THE SON CAN DREAM
By Mike Cruz
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2005 Mike Cruz
Smashwords
Edition, License Notes
This ebook
is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be
re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share
this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for
each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase
it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to
Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting
the hard work of this author.
{-us, God No!!!! Move!! Come on, baby, be alive.... ..Be alive.”
The sun scrapes away the heat, burning hate into the skin lying across his neck. Sticky sweat loosens the seams in his head. This convulsion he’s been fighting back unravels a whisper, “..she’s already dead.”
“Come on!!!!” The thinning skin stretches over the bones beneath his face. Eyes are bagged and bleeding. Out of a blood shot, the guilt for all of this seems to come out from within, drowning him line by line with the dialogue never given him; what can’t be said, scene’s in read, dripping sideways down his throbbing temple - no longer giving sanctum to the vivid scenes playing out inside his head. The punishing wind whales his wounding lines, word by word, out towards the open sky.
A semi tries to pass another semi, blocking both of the lanes he’s passing by rolling his sweaty palms down the bony shoulder of the highway. The spinning wheels throw up bits of rock behind him. Fists full of beating veins wrap tightly around their wet bars, as he swerves to barely feel him roll over a torn piece of tire. She’s everything. He’s got to get there now. “Please, Jesus! God. Fuck!!”
Every pour is running over with what can’t be cried. While he turns off of the highway, he can feel their love fading, crumbling, ripping into pieces as it crawls up red and cold out of his soul to dribble down his trembling lip. Bits of it blends with a drip of puke that slides across his cold cheek. They fly a short journey into his brown hair; whatever’s remaining melts a maroon crust into his chin. “Oh God! Please, baby. Don’t you fuckin’ die.”
A nervous twitching wraps lightly around the fury in his face. It screams a yell at the tires to spin him faster as he turns onto her street. “Not much farther. Not much farther. Hold on, baby.” Under the clouds tearing beautifully all along the sky-blue sky, he rides into an elastic reflection. He rides for her life.}
1.0
The sun has an itch to become the Moon scratches its first Stars shed skin to reveal the bone-bare wishes that rain stoned, staring bitches into the empty seats of a small café. Our character sits in his stool as folded over as any scene within - rewritten into a near oblivion.
A paper sleeping bag, cuddling carbon monoxide, burns over the “but”, which mildly shakes between his fingers as most of his meal: 1. eating unfiltered coffee, 2. downing black cigarettes. His stomach’s a rotted out rot hole, coated with an elastic lining, weaved out of the guts of many strong insects. Nicotine flavorings leak between the rubbing legs, secreting all of the telling things of him behind a tightened mouth closed to all but the butt slipping back into him; a nausea that just won’t go his way.
Scratching his thumb, he looks within to finally drag a nail into that sin. Seeing no one outside within, he bows his head and unfolds the skin, opening a redness which shines himself out to him.
1.1
Past presents its surprise: the boy who loves to hate is riding his old bike. Pulling down the kurt-long hair, he roles himself back into the teen (our bearer of all these things), who’s grinding his rubbers as he once did over a gravel road on this: a stereotypical, rainy morn. A closing curtain of mud and dirt continuously disintegrates under the spinning wheels, flipping its shrapnel of torn curtain up into the back of his violet leather coat, barring the blunt of its burnings, and down into the split ends of his knotted brown hairs.
As the gravel reaches the street, coming to a T, our fool to be pitied looks both ways in a very, paranoid manner. A bus driver’s bus, carrying rows of empty, elementary seats, sails on bye - spreading the waves of water and mud into two walls, like the boys from the girls in a gymnasium too young and pure for the Charleston. Our bout of paranoia waits for its curtain calls to end, just in case the driver happens to know he’s a senior at the high school ditching for his eighth time this quarter. Coming to a close, the pedals fall and bloom beneath him in the fastest cycles seen all down the long, crooked street.
Hardly any life to be seen all along the trees and flattened greens, his ride is still no ride in the park but to, as his head for the glare could be seen but in passing hair, revolving like the horse on a merry-go, hearing the siren and trying to run from the torn ticket that’s never leaving its feet.
Braking in to Dogwood park, he chains her up to the rack and race-walks to the back, where a pair of picnic tables await him next to an old, abandoned obstacle course.
Under the rough barks of the roof, he sits in soaks of mud at his breakfast table, waiting for the quarter to pass the only thing: eight (a crazed, empty minute-hand, vowed with this ring for his splitting head to gather what’s left and head back home or back to a part meant for him).
Stepping into a role like that means he’ll have to watch tv as if under no scholastic supervision, or steal his brother’s car for the day (without even a permit) and take an unused allowance to the mall, or of course make past homework up (or at least what’s due today) like he knows he will! Demon: Thy name is lazy. But before he’d partake in all of that preparation, he’d have to perform his old role of the Father calling the school; that is.. if he doesn’t get caught first.
Sitting alone at the picnic table in the back of the park on the early morn of this weekday, his eyes leave the park to follow a white car (well down the way) as it slowly (for the distance) heads down the long, crooked street. ………-tension-……This could be a teacher who’s running late and happens to recognize him from the dirty side window at a hundred yards away, ……..……..or.. it could simply be a teacher that left her class after the roll call and took it upon herself to find him (by ANY means necessary!) ….Maybe his dad saw him pedaling away from the school, when he decided to take the trash out (the son’s only chore), ……….or it could highly be that this white car heading down the way is a cop car looking for seniors who are cutting their last year of school short…. Coming into his view, the car with a missing light bar, that’s more of a 70’s Lincoln than a 90’s Caprice, passes the entrance to the park.
Taking a good mouth breath, he thinks about what his English teacher must be thinking (of him) in first hour right now (as if she could think of anyone else). For the next absence he might have to cough up an entire lung like another former mid-westerner had to, only our faker’s popularity is about as full as an empty, paper cup. He’s not a nerd, mind you, or a jock (no sports since the 4th grade); like his very skin, he’s one of those mixes of about everything, which makes him a little shy and more of the time just plain quiet.
He’s one of those few kids at school that looks slightly nervous and hangs his head to correlate with the crooks and crannies of his curvy spine. He’s one of those people you have in a class or see walking down the hall who is so quiet it’s eerie, and there’s just something about them (something tragic) that you feel sorry for; then, later in the school year or slightly past, you find out they’ve just died in a car accident. Yeah, it’s sad, but you also somehow have been waiting to hear that for so long that it’s really not as surprising as it should be.
The butterflies whisper silence as they sit in the quiet corners of his weak stomach. Amidst these hollowed halls is a sweet, gentle rumble that hug and cuddle violent, suicidal screams. They roar a whisper for him to leave the phone on a dead ringer and swallow down his fate.
Looking nervously at a golfer walking up into the day, he turns the thin parts a jean-hooded engine and steers himself the other way.
1.2
Home (Apartment 1A): Almost six feet entirely beneath the earth. Only slivers of glass for windows overlook the grass and maybe a pair of feet up from that. There’s a bedroom for his brother and one for himself, a one person bathroom to bruise their elbows with every turn, and a slightly bigger kitchen, where some rock hard burritos are still stuck to the freezer from when he was a sophomore.
The front door opens to the living room, where his dad’s fold-out, love seat remains unfolded to reveal where his bed has been since he moved there. The coast clear, our little buddy/skipper anchors down onto the closed mouth of the tiger throw well made over his dad’s bed.
In a breath, he looks from the ceiling down the cream-colored walls to his pitch gray shoes. He scratches a shoe with the other shoe, where the white cotton wrapped over his wiggling toes shines through. Breathing through the breather holes, diseasing his sole, yet beaming out from their dirty bottoms, is all the off-white held in a dimly lit lamp. Those shoes.. Ran ragged, they remind him of an old favorite: a favorite, little tramp.
2.0
“No.” Years away from a ravaged mind in a somehow more modern time, his junior high eyes looked away from the shoes standing in a wall among the line, “But you need some dress shoes.” “I don’t like them.” Instead of putting her foot down, his mom actually persisted and pleaded, which was something pretty foreign to him. She was the second in command, behind his father. Growing up, she only grounded their son to give him spankings; but so few or many that he almost always listened to her after opening a younger pre-aged bottle of whine.
That next Sunday morning, he stepped those new shoes up into the family Lumina. She drove her pair of sons through the town that they moved to just three or two or four years ago; the drive that took them from their Cleaver blue and white family house.
House: winding road of yard by yard suburbia of a different color (Author’s note: although called “suburbia”, this house is not located adjacent to or anywhere near a major city). Theirs had a decent back yard, four rooms, two bathrooms, a nice kitchen, and all of the standard amenities provided for the middle class family. Who, when touring the house belonging to someone’s darker descendents, their junior high son secretly lifted up a red veil on a bookcase to see an idol in need of great attention for it had many broken arms in need of being set; but as it stared back at him, it appeared to be stiffening with what might already have been the golden stages of rigor mortis.
Upon the wings of a mighty escrow, his religious (in-their-own-rite) parents walked back through the house, waving to every part of it and chanting in languages certainly more foreign than the previous owners. According to his eleven, ten, or twelve year experience, this is done in order to show Cultural & Religious Superiority.
She backed them into the tiniest, gravel lot, fitting three cars if parked just right, with their back ends hanging onto the bricks in the alley. Then they walked from the church office, across the street, to the church (or the nice basement of a realty office).
Now when I say “basement”, yeah it technically still had the cement floors of the parking garage it used to be, but it was really fixed up nice since then. Making up the house of their lord was a full-on erection of white dry walls, a small stage, enclosed rooms to the sides for classes, and finally came the cream-white carpeting, which was laid throughout. Long halls to the sides of these classrooms led to doors that opened into the “back area”.
Separated from the auditorium, this back area was already finished and being used by the realtors for their kitchen and restroom facilities. The church (or its staff) just erected some small rooms for the toddlers and nursery and left what became a main room, which would be for junior high classes held during the day, Sundays, and during the nights of Sundays and Wednesdays. In these nights is when it held the alternatively titled “(youth) groups,” which always held a fuller room (because that’s when parents and adults were no longer the majority).
This being a Sunday day though, their twelve, fourteen, or thirteen year old son was in the auditorium stuffing bulletins. Other early jobs were for him to unlock all of the doors in the back, move the heavy church sign outside for the vehicles to see, pumping the blood of Welchs into thimble-like, plastic cups for the people to drink, unstacking and/or straightening the chairs in the auditorium, and things like these, not necessarily every time or in that order, were just some of the wants\needs in opening up a church before the sheep.
Their older son ran the soundboard. And he must’ve been very good since not many mistakes happened on the sound front, unless the subs were in; they were an unkempt married couple who both happened to be deaf in one ear. Anyway, his brother also ran it for concerts that occasionally came and went through town. Probably the biggest performer to perform at the church was Johnny Cash’s sister. She kept calling him “Jethro”. No one knew why....
It was a very laid back church. For instance some people wore blue jeans and some tee shirts and smells. It had its fair share of the less privileged. The church’s motto was “Come as you are; You’ll be loved.” No. Don’t confuse it with the lyrics of their son’s later late hero. This is a year to a couple before all of that.
Their son would stand as he did stuffing those bulletins with the song lyrics he never sang (as there were no hymn books or pews), while anxiously waiting to see which one of his friends would head down those stairs first. His best friends were the offspring of parents who had a role in the church. Makes sense, since these were the ones who would be there before opening and after closing. The ones he spent the most time with was the song leader’s son and a song singer’s son. Both singer parents were the fathers in this case. Other friends belonged solely to the (youth) group, which met when? ________________ Answer: Sunday and Wednesday nights (and Sunday day is also acceptable).
Where was I? ……………..Sunday nights at this time were sometimes tough to take at first; for the junior-highers didn’t always meet there/then. It took a little time for the church to grow, and it didn’t begin but a year or so ago. There had to be a youth pastor and enough kids roaming around to where the topic of rounding them up on the nights would have to be brought up. Once this was done, the real reasons for the invention of the VCR came into being: to tape his True Colors, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, The Simpsons, and In Living Color (or the Sunday night line up for that new station, called Fox).
But with the dropping of nads and the lifting of girls’ fun bags, it was there that their son was destined to become a star. For he had been there longer than anyone and had developed a tribe of friends. And these were the nights it would be all about them, because there was no family presence. They were dropped off for a whole couple of hours, steaming with hormones and adrenaline; and without all of the nagging and watchful eyes, this would be the one time of the entire week that they could be who they really were/or wanted to be.
As the morning progressed, his friends’ dads finally began to sing. The song leader prayed and strummed, keeping his eyes at a slant and his head tilted high. The song singer would always start to sing but then would stop, look around as if he had just found out he had been shot, and blow his large, red nose into the capturing mikes that surrounded the stage – certain allergies that came with the basement, I guess.
Anyway, the son of the blowing singer customarily had to sit with his mom and sisters in the front, so the remaining pair of friends would sit in the back row that was saved for them by our bulletin stuffer; it consisted of three chairs next to his brother’s soundboard. Seated there, in front of the ushers he also knew, their son would turn the bulletin on its backside and draw about fifteen lines from top to bottom. Then he drew an’ drew about eight lines from side to side, making a huge tic-tac-toe board. By nearly every song’s end, the game pretty much belonged to the cats.
Before the offering, as was custom, our o’s dad stood from where he was seated at and walked up onto the stage. There, in front of around two hundred people, he would pray for their family’s finances to appear in wicker baskets. Everyone bowed their heads to this and then actually gave what they did.
A prayer for the children, and they were dismissed to their classes; and while the adults “greeted” their “neighbors”, the pair in the back row greeted themselves outside.
Sometimes they’d take care of the toddlers or go to their junior high class when it was held. But most of the time it was hanging out in the back or they’d go outside and walk around downtown. Once and awhile, they’d see a friend in the parking lot who hadn’t left from the first service yet. Ohh, that’s right! There were two services every Sunday. First ones to leave; last ones to leave.
In the parking lot, they’d toss a football around or catch each other up on their thoughts for the week. The church parking lot belonged to the realtors, the tanning place, the hairdressers, and pet store (at least when they were there). So it was pretty big ..for a small town.
If there was no lot action, they could then hit the town. They never went far. There was a 31 Flavors close to the west and a 711 in the far east – maybe it was a quarter of a mile. But that was it. They were too young to be whipped but not bad enough to unleash what was wrapped tightly around their necks. Frothing and stifling, this was the most enjoyable day of the week. It was what they looked forward to. They could see their friends and get the attention they didn’t get at school and home. This was the way he grew up: a pastor’s kid.
Their son was very much a leader; always included the snotty-nosed kid in the corner. Maybe he was a good kid. Maybe he saw who they were from himself. He would be them five days of the week and then some. But here, this was his element. This was his place. These were his friends. And his friends would be theirs too, even if they didn’t want to.
The group and its retreats were some of the best times of his whole bit, middle school-aged life. Examples: like the time he arm-wrestled the singer (who always blew his nose)’s son for literally a half an hour and lost by taking the top off of an Oreo cookie; feeling the vibration go through everyone’s holding hands after one of them touched an electric fence; playing a muddy game of rug-beat in a thunderstorm; taping the “cool”, new kids’ underwear to the cabin ceiling; all of the near girl experiences; the elevator straight to hell; the huge Capture the Flag games with other groups at Camp Tocumisa; playing sticker tag at the mall; putting a kid’s fingers in warm water while he slept, and then watching him scratch in the morning; staying up late in a hotel room to watch The Creature from the Black Lagoon; all the games: the sock wars, water fights, cowboy caroling, a midnight kick the can game (he hid in the freezing pool), and all the etcs.
Be there hints of corn or cheese, these were his memories, his corn ..his cheese. They were the memories he knew and cherished, making him relish this time.
And the things like those found in this typical Sunday was the way he grew up. Going to eat out with the new families of the church, having others come to their house, helping plan the games for group, being the center of attention to the youth his age on those nights, unlocking the doors and turning on the lights/turning off the lights and locking the doors.. It was all in the way he grew up: A pastor’s kid. The way he knew life.
2.1
His mother’s voice fell from her lips, down the stairway, and through the cracks around his bedroom door, spilling into the holes of his ears. It cuddled the name that his world of family and friends knew him by, followed by “, can you come up here for a minute?” He tucked away the bore in his eyes and after a great hesitation jumped out of his top bunk bed. His brother’s bottom was in his own room.
Brown flames pollute the whiteness of his eyes. Her making him walk all the way upstairs into her little study is probably some kind of child crime. The “study” consisted of a little fold-out love seat, books on their shelves, pictures on the desk and walls, a plaque or two sharing those walls, and the little space heater in the corner under the desk. Room for about two or three thin people standing straight up even in her “study”.
Stair-stair-stair-stair-stair-stair-stair-floor by door -stair-stair-stair-stair-stair-stair-stair-stair-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-door open-stare. “Yeah,” their son responded lazily. “......., your dad talked to you right?” “About what?”
She shut the door behind them, as if to keep this mother-to-son conversation from the other members of The Family, who may be lurking somewhere amongst their house - even as they speak. “Well, .… . .your father and I.. ..have had some difficulties . .”
An itch burned all over his body, trying to sweat through his flaky, clogged, dry skin for a scratch. The words went from sitting cross-legged and indian style to lying down face-first making angels without wings slowly sink into full-fledged falls through his tight skin. And when they finally sunk in, they would have to wander for years after to gather enough feathers to fly out of that hell hole, which unbeknownst to him would be becoming a home for them.
After the conversation, he went downstairs, walked into his room, locked the door (for once), and then just simply stood there. His room was around him, but the strange thing about it was that it was the same. How could it be the same? How could it look the same after this? Everything else is different. Everything else feels different, yet this looks exactly the same. Is he really here right now? This one place of previous solice is the last place in the world he ever thought he would feel out of place in. The stranger feeling ever stranger in a familiar land continues to stand there staring at nothing. --------------------------
Then to pretend like he was doing something other than thinking about the things that were just given him, he walked out of his room – his feet unsure of his direction, until he heard his mother coming down the stairs. He stepped from the living room into the open workout room, where he planned to blend into the walls just long enough for her to pass him by.
As she carried a load of laundry by the room and saw him standing frozen and staring at nothing, she asked “Are you okay?” But she asked it in a tone like she didn’t just ask if he would choose to live with her over his dad someday. She asked it like it was just a normal night some days ago. (Oh weren’t those precious days!)
Somehow found within the open and well-dusted room, her “dear” in the lights relaxed his posture enough to quiet himself and find the closest response. What do you say to something like that? So his mouth carried the voice, cuddling the words, past his trembling lips to bring forth “Sure” (in a very sure-why-not-?-way). And as she continued to walk by, her eyes watched his face very carefully as if trying to measure it for a mask (fitting), then they left with the rest of her, stepping back behind the brown, cardboard wood walls.
Beginning to take in the vaporous smell of lemon from the stacks of rubber weights next to the unused Soloflex, he found his feet to be taking him back into his room, where he locked the door once again. Without looking at anything this time, he jumped up onto his lonely, part-bunk and just sat there.
Faded colors of the spots he’s now in dimly lit up his mattress. It was the same mattress he had since their first house. When looking at it, you could kind of see some of the springs but not now. Now, he’s lying on it, not shifting from the wild springs poking at his backside. Anything is furthest from his mind. Between his ears there was a blankness for the first time of his thirteen year life. There wasn’t a thing he could think. Not a damn thing. Not a thing he could see or hear outside of his head or in. Everything was just....... .. . .nothing.
As though a soul and his insides could be numb. Maybe it was shock. Maybe there were some things that some people just can’t comprehend. Shouldn’t comprehend. At least not like this. Not this quickly.
He leapt down from the bed, his bare feet smacking the hard, blue, carpetless, cold-covered floor. He shrunk down into the corner of his room by the closet and the door, where he could’ve sworn he’d seen the stars shrink down before when they were upset. And there, ceilings fell from the corners of his mouth to reveal a quivering chin.
Through the mocking mouth of the wall, a yellowish moving blur about the size of a faraway half dollar seemed to be looking toward him at a downwards glance and to its side with a look of horrorish pity or guilt-torn empathy. Behind it the sky dressed in black. Then these moving images stopped, rolled slowly yet softly down his cheek, hung at the corner of his mouth, then spilled over his chin, paused ..… and fell face first to the ground.
They were uncontrollable. A need to release complete and utter grief. It was hard, bitter weeping ..sobbing. The soul trying to accept for him what the mind couldn’t yet comprehend. It was as if everything he knew that was known was torn from his head. No preparation. No bandages. Drips fell out of the un-tickled tip of his nose. They rolled across the skin, shriveling over the bones in his face, making thuds as their bodies broke by his knees on the cold, hard floor.
The son lied on the ground shivering, carefully cursing God and his family; damning everything he’s ever seen. Praying to nothing for something to make this end by someone turning around to say “Gottcha!” or for an overweight camera crew to finally come down the stairs with the smiles of his friends and family. But, so far as it seemed, no piece of this burning, brand new memory was a dream.
Resting his head against the floor above his knees, his eyelashes sank into the puddles. He sat there folded over, gently falling apart. Abandoned, Abused, Bitter, Confused.
3.0
........everything was bright. Nothing dark was too bright. Smiles lied in neatly folded piles under his bunk bed. Emotions failed upon use. There was a taste in his mouth he never noticed before. The taste was bland yet everything tasted the same as this. ..this....
This was his fault. He knew it. Just a couple weeks ago, he prayed to God for some excitement in his life. As happy as he seemed, the days were the same. One monotonous week after week came and came and came. He prayed for something to happen - anything. Now, something did. And if a God did grant this upon any twelve or thirteen year old, he should be stripped of his robe and damned to our damnations. Something I’ve got a feeling that’s maybe happened once before.
In a night, everything was changing before his mind had the chance to grasp at what was different. It would be a long, long time before he’d finally realize that he would never be able to take his kids to their grandparents’. Not on his side. His side would be the hazy, dark side. The parental pastors patiently paused the paving of their pawned poxes. Paying would be he, strangely for their crime, every time he says “We’re going to Grandpa’s” or “You ready to see Grandma?!” He, the child of his parents, would pay; and they, the children of him, would bare the endings of the blow by having to understand the difference between Grandmas and Grandpas and family at an earlier age than he did. It would never leave him.
And the stink of it would be that he would be the one who would have to explain it to them, why grandma and grandpa doesn’t live together. Either that or he would have to go through the pain of overhearing Grandma tell his daughter before her bedtime or in front of everyone, including his in-laws, at dinner why Grandpa doesn’t live with her anymore. And Grandma would probably undress her face to show off her scars in a pan and scan, weeping format, if not in front of his kid then later.
Yes, this is depressing, but this is what was happening. Like you, he didn’t ask for this. Not this. It was just handed to him last night. Everyone has to have difficulties; you’re just never prepared for when you’ll be ushered in to the hells you will burn through (especially this young, when you think you know how it’s all going to end). No, now that you’ve seen your monster, it’s not going to come when you’re older; you will feel this now. There were no apologies so far. This was the way it was. There wasn’t enough dirt in the world to bury something like this. This would soon begin to rot and decompose – the stench blinding him from his optimism and dispersing the warrior spirit into a mere fog to settle down within. This was going to be very bad. And for the first time, there wasn’t any fire-breathing dragon he could slay and walk through in his head; he was going to assume the worst.
He breathed a little slower. The millions of thoughts were pushing past each other, stomping, throwing themselves into a froth, while the weaker ones were violently swung into red deaths when taken over the dangerous curves of his eyes. He saw them, as they fell from him. The dead formed lines down the edges of the dirty brown holes they crawled up from, unable to recognize the place he’s now in. Splashing water over his face from the bathroom sink, only makes them thicker.
He wants to stop thinking; for everything to stop, so he can catch up to it before it gets a head of him. He just wants everything to stop. Everything. He’s about to go upstairs, so he’s got to wash those faces off and find the bottom one, the one of Normalcy.
Last night was so surreal, he wasn’t sure if he should ask his mom if it really happened. I mean, what’s the odds? Dreams seem very real sometimes. Don’t they?
He dried a face off and headed upstairs, where he heard things snapping and popping. His mom was in the kitchen making breakfast. It was the first day of his spring break: Saturday. He walked over to the kitchen table. She was standing in the kitchen and rolling some crackling doughnuts. She wasn’t singing Rise and Shine “and Give God the Glory, Glory!” She seemed to be asking him about the feeding of the fish. Fish? What are those? “Oh. Sure.” Like that’ll solve everything.
He walked back towards the stairway and took the hard right. One pinch or two? How big or how few? He wasn’t sure. {The fish. Are you kidding me?} He wasn’t sure if he should ask her about the conversation. Or how. “Did I leave something in the study when we t-,” didn’t really work. How about “... .... ....?” Oh, well.
The food seemed to sleep with the fishes. The flakes slowly got caught up in the stream and separated out toward their separate corners just above the sleeping fish. He knocked on the plastic lid above them, but they didn’t respond. They were in their own little worlds. Not his problem. Delaying the next great mother/son sit-down, he decides to go the long way into the kitchen. No reason but boredom really - a different path, which happens to take him by the study (the scene of the crime).
He brushed his red hand against his jeans, as he began to follow the wall. “Mom, did I lea-” The son stops as his dirty browns have seemed to have found something through the crack of the “study’s” door. There, between the arms of the love seat, were three bedroom blankets and a pillow, complete with head indention. “What, sweetie?” “……never-mind.”
4.0
“Ann Smith.” “André Caserblahe.” -lah- “Beca Fruse.” –blah- “Dot Delio.” -b- “Mr. Eeeps.” -lah- You could see her legs through the holes in her blue jeans. An American flag wrapped around her top in the form of a tee. Beneath that flag, two fistfuls of everything this country stood for pushed some stars and stripes into his view, which made him stand in full salute, feeling overly ..patriotic. Sandals had been slipped onto her feet. A pair of sky-blue eyes had turned beneath her short blond curls. Alas, she was not a knock out, so he had fallen for her.
She was a girl who wasn’t the model of their time, as much as he might have lovingly built her in his mind. She had something more to her; something to her that made the world pull away from her like a pair of dirty curtains. Showing to him through all the darkness of a Wednesday night was the girl who was meant for him. It was as if they always have been, and they both already knew it. There wasn’t any second-guessing. He could take her hand and walk them out of there with no open stares. They were. Simply put. Nothing could feel more simply.
She lived with her Grandma as a product of her parent’s divorce. Her little sister was in and out of the hospital from a rather serious illness. He was not only attracted but saw her sorrow, as he would soon feel his and as she would later feel for him.
She was new in the group, and it took him weeks before he finally walked up to his girl. They had been falling for each other only through open stares. In fact, he didn’t even have his first good conversation with her until the retreat in March (or in a couple of days) for this eye-secreting sight was maybe a long pair of lean months before. He would swallow the guts to speak every time. But it didn’t matter. They already were.
She lived downtown. He lived uptown. Some white pages later, he and the song leader’s son would ride their bikes by her house (or along her street) and see if they’d see her. Maybe she’d be seductively sunbathing outside in the grass. Maybe she’d just be taking a walk or see them through her window and come strutting out. Never.
They rode their bikes by the hospital at a time she mentioned that she’d be there. Her worse half then went to daring his friend to dare him to go in. Then, like a wet tongue to an icy pole, he crossed through the separating doors, looked at the main desk, didn’t see her, and walked right back out to push his pedals home. All he wanted was to be with her so badly, but apparently he was plenty pussy for himself. She was his thoughts in the morning/she was in his little man screams at night.
He just wanted to be near her, hold her. She was funny, honest, and as real as he was when he was around her. They were honest laughs too; there was nothing fake about them. And when they were talking, people for the most part left them to themselves. They knew. When they were together there was real chemistry. But unfortunately, the son never bothered with chemistry. He could never understand the answer for the equations.
This retreat in two days was when he had planned for her. She said she would be there. He had wanted nothing more than to be with her. To tell her how he felt. But now, ..everything had changed.
He felt like he was behind himself. Like when a little kid is scolded very badly and then is released out into his friends for play, but the scolder is still watching; and the kid knows this. It’s hard to jump right back into screaming and running around with your friends. There’s that thing at first that’s holding you back. You see your friends, and you’re out of the moment but slowly coming back in. He’s out of the moment, and no one even knows it. Does he sit to the side and wait for it to pass or does he slowly come back in?
5.0
Eyes peer over the legendary upside down hill. It’s where the son goes when it gets to be too much. A place to be by himself and stare out towards the hill but only in the reflections of the waters below. This is not where he expected to be. The camp has been closed due to power outages. Funny, huh? Now, every group that was going there for the great retreat was coming here, to his church. Great way to get away! Can’t do anything romantic with Ann. There’s no trails or tether ball; no kitchen duty or campfire stories. There’s no place to get lost in – by himself or with her.
He doesn’t know if he even wants to be with her. Sometimes it gets hard to talk. There’s a secret in him deeper than anyone could have ever guessed. A secret anyone would want to know (anyone from his church). Sucks enough that they’re grounded to their own church after the weeks of anticipation (they can’t even walk around their own town unless their parents come for them), but they have to be stuck in there with literally three to four hundred strangers.
He wants to tell his closer friends, but he’s got this “not” now in his throat; been there since he got there. {They’re starting to suspect something’s wrong} he suspects. But this is something they could never guess. His parents? His?
He just needs to relax. His parents are conservatives; they could very easily work things through (to keep what they have). It is possible. Highly possible. With God, all things are possible. So, relax. {Relax the muscles in your face. Rub your temples with your thumbs. Relax.}
The son looks toward the still waters. The smooth, grassless, upside down hill has only a patch of weeds along its crevice. Two lovers could lie against those weeds and make out along that crevice if it weren’t for that hole near the bottom of it. Still romantic to look at, it always manages to put him at ease. The upside-down hill separates, showing him what it’s famous for. A batch of un-grown trees pushes through the surface of that deadly, yet intellectually, enriching hole. The trees fall like logs into the undrinkable, almost shadowy waters below.
He grabs a fist full of papers, made not from those trees, and reaches his hand out toward the hill that’s still reflecting in the waters below. Then like an earth-conscious painter, he slowly and meticulously wipes away the part of the wet bark that’s stuck to the weeds and smearing along the surface (for as to prevent the surface from eroding and the weeds from tearing and breaking off from their already naturally, beautiful state of order. Dangerous berries can also grow and knot along them, if these previous precautions are not met.)
He stands and pulls the bottom half of him up; for the minutes upon minutes of sitting and gazing, his legs tucked underneath him had been falling asleep. The scene, the hill, the waters, the secluding, the relaxing, all of it stirs and stirs into strengthening spirals down, down, down into the hole of his gaze.
Bar doors swing behind him as his drying hand turns the knob. Slowly, he opens the door, reminding himself to blend in. These are his friends. They don’t need to know anything that he doesn’t want to know. This is their retreat too. Why should he ruin it for everyone by making it about him? He just needs them to be them.
The pastor’s son heads into the back room where they’re all standing around one of the church’s long but lean tables. There’s no arm-wrestling or paper football going on here. “What’s going on?” He asks his group, while standing outside of the semi-circle. No one answers quickly; quickly for it being his own damn group. “What’re you tryin’ to do,” he asks a friend who hops down from the table. It must have finally happened. He couldn’t save his parents’ marriage through the time machine, and now his meager existence has faded into oblivion.
The song leader’s son finally answers back, “Tryin’ to step onto the table without using your hands.” Others: “I don’t think you can do it.” “The table’s too freakin’ skinny.” “I can do it.” A familiar voice speaks from the back of them. Their forgotten leader steps up to the table, lifts his leg high into the air, and steps up. His body shoots through the air, landing both of his feet atop of the table and his forehead into the sharp edges of the sprinkler above. “Ahh!” He shrinks down into their laughs. “See!” Holding his head, he leaps back down into them.
“Let me see.” Someone says. “Am I cut?” He takes his hand away with a streak of red on his finger. “You cut yourself.” “Oh, that’s not bad.” “Could’ve been worse.” “That’s funny.” “Yeah, but hey, I did it. You couldn’t do it.” “I didn’t want to cut my head off!” They got a good laugh off of it, but it appears he was back in.
Walking into the parking lot at day’s end, he’s finally about to leave the premises – if but briefly. The band needs extension cords, so he’s headed to the new Walmart with a friend of his, who happens to be a college student and a group leader (not to be confused with the youth pastor).
They weave through all of the souls his age who are in a completely different state than him, as he shuts himself into the car. Silence.
“You’ve been acting pretty withdrawn. Everything going okay?” This man was one of those child prodigies who always knew more than those who could teach him. He also had a heart bigger than most, and the car he drove was a Mercury modeled after his last name (coincidence?). “No. ..I just found out something that….” Unable to finish, he can only turn away, as his face curls into his head for solice. “Hey. What’s going on?” “…..........” “What? Is it your family?” “....(a nod)..” “Yeah. Well, is there something I can do?” “….pray.” And he actually prayed. He meant it as a figure of speech.
Here, in the fuzzy interior of a Mercury, the model name was the first to know and would probably be the last for quite a while. It was a big step to say it out loud for the first time, something that scared him to the roots. He gave support and sensitivity to the small son on their trip back from Walmart. That place was huge. (It would later expand even more to be the super store it would be.)
The group leader pulled into one of the few parking spaces left in the church parking lot. There were more people than cars, but there were more vans than cars too. So there was maybe a hundred people or so his age in the parking lot alone just hanging out, smoking, or getting air. “Wow. There’s a lot of people here.” They walked through the masses and made their way to the main door.
Downstairs: The lights were out. Blue lights and strobe lights lit their way down the staircase. He wanted to find his friends; but in a way, he would be happy to lose himself in this. Be just another person for once, and maybe forget some of the demons rolling over themselves within. The model name put the cords to use by the stage-front, as our light feet kept to the back wall of the church.
The chairs were set up everywhere but along the front (for a mosh pit-like atmosphere for the soft rock Christian band). In the back were where the remains were stacked; the chairs that were being used were being used by regions. The group from Wisconsin was sitting in their spot towards the middle; a group from Minnesota was along the far left-hand side; the Michigan group sat with their Canadian friends in the front; and his group was along the far right corner towards the back. The chairs in front of them were unused – as were the few rows in the back. Their youth pastor probably told them to scoot up, being where they’re at.
He walked on past them, still following that back wall, past the door to the unused Sunday school class and on his way out of the auditorium. He was still a little choked up and was trying not to make eye contact, lest someone see his bloodshot eyes in the flash of a well-placed, strobe light.
Walking by them with his head down, he looked up a pair of walking legs to see Ann seeing him, as she walked on by into the auditorium that he was leaving. She was smiling. He was not.
He walked through the open door out of the auditorium, by the back staircase, and into the short hallway leading into the open back room. There, he walked by all of the people standing around, infesting the kitchen and other areas no longer considered his, and went straight into the bathroom, where no one was for once.
The son stood in front of the mirror above the sink. A thin layer of tears soaked through the red bars that were lodged between the lids in highly decorative ways, bending this way and that. Just as he’s beginning to calm down and find some of himself somewhere within, the door opens. Quickly, he bends over, turns the sink on, and washes his face off with the water already overflowing the flesh-colored cup of his hands.
“Oh, hey Joe,” he’s lackadaisically addressed by the song leader’s son. “….hey.” Of all the people in that rat hole, his best friend had to walk in, catching him with his guard down. (Actually, there were a couple of best friends, and his name isn’t Joe either. It’s just what he calls his friend and what his friend calls him. You see, they both had a crush on the same girl a couple of years ago, and they wanted to disguise her name in conversation so no one would know that they were talking about her. She became “Doe” from “John Doe”; and since there were too many real Johns, they each became “Joe”.
“Didn’t see you come back.” “Yeah, we just got here.” His friend uses the stall next to him, while he washes his face. The door opens yet again. A big foreigner heads in and immediately takes notice of the smallest public restroom of the state: their In. “Toilet’s in there.” A drying face nods up to the saloon doors that swing behind the grateful stranger; after all, he is still the pastor’s son here. “See you in there.” His oblivious friend leaves him to a mere sink. {He didn’t wash his hands.}
The son wipes his face off with his sleeve – the paper towels being the rough, brown kind. Shaking his head at the surrealism of it all, he hears the loud music of the band, the Violet Burning, getting into his ears and underway. The walls vibrate around him. The kid out of state remains stinking silently in his stall, perhaps waiting for the pastor’s son to leave before unleashing all Hell. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
The heavy door slams slowly back into its silver lock behind him. The back room is nearly cleared out. The thieves of his land have filed into the mainland for the band. Tan skin slowly follows the son back down the short hallway and through the door.
Standing at the foot of the back staircase, he looks to the darkened door that leads to the auditorium. Strikes of light, colored and bright, flash themselves over the door, perverting his eyes from the darkness.
There was a time, not long ago (or enough as it seems), when everything seemed so clear. It was as if there was a yellow glow just above him hanging off focus and in flight with its ever-stretching wings, making everything so bright and easy to see. Or maybe it was that bar of circular light that hung above his head amazingly with no strings attached, ..or so it seemed.
Now, what once was found was lost in the pollution of these darker things found only in the colors of blindness. They’re surrounding him. They’re in his clothes – in his very mind. These colors swish against the skins of demons, as they roll violently against each other, fucking themselves into the farthest corners of him, lubricated with the life yet to be seen as read but nevertheless flows through his changing body like polluted water that’s as thick and dark as ink. Only there is no fine line. There’s just the wide, cream-colored carpeting that reaches him from wall to wall, trapping him in his own breath of fresh air – like a preacher man’s fun house, where everything is not as it seems. Mirrors reflect bending images of himself: the thinner kid in his element, who seems unable to speak. He appears as his friends would pretend to be: leaving their House For God and walking free.
The last stages of the winter wind blows the door into him, making him push harder in front of the pretty pair, sitting on their stares. Feeling their loss of appeal, he quickly walks out, ashamed at their estimation of him (although they’re already entering the auditorium).
He is weak. He has a damn right to be weak. He sees himself on a world away from his friends. Sure through weakening transmissions they can learn to acknowledge him, but he is not their leader today. And that part feels.. great. Usually they’d cling to him closer than his clothes would four years from here. But here, he is outside. Where not a soul should creep upon him ..but maybe Ann’s.
The Ann thing is like a spirit out of sync. He’s perfectly happy to be walking outside by himself; but if she were to find him, it could involve some sort of melancholic bliss – if that makes sense. Strolling alongside the place he’s known longer than anyone here, they look at him like he’s the stranger amongst the norm. He – who doesn’t recognize any of them. Maybe he is the stranger. He seems stranger. Everything is stranger. Who are they? Who is he? This isn’t his place.
He is their stranger growing ever stranger, as he walks over the sidewalk towards the main door. There’s too much here. Too many feelings to feel in a night. It’s a bit too chilly out here to think; trying to think why nothing’s right – in a familiar place where nothing’s right. Passing the storefronts of the closed stores, he heads down towards the main door. His hand to the handle, he’s completed a half circle for all of those outside of him, who wouldn’t notice to care. But just in case a pointed finger should rise, he walks back in without a stutter step, as if going from back to front was his original intention.
Too many strangers; too much awkwardness to act out his subtle fights. The soft music’s loud enough to shout over himself if he wants to, but his mind is blank anyway. His ears begin to adjust as if submerged into a new wave of loud nonsensical beats, stings, and a voice, which shakes the very walls with its other worldly loud echoes. He takes the downward turn and heads down the darkened stairway. No lights are needed; the son knows these stairs by memory. The music’s getting softer as he gets closer.
At the bottom, he steps out from the small hall. There, before the stage, people his age are on their knees. They’re lying face-first on the floor, sitting down in tears, standing in different places of the auditorium with their hands in the air, surrounded by others praying for them with the laying on of hands. What did he miss? Were they waiting for him to leave? This place has turned into something he’s never seen with people this fragile coming of age. Group leaders are walking around slowly in great concentration; their mouths seem to be speaking in tongues, as their unfocused eyes scan over the shadows that rise and fall over the cream-colored carpeting.
He follows the back wall over towards the far side of the church again. The lead singer steps back up to the mike, as the band continues to give background music to the cries of people his age who are hurting. It’s something you would never believe unless you’ve seen it; it’s like a stage in reverse. Then, in a soft dialogue, he tells them that no one will be hurt and everyone will be okay if they just give everything they have to God.
Stepping out from the end of the wall, he comes upon the only group still sitting as a group. He wished they weren’t there. But they were. He sat along the side of some girls he didn’t know that well, instead of beside his friends. A night of the rare and oddity.
This whole room was warm and filled with emotions. People were sobbing as loudly as he had been wanting to. It was a very powerful scene for anyone that believes in anything or nothing. These were girls without parents or who went through a secret rape; boys with bruises or had someone close to them die. These were strangers who had some deep, deep pains; and it was hard not to cry for them alone, if you didn’t have anything to tear over yourself. Only he did. No one knew. But he did. And he was feeling this room.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-23 show above.)