Mad Boys (4 page)

“What?”

“Get it equals gayget aygit. Stupid equals staygupaygid.” He pointed to the A-Y-G on his cap. “Secret language.”

“Okay equals aygokaygay,” I said.

“Raygight,” he said.

I felt an instant hero-worship for this boy. He seemed to throw off light from within; his voice was full of command, without being bossy. He had my full attention.

“Who are you? And how did you find me here?” I asked.

“Your picture was in the newspaper. Lost boy. Amnesia. Flying saucer stories. They’ve got an APB out on you. You better get out of here, or pretty soon your so-called loved ones are going to be on your trail.”

“What do you care?”

“I don’t, really. I don’t care about anybody but me. But I always follow my instincts, and when I read the news account about you, my instincts brought me here. I knew you were one of my own kind.”

“You mean we’re related?” I said.

“We’re virtual brothers. I mean that like me you got away.”

“You think I ran away from home.”

“Exactly. Life was so bad there you had to bug out. I know that routine. Once they find you, all they’re going to do is bring you back to the life you hate.”

“Actually, an alien being from outer space . . .” I started to tell my story over again, wondering how I was going keep the details straight. I’d forgotten half the stuff I’d said to the doctors. But it didn’t matter. The boy cut me off before I got started.

“I hear ‘spaceship,’ and I want to yawn. When you find one that can make some money, give me a call.”

“You saying I’m a liar,” I challenged him.

“I’m saying you’re a sicko,” he said.

I suppose he should have made me angry, but instead he relaxed me. I couldn’t fool this teenage whiz bomb, so why should I try? “Tell me who you are,” I said.

“Royal Durocher. My associates call me Royal. Notice that I said associates, not friends. I don’t believe in friendship. There’s no profit in it. I believe in partnership. I do something for you, you do something for me. Want to know the secret of my power?”

“Sure do.”

“There’s no love in my heart. That’s my power. It’s the power of Satan himself.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m the son of a rich record producer who lost everything in the 1987 stock market crash. My mother abandoned me when I was an infant, so I hated her. If you won’t love your mother, why should you love anybody?”

“That’s sad.”

“Don’t you pity me. There’s no reason for it. You see, I’m not discouraged. I’m completely undiscouragable. I’m infuriatingly upbeat; I’m a positive thinker; I’m more gifted than a cross between a porpoise and a parrot. To sum it up, I am the proud possessor of ‘the gift.’
”

“
‘The gift’—what gift?”

“The entrepreneurial gift. Enough about me. We have to get you out of this joint,” he said.

Though I’d been bent on escape, now that it was put to me that I ought to leave, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go. “Maybe I don’t want to escape. Maybe I just want to find out who I am. And if you’re so smart, you show me how to get my memory back.”

“Okay. Sometimes drastic measures are called for.” Royal picked up the bedpan and knocked me on the head with it. I saw stars, saw a green and gold frog, saw a dark, oily shadow, saw a grinning fat man, then blacked out for about a ten-second count. When I came to, I was fingering a lump the size of a tomcat’s hairball on my right temple.

“Remember anything?” Royal said.

I thought and thought. Blank tape. “No. You’re not going to hit me again, are you?”

“Why should I? It didn’t work. One more blow and I might kill you, and that would help neither one of us. I’ll think of something else.”

“I don’t know,” I said, rubbing my head.

“Look,” he said, “if you want to stay here and wait for your loved ones, go ahead. Know what grown-ups do? Make you suffer in your heart.” Royal thumped his chest.

I thought about that for a minute. As far as I knew, I had no loved ones. What I did have, though, was a hollow place inside that needed to be filled with memories of people, events, and feelings. At the least, I wanted to know my name.

“Do you know who I am?”

Royal looked me up and down, real serious. “You’re nobody,” he said.

“Wha—?”

“Follow me. You’re about to be tested.” We went into the bathroom.

“Look in the mirror. What do you see?” he asked.

I saw the face of a kid. Black hair. Twist in the mouth. “I see a tough kid,” I said.

“Look again. Look at the eyes.”

The eyes were scared. I wondered why, and the brashness disappeared from my expression.

“What you see is a frog,” Royal said.

Sure enough, as I looked closer I saw bulging eyes, a wide, sarcastic grin, and smooth, shiny, mottled skin the same color as the eyes, green and gold. “I’m not a frog,” I screamed. “You’re making fun of me.”

Royal just laughed.

“You’re mean,” I said.

“I’m not mean, I’m cruel. All great men are cruel. I’ll show you. Ask me where your mother is.”

“My mother? You know her?” I was frantic.

Royal gave me a nasty smile.

I snarled at him, “Where is my mother?”

He chuckled in an exaggerated way designed to get my goat, “How much will you pay me to tell you?”

I doubled my fist and held it up in front of his face.

“You couldn’t lick a stamp,” he said.

“I’ll kill you,” I said.

He sneered, “Your mom choked to death on a fish bone.”

I threw a punch, but Royal just grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back until I yelled in pain. He let go of me, and said, “Stay calm, it was just a joke. I’ll tell you what I’ve figured out. You don’t have suburban swagger. You don’t have street smarts. You’re not a country boy. You aren’t spoiled. I know spoiled, because I was spoiled, so that means you aren’t rich. I’d say you’ve done some time on the roads of America, because you got a little bit of this and little bit of that in your accent. Deep down you’re mixed up. All mixed up.”

I felt the intelligence of his words. Royal Durocher had told me more about myself than Nurse Wilder on my platoon of doctors.

We left the bathroom and returned to my room and hopped on the bed. I sat at the tail end, Royal at the head end.

“Take me with you,” I said.

“In my car?” he teased.

“You have your own car?” I said.

“Not just a car, a white limo. It was the one thing my father protected from bankruptcy. Last month I was old enough to get my junior license. I claimed my old man’s car and moved out.”

“Where do you live?”

“In the car, dummy.”

“How do you get money for food and movies and stuff?”

“Look at this.” Royal pulled out his wallet and showed me a wad of bills. “I’ve been selling steroids to high school athletes. It’s a pretty good business. But I’ve got other plans, plans for making big money, really big money.”

“What’s that?”

“Number One: Gun running. Everybody wants guns. Number Two: Development of new forms of entertainment. Number Three: Start my own empire. The adults haven’t done anything for the country. It’s time the kids took over, with me as the king kid, the czar of adventure and synthetic violence, the emperor of ice cream, the duke of vice, the dauphin of mean.”

At that moment Nurse Wilder’s voice came across the intercom, “Get dressed, young stranger. Flush your toilet and turn off your TV. We’ve got big news for you.”

“This may be the end for you,” said Royal. “Your loved ones could be coming to drag you away. I’d better go.”

“I’ll go with you; I won’t be any trouble,” I said.

“Back there when I was being cruel, irritating you with that stuff about your mother? Well, that was the test, and you flunked. You’re not ready to face up to the world. You’re just a baby.” He slipped out of my room, and I was suddenly alone, a white nothing swirling in a blinding light.

A minute later in came Doctor Hitchcock, Doctor Thatcher, and Nurse Wilder. Nurse Wilder had lost a few pounds since her husband had died.

“We’ve been able to identify you,” said Doctor Hitchcock. “Your name is Langdon Webster.”

I don’t know why, but I exploded, saying strange things, my body writhing as I spoke, “Xiphi elphege alcid vaccarressi flora.”

“He’s having a seizure,” said Doctor Hitchcock.

“He’s trying not to feel, not to remember,” said Doctor Thatcher.

“He’s speaking in tongues,” said Nurse Wilder. “Langdon? Langdon?”

“Don’t you call me Langdon.” I was suddenly clear in my speech, if not my thinking. “That’s the dead boy. He’s not me. Understand? I’m him. We’re me. He’s us.”

“He’s going to need more therapy,” said Doctor Thatcher.

“For now, let’s make do with information,” said Doctor Hitchcock sarcastically. “Your father, a gentleman named Joseph Webster, reported you missing as a possible runaway five years ago when you were seven years old.”

“Is my father going to come and get me?” I asked.

“Mister Webster is not in, how shall I say, a financial position to support a young boy,” said Doctor Hitchcock.

“The plain fact is your father is an old hippie from the 1960s, a drifter, an alcoholic, and possibly a drug addict,” said Nurse Wilder. “It’s a shame that he’s going to be allowed to claim you.”

I tried to picture this father in my mind, but couldn’t.

“Nurse Wilder is right,” said Doctor Thatcher. “But, to give the devil his due, your father has vowed to start a new life now that you’ve been found. He’s coming to get you.”

At that point, something dawned on me. “And my mother?” I blurted out.

Nurse Wilder dabbed at a tear, and I felt a shudder pass through me. Doctor Thatcher said, “I’m afraid that the whereabouts of your mother are unknown.”

That night I couldn’t sleep, and Nurse Wilder prayed over me. I tried to join her, but I couldn’t get the words out. I just babbled, “Xiphi, exlibo, sanskrew, lyxpyks.” After she left, I switched on my television. Just when I was dozing off, a white light filled the room, and the boy in the iridescent space suit who I had seen the first day out of the swamp appeared on the TV screen.

“Now I know who you are. You’re my guardian angel,” I said.

“That is correct. I’m an angel.”

“Help me.”

“I’m afraid that my abilities in this world are severely limited.”

“Is it true that there are three persons in one God?”

“At least three.”

Maybe there were four-headed and five-headed gods. Too many to deal with. I changed the subject. “What is your name?”

“My name is Langdon.”

“They say my name is Langdon.”

“No, Langdon is the dead boy, and I am his spirit.”

“I want. . . .”

“I know what you want. I can read your mind. You want to feel your mother’s arms around you.”

“I can’t. . . . I don’t know. I have a need, an empty.” I couldn’t translate my deep feelings into English; I was choking on my own words. Langdon helped.

“I will tell you this: there is such a thing as the search for truth. Truth is what you seek.”

The search for truth: I thought that was about the most noble idea I’d heard since coming out of the muck.

“Where is my mother?”

“Not today. That is not on today’s list of things to say. Today I will inoculate you with your, with your, with your. . . . Oh, oh, stuck-record syndrome. Your name. My name. Our name. His name. The dead boy . . . the dead boy . . . the dead . . . Scratch . . . Scratch . . . Web . . . Web . . . Web.”

I opened my eyes, the program was back on the screen, my guardian angel was gone, I was alone, awake, ignorant as ever.

The next morning I was released into the custody of my father. Nurse Wilder made me sit in a wheelchair, even though I didn’t need one. I was a little embarrassed, but I have to say I enjoyed the ride down the hall, to the elevator, into the lobby, and out into the open air. In the parking lot, I spotted Royal’s white limousine, but the glass was tinted and I couldn’t see inside.

Less than a minute later, I heard a noise like a ruptured lawn mower. Out of nowhere a battered pickup truck, backfiring and roaring from a hole in the muffler, pulled right up on the grass beside the hospital gate. The next thing I knew, the passenger side door was flung open, and a voice called out, “Get in!”

I froze. Behind the wheel sat about the scroungiest human being I could imagine, a man with a scraggly beard and dark, greasy, shoulder-length hair. I thought the devil had come to take me away.

“It’s him,” said Nurse Wilder.

I got out of my wheelchair, and Nurse Wilder gave me a big, strangling hug. Next thing I knew, a hand grabbed my wrist and jerked me into the cab at the same time that the truck ripped out of the hospital lawn, tearing up divots.

Rock music pounded on a tape deck as we sped out of the parking lot. The man wore filthy blue jeans, a flannel shirt, scuffed leather boots. From his clothes, I smelled wood smoke and b.o.; from his breath, I smelled alcohol and pizza with everything on it, including anchovies, and something else I couldn’t identify. Later I found out that the smell was marijuana.

“You’re . . . you’re my father,” I said, trembling.

“Joe Webster, your old man. I got custody of you.”

“I’m . . . I’m . . . Web,” I said.

“Of course, you’re Web—we always called you Web.”

MOTHER/FATHER

Father had been a homeless man on the streets of Seattle, Washington, when he’d received a telephone call at the shelter where he was staying. An unidentified man had informed Father that I’d been found in New Hampshire, and then hung up. Father had hitchhiked back East, not sure how he was going to take care of himself, let alone take care of a son he hadn’t seen in five years. But I’d brought him luck, he said. He had bumped into an old hippie friend, fellow with a sick liver who had offered to let Father squat on his property ten miles west of Keene if Father promised to watch over the place while he was convalescing. The fellow never did convalesce; he died. Father and I moved onto the land and started acting like we owned it. Father figured that if he paid the property taxes nobody would bother us.

The land was deep in forested hills, on an unmaintained dirt road one mile up slope from the town road. The place soon began to feel like home. Father taught me about the woods, and soon the knowledge spread through me almost as warmly as Nurse Wilder’s blessing. Fluttering leaves: poplar. Sticky bark, soft, white wood: pine. Winter green smell in raw wounds: black birch. Reddish bark and roots that hug granite: hemlock. Tough wood, good to burn: red oak. Sweet sap, good to lick: hard maple.