The Walking Man (18 page)

SES was located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Accordingly, the school had all the high-tech learning gizmos that made parents believe their children were being educated, including one PC per child. SES also had a big concrete pad located near its rear entrance. The slab supported a variety of structures built from recycled automobile parts. An accompanying plaque proclaimed the “activity sculptures” constituted Silicon Valley’s first “environmentally-friendly playground” an honor distinctly lost on the school’s oft-injured children who considered the area a “killing field.”

Over the years, many students experienced post-traumatic stress due to their time spent at the SES playground, but nobody suffered more within its bounds than Steven Zangst. By the time Steven reached second grade, a day never passed without him receiving multiple helpings of the schoolyard’s daily special, which meant on Monday, kids lined-up to give him atomic wedgies; Tuesday, purple herbies (nipple twisters for those of you unfamiliar with proper bullying terminology); Wednesday, noogies; Thursday, Indian sunburns followed by swirlies; and Friday “wiffle-whacks,” an SES original torture, in which Hector Pounce hung Steven upside down from the playground’s monkey bars so his classmates could whack him with a wiffle ball bat like he was a piñata.

For most “students,” “wiffling” Steven was the highlight of their week; so fights often broke out in the on-deck circle as anxious batters battled over whacking rights. At times, the commotion provided Steven with a reprise by forcing Hector Pounce to use his deep voice to remind his rowdy cohorts of the playground’s unwritten policy of “one-whack-per-child.”

“Calm down! Everyone will get a chance… No cutting in line!” Hector would yell while Steven flailed about. “You got one swing so make it count!”

In fairness to his many torturers, during a wiffle-whack session, Steven’s comical screeches and spastic attempts to break away from his persecutors provided an irresistible level of physical comedy, which left his peers in stitches and rendered the school’s laugh-starved adults incapable of properly intervening. To most folks, there was simply nothing funnier than watching the speech-impaired Steven hurl indecipherable insults at his attackers, especially when they were comingled with screams caused by “dick-whacks,” a sound best described as a cross between a wolf howl and a duck call.

“Hectah, some day I’m going to urdah you, you fucking oron! Ooowwooooackackack, Ooowwooooackackack!”

Regarding Steven’s first act of revenge, the story goes: Hector had a beagle named ChumChum, and it was widely believed that ChumChum was the cutest dog that ever lived. This fact was confirmed by those skilled in the art of assessing dog-boy relationships, who considered Hector and ChumChum soul mates after verifying reports that the young couple was often spotted co-licking soft serve ice cream cones at the Sunnyswale Dairy Queen.

Regardless of the exact nature of Hector’s love of ChumChum, it was clearly worth twenty-five thousand dollars to his parents, for that was the amount they offered on the wanted posters after ChumChum’s obvious disappearance caused their youngest son to issue God his first hysterical, “Why?”

A month into ChumChum’s disappearance and a week after Sunnyswales’ Medical Examiner/Dog Catcher pronounced ChumChum “presumed dead,” Steven Zangst sat down beside Hector in the SES cafeteria. Having firmly established their respective roles within their third grade social structure, the still-mourning Hector Pounce was surprised to see tiny Steven Zangst had mustered the balls to sit at his “cool kids” table.

“What the fuck do you want, dipshit?” the particularly ornery Hector asked. “Get back to the dweeb table where you belong, or I’ll yank on your underwear until you can taste your own balls.”

Steven was dead calm. He stared Hector in the eye and then slid something across the table. It was a dog tag. On it was the word: “ChumChum.”

“Hectah, I found this in a dish of beef chow ien,” Steven squeaked. “Bow-wow.”

Steven’s icy stare left little doubt in Hector’s mind that ChumChum had indeed squirted on his last hydrant. Hector’s resultant nervous breakdown was recorded on the school’s security cameras. It featured an amazing series of herky-jerky motions that later became known as break-dancing. Poor Hector spent the remainder of his school year in one-on-one psychological counseling with occasional breaks for gym class where he was used as a dodge ball practice dummy.

Parental anger combined with Hector’s declining mental health eventually forced the school to conduct a formal inquisition into the fate of ChumChum. During the inquiry, Steven Zangst steadfastly maintained he had found the beagle’s dog tag in a Chinese noodle dish, which he purchased at the Food Court at the Sunnyswale Mall. Although his story had many holes, no degree of adult browbeating could break the playground-hardened Steven Zangst.

Steven’s unwillingness to confess eventually forced the principal of SES, a legendary disciplinarian named Rudolph Maurer, to call a special school assembly. During the gathering, sitting alone on stage in front of eight hundred schoolmates, Steven Zangst calmly responded to Principal Maurer’s red-faced denunciation of his character by saying, “Aurah, how does a nine-year-old boy travel six iles to Hectah Pounce’s house to do his dog? Come on. Give e a break.”

By junior high, Steven’s road to respect was littered with several other broken tormentors, including Laura Gibbons. Laura was the mother bee of Steven’s sixth grade class. She was a preening drama queen with a notable wink and wiggle that gave more than one SES boy their first woody.

Unfortunately for Laura, one morning during her first period, she called Steven Zangst a “dickless nerd” for simply saying, “hello.” A day later, Steven launched a coordinated rumor campaign, which claimed Laura’s stunningly perky breasts were actually composed of Kleenex. The nickname “tissue tits” followed, and within days, Laura was on Prozac. Inevitably, an eating disorder ensued causing the once petite Laura to consume double-stuffed Oreos until she looked like the Michelin Man.

By his freshmen year in high school, Steven had earned the nickname “Even Steven” for virtually castrating anybody who crossed him. No offense, real or imagined, was too small to be redressed by Steven, and his retribution was always an order of magnitude more severe than the original offense. If you stepped on Steven’s toes, he broke your foot; if you stole his lunch money, your mother’s automobile would catch on fire. And, and if you called Steven a “midget,” or any other word that referred to his sub five-foot stature, you would end up with a broken nose – and there was no place you could hide.

More intimidating than Steven’s actual acts of revenge was the mystery surrounding them, for Steven Zangst was never caught in the act. Most folks believed Steven had one or more accomplices, and a baseless rumor persisted that he was somehow connected to the Russian mob, but the truth was Steven was a solo act. Steven’s expertise included an amazing ability to indirectly inflict harm by connecting seemingly disparate data. A typical example of a Steven “action” would be the day he inflicted frostbite on a perceived nemesis by drilling tiny holes in the base of his snow boots after reading the Farmer’s Almanac was predicting a long-cold winter. Another amazing aspect of Steven’s revenge was the way he’d subtly disclose his culpability to impart maximum fear. In fact, most often, Steven’s victims believed they’d had an accident until a get-well card arrived that described some private aspect of their misfortune. Perhaps the cruelest of all Steven’s get-well wishes was sent to his soccer foe, Bobby Grier, a classmate who nearly died from a mysterious case of food poisoning…

Dear Bobby,

Very sorry to hear your colon needed to be removed. My guess is the horrible bacterial infection you caught came from undercooked chicken. Maybe it was those awful nuggets they served in the cafeteria last week.

FYI, in case you were wondering, I have recovered from the kick to the tummy I received from you on the soccer field last month.

Bobby, please let me know if you need any help dealing with your ostomy bag at school. I’m sure having a smelly sack of shit attached to your stomach is not much fun…

Once again, please get well soon.

Your concerned classmate,

Steven Zangst

Although Steven’s parents recognized their only son had a “severe side” they were not generally concerned about him during his teenage years, for Steven got “A”s and “B”s, he showered often, and never stuck his penis into an inanimate object.

Steven’s mother was a bookkeeper, and his father was an accountant. Steven’s dad was a decade younger than the woman he called his “bride.” Steven got his height from his father who was only four feet eleven inches tall. His cuteness and his squeaky voice came from his normal-sized mother, named Philomena – a woman incapable of cooking soup that Steven hesitantly classified as a “hopeless bimbo.”

Growing up, Steven was an only child, so he had his own bedroom. On the walls of his room were posters of his heroes: Scipio Aemilianus, the Roman General who systematically burnt Carthage into the ground, Napoleon, and General Tecumseh Sherman. Under the psychotic gaze of Sherman were the words: “If people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war…”

In commenting on his wall décor, Steven’s dad once asked, “Hey, son, where’s the poster of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders?”

In response Steven sighed, and then said, “I love you, Dad, but you aw a trivial an.”

Notable during his high school years was Steven’s distinct lack of friends. Several girls thought Steven was cute, in a teddy bear sort of way, but like their male classmates, fear prevented them from forming a bond with the “scary midget.” Not wanting to be known as a total outcast, Steven attended his Senior Prom with his school bus driver, a knockout twenty-eight year divorcée named Hermangee Franjapanni. Because she was an honorable woman, and the date involved a small payment, after drinking a fifth of Southern Comfort, Hermangee gave Steven a post-prom ride in the hay. For several weeks after the incident Steven experimented with hallucinogenic drugs, hoping to erase the memory of the encounter. But alas, nothing worked…

After high school, Steven skipped college and went into business on his own. Years earlier he had decided to become rich, so he could crush his enemies, buy a good life, and land a hot wife.

Being ruthless and smart, Steven understood to run a successful business he simply needed to take in more money than he spent. So after looking at the world’s markets, Steven concluded buying stuff in China at a low price and then selling it in the USA at a high price was the best way to get wealthy fast, and he was right.

By age twenty-one Steven had made his first million by selling low-cost Chinese merchandise into the United States’ promotions market. He sold things like glowing yoyos, beer can openers that sang
God Bless America
, and baseball caps with built-in cooling fans. The California Office of Corporate Affairs listed the name of Steven’s company as Zangst Enterprises, but Steven called it, TCTBSFADASIFTI, “The Company That Buys Shit For A Dollar And Sells It For Two, Incorporated.”

Making money was like breathing for Steven Zangst, so by age twenty-four Steven was not just plain rich. Initially, being wealthy made Steven relatively happy because he could buy hot cars and big television sets, but ultimately Steven knew he had a problem. He was a virile young man who did not have a woman, and it was bad. Steven often had wet dreams about his old bus driver, haunting memories of Marlboro-stained teeth and ethanol breath, and he also would sprout unwanted erections upon looking at any curvy object. Sadly, even the Pillsbury Doughboy got him aroused.

Understanding the desperate nature of his situation, and above all being a practical man, Steven assessed his options. He thought about joining a singles group, or paying a matchmaker. He even considered going to Thailand and buying a mate. But then came the day that Steven walked into the Sunnyswale Applebee’s and ordered a chicken fajita from Faith Inman, the restaurant’s stunning daytime bartender. Instantly, there was no doubt in Steven’s mind that Faith was “the one.” In fact, for the remainder of his life Steven would never experience a conscious hour without recalling the first words Faith ever said to him: “What can I get you, hon?”

Steven knew landing Faith would be difficult because the competition was stiff. The Sunnyswale Applebee’s was located one block away from a large Hughes Aircraft research facility that employed hundreds of young engineers who also had the curvy-thing problem. Worse, it appeared many of the Hughes workers could spend limitless time at Applebee’s and charge it to the government under billing code “FNOFF.”

Steven carefully assessed the situation. After years of diction training Steven had made his squeaky voice intelligible, but he could not change his four-foot-eleven-inch height, his acned-coated complexion, or the onset of male pattern baldness. Being so, Steven calculated the odds of him landing a stunning and vivacious five-foot-eight-inch blonde and concluded his chances were nil. But, his attraction to Faith Inman was too strong to deny. Consequently, despite the math, Steven launched a plan to eliminate his competition.

Within weeks the young men that frequented Applebee’s disappeared as Steven bought them off. Per his style, Steven’s approach was indirect; he befriended one of the Hughes regulars, paying him fifty thousand dollars to keep his co-workers away from the Applebee’s bar.

“Spend what you need, but if you mention my name the consequences will be severe,” Steven warned his accomplice before asking him to check his references, which included: Hector Pounce, Laura Gibbons, and a slew of others.

Three weeks later, Steven sat alone at the Applebee’s bar.

“Slow day, huh, Faith?” Steven said.

Faith frowned. “Steven, I’ll go on a date with you if you stop paying people to stay away. I need tips to pay my bills.”