The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

by Brady Udall

  When the boy saw us, he heaved himself to his feet and said, “Oh man, are we missing King Kong night?”

  “Glen, you shithead,” Nelson said. “That’s why we’re doing it tonight. Everybody’s at the movie.”

  “Damn,” he said with an air of pointed regret. “I love that King Kong.” Glen shrugged, peered at me. He had a faint, homemade tattoo, three letters that ran down the middle finger of his left hand:

  S

  E

  X

  He said, “This kid don’t look white.”

  “He’s only part, I guess. He says it’s a mailman ran over his head. He’s pretty funny.”

  In the deepening evening, I walked across the parade grounds with my new friends, Nelson and Glen, and did my best to keep my marbles from making too much noise; I had brought them with me to dinner, intending to give them (except for a couple I had stashed in my pillowcase) back to the boys, but they had stared across the tables at me with such hate that I had been unable to approach them at all.

  Halfway across, a cloudy-eyed reservation dog slinked up to us, looking for handouts, and Nelson gave him such a ferocious kick that he rolled three times in the dust before he was able to right himself and limp away, glancing back and crying in pain. I stopped to watch the dog go, but Nelson grabbed my sleeve and pulled me along. We crept along the row of houses, all built with large river stones hauled up from the canyon by Apache prisoners of war. A couple had lights on, but the last three, close together under the night shadows of one massive elm, were dark. We went around to the far side of the last one and stood in the tall weeds under a small round window about six feet off the ground.

  “This is the one window they never lock,” Nelson whispered. He explained what my part was in this fun we were having. They were going to boost me up so I could get through the window and into the bathroom. From there, I was to go into the kitchen, locate the refrigerator and take as much Budweiser as I could carry. If there was any money lying around, or candy bars, or rubbers, I should take those too. Then I was to go out the front door, making sure to lock it behind me again. For their part of the job, Nelson and Glen were going to wait in the old guardhouse for me to bring them their beer.

  “Budweiser?” I said.

  “Beer,” Glen said, “don’t you know what beer is? Fuck, man!”

  “White cans with red letters,” Nelson said.

  I decided not to ask about the rubbers.

  Glen helped me onto Nelson’s shoulders, lifted me like I was no more than a toddler, and they both helped shove me, headfirst, through the tiny porthole of a window. Once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness I saw that I was indeed in a bathroom; there was a claw-foot tub in the corner and a chipped porcelain sink with its stainless steel pipes exposed, glinting in the darkness. It occurred to me that there was going to be no good way to get to the floor without slithering through the window and landing headfirst on the toilet below.

  I heard a noise, a faint nuh nuh nuh, and saw through the bathroom doorway that it was coming from the bedroom just across the hall. It was brighter in that room, probably the glow from the porch light coming through the window. I could see the corner of a bed and, on top of the bed, two pairs of legs, one on top of the other, two feet pointed at the ceiling and two at the floor. The legs writhed and almost seemed to be battling each other and the sound from the bedroom came a little clearer now: nuh nuh, ah ah, nunnh, nunnh.

  I then heard, unmistakably, a man’s voice say, “Almost there, sister.”

  It sounded to me like somebody was in pain.

  I cupped my hand over my mouth and hissed, “There’s somebody in here!”

  “In the bathroom?”

  “In the house! I heard somebody say ‘sister’!”

  “Fuck, there’s nobody in there,” I heard Nelson say. “Mrs. Thomas is at the movies. Now get on in there and meet us at the guardhouse.”

  They took their hands from my ankles, which upset my center of gravity and made me pitch forward a little, so that I had to brace my arms against the tiled wall to keep from sliding through. I heard them crash away through the tall weeds and then the faint flap flap flap of Nelson’s sandals.

  I wished fervently that I was back in the gymnasium with everybody else, laughing in the dark, waiting to see what the big monkey would do. Here and now, it seemed I had two choices, neither worth much consideration: falling a good four feet headfirst onto the toilet or backing out of the window and having to face Nelson and Glen, beerless and without excuses. While I tried to come up with some alternative, I hung there, the window sill digging into my belly, the marbles in my pockets cutting off the circulation in my thighs, and watched the legs in the bedroom, listening to the low moaning and the squeak of the mattress. It was when the moaning began to change, turned into something that sounded like a yip of pain—ai! ai! ai!—that I felt the vibration in my legs that meant a fit coming on.

  I only had a second or two before I blacked out, and in that moment I did not try to figure out the best way to fall forward or try to scramble out backwards, I simply hung there, doomed, and thought longingly about my helmet, lost forever under the muck of shithouse number two.

  A GLOWING WIRE

  THE INFIRMARY AT ws was nothing more than a large closet with an army surplus cot, a dented swivel stool for the nurse to sit on, and a cabinet on wheels that held bandages and other supplies, but it was more than enough for me to feel like I was back at St. Divine’s, being attended to, my needs taken care of. Here, I figured, I could pee all over the place and there’d be nobody to complain about it.

  Hollow-faced Nurse DuCharme (who doubled as a cafeteria worker) was the same one who had poured lice powder on my head the first day of school. She scowled a lot, filled the tiny room with her cigarette smoke, sang Johnny Cash songs to herself in a husky monotone and disregarded Edgar entirely. He secretly pined for any of the nurses from St. Divine’s—big Nurse George with her behind like a bag full of wet clothes, Nurse Lovett and her red lips, Nurse Sweet and her black licorice breath—but decided, under the circumstances, that he should be happy with what he could get.

  I don’t believe I belonged in the infirmary at all; I had only a small goose egg on my forehead from falling on the toilet tank—no concussion, no broken bones, not even a cut—but somebody had decided that with my history, it was better safe than sorry. And it turned out I was not the only casualty from the night before. Mr. Thomas, husband to Mrs. Thomas the librarian, who worked construction in Phoenix and stayed at Willie Sherman only on weekends, had rushed in from what occupied him in the bedroom to see what all the racket was about and ended up dislocating his elbow after slipping on the marbles scattered all over the bathroom floor.

  I was unconscious for only a few seconds—from my seizure, not from the blow to my head—and when I woke up I saw Mr. Thomas, buck naked and baffled, holding his wrist and skating wildly on the ricocheting marbles. He went down hard on the tile floor and I could not take my eyes from his pecker—it was enormous and purple and had a slick sheen to it which made it glisten in the dim light. What’s more, it was erect, but quickly wilting, shrugging in on itself, as if it was more embarrassed by this whole situation than anybody. Although Principal Whipple had talked to me briefly that night about what had happened, he came in this morning with a yellow tablet, which he scribbled in as I spoke, propped up on a pillow that smelled like a cat had peed on it some years before. In the end, I told him everything, except the part about Mr. Thomas being naked, and how his penis had looked. These didn’t seem to be the kind of details that could help anybody.

  At first, I tried to obscure the fact that Nelson had been involved, but Principal Whipple kept asking questions and I kept giving answers until I had offered up everything. Principal Whipple didn’t seem particularly angry with me—he was mostly tired and distracted—until I told him about the people I had seen and heard in Mrs. Thomas’ house.

  “People?” he had said. “You mean Mr. Thomas?�
��

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “I saw two people on the bed. I saw their legs. They were making noises.” I thought about it for a second and then did my best to mimic the grunts and gasps and yipping and yapping from the night before. Apparently, I did quite a good job of it, too, because the principal looked like somebody had swatted him across the face with a newspaper. He yanked off his glasses, pressed his lips together and proceeded to whistle a little tune of anger through his nose. “Two people you say? Who was it? Did you see their faces?”

  I tried to tell him that I didn’t see any faces, only legs, but he waved his hand in my face, stopping me.

  “So you didn’t see them, but you saw their feet, correct?”

  I nodded. I had seen their feet very clearly.

  “I want you to tell me one thing,” he said. Without the glasses, his eyes looked like tiny puckered holes with nothing in them. “Did any of those feet have their toenails painted?”

  “Pink,” I said, and Principal Whipple was out the door before I could say another word, leaving his notebook on the floor.

  I stayed in the infirmary for two days, eating my meals in bed, listening to the radio that Nurse had brought in, reigning supreme in my own little private kingdom, but it wouldn’t last long. On Tuesday, I was sent back to class, and when morning recess came, Miss Clemente, my homeroom teacher, put a hand on my shoulder and told me I would be under detention for the next two weeks; no recess, no free-time activities, no going along on field trips if any were planned (none ever were). Also, for the next two weeks I would be on breakfast duty in the cafeteria, washing trays, swabbing floors, scrubbing the burnt oatmeal out of the bottoms of pots the size of garbage cans.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t bring the tribal police in on this one,” she said. “Usually they catch somebody breaking into one of the staff houses and here come the flashing lights, out come the handcuffs. A big show for everybody.”

  But Miss Clemente didn’t say this with any meanness. I could tell she liked me: I didn’t cause her any trouble, and that’s just about the best thing a teacher could say about a student at Willie Sherman.

  My detention might have actually been a blessing in disguise, a two-week reprieve before Nelson could get his hands on me, but Nelson was much better than that; if he couldn’t get me during recess or after class, he would figure out another way. I understood this and accepted it; there really was no way out. Even though the teachers and staff knew how dangerous Nelson was, what he was capable of, they couldn’t watch him all the time; they had two hundred other budding criminals to worry about.

  It was two nights after they let me out of the infirmary that I woke up to find Nelson’s round face hovering over me like a rising yellow moon. “Hi Nelson,” I said, and immediately he smothered my mouth with one enormous soft hand like a catcher’s mitt.

  “We’re going out to the guardhouse now,” he said into my ear. “You want to come?”

  Even in the shadows of a dark room at midnight, his face showed not a hint of menace; he had that smile of his going full blast.

  In only my underclothes and tennis shoes, I walked out into the cool night with Nelson. It was the middle of September and already the mountain air was turning cold enough at night to leave a crust of frost on the grass. Tonight, there was a skinny moon out and the faint shrieking of coyotes echoed up and down the canyon. By the time we made it to the guardhouse, I was shivering so hard I could barely walk.

  Inside the building, three boys were gathered around a squat candle which threw odd, warping shadows against the stone walls. Wrong-eyed and slack-faced, they passed around a paper bag, sucking on the fumes of model airplane glue. One of the boys, skinny, with long hair and a bandanna, I didn’t recognize; but the other two I knew. One was Glen, chewing on a cigarette burned down to its filter, the other Rotten Teeth.

  “Hey, it’s Edgar!” he called out. Without looking up, Glen head-slapped Rotten Teeth with an open palm and said around the nub of his cigarette, “Keep it down, cocksucker.”

  Nelson found an old paint can for me to sit on and took his place on the mattress next to Glen. “You remember when I brought you in here the last time?” he said to me.

  I nodded.

  “What did I say?”

  “You said I was a smart guy.”

  Rotten Teeth guffawed and got another head-slap from Glen.

  “I also said we were going to help each other, right? But you know what? You didn’t help me at all. You told on me. You told ’em it was me and Glen who helped you get into that house. You get off easy because you’re just a little kid, you know, and a retard, but me and Glen, we got three days’ suspension, weekend cafeteria duty for a month. And you didn’t even get us our beer.”

  Nelson got up from the mattress and kicked around in the debris until he found a rusted coat hanger still bearing a paper covering advertising Red Rocket Dry Cleaning. Meticulous as a surgeon, he tore off the paper and straightened each bend in the wire until he had a long, copper-colored wand. We all watched, rapt, as he held the end of the wire over the candle flame until it began to glow, first a dull red that quickly turned into a yellow the same color as the flame.

  Glen rubbed his hands together and said, “Roasting wieners,” which made Rotten Teeth let out a cackling hoot. He looked grateful when nobody tried to hit him.

  When Nelson lifted the wire away, the other boys grabbed me, wrestling me easily to the ground and holding my arms and legs. With his free hand, Nelson yanked my underwear down around my thighs and knelt down at my side. He held the glowing tip of the wire up to his face, the light of which reflected off the fine hairs inside his nose.

  “We can still be buddies,” he said. “But you’re not ever going to tell on any of us guys again, are you?”

  I shook my head and let out a laugh that was pure terror. Rotten Teeth had his leering face in mine and his breath smelled like burnt rubber. Squinting, he said, “My pecker’s a lot bigger than this kid’s.”

  Nelson let the glowing wire drift slowly down, like a snake blindly searching for a meal, until it was only a few inches from my crotch. I squirmed and pumped my legs but couldn’t get enough air from my lungs to make more than a hoarse croak.

  “We’re being nice to him, right?” Glen said. “He’s lucky he’s not getting it right in the eyeball.”

  Nelson laughed and lowered the wire. The instant the tip touched the side of my penis, my bladder loosened like a deflating balloon. Because of my bed-wetting problems, Raymond reminded me every night to use the bathroom before bed, and often watched over me as I did so, but tonight I had fallen asleep early and I guess he didn’t have the heart to wake me up. So my little bladder was full to bursting, and had I not been out here in the old guardhouse being tortured with a red-hot coat hanger I would have soaked my bed for sure.

  It was this smaller-than-normal bladder that saved Edgar from a lot of undue suffering that night. I let go a tight, laserlike stream of piss that shot out over Nelson’s head and arced down across his pie plate of a face, nailing him right in the eye and getting into his opened mouth. He bellowed and lurched away, whipping the coat hanger sideways, lodging the glowing tip in the outer curve of Rotten Teeth’s ear. In the midst of his howling, Rotten Teeth stood up, did a little foot-stomping jig of pain, and kicked over the candle, instantly casting everything into darkness.

  I was kicked in the head and stepped on, but without much trouble I was able to turn over and scuttle out the door on my hands and knees. I started to run, but my underwear, already around my knees, fell down about my ankles and sent me sprawling into the frosty grass of the parade grounds. I got up, and as I pulled my underwear up enough to free my legs, I looked back at the guardhouse, but no one had emerged yet; they were still busy spitting and cussing and yelling at each other. I set off again and ran right past the boys’ dormitory, crossed the road and dove into a thicket of mesquite, where I stayed the rest of the night, shivering and cupping my groin with bo
th hands until just before dawn, when I crept back into the building and slipped into bed five minutes before Raymond burst into the room like a drill sergeant, heartily booming his wake-up call.

  SYLVIA ORTIZ

  FOR LITTLE EDGAR, it was plain as anything: the miracles were over, the luck run dry.

  It seemed the best and only option was to make a break for it—but here is where I always got stuck. If I ran away, where would I go? I thought of going to California to find my mother, but California, wherever it was, seemed as distant and unreachable as the moon. The place I really wanted to escape to was St. Divine’s. I dreamed of arriving there, dragging my suitcase behind me, to a grand welcome by the nurses, by Sue Kay, by all the patients in the Dungeon: Edgar and his triumphant return. I imagined Art would be there in his old bed, grimacing with that old face like a mess of roadkill, the sharp scent of his cologne hanging in the air like a haze of insecticide, and my bed would be empty, the blanket turned back. I could get rid of my heavy clodhoppers, jump into a hospital shift, lie back in bed and not have to worry anymore.

  For most of October, I devised ways to get myself back to the hospital. First, I tried squeezing through the steel bars and jumping from my second-story window. I had to do it twice before I was able to sprain my ankle well enough to limp over to the cafeteria and present my swelling foot to Nurse DuCharme, who was busy feeding fatty scraps of beef into a meat grinder. She glanced at my foot and told me that there was a bunch of old crutches stacked up with the banquet tables under the stage; if I wanted to, I could go find a pair that would fit me.

  I limped around for a few days feeling sorry for myself before I decided I was going to have to work at this. My head had gotten me to St. Divine’s in the first place and I decided it had to be the best way to get me back. Whenever I got the chance, I would grit my teeth and ram my head into the hardest thing I could find: a wall, a desk, a flagpole, once even the cavalry bell, which made its low, liquid oooowng and had everybody doing a double take, thinking it was time for dinner. I even tried throwing an old brick in the air and standing under it, but I would always flinch at the last second and end up with a bruised collarbone or scraped ear. I managed to give myself headaches, make myself dizzy, even make my head bleed a little, but my head had survived a half-ton mail jeep—it could certainly withstand my pitiful assaults.