The Antichrist of Kokomo County

by David Skinner

  What else did I do with that glorious day off that really wasn’t? For the first time in years: bear cartoons. And they were terrific, even more so than I remembered.

  In one sense, it felt like redemption for that twelfth birthday of mine, where bear cartoons had been ripped from me and my self-esteem had been laid so low, while in another sense, I was experiencing my first feelings of longing for those much simpler times. Before all talk of the Great Horvath. Before choosing memory boosters over video games. Before I sacrificed my affable buffoonery for my much less admired suckuppery.

  It was quite the day. Far better than school. At one point, after finally getting to see the end of that episode the human pyramid had preempted so long ago, I even got a little misty with nostalgic joy.

  To my delight, I learned the grouchy brown bears hadn’t run off with the magical honey stores at all, but had been tricked by the friendly black bears into only thinking they had. So in conjunction with the grouchy brown bears’ celebration (a somber, goose-stepping parade) what they thought to be their finest hour, the friendly black bears, led by the unbeatable Proust (the tree branch had only momentarily stunned him), were high-fiving each other over their latest victory and laughing over the honey the grouchy brown bears had, which was not only non-magic, run-of-the-mill blah, but mixed with something that would make them fart uncontrollably.

  Just where were my parents to put a stop to this all-too-wonderful day?

  Well, the old man was at the hardware store, making his co-workers miserable no doubt, and my mother was in bed with a crushing headache. Consequently, nobody answered the three phone calls from school wondering where the hell I was, which meant none of us had any idea I had been duped until I saw Billy Slider through the Horvath living room window at 3:15 that afternoon, laughing, dancing, and wearing a backpack.

  “Ha ha-ha ha-ha haaa!” Billy Slider laughed and danced.

  5

  Now, sometimes, when people get really angry, they like to communicate the extent of their rage through idioms such as, “I got so pissed,” and, “I saw red,” when in truth bladders were not emptied nor did any seeing of primary colors occur.

  But not with me. No kidding, I became so angry over the sight of Billy Slider wearing a backpack that I honest to goodness pissed myself. I also literally saw red.

  What was red? Billy Slider’s backpack…and tongue, which was now french kissing the Horvath living room window. As this sickening display unfolded, my mind was reeling with two cataclysmic thoughts: Billy Slider only wore backpacks when he was going to and from school! Billy Slider only went to and from school when there was school!

  At that moment, peeing, seeing red, I vowed to hate Billy Slider until he died. But Billy, unaware of my dark pledge, kept tonguing the window and laughing all the same. In his mind, see, he had just won.

  *

  What happened was this: Billy Slider tricked me because he wanted the Perfect Attendance Award.

  What Billy Slider didn’t understand was that more than one student can win. He had not been paying attention when previous winners had been granted the award, nor had he counted the number of students who had won. If he had, he probably would have left me alone. But Billy Slider hadn’t paid attention to much of anything his entire life—something his grades accurately reflected—to where the teachers debated often over whether to cut their losses and pack him off to Special Needs.

  Billy Slider, aware of the forces striving against him, knew he would have to do something about this before it was too late—and something other than being a better student. Much like me, Billy Slider came to believe perfect attendance would make those bad grades go away, or at least give him something to fight back with. He figured showing up every day had to be worth something as all the teachers made such a big deal out of it.

  Hadn’t he been told how perfect attendance had its own special feature during the school awards banquet and even its own theme song played by the Strother Martin High School Fipple Flute Orchestra? Hadn’t that perfect attendance plaque he’d once seen in the hands of Delia Nordsbury the year she’d won been so shiny? Hadn’t he figured that was why Ms. Munt had a massive banner above her blackboard with a quote from that goofy-looking Woody Allen guy: “Ninety percent of life is just showing up”?

  This could be the ticket, he thought, and with a bit of luck, if he got it, it might be good enough to keep him out of Special Needs. Forever.

  After all, ninety percent of anything is an A minus. And since A minuses were far better than the grades he usually got, Billy Slider swore to win a Perfect Attendance Award, even if it meant his very soul.

  Where it got tricky for Billy Slider was when he followed his squirrelly logic to the dismaying possibility of more than one student making it through the whole year with perfect attendance. His long ignored mental faculties straining to their breaking point (and perhaps beyond), Billy inferred that the students who didn’t miss time would have to keep attending school—through summer vacation if necessary—until all but one of them gave up and took a day off.

  Since Billy Slider hated the idea of going to school all summer, he hatched the Arbor Day Plot, and with me, the only other student in the running, now out of the way, Billy Slider thought he was a shoo-in, as he only had to last another three days.

  How do I know all this?

  Little Ozzie Reddingham, the future father of Little Nazi Eddie. He told me all about it afterwards, the whole scheme.

  Naturally, at one point, I asked him, “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because Billy Slider sticks my head in the toilet,” Ozzie said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before all this happened then?” I said.

  “Because you’re no fun anymore, Horvath.”

  Yet, for all of his nefarious intrigues, Billy Slider ultimately failed to get the Perfect Attendance Award. This would be because on the second-to-last-day of school, Billy, perhaps soaring with a feeling of invincibility over having vanquished me, attempted to summit the Little Hat water tower, failed, and tumbled headfirst to the pavement. Subsequently, he missed the last day of school. In fact, he never went back to school again (this was because he was dead).

  Which reminds me of a line from one of Rev. Phipps’s sermons: His Judgment Cometh and That Right Soon.

  Take that, Billy Slider.

  6

  On with my humiliating high school years!

  I never won Best Speaker in a debate meet. I sucked at sports. I finished in the middle of the pack every student council election. My best performance in the spelling bee was eleventh place. The pinnacle of my career as a thespian came as the dull, pathetic Gremio, the aging suitor of Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew. In band, I was fourth chair clarinet, third part, which meant I spent most of my time counting rests and playing notes that nobody noticed if they were played or not. My daily prayer meetings survived a mere three weeks before being cancelled by the administration, largely due to an incident with Penny Turney, the class tramp who had asked me to pray for her to stop putting penises in her mouth.

  Just so nobody gets the wrong idea, here’s what happened:

  Penny attended one of my early morning prayer meetings and asked for help with the crushing guilt. She was the only one who showed up that morning. Me and her. And the donuts.

  “Yeah, you really shouldn’t do that,” I told her, munching on a Long John. I was politely referring to, of course, putting penises in her mouth.

  “I know,” she said, barely touching her plain cake donut. “I’ve been told I’m not even very good at it.”

  “Plus, it’s dirty,” I said, moving on to an apple fritter.

  “I dunno. Sometimes it can be kinda fun,” Penny said.

  “No, it can’t,” I said, as sternly as a cellophane-ish voice thickened by sugary apple chunks can be. “Not fun at all.”

  �
�Okay,” said Penny. “It’s not fun.”

  I imagine she would have agreed to anything I said. She desperately wanted help. Guidance. Salvation.

  “Pray for me,” she said, and lo and behold, I did.

  This is what I prayed in my head: Please God, save Penny’s soul and help her to not put penises in her mouth. Wanting a little extra spiritual power though, this is how I prayed it out loud:

  “GORZY-MORZY-WORZY-GORZY-MORZY!”

  Not healed as I was hoping, but freaked out for some weird reason by the presence of God (and the awesome power of my tongues), Penny Turney backed out of the room and raced to the principal’s office.

  Her attempt to get her life turned around having failed, she went back to putting penises in her mouth.

  And from what I heard, over time, she got better at it.

  So for all the innumerable pains taken in athletics and extracurricular everything, I never received any recognition or acknowledgement. I never lettered in any sports. I never won an award at the school banquet. I never got a trophy or medal. I didn’t even get a pat on the back or a Keep at it! from a coach, a teacher, or my parents.

  What I did get was a shitload of Participation Certificates, and an even shittier load of frustration, as I fervently prayed every year for the opportunity to be the big hero in something when the going got tough—like playing in a basketball game in the final minute with the score tied; or speaking with the outcome of a debate in the balance; or being offered a word like “zwischenspiel” to win a spelling bee; or performing a killer clarinet solo that would set hearts on fire (and win the band a contest); or having the opportunity in prayer meetings to save a Penny Turney from putting a final, fatal penis in her mouth.

  If situations like the above were to present themselves, I was certain I would make good in a way that would cast off my mediocrity forever. All I needed was a chance with everything on the line, whatever that everything was.

  Twenty years later and here I am.

  * * *

  † Named after the beloved 1950s comedian who was born in Vincennes, a town that is not a part of Kokomo County.

  ‡ Named after the American actor from the actual town of Kokomo (which again, and weirdest of all, is not a part of Kokomo County) best known for his role as the prison captain in Cool Hand Luke.

  PART FIVE

  And speaking of points, what’s the point of having a 9mm stuffed down the front of your pants if, when it seems high time you used it, you forget it’s there in the first place?

  1

  We’re in. The Church of Epistemological Emendation. I said we were going in and now we’re in. It’s good to be in. Much better than being outside preparing mind, body, and soul to go in. This time there’s no question whether something of import has been accomplished.

  Something has. We are in.

  As we were in the process of going in, Sparky tugged on my arm. “I still want to go home,” he said.

  And I said: “Still no.”

  The office: Pretty ordinary. No pizza boxes. No upside-down crosses. No grunty music. No drugs, no guns, no foosball table. Nobody passed out. Nobody with their shirt off. Nobody anywhere, really. So far so good.

  There is a couch near the far right wall, but it isn’t grimy nor, as far as I can tell, rife with crumbs. It is an eye-pleasing champagne color and looks like a nice, clean, comfy couch anybody would be thrilled to sit on. The floor, covered in a nice, clean, almond-colored carpet, is free of debris as well and looks like the kind of comfy carpet anybody would be thrilled to walk on.

  For the record, I’d like to take my shoes off and walk on the carpet in just my socks. I also wouldn’t mind trying out that couch.

  The walls are a tranquil, neutral, cream color and there are no pictures, signs, or decorations anywhere to be found. Not one depiction of the Prince of Darkness feasting on the souls of mankind, blood dripping from his jowls. No propagandistic sloganeering poster about how stupid other religions are and how cool and smart Satanism is. There’s not even an Ansel Adams, something I think would work well in this décor (or lack thereof)—over by the coffee station, which is, like everything else, immaculate.

  Then again, what do I know about interior design? Maybe they’d tried an Ansel Adams and it hadn’t looked right.

  “Until we figure something out,” they might have said to one another, “we will leave the walls the way they are.”

  And so they did. And so they are.

  I mentioned before there’s music playing, and it’s still going, shimmering, glistening, as it falls on our ears from speakers perched at the four corners of the room, connected to hair-thin black wires that run down the corners, across the baseboards, and down a hallway. So unless my eyes are deceiving me, the music’s source is not the Malebolgian Symphony Orchestra, piping in through the floors via black magic from the eighth circle of Hell, but the much more banal, though no less infernal, invention of Muzak.

  Right now it’s the beginning of Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero”: gentle, tapping drums.

  Tap taptaptap tap tap tap taptaptap tap tap tap taptaptap tap tap tap...

  Then, a flute: mirthful, mischievous, but gentle. Like Pan at play in a quiet wood.

  Doooooooo doodoodoodoodoodoo doo doodoodoooooo doodoodoodoodoodoodooooo...

  I also said there are no shirtless people here, so scratch shirtless Danicas. There is, however, a Danica, singular, wearing a smart-looking green blouse and black slacks, just arrived from down the hall and now seated at a desk.

  How do I know this is Danica?

  She’s wearing a nametag that reads Danica.

  I know, a Satanist with a nametag. The mind boggles.

  Right off the bat there’s something problematic about this Danica though, that being she looks a lot like a young Jane Fonda—and not the batshit pinko Hanoi version either.

  Think Cat Ballou. Think Barbarella.

  Which makes her—if a young Jane Fonda is your thing (and it is very much mine)—beautiful. You may recall me saying earlier that if upon entering this office I were to catch sight of a topless Danica, the boy and I would be going home.

  Feel free to disregard that.

  “Welcome to the Church of E,” Danica says as I reach her desk. “You must be Mr. Horvath.” Good lord, she even sounds like a young Jane Fonda.

  “Uh…yeah, that’s I—me,” I answer, and way too bashfully for someone packing heat.

  Unable to endure the sight of this gorgeous creature, I look down at Sparky to see if he’s seeing and hearing what I’m seeing and hearing. Perhaps I’ll throw a wink at him as if to say, You seeing and hearing what I’m seeing and hearing, pal? Yowza.

  But this look down not only tells me that Sparky does not see nor hear what I do, it also tells me not to waste my time throwing any Yowza winks at him either.

  This is because he’s gone.

  2

  Although my life throughout high school had been nothing more than one disaster after another, the good news is, shortly after I turned seventeen, my mother died.

  To repeat: for most of my adolescence she had been suffering from crippling headaches and had been to doctor after doctor about them. Tragically, none of these doctors could figure out what the problem was, mostly because doctors in general are not the gods society makes them out to be, but flawed, limited human beings who, faced with so many people who expect the impossible from them, have no choice but to guess and lie.

  I can’t really say I blame them for any of that. The human body—as any doctor will tell you when you get him inebriated to the point of honesty—is still too much of a mystery and for every symptom bodies do or do not exhibit, there are oftentimes limitless possibilities as to what could be wrong with them.

  Doctors know this. It drives them crazy. It’s why a lot of them are closet drunks and sex ma
niacs and have wives and children who despise them.

  Unsurprisingly, all the doctors to whom my mother went were these sorts of doctors. They also didn’t guess or lie very well about what was causing her headaches.

  Dr. Wiley, Mom’s general practitioner, said it was probably an issue with stress and lack of sleep. He guessed this because a few patients he’d had with headaches had mentioned stress problems in addition to not sleeping very well, but after he had told them to get more sleep and find ways to relieve stress, they hadn’t come back right away.

  A patient not coming back right away was, to Dr. Wiley, the best measure of success.

  Dr. Cobb, the first neurologist my mother saw, said—after scanning her head and finding nothing—that her headaches might be due to a lack of sexual activity. He guessed this because he too had been having a headache here and there of late and had found that after expelling his seminal vesicles he felt better. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, Dr. Cobb thought. But then, Dr. Cobb thought the answer to everything was sex because he was a sex maniac.

  The second neurologist my mother went to see, Dr. Cogswell said—after scanning her head—it was due to not getting enough vitamin C in her diet. This supposition of his was the result of a kickback deal he’d worked out with a local vitamin company that was hoping to get more sales for its supplements.