Why do you care so much about this squirt all of a sudden? he asked himself as he climbed behind the wheel of the old Datsun. Why him?
He thought about it for a moment. "'Cause the world don't favor a hero, for one," he answered aloud--but there was more to it than that, he just wasn't sure what it was. Maybe it was that the little pipsqueak reminded him of himself when he was a boy. Maybe he just wanted to get into Dora Strathcomb's pants.
Mr. McAllister silenced these thoughts by doing what he did best: he threw the transmission into drive and Christ-alive drove. Traffic was light, and he didn't hit a red all the way to Dark Pines Estates. Dora Strathcomb's maroon wagon wasn't in her gravel drive. The attendant, whom Mr. McAllister had gone to school with forty years ago, and whose better days were about that far behind her, looked up from reading Better Homes and Gardens and regarded him with suspicion.
"What c'n I do for ya, Pip?" she said, referring to him by his grade school nickname, Pip as in Philip, not Pipsqueak, though he had surely been that. The silly sweater and bucket hat she wore--Didn't she wear that style of hat when we were kids? Mr. McAllister wondered--made her look even older than their fifty(-ish) years, and from her expression she would have preferred him to do something for her, and get the hell out of her mobile court.
Out among the trailers, a grungy fella in tighty whites and construction boots tromped through the muck from one trailer to the next with his hound on a leash, sucking down a tallboy. There goes trouble, Mr. McAllister thought, recognizing the guy's face from The Tap. "Dora Strathcomb around?" he said to Rosie Ferguson, whose attention had wandered back to her magazine.
Her suspicion grew as she looked up again. Musta been hopin I'da disappeared, he thought. "Now what business would you have with her?"
"Well, Rosie, I'd have to say that's nunya. As in nunya business." With this, Mr. McAllister showed her his teeth. Rosie flinched, as if she'd seen gristle in between them, though Mr. McAllister knew they were just as minty fresh as always.
"Well," she said, adding, "Pip," with emphasis, "tough titty said the kitty but the milk's still good. We haven't seen her since yesterday." When Rosie said we she meant we at Dark Pines Estates, not we as in her and a suckling tabby cat. "Dora blew out of here in a tizzy to take that boy of hers over to the hospital."
"Hospital?" That giant hemorrhoid pain-in-the-ass Jessie. That fat lump of yesterday's trash.
"Uh-huh." Rosie didn't look too concerned about it. "Poor kid had an eye black as the ace of spades, jaw all swelled up like a punkin. Not that that's any-ya business," she added, riffing on his earlier joke, but he was too annoyed to laugh.
"Thanks, Rosie." He patted the counter. "You always were a peach."
She gave him the bird as he got back in his car. He drove the hour to Peterborough right away, figuring they would have had to take Dennie to Peterpatch Regional, being the closest hospital to Dark Pines. The nurse at the station directed him to the right room, and there was Dennie, his jaw wired shut, beaten and bruised as all get-out, the right eye closed up to a blood orange slit. Dora sat beside him, holding his hand. When Mr. McAllister stepped in she began to rise from her seat.
"Mr. McAllister?"
He held up a hand. "Don't get up. I just dropped by 'cause I heard what happened to Dennie. Jesus, I'm sorry, Dora. Is he gonna be okay?"
"The doctor said he'll be fine." Her eyes met his with suspicion.
"Why are you sorry?"
"That's good," he said, ignoring the question. Can't a guy do something decent without everyone wondering what he's sellin? Mr. McAllister wondered.
"Why are you sorry, Mr. McAllister?"
For a moment he considered telling her the truth, but he thought against it. "I'm just real sorry it had to happen, that's all. Nobody deserves that, not least of all your boy. Dennie's a good kid. He's--" He'd almost given himself away, about to call the boy a hero for standing up against Jessie when the fat asshole was ragging on Mrs. Plump--Plimpton.
Goddamn it, now I'm callin her that, Mr. McAllister thought, and smiled down at Dora Strathcomb.
"Thank you." She smiled herself, her eyes damp, and turned to her son, squeezing his small hand in hers. "And thank you for coming, Mr. McAllister."
"Phil," he said. "You can call me Phil."
"Thank you, Phil."
Mr. McAllister stood a moment longer, looking at mother and son--his face like mashed potatoes with the skin on--and began to feel like he'd overstayed his welcome. "Well, I'm glad he'll be okay. Lookin forward to seeing the two of you back in my rearview, Dora."
She nodded. Mr. McAllister crept out into the hall, feeling deceptive, wishing he'd had the guts to tell her what had gone down the other day. But the world didn't favor a hero--Jessie Kinsmen had proved that true when he broke Dennie Strathcomb's jaw. There were more Jessie Kinsmens in the world than Dennies, as far as Mr. McAllister saw it, and that was the real shame of the world. And those who were neither a Jessie nor a Dennie, most times they'd turn a blind eye when the shit hit the fan, when the Jessies of the world spat their poison and hate on all the Dennies and Mrs. Plimptons. They'd look away or hurry past, they'd turn up the music on their headphones or absorb themselves in their cell phones, pretending they saw nothing, hoping the "nothing" would end before they felt even more like a coward for ignoring it.
The world didn't favor a hero, but it didn't mean Mr. McAllister had to turn a blind eye. He vowed, as he left Dora and Dennie Strathcomb behind, to stop playing it by the book just this once, whether the School Board liked it or not. He was through towing the line. If standing up for what was good and right cost him his job, so be it. Something had to be done, once and for all, about that lousy scum-sucking Jessie Kinsmen and all the other Jessies of the world, and this time, Mr. McAllister would have to be the one to do it.
The question, as some Tap tourist might have asked, was how?
He found the answer later that night. There was a time, a few years back, when Mayor Kinsmen had petitioned to get peanut butter removed from the schools. Mr. McAllister looked it up, and sure enough, there were several articles in the Dark Pines Signpost about what had been considered a scandal at the time. Parents had been up in arms. How dare he tell them how to raise their children? What were they supposed to give their kids for lunch? Sushi? Not everyone in town could afford fifteen-dollar a pound steak like the kind Mayor Kinsmen bought to feed his Dobermans. Not everyone ran a chain--not one but a half dozen throughout Peterborough and Haliburton counties--of successful used car lots like Mayor Kinsmen.
Kinsmen's soapboxing had won out, as everyone had expected it would, and both schools in Dark Pines adopted the new nut-free policy. Mr. McAllister had joked, down at The Tap, that the School Board already had a nut-free policy, kowtowing to the PTA whenever an issue came up they were too chickenshit to fight over. "That's nuts as in co-ho-nays, fellas," he'd added with a grin, and the boys had chuckled genially and guzzled their beers. They never did appreciate the comedic genius in their midst.
The point of all his research was that he remembered hearing Kinsmen had only started the campaign because his son, Jessie, was an anaphylactic. Big old bully Jessie Kinsmen was afraid of an itty bitty peanut. If he'd ever met Jimmy Carter and shook the man's hand, he'd have swollen up worse than Dennie Strathcomb's jaw and had himself a popleptic seizure.
He might even die, Mr. McAllister thought, and strangely the notion didn't bother him much at all. You don't feel sorry for a rabid dog when he bites, he told himself. You just pull up your big-boy pants and put the damn thing down.
Jessie Kinsmen was a rabid dog. He'd just bit his last kid.
❚❚
MONDAY CAME AND the trap was set. He'd spent the entire weekend mulling over the finer points, but the gist of it was simple. He'd leave a peanut butter sandwich under the seat, half-eaten (this proved to be the hardest part of the job, since Mr. McAllister thought peanut butter tasted like salted shit), and the epinephrine injector the School Board had made
mandatory on all buses--after serious lobbying from the PTA--would have disappeared. "Couldn't say," Mr. McAllister practiced saying in front of the mirror, watching for the tell-tale facial tics of a liar, "I s'pose it musta fell and got trampled off the bus when the kids rushed off to school. You know how kids are with trash, always wanna kick it 'stead of puttin it where it belongs."
When he was satisfied with his confused yet tormented expression, he raided the cabinets at the old house on Greenbury Street. He'd had to put his father in the convalescent home recently, after the old man had fallen down the stairs and couldn't stop shitting himself. His visits to casa del McAllister, the old homestead, were far less frequent these days, mainly to make sure the roof hadn't caved in and the lawn wasn't going to pot. Having power of attorney, he could have sold it if he'd wanted. He just couldn't bear to get rid of the house he'd grown up in, not with all the photographs of his mother on the walls, who'd passed on when he was still quite young.
The peanut butter was in the cabinet. He opened the jar, sniffed it, and gagged. It was oily and smelled worse than normal--chemically. He'd bought a loaf of white at the Hometown Proud, aware there was a crusted jar of blueberry jam in the fridgerator he could use. He'd only have to take a few bites.
So he poured himself a tall, cold glass of milk, and he slathered the bread with salted shit and jam. Looking down at the sandwich, cut in half on a diagonal and laid out nice on a plate beside the milk, brought back memories of his mother. His dad had never been the same after she passed. Never cracked a smile or joked with him anymore. Never taught him how to ride a bike. Never spent a night without a six-pack in front of the boob tube. The shell of a man Mr. McAllister visited twice weekly, who pissed and shat in his semi-electric bed at the Castle, was just showing on the outside how he'd felt on the inside since Florence McAllister passed through the Pearly Gates in the summer of 1969.
He bit into the sickly sweet, gooey sandwich and chewed until it was doughy and gritty and swallowed it down before he could puke it with a big gulp of milk. Then he did it again, just so it would look authentic. He didn't even have to swallow, but it felt like eating a few bites of shit sandwich would be a minor penance for the crime he was about to commit. Even if the kid just got a small allergic reaction, it could still be considered assault in the court of public opinion. These days, that was just about the only court that mattered.
What happened, as far as he could figure, was that the mechanic who worked on the buses on weekends, idiot that he was, had been tightening the bolts under Jessie Kinsmen's seat while eating a PB&J. The sammie fell out of his hand, and forgot about the 5-second rule. He must have bumped his head or something, because he left it laying on the floor to rot instead of throwing it in the trash.
If the kid really was as allergic as they said and not just faking it for attention, all the Dennie Strathcombs of the world might breathe a little easier knowing Jessie Kinsmen had a kryptonite.
He tried to hide his smile pulling up the curb in front of the Kinsmen house. The kid had the stop all to himself, that's how you could tell he was King Shit among all the little floaters. Other kids who lived closer to the Kinsmen stop walked several blocks out of their way to get on before or after Jessie, and Mr. McAllister couldn't blame them. What kid in their right mind would want to stand around without supervision in the company of a rabid dog?
"Jessie," Mr. McAllister said, biting his cheeks so he wouldn't grin, as the boy's weight depressed the right front shocks.
The kid wore a smile of his own, probably feeling pretty fine about the job he'd done to the Strathcomb boy, not seeing Dora's car idling behind the bus, nor the kid himself in his regular seat. The downcast eyes as Jessie passed made Mr. McAllister feel pretty good himself about the job he was about to do on Jessie Kinsmen's immune system.
But Jessie walked right past his seat, where he'd sat day after day for as long as Mr. McAllister could remember, right past his kryptonite, right past any chance Mr. McAllister had of getting even on the fat squirt.
Sweet fancy molasses! Where the shit is he going?
Jessie tromped on to the empty seat near the back, where Dennie Strathcomb would sit if it wasn't already occupied by one of the cool kids. The boy wedged himself into the seat and turned to face the front. He beamed his smile at Mr. McAllister, the proud smile of a boy who'd won a trophy, if only in his own mind.
Fuckity-fuck!
Mr. McAllister angrily threw the tranny into gear and pulled off from the curb, the whole plan foiled.
The whole plan! What now what NOW...
For a split second he considered slamming his foot on the accelerator, taking the corners at high speed in the desperate hope the sandwich in its plastic baggie would skitter across the dirty floor and somehow come to rest near Jessie's feet, a fucking impossibility, not fucking likely at all, Pip old chum, old chap, and even if it was possible he'd take hell from that, the PB&J wouldn't be the only shit sandwich he'd have to eat, and this time the School Board might just suspend him, or worse. He'd end up working the limestone pit with the boys from The Tap, choking up rock dust while sucking down their wobbly pops.
"Fuck that," Mr. McAllister said to himself. He looked in the rearview to see if anyone had caught it, but the only one looking at him was Jessie, his green eyes wide like he was gawping at a carnival freak.
Mr. McAllister squeezed the wheel and focused on his driving. It was all he could do to keep from pulling over to the side of the gravel road, stepping off the bus and just keep on walking all the way back to town, to The Tap, which hadn't even yet opened for breakfast, let alone for boozing. He'd sunk all of his hopes into this Hail Mary pass, a desperate clutch at his last scraps of humanity, and nobody was in the end zone to catch the damn ball.
Feeling more depressed than he'd ever felt in his life, except for those first few months after his mother passed, Mr. McAllister pulled the bus up to the corner of Groonie Road and Van de Meer, where Janey Freely stood, backpack in hand. "Good morning, Mr. McAllister," she said cheerily, as she always did, her braces glimmering in the sun.
"Ain't it, Janey?" Mr. McAllister managed to spit out. She smiled again, though she stopped suddenly as she turned toward her seat near the front, and her backpack slipped from her hand to the floor with a jangle of pencils and three-ring binders.
"What's the--?" Mr. McAllister turned as he spoke and caught sight of Jessie Kinsmen, his fat neck and round face much redder than normal, just about as red as a beet.
"...Mr. McAllister?" Janey said.
Jessie was choking, and not just on a sip of water that went down the wrong tube--Jessie Kinsmen choking to death.
"Cripes," Mr. McAllister gasped, looking around himself desperately. Mrs. Plimpton shifted in her seat to look back. She removed her glasses and held them out from her face like binoculars to get a good look.
"Somethin's wrong with Jessie," Barclay Robbins shouted.
"He's not breathing," said a girl whose voice Mr. McAllister didn't recognize.
Everyone stood up in their seats, but nobody moved. No one made to help. They were frozen, transfixed, as Jessie's pink hands came up to claw at his throat.
"Christ Jesus," Mrs. Plimpton muttered, blinking hard with her beady chipmunk eyes. She turned to Mr. McAllister. "What do we do?"
"The EpiPen," Janey said, both she and Mr. McAllister turning to it at once. But it was gone, of course. He'd made sure of that this morning. The hope visibly drained from Janey's face.
Mr. McAllister hurried back to where Jessie sat, clawing at his own throat, eyes bugged out of his fat head. All the kids gawped. What are they thinking? Mr. McAllister had a moment to wonder. "Jessie," he said. Jessie stared straight ahead, his fingers clawing at his WWE t-shirt like they belonged to someone else. Mr. McAllister took hold of the boy's shoulder. "Jessie, look at me."
The boy's eyes rolled in the direction of Mr. McAllister's voice. "Jessie, have you got an inhaler? An EpiPen?"
Jessie shook his head m
ore vehemently than it had already been shaking. Tears broke free from his eyes and streamed down his freckled cheeks. Pink froth began accruing in the creases between his lips. Pink froth. It brought back images of Mr. McAllister's father, dying slowly in a hospital bed. They'd asked him about pulling the plug last week. There wasn't much they could do for him, they'd said. He likely wasn't conscious at all, they'd assured him.
He said he'd think about it.
More pink froth spilled from Jessie's mouth, dripping down his chin and gathering on the collar of his shirt.
Think about it, Mr. McAllister told himself. Had he really thought about what would happen before he'd started this, or had he been moving on autopilot, as unconscious of what he was doing as his driving had always been? Did he even consider the fact that this was murder?
Mr. McAllister threw a look over his shoulder at Mrs. Plimpton, whose bug eyes looked even more insect-like with her glasses held out from her face. He caught the eye of Barclay Robbins, a handsome kid, like his father. The boy seemed to shake his head. Tanner Jones seemed to do the same. Even Janey, hugging herself at the front of the bus, seemed unsure.
They don't want me to save him, Mr. McAllister realized then, to his growing horror. They've seen their chance. They'd let him die here, gladly, and that's on me. They'd smile and wave bye-bye but Christ-alive they'd regret it once he's gone. Can't put that on them. They're just mixed-up kids, they don't know what they want.
"Fuck," he said, and nobody seemed to care. They just kept staring at him, at Jessie--who was just a boy, after all, not a rabid dog, not a monster--and praying for it to be over soon.
Mr. McAllister dropped to his knees before the dying boy. He peeked under the seat, pretending to look for the missing EpiPen. There was the sandwich, right where he'd left it. It hadn't moved an inch and still Jesse spazzed-out.
Video Nasties Page 16
