(part four) Cul de Sac
“The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less”.
-Soul On Ice Eldridge Cleaver
(ten) Punching Chuck E. Cheese
Autumn had blown in unexpectedly early, before the middle of September and the Indian Summer that the boys wished for never materialized. The haze of summer was brushed from their minds as the hustle, bustle and dread of entering high school took its place.
Jake had stashed away a good chunk of change during his weeks at McDonald’s, but his savings plan would alter when his father demanded he scale back his hours to concentrate on his studies. In return, Big Jake would drive him back and forth to work. The boys immediately hopped on the idea that they would never have to ride their bikes up to the Mall anymore. They could hang out there all weekend waiting for Jake to get off his shift and then head out to parts unknown getting into any trouble that would be had. The boys thought that with this new mode of transportation, Summer could linger indefinitely, if only in spirit. But, Eddie had other plans.
Eddie had begun to extract himself from the rest of the children on South Martin. He began to eat at another table with older kids. Punk kids with long greasy hair that reeked of cigarette smoke. These were Burnouts. These were kids who traveled the Path of Least Resistance. Kids who enrolled in mentally strenuous classes like Wood Shop or Auto Mechanics. They would sit at the back tables dining on healthy foods like Munchos or King Dons and wash them down with half-liter bottle upon half-liter bottle of Mountain Dew. Occasionally, Richie and Morris would join Eddie with his new friends, but he never asked the Twins and least of all Jake. Eddie would laugh at one of the upperclassmen’s imbecilic jokes and then look over at his former thralls as if to say ‘I bet you wish you were me’. He would say something just out of earshot of the remaining boys clutched around the small round table, laugh and point in their direction. The upperclass men would laugh and clap him on the back in deference to his mental dexterity and verbal wit.
Following these lunchtime betrayals, Alex and Scott would rage and steam at Jake. He offered neither solace nor no explanation at their trusted leader’s transformation. He merely basked in the emptiness that he left and the joy that the leaving brought. He was more relaxed, more jovial without Eddie around. His transition from junior high to high school was running along its course without so much as a ripple. But, Jake was lulled into a false sense of security that would bare its ugly teeth and bite him when he least expected.
All the boys had English together, Jake and the Twins Carson seated in the front of the class and Richie, Morris and Eddie seated in the rear. Their teacher was a nearly blind arthritic hag of a woman named Miss Waltham, first name Madge. She was shriveled and brown with age, like a rotten apple, age spots standing out like major cities on the road map of her wrinkled skin. She had taken to wearing caftans about fifteen years back and had liked the comfort they afforded her enough that she threw away all her other clothes. Her fingers were caked with chalk dust that dried out the tips so much they cracked and bled.
Her major pedagogical thrust was the word puzzle. She would Xerox a dozen or so word puzzles every Monday and pass them out. The students would then be required to pass them in during the week or until she collected them at the beginning of class on Friday. For the first few weeks, Jake thought this was a joke. He thought that perhaps the real teacher had been on maternity leave and was set to come back anytime. Or, the real teacher was dying of an inoperable brain tumor and the school board was frantically looking for a replacement. But, the weeks wore on and Jake thought that perhaps Miss Waltham had read the same magazine article his sister Kay had read about crossword puzzles strengthening your vocabulary. Jake finally settled on the idea that Miss Waltham was preparing for retirement by scaling back her workload of teaching her students the beauty and majesty of the written word by replacing it with endless variations on the same Word Search or Jumble.
Jake, Alex and Scott would have them all finished by the end of the class period on Monday. It took others longer. Most of the students were done by classtime Wednesday, leaving them two days to fuck around doing nothing until Friday. On Friday, she would show an hour of a movie of the book the class was currently supposed to be reading and writing a paper on. This week Scott had talked her into renting Excalibur because they were reading The Legend of King Arthur. Jake suggested that he talk her into Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but then thought she’d catch on. Either way, she had no idea of the amount of nudity and gore in the movie and she had missed most of it during her nap anyway.
That was it, crosswords and movies. If any of the parents knew the kind of quality education their sons and daughters were getting they’d’ve yanked them out of public school and taught them themselves.
Eddie was passing in one of his crosswords and on his way back from his desk he dropped a note onto Jake’s desk. Jake opened and read it.
J.
They’re giving out free passes to the sneak of Fast Times at Ridgemont High at Harmony House. Ask to go to the library. You’re doing your report, whatever. Meet us by the bike racks. We’re going to the Mall.
E.
It was a masterful plan and Jake marveled at Eddie’s ingenuity. It would take ten, fifteen minutes to ride up to the Mall, they’d grab the passes and a little lunch and then be back by the time the bell rang. But, Jake had misgivings. Could he trust Eddie? Could this be an elaborate hoax to leave him stranded at the Mall with a flat tire so it looked like Jake had skipped school when in reality he had only skipped one class? Fast Times at Ridgemont High had looked good in the previews Jake had seen and he thought Phoebe Cates, who he thought was hot, was topless in the movie. He was torn. He decided that he would do it. He passed the note to Scott who read it and passed it to his brother. They were all in agreement.
The ruse went down smoothly. Miss Waltham-- Mötley Mädge, as some of the Burnouts had started to call her because of the huge pentagram Jeff Hogan had scrawled on the front of her desk with a black El Marko--scribbled out a hall pass in her cramped hand and they were off. They stopped by the library to get the pass signed by Jo Canton, a plain looking girl who worked in the library during this hour each day, restocking books and reading magazines, learning Library Science through a hands-on approach. She asked them to get her a pass too in return for the favor and Jake had agreed. She winked at Jake when she handed the pass over. Their alibi in hand, the boys met by the bike racks and took off to the mall. Traffic was light for 11 a.m. and they had no problem making it to their destination in under fifteen minutes. They parked their bikes near the Chuck E. Cheese and entered the Mall.
Most of the shoppers at this time of day were housewives, trotting around from Lord and Taylor to Olga’s Kitchen to Lane Bryant in their jeans and appliquéd sweatshirts. Some even had curlers in their hair neatly camouflaged by a Western print handkerchief tied Mormon-style over the bulky rollers.
The boys mounted the escalator and planned the rest of their mission.
“I vote we get McDonald’s”, Scott said. Alex slapped him in the back of his head.
“Yeah, Let’s get Jake in trouble, Butthole”, Alex barked.
“How’s he gonna get in-- Oh, I see”, Scott corrected himself.
“I say we hit Taco Bell”, Jake said. Jake always suggested Taco Bell because it was good food that was within his meager budget. Most times they agreed.
“We’re going to Chuck E. Cheese”, Eddie stated firmly. “Anyone who wants to eat can eat, anyone who wants to play Defender or Donkey Kong can play.”
It was settled like that. Without a vote, without even a cursory ‘What do ya think?’. Eddie was always that way. He rode roughshod over all the boys, all the time. Jake had relaxed in the past few weeks into the small, neat democracy he and the Carson boys had formed. There were only three, which meant there was never a stalemate. Everyone was fairly represented. Each had their own voice. Eddie’s reassertion of his power over them rubbed Jake the wrong way. He saw the discomfort that Alex and Scott were feeling also. They were pulling on their newly shed subservient mannerisms like old clothes they’d grown out of; ill fitting and constricting.
They entered Harmony House in a dispersal pattern, like an efficient gun squad. Eddie and Richie hustled to the Heavy Metal section. Morris cut right toward the front cash register. The rest of the boys wandered over to the movie soundtracks.
Morris was talking to the woman behind the counter and then turned, empty handed and headed toward Jake.
“They’re out of them. Eddie’s gonna be pissed”, he said under his breath as he made his way over to Heavy Metal.
“We rode all that way for nothing?”, Alex asked.
“I bet they told them not to give them out to kids who were cutting class”, Jake offered in response.
“How would they know?”, Scott chimed in. “Why else would we be here at 11:15 on a schoolday?”, Jake answered. “Unless...”
Jake broke from them and headed toward the woman at the register. He stopped short and began to cough violently. The woman looked up from her copy of Rolling Stone and Jake bellied up to the counter.
“You okay, Kid?”, the longhaired brunette asked. She was dressed in a chambray shirt tied at the waist and jeans. Her hair was swept back behind one ear. The tag on her right breast said ‘Hi, I’m Pam, How may I help you?’
“I’m sick”, Jake said.
“Well, don’t give it to me”, she returned leaning back a bit in mock horror then she smiled. “What can I get you?”
“My Mom heard on the radio that you were giving out passes to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She told me to come over here while she was in Lane Bryant to get passes and to remember to get one for my brother, too”.
Pam looked intently into Jake’s face.
“You’re probably all out aren’t you?”, he ended this question with a small muffled cough and a sniffle, a trick he learned by intently studying the behavior of his mother, a devout hypochondriac.
Pam paused and then reached below the counter, retrieved three pink rectangular pieces of paper and passed them to Jake’s sweaty hand.
“You do have them”, Jake squealed a bit. “Thank you so much.”
He smiled broadly to the woman, turned on his heels and walked out of the store. One by one the boys followed him, exiting the store at approximately 30-second intervals. They walked to the pre-ordained regrouping spot at the fountain in the center of the Mall.
“How many did you get”, Eddie said grabbing them from Jake’s hand.
“I got three”, Jake answered grabbing them back.
“What good is three gonna do?”, Morris said. “Well, one goes to me, ‘cause it was my idea”, Eddie said. “The rest of ya can fight over the other two”. A palpable tension began to rise between Eddie and Jake.
Richie broke in , “I’m hungry. Can we figure it out later?” Eddie paused for a brief second before turning for Chuck E. Cheese.
* * *
They had finished their pizza, wolfing it down in quick gulps, searing the roofs of their mouths with the hot napalmesque mozzarella. Eddie simmered in the corner playing Defender and smoking cigarettes.
Jake had caused a shift in the power dynamic. He had spoken out against the dominant paradigm and was now in a situation that made Jake wonder if his rising dread was what Leon Trotsky must’ve felt. He expected Eddie to return with a pick-axe and plunge it into the back of his skull, wrench the Fast Times at Ridgemont High passes from his pizza sauce stained hand and bolt past the cartoon pictures of Ollie Onion, Peter Pepperoni and Tommy Tomato toward the exit. Alex and Scott were stealing furtive glances between themselves and Jake. Richie and Morris ate in silence, alternately taking a drag on a cigarette and chawing a hunk of pizza crust oblivious to the danger of the situation. Not the danger of inhaling artery clogging mozzarella cheese and massive amounts of tar and nicotine, but the danger of sitting so close to a doomed man.
Eddie finished his game of Defender by slapping the joystick hard. He returned to the table.
“Let’s went”, Eddie stated as he crushed his butt out on the half-eaten piece of pizza on Scott’s plate.
They exited into the sun. Next to the entrance, some poor soul dressed as the restaurant’s mascot was waving to the cars passing in the parking lot. Jake looked at the six-foot rodent and was amazed at the fact that a restaurant would enlist a filthy disgusting trash-eating vermin to be their sole spokesmodel. Surely this was a health code violation. Eddie pulled his pack of cigarettes from his coat and began to open it when he saw Chuck E.
Chuck E. had turned toward the group and his friendly manner went into the semblance of a swagger.
“Hey, Whassup?”, Chuck E. said. “Wassup”, Eddie said. “Who’s in there?”
“I’m not suppose to talk”, Chuck E. said.
The boys were unlocking their bikes while listening to the exchange. Alex and Scott were doing it more quickly than the others were as if they knew of some impending kitchen fire or explosion.
“Where’d you go to school”, Eddie asked. He turned to Jake and handed his cigarette pack to him. Under his breath he said, “Hold these for me”.
“Royal Oak Campbell”, Chuck E. answered. Richie and Morris were on their bikes.
“Campbell, hunh?”, Eddie replied. “Campbell SUCKS”.
Jake looked up from putting the pack into his pocket just in time to see Eddie rear back and punch the big Rat in the side of the head. His fist cracked the paper maché and fiber and left a dent in Chuck E.’s round flesh colored cheek. The Rat stumbled backward, his tail swinging wildly back and forth on its fishing line guide wire. Eddie stepped toward him and swung again, the blow glancing off the bulbous black nose, snapping it loose from the rest of the snout.
Richie, Alex and Scott were already pedaling toward the bike path at the edge of the parking lot. Morris was holding Eddie’s unlocked bike upright, in wait for the rider. Eddie took two steps and leapt onto the bike. Jake stood motionless, gripped in the utter surreality of the situation. Chuck E. rolled onto his front and got to his feet. The Rat turned, swinging his big dented head in Jake’s direction, the black nose lolling into and out of its correct position on a few intact fibers. He grabbed Jake by the arm.
“Are you with them?”, Chuck E. barked in an angry strangled growl belying the permanently cheerful grin and rosy cheeks of his outward demeanor.
Jake jerked his arm from the Rat’s grip and shoved him toward the door. He stepped back, on his own tail and fell flat onto his gray fake-furred haunches, the tail sticking between his legs like a gargantuan pink penis.
Jake jumped on his bike and pedaled fast. Chuck E. got to his feet and vainly gave chase. Jake was out of his reach and down the row of cars before Chuck E. could reorient his huge head. Alex and Scott were waiting at the viaduct, laughing their asses off as Jake rode up to them. He could see Richie, Morris and Eddie pedaling into the distance.
They looked back to the entrance to Chuck E. Cheese. The Rat was now decapitated. He had grown a smaller human head that was chattering away to Mall Rent-A-Cop and gesturing toward the highway with his furry grey paw.
* * *
When they stopped by the library they had exactly four minutes before the bell. Jake gave Jo Canton a pass and thanked her for her help. She smiled at him and stuffed the pink paper into the pocket of her supertight dark blue Sergio Valenti jeans. She readjusted the bottom of her baby blue Izod sweater over the waist of her jeans, exposing for a moment the flat plane of her stomach. Alex and Scott looked at Jake with confusion as he walked out of the library. They looked blankly at each other and followed him out.
“What’d you do that for?”, Alex asked. “Now there’s only one left”.
“Two left”, Jake said.
“You’re not giving Eddie his pass?”, Scott asked loudly.
“They’re my passes to do with whatever I want”, Jake said turning and stopping in the hall. “Here. You take them”.
He handed the Twins a pass each. They looked at them as if they’d just unwrapped a Wonka bar and found the coveted Golden Ticket inside.
“You’re sure?”, Alex asked.
“Yeah”, Jake returned, heading back to Mötley Mädge’s class.
“Why are you doing this?”, Scott asked. “Eddie’s gonna be pissed”.
“Ask me if I care”, Jake said as he turned the corner
* * *
Jake noticed that Eddie, Richie and Morris weren’t there. He gave Miss Waltham the pass and she pulled her glasses up from where they hung on a chain against the embroidered front of her caftan.
“Where’s Mr. Stephens and the rest of them”, she asked.
“I think they’re going to lunch from the library”, Scott answered. “They said you wouldn’t mind. Do you want me to go get them?”
“No, that’s all right”, she said as she wiped a bit of drool from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. Jake looked down to the velour front of her blue caftan to see a darker blue wet spot. She had probably fallen asleep again.
The bell rang and the kids funneled through the door into the cramped hall, filling it with sweaty noise. Jake pushed past the gaggle of sophomore girls clumped at he locker near the door. He turned to see Eddie leaning against his locker; one shoe resting on the vent grate at the bottom, the other plant firmly on the tiled floor. He walked up next to him and began to turn the dial on his locker.
“Where’s my pass?”, Eddie asked.
“I don’t have them.”
“What do you mean you don’t have them?”, Eddie had turned toward Jake and leaned into his face. He smelled strongly of cigarettes and garlic.
“I gave them away”, Jake pulled his locker open.
Eddie punched Jake’s locker shut with a clang. Eddie stood there a moment vibrating with burgeoning rage and then reached his hand down to Jake’s side. Jake felt him grab a pinch of his fatty lovehandle between the side of index finger and thumb and clamp his grip down. Jake bent toward the pain. Eddie then twisted the skin between his fingers and pushed in inward, intensifying the already sharp pain. Jake buckled and tried to wiggle from the pinch. His legs gave way and he collapsed in a clump, sliding down the lockers and onto the dusty tile floor. Eddie followed him down, never letting go. When he was pleased that Jake was indeed in excruciating agony, he finally let go and stood. Jake rolled onto his back holding his side. Eddie lifted his sneakered foot and brought it down hard, stopping three quarters of an inch from Jake’s face. Jake could make out the word Nike and the Swoosh under it. Dirt flaked off of the sole and into Jake’s eyes. He tried to blink away the dirt, bringing more tears to his already welling eyes.
Eddie removed his foot and walked away, leaving Jake balled in a fetal position on the floor.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
(nine) Pedal faster, Fat Ass
(nine) “Pedal faster, Fat Ass”
Feeling guilty that he was not contributing his share to the tiny family income, Jake had taken a job at McDonald’s in the Mall, his first paying gig. He had lied about his age on his application in order to get the job paying student wage, $2.85 an hour. He worked like a galley slave for the pittance and in return they gave him a free uniform, complete with paper hat and a free meal every time he worked. It was Jake’s way of helping his family. They wouldn’t have to feed him as much and he would be bringing some extra cash into the house. In the trade off, he worked on weekend mornings during the summer. He was the first of his friends to get a job outside of Morris’ and the Twins respective paper routes and he was proud of it. Well, except for the uniform.
He despised being seen in this polyester disaster. He had taken to riding to the Mall in street clothes, changing into his uniform and then, at the end of his shift, changing back for the ride home. This day, however, he had woken up late and thrown on the uniform to save time. At about ten minutes to the end of his shift, the boys walked into his McDonalds.
They had ridden to the Mall, the boys, on what the weathermen had promised was going to be another fabulously bright sunny day. It was east down 14 Mile Road, across three major thoroughfares and under the I-75 overpass. It was a long ride and accordingly meant that they had likely spent the entire day wandering around, loitering actually, in the cool air conditioning. Jake knew the drill because he’d done it so many times before he got the job. They would rest up from the long trek, leisurely stroll through Harmony House and Footlocker, stopping by The Pretzel Man for a cheese-covered pretzel. Or, perhaps they would have lunch, which meant four large French fries and four large Cokes, at the Kresge Cafeteria because the fries were bigger than McDonald’s. Jake clocked out and joined the rest of the boys at the fountain that took up the center of the Mall. The fountain that, every fifteen minutes, shot its chlorinated streams into the skylight above; the mist from the spray landing on the boys’ skin cooling them even more than the conditioned air. And, they would need cooling. First from the long ride and then from the swarm of teenage girls.
The girls would herd by in clumps of five or six, flip-flopping their sandals or neatly tied shoes across the faux-marble granite floor. They would stop at the window of Baker’s Shoes or at Hit or Miss, the designated lookout craning her neck to see if any of the boys were still looking. For the most part, they were dressed alike. Short shorts, usually jean cut-offs or cords, and tank tops or short-sleeved concert T-shirts with names like Asia or Journey emblazoned across the swell of their bosoms. Some of the girls still hung on to bell-bottoms, but they were fast being taken over by straight-legged designer jeans. Their clothing, however, wasn’t as important as their hair. This was the main focus, this was the part of their body that they sexualized the most. A flowing mane was the bright plumage needed to attract the opposite sex. It was kept long for fear of being called a Lezzie. Sure, some had ventured into the Dorothy Hamill but had since grown it out. The girls would intricately feather it back from the center part, cascading it down around their shoulders in auburn or amber waves. It was frosted or dyed blonde and was held in it’s position with half a can of Aqua Net Super Hold.
Most of the girls smoked, which Jake thought was odd considering the amount of flammable liquid they applied to their hair. Jake was dazed as one brunette girl tilted her head sideways and pushed her hair around to her back to avoid lighting it aflame as she sparked her Virginia Slims 100. She took a deep satisfying drag and straightened up, letting the smoke billow from between her slightly parted lips. Jake knew smoking made you look cool, but he had never acquainted it with making someone look sexy. Jake stood in awe at the epiphonious discovery that cool equaled sexy when Eddie broke the silence.
“I’d do her”, He said dragging on his butt. “While you guys watched”.
“Tag team”, Richie added and Eddie and he slapped five.
“She’s really Foxy”, Jake added then realized he should’ve just said ‘She’s a Fox’ or better yet just kept his mouth shut. The boys looked at him, puzzling at his verbal inadequacy, thinking ‘...and he’s suppose to be the smart one?’.
Jake recognized two of the girls as Steph Beaudoin and Dana Cortez. Steph took the cigarette from the brunette and puffed on it as Dana lit her own and handed it to her cousin, Jodi Bon.
Jake stood, then quickly sat down. To him, it was an honest gut reaction; perfectly natural. Suddenly his palm tickled recalling the plastic bristled nailbrush scraping her name and number from its soft pink flesh. He began to breathe deeply and shift his weight in his seat.
“Quit shaking the bench, Ya Spazz”, Morris said.
“Are you okay, Jake? You need my inhaler?”, Alex asked.
“Hey, Jake, isn’t that your girlfriend?”, Eddie turned, his eyes alight with mischievousness, his lips curled back in a grisly smile. He turned toward the girls and yelled, “Hey, Dana”.
There was no way in Hell that Jake was going to let Jodi or any girl he knew for that matter see him in his uniform. Jake stood, turned his back to the girls and went directly into The Cutting Board, the cutlery shop, without looking back. He stood behind one of the black marble uprights at the entrance and pressed his face to the stone. When he got himself under a semblance of control he peeked out from around the stone pillar. Eddie was talking to Dana who was flipping her hair and sucking feverishly at the straw to her lemon-lime slush. The boys were splayed out around Eddie, looking distractedly into the faces of the girls in front of them, that was, all but Alex, who kept looking for Jake to come out of the knife store and join them.
Jake turned and looked at the shining knives elaborately hung across a wall of burgundy velvet. He fixated on the 10-inch Chef’s knife to the left of the hefty cleaver set that was the centerpiece of this macabre display of cutlery. It was the 10-inch Chef’s knife that was the weapon of choice for Michael Myers, The Shape from the horror film classic Halloween.
He saw himself smashing the glass showcase door with his pudgy fist and extracting the gleaming metal tool. He made a few practice slashes in front of a nearly catatonic woman wearing a faded floral print dress and corrective shoes. Her mouth was stuck in a wordless scream. Jake walked quickly, never breaking into a run, like all good stalkers, for he knew that regardless of how fast the victim ran, he’d always be right behind. He crossed the marble floor and closed the distance between him and his prey. Eddie would be standing with his back to him and as he turned Jake would strike, slashing the airbrushed picture of Gene Simmon’s face on his shirt in two. He would advance at Eddie, stroking and slashing. Then, with his unoccupied hand he would grab Eddie’s throat and raise him off the floor in the adrenaline-fueled mania that gave all good slasher movie villains their inhuman strength. He would plunge the bloodied knife into Gene Simmon’s mouth and toss the limp, nearly lifeless Eddie into the Mall fountain, just as it began to spray. The water would be clear then turn to pink as it shot from hole in the center of Eddie’s shirt. Jake would then turn and all the girls and boys would applaud. Richie and Morris would slap him on the back. Alex and Scott would begin a rousing roundelay of “Ding, Dong, The Dick is Dead”. And, the milling throng would raise Jake to their shoulders and carry him in to Sander’s Ice Cream to share a celebratory Hot Fudge Cream Puff with his new sweetheart Jodi Bon.
Jake stood there, his face against the cool marble and watched as the group went off toward the escalator at the other end of the Mall. Scott and Alex looked back and caught Jake’s gaze. Scott raised his shoulders and arms in a ‘what are you doing?’ kind of gesture before falling in to the retreating ranks.
“Can I help you?”, a man with impeccably styled hair and very shiny fingernails was standing beside him. Jake startled.
“Ummm. No. Yes. Do you have a bathroom?”
“Public restrooms are over near the Brown’s Jewelers. Next to Sanders?”, asked as if this was Jake’s first time in the Mall.
Jake stepped out from behind his shelter and made his way away from the fountain that was just cycling up; spraying its discharge over the heads of the teenaged boys and girls giggling around it.
* * *
He was sitting in the back of Sanders polishing off his sundae, licking the sticky brown fudge from the back of his spoon and downing the last of his ice-cold milk when the Twins came in the through the entrance. They were alone and they scanned the seating area for a table. Jake tried to make himself smaller, shrinking in the booth and closing his eyes like the Cheshire cat trying to make itself invisible. Alex spotted him and motioned to Scott to follow. They made their way past the “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign and slid into the booth.
“Where’d you go?” Scott said as he grabbed a menu from the holder next to the ketchup.
“Uhhh, I don’t know...Here, maybe?”
“Eddie and Richie were wonderin’ where you went”, Scott added, running his finger down the list of burgers.
“I knew we’d find him here”, Alex said wrenching his brother’s menu from his grip. They flicked each other with their fingers for a brief moment until Scott relented and drew another menu from the holder. “Only, I didn’t tell Eddie”.
“Thanks”, Jake went back to scraping the last of the fudge from the metal dessert cup.
The waitress was a plump pleasant-faced woman with simple drop earrings on either side of her apple cheeks. She pulled a pencil from her tightly pony-tailed hair and a pad from the pouch on her apron.
“What can I get you young men?”, she said in a casual and almost flirtatious way.
“I’m hungry”, Scott said to Jake. “You’ll stay ‘til we eat, right?”
“Buy me a Cherry Coke?”
“Split it?”, Scott said to his brother, who nodded in agreement.
“Three Cherry Cokes to start”.
The waitress began to scribble their order.
* * *
“He’s an asshole”, Jake said, dropping his voice on the first syllable of the swear word as he took the last French fry from Alex's plate.
Alex and Scott nodded. Jake sat silently for a second vainly waiting for a response from the Carson boys.
“What do you think?”
“He can be mean sometimes”, Scott said.
“Jake’s right. He’s a butthole”, Alex hated cussing. The Carson family was devout Catholics. He was raised to be a cordial and polite young man. Vulgarity embarrassed him. In every situation, he’d find a euphemism or replacement for the offensive word.
“Sometimes, I just want to kill him”, Jake said. Alex smiled in agreement and sucked down the last of his chocolate malt.
“I dream about it”, Alex added. “Like I’m Jason or Freddy. I just want to slash his throat, pull his tongue out of the hole in his neck and pee on him. You think I’ll go to Hell for thinking that?”
“No”, Jake comforted him. “Not if you don’t actually do it.”
“Maybe his home life sucks”, Scott chimed in. “So he takes it out on us”.
“God, I HATE him”, Alex said a little too loudly, drawing the attention of a young mother who was spooning ice cream into her child’s mouth. Jake thought that her actions were probably the first of a long line of mistakes that would eventually turn the child into a hideously obese man/boy who’d never leave the house.
“Then why do you hang around him?”, Jake asked.
The Twins sat, silently contemplating this thought as the waitress padded over to the table and slapped down three checks.
* * *
“I don’t know”, Scott answered as he spun cord of the bike lock around the seat post of his Schwinn. Alex did the same.
“Who else are we gonna hang out with?”, Alex joined in.
“What about us? Just us three?”, Jake offered.
“That would get boring.” Alex said, mounting his bike. “He has all the cool ideas”.
Jake looked at the pair. Here they were, three intelligent boys who were imaginative enough and smart enough to dissect the reasoning behind Eddie’s vindictive and controlling behavior, but were stumped as to the reason why he held sway over their every action. Jake had suggested that they ignore Eddie for a while, sticking together. It was solidarity that would defeat the current fascist regime and bring down this Stephens tyrant. Jake had listened intently to his father and brother discussing Union business one night as he sat, huddled in the stairway leafing through The Story of America. What he was suggesting was a type of Union. Alex and Scott agreed that while it would work in theory, it would infuriate Eddie and he would rain down harsher and harsher ridicule and belittlement until they cracked under the pressure and returned to being his mindless thralls.
They discussed its pros and cons for a few brief moments, eventually coming to an agreement to just go on doing exactly as they had done all along. Jake shook his head in amazement at their complacency and inability to act as Alex and Scott split off on their way over to the video store where their older brother worked to beg him for a ride home in his truck. They left Jake standing alone outside the huge mosaic mural of the solar system that ran the whole length of the facade above the main entrance to the Mall.
Sweat rolled down his neck beneath the collar of his navy polyester uniform shirt as he worked the black dial of his bike lock. Heat was pulsing off of the tarmac in the Mall parking lot. He popped the lock and twirled it around the seatpost.
He hated this. Hated the trek home, a mile and a half down one of the busier streets in the county. He dreaded pistoning his polyester covered legs up and down in a mad dash from here to home in the shortest time to minimize the risk of being seen by any upperclassmen looking to terrorize a rolly-poly fat kid. He despised how the plasticesque fabric stuck like putty to his back, his chest, his thighs.
It wasn’t only the uniform, but just the act of being seen was what caused him duress. He was the lone soldier running from foxhole to HQ with no one to cover him. He was alone, unprotected from the gaze of the cruel car-owning upperclassmen that often cruised this stretch of road. Each rumble of bass throated, V-8 powered, muscle car exhaust raised the small hairs on the back of his neck. All the junior and senior boys owned supertuned gas hogs with rally stripes or Cragars. Ragtops and fastbacks would pass by with girls peeking out of the windows and screaming at their friends in other cars. The four-lane blacktop ribbon brought an acidic queasiness to each trip he made. He slid onto the saddle and pulled the front wheel out from between the bars of the rack.
He crossed the parking lot and pulled up onto the bike path that led along the heavily trafficked street and under the overpass. He crossed the cloverleaf that funneled the Northbound cars onto the interstate and headed toward the shade of the cement viaduct. Jake jumped off his bike and walked it into the waiting dark.
Here it was cooler. It was an oasis in the treeless sun-blanched landscape surrounding the highway interchange. The exhaust from the cars passing overhead wafted down into the space. A lot of the cars on the road still used Regular leaded gasoline. Most of the big chain gas stations had changed over, but there was still demand for the ozone killing fuel. Jake breathed in. He thought that the exhaust from Regular gasoline smelled uniquely comforting, unlike the Unleaded exhaust that was more acrid and bitter. No, Regular exhaust was rounder in the nose, its bouquet fuller and milder. He made his way under the cars barreling across the cement above him, their tires slapping the strips of tar separating the concrete slabs in rhythmic fashion. Jake made a wordless noise and the cavernous space bounced it off its graffiti-covered walls and echoed it back to him.
Out in the sun again Jake hopped on his bike and pedaled toward what his brother had affectionately termed “St. Phenson Highway”.
“Yeah, you never heard of St. Phenson? He’s the Patron Saint of the Suburbs.” Craig would say in mock serious tones. “He guided the developers to the woods and showed them how to clear cut the trees. He showed them visions of miles of subdivisions and planned communities. And, they seen that it was good”.
Jake now saw why his brother had given the street its name. In front of him was a green and white sign that read:
ST PHENSON HWY.
Some one had peeled the first “E” off the sign. Why, Jake had no idea. Jake couldn’t make out any possible reason, no hidden cuss word or sexual innuendo in the defacing of this sign. Maybe, he thought, it was just bad glue and it had fallen off by itself.
The bike path turned and ran along parallel to and about two feet from the road. Jake angled the bike toward the road and quickened his pace. A few cars with teenagers drove past him and he tucked his head down and sped up. It was then he realized he had forgotten to take off his little paper hat.
A yellow 1970 GTO with “The Judge” spelled out in a puffy orange 70’s era typeface on the fender pulled up even to Jake. He glanced quickly to his side and saw that the front seated was filled with girls. He turned his attention back to his path and steadied his steering. A girl, a blonde wearing a pink T-shirt with the words ‘Pretty Thing’ in cursive on it leaned out the window. The bike path was a good deal higher than the street and this advantage offered Jake an amazing view down Pretty Thing’s cleavage. She steadied herself on the door and spoke.
“Hey”, she said in a sexy smoky tone. This made Jake look over to her. She was holding something white in her hands.
“Pedal faster, Fat Ass”.
Jake could see what she had in her hands now, but by then it was too late. She pulled back the elastic on the boy’s underpants like a jury-rigged slingshot and flung them into the air between the car and Jake. They hit Jake in the face, obscuring his vision with white. He reached up one hand to pull them from his face and his head slid through one of the leg holes. The Judge sped off as Pretty Thing flipped Jake the bird. He looked into the rear of the car to see the front Mag wheel of Eddie’s Mongoose sticking from the trunk. Jake looked up at the rear window and saw Dana Cortez and Eddie sitting on either side of the car, laughing and pointing. Between them, facing forward and slumped down, he could make out the back of another girl’s head. The girl turned, and furtively looked toward Jake. It was Jodi Bon. Across her face was splayed a mix of hurt from Jake never having called her and sympathy for the boy she liked being the butt of a cruel joke. Tears welled in Jake’s eyes and he lost control of his bike. It careened down the ditch that ran in between the bike path and the parking lot to an industrial complex. As soon as his front wheel hit the soft earth, he went over the handlebars and landed flat on his back in the middle of a stand of cattails.
He lay there motionless except for his sobs, listening to the crickets around him, staring up at the sky and letting the murky rain run-off soak into his silly paper hat.
Feeling guilty that he was not contributing his share to the tiny family income, Jake had taken a job at McDonald’s in the Mall, his first paying gig. He had lied about his age on his application in order to get the job paying student wage, $2.85 an hour. He worked like a galley slave for the pittance and in return they gave him a free uniform, complete with paper hat and a free meal every time he worked. It was Jake’s way of helping his family. They wouldn’t have to feed him as much and he would be bringing some extra cash into the house. In the trade off, he worked on weekend mornings during the summer. He was the first of his friends to get a job outside of Morris’ and the Twins respective paper routes and he was proud of it. Well, except for the uniform.
He despised being seen in this polyester disaster. He had taken to riding to the Mall in street clothes, changing into his uniform and then, at the end of his shift, changing back for the ride home. This day, however, he had woken up late and thrown on the uniform to save time. At about ten minutes to the end of his shift, the boys walked into his McDonalds.
They had ridden to the Mall, the boys, on what the weathermen had promised was going to be another fabulously bright sunny day. It was east down 14 Mile Road, across three major thoroughfares and under the I-75 overpass. It was a long ride and accordingly meant that they had likely spent the entire day wandering around, loitering actually, in the cool air conditioning. Jake knew the drill because he’d done it so many times before he got the job. They would rest up from the long trek, leisurely stroll through Harmony House and Footlocker, stopping by The Pretzel Man for a cheese-covered pretzel. Or, perhaps they would have lunch, which meant four large French fries and four large Cokes, at the Kresge Cafeteria because the fries were bigger than McDonald’s. Jake clocked out and joined the rest of the boys at the fountain that took up the center of the Mall. The fountain that, every fifteen minutes, shot its chlorinated streams into the skylight above; the mist from the spray landing on the boys’ skin cooling them even more than the conditioned air. And, they would need cooling. First from the long ride and then from the swarm of teenage girls.
The girls would herd by in clumps of five or six, flip-flopping their sandals or neatly tied shoes across the faux-marble granite floor. They would stop at the window of Baker’s Shoes or at Hit or Miss, the designated lookout craning her neck to see if any of the boys were still looking. For the most part, they were dressed alike. Short shorts, usually jean cut-offs or cords, and tank tops or short-sleeved concert T-shirts with names like Asia or Journey emblazoned across the swell of their bosoms. Some of the girls still hung on to bell-bottoms, but they were fast being taken over by straight-legged designer jeans. Their clothing, however, wasn’t as important as their hair. This was the main focus, this was the part of their body that they sexualized the most. A flowing mane was the bright plumage needed to attract the opposite sex. It was kept long for fear of being called a Lezzie. Sure, some had ventured into the Dorothy Hamill but had since grown it out. The girls would intricately feather it back from the center part, cascading it down around their shoulders in auburn or amber waves. It was frosted or dyed blonde and was held in it’s position with half a can of Aqua Net Super Hold.
Most of the girls smoked, which Jake thought was odd considering the amount of flammable liquid they applied to their hair. Jake was dazed as one brunette girl tilted her head sideways and pushed her hair around to her back to avoid lighting it aflame as she sparked her Virginia Slims 100. She took a deep satisfying drag and straightened up, letting the smoke billow from between her slightly parted lips. Jake knew smoking made you look cool, but he had never acquainted it with making someone look sexy. Jake stood in awe at the epiphonious discovery that cool equaled sexy when Eddie broke the silence.
“I’d do her”, He said dragging on his butt. “While you guys watched”.
“Tag team”, Richie added and Eddie and he slapped five.
“She’s really Foxy”, Jake added then realized he should’ve just said ‘She’s a Fox’ or better yet just kept his mouth shut. The boys looked at him, puzzling at his verbal inadequacy, thinking ‘...and he’s suppose to be the smart one?’.
Jake recognized two of the girls as Steph Beaudoin and Dana Cortez. Steph took the cigarette from the brunette and puffed on it as Dana lit her own and handed it to her cousin, Jodi Bon.
Jake stood, then quickly sat down. To him, it was an honest gut reaction; perfectly natural. Suddenly his palm tickled recalling the plastic bristled nailbrush scraping her name and number from its soft pink flesh. He began to breathe deeply and shift his weight in his seat.
“Quit shaking the bench, Ya Spazz”, Morris said.
“Are you okay, Jake? You need my inhaler?”, Alex asked.
“Hey, Jake, isn’t that your girlfriend?”, Eddie turned, his eyes alight with mischievousness, his lips curled back in a grisly smile. He turned toward the girls and yelled, “Hey, Dana”.
There was no way in Hell that Jake was going to let Jodi or any girl he knew for that matter see him in his uniform. Jake stood, turned his back to the girls and went directly into The Cutting Board, the cutlery shop, without looking back. He stood behind one of the black marble uprights at the entrance and pressed his face to the stone. When he got himself under a semblance of control he peeked out from around the stone pillar. Eddie was talking to Dana who was flipping her hair and sucking feverishly at the straw to her lemon-lime slush. The boys were splayed out around Eddie, looking distractedly into the faces of the girls in front of them, that was, all but Alex, who kept looking for Jake to come out of the knife store and join them.
Jake turned and looked at the shining knives elaborately hung across a wall of burgundy velvet. He fixated on the 10-inch Chef’s knife to the left of the hefty cleaver set that was the centerpiece of this macabre display of cutlery. It was the 10-inch Chef’s knife that was the weapon of choice for Michael Myers, The Shape from the horror film classic Halloween.
He saw himself smashing the glass showcase door with his pudgy fist and extracting the gleaming metal tool. He made a few practice slashes in front of a nearly catatonic woman wearing a faded floral print dress and corrective shoes. Her mouth was stuck in a wordless scream. Jake walked quickly, never breaking into a run, like all good stalkers, for he knew that regardless of how fast the victim ran, he’d always be right behind. He crossed the marble floor and closed the distance between him and his prey. Eddie would be standing with his back to him and as he turned Jake would strike, slashing the airbrushed picture of Gene Simmon’s face on his shirt in two. He would advance at Eddie, stroking and slashing. Then, with his unoccupied hand he would grab Eddie’s throat and raise him off the floor in the adrenaline-fueled mania that gave all good slasher movie villains their inhuman strength. He would plunge the bloodied knife into Gene Simmon’s mouth and toss the limp, nearly lifeless Eddie into the Mall fountain, just as it began to spray. The water would be clear then turn to pink as it shot from hole in the center of Eddie’s shirt. Jake would then turn and all the girls and boys would applaud. Richie and Morris would slap him on the back. Alex and Scott would begin a rousing roundelay of “Ding, Dong, The Dick is Dead”. And, the milling throng would raise Jake to their shoulders and carry him in to Sander’s Ice Cream to share a celebratory Hot Fudge Cream Puff with his new sweetheart Jodi Bon.
Jake stood there, his face against the cool marble and watched as the group went off toward the escalator at the other end of the Mall. Scott and Alex looked back and caught Jake’s gaze. Scott raised his shoulders and arms in a ‘what are you doing?’ kind of gesture before falling in to the retreating ranks.
“Can I help you?”, a man with impeccably styled hair and very shiny fingernails was standing beside him. Jake startled.
“Ummm. No. Yes. Do you have a bathroom?”
“Public restrooms are over near the Brown’s Jewelers. Next to Sanders?”, asked as if this was Jake’s first time in the Mall.
Jake stepped out from behind his shelter and made his way away from the fountain that was just cycling up; spraying its discharge over the heads of the teenaged boys and girls giggling around it.
* * *
He was sitting in the back of Sanders polishing off his sundae, licking the sticky brown fudge from the back of his spoon and downing the last of his ice-cold milk when the Twins came in the through the entrance. They were alone and they scanned the seating area for a table. Jake tried to make himself smaller, shrinking in the booth and closing his eyes like the Cheshire cat trying to make itself invisible. Alex spotted him and motioned to Scott to follow. They made their way past the “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign and slid into the booth.
“Where’d you go?” Scott said as he grabbed a menu from the holder next to the ketchup.
“Uhhh, I don’t know...Here, maybe?”
“Eddie and Richie were wonderin’ where you went”, Scott added, running his finger down the list of burgers.
“I knew we’d find him here”, Alex said wrenching his brother’s menu from his grip. They flicked each other with their fingers for a brief moment until Scott relented and drew another menu from the holder. “Only, I didn’t tell Eddie”.
“Thanks”, Jake went back to scraping the last of the fudge from the metal dessert cup.
The waitress was a plump pleasant-faced woman with simple drop earrings on either side of her apple cheeks. She pulled a pencil from her tightly pony-tailed hair and a pad from the pouch on her apron.
“What can I get you young men?”, she said in a casual and almost flirtatious way.
“I’m hungry”, Scott said to Jake. “You’ll stay ‘til we eat, right?”
“Buy me a Cherry Coke?”
“Split it?”, Scott said to his brother, who nodded in agreement.
“Three Cherry Cokes to start”.
The waitress began to scribble their order.
* * *
“He’s an asshole”, Jake said, dropping his voice on the first syllable of the swear word as he took the last French fry from Alex's plate.
Alex and Scott nodded. Jake sat silently for a second vainly waiting for a response from the Carson boys.
“What do you think?”
“He can be mean sometimes”, Scott said.
“Jake’s right. He’s a butthole”, Alex hated cussing. The Carson family was devout Catholics. He was raised to be a cordial and polite young man. Vulgarity embarrassed him. In every situation, he’d find a euphemism or replacement for the offensive word.
“Sometimes, I just want to kill him”, Jake said. Alex smiled in agreement and sucked down the last of his chocolate malt.
“I dream about it”, Alex added. “Like I’m Jason or Freddy. I just want to slash his throat, pull his tongue out of the hole in his neck and pee on him. You think I’ll go to Hell for thinking that?”
“No”, Jake comforted him. “Not if you don’t actually do it.”
“Maybe his home life sucks”, Scott chimed in. “So he takes it out on us”.
“God, I HATE him”, Alex said a little too loudly, drawing the attention of a young mother who was spooning ice cream into her child’s mouth. Jake thought that her actions were probably the first of a long line of mistakes that would eventually turn the child into a hideously obese man/boy who’d never leave the house.
“Then why do you hang around him?”, Jake asked.
The Twins sat, silently contemplating this thought as the waitress padded over to the table and slapped down three checks.
* * *
“I don’t know”, Scott answered as he spun cord of the bike lock around the seat post of his Schwinn. Alex did the same.
“Who else are we gonna hang out with?”, Alex joined in.
“What about us? Just us three?”, Jake offered.
“That would get boring.” Alex said, mounting his bike. “He has all the cool ideas”.
Jake looked at the pair. Here they were, three intelligent boys who were imaginative enough and smart enough to dissect the reasoning behind Eddie’s vindictive and controlling behavior, but were stumped as to the reason why he held sway over their every action. Jake had suggested that they ignore Eddie for a while, sticking together. It was solidarity that would defeat the current fascist regime and bring down this Stephens tyrant. Jake had listened intently to his father and brother discussing Union business one night as he sat, huddled in the stairway leafing through The Story of America. What he was suggesting was a type of Union. Alex and Scott agreed that while it would work in theory, it would infuriate Eddie and he would rain down harsher and harsher ridicule and belittlement until they cracked under the pressure and returned to being his mindless thralls.
They discussed its pros and cons for a few brief moments, eventually coming to an agreement to just go on doing exactly as they had done all along. Jake shook his head in amazement at their complacency and inability to act as Alex and Scott split off on their way over to the video store where their older brother worked to beg him for a ride home in his truck. They left Jake standing alone outside the huge mosaic mural of the solar system that ran the whole length of the facade above the main entrance to the Mall.
Sweat rolled down his neck beneath the collar of his navy polyester uniform shirt as he worked the black dial of his bike lock. Heat was pulsing off of the tarmac in the Mall parking lot. He popped the lock and twirled it around the seatpost.
He hated this. Hated the trek home, a mile and a half down one of the busier streets in the county. He dreaded pistoning his polyester covered legs up and down in a mad dash from here to home in the shortest time to minimize the risk of being seen by any upperclassmen looking to terrorize a rolly-poly fat kid. He despised how the plasticesque fabric stuck like putty to his back, his chest, his thighs.
It wasn’t only the uniform, but just the act of being seen was what caused him duress. He was the lone soldier running from foxhole to HQ with no one to cover him. He was alone, unprotected from the gaze of the cruel car-owning upperclassmen that often cruised this stretch of road. Each rumble of bass throated, V-8 powered, muscle car exhaust raised the small hairs on the back of his neck. All the junior and senior boys owned supertuned gas hogs with rally stripes or Cragars. Ragtops and fastbacks would pass by with girls peeking out of the windows and screaming at their friends in other cars. The four-lane blacktop ribbon brought an acidic queasiness to each trip he made. He slid onto the saddle and pulled the front wheel out from between the bars of the rack.
He crossed the parking lot and pulled up onto the bike path that led along the heavily trafficked street and under the overpass. He crossed the cloverleaf that funneled the Northbound cars onto the interstate and headed toward the shade of the cement viaduct. Jake jumped off his bike and walked it into the waiting dark.
Here it was cooler. It was an oasis in the treeless sun-blanched landscape surrounding the highway interchange. The exhaust from the cars passing overhead wafted down into the space. A lot of the cars on the road still used Regular leaded gasoline. Most of the big chain gas stations had changed over, but there was still demand for the ozone killing fuel. Jake breathed in. He thought that the exhaust from Regular gasoline smelled uniquely comforting, unlike the Unleaded exhaust that was more acrid and bitter. No, Regular exhaust was rounder in the nose, its bouquet fuller and milder. He made his way under the cars barreling across the cement above him, their tires slapping the strips of tar separating the concrete slabs in rhythmic fashion. Jake made a wordless noise and the cavernous space bounced it off its graffiti-covered walls and echoed it back to him.
Out in the sun again Jake hopped on his bike and pedaled toward what his brother had affectionately termed “St. Phenson Highway”.
“Yeah, you never heard of St. Phenson? He’s the Patron Saint of the Suburbs.” Craig would say in mock serious tones. “He guided the developers to the woods and showed them how to clear cut the trees. He showed them visions of miles of subdivisions and planned communities. And, they seen that it was good”.
Jake now saw why his brother had given the street its name. In front of him was a green and white sign that read:
ST PHENSON HWY.
Some one had peeled the first “E” off the sign. Why, Jake had no idea. Jake couldn’t make out any possible reason, no hidden cuss word or sexual innuendo in the defacing of this sign. Maybe, he thought, it was just bad glue and it had fallen off by itself.
The bike path turned and ran along parallel to and about two feet from the road. Jake angled the bike toward the road and quickened his pace. A few cars with teenagers drove past him and he tucked his head down and sped up. It was then he realized he had forgotten to take off his little paper hat.
A yellow 1970 GTO with “The Judge” spelled out in a puffy orange 70’s era typeface on the fender pulled up even to Jake. He glanced quickly to his side and saw that the front seated was filled with girls. He turned his attention back to his path and steadied his steering. A girl, a blonde wearing a pink T-shirt with the words ‘Pretty Thing’ in cursive on it leaned out the window. The bike path was a good deal higher than the street and this advantage offered Jake an amazing view down Pretty Thing’s cleavage. She steadied herself on the door and spoke.
“Hey”, she said in a sexy smoky tone. This made Jake look over to her. She was holding something white in her hands.
“Pedal faster, Fat Ass”.
Jake could see what she had in her hands now, but by then it was too late. She pulled back the elastic on the boy’s underpants like a jury-rigged slingshot and flung them into the air between the car and Jake. They hit Jake in the face, obscuring his vision with white. He reached up one hand to pull them from his face and his head slid through one of the leg holes. The Judge sped off as Pretty Thing flipped Jake the bird. He looked into the rear of the car to see the front Mag wheel of Eddie’s Mongoose sticking from the trunk. Jake looked up at the rear window and saw Dana Cortez and Eddie sitting on either side of the car, laughing and pointing. Between them, facing forward and slumped down, he could make out the back of another girl’s head. The girl turned, and furtively looked toward Jake. It was Jodi Bon. Across her face was splayed a mix of hurt from Jake never having called her and sympathy for the boy she liked being the butt of a cruel joke. Tears welled in Jake’s eyes and he lost control of his bike. It careened down the ditch that ran in between the bike path and the parking lot to an industrial complex. As soon as his front wheel hit the soft earth, he went over the handlebars and landed flat on his back in the middle of a stand of cattails.
He lay there motionless except for his sobs, listening to the crickets around him, staring up at the sky and letting the murky rain run-off soak into his silly paper hat.
Monday, July 26, 2010
(eight) The Assembler’s Special
(eight) The Assembler’s Special
Craig had come home on Sunday afternoon and picked up Jake in his Duster. Jake assumed that this meant he was going to be spending the next hour vacuuming out his brother’s car at the local coin-op Car Wash while Craig Armor-Alled the wheels. For his labor, Craig would buy his little brother a large glass bottle of Coke, instead of the piddly cans that his mother and father would purchase. His mother would always admonish Jake with “That’s just too much pop for one boy. You’ll wet the bed”. Jake knew that the real reason behind the purchase was that pop in a can was less money. That icy-cold-slush-in-the-neck-of-the-bottle Coke and a crisp dollar bill were Jake’s payment for his hard work. He earned it. Jake normally thought that the deal was a good one, but with the recent demise of his transportation, his poor mangled two-wheeler, he was inconsolable.
Craig had instead taken Jake on a scouting trip. Their objective was a boy’s twenty-inch bike frame in good condition and a couple of rims. The following day, Monday, was trash collection day and Craig was determined to find his little brother a replacement ride.
They had tumbled out of the car a few times to scrounge through some discarded bike parts and had come away with two slightly worn knobby tires, a remarkably straight front wheel and a rear wheel dusted with a film of surface rust.
“Some steel wool’ll take that rust right off”, Craig said as he slid back behind the wheel of the big Hemi. “Now, we gotta find a frame”.
They looked until dusk had started to settle. They were at the edge of the section of Clayton that had their trash day on Monday. One street over, the trash day was Tuesday. Jake was taken with the purposefulness of the zoning for trash pickup. What to some may have seemed arbitrary and meaningless, to Jake was extremely efficient. The governing body had deemed this day as the day the people’s trash would be collected. It was a weekly holiday in the life of a poor kid. It was a routine that never changed and it was one of the only constants in his chaotic life. It was sometimes, when he was being shunned by his fair weather friends, his only entertainment.
Jake would imagine himself as the kind of boy that would throw out a reasonably fixable air hockey game or a perfectly good Twister game board. His family’s economic position had forced the children of the household not only to hold on to everything they got but to engage their respective imaginations to pass the time when they had to go without.
Kay dove into crossword puzzles, which she thought would improve her vocabulary. Occasionally, during a mad cleaning fit brought on by the depression of living in a dismally lit and cluttered house, Jake and his sister Denise would find dozens of half-done crosswords under the tattered couch. While Denise was angered at the fact that her older sister had created a fire hazard, Jake was saddened at the extent that the crosswords were done. Simple phrases and trick clues popped out in Jake’s mind as he mentally tried to finish the puzzle. He tried to make out the words through the different layers of corrective overwrites and pencil erasures that flecked the black and white checkerboard with hairy little holes. Jake was saddened at his sister’s attempt to improve herself so much that this made him laugh a halting, empathetic chuckle.
Denise too had attempted to have some impromptu fun once, but it was an abysmal failure. She had gotten it into her head to create her own version of a Slip and Slide. This was a water toy that was basically a long sheet of rubber that connected by special hose to a household waterspout. The water would keep the surface slick and provide hot kids with endless hours cool wet, slippery, sliding fun. Denise’s version was two Twister game boards held together with duct tape and a length of sun-baked garden hose.
For a while it was just like the real thing. The surface of the Twister boards was slick and it did cool the kids off on an unusually hot June Saturday afternoon. Evidently the noise from the neighborhood kids yelling in delight, had roused Jake’s mother from her restful mid-day, depression-induced slumber. She screamed at Denise to turn off the water.
“You want to pay the water bill young lady?”
“No”, Denise yelled back.
“Turn the water off this minute and get rid of that thing before you break your leg”.
Denise mouthed this phrase mockingly as she turned the water off. She came back to the head of the makeshift water slide.
“We better do what Mom says”, Jake whispered.
“One more run”, Denise said.
The haunting echo of this phrase stuck in Jake’s head like a tape loop. For on Denise’s final run, she miscalculated the viscosity of the remaining water, slid right off the end of the Twister boards. She plunged feet first into the warm waiting embrace of the pile of bricks stacked scattershot across the back of the house, breaking her leg in three places. She spent the better part of that summer lying on the couch scratching at her thigh inside of her full-leg cast with a bent coat hanger and drinking lots of Faygo Rock-N-Rye. Jake’s Mom, on the other hand, spent the rest of the summer finding every little way to work the phrase, “Next time you’ll listen to your Mother” into every conversation.
Jake had taken his lot in life in stride and spent the time wisely, delving into the world of books in the musty hall cabinet beneath the bookshelf. This was strictly a rainy day activity in the summer. Like all good boys, Jake spent most of the day outside, soaking in the sun of the summers he would later recall as somehow brighter, somehow sharper than those in his grown-up days. He spent those sunny days riding bikes with his friends.
This summer had started on a bad note with the Accident and the subsequent loss of the cheap Polish bike that his father had bought him. He was in dire need of a replacement before Summer got into full swing or he would be left out when it came time to cruise up to Burger King or even the rare all-day trip to The Oakland Mall.
As the light faded from the sky, Jake held the rusting wheel in his lap, rubbing the surface of the rim with his thumb. He looked down the cross street to see the optic orange sun sliding behind a silhouette of a line of maple trees.
“Maybe next Sunday, Sport”. Craig pulled one of his patented U-turns in the intersection of the cross street and headed back the way they’d come.
“Wait”, Jake had pulled the handle and was out of the car before it stopped. He ran to the edge of the lawn two houses up. Craig pulled up to the curb as Jake turned around. He was holding the scratched frame of a moto-cross bike. It was painted white over its original color and had been scratched badly so the first coat shown through. It had tube forks and the neck had no bearings in it. Jake stood there in middle of the street with the trashed skeleton of a spoiled kid’s bike, struck with a look of wonder on his face. He had found the Lost Ark and now beheld its power.
* * *
They spent the rest of the night stripping the frame of its paint and scrubbing the rust from the grooves between the spokes on the back wheel. Craig set up the work light out in the back yard. Both he and Jake rubbed on some Avon Skin So Soft to keep the bugs away and headed out back to primer the frame. Craig moved his car out into the street--he didn’t want the grey mist to drift onto his Duster--and began to work. He had finished the second coat of primer and had enlisted Denise to dry the coats with her hairdryer. Big Jake had come home and ventured out into the yard to see what his kids were up to.
“What color are you gonna paint it?”, Big Jake asked.
“I don’t know”, Jake answered. “Maybe just primer colored”.
Big Jake whispered to Craig and Craig disappeared around the front of the house. Moments later, he returned with four cans of spraypaint.
“I got these when I got my car painted. They’re for touch-ups. We can use these”.
Jake stood still, silently gasping in shock as Craig popped the cap on the first can and began to shake it. He was going to have a bike the same color as the coolest car in Clayton. He was going to be the envy of the entire neighborhood. Perhaps the whole street from 14 Mile to Normandy would gaze in awe at the boy on the kick-ass bike.
The painting process was tedious and when the chill came into the air Jake retired to the basement. Down in the warm mustiness, he finished tightening the spokes and putting the tubes into the new knobby tires mounted on the newly polished rims. The bike was still missing handlebars, but the rest of it was there.
At about 1 a.m. Big Jake came down the stairs to find his youngest asleep sitting up with a rust flaked clump of steel wool in one hand. He jostled him barely into consciousness and packed him off to bed.
* * *
Jake awoke late the next morning in his upstairs bedroom, not quite remembering how he got there. He could hear the boys down below and outside, riding their bikes up and down the street, jumping curbs, doing tricks. He could hear the buzz of the knobby tires whizzing along the pavement. He could hear them laughing and talking. He knew he wouldn’t be able to join them today because his bike wasn’t whole. He had resigned himself to spending the gloriously sunny day indoors reading.
He had walked down the stairs after throwing on his corduroy shorts and a striped shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He turned to enter the kitchen where he’d planned to make himself a giant bowl of Jacque Le Feet cereal, his favorite. He stopped and turned toward the living room. The drapes where open slightly, which was rare. The sun shone through the sheers. It illuminated the thick cloud of dust settling onto Kay, who had fallen asleep on the couch and Jake’s new bike; including its shiny black moto-cross handlebars.
Jake finally put it all together. When they went to Meijer’s Thrifty Acres, Craig had made him stay in the Duster. He had come out with a bag bigger than what would hold the inner tubes and primer he had gone in the store for. He stopped to put something in the trunk and then got in handing the bag to Jake.
“That’s what was in the trunk”, Jake mumbled into the bright shiny dust cloud.
He threw his shoes on, without socks, and opened the front door. The sound of the large heavy wood door pulling loose from its resting-place woke Kay.
“You like it?”, she yawned rubbing the crusty sleep from her eyes while simultaneously reaching for her pack of Winston 100’s.
“Absolutely.”
She laughed at his choice of word and lit her cigarette. Jake opened the screen door, ran down the front steps and mounted his new bike. He rode it around the front walk and then up the driveway. He then turned and drifted into the street.
Richie and Morris were sitting on the curb in front of Richie’s house killing ants with the pads of their thumbs. Alex and Scott were circling their Schwinns in lazy arcs with the precision of circus clowns. Eddie wasn’t out yet.
Jake rode past the group. He was nervous that they’d leap for him and beat him down, but he figured that without Eddie there to actually tell them, they would be lost and never be able to come up with the idea on their own. Scott looked up from his concentrated effort of steering to look at Jake’s new wheels. He plowed straight into the back tire of his brother’s Schwinn.
“God, Scott, You’re such a dork”, Alex yelled and then followed his brother’s gaze to the gleaming olive iron horse.
“Where’d you get it?” Morris asked.
Jake stopped the bike.
“Are you talkin’ to me?”, Jake asked hardly concealing his mirth.
“You steal it?”, Richie asked.
“No, I’m not you”, Jake returned. Both twins laughed. Morris cracked a smile.
“Eddie’s pissed at you”, Richie said steering the conversation away from his favorite past time.
“Yeah, well, he fucked up my bike”.
“Yeah, well, you fucked up his bike and his leg. He’s gonna have a scar”, Richie returned.
“How’s your chin?”, Jake asked. Morris and the Carson boys laughed at this. Richie moved his jaw back and forth as if feeling the sense memory of the elbow he'd received.
“It’s fine.”
“Hey, I’m sorry about that”, Jake added. The apology was unanticipated. Richie didn’t know how to process it. He blushed a bit and avoided eye contact with Jake. “Ya mad at me?”
Jake held out his hand in front of Richie. Richie waited then grabbed Jake’s hand in a Soul Handshake, wrapping his fleshy hand around the base of Jake’s thumb. Things were slowly returning to normal. There was still a thick post-Accident haze hanging over the boys adding to the general malaise that set itself off in sharp relief against the sunny warm morning.
“We’re cool”, Richie added in response. Alex and Scott smiled at each other. Morris went back to killing ants.
“What kind of bike is that?”, Eddie asked. He had come up slowly, carefully walking his bike across the grass so as to not make a sound. He had seen the exchange. He had heard everything. Jake bristled at his voice. He looked down and saw the bandage running the length of Eddie’s left leg. Jake had just forged an uneasy peace with the rest of the group, but he knew that with one word or action Eddie could veto it and he would soon be chased across the street by boys who knew their hearts weren’t in the act.
“An Assembler’s Special”, Jake answered.
Eddie paused looking up and down the bike.
“Tube forks”, Eddie said flatly.
“Yeah”, Jake returned.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have that bike you’re riding”, Eddie then stood up on his pedals and cranked his bike into the street, heading toward 14 Mile Road.
Jake stood holding the rubber handle grips tightly, his face flushing from fishbelly white to hot pink. Eddie, in one phrase, had sullied his brother’s selfless act. He had ruined the warm feeling pulsing inside his chest that was the direct result of this selfless act. With his words he had reached in and stolen his sense of joy and left a tight dread-filled anger in its place.
The other boys mounted their bikes and followed their leader. Jake turned and rode behind, slowly pushing the pedals of his Assembler’s Special
Craig had come home on Sunday afternoon and picked up Jake in his Duster. Jake assumed that this meant he was going to be spending the next hour vacuuming out his brother’s car at the local coin-op Car Wash while Craig Armor-Alled the wheels. For his labor, Craig would buy his little brother a large glass bottle of Coke, instead of the piddly cans that his mother and father would purchase. His mother would always admonish Jake with “That’s just too much pop for one boy. You’ll wet the bed”. Jake knew that the real reason behind the purchase was that pop in a can was less money. That icy-cold-slush-in-the-neck-of-the-bottle Coke and a crisp dollar bill were Jake’s payment for his hard work. He earned it. Jake normally thought that the deal was a good one, but with the recent demise of his transportation, his poor mangled two-wheeler, he was inconsolable.
Craig had instead taken Jake on a scouting trip. Their objective was a boy’s twenty-inch bike frame in good condition and a couple of rims. The following day, Monday, was trash collection day and Craig was determined to find his little brother a replacement ride.
They had tumbled out of the car a few times to scrounge through some discarded bike parts and had come away with two slightly worn knobby tires, a remarkably straight front wheel and a rear wheel dusted with a film of surface rust.
“Some steel wool’ll take that rust right off”, Craig said as he slid back behind the wheel of the big Hemi. “Now, we gotta find a frame”.
They looked until dusk had started to settle. They were at the edge of the section of Clayton that had their trash day on Monday. One street over, the trash day was Tuesday. Jake was taken with the purposefulness of the zoning for trash pickup. What to some may have seemed arbitrary and meaningless, to Jake was extremely efficient. The governing body had deemed this day as the day the people’s trash would be collected. It was a weekly holiday in the life of a poor kid. It was a routine that never changed and it was one of the only constants in his chaotic life. It was sometimes, when he was being shunned by his fair weather friends, his only entertainment.
Jake would imagine himself as the kind of boy that would throw out a reasonably fixable air hockey game or a perfectly good Twister game board. His family’s economic position had forced the children of the household not only to hold on to everything they got but to engage their respective imaginations to pass the time when they had to go without.
Kay dove into crossword puzzles, which she thought would improve her vocabulary. Occasionally, during a mad cleaning fit brought on by the depression of living in a dismally lit and cluttered house, Jake and his sister Denise would find dozens of half-done crosswords under the tattered couch. While Denise was angered at the fact that her older sister had created a fire hazard, Jake was saddened at the extent that the crosswords were done. Simple phrases and trick clues popped out in Jake’s mind as he mentally tried to finish the puzzle. He tried to make out the words through the different layers of corrective overwrites and pencil erasures that flecked the black and white checkerboard with hairy little holes. Jake was saddened at his sister’s attempt to improve herself so much that this made him laugh a halting, empathetic chuckle.
Denise too had attempted to have some impromptu fun once, but it was an abysmal failure. She had gotten it into her head to create her own version of a Slip and Slide. This was a water toy that was basically a long sheet of rubber that connected by special hose to a household waterspout. The water would keep the surface slick and provide hot kids with endless hours cool wet, slippery, sliding fun. Denise’s version was two Twister game boards held together with duct tape and a length of sun-baked garden hose.
For a while it was just like the real thing. The surface of the Twister boards was slick and it did cool the kids off on an unusually hot June Saturday afternoon. Evidently the noise from the neighborhood kids yelling in delight, had roused Jake’s mother from her restful mid-day, depression-induced slumber. She screamed at Denise to turn off the water.
“You want to pay the water bill young lady?”
“No”, Denise yelled back.
“Turn the water off this minute and get rid of that thing before you break your leg”.
Denise mouthed this phrase mockingly as she turned the water off. She came back to the head of the makeshift water slide.
“We better do what Mom says”, Jake whispered.
“One more run”, Denise said.
The haunting echo of this phrase stuck in Jake’s head like a tape loop. For on Denise’s final run, she miscalculated the viscosity of the remaining water, slid right off the end of the Twister boards. She plunged feet first into the warm waiting embrace of the pile of bricks stacked scattershot across the back of the house, breaking her leg in three places. She spent the better part of that summer lying on the couch scratching at her thigh inside of her full-leg cast with a bent coat hanger and drinking lots of Faygo Rock-N-Rye. Jake’s Mom, on the other hand, spent the rest of the summer finding every little way to work the phrase, “Next time you’ll listen to your Mother” into every conversation.
Jake had taken his lot in life in stride and spent the time wisely, delving into the world of books in the musty hall cabinet beneath the bookshelf. This was strictly a rainy day activity in the summer. Like all good boys, Jake spent most of the day outside, soaking in the sun of the summers he would later recall as somehow brighter, somehow sharper than those in his grown-up days. He spent those sunny days riding bikes with his friends.
This summer had started on a bad note with the Accident and the subsequent loss of the cheap Polish bike that his father had bought him. He was in dire need of a replacement before Summer got into full swing or he would be left out when it came time to cruise up to Burger King or even the rare all-day trip to The Oakland Mall.
As the light faded from the sky, Jake held the rusting wheel in his lap, rubbing the surface of the rim with his thumb. He looked down the cross street to see the optic orange sun sliding behind a silhouette of a line of maple trees.
“Maybe next Sunday, Sport”. Craig pulled one of his patented U-turns in the intersection of the cross street and headed back the way they’d come.
“Wait”, Jake had pulled the handle and was out of the car before it stopped. He ran to the edge of the lawn two houses up. Craig pulled up to the curb as Jake turned around. He was holding the scratched frame of a moto-cross bike. It was painted white over its original color and had been scratched badly so the first coat shown through. It had tube forks and the neck had no bearings in it. Jake stood there in middle of the street with the trashed skeleton of a spoiled kid’s bike, struck with a look of wonder on his face. He had found the Lost Ark and now beheld its power.
* * *
They spent the rest of the night stripping the frame of its paint and scrubbing the rust from the grooves between the spokes on the back wheel. Craig set up the work light out in the back yard. Both he and Jake rubbed on some Avon Skin So Soft to keep the bugs away and headed out back to primer the frame. Craig moved his car out into the street--he didn’t want the grey mist to drift onto his Duster--and began to work. He had finished the second coat of primer and had enlisted Denise to dry the coats with her hairdryer. Big Jake had come home and ventured out into the yard to see what his kids were up to.
“What color are you gonna paint it?”, Big Jake asked.
“I don’t know”, Jake answered. “Maybe just primer colored”.
Big Jake whispered to Craig and Craig disappeared around the front of the house. Moments later, he returned with four cans of spraypaint.
“I got these when I got my car painted. They’re for touch-ups. We can use these”.
Jake stood still, silently gasping in shock as Craig popped the cap on the first can and began to shake it. He was going to have a bike the same color as the coolest car in Clayton. He was going to be the envy of the entire neighborhood. Perhaps the whole street from 14 Mile to Normandy would gaze in awe at the boy on the kick-ass bike.
The painting process was tedious and when the chill came into the air Jake retired to the basement. Down in the warm mustiness, he finished tightening the spokes and putting the tubes into the new knobby tires mounted on the newly polished rims. The bike was still missing handlebars, but the rest of it was there.
At about 1 a.m. Big Jake came down the stairs to find his youngest asleep sitting up with a rust flaked clump of steel wool in one hand. He jostled him barely into consciousness and packed him off to bed.
* * *
Jake awoke late the next morning in his upstairs bedroom, not quite remembering how he got there. He could hear the boys down below and outside, riding their bikes up and down the street, jumping curbs, doing tricks. He could hear the buzz of the knobby tires whizzing along the pavement. He could hear them laughing and talking. He knew he wouldn’t be able to join them today because his bike wasn’t whole. He had resigned himself to spending the gloriously sunny day indoors reading.
He had walked down the stairs after throwing on his corduroy shorts and a striped shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He turned to enter the kitchen where he’d planned to make himself a giant bowl of Jacque Le Feet cereal, his favorite. He stopped and turned toward the living room. The drapes where open slightly, which was rare. The sun shone through the sheers. It illuminated the thick cloud of dust settling onto Kay, who had fallen asleep on the couch and Jake’s new bike; including its shiny black moto-cross handlebars.
Jake finally put it all together. When they went to Meijer’s Thrifty Acres, Craig had made him stay in the Duster. He had come out with a bag bigger than what would hold the inner tubes and primer he had gone in the store for. He stopped to put something in the trunk and then got in handing the bag to Jake.
“That’s what was in the trunk”, Jake mumbled into the bright shiny dust cloud.
He threw his shoes on, without socks, and opened the front door. The sound of the large heavy wood door pulling loose from its resting-place woke Kay.
“You like it?”, she yawned rubbing the crusty sleep from her eyes while simultaneously reaching for her pack of Winston 100’s.
“Absolutely.”
She laughed at his choice of word and lit her cigarette. Jake opened the screen door, ran down the front steps and mounted his new bike. He rode it around the front walk and then up the driveway. He then turned and drifted into the street.
Richie and Morris were sitting on the curb in front of Richie’s house killing ants with the pads of their thumbs. Alex and Scott were circling their Schwinns in lazy arcs with the precision of circus clowns. Eddie wasn’t out yet.
Jake rode past the group. He was nervous that they’d leap for him and beat him down, but he figured that without Eddie there to actually tell them, they would be lost and never be able to come up with the idea on their own. Scott looked up from his concentrated effort of steering to look at Jake’s new wheels. He plowed straight into the back tire of his brother’s Schwinn.
“God, Scott, You’re such a dork”, Alex yelled and then followed his brother’s gaze to the gleaming olive iron horse.
“Where’d you get it?” Morris asked.
Jake stopped the bike.
“Are you talkin’ to me?”, Jake asked hardly concealing his mirth.
“You steal it?”, Richie asked.
“No, I’m not you”, Jake returned. Both twins laughed. Morris cracked a smile.
“Eddie’s pissed at you”, Richie said steering the conversation away from his favorite past time.
“Yeah, well, he fucked up my bike”.
“Yeah, well, you fucked up his bike and his leg. He’s gonna have a scar”, Richie returned.
“How’s your chin?”, Jake asked. Morris and the Carson boys laughed at this. Richie moved his jaw back and forth as if feeling the sense memory of the elbow he'd received.
“It’s fine.”
“Hey, I’m sorry about that”, Jake added. The apology was unanticipated. Richie didn’t know how to process it. He blushed a bit and avoided eye contact with Jake. “Ya mad at me?”
Jake held out his hand in front of Richie. Richie waited then grabbed Jake’s hand in a Soul Handshake, wrapping his fleshy hand around the base of Jake’s thumb. Things were slowly returning to normal. There was still a thick post-Accident haze hanging over the boys adding to the general malaise that set itself off in sharp relief against the sunny warm morning.
“We’re cool”, Richie added in response. Alex and Scott smiled at each other. Morris went back to killing ants.
“What kind of bike is that?”, Eddie asked. He had come up slowly, carefully walking his bike across the grass so as to not make a sound. He had seen the exchange. He had heard everything. Jake bristled at his voice. He looked down and saw the bandage running the length of Eddie’s left leg. Jake had just forged an uneasy peace with the rest of the group, but he knew that with one word or action Eddie could veto it and he would soon be chased across the street by boys who knew their hearts weren’t in the act.
“An Assembler’s Special”, Jake answered.
Eddie paused looking up and down the bike.
“Tube forks”, Eddie said flatly.
“Yeah”, Jake returned.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have that bike you’re riding”, Eddie then stood up on his pedals and cranked his bike into the street, heading toward 14 Mile Road.
Jake stood holding the rubber handle grips tightly, his face flushing from fishbelly white to hot pink. Eddie, in one phrase, had sullied his brother’s selfless act. He had ruined the warm feeling pulsing inside his chest that was the direct result of this selfless act. With his words he had reached in and stolen his sense of joy and left a tight dread-filled anger in its place.
The other boys mounted their bikes and followed their leader. Jake turned and rode behind, slowly pushing the pedals of his Assembler’s Special
Monday, July 19, 2010
(seven) "I’m gonna kill you" and Other Meaningless Threats"
(part three) Riding Bikes
“It’s awfully sad,” the first twin said cheerfully.
“I don’t see how it can have a happy ending,” said the second twin.
-Peter Pan
J.M.Barry
(seven) “I’m gonna kill you” and Other Meaningless Threats
He never let on that he knew what they had done. Not one bit. He ate the pain and the humiliation. Summer was approaching and he would be spending more time with his friends. He would need their relationships to get him through what would otherwise be long tedious days filled with nothing. Sadly, he knew that he would be forced to bide his time and to commit his energies elsewhere. The thing that was fast becoming his favorite pasttime was plotting Eddie’s death in elaborate ways; ways one could only see in a Friday the 13th movie.
It would come from nowhere, he thought. A low black car, preferably a 1967 Lincoln Continental with suicide doors, with Jake crouching in the back, slunk below the blacked-out window, would slow in front of Eddie’s house. The Intended Victim, the Mark, would be outside raking leaves or weeding the flowerbed beneath the picture window or perhaps just smoking on the porch. He would turn to look at the car, caught by the glint made by the tinted rear window rolling down slowly. A moment of anticipation would flash across Eddie’s face as if he thought Farrah Fawcett had become lost in his neighborhood and had stopped to ask him for directions; his eyes glistening at the thought of the blowjob she would surely give him in return for helping her. Then that anticipation would melt into unmitigated horror as a flaming arrow would fly from the open window to its target, the center of Eddie’s poly-cotton polo shirt. The shirt would go up like parched kindling, burning his ever-so-perfectly-coifed hair. The Mark would hit himself violently about the head and neck in an attempt to put out the flames. Desperately, he would try to drop and roll, but the arrow sticking out of his chest wouldn’t allow it. The low black car would speed away with Jake in the back, slowly, methodically dismantling his crossbow with the precision of a professional killer and snickering softly to himself.
He would rock back and forth on his bed listening to Cheap Trick Live at Budakhan, and thinking these thoughts. They would comfort him like an old wool sweater. They would clear away the utter despair of the fact that he was alone in his misery. He saw no outward signs on any of the other kids Eddie had chosen to ridicule. Alex and Scott may have winced at a particularly harsh comment once in a while, but on the whole, it didn’t seem to phase them in the least. He cursed his own sensitivity in a vane attempt to assuage the emptiness.
The kids were gathered in the street in front of the Old Polks’ House seated on their bikes, bullshitting.
Richie’s bike was a Redline Competition Model, which he bought with money he stole from his various family members’ wallets and purses when they weren’t looking. Morris’ was a plain blue Huffy refitted with moto-cross handle bars and racing seat. Alex and Scott both had matching silver Schwinn five-speeds with the car-like gearshift, the banana seat and the shock-absorbed smaller front wheel. These bikes didn’t really allow them to do many tricks or jumps, but they looked cool riding down the street.
Jake’s bike embarrassed him. It was an off-brand bike by the name of Tyler that was built in Poland. When you thought of quality bikes names like Schwinn, Raleigh, Mongoose, Takara and Huffy came to mind. Quality bikes were built in California or Great Britain or even Japan, not in Poland.
“Do you have to pedal it backwards?”, Jake’s sister Kay asked him when he was about to mount it for the first time. She said this without the slightest bit of acknowledgement to her obvious hypocrisy. She was best friends with Richie’s mom who prided herself on being three quarters-Polish.
Jake had tried desperately to get rid of the plainness of his bike. He replaced the long handlebars with moto-cross versions he had picked out of the garbage. Likewise, he took the seat off a rusted ten-speed that sat at the curb on Trash Monday. He cobbled together his makeshift BMX bike from parts he found and parts he bought with the remains of his lunch money that he’d saved. His brother Craig, a long-time Harley owner, had dubbed his little brother’s bike “an Assembler’s Special”. This brought pride to Jake’s face, because he knew that the coolest hogs were always “Assembler’s Specials”.
Jake rode up next to Richie who sat with his front wheel in the air, spinning the handlebars in a circle. Morris was bent over his handlebars, spitting on the ants that were busily trying to make their way from swarming over the crust of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich to their home near the top of the curb. Scott and Alex were busy alternately trying to strip each other’s gears and shove one another off their respective bike. They were waiting for Eddie.
Eddie came rolling down his drive on his Mongoose, banked his bike toward the curb and jumped it, crossing his handlebars and straightening them before softly landing and skidding to a halt next to Richie.
“Let’s go”, Eddie lifted his front wheel, turned his bike 180 degrees and headed for the dead end of South Martin and what lay beyond.
They were going to the track. This was not really a track in the sense that they had to pay to get in and it was professionally groomed. This was a field just inside the border of Royal Oak, located outside of Quickstad Park. The kids always referred to it as Quicksand Park because there was a rumor that there was quicksand under the pond in the woods and that a boy about their age had gone under and was never seen again.
There was another rumor that people had seen the Blue Gremlin with the Hockey Stick Stripe driving around Quickstad Park. This was the car that was driven by the Oakland County Child Killer. Rumor spread that he lived in the woods and he had buried all of his victims there.
It was the Oakland County Child Killer who had ruined two of their summers with his incessant bloodlust. If he struck on Monday, all the kids had to stay inside on Monday. Then he struck on Sunday. “The Lord’s Day, How could he?” Jake’s mother had said. Then he struck on Saturday. Not only had this serial killer terrorized the whole of Oakland County, but he had also ruined the weekends for the entire summer for most of the boys and girls in Oakland County. They couldn’t go out. They couldn’t ride their bikes past the end of the block. And, for the boys of South Martin, Quickstad Park was ‘Off Limits’. It was the Oakland County Child Killer who made the City of Royal Oak lock the fence around Quickstad. It was the Oakland County Child Killer who spoiled their fun.
But, that was a few years ago. The Oakland County Child Killer wasn’t caught; he, most likely a “he”, anyway, had just stopped killing. Some say he was caught on another charge and he was in prison, champing at the bit to get out and continue his life’s work. This was the story of the parents who found that terror was a great way to control their children. Most parents would use the ubiquitous Boogey Man demagoguery trope to keep their children in line, but with a real threat looming behind every tree parents could use it to their advantage. “Don’t go too far or the Oakland County Child Killer will get you” or “No, you can’t go up to the Mini-Mart with your friends. Do you want the Oakland County Child Killer to get you?”. Consequently, for two summers the lawns and shrubbery around every house were immaculately trimmed and neat due to the surplus of child labor.
The other story was that he died and that’s why the killing stopped. Whatever story you chose to believe, there was still no closure to the trauma of living in fear. There was no demonstration outside the courthouse. No legislation for the reinstatement of the death penalty. No victim’s family support group. No chants like, “Burn the Baby Killer” or “No Justice, No Peace” hurled at the flak-vested sociopath as he was escorted from the courthouse in chains. The terror of the Oakland County Child Killer persisted and informed every action that every parent took. They held their children’s hands a little tighter while walking in a crowd. They knew their children’s whereabouts at every moment. It was fear that made them do this. Sadly, it took the tragedy of the slayings to make them better parents. However, the aftermath of intense caring didn’t extend onto South Martin.
The boys rode their bikes through the split in the barrier at the dead end. No concerned parent came out to yell, “And just where to you think you boys are going?” They rode across Normandy (or 13 1/2 Mile Road) and steered toward the dirt track that wound its way around the tall maples and oaks that lined the two lane road. Eddie parked his bike next to one of the many graffiti covered picnic tables that were chained to the smaller trees. This one in particular had hard rock groups names scrawled over almost every inch of its surface, table and benches alike. Groups like, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin--which was invariably left “Led Zep” because, as Jake thought, the artist didn’t know how to spell ‘zeppelin’-- and Aerosmith. Sometimes it would be spelled ‘Arrowsmith’ then summarily crossed out or the word “Dumbass” was written next to it with an arrow pointing to the misspelling. Whoever had written the correction and the helpful comment had a wonderful career ahead of them teaching in Clayton’s public schools.
Morris and Richie rode around the track, practicing bunnyhops and jumps. Alex and Scott were busy walking their heavier, more cumbersome bikes through the tall grass. Eddie was already seated on the table; cigarette in hand, cupping the match in his fingers with his other hand. Jake was sitting on his bike with one Kmart Traxx tennis shoe resting across a huge ornate carving of a skull with a snake coming out of its eye that adorned the bench of the picnic table. Alex and Scott came up huffing and puffing from their labor and collapsed onto the table.
“Better stop smoking them big black cigars”, Eddie said to the twins. “They’ll kill ya.”
“Hey guys, c’mon”, Morris screamed from the track.
Jake took a couple of turns around the track, skipping the big jump, which was just a large mound of dirt at the end of a long stretch of hardpacked trail. Alex and Scott just sat there at the picnic table reading all the scrawlings like an archeologist deciphering hieroglyphics. Eddie had finished his cigarette and was banking on the last berm before the straightaway. He pumped his legs, leaning his bike from side to side, picking up speed. He steered the Mongoose down the slight embankment and up over the jump. He hung in the air, crossing his handlebars and lifting the bike into his body to gain more height. He slowly, softly came down to the dirt standing high over his seat. He then leaned left and skid his back tire around 180 degrees and ended standing. It was a feat that only Richie came close to. Richie repeated the same moves that Eddie had just done, down to the lean on the skid, but while it might have been high in technical marks, it was low on the artistic scale. It didn’t have the same panache, the same ebullent bravado. Morris’ attempt was even worse, technically sloppy and artistically weak, straight sixes on a 10-point scale. They spent the better part of the afternoon repeating this pattern, alternately showing off for each other and smoking cigarettes.
That was until the Accident.
Eddie had just finished an awesome tabletop off the big jump and had nearly wiped out on the landing. Morris was already lying on the grass rubbing his crotch, recovering from coming down hard on the frame crossbar when his right foot slipped of the pedal. Alex and Scott had howled with laughter. “You want me to kiss it and make it better?” Richie had mocked Morris’ pain. Morris did want that, only later, in his bedroom preferably performed to the song stylings of Air Supply. Then Richie called Morris a ‘pussy’.
“I’m gonna kill you”, Morris managed between the groans of sheer agony. “I swear”.
This meant absolutely nothing. It never did. “I’ll fucking kill you”, was delivered with real emotional force every time it was said. The Sayer’s eyes would widen, his nostrils would flare, teeth would be bared, hands would clutch into stiff fists or claws, the face would turn red. With all the outward markings of rage showing on the surface of The Sayer, the words would resonate with an empty echo, lifeless, powerless. A phrase that would surely strike terror in the heart of any adult if said by one of their peers, was passed off by children as mere rhetoric, hollow and harmless. It was the spoken trope that meant that The Sayer was extremely displeased with you and you had better stay away from them for a while until they calmed down. These were life lessons that would hold the boys in good stead when they finally had intimate relationships with the opposite sex.
Jake had heard the interchange between Morris and Richie as he pedaled his ersatz BMX into the apex of the molded dirt berm. His bike banked low off the wall and shot out into the series of moguls that were between the banked turn and the approach to the jump. He cleared the final hillock and began to pick up steam for the leap. His heart was pounding, his chubby legs pumping away at the black tar pedals, the racing saddle chafing at the inside of his corduroys. He raised his head and focused on the jump. Behind this, out of his range of focus, Eddie was dragging his bike, head bent to light a cigarette, across the spot where Jake intended to land.
Jake tried at the last moment to pull up, but his sweaty hand slipped free from the handlebar in the effort. By the time he thought to scream he was airborne. The bike careened up and Jake separated from it, like booster rockets from the Space shuttle. The bike landed directly across the handlebars of Eddie’s very expensive, very pampered racing bike. Jake’s bike split in two from the force. The neck assembly, handlebars and frontwheel attached, snapped from the rest of the frame. The frame fell to the ground scraping its rough metal wound down the length of Eddie’s shin. The front wheel and handlebars went rolling off into a large elm tree dripping Dutch Elm Disease Puss down the front of itself. Jake hit the hard-packed dirt on his back with a meaty thud. He lay there motionless as his brain processed the fact that he could now no longer breathe.
Terror flooded into Jake. The fall had knocked the wind out of him. He struggled to get to his feet as he tried forcefully to intake the humid air. His vision swum into tunnel vision and his head began to throb rhythmically. He suddenly thought that he might actually die here on the moist ground, the rustling trees towering over him. The last thing he would see was Eddie’s face mouthing those soothing words of concern, “You’re paying for my new handlebars”.
Then the air began to work its way into his burning lungs. He labored to fill his rotund body until his heart rate slowed enough for him to stand. He stumbled to his feet and turned in time to see Eddie rise from the ground, holding his bleeding leg, eyes rimming pink with rage.
“I’m gonna kill you”.
This time, Jake believed him.
Jake’s heart sped up again, thundering against the sweaty inside of the faded iron-on transfer of The Blues Brothers that graced the front of his shirt. Eddie turned to Richie, The Twins and Morris, who was still rubbing his aching crotch.
“Kill him.”
This was where, Jake thought, Eddie went too far. He required the utmost loyalty from the kids gathered around him, unquestioned loyalty and, up until this day, untested. Oh, he could get other kids to do things for him. Each boy had a special talent, his own modest form of super power. He could get Morris to lick anything. He could get Richie to shoplift anything. He could get Alex to beat up Scott or vice versa, at the drop of his Tigers hat. These were things that were in their nature. These were things they would readily do without incitement. They were also essentially harmless, victimless crimes. Even the paltry slapfests that the Carson boys engaged in lacked any real danger. But, what Eddie was now asking was for them to turn on one of their own. Jake knew that each individual would weigh their decision heavily, as heavily as if they were in Jake’s position. Jake trusted them to make the right decision and defy Eddie’s orders. Justice and Truth would prevail in the face of abject tyranny. This thought made Jake feel safe.
They turned on him like a pack of rabid dingoes.
Richie broke toward Jake first. Morris followed, rising in a bolt, forgetting completely his own pain throbbing between his legs. Alex and Scott looked at each other and then back at Jake. Eddie ran through them, barking “C’mon” at them over his shoulder. Jake spun on his heels and ran, his legs turning to warm, wobbly Jell-O. It was the fastest that he’d ever run in his life, well except the time he was chased by the angry mother bluejay that he’d terrorized into a frenzy, but this was a very close second.
Richie grabbed Jake’s shirt and pulled him back, ripping the seam. Jake spun quickly to wiggle free from his grip, elbows flailing wildly. His right elbow contacted Richie’s jaw. Richie released his hold and his hand flew to his face as he slowed his pursuit. Morris, lumbering a good 7 or 8 yards behind Richie, was the next closest posse member. Jake knew if he kept his pace up he would make it to his house before anyone would gain enough ground to pummel him. He jumped the orange dead-end barrier and fell into the street, scraping the soft flesh on the pads of his hands and his right elbow. He scrambled to his feet and continued his run. Morris had split the distance and was approaching the barrier. Jake was now only three houses down from his house. This is where he began to scream.
“Maaaaahhhhhhhmmm”.
Kay was at the door, of course, smoking the remnants of a cigarette she had put out so she could check if the laundry was dry. She looked up from her crossword to see Jake crossing the Bell’s lawn, with what looked like a scrawny balding boy in hot pursuit.
Eddie had leapt the barrier and was now high-tailing it toward Jake. Morris started to slow down, admitting defeat because Jake had reached his property. There was no way he would pursue him onto his own property. That was the Safe Haven. That was the De-Militarized Zone.
“What’s goin’ on here?”, Kay said in her smoky growl.
Eddie followed Jake onto his property and grabbed him.
“Get off my property”, Jake said.
“Ask me if I fuckin’ care”, Eddie spat in to Jake’s face. He reared his hand back to clock Jake.
“Do you care?”, came from area near the backyard gate. It was Craig, his arms, black with grease, crossed leisurely over the fence, dangling a Vantage Menthol from his lips.
Eddie turned and reflexively said, “Stay outta this”. Then he actually saw Craig. Eddie physically jerked from the surprise.
“C’mere”, Craig beckoned with one greasy finger.
“What?”, Eddie said.
“C’mere. I wanna tell you something”
Eddie edged over to the gate. “What?”
“Closer”, Craig smiled to ease Eddie’s fear.
Eddie had barely moved within Craig’s range when he was off his feet and flying towards the gate, his shirt gripped in the one balled grease-stained fist.
“You see that?”, Craig pointed to Kay. “That’s a lady. You watch your mouth around them, you hear me?”
“Yeah”, Eddie struggled out of his grip, wincing slightly from the smell of black grease and cigarette smoke.
“I don’t want you on this property again”. He dropped Eddie’s shirt and straightened it out, adding more and more grease with each pass of the hand.
“Now, run and tell your Mom she wants you.”
Eddie walked slowly down the driveway. When he reached the end, he turned toward Jake.
“You’re Dead”, he grimaced halfway between rage and embarrassment. “You’re so fu...You’re Dead”.
Morris fell in behind Eddie as he walked past him. Richie, Alex and Scott had pulled up the rear and joined the exodus. Jake stood, panting slightly from his run, barely able to contain the pride he had in what his brother had done for him. This pride was slowly replaced with a sinking, aching feeling of emasculation and a deep dread that someday soon he would have to prove himself without his brother’s help.
“See ya round, you Fat Little Mama’s Boy” Eddie yelled as he crossed the street. “I’ll be seein’ ya real soon”.
Craig made a quick grab for the gate latch and Eddie ran the rest of the way across the street, with Richie and Morris in tow. Alex and Scott stood on the driveway apron and looked silently at Jake.
“You comin’?”, Eddie asked them.
Alex and Scott crossed the street and made their way into Eddie’s backyard.
* * *
Jake was finishing off his second glass of ice-cold water from the bathroom sink when he heard the crash of metal against cement. He choked down the last swallow of water, dropped the cup and headed out the back door to where he was sure he’d find Craig crushed beneath his beloved olive and gold-metal-flake Duster. Jake saw Craig getting up from the ground and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“You hear that?”, Craig asked.
“What was it?”
“Came from out front”.
Craig wiped his hands on a faded red shop rag and opened the gate. He saw what had made the noise and called to Jake:
“You’re not gonna like this”.
Jake followed his brother into the frontyard.
There, lying in the front walk, were the remains of Jake’s mangled bicycle. It was split in two, true, but Eddie had done some of his own work on it to complete the rest of the demolition. The spokes were cut with wire cutters, “tin snips” his father called them, and bent in every direction. The tires were slashed, the rims were bent out of round, the seat was missing, as was the chain, and the frame was dented and gouged, the cheap paint peeling away from the metal. It was only when Jake got closer to what use to be his bike that he could make out the smell of urine.
“It’s awfully sad,” the first twin said cheerfully.
“I don’t see how it can have a happy ending,” said the second twin.
-Peter Pan
J.M.Barry
(seven) “I’m gonna kill you” and Other Meaningless Threats
He never let on that he knew what they had done. Not one bit. He ate the pain and the humiliation. Summer was approaching and he would be spending more time with his friends. He would need their relationships to get him through what would otherwise be long tedious days filled with nothing. Sadly, he knew that he would be forced to bide his time and to commit his energies elsewhere. The thing that was fast becoming his favorite pasttime was plotting Eddie’s death in elaborate ways; ways one could only see in a Friday the 13th movie.
It would come from nowhere, he thought. A low black car, preferably a 1967 Lincoln Continental with suicide doors, with Jake crouching in the back, slunk below the blacked-out window, would slow in front of Eddie’s house. The Intended Victim, the Mark, would be outside raking leaves or weeding the flowerbed beneath the picture window or perhaps just smoking on the porch. He would turn to look at the car, caught by the glint made by the tinted rear window rolling down slowly. A moment of anticipation would flash across Eddie’s face as if he thought Farrah Fawcett had become lost in his neighborhood and had stopped to ask him for directions; his eyes glistening at the thought of the blowjob she would surely give him in return for helping her. Then that anticipation would melt into unmitigated horror as a flaming arrow would fly from the open window to its target, the center of Eddie’s poly-cotton polo shirt. The shirt would go up like parched kindling, burning his ever-so-perfectly-coifed hair. The Mark would hit himself violently about the head and neck in an attempt to put out the flames. Desperately, he would try to drop and roll, but the arrow sticking out of his chest wouldn’t allow it. The low black car would speed away with Jake in the back, slowly, methodically dismantling his crossbow with the precision of a professional killer and snickering softly to himself.
He would rock back and forth on his bed listening to Cheap Trick Live at Budakhan, and thinking these thoughts. They would comfort him like an old wool sweater. They would clear away the utter despair of the fact that he was alone in his misery. He saw no outward signs on any of the other kids Eddie had chosen to ridicule. Alex and Scott may have winced at a particularly harsh comment once in a while, but on the whole, it didn’t seem to phase them in the least. He cursed his own sensitivity in a vane attempt to assuage the emptiness.
The kids were gathered in the street in front of the Old Polks’ House seated on their bikes, bullshitting.
Richie’s bike was a Redline Competition Model, which he bought with money he stole from his various family members’ wallets and purses when they weren’t looking. Morris’ was a plain blue Huffy refitted with moto-cross handle bars and racing seat. Alex and Scott both had matching silver Schwinn five-speeds with the car-like gearshift, the banana seat and the shock-absorbed smaller front wheel. These bikes didn’t really allow them to do many tricks or jumps, but they looked cool riding down the street.
Jake’s bike embarrassed him. It was an off-brand bike by the name of Tyler that was built in Poland. When you thought of quality bikes names like Schwinn, Raleigh, Mongoose, Takara and Huffy came to mind. Quality bikes were built in California or Great Britain or even Japan, not in Poland.
“Do you have to pedal it backwards?”, Jake’s sister Kay asked him when he was about to mount it for the first time. She said this without the slightest bit of acknowledgement to her obvious hypocrisy. She was best friends with Richie’s mom who prided herself on being three quarters-Polish.
Jake had tried desperately to get rid of the plainness of his bike. He replaced the long handlebars with moto-cross versions he had picked out of the garbage. Likewise, he took the seat off a rusted ten-speed that sat at the curb on Trash Monday. He cobbled together his makeshift BMX bike from parts he found and parts he bought with the remains of his lunch money that he’d saved. His brother Craig, a long-time Harley owner, had dubbed his little brother’s bike “an Assembler’s Special”. This brought pride to Jake’s face, because he knew that the coolest hogs were always “Assembler’s Specials”.
Jake rode up next to Richie who sat with his front wheel in the air, spinning the handlebars in a circle. Morris was bent over his handlebars, spitting on the ants that were busily trying to make their way from swarming over the crust of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich to their home near the top of the curb. Scott and Alex were busy alternately trying to strip each other’s gears and shove one another off their respective bike. They were waiting for Eddie.
Eddie came rolling down his drive on his Mongoose, banked his bike toward the curb and jumped it, crossing his handlebars and straightening them before softly landing and skidding to a halt next to Richie.
“Let’s go”, Eddie lifted his front wheel, turned his bike 180 degrees and headed for the dead end of South Martin and what lay beyond.
They were going to the track. This was not really a track in the sense that they had to pay to get in and it was professionally groomed. This was a field just inside the border of Royal Oak, located outside of Quickstad Park. The kids always referred to it as Quicksand Park because there was a rumor that there was quicksand under the pond in the woods and that a boy about their age had gone under and was never seen again.
There was another rumor that people had seen the Blue Gremlin with the Hockey Stick Stripe driving around Quickstad Park. This was the car that was driven by the Oakland County Child Killer. Rumor spread that he lived in the woods and he had buried all of his victims there.
It was the Oakland County Child Killer who had ruined two of their summers with his incessant bloodlust. If he struck on Monday, all the kids had to stay inside on Monday. Then he struck on Sunday. “The Lord’s Day, How could he?” Jake’s mother had said. Then he struck on Saturday. Not only had this serial killer terrorized the whole of Oakland County, but he had also ruined the weekends for the entire summer for most of the boys and girls in Oakland County. They couldn’t go out. They couldn’t ride their bikes past the end of the block. And, for the boys of South Martin, Quickstad Park was ‘Off Limits’. It was the Oakland County Child Killer who made the City of Royal Oak lock the fence around Quickstad. It was the Oakland County Child Killer who spoiled their fun.
But, that was a few years ago. The Oakland County Child Killer wasn’t caught; he, most likely a “he”, anyway, had just stopped killing. Some say he was caught on another charge and he was in prison, champing at the bit to get out and continue his life’s work. This was the story of the parents who found that terror was a great way to control their children. Most parents would use the ubiquitous Boogey Man demagoguery trope to keep their children in line, but with a real threat looming behind every tree parents could use it to their advantage. “Don’t go too far or the Oakland County Child Killer will get you” or “No, you can’t go up to the Mini-Mart with your friends. Do you want the Oakland County Child Killer to get you?”. Consequently, for two summers the lawns and shrubbery around every house were immaculately trimmed and neat due to the surplus of child labor.
The other story was that he died and that’s why the killing stopped. Whatever story you chose to believe, there was still no closure to the trauma of living in fear. There was no demonstration outside the courthouse. No legislation for the reinstatement of the death penalty. No victim’s family support group. No chants like, “Burn the Baby Killer” or “No Justice, No Peace” hurled at the flak-vested sociopath as he was escorted from the courthouse in chains. The terror of the Oakland County Child Killer persisted and informed every action that every parent took. They held their children’s hands a little tighter while walking in a crowd. They knew their children’s whereabouts at every moment. It was fear that made them do this. Sadly, it took the tragedy of the slayings to make them better parents. However, the aftermath of intense caring didn’t extend onto South Martin.
The boys rode their bikes through the split in the barrier at the dead end. No concerned parent came out to yell, “And just where to you think you boys are going?” They rode across Normandy (or 13 1/2 Mile Road) and steered toward the dirt track that wound its way around the tall maples and oaks that lined the two lane road. Eddie parked his bike next to one of the many graffiti covered picnic tables that were chained to the smaller trees. This one in particular had hard rock groups names scrawled over almost every inch of its surface, table and benches alike. Groups like, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin--which was invariably left “Led Zep” because, as Jake thought, the artist didn’t know how to spell ‘zeppelin’-- and Aerosmith. Sometimes it would be spelled ‘Arrowsmith’ then summarily crossed out or the word “Dumbass” was written next to it with an arrow pointing to the misspelling. Whoever had written the correction and the helpful comment had a wonderful career ahead of them teaching in Clayton’s public schools.
Morris and Richie rode around the track, practicing bunnyhops and jumps. Alex and Scott were busy walking their heavier, more cumbersome bikes through the tall grass. Eddie was already seated on the table; cigarette in hand, cupping the match in his fingers with his other hand. Jake was sitting on his bike with one Kmart Traxx tennis shoe resting across a huge ornate carving of a skull with a snake coming out of its eye that adorned the bench of the picnic table. Alex and Scott came up huffing and puffing from their labor and collapsed onto the table.
“Better stop smoking them big black cigars”, Eddie said to the twins. “They’ll kill ya.”
“Hey guys, c’mon”, Morris screamed from the track.
Jake took a couple of turns around the track, skipping the big jump, which was just a large mound of dirt at the end of a long stretch of hardpacked trail. Alex and Scott just sat there at the picnic table reading all the scrawlings like an archeologist deciphering hieroglyphics. Eddie had finished his cigarette and was banking on the last berm before the straightaway. He pumped his legs, leaning his bike from side to side, picking up speed. He steered the Mongoose down the slight embankment and up over the jump. He hung in the air, crossing his handlebars and lifting the bike into his body to gain more height. He slowly, softly came down to the dirt standing high over his seat. He then leaned left and skid his back tire around 180 degrees and ended standing. It was a feat that only Richie came close to. Richie repeated the same moves that Eddie had just done, down to the lean on the skid, but while it might have been high in technical marks, it was low on the artistic scale. It didn’t have the same panache, the same ebullent bravado. Morris’ attempt was even worse, technically sloppy and artistically weak, straight sixes on a 10-point scale. They spent the better part of the afternoon repeating this pattern, alternately showing off for each other and smoking cigarettes.
That was until the Accident.
Eddie had just finished an awesome tabletop off the big jump and had nearly wiped out on the landing. Morris was already lying on the grass rubbing his crotch, recovering from coming down hard on the frame crossbar when his right foot slipped of the pedal. Alex and Scott had howled with laughter. “You want me to kiss it and make it better?” Richie had mocked Morris’ pain. Morris did want that, only later, in his bedroom preferably performed to the song stylings of Air Supply. Then Richie called Morris a ‘pussy’.
“I’m gonna kill you”, Morris managed between the groans of sheer agony. “I swear”.
This meant absolutely nothing. It never did. “I’ll fucking kill you”, was delivered with real emotional force every time it was said. The Sayer’s eyes would widen, his nostrils would flare, teeth would be bared, hands would clutch into stiff fists or claws, the face would turn red. With all the outward markings of rage showing on the surface of The Sayer, the words would resonate with an empty echo, lifeless, powerless. A phrase that would surely strike terror in the heart of any adult if said by one of their peers, was passed off by children as mere rhetoric, hollow and harmless. It was the spoken trope that meant that The Sayer was extremely displeased with you and you had better stay away from them for a while until they calmed down. These were life lessons that would hold the boys in good stead when they finally had intimate relationships with the opposite sex.
Jake had heard the interchange between Morris and Richie as he pedaled his ersatz BMX into the apex of the molded dirt berm. His bike banked low off the wall and shot out into the series of moguls that were between the banked turn and the approach to the jump. He cleared the final hillock and began to pick up steam for the leap. His heart was pounding, his chubby legs pumping away at the black tar pedals, the racing saddle chafing at the inside of his corduroys. He raised his head and focused on the jump. Behind this, out of his range of focus, Eddie was dragging his bike, head bent to light a cigarette, across the spot where Jake intended to land.
Jake tried at the last moment to pull up, but his sweaty hand slipped free from the handlebar in the effort. By the time he thought to scream he was airborne. The bike careened up and Jake separated from it, like booster rockets from the Space shuttle. The bike landed directly across the handlebars of Eddie’s very expensive, very pampered racing bike. Jake’s bike split in two from the force. The neck assembly, handlebars and frontwheel attached, snapped from the rest of the frame. The frame fell to the ground scraping its rough metal wound down the length of Eddie’s shin. The front wheel and handlebars went rolling off into a large elm tree dripping Dutch Elm Disease Puss down the front of itself. Jake hit the hard-packed dirt on his back with a meaty thud. He lay there motionless as his brain processed the fact that he could now no longer breathe.
Terror flooded into Jake. The fall had knocked the wind out of him. He struggled to get to his feet as he tried forcefully to intake the humid air. His vision swum into tunnel vision and his head began to throb rhythmically. He suddenly thought that he might actually die here on the moist ground, the rustling trees towering over him. The last thing he would see was Eddie’s face mouthing those soothing words of concern, “You’re paying for my new handlebars”.
Then the air began to work its way into his burning lungs. He labored to fill his rotund body until his heart rate slowed enough for him to stand. He stumbled to his feet and turned in time to see Eddie rise from the ground, holding his bleeding leg, eyes rimming pink with rage.
“I’m gonna kill you”.
This time, Jake believed him.
Jake’s heart sped up again, thundering against the sweaty inside of the faded iron-on transfer of The Blues Brothers that graced the front of his shirt. Eddie turned to Richie, The Twins and Morris, who was still rubbing his aching crotch.
“Kill him.”
This was where, Jake thought, Eddie went too far. He required the utmost loyalty from the kids gathered around him, unquestioned loyalty and, up until this day, untested. Oh, he could get other kids to do things for him. Each boy had a special talent, his own modest form of super power. He could get Morris to lick anything. He could get Richie to shoplift anything. He could get Alex to beat up Scott or vice versa, at the drop of his Tigers hat. These were things that were in their nature. These were things they would readily do without incitement. They were also essentially harmless, victimless crimes. Even the paltry slapfests that the Carson boys engaged in lacked any real danger. But, what Eddie was now asking was for them to turn on one of their own. Jake knew that each individual would weigh their decision heavily, as heavily as if they were in Jake’s position. Jake trusted them to make the right decision and defy Eddie’s orders. Justice and Truth would prevail in the face of abject tyranny. This thought made Jake feel safe.
They turned on him like a pack of rabid dingoes.
Richie broke toward Jake first. Morris followed, rising in a bolt, forgetting completely his own pain throbbing between his legs. Alex and Scott looked at each other and then back at Jake. Eddie ran through them, barking “C’mon” at them over his shoulder. Jake spun on his heels and ran, his legs turning to warm, wobbly Jell-O. It was the fastest that he’d ever run in his life, well except the time he was chased by the angry mother bluejay that he’d terrorized into a frenzy, but this was a very close second.
Richie grabbed Jake’s shirt and pulled him back, ripping the seam. Jake spun quickly to wiggle free from his grip, elbows flailing wildly. His right elbow contacted Richie’s jaw. Richie released his hold and his hand flew to his face as he slowed his pursuit. Morris, lumbering a good 7 or 8 yards behind Richie, was the next closest posse member. Jake knew if he kept his pace up he would make it to his house before anyone would gain enough ground to pummel him. He jumped the orange dead-end barrier and fell into the street, scraping the soft flesh on the pads of his hands and his right elbow. He scrambled to his feet and continued his run. Morris had split the distance and was approaching the barrier. Jake was now only three houses down from his house. This is where he began to scream.
“Maaaaahhhhhhhmmm”.
Kay was at the door, of course, smoking the remnants of a cigarette she had put out so she could check if the laundry was dry. She looked up from her crossword to see Jake crossing the Bell’s lawn, with what looked like a scrawny balding boy in hot pursuit.
Eddie had leapt the barrier and was now high-tailing it toward Jake. Morris started to slow down, admitting defeat because Jake had reached his property. There was no way he would pursue him onto his own property. That was the Safe Haven. That was the De-Militarized Zone.
“What’s goin’ on here?”, Kay said in her smoky growl.
Eddie followed Jake onto his property and grabbed him.
“Get off my property”, Jake said.
“Ask me if I fuckin’ care”, Eddie spat in to Jake’s face. He reared his hand back to clock Jake.
“Do you care?”, came from area near the backyard gate. It was Craig, his arms, black with grease, crossed leisurely over the fence, dangling a Vantage Menthol from his lips.
Eddie turned and reflexively said, “Stay outta this”. Then he actually saw Craig. Eddie physically jerked from the surprise.
“C’mere”, Craig beckoned with one greasy finger.
“What?”, Eddie said.
“C’mere. I wanna tell you something”
Eddie edged over to the gate. “What?”
“Closer”, Craig smiled to ease Eddie’s fear.
Eddie had barely moved within Craig’s range when he was off his feet and flying towards the gate, his shirt gripped in the one balled grease-stained fist.
“You see that?”, Craig pointed to Kay. “That’s a lady. You watch your mouth around them, you hear me?”
“Yeah”, Eddie struggled out of his grip, wincing slightly from the smell of black grease and cigarette smoke.
“I don’t want you on this property again”. He dropped Eddie’s shirt and straightened it out, adding more and more grease with each pass of the hand.
“Now, run and tell your Mom she wants you.”
Eddie walked slowly down the driveway. When he reached the end, he turned toward Jake.
“You’re Dead”, he grimaced halfway between rage and embarrassment. “You’re so fu...You’re Dead”.
Morris fell in behind Eddie as he walked past him. Richie, Alex and Scott had pulled up the rear and joined the exodus. Jake stood, panting slightly from his run, barely able to contain the pride he had in what his brother had done for him. This pride was slowly replaced with a sinking, aching feeling of emasculation and a deep dread that someday soon he would have to prove himself without his brother’s help.
“See ya round, you Fat Little Mama’s Boy” Eddie yelled as he crossed the street. “I’ll be seein’ ya real soon”.
Craig made a quick grab for the gate latch and Eddie ran the rest of the way across the street, with Richie and Morris in tow. Alex and Scott stood on the driveway apron and looked silently at Jake.
“You comin’?”, Eddie asked them.
Alex and Scott crossed the street and made their way into Eddie’s backyard.
* * *
Jake was finishing off his second glass of ice-cold water from the bathroom sink when he heard the crash of metal against cement. He choked down the last swallow of water, dropped the cup and headed out the back door to where he was sure he’d find Craig crushed beneath his beloved olive and gold-metal-flake Duster. Jake saw Craig getting up from the ground and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“You hear that?”, Craig asked.
“What was it?”
“Came from out front”.
Craig wiped his hands on a faded red shop rag and opened the gate. He saw what had made the noise and called to Jake:
“You’re not gonna like this”.
Jake followed his brother into the frontyard.
There, lying in the front walk, were the remains of Jake’s mangled bicycle. It was split in two, true, but Eddie had done some of his own work on it to complete the rest of the demolition. The spokes were cut with wire cutters, “tin snips” his father called them, and bent in every direction. The tires were slashed, the rims were bent out of round, the seat was missing, as was the chain, and the frame was dented and gouged, the cheap paint peeling away from the metal. It was only when Jake got closer to what use to be his bike that he could make out the smell of urine.
Monday, July 12, 2010
(six) The Game Room Fake
(six) The Game Room Fake
The last refrain of “Last Dance” by Donna Summer had just come to an end. Morris and Richie were seated in the wooden pews that lined the rink, already unlacing their skates. The last skate was Couples Only and no one had asked them. Morris, every week without fail, suggested that they both skate together as a joke, but Richie would have none of it. He would stare at Morris blankly for a moment before picking up his skates and heading toward the return window. To Morris, Richie’s hesitation was a cry of wanting to oblige his own dark homoerotic fantasies as he silently caved in to societal pressure that was just too strong. As Richie stood, Morris would laugh it all away in a manner that managed to cover his yearning to hold Richie’s hand in front of the entire world, joke or no joke.
“I keep tellin’ you it’s not funny, it’s sick”, Richie would break the awkward silence with a brutally hard punch to Morris’ shoulder as he left him seated in the pew and went to return his skates. Morris would gaze longly in the bathroom mirror at the bruise that the punch would raise on his arm. He would fancy himself Richie’s battered wife.
Eddie had talked Dana Cortez into skating “Last Dance” with him. This was easy since it was known throughout school that Dana wanted to get into Eddie’s pants. Eddie on the other hand, was always fond of saying to the other boys that he “liked a challenge” and that boffing Dana would be too easy, like “shooting fish in a barrow”. Jake never had to heart to correct his malapropism and, indeed, secretly wished that the others would see his stupidity. But, Now. Now that Jake was picked for Ladies’ Choice, he had to prove that he was still the Alpha Dog. He skated the whole song trying to tongue Dana’s ear between ineffectual slaps from her tanned hand. She tried to contain her joy at finally reeling Eddie in at the same time she genuinely looked to be, at least to Jake, not enjoying the attention. Jodi, however, did like the attention. She skated with her arm around Jake, under his outer shirt and over his “BRAT” shirt; hand tucked firmly into his left pocket. Jake had skated with his arm around her, holding her like a fine piece of china, firmly yet delicately, in reverence to the beauty in his grasp.
The song ended and most of the couples slid silently to a standstill, necking, talking closely to one another’s ears and making plans for, at least, the very near future. The lights flickered from soft, pulsing, moody cross-lighting to the harsh worklight incandescents overhead. The whole place went from cozy nightspot to drafty warehouse in the flick of a switch. To Jake the breaking of the illusion was shamefully abrupt. The killjoy was the bleating goblin in the duct-taped blue vest, ushering the couples off the floor with his quick circling and low, gruff delivery of:
“Fun’s over, take it off the floor.”
Feet back safely in their Pumas and Adidas, the boys walked from the dark corridor next to the skate window and out into the afternoon brightness. Another line had formed beside the stucco wall. This crowd was older and, accordingly, was dressed like whores and their pimps. Scott and Alex, exiled since their scuffle, stood apart from each other at the edge of the street shivering and waiting for the rest of the boys to rejoin them. Eddie kissed Dana one last time and took the small piece of paper she proffered to him. Jake walked Jodi to her aunt’s station wagon. She pulled a felt-tipped Bic Banana pen from her purse and took up Jake’s shaking hand. He pulled it away and wiped the sweat on his pants and gave it back to her. She cradled it gently in hers and turned it over. In swirling open script, she wrote her name and phone number across Jake’s plump palm, dotting the “I” with a cute little heart. When she finished, she blew on it like a mother tending to her child’s first-degree burn. The caress of cool air across his hot flesh sent waves of electrical static through his body. She hugged him softly, lingering just slightly. He ran his hand across the back of her satin baseball jacket, feeling the bump of her bra strap. She turned and got in the waiting Ford LTD.
“Who’s your girlfriend?”, a friendly yet taunting voice came from behind Jake.
He turned and saw his sister, Denise. She was standing next to a suede-coated Dean who was leaning against the stucco with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Denise was smiling broadly behind her blue eyeshadow. She always smiled around Dean. Ever since he put her ten-speed on top of Jenny Toma’s garage, she knew they were fated to be together. When asked, Dean said he did it as a joke. But, in reality, it was more because he didn’t want her to leave. Jake agreed it was a brilliant ploy; take away her mode of transportation and she was powerless, a modest turn on what Stalin did to Hitler’s troops. It was an excellent ruse. It also explained why Dean drove everywhere they went.
“Her name’s Jodi Bon”, Jake said, hardly containing his joviality.
“Like Bon Scott, lead singer for AC/DC”, Dean chimed.
“Yeah”, Jake answered.
“Cool”, Dean said and tousled Jake’s hair, messing up his intricate part.
“Is that my shirt?” Denise tried to pry open the front of Jake’s jacket. “What are you doing wearing my shirt?”
Then she tousled Jake’s already misshapen hair and forced a dollar into his fist.
“Here. We’ll talk about this when we get home. And, don’t let that Stephens punk make you spend that on cigarettes”. She said this as she plucked the cigarette from between Dean’s lips and dragged on it, making it hard for Jake to take her seriously.
He looked over toward the edge of the road where the boys stood waiting for him. He ran over to meet them.
“Man, your sister’s a Fox”, Eddie asked. “I’d do her.”
“Shut up. She’s my sister.”
“No Shit, Rotundo”, Eddie then thumped Jake on the top of the head with a knuckle. “I wouldn’t fuck her anyway. ‘Cause that’d make you and me related.”
Eddie gave a violent shudder, laughed one loud braying snort and crossed into the left-turn lane of 14 Mile Road. Rubbing his head, Jake fell in behind the rest of the flock.
* * *
Twenty minutes into their walk home, the boys finally crossed Massoit and turned the corner onto South Martin. Each one was chomping furiously on the Bubbalicious Bubble Gum Eddie had given them to cover the smell of the cigarettes.
Jake bent down to tie one of his Kmart Traxx shoes. He was often doing this because, unlike the rest of the boys, he couldn’t quite tie the cheap nylon laces so they would hold a knot for any length of time. Some kids tied them once and they lasted he whole damn day. Jake, if he got a good knot that would stay, he’d take the shoes off without untying them and then slip them on the next day by cramming his foot into them. This wore the cheap nylon and vinyl shoes out quicker. His mother was forever complaining about how hard he was on shoes, even trying to get him to double-knot the laces but, double-knotting was for fags and girls. So, he was forced to straggle behind the rest of the boys because, like most self-absorbed teens, the group never would have the common decency to ‘wait up’ and walked on without him. Eddie looked back at Jake. When Jake looked up, he saw Eddie break off his whispering into Morris’ ear. Morris bobbed his head in agreement as did Richie. Alex looked at Jake and then diverted his glance forward. Scott stared straight at the ground, almost too concerned with where he was walking. Jake quickened his pace into a jog and joined them.
“What’s up?”, Jake asked. “What are we doin’?”
“I gotta go in. If I don’t sweep my Mom’s ceramic shop we can’t get Taco Bell.” Richie, moaned in that familiar tone, the tone that he always used when referencing anything to do with going home.
“My Dad’s probably looking for me”, Morris said, mimicking Richie’s blues riff timbre.
“I’m going in, too. I’m hungry”, Eddie said. Jake knew this meant that both Carson brothers would go home, too. What Eddie did; so did they.
“Aawwh, Man”, Jake groaned. He was riding a hormonal high and didn’t want it to end. This premature close of the day’s festivities was definitely wrecking Jake’s testosterone buzz. Richie was already ascending his front porch stairs. Morris was sullenly creeping up his driveway. Alex and Scott began to walk vaguely in the direction of their house.
Jake was still cresting the wave of happiness of having not been one of those sad unlovable boys forced to remove their skates to the tune of “Last Dance”. He had engaged in that act many times before, each time vowing to himself that next time he’d be out there on the floor skating to it. Each time he heard the song, he heard it as a lament of huge proportions. It added an edge, a sting to the finality of the end of the afternoon. Its melancholic bitterness of lost opportunity penetrated deeply into his tiny heart with each refrain. But, this time he heard it as a last grasp at happiness, a glowingly opportunistic aria on the transitory nature of love. Ms. Summer’s song was transformed from a torchy, achingly soulful dirge to an orgiastic call for hedonism. Jake had finally grasped the song in all its subtleties and was reveling in both his intellectual and emotional growth as a result.
“Jodi’s pretty hot.” Eddie said. Jake turned slowly toward him smiling.
“Yeah”.
“No need to thank me.” Eddie said as he started toward the side door the brick-faced bungalow his family owned.
“What do you mean?”
Eddie turned to look at Jake, “You don’t think she asked you to skate on purpose?”
Momentarily, Jake lost focus on everything in front of him. Not so much as a visual focus, but more a mental focus. It was as if what he firmly knew as sharp truth had swum into a fuzzy blur the instant Eddie finished his thought.
“What?”
Eddie edged closer to Jake. “I told Dana to tell her to ask you to skate during Ladies' Choice.”
Eddie turned and started up the driveway. Jake bit into his cheek to keep his grasp on his bearings. At the door, Eddie turned.
“You’re welcome”.
Jake stood frozen in the Old Polks’ House driveway apron as he watched the side door whisk shut behind Eddie.
It was a lie. Jake knew it. Jodi was sincere. If anything felt awkward or stiff it was because she was as emotionally confused as Jake was. She was haltingly groping her way around something that was new to her. She was not faking it. She wasn’t.
Or, was she? When you replay every nuance. Every nervous hand brushing her hair from her face. Her eyes darting about the rink. Her sudden bursts of laughter for no reason. Certainly not because of anything funny that you said. No. You had rightly perceived her mime-like performance, because that’s what it was, a performance.
But, his sister had seen it also. She saw something that automatically culled to her mind the word “girlfriend”. She saw the way Jodi looked at her little brother. Not like a friend who was a boy, but as a boyfriend.
Jake slowly walked up the uneven, crumbling, cement steps and opened the rusty whining screen door to his house. He pushed his way in through the front door. The dry heat blasted his face. His mother always kept the heat cranked high from the first of September until Memorial Day; occasionally opening all the windows for a few minutes at Big Jake’s request to “Blow the Stink Out”. Those times were the only respite from the merciless onslaught of manufactured heat.
Jake peeled off his coat and settled down on the floor next to the heavily curtained picture window that faced the street. He sat, arms clasped tightly around his knees, and rocked back and forth. The heat was too much for his already heated face. The hairs on the back of his neck were slick with sweat and he started to stand to retrieve a cold washcloth from the bathroom. He supported his weight on the windowsill and paused there. He leaned his face through the drapes turned his head and touched his right cheek to the cold glass. This comforted him. He sat back down and turned his other cheek to the glass. The heat started to dissipate. The sweat on his neck started to wick away. He moved his face along the glass to search for new cold spots. He turned his head and placed his forehead to the pane.
That’s when he saw Richie hop the fence into Mrs. Dunbar’s backyard.
Richie stood for a second, cast a sharp glance toward Jake’s house and ran behind the mint green clapboard bungalow across the street. Out of the corner of Jake’s squinting eye, he caught a flash of red. Four houses down, squatting behind the Owens’ Impala, Jake could make out the sleeve and hand resting on the trunk of the Chevy and he recognized it as belonging to one Morris Shuler. Jake scanned the backyards of the houses across the street. He locked on Alex as he followed his brother through the rear of Mr. Rutherford’s vegetable garden. Scott paused just long enough to hike up the waist of his pants and continued on his trek out of Jake’s field of view.
Jake head was swimming. He shook it and focused on the side door to the Old Polks’ House. The inside door came open, but no one came out. From around the back of the house, crouched behind the back end of Eddie’s father’s Olds 88, came Morris. He leapt toward the screen door, pulled it open and was in. Richie was next. A short while later, Alex came stumbling around the corner, for Scott had surely shoved him, and turned back to punch at the unseen Scott. Scott then came barreling around the corner, hugging the siding and walking, bent-kneed. A moment later, Alex followed in the same fashion and the door started to close behind them. They were all now safely in Eddie’s Game Room, stripping off their coats, wrestling over the Atari joysticks or calling dibs on the Spirit of ‘76 pinball machine. As the door slammed shut, Jake could barely make out the dim features of Eddie Stephens’ angular face. He was looking directly at Jake’s house and he was smiling.
Jake stood, his thighs throbbing more from the emotional shock of the day’s events than from four hours of roller-skating. He walked to the bathroom.
Standing at the pedestal sink, he looked directly into his own face. There he saw what they all had seen, a poor retch trying to rise up above his standing. He saw his plump face, embarrassingly red with blotches. His eyes pathetic little slits. His stringy, sweaty hair sticking to his forehead in clumps. The beginnings of a zit, red and swollen, forming at the corner of his mouth. In his disgust, he contorted his face even more, making it more ugly and shameful than before. The sight of his own face made him want to vomit. He could feel his gorge rise and recede, sickly sweet Coke spilling up onto the back of his throat, never quite reaching full retch. He steadied himself on the vanity and waited for the aftershock to subside.
He straightened himself and turned his hand over. Jodi’s name and, placed neatly under it, her number stood out boldly from the milk-white flesh of his palm. The dark looping script mocked him. The thick heart over the thin upright of the “I” had smudged to become almost black. The full circles and curlicues of the six and the eight stared back at him like empty soulless eyes.
Jake flipped the hot and cold taps on. He grabbed the thick wet, gelationous, family-size slab of Dial that rested in the slick and crusty soapdish. He grabbed his brother’s coarsely bristled nail brush and ran it under the water, dragging the brush through the soap until the tines were filled with yellow sudsy sludge.
Placing his hand palm open on the lip of the vanity, as if in preparation to sever it from his arm in punishment for it having offended him, he paused there staring at it accusingly. Whether it was fact or fiction, there was no simple, clear way to tell. Calling her out and risking the pain of truth was not a direction in which Jake was prepared to go. Synapses fired wildly causing a burning hollowness to fill his chest and boil the contents of his stomach. Hot stinging tears welled in his eyes as the thought of what he was about to do came home.
Jake spent the next ten minutes washing Jodi Bon’s telephone number from his hand.
The last refrain of “Last Dance” by Donna Summer had just come to an end. Morris and Richie were seated in the wooden pews that lined the rink, already unlacing their skates. The last skate was Couples Only and no one had asked them. Morris, every week without fail, suggested that they both skate together as a joke, but Richie would have none of it. He would stare at Morris blankly for a moment before picking up his skates and heading toward the return window. To Morris, Richie’s hesitation was a cry of wanting to oblige his own dark homoerotic fantasies as he silently caved in to societal pressure that was just too strong. As Richie stood, Morris would laugh it all away in a manner that managed to cover his yearning to hold Richie’s hand in front of the entire world, joke or no joke.
“I keep tellin’ you it’s not funny, it’s sick”, Richie would break the awkward silence with a brutally hard punch to Morris’ shoulder as he left him seated in the pew and went to return his skates. Morris would gaze longly in the bathroom mirror at the bruise that the punch would raise on his arm. He would fancy himself Richie’s battered wife.
Eddie had talked Dana Cortez into skating “Last Dance” with him. This was easy since it was known throughout school that Dana wanted to get into Eddie’s pants. Eddie on the other hand, was always fond of saying to the other boys that he “liked a challenge” and that boffing Dana would be too easy, like “shooting fish in a barrow”. Jake never had to heart to correct his malapropism and, indeed, secretly wished that the others would see his stupidity. But, Now. Now that Jake was picked for Ladies’ Choice, he had to prove that he was still the Alpha Dog. He skated the whole song trying to tongue Dana’s ear between ineffectual slaps from her tanned hand. She tried to contain her joy at finally reeling Eddie in at the same time she genuinely looked to be, at least to Jake, not enjoying the attention. Jodi, however, did like the attention. She skated with her arm around Jake, under his outer shirt and over his “BRAT” shirt; hand tucked firmly into his left pocket. Jake had skated with his arm around her, holding her like a fine piece of china, firmly yet delicately, in reverence to the beauty in his grasp.
The song ended and most of the couples slid silently to a standstill, necking, talking closely to one another’s ears and making plans for, at least, the very near future. The lights flickered from soft, pulsing, moody cross-lighting to the harsh worklight incandescents overhead. The whole place went from cozy nightspot to drafty warehouse in the flick of a switch. To Jake the breaking of the illusion was shamefully abrupt. The killjoy was the bleating goblin in the duct-taped blue vest, ushering the couples off the floor with his quick circling and low, gruff delivery of:
“Fun’s over, take it off the floor.”
Feet back safely in their Pumas and Adidas, the boys walked from the dark corridor next to the skate window and out into the afternoon brightness. Another line had formed beside the stucco wall. This crowd was older and, accordingly, was dressed like whores and their pimps. Scott and Alex, exiled since their scuffle, stood apart from each other at the edge of the street shivering and waiting for the rest of the boys to rejoin them. Eddie kissed Dana one last time and took the small piece of paper she proffered to him. Jake walked Jodi to her aunt’s station wagon. She pulled a felt-tipped Bic Banana pen from her purse and took up Jake’s shaking hand. He pulled it away and wiped the sweat on his pants and gave it back to her. She cradled it gently in hers and turned it over. In swirling open script, she wrote her name and phone number across Jake’s plump palm, dotting the “I” with a cute little heart. When she finished, she blew on it like a mother tending to her child’s first-degree burn. The caress of cool air across his hot flesh sent waves of electrical static through his body. She hugged him softly, lingering just slightly. He ran his hand across the back of her satin baseball jacket, feeling the bump of her bra strap. She turned and got in the waiting Ford LTD.
“Who’s your girlfriend?”, a friendly yet taunting voice came from behind Jake.
He turned and saw his sister, Denise. She was standing next to a suede-coated Dean who was leaning against the stucco with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Denise was smiling broadly behind her blue eyeshadow. She always smiled around Dean. Ever since he put her ten-speed on top of Jenny Toma’s garage, she knew they were fated to be together. When asked, Dean said he did it as a joke. But, in reality, it was more because he didn’t want her to leave. Jake agreed it was a brilliant ploy; take away her mode of transportation and she was powerless, a modest turn on what Stalin did to Hitler’s troops. It was an excellent ruse. It also explained why Dean drove everywhere they went.
“Her name’s Jodi Bon”, Jake said, hardly containing his joviality.
“Like Bon Scott, lead singer for AC/DC”, Dean chimed.
“Yeah”, Jake answered.
“Cool”, Dean said and tousled Jake’s hair, messing up his intricate part.
“Is that my shirt?” Denise tried to pry open the front of Jake’s jacket. “What are you doing wearing my shirt?”
Then she tousled Jake’s already misshapen hair and forced a dollar into his fist.
“Here. We’ll talk about this when we get home. And, don’t let that Stephens punk make you spend that on cigarettes”. She said this as she plucked the cigarette from between Dean’s lips and dragged on it, making it hard for Jake to take her seriously.
He looked over toward the edge of the road where the boys stood waiting for him. He ran over to meet them.
“Man, your sister’s a Fox”, Eddie asked. “I’d do her.”
“Shut up. She’s my sister.”
“No Shit, Rotundo”, Eddie then thumped Jake on the top of the head with a knuckle. “I wouldn’t fuck her anyway. ‘Cause that’d make you and me related.”
Eddie gave a violent shudder, laughed one loud braying snort and crossed into the left-turn lane of 14 Mile Road. Rubbing his head, Jake fell in behind the rest of the flock.
* * *
Twenty minutes into their walk home, the boys finally crossed Massoit and turned the corner onto South Martin. Each one was chomping furiously on the Bubbalicious Bubble Gum Eddie had given them to cover the smell of the cigarettes.
Jake bent down to tie one of his Kmart Traxx shoes. He was often doing this because, unlike the rest of the boys, he couldn’t quite tie the cheap nylon laces so they would hold a knot for any length of time. Some kids tied them once and they lasted he whole damn day. Jake, if he got a good knot that would stay, he’d take the shoes off without untying them and then slip them on the next day by cramming his foot into them. This wore the cheap nylon and vinyl shoes out quicker. His mother was forever complaining about how hard he was on shoes, even trying to get him to double-knot the laces but, double-knotting was for fags and girls. So, he was forced to straggle behind the rest of the boys because, like most self-absorbed teens, the group never would have the common decency to ‘wait up’ and walked on without him. Eddie looked back at Jake. When Jake looked up, he saw Eddie break off his whispering into Morris’ ear. Morris bobbed his head in agreement as did Richie. Alex looked at Jake and then diverted his glance forward. Scott stared straight at the ground, almost too concerned with where he was walking. Jake quickened his pace into a jog and joined them.
“What’s up?”, Jake asked. “What are we doin’?”
“I gotta go in. If I don’t sweep my Mom’s ceramic shop we can’t get Taco Bell.” Richie, moaned in that familiar tone, the tone that he always used when referencing anything to do with going home.
“My Dad’s probably looking for me”, Morris said, mimicking Richie’s blues riff timbre.
“I’m going in, too. I’m hungry”, Eddie said. Jake knew this meant that both Carson brothers would go home, too. What Eddie did; so did they.
“Aawwh, Man”, Jake groaned. He was riding a hormonal high and didn’t want it to end. This premature close of the day’s festivities was definitely wrecking Jake’s testosterone buzz. Richie was already ascending his front porch stairs. Morris was sullenly creeping up his driveway. Alex and Scott began to walk vaguely in the direction of their house.
Jake was still cresting the wave of happiness of having not been one of those sad unlovable boys forced to remove their skates to the tune of “Last Dance”. He had engaged in that act many times before, each time vowing to himself that next time he’d be out there on the floor skating to it. Each time he heard the song, he heard it as a lament of huge proportions. It added an edge, a sting to the finality of the end of the afternoon. Its melancholic bitterness of lost opportunity penetrated deeply into his tiny heart with each refrain. But, this time he heard it as a last grasp at happiness, a glowingly opportunistic aria on the transitory nature of love. Ms. Summer’s song was transformed from a torchy, achingly soulful dirge to an orgiastic call for hedonism. Jake had finally grasped the song in all its subtleties and was reveling in both his intellectual and emotional growth as a result.
“Jodi’s pretty hot.” Eddie said. Jake turned slowly toward him smiling.
“Yeah”.
“No need to thank me.” Eddie said as he started toward the side door the brick-faced bungalow his family owned.
“What do you mean?”
Eddie turned to look at Jake, “You don’t think she asked you to skate on purpose?”
Momentarily, Jake lost focus on everything in front of him. Not so much as a visual focus, but more a mental focus. It was as if what he firmly knew as sharp truth had swum into a fuzzy blur the instant Eddie finished his thought.
“What?”
Eddie edged closer to Jake. “I told Dana to tell her to ask you to skate during Ladies' Choice.”
Eddie turned and started up the driveway. Jake bit into his cheek to keep his grasp on his bearings. At the door, Eddie turned.
“You’re welcome”.
Jake stood frozen in the Old Polks’ House driveway apron as he watched the side door whisk shut behind Eddie.
It was a lie. Jake knew it. Jodi was sincere. If anything felt awkward or stiff it was because she was as emotionally confused as Jake was. She was haltingly groping her way around something that was new to her. She was not faking it. She wasn’t.
Or, was she? When you replay every nuance. Every nervous hand brushing her hair from her face. Her eyes darting about the rink. Her sudden bursts of laughter for no reason. Certainly not because of anything funny that you said. No. You had rightly perceived her mime-like performance, because that’s what it was, a performance.
But, his sister had seen it also. She saw something that automatically culled to her mind the word “girlfriend”. She saw the way Jodi looked at her little brother. Not like a friend who was a boy, but as a boyfriend.
Jake slowly walked up the uneven, crumbling, cement steps and opened the rusty whining screen door to his house. He pushed his way in through the front door. The dry heat blasted his face. His mother always kept the heat cranked high from the first of September until Memorial Day; occasionally opening all the windows for a few minutes at Big Jake’s request to “Blow the Stink Out”. Those times were the only respite from the merciless onslaught of manufactured heat.
Jake peeled off his coat and settled down on the floor next to the heavily curtained picture window that faced the street. He sat, arms clasped tightly around his knees, and rocked back and forth. The heat was too much for his already heated face. The hairs on the back of his neck were slick with sweat and he started to stand to retrieve a cold washcloth from the bathroom. He supported his weight on the windowsill and paused there. He leaned his face through the drapes turned his head and touched his right cheek to the cold glass. This comforted him. He sat back down and turned his other cheek to the glass. The heat started to dissipate. The sweat on his neck started to wick away. He moved his face along the glass to search for new cold spots. He turned his head and placed his forehead to the pane.
That’s when he saw Richie hop the fence into Mrs. Dunbar’s backyard.
Richie stood for a second, cast a sharp glance toward Jake’s house and ran behind the mint green clapboard bungalow across the street. Out of the corner of Jake’s squinting eye, he caught a flash of red. Four houses down, squatting behind the Owens’ Impala, Jake could make out the sleeve and hand resting on the trunk of the Chevy and he recognized it as belonging to one Morris Shuler. Jake scanned the backyards of the houses across the street. He locked on Alex as he followed his brother through the rear of Mr. Rutherford’s vegetable garden. Scott paused just long enough to hike up the waist of his pants and continued on his trek out of Jake’s field of view.
Jake head was swimming. He shook it and focused on the side door to the Old Polks’ House. The inside door came open, but no one came out. From around the back of the house, crouched behind the back end of Eddie’s father’s Olds 88, came Morris. He leapt toward the screen door, pulled it open and was in. Richie was next. A short while later, Alex came stumbling around the corner, for Scott had surely shoved him, and turned back to punch at the unseen Scott. Scott then came barreling around the corner, hugging the siding and walking, bent-kneed. A moment later, Alex followed in the same fashion and the door started to close behind them. They were all now safely in Eddie’s Game Room, stripping off their coats, wrestling over the Atari joysticks or calling dibs on the Spirit of ‘76 pinball machine. As the door slammed shut, Jake could barely make out the dim features of Eddie Stephens’ angular face. He was looking directly at Jake’s house and he was smiling.
Jake stood, his thighs throbbing more from the emotional shock of the day’s events than from four hours of roller-skating. He walked to the bathroom.
Standing at the pedestal sink, he looked directly into his own face. There he saw what they all had seen, a poor retch trying to rise up above his standing. He saw his plump face, embarrassingly red with blotches. His eyes pathetic little slits. His stringy, sweaty hair sticking to his forehead in clumps. The beginnings of a zit, red and swollen, forming at the corner of his mouth. In his disgust, he contorted his face even more, making it more ugly and shameful than before. The sight of his own face made him want to vomit. He could feel his gorge rise and recede, sickly sweet Coke spilling up onto the back of his throat, never quite reaching full retch. He steadied himself on the vanity and waited for the aftershock to subside.
He straightened himself and turned his hand over. Jodi’s name and, placed neatly under it, her number stood out boldly from the milk-white flesh of his palm. The dark looping script mocked him. The thick heart over the thin upright of the “I” had smudged to become almost black. The full circles and curlicues of the six and the eight stared back at him like empty soulless eyes.
Jake flipped the hot and cold taps on. He grabbed the thick wet, gelationous, family-size slab of Dial that rested in the slick and crusty soapdish. He grabbed his brother’s coarsely bristled nail brush and ran it under the water, dragging the brush through the soap until the tines were filled with yellow sudsy sludge.
Placing his hand palm open on the lip of the vanity, as if in preparation to sever it from his arm in punishment for it having offended him, he paused there staring at it accusingly. Whether it was fact or fiction, there was no simple, clear way to tell. Calling her out and risking the pain of truth was not a direction in which Jake was prepared to go. Synapses fired wildly causing a burning hollowness to fill his chest and boil the contents of his stomach. Hot stinging tears welled in his eyes as the thought of what he was about to do came home.
Jake spent the next ten minutes washing Jodi Bon’s telephone number from his hand.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
(five) Ladies' Choice
(five) Ladies’ Choice
The boys rolled over the short, matted carpet of the roller rink seating area and lined up in front of the pop machine, feeding quarters and dimes into the slot and reaching their hands through the plastic door to retrieve the little 10 ounce paper cups filled with super sweet Coke. They chewed the crushed ice and crumpled the cups, banking them off the carpeted wall into the trash can at the end of the snack area.
The boys were buzzing not only from the caffeine but also with expectation of what they knew was coming. At exactly half way through the skating period, the remaining four boys--Alex and Scott were ejected for fighting and were probably next door getting eggrolls and Hot and Sour soup served by the fawning, plump Chinese waitresses at Liu’s Palace--skated passed the sign that read “No Food or Drink Beyond This Point” into the bench area on the skating floor that ran between the cinderblock wall emblazoned with large silhouettes of skaters of various ages and an iron handrail. This was the place where all the cool kids smoked. This was the place where you sat to be watched. This was the line up from which most of the girls chose their skating partners for:
“Ladies' Choice”, the voice blotted out the last strains of Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil”.
“Ladies' Choice. All men off the floor. ”
Eddie sat on the wood bench sucking on beginning of a second straight cigarette, his posture loose and relaxed. Morris was at he end of his first and Richie and Jake split one between them, both aping Eddie’s manner in a sickly deferential way. No matter how hard they tried, a twitchy hand or an unconsciously bouncing knee belied their performed Cool.
Girls skated awkwardly by in clumps, pointing toward the bench. Occasionally, one would slide from the pack, point at one of the boys on the bench and curl her finger toward her with an unpolished sensuous charm, at times seductively ambiguous, other times ungracefully desperate. The equally desperate boy would duck under the iron rail and skate into position next to the girl, arm around her waist, face bent to her ear. Jake assumed that the conversation between the two would probably be an endless riff of complements from both sides:
“How’d you get your hair to feather that way?”
“Those Sergio Valentis look great on you”
“You’re one Stone Fox”
“You’re one Macho, Macho Man”.
Then the girl or the boy would switch positions and skate backwards so they could look at each other better and get closer. Some of the other more classless boys would purposely fall, pulling the girls on top of them in a cheap move planned not only to look chivalrous by breaking her fall but to cop a feel while doing so. Some of the couples would slowly drift into the middle of the floor, stop and begin to make out, dry hump or otherwise simulate sex. Then the whistling gnome in the John Deere hat and the threadbare blue vest would skate through and make them ‘Keep It Moving’.
A small herd of girls from Royal Oak, most likely--not one of the boys recognized them as belonging to Clayton-- skimmed by. One of them, a shorter, brunette with light freckles scattered across her plain face and under her deep brown eyes, broke from the covey of giggling girlflesh and steered toward the boys’ spot on the bench. Eddie rose slightly in his seat, prepared to accept the girls offer, tossed his butt to the floor and rolled one of the wheels of his skate over the coals. He started to stand as the girl held out her hand. On his way up, he froze in his place.
Her tiny bracletted hand was pointed right at Jake.
Jake took the shrinking cigarette from Richie. Richie nudged him and he looked up.
“You.”, said the little rollerchick.
“Hunh.”, Jake puffed out the smoke he was holding in his mouth and handed the butt to Richie. Jake knew that the girl was not talking to him, but he listened intently anyway.
She smiled into Jake’s blank face, “Yeah, you. Brat.”
Jake blinked twice and turned just in time to see Eddie sink back into his seat. He was confused. What exactly was happening? What did the girl want? Morris and Richie were looking at Jake with such glee as if they had been chosen as well.
She wants you, you sad fuck. Not Mr. I’m-so-fucking-cool-I-piss-ice-cubes Eddie. You. Now get the Hell out there and make all these assholes jealous.
A smile spread across Jake’s face. In one smooth motion he went from a seated position, under the rail, to standing beside the brunette.
“Ladies' Choice”, echoed one final time through the hall and the opening piano phrase of “Desperado” by The Eagles began to drift from the speakers. Jake threw a glance back at the boys lining the bench as he made his way into the enflux of paired skaters. Morris and Richie were smiling broadly and Eddie was looking, arms crossed, toward the mirror at the end of the rink.
* * *
“Jodi”.
“Hunh?”
“My name’s Jodi”, she smiled into Jake’s broad face. “What’s yours?”
“Jake. My name is Jake”.
“Like The Blues Brothers”, she laughed.
“Exactly”, Jake said.
“Can you skate backward?” Jodi asked. Jake shook his head back and forth, his center-parted hair falling across the sides of his forehead. The fact that he didn’t know how to skate backwards was a black mark of shame, a hole in his character. This was a social faux pas, an embarrassment, like not being able to lead while dancing or not knowing where the salad fork goes in a table setting.
Jodi took action, moving in front of Jake. She wore a pair of orange-red hip-hugging cords that flared below the knee. On top she wore a tight, peach-trimmed cream-colored T-shirt with an iron-on transfer of Shaun Cassidy grinning from between her blossoming breasts. To Jake, the atmosphere surrounding him seemed to throb and hum. He suddenly wanted to stand behind something taller than waist-high and drink something very cold. However, stuck in the middle of the parquet in a mass of sweating, moving moistness, he was unable to do anything. He breathed in the humid air deeply and rode the feeling.
She was from Royal Oak. Her cousin, the blonde girl grinding her crotch into an eighth grader Jake’s sister use to babysit, was Dana Cortez, a girl from Jake's school. Jodi loved unicorns, rainbows, Donna Summer, The Bay City Rollers and all things Shaun Cassidy. She smelled like her mother’s Charlie perfume and very sweet Sprite.
Jake was taken by her almost uncanny resemblance to his next oldest sister. Not Kay, the one who smoked like a fiend and couldn’t get enough of crossword puzzles, but Denise, the one who changed her clothes between ten and twelve times every schoolday morning before she ran out the door to the cherry-red 1974 Firebird where her boyfriend Dean was waiting to take her to her last year of high school.
Jake thought that while Jodi did resemble his sister, this was definitely not his sister. Denise had long lost her interest in Holly Hobby figurines and rainbow colored unicorn statues. She was a modern, sophisticated woman. She traipsed off to the latest AC/DC or Aerosmith concert or stayed out late watching horror movies at the drive-in; the tales of which would take up most of the next morning as she told them to Jake over a big bowl of Cap’n Crunch, or his arch-nemesis Jacque La Feet, cereal. With nauseating detail she would explain what little plot there was and gloss over some of the more intricate deaths. Jake would listen attentively, soaking in the choppy, disjointed narrative and filling in the gaps with his own imagination. Occasionally, when she was in a good mood, Denise would convince Dean to take Jake along. Jake was the only one of his group of friends to have seen John Carpenter’s classic Halloween twice on the big screen. Jodi wasn’t a fan of horror movies, even though she lived right down from the Oak drive-in where, if she wanted to, she could walk into her back yard, climb on to the roof of her garage, and watch any number great horror movies, free of charge.
Jake looked into Jodi’s eyes and smiled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just...the light off the mirrorball makes your hair look red.”
“Do you like it?”, she said, tilting her head down and casting her eyes up into his face. She had all the moves down right, but they seemed a bit like mime to Jake. He had seen his sister Denise do this a hundred times to Dean and each and every time brought with its saccharine charm a sick vomitous feeling to his throat; it was calculated, insidious, manipulative. Now, on the receiving end, he could see it’s power; coy, playful, and warmly inviting, yet still with a slight hesitance that showed it’s mechanical nuances. It was more a representation of flirtation than actual flirtation.
“Yeah. It looks Foxy”. Jake winced at his use of this word. He knew that foxes were dirty little woodland creatures that Englishmen killed for sport and in no way resembled the budding woman in front of him. The comparison made little sense to Jake. He thought maybe the phrase alluded to the female’s imminent wiliness. Jake was raised in front of a television to believe that coyotes were wily not foxes. But, Jake knew the term for girls not blessed with the delicate features of a Hummel figurine, or those who were deemed physically repulsive were called “Coyote Ugly”. This meant that if you had the sad misfortune of waking next to one with your arm trapped beneath their head, you’d probably chew it off to escape the risk of waking the hideous beast. However, in Jake’s estimation, the coyote was far and above the fox in grace and beauty; silhouetted against the full moon’s glow, howling its doleful lament into the indigo sky, voicing its plaintive report to a listening God. Meanwhile, the fox ate rats and stole eggs from hapless chickens, perhaps killing them in the process. The coyote may not have been the best looking species of Canus family, but he was resourceful; the fox was nice to look at but sneaky and self-centered. But, regardless of the awkwardness that this paradox imparted to his delivery of the complement, the girl blushed a healthy translucent pink. And, she smiled deeply, the kind of deep dimpled smile normally scene on joyous babies. Jake tried to grasp at an explanation of the emotions that were coursing through his body like caffeine, but when no answer came near the truth, he relaxed into the confusion and marveled at its wonder.
The boys rolled over the short, matted carpet of the roller rink seating area and lined up in front of the pop machine, feeding quarters and dimes into the slot and reaching their hands through the plastic door to retrieve the little 10 ounce paper cups filled with super sweet Coke. They chewed the crushed ice and crumpled the cups, banking them off the carpeted wall into the trash can at the end of the snack area.
The boys were buzzing not only from the caffeine but also with expectation of what they knew was coming. At exactly half way through the skating period, the remaining four boys--Alex and Scott were ejected for fighting and were probably next door getting eggrolls and Hot and Sour soup served by the fawning, plump Chinese waitresses at Liu’s Palace--skated passed the sign that read “No Food or Drink Beyond This Point” into the bench area on the skating floor that ran between the cinderblock wall emblazoned with large silhouettes of skaters of various ages and an iron handrail. This was the place where all the cool kids smoked. This was the place where you sat to be watched. This was the line up from which most of the girls chose their skating partners for:
“Ladies' Choice”, the voice blotted out the last strains of Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil”.
“Ladies' Choice. All men off the floor. ”
Eddie sat on the wood bench sucking on beginning of a second straight cigarette, his posture loose and relaxed. Morris was at he end of his first and Richie and Jake split one between them, both aping Eddie’s manner in a sickly deferential way. No matter how hard they tried, a twitchy hand or an unconsciously bouncing knee belied their performed Cool.
Girls skated awkwardly by in clumps, pointing toward the bench. Occasionally, one would slide from the pack, point at one of the boys on the bench and curl her finger toward her with an unpolished sensuous charm, at times seductively ambiguous, other times ungracefully desperate. The equally desperate boy would duck under the iron rail and skate into position next to the girl, arm around her waist, face bent to her ear. Jake assumed that the conversation between the two would probably be an endless riff of complements from both sides:
“How’d you get your hair to feather that way?”
“Those Sergio Valentis look great on you”
“You’re one Stone Fox”
“You’re one Macho, Macho Man”.
Then the girl or the boy would switch positions and skate backwards so they could look at each other better and get closer. Some of the other more classless boys would purposely fall, pulling the girls on top of them in a cheap move planned not only to look chivalrous by breaking her fall but to cop a feel while doing so. Some of the couples would slowly drift into the middle of the floor, stop and begin to make out, dry hump or otherwise simulate sex. Then the whistling gnome in the John Deere hat and the threadbare blue vest would skate through and make them ‘Keep It Moving’.
A small herd of girls from Royal Oak, most likely--not one of the boys recognized them as belonging to Clayton-- skimmed by. One of them, a shorter, brunette with light freckles scattered across her plain face and under her deep brown eyes, broke from the covey of giggling girlflesh and steered toward the boys’ spot on the bench. Eddie rose slightly in his seat, prepared to accept the girls offer, tossed his butt to the floor and rolled one of the wheels of his skate over the coals. He started to stand as the girl held out her hand. On his way up, he froze in his place.
Her tiny bracletted hand was pointed right at Jake.
Jake took the shrinking cigarette from Richie. Richie nudged him and he looked up.
“You.”, said the little rollerchick.
“Hunh.”, Jake puffed out the smoke he was holding in his mouth and handed the butt to Richie. Jake knew that the girl was not talking to him, but he listened intently anyway.
She smiled into Jake’s blank face, “Yeah, you. Brat.”
Jake blinked twice and turned just in time to see Eddie sink back into his seat. He was confused. What exactly was happening? What did the girl want? Morris and Richie were looking at Jake with such glee as if they had been chosen as well.
She wants you, you sad fuck. Not Mr. I’m-so-fucking-cool-I-piss-ice-cubes Eddie. You. Now get the Hell out there and make all these assholes jealous.
A smile spread across Jake’s face. In one smooth motion he went from a seated position, under the rail, to standing beside the brunette.
“Ladies' Choice”, echoed one final time through the hall and the opening piano phrase of “Desperado” by The Eagles began to drift from the speakers. Jake threw a glance back at the boys lining the bench as he made his way into the enflux of paired skaters. Morris and Richie were smiling broadly and Eddie was looking, arms crossed, toward the mirror at the end of the rink.
* * *
“Jodi”.
“Hunh?”
“My name’s Jodi”, she smiled into Jake’s broad face. “What’s yours?”
“Jake. My name is Jake”.
“Like The Blues Brothers”, she laughed.
“Exactly”, Jake said.
“Can you skate backward?” Jodi asked. Jake shook his head back and forth, his center-parted hair falling across the sides of his forehead. The fact that he didn’t know how to skate backwards was a black mark of shame, a hole in his character. This was a social faux pas, an embarrassment, like not being able to lead while dancing or not knowing where the salad fork goes in a table setting.
Jodi took action, moving in front of Jake. She wore a pair of orange-red hip-hugging cords that flared below the knee. On top she wore a tight, peach-trimmed cream-colored T-shirt with an iron-on transfer of Shaun Cassidy grinning from between her blossoming breasts. To Jake, the atmosphere surrounding him seemed to throb and hum. He suddenly wanted to stand behind something taller than waist-high and drink something very cold. However, stuck in the middle of the parquet in a mass of sweating, moving moistness, he was unable to do anything. He breathed in the humid air deeply and rode the feeling.
She was from Royal Oak. Her cousin, the blonde girl grinding her crotch into an eighth grader Jake’s sister use to babysit, was Dana Cortez, a girl from Jake's school. Jodi loved unicorns, rainbows, Donna Summer, The Bay City Rollers and all things Shaun Cassidy. She smelled like her mother’s Charlie perfume and very sweet Sprite.
Jake was taken by her almost uncanny resemblance to his next oldest sister. Not Kay, the one who smoked like a fiend and couldn’t get enough of crossword puzzles, but Denise, the one who changed her clothes between ten and twelve times every schoolday morning before she ran out the door to the cherry-red 1974 Firebird where her boyfriend Dean was waiting to take her to her last year of high school.
Jake thought that while Jodi did resemble his sister, this was definitely not his sister. Denise had long lost her interest in Holly Hobby figurines and rainbow colored unicorn statues. She was a modern, sophisticated woman. She traipsed off to the latest AC/DC or Aerosmith concert or stayed out late watching horror movies at the drive-in; the tales of which would take up most of the next morning as she told them to Jake over a big bowl of Cap’n Crunch, or his arch-nemesis Jacque La Feet, cereal. With nauseating detail she would explain what little plot there was and gloss over some of the more intricate deaths. Jake would listen attentively, soaking in the choppy, disjointed narrative and filling in the gaps with his own imagination. Occasionally, when she was in a good mood, Denise would convince Dean to take Jake along. Jake was the only one of his group of friends to have seen John Carpenter’s classic Halloween twice on the big screen. Jodi wasn’t a fan of horror movies, even though she lived right down from the Oak drive-in where, if she wanted to, she could walk into her back yard, climb on to the roof of her garage, and watch any number great horror movies, free of charge.
Jake looked into Jodi’s eyes and smiled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just...the light off the mirrorball makes your hair look red.”
“Do you like it?”, she said, tilting her head down and casting her eyes up into his face. She had all the moves down right, but they seemed a bit like mime to Jake. He had seen his sister Denise do this a hundred times to Dean and each and every time brought with its saccharine charm a sick vomitous feeling to his throat; it was calculated, insidious, manipulative. Now, on the receiving end, he could see it’s power; coy, playful, and warmly inviting, yet still with a slight hesitance that showed it’s mechanical nuances. It was more a representation of flirtation than actual flirtation.
“Yeah. It looks Foxy”. Jake winced at his use of this word. He knew that foxes were dirty little woodland creatures that Englishmen killed for sport and in no way resembled the budding woman in front of him. The comparison made little sense to Jake. He thought maybe the phrase alluded to the female’s imminent wiliness. Jake was raised in front of a television to believe that coyotes were wily not foxes. But, Jake knew the term for girls not blessed with the delicate features of a Hummel figurine, or those who were deemed physically repulsive were called “Coyote Ugly”. This meant that if you had the sad misfortune of waking next to one with your arm trapped beneath their head, you’d probably chew it off to escape the risk of waking the hideous beast. However, in Jake’s estimation, the coyote was far and above the fox in grace and beauty; silhouetted against the full moon’s glow, howling its doleful lament into the indigo sky, voicing its plaintive report to a listening God. Meanwhile, the fox ate rats and stole eggs from hapless chickens, perhaps killing them in the process. The coyote may not have been the best looking species of Canus family, but he was resourceful; the fox was nice to look at but sneaky and self-centered. But, regardless of the awkwardness that this paradox imparted to his delivery of the complement, the girl blushed a healthy translucent pink. And, she smiled deeply, the kind of deep dimpled smile normally scene on joyous babies. Jake tried to grasp at an explanation of the emotions that were coursing through his body like caffeine, but when no answer came near the truth, he relaxed into the confusion and marveled at its wonder.
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