THE UNDERCURRENT OF DEATH: An Interview with Julian Tepper
Early readers have already told me that this is a novel about coming to New York as an artist and what it takes to succeed. Believe it or not, I wasn’t thinking about that all too much.
Claire Hopple
Claire Hopple is the author of five books. Her fiction has appeared in Wigleaf, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Peach Mag, Forever Mag, and others. She’s the fiction editor at XRAY. She grew up in the woods of Pennsylvania and currently lives in Asheville, NC.
THE DOCKMASTER MUST NEVER SEE THIS by Claire Hopple
Gretchen starts with ditching her cell phone. She connects a landline and absconds with an old friend’s answering machine.
She receives a message from a wrong number telling her to meet at a houseboat by the river tomorrow at nine. The voice doesn’t specify whether that’s A.M. or P.M. She plays the message over and over, repulsed.
The following day, she settles on a bench beside the river. There’s only one boat. It’s docked directly in view of the casino. It’s not a houseboat. Not at all. Regardless, this must be the place.
Hampered by the stranger’s lack of specificity and not yet emboldened enough to track down her hunch, she decides that he meant nine at night, not nine in the morning like it is right now.
Gretchen doesn’t go home. She continues to sit on the bench. She stares at a patch of dormant grass and tries not to think very deeply about its symbolism.
A breeze kicks up from the water. She puts her fingers on her neck to warm them, which feels like being mean and nice to herself at the same time. Maybe she is canceling herself out.
There’s a doughnut cart over by the playground. She stands down from her station for reinforcements and fraternizes with the pigeons by feeding them crumbs.
Finally, it’s time. Gretchen enters what is meant to be the living room, bringing a wake of her own.
“The dockmaster must never see this,” a man says from the ground.
He stops blinking away the blood from a gash on his forehead.
“You’re still alive? I wasn’t sure,” Gretchen says.
“Tell it to the buoys.”
According to the vinyl beside him, he wasn't the only victim. A mangled ball python lies on torn cushions.
“Can it be cured?” he asks, gesturing to the snake but not moving very much.
She wasn’t sure if by “cured” he meant made into meat or healed. She doesn’t answer.
There are so many ways to make it clear that a visitor doesn’t belong, she thinks, and one of them is not using customary specifics when requesting said visitor in the first place, even if the message was intended for someone else. She could have arrived before it was too late. Still, she almost wishes she could decipher the architecture of helpfulness.
He looks like one giant and triumphant recessive gene lying there on the floor like that. He probably studies escape routes of public buildings.
The man keeps shouting at her, “I keep shouting at you!”
But then he reaches a more suitable volume. He volunteers that he used to be a tightrope walker.
“How did you do it?” Gretchen asks.
“I could tell you, but it’s much more interesting to learn how you do it,” he says.
His small table holds what looks like a framed portrait of a slice of rhubarb pie.
“I used to think I wanted to be inconspicuous about my work. Like the daytime moon. Now I know I’ve always yearned to be caught. I can tell you’re the same way. And yet you’ve failed me,” he says, trying to get up.
Failing people. This is the sort of thing she can do.
“I know what you’re getting at,” she says.
The man seems to already know about her. She does want to be reprimanded, but the only people who notice her are the people who don’t seem to mind.
“Look, there’s a horde of angry civilians peering in the portholes and murmuring at us right now.”
There isn’t.
“Do you want...a bandaid?” she manages. “Or an MRI?” she tries again.
A woman joins them below deck and sets down her purse. Her name tag says: LUCKY.
“That student government your son is involved with, it’s really just a puppet regime,” Lucky says.
She sits down on the flayed cushions, right on top of the snake carcass, and unties her shoes.
GRIP by Claire Hopple
Let us tell you about Louise. At the moment we started to really pay attention, she was stuck behind a vehicle that read “Criminal Transport Unit - Dept. of Corrections” on the highway.When traffic cleared and she finally made it to the park, she was handed a universal key to all the glass showcases by her father.“Add more furnishings to the blue-tongue skink cage,” he said, gesturing toward an open box on a picnic table.Louise pulled what looked to be a mini tiki hut and micro lounge chairs out of the box and headed toward the showcases. The skinks did not seem to react to the new arrangement, though Louise thought it could’ve been because they were far too large to fit into the chairs.Here she was working with her father and living with her father and somehow her brother Bill had made it all the way to Colorado, even if he was transporting dead bodies for a living.Naturally, he loved to tell everyone about picking up Joe Cocker’s body, who passed away on December 22, 2014 in a place called Crawford, Colorado, population 431.“Too many cigarettes,” Bill always said, like he and Joe were buds.Just as Louise noticed how the park pavilion smelled exactly like camp in some murky way, her father came back over.“If things get...if they go...if things become cumbersome today, the code word’s sarsaparilla,” he garbled.She opened her mouth to reply and he said “what” in a way that wasn’t really a question and she said “nothing,” but it was really that if something actually went down today, she would panic and not remember any real, helpful words let alone any code words, especially one like sarsaparilla.He was off to prep the leopard geckos. She wasn’t allowed to touch them because they could lose their tails if handled too roughly.Sure, Louise was offended that her father thought she wasn’t up for a task like that, but she was also relieved. One of the leopard geckos had this pendulous tumor that she couldn’t help staring at.This party was for some family friends of theirs. Mitchell, the father of Chase the birthday boy, used to be the older kid on the block when Louise was at her most aesthetically vulnerable.She noted that she’d first seen him practice-making-out with a front door screen, and now she was watching him unclasp his son from a carseat.Even these days, he would take his glasses off and Louise found that looking at his actual eyeballs would be this very personal thing. He would seem naked in a way that was more naked than nakedness, and she couldn’t look at him but also couldn’t not look at him. The crash was more of a beginning than an ending. In the early party pandemonium, no one saw who did it. But the smashed cage was a reality nonetheless.The Pacman frog’s cage was shattered, though it looked like he (she? it?) had escaped. Of course, the amphibian with “an easygoing nature ideal for a life of captivity” was the one set free. We had witnessed Louise do a little research of her own on these creatures, though we’re not sure exactly why she wanted to impress her own dad.A pink Post-it lay beside the glass with the words:For E.G.As if the destructive behavior were lovingly devoted to this person.Well, that was what we called the tipping point for Louise. A crowd had formed. She turned the moment into a confessional.“I have a habit of stealing phone books off of my neighbors’ stoops,” she began.We knew this, and the neighbors did too, but they were so thankful they didn’t have to dispose of them that they didn’t say a word.“I stack them in the basement closet that houses the water heater,” she continued.She was losing them.“I - I think it’s because things have gotten out of hand. I was fired. The woman who replaced me was supposedly hired just because the CEO hit her with his Range Rover while she was crossing the street. This phone book collection is my only grip on life.”There was a pause.“Well, we all knew that,” said her father from somewhere in the group.She didn’t know what to make of this.The glass shards fell through the slits in the picnic table, landing somewhere just behind her and the memory of her pride.As soon as we heard her outward yearning we knew no more exotic animal birthday fun would be had that day.We found that Louise had reached that point in adulthood where she thought everyone flying planes and cutting people open should be older than her, but they were not. Not always.Meanwhile, she spent her time doing things like compiling lists of words that were rarely unpaired. Like how nothing ever seems to “spurt” except blood.That, and we knew for a fact she was waiting out the crinkly man four houses down. He was bound to die soon or at least move into a home, and she was preparing a way for them both. She thought he had no mortgage or family left and that this would work out for her. She helped him paint his siding three weeks ago and we think she was really helping herself.Anyway, it was easy for us to see that her one regret in life was not just one but multiple. And that maybe she was secretly hoping that we were all axolotls, who have cannibalistic tendencies but if bitten, can regenerate their body parts over time.
THIS IS GONNA BE GOOD by Claire Hopple
“Do you know where Bernie is?” a stranger asked the man as he was headed in to change.
“Not sure. I think I saw him in the parking lot a minute ago,” said the man, trying to be helpful to the stranger even though he was technically a stranger.
“Who’s Bernie?” the stranger then asked.
“I thought you were looking for Bernie. How can you be looking for him if you don’t know who he is?”
“Why can’t I be looking for someone I don’t know?”
The man had had enough. He went inside to change for his shift so he wouldn’t be late. Coming back out to the main room in full garb, he saw Bernie picking a bandaid off the plaque in the corner. It read: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH, was engraved and everything, but was screwed into the wall high enough so that it was unclear what one wasn’t supposed to touch. The bandaid was covering the word “NOT” rather defiantly.
“I think that was someone from the Association,” said Bernie.
The bandaid was flapping at the edge of his middle finger, successfully dislodged from the plaque. Bernie peeked at the gauze portion to see if it was used before tossing it into the trash.
“The Association?”
“Yes, The Association for Living History Farm and Agricultural Museums. Those guys.”
The man didn’t know such an association existed, had just started this job a few months ago, but didn’t want to rankle Bernie even more by asking followup questions.
“This place is not in shape for visits from the Association. This could be bad. I don’t want to end up like the settlement. You know what happened to Todd at Jamestown.”
The man tried not to remember what happened to Todd at Jamestown. It was Bernie’s standard cautionary tale for when anything went wrong.
He knew what this was really about. Tourists would rather drive eight miles out of the way to visit the wildlife refuge than come here. There, exotic animals appeared unencumbered by civilization. Their labyrinthine pathways seemed especially natural and created a pleasant plume of dirt when you scuffed your feet along them.
The man visited once but didn’t want to go back. The animals looked mutinous and the humans hypnotic. He had found a cage marked “Horned Viper” that appeared empty and struggled not to apply any meaning to it. Push pop carapaces littered the paths. Maybe we should be handing out push pops, the man thought.
*
Power lines buzzed above him on his way to the coffee shop. The buzzing forced him to imagine what impulses were being carried across right then, directly over his head. He entered, ordered, found a nice table near the wall of windows at the front. Outside, a woman was telling a rather animated story to her friend on the bench up against the window. She was gesturing high enough to look like she was reaching to give the man a high five.
He unceremoniously gulped his to-go cup and waited. The sleeve on the cup kept slipping and he thought about the frustrating nature of gravity, but also wondered why the barista had given him a portable cup rather than a mug. Did she expect him to leave?
He was not leaving. He was meeting a manager or director of some sort from an in-home aide service.
The man’s father was not doing well. In fact, the man was pretty sure his father was gradually becoming a recluse. His father had mentioned something about conch shells, how he could hear the sound of muffled waves just as clearly from pressing a mug to his ear as he could from a shell found near the wave’s end. At the time, he figured his father was just lonely or perhaps becoming a poet. He thought about getting him a no-nonsense pet, something that didn’t require a lot of maintenance, like a turtle. But the pets that require the least amount of maintenance also seem to provide the least amount of comfort.
Plus, the turtle was sure to outlive his father. And what was the man ultimately going to do with a turtle once his father passed, especially one that he indirectly inherited from himself?
The man wasn’t sure about the in-home care thing since his father was in very good physical condition. He didn’t know if reclusive tendencies was a box you could check on a form. But mental health is just as important, he thought.
And people talk about nervous breakdowns but maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. If you lean into it, accept the madness creeping over you, maybe it can be a peaceful adjustment. Like slipping into warm bath water. Like the gradual murk clouding the waters in a turtle tank.
She was late.
Being a historical interpreter mostly meant advising visitors to hold on to the railing along the stairs. Telling kids as well as adults, “Everyone has to hold on. No one is above hanging on.”
It also meant trying to fuse history with the present to a horde of students on field trips and retirees finally able to travel. And they came to this vaguely colonial site to hear about farming practices and blacksmithing techniques while the jake brakes of semis shuddered on the overpass. A submissive, sonorous percussion giving into the slope.
The man had applied, desperate for a way out of a misleading corporate position. He had been told travel would take up around 25% of his time but it was actually closer to 40%. The man’s ears kept popping and clogging from elevation changes to the point where he could no longer hear what went on in the meetings, the ones the company thought were worth flying the man hundreds of miles to attend, 40% of the time.
He suspected he landed this job with absolutely no interpreting experience merely because he was a man. With no battle scenes to reenact and no weapons to wield, the staff was mostly made up of women. Guys thought the big show was in Williamsburg. But these women wielded plowshares and ironwork and could maintain the fields far better than he could.
Some of the reenactors used to be street performers and some thought they deserved to slough off the first few letters entirely, transforming purely into actors.
The only other male on staff was Ames, an aspiring magician, who practiced tricks when things were slow. The man wasn’t impressed with his tricks. They were sloppy and unrehearsed. And also because what doesn’t disappear? What doesn’t eventually dissolve on its own?
Ames fumbled through stunts. He muttered things like, “I’ll get the hang of it. It’s just muscle memory. Like learning guitar.” But he wasn’t improving. Ames would say things like “This is gonna be good,” and “Wait, we’re getting to the good part,” which totally diffused any possibility for goodness in the impending act.
Muscle memory isn’t always ideal, the man kept to himself. Isn’t it just practicing an action over and over until it’s automatic? So that if every action were purely muscle memory, your whole life would be forgotten before it’s even gotten? The man thought about all of this while he nodded to Ames, polished the spinning wheel display.
*
The man had come to expect two things from his father. First, he wasn’t going to let an aide swing by his home a few days a week. This was less of a suspicion and more of a reality, since his father had already kicked out the aide within the first hour. Second, his father wasn't going to go out into the world anymore, but he could let some of the more entertaining parts of the world in.
So he drove Ames out to the house, switching out his straw farmer hat for a tall black one. They parked next to his father’s overly reinforced mailbox. His father understood the importance of mail but also understood the power of baseball bats and midnight teenage angst.
He made Ames tuck his long hair into a skinny ponytail. Ames had that mangled look caused by hair that’d been dyed for decades, like split and dried firewood stacked indoors. Just like the man’s mother used to have.
A song played on the radio in the car but it didn’t sound right. After listening for a few seconds, the man realized what was off about it. This song had become such a popular choice for karaoke that the original now sounded like a remake. No squeals or squawks or jumbled lyrics. It stuck out precisely because it was performed so cleanly.
The man gave Ames an encouraging pat on the shoulder before shutting off the engine and opening the door.