Wicked and Weird

by Rich Terfry

  Now I had to get rid of the evidence.

  With my heart trying to fight its way out of my chest, I rooted through a nearby closet for a suitcase. I found an old, never-used duffel bag and hurried it back to the crime scene. Thankfully, the dead frame fit inside. All that remained to do was get it out of the house.

  The only way out was through the basement door that opened to the backyard, beyond which was the woods. My mother was still upstairs on the deck, tending to the barbecue, her back to the yard. Banking on the belief that my mother wouldn’t think it too strange to see me sprinting into the woods, I made a break for it. I hugged the duffel bag to my body in order to conceal it from her view.

  As I tore into the forest, my mother yelled, “Don’t go far, you. Dinner’s almost ready.” I exhaled for the first time in five minutes.

  Deep, deep in the woods, among the tuba-loving creatures, I dug a hole with my torn hands. Deeper than any grave, I dug. I sent that duffel bag and the broken glass it contained straight to the depths of hell. It was the bag of glass or me.

  When I emerged from the forest dirtied and bloody, my mother didn’t bat an eyelash. “Come and get it” was all she said. More dead than alive, I climbed the stairs of the deck a free man and sat down to the most beautiful hamburger I had ever seen.

  •

  My throwing skills were in popular demand every summer during the volunteer fireman’s fair. It was my favourite time of year. I looked forward to it for months. The event always kicked off with a fireworks display on the first Friday night after the school year ended—the best reason I could imagine for a blowout celebration. An old-timer named Fud Puckett was furnished with a microphone hooked up to a speaker system to commentate on the presentation.

  “Oh! There goes a nice red one … Now, that yella one kinda looks like a flower, don’t it? … Oh my gosh, a green one … Wonderful!”

  There was a parade the next morning with floats and oxen and horses and kids on bikes decorated with flowers made of coloured toilet paper. But year in and year out, the star attraction was Flum Hudson. He’d unveil an extremely customized hotrod bicycle that he’d been working on in closely guarded secrecy for the previous year. Each creation outdid the last, and there was always genuine excitement among the onlookers to see what he’d come up with. The major flaw in the design of the pageant was that as the grand finale, Flum had to ride his engineering marvel through the minefield of shit from the horses and show oxen that had paraded ahead of him.

  One year, the talk around town in the weeks leading up to the fair had a skeptical tone.

  “He’s reached his peak.”

  “There’s no way he can top what he did last year.”

  “He’s taken the craft as far as it can go!”

  These skeptics ate crow when Flum arrived piloting the most incredible vehicle any of us had ever seen. It was a souped-up monster wheelbarrow, outfitted with a big, fat mag wheel, handbrakes, chrome mirrors, a windshield and flames painted on the side. I watched grown men remove their caps and cry without shame at the sight of it.

  The parade ended at the fairgrounds, which were situated at the fire hall, down by the lake. Inside the fire hall itself were events like baby contests and Highland dancing demonstrations. There was a bake sale and tables set up for local artisans to sell their wares. And although it was the height of summer, Buzzy’s mom’s socks and sweaters were big sellers.

  The real action, though, was outside in the parking lot and in the asphalt hockey rink behind the hall. Here were to be found a few rickety rides, a greasy pole, a high striker, a bingo tent and a bouncy castle. There were also food booths and side stalls with games where you could win a goldfish in a bag or a cuddly toy. One year a kid stole one of the mice from the mouse game and dunked it in a deep-fat fryer. That was controversial enough, but then the kid ate the friggin’ thing. Still, the big show was always at the dunk tank. It attracted the biggest crowds and I was their king. Sometimes I’d get phone calls at home when there was an urgent dunk-tank situation—when someone had been stranded on the platform too long or when a hotshot like the school principal or the parish priest or shit-talking Vera Savage was up there. My hero status was sealed for eternity the day I dunked the voluptuous Sherry. She was wearing a white T-shirt with no bra and I sank her with the first ball I threw. My hand burned for a week from the high-fives. By the end of that weekend I had dunked twenty-six victims and was awarded a plastic crown and a free hamburger platter for my efforts.

  In addition to the amusements, a variety of contests ran through the weekend. There was a Most Beautiful Chicken contest. There was a rubber-burning contest. There was an ox pull. And the day after I dunked Sherry, my friend Loren and I entered the egg-toss contest.

  An egg toss is a contest to see which two-person team can throw and catch an egg across the greatest distance without breaking it. Loren and I were the youngest team in the contest that day by a long shot—we were both in the early throes of puberty. But we totally dominated the competition. The whole town was watching and with every successful toss and catch, the crowd went crazy.

  After we successfully cleared a distance of a hundred feet, Sherry, who was caught up in the excitement, yelled, “I love you, Buck!” I scanned the crowd to find her face. She was easy to spot. She shone brighter than the rest. She looked so pretty. She was perfect—her hair, her teeth, her skin. My god, her skin. I didn’t want to think about eggs anymore. I wanted to think about Sherry’s skin. I just wanted to smell her. I wanted to kiss her hands.

  I had been in the zone. But thoughts of the smell of Sherry’s skin shook me up. I wanted her love. My focus blurred. I was dreaming through a Vaseline lens.

  I shook my head. I had to get myself together. I made a T sign and yelled to Loren,

  “Time out!”

  A hush fell over the crowd. I stood there at the edge of the lake (a swamp, really) in my black-and-red rain boots and tiny red Adidas shorts (my daily summer uniform) and took a few deep breaths. I tried to concentrate and find my way back into the zone. After a few moments, the crowd began to stir.

  “C’mon, Buck!”

  “You can do it!”

  I wasn’t ready, but I couldn’t delay any longer. I signalled Loren with a wave. It was his turn to throw. It was down to us and one other team. One more successful catch and the trophy would be ours. I wanted that trophy.

  Loren and I took our positions. Our goal was not just to win but to set a new record. We put as much distance between us as we could. We stood at opposite ends of the fairgrounds. We wanted to end this thing in spectacular fashion.

  Loren reared back. He grunted loudly as he threw. The egg wobbled across the sky. The throw was on line, but a bit short. I ran forward a few paces and made a desperate lunge to catch the egg before it hit the ground. As I did so, my left foot slid on the loose gravel of the playing surface.

  The egg hit me right between the eyes. The crowd moaned. I continued to race forward, blinded by albumen and shell shrapnel, until I slipped on a beer can, which sent me twisting sideways. I toppled head over heels into the green-black of the swamp lake. I was under water for a suspended eternity before someone pulled me out. I don’t know who it was. Maybe my super-athletic gym teacher, Mr. Hunter. Maybe it was my friend Mark’s sister, Truck; she was the most powerful human being in Mount Uniacke—more powerful than the weekend’s champion ox. Maybe it was my dad. Maybe it was golden Sherry.

  Once I was back on dry land, the air was as silent as the water had been. In the crowd, hands were held to mouths. No one had ever been seen going into that water.

  A cry shattered the stillness: “Someone get the salt!” I looked down. My body was covered in shiny black leeches.

  Ten seconds later, someone came leaping over the wall of the rink with a shaker of salt from the french fry booth. Two or three anxious women started tending to me and the removal of the leeches. Little streams of blood ran down my body where each leech had been attached. One of the
women screamed as an eel wriggled out of one of my boots. Another woman pulled long gloops of algae out of my hair. I saw someone returning a hamburger-sized turtle to the water.

  Grubby Hoffman, the judge of the contest, approached. He was wearing his signature straw boater with its red-white-and-blue band. It looked good on him.

  “You okay, Buck?”

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice trembling.

  “We’re willing to give you another shot. You want to go for it?”

  I hated being a charity case. I’d blown it; I hadn’t made the catch. But I wanted the chance for redemption. I nodded.

  “He’s going to take another shot, folks!”

  The crowd erupted.

  Loren and I received a new egg. We took our positions at either end of the fairgrounds again. Loren let fly. It was a perfect throw. I didn’t have to budge. I cradled the egg in the nest of my hands. When I held it high above my head, the crowd erupted again.

  Sherry ran over and hugged me. I was in heaven. A new Mount Uniacke egg-toss record had been set. As far as I know, it’s never been broken.

  In the days following the fair that year, my body was filled with the aches of my injuries, while my head held my inflated ego. But when the intoxication with myself wore off, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sherry. I felt bad for her. When she’d emerged from the tank, soaking wet and in all her glory, the reaction from the men on the fairgrounds had been feral. She’d seemed to handle it with grace and humour—even joy—but now I wondered if all those devouring eyes might have scared her. Heck, they’d scared me!

  I pedalled over to Sherry’s house, dumped my bike on her lawn and banged on her screen door.

  “C’mon in, Buck!” Her voice was like music.

  “Can I have a haircut?”

  “Of course! Come sit your buns down.”

  She dragged a dining room chair into the middle of the kitchen floor, as usual, and pulled a big, black garbage bag with a hole cut in it over my head.

  “Sorry for dunkin’ you,” I said as she began to slash.

  “That was amazing! First try, down I went!”

  “You’re not mad?”

  “Mad? At you? Oh my goodness, no! Why would I be mad?”

  “Well, I guess just ’cause if it weren’t for me, all those men wouldna looked at your boobies.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about the assholes around here. They’ll never see me again, anyway. That’s kinda why I did it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m leaving. I’m moving away. I’ll be gone in a few days.”

  “What do you mean? Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to Sackville. I’m finally doing it. Can you believe it? I got a job and an apartment set up and everything. Will you come visit me?”

  “Yeah, but …”

  “I’ll miss you the most. You’re just about the only thing I’ll miss about this place.”

  “Jeez. And so … You don’t care that they saw you like that?”

  “Naw. I don’t care. It’s no big deal … Did you see?”

  “No. Everyone was mobbing me. By the time they stopped you were gone. I thought maybe you got sad and ran away.”

  “Do you wish you saw?”

  “Haw, gee … I don’t know … I mean … kinda, yeah. I guess so.”

  “Did you ever see a girl’s boobs before?”

  “Well, only in the movies a couple of times.”

  “Do you wanna see?”

  “Yours?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Uh, okay. Gosh.”

  Sherry set her scissors down on the kitchen table and positioned herself directly in front of me. She pulled her shirt up over her chest and stood there without saying a word. The kitchen faucet dripped into an unwashed bowl. I studied what was before me as if I’d been confronted by a Rothko painting. I was amazed by the beauty but didn’t understand what I was looking at. I scrutinized every facet and contour with earnest and eager attention. My mind was blank.

  “Okay,” I said after ten seconds, indicating that Sherry should resume with the haircut. She sang “Electric Avenue” by Eddy Grant as she continued her attack. I sat stupefied for a minute before interrupting her performance.

  “I wish you weren’t going away.”

  “Oh, but I gotta get out of here and you gotta do the same thing one day. As soon as you can get out, get out. This place will only drag you down. You’ve got to let that curious mind of yours go free. I want you to promise me that you’ll get out into the world.”

  “Okay. I promise.”

  “And that you’ll come visit me and that we’ll always know each other.”

  “Yeah. I promise.”

  Sherry left Mount Uniacke a week later. Over the next two or three years, I saw her only a handful of times, and each time her fake tan was darker and her makeup was thicker. Eventually, the light seemed to go out of her altogether. Some kind of darkness swallowed her up, and after that I never saw her again.

  •

  As I grew older and Buzzy became consumed with cracking the codes of the stock market, the one person I could count on to play catch with me was my friend Bunch. But many days I didn’t have the courage to call his house to ask him to join me. Though I never laid eyes on her, I was frightened of Bunch’s mother. I have nightmares about her to this day. She ruled her household by sadistic decree and in the absence of any paternal figure. She forbade her children from answering any call at the door. And if you phoned the house: “WHY DON’T YOU SHOVE A HOT CURLING IRON UP YOUR ASS?” she’d scream into the receiver, bypassing all formal greetings.

  “Um, good morning, may I speak to Bunch, please?” I’d ask as delicately as possible.

  “ROTTEN SHIT EATER!” she’d accuse either Bunch or me—it wasn’t clear who. Next would come the sound of physical abuse being heaped upon poor Bunch’s bones in the next room. The mere reminder of his existence was enough to warrant punishment, I guess. Eventually, he would come to the phone, out of breath and agitated.

  “Hello?”

  “Wanna play catch?”

  “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  It would always take an hour for Bunch to arrive because he would stop to visit Hoy Calahan on the way over. Hoy was the pedophile who lived in a trailer by the lake. Bunch actually thought he was suckering Hoy by letting him do whatever he wanted in exchange for gifts and privileges. Every game of catch would begin with a detailed report.

  “All I had to do was let Hoy put his pecker in my butt and I got to ride his four-wheeler and play video games and eat Pop-Tarts!” Then Bunch would give me a smug look because he knew I didn’t have expensive things.

  Bunch and I would play catch until the sun went down. Then, realizing it was late, he would announce, “My mother’s going to kill me,” before tearing off on his shitty bike.

  •

  People who say baseball is boring are the same people who get antsy in art museums. They don’t read Dostoevsky or ee cummings. They’re uncomfortable pronouncing the word beautiful. They don’t notice sunsets or birds’ nests and they certainly don’t watch foreign films. People who say baseball is boring give themselves headaches looking for fishing line at the magic show. They don’t hear the accidental music made by trains and broken air conditioning units. They’re blind to the beauty of an old, greyed, half-collapsed barn or an abandoned warehouse that’s been annexed by wildlife. Legendary baseball broadcaster Red Barber once said, “Baseball is dull only to dull minds.” There’s poetry in the quiet in-between moments of the game and true splendour in its climaxes. It’s a game of almost constant tragedy. The 4-6-3 double play is a three-second ballet. And I’ve seen few things as grandiose as a home run. Baseball reveals its magic only to those who watch with fine-tuned attention. Without this kind of close study, I would never have noticed something like the “other air.”

  I saw it for the first time while marvelling over a long fly ball hit by a guy named Johnny Handsome (not a
nickname). He was one of the big kids—five years older than me. And he was one of those “natural athletes,” good at everything. Like most kids in Mount Uniacke, he was more interested in hockey than baseball, and even more interested in raising hell. But man, could he hit. He was one of the “baseball is boring” people, but when he did play, he could hit a home run whenever he wanted.

  One day, from the top of a hill, I saw Johnny and a few other kids playing a makeshift game in the distance. There were only six players scattered around the field and each took a turn batting. Johnny hit a long, towering drive and from my perspective—up high and maybe five hundred feet away—I saw the ball do something strange as it ripped through the air. Once it reached a certain altitude, it seemed to jump—it appeared to experience a burst of speed that carried it higher and further along. This happened in a blink of the eye. At first I thought the ball must have benefited from a little gust of wind, but not the slightest breeze was blowing that day.

  After that, whenever I saw a good hitter I’d watch to see if the phenomenon would be repeated. My cousin Bert was a big, strong guy and I saw him do it a few times. I knew right away that if I was ever going to be a power hitter, I’d have to be strong enough to send the ball into the “other air,” as I came to think of it. I’ll never forget the first time I did it. Bunch was pitching to me in the field behind the church. I got a hold of one and landed it in a swamp beyond church property. Bunch, who was usually a blabbermouth, fell silent. The ball was lost, but I didn’t care. It was the greatest feeling I’d ever had.

  I realized I had turned a corner in my development as a ballplayer the day I no longer feared a local menace named Coy (pronounced kai because it was short for Coyote). Coy was Lunk’s older brother, and his age was a mystery. He could have been anywhere between twenty-five and fifty. He was seldom seen and existed mostly as a rumour. (“He worships Satan.” “He’ll douse you in gasoline and light you on fire.” “He’ll fuck anything.” “He strangles dogs for fun.”) He looked like a bad guy from the world of professional wrestling: very tall and built like a bodybuilder. And he had the most beautiful head of long, flowing hair. So much volume. Never greasy. There were whispers that he washed it three times a day. It was also a well-known fact that he would only eat a dry sausage snack food manufactured by a company called Dogg It! (exclamation point theirs, not mine).