Mad Boys (15 page)

“Slight miscalculation on my part,” Royal said. He reached into his shirt, and pulled out a thin, black ribbon, which he fastened around my neck.

“What’s this?” I said.

“It’s a collar,” Royal said. “Keep it on at all times.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s your destiny. Keep your head down, and I’ll be right back.” Before I could protest, Royal had slipped away from me and was running down an alley. I got up to follow him, but somebody fired a gun, and I instinctively dropped to the pavement. Seconds later bullets were flying everywhere, and I could smell the sweet, sickly powder. I did what Royal had ordered, I kept my head down, hiding behind a row of sixteen garbage cans. I know the number because in the lulls between the shooting, I counted them to keep myself from freaking out.

Across the street, I saw Islands and Pope and other Souv boys. Quicker than you can say make my day, somebody started firing at me. But none of the bullets came close. It’s a good thing they weren’t good shots, because I was exposing more of myself than I should have. I was curious. I wanted to see somebody get shot. I wondered whether a shot person would fall forward or backward or just collapse. Whether they’d holler, groan, scream, or gasp. Whether they’d get a glazed look in their eyes, as if their whole life was passing before them. Maybe if I got shot, my life would pass before me. I’d get my memory back, I would know everything about myself, and then I would drop dead and go to heaven or hell or be taken on board the mother ship or just fall into the well of Total Quiet.

An innocent bystander had gotten in the way, the one-eyed homeless man who had given me directions. One of the River Rats took a shot at him, and soon everyone from all three sides was shooting at the homeless man. Eventually, he was hit and he cried out. That invited more shots. The River Rats, the Shadows, and the Souvz just filled his body with lead, and soon he was still, lying in a clump. So I had my answer about what happens to a shot person. They look confused, they stagger, they drop down, they don’t say much.

By now I had problems of my own. The Shadows had shifted position and so had the River Rats and the Souvz, and somehow yours truly found himself in the middle. It was pretty exciting, bullets thudding into the garbage cans, bullets plinking off the red brick, bullets scarring drawings on the walls, bullets ricocheting off the sidewalk, bullets breaking glass in the windows over my head. I don’t think the boys in the boy gangs even knew I was there. They were looking past me and through me. Happy with their own battle. I wished I was on one side or the other, the Shadows or the River Rats. Not the Souvz. I didn’t want to take the time to learn their language.

I crouched between the garbage cans, not thinking, not dreaming up a plan, just cringed up, counting the cans, counting, even, bricks. I was in that self-folded position when I heard a voice I recognized. I looked up and was looking into a familiar face—big mustache, bald head: the Autodidact. His eyes burned with rage. He grabbed me and put his hand over my mouth. My body went limp.

KIDNAPPED

He carried me like a sack over his shoulder, not running but striding quickly down the alley and away from the shooting. The alley led to a street where the trailer was parked. At first I thought it was a different rig, since the trailer was painted black and the pickup was gone, replaced by a Cadillac. Inside the trailer, though, everything looked the same as before: book litter. He sat me down in a chair, taped my hands to the chair arms, and tied up my ankles with rope. He never said a word, then left. A few seconds later he started up the Caddy and we were moving. I probably could have escaped my bounds within an hour if I’d been able to work hard, but my muscles were jellofied with fear.

I looked out the window. The glass was tinted, but it was a big window, so I got a pretty good view. We left New York, headed west on I-80. Through New Jersey and into Pennsylvania: monotony. Nothing but hills and trees, like New England, except short on stone walls, and the hills ran in long, dreary ridges. At the run of one I saw the peep show people, wrapped up in each other like a badly made granny knot. I shut my eyes, and when I opened them a minute later the peep show people were gone. I tried to recreate the image in my head, but it would not come into focus. I thought about Siena, imagining we were twins. She sensed my danger at this moment, and she was coming to my rescue. Maybe all those times I had sensed danger, I was really feeling trouble not inside myself but inside her. Maybe I was a Souv. I tried to think of some Souv words, but none came to mind. I kept watching for Royal’s limo on the highway, but it never materialized. I was starting to doze off when the rig pulled off the interstate. By the time we’d parked on a dirt turn-off on a lonely road I was hoping lightning would strike me dead. I watched the door as it opened, and the man with the black-white mustache who I knew as the Autodidact filled the space with his bulk. He came toward me.

“I’m going to give you a chance to get the blood circulating,” he said. He untied my legs and pulled the tape free from my wrists. “Can you stand up?”

“Yah.”

“Say, ‘yes, sir,’ when I speak to you.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Stand.” I stood. “Move around a little.” I was a little dizzy, but I didn’t say anything. “Your face is not in good shape. They’ll think I did it. Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

“Yes, sir.”

He led me to the bathroom. He kept the door open, watching me while I went. I barely managed to unzip and do what I had to do.

When I was finished, the Autodidact said, “Let me look at your kisser.” He sat me on the toilet seat. His fingers ran across the pulpy knolls of my face. It seemed to me I’d been through all this before. I shut my eyes and tried to pretend I was far away, sitting by a cool stream. “You could probably use a couple stitches over the eye.” He pushed flesh—it hurt on the bone. “You’re a good coagulator. You’ll be all right with a scar to remember your enemy by. What’s this?” He tugged at the collar Royal had given me.

I jerked my head away. “That’s mine, you can’t have it.”

“Let me guess. A keepsake from a loved one.”

“If you take it off, the Alien will send his death squads down to kill you.”

“Young man, you shouldn’t make threats you can’t back up.” He unsnapped the collar and eyed it. “Feels like genuine leather.”

I thrashed and screamed. “Mine—mine! They’ll kill you.”

“Okay, kid, you won that one.” He put the collar back on.

“Are you going to kill me? Are you going to torture me? Why did you kidnap me?”

“It’s too much for me to explain right now. Let’s just say that because of you I’m wanted by the law. I’m taking you to see somebody. She’s a lawyer. She’s going to talk to you. We’re not going to hurt you.”

I’d heard him lie back in New Hampshire, so I figured I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t lying now. “Okay,” I said.

He washed my face, hurt me by patting alcohol swabs on my wounds. Then he made me stand. He stroked, pinched, squeezed my body. “No broken bones,” he said.

He led me to the dining table. “Sit,” he ordered. I sat. He brought me a tall glass of water. “Drink. All of it.” I drank. All of it.

While I sat, he started constructing two giant sandwiches. I watched and drooled.

“When I was your age we used to call these Dagwood sandwiches,” the Autodidact said. “Do you know who Dagwood Bumstead is?”

“No, sir,” I said. “Was Mister Bumstead somebody you knew in prison?”

“What else do you know about me?”

“That you were in state prison for thirty-nine years for murder.”

“That’s correct.” He built the sandwich very slowly and carefully, as if it was going to be displayed instead of eaten.

“You were probably unjustly convicted for a crime you did not commit,” I said.

“To the contrary. I was justly convicted for a crime I did commit. I held up a filling station. The attendant went for a gun under the register, and I shot him. He was sixteen years old. Two years younger than myself. He could have been my kid brother, and I killed him.”

My voice rose up in anger, and I shouted my words as an accusation. “I know something else about you. You’re an autodidact. You said so yourself.”

He smiled the way you would at a fly you were about to squash. “And what is an autodidact?”

“A friend.”

“In a manner of speaking, you may have a point,” he said, very serious now. “But in common usage an autodidact is merely a self-taught person. It is a fancy word. Self-taught persons often use fancy words to masquerade the shame they feel at their lack of formal learning. I suppose that’s why I told you back in New Hampshire that I was a college professor. It was my heart’s desire to be perceived as a college professor. In fact, I am an ex-convict, a collector of books, and, yes, an autodidact.”

“The Autodidact.” I liked the sound of the word now that I knew what it meant.

“In deference to my age and modest achievements, you will refer to me as the Autodidact, sir.”

“Okay, sir. You wiled away the hours in prison reading books?” I said.

“That’s correct. It paid off in more than in an academic way. I started to collect and swap books. I eventually amassed a number of rare volumes. Upon my release I sold my collection and with the profits bought this trailer.”

“You didn’t sell them all. This place is jammed with books.”

“I sold only the valuable ones. I kept the ones that had personal meaning for me, the ones that educated me. The ones that gave me the will go on in the world. Such books are not rare. They are easily accessible to most people.” He stood, grabbed a book. “Aristotle. Who taught me the pleasures of logic and common sense.” I thought about my geek friend, Aristotle II. He put the Aristotle book back and removed another one. “Frederick Douglas. Suffering, freedom, triumph.” He put back the Douglas and held up two others. “The Marquis de Sade, forbidden fantasy. Proust, memory as art, the sentence as art.” He returned the books where he found them, so apparently he had a particular place for each one.

“And the Cadillac?” I said.

“I bought the truck you saw. I stole the Cadillac. Under stress, I discovered that the civilized veneer that I’d cloaked myself with over the years was stripped away. I reverted to juvenile behavior.” He talked very carefully, measuring out each word. “I believe I am over that, in control of myself at least for the moment. Now about yourself, young man. You took something from me; I want it back.”

“Are you going to torture me to get it?” I won’t say I was scared, but I was breathing faster than normal.

“I would torture you if I thought it would do any good. Do you know what you took from me?”

I shook my head no.

“I didn’t think so. I don’t know what to do with you. That’s why we’re going to meet with my friend, the lawyer. She has more hands-on experience than I in the world outside prison bars. Come on. You ride in the car with me.”

As the Cadillac rolled down the highway, the Autodidact told me about the state prison in Concord. The men showered together in a huge room with a pitted concrete floor, and in the winter the wind from the outside whistled through the room and the bodies turned blue with cold. The Autodidact had his own cell on the third floor. It was very small, too small to keep a lot of books in. He stored most of his collection in a warehouse, arranged through a pen pal. Her name was Sally. It was her place we were headed for, in Steeltown, Ohio, along the Ohio River.

We stayed that night at a campground. I wasn’t allowed to go out because my swollen face might attract attention. After an evening meal of pork chops, boiled potatoes, and peas, the Autodidact said it was time to turn in.

“Come with me,” he said, and brought me into his bedroom. Even with the light on it was dark. Besides the usual books on shelves on the wall, there was a shelf of knickknacks over the bed—a picture of a woman (his mother, now dead, I found out later), another woman (Sally), some green beadlike stones, a big knife, some pens, and a notepad. But most of this small room was dominated by the bed. It was huge with metal posts at the four corners.

“You will spend the night here,” the Autodidact said. “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

“No, sir.”

“How do you sleep?”

“I don’t understand, sir,” I said.

“Do you sleep on your back or on your belly or on your side?”

“On my back.”

“Okay. Lie down on the bed on your back.”

I did as he told me, and he tied my wrists and ankles to the bedposts. I was thinking about the knife on the shelf over the bed, but he took that away.

He walked to the doorway and looked at me for the longest time. Finally, he said, “Now I can get some sleep,” and he went into the other room.

We left bright and early the next morning on a two-lane road. I rode in the Caddy with the Autodidact and watched the scenery through the big windows. We passed through sweet little, rounded hills, the tops covered with hardwood forests, the narrow but flat valleys cleared and planted for corn and other vegetable-garden crops. A log house or two decorated the countryside, but mainly the road was a winding, wandering rabbit warren of small farms. The region looked like a sawed-off New Hampshire. I liked it.

I was not only delighted but surprised when we drove by a black, horse-drawn cart carrying a bearded driver, a woman with a bonnet, and a couple of kids. Down the road was their farm. Something about the place took my breath away, but it was a second or two before I figured out the source of my amazement, not what was there, but what was not there. No paved driveway. No motorized vehicles in the yard. No power lines. The Autodidact said these spreads were inhabited by the Amish, people who lived without modern conveniences because of their Christian religious beliefs. They worked hard. They minded their own business. They didn’t live only for their addictions.

The Amish had what Father had angled for all his life—good land for homesteading, working farms, independence from “the system,” no yuppies for neighbors. Why had the Amish succeeded and why had Father failed? The answer was as plain as the nose on your face: a dutiful attitude toward the three-headed God and good living habits. Poor Father had started down the road to self-sufficiency from the wrong end.