Fuckness (22 page)

“
They wanted me to go to war. Only they didn’t call it a war. They called it a conflict. I almost went to Vietnam, Wally boy. Fortunately, I was completely fucking nuts. At first, I was only a little bit crazy. But then, all of that stuff started happening and I started imagining myself thousands of miles from home. I’d heard about what it was like. Something snapped, Wally. Something just snapped. You’ve felt the snap, haven’t you, Wally?”

I nodded again.

“
Do you know what happened when I snapped, Wally? Do you know that what I did was of catastrophic proportions and it directly involves you? Do you know what I did when I snapped?”

I shook my head, whispering, “No,” because there was something about Uncle Skad that had made me completely captivated. He no longer moved his hands in the dramatic fashion. He stared straight into me, his eyes reaching in and wringing the soulhurt I suddenly felt.

“
I imagine it. There’s a metallic kind of feel in your body. This feeling, it has a way of completely and totally overwhelming you, driving you to your knees. It feels like a lifesize railroad car is roaring through your head. Sometimes, when this feeling comes over you, you are not you anymore. You have no control over yourself and you’ll do anything, anything to make that bending, warping feeling go away. It’s so consuming that it blocks your vision, blinds you. The logic it imposes is its own fever logic. The ends to the means are completely ridiculous because the means themselves are ridiculous. One time I woke up while pulling out one of my teeth because, according to this dream logic, I had to excise the tooth so the car would start when I woke up in the morning. I didn’t even have a car. Do you know how numbing it is to wake up to something like that? To ‘come to’ and realize that, for however brief a period of time, you were not able to exercise any self-control whatsoever? Of course you do.

“
So one morning I wake up, I come to, because I was never really asleep, you see. I come to and, in my hands I’m holding a sledgehammer. And I’m standing in a bed soaked red with blood. My parents are below me. Smashed. Pulp. I threw the hammer down and rolled out of bed and lay on the floor and cried and cried and cried. Do you know why I cried, Wally?”

“
I think... maybe.”

“
Not so much because I had killed my parents. Anybody could have killed them. Part of the crying, of course, was the sadness of their death. But what made me really break down was that brief period where the dream logic overlapped reality and what I was doing made perfect sense. The fact that I remembered, quite clearly, bringing the hammer down onto their heads, that was what made me break down. The fact that I was capable of doing something like that. That I could have, at any time, found that behavior rational. But the act was done. And I had to go away for awhile. It was a departure that I welcomed, that I deserved. It was there, in the hospital, that I discovered myself.

“
I spent most of my time there wondering this: is a man who he is, should he be
judged
by his actions of the past and maybe even the present, or should he be judged by who he wants to become, what he is
trying
to be? Should a man be judged at all? And who is he judged by? Look out there.” Skad motioned out the window, at the high school kids practicing football. I turned my head to watch them.

“
You see those people out there? I’m afraid they may be the judges of people like us. Oh, that’s not to say all of them are like that or, for that matter, that you and I are exactly alike. But their mentality, think about it. They want glory, they want recognition. So once a week, they have a heap of lights pouring down onto them and, for a couple of hours anyway, they have everyone’s attention. Most of them even have their names across their back so they can be identified. The strongest, the most cunning, the one who can
smash
the most people down—that’s the one that gets the most recognition. And look where they play, a field covered in lines. Cross some of the lines and you’re out of bounds—the game stops. The entire game is about getting to the end zone—the final prize. Sometimes I think that’s what’s missing, the final prize. But it’s not their fault, of course. That’s just a metaphor. Sometimes I feel like I’m only living to die.”

The waitress came over and sat the plates of food down on the table.

“
Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

“
We’re fine. Thanks,” Skad said. Then, to me, “Dig in.”

We devoured our food, our mouths making sounds like rabid animals. Skad alternated between taking bites of his food, sips of his coffee, and drags off his cigarette. The rapidity with which he performed each of these actions looked like an amazing task. Comical and demonic looking smoke rolled out of his mouth as he chewed the food. While I ate, I couldn’t stop thinking about Uncle Skad. I found myself periodically glancing at him, trying to find the murderer somewhere within. I couldn’t do it. His eyes were too gentle. There was an overall deliberate delicacy in his movements that rendered him incapable of taking anyone’s life. Something about the way he held his head suggested he was the type of man who was perfectly content with food, drink, and smoke. He’d probably forgotten about women a long time ago.

There was that other stuff he said, too. The fuckness about only living to die. Sometimes I felt exactly like that. Sometimes I waited to die. I thought that him telling me all about that stuff would make the wave of soulhurt come back over me. But it made me feel better. Knowing he felt like that too somehow made me feel like I didn’t have to feel bad. He stated it as though it was a fact of life.

We pushed our plates aside once we finished and the waitress came over to refill my Coke and Skad’s coffee. She laid the check down on the table, a waitress’ subtle hint to settle up and get the hell out.

“
You can pay that at the register,” she said. She turned to walk away and then, pausing, turned back around and looked at me. “Why the hell are you wearin them stupid horns?”

I was expecting someone here to point that out. I don’t exactly know why. Nevertheless, I think I fielded it a little bit better. I reached up and felt them, stroking their grandeur, feeling the confidence from Skad across the table.

“
My mother, uh, fucked a bull,” I said.

The waitress’s mouth dropped open, but she was clearly angered by the comment.

“
Well, them’s the most retarded things I ever seen. Nobody from my school would date a boy with horns.”

“
Thank you,” I said.

“
I think you better pay that and get out. Boss told me to tell you we don’t need no freaks and bums in here. This ain’t that kind of place.”

Then Skad asked, “Just what kind of place
is
this, ma’am?”

The waitress, looking about ready to cry, clenched her teeth and said, “This here’s a decent place.”

Then she turned to walk back to the kitchen. I felt and heard my bowels shift. I had religiously had a bowel movement a day ever since I turned twelve. I managed to hold it in yesterday but this was the big one.

I stood up and leaned over the table. “Excuse me,” I winced to Uncle Skad and hurriedly walked toward the bathroom. I undid my pants as I opened the door. I turned, facing the inside of the door, angling my ass toward the toilet and pulling down my pants in one swift motion. My bowels released with an explosion of sound and stink. It was a succinct shit, however. One heave and it was over.

Finished, I wiped and stood up to wash my hands in the sink. I don’t really know why I bothered. It’s not like it really mattered, the rest of my body was so filthy. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I’d felt the horns, but this was the first time I really saw them. And it was the first time I’d really seen myself. I looked truly hideous. My face was lumpy and swollen. My nose was crooked. One of my eyes wouldn’t quite open all the way. The horns rose up from my scalp, monstrously large. It made me sad to look at myself. The wave of soulhurt quickly washed over me. Was it panic? Maybe it was panic. Every time the soulhurt would infest me, I had the overwhelming urge to sabotage everything I had. To escape from wherever I was. And it was with that feeling I had another terrible idea. Another terrible idea I knew I would follow through on. Not as terrible as my ideas of the day before, but terrible nonetheless.

I was going to leave Uncle Skad’s side. It had nothing to do with Uncle Skad, there was just something inside of me screaming that I deserved to be alone. I knew the voice was right. No, I knew it was true. It may not have been right. I would undoubtedly be happier if Uncle Skad were to accompany me wherever I went but I started alone and I felt like I had to end up some place alone and I didn’t want to drag Uncle Skad into anything else I might do. Knowing that I was going to follow through on it gave me the most soulhurt of all.

I shook my hands out over the sink and finished drying them on my pants. How was I going to tell him? I briefly thought about just running out but I didn’t really think my legs would work very well and that just didn’t feel like the right thing to do.

I walked out into the restaurant and was surprised to see that Skad wasn’t sitting in the booth. Maybe he’d left without me. That would have certainly been a relief. I didn’t think that seemed like Uncle Skad but, then again, how much did I really know about him? I didn’t think he seemed like a murderer either. It seemed more likely he led a country called Pung and spent time in hell than murder someone. Was it the brutal reality of murder that should have made it seem more likely to believe? Did I seem like a murderer to him? Because, most definitely, that’s what I was.

Lowering my head, I quickly walked out of the restaurant. When the door shut behind me, I was sure I heard the waitress shout something at me, but I couldn’t make out what it was. Outside, the sun was well on its way out of sight and the air felt chillier, the wind having a slicing quality on the top of the hill. Skad was out there, smoking a cigarette and turning in circles. He saw me coming and stopped his rotations.

“
You don’t look so good,” he said. “I hope I didn’t scare you with that stuff back there.”

“
No,” I said.

“
Because, you know, when it’s all said and done, we are really living to live. Happiness can be easily obtained. All I need to do is wake up to a cigarette and a cup of coffee. Maybe have some whiskey before I go to bed at night. A roof over my head. A warm fire. Those are the essentials. Where we off to next?”

I gritted my teeth and mumbled, “Gonna go.”

“
Eh, Wally?”

“
I think I’m just gonna go.”

“
By yourself?” I could tell by the gleam in his eye that he was disappointed. Not angry, just sad.

“
I think it’s just something I need to do alone.” I moved closer to him and hugged him. “I’ve enjoyed being around you.”

“
You’re a good kid, Wally.” Then he grabbed me by the upper arms and thrust me away to arm’s length. That electric feeling shot through me and I could see that bluish glow glittering around in his eyes. “You can do anything you want to do! Just
find
something! Go wandering and it will come to you. Anything you do, do it with
passion
! That’s the problem with the world today, there’s no passion. Walk like God, Wally! Walk like fucking God! What do you think of when you think of...
God
?”

Truthfully, I didn’t really think about God too much, unless I was feeling especially pitiful. “I don’t know... creation?” It was the first thing that popped into my head.

“
Then create. No one creates anything anymore. Now we want machines to do everything for us. Create a fantastic life, Wallace. Start now and spend the rest of your days creating the perfect life so you’ll die a happy man.”

Then he let go, but I still felt that electricity sizzling through my marrow, through my head.

“
Go, Wallace! And don’t ever look back!”

I turned away from him, that electricity crackling all through me, and took off running.

Chapter Twenty

You Are

The best thing about pollution is the brilliant sunset it creates. Behind Uncle Skad, the entire time he was talking, I kept looking at that violent red sunset smeared across the sky. Now, as I ran down the other side of the hill, the sun had completely disappeared beneath the horizon. The whole sky glowed an amazing pink color. I was glad I had Skad’s blessing. I mean, I’m glad he didn’t seem to mind me going. I knew he was probably just a lonely old guy, as eager for friends and company as I should have been. But I wasn’t. I meant what I had said to Uncle Skad. I didn’t know where the hell I was going, I just felt like it had to be done alone.

I did feel kind of bad, but it wasn’t anything Skad made me feel. It was something from inside. It was like, no matter how much I liked a person when I first met them, it was only a matter of time before that feeling turned into one of bitter hatred. I didn’t want to have to end up hating Uncle Skad. It was like that with the parents. After sixteen years with the parents, even if they
had’ve
been decent human beings, I still couldn’t have stood them any longer. It was the same at school. Like old blob Pearlbottom. I just hated her more and more every year. I didn’t like feeling that way at all. And I didn’t want to let myself feel like that about Uncle Skad.