Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  I leaned over his fence and said, “Well, the window-sills want scraped and painted before winter, and I gotta start on storms this weekend.”

  He coughed real hard. When he’d finally forced all the ashes, tar, and goop out of his filthy old lungs, and sucked in what air he could, he wheezed, “Goddam doctors!” Then he set up his favorite joke. “You’re good with your hands, bub, it’s a shame you have such a hard time keeping up.”

  I played along—he was a nice old fart. “Well, it’s hard to make myself fix stuff at home for free, when I can do the same thing for other people for money.”

  “Shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot.” Maybe he was just slapping his knee due to the coughing fit that laughing at his own joke had sent him into. I hoped so. He finished with a long hraaak! and leaned sideways to slobber over the side of his lawn chair. “Goddam doctors.”

  I bet they kept trying to tell him he needed to stop smoking, the mad fools.

  I opened the door. Forest, Loveheart, and Sunnyjoy ran out. “Have fun, kitties, there’s a lot of nice tires to go under just up the street,” I said.

  I scooped the mail up from the floor in front of the slot—just the electric bill, which I pigeonholed, and a BankAmericard thing that I buried in the trash so Mom wouldn’t see it and apply.

  I looked at the clock. Mom would be at Mister Peepers at least another hour and a half. I dialed Kathy’s number, and she picked up on the first ring. “Just checking in and letting you know I’ll be there tonight,” I said.

  “I saw you coming out of Dad’s place. How is he?”

  “Exactly the same as ever,” I said. “He’s adding an evening shift Fridays and Saturdays because some new people are reopening the Ox. And Angie has a new boyfriend, a banker that rides a motorcycle.”

  “Hey, tell her to give me a call and tell me all about it, ’kay?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Have a quiet evening, Karl. You take care.”

  “You, too.”

  Funny the way people could be. From the day Kathy, Philbin’s older daughter, had bought the franchise for the McDonald’s out by the interstate, old Philbin had refused to speak to her. But he’d offered, before she did it, to mortgage the drugstore to give her a stake to launch her own downtown burger stand. He wasn’t mad that she was competing with him—it was that it was McDonald’s.

  Everyone in town always told Philbin, to his face, that his hamburgers were better than McDonald’s. They were, too, bigger and greasier and with buns from some bakery up in Toledo, and the onions and tomato were all locally grown in the summer, and Dick and Mrs. P didn’t cook them into hockey pucks, and they were just better, all kinds of ways.

  Just the same, the people who said they loved Philbin’s hamburgers, whenever they chose to go out for a burger, took their kids to McDonald’s, because that’s where the kids wanted to go, and the French fries were better, because McDonald’s changed the grease in their deep fat fryer now and then.

  Maybe Philbin needed to change his grease more often. Or advertise on national TV. Or give away cheap toys, or wear a clown suit. Or else, maybe just plug in a time machine and take the whole place back to 1956. Everything must’ve seemed pretty promising back then, with new décor and two little girls running in and out.

  Hell, 1956 had seemed so promising, Mom and Dad had gone and had me. I guess things don’t always turn out.

  I pasted Mom’s IOU into my account book and refig ured the total. $2,937.41. One way and another, since ninth grade I had been making about six grand a year, most of it in off-the-books stuff like yardwork and ad sales and carrying sofas. That worked out to Mom having taken about half a year out of three, or one out of every six dollars I’d made.

  That was a little comforting. Looked at that way, she wasn’t any worse than paying taxes would have been, and no more useless.

  I was balling my fists and breathing hard. I closed up the account book and decided I was entitled to a hot shower. Also to a house that didn’t smell like a damn litter pan, and a whole year of being normal. But the hot shower was the one I was pretty sure I could get.

  I pulled my McDorksuit out of the dryer and put it on a hanger in my closet. I scoured myself down till I was pretty much pink skin on bones, enjoying the hot water and the Ivory Soap. At least this was something that was all mine. The cats had stayed out of the towels, for once, too. Life was okay.

  I ran my electric shaver over my face on the off chance that I needed a touch-up, though I probably wouldn’t have needed a touch-up for a shave from last week.

  In the mirror, I didn’t look any worse or any better, just clean and naked.

  In a paisley shirt, low-cut tight pants, and the shoes I usually wore with the jacket-and-tie to sell radio ads, I studied my image in the mirror: less Inconspicuous Madman, more Well-Dressed Dork. And to think some people don’t believe in progress.

  I made sure the sash lock on the porch window was unlocked. The only key to the house was in Mom’s purse, always, and that was either on her arm, or, when she was asleep in bed, on her night table.

  I could have chanced going into her purse while she was passed out, but the one time I had tried it, the summer before ninth grade, it just didn’t work out.

  It started when a hard thunderstorm made me come home from a lawn mowing job early. I walked in on her making out with some college guy. She had her shirt off and the whole living room stank of pot.

  She was yelling, all pissed, and shoved me out the door, so I walked around town for hours and was just sitting on the steps of the roller rink when Officer Williams saw me and said I had to go home, it was past curfew.

  He must’ve seen I was upset, because he insisted he’d take me himself. When I got home Mom had had all the windows open for a while, so I don’t know if Williams could smell the pot (though I still could) and the minute I got in the place she was yelling at me about running away and having been worried sick, just like she was still being a real mom. Williams left quick and as soon as he was gone, Mom slapped me and told me not to ever bring pigs around the house again, then shoved me out the door and locked it.

  That was the first time I got locked out. It was warm, so I just went around to the back alley behind First United Methodist and lay down on the back stoop, using my shoes for sort of a pillow because the concrete was pretty hard on my head. I didn’t sleep much.

  Next morning, I went back. Mom had left the house unlocked before going to work; in a little town like Lightsburg, people did that. I got my books, went to school, got through the day somehow, and went right home and to bed. Next morning when I got up everything was normal. Mom never said anything about it.

  That made me think about getting a key. The hardware store was open till eight on Wednesdays, so the next Wednesday, while she was on the phone talking all soft and sexy to some guy, I slipped into her room to go into her purse and get her key.

  But it must have been on the bottom of the purse, or maybe she had it in her pocket, so instead I found a fifth of gin, a few joints, and some loose rubbers.

  That had freaked me out. Back then I barely even knew enough to recognize the stuff. I felt so bad I just went upstairs to lie down and read some dumb book for the rest of the night, and never tried again. So I guess it was really my fault, like a lot of things.

  Nowadays I had several different ways to get back in, depending. Before the storm windows went up, it was always real easy because Mom didn’t notice sash locks.

  I grabbed the coal shovel and made my high-speed rounds through the house, getting a full shovelful of wormy cat crap in no time, and stepped out on the back porch to fling it behind the trellis. That’s when I saw Sunflower; it looked like she’d had a serious argument with the old boar coon that lived down by Hawthorne Ditch and foraged into our garbage now and then. I thought, I can’t imagine what that old raccoon would be doing out in the daytime. I reluctantly headed for the toolshed; I couldn’t leave Sunflower out there for Mom to find.
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  As I came out with the shovel, I heard a goopy cough, and old Wilson wheezed at me, “Karl, I’m sorry, I meant to tell you about that. I think your mom’s kitty got killed under my lilac bush last night, and then this afternoon that collie Trixie, that belongs to the Ramsay kid down the street, had drug it out and was messing with it, so I threw a rock at her and she ran off. But I think it was that old raccoon that got your mom’s kitty—I think Trixie just found it.”

  “I’m sure it was the raccoon,” I said. “Trixie’s never done more than chased them and she wouldn’t eat half the cat the way the raccoon did.” I grabbed a garden spade and a posthole digger from the shed—the ground was soft from yesterday’s rain, but not soft enough to dig with my coal shovel—and I walked over for a good look.

  No question it was Sunflower—that cream-and-orange blotchy pattern was distinctive, even with the face torn up pretty bad. She must’ve gotten in a couple good bites, but that old boar coon was a twenty-five-pounder at least, and those teeth on coons are like butcher knives.

  Definitely the raccoon. We had a couple cat-killing dogs in the neighborhood, but they usually didn’t eat the victim, and especially they didn’t tear into the belly and bite out everything from the back legs to the ribs and leave the poor cat like an empty rag. Not a dog, obviously not a car, and not a hunter either. The corn was still in the fields; too early in the fall for a quail or pheasant hunter to have shot her—they did that because free-roaming cats killed chicks and ate eggs. Besides, if she’d lost that much of her guts to birdshot, she’d never have made it back here.

  I felt like Sherlock fucking Holmes; over three years of experience had taught me to recognize most of the ways that Mom’s cats died. “Obviously, Watson,” I muttered, “this is the work of Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Lightsburg varmints.”

  “Remarkable, Holmes,” Wilson said. He’d hobbled right over behind me, and I about jumped out of my skin at his voice so close.

  We contemplated the mauled remains of Sunflower together. There was a leg missing, and most of the tail too, but I wasn’t going to go looking for them; probably the nephew that did Wilson’s yard would rake them out from under the bush later on.

  I flipped her over, gently, with the spade. Sunflower hadn’t had much of a personality except that she was about half wild like all of Mom’s cats; it was that splashes-of-yellow-orange coloring that was unusual. I couldn’t think of a thing other than that I remembered about her.

  There was plenty of room in Cat Arlington, as I thought of the back end of the backyard; when you bury them right next to each other you can fit a lot of cats into a small part of the yard. Muffin’s headstone—a nice piece of ply that I’d worked up with the wood-burning set—was still in pretty good shape, at the far back corner; she’d died while still a kitten, back when we just had that one litter, by pulling a bookcase onto herself. Next to her, starting the first row, was Starpeace, who I’d only found after a couple dozen cars had flattened him. Sunflower would make the third grave in the fourth row of the not-yet-completed ten-by-ten grid. I figured we’d probably get to somewhere in the fifth row before I left for the army.

  I made four neat cuts and lifted out the sod in a block. Old Wilson hawked one up and spat onto the grass. “Goddam doctors. Ever thought about putting the Lightsburg Coon Hunters’ Club onto the job?”

  “Mom makes me promise not to. I don’t think she believes me when I tell her it’s that big old raccoon. She always says he’s natural, beautiful, and free and therefore he would never harm a natural, beautiful, free kitty.” I shrugged; at least Wilson knew something about what Mom was like, because she occasionally leaned across the fence and harangued him about switching to organic tobacco, or asked him if he’d sensed any spiritual forces in the neighborhood, so I could tell him the kind of things she actually said without feeling like I was narking her out.

  “Might could be.” He wheezed, gasped, and started over. “I might put a word in an old friend’s ear. I ain’t been out on a coon hunt in a long time and couldn’t now, but some of those guys would love to get one that big.”

  “’Preciate it if you did,” I said, “just don’t let Mom know I had anything to do with it. God, look at that. I hope that coon slashed her throat before he started eating. That looks like it hurt.”

  I took my posthole digger and screwed it down into the heavy earth, pulling out a plug of about a foot and a half of dank clay. Sunflower went into the hole headfirst, in kind of a loose heap—not much of a ceremony, but I figured I had things to get to and she was past caring—and then I busted the plug into pieces on top of her, tamped it down, and slid the sod back into place.

  When I went back to the shed to return the spade and posthole digger, I picked up one of my “headstones”—a big plug of Readi-Mix poured into a plastic milk jug bottom. I carried it out, turned it over onto the grave, and with a Sharpie marker, I wrote, SUNFLOWER SHOEMAKER, 9/5/1973, GOOD KITTY RIP on the plastic top. The neighbors’ dogs would mostly be too lazy to try to dig in through the sod around that block of concrete.

  Have to remember, sometime soon, to pour a few more headstones; I was running low again.

  “For sure,” Wilson said, “I’ll remember to tell him next time we talk. Your mom’s ain’t the only pets’at get killed by him.” He shuffled back toward his place, shaking with smothered coughs.

  “Thanks, Mr. Wilson,” I said.

  I checked my watch; I’d cut myself plenty of time, and just needed to dust my pant legs, recomb my hair, and get moving; still plenty of time to walk to the high school for the First Day Dance. Dead cats, crazy mothers, all in a normal kid’s day’s work, right? Nothing to worry about but staying normal.

  I walked back to the high school at a comfortable pace, with lots of time to spare. Lightsburg, with all its bricks and white columns on older expensive houses, could be kind of pretty in the golden early evening. Between the trees overhead there were already a couple bright stars, though the tops of the trees were still glowing with sunset. Cicadas were going at it like they had amps, drowning out people out on porches talking about sports and weather and Watergate, and even the screams of the little kids playing on the lawns. Everything felt warm and moist and crawling with life.

  Good evening to be a kid.

  Good evening to be some poet with a girl to write about.

  Or, I thought, being me, with all those bugs around, it would be a great evening to be an exterminator. I could never help thinking about who made the money.

  Around the high school grounds, lots of kids on foot crossed every which way, between and among new station wagons trying to snake through to drop off bunches of freshmen and sophomores; old beaters trying to get up enough room to go fast for a second or two; and a few late models, containing our few rich kids, cruising by slowly to make sure we knew they were there. I saw Cheryl go by in a ’72 Barracuda, but she was with Bret, this rich FCA guy, so I didn’t wave.

  I went into the building but not into the gym, not yet. The band would still be setting up and the Spirit Club would still be getting their concession stand organized, and that would be all there would be. And until the sun was off the gym windows, it would be an oven in there.

  So I wandered around the dim, cool hallways, past other people just wandering around, and stopped by the Alum Case. It was a fund-raiser; the school took bids from all the different alumni classes, and each month the display in the case went to the high bidder. This month it held several yearbooks open to different pages, some rusty trophies, two football helmets, and remnants of a science fair project from the Class of ’61. Row after row of guys with different ziphead haircuts and girls with bubble hair, all smiling just like something good was going to happen to them.

  “Are they all your cousins, or are you trying to memorize old sports records?” Marti asked, behind me.

  “Just killing time. I do a lot of that.”

  She moved around to see what I had been looking at. “Class of 1961. Jus
t twelve years ago. They all look so normal.”

  “That’s pretty much what I was thinking. I can’t tell who was a social, who was a dork, or anything.”

  “The big guys were probably jocks,” she pointed out.

  “Yeah, but after that, who can tell? The clothes and stuff were all different from now, and they kind of all look the same. I do know who some of them were”—I looked at the names on the roster—“him, him, not him but his kid brother, her kid delivers our paper, she got killed in a car wreck. Neil, there, went out with my mom for a while, till he found out how old she really was—he’s not the smartest guy in the world, you know, guess he couldn’t subtract or something—and he still comes by sometimes and sees her, or they come home from the bar together, but they don’t, like, go out on dates or anything anymore. That greaser hood guy there, the only one with any sideburns? Now he teaches at Vinville High, and coaches debate and their chess team. Some people change, some people go away, most people don’t do either. That’s what my dad used to say.”

  “He doesn’t anymore?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry—”

  “Three years, eleven months, and twelve days ago. I’m over it. It’s the rest of the people in town who aren’t. Dad was kind of a big guy in town here, though—mayor when I was little—so people pay too much attention to me, you know what I mean?”

  “Why, no.” One eyebrow went up and her mouth kind of twisted, like she’d just eaten something and everyone was laughing and she was waiting for them to tell her what was in her mouth. “I have no idea what it’s like to have people pay too much attention to you because of who your dad is.”

  “Sorry.”

  She touched my arm. “Hey, I didn’t mean—”

  “Naw, that’s okay, I just kind of forgot that other people have troubles, too, and everyone has the biggest troubles in the world. Which is another thing my dad used to say. I don’t think he said an original thing in his life. Probably why so many people voted for him.” We both stared at those meaningless old yearbooks and trophies for like half a minute, or maybe half a century, something like that, before I glanced sideways at Marti. She looked like she really was trying to memorize the sports records. “Hey, you’re pretty interested for somebody who just got here.”