"Aw, that"s okay, I can get you another sucker. Besides, it doesn"t sound like it weren"t for nothin. You gotta quick feel of that s.n.a.t.c.h didn"t ya?"
I didn"t know what he meant. Given a few moments, I"m sure I could have figured it out. I"d just never heard it called that before.
"Her privates, boy. You gotta quick feela them didn"t ya?"
In my crying jag I must have told him every little detail. I thought I"d left that part out. I nodded.
"Then it weren"t for nothin. You remember what that felt like and I"ll tell you this now: the woman"s s.n.a.t.c.h is a powerful thing. You"ll feel its power for the rest of your life. s.h.i.t, a sucker. You should be lucky all you lost was a sucker. I"ve lost a house and two kids to the power of that f.u.c.kin thing."
I imagined one of those women on the television spreading her legs and sucking objects into that patch of hair. Only, it hadn"t felt like there was much hair on Mary Lou"s.
"You say those horns is some kind of punishment?"
I nodded.
"You think your mom"d get mad if I take em off?" Then he paused, chuckled, and said, "I guess that doesn"t matter much now, does it?"
"Guess not," I said.
"Well, where ya goin?"
"I don"t know. I have to leave Milltown. I think I"m gonna try and go see my Uncle Skad over in the Tar District. After that, I"m not really sure. I gotta get out of Milltown."
Drifter Ken smiled. "Ah, the Tar District." Then he became serious. "You be careful in those parts. We"ll be sorry to see ya go round here. But a man"s gotta do whatta man"s gotta do."
Yeah, f.u.c.k it, I thought.
"So why don"t you let me take those foolish things off?"
He reached under my chin and I could smell his hands. They smelled like one of the mother"s ashtrays. Smelling ashtrays had been a hobby of mine a few years before. Like a lot of other things about myself it was something I couldn"t really explain. It was merely another frivolous desire in a life of necessity.
The skin got pinched up in the buckle as his giant fingers unfastened it.
"Here we go," he said and pulled the strap through the buckle. Then, "Holy s.h.i.t."
"What?"
He reached out and slapped at the left horn. His hand made a dull sound like whap and I felt my scalp twitch, the horn tugging against it.
"What?" I repeated, fearing the worst.
"Hate to tell you this, but it looks like them horns might just be stayin on a little longer."
I broke down and started crying again. At that moment, I really did feel like a demon. A giant horned demon. If it wasn"t the strap holding those things on, then I figured it must be some other force. I reached up and felt the sides of my head. My worst fear had come true. The straps were nowhere to be felt. They had vanished. Simply disintegrated. I was sure that had to mean I was evil. It had to be some kind of punishment from G.o.d or something. That made the evil a little more meaningful. I mean, I"d been called evil by all sorts of people but I just kind of dismissed it. This felt like G.o.d had finally ordained me as a certifiable demon.
I was able to compose myself and ask Drifter Ken, "Do you think I"m a demon?"
"Naw, you"re a real sweet kid. There are demons out in that world though, and I think one of em mighta put his horns on you." I hadn"t really thought of it like that. Weren"t there saints who got struck with stigmata?
There were a few moments of silence, Drifter Ken taking deep drags off his cigarette, staring off at the horizon. "Hey," he said, "they look fine. They give you a sort of... ostentatious flair you ain"t never had before. Not that you wasn"t fine before but they add..." he groped for the right phrase. "s.h.i.t, they"re like a new pair of shoes or a fancy shirt of somethin. Maybe a pair of tight pants. They"re just... unconventional, that"s all."
I liked the sound of "ostentatious flair."
"Really?" I asked.
"Yeah. They"re kinda neat. Make you look tough."
That made me feel a little better, seeing them in this new light. After all, if some magic or force had made those straps disappear, didn"t that mean there was also some kind of good magic out there?
"You know," Drifter Ken said, "one time I had a melanoma-it"s like a huge moley growth of some kind-growin on my forehead right between my eyes. When I had that thing I always walked aroun feelin embarra.s.sed as s.h.i.t so I finally saved up enough money to go have that motherf.u.c.ker lanced. They did it and I looked perfectly normal afterwards but I kind of missed the growth. I kind of missed the people lookin at me, you know. At least I was known for somethin."
I figured he probably made that up just to make me feel better. I couldn"t see Drifter Ken with a giant thing growing off his head. That just wasn"t him. Besides, I didn"t really want to be known for anything unless it was going to be something glamorous like dancing for Bobby DeHaven or some f.u.c.kness like that. I appreciated his attempt to cheer me up, anyway.
Suddenly, I was overcome with the feeling that I was running out of time. The doomwave unexpectedly surged over me and I remembered one of the reasons I had come by the park in the first place.
"I"ve gotta be gettin outta here," I said. "Say, uh, do you happen to have some matches I could have." I hated asking for things. I never minded people giving me things, but I absolutely hated having to ask for them. I"d go around for the rest of my life feeling like I owed that person something. But I was running out of time and I knew I might never see Drifter Ken again and what I needed was an absolute necessity.
"All I got"s this one lighter. I tell you what, you let me light one cigarette with it and I"ll just keep on lightin the next one from the one before. That way you can take the lighter."
"What if one of your cigarettes goes out?"
"I"ll be fine. You consider that a goin away present."
He lit his Camel, bent down, and gave me a hug. I was glad he gave me a going away present. Now it felt like I had to get out of Milltown.
Chapter Nine.
Burning Down The House I got back to Walnut in no time at all. I stayed on the opposite side of the street from the house. If an outsider paid any attention to the cars lining the street, they might think they were living twenty years ago. An abnormal amount of the cars had the cardboard temporary tags taped to them. Most of the cars would expire before the thirty-day tags. I guess I kept to the other side of the road to further dismiss myself from the house. I didn"t have to worry about the parents catching me.
I still had this paranoid feeling like maybe somebody was looking for me. Like the school or the police or something. It was ridiculous, of course. The parents rarely left the house so they didn"t really have anywhere to be missing from and I knew the school would probably rather not have me there. I knew for a fact, when I was absent, Pearlbottom never reported it.
My mind started playing tricks on me again. I didn"t know why it wouldn"t just leave me the f.u.c.k alone. I began to think maybe the parents weren"t really dead. After all, how much faith could I actually place in my mind? Wasn"t it just that morning that I had imagined them alive?
I remembered the note the mother had slapped onto my chest.
I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper.
Something had been written on it, but I couldn"t tell what it was.
Not that I really had anything to worry about, anyway. They kept all the blinds drawn and usually only came outside to get the mail in the evening. Even to do that, all the mother had to do was open the door and stick a meaty hand outside. Racecar couldn"t get the mail, of course. He couldn"t reach it. And I knew they wouldn"t be on the lookout for me. At least not very actively, anyway. Racecar would say something like, "The little s.h.i.t gets what he deserves." And the mother would strumble, "If he thinks I"m gonna quit my stories to look for his sorry demon a.s.s, he"s got another thing comin."
I waited for a few minutes there on the other side of the street, hidden behind a battered black Buick nearly the size of a schoolbus. The house looked quiet. I was struck with the feeling that, through all the f.u.c.kness that had happened in the house, it probably looked quiet from the outside, the blinds shut against the world, the steam from the furnace serenely drifting at an unchanging pace toward the sky. If alive, I wondered what Racecar was doing without his wheelchair. Did he have a spare? Did he just roll around on the floor? That was something I could picture him doing. Rolling around on the floor, grunting and drooling. Who cared? f.u.c.k it. Let them rot.
I made a break for the garage, going as fast as the wheelchair allowed, its hum heightening my sense of paranoia. The garage was in even worse shape than the house. There wasn"t a fleck of paint left on it, just gray rotting wood, gaping with neglect. Racecar always insisted I lock everything inside with a padlock when I put the lawnmower away but I never could understand why. With those huge holes all over it, anyone could probably pull down an entire wall with just their bare hands. Those holes used to bother me when I was a kid because Racecar always acted like all of our really important stuff was in that garage and it bothered me that someone could just walk in and steal it. It took me a while to realize we didn"t have any important stuff, that"s why we lived where we did. Racecar was just pretending to have important stuff, which was what most people did.
At first I thought I"d have to get at the inside barehanded, maybe yank the lock right out of the soft wood, and I kind of panicked because I thought that would take more time and might cause enough of a commotion to bring Racecar or the Wig outside. Then I remembered he always kept those keys on a little ring in a pouch on the side of his wheelchair. I reached down to rea.s.sure myself they were still there.
I edged up to the garage and grabbed the cold steel lock in my hand. Even standing out there in the cool fresh air I could smell that gasoline smell from inside. Years of it being splashed upon the cement floor, sinking in, greasing it up. The smell had nauseated me before, but now it filled me with a sense of purpose. Hopefully, the little gas can would be full. Before then, I hadn"t even thought about whether or not it would have any gas in it. I hadn"t had to mow the gra.s.s yet that year. It most probably wouldn"t, I a.s.sumed. I took the keyring out of the pouch and started trying the keys. There were about fifteen keys on the ring and I tried to go as fast as I could, wondering why in the h.e.l.l we had all of those f.u.c.king keys. Had they saved the keys from every place they"d ever lived, every car they"d ever driven? The seventh key fit and I struggled to twist the barrel around in the lock, my hands shaking. All the while I could hear Racecar"s voice in my head, "It"s not that hard, a.s.s." The barrel caught, turned, and I pulled the lock apart with ease.
The garage door wasn"t one of the modern types most people would think about when they thought about a garage. Not that I thought anyone did much of that, thinking about garage doors. No, ours was just two standard doors, joining in the middle. One of them swung to the left, the other to the right. None of that sliding up and back into the garage bulls.h.i.t. I opened the door on the right just enough to reach in and grab the can. I didn"t bother shutting it. After the horrible thing I was about to do, I didn"t figure it would make a whole lot of difference.
Wild, unkempt hedges grew all across the front of the house, thick and bushy. I rolled over to the hedges in front of the kitchen. That way they wouldn"t be able to see my now incriminating silhouette from the living room where they spent most of their time. I didn"t think they"d mistake me for the mailman or the meter reader with those horns on my head. There was a moment when I wanted to open the door. To just peek inside and make sure they were really dead. But it would be like sticking my hand in a bear trap. I poured the gasoline all over the hedges, scattering the gallon-can around as much as I could. It didn"t go very far.
I"d kept the lighter sitting in my lap. I grabbed it up and gave it a few flicks. It occurred to me I had never even held a lighter in my hands before. The mother always used matches to light her cigarettes. I flicked it and flicked it, my thumb slipping off. I"d developed a nervous sweat. After it felt like a blister was forming on my thumb, the d.a.m.n thing started. I held it out to the hedges as slowly as possible so its small flame wouldn"t go out. Once I got the flame to the bush I had to keep holding it there and it started to get really hot but I didn"t want to let go of it again. Plus I was starting to get even more nervous. A few moments had determined the difference between someone merely catching me skulking around outside the house and them catching me skulking around outside the house while holding a lighter to the precariously gasoline-drenched hedges. It was the difference between truancy and arson. I kept imagining I could hear the mother walking toward the door, strumbling to herself. I even imagined I heard Racecar in there, growling and rolling around on a new wheelchair. A fast one, I told myself, picturing a maliciously modern contraption with machinegun turrets on the handles.
No, no, I told myself. They"re dead. Dead. Dead!
And just as I imagined having some sort of wheelchair race with Racecar rapidly gaining and firing away, when I didn"t think I"d be able to hold the hot lighter any longer, the shrubs went up-whoosh!-and scared the s.h.i.t out of me.
I crammed the lighter into the wheelchair"s little side pocket and headed back out to the road as fast as the motor allowed, which was about as fast as someone with polio could jog. I would have abandoned the wheelchair and ran, I was so scared, but my body still had that grinding bonefeel. Blood pounded in my ears, a horrible whumming ricocheting around. Now, not only was I just afraid of the parents catching me, I was also afraid of someone else seeing me. I could see the headline in some low rent tabloid: "Boy Demon Tries to Catch Neighborhood on Fire and Make the World His Personal h.e.l.l... After Murdering Parents!"
When I finally got to the end of Walnut and looked back, the fire was burning pretty nicely. The flames licked up against the window, spreading over toward the other side of the house. I thought maybe I should have set the fire around back where they wouldn"t notice it so quickly. So they"d have less time to put it out. But I knew there wouldn"t be any putting it out. The parents were dead as dead could be and the neighbors surely realized it was more economically feasible to let the s.h.i.thouse burn.
Looking at the other three blackened sh.e.l.ls on the street, I wondered if the same thing had happened to them. Was it b.u.mbling crackheads or disgruntled youth?
I figured it was probably somewhere in between.
I took a deep breath, smelling the sweet smoke of the rancid house, and headed for Milltown Middle School.
Chapter Ten.
Let Revenge Set You Free By the time I got to the school, the eighth graders were out for their recess, trudging along on that sad playground. I turned toward the playground, going right by the school and hoping none of the teachers saw me. Most of the kids were too busy with their running and their games to notice.
I spotted Bucky Swarth, his gang thuggishly gathered there around him, smoking. I could tell by the way they vampirishly leaned in toward him that they were really interested in something he was saying. I pulled onto the playground. I rolled right up there to their circle just like I wasn"t afraid of anything at all. Only I was afraid. I was terrified as all h.e.l.l. And I sat there in that wheelchair, twitching and squirming, trying not to hoot or call out. I wondered what it was about that school that made me more r.e.t.a.r.ded than anywhere else.
This is what Swarth was saying: "s.h.i.t, man, I had er all leaned up against a f.u.c.kin tree n s.h.i.t n got er pants down an er shirt up n s.h.i.t an this f.u.c.kin train starts comin n she gets real nervous. I tole the b.i.t.c.h to f.u.c.kin shut the f.u.c.k up n s.h.i.t cause that f.u.c.kin train weren"t stoppin fer nothin so there weren"t no f.u.c.kin way we was gonna get in trouble n s.h.i.t. So she starts sayin stupid f.u.c.kin s.h.i.t like they"s gonna see her t.i.ts n p.u.s.s.y n s.h.i.t n I just tole her to shut the f.u.c.k up. I took her f.u.c.kin unnerwear off "n pushed er f.u.c.kin bra all up n s.h.i.t. Man, them t.i.ts was f.u.c.kin huge. You think them look big now, you shoulda f.u.c.kin seen em thout a shirt..."
And I wheeled my wheelchair further up in there, just like I was a member of their gang or something and, instead of hooting some tune that was in my head, I blurted out: "I bet you have bigger t.i.ts than Mary Lou."
"s.h.i.t, man, this weren"t f.u.c.kin Mary Do-You Lou. It was an older f.u.c.kin chick." He said that just like he didn"t know who said what I said.
"I bet your t.i.ts were bigger than hers, then. Did the guys on the train see your t.i.ts?" It was like I wanted the beating. Like one of my main goals in life was hospitalization.
This last thing I said stopped him cold. He turned and fixed those boiling hate eyes on me. I didn"t know why I said it. I"d never said anything like that to any of the bullies. I knew I was going to get the s.h.i.t beat out of me but I had a bigger plan and that was all I could think about. The fear was there, black and intense, but it didn"t matter.
"Wally Black," he said. "You look like a f.u.c.kin r.e.t.a.r.d ith them horns. And what"s ith the wheelchair?" He turned to his friends and said, "I beat the walk right out of him." Then he turned back to me. "Didn"t you learn yer lesson yesterday, you piece uh s.h.i.t?"
One of his friends tipped the wheelchair over and I fell out onto the gra.s.s. As soon as I went down, Swarth was right on top of me, working me over with those bra.s.s knuckles. I heard them slapping the skin and felt reverberations of pain all over my body. This pain wasn"t quite as bad as the day before because I knew what kind of pain to expect. What I did to the parents last night told me I could do just about anything if I got mad enough and I wasn"t mad yet. I didn"t really have a reason to be mad. The red crawlies hadn"t come yet. What I had said to Swarth was mean and completely unprovoked. I deserved the beating I got. I almost wanted it to stop so I wouldn"t have to follow through with my plan. I almost wanted one of the teachers to come out and say, "Oh my Lord, you stop beating on that cripple. He"s just a... a cripple."
But it didn"t stop. Swarth kept beating down. And then the anger was back, the red crawlies, entering my veins with a liquid electric rush. The beating wasn"t really what caused the anger. It was what the rest of his gang was doing. They were all kicking at the wheelchair and pulling it apart. One of the larger ones kept picking it up over his head and slamming it back down on the ground. And they laughed ridiculous animal sounds while they did it. All I could think about was Racecar. And that was the only time I think I ever felt sorry for him. That wheelchair was the only thing he ever did. I had stolen it, but at least it was intact, a sort of memorial. But it didn"t matter to them. They just smashed and smashed and smashed like it didn"t have any meaning or use or value at all.
I rolled out from under Swarth"s thundering fists. I didn"t know if I"d be able to stand up or not so I just kept rolling.
Mary Lou noticed what was happening and came over to watch. I heard her yelling, "Kick the s.h.i.t out of him, Bucky!" And then, taunting, "Molester! Molester!"
A couple of his gang members grabbed me under the arms and pulled me up. The wheelchair was totally demolished, silver pieces scattered all over the playground. Swarth was bent over, his a.s.s stretched tight in those dark blue jeans, his bowels roiling. A gang member grabbed each horn and shoved my nose right up against that fat a.s.s. Everything was familiar. The new smell of the denim. The sounds of the fart starting. This one sounded strained. It was going to be a long one. I knew I couldn"t take it. That smell would have killed me. I stumbled back and thrashed my head from side to side, shaking the gang members off. Then I crouched down and sprang forward, driving my right horn toward that deadly squeaking sound. The sound stopped. It was like a balloon suddenly running out of air, twisted shut at the opening.
Bucky Swarth screamed. It was a horrible sound, high- pitched and girlish.
I had gone face first into the ground when Bucky went down and I couldn"t see anything. My head hit something small and hard. All I could smell was gra.s.s, dirt, and the metallic tang of pollution and blood. I got ahold of everything I could and stood up, twisting my head as I did so, remaining bent over at the waist, still attached to Swarth. I looked down and saw the lighter Drifter Ken had given me. Blood trickled down onto it. I had a feeling Swarth was bleeding a lot more than I was. He kept screaming as the tip of my horn sc.r.a.ped around on his insides. I stepped back, yanking the horn out with a sickening suction sound, grabbed that a.s.sblood-stained lighter, and took off running for the road. That anger made me numb to all the pain and soreness. That feeling inside me told me it was time to get out of there.
Swarth screamed: "My a.s.shole! My a.s.shole!"
I imagined the other kids on the playground were cheering me on as I ran faster than I ever had. In actuality, they had all gathered into a mob and taken up the chant, "Molester." I imagined Swarth"s hand clasped around his sizable b.u.t.tocks, blood seeping between the fingers. I ran as fast as I could. It felt like I was running toward some unknown freedom. Into the blueness of the day. Before, it wasn"t like it mattered how hard I ran from all the bullies because I would still end up in that house with the family every night, only to be bullied some more.
But that day, I ran toward the river, toward the Tar District, toward anything at all and all I could imagine was the parents" diseased house burning down to the ground and Bucky Swarth"s a.s.shole, impaled on my horn like a trophy.
Chapter Eleven.
Attack of the Clean People It didn"t feel like there was anything I could do but run. I slowed down once to look back over my shoulder. Black clouds gathered up over the Korl Brothers factory. The March weather was about ready to turn from pleasant and warm to downright violent and cold. I didn"t care. It didn"t matter. I wasn"t afraid of the stormsmoke of the dead, coming to take me with them.
I felt weightless!
I waited for the coming storm, longed for it to come and crackle electricity into my steps. I longed for its freezing rain to beat down and further numb my sore skin, to calm the raging red anger that made me go go go.
I didn"t know what waited for me at Uncle Skad"s house. Whatever it was it had to be better than the house I"d just left. I wasn"t even really sure if I could find Uncle Skad"s, exactly. I left it up to that inner feeling to guide me. There was no way Uncle Skad and his house could live up to the expectations I had already set for them. In my mind, Uncle Skad"s had become some sort of way station, a middle point, somewhere between here and there-but also a beginning. I thought maybe once I got to Uncle Skad"s, I could take some time to rest and cleanse my mind, so I could focus on what lay ahead. It was still in Milltown, true, but it was the Tar District, at the very fringes of not only the physical town but so-called "decent society," also.
The horns were heavy on my head but I imagined them slicing out the direction I was going like the rudders of a boat. My lungs burned. My shoes were splitting, the Velcro barely holding, and I knew there was no turning back. I felt great.
Once the school and the factory were out of sight, I stopped to catch my breath. I felt like I could stop. When the wind blew real hard around the factories and all that f.u.c.kness, it had a way of dragging the pollution and the foul smells away and I smelled the air the way it was supposed to smell, the way some other town smelled it. It was nice, trotting along there on the side of the road. Beneath the wind, the air was almost balmy, hinting of the summer to come. Then the wind would kick up, reminding me of the winter left behind and bringing with it those deep black, ominous storm clouds. I knew there was no hope of making it to the Tar District before the storm hit. I doubted I"d even be there before dark. And I didn"t feel like rushing. In one fell swoop, I had rid myself of the restrictions of the parents and the school. Maybe it was just giddiness but it was a feeling I"d only felt once before when I was seven or eight.
It was a little while after the father lost his legs. We had had to move from our much nicer house in Farmertown to that dump on Walnut. Shortly after moving there, the mother said someone would be visiting and I"d have to be on my best behavior. It took me a while to realize the someone was a social worker. It was the mother"s theory that some do-good, wealthy housefrau had reported them. Later, there were investigations into that. The logic was that this rich family of mill owners wanted that land for another mill or, their newest endeavor, low income apartments, and they figured if they could get all of those houses condemned, they could buy the land good and cheap. And if they built low income apartments there, it was guaranteed the rent would be on the government"s tab. The social services were obligated to investigate every claim and they had called the parents to tell them they would like to arrange a meeting.
At the time, I didn"t know if the mother was being honest or if she was just trying to scare the h.e.l.l out of me. She told me they might try and take me away from them. I"d never been more terrified in my life. Sure, I had my moments of wishing I lived with a different family, but what kid didn"t. More than anything, I was comfortable with the parents. As a child, there was no feeling better than love and comfort. I imagined myself living with another family. I would be like a pet, exciting and new for a few months, little more than a burden after a year. The thought of being taken away from my parents occupied my every thought. Every night, it felt like my insides were scoured by horrible nightmares that, upon waking, I could never remember.
I know from what I"ve told you so far, you probably think that house was a terrible place to live but it didn"t really get like that until after I started failing and the mother had her stroke. I didn"t just feel bad for myself, either. I felt bad for my parents. Now I get the impression that having the social services called on them was one of the things that really broke the parents down. Like after that they felt like nothing they ever did would be good enough. From my room, I heard the mother asking the father what they were going to do if the services took me. I heard the sobs from my bedroom. Those were the only times I could remember her crying when it wasn"t out of anger.
I"m sure she was overwhelmed. The house was truly a shambles but it was the only thing they could afford and it had come that way. The shambles wasn"t something they created. Since the father was pretty much completely incapable of doing anything physical they had planned to put back a little bit of money and have it fixed piece by piece. Once they knew they had to get it fixed quickly, they sold everything worth anything. It wasn"t long before we were living in a house devoid of records, stereo, or television. The mother also sold the few pieces of jewelry she had. "Well," she said, "we"ll just tell them we"re religious." The mother ended up buying the cheapest supplies and doing the labor by herself.
The whole house was in a state of extreme tension. The father was essentially resigned. First he"d lost his legs and now he was threatened with losing his child and he didn"t really have any control over either event. The mother spent her days smoking furiously, running around the house and painting, stuffing the holes in the drywall, and cleaning years" worth of grime off the windows. I mostly stayed in my room, too anxious to do much of anything but scurry around and make sure my bed was made and all of my toys were in the exact correct location.