Piper

by John E. Keegan

  Living alone with her mother in a double-wide at the Cedars Trailer Park, I imagined they had to be close. Her mother must have been proud to have raised someone as accomplished and beautiful as Rozene. But then there was the Great Equalizer in the sky. Whenever someone got too far ahead in one department, he’d clobber you in another. That’s probably why Mrs. Raymond had lost her job at the paper, and Dad had lost his wife.

  As I watched Dirk pass the facades of the shops on Commercial Street, I wondered if the Great Equalizer worked in reverse, when someone got too far behind. If so, maybe there was a windfall in Dirk’s future, something to counterbalance all the crap he’d taken from his dad. It was just a matter of how sweet the payoff was going to be.

  Everyone was tittering when I came into home room next morning. At first I thought it had to have something to do with me—my bald head, or blood that had soaked through my crotch. I took my usual seat on the aisle closest to the windows, trying to ignore the sophomorics. God, I could hardly wait to get out of high school and not have to worry about what I looked like every time I walked into a room. But my self-consciousness was wasted because nobody was looking at me. Secured with torn strips of masking tape to the blackboard was one of those blown-up posters the copy shop could make from an ordinary photograph. It was a picture looking down at a kid in a toilet stall who was masturbating. The photographer must have yelled something as he snapped the picture because the kid’s mouth was agape. At the bottom of the poster, someone had printed in big letters: “Dirky Jerky.”

  I looked around trying to size up the situation. Dirk must have still been prowling the halls to catch a glimpse of Rozene, but she was one of those at the poster. I had to do something before he saw this. The bell rang and Mr. Wendall breezed through the door with a stack of papers coming loose from under his arm and a pencil over his ear. He stopped to take in the bedlam.

  “Everyone take their seats and pipe down.”

  While the bell was still ringing and before the door closed, Dirk sliced his arm through. Averting his eyes from Mr. Wendall, he missed the poster. He was breathing hard and his shirt flap was hanging outside of his pants as he trudged back to his seat at the back of the middle row. Dirk was so intent on not being the last one to sit down that he didn’t seem to notice the people staring at him. I wanted to yell, Run for it, Dirk, but what good would it do? Everyone had already seen the picture. The class quieted to a dull roar and Mr. Wendall dropped his papers onto the desk with a bang to signal his irritation.

  “Tweezer dick,” someone said in a deep monotone like a bullfrog. I snapped around to see Condon Bagmore drop his cupped hands away from the shitkicker grin on his face.

  “Tweezerdick.” It was someone else from the other side of the room.

  “Tweezerdick.” There was nervous laughter after each intonation of the mantra.

  “The next one of you who mouths off is facing detention.” Mr. Wendall was oblivious to the reason for the excitement. He pinched at the hair in the neck of his shirt, something he always did when a pretty girl approached his desk or he was on the verge of losing control of his class. Due to his mannequin good looks some people called him “Ken Doll,” and he always had a large turnout for his girls’ volleyball team.

  Rozene Raymond sat two rows over and three desks ahead of me and I tried to see if she was joining in the laughter, but she was looking straight ahead at Mr. Wendall and I couldn’t get a reading. Dirk was slumped in his seat, looking in the general direction of Rozene through bars formed by the fingers over his eyes.

  I could wait no longer and marched up to the front of the class. Mr. Wendall had on a cologne like over-ripe peaches and I could vaguely feel his hands reaching out to stop me, which he probably would have done except for the fact he’d already been disciplined for touching female students. As I walked over to the poster, I could hear the jeers.

  “Lick it, Piper!”

  There was an uproar as I grabbed the top corners of the poster and ripped it down.

  “What’s that?” Mr. Wendall said. “Give it to me.”

  When I turned to face the class, Dirk was running up the aisle, his face a mushy dike on the verge of bursting.

  Mr. Wendall made a pathetic effort to block him. “Where are you going, Mister?”

  Dirk raised his elbow to protect his face from Mr. Wendall the way he’d probably done with his dad when his sheets weren’t turned down just right, but Mr. Wendall wasn’t his problem. It was Condon Bagmore and his band of sickos. For them, the rest of us were white mice they could inject, prod, and electrocute. Dirk pushed out the door and was gone.

  “Take control of your goons,” I said to Mr. Wendall, rolling the poster under my arm.

  “I don’t want any lip out of you, Ms. Scanlon. Now give me that.”

  I took a step back. There were catcalls and more laughter. “Not a chance,” I said. If he reached for the poster, I was going to kick him. Nobody else was going to see that poster.

  Someone in the back of class yelled out, “Scanlon sucks dick!” Laughter again.

  I could feel the blur of Mr. Wendall coming towards me from the right. Somehow I had become the plug he needed to pull in order to drain this whole sorry mess from his classroom and I wasn’t going to let him touch me. “Bugger you, Bagmore!” I yelled.

  Someone in the front row said, “Ooh, she bites.”

  “And bugger any of the rest of you who think this is funny!” I gave Bagmore a left-handed finger, trying to make it as stiff as I could, and then I fanned it back and forth in front of the class like a shaman trying to exorcize the vermin from the room. The last pair of eyes I caught before jerking my shirt out of Mr. Wendall’s fingers were Rozene’s. They were riveted, unblinking, and, I wanted to believe, full of compassion.

  I bolted for the door and would have slammed it but for the mechanical closer which allowed only a gradual muting of the racket as I ran toward my locker, looking up and down the hall for signs of Dirk. I couldn’t stuff the poster into one of the waste cans for fear someone would dig it out and start the horror all over again. My locker was the only safe place. Except for the janitor’s end of the year clean out, nobody messed with your lockers. Kids left pot and whiskey in them. When I reached my locker though, I didn’t stop. Instead, I slowed to a fast march, then a stroll, and kept right on walking out the double-doors at the end of the hallway.

  The outdoors was cool and cloudy, but it was devoid of voices and, for that reason, it was heaven. My skin was sweaty and I fluttered the front of my shirt to dry out. As I passed Marge’s Cafe, I didn’t do so much as an eyes right. My heartbeat had slowed and my wits were back in their pockets. If anyone asked, I was going home to get the project I’d forgotten for sixth period biology.

  I thought of last night at the billboards with Dirk, how he’d scooted in close to me to keep warm, how he’d declared his infatuation with Rozene Raymond and his hopelessness. I wondered, on the ladder of human misery, what came below hopeless.

  6

  For days, I didn’t touch the poster. I’d stuffed it into the shopping bag with the wrapping paper at the back of the closet, but I couldn’t say I didn’t think about it. In fact, the mere thought of it was making me itch.

  In all the time we’d spent together—making kites to fly from the island in the middle of the river, sneaking into Carmichael’s pasture and riding bareback on their old mare, or changing oil in the Thurgood’s pickup—I’d never really thought of Dirk as someone with a sex drive. Mostly, we talked about sex as observers: his movies, my books. I’d never imagined that the same hands through which the kite string slipped during the day would be wrapped around his apparatus at night. Somehow, I felt cheated that he’d tranquilized me with his Tom Cruise video collection, yet had never gotten around to mentioning this. For all of our vows of fidelity, he hadn’t trusted me with the real stuff. Nor had I him.

  My formal sex education consisted of three visits by Father O’Malley at Saint Augustine’s grad
e school (Stampede didn’t have a Catholic high school or Dad probably would have made me attend it). The first two visits were devoted to the papal encyclicals on marriage. I only remembered the third visit, which the class ahead of us had promised got into the good stuff. Father O’Malley stood up in the front of the class while Sister Graziana sat at an empty desk in the back saying her rosary. He was a stooped over man with sagging jowls and perspiration that he sponged off with the handkerchief wadded up inside the sleeve of his black jacket.

  “It’s called self-abuse,” he told us. That was no surprise, I thought. For Catholics, most things starting with “self” were troublesome. I never questioned the characterization. It was one of those terms you grew up with, like “adultery” and “fornication.” “Your penises are for procreation,” he said, the phlegm in his voice rattling like loose gravel across the bed of a pickup. I waited anxiously in row four, seat three, for him to say something about vaginas, but he never even uttered the word. Apparently, all of us St. Augustinettes were merely foils whose role in the great sexual escapade was to push eager hands away from our breasts and thighs. “If you’re tempted with impure thoughts, boys, read The Confessions of St. Augustine.”

  Father O’Malley’s talks were no help. The stories of Onan spilling his seed became confused in my mind with Sodom and Gomorrah. If God or your dad caught you at it, he’d turn you into a pillar of salt. Whatever the theological implications, I was pretty certain based upon what Father O’Malley had said that self-abuse was a male thing. The act itself had been named after the master, not the mistress. Until reading Anais Nin, I’d never heard of a woman doing it and I still hadn’t found anyone who did it as often as I did.

  Ironically, it was something I later used as evidence to convince myself I was normal. My fantasies included men in tight jeans, male body parts, guys on road crews. It wasn’t until later that the images changed.

  Of Dirk’s poster I could say in all candor, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

  At lunch hour, I started leaving the school grounds and walking along the river for a smoke to get away from everyone, hoping I’d run into Dirk, who still hadn’t returned to school. It was against the rules to leave the grounds, but nobody enforced them unless you were late for class.

  Instead of doing the river, I decided to stroll through Kla Hah Ya Park. I knew Dirk couldn’t be home or his dad would know he was skipping. In the field where kids played Ultimate Frisbee, I noticed a man in knee pads with a pair of earphones, traversing the grass, moving an apparatus that looked like a weedeater back and forth in front of him. I walked over to see what was going on. His back was to me and there was a collie following him. Suddenly the man stopped, dropped to his knees, and took a trowel out of his back pocket. With both hands, he leaned on his trowel and pushed the blade into the earth again and again until he was able to rip out a rectangle of sod about the size of a squirrel grave. When I leaned over to see what was underneath the sod, he must have noticed me because he turned around.

  “You scared me.”

  “Willard? What are you doing?”

  “Treasure hunting.” He reached into the pocket of his tattered sportcoat with the leather elbows and pulled out an assortment of bottle caps, rusty screws, coins, and a needle valve. “Here, lookee.” Freeway looked up at me appreciatively, panting.

  “It’s junk.”

  Wheezing with delight, he reached into his other pocket. “Junk? This is junk?” Between his thumb and index finger he held what could have been a diamond ring that still had mud encrusted in the setting.

  “You can’t keep that, you know.”

  He pushed the ring against my sternum. “Finders keepers, losers weepers.”

  “Nice try, Willard. Someone’s probably looking for it. They’ll nab you when you try to fence it.”

  “In Wapato?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I have a second cousin there.”

  “Is he alive?”

  He cackled, cracked open his jacket pocket, and dropped the ring back in.

  “Have you seen Dirk?”

  He started shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes alternating between me and the hole in the grass. “The Army officer’s boy?”

  Yeah, sure, Willard, as if you didn’t know. Something didn’t fit.

  After dinner, I wasn’t in the mood to read and found myself following Willard downstairs. Before he came to live with us, I never went to the basement unless it was to flip the breaker switches when one of the circuits went out. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned around, obviously trying to block me. His eyes were doing that flitting around thing, like he was tracking fireflies.

  “You looking for somethin’ in particular,” he said.

  “I’m bored.” With Dad gone all the time and Willard in the basement, the house’s center of gravity had been lowered. When there was nothing else to do, I headed down instead of up these days.

  “This visit is off the record?”

  “You have another mutt downstairs, don’t you?”

  He snorted and shuffled, tapping his toes against the baseboard, his eyes still flitting. “They’re not mutts. They’re disciples.”

  “Whatever. The point is you’re over the limit.” I sidestepped Willard and proceeded towards his room.

  “Remember our deal …?” He walked backwards next to me as he talked, a pretty nimble feat for an old man who said he was a disappointment to his wife as a dancer even in his prime. Of course, Grandma Cooper had the benefit of toe dancing lessons on those days when Willard was out cutting asparagus spears.

  The door to Willard’s room had a wooden dowel handle like the latch for a barn. I could hear the anticipatory squeals and wags of Willard’s disciples coming alive inside, wondering what else their master had pinched from the refrigerator. As soon as the door opened, they flowed past me in waves to get to Willard, their tails beating against my pantlegs. The silver pug with the black mask was the lowest to the ground and the last one to reach him. Willard sprouted extra hands as he cupped each one of their heads, tugged at their ears, and itched the hindquarters of those who turned their butts to him. I counted five, which was right. Mrs. Churchill, the black and tan beagle with the droopy ears and pendent lips whom Willard said was more of a coonhound, circled back inside the room after getting her touches and stood in front of the closet, with her tail wagging.

  “Are you satisfied?” he said, shoving his hands into his front pockets.

  I sprung the closet door. “Jesus!” On the floor, in a half-lotus position, a pair of dirty jeans, unlaced Nikes, and no socks, was Dirk Thurgood. His eyes were bloodshot and hollow, like someone who’d just fought a forest fire.

  “Your grandpa said I could stay here.”

  “You could have asked me.”

  “Leave him be,” Willard said, patting me on the arm.

  “Did you tell Willard why you’re here?”

  “Not exactly …”

  “It’s only shameful, you know, if you make it that way.”

  “Tell that to my dad …”

  “Screw your dad! Hasn’t he ever played with himself?”

  “He found out about it.”

  “It’s not like you robbed a bank, or forgot to salute. You’ve got to unfasten his grip on you.”

  “Yeah, how?”

  “Give him something he can really cry over.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  Freeway, the twelve-year old greybeard with arthritis, edged his paws into the closet and methodically licked the dirt off Dirk’s bare ankle. I could see why Dirk liked to hang out down here. Acceptance by his peers was instantaneous. Willard brought him food and water, newspapers, whatever he needed. The only essential he lacked was his VCR.

  It was late by the time I convinced Dirk he had to go home and take control of his life again. We made him shower and clip his fingernails. Willard lent him a pai
r of clean underwear and socks. We figured the cleanliness would neutralize his dad. Although Dirk protested each step of the way, the attention seemed to get his blood circulating again.

  “You guys are nuts,” he said.

  Willard and I walked him home with the dogs, taking the back streets so we wouldn’t run into my dad. As we got closer to Dirk’s, I watched his shoulders collapse and his head droop. His gait changed to a shuffle, his shoes scuffed against the sidewalk, and his words turned to a mumble.

  “Thas enuf,” he said when we were about to cross the street onto his block.

  His house was the one with the well-squared hedgerow and the lattice arbor that arched over the entrance to the walkway. The only lights on were those upstairs. “We’ll wait here,” I said.

  The dogs started to follow him and Freeway herded them back to the sidewalk where they waited as Dirk slouched across the intersection under the glow of the streetlight. When he reached the opposite curb, he stopped to hitch his pants and tuck in his shirt. It was a gesture of readiness and I nudged Willard. “See?”

  Willard turned to go home, the dogs rustled, and I grabbed his arm to detain him. I wanted to see the front door crack and Dirk go into the house. He looked back at us just before crossing under the arbor. I could hear the door unstick and thump shut again. I waited to hear voices, but none were decipherable over the faint buzz of the streetlight. Freeway seemed to know something was going on because his ears perked up and he stared dead-straight towards the lattice arbor.