Wagner, Descending: The Wrath of the Salmon Queen
by
Irving Warner
Fiction: Novel
SBN: 1-929355-17-3
Price: $16 (trade paperback) * 195 pages
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Irving Warner, whose collection of stories called
In Memory of Hawks, and Other Stories from Alaska was published by Pleasure Boat Studio in 1998, has come up now with a remarkable and wild novel about an obese man who escapes from an institution and is pursued by his billionaire mother, the so-called Salmon Queen. His mother has had him committed in order for him to lose some of the immense weight he's been carrying. Wagner, however, has other plans. He finds the extreme dieting to be maddening and inhuman, and he has nothing on his mind but getting out. If you can imagine a cross between
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Catcher in the Rye, you'll have some idea of the kinds of adventures Wagner experiences as he slices and dices his way across North Carolina.
It's not for everyone. This novel breaks rules of decorum and political correctness. It tears through most people's concepts of politeness the way Wagner's own vehicles tear through the North Carolina countryside. In doing so, however, Warner has taken the horrors of obesity and laid them bare on the pages of this book, darkly and spiritedly. Following is part of the first chapter of this most iconoclastic and hilarious story:
*From Wagner, Descending: The Wrath of the Salmon Queen:
They shouldn't have snared Wagner in the first place, but now that he'd escaped, he swore it would be a cold day in Pago Pago before they'd nab him again, the sons-of-bitches. And to stay escaped, Wagner's instincts urged him to steer the truck off the I-95 corridor. The key to a successful escape, he knew, was along the North Carolina back roads.
It was a trivial drawback that he'd never been a free soul in North Carolina, and was completely ignorant of the countryside. Yes, Wagner's practiced skills at getting out of terrible pickles made him feel sure he could score on some goddamned clothes. Which would be tricky business.
Even after 51 days in St. Finn Barr's-loathingly called St. Finnys by patients-Wagner still was a tad over 430 pounds.
Of course, he credited The Fix for that.
With Herr Direktor-Dr. Von
Bracken-and his toadies pumping syringe-loads of Sodium Anhydroxaline into Wagner, they'd managed to sweat off almost a hundred pounds in 51 days, the fuckers.
But still, for an escapee of Wagner's physical stature, acquiring clothes on the run was going to present a challenge. Wagner indulged himself a Cheshire smirk, then took a lusty hold on the steering wheel of the Oh-So-Recently-Ripped-Off laundry truck.
It had been a brilliant improvisational escape-testifying to Wagner's vigilance and presence of mind. Certainly, it stuffed a deserved plate of crow down the gullets of St. Finny's staff, and of course the driver of the truck. Still, Wagner's drama was a long read from the third act and success-in fact, to be precise, 3,900 miles from his residence, a.k.a. "Swine Wallow," in Anchorage, Alaska. Well, the first hurdle was to get hell out of North Carolina's primitive jurisdiction where commitment laws were still medieval.
The Salmon Queen had used them well, goddamn her-his own mother.
He checked the rear view mirror, then pointed the box-shaped vehicle towards a narrow off-ramp. Bringing it from 85 down to 25 caused a thump, followed by a worrisome shifting of the truck's cargo. Yet Wagner held it tightly into the curve that whipped motorists around 120 degrees beneath an overpass. Though the techno-trash who engineered the off-ramp did so from professional angst-to promote ugly accidents-he managed the maneuver without mucking out. Stacking the damned truck up would definitely put a kink in his plans.
Wagner made it to be about an hour before dark, and he found himself navigating through terrain steeped in rural Gothic. It was cast in long shadows. On both sides of the road were sprawling stands of scrub pines and nothing more. One minute there had been concrete interstate, then voila, timbered wastes.
The road was new, yet narrowed to two lanes without shoulders. Wagner's editorial olfactories caught the scent of the politically rank: Somewhere close an influential politician owned a chicken plant, turpentine mill, or opium greenhouse. What else could explain the outlay of federal highway dollars for such a superfluous exit on I-95?
But until safe ground was reached, he could no longer be Eyes and Ears for the Northern Socialist Review, his brainchild that had made life miserable for
fatcats and political parasites.
As an escapee from St. Finny's, what the hell did he care if some entrepreneurial maggot squandered taxpayer's money? For now, it suited Wagner's purposes to be cloaked in the North Carolina hullygullies-this obscure exit's presence was potent serendipitous medicine.
"Just go with it, Wagner; just go with it."
He sang this into the windshield as his escape grew stronger, and was working up a momentum hard to stop. He was miles from the broken down, wrought iron gate of St. Finny's. In fact, his intellectual curiosity, recovering from 51 days stunted by The Fix plus the frustration of involuntary commitment, was sprouting its usual rich crop of questions and ideas. Amongst other disciplines, Wagner was a student of regional folklore. He supposed this sylvan niche was peopled by genetic backcrosses heralding back to 1540.
After all, he wasn't in Alaska or even Washington State, where Euro-histories were comparatively infant. No, not at all. By contrast, Europeans along the eastern seaboard ran short of appropriate mates after six or seven generations of blood feuds and, when not making clandestine raids in the slave quarters, had fallen to intra-family humpings. By the time of the Revolutionary War, Wagner guessed that much of the present countryside was populated by people having extra body parts, and patches of hair growing from odd places.
But Wagner was concerned less about herds of abnorms as opposed to organized parties of cops, or, worse yet, Monarch Foods corporate security thugs. Jesus Christ, yes! It would be only a few more hours until the Salmon Queen's hounds would be hot on her first-born's trail. And the Chief Hound would be Colonel Younghusband, a chartered, Limey public school shithead if there ever were one.
Wagner managed the hearty laugh of the traditional villain, and announced to the windshield, "Clothes or no clothes, I'm a long-gone 430-pound motherfucker now."
Oh God! Wagner was a foul-talking/-thinking slab of humanity. He'd long ago adopted this snippet of personality ambiance from his grandfather. Obscenities and profanities discombobulated the Salmon Queen's social pretenses and Orthodox sense of decorum-dirty talk as a partial defense against her intelligence and dark, oriental femininity. Goddamned rights-it worked for both Grandfather and grandson.
During her initial visit to St. Finny's the Salmon Queen spent most of the time dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, musing on her eldest son's personality ironies and foibles. Of course, while doing this, she ignored the slight, semi-illegal detail (not to mention moral outrage) that she had directed Younghusband and his uncle/younger brother Oswald to deploy Monarch Food's security people to kidnap Wagner.
The corporate knuckle-draggers had surprised Wagner en flagrante with Crazy Sue in a Durham motel. Then the reptiles had stuffed him away in St. Finn Barr's padded rest stop for the Magnificently Rich, Fat, and Fucked-Up.
She of course, had denied using Crazy Sue as the lure to draw him into the legal sand trap that was North Carolina. Having dabbed all her mascara away, she reapplied it while lamenting, "One would never guess you had wonderful degrees in classics from Wanderlay College, the way you talk."
"Oh fuck Wanderlay. By the time anyone was a senior, half the goddamned faculty had sodomized them. A grand lot of buggers they were."
But that was fifty-two days ago, and Now was Now, and Then was Then, and fuck all.
Best to forget about the Then and get into this escape. And hell, while he was at it, he would do well to forget The Fix. Wagner would also forget about St. Finny's.
And forget about its staff.
Forget the sixty-plus moneyed abnorms who until just thirty minutes ago had been Wagner's co-sufferers, the poor miserable sots.
He brought the truck back up to a comfortable fifty mph along the humble secondary. Sunlight seeped through the stands of pines, filtering down to tawny stripes that painted narrow bands along the blacktop. He settled into the challenges ahead.
Wagner began with a list-a habit taught him during childhood-a part of all self-assessment activities. Lists clarified messy situations, after all, "Why else had things like the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly Sins come about?" his grandfather the Salmon King had claimed. So, now was time for a hell of a list:
(1) He should find out where he was, at least more specifically than simply North Carolina, probably a map would suffice;
(2) Clothes. Something better than St. Finny's smocks for
abnorms;
(3) Something to eat. He was hungry. He was really hungry. Goddamn, he was hungry.
(4) Ditch the truck and score on less conspicuous transportation than a stolen 2-1/2 ton laundry truck with giant red letters proclaiming WHISTLER'S INDUSTRIAL LAUNDRY AND DRY CLEANERS on three sides.
(5) Activate Escape Plan.
(6) Check on Lulu.
Wagner was getting into rearranging his list for maximum efficiency when the service door to the cargo bay slid open with a loud and abrupt WALLOOOOSSSP!, and Winslow whirled into the front compartment semi-free fall style. His still huge body slapped against the right hand double-door, ricochet with a sickening "THWAP," causing even the huge vehicle to shudder.
Goddamn! Wagner had almost forgotten about Winslow, the poor, miserable bastard!
The unfortunate man gulped at the air like a goldfish thrown out of its bowl-he grabbed at his pale, fleshy throat.
"Jesus, I'm going to be sick! Stop!"
Winslow slid the right-hand service door open before the truck rolled to a stop and hucked copiously onto the State of North Carolina's immaculate road. Wagner winced as he listened to the ghastly retchings.
Wagner amended and rearranged his list to read:
1) Get rid of Winslow.
With the rest following in as yet undecided order. Wagner's eyes narrowed as he noted Winslow's halfway-in/halfway-out position in the door. Hell, the answer to the Winslow question was close at hand.
"Winslow, you inconsiderate asshole, be sick completely out of the truck. Don't do things half-assed."
But Winslow clung to the handle, swaying back inside, gasping. "You'd leave me."
"And why the hell not?"
Wagner took off with a brutal jolt, sending Winslow on a bone-brutal return trip into the cargo area where he hoped he'd brain himself swan diving into the truck's iron chassis. Wagner shouted over his shoulder in the direction of his recently departed rider, "Winslow, you sorry fuck! It was my escape and you screwed up the purity of it. At the first opportunity, you're out, O-U-T, OUT, you understand?"
He heard Winslow wallowing, trying to regain his footing then his weak predictable rejoinder-a pathetic whine. The lucky bastard had soft-landed in the laundry.
"But it's my money."
After fifty-one days of The Fix on alternate days, plus being fed little more than would keep a pair of gerbil healthy, Wagner was in no mood for cloudy thinking. His shout took on a definite menace.
` "You loaned me the twenty-seven G's, motherfucker. When you loan somebody money, it is theirs, not yours. Understand? Or has The Fix sapped every solitary speck of gray matter from what's left of your confectionized brain?"
Winslow's mental degradation was a sad truth; Wagner should be more tolerant. The Fix frequently did heavy things to patient's mental faculties, and of all people at Finny's, Winslow had been there the longest-173 days. Allegedly, this pharmaceutical scrambling was temporary. But temporary or otherwise-upon checking in, Winslow had a Ph.D. in Particle Physics and weighed in at seven hundred pounds. Now the infirm bastard came in just under four hundred, but couldn't add, subtract nor recall with any reliability the names of his three children.
But sympathy and reflection had no place in what essentially was combat. Kindnesses meant nothing. What did convey meaning was that the hundreds and fifties in the cloth poke around Wagner's neck was his-not Winslow's. Wagner's innocuous looking pendant was access to Freedom From Want: A return north to the editorial offices of the Northern Socialist Review, and not inconsequentially Kokanee Joe's Special Denali Fried Chicken and Biscuit Superbucket anytime he felt like it.
Wagner had freedom in his sights, and goddamnit he wasn't about ready to allow a blob of mentally mangled humanity like Winslow to get in the way.
"Warner brings an amused world view and incisive understanding of the warped and funny aspects of all of us to this terrific novel. Buy it, read it, save it, reread it, but don't ever lend it out, you might not get it back."
-- John Hill, screenwriter of QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER
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