It was about three years before I heard from him again. I think deep down, even though he was just a homunculus, there had to be some kind of awareness how painful it all was for me. You can’t say it was empathy really, but kind of like when you’re agitated, your dog is agitated, that kind of thing—I think he knew to leave it alone for a bit. When I finally got the call, he said he was just checking in, nothing important, but if I was gonna be in town to see my father up the road sometime maybe I could stop by. I’d already planned to fly in for the July 4th weekend in three months (I didn’t tell him that), but I said sure, Mike, yeah, I can do that—I’ll let you know, OK?
Now when you live in a big city like Los Angeles, you think you want peace and quiet—that is, until you really get it. Then you start to chew your fingernails and it’s really too early to start drinking and you’ve already been outside for a nature walk and seen all the wildlife and someone says hey you seem really antsy so pretty soon you find a way to get in the car and just get rolling. I had almost sworn to myself I wasn’t going to go to Shawnee, Oklahoma ever again but I felt like I’d left a lot of that behind me and was ready to go there and see some of the old buildings downtown and even reminisce a little about some of the things that weren’t absolute suckage. The Charcoal Room at Van’s Pig Stand, if that was still there (or did they manage to fuck that up, too). The old train station—The Santa Fe Depot. That old western shop downtown, smelled like one-hundred-year-old leather in there—primarily because the shop was a hundred years old. But hell no, they don’t have the Charcoal Room anymore, downtown there’s only three shops left and Shepherd’s Menswear is hanging on by a thread—it’s a ghost town. I go a little farther down and Richard’s Rexall Drug is there, and so is Hamburger King, big exhale, OK, it’s not Planet of the Apes.
Check this out, though—Shawnee had once been a bustling place with a lot of money back in the twenties and had once even been in line to be the capital before statehood. They even built a governor’s mansion to lure the state congress or whatever you call it into picking Shawnee. But it had fallen on hard times and then they started building out by the interstate and moving out of downtown and then meth hit and it had reverted into just a little bedroom community at best and no one (at least the young people) could figure out why you wouldn’t just live 30 minutes up the road in Oklahoma City.
Now my grandpa told me that in this bustling place where he had once owned a pool hall (I only set foot in it once because it was just a front for his gambling operation), there had once been speakeasies underneath all of the legitimate businesses, and he would know. That always kind of fascinated me—an underground city. Clubs of all kinds beneath every business—and tunnels to connect them. I wonder what they look like now and I might just get to find out, we’ll see.
So back to the story—I finally just say fuck it and decide I’ll go see my homunculus, Mike Khepri. What else have I got to do. I took a look at the address and sure enough it’s a block or so behind me, so I just park next to Hamburger King and start walking west up Main St. I get up there and sure as you’re reading this, Mike Khepri, my dumbass homunculus, has stenciled “Mike Khepri – Private Detective” on a glass door that leads down a staircase. Now in your mind’s eye you’ve seen this stenciled in every film noir movie, and yeah, that is exactly what it looked like. Now I’m thinking, what in the utter fuck am I doing here? I had two beers with this guy three years ago and now I’m getting ready to walk through this door down into God knows what. He ain’t no goddamn detective, he’s a homunculus. (I crash my face into my hand like you see in the comics). But if you know me—you know there’s just one thing I’m afraid of—fear—and since I have already faced down all the suicides and navigated through the mental illness and depression and even figured out how to have solid friendships and also relationships with women on my terms and not those set for me by my family or some fake curse, and not only that—I have become a real artist and have taken all this bullshit and turned it into something that sustains me (and maybe others, later)—like an alchemist, then I’m going to suck it up and go through this door and see what that crazy sumbitch is working on now. And after all, if the alchemy that got me out of all that madness created this homunculus, then I got to go ahead on and face him, too.
So I get down there, go through another door and take a right (he’s right there in the middle sitting at a card table but I don’t want to look at him yet) and it’s not as bad as I thought, looks like an old seamstress shop, walls are yellow (probably paint from the seventies), couple of old sewing machines in the corner and aww hell, OK, “Hey Mike.” I can’t get over his dung beetle face, holy shit, goddamn it smells in here but I keep it together, he says hey Rhett, how’ve you been? I said pretty good, walk a little bit closer and on his card table he has the plaque, “Mike Khepri- Private Detective.”
Dammit Mike. You’re not a private detective. I don’t know how many times I gotta tell you, you’re a homunculus. He says I beg to differ. (Where he heard “I beg to differ” I have no idea, maybe a cop show). So I say, Mike, you’ve never even been a cop, you don’t have any qualifications, you can’t just say you’re a detective—it’s fraud. And he says I do have qualifications. I know how to dig. I said it’s a different kind of digging, Mike (I don’t have the time nor do I know how to explain to him what a metaphor is). And he says and another thing, I have another qualification. I said what is that, Mike. He says, I have a client. I’m thinking, what in the holy flerking schlicht is wrong with this dude.
So we get some lunch. I don’t feel like sitting next to him at Hamburger King (just because of the smell since now I’m kinda used to the face) even though that’s where I really want to go, so we get it as takeout and head over to Woodland Park, which I do not have good memories of since I got my ass kicked there in 8th grade when this wrestler dude knocked half of my braces off. But it’s close and I have a feeling I want to get this over with.
Turns out his client is the wife of a man who was killed by the Indian Mafia. Now I’ve messed with things I shouldn’t have and I’ve already messed around twice with Mike Khepri but if there’s anything I’m not messing around with, it’s the Indian Mafia. But Mike says we don’t have to mess with them, we just have to find something for his wife. And I say what’s that, Mike. He says, “his penis.” And I go holy shit dude—what are you fucking talking about. He says they cut off his penis after they killed him and threw it off a bridge by the river.
Fuck me. What the fuck. Why am I here. What is wrong with me. Mike, when did the man die? He says three weeks ago. Mike. Listen to me. That penis is not there anymore. He says what do you mean. I said, something has eaten it by now. He says no it hasn’t. Mike. He says the woman told him it would still be there. Mike. He says what. It’s not gonna be there. He says well, she’s my client, I’ve got to at least look for it. I said why are you telling me this. He says, well, you know the river better than me. I said Mike, somehow you managed to rent a space on Main Street, I think you’re doing just fine finding your way around town. He says just go out there with me and we can be done with it. Well I am ready to be done with it and I know he’s right about the river because there’s only one bad place that things happen and it’s at this same spot on the river near the reservation. Now in hindsight maybe it’s because the tribal police are more lax or there’s some other rationale why it’s in the same spot, I don’t know. Maybe every town has a spot like this. I know it better than I should. I first went there as a teen with my mother’s boyfriend Timmy when we blew the shit out of an old washing machine with a pipe bomb we made. I went there a bunch more times for things that were not quite so innocent.
OK so fuck it. We get in the car, I drive down there, know just where to park, we get out and walk over to the one area people throw shit they don’t want to get busted for and I look and see this wooden carving sort of cropping out of the red clay like the Statue of Liberty from Planet of the Apes, pick it up and start looking at it. It was shaped like an ear of corn. Was really quite beautiful. Like an art deco version of an ear of corn, but something made by Native Americans. Probably made by a Native American for tourists, but made by their hands nonetheless, a long time ago.
Mike sees me looking at this thing and he says, “That’s it!” Goddammit Mike, this is a wooden carving, not a penis. He says that’s it. Now this dung beetle-faced bastard is about to get on my last nerve. I say listen, dumbass, and he cuts me off and says don’t call me that anymore I told you that the last time. He says, that’s how she described it. Now at this point it’s like if we can be done with it then let’s get in the car and give it to this lady and call it a day. I mean it is a phallus of course. Plus I know he doesn’t know the difference between a penis and an ear of corn and maybe the lady doesn’t either. We are in Shawnee, Oklahoma after all. Maybe he doesn’t have a penis—I just don’t want to know with this homunculus motherfucker. I just want to drive back to my dad’s.
So we’re in the car driving to this lady’s trailer probably and I say, Mike, how did this lady get in touch with you? He says Yellow Pages. I said Mike, I don’t think there are Yellow Pages anymore. He says well that’s how she found me. I said Mike the Yellow Pages might as well be papyrus dude. I look over at him and if a beetle-faced bastard could blink that’s what he was doing and I know he doesn’t know what the word means because they don’t talk about papyrus on cop shows.
Now I will spare you what the lady’s place looked like. I think it was Cormac McCarthy who said there are things that you put in your head that you can’t ever get out. So you should be careful what you put in there. Something like that. And you may not believe me but I am sparing you from things that are in my head that I don’t want to burden you with, for that very reason. Because they might scar you too bad. And maybe you have things like that too. But anyway we walk in and she’s wearing an Oklahoma Sooners football helmet, a hot pink T-shirt that says “Blessed” in black letters—and no pants. No underwear. No undergarments of any kind. Her breasts are so huge and hang so low that they almost obfuscate the view downstairs, but no, not quite. Not that lucky. Now the football helmet is really not surprising, it’s a football crazy place—and really when I think about it neither is the shirt, and then I think about it some more and neither is the no pants thing in Shawnee. What a dump.
Mike hands her the wooden ear of corn and she says thank you. Let me get my checkbook. That’s it. Nothing. Done deal. She comes back into the living room and hands him the check and he says what are you going to do with it. I’m thinking Mike Jesus please leave this alone and don’t ask her anything more and she says “It’s part of an ancient ritual.” Please oh please Mike just leave it alone but no, here he goes—“What’s the ritual?” She says that’s my business. He says, it doesn’t have a body. She says—it will.
He says, “Are you going to fuck it?”
Now I don’t know if this lady knows anyone in the Indian Mafia and I don’t want to find out but I manage to wrestle him out of there real quick even though I hate wrestling and I look back and she’s still standing in the same place with the football helmet on and holding the wooden ear of corn with no pants and I can’t get out of this town fast enough and finally I get him back to Main Street and drop him off. He’s standing over the passenger side hunched over looking at me and I’m looking at the weird outcroppings on his face while I’m holding the steering wheel, white-knuckling these last few moments and hoping he doesn’t ask me to go out for beers and finally I just say how much money did you get?
He says $500. I said, well, what are you going to do with it? He says I’m going to buy a gun. You gotta have a gun if you’re a private detective. I said Mike I don’t think that’s a good idea. He says well I solved my first case and if I’m going to have more clients I’m definitely going to need a gun. I said Mike you didn’t even find that thing, I did. He says well we found it together. He says, we make a good team. It’s almost like we’re in a true crime series together—“The Mike Khepri Mysteries.”
What in the utter fuck.