New Jersey Me

by Ferguson, Rich;

  “You mean it?” she said.

  My feelings for her then, and long afterward, would never change: with all my heart, I wanted her to lead a good, long life. That meant getting far, far away from poisoned Blackwater. Yet again, I tried offering her the ring. “Please, take it. My grandmother wanted you to have it.”

  “I knew it,” Callie choked out. “No one wants me. Only her.”

  Later, when my head was on straighter, I’d recognize how my feelings for her were a lot like that Bruce Lee quote: Love is like a friendship caught on fire. It was just too bad that that wildfire had burned me into a crazier mess than I normally might’ve been. I told Callie I wanted her too, then placed the ring in her hand.

  She turned it in her fingers. The more she studied it, the more her downcast eyes brightened. “If I take it,” she said, “you might meet someone else.”

  I considered that one. As the low, jangly strains of “Nowhere is My Home” ghosted through the car, I realized that in the long run, maybe she wasn’t the right girl for me. More importantly, I probably wasn’t the right guy. Between the downers and everything else, I was spun. The only hope I was still holding on to was of honoring Grandmother’s wish.

  “Here’s the deal,” I said. “Just take the ring. Even if you don’t wanna be with me just hold on to it. You’re the only person I can trust to keep it safe. Plus, if you have it that means I’ll have to leave some day to get it from you. Or maybe you can still keep it if you want. I dunno. Whatever.”

  Between sniffles, Callie said: “Listen to what you’re saying.”

  But I couldn’t. The crude equation of Mom’s pills plus Grandmother’s death times Callie heartbreak equaled nothing but a fucken mess. Every bit of me was scattered from Blackwater to far beyond the heights of the Hudson Palisades, all the way up to Alpha Centauri. From the “Dawn of Man” chimp to the beautiful Pepsi people cruising Venice Beach. From busted bongs to nuclear bombs. From sexual bombshells to wedding bells.

  Finally Callie said: “What if you never get out?”

  “I will.”

  “But what if you don’t? Then all that ring’ll do is remind me of how you never left.” She handed it back, then leaned into me.

  I wrapped an arm around her, smoothed a hand along her back.

  In a whispery voice, a voice as thin as the few strands of blonde hair caught in her lips, she said, “It’s only that if you left I hope you’d come looking for me, not some ring. That’s all.”

  “But I want you,” I said. “How’ll I find you?”

  She told me she’d write.

  I told her that’d be nice, but secretly I didn’t buy it.

  Then we just sat there listening to the low, driving thump of The Replacements get all knotted up in the muffled chatter of customers walking into the diner.

  Eventually, Callie lifted her head from my shoulder. “I should go.”

  Part of me wanted to start the car, do what I should’ve done from the very start. Forget my fears and obstacles. Forget everything. Just leave Blackwater in the dust. But I could still feel Mom’s pills and Grandmother’s death play that weird tug-of-war inside me. No way did I want to chance going off the rails with Callie at my side. “I guess you’re right,” I said.

  She took the ring from my hand. At first I thought she’d changed her mind. Then she slipped it back into my coat pocket. “Take good care of it, Mark. It’s special. I can feel it.” She kissed me on the cheek, then left.

  As she hobbled toward home, I watched her intently. Callie of the pretty blonde hair; Callie of the liquid green eyes; Callie of the better Ophelia ways; Callie of the one good, strong leg, and sweet, lopsided smile.

  And while it hurt like hell to see her go, I didn’t look away. I had to prepare myself for when I’d watch her leave for real. Me minus Callie: zero. Callie minus Blackwater: life.

  Drifting down Route 9, I did my best to block out all the leavings. I cranked the stereo. Rolled down the windows. Gunned the engine. Nothing worked. Callie, my grandmother, and Mom kept coming back to me. I sensed Callie in the unusually strong momentum of the engine, and in the achingly beautiful songs blasting through the stereo. Grandmother’s spirit I sensed in the blur of passing scenery, and in the hum of wheels against road. As for Mom, I felt her in the cold air. I felt her in the last bit of downers floating through my blood.

  Chapter 18

  For the rest of the day after leaving Callie, I cruised Blackwater. Normally, I would’ve steered clear of places like the power plant and Satan’s Tree, but not that day. When it got darker and colder, and the downers had completely abandoned me, I felt far lonelier and alone. Normally, I would’ve headed to Jimmy’s. I chose a different destination.

  Once I’d pulled into the vacant lot across from the Third Lake, I called out: “Julie’s Been Working for the Drug Squad!”

  Mad Man appeared. Beneath the overhead streetlight, his partially lit, weathered, and pockmarked face resembled a waning crescent moon. In addition to his trademark jeans, boots, and swoop of hair, he was also sporting a huge, black, puffy down coat—Michelin Man gone punk rock. He scoped out my ripped jeans and equally ripped face. He knew I wasn’t there to sell socks. “Looks like you’ve been through the meat grinder, Spicoli.”

  In a rush and jumble of words, I explained my day. Some of what I was saying I couldn’t even understand, but I think Mad Man caught my drift.

  He slung an arm around my shoulder. “Damn. That’s a rough one.” He glanced down at the dirt lot riddled with tire skid marks, and the occasional spent condom and busted beer bottle. During the summer, those objects would’ve served as grim artifacts left by Blackwater’s Third Lake denizens. But being winter, they looked like diamonds, the way everything shimmered in glittery, icy white. Right then, I figured Mad Man was considering some wise words to offer, but out of the blue, he said: “Wanna see what I do with my socks?”

  Later, his offer would make a bit more sense, but right then, that proposition seemed like the biggest mindfuck of the day. For years, Jimmy and I had done practically everything except torch Mad Man’s super Aqua Net’ed hair, trying to make him reveal his sock secret. Up until that moment, all kinds of rumors had been going around town—everything from Mad Man using the dirty cotton for extra pillow stuffing to achieve wilder, kinkier dreams, to placing the socks on his TV antenna to receive alien transmissions.

  “You serious?” I said.

  He gave my shoulder a meaty squeeze. “Sure, Spicoli. You’ve waited long enough.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  There were all kinds of odd homes throughout Jersey—the House With the Chair on Top, the Cookie Jar House, and the Palace Depression. Add Mad Man’s to the list. Once through the front door of his place, we were already in the living room/kitchen/bedroom area. In addition to the record albums, tubes of paint, spray paint cans, and dirty socks scattered about, there were four rocking horses hanging from the ceiling—four for the number of Horseman of the Apocalypse. All over the walls: a collection of velvet Elvises, in various stages of his career—from lean hip-swinger to Fat Vegas days—painted with Cheetos dust and lacquer-sprayed. In the center of the room: a pulled-out sofa bed, topped with an assortment of Winnie-the-Pooh plush dolls, hair dyed blue. A grimy hotplate and mini fridge sat against the far wall. The air reeked of spray paint, foot-funk, and stale bong water. Atop some day-glo painted milk crates was a portable TV with bent rabbit ears, minus socks. The TV was turned on its side so that if you wanted to view it normally you’d either have to cock your head to some weird angle, or be sprawled out on the sofa couch. Either that or sit up straight and let Cheers, Growing Pains, and Wheel of Fortune spill all over you horizontally.

  Mad Man tossed our coats over a hot-pink fiberglass replica of the Statue of David—a freaky distant cousin to Jimmy’s ceramic gnome. Then Mad Man swept the blue Poohs from his sofa bed, and folded it up. “Here.
Sit.”

  “That’s cool,” I said. “I’ll stand.”

  He grabbed a couple Millers from the mini-fridge, offered me one.

  Since my nerves were still jangly from the downer comedown, I gladly accepted. I cracked it open, swigged brew.

  Mad Man dittoed. Then he picked up a pill from the floor— a black beauty. After tucking it into his front pocket, he said: “Know how old Van Gogh was when he died?”

  “No idea,” I said. “Fifty?”

  “Thirty-seven,” said Mad Man.

  “He looked a lot older in his paintings,” I said.

  “Tell me about it,” said Mad Man.

  I eyed him as he continued drinking. Through the years, he hadn’t changed much. Not much had changed with me either. “What’s Van Gogh got to do with socks?” I asked.

  Mad Man shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But here’s something to consider. He actually didn’t start creating art until he was about twenty-seven. But in those last ten years of his life, Van Gogh created two thousand pieces, including around nine hundred paintings and over a thousand drawings and sketches.” He paused, took a long last pull off his Miller.

  I’d already experienced enough confusion that day. I was growing tired of playing Twenty Questions. I wanted to tell him to get to the point, but I waited and downed more brew.

  He grabbed some art canvases propped up against the wall behind the TV. He spread them across the warped hardwood floor.

  Our old socks hadn’t been used for religious, sexually perverse, or ritualistic voodoo shit. They hadn’t even been used as a radiation screen. They’d been colorfully painted and glued across each canvas. I pounded the rest of my beer, then said: “Are you serious?”

  There wasn’t a hint of irony or apology in Mad Man’s voice when he responded: “It’s kinda like therapy.”

  Maybe it was because I’d sucked at finger painting in kindergarten. Or that I’d never watched Oprah or Sally Jessy Raphael to understand all the touchy-feely stuff he was getting at. But I was willing to try. “Why old socks?”

  “That’s the point exactly,” said Mad Man. “It’s the sweat, the stink, the way they’ve been lived in that makes each sock a living work of art.” He pointed at one of the canvases. “Check it out. You’re in that one.”

  Atop the canvas—reeking of spray paint, glue, and toe jam—I spied a pair of tube socks that I’d recently sold him. They had holes in the heels and big toes. Bits of their grime and gray color showed through the yellow they’d now been painted. There were other socks glued across the canvas, too. Sleek socks, battered socks. Baby socks, jock socks. Even a pair of women’s fuzzy socks. A pair that looked like Jimmy’s had been sprayed blue. A pair of my old man’s: green. Others I didn’t recognize—red, orange, and gold. Collectively, the footwear resembled bodies: misshapen and elegant bodies intertwining, forming a circle. Those bodies were alternately loving and struggling, trying to liberate themselves from the canvas.

  “It’s my latest,” said Mad Man. “I call it Love From Space.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “You tell me,” said Mad Man. “Look at it.”

  I got down on one knee, studied my socks on the canvas. As I did so, I was reminded of a Bruce Lee quote, something about how art is the expression of the self. And how the more complicated and restricted the method, the less opportunity for the expression of freedom. In Mad Man’s case, it was all about that expression of freedom, or at least potential freedom. There I was on the canvas, all tangled up in Jimmy’s, my old man’s, and everyone else’s lives. We were struggling to bond, struggling to break free. The longer I stared at the artwork, the more intensely it brought up all the love and dissatisfaction I’d been dealing with my whole life. I grabbed the canvas. Wanted to worship it, shred it to pieces.

  “Easy, Spicoli. You’ll wreck it.”

  “Sorry,” I said, coming to my senses. I handed it over.

  Mad Man placed it, along with the others, back behind the TV. “It’s okay,” he said. “It affects me that way, too.”

  For a moment, Mad Man didn’t speak. Then his brow crease deepened, as if his thoughts were digging a ditch right between his eyes. “Look,” he said. “I know what people say about me. That I’m just some freaky-dressing, sock-buying, SSI check–collecting nut job. That’s fine. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Me, I’m a walking advertisement for what makes me feel good and that ain’t gonna change. As for taking my work to New York and other places, I tried all that stuff. Didn’t work out. But I ain’t getting weepy about it. As long as I’ve got my art I could be on the moon for all I care.” He paused, pressed a paint-splattered finger into my chest. Bull's-eyed my Social Distortion T-shirt-covered heart.

  “Check it out,” I said. “I once heard this story you were sewing all our socks into radiation blankets.”

  Mad Man howled over that one. “I’ve heard a lot of stories around town. But that one beats ’em all.” He cracked open a couple more beers, then said: “Of course you didn’t believe it, right?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “What?” he said. “You didn’t think that was crazy?”

  Still no response.

  Mad Man placed a hand on my shoulder, gave me a friendly shake. “Damn, Spicoli. You’re nuttier than me.”

  I shrugged. “I was kinda hoping it was true.” After taking a long pull off my beer, I launched into still another one of my nuclear rants. Went off about the massive power excursion at Chernobyl earlier that year, sending radioactive fallout into the air, four hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. After that, I railed on Three Mile Island, then much closer to home, Crab Creek. Said how easy it would be for a disgruntled worker to flip a few switches in the nuclear facility’s control room, shutting off pumps and key valves, causing a meltdown, sending poisonous gasses into the atmosphere. Within days, high levels of radiation would annihilate the body’s actively dividing cells. Signal acute hair loss, severe vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding from every orifice. Early deaths within a ten-mile area would number two to twelve thousand. Add to that the tens and hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths that would occur over the next two to sixty years. And forget about the food grown in the area. It would remain radioactive for hundreds and hundreds of years.

  Mad Man rolled his eyes. Told me about a book he’d once read, In The Belly of the Beast, by Jack Henry Abbott. Said the guy wrote about his time in prison and how it totally sucked, but how he’d made his peace with it. Mad Man followed that up with a laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “The screwed thing is,” he said, “once Abbott got out of jail he ended up murdering some other guy.”

  “So much for freedom,” I said.

  We toasted beers over that one, then Mad Man said: “I’m real sorry to hear about your granny and Callie, I really am. But while you’re stuck in Blackwater, you gotta try to make peace with it all. There’s beauty in all the shit if you look deep enough.”

  Part of me wanted to believe him, but another part highly doubted his plan would work for me. I didn’t have prison confessionals or sock art to grant me inner contentment after such a fucked day. All I had were beers, bong hits, Jimmy’s mom’s codeine cough medicine, and Mom’s downers to help me get along. “I dunno,” I said.

  “For real,” said Mad Man.

  Chapter 19

  Just a few days after Callie had left Blackwater, I was sitting in math. It was another one of those days, like most every day in that class, where the fluorescent lights made everyone appear washed out, dead. The teacher droned like an EKG machine flatlining. Rather than copying the problem-of-the-day into my journal, I created my own word problem. It went something like this:

  Callie flies against the wind from Blackwater to Tucson in eight hours. She then returns from Tucson to Blackwater, in the same directio
n as the wind, in seven hours. Find the ratio of the speed of Callie (in still air) to the speed of the wind.

  That word speed got me to Speed Racer. Jake Speed. Vanishing Point. Steve McQueen. Bullitt. Bullet in the brain. Brainwaves. Ocean waves. Other words for waves are surf, breakers, rollers, whitecaps. Waving goodbye. Au revoir. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. “Hit the Road.” “Thunder Road.” The Road Warrior. Kung-fu warrior. Bruce Lee. Leech. Leery. Gleeful. Lee Marvin. Lee jeans. Lee Press-On Nails. Nails in the coffin. Coughing up blood. Coughing up a loogie. The Bogeyman. Batman. Airman. News anchorman. Man overboard. Bored stiff. Bored to death. Bored as hell. “Highway to Hell.” “Run Like Hell.” “Hell is Living Without You.” Hellbound. Hellbender. Return to Sender. Going to Hell in a handbasket. A-tisket, a-tasket, a green and yellow basket. Breadbasket. Wastebasket. Dorothy traveling to Oz with her pretty handbasket. Dorothy blown away by a hurricane. “Hurricane” the fighter, a botched conviction. Hurricane Gilbert. Hurricane Gloria. Or that troubling wind blowing Callie away. “Against the Wind,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Wind Cries Mary.” Mary Poppins. Popeye. Pop-Tarts. Pop gun. Poppies. Popsicles. Pop Goes the Weasel. Diesel. Diesel trucks. Long-haul travel. Blackwater to Tucson, and back. “Back in Black.” Backflip. Backdate. “Backstreets.” Back dive. Dive bar. Set the bar higher. “I Want to Take You Higher.” “Rocky Mountain High.” “High on Rebellion.” “Highway Patrolman.” “Highway Star.” Starlight, starbright. Asterisms. Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Pegasus. Some constellations are only visible in the northern hemisphere, while others are only visible in the southern hemisphere. Some constellations have families: Hercules, Ursa Major, Perseus, Orion. Lion. Androcles and the Lion. The Lion and the Mouse. Mousetrap. Shrewmouse. Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney. Cryonics. The Dark Side of the Moon. A “Moonage Daydream” frozen in time and space. “Time in a Bottle.” “Message in a Bottle.” Sending out an SOS.