It was Jake’s first trip to the emergency room. His Mother had thrown her thick tan wool coat over her house coat and slippers and actually drove the Chrysler Town & Country that Big Jake had bought her because she complained that the Dodge Dart was too small and made her feel unsafe. Jake sat on the cold vinyl seat holding his hand wrapped tightly in an ice cube-filled towel. Kay sat in the backseat inhaling cigarette after cigarette and trying vainly to concentrate on a Word Search. Jake could feel his stomach recoiling at the mélange of the dull pain from his hand and choking stench emanating from the rear of the wagon.
He sat patiently through the entire four hour ordeal, reassured that the pain was just a trade off for the sharp crystal clear feeling of fulfillment he was enjoying. He rose up against unjust tyranny and struck a blow for the common man. He replayed the fight in snippets, reveling in the efficiency with which he’d dispatched his foe. He reviewed the look he had received from the Coach. ‘Thatta boy, Kid. We could use a man like you on the team’, Jake heard the Coach-In-His-Head say. He had done this to entertain himself for there were no small toys or games in this adult waiting room. And, there was no large fish tank in sight.
He was calm when the doctor set his hand, pulling his finger and snapping it back into its correct position. The nurse who wrapped his hand with gauze had engaged him in small talk.
“You get in a fight?”
Jake replied, looking straight into her clear blue eyes. Her dark hair was parted on the side and it swept around her face; framing its soft features. She didn’t look like the nurses at the pediatrician clinic. They were all significantly older and greyer than this nurse. They wore pastel cardigans over their dingy uniforms. She wore a pristine white tailored uniform that showed off her figure; curving in under the swell of her breasts and out again at the rise of her hips. The sight of her made Jake feel excited like he’d never been before. He was euphoric and tingly all over.
“I’d hate to see the other guy”; she said bending down to catch his gaze. She placed her hand gently above his knee. “Did you win?”
“Yeah, I think so”.
The nurse patted his lower thigh twice.
“Doctor’ll be right in to apply your cast”, she removed her hand and padded off through the drawn screen. Jake breathed in deeply and rhythmically to stave off his rising excitement.
* * *
“You kicked ass”, Jenny Piper whispered across the row to Jake. Jenny was a shorthaired varsity swimmer, which, at least in Clayton, was a euphemism for ‘lesbian’.
This was one of the many comments he had gotten the next day. He came to school and immediately kids buzzed around him. Girls asked to sign his cast. And they did, dotting their eyes with little hearts and smiley faces. The boys recounted the fight, embellishing moments and adding things that weren’t even true. By the end of the day, the accepted rumor would be that Eddie spent the night in a coma at William Beaumont Hospital with a penny lodged in the frontal lobe of his brain. Throughout the entire morning before first period, well-wishers accosted Jake. Boys would walk up to him and show him their open palms and say ‘Slap me five’. Others would return to Jake the pennies they had picked up after the fight, saying ‘You’ll probably want these back’. By the first bell, he had twice as many pennies in his locker than he’d put in the sock in the first place.
About ten minutes into first period, a voice came over the loudspeaker above Mr. Goicha’s desk.
“Stan?”, Terry the temp from the junior college came on.
“Yes”, Mr. Goicha replied.
“Will you send Jake down to the Principal’s office?”
A harmonic chorus of “Aaaawwwwwww” rose from his classmates’ throats.
“Right away”, he said and the speaker buzzed out.
* * *
Principal Bertram, affectionately called Butt-Ram by all the boys in the school, was seated in his office, hands behind his head, chair leaning slightly back on its spring, his feet crossed at the ankle. He looked as if he’d just been given a promotion to the School Board or a very satisfying blowjob. Jake assumed by the tousled hair and the general sleazy demeanor of Terry, the junior college temp sitting at the reception desk, that it was probably the latter. Butt-Ram and Vice Principal Luther probably laughed with each other in the faculty bathroom, saying that they had to hire her because “she gave, er , took great dictation”. Jake could hear Mr. Luther’s braying jackass of a laugh in his head.
Eddie was seated in the last of the row of four chairs along the wall. He was gesticulating grandly, like a used car salesman and mumbling phrases like ‘discount prices’ and ‘at cost’. Jake knocked on the open door and Butt-Ram sat up straight.
“Come in, Jake”, Butt-Ram said pointing to the bank of chairs along the wall.
He sat in the seat furthest from Eddie and closest to the door.
“Jake, I’m sure you know why I called you both here this morning”, Butt-Ram leaned forward in his chair and pulled a cigarette from the pack on his desk. He flicked his table lighter and lit the tip. “Do you know why you’re here?”
The boys nodded and the lecture began. Eddie didn’t once look at Jake the entire speech. Butt-Ram paraphrased the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and The Bible in his homily on Non-Violence. Jake thought he’d even quoted a few protest songs from the 60's, but couldn’t be sure. He used the repression of the black man and his grace and determination in not resorting to violence to put down that repression as a testament of exemplary behavior. His refrain was just a riff on his same tired motto. “Turn the other cheek and you’ll make a difference”. Jake was amazed at Butt-Ram’s ability not only to denigrate the Black Man’s struggle by grossly over-simplifying it but also to distill it into a political slogan. Jake was probably the only white freshman in Clayton to have read Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice and his thoughts were screaming for a chance to bust Butt-Ram’s ass with a few choice quotes. Jake was silent, though, simmering at the audacity of the Principal’s theme. The message he was sending made Jake wince with disgust. ‘Rejoin the Fold’, ‘Toe the Line’, ‘Conform to the Status Quo’, ‘Obey’, or else. Jake realized that Butt-Ram was spouting party line rhetoric. Butt-Ram was being a good Kapo, trying to get his charges back in line so they could be controlled.
“Now, I want you to apologize”, Butt-Ram leaned back in his chair. “Jake?”
“I’m sorry”, Jake mumbled. He had already crossed his second toe over his big toe and reveled in the fact that what he’d just said didn’t count.
“Good. Now don’t you feel better?”, Butt-Ram asked. “Do you accept, Edward?”
Eddie looked over at Jake with mock sincerity. Jake saw that he was acting. He knew it. He wanted to jump up, pointing his cast-covered hand and scream “Faker” at the top of his lungs, then continue the pummeling he started yesterday afternoon. Butt-Ram was an imbecile if he couldn’t see through Eddie’s little sympathy-reaping charade. Jake stared into Eddie’s eyes, one of which had swollen to almost closing and turned a deep purple from Jake’ blow. This visible injury lent credence to his performance.
“I accept”, Eddie said in a low, halting tone. He cleared his throat and sipped a little water from a cup in his hands.
“Let this be a lesson for you, Jake. You’re excused”, Butt-Ram turned back to Eddie and picked up a pad of paper and a pen. “Where’d you say your Mother worked?”
“It’s an Apple distributor”, Eddie replied. “Like I was saying, she could get a bulk order for probably very close to wholesale. Computer, monitor and printer. The whole package”.
“Really. Could you write down your phone number?” Butt-Ram handed Eddie the pad.
“The Apple Classic is the top of the line. It’s much better than IBM. Easier to use, too”.
Jake paused at the door.
“See Terry for a pass on your way out”, Butt-Ram said never turning his attention away from Eddie’s sales pitch.
* * *
Last bell came and went and Jake traipsed back to his locker. Alex and Scott stood silently by their lockers. Neither one looked up from their task. They had sold out their friend for a pardon for themselves. They had misjudged Jake's resolve and their plan had backfired. Had Eddie beat Jake soundly, their pre-fight deal would've spared them. But, with Jake's victory, their safety hung in the balance; tottering on the eventuality of Eddie's reprisal for their part in the plot. They retrieved their respective coats and exited the building with out so much as a ‘Hey’ or a ‘Can I sign your cast’. Jake popped the lock on his locker and a white piece of paper flitted down from the air vent in the door to the floor. He picked it up and read it.
Jake,
I’m having people over to my house for a
party. My parents are going to be out and
we’ll have the whole house. 1157 Ticonderoga.
See if you can score some of your sister’s
boyfriend’s killer weed. See you there.
Dana
Jake had been invited to a girl’s house. To a party at a girl’s house. Perhaps, no it was too much to ask for, Jodi might be there. Jake reread the note, stuffed it into his jeans and floated out to his waiting bicycle.
* * *
He parked his bike around the back of the house at 1157 Ticonderoga next to a bunch of other bikes and walked to the back door of the Cortez house. It was a moonless, cloudless night. He could feel the approach of winter in every breeze. He pulled the collar up on his Dad’s corduroy fleece-lined jacket and rapped on the door. He heard steps plodding up the basement stairs. The shear, embroidered curtain was pulled back to reveal Dana’s face, floating brightly in the dark around her. She pulled open the inner door and the outer door sucked tightly into its frame. She hit the latch and opened it.
“Come on in”, Dana said as she blocked the chill with the heavier inner door.
Jake stepped inside. It was warm and the smell of incense wafted up from the basement. The lights were dim down there and they flickered. ‘Candles’, Jake thought. He now knew that he hadn’t walked into just any party. This was a special party. This was a party that he’d, up until now, only heard rumors of. He was frightened and titillated at the same time.
“Did you bring the pot?”, Dana asked.
Jake reached into his upper coat pocket and produced three slightly-larger-than-pinner-sized joints. The Lions hat he’d bought tapped him out. So, he’d taken the change that he’d got from the kids at school and combined it with a few returnable bottles to come up with three dollars. He bought the joints from his sister Denise who looked at him with a mixture of pride and shame. Pride at him growing up and getting older, shame that she had indoctrinated him as another member of the family that smoked pot behind their parents’ backs.
* * *
He was 11 years old when he first tried pot. Kay and her asshole boyfriend Chuckie, Denise and Dean and Jake were all coming back from seeing a matinee of The Rose, the Bette Midler quasi-biopic about a Janis Joplinesque singer who died of a drug overdose. They had piled into Kay’s big white Ford Elite and immediately lit up. Jake was sitting near the rear window on the driver’s side, looking out at the passing traffic. He ignored the ritual passing of the joint as if it were a sacred rite that he had not yet grown up enough to engage in. He ignored it until Dean had absent-mindedly nudged him.
Jake turned and saw Dean looking the other way engaged in a French toke with Denise. Jake looked at the joint. Tendrils of thin smoke lifted and twirled from its tiny red coal. It was beckoning him; calling him to partake in its untold pleasures.
Come. Dance in the moonlight with the Wolves of the Sky. Feel the joy of the ones who’ve gone before you. Breathe in the Spirit of your Elders. Become one with them, one with the Universe.
Jake took the joint and quickly brought it to his mouth. He drew his hit in and held it passing the joint back to Dean; who took it back with his accustomed nonchalance.
“Your brother’s a little High-On”, Dean said to Denise as he toked.
Denise gazed over at Jake. It was the first time she’d looked at him with that familiar look of Pride/Shame.
* * *
“Cool”, Dana said as she turned and bound down the stairs into the orange glow of the basement. As she went Jake could hear the low hum of the first cut off Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
The basement was filled with the remnants of furniture that mostly likely was the living room furniture from 1973 to 1978, but had since been relegated to the basement where it would remain until Dana went to college or the living room was remodeled, which ever came first. There was a burlap sofa across the West wall of the room; its fabric was awash in orange and gold stripes. Around its base was a thin chrome strip. This strip was repeated on the loveseat that sat along the other wall. There was an orange vinyl Eames Chair rip-off with a broken arm lolling at its side. It was stuffed ungracefully in the corner next to a stand-up ashtray in the shape of a small pot-bellied stove. There were giant throw pillows strewn across the orange and gold shag carpeting; most of which were of an Aztec or Indian motif. The walls were, of course, paneled; except for one wall, which was covered in smoked mirrors with tiny gold veins traversing its murkily reflective surface. To the left of the mirrored wall was a door Jake thought must’ve led to the laundry room. To the left of this was, Jake would later find out, a closet.
Most of the boys were sophomores. Out of the group, Jake only recognized Brian Tashman. Denise use to baby-sit his little sister. Jake would go with her and swim in their pool. Sometimes even engaging Brian in a game of pool basketball, which Brian always won. He would spike the ball splashing Jake in the face to signify his victory. Brian was an up and coming bad ass, replete with black Ted Nugent T-shirt and white Adidas hi-tops. He was lounging on one of the throw pillows, the back of his head resting between the thighs of Shelly Bergen, the blow-dried pretender to Farrah Fawcett’s throne.
“Hey, Jake. Long time, no see”, Brian put his hand out and Jake tapped it lightly with his broken hand. Noticing the cast Brian added. “Whoa, you’re fucked up”.
Jake stepped through the lounging bodies on the floor and made his way to the Eames chair. Aside from a couple of boys in the corner, telling jokes to one another, the place was surprisingly mellow. At regular intervals, one of the girls would bolt up and grab another girl and take her into the laundry room. From behind the door Jake could hear phrases like ‘No Way’ or ‘Get outta here, really?’. Occasionally, he would hear ‘I don’t think I’m ready’ said low and fast. He would look at the guy to whom the girl belongs and feel sorry for him. The girls would come out and return to their places giggling like, well, schoolgirls.
“Jake. Spark it up”, Dana said as he took off his coat. “Here”
She tossed him Zippo with the letters D-M-C engraved on the lid. She was probably trying to pass the lighter off as her own, but Jake knew her Mother smoked and that her name was Delores. He clinked the lid back and struck the wheel. Blue flame popped into being and settled into the wind grate, peeking its gold head above it like a small child in a playpen. Jake brought the lighter to his mouth and cupped the flame with his cast.
“Cool”, Brian said pointing at the large AC/DC Stu Watkins had drawn down the length of his cast. Brian traced the letters, his finger rising and falling over the uneven surface.
“Yeah”, Jake exhaled passing the joint to Brian. He turned toward the sound of a creak on the stair and saw who he’d thought and even prayed would be there, who he’d came to see.
Jodi was radiant. She was wearing tight blue jeans that hugged her slight hips. She was bare foot and her toenails flashed a shimmery pink that matched the color of her tight T-shirt. Jake caught his breath when he read what was written across it.
Bright reflective letters spelled out the word “BRAT”.
Jake smiled at her as she turned her gaze toward him. She tiptoed through the lounging teenflesh and stood before him.
“Mind if I sit on the floor between your legs?”, Jodi asked.
Jake nodded and watched her steady herself on his knee as she knelt to the shag floor.
“Does that hurt?”, Jodi said turning the cast gingerly in her hands.
“Not anymore”
The haunting melody of “Comfortably Numb” rolled out of the speakers setting the score to the dance of the silently shifting, flickering light of the room.
* * *
“Who wants to play a game?”, Dana said turning down the music and ‘shushing’ the giggling throng of girls seated along the wall. She had spent the better part of the last two songs scribbling furiously on small pieces of paper. Jake had had a passing thought that the marijuana had sparked her to either create some very intense haiku or blueprint plans for a rudimentary bong.
Dana grabbed Denny Ellison’s Tigers hat off his head and up ended it. She swiped the scraps of paper off the table and into Denny’s hat. She stood shaking the hat as if she was standing at a range making Jiffy Pop popcorn.
“These are all the names of all the boys in this room”, Dana explained. “Each girl will draw a name from the hat and the lucky couple will pick a song and spend the entire song in the closet doing whatever they want to do”.
Dana leaned into Sherry Dugan’s ear and whispered something. Sherry nodded in agreement as Dana addressed the rest of the room.
“Sherry will pick first”.
Sherry put one hand over her eyes and the other in the hat, making a big production out of it. She swirled it around for a moment then pulled out a slip of paper.
“The luck guy is...?”, Dana announced.
Sherry finished, “Doug Hansen”.
Doug, a strapping young man in a grey sweatshirt with a very fierce wolverine growling across the front, leapt up from his seat and stepped toward the closet. He gallantly opened it for Sherry.
“Super Freak by Rick James”, Doug said. The boys in the room howled with laughter and encouragement and were nearly shouted down with the girls’ cries of ‘Oh, Please’.
The needle popped and hissed as Dana set it down on the record and the couple entered the closet.
Jake sat in stunned silence mulling over what he’d gotten himself into. He was in a situation that was fast becoming very uncomfortable for him. He could excuse himself to the bathroom to buy himself some time, but sooner or later he would have to face the music, literally. He ran his fingers through his hair and leaned back into the chair. Jake thought of how appalling it was to be engaged in this kind of behavior. When he examined it down to the core of its ritual, it was just organized date rape. He began to worry that the girls were getting the short end of the deal here. He had always thought that the boys were basically takers when it came to matters of sex. This was because he thought that boys really had nothing to give. It was the girls that held all the power and all the mystery. It was up to them whether they allowed the boys in on their secrets. The fact that through the process of the draw, a girl would be forced to divulge their deepest most cherished secrets to some boy she didn’t even care for. He looked around the room to decide which of the girls he’d want to be stuck in the closet with in the event that Jodi didn’t pull his name from the hat. He scanned their rouged and powdered faces for a glimmer of attraction. None came.
Then he thought of what would happen if Jodi chose someone else’s name. How would he react to one of the other guys spending the next 5 to 7 minutes behind the door with the girl of, if not his dreams, definitely his thoughts? He looked at the boys’ faces. Each and every one was filled with lustful desire. Their lips were slick with drool, their eyes bulging with their fevered fantasies. Soon he was seeing images of Jodi nude bucking wildly into the crotch of a faceless boy as he took her from behind. He slammed his eyes shut and thought of dead puppies. His brother Craig had given him this sage piece of advice. ‘Think of dead puppies, it’ll do the trick’. It didn’t. He thought of a pile of dead puppies and was momentarily struck with a profound sadness. Then the puppies came to life and then he thought of how puppies were made. Soon images of dogs going at it flashed across his eyes. This was soon replaced with the image of Jodi nude except for a dog collar bucking wildly into the crotch of a boy dressed in a Halloween costume that made him look eerily like Ralph the piano-playing dog from The Muppet Show. He opened his eyes and began to breathe deeply, trying to make his thoughts clearer. He had to calm himself. He began to try to remember the Presidents of the United States in order.
By the time he reached into his memory to retrieve the name James K. Polk, the music had stopped.
The closet opened and Doug stepped out. The boys renewed their howling. Doug’s mouth was smeared with a shimmer of lipgloss. He was no longer wearing his sweatshirt. His navy tank top showed off his smooth hairless biceps. He shielded his eyes from the light of the room with the back of his arm, exposing the veins that ran down the length of his forearms. Sherry came out from behind him sheepishly adjusting the buttons on her blouse and running her hand through her hair. She reached down and held Doug’s hand, crossing one bare foot over the top of the other.
“Jodi, you’re next”.
Jodi leaned back and pushed herself up, supporting her weight with Jake’s knee. She made her way to her cousin and reached into the hat.
“The next lucky guy is...”
Jodi blushed, adding, “Jake”.
Jake sat in the busted orange chair rocking his head back and forth and breathing in and out rhythmically, oblivious to what had just been said. That was until Brian Tashman kicked him in the shin.
“Yo, Shit fer brains. Yer up”, he yelled.
Jake looked over toward Dana and saw Jodi standing next to her pushing her hair back behind her right ear. He had seen her do that when she gave him her number at the Embassy. He had committed to memory every nuance of the movement. The slow ascent of the hand. The light brushing of the upper cheek with her fingertips. The hair gathering against her hand. The slight rise as it went over her tiny simple-gold-hooped ringed ear. The flash of palm as she completed the process, her hair resting in a gentle curve behind her lobe. He ached at the sight of her in the flickering candlelight.
He rose from the chair supporting his weight on the left armrest. He hopped through the bodies on the floor and stood next to the closet.
“Stairway to Heaven”, he said calmly and firmly.
The room fell silent. The girls in the room sighed and looked at each other. The boys nodded their approval, smiling knowingly at Jake.
Jake knew it was the right choice. Not only was it the right choice, it was the perfect choice. Sure, some greedy assholes might get smart and request “Inna Godda Davida” or “American Pie” or the interminable “Alice’s Restaurant” just to guarantee enough time to do his dirty work. Some boys might even, as Doug had, had chosen something with a funky bass line that throbbed in time with your heartbeat. The groove would be hard to resist and the girl’s body would move in spite of herself. But, “Stairway” was the real shit. It was the greatest rock and roll song of all time, bar none. It was slow at first, light and almost folksy. That bought you points from the girls who like slow songs. The lyrics were ethereal and evocative. This added to the mood. The choice of this song showed maturity, sensitivity and good taste in music. Plus, it rocked out toward the end of it, which would cover the noise of your moaning and grunting if you indeed did get lucky. Doug Hansen was kicking himself for not picking it.
Jake opened the door for Jodi and she stepped in. The guitar started in and Jake shut the door behind him, enclosing them both in black.
“So”, Jake said.
“So”, Jodi said.
“What do you want to do?” Jake was always polite.
“Why didn’t you ever call me?”
“My Mom made me wash my hands for dinner the minute I got home. I’m sorry”. He knew it was a lie by it was white and tiny and the truth would’ve made him look pathetic and cast aspersions on her character. The path of least resistance ruled again.
“You could’ve asked Dana for the number”.
Jodi’s face was swimming into view, slowly. There was a thin slit of light shining up from the bottom of the door. Slight grey German Expressionistic shadows played across the left side of her face. Her left eye glinted like oil in the dark.
“I’m sorry”.
“That’s okay”. She leaned into Jake’s chest and he steadied himself on the Hoover vacuum to his left. He folded his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. She tilted her head up to him and her lips parted like a tiny flower that glistened with dew. He leaned his head down and they met, just lips at first, then tongues.
He slid his hands down to the rise of her hips and she slid hers under his shirt. She caressed his flesh beneath the warm pads of her hands. He leaned back to the wall of the closet.
“Can I”, Jake whispered.
She leaned back and took his left hand. She guided it under her shirt and it slid beneath the letter ‘B’. Their eyes had adjusted enough to see each other in the half-light. Her soft skin was warm under his palm. He slid his hand toward the center of her chest and felt her heartbeat drumming against the pads of his fingers. Sliding his hand down her belly and around to the small of her back, he leaned into her welcoming face.
“I’m glad it was my name on that piece of paper”.
Jodi giggled and turned her eyes away. Jake tried to chase her face with his gaze, but she turned and buried it into the arm of a wool coat hanging from the bar at the rear of the closet.
“What? What’s so funny?”
Jodi looked up at Jake. Her eyes were happy little slits. Her smile pushed her cheeks into round balls. Like she had a secret she was dying to tell. Mischeviousness looked so good on her. She murmured a muffled giggle.
“It was blank”, Jodi said.
“What was blank?”, Jake returned, puzzled.
“The piece of paper. It was blank. We got to pick whoever we wanted”.
Jake was stunned for a moment and then a warm realization fell over him like a wool afghan. Of course they chose. Of course they had it all planned out. These were girls he was dealing with. They were better at this because they had more to give and consequently, more to lose.
“I chose you”.
Jake was momentarily saddened that it wasn’t Fate that had thrown them together into this musty closet to fumble around trying to learn this new exotic and mysterious dance. His sadness melted at the thought that the truth was actually better than his imagined Romanticized cliché.
They kissed once more as the song ended.
The door opened and the warm bright light burst in. Jodi grabbed Jake’s left hand and stepped out first. Jake followed her into the light.
* * *
He rode home in the cool dark, pedaling slowly and aimlessly through the streets. He got Jodi’s number, on paper this time, and put it in his wallet behind his WRIF ‘DREAD’ card. As he coasted along, Jake tossed over the emotional turmoil of the past few days in his mind. He had come within an inch of being a non-entity for the rest of his high school career, springing from the shackles of a repressed-- both psychologically and socially--awkward boy and rushed headlong, devil-may-care into his waiting teenhood.
Jake drifted up the driveway and parked his bike next to the pile of bricks that had broken his sister’s leg that summer day. He stood and looked into the cloudless sky. Turning toward the grass, he wandered out into the back yard.
The North Star shone like a rich woman’s engagement ring. He twirled around a bit, neck craning, and took the rest of the sky in. Orion the Hunter chased the Sisters of the Pleiades across the inky black while Taurus snorted in reverence to his Queen, Cassiopeia. Jake lay down on the moist grass and stared into the field of bright pinpricks against the blue-tinged ebony void.
He reached into his jacket, pulled out the remaining joint and lit it. The scent wafted across his nose, rubbing its woody, earthy body around the walls of his nostrils. He held his smoke and slowly let it loose. It folded onto itself as it rose into the stars and dissipated.
Jake’s mind wandered, peeking into his depressing past, hurtling back to cold mornings huddled by the heat register with his mothhole-ridden woolen blanket. Back to hot summer days running until his legs were loose and rubbery, dousing his hot neck with cold water straight from the duct-taped hose by the side of the house. His mind called up memories, marching them past Jake’s mind’s eye in neat rows. There was the singing in the kitchen, his family breaking out the Reader’s Digest Family Songbook and belting out tunes like “Dinah Won’t You Blow (Your Horn)”, “Ja Da, Ja Da” or “Toorah Loorah Loorah”. There was the monthly trips to Farmer D’s fruit stand in Romeo, sitting in the back seat of the rusting 1967 Lincoln Town Car with suicide doors on a warm day, juice from a plump Red Delicious apple running down his chin. There was even the Christmas when he got his racetrack set. It was the only thing he got that year and he played with it until the controller raised a blister on his index finger. He switched to the middle finger and kept racing the silver car around the black plastic oval, eyes bright with unmatched glee.
None of these memories could compete with how he felt at this moment, at this time. He breathed in the last of he smoke and flicked the tiny brown buttlet into the dark of the backyard. He watched its orange trail until it blinked out. He gazed at the stars whirling slowly over him. Jake was now completely at ease with who he was and where he was. He had fixed something that had been broken in him or had broken something that had held him back from being who he truly was meant to be.
Jake lay there thinking that he had, by some mysterious accident, become one of the Accepted Ones, The Chosen Ones. With one violent rebellious act he had proven his worth and was allowed into the upper levels of suburban society. Somehow his unwillingness to buckle under had granted him entry into the world he’d always glimpsed from the outside.
He laid there smiling at the great practical joke he’d played on them. He had performed like a star. He had fulfilled and surpassed everyone’s expectations. He glided effortlessly into their ranks without attracting any stares or raising any suspicions.
He lay in the cool wet grass, laughing lightly to himself; amused by his ability to pass himself off as one of their own.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
(fourteen) The Assassination Plot
It was to take place that Monday morning. It was to go down like this:
After the last bell, the three conspirators would meet at the bikerack in front of the school. They would have planned it so their bikes would be on either side of Eddie’s. They would run the lock through his frame so he couldn’t get his bike out. For added assurance, they would let the air out of his tires and take his chain off the sprocket. Then, they would wait.
As Eddie walked up, Jake would be in the middle, flanked by Alex on his left and Scott on his right. They would surprise him, attacking first, which he wouldn’t expect, each in his assigned area. Alex would dive for the bastard’s legs, wrapping his bike lock around them. Scott would grab the fucker’s arms from behind. Jake would then concentrate on pounding him about the head and neck with the ragg wool sock full of pennies he had made the night before. Their moves would be swift, their accuracy, deadly. Ruthlessness was what was needed, ruthlessness was what they’d use. It would be all over in a matter of seconds.
The other kids would be stunned at their efficiency. Eddie would be bloody and unconscious on the ground before anyone knew what had happened. The three would be on their bikes and gone before Vice-Principal Luther pulled his pants up from receiving his daily blowjob from the secretarial intern from the junior college and headed out to investigate the ruckus.
They had practiced it the entire weekend, down in the silence of Quickstad Park. They chose a five-foot stump of an old silver maple tree to be their target, Eddie. Its bark was covered with blackened carvings of romantic pairings. ‘Tanya -N- Eric’, ‘Travis and Tracy 4ever’, ‘Bobby loves Terry’, ad nauseum. Jake found a relatively bare spot and had carved a rough caricature of Eddie’s face in the top of the stump. The Dummy Eddie’s face was a portrait of evil, like a villain in a Marvel Comic book; all hard angles and deep lines. His teeth were bared and his eyes stared crazily down from beneath hideously shaggy eyebrows. In reality, it didn’t really look like Eddie at all, but rather his essence, his spirit, his chi.
Alex had practiced his lunge and tie. He dove at the base of the trunk, bike lock in hand, locking it around the bark and had gotten fairly proficient at hooking the lock on the first try. Scott was busy synchronizing his movements with his brother’s. They practiced lunging at the poor tree, until their shirts were flaked with dry bark and sweat stains had formed under their arms.
Jake stood in front of the tree. He calmly proceeded in his preparation, focusing all attention on the sneering face before him. Starting in small movement, he would alternately draw the sock from his jacket and replace it. Then he started to add another motion to the movement. He would draw and then land the first blow, the pennies hitting the rotting wood with a dull ‘thuck’. Then he’d add a blow. Then another. He quickened the pace, until...
* * *
“My Mom and Dad went to my Aunt’s for the day. We got the whole house to ourselves”, Eddie smiled demonically as he propped the door open with his foot, and lit the end of a joint with his lighter.
“C’mon in”.
Jake entered followed by Richie. Morris and the twins were still at Mass at Guardian Angel and were suppose to join us later.
“We had Little Caesar’s last night. We got a whole large left in the fridge. So we’ll get baked, have some nosh, wait the allotted half hour playing Pitfall and then we’ll hop in the pool so I can kick your guys asses in water dodgeball”.
Jake was a bit on edge with just Eddie and Richie. He really didn’t trust either one of them very much, though Richie more than Eddie. Richie was, after all, his sister Denise’s godson, though Denise wasn’t Catholic and was therefore probably picked as godmother just to piss off one of Richie’s aunts.
The Stephens house was ultra modern in every way. The kitchen was awash in bright white counter tops and cabinet fronts with gleaming silver handles. The refrigerator was gloss black with ice and water through the door. In the dining room, which was just as modern as the kitchen, stood a smoke gray glass topped table with white leather and chrome chairs.
Richie bee-lined toward the living room and switched on the 32 inch color set that stood on a dark oak stand. The carpet was darker here, a charcoal shag with black accents. The furnishings were also darker, a deep grey plush sofa, matching love seat and chair with ottoman. Interspersed between these were the odd smoked glass end table, upon one of which stood a wrought iron ashtray with two joints placed neatly in the cigarette holders.
Richie sifted through the stack of game cartridges under the television, found the one he wanted, shoved it in its slot and snapped the Atari on. The game booted up to the player screen.
“Two player”, Jake said and made for the other control. Richie selected ‘One Player’ hit the fire button on the joystick. He turned his face toward Jake, smiled and turned back toward the screen.
Eddie came out of the bathroom, with his shirt off and handed the butt of the joint to Richie. He took it between his lips and sucked it down to half its size, never missing a beat on his joystick.
“Torch another one, man” Eddie said pointing to the ashtray with the two joints.
Jake took one from its resting place and grabbed the red bic lighter from the pack of Eddie’s Marlboro Lights that lay next to the ashtray. He cupped his hands and lit the end. The smoke was both acrid and cloying. It caught in his throat a bit and he coughed the smoke into his nose. He exhaled forcefully and his head began to throb.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Eddie yelled wrenching the joint from Jake’s fingers. “Don’t waste it. Jesus.”
“Water” Jake managed to choke out, awkwardly making his way to his feet. Eddie watched him disinterestedly as he pulled another hit.
“What color am I?”, Eddie said showing Jake his arm. “I’m not your fucking Nigger. Get it yourself”
In his short walk from the living room, the pot began to take affect. His nose tickled and his spit began to thicken. Jake walked in the kitchen and popped open one of the cabinets. He took a moment to focus. Plates and Bowls. He smiled. He imagined Mrs. Stephens making a cake in one of those bowls. He saw her, highball of gin within arms reach, scanning a page of the familiar red plaid Better Homes Cookbook. He imagined ashes from her Virginia Slims Menthol 100 falling into the batter, her hesitating for a moment and then folding it in like it were egg whites. He closed the cabinet and opened the one next to it. Bakeware. He began to chuckle to himself. He shut the door and went to open the one on the opposite side of the sink.
“What are taking inventory in there? Above the microwave, Numbnuts”.
Jake looked down and settled his gaze on the microwave. He marveled at the television-like apparatus sitting on the counter for a few seconds, for he had never seen one and doubted that he would ever use one until he had the money to buy one himself. He popped open the cabinet and took down a tall glass tumbler with Elmer Fudd sheepishly grinning from its side.
The ice cubes tinkled into the glass and rang around the bottom. He then pushed the glass against the bar and a clean jet of water shot thickly into the glass, the ice cubes snapping and popping in its stream. Jake raised the glass and drank deeply. This particular glass of water was not just any glass of water to Jake. This was the glass of water. This was a glass of water that he would remember. Like he remember that bottle of Coke, its frosty slush plugging its neck, that his brother Craig pulled from his fridge when they had finished painting the garage one summer. Fucking Awesome was the only way to describe it.
Eddie came around the corner and interrupted Jake communing with his waterglass, calling back to Richie in the living room.
“Hey, Pollack, wanna Coke?”
Richie mumbled in the affirmative and Eddie pushed past Jake to the fridge. He popped two cans out of a twelve pack and turned back toward the living room.
“Can I get one of those?” Jake asked.
“You got your water”, Eddie answered over his shoulder never looking back. Jake looked down at his glass. In sipping the last bit of water from it, he realized that the ice cubes smelled faintly of garlic. He topped the glass off with new ice and water and returned to the living room.
Eddie was kicking much ass on Pitfall, mastering every move, instinctively acing every pattern for every board level. Eddie’s invitation to come over and play video games was never about hospitality and wanting to engage his fellows in friendly competition. No. It was more just a cursory, good natured, “C’mon let’s play” that soon degraded into a fast exit for his opponent and lengthy periods of making the rest of the guys watch him play. Sometimes ten, fifteen minutes would go by before his man would die. Then, with the predictability of a Swiss movement, he would jerk the game cartridge from the machine, stuff in a new game and start all over again.
This time, when Eddie’s Pitfall Harry died (those damn dirty crocodiles, again) he just shut the Atari off.
“Time for a swim”, Eddie said tossing the joystick under the television.
“I thought we were gonna have pizza”, Jake questioned.
“Is food all you every think about?” Eddie patted Jake’s tummy as he tried to pull away. “You could do with skipping a couple meals there, Doughboy”.
Richie kicked off his shoes and pulled off his tank top and walked out toward the kitchen and the back door. Eddie went to the bathroom to change. Jake walked to the sliding door off the dining room and watched Richie ascend the ladder to the pool.
“Hey, Jake. Come ‘ere”, Eddie yelled from the bathroom.
“What?”, Jake returned as he watched Richie go under the water for the first time.
“You gotta see this”, Eddie implored.
Jake walked around the table and down the short hall that lead to the bathroom and Mr. and Mrs. Stephens’ bedroom. He looked at the pictures lining the walls of the small hallway. Eddie’s brother and sister looked down at him from family picnics and Christmas gatherings. Mr. and Mrs. Stephens were smiling down from their wedding chapel, flanked by tuxedoed and long-gowned relatives. In one frame rested Eddie’s class picture, his hair perfectly coiffed, his tinted glasses gone, revealing cold, gray eyes, his smile splayed across his face in an almost genuine display of benevolence.
“Hurry up”, Eddie said.
Jake turned toward the bathroom and opened the bi-fold door.
Eddie was standing in the middle of the purple tile floor, his arms folded behind his head. He was completely naked, his penis fully erect arching up toward his belly.
Jake stood motionless in the doorway, unable to grasp what he had let himself be goaded into. He should’ve seen something coming. He cursed his own stupidity and naiveté. He should’ve seen Eddie’s sly, nonchalance during the past hour. Normally, he completely ignored Jake, referring to him only when he needed something from him. Jake shifted his gaze from Eddie to the floor, his pulse quickening exponentially for every second he remained in the doorway.
Before he could move, Eddie grabbed his arm and pulled him into the bathroom. Jake turned to flee, pushing on the door to open it. Instead it folded back to its closed position. He was trapped. Eddie forced him into the corner of the bathroom and put both arms on either side of Jake to block his escape.
“Touch it”, Eddie sneered. “You know you want to”.
Jake looked at the purple tiled wall. He focused on the cream colored grouting as it ran in a network of crosses between glossy tiles. The air was suddenly thick with moisture, so much so that he couldn’t pull it into his lungs, his breathing became shallow, labored.
“What’s the matter? Never seen one this big before?” Eddie grabbed Jake’s hand and forced it down toward his crotch. Jake resisted but Eddie had more upper body strength and easily overcame his attempt. Jake looked away from the wall and caught his own face in the mirror that ran along the wall over the sink. He looked into his own eyes. He saw someone else there, someone that wasn’t him, someone he pitied. As his hand edge toward Eddie’s groin, Jake’s hatred for the pathetic boy in the mirror deepened. When his hand brushed the warm spongy tip of Eddie’s member, that hatred flared.
Jake planted his other hand directly in the middle of Eddie’s chest, brought his right foot up against the wall and shoved him with all his weight behind it. Eddie lost his footing and backpedaled, grasping at the towel bar for balance. He clutched it and it came free of the wall, slowing but not stopping his backward movement. He threw the other hand up toward the shower curtain as his heel hit the tub with a hollow thud. He stood on his heels for a brief moment perched on the fulcrum of falling and regaining balance, then pitched into the tub, pulling the curtain down on top of him, covering his rigid dick like a tent.
* * *
“Hey, cool it”, Alex said as he stood shaking the bits of bark from his hair. His friend didn’t hear him. Jake continued to pummel the stump.
He’s a fucking animal and he deserves everything he gets goddamnit. He’ll pay for everything he’s ever done to you and you’ll be vindicated. People will cheer when they see what you have done. They will cheer your act. They will cheer.
“JAKE!!!”, Scott screamed in his friends ear. “STOP IT. YOU’RE SCARING US”.
Jake stopped his merciless assault. His breath was shallow and fast. He put his head between his knees and gulped in the cool air. He stood up straight and felt the bicep of his right arm throb in time with his pulse.
“Jesus Christ”, Alex whispered. “Look what you did”.
The blows from the makeshift blackjack had pulverized the face on the tree. The entire top half of the stump where the head had been was blasted away. The only thing remaining was the sickening upturned grin.
* * *
Later that evening, after finishing dinner and his chores quickly, Jake biked the mile and a half to Meijer’s Thrifty Acres. As he entered the bright fluorescent light, he squinted, allowed a moment to adjust and headed toward the young men’s department.
He walked past sweater vests and neatly pleated slacks, past zippered velour long-sleeve shirts and poly-blend turtlenecks, but could not find what he came for. What he was looking for was not to be found. This brought a sudden wave of panic over his whole body. He shuddered as he stood between the clearance rack and the display of Dickie’s workclothes. Sweat began to form on his lip though the air was cool and dry. Then, he stopped, collected himself and breathed deeply. He craned his neck over the racks and scanned the area. His eyes fell upon a large sign that read ‘Accessories’. He smiled and bolted toward the racks directly under the sign.
He walked down the aisle of ties and handkerchiefs and came back up the other side. There, at the end of the aisle was what he so doggedly sought. At eye level, stacked neatly, tightly, stood a row of Detroit Lions stocking hats.
Jake pulled a black one from the shelf. On it’s face was just the blue silhouette of the pouncing lion. No ‘Detroit Lions’ in that vaguely Old West font that Jake really didn’t like. Not even just ‘Lions’. Just the King of the Beasts, frozen forever in mid-pounce. And, the best part about the hat was that it had no pom-pom on its crown.
Jake smiled, looked at the tag, pulled his hard earned money from his pocket, nodded in silent agreement with himself and headed toward the registers to pay.
* * *
The next morning, hat firmly on his head, Jake rode his bike to school. As he turned the corner to ride the last 100 feet to bike racks, he saw Alex and Scott standing close to each other, talking to each other. This probably would’ve seemed normal to any other viewer, but Jake knew that these were two guys who couldn’t stand being near each other. They constantly kept their distance from one another in hopes to reaffirm that they were separate entities and should be dealt with as such. This morning, Jake thought, they were suspiciously close. They pointed at and shoved each other until Scott had caught sight of Jake. They stopped their argument as Jake approached.
“What’s up?”
“Hey”, Alex said bending down to wrap the lock around the rack and through the frame on his bike.
“So, we’re still gonna do this, right?”, Jake said. He sensed their loyalty flagging in light of the previous day's incident.
“I’m still in”, Scott replied and turned his eyes ever so slightly toward his brother.
“Alex, this isn’t just about us”, Jake explained “This is for everyone he’s ever fucked with. If he goes unchecked, there’s no tellin’ what’ll happen”.
“But, maybe its too harsh”, Alex replied looking to Scott for support.
“Too harsh?”, Jake asked. “One of these days he’ll push someone too far and they’ll end up killing themselves”.
Alex turned his eyes away from Jake. He looked toward his bike and shifted his weight to his right foot. Jake could see his breath quicken. Alex’s face flushed in patches.
“Or, worse. They’ll come to school with their Dad’s 12 gauge...? Blow you away in homeroom like that kid in California last year?”. Jake had him back in the fold now. Alex was bobbing his head ‘yes’ before Jake finished his sentence.
They agreed, in silence, that in 6 hours they would teach Eddie a lesson that was a long time in coming. It was a lesson that would make Eddie realize the error of his ways. He would cease to be a threat to those he ridiculed. Jake and his band of conspirators would force him to take notice that the poor slobs he tortured were human beings with feelings, not pathetic pawns to be played with as it fit his fancy. This blow would stick and stick hard. It would change the future. All their futures.
As the Twins started for the front door of the school, Jake was struck with a bitter ache at the thought that he had just played upon his friends' fears in order to get them to do what he wanted them to do.
* * *
It was five minutes before the last bell, when Josh Stern whispered in Jake’s ear.
“Eddie knows what you’re up to”.
Josh was a smartly dressed boy, in his pink broadcloth shirt, his grey Izod v-neck, his straight-leg Jordache jeans and his Sperry Topsiders sans socks. He would’ve thrived in the stricture of the Catholic school uniform, if it weren’t for the fact that he was Jewish and a Unitarian. He would be the first in school to wear parachute pants, the first to listen to the Pet Shop Boys and the first to be caught in the Mall bathroom giving head to a stranger. Jake looked up into his face of tanned clear skin, into his dark brown eyes.
“Just thought I’d warn you”.
Jake sat in his desk bobbing his leg up and down next to upright post. At first he didn’t recognize what Josh had said. It was as if the combination of words hadn’t formed to make a complete thought. It took him a few long seconds until his brain had wrapped itself around the statement.
Jake looked around the room. The light mint green walls seemed to close in around him. The hum from the banks of fluorescent lights grew to a deafening roar in his ears. Each flat emotionless face on each kid was stealing looks toward the doomed man. It was clear to Jake that his circle of loyal conspirators had buckled under the stress of the Act. What was to be a blow for the greater good of the community had disintegrated into a looming punishment for the traitor in their midst. Jake turned back to his book to finish his geometric proof.
A. If Eddie knows you planned the whole thing
B. And, you have no plan B.
C. And, you have no escape route.
D. Then you’re in deep trouble.
E. Therefore, you will be in a lot of pain very soon.
Jake slammed his book shut. He turned and looked out the window. A lone brown mangy looking squirrel with a furless tail scampered across the leaf-strewn courtyard toward the tree that rose above the bike racks. Jake followed the squirrel’s trek up to the base of the tree. Poking from behind the tree was a pair of Sperry boatshoes. A hand waved from behind the tree to the front door of the school. Jake panned to see Alex open the door and run, crouching, to the tree. Scott, in his Sperry boatshoes, then ran from behind the tree to his bike, sat on his haunches and started to unlock it from the rack. Alex followed. They had both their bikes unlocked before Jake was able to close his mouth.
They’re the traitors, not you. They’re weak and powerless. They’re sheep. You don’t need them. You remember the painted banner that hangs above the door to the principal’s office? “You Make A Difference”. You. Alone. It’s time to stop relying on others and... Make a Difference.
Jake watched the Carson Twins mount their bikes and ride off. The last bell rang just as they turned the corner near the Post Office and disappeared from Jake’s sight.
* * *
Jake shut his locker slowly and put his hand in his right coat pocket. He felt the pennies under the ragg wool of the sock. His heartbeat kicked up a notch. Breathing deeply as he walked, he started toward the front entrance to the school.
Kids were rushing past him. Some going to practice for some varsity sport. Wrestling, Basketball, whatever. The girls hustling in their pom-pommed groups toward the cafetorium--named so because it served as both cafeteria and auditorium--to practice their high kicks and pelvic thrusts to the exotic rhythms of Prince and The Time. Most, however, were filing out onto the lawn in front of the school. They were unlocking their bikes extra slowly, stretching their conversations longer than normal, in hopes of catching the rumored fight.
Jake was surprised that there had been no taunting beforehand. Usually, as with most high school fights, there was the ritual of the pre-fight taunt. It went down like an impromptu press conference that announced a big Sugar Ray Leonard/Tommy “The Hitman” Hearns prizefight. There would be exchanges about how much Fighter A was gonna kick Fighter B’s ass. There was the retort from Fighter B that invariably had some reference to Fighter A’s Mother or Sexual Preference. Then Fighter A would charge at Fighter B and his corner crew would struggle to hold him back. These displays were pathetic shows of testosterone fuelled rhetoric; full of hyperbole and demagogic posturing. On the professional sports level, it was grandstanding showmanship at its best. Down at the teenage level, it looked more like street performance art; raw, unpolished and very much on the edge.
Jake had meandered to the front doors without so much as a “You’re Dead” or “I’m gonna fucking KILL you” from Eddie. Eddie was nowhere to be seen. This lulled Jake into a comfort that would disappear as soon as he hit the first step of the stairs leading down to the bike racks.
“There he is”, someone in the crowd had yelled and hands began to point. Jake thought this must be an accused killer must feel, the press crushing in around you as you tried to make your way to an appointment with the hanging judge.
The crowd parted as Jake wended his way to toward his waiting fate.
Eddie was standing in the middle of the crowd, leaning on the bike rack and smoking a cigarette. Jake knew this was Eddie posturing, playing everything as if it were no big deal. The Cool Hand Luke demeanor was meant to disorient and disturb Jake. Jake saw through it to the inner asshole beneath. He saw him clutching protectively to the position he held in the social system, performing his persona like John Travolta in Grease. When he saw Jake, he stood up and dropped the butt to the grass; grinding it out with the ball of his shoe, like a cut-rate James Dean. He took off his jacket and handed it to Richie. Jake breathed in very deeply, as if the cool air would somehow calm his raging resentment, and bent to unlock his bike.
“I hear you’re gonna kick my ass”, Eddie said calmly. The boys in the crowd tittered. Eddie looked at them nodding agreement, his tongue wagging out in grotesque display of camaraderie.
Jake reached into his pocket and grasped the knot in the sock.
“Here I am Fat Boy”, he said thrusting his arms out in a mock Christ pose. “Hit me with your best shot”.
He barely had time to laugh at his own comic brilliance before Jake took him up on his offer.
Jake went from crouched to lunge, arching the makeshift blackjack in a half-circle. The combination of movements left Eddie no time to react. The sock struck him squarely in the left eye socket and glanced across the bridge of his nose; splitting at the seam in the toe and spraying the crowd with copper like blood from an artery. Jake brought the sock down to his side as the rest of the pennies spilled out onto his right foot. Eddie stumbled on his heels and clutched at his eye. There was a small gash on the bridge of his nose that brightened with blood and began to trickle. Jake took two small steps toward Eddie and planted his right foot in between the legs of his Levi’s Movin’ On Jeans with the grace and skill of a professional place-kicker. Eddie bent in half, moving one hand from his eye to his crotch. As Eddie was making his descent to the grass, Jake cocked his hand back and delivered a massive, meaty blow to the side of Eddie’s head.
That’s when he heard something crack.
Pain shot up through his arm as he jerked it back from the blow. He looked at his hand. His pinky finger knuckle looked misplaced. It was sort of bent from its true position and twisted to the side. His little finger jutted out at an odd angle from the rest of his hand. It looked to Jake like someone else’s finger. He shook his hand twice, each time feeling the grinding of bone against bone.
Jake turned and leapt over the bike rack. Eddie was rolling from side to side clutching and rubbing the wounded pride between his legs. The girls looked away and started to huddle with each other. Jake pulled his bike from the slot in the rack and turned it toward the cement. He hopped on and tried to grasp the bar with his injured hand. He couldn’t feel the bar under his palm. His hand had swelled considerably in the short time since he broke it and he could no longer close it. Holding his right hand close to his body, he pedaled quickly toward the Post Office.
As he headed down the slight incline, he passed Vice-Principal Luther who was hiking up his pants and doing up his belt as he ran toward the mass of kids surrounding the prostrate Eddie. He turned his attention toward the front door. There, standing framed in the wire mesh glass, was Coach Zazz. He watched Jake as he sped away on his bike; smiling and shaking his head.
After the last bell, the three conspirators would meet at the bikerack in front of the school. They would have planned it so their bikes would be on either side of Eddie’s. They would run the lock through his frame so he couldn’t get his bike out. For added assurance, they would let the air out of his tires and take his chain off the sprocket. Then, they would wait.
As Eddie walked up, Jake would be in the middle, flanked by Alex on his left and Scott on his right. They would surprise him, attacking first, which he wouldn’t expect, each in his assigned area. Alex would dive for the bastard’s legs, wrapping his bike lock around them. Scott would grab the fucker’s arms from behind. Jake would then concentrate on pounding him about the head and neck with the ragg wool sock full of pennies he had made the night before. Their moves would be swift, their accuracy, deadly. Ruthlessness was what was needed, ruthlessness was what they’d use. It would be all over in a matter of seconds.
The other kids would be stunned at their efficiency. Eddie would be bloody and unconscious on the ground before anyone knew what had happened. The three would be on their bikes and gone before Vice-Principal Luther pulled his pants up from receiving his daily blowjob from the secretarial intern from the junior college and headed out to investigate the ruckus.
They had practiced it the entire weekend, down in the silence of Quickstad Park. They chose a five-foot stump of an old silver maple tree to be their target, Eddie. Its bark was covered with blackened carvings of romantic pairings. ‘Tanya -N- Eric’, ‘Travis and Tracy 4ever’, ‘Bobby loves Terry’, ad nauseum. Jake found a relatively bare spot and had carved a rough caricature of Eddie’s face in the top of the stump. The Dummy Eddie’s face was a portrait of evil, like a villain in a Marvel Comic book; all hard angles and deep lines. His teeth were bared and his eyes stared crazily down from beneath hideously shaggy eyebrows. In reality, it didn’t really look like Eddie at all, but rather his essence, his spirit, his chi.
Alex had practiced his lunge and tie. He dove at the base of the trunk, bike lock in hand, locking it around the bark and had gotten fairly proficient at hooking the lock on the first try. Scott was busy synchronizing his movements with his brother’s. They practiced lunging at the poor tree, until their shirts were flaked with dry bark and sweat stains had formed under their arms.
Jake stood in front of the tree. He calmly proceeded in his preparation, focusing all attention on the sneering face before him. Starting in small movement, he would alternately draw the sock from his jacket and replace it. Then he started to add another motion to the movement. He would draw and then land the first blow, the pennies hitting the rotting wood with a dull ‘thuck’. Then he’d add a blow. Then another. He quickened the pace, until...
* * *
“My Mom and Dad went to my Aunt’s for the day. We got the whole house to ourselves”, Eddie smiled demonically as he propped the door open with his foot, and lit the end of a joint with his lighter.
“C’mon in”.
Jake entered followed by Richie. Morris and the twins were still at Mass at Guardian Angel and were suppose to join us later.
“We had Little Caesar’s last night. We got a whole large left in the fridge. So we’ll get baked, have some nosh, wait the allotted half hour playing Pitfall and then we’ll hop in the pool so I can kick your guys asses in water dodgeball”.
Jake was a bit on edge with just Eddie and Richie. He really didn’t trust either one of them very much, though Richie more than Eddie. Richie was, after all, his sister Denise’s godson, though Denise wasn’t Catholic and was therefore probably picked as godmother just to piss off one of Richie’s aunts.
The Stephens house was ultra modern in every way. The kitchen was awash in bright white counter tops and cabinet fronts with gleaming silver handles. The refrigerator was gloss black with ice and water through the door. In the dining room, which was just as modern as the kitchen, stood a smoke gray glass topped table with white leather and chrome chairs.
Richie bee-lined toward the living room and switched on the 32 inch color set that stood on a dark oak stand. The carpet was darker here, a charcoal shag with black accents. The furnishings were also darker, a deep grey plush sofa, matching love seat and chair with ottoman. Interspersed between these were the odd smoked glass end table, upon one of which stood a wrought iron ashtray with two joints placed neatly in the cigarette holders.
Richie sifted through the stack of game cartridges under the television, found the one he wanted, shoved it in its slot and snapped the Atari on. The game booted up to the player screen.
“Two player”, Jake said and made for the other control. Richie selected ‘One Player’ hit the fire button on the joystick. He turned his face toward Jake, smiled and turned back toward the screen.
Eddie came out of the bathroom, with his shirt off and handed the butt of the joint to Richie. He took it between his lips and sucked it down to half its size, never missing a beat on his joystick.
“Torch another one, man” Eddie said pointing to the ashtray with the two joints.
Jake took one from its resting place and grabbed the red bic lighter from the pack of Eddie’s Marlboro Lights that lay next to the ashtray. He cupped his hands and lit the end. The smoke was both acrid and cloying. It caught in his throat a bit and he coughed the smoke into his nose. He exhaled forcefully and his head began to throb.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Eddie yelled wrenching the joint from Jake’s fingers. “Don’t waste it. Jesus.”
“Water” Jake managed to choke out, awkwardly making his way to his feet. Eddie watched him disinterestedly as he pulled another hit.
“What color am I?”, Eddie said showing Jake his arm. “I’m not your fucking Nigger. Get it yourself”
In his short walk from the living room, the pot began to take affect. His nose tickled and his spit began to thicken. Jake walked in the kitchen and popped open one of the cabinets. He took a moment to focus. Plates and Bowls. He smiled. He imagined Mrs. Stephens making a cake in one of those bowls. He saw her, highball of gin within arms reach, scanning a page of the familiar red plaid Better Homes Cookbook. He imagined ashes from her Virginia Slims Menthol 100 falling into the batter, her hesitating for a moment and then folding it in like it were egg whites. He closed the cabinet and opened the one next to it. Bakeware. He began to chuckle to himself. He shut the door and went to open the one on the opposite side of the sink.
“What are taking inventory in there? Above the microwave, Numbnuts”.
Jake looked down and settled his gaze on the microwave. He marveled at the television-like apparatus sitting on the counter for a few seconds, for he had never seen one and doubted that he would ever use one until he had the money to buy one himself. He popped open the cabinet and took down a tall glass tumbler with Elmer Fudd sheepishly grinning from its side.
The ice cubes tinkled into the glass and rang around the bottom. He then pushed the glass against the bar and a clean jet of water shot thickly into the glass, the ice cubes snapping and popping in its stream. Jake raised the glass and drank deeply. This particular glass of water was not just any glass of water to Jake. This was the glass of water. This was a glass of water that he would remember. Like he remember that bottle of Coke, its frosty slush plugging its neck, that his brother Craig pulled from his fridge when they had finished painting the garage one summer. Fucking Awesome was the only way to describe it.
Eddie came around the corner and interrupted Jake communing with his waterglass, calling back to Richie in the living room.
“Hey, Pollack, wanna Coke?”
Richie mumbled in the affirmative and Eddie pushed past Jake to the fridge. He popped two cans out of a twelve pack and turned back toward the living room.
“Can I get one of those?” Jake asked.
“You got your water”, Eddie answered over his shoulder never looking back. Jake looked down at his glass. In sipping the last bit of water from it, he realized that the ice cubes smelled faintly of garlic. He topped the glass off with new ice and water and returned to the living room.
Eddie was kicking much ass on Pitfall, mastering every move, instinctively acing every pattern for every board level. Eddie’s invitation to come over and play video games was never about hospitality and wanting to engage his fellows in friendly competition. No. It was more just a cursory, good natured, “C’mon let’s play” that soon degraded into a fast exit for his opponent and lengthy periods of making the rest of the guys watch him play. Sometimes ten, fifteen minutes would go by before his man would die. Then, with the predictability of a Swiss movement, he would jerk the game cartridge from the machine, stuff in a new game and start all over again.
This time, when Eddie’s Pitfall Harry died (those damn dirty crocodiles, again) he just shut the Atari off.
“Time for a swim”, Eddie said tossing the joystick under the television.
“I thought we were gonna have pizza”, Jake questioned.
“Is food all you every think about?” Eddie patted Jake’s tummy as he tried to pull away. “You could do with skipping a couple meals there, Doughboy”.
Richie kicked off his shoes and pulled off his tank top and walked out toward the kitchen and the back door. Eddie went to the bathroom to change. Jake walked to the sliding door off the dining room and watched Richie ascend the ladder to the pool.
“Hey, Jake. Come ‘ere”, Eddie yelled from the bathroom.
“What?”, Jake returned as he watched Richie go under the water for the first time.
“You gotta see this”, Eddie implored.
Jake walked around the table and down the short hall that lead to the bathroom and Mr. and Mrs. Stephens’ bedroom. He looked at the pictures lining the walls of the small hallway. Eddie’s brother and sister looked down at him from family picnics and Christmas gatherings. Mr. and Mrs. Stephens were smiling down from their wedding chapel, flanked by tuxedoed and long-gowned relatives. In one frame rested Eddie’s class picture, his hair perfectly coiffed, his tinted glasses gone, revealing cold, gray eyes, his smile splayed across his face in an almost genuine display of benevolence.
“Hurry up”, Eddie said.
Jake turned toward the bathroom and opened the bi-fold door.
Eddie was standing in the middle of the purple tile floor, his arms folded behind his head. He was completely naked, his penis fully erect arching up toward his belly.
Jake stood motionless in the doorway, unable to grasp what he had let himself be goaded into. He should’ve seen something coming. He cursed his own stupidity and naiveté. He should’ve seen Eddie’s sly, nonchalance during the past hour. Normally, he completely ignored Jake, referring to him only when he needed something from him. Jake shifted his gaze from Eddie to the floor, his pulse quickening exponentially for every second he remained in the doorway.
Before he could move, Eddie grabbed his arm and pulled him into the bathroom. Jake turned to flee, pushing on the door to open it. Instead it folded back to its closed position. He was trapped. Eddie forced him into the corner of the bathroom and put both arms on either side of Jake to block his escape.
“Touch it”, Eddie sneered. “You know you want to”.
Jake looked at the purple tiled wall. He focused on the cream colored grouting as it ran in a network of crosses between glossy tiles. The air was suddenly thick with moisture, so much so that he couldn’t pull it into his lungs, his breathing became shallow, labored.
“What’s the matter? Never seen one this big before?” Eddie grabbed Jake’s hand and forced it down toward his crotch. Jake resisted but Eddie had more upper body strength and easily overcame his attempt. Jake looked away from the wall and caught his own face in the mirror that ran along the wall over the sink. He looked into his own eyes. He saw someone else there, someone that wasn’t him, someone he pitied. As his hand edge toward Eddie’s groin, Jake’s hatred for the pathetic boy in the mirror deepened. When his hand brushed the warm spongy tip of Eddie’s member, that hatred flared.
Jake planted his other hand directly in the middle of Eddie’s chest, brought his right foot up against the wall and shoved him with all his weight behind it. Eddie lost his footing and backpedaled, grasping at the towel bar for balance. He clutched it and it came free of the wall, slowing but not stopping his backward movement. He threw the other hand up toward the shower curtain as his heel hit the tub with a hollow thud. He stood on his heels for a brief moment perched on the fulcrum of falling and regaining balance, then pitched into the tub, pulling the curtain down on top of him, covering his rigid dick like a tent.
* * *
“Hey, cool it”, Alex said as he stood shaking the bits of bark from his hair. His friend didn’t hear him. Jake continued to pummel the stump.
He’s a fucking animal and he deserves everything he gets goddamnit. He’ll pay for everything he’s ever done to you and you’ll be vindicated. People will cheer when they see what you have done. They will cheer your act. They will cheer.
“JAKE!!!”, Scott screamed in his friends ear. “STOP IT. YOU’RE SCARING US”.
Jake stopped his merciless assault. His breath was shallow and fast. He put his head between his knees and gulped in the cool air. He stood up straight and felt the bicep of his right arm throb in time with his pulse.
“Jesus Christ”, Alex whispered. “Look what you did”.
The blows from the makeshift blackjack had pulverized the face on the tree. The entire top half of the stump where the head had been was blasted away. The only thing remaining was the sickening upturned grin.
* * *
Later that evening, after finishing dinner and his chores quickly, Jake biked the mile and a half to Meijer’s Thrifty Acres. As he entered the bright fluorescent light, he squinted, allowed a moment to adjust and headed toward the young men’s department.
He walked past sweater vests and neatly pleated slacks, past zippered velour long-sleeve shirts and poly-blend turtlenecks, but could not find what he came for. What he was looking for was not to be found. This brought a sudden wave of panic over his whole body. He shuddered as he stood between the clearance rack and the display of Dickie’s workclothes. Sweat began to form on his lip though the air was cool and dry. Then, he stopped, collected himself and breathed deeply. He craned his neck over the racks and scanned the area. His eyes fell upon a large sign that read ‘Accessories’. He smiled and bolted toward the racks directly under the sign.
He walked down the aisle of ties and handkerchiefs and came back up the other side. There, at the end of the aisle was what he so doggedly sought. At eye level, stacked neatly, tightly, stood a row of Detroit Lions stocking hats.
Jake pulled a black one from the shelf. On it’s face was just the blue silhouette of the pouncing lion. No ‘Detroit Lions’ in that vaguely Old West font that Jake really didn’t like. Not even just ‘Lions’. Just the King of the Beasts, frozen forever in mid-pounce. And, the best part about the hat was that it had no pom-pom on its crown.
Jake smiled, looked at the tag, pulled his hard earned money from his pocket, nodded in silent agreement with himself and headed toward the registers to pay.
* * *
The next morning, hat firmly on his head, Jake rode his bike to school. As he turned the corner to ride the last 100 feet to bike racks, he saw Alex and Scott standing close to each other, talking to each other. This probably would’ve seemed normal to any other viewer, but Jake knew that these were two guys who couldn’t stand being near each other. They constantly kept their distance from one another in hopes to reaffirm that they were separate entities and should be dealt with as such. This morning, Jake thought, they were suspiciously close. They pointed at and shoved each other until Scott had caught sight of Jake. They stopped their argument as Jake approached.
“What’s up?”
“Hey”, Alex said bending down to wrap the lock around the rack and through the frame on his bike.
“So, we’re still gonna do this, right?”, Jake said. He sensed their loyalty flagging in light of the previous day's incident.
“I’m still in”, Scott replied and turned his eyes ever so slightly toward his brother.
“Alex, this isn’t just about us”, Jake explained “This is for everyone he’s ever fucked with. If he goes unchecked, there’s no tellin’ what’ll happen”.
“But, maybe its too harsh”, Alex replied looking to Scott for support.
“Too harsh?”, Jake asked. “One of these days he’ll push someone too far and they’ll end up killing themselves”.
Alex turned his eyes away from Jake. He looked toward his bike and shifted his weight to his right foot. Jake could see his breath quicken. Alex’s face flushed in patches.
“Or, worse. They’ll come to school with their Dad’s 12 gauge...? Blow you away in homeroom like that kid in California last year?”. Jake had him back in the fold now. Alex was bobbing his head ‘yes’ before Jake finished his sentence.
They agreed, in silence, that in 6 hours they would teach Eddie a lesson that was a long time in coming. It was a lesson that would make Eddie realize the error of his ways. He would cease to be a threat to those he ridiculed. Jake and his band of conspirators would force him to take notice that the poor slobs he tortured were human beings with feelings, not pathetic pawns to be played with as it fit his fancy. This blow would stick and stick hard. It would change the future. All their futures.
As the Twins started for the front door of the school, Jake was struck with a bitter ache at the thought that he had just played upon his friends' fears in order to get them to do what he wanted them to do.
* * *
It was five minutes before the last bell, when Josh Stern whispered in Jake’s ear.
“Eddie knows what you’re up to”.
Josh was a smartly dressed boy, in his pink broadcloth shirt, his grey Izod v-neck, his straight-leg Jordache jeans and his Sperry Topsiders sans socks. He would’ve thrived in the stricture of the Catholic school uniform, if it weren’t for the fact that he was Jewish and a Unitarian. He would be the first in school to wear parachute pants, the first to listen to the Pet Shop Boys and the first to be caught in the Mall bathroom giving head to a stranger. Jake looked up into his face of tanned clear skin, into his dark brown eyes.
“Just thought I’d warn you”.
Jake sat in his desk bobbing his leg up and down next to upright post. At first he didn’t recognize what Josh had said. It was as if the combination of words hadn’t formed to make a complete thought. It took him a few long seconds until his brain had wrapped itself around the statement.
Jake looked around the room. The light mint green walls seemed to close in around him. The hum from the banks of fluorescent lights grew to a deafening roar in his ears. Each flat emotionless face on each kid was stealing looks toward the doomed man. It was clear to Jake that his circle of loyal conspirators had buckled under the stress of the Act. What was to be a blow for the greater good of the community had disintegrated into a looming punishment for the traitor in their midst. Jake turned back to his book to finish his geometric proof.
A. If Eddie knows you planned the whole thing
B. And, you have no plan B.
C. And, you have no escape route.
D. Then you’re in deep trouble.
E. Therefore, you will be in a lot of pain very soon.
Jake slammed his book shut. He turned and looked out the window. A lone brown mangy looking squirrel with a furless tail scampered across the leaf-strewn courtyard toward the tree that rose above the bike racks. Jake followed the squirrel’s trek up to the base of the tree. Poking from behind the tree was a pair of Sperry boatshoes. A hand waved from behind the tree to the front door of the school. Jake panned to see Alex open the door and run, crouching, to the tree. Scott, in his Sperry boatshoes, then ran from behind the tree to his bike, sat on his haunches and started to unlock it from the rack. Alex followed. They had both their bikes unlocked before Jake was able to close his mouth.
They’re the traitors, not you. They’re weak and powerless. They’re sheep. You don’t need them. You remember the painted banner that hangs above the door to the principal’s office? “You Make A Difference”. You. Alone. It’s time to stop relying on others and... Make a Difference.
Jake watched the Carson Twins mount their bikes and ride off. The last bell rang just as they turned the corner near the Post Office and disappeared from Jake’s sight.
* * *
Jake shut his locker slowly and put his hand in his right coat pocket. He felt the pennies under the ragg wool of the sock. His heartbeat kicked up a notch. Breathing deeply as he walked, he started toward the front entrance to the school.
Kids were rushing past him. Some going to practice for some varsity sport. Wrestling, Basketball, whatever. The girls hustling in their pom-pommed groups toward the cafetorium--named so because it served as both cafeteria and auditorium--to practice their high kicks and pelvic thrusts to the exotic rhythms of Prince and The Time. Most, however, were filing out onto the lawn in front of the school. They were unlocking their bikes extra slowly, stretching their conversations longer than normal, in hopes of catching the rumored fight.
Jake was surprised that there had been no taunting beforehand. Usually, as with most high school fights, there was the ritual of the pre-fight taunt. It went down like an impromptu press conference that announced a big Sugar Ray Leonard/Tommy “The Hitman” Hearns prizefight. There would be exchanges about how much Fighter A was gonna kick Fighter B’s ass. There was the retort from Fighter B that invariably had some reference to Fighter A’s Mother or Sexual Preference. Then Fighter A would charge at Fighter B and his corner crew would struggle to hold him back. These displays were pathetic shows of testosterone fuelled rhetoric; full of hyperbole and demagogic posturing. On the professional sports level, it was grandstanding showmanship at its best. Down at the teenage level, it looked more like street performance art; raw, unpolished and very much on the edge.
Jake had meandered to the front doors without so much as a “You’re Dead” or “I’m gonna fucking KILL you” from Eddie. Eddie was nowhere to be seen. This lulled Jake into a comfort that would disappear as soon as he hit the first step of the stairs leading down to the bike racks.
“There he is”, someone in the crowd had yelled and hands began to point. Jake thought this must be an accused killer must feel, the press crushing in around you as you tried to make your way to an appointment with the hanging judge.
The crowd parted as Jake wended his way to toward his waiting fate.
Eddie was standing in the middle of the crowd, leaning on the bike rack and smoking a cigarette. Jake knew this was Eddie posturing, playing everything as if it were no big deal. The Cool Hand Luke demeanor was meant to disorient and disturb Jake. Jake saw through it to the inner asshole beneath. He saw him clutching protectively to the position he held in the social system, performing his persona like John Travolta in Grease. When he saw Jake, he stood up and dropped the butt to the grass; grinding it out with the ball of his shoe, like a cut-rate James Dean. He took off his jacket and handed it to Richie. Jake breathed in very deeply, as if the cool air would somehow calm his raging resentment, and bent to unlock his bike.
“I hear you’re gonna kick my ass”, Eddie said calmly. The boys in the crowd tittered. Eddie looked at them nodding agreement, his tongue wagging out in grotesque display of camaraderie.
Jake reached into his pocket and grasped the knot in the sock.
“Here I am Fat Boy”, he said thrusting his arms out in a mock Christ pose. “Hit me with your best shot”.
He barely had time to laugh at his own comic brilliance before Jake took him up on his offer.
Jake went from crouched to lunge, arching the makeshift blackjack in a half-circle. The combination of movements left Eddie no time to react. The sock struck him squarely in the left eye socket and glanced across the bridge of his nose; splitting at the seam in the toe and spraying the crowd with copper like blood from an artery. Jake brought the sock down to his side as the rest of the pennies spilled out onto his right foot. Eddie stumbled on his heels and clutched at his eye. There was a small gash on the bridge of his nose that brightened with blood and began to trickle. Jake took two small steps toward Eddie and planted his right foot in between the legs of his Levi’s Movin’ On Jeans with the grace and skill of a professional place-kicker. Eddie bent in half, moving one hand from his eye to his crotch. As Eddie was making his descent to the grass, Jake cocked his hand back and delivered a massive, meaty blow to the side of Eddie’s head.
That’s when he heard something crack.
Pain shot up through his arm as he jerked it back from the blow. He looked at his hand. His pinky finger knuckle looked misplaced. It was sort of bent from its true position and twisted to the side. His little finger jutted out at an odd angle from the rest of his hand. It looked to Jake like someone else’s finger. He shook his hand twice, each time feeling the grinding of bone against bone.
Jake turned and leapt over the bike rack. Eddie was rolling from side to side clutching and rubbing the wounded pride between his legs. The girls looked away and started to huddle with each other. Jake pulled his bike from the slot in the rack and turned it toward the cement. He hopped on and tried to grasp the bar with his injured hand. He couldn’t feel the bar under his palm. His hand had swelled considerably in the short time since he broke it and he could no longer close it. Holding his right hand close to his body, he pedaled quickly toward the Post Office.
As he headed down the slight incline, he passed Vice-Principal Luther who was hiking up his pants and doing up his belt as he ran toward the mass of kids surrounding the prostrate Eddie. He turned his attention toward the front door. There, standing framed in the wire mesh glass, was Coach Zazz. He watched Jake as he sped away on his bike; smiling and shaking his head.
(thirteen) Comrades in Arms
(part five) Death to All Fascists!
“This is a people shooting hat,” I said. “I shoot people in this hat”.
-The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
(thirteen) Comrades in Arms
He hadn’t gone back to school the next day. Jake secretly hoped that in the interim between the time he left school the day and the Monday he was due to return, some other huge news item would burst onto the scene. Perhaps, the rumor that Shelly Geller was pregnant or Josh Stern had been caught staring at David Proctor’s ass during swim class would spread like the flu and everyone would forget the minor sniffles caused by the cartoon of Jake and the Carson Twins in flagrante delecto.
His sister Denise went to school and got his homework for him to do, but the books sat on his desk stacked in a neat pile. All of his spare time went into the planning of what would surely be his greatest achievement. He woke, restless. He called the Carson house and, confirming his suspicions, Alex picked up the phone. Neither of them had gone to school either.
“I knew it. I’m coming over”, Jake said as he hung up the phone.
They were still in their pajamas drinking down the last bit of pink milk out of the empty bowl out of which they’d eaten their Frankenberry cereal. Scott’s hair was a disheveled mess while Alex’s was smoothed back as if he hadn’t moved an inch during the entirety of last night’s slumber.
“I told you you shouldna went back in”, Scott said licking his spoon. “You shoulda listened”.
“Fuck you”, Jake yelled. “My Dad woulda kicked my ass if I ditched school”.
“Which is worse?”, Alex asked. “That or what actually happened”.
Jake weighed this for a second. What would’ve happened? He would’ve gotten a down-the-basement-hug-the-pole-licking from his Dad and his big, thick, black leather belt, that’s what. He would’ve spent the rest of the night, in bed, on his stomach, sobbing into his pillow and devising ways to rig his father’s car to explode using only household items. This would’ve kept him from focusing on the true villian in this scenario, the thorn in his plump peasant paw, Mr. Eddie Stephens. Jake then shook the thought from his head.
“Eddie needs to by taught a lesson”, Jake countered.
“Who’s gonna teach it to him? You?”, Scott said walking his bowl into the kitchen.
“He’ll bash your brains in. Bash ‘em right the fuck in, Wendy”, he said the tale end of this in his pale mimic of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
“No, We’re all gonna do it”, Jake sat on the sofa and leaned into the space between him and the twins.
Alex looked up from his Detroit Free Press Comics. “What?”
“What’s this ‘we’ shit, White Man?”, Scott protested. “Keep me out of it”.
“Remember the drumstick incident?”, Jake questioned. Scott flinched as if a bee had flown past peripheral field of vision. He remembered, all right. He couldn’t forget it.
* * *
It was the first day of ninth grade and he was in the band room packing up his snare drum kit. He was planning on joining the high school marching band and had promised himself that he would practice every single day to be the best drummer C.H.S. ever had. He had just bent down to pick up the drum stand when Eddie appeared in the doorway, flanked by Richie and Morris.
“Well, if it isn’t the band fag”, Eddie sneered.
Scott quickened his ritual of dismantling and packing his instrument, hurriedly sticking the sticks in their velvet resting place. Eddie grabbed one of the drumsticks from the case and started to rap it on the table.
“Give me that back”, Scott whined. Being in Eddie’s presence always made his voice turn back into a girlish pitch. It also made him sweat profusely.
“Take it from me. Go on, take it”, Eddie said holding the stick out toward Scott.
Scott grabbed for it and Eddie swung it from under his reach and brought it down across his knuckles with a sharp ‘crack’. Scott winced and drew his hand back. Richie backed into the hallway to look for anyone coming. He saw Jake standing at his locker, speaking to Alex clueless to his brother’s pain.
“Give it back”, Scott cried.
Eddied mocked him, “Givvvee iiiittt baaaaacckkk”.
Scott’s face colored as if the temperature in the room had jumped twenty degrees. This flushing was making him sweat even more heavily now. Damp spots began to appear at the creases of his poly blend polo shirt near his armpits.
“I’m trying to give it to you”, Eddie offered again, hand outstretched in a mock gesture of peace. "Take it."
Scott lunged for it again and Eddie raked it over the back of his hand at the wrist, this time with a deeper, meatier clap. Scott bent double from the pain and howled wordlessly.
“Shut up. You’re gonna get us in trouble”, Morris whispered loudly.
Scott stood up. He slammed the case shut, latched it with his other hand and began to walk out of the band room, cradling his injured paw next to this chest.
“You forgot your stick”, Eddie said.
“Keep it”, Scott yelped, shoving his way past.
“I don’t want it”, Eddie screamed and he brought it down on the top of Scott’s head, cracking the wood in two.
The severed piece flew across the room in an arc, tumbled end for end and stuck into the faded corkboard marked ‘Band News’ that was mounted on the front wall. Scott dropped the drum kit with a metallic ‘thwoing’ and his hands flew to the top of his head. He yelped loudly, the sound echoing a slight return in the cavernous room. Richie whistled, alerting Eddie that someone was coming down the hall. Morris got scared and scrambled nervously out of the room, slipping on the dusty tile in the hall in a gross caricature of a cartoon getaway. The volume of Scott’s howl got louder. A door opened at the rear of the band room. The band teacher, Mr. Ford, a small rotund bald man came out of his tiny office. Sarah Tauber, a freshman, came waddling after him adjusting her top. She was apparently sinking the deal that would make her first chair clarinet for her entire academic career at C.H.S.
Jake and Alex came to the door as Eddie was exiting. He shoved Alex to the floor in his hasty retreat. They entered the room to see Scott seated on the floor balling and rubbing his scalp with both hands.
* * *
Scott stood, in his faded Coca-Cola shirt and pajama bottoms, caressing his head to dull the phantom pain this memory had brought back.
“So”, Scott said. “Who cares?”
“You gave up band the next day”, Alex said. “It’s because of Eddie that you’ll never be a drummer like Bonzo or Neal Peart”.
“What about you, hunh?” Scott jabbed his brother in the chest with his finger while he rubbed more furiously at the crown of his own head. “What about your Gazebo model?”
Alex had blocked that out of his mind completely. He had almost replied ‘What Gazebo model?’ when the memory came rushing back into his head like a breaker over rocks.
* * *
It was in Art class, the second to last art class of the eighth grade. The Clayton City Chamber of Commerce was sponsoring a contest for the new gazebo that would be built in next to the City Library. It was open to all Junior High and High School students with a ‘B’ average or better. The contest was for the students to build a model of their version of the gazebo and the best design would be built and the winner would be given a $50 gift certificate to Walker-Crawford Art and Paint Supply.
Alex had worked studiously on his model. He researched gazebo architecture at the library, making numerous sketches in preparation for the building of the scale model. He had chose 1/24 scale and was going to carve the balsa wood that the school supplied into miniature 1x2 slats and 4x4 posts. He hand carved each and every rough-hewn cedar shake shingle to evoke his beloved Cape Cod effect. He had even equipped the gazebo with a wide ramp that came down in levels from the rear for Stuart Weber. He wanted the friendly mentally retarded man that everyone called “Stu” to be able to ride his three wheel bicycle up to the platform if he was ever given a public service award for his untiring efforts keeping the city parks free of refuse. Eddie took one look at the handicap accessible ramp and pronounced it ‘gay’.
Alex had left the model unattended on the day that it was to be turned in. The Mountain Dew Big Gulp he’d bought for breakfast had run right through him and he ran to the bathroom, making it to the bank of urinals with seconds to spare. He stood at the urinal quietly reading the juvenalia scrawled across the pale yellow-painted plaster until the flow subsided. A shiver ran through him that he'd incorrectly passed off a the 'Pee Shakes'. It was more an unconscious premonition.
As he was returning from the bathroom he passed Eddie in the hall. Eddie was holding a hall pass and Alex assumed he was also en route to the urinals. When he reached the class, he saw Ms. Turner was waving a towel out the door and he caught the slightest whiff of toasting wood in the air. He stepped up his walk into a canter, then to jog as he ran past Ms. Turner.
“I’m sorry, Alex”, she said as he ran past.
Most of the girls were coughing and waving their hands in front of their faces. Some of the boys were gathered around the huge double sink at the rear of the art room. He noticed the trail of smolder and steam rising from in front of the group. Alex ran to the sink to find his gazebo, a quarter of it--the handicap ramp included--charred into a black, wet, crumbling mess.
* * *
Alex padded into the kitchen and poured himself a giant tumbler of ice-cold water from the tap. He downed it in a few gulps and refilled the glass. He started sipping the second as he walked back into the living room where Scott and Jake were sitting.
“All right. I’m in”.
“This is a people shooting hat,” I said. “I shoot people in this hat”.
-The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
(thirteen) Comrades in Arms
He hadn’t gone back to school the next day. Jake secretly hoped that in the interim between the time he left school the day and the Monday he was due to return, some other huge news item would burst onto the scene. Perhaps, the rumor that Shelly Geller was pregnant or Josh Stern had been caught staring at David Proctor’s ass during swim class would spread like the flu and everyone would forget the minor sniffles caused by the cartoon of Jake and the Carson Twins in flagrante delecto.
His sister Denise went to school and got his homework for him to do, but the books sat on his desk stacked in a neat pile. All of his spare time went into the planning of what would surely be his greatest achievement. He woke, restless. He called the Carson house and, confirming his suspicions, Alex picked up the phone. Neither of them had gone to school either.
“I knew it. I’m coming over”, Jake said as he hung up the phone.
They were still in their pajamas drinking down the last bit of pink milk out of the empty bowl out of which they’d eaten their Frankenberry cereal. Scott’s hair was a disheveled mess while Alex’s was smoothed back as if he hadn’t moved an inch during the entirety of last night’s slumber.
“I told you you shouldna went back in”, Scott said licking his spoon. “You shoulda listened”.
“Fuck you”, Jake yelled. “My Dad woulda kicked my ass if I ditched school”.
“Which is worse?”, Alex asked. “That or what actually happened”.
Jake weighed this for a second. What would’ve happened? He would’ve gotten a down-the-basement-hug-the-pole-licking from his Dad and his big, thick, black leather belt, that’s what. He would’ve spent the rest of the night, in bed, on his stomach, sobbing into his pillow and devising ways to rig his father’s car to explode using only household items. This would’ve kept him from focusing on the true villian in this scenario, the thorn in his plump peasant paw, Mr. Eddie Stephens. Jake then shook the thought from his head.
“Eddie needs to by taught a lesson”, Jake countered.
“Who’s gonna teach it to him? You?”, Scott said walking his bowl into the kitchen.
“He’ll bash your brains in. Bash ‘em right the fuck in, Wendy”, he said the tale end of this in his pale mimic of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
“No, We’re all gonna do it”, Jake sat on the sofa and leaned into the space between him and the twins.
Alex looked up from his Detroit Free Press Comics. “What?”
“What’s this ‘we’ shit, White Man?”, Scott protested. “Keep me out of it”.
“Remember the drumstick incident?”, Jake questioned. Scott flinched as if a bee had flown past peripheral field of vision. He remembered, all right. He couldn’t forget it.
* * *
It was the first day of ninth grade and he was in the band room packing up his snare drum kit. He was planning on joining the high school marching band and had promised himself that he would practice every single day to be the best drummer C.H.S. ever had. He had just bent down to pick up the drum stand when Eddie appeared in the doorway, flanked by Richie and Morris.
“Well, if it isn’t the band fag”, Eddie sneered.
Scott quickened his ritual of dismantling and packing his instrument, hurriedly sticking the sticks in their velvet resting place. Eddie grabbed one of the drumsticks from the case and started to rap it on the table.
“Give me that back”, Scott whined. Being in Eddie’s presence always made his voice turn back into a girlish pitch. It also made him sweat profusely.
“Take it from me. Go on, take it”, Eddie said holding the stick out toward Scott.
Scott grabbed for it and Eddie swung it from under his reach and brought it down across his knuckles with a sharp ‘crack’. Scott winced and drew his hand back. Richie backed into the hallway to look for anyone coming. He saw Jake standing at his locker, speaking to Alex clueless to his brother’s pain.
“Give it back”, Scott cried.
Eddied mocked him, “Givvvee iiiittt baaaaacckkk”.
Scott’s face colored as if the temperature in the room had jumped twenty degrees. This flushing was making him sweat even more heavily now. Damp spots began to appear at the creases of his poly blend polo shirt near his armpits.
“I’m trying to give it to you”, Eddie offered again, hand outstretched in a mock gesture of peace. "Take it."
Scott lunged for it again and Eddie raked it over the back of his hand at the wrist, this time with a deeper, meatier clap. Scott bent double from the pain and howled wordlessly.
“Shut up. You’re gonna get us in trouble”, Morris whispered loudly.
Scott stood up. He slammed the case shut, latched it with his other hand and began to walk out of the band room, cradling his injured paw next to this chest.
“You forgot your stick”, Eddie said.
“Keep it”, Scott yelped, shoving his way past.
“I don’t want it”, Eddie screamed and he brought it down on the top of Scott’s head, cracking the wood in two.
The severed piece flew across the room in an arc, tumbled end for end and stuck into the faded corkboard marked ‘Band News’ that was mounted on the front wall. Scott dropped the drum kit with a metallic ‘thwoing’ and his hands flew to the top of his head. He yelped loudly, the sound echoing a slight return in the cavernous room. Richie whistled, alerting Eddie that someone was coming down the hall. Morris got scared and scrambled nervously out of the room, slipping on the dusty tile in the hall in a gross caricature of a cartoon getaway. The volume of Scott’s howl got louder. A door opened at the rear of the band room. The band teacher, Mr. Ford, a small rotund bald man came out of his tiny office. Sarah Tauber, a freshman, came waddling after him adjusting her top. She was apparently sinking the deal that would make her first chair clarinet for her entire academic career at C.H.S.
Jake and Alex came to the door as Eddie was exiting. He shoved Alex to the floor in his hasty retreat. They entered the room to see Scott seated on the floor balling and rubbing his scalp with both hands.
* * *
Scott stood, in his faded Coca-Cola shirt and pajama bottoms, caressing his head to dull the phantom pain this memory had brought back.
“So”, Scott said. “Who cares?”
“You gave up band the next day”, Alex said. “It’s because of Eddie that you’ll never be a drummer like Bonzo or Neal Peart”.
“What about you, hunh?” Scott jabbed his brother in the chest with his finger while he rubbed more furiously at the crown of his own head. “What about your Gazebo model?”
Alex had blocked that out of his mind completely. He had almost replied ‘What Gazebo model?’ when the memory came rushing back into his head like a breaker over rocks.
* * *
It was in Art class, the second to last art class of the eighth grade. The Clayton City Chamber of Commerce was sponsoring a contest for the new gazebo that would be built in next to the City Library. It was open to all Junior High and High School students with a ‘B’ average or better. The contest was for the students to build a model of their version of the gazebo and the best design would be built and the winner would be given a $50 gift certificate to Walker-Crawford Art and Paint Supply.
Alex had worked studiously on his model. He researched gazebo architecture at the library, making numerous sketches in preparation for the building of the scale model. He had chose 1/24 scale and was going to carve the balsa wood that the school supplied into miniature 1x2 slats and 4x4 posts. He hand carved each and every rough-hewn cedar shake shingle to evoke his beloved Cape Cod effect. He had even equipped the gazebo with a wide ramp that came down in levels from the rear for Stuart Weber. He wanted the friendly mentally retarded man that everyone called “Stu” to be able to ride his three wheel bicycle up to the platform if he was ever given a public service award for his untiring efforts keeping the city parks free of refuse. Eddie took one look at the handicap accessible ramp and pronounced it ‘gay’.
Alex had left the model unattended on the day that it was to be turned in. The Mountain Dew Big Gulp he’d bought for breakfast had run right through him and he ran to the bathroom, making it to the bank of urinals with seconds to spare. He stood at the urinal quietly reading the juvenalia scrawled across the pale yellow-painted plaster until the flow subsided. A shiver ran through him that he'd incorrectly passed off a the 'Pee Shakes'. It was more an unconscious premonition.
As he was returning from the bathroom he passed Eddie in the hall. Eddie was holding a hall pass and Alex assumed he was also en route to the urinals. When he reached the class, he saw Ms. Turner was waving a towel out the door and he caught the slightest whiff of toasting wood in the air. He stepped up his walk into a canter, then to jog as he ran past Ms. Turner.
“I’m sorry, Alex”, she said as he ran past.
Most of the girls were coughing and waving their hands in front of their faces. Some of the boys were gathered around the huge double sink at the rear of the art room. He noticed the trail of smolder and steam rising from in front of the group. Alex ran to the sink to find his gazebo, a quarter of it--the handicap ramp included--charred into a black, wet, crumbling mess.
* * *
Alex padded into the kitchen and poured himself a giant tumbler of ice-cold water from the tap. He downed it in a few gulps and refilled the glass. He started sipping the second as he walked back into the living room where Scott and Jake were sitting.
“All right. I’m in”.
(twelve) The Appearance of the Mysterious Cave Drawings
Jake popped the chrome-plated handle on his locker and it whined open. A folded lined three-hole punched piece of white paper floated down to rest between his shoes. He bent and retrieved it, carefully looking from side to side to see if anyone was watching for his reaction. He opened and read it.
Jake,
Thanks again for the pass. You’re so sweet.
Don’t ever change.
Sincelery,
Jo
Jake thought that “Sincerely” being misspelled in no way diminished the feeling of the letter. In fact, he actually thought it added a depth of human frailty to the note. Here was this girl, obviously grateful, opening herself up and letting him know how much his gesture touched her. Jake folded the letter back up carefully and put it in his front pocket and headed off to English.
Jo Canton was a plain looking girl, average in most every way. Jake could see himself asking her out if he could assure that Eddie would never find out. He felt bad about judging whom he’d be seen with based on Eddie’s approval. Jo was a nice person who, although sometimes too talkative, had a great many good qualities. She was always willing to do things for other people regardless of their station in the social hierarchy, sometimes to the detriment of her own place in that system.
Damnit, she’s generous of spirit and if they can’t recognize that as something noble then fuck them. Ask her out. Who gives a flying fuck at a rolling donut what Eddie thinks.
He was determined now to ask her out. He had missed his chance with Jodi. Well, perhaps missed is not the correct term. Blew is probably more towards the point. Agonizing over whether she was sincerely interested in him or just Eddie’s willing shill, prostituting herself to brighten, if only for a moment, the life of some pathetic rotund Weeble-Kind, had perplexed him into a state of inertia. From this, he was powerless to break free. Ever the pessimist, his decision came down on the side that caused the least pain. If he called and she said she’d skated with him as a joke, he would be devastated for months. Never calling would cause him only slight pain and for a very short time. The Path of Least Resistance was the only choice for him.
There was laughter coming from inside the classroom. Long trailing rounds of wicked laughter rolled down the hall from Miss Waltham’s door. The laughter was broken by a few shrill girls’ voices saying ‘That’s sick. That’s just sick’. Jake assumed that someone had just pulled a practical joke on someone else much to their discomfort and annoyance. He imagined it was Thad Wilson, the trickster sophomore who had been forced to retake freshman English. He had probably picked his nose and wiped it across some poor geek’s glasses. Or, perhaps he was halfway through his famous all belch rendition of “Mary had a Little Lamb”.
Jake couldn’t have been more wrong.
He appeared in the doorway and the laughter erupted anew. Faces turned red and eyes brimmed with tears. If Jake had been able to turn off the sound to this scene it could’ve almost passed for a moment of great sorrow, the emotions of some classmate’s death wrenching the kids’ bodies and puffing their cheeks. Richie was standing in between two rows near the front of the class, his face patchy with red from laughing. Eddie and Morris were in their desks at the rear smiling silently. Jake looked at Alex and Scott. Alex’s head was down on the desk and his back was heaving up and down. Jake thought he was laughing with them until he raised his head to wipe his tears from his eyes. Scott was behind his brother sitting, arms crossed, his jaw set, eyes peering straight out the window at some unseen thing. The rest of the kids began pointing, half of them at Jake, the other half at the chalkboard at the front of the room. Jake entered slowly, cautiously, as if someone had planted landmines somewhere beneath the institutional tile. Turning to face the chalkboard, he finally set eyes upon what everyone had found so funny.
Spread across almost half of the chalkboard were three crudely drawn chalk figures engaged in carnal knowledge of each other. The two thinner ones were standing facing each other and the fatter one was on all fours, dog-like between them. There was a cartoon bubble coming from the head of the figure on the left moaning “Ohhhh, Yeaahhhh!!!”, its eyes just slits, its back arched in the throes of physical ecstasy. The other upright figure was hunched over slightly, his three-fingered hands gripping the waist of figure in the middle. Out of the round circle of his mouth came the bubble stating, “Das ist Gut”. The figure in the middle was just silent apparently because he had learned never to talk with his mouth full.
Jake’s first reaction, besides the fact that he could’ve drawn it better, was to giggle at the picture. That was until he saw the names written across the bottom of the picture. From left to right he read, ‘Scott’, ‘Jake’ and ‘Alex’, each name attached to an arrow pointing accusingly toward the figure it named. Jake looked at the drawing again and centered on the fat figure in the middle. Its eyes were closed, in what others would see as utter enjoyment, in what Jake saw as shame.
Jake started for the chalkboard but Richie’s foot halted his progress. Jake flew forward catching himself for a second on the chalk-tray ledge attached to the board. This momentarily slowed his decent to the hard tile floor. He stood up and whacked the back of his head on the chalk ledge that had saved his from a headfirst dive into the wall. This brought gales of laughter up from the kids’ throats. He turned toward the class, oblivious to the fact that he was now standing directly between the two upright figures on the board. He looked at Eddie, who had sat up in his desk and reached into his pocket. Pulling out the two pink Fast Times at Ridgemont High passes Jake had given the Twins, he waved them in front of his widely grinning face.
“Hi, Miss Waltham”, a girl in the front row said loudly.
The laughter stopped. Richie bolted out of his desk and pulled down the map of the United States that hung above the chalkboard. As he pulled it into place, it perfectly covered the entire drawing.
“What are you boys up to?” , Madge said as she shuffled her way to her desk, clutching a steaming hot cup of tea in her bony right claw.
“I was showing Jake where San Francisco was”, Richie replied. The room burst into new laughter. “He’s thinking of moving there”.
Jake shoved past Richie, driving his crotch into the corner of Sara Etanger’s desk. He bumped Miss Waltham who spilled a drop of scalding tea down the front of her purple caftan. He barreled into the hall slamming into one of the lockers standing across from the door.
As Jake ran down the corridor, he could hear Madge’s cracked howling voice trailing after him.
* * *
“Why didn’t you erase it?”, Jake asked Alex who was seated across the table from him sucking down a Hardee’s chocolate shake.
“I couldn’t. I was too embarrassed.”
“What about you?”, Jake accused Scott who had just returned from the counter with two Big Cookies.
“I tried”, Scott replied as he bit into his first cookie. “Richie stopped me and when I tried to shove him out of the way, Eddie came up from behind and jabbed me in the shoulder with his pencil”.
Scott put the cookie down and pulled up the sleeve of his J.C. Penney Hunt Club polo.
“The lead’s still in there”.
Jake examined it more closely and saw a sliver of black beneath a translucent layer of skin.
“I gotta get it out. I’m gonna die of lead poisoning”.
“It’s graphite”, Alex added. “They haven’t made lead pencils since forever.”
Other kids began to file into Hardee’s for lunch. A bunch of them went straight for the tables, saving them for their respective groups, while the others ordered for them. A few of them would look over at the three boys and then lean into the ears of their friends, telling them the story of what happened in third period. The listeners would laugh out loud and turn to look at Jake and the Carson boys with a mixture of disgust and pity. This action spread like a, well, a rumor, until everyone in Hardee’s was stealing glances at the boys and giggling under their breath. Jake couldn’t take it anymore and got up to leave. As he stood shoving scraps of waxed paper and cardboard boxes on the brown plastic tray through the door marked ‘Thank You’, he was met face to face with an upperclassman who had turned around in his booth to ask Jake a question.
“Hey, tell me somethin’. Do you spit or swallow?”
The upperclassman’s eyes narrowed to slits, his lips pulled back, baring his crooked nicotine stained teeth. He barked his smoke scented guffaw into Jake’s face. Jake looked at the upperclassman’s table and saw the rest of the guys seated around it, all of them miming oral sex. They rhythmically plunged their invisible penises into their mouths poking into the side of their cheeks. It was a horrific display of ridicule. Jake dropped the tray into the trash and ran out into the parking lot.
Alex and Scott caught up with him near the split in the fence that led back to school.
Jake turned to them and screamed, “How did he get the passes?”
Alex and Scott looked down at their shoes.
“The passes. He had them. How’d he get them?”
“He threatened to sic Sean Logan on us”, Scott replied.
Sean Logan was the redheaded boy who, in ninth grade, already had a full mustache. Not one of those thin, cheesy, as Eddie called them, “Dick Ticklers”, but the full Billy Dee. On top of that, he towered over the other kids. His copper colored locks came away from his scalp like a tangle of weeds. He wore a black jean jacket with the back emblazoned with “Eddie” the walking dead bloodlusting satyr that was the mascot of the thrash metal band Iron Maiden. Jake thought that he would’ve given up the passes with that threat, too. Hell, he’d’ve given up the coveted watch pen his aunt had bought him for Christmas and his Ron LeFlore rookie card.
“Are you going back to class?”, Scott asked.
“Aren’t you?”, Jake returned.
“Oh, yeah, I just didn’t get enough humiliation yet. I need more”, Alex said. “Fuck that noise”.
Scott and Jake turned toward Alex. Alex never swore. It was obvious that today’s events had pushed him beyond the point where his Good Catholic Upbringing could reach him. It had pushed him into the red. He was boiling hot and gave no signs of cooling down.
“The fuck I am, too” Scott said, turning to Jake. “That’s bullshit”.
The Twins walked toward the bike racks. Jake stood, one foot on the grass, the other on the first step to the South entrance to the school. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He weighed the possibility of skipping the rest of the day. He could see the look on his Father’s face as his Mother told him of the phone call from school that had woken her out of her mid-day snooze. He could see his Father unbuckling his belt and pulling it from his waist. He could feel the sting of the thick leather slamming against his buttocks and the backs of his thighs. He wanted none of it. He opened his eyes and walked through the bright orange doors.
By 2:45 p.m., he wished he hadn’t.
* * *
He had endured it all. The whispers. The catcalls. The whistling upperclassmen, grabbing at their crotches and yelling ‘I got something for you to suck on’. Girls would point and turn away. People gave him wide berth when he walked down the hall as if his humiliation reeked from every pore of his body like a rancid stench. He was shoved into the girls’ bathroom twice, to calls of ‘That’s the right bathroom, Fag.” To his credit, that act had presented him with the opportunity to see Tracy Dunham, the most popular girl in school, naked from the waist down for a split second as she pulled up her skirt. However, the sight in no way diminished his crushing shame and embarrassment.
Between fifth and last period, Keith Smythe, the plump diminutive son of the Born-Again Christian pastor that ran the Liberty Congregational Church, sidled up to Jake to tell him to “Turn the other cheek”, that “This too shall pass”. He wanted to let him know that he would pray for him and that God would see him through the darkness. Jake had slammed his locker door and looked at Keith, shaking his head in amazement.
“There is no God”, Jake spit the words into Keith’s cherubic face.
Jake walked off as Keith bowed his head to pray.
The worst by far was the last bell. Jake thought that he had endured the full brunt of human humiliation. He had come through the fire, singed and sore, but not completely burnt. Jake’s spirits began to rise as he started out the West doors. He was headed home to lick his wounds and drowned his sorrow in a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers and a big 2-liter of Faygo Red Pop. The sugar high would wash away the bad thoughts and the eventual crash would lull him into a restful, dreamless sleep. Jake smiled at his plan as he pushed the heavy orange door open and was immediately grabbed by a trio of upperclassmen.
They pulled his pants down to his knees, which was easy because, being cursed with his Mother’s body type, he had no ass. The front of his Dad’s old shirt covered his bits and pieces and the tail covered most of his crack. The upperclassmen then picked him up and threw him face first into the muddy football practice field. Jake had tried to get up, but every time he tried one of the guys stuck his Adidas high-topped foot on his butt and forced him down.
“Fuck the mud, Fuck the mud, You Fat Faggot”, he said shoving the heel of his shoe into Jake’s tailbone.
The football coach, Coach Zaslavskaia--Zazz for short--blew his whistle and the upperclassmen dispersed. The coach helped Jake up and asked him if he wanted to use the shower in the locker room to clean himself up. Jake just pulled his pants up and walked away.
The ride home was worse than any he’d ever endured, because he now felt outside what he had been feeling inside; filthy, disgusting and in utter despair. The mud soaked into his underwear and onto his thighs. With every pedaling motion, he felt his thighs sliding together, the friction eased by the slick film of wet mud. Dark stains rose up on the front of his paints. As the mud dried, it began to itch. He spent the last few blocks, walking his bike and scratching his crotch to stop the itch, dried mud falling in scabby flakes out the legs of his pants.
Thankfully, his Mother was asleep. He pulled the muddy clothes from his body and shoved them into the laundry chute. He stepped into the warm shower and began to sob, head resting against the title wall, watching the brown swirls disappear down the rusting drain.
He replayed every taunt, every derisive comment as he lay, fresh from the shower, on is bed. His face was contorted in a crumpled mess and he held his arm over his eyes to block the light from the window. He had reached the bottom. He saw nothing but black around him, nothing but evilness and hatred. Eddie’s face swum into focus, his visage frozen in a permanent state of mischievous glee. Jake tried to block out the image by cramming his eyes shut and rubbing them hard until bright bursts and swirls of primary colors appeared in the dark. His sister Kay had called this phenomenon “Polish Fireworks”. He’d open his eyes and the patterns would remain for a moment, then dissipate.
Jake looked at his hands. They were plump peasant paws. Even though he’d taken a shower he still could see grime in the furls and rows of his palms. He rubbed them together and little balls of dirty dead skin fell into his eyes. He closed his eyes, brought his hands to his throat. He started to squeeze. The veins under his thumbs bulged out. He tightened his grip and concentrated. He could feel his face puffing up. He dug his nails into the sides of his neck. His face stricken with terror and determination was beet red, his eyes welling with tears. He began to feel light-headed. His head was thrumming with the sound of his quickened heartbeat.
Suddenly, a pain started at the base of his right thumb. He loosened his grip and the pain worsened, like a rusted shish-kabob skewer thrust right through the meat of his palm.
“Ow, ow, owwwwwww”, Jake cried as the cramp set in deeply, stiffening his entire hand and bending his thumb at an awkward angle. He lay there panting, his eyes closed, rubbing the rigor from his right hand.
His eyes snapped open.
He had reached an epiphany. He had gone through the blackness to the other side. He had risked death, or in the very least unconsciousness, to assuage the pain and now saw everything sparklingly clearly. All the pieces fell into place like some mystical game of Connect Four. Blaming himself for everything wasn’t the right thing to do. It wasn’t as if he had brought all this shame and degradation on by himself. It wasn’t him. He should be blaming his parents, especially his Mother, for raising him as a fat pansy egghead. He should be blaming her for force-feeding him Devil Dogs and Fluffer Nutter sandwiches every time he fell in the street or had a bad day at school. He could blame his Father for not being around to show him how to act as a boy. He had been forced to glean his image of boyhood from reruns of Leave It To Beaver, The Brady Bunch and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father--which he had stopped watching because of the title. It was their fault this happened. All their fault.
It was then he realized that it wasn’t their fault, really. All the fault could be laid at the feet of Mr. Eddie Stephens. He was the culprit. He was the mastermind behind the slow destruction and eventual demise of Jake’s self-esteem. Eddie had consciously taken credit for everything good that happened in Jake’s life. It was his way of gaining ascendencacy over him. Jake had turned into a sycophant, just like the rest of the boys, lobbying for approval in the master’s eyes. Eddie would ridicule each of them constantly, never offering words of encouragement. And, it was when the boys chafed at his power that they received the harshest punishment. Someone, Jake thought, ought to show him how it hurt, see how he liked it.
Jake bolted from his bed, ran down the stairs taking two at a time and crouched in front of the bookcase. He extracted The Story of America from it place next to Soul on Ice and riffled through the pages.
He flipped to the rear of the book and opened to a page with a black and white picture of a black 1939 Mercedes-Benz with a group of men standing around it. In the center stood Adolph Hitler, looking relaxed and at ease. The men looked happy, as if Hitler had just told a joke about a Minister, a Priest and a Goddamn Kike Rabbi. But, behind the smile on each face was a look of fear. A dread of the power that the little man in the trim wool coat and toothbrush mustache wielded over them.
Jake traced his finger down the page. He stopped and began to smile. He ran his index finger under the phrase ‘assassination attempt on Hitler’s life’. Jake read on to the end of the paragraph. He re-read the entire section, nodding his head at the craftiness and beautiful simplicity of his plan. But, clouded by his glee over his burgeoning plot, he completely missed the word ‘botched’.
Jake,
Thanks again for the pass. You’re so sweet.
Don’t ever change.
Sincelery,
Jo
Jake thought that “Sincerely” being misspelled in no way diminished the feeling of the letter. In fact, he actually thought it added a depth of human frailty to the note. Here was this girl, obviously grateful, opening herself up and letting him know how much his gesture touched her. Jake folded the letter back up carefully and put it in his front pocket and headed off to English.
Jo Canton was a plain looking girl, average in most every way. Jake could see himself asking her out if he could assure that Eddie would never find out. He felt bad about judging whom he’d be seen with based on Eddie’s approval. Jo was a nice person who, although sometimes too talkative, had a great many good qualities. She was always willing to do things for other people regardless of their station in the social hierarchy, sometimes to the detriment of her own place in that system.
Damnit, she’s generous of spirit and if they can’t recognize that as something noble then fuck them. Ask her out. Who gives a flying fuck at a rolling donut what Eddie thinks.
He was determined now to ask her out. He had missed his chance with Jodi. Well, perhaps missed is not the correct term. Blew is probably more towards the point. Agonizing over whether she was sincerely interested in him or just Eddie’s willing shill, prostituting herself to brighten, if only for a moment, the life of some pathetic rotund Weeble-Kind, had perplexed him into a state of inertia. From this, he was powerless to break free. Ever the pessimist, his decision came down on the side that caused the least pain. If he called and she said she’d skated with him as a joke, he would be devastated for months. Never calling would cause him only slight pain and for a very short time. The Path of Least Resistance was the only choice for him.
There was laughter coming from inside the classroom. Long trailing rounds of wicked laughter rolled down the hall from Miss Waltham’s door. The laughter was broken by a few shrill girls’ voices saying ‘That’s sick. That’s just sick’. Jake assumed that someone had just pulled a practical joke on someone else much to their discomfort and annoyance. He imagined it was Thad Wilson, the trickster sophomore who had been forced to retake freshman English. He had probably picked his nose and wiped it across some poor geek’s glasses. Or, perhaps he was halfway through his famous all belch rendition of “Mary had a Little Lamb”.
Jake couldn’t have been more wrong.
He appeared in the doorway and the laughter erupted anew. Faces turned red and eyes brimmed with tears. If Jake had been able to turn off the sound to this scene it could’ve almost passed for a moment of great sorrow, the emotions of some classmate’s death wrenching the kids’ bodies and puffing their cheeks. Richie was standing in between two rows near the front of the class, his face patchy with red from laughing. Eddie and Morris were in their desks at the rear smiling silently. Jake looked at Alex and Scott. Alex’s head was down on the desk and his back was heaving up and down. Jake thought he was laughing with them until he raised his head to wipe his tears from his eyes. Scott was behind his brother sitting, arms crossed, his jaw set, eyes peering straight out the window at some unseen thing. The rest of the kids began pointing, half of them at Jake, the other half at the chalkboard at the front of the room. Jake entered slowly, cautiously, as if someone had planted landmines somewhere beneath the institutional tile. Turning to face the chalkboard, he finally set eyes upon what everyone had found so funny.
Spread across almost half of the chalkboard were three crudely drawn chalk figures engaged in carnal knowledge of each other. The two thinner ones were standing facing each other and the fatter one was on all fours, dog-like between them. There was a cartoon bubble coming from the head of the figure on the left moaning “Ohhhh, Yeaahhhh!!!”, its eyes just slits, its back arched in the throes of physical ecstasy. The other upright figure was hunched over slightly, his three-fingered hands gripping the waist of figure in the middle. Out of the round circle of his mouth came the bubble stating, “Das ist Gut”. The figure in the middle was just silent apparently because he had learned never to talk with his mouth full.
Jake’s first reaction, besides the fact that he could’ve drawn it better, was to giggle at the picture. That was until he saw the names written across the bottom of the picture. From left to right he read, ‘Scott’, ‘Jake’ and ‘Alex’, each name attached to an arrow pointing accusingly toward the figure it named. Jake looked at the drawing again and centered on the fat figure in the middle. Its eyes were closed, in what others would see as utter enjoyment, in what Jake saw as shame.
Jake started for the chalkboard but Richie’s foot halted his progress. Jake flew forward catching himself for a second on the chalk-tray ledge attached to the board. This momentarily slowed his decent to the hard tile floor. He stood up and whacked the back of his head on the chalk ledge that had saved his from a headfirst dive into the wall. This brought gales of laughter up from the kids’ throats. He turned toward the class, oblivious to the fact that he was now standing directly between the two upright figures on the board. He looked at Eddie, who had sat up in his desk and reached into his pocket. Pulling out the two pink Fast Times at Ridgemont High passes Jake had given the Twins, he waved them in front of his widely grinning face.
“Hi, Miss Waltham”, a girl in the front row said loudly.
The laughter stopped. Richie bolted out of his desk and pulled down the map of the United States that hung above the chalkboard. As he pulled it into place, it perfectly covered the entire drawing.
“What are you boys up to?” , Madge said as she shuffled her way to her desk, clutching a steaming hot cup of tea in her bony right claw.
“I was showing Jake where San Francisco was”, Richie replied. The room burst into new laughter. “He’s thinking of moving there”.
Jake shoved past Richie, driving his crotch into the corner of Sara Etanger’s desk. He bumped Miss Waltham who spilled a drop of scalding tea down the front of her purple caftan. He barreled into the hall slamming into one of the lockers standing across from the door.
As Jake ran down the corridor, he could hear Madge’s cracked howling voice trailing after him.
* * *
“Why didn’t you erase it?”, Jake asked Alex who was seated across the table from him sucking down a Hardee’s chocolate shake.
“I couldn’t. I was too embarrassed.”
“What about you?”, Jake accused Scott who had just returned from the counter with two Big Cookies.
“I tried”, Scott replied as he bit into his first cookie. “Richie stopped me and when I tried to shove him out of the way, Eddie came up from behind and jabbed me in the shoulder with his pencil”.
Scott put the cookie down and pulled up the sleeve of his J.C. Penney Hunt Club polo.
“The lead’s still in there”.
Jake examined it more closely and saw a sliver of black beneath a translucent layer of skin.
“I gotta get it out. I’m gonna die of lead poisoning”.
“It’s graphite”, Alex added. “They haven’t made lead pencils since forever.”
Other kids began to file into Hardee’s for lunch. A bunch of them went straight for the tables, saving them for their respective groups, while the others ordered for them. A few of them would look over at the three boys and then lean into the ears of their friends, telling them the story of what happened in third period. The listeners would laugh out loud and turn to look at Jake and the Carson boys with a mixture of disgust and pity. This action spread like a, well, a rumor, until everyone in Hardee’s was stealing glances at the boys and giggling under their breath. Jake couldn’t take it anymore and got up to leave. As he stood shoving scraps of waxed paper and cardboard boxes on the brown plastic tray through the door marked ‘Thank You’, he was met face to face with an upperclassman who had turned around in his booth to ask Jake a question.
“Hey, tell me somethin’. Do you spit or swallow?”
The upperclassman’s eyes narrowed to slits, his lips pulled back, baring his crooked nicotine stained teeth. He barked his smoke scented guffaw into Jake’s face. Jake looked at the upperclassman’s table and saw the rest of the guys seated around it, all of them miming oral sex. They rhythmically plunged their invisible penises into their mouths poking into the side of their cheeks. It was a horrific display of ridicule. Jake dropped the tray into the trash and ran out into the parking lot.
Alex and Scott caught up with him near the split in the fence that led back to school.
Jake turned to them and screamed, “How did he get the passes?”
Alex and Scott looked down at their shoes.
“The passes. He had them. How’d he get them?”
“He threatened to sic Sean Logan on us”, Scott replied.
Sean Logan was the redheaded boy who, in ninth grade, already had a full mustache. Not one of those thin, cheesy, as Eddie called them, “Dick Ticklers”, but the full Billy Dee. On top of that, he towered over the other kids. His copper colored locks came away from his scalp like a tangle of weeds. He wore a black jean jacket with the back emblazoned with “Eddie” the walking dead bloodlusting satyr that was the mascot of the thrash metal band Iron Maiden. Jake thought that he would’ve given up the passes with that threat, too. Hell, he’d’ve given up the coveted watch pen his aunt had bought him for Christmas and his Ron LeFlore rookie card.
“Are you going back to class?”, Scott asked.
“Aren’t you?”, Jake returned.
“Oh, yeah, I just didn’t get enough humiliation yet. I need more”, Alex said. “Fuck that noise”.
Scott and Jake turned toward Alex. Alex never swore. It was obvious that today’s events had pushed him beyond the point where his Good Catholic Upbringing could reach him. It had pushed him into the red. He was boiling hot and gave no signs of cooling down.
“The fuck I am, too” Scott said, turning to Jake. “That’s bullshit”.
The Twins walked toward the bike racks. Jake stood, one foot on the grass, the other on the first step to the South entrance to the school. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He weighed the possibility of skipping the rest of the day. He could see the look on his Father’s face as his Mother told him of the phone call from school that had woken her out of her mid-day snooze. He could see his Father unbuckling his belt and pulling it from his waist. He could feel the sting of the thick leather slamming against his buttocks and the backs of his thighs. He wanted none of it. He opened his eyes and walked through the bright orange doors.
By 2:45 p.m., he wished he hadn’t.
* * *
He had endured it all. The whispers. The catcalls. The whistling upperclassmen, grabbing at their crotches and yelling ‘I got something for you to suck on’. Girls would point and turn away. People gave him wide berth when he walked down the hall as if his humiliation reeked from every pore of his body like a rancid stench. He was shoved into the girls’ bathroom twice, to calls of ‘That’s the right bathroom, Fag.” To his credit, that act had presented him with the opportunity to see Tracy Dunham, the most popular girl in school, naked from the waist down for a split second as she pulled up her skirt. However, the sight in no way diminished his crushing shame and embarrassment.
Between fifth and last period, Keith Smythe, the plump diminutive son of the Born-Again Christian pastor that ran the Liberty Congregational Church, sidled up to Jake to tell him to “Turn the other cheek”, that “This too shall pass”. He wanted to let him know that he would pray for him and that God would see him through the darkness. Jake had slammed his locker door and looked at Keith, shaking his head in amazement.
“There is no God”, Jake spit the words into Keith’s cherubic face.
Jake walked off as Keith bowed his head to pray.
The worst by far was the last bell. Jake thought that he had endured the full brunt of human humiliation. He had come through the fire, singed and sore, but not completely burnt. Jake’s spirits began to rise as he started out the West doors. He was headed home to lick his wounds and drowned his sorrow in a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers and a big 2-liter of Faygo Red Pop. The sugar high would wash away the bad thoughts and the eventual crash would lull him into a restful, dreamless sleep. Jake smiled at his plan as he pushed the heavy orange door open and was immediately grabbed by a trio of upperclassmen.
They pulled his pants down to his knees, which was easy because, being cursed with his Mother’s body type, he had no ass. The front of his Dad’s old shirt covered his bits and pieces and the tail covered most of his crack. The upperclassmen then picked him up and threw him face first into the muddy football practice field. Jake had tried to get up, but every time he tried one of the guys stuck his Adidas high-topped foot on his butt and forced him down.
“Fuck the mud, Fuck the mud, You Fat Faggot”, he said shoving the heel of his shoe into Jake’s tailbone.
The football coach, Coach Zaslavskaia--Zazz for short--blew his whistle and the upperclassmen dispersed. The coach helped Jake up and asked him if he wanted to use the shower in the locker room to clean himself up. Jake just pulled his pants up and walked away.
The ride home was worse than any he’d ever endured, because he now felt outside what he had been feeling inside; filthy, disgusting and in utter despair. The mud soaked into his underwear and onto his thighs. With every pedaling motion, he felt his thighs sliding together, the friction eased by the slick film of wet mud. Dark stains rose up on the front of his paints. As the mud dried, it began to itch. He spent the last few blocks, walking his bike and scratching his crotch to stop the itch, dried mud falling in scabby flakes out the legs of his pants.
Thankfully, his Mother was asleep. He pulled the muddy clothes from his body and shoved them into the laundry chute. He stepped into the warm shower and began to sob, head resting against the title wall, watching the brown swirls disappear down the rusting drain.
He replayed every taunt, every derisive comment as he lay, fresh from the shower, on is bed. His face was contorted in a crumpled mess and he held his arm over his eyes to block the light from the window. He had reached the bottom. He saw nothing but black around him, nothing but evilness and hatred. Eddie’s face swum into focus, his visage frozen in a permanent state of mischievous glee. Jake tried to block out the image by cramming his eyes shut and rubbing them hard until bright bursts and swirls of primary colors appeared in the dark. His sister Kay had called this phenomenon “Polish Fireworks”. He’d open his eyes and the patterns would remain for a moment, then dissipate.
Jake looked at his hands. They were plump peasant paws. Even though he’d taken a shower he still could see grime in the furls and rows of his palms. He rubbed them together and little balls of dirty dead skin fell into his eyes. He closed his eyes, brought his hands to his throat. He started to squeeze. The veins under his thumbs bulged out. He tightened his grip and concentrated. He could feel his face puffing up. He dug his nails into the sides of his neck. His face stricken with terror and determination was beet red, his eyes welling with tears. He began to feel light-headed. His head was thrumming with the sound of his quickened heartbeat.
Suddenly, a pain started at the base of his right thumb. He loosened his grip and the pain worsened, like a rusted shish-kabob skewer thrust right through the meat of his palm.
“Ow, ow, owwwwwww”, Jake cried as the cramp set in deeply, stiffening his entire hand and bending his thumb at an awkward angle. He lay there panting, his eyes closed, rubbing the rigor from his right hand.
His eyes snapped open.
He had reached an epiphany. He had gone through the blackness to the other side. He had risked death, or in the very least unconsciousness, to assuage the pain and now saw everything sparklingly clearly. All the pieces fell into place like some mystical game of Connect Four. Blaming himself for everything wasn’t the right thing to do. It wasn’t as if he had brought all this shame and degradation on by himself. It wasn’t him. He should be blaming his parents, especially his Mother, for raising him as a fat pansy egghead. He should be blaming her for force-feeding him Devil Dogs and Fluffer Nutter sandwiches every time he fell in the street or had a bad day at school. He could blame his Father for not being around to show him how to act as a boy. He had been forced to glean his image of boyhood from reruns of Leave It To Beaver, The Brady Bunch and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father--which he had stopped watching because of the title. It was their fault this happened. All their fault.
It was then he realized that it wasn’t their fault, really. All the fault could be laid at the feet of Mr. Eddie Stephens. He was the culprit. He was the mastermind behind the slow destruction and eventual demise of Jake’s self-esteem. Eddie had consciously taken credit for everything good that happened in Jake’s life. It was his way of gaining ascendencacy over him. Jake had turned into a sycophant, just like the rest of the boys, lobbying for approval in the master’s eyes. Eddie would ridicule each of them constantly, never offering words of encouragement. And, it was when the boys chafed at his power that they received the harshest punishment. Someone, Jake thought, ought to show him how it hurt, see how he liked it.
Jake bolted from his bed, ran down the stairs taking two at a time and crouched in front of the bookcase. He extracted The Story of America from it place next to Soul on Ice and riffled through the pages.
He flipped to the rear of the book and opened to a page with a black and white picture of a black 1939 Mercedes-Benz with a group of men standing around it. In the center stood Adolph Hitler, looking relaxed and at ease. The men looked happy, as if Hitler had just told a joke about a Minister, a Priest and a Goddamn Kike Rabbi. But, behind the smile on each face was a look of fear. A dread of the power that the little man in the trim wool coat and toothbrush mustache wielded over them.
Jake traced his finger down the page. He stopped and began to smile. He ran his index finger under the phrase ‘assassination attempt on Hitler’s life’. Jake read on to the end of the paragraph. He re-read the entire section, nodding his head at the craftiness and beautiful simplicity of his plan. But, clouded by his glee over his burgeoning plot, he completely missed the word ‘botched’.
(eleven) “They’re not mine, I swear”
Jake awoke groggy the next morning, his teeth covered in a thick pasty film, breath reeking of yeast and cigarettes. Struggling to get his pudgy frame off the sagging bed, he stood unsteadily and waddled over to the cracked full-length mirror leaning up against the chimney in his bedroom. He was wearing only grungy grey briefs that were too small for him. Turning his hips to his left, he saw the large purple bruise that covered a softball size circle of flesh over his kidney. He winced softly as he ran his hand over its plum surface. Bending down slowly, being careful not to pinch or bind the sore spot, he began the process of picking out his school clothes from the crumpled clothes piled on the floor of his room, alternately picking an item up off the floor, smelling it and either returning it to the floor or putting it on.
Jake came down the stairs fully dressed in jeans and one of his dad’s old work shirts. He pulled his torn hightop Traxx sneakers on as he sat at the foot of the stairs. Realizing he was running a bit late, his dad had already left, he dreaded the fact that he would have to take his bike to school. Grabbing his worn jean jacket off the knob of the door leading upstairs, he headed for the kitchen. As he turned the corner, he was startled by the sight of his Mother seated at the table in a pink flannelette housedress, drinking a mug of instant coffee.
The east window caught the sun popping over the Nickerson’s colonial. Light filtered through the dirty kitchen windows in a thick film of dust particles settling down onto the surfaces of the countertops. The kitchen was bathed in a murky golden glow. The sink was piled with glasses half-filled with sour watered-down milk, plates with spaghetti sauce crusted around the rim and bowls of stagnant water immersed in the process of incubating bacteria. The floors were crumby with months worth of salt, sugar and other seasonings and toppings that had missed the plate during application. Long deserted cobwebs hung in the corners of the room, caked with dust. The table, at which Jake’s family only ate Thanksgiving dinner, was piled high with newspapers. Stacks spilled over onto the chairs, which, of the four, only two were actually free from clutter. Jake knew that the kitchen was a tinderbox from the Fire Safety filmstrip he saw in class. He had jokingly thought of suggesting a field trip to his house to experience Bad Fire Safety at first hand. Perhaps the embarassment would thrust his mother out of her depression-enduced slothfulness enough to toss the trash out. Jake did his share but with an example like that, his efforts soon dwindled to just taking the garbage out, cutting the lawn and shoveling snow. Nothing else.
His mother completed the picture in her rumpled gown and tousled dyed-red hair, its white roots showing. Her pinched yet plump face, splattered with a spray of freckles, was alive in some kind of agitated condition. Behind her, the dowager’s hump slumped into her large upperarms, then tapered off into graceful forearms and wrists and finally into thin bony hands clutched around the mug bearing the slogan “World’s Best Mom” that Jake had made for her in 4 grade.
“Looking for these?”, she said, turning and proffering a hardbox of Marlboro Lights.
As Jake glimpsed the white and gold box, his head began to buzz, his heart rate quicken.
“Well”, she insisted. “Are you?”
Jake stood there in a wretched silence that entombed like a bubble he dared not break.
“Take one.”
He stood stock still, aching to be outside and on his way to school.
“I said: Take One”, she repeated and thrust the pack toward him.
What the hell are you going to do? If you take one, she’s gonna go gonzo on you. If you don’t she’s gonna yell at you until you do and then go gonzo on you. You are so fucked.
She took one of the cigarettes out and handed it to him. He took it timidly.
“Light it.”
Fine. He decided he’d do what she wanted. Jake knew that in an effort to torture him by going through this, she was torturing herself. She was forcing her son to engage in a behavior that she tried to raise him not to do. The whole situation seemed masochistic to Jake.
He grabbed the Zippo off the table and popped the lid, pausing slightly for any reaction before he went further. When none came, he continued. He snapped the wheel and the flame kicked into life. He brought his hand up and cupped the lighter as he brought it to his face. He even tilted his head slightly to avoid the flame. He clicked the lid shut and took a long, calm first drag.
He felt the sting of nails scrape the tender flesh between his cheek and his mouth. Hot coals rained onto his neck as the cigarette flew from his mouth. Catching it out of the corner of his eye, Jake watched as it somersaulted and bounced, ash first on the linoleum, before coming to rest, extinguished on a pile of last week’s Detroit Free Press.
“I can explain”, he said brushing his neck where the coals landed.
“You fucking better.”
He had never heard his mother cuss before. It was beyond odd. It was surreally freightening; as if he’d just seen Mother Teresa knock back a shot of Jack Daniels and light up a stogie.
“They’re not mine, I swear”, Jake whined.
The words sounded shallow and brittle as they fell from his mouth. Now completely beyond his control, his lower lip began to tremble. The sound of the repetitious pop of his pulse thrummed in his ears. The heat in his face grew with each beat. He felt the trust he had built with not only his Mother but his Father, crumble as he spoke. He vainly tried to shore it up with words that flaked off and disintegrated with every syllable.
“Whose are they?”
“Eddie Stephens gave them to me to hold.”
It was then that Jake realized how utterly unbelievable his absolutely true story was coming out. He had turned into a very poorly scripted after-school special on the dangers of smoking; changed into the trope of the Bad Child who did things behind his parents’ back. He struggled to reconcile to himself that this was not him.
“I knew that kid was trouble the day he moved into the Polks’ Old House”, she took another sip of her burnt- smelling coffee without taking her eyes off her child. This statement assuaged Jake’s guilt a bit. She was willing to believe, at least she intimated so, that her son was under the control of darker force, one he was powerless to resist.
“He gave them to me at Chuck E. Cheese”, Jake said building on the story to make in more believable. He hated having to sell the truth.
“When were you at Chuck E. Cheese?”, she asked.
“Yesterday”, Jake replied quickly. He closed his eyes as he realized his mistake too late.
“You came home right after school yesterday. It couldn’t’ve been yesterday.”
Jake scrambled for an answer. He spun his mental Rolodex to come up with a plausible explanation to cover the truth.
“Maybe it wasn’t yesterday”, Jake said averting his eyes.
He was caught now. He felt it. Sweat started to bead on his upper lip. What came so easy in front of that stranger named Pam at Harmony House, was now sticking in his throat, choking off his air supply.
“Are you lying to me, young man?”, she said, leaning into his face and grabbing his hand in her bony lobster-claw grasp.
“No?”, Jake asked.
He wished he could replay this entire episode. He saw Eddie knocking on the door, his Mother answering it. Eddie would ask if Jake were home.
“Why?”, she would ask as she let him in.
“He’s got my pack of cigarettes”, he would say. “I asked him to hold them for me while I beat the shit out of a some kid in a Chuck E. Cheese suit.”
“Jake, Eddie’s here, he wants his cigarettes back”, she would then turn to Eddie and ask him to stay for breakfast, which he would refuse politely.
“Is that a question or an answer? Don’t try my patience”, she barked, her burnt coffee breath pulsing out in acrid clouds toward Jake’s face.
He looked at her. Really looked at her.
For the first time he saw the careworn wrinkles at her brow, the way they cut into the space between her eyes, making her seemed hard-edged and permanently pissed. Her eyes were rimmed with tears, pink and rheumy. With just one glance, Jake saw his dead uncle Dodge, her only brother, staring back at him.
* * *
Uncle Dodge was a beerbarrel of a man, with scarcely a straight line on him. He was meaty and tough like a cheap flank steak. Dodge was bald with a monk’s tonsure and a few strands of combover sticking to his sweaty pate. He wore painter’s pants ages before anyone thought they were cool. Painters pants and an off-white t-shirt with a yellowing half-moon pitstain splaying out from underneath his each of his chubby arms. The left sleeve was where he always kept his cigarettes. “Squares” he called them. Unfiltered Phillip Morris cigarettes. Like Pall Malls, only stronger. He smoked them heavily, he would constantly stress “only two packs a day”, but in reality the third pack he opened late in the afternoon would only have five or six cigarettes in it come morning. Along with that were his evening cigars; stench blowing Phillies Blunts he had chewed into a mushy blackness, one after supper and one while on the toilet after watching Johnny Carson, his “night crap” he called it.
And, he was a professional mason on top of it. So, when the doctor told Jake’s mother, his only living relative, that he had lung cancer, his mother took it as a given, shaking her head up and down slowly and assuredly, with no sobbing or tears, only a somber grace, as if she’d just given the doctor the bad news.
Later, on a frigid day in February, he had a heart attack, a severe one, and fell from the scaffolding in the Shrine of the Little Flower, to the marble floor below and straight into a coma from which he’d never wake.
She’d signed the “Do Not Resuscitate” order and gathered up his shredded clothes, while Jake sat quietly in the aqua vinyl chair under the TV in his uncle’s hospital room, just eight years old and already he’d seen his first dead, or dying, body. As she placed his things into the bag, a pack of Phillip Morris cigarettes rolled out of an unseen pocket and smacked to the floor.
She stood there, shocked for the moment, staring at the red rectangle on the gleaming white tile. She stood there, in this catatonia for several seconds, just staring, as if willing the pack up from the ground and back to its proper place with solely the power of her thought.
A howling sob burst forth as she tilted her head to the ceiling. Her body began to shake. Tears poured out of her swollen eyes and down her round freckled cheeks.
And, then it stopped. She breathed, no sucked, a large breath in, as if this brief moment’s passion had nearly suffocated her. She sighed out long and slow, brought her head level, stooped and picked up the pack, swivelled on her thick-heeled shoes and dropped it in the wastebasket next to the bed. She turned and exited, leaving Jake alone in the room with nothing but the rhythm of the heart monitor for company.
* * *
In the mustiness of the kitchen, his mother looked at him the way she looked at that small red pack of cigarettes, with fear, anger, regret and sadness.
Jake took a deep breath and the truth came flowing out of him like vomit.
* * *
She had dragged him into the bathroom by her patented underarm pinch and told him to open his mouth. She reached in the back of the medicine cabinet and drew out a grey-green bar of soap. It was Fels-Naptha. Craig was the only person who used that bar because it removed grease better than any other soap. Its grease-cutting power was attributed to the active ingredient of Naptha or “White Gas”. Jake’s eyes widened when he realized what was in store for him. She turned the tap on and ran the bar under the warm water. Jake’s jaw reflexively clamped tightly shut.
“Open”, she said. “I said:‘Open’”.
She grabbed his jaw and he opened it, forcing the bar into his mouth where it hit his tongue in all its chemical bitterness. His tongue drew back and triggered his gag reflex. His teeth clamped into the bar involuntarily. She placed her hand on his forehead to steady herself and yanked the bar out of his mouth. Jake shuddered violently as he felt the waxy shavings of soap dredged up by his teeth curl into the roof of his mouth. He tried to open his mouth to spit, but his Mother shoved his chin up, causing him to bite the tip of his tongue. This made his mouth water. He retched a bit, the foam shooting up the back of his throat into his nose. Now he could smell as well as taste the petroleum rankness. A few seconds later, his mouth slick with foamy lather, she released her hand and allowed him to spit.
“Maybe next time you’ll think twice before you lie to your Mother”.
She exited the bathroom. Jake stood retching soapy slightly gas-scented foam into the vanity bowl. He stuck his tongue under the running water, hurriedly cupping water into his mouth in an attempt to rinse out the inside. When the taste had subsided, he looked up at his reflection. The whites of his eyes were a bright pink, his nose was running and he was drooling. For a boy who’s Mother had nearly poisoned him he didn’t look half-bad.
He dried his tongue and the rest of his face on a sour hand towel and went into the kitchen, fully expecting to see his Mother breaking up the cigarettes into the garbage disposal. Instead the kitchen was empty. He reached in to the cupboard and took three Dolly Madison Zingers from the box his Mother had “hidden”. He opened the fridge and grabbed a can of Faygo Rock ‘n’ Rye --their version of Dr. Pepper-- and made his way to school.
Jake came down the stairs fully dressed in jeans and one of his dad’s old work shirts. He pulled his torn hightop Traxx sneakers on as he sat at the foot of the stairs. Realizing he was running a bit late, his dad had already left, he dreaded the fact that he would have to take his bike to school. Grabbing his worn jean jacket off the knob of the door leading upstairs, he headed for the kitchen. As he turned the corner, he was startled by the sight of his Mother seated at the table in a pink flannelette housedress, drinking a mug of instant coffee.
The east window caught the sun popping over the Nickerson’s colonial. Light filtered through the dirty kitchen windows in a thick film of dust particles settling down onto the surfaces of the countertops. The kitchen was bathed in a murky golden glow. The sink was piled with glasses half-filled with sour watered-down milk, plates with spaghetti sauce crusted around the rim and bowls of stagnant water immersed in the process of incubating bacteria. The floors were crumby with months worth of salt, sugar and other seasonings and toppings that had missed the plate during application. Long deserted cobwebs hung in the corners of the room, caked with dust. The table, at which Jake’s family only ate Thanksgiving dinner, was piled high with newspapers. Stacks spilled over onto the chairs, which, of the four, only two were actually free from clutter. Jake knew that the kitchen was a tinderbox from the Fire Safety filmstrip he saw in class. He had jokingly thought of suggesting a field trip to his house to experience Bad Fire Safety at first hand. Perhaps the embarassment would thrust his mother out of her depression-enduced slothfulness enough to toss the trash out. Jake did his share but with an example like that, his efforts soon dwindled to just taking the garbage out, cutting the lawn and shoveling snow. Nothing else.
His mother completed the picture in her rumpled gown and tousled dyed-red hair, its white roots showing. Her pinched yet plump face, splattered with a spray of freckles, was alive in some kind of agitated condition. Behind her, the dowager’s hump slumped into her large upperarms, then tapered off into graceful forearms and wrists and finally into thin bony hands clutched around the mug bearing the slogan “World’s Best Mom” that Jake had made for her in 4 grade.
“Looking for these?”, she said, turning and proffering a hardbox of Marlboro Lights.
As Jake glimpsed the white and gold box, his head began to buzz, his heart rate quicken.
“Well”, she insisted. “Are you?”
Jake stood there in a wretched silence that entombed like a bubble he dared not break.
“Take one.”
He stood stock still, aching to be outside and on his way to school.
“I said: Take One”, she repeated and thrust the pack toward him.
What the hell are you going to do? If you take one, she’s gonna go gonzo on you. If you don’t she’s gonna yell at you until you do and then go gonzo on you. You are so fucked.
She took one of the cigarettes out and handed it to him. He took it timidly.
“Light it.”
Fine. He decided he’d do what she wanted. Jake knew that in an effort to torture him by going through this, she was torturing herself. She was forcing her son to engage in a behavior that she tried to raise him not to do. The whole situation seemed masochistic to Jake.
He grabbed the Zippo off the table and popped the lid, pausing slightly for any reaction before he went further. When none came, he continued. He snapped the wheel and the flame kicked into life. He brought his hand up and cupped the lighter as he brought it to his face. He even tilted his head slightly to avoid the flame. He clicked the lid shut and took a long, calm first drag.
He felt the sting of nails scrape the tender flesh between his cheek and his mouth. Hot coals rained onto his neck as the cigarette flew from his mouth. Catching it out of the corner of his eye, Jake watched as it somersaulted and bounced, ash first on the linoleum, before coming to rest, extinguished on a pile of last week’s Detroit Free Press.
“I can explain”, he said brushing his neck where the coals landed.
“You fucking better.”
He had never heard his mother cuss before. It was beyond odd. It was surreally freightening; as if he’d just seen Mother Teresa knock back a shot of Jack Daniels and light up a stogie.
“They’re not mine, I swear”, Jake whined.
The words sounded shallow and brittle as they fell from his mouth. Now completely beyond his control, his lower lip began to tremble. The sound of the repetitious pop of his pulse thrummed in his ears. The heat in his face grew with each beat. He felt the trust he had built with not only his Mother but his Father, crumble as he spoke. He vainly tried to shore it up with words that flaked off and disintegrated with every syllable.
“Whose are they?”
“Eddie Stephens gave them to me to hold.”
It was then that Jake realized how utterly unbelievable his absolutely true story was coming out. He had turned into a very poorly scripted after-school special on the dangers of smoking; changed into the trope of the Bad Child who did things behind his parents’ back. He struggled to reconcile to himself that this was not him.
“I knew that kid was trouble the day he moved into the Polks’ Old House”, she took another sip of her burnt- smelling coffee without taking her eyes off her child. This statement assuaged Jake’s guilt a bit. She was willing to believe, at least she intimated so, that her son was under the control of darker force, one he was powerless to resist.
“He gave them to me at Chuck E. Cheese”, Jake said building on the story to make in more believable. He hated having to sell the truth.
“When were you at Chuck E. Cheese?”, she asked.
“Yesterday”, Jake replied quickly. He closed his eyes as he realized his mistake too late.
“You came home right after school yesterday. It couldn’t’ve been yesterday.”
Jake scrambled for an answer. He spun his mental Rolodex to come up with a plausible explanation to cover the truth.
“Maybe it wasn’t yesterday”, Jake said averting his eyes.
He was caught now. He felt it. Sweat started to bead on his upper lip. What came so easy in front of that stranger named Pam at Harmony House, was now sticking in his throat, choking off his air supply.
“Are you lying to me, young man?”, she said, leaning into his face and grabbing his hand in her bony lobster-claw grasp.
“No?”, Jake asked.
He wished he could replay this entire episode. He saw Eddie knocking on the door, his Mother answering it. Eddie would ask if Jake were home.
“Why?”, she would ask as she let him in.
“He’s got my pack of cigarettes”, he would say. “I asked him to hold them for me while I beat the shit out of a some kid in a Chuck E. Cheese suit.”
“Jake, Eddie’s here, he wants his cigarettes back”, she would then turn to Eddie and ask him to stay for breakfast, which he would refuse politely.
“Is that a question or an answer? Don’t try my patience”, she barked, her burnt coffee breath pulsing out in acrid clouds toward Jake’s face.
He looked at her. Really looked at her.
For the first time he saw the careworn wrinkles at her brow, the way they cut into the space between her eyes, making her seemed hard-edged and permanently pissed. Her eyes were rimmed with tears, pink and rheumy. With just one glance, Jake saw his dead uncle Dodge, her only brother, staring back at him.
* * *
Uncle Dodge was a beerbarrel of a man, with scarcely a straight line on him. He was meaty and tough like a cheap flank steak. Dodge was bald with a monk’s tonsure and a few strands of combover sticking to his sweaty pate. He wore painter’s pants ages before anyone thought they were cool. Painters pants and an off-white t-shirt with a yellowing half-moon pitstain splaying out from underneath his each of his chubby arms. The left sleeve was where he always kept his cigarettes. “Squares” he called them. Unfiltered Phillip Morris cigarettes. Like Pall Malls, only stronger. He smoked them heavily, he would constantly stress “only two packs a day”, but in reality the third pack he opened late in the afternoon would only have five or six cigarettes in it come morning. Along with that were his evening cigars; stench blowing Phillies Blunts he had chewed into a mushy blackness, one after supper and one while on the toilet after watching Johnny Carson, his “night crap” he called it.
And, he was a professional mason on top of it. So, when the doctor told Jake’s mother, his only living relative, that he had lung cancer, his mother took it as a given, shaking her head up and down slowly and assuredly, with no sobbing or tears, only a somber grace, as if she’d just given the doctor the bad news.
Later, on a frigid day in February, he had a heart attack, a severe one, and fell from the scaffolding in the Shrine of the Little Flower, to the marble floor below and straight into a coma from which he’d never wake.
She’d signed the “Do Not Resuscitate” order and gathered up his shredded clothes, while Jake sat quietly in the aqua vinyl chair under the TV in his uncle’s hospital room, just eight years old and already he’d seen his first dead, or dying, body. As she placed his things into the bag, a pack of Phillip Morris cigarettes rolled out of an unseen pocket and smacked to the floor.
She stood there, shocked for the moment, staring at the red rectangle on the gleaming white tile. She stood there, in this catatonia for several seconds, just staring, as if willing the pack up from the ground and back to its proper place with solely the power of her thought.
A howling sob burst forth as she tilted her head to the ceiling. Her body began to shake. Tears poured out of her swollen eyes and down her round freckled cheeks.
And, then it stopped. She breathed, no sucked, a large breath in, as if this brief moment’s passion had nearly suffocated her. She sighed out long and slow, brought her head level, stooped and picked up the pack, swivelled on her thick-heeled shoes and dropped it in the wastebasket next to the bed. She turned and exited, leaving Jake alone in the room with nothing but the rhythm of the heart monitor for company.
* * *
In the mustiness of the kitchen, his mother looked at him the way she looked at that small red pack of cigarettes, with fear, anger, regret and sadness.
Jake took a deep breath and the truth came flowing out of him like vomit.
* * *
She had dragged him into the bathroom by her patented underarm pinch and told him to open his mouth. She reached in the back of the medicine cabinet and drew out a grey-green bar of soap. It was Fels-Naptha. Craig was the only person who used that bar because it removed grease better than any other soap. Its grease-cutting power was attributed to the active ingredient of Naptha or “White Gas”. Jake’s eyes widened when he realized what was in store for him. She turned the tap on and ran the bar under the warm water. Jake’s jaw reflexively clamped tightly shut.
“Open”, she said. “I said:‘Open’”.
She grabbed his jaw and he opened it, forcing the bar into his mouth where it hit his tongue in all its chemical bitterness. His tongue drew back and triggered his gag reflex. His teeth clamped into the bar involuntarily. She placed her hand on his forehead to steady herself and yanked the bar out of his mouth. Jake shuddered violently as he felt the waxy shavings of soap dredged up by his teeth curl into the roof of his mouth. He tried to open his mouth to spit, but his Mother shoved his chin up, causing him to bite the tip of his tongue. This made his mouth water. He retched a bit, the foam shooting up the back of his throat into his nose. Now he could smell as well as taste the petroleum rankness. A few seconds later, his mouth slick with foamy lather, she released her hand and allowed him to spit.
“Maybe next time you’ll think twice before you lie to your Mother”.
She exited the bathroom. Jake stood retching soapy slightly gas-scented foam into the vanity bowl. He stuck his tongue under the running water, hurriedly cupping water into his mouth in an attempt to rinse out the inside. When the taste had subsided, he looked up at his reflection. The whites of his eyes were a bright pink, his nose was running and he was drooling. For a boy who’s Mother had nearly poisoned him he didn’t look half-bad.
He dried his tongue and the rest of his face on a sour hand towel and went into the kitchen, fully expecting to see his Mother breaking up the cigarettes into the garbage disposal. Instead the kitchen was empty. He reached in to the cupboard and took three Dolly Madison Zingers from the box his Mother had “hidden”. He opened the fridge and grabbed a can of Faygo Rock ‘n’ Rye --their version of Dr. Pepper-- and made his way to school.
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