Pluto Walks the Earth, Chapter 1
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About 10 years ago, just for the hell of it, I wrote a genre novel titled Bedfellows. It was about a mattress-store owner and his unlikely relationship with a down-market Brooklyn crime family that was attempting to adjust to the harsh realities of the Great Recession. Sold pretty well, I guess, but maybe it would have done better — comic-thrillerwise — had it been a little funnier and, you know, more thrilling. Nonetheless, it was mainly well received. Here’s the capsule review I liked most:
Indelible characters! Hilarious scenes! Absurdity and realism interwoven like DNA! And an ending for the ages! Don’t miss this one! In fact, buy two copies, in case something should happen to the first!
– Bob Garfield, author, Bedfellows
OK, as I say, that was a ways back. But now, recalling the pure fun of following in the footsteps of Tolstoy, Garcia-Marquez and Bazooka Joe, I’ve recently focused my historic genius on a second novel, titled Pluto Walks the Earth. It’s a picaresque social satire as told by 20 variably reliable narrators, set mainly in Santa Fe but with stops in Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Death Valley, the Central Valley of California and Wilmington, Delaware.
The story, told entirely in the first person by the entire cast of characters, begins with news of a murder. Pluto Walks the Earth, however, is not a whodunit so much as a whogotdunin. Until page 210, there is no dead body, but from the opening paragraphs we know that a murder has taken place. Thereupon unravels a series of curious events leading to the discovery of the victim, who police find to have been electrocuted in a hot tub during a New Age rebirthing ritual.
Along the way, we meet an eccentric lot, many of them alternative healers who are as human and relatable as they are odd. The reader is immersed in a posole of science, pseudoscience, cunning, frailty, greed, generosity, hallucinogens, trade journalism, Multilevel Marketing and one slight, accidental sodomy.
Our hero, the guileless Pluto McDowell, is the linchpin, a self-disinherited scion of a Philadelphia banking family who forswears his legacy, instead to explore the Sacred Energies of New Mexico. He quickly becomes entangled with the employees of a New Age grocery called Mary Lou's Chakra ’n’ Awe, and we witness the improbable (but weirdly plausible) narrative play out from the various vantages of all of them.
From a botched psychic surgery to a heroic Heimlich to a reality-TV show to a bizarre hand of Vegas poker to a peyote adventure for the ages, it is a comedy of the unexpected. Throughout, we see genuine relationships forged in the desert furnace, fired by tragedy, geology, unscrupulousness and innocence — plus (spoiler alert) one cat duct-taped to a wall.
Why do I tell you this? Here’s why. Beginning in a few weeks, Pluto Walks the Earth will be sent, chapter by chapter, to paid Bully Pulpit subscribers. Like Trader Joe’s and heroin dealers the world over, however, I’ll offer free samples in an attempt to get you hooked — beginning with right now. Henceforth, my Monday post will be devoted to the usual minestrone of social, political, cultural and media criticism (the occasional free chapter will be sent to subscribers, paid and unpaid, midweek). On this Monday, however, I introduce you all to Pluto.
Pluto Walks the Earth
Part 1. Thin Heir
Chapter 1. Go West
Pluto
This story is not about what this story is about. I have been asked to offer my perspective, and I will, but I would urge you to look beyond the events themselves. Step back and see the big picture, such as the mathematics of the cosmos and, especially, the nature of truth — because that is kind of squishy, in my humble opinion. OK, that’s one thing. The second thing is, I totally did not kill anyone. This has to be clear. Some things happened, obviously. But no harm was ever intended, or even anticipated. As the politicians always say when they get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, or some aide’s Spanx, mistakes were made.
Still, I simply must reiterate (say again) that, when certain events took place with certain tragic results, I was 661 miles away, due west — in surgery, no less — completely unaware of what was going on in that faraway place it took place in (dangling preposition?) This is not some flimsy alibi. It was a nightmare I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, who is Vineeta, and you’ll hear about her before this is over, believe me. But concerning that particular event that I was unaware of, if anybody was offended, I am genuinely sorry. This is me speaking from my heart. Bottom line is: Evil exists in the world.
My name, as you know from cable news, is Pluto McDowell. Oh, how the media love that. If I hear one more “demoted planet” joke I’m gonna … I don’t know what I’m going to do, but take my word for it, it gets very old, very quickly. I was born and raised in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and, yes, I am the son of banker/socialite/prick Jeremiah McDowell Sr., and, yes, prior to the Santa Fe mess I was known mainly for walking away from my fancy family and fortune-to-be. My tour out west was pretty nutty, that’s for sure. And I guess you definitely know that I’m now a newly-licensed home inspector in the Wilmington, Delaware area. (Delaware was the first state of the union. Did you know that?) Great career potential. I’m my own boss. I get to meet many folks and to help them with the biggest investment of their lives. And so far I’ve never been bored. The challenge of finding hidden flaws in a residential property is like being a detective. The two biggest differences are: 1. I never bullied anyone into a confession despite knowing that the story’s way more complicated than what everybody is saying; 2. Detectives never have to climb down from a hot attic picking fiberglass insulation out of their hair. Almost never.
Maybe that comes to mind because that’s where I just came from: an attic in a Newport, Del., post-war rowhouse with rotting 5/16” roofing plywood and mouse turds like sprinkles on a cupcake. It’s 1,000 degrees up there and smells like a petting zoo. Speaking of, they could use a turtle (the aluminum kind!) to vent that hot stench. Truthfully, I’ve been putting off this whole “saga” thing, but after crawling around up there, my laptop seemed like a refreshing dive into a pool, which these people don’t have one of, but that’s a metaphor, I guess.
I suppose we can get into this later, but the reason I basically disinherited myself is not that I was mistreated by my dad. He didn’t pay enough attention to me to mistreat me. He was busy running his little empire and serving on corporate boards and raising money for the SIDS Ball and eff-ing his senior VP for Communications to waste time on his only son and heir. My older brother, Jeremiah Jr., died before I was born. (Guess what of?) But I didn’t hate my father, exactly. I just didn’t like him making decisions for me, and even before that I always felt like a stranger in my own home. Or estate, actually. A nine-bedroom, stone mansion with servant cottage (converted to my mom’s private glassware museum), stable, pool, cabana, skeet-shooting range, 5-car garage filled with five cars and library/home theater. Plus two golf holes (a 167-yard par 3 over our kidney-shaped pond onto a sloping green well protected by a semi-circular stand of pines on the back side, and a 380-yard par 4 following the bridle path and doglegging around the stable.) (Forty-five acres on the Main Line. Do the math!)
My dad had medium plans for me. And I can’t blame him for that. Growing up I struggled with lysdexia. (Kidding! I tell that joke on myself so people won’t think having a learning disability makes me some sort of short-bus guy.) But still I kind of flailed even in my prestigious private school with small classes and individual attention. Full disclosure: I’ve also been politely told by many people — teachers, psychologists, police, “co-conspirators” — that I’m just not very bright. This also gets old. I mean, my own parents. Once I overheard Dad asking Mom, “What in the world will we do with Fredo?” I remember this because a) that’s pretty cold, if you think about it, and b) Godfather is my third favorite movie after The Celestine Prophecy and, come on, Shawshank. Also, honestly, at least in my opinion, I’m not all that stupid. A great intellect? Probably not. But my grades were OK, in the B range mostly, except for math and English. And physics. (How ironic that Mr. Below Average is now a published author.) The point being that not only can I more than follow what’s going on, I also have the ability to “observe the world in more than one dimension,” as my Supreme Upline liked to say before he left for a “better place.”
So, movies. I have seen a lot of movies. It’s about the only thing my father and I have in common. He’s so into them that he turned the library into a book-lined screening room. I never much liked that room when I was super little, because it was so dark and creepy. It was actually on two levels of the house, with a sort of catwalk on the upper tier lined with 12-foot-high bookcases, neatly adorned with shelf upon shelf of leather-bound treasures with spines embossed in 22-karat gold. The catwalk was guarded with mahogany railings and balusters and to get up there you had to grab a curved banister and climb a narrow flight of steps, which were blocked on the bottom level by a velvet rope draped between two shiny brass stanchions. Touching the rope was a capital offense, but if you were to reach the summit, it was all the Great Books, which my father said were “redolent of man’s wisdom” but if you ask me made the whole room stink like mulch. I never saw Jeremiah hold one of those precious redolent volumes in his actual hands, by the way — or even ever hang out in that room — at least, not until the home theater went in. That was pretty cool. What a set-up. It started with VHS tapes screened on some sort of million-pound ($6,000) rear projection unit, which Mom called the Jumbotron. Those gave way to DVDs, and then Blu-Ray and, eventually, internet streaming on a high-res flat-screen the size of a sheet of plywood. We watched a lot of old-school flicks. I remember The Dirty Dozen, Charade, Citizen Kane (weird), The Bells of St. Mary, 2001: A Space Odyssey (mega weird), Klute, Return of the Pink Panther, The Godfather and The Celestine Prophecy and The Shawshank Redemption (of course), The Graduate, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Sound of Music, Bullitt, Cat Ballou, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Giant, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Great Escape, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, Throne of Blood, High Noon, The Music Man, Mary Poppins, Singin’ in the Rain. Pretty much everything from the 19th century (ha!). That’s just some. Mostly my parents loved musicals. I’ve seen Camelot a bazillion times. And, oh man, My Fair Lady. 100 bazillion times. But get this: When I was about 8, I finally noticed that Professor Henry Higgins’ library — the one with the ladders that roll on tracks along the upper-level bookcase moldings — is exactly like ours. Now that I think about it, Jeremiah always sang along to “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?”
About folk healing. Jeremiah Sr., of course, had even less interest in my so-called New Age explorations than in my everything else, and he wanted me to go from my fancy private Haverford School straight to his even fancier alma mater, Columbia, to study finance. I don’t think he imagined me as a next-gen tycoon. I think he imagined me as a next-gen loan officer. He often tossed out left-handed compliments, along the lines of, “You are a fine-looking young man who will handsomely decorate any Montgomery & Chester Trust branch.” This is not saying I’d be worthy, just not ugly enough to scare the customers away. (FYI: People say I’m handsome, which I gotta tell you has hurt me more than it’s helped. A lot more. A lot lot more.) But I wanted no part of my parents’ ambitions for my college education. “No way,” I said, and Columbia did also. So much for “legacy.” Dad wrote a check in seven figures, but my SAT score was in three. That’s when out of nowhere the elite but tiny Haverford College (no relation to my prep school) was endowed with funding for the McDowell Fitness and Recreation Center. I was miraculously admitted there without even submitting an application, but let’s be real. If I’d learned anything from grades 8-12, it’s that prep just isn’t my scene. I didn’t mind the khaki and tortoise shell, but what a vacuum of spirituality. It was as if the whole culture was numb to the beautiful vibrations and serenity of the cosmos. When I proposed a gap year in a Santa Fe ashram, the folks had a counter-proposal: “No.” The famous line from Dad was, “Pluto, you will earn a degree from Haverford and you will join the firm or you will have to find your own path in life.”
Actually, it’s all a bit of a blur. Is that really what he said? I’d probably have remembered if he did, because it was the dumbest threat ever. Finding my own path is pretty much what I wanted my whole life. But what I do remember was hearing about the gymnasium bribe and deciding to shut my trap, collect my diploma, and make a bee line from the Main Line to a much healthier energy vortex. The morning after commencement, I grabbed my suitcase(s), drained my savings account and got on the first flight out of Philly to Albuquerque, New Mexico (connecting in Denver). Funnily enough, that “own path” deal is how my father quoted himself in the Philadelphia Inquirer, which had somehow gotten wind of my decision to renounce my inheritance and blow town. Instead of no-commenting his way through this private family matter, like a normal human would, Papa Bear went public to make me look like an ungrateful loony-toons. In my opinion, this reflected worse on him than on me. Still, that was kind of a red-letter day for me. Not only was I starting over with nothing but $45,000 in cash and my Mercedes CLS in long-term parking, it was the very first (and unfortunately not the last) time I graced the front page of a tabloid newspaper. The Daily News had staked out the airport terminal with a photographer, and they caught me as I checked my bags.
“Hey, Pluto!”
“Huh?”
Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.
The front page had me the next day, like a no-great-intellect caught in the headlights, under the headline: SCION-TOLOGY. A friend sent it to me in Santa Fe. I assume they got the headline idea before they ever sent the camera dude. But they sure didn’t do their homework, because Scientology is a made-up Organized Religion with zero to do with the ancient spirit doctors or the vibrational hearing energy of Mother Earth. Like I’m Tom Cruise or something, instead of a humble seeker on my own private spirit journey. Come on, mainstream media, get over yourself. I did have to laugh at the headline inside the paper where the actual story was: Heir Apparent(ly Not). Props for that, I suppose. As for me, finding-my-path-wise, not a great start, which, to quote my attorney, “set in motion a chain of events when my client’s white lie, a social lie, an inconsequential shading of truth, cascaded into misunderstanding, bitterness and tragedy.”
So tuck that away. Also this: You know how they say, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”? That’s bull****.
Dear Ellie, You are far too kind and generous. I can try to sort this out with the Substack folks, but truly I'd prefer that you do not pay more than you already do. I'm touched, of course, but it seems somehow unfair. Thank you, as ever. -- Bob
I can't decide if this is more Tom Robbins by way of Tim Powers or Terry Pratchett by way of Iris Murdoch... but whichever authorial mashup I eventually land on, it's delightful.