* * *
Frankie’s death was an accident. It occurred while he was working the remote control of the ladle belt, a heavy-chain conveyer suspended twenty feet above the foundry floor. The ladle belt transferred large tubs of molten steel from the melting furnace at one end of the plant to the holding furnace at the opposite end thirty yards away. Subsequent insurance reports state that at approximately three p.m., a pressure valve malfunction caused the holding furnace to explode. The explosion sent finger-thick slivers of red-hot steel bursting outward in a cloud of death, the fragments packed within a tremendous gust of hot air strong enough to unhinge one of the deteriorating ladle clamps which secured the transporting buckets of liquid metal. High above the exact spot where Frankie stood, the unhinged ladle tipped heavily sideways, dutifully dumping all 300 tons of molten steel onto his head with the precision of a giant, well-targeted water balloon.
A co-worker testified he heard Frankie cry out at the last second, looking up as if hearing Jesus, but instead finding death spilling down on him from above to erase him from this life, hard hat and all. Once workers were able to get to the cooling pool of spill, what remained was more a lump of steaming metal than a human being.
The coroner later explained, to a grieving, horrified Agnes, that while Frankie was melting at 450 degrees, the liquid steel had destroyed every nerve near the skin instantly. A silver lining, he surmised, was that Frankie didn’t feel much after the initial coat.
After a series of decisions made in behind-door meetings (involving corporate executives, the coroner, a smelter and a priest), what they eventually buried one gloomy March morning was a smooth rectangle—a five-foot, ten-inch, 200 lb. bar of metal settled neatly within the plush white silk of a steel coffin.
After the closed-casket ceremony, Frankie’s molten remains were lowered into the wet, dark earth under young Adolf’s watchful, questioning, disappointed stare, while Agnes wept loudly amidst a spattering of co-workers and mysterious cousins.
Watching his father’s coffin lower into the ground was the first moment—perhaps a sign of his new adulthood—that Adolf was able to find a name for the strange, black slate of emotions he had felt his whole life, a swirling ethereal mass now localized, centered, condensed and crystallized.
That nameless dark was hate; and on that cold, damp March morning his skin prickled with the heat of it.
* * *
Adolf grew. What he lacked in wits his body made up for in physical stature, shooting him past six-feet before the age of seventeen. He had a tremendous gut and a wealth of coarse black hair spread out over his back, cheeks and shoulders. But for all his girth, or perhaps because of it, Adolf had numerous physical ailments.
After failing his driver’s test for the third time, it was determined Adolf’s vision was no more than a stone’s throw from legally blind, a diagnosis of amblyopia, or lazy eye. Because of the condition, Adolf was forced to wear thick glasses with heavy black frames, chosen not for style but because they were the least expensive, Frankie’s life insurance policy barely keeping the family afloat as it was. Wearing the glasses gave Adolf a mad-scientist look, his bulbous dark brown eyes swam behind the lenses, creating the effect that the boy was ever-watchful and slightly amphibian.
As his broad, lop-sided frame continued to add weight, pushing his overall girth past the 250 lb. mark, Adolf developed a mysterious gait, a sort of giddy-up in his step that was somewhere between a limp and a hop. Further physicals determined one of Adolf’s legs was an inch shorter than the other. There was nothing to be done for the physical abnormality, so he worked through it as best he could, wearing thick-soled black leather biker boots with the heel on the right foot sawed flat. This evened things out well enough, but running or jogging were out of the question, which, all things being equal, was just fine with Adolf.
Despite his large size and bludgeoned-by-God physiology, Adolf was amazingly adept at working with animals. More precisely, animal corpses. In his younger years, he established himself as an expert at the science of bug collecting—suffocating beetles, roaches and butterflies in jars before mounting them within small wooden frames that covered an entire wall of his bedroom. His love of insect trapping quickly dovetailed with something more in line with his somewhat baleful nature.
Adolf learned to hunt.
Living in the poor suburbs of San Ramos, the only hunting Adolf could do is what he termed “nailing the vermin out back,” and consisted primarily of killing squirrels, chipmunks and the occasional ignorant bird with his Daisy BB Air Rifle, purchased for him on his 16th birthday at the local Wal-Mart along with a frozen ice cream cake and a comic book filled with illustrated ghost stories.
Once killed or captured, he would studiously slice his victims open with one of the cooking knives from his mother’s kitchen and scrutinize the insides of each creature with great care, often making notes and drawing crude illustrations in a soiled spiral notebook he’d had since third grade. Afterword he would bury the gore somewhere in the backyard, the pieces of intestine and flesh often brought back up by a bird or a stray cat, Adolf not being much of a digger.
As Adolf distracted himself from his sorrow through hobbies, Agnes—recovering from the shock of losing her husband—became bored at home with no job and a stagnant son. She began to itch for companionship, but her prospects were marginal as she was not the most handsome of women. Agnes was pudgy and lumpy, with drab brown hair that fell in messy curls around her fleshy, pumpkin-like head. She was pigeon-toed and pasty and stank heavily of perfume saturated with the thick, chemically-enhanced sting of wild flowers. But she was a woman full of vitality, which could attract a more diffident man looking for a spark in his life. And so it did for Steve Orosco, an insurance salesman who worked for a small company called Global Financial and Life.
It was Steve who had consulted with Agnes after Frank’s death and then, once every month, personally stopped by to deliver an insurance check drawn from Frank’s policy. After a few months, Steve added flowers and small gifts to the check delivery, and within a year Steve was staying the night, and other nights, as well. Steve had become a straight-up VIP guest at the now infamous Politzcki’s Palace.
Steve was a slight man, bald and tidy with a trim brown moustache that coordinated uncertainly with small, muddy, hazel eyes. When put into a portrait with Agnes, Steve’s features and size became more pronounced. Even the moderately-sized (if bulbously-shaped) Agnes had an inch and twenty pounds on Steve. When he inevitably stood next to a specimen such as Adolf he looked downright impish, a do-gooding leprechaun with a black pleather briefcase rather than a pot of gold. His small bald head could have been easily encompassed within one of Adolf’s grimy, fingernail-chewed paws, should the boy ever feel obliged to cup the man’s pate.
Steve put up with Adolf’s quirks using the same serene scrutiny with which he analyzed any situation. It was with a small amount of reserve, however, that Steve actually spent time with the son of his lovely Agnes. The boy frightened him with his overwhelming size, his slowness of thought, his odd, shuffling gait and his black, rambling eyes. For his part, Adolf simply thought of Steve as a shadow, something that slipped in and out of his world without impact. A random voice in the hall, an extra balled-up napkin on the dinner table. Steve created the same buzz of awareness in Adolf’s mind as a television left on in an adjacent room, or a flitter at the corners of his vision. To Adolf, Steve Orosco existed only as an abstract attachment hovering near his mother, as if he were an accessory of hers—like a handbag or a walking stick.
* * *
“Adolf!” his mother bellowed from the living room. “Our show is on!”
Adolf stuffed the porn magazine he’d been thumbing through under his mattress and shambled into the hallway.
“Hurry, baby! You’re missing the start!”
Adolf and his mother always spent an hour or two every night watching a couple select shows. He would lie his heavy head in her lap and she would rest her hands
on his enormous shoulders, sometimes humming softly as they watched police hunt down killers in the big city, or the beautiful doctors and nurses who found drama in the emergency room as well as in their personal lives.
Adolf didn’t really care about these stories, but his mama liked them so he liked them. When alone, Adolf mostly enjoyed nature programs, the ones that showed animals in their natural habitats—the way they lived, how they killed, the things they needed to do to survive. He often dreamed of being one of the ferocious, wild beasts he saw on television—a lion attacking a limping gazelle, a spider stabbing its webbed prey, or a shark ripping apart a baby sea lion, its shredded blubber dissolving in the vastness of the dark, cold sea.
On this night, Adolf entered the living room and saw his mother cradling a large plastic bowl of buttered popcorn. Steve sat next to her, tilting toward her slightly, the weight of her giving the couch a slight U shape, as if the gravity of her, like a planet, pulled the objects of the room toward her dominant mass. This included the twig-shaped, shiny-headed Steve, her orbiting moon.
“Hiya, Adolf,” Steve said.
Adolf grunted and dropped next to his mother, causing Steve to nearly fall into her lap as the couch sagged hard left under Adolf’s substantial weight.
Adolf watched the television blankly, his mind wandering. He was thinking about a program he had watched recently where a crazy Australian explorer had put his head inside a crocodile’s widely-stretched mouth, just to show how big of a bite the croc could take out of a person were the jaws not locked open, as they were in the show, by a strong iron harness. Adolf thought he could probably fit Steve’s whole head into his own mouth, like the Australian guy did with the alligator, or like a circus trainer would do with a lion.
Hearing his mother gasp and Steve “tut-tut” and giggle in the same breath, Adolf brought his focus back to the television show. He absently watched the cops chase down a suspect and concluded that—yeah—he could definitely eat Steve’s head. He could do it in one giant bite.
* * *
The trip was Steve’s idea.
He and Agnes had been together a few years now and had never ventured outside the San Ramos area. It had been a strong year of sales for Steve, and with his year-end bonus he wanted to treat Agnes and Adolf to a real vacation.
Agnes was thrilled, shedding tears of joy as she and Steve stumbled arm-in-arm like a couple of drunks into the living room where Adolf watched TV.
“Adolf!” Agnes cried, as if he were two rooms away instead of lying prone on the couch directly in front of her. Steve stood at her side, smiling but embarrassed by the enthusiasm. “Steve is going to take you and me on a trip! Oh my god, baby, we’re all going to Mexico!”
Steve nodded. “That’s right, champ. Acapulco.”
“You hear that, Adolf? Apaculco!”
“Aca-pulco,” corrected Steve.
“How exotic! I don’t know a word of Mexican,” Agnes cried, her powdered, splotchy face lit up with enthusiasm, brushed with a sheen of moisture from her joyous tears and the sweat of anticipation. “You say thank you to Steve, Adolf. Can you believe it? He’s taking us away!”
On hearing those last words Adolf’s dead eyes came alive. He looked at Steve as if seeing him for the first time. The first time ever.
“Thank you, Steve,” Adolf said in his quiet, high-pitched voice.
Steve shifted from one foot to another, uncomfortable with Adolf’s sudden awareness. Those eyes, he thought. “Of course, Adolf. I want you and your mother to be happy. I’m pleased to do it. It’s been a good year,” he added lamely.
Adolf stood from the couch, took a step toward Steve and his mother, looked down on them, his normally dull-eyed stare now alert, sliding from one smiling head to the other.
“Where will we stay?” he finally said.
“That’s the best part,” his mother said. “There’s a fancy resort right on the beach where we’re all gonna be sleeping at night. And there’s snorkeling and hiking and a bar right by the pool! You can drink Mai-Tai’s while soaking in the hot tub, Steve said. Didn’t you, Steve?”
“Uh-huh,” Steve responded, his tight smile unmoving, his eyes never leaving the massive boy towering before him.
Adolf picked up the remote control, muted the television. He looked at his mother. It was deathly quiet in the room. For a moment, no one moved.
“When?” Adolf said, his face unreadable.
Steve cleared his throat. “Well, in about a month, when the weather down there isn’t too hot. We don’t want to melt,” he finished, chuckling without moving his lips, a bead of sweat fingering down his temple.
“Oh my god, I’m just gonna scream!” Agnes cried, breaking apart the tension. She smacked the top of Steve’s head with a wet kiss, her lipstick leaving a birthmark smear above his brow.
“Thank you, Steve,” Adolf repeated, then turned his back on them and went to his room. He shut the door quietly, sealing off the shrill screams of his mother’s delight.
Sealed away in the sanctuary of his room, Adolf sunk down into the balled-up blankets of his bed with a sigh. He stared dumbly at the ceiling, studied the familiar cracks and stains that decorated the old white paint. He thought about Steve. For the first time, Adolf took a moment to try and understand who Steve really was.
Steve suddenly seemed alive to Adolf. A new presence in his home that needed to be dissected. With a spurt of alarm, Adolf realized that Steve had power. Power over his mother, power over him. He could make things happen, he could change things. Because of Steve, they were all going to go away. To Acapulco.
Adolf looked deep within, wondering if he also had this strange power. After a few minutes of reflection he sensed nothing, and that worried him. Would Steve ever consider using this power against him? Against his mother? With a pang of fear in his gut, Adolf wondered just how powerful Steve was. If he could take them on this trip, what’s to say he couldn’t take her forever? Leave old Adolf behind. Alone.
Pushing these thoughts away, he found the remote and turned the television to his favorite cable channel, the one that always showed animals, currently playing a special about lions. While his mind tinkered and tested and searched for answers to his new-found Steve problem, the television glowed with the bright desert wilds of Africa. The screen showed a female lion laying quietly with her cub. Within moments a male lion appeared, wanting to take leadership of the small pride. Adolf watched with increasing interest. He sat up, grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume. He hung on every deep, silky, British-accented word the narrator spoke.
…the lioness, although appearing submissive, will put her life at risk to protect her cub from the intruding lion, whose objective is to kill the cub from the previous male in order to put the lioness into heat. Once done, the male can create his own offspring for his newfound pride…
Adolf stood up, watched with amazed and frightened eyes as the lion tried to kill the helpless cub again and again, the mother ferociously defending, her teeth bared, her muscles shining and tense. Finally, seemingly from exhaustion, the intruding lion stalked away, snarling at the protective mother over his shoulder as he disappeared into the tall grass.
…she has saved her cub this time, but the lion will be back, and he will keep coming back, until the cub is dead, and the pride is his…
A tear swelled in the corner of Adolf’s lazy eye, rolled down his cheek. He removed his thick glasses and brushed it away. He laid down heavily onto his bed, a sob escaping his lips like a wet cough.
For the first time since he was a small child, Adolf hugged his pillow to his face and wept.
* * *
The first thought to enter Adolf’s brain after stepping off the plane was that it was fucking hot.
He wasn’t sure what to expect when they disembarked onto the asphalt airstrip at the Acapulco International Airport, but the thick, humid ninety-degree air was not it. Wearing an all-black ensemble of jeans, biker boots and a t-shirt, Adolf immediatel
y broke into a full-body sweat, his pores opening up and exhaling salty, sticky liquid that mixed with the rampant bacteria of his unwashed skin to leave him standing, within seconds, wrapped in a pungent pool of his own body’s waste.
He hoisted his backpack higher onto his shoulder and followed Steve and his mother through the non-air-conditioned terminal. He eyed the snack stands and fruit drink vendors, warily watched the native Mexicans, disheveled tourists, crying children and pushy drivers-for-hire, one of whom repeatedly tried to take Adolf’s backpack off his shoulder while Steve came to a quickly-spoken agreement for his services.
Somehow, the outside of the airport was even hotter and muggier than the inside. Adolf felt sweat running down the inside of his legs, his long hair matting to his forehead and the back of his neck, his shirt clinging, his thick eyeglasses fogging up, the frames sliding down his slick, porous nose.
The stubby Mexican driver showed them to a green Volkswagen Bug with one missing hubcap and a lilting rear chrome bumper. Adolf knew instantly there was no possible way the three of them, the driver, their three large suitcases and other smaller bags would ever fit inside.
He watched with curdling dismay and a small amount of wonderment as Agnes and Steve squeezed into the backseat, one suitcase on their lap and two tossed into the hood of the Bug. The driver opened the front door and indicated for Adolf to hop in.
“Vamos!” the driver snapped at Adolf, pointing at the cramped, frayed gray seat. Adolf shook his head but somehow, some way, squeezed himself into the vehicle. He felt the car lower, tilting to the right with his weight, and wondered if the entire drive to the hotel would be trailed by a shower of sparks as his side of the car’s undercarriage ground against the pavement.
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