Read Online The Albuquerque Turkey: A Novel by John Vorhaus - Free Book Online Page A

like a pimped-out hibachi, spewing gray-green smoke that swirled and spread throughout the hut, driven by a fan the size of a jet engine. Vic stood nearby in Bermuda shorts, attacking a painted piece of Sheetrock with a compressed-air nail gun. Peering through the smoke, I could see impaled on the Sheetrock various means of killing rats (traps, snares, poison) and, I believe, a smattering of actual dead rats. On the modeling stand stood Zoe, Vic’s new best friend, naked, posing. At intervals, Vic would pause, stare at her intently, then unleash a frenzied new burst of nail-gun carnage.
    “Vic!” I shouted over the oliated din, but he didn’t respond, so I reached forward and tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled, still firing, and I felt a rush of air as a nail whizzed past my ear and clanged off the far curve of the Quonset hut.
    “Christ! Be careful!”
    “Sorry, man. I was in the zone.” Noticing Allie, he said cheerily, “Hi, Allie,” then repeated, “I was in the zone.” He reached down to a boom box and turned off the audio waterboarding. “Good to see you guys.”
    I waved a hand at the brazier. “What’s with the smoke?” I asked.
    “It’s sage,” he said. “I’m smudging.”
    “Smudging?” asked Allie.
    “Ritually cleansing my environment to make my art more potent.” He hooked a thumb in Zoe’s direction. “It was Zoe’s idea. She’s a very intricate thinker.” Then he indicated the boom box. “The music helps.”
    “Is that what you call that?”
    “Ha-ha, Radar. I composed it myself, you know. A true artist masters all arts. I’ve started taking flying lessons.”
    “How is that art?”
    “Everything’s art, my friend,” said Vic. “I’m surprised you don’t know that.” He stepped back from the Sheetrock and offered it for our inspection. “Well,” he said, “what do you think?”
    “Are those real rats?” I asked.
    “Taxidermed,” he said. “Got ’em at a yard sale.”
    Allie examined the piece with a critical eye. “What do you call it?” she asked.
    “Nailed You Good, You Rat.”
    “A little on the nose, don’t you think?” I asked.
    “So far,” he said. “But watch.” He rummaged in a nearby bin of flotsam, pulled out an empty Pop-Tarts box, and crucified it to the Sheetrock. Then he sprayed the whole thing with aerosol cheese. “See? Now it’s a comment on consumerist society.”
    “Conceptual,” I granted. “But kinda grotesque.”
    “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Art’s not meant to be pleasant. It’s meant to make you think.”
    My eye caught the lifeless eye of a rat. “I think I want to puke.”
    “Good. That’s good.”
    “Really?”
    “Radar, dude, how many artists you think there are in Santa Fe?”
    “I don’t know. Thousands?”
    “And how many better than me?”
    “Pretty much all of them.”
    “In terms of painting shit that looks like shit, yeah. Flowers, buttes, butts, whatever. I can’t compete with that.” He drew himself up to his full five-foot-seven skinny magnificence. “Therefore, instead, I shall outrage.”
    “With dead rats?”
    “Dead rats,” said Vic imperiously, “is only the beginning.”
    By this time, Zoe had thrown on shorts and a crop top and walked over to join us. We exchanged greetings and names, and then Zoe headed out.
    “She seems nice, Vic,” said Allie.
    “She poses nude for free.”
    “Do you think she might be hinting at something?”
    “Hinting at …?” The thought filtered down through Vic’s brain stem and spinal cord, arriving at last at his joint. “Oh!” he said, genuinely surprised. “Son of a gun. I’ll have to look into that.” He turned to me abruptly. “Hey, did you talk to your dad?”
    “Just all night. Turns out he was in the bar.”
    “Yeah, no, I mean now, today. He stopped by earlier.”
    “Here? Why?”
    “Search me. Guess he wanted to see the genius at work. He seemed kind of rattled, though.”
    “Rattled?” I looked at Allie. I could