Lunchmeat

by Ben D'Alessio

  “Hell is there?” Andrius questioned, as if he had been expecting demons to be flying around on chimeras shooting fire.

  “Yes, it’s in there. Ya know, my brother says that during the Revolution, George Washington and his men hid in there from the British, and then… and then they did a sneak attack at night and WON THE WAR.”

  “Wow,” said Paxton, staring wide-eyed into the cave.

  “You’re telling me that George Washington hid behind Glenwood during the Revolution?” Karl questioned, again.

  “No! That’s not what I’m saying, because Glenwood wasn’t even here yet. Duh! This kid is too young to even know history.”

  “Okay, so how do we get over there?” Paxton asked eagerly, sizing up whether he could jump the length of the brook.

  “Well, I know I can jump it,” said Pierce Stone, “and probably Andrius too, because he has those long Lithuanian legs. But I don’t know about you bozos. You’re on your own.”

  Paxton was not okay with this answer and grabbed Pierce Stone by the shirt collar, which brought a smile to my face. “You brought us all the way out here and you’re just going to leave? Nuh-uh. No way. You’re going to carry me across this brook if you have to. I’m going to see Hell.”

  “Jeez, alright. Let go of me… dumbass. I think I know a way across. Follow me.”

  Pierce Stone led us along the side of the brook and up through the woods until the cave was out of sight. I was tired and sweaty and really just wanted to play kickball (I still hadn’t forgiven Paxton for his deception). I didn’t care about Hell anymore. I knew Karl and I could always come back to the woods, maybe with Tony and George, and the four of us could go to Hell together. But right before I was going to call it quits and walk back home with Karl, Pierce Stone shouted from up ahead and pointed to a convenient little wooden bridge that traversed the brook where the stream became narrow.

  “Ya see there? I told you I knew where I was going!”

  Paxton sprinted up to the bridge and crossed it without checking first; Pierce Stone, Lenny, and Andrius followed. I asked Karl if he definitely wanted to do this, putting him in the position to opt out of the voyage and allow me to save face. But he didn’t catch the hint, so we marched across the bridge, too.

  We reached the cave, which seemed narrower than it had from across the brook, and stood outside of it, waiting for someone to take the lead. I would’ve assumed it would be Pierce Stone, but I caught him inching back as Paxton tossed a few pebbles into the black unknown.

  “Ya think the Devil is actually in there?” asked Lenny.

  “It seem quite small,” said Andrius.

  “Oh, of course!” shouted Pierce Stone. “We need a key. I remember my brother telling me you need a key for the gates of Hell.”

  “Where the heck are we going to find that?” asked Paxton, growing more impatient.

  “It’s probably under one of these rocks,” said Lenny.

  “I bet it’s black with a skull on it or something,” added Paxton.

  “Okay, you flip ’em then,” said Pierce Stone.

  The six of us began flipping stones at will, tossing some of them into the brook. I chose a big gray one with moss growing on the side. I knew I could flip it myself, but when I bent down to grab it, Pierce Stone knocked me away. “You can’t handle that, Ferraro. I got it.” He bent down and lifted the rock, but before he could toss it into the brook, he stumbled back and started muttering and mumbling something unintelligible.

  In the crater of dirt, a swirling snake uncoiled itself and popped out its black tongue. Pierce Stone dropped the rock and froze. When Paxton and Lenny saw the snake’s head, they sprinted back toward the bridge. Andrius cleared the brook with his long, Lithuanian legs—he didn’t even get wet. I backpedaled but tripped on a root sticking out of the soil like a knuckle. My head slammed into the dirt. My vision blurred, like I was looking through a kaleidoscope—I felt drowsy. I tucked my chin into my chest and saw the serpent slithering over the dead leaves of autumn. I remember thinking that perhaps this was the Devil. We’d talked about the snake and fruit and Adam and Eve in CCD class, but this snake wasn’t speaking.

  I shuffled backward, crouched in a crab position, sweating and panting and crying—I will admit it, I was crying. “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!” I managed to get out, but the snake didn’t listen. I could see Pierce Stone still frozen in my periphery. I blindly searched for a weapon. I knew we should’ve brought weapons. And right when I was getting my feet ready to do battle with the serpent, Karl’s staff came crashing down onto the beast’s head, splattering brain matter onto the dirt.

  “Fatality,” he said in a deep, dramatic voice as he looked down at his kill.

  I caught my breath and got up from the ground. Pierce Stone’s eyes had glossed over and he still hadn’t moved. He had a giant dark spot in his crotch that was expanding down his khakis.

  Karl lifted up his staff and asked if I was okay. I brushed the dirt from my pants and wiped the tears from my cheek. “Yeah. Thanks, Karl.” Karl, unfazed, spun the stick around in his hands, making battle sounds with his mouth. “Let’s go home.”

  I passed Pierce Stone, who still hadn’t blinked, and walked back to West Road with Karl, my champion.

  I didn’t tell my parents about the woods. When I got home, I rushed past my father in his Lay-Z-Boy recliner, sipping a beer in his underwear, and tossed my dirty clothes in the hamper. By the time I snuck into the bathroom, I had gotten so tired that I sat down to tinkle. There was a knock on the door.

  “Vic? Are you in there?”

  “Yeah, Tony, you can come in.”

  He walked in wearing his custom team Miami Dolphins #22 jersey that had “Ferraro” on the back.

  “Why are you sitting to tinkle? That’s how girls tinkle.”

  “Did you know that girls don’t tinkle out of their butts?”

  “Duh, everyone knows that, Vic.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me? You always tell me the things I need to know, Tony.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry… Wait, why? Was that kid picking on you again?”

  “No… not about this.”

  Tony knew all about Pierce Stone. He caught me crying in my room one night after Pierce Stone said I had too much arm hair.

  Starting from right above my elbow, a dark, thick coat of hair tangled itself down my forearm and stopped at the beginning of my hand. My mom would tell me it meant I’m healthy. My dad said it’s because we’re Italian and I should be proud of it. He would put his bronze-olive arm next to mine to show that he was hairy, too. But I told them I didn’t care and that I wanted to shave it off. They hid the razors. Sometimes I would pull at it and wouldn’t stop until I cried.

  “How was kickball?”

  “We didn’t play kickball. Stupid Paxton lied to me again. Why… why do people lie, Tony?”

  “Well… people lie to get what they want.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m never going to lie.”

  “You lie. What about when you give Nero your vegetables under the table and Dad asks if you ate them? Hmm?”

  “You can lie if it doesn’t hurt anyone!”

  I was still sitting on the toilet. My feet dangled above the white and blue tiles of our bathroom. There was another knock on the door: “Hey boys,” my dad called through the door. “What are you fidends (translation: mischievous types, typically children) doing in there?”

  “Dad, Vic is tinkling like a girl!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Vito, why you tinkling like a girl?”

  “Dad!”

  “It’s your mother, isn’t it?! Maanuggia (translation: typical Italian-American exclamation)—she says it’s okay to sit down to tinkle. Honey!” I could hear the contents of the medicine cabinet shake as my old man stomped down the hall. Tony was laughing so hard he almost fell off the
vanity.

  “I’m sorry… ha! Okay, I’m sorry, Vic. I’ll tell him you were tinkling normal.”

  “Hey, Tony, can we play SEGA tonight? Maybe Streets of Rage or Dinosaurs for Hire? I’ll be the triceratops so you can be the T. Rex.”

  “No. I want to go to the Geigers’ tonight.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “George told me Mr. Geiger got a new case of Stewart’s Root Beer and we can have some. But don’t tell Dad, got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  Mr. Geiger let us in the side door. He was tall with shiny gray hair and glasses and was always smoking cigarettes. Sometimes the smoke bothered my eyes and I would have to rinse them to relieve the burn. He was a nice man, though, and he liked how fast I was. He said he couldn’t wait until Karl and I were old enough to play football together.

  We passed through the kitchen and descended the creaky steps into the basement. I could hear George swearing at the television as he slammed down the Super NES controller; Karl and George were allowed to swear in their house. George had customized the screensaver and made it say: Bow before George or @#$% you!!! on one of the computers. Karl even got in trouble at school for calling Max Cunningham an “ass” during recess. After that, Mrs. Geiger put a “swear jar” on the kitchen island and required a dollar deposit per curse word—but it didn’t work the way she wanted. Sometimes when Karl was really angry, he would stand at the island and scream “fuuuuuck!” while dunking his allowance into the jar. So Karl wouldn’t have to lose any more of his money, we started using “sock” instead.

  It didn’t mean anything, really. We made it up. Sometimes Karl was a sock and sometimes I was a sock. Sometimes Ms. O’Donnell was a sock, or Mrs. Lydell. Paxton and Lenny could be socks, too. But Pierce Stone, he was the biggest sock of all.

  “Hey Vic, Karl told me you guys went looking for Hell in the woods behind Glenwood,” said George, without taking his eyes off the television screen.

  “Yeah, we didn’t find it.”

  “No shit! You idiots didn’t actually think that Hell was behind Glenwood school, did you?”

  “Pierce Stone told us it was.”

  “Pierce Stone, huh? Karl’s told me about this asshole. A real asshole, right? Tony, you know about this Pierce Stone asshole?”

  “Yeah, he messes with Vic a lot.”

  “No he doesn’t!” I screeched.

  “Yes he does. Vic, you were crying over something a couple of weeks ago. Something about the lunchbox Aunt Josephine got you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Karl!” Tony called. Karl, shirtless and sockless, hadn’t looked up from the computer screen. He was playing Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. Karl liked to play as the orcs—I always chose the human race. “You know anything about Pierce Stone?”

  “Not really. Just that he’s a sock.”

  “You idiots keep using that word,” said George. “It doesn’t even mean anything!”

  Tony opened the fridge and pulled out four Stewart’s Root Beers with the iconic painted-on orange label and cap. “You ‘socks’ want one?”

  “Wait, is this Pierce Stone asshole related to Trevor Stone?” asked George.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Oh, man. Trevor Stone is such a douche.”

  “Douche?” I asked.

  “Exactly. He’s a grade older than me. I heard he got head from this girl, Rachel Feinberg… or Feinstein… I don’t know, something Jewie like that, and she hated it. She said she would never do it again.”

  I didn’t know what “head” was. I wasn’t an idiot; I knew it was something sexual. But as George kept going over the possible suffixes to Rachel’s surname—“Feinbaum? Feingold?”—all I could picture was a brunette jamming the crown of her skull into Trevor Stone’s crotch.

  I grabbed a Stewart’s from Tony and pulled up a seat next to Karl. He was deep in an orc campaign, slaughtering a village of elves. Karl was the best at video games, and all different types, too: strategy games, one-on-one fighters, racing games. Give Karl fifteen minutes to get familiar with the game and he could compete with anyone. And he wasn’t limited to video games either. I never beat Karl at Stratego or Monopoly or Risk. I didn’t entirely understand how to play Risk, but I pretended so Karl wouldn’t think I was stupid.

  I often felt stupid at Glenwood. I loved to write stories about battles and kings—like King Arthur, he was my favorite—but I didn’t really care about the other stuff. Ms. O’Donnell told my parents that I was behind in math and that I needed extra work. She gave my mom photocopied worksheets that I had to do at night. I hated those worksheets. I started giving them to Karl to do after school. He liked math, and it only cost me my pack of peanut-butter crackers.

  “You idiots want to know where Hell really is?” asked George, putting down the controller.

  Karl paused his game and turned around in the chair. “You don’t know where Hell is,” he said before turning back around to continue playing.

  “Uhhh, yes I do, idiot. And it isn’t even far from here.”

  Tony let out a giggle and sucked down some root beer.

  “I’ll show you dumbasses if you promise not to tell Mom.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yeah, Tony and I will take you there.”

  Tony drank the last of his root beer and opened another. Karl turned off the computer and stood up, irritated by the incessant distraction of false promises.

  “Okay, George. Show us where Hell is. Jeez… ya know… do I have to put on my shoes or anything?”

  “Nope! Because it’s right here in the house.”

  I knew it. The Geigers’ house was full of empty rooms and hardwood floors that creaked in the night. If I was sleeping over and couldn’t hold my pee until morning, I’d run down the hallway to the bathroom so I wouldn’t get nabbed by a flailing ghoulish appendage.

  “Bullshit, George.”

  “No, I’m serious. Dad told me. He didn’t tell you because you’re too young.”

  “Dad said that Hell was a place called Penn Station, in the City.”

  “Come on, Karl, he was just kidding. You really think Hell is in a train station?”

  “Oh… I guess not.”

  “Exactly. Okay, you two idiots follow me and Tony.”

  “Will we need weapons?” I asked.

  “What? Uh… no. There are some already there.”

  Tony and George led us up the creaky basement steps and then up another winding staircase that led to the second floor. I could hear Mr. Geiger swearing at the TV in the living room—I assumed his beloved Ohio State Buckeyes were losing. Mr. and Mrs. Geiger both went to Ohio State Law School. One time I went over to their house in a Michigan jersey and Mr. Geiger made me take it off before I was allowed inside. He gave me an Ohio State shirt and said I could keep it if I never wore the Michigan jersey again; I buried the jersey in the depths of my closet and haven’t worn it since.

  We were halfway down the long hallway that ended in darkness when George stopped in front of a white door.

  “You’re telling us that Hell is in the attic?” said Karl.

  “Yup! Right up there. You never wondered what those sounds were at night?”

  “Okay, fine. Let’s see,” said Karl, pushing his brother out of the way. “I just want to go finish my campaign already.”

  Karl had trouble opening the door. When he finally tugged it open, there was a smell of old wood and weathered paper. Chinese New Year calendars lined the walls of the dirty brown staircase.

  “Well… after you, idiots.”

  Karl started up the stairs without hesitation. I took a step back.

  “Come on, Vic. You don’t want to know what Hell is like?”

  “I… I do… I just can’t believe that it’s up there. Like… how do I know that it’s up there?”

 
; “What? You think George and I would lie to you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Okay then. After you.”

  I started up the steps, my head on a swivel, reading the Chinese New Year calendars: 1996 Year of the Rat, 1995 Year of the Pig, 1993 Year of the Rooster, 1990 Year of the—gulp—Snake.

  Karl stood at the top of the stairs with his hands on his hips. “I don’t see it.”

  “No, no, keep going,” said George. “It’s in the back.”

  There were dusty bookshelves with framed black-and-white photos and a table and chest with memorabilia from history: Mr. Geiger loved to collect things, like license plates and maps and Nazi and Soviet regalia (and Chinese restaurant calendars). Karl even said that there was a pistol up there, a Soviet Makarov that his grandfather brought back from his station in Berlin.

  “Back there,” said George, walking up the stairs and pointing to a room where there were a few boxes and a naked lightbulb hanging from a cord.

  “It’s back there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, go in there and you’ll see,” said Tony.

  Karl went into the room and spun in a circle. “Nothing… There isn’t shit in here, George.”

  “Go open that box. Vic, you have to help him. The top is heavy.”

  I walked a few steps into the room to help Karl with the box, but before I could put my hand on it, George screamed, “Welcome to Hell, idiots!” and slammed the door shut.

  My heart almost stopped. Karl pounded on the door, but it was locked. “You motherfuckers! You fuckers!”

  Rusty nails protruded from the wood in the ceiling; it felt like they were only inches from my eyeballs. “Tony! Why, Tony, why?!” I started to shriek. “Why, Tony?!”

  “You fuckers! I’ll fucking kill you, you motherfuckers!”

  I pulled the collar of my shirt over my nose. “Tony! Why?!”

  “I swear to fucking God I’m going to murder you fuckers!”

  “Tony!”

  “Fuckers!”

  “Tony!!!”