Terrible Cherubs: Tales of Sinners, Mistakes, and Regrets

by Steve Wetherell

  He dropped the bag to his side and gave Dodson his full attention. “Yessir.”

  Dodson glared at him incredulously. “You better be listening boy, because while lil’ ole candy ass Principle Tomlin was forking over that pretty piece of paper, me and my deputies ran a drug sweep at the school. Do you know why we were running a drug sweep?”

  “No sir.”

  “‘Cause I received credible information that your buddy over there…” he pointed to Todd sitting in the truck. “…is up to his ass in dealing.”

  The Sheriff stood, and the cruiser’s springs groaned in relief. “I don’t supposed you’d know anything ‘bout that, would you?”

  Nausea threatened to overwhelm Mike. “No sir.”

  “Your daddy is my friend. So was your momma,” he paused, letting those words sink in for effect. “She’d be right proud of you.”

  He felt Sheriff Dodson’s eyes burning into him, trying to squeeze a response, trying to break him. “I’d hate to think what it would do to your Pa if your scholarship got revoked.”

  “Can I go now?” was all he could think to say.

  “Mikey…think hard about who you’re keeping company with. Me and my deputies are going to be dropping by the high school a lot, we might even be bringing drug sniffing dogs. If you’re caught up in Todd’s shit, I will bust you in a heartbeat. You’ll spend the rest of your life shoveling horse shit or flipping burgers, thinking about what could have been. Do you understand me?”

  “Yessir. Can I go now?”

  Sheriff Dodson opened the car door and slid behind the wheel. Mike wondered how he steered around that enormous belly. Dodson remove this hat and stuck his head out the window. “Scrape Todd Toobin off, or that little prick will ruin your life.”

  Mike slowly walked back to his truck, casting a wary eye over his shoulder at the Sheriff’s car, which had backed into one of the lot’s darker corners and shut off its lights.

  A moment later Mike settled onto the ripped vinyl bench seat beside his best friend. Todd snatched the bag and started wolfing down onion rings. “I need serious nourishment,” he said between voracious smacking.

  Todd paused and looked around, as if something wasn’t right. He frowned at Mikey, blood drying under his nose. “No Coke?”

  That earned a hard stare, which only merited a slight shrug from Todd, and sent him back to his onion rings. “No problem, man. I’ll grab one later.” Todd began fingering the loose change at the bottom of the filthy ashtray. “Don’t worry, Mikey, I’ll pay you back later, promise.”

  Sure you will, Mike thought, as his appetite suddenly vanished.

  “Do I got any blood on my face?”

  “No more than usual. If you cry I’m going to call you a pussy.”

  “You can’t call me a pussy, because you’ve never seen one before.”

  “I’m looking at one now.”

  Todd threw the wadded onion ring bag at Mike before settling into the seat and attacking the hot dog. The pair sat without a word as Mike observed the goings-on around the parking lot.

  Cars full of local teens cruised Main Street, occasionally pulling into the Dairy Queen before rejoining the stream of headlights and taillights on the strip. Mike glanced up at the cracked Dairy Queen sign, remembering how Todd had thrown the rock that split open the red plastic. Each night since middle school, unfiltered white light escaped into the Texas night, summoning a horde of dancing moths to worship its glaring goodness.

  Why did you do it, he had asked Todd. Todd never answered, only shrugged and moved on to the next quest for excitement, which was throwing rocks at the tornado siren behind the DQ. The siren’s metal casing resisted Todd’s assaults with greater success than the plastic sign. An adult’s shout forced the middle school boys to seek mischief elsewhere that night.

  The real question Mike had to ask himself was why he participated in Todd’s chaos. Todd, special ed student and juvenile delinquent, was like that crack in the Dairy Queen sign, a tear in the fabric of the universe where energy, dangerous and bright, spilled forth. Mike knew he was a bland, colorless moth, hoping some of that light would soak into his body and give it color and purpose.

  A hundred life-and-death teenage dramas unfolded below the swirling insects. Over by the order pickup window, Jimbo had found his way to Kaylee. Interlocking arms, she beamed up at the quarterback, as if her conversation with Mike had never happened.

  Mike found himself staring at a black shadow lining the bottom of the Dairy Queen sign; a dark, graceful curve composed of hundreds of dead moths piled up inside the case. He traced the arching, almost perfect curve with his eyes, as a memory from his advanced placement physics class bubbled up in his mind. Mr. Wilson had discussed quantum physics at the beginning of the term.

  The pile of moth corpses matched a quantum probability curve.

  Todd released a loud belch, wadded up the bag and threw it on the floor board. Shaken from the trance, Mike glanced down and saw it had landed on a blood splattered and crumpled blue cloth.

  “Dude, my shirt. What the hell?”

  Todd spoke around his full mouth, “I needed something to stop the bleeding, so I grabbed a rag from behind the seat.”

  “That isn’t a rag, that’s my Honor Club shirt.”

  “Sorry, but it was either that or bleed all over your seat. Anyway, you should thank me. You don’t really want to wear that shirt. I saved you from looking like a pansy-ass.”

  Todd followed Mike’s gaze across the parking lot. “Jimbo McClellen is a ball sucking faggot. I’ll figure out a way to get him back.”

  For a moment, Mike considered asking him what started the fight, but thought better of it.

  Todd’s eyes narrowed on Jimbo. “Dude, sound the war drums.”

  Mike shook his head vigorously. “No. No way, man. Not the right time. Anyway, it skips.”

  “It’s always the right time for war drums.” Todd popped open the glove box and ruffled around the crumpled papers and half-a-dozen uncased compact discs.

  “It’s not in the player, and I can’t find it.”

  That didn’t stop Todd from looking. A moment later, with Todd’s trademark goofy grin, he held up a scratched CD-R with WAR DRUMS scrawled on it in thick, black Sharpie.

  “You’re a shitty liar.”

  Mike glanced uncomfortably over at Kaylee. “C’mon, not a good time. Anyway, it’s scratched all to hell.”

  “Just some dust.” Todd spit on the play side and wiped it with his t-shirt. He leaned under the dash and inserted the CD into the six-disc player.

  Todd pushed the power button and rolled the bass to max. Raw voltage poured into the three fifteen-inch woofers behind the bench seat.

  Mike slapped his hand away. “You’re going to blow the speakers.”

  “What’re you talking about? I helped you build this.”

  “No, you drank my Dad’s beer and watched me build it.”

  Todd shrugged. “Whatever. You needed managing.”

  Last July, Mike and Todd installed this custom car stereo during that time in their youth that all teenage boys go through, when one firmly believes a kick-ass car stereo will earn friends and pave a pathway between a girl’s legs.

  Mike had proven the theorem false, but in the process built indisputably the most powerful car stereo in Flatte County, perhaps in West Texas. It didn’t win any dates, but it did establish his acoustic dominance, making him a homemade car stereo legend. He didn’t know what the fuss was all about, as it was just a matter of energy, transmitted over space at varying levels of power, amplitude, and frequency, to deliver a desired effect.

  Perhaps Mike built the stereo, but Todd usually provided the music. If Mike understood physics, then Todd knew how to mix a CD which took full advantage of the stereo’s capabilities.

  Todd leaned out the window and shouted at the top of his lungs. “Sound the war drums!”

  The popular kids at the picnic tables rolled their eyes and snickered, but whoops an
d cheers rose from the parking lot’s edges.

  Mike smiled despite himself. “Fuck it. Sound the war drums.”

  “Hell yeah,” Todd pounded on the dash. “War Drums!”

  With only one button, Mike set the graphic equalizer to a custom setting programmed just for this mix. He thought about putting in his earplugs, as last time it had hurt.

  A little pain might feel good, he thought.

  CD #3. Track 1. PLAY.

  The woofers hummed. The seat throbbed. The rearview mirror vibrated. Around the truck, people covered their ears. Bars on the equalizer skyrocketed from green to yellow to red. Mike’s homemade monstrosity roared to life with the opening drums solo from Conan the Barbarian.

  The stock speakers from a nearby Dodge truck, no match for Mike’s, went silent. Shania Twain surrendered to the onslaught. Farther away, the Mexican kids hiked the volume on their low-riders’ speakers, but eventually retreated before the war drums. As drums preceded armies of old, these were only harbingers of what would come, attention getters and woofer warmups.

  Todd screamed out the window, but the woofers drowned him out. We are here, they pounded across the parking lot. You can’t ignore us. We matter.

  Then the drums faded, but for only a moment, before the main speakers and tweeters kicked in with Van Halen’s Eruption.

  All eyes turned to the Ford pick-up. Some knew what would come next, but others didn’t. Those expecting David Lee Roth belting You Really Got Me Now following Eddie’s guitar solo were disappointed.

  Hands resting in lap, Todd sat calmly and lip-synced Tubthumping’s opening dialogue.

  Truth is, I THOUGHT it mattered. I thought that MUSIC mattered. But does it bollocks? Not compared to how people matter.

  Todd began to sway, grinning and nudging Mike with his elbow to join him.

  We'll be singing

  When we're winning

  We'll be singing…

  I get knocked down

  But I get up again

  You're never gonna to keep me down!

  Mike didn’t know what shook the truck more, Todd’s sudden explosion of fists, feet and elbows, or the thunder pouring from the eight speakers under the dash, doors and floorboard.

  Todd shouted out the open window, sometimes pumping his fist, sometimes flashing the bird; not at anyone in particular, but in defiance to everyone and everything. To Mike, he looked like a crazy British soccer hooligan, celebrating his favorite club’s victory. Mike surrendered too, and let the infectious energy carry him away like only a teenage boy could understand. The music became a drug; a volatile, untamed cocktail of anger, angst, and raw testosterone that can create or destroy worlds.

  He drinks a whiskey drink

  He drinks a vodka drink

  He drinks a lager drink

  He drinks a cider drink

  Inside the truck, hands in unison mimicked drinking with each line. Outside the truck, teens in the pre-designated places of popularity shot impotent glares at Mike’s truck. However, those faceless kids who lingered at the edges of the light, the nameless ones who drove the old beater cars or rusted out pick-ups, found themselves tapping their fingers on steering wheels, or dancing to the beat.

  He sings the songs that remind him

  Of the good times

  He sings the songs that remind him

  Of the better times

  Todd pointed to Mike and mouthed, “Bitch part.”

  Mike flashed a casual middle finger.

  Oh, Danny boy, Danny boy, Danny boy

  Across the parking lot, the Sheriff issued a warning flash from his blue lights. Mike dropped the volume dramatically, and cut off the power booster. “Fun’s over.”

  “Bastard,” Todd fumed.

  Anthem over, country music and Tejano, and the sons and daughters of Flatte County’s well-to-do, once again held court in the Dairy Queen parking lot. The green LED counter softly clicked, and the player switched to the next CD. Chumbawamba’s defiance ceded to Crash Test Dummy’s somber tones. The atmosphere inside the truck seemed to change with the music.

  Mike stared hard into the rear view mirror, wondering who stared back. He recognized his momma’s hazel eyes behind black frame glasses, but not much else. His daddy’s square jaw seemed more pronounced as pimples slowly surrendered to stubble. Maybe a man lurked in there, ready to step out from behind the boy and forge his own destiny.

  Maybe not.

  Todd broke the silence. “What did Kaylee want? I bet she wanted you to do her homework or something. Bitch is a user.”

  “She’s not a bitch.”

  He turned to see Todd staring at him incredulously.

  “I mean it. She’s lots of things, but bitch isn’t one of them.”

  “Do you really think you have a chance with her? Dude, she’s a prep. You’re not.”

  “And what are we?”

  “We’re the Freak and the Geek. Fuck her, and fuck Jimbo, and fuck everyone else. End of story.”

  Todd changed the subject. “Time to get the hell outa here. Let’s drive to Dixie Mart and grab some beer.”

  The good feeling Mike had only a few minutes ago had cooled. “I just spent the last of my money on your food. Unless you can scrape up some cash, we ain’t drinking tonight.”

  “Then let’s go to Julio’s. He’s always got beer.”

  “His trailer smells like cat piss. I’ll pass.”

  “Mikey, he’s got liquor and a Playstation.” Todd leaned in. “A Playstation.”

  Mike knew it was more than liquor and a Playstation that kept Todd hanging around the unemployed thirty year old. Julio’s sister happened to be the sheriff’s radio dispatcher, an instrumental fact which kept Julio, and Todd, out of jail.

  Mike turned to Todd with a hard stare as something snapped deep inside. His entire universe suddenly shifted to accommodate the birth of a new worldview. “So, do you know why the Sheriff was at the school today?”

  Todd leaned back against the cracked upholstery, hands behind his head. “No idea.”

  Mike paused for a few moments, tapping the steering wheel. “What did you think when the vice principal handed me my scholarship? Pretty cool, huh?”

  Todd sniffed, wiped his nose and looked away, as if finding something out the passenger window suddenly interesting. “It was awesome. Really proud of you, dude.”

  Mike sighed, slumped and rolled his eyes up at the torn headliner. “Todd, the vice principal wasn’t there, and neither were you. And I didn’t say ‘they,’ I said ‘sheriff.’”

  “Why are you giving me the third degree?”

  “Yes or no - were you at the assembly or not?”

  “Sorry, had to take a serious shit, couldn’t hold it.”

  Mike cranked the truck. The old six cylinder sputtered to life in a cloud of blue smoke.

  “I’m not going to Julio’s, and I’m not going to scrape up the money to buy your beer. Kaylee invited me to the party at her ranch tonight.”

  Todd shrugged. “Okay, cool. We’ll go to Kaylee’s. If you want to hang with a bunch of preppy faggots, then I’m in.”

  “I’m going to Kaylee’s. She didn’t invite you.”

  Mike braced himself for the inevitable Todd Toobin Jedi Mind Trick. It started with an unblinking, mute stare. The silence lasted just as long as necessary until Mike looked at Todd. Then the treatment progressed to Stage II, an expert blend of emotionally wounded combined with an ice-cold dose of go-to-hell. Once the weak-willed victim broke the silence, Todd would quickly pounce with baseless allegations and, if necessary counter-allegations. Todd had used it countless times on Mike, his mother, and about every teacher in the Flatte County school system.

  “I get it, land a scholarship and ditch your best friend. Go ahead, hang out with assholes who think they’re too good for everyone else. Maybe they’ll make you King Cocksucker. Sorry for being alive, Mikey.”

  Mike closed his eyes and took a deep breath, fighting the urge to blurt “It’s not
like that…” No, he wouldn’t fall into that trap again. Ever.

  “Just get out.”

  “Fine, asswipe. Drop me off at the high school, and I’ll be out of your way.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you.” Mike pulled down on the steering column shifter. The transmission dropped into drive with a clunk as he prepared to inch into the lot around the milling teenagers. Then a thought occurred to him.

  “Why the hell do you want to go to the high school?”

  “I’m gunna break in.”

  Mike slammed the shifter up into park. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Back in control, Todd pushed in the cigarette lighter and calmly produced a pack of Marlboros from his front pocket. He tapped the crumpled box against his knee. “No.”

  “Why the hell do you want to break into the high school?”

  “Because I had to hide four dime bags of Julio’s weed when the Sheriff showed up.”

  “Get out.”

  The lighter popped, Todd lit the cigarette and opened the door. “Don’t you want to know where I stashed ‘em?”

  “No,” he lied. “Get out.”

  “I hid ‘em in your locker, asshole.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “Bet your ass, I did.” Todd opened the door to step out “And guess what? Julio says Dodson is showing up first thing Monday with dogs. I won’t have time to grab the dope by then.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Mike grabbed the sides of his head and pulled his hair. His heart sank until it scraped his stomach. “You son of a bitch! If they find that weed I’ll lose my scholarship. I’ll lose everything.”

  Across the parking lot, Mike spied two figures walking toward the picnic table, hand-in-hand. Kaylee stared adoringly up at Jimbo, and Jimbo sneered smugly toward Mike’s truck.

  Todd followed his gaze, and blew out a long stream of blue smoke into the dim dashboard light. “Yeah, that sucks.

  “You can go to Kaylee’s tonight and be her tool, or you can help me get my dope out of your locker.”

  “And be your tool?”

  An almost imperceptible, deep whump penetrated the night. The truck died instantly, without so much as a chug or engine knock. The dashboard went dark and the CD player mute. At the same moment, total darkness bathed not only the Dairy Queen parking lot, but all of Main Street. Cars rolled to a halt, headlights extinguished. Dueling speakers made peace in the darkness as crickets could once again be heard.