Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  Everybody grabbed up their books and piled through the door, taking off to tell all their friends about it, with no crowd in their way because Gratz had let them all go five minutes early. They sprayed out like gas molecules into space, and were gone.

  I walked up to Gratz’s desk like a lifelong atheist approaching St. Peter. “Sir?”

  “Karl, you’re a good kid. I know that. So are the ones that went down to the office. And I’m not happy with how I lost my temper.” He was looking down at the desk; his hands were trembling. Poor bastard was really losing it. “Do you still want that letter?”

  “Uh, yes, sir, I do.”

  “Okay. You have to give it directly to the counselor, so you’ll need to go to the counseling room a little early, then hurry back here, be on time for class, and that’s the deal from then on.” He pulled out a sheet of paper, signed it, and pointed to where I was supposed to sign. It said Gratz and I had agreed to meet to talk over my problems and therefore I was requesting to be excused from group therapy.

  I signed it. I felt like I was being Paul, in The Crucible , last year, when he was talking about signing a death warrant; I’ll not conceal it, my hand shakes yet as with a wound!

  Then Gratz folded it into an envelope and said, “Okay, now we have to sign across the flap, so people can tell if this has been tampered with, since we both sign it. You sign across the flap, too.” So we both did that.

  I must have looked like I was puzzled (as opposed to sick, which I actually was), because he explained. “They make us take all these precautions to prevent teachers from pressuring kids into leaving therapy; they’re afraid a teacher might push a kid who really needs professional help into going to prayer meetings or something instead. I just can’t imagine that any professional educator would do that, but that’s what this business is about.” He paused for a deep breath. “So, anyway, take that to the counselor on Monday, early, and you’re free—except you have to get together and talk with me now and then.”

  “Thank you, Coach.”

  He glanced up at me. “I suppose it’s not that different from meeting an AA sponsor.”

  “I’m doing okay with Dick.”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean anything by that. Just thinking out loud. I’ve never thought the therapists are very good for you kids, and I always thought I could do a better job, but now that I have to do it, it looks bigger and harder than I thought it would.” He sighed. “Well, we’ll try to figure out whatever it is you need, and do something about that.”

  I didn’t see any way he could give me five extra hours in the day, a mom who wasn’t crazy, or a bank account that was safe, but I just said, “Thank you, Coach,” again.

  “And thank you for not adding to the mess. I behaved inappropriately—funny how the therapy kids can always get to me.” He shook his head like he’d just gotten hit with a takedown and pin and lost in ten seconds. “Anyway, please tell your friends that I’m going to apologize publicly on Tuesday when they’re back in class. No penalties. I can’t believe I acted like that. Oh, and give them the assignment, too—they left before it was given. Jeez, I’m really sorry about everything, Karl.”

  I couldn’t think what to say—I didn’t want to say it was all right, because it sure wasn’t, but on the other hand, anything that looked faintly like humility in Gratz was something I didn’t want to crap on. So I kind of half-waved and shot through the door like my butt was on fire, rushed off to put the letter safely into my locker, and made it to trig still early.

  “You okay, Karl?” Bonny asked. She was the only one there so far. Today she was being pretty moderate, just a gauzy blouse over a tie-dye top and some baggy pants I guessed she’d made for herself out of old curtains.

  “There was a Madman eruption in Gratz’s class. Gratz started it,” I said. “Everyone else went to the office, I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  She shrugged. “You’ve been changing. You stopped drinking, you talk to that army recruiter all the time, you stopped going out with me—”

  I wasn’t up for this, but here it was. “Bonny, you dumped me.”

  “’Cause you stopped being any fun,” she said. “And it wasn’t just that you got all holy-roller and stopped drinking. The way you treated me after prom . . .” She shook her head. “Well, I still miss you and we’re still friends, but good riddance, asshole.”

  I thought about pretending I didn’t know what she was talking about, but that would never work. Bonny was cute and she cracked me up a lot and I liked being out with her, and talking with her, and the way other guys looked at her. I guess most guys would’ve said I had a great girlfriend back then.

  But Bonny had some weird problems about making out and touching and stuff; actually her rules were pretty simple, just crazy:1. I was supposed to touch her where and how she liked it.

  2. But only when she was drunk enough so it wouldn’t be her fault.

  3. She wasn’t supposed to ever have to say she wanted it.

  4. We had to stop and promise never to do it again as soon as she was done.

  5. She would never touch me.

  6. Except once . . .

  After prom, we were in her bedroom, her parents were somewhere in France, the kids were in dreamland, Mom would’ve been in the cheering section if she could’ve been, and I was about on the ceiling with nerves, but going ahead bravely. After all, it was good old Bon, and we both had a nice little drunk going from splitting a bottle of champagne she’d liberated while I distracted the caterer at her cousin’s wedding.

  You’d’ve thought it’d’ve been perfect, but, well, it was us. So I was heavy petting her and she seemed pretty close to the point where she usually went “Oh!” and told me to stop.

  This time, though, she asked if I wanted to see it—I’d been going by feel all this time. She took off her pants, and I started touching her there again.

  Then she said, “Do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. Let’s have sex. You brought a rubber, didn’t you?”

  “Um, I—no.”

  “Do it anyway. Come on, I’m drunk, and I’m asking you.”

  Maybe I just never get that drunk. I said, “I don’t want to get you pregnant, Bon. We’d have to get married, and it would wreck both our plans.”

  And she got pissed and threw me out; I didn’t even get time to get a good look at her naked. I never quite got if it was because I was supposed to have a rubber, or supposed to want to marry her, or I wasn’t drunk enough to get all carried away and just do it, or what. I sure did get that she was pissed, though.

  Ten days later, after Mom’s stupid thirty-ninth birthday, I gave up drinking, and the next time I saw Bonny at a party, she was mad at me about that too, and went off and made out all night with Chip Neminech, the tackle who demonstrated that not only is there no I in team, there’s no Q, either. I suppose, given that my mother was a girl, I shouldn’t have been surprised that some of them could get pretty weird.

  So I was standing there realizing Bon was still mad about that, and maybe about my quitting drinking, and God knew what else. “So everyone else went down to the office?”

  “Yeah, Gratz wanted me to tell them he’s sorry, though, and he’ll apologize.”

  “But you didn’t go.”

  “No.”

  “Remember when you and me and Paul got suspended together, from Gratz’s class?”

  “Yeah.” I was pretty much down to monosyllables.

  She glanced at the door to make sure we had no company yet. “I let Chip do it. All summer.”

  I had no idea what to say to that; she obviously wanted me pissed off or hurt or something, but I had no reaction I could think of. “If you’re happy,” I said, “Then it’s none of my business.”

  “Exactly.” Wow, she was pissed.

  “What do you want me to say?” I asked. Sometimes Bonny could confuse me as much as Mom did. “You know I’m your friend, and I want to give you what you need.”

&nbs
p; “How about a weekend in Detroit with a bunch of geniuses and some horny fat girls from out of town?”

  I turned around and of course it was Larry. Much as he wanted to be a weird guy, what was really the weirdest thing about him was that he never noticed anyone else having a conversation. Bonny raised an eyebrow and I nodded back; if I wanted to talk, I guess she’d talk.

  It turned out Larry was talking about one of those sci-fi conventions he was always trying to get me to, sometime next month. He lost his virginity at those about as much as he did at summer camp. (Actually since 0 = 0, exactly as much.)

  Larry also wasn’t real good at noticing when someone was trying to escape from a conversation with him, either, so I kind of had to push past him when Cheryl, Marti, and Danny came in; Gratz must have found a hall monitor to take a note right down to the office right away. “Hey,” I said. “Gratz says he was out of line, no punishment, he’ll apologize in class on Tuesday, and read through Chapter Six of Fuckle Hairy Bin for Monday.”

  Danny and Cheryl, organized types that they were, pulled out their little assignment books and scribbled. Marti just shrugged. None of them looked the least bit surprised. If you had abusive parents or worshipped a vengeful god, or both, you knew everything about Gratz’s sudden reversals.

  “Hey,” Larry said, “I was talking to you.”

  “You were,” I said, “but now you’re just standing there with your mouth open, looking confused.”

  Nobody laughed or anything. I think I hurt his feelings. I didn’t care.

  All through math class I kept wanting to run back to my locker and see if my letter was still there. It was what I’d been dreaming about all summer—the Ticket for No Ticket, my way out of the Madman Underground.

  Of course I’d been dreaming about that with Paul . . . who’d’ve guessed we could both be serious? But I guess he was back in the Madman Underground, now, all the way to graduation. And without me. He could be king all by himself.

  Along with all my friends. Well, except Squid, who hadn’t heard about it yet, and Larry, who was curled over his book, pretending to listen and actually just hugging himself, the way he did when he was really hurt.

  Maybe they had a Normal Underground for stooges and sellouts. Come to admit it, my ticket for that was in my locker right now.

  “Karl?” Mrs. Hertz asked.

  “It’s isosceles,” I said.

  “It is, but the question was the value of theta.”

  “I guess I don’t know.”

  “Well, if you know it’s isosceles,” she said, “then you already know everything you need to know about the value of a and b. Doesn’t that give you a clue?”

  She just kept pushing, and I just kept saying I didn’t get it. Finally Larry put his hand up and said, “Pi over four,” in this real bored arrogant voice. I know he meant to put me down, but I was glad he let me off the hook. Right now I just couldn’t care about the value of anything.

  Danny didn’t exactly act pissed off in gym class, but then Danny rarely acted pissed off even when he was homicidal. He was always buttoned down tight except when he was crying.

  But he didn’t say hi, and he didn’t look at me, and when we went out to run, he hung in close with his jock buddies. So I might have guessed he was pissed off.

  Or I could have just listened to Squid, who ran alongside me for a while. It was being typical Ohio for that time of year—the soaking-cold stormy morning had been replaced by a steaming-damp sunny midmorning. “What’d you do to piss Danny off so bad?”

  “Gratz had one of his Gratz-attacks all over Marti, that new girl. Paul backed her up, Gratz let loose at the therapy group, everyone went down to the office except me. So I guess I didn’t back the group up. Probably he’s pissed about that.”

  Squid chugged along beside me; I kept my pace down, waiting for the coach to yell at me to pick it up, because just at the moment Squid might be as close to a friend as I had.

  After maybe half a lap he said, “That’s not actually such a big fuckin’ deal, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’ll blow over.”

  “Yeah.”

  Then we ran another lap without talking before he said, “I heard something else that was pretty rough, though.”

  I nodded so he’d know I was listening. By now my heart and lungs had settled into that comfortable groove where I could run the rest of the day, and would have liked to. My shirt was drenched with sweat and my soggy gym shorts were sliding over my wet thighs; it must have been ninety degrees out, and the humidity was like a swimming pool. I paced Squid’s heavy-footed trot and waited.

  Finally he shrugged and said, “I don’t think it’s fair.”

  “What’s not?”

  “Well, I guess Paul told them all you weren’t coming along because you had some deal with Gratz to get out of the therapy group and you didn’t want to be friends with them no more.”

  I felt sick as shit, I can tell you that.

  “I can tell you still want to be friends,” Squid said, kind of shy, like he was afraid I might snap at him.

  “Yeah! Yeah, I do.”

  “Maybe not with Paul right now, hunh?”

  “I’ll get over it,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I meant that.

  Squid shrugged, and the way he did it said it all: I still had at least one friend. “Paul’s a good guy, but sometimes he’s a mean little cock-sucking queer-bait, you know? You got to keep a balanced perspective.”

  I made the mistake of looking sideways at Squid and seeing the twinkle in his eye. It’s hard to run well when you’re laughing. Then Coach Korviss trotted up beside us and pointed out that Squid was loafing and I was loafing for two, and we put on some speed, which meant Squid didn’t have air to talk and I was way out in front of him anyway.

  I felt better. For the rest of gym I ran like a crazy bastard, and it made the shower feel like paradise.

  I made a point of eating lunch with Larry. He had probably thought I was mad at him, or avoiding him, or something, these last few days. He explained all of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch to me—twice I think. I acted like I was real interested and stuff. He seemed pathetically happy.

  Paul was in senior honors gov, and today he was really “on,” as he called it, hassling Harry in a friendly way, sucking up and backing off, making old Harry think he was running a real discussion. I tried joining in and Paul acted like I’d pissed in his Cheerios, so I shut up and let Harry and Paul do their show while the rest of the class subsided into a doze.

  It wasn’t being much of a day but I’d had worse. I figured if I took care of all my other friendships, and just did what I needed to do, I could get it down to aching about Paul maybe once every other breath.

  I’d heard the booms of thunder all through French class. We were just doing convo practice and I spent the whole time flirting with Darla, who was being all bitchy and come-here come-here come-here get-away get-away get- away on me. Mr. Babbitt—Monsieur Babbitt, actually, you had to call everything by a French name, which is why I was Claude and Darla was Nathalie—made fun of me, and I tried to rise to the bait, but apparently I was just not doing what Darla wanted.

  When we finally got out of class, the temperature had dropped like a brick, there was hail spatting across the parking lot, and the sky was as black as it had been that morning. It wasn’t going to last long—these storms never did—but for the moment it was cold, rainy, and nasty, and my house was closer to Philbin’s than the high school was. I sprinted to the bus, splashing through the icy puddles on the sidewalk.

  “Hey, kiddo.” Jolene seemed kind of glum, for her, but glad to see me. “Your mom told you about her new guy?”

  “I think so,” I said, “if it’s the same one it was this morning.”

  She made a face. “Nice way to talk about your mom. She really loves you, you know, she talks about you all the time.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  I took a seat toward the back. Just befor
e Jolene pulled out, Paul flopped into a seat way up toward the front, away from me, and stared out the window. I wondered how it felt to be him. He’d been working as hard as I had, apparently, on spending a year not in the Madman Underground. He’d lectured me like I was a bad little kid about it. Then half an hour later he’d kicked the whole idea away. I just didn’t get him at all.

  His forehead was resting against the bus-window glass, so he must be getting that rattle-buzz in the skull. What I could see of his face—one closed eye and a slack lower lip—looked more dazed and tired than anything else.

  Just before his stop, I came up behind him, risking having Jolene yell at me to sit down, and said, “Hey, Gratz is going to apologize Tuesday morning. No penalties for anyone. He wanted you to know the assignment is to read through Chapter Six by Monday, okay? He wanted me to tell you that.”

  “Good boy,” Paul said.

  “Fine,” I said. “I was supposed to tell you and I did, and fuck you very much. How did you know I’m going to be seeing Gratz instead of going to therapy?”

  “I was waiting for you after class, yesterday morning, so I could explain what I told you this morning. Fuck, I almost ran in to ask if I could get that deal, too. But I knew it was Gratz, and sure enough, he was real Gratz this morning. Sucking up to him just wasn’t worth it no matter what. Not for me.”

  He slung up his books and pushed past me through the bus door into the cold rain at the street corner. As we pulled away I watched him running through the icy silver-gray light, his shirt and pants sticking to him.

  I rode the bus to the closest stop to my house, and ran. I don’t think I even felt the cold rain.

  When I opened the door, Mom hollered, “Hey, Tiger, in here.”

  In her room, she was packing her suitcase. “You’re not gonna believe this one, Tiger,” she said. “Not in a million bajillion years.”

  “Try me.”

  “That new guy in my life? He’s a college prof.”

  “Somebody has to be.”

  “That’s not what you’re not going to believe. So . . . it’s after Labor Day and the Erie Islands are cheap. We’re going to go check into a cabin up at Put-in-Bay. Tonight and tomorrow night.”