The Bear in a Muddy Tutu

by Cole Alpaugh

  The seagulls continued circling overhead.

  Whenever Billy Wayne was forced to endure sand, unpleasant visions of that night came back to haunt him. The mature, grown-up Billy Wayne, who knew sand was just sand, pushed thoughts of that dark night away, as he trudged through the deep white granules toward the lone figure of a boy he’d spotted on today’s new mission.

  “You got a dollar, mister?”

  Billy Wayne had parked his Dart in the sandy lot of the Barnegat Light at the very northern tip of Long Beach Island. He wore his best suit and carried an important looking yellow legal pad recommended in step number seventeen of his book. The pad was to convey a sense of importance and substance to a prospective disciple. If not for some important reason, why else would someone be carrying a legal pad? A pen or pencil was optional.

  “Fifty cents?” the boy tried again. Billy Wayne steered toward him, fishing in his pockets as he slowly approached, legal pad tucked beneath his double chin. But the only money he had on him was the wad of tens in his wallet and whatever was stuffed one sock, sometimes cramping the muscles in the arch of his foot. His heart raced at this unexpected opportunity, and he could feel the sweat glands in his armpits go into overdrive. He’d studied up on suggestions for peeling what the book called Odd Ducks away from the pack, but had only had time to glance at the section on Lone Ducks. He had read that even though loners might seem like easier targets, they tended to have their guard up in anticipation of fending off the mean people who were always just around the next corner preparing to hurt them. People at the edges of larger groups, trying but failing to fit in, were much more approachable. They wanted more than anything to be accepted into just about any group. These people might seem a bit dim, but their eyes were wide open, and they were drawn to any smile that welcomed them like moths to a bare bulb. These people longed to be pulled into something bigger than themselves; they were ready.

  “Relax,” Billy Wayne whispered to himself, holding the legal pad tightly in his left hand while attempting to keep his right hand dry by wiping it on his pant leg as he walked.

  The boy sat in the shade of the enormous lighthouse. The lower third of the Barnegat Light was painted white; the rest, up to the metal crow’s nest that surrounded its large windows, a rich burgundy. The sand walkway leading to the base of the building was deep and white, with an old, sun-bleached split rail fence to keep visitors off the dunes. Small trees and grasses held the dunes together, despite the harsh weather this exposed area endured. Most of the vegetation was a healthy green, showing new growth from the mild spring and recent rains.

  “I have a ten dollar bill if you’d be willing to hear me out for a few minutes.” Bill Wayne offered his hand for a shake. The boy, no older than fifteen, looked up at him, scoping out the best escape route at the same instant, but held fast.

  “My name’s Reverend Billy Wayne.” He displayed his whitest and brightest smile, pulling his hand back casually to show there was no offense taken. “I s’pose in this day and age a young person needs to be especially vigilant ’bout who he lets near, am I right? World’s gettin’ crazier and crazier, it seems.”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders and Billy Wayne relaxed a little. So far so good. Take it slow, Billy Wayne reminded himself and then did a quick mental review of step number twenty-four of his book: “Most young people respond to the ‘Us versus Them’ scenario. A child is alone for a reason; either he’s escaping an angry parent or older sibling or he’s having trouble with a teacher or the kids at school. Show you understand, and that you, too, have suffered the same unfair persecution. Soon you’ll develop a bond that will lead to loyalty and dedication.”

  “You remind me of myself when I was your age,” Billy Wayne began, but the kid’s bulging eyes at the impossibility of this statement made him backtrack. “I mean, I spent a lot of time alone when I was young. My dad used to drink and beat the pants off me.”

  “You ain’t a homo are you?” the boy asked earnestly.

  “Ah, no, son, I ain’t a homo, last I checked.” Billy Wayne regrouped his fake smile. Why did people keep asking him that? “If I swear I ain’t a homo, can I take a load off?”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Billy Wayne dropped to the sand with a grunt, leaning back against the white cinderblocks of the lighthouse foundation.

  Okay, this is good, this is very, very good, Billy Wayne thought, although both his shoes were now half-filled with goddamn sand.

  “I’m Tommy,” the kid said.

  “Nice meetin’ ya, Tommy.” Billy Wayne adjusted his coat to proudly display his belly while trying to hide the fact that his legal pad was blank. He’d have to write some things down and busy it up for the next time. Maybe some math problems would look good.

  “Tommy, you believe in God?”

  “My mom does.” Tommy pulled a crumpled green soft-pack of Marlboro Menthols from the back pocket of his cutoff jeans. “She believes God is who put my good-for-nothing father and her piece of shit son on this earth to torture her each and every day.”

  Us versus Them, Billy Wayne thought as the boy lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke out both nostrils, then turned his head away. Billy Wayne had read that when someone turned just their head away from you, it meant a level of trust had been achieved.

  “Wow, so you know what I’m saying about my dad, huh?” Billy Wayne said. “Parents can be pretty screwed up.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “My mother was pretty tough, too. I couldn’t hang out with my friends. Seemed like I always had to be doing homework and never got to watch TV.”

  Billy Wayne didn’t blush one bit at these lies. He, of course, never had any friends to go anywhere with, stopped doing any sort of school work at an unusually early age, and was always welcome to lie down on the living room couch and watch soap operas to keep his mother company. He was pretty much free as a bird, as long as he kept his mother stocked with cans of Coke and bags of sugar cookies from the dollar store. She sometimes even paid Billy Wayne a quarter for slathering her feet in Vaseline Intensive Care lotion, rubbing real hard between her toes.

  “So you became a preacher?”

  “Yes, I guess you could say I found my calling.” Billy Wayne was trying to figure his next move, maybe see if the boy was hungry and buy him a cheeseburger or something. Bringing out the big guns and announcing he was God didn’t seem the right tactic to use with a kid. Not yet, anyway. Although Billy Wayne was feeling more and more at ease as a counselor.

  “Hey, you hungry at all? Let’s go grab a bite and talk over a burger or somethin’. Be my treat.”

  “I got no place else to be.” The boy hopped to his feet with ease, while Billy Wayne had to grope at the side of the building to rise from the deep sand. Christ, his shoes were more than half-filled with this goddamn sand. The dark-haired boy was taller than Billy Wayne had estimated and a lot broader in the shoulders. He has the makings of a fine first disciple, Billy Wayne thought. And the kid actually had some manners, gesturing for Billy Wayne to go first down the narrow sand path that led back to the parking lot.

  Billy Wayne was feeling like a fisherman, coming back to port with a big trophy catch hauled in from the high seas. He felt better than he’d felt in weeks, maybe months. Heck, maybe ever! This might not be so hard after all. It was just about being able to talk to people, being yourself.

  “My car’s up here or we can … Ouch!” Billy Wayne screamed, stars flying across his vision and his knees buckling from the staggering weight that had banged across the back of his head. Billy Wayne lurched first one way, then the other, as though trying to stand up on a floating lounge chair in a swimming pool. The world was rotating but his eyes couldn’t keep up, and he realized he was going down just as another heavy blow cracked down on the top of his skull, sending him sprawling in the sand.

  “Fucking homo,” he heard from somewhere in another room or maybe another planet, what with all the stars and blackness. He tri
ed to blow some of the sand from his mouth, but it was all coated and stuck to his tongue. Billy Wayne then felt he was being levitated and realized the kid was lifting him by his belt. The muscular boy rummaged through his front pant’s pockets and then dropped him to snatch the wallet from his back pocket.

  Billy Wayne’s ears were receiving a high pitched ring and it felt like a sizzling-hot needle had been plunged into his right temple, but he was still able to hear the boy unzipping his jeans somewhere up above. A warm stream of piss started at the back of Billy Wayne’s neck and then drew a line up the back of his head, finally finding his right ear. The boy’s piss sent the ringing underwater, dulling the pitch, which actually made the sharp pain subside a bit.

  Then Billy Wayne lay there alone, only moving enough to begin taking inventory of the damage. His vision had returned and he could see the very top of the lighthouse, just above the gray fence and stubby trees. His feet moved and he wiggled the toes on his bare left foot; he’d apparently lost one of his good shoes in the attack and would have to find it. His book said how important it was to have good shoes. Billy Wayne concluded he was probably okay, except for the salty taste of sand and piss and one thumping headache. He used the front of his incisors to scrape the sand off his tongue, spitting out little clumps.

  Jesus was a martyr, Billy Wayne thought. He sacrificed his life for his beliefs and to redeem us from the original sins of his forefather, Adam.

  Step number twenty-six in How to Become a Cult Leader in 50 Easy Steps: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade! When suffering your own seemingly monumental setbacks, take into consideration that the original cult leader was beaten, stoned, whipped, and nailed to a cross. Now, as you stand there feeling sorry for yourself, has your day really been that bad?”

  “Yes,” Billy Wayne groaned as he found his way to his knees before trying out his legs. He resisted the urge to remain kneeling, whimpering there in the sand for the rest of his life. The smell and taste of urine was horrible, and the wet sand sticking to his arms and face was itchy. He knew his mother would let him come home. He could tell her how sorry he was for leaving, that he couldn’t live without her. He could promise to be a good boy from now on, to stop being foolish. She’d have to take him back because she needed him.

  “No.” Billy Wayne leaned forward to punch the deep sand. “I’m not giving up.”

  Billy Wayne let a new wave of nausea pass before rising to his feet and stumbling down the path toward his car, spitting tiny grains of sand as he went. He spotted his lost shoe on the other side of the split rail fence near the parking lot and strained to squeeze his fat torso through to reach it. The shoe was also damp with piss. Billy Wayne decided another long hot shower should wash this day away. Maybe buying a gun would help him avoid another one like it.

  Chapter 4

  The phone book in the Belmar Arms Motel was so fat, its soft spine and pages rubbed so smooth by age, it acted like liquid in Billy Wayne’s lap. Each time he attempted leafing through a section, it tried pouring itself onto the floor.

  The old guy planted behind the counter watched Billy Wayne’s struggle. “Book is old like me. Ain’t got no bones left.”

  The stub of a pencil and scrap of paper Billy Wayne also held made it even harder to corral the phone book. His head was tender in two spots, but the headache had mostly passed, and he was determined to continue his mission properly armed.

  “If you’re looking for a massage girl, you best make certain it ain’t for no house call. I’ll kick your butt right outta here, and don’t even think about a refund.”

  Billy Wayne had decided the old clerk wouldn’t be the best person to ask about buying a gun, so he’d opted for the Yellow Pages.

  Everything Billy Wayne knew about guns had been learned from cop shows. His mother sometimes mentioned them, but only to tell Billy Wayne he might as well go down to the corner store and buy a gun so she could kill herself. When he was little, he pictured a real store down on the corner that stocked these special suicide guns, with curved barrels that aimed the bullet back at the shooter. He imagined the proprietor wore a sinister black cloak, face hidden deep within the dark hood so nobody could tell which person from the neighborhood was the owner. Maybe, while he gave you your change, the man would reach out with your dollar bills clenched in a white, bony skeleton of a hand.

  Billy Wayne found a sporting goods store that promised guns and ammunition of all sorts and sizes, and jotted the street and town on a slip of yellow paper torn from his legal pad. The listing was in the Yellow Pages at the back of the book and included two lines advertising how they served the brave men, women, and families of Fort Dix. Billy Wayne considered asking the old clerk for directions but decided to make this journey on his own. Now that he had a plan, he needed to stop relying on others. He knew Fort Dix was maybe a half hour away, somewhere off to the south.

  Billy Wayne followed road signs and found the turn for Tom River with gratifying ease. But after an hour of hopeful turns, Billy Wayne’s Dart had begun to overheat and was nearly out of gas. Giving in to asking for help became much easier, and he found a group of teenage boys hanging around the front steps of a convenience store in a place called West Tuckerton.

  “You can’t miss it,” the boy said of the sporting goods store. “Left out of the lot, then the second right. Then just keep on going.”

  “It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere,” added another boy, and Billy Wayne misinterpreted the snickering from two others, used to having teenagers laugh at him for no reason other than his presence.

  “Thank you, boys, and God bless.” Billy Wayne backed his Dart out of the space to another round of snickering.

  He drove his old Dodge Dart down the long, straight road, all his windows open to let in the salty air.

  As suspicious as Billy Wayne currently was of teenage boys, it didn’t dawn on him that they might be sending him down a long, dead end road into the flat, grassy marshes for a laugh. He drove over the last small bridge, which stood about six feet above the water and muck, scanning the gray horizon for any signs of a bigger road that might lead to a town and a sporting goods store. The only sign of anything other than nature was the gravel drive running off to the right, returning on his left after it appeared to make a large loop. He also noticed a weathered wood sign painted with the words, “Fish Head.”

  “Fish Head Island,” Billy Wayne guessed and then drove down the other side of the bridge onto the island, using his blinker to turn right. He was deciding whether to risk getting stuck in the mud turning around or to just drive all the way around the loop, when he came to a spot where the bay opened up to the ocean off to his right. He stopped his car to watch several specks race and bob across the horizon, finally recognizing them as jet skis.

  It was in this remote place that Billy Wayne began to feel something foreign, a sense of unease. Other than the times he locked himself in his bedroom, he had rarely been alone, always in calling distance of his mother. Every peaceful moment was always tarnished by the cringing awareness of his mother’s impending plaintive demands. Billy Wayne was a beaten dog when it came to enjoying peace and quiet. He mostly winced through those calm moments, too jittery to ever enjoy them.

  He parked his Dart and stepped out into the morning sun, which rose up over this calm section of water. Facing due east, he saw a fairly narrow channel out to the Atlantic, where strips of land reached from both the left and right across several hundred yards of glassy water. Off in the distance was a gigantic tanker ship, big and dinosaur-like, silhouetted by the glare of the sky.

  For as far as Billy Wayne could see, there wasn’t another human being other than those hidden inside the far-away tanker, now that the jet skiers had disappeared. Billy Wayne could almost taste the solitude, his senses sharpening like someone who had been deaf but could suddenly hear. He was certain there was something very special about this place.

  On Fish Head Island, the sky was a blue-gray dome, a steel cathedral
overhead. Billy Wayne thought he’d been sent to this place by a power greater than a juvenile delinquent; there was an undeniable spiritual aura, notwithstanding the crumpled condoms underfoot.

  There simply had to be an important reason he’d been led to this bleak but glorious spot, busy only with darting seagulls and tiny fish breaking the surface of the bay to escape bigger fish. Billy Wayne felt for the little ones under assault, leaping into what was to them an airless world for momentary freedom. He’d suffered a thousand dreams of being chased by something with awful teeth and scales.

  Billy Wayne regretted wearing his best shoes but felt compelled to explore, especially since there seemed to be no dangerous teenagers lurking about. He reached back into the car for his yellow legal pad, just in case, and took a walk down a path through the sea grass off to the right. He was a little surprised at all the trash in such a remote area; then he remembered watching a television show with his mom about places in Hawaii where all the garbage from Japan would wash up, making that tiny slice of paradise look like a garbage dump. Maybe this was the same thing. Maybe even Heaven had a big pile of soiled mattresses and non-biodegradable debris stacked up against the Pearly Gates, flotsam and jetsam from mortals below.

  The path was interrupted by a narrow canal that seemed a little too wide to hop across. Litter was strewn throughout the sea grass, from faded Dunkin Donuts boxes to mashed beer cans and nasty, poop-streaked diapers.

  The path continued on through slightly taller grass on the other side, and Billy Wayne stood for a moment to calculate his chances. Throughout his entire life, this was the exact type of challenge he’d avoided, opting for safety. But that wasn’t how he was going to live the rest of his life. Things were different now, and he could feel the power and strength of his new purpose-driven existence.

  “I can do it.” Hearing his own words encouraged him even more.