The Antichrist of Kokomo County

by David Skinner

  EVERYBODY:

  Poop and pee

  Poop and pee

  I don’t like to poop and pee

  On the back of the manual that comes with the course, the following, underscored and in big block letters, is written:

  BE SURE TO KNOW WHICH DISORDER YOUR CHILD HAS, AND NEVER, EVER PLAY THE WRONG SONG.

  Unfortunately, as most people tend to do when they acquire a sense of purpose, the wife and I pushed things a tad far. Hence, Sparky still sings the anal retentive song to this day, even though he’s long since kicked that problem, now making his home at the other extreme. He’s untidy, doesn’t focus all that well, and loves sitting on the “pot,” making “doo-doo stew” (as he calls it).

  Occasionally, he still shits his pants.

  The difference between how he shits his pants now compared to how he shit them before is that before, he would take off his pants, fling them away in loathing, and bawl his head off. These days, he likes to sit in the shit and cackle.

  That’s right, my son is twelve years old, looks like Winston Churchill, and likes to sit in his own shitted pants. For reasons that will be revealed, I am okay with that. Not thrilled, not ecstatic, but okay. Over time I have learned to accept Sparky’s refusal to adopt traditional toileting methods, falling back on the motto the wife and I have clung to whenever there is a question about our parenting ethics:

  Better Safe than Sorry.

  Hitler was anal retentive. So was Stalin, Mobutu, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Ahmadinejad. The list goes on and on.

  Which isn’t to say that the list of evil men on the anal expulsive side isn’t long as well. It is, with big names like Genghis Khan, Benito Mussolini, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Idi Amin, Muammar Qaddafi, and Hugo Chavez, but for whatever reason, those names aren’t as scary sounding as the others. Like many of the big decisions in life, it comes down to this:

  Pick Your Poison.

  3

  Now that those nasty, pustule-ravaged girls have receded from mind and view, the boy and I can finally begin to make our way to the Lawrence P. Fenwick Building and to all the horrors that await us within.

  Yes, it’s time to stop stalling. High time. I don’t think even Satanists from Kokomo County take too well to those who show up late for appointments.

  The following is one of the Eight Emendationist Laws of Existence (pulled from their website), No. 4:

  If a traveler on your property aggravates you, rip him limb from limb!

  Here’s another, No. 8:

  When traveling on common ground, keep to yourself. If someone inflicts himself upon you, tell him to mind his business. If he refuses, bash his brains in!

  Natch.

  *

  What we are wearing:

  For me, it’s white Reebok tennis shoes, my most comfortable pair of Levis, and a roomy blank-blue T-shirt made by the fine folks at Fruit of the Loom. The T-shirt hides my bit of stomach, making me feel more slender than usual and thus more confident.

  Sometimes I worry about my weight, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes when I see my bit of stomach I want to stick my head in the oven. Sometimes when I see my bit of stomach I think about a chicken in the oven, because I’m hungry. Why this is the case I couldn’t begin to tell you.

  Another reason for the roomy, blank-blue t-shirt: to hide the 9mm pistol stuffed down the front of my jeans.

  Talk about a confidence boost.

  Sparky, meanwhile, is clad in brown loafers, khaki pants, and a smart-looking Polo shirt. He looks ready to play golf.

  On the Senior Tour.

  To hide his balding pate, which has been known to freak people out, I make him wear hats. The hat he is wearing today—the only thing in the world I know for sure he loves—is blue and has a big red “C” in the middle. Like most over-cherished possessions, it is worn out and faded—and in Sparky’s case even stained—but beware, this is no ordinary hat. Its shabby appearance notwithstanding, it is the hat that nearly wrecked us all not too long ago, a hat that nearly shattered the world.

  The “C” on the hat stands for “Chicago.”

  It also stands for “Cubs.”

  4

  A little more than six years ago, Sparky took an interest in baseball. By this I mean he found a baseball in our backyard—presumably left there after an errant throw or hit by other boys in our neighborhood—and being curious, brought it into the house.

  Just so there’s no mistaking things here, the wife and I would never have given him something like a baseball to play with. You never can tell where things like baseballs might lead, especially in this day and age when the really good players have more money than entire nations. Also, people have a troubling inclination to worship the really good ones, so no baseball for the boy.

  Better Safe Than Sorry.

  Anyhow. Sparky rolled the ball around on the living room floor a minute or two before looking up at me, mystified.

  “Wut zis?” he asked, holding it up like a street urchin with his begging cup.

  And as I would do so many times when he would ask me questions, I stroked my chin, furrowed my brow, hemmed and hawed for a moment or so before taking a deep breath, shrugging my shoulders, and saying, “Aw hell, son. I don’t know.”

  The following is one of the rules we lived by in regards to raising this son of ours:

  The response to any question, query, or curiosity put to us by Sparky shall be “I don’t know.”

  I don’t know is the answer always, even if the answer is known, unless the answer in some way helps to achieve the primary objective.

  For instance:

  Wut zis?

  I don’t know.

  Wer’ zis?

  I don’t know.

  Why zis?

  I don’t know.

  With the baseball still in his chubby fist and I don’t know still lingering in the air like the smell of doo-doo stew, Sparky, frustrated with my lack of answers, took it upon himself to make sense of the stitched little sphere. Limited in intuitiveness as he was though, the only thing he could come up with in the way of further analysis was to roll it back and forth across the carpet a few more times before his eyes glazed over.

  Confident that I don’t know had once again closed an avenue of potential disaster, I went in for the kill and turned on the television, knowing whatever inquisitiveness was gasping for breath inside my son’s head would almost certainly be smothered via the glorious, imagination-

  asphyxiating power of the boob tube.

  Which brings me to another of our rules:

  If at any point should Sparky begin to take it upon himself to ascertain the nature of something, or to acquire knowledge of any kind at cross-purposes to the primary objective, all manner of distraction, disruption, disturbance, and/or commotion may be used in order to obstruct him.

  And although there are many, many ways to distract, disrupt, disturb, and obstruct a child, none are as effective as the idiot box. It’s my ace in the hole. Like napalm, wipes out everything.

  That being said, no matter how smart you think you are, there are times when the reach of your cleverness exceeds its grasp—like Icarus’s ill-advised hubris toward the sun—and you end up with melted wax-wings.

  Apropos, when I went in for the kill and flicked on the TV, what came on was a baseball game.

  As it turns out, I had already left for the kitchen, eager to finish a crossword puzzle and comfortable with the assumption that whatever was on the television would serve as more than adequate distraction and disruption—a foolish mistake. Because while I was figuring out the five-letter first name for the clue “Peace Nobleist Root” (“Elihu” for those keeping score), Sparky was watching a baseball game featuring the New York Yankees, which was something of a double-whammy.

  For those not in possession of even a rudimentary knowledge of America’s past
ime, the New York Yankees are pretty good at the game of baseball. In fact, they are the most successful organization in the history of North American professional sports. This means that not only was Sparky being shown what the ball on the floor was for, he was being shown how to play with that ball by the best—i.e., he was being introduced to excellence.

  If the wife had walked into the room at that moment she would have screamed bloody murder.

  Luckily, only a few minutes elapsed before I realized what I’d done, changed the channel, and engaged in another of our tactics by enticing Sparky with eight cups of ultra-refined sugar-imbued chocolate-flavored puffed-rice cereal (159 calories per cup) soaked with ten servings of half-and-half (400 calories total). The former ingredient was good for making him toss the couch cushions about the living room, cackling like a loon, while the latter’s lung-and-artery-clogging soporific effect kicked in shortly thereafter, bringing all mental and physical functions to a crashing halt. Little more than an hour later, Sparky was curled up fetal on the floor, blinking listlessly at muted Japanese cartoons flashing across the TV screen like a strobe light—something that is deadening to the senses even if you aren’t susceptible to seizures.

  The baseball now lay forgotten near the sofa, and later on, in the midst of a brisk evening constitutional, I threw it long and far into the twilight nothingness beyond the outskirts of our neighborhood.

  Close call.

  5

  As Sparky and I traverse this treacherous Berry, Indiana sidewalk, my phone starts blaring that unparalleled masterpiece of modern music, “Eye of the Tiger.”

  Like most people who experience this tune, it has been known to really rev me up, make me want to do some hard exercise, like go berserk on a punching bag or run real fast around the block. So you would think hearing this song now would be a nice lift for my morale, and considering the magnitude of this day, a much welcomed one at that.

  Too bad it’s not. Not anymore, anyway.

  Now my gut reaction to “Eye of the Tiger” is not to monkey-climb a gym rope or bounce the hell out of a medicine ball, but to sit down and put my head in my hands, all because of who is waiting for me on the other end of the line, one of three people who will more than do their part in making the time we spend conversing the metaphorical equivalent of having one’s nose shoved up another human being’s fundament.

  The first of these people: my father, who loves to call up to a dozen times per week to crow and rave and brag and swank over my eight-year-old half-brother.

  I hate that little twerp, and I really hate hearing about him from the old man. Why this is I’ll get to later, but for now, take my word for it. Younger brother is a piece of work.

  The second person: Little Eddie Reddingham.

  Despite the wife’s and my largely successful campaign to keep Sparky isolated and buddy-free, he has recently acquired a playmate—Little Eddie—who likes to call my phone about as often as my dad and leave long, disturbing messages for my son.

  But for this one, I have nobody to blame but myself. I’ve been somewhat careless and less watchful over Sparky’s activities of late, no doubt about it. In the past, the wife would have made sure we stayed on target and wouldn’t have allowed things to fall apart like I have, which is why, up until the last year or so, Sparky never had a friend.

  On my own I’ve proved unequal to the task. The wife’s death has been quite a blow and my efforts have not been enough to make up for her loss.

  It also doesn’t help that, since his mother’s departure from life, Sparky has become sneakier. And rebellious.

  A bit more about Little Eddie Reddingham: On the surface, he would appear to be nothing more than your harmless, everyday, garden-variety dork. He wears glasses. He’s skinny. He’s small.

  The one thing that makes him worth mentioning (and fearing): his favorite movie is The Producers.

  Quite taken with the comedy’s breezy, cavalier tone toward Nazis, Little Eddie Reddingham likes to go around town belting out the songs from the film. Wouldn’t be such a big deal if he concentrated primarily on some of the more innocuous numbers, such as “Prisoners of Love” or even “Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop,” but since I’ve had the pleasure of knowing the lad, it’s only been “Springtime for Hitler” and at a volume and clarity that’s impossible to ignore.

  This may or may not come as a surprise, but ripped from the playfully irreverant confines of its own context, the song tends not to elicit great peals of laughter from those that hear it, but rather confused, concerned looks, or, in one case—Diane Crunk, a neighbor who claims to actually know someone Jewish—outraged phone calls to yours truly.

  Why, pray tell, would she dial me? Because Sparky has willingly joined Eddie in his one-boy attempt to unsettle as many Kokomo County-ites as possible, turning what was once an ill-advised solo act into a less-than-dynamic duet, ensuring that “Springtime for Hitler” would not be a brief, thankfully forgotten phase during the tender years of one little small-town idiot, but something that could possibly have dire, far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world.

  Naturally, I’ve complained to Eddie’s parents, Ozzie and Belinda, about their son’s behavior, but they seem to think it’s all in good fun.

  “It’s just a silly movie for crying out loud,” Belinda said to me. “It’s not supposed to be taken seriously. It’s ironic.”

  “You familiar with the term ‘satire,’ Horvath?” Ozzie added. “And hey, Mel Brooks is Jewish. You think he didn’t know what he was doing?”

  Being the good—no, great—person that I am, I have tried my best to inform Ozzie and Belinda how reckless it is to approve of Little Eddie singing songs extolling Nazi virtues around such a dangerous boy as my son (though I don’t describe him as such, opting for words such as “pure” and “innocent”). Sparky, I’ve told them, has no idea what satire and irony are and so might get to thinking the Third Reich was a magical, musical place, which, for about 13.3 million reasons, would not be a good thing. But these arguments have proven ineffectual, as have been my endeavors to keep Sparky and Eddie apart, to the point where my repeated wishes that the boys not be allowed to see each other have been deliberately flouted by the Reddinghams themselves.

  “Lighten up, Horvath!” Ozzie has said to me.

  “Kids need friends!” Belinda has said to me.

  “Your wife would have been thrilled that they’ve gotten closer since she passed,” they both have said to me, betraying the truth that neither of them had the slightest clue what would have thrilled my wife.

  If they had mentioned the old man they would have been dead on. He had been elated at the news that another flesh-and-blood human being would want to spend time with his grandson.

  “It’s about time he started having a normal childhood,” he’d said.

  The third person I dread hearing from: Joyce. My stepmother. I owe her five grand.

  Full disclosure: I’ve gotten a little spendy the last year or so with my limited income and have not been prompt in paying off a loan she extended (unbeknownst to my father) to help me get by. But with her call, I do not plunge into despair. It does not make my heart rage as it would if it were the old man, neither does it throw a spotlight on my failures as a father like Little Nazi Eddie Reddingham. Mostly I feel guilty and entirely because of how nice she is about it. And although she does call roughly once a month to see how that first payment is coming along, she has yet to act like she’s all that concerned about it.

  I only wish I could say her patience and long-suffering will pay off, but I can’t. Because if today goes like I think it will, then all of that compounding guilt and debt will be rendered utterly moot.

  Besides, many great men were bad with money. Mozart, Van Gogh, Dumas, Ghandi. That’s damn good company.

  *

  So. We’re almost to the entrance of the Lawrence P. Fenwick Building where the C
hurch of Epistemological Emendation resides, my phone is still blaring “Eye of the Tiger,” my confidence is in the tank, while the rest of me is overcome with the irresistible need to sit and put my head in my hands. But seeing how there’s nowhere to sit on the sidewalk, and because no matter how tough things get we’ve just got to keep going, I sigh wearily and smack at the phone in my pocket until the song dies.

  In the meantime, I will keep my eyes peeled for somewhere to sit and put my head in my hands. In the meantime, I will try to think about something else.

  6

  A little while after the affair with Sparky and the baseball, long after I thought the crisis averted, he returned from school one afternoon with a baseball mitt.

  I was already home from work for the day as there hadn’t been a whole lot to do in silverware design other than wait with bated breath for the judgment on my latest and greatest brainchild: a large, ten-tined dinner fork (target demographic: dudes of any age who want to take really big bites).

  You know, Girthy Fork.

  (It was rejected.)

  The wife, thank God, was out grocery shopping. If she had been home and had seen such contraband as a baseball glove anywhere near Sparky, she would have screamed bloody murder. She didn’t handle those kinds of situations well, so it was a good thing they mostly occurred on my watch.

  “Uh, where didya get that...doo-hickey, son?” I asked him, calmly, friendly, not bloody murderly.

  “Hanzy,” Sparky mumbled.

  “Hanzy, huh?” I said, trepidation suddenly clawing at my throat. “W-would you like an Oreo or two?”

  In addition to the scores of sacchariferous cereals and copious amounts of half-and-half available, the wife and I were also meticulous enough to make sure we were stocked floor to ceiling with additional brain-addling junk-foody stuffs, such as cookies and donuts and potato chips and jelly beans and chocolate bars—the boy can’t resist them. So when I waved the package of Oreos in his face, Sparky’s eyes popped, his lips smacked, and before I could even say, “One at a time there, pal,” he had dropped the mitt and was double-fisting those wonderful shortening-packed chocolate cookie sandwiches (approximately 53 calories per), and chasing them with crazed, delirious gulpfuls of deliciously thick, waistband-exploding, mind-clabbering half-and-half (40 calories per tablespoon!) right out of the carton.