Wolf Gang

by Chris Lynch

  “How can you sleep standing up?” I asked.

  “Horses do it all the time,” he answered. “It was so dark and warm …”

  “How long before Wolf gets here?” I asked Ness.

  “Not long. You wanna do something, you have to do it soon. He might be out there right now, in fact.”

  I jumped.

  Not that I was afraid of him or anything. It was just, well, anyway …

  “I better go check,” I said, then started up the wall alley again. I was halfway there when I heard the door from the shop to the back room open and Jerome’s sappy voice yipping.

  “It’s my chance, it’s my chance,” he said excitedly. “Yvette said I could do it, and Wolf said he’d let me cut his hair.”

  Holy—

  I scurried the last few feet to see Wolf being lifted out of his wheelchair by Ling’s sister, Rock, Yvette, and Monica, and placed ever so gently in the chair. I quickly made my way back toward Vanessa.

  “See, this is the difference,” Jerome said as he frantically rummaged through shelves and boxes in the storeroom. “This is what leadership and loyalty are all about. You think Johnny Nosehair would ever let me work on him? Right.”

  Keep digging there, Jerome.

  “What are you looking for?” Vanessa asked.

  “Yvette said I have to wear a white smock like everybody else if I’m going to work on anybody. She said it’s in here, but I can’t find it. I can’t find it. I can’t—”

  “Oh, that,” Ness said with an exaggerated nod. She glanced over to where I was peeking out of my hole and gave me the high sign. “I know where that is. It’s right there on the coatrack.”

  Yesssss! Vanessa, rookie of the year in the He-Man league.

  “Where?” Jerome said suspiciously. “I don’t see any smock there. I just see coats.”

  “Right there,” she said. “Under the rain slicker.”

  As Jerome made his way to the slicker, I inched up, ready to pounce. Cecil hovered, looming high above our once and future comrade, waiting.

  Jerome snatched away the slicker, revealing no smock.

  “See?” he said. “I knew it wasn’t there.”

  Come on, Cecil, come on.

  “It’s in there,” Vanessa prodded. “Keep poking around.”

  So he did. He prodded around so thoroughly, Cecil wouldn’t need a physical for another year. But Cecil did not react.

  He was asleep again.

  Vanessa stomped over to the couch, stood on the back of it between two hair dryer helmets, and started slapping the coatrack on the side of the head. “Keep … looking … in … here,” she said, slapping with each word.

  The coatrack stirred. Jerome dug deeper. The coatrack started giggling.

  I heard Monica on the other side of the door. “All right, all right, I’ll check. Maybe Precious got lost.”

  I jumped out of hiding. “Grab him, Cecil,” I said. And Cecil did.

  “Jerome, my mom wants to know what’s taking so—” Monica stopped and stared as I grabbed Jerome from the back, and the mound of jackets was wrapping him up from the front, and Vanessa stood munching cookies. I looked to see what Monica was going to do, and she made a motion to go back and tell her mother but then stopped, closed the door, and approached Nessy.

  “Are those the butter cookies,” Monica asked casually, “or the sugar cookies?”

  Under one particularly heavy wool sweater Jerome was muffling, “Help. Help me, please …”

  “Oh, I can’t eat more than a couple of the sugar cookies or I feel nauseous,” Vanessa said, and the two of them slid down into side-by-side positions on the couch. When Jerome’s struggling got more serious and more pathetic, they pulled the hanging hair dryer helmets down over their heads.

  “Good,” Monica said, taking a cookie. “I like the butter ones better too.”

  As Cecil and I wrestled the squirming Jerome out the aquamarine door, Monica called to us, “Try to keep a better eye on him next time, wouldja? We don’t want him running away and showing up here again.”

  7

  Get with the Program

  “STOP IT, YOU’RE MESSING up my hair,” said Jerome, still a-kickin’ and a-whinin’ when we brought him in.

  When the door to Lars’s garage was shut and bolted behind us, we finally let him go.

  “Welcome home, Jerome,” I said.

  “Welcome to jail, you criminal moron,” he responded.

  “Ling,” I commanded, “sit on him.”

  Good soldier that he is, Ling grabbed Jerome, apologized, then squashed him on the cold concrete floor.

  “Now, criminal moron?” Ling asked, as if they were carrying on a casual, friendly conversation. “Does that mean he’s so dumb it’s a crime, or does it mean he’s unintelligent and just also happens to be a person who commits crimes?”

  “I have not committed any crimes,” I insisted.

  “Kidnapping is a crime,” Jerome wheezed from under the bulk of Ling.

  “You are not kidnapped,” I said. “You’re rescued.”

  “Oh god,” said Cecil. “What we done? Are we goin’ ta jail? I heard about jail from my uncle Jack, and I don’t think I’m gon’ like it much.”

  “Too bad,” Jerome said, trying bravely to fix his hair with his one free hand, without a mirror. “Because you are going to prison once I get out of here.”

  I was not nervous. “We are not going to jail.”

  “Because you are not getting out,” Ling added.

  “No, that’s not it,” I assured them all. “It’s because, once we deprogram you, you are not only not going to put us in jail, you are going to thank us for saving you.” I motioned to Ling to let the prisoner up. He did, and Jerome creakily got to his feet and dusted off.

  Just then Lars came running down from his office. “What is he doing back here? I thought we lost this bad penny. And what happened to him? Boy, Jerome, you was a sorry enough sight before, but now you look like a little Ken doll, only wimpier.”

  “I missed you too, Lars,” Jerome said.

  “No time for this, guys,” Ling cut in. “We’ve got deprogramming to do.” Ling was really warming up to this now.

  “Lemme in. Lemme in.” It was Vanessa. She must have thought by then that that was the password, because that’s what she did instead of knocking.

  “How’d it go back there?” I asked as she strolled in.

  “Cool. I told Wolfgang that Jerome ran off, and he said, ‘Good. That’s how you can tell Jerome’s a member of a club, ’cause he keeps on quitting it.’”

  I laughed, from experience. Wolf was right on that one.

  “Wolf said that about me?” Jerome was wounded.

  “Hey there, Jerome,” Nessy said proudly. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Is it, like, your life’s mission to haunt my every conscious moment?” he asked her.

  “As a matter of fact, it is,” she answered with a smile.

  He’s lucky, I thought. At least she limits it to his conscious moments. My most recent Monica haunt had come just the night before, when I dreamed an entire scene from King Kong in which Monica was climbing the outside of the Empire State Building with me in her fist. When she got to the top, she celebrated by kissing me with big blue blubber lips the size of water beds.

  We hauled Jerome through the garage and into the Lincoln. Inside, it was warm and cozy and familiar. I sat in the driver’s seat, of course. Jerome got shotgun. Ling and Cecil sat in back, flanking Nessy.

  “Nice wheels,” she said, running her mitts up and down all over the upholstery.

  “Don’t do that,” I said. She stopped, but Jerome wouldn’t take his eyes off her.

  “See, doesn’t this feel nice, like old times?” I said to Jerome.

  “Make up your mind, Steven,” he snipped. “Does it feel nice, or does it feel like old times?”

  “Har-har. But admit it, doesn’t it feel better? Doesn’t it feel right, here with your old friends?”
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  “Well… I do like the car … and I suppose you guys …”

  I could feel him coming back to us. No way he could resist the total He-Man experience.

  “… but you don’t know … the rich feel of mousse foaming through your fingers … the smell of aerosol all day long …”

  “That explains it,” I said. “Aerosol spray’s making you daffy.”

  “No, it doesn’t, Steven. I’m serious. If you guys would only give me a chance … if you would open yourselves up to the experience of a higher level of personal hygiene …”

  “Not us, none of that, no hygiene,” Cecil said.

  “Never mind all that,” I said. “Think about it this way: Wolfgang—who you fear—was here, and now he’s there; Monica and the Scouts—who you also fear—are over there as well. Remember the savage snowballing incident, when they left you for practically dead before I rescued you and took you in here?”

  Good play, Steve-o. Tap his scarediness and his sappiness.

  Jerome turned all red, and growled.

  “Right,” I pointed out. “And now, you are in a club with them?”

  “Ya,” Jerome said, digging in, “well, you might be right about that other stuff, but I was this close to being an honest-to-goodness hairstylist. Laugh if you want to—”

  I wanted to, but was sure it wouldn’t help things.

  “Har-har-har …” Cecil had no such reservations.

  “But at least I have a dream. You fix cars and count chest hairs, Steven. Ling, you have a dream filled with bazookas and aircraft carriers and you can fly. Cecil, you have a dream too, probably. I’m sure your dream is like, a dial tone or something, but it is your dream. Me, I’m a creative artist. I want to make the world more beautiful, one unsightly person at a time. Ness the Mess …”

  My, the prisoner was feeling bold. Everyone knows that nickname, but people do not often call Vanessa Ness the Mess and walk away from the conversation under their own power.

  “Nessy, you have a dream too, I bet.”

  Nessy put on a very serious face, and nodded. She leaned over the front seat to tell her dream to Jerome privately.

  “Oh my god!” Jerome shrieked, pulling away from her. “Well, your dream will not be coming true anytime soon, I can assure you.”

  Meanwhile, the He-Man leader was thinking on his feet.

  “Jerome, we are aware that that’s what you want to do. Word’s out on the street, buddy.”

  “It is?”

  “Sure. And that’s why we came to get you. We said to ourselves, you know, things just ain’t right here without Jerome. And then to think he’s over there, slaving and cutting hair for people … who don’t appreciate him …”

  “You know, you’re right about that, they don’t really appreciate me there.”

  “… people who threw snowballs at him …”

  “You think I forget? You think I ever close my eyes on them? Winter’s coming up too, don’t forget. Who knows when they’ll get the snowballing urge again.”

  “… people who have no respect for his He-Man qualities …”

  “Now, that’s not true, Steven. No, they can see my He-Man—”

  “Wake up and smell the aromatherapy, Jerome,” I said. “Didn’t you wonder why you were the only He-Man Wolfgang stole for his new club? Did you not notice that you were the only Man in the whole place besides him?”

  “Well, I did wonder …”

  “It’s because Wolfgang doesn’t like guys at all!”

  I announced it as if I had exposed Wolfgang as a Nazi war criminal.

  “He only likes women, and mousy little guys who are no threat to him. That is why—you will recall—Wolfgang had nothing but problems with ol’ Johnny Chesthair. Too much man, plain and simple.”

  “He said that? About me?” Jerome was outraged.

  “Ya …” I fudged, “… at some point, I’m sure he has… said more or less what I just said. And to think you were over there working for that rat when we, your old buddies, were here, so badly in need of somebody to cut some hair right here.”

  “What?” he said. “No. You’re pulling my leg.”

  “We don’t pull nothing here, Jerome, you know that. We need you. I mean just this morning Cecil was moaning that if he didn’t get somebody to give him a trim, he wouldn’t be able to leave the house pretty soon.” I leaned in close to Jerome, to make sure I nailed the target straight on. “’Cause you know, the poor kid’s got no money to pay for something like that.”

  “How come I don’t remember sayin’ nothin’ like that?” Cecil asked nervously.

  “Ah, because you were sleeping. It was when you were sleeping.”

  “Oh. Well, anyways, if I said it then I musta meant it, huh? And if I say something I make good on it. Everybody knows that about me.”

  Jerome was staring at Cecil hard now. “You know, I didn’t want to say anything before, but you are looking a little like a sheepdog there, Cecil.”

  “Heck, let’s fix me, then,” he said.

  I didn’t want to lose the momentum. I threw open the car door. “Yo, Lars, you have anything like scissors back there?”

  Lars dug into his great big Snap-on toolbox. “I got some long-nose wire cutters.”

  “Fine,” I said. It wasn’t my hair, after all.

  “They’re a little greasy, but they’re plenty sharp.”

  “That’ll do,” I said.

  I turned to Jerome and offered him my hand. “Back in the fold, He-Man?” I asked.

  “I have missed that,” he said, shaking my hand. “Being called a Wolf Ganger made me feel a little dirty.”

  “Cool. Just one thing.”

  “Name it.”

  “Barber shop.”

  “Barber shop?”

  “Barber shop, right. Where we set you up, where you’re going to do your business. It’ll be called a barber shop. Not, you know, not a salon or nothing like that. That just wouldn’t work for us. All right?”

  8

  Cecil’s Dream

  THE NEXT DAY WHEN I got to the club, Jerome was already open for business. Way open.

  We had an old velour bucket seat from a ’67 Mustang that had been kicking around the shop forever. Jerome was using that as his barber chair, pumping it up and down with a hydraulic jack. Ling was sitting in the waiting area, browsing a Wolverine comic, and Cecil was up there in the chair.

  “Still?” I asked Cecil.

  “No, again,” answered Jerome. “We had more work to do, so we continued this morning.”

  Cecil was reclined all the way back, while Jerome fooled around combing the mop of hair forward, back, sideways, and then scrambling it all up to start over.

  “And I do so have a dream,” Cecil blurted. Poor guy, he must have been nursing this all the way since yesterday, which is a very long time for Cecil to hold a thought. “I have a dream, just like the rest of y’all, and it don’t sound like no dial tone, neither.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry about that, Cecil. I was just mad.”

  “Ya, well, my dream is … I want to fix televisions.”

  There was a pretty large silence in the crowd. Nobody wanted to laugh, what with Cecil being hurt enough already, but it was hard to know what to say to make him feel good, either.

  But after all, I was the leader around here.

  “That’s … ah, that’s nice, Cecil. But how come you want—”

  He was gritting his teeth. He was truly angry here, something I’d never seen from him before.

  “Because,” he said. “Because that’s my dream and it’s a good dream. It ain’t like your dream, Steven, which is to make people obey you, or your dream, Jerome, which is to make people not hurt your eyes, or your dream, Ling, which is to make people blow up. I have this dream all the time and it is just to make folks happy. And I don’t know every darn thing but I know that television makes folks happy. I fix their broke televisions and they’re happy and then I’m happy.”

  I couldn’t e
ven think of a joke for that. He had us all whipped, the big dumb thing. I don’t think any of the other dreams ended with the dreamer being happy.

  “Good dream, Cecil,” I said, and I determined right then that I was going to modify my dream. I was going to stop focusing on negative, hateful, stupid stuff, and I was going to be happy.

  Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

  Someone was at the door. Me and my new attitude went to answer it.

  “Open up. It’s me, Rock, and I wanna come in.”

  “Get outta here, ya big rotten girl,” I screamed.

  Good-bye new attitude. Glad I got that out of my system.

  “It’s okay” came a second voice, Nessy’s. “She’s with me.”

  “So why does that make it okay?” Jerome said, leaving Cecil stranded in the chair. He turned to me. “Now’s your chance, Steven. Don’t let her in.”

  Cecil ran right up beside him, to address the other one. “Go home, Rock,” he yelled. “You don’t belong here.”

  “I wanna be a He-Man too,” she said. “Like Vanessa.”

  Ling turned to me. “Now see what you did? You let down your guard for the first one, now they’re all coming in under the door like roaches.”

  “Calm down now,” I said. “It’s not such a—”

  My men ignored me. “Go away!” they both screamed together, but at their separate targets.

  “Come on,” Rock reasoned. “We want to be on your side. Wolfgang’s a rat, and we want to help you whip him.”

  Hello, personal quest.

  “Maybe we should consider—” I tried.

  “Get out!” Ling screamed. I didn’t recall ever hearing Ling scream before. “Get out of here, Rock, or I’ll …”

  All she did from her side of the door was laugh mercilessly.

  “I’ll … tell Mom.”

  Now Rock and Vanessa were both laughing.

  “That didn’t help,” I said. “Listen, girls. We have standards, you know. We can’t just let you in because you feel like—”

  “I’ll whip any He-Man in the joint,” Rock insisted. “You prove me wrong—heh-heh—and I’ll go away. If I win, I’ll just be the toughest He-Man in the place, at your service. You can’t lose, in a way.”