“Sure. You look like you’ve been through a lot. We humans hafta help each other out. Besides, you don’t look like you’d hurt a flea. Follow me.”
I stood up, sluggish, and followed her back through the vaguely depressing and dimly lit family room all the way to the far end where brown carpeted steps led to the upstairs. Maria turned a light switch and I followed her up the steps, my legs straining. Sleep will do me good, I thought. A night of genuine rest. It occurred to me that I hadn’t slept on an actual bed for years.
I followed Maria down the hall. She pushed a door to her right open and said, “That’s the bathroom up here. If you wake up in the middle of the night you don’t have to go all the way downstairs.” She took a couple more steps and opened a door. She stepped across the threshold and turned on a light. “This is the guest bedroom. Just make yourself at home. Me and Boo’ll be right across the hall if you need anything. We’ll probably just eat dinner when he gets home and then we’ll probably go to bed.”
“Thank you.”
I walked into the bedroom and kind of stood there. She took a step toward me and looked at me with that curious stare. She put her hand on my forehead and said, “Still kind of warm.”
“I feel fine. Really. I’m sure sleep’ll do me a lot of good. Thanks.”
“I guess I’ll just leave you alone, then.”
She shut the door behind her when she left. I wandered around the room, kind of pacing, feeling the plush carpet mush beneath my feet, looking around the room. A small lamp with what I figured must have been a 40-watt bulb illuminated the room. The walls were primarily yellow, light pink flowers spaced throughout at wide intervals.
The dresser shoved against the wall had a large sparkly mirror on top of it. I avoided looking at myself. I dragged the dark green comforter off the bed and threw it over the dresser. The one window in the room looked over the churchyard. The church itself was a huge brick thing. I noticed the graveyard behind it. It was one of the old graveyards with the gargantuan tombstones sprinkled with a few heavy square mausoleums. I waited for the melancholy feelings to hit me, that giant wave of sadness. But standing there I didn’t feel much of anything at all. Like my emotions had just run up on a brick wall. I seized the opportunity. I pulled back the skin-colored blanket and climbed into bed. Maybe I would let this feeling give me a good night’s sleep but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let it lull me into a sense of complacency. Some moments I might be exuberant and other moments I might be melancholic but complacency—the complacency would allow the fuckness to trample all over me. And I knew the fuckness wasn’t gone. It was simply poised in some dark corner like a snake.
It took me longer to fall asleep than I thought it would. The house was entirely quiet. Like an intimidating void. I couldn’t hear the wind or the big machines wrestling with sheets of steel, or the dark railroad speeding through the night. Lying there wide awake, I thought to myself, this is sleep. Being awake in that house was as good as being asleep. Maybe I was just being cynical. I didn’t know these people, these Thiklets, but I imagined them. Tomorrow was Sunday. They would undoubtedly rise and go to church. They’d get all dressed up too, a brimstone-threatening end to their complacent week. A few hours of being bombarded with fiery hells and mortal sins and morals, morals, morals. Then the week would begin anew. Maria Thiklet would run around town, rushing to pay bills, buy groceries, running home and hurriedly preparing dinner for Boo. I was sure Boo was a real cockwrinkle. Gotta work to pay the bills. Gotta pay the bills to live. There may have been fun in Boo’s world but it was probably the kind of fun you had to buy. I was sure he came home and sat down in that big recliner I’d seen downstairs, pressing his tainted ass-reek into the buttocks- indented cushion. I imagined him sitting there, maybe drinking some beer and watching auto racing on TV. Maybe he just sat there and made Maria give him head, the crumbs from his sandwich dropping onto the top of her head. He probably asked her to hop off so he could shoot his wad into her face. “But it gets in my eyelashes,” she’d complain. And I was sure he didn’t just blow farts but was also the type of person to comment on the flatulence. “Whoo hoo,” he’d say, waving his hand in the air and wrinkling his nose, “‘bout ripped the seat of my pants out on that one.” A real cockwrinkle.
And what would I be when I was that age? Would I be anything? If this is what I became by going and getting a good job as a steelworker, how would I tolerate it. I would have to find some illicit habit to throw my money toward. Some type of heavy narcotic that would sugarcoat the daily death march to work every day. Every fucking day. How could anybody do anything every fucking day of his life. That certainly wasn’t what I wanted. I just wanted the fuckness to go away. Maybe the parents weren’t too bad. Maybe the fighting made me happy. Maybe being someplace where my bitterness and anger was completely understood was just what I needed. I decided I’d start back home the next day. I was tired. The burning in my lungs and the nearly constant whumming in my head told me that I was probably sick. I didn’t think I’d be able to spend the rest of my life running. I would go home and pretend nothing happened. I could probably do that. It’s what I did most days anyway. It’s what I had to do because most days, something did happen. Maybe somehow, I kidded myself, the parents were still alive. I could only hope the parents would be more enthralled by having me back safe and sound than the fact that I’d put them through a couple days of hell. Maybe I could tell them I was abducted. Maybe as I rubbed some sort of burn salve on them I’d ask, “How did this happen? Me? Oh, no, I was out in Farmertown finding myself.”
And that was what scared me the most, wasn’t it? The fact that, maybe there wasn’t a self to find.
The thought of that overwhelmed me to sleep.
Another short sleep, another vivid dream.
Some dreams are seen from my eyes. Some dreams are seen from some place far above. This was one of those dreams. Below me was a dark forest but the trees were jaggedly cut sheets of metal with corrugated iron trunks. The trees were tall, huge, the forest floor littered with cans and bolts and shredded tarpaper. The parents were down there. Not the vibrant parents of the last dream. These parents were the rundown gutter version of those people. The father wore a stained white t-shirt stretched over an enormous gut. Blackened jeans truncated at the tops of his thighs. His shiny new legs were now thickly rusted iron springs. He bounced heavily around the forest floor. The mother drank her gin out of a pitcher, sloshing the brownish-tinged liquid down her chin. Even from my vantage point, I could tell she had had another stroke, something in the way she carried herself. She wore no wig at all, strands of gray-black hair pasted down to her filthy scalp. They both scurried around, kicking the stuff on the ground away, occasionally bending down to move something with their hands. They were looking for something.
“Wallace,” the Racecar called.
“Wallace,” the mother strumbled. “Where’s Wallace?”
“Wally!”
They got moving faster and faster. I felt dizzy and sick, saddened at their downtrodden appearance and hopeless search. A terrible screeching filled the dream, the sound of one of those giant iron trees slowly loosing itself, pulling its bolts up out of the forest floor, and heading straight for the parents. I looked away, up at the moon, filled with Maria Thiklet’s face.
“Wallace!”
Then I woke up. The room was dark and at first I didn’t know where I was. Once I remembered, I figured Maria must have slipped in and turned off the light.
The room was dark but the house wasn’t still and whatever complacency I’d felt before was gone. I heard Maria sobbing. Then I heard Boo, the beloved husband.
“What the hell you doin bringin a fuckin freak in mah house?”
I was immediately gripped by fear. It was like hearing him talk, from the accent to the tone of the things that actually came out of his mouth, proved my assumptions true. Here was a grownup Bucky Swarth, swelled up to hideous adult proportions. A giant cockwrinkle.
&nbs
p; “What was I supposed to do, just leave him laying there?”
“Somebody woulda come and picked eem up. Why’d you gotta go and make it our problem?”
“He’s not a problem. It’s good to do things like this.”
“You think you know what’s good? He’s in there layin in his own stink. You know what he smells like? Smells like death. What he done to get himself here? You ever thoughta that? You don’t know what’s good. Whatcha oughta do is be waitin here for me with yer legs open when I get home. That’s what’d be good.”
“You’d be so drunk you couldn’t get it up.” The hatred in her voice surprised even me and I didn’t even know her.
There was a struggle after that. I heard thumping. And then silence.
The rest of the night I lay there, hating God, hating the parents and myself and everything. Of all the places for that rope, that force to bring me, why did it have to be here? I’d get out. I’d wait until the Thiklets were asleep. I’d find my shoes and I’d get the hell out. Probably go back home. Maybe I would go ahead and turn myself in. I’d only been away two nights and I already had the feeling there wasn’t going to be anything better further down the line. I’d just get more and more beaten down as the world clawed at my soul.
I just kept thinking thoughts like that, lying there stiff as a board as my fever or whatever the fuck it was broke me into a cold sweat. The thoughts went around and around, creating that other emotion besides the exuberance and the melancholy sadness, the red panic. I’d felt the red panic at school a few times, had out and out fled on one of those occasions, but never like this. The worst thing about the red panic was that it only created the feelings and no solutions, no way out. The only way out, I figured, was the red crawlies. My body was so rigid I felt like it was cutting into the bed. Before I knew it, it was dawn and then, I don’t know how, but I drifted back to sleep. A cool, calm, dreamless sleep.
Chapter Twenty-two
Building a Secret Place
I woke up to a knocking on the door. It was Maria.
“Wallace. I cooked us breakfast.”
“Thanks,” I called.
I jumped out of bed and something pinched my hipbone. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the lighter Drifter Ken had given me. I yanked the comforter off the dresser and threw it on the bed. I put the lighter on the dresser. Turning around, I set about making up the bed. I’d never done this before. Of course, ever since I’d been of bed making age I hadn’t really had a bed to make. I’m sure I did a horrible job, but I tried. It didn’t look nearly as good as it had before I’d slept on it. The comforter was all wrinkled- looking, sad and pathetic, the Mr. Lawrence of comforters. It didn’t seem nearly large enough to fit the bed. I gave it a quick smoothing with my hand and went downstairs.
Sunlight filled the entire house and I felt good. I’d tell Maria I was leaving after breakfast and then I’d do it. Maybe I’d wander around Farmertown a little and look at all of the old buildings. Then I guessed I’d go back home to Walnut and see if the house was still there. I still didn’t know if I’d go in or not, but I’d at least go by.
Maria had cooked bacon and eggs and toast for breakfast. That food mingled with the smell of coffee and all of it seemed really comforting. Maria was already sitting down. She looked up at me. “Help yourself,” she said.
If she looked tired yesterday, she looked outright beaten down today. As we ate, there was none of the chatter that accompanied the dinner last night. When we were finished she asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Good. Actually, really good.”
“Good.” She smiled.
I thought it would be easy to tell her I wanted to leave. I thought it would be even easier to do the actual leaving but as I looked at her, sadly smiling over her half-eaten breakfast and mug of coffee, something inside of me didn’t really want to go. Rather, there was something inside of me that told me I should stay.
“Where did you put my shoes?” I asked, staring down at my plate.
“They’re in the living room. Are you leaving?”
“I think so.”
“You should stick around. Boo said he really wanted to meet you.”
“I think I’m gonna go back home.”
“Look, stick around for dinner and one of us’ll drive you home tonight. Where are you from?”
“Milltown.”
“That’s not an easy walk.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“I’m making roast beef. It’ll be really good. Besides, I could kind of use the company.”
“Okay,” I mumbled. Maybe I was just flattered that someone wanted my company.
“Staying?” she asked.
I nodded my head.
“Great,” she said.
Her beaten down quality lifted and there now seemed something more genuine about her. She might be more entertaining today.
We got up from the table and scraped our plates over the trash. I helped her with the dishes. After the dishes, I followed her around the house, listening to her talk about just about everything as I stood by, completely useless. Once the living room was completely restored to a condition very similar to what it was already in, she flopped down on the couch.
“The best thing about cleaning the house is sitting down afterwards,” she said with an exasperated sigh.
“I guess,” I said. But I didn’t sit down. I think I was still waiting to leave. I never really liked sitting down on couches anyway. I would gladly sleep, but it was rare for me to just sit down on a couch and not do anything at all.
“You like music?”
“Some of it, I guess.”
Maria got back up off the couch and went over by the television, where the stereo system was. She bent down and flipped through a small record collection. The afternoon sunlight came in through the glass sliding door at the back of the house. Last night it hadn’t seemed like the house was capable of being this bright. I watched Maria put the record on the player and drop the needle down.
A familiar music filled the room.
“Bobby DeHaven,” she said.
“I know. He’s my favorite.”
“It’s pretty good stuff. You like to dance?”
This was an interesting question. I didn’t really know if I liked to dance or if, upon hearing Bobby DeHaven, I was simply filled with an overwhelming urge to dance. Nevertheless, dancing made me happy, so I said, “Yes.” I knew my particular style of dancing was somewhat embarrassing and probably painful to watch, but I figured I’d be gone soon anyway, so what did it matter?
Fuck it. Right? And to think, it wasn’t that long ago I’d actually entertained thoughts about being a backup dancer for Bobby DeHaven. Why had that not seemed insane at the time? It certainly struck me as ludicrous now.
She started dancing first, swishing her hips around, her long khaki skirt billowing out from her legs. She opened her arms, beckoning for me to join her. I moved in, tentatively at first, not sure how to really dance while conjoined with someone else. Her arms encircled me and she dragged me into her laughing warmth. How could I not feel happy? Pressed up against her body, I felt ecstatic. The firmness of her breasts sunk into my stomach. We turned around and around in circles, feverishly matching the music. She kept pulling me into her as we drifted toward the couch. I think she meant to pull me down with her, but I stayed upright, letting her crash there on the couch by herself. I burst into my one-man routine—the one I worked on in my room by myself. I hadn’t danced like that in some time and figured I might be rusty. But it was just the opposite, as though the break had done me some good. My movements were quick and precise. The weight of the horns on my head added some excitement, as though they threatened to throw me off balance. I must have gone like that for some time, throwing myself all around the living room, Maria unabashedly laughing. Before I knew it, the side was over and I was standing over by the sliding doors.
“Why don’t you turn the side over and come take a rest.”
Maria turned sideways on the couch, so that she was facing me, tucking her feet up under her legs.
“That certainly was unique,” she said. “Where’d you learn to dance like that?”
“On my own.”
Looking at Maria, curled up there on the couch, made me think of her completely differently than I had the night before. Maybe it was just the dancing, but it kind of felt like we’d created some secret world between just the two of us. She had danced with me, something I didn’t think anybody else would ever do. And I had helped her with the dishes and cleaning the house, which I would say nobody else ever helped her do. And I also thought I knew something else that I doubted anyone else did.
Suddenly, I realized what that peculiar look on her face was last night. She hated Boo Thiklet. Probably with a great unabiding passion. I’d only heard him talk for a few minutes and I hated him.
“Nobody ever dances with me,” she said.
“Me either,” I said right back.
“It felt kind of good.”
“It sure did.”
“It’s nice to have company. Someone to talk to. Boo won’t even let me keep a pet so I just wander around here most days talking to myself like a crazy woman.” She laughed, a light breathy thing. “I guess we’re all a little crazy sometimes, huh?”
“I guess.”
A sudden wave of self-consciousness swept over me. It coincided directly with the fact that, at that moment, I found Maria Thiklet incredibly attractive. And it wasn’t a trashy kind of attractiveness that blobby Mary Lou Dover exuded at school. It wasn’t even the attractiveness I’d found in her when I first came to on the couch. It was something else. It was the way she did things. Or maybe it was the way she acted. She seemed innocently imprisoned in her house with her husband as the captor and yet she brought me in from outside and hadn’t even mentioned my goddamn horns. And my self-consciousness didn’t have anything to do with the way I looked. I just started thinking about how I should act and, top priority, how I smelled. I remembered Boo Thiklet saying I smelled like death last night. That was probably while I was in there wrestling with my fever. Sometimes, if you just let it go, stink will die down a little. But when you sweat, like after dancing for a half an hour, it’ll break that stink open so it’s a degree worse than it was before. Sitting on the couch, I was incredibly aware of my stink.
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