Besides the poor choices of booze and nicotine, my dad was the smartest man I’ve ever known, and I still hear his voice guiding me, directing me through this place that I’ve been put in. I don’t blame him for leaving me. I thank him for doing what he could when he was with me.
My dad made a decision to let the doctors do an experimental procedure to save my life when I was just five years old. Each month after the surgery, I would go in for my checkup with the company doctor when my father still worked for Theoretics. They would do blood work, scans, and tests for my rare condition that I have and have had since I was a child.
My father took great care of me, helping me cope with the new child that I had become after the procedure, the chronically sick me. Shortly after the surgery, I would have violent mood swings, screaming at the top of my lungs and breaking things without provocation. The episodes of anger would be so violent that I would sometimes black out and go unconscious. When I awakened, I would not remember a thing. My father would have restless nights as well, staying up and trying to comfort me from my nightmares and fear of falling asleep weeks after I had the dream again. His magic hands wouldn’t work during these times. He would read to me and play a few games of chess with me well into the night until my fear was distracted long enough that I would basically keel over from being so tired. He’d cradle me when I would howl like a wounded coyote from the intense pain of the headaches I used to endure, telling me everything would be all right and that one day I would be a hero.
Then one day, when the last bell rang for school and I walked outside, the space where my father’s car was parked every day where he’d wait to pick me up was empty. I looked up and down the block, and I could hear no jazz music or see that old hunk of metal with the faded baby blue paint. Then a police car pulls in the exact same spot where my father used to park. And ever since that officer got out of his car, walked over to me, ever since he took off his hat and kneeled down to me and said what he had to say, it’s been bad news ever since.
I ask the doctor about my headaches. He tells me that I have cluster headaches, maybe triggered by the environment. There’s lots of different species of oak and mold in this area that may be causing the headaches. Or, it could be the shithole of a place that I’m living in. Whatever the cause may be, I can’t stand the headaches much longer, and every doctor has told me different bullshit. I only sparked up the conversation to distract him so that I can get a few bottles of sanity. So while the doctor wasn’t looking, I swiped some more bottles of pills from his bag. I was running low, and I don’t think I could have made it through the week without a few fresh bottles.
I’m taking fifteen pills a day now. On top of this headache, my body constantly aches for this substance when it doesn’t receive it. Mornings are the hardest. My stomach churns and my blood turns to ice and I sweat profusely until I shake that bottle. Sometimes I try and fight the pain of dependence, but I always end up popping a pill in resignation.
All week at school, Mrs. Biel either wanted me dead or was possessed by the devil. Her torment on me knew no ends as every minor infraction that I did she multiplied tenfold. The chair by the blackboard facing the wall damned near became my permanent seat. I was also issued a packet of “disciplinary work” for pissing her off for whatever reason. I made the mistake of nodding off in her class for a few seconds, and venom from her mouth woke me up. Her class is in the middle of the day, and I take a maintenance dose to keep from snapping on her in class. I think I’m just her punching bag for whatever happened in her life. Either way, this shit is getting old, and I’ve got to do something about it.
The next morning, for some reason, there is a change in the guard activity. All of their patterns have changed inside and outside of the Rose. Maybe they found the violated section of the gate where I escaped, or maybe it’s training. Whatever it may be, it’s making me a little anxious about my upcoming nightly activities. I’m less inclined to take a step outside of my door after lights out. However, there’s one thing that didn’t change, and that’s the footsteps that disappear every other week. When the footsteps return after a few hours, I can only imagine what happened. Hang in there, David.
It took me four months to figure out the new pattern and be able to determine a new route out of the Rose at night. There’s only one more thing that I pursue, and that’s my mother’s final resting place. Somewhere in this demonic town, buried beneath six feet of earth, lies my mother, whom I’ve never met, whose voice I have never heard, whose touch I have never felt.
Five miles through the backcountry roads will take me to the graveyard, according to the message in my dad’s notes. I have no idea what’s in that plot of land in the dark countryside, but in a few weeks, when the guard activity slows down, I will find out.
Chapter 14: Birds and the Bees, Part 1
Spring melts the snow and the garden grove begins to bloom with daffodils, tulips, and red roses, creating a wonderful fragrance when the wind blows between the dorm and office building. That aroma masks the smell of decay from the rotting hopes of a few dozen kids. The bouquet also brings on swarms of honeybees and hummingbirds that bring a beauty to my dingy window that I stare out of each morning.
Then the muggy summer climbs over the hills, encompassing the county and lands on top of our heads with thunderstorms and sticky nights that paste our skin to the bed sheets of our air conditionless rooms. It also signals that school is over, and a not-so-intense mandatory summer school season begins.
Only three classes a day, and we are done after we eat lunch, which ends around one o’clock. But, even a rose has its thorns, and those thorns are that of a woman named Mrs. Biel. Her math class is the last class of the three that I have. She spares my friends from scorn, yet burns me at the stake every chance she gets.
We only get to see Ron for a very short time now that summer is here. We aren’t permitted visitors, unless they are relatives or they were put on the visitation list by a relative, so Ron coming to the Rose is out of the question. The only kids that get visitation rights are the Swelchz family, which is a bit suspicious. I am unable to see Bill or Father Mire at all, either, which is difficult for me, as they provide me with much-needed guidance. Bill is the only one I know that I can’t beat at chess.
Kim, Steve, and I do our best to kill time at the Rose, playing card games with a deck that Steve was able to get his hands on, me kicking their ass in chess and betting how many moves I can beat them in, telling stories about what it was like before we got here and what we want to do when we get out. Most of the time, we just stay in our rooms, where it’s safe from trouble.
Steve is always complaining about his new roommate they stuck him with a few weeks ago, who is stark crazy. I think that’s another reason he sneaks around the Rose, exercising his sticky fingers so he can have an excuse to leave the room. He says his roommate mumbles gibberish to himself for hours on end, rocking back and forth and drooling. A few days ago, he said that the poor slob had a seizure and slipped into a coma.
It’s weird that the medical staff got here as fast as they did to rescue the poor bastard. It only took a few minutes, I think. We healthy kids, besides me, have to wait hours or even days on end for medical attention, even if we claim we’re dying. One time a kid broke his arm after he fell down the stairs and couldn’t get medical attention to get it fixed for three days. The kid walked around with his arm looking like a boomerang in a pillowcase sling for three days. Now his hand can’t open all of the way, and the other kids make fun of him, calling him “crab boy.”
It was strange that the disabled, insane, and infirm were always adopted and not us healthy kids. Before Kim became my roommate, I had a few nut cases as roommates as well. One in particular was fascinated with chickens. “Chickens are roosters and roosters are chickens!” he’d say for hours, drooling and clapping his hands together, laughing at the fascination of the fact that he knows that a chicken and a rooster are similar. “Why are roosters chickens?” All day
he’d ask me, drooling all over himself. A few days a week, when I did manage to sleep, I’d be awakened by crowing at the break of dawn as this kid cackled like a rooster at the top of his lungs, looking out of the window at the morning sun. “I’m a rooster, Cock-a-doodle-doo!” One day, while we were eating in the cafeteria, I told him that he was eating chicken and he attacked me. It took two guards to finally get him off me. He was adopted just a week later, after he suddenly became mute one morning and just stared at the wall all day, drooling on himself, just like all of the others. I would hear yelling and screaming every so often from rooms down the hall where other weird kids were being kept. I’d then see the peculiar all-black medical van with no lights on the roof outside minutes later and the child being rushed to wherever hospital they were taking him. I’m thinking its more money from the government for the parents who house these handicapped children.
One morning at the end of June, I awaken from a chemically induced slumber and slobber on my pillow, feeling sluggish and groggy. My head feels like I’m wearing an elephant for a hat as I struggle to lift it from my pillow. Maybe next time I will take only my usual four pills instead of eight before I go to bed. This has been the only means that I am able to sleep for more than a few hours and escape the nightmares that have me in fear of closing my eyes. I feel the only permanent solution is death. I’ve thought of it a few times. Just take the entire two bottles all at once and go out easy. However, death wasn’t why my father saved me. If he had wished for me to die, he would have never went bankrupt saving my life or taught me about life and how to live or left a weird message for me to find. He wanted me to find salvation, and salvation is buried beneath six feet of dirt somewhere in Oak County. Whether reality to me is a fantasy of ghosts that whisper in my ear, mirages that glimmer in a snowy desert, or the will of my father, I’m ready to find out.
Dressed and ready for the day, school meant nothing to me anymore. Anger had taken over me and lit a fuse that would soon reach a powder keg.
We leave the Rose and the day at school thus far has gone uncharacteristically smooth. No Dead Ends, the breakfast at the Rose didn’t make my stomach turn, and my friends cheered me up a bit on the bus ride. All of that was immediately turned to shit once I reached Biel’s class. I walk in two seconds after the bell rang and fire and brimstone comes from her mouth.
“Late to my class again!” she yells.
“I wish this bitch would just get hit by a bus,” I say under my breath.
“What was that?” she says.
“I didn’t say anything.” Holding my hands up in innocence.
“Oh, you want to be a smart-ass?” she says, sticking her finger in my face. “You know, I found out that your criminal hands took money from my purse when I wasn’t looking.”
Shit. I bet it was George the Queer. “I don’t know anything about that, I swear.”
“Fine. Since you won’t tell me who did it, then you’re guilty. Detention for a week!”
Ron starts to laugh at me under his breath. I guess that’s what happens when you strike a beehive. Her words are stings, and stings bring more stings, so it’s best to leave the hive be. She reprimands him as well, but doesn’t cast fury upon him like she did on me, but I didn’t care.
The only thing I cared about was tonight, when I would finally get to honor my mother’s grave, to see the resting place of a woman I’ve never met and never will, a woman I killed before I took a breath. I wish they saved her instead of me. Tonight, I finally get to pay my respects.
Chapter 15: Monologues from the Grave
Night is finally here. Kim is sound asleep as I lay in my bed with my eyes closed, fantasizing about what will come of my journey on this night. I can barely lie still from the nerves that are building inside of my gut. I patiently listen for the dragging feet of the security guard to pass by my door and disappear down the stairs to signal that I can make my move. Alas, silence. Now that I remember, silence is a sign that I can escape a prison, but another sign that somewhere in this prison my good friend is being tortured.
Moving like a mouse, I crawl out of bed fully clothed, slip on my shoes and grab my kit of essentials from beneath my bed. Taking the alternate route that I designed to thwart the new guard shift, I make it to the gate. The night air is moist and so thick that I can almost chew it. The sky begins to flicker behind the darkened clouds, giving me snapshots of my path. I bang out the bars and slide my way through the opening and head west, running in the darkness of the new moon.
After twenty minutes and five miles, I’m in front of a tall white rusty gate with an arching wooden entrance. Shining my penlight on the entrance, I pan slowly left to right across the arch. “Heaven’s Pasture” is written in large white letters across the arch.
I use my dad’s notes collected from the chessboard decryption and the library book, holding the penlight at eye level to guide me as dots of water begin to stain the paper in front of my eyes. The path in front of me lights up every few seconds with a rumble from the sky.
I find a plot in a small clearing away from all of the other graves that looks like it wasn’t meant to be found. There’s a tiny pile of rubble scattered in a few feet radius. The rubble used to be a headstone that has either been weathered severely or has been vandalized.
Fishing through the pieces of stone, I find some lettering that has been ground down on one end. “Here lies . . .” and the rest of the letters are unreadable. They appear to be completely rubbed out. According to my father’s directions, this is exactly where my mom’s grave should be.
I felt oblivious to the situation and then overwhelmed with grief, guilt, and then joy—grief for my dead mom, guilt that I took her life, and then joy that I finally can pay my respects.
I then noticed a depression in the dimensions of a coffin large enough for a woman. No other graves in the area had this depression in the ground. At first I thought that it may be some type of phenomena of nature, and then I thought about what my father used to say, “All myths and lies have truth to them.”
Looking at my father’s notes again, it reads, “The truth was buried with her.” I find a nearby utility shed that is chained with a padlock. The lock gives with a few kicks to the shed’s double wooden doors and I grab a spade shovel and head back to the gravesite.
Raising the shovel, I squeeze my lips together in rage and slam it into the ground. The sky begins to set itself ablaze, and the light twinkles through the large oak tree that covers the grave. Tears begin to moisten the loosened soil mixed in with the light drizzle of rain. I clench my teeth and punch the shovel into the ground, stomping on the shovel and ripping at the earth. I hear the pop of the grass and the tree roots tear from their grip in the thick clay.
I’m either getting closer to the truth or finding myself in a much deeper lie. My hands ache and are raw from sliding up and down the wooden handle of the shovel, but it doesn’t slow me down. I continue digging nonstop with the anticipation of what lies beneath, blinding my pain.
The shovel halts in the dirt with a loud clank. Not that of a wooden box, but of something metal. Throwing the shovel to one side, I get on my hands and knees and start clawing at the squishy ground like a hound. Tearing away roots and soil from the ground, I see a glimmer. On my knees leaning over the metal object in the ground, I pick off worms and crawly things coiled around the neck of the foreign object. I rub away the dirt, then pluck it out of the earth. In my hands lies an urn. Dented and tarnished, it bears a marking stamped on the bottom that is similar to the strange symbols on the front of the book that I retrieved from the library.
I never knew my mother was cremated. It saddens me to learn that this information was kept from me for so long. Then rage fills my heart and I chuck the urn against the tree, watching the top fly open with a cloud of ashes billowing out. Walking over toward the urn, hovering over it with tears streaming down my face, spilling into to the pile of ashes that are being melted away by the heavens, I notice a small roll of p
apers protruding from the remnants of my mother.
Kneeling to the ground, I sift through the ashes. Picking them out of the pile, I start to look at some of the papers. There are memoirs and diary logs that I should be able to read, and microfilm that is damaged and probably useless. Holding the penlight on the papers, there are things that look just like the markings on the book that I nabbed from the abandoned library.
Ding, I hear the timer from my bag. Oh shit. Reality comes back to me. It’s been over an hour since I arrived.
Scooping up all of the papers and putting them inside of my sack, my clothes become soiled with the soul of my mother. Trying to cup the ashes in my hand, I attempt to pack what’s left of my mother back into the urn, then gently place it back into the dirt and cover it up again with the shovel. Reaching into my pack, I take out two half-bloomed roses that I picked from the garden grove back at the orphanage. I lay them beside the crumbled headstone with their stems crossing. I lay my hands on top of the dirt, say a prayer, and make my peace.
Wiping tears from my eyes, I sober up and race back to the Rose. The essence of my mother’s soul follows behind me in a trail as the ashes wick away from my clothes, being swept by the wind from the storm.
Once back at the Rose, I’m soaked and muddied from the elements, so I leave my clothes—shoes and all—in the oak forest and bury them under leaves, branches, and thistle, then I make my way inside, stark naked, carrying nothing but my sack.
Carefully, I make my way back to my room, grab a towel from the kitchen on my way and wipe away puddles of water from my footprints. After drying off, I slip on new clothes in my room, get settled in bed, and I read the damp papers still covered in my mother’s ashes. I cautiously handle them to not tear the moist papers. Using the light coming through my bedside window, I try to figure out what my father meant in his notes.
Chess Players: Atlantis and the Mockingbird Page 10