Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  After that, Mom got into how she thought her friend Judy might lend her some money to write and publish a book about the connection between Nixon and flying saucers.

  I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I mean Judy wasn’t going to give her the loan—Judy was lucky to keep the doors of her little head shop/record store, Officer McDoodle’s, open.

  Come to admit it, I figured Nixon would leave on a flying saucer well before Judy would loan Mom money or Mom would get her real estate license.

  So she rambled back and forth between her jokes about Mary the Slutlette, which I wished she hadn’t been quite so loud about because like everyfuckingbody in town went to Pietro’s, and Pearl Merton’s whole closet full of unopened tins of Christmas cookies, and how Daniel Ellsberg used to work for national security and must have had the secret codes for contacting the good saucer people (“elves”), and Nixon and his bunch must have been trying to steal the codes to give them to the bad saucer people (“grays”).

  I don’t know what got into me to ask her, “So why would Ellsberg leave the codes in his psychiatrist’s office? Instead of in a safety-deposit box or something, I mean.”

  “Because a psychiatrist is like a priest or a lawyer, baby, they can’t divulge your secrets. And he’d never put it into a safety-deposit box at a bank—they’re all in it.”

  “In what, Mom? I’m falling behind here.”

  “Yes, you are, sweetie.” She leaned forward, holding her cigarette down low so that smoke went up past her face. I think she was trying to look extra mysterious. The candlelight caught her face on the underside, which made her makeup look like she was telling stories at a Halloween bonfire. “I’ll show you. Show me a dollar bill. Actually we just need the back of a dollar bill.”

  “The front comes with it,” I said, fumbling in my wallet.

  “Oh, you.” She giggled, so she was still cool—good. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re very literal, Tiger?”

  “You, just now.”

  “Hah hah. Now look here at the back. What does this say and what is that?” Her fingers rested on two spots.

  “This says ‘Federal Reserve Note,’ and that is an eye in a triangle floating over a pyramid, Mom,” I said. “You went all through this a couple times last winter, so I looked it up. The Federal Reserve is the bank that all the other banks use to clear checks, and the eye over the pyramid is supposed to be the eye of God, or a Masonic symbol because a lot of the Founding Fathers were into Freemason stuff, and nobody really knows whether the Masons on the committee that created the seal put it on there, or if people just liked the idea of God watching over us all. Personally I like the idea of God watching over my money.” Not a real subtle hint.

  She dragged my dollar bill toward her with the two fingers she’d been pointing with, daring me to point out that it was mine, and I felt like it, but I also decided it was her goddam birthday and she wasn’t getting this easy an excuse to spoil it.

  With the dollar bill safely in her purse, she glared at me, puffing out smoke fiercely. I could tell she was having an idea, which was always scary.

  Just then Lyle, the waiter, showed up with our pizza. Mom sat back and turned her radiant-happy love-you-sweetie smile on him. Lyle had been a senior when I’d been a freshman; he was a shy, gawky guy with shoulder-length gray-blond hair, and always seemed pretty startled that anyone noticed he was there. Mom cranked the wattage, asking him how he was, remembering things about him, and getting him all stammery.

  Once she had him flustered, she said, “Well, I guess we have to let you get back to work. Oh, and Lyle, please get us a bottle of your house red wine, and two glasses.”

  “Um, I’ll need to see some I.D. for him. Um.”

  That was what she’d been waiting for; she opened up her could-cut-glass stand-up-for-your-rights-voice to half-scream. “No you sure as hell don’t need to see any I.D. for him. I’m his mother! I say it’s fine for him to have wine, and who the hell’s business is it besides mine?”

  Everybody stared at us.

  “Those are the rules,” Lyle said, hitting Mom’s overdrive button with a hammer.

  “The rules! The rules are why soldiers are killing babies in Vietnam! The rules are why we don’t have a woman president! Why don’t you think a little more about freedom and a little less about the rules?”

  I was hungry. I wanted to eat some of that pizza, which I’d be paying for whether she calmed down and we ate, or we got thrown out, or she sailed it into the kitchen like a Frisbee, and with Mom any of those might happen.

  I needed to say something, but the truth—that I didn’t want any wine, I just wanted to eat—would really get Mom up on her hind legs, mad at me for not standing up for my freedom.

  Then I thought of the winning strategy. “Mom, I want you to have a good birthday.” I kept my voice very soft.

  She got that crazy scared look in her eye, and she leaned across the table and hissed at me. “Karl, controlling people’s access to altered consciousness is the first thing the oppressors do.”

  “Lyle, just for today, so my mom can have a nice birthday, you go right ahead and oppress me. Bring a bottle of wine and one glass. And watch me like a hawk to make sure I don’t alter my consciousness. But I warn you right now, buddy, when the Revolution comes, I’m putting you up against the wall personally.”

  Lyle laughed, thank God, and looked relieved, so Mom decided to laugh, too, and just like that it was cool again. Everyone at the other tables saw the show was over; I got the root beer I actually wanted; Mom got a bottle of wine all for herself; and Lyle got a safe escape and a big boost in the tip. Mom and I settled in to eat, and as the wine hit her, she got all silly and girly and funny. Damn if it didn’t look like the best Mom’s birthday I’d seen since about sixth grade, before Dad got sick.

  She was eating more than usual, and drinking to keep up, and she got funnier and funnier, rambling on about her girlfriends, the “super super ladies.” To be a “super super lady” you had to be a middle-aged lady that wished she was a twenty-year-old hippie, with extra points if you were divorced, did witchcraft or astrology or other weird shit, and smoked pot. Whenever that crowd acquired a new member, and Mom would tell me about her, she’d finish up by saying “She’s a super super lady.”

  Lots of times she’d say that after talking nasty about one of them, too; “so she’s blowing the mailman and she sold her kids for medical experiments and she’s eating Dex like it’s Milk Duds. She doesn’t take shit from anybody. She’s a super super lady.” Like that.

  As she went on, I realized that she thought I was also going to give her night-out money like I had last year, in addition to the dinner and the wine.

  That was pretty fucking pushy, come to admit it, but this is what I had money for, to keep Mom happy so bad shit wouldn’t happen. She was going to have a happy birthday if it fucking killed both of us and the whole town of Lightsburg. Actually, killing the whole town of Lightsburg might make it a happy birthday for both of us, but since that was out, I was ready; I’d brought along an emergency wad. “So,” I said, “about how much is it going to cost for you and the super super ladies to go terrorize the town?”

  Mom brushed her hooker-blonde hair back, wrapped one arm across her chest, held her cigarette upright, and looked at me across a sip of her glass of wine. “Me and the super super ladies? So, Tiger, are you implying that your old mother is not a super super lady?”

  “You’re in your own category, Mom. A super super super lady. One full super ahead of the rest.”

  “And you’re a big phony super suck up.”

  “Why do you think I’m such a good salesman? All right, you’re a half-super super super lady. Only half a super above the rest. But that’s my final offer, and if you don’t like it I’m getting a new Mom, which I hate to do for a steady customer like you but—”

  She was laughing real hard again. “Oh, Tiger, when you flatter your old mother like that, I ask myself, ‘Beth, how long is i
t before there’s a whole squad of pregnant cheerleaders on the front porch?’” This would usually have been her cue to try to piss me off by loudly asking me if I’d fucked Bonny, the girl I took to the prom. But apparently I’d mellowed her so much that she just topped up her glass and reached for more pizza.

  So I had another piece of pizza myself—I had an infinite capacity—and right as I was figuring I could probably hand her two twenties and a ten, the price of a good tear through the bars back then, and make her birthday perfect for both of us, she pulled out a real mood-killer. “So what are you signing up for, for your senior year? Gary O’Grary in the office was bitching about Larry signing up for a lot of puff courses.”

  I tried to deflect her. “What can you expect from a whole family that rhymes?” That was our standing joke, since Larry’s grandfather was Harry, his mother was Mary, and his sister was Terri. We had no idea why they hadn’t gone on to have two more kids, Barry and Sherry, but maybe they were trying to leave room for future generations.

  She laughed but she said, “All right, Karl, I’m drunk but I’m smarter than that, sweetie, and I know this is the week you sign up. Now what are you planning to take next year?”

  I shrugged. Maybe she wasn’t really interested. “Gov, gym, Mod Lit, probably French, and then either Wildlife Ecology or wood shop.”

  Mom was looking way too focused. “Correct me if I’m wrong. None of that is college prep track.”

  “French is,” I said, “third-year languages all are. And I only need a semester of science, the government class, and six units overall to graduate, so I’m taking more than I need to—”

  “Unh-hunh.” Mom could always just drop the drunk when she wanted to, maybe not enough to drive, but more than enough to talk. “Let me tell you what worries me here. You’re not lazy, Tiger, and sweetie, your mother may be an old bimbo and a fake hippie and a drunk—I know what people say—but I do know you, and know how you think. So when you don’t take college prep, it means you are not planning on going to college.”

  Like a moron—maybe I used up all my strategy earlier or something—I sat there and nodded, instead of making something up quick.

  “You couldn’t be dumb enough to be thinking of staying here in Lightsburg,” she said, not making it a question. “You know this whole stupid little armpit of a town is dying, the jobs are going, the people are going, all that’s going to be left is ucky ucky old turds that don’t want anything to change ever and hate everyone’s freedom, this town will look like the Ohio State Rest Home for the Elderly Stupid in another twenty years. You need to get out, Karl, I’d be getting out if I had a way and something to do. So if you’re not going to college, what are you doing?”

  The whole time she’d been jabbering I’d been shoving pizza into my face. I figured I was about to lose my shot at it if I didn’t get it inside me soon, and it was good and I’d paid for it. So when she suddenly asked that question, I had a great big mouthful, and the perfect excuse of having to chew and swallow, to give me time to think. Unfortunately, even when I’d finished, I still had no idea what to say.

  I guess the Brain Fairy had visited but forgotten to leave a quarter. I just blurted, “I’m planning to go into the army.”

  Dad had done that when he was eighteen—joined the army to leave Lightsburg—like he said, they were definitely hiring in 1942. He was no hero type or anything, he jumped for every clerking job he could find, said he’d personally fought the Japs all the way back to Tokyo with his adding machine and four tablets of graph paper, and like that. It would crack me up.

  “Oh, for the love of God,” she said. She looked at me like I’d blown my nose on her shirt. “At least give yourself a chance, Karl, it’s the least you can do. All right, we’re poor and things aren’t going very well, but it’s not like we live in the projects and you’re going to be hanging out on street corners.”

  I shrugged. “It’ll get me out of Lightsburg, and after a few years they’ll pay for my college. And Vietnam’s over, Mom—”

  “Oh, fuck, fuck, you stupid fuck, you don’t mean you believe the shit they put in the newspapers? They’re still over there burning villages and spraying chemicals, it’s just secret since Kissinger came back and lied about having a peace treaty so McGovern would lose the election. That’s part of what Watergate is supposed to cover up for. Get real. They’ll put you under some big black sergeant and he’ll beat the shit out of you all the time.”

  “I don’t believe any of that,” I said. “It won’t be all that bad.”

  She gulped her glass of wine and poured another. “Christ, I can’t believe I have to argue with you about this at all. Sometimes you’re so much like your father I could just slit your throat, you know?” She heaved a sigh. “Karl, my father and both my parents went to college. Even Doug managed to make it through night college after we got married, though it wasn’t easy . . . I mean, his grades . . . and all right, so I only did one semester, and I didn’t like it, but I tried, and I found out I could have done it, that’s how I know I have the brains to do my projects now . . . it’s just—you know?—important?” Her sharp focus of a minute ago was fading.

  “And I know maybe you’re thinking about Doug . . . aw, shit, Karl, I didn’t get along with your dad and all but I did love him and I miss him, too . . . shit. What I was going to say is he was the mayor here, they elected him three times, and Shoemaker Avenue is named after his great-grandpa, and the whole fuckin’ ceme-trare—cemetarary—cemetery, cemetery, cemetery, your old mom isn’t as peep as some thinkle drunk, Tiger!” She flashed her God I’m cute little-girl smile at me. “The ce me-te-ry is full of his people and my people and we all go to college.”

  “And then to the cemetery.”

  “Getting cute will not get you off the hook this time. Why would you want to go into the ucky ucky army, anyway, sweetie? Right now the college campuses are just . . . they’re places of peace and love, Karl, I wish I was your age and going to college . . . can’t you feel all that harmony and peace settling in? I know you don’t like my astrology stuff but it’s the age, Karl, it really is the age of Aquarius, and you want to put on a uniform and go be all Piscean . . . I mean, don’t you even want to smoke a little grass and get laid while you’re young?”

  From what I’d heard from guys I knew that were in the army, that wasn’t going to be a problem.

  “Karl, all I’m saying—I don’t want to be all fascist and controlling with you, Tiger Sweetie—is give yourself the courses so that even if you do go into that ucky ucky army, at least you can go to college after.”

  Well, she kept getting louder. Finally, so I could get her quiet, give her a nice birthday—and okay, eat the rest of the pizza in relative peace—I had said, yeah, I’d take the college prep classes my senior year. Hell, I’d even take the SAT, it was just one more test. After all, I reminded myself, soon as I turned eighteen, on June 29 after I graduated, I’d be pounding down the door at the recruitment office, and get on that bus to freedom.

  But to get a shot at the last of that pizza, I had promised I’d take the college prep classes, trig and senior lit and honors gov.

  At the time I agreed to it, it hadn’t seemed so bad. I was okay at math, and I knew I could get through trig. Honors gov was the class everyone called “Agreeing With Harry,” because a third of your grade was participation, and Harry Weaver did these humongous long riffs about how Castro was going to invade, the Supreme Court had made praying illegal, and Martin Luther King was a Communist. He also insisted that we call the Civil War the War Between the States, because he was from some hillbilly state and couldn’t get over being forced to wear shoes and share drinking fountains. As long as you nodded, and woofed all that back to him on the work sheets and tests, Harry gave you your A.

  But the best deal of all had been taking senior lit from Mrs. Kliburn. In fact five of us Madmen had signed up for that first period college-track lit class. Our therapist last spring had been a young-looking eager guy na
med Vic Marston, who thought stress made people crazy and the thing you had to do was avoid it and get rid of it and never let stress into your life, which it seemed to me would be okay if you were a cow, but I think old Vic wanted everyone to mellow out and coast, I guess like he did when he would get high with students at parties sometimes.

  Vic had set up a list of all the “low-stress” and “high-stress” teachers, gone to the principal, and insisted us Madmen only take classes from low-stress teachers. And Mrs. Kliburn had been Low-Stress Teacher Number One, because she was into this thing called “full-success learning” where supposedly her objective was to always have a hundred percent of the class score a hundred percent on every assignment. Paul’s dad said he didn’t know what it did for the students, but it was great for football and basketball, and that was good for bond issues.

  So I didn’t think I was giving up all that much by agreeing to do college prep. It was like giving Mom her going out money—more than I expected but not impossible.

  Anyway, it didn’t really matter right away. Mom got into getting drunk and overeating, and by the time we got home, it was a little late for her to call Jolene, who still lived with her husband, or Judy, who had to open up her record shop in the morning, so Mom decided to delay going off to Mister Peepers to pick up sales guys and lawn maintenance workers for another night. By then she was all sloppy and sentimental and hugging me and calling me Tiger Sweetie, and messing up my hair, and I more or less dumped her onto her bed, facedown so as not to choke on her puke.

  By the time I got her tucked in, and my McDorksuit on, the clock said 9:48, and I had to practically run all the way, a good mile and a half, to be on time for my job cleaning out McDonald’s. I punched the clock at 9:57—three minutes to spare. That queered my mood bad. I liked being a guy who was always way early.

  So I was whizzing around, burning off energy scrubbing counters and wiping down tables and all that, and since none of my friends had shown up to watch me clean, I pulled out the bottle of Rosie O’Grady that I kept in my school bag.