Property of the State

by Bill Cameron

  But we’re not allowed to talk about that.

  Wayne leads us inside. It’s a small house on the flats east of Mount Tabor between Eighty-second Avenue and I-205. The design is Lego Modern, but the construction is Rain-Soaked Cardboard. Every blocky edge is soft and frayed, the corners all dark with mildew. In the living room, a sprung couch is centered on the big boxy TV, old-def. As usual, Wayne is watching cable snooze. He’s all about the news, while Anita lives for reality TV. Who Wants To Be A Kardashian Towel Boy? and I Can’t Stop Giving Birth! compete with Headline News and roundtable shout fests. For me, it doesn’t matter what’s on. It’s all noise.

  One direction, the dining table is piled high with overflow from Wayne’s office—he’s some kind of insurance guy. Home way too much, which is all I need to know. The air is stale and smells of creamed chipped beef—Wayne’s favorite meal. The other way, a short hallway under the stairs leads to the Bobbitt bedroom—shudder. One can only hope they don’t actually mate.

  The only thing the house has going for it is the second floor. Since her accident, Anita can’t manage the steep stairway, so I only have to deal with personal space invasions from Wayne. He’s bad enough, but at least he doesn’t steal my money to buy dope. Excuse me. Medication.

  “So what’s the problem this time?”

  Wayne used to be in the Marines, but all that’s left of those days is his sharp voice. The rest of him is as soft as the couch where he spends most of his waking hours.

  Mrs. Petty heads for the stairs. “Just a spot-check. How is Joey doing?”

  “His grades are satisfactory. I wish I could say the same about his attitude.”

  Goes both ways, Wayne. He and I follow her up. Spot-check means a room search. She wants to know what I’m hiding.

  My room—a narrow brown cell with a sloped ceiling—is spotless. Not much to mess up. There are no pictures or posters on the walls, no books except a student dictionary, an ancient encyclopedia set, and a Bible I’ve never opened. The twin bed is made to Wayne’s Marine Corps standards, the itchy olive drab blanket taut across the thin mattress. The dresser is steel-framed pressboard. Socks rolled in the top drawer, shorts folded in the second. Shirts and pants below. I have a few items hanging in the shallow closet. The desktop holds only a Tensor lamp and a mug filled with pencils. I’m pretty sure Wayne comes in and sharpens them when I’m gone.

  Mrs. Petty flicks the Tensor lamp on and off, then glances in the closet and pulls open my dresser drawers.

  Wayne folds his arms and makes his drill sergeant face. “I check the drawers and closet for food every day.”

  She and I both know stashing food is so nine years ago. She throws him a side eye he doesn’t catch, then kneels to tap along the baseboards. When she hears a hollow spot, she looks back at me and pulls a Leatherman tool from her pocket, opens the flathead screwdriver. She slips the head into a narrow gap between the wall and the top of the baseboard. A two-foot section clatters onto the bare wood floor. Wayne draws a breath.

  Behind the baseboard, I’ve cut away the drywall to reveal a shallow space framed with thin slats of pine. The wall studs are on sixteen-inch centers, making the space a little more than a foot wide, three inches deep, and four inches high—as big as I could make it and still hide it behind the baseboard.

  Mrs. Petty stands up. “Empty. Should I be pleased, or keep looking?”

  This particular hidey-hole is a gimme. I’ve never used it. There are a couple of others in the room, one pretty easy to find if she wants to, one I hope she’ll miss.

  “A sneak.” A vein stands out on Wayne’s forehead.

  Mrs. Petty seems less concerned. “How long has this been here, Joey?”

  I shrug. She knows better than to ask me questions like that. She turns to Wayne. “I see it as a good sign. At least it’s not stuffed with chocolate.” I’ve never hoarded candy, as she knows. I look out the barred window—for security, allegedly. The key hangs on a hook on the wall, but as soon as Mrs. Petty leaves, Wayne will retrieve it. He doesn’t want me sneaking out at night. Or, apparently, escaping if the house ever catches fire. A shadow pressure of fear constricts my chest at the thought. I shove it down again and focus on the smoke detector on the ceiling above the window.

  Mrs. Petty spends a few minutes tapping the walls without finding anything of interest. I’m not surprised when she unplugs the Tensor light and tries it in the one unused outlet in the room, just as she isn’t surprised when the light doesn’t work. She uses her screwdriver to remove the faceplate. The plug assembly, unwired, swings out on hinges. The space behind it is much smaller than the space behind the baseboard, an ordinary PVC electrical box. Mrs. Petty reaches inside and pulls out a USB thumb drive.

  “What’s this?”

  She waves the seemingly innocuous object at me. Like I’d tell her what’s actually on it.

  “Wayne’s collection of Internet porn?”

  This is how I end up in trouble. But sometimes, a smart-assed remark is worth the look on their faces, no matter the blowback afterward.

  1.3: Oh, My Nose

  Mrs. Petty pockets the thumb drive, but I’m not worried. She won’t find the hidden script Somers created to fake out the prying eyes of Katz IT. It’s designed to auto-load on mount—but only if the spyware is present. Otherwise, all you see is a boobs-and-bullets game demo he put there to give the witless something to fret about.

  Her gaze drips with disappointment. Story of my life. “Joey, I think I’ll sit in with you and Reid tomorrow.” Oh good. A tag team. She eases past Wayne and heads down the stairs. His own parting shot features flecks of spit. “Clean this trash heap.” He doesn’t slam the door on his way out. Not quite.

  People say there are reasons I find myself in these situations. In the typical rundown, Mrs. Petty—or my therapist, Reid—will bring up my father, Orville, and my sister, Laura, dead when the house burned down. They might mention my mother, Eva, last seen tearing off in the family pickup around the time the fire broke out. Maybe they’ll remind me I nearly died myself. A neighbor pulled me out of the burning house just as the first fire truck arrived.

  The thing is, it all happened over ten years ago. I’ve been property of the state longer than I was in parental custody. I try to tell them: I barely remember what Laura looked like. As for Orville and Eva, well—I have a clearer picture of the back of my own head. If you ask me, post-traumatic stress disorder is just psychobabble used to control people who won’t act the way the world thinks they should.

  I rub my hands on my pants and glare at the security bars. Where I came from doesn’t matter. Where I’m going even less. Right now, all that matters is Wayne and the next ten minutes.

  I move to the door, crack it open. I can hear murmuring down below. Mrs. Petty is probably pointing out the ways things could be worse, maybe sharing an anonymous horror story about one of her other cases. This situation with the computer, she’ll say, it’s perfectly normal. Boys like to look at explicit sexual imagery.

  So do middle-aged ex-Marines, but I doubt Wayne will cop to using my laptop to find spanking material.

  I close the door and regard the trash heap. I vacuumed and dusted before school, a daily requirement. During her search, Mrs. Petty didn’t make much of a mess, but I return the lamp to the desk and close up the hidey-holes. Just for giggles, I stick the window key inside the outlet compartment. Since she showed him exactly where to look, Wayne will get a cheap thrill when he finds it. If I’m lucky, he’ll think she sussed out all my hides.

  When everything is in order, I sit on the bed. Wayne’s meltdowns follow a standard arc. Thunder, stomping, foaming. Once his heart rate passes one hundred sixty, he’ll suck air until he can breathe again and then send me to bed. The Bobbitts aren’t allowed to not feed me—regular mealtimes are part of my treatment plan. But Wayne’s definition of a meal is pretty loose. I’ll be lucky to get a cou
ple of Kraft Singles on toast and a glass of milk.

  But when Wayne opens the door, I can see something is off. His face is the color of his beloved chipped beef. Beads of sweat gleam in his crew cut. “What did you say to her?”

  There’s no good answer to a question like that. Wayne’s pupils bounce side to side, as if he can’t decide which of my eyes he wants to gouge out first.

  “I asked you a question.” His voice has a crazy wobble. He takes a step, then another until he’s standing over me. White goo collects at the corners of his mouth. A vein thumps at his temple.

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I didn’t have to say anything. We could both hear you fapping as we drove up.”

  Prolly shoulda have counted to ten.

  Wayne picks me up, two-handed, and throws me against the wall. I don’t have time to be surprised. The whole house seems to shake as I bounce off sheetrock and pitch face-forward into the corner of the desk.

  A shatter of light blinds me. I fall sideways and crack the back of my head against the desk chair. Sickening waves roll from my gut to my throat. I’m not sure what I’m seeing at first. A scarlet glimmer through broken glass. Spilled paint splashed across the floor. Feels like something is trying to get at my brain through my sinus cavity. I reach for the edge of desk—anything solid. Then I see Wayne.

  He looks glassy-eyed and ghost white. Something I’ve never seen before.

  I put my hand to my face, touch gore. The pain hits and I fall back against the desk. Maybe I make a sound. Darkness threatens at the edge of my vision, fog the color of smoke. I blink back tears. I have to breathe through my mouth. The air tastes like metal.

  “Wha’d you do t’me?” I’m not sure he can understand me. Even inside my head, the words sound like I’m talking through a wad of half-chewed paper.

  Wayne backs up to the bed. He starts to tremble. A stain darkens his khakis at the crotch and down the inside of his legs.

  The weird panic I feel at the sight of Wayne pissing himself is almost worse than the pain. All I want to do is get away. I stumble to the doorway, catch myself and somehow think to grab my backpack. I almost fall down the stairs, find my feet at the bottom. Leave a bloody handprint on the wall next to the front door.

  When I step out onto the porch, I nearly collide with Anita.

  Anita is Wayne’s opposite, a broomstick with scarecrow hair and eyes like the undead. She’s as tall as me, but not even half as wide. Now she’s leaning on her cane, her face flushed from the three-step climb from the front walk. Nothing in her expression suggests anything is amiss. Even her voice is flat.

  “Joey, what happened to you?”

  “Wayne peed his pants.”

  She’s baffled, as usual. “What are you saying?”

  “He pissed himself.” I lurch past her down the steps. The sun hangs over Mount Tabor, but overhead the sky has gone cloudy and dark. Anita taps her cane on the porch, pretending to be blind maybe. “Where’s Wayne? Have you made supper?” I never make supper. Wayne doesn’t like me around sharp things.

  “I’m outta here.” Probably unintelligible, but whatever. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think this may be the last time I will ever talk to Anita. I take one last look at the house. Wayne peers back from my bedroom window, hands gripping the bars that keep me in at night.

  As the rain begins to fall, I run.

  1.4: Zombie Apocalypse

  All I can think to do is put distance between me and the Boobie Hatch. At best, I’m looking at a long, grim night ahead. At worst, Mrs. Petty tracks me down and dumps me in some stack-’em-and-rack-’em warehouse where everyone sleeps in triple-bunked cots and fetal alcohol savages issue beat-downs out of boredom. If I was schizoaffective or borderline personality disorder I might score a room in a country club like the Parry Center, but—my luck—I’m not even on the autism spectrum.

  The situation outside isn’t much better. Whacked out hobos will throw down over a doorway or a dry spot beneath an overpass. Downtown, pimps troll runaways for mouths to add to their blowjob squads. I might ride the MAX until it stops running. Warm and dry, but I’d risk getting rolled by rail thugs, if I’m not booted by a transit cop first. In the shelters—assuming I could score a bed—it’s beat-downs or worse, all over again.

  For all that, I prefer my chances outdoors. Wayne will already have his story worked out—“He attacked me. All I did was push him away to protect myself.” I’ll take a hobo over the system any day of the week—at least you can sometimes cut a deal with the hobo.

  I pause next to a rusty Camaro to hork bloody snot into the gutter. In this neighborhood no one will notice—domestic bloodlettings are as common as feral cats. Rain falls onto my neck out of a sky more blue than gray. The rainbow will be behind me, but I’m in no mood for fucking rainbows. I can hardly breathe, my face feels like someone drove a spike through it, and my options are for shit. Except: keep moving.

  At Eight-second Avenue, a bug-eyed kid in the backseat of a passing minivan takes a break from his in-flight movie to gape and point. The van drives on, but a hooker on the corner finishes his thought. “What in hell happen’ to you?” Half a block later, I catch my reflection in the window of a discount cigarette shop.

  I look like zombie apocalypse, phase two.

  There’s a McDonald’s on the next block where I sometimes stop on my way to school. I don’t get but two steps through the door before an assistant manager scoots out from behind the counter. He’s waving twig arms and shaking his head. His neck is four sizes too small for his collar.

  “You hooligans aren’t welcome here.”

  Hooligans? “I just want to wash my hands and face.”

  “Bathrooms are for customers only.”

  “Fine. I’ll have a vanilla shake.” I pull a tangle of singles from my pocket so he knows I can pay.

  For a second his Adam’s apple quakes, like maybe he works on commission. But then his eyes go hard. “Get out, before I call the police.”

  I need to get cleaned up and under cover until I can figure out how to keep my long-term plans on track. Cops I do not need.

  There are other places along Stark Street—a pizza joint, a few restaurants, a coffee shop—but I have no reason to expect a warmer welcome in any of them. Marcy would let me clean up at Uncommon Cup, the café where I feed my caffeine jones, but UC’s on the far side of Mount Tabor and way down Hawthorne. Thirty blocks—and me bleeding the whole way.

  Then I have a thought: the Huntzels are half as far as Uncommon Cup, on the west slope of Mount Tabor Park. Mrs. Huntzel won’t cover for me with Mrs. Petty, but if I’m lucky I can get there before the APB goes out. She’ll let me wash up, maybe loan me some of Philip’s clothes. When she asks what happened, I can tell her I was jumped by hooligans.

  The Huntzel house is a castle, the kind of place where magazine-ad teens live in shows on the CW. The view alone—of the Hawthorne and Belmont districts and all the way to downtown Portland—screams money. Not that the Huntzels are flashy. Mrs. Huntzel may drive a Beamer—the 740i, her one indulgence—but she gets her hair done at SuperCuts. Mr. Huntzel drives an old Toyota and dresses like a Walmart greeter. And Philip dresses like me. Still, things stand out, and not just the BMW. Everything in the house is oversized, an exercise in excess, from the slate roof to the baby-grand piano in the basement rec room—a twenty-by-forty chamber also home to ping pong and pool tables, a fireplace big enough to roast a pig, and a half dozen dead animal heads on the walls. And that’s just the daylight end of the basement.

  Hell, there are thirty-two smoke detectors in the house. And people wonder why I need a week to clean.

  I approach from the rear. Caliban—a freak show mutt who adopted the Huntzels, or maybe just Huntzel Manor—greets me outside the laurel hedge that forms the boundary between park and backyard. From the front, Caliban looks like a dust
mop on stilts. The full three-hundred-sixty-view is even more absurd: a lion reimagined by The Biggest Loser. Mrs. Huntzel said she thinks he’s half-Pomeranian, half-greyhound, half-pit bull. I don’t even want to know how that happened.

  When he sees me, he charges up the hill, tongue flapping. I flinch in anticipation of the tackle, but he barrels past and spins, then hip-checks me.

  “Watch it, dog.” I rub his shaggy head and continue down to the hedge gate. The rain has stopped and sun shines through broken clouds. I cross to the veranda, peering through windows. No sign of life. At the side door, I knock and wait. The air feels dense, or maybe the pressure is all inside my head. If it was right after school, I’d go in—except for days when I ride with them, I often beat the Huntzels here. But it’s past five. I feel weird arriving so late.

  When no one comes, I make for the front door. Caliban pads along behind. The doorbell is a freaking gong: you can hear it anywhere in the house.

  Nothing.

  “Where is everyone, dog? Still at the hospital?”

  Caliban wags his tail, which I take as a yes.

  My head is about to fall off and gore has glued my shirt to my chest. Any minute, carrion birds will start circling. “They won’t mind if I go in and clean up, will they?” Another wag. I’m surprised he can understand me. In my ears, my voice sounds like a swarm of bees. Not that it matters. I’m talking myself into what might be viewed as trespassing should someone get pissy about it. Small fries, if Cooper tries to start my laptop.

  “I’m going in. Cover me.”

  Wag.

  I use my key at the side door and step into a mud room with openings to the front hallway, the south stairs, and the kitchen.

  “Hello? Anyone home?” I punch in the alarm code on the panel inside the butler’s pantry. On the long center island in the kitchen there’s a Rite-Aid bag—Vicodin for Philip. They’ve been here and left again, if the silence is any indication. Knowing Mrs. Huntzel, she took Philip for ice cream.