Tales of the Madman Underground (19 page)

The funny thing was, even then, before I had any idea what it was all about, somehow I knew they were making a mess of Dad’s life (and Mr. Knauss’s, and mine) for flat nothing. Every Tuesday night the meeting would go way over time and I’d end up going home slung over Dad’s shoulder, half-asleep. Sometimes he’d meet some voter on the street, explain he was going home from Council, say that he thought they’d done some good things for the town that night (even if it was just all yelling, he’d say that), and then explain that “this is Karl, my sack of potatoes, and I’d better get him home to bed.”

When we got home, he’d just kind of hand me to Mom and she’d more stuff me into bed than tuck me, then go to bed herself. She didn’t want to hear about it and he wanted to talk out his fury, so Dad would go to the bar and talk politics with his cronies. That’s what Mom called them; I think I was in about sixth grade before I realized that being a crony wasn’t a job like being an assistant.

That September, Vietnam was just really getting going. The old farts that were picking on Dad were all for Goldwater and Dad was the city chairman for Johnson. Before then I just knew that good guys rooted for the Indians, voted Democratic, and went to United Methodist. I wasn’t sure whether it was Republicans, Tiger fans, or Catholics who were the real source of evil in the world.

But early in third grade I realized it must be Republicans. Everyone was yelling at Dad and writing awful things about him in the paper; what Mom was calling the “Goldwater asshole/cheap bastard axis” was in full swing. I liked the way that when she’d say that, or Dad would, they’d start shushing each other because I wasn’t supposed to hear them say bad words, and then they’d get laughing so hard they had to hang on to each other. That was pretty cool.

So sometime in September, Mrs. Baker, the third-grade teacher, who was a Goldwater asshole herself and married to one of the town’s leading cheap bastards, tried to tell us about how bad the Russians were and all. My dad said she was putting her politics in her classroom, where it didn’t belong, because she was a crazy old lady who wanted to take Grandpa’s Social Security away and go to war in Vietnam.

One story hour, Mrs. Baker read us this story about how a bunch of kids were saying the Pledge of Allegiance and their new teacher made them cut up the flag and not pray, and I guess the teacher was Russian. And maybe we were supposed to feel sorry for the old teacher who got taken away at the beginning of the story, because she was a mean old lady like Mrs. Baker.

I thought it was a dumb story with no fighting or danger. Years later when we had U.S. History from Harry we read it again, and I found out what it was about, which was pretty much beyond me when I was eight; it was supposed to warn us that all us kids were all so dumb that we’d fall right into line for the first Communist teacher that walked into the classroom. Like anyone ever believed or did what
any
teacher told us.

Anyway, at the time it was just a dumb story, and after Mrs. Baker read it to us, she started talking about how the way the Communists ran Russia, if people stood up and disagreed and yelled about how something was wrong, the police took them away and they were never seen again.

Now
that
was interesting. (It was also not lost on me that they took mean old teachers like Baker away and shot them.) I thought about that all day. If we had that here in Lightsburg, and put those real estate bastards and Goldwater assholes in jail, meetings could be over in no time. The DQ would still be open, I could walk home with Dad instead of going home slung over his shoulder, and we’d never have to hear from those old hollering booger-faces again.

And it was kind of the perfect day for the idea, because it was Dad’s birthday. Also, Dad had lined up a couple contracting jobs for January, after he would stop being mayor, so he’d be able to restart his business and not have to take some clerk job in Toledo. So it was a celebration. They had a bottle of wine before dinner (they let me have some mixed with 7-Up; I’d rather have had plain 7-Up but it was a big deal to them).

Then they had another bottle of wine with dinner, and they were being all loud and silly as they tried to get Dad’s Sara Lee birthday cake out of the box and onto a plate so they could put candles on and everything. Big mistake. It went right over the plate, catching the far edge and flipping the plate up into the air, before landing upside down on the floor. The plate shattered next to it.

Mom and Dad started in yelling at each other about it, at the top of their lungs, the usual
You-fucked-it-up/ No-
you
-fucked-it-up
thing they did whenever anything went wrong. It went on for a while. I just sat at the table and thought about poor Dad not getting his cake, and how I had been looking forward to it, too, and it was all very sad.

But at least I had an idea to cheer Dad up
—
that Russian idea. I was sure it was a good idea because Mrs. Baker didn’t approve of it, and Dad didn’t approve of Mrs. Baker.

So Mom cleaned up the cake and the smashed plate, and then she made this thing with vanilla ice cream over Oreo cookies, and put candles on it. Dad blew out the candles and they had some more wine, and everything seemed better. Mom was sitting with her arm around him, and he was smiling and holding her hand.

“I learned something in school today that was really good,” I told Dad. “In Russia, they just put guys that holler and complain in jail. So they won’t bother anybody.”

Dad agreed that indeed, they did that, though he wondered why Mrs. Baker was telling little third graders about it and scaring the hell out of them for no good reason.

I explained that if we did that here, we could just take all the people that made the Council meetings take so long, because they were always hollering and objecting, and send them away to jail, the way that they did the mean old lady teacher in that dumb story about kids cutting up the flag.

“You dumb little shit,” Dad said. “You dumb, dumb little shit.”

“He doesn’t know any better!” Mom said.

“He damn well should, he
goes
to Council meetings, we’ve taught him—”

“How much can you teach a third grader about something like that?” Mom said, her voice tight, holding her breath a little; it was her
please don’t
voice, the one she used when he was about to start ranting and yelling, and sometimes it worked, sometimes he’d back off and say she was right.

But not tonight. “Karl, listen. Did you say anything about this to anyone else?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Actually I’d told Paul and Paul had said he thought we’d get in trouble for that idea. I didn’t want to tell on Paul and get him in trouble, too, and I really didn’t want to be in trouble for having told him.

Unfortunately Dad knew as well as I did that that was what I said whenever I was trying to think up a lie.
“Did you talk about this to
anyone
else?”

“Doug, he’s a little boy, you can’t expect him—”

“Did. You. Tell. This. To. Anyone. Else?” He stared into my eyes, I think, though I couldn’t see through the tears welling up. “Dammit, Betty, if he said anything like that around Baker or her stupid husband or any of the Goldwater assholes or their asshole kids, they’re gonna be all over me at the next Council meeting, and I need to know!” He leaned across the table and shouted into my face.
“Now did you say anything about it to anyone?”

I was blubbering now.

It always made Dad sick to see a boy cry. He said that all the time. He grabbed up the bottle from the table and went out to get drunk by himself on the back porch, like he did when he was really mad, muttering and swearing.

Mom’s arms folded around me and I buried my face in her sweater and cried. After a long while, when I’d settled down into sniffles and she’d been holding me and stroking my hair, she got it out of me that I’d talked about it with Paul, and no one else, and that Paul had thought it was a real stupid idea and I’d better keep it secret. “You should listen to Paul more often,” Mom said. She sounded really tired, but she kissed me on the forehead and hugged me really hard again. “And when your dad asks you something you should just tell him the truth. I have to talk to him for a few minutes, ’kay, Tiger? Would you like more ice cream treat? Yours got kind of spoiled for you.”

It was runny and the Oreos were soggy but getting seconds on dessert was a big deal, so I ate all of it and scraped the bowl pretty much down to the shine. I could hear Mom’s voice, soft and pleading, and Dad grouching and grumbling, and then after a while this long sigh from him. “I never could fight you about anything, Betty.”

They came in and Dad sat down next to me, put his arm around me, and Dutch rubbed me, not hard, though I was a little scared because sometimes when he was real drunk he was rough. But this time he was gentle, like he was afraid he’d break me.

He said he was sorry he’d yelled at me. He made sure Mom had explained to me that putting people in jail for arguing was wrong and that it was
bad
that the Russians did it. Even if the people arguing were old booger-faces. And he asked if maybe I didn’t want to go to Council meetings anymore, since now they were so nasty and taking so long, but I said I still wanted to go.

That settled all the big questions, so Mom got me cleaned up and put to bed. I remember her hugging me extra hard and saying, “Your dad does love you, Tiger, and I know you love him, but try not to be like him, ’kay?”

THINKING ABOUT ALL that now, riding in Browning’s hearse, I had about worked myself into hating the whole world. Old people in particular. Why couldn’t things just be wrong, and let it go at that? Lots of unfair stuff happened all the time. Lots of things that weren’t right happened. You could hear all about them in any therapy meeting.

But that was no excuse for all the hollering. We could all get along a lot better in life if people weren’t always standing up and hollering about
this isn’t right, that isn’t right
. You know what? Maybe it’s
not
right. But maybe nobody fucking wants to listen to you holler.

Why did they all think that all that standing-up-for-your-rights bullshit was a good thing? People who said my mom was plain old fucking batshit crazy, and a hippie communist, too, would turn right around and say, “But that Beth sure stands up for what she thinks is right,” like that was a good thing. Which makes no fucking sense at all if you think about it. Somebody’s not only wrong, but insists on yelling at you about it and not leaving you alone? And that makes it better? Shit.

My hands were squeezing each other in my lap like they did when I wanted to go punch something and make it be afraid of me.

Browning said, quietly, “When I was your age I used to promise myself that I wouldn’t ever, ever, ever turn into an old fart that lectures young guys about how to run their lives.”

“I was just promising myself the same thing.” My fingers were knotting around like spiders at an orgy.

Browning laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and he kept right on laughing as we carried the couch in through the big back door of his workshop, and clapped me on the shoulder and said having me around did him good.

Browning added this trip to my tab—he only paid me once a month, but always the minute it was due, and in cash because he hated all those stupid laws and didn’t see any reason why either of us should be paying into Social Security since “I can goddam well work to support myself and you’re too young to worry about retiring and we’re the only two people that should goddam be involved, and you know they don’t save that money, Karl, they’re using it to pay off some old poop my age who was too lazy and dumb to save for his own retirement, and thinks he should live off working people now.”

I liked the way he put that. He never hollered about it, either. When I staged my Communist coup and took over and put all the people that hollered into concentration camps, maybe I’d put him in the extra-nice one for senior citizens, and give him a private room where he could jump Rose Carson.

Besides, unlike some past employers, Browning had never let my mother sweet-talk him into giving her my wages as an “advance” for an “emergency.” I always figured that was the real reason Mom hated him; she was always saying he was a backward, stupid, old small-town bigot who hadn’t had a new idea in fifty years. Which he
was
, of course. But there were so many of those around Lightsburg that it was pretty strange that she hated Browning in particular.

Browning dropped me off four blocks from the high school—I had explained to him the year before that it looked pretty weird for me to arrive in a hearse. The streets and sidewalk were already warm in the sun, but in the shadows of the houses the thick lawns were all still soggy with dew, and water ran down the street signs and tree trunks.

I crossed the street to walk in the sun. A car horn honked. When I looked up, it was Marti. She rolled down her window and said, “Hey, little boy. Wanna come for a ride in my car? I have candy!”

There’s a rule or something that if a girl can crack you up, you have to do what she says. As soon as I had closed the door, Marti said, “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about blowing up at you last night. I mean, no wonder I’ve never had any friends, hunh?”

“You’re pretty cool,” I said.

“Really cool, or just cool for a titless genius?”

“I told you before, those assholes
meant
for you to hear that.”

“You know, when someone hurts my feelings, somehow it does not comfort me to know that it was deliberate.” She went around a corner with a squeal of tires. “On the other hand, knowing that someone else thinks they are assholes helps a great deal.”

“I think that’s some kind of rule for the universe.”

“Probably. I’m good at figuring out rules for the universe. My dad figures out the rules for manipulating protons, I figure out the rules for manipulating morons.”