The Republic of Nothing by Lesley Choyce Page B

under the sea and that it could communicate with him which none of us doubted. He stored the rest of the furniture in what was left of his barn and threw big ship tarpaulins over most of it to keep the bird shit off. And he waited for the immigrants that he knew were headed for the Republic of Nothing.
    Hants kept a telescope handy and studied the sea for days, waiting for the arrival of immigrants who would need the store of furniture. He studied so long and hard with one eye fixed upon the horizon and the other one squinted shut that he developed a common disorder of chronic telescope users. The overused eye went nearly blind and the unused eye, even when open, began to see things that weren’t there. Mrs. Bernie Todd said she had seen just such a thing before with submariners from Portsmouth and she told Hants the only thing he could do was to go soak his head in salt water at regular intervals for as long as he could hold his breath. Hants thought this was a reasonable idea, and seeing a secondary use for his monkfish aquarium, stuck his head in with his favoured sea creature.
    I was standing in the doorway to Hants’ overly furnished home when I saw him pull his head from the tank for the finaltime. He let out a maniacal wailing and I could see that he had a two-headed monkfish the size of a medium-sized cod dangling from one earlobe like a giant earring.
    â€œHelp me, Ian,” he shouted, “It’s trying to chew its way into my brain!”
    In my panic, for I had little experience with intelligent, carnivorous aquatic life, I yanked hard on one head of the monkfish whose teeth still gripped firmly onto Hants’ ear-lobe, tearing the thing off — well fifty percent of it anyway — while the other head of the monkfish looked around, mouth gaping. Hants felt his ear, realized he had lost a minor, insignificant part of his anatomy, shook the water oif his head like a dog would and sat down in a faded but immaculate throne that might have suited a king. He blinked the water out of his eyes. “I can see perfectly clearly now,” he said. “Tell Mrs. Bernie Todd that the therapy worked.”
    â€œWhat’ll I do with the fish?” I asked, for it was writhing jn my hand as I held it in front of me with its one head looking up, the other down. It had dropped the earlobe at my feet and I feared that the fish might grab onto either my nose or my pecker and I wanted no more of it.
    â€œPut her in the tank, son,” Hants said. “No real harm done. My fault for not feeding her a proper diet.” Hants knew when it was wrong to pass on blame and this was one of those times. I heaved the monk fish back in the tank where it fell with a frantic splash.
    Hants was probably not expecting to see the first of the immigrants — refugees all — arrive in a brand spanking new two-tone Ford four-door. We were standing in the sunlight in his yard. I was holding up a mirror for him so he could stitch the piece back onto his ear with thirty pound test fishing line. He feared he might bleed to death if he didn’t get a set of good double stitches into it. Hants had fortified himself with black tea spiked with thick black Barbados rum intended “to ward off pain and such,” he said.
    The ear had stopped bleeding by the time that Tennessee Ernie Phillips pulled up to a stop on the crushed clamshell driveway. Unfortunately, Hants had not done so well with the stitching and the lobe fell off again. Distracted by the newcomers, Hants walked away. I picked up the round earlobe which looked kind of like a well-chewed piece of bubble gum and put it in my pocket. A man got out of the newly arrived car to survey the very end of the road. “Where am I?” he asked. He looked far too polished for these surroundings, as did his car.
    â€œYou’re here,” Hants said, trying to get a knot in the final stitch of what was left of his ear.
    â€œThe Republic of