and now I’m wet, too.

I should straighten the apartment today. I should will it to straighten itself. That works sometimes, if you want a thing bad enough.

This morning the air stinks, more than usual, and my nose points me toward the kitchen. On my way I pause to wipe dust from the statue of Jesus that my mother gave me years ago. Already I’m sweating. “Kinda early to be this hot, ain’t it, Lord?”

“I don't know, Davy,” says my television. I don’t have cable, don’t have satellite, don’t have pay-per-view, don’t have any of that digital fiber option stuff. What I’ve got is an antenna and one channel that works, and this same cartoon is on every day. It’s about a clay dog that gives advice to a little wooden boy. The dog actually talks to him. Now, in my world, people who listen to talking dogs go on to become serial killers or see therapists. But in cartoons it’s perfectly natural. Anyway, when the wooden kid has troubles too big for the dog to solve, he goes to his father, who explains about God.

 The telephone rings, my neighbor one door down complaining about the noise. “Okay,” I say, and I lower the volume on the set. She swears and slams the phone in my ear. I let the receiver drop, where it chips off another piece of paint from the wall. Then I change my mind and just unplug it. I should have let them disconnect the damn thing when they threatened to.

I raise the volume on the TV.

The smell gets stronger. I see the problem right away. The latch on the refrigerator has been broken for ages, and I forgot to prop it shut last time I used it. So the door's flapping open and all the perishables are showing why they're called that. A quart of milk, some cheese and wieners, three eggs. A bottle of Mogen David. I rummage around for something still edible, but have no luck. The wine isn’t vinegar yet, it always tastes that way. I won’t even have food stamps till the end of the week.

What I do have is cockroaches. With the fridge door open, they’re having a field day. I inspect them closely, then brush them onto the floor. They scuttle this way and that, as if they know what’s coming. I crunch a few with my toes.

While the television exalts God in Cartoonland, a movement inside the refrigerator catches my attention. “Aha!” I cry. “I knew it! Thought you could hide, didn't you?”

There, behind the milk carton, is the largest cockroach of them all, the one with White-Out painted on his back. We jockey around for a while before I nab him in my fingers and hold him up to my accusing glare. Even though there’s hot dogs on his breath, he looks at me just as innocent as you please, with Shirley Temple eyes.

“Goddammit, Franz, don’t I feed you? Don’t I drop crumbs on the floor for you every day? But that’s not good enough for you. Oh, no, you have to raid the fridge. Well, just you wait. Next time I might surprise you.”

But you kill my friends, he signals.

“Cockroaches don’t have friends. Besides, that’s the order of things. You guys were invented to be stepped on. It’s my duty.”

Duty, my ass. Your problem is you’re afraid of changes. You hate living like this, but at least it’s safe. No one expects anything of you.

“That’s what you say. Change is easy. When I will it, it’ll happen.”

That crap again. Like the old fart down the hall. You willed him to disappear.

“It worked, didn't it?”

Yeah—he won the Publisher's Clearing House and moved to Tahiti.

“Still.”

You got this power, do something simple. Why not will yourself a job and get outta this dump? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about us cockroaches.

“What makes you think I worry about you? Now, beat it, before I squish you, too. I don’t need your advice.”

As soon as I put him down he scurries into his matchbox, which I close to prevent another raid on my food. Bastard, he says.

Okay, listen. Franz is nothing like that clay dog. I’m not a serial killer, and I don’t see a therapist. I did hear once, though, that baking soda kills cockroaches. It causes gas, which humans would just burp away. But cockroaches have no burping mechanism, so when the gas builds up, they literally explode. This is all true. I have this image of an army of them marching in neat rows across my walls, whistling that tune from The Bridge on the River Kwai, and blowing up three by three in time to the music.

Except Franz, of course.

And so my day goes: I watch television, I look at my diploma on the shelf, I shoo mice from the cupboards into the traps I’ve set all over. Sometimes rats get in and eat the trapped mice, easy as Hershey bars. Cannibal cousins, sort of.

I should straighten the apartment, but it’s too hot.

The sun wades through the sky, then finally goes away. My wine has now cooled, and I curl up with it to follow the sun.

The wooden boy’s God goes bowling in the night, with flashlights and cymbals. He must be having a hell of a time of it. There are tap dancers at my window, an ocean at my head, coming through in single file, dripping on my mattress.

God’s really panting hard.

I’m dying.

            ***

I’m not dying. It’s morning again. I roll over, open my eyes. It’s still raining from last night, still hot. I turn on the television, plug in the phone, wonder how many people didn’t try to call.

While I’m soaking my head a loud clap of thunder makes me jump, and I bump my head on the faucet. This day is going to suck a lot, I can tell. I dab the cut with a washcloth, but it’s not serious.

The thunderstorm rattles my building. I hurry to my window to see what’s going on.

There are huge black clouds in the southwest sky, coming at me. At any moment I expect a snake to fall out of those clouds and wiggle around in my town. I took Elements of Weather. I know a wall cloud when I see one.

The state I live in is famous for its tornadoes. We proudly proclaim we have more of them than any other place in the universe, except Oklahoma. Executive Vice President in Charge of Tornadoes, so to speak.

“God’s will,” says the television. It’s the little wooden boy’s father again. I look at my statue of Jesus and say, “Well, how ’bout it, Lord?”

My Weather prof used to tell us morning twisters are rare. I point outside and reprimand my memory of him. “That shows what you know.”

When I check back to the cartoon, the kid’s mouth is moving, but the words coming out of it are these: “This is the Emergency Broadcast System. You are urged to take shelter immediately. At 7:48 a.m. a confirmed tornado was reported on the ground....”

Excited, I run to tell Franz the news.

But the matchbox is still closed, after nearly twenty-four hours. I am sick. Inside, Franz is on his back, his tiny legs kicking weakly. It’s finished, he says. This is no fun at all.

For the first time I can remember, I cry. “Franz, you can't do this to me!”

Too late. He’s gone.

I should show him some respect. I put some food in his box, as if he were an Egyptian pharaoh. I can’t build a pyramid for him, but cremation would work, so I go to light the stove. As I walk away, his friends move in to eat his after-life food. Undiscriminating, they eat Franz, too.

“Cannibals! Goddamn cannibals! What could make you do such a thing?” Angrily I smash a can of baking soda to the floor. It splits open, and the insects run to it.

They really do explode.

This is the last day of the world, says my crucified Jesus; and with that I will a change.

A tornado tumbles out of the sky. I kneel at my window to watch it side about, graceful as an eel. My city starts coming apart. I’m in awe of this power, the ultimate phallic symbol, the ultimate “O”. The funnel moves my way. I close my eyes, cross my fingers: this is a mystical moment. My buildings burps, implodes around me. I peek out with one eye. The twister ropes out and dissipates.

All right, I’m dead.

“I don’t know, Davy ...”

Of all the things to be left intact. “Oh, shut the fuck up!” I scream at the television. I throw a brick through the picture tube, remain miserably alive amidst the rubble of my apartment. Now it really needs straightening up.

You’re right, Franz. This is no fun at all.

 END