Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  I set the remaining burgers and big pile of roomtemperature dried-out fries down in front of her. “Well, I could use some company, too, Marti. It’s been kind of an up-and-down day.”

  “Yeah. Guess there’s a lot of it going around. Thanks for the food. I got home and Dad started right in screaming at me, and Mother was already gone off with your mother, and . . . well, basically, I just got screamed at for some hours, and when he was done with that, finally hoarse I think, he started in crying about it all, and begging me to forgive him. After enough of that I just fuckin’ cruised. I hate the ‘I’m a bad Dad’ phase even more than I hate the screaming and yelling . . .” She stopped for breath and was staring down at her burger.

  “Did you get anything to eat?” I asked, feeling like a mom, though sure as shit not like mine.

  She shook her head. “He started the second I walked in, so nobody made dinner—”

  “Eat, Marti. Just eat.” As skinny as she was I figured she probably didn’t have any reserves.

  “I’ll be quick so you can leave on time.” She crammed a third of a burger into her mouth.

  “Slow down, and enjoy that stuff if it’s possible. Kathy doesn’t care what time I leave, only what time I clock out, and she knows sometimes I sleep here when I’m locked out, or have friends over. Everything’s cool as long as I clock out on time.”

  She swallowed that big bite she’d rammed in, and said, “Okay. Jeez, I’m so hungry, this stuff is good.”

  “Ketchup for your fries, miss? I can recommend it—it’s my main source of vitamin C.”

  She smiled. “Sure. What does Kathy do if you clock out late?”

  “Well, a couple times I’ve fallen asleep and done it, and gotten off with a warning. Eventually, though, if I made a habit of it, I’d disappear in the middle of the night, and never be seen again, and the only clues the police would have would be a few orange hairs and some enormous shoe prints. But for a few weeks afterward, all over the country, the Quarter Pounders would taste just a little bit more like Lightsburg, Ohio.”

  She smiled, then looked at me more closely. “Fuck, Karl, you look worse than I do.”

  “Thanks, I try. Today bounced me all over the place.” I mopped my face with a couple of McNapkins and tossed them in the McTrash. “I guess I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “’Kay.” She started into a Quarter Pounder and chewed slowly. “I hate to admit how good this tastes. Sorry to be keeping you up.”

  “You’re not. You did me a favor by waking me up.” I looked at the clock; close enough not to lose any pay, so I grabbed my time card from its rack on the wall, and clocked out. “I sometimes sleep here when I get locked out. I just have to get up by three forty-five, when Pancake Pete comes in.”

  “So we could sleep for like two hours and forty minutes.” She reached into her purse and pulled out one of those little fold-down travel alarm clocks, the ones that look like a plastic clam when they’re folded down. She saw me glance at that and said, “I always have one of these in my purse because I get locked out a lot.”

  “It’s a good idea. If I had a purse I’d carry one too.”

  She smiled like we’d traded the secret handshake. “Great. Five more minutes while I swallow more food?”

  “Ten if you like. I wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight anyway.” I grabbed a cheeseburger just to be sociable.

  “Karl, are all the Madmen short of sleep?”

  “Well, you and me aren’t the only ones. Bonny gets to sleep, mostly, because her household is pretty normal, if you don’t count that she’s the parent and she’s blind drunk a lot of nights. Cheryl and her sister, Paul and his sister, Squid and the two younger kids, they have to hide out now and then because it gets dangerous at home. Danny’s just a plain old all-American farm boy with a father drinking away the farm. Mostly he just cries because he’s exhausted and picked on all the time, but so far he’s never been locked out—his dad wouldn’t do that because he needs Danny to do the early morning chores, since he’s always too hung over himself. So some are better off than us, some worse, I guess.”

  “Where does a locked-out kid sleep in this town? The last places we lived were warm and dry at night so I’d just sleep in my backseat—I even have toothpaste and toothbrush in the glove compartment.”

  “Well, you can sleep here if I’m working. Get here before one, Sunday through Thursday nights. Paul can hide you in his basement sometimes, if you sneak in and stay quiet. Bonny or Darla are home alone a lot and they’ll let you have a couch, but you have to catch Darla before she leaves Pongo’s at nine, because she spends a lot of time over in Vinville with college students. Bonny goes home real early and you do have to put up with little kids who are starved for attention. And I’d stay the hell away from Cheryl’s if you’re a girl; she’s got a real scary grandfather, you’ll hear about him in therapy meetings.”

  “Which you’re planning not to be at.”

  “Well, you know, except for you it’s all gonna be reruns, and you already told me your story.” I hoped goofing would get her off the subject.

  She looked more serious than I wanted her to, but all she said was, “I guess. I still think you’re an idiot, even if you’re a great idiot to have for a friend. Where do normal kids sleep when they’re locked out?”

  “I guess I’ll find out. Anyway, in a real crisis, especially if you get thrown out real late, the Carrellsen Hotel lobby is okay if it’s cold—the clerks will usually let you sleep in an armchair, and sometimes if you have a few bucks and they’re not full up they’ll give you a break on a room. There’s three college guys that are night clerks there—Greg and Don are reasonably cool, Jack’s the best one for letting you have a room if he’s got one. If you look in the Carrellsen and see a guy with gray hair behind the desk, it’s Roy, so don’t go in. You’ll wake up with his hands on you—boy or girl, in the lobby or in a room, Roy doesn’t care. On the other hand if you see that the desk clerk is a lady with a dyed-black beehive and Bozo makeup, go right in, because it’s Marilyn, and she’s the best. She’ll almost always give you a room if she’s got one, even if you don’t have a dime; she’s a real churchy but the good generous kind. But she’s only at the Carrellsen on Sunday nights.

  “If you get locked out early and you don’t mind singing and praying a lot before you get your soup and bed, there’s the Salvation Army on Wilbur Avenue, but they lock up real early, at eight thirty, and if you’re a guy you have to not mind what a room full of winos smells like, and if you’re a girl they put you in with the moms with little kids, which is pretty noisy.”

  “And this place is only good till three forty-five?”

  “Kind of. Pancake Pete wouldn’t care and he’d never nark anyone out, but he likes to sing while he works, and he tends to get stuck on ‘Old McDonald Had a Farm’ or ‘Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day,’ and he goes pretty loud and long. And hell if I’m going to complain and make him be quiet in the best part of his day. Mom always says never fuck with anybody else’s bliss, you know?”

  We set her little alarm clock for 3:40 and stretched out on the benches, with our heads together and feet pointed in opposite directions. I was just about to nod off when Marti said, “Hey, your friend Paul?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is he gay?”

  “I don’t know if he knows what he is. He gets crushes on girls all the time. Why?”

  “He asked me to go to the movies with him on Saturday, that rep cinema next to the drugstore where you’re going to be working. Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. And I said yes, and then I got to worrying—I was afraid my very first date was going to be with a gay guy. Don’t tell Paul I asked!”

  “I’m not as dumb as I look, Marti. I’m sure six assholes already told you what he does up in Toledo, right?”

  “Yeah. Is it true?”

  “Sometimes. Not as often as people make out like he does. I wouldn’t worry. Him and me might not be getting along right now, but he�
��s still the best guy in the world.”

  “’Kay.” She squirmed a bit to get comfortable. I felt her slip away into sleep, her head lolling over. I watched the little dark bands run around one aging fluorescent tube, overhead, and silently recited Dad’s list of household chores until I drifted off.

  PART THREE

  (Friday, September 7, 1973)

  15

  That, Son, Was the Lone Madman

  MARTI AND ME woke up with her alarm. We staggered around, throwing away the last couple soggy burgers and dried-out fries, splashed water on our faces in the bathrooms, and looked at each other and sighed. I wiped down where our shoes had been on the benches.

  Pancake Pete tapped at the door, so I went over and opened it for him. He came in laughing and gave me a big hug. He always did that.

  “Pete,” I said, “this is Marti.”

  “Hi, Marti! Can I hug you?”

  “Sure!” So they hugged.

  Special Ed had taught him to ask. I understood why, but I thought it was kind of sad that they had to teach him that.

  “Now we’re friends,” Pete said happily. “You have a good day okay?”

  “Okay, Pete. Have a good day yourself.”

  As Marti started her car, I said, “There are times when I think it must be great to enjoy things as much as Pete does.”

  “I’m always a little nervous around retarded people,” Marti said. “My dad says horrible things about them.”

  “Well, I should probably warn you I’ve set you up. Now whenever you run into Pete around town, he’s going to shout ‘Hi, Marti’ and wave at you.”

  “I can deal. I’ll wave back and say ‘Hi, Pete,’ and I bet that’ll work. I hope he does it in front of Dad. If he does I’ll hug him.” She turned the corner and accelerated into the dark, her headlights reaching just a little way into the shadows under the big old trees. “Do you hate your mom?”

  “Sometimes. I try not to. I mean it’s not like I can trade her in and get another one.” I shrugged. “I guess I can feel sorry for her. She just wants people to like her and think she’s cool. I guess I can’t really hate her.” Then it seemed polite to ask, “Do you hate yours?”

  “About as much as I hate my dad.”

  Neither of us said anything else as we passed through the dark, silent streets just before 4 A.M. When Marti pulled up in front of my house, she said, “See you in school, try not to over-normal it, okay?”

  “See you,” I said. “No being a genius for you, either.”

  I felt like we should have shaken hands or something but I just got out of the car in the dark.

  Mom must have been mad at me when she came home, and locked the front and back doors, so I got in through the front room window. I peeked and it looked like someone was in the bed with her in her room, so I slipped upstairs, undressed quick, and got into bed; it was 4:02.

  My eyes slapped open at 7:15. Something pushed on my chest, and it smelled like Charlie the Tuna was frenching me. Once again, Hairball had managed to work the doorknob—he did that now and then, though he didn’t consistently remember how—and now he rested like a hairy Buick on my chest, muzzle against my cheek and paws extending on either side of my face, purring in his sleep.

  Gently, I bench-pressed him off my chest. He said something like “qurgle-qurooph,” yawned, stretched, and padded away like a surly orange mop.

  I trotted down the stairs for a shower, taking a couple extra minutes for a second lather. Lack of sleep crawled around in the back of my head, scraping on the back of my eyeballs, drooling down into puddles of weariness on top of my spine, waiting to knock me unconscious during trig or honors gov. The extremely normal dork in the mirror had Madman-style dark circles under his eyes.

  I glanced at my watch. Damn. I needed to make it to school early to get that note from Gratz, but I didn’t want to miss any of my Friday ritual. Butt in gear, right now.

  I finished dressing in a hurry, made sure my door was closed tight, and bounced down the stairs like an amped up kangaroo.

  “Tiger Sweetie?”

  “Gotta run, Mom, late.”

  She lurched into the living room from the bedroom, looking like a housecoat under a haystack. “Are you going to go straight from school to Philbin’s?”

  “Yeah, I think I’ll have to.”

  “Ucky ucky. You work too much. You should give yourself time to be a kid, it’s the best time you’re ever going to have. Anyway, will you be around tomorrow?”

  “Pretty busy, but Sunday I’ll be around most of the day, I think.”

  “Okay, good.” She walked slowly toward me. I wanted to break and run. I could feel the clock ticking away on my Friday morning.

  She pressed her soft mouth against my cheek; I’d have to scrub, as soon as I was out of her sight, because that frosted baby pink lipstick she wore stuck like a coat of paint. Actually it pretty much is a coat of paint, I thought, so I cheered myself up by thinking, okay, so I’ll say it sticks like napalm to a baby.

  “Listen, Tiger, I just wanted to say . . . I’m really sorry about that twenty. Put it on my tab of IOUs, ’kay? But something—somebody—wonderful happened while I was out last night. This might be the first man I’ve brought home that I want you to meet, really want you to meet. ’Kay?”

  “All right, Mom, Sunday if you want, bring him around and I’ll make sure he’s okay, and if he’s not okay, I’ll bop him on the head and put him in the river with the others.” She had a new “first man she really wanted me to meet” about every two months. They were always more trouble, one way or another, than the ones she just brought home to fuck.

  “Oh, you! Have a good day, Tiger Sweetie.” She kissed my cheek again. “The glow of the moon bathes your soul because you are a special child of the universe.” Her breath wasn’t quite as bad as it usually was in the morning.

  Old Wilson waved as I shot by his gate. “You keep running like that, Karl, you’re gonna give yourself a heart attack,” he burbled, through the snot-gorged remains of his lungs.

  I ran backwards a few steps and waved back at him. He went off into a coughing fit and I was halfway down the block, probably, before he got enough air to cough up a looger and say, “Goddam doctors.”

  I spit on my handkerchief and wiped where Mom had planted that kiss on me, checking the pink smear on the cloth and wishing I had a mirror. After the third spit-and-rub nothing more came off. I picked up the pace a little.

  By the bank clock at the corner of Church Street, I needed to haul ass, even if I was kind of wasting my morning shower; I wanted to have all my time made up before I got to Philbin’s, since breakfast there on Fridays was one of the high points of my week, usually, and this was looking to be a week that would need a high point.

  It felt good, before the hot wet air crawled over the town and smothered it, to be running flat out like a crazy bastard with the street to myself. The old trees in the strip between the sidewalk and the street arched over, big deep green leaves not even started to turn yet, and I ran east up Buchanan Street, toward the red ball of the sun coming up between the twin spires of St. Iggy’s, staining the street in front of me with the blood-colored glow that seemed to freeze under the deep purples of the thunderheads low overhead. Already the air felt heavy and wet. My legs and lungs warmed to the job, and I flew down the street.

  I walked into Philbin’s dead on time. Only two booths occupied, no one at the counter—the balled-up blue clouds mashing down over the town must have pinned people into their homes and cars this morning. Dick leaned out of the kitchen and said, “Nobody’s ahead of you, Karl, want the usual?”

  “Great, sure.”

  Angie returned from a booth she had been waiting. “I don’t know how to break the news to you, but you look awful.”

  “Eahh. I had a little trouble getting sleep,” I said. “I’ll get it back Sunday. No biggie.”

  Dick whomped up my Farmer’s Special, a huge skillet full of bacon, potatoes, mixed vegetables, gravy
, Amish pepper sausage, Amish baby Swiss, and eggs; Philbin used to claim that he was the major cash income source for six Amishmen. Dick would start it in the skillet with the bacon on the bottom and some of his white pork chop gravy on top, and then when it was sizzling he’d dump it upside down, leaving the skillet over it, onto the hot grill. By the time he lifted the hot skillet off with a pair of channel-locks, and scraped the stuff onto a plate, you had pure ambrosia.

  As usual Dick made my Farmer’s Special big enough for two farmers, but I managed to find someplace to tuck it in. It came with a big glass of OJ, and coffee, and to make sure you didn’t leave hungry they threw in a chocolate frosted cake doughnut. I inhaled all that in about twenty minutes, reading a few pages of Three Stigmata. Maybe if I reread it sometime in the next couple weeks, I’d be able to fake understanding it.

  “Where’s your dad?” I asked Angie. “Resting up for tonight?”

  “No, the idiot supplier sent over the wrong stuff, instead of the heart medicine that a third of this town full of geezers is on. Dad could just let them send it over by courier car, besides he’s got enough to cover twice the usual demand till Monday anyway, but now he doesn’t trust ’em, so he’s driving to Toledo to do the exchange in person. He was stomping around and yelling that people’s lives depended on that stuff. I can never decide whether I’m proud of the old poop or embarrassed to death.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “He’ll never believe I said anything as nice as ‘old poop.’”

  “Actually I’m supposed to tell you that you should give Kathy a call. Some kind of news.”

  “Cool. Maybe she’s finally pregnant. We’re hoping that’ll make Dad stop being such a shithead.” She glanced around; everyone looked okay. “Cover for me, will you? I’d like to call her right away.”