Scarecrow Gods (27 page)

“Mom? Mrs. Bergen?” screamed Danny. “Something’s wrong.”

They rushed into the room but were pushed aside by a nurse.

“Visiting Hours are now over. Stand outside, please.”

“What’s happening? Tell me what’s wrong,” pleaded Bergen’s mother.

“Stand outside, now!”

Danny felt his mother’s fingers wrap around his wrist as she jerked him from the room. Out in the hall, he pushed his face against the window, trying to see what was happening.

Doctors and nurses swarmed around the boy on the bed. After ten long minutes, they began to disperse, leaving one lone doctor and nurse within the tiny room.

Surgery
, said one. They were taking Bergen to surgery in order to remove his spleen. Such drastic measures for an organ he didn’t need.

CHAPTER 11

Tuesday—Thursday

Ooltewah, Tennessee

“Little shit thinks he can come into my home and treat me like this. I don’t think so. Hell, if this was anywhere other than America, I might just kill him.” After a moment of thought, “And it would be legal.”

The squirrel glanced up from its feast of shelled walnuts and cashews and appraised the giant black man. Cocking its head, the squirrel paused from chewing for a moment.

“No. Not you, Nuts. That little shit we took down.” Maxom chuckled. “You know, little friend? We did good.”

As if pleased with the turn of the conversation, the squirrel resumed chewing, his bulging cheeks cheery. Maxom leaned against the peeling door jam and watched the squirrel’s almost mechanical consumption for another fifteen minutes, then stalked back into the house.

Light streamed through the windows he’d. He stared disgustedly at the filth that had been all but invisible in the black light gloom. Truly, he’d had no idea how badly he’d been living. If he’d had, he’d have been much more serious about getting help.

As Maxom had told himself the other day when the life of that fat white boy had hung in the balance, living in fear of a symbol was ridiculous. Plodding around the living room, Maxom picked up a few things, more as a way to pass the time than to accomplish anything. It was just too much and in a matter of minutes, he found himself heading for the couch. The amount of filth was staggering. The mess that was his life was just too much for one man, much less the parts of him that were man.

A knocking at the door was what finally moved him. Maxom stepped to the front window. It was the boy again. A wave of anger surged through him, but he let it fade. Anger was a tiresome emotion, and Maxom was truly a tired man.

Maxom opened the door.

“What do you want boy?”

The kid stared up, licking his lips. He seemed nervous but not scared.
Good,
thought Maxom. He hated when people were scared of him. Scared was easy.

“I came back,” said the boy.

“I lost my legs, not my eyes.”

“Yeah. Well…” The boy shuffled his feet.

Maxom was enjoying himself. Their conversation wasn’t going as the boy had planned. Boy probably thought he’d just saunter up, apologize and then
POOF
everything would be all right as if this were a fairy tale. The boy needed to realize that crosses weren’t burned in fairy tales.

“Spit it out. I’m not gonna stand here all day.”

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry and…” The boy glanced at Maxom for some help, but turned quickly away when none came. “And I want to make it up to you. Help you like my dad said.”

“Ain’t that just the nicest thing. You’re a regular Martha Stewart. Hell, lets make this an official holiday. Break out the noisemakers. String some stringers. Make it up to me? Ha! I can tell you right now, that I’ve been waiting for someone to show up at my door and say just that. Doctors and nurses of the world said it couldn’t ever be done, but tell me boy, how exactly are you gonna give me some new legs, an arm and a life?”

“What?”

“I don’t see none on you?” Maxom smacked the front of his head. “Wait a minute! If you’re gonna offer me your legs boy, let me say that I appreciate the sentiment, but they’re just too short for me. Plus I think I’d look kinda silly in swimming trunks with me black on top and white on the bottom. Kinda like half a s’more, you know?”

“What?” asked the boy. “I mean, no!”

“No, I wouldn’t look silly?”

“No! I mean yes. I mean—” Tears appeared in the boy’s eyes. The corners of his mouth twitched as he tried not to stare at Maxom’s prosthetics. Clearing his throat, “I mean I’m here to help you.”

“Oh. Hell if that ain’t nice. So what you gonna do then? What are you good for?”

“I can clean.”

“See! Now that’s a useful skill,” said Maxom. He’d given the kid enough of a hard time. “Come on in then. I’m sure you’ll find yourself something to do.”

Danny hesitated, wiping his eyes.

Maxom continued, “Last time I cleaned was, let me see, do you happen to remember Marlin Perkins and that monkey of his? Or that guy Bob? No? What about Shaft? Do you remember Shaft?”

The door slammed shut after Danny as he entered the Maggot Man’s domain.

* * *

From dawn ‘til dusk for the last few days, Danny had experienced a very special kind of Hell. One where the running days of his thrill-happy summer had tripped, fallen and become forever entangled in the life of another, crippled existence that kept him inside and handcuffed to a man he’d once hated.

Life was funny.

When his father had first brought it up, helping the Maggot Man had seemed as awful as anything Danny could imagine. Still, the indentured servitude was better than a week’s worth of whippings. Or reform school. Or summer camp. Or being grounded all summer.

Or so he thought.

Now, struggling through the hip-deep lawn with a fifty year old manual lawn mower, gnats and mosquitoes attacking him as if he was Pearl Harbor in the kamikaze free-for-all of a Japanese surprise attack, Danny was convinced he’d made a mistake.

The whippings would have been terrible, but they would’ve been over by now. Maybe a bruise or two would remain, but nothing to compare to the bright red aches of the claw marks still healing upon his face.

Likewise reform school. Although enrollment in one of the many military academies found throughout the South was a constant threat, even Danny knew the cost was prohibitive. In times of stress, the threat worked well, eliciting the terror needed to control his behavior. Once his head was clear, however, Danny understood just how empty the threat was. But by then it was too late.

Summer camp, on the other hand, was a terrible place he’d not wish on his worst enemy. Well, maybe his worst enemy, but no one else.
The Kingdom of the Geeks
as Doug called it, or the
Land of the Unwanted
as Bergen called it, was a place Danny had visited only once. Yet that one time had left an impression. The acne-faced eighteen year olds explaining how to tie-dye, the non-thrill of making your first leather bracelet, the hilarity of the grown-ups trying to scare the kids around a campfire with ghost stories when those same kids had grown up with Freddy Krueger and Chucky as nighttime pals were only a few of the reasons summer camp was a pre-teen Hell.

And all the while the staff of Camp Chicamauga was insanely happy with their brochure-empowered directives, the kids found themselves in varying states of zombiedom. Whether it was the cardboard food, overdoses of bug spray or the realization that their parents didn’t want them, Danny wasn’t sure. What he was sure of, however, was that he never wanted to return to Camp Chicamauga. That one visit had been enough and he was thrilled he’d been able to reason his parents out of sending him again.

Then, last but not least, was the most used threat in the history of parental misuse of threats—
The Mythical All Summer Grounding
. At the time, Danny had been terrified. His mother had been so angry he couldn’t help but believe her.

Would his mother really want him inside the house all summer, every day, every hour, every minute, under her feet, asking permission to breathe? He’d fallen victim to yet another meaningless threat.

Yes, he felt tricked, and picked upon. There was so much dirt under his nails he’d never be able to get it out. His knees ached from scrubbing floors that hadn’t seen the working side of a brush in a decade. The skin on his hands was a study in mummification, wrinkled and loose as an eighty-year-old’s. Somewhere along the way he’d developed a sneeze, probably from the mounds of dust he’d removed from the house of Maxom Phinxs.

And that was another thing.

The Maggot Man. Maxom Phinxs. The Stork, as Danny had come to think of him sometimes because of the way the man stalked towards everything, legs stiff and awkward. Last night, deep beneath the covers needed to stave off his mother’s air conditioning, Danny’d had nightmares of those legs. Where the knee ended, a cup caught and held a half-body’s weight. Below the cup was a length of metal shooting straight to a hinged rubber foot which sprang back with each step whether it was a walk or a run or a sprint or a stumble.

In his dream, it was Danny who was wearing the metal and rubber legs. His own were gone, replaced by the prosthetics. Except Danny had no idea how to use them—he’d stand and fall, stand and fall, his hands scrambling to support him, nails split and bloody. He kept turning. He kept trying to see what was behind him, what was chasing him. He’d awoken twisting in his sweat-soaked sheets, the inevitability of something large and invisible capturing his thrumming heart.

Danny had never known the man was a war hero. Or that he’d seen Martin Luther King in person. Or that he knew every Commodore song by heart. Or even that underneath the freakish exterior, he was a fairly decent person—if you discounted the man’s general and nearly total disdain for humanity.

But Danny thought he’d figured out that part. After all, why would Maxom Phinxs like normal people? People had given him nothing but difficulties since he’d returned from Vietnam. Danny counted himself as one of them.

The man was slowly coming out of his shell, however. The first day he’d been gruff, even mean. More than once Danny had felt the sting of tears because of his words.
What the hell were you doing in the kitchen all that time? I thought you said you knew how to clean? Jesus, boy. You’re about as useful as tits on a bull.
There were several times when Danny had asked where something belonged and the man had ignored him
.

Now, the man was acting nicer, at times almost silly. It was like he hadn’t been around people for so long that he didn’t know how to act. There were times when Danny could swear Maxom was acting like a kid, almost giddy; then other times when he would sit in a dark corner and sulk, usually over something fairly small and simple. Then there were the times when the man would fade out and go into another place. Danny had seen him do that several times.

Lying on the couch, legs sometime on, sometimes off, dropped in a pile beneath the scarred and bony stumps, Maxom’s breathing would slow until his chest barely moved. It wasn’t long before a thin line of drool would form and like a slow motion waterfall, pour inexorably onto the hollow in the center of his neck. When Danny asked about those times, Maxom got a peculiar look upon his face and said it was a
Vietnam thing
.

During a particularly long and hot day, Danny was hacking away at the twisted coils of vegetation that had all but taken over the backyard of the small house. All he had was a swing blade. Although it was deadly to the occasional weed and the long kudzu vines, it was almost useless to the hundreds of sweet smelling, cantankerous sassafras treelets that had rooted throughout the small plot.

When he’d first started clearing the backyard, Danny had planned out squares of work. Long ago, he’d learned that attempting to conquer an entire yard could be overwhelming. Small attacks meant small victories over the forest enemy, and each victory furthered his success in the war. The squares were about five-by-five. He’d have made them larger, but each square took him the better part of an hour to hack down to ankle level.

So it was, panting and dripping sweat, that he entered the clean but serviceable kitchen to get a glass of iced tea. Before he poured, he let the coolness of the ice-encrusted freezer billow over his super-heated head. The first glass he drank right down. Partially satiated, he poured himself another. This one he sipped.

Danny walked into the living room to turn on the record player. He’d grown fond of the older music, though he’d never before paid much attention to it. His favorite songs of the old man’s collection were
Aqualung
,
Brick House
, and
Live and Let Die.

Danny picked a record at random and placed it on the turntable. As the music started, he checked out the jacket cover and the many sequined black men gyrating upon it.
Earth, Wind and Fire
was printed across the top.