King Zamp

Zamp is coming. Fat and frantic. Pushing and shoving, jiggling and yelling, running foulmouthed with his aluminum cane, here comes Zamp.

"Where the subway? Where the goddamn subway?" Holding tight, drawing the terrified white face close to his, nose to nose, Zamp wants the subway. Two bright lights burn in those dark woolly eyes.

"Downtown, man, goddamn downtown."

The arm pulls him forward, Zamp is moving and the arm takes him to the subway entrance. Zamp can smell the subway, he can smell the heat and the bodies and the steel and the hot rush of popcorn-dead air that hits him in the face. It's got a downtown smell to it. Zamp knows.

"Thank you, Mr. Jim."

Zamp, the cocoa blimp begins his tapping down the stairs. He shoves, bumping bodies.

"Goddamn, man, downtown, downtown!" he yells to no one in particular. He keeps yelling until someone comes and takes him by the arm and leads him right to the platform. Zamp reaches out with his cane and feels the edge of the platform and steps back two feet.

It is midday. There are only several people on the platform. Zamp rolls his head in all directions, eying everyone with dead eyes. He swaggers and dances, feeling his belly and leaning on his cane. His fly is open. His shoes is untied. But Zamp don't know and Zamp don't care. Zamp ain't looking. And if you're looking, he ain't looking at your looking.

Rumble of the train. Bet Zamp gets in first. Bet you ain't gonna get out first. Here comes Zamp.

Screech bump the doors fly open and Zamp bumps his way in. Tapping inside, he turns his fat ass to a seat and before he sits down a terrified man jumps up and Zamp sits, hopelessly wedged between two bodies. Zamp is happy when he's wedged, happy when he can feel wet flesh next to his, squirming to get free. But this time he's got them and they know it and now they've got to listen.

"Now, just what the hell do that say?" Zamp says, pointing to a subway poster. The man sitting next to him tells him and Zamp grunts.

"Uh-huh."

Zamp starts singing a little song. It is a tiny song, you can barely hear the words, and Zamp likes it that way. He sings in this tiny high little voice and he sings about Zamp 'cause there ain't no one else singing about Zamp. Not anyone in this whole world. Zamp got to sing, otherwise he just disappear.

Poof. Zamp know that.

"What the hell do that say?" And the man tells him.

"Now, ain't that a load of shit?" Zamp says. The man agrees.

"Now, what the hell you agreein' with me for?" Zamp asks. The man don't know. Zamp don't know the man. He just a voice. They all a voice. That's all they ever be. Well, damn, they never going to know Zamp, so how Zamp going to know them?

"You get me off at Eighth Street," Zamp says. The man nods invisibly.

"Hey, you son of a bitchin' get me off at Eighth Street!" The man says he will and Zamp starts singing again. He feels good when he's singing and he likes to bob his head up and down and roll it side to side like he did when he was just a baby and was the same as the way he is now and as soon as his momma gave birth to him she gave birth to an aluminum cane 'cause she knew Zamp was going to need it and she knew that was all she could give Zamp, all she could ever give Zamp, because she would never see him, never again, and his father wouldn't even see him once. If he had tears he would cry, but Zamp swallows tears, did it ever since he was little, a trick he learned to help him get by, 'cause if they ever saw you with tears they come down on you hard. Oh, they beat you good, strap your back and put the latticework against your skin and then in the night you can run your finger back there and suck on your own blood until morning.

Zamp forgets to count the subway stops down from 59th.

"This Eighth Street?"

Someone pulls him up and Zamp rushes out. He stands on the platform with his arms stretched out, feeling which way the people are going and when he feels the direction of the bodies brushing by his hands he follows them. He smiles and sings. He smells old shoes and moth balls and stale Baby Ruths gone black with time on the back of subway seats. He pushes toward the turnstiles and follows the thumping of the feet up the stairs, smelling air and dog shit, and he knows he's hitting the street and when he gets outside he walks over to a building and kneels down and prays for sight and then prays for getting out of the subway again and into the sun and then takes out his short stubby little member and urinates against the wall and shakes it dry and puts it back and this time remembers to zip his fly and starts walking down the street and singing.

Zamp got downtown business. No basket weaving for Zamp, oh, no. They try to pull that shit on him at the Lighthouse and he say no, not Zamp. Zamp pat his belly. He got the business right in there. He giggle. Zamp and God going the same way. Zamp know.

Now he knows every shop and street corner, every stop light and every moocher in this block. This Zamp's block. He know this block and this block know Zamp.

Zamp tapping past the Nedick's and the Afro shop and the electricity shop and all the clothes shops. Zamp smells the afternoon sun, smells it like he smelled it a thousand times before and will smell it a thousand times again, and wonders about the sun and looks up at it but can't see and thinks he knows why the sun is up there and thinks if I stop thinking about the sun, why that old sun is just going to disappear, like Zamp, and then where will I be?

He is about to cross the street when he feels a hand on his arm and it is a girl's hand and she is young and she smells white and she asks if she can help Zamp and Zamp says yes. Zamp follows the girl up to her loft. He will not stay long. Zamp has street business and that comes first. This is just a detour, but sometimes it's fun to take a little detour, especially if they don't last long and don't get in the way of business. The girl speaks softly and serves him tea and she sounds tall, she has a soft tall voice. She tells Zamp she is a painter and she would like to paint him and Zamp says some other time that now he's got business and he don't want to hinder her career or anything 'cause he's got a career of his own and he knows how important careers are but some other time.

They drink tea and there is other talk and a cat purrs across his leg and he can smell garbage and turpentine and plaster of Paris and hear a faucet leaking and the girl has to go to the toilet and when she comes back the water is still running, though the girl can't hear it but Zamp can.

"You're beautiful," the girl says.

Zamp rubs his belly.

He can smell many cats, male cats, and the heavy wet odor of spray fills the room. There is a breeze coming in from the window and Zamp can smell an old ashtray left on the window sill.

The girl gets up and he can hear her doing something. What she is doing is filled with soft sounds, like velvet rubbing against velvet and silk flowing gently over skin.

"Are you happy?" the girl asks.

"Me?" Zamp says. "You gotta be kiddin'. You gotta be outa your mother skull."

There is a silence. The wind blows and he can feel the girl moving. He can smell skin and the dark, dense, damp odor of hair. Zamp reaches out and she jumps away.

"Hey, what the fuck?" Zamp says.

There is an absurd silence in the room that curls around the walls like a gigantic white snake.

"What the hell is going on?" Zamp says.

It troubles him, this snake of silence, and Zamp stands up and waves his cane around. His belly shakes and his deep fat navel, looking like a hidden volcano, peers from his shirt. He bites his lower lip and swears. Then he sits down, exhausted.

He smells something sweet, incredibly sweet, something like wine but sweeter yet. Zamp remembers when he suckled at his mother's breast and the heavy lush milk odor that hung around her nipples. His eyes were in his mouth then, and he clung for dear life to the giant mountain of flesh that he kept trying to climb, clawing with his tiny little hands. He would grab and squeeze and his mother would yell and then that was the last he ever heard of her.

"Where you at, woman?" Zamp yelled.

He could hear the hum of the refrigerator and the sound a cat made as it jumped up on some dishes and Zamp felt his belly and clutched the terror that was strapped to his giant waist. It was soft and warm and he could push his thumb against it because there was enough room in the plastic bag to move what was inside around. Zamp felt the edge of the table, wood, and the chair, wood and caned bottom, and listened to the sound of the room, his head tilted to the ceiling. He couldn't hear the girl so he tried to smell her, but the only thing he could smell was the cat spray. Every time he caught a whiff of her something else intruded, turpentine or wood or paints or something. He felt he was inside a clock and someone kept winding the clock spring tighter and tighter and Zamp wanted to yell to them to stop, but they couldn't hear him inside the case.

"I'm going, woman," Zamp said.

He got up, leaning forward on his cane. He could feel the uneven boards on the floor and hear the faucet drip and there seemed to be a whole new set of smells.

He could smell flesh and perspiration and the dank odor of tightly compressed, wiry hair.

"Don't leave," the girl said.

"You bitch," Zamp said.

"Don't leave," the girl said. "I want to undress you. I want to paint you."

"Don't touch me," Zamp said.

He felt hands on his back and he turned around, but they were gone. The girl pleaded with him.

"Please let me undress you. I want to paint you."

"Ain't no one undressin' Zamp."

He could smell damp wool and blood and a peculiar vibration that seemed to be bouncing off the walls and turning the room into a sound chamber. It was as if the sounds were coming from farther back, maybe across the street, or maybe up the next block, or farther back in time, ten, 20 years ago. He didn't need this. He didn't want this. If she wanted to screw that was OK and he'd do it and if she didn't want to, then he would leave, but he didn't give a damn about this crap. He didn't give a damn about painting, about anybody painting, and he waved his cane around trying to find the cans of paint and knock them down, spill them all out and then step on them and grind them into the floor. It was like spilling someone's eyes out. He waved the cane furiously, hoping to strike cans, but he heard nothing, and the aluminum cane whistled through the air like a dead whip.

He stopped, breathing heavily, his belly sweating.

The cane was on the floor and Zamp leaned over to pick it up. He was pushed from behind and fell rolling on the floor. It seemed as if he were turning into a ball because he just kept rolling and the room seemed to pulsate, the walls vibrating in and out. When he came to a stop the girl was on him and he could feel her bare arms and bare skin and she tried to hold his arms down and was whispering or licking or doing something to his ear. He could smell the heavy odor of cat spray. It gagged his nostrils and turned his belly. He could smell sawdust and varnish and crankcase oil on the floor and it was like being back in the garage when he was a little kid. They used to let him hang around because no one else wanted him and they even let him put gearboxes back together by touch, but they couldn't resist doing something to him while he worked, such as pouring oil on his fingers or snipping big sections out of his shirt or taping signs to his back. They were nice to him but they did these other things to him too and Zamp could never figure them out until he found that most people were like that and that most people would help you and at the same time took pleasure in hurting you. He pushed the girl off, cursing.

"You m'f'in' ofay, you sloppy crack, (continued on page 182)King Zamp(continued from page 116) gimme my cane and let me get outa here."

The cane rattled on the floor in front of him. He got up and walked toward it, stumbling into a table, cursing, throwing the table across the room.

"I love you," the girl said, "I want to keep you."

Zamp jumped at the sound. All he wanted to do now was get out of here. He was going to meet the man and sell some hash. It was still at his waist. He had to get out of here. He couldn't trust this crazy bitch, and even a quick lay wasn't worth the money he'd get for the hash. No woman was worth that. Ever. Ain't no way they would ever be, either.

He felt on the floor for his cane and the girl spoke again.

"I got your cane. You can't go until you do what I say."

Zamp rages, eating his tongue, feeling worms crawl across his dead eyes. He starts running and bumps into a chair, sprawling across some cans. Zamp picks up the cans and sends them flying across the room, paint fleeing like sleet sprayed on a wall. Some of the paint dribbles onto his face and he wipes it with his hand, smearing color across his cheeks. He can feel the color, the sticky grease of the color, and he takes his shirt and tries to wipe it off, but he can tell that it won't come off and so here is another mark against them, another stain he is going to remember and work into his gut.

"I'm going to tie you and then eat you up," the girl says, and Zamp jumps at the sound of her voice.

He stood still, trying to smell her, trying to hear her, trying to feel her in the room, but the room was like a part of her, it turned the sounds and the smells into a jumble, the room was turning around and in turn spun like a centrifuge, spinning off all the impressions separately and flinging them at Zamp like garbage. All he needed was an arm or a leg, just something to grab hold of. Once he had that she would never get away and he could get anything he wanted. That was the way it was with Zamp. Power came through his hands, power that riveted, hypnotized, made people listen to him and do what he wanted them to do. But he had to touch them first and hold them. It didn't do any good just talking to them, because when he did that he was just another fat blind man, but when he could hold them he changed into a demon and he could feel souls shrivel at his touch and hearts quiver and Zamp knew then that he was cursed and had the Devil and that the only way he could ever get by was to use his Devil.

"Here comes the rope," the girl said. "I'm gonna tie you up tight till your blubber hangs over the edge."

Zamp cocks his head to one side, straining for her presence. He can hear her breathing, a soft heavy rustling of air through the lungs. He tries to follow the breathing, but it seems to fill the room. Everywhere he turns there is the same, steady, bellowslike rush of air and then Zamp realizes it is his own breathing. He stops and reaches down for his cane. Hands grab the back of his shirt and before he can turn around he can hear and feel the fabric ripping and he turns, twisting the two halves of shirt, still bent over, and the shirt is pulled off over his head. It is like a ballet, and Zamp stands belly heavy in the room, quivering, his rage sputtering at his finger tips. He never should have pushed her off. He should have held onto her arm and twisted it until he got what he wanted, twisted it behind her back and up her neck and even farther up to the base of her head until she was crying and the pain made her bite her eyes and then she would be willing to do anything he wanted. He knew. That was the way they used to twist his arm, turning beyond what he thought it could go and forcing tears out of his sightless eyes.

"Door's locked. You can't get out."

"Bullshit."

He always got out. He got out of everything they put him in and a lot of things they didn't. He got out of his momma's belly before he should have and he got out of school and got out of cars and got out of homes they tried to put him in. There wasn't nothing that could hold Zamp and there never would be anything that could hold him. Zamp had the power and Zamp had the means and when Zamp got his mojo working for him there was no power in the known solar system that could stop him. His belly radiated it, his cheeks were flushed with it, his arms exemplified it, his hands personified it, his face showed it and everybody knowed it.

"Zamp!"

How the hell did she know his name?

"Zamp!"

He could feel the rope brush against his forehead, feel every bristle and hair and smell the tar and hemp and wood that made up the rope and even doing all this he still had the presence to get the damn rope off him, but the girl pulled it back before he could grab it and pull her and the rope to him. He could hear the rope sliding across the floor and he scrambled after it, but it stopped, or the sound of it stopped, as soon as he started running for it and when he continued running to where it should have been it wasn't. He felt something stiff at his feet and he leaned down and there was his cane. It felt good to have the cane in his hands and he tapped the air around him with the cane, feeling for objects, and felt a chair. He picked up the chair and sat in it, sitting straight up, his belly on his legs, his arm stretched horizontally in front of him with his hand resting on the cane. Zamp was holding court, King Zamp.

Now he knew the girl was crazy. It made her harder to deal with because he was used to dealing with people who felt guilt. He could twist guilt and use it. He could bend it and stretch it and make it bounce back into people's faces, make it circle like a boomerang, make it lie like a cat waiting to pounce, make it strangle, turn it into a pool and make it drown, roll it out and make it crush. But the girl was crazy and that made it more difficult. He knew.

He waved his cane around, thinking he could feel her vibrations through the metal. But all he felt was the hum of the refrigerator, so he dropped his arms to his sides and as soon as he did he felt the rope around him and he tried to raise his arms, but the rope got tighter and then it came around again, only this time lower and it tightened and then again and his belly was pulled in and then his legs and hips were tied to the chair and Zamp felt like he was being spun around the chair, as if the chair were becoming a brace that he would have to wear for the rest of his life. The girl was quick and wound the rope tightly around him several more times and soon you could hardly distinguish Zamp from the chair. He and the chair looked all of a piece, he felt like his back and legs were in a brace and that somehow pipes and tubes hung over him, dripping various liquids into his veins.

He could hear her working with something, something that creaked and sounded as if it ran along a trolley. He could smell oil and rust and old metal and he heard cats purr and the sound of the girl walking across the floor in bare feet. She was hot. He could smell the sweat on her body and hear the perspiration as it fell to the floor like rain and he kept thinking of the time he was kept by the fat lady who sweated all the time and smelled like cream cheese and liked to bundle Zamp in bed with her and later she liked to stick him with a needle and make him cry just so she could comfort him and he learned to take the needle without crying and that only made her mad and she started poking him harder with the needle. Yeah, they liked to do that. They dipped your fingers in glue and tied your shoelaces to the chair and little things like that and it was fun to watch you fall or stick your hands in paper or mess up your shirt. That was their fun. But Zamp got back. It might take years, but he had ways. The only thing to do was not show them anything, not give them anything they could take from you.

The girl came from behind and Zamp could smell under her arms and between her legs.

"Feel this," she said to Zamp.

It was a straight razor and she lay the side of it against his cheek, the edge resting between two rolls of fat, drawing a slight hairline of blood. He could feel her hand on his skin, her soft white small hand, and she gently drew the razor up the side of his face, barely drawing the hairline along with it. It felt like the edge of an explosion.

She took the razor away and began slicing away at his clothes, stripping the tattered pieces from the ropes. She cut his shoelaces and took off his shoes and Zamp was a big nude baby strapped to the chair. A breeze blew in from the window and felt like cool water running over his body. The girl brushed against him, skin to skin, and Zamp shivered.

"Gonna paint you, Zamp, but first you go on a trip."

"Go where?"

She didn't answer. He could hear her pushing something across the floor, something heavy that was on rollers. She pushed it toward him and when she got it up to the chair she went behind Zamp and tipped him forward and then put something under the chair that tipped him backward, fright momentarily gripping his stomach and twisting it like a dishrag, and then he felt himself gliding forward and he could hear the girl humming to herself. When she got to the window she stopped. Zamp could feel a strong breeze coming in from the window and he could hear the traffic below. He didn't like the window. He didn't like being near it and he didn't like its being open and he didn't like being tied up by it and he felt uneasy, a twitch away from a scream. He felt like he might empty his bladder right there on the floor. He felt like his fingers and the parts of his body that were separated by the ropes were going to fly apart, that he was losing control and that unless he exerted tremendous will he would explode and scatter himself across the universe. He heard something creaking, as if it were on rollers, and he felt several strands of rope that were tied around him being pulled up and he felt cold metal against his skin.

"You know what's gonna happen, Zamp?"

Zamp didn't know. Zamp didn't want to know.

"Zamp, you a king. You a King of Kings. Don't you know that, Zamp?"

Sure he knew that.

"Zamp, I'm the Virgin Mary. But first I'm gonna paint you. You know how you paint the King of Kings? How would you paint the King of Kings?"

Zamp didn't know.

"Why, you paint Him on His throne, Zamp. You know where that is?"

No, he didn't.

"Only one place, Zamp. Only one place."

And he felt himself being lifted up, slowly, swinging, three legs of the chair off the floor and the fourth one a pivot around which the bulk of Zamp and the chair swung and then that too came up and he hung free. He felt as if he were on the end of some kind of gallows. The girl put her hands on him and pushed him, slowly, and Zamp swung around through the air and kept moving slowly until he could hear the traffic and feel the sunlight on his body and suddenly he knew he was hanging over the edge of the building, the traffic snarling below him and a stiff breeze coming in from the Hudson River, and he heard the voice of the girl inside saying:

"Now, don't move, Zamp. I'm going to paint you just like that."

He didn't dare move. Gods never move.