Dysphoria

by Sheldon Lee Compton

  "We are going to have so much fun, me and you. You just wait and see, little Shannon.” She wiggled her shoulders. “My little Shannon."

  The door closed slowly bringing the darkness spiked with purple rays of twilight through the loose boards of the shed. Dave scrambled across the dirt floor, moving his hands in large sweeping motions through his own vomit and found his clothes.

  Outside the shed he could hear whistling. Through the hole in the door he could see Clara. She was plucking absently at the flowers at the foot of the steps leading up to the porch. Dave looked at her dress, hanging about a foot below her knees, thought about her legs and vomited again, white and yellow bile across his lap, his empty stomach cramping as he finished.

  They fed him very little over the next two days before a police officer knocked on the door and asked if they'd seen David Shannon, William Shannon's boy. It was slop, meant mostly for the hogs, and he did good to eat it without losing it back up again. He lived, he figured later, on the two Mason jars of green beans he found on the last morning he was in the shed. He noticed them along the top shelf and brought them down with his heart ramming against anything near it. He ate more than half of the first jar before screwing the copper-colored lid back on. A short time later, he unscrewed it, took two more beans and a large drink of the water sloshing around inside, and replaced the lid. He put both jars back in their spot. Joe hadn't came back into the shed for tools or anything of that nature, but he didn't want to take the chance that mean old Joe would find his hidden life line. He had been thinking a lot about death in the hours leading up to discovering the jars of beans, and now, for the first time since he had been taken prisoner, he was thinking about life.

  Larry was back home, having spent a day in the hospital undergoing emergency surgery for his left hip and two badly pulverized legs. The details were lost on Dave. He heard Joe and Clara talking on the porch the evening Larry was brought home; he remembered hearing that word pulverized and feeling what it meant. He remembered Larry pancake flat against the pile of coal like a yellowed toenail at the base of the tipple. It was amazing that he was home at all.

  But not having him home was not acceptable. Joe made that clear, and no one questioned it. Larry was home, huddled in the back room dealing with his pain while Dave dealt with his in the shed.

  It was early afternoon by the time the first cop knocked on the front door of the Fenner's home. Dave was sleeping, taking advantage of an uncommonly cool afternoon that gave back his lungs, beaten from heat and exposure to little or no clean air.

  Larry heard them from his bedroom, talking to his mother and father. His eyes searched the ceiling, jerked left to right while he listened.

  That's a shame, officer.

  Don't they have an idea where he'd be?

  When did they see him last?

  Larry shook his head and his eyes and his arms. He would have jerked his legs if he could have moved them.

  They say he was with our boy the last time anybody saw him? Who said that?

  Well it matters to us, I reckon.

  The sound of the cop’s cruiser engine revving in the driveway woke Dave up and he just had a chance to see through the hole the blue and white car with the large antenna rolling back and away from the Fenner house. He couldn’t help himself and at the risk of attracting attention after such a long break, he banged his fist against the door and started to cry.

  He was still crying when Joe slammed the back door and stomped down the front steps. The shed door popped open on its hinges. Dave noticed above Joe’s head the dull gray sky. Summer rain.

  He looked down on Dave. "Sonofabitch.” He put his hands on his hips and spit sideways and cocked his head. "Come on! Sonofabitch."

  Dave didn't move. He thought about standing, but then decided to sit and wait to see what Joe wanted. His heart was racing. He felt like he would pass out. Joe grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to a standing position. He could see most of the boy's ribs when he got him standing. Served him right, busting up his boy's legs like that and then showing up here like he did. And even if he hadn't busted up Larry's legs, sometimes little pricks like Dave Shannon just needed to be reminded of a few things. He liked to be the one reminding. But that was over now. Fucking cops. Somebody told about what happened out at the tipple. All he knew was that Larry fell off the tipple. That's what Larry had told him. He figured out himself that it was Dave's fault. That part wasn't hard. What had him thinking was who it was that reported this little skinny shit missing so quick. It was probably one of those other boys always running with Dave and his brother. It sure as shit wasn't William Shannon. The man was at work too much to notice. The boy's mother would have just thought he was off staying with somebody. That's what he had relied on. But now this.

  The cop that came knocking was a boy Joe recognized, and he heard while getting gas at Cramer's that the Shannons had reported Dave missing the evening after he didn't come home after school. He overheard someone say they read an article about the missing Shannon boy is the newspaper. The Shannons must have called them, asked them to put a missing person's notice in or something. Chip Evers must have needed something to write about and wrote a whole hellfire story on the little prick. Three days and already he was the missing Shannon boy. But Joe had a plan now. To make it work would take some doing, planning that started now, here in the doorway of the shed.

  Joe stepped into the shed but then reeled backward and covered his mouth and nose with the palm of his hand. The boy had used the bathroom in one corner and it smelled far worse than even the pig lot. He crossed the shed and took Dave's arm.

  "You bout to go,” he said. “I'm gonna take you out to the tracks on Elm Branch and gonna let you out. I'm gonna call the goddam newspaper first and tell them I saw that missing fucking Shannon boy out there on the tracks on Elm Branch.” He stopped at once, pulled Dave to his feet. "You gettin' this? You'll want to remember everything from now until you get back home real clear, cause it's real important. If word gets out about what's happened here, about you being here, I don't think I need to tell you what will happen.”

  Dave's arm hurt. Everything in the past few days had been converted to physical reactions of pain and hunger. He understood what Joe had told him, but his main concern was for the two jars of green beans on the shelf. He was sure Joe was going to notice them and break them and laugh and leave, even though he only stared down on Dave. If he turned his head just an inch or two he’d see the jars. Though he understood what Joe had said, he wasn’t convinced any of it was real or true.

  "You better understand me, boy," Joe said and jumped into Dave's face, his nose so close to Dave's face that he could see three long hairs crawling from the left nostril toward his slightly crooked upper lip. "I'm lettin' you go.” Joe stopped, stood as if thinking about this statement and the weight it carried and then leaned back into Dave's face. "But what I probably ought to do is kill you.”

  Joe stood and scratched his chin a moment, thinking about how he could do it. He could do it and never get caught, that was sure. But the police had already visited his house. Had they visited other houses in the area? Had someone saw the little shit here at his house and reported it and the cops were just playing dumb, luring him in, keeping watch. No, he couldn't kill him, he figured. No matter how nice that would be.

  "Naw, I guess I can't kill you. But that's what I'd do if I knew I could. Let's go."

  He didn't see the beans, Dave thought as Joe jerked him by the elbow out of the shed. He's not going to take the beans, the magic beans. "The magic beans."

  "Huh? What'd you say?"

  When Dave didn't answer, Joe turned fast with the nose hairs and heavy breathing. "Look at me. Look at me!"

  Dave pulled his gaze from the ground. The beans were gone for good now. No way around it. When he looked up, he saw Joe's elbow bending back and then his fist coming fast at his face and there was nothing he could do about it.

  "Right there you go, you horrible litt
le cripplin' fuck!” Joe slammed his fist a second time into Dave's mouth and smiled at the pain he felt in his knuckles as they smacked across and against Dave's teeth and lips. The lip was split almost in half with the first punch and the second sent a tooth down Dave's throat. Dave gagged on it and dropped to the ground, his mouth transformed into a faucet of dark red-black blood. And Joe dropped to his knees in front of the boy, swiveled his head left and right, checked the surrounding hills, making sure no squirrel hunters or anybody else was perched on a nearby ridge, and then pushed the ball of his elbow up into Dave's face once, twice, sending him flailing backward onto his back.

  "Now, now, now," Joe panted. His chest was heaving up and down and he couldn't keep his arms still; his fists wanted more action. What a spectacle he must have been if someone had seen him spinning in the yard with arms out of control over Dave Shannon on the ground, a bloody mess full of crying and bleeding.

  Kill him.

  It sounded good. The problems with that simple plan that had been running through his head earlier were gone now, tucked neatly aside by adrenaline and power and rage, his interchangeable constants.

  "That shed’s nice and comfy ain't it, boy? I done my time in that shit hole, same as Larry, same as you, and done it hard. But your time's done now.” He leaned in closer, his cheekbone brushing Dave's busted nose he was so close. "Yes, yes, yes. I think I am gonna kill you, prick.” He jumped up and slung his arms in the air and twirled around. When he leaned back over, pressing in close to Dave again, he was a god and yelled into the boy's face thunder and lightning and hail.

  Dave cut the yell in half, all elbows and pushing and thrusts, and then Joe was reduced from his god-self to an old man again, gurgling on blood and drowning from a hole in his throat about the size of a quarter. Dave dropped the blunt stick, now covered in warm blood, to his side. He had shoved it into the side of Joe Fenner's neck without a thought. There had been a thick suction when he pulled it loose. Exhausted, Dave relaxed his head onto the ground and, beyond his control, fell immediately into a drained, steady sleep.

  In the car it was silence he remembered most, and the back of Clara’s head, shaking and moving back and forth from side to side. The whispers and the hissing he would remember later in his dreams and in the fields overseas. It was the sound of the rain coming across the rice field that brought the hisses back to his memory then, just before the full storm hit across his platoon, young men huddled together and tired of the rain, tired of the fear. This hiss, when the coming rain was still just a distant sound beating a millions dents across the field, was the sound Clara Fenner kept making while she drove him out to Elm Branch. It was the sound she spat into his face as she dropped him from the car and onto the tracks. And it was the sound the car made as it disappeared and became part of the terrible past.

  25

  Paul hitchhiked back to Red Knife. The trip was dark and cold. The man who gave him a ride wasn’t a talker. He mentioned he drove a coal truck, spent about three minutes complaining that all his co-workers stayed high on nerve pills and speed, and then went quiet. Some kind of miracle for sure, Paul figured, that anyone would pick up a hitchhiker these days. But, hitchhiking or not, Red Knife was a dangerous place. Dangerous now; dangerous when his dad was growing up. Paul thought of all that John Harper told him, how he would have never imagined that Larry’s family, his parents, were that demented. It was one thing to know that people had meanness in their hearts, but it was another thing entirely to imagine the type of meanness leading them to the kind of acts John had described.

  From the moment he left John Harper’s house he had felt listless in a way he would never feel again, untethered and spirit-starved. If a mind could truly overflow, this would be that time for Paul. Overflowing, maybe, but not a single thought among it all about his father. He had spent nearly his entire life either openly hating his father or secretly hating him, down so deep inside his secret self even he couldn’t realize how dark the impressions ran. What he felt now, though, was a cream-colored void, no passion to speak of good or bad. His father experienced something terrible and it changed his life. But the thing for Paul was simply this: it changed his life too. This fact blending with the new facts of his father’s past had placed Paul into a kind of mental lockdown. Watching the guardrail from the passenger window, his only thought was sleep.

  When he got to his grandparents' house he stumbled through the kitchen. He passed the guest bedroom and navigated the living room and went into his father's old bedroom. He stepped into the bedroom and, without turning on the light, peeled his shirt off and slid his shoes off at the foot of the bed.

  The room was full of ghosts and fears. It was candy apple-dipped in mental darkness. Paul could make out the silhouette of the bed and pushed ahead until his knee bumped its corner. He then turned sideways and sat down heavily. What else might be waiting for him under the mattress? The bed springs pinched and jabbed his back, prodded him to lift it like a cellar door and fumble for other artifacts, puzzle pieces. But as his eyes adjusted to the dark, the pictures on the walls, pictures of him, became his focus. He was hidden there. He was the next artifact. He alone remained unturned.

  He came awake slowly, turning on his side. The springs still snagged and scraped his ribs, but it was the smell of his father that brought him completely awake.

  The room was slightly lighter. It must have been early morning. He could make out things now, and he felt rested. He closed his eyes again and breathed into the pillow. His breath raised the smell of his father again, and again he opened his eyes.

  The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes this time was the Mason jar of money sitting on the nightstand. The crumpled bills outlined by shadows. He reached across the bed and took the jar in his hand. He brought it close to his face. The lid was old and rusted. He turned it over in both hands, now lying on his back. With a quick flick of his wrist he spun the lid loose and pulled it off. He turned sideways on the bed and dumped the contents on the mattress. Coins scattered inside dark ridges of tossed sheets. The bills tumbled across the bed, along with the letter. He flicked the letter with his fingernail and then looked to the green bills. He picked a handful up and stuffed them in the jar, holding it closer to the growing light coming through the window. He lay like that for a long time while morning broke making the green of the dollar bills more and more visible through the jar. After a long while of this, he got out of bed, dressed in a rush and snatched the keys to the car as he left the house. He had a better than average idea of where the house was, but the overgrown dirt road was so infrequently traveled he might as well have been driving along the side of a hill. He clutched the steering wheel and braced as the windshield of the car tore at and took hits from sagging tree branches that had stretched and then dropped across the road.

  It was just past eight when he came to a rolling stop in front of the old Fenner home. Beside him, the Mason jar rolled back and forth in the passenger seat, empty now.

  It was smaller than Paul had imagined. A rectangle of matted leaves and bald spots showing dirt made up the front yard. This had been the garden. Around the spot where the garden had been were the remnants of a knotted wooden fence. Once well-constructed, what was left of the fence lay in ruins, mostly rotted and falling apart.

  The house looked much the same. Probably in poorer condition than when his father was younger, the house was now a brown and moss green patchwork blending into the trees and bushes that had either crawled up its sides or clutched onto the roof, which Paul noticed was partly collapsed. On the dilapidated front porch was a single wooden chair. Paul stared at it for a long time before getting out of the car. There he could feel a ghost, or a spirit, a demon. All real and all whole and into the world, but also nothing, only an empty rocking chair.

  He slammed the car door shut and checked his back pocket for his father's letter. He had taken the money, folded it into his wallet. The change he dropped into a cup on the kitchen table. Satisfied that the lett
er was still in his pocket he walked into the overgrown leaves, turning the jar in his hands as he went.

  Connected to the far end of the house was what Paul considered a simple carport, but what he figured must have been where Joe Fenner kept his horses. Two thick posts stuck up from the ground under the shed like rotten teeth. The ground beneath the covering was trampled and sported large ridges. He navigated along these ridges to the back of the house and came to the porch.

  The yard in back was a carbon copy of the front, with the only exception being the absence of the rectangular ghost of a garden, and, of course, the tool shed. The tool shed remained. About fifteen feet from the back porch it stood at half attention. Although still standing, it now tilted to the left. A stiff push would send it to the ground. Scattered around the shed and back porch were an assortment of tools, rusted and broken. A garden tiller and, not far away, a skeletal set of mattress springs, presumably used to drag the garden. The back door of the house stood open, hanging by a single hinge.

  Paul started for the door and stopped. He turned the jar over in his hands and then turned again and started to the shed. He stuck his index finger through the hole in the door and gently tugged. The door cracked open about three inches and then stopped, stuck in high grass. Paul shifted the tables of grass with the tip of his shoe and gave a firm jerk. The door broke off and pulled his arm, gravity heavy, to the ground. He regained his footing and dropped the door into the grass and stepped inside the shed.

  In the five or six seconds it took for his eyes to adjust all Paul was left with was the slightly cool breeze coming from inside the shed and the scent of earth and old wood. As the corners of the shed's insides started coming into the view, the first thing he noticed was a brown, rusted gasoline can ahead of him against the far wall. To the left was the bent section of wall that caused the tilt. Paul kicked lightly near the bottom at a small hole there, a place where the wood had given way to leave an opening, tugged at by animals, maybe. To the right, he immediately saw the cuts in the wood. Deep scratches roughly two inches long. They covered the wall. Paul held his hand up and ran his finger along one of the slashes, felt where the wood had peeled away in a ribbon. They started at about his eye level and extended down the wall to about his knees. He bent and brushed a fingerprint along the marks nearest the bottom. These were smaller, about a half inch each, and not as deeply cut. Some had nearly faded away, nothing more than frantic whispers of scratches.