by Timmy Reed
~
Mister Reese was asleep when I swung by his house this afternoon, but Diamontay let me in anyway. She was wearing a skimpy tank top and had Tickles the snake with her when she opened the door. He was twisted around her torso like it was a deep brown tree trunk, whispering into her ear. She petted Tickles on the forehead and he stuck out his tongue.
Diamontay led me out back to the deck where we sipped mint tea and read fashion magazines while Motown hits drifted from the portable speaker she had hooked up to her iPod. Diamontay told me a story about an old homeless man she once knew, a junkie named Sky King who fell off the roof of a building she used to live in. Sky King, like a miracle, survived the fall with only minor bruises and fractures to the left side of his body, for which he was given painkillers. Delighted to have discovered what seemed like an excellent new RX connection, Sky King tried the stunt two more times and ended up in Sheppard Pratt, where he was diagnosed as a severe manic depressive and put on suicide watch. When he got out of the loony bin, he was clean for a day. And that was the day he got his nickname, Sky King. Then he started jumping off buildings again. It was a sad story, but funny the way she told it.
After a while, Diamontay asked me if I would hold the snake while she went in to check on Mister Reese. I wasn't sure if I wanted to or not, but I liked Diamontay and I didn't want to seem rude. Or look like a scaredy-cat for that matter. So I said okay.
She draped Tickles over my shoulders. He coiled his spine around my left forearm all the way up to my shoulder, then wrapped himself around my neck. A heavy bastard, he was. Diamontay went inside and left me with the snake. He kept moving around, climbing all over the chair and curling around my body, wrapping me up until it was a little disorienting trying to figure out which part of his body was which. So I quit trying. I gave myself up to the beast and slurped tea.
Tickles's skin was smooth and I trusted him. His wide jaw looked like it was frozen in a permanent close-mouthed smile. I closed my eyes for a minute or two and it was nice. I could feel him on me, moving, but the rest of the world was black. When I opened my eyes again, Tickles had stretched himself down toward my lap. He was probing my tea cup with his tongue, which was forked and trembling. He took a sip. I was glad. I wanted him to.
“I think he likes you, buddy,” Diamontay said when she came out.
“We're old friends,” I nodded, and gave Tickles a wink.
~
Walking with Mister Reese, hands in my pockets, birds in the sky, dead bugs breaking to pieces under my feet. The old man is carrying a big walking stick. I decide to ask him about the war.
“Were you in the war?” I ask. “My grandfather was in the war, but I didn't know him or anything . . . Maybe you two knew each other, huh?”
“Everyone was in the war,” he says. “It was a big war.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess so . . . Were you, um, like the funnyman of your unit. You know, being a magician and all.”
“Awww fuck,” he goes. “I don't know. I guess I might have told a few jokes. People tend to tell jokes when they're scared as shit for their lives.”
“Tell me a joke then . . . A war joke or whatever.”
“A war joke?”
“Yeah. Like a joke you might have told or heard during the war. To keep up morale and stuff like that.”
“I don't know, Miles. It really wasn't all that funny of a war.”
“Come on, you old wuss. Please . . .”
“Okay,” he said. His eyes looked thoughtful, like he was trying to make one up on the spot. After a minute or so he looked at me and said, “Knock, knock.”
“All right,” I said. “Who's there?”
“Francis.”
“Francis who?”
“France is over there getting raped in the ass by Germany,” he said, deadpan as all fuck.
“That's, um, not that funny.”
Mister Reese shook his head. “I told you it wasn't,” he reminded me.
And, dude, you know what, he was right.
~
I have always wanted to be blood brothers with somebody, like in Tom Sawyer and shit. But I can't ever seem to find anyone to be blood brothers with me. How do you ask somebody? What if they say no?
I think I might be getting too old for it anyway. Unless I somehow join the mafia or something. Besides, I imagine it's pretty unsafe in this day and age, what with the HIV and all that. So FUCK blood brotherhood for now, I guess. Until they find a cure, I'll keep my blood to myself, thank you very much.
Unless you want to share with me?
~
My parents have been fighting a lot lately. With each other. Over the phone. I think it has something to do with the fact that the renovations at the old crib are now complete. I think they might be selling pretty soon. Money tends to make people tense, I've noticed. And being tense makes them angry. And angry people fight.
My folks used to fight like vicious dogs when they were still living together, but now that they're apart again, I haven't had to see it in a while. I remember the last time I saw them really go at it in person. They were only very recently separated again. John was over and we came in to find them in a standoff. My mom was holding a small stool over her head and my dad was holding a pot of steaming water. John and I were ushered off the doorstep by Miss Sandy Diamond and taken to her house where my sisters were already waiting (in tears) with that douchebag Donald, who was trying all feeble to comfort them by showing them a book about dinosaurs. Fucking dinosaurs! I thought. At a time like this! John and me ran upstairs and ate a shitload of cookies while watching my mother's front door from Donald's window. After a minute, the fight spilled outside and we could hear my mother shrieking like a dolphin as she threw her wedding ring at the storm drain. It didn't go down at first. She charged over, stumbling, and kept stubbing her toe as she tried to kick it down the drain. Meanwhile my father was standing ten feet behind her, pointing, calling her names like a child.
When the police showed up, I grabbed John and my sisters and led them down to the basement under the pretense of a major video game session. Donald was upstairs helping his mother prepare a platter of kosher meats and cheeses for the occasion. Instead, I snuck everybody out the garage door and we high-tailed it through a secret hole in the neighborhood fence, then split over to Gary's and then to the country club where we played Sharks and Minnows in the deep end until it was dusky and the mosquitoes were coming out and our limbs had practically fallen off they were so tired from swimming. All that was left to do after that was invade the snack bar, where we ordered a tremendous feast on Gary's folks' account and gluttonized ourselves in the dying sun. We were happy then and felt about a million miles away.
And, you know what, for a moment there, I felt like a hero. But I never let anyone know until now.
~
Guess what, Journal? I can call you that, can't I? I mean we are on a first-name basis at this point, aren't we? Well, Journal, I've got a bone to pick with you: I sit here telling you all about my life and my family and my most intimate secrets and you give me nothing in return. It's like you don't trust me. I'm too stupid to understand your situation, is that it? Or what? You don't have any skeletons in your closet, huh? Your shit don't stink? Dead-fucking-serious, I think you're hiding something. Something dark, something scary . . . And I'll get to the bottom of it, whatever it is . . .
Nah, I'm just playing with you, baby . . . you're cool.
~
The other night, me and a bunch of other dudes slept over at John's house. We snuck out to party with his neighbor, this chick in the grade above us at Dulaney. She had some friends over. A few of them were hot. I ended up on the couch talking to one of the semi-hot ones. Her name was Kelsey. I was telling her all about those crystal skulls they found in Latin America. She seemed pretty interested. Eventually I got up to use the bathroom. While I was peeing I
realized I had to vomit. I did it all neat in the toilet bowl and flushed. Then I gargled mouthwash for thirty seconds. When I came back out I found Kelsey right where I'd left her, only now she was sucking face with Blake Rogers. So I just kept drinking.
When we got back to John's we turned on the most recent Terminator flick and me and Stephen Kimble got everyone high. I don't remember anything after that, until later when I woke up to overhear John giving a whole speech about how hot my sisters were getting. He must've thought I was still asleep. I kept my eyes shut and listened. Everyone agreed about wanting to fuck them. Tommy Nesbitt even went so far as to say that I wouldn't do anything about it if one of them did happen to fuck my sisters. Somebody else corrected him. “WHEN we fuck them,” they said. I could hear their laughter as I fell back to sleep and the whole terrible conversation drifted away like it had been a dream.
When I woke up in the morning, I went to the bathroom for a piss. Standing in front of the mirror, I saw my friends had trolled me. I was covered in black marker. There were crude penises drawn all over my face and across my chest was scrawled a mathematical equation. RETARD + LIFE = SUCKFEST, was what it said.
I was angry, but I pretended not to be.
I don't know, maybe it was funny.
All my so-called friends were laughing like hyenas over breakfast. Even John's mother had a chuckle on me. So, right there at the table, I laughed along with them.
Although I couldn't be sure why I was laughing and I felt bad about it afterward.
~
Thomas Angel murdered a mole today and delivered the carcass to our doorstep. I forgave him for it, but I'm nervous for the rest of the moles. Are they in danger now that he has discovered their colony? Should I help them relocate? Dig them up and transport them somewhere safer? Where is safer?
~
Mister Reese agreed to drive me out to Dulaney Valley so I could skate this drainage ditch on Pot Springs. He said he'd hang around and watch until I wanted to leave, which was real swell of him since I can't imagine anyone wanting to sweat their balls off all afternoon in a storm sewer just to see me skate . . . Anyhow, on the way there we found ourselves at a stoplight in Towson where I saw a woman hunched on the sidewalk. Despite the heat, she was wearing a full sweatsuit. It was fire-engine red and covered in stains and so tight that it clung to her bones. Real haggard-looking. Her hair hung down in clumps, not unlike the feces-caked strands that often dangle from the backside of long-haired dogs. This woman most definitely appeared to be homeless. She was even holding a sign she had made out of cardboard. As the light changed I craned my neck to read the sign, but it was completely blank. Nothing. Nada. Not a single word.
I considered the possible meanings behind this woman's blank sign. Maybe she was trying to indicate that she was illiterate as well as homeless and that those of us in traffic should have extra pity on her because of this. Maybe it was some kind of statement about the silence of poverty or the futility of signs. Or maybe she was just waiting for somebody to let her hold a pen . . . I thought of asking Mister Reese about it, but then I stopped myself. I was embarrassed. I felt foolish for wanting to ask him and I thought he would probably think I was foolish for asking . . . I mean, I can't expect him to explain EVERYTHING . . .
~
Yesterday evening, Katie and Kelly had a slumber party at my dad's place and we ordered pizzas for dinner. After dinner the girls asked me to play Hide and Go Seek Flashlight Tag with them in the graveyard on Homeland Avenue, just outside the gates of my father's community. I got really high before playing. That might have been a mistake.
Ashley Vidal was sleeping over along with a couple of the girls' other, less important friends. I pictured myself discovering her curled up all alone behind some gnarly tombstone or mausoleum, terrified but excited as heat lightning streaked the sky and the beam of my flashlight hit her on the chest, taking her out of the game and into my arms where she would feel safe and maybe want to French kiss . . .
Silly, right?
Instead I ended up hopeless, lost in the rows and rows of marble blocks. I was trying to guide myself by the light of the half-moon instead of the flashlight so as not to give away my location, all the while being eaten alive by aggressive-as-fuck mosquitos. Nevermind the bugs. I kept bumping into stuff, stepping on dead bouquets, tripping over plaques at my feet. Playing the game in bare feet had been another big mistake. I must have already stubbed my big toe three or four times by this point, one time splitting the nail where I'd already busted it in my latest bicycle accident. I could see the girls' flashlights dancing like ghosts in the distance.
After what seemed like forever but was probably no more than twenty minutes, I decided I better sit down for a rest and try to get a better hold on the situation. I found an inviting little grave and planted my ass right on top. I took out a cigarette and decided to risk a smoke, even though I feared it might give away my location. I really wanted one but no way was I gonna be the first one caught and become IT. My sister's poor friend Sarah was currently IT, after losing a round of One Potato, Two Potato. If I ended up being IT, the whole night would be miserable. I'd probably suck at finding the others, which meant we could either be out here all night getting eaten alive or everyone would give up and go home to make fun of me for sucking at life. I might never get to see Ashley Vidal in her pajamas or possibly even play Truth or Dare. I cupped the tip of my smoke in my hand and walked as I smoked so the fumes would disperse in the air behind me and would be less likely to give me away.
The graveyard at night was a little bit eerie, to be honest. Occasionally I would hear the girls in the darkness around me, a burst of laughter or a shriek as they made their way down the rows. The sound of their voices sent shivers up my neck . . . At one point I came face to face with a stray cat, perched on top of a thick granite cross. The animal freaked me out a little, his eyes. He hissed at me, then evaporated on the spot . . . And there were hordes of tiny bats clipping the sky above my head. Do all graveyards have bats? Are they some kind of prerequisite? These bats were strictly decoration, I guess. They were doing very little to control the mosquito population . . . At one point I even saw what I took for an owl gliding across the light of the moon. It was enormous! As big as a human from wing to wing! I felt wild inside when I saw it! I imagined myself riding the back of the tremendous owl, cold air rushing past my face, fists gripped around monster-size quills as the beast bore me toward the moon . . .
And just then I was caught in the center of a white spotlight, like someone naked in a dream . . .
That little bitch Sarah had found me. Now I was IT. My heart sank.
I helped her round everyone up and we started all over again. I leaned my forehead against the cool outer wall of a large crypt and began counting one banana, two banana, three banana . . . all the way to a hundred. At first I could hear the girls whispering behind me. After they scattered, there was nothing but the sound of crickets and the occasional flap of low-flying bat wings. I was all alone. On the hunt. I decided to stop counting at around eighty banana and charged off into the darkness.
The night looked even darker now that I had to search through it. And the graveyard seemed more empty. I searched and searched, but I couldn't find a soul. My calves began to burn. I was sweating. The sweat attracted more bugs. They landed on me and fed off my skin. I was going in circles. I had lost all concept of time. I felt like I had been IT my whole life. I was becoming desperate. Where the fuck were those girls hiding?
At about this time, during the heat of my despair, I stepped on a fresh-picked rose at the foot of a grave. A very large thorn lodged itself in my heel. I sat down and perused the wound with my flashlight. It was more like a railroad spike than a normal-sized thorn. And it was in there pretty deep. Bleeding. With extreme caution I set about trying to pull the thorn from my foot. I didn't want it to break off inside me. But it did. It broke off inside me.
As I sat there bleeding in the grass, surrounded by the buried dead, it occurred to me that I hadn't seen the beam of another flashlight, not even once, ever since I had become IT. Come to think of it, I hadn't heard any voices or footfalls either. I was the only living person in the whole graveyard. I was sure of it. The twins and their little friends had ditched me.
I found my way to the road and limped back home, tired and bloody. I considered hopping the fence to the pool and washing myself off in the chlorine, but I decided against it. I wanted my little sisters to see the condition I was in when I came home to find them all snug in front of the television eating leftover pizza. I wanted them to feel guilty. I was livid. I meant to bitch them out, make them cry, ruin their little slumber party. And Ashley Vidal too. Fuck her for going along with them. In fact, fuck everybody. Fuck the world . . . That's about how I felt inside.
But when I got there, it was a different story altogether. I could see my sisters through the basement door. I had been right. They were all snugged out in their PJ's, on cushions in front of the flat screen, giving each other French braids and eating cold pizza. They were giggling and talking over one another, probably making fun of me, but I didn't want to bitch them out anymore. They looked happy. Besides, I didn't want to let them know they had gotten to me, gotten under my skin. I was too proud.
And they were only having fun, right? Why would I want to ruin their evening over a little joke? What kind of monster would that make me? How would I look? How would it make me feel?
So I left my herb inside to avoid seeing them and set off in the direction of Charles Street and our old house. With each step I took, I could feel the thorn climbing deeper and deeper into my foot. It hurt, but that didn't bother me. I got used to the thorn. By the time I got to the end of Homeland Avenue, I felt almost as if I deserved it somehow. The thorn was my cross to bear, like Jesus. That seemed like a cool idea at the time. I chain-smoked the whole distance and by the time I stumbled in the heavy old door, my throat was sore and my mouth tasted like garbage. But I felt good in a weird way. Relieved. I curled up beneath an oilcloth on the couch in our sunporch, where I used to watch Saturday morning cartoons when I was little. Just before drifting off to sleep, I stuck my thumb in my mouth like a baby. It tasted like cigarettes and sweat and cemetery filth. It nearly made me hurl. But I didn't hurl. I smiled and started to say a prayer in my head. For everyone I know. Even for some people I don't know, like those kids in Africa with the flies on their faces and stuff. And I fell asleep praying for the world and saying thank you. How about that? Weird, right?