Alter Boys

by Chuck Stepanek

  Prologue

  Father Gus took great pride in his vestments. Such a clever disguise. He didn't listen to the pitiful housewife and her confession. There was a much more interesting sound-- the cheery herald of the ice cream truck outside. His heart closed to God and opened to the promise of what, or who, the truck would bring.

  Part 1

  Corky

  Chapter 1

  1

  At the age of 4 (almost 5!) Corky had everything that mattered to little boys. He had TV. What more could you want? Sure there were other things: He lived in a house. He wore clothes. He was never too cold, never too hungry and never too bruised by the angry hand of an adult that he may have displeased. But those were things that were far beyond a preschooler’s understanding of what contributed to a full and happy life. What mattered was television.

  Upon awakening, most young children will seek assurance that all is still right in their world. They snuggle up with the house dog, check the goldfish to ensure that it’s still swimming or clamber into bed with mommy and daddy. Or, lacking these links with the living, tots may explore the kitchen, seeking confidence that, with the presence of food, everything will be okay. Not so with Corky. The morning hug of a parent, the face-licking of a hyper pup, even the comfort in knowing that a half-a-box of Cheerio’s was in the lower cupboard were of no importance. Everything in Corky’s world would be fine. So long as the TV worked.

  As he was on most days Corky was up early. He awoke to emptiness; both around him and inside. The walls of his room were barren of little boy drawings; his dresser uncluttered by little boy trinkets and treasures. No books, no maps, no favorite toys that could distinguish his room from that of any other in his small house. Just stark walls that had never recovered from that ‘just moved in look.’ It was what he knew, what he had always known. And as a result the emptiness around him was not unpleasant; it was…well…it just was what it was.

  Having scrubbed the remnants of sleep from his eyes, the emptiness inside him also awoke but never became evident. Where there should have been little boy adventures of forts, sandcastles or trees to climb, there was merely a black bottomless pit. The emptiness inside him was not unpleasant; it too…was just what it was.

  The blanket pulled aside, Corky slid his bottom along the bare mattress and maneuvered his feet over the side. He arched his back and probed cautiously until his toes found the floor. The bed was left unmade; his clothes unchanged. Eventually he would learn that it was customary to make your bed and uncustomary to sleep in and wear the same set of clothes for more than a week. But that was many years away. All that mattered to him was now. And right now, Corky needed to pee.

  He padded down the hall and entered the bathroom; not bothering to close the door or lift the ring. Seeing the bowl in front of him made his need more urgent. There wouldn’t be time to lift his shirt and tuck it under his chin; there was barely time to suck in his tummy, pull down at his pants, and aim.

  He almost made it.

  Overnight his go-go had slumped against his sac and the two had fused into one. His go-go sprayed down and to the left, the thin stream of urine decorating the already yellowed linoleum. He showed no alarm. No hiss of dismay. This little accident was more commonplace than exception. He squeezed hard to stop the stream and unfolded his pleated go-go. The rest of the job went smoothly but Corky still kept a keen ear. Had he heard the heavy trod of adult footsteps he would have again squeezed off his urine stream and frantically lifted the ring before finishing the job. But no such footfall interrupted his duty on this day. He flushed the toilet; something he never neglected. Rushing water vacated the bowl and recharged the tank. Corky didn’t like the sound. Nor did he like the knowledge that the water went down a hole, a hole that he could fall into. It was all very unnerving. But neglecting to flush the toilet would bring a greater consequence. It would mean that he had displeased, that he had failed, that he was bad. An even greater consequence would have followed the potential discovery of a line of golden sprinkle upon the floor. With his feet he shuffled the horseshoe shaped rug away from the base of the toilet and then swiped it back and forth until the offending dotted yellow line was erased.

  He was ready to start his day.

  There had been a time when the TV did not work. It was the longest week of punishment Corky had ever known. A carelessly placed half-glass of water was among the forgotten items parked on the shelf above the set. Daddy had been messing with the rabbit ears and had knocked the glass onto the Magnavox. Water poured into the dozens of breather slots cut into the back of the console. Immediately there was breathy pop and tinkle of glass as one of the tubes let go. Mitch Miller and his orchestra disappeared. “God Damn it!” Daddy righted the drinking glass and then yanked the power cord from the wall socket. A crackling, fizzling sound gurgled in the guts of the set while wisps of smoke filled the living room with the carbonic smell of melted plastic. “Who put—that--God Damn---- thing there!” Daddy stammered. It was one of the lengthiest statements ever uttered by his father. Corky sat frozen, stoic. He didn’t know who had put that God Damn thing there. He was not fearful of what daddy might do. He was more concerned, gravely concerned for the TV. He had been following the bouncing ball as Mitch and his orchestra played on and on. He didn’t care much for the music or lyrics in white block letters superimposed at the bottom of the screen. But the bouncing ball mesmerized him. And now, with the TV broken, the ball bounced on and on in some faraway place. But not for him, not now.

  His hope was that daddy would plug the TV back in. Instead he retrieved a screwdriver, took the back off of the set and tinkered around trying to get it working. At first Corky was awestruck to see the inside of the TV. All of those tubes and wires! But soon his attention was captured by other things: Dust, cobwebs, filaments of shattered glass; even the gaping socket that once held the tube that would glow nevermore. Later Corky would prod his finger into that socket. Other times he would plug the TV in hoping that it would come to life. If there is a god that looks out for inquisitive children who play with electricity and obliterated drunks who pull into their driveways unscathed then surely that god was looking out for Corky.

  After several days of fiddling with the set, daddy conceded and called a repairman. When the white van appeared in the driveway it was a momentous occasion. On the side of the van was a comical TV tube with eyes, a nose and open-mouth grin. A puffy cartoon hand displayed a “thumbs-up” gesture. Zigzags of electricity created a corona to complete the scene. Staring out the window Corky hopped from one foot to the other. Then he caught himself and withdrew unseen to the couch. For the next 30 minutes he watched while the repairman (who also had a smiling TV tube on the back of his shirt) poked and prodded and did the things that adults do to fix things. When the repairman plugged in the cord Corky squirmed, then became breathless as the set was turned on. After about 10 seconds the tubes warmed sufficiently and an image appeared on the screen. Corky kept absolutely still but inside his heart and mind were racing.

  The repairman stayed a bit longer replacing the housing and giving some papers to daddy. And then he was away; unnoticed. Ironically the clutter of stray items including the now-almost-empty water glass remained parked on the shelf above, inviting a repeat of the calamity. But Corky didn’t notice as he too was parked in his usual spot; five feet away from the face of the set. Eyes locked on the sand flowing through the hourglass as the credits rolled for “Days of our Lives.”

  Having suffered through nearly a week without television Corky found a new level of reverence for his sole activity in life. TV was back.

  And so on this Minnesota morning, having peed and flushed, Corky moved down the hall toward the living room. There was just a moment of trepidation as he turned on the set, hi
s mind in angst pondering the consequence of a non-working television. But then came the hum, followed by a steady audio tone, and slowly the screen brightened the room as the tubes came to life. And just as a mother’s voice and face become signs of reassurance for a developing youngster, Corky put the same value on the unbroken audio tone and test pattern of his surrogate parent.

  On days like today when he woke up early he would watch the test pattern and listen to the audio tone, vacating his mind of anything intellectual or imaginary. When the tone stopped, he knew that a picture of a weather vane with the letters “N,” “E,” “W,” and “S” would appear on the screen. News was one of the first words that Corky learned thanks to the science of vacuum tubes and transmission towers.

  The appearance of the weather vane was a signal. Soon there would be activity in the kitchen. His bed-raggled mother moving about; wringing her hands, making coffee, fretting and then wringing her hands some more. She mumbled to herself constantly. It was part vocalization of the task she was performing and part prayer to any of a dozen different saints. “I need the stem for the coffee pot…Saint Jude I petition you…put the water on the stove…pray for us sinners now and at the hour…where’s his lunch bucket?” You can imagine that listening to this would wear on a person after a while. Corky preferred the test tone.

  Soon daddy would lumber into the living room; sitting far back, as if keeping his distance from the intellectual presentation called “N,” “E,” “W,” “S”. Daddy didn’t watch the news, he tolerated it. He was here for one thing and one thing only: the weather.

  Daddy worked as a meter reader and Corky knew that he walked from house to house looking at numbers on meters. It was a job that brought encounters with angry dogs and angrier people. But nothing affected the job more than the weather. So when the weatherman came on and started affixing magnetic symbols to the map of Minnesota, Corky recognized the importance of each one. Snow, rain, cold and wind were bad. Today there were a lot of snow symbols on the map. The weatherman talked about low pressure and isobars and cold fronts. From time to time he would raise his wooden pointer with the black tip to indicate different parts of the map. Mankato, the arrowhead, the twin cities. Corky thrilled on the occasions when the weatherman would point to the spot on the map and utter the words he knew as home. “Elmwood.” But Elmwood was not in the news or the weather today.

  Daddy rose, moved to the kitchen and said: “Snow.” This elevated mommy’s fretting and mumbling to a new level. “Do you want another thermos…forgive us our sins as we…where are your heavy gloves…blessed St. Anthony…I’ll put on more coffee…” Daddy could barely keep up a monosyllabic conversation under the best circumstances. He stammered out just one more thing: “Cold” and wisely turned his attention to the closet to rummage for boots. The additional revelation of ‘cold’ would escalate the petitions to saints and coffee pots to new heights.

  When it came to human development, social skills or even the basics of communication Corky didn’t have doodly-squat. Had he known the term he would have been able to describe his family as ‘dysfunctional.’ Really dysfunctional. But such matters were beyond Corky’s comprehension. His mom and dad had both come from families of dysfunction. If it had been just one of them, maybe things would have been okay. But having two clueless parents only exacerbated the problem.

  Corky’s mom had been known as “the dumb one” by her own parents. During her childhood, on trips to town or to visit relatives, her parents introduced their kids by age. Here’s our oldest, here’s our second, this is our ‘dumb one’ and this is our youngest.” When they went to enroll her in school they stood in line with “their dumb one.” When other children at play said: ‘Look! Look at the airplane!” It wasn’t her poor eyesight (and lack of glasses) that was identified, it was: “oh yeah, she’s the dumb one.” So she learned to withdraw to discrete corners of the schoolyard where she engaged in conversations with herself. Nursery rhymes, church hymns, snippets of the Pledge of Allegiance, DEKALB seed corn ad slogans, anything with cadence or rhythm rolled over and over in her head in an unending self litany of obsessive compulsive behavior.

  Corky’s dad wasn’t a ‘dumb one.’ Actually he was fairly intelligent. But intelligence can’t fully compensate for the absence of social skills. The oldest of 11 children, Corky’s dad didn’t speak a word of English when he started grammar school. On the farm, the family, when they spoke (which was exquisitely rare) spoke only in Czech. Thus Corky’s dad was ostracized on the playground by the other children and (unwittingly) in the classroom by the teachers. Eventually he caught on to the language but only in broken bits and pieces. Keeping his mouth shut was far safer than the humiliation of learning to socialize. So that’s what he did. He kept his mouth shut tight. The absence of social skills would make him pay dearly and the debt would be passed along to his offspring.

  Since life skills from this dysfunctional duo were not to be had, Corky naturally turned to television. TV was always moving, always stimulating, always modeling his human development, never shaming, never assessing the guilt or the blame. TV was the perfect pastime and the perfect parent. Corky would lay out his meager toys in front of the TV and then watch, listen and learn while the non-judgmental Magnavox directed him through his day in the art of becoming human.

  During the morning “N” “E” “W” “S” he would drive his plastic cars through a carpet of imaginary rain puddles or snow drifts (depending upon the season) waiting for the time when the weatherman would come on screen and affix magnetic symbols to the map of Minnesota. If the weatherman happened to report clear conditions, he would retrieve a few ‘cyclopedia books from the bottom shelf of the TV stand and arrange them into roadways for fair weather driving. A bad weather forecast would mire his fleet in the heavy filaments of the throw rug.

  Later, the daytime soap operas would find Corky with a handful of marbles and an assortment of round containers, mixing bowls and pie pans. One by one he would select a container, drop in a few marbles, and then swirl the pan back and forth to give the marbles momentum. Always trying to see how close he could get the marbles up to the rim yet avoiding the cataclysm of having one of the marbles shoot out and land in some unattainable place like under the couch. His spinning marbles represented a curious affinity to the spinning globe of ‘As the World Turns’ and the ever-flowing hourglass of ‘Days of our Lives.’

  On nights when he was up late he could watch Ed Sullivan, Jack Benny or the red skeleton. During these shows he would build small towers with faded wooden blocks and when the audience laughed he would knock the towers into a tumble. One time Corky’s mom and dad had turned off all the lights and had gone to bed leaving him alone - transfixed to the glow of the screen. Eventually when the credits flipped and the theme music rolled Corky realized that he had been abandoned. He screamed. In no hurried fashion a hallway light came on silhouetting his mommy who delivered an admonition for not going to bed when he was supposed to. The admonition carried over the next morning from Daddy for failing to pick up his “God damned toys” from in front of the set. Subsequent nights, while transfixed by Sullivan or Benny or the skeleton, he would come to a sudden realization, whip his head frantically behind him and then return to the set having confirmed that all was still okay in his world.

  But afternoons were the best.

  Afternoons brought Casey the Engineer and his cartoon show. Casey bore a striking resemblance to the weatherman who opened each broadcast day. A pillow-tick cap, lantern and greasy oilcan in lieu of magnetic symbols and weather-pointer were all it took to believably transform the persona for the average pre-kindergarten viewer. Casey was never angry or said things to make Corky feel bad. Plus he showed cartoons. Yakky Doodle and Snagglepuss, Yogi Bear and Boo-boo, Deputy Dog and Auggie Doggie. Corky didn’t understand most of the dialogue exchanged between these characters, but they did funny things that made him laugh. And laugh he did; far too long and far too loud for whatever the current adventure on scr
een deserved. Laughter would not bring an admonition. Laughter did not involve the formulation of words to respond to the complexities of parental conversation. (If one wants to call it that) But just hearing his own voice pleased him somehow. And so laugh he did.

  Between each cartoon, Casey and his side-kick Harry the Happy Hobo would engage with a group of perhaps 20 kids arranged on bleachers in the studio. Each youngster had been presented a treat bag before the show to try and loosen them up before the red light came on above the studio camera. At first the kids picked gingerly at their treats but soon the elements of trepidation and good manners evaporated and they greedily devoured their goodies both on camera and off. After the first cartoon Casey passed a microphone asking each youngster his name. Often times the name came out with a gooey smacking sound as the ‘junior engineer’ worked over a mouthful of Sugar Babies or licorice Good n Plenty’s. The camera panned along with the progress of the microphone to give each child’s face a two-second glimpse of fame for those watching along at home.

  The end of the second cartoon brought Casey’s ‘engineer cheer’ and a recitation by Harry the Happy Hobo of all the children celebrating birthdays. Another cartoon and there was Casey again, this time holding a Tootsie Roll the size of a fireplace log. Of course Corky didn’t realize that it was just a cardboard tube filled with regular sized tootsie rolls, in his mind it was one massive tootsie that had been laced with Miracle Gro. Casey would announce the name of one lucky youngster who would tumble out of the bleachers to claim this cherished prize.