by John Barnes
“But sometimes, he goes up to the interstate entrance, flags down a trucker or a traveling salesman or just some homo, and gives the guy a little action to get a ride up to the stroll in Toledo. Usually by the end of the first night, some older guy takes him home for a few days. It’s the main way he gets new clothes. Paul says he’s not really queer or anything but you can take his word or not on that, I guess. I think that stuff is pretty gross and when I picture him doing it, I kind of want to puke. But that is what he does.”
“And you guys are going up there to make him stop?”
Cheryl sighed. “Well, no. If he was just turning tricks and finding older guys to take care of him, we wouldn’t like it but we wouldn’t interfere. But two years ago some guys on the team were driving around trying to find the stroll and they found the gay part of it. We were doing Charley’s Aunt in the Drama Club and Paul did Babbs, which is a guy who wears a dress, and he had a fight with his dad and because of that didn’t go to the cast party on closing night. So he was up there in Toledo, hustling men, and those football players saw him and beat him half to death, and bragged it up to the whole school. And they got away with it.”
“You sound pretty pissed.”
Cheryl sped up. “Shit. Mostly we all feel like such losers . Even a guy as brainy as Danny feels that way. But Paul’s so talented—sings, draws, acts—everything!—he’s just beautiful. And those assholes got away with it, beat him so bad his hands were swollen up and he couldn’t play the piano or draw, he was too stiff to dance or twirl—it just makes me sick. Because they hate—”
“Cheryl,” I said, “we’re doing ninety, and we can’t afford the time to talk to a statie right now.”
“Sorry.” The little reflectors on the road-edge markers stopped coming at us quite so fast.
“So what do you guys do?”
“Cheryl hears things,” I said, “because, excuse my saying it, she’s a social, or at least the other socials think she is. There’s always some dumbass trying to impress a popular girl by telling her he’s going to beat up that goddam makes-you-sick queer. So Cheryl and me go find Paul—usually it doesn’t take long because if he’s not right out on the street working, within a few minutes he’ll be dropped off again. He listens to Cheryl more than he will to anyone else—uh, because he has had a crush on her forever—”
Cheryl sighed, loudly.
“Well, it’s true, and I thought I’d have to explain why he’ll get in the car with you—”
“Not the best way to explain it to someone who is turning into his girlfriend, Karl.”
“It’s okay,” Marti said. “Really. Haven’t even had the first date yet.” I could hear a little puckish smile, and she said, “I’d already figured out Cheryl had kind of a crush on him.”
“Yeah,” Cheryl said. “It would never work.”
I was looking back at Marti, and her eyebrow couldn’t have cocked any louder if she’d screamed Why?, but instead she asked, “So what happens when Cheryl talks to him?”
“He follows her back to the car—usually after some dramatics—and we bring him back and crash him out somewhere. It works good as long as we get there before the big monkeys do.”
“So the bat is in case you get there second?”
Cheryl shrugged. The tires sang on the pavement as we rolled into a patch of deeper darkness, so that Cheryl and I were lit by the dashboard glow, and all that showed of Marti was a vague cloudy glow of hair, and the glint of her glasses frames and braces, like the ghost of Palmer Eldritch in that book.
“Well,” Cheryl said, finally, “some years ago when he was really fucked up, Karl did a couple real bad things, which were pretty scary—well, really scary—and so a lot of kids that don’t know him call him ‘Psycho Shoemaker, ’ which really hurts his feelings and is so unfair, but it also means that some kids who don’t know him are scared shitless of Karl. And there’s a particular reason that football players might be kind of scared of Karl with a bat.” She shrugged. “And of course the stroll is in a bad, bad area, and I’m tiny, and Karl’s tall and muscular and looks crazy. Sorry, Karl, but you do. I feel a lot better getting out of the car knowing he’s in here watching out for me, with that bat across his lap.”
“How often do you guys do this?”
“A few times a year,” I said. “Not even once a month.”
“Eight times in two and a half years,” Cheryl said. “Over the summer I got curious and counted them up in my diary.”
I nodded. “Seems about right. See, Paul’s my best friend from, like, the dawn of time, but he’d never listen to me about this, but he’ll listen to Cheryl because she’s like his Blanche Fleur, you know? So I have to stay in the car while Cheryl talks him into it, and then when he realizes I’ve seen him like that again, he’ll go way over the top for crying and sobbing and hysteria.”
“He doesn’t, um, just do it for the attention?”
“He could get just as much attention if he’d just ask us,” Cheryl said.
We crossed over the river into Maumee, turned west and then north, and made our way through deserted streets.
“Uh, so—Karl, excuse my being a big chicken, but what happens when you get out with the bat? Do they just back off?”
“Actually,” I admitted, “we’ve always gotten there first. I’ve never even had to get out—there hasn’t even been a bum hassling Cheryl. This time of night, all that’s on that street is a few young guys hustling, and we usually get Paul into Cheryl’s car in like two minutes. The guys from the team take a long time getting drunk and psyching up for it. That’s one reason we’re so nervous, is we’re cutting it so close this time, and maybe for the first time I’ll have to get out of the car.”
“So after we get him, what do we do?”
“Traditionally, we go get food at Denny’s in Maumee, talk for hours, then head back to Lightsburg, and it’s all cool. Of course last year, twice, we didn’t hear about it at all till we saw Paul in school, all bruised up. But most of the time we get there in time to save his stupid butt.”
For a couple miles of dark silence, I stared out the window and thought. Operation Be Fucking Normal was kind of off track, come to admit it.
Besides saving Paul from ass-thrashings, us Madmen, singly and in combination, also saved Paul from running away, and suicide attempts, and getting into serious drugs. He took a lot of saving, and it wasn’t all because his dad would slap him around and call him a homo. Hell, Kimmie wasn’t half that much a mess for being beat up and called a whore. She was tough and mean and looking for the right guy to run away with and marry, and that’s what she’d do as soon as a guy that wasn’t a loser hood was interested in her. The thing was, Paul’s reaction to all that shit at home was always fucking grand opera, with all the Madman Underground as supporting players.
Actually, maybe more like what my dad called a horse opera, an old western. When I was little one Toledo station showed reruns of The Lone Ranger all the time, right after dinner, and I’d sit next to Dad and watch. He’d always be the Ranger and I’d be Tonto. I was thinking that was kind of my life—permanently Tonto. Always the guy who got beat up, never the guy who got the girl; always the one outside making a noise like an owl, or sneaking through the woods to make the plan work, and never the one everybody was thanking.
And being the Tonto I always was, here I was again: Tonto to Paul, who was artistic and beautiful; Tonto to Cheryl, who was off to save the beautiful artist; Tonto to my crazy mom; probably Tonto to old Browning—I was the eternal sidekick.
Once again, Tonto got to get there in time to save Kemo Sabe. Then Kemo Sabe ride off into sunset with both girl. Them share loneliness of masked man.
Meanwhile, back in Lightsburg, Tonto go back to Tee-pee of Heap Big Heap of Catshit, in case somebody need to save Fucks With Everybody.
Tonto fucking tired. Tonto hardly wait to join pony soldiers. Kill babies and burn villages heap less work than take care of Fucks With Everybody and Kemo Sabe and wh
ole goddam fucking village.
That was one fine set of jokes, to judge by the mood I was getting into. I was kind of hoping the team would show up. Just once maybe I’d get to use the bat; the way that had felt, the shiver in my palm from when I’d whacked Al’s elbow, was still something I loved to remember.
Yeah, I did want that. Fuck Jesus if I was gonna let a bunch of big dumb apes pound my best friend.
More of the buildings rolling by were boarded up, smaller and closer together, fewer big plants and more little old shops. We began to see people out walking around, mostly black people, some of them glaring at the car full of white kids.
I couldn’t blame them. Assholes from all the little jerkwater towns around thought it was very cool and brave to go “coon calling,” which was driving by some black guy who was minding his own business and yelling “coon!” at him. Not just farm boy assholes, either. I’d seen Paul do it, once; I didn’t know what to say so I never asked him about it.
When I was a freshman, Gratz had braced up two guys in the parking lot because they’d coon-called Naomi Smith, who was one of our few black students. I didn’t see it but from what I heard, Gratz ran in front of the dumbass kids’ car and when they slammed on the brakes, he dragged them both out, one in each hand by the collar, hauled them into the school, made them write out confessions and write letters of apology to Naomi. Supposedly he’d stood over Emerson and insisted that that was going to be a week’s suspension, too.
It was kind of a legend there in Lightsburg. It was so perfectly Gratzical to go all apeshit about something just because he thought it was important.
To me, he was just one more hollering asshole making more trouble than it was worth. I wondered if somewhere in the tirade he no doubt gave those guys, he told them to quote and not call.
A couple-few more blocks took us into the stroll: lots of cheap featureless brick hotels with red neon VACANCY signs, a couple of yellow-signboard dirty-book stores, mostly just lots of empty storefronts and boarded-up gas stations. Cars started slowing down along the sidewalk. In the left lane one guy with silver hair and a long pointy nose, more or less a big leprechaun or a small elf, pulled up in a Cadillac, looked and saw that Cheryl was in her cheerleader uniform, and leaned over to roll down his window. Before he could say anything to her, Marti shot him the finger and I held up the bat, and he took off.
“I hate this part,” Cheryl said.
“We need a bumper sticker that says ‘We’re just here to rescue the fairy,’” I said.
She whooped like a maniac. “Oh, shit, Karl, why am I not in love with you?”
“I always meant to ask. Why aren’t you in love with me?”
She pretended to think before she answered. “Because neither of us would make enough trouble to keep the other one miserable?”
“Fuck yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s skip the love and just use each other.”
“We get too pissed when other people do.”
“You guys act like best friends, or a real tight couple,” Marti observed.
“We’ve just been friends a long time,” I said.
Cheryl nodded. “Okay, boy zone coming up after the next turn. If we’re going to see him we’ll usually see him by our third or fourth trip through; he doesn’t spend much time with anybody unless someone takes him home.”
Cheryl turned the corner into a broad avenue; half the streetlights were out, and the flat bland buildings were peppered with windows as dark and empty as a vice principal’s soul. Cars cruised by a few nicely dressed young guys; it wasn’t nearly as big and crowded as the regular stroll. No Paul on the first try, and she headed back around.
On our fourth trip through, three cars ahead of us, Paul got out of a big old white Cadillac; probably some guy who’d driven in from Sylvania to get a blow job from a boy, before going home to hear the kids’ prayers and read the Bible with his wife. Paul waved good-bye and blew a kiss and then turned and saw us pulling over. He started walking away, obviously angry.
“Shit, he’s gonna be a jerk about it,” Cheryl said. “What do you think, Karl? We can’t stop here.”
“Round the corner. You and Marti go together and stick close to each other. I’ll get out and stand by the car, with the bat down low so a cop just driving by won’t see it. If you yell I’ll be right there. Don’t get more than half a block away.”
“Good.” She pulled the car in behind a van and I hopped out, holding the bat down by my leg against the car door. Cheryl handed me her keys and purse, and she and Marti ran around the corner after Paul.
I moved around to lean my ass against the hood of the car, figuring that the way Paul was acting, Cheryl might need some time to get him to come along. I wasn’t sure which thing I needed to hide more, my ball bat or her purse. I really hoped a cop wouldn’t come by. I guess I could try to convince him I was playing midnight softball in the gay league.
I thought how normal kids were spending their Friday nights after a game. Probably having pizza, or road drinking, or making out. Whereas I was standing on Mug Me Street in Toledo, Ohio, with a baseball bat and a purse.
Normal kids would go home and tell their moms nothing much happened, no matter what actually did. My mom wouldn’t ask me, I sure as shit wouldn’t tell her, and anyway usually I was the one waiting up for her. Normal kids would be happy because someone they liked had been nice to them, or crying over getting dumped, or lonely and wondering if there was more to life than this. They would know pretty much what they felt, and if they had a story to tell about it later, it would be something like “The Night We Beat the Scumcats” or “The Night I Felt Up Mary Sue.”
I didn’t have any feelings that I had a name for, and no idea how the story would come out.
Paul came back around the corner with the girls, one on each arm, holding him close as he shuffled along with his head down. I walked toward them.
A girl’s voice behind me said, “Don’t try it, asshole.”
I whipped up the bat, turned around, and found myself face-to-face with Bonny, Danny, and Squid.
There was a very long pause, and then all of a sudden Cheryl whooped—do they teach them to whoop like that at social school, or what? We were all laughing.
I lowered the bat and said, “See here, you savages, stop your violence this moment or I shall strike you with my purse,” really hissing all those ss, and god we all laughed.
We sorted out the kind of information that you get from everyone talking at once. Bonny’s boyfriend Chip had ditched her to go queer-thumping, which meant he was now her ex-boyfriend, though he didn’t know it yet. She’d rushed to Pietro’s, because she knew that Danny often took Squid there for postgame pizza. “I knew Karl was working late, and I couldn’t find Cheryl, and I was afraid they wouldn’t get here in time. And you’re new, Marti, I just didn’t think of getting you, sorry about that.”
Squid had spotted Cheryl’s car, and seen a dark figure standing there with an obvious weapon. Danny and Squid decided that the dark figure must be waiting to ambush Paul, Cheryl, and Karl when they got back. So they parked down the street and started stalking me, ready to thwart my evil plan.
Bonny was pretty proud about it, and all. “Okay, we’re not the varsity team for Paul-rescues, but I think we’re a real strong JV. Strength on the bench and all. I think we did a pretty good job. If Karl had been about to attack Paul with a ball bat, we’d’ve been right there—”
“That’s why I didn’t,” I said. “Also why I gave back Cheryl’s purse. Don’t hurt me.”
18
Tales the Madmen Never Tell
SO WE ALL went to Denny’s in Maumee, which didn’t mind groups of high school students on a weekend night. Not that they were fools about it—the Denny’s lady took one look at us and put us at a table away from other people. I ended up perched on the corner of one of those round bench things; Paul was at the center (of course), Marti sitting close beside him on one side, Bonny on the other. Cheryl faced me across the table, an
d Danny and Squid were in chairs.
We did the usual thing we did when we’d all had a scare and come through it okay; everyone had to tell everyone else the story, all at once, loud. So we did that for a while. When that had about died down, Marti said, “So I guess this is another Madman Underground story.”
“I guess so,” Paul said. “I’d like to have a few less starring roles, get more character-actor work, in the future, I think.” He was still in that drum major uniform, his folded hat like a thick black Frisbee on the table by his plate.
There was an itchy, crawly feeling behind my eyeballs. I wanted to sleep, but I wanted this more. Wedged between Squid and Bonny, I was home.
I dumped my two poached eggs into my bowl of chili and stirred them in; food helped. I thought about coffee, but maybe I would still get some sleep tonight.
The other Madmen were filling Marti in on our history and customs and stuff, I guess you could say, like several different versions of how Squid and Danny beat up the Worthless Brothers and got away with it, and the time Paul decided to take off running instead of coming along, so Cheryl tackled him and had to tell a cop he was her brother, and the night me and Paul and Kimmie and Squid and his two younger sibs ended up all sleeping at Darla’s, and it turned into sort of a batshit-weird pajama party. “No shit,” Squid said, “and then Darla starts crying because she misses her kid brother—and Marti, I mean this, she’d’ve killed Logan, sooner or later, if he’d stayed there with her. She says so herself when she ain’t crying about him being gone. And she took us on like the grand tour upstairs into all the old rooms with sheets over the furniture, like a movie haunted house or something, and she talked about her grandma and she was crying and shit the whole time. I guess she actually lives in about three rooms downstairs. I think she’s not real happy.”
“Imagine that,” Paul said, a little more sarcastic than it needed to be. He pissed me off sometimes because he’d be rude to Squid that way, and though Squid wasn’t dumb, it was easy to make him feel dumb. I hairy-eye-balled Paul, and he glared at me, and I knew it wasn’t all okay, not yet anyway, we were just having a truce in front of people.