Falls Street (8) “How long have you been on Green St,” I asked. “How long since this happened?” “Three weeks,” he said. “I have to go in this weekend.” “Fuck, man,” I said. “You’ve gotta do something.” “I know,” he said. “I know.” “Call the school,” I said. “There’s not enough time,” he said. “I just want to stay here for a while.” “All right,” I said. “Do you need anything?” “No,” he said. “Thanks. You’re a good friend.” “No,” I said. “No, I’m not.” “I’ll write,” he said. “You won’t need to, damn it,” I said. “Don’t fucking say that shit! Don’t be trying to scare us with this bullshit. It’ll be fine once they know the truth.” “I don’t want to tell you,” he said. “Then, don’t,” I said. “Just promise me you’ll call the school tomorrow.” “I’ll try them,” he said. And that was it. When I got to the parking lot, no one was on the field and only one car was left in the lot. The light kept going on and off inside. I was hoping I could find Crash so we could talk this out. No one was around anywhere. The sun had gone down. I walked through the parking lot thinking I’d go for the pay phone to give him a call, and that’s when I heard the scream. Donna Smith came running out of the tan Buick. She had this wide blue mark on her left leg, and she was kind of dragging it. Tommy came out from the other door pulling up his pants, showing these white thermal boxers. She was trying to move fast, but her black, high heels kept turning. She had nice tanned legs. I hadn’t seen her all summer. He was a big fat ghost, pale with a red face. And he ran right at her like I wasn’t there, but I was. I don’t know why it happened the way it did or why I didn’t just try to punch him in the balls and run if I was going to hit him. I didn’t really feel it, until his I heard his Yankee cap hit the stones. Then, his body crushed down on top of it with this strange thud that sounded like someone kicking something real hard, only slower, drawn out a hundred times longer with the echoes compressed. I felt his fatness vibrate the earth. The night had a funny wind that blew my shirt like I was falling. Donna Smith saw him on the ground, and she screamed louder than she had before. She held a hand, with two broken nails, over her dark purple lips. The wind sent her fluffy, brown hair in a frenzy. I reached out to grab her shoulder, but she knelt down to shake him. And the tears came out of nowhere as she rubbed a hand upon his shoulder. I saw the ring, too. A diamond, very small, was right there. Tommy rolled around a bit groaning about his jaw. I looked around in all directions, and I didn’t see anything but black night. Even though the wind was moving, I couldn’t see the edge of clouds moving in. It was like one eternal tortured second. I held my head, because it was pounding at all the other noises coming from the people in front of me. I started to get sick, and that’s when I sort of felt like they weren’t the only ones around. Then, she came over from the across the field and called out my name when I turned to face her. “Jason,” Carrie Ann said. “I didn’t mean to do it,” I said. “I’m sorry. I never told you.” “What happened?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Why do you look like that?” Donna kept shouting, and Carrie Ann knelt down beside her. Far away on the hillside, I saw a shadow moving. I could almost hear him say, “You can’t save anybody?” And I said out loud, “I hope we all go to down for this.” “What?” she said. And I walked away. *** Chapter 7 - Salvage Being at home can be fun, if you’ve been gone a long time. You can sit and watch space. Plain ordinary space feels like an adventure. It’s weird, but when I was a kid I could stay up in my room for whole days with my toys. Everything that existed was just terrain. For living, it was perfect, if living meant playing out the stories in your head. I remember I used to hang upside down from the couch and wonder what it’d be like to walk on the ceiling. I’d just hang there looking up, looking down. I’ve been watching these past weekdays, wondering why I can’t think of anything. It’s still pleasant, though. The room is big and empty. The less you know, the fewer restrictions. It’s best not to know anything for sure. That way you can allow yourself to dream. Why did I like Dukes of Hazzard? Why did I like G.I. Joe? There was no such word as “believable” back then. Everything just was, and then you decided whether you liked it or not without even thinking about it. Back then, if I saw something I liked, I’d ask for it for Christmas or save my allowance to get it. A lot of the time it just came down to seeing it in the store package and saying, “Sure. It’ll be fun. It’s mine.” It seems to me that the happiest things happen this way. They happen when we’re relaxed, accepting, and ready to possess. I can’t remember a single action figure that I bought that wasn’t fun. I can’t remember a single comic book that I’ve read that wasn’t at least somewhat fulfilling. I can’t recall ever feeling disappointed by anything except my life and all the forced interaction with other lives. And I know that every comic book character was designed. Every action figure was made. Still, I don’t want to meet any of the people behind them. I don’t want to know their names. The more I know, the less magic. Magic’s the best word I could come up with. The corners of this room have a magic to them, too, dwindling and polluted by hours of sitting and watching the television. I’d trade it off if I could, all the impulses for pornography and the fever that pushes me towards an interesting life, for the old summer days of imagination and this quiet loving room. I think the best thing anyone ever did for me was leave me alone. And I’ve felt so good for so long, really. I guess I could expect a huge falling out. I was lucky to make out with a chain of breakdowns, instead. Someone up there is looking out for me, right? So, I felt good for a while just lying on the floor getting all dusty and sweaty, because the heat went up again, and I won’t open the window. Downstairs, I can hear my mother moving everything around. She’s compulsive like that. If you mention something, it doesn’t matter how bad you want it or you just thought of it, she’ll rip through the cupboards and the drawers to find it. This place would be neat, but it’s not. There’s too much stuff and not enough space. The attic is full of things. The basement is full of cardboard. Lifetimes are stashed away, I guess. Everything my father was is melting and rotting in boxes. My mother’s life before this, before me, that’s somewhere in boxes, too. The clutter is dying, though. The memories are going. The condition of my father’s record collection is deteriorating, too. And you can’t fight it all with cardboard and plastic. Eventually, things try to go back to the nothingness they came from. Down there in the basement, I can feel things, aching things, trying to die or screaming to saved. It all depends on how I feel. Sometimes, I want to burn the whole of everything and start over, just to silence the voices all the old things. In the later hours of the afternoon, they’re calling, “don’t you need me, anymore?” and “don’t you love me, anymore?” And somehow, I feel like some atrocity has been committed that I can’t put my finger on. I feel like I don’t want to be human anymore, just so I can have an excuse, so I can pretend I don’t understand what we’re doing to the best of our world. A whole culture breathes on purchasing and discarding, and their basements must be quiet as a dead mouse to them. I walk around down there and try not to see anything I recognize. When my father saw what I was up to, he didn’t say anything at all. He just went back upstairs to watch his movie. He didn’t say no or yes. He just forgot about the whole incident. It took three hours for three nights to alphabetize his record collection and stack them onto shelves so they wouldn’t take any flood damage in the spring. It was an intervention, I guess. I didn’t know the bands or the music, but I felt something the whole time. My stomach hurt a lot when I tried to really get to the heart of it. There was so much else that should have been on my mind anyway. I should have been thinking about Starky and all the shit he got into. I should have been thinking about Donna Smith, maybe, and whether she got home all right. I should have thought of Carrie Ann, but for some reason, I couldn’t remember what she looked like at all. It didn’t bother me to go on and think about something else, instead. I stayed home and had pancakes for supper with my mom. It was all right. No one asked me any questions. They just let me go up to my room afterwards, and I lied down on the floor not really thinking, just waiting. Late at night, my parents came up the stairs and went to their room. I was always awake when one or the other would go to the bathroom. It was my television. I couldn’t really take much more action. My mother would tell me when the phone rang for me, and I told her that I was busy or sleeping. I knew why they were calling. Ray wanted to know what happened with Donna Smith, and I’d rather not have any more reason to hate anyone. I knew he didn’t want to talk about Starky. We should. We should have been there that night, all together. That wouldn’t have done anything, I know. When I was looking at that empty field, I felt like I never wanted to see anyone again. I felt like I gave them their chance, and now that chance is over. I thought about calling Starky, but I didn’t want to hear his mother or father answer the phone. It was like all the hate had been sucked out of me, and to hate anymore would be like trying to run a machine with half the parts. I felt sick whenever I thought about Starky’s house, the lights always low, the clutter heavier, no basement at all. I thought of his dirty, fat mother waddling around the kitchen in huge flower dress pulled tight around her big ass. I thought of his father and his big tan moustache, soaking up the beer from the ridge of a can of Genny Light. I could see it all in my head from the tin foil on the rabbit ears to the collection of Mc Donald’s toys on the kitchen table. There was never enough space. He must have been raised without peace. He must have been raised with peace as some distant mission. He must have been raised with imagination just feeling like a frazzle, someone starting up and turning off a machine. He never broke down. He never got going at all. I tried to think of a way to ask my father what to do about him, but I didn’t want to be mad at him either. I felt it, too. They all knew about it, somehow. It might have made the papers, but I doubt it. My mother probably found out from the PTA, and that hum I heard underneath my room when she was talking on the phone in the kitchen, one of those murmurs could have been her relaying the tale, telling some parent how concerned she was that a friend of her son was a pervert. I didn’t want to argue for him, and I know that means I’m still not a very good person. At least, I realize I don’t have the right to feel sorry for myself. That’s why I didn’t want to talk to Ray. I didn’t want to tell him about anything I was going through. I didn’t feel like playing psychology patient. I didn’t deserve the attention. And it didn’t matter that nobody liked Tommy Compagna. I still didn’t want to hear what anyone had to say to me about it. The only person I’d considered talking to was Tommy, but only if he came up to the door of my room ready to get even. I’d let him. I had no business hitting him. It was a stupid thing to do. Starky might go to juvenile hall or get tried as an adult. It was easy to think of life without him. He was never all that important to anything going on. That didn’t matter. It could have been any one of us. And at one point, there was an “us” to think about. He was there, whether he was important, funny, or had a chance to score at all, he was there. And the “us” died out somehow, and I shrugged that off, but looking back I wonder if he would have been okay if only that “us” had just held out. We were all too greedy to be good friend. We were all too damn starved for sex. The three of us, if we had ever grown some balls, might have done well alone. It’s nice to think that, but we probably would have killed each other anyway. I didn’t see anybody for a while. I took my bicycle down to Green St. looking for someone to talk to. Renee was there smoking on the corner with the skanks. Candice told me that Starky wasn’t there anymore. She said that he went to live with his uncle or some shit. That’s all I know about it. Renee offered me a smoke. It was a Winston light. I just had a drag off hers. She takes care of the sick and the weak with alcohol and cigarettes. She’s a damned saint, I’d say. She was the person to go to if you needed something, that’s if you didn’t mind her redneck brothers shooting fireworks at you or her mangy collies rubbing burdocks off on your clothes. We all got in her car, and she took us to the grocery store. I waited in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette, while she went in to buy us some stuff. Her brothers were in the backseat smacking the hell out of each other. That’s when somebody shouted to me. “What?” I asked. And Connie Stultz popped out of her white Neon. “I didn’t know you smoked,” she said. She was wearing a white dress with thin straps spaghetti straps. She had a nice tan like she does every summer; of course, I usually saw it only for the last few days of school. “I don’t,” I said. I realized I wasn’t wearing my good clothes. I had a red shirt on, and some blue jeans. I had “Mr. Breakdown” scribbled on one leg in blue pen. No one had asked, because it was upside-down to them. “Okay,” she said. “How come you haven’t been to the ball games?” “I don’t like baseball,” I said. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I forgot.” She walked around her car like she was going to make a bit more talk before she went to the store. She had nice heals on, looking like she just came out of wedding or something. Her brown hair was tied us in some weird braid with a big flower on top. She reeked of perfume, but it didn’t smell bad, just a bit sweet. “Have you seen Randy at all?” I asked. I don’t know why. She was looking at me, and it was strange. If she wasn’t already loaded, I would have held onto my wallet. That’s how weird she was looking at me. “Not much,” she said. “He’s going to be starting up football summer sessions soon.” “I see,” I replied. “I’ll let him know you’re looking for him,” she said. “You don’t have to do that,” I said and added, “We’ll probably run into each other.” “You two are okay, right?” she asked. She’s a smart girl. She could tell by my voice that I didn’t really want to see him. “Yeah, I guess,” I said. I could have said no, and tried to get some sympathy out of her. And I really wanted to tell her about Starky and about everything else, but then I remembered that I didn’t know her. I barely knew anything about her except a burned in image of her breast underneath various apparel. My memory had its share of Connie Stultz related images. That didn’t pull me, as much as the recognition that she was breathing. Her chest was rising and falling slightly. Her lips were fluttering just a little bit. Her dress was softly throbbing white waves and creamy shadows in motion, but I wanted to hear her, the central sound at the heart of her. I wanted to know she was alive just like everybody else. Then, I could tell her anything. I got thinking about Renee, though, and how nice it would be to hear her talk about her boyfriend, instead. Renee always swore and threatened to beat people up if they made fun of her during one of her stories. It was great. It was somebody else’s problems fully illustrated and guaranteed, complete with refreshments in a bottle in a bag. She had always been civil to me. Her policy on me had never changed, and while she was just somebody I knew through Starky, Connie Stultz was someone I didn’t know at all. She was just a thing that I wanted to suck my dick, and if there was a real person in there, I didn’t really deserve to know her. I got carried away, though. She probably didn’t want anything at all except to feel good about herself by acting like she’s not a snob, while it’s true that the only people she actually hangs out with are rich bitches. I was getting that ache, because I was almost mad at her. “Hey, Jason,” Zack said. Zack’s Renee’s most retarded brother. He once rammed a radio controlled airplane into his forehead to see if it would hurt. No word on whether it did or not. When Zack regained consciousness, he had said, “That was fucking awesome, dude.” “What?” I asked. “Is the beer here yet?” he asked. “No,” I said. “I better get moving,” Connie said. “There’s a party at Sarah’s house this Friday again. You should stop by sometime. Bring Ray, too. That kid is so funny.” “Yeah,” I said. “Right.” “See you later,” she said. “And have fun you guys.” “Bye,” the brothers said loudly from within the car. I started to wonder how many pounds of pure stupid could fit in the backseat of a Geo. We had to have been somewhere near capacity. Renee came back with a forty once bottle for each of us. We drove back to Green St. where the brothers and skanks got into an argument over who was “more stupider.” It was pretty annoying. I listened to Rene talk about her boyfriend Chris being an oblivious bastard for a while, and then I screwed the cap on my bottle, put it back in the paper bag, threw it in my book bag, and went on home. I finished the beer and was about to take a nap when Ray called. My mother answered the phone and wanted to know if I was ready to talk. I said that I was going to sleep. I stayed up a few more hours just looking at the ceiling. ***
Go to part: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Copyright © 2001 Scott W. Hazzard |