the midnight special by philip loyd (from his novel You Lucky Bastard)

The Midnight Special is not an original term. It can mean several things. For people from my generation, it was THE TV show to watch late nights if you wanted to see your favorite band. And believe me, back then there weren’t many places for that.

For my grandfather’s generation, the Midnight Special was a train. And for my grandparents, it was even more than that; it was a song too.

My grandparents were from Dekalb, Texas, a nowhere stop on the tracks except for that it’s where Lead Belly supposedly wrote that famous song, you guessed, The Midnight Special. He is confirmed to have lived in Dekalb and even to have been in its jail, where exactly he wrote the famous song will never be known for sure.

Enjoy.

……………………………..

Alone there in the basement, looking at my brains spilling out all over the floor, I couldn’t help but think: You’re not so tough. That’s what happens to your soul after you die, you know. It just sits there, right where you expired, so you can see exactly how bad you screwed things up. Anyway, mine did. It was good to know at least, that I had a soul. I was beginning to wonder.

I guess I hit my head too hard, plain and simple. It was never my intention to kill myself, not by a long shot. But there’s no guide book for dropping a fifty-pound car battery on your head. There’s no owner’s manual for being half a lunatic, either.

Next thing I knew, I heard footsteps, squeaking shoes coming up from behind me until suddenly the squeaking stopped. Then, as if a heavenly spirit, there she was: Fanny. I looked twice, making sure it wasn’t an Irish Setter.

“Hello, Arlen,” she said, kneeling over my dead body.

Fanny. Fanny, my love. I tried to tell her, THAT wasn’t me anymore, that I was—that my spirit was—over here now; but of course, she couldn’t hear me. She couldn’t see me either because, if you haven’t been paying attention, I WAS DEAD! Boy, did I screw things up. I always screw things up.

“It’s about time you saw it through,” said Fanny. “I was beginning to think you didn’t have it in you.”

Didn’t have it in me?

“Like I told you that night.”

So it wasn’t a dream. That night. It was real. I knew Fanny wasn’t really there on the beach that day. I’m not crazy, you know. I knew she wasn’t a golden retriever. But that night, the night I found my front door open. It was real. It happened. It really happened.

“I’m so happy to see you’re all better now. I really was worried about you.”

Isn’t that sweet.

“You may wonder why I disappeared like that,” she said

Poof.

“Perhaps one last bedtime story will explain it best? I promise; it won’t disappoint.”

Did I have a choice?

“So, where were we?” says Fanny, cozying up to my now rotting corpse, putting my split-open head right in her bloody lap. “Oh, yeah: the booby hatch. So, man comes into the hospital talking gibberish, going on and on about germs and how they’re going to take over the world.

“They’re about to give him the Old Sparky treatment when he gets sprung. That’s the last I see of him.

“Years go by. Of course, I’m still doing my thing, only now I’m working the Trauma Center at St. John’s in Santa Monica.”

Right.

“Then, one day out of the blue, they bring in this guy. Seems he’s been hit by a car, right there in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard. In the head, no less.”

What a nut job.

“I can’t believe my eyes. My ears, either. It’s been years, but it’s the same guy: the same guy from Downey. Craziest part is: this guy is still talking the same gibberish about germs and how they’re going to take over the world. Same exact story. Only now, he’s added to it.”

I think I know how this story goes.

“He starts talking about how the polar ice caps are melting.”

The invasion force from Germanicus.

“And little green men.”

Subatomic, little green men.

“Anyway, I ask one of the nurses if he should be sedated, perhaps; transferred to the psych ward, maybe. She says, ‘No, that won’t be necessary.’

“I ask her why not and she tells me once he wakes up he’ll be just fine. Just wrap a bandage around his head and send him on his way. Seems this isn’t his first time here, and they’ve all heard the story of the microbial invasion force from Germanicus before.”

So what happened?

“Turns out they’re right. About an hour later, the guy wakes up, right as rain, asking where’s his hat.”

His hat?

“We need some ID before we can let him go, so he tells me his name is James Aloysius McCarthy.”

That’s: Professor James Aloysius McCarthy.

“As he’s walking out the door, one of the nurses picks up his chart and says, ‘So, he’s a Professor this time.’ I ask her what she means.

“She tells me the last time they brought him in he was Mark Twain. The time before that, Napoleon Bonaparte. And the time before that, his Highness Emperor Norton.”

I know Emperor Norton. Emperor Norton was in real life a man by the name of Joshua A. Norton, a homeless loon who, after once being one of the wealthiest men in San Francisco (then losing all his money while trying to corner the rice market), in 1859 walked into the offices of the San Francisco Bulletin and proclaimed himself Emperor Norton I, emperor of the United States.

Norton wandered the streets of San Francisco for nearly twenty years, all decked out in full imperial regalia, complete with tasseled epaulettes, a saber, and even a funny-looking emperor’s hat.

Emperor Norton was a real-life character. He was also the inspiration for “The King” in Mark Twain’s novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and a character on the TV show Bonanza.

“Seems the Professor is a different person every time,” says Fanny. “At least, that’s what all the nurses tell me. All six times he’s been run over out on Santa Monica Boulevard, then brought into the ER at St. John’s.”

Doesn’t surprise me.

“So who is this guy, I’m left wondering? Then one day I actually see him in action out on Santa Monica Boulevard. No wonder he gets run over so often. He’s not only playing in the middle of traffic, he’s jumping out in front of cars demanding they stop.

“On top of that, he’s wearing—you guessed it—a ten-gallon hat. Like the one Hoss Cartwright wore on Bonanza? You know what I’m talking about.”

Of course: Hoss Cartwright. Dan Blocker, from my dad’s hometown of De Kalb, Texas. Not only is De Kalb, Texas, the birthplace of Bonanza star Dan Blocker, it’s also the place where Ledbelly wrote the song, The Midnight Special.

“Anyway,” continues Fanny, “so there’s this lunatic in a ten-gallon hat in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard and he’s going on and on about why the polar ice caps are melting, an invasion force from the planet Germanicus, and alien pathogens from outer space.”

Poor, Professor.

“Some other guy goes walking buy in a cape, another in an astronaut suit, and that’s when I realize: I’ve just landed on Mars.”

We prefer to call it, La La Land.

“I’d like to get this poor guy off the street before someone runs him over. Again. Do you have any idea how many people get run over every year?”

Sort of.

“But I’m not running out into traffic. How this guy’s made it this long, I’ll never know.”

Maybe he was a matador in a past life.

“So there I am, watching helplessly, when I see this little Chinese guy over on the sidewalk watching the whole thing. I walk up and ask him if he knows the man in the middle of the road.

“Yes,’ he tells me. ‘He live in apartment building where I work.’”

Hop Sing?

“No, not Hop Sing. He tells me his name is Wang, and he’s the maintenance man at the Hacienda Palms Apartments just around the corner.

“I ask him why he’s there watching the man dodging traffic, and he tells me, ‘To get hat, after ambulance take man away.’”

To get hat?

“’Yeah,’ he says, ‘hat belong to apartment; used to belong to cowboy Tex Ritter.’ I have no idea who Tex Ritter is.”

I knew it!

“That’s when he also tells me, right out of the blue, that there’s an apartment available in the building.”

Do tell.

“I don’t know if he’s trying to be helpful, or he’s just horny.”

Hard to tell with Wang.

“Thing is, I’d just transferred to St. John’s from Torrance Memorial and didn’t yet have a place to live. In fact, I was still sleeping on beds at the hospital. Why not? I was working all the time, anyway. But I needed a place to call my own. Then he tells me the building’s a rent-control unit. That sealed the deal.”

Bingo.

“Now, I’m living in the land of the crazies, and lucky me, I’ve set up house right at ground zero.”

Ground zero is right. Like the apartment building in the original Ghostbusters.

“It allowed me to continue doing my work as the Good Samaritan, even outside the hospital: Compton, Gardena, Redondo Beach. Getting the picture?”

Not really.

“Don’t you get it, Arlen?”

Apparently not.

“Do I have to spell it out for you?”

It might help.

“Geez, Arlen. You. It was You.”

Me?

“Yes Arlen, YOU. It was you at the psychiatric hospital in Downey that day.”

Huh?

“It was you in the ER at St. John’s all those times.”

Come again.

“It was you ranting and raving all up and down Santa Monica Boulevard.”

No, that was the Professor.

“Arlen,” said Fanny, “There is no Professor.”

What?

“There is no Professor James Aloysius McCarthy. At least, not in real life.”

Not true. He lives in Apartment 9M.

“Nobody lives in Apartment 9M.”

How do you know?

“Because there is no Apartment 9M.”

Yes there is. It’s the apartment at the end of the hall, next to the elevator. I’m not crazy; there’s a big M right there on the door.

“Yes, Arlen: M; M for Maintenance.”

Maintenance?

“Yes, the M stands for Maintenance. It’s the maintenance closet.”

Are you sure?

“I checked it myself. It’s nothing but cleaning products, and boxes upon boxes of hand sanitizer. That’s it”

But the Professor?

“Come on, Arlen. Professor James Aloysius McCarthy? He was a character on Bonanza. Could you have been more obvious?”

But I saw him. The shaved head. The bleached-white eyebrows. The golden earring.

“That was a bottle of Mr. Clean.”

And the little green men? From Germanicus?

“Hoss and the Leprechauns?”

Hoss and the Leprechauns?

“Yes, Hoss and the Leprechauns. Bonanza, Season 5, Episode 12, guest starring Sean McClory as Professor James Aloysius McCarthy.”

Right, Sean McClory: the actor.

“I told you, my father was a huge Bonanza fan. I’ve seen every episode at least twice.”

The man she was referring to, Sean McClory, was a veteran character actor known for such 50s and 60s TV shows as Gunsmoke, The Virginian, Rawhide, and yes, Bonanza. You name the TV western, chances are he was on it. He was once even on an episode of The Outer Limits.

“Mark Twain and Napoleon Bonaparte, both names you gave at the hospital; sure they’re historical figures, but they were also characters on episodes of Bonanza. Calamity Jane, the gunslinger; Albert Michelson, the famous physicist too.

I was starting to feel a little dizzy. It was no wonder, with my head split wide open and all.

“Tell me something, Arlen,” she said. “Where is the Professor?”

The Professor?

“Where is he? Better yet, where has he been all this time?”

I told her he was in a mental hospital.

“What’s the name?”

The name?

“The name of the hospital? What is it?

I paused for a moment, not wanting to betray the Professor; but then again, I guess I had his permission now.

Hollydale. The name of the place is Hollydale.

“For one thing,” she said, “Hollydale used to be called Sunnyvale. The Poor Farm. Downey Psychiatric.”

Huh?

“And for another, Hollydale is closed down. It’s been boarded-up for years. Abandoned. It’s nothing more than a ghost town now.”

Hold on. Maybe she was onto something. Seems like I saw something about that on the news once. I remember Flint Rockway reporting from Hollydale one time, about all the homeless and drug addicts who had moved in after the place shut down and… Holy shit! She was right.

Then it dawned on me. If what she was saying was true, it would explain a lot of things: like those old blues albums, all that hand sanitizer, and that damn cowboy hat.

“It’s you, Arlen” said Fanny. “It’s always been you.”

Forgive me a moment while I process my craziness.

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Arlen. In just about every Emergency Room and Trauma Center in Southern California. I knew you’d show up sooner or later. Happy Accidents, right?”

Happy Accidents?

“Yes, Happy Accidents.”

OMG! Happy Accidents, starring Marisa Tomei and Vincent D’Onofrio. I’d forgotten all about that film. That would have been the perfect movie for Fanny and me. OUR movie. Maybe next time.

“Then, by the grace of God, you show up at St. John’s that day. About time.”

Grace of God? Not hardly.

“And then you standing out there in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard, screaming at motorists in a ten-gallon hat? Yeah, I saw you. I saw you, all right. So did just about half of Santa Monica.”

By Jove, she was right.

“So I moved into the Hacienda Palms Apartments and I’ve been watching you ever since.”

I knew it. But how?

“All the doors have peepholes, you know.”

I never thought about it that way. So, she had been stalking me too. See, I told you I wasn’t some kind of weirdo.

“I had Wang move me into the apartment across the hall so I could keep an eye on you. It wasn’t hard; most the apartments at the Hacienda Palms are empty anyway.”

It used to be a nice place, a long time ago.

And then, just when it couldn’t possibly get even crazier, it got even crazier. WAY CRAZIER!

“Now that I found you,” said Fanny, “it was game-on. Again.”

Game-on?

“You and me, baby. Saving the world. Remember?”

That explains the cracking of skulls, and the Cranium Killer.

“Everything’s going according to plan,” said Fanny. “Then, all of a sudden you go completely off the deep end. You turn on me. Me!

“Next thing I know you’re going to crack my skull open. That’s when I knew.”

Knew?

“Yes, Arlen. All this cracking walnuts all over town and there it was staring me right in the face all along,

“I didn’t want to desert you; but at the same time, I couldn’t have you cracking open my skull and looking inside.”

Sorry about that, the whole cracking open the skull comment. Insensitive.

“Besides, that’s My thing.”

Right. Your thing. My gal: the Serial Killer.

“Hey,” said Fanny, “I’m no f’ing serial killer.” And she was adamant. “I’m a warrior.”

Right. A syringe-wielding, germ-craving, bacteria-inviting, pathogen-daring, microbe-annihilating, virus-slaying, bug-blasting, honest-to-God, ninja warrior.

“You got that right.”

My baby.

“It’s okay. Truth is, that day at your apartment, when Wang interrupted us.”

Yeah?

“Thing is, I was just about to slit your throat.”

Slit my throat?

“Yeah. Then I was going to chop off your head.”

Sweet Jesus.

“But I couldn’t. That’s why I left. That’s why I had to break up with you.”

Break up with me? Then she was, she was my girlfriend. YES!

She might have broken my heart, but still, it was better than chopping off my head. Wait a minute. Slit my throat? Chop off my head? WTF was she talking about?

“I couldn’t crack your skull open, either. I just couldn’t do it.”

Ah. That’s so sweet.

“We both know you had to do it yourself.”

Wait. What?

I’m so proud of you, Arlen. I knew you could do it.”

She was an angel, all right. The Angel of Death.

“Let’s get this over with,” she said, grabbing hold of my head.

She then proceeded to saw off the top of my skull, and out of it came the most horrifying thing I ever saw in my whole life.

It was him, the miniaturized spy from the village of Tumerling in the Long Duk Dong region of China. Only, it wasn’t really a miniature Chinese spy at all, but a brain tumor, a cute, fuzzy little brain tumor complete with eyes, mouth and teeth. Seriously? All this time, that’s been it? A brain tumor? I guess that would explain a lot.

He might be free now, but that little tumor wasn’t finished. He looked at me, then Fanny, then whipped out a cane and broke into a song and dance: like Fred Astaire in Top Hat.

When he was done, after taking a bow, he scampered across the floor and out of the room up the stairs. Cocky little bastard. Finally I get a chance to put my hands on him and he runs away like a frightened little girl. Coward.

“I’m afraid that wasn’t him.” Says Fanny.

Him?

“Yes, the Tumerling spy. And there were no battle plans, either. Shucks.”

Shucks, was right.

Fanny opened-up a hat box and proceeded to scoop my brains up off the floor and put them inside. “Well,” she said, “waste not, want not. At the very least, this will make a nice addition to my collection. I will treasure it, always.”

All those hat boxes. The Cranium Killer. I should have known.

Finally I get a girlfriend, and just my luck she turns out to be a serial killer.

She was a serial killer, all right: crazy as a loon. But she was MY serial killer. MY loon. And, I had to admit: as serial killers go, she was awfully cute.

Some serial killers collect hands, feet—even whole heads—Fanny was the first I ever heard of who collected just the brains. Like Dr. Fleon Sunoco. Of course, Dr. Sunoco wasn’t a serial killer, just a mad scientist studying the brains of Mensa members to see if they had alien radio transmitters hidden inside. Maybe that was it; maybe Fanny was doing some kind of medical research.

Then I thought about the Professor. What was it he said that day? Oh, yeah. “They even sent one-hundred trillion microbial spies (disguised as someone in the medical profession) to my apartment to find out exactly how much I knew.”

Someone in the medical profession? Of course. Fanny was in the medical profession. And now it was clear: I really was the Professor.

Maybe Fanny was actually an undercover agent for Germanicus, or friends of Germanicus. Nice try. No matter how much I tried to sugar coat it, I knew the awful truth: she was just plum out of her mind.

Fanny looked at me one last time. “Well,” she said, “I’m off to carry on the battle; to keep fighting the good fight. Sorry I can’t take you with me, but you’re dead, honey.”

You don’t have to tell me.

Then, she leaned forward and, smiling, kissed me softly on the lips. Kissed my dead body on the lips. Oh well, a kiss is a kiss, dead body or not.

She kissed me! She actually kissed me!. My first kiss. OUR first kiss! Too bad it had to happen after I was dead.

“Goodbye, Arlen.” said Fanny. “I’m so glad to see that you’re finally happy.”

I don’t know about happy. I mean, I was lying there with my head split wide open.

Happy Hunting, I told her. Good luck saving the world; although I didn’t actually say anything because I was dead, remember?

END

 

Think maybe you’ve got the writing bug, too? REAL WRITER’S MARKET has over 500 publishers and  800 Imprints! Submissions now open. Check it out…