Brad directed us to where we should position ourselves. Then we opened our plastic Captain Bob’s bags and, fish by fish, blindly catapulted them over the shrubs. Some we heard splash into the pool, our target. Others we heard thud against the cement and lawn. A couple smacked the metal slide, which made more of a racket than we’d wanted. My blood was pounding through my veins.
Twenty mackerels and six porgies had been too many!, I thought.
Then there were none left. We ran like idiots back to my car, our arms, our clothes, Jon’s face, my Jesusy hair spattered with rotting fish guts. I put 7-Eleven bags over my hands so I didn’t mess my steering wheel. My Toyota tore through the night. We gagged and laughed and retched the whole way to my house. We hosed off in my yard. We still stank the next day, even after we’d each gone home and showered.
And that was how Brad rained justice down on Steve Higgleman.
The things we do for friends.
The second floor of Brad’s house had two bedrooms. In one was his sister Tricia, thirteen years old, cute but kind of bubble-brained. The other bedroom belonged to his devoutly Catholic mom and his stepfather. Brad never called him that. It was either “my mom’s boyfriend” or “Marty.” Brad lived in the basement, as far as he could get from them while living under the same roof. He liked to draw comics and cartoons. All he did when he was home was sleep and draw. (The sketches appearing throughout these pages are some of his I’ve kept.)
Jon lived up the block from Brad. His father was an electrician and a mean drunk. Not violent mean, just angry mean. He’d yell and break things, which I suppose one could say was violent. But he never hit Jon or his little brother or his mom. Sometimes, when I picked Jon up, I could hear his dad thundering inside, rattling the windows. Jon didn’t talk about him much. Talked about his dad’s boat way more than about him.
My parents were normal. They brought me up normal. They encouraged my writing, even though I wasn’t very good back then. Wrote the usual pretentious angsty shit teens write. By the time I started high school, my two older brothers were gone, one somewhere in Europe, the other dead. So it was just me, my mom and my dad. They didn’t mind if I stayed out late, sometimes until dawn. They were cool like that.
Brad, Jon, and I had met in junior high and we remained friends into high school even though we were in all different classes. I took mostly AP ones, while both Brad and Jon had been dumped in with the remedial kids, though I think only Jon had some sort of actual learning disability. We’d gravitated toward each other because we didn’t fit in anywhere else. We weren’t jocks, or nerds, or art fags, or band geeks, or drama freaks. We never hung out at school. We’d always meet up by the theater after the last bell rang then hop into my car, a shamrock green 1982 Corolla that we dubbed the Deathmonger for no better reason than it sounded badass.
We would drive somewhere, nowhere, wherever, in search of something to do. That was our routine. That was our life. Formative years, they call these. And indeed I was formed—forged, really—into what I am today.
My appetite for mischief introduced itself in elementary school. I enjoyed getting blamed for offenses I had not committed. If a pencil or hat or blackboard eraser went missing, and the teacher asked the class if anybody knew where the item was, I pretended to harbor this knowledge by looking culpable, staring down at my desk and fidgeting my legs. The teacher would then ask me if I had taken the item. My eyes still averted, I shook my head. Sometimes she’d inspect my desk or knapsack, of course finding nothing. I could tell she still didn’t believe me, but she couldn’t prove my guilt. She was powerless to do anything. This excited me.
By fourth grade they put me on Ritalin.
Boys will be boys, they say. Some of the girls I’d known back then were like boys too. We relentlessly sought out ways to amuse ourselves. Some days our gang would crouch on opposite sides of a street, wait for a car to approach, then tug an imaginary rope across the road. The more vigilant drivers would brake hard and glare at us. A few even got out to check if we were stretching something, maybe some sort of metal-shearing cable that could slice their car in half. We’d just stand there, looking innocent. Looking at them like they were stupid.
Me and my childhood friends Larry and Greg—the Verdusky twins—on one especially inspired afternoon at their house, were browsing the Lost Pets classifieds in the local paper. We settled on an ad labeled HEARTBROKEN. Dialed its number.
“Hello,” an old-sounding woman answered.
“Hi,” I said. “Did you lose a little white dog with a sparkly green collar? Name on the tag says Binky.” I read this off the description in the ad.
“Yes we did! Did you find her?”
“Yep! On Grenada Ave, near the Foodtown.”
“That’s wonderful! The kids will be so happy!”
“Super. Is there a reward?”
“Yes there is! $50.”
I lowered my voice an octave. “We want $300.”
“$300! That’s too much.”
“Do you want Binky back or not?”
“Of course! But I can only give you $50.”
“That’s not enough.”
“That’s all you’re getting, young man!”
“Then my buddies are just gonna keep kicking the crap out of your mutt until you pay up.” Larry and Greg kicked a cardboard box and made whimpering noises in the background for effect.
“Stop it!” the old lady cried. “You awful—”
“We’ll call you back. Give you time to think about how much Binky is worth to you and the kids.”
Then I hung up. We never called back, of course.
It would have been a perfect prank, except for one lapse in planning: we had called our mark collect. When she received her phone bill, the Verdusky’s home number was listed with the reverse charge info. It didn’t take long for the old lady to contact the authorities, who pulled up the twins’ address and sent two policemen there. Their mom answered the door. Once assured there was no little white dog with a sparkly green collar on the premises, the officers left. Larry and Greg both got grounded for a month.
I got in no trouble at all.
*****
The Christmas season brought out our naughty sides in full force.
Jon owned a high-powered BB gun, an air rifle that took two CO2 tanks. It had impressive range, and Jon had good aim. For most of the year we tooled around town and shot out street lamps and car tires. During the holidays, we set our sights on the most irresistible prey: inflatable Xmas decorations. Soft-skinned Santas and reindeer, Frostys and candy canes, drunkenly swaying. They were not built to endure. They were not long for this world.
We’d cruise up to a house displaying one or more of these bloated abominations. Then Jon would lean out the rear window—I always drove, Brad always rode shotgun, and Big Jon had the entire backseat to himself, where he fired off a rapid succession of death-dealing steel pellets. The results were not immediate. We’d speed away, grab a bite at the 7-Eleven, then return to the scene of the slaying about an hour later.
How gratifying it was to behold our victims, now mostly flaccid, parts of them clinging to life, a mittened hand still raised, an antler still extended, their smiles transformed into crazed grins with the realization that, come morning, they’d likely wind up in the trash can, not worth the effort to patch up, no matter how much li’l Sara or Davy begged their parents to save them. Mommy and Daddy would just buy a new pump-up Rudolph, until the high mortality rate convinced them to go with a hard shell model instead.
In a more ambitious, more thought-out scheme, we snatched from people’s properties an assortment of the most distinctive holiday ornaments—one-of-a-kind homemade ones were especially coveted—storing them in my backyard shed until the next December when we would return them… to their neighbor’s front lawns. We imagined we’d started scores of family feuds. And while our imaginations were fertile, after a couple of years we grew dissatisfied we had never actually witnessed any of the outcomes.
Did hot-tempered Mr. Harrison beat up Mr. Greeves over the theft of his hand-painted Santa’s Village wall tarp? Did bully Billy Pulaski take a bat to Mrs. Wegman for swiping his animatronic gingerbread man? We never found out.
That was no fun.
As part of our annual heists, we abducted black Wise Men from outdoor Nativity scenes (including ones from the Bethport firehouse and the Hooksville train station). It wasn’t a racial preference; rather, the black ones were typically the tallest of the three figures and looked the sharpest in their regal robes. We accumulated almost a dozen over three years, all of which I kept in my shed. When my parents asked me where they came from, I answered we’d salvaged them from people’s trash. Mom and Dad bought my explanation. Or maybe they just didn’t want to upset me. I wasn’t very nice when I was upset. Sometimes they wouldn’t sleep until I cooled off.
I was thirteen when my brother Pete died in a car accident, totaling his restored ’67 Mustang and himself. He had been drinking and driving, discovering he couldn’t do both at the same time. He’d been a good brother, with a kind heart. The kind of heart that could not withstand a head-on collision with a concrete mixer. A tragedy, by all accounts.
All through the viewing at the funeral home, I remember my mother didn’t say a word. She was still in shock I guess, sitting in an armchair against the wall, only nodding at family and friends expressing their condolences. She wouldn’t even look at her second-born son lying there in the open casket.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Pete. He was wearing my tie.
“It’s OK,” dad said when I pointed it out. “Pete looks good in it, doesn’t he?”
But it wasn’t OK. It was my favorite tie, a retro design of psychedelic amoeba shapes dancing in an alien sea. Mom bought it for me at the Fortunoff’s in the mall. I wore it to most special occasions.
I told my dad I wanted it back.
“You can’t have it,” dad said.
“It’s mine,” I said.
He promised he’d buy me a new one.
I demanded it back.
“Please don’t make a scene,” dad said. “Not here.”
I saw people were gawking at us.
“Nobody asked me,” I grumbled and stomped out to the lobby, taking a seat in a big leather chair. I spent the remainder of the affair digging furrows into the chair’s arms with my fingernails.
The next day, after Pete was buried, I came home to find the tie draped over my pillow. Dad must’ve asked the funeral director to replace it. I rolled it up and stuck it in my drawer with my other ties. I never wore that one again. Pretty much forgot about it.
Pete was the second real-life dead body I’d ever seen. The first I saw the year before while walking to school. I was taking a shortcut through the woods between my house and the junior high. As I crossed the creek I spotted a person sitting on the eroded bank, underneath a canopy of exposed tree roots.
It was a young scrawny guy, probably in his early twenties, in sandals, jeans, and a Pink Floyd t-shirt, with messy brown hair and a stubbly pale face. He slouched forward, holding a silver pistol limply in his lap. Lots of blood trailed out of his mouth and down his chin. There was a gaping hole in the back of his head—an exit wound. Obviously a suicide.
I understand why he chose this place to do it. It was peaceful and pretty secluded, but there were enough people who hiked and hung around there so eventually he’d be found. His family and friends would know what had happened to him, which I suppose was better for them. For closure, I guess.
I picked up a long straight stick and poked at the hole in his head a bit. Then I stuck it in, slid it all the way through and out his slacking jaw a few inches. There were a few leaves sprouting from the other end of the stick. It looked like a small tree growing from his skull.
I left him there like that. Something to mystify his surviving loved ones. The stuff memories are made of.
*****
The novelty of stowing an inanimate army of swarthy Wise Men eventually ebbed. One night, we loaded them all up in my car—three in the trunk, six in the backseat with Jon, two in Brad’s lap—and drove to the end of the canal. There we filled each with enough seashell gravel to weigh them down, then heaved them into the water, which swallowed them whole.
Afterward I dropped the guys off. We got to Brad’s house first, close to 3 a.m. The light in his parents’ bedroom was off, while his sister’s was on. “Tricia’s up,” Jon said. I knew he had a crush on her, but she was jailbait. And she didn’t like boys.
Brad stiffened, as he always did when he came home to the same situation. And I could feel from him that it was a situation, though he never shared with Jon and me what bothered him. Only once did I ask him what was wrong. Nothing, he answered. He meant it was none of my business. At the time, I was kind of pissed off by this. Friends confided in each other, it was a barometer of trust. Now I can admit I was just being nosy. We didn’t tell each other everything. Some things we bury inside us, dig them up when the mood compels us, and then shovel the dirt right back over them.
Without a word Brad exited my car and crept into his house. I wanted to honk my horn, wake everybody in his family up, see what happened, but I didn’t.
The living room light in Jon’s house was on when we pulled up. I knew that meant his dad was awake and wasted, so Jon didn’t go in. Said he was going for a walk. As usual, he didn’t want to hang out more. We seldom hung out without Brad. It felt weird doing it, like we were missing an essential circuit that kept us running properly. Jon put on his headphones and started hiking down the block. I went home.
That night, and many nights after, I dreamt all the plastic Magi, glowing ethereally, had surrounded my bed, regarding me with their luminous dead eyes. “Why are you here?” I screamed and bubbles spilled from my mouth—they hadn’t come to me, I’d been taken to them, under the water. Yet I wasn’t scared. Here I was a god.
The dockside spot where we’d sunk them was about five feet deep. In the daylight you could see them through the murk, clustered on the canal bed. Over the next few months I had gone back several times. Their paint peeled off, replaced by mottles of algae and barnacles. Schools of minnows zipped about them, nibbling from their husks. Soon marine life and litter had concealed them entirely, and now only I remember they’re down there. That’s how I want it. That’s how some things need to be.
*****
During Easter break of our junior year, Jon’s cousin Randy came to visit from Connecticut. He was one of those martial arts buffs, always wearing this shiny black jacket with patches all over it featuring dragons and cobras and Oriental words. We were never sure if he really practiced karate, tae kwon do, or jiu-jitsu like he claimed. He’d show us some fancy moves, but for all we knew he could’ve copied them from kung fu movies. He never brought over the belts he supposedly earned. Always forgot to. Always promised he would next time.
What he always did bring was any new weaponry he’d collected. On prior occasions, it was Asian stuff he had picked up at tradeshows: nunchucks, throwing stars, butterfly knives, an awesome Samurai sword with a phoenix etched into its blade. This time, though, he brought something different, something better—a compound bow. It was charcoal gray, with pulleys on each end. Randy told us the bow was made of aircraft-grade aluminum, with steel strings.
We wanted to see it in action. Randy was happy to oblige us.
We trekked into the woods beyond the railroad tracks where many of the kids from our school partied at night. As we’d hoped, nobody was there because it was too early, still daylight. We set up a bunch of empty beer cans on a decaying log and took turns trying to hit them with silver-tipped arrows. It was like a carnival game. Brad, Jon, and I sucked at it. To his credit, Randy was an ace shot. He missed only once, and that was because at the moment he released his arrow a deer came bounding out of the brush. Randy missed that fucker too. We left when it got so dark we couldn’t see anything anymore. But we weren’t ready to quit playing.
It was Brad who suggested going to Satan’s house. Satan was actually Mr. Vincent, our vice principal. He’d sentenced Brad to detention no less than a dozen times for tardiness. Brad, believing Mr. Vincent had it out for him, retaliated by drawing pictures of his nemesis with devil horns and fiendish fangs. Sometimes he replaced Mr. Vincent’s pornstache with snakes. I have to say, the pictures weren’t an unflattering likeness. Many of them had a wicked appeal.
Mr. Vincent’s address was listed in the phone book. We drove there after midnight, after watching the movie Dreamscape which Jon had rented from the video store. We parked across the street a few houses down. There were no lights on in Satan’s house. We approached stealthily and stood in the moon-flecked shadows of a maple tree. Randy raised his bow, aimed, and fired an arrow through the front door. It hardly made a sound, just a dull thunk like a paper punch. We ran like hell back to my car. Made a clean getaway.
It wasn’t until the following week that we learned Randy’s arrow had killed Mr. Vincent’s dog. It must’ve been lying by the door, or passing by it at the instant of impact. I wondered what kind of dog it had been, hoping it was a cocker spaniel or a poodle. I wondered what it was like waking up to find your pet skewered. It must’ve upset Mr. Vincent. He didn’t show up at school for the rest of that week.
It also really upset Jon. Owning a dog himself—a slobbery golden retriever named Carly—he’d developed a soft spot for animals. Guess he blamed Brad and me for what happened to Satan’s pooch, which was stupid since Randy was his cousin. At any rate, Jon didn’t hang out with us for almost three months. He wouldn’t answer his phone when we called or come to the door when we dropped by. He was being lame.
Sometimes we spotted him walking around the neighborhood listening to his Discman. We’d pull up beside him and urge him to rejoin us. We reminded Jon that we didn’t mean to whack the dog, that it wasn’t even Jon’s dog, that Mr. Vincent had once yanked Jon out of the cafeteria by the collar (for adding red food dye to all the toilets) while everyone laughed at him. At first, Jon simply ignored our logic and pleas. Later we knew we were wearing him down when he told us to “Fuck off!” Finally, at the end of June, we reminded him July 4th was near. We had always spent the holiday together. To this he yielded, reoccupying his place in the backseat of the Deathmonger.
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