Saint Calvin the Cannibal is a novel about a man who, deceived into eating his father's remains to survive when stranded in the Arctic, suffers a subsequent mental breakdown and goes on a string of adventures throughout the state of Texas. Available from lulu.com June 26, 2023.
CHAPTER
5
The
funeral of Okie Puckett, and two startling revelations.
†
Calvin
was relieved to have hold of such clarity when he attended his
father’s proper funeral in Oklahoma City. He was glad to feel both
deeply saddened and oddly satisfied that Okie Puckett would have a
decent burial and not one improvised by a hapless park ranger amid
rocks and wild scavengers.
Despite
being his father’s birthplace and the site of his formative years,
Oklahoma City was completely foreign to Calvin. Okie had never taken
him there, not even during his childhood when Okie was still part of
the family unit. Upon driving through what was, to Calvin, a bustling
city, he wondered if the town had any local orchestras, or at least
chamber music ensembles, for which he could audition. His
contrabassoon was never allowed to gather dust, but he knew both he
and the instrument would require vigorous refreshment should Oklahoma
City offer some kind of musical opportunity; nights spent playing the
music of Beethoven and the contemporary likes of the Foo Fighters and
the Airborne Toxic Event brought him comfort and mental exercise, but
were a far cry from the lengthy hours he’d rehearsed with great
focus in his teenage years.
Though
Calvin was joyed to have regained a semblance of aspirations again,
his mood quickly became sullen and jumbled as he endured his father’s
funeral. He knew next to no one who attended, but was sure that among
them must have been some notable figures, or once-notable, in Texas
politics. It was also not lost on him that many attendees were likely
loose acquaintances from Okie’s pre-Texas days, lured to the event
mainly by the surprising fame his death had spawned. News of his
bitter cold end and his son’s subsequent rescue had been the stuff
of feature stories in western Canada; Calvin had done his best to
pretend not to notice the camera crew filming his limp to the plane
at the airport.
The
funeral service itself was a traditionally Baptist one, which itself
brought the grown orphan to tears, knowing his father had accepted no
Christian doctrine before his death. Thus the hymns sung could give
Calvin no peace this morning, only bitter and humorless irony, and
the knowledge that Okie assessed himself too vile for even the
all-powerful and omnipotent Almighty to redeem him. Of all the vices
with which Calvin could identify most, and therefore the one he most
despised, was the sin of self-loathing.
The
sight of his father’s discolored, made-up face in his casket
summoned the far-away chills of the Yukon to again grip his spine.
He’d been told the damage done to his father’s body by animals
was concentrated mostly in the taking of his liver, thus completely
hidden by the charcoal suit in which Okie was stiffly placed. Still,
the artificiality and wax-like appearance of his face only compounded
the absolute absence of life behind the eyes sealed shut by a
mortician’s glue.
Calvin
had little input in the planning of the funeral, being too focused on
his own physical and mental recovery. Most of it was taken care of by
Sam Puckett, his father’s older brother and business partner. It
was fitting, as Sam had been much more of a presence in Calvin’s
growing years than his brother had. Calvin sometimes suspected that
his father had dispatched his brother to bring various Christmas
gifts and appear for spontaneous visits as a way to live vicariously
through him, so he might feel less guilt over his absence. But there
were other times when Calvin felt his uncle’s concern for his
nephew and sister-in-law to be genuine, more than that of an
ambassador for a deadbeat, given Sam’s amiable personality.
Sam
Puckett, despite being a native Oklahoman himself, and despite never
having appropriated “being Texan” the way his brother had,
possessed a much more boisterous manner and Texas-esque swagger than
Okie could ever hope to emulate. He ate steak or pork with every
meal, wore a brown, starched Homburg hat that, when removed in the
company of ladies and clergy, revealed a shock of slicked-back white
hair drenched in Vitalis; he always smelled of cologne and pipe
tobacco, possessed a handshake of Herculean grip, was incapable of
using words ending in “-ing” without dropping the g,
routinely swore, owned a horse stable, and even rode and bred them;
he owned not one but two cabinets full of rifles, underwent some
variation of a medical procedure for his heart every few years, and
married a Sunday school teacher from Galveston. They had no children,
as, owing to the Texan forces that had taken hold of the tall, broad
man from Oklahoma, Sam had been injured when a rogue fishing hook
pierced his loins, permanently compromising his reproductive ability.
Calvin
would sometimes think of the injury and, being fair to his lively and
loud uncle, surmised that his inability to have children of his own
was the reason for his attempts to establish a rapport with his only
nephew. But it was a hopelessly awkward situation of course, his own
brother having deserted the family for a life of politics, prison,
and chicken-fried steak.
Notwithstanding,
Calvin felt a warmth in his heart, something more to distract from
the lingering frost of the Yukon, when his uncle Sam insisted on
taking him to a large steak-and-etc. restaurant after the funeral.
The one thing Calvin had imposed on the service was that there be no
post-burial pot luck; despite eating at every gathering being a
staple of Baptist culture, Calvin felt that to do so immediately
after committing a box of mortal remains to the earth was less than
tactful.
The
restaurant was quite what one would expect from a Mid-Southern steak
emporium, catering to tourists and sightseers with the overdone
novelty of Old West imagery. The hostesses wore faux Stetsons and
long skirts of cow-hide print; a trio of middle-aged minstrels roamed
from table to table playing the violin (that is, the fiddle) and a
pair of acoustic guitars; the wood plank floor was intentionally
creaky, reminiscent of what a saloon of antiquity might sound like in
movies (indeed the doors of the dining area were fashioned like the
swinging double doors of Old West watering holes). The restaurant was
so spacious that in its center was a full-sized carousel of porcelain
horses for children. Near the carousel was a special table, raised
above the others, the place of honored guests who took on the
challenge to finish the 72-ounce steak meal in less than an hour; if
they could achieve this feat, the steak and all its sides would be
free of charge (though, to prevent the impoverished and starved from
wolfing down a free meal every day, challengers were required to pay
for the meal before attempting it; they would be refunded if they
succeeded).
The
tacky charm of the restaurant reminded Calvin of a similar placed
he’d visited with his mother and father in happier times, the Big
Texan in Amarillo. Even as an eight-year-old, Calvin couldn’t help
comparing the Big Texan restaurant and tourist trap to his father –
it aggressively exuded Texas, yet it rang hollow, pandering to
out-of-towners, an imitation of what non-Texans would expect the
region to be. And though this particular steak place was in Oklahoma,
it made the same risible effort as the late elder Puckett. Calvin
felt weak as he and Uncle Sam were seated; he held back the sting of
tears, not wanting to ruin a steak dinner for his uncle with a
maudlin display.
Upon
examining the menu, Calvin was struck by the sight of the delicious
bird that saved his life in the frigid Yukon – the coveted
pheasant. Though his mouth immediately began to water at the photo of
an immaculately prepared platter of pheasant meat, Calvin was
unprepared to encounter the bird again so soon after his father’s
memorial.
He
was shaken from his funereal trance by Uncle Sam’s booming
observations about the menu. Sam Puckett, calling Calvin “Joe” as
his father had always done, remarked with amusement and disdain what
everyone else in the restaurant already knew, that the presentation
echoed a cheesy Western from what was called the Golden Age of
Hollywood, and as Sam mused, a Roy Rogers Western at that, lacking
the muscle and rugged swagger of a John Wayne or Clint Eastwood film.
Somehow,
Uncle Sam’s boisterous presence, his obliviously uncouth and loud
demeanor instilled a bit of courage in Calvin, steeling his resolve.
This moved him to shun his hesitation at ordering a plate of juicy
pheasant. He suddenly felt the discovery of a succulent dish could be
seen as a small, unlikely blessing that came from the tragedy he’d
just suffered. He’d lost a father, but gained a new favorite fowl.
Though,
when Calvin told the waiter (clad in a cowboy hat and leather chaps)
that he would have the pheasant plate, Uncle Sam combined a unique
string of curse words and insisted he order at least a 32-ounce steak
in addition to the bird, to offset the inherent Yankee daintiness of
such a meal. His appetite growing by the minute, Calvin readily and
happily obeyed his uncle.
When
their abundance of meat, potatoes, corn, and okra arrived some time
later, Sam drawled a blessing over the meal, blessing even the bird
he held in derision for, he prayed, soaring majestically, in an
attempt to escape the bullet of the hunters, admiring the fight it
may have put up when it was grabbed by the fowlers to be caged,
thanking the Almighty for giving the pheasant the nerve to make a
valiant effort to flee its captors; Sam also asked the Lord to have
mercy on the bloody hands of those who’d been given the unenviable
task of slaying the cattle they were about to eat, to give the
slaughterhouse workers the peace to sleep that night, despite knowing
they’d slain such beautiful animals.
Calvin,
being used to such lengthy prayers, though not quite as bombastic as
this one, was patient during his uncle’s exclamation of grace. But
when he finished, Calvin relished putting his fork into the tender
pheasant that lay on the plate before him. Before he could bring it
to his mouth, however, Uncle Sam interrupted, thundering an
earth-shattering question with strange Mid-Southern informality –
he asked Calvin if his father ever told him he had a sister.
His
nephew frozen in bewilderment, Sam told the story, still intently
chewing his food, of how Okie had fallen in lust with a pen pal he’d
encountered while incarcerated. After his release, Okie had
immediately traveled to Waco, where the woman lived, where they
fornicated to consummate their desires. Several months later, a baby
girl was born to the woman (who Sam vaguely recollected to be named
Tammy), three months premature, and almost died, but overcame the
adversity of being a “preemie” and lived to be named Kathy.
The
room began to tilt and sway; given the enormity of both the
restaurant and the sudden revelation of a hitherto unheard-of sister,
he felt as if he and the entire building were tumbling into a
bottomless void. The spinning carousel in the corner of his eye
seemed like a blur.
Uncle
Sam continued, not missing a beat in the voracious rhythm of his
chewing, that the girl Kathy was about twenty years old now and still
lived in Waco. Sam relayed all this so casually in his speech, his
eyes never leaving his rapidly-emptying plate, except one brief
moment when the clatter of a dropped dish caused him to look up and
give a charming wink to the embarrassed server who’d dropped it.
Calvin
was in too deep a stupor to notice the sound of the dish, or how
nonchalantly his uncle was revealing such an explosive story. He
absently began putting piece after piece of fried okra in his mouth,
giving each piece a perfunctory chewing before forcing it down his
throat with a strained swallow. It was as if he’d developed a
sudden nervous tic that required constant chewing to avoid an attack
of hyperventilation.
His
mouth occupied by okra, Calvin forced the question from his mouth if
this half-sister knew of his existence. Sam replied, as offhandedly
as he’d told the rest of the tale, that she too had only learned
her half-brother a few days ago, when Sam contacted her to inform her
of her biological father’s death.
Calvin
was drawn out of his daze and brought back to the humming, crowded
restaurant with a string of questions: why had he never been told of
this Kathy? Did Calvin’s mother know? Had Kathy ever met Okie
Puckett? If so, how often? Was Kathy a believer in Christ? If so, was
she of any particular denomination?
Uncle
Sam, having just polished off his entire steak, finally seemed aware
of the shock his story had caused his nephew. He reached across the
table and gripped Calvin’s forearm, imploring him to take a deep
breath and calm himself, speaking in a gentle but firm tone as if
commanding an unruly horse. He explained there was no need to be
jealous, that Okie was as scarce a presence in his bastard daughter’s
upbringing as he’d been in his son’s.
Calvin
was snapped completely out of his shock now, thanks to Sam’s
assumption that Calvin would have been jealous if his father had
taken more of an interest in his daughter. While he indignantly
protested such a notion (despite knowing it to be a fair assumption),
his uncle interrupted and continued the story: philandering Okie
distanced himself from the girl and her mother not long after she’d
given birth, and moved away from Waco as soon as his parole
conditions allowed for it, overcome with guilt at what he’d done. A
monthly sum of child support was arranged, and (usually) paid on
time. To Sam’s understanding, he did visit the girl Kathy on
occasion, and once even took her to the Six Flags amusement park
(this didn’t fail to sting Calvin, as he’d never been to an
amusement park of any kind). But Sam added that any relationship
between father and love-child had been only obligatory.
Sam
was aware enough of his nephew’s dismay to add an aside at how
disappointed he’d been in his brother.
As
for Deborah Puckett, Sam revealed that she’d indeed been aware of
Okie’s “other family,” if one could reach far enough to call it
that, given his sparse interaction with them. Sam himself had told
Deborah Puckett of the affair, oddly enough at the cowardly request,
Sam said, of his brother, not being able to confess his infidelity on
his own accord. Deborah, Sam was sure to add, had taken the bombshell
with a great degree of dignity; she didn’t burst into tears or
smash any household objects in rage. But she did, Sam explained,
refrain from telling Calvin about the ordeal – and swore Sam to do
the same, reasoning it must be Okie to confess all to his son.
Unfortunately, he never did.
When
Calvin asked why he was being told of his half-sibling’s existence
now, Sam explained that Calvin’s inheritance, and his own
conscience, were the reasons: Okie had left a part of his estate to
Kathy, of course meaning Calvin’s share of the life insurance
payoff would not be as abundant as it would have been had he been an
only child (which he had been until twenty minutes ago, Calvin
thought dizzily). Sam didn’t want his nephew to think he’d
short-changed him in the distribution of his father’s money.
Uncle
Sam added that he felt it simply wasn’t right to leave Calvin in
the dark concerning his flesh and blood, given that both his mother
and father were no longer able to let him in on such a scandalous
secret.
As
for Kathy’s religious beliefs, Uncle Sam had nary a clue; he did
mention that, when he called her, her ringback music was the pop
classic “Jesus Take the Wheel,” but other than that he had no
information to give concerning her faith. He produced a scrap of
paper from his wallet, on which were written Kathy Campbell’s
street address and phone number in jagged cursive. The sight of the
name, seeing it visually and handling it with his fingers, was the
final exhibit solidifying as fact the outrageous story that had just
burst upon him in a tacky steak restaurant in Oklahoma City.
Calvin
put the piece of paper containing proof of his half-sister’s
existence in his coat pocket. He’d been brought back to solid
ground, so to speak, and was suddenly more hungry than anything else,
perhaps subconsciously desiring to devour the emotion of the past
half-hour. He cut a generous portion of pheasant, his mind just
recovered enough to anticipate, with joy and a bit of anxiety, the
succulent taste. Calvin chewed one piece thoroughly. Then another
piece, and another. Each successive bite was chewed slower and
slower, and accompanied by more and more disappointment, followed by
a creeping revulsion.
The
pheasant on his fork tasted nothing like what he’d eaten in the
Yukon.
CHAPTER
6
Calvin
appears on television, and other noteworthy
events
in his post-rescue life, including becoming a meme.
†
Calvin
reasoned within himself for the next week, conjuring many
explanations for why the pheasant he’d eaten on American soil was
not been at all similar, in neither taste or texture, from the
pheasant he’d been fed by the woefully inept tour guide in Canada:
the change in altitude and temperature, the shock of having just
learned about a half-sister, the particular breed of pheasant, all
could explain the vast gulf of difference.
He
went so far as to order a variety of other pheasant meats via the
internet. To his dismay, none of them tasted slightly like the meat
he’d eaten and savored in the cold, flimsy tent in the Yukon.
When
he made the grand step of ordering a batch of pheasant from that
specific area, Calvin flirted with the notion that Bryson, not being
an exceptionally adept or expert outdoorsman, had simply
misidentified the bird. Calvin researched the other species that
dwelt in that part of Canada: geese, ducks, pigeons, doves, and more.
He would have been very displeased at having eaten a dove, that bird
being a symbol of the Holy Spirit and thus having a special
significance for Calvin, but he knew God would understand that he’d
been on the verge of death (and moreover, that it was no sin to eat a
dove in the first place). Even so, consuming a dove was a far better
scenario than the one that increasingly haunted every hour of his
day.
Calvin
set out to taste as many edible birds as possible, spending hundreds
and hundreds of dollars, and it seemed just as many hours, obsessing
over finding a bird – any bird, any edible creature with wings and
capable of flight – whose meat held the unique taste as what he’d
eaten before. But the taste evaded him, save for in his memory. He
could never forget such a distinct taste no matter how he tried. He
felt nauseous and chilled to the core when he faced the only answer
as to why what he’d devoured so hungrily in the Arctic had tasted
nothing like pheasant, nor any other bird under the sun.
Calvin
was so consumed with the search for the perfect fowl that he wasn’t
in the least intrigued, excited, or gobsmacked when a television
station in Dallas reached out to him and invited him to share his
harrowing experience via media.
He
moved almost robotically as he had his suit dry-cleaned, prepared a
paper manuscript of The
Elusive Tangerine to
give to any interested media personnel, and drove seventy miles south
to Dallas on an unextraordinary Tuesday morning, doing all this as
someone whose life was completely unruffled.
Calvin
arrived to the studio with the 416-page manuscript, double spaced,
concealed under his coat, and kept it held against his body by
keeping his left arm pressed against his side. It was an awkward
stance, but he could disguise it as being the effects of a stiff arm
recovering from some dreadful effect of the Yukon. His limp from
losing three toes to frostbite was certainly not exaggerated, and he
reasoned it would take away attention from the bulky bundle of paper
he concealed. Before long, Calvin began to perspire with the strain
of holding the heavy manuscript so awkwardly against his side with
one arm, but he would have been greatly embarrassed carrying a big,
fat piece of his own work; it would have revealed how desperate he
was for anyone in the TV station with possible connections to
publishers to take it and become engrossed in the Russian Civil War
drama.
In
the makeup chair, Calvin felt even more self-conscious, as any
first-timer on television would. He timidly asked the makeup artist
to conceal the now-maroon frostbite scars on his cheeks, though he
requested she use as little powder and goop as possible in doing so.
The makeup artist, however, responded that her instructions from the
producers were the opposite – to highlight the facial wounds. When
Calvin gathered the courage to ask the cosmetic technician if she
might put some temporary dye in his beard, to conceal some of the
premature gray that speckled it, she again declined, explaining that
doing so what be against her instructions to enhance and emphasize
the apparent effects of the icy ordeal Calvin had endured. Calvin’s
vanity rose and his pride sank as the makeup artist observed that the
white in his otherwise auburn beard, no doubt a bodily chemical
response to trauma and grief, lent him a snowy look, as she phrased
it, that fit the desired aesthetic. Calvin grumbled in response,
under his breath, that his words could have just as well painted a
picture of his experience.
For
someone on live television for the first time in his life, he was
rather listless and lethargic as he sat next to a stunningly
attractive news anchor named Maria Garter. Calvin, who endued the
aura of a deflated balloon, was a study in contrast next to the
olive-complected woman with bright blue eyes and clad in a crisp red
blazer. Calvin didn’t fail to notice this on the monitor, the sight
of which made him exhale with despondency. No one would want to buy
the rights to a novel written by such a disheveled author, he thought
sadly: a depressed author is difficult for publishers to market, he
reasoned, and such a one’s picture would look quite unappealing on
the dust jacket. But after all he’d been through, the only version
of himself he could present was a version that looked as though it
had been plucked from a landfill.
Calvin
snapped out of his trance of self-pity when Maria Garter introduced
him in a voice that matched her vibrant appearance. Her countenance
slowly fell, however, as her guest began to tell his story, before
her prompting, and without proper segue; he gruffly described his
late father as a philanderer with delusions of adventure to
compensate for a life of lies and failure; Calvin assigned the rest
of the blame for the tragic expedition to Bryson the haphazard guide,
whom he described as a having all the outdoor savvy of Timothy
Treadwell.
Maria
Garter’s bright expression darkened to a dull trance of her own,
almost mesmerized by the grim rehashing that flooded from the mouth
of her guest. She watched the slow train wreck, so to speak, as
Calvin let forth a guttural sigh clogged with phlegm and concluded
his dire tale with the epilogue that his father would find himself in
the flames of hell upon the day of his judgment.
Maria
Garter recovered her poise, on the surface at least, her experience
in front of a camera having taught her how to conduct herself in such
unexpected conditions. She put her hand on Calvin’s corduroy-clad
shoulder to punctuate the humanity of the moment. But before she
could improvise any sympathetic speech to bring the depressing
segment to a more sentimental mood, Calvin spontaneously announced,
in cold, blunt speech that he had unwittingly eaten his father’s
liver.
A
chilling hush fell over the studio, save for a bit of stuttering on
the part of Maria Garter, which could not be edited on a live noonday
broadcast. When she found her voice, she managed to offer that this
incident of eating a human organ, though most unfortunate, was not
uncommon in such desperate situations. She went so far as to cite
what became known as the Alive
incident (so called because of the shocking book and movie that
detailed the events), in which an airplane carrying a rugby team from
Uruguay crashed in the Andes Mountains, leaving the survivors no
choice but to consume the meat of the dead for sustenance. Calvin,
nonplussed, responded (or more aptly, wondered aloud) if the harrowed
rugby team slept better at night than he could, knowing the meat
they’d eaten had belonged to presumably better men than the
cowardly adulterer Okie Puckett.
At
this, Maria Garter, as steady as she’d been throughout most of the
interview, was finally lost for words flowery enough to shift the
tone of the discussion and change the atmosphere of the studio, which
was no doubt the same as the rooms of those watching all over the
Dallas-Fort Worth area. She decided to wrap up the interview as
gracefully as she could by asking Calvin if he had anything else to
say, perhaps words of advice for other amateur explorers who dare to
travel to such remote and harsh locations as the Arctic.
Calvin,
feeling the weight of his bulky manuscript, and the crinkling of a
single piece of paper in his pocket, made a decision and asked to
read the note he’d written to his dear, beloved Fidanka when he’d
been convinced he was at eternity’s door.
The
anchorwoman’s face softened with relief and sentimentality at such
a touching gesture, and she urged her downtrodden guest to bear his
heart and recite the words he’d written to his love. As Calvin
unfolded the letter, he let out another sigh, less accented with
throaty gurgling than his last, and remarked that the beauty of
Fidanka Kovachevski made even Maria Garter look like Vernon Dursley.
She glanced at the producers and crew, a subtly hurt expression on
her face.
Calvin’s
letter began by noting that he’d never called Her Excellency by her
first name in his previous letters; the anchor and others watching
took this to mean he’d always referred to her by some pet name in
their correspondence, as they had no idea who this Fidanka was. But,
Calvin continued, the circumstances under which he wrote this letter
allowed him to be so forward.
Maria
Garter was so moved that she forgot all about Calvin’s earlier
slight.
He
went on reading, the note expressing that the ostensibly dying author
had no wish to write about politics, but only to implore his apple’s
eye to hold her beauty sacred; not only her carnal beauty (which
Calvin extolled in a passage of honey-soaked prose, comparing her to
sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and any other celestial host one can
think of), but also the beauty she gave to the world by her words,
accompanied by dutiful deeds of honor and sincerity; he went on to
catalog a number of terrible sights common in the world that are
overshadowed by, he said, the radiance of her tireless work to shine
light in the darkest corners of civilization – a rusted oil
derrick, a crumbling Soviet monument, a mural marred by bullet holes,
and a slew of other grim images.
Maria
Garter and the surrounding television crew struggled to stifle their
tears. All except a gaffer, whose cheeks were soaking wet by the time
Calvin’s now-quivering voice lamented the bullet-riddled street
art. The letter concluded with the bittersweet epitaph that, should
Calvin never be so blessed to again look upon Fidanka’s face and
all the Slavic mysteries it held, he would close his eyes for the
final time in peace, knowing she would continue to, as the trite
expression goes, make the world a better place.
A
hush fell over the studio, a softer kind of quiet than the one that
befell them earlier, and everyone inside reeled from the rending of
Calvin’s heart. When Maria Garter was able to speak, she asked if
Fidanka was Calvin’s wife, to which he explained he had never met
her; that she was the recently outvoted president of a Balkan nation
whose position had been taken by, he scowled, the nefarious,
classless, ungracious means of a common cattle butcher.
When
the interview was awkwardly and hurriedly brought to a close, Calvin
shuffled aimlessly out of the studio. Maria Garter almost hurried
after him, but his posture convinced her anything she said to try to
encourage this man would only fall flat. As he slowly ambled down the
hallway, his limp reflecting his soul, he noticed a large trashcan.
His arm felt a wave of relief as he relinquished his grip on the
heavy manuscript he’d concealed for two hours, and carelessly
dumped it into the large waste bin.
Though
the letter Calvin read on the air had taken away the breath of all
who heard it, the romantic effect did not last. The story of Calvin’s
unwitting cannibalism became the focal point of his TV appearance.
Clips of Calvin rehashing the eating of his father, spliced with his
scathing description of Okie, soon went viral and eventually made the
rounds on hybrid comedy-news shows and podcasts, turning the very
real tragedy into a slice of schadenfreude.
Memes
inevitably followed and the internet was soon buzzing with graphics
of an unflattering still of Calvin in mid-speech during the
interview, with various sardonic and morbid captions:
“Can’t
wait to have Dad for Thanksgiving,” “How do you make a Dead Dad
Float? Two scoops of ice cream, two scoops of dead Dad,” and
one that featured a red glow superimposed over Calvin’s eyes, over
which the words, “I
have daddy issues” were
pasted, followed by
“Calvin Puckett has entered the chat.”
For
the time being, Calvin took the fifteen minutes of infamy in stride,
as he was such a jumble of emotions he didn’t possess the will
required to stay angry long enough to curse the faceless meme-lords
who relentlessly made his ordeal the butt of their jokes. He did
settle long enough to wonder, though, why Bryson the guide wasn’t
found and interviewed; his mountain man appearance fit the “psycho
cannibal” stereotype much better than Calvin’s, and it was
Bryson, after all, who’d instinctively known to go straight for the
corpse’s liver.
In the cacophony of intrusive
thoughts and existential musings, he could abide being the face of
the “Calvin the Cannibal” meme. He did, however, find himself
fighting the thought that he should have shared his manuscript on TV,
instead of his love letter to President Kovachevski. The notoriety
might have at least led to some interest in his sprawling war epic.
Calvin caught himself
regretting his decision more than once; each time, he deeply despised
the thought.
