The man stood up, brushing wet gra.s.s off of his skintight pants. He looked dizzy and confused.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

He picked a couple pieces of gra.s.s out of his curly blond hair. Even in the darkness, there was nothing natural-looking about that hair. It looked like it had been bleached a while ago, hanging to his shoulders in curls. Bangs had been cut straight across his forehead.

"I've died and gone straight to h.e.l.l." Then I guess he noticed I was trying to help and he smiled a little, his teeth gross within his mottled flesh. "What the h.e.l.l's them things on your head?"

"They're horns."

"Well I can see they're horns, but why the h.e.l.l're they there? On your head. What are you tryin to pull? You're not a Satan worshipper are you?"

"No."

"You gotta be careful. I hear the Satan worshippers are fairly prevalent around here. I'm from back East. Back there you got your occasional psycho or ma.s.s murderer, whatever the h.e.l.l, some office worker snaps and fires off a few rounds in a mall somewhere but the cult stuff's spooky s.h.i.t. I had a friend who's a cop over in Illinois. He says they pulled some dead sacka s.h.i.t outta some ditch and the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d didn't have any ears. Now whatta you reckon some sickos gonna do with this guy's ears?" I briefly imagined someone holding this pair of severed ears up to their head, having a joyous time at the thrill of having a new set of ears.

He looked around him on the ground. "By the way, you see somethin flyin out the train? Two something's maybe." He held his arms out from his body. "Bout this size?"

"Over there," I pointed into the darkness behind him.

Slowly, he backed up, not taking his eyes from me.

"So what is it, with them horns?"

"I was just born this way."

"And your folks? They ain't tried to sell you to some kind of freak show yet?"

"They tried to keep it under wraps."

"What are you doin around here after dark? This ain't the best place to be, you know."

It suddenly got quiet and I realized the train had fully pa.s.sed, dragging its noise into the dark distance.

I didn't feel like telling this guy the whole story. I'd already told Drifter Ken and I imagined I'd be telling Uncle Skad if I ever found him. Twice was enough. I counted myself lucky if I could make it through something the first time.

"A freak show," I said. "I figured I'd run off and join a freak show. Make some money on my own." I was quickly learning that people desperately wanted reasons for just about everything.

The man bent down to pick up what I now realized was a guitar case and, a few feet away, an amp.

"Show business is rough," he held up the guitar case. "You got a few minutes, I can tell you a little bit about it. My name's Johnny Metal." He said "Metal" in a low growly voice. He held out his leathery hand. Over the course of the evening, I would learn that he liked to say his name a lot, out of the blue. Sometimes in that low, growly voice, and other times in a high nasally whine.

"My name's Wallace Black."

"You a Wally?" he asked as he pumped my hand with a comfortable and surprising strength.

"Whatever you wanna call me is fine."

"Wally, you happen to see a bandanna layin around anywhere. I coulda swore I was wearin a badanna."

I didn't remember seeing a bandanna fly off his head as he jumped out. I supposed it could have been tossed off before the guitar case and the amp. He looked around for a few minutes and then threw up his hands and rolled his eyes.

"Oh well," he said. "Guess I can always find another bandana. I liked that one. It smelled like p.u.s.s.y. Johnny Meeetal. A drink, though, I need a drink right now. Come on, Wally, come with me. Only alcoholics drink alone. You drink?"

"I'm only sixteen."

"Bah, had my first drink at twelve. p.u.s.s.y at eleven, whiskey at twelve. Sixteen? Pot and maybe some c.o.ke. You got any p.u.s.s.y yet?"

"Uh, no. I guess I haven't."

We started walking toward the Tar District. "It's takin kids longer and longer to grow up."

"Nah, eleven or twelve still seems about the right age. I'm just incredibly ugly. n.o.body would want much to do with me."

"You'll grow into them features. One day, if you're lucky, if take good care of yourself, you could look like me." He growled his name and began walking. I followed him. It looked like he had vents cut into the back of his sleeveless t-shirt. I thought that was kind of cool.

Chapter Fourteen.

The Tar District We slowly made our way into the Tar District, maintaining a shroud of relative silence. I really did get the palpable feeling I was walking into something. And it was like something that was felt without a sign to remind you. It got a lot brighter and those three and four-story buildings, most of them on the verge of dilapidation, had a way of leaning over me. Johnny Metal said he was looking for a place called Toady's because they had the cheapest whiskey. It was obvious he'd been here before. I wondered if he really came all this way just for a shot of whiskey. I've never been very good at small talk so I just stayed quiet, weaving the shroud a little tighter. I felt comfortable around this man and that was enough for now. I stayed as close to him as possible. There was something about this section of the Tar District that I found creepily terrifying.

We walked for a couple blocks. I could feel my muscles beginning to stiffen again. I'd woken up that morning feeling like total h.e.l.l and had been moving ever since, the friction burning away some of the soreness. Metal, even though it looked like he was pretty old, still had a real fluid and cool way of walking. I was the one walking like an old man and he was the one who a.s.sumed the smooth gait of a seventeen or eighteen-year-old-someone who's too young to have let the world beat them down and old enough to know the adults couldn't make you do anything you didn't really want to. All you had to do was put up a fight. I was sure Johnny Metal had put up a lot of fights in his time. His face kind of looked like it had been beaten with a mace.

Eventually, he turned right into a dark alleyway between two sagging glazed brick two-stories. A yellow light drifted out from a door open into the alley. The opening illuminated the wall opposite it, revealing an ancient faded mural for Bull Durham rolling tobacco.

"This's the place," Metal said over his shoulder before warbling out his name.

I wondered what kind of bar had a door that opened into an alley until I noticed the front of it was all boarded up-door and windows.

"You ever been in a bar, Wally?"

"No, sir," I said "G.o.ddammit, don't call me sir. That's a good way to make me feel old."

"Sorry."

"Johnny Metal!" He sang his name loudly, nearly shouting it. "It's a great name! Momma should not be ashamed for namin me that!"

I doubted he was born with that name.

"Well, if you ain't never been to a bar, this here's as good a place to start as any."

He walked into the yellow light and I followed him, innately sensing I wasn't going to be thrown out for being too young. I was pretty sure this place didn't even have a liquor license, therefore they didn't really have anything to lose if they sold to minors. But I had no urge for a drink of the alcoholic kind. I'd tried the mother's on a few occasions and they made me feel like throwing up and made my throat burn. Not only that, it seemed to make people talk and act dumber than they already did. I usually felt stupid enough.

"We'll get us a dark corner so no one notices them things on your head." Once inside, he lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. "If anybody happens to start givin you any funny looks, you just look away. Unless you think you can handle em, then you just stare em down." He showed me how to stare somebody down.

I didn't think I could handle a toddler whacked on heroin at that point having, as I was, a certain level of difficulty handling the fine art of standing while not allowing a sour grimace to grind its way over my face.

Metal motioned to a dark, smoky back corner with his guitar case. "You can take a seat right over there. I gotta go say 'hi' to Toady."

I shuffled over to the corner and sat down. The seat was old and musty. A sticky sheen coated the small table, swirls of dust and long strands of hair poking up in sporadic bursts. Looking around at the patrons in the bar, I became horribly depressed. That yellowish light glowed throughout the whole bar, emanating from no specific source. I imagined it coming from their nicotine-stained souls, shooting right up out of those bags bulging beneath their bloodshot, watery eyes. This wasn't at all what I expected from a bar. No TV. No pool table. No women. Just the bar, sitting warped beneath a mirror so filthy it had stopped reflecting. It turned all the faces it could manage to catch into faded, ghostlike images.

This was one of the first places I'd been to in a long time where I didn't know everyone else's name. This bothered me for some reason so I came up with my own names for them. One of the guys up by the bar I decided to call Wooden Leg because of the stiff way he stood there, one hip jutting out. Another guy who sat with his back facing the bar, I decided to call Meat Sandwich-his face had an oddly textured roll to it. In the opposite corner from our booth, slumped an exceptionally drunk man who I decided to call Death Swamp. Others were scattered around. Their names, for various reasons, were Slow w.i.l.l.y, Ol Round Paul Willard, Mr. Cindy Beckman, and Gout.

No one spoke. For the most part, it felt like they didn't even want to look at another human being. There was one sad looking guy, Gout, sitting under a patch of exposed insulation, who glanced up at me while I studied him. He quickly looked back into his beer. When I decided to look away, I felt his eyes boring into me, not necessarily hateful, just a perplexed stare at the horns on my head. I wondered if he thought they were caused by too much drink. Maybe he a.s.sumed they weren't really there at all. Except I knew that wasn't true. An alcoholic took whatever happened when they were drunk as reality. It dawned on me at that point that that was what the mother had become the last few years-a drunk. And she was h.e.l.lbent on seeing that everyone felt her reality.

Metal came walking back with two paper cups in one large hand. Coming through the bar, he could have been virtually indistinguishable from all the other guys in the bar if it wasn't for his weird hair and skintight, neon-striped pants. Their skin all seemed to be a sickly gray-green color rather than the flesh tones usually found on healthy humans. Perhaps they formed a new race. Their hair was a uniform dark steel gray. Even Metal's, in this light, looked more gray than blond. Clothingwise, everyone except for Metal seemed to wearing brown.

Metal reached the corner, clunking the guitar case down on the floor. He pulled a rickety wooden chair across the floor with his foot and sat down in it, crossing his legs in an almost prissy manner.

"Gotcha a c.o.ke," he said, proffering one of the paper cups to me. "Toady says he don't want you drunk and charging through this place. Stuff's too sweet for me."

Metal's voice sounded like he was about two months away from a stoma, but it had a quality that made me want to keep listening to him.

"Thanks," I said.

He took a gulp from his cup and fished in his breast pocket. He pulled out a pack of unfiltered Kools and threw them down on the table. Picking the pack up with a trembling hand, he pulled a cigarette out and lit it with a match, shaking out the flame and flicking it to the floor, his head enveloped in a web of smoke.

"Ah, these addictions," he said. "Crutches for an old battered soul. Buy me a closet fulla new souls, cause this one's tattered and worn," he half-sang. It sounded more like a lullabye than a power ballad.

All Metal's companionable qualities aside, I was still depressed as all h.e.l.l. I sipped the lukewarm c.o.ke, unable to get comfortable because I had to keep my arms off that sticky table. I leaned my head back against the wall, the horns clunking. They chipped away a little bit of the old drywall and a small chunk of plaster tumbled down onto my shoulder.

Metal took another swig of his whiskey and there was a little more life in his eyes.

"What's got ya so sad?"

A grit had formed over my eyes. I wiped at them with the back of my hands.

"You do look really sad, ya know?"

"I don't know. I guess I don't really wanna talk about it." It was true. I had no idea what made me so sad. I wasn't thinking about the parents or any of the heavy f.u.c.kness that had happened earlier that day. If I'd been thinking about that, I would probably have been happier. Triumphant and weightless. That was how I'd felt earlier. I figured it must have been something in my head, chemicals or some f.u.c.kness like that, or I would have been sad all the time-which I wasn't. Miserable and angry, maybe I felt those feelings most of the time, but the sadness and the feeling of overwhelming doom only came in occasional waves. I knew after I started feeling the soulhurt, the tears weren't very far away, but I knew I couldn't cry in this place.

"I just... don't know," I nervously clunked my head against the wall for emphasis.

"Ya dohn know? Now, what kinda answer's that?"

"It's a d.a.m.n good one," I said, trying to smile.

"Yer right about that, I guess." I noticed that, as Metal got drunker (and he seemed to become drunk with the first introduction of alcohol into his system), he made these weird arm gestures, throwing them out from his body like a man imitating a chicken. "Id is indeed a good answer. Yer right. A d.a.m.n good answer. But I think you might juss know a little bit bout why yer so sad. h.e.l.l, we all got problems, I guess. I'm gonna go freshen the cup."

He stood up, staggered backward a little, catching himself and turning toward the bar. He walked up there with those wild chicken motions. Metal got to the bar and the bartender already had a paper cup waiting for him. I watched Metal pull the money out of the waistband of his pants and hand it over. Part of me wanted to stand up and leave, but I really didn't think I'd be able to. That old worn booth seemed extremely comfortable. I could have probably fallen asleep there and kept sleeping all night. I hoped he wasn't going to try and get me to talk. I thought it would physically hurt to open my mouth.

Metal came back and sat down in the chair. He quickly looked up at me. I really thought Metal was a good guy and all but, for some reason, I got the feeling it didn't really matter who he was sitting there with. Like he could strike up a conversation with just about anybody.

"So, uh, where yuh headin?"

"The big freak show."

"Oh, yeah, tha.s.s right. Say, uh, didn't I say I was gonna tell ya bout the show business."

"Yeah."

"You, uh, listen to much music?"

"Not a lot. I like Bobby DeHaven."

"Bobby DeHaven..." Metal tilted his head, trying to drag the name from memory.

"He sang that song that was really big last year."

"Oh, yeah. That song. I play some music."

I figured he did, what with the guitar case and amp and all.

"You know, I almost got real big and popular, too." I found myself a litte more interested at that point, thinking maybe I'd heard of him. "That was a long time ago, though. Prob'ly before you was born, even. You ever listen to metal?"

I didn't guess I had. I said, "No."

"Yeah, well, you ain't missin much. Now, when I was a h.e.l.luva lot younger than I am now, metal was the s.h.i.t. It was pure. It was out of control. It was fun." He rocked back in his chair and did some air guitar and throw his hair around. Then he polished off his cup of whiskey, belched into his hand, and fished a Kool out of his pocket.

"Now, back then, it took talen to be in a band. You had to look awesome, too. Some guys I knew even got their songs on some radio stations."

"Were you ever on the radio?"

"Yeah, I had me a little song that got played a little bit. It was called, 'Gotta Get G.o.d Before I Go to h.e.l.l,' when I was with Thunder Hoof. We had those dot things over the 'o's. Never went much farther than that, though."

"Didn't people like your song?"

"Oh, I guess they liked it fine but I couldn't play any live gigs."

"Why not?"

"Ya see, it was always hard for me to play in fronta people, cause when I start playin the guitar, you know, I gotta make my faces. Once all those people got a look at them faces they'd start laughin. It didn't matter where I was, everyone in the club would be laughin. Not even the drunks could take me seriously. Never failed-one person started laughin, ev'ryone else started laughin too cause that s.h.i.t's contagious ya know. Anyway, I was younger then, keep in mind, I'd get all p.i.s.sed off and try and beat the h.e.l.l outta the first person I come to. It wasn't too hard either, since most of them was laughin too hard to fight back. Made me feel kinda bad too, havin to beat someone who's laughin so much."

"That's terrible," I said, but I didn't really mean it. I felt too exhausted to feel any type of emotion at that point. My body had melted into the booth and become just as feeling as the musty cushions. "I'd like to hear you play."

"I'd like to play somethin."

"So why not." I was kind of hoping it would pa.s.s the time a little bit. Besides, I'd never seen anyone actually play music before except hideous Ms. Mapes, the music teacher. She'd sit on her knees in front of the cla.s.s and talk endlessly in a tone of voice that suggested we were all in kindergarten while these hideous spitb.a.l.l.s formed on her lips, stretching elastically back and forth. I remember sitting there, paying more attention to the spit strings, waiting anxiously to see when they would break, than anything ol Ms. Mapes happened to be braying.

"I guess I'll swing round here and play somethin but there's one condition. When ev'rybody here starts laughin, and b'lieve you me they will, you just go ahead and stand up and walk out, cause I won't be able to look at ya after that."

I didn't know if I'd really be able to move or not but I nodded my head anyway.

"Get set," he said. He bent down and unlatched the shiny guitar case. "I sure do wish I had my bandanna. Always played better in a bandanna. Plug me in?" He pointed to an outlet at the bottom of the wall. I plugged the amp into it.