Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet

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Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet Page 6

by Joanne Proulx


  Kite had been odd. He’d given us this endless tour of his house and we’d all had to pretend to be amazed by the ceiling moldings and the walk-in closets and the TV in the can (which was cool) and the wood-paneled library with the fake books and the purple living room that had just been “done” by a Chicago decorator and the lounge with the hand-carved pool table which none of us were allowed to touch. Then the equally odd Mrs. Kite, wearing this tight gold dress, fed us crappy Costco lasagna off paper plates before forcing all the kids to go swimming even though it was a cock-shrinking sixty degrees outside. I’d silently protested by pissing in the pool and have since refused to attend any of the Kites’ other functions. And seriously, unless my dad is a completely different person than I think him to be, I have no idea how he manages to work with Mr. Kite day after day. No idea.

  A couple blocks past the boss’s place, the stately houses came to an abrupt halt at McCreary Park. The rich people pressed enough cash into someone’s hands to keep it lush and vagrant free, and a new, all-American bandstand stood whitewashed against the greenery at the back of the property. However, Water Street turned a little sour on the other side of the park, where things went retail. The redbrick buildings were still standing, but all the decent stores had either shut down or moved out to the mall when Wal-Mart set up shop on the outskirts of town. Downtown was left with the little branch of the Michigan Savings and Loan where my mom worked, the doughnut hole, the two-screen Royal Cinema, Burton’s pharmacy, a pawnshop and, of course, Hank’s T-Shirt Shack.

  I slowed up to check out Hank’s window display—all tackedup Ts, glass pipes, bongs and black velvet boards of jewelry—then ground to a halt at the entrance. The door was shedding thick curls of lime green paint and, like every place in town, there was a flyer taped to the glass. ASTELLE JORDAN. MISSING, announced the big black letters at the top of the poster. Underneath the catchy title, a pretty, smiling face afloat in a sea of long, wavy curls. Below that, in smaller letters, the stats: Sixteen years of age, five feet three inches, 110 pounds. Brown hair, brown eyes. Last seen, Subway Restaurant, October 3, 2002, 4:15 P.M. Lace-up Mavi jeans. Dark gray Nike running shoes. Red “Fantasy” shirt. Blue Adidas backpack. Seen Astelle? Better give the Stokum police department a ring.

  I didn’t know her. She went to the Catholic school on the other side of town. I might have seen her at a basketball game or two, I wasn’t sure; there were a lot of hotties at St. Pete’s. Still, I recognized her from the onslaught of media exposure her smiling face had received since her disappearance. And I couldn’t help thinking about the weeping older version of that same face standing behind a quivering flyer, pleading for help on the evening news for the past few weeks. It was probably just a couple dead men doing their voodoo death whisper in my ear, but I definitely wasn’t getting a good vibe from the girl on the glass. I gave the tail of my deck a kick. My board jumped into my hand. Avoiding contact with the poster, I pushed my way into the Shack.

  I shoved my board in the battered umbrella stand inside and checked out the dude behind the counter. Shaved, various piercings, fat tribal tattoo around his left arm—the usual tough-guy shit. I’d never seen him before and, seeing how I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat, I toured the store, hoping Hank would presto soon.

  The new guy behind the counter stared at me, probably thinking I was about to stuff some product down my pants and split, but I didn’t care. I was in no rush, so I just holed up in my hoodie and fingered the merchandise, worrying the dude behind the counter. And for just a minute, and for the first time since he died, I let down the gate and I thought about my buddy Stan.

  Last year was the 150th anniversary of Stokum becoming a town or some such nonsense, and Mr. Tanner, the principal at Jefferson, had gotten all jissy about it. He’d declared September Community Spirit Month, decided everyone at school would be involved and started assigning all the projects he’d cooked up over the summer. Most of the kids in my homeroom class had to work with this old bag from the local museum setting up a display in the school foyer, laying out the history of our great town, which was just as boring as it sounds. Stan and I got assigned the fund-raising gig for the sophomore year, going head to head with the other grades to see who could raise the most money for the new wetlands park the city was throwing up on the outskirts of town. The park was going to be littered with wild grasses and bulrushes and ponds for frogs and migrating ducks (since all the natural habitats within a thousand miles had been destroyed by unfettered development, as my mom pointed out that evening at dinner). According to Tanner, who’d leaned across his desk with his eyes ablaze and a determined finger pointed at me, Stan and the other fund-raisers/hostages, this watery utopia deserved our most committed efforts.

  Stan and I weren’t really friends at this point, but we’d locked eyes that day in Tanner’s office, exchanged an in-sync what-acomplete-asshole look, and I guess we just moved forward from there. I think Stan appreciated my low-key wit and I picked up on his enthusiasm for kicking the competition. We settled on the T-shirt idea pretty quickly and I came up with the slogan in about five seconds. While I was in my room designing the logo on the computer, Stan completely chatted up my dad, convincing him to get Kalbro to donate two hundred dollars to the cause. Seed money in hand, we’d headed to Hank’s to make a deal.

  Hank was a middle-aged guy with a wig of wiry black hair and a largish, slogan-slathered gut. The first time we went into the Shack, he was sporting a neat white shirt emblazoned with a distinguished-looking crest announcing his membership in the Eastern Seaboard Pervert Association. He’d been cool with us at first, but Stan had warmed him up fast, telling him what we were up to, stressing our desire for the cheapest shirts available—any color, any size, any vintage. Sensing a business opportunity, Hank escorted us into the back room and grabbed a couple beat-up boxes from a top shelf loaded with similar-looking cardboard refugees. (When I told my dad about this later, he got a glint in his eye and said this was a perfect example of the problems associated with supply chain management, albeit on a much smaller scale than the ones he dealt with at Kalbro. Christ.) When we opened the boxes up, we found a payload of raunchy, orangey red T-shirts faded out in places and with the odd ripped seam adding character. One box was all XLs, which would do for the guys, the other all XSs, which Stan and I imagined wrapping nicely around the Jefferson girls’ tits. We settled on a buck a shirt for two hundred shirts, and after Hank saw our logo, he said in the name of community he’d print them up for free.

  It was already near the end of September when we set up our booth (the two boxes stacked one on top of the other) in the school foyer, right beside this wooden statue of Stokum’s founding father, Mr. R.J. Stokum, inventor of the then new and improved Red Stokum wheat, a hearty fall strain which was more resistant to insects and cold than any other wheat at the time. Yee-haw! By way of advertising, Stan wiggled into one of the XS shirts and I threw on one of the XLs, and charging twelve bucks a shirt we sold out our Stokum Sucks Ts before the end of the lunch hour. I think every kid at Jefferson bought one, and although we never saw her wear it, we definitely outfitted Mrs. Hayward, our English teacher, with an XL model, and rumor had it that Ms. Banks slipped one of the library regulars some dough to buy her one too.

  Of course, there were complaints. My mom rolled her eyes when she saw the shirts and called me an idiot, and once our customers started sporting their new garb at school, some of the teachers got to grumbling. Needless to say, Principal Tanner wasn’t pleased. He dragged us into his office and gave us this long speech about how we’d sullied the spirit of the campaign, how we should be ashamed of our smart-ass cleverness, which wouldn’t get us far in life, whang, whang, whang. When we plopped the $2,400 down on his desk, he kind of shut up. Still, it nearly killed him to hand over the fund-raising award at the assembly at the end of the month. Stokum’s mayor was on hand to receive the loot and, despite all the organizing of dunk tanks and bottle drives and bake sales, the entire school only raised
$4,363, which demonstrates just how hard Stan and I had spanked everyone’s asses with our one lunch hour of work.

  When we went up on stage to get our certificate, the whole auditorium, a virtual sea of pukish orangey red, erupted into a “Stokum sucks, Stokum sucks” chant. Tanner went all red and hid behind the big cardboard check he was about to hand over, but the mayor, trying to demonstrate his hipness, joined the chorus, pumping his fist in the air campaign-style, trash-talking his city, while Stan and I laughed our asses off.

  I was sort of lost in all this, probably even had a smile lighting up my gob, when a loud voice slapped at me. “Hey, are you gonna buy something or just fondle the shirts or what?”

  I looked up. I’d forgotten the tough guy behind the desk. “I’m here to see Hank. I’m one of the … Is he going to be here soon or what?”

  A shrug of shoulders. “He’s the boss man, not me.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. What time does he usually get here?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “What’s it to me?” My bright-light face went dark. “I need to fucking see him, that’s what.”

  “I’m not allowed to give out details about his comings and goings.”

  I shook my head at that. “Hank will be pleased his new employee has boned up on all the shop’s privacy rules and regs.”

  The dude crossed his arms over his chest and his mouth pinched into an anal little pucker, causing his nose and lip rings to do a mating dance sort of thing right there on his face. “Listen, I don’t know what your problem is, but—”

  “I don’t have a problem.” I planted my hands on my hips and widened my stance.

  “Yeah, you do. You have a completely fucked-up attitude, for one thing.”

  “Really? I have a fucked-up attitude? Maybe you should give me the name of your charm school, asshole.”

  He pushed himself off his stool and came around the counter. Unfortunately, he was a lot bigger than he’d looked sitting down. I stood my ground and, so he could see how scared I wasn’t, I stepped away from the rack of shirts and yanked my hood down.

  He totally pulled up. “Holy shit! You’re that kid.” He ran his hand over his bald head and, despite the tattoos and the protruding hardware, his facade cracked, leaving him looking all pierced and pathetic. “I saw you on the news. I mean, I saw your picture. It was a shitty shot, but seriously, you look like total crap. Are you okay? You an addict or something?”

  “Working on it.”

  “Yeah, like, who isn’t?” he said, laughing, but in a real shaky sort of way.

  He was already back behind the counter by the time I settled myself into the window display. He kept staring at me, though, checking the clock, staring at me, drumming his fingers on the display case, rattling the gear inside. Then more staring, more clock checking, more drumming. The whole thing was fairly painful, and I was thinking about going over and smashing his noisy fingers into the countertop when he suddenly sparked up a conversation.

  “The Prophet of Death,” he said, shaking his shiny head. “Goddamn. Death predictions. Goddamn. Stuff like that really freaks me out.”

  “Really?” I mean, the air was thick with his nervousness. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not expecting you to bite it anytime soon.”

  He shook out a laugh, recommenced with the finger tam-tams. “I believe in all that stuff, though,” he said in this confidential tone, like I might have cared. He was full-on gaping at me now, obviously no longer concerned with the time. I could practically see his gears grinding, just knew he was going to come up with something good. “So … how’d you do it?” he finally asked. Like it was some sort of trick.

  I offered a “No fucking idea” and pulled my hood back up. He went quiet for a while and I thought he was going to leave me alone. He wasn’t.

  “So, like, did you know for a long time the other kid was gonna die? Or did it, like, come to you all at once, or what?” The fact that I wasn’t responding didn’t seem to slow him down. “What I can’t figure out is, if you knew it was going to happen, why didn’t you do something? That’s what I don’t get.”

  I’d had enough of his stream-of-consciousness crap. I headed for the door, had almost escaped when Hank came out of the storeroom. When he saw me, he sputtered to a halt. Yeah, an eyeful of me had old Hank totally stun-gunned, and I could just tell it had been a stupid idea to drop by the Shack. Like I could just go up to people, like some regular person, like someone who hadn’t known his friend was going to die, and say what? Jesus. What an idiot. I grabbed my board and threw the door open. But before I could bail, Hank kicked it into gear and he was right there, outside, beside me.

  “Sorry about that, Luke. I was just—just surprised to see you,” Hank said quietly.

  His T-shirt wasn’t as reserved. Tact is for people too dumb to be sarcastic, it announced in huge white letters. Except for the shirt— one of my favorites—I did not like what I saw when I looked at Hank. His mouth was a hard, tight line. His eyes were liquid. And he kept swallowing, trying to gag down a whack of big sloppy emotions. Right away I could see he was dangerous. And he was contagious. Just one gulp of him had my throat, my chest, my gut so tight. Then he tried to talk, another mistake, because his voice was all quivery and weak.

  “I was just thinking about Stan, in the back room there.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s all I can think about. It’s really hit me, Luke.” He ran an arm under his nose, half smothering a wet-sounding snort. “It’s just so terrible. I mean, he was so young. He was so, so—”

  I held up my hand, straight-armed his words like some nimble running back, so he’d stop and I could escape before the monster wave of guilt and grief and whatever else was rising inside me completely wiped me out. But Hank was quick. I’d dropped my board, already had one foot on deck, when he grabbed my arm and pulled an envelope from his back pocket.

  “These were for you. For you and Stan. I’ve been carrying them around for days, wondering what to do with them. Take them.” He shoved the envelope into my hand, then bolted for the store.

  I took off across the street. I only glanced back once. Through the pane of glass, Hank was watching me roll away, looking all white and scared behind the smiling face of the dead girl on the door.

  I ripped into an alley down the block to reconstruct myself and to shake off the aftershocks of Hank. It took a while, a good long while, before I could even deal with the envelope. Inside, a folded sheet of paper and two tickets. The Chili Peppers, in Detroit, in December. Got these as a promo. The words scrawled across the page. Thought of you guys right away. Have a blast. Your buddy, Hank. I sat on my board. I laid my head in my hands. In that narrow alley, with everything looming large, I felt so small, small enough to be crushed by the weight of a couple goddamn tickets.

  AFTER THE PATHETIC BACK-ALLEY DRAMA, I headed to Burton’s pharmacy, which had been the real purpose of the trip downtown. The Shack had been a stupid detour, one that had only reinvigorated my quest for Trazon and the necessity of putting as much distance between me and myself as possible. I was hoping I could talk my way into a refill, although the empty bottle I’d jammed in my pocket that morning clearly indicated none was available. I mumbled my problem to the pharmacist, some young, clean-cut guy in a lab coat who, one step up, had a good twelve-inch height advantage on me. Peering up, I explained how I’d somehow lost or dropped some or most of the pills into the toilet and/or sink and that I was in need and would he mind very much phoning Dr. Cramp to see if he could refill the prescription over the phone.

  The guy behind the counter shoved his hands into his deep white pockets and leaned back like he was trying to distance himself from a particularly stale fart or something. He gave me a tight-mouthed look, making it clear that he was disappointed by my lack of originality while at the same time revealing himself as a master spotter of prescription junkies. He shook his head at me, just in case I was too out of it to pick up on the look, before turning around witho
ut saying a word.

  He went and chatted up some lady loitering amongst the drugs, clipboard in hand. She took the bottle, read the label, moved her glasses down her nose and checked me out. Then, heads in close, the two of them started whispering and the dickweed who’d been harassing me suddenly turned to stare, and I knew The Prophet had been fingered. I thought about just taking off, figured I was out of luck anyway and that I’d have to track down Dwight Slater between press interviews to see if he had anything stronger than skank weed stashed in his locker. But the lady started flipping through her clipboard, tugged a sheet out and handed it to the guy. A couple minutes later he returned, carrying a neat white and green Burton’s pharmacy bag, which he efficiently stapled closed.

  “That’ll be $18.65,” he said, handing it over. I must have looked a bit stunned or something, because as he dumped my change into my hand he added, “The refill was faxed in this morning.”

  I was thrilled. I didn’t give the mystery fax a second thought. What I did was give the asshole in the lab coat a big fuck-you smile, making it clear I was pleased by the power shift that had just taken place while at the same time revealing myself as a big Dr. Cramp supporter. And just in case he was too out of it to pick up on the subtlety of the smile, I gave him the finger, then left without saying a word.

  EIGHT

  With a locked-down supply of drugs, I managed to wipe out the rest of October and the first half of November. The days sort of ran together, with me floating through a blurry obstacle course of worried faces, a multitude of moving mouths, everything safely on the other side of my Trazon bubble. I knew it wasn’t the best way to be spending my precious teen years, but hey, the premonitions, my aura of freakishness, the absence of Stan, all felt murky and distant, and that was the mission, man, that was the mission. Still, heading into the second half of November, the Trazon started to fail me. I couldn’t get the dosage quite right and shit started slipping through.

 

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