I went out to one of the tiny islands and just sat there, watching the pockets of soapsuds bob and thicken along the water's edge, unable to think about anything but Colleen.
Above me cumulus clouds crawled across the sky. I lay back on the dirt and searched the edges and shaded interiors and textures of those clouds, not trying to make them appear like something familiar, just trying to lose myself in the curves and convolutions of forms unlike any I'd ever noticed before. My hand, moving about to provide a better cushion for my head, rubbed against something hard and sharp. I sat up hissing in pain, and saw blood flowing from an abrasion on my knuckle. I looked down and saw a slightly smeared drop of my blood, glimmering with reflected sunlight, resting on the crest of a gray, scimitar-shaped rock, half protruding out of the ground. As I alternately sucked my knuckle and then rubbed it on my cutoffs, I looked down at the smeared droplet and the strangely beautiful shape on which it rested. I rubbed the blood away, spreading a red sash down that curving stone blade, and then picked up a stick and began poking away at the dirt around the rock. I suppose I started out with the intention of freeing it, examining it briefly and then tossing it in the water.
Evidently, some time passed.
"What are you doing?"
I turned around with a gasp.
"Oh, god, Danny, I didn't mean to scare you!"
"You didn't scare me. I was just . . . what are you doing here?"
"I was up there," pointing up the weed-choked slope that led up to the rear fence of Cunningham Beach, "walking home, and I thought I saw you. It was hard to tell . . . the leaves and weeds are really thick out here."
"I know. That's what I love about this island. This one in particular."
She knelt at my side. Her blonde, corkscrew curls brushed against my unshirted shoulder for just an instant. She laid her hands over the top of the rock I had been unearthing and petted it gently, far more gently than she had Ralph's back. I looked at that perfect hand, and then, in its wake, at the form across which it had passed.
Had I done this? Could this possibly be the same rock I'd cut my hand on, the same small, single-curved piece I'd been poking around? With its curves, its jointed segments, it didn't resemble a rock at all.
Colleen ran off and then returned immediately with water cupped in her hands. Her arm brushed warm against my own as she sat beside me and released the water onto the stone. The surface beneath the thin layer of dirt was a light, fleshy pink, scattered with red and violet specks ranging in size from sugar granules to pennies. It was made up of two graceful, slightly asymmetrical arcs with a multi-faceted nodule rising at its center. Was it bone? A buried statue? It looked like raw, diseased flesh but it felt cool and polished, like porcelain.
"We can't tell anybody about this," I told her.
"Why not? It's so beautiful."
"Well, then, let's just not tell anybody about it yet. Okay? Let's . . . dig out the whole thing first, okay?"
"You and me?" she stared right into my eyes, and then nodded her head slowly. "Okay."
But of course it didn't work out that way. Neither of us went back to the island for almost another week. When I finally went out there myself, and sat digging with my fingers and occasionally a short sharp-edged stick, no more than a half hour passed before I heard splashes behind me and turned to see Colleen and Ralph, hand in hand.
"Hey, Pickett, what's goin’ on?"
I didn't answer. I just stepped away from my handiwork and watched Colleen's eyes and mouth widen in wonderment, and watched Ralph kneel and squint with a visage of measured disbelief.
"Holy shit, he said. “What the fuck is this?"
I looked back and forth from my friends to the thing rising out of the ground at my feet and made an introduction. "It's the Trilobite Man."
And so my plan for creating a perfect rendezvous for Colleen and me faltered before it ever started. I spent the rest of that afternoon clawing away with my fingers and poking away with a stubby twig, slowly revealing more and more of the figure—it was no longer merely a form—while Colleen watched and sometimes helped and while Ralph sometimes watched and sometimes tried to distract Colleen with some half-hearted attempt at a conversation.
I ignored them both, preferring instead to uncover the Trilobite Man's cold, meat-colored ribs.
For the next couple of weeks I spent every afternoon out there. Almost every day somebody joined me, though no one besides Colleen ever lent a hand in the digging. And, of course, even though he never paid any attention to her unless it was just the three of us, Ralph never let her set foot on the island without him.
I don't know . . . At what point did I start to notice the change? Did I accept it all at once or just gradually surrender myself to it, and how long afterward did it take everyone else to notice it? My life up until now had consisted of so many impacted pockets of strange, deathlike dislocations, deluded fantasies of revenge and of my father returning to me after all these years. And of course there was my memory of the man—the thing—that had killed my friends three-and-a-half years before, and the savage beating I’d received, which the world saw as a brutal but botched suicide attempt. Looking at it from that perspective it would have been so easy to dismiss it as just another fantasy, just another example of me withdrawing from the world that had left me so unanchored and raw and Godless. But it was more than that.
Something happened to me and my friends—to the world—once we crossed the narrow stretch of river onto the banks of the tiny island. Sounds that I could not hear beyond that shoreline would swell up from nowhere the moment I stepped on the island, the sounds of millions of hunting, hovering or digging insects, each of whose cries seemed unique from all the rest, but who, as a group, formed a hypnotically resonant harmony in which tones seemed to waiver and bend in unison. If it was raining, the rain always seemed to be of a different character and consistency upon the island—warmer, more aromatic, and, in the sound of its impact upon the leaves and dirt, somehow possessed of a songlike quality of its own. I would stand on the open edge of the island, the rain roaring down on me as though it were a single living entity, reaching down for the sole purpose of calming and reassuring me. The world beyond the edges of the island always seemed a little less colorful, as though all that color was being sucked onto the island itself, enriching the blues and greens of the leaves and grasses, the gemlike glint of its stones, the protective covering of the island's single great weeping willow tree and the blood-suffused hues of the Trilobite Man.
But, of course, none of this was visible from even as close as fifteen feet—the distance from the river's edge to the island. It was just another tiny island. And when we ourselves were off the island, we never talked about it in any way that would indicate that it held any special power over us.
Even Colleen and I, alone together every weekday at noon as I walked her home from school, never mentioned the island or the Trilobite Man. Instead, I would let her look at my poetry, and we'd both pretend that none of its heartfelt but shameless clichés were directed at anyone in particular, or I would show her the panels of the underground comic I was scribbling away at during those three-hour U. S. History lectures. I would speak carefully, trying to mold myself with every word and gesture into everything I knew Ralph wasn't. She got to the point where she would complain about him and I would comfort her to the razor's edge of making an outright overture to her.
So, by mid-July I was hopelessly in love with Colleen and couldn't stop thinking of her except for those moments when I was on the island, when she became—if only because of Ralph's presence—just another castaway, just another being lost in the bewitching folds and breezes that held this island-world together.
"There." I stood and brushed my dirty hands on my jeans.
I had been digging for several days—in my slow, deliberate fashion—at a massive form that appeared to be the Trilobite Man's head.
They all gathered around me, looking down at the crowning bulk. The Trilobite Man
had, up until this point, not exhibited any hint of symmetry. But now, as we looked down at it, there seemed to be an overwhelming sense of form. It was still far from symmetrical and its trilobite-like segments were really more like a tangle of ribs, all of varying lengths and thicknesses. Some of them were as thick as human limb-bones and rode over the top at severe angles to all the rest, and one could easily see them as appendages—as true arms and legs. The crown was thick and rounded, except for two long, sharp prongs that extended down from the sides and thinned down and mingled into the latticework of ribs. Upon its bulbous peak were five smooth fissures that extended at least three inches into it.
We looked down at it, especially into those holes, and for the first time could feel it staring back at us.
II
It was a luscious, hanging fly ball, and I could see by its trajectory that it was going to come down about twenty feet behind Marty Hiatt, practically into the street between the park and the train depot.
"Back up, Marty, this one's yours!" I shouted.
Marty sprang to life like someone awakening from a nightmare, skinny arms flailing, his long hair sweeping over his face, as he began running back, still not quite sure where he and the ball should rendezvous.
Well, he tried. He leaped into the air, the ball came crashing down on the hood of Amazing Grace's pickup truck, and Marty landed on top of it, bouncing against metal and then rolling, dazed, down into the grass, while the ball came tumbling after him.
"HEY!" it was Amazing Grace (Jumbo to his friends), all three hundred pounds of him, coming out from the Parkside Tavern. Amazing was one of the town's most notorious rednecks, a hard-drinking, shit-kicking good-ol-boy.
"You little faggot! What the fuck are you doin' ta my truck?"
Amazing Grace was moving fast. Marty got up, grabbed the ball, and backed away in a total panic.
Kevin ran up behind me and poked a finger into my shoulder blade. "Oh shit, oh shit," he whispered.
Amazing stopped and looked at the hood of his blue pickup and then at Marty. "Come here, boy!"
Marty turned tail and ran towards us, but Amazing Grace, who, after all, was far more Amazing than he was Jumbo, managed to charge after Marty and catch him before he reached us.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a police car pulling up the adjacent street, making his circuit. If only he could just turn the corner now and see . . .
Amazing Grace swung Marty around, towering over him, roaring a wave of drunken obscenities down at him and raising that big arm to backhand him.
We were on him as a group, surrounding him and shouting our loudest, darkest threats while Curt jumped into the center of it all, brandishing the baseball bat. Amazing backed off and turned to see the cop car pulling up alongside us. He put up his hand and motioned the cop over to us. The car stopped and a cop got out. As the car door shut I read the motto decaled there: "We care. We enforce."
"Hey, Jumbo, what's the problem?"
"Jim, these boys were jumpin' all over my pickup and when I told them to get off they tried to all take me on at once. And this carrot-headed one here tried to swat me with that bat."
The cop just turned to us, one of those quick, barnyard-chicken-like moves that adults used when they were handed an unexpected revelation of the worst kind about you.
"What's your problem boys? Smoking dope? Getting a little crazy? Do you want me to run you all downtown?"
Amazing Grace just laughed and Jim the cop smiled at him before turning an even more severe face back to us.
"We were just playing ball, officer," Mike Kinney piped in.
"I went after this ball and I just . . . fell on his hood," Marty shrugged, realizing the only way to get the rest of us out of this was to make himself look like a total idiot.
"Yeah, and this guy comes spilling out of the bar and screaming at us!" Kevin offered.
Curt threw the bat on the ground. "Of course, if you guys are buddies, by all means! Throw our asses in jail!"
The cop stepped up to Curt and jabbed an outstretched finger before the boy's freckly face. "Hey, son! I'll do just that if I hear any more of that kind of talk!"
"Teach 'em a lesson, Jimmy," Amazing Grace said, sounding as though he had a mouthful of half-chewed banana.
"Jumbo, why don't you just go on home and let me take care of this, okay?"
Amazing Grace shrugged and said okay. He reached down, picked up the bat—my bat, got into the truck and drove away. When he was gone the cop turned back to us.
"If I hadn't stopped when I did you know what would have happened to you? Little guys like you taking on Jumbo Grace? He'd of snatched that bat out of your hands, busted it over his knee and then done the same to the rest of you. And hey! There wouldn't have been a damn thing you could have done about it. I gotta tell you boys, I don't think either of your stories sounded too good, but from what I could see when I drove up, you guys were ganging up on an adult . . . and you had a baseball bat. Any other town, any other circumstances, and they'd call that a bunch of punks trying to roll a drunk. I'm gonna let you go this time, just because I don't think I've ever seen any of you before, but I want your names, and I want you to know I'm going to remember your faces."
And that was it. I asked why he let the guy off with my baseball bat, and the cop suggested I go see Jumbo myself and ask for it. It wasn't until he got back into the car that I noticed there had been a second cop, sitting in the passenger seat and grinning at the whole thing. They both waved as they drove away.
"What a cocksucker!" cried Jack Kelleher.
"Which cocksucker are you referring to," Kevin asked, "those redneck assholes or the Human Torch here?"
"Hey," Curt hissed, "at least I didn't just stand here waiting for them to slap my hand!"
I turned on Curt and pointed my finger in his face, not much differently than the cop had. "No, man! You just decided to throw a tantrum! He wouldn't have taken my bat if you hadn't thrown it on the fucking ground!"
Ralph looked down at Marty. "You okay, Marty?"
Marty just stood there, looking like a guy who absolutely refused to cry, no matter what. He turned away and waved us off.
"I'm going home. I'll see you tomorrow."
We just stood there quietly for a while, watching Marty retreat and finally disappear around a corner.
"Amazing Grace," Ralph said in disbelief.
"I'd like to kill the motherfucker," Kevin hissed.
~ * ~
Something ugly awoke deep in my gut and rose up into my skull, making my face burn and my teeth grind. I felt as though I'd awakened from a three-and-a-half-year dream.
It was a perfectly normal summer weekday. I walked Colleen home, went home myself, ate, changed and headed off for an afternoon at Cunningham Beach. When I stepped out of the locker room I saw the usual gang of idiots all sitting around a picnic table near the concession stand.
The moment I reached them I realized something was wrong. Their faces just hung there, eyes drooping, mouths defiantly shut. Marty's girlfriend Sue was crying, and Debbie and Colleen huddled on either side of her, stroking her hands and gently shushing her.
"What happened?"
It was Ralph who looked up at me first. "Marty's in the hospital. He got beat up."
"MARTY?"
Kevin stood and looked me in the eye. "Amazing Grace."
And so I heard the story: Marty had been walking home alone from Sue's house at around ten o'clock the night before, when Amazing Grace pulled up in his pickup truck, got out, and, four blocks from Marty's house, beat the shit out of him. Broke his nose, pulled his neck out of joint, and busted two ribs.
And then he drove Marty home, dragged him out of the back of the pickup and up to the front door, and proceeded to tell Mr. and Mrs. Hiatt that their son had been harassing him ever since an altercation at Burlington Park a couple of weeks before, had been shouting insults to him and throwing rocks at his truck. Tonight he'd hit the windshield with a rock and almost sent Amazi
ng's truck into a tree. When Amazing got out of the truck, all shaken up, Marty continued howling and throwing things at him, and so Amazing gave chase. Caught him. And "defended" himself.
"So Marty gets taken to the hospital, the Hiatts go with Amazing Grace down to the cop station, but they don't press charges. Seems the police believed his story. And the Hiatts, the fucking Hiatts, they end up believing it, too." Kevin, who'd been Marty's best friend since kindergarten, shook his head. "You should hear them. They told me they thought Marty would learn a valuable lesson from all this."
Kevin punched the picnic table.
"Can you believe this?" Curt said. "How can they live with him and be stupid enough to believe a story like that?"
And so we just poured out all our bitterness against our parents. All of us had problems, real or imagined, with our parents, and it was the only subject about which we always seemed able to speak with any kind of passionate indignation. Every injustice we saw in another's parents became our own. The Hiatts had committed the most perverse one of all: not knowing their son, not believing in him, not sticking up for him. It didn't matter whether they believed that Marty, peaceful, polite and studious, could have harassed a three-hundred pound shit-kicker so mercilessly, or whether they were just as afraid of Amazing Grace as we were. A real father or mother would have stood up for Marty. Wouldn't they?
We decided to go visit him at the hospital. It was a long, desperate trudge, and every vehicle that passed us inspired a seething rage in us.
Of course, it was the violation that made us smell blood, that made us so hungry for revenge. Had it been a kid at school it would have been different. But Amazing Grace was at least thirty years old. An adult. We seethed because, in reality, this all just confirmed our most melodramatic visions of ourselves and the adult world we despised so much. It wasn't a game. Adults really were tainted and cruel and all in it together.
Don't Clean the Aquarium! Page 14