Chapter 23

1
The meteorologist in Davenport, whose nightly news was picked up by Reedy Creek’s basic cable and through the squiggly lines of antenna reception, warned residents in the county of a severe thunderstorm bringing with it the chance for hail and intense wind gusts. He spoke of the storm’s first stage, the developing cumulus tower, climbing like the horizon’s shadow toward the northeast and scurrying with the ardor of an assembly line of anvils; the man was rather poetic, and delighted in his analogies. Most of what he said went over the heads of his viewers, but he spoke with a calculated determination and authority that meant he knew what he was talking about.
            And he must have. Because the storm hit Reedy Creek just after supper. Just as Danny retired to his room, his mind so choked now he barely even recognized the storm for what it was. Thunder shook the house and wind buffeted his window. He wasn’t sure how the try-outs went; he was a good pitcher. He’d gotten by over the summer by emulating Ron Guidry, and his father told him imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, but at some point you developed your own style. The idiom went with whatever you were doing in life. For Pug it was writing. For Adam it was ball. But Danny didn’t know what he would become outside of his attempts to be somebody else. And for the longest time that worked for him; it’s what made this last summer so great. Because he could avoid who he was. Maybe that was a strange thought, but today he was pulled in, pulled back, no matter how badly he tried to be Guidry when the coach told him to fire in a couple of pitches as he held the radar gun. He was the Jew. His friends gave him the nickname and he ran with it. He knew the implications of the name. He understood parts of the history, and he hoped using it would somehow give him some power over the word. The noun. But what happened today, what happened—

            There was a knock on his door. For the first time he realized the rain had started. The world was blurry through his window. It was his dad.

            “How was baseball?”

            His dad was late for dinner. He sometimes worked long hours. Danny sat alone with his mom, mostly quiet, she only casually asking him questions and he answering in the shortest possible way: either by grunting or stuffing his mouth with food so he wouldn’t appear rude if he didn’t talk. She never brought up the rumors about the General. She was respectful enough of those lost lives to know dredging up their deaths would only bring bad tidings. Plus, he’d heard enough about what people thought happened to make even thinking about it tedious.

            “Alright.”

            “You pitch?”

            “Yeah.”

            “So mom was right.” The man sat on the bed with Danny. He had Danny’s hair, or rather, Danny had inherited his dad’s. Long and curly, bunched some at the ears but combed to attempt a modicum of professionalism. He looked like an accountant. “You’re not in a talkative mood tonight, are you?” There was a crack of thunder and his dad looked out the window. “Good timing on this one. News said it would be wise to stay indoors. Cat got your tongue?”

            “I’m fine.”

            “Well, have I got one for you. Buddy called me earlier. At the office. The man’s on a mission, and he thought throwing you under the bus would somehow convince me to unload a ’52 Mantle for one of his Goudey Dimaggios. I hear you made a hundred bucks on a Ryan/Koosman. Soiled ol’ Buddy’s mood.”

            Danny didn’t say anything. He figured, over time, the corpulent card dealer would call his dad. He wasn’t sure he even cared anymore. Cards didn’t really matter much to him. He thought about the dream he had the other night. The dream he feared would rear itself again tonight with the thunder as its chorus, Grimwood appearing from between the dumpsters in some New York back alley with filed teeth and a swastika carved in his forehead, asking him for the gold filling from his teeth.

            “I’m not mad, Danny. Not at all.” His dad laughed. “Surprised, actually, that you were able to negotiate a hundred bucks for it. Especially from Buddy. He was dangling the info like a threat. I can only assume there’s a reason your friends call you the Jew, and I would say you earned it with that transaction. We’ll come back to what you intend to do with that money, Daniel.” He patted Danny’s shoulder. It was a father/son thing, maybe when words weren’t enough. “Typical Buddy, a guy who razes estate sales and criminalizes poor widows with lowball offers on boxfuls of authentic goodies stored in attics or garages, applies the moral high ground when he accuses a kid of getting the better of him. If I have any goal in our time here in Reedy Creek, it’s to ensure that man never sees hide nor stitch of a Mantle. Especially when those Cracker Jacks of his were ill-gotten from an old woman looking for a bit of money for her dead husband’s debts. But check this. He thought he had me with this clunker, sort of a segue to his accusation: Who was the first MLB pitcher to throw a ball over a hundred miles per hour?”

            “Dad, have you come across…I don’t know, any racists here? Like, I mean, anti-Semites…”

            Danny’s dad, David, sort of lost the color in his face and that manic smile, beaming before, turned to a confused puckered line. The answer to that trivia remained lost. It didn’t matter anymore. “What happened, Daniel?”

2

“Dude, you keep farting like that and we’ll likely suffocate from gassing.” Croak laughed. Danny wasn’t sure if that was a Nazi joke or not. It was damn funny, that he could say. Pug was pretty quiet in the corner, and hadn’t said much since going with his mom to check on Chels. When the guys asked how she was doing, he just said they had to wait on some tests. Danny knew that wasn’t the full truth, but he wouldn’t press him on it. If Chelsey was going through some shit, he’d respect the process. She was one of them. He’d said it before and nothing would ever change that. She was the fifth. As important to this summer as any one of them, and if she was truly sick, he, Croak, and Adam would make sure Pug knew they were on his and her side.

            “Yeah, Danny, you should fire off that mud flap before practice or you’ll have to throw out your pants.” Adam waved his hand in front of his nose, standing in his boxers as he climbed into his jockstrap. The locker room here at the secondary was large enough to accommodate fifteen of the boys trying out for the Hornets baseball squad, hoping to make the most of the nice weather until around Halloween, God-willing, when the snow came and put a damper on the national pastime until the season officially started in the spring. The boys were laughing. All of them.

            “My goal is to make mincemeat of these undies now and go bare ass in my sweats.” Danny stood up and farted again; the sound carried in the change room, like a stilted, throttling engine. A guy named Dennis chuckled and waved his ball glove by his face.

            “Well, that must have done it. Sounds like your a-hole ripped.” Croak shoved Danny and the two only laughed.

            “Ripped, maybe. Jarred something loose, definitely. Methinks a quick squat might be wise about now.” Everybody laughed. It didn’t matter if Danny was serious or not. Because there was something about toilet humor. Something about farts. Boys loved it because it was bonding, because no matter who you were or whom you were with, a fart brought out a collective laugh and everybody could talk about it. Everybody had a joke. Girls were probably the same, even if they claimed otherwise. To him maturity was all about laughing at what was actually funny and not trying to appear above the profane; it was juvenile to think you were somehow immune from humor, no matter the root of its content.

            But Danny wasn’t stupid enough to take this stomachache out on the field, especially if he was expected to pitch. Even thinking about lifting his legs in the Guidry swing was enough to convince him shitting now was easier than wearing a diaper later. So he left the guys and hit a stall, scurrying away while jokingly holding his ass with one hand, his steps short and scuffled. The boys laughed. He knew they would.

            “You don’t show up at practice, can we assume you gassed yourself?” Croak called.

            Danny only farted in return. And the guys exploded again. Laughing, coughing, slapping their knees and throwing their gloves at each other. Because they were young and stupid. That’s just what you did.

            When Danny returned to the locker room it was empty. His stomach felt better. Lighter. Maybe it was lunch; his mom packed him some hummus with carrot sticks, and the stuff had been sitting in his bag in the heat, cooking in the Tupperware so that when he did peel back the lid to do some dipping, he could faintly see lines of steam wafting off the surface, like asphalt on a sunny New York day when the street kids break a hydrant to find some refreshment and fun running through the jetstream of water. He set his glove on the bench. Pulled out his sweats from his backpack, folded neatly, the seams pressed with the precision only a mother could perfect. He laid his Yankees cap on top of the sweats and pulled out his Chucks. His mom would have to take him to the strip off Main to buy new cleats. He was growing. His dad was six feet tall, and Danny figured he’d end up around there. Taller if he was lucky. His old pair could barely fit the width of his damn feet; they were still stained with the residues of shale from the field in Brooklyn where he played so many times. He’d just stuck them under his bed, because they were memories. Good memories. And he was sort of like Pug in that he held close those parts of his life that he wanted to retain as he grew up.

            He heard the creaky clack and shrill whistle of the wheels on the floor tile. The man pushed the mop bucket into the locker area, guided by the prop of the mop handle, clenched surely in the man’s large hands, hairy knuckles furled and fat. He was the janitor. He wore a pair of dark navy slacks with a keyring dangling from one belt loop, his shirt a baby blue and nearly too small for his heaving gut, distended over his crotch with an almost waxy drip, like hot plastic formed in a great convex. His hair was black and slicked back with pomade, so that thick lines of scalp were exposed in rows, severing the beaded gleam of the overhead fluorescents catching the shine of his styling product. He had a large brow, protuberant, so that his eyes seemed sunken and distant, but he stopped there by the entrance, by those first lockers, still holding the mop, and he stared at Danny. Stared at him not with curiosity, but as if he knew everything about him. Had decided everything he’d ever feel about the boy based on those initial musings.

            “Huh—hi,” Danny said. He’d already pulled on his pants and was just struggling with his Chucks.

            “You a Joooo?” It wasn’t Jew. No, the word was prolonged, turned into an elongated BOOOOOO, something you might hear a southerner say in the movies.

            “Pardon?” He suddenly wished getting a laugh wasn’t so important. Getting a rise out of Pug was his greatest accomplishment for the day, because he did see the guy chortling as he brambled out of the room, tossing up his mitt to catch, his mind most likely still snared by Chels’s prognosis. But he’d at least gotten through with his puerile antics. Leaving him alone now in the locker room with the janitor, and the guy was off his rocker.

            “Greenfield, right? That’s Jewish. I asked if you’re a Jew.”

            Danny instinctively looked around the room for cameras. Hoping he might find at least one. But there was nothing. Grimwood liked to watch, but even he had standards of conduct and apparently watching boys play dress up went over the line. “I guess…yeah. Why?”

            The janitor stood rooted in spot, still holding the mop, still looking at Danny with dark eyes. Two pinpoints staring out from the shadow of his brow. His was a dumb look, but certain.

            My dad’s a Jew. My mom’s secular, she just gave him a killer deal. Half off. He couldn’t say no. Physically couldn’t. Because a Jew can’t say no to a sale. Danny wanted to chuckle. Wanted to say that out loud, knowing his friends would give a good laugh, but he somehow understood this man wouldn’t care for humor. Because he’s got a screw loose.

            “This damned ethanol. Bringing in the kikes. Kikes like you. Is your cock snipped? Did some rabbi bite the end of your cock when you were a baby? Rabbis chew dick skin like it was gum.”

            Danny didn’t say anything. It wasn’t often an adult swore in front of a kid. Adults usually conducted themselves with reserved self-interest, because appearance was everything. Plus, they didn’t want to teach bad behavior. But this man didn’t care.

            “Couple years ago there weren’t no Jews here. Not in Reedy Creek. It was like heaven, doncha know. And then these fuckin’ Jew Yorkers and niggers start takin’ our crops from us to sell to gas stations, and here I am havin’ to mop up after a kike kid scuffin’ up my floors.” He pulled out the mop now, and with it a splash of filthy water that soaked the floor.

            Danny thought about his dream, but this time it wasn’t Grimwood tottering out from between the dumpsters in that eerie version of New York that wasn’t real, but bore the illusive veneer of the city he remembered; this time it was the janitor, and he pulled that same screeching bucket of dirty mop water with him as he glowered down at Danny.

            “Look, I gotta go to baseball.” He stood up, his knees wanting badly to buckle. So badly he actually did think he’d sit down again. You won’t ever get on that field. You shouldn’t have taken a shit, Daniel. You should have played through it. This man is going to murder you.

            “That’s right. Cause the niggers and Jews run sports now. Baseball used to be a good white man’s game. You think Babe Ruth would even matter these days when ya got niggers stealing his home run record? Do ya?”

            “Please…just let me leave.” Danny thought he might cry. He wanted to. But he figured this man expected it.

            “You should be over the moon, boy. You got a second chance here. Your folks are Oven-Escapers. Every fuckin’ Jew still breathing’s an Oven-Escaper. Gas chambers probably looked a little something like this. Replace the showerheads with gas nozzles,” he chuckled, “and cycle in some of that Zyklon B. Just so I can hear you choke on your own tongue. I’d gladly clean up your vomit if that meant burying you outside in the field. You shouldn’t be playing ball onnit, you little fuck, you should be in a pit under it.” The janitor’s smile widened into a menacing leer. It nearly folded his eyes into mere slits.

            Danny finally held his breath and walked out, cradling his glove, his cap sitting askew on his head leaving bushels of his hair to curl over his ears. He could smell the man. Could smell bleach, and he could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath, the pine scent that must have been his cologne, dabbed on doughy flesh with his fat fingers as he stared at himself in the mirror. The man didn’t move to let him by. Danny heard his Chucks squish on the wet tile where the mop water settled, its edges white with soapy film.

            “Please…”

            “You ain’t gonna tell nobody. Nobody’ll believe you. A fuckin’ kike. Not over me. I been in the Creek for fifteen years. I belong here. I left Jew York. To get away from you filthy Zionists. And ya just up an’ follow me wherever I go. Like cockroaches.”

            “I won’t say anything.”

            “Cause you a coward.” The janitor laughed and actually did swivel a little. Enough so that Danny could squeeze by. He listened to the man bellow laughter as he ran down the hall. Now he was crying. He’d stand by the exit to the field for another minute or so to let the tears abate. To let his heart settle. And he wouldn’t say a word of it to the guys on the field. No. Because what had happened, it still didn’t make much sense. Not yet. It was new to him. An adult had never done that before. Not to him. Broken the pretense of affability that meant one had graduated from the do-anything trials of childhood and adolescence.

3

“Your friends call you Jew because they respect you. That’s what boys do. They find nicknames that make sense. You’re the Jew not because there’s anything wrong with being one, but because they’re defining you by the stereotypes to get an easy laugh. There’s nothing wrong with that, because you and your buds are taking control of the stereotypes. There aren’t any, well, ill intentions when you guys use it. Just like you call Horace Pug. Because he’s, what, fat? And’s got the pushed in nose.” His dad smiled. Danny’s room lit up with a flash of lightning and his dad waited for the thunder to strike, counting under his breath. One, two, three. Three miles away, he’d say. “If some other kids called Pug fat, some strangers, it’s the same thing. They didn’t earn that right. Pug might know he’s fat. He might even be pretty comfortable with it. But when somebody he doesn’t know points it out, it turns from something funny, something relatable, to something mean and dispiriting. It can change that fast. On a dime. So when somebody says you’re a Jew, somebody you don’t know, it makes you the stereotype and the accusation is realer because all of those characterizing faults, the history, everything, it’s laid at your feet. Does that make sense?”

            Danny thought about it for a moment. Or feigned thought. He didn’t tell his dad everything the janitor had said. He didn’t think he could. Because it was horrible. So he changed the story. To somebody on the team calling him a Jew. Calling him out for the obvious jokes: that he had a big nose and wanted to cheat the coach of his retirement pension by convincing him to put everything in junk bonds. As if the kids playing ball knew what that meant. “I guess,” he finally said. It did, he knew that, but at the same time it didn’t make sense of what the janitor said. Because that wasn’t simple name-calling. That was hate. Plain and simple.

            “Look, Daniel, it isn’t fair. I get that. What we’ve gone through as a people, you’d think it would give us pause for a bit. You’d think the Holocaust, what happened during World War II, that it would remind us we’re all human, we’re all alike. No matter what. But there are bad people. Evil people. I’m not daft enough to think you believe that isn’t true. You’re a smart kid. Some people can only define themselves by revealing and, well, demonizing differences. Because their worldviews are that narrow-minded. We beat the Nazis. But our freedom of association, our liberties, gave root to the American Nazi Party. A military man who served in World War II for the good guys, named George Lincoln Rockwell, founded the American chapter, the Nazi Party, in the 50’s.”

            “Nazis…in the States?” Danny was incredulous. He imagined Harrison Ford punching one in the jaw before pulling out his bullwhip. And then he wondered if the janitor, the man with the slick hair and thick brow, was a card-carrying member.

            “Posers, as far as I’m concerned. Taking an established idea, an established symbol, and carrying the flame because they were far too intellectually retarded to find a basis for their hate. But they found a leader in Hitler. Said and believed the Holocaust never happened. That we, well, the Jews were professional victims. Needed the world to believe their sob story otherwise we would have never gotten Israel.”

            “Really? And…and these Nazis, are they still around? Or are they, I don’t know, disbanded?”

            “Psychotic groups like this go through transformations. They re-branded in the late 60’s. I think 1967. National Socialist White People’s Party. To give themselves a more legitimate political aim. Before it was just about the idea. A pure race nation. Aryan. Sending out shock troops, Stormtroopers, to parade their symbol of hate and create fear. The party splintered. Rockwell was even assassinated. Happens with leaders of these types of groups. Malcolm X was killed by, well, a different type of supremacist movement. But people die and kill for their sickness.”

            Danny thought about the janitor’s fat fingers clenched around the mop handle; he thought about those hands dropping that wooden wedge to throttle him as he tried to leave, pushing in his Adam’s apple until his face was purple and waxy. Until his stuttered breaths ceased and he fell in a heap into his own piss, only to be found when Croak sauntered in after practice. He wasn’t sure how he would sleep tonight. Not after what had happened, especially if the storm remained strong. He only listened to the thunder and thought of the terrible shit going on in the world right now. The atrocities. He wondered if somebody like Grimwood was keeping tabs.

            “I don’t mean to scare you, Daniel. I hope you know that.”

            “Of course. I just…well, even in New York I didn’t come across much of it, cause people kind of just stuck with their own. And if it did happen, if somebody did say something, I might not have even understood it.”

            “True,” David nodded. “I’m going to be honest with you. You’ll never escape it. No matter what. Six million people died, some of your relatives, ancestors, hardly even a memory now spare for the burden they undoubtedly faced down. There are people even now that deny what your ancestors went through. That my grandparents died. There’s a trial going on in Canada with a Holocaust-denier named Ernst Zundel. There’s always going to be somebody who hates you for you. For what you are.”

            “The guy who used to bully you—”

            “Eddie Hilton,” David whispered.

            “Yeah. Was he a Nazi? In the American Party, you think?”

            “Maybe,” David said. He was looking at the poster of Joe Dimaggio on the wall across from him. Just staring at it. Lost in thought. “Don’t let what people say to you, don’t let it sink in. It can drive you mad, Daniel. Just like hatred’s driven them mad. Will you promise me that much?”

            Danny only nodded his head. He heard something in his father’s voice he didn’t quite like. Something like shame. He wasn’t sure. “Nolan Ryan.”

            “Pardon?”

            “The answer to Buddy’s trivia. Easy.”

            David smiled. He looked at his boy and ruffled his hair. “Right on. We’d make quite the duo. Go the gameshow circuits. You need to earn some money if you’re going to pay me back a hundred bucks, cause I can only assume you scoundrels have already burned through a big chunk of what Buddy bartered. That’ll teach you to sell what isn’t yours.”

            David stood up and looked out the window. The street was flooded, the sky still streaking with forks of white fire.

            “It’s like the end of the world out there.”

            When the power went out at 9:17, Danny was sitting alone in his room. Afraid to close his eyes. Afraid because of what he’d see. His radio didn’t turn on with a message. Nor would his TV. The night of the storm, Danny the Jew would wait until the rain tapered and lie back on his bed, watching the lightning flicker in farther parts of the world. But the ball was certainly rolling for him. Everybody needed a starting point.

            And he would dream about the man in the navy slacks with the mop bucket, standing behind the closed door of his closet, peering through the louvers with his deep slatted eyes as he dabbed pine-smelling cologne on his neck and chewed a piece of bloody flesh that Danny knew was somebody’s foreskin. Because dreams were assholes.

4

Croak was in his basement during the storm. He’d watched a rerun of Who’s the Boss until the Davenport transmission gave way to a pre-empted report on the raging storm that was most likely just making its way to the urban center. Wondering what Alyssa Milano might look like without those jeans on, and then those thoughts would work their way into the frenzy of curiosities he wished Randy had warned him about, because puberty was a bitch. It wasn’t just his voice that made the transformation so damning. No, there were other things. He’d learned in Health class last year about the hormonal switch being flicked in his body, but he wasn’t prepared to handle those thoughts he might have about Sam Micelli, cute little Sam who was just a little girl a few years ago but now had become the sort of teen he’d like testing what Danny called a French kiss on; the adult kiss, the one you saw in the movies when the guy and girl both opened their mouths to taste each other’s tonsils. He’d once thought the idea of sticking his tongue into a girl’s mouth was a one-way ticket to Mono, but now, now maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

            The Hopson basement was unfinished, but his mom had tried to prepare a boys’ corner across from the stairs in an effort to keep Randy and Cory out of her hair should one of her suitors ever get the idea to stay over for the night. Randy would just tell Croak his mom didn’t want them to hear her testing the bedsprings, and though he didn’t quite understand what was meant of the statement, he knew it had to be dirty. But he liked it down here. The basement was chilly, which was great during the summer, and the stacked boxes from the move made the area like a fort, creating a partition he’d swivelled into a makeshift rampart requiring a password for entrance. His mom had put a cheap carpet down on the concrete, and their old couch was set up in front of the Zenith after she’d finally plopped down a pretty penny for the new one upstairs in the family room, meant to give the illusion of class. That’s what the main floor was; he’d heard his mom discussing it on the phone once, maybe with his grandma or one of her friends, the few she’d kept, that is. You kept those places orderly people were apt to see who popped by, those who might like a quick tour; you kept the kitchen clean, the family room tidy, and you spent money where people looked. Whatever. This was fine by him. He’d had Pug down here quite a bit over the summer. Adam and Danny whenever they were done at Fenway and wanted out of the sun. They watched Sixteen Candles. Weird Science. The John Hughes collection. Played Nintendo. Zelda. Mario. Metroid. And whatever baseball games they could find being broadcast on the very limited basis of the rabbit ears and tinfoil propped up like leaning twigs above the television. Yeah, Croak was just like Pug in that he missed what they had. He would probably grow old thinking about this summer, thinking about what they’d made together; they created a universe into which they could disappear. Fenway was like that for them, for as long as they could keep it that way. Hidden from Reedy Creek the way a glacial spring was hidden from view in the mountains. But they weren’t really hidden, were they? Because Grimwood was watching them. Watching them all summer. And so what they had changed the moment they learned that. The moment they learned leering eyes and a toothsome grin beneath pored over their every move as Jim Rice took Ron Guidry yard and Vin Scully called the shot.

            He heard the thunder outside and trembled. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t think about Grimwood. And maybe that’s why he’d insisted on coming down here. Because the basement was farthest away from the camera in his house, the camera in his mom’s room.

            The power went out in the house just as the newscaster in Davenport, some oily old guy with salt and pepper hair and reading glasses that meant to convey an expression of intellectual superiority, was talking about Vice President Bush and Michael Dukakis. He heard the sharp hum of everything turning off at once and he was left in darkness.

            Shit.

            He sat there, his heart thumping. No matter how old you were, how tough you thought you were, the moment you were left stranded in the pitch black, especially in a basement, you lost all sense of disposition and made the resulting noises into the monsters coming to pull you away. Beyond the thunder he could hear the furnace ticking, the floor above groaning, he could hear the sounds the house made in the middle of the night, those sounds trying to convince you of some inescapable evil plotting your demise. He sank back into the old couch, smelling his old house, wanting to call out for Randy, not caring if his brother laughed at him. He didn’t want to be alone.

            And then there was a squiggle of static on the Zenith’s screen. And another. Until the television was lit white with snow, the kind that always came on when the channel’s feed was done for the night. He could hear the muffled shhhhhh humming from the screen. None of the lights flickered back on; he could hear the wind and rain upstairs, rattling the windows. His face was tattooed with the nimbus of that static. Like the movie Poltergeist. Like when that little girl can hear the voices in the TV. Why did he have to have that thought? His fingers dug into the couch cushion and his heart rate climbed into a crescendoing hammer against his rib cage.

            And then it was the newscaster again. The old guy sitting in front of the printed mural behind him, open farming fields shaded beneath the oily rim of a full moon; the desk at which the man was sitting was covered in paper, and his hands were clasped above crumpled sheafs, as if he’d just gone through his notes incredibly fast and had discarded each page indifferently as he carried on. Something’s not right about him. Wasn’t his hair parted the other way before, when he was talking about the presidential election? Wasn’t the picture behind him during the day? Maybe that didn’t matter. Or maybe he was just so scared right now that his memory was rattled.

            “Those of you watching from Reedy Creek. Smile. You’re on candid camera.”

            What?

            “What you might have once considered private is now on grand view to the world outside your window. You are being judged by many who carry the same secrets, but who express such rage at the improprieties of those they believed moral. Because we are all so debased to overlook the hypocrisy of our own misgivings, instead delighting in the observance that others might just be worse than we are. Drug addicts at home who lead important executive lives in the business world during the day. Check” There was an image of a woman above the newscaster’s right shoulder, attractive, with the red hue of blush on her cheeks and styled blonde hair. It wasn’t anybody Croak knew. Nobody he’d ever seen, but she seemed strangely familiar regardless. “A respected local businessman with a perverse hobby behind closed doors.” This time there was an image of a man Croak knew. Because it was a man everybody had been talking about all day. At school and during tryouts after. Dr Halliburton. The guy found dead at the General. “Public versus private. This is an ongoing debate. But how would you frame the argument?” And now there was a new feed above the old guy’s shoulder. And Croak knew he must have been dreaming. Knew it.

            Because the woman on the screen, the woman being shown on Davenport’s news, was his mom. She was talking to a man whose back was turned to the camera, showing the same sort of stream he and the guys were used to having watched on the surveillance tapes of Robert Wilson that Grimwood had left for them to find. She was wearing the same outfit he’d seen her in before school when she was getting everything ready for him and Randy before she had to jet to the stupid plant. The white blouse and black slacks. Her hair up in a bun. She hadn’t a chance to change when she got home before the storm hit, electing to re-heat some Hamburger Helper she’d stored in Tupperware, sitting for a quick eat with Croak as Randy sat in his room with the music blasted, his mom asking him about school and baseball and he giving the same simple answers she’d come to expect as part of the dull routine. And then he sauntered into the basement to watch TV. Because this was his space. But here she was now, his mom, on TV looking the way she had over dinner. He didn’t recognize where she was, but he figured it had to be the one place in the house an image like this could be arranged.

            “I’m falling for you, Avery.”

            “You can’t be. Just. No.”

            “I don’t care what you think is right. Or even if this is right or wrong. I married her because I had to. She got pregnant so I gave her the ring. We didn’t have a chance to do this. To be this.”

            “I don’t care,” his mom said, even as the man, the man Croak could not see, went to take his mom into his arms.

            The image froze just as the mystery man pulled his mom into his chest; her face was distorted through a white squiggle, her eyes seemingly looking at him, looking at Croak in a frozen, almost dismayed expression of horrified shock. Shock maybe that she was being watched, beyond even what she was trying to articulate to this man.

            Croak darted for the stairs. Suddenly angry but incredibly curious. And confused. Oh yes, confusion couldn’t even begin to describe what he’d just seen. He went to the stairs and tried the switch, fumbling for it through what little he could see in the path of the Zenith’s illumination. The light didn’t turn on. And the TV went black. As if nothing had ever been projected on the screen. He ran up the stairs two at a time. Panting. Trying the lights in the kitchen. In the family room. Nothing. The rain pelted the windows, driven in utter torrents by the wind. Lightning flashed and thunder followed. He ran up the stairs in the foyer. The lights didn’t work here. Randy’s music was no longer playing. It looked, in the brief glance he gave the window, like the street beyond the veneer of rain was just as dark as his house.

            He went straight for his mom’s room. Not caring about her rules. That he knock first. That he just steer clear because a woman’s privacy was of utmost importance. The door smacked off the wall as he stumbled in, the darkness overwhelming. Why were you on TV? What are you doing, mom, what? Who is that man? Why are you like this, like what Randy calls you, the Human Rolodex? Why do you do this to yourself? Because people are watching. People are watching you on the news! He wanted to scream this. Wanted to approach her with every threat and hurtful comment he could think to utter, but he couldn’t. Because her room was empty. His mom wasn’t there. He stood in place, panting, looking up at that goddamn camera above her bed; he ran to it, and in his anger pressed his thumb against its convexed lens as he balanced on her headboard, pushing it back, feeling some give, hopefully breaking it, finally releasing them from the profane underworld in Reedy Creek.

            Croak went to Randy’s room and opened the door. His brother’s window was open a crack, letting in gusts of wet air and flicking his posters’ edges into drumbeats against the wall. He could smell smoke. Not cigarette smoke, but that stronger, organic stink he’d remembered wafting from Pug’s sisters when they followed the girls and those douchebags to the greenbelt to take damning photos. Randy was smoking a joint, his face a lit jack-o-lantern above the bobbing red tip.

            “What?”

            “You seen mom?”

            “Nope. And if it pleases ya, bro, I’d prefer you didn’t tell her about this or I’ll make you look like me.” Randy smiled. It was the first time Croak had seen him smile since Saturday night. He just gestured to the joint and then took another long drag, holding the smoke in his mouth.

            “Randy, I just…I saw her on TV. The news. Just now…she…” He didn’t know what he was saying. And a part of him didn’t even believe it. Didn’t believe what he saw, that he might be crazy. That in his fear sitting alone in the dark basement, he’d concocted some sort of imaginary broadcast to keep his heart from finally jettisoning his chest.

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Just now, Randy…mom was on the news with some guy. Just now. Just a second ago.”

            “You dumb shit, the power’s out. Been out for like five minutes. Ten maybe. My music cut. You were dreaming.”

            “No…mom was…”

            “Shit, Cory, maybe you need this more than I do.” He offered the joint but Croak only ignored him. Because it didn’t take much to convince one’s self one was crazy. Just a nudge really. He would have to ask Pug. Have to ask Adam and Danny if they watched the news as well. If they saw the oily Davenport talking head reveal to the world the existence of Reedy Creek’s Watchtower project, if they saw his mom on TV exposing the tangled web of some obscure romance. He would have to. Because Randy was right. The power was out. Was still out. Even when Cory went to the garage to see if his mom’s car was gone. It was.

            The guys wouldn’t think he’s crazy, would they?

            But do you tell them? Do you? With everything that’s been going on, with what you decided about Grimwood and your summer adventure, do you go about dragging the surveillance tapes back into the picture and see if they saw your mom on TV too? Because if they didn’t, they’ll just tell you what Randy did and you might need a shrink.

           It would turn out he’d never get the chance to bring it up to his friends. And maybe for now that was for the best. Because something else had happened the night of the storm.

           Something horrible.

5

“Shit, Cory, maybe you need this more than I do.” Randy held out the joint, watching his younger brother study him, more or less wishing he could help, wishing he could ask about what happened to him the night of the barbecue that turned him away from the happy-go-lucky fucking prig he’d so wanted to become, and maybe a part of Randy wished he would, wished the two could just talk like brothers should, but Cory left and shut the door, leaving him in the shadow of his room as thunder crashed again as the world’s cymbals collided in the heavens.

            Randy took another deep drag and held in that dank smoke, tasting it, wanting it.

            “Your brother okay? I never did sell him anything the other night. He didn’t require my services in that regard.”

            Randy smiled, smoke filtering up from between his lips as he watched Henry walk toward his bed from the nook behind the door.

            “What did he require?”

            Henry only sat on the edge of the bed and took the joint from Randy. “Not for me to say, pal. Code of conduct.” He tapped his nose to imply the secrecy. “Those punks stumbled on something. That’s all. Above my paygrade.”

            “That so?”

            “Yeah, man. But your baby bro’s looped as fuck. Your mom doesn’t seem the type that would be on TV. She looks hot, shit. But TV hot? Nope.”

            “Shut up,” Randy laughed. It hurt, but not as much as before. His face sort of tingled now, and he liked that. He wanted that.

            “You ready for me to pop that sucker back in place?”

            Randy wasn’t sure. He hated the way he looked. He avoided the mirror. That used to be the routine of one who didn’t want to see the junior reproduction of his father’s face staring back at him, but now it was only the ghost of what Brad had done, of what he would continue to do. Because Brad and his buddies were bored and Randy had become their plaything. Like when young kids discover a dead bird and want to play surgeon on it in order to placate those incredibly macabre urges so privy to youth. Randy was their dead bird. “You looked at her today, didn’t ya peckerwood?” Brad had cornered him in the hall, and a few kids had gathered to watch the guy with the broken nose only look down at his feet like a punk. “What did I tell you? I said you look at her, I fuck you up. It’s like you think I enjoy doing this.”

            “It’ll hurt for a sec. But you’re a good-looking guy. I ain’t gay, Randy, but I can appreciate that shit. Like looking at the statue of David and remarking on his body; it’s for the art, right? Even if that dick is dangling right in front of your face, you’re remarking on the art. Here, blow into this.” Henry handed him a towel he’d picked up from the floor. Randy made sure it wasn’t one he’d jerked off into. And even if it was, he wasn’t sure it mattered. He’d already been pissed on. There wasn’t much lower than that. Randy blew his nose into the stale towel and felt the surge of pain in his forehead. He looked down at the spatter of blood and snot. “Taking the kink outta the hose.”

            Henry placed his forefingers on the bridge of Randy’s nose; he only looked out the window, certain this would hurt, watching a fork of lighting in the distance and waiting for the thunder. “I’d give you a belt to bite down on but it’s not like I’m taking a bullet out of you. Breathe in.”

            Randy did. And Henry clapped his palms together, pinching the bloated bridge of his nose and pulling down. There was a sharp snap. For a second he felt nothing. Just a white stripe he thought might have been more lightning. And then the pain hammered that spot between his eyes that made them both feel like they were bugging from his sockets.

            “Fuck me,” Randy bellowed, wanting to grab his face in both hands and lie back in his bed. But he held fast and grit his teeth.

            “You’re going to wanna ice that shit. But it looks better to me. Straight as can be. You good-looking fucker.” Henry clapped him on the back.

            “It feels like I’ve been stabbed in the face.”

            “Not yet. With enemies that’d do that to you, who’s to know, right?”

            Randy tried to smile but couldn’t. Not yet.

            “You going to tell me about what happened? I don’t have many friends, Randy. Really none here. Here people see me for what I am. And they use me for that reason. Can’t escape it. But you I’d make an exception for.”

            “Same here,” Randy replied. “About seeing me for what I am, I mean. Used to have hair like you. Long. Cause of that.” He pointed to his records. Rock. And a ton of it. That was his world. Music was an expression of one’s soul, and even beyond that poetic license, it was the escape from his reality that allowed him to perceive a world as seen by the Clash or Guns and Roses, outsiders but brilliant in the art they created to give themselves a purpose beyond the mundane normalcy one was expected to be reined in by. “I changed for a girl.” He laughed. “I thought that would make a difference. I really did. Cutting my hair, changing my clothes.”

            “It’s always about a girl, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question but a musing.

            “But I’d already left my mark here. And that’s what people expected of me. It was my bookmark in Reedy Creek. Or the skidmark in its ginch.” Randy laughed. “I’m not even sure I understand what that means, but it works in a way. Because I was the fuckin’ skid, and people knew that when they saw me. It made sense to their worldview. So when I did change, some of those people, they couldn’t make sense of it. It broke their expectations, but instead of changing what they saw, or re-arranging it, they fucking wanted things back to the way they were. I cut my hair for a girl. And I convinced myself she would like me for it. I did. And I thought she did. That’s how powerful the ol’ brain is.” Randy tapped his skull, making sure the thud was evident, and then he lightly rubbed his nose. He could tell it felt straighter now. The swelling was still abundant, but he could breathe and that was a plus. “But she just played a trick on me, man. And she’s guilty about it, too. Because her little attack dogs made it real for her. Pulled her into the shit. They beat me because I thought I could chill with their girls. Be in their world. You know what I mean?”

            Henry only nodded, listening, his eyes strangely non-judgmental but studious and wise.

            “How fucking stupid was that. You wanna know how far these guys will go to make sure I know my place? They’ll leave me for dead in the woods and have a clear conscience about it. And they’ll fucking piss on my…” Randy stopped. He was sort of high. The borders were truly blurred on that reality. Henry was still holding the blunt. Neither of them had taken a hit in a while. Talking did that, he supposed. Weed turned him into a spigot of confessions. He wiped his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was crying because of what he was saying or because of what Henry had just done to his nose. But he couldn’t stop himself. He liked talking to Henry. Because he liked how the guy looked at him. “They had me kneel like I was being executed. In the public pisser at school. Day I called you for the methadone. You even said I smelt of piss. And I know I did. Lowest point of my life. Or one of them. That and when my dad left. Or when I understood he’d left for good. You always hold out some hope, right?” His smile was false. He looked down at his hands, the pain subsiding in his nose, the flaring headache dissipating; it was only the sound of the wind and the rain. “You ever put your face on a urinal? I sometimes have trouble standing at one when I take a leak. Cause most guys miss. They don’t care. They don’t have to clean it up. Because those fuckers had me kneel in front of one, like I was gonna give it a BJ, and I set my head on it, I could smell the stale piss, could almost taste it, and…and I was pissed on. That’s my mark here in Reedy Creek. The piss stain on the Creek’s crotch.”

            “Jesus Christ,” Henry whispered. “That really happened?”

            “You smelt me.”

            “Thought you might have been a little too quick to pull up the trousers. Never that, though. You okay, Randy?”

            “I am now. Not then. Sometimes people just need a friend, ya know.”

            Henry took a deep drag of the joint and leaned forward, pulling out his wallet from his back pocket. His hair was parted over the left side of his face where he was scarred. “We have that in common. Shit a girl does, I mean. I’ve never been pissed on, but to-may-toe to-mah-toe.” He pulled out a folded picture from his wallet, an old cracked leather billfold that could have been a hundred years old. And maybe it was. “She was my life. Thought she was. But I wasn’t hers. It’s never easy, is it?”

            Randy took the picture and looked at it. It was an old Polaroid. Like something his mom had in her albums from her heyday, the 60’s when she was just up and coming and enjoying life, before the prick would put a couple of kids in her and jet for greener pastures. The picture had a crisp wrinkle down its center where Henry had folded it; there was a thick white border around it and what looked like a stamped date on the bottom: SEP ’68. Maybe something done by the processor, but if that was a date it didn’t make any sense. Because the image was of a beautiful girl in sunglasses, sitting with her legs crossed on the lap of a guy whose arm was around her waist; she was wearing denim shorts, cut just high enough to elicit the slight urge to use that bloody towel as another depository of his fluids, and a T-shirt whose sleeves were rolled to the shoulders to reveal lithe arms. The guy upon whose lap she was sitting looked familiar to Randy. As he should. Because once upon a time there was a world where Henry once strolled the streets and the people didn’t call him Lazarus or Scarface behind his back. Because there was always a before. A beginning. His hair was long, like it was now, all spilling over his ears and onto his shoulders like tar, but the wide reveal of his face showed one of symmetry, of a time before, of a man without scar or burden. This version of Henry was handsome. Innocent.

            “Is that you?” A stupid thing to say. And he knew it the moment the words left his mouth.

            “Oh yeah.”

            “She’s, like, gorgeous. Who is that?”

            “I, like, know. Fuck, man, that was the happiest time of my life. Before I was shipped off to war. Before she moved on.”

            “Shipped off to war?” Randy looked at the date on the photo. Looked at Henry here as he sat in his room, consumed by the darkness of a world without power, and then in the photograph, lips curled in a devious smile and eyes lit in the expectation that this moment would live forever. And it did. In his wallet.

            “Doesn’t matter, kid. Time before the Creek. What that is, what those are,” he pointed at Randy’s records, his music, “they’re our happy place. You and I are victims of what we wanted to become and how people around us thought otherwise. It’s not fair, but the world doesn’t give a fuck what we think. So we go on. We’re not invisible but we don’t matter. We’re fixtures for them to avoid. I made use of my mark. I give them temporary reprieve from their normal, mediocre lives. Because no matter how happy they seem, how true could it be if they need blow or weed to take off the edge? I like the fringes, Randy.” Henry took back the photograph and looked at it once more. Randy could see the longing in Henry’s eyes, could see, even beyond the scars, what had once been.

            SEP ’68.

            “I already tried that life.” He flicked the photo and folded it again, sticking it back in that old leather billfold, and then into his jeans. “That life didn’t want me. Even when I gave it my all. My everything.”

            Randy watched the storm outside the window; it revealed in itself a strange truth about his life, about how destructive the world could be when his intentions changed. “My life changed when my dad never came home.”

            “You hold a photo of him?”

            “I am the photo.” Randy drew a circle around his face and then slightly smiled.

            “We’re two peas in a pod, partner.” He handed Randy the blunt. “Why don’t we leave our mark on Reedy Creek.”