“No.”
“Well, get ready for the experience of a lifetime. Are you ready?”
“Sure.”
I followed Skad outside. This was the first time I got to really get a good look at the Tar District. Unlike the rundown area up by Main Street, where I’d seen the homeless folks the night before, this section, the “riverfront” as Uncle Skad called it, contained actual houses. They could only be called houses in the sense that they had what passed as walls and ceilings and people living in them—they all looked so run down and broken. Standing there and looking around made Walnut seem like a row of palaces. None of these houses were taller than one story. A few of them were up on stilts. I guess that was so they’d be safe when the Saints rose but the stilts looked so decayed it seemed like they would make them fall even quicker.
The sun was huge and warm and threw crazy shadows all over the Tar District. The sun’s heat made all of those smells rise up and the whole strip reeked, fishy and oily. There wasn’t any grass to be seen. The ground was covered with what looked like roofing shingles. The only signs of life were the anemic wisps of smoke coming from the metal-looking makeshift chimneys.
Black seemed to be the dominant color here. Further up the Saints, on the opposite side, loomed the oldest of those death factories. They were already at work, pumping their black smoke up into that rich blue sky. Uncle Skad’s house sat a few yards further back than the rest of the other houses and was about half the size. It was stained a few shades darker than the other houses and the right side of it looked like it was sliding into the Saints. The black plastic covered the outside of the windows, also. In front of the house hung a black flag from a rusted flagpole.
Uncle Skad clapped his thick hands together and my attention snapped back to him. I’d been standing there staring with my mouth wide open.
“I’m so excited you’re here, Wally. I’ve been waiting to show someone my invention.”
“Invention?”
“Yes, I’ve taught my bicycle to fly.”
I became incredibly excited at him saying this. Immediately, I began picturing all sorts of things. A flying bike. It sounded magnificent but I figured it was probably about as real as the people who were following him or his visit to hell.
“Let me go get it, Wally.”
Uncle Skad disappeared around the far side of the house. I tapped my foot on the ground, looked up at the sun, and threw my head from shoulder to shoulder. Whenever I was able to move around like that, it made all of the other thoughts go away and the time passed twice as quickly.
Skad came around from the other side of the house and I stopped my thrashing. He was pedaling the bike, struggling to keep it balanced. It was a tandem bicycle, one with two seats and two sets of pedals on it. Extending from the sides were two huge white wings. If it did fly, I was sure it would be able to fly higher than any bird I’d ever seen.
Uncle Skad rang a bell on the front of it and motioned for me to hop on. Truthfully, I was almost scared. I wondered what would happen if we got going too high. I didn’t see any sort of seatbelts or anything like that on it and I wasn’t very coordinated anyway so it seemed like it would be really easy to just sort of fall right off.
“Have you been up in this thing, yet?” I asked him.
“Oh yeah... It’ll be the experience of a lifetime, Wally. You have my utmost reassurance of that. In no time at all, we will be fully ascended and flying right next to the sun, out of all this blackness.”
“What if we fall off?”
“Then it was meant to be!”
Given my theories of the game, what Uncle Skad said kind of disturbed me. I figured if someone were meant to fall off something then that someone was me. So far, I still had not technically left Milltown and I was still waiting for my rotten luck to change. I looked at the bike as though it was the grim reaper, nearly certain it would be the death of me.
“Hop on! Hop on, Wally! You worry too much! We’ll be safe as angels in this sad-looking contraption.”
Even with my premonitions of death, I was very excited to get on the winged bicycle. I rushed over and hopped on.
“You just have to be very careful not to lean. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. We have to pedal very, very fast in order to get this thing to take off.”
We both hunched our backs and laid into those pedals. The bicycle’s tires skidded in the dirt, we started pedaling so hard. I took a look back at Uncle Skad’s shack, my eyes fixing on that flagpole. I noticed the flag wasn’t entirely black, like I’d thought at first. It was the American flag, covered in dirt and pollution. The flag got smaller and smaller.
And we kept pedaling and pedaling, leaving the Tar District behind and heading for the rolling pale green meadows and sheared down, brown cornfields surrounding Milltown. I kept waiting for us to lift, wanting the closeness of the sun to melt away the chill of the wind.
We were going so fast the wind whistled in our ears. In order to be heard everything had to be shouted.
“Feel that, Wally! We are so high! Like a giant bird! I told you this was amazing!”
One of us was obviously hallucinating. We were still on the ground and, although we were going very fast, we were nowhere near flying. I decided to let Uncle Skad keep his fantasy. I needed it as much as he did. The more I played along with him, the more it felt like we were flying.
“This is great! Hooray, Uncle Skad! I can’t believe that we’re actually flying!”
“We’ll be there in no time at all!”
“Where exactly are we going!”
“No idea!”
It sounded like as good a place as any!
“How much longer!”
“Not much! You’ll know when we get there!”
Excitement mounted within me. I had no idea where we were going and I didn’t care. The momentum, the movement felt good. It was the first time since starting out that I felt like I was taking more than slowly plodding baby steps. And we pedaled and pedaled and pedaled until we were so close to that fat sun it should have melted the rubber off our tires. I wouldn’t have cared if it melted the flesh from my bones.
I’ve done it, I thought. I’ve finally left Milltown. And I had no regrets at all.
Chapter Nineteen
The Hilltop Cafe
It was amazing how much ground we covered on the bicycle. It wasn’t long before we were away from Milltown completely. It truly was a beautiful day. Out there in the countryside, the sky was a wild vibrant blue. Those fat white clouds hung there, floating slowly along like giant ships. The hillsides around us were nearly artificial-looking green. There had been enough warm days the past week and it felt like spring was here. The heat was palpable in the air. I had worked up a pretty good sweat. Uncle Skad had worked up a completely horrendous stink.
This was probably the most physical effort I had expended in years and it wasn’t long before I really started to feel it. I wanted to think my thoughts. I wanted to be able to look around at the beautiful day but I ended up bearing down, concentrating on moving my legs up and down, and focusing on the dead roach caught up in the back of Uncle Skad’s hair. Trying not to lean was another issue altogether. My head whummed with exhaustion and strain. It felt like my heart was pumping a bunch of blood into my head and it would only be a matter of time before it exploded like a red balloon. I wondered how many sixteen-year-olds who weren’t speed addicts had heart attacks. The only thing I wanted to do was lay my head on Uncle Skad’s back and take a snooze. I wondered if he would notice if I stopped pedaling completely.
Uncle Skad rang the bell on the bicycle, something he had done the entire way in order to get my attention. The sound of the wind and the heavy glubbub of the whumming made conversation nearly impossible.
“It won’t be long, Wally!”
My mouth was painfully dry. It felt like my tongue was swollen enough to take up my entire mouth so I wasn’t able to give him any type of response.
My eyes just stayed bulgy and glued to the back of Skad’s head, ragged breaths rhythmically ripped out of my mouth, my lungs furiously burning.
“Up there! That’s where we’ll stop off!”
He nodded his head in front of the bike and I managed to look up. We were about to start up a large hill. We were both still pedaling like mad, those huge white-feathered wings flapping madly up and down.
“Wow!” I think I said. I’m not really sure if anything actually came out or not. It was probably just a dry wheeze.
“Don’t worry, Wally! I’m sure this old beast’ll be able to clear that mountain!” It wasn’t the bike I was worried about.
Skad was truly amazing. When he leaned back to talk to me he didn’t even sound like he was out of breath. And then I had a crazy idea. What if I was there, on the ground, pedaling and pedaling and pedaling and Uncle Skad really was somewhere way up in the sky, flying toward the sun? Could it be that I was just confused and making the whole thing harder on myself? I looked down at his feet just to make sure that his legs were actually moving. They were, but it didn’t look like he was putting nearly the effort into it that I was. Maybe if I hadn’t given up to the whumming and the wheezing a long time ago, if I had continued to think we were flying, then maybe I wouldn’t be so exhausted now. But it was too late to start flying in my head again. I was down and we were about ready to start the hardest part.
As soon as we hit the base of the hill, the pace automatically slowed. It was a good thing my legs were numb. Whatever movement they generated was of their own free will. The sizable hill I saw became Skad’s mountain. I couldn’t do anything but look at the top of it and wait. I had faith in our legs. I had faith in the bike.
Uncle Skad rang the bell and called over his shoulder. He was able to speak in a normal voice since we were moving way too slow to create any ear friction, but he still insisted on shouting.
“We should make quite a show, Wally!”
I tried to say something and unleashed a volley of coughs instead.
“You okay back there, Wally!”
“Fine, fine,” I managed. “Where are we going?”
“I told you! Anywhere! But first I thought we’d stop and get a bite to eat! I’ll buy!”
“Sounds great. Are we almost there?”
“Top of the mountain, Wally! It’s called the Hilltop Cafe! A wonderful place! We’ll be there in no time! Just enjoy the ride!”
We were going slow enough for me to look around again. It must have been late afternoon sometime. The hill was covered in trees. The air felt cooler since we were in constant shade and everything smelled woody. I always found the woods to be slightly creepy. They seemed completely disorienting, like you’d never be able to remember where you were. And the further you looked into them, the darker it became. I imagined people living in secret houses and doing secret things like making moonshine and fucking relatives. Both of us were up off our seats, putting some weight into the thrusts and taking some of the strain off our legs. The road wound and twisted to the top of the hill. I knew this made it less steep but it seemed to draw the excursion out to a nearly epic proportion.
A huge car headed straight for us before swerving and honking its horn. I realized that cars had been passing us all day. If I’d been more aware, this would have made me kind of nervous but I was too busy with everything, I guess. Uncle Skad had that effect on me. I didn’t think it would be possible for me to feel unsafe around him. It had been under twenty-four hours since we met and I already felt comfortable. I hadn’t really said much to Skad since telling him my story yesterday, which was another thing. I didn’t feel compelled to talk, like I should just say stuff for the hell of it, but I did feel like I could blurt things out. If I had a thought I could go ahead and say it.
My stomach started growling and I wondered where the hell this restaurant Skad was talking about was. The trees gradually thinned and the ground gradually leveled.
“Any minute now!” Uncle Skad shouted. I really hoped he’d stop doing that soon. “We won’t take this bird through town!”
We rode it for a few more yards. Once we reached the leveled top of the hill it felt like we were gliding along on ball bearings. We were at the edge of a very small town. Actually, calling it a town was, more or less, hyperbole. It was more like the fractured remains of a town. The top of the hill really wasn’t large enough to contain an entire society. To my right I saw the Hilltop Cafe, a small, rundown-looking restaurant. A large red neon sign on its roof flashed “EAT” into the coming dusk. Across the street, to my left, there was a football field, the gruff shouts and plastic clatter of helmets and pads echoing through the quiet. On the far side of the hill were a few houses, built there for the view, no doubt. A gas station sat beside the Hilltop. On the left side of the road, where the football field was, there were a couple of other two-story brick structures. I couldn’t tell what they were. I didn’t really give a fuck, either. I was ravenous.
We rode the bike over to the side of the road and got off. My legs nearly rubberbanded me to the ground. We pushed the bike over into the edge of the woods.
“How’d you like the trip, Wally?”
“It was all right, I guess.”
“It was fantastic!”
“Fantastic!”
“We’ll leave this baby right here. Let’s go get some food.”
“Thanks for being so nice, Uncle Skad.”
“Hell. Thank Otto, it’s his money. May he rest in peace. Otto was an expert panhandler and he didn’t drink so he had a good amount socked away.”
Both of us walked very slowly toward the restaurant. It was pretty windy there at the top of the hill and the air was starting to moisten a little. It would probably rain all day tomorrow, I figured. The air smelled much better up here than down in Milltown. I could smell the dirt and the grass—all the smells were good clean smells. And as we got closer to the restaurant, I could smell even better smells, the toasting of bread, the frying of flesh and boiling vats of fat.
Skad took a deep breath. “Ah, the best food this side of the carnival, Wally. You get whatever you want.”
The glass door jingled as Skad swung it open. The only people in there were a family sitting over in a corner booth. None of the waitresses were visible. I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to urinate. Apparently Skad also had the urge to urinate. We matched each other step for step, our shoes sticking to the yellow tiled floor, as we retreated for the obscure back location that harbored most bathrooms. In this one, you had to open a door to a small vestibule before the actual bathroom door. I got my hand on the handle first and then Uncle Skad’s covered mine. We paused as though both of us were locked in some form of homophobic dilemma. Skad looked me in the eye and issued a challenge: “This is okay. We can have a pee race if you feel up for it."
I didn’t grow up with any brothers or any fuckness like that and when Racecar pissed he had to sit down, so I didn’t really know what the hell a pee race was.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s easy. There’s nothing to it. Just do what you normally do.”
We crowded into the small bathroom and quickly shut the door. Skad kicked up the toilet seat and had his pants unzipped before I even knew what was going on. He dangled his penis over the bowl and gave it a shake. I unzipped my pants and fished around for my penis. I chuckled with the absurdity of it all. Normally my penis was sucked back into the body cavity. That probably came from being so high- strung. I looked down and saw Skad had already started, his piss pretty much the color of the bathroom. I had trouble starting. I’ve always been a little bit pee shy. I almost never went at school but if I did I had to use a stall. Skad had a really respectable-looking dick. I was sure he had it named something really masculine like Brock or Rocky or some fuckness like that. Mine looked weak. Long and skinny. A real Mr. Lawrence.
Finally, I started up, the piss screaming out of me. There was nothing like a good piss after a long wait. I was s
ort of surprised anything came out. Skad’s stream was slow and steady, heavy-sounding. Mine was the urinary equivalent of a greyhound. The two streams crossed each other, bubbling in the once clear water. Skad’s stream slowly ground to a halt. It looked like he had won. A few seconds later, I finished. Skad’s dick suddenly let go with a couple more spurts and he shook it vigorously. He held the entire thing in his hand while he urinated whereas I’d normally only had to use a couple of fingers or perhaps a thumb delicately pressing down on the head. Anyway, now it looked like I had won.
“Damn that prostate,” Uncle Skad said. He zippered up and looked at me. “Congratulations, Wally, you’re the first person to beat me in a pee race. Maybe I should retire. Wallace Black. The new pee race champion!”
“Hooray!” I said.
“Okay, let me walk out first. When I get to the booth and sit down, you go ahead and come out. Don’t want people to think we’re weird.”
Skad left the dim bathroom vestibule, picked a booth in front of the window and sat down. Once he got a cigarette lit, I went ahead and walked out too. I walked quickly and with my head down. The only time I was really conscious of the horns’ weight was when I lowered my head like that. This really felt like the first time I’d been out in public daylight since tooling around Milltown in the wheelchair yesterday morning. Christ, that was only the day before! It felt like a fucking century ago. After I got to the booth and sat down, I felt a little less self-conscious. I mean, I was used to being a freak anyway so you’d think I’d just be able to shut out those voices around me. But it was just the opposite. As soon as I went anywhere in public my body established some form of hyperawareness to the mocking voices around me.
For instance, when I got to that booth and sat down, I heard a little girl from the family table over in the corner say, “What’s wrong with that man?”
The mother whispered something in her ear, I couldn’t quite make out everything she said, but I’m pretty sure I heard the word “dangerous” in there. That made me want to laugh. I found the notion absurd. Maybe someone who knew about the murders would think I was dangerous but I didn’t think the horns made me look dangerous. I figured it probably had more of the effect of watching a prepubescent boy struggle with his first set of weights. Nevertheless, after hearing that, after knowing I’d been noticed, I sat there in dread. I sat there in dread because I kept waiting for some sort of macho instinct to kick in with the father of the family, like he’d have to come over to our table and kick the shit out of me and Uncle Skad to show his family how protective he was. But he made no attempt to stand up. He just kept glancing back over his shoulder to make sure we weren’t moving in to rape, rob, and loot his family.
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