Orphans of Wonderland

by Greg F. Gifune

  When Joel finally went to bed, he kept the television on with the sound muted so there’d still be light in the room. But every peripheral sound in the hotel hallways became amplified, every noise a potential threat, and he began to wonder if all these things could be connected somehow.

  Do you believe the Devil is talking to you, Mr. Walker?

  The terrible whispers and sounds that had once stalked the corridors of his mind returned, testing the periphery of his sanity and attempting to drag him back to the same hell he’d clawed his way out of all those years before. Wasn’t that part of the trap he’d fallen into before, making connections where there weren’t any?

  Do you believe he’s inside you right now?

  But had he been wrong? Was he wrong now? Or right on both counts?

  He slept fitfully, like a frightened child hiding beneath blankets and waiting for the monsters under his bed to strike, hoping his parents might arrive first, save him from his fears and assure him that there were no such things as monsters.

  The luxury of fearing things that didn’t exist eluded him, however; it had for several years now, and likely always would.

  Because Joel knew those monsters were real.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As the sun sets over Horseneck Beach, a two-mile stretch of sand and dunes in Westport, just part of the hundreds of acres of barrier beach and salt marsh that constitute one of the busiest and more popular locations in the Massachusetts State Forests and Parks System, the four boys sit in the sand, watching the water and sharing a case of beer. Crowded with tourists, out-of-towners and locals alike during the summer months, in early spring it’s far more quiet and less traveled. To locals like Joel and his friends, it’s the best time—their time—to hang out here and enjoy the sand and sun and ocean.

  On this early evening in 1982, the sun low in the sky but not yet down, they have come in Sal’s ’71 Mustang to a spot they’ve frequented their entire lives. They’re all nineteen and nearly a year out of high school, but since the drinking age is twenty, none are old enough to buy. Luckily, Dorsey’s older sister works part-time at a local liquor store and has managed to score them a case of Schlitz and a fifth of Southern Comfort. Trent has weed, Quaaludes and mescaline, like Trent always does. Joel, assigned with “tune duty”, has shown up with his new JVC boom box and a handful of cassettes. Lonnie, given the responsibility to snag food, has a bag of sandwiches.

  They all met at Sal’s house, then piled into his Mustang and hit the beach. The plan is to enjoy a few hours of relaxation and laughs before hitting a party another friend has scheduled for later that Saturday evening. Summer will be here soon. What they don’t yet realize is that it will be their last together. After taking a year off between graduation and continuing his education, Joel will begin college the coming fall to pursue a degree in journalism. In the interim he’s working at a local restaurant, waiting tables and saving as much money as he can. Between his own limited funds, student loans, financial aid, a small scholarship and the help of his parents, college is a possibility for him. The others are either not as fortunate or not interested in college. Sal, a former Golden Gloves boxing champion, is good enough to turn pro but has no desire to, and opts instead to pursue his love of cars and work as a mechanic at a local garage owned by his cousin. It’s all he’s ever really wanted to do. Dorsey, who had planned to enter the military, has changed his mind and instead taken a job at a hip clothing store at the nearby Swansea Mall. Lonnie is working security for a company in New Bedford, and Trent has already had a handful of jobs since graduation. None have worked out, so he has returned to what he did through most of high school: selling drugs.

  By the following summer, Joel will have moved on with his college career and stopped spending a lot of time with the old crew. Trent will get into more trouble, including a few stints in jail, then move away and not be heard from again. Lonnie, Sal and Dorsey will remain in touch and relatively close friends, but even Lonnie will go his own way once he becomes a father. In the years that follow, only Sal and Dorsey will remain tight, although they won’t be able to maintain the level of friendship they enjoyed in high school. Life seems to conspire against them all in that regard. This close-knit group of five friends is doomed, but they have no idea, because in those waning days and nights of spring, it still feels as if they’ll be friends forever, always this close and connected as they’ve been for years now. How could it ever be any other way? Sure, things will change along the way, and they’ll all change a bit along with them, but they’ll still be them, they’ll still be buds and they’ll always hang out and be there for each other. Won’t they?

  Few things lost can never be saved. This is one. They are one.

  “You look ridiculous,” Sal says to Trent as he flops down onto the sand, a beer in hand. “When you gonna quit this bullshit?”

  Trent chuckles, shakes his head. His Mohawk is purple today. It changes color frequently. His outfit is punk all the way, from his jackboots to his torn Dead Kennedys Holiday in Cambodia T-shirt, to the large clothespins he sports as earrings, to the wide, leather, spiked bracelet. It’s a transformation he made at the beginning of their senior year of high school, and it’s gotten continually hardcore since. But to them, he’s just Trent, the skinny, soft-spoken kid with sad blue eyes, the weakest and most vulnerable of their group, reborn as a tough and rebellious punk. “What do you care?” he asks.

  “Because we hang out, and you look like a fucking asshole.”

  Dorsey waves at him, as if to swat his words from the air. “Leave him alone.”

  “I’m trying to help him out.” Sal opens his can of beer with a loud pop, then takes a quick gulp. “Fucking peacock on acid over here.”

  “Christ, not this again.” Lonnie takes a pull of Southern Comfort. “Every time now with this bullshit. It’s his thing, okay? Let it go, it’s got nothing to do with you.”

  “Joel,” Sal says, spreading his hands wide in an appeal. “Help me out here.”

  “You’re on your own,” Joel tells him, laughing. “Only one it bothers is you.”

  “Here, this is for all of youse. Drink it in, ya fucks.” Sal flips everyone off and takes another swig of beer. “You clowns cover for him all you want. I’m the only one with the guts to tell him how fucking retarded he looks.”

  “What, you look so good?” Trent smiles, rolls a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and lights it up with a Zippo. “Give me a break, big man.”

  “What’s the matter with the way I look? I’m dressed normal, like a regular person, not some goddamn carnival freak.”

  Trent winks at Joel, knowing he’s goading Sal but unable to stop himself. “So a KISS T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, jeans, sneakers and your hair slicked back like some greaseball, that’s normal?”

  “Greaseball?” Sal laughs, slaps Dorsey’s shoulder hard but playfully. “You hear what he just called me? You gonna sit there and let this Sex Pistol motherfucker insult my proud Italian heritage?”

  Dorsey, who is busy rolling a joint, shrugs. “Hey, you’re Sal ‘The Volcano’ Valano; knock his ass out.”

  “Least I’m the real deal,” he scoffs, motioning to Trent. “You’re just pretending. You’re not some punk rock dipshit from London or whatever. You’re a regular white kid from the working-class burbs like the rest of us.”

  Dorsey looks up from the rolling paper in his hands. “I’m black, you idiot.”

  “Come on, don’t start that racist shit with me. You know what I mean.”

  “Oh, I’s sorry, Mistah Sal, I sho enough ams!”

  Everyone laughs but Sal. “Don’t fucking encourage him with that shit.”

  Dorsey begins singing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”.

  “Yeah, okay, whatever. The point is Trent’s just playacting. It’s a bunch of bullshit. It’s all for show, hair done up like that and looking like he
hasn’t had a bath in a year. Jesus, man, you need attention that bad?”

  “Yeah, I do, but only from you.” Trent blows him a kiss. “I’m dying for it, baby.”

  “In your fucking dreams, Mary.”

  “He’s expressing himself,” Lonnie says, passing the bottle to Trent. “Not the way I’d do it but—fuck it—who gives a shit?”

  “Exactly,” Sal says, “it’s not the way you’d do it because it’s fucking gay and he looks like a jackass.”

  “What the hell difference would that make?” Dorsey asks. “Lonnie looks like a jackass anyway.”

  Everyone laughs, and Lonnie throws a handful of sand at Dorsey, which results in the group collectively scolding him for potentially ruining the joint-in-progress.

  “You guys are asleep,” Trent says. “All of you. Open your eyes; the world’s in flames all around you.”

  “That’s just your hair,” Sal says.

  “Keep laughing. It’s all a lie, man. Anarchy, that’s the only answer.”

  “Yeah,” Sal says, “because I’m definitely gonna take you seriously in that getup. I wouldn’t let you walk my fucking dog looking like that.”

  Trent raises a finger. “First of all, you shouldn’t talk about Barbie like that.”

  Everyone bursts into laughter as Joel falls over and rolls in the sand.

  “Ouch,” Lonnie finally manages. “Come on, man, that’s the love of his life.”

  “Yeah,” Dorsey adds, “this week.”

  “Fuck you, Trent,” Sal says, drinking more beer. “You wish you could get anywhere near something that fine. Fucking guy looks like he gets his dates at the zoo and he’s busting my balls. And don’t even get me started on that sorry excuse for music.”

  “Sorry I don’t dig that radio-friendly, corporate sell-out shit you like. Packaged and sanitized for your protection.”

  “Yeah, yeah, heard it all before. Nonconformity and antiestablishment pukes think you’re our only hope.”

  “There is no hope.” Trent smokes his cigarette, and though still in a jovial mood, seems a bit more serious. “And since when did you become so conformist and establishment anyway?”

  “Maybe I’m not,” Sal says, “but I do it cool, you know, like a man. Not some whacked-out lunatic the way you’re trying to do it.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Dorsey says, sparking up the joint. “What do you mean there’s no hope?”

  “There’s always hope,” Joel says.

  Trent flashes him a look. “Dude, seriously?”

  “What?”

  “You sound like a fucking child, man.”

  “Why?” Joel asks. “Because I don’t think everything sucks and the whole world is one big hopeless cesspool?”

  “Open your eyes.”

  “To what, your way of thinking? No thanks.”

  “So you believe everything’s right with the world? Go along to get along, huh?”

  “Can we lighten the fuck up, please?” Lonnie says. “Jesus Christ.”

  “We all deal with shit in our own ways,” Joel says evenly. “Right?”

  They all know exactly what he means, but don’t intend to discuss it.

  Trent shrugs, and instead says, “Dorsey, what you do believe?”

  “I believe we should smoke this doobie.” He smiles mischievously. “And get very…very…small.”

  One by one, they faded away, taking their carefree attitudes and dated, politically incorrect humor with them, until Joel stood alone on the beach, watching the waves crash shore. For all their faults and foolishness, they were a family in their own way. Joel remembered how, later that night, someone at the party called Trent a freak and Sal beat the guy to a pulp. They could say anything to each other, but no one outside their circle had that privilege. He’d forgotten how close they’d all once been, how comfortable and safe they’d been with each other. He’d forgotten how badly he missed that, how badly he missed them.

  Joel walked the sand a while longer, but the wind and the cold were too much, and he soon found his way back to his car. He drove across town to their old neighborhood. He, Dorsey and Lonnie all had lived on the same street. Sal and Trent had lived on the next street over. Their neighborhood consisted of rows of modest homes lined up on mostly quiet streets.

  Not much had changed in all these years.

  Joel cruised the neighborhood, his car crawling along the streets where they’d all grown up. There was Freaky Harold’s house, a middle-aged guy everyone was told to stay away from and never talk to. The town pervert, complete with a windowless van, a creepy stare and a perpetually itchy groin, he often followed kids home from school and scared his share of little boys and girls, but no one ever heard of him actually doing anything. Joel’s freshmen year of high school, Harold killed himself, slit his wrists. It was the talk of the town for weeks. The house was now a different color, but Joel recognized it as Harold’s right away. Then there was the Silva’s house, where Mr. Silva had a bicycle repair shop in his garage. Everyone took their bicycles to Mr. Silva, a kindly older man who often made minor fixes for free. The garage was still there but no longer a repair shop.

  Joel turned at the corner onto the street where he’d grown up.

  Ray-Ray Jennings had lived right there, he remembered, in that cape with the extra wide driveway. A few years older than Joel, he was a bully who constantly chased him from the bus stop at the corner all the way to his house. This continued through most of seventh grade, until he became friends with Sal, who, with one memorable beating, put an end to Ray-Ray’s reign of terror.

  Dorsey’s old house was updated and now sported lots of shrubbery along the front of the property and a paved driveway that had once been gravel. Joel wasn’t sure who lived there now, or if the house was even still in Dorsey’s family.

  Everything looked so cold and still, locked down, as if no one lived in any of these old houses anymore. Despite the years since he’d last been here, and there’d been plenty, the memories kept coming.

  There was Lonnie’s house. The screened-in side porch looked pretty much the same as it had when they were kids, as did the rest of the place. The property had not been particularly well maintained and was in need of some major repairs.

  Joel slowed the car to a creep, then pulled over onto the side of the road.

  A few doors down from Lonnie’s, there it was: the house he’d grown up in.

  He could almost see a younger version of himself running around and playing in the yard…his mother gardening in the summer heat…his father mowing the lawn. It all seemed so clear in that moment, so alive and tangible, as if it were still going on just like it had all those years before. None of those people were gone, it seemed, just out of sight, hiding perhaps, until he was on his way and no longer looking.

  But Joel knew the truth all too well. His mother, a secretary at the local elementary school, had been diagnosed with lung cancer just weeks after he graduated college. Five months later she was dead. Although his father, an electrician, lived in the house a couple more years, he eventually sold it and moved to Florida, where he remarried and still lived to this day. Joel’s mother missed so much. She never saw him marry Taylor, never really got to know her. She never even got to know him as an accomplished adult. She also avoided his collapse and fall from grace, and for that he was grateful, as it would have devastated her to see her only child ushered into a mental institution. His father, on the other hand, acted as if nothing ever happened. He was already in Florida at the time, and that’s where he stayed. They had literally never discussed it. Even these days they only saw each other every few years, and when they did, both pretended all was right with the world and always had been.

  My God, he thought. This life—my life—really existed. Here, in this place.

  Yet it seemed so impossibly far away, a dream he’d had years before and was j
ust now remembering, like the memories of the black car haunting his nightmares.

  Before his emotions got the better of him, Joel pulled back out onto the street and continued on until he’d found Trent’s old house on the next street. While Sal, Dorsey and Trent all had siblings, Joel and Lonnie were only children. Of their group, Trent was the only one raised in a single-parent home. His mother, a former hippie, worked as an art teacher at a private Catholic high school in nearby Dartmouth, and although she had a series of boyfriends over the years, never lived with any of them and raised Trent and his sister Delilah alone. Joel had no idea who lived there now.

  A few doors down, he found Sal’s house.

  It looked the same, only older and with relatively new vinyl siding, a dull beige. Same big bay window facing the street, same overgrown, weed-infested front yard, same rusty auto parts and crap littering the side yard and small section of woods beyond. The paved driveway, which led to a two-stall garage, housed a pair of cars, including one up on blocks. An American flag mounted just outside the front door flapped in the cold wind.

  Joel parked out front.

  Even before he’d gotten out of the car, Sal appeared, all six-foot-four-inches of him framed in the doorway to the garage, a can of beer in one hand held down by his hip, a soiled rag clutched in the other. He squinted, stepped out onto the driveway, apparently oblivious to the cold in a sleeveless sweatshirt, a pair of old jeans and work boots. Filthy as any respectable grease monkey, he adjusted the brim of an equally dirty New England Patriots hat, then turned his head and spat on the ground.

  Joel walked around the side of the car, heart pounding. He stopped halfway up the driveway and smiled.

  “Sonofabitch,” Sal said. His face remained expressionless and weathered, his nose flattened and wide from years of boxing, his complexion red, leathery and loose from years of hard drinking, eyes tired and encircled with black rings from the rest of his vices and stresses and everything else life had dished out. “Joel Walker.”