The One Percenters (9 page)

I remember reading that raccoons adore the taste of crawfish, or is it crayfish? Truthfully, I’m not sure there’s a difference, and I sure as hell don’t know if Lake Opson has either of them. But the masked bandits must have found something that was to their liking,

‘cause they were shrieking up a storm down there. Food could be one explanation for that. The other’s a good woman. Maybe one of those big fellas found himself a gal and the two were now getting acquainted. I could relate. When we awoke, the weather had seen a great improvement. The sun’s rays scattered brightly across the surface of the lake, and reflected through the forests, dancing on the leaves of the larger trees. The sky was a bright, intoxicating hue of blue, like a big bowl of, well, blue gelatin. The air was crisp, and you could feel a breeze under your armpits. If this wasn’t a perfect day, then I have never had the pleasure of seeing one.

Cristen and I did a little shuffling, removing all the beer from the small cooler except for a six-pack.

We made a couple of sandwiches, which joined the beer in the little cooler. Armed with food, drink, and with fishing poles stretched across our backs, we waded out into the lake.

There was a pier about 500 feet to our right, but we chose instead to set our sights on a large rock which protruded from the lake about forty feet out.

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The natural setting felt more soulful, and who knows what monstrosities the local fishermen might have left on the dock?

The boulder was flattened on its top, making for an ideal place to suntan and take it all in. A third person would have cramped its surface, but for a couple, it was terrific. We had taken in several small fish, maybe six total—nothing keepable—when we ran out of beer.

Besides, you can only sit on a rock for so long. We now treaded the exposed stones toward the shore, and were about halfway there when hell ascended upon us.

I happened to be looking downward (assward) at the time, so I saw it well. Cristen was wearing sandals, and the water had made her footing a bit tense. Finally, almost inevitably, her left sandal slid out from beneath her. I will never forget seeing her ankle dislocate. Her foot was at a right angle to the leg, and for a brief instant she was actually standing on the base of her calf. I didn’t hear any rip or tear. Instead, for just a moment, the whole world went dead silent.

It was the instant between paradise and hell, the moment of the dawning realization. In the time it took for the pain to go from ankle to brain, my own mind realized this event marked the end of any fun we’d be having this weekend. It was something I realized in a resentful manner, as if the accident were planned to take away a bit of joy from my life. The funny thing, though, is that I didn’t stop enjoying myself at that moment. Nothing of the sort, actually.

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She screamed. It was a loud, piercing-to-the-point-of-curdling-the-blood, horrifying scream. It echoed through the valley, off the rocks. I knew she would not be able to keep her balance, and indeed she didn’t.

Heroically, she stood as damaged goods atop that rock for several seconds, screaming, until pain totally enveloped her, forcing her to submit. I never would have been able to hold my balance so long. Weaker sex my ass. I remember the look on her face at that moment.

I remember it clearly, actually. The moment was one of those that plays out as if in slow motion and then lingers in your head until the day you die. Her lips receded, baring her teeth, small and shiny. Her eyes rolled up to the point where her irises were little half melons resting on a bed of eyeball. Her face was white, and not the good alabaster white that you read about in all of the old-time dramatic plays. This white was ashen, defeated, dead.

Then she fell backward. Slowly, symmetrically, and into four feet of water.

Up until this point, I had been frozen in a curious, thoughtful, disbelieving pose. At last, fear released its hold on my body, and I sprang into motion. I stepped from my rock to hers—far more successfully than she had—and reached blindly for her ankle. Her head was bobbing at this point, dipping momentarily beneath the water’s surface and then popping up into the daylight.

It was impossible to tell the tears from the lake water.

I looked around at my surroundings. It was indeed a large lake, with many people around it. Where were they now? Why weren’t they responding to the screaming? The opposite shore was far away. Would the sound even carry that far? Our side was more isolated; favored by the locals. I looked at our campsite and realized that the outgrowth of trees over the water acted as a physical barrier.

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Still, I was sure that plenty of people heard the screams, meaning one of two things. On one hand, it’s possible, perhaps, that people assumed the screams to be shrieks of fun. Children’s voices can get pretty high when they’re alive with pleasure. Little girls can rival dog whistles. I wasn’t buying this particular theory, but I was trying like hell to think myself into it. Because the other possibility is that nobody cared. Or at least that they didn’t want to help if it meant the possibility of risk to themselves.

Besides, there were hot dogs to be eaten, softballs to be tossed.

I must admit, I’ve been subjected to this phenomenon myself. You hear a scream, a cry for help, you figure, “Ah, someone else will take care of it.” And they usually do, because there are two or three good people left, although they are usually overlooked. I like to think they prefer it that way.

So that was it. Either people misidentified the scream, or they just didn’t want to care. Help hinders, right? We must learn to help ourselves. Only the strong survive. Nice guys finish last. Give 110%. There are far too many clichés in world. Life can’t be summed up in a blurb, or maybe it can and I’m too scared of what it would mean to admit to it. Maybe I’ve just eaten one too many fortune cookies, though I doubt that’s possible.

Those suckers are good.

My hand was around her good ankle. I reached at first for her left leg because it was closer, but thankfully, I realized my mistake before I brought a fistful of pain upon her. I might well have pulled her foot off. No, I had her right ankle, and I would bring her ashore. Even if she was unconscious, I could place her in the truck and drive the thirteen miles to the hospital. After all, she didn’t look well, and she would be on crutches for a while, but the injury was by no means life-threatening.

It was only as scary as it was because we were in the middle of West Nowhere.

I would drag her ashore and lay her on the dirt while I drove the truck to the lake’s edge. Then I would take her to that hospital, and she would recover
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her strength, and we would cut the trip short and eat dinner on the couch while watching old movies on the television. Tomorrow was 99-cent night at Goldfin Video, if she preferred a rental. Everything would be O.K. Except that’s not what happened.

The buzz grew. It had been rising steadily but slowly, but now it grew by leaps and bounds.

The mind is capable of performing an incredible feat. It can process a phenomenal amount of information in a relatively brief time. We take in our surroundings, feed the information through the sorter, and make decisions almost instantaneously. We take it all for granted because we do it thousands of times a day, far more still should we be driving. Well, the scene at the lake probably took less than a minute, but in that small space of time my own mind processed thoughts, made decisions, and in the process changed my life forever.

My first thought was of Thelma Vicaro. She was a girl I knew in high school. Well, “knew” might not be the most appropriate word here. Few people really knew her, but this is not a story of popular or unpopular.

Popularity is irrelevant here. Thelma was different.

She appeared unaffected by the questions that concern a typical junior year class—who was dating who? when was Homecoming?—all of the usual fanfare.

She did well in her classes, but kind of crept from room to room and locker to locker. She seemed to bounce through her life like an ice-cream stick floating down a street, bopping along the rain-laden gutter until it eventually disappears down a sewer hole into a black oblivion, forgotten to all but the very small minority.

L.I.F.E. And then nothing. Fade to black. No rabbit in this hat.

One day I saw Thelma bop-bopping through the hallway, almost invisible. It had become an obsession of mine to figure out how this girl did it. How she could withstand such isolation and exist within her own world? On this particular day, I realized I could wait no longer for an answer. I approached her, nearly knocking her over. I don’t think she was used to being approached. I excused myself for my intrusion into her
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space, beat around the bush for a while, and finally got my nerve up.

“How do you do it, Thelma?”

“Do what?” She didn’t even look up. Even then she was. .elsewhere.

“You live in your own world. Don’t you
care
?

Isn’t there anything you like? Why do you act like. .

like. .?” At this point, I realized I was being driven by curious angst built up over three years. I hadn’t taken the time to actually develop a question, and now that the time was here, I was going nowhere.

“…I’m dead?”

Those were her words; I remember them well.

“I guess. I’m not trying to sound mean. I was just. .curious.”

She looked at me, finally, as if wondering whether to open up to a stranger. I guess I made the cut. Like I said, I don’t possess a threatening look.

“You are born into a world not of your choosing, with no hint as to what direction to move in. Your parents are chosen for you. Your friends
you
choose, but most of them you actually have little in common with. The association exists to make you feel. . secure.” The speech was well versed. Obviously I wasn’t the only person to have asked the question. Or maybe she had just been craving an opportunity to vomit her thoughts.

She continued.

“None of us has any idea what’s going on, but we each develop our own way to make it look like we do—

spirituality, pompous academia. . Or we find a way to escape it.” She paused for air. At last I got a word in.

“So this is your way of. .escaping?”

“No.” She paused to look at the clock above me.

I’m not sure she was actually checking the time. She might just have been collecting her thoughts. She had the look of someone about to make a serious decision.

Finally, she continued.

“No. It’s just that I don’t waste my time trying to find answers when I don’t even know the question.”

“Kind of a fatalistic attitude.”

“Far from it. I spend my time learning, observing, making mistakes. It’s a sacrifice.”
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“How so?” I was surprised to find her to be so open, considering she could not have had much practice with conversation. For a second, I thought it was a sign of wisdom and confidence, but perhaps in the end Thelma
was
lonely. Maybe this
was
just her own means of escape. She put her foot up against the row of lockers, staring into space across the hallway. Classes were over now, and papers were strewn on the floor. I wondered if I would miss my bus, or Thelma hers. She probably wouldn’t care.

“I’m from a poor family, Ed.” She knew my name.

I was surprised. “I have two shitty parents, and I can’t do any one thing particularly well. And I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid, Thelma.”

“I am.”

“No. I mean, anyone who devotes this much thought to. .”

“It’s irrelevant. It doesn’t help my situation in life, so it doesn’t count as an asset. I’m stupid by society’s terms, and therefore I’m stupid.” I was fighting a losing battle here. But I had one more question.

“You said your life was a sacrifice?”

“Yes. My odds aren’t good here, Ed. I know it.

I’ll never make it here. I don’t. .fit. So I’m learning what I can from the shadows, and I’ll use it in the next world.

I’ll rock that world.”

It was a strange mentality, and I thought it to be a string of bullshit. At least, that is, until I heard that she killed herself three years later. So either she was really lonely or really gutsy. If there is a second world, I hope Thelma’s rocking it. Still, I think of her. I think of what she said, and I find myself agreeing far too often.

I find it hard to find the good in people.

Sometimes life seems to be a manipulative chess match with a whole lot of back stabbing. You can’t trust anybody, and the bad far outweighs the good. And it’s when I feel this way that I hear the buzzing, when the sky can’t be blue enough to ease my mind. And, like I said, it’s been getting louder, which takes us back to the day by the lake. Maybe you’re not ready to get back to that tale yet, but I can only hope that the story of Thelma will help explain my mindset. I can only hope
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that you understand. I can only hope that you are
like
us
.

Because…the buzzing was there at the lake, disturbing the peace of the day. God forgive me.

I don’t feel an ounce of guilt concerning Thelma’s young death. I’ve rarely even thought about it, to be truthful. Maybe I could have told somebody, and maybe they could have stopped her (though I doubt it), but why deny a person their dream? Like I said, you have to give those people credit. Anyway, she’s in a better place now; I’m sure of it.

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(Fuck superstition. Bloody Mary,