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crazytymeThis story may contain adult content. |
| Written by mike counselman | |
| Wednesday, 20 August 2008 | |
CrazyTime By Mike Counselman
I could feel their eyes watching me. Even with my head down I could see them laughing. Leering and smirking as they watched me role up my tools for the last time. I slammed them into the back of the wagon. Yeah, laugh *************, laugh your asses off. You think you gain at my loss? You're too stupid to realize you're being screwed just like I am. **** YOU!! Idiots, assholes, I have half again your I.Q., yet you're still working while I'm going home. But you pay for it. I may be broke and unemployed, but I haven't kissed any ass lately, have you? I've eaten plenty of **** though. Oh yeah, my share and then some. You thought it was hilarious when I was getting all the lousy jobs. Doing all the houses that didn't pay enough to even make the bills. What a loser the new guy is. "He's dying on that house", you said to each other. I can do your job, can you do mine? I know you're laughing. I can see it, I can feel it. Sorry, there's no work for you here. Bullshit. I can see the work, there's just none for me. And I know you, Andy. You're like every other foreman I've ever known, an equal mix of ******* and arrogance. I can just hear you. "Hey, sorry Mark, maybe if you'd have sucked up a little better, maybe brown-nosed more, you'd still be working too. Oh, and you bitched about the prices too much. Ten years as a carpenter and you're only making ten dollars an hour. Boy, you really are a loser. Yeah, I know these piece-work prices are impossible for anybody to make money on. But you've gotta' understand something, I don't care. I'm making my nut and taking care of my buddies. I don't really give a **** whether you like it or not, you're nothing to me. It's My Way or The Highway, guy. If you don't like it, take a hike. There's another swinging dick right behind you just waiting to be stroked. Just remember, I don't care." Would you care if I held the barrel of that sawed-off shotgun under your chin, Andy? Would I suddenly be a better carpenter with four pounds of finger pressure between you and tomorrow? Would you **** with me then, Andy? I don't think so. You're one hell of a foreman, but you're not much of a man, are you? It was right there under the seat of the wagon. That sawed off J.C. Higgins pump. Six rounds in the magazine, and a whole fistful of shells rattling around in the glove compartment. When did I put it there? A week ago, two weeks? I remember cleaning it, but I don't remember putting it under the seat. But I know it's there. I smelled the gun oil on the way to work this morning. I reached down and touched the cold steel. It was ugly and beat-up; illegal as hell, but the action was smooth enough to eject a shell from just the weight of the fore piece. Like the .45 Colt in the gear bag, it was a well maintained weapon. Am I being paranoid, or are they really laughing? I tried to be friends. My work is good, I'm reliable, what am I doing wrong? Nothing, absolutely, positively-fucking nothing. I know the truth. I just don't play your silly game, do I? No, Andy, you're not the best carpenter I've ever seen. And when you **** up, I can't resist shoving your nose in it a little bit. Just a little payback for all the times you've made me crawl. Made me eat your **** just because I needed this job. Well, I guess I don't need it now, do I? Cause it's gone, ************, you just jerked it right out from under me. So what's left? The bank repoed my truck and I'm forced to drive this piece of **** station wagon. My wife took the kids home to her mother, and you're getting a big kick out of watching me roll up my tools in front of everyone during lunch. How funny is a funeral, Andy? How funny would it be to your widow and kids? You think ******* with my life is a big joke. How funny would it be if I messed with yours? It's right there under the seat. A twelve gauge, fuel-injected, joke machine, just waiting there, ten steps away. The ultimate ******* punch line. Here comes your kiss-ass buddy, the guy you gave my job to. You're not laughing at me are you Dennis? You are, you ****. I can't stand it. God I can almost feel the recoil. You're first, even before Andy. I can't wait to see the look on your face. How about a twelve gauge enema, Dennis. I'm gonna' do it. You bet your ass. One more thing and that's it, I'm gonna' nut up. Please, just one more thing, just give me a reason to pull that pump-action persuader from under the seat. "You sure there's nothing I can do, Andy?" I plead. Oh yeah, smirk you bastard, I want it bad, give me a reason. Come on *******, give me a reason. "Nope, no more work." "What about the stairs on lot 40?"
"They're covered; you can pick up your check at the office." "Bullshit, you been milking it since you got here. You're lucky I'm not back charging you. Now clear out."
"That's it Doc, after that everything gets pretty fuzzy." Dr. Elliott looked at me for several long seconds, not saying a word. I like to use these pauses of his to study his face. I think it bothers him, and I like that. After all, how good a shrink can he be if the best he can do is a state job in this arid backwater. You can see the answer in his face. A fine network of red veins crisscrosses his nose and cheeks, like the wine was trying to seep its way back out. And the scraggly beard, a graying affectation almost universal among middle-aged psychiatrists. I think somewhere along the line, the good doctor realized he was a poor practitioner of a sham science, and was doomed to spend the rest of his life scared to death that someone else would find out. Of course he doesn't believe me. After five years of therapy Dr. Elliott can tell when I'm lying. Certainly I remember the rest. I remember every exquisite detail. It was my fifteen minutes of fame. But if I tell them, I'm stuck here for the rest of my life, and I don't think I can stand that. It's the damn wind. You ever heard of Vacaville, California? To be more precise, The Vacaville State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The nut house. I'd never heard of it either, until that gavel banged down, and the next thing I know, I'm in the armpit of Hell. In the summer, when it's 110 degrees in the valley, the wind rushes through this narrow slot in the foothills like Satan's own blast furnace. The grass covered hills that surround it are green for about a day and a half in the spring, then they're seared to a parched brown by the evil wind. I refuse to go out into it. Last summer, I didn't leave my cell for twenty-eight days. That's how long the wind blew. I stuffed towels around my doors and windows, but still it found me. I slept rolled up tight in every blanket I could find, but I could feel it creeping up my spine, turning the sweat that streamed off my body into ice. Ice so cold I could feel the bloody rivulets it scored down my back. I hate the wind, almost as much as I hate this place. But as far as remembering, Dr. Elliott knows, and I know, and Andy eventually knew, that he had finally ****** the wrong dude. It ain't that I'm so bad; it's just that the bad don't **** with me. Ha, ha. That's a joke you know. I'm actually the calmest person you ever met. It's just a matter of how much do you take? That's what I was trying to get across to Doc Elliott. Somebody had to take a stand, and somehow, I knew I'd been elected. How else did you explain the shotgun and the pistol in the wagon? A sane, hard-working carpenter would certainly have never done such a thing, so obviously an outside committee had selected me to take a stand. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I come from a dysfunctional family where my parents were abusive both mentally and physically. My father was an alcoholic whose incestuous behavior with my sister left me unable to form a normal bond with the opposite sex. My mother was a co-dependent enabler whose own childhood affected her ability to show love. I was sexually abused as a child and suffer from suppressed memories of this trauma, thus rendering me unable to make rational decisions affecting myself and those around me, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, blah, blah, blah. More psycho-babble. Sounds pretty good though. Sounded good enough to keep me from swinging from the neck until dead, dead, dead. Even though they don't do that anymore, it sounds better than breathe this poison gas until dead, dead, dead, or take this **** in your veins until, well, you get my drift. Actually, I come from a very normal and boring little family living out their quiet desperation in southern Marin County. Close enough to visit on weekends, if they ever wanted to. Big brother Sam had come once when I was first placed here, but that was only to vent his own anguish about how I had disgraced the family and that I deserved everything that I got. He finished up by spitting in my face, and that was the end of my family values. Did I say a normal family? Let me qualify that a bit. They were no more twisted and screwed up emotionally than anybody else's family. The more I talk to people, the more I realize that we're all nutso in our own little ways. Every family has that errant gene that everyone's aware of, but nobody dares to acknowledge. The one that caused Uncle Johnny to throw a hammer off the roof and bean his brother in the head. Uncle Tony was never quite the same, but over the years it turned into just another funny, family story. Or brother Jimmy's fascination with butterfly collections. It evolved into a fascination with war, until he volunteered to go to Vietnam as a helicopter door gunner. Those guys' life expectancy was measured in hours. Talk about life in the killing jar. But Jimmy thrived on it, and after two tours of duty, he wasn't the same Jimmy who'd left California. Now he sits up their in the foothills with his gun collection and his dogs. Last time I was up, he had nailed his Purple Heart medals to a tree, and was using them for target practice. Claimed the damned Agent Orange had damaged his liver, and the damned government wouldn't do anything about it. Then he took a big swig off the Jack Daniels bottle next to his chair, and spread bullets in the general direction of the medals. Having said that, I have to admit that I was the worst of the lot. I discovered drugs at an early age, and it was like that clang you hear when they lock the bar across your lap on a roller coaster. I was locked in and moving. Eyes wide open and both hands stuck high in the air. I had finally found something I was good at, and I went to it with a vengeance. In six weeks I went from my first toke on a joint, to slamming heroin in a crowded, dirty apartment with Junkie Joan and her husband. But even before the drugs, I knew I was different. Way different. As a boy, I had a paper route. Six days a week the Sacramento Bee was an afternoon paper, but on Sundays, it arrived in the morning. The normal paper boys had their alarms set. They'd rise at four a.m., and fold and deliver their papers. As they were wiping the sleep from their eyes, I was delivering the last paper of my route. Unlike the others, I stayed up and watched T.V. until Geoff Wong's midnight horror movie would drag its last scream from the set. Sometime between one and two a.m., the Sunday papers would appear on my porch with a heart rending thump. I'd fold and deliver them in the total stillness of pre-dawn Sunday, and then pedal to Rusch Park. I would sit on the banks of Cripple Creek, as unmoving as the shadowed mass of the oak tree that I leaned against. An amazing assortment of wildlife prowled this urban waterway, and one morning I chanced upon some kind of migration of frogs. Thousands of the tiny creatures covered the banks as I arrived in the graying dawn. They hopped out of the dew-wet grass by the hundreds, making their way in waves to the edge, where they jumped in and were carried away by the meager current, tiny bumps on the surface of the water. I jumped up excitedly; eager to share this miracle with someone else, but the park was empty. I settled back on my haunches and watched the parade of frogs. After about fifteen minutes, the steady flow diminished to a trickle, and I went back to where I'd dumped my bike in the wet grass. As I picked it up, my hands slid off the handle bars like they were slicked with oil. I tangled my legs in the strings that secured the bags for the papers, and down I went, soaked instantly by the wet turf. Then I felt the wiggling. It squirmed and squashed underneath me. A feeble motion that made its way up my sleeves and past the cuffs of my jeans with a cold wet crawling. I leaped up, brushing tiny frogs from my hair and face. I could feel them inside my clothes like cold, slimy hands reaching from the grave. I panicked, trying to rise and felt a sickening wet crunch under my tennis shoes. I slipped and sprawled full length back into the second wave of amphibians. They were everywhere, crushing wetly under my bare hands. I dragged myself out of the gore, and ended up sobbing against a chain link fence. How long I sat there, I don't know, but as the sun came up the frogs disappeared. With the coming light, I could see the flattened grass around my bike, and the crushed carcasses of the dead frogs. Several still moved feebly in their death throes. I could still feel their cold flesh against my skin. I crushed every one I could see under the heel of my shoe. The more I looked, the more frogs I saw. Not like during the night, but still there were literally hundreds of stragglers. I stomped through the grass in a mad dance, feeling their bones crush like damp popcorn under my feet." Die, die, die", I chanted, as I snatched them up, slinging them hard against the far bank, where they shattered and twitched. That's how Mrs. Flint found me that morning. Covered in blood and screaming in the middle of several hundred dead frogs. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me home, my bike forgotten. Later when I went back to get it, there wasn't a sign of the night's horror. But Mrs. Flint had told my parents and the neighbors about the scene in the park that morning, and the deranged neighbor boy. My parents tried to ask me about it, but I could tell they were uncomfortable. There was talk of seeking counseling; I heard them discussing me through the thin walls of the apartment. They both agreed that it was just a phase, but perhaps we should keep a closer eye on him. They really didn't know what to think. Big brother Sam had his expected reaction and called me a freaking' pervert. Said if I ever harmed an animal again he'd pound me. Cleveland Amory would have been proud. I really couldn't explain it myself. That evening, lying under the warm covers, I remembered the cold death-touch of their skin on mine. The little bastards deserved everything they got. Nobody else had felt that graveyard clamor. I'd do it all over again. I don't remember my dreams that night, just that they were vague and bloody. I do remember that I woke with the first hard-on of my life. Something inside me had awakened. Dr. Elliott scribbled furiously after that session. Nothing like sex to fill a shrink's notebook. I remember how he settled back; eyeing me over the cloying sweet clouds of smoke he puffed out of his carved pipe. Another affectation, this man was a walking cliché. "We're making real progress here, Marcus, real progress," he said, toking on that idiotic pipe, He liked to call me Marcus, though I'd told him repeatedly, my given name is Mark. I didn't say nothing, letting him gloat on the idea that he'd dragged this bit of angst out of me. I could have told him how Dr. Loli Sergo had heard the same story twenty something years ago, right after the puppy episode. It certainly shocked my parents into forgetting all that "going through a phase" bullshit. And at the time, it felt good to finally tell someone how I really felt. Of course they locked me up afterwards, so I never made that mistake again. But at the time, it seemed like a good idea. Dr. Loli, she made me call her that, said I had repressed aggression, and a birth-order anomaly that resulted in jealousy of my siblings. I still don't understand why that made me chop the puppy's legs off, but she said it had something to do with having no power in my life. Hey, you try being the youngest of four kids and see how much power you have. Maybe she was right, though, if Don Rickles had grown up in our house, he'd have been the nice one. The problem was everyone was too smart and too competitive. A simple game of Monopoly turned into a rules interpretation marathon requiring Supreme Court intervention. The card game "Hearts" was ruled off limits, after brother Jim "shot" seven times in a row, losing every time, and growing more bitter and stubborn every time. "Trivial Pursuits" was nearly cause for a fistfight as my brothers and sister argued ephemeral trivia. It was a madhouse. Okay, speaking from experience it wasn't, but it was close. No one ever called us a tight-knit family. My older brother and sister were a generation apart. For some reason my parents had chosen to have two births in rapid order, and two more some six years later. Brother Jimmy and I were the second pair. Born a year and eight months apart, we were as totally opposite as the Ying and Yang. Jimmy typified the Germanic stereotype of our heritage. A totally cold and unfeeling introvert, who demanded order in everything. He of the butterfly collection rigidly pinned and labeled to the cork. Even before Vietnam, he was a total war nut. We all built models, us three boys, but Jimmy's were by far the best. Where mine showed smeared fingerprints in the glue, and crooked decals, Jimmy's were razor sharp. And always military. Aircraft at first, but later he built incredibly detailed tank dioramas. So lifelike you could almost hear the roar of that huge 88mm cannon on the panzers. The troops were barely an inch and a half tall, yet the tiny SS lightening strikes on the collars stood out distinct and clear. The pinhead sized eyes contained both the pupils and the whites, all painted with a steady hand and a brush containing a single hair. They were incredible. I quickly lost interest in model building. Big brother Sam was a different breed of cat. Where Jimmy was cool and calculating, Sam was as impulsive as they come. He'd do anything on a dare. He embodied that bad joke of a red-necks last words, "Hey ya'll, watch this." And he always seemed to lead with his head. Of course, it could have been my folks' experiments in parenting. Hey, they had to learn somewhere; Dr. Spock was still in high school. Thankfully, they'd stopped banging heads against the wall by the time Jimmy and I came along. But Sam was a different story. When Mother's experiment with home haircuts was in full swing, his too close flat-top would reveal a road-map of scars. The six years difference in our ages made him a distant and revered figure. By the time I was old enough to be aware; he was out of the house. But I have certain flashes, vignettes if you will, of him playing with us when we were young. I remember flying down our dirt road, inches above the ground, hanging on for dear life as he broad-slided the go-cart he got for his birthday. I remember him tossing us through the air in some kind of acrobat game. And then he was gone. Off to college at Humbolt State. Seen only in the summer, and then in an old Victorian house that had been rudely chopped up into four apartments. His always reeked of incense and the sweet smell of marijuana. And his girlfriends wandered about in casual nakedness. Heady stuff to a 16 year old socially retarded brother. When he asked me to watch his place one week end, it had been a near equal battle between terror and joy. Terror at being alone in this slum with his strange neighbors only a walls thickness away, and joy at the freedom, the lack of supervision. I had a bachelor pad for the weekend, complete with waterbed and Sansui stereo. Not that I did anything with it. Like I said, I was socially retarded, a virgin until I was 18. But I could have done something, I felt so bohemian. But back to the first thing that led to my being institutionalized; the puppy episode. On Easter Sunday of 1969 I was 13 years old. My sister, two years older than brother Sam, was home for the holidays, bringing along her boyfriend of the month. I actually thought this one was pretty cool; he played the guitar and harmonica, and knew the words to every song ever written. I knew something was up the moment they pulled up in that noisy VW van. I was out front and Bonnie rushed past me, diving out of the van before it even stopped. Tom, the boyfriend, was right behind her, and he threw an arm around me, turning me away from the van. The shock of a total stranger touching me caused a momentary brain shuffle. We were not a real touchy-feely family. But he guided me inside where Bonnie had Mother and Daddy cornered in the bedroom, just out of earshot. A heated discussion was taking place, with me the major subject. Ultimately, after much discussion and head nodding, they all smiled at me. Tom, the familiar stranger, spun me around and out the door. Back at the van, I heard a whining and scratching, and out tumbled a Lab puppy, as black as midnight. "For me," I exclaimed, unbelieving. "I can keep him?" They all just laughed as that black bear of a puppy knocked me backward onto the lawn, all tongue and puppy-smell as he licked my face. "But you've got to take care of him." My mom and dad said in unison. Looking at each other and bursting into laughter at their harmonized cliché. "Just think of this as an early birthday present," Bonnie said, " And you've got to promise Mother and Daddy, that they won't end up taking care of it. That's part of the deal. Agreed?" "Agreed. Anything. You mean I can finally have a dog? You won't ever have to do anything, not even once. I promise." Of course within a couple of weeks my mom was feeding it, and the only interaction I had was when I had to gather the crap the puppy had strewn all over the back yard. I named the puppy "Ace", but my Dad's name for him was more accurate. "Old Chewndig." Cause that's all he did. If the garage door was left open for a moment, Old Chewndig would have all the laundry in the yard. A particular favorite was Mother's underwear, and he'd neatly chew the crotch out of every pair he got his paws on. And of course I got blamed every time "my" dog destroyed something else. I came home from school that day to find the back yard decorated with dirty laundry and Ace hiding in the garage thumping his tail guiltily in the dark. I dashed about snatching up the laundry and cursing that damn mutt with every piece. Mom would be home any second, and I'd get my ass reamed again for something this useless animal did. He followed me around the yard at a safe distance, with a dense look on his face. Stupid ******* dog. I thought I had the last piece, when I spotted something white far back in the planter. I grabbed up a hoe and fished out my little league jersey from under the bushes. Smeared with dirt, it had both armpits chewed to rags, ruined. I stood there unmoving, hoe in one hand, tattered remnants of my uniform in the other. In my head I heard the tirades by my Dad about how we weren't made out of money, and when he was a kid they played baseball without some damn uniform and were better off for it, and if I didn't take damn good care of it, it was the last damn time he'd ever shell out for any of this bullshit. And here it was, after one losing effort on the field, not even enough left for a decent rag. I turned to see the puppy slinking away, tail between his legs. I held out the jersey, my hand shaking and my knuckles white. "You want this?" I said, through clenched teeth, that red pounding, deep and solid in my brain. "You want to play with this?" He sidled a couple of more steps away, and stood there shivering, afraid to move. I heard the car door in the driveway, and realized there was no covering up this time; this ruined jersey was the end of my baseball experience. Blinded by rage, I swept the hoe in an arc, cleaning all four legs out from under the puppy. He yelped and rolled trying to regain his footing, but I was too quick for him. I swung the hoe high overhead and brought it down aiming to crack the damn dog's skull. My aim was off just enough to open a gash on his nose, and bury the blade in the joint of his foreleg. The dog screamed as blood gushed from his nose and leg. You could see muscle and tendons convulsing as he struggled to stand, pushing himself in a circle in the bloody grass. As he spun, I chopped again and again with the hoe, hitting with uncanny accuracy on the spinning legs. In seconds the pup was a bloody torso with three legs nearly amputated. I remember kneeling to get a better look at the severed joints. It looked exactly like the chicken legs Mother cracked and separated when she was cutting up a fryer. Like the frog episode, afterward, I felt totally spent, and slept for the next twelve hours. When I woke this time though, there was something warm and sticky on my sheets and belly. The puppy was gone too. But you could still see the bloodstains in the grass, despite my parents constant rinsing with the hose. Oh, and instead of going to school the next day, I made my first visit to a mental hospital. I guess my folks figured out maybe it wasn't just a phase. I spent the next three months in a "group home" with eight other "troubled teens." It was a very structured environment where an angry adolescent could work out his problems in a caring atmosphere. At least that's what the pamphlet said. In actuality, it was like any other lock-up. Ninety five percent boredom and five percent bullshit. We did get counseling. Every day we cycled through Dr. Loli's, or someone like her's office, and lied our asses off. It took me about a week to get over how good it felt to have someone to talk to. When I told the truth about how I felt, everybody changed. They did try to hide it, after all, they were supposed to be professionals, but I could see that they looked at me differently. And my prescription to Librium was upped until I spent most of my time in a stupor. So I spent three months in a kind of somnambulant vacation, and arrived back home just as school was letting out for the summer. The official family story was that I'd spent three months back east helping my sick grandmother, but everybody knew. I tried going to the new pool at the park when it first opened, but the taunts were intolerable. The crossed eyes and finger circled around the ear. I finally gave up and spent that hot summer reading and building bad models in my room. It was also the summer that Bonnie and Sam both moved out. Bonnie to U.C. Berkeley, and Sam to Humboldt. They never said it, but I know they wanted to distance themselves from me. The general populace seems to think at the least mental illness is contagious, but they're sure it's hereditary. After that long lonely summer, things were never quite the same. The world took on a glassy hardness, with invisible lines. Me on one side, and the real world on the other. But I coped. I kept my head down and didn't voice any opinions I hadn't heard someone else say first. My own thoughts were strictly my own, never to be shared. At least that's what I thought until I met Julie. It was the summer of my junior year, and I discovered drugs and Julie on the same day. Every day I spent lunch period in the library, eating my sack lunch and reading. On this Monday, the library was closed for inventory so I headed off campus to a wooded area next to the school the stoners called "Zulu Land." Heavily overgrown and marshy, the brambles had climbed into the lower branches of the oaks until they formed a solid ceiling. These bramble caves were the local party spot and were littered with beer cans, Zig-Zag packages, and used condoms. I found a quiet corner away from anybody and got absorbed in my book. I vaguely heard the bell for the second lunch, but since I had an open period next, I ignored it. A few minutes later I heard branches scraping on cloth, and the murmur of whispered voices. I silently closed my book and pushed as far as I could back into the bushes, willing myself to invisibility. But it was too late. I could tell they were following the same tunnel that dead ended where I sat. They were as surprised as I was when they rounded the corner and saw me pressed back into the bushes. Two girls and a guy. I started to say something, but one of the girls covered my mouth and whispered close to my ear. "Shhh, Old man McCorkle's right on our ass. Don't move." I froze, not because of Vice-Principal McCorkle, but because of the nearness of this girl. She sat so close that her thigh was pressed up against mine, and I could feel the tips of her hair brushing my arm. I'd never been this close to a girl my own age, and it was overwhelming. She smelled of patchouli and bubble-gum, and when she turned to whisper something to her friend, her breast grazed my arm. I thought I was going to pass out. We sat like that for frozen minutes while McCorkle crashed through the bushes all around us. Every time the two girls would look at each other, they'd start to giggle and slap their hands over their mouth to stifle the sound, only their eyes laughing. Then Julie crossed her eyes, and this set every one else to laughing under their hands. When we finally heard McCorkle leave, we collapsed in a paroxysm of laughter and cramping muscles. "Whew, that was close," Julie said, collapsing back on the trampled earth. "He was right on our butts." Now that the emergency was over, I could feel the blood starting to rise in my face. I was never good with strangers, and now I sat in this tiny clearing with three of my peers. I'd have walked away if they hadn't been blocking the only exit. I recognized Steve Solich from my P.E. class, but the girls were strangers. "You're Mark Merrit, aren't you?" he said extending his hand. "Yeah," I said shaking his hand. "We have P.E. together next period." "That's right," he said, "This is Kim," he said pointing to the blonde holding his hand, "And that's Julie. Ladies, this is Mark Merrit." Julie shook my hand; her's feeling tiny in my awkward grip. "I've seen you around school," she said, "But I had no idea you were a closet stoner. Speaking of which." she said elbowing Steve. "Fire it up." I didn't know what to say. They'd missed the book, and assumed I was there for the same reason they were. Steve produced a crudely rolled joint and lighter from his sock, and lit it. He took a huge hit, and held it until his face started to turn red. "Hey Bogart," Julie said, snatching the joint from his hand. "Save some for us." She took a more modest hit, and passed the joint to me. I stood staring at it. Things were happening too fast. Five minutes ago, I'd been my old introverted self, now I was about to share spit with total strangers. When was the glass curtain going to come crashing down, where was the rejection. "Don't let it go out, man." Kim said, "I want to get STONED." I took a small hit and passed it over, holding the smoke in my lungs the way the others did. Around and around it went, with little talk as we tried to hold our hits as long as we could. Each time it came to me, I took a little bigger toke. By the time it was getting to a roach, I was starting to feel warm and fuzzy. I started to take another hit and felt the glowing cherry bite into my finger. "Yeow," I said, dropping the roach, Julie snatched it up where it lay smoldering in the grass. "Who needs roach clips, when you got these," she said holding it to my lips with her long nails. For the second time that day I felt her soft breast brush my arm. With the joint gone, everyone settled back and enjoyed the buzz. Kim snuggled closer to Steve, and he pushed her back in the grass, letting his hands roam her body while he buried his tongue deep in her throat. Embarrassed, I looked away. I caught Julie watching me, and felt my face starting to flush again. "You blow my mind," she said, looking me square in the eye. "We all had you pegged as a total nerd, then boom, here you are out in Zulu. Did ja' get a buzz?" Yeah, I had got a buzz. For once the world had lost its hard edge and taken on a soft focus. I sat talking casually to a beautiful girl, while total strangers were damn near fornicating within reach. No glass curtain, no anxiety attack. This is what they should have prescribed in the hospital. Where the Librium had pushed me farther into myself, the pot had freed me. I had found the answer. "Definitely, yeah definitely, Uhh, you wouldn't know where I could get anymore would you? My guys' out." "You're not a narc, are you?" she said suddenly wary, "Cause if you are, and I ask you, and you lie, that's entrapment, man." "No, no, no, I'm no narc." I said too loudly. "Look, I'm sorry, I know it's uncool since we just met, but that was good ****, I'm just looking to score." I felt like I was reciting lines out of Mod Squad, I knew zero about pot, except now I knew that I liked it, and wanted more. "No," she said, smiling again," I don't think your a narc, you're to cute to be a narc." I swear my heart stopped. If I hadn't been loaded, I know the earth would have just swallowed me up. She was actually flirting with me. "I can get you a lid from my brother's stash. Just meet me here tomorrow and bring ten bucks." " ****," Mark said, looking up from where he had Kim pinned and panting in the grass. "Was that the first bell or the second?" Dimly, I heard the electronic bell buzzing from the school. "First," I said, glancing at my watch, "But we better haul ass if we're gonna' be dressed down in time for P.E. Coach'l have us running laps til dark." Together, we burst from the bushes and sprinted our way across the wind rippled field. I hung back enough to watch the way Julie's hair flowed in the breez It was funny, but when she died, everything died except her hair. Her eyes died in a vacant stare, her skin grew cold and pale, but her hair, that beautiful mane, looked just as stunning in death as it did that first day. I can still see it in my minds eye, flowing on that spring day. She had been beautiful. How can I describe the weeks in between? Perfect, normal, neither is adequate. For once, I fit in. For the first time in my life, I had friends. And I had the weed to thank for it. Julie scored me that first lid, and one a week until the day she died. **** the library; I spent every lunch at Zulu Land. The Fab Four met every day in that clearing. Drugs were my ticket to normalcy. We dropped acid, and spent endless hours wandering the woods around campus. We dawdled at a creek for what seemed ten minutes on the way to Julie's house, only to find her in a panic three hours later when we'd finally made it. I remember thinking that if I cut my leg open; all I would find would be brown straw, like a scarecrow. It was all Steve could do to keep me from slicing my leg open to find out. And the creek was flowing backward, against the current. But through it all, there was Julie. Long brown hair, those beautiful green eyes, and that figure, every time I saw her it took my breath away. She'd started a small, but spectacular ritual every time we met. She'd fling her arms in the air and cry my name like it had been months instead of hours since we'd last seen each other. She'd run towards me and fling herself into my arms. The first time, I almost fell over backwards, but after that I relished the feel of her in my arms, and would spin her around until she would plant a dizzy kiss on my lips, and demand to be returned to earth. I would comply, but in a slow and gradual fashion, savoring the feel of her as she slid down my body. It was these little things, these teases that finally got to me. For instance, the first time she kissed me was when her old boyfriend walked by. The way she sat in my lap in the darkened classroom during movies, the way she flung herself at me in the hallways. But if I tried to go beyond the boundaries she'd set, the goddamn prick teaser would grab my hands. Or when we were making out in Kim's basement rec room, she let it build up until I had such a raging hard-on that I'd have to leave. The ***** would innocently kiss me good-by as I hobbled down the step trying not to trip over my dick. She knew it, dammit, she did it on purpose. I think it was only in those last few moments, with my hands around her throat, that she realized her mistake. I think she tried to say something about it and I saw the change in her eyes, she knew she shouldn't have teased me and I really think she was sorry, but by then it was too late. The ***** should have thought of that sooner. The way she treated me, she deserved everything that she got. It's ironic, that the first place we met was also the last place we'd meet, until I see that prick teasing ***** in hell. Nobody had any weed that day, so I had to stand in front of a liquor store until some rummy agreed to score us some booze. I'd asked him to get us a pint of bourbon, but the dumb **** brought out peppermint schnapps. It pissed me off but what could I do? Then Kim and Steve got caught cheating on a test, and ended up doing detention during lunch. That left me and Julie alone out in Zulu with her in a bad mood and me half drunk with the rest of the bottle of sickly sweet schnapps. I tried to make the best of it, but no, she'd have nothing to do with it. She took one tiny sip of the schnapps and made a face. "Why didn't you get bourbon?" "I told you that's what I asked for, what'd you want me to do, take it in and exchange it?" "I don't care, that shit's terrible." She lay down in the grass, and I scooted over next to her, letting my hands run over her shoulders and down to her stomach. Carefully skirting the edges of her breasts, yet inching closer with every circuit. She let me do this for several minutes, gently returning the kisses I laid on the nape of her neck. When at last I let my hand gently cup the curve of her, she stiffened and snatched my hand away. "What are you, a ******* animal? How many times do I have to tell you no? You're drunk, and your breath is like peppermint hell. I'm going back to class." She started to gather up her stuff and adjust her clothes. Then I saw it. She tried to hide it behind her hand, but I saw it. That damn smile. She did it on purpose, let me get all heated up and then cut me off. Damn her, damn her, damn her. She started to leave and I hooked her foot. She went sprawling in the dead leaves, the contents of her purse spreading in a wave as she lost her balance. The ***** came up screaming. "You *******! You dick, look what you did." She started to pick up her ****, her tirade unrelenting. "You're crazy, everybody was right, you are ******* crazy. To think I ******* defended you when they told me those rumors. You're a ******* nut." It took a second for the words to sink in. At first I hadn't been listening, but now I couldn't hear anything else. That old red spot began to grow in my vision and her words became an unintelligible buzz in my ears. I could see her mouth moving and the angry "v" between her eyebrows, but I couldn't understand a word. As soon as I realized that she knew everything, it all changed. She was no different than the rest. She knew about me, and suddenly everything had changed. The glass curtain hadn't disappeared, it had just risen higher and higher until it loomed impossibly huge and suspended by nothing but lies, and now, with nothing to hold it, it came smashing down with incredible force, making a mockery of the last few weeks. What was I, her ******* charity case? No wonder she never let me get past first base. Yeah, let's tease the psycho. Prick teasing *****. God another ******* setup. She was still screaming, but it was really weird. I couldn't understand a word. Just that mad keening buzz in my ears, and the tunnel vision. Her face fixed in a blood red frame, the world gone except for her, and she hated me. I could already hear her telling Kim and her other girlfriends how she'd made a fool out of the freak, but right now I just wanted her to shut up. She leaned over to pick up her mascara from the dirt, and in slow motion, her hair brushed the edge of my hand. I watched my hand take a wrap of that beautiful mane, and to my surprise, slam her face into the trampled ground. In my limited vision I saw the look of terror on her face and the trickle of blood from her nose. The second time I watched my hand jerk her face to the ground, I think she realized her mistake. Where's that smirking smile now, *****? She really started to fight me then, and I had to throw my legs across hers to keep her from jumping up and running. She was a lot stronger than I expected, and now her screaming was right in my ear. Just shut up, shut up, shut up! My free hand found her long beautiful neck; I watched my fingers bury themselves deeply. Mercifully, the screaming dropped to a low gurgle, and the buzz in my head started to ebb. My hands squeezed tighter, and the red haze enveloped us both. I woke minutes later with both hands sunk deeply into her neck. I had to massage them both just to get enough feeling back to arrange her clothes and that beautiful hair into a fan around her face. If I draped it around her neck just so, it covered those ugly purple marks. When I had her just right, I gathered up my stuff and barely beat the last bell back to class. We were playing soccer that day, and my team won by three goals. I still remember the look on my mothers face when the cops came to our house that night. I heard her timid knock on the bathroom door, and barely had time to cover myself before the door was pushed open by two large police officers. I don't think she said a word as they let me pull my pants up and dragged me to the waiting cruiser. It's funny, Julie was almost 16 years ago this month as I sit here writing this. Half my life. Yet it's as clear as a bell to me. And Ol' Chewndig, and the frogs, I remember with crystal clarity. But I couldn't tell you what I had for lunch yesterday. My sister can remember every teacher she's had from first grade through college. I can remember one, Miss Gibbs, first grade. But I can tell you exactly what Julie was wearing the day she died. There was an embroidered flower on the left hip of her bell-bottoms. And I can tell you exactly how many steps Andy ran before that first blast ruined his knee. Three. That's how long it took me to eject the shell that had Dennis sitting in the middle of the road; trying to stuff his guts back in and chamber one with Andy's name on it. I thought I'd loaded the first two rounds with No. 6 bird shot, but I think one of the buck shot loads must have snuck in there the way it took Andy's leg almost clean off. The ricochets peppered Andy's truck, and I think I saw Reuben, the fork lift driver, diving out of his seat. I really couldn't see very well. That familiar red haze had set in, and that sonorous buzz was in my ears. But that was good, it let me focus. Andy scooted across the new asphalt, his leg leaving a thick trail of blood. His femoral artery must have been ruptured, because a fountain of blood spattered the asphalt to the sides of the main flow. When I got close enough to see him with my blurred vision, it was almost comical. His baseball hat was skewed sideways, and a lock of wispy blond hair was down across his eyes. He looked like a scared ten year old. Where was the big bad foreman who'd taken such delight in tormenting someone he barely knew? When I got close, I knelt down and put my mouth next to his ear. "Andy, oh Andy." He curled into a ball and laid shaking and moaning there in the street, his hands over his head. The rest of the world ceased to exist. It was only me, and Andy, and that old familiar buzzing. I sensed the guys gathering around us, but they were like ghosts, unreal. The only reality was me and Andy. I'd have been dead meat for any of the twenty guys with hammers watching Andy's final scene, but nobody moved. I forced the barrel of the shotgun through his clenched fists and used it to lever his chin up. "Open your eyes, Andy. Come on, look at me. " He clenched tighter, his mouth working as he screamed something at me. I couldn't hear a damn thing through the buzzing in my ears. But I know he could hear me. He had to hear me. "Andy, Andy, open your eyes now." I shoved with the shotgun and his head bounced off the pavement, a bloody O appeared where the barrel had bit into his chin. His eyes flew open. "That's better. Now Andy old buddy, you didn't really mean that **** about firing me did you?" He shook his head frantically. "Good, good. I didn't think so. But Andy, it really doesn't matter, cause I quit." As I said the word, those rebellious hands of mine pulled the trigger, and then for good measure pumped two more rounds into Andy's now headless corpse. Pretty much pulped it. I remember getting in Andy's truck and making a circle of the cul-de-sac, past Andy's body and the soon to be corpse of Dennis, holding his guts in his hands. As I turned, my tunnel vision swept the crowd of stunned carpenters like a search light. They parted enough for me to slowly drive away. As I hit the freeway, "Freebird" came on the radio, and I turned it up until the speakers rattled. I just drove, the music in my ear and Andy's blood drying on my hands. I must have left the shotgun in the cul-de-sac, cause when the cops finally pulled me over, the only weapon I had was the .45 which I threw out the window as soon as they stopped me. What the hell would you do with ten cops drawn down on you just waiting to finally use their weapons? As I expected, my troubled past kept me from any real justice. I guess that's why Andy's father spit on me after the hearing. I tried to explain that it was his son's own fault. He'd finally ****** with the wrong dude, but he didn't seem to want to hear the truth. Just like every other time, I was pushed until I couldn't stand it any more. But today, for the first time in, I get to leave the facility. Dr. Elliot has convinced the board that it would be a good thing for me to go to an "Oakland A"s game. And I'm ready. I got my hat, and my shirt, with the home team, and I got that ice-pick I stole from the kitchen. With the handle removed, it fits perfectly in my anus. And I know for a fact that the good doctor will have to accompany me to the bathroom. It's nothing personal; it's just that I refuse to spend another night in hell when it was her own damn fault. If the frogs hadn't crawled up my sleeves, if the damn dog hadn't chewed up my jersey, if the ***** hadn't been such a prick teaser, if Andy had treated me with just a modicum of respect, maybe Doc Elliot could have been saved. But as it stands, if this works out, and you meet me on the street, Maybe you ought' to be nice. Be seeing ya.
Mike Counselman
Copyright 2008 mike counselman |
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