by Jarod Powell
His dad thinks he barfs pea soup. He caught him padding the headboard of his bed when he stumbled in, tripping on the brown bag of nails in the doorway. His dad looks at him and keeps stapling, probably more staples than he needed. He’s nervous.
What you doin’, Dad?
Just some precautions, he says.
I’m fine, you know. You don’t have to do that.
Just in case. He pauses.
Don’t worry, his dad tells him, fluffing the pillow. We’ll have you up and purring like a kitten in no time.
That night his dad put the extra Bible stolen from a hotel room on the night stand.
The padding on the headboard was way conspicuous as he tried to sleep. He kept his head turned up to analyze it for the first few hours till his spinal chord felt like it might snap, then he kept it in his memory as he stared at the poster of some anonymous Sports Illustrated model.
His cousin Bayda tells him about dreams she has. Sometimes they have zombies or ghosts or something scary, and sometimes they are full of mysterious religious shit, like Jesus comes to her in a field of light and tells her not to have sex before marriage or smoke pot or whatever. He don’t really like her, but he likes listening to her talk. She’s real smart about some things, and fantastical in her delivery. It’s hard not to like her, kind of.
Do you ever have, like, dreams about like, romance? He asks her.
No, never.
Never?
No.
Well, what about…
What?
Forget it.
No, what?
You’ll think I’m a pervert.
Oh, listen. That’s just the devil getting to you. You just have to clear your mind while you’re awake, and the dreams will stop.
What in the world are you talking about? He asked. Here she goes again, talking straight up bullshit.
You know, read the Bible more; actually listen to in church.
I’m not sure you get what I mean.
I get what you mean.
But dreams can’t be controlled, I don’t think. I think they happen due to thoughts we don’t dare have on purpose.
That’s one way to look at it, I guess.
I like to think of them as something that makes us let our blocks down we hold around lots of people or in crowds – the same guards that tell us to hold in our farts in church or at the dinner table –
Oh, man, don’t be gross.
Or like when your parents are gone, and you steal from the liquor cabinet just because their shit’s always easier to deal with later.
You lost me.
But these are daydreams. The dreams I can control, but choose not to. Choices always have punishments. Sunday school pretty much says that’s what life on Earth is all about.
You mean consequences. Choices always have consequences.
Huh?
That’s what you should mean. Don’t let the Devil take you on like that. He will make you jaded and cynical and lazy. Don’t be lazy.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but we’ll get into it more later. I’ve got to go babysit.
Oh man, have fun.
Yeah, right.
Cynical and lazy, don’t be! He said with a grin.
Shut up.
He tends to ride his bike before his doctor’s appointments. It’s not something he does on purpose.
He runs the same route, the county road in front of Greer’s house. Riding past Marcia’s house, he waves at her family every time but they never wave back, except Marcia. It doesn’t bother him because they’re town outcasts and so is he, and in some weird way he takes pleasure in predicting they’ll eventually come around when they get to know him. It’s a psychic bond they’re too stubborn to acknowledge. I guess it calms him.
He knows exactly what happens on these rides he takes. Greer stops him with some gossip, usually about the neighbor he’s taken to calling Chester the Molester, our boy’s uncle, and asks if he has cigarettes.
Hey, Homes! He waves from his yard.
’Sup, Greer. He stops and talks and rolls his eyes. Greer seems to enjoy his attitude.
He’s back.
Who’s back?
Chester the Molester, dummy. Gotta post that sign in his lawn now, but he’s on probation or something. His kid moved out. Still don’t have that sign up, though.
Well, his kid should move out if he was fucking him, right?
Fatty got all quiet: But here’s the bad part. I heard the mom is thinking about getting back together with him.
That’s fucked up, kinda.
You got any cigs, Homes?
I can find some, Daryl said. Got any Kool-Aid, Fatty?
The therapist’s office smells like a bank. It prevents him from talking too much. It’s like a professional place, not a place for talking about shit they want you to talk about. Anymore, they don’t have talks like normal. Doctor Ewen puts him under hypnosis.
He plays slow electronic music or water soundtracks or whatever. He then asks him questions. He remembers most of it but after the session, a period of time is missing. Like, he remembers the doctor asking him a question, and the next thing he remembers is waking him up. He don’t really think that’s fair. It’s like giving him truth serum, and if he don’t want to talk about some things, he shouldn’t have to. We’ve all got things to hide and they should stay hidden until they naturally blow up. They don’t need help coming out. It hardly seems fair, mainly because the subconscious is not something we’d even remember to talk about it. It’s like Marcia and her Wicca. It’s like rushing the universe. It’s dangerous.
And lately, Doctor Ewen has been acting weird. He has a look of pity or mourning or even guilt on his face, and he touches his shoulder in a deliberately compassionate way on the way out of his office, and that bothers him, especially after hypnosis, for obvious reasons.
People are quiet in the waiting room and they stare. They couldn’t possibly have heard anything in the session, but some people let off a stink when they’re sad, like a radiation or as Marcia says, an “aura”. It’s his best guess. He don’t like it.
Riding his bike has become hard work. It’s June and it’s muggy. He starts sweating outside the door. But today, he has a destination.
He chugs through the rock with his flat tires and once he gets to Marcia’s house he just walks his bike in the middle of the rows and rows of young trees. Marcia’s outside sucking on a popsicle. She adjusts her bifocals and perks up when she sees it’s him.
What’s up! she hollers in the thick voice of a chunky girl.
Hey Marcia, he pants.
Want a popsicle?
Okay.
They sat in the front porch on a white plastic bench. Marcia talked and talked and talked through her red stained teeth, while her dad mowed the back lawn and gave him dirty looks whenever their eyes met. When the Sun was about to go down and the mosquitoes started biting, Marcia looked at him sheepishly and said, Let’s go sit in the car and listen to the radio.
She put it on the pop station. She bobbed her head along to a dance song. He waited until after the song was over to change it to the country station. Then she turned it down and asked him if he had ever been kissed. He said he wasn’t sure.
You don’t remember if you’ve ever been kissed? She detected bullshit.
I swear, I don’t remember, He said.
I’ve never been. I’m kind of wanting to get it over with.
He kissed her. Then she took his hand and placed it on her breast.
The tingling started down in his spine and he got nervous.
Your nose is bleeding, she said as she backed away.
That’s the last thing he saw before the pain started, his eyes closed and his head split open again.
He felt his body being dragged out of the car and carried like a bride over the threshold, to another car. Can you hear me? Are you awake? He heard Marcia say over and over again.
Bring the bike to his house, He heard a
man in a thick Hispanic accent say sternly. I’ll take him home.
He needs to go to a hospital.
Do as I tell you.
Marcia’s voice trailed off. She was muttering something that sounded like, “I’ve done it again, I’ve done it again,” but it wasn’t clear enough to be sure.
He fell asleep on the porch step, where Marcia’s father left him. He had knocked on the door, but no one heard him I guess.
He woke up in bed, to the hum of the humidifier and with a drying rag on his forehead. He was quizzed by his parents extensively about what happened this time, where he was. He said nothing.
With the day off from school and his mom and dad at work, he ignored his lingering migraine and rode his bike. He expected to see Fatty Greer outside his house, as he was suspended for a couple days for throwing a lit firecracker beside Mrs. Danforth’s tire on her way out of the parking lot. He wasn’t there, so he kept riding past Chester the Molester’s house. But he saw Fatty’s bike on top of the storm cellar.
He rode farther up than he ever had, and then onto the highway, all the way to the convenience store owned by the Redmond family. He bought a Gatorade and Mrs. Redmond said, don’t stand outside and drink it. Be on your way. He did anyway and that weird hag didn’t do anything about it.
Riding back home was a fucking chore. He stopped at the T in the road to catch his breath and he saw Fatty sitting on Chester’s porch smoking a cigarette. He waved at him. He started riding toward him.
This dude’s got cigs! He said with glee. You want some? He gave me half a carton.
Sure, he said. Chester came outside, shirtless and smoking.
How you doin’? How’s your mom? Chester said, stroking his mustache, barely awake.
I turned the A/C on. Looks like you could use it.
Nah, he said. I gotta go.
Suit yourself, Chester said. Charlie, you gonna be long?
No sir. Fatty looked at our boy and whispered, I’m doing chores. This faggot will give you whatever you want if you do bullshit for him.
Hey boy, Chester said to Daryl. You ever mow a lawn?
Yeah.
Fatty looked at him with warning. Yes sir, he whispered.
Yes sir, Daryl repeated.
Chester grinned. That sounds so much better.
His voice, the mannerisms. They were familiar to our boy. Chester and our boy were related, but strangers. He couldn’t place it.
Chester didn’t have much of a lawn, and less of a lawnmower. It took our boy about half an hour to mow the entire lawn front and back. Chester came out with a drink three different times, then offered to make him a sandwich. Knowing what he knew, he should not have gone inside, but Chester the Molester was familiar to him and our boy wanted to figure out who this dude was.
Inside was a Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon on television, and a vacant-eyed boy watching it, much younger than Hopper, occasionally looking at Daryl longingly.
Let’s get out of here.
Inside this dilapidated house was a grown man getting too close to the demon inside our boy’s own dilapidated dollhouse of a brain.
His brother has said that our boy’s recurring migraine was a demon inside him, aggravated by something and lashing out from within. Shame has prevented him from saying what has aggravated this beast.
The teenage orgasm is a shameful thing, as children are not meant to experience them, and knowledge is not meant for them, either. The truth is that our boy thought they were punishment, as if his brain or body, or maybe his soul, was rejecting this knowledge as if it was an alien organ transplanted.
And so, you can guess how our boy recognized Chester the Molester. The migraines were probably not demons.
It was on this morning that it all came together and it was too much to take. Our boy didn’t kill Chester the Molester, though he wanted to, and you might say he should have. He had the opportunity to be a pre-teen hero and he rejected it. This is something to regret later in life. Instead, he had the final migraine of his long, murky, uninspiring life.
His insides sat in Chester the Molester’s yard, pieces of it stuck to the living room carpet, the kitchen floor, splattered in the bath tub.
When our boy came to, he just left. He didn’t ride his bike home, he walked it under highway hypnosis. He never told anybody, and didn’t even remember after a short period of time, and in fact forgot most faces, names and occurrences. He started over. He just lived the kind of repressed life one would expect until adulthood, a tiny voice inside of him futilely refusing to be victimized any more, but of course he was always held hostage.
HOMELESS MAN FROM HAWTHORN FINDS A KINDRED SPIRIT ON NORTH CAHUENGA BLVD. AND PROSELYTIZES ABOUT WHAT EVE DONE
Don’t worry, Mister. I know better than to ask you for change. You ain’t that generous. You know how I know? Your suit is too clean. Your tight wallet tells on you. People that spend money don’t have it. You ever notice that? What do you do with that suit around here? You ain’t got no briefcase, but I bet you own a shiny, leather one that you carry around everywhere that you want to be seen. I know you ain’t on no business trip out here, and there ain’t no job to go to, especially on this bus route. What’s the matter, didn’t want to dirty up your rental? Are the girls too wild downtown? Gotta come to The Valley for the cleaner fun? They’re all professionals, Mister. Don’t matter, I suppose. I can smell your aftershave from here and I ain’t that close. Smells real nice. What are you tryin’ to cover up? I know you can smell me. You know what that smell is? It’s what life’s shit smells like. It’s all over me.
Don’t give me that look, Mister, you’d be surprised at how easy you can fall out the tower. Sounds like somethin’ you heard in a movie, don’t it? Well, it’s the truth, cliché or no cliché. You wouldn’t be kind
enough to let me use your Sunset Marquis shower, would ya’? Didn’t think so. I stayed there once. Spent all my money in one night, and been homeless ever since. Hey. I made a joke and you didn’t even hear it. Stop pretending you don’t hear me. You look nervous. You’d probably like nothing more than for me to remove my gut from behind your hundred-dollar haircut. I’m standing right here, Dapper Dan. I’m not moving. It’s a free country, in case you’ve been in that high-rise cocoon for too long. Why are you reading the New York Times, Dapper Dan? Don’t try to act like your hometown paper is so much better than ours. New York is your hometown, right? Yeah, right. How are my strapped brethren on the East, my strapping brother?
You wouldn’t know. You’re probably from some po-dunk snow globe, fuckin’ Denver or something. I went there once. Real nice place to raise a trust-fund baby. How many of those you got now, Dapper Dan? How many you plannin’ for? You gotta send them all to college, you know. Just keep ‘em in Colorado, Danny
boy. Bring ‘em out here and they’ll end up with water balloon-titties and a face only a beach bum could love. You may as well look me in the eye, Dan. I’m not talking crazy and I know you’re listening. You can’t dismiss me like that, you no-good pretty princess. You ain’t careful, you just might learn what that Vanderbilt-wannabe slag you call a mother couldn’t pay for you to learn. I’m sorry, fella’. Your mother is probably a lovely woman. As lovely as they get over there, anyway. You ain’t listenin’, and I’m wastin’ my time obviously, so I’ll just leave you with this and let you get to pretending to read the paper.