by Richard Cox
Ten minutes later he was sitting in the dark and smelly cab of the delivery truck, his head resting against the plastic steering wheel. Sitting there defeated.
He’d had problems starting the truck before. You inserted the key into the ignition. You pumped your foot against the gas a few times. Then you turned the key, and the engine was supposed to crank for a second or two until it roared to life. He’d seen his dad do it successfully a thousand times.
But now the stupid truck was mocking him. It almost started on the first try, but when it didn’t he pumped the gas again, and turned the key again. The engine didn’t start then, either. So he shoved his foot against the gas several more times, thinking the extra gas would help, but it didn’t.
He couldn’t imagine going back inside to admit defeat to his dad. He couldn’t confess his inability to even start the truck, let alone drive it.
But in the end he was forced to do just that, go inside, because he also couldn’t sit outside for thirty minutes and then lie about it. His dad would know. He always knew.
So David went back into the restaurant and closed the door behind him, carefully, because the hydraulic arm was broken. He ambled into the kitchen, then turned right and went out to the serving line where the register was. Grabbed a Reese’s and stuffed both cups into his mouth. And if they were waiting on Julie to finish with the kitchen, where was she? Where was his dad? Why the hell couldn’t they go home?
The serving line bent around a corner, and he followed it, imagining what it would be like to work alongside the girls who stood here in their tight jeans and T-shirts while they built plates of brisket and sausage. They were really sexy, the girls. Sometimes David imagined himself having sex with them, especially Terry, whose butt was perfect, like an upside down heart. Sometimes, especially at night, he could hardly stop thinking about having sex with Terry. He guessed that, being sexy, she would really like doing it and would want to do it all different ways, that she would be kind of, well, slutty. Slutty like the girls in the nudie magazines with their aggressive poses and their open mouths.
Strange how much more beautiful Alicia was than these barbecue girls, and yet somehow less sexy. He’d never imagined having sex with Alicia. He couldn’t imagine it now.
David walked toward the break room door and heard his dad’s voice as he was opening it.
“You like that, don’t you, baby?”
Later he would tell himself that things could have been different, that he should have recognized what he heard in time to not open the door. But that wasn’t what happened.
What happened was David pushed the door open and stepped into the break room. From there a person could look into the business office, which he naturally did.
His dad was bent over Julie, the serving girl, who was kneeling in the desk chair. His dad’s penis was much larger than his own, longer and much thicker. He was thrusting into the woman, roughly, and from the look on her face David couldn’t tell if she was loving or hating it. He backed away and bumped into the time clock, the one employees used to track their work hours each day, and his dad’s head jerked toward him.
“David?”
The elder Clark’s voice sounded unsteady, nothing like his normal commanding tone. He pulled away from Julie and reached for the office door. “David, get out of here. Go outside.”
The door closed. David stood there in the break room.
The time clock ticked.
Why the hell was it called a time clock? What was any clock for except to tell time?
In the business office, behind the door, David heard clothes shuffling and Julie complaining and his dad answering harshly.
“David?”
“Yes, Dad?”
“Go outside, son. Get in the truck. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Later, sitting in the passenger seat, David saw Julie exit the restaurant and march toward her own car. She peeled away a moment later, and then, as if on cue, his dad appeared and climbed into the truck.
They sat there for a minute not looking at each other.
“David,” his dad finally said, still not looking at him. “David, I—”
They sat there a while longer.
“I know it wasn’t right, what you just saw. I mean, that’s the kind of thing I should only be doing with your mother. I’m sure you know that.”
David couldn’t imagine his father doing anything remotely like that to his mother.
“It’s wrong what I’ve done, son. But if you tell your mom, things are going to be a whole lot different. She isn’t the same woman she used to be. In the old days she was so confident and energetic and now she just sits in her room all day. I’m afraid if she found out, and we got divorced, she might not fare too well.”
“Like you care,” David said.
They still weren’t looking at each other.
“I do care, David. I do. And what I’m saying is, as wrong as I am in this, I still think she might be better off not knowing.”
“Maybe. But you’re definitely better off, right?”
More silence. David could hardly believe he was sitting here. Maybe it was a nightmare. Maybe any minute he would wake up and find himself in bed.
“You want to go to college?” his dad asked.
David wondered what that question had to do with anything.
“You want to keep having nice things? If your mom and I get divorced, sure, I’ll pay child support, but you’re not going to live like you do now. Nothing will be the same.”
Was his dad threatening him? What would Todd do in this situation?
“Tell you what,” his dad said. “I’m going to make you a deal. What’d you work, twenty hours this week? That’s almost seventy dollars, right? Well, I’ll keep putting my half into your college fund, and give you the other half . . . but you don’t have to work here anymore. Thirty bucks a week, free and clear, no taxes, if you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
His father was looking at him now. David turned and met his eyes. Said nothing for five seconds, maybe ten. He hadn’t cried since he was ten years old, the day of the tornado, but he was near tears now.
“Sure, Dad. For thirty bucks a week, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“Good, good. You’ve made the right decision.”
His dad spent a few moments trying to start the truck and finally the engine caught. They backed out of the parking spot and started home.
“You know what, Dave? You’re going to make something of yourself. I can tell. It’s in your eyes.”
The world blurred, and David looked out the window. When he blinked, tears leaked out of his eyes.
“You see things. The right way to go, the right choices to make. You see.”
It was late. Dark outside. The world was shadows. Blurry shadows. That’s all he could see.
Blurry shadows.
44
Todd had been in bed for a long time. Two or three days it seemed. He could remember getting up to use the bathroom, could remember eating a few bowls of soup prepared by his mother, and finally a short, tense visit from Dr. Robbins. The rest was mostly a blur of twisted sheets and hot pillows and drowning in the sweaty mess of his too-soft mattress.
According to the doctor he had not fallen into relapse. He responded well to stimuli and was aware of his surroundings. Dr. Robbins asked what Todd had been doing since he last saw him.
“Oh, mainly I hang out with friends. We go swimming and play video games and hike through the forest.”
“Yes. I was pleased to hear of this when your mother called about the bad dream.”
His mom was standing in the doorway, arms folded across her chest. The doctor smiled at her. She didn’t smile back.
“So why aren’t you with your friends now?”
“I haven’t felt up to it the past couple of days. I feel sort of sick, like I’ve got a fever or something.”
Dr. Robbins explained he was not suffering from a fever or any physical problem.
“Whi
ch is quite different than when you were sick before, Todd. Your neurological and physical responses were severely compromised when you first entered the catatonic state, but that is true no longer. If you’re tired or feel under the weather, I suggest you go outside and get some sun. Play with your friends. Be active.”
At this his mother interjected. “What about the chance for another head injury? Like should he be swimming? Playing football?”
“Mrs. Willis, your son’s physical injuries healed long ago. His mental difficulties are not easy to explain, but now that he is back with us, interacting with the world again, the best way to keep him here is to let the world return the favor.”
“It’s been his choice to rest the past few days.”
“Yes, but if he hadn’t sustained a head injury, would you allow him to lie in bed all day?”
“No. But he did sustain a head injury.”
Robbins was about to respond when his mother cut him off.
“Doctor, I’m scared. I’m worried I’m going to lose him again. Is that so wrong of me?”
“No, Mrs. Willis. Of course not. But a meek response is not always the answer to fear. You shouldn’t always hit the brakes when an accident looms. Sometimes the accelerator offers the best opportunity for a positive outcome, and this is one of those times. You will hurt his chances to have a normal life if you shelter him. I don’t think I can be more clear than that.”
Later, after the doctor left, Todd’s mom sat next to him on the bed and stroked his forehead.
“Do you feel like going outside today?”
“Not really.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that sounds all right. I’ll go find my friends tomorrow.”
“I’m sure you’ll have the best time. You seem to have really bonded with those boys.”
His mother’s intentions were good, and she only wanted the best for him. But since she was powerless to address the real problem, Todd found himself resenting her. She didn’t understand the world was a farce, a sick joke. None of them did.
When he first awoke from his long sleep, Todd had felt empowered by his dreams and what he learned from them. He couldn’t recall specific details, not then, but generally he understood the world was different than most people thought. Possessing this knowledge, he believed, made him special. It offered an edge over others, especially kids his age. If he had been evaluated by someone who could comprehend his newfound intellect, Todd believed he would have been considered a prodigy.
But over the next few weeks, as sounds and images coalesced in his mind, as their shapes revealed increasingly greater detail, Todd’s feelings had changed. At night, in his dreams, he saw a wall of all-consuming fire. He heard music that wasn’t his own and saw photographs of people he didn’t know and experienced stories that could not be true and yet he somehow knew were true. In the photographs, he noticed the same few people again and again, a man and a woman about the same age as his parents and a little girl he assumed was their daughter. The locations of these pictures varied, like sometimes the family was inside their home, sometimes in the back yard, and other times they appeared to be on vacation in places like Boston or California or Switzerland. The girl aged over time, and in some of the more recent pictures there was a newborn baby.
The styles of music also varied, and the individual songs seemed to be without number. Todd knew if he could remember in the morning all the melodies and lyrics he heard in his nighttime dreams, if he could record them somehow, he would grow up to be the most famous songwriter of all time. And yet his knowledge of this music, these songs that were clearly not his own, rendered them meaningless. He understood they belonged to another place, or another time, and the only way he could make sense of this reality was to question his own.
Either he was still asleep or he was crazy or he lived in a world where nothing added up, and so everything seemed pointless to him.
The most difficult concept to understand was the story of this place, this city that had been promised greatness but instead would be wiped off the map one day in the future. The people here truly believed the lies they had been sold, that their choices mattered. But whoever was in charge didn’t give a shit about them. Whoever was in charge was just using them the way the powerful had always used the weak.
Todd refused to be like the rest of them. He didn’t want to be used. If there was any way to take control of his own destiny, it was to reject the very idea of this world, this story, this summer.
And if he wanted to save his friends, he would have to convince them to join him.
45
The descent was well under way when a football game sent the summer into a tailspin from which there was no recovery.
It was just after four o’clock in the afternoon. Their field was a recently mowed, flat rectangle of pasture. The sky was white, the air dry and hot and nearly tangible. Cicadas buzzed in trees that surrounded the pasture. Red and blue water jugs marked the four corners of the makeshift football field.
It was a summer afternoon in the dead zone of Wichita Falls.
It was the overexposed film of Todd’s fevered dreamscape.
David and Jonathan lost the toss, and Bobby promptly ran their opening P-for-K (pass for kick) back for a touchdown. With the two strongest boys on one team, it was obvious a blowout was inevitable. But David whispered a suggestion to Jonathan, gestured toward the end zone, and then assumed the role of quarterback on offense. Fifteen minutes later, the two of them had put up forty-nine points to Todd and Bobby’s fourteen.
Part of the reason the “better” team was losing was because Jonathan was a lot faster than he looked. He could get open nearly every play, and on defense he’d intercepted Bobby three times. But an even bigger problem was David’s disturbing accuracy throwing the ball. He could hit Jonathan in stride on crossing routes, could time his throws so that when Jonathan turned to make a catch, the ball was already halfway there. And their deadliest weapon was the play David had dubbed “Home Run,” where Jonathan simply ran straight ahead as fast as he could, and once he was behind the defender, the ball was delivered on target almost every time. Todd couldn’t understand why they didn’t run the play every down. It was virtually unstoppable.
At 70-21, Jonathan proposed they switch up the teams.
“Fuck that,” was Bobby’s reply. His face sparkled with perspiration, and his breath came in great hurricane bursts. “No fucking way. We’ll come back, you just wait and see.”
Todd had doubts about this but didn’t voice them. The seeds of a plan had taken root in his mind, and he saw a way to maneuver them into a place where he could exert further control. Where he could help them understand what he had seen and knew to be true.
They played a few more minutes, and soon David had thrown his fifteenth touchdown pass, and the deficit was more than eighty points.
“This is fucking bullshit!” Bobby yelled as Jonathan celebrated halfheartedly in the end zone. “This isn’t real football! Touch is for pussies!”
His statement wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, but it was a challenge and demanded a response.
“I don’t feel like playing tackle without pads,” David said. “Especially on this lumpy field.”
“You just don’t want to lose,” Bobby answered.
“Dude, it’s 105-21.”
“So? If I can’t tackle Jonathan—”
“You can’t tackle him anyway. He’s running past you every time.”
“Then why don’t you run routes, Mister Hotshot? Let’s see how you play after you take a couple of good licks. That’s what football is about. Hard hits, intimidation.”
“Why don’t we go inside?” Todd suggested. “It’s too hot to be playing right now. Let’s go to the empty house and turn the air conditioning down to zero. Play D&D or something.”
David and Jonathan looked at Bobby, who was still pissed, but who also seemed to realize the futility of football in the baking heat.
“We can swim if you guys want,” Jonathan offered.
“No thanks,” Todd said. The sky seemed whiter than before, the heat even more oppressive. He still didn’t feel like himself and the unrelenting sun only made things worse. But the real reason he wanted to visit the house was to get them alone. “I think I’d like to get out of the sun for a while.”
“Me too,” David agreed. “Maybe we can swim this evening.”
Twenty minutes later the four of them were sitting in the den of the abandoned house, sharing Oreos and Fig Newtons and pulling cans of Mountain Dew out of an ice chest. Adam couldn’t join them right away but would come by soon, he promised.
“I don’t feel like playing D&D,” Jonathan said, leaning against the wall, eyes closed. “I just want to rest.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” David agreed.
Bobby just sat there, staring into space.
There was a different song playing in Todd’s head, something he may or may not have heard on the radio this morning. Purple splotches of color floated in front of his eyes. He switched on his synthesizer and started playing with the keys, working out the melody.
“I like that song,” David said.
“You play it pretty well,” Jonathan added. “The Eurythmics, right?”
“‘Sweet Dreams Are Made of These,’” Bobby observed.
“Of this,” Jonathan corrected. “‘Sweet Dreams Are Made of This.’”
“‘This?’ That doesn’t rhyme.”
“But it’s what she says.”
“Hey, Jonathan,” Todd said, gesturing. “Hand me your tape player. I want to record this.”
“These,” Bobby chuckled humorlessly.
At some point the sliding glass door opened and Adam appeared. “What are you guys doing?”
“Hanging out,” Todd answered. “Feeling groovy.”
Adam sat down, reached into the cooler, pulled out a Mountain Dew. “You guys look tired.”