Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz

by Chris Lynch

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m ready, almost.”

  “Almost?”

  “I decided I can’t go seeing anybody like this. I don’t want to be an embarrassment to either of us. I have to do one thing before I go see anybody.”

  “What did you do?” Sal demanded when I walked in the door, past his twisting red-and-white candy cane barber pole thing. He was so mad he got up out of his chair. “I spent all these years taking care of your head, and you go behind my back and get this?” He patted the top of my admittedly bouncy head like he was dribbling a well-overinflated basketball. “Who did this to you?” he demanded.

  “Hello, Sal,” I said.

  He stopped. He regained his old-world manners without relinquishing his current fury. “Hello, Mr. Sponge Head. Get in the chair.”

  “This is my uncle Alex,” I said.

  “Hello, Uncle Alex,” Sal said. “Did you do this to him?”

  Alex laughed. “I am happy to say I did not. I thought he looked fine before. You do good work.”

  “Right,” Sal said, pointing up at Alex’s own dodgy head. “You just wait, I’ll take care of you after the emergency.”

  “He was trying to look like his pal Frank—”

  “Of course, the golden retriever.”

  “That’s him.”

  “I was not.”

  “He’s kind of fixated on him right now.”

  “I am not.”

  “Stop squirming. You wanna be stabbed with the scissors? Anyway, this was supposed to look like your friend? Your friend maybe after he was dragged backward through an electrical fence.”

  “Sorry, Sal.”

  He was gracious about it, though.

  “Yes, well, sorry doesn’t make it better. What am I supposed to do with this now?”

  My uncle came to the rescue.

  “There’s only one thing you can do for it,” he said solemnly.

  “I fear you are correct,” Sal said, matching the tone.

  “What?” I said, then, “No... no...”

  Alex came closer, so the three of us were now facing me in the mirror. “It’s gotten worse.”

  “It has not,” I insisted, mortified at the unthinkable thought that I knew to be true.

  “It has, since we went in the pool. The chlorine’s got at it now. And it’s like it’s still working on you right now, ’cause every day it’s a little fuzzier.”

  “Dear God,” I said, and leaned a little closer, dangerously closer, to the mirror.

  I realized I had somehow managed to ignore my physical self for the last few days. I had not seen the grisly process still going on up at the peak of Mt. Me.

  I sat there in the chair, up in the air since Sal still insisted on pumping the chair up like he always had, even though he had to get up on his toes to do his work now. And with the black leatherette apron buttoned right up tight to my neck, I looked like a grotesquely overgrown version of those Christmas angels we used to make in school by stapling a sheet of construction paper into a cone and sticking a Styrofoam ball on top. Only without the wings. And black instead of white. And in place of the little Styrofoam ball, a pink grapefruit.

  And the hair itself had reached that miracle color where orange and green somehow become related.

  I believe I spoke for everyone when I gasped.

  “Oh goodness, don’t cry, Elvin,” Sal said, clipping away big clumps to make me happy.

  “I am not crying. It’s that hair tonic stuff, always irritates my eyes.”

  “You sure it’s not the mirror irritating your eyes?” Alex joked.

  “You should talk. At least in a few minutes, I’m going to be cured.”

  “Touché,” Alex said, and retreated to a guest chair and a tabloid newspaper.

  A surprisingly short time later, it was done. And gone.

  “I’m bald now,” I said rather calmly.

  “Not bald,” Sal lied, rather baldly.

  “Wow,” Alex said.

  “Not bald at all,” Sal said. “Look, up close here, you can see.” He pulled up behind me with a large, handheld mirror, beaming the reflection of the fat bald back of my head off the mirror in front of me and back to my disbelieving eyes. “See?” he said, working heroically to grip something hairlike at my skull between his thumb and index finger. I felt a little pinch up there. “I was able to save some seed hair, where the color and texture was still your own. All the bad has been weeded away now.”

  This seemed like a good time to let my well-developed gift for fantasy, delusion, and nonsense take over.

  “All the bad has been weeded away now,” I repeated robotically. I even allowed myself a frigid and vacant smile, until my reflection frightened me and I had to give that up.

  “That’s right,” Sal said.

  “All the bad,” I said wistfully. “All the bad has been weeded away. There is no bad left, of any kind. It’s like a magic haircut. You are a magic haircutter, Sal. I knew I should have come here all along.”

  I was letting my eyes close as I drifted into the pleasant other world I call “the place without the mirrors,” when somebody ruined it.

  “Har,” Alex laughed loudly, jolting me before stuffing a knuckle into his mouth.

  “All right,” I said, jumping up and removing my bib. “That’s you. In the chair, bub.”

  “Okay,” he said, still chuckly.

  When Alex was settled in and buttoned up, Sal stood, then walked around him, taking it in from angles. He went right up and sort of patted Alex’s head a few times, then stood back, as if he expected it to blow or something.

  “So what happened to you?” Sal asked.

  “Well, it kind of got set on fire a couple of times. Never really quite came back right after that.”

  “Hmm,” Sal said, “Are you sure you two are supposed to be out by yourselves?”

  “Not sure,” Alex said, giving me a big mirror grin. “But here we are.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  Alex continued looking at me, and I at him.

  “I think there’s only one thing for it,” he said.

  10 Whenever (cont’d.)

  WE STOOD THERE ON the sidewalk staring at each other’s heads.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

  “Solidarity dictated that I did.”

  “Well, whoever Sol is, he’s no friend of yours.”

  Alex rubbed his hand back and forth over his skull for the fiftieth time already. I did the same thing, again. It was like yawning.

  “No great loss in either case, though, huh?”

  “I suppose not.”

  We walked. We got about a block from Sal’s when the unthinkable happened.

  Not true. It was very thinkable. So thinkable I had been thinking about it since Sal shaved that first bone-colored strip down the right side of my head.

  “Hi, guys,” I said in such a pathetically fake move-along-nothing-to-see-here voice they didn’t even wait a polite second to burst out laughing.

  “For God’s sake, Elvin,” Frankie said, pointing at my dome.

  “Are you trying to make Grog feel pretty?” Mikie asked. And the two of them fell over themselves laughing.

  I almost hated to interrupt. “What are you doing out of detention?” I asked Frank.

  “Oh, well, your pal Llewellyn turns out to be such a power-nuts control freak, she won’t let this go. She’s determined to solve the case. So she cuts me a deal, that if I admit to her that it was your phone, she gets her satisfaction, I get points for loyalty, and nobody gets detention. Sweet, no?”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Sweet, she isn’t. But fine. Where’s my phone?”

  “She says you have to come get it from her yourself.”

  Ah, there it is.

  “And I have to tell you, I’m not completely sure about that last part, about nobody getting detention. ’Cause right after I ’fessed, she stood there pounding her fist into her palm and going, ‘Right. Bishop. Bishop.’�
�

  “Hey,” I said. “You sold me out. I thought you were taking the hit for me?”

  “That was for today. Because you had something to do. And if I knew that what you had to do was go out and turn yourselves into a pair of boobs, I might have thought twice about it in the first place. To save you from your boob self.”

  I heard next to me the sound of my uncle working up a furious wheeze. I looked, to find it was furious indeed.

  “Have you had about enough of this crap from these guys, Elvin?” he growled. His voice took on a whole new, scary tone I wouldn’t think his body could produce. His face screwed down into a nasty scowl that changed his expression, his age, even his size into something altogether different. His face started getting deep red, then it spread to his head and, of course, the new scalp design didn’t help.

  “Well, I kind of have. But I had had enough a few years ago, and I didn’t do much about it then, either. And this time I have to admit they have a pretty good point. I have not been kind to my head.”

  “Oh, for cripes...” He wasn’t too impressed with my position. So he took matters into his own hands. “You two need to just shut your holes. You making fun of this guy? Well, let me tell you something. There’s a lot more to this boy than you think. He’s been working out, you know.” Here Alex had to raise his voice further to be heard above the spluttering.

  Why is it that laughter is so much more like yawning than screaming anger is? Why is it that, no matter how unwise an idea it might be at the time, you almost always let yourself get pulled into the laughing fit rather than the fuming anger fit?

  “Stop that,” Alex snapped at me before going back to them. “He’s a lot harder than you think, and it would behoove you to note that.”

  Did he have to say behoove?

  “Stop that laughing,” Alex demanded. Then, back to the guys. “I’ll have you know, this guy here was lifting weights and swimming laps and running the treadmill harder than anybody in the place the other day. And he’s got hairier nuts, I’ll bet, than the two of you put together. I know, I’ve seen them.”

  Oh God.

  “That tears it,” Alex said as the two of them dropped to their knees, right there on the sidewalk, dying before our eyes with joy. You couldn’t blame them except for the fact that this was such not the right time.

  I managed to stop laughing myself at the point where my uncle started praising my hairy bits.

  “Can we just go?” I said quietly, tugging on Alex’s arm.

  “No, we certainly cannot go. Where is your pride, boy?”

  It went thataway, was the first of a thousand wise guy/honest guy answers that flew through my mind. But I didn’t get a chance since Frankie was much more anxious to help out.

  “It’s in his jockstrap,” he called out.

  Alex could take no more. His head appeared to be inflating, with the blood that was pumping to it.

  “Elvin,” he said through gritted teeth, “kick his ass.”

  Oh God.

  “Elvin!” he snapped when he noticed I wasn’t kicking anything.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. I whined, actually. “Why would I want to do that?”

  Mikie cut in, “I don’t know, El, think about it: Frankie’s ass.”

  Here’s how much Silly Putty is in my head. Because he told me to think about it, I thought about it.

  “Hey,” I snapped, much, much too late. They were laughing harder than ever. You could hardly blame them. I was a figure of fun, seemingly programmed to behave only in ways that would make them laugh.

  My uncle was staring at me now, with his hands on his hips and his head just about ready for liftoff. A nasty mix of amazement and disgust had settled on his face like the mud splash from a speeding car. “You can’t just let people make fun of you like that,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m doing a pretty good job so far.”

  It occurred to me that while Alex and I may have shared some genetic material, we did not fully share my sense of humor. Or his sense of outrage.

  “I am sorely tempted, sir,” my uncle said, “to kick your ass myself.”

  Which, I think, changed the tone of things somewhat. Good options were pretty scarce from what I could tell.

  “Come on, Alex. I don’t want to fight. Nobody here wants to fight.”

  Bastard. Rotten, rotten bastard. Sorry for the outburst, but you’ll see what I mean.

  “I do,” Frankie said brightly.

  “See, there you go,” Alex said.

  “I am not fighting anybody,” I said. “This is completely stupid.”

  See, the thing was, they didn’t take Alex seriously. They didn’t believe he could possibly want this to happen, so they just ran with it and in the process wound my uncle up into a frenzy.

  “Let’s get it on,” Frank said.

  Thing was, here is the sweet irony of it. And by sweet irony I mean, as most people do, what crap. Frankie was, by his behavior, making me want to fight. I was getting madder and madder, and I was sure my own newly shiny skull was giving me away like a barometer.

  But I would rise above.

  “No,” I said coolly, though cool I was not.

  “No?” Frank said, mock disappointed.

  “No?” Alex grunted, homicidally disappointed.

  He brushed by me, stomping toward Frank. “See, this is why I’m here,” he said. “This is just the type of lesson you have missed without a dad....”

  “Oh God, no, Alex!” I shouted.

  You may not be surprised to find out that my shout had no noticeable effect.

  Alex ran up and locked up with a suddenly worried-looking Frankie. Had to admit the very, very rare sight of a disconcerted Frank was not an unwonderful thing... but I couldn’t enjoy it for long. He looked at me desperately for help as my enraged uncle grappled with him in a kind of Greco-Roman tango.

  “Please stop,” I said from pretty far away.

  “Hey, really,” Mike said, inching up closer to them. “Cut it out. This is really foolish.”

  “Ya,” Frank said.

  “Shut up,” Alex barked. “Not so tough now, huh? Not so smart with your mouth now, huh?”

  “Well, I didn’t think—”

  “Shut up,” Alex snapped again.

  “Well, you asked me a question,” Frank answered.

  I thought it would fizzle out in a few seconds when the players realized how stupid they looked. They didn’t; it didn’t. Frank, for his part, seemed to be doing a reasonable job of just restraining Alex, who was going at him like Don Quixote at a windmill.

  Until Alex grew rapidly, visibly tired. He flailed, struggled. Grappled. Then finally let his arms fall to his sides. Without further incident, Frankie let go of him.

  Which was when my ex-con uncle made his move, smacking Frank crisply on the side of his head, snapping that head sideways.

  A whole new ballgame. Frankie’s face was red, his hair was asymmetrical, and he was serious. He grabbed Alex by the shirt and Alex grabbed him by the shirt and they pushed left and right trying to wrestle each other to the sidewalk.

  What I did not expect was Mikie jumping in. He didn’t jump in the way rowdies jump into a brawl. But he did jump in seeming to believe Frankie was the one needing help.

  “Aw cripes,” I said out loud as I scurried over and...

  Never ever thought I would have need for this combination of words, not in my lifetime, not in any possible context. But here goes:

  I jumped in.

  I couldn’t believe it even as it was happening. The whole crowd of us toppled over like a great, big, idiot sundae. Frankie fell backward with Alex on him, with Mikie on him, with me on him.

  It hurt, four guys falling comically, more than you would expect it to.

  I took it upon myself to speak for the crowd and shout, “Ouch,” when my knuckles first hit the pavement, then my head followed as I rolled off the mound. I reached back to use my new muscles and start pulling jokers ou
t of the pile.

  Deep, deep humiliation set in as I had this vision of what was going on. It is a gift I have, a gift given to me by God or Santa or whichever giveth/taketh away being assigns these things out, to keep me from ever getting delusions of grandeur or of dignity. It is the ability/misfortune to actually visually witness myself at the nonsense of my life as if I were a regular paying customer like you, rather than the mere victim of it all. Sometimes I’m blessed enough to see things that aren’t even happening in the literal physical sense but only metaphorically like the time I saw clearly the scene of the Last Supper in which all of the apostles were me and at the center was Jesus, holding a brownie way up over his head and making all twelve of me jump for it.

  But that was different, though no less humiliating. Here I could see myself and my uncle, with our hysterically glowing heads, fighting it out on the street with my two oldest friends, like a pair of Mr. Freezes vs. Batman and Robin.

  And if you are thinking right now that I’ll say, how could it possibly get any worse, forget it. Just forget it. I’m not biting that hook ever again, no way.

  A spell was broken, fortunately, when I pulled Mikie up. First he spun on me in a kind of hostile way. Then his face was there, looking into mine. And, we got it. He all but rapped himself on the head with his knuckles and gave himself a duh.

  Together we got the rest of it cleaned up. Mikie pulled at Frank, and I grabbed Alex. Without words, Mikie started walking him away down the street. I waved him on, nodding, hurrying him along. He nodded, waved, disappeared.

  To leave me sitting on the curb with the man.

  “Well, how stupid was that?” I said. Expecting, I guess, exhaustion to bring agreement.

  “Very stupid,” he said weakly. “And humiliating.”

  “Right.” This was going too well.

  “You should have hit him. God, you take a lot of crap off people, Elvin.”

  “I do not.”

  “Yes, you do. And your dad wouldn’t want that. Your dad would want to know that you were taking care of yourself. That would be important to him. It’s important to me. I want to help straighten you out before it’s too late.”

  I thought about it. No, that’s too strong. I attempted to think about it. But it was futile. I simply could not manage to relate to what he was telling me, no matter how genuine his intentions were.