Pins: A Novel

by Jim Provenzano

  He traced the eleven blocks toward home. A lawn sprinkler darkened a wedge of sidewalk at his feet. Trees bloomed with lime buds. Birds sang. Everything was perfect.

  23

  The heater rumbled warm air through the grates. Then it stopped, as if finished breathing for the season.

  He went to the bathroom, leaving the light off, took a last piss, then almost hit himself in the head when he opened the medicine cabinet. He took the aspirin bottle, careful not to let the white discs inside clatter.

  Someone stood in the hall.

  “What are you doing?” Mike appeared in his Gargoyles pajamas, groggy from sleep.

  “Nothin’. Go back to bed.”

  We always kiss goodbye.

  He must have been too tired to react. As Joey’s lips brushed his cheek, Mike just blinked and blinked.

  Joseph watched him pad back down the hall, look back once before retreating to his room. He returned to his own room, quietly pushed his desk chair to his closet door, fished high up for the drawings, took them down from their hiding place.

  His varsity jacket fell silently off the hangar. He slipped it on.

  He knelt. Deep inside his gym bag, he felt for the rustle of the plastic compress. In the kitchen, he found some matches, then stuffed them and the bottle of aspirin in a coat pocket. He pushed the stool to the cabinet where his father had hidden the whiskey bottle, took that down. He took a gulp, gasping at the burn, then poured water into the bottle. He took the remaining Valiums at the sink, stuffed them in his mouth, washing them down with the whiskey, water, stuffed the bottle in his pocket.

  He opened the back door slowly. A rush of cold air swept into the kitchen. A spring storm bit with tiny drops of half-rain, sleet. Then he was awash in it, stepping down off the porch, out into the purplish glowing night.

  “Shit,” he muttered, already blurry from the first gulp of whiskey.

  Creeping through receding piles of shoveled road snow, mucky lawns, his poisons rattled in his pockets, sloshed in his gut.

  Where to? Purgatory, maybe, the blue-skinned beauty queen in Beetlejuice, the nun’s explanation, waiting on the Dean’s bench, forever.

  The Valiums were beginning to blur synapse function, Joey’s ability to adjust his cassette player’s earplugs. He decided singing along to AUURGH, then thought, as his limbs grew queasy, that the music in hell would probably be lousy.

  He felt drunk, only less liquid, as if he were thickening inside.

  The woods closed in. Occasionally, a branch lashed his neck or face.

  He stumbled around a small pile of rocks where some kids had made a fire. He gulped aspirin while guzzling watered-down whiskey. It still burned his throat, but he had to eat them all. That was what he had to do. His chest rumbled with hiccups. He grabbed a bit of puddled water, lapping it off his hand, the grit of rotten leaves, earth mixed in.

  He had trouble pushing the rocks up to make a better windbreak. He lit the drawings on the fourth try, but they sputtered out. He tossed some sticks, poured whiskey on it, and the paper whooshed into a little ball of flame, flying up. One sheet, half-eaten by flames, rode up a few feet like a kite, lighting him, warming him for a tiny moment. He found the knife, stabbed the cold compress bag, sucked the fluid out. It was bitter, burned like road salt or how he imagined antifreeze would taste. He managed to gulp down one blast of it, but had to toss the bag aside, coughing. He remembered the punch line of a joke about a Lambrusco on the Rocks, except he forgot the rocks.

  His limbs grew numb as he stumbled in the mucky earth. What he had known so deeply, his own body, all its sensations, drifted away. His head grew cloudy. He fell down, then lay, a cluster of soggy leaves under his head.

  Stars hovered through the trees, distant, unseeing eyes. He felt his heart, which he’d fed on passionate moments, falling away as the thud in his ears grew slower, then turned to ringing.

  Somebody was calling his name. He felt himself floating, sinking at the same time. The trees’ arms covered the sky like a spidery canopy. Bits of charred paper and black flakes floated up to meet them.

  A gurgling interrupted his expected epiphany.

  “Wait a fuckin’ minute.”

  The gurgling found a partner, multiplied, shifted upward, demanded exit.

  El Vomito Grande.

  24

  “A priest and a nun are in the desert on a camel.”

  Joseph was telling the joke, trying to make a rather hunky dude from Cedar Grove laugh as they sat on the mat in cross-legged groups. The dude snubbed him, so he feigned fascination with a small feather, from a pigeon, perhaps, that had fallen the gym rafters. He stuck it in his sock.

  He was still getting over the embarrassment of not only having failed to kill himself the previous weekend, but trudged home, keeping the whole thing a secret until the bottle was found missing. He’d cried. It didn’t take much, he was so hung over. He said he’d drunk some and tossed the rest, which was true, in a sense.

  So when Coach Cleshun, then Raul Klein, called, and he said that he wanted to finally get back into something other than being miserable, his parents practically shoved him out the door. A wrestling clinic. Go. Live a little.

  Joseph was trying to repolish the tiny bits of social skills he still had by telling the joke. He didn’t get to finish it. A coach for the local school led them in warm-ups.

  The great wrestler held a clinic and boys from many schools had come to a gymnasium on a Saturday morning for that day-long clinic. It would give all the boys an edge, they were told.

  The great wrestler had won awards, trophies, medals. Coaches and parents sat back on the bleachers, watched as he showed the boys moves they had never tried, or been allowed to try. Wrestling season was over, but wrestling season, in a sense, is never over.

  Troy, Raul and a few other boys Joseph knew by face or weight, but not name, squatted in a circle and watched as the great wrestler grabbed and pushed and shoved and kicked the boys in various ways that had made him a champion and left the boys rubbing parts of their bodies in slight yet inspirational pain. He showed them the way of wrestling outside polite competition. This was the way it was. This was what it took to be a champion.

  In the midst of his teaching, he occasionally let slip a few comments that did, at first, merely give the coaches and parents a shrug of bemused smirks. The great wrestler, to be honest, had a dirty mouth.

  This did not shock Joseph. He was dealing with the hunky dude totally snubbing him. There was a bit of turf action going on.

  When the great wrestler broke them up to do drills, they kept it light. Raul Klein partnered with Joseph. Raul had continued his athletic endeavors on the track team. He’d tried to get Joseph to join so they would have something new in common, become closer friends, maybe new best friends. Joseph shrugged it off. “I don’t like running.”

  Raul let it slide. It was an off day all around.

  The great wrestler, at a late hour in the long day of practicing fireman’s carries and bow-and-arrows and Russian arm bars, found himself at a loss for words to describe the swift hopping motion that was required to accomplish a certain move.

  As he showed it, he made mention of how this swiftness should be accomplished, “like a, like a fairy, like a little fairy.”

  He smirked. Many of the boys smirked. A few chuckled.

  That they didn’t even know who they were laughing at brought him to his feet.

  Ingoring it would have been easier for stronger boys. They laugh along.

  Joseph, however, felt his blood drop, as if someone had pressed the elevator button, punched him, put a bag over his head, pressed DOWN. He realized that yes, he had heard that from the great wrestler and yes, it was an insult and yes, it was his right to be offended.

  It is difficult to say when the exact moment of Joseph’s resolve to die for Anthony came about. It was certainly a cumulative vision, but this moment should suffice.

  It occurred on a Saturday, in a suburban area, in a sch
ool gymnasium among a few dozen bright-eyed boys and a few older men. The boys were shown the various positions for the man on the bottom, the arms and legs moving like a clock with extra limbs. Here is the hour of defense, the hour of our victory, the hour of our death.

  When Joseph failed to respond to yet another joke of questionable taste, the great wrestler singled him out and asked him if he was bored.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No. I’m not bored.”

  “Come here.”

  It occurred on a Saturday, when Joseph chose a happy death.

  He was invited with a single finger to assist in showing a move. He was told not to resist. For a fifteen-year-old boy to resist, or by being in the wrong place and resisting, particularly under a man with a fifty-pound, twenty-year, two-hundred-fifty-pin advantage, was to risk serious injury.

  “What?”

  “Did you want to volunteer?”

  “You asked for a fairy.”

  “Joe. Don’t,” Raul muttered.

  The circle of boys fell back slightly, some suppressing bursts of astonishment, disgust, bewilderment.

  Raul dropped his head, covered his face.

  On his way through the cluster of parting legs, and eventually, with his back to the mat, his neck suddenly in a very wrong position, the boy looked up.

  Perched high on the girders of the gymnasium ceiling, crouched like a thoughtful monkey, in a white singlet and whiter wrestling shoes, His pristine wings fluttering, His skin blue as a dolphin, His holy power ready to defend the only member of His faith, Saint Anthony of Totowa prepared to swoop down.

  “I’m not saying I’m better than any other person. You just get to the stage where your pain threshold must be higher than the average person’s. You learn to live with pain that would generally disable someone else.”

  – Ian Roberts, rugby player

  1

  Neither hell nor heaven had ever been described to him as pine-scented. That was the first sign that he’d missed the other-worldly bus.

  The beeping sounds and annoyed announcements confirmed it.

  His insides had been scraped out and shoved back down his throat. He tried to move, but with a tube in his nose and another one sticking out of his arm, and about four feet of steel cables suspending his head in a sort of geodome of wires and supports, even blinking hurt.

  Everything ached.

  Something beeped behind his head.

  Something beeped inside his head.

  A rumpled dress made of paper choked his neck and bunched up under the sheets.

  He couldn’t move, but half-saw, by moving his eyes sideways until even that exhausted him, his mother curled up in a chair.

  A curtain skirted the other side of his bed. He banged his hand on a metal bar at his side. In the drug haze of immobility, laughing inside, thinking that if he was paralyzed and he had to piss, there was only one way. He did, without moving.

  Before falling back to sleep for another day, he muttered, to no one in particular, “You fag.”

  1.5

  “Ma, he woke up.”

  She hovered close from the other side.

  “Feelin’ better?”

  “Awg.”

  “You’re alive.”

  “Mnhn.”

  “You died for a whole minute!” Mike barked.

  The experiment was a success! He wanted to shout. But the river of silk in his veins heavied his lips. “Jhyugh.”

  His mother took his other hand. “Michael. Go sit outside a minute. Let me talk to your brother.”

  Mike scowled. “You gonna feed him?”

  He had to watch the perimeter of his brother’s actions, as the metal work surrounding him prevented him from looking up. He feared for his toes in Mike’s presence, felt his legs move, was thankful, relieved.

  “No, my love, but I will smack you if you don’t behave. Don’t go peekin’ in other people’s rooms.”

  He heard Mike leave, and watched his mother park herself beside his face. He kept darting his eyes sideways, until it hurt. He held up a hand, and she took it, but started crying, then stopped crying enough to hold him.

  “Where’s Da?”

  “Downstairs.”

  “Smokin’?”

  “Well, you made us very scared, Joseph. They hadda…the things they did. Then you, you were gonna die…” Her face scrunched up with tears, her hands covered her eyes.

  “Sorry…Sorry.”

  “I …know.”

  “He said,” and she stumbled over it, “…that it would take a while, maybe a few months, but you’re gonna be okay. I know you will.”

  “…know…”

  “Yes, you will!”

  “I said…I know…not ‘no.’”

  “Oh. Okay. You want I should get you a pen and pad?”

  “Can we …later?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can… you get…”

  “Yes, dear, what can I get you? You want some water?”

  “The Mylar…balloons. They hurt my eyes.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “Dad.”

  “You want I should go find him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll be awright?”

  “Promise…won’t jump out a window.”

  He imagined a plane with huge beds. The drugs they gave him rocked so much he didn’t care if he’d ever be fine.

  He crept a hand up to feel the metal whatever-it-was around his head. He must have broken his neck. Finally. That was why he died. Almost. He even smiled imagining the scene he’d caused.

  His proud smile dropped as his fingers felt the parts of the brace pressed against his skull.

  No, not against.

  In.

  Drilled into his head in a circle were six metal pins.

  2

  Three hours or days later, in the dark, his father sat beside his bed without saying a word, holding the boy’s hand.

  “Wha’ time...?”

  “It’s late. Your mother went home.”

  “Bu’ I just…”

  “Easy.”

  “Get ‘em out. Get these things outta my head, Dad. Please.”

  He then had a bit of a panic attack, bumped things, until his dad pressed down, shushing him.

  His dad’s beard stubble scraped his cheek. He smelled sweat, coffee. Dino’s flannel shirt warmed him. He held on, but couldn’t keep the awkward position.

  “Here,” he patted his own stomach.

  His father nestled on his belly like a dog.

  Dr. Behn, his surgeon, visited him. She answered questions, had others. She seemed amazed by his rapid healing, despite her excellent work. They talked about the equipment, vertebrae, nerves, fusion. They’d even made a video of his operation. That viewing would have to wait, not that he didn’t want to see it. His hospital room didn’t have a VCR.

  Although nurses, visitors, drug people, clean-up people, flower people came and went, the one that Joe liked best, aside from the cute guys who came and went, was Irene DeStefano.

  It was only then that he really got to know her. He couldn’t always see his visitors, but Joe could smell her cigarettes and perfume. Her voice was raspy, but she cheered him up when she told him how worse things were in her day. She told stories, brought food, reassured, read to him. “You should be happy you’re alive.”

  “I am,” he said, still frequently touching the two-and-a-half-inch titanium pins connected to a two-pound head brace, called a halo. “I dunno why, but even though I am in so much pain, I’ve never been happier.”

  He’d have been happier if a few of the cuter male orderlies paid more attention, but Irene’s voice had a quality that healed the time, passed the afternoons, giving his parents some time off, since the drive was almost an hour.

  They’d moved him to a hospital that specialized in neck injuries. It also helped them avoid the cameras, which had hounded them to the emergency ward after the accident. But
then an opening at the best Children’s Hospital in the state suddenly turned up.

  Rico Nicci wasn’t in hospital management for nothing. They’d even flown in for a visit he still barely recalled. He just remembered his uncle and aunt standing over him.

  Maybe he had died and this was the waiting room.

  Whatever it was, Irene was there, and knitting up a storm as she talked. “I mean, you would not believe the things that people go through, and survive and manage to live wonderful lives. One gentleman on this floor, seventy-five, just in for a slight heart problem, found the girl of his dreams, get this, at a high school reunion. At sixty, finally got her. So, I say, if you’re gonna dream, you should dream, you know what I’m saying?”

  A full minute, Dr. Xing, his other doctor, had said, confirming Mike’s point of fascination. After the accident, he had flatlined. Dr. Xing told him some guy had given him mouth to mouth.

  “Which guy?” Joe asked.

  “A medic.”

  Dr. Xing made a note to lower his dosage when the patient couldn’t stop laughing at his own joke, “Is he married?”

  Plants, red roses, crayon anenomes from Sophia, cards from school, from Newark, several coaches, other teams, and of course his own team, or its remaining members, filled his room, even though with the position of his neck brace, he couldn’t see it all very well. He asked them to tape some to the ceiling, but the orderlies said no. They adjusted his bed to tilt, when he was ready. A mirror was brought in, but he asked them to take it away. He did not want to see himself. Looking at the puncture permanent made him nauseous.

  Grandmama visited, all the aunts, two by two. They held his hand, hovered over his face like moons. They brought flowers, plants, candles. They cried, prayed. He loved it.

  His parents traded off shifts of staying with him, refusing to leave him alone until he assured them he was okay. Teachers, administrators, came in suited pairs. A lawyer visited. He seemed very enthusiastic.

  Even Miss Pooley visited. Somehow the flower idea had been squelched in favor of drawing pens, paper, his textbooks.