They find Nat changing out of her work clothes in the bedroom. Did you talk to him? she asks.
He lies so easily he surprises himself. Yes.
And?
He said they’d pay.
When?
Soon.
Not good enough. What were his exact words?
Don, stained with embarrassment, recites the platitude. The Lord will provide.
Ha! Nat snorts. Don’t we get any credit?
Don takes Gemma to the kitchen for a drink.
PANEL: DON AND GEMMA THE TALKING BABY IN THE KITCHEN, THE SUN SHINING THROUGH A HOLE IN THE CEILING. A FILE OF CARPENTER ANTS MARCHES DOWN A CUPBOARD DOOR IN TINY HARD HATS, SAWS OVER THEIR SHOULDERS. ANTS’ BALLOON: HEY, HO! HEY, HO! GEM’S BALLOON: WHAT’S EATING MA? DON’S BALLOON: NOT YOU. SO IT’S GOT TO BE . . .
After an extensive search, the sippy cup is located under all the dishes in the sink, filled with water and handed up. Gemma brings it down on Don’s head, hard—ow! Then Nat comes in, T-shirt straining, and levels a displeased eye on the mess. What have you been doing all day?
Looking after Gemma.
The anger slides right off her face when he says this. It’s as though she’s just remembered she has a baby. She pulls Gemma off Don’s shoulders and heads back to the bedroom with her.
PANEL: DON’S SELF-LOATHING SCAMPERS UP HIS PANT LEG. DON TRIES TO SHAKE IT OFF. DON’S BALLOON: WHAT DO YOU WANT? SELF-LOATHING’S BALLOON: LOSER!
Don starts on the dishes, which he apparently should have done earlier.
PANEL: DON TRYING TO DROWN HIS SELF-LOATHING IN THE SINK WITH ALL THE DIRTY DISHES. SELF-LOATHING’S BALLOON: FAGGOT! CHEESE-FACE!
He keeps an eye out the cracked and taped window, on the field, the grass knee-high, bleached almost white. Later in the evening it turns a pinky colour, then a deep charcoal by the time the highway lights come on and Sandhu’s Used Auto Parts’ go off. The circular path in the grass is invisible then, the cars parked behind Blake’s trailer gone, Blake alone inside the trailer eating locusts and wild honey. For now, though, he’s still walking. The man and the woman in the wheelchair have left. Blake’s been on the path since Don woke with Gemma at six this morning, almost twelve hours, or more—who knows when he started. It has to be a record. Occasionally he sips from the water bottle strapped to his belt, but if he stopped for a whiz or a sandwich, Don missed it.
Nat brings Gemma back to the kitchen and hands her off. On the baby’s face, a sated, vaguely drunken expression.
PANEL: GEMMA THE TALKING BABY GLOATS IN DON’S ARMS. HICCUPPING AND SLURRING IN HER BALLOON: DEE-LISHUS! YUMMY, YUMMY! YOU SHOULD TRY IT, POPS!
This is the only time Don feels anything but selfless adoration for his daughter.
From the fridge, Nat takes a foil-wrapped roast chicken she must have picked up on the way home. She drops it on a wet plate.
How was your day? he asks.
Shitty. She disappears inside the fridge again, comes up with an unhappy lettuce. All that way and my contact didn’t show. Now I have to make something up.
I’m sorry, says Don.
She tears leaves off and drops them in the salad spinner. Why? It’s not your fault.
But it is his fault. She wanted to be the one home with Gemma.
I’m going to talk to your friend, she says.
He’s not my friend, Don tells her.
What is not Don’s fault is this house. Nat was nesting. Nat insisted they buy, but unless they were prepared never to go on a trip, or even to a restaurant, ever again in their entire lives, they had to buy in the ’burbs. Not Surrey, Don told her. Please. But the realtor found this old farmhouse. Country life awaited them between the highway and a car parts salvage. All they had to do was plant some trees. The trunk of each of these trees is presently the circumference of Don’s thumb, but give them twenty years and Sandhu’s extensive inventory will eventually be screened.
Less than a month after they moved in, there was a knock at the door. Don answered. Nat was sleeping with Gemma, only a week old.
Picasso? Hey! I can’t believe this!
Instantly, Don was doused in sweat. To this day he hasn’t bought anything in Surrey, not even gas, because he’s afraid of it happening again, of running into someone he went to high school with and his flight instinct not kicking in. However much Don has changed, they’ll recognize him.
Blake Alderson, said Blake Alderson, fully justifying Don’s paranoia. He held out his hand for Don to shake. Don took it. He had to. Because of that day behind the school, Blake Alderson and Dean Sawitsky with the sticks and the dog shit.
Blake explained about the trailer and needing a big lot. Don was hardly listening. He was thinking how this must happen all the time in places like South Africa and Argentina. Waiting for the bus, shopping in the grocery store, there he is! Your former torturer.
No parties, I promise, said Blake.
He looked sixty years old, Don realized, though he couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Don. Instead of a face, a skull in a leather bag.
No drugs or booze. I’m different. I found Christ.
Don was different too, of course. He’d found Art.
After supper, Don stands at the kitchen window again watching Nat wend her way down to the bottom of the property. Daunting, the sight of her at the fence, rigid with disapproval, hands parked on hips. Any husband would cower. But Blake doesn’t alter his pace. Blake is not afraid of Nat. Because the path passes near the fence, it looks as though he’s veering across the field, heading directly and purposely for her.
The prodromal signals: sweat, a tightening in his chest, shortness of breath. Gemma in the Jolly Jumper shrieks for attention, but Don can’t take his eyes off the window. Blake is just metres away from Nat now and getting closer. He’s almost at the fence. There. He’s right in front of her, partially eclipsed by Nat.
Nat turns her head, watches him pass.
Nothing happens.
Don’s whole body is tremoring.
PANEL: STRUNG UP IN THE DOORWAY, GEMMA THE TALKING BABY PIROUETTES AND SHRIEKS, SPRAYING DROOL. GEM’S BALLOON: GET ME A GRAVOL, QUICK! DON RUSHES TO EXTRICATE HER FROM THE HARNESS WITH SELF-LOATHING ON HIS SHOULDER MAKING FACES AT THE BABY.
He totes Gemma off for her bath. It’s all right, he says, still panting. Everything’s going to be fine.
Gemma bathes in a ring that keeps her upright and suction-cupped to the bottom of the tub. Still, he can’t leave her and go to the window. You can’t leave a baby in the bath. He submerges the plastic teapot, tries to get her to fill his cup. He squeaks her duck. All the while he’s listening for Nat to come back in, fretting over why she’s taking so long. Is she mad enough to go over the fence?
PANEL: DON’S SELF-LOATHING DOING THE BACKSTROKE IN THE TUB. IT RUNS INTO DUCKIE. SELF-LOATHING’S BALLOON: OUT OF THE WAY, YA PIECE OF RUBBER!
When he can stand it no longer, he lifts Gemma out, wraps her in a towel and carries her to the kitchen window. Blake is on the outward swing of the path, walking away from the fence, Nat just then heading back up to the house, head lowered, dark hair concealing her face. Don reads the disappointment in her posture—disappointment in him, in how everything has turned out.
When she comes back inside, she takes Gemma off to bed without a word. Assuming that’s the last he’ll see of Nat tonight, Don goes dutifully to the living room to tape a crooked seam in the drywall. They are two bookish people trying to fix up an old house using a book. It should be funny. It should be filling every panel of his strip, which is essentially the autobiography of a dweeb, Don, barely muddling through the day. For a long time Don hasn’t been able to get the pictures out of his head.
Nat does come back. She comes and lies on the couch and watches him, which makes the tape stick to his fingers.
PANEL: A SINISTER-LOOKING DON ROLLING HIS SELF-LOATHING IN DRY-WALL TAPE. SELF-LOATHING’S BALLOON: UNHAND ME!
She’s avoiding writing. Don is familiar with h
er strategies. The only way she can start is to put it off and put it off until she can scratch her backside on the deadline.
She says, He wouldn’t answer.
I could have told you that. You can call him till the ghosts of the cows come home.
Does he ever stop?
He hasn’t today.
You’d think he’d want to take a load off. On the Sunshine Coast, people leave their old chairs at the bus stops. Isn’t that nice?
Yes. It is.
It drives me crazy watching them. Around and around and around. Because that’s what I feel like, driving into work an hour each way, writing about topiaries and sunscreen and sangria. Coming home to the endless Work-In-Progress. I’d just like to hire someone to fix up this dump. I’d like him to pay us so we can hire someone. Is that so unreasonable?
Don says, No.
This should be the happiest time of our lives.
I know, says Don.
Who is he? He looks like some crazy freak.
A guy I went to school with.
You said that already.
Don has hinted things to Nat. Once, for example, he brought up his scars. He said, I can’t set foot on a golf course. Men in spiked shoes run after me with clubs trying to get a whack at my face. Nat said, So you had zits. Who didn’t?
PANEL: LITTLE DONNY BUTLER RUNNING THE GAUNTLET BETWEEN CLASSES AT SIR JOHNNY MAC. SO MUCH ACNE, HE LOOKS LIKE A SMALLPOX VICTIM. SKOOL-MATES HURL FOOD AND TAUNTS WHICH HE DEFLECTS WITH A FOODS-PATTERED BINDER.
PANEL: DONNY TAKING REFUGE IN THE ART ROOM. FINGERS CLAW UNDER THE DOOR, TRYING TO GET AT HIM. MRS. LONG IS BUSY AT THE BACK OF THE ROOM RECONSTRUCTING THE VENUS DE MILO OUT OF TAMPAX TUBES. MRS. LONG’S BALLOON: DONNY! COME HERE AND TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF THIS.
PANEL: DONNY CROSS-EYED WITH EMBARRASSMENT BEFORE THE SCULPTURE, STEAM POURING FROM HIS EARS. MRS. LONG’S BALLOON: . . . AN AESTHETIC REBUTTAL OF HISTORICALLY MISOGYNISTIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE FEMALE FORM—OH, HERE’S SOMEONE I WANT YOU TO MEET.
PANEL: GIRL IN BIG GLASSES COMING IN THE DOOR, HOLDING HER NOSE. GIRL’S BALLOON: HI, DONNY. I’M WITH THE YEARBOOK COMMITTEE. MRS. LONG, AH, WE, AH, WE WERE WONDERING IF YOU’D DO PORTRAITS OF THE CLASS OF ’79.
PANEL: HEADING: AND SUDDENLY LITTLE DONNY BUTLER’S LIFE TOOK A TURN FOR THE BETTER! DONNY IN THE ART ROOM SKETCHING A BLOW-UP DOLL OF A GIRL. BEHIND HER, ALL THE SKOOL-MATES WHO WERE ABUSING HIM STAND EAGERLY IN LINE.
PANEL: HEADING: BUT ONLY SOME OF THE TIME! DONNY STANDING AT HIS LOCKER. SCRAWLED ACROSS IT: FAGGOT! CHEESE-FACE! I EAT SHIT! DONNY SNIFFS. DONNY’S BALLOON: WHAT’S THAT SMELL?
PANEL: HEADING: THE NEXT DAY. BLAKE ALDERSON STALKING THE HALL. WAIST-LENGTH HAIR, TOOLED LEATHER WRISTBANDS, SLEEVES RIPPED OFF. DONNY SHRINKS DOWN AT HIS LOCKER. DONNY’S BALLOON: OH, NO! THERE’S BLAKE ALDERSON! HE’S PROBABLY THE ONE WHO PUT DOG SHIT IN MY LOCKER YESTERDAY!
PANEL: DONNY TRIES TO SQUEEZE INSIDE THE LOCKER. BLAKE ALDERSON’S BALLOON: HEY, DONNY! I’M TALKING TO YOU.
PANEL: DONNY LOOKS UP, DON’T DO IT! WRITTEN ON HIS FACE. A FEW OF HIS ZITS SPONTANEOUSLY POP, SPLATTERING BLAKE. BLAKE ALDERSON’S BALLOON: I FUCKIN’ LOVE THAT PICTURE YOU DREW OF ME! CAN YOU DRAW ANOTHER ONE? MAKE IT BIGGER. AND MAKE IT A JOINT, NOT A CIGARETTE.
PANEL: BLAKE HOLDS UP THE PICTURE OF HIMSELF, GRINNING. BLAKE’S BALLOON: THIS IS FUCKIN’ GREAT! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID IT JUST LIKE THAT! I’M PUTTING IT ON THE FRIDGE, MAN.
Don tells Nat, Once I was leaving school late. He assumes she won’t understand that this meant no witnesses, that he could be singled out at a glance. I was drawing pictures for the yearbook. Caricatures of the graduating class.
It was likely Mrs. Long, the art teacher, who got the yearbook committee to ask him. Years later, at the time of the Columbine massacre, Don wondered about the art teacher because Mrs. Long was the only one he would have spared had he a taste for revenge, which he doesn’t. Because of the yearbook gig, Don had to stay after school a few times a week, drawing. People who’d never spoken to him in his life, even people who unfortunately had, began sucking up. They wanted bigger boobs, smaller noses, braces and pimples left out. Suddenly Little Donny Butler possessed the transforming powers of a god.
Giving up with the drywall tape, Don moves to the chair across from where Nat lies and puts his feet up on the tool box. At the back of the gym, he tells her, there was an emergency exit with an overhang where the smokers sometimes hung out. I was going home that way and I saw Blake Alderson and Dean Sawitsky there.
PANEL: BLAKE AND DEAN, SLEEVELESS. SCRIBBLED HAIR, TOOLED LEATHER. HEADING: NOTE THE SUPERB LATERAL VISION POSSESSED BY PREDATORS.
I saw them. Blake and Dean. But I had to keep going. If I turned back or if I ran, they’d come after me. If I kept walking they might just call me names.
What names? Nat asks.
Don tells her one of the more benign ones, Cheese-face, and Nat laughs.
Nat laughs!
Anyway, he says, I kept on walking and they didn’t notice me. I took this as a ruse. I lived this scenario so often it was like chess. As I got nearer, I saw they were leaning over something. They were bending over something and laughing. They had sticks. They’d caught something and were torturing it with sticks.
Nat rises on an elbow and looks at him.
I didn’t want to see what it was, says Don.
What was it?
Some kind of animal, I thought. I hoped it was dead.
What? Nat asks.
It was a pile of dog shit. They were playing with it. They had it sort of pincushioned with sticks.
The black spiky mound appears in every one of his cartoons. He has several dozen sketchbooks filled only with this image.
Once they put shit in his locker, but the janitor cleaned it up. Don would have rather they just pounded him. Anything but what he thought they were going to do. He tried his usual useless last resort, negotiating with the deity, please God, please, though he didn’t believe in God anymore. Don’t let them make me. Please. By then Blake and Dean were behind him, leaving Don in the worst possible tactical position. He could never outrun them. Looking over his shoulder to see if they were following—that was their signal. One backward glance and—go!
He thought, I’ll kill myself. If one molecule of that shit so much as touches me.
PANEL: BLAKE AND DEAN BENDING OVER THE MOUND. DON’S SELF-LOATHING LEAPS TO ITS FEET AND RUNS. BLAKE AND DEAN’S BALLOON: HEY! WHAT’S GOING ON? COME BACK! FAR IN THE BACKGROUND, DONNY STALKS AWAY WITH A NOOSE DANGLING OVER HIS HEAD.
I had a hard time, Don tells Nat. All the way through school. It was hell.
PANEL: DONNY IN HIS BASEMENT AT HOME, STANDING ON A CHAIR, A ROPE COLLARING HIS NECK. HE’S TYING THE END TO A RAFTER. SELF-LOATHING WATCHES. SELF-LOATHING’S BALLOON: HEY! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?
PANEL: DONNY LOOKS DOWN AT THE SPIKY BLACK CREATURE. DONNY’S BALLOON: WHERE’D YOU COME FROM? SELF-LOATHING’S BALLOON: YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GET OFF SO EASY! COME DOWN RIGHT NOW!
Nat says, What happened?
And all Don can bring himself to tell her is this: Blake said hi.
He said hi?
He called me Picasso. When I walked by, that’s what he said. Hi, Picasso.
Don goes to the kitchen to get a drink of water, lifts the glass with a shaking hand. Outside, every highway light is haloed. There’s another light too, smaller and closer, not stationary, but moving slowly in an arc. Blake Alderson, walking around by flashlight.
Don sets the glass in the sink and leaves by the kitchen door. There are no stairs, which is why they don’t normally go out this way. Don has to jump into a void. He closes the door then stands for a long time watching the drunken firefly that is Blake’s light, wondering once again what he should do and feel about the man. It’s true that after Don drew the picture of Blake, Blake never bothered him again. Not that day behind the school. Never again. But what about everything that happened before that? Don should just forgive and forget? Or should he thank Bla
ke? Thank you, Blake, because, without you and your ilk, I would not be the syndicated dweeb I am today.
Above his head the kitchen window slides open and Nat calls his name.
Nat sees Blake too, she must. For a long time they watch him, Don just under the window, so close to Nat that if he reached up and Nat out, their hands would touch. In actual fact, they’ve never been so far apart.
Don? Are you out there?
Eventually the window slams.
After a minute, when he’s sure Nat has left the kitchen, Don walks down to the bottom of the lot. There’s a moon to see by, silvering the way. He leans against the fence watching Blake on the slow homeward swing now, the flashlight beam sweeping the path as he advances. Don hasn’t been standing very long when he begins wishing for a chair.
Blake passes in the dark, a shadow of himself. Fuck you, Don says. Blake staggers on without responding so Don climbs the fence and waits for him to come around again. He’s walking so slowly, it takes him almost ten minutes to complete the circuit, by which time Don’s ass is numb and he has no choice but to get off the fence. He jumps down on Blake’s side.
Fucker.
He wades through the grass to the tamped-hard path, falls into step. Asshole.
PANEL: BLAKE ALDERSON, SEMI-CONSCIOUS, DRAGGING HIMSELF AROUND THE CIRCLE, DON FOLLOWING. DON’S BALLOON: ASSHOLE! SHITHEAD! STONER!
Each of these insults Don pronounces in a low clear voice. He’d scream them, but then Nat would come out. Tailing Blake in the dark, feeling his way with his feet, thinking of the most outrageous, puerile things, then saying them. Shit licker. Toilet-paper face. Cum wad. Christ! Where is this coming from? Don almost stumbles but recovers his footing and continues pelting these ludicrous expletives at the silhouette of Blake’s stooped back. Booger eater. Cock breath. Pus sucker. Bum boil. He feels like an idiot. Then he starts to laugh. It would be funny in the strip, hilarious, but they wouldn’t print it.
Shut up, Don thinks. Just shut up.
It’s quiet now, hardly any cars on the highway at this hour. No sound but breathing—Blake’s ragged, Don’s decelerating. And whoa! Down he goes! Blake sinks to his knees like a beast, like the silence has felled him, and Don almost trips over his swaying genuflection. He steps back as Blake thuds onto his side in the long grass.
Pleased to Meet You / The Sky is Falling Page 14