Mad Boys (17 page)

Late one afternoon we were hunting by the steel-mill fence when we saw a rabbit. It was the Autodidact’s turn with the bow and he let loose an arrow. It missed by a mile, and the rabbit kept running. It disappeared at the fence and a second later reappeared on the other side, racing for some briars. We found a break in the fence and crawled through.

It was a different world behind that fence. The plants were different, the views were different, the smells and even the weather were different. The mill buildings blocked the breeze and threw off the stored heat of the sun, so it was hotter. Something in the air made our noses itch. Sounds from the world at large were muffled. Close by sounds were kind of hysterical. Birds didn’t tweet, they screeched; bees droned angrily; the mill building periodically groaned and crackled from the heat, like some huge tormented thing. We’d landed on Xi.

“Do you feel it, Web?” the Autodidact said.

“I’m home,” I said.

“I was going to say the same thing. Prison was like this, unreal but sharp.”

We jumped the rabbit by the briars and the Autodidact shot again. Missed. The rabbit ran right at the steel-mill wall. Maybe it thought there was a hole there. Well, there wasn’t. The rabbit pulled up at the wall. Instead of veering off, it stopped and posed on its hind legs for a few seconds. The Autodidact let loose with another arrow. It went right through the rabbit’s throat. The rabbit tried to run, made a half circle, and keeled over. When we reached it, it was still breathing; it didn’t look right to me, too relaxed. The Autodidact rapped its head on the brick side of the building. The rabbit shuddered for a second, then went limp.

“It didn’t seem to be in pain,” I said.

“Once the body knows it’s going to die, the pain goes away,” the Autodidact said. “It’s Nature’s way.”

“I want to die like that rabbit,” I said.

“It beats cancer, but you never know how the end will come. A person, like an animal, has little to say about his death. And because people are so much more aware of time, their deaths are apt to be more complicated and difficult.”

“You’ve thought about this before.”

“Yes, about the boy I murdered. How he must have felt. The best thing I can say is that because of the circumstances, he never had a chance to experience any of those complex and difficult human emotions. He died like any animal overcome by a predator. The thought brings me some comfort.” The Autodidact looked off for a moment into the nowheres of could-have-beens and neverweres. “Let’s see about preparing this game for the dinner table.”

We scrambled through the hole in the fence, walked to the trailer to dig up a book about hunting. He fingered through the table of contents. “Here it is, ‘Rabbits.’
”

We brought the book and the rabbit into the house. The Autodidact stood over the kitchen sink with a big knife, and while I read from the book on how to do it, he skinned the carcass. We had a fun time, because the Autodidact kept making mistakes. Eventually though, the job got done. With bloodied hands, the Autodidact held the rabbit by its feet in front of me. It looked almost human, like an acrobat dead for a year or so hanging from his heels.

“Look up a recipe for rabbit stew,” the Autodidact said. Just then, Sally came in from shopping. At the sight of the carcass, she made a small, closed-mouth, controlled-screaming sound. The Autodidact explained to her that we had hunted and killed the rabbit. He was proud.

“How could you destroy that poor, defenseless animal?” she said.

“God made rabbits to benefit the predators,” the Autodidact said.

“And you’re a predator.” She bored holes in his head with her eyes.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I was convicted of predatory behavior. Remember?”

“I thought you were rehabilitated.”

“I am, Sally. I’m no longer a predator of people. I was merely hunting with a boy. Men and boys have been doing that for millennia. It’s not an act requiring rehabilitation or apology.”

“In a civilized society, hunting is not a necessity for survival. It is a mere amusement at the expense of living creatures who already have a hard enough time.”

They went round and round on that one, and never agreed. She yelled at him—“Thug!”—and he yelled at her—“Bitch!” And then the Autodidact lost control. He grabbed Sally’s wrist, wheeled her around and raised a hand to her. I knew the look in his eye—I’d seen it in Father’s eye. Sally screeched as if she had been cut by a whip, but it was only from fear. The Autodidact didn’t follow through. After she hollered, he let go of her, backed off, sat down, and buried his face in hands.

“I came within an inch of hurting you,” he said. “And all over a foolish disagreement. I’m afraid I’m not ready for a relationship.”

“I know, I know,” she said, forlorn and still jittery.

We didn’t eat the rabbit. The Autodidact dug a hole in the yard, and we buried it. Later, the Autodidact and Sally had a long private talk in their bedroom. I tried to listen by putting my ear to the door, but I couldn’t hear anything.

The next day was tense. The Autodidact avoided me, working in his trailer. Sally smiled a lot, and she was full of polite conversation. The Director whispered in my ear, “Insincere, insincere, insincere.” I didn’t hunt at all. I walked by the river shore. The water was dark and gloomy. I considered jumping in, drifting down the Ohio into the Mississippi, into the Gulf of Mexico, into the ocean, across to a new world or off the edge. I left the river and went up the road and stalked cigarette butts. Wherever I went, the steel mill loomed over me.

A few minutes later, I heard Sally calling me in for dinner. She and the Autodidact were on the porch, sipping their before-dinner drinks when I arrived. The Autodidact poured me a lemonade and told me to get a load off. He didn’t seem too relaxed. The Director whispered, “Insincere, insincere.”

The Autodidact turned to Sally. “I told you he’d know.”

They wouldn’t say where he was going. I was to stay with Sally for a while. Once the Autodidact had a head start, I would be turned over to the county welfare department, where I should tell them the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The “system” would take care of me. I wasn’t sure whether this was the same “system” that Father had spent his life fighting, but I thought it might be pretty close. I promised to be good. Sally put her arms around me and hugged me. The Autodidact looked me up and down. His Director was whispering in his ear that I was insincere.

We ate dinner in silence. Afterward, while the Autodidact and Sally packed some things, I stole a big bag of peanuts, a loaf of bread, and a gallon of water in a plastic milk jug, and hid these supplies in my room.

Finally, it was time to go. “I don’t know what to say,” the Autodidact said. All those books, and he couldn’t find a word.

“I’m going to bed,” I said, yawning and stretching my arms over my head.

Sally kissed me good night, but the Autodidact never got close, just backed away from me. They were glad to get rid of me; they wanted to say their own good-byes. I knew they’d take forever; in fact, I counted on it. I made my bed to appear as if I was in it and slipped out the window with my paper bag full of goods.

Outside on the grass, I eavesdropped by the open living room window for a few seconds before moving on.

“Oh, Sally, I wish you’d come with me. We can start over together,” the Autodidact said.

“I already have a life.”

“It’s a lonely life. You said so yourself.”

“Perhaps, but I’m not ready to give it up. No, that’s not exactly right. I’m not ready to leave behind . . . a self.”

“I guess I better get going. I’ll be driving all night.”

“Don’t call. Don’t tell me about the new identity. I don’t want to know. I couldn’t in all honesty lie to the authorities.”

I didn’t hear the rest. I hurried off to the trailer, hiding in the luggage compartment. A few minutes later I heard the Cadillac’s door slam and the engine start. Soon I could feel us moving. I opened the drawer, returned to the living quarters of the trailer, and took a seat in a chair by a window. I figured that once the Autodidact was away from Sally for a while, he’d calm down. When he was in a good mood, I’d reveal myself to him. He’d be mad at first. He might even knock me around a little bit, but eventually he’d realize I was good company. We’d go look for my mother. She and the Autodidact would get married, and I’d be their son.

GRAND ISLE

We picked up Route 62 and dropped south. The road took us into the bluegrass country of Kentucky. In the night light under the moon the grass in the rolling fields actually did look blue, like snow at night in New Hampshire. Wooden fences and horse barns decorated the fields. I wondered what the life of a horse thief must be like. Sneak into barn, make friends with horse, hop on and ride off. Jump over fences, ride all night under the light of the moon. Along toward sunrise race horse back to barn, nobody the wiser. Kiss his nose, walk out of barn. Outside again, drop to knees, stick face in dew on grass and sniff the Xi.

I fell asleep, snapping to wakefulness maybe an hour after dawn. As we drove further south, the air got hotter and more humid. I didn’t mind too much. Like the Autodidact and his trailer, I didn’t have much room for feelings, being in that state of mind where everything is ahead or behind. The Autodidact didn’t have a TV in his trailer, but he did have a radio, and I passed the time listening to Country and Western music (“All my exes are in Texas and that’s why I’m living in Tennessee.”), Baptist ministers (“Beware the raiments of hell.”) and the news (“In the Louisiana governor’s race, the Dauphin is being challenged by the Duke.”).

I munched on peanuts and bread and drank from my gallon jug of water, making sure not to make a mess, because I didn’t want the Autodidact to notice anything different when finally he stopped and checked his trailer.

In south Louisiana, we got off the interstate onto a narrow, two-lane black-topped road. We slammed through St. Charles, Raceland, Lockport, Larose, Cut Off, Galliano. The road ran beside a bayou, which is like a river that flows real slow both ways. The bayou wasn’t very wide, but it must have been dredged pretty deep because I saw good-sized fishing boats going up and down the waterway. A faded billboard showed a goofy fat guy and a skinny minnie in a bathing suit. They were sharing beers and eating from a bucket of crawfish. Father had occasionally used crawfish for bait in trying to catch bass, but I couldn’t imagine crawfish by the bucketful, and I couldn’t imagine eating them.

Further into the grassy swamp we drove, through Golden Meadow and Leeyville. Traffic petered out. Which made sense since eventually the road dead-ended into the Gulf of Mexico, facts I gleaned by hauling out one of the Autodidact’s maps and looking up the place names I’d seen on signs. The sun was high and bright, and beyond the bayou was tall, wavy grass and the smell of sea water and fish; this was delta land, dumped by the Mississippi River years ago; it really was like driving out into the Gulf of Mexico.

At the end of the road was Grand Isle, and I looked it up in the Autodidact’s library. Hotels and fine vacation houses used to line the beaches, but hurricanes took the “grand” out of the isle, sweeping it clean every forty or fifty years. When we arrived, the place had a temporary feel to it. The Autodidact pulled in front of one of the many mobile homes that set on wooden piers about ten feet tall. There were no trees in the yard, and the uncut lawn was a little stinky from overwetness. Father would have loved this place.

Through a slit in a curtain, I watched the Autodidact walk up a rickety wooden staircase to a landing, look around, knock. A few seconds later a woman opened the door. The sight of her scared me, so that I pulled away from the window. The woman had snakes in place of hair. By the time I gathered my wits about me and looked again, the Autodidact and the woman had gone inside. I waited by the window. The Autodidact was in there maybe half an hour, and then he came back out, carrying a big, bulging sack over his shoulder. I scurried away, ducking into my hiding place under the couch.

The Autodidact opened the trailer door, and I heard a thump. He’d tossed the sack into the trailer. He left, started the car, and drove slowly away. I came out of my hole. The sack lay by the door. It looked a lot bigger before my eyes than it had seemed on the shoulder of the Autodidact. I poked at it with my finger. I was beginning to suspect what was in the sack. A rope was wrapped around the top, and I untied it and rolled down the top of the sack. Inside was the body of a man about sixty, dead. I looked at him. His eyes were closed, but he seemed at peace. He reminded me a little of the Autodidact. He was the same complexion, about the same size and age, except he didn’t have a mustache and instead of a bald head, he had sideburns and kinky brown hair on his head. “Wake up,” I said, but I knew there was going to be no waking up. I retied the sack and went back into my secret compartment.

The Autodidact didn’t go very far, he only drove a little ways and parked. I could hear waves breaking on the shore, so apparently we were on the beach. A minute later, the Autodidact came back into the trailer. From the way he puttered around and mumbled to himself, I could tell he was nervous. An hour or two went by. I dozed, and was awakened by the sound of somebody knocking at the door. A few minutes later I was listening to a conversation between the Autodidact and the woman with snakes for hair.

“The mustache has got to go,” she said.

“I’ve had it for twenty years. It’s become part of me.”

“You’re not you anymore. If you don’t want to arouse suspicion, you’ll have to let your hair grow in, your sideburns come down a little cockeyed, like our friend in the sack.”

“The new me.”

“That’s right, the new you. Do as I advise and no lawman will ever mistake you for that wanted character in . . . where was it?”

“New Hampshire.”

“Is that in Massachusetts?”

“More or less.”

As they talked, I could hear other sounds—zzzz, snip-snip, ouch. She was working on him, cutting off his mustache, doing other things to change the way he looked.