I heard trundling in the hallway before the mother barged into my room and strumbled, "You have to get up for school!"

I had sort of drifted off into a slumber, like where the mind is still working but your eyes are closed. The first thing I said was, "But... the horns." And I clicked them ominously against the wall. There was no way she could expect me to go to school with those things.

"I've already wrote a note to your teacher about that." And she slapped the note down hard onto my chest, sending out those waves of pain. As she got closer to me I saw that some drool had worked its way out of her mouth, racing down one of her frownlines. That was her Drool of Fury. You know someone is mad when they cease caring about the retention of their bodily fluids.

The drool wasn't the only body fluid she was leaking. As my eyes focused, I noticed the ratty, blood-matted wig, how she seemed to be missing half her head or how it was sort of caved in or something. Last night came back to me in bright, flashbulb images that made me think of an autopsy.

"Get up! Get up!" she shouted a couple more times. Then, just as quickly as she had come, she turned to leave, her trundling dwindling toward the front of the house.

I looked at the note and this is what it said: WALLACE HAS TOO WARE THESE HORNS FORE THE RETS OF HIS LIFE.

And it was signed: "Msr. Black."

I crumpled it up and put it in the pocket of my pants.

I laughed nervously and decided to get out of the cot.

I wondered if I should move real slowly so it wouldn't hurt so much. Finally, I decided to just face the pain and do it as fast as possible and hope I got used to it. Like jumping into a pool or ripping a Band-Aid off. So I did this thing where I kind of threw myself up in the air and in the direction of the floor. It was sort of what I normally did, but this version was a little more intense. I knew I had to really put my all into it. By the time I realized what a horrible idea it was, it was way too late. My legs would barely move so I couldn't bring them up in time to get the necessary lift that I needed. I collapsed onto the carpet with a loud thump. That jolt made that horrible grinding bonefeel shoot all the way through my body and I think I screamed then. No. I know I screamed because it brought Racecar rolling into my room, angry as ever.

"Come on, you f.u.c.kin pansy s.h.i.t. I can't eat breakfast around all that screamin. The sooner I eat my breakfast, the sooner I can get down in that bas.e.m.e.nt. In here screamin like a f.u.c.kin little girl. You think I screamed when I got my legs lopped off? Huh! Do ya! You think I'd let those f.u.c.kin whiteshirts hear me screamin? Huh!"

"I don'..." I started, managing to get up on my hands and knees. My skin felt p.r.i.c.kly, like it wanted to get up and move but my skeleton desperately wanted to slouch to the floor.

"Answer me, a.s.s! Answer me!"

Then I screamed again, but not out of any sort of bodily pain this time. I was mad and the anger sort of made all the other pain go away. The anger was hot and electric, surging through my skin and veins, grabbing my bones and lifting them up.

I screamed, "Leave me alone! You're dead! Both of you! I killed you! You can't do this!"

I charged at him. Only it wasn't just him I charged at. It was everything. The hopelessness I felt inside. All the punishments of the past. Everything.

He sat blobbishly in his wheelchair, shooting an angry glance at me, wheeling the chair sideways so it blocked the door. I hit him in his giant head with my sharp, girlish elbow. The force of the blow sent the chair spinning. Racecar flew right out of it, sliding down the wall beside the door. He thrashed around on the floor, grunting and growling. I swear, at one point, I heard him growl, "Bas.e.m.e.nt." That single burst of energy took it out of me. I bounced off the wall, coincidentally collapsing into his wheelchair. Before I knew it, my hands were working the levers Racecar, more and more, refused to use. I had to move the little joystick quickly back and forth to get the chair straightened. I threw it in reverse and backed it into my room a little, so I could get through the door. As I did that, I accidentally rolled over one of Racecar's stumps. Then, as I shot forward, I ran over one of his stumps again. That time it almost toppled the chair. He screamed like someone was murdering him. But he didn't really scream at all. I only imagined him screaming. He was still in the living room, exactly as I had left him. Both of them were.

And I was in the wheelchair, breathing hard, confused.

I buzzed for the front door, leaving those screams behind. If someone could have seen the look on my face, they would have thought I was the happiest crippled alive.

"n.o.body's going to treat a Bobby DeHaven dancer like this. n.o.body!"

I don't know why I said that or even, really, who I was talking to. Maybe I wanted their ghosts to know they were going to blobbishly rot away in this house and I was heading into a world filled with money and girls and fame. I struggled for a few minutes, banging the door open against the wheelchair. But I got it open and I was outside and sure I wasn't ever stepping foot in that house again.

Chapter Seven.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Rolling out of the house, the morning was surprisingly bright and sunny for Milltown. Even on most clear days, a dingy brown cloud usually extended its dusky wings over the horizon. I had no idea what I was going to do. I certainly wasn't in any sort of shape to go to school. I got out to the sidewalk, as though some direction I might choose would provide me with an idea. I rolled the chair down the sidewalk and over to the little alley beside our garage. I decided to just putter around the town for awhile, trying to avoid everyone.

Going one way would lead me to the southwest part of the town. The Saints River made up the town's southwestern border. That was one filthy river. Most days it was a grayish black and carried a scent of rotten decayed fish with it. These fish could be seen, white and bloated on the steep banks of the river. On its cleanest days, it was a sort of brownish green, swirls of oily color twisting on its surface.

For as many people who lived in Milltown, the town itself was surprisingly small. It didn't take up a lot of s.p.a.ce. No matter where I decided to go, I wouldn't be far from any other area. Therefore, it didn't really matter where the h.e.l.l I went.

The Historic District was located about five miles east of the river. For all the pollution and dirtiness and other f.u.c.kness, the Historic District looked pretty nice. The few times my family had ever taken me out of town I remember liking this part of Milltown the best, when we were just driving through. If I ever had to stay there, in that s.h.i.tty little town, I guess the Historic District was where I would have liked to end up. It was quiet and all the houses were brick. Although, I didn't know how valid the t.i.tle of Historic District was. The houses were built just after World War I. They weren't even the oldest buildings in Milltown. It was like the founders botched their first attempt, trashing it up, and just decided to start over.

As the town sloped southwest toward the river, it got even dirtier and smelled like all h.e.l.l. The area closest to the river was called the Tar District. Those were the earliest buildings. My Uncle Skad lived in the Tar District. Uncle Skad was the mother's brother and I only knew about him through stories. There were a few foggy memories the name conjured up from childhood but I didn't think I'd be able to pick him out of a crowd. The parents apparently wanted nothing to do with Uncle Skad. Racecar told me while other boys were off fighting for their country and freedom and all that f.u.c.kness, Uncle Skad sat in a cozy inst.i.tution, faking a disability. The mother didn't talk to Uncle Skad because Racecar's reasons were good enough for her. The parents always said Uncle Skad lived in the "flat out most disgusting house in the Tar District." The Tar District was typically seen as the home of the lowest common denominator. The only people lower than the people who lived in the houses in the Tar District were those who couldn't even find a house, the homeless. They lived around the Tar District, waiting for a house to open up. In other words, they were waiting for someone to die. The Tar District was kind of a mythical area. It was blamed for most of the town's problems. Some said it claimed souls and when people talked about it, it was like none of the individual places had names, or the people either, for that matter. The places were referred to as "that place in the Tar District" or, sometimes, simply the Tar District, as though it were all one sprawling complex of sin and crime. The people were simply called the dregs or the b.u.ms or the hobos.

I really didn't know where the f.u.c.kall I was going. I think there was a part of me that knew I would eventually try to find Uncle Skad's house in the Tar District, but that seemed too depressing at the moment. So, keeping the wheelchair and, mainly, my giant horned head off the more heavily traveled roads, I stayed around the outside of the Historic District, in between that and the new large homes. The people who ran the mills and factories in Milltown built most of the new large homes. I always thought of them as "The Clean People." They were the people who could make money without getting s.h.i.t on their hands. They were the people Racecar called the whiteshirts. The Clean People really knew how to play the game. If the game had a power structure, like the food chain, these were the people at the top. The only thing separating them from blobs was their overzealous obsession with cleanliness and order. In a way though, they were blobs. They were like superblobs, an entirely different cla.s.s. They were what most lower blobs aspired to be.

By going by that area, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with those blobs in suits and their blobbish families, I figured I would be able to really get in touch with my anger. And I was starting to feel like I should be really angry, like back there at the house, but I didn't really feel that way at all. A sort of serenity enshrouded itself around me. I just rolled along and looked up at the sky that was actually blue and at all those huge houses with happy people living in them.

Why couldn't I have been born to one of them?

It was a tired, resigned thought, not full of any sort of anger. Only I knew it wouldn't really have done me any good to be born there. I wouldn't belong there any more than anywhere else and I knew they probably weren't happier than anybody else. They were rich people with problems of their own, even if their problems were just blobbish inventions.

Suddenly, overwhelmingly, a feeling swept over me. It was the feeling that I should, at that point, decide who I wanted to be. I fought to resist the temptation. I knew there were several types of person to become. There were those who had material wealth. Those people living in the houses up on the hills in the near distance. But what did those people really have? They were the people who made their living by controlling other people's lives. They made the rules, the policies-they hired and fired people. They decided whether or not the people below them would be eating in weeks to come. I didn't think I could ever become like that. They were the human G.o.ds, the new breed of G.o.ds who built the new nature, the machines, something for the mere mortals to spend their days toiling with. No, I could never be a G.o.d.

Then there were others, people like Drifter Ken, who seemed perfectly content to live with nothing. Like all of their happiness came from the inside and how they treated people and all that Biblical kind of f.u.c.kness. I could kind of see myself being one of those people, if I could ever get rid of the giant waves of f.u.c.kness that seemed to wash over me on a daily basis. If the f.u.c.kness would just let me be, maybe I could be a little nicer to people. If I could exterminate the red crawlies. Nearly everyone has a desire to be successful and make money but, for people like me, I knew it didn't happen that way.

There was, of course, a third cla.s.s of people. The types of people that if I could have been I wouldn't have chosen. This type of person never gives up. They're not allowed to give up. They never rest to develop any kind of happiness on the inside because they are too busy trying to make money, trying to be one of the Clean People. So, not only do they not get to lead the life of expensive distraction, they also didn't get to rest and enjoy life.

Most of all, I didn't want to be one of those people who had no idea who they were. The type of person who would whither up and die if you gave them an empty room. Those malleable, blobbish souls who were so busy presenting the world with an image they thought the world wanted to see, that they forgot who they started out as. This type of person can be found in each of the above cla.s.ses, no doubt.

After thinking that, I guess I really started wallowing in self-pity because I started thinking of all the mean things the parents had done to me and wondering if all that meant I had to be who I was. Like maybe I didn't have to choose what type of person I should become because it was already chosen for me. For starters, the mother gave birth to me. And I was pretty sure my genes were somehow faulty because n.o.body acted like I did. Even the LD kids could go to their special cla.s.ses and manage to go up to the next grade. I couldn't get into those cla.s.ses, though. All the tests said I was at least of average intelligence. That is, they said all of my problems were physical. Or that I chose to act the way I did. I was sure the parents had taken some pieces of the puzzle out of their respective boxes. Giving birth to me also meant I had to see them on a day to day basis.

And then there were the horrible punishments.

At first, they started out kind of subtle. I was certain, however much the parents denied it, that other kids' parents bought clothes and all kinds of stuff for them. After I started failing, the parents didn't even buy Christmas presents. They said presents cheapened the spirituality of Christmas. The parents had never struck me as very spiritual people and their lies blew up when I, on Christmas Eve one year, watched wide-eyed as they exchanged presents. Birthdays also went uncelebrated, one age sliding smoothly into the next. I doubted the parents even remembered when my birthday was. The punishments roughened in texture, growing more brutal and physical. But I kept focusing on this one thing. This one thing was what had made me finally decide Racecar was one of the blobbiest people in the world. In other words, if I hated Racecar, if that was what I was feeling, then this was the reason why.

Ever since I turned ten, it had been my job to mow the lawn. The yard was easy to mow, being equal parts gra.s.s and dirt, but the family had had the same lawnmower for as long as I could remember and something new would go wrong with this lawnmower every year. Racecar obviously couldn't mow the gra.s.s unless he could find a way to strap a blade under that chair and when the lawnmower developed all those special tricks you had to know to operate it the mother decided it just wasn't ladies' work and that I was plenty old enough to start mowing it myself.

The only thing Racecar had to do was show me how to start it and turn it off. The pull cord that had come connected to it had been ripped off, so the father improvised with a piece of thick yellow rope that was knotted at both ends. To start it, he had to wrap this rope around some cylindrical thing at the top of the engine and pull. It took him about ten more pulls than it had before the pull cord was dislocated. To turn it off, you had to take hold of these two naked wires and touch them to this hot part of the engine and keep them held there until the d.a.m.n thing sputtered to a stop. This seemed kind of dangerous because the lawnmower didn't have a gas cap and the strenuously bucking exercise of starting it caused gas to slosh everywhere and, when you touched those wires to that metal, there were usually some sparks. I waited for that lawnmower to turn me into an instant burn victim. Then I would creep people out even more with my baby pink, eyebrowless face.

I stood beside him, both of us looking down at the gimpish lawnmower, a grime-covered gas can sitting beside it. Racecar made me bend down and wrap the rope around the top of the engine and hand the end of the rope to him.

"Now all you gotta do is give it a yank." He pulled violently up on the rope, his wheelchair shifting a little in the gra.s.s.

He pulled on the rope a few more times, getting more and more frustrated with each pull.

"Now you try it, you little a.s.s. A growing boy should be able to do more than an old cripple."

I always hated it when he called himself a cripple. It made him sound so much more innocent than he really was.

I wrapped the rope around the top of the engine and gave it a yank, my hands slick with sweat. My right hand slipped off the rope, the back of my hand smacking Racecar in the forehead. I burst out laughing. I'm not sure whether it was the accidental cuffing or the laughter, but Racecar was furious. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the rope off the lawnmower, grunted, and smacked me on the arm with the knot at the end of the rope.

I accidentally shouted, "f.u.c.k," and he belted me again on the other arm. That was the worst pain I'd ever felt at that time in my life. The pain was red hot and lingering. I imagined it felt like being hit by a bullet. Racecar rolled back to the house. I silently wished the uneven yard would pitch him out of his wheelchair. I told myself if that happened I would hover over him, s.a.d.i.s.tically belting him with that rope until he was a giant welt. Then I would dance around him singing a song I'd invented for just an occasion called, "I Got Legs and You Don't."

"You're on your own, you little s.h.i.t, and you better have the whole f.u.c.king thing mowed before dark," he called over his shoulder. To my disappointment, he made it to the house unpitched.

I managed to get the job done and, by the time I was finished, there was a giant purple knot painted on each of my arms. If it wasn't for being able to rest them on the lawnmower's handle, I don't think I could've even kept them held up.

I didn't know why that, of all things, had come to me on my day of escape and then I had an even crazier thought. I thought about that piece of s.h.i.t lawnmower I'd never have to use again and that piece of rope, now blackened, that I always tied around the handle when I was finished and then I thought about that gas can and how the garage always smelled full of gas. I thought about what a dry day it was.

Then I had a truly awful idea. Sometimes thinking too much led me to those truly awful, ugly ideas.

The parents were already dead. I was already a murderer. Why should I give them the satisfaction of a decent burial? Why should any other blob think I was a murderer, that I hadn't died right alongside them?

I was wrong when I thought I would never be going back to that house. I would go back this one last time, I told myself, and I wouldn't even have to go inside.

I turned the wheelchair around and headed back home.

Chapter Eight.

The Confession Starting back home, and knowing full well what I planned to do, I decided I didn't have the proper resources. I briefly thought about trying to use the sparks from the lawnmower but that would be noisy and there was the whole creepy burn victim thing. I would need matches or a lighter, any incendiary device would do, and I knew exactly where to go. I turned the wheelchair around. I started back the way I came, figuring that would kill more time. Right after I'd had the first ugly thought, another one blossomed, almost as bad as the first. Timing figured in heavily with the second idea. The parents would always be there but, after the second idea was fulfilled, I knew I would have to leave town. My work would be done. I'd only been out of the house for a couple hours and I was already starting to feel like a different person. My thoughts seemed clearer. From the usual low-grade whumming I never really noticed, another voice was making itself heard. Only it didn't seem like a voice as much as it did a feeling, a tug, some form of direction.

I would start back the way I came, branching off near the house so I could go by the park and see Drifter Ken. I felt like I had to say bye to him. It seemed like he was one of the only people who'd ever been nice to me and I figured he was sure to have matches or a lighter. Something for the job.

On the way there, I thoroughly enjoyed the wheelchair. For a relatively lazy person like myself, it sure beat the h.e.l.l out of walking. I just rolled right along in the crisp air and looked up at that blue sky and those nice old houses and if my head and neck weren't so sore I could have thrashed around and had a great time thinking my thoughts. When you're tall and gangly, sometimes you have to concentrate on walking. The wheelchair allowed me to listen to that new feeling, going where it told me to go. Until the discovery of the wheelchair, skipping had been my favorite mode of transportation because, when I skipped, I didn't have time to think any thoughts at all and, most of the time, that was best. And, realistically, that would have been impossibly far to skip.

A few cars rolled past real slow. I could tell the people inside were staring at me. h.e.l.l, I would have stared too. It's not every day you see someone, hideous under regular circ.u.mstances, with horns on his head. Like the horns drew attention to all the rotten f.u.c.kness below. I imagined them edging their holy cars over to the other side of the road because the horns said I was evil and they didn't want anything to do with evil and rottenness. I was probably lucky it wasn't the time of day when the cruel high schoolers were out cruising around. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to just go ahead and take the stupid things off. It was like there was something inside of me that wanted to be punished. I just kept my head down, trying not to make any eye contact.

When I first got to the park, I stayed behind the hedges. A cop was talking to Drifter Ken. Even though Drifter Ken didn't normally talk about his problems, I'd heard him complain about the cops on a few occasions.

"The cops in this here town. s.h.i.t. I'm just an ol man who likes to sit down on this here ol bench with compulsive regguhlarity and they always wanna give me s.h.i.t about it."

Drifter Ken was amazing. If it weren't for that something inside of me, that feeling or calling or whatever, that thing that yelled at me and told me I had to get out of Milltown, I could have seen myself living with Drifter Ken. Well, the living part was kind of in question, since I wasn't sure if he had a house or not. There was just something so unblobbish about him I knew we'd get along fine. Of course, there was always the possibility he would think I was a blob.

As I sat in my chair watching him talk to that cop, I could tell he was making the cop break up. I heard the cop laughing all the way over there in the bushes and, before walking away, he gave Drifter Ken a pat on the arm as if to say, "You keep em laughing, Drifter Ken."

The cop got in his car and started up toward the school. I was far enough off the road to where he wouldn't notice me. I didn't even really stop to think I could be the person the cop was looking for. That would be one of the worst things in the world, a major setback, that cop dragging me back into the school. He would smile at Pearlbottom. A secret smile that said they were both members in the society of keeping kids' lives joyless and free of fun. "I found a little piece of trash for yuh," he'd say. "Didn't know whether to take him here or straight back to h.e.l.l." No, I figured I was pretty safe. Who was going to hara.s.s a crippled boy, anyway?

I waited for him to vanish out of sight and pulled around the hedgerow, wheeling toward Drifter Ken. I could tell he didn't know who the h.e.l.l I was when he first saw me coming. He looked hard and squinted those huge eyes. His top lip raised up and I could see those teeth getting bigger and bigger as I pulled closer to him. I was sure Drifter Ken dreaded new kids coming around the park. That was just someone else to go home and tell warped malicious lies about him.

Finally he recognized me.

"Hey hey, Wally Black! How's my favorite eighth grader?"

"I'm okay. How are you?"

"Oh, I'm doin all right, I guess. If the f.u.c.kin cops'd get off my back I'd be doin a h.e.l.luva lot better. Why don't you tell me somethin to brighten up my day. School done started. You got time today, ain't ya?"

"A little, yeah," I said.

"Well, shoot then."

I did have the time, sure, but I didn't really have a joke in my head. I improvised with the first thing I could think of.

"Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Beats."

"Beats who?"

"Beats just forgot his name."

Drifter Ken cracked up. "Now," he said, "that was pretty good, a real cla.s.sic, but the next time you say it, I think it's s'posed to be, 'Beats me, I just forgot my name.'"

"How could someone forget their own name?"

"Beats me."

We both laughed at that, Drifter Ken reaching down and poking me on the shoulder. That's what he always did when he got to laughing-reached right down and gave me a good jab. For some reason, that always made me laugh harder. This time it kind of hurt.

"Say, you gotta setta wheels."

"Yeah."

"You get paralyzed or somethin."

"No, just a little sore."

"Oh yeah, what happened?"

I really hadn't expected to have to explain what happened to anybody. I kind of fell silent for a while, searching for the answers to that question. I wanted to just give him a summary, tell him a few things. He probably wasn't interested in hearing all of it. But the more I tried to a.s.semble a few logical events, the more they came apart, making little sense.

I broke down and told him everything. I realized I'd been dying to tell somebody, probably because I didn't think anybody would actually ask. I broke down a lot, like when I had the crying jags at school sometimes and Pearlbottom would drag me out into the hall. But usually when I broke down, I never told anybody anything. I could never find the right words. This time felt a lot different. I found myself becoming fluid, I wanted to make him see everything that happened and then I thought that wouldn't make a lot of sense either if I couldn't also make him feel what I was feeling at the time. Sometimes it felt like I carried this giant weight around. Sometimes I visualized like a giant rock or cement block. Other times, it felt like a huge sad wave of melancholy. Whatever it was, it inevitably came down on me, crushing me into innumerable pieces, that feeling of yellow-purple soulhurt emerging from the rubble. That feeling had loosed itself on me as I stood there talking away.

Drifter Ken listened to everything, towering above me and sucking away on those Camels. Throughout me telling him this, he became my audience. I realized a little bit of what Bobby DeHaven must have felt, except mine was just an audience of one. I guess, in a way, Drifter Ken had always been my audience but, before, with the jokes, I always felt like I was trying to entertain him. Not only that, but the jokes were always something somebody else had made up or some f.u.c.kness like that.

When I got finished, I stopped and waited for what Drifter Ken would say.

He was silent for a moment and then he said, "Well, that Mary Lou's a real c.o.c.ktease. And that Bucky Swarth, well, he sounds like he's got some real weight problems. And sometimes people with weight problems get real mean and hateful. You know what to say to him if he gives you any more s.h.i.t? You say, 'I bet your t.i.ts is bigger'n Mary Lou's.' That oughtta make him real mad. Someone's gonna beat the s.h.i.t outta you like that, you gotta get smart and fight back with your tongue. If they're gonna do it anyway, you might as well give em a reason to do it."

Drifter Ken always gave me the best advice. When most people gave me advice, it was just a polite way of telling me what to do. I always got mad when someone tried to tell me what to do and then I'd make d.a.m.n sure not to do what they asked me. This usually, in turn, made them mad for not listening to them. People only told me what to do so their lives would be easier, anyway. It never made me mad when Drifter Ken gave me advice.

"I'm real sorry about tradin that sucker for nothin."