Fuckness (10 page)

I waited for him to vanish out of sight and pulled around the hedgerow, wheeling toward Drifter Ken. I could tell he didn’t know who the hell I was when he first saw me coming. He looked hard and squinted those huge eyes. His top lip raised up and I could see those teeth getting bigger and bigger as I pulled closer to him. I was sure Drifter Ken dreaded new kids coming around the park. That was just someone else to go home and tell warped malicious lies about him.

Finally he recognized me.

“
Hey hey, Wally Black! How’s my favorite eighth grader?”

“
I’m okay. How are you?”

“
Oh, I’m doin all right, I guess. If the fuckin cops’d get off my back I’d be doin a helluva lot better. Why don’t you tell me somethin to brighten up my day. School done started. You got time today, ain’t ya?”

“
A little, yeah,” I said.

“
Well, shoot then.”

I did have the time, sure, but I didn’t really have a joke in my head. I improvised with the first thing I could think of.

“
Knock knock.”

“
Who’s there?”

“
Beats.”

“
Beats who?”

“
Beats just forgot his name.”

Drifter Ken cracked up. “Now,” he said, “that was pretty good, a real classic, but the next time you say it, I think it’s s’posed to be, ‘Beats
me
, I just forgot
my
name.’”

“
How could someone forget their own name?”

“
Beats me.”

We both laughed at that, Drifter Ken reaching down and poking me on the shoulder. That’s what he always did when he got to laughing—reached right down and gave me a good jab. For some reason, that always made me laugh harder. This time it kind of hurt.

“
Say, you gotta setta wheels.”

“
Yeah.”

“
You get paralyzed or somethin.”

“
No, just a little sore.”

“
Oh yeah, what happened?”

I really hadn’t expected to have to explain what happened to anybody. I kind of fell silent for a while, searching for the answers to that question. I wanted to just give him a summary, tell him a few things. He probably wasn’t interested in hearing all of it. But the more I tried to assemble a few logical events, the more they came apart, making little sense.

I broke down and told him everything. I realized I’d been dying to tell somebody, probably because I didn’t think anybody would actually ask. I broke down a lot, like when I had the crying jags at school sometimes and Pearlbottom would drag me out into the hall. But usually when I broke down, I never
told
anybody anything. I could never find the right words. This time felt a lot different. I found myself becoming fluid, I wanted to make him
see
everything that happened and then I thought that wouldn’t make a lot of sense either if I couldn’t also make him
feel
what I was feeling at the time. Sometimes it felt like I carried this giant weight around. Sometimes I visualized like a giant rock or cement block. Other times, it felt like a huge sad wave of melancholy. Whatever it was, it inevitably came down on me, crushing me into innumerable pieces, that feeling of yellow-purple soulhurt emerging from the rubble. That feeling had loosed itself on me as I stood there talking away.

Drifter Ken listened to everything, towering above me and sucking away on those Camels. Throughout me telling him this, he became my audience. I realized a little bit of what Bobby DeHaven must have felt, except mine was just an audience of one. I guess, in a way, Drifter Ken had always been my audience but, before, with the jokes, I always felt like I was trying to entertain him. Not only that, but the jokes were always something somebody else had made up or some fuckness like that.

When I got finished, I stopped and waited for what Drifter Ken would say.

He was silent for a moment and then he said, “Well, that Mary Lou’s a real cocktease. And that Bucky Swarth, well, he sounds like he’s got some real weight problems. And sometimes people with weight problems get real mean and hateful. You know what to say to him if he gives you any more shit? You say, ‘I bet your tits is bigger’n Mary Lou’s.’ That oughtta make him real mad. Someone’s gonna beat the shit outta you like that, you gotta get smart and fight back with your tongue. If they’re gonna do it anyway, you might as well give em a reason to do it.”

Drifter Ken always gave me the best advice. When most people gave me advice, it was just a polite way of telling me what to do. I always got mad when someone tried to tell me what to do and then I’d make damn sure not to do what they asked me. This usually, in turn, made them mad for not listening to them. People only told me what to do so their lives would be easier, anyway. It never made me mad when Drifter Ken gave me advice.

“
I’m real sorry about tradin that sucker for nothin.”

“
Aw, that’s okay, I can get you another sucker. Besides, it doesn’t sound like it weren’t for nothin. You gotta quick feel of that snatch didn’t ya?”

I didn’t know what he meant. Given a few moments, I’m sure I could have figured it out. I’d just never heard it called that before.

“
Her privates, boy. You gotta quick feela them didn’t ya?”

In my crying jag I must have told him
every
little detail. I thought I’d left that part out. I nodded.

“
Then it weren’t for nothin. You remember what that felt like and I’ll tell you this now: the woman’s snatch is a powerful thing. You’ll feel its power for the rest of your life. Shit, a
sucker
. You should be lucky
all
you lost was a sucker. I’ve lost a house and two kids to the power of that fuckin thing.”

I imagined one of those women on the television spreading her legs and sucking objects into that patch of hair. Only, it hadn’t felt like there was much hair on Mary Lou’s.

“
You say those horns is some kind of punishment?”

I nodded.

“
You think your mom’d get mad if I take em off?” Then he paused, chuckled, and said, “I guess that doesn’t matter much now, does it?”

“
Guess not,” I said.

“
Well, where ya goin?”

“
I don’t know. I have to leave Milltown. I think I’m gonna try and go see my Uncle Skad over in the Tar District. After that, I’m not really sure. I gotta get out of Milltown.”

Drifter Ken smiled. “Ah, the Tar District.” Then he became serious. “You be careful in those parts. We’ll be sorry to see ya go round here. But a man’s gotta do whatta man’s gotta do.”

Yeah, fuck it, I thought.

“
So why don’t you let me take those foolish things off?”

He reached under my chin and I could smell his hands. They smelled like one of the mother’s ashtrays. Smelling ashtrays had been a hobby of mine a few years before. Like a lot of other things about myself it was something I couldn’t really explain. It was merely another frivolous desire in a life of necessity.

The skin got pinched up in the buckle as his giant fingers unfastened it.

“
Here we go,” he said and pulled the strap through the buckle. Then, “Holy shit.”

“
What?”

He reached out and slapped at the left horn. His hand made a dull sound like
whap
and I felt my scalp twitch, the horn tugging against it.

“
What?” I repeated, fearing the worst.

“
Hate to tell you this, but it looks like them horns might just be stayin on a little longer.”

I broke down and started crying again. At that moment, I really did feel like a demon. A giant horned demon. If it wasn’t the strap holding those things on, then I figured it must be some other force. I reached up and felt the sides of my head. My worst fear had come true. The straps were nowhere to be felt. They had vanished. Simply disintegrated. I was sure that had to mean I was evil. It had to be some kind of punishment from God or something. That made the evil a little more meaningful. I mean, I’d been called evil by all sorts of people but I just kind of dismissed it. This felt like God had finally ordained me as a certifiable demon.

I was able to compose myself and ask Drifter Ken, “Do you think I’m a demon?”

“
Naw, you’re a real sweet kid. There
are
demons out in that world though, and I think one of em mighta put his horns on you.” I hadn’t really thought of it like that. Weren’t there saints who got struck with stigmata?

There were a few moments of silence, Drifter Ken taking deep drags off his cigarette, staring off at the horizon. “Hey,” he said, “they look fine. They give you a sort of…
ostentatious flair
you ain’t never had before. Not that you wasn’t fine before but they add…” he groped for the right phrase. “Shit, they’re like a new pair of shoes or a fancy shirt of somethin. Maybe a pair of tight pants. They’re just… unconventional, that’s all.”

I liked the sound of “ostentatious flair.”

“
Really?” I asked.

“
Yeah. They’re kinda neat. Make you look tough.”

That made me feel a little better, seeing them in this new light. After all, if some magic or force had made those straps disappear, didn’t that mean there was also some kind of
good
magic out there?

“
You know,” Drifter Ken said, “one time I had a melanoma—it’s like a huge moley growth of some kind—growin on my forehead right between my eyes. When I had that thing I always walked aroun feelin embarrassed as shit so I finally saved up enough money to go have that motherfucker lanced. They did it and I looked perfectly normal afterwards but I kind of missed the growth. I kind of missed the people lookin at me, you know. At least I was known for somethin.”

I figured he probably made that up just to make me feel better. I couldn’t see Drifter Ken with a giant thing growing off his head. That just wasn’t him. Besides, I didn’t really want to be known for anything unless it was going to be something glamorous like dancing for Bobby DeHaven or some fuckness like that. I appreciated his attempt to cheer me up, anyway.

Suddenly, I was overcome with the feeling that I was running out of time. The doomwave unexpectedly surged over me and I remembered one of the reasons I had come by the park in the first place.

“
I’ve gotta be gettin outta here,” I said. “Say, uh, do you happen to have some matches I could have.” I hated asking for things. I never minded people giving me things, but I absolutely hated having to ask for them. I’d go around for the rest of my life feeling like I owed that person something. But I was running out of time and I knew I might never see Drifter Ken again and what I needed
was
an absolute necessity.

“
All I got’s this one lighter. I tell you what, you let me light one cigarette with it and I’ll just keep on lightin the next one from the one before. That way you can take the lighter.”

“
What if one of your cigarettes goes out?”

“
I’ll be fine. You consider that a goin away present.”

He lit his Camel, bent down, and gave me a hug. I was glad he gave me a going away present. Now it felt like I
had
to get out of Milltown.

Chapter Nine

Burning Down The House

I got back to Walnut in no time at all. I stayed on the opposite side of the street from the house. If an outsider paid any attention to the cars lining the street, they might think they were living twenty years ago. An abnormal amount of the cars had the cardboard temporary tags taped to them. Most of the cars would expire before the thirty-day tags. I guess I kept to the other side of the road to further dismiss myself from the house. I didn’t have to worry about the parents catching me.

I still had this paranoid feeling like maybe
somebody
was looking for me. Like the school or the police or something. It was ridiculous, of course. The parents rarely left the house so they didn’t really have anywhere to be missing from and I knew the school would probably rather not have me there. I knew for a fact, when I was absent, Pearlbottom never reported it.

My mind started playing tricks on me again. I didn’t know why it wouldn’t just leave me the fuck alone. I began to think maybe the parents weren’t really dead. After all, how much faith could I actually place in my mind? Wasn’t it just that morning that I had imagined them alive?

I remembered the note the mother had slapped onto my chest.

I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper.

Something had been written on it, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

Not that I really had anything to worry about, anyway. They kept all the blinds drawn and usually only came outside to get the mail in the evening. Even to do that, all the mother had to do was open the door and stick a meaty hand outside. Racecar couldn’t get the mail, of course. He couldn’t reach it. And I knew they wouldn’t be on the lookout for me. At least not very actively, anyway. Racecar would say something like, “The little shit gets what he deserves.” And the mother would strumble, “If he thinks I’m gonna quit my stories to look for his sorry demon ass, he’s got another thing comin.”