Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (19 page)

THE CALL CAME a few nights later as Dad and I were watching
Kojak
. Mother never answered the phone, always expecting us to tell people that she was “out”—although where she would be at this hour on a weeknight was anyone’s guess. Helping the insomniac poor?

Dad went to their bedroom to answer the phone. There was a pause, and then he shuffled back down the hall to the laundry chute, our intercom to Mother’s basement lair.

“Elaine?” he yelled into it.

Mother trudged up the stairs silently. As she passed by us, I stared at the TV, not wanting to lock eyes with her. Dad followed her quietly into the bedroom, closing the door behind them.

 

 

“SHE’S IN a better place now.”

I had heard this line before when people passed away—but I wondered if Mrs. Edwards was
supposed
to be in Heaven. Maybe she was supposed to be alive for Frances’s triumph on Broadway. Or Donny’s invention of the flying car. Or Theresa’s recitation of the ingredients of a Big Mac. Maybe she was supposed to see me play the trumpet at Carnegie Hall.

How could God have allowed this? I had invoked magic to compete with the Edwardses. But this was not how I wanted to win the game.

MR. EDWARDS seemed changed. It was as though the light had gone out in his eyes. After a time, we began to have the family over to dinner again. But the palpable emptiness in the room and in his smile was a source of pain so potent that, whether through kindness or cowardice, Mother and Dad elected to give the situation some time to heal.

But nothing could heal the growing fear inside me. Whether I regarded this tragedy as the darkest possible interpretation of a magical request, or simply the random act of an angry and vengeful creator, it seemed frighteningly clear that the God I once knew had indeed left the building.

I
had always considered myself a compassionate figure, a benevolent soul in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., Marcus Welby, M.D., or Big Bird. As someone with such munificent qualities, I naturally abhorred violence of any kind, particularly that rendered upon small animals or seventh-graders.

Thus, it was with great distress that I greeted the revelation that Albert Anderson, one of the neighbor kids, had a thing for torturing defenseless creatures.

My discovery that he had graduated from setting ants on fire with a magnifying glass came one afternoon as I was sitting on the patio enjoying some delicious Kraft macaroni and cheese. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of red hair and freckles. Albert shot past our backyard.

A strip of common ground ran behind all the properties on our side of the street, thus making it easy for nosy neighbors to scope out what was happening in your yard at pretty much any given time. Likewise, since few of us had privacy fences, there was no missing the activity that occurred on the common ground.

I glanced up to see that Albert (whom I referred to as Fat Albert to anyone who was unlikely to repeat it to him) was carrying a BB gun—a weapon that was, at best, ill advised for someone with a flair for persecution. He stopped in his tracks and raised the gun.

“Hey, Albert!” I hollered in my friendliest voice. Albert was, obviously, a lot wider than me, and although he had never really threatened me, I figured it wise to hedge my bets.

He ignored me and took aim at something.
Ping!

I jumped up. “Hey, whatcha doin’?”

“Tryin’ to nab me a squirrel.”

“For what?” I replied, agitated. “Some Jed Clampett stew?”

Albert pumped the gun and raised it again. I saw a small brown squirrel scampering slowly up the trunk of a tree, his head cocked nervously as if aware that danger was near, but not quite sure from where.

“Albert!” I screamed, trying to divert his attention so the poor little nut scavenger could make a getaway. Val and I had owned pet guinea pigs since shortly after our arrival in St. Louis, and it felt as though Albert were taking aim at one of their cousins.

Albert paid no attention. He shot again. “Gotcha!”

He rushed over to collect his wounded trophy, but the panicked squirrel managed to limp to freedom through the chain-link fence of the high school.

I hurried out toward the common ground, staying just inside the perimeter of our yard in case events took a turn for the worse.

“Why do you wanna shoot things that can’t shoot back?” I said in as unchallenging a tone as possible. “Not much of a competition, is it?”

“He deserves it.” Albert’s Wrangler Huskies were riding low, and I could see his big white butt-crack, which threatened to reverse the gravitational voyage of my macaroni and cheese.

“Why? He didn’t do anything to you.”

“He was in my yard.”

“So was the Mulligans’ dog, but you didn’t shoot him.” I immediately regretted this statement. Albert didn’t have much going on in that fat head of his, so there was plenty of room for the planting of an idea.

“Yeah, well, you can’t kill a dog that big with a BB gun.” He obviously
had
put some thought into it. He turned and marched off in search of another woodland creature.

 

 

I TOLD Darren Pulaski about Albert.

Darren was an older and wiser Royal Ambassador from church whose criminal tendencies gave him an exotic edge. He had been known to steal Ding Dongs from the Quick Shop—slipping the cellophane-wrapped cakes between his buttocks, which, to me, seemed unnecessarily complicated—and had once been “almost arrested” (according to him) for a crime he was not at liberty to discuss.

We were strictly church friends—he wanted nothing to do with me outside of that venue—but there Darren imparted the many insights he had gleaned from nearly twelve extra months of living, as we walked up and down the darkened hallway of an unused section of the church that he regularly broke into just to prove that he could.

“It’s just a squirrel,” Darren said, mystified.

He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and nonchalantly stuck it in his mouth without lighting it. He pretended to smoke, inhaling loudly and exhaling through pursed lips, a look of utter cool pasted across his face. “If Albert didn’t kill it, a bear probably would.”

Given Darren’s status as an elder, I hesitated to point out that there weren’t a lot of grizzlies roaming around the Wedgwood Green subdivision.

“But the bear would eat it, right? Albert was just trying to kill it for fun.”

“Yeah, that part kinda stinks,” he said, flicking a non-existent ash off the cigarette. “But there’s a lot of stuff in the world that doesn’t make any sense. You just gotta roll with it.”

ALTHOUGH I CONSIDERED myself to possess many illustrious talents, Rolling With It was not even on the list. Sitting in the basement with the once mighty bedspread on my lap, I closed my eyes.

“We
have t
o stop him,” I demanded to a God I wasn’t at all sure was listening.

I had always believed that my magic could triumph over evil. But given the events of the past couple of years, this was seeming less and less likely to hold true. But surely, I thought, God wouldn’t doom little animals to the same kind of treatment he imposed on his human children. Surely he would heed a magical request for creatures so powerless.

I began to visualize the common ground behind our house suddenly filled with squirrels, rabbits and moles—a glorious, enchanted meadow where these guileless creatures romped and played, unwary of human interlocutors. Albert appeared, gun in hand, and, without concern for their safety, the animals jumped on him, licking his face, sliding merrily down the barrel of his weapon, the squirrels begging him to be their companion. He dropped his gun and, overcome by their pure, innocent joy, joined them in a game of nut relay.

 

 

I HAD NOT SEEN Albert in more than a week, and God had, in my eyes, begun to redeem himself. It was reassuring to feel that he understood the needs of the meek; that perhaps he did, after all, hold the most downtrodden in his big, heavenly hands.

I once again started to enjoy relaxing on the patio, reading and listening to KSLQ while trying to be the ninety-eighth caller.

Then, one afternoon as I sat reading a compendium of the finest literary pieces from
Cracked
magazine, I heard the dreaded
ping
.

Albert ran past, whooping. He stopped on the common ground and picked up a small animal. From a hundred feet away, it looked like a rabbit. It seemed to be squirming, as if it had been hurt but was still alive.

I was aghast. Albert set the animal back on the ground, and it began to limp away. Well, at least, I thought, he’s gonna let it go lick its wounds. God had stopped him from doing something truly heinous. Maybe it’s not that big a deal if he just hurts ’em a little. They’ll heal. I’ve gotten lots of bruises and scratches and I’m none the worse for wear.

I watched as Albert stood over the animal, apparently making sure that it could walk and would be okay. Then he lifted his leg over it.

What is he doing? I wondered. I stood up to get a better look—just in time to see him
stomp
on its head. He paused, and stomped again.

My mouth fell open. Apparently satisfied that he had killed the creature, Albert picked up his gun and marched off without a sound, a look of smug satisfaction on his face.

I stood frozen in place on the patio. As Albert headed toward the creek and disappeared from view, I finally dropped my book and slipped across the backyard to the common ground.

A small, gray rabbit lay there, bleeding, its eyes closed.

I watched it for signs of life. It wasn’t breathing.

I touched it. It felt dead.

My blood began to boil. This poor little guy had done nothing to him, and he had killed it. I wanted to run after Albert, to grab that gun and smash it down on his head so hard that his skull split open in front of me. I wanted to watch him bleed, see
him
die.

 

 

WHAT A FRIEND
we have in Jesus . . .

These ironic words were sung by me, Mother, Dad and the two hundred other sweaty congregants of Florissant Valley Baptist Church. Sunday morning was unconscionably warm and humid, and I was melting under my plaid sport jacket and clip-on tie, wondering just how much praise I had to give this Supremely Indifferent Being before he’d let me go home and put on shorts.

Exactly whose grief was he bearing? I wondered, as I held the heavy blue hymnal. Certainly not mine, or the rabbit’s. I sang dutifully in the official Baptist singing style, a dirgelike voice that made every song sound like we were about to put a bullet in our heads. I had once asked Dad why we didn’t sing like those black audiences on televangelist shows, and he explained that that kind of carrying on made God mad.

Maybe for you guys, I thought, gazing down the pew at the Reynolds family, and the Clarksons. Mr. Clarkson was slumped over, snoring. Mrs. Clarkson used to elbow him, but after he had told her a few weeks back to “leave me alone or I’ll be tithing ten percent of your booze fund,” she just let him be.

Although I’d never really paid any attention to the hymns we sang like soldiers on a death march, today the lyrics struck me as completely absurd. Jesus was not my friend.

Once we had finished (the Almighty required all hosannahs to be sung standing, which made me wonder about the hereafter prospects for Dave Wornack, a recent Vietnam vet who was in a wheelchair), we sat back down.

“Our Lord God,” Pastor Thompson said, his voice booming from the pulpit, “is always with us. Through joy and through sorrow, he is at our side.”

Outside of his dire warnings about the consequences of wrongdoing (Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death”), I’d never really bothered to contemplate what the pastor said. His sermons were eternally long, and I generally passed the time singing Tony Orlando and Dawn songs in my head and wondering if there was a biblically mandated amount of worship time (since we also attended services on Sunday and Wednesday nights), or if those extra services were just an insurance policy, a sort of Allstate plan for the afterlife.