Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  Operation Restore Best Friend would go like this: Paul would sit with me, we’d have a normal conversation, and then on the way out he’d suddenly tell me why he was avoiding me. He liked to drop the big one on you just as you were saying bye—as an actor, he wanted the curtain line.

  Paul came out of the serving line. Larry waved at him. Paul walked right by us and went to the picnic tables outside.

  “Wonder what’s wrong with that there laddie, ’e’s a weird one ’e is, eh, eh, eh? A weirdie you know. Eh?” Larry was probably quoting some movie I hadn’t seen, to judge by the fact that he was doing a really bad accent, bad enough I didn’t know which he was trying to do. He did that a lot. I don’t know if he was hoping people would recognize something he quoted, or afraid they would; knowing stuff nobody else knew was a big deal to Larry.

  “Hunh,” I said. “He seemed kind of fucked up earlier today too. But you know, sometimes Paul’s just like that.” I was lying—I’d never seen him act like this before—but I guess I just wanted to keep it sounding normal. Maybe I wanted Larry to agree I knew Paul real well.

  I ate a couple bites of corn while Larry launched off into some rambling thing about what if all your friends were replaced by aliens, which I think was like his MAD- magazination of a Philip K. Dick book. I was watching my tray like it was naked television.

  When he stopped to breathe, or I think maybe he asked me a question, I said, “Hey, I’m not hungry. You want to finish this for me?”

  “You only ate, like, a few bites, man.”

  I shrugged. “If there’s not enough of my germs, I could sneeze on it for you.”

  He laughed. “Good one, Karl. I wish I’d thought of it.”

  “You will if you’re ever not hungry.” I passed him my tray. “I have to grab something from the library.”

  “First Paul, then you. Is it my breath?”

  I got up. “No, that’s what keeps girls away.” He snarfed, so I said, “Hey, I offered to sneeze on it for you, you don’t have to do it yourself.”

  Like Paul always said, you don’t waste a curtain line, so I went.

  After not being hungry at lunch, I was starving all afternoon and couldn’t concentrate in chem, or in Agreeing with Harry, or even in French.

  Walking home—I usually did if the weather was good and I didn’t have to get over to Browning’s to deliver a couch—I mostly watched my shoes and didn’t go very fast. I was going to buy dinner at Philbin’s Drug Store rather than try and find anything clean and not-cat-chewed at home. The one problem I didn’t have was poverty, and at Philbin’s I could get a science fiction novel or a mystery or even just a comic book to enjoy with dinner.

  “Hi,” a girl said behind me. “I’m going to introduce myself to you because—”

  I turned. “Your name is Marti,” I said. “Coach Gratz made sure everybody would remember.”

  I could tell from how she flushed that that was a real stupid thing to say. For just a sec I felt like shit.

  Then she made herself smile, revealing her braces. “This is the part where you tell me your name. That way you can say ‘Hi, Marti’ and I don’t have to say ‘Hello, geek.’ ”

  I laughed. “My name is Karl Shoemaker. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, I was hoping for you to have a good name, but don’t apologize, I’m sure your parents liked it.”

  I was so out of it I almost went on to explain that no, I meant I was sorry about having brought up the thing with Gratz, then finally got my head together enough, and realized what she’d said was funny. So after an interval just long enough for her to decide I was retarded, I said, “Uh, yeah. Um, I’m kinda thinking too much and I’m a little slow about everything. Uh.” I was sounding fucking brilliant, I can tell you that. “So you’re new this year. Where’d you come from?”

  “Prison,” she said. “Are you going this way for a while? I’d like to try to make friends.”

  “I’m going downtown,” I said. “Walk along if you like.”

  She was bony, with about as womanly a figure as I had. Her belted-in jeans bunched and sagged around her ass. She was wearing grody old loafers without socks. Her frizzy blonde hair bunched around her head so that she looked like a tree drawn by Dr. Seuss.

  “Most people, when I say I came from prison,” Marti said, “either laugh like they’re afraid I will think that they didn’t get the joke, or they’re so literal-minded that they ask ‘really?’ Most people don’t stay dead silent, when I say that.”

  I wasn’t going to tell her that I’d been trying to figure out exactly how small her boobs were. “I figured if I waited a little, you’d tell me.”

  “Karl, you’re a great person,” she said. “A really great person.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. “So what prison were you in?”

  “Prison with style. My dad kept putting me into genius schools to teach me discipline so I could live up to my potential. It didn’t really work out.”

  “You didn’t learn discipline?” I asked, feeling stupid.

  “No, that’s all I learned, was discipline. I had to—there was so much homework and it was so hard. After a few months, I’d start to cry all the time, and then he’d move me to another genius school.” She sighed. “I didn’t actually have any potential. Well, not, didn’t have ‘any,’ any, but not like the kids that go to those schools do. The trouble is that Dad is a genius, a real one I mean, and he thinks since I’m his kid I should be a genius, and—I mean I’m smart enough and all that shit, but not a genius. Not the kind of daughter that Doctor Martin Nielsen should have, and Doctor Martin Nielsen gets what he wants, or he thinks so. Or at least he gets what he wants except when it’s his daughter.” She shook her head as if she wanted to slap herself and said, “Wow, Marti. Brilliant. Confess your whole life. Scare the shit out of the guy you’re trying to make friends with.”

  A normal guy would’ve found a way to ditch her right then, but I wasn’t doing so good with being normal at the moment. “So you’ve never been to just regular school before?” I asked. “I’m guessing Lightsburg High has to look easier?”

  She twisted her mouth sideways. “I’ll probably get A’s. Which Dad will use to prove that I really had all that potential he wanted me to live up to. But I am still not a genius. ’Kay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sorry, I guess I really overdid that, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah. Is that what all geniuses do?”

  She swatted my arm, not hard. She knew it was a goof. She’d’ve had a great smile if she’d been showing teeth instead of miles of wires, but it only flashed for a half a sec before she started checking the sidewalk for land mines, open manholes, or rattlesnakes. “I think Dad finally decided that I’m not going to live up to my potential, or maybe Mother won an argument. She does sometimes.”

  We walked half another block before I thought of anything to say. “So you were in therapy before at your old place?”

  “Every year since second grade. How about you, Karl?”

  “Since fourth. I was a late bloomer.”

  She made a weird snorty-fizzy noise that I realized must be her laugh. “That’s funny.”

  “That would be why you laughed.”

  Another fizzy noise followed by a snort and a gasp. “Karl, you crack me up.”

  Normal guys walk with pretty girls who giggle at their jokes, I thought.

  She hesitated, then said, “Can I ask you a stupid question?”

  “Sure.”

  “There’s posters all over the hall for this First Day Dance thingy?”

  “It’s a come-on to lure freshman girls for the annual Massacre of Virgins.”

  “Okay, but—seriously—socially speaking, is it like, serious? I don’t know this stuff because I’ve never been in regular school before and nobody tells me anything.”

  “The password is ‘Dingleberry.’ ”

  “Seriously, please?”

  She looked kind of frantic, s
o I said, “Okay, seriously.”

  “Well, then.” She drew a deep breath. “If I don’t go—or if I do go—will I get social leprosy?”

  “Depends on who you want it with. If you do go you get social leprosy with the drama types, the school paper, the Poetry Club, and both the serious intellectuals.”

  She grinned. “Both?”

  “Spooky Darla and her hypothetical male counterpart. So if you want to be in with the people that make a big deal about being brainy and too cool for kid stuff, don’t go. They’ll all be at Pongo’s Monkey Burger across town, the place with the monkey on the roof, smoking and trying to be too cool for each other. On the other hand, if you don’t go to the First Day Dance, you get social leprosy with the socials, the jocks, the Glee Club fairies, the hoods’n’sluts, and all the clubs that begin with F.”

  “Clubs that begin with F . . . okay, let me try, I’m gonna get this place figured out if it kills me. The guys in the blue jackets—”

  “Future Farmers of America. Guys who take ag classes and are going to inherit the farm. Hot shit around here, they have a couple guys in every clique, and they stick together, ’cause they know they’ll be seeing each other every week for the next sixty years. If you go out with the right one you might could be Dairy Goat Queen at the next Gist County Fair. Wow, you can stick your tongue out a long way.”

  “Is there really a Dairy Goat Queen?”

  “More real than Santa or Jesus—Stacy, in Gratz’s class? She was DGQ just a month ago. Probably still has her tiara.”

  Marti shook her head. “I am not sure I will ever fully understand the strange ways of your tribe.”

  “Well, then we should definitely be friends, because I sure don’t. Okay, three more F clubs.”

  “Hunh. Well, I saw a sign for an FCA get-acquainted picnic.”

  “Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Jock club that gets together to fake the churchy adults into thinking they’re responsible young men with bright futures. The ones with long hair that’s perfect, brown cord bell-bottoms, big sincere smiles, Good News Bibles in their back pockets. No girls, because there’s no girls’ varsity anything here.”

  “Imagine my disappointment.”

  “They sponsor a lot of coed events that are pretty dull and involve a lot of talking about the Lord before they sneak out back to drink Little Kings.”

  She grinned. “Karl, I feel like you just saved me a month of confusion. What are the other F clubs?”

  “Future Homewreckers—FHA—the dumb girls that are majoring in clothes and makeup. French Club, because French is the social language.”

  She looked puzzled, then caught it. “You mean the language of the socials.”

  “Yeah, socials don’t take Spanish because Mexicans speak it, or Latin or German because the teacher for those is a hard case. And the last F is the Freshman Council, which is all the freshmen that are going to be on student council and prom committee and all that shit.”

  “That’s five clubs that begin with F,” she pointed out. “You said there were four.”

  “You’re the one who didn’t want to go to genius school. See what we’re like here?”

  “How utterly splendiferous!” she said. “That means ‘real good.’ ”

  “I’d take vocabulary notes, but they don’t let me have sharp objects. Anyway, as for whether you’ll get social leprosy by going or not going—” I shrugged. “Depends on who you want leprosy with. I’ve had three First Day Dances to deal with. I went to one, I went to Pongo’s another time, and last year my buddy Paul and me stayed home and got drunk in his basement and watched The Three Stooges.”

  “And this year?”

  “I’m going, I think.”

  “So am I,” she said, “based on your excellent advice. It’ll be good to have someone I can say hi to by name,” she said. Okay, her eyes were a weird shade of storm-blue, and about as nice as her smile. She was still a woofer, but not a 100 percent woofer. “Would you do me a humongous favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Ask me to dance at least twice tonight. In the first hour. Not when the floor is empty—when some people are already dancing. So I don’t have to start off looking like a reject. ‘Kay? Just, you know, friend for friend?”

  “Sure.” Actually this meant not having to worry about starting off shot down, and, since she’d asked, it wasn’t a pathetic loser deal. At least not for me.

  We were almost to the old redbrick downtown.

  “This part of Lightsburg is kind of pretty,” she said.

  “As long as you don’t notice all the boarded-up storefronts.”

  “Does the Chamber of Commerce pay you to be this cheerful, or are you on happy drugs? Here’s where I turn off. If I say it was nice talking to you, can you not say something sarcastic?”

  I said, “Uh—I’m glad I met you.” That didn’t seem like enough, so I added, “Really,” which, I realized a second too late, didn’t help at all.

  God, she had a great smile, if you could deal with all the metal. “Oh, I’ll believe you. Tonight. We dance twice, and make it look like you want to! Bye.” She turned away down Pierce Street, walking in that funny, stiff-legged strut that some girls get from being yelled at about moving their hips when they walk—Kimmie, Paul’s little sister, walked that way—like she was trying to hold a corncob in her butt.

  6

  A Word from My Sponsor

  PHILBIN’S WAS AN old dump: linoleum checkerboard floor, busted-up Naugahyde-topped stools shaped like conga drums, one of those butt-ugly steel counters. Lots of dull old chrome, and enamel in fridge-mold green and baby-shit pink. Outside, over the street, one of those old neon-tube signs (which didn’t work anymore, thank god) said, PHILBIN’S DRUG STORE SUNDRIES SANDWICHES ICE CREAM.

  I guess the place was mondo keen, maybe even groovy, in 1955, but nowadays they probably couldn’t donate it to the Museum of Embarrassing.

  Philbin’s stayed open selling comic books and candy to younger kids, lunch and breakfast to the downtown workers, and lunch and medicine to the old people who’d been coming to this place since Philbin’s granddad had opened it. I figured I’d come back from the army sometime and it would be boarded up like a lot of the other places in town.

  They got no after-school crowd. Philbin and his daughter Angie both had asthma and wouldn’t let kids smoke, so the hoods went to the poolroom up the street or the Catholic juv center instead. Heads went to Judy’s stupid head shop, which was called (I wish I was kidding) Officer McDoodle’s Shredded Wheat and Records Emporium. It had some tables and served herbal tea, and Judy let the fourteen-year-olds smoke. The jocks had practice, and the socials did cool extracurriculars like Show Choir and Key Club, so they hung out with the jocks at Pongo’s Monkey Burger later in the evening.

  Angie was sitting at the counter reading last week’s National Enquirer, and Philbin was staring at an old black-and-white TV, watching the Indians lose as usual. “’Lo, Karl. Gettin’ dinner here tonight?”

  “Guess so. But first I’m going to get something to read, and do homework, and soak up some of that fine coffee.”

  I first started going to Philbin’s after school in eighth grade—right after Christmas, we had some big blizzards and I got a bunch of snow-shoveling jobs. It was the first time I had some extra cash, and a good thing, too, because food was getting pretty irregular at home—Mom sometimes just fixed baloney sandwiches and Campbell’s soup and went to bed, and other times took off to drink her paycheck. I could make mac and cheese or a sandwich, of course, if there was anything in the house, but often there wasn’t.

  Back then with only the snow money and the paper route money, I had to squeeze every nickel till the buffalo shat, so I got to drinking coffee with the afternoon special, because it was hot, only cost a dime, and refilled for free. But I’d been raised pure Ohio: the Zeroth Commandment was Thou Shalt Not Be Any Trouble to Anybody Ever. I didn’t want them to make a new pot, even though the last customer had probably been
about three hours before me, and what was in the pot was lukewarm, with a greasy sheen on the surface, and thick as motor oil.

  Philbin poured the old stuff down the sink. “Ooops. Just spilled it. Have to make a new pot.” It was our particular joke. Not exactly a knee slapper, but it always made me feel at home.

  I found a few new paperbacks in the spinner racks. I could buy them all if I wanted. I still had a ton of money, even after Mom’s most recent raid on my cash.

  I touched her IOU in my pocket; not as much as I would have had. She was never going to pay me back. I had her IOUs for more than a year’s mortgage.

  The first one had been right after she cleaned out my bank account—May 17, 1970, probably about two P.M., Mom took all $171.38 out of my savings account to buy wine, snacks, and pot, so she could “have some people over for a meeting to just share some feelings and talk about how everyone felt about Kent State and Cambodia and all.” It was about six months after my dad died.

  The second time she cleaned out my savings account was that fall, when I started ninth grade: $392.67 of garden work, paper route, sweeping out Philbin’s, and some corn detasseling. Mom could take all the money in any bank account I opened because the law was, I couldn’t get an account without her as a cosigner till I was eighteen. So in fall 1970, I started keeping money in hiding places, and I never told anyone I was doing that, not even Paul. It took her almost till Christmas to figure out what I was doing and get together with Neil to rob one of my jars, and by that time I had several stashes scattered. It had been a long hard run, but I was staying ahead of her.

  The Madmen didn’t know what I did with the money, but they sure knew I worked for it; Squid and Bon worked almost as much, after all. Every single shrink the group had ever had, since I was in ninth grade, said that the way I lived, always working and always making money, was a “defense.”