Alter Boys

by Chuck Stepanek

  But this was no game as there wasn’t a predicate member of the phrase ‘hide and seek.’ There was just a boy on the floorboard. Besides, there were those pathetic guttural sobs. Nope. No kids at play. Just one boy. A boy who had done something terribly, terribly wrong and who was gonna have the devil delivered to him when he got home.

  Once the car was running and out into traffic, which is an overstatement as they were the only thing on the road, Corky flattened his face to the floorboard. The thrumming of the undercarriage sang to him like a mechanical lullaby. Albeit soothing, the vibration soon crafted a dual image of spinning gears, sharp metal rods, and rusty springs – all toys of torture as wielded by the devil. He repelled from the vibrating motion – embraced it – and repelled from it again. His mind swirled in a futile search for sanctuary.

  He could have stopped crying at any time. But the wailings spasmed and oscillated. One moment – relief; away from the once-revered, now-evil monster. The next moment – anguish, anticipating the punishment that awaited him. Now - freed from the rod that had brutally reamed his butt. Then – a flare up of pulsing and what’s this? – blood seeping from his hole. It was easier just to cry.

  As the car navigated the streets, he bounced around the floorboard in response to each turn and change in acceleration. Doorframe – axle well – seat front – firewall. Bang – bang – bang – bang. And daddy did nothing to mitigate the severity.

  Of course it would have done Corky well to look up and to his left. An up-close view of daddy’s big feet stomping on the pedals and his hands working the gear shift and the wheel would have saved him more to cry about. Seeing the mechanisms at work could have braced him from the forces of inertia. But no, he could not look. This was his punishment. It was supposed to be this way.

  When the car finally stopped, it was not relief that Corky felt, but yet a new threshold of panic. Where was he? Was it someplace where another monster would brutalize him? Were they back at the church! We’re they stopping so daddy could dump him out to be left in the cold? These and a thousand other thoughts filled his mind. But when he did dare to look up, they were the one place he hadn’t thought of. They were home.

  And somehow, that seemed even worse.

  “Was the snow heavy on …the resurrection of the body… I baked kolaches…suffered under Pontius Pilate… Oh! The coffee! I’ll start…”

  As keenly aware as she was of their arrival, Mommy was as equally oblivious to the demeanor of her two other family members at the front door. Daddy’s expression was as blank as a refrigerator door. Corky was just a tad more animated. He was screaming like a banshee that had been buggered with a broomstick. It mattered not. There was coffee to be perked and saints to be petitioned.

  As tough as things were going for Corky, it was daddy who had the real dilemma. How could he explain what had happened? He wasn’t even sure what had happened or if he could even believe it for that matter. The priest had said not to tell anyone about this. And as a man who took orders, did what he was told and master of a vocabulary insufficient of repeating a knock-knock joke, the concept of keeping his mouth zipped was appealing.

  Plus there was the pressing question of God, church and priest. Speaking against the priest would be blasphemy. And if he did, how could he then atone for his sin in the confessional – muttering his words of contrition to the very man he had transgressed.

  But the boy was screaming. And that would bring questions. Maybe not now, but if it kept up, maybe a few hours from now. If he could get the kid to shut up it would buy him some time to think things over and maybe even forget the entire thing had happened.

  Neither man nor boy had moved after the door was closed behind them. Daddy looked down at his son and tried to decide what he should do. He was absolutely, utterly clueless.

  The traditional methods of soothing a crying child (holding, rocking, humming, singing) had been forgone on daddy when he was young and thus were a skill set that he had never used on his own offspring. But boldly (and to his credit) he tried it just the same. First a word: “Quiet.” Again, to his credit, he waited for a reaction but none came. He searched for and came up with a new word: “Stop.” Again a pause for effect but no response.

  From the kitchen: “Did you say someth…the communion of saints…there’s cream in… the life everlasting.”

  It was yet another moment in his life where daddy’s mouth had betrayed him. Almost. He scrapped his original plan to quiet the boy with words and embarked on a new plan: A plan to muffle him with walls.

  Taking the scruff of the boys coat sleeve he led him off to the bathroom, popped the plug into the drain and began filling the tub with water. Immediately it was better, the sound of the running water diffused the cries of the boy.

  But corky did not undress. He knew not that this bath was for him. His father had NEVER prepared a bath for him, so he assumed that it was daddy who was taking a bath and he was here merely as an observer. He laid on the floor, still fully hatted, gloved and zipped from his recent journey outdoors. There was a whole lot of crying to attend to and a haunted cathedral of images in his brain would keep him occupied just fine while daddy splashed in the tub.

  Clumsily, daddy righted the boy, undressed him methodically, and placed him in the water. It was only by the grace of God that Corky did not have a scalding added to his current bag of woes. By complete chance daddy had hit the mark just right balancing the flow from the hot and cold water taps. But then again, a good scalding is a perfectly legitimate explanation for a screaming child – but daddy didn’t think of that. And corky continued his screaming without the benefit of being boiled alive.

  Then a very strange thing happened. Daddy picked up the scattered clothes, stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door. Corky had never seen the bathroom door closed from either side, inside or out. It was yet another bizarre entry to tonight’s bizarre chain of events.

  2

  There are those people who, being so blessed, can easily pick up on subtleties. Little nuances, things that might be just a little bit out of place, or in the wrong order. These are the people who can glance at a fully-laden banquet hall table and say ‘hmmm, one of the salad forks is in the wrong spot. Let’s fix that. There we go.” These are the same people who will hesitate while reading a newspaper article to muse: ‘the author just dangled a participle.’

  Daddy was not one of those people. On the subtlety scale, getting his attention was the equivalent of bashing his head with a two by four, dousing him with ice water or lighting a fire under his Slavic ass. So it was only by complete chance, as he stood in the hallway, a clump of little boy clothes in his arms, that he picked up on something that was ‘just a little bit out of place.’ There was blood in the boy’s underwear.

  The underwear had been the last thing off, ergo they were the first thing in the pile. The pile that was now held just inches below daddy’s face. He stood and stared; stood and stared. What should have been an intellectual quandary filled with dozens of ramifications, was winnowed down to black or white, yes or no, on or off. Tell or don’t tell.

  Behind him and the closed door, the boy in the bath screamed on. That would stop…eventually. In front of him the blood, well that was permanent.

  The underwear could go into the clothes pile. But when laundry day came around, they would be discovered. Black and white. That settled it. He had to go to mommy and explain what had happened. Besides the underwear could be useful. Without having to resort to words he could just hold the stained skivvies out as a prop. A prop that explained everything to mommy. “Oh, I see. Those are Corky’s underwear and they’re all bloody. Father Milliken must have raped him. It’s not your fault, you were out scooping snow, and that explains why our son is now screaming in the bathroom. Sit down to some hot coffee and fresh kolache. They’re still warm.” Yes, the underwear could explain a lot of things that he wouldn’t have to.

  It would be days later before daddy would realize that he did have other
options. Washing out the bloodstain by hand for one, throwing the underwear in the garbage for another. But a cerebral man he was not. And so with a double armful of clothes and winter wear he headed toward the kitchen.

  3

  You would have thought she had already heard the news. Mommy was pacing back and forth in a manic state of OCD. Sink to table, table to sink, sink to table. She sees but doesn’t notice daddy with his bundle of incrimination. “The coffee’s almost…” she turns on the stove light “…believe in the holy spirit…” turns off the stove light “…how bad were the streets…” turns on the stove light “…anointed in the spirit of Juan Valdez…”

  Mommy was wired.

  Even a small change in the daily pattern of an OCD sufferer can be highly upsetting. OCD is all about routine, and the errand that daddy and the boy had made to the church was not part of the routine. This had thrown a wrench into mommy’s tightly wound clock springs and she had spent the evening bouncing around the house like a plinko marble: Locking and unlocking doors, washing hands, checking the stove burners, washing and checking and washing and checking and washing again. And now her attention was not on the man who stood before her with a wash load of sin. It was mired in a paragon of patterns and ritual.

  Daddy saw this and for a moment considered taking the clothes and stuffing them in the hall closet. He had seen his wife in these manic fits before and while he didn’t have enough common sense to worry about her well being, he did have enough to worry about his own. When his wife was like this – he didn’t – well, he just didn’t like it. And what he felt he had to do now – well that was something he liked a whole lot less.

  Meanwhile Corky screamed mercilessly in the bathroom.

  Wordlessly, with four determined strides, daddy crossed to the kitchen table and dumped the clothes on the open end, away from the plate of kolache’s and waiting coffee cup. The clothes tumbled, rolled, then settled; the all important telltale underwear now mostly covered by a shirt tail and one dangling mitten.

  This would not do. Daddy pawed at the pile and brought the key piece of evidence back atop to prominence. He then squeezed the sides of the mound together so that it may hold its position.

  Yet, just like before, he was seen but not noticed. Sink to cupboard, cupboard to sink was the current perpetual loop in motion. He would have to talk. At the very least start to talk. Once he got started the bloody underwear could speak for itself. He looked at the heap of fabric and searched for just the right word. It came easier than he expected, he took a breath and rolled it out of his mouth in two well practiced syllables: “Coffee.”

  The reaction was epic.

  “Oh the coffee, I didn’t pour! Forgive us our sins…the cup is on the table, if I can find…blessed Saint Jude patron saint of lost…” And that was where the words stopped.

  In an act of raw concentration mommy held her breath as she poured the steaming cup of Joe. Eyes never leaving their mark—disregarding the abomination of bloody clothing three feet away from her. All was silent in the house save for a gentle gurgle as the bottom of the cup filled, then abated as the level of the liquid rose to absorb the sound of pouring. That – and of course the screaming.

  The few seconds of concentration to fill the cup were enough to put the OCD thoughts and actions on temporary restraint. It was just enough time for mommy to broaden her perception beyond the nonstop amusement park of her mind and kitchen. She saw the clothes. She saw the blood.

  “Clothes. Blood…. Nailed to the cross to die for our…” Again she stopped. And even without the aid of pouring coffee she held her breath and concentrated. There was something else. It was screaming. Screaming coming from the bathroom. From Corky.

  She was far from alarmed. The blood could be washed out with cold water, several times if need be. Heaven knew she was up to doing a task more than once. The screaming was no more than a nuisance. It would end in time. But thanks to her overactive albeit misguided mind she allowed her old friend paranoia to reignite the OCD party. Somewhere she made a connection between bloody clothes and shrieking child. Her brain kicked into alarmed overdrive.

  “Corky! Did he break something at the church…blessed are the poor in spirit…he didn’t smear blood in the rectory…that’s sacrilege – Jesus help us!” She wheeled to her shrines, each in turn, the coffee pot, the sink, the cupboard, the door latch, none could give her the answer she craved. She wheeled on daddy. “What did he do!” It wasn’t ‘what happened to him’, ‘is he alright’, not even a ‘is he still bleeding.’ Just an implied statement of judgment disguised as a question.

  It was the wrong question; but it mattered not. Daddy had been formulating an answer just the same. The answer came out easily and with the power of a wrecking ball. He looked at his wife and without the slightest hesitation or stutter said: “He fucked him.”

  Two things struck mommy. The first was shock. Shock at the use of the most forbidden word. The wrecking ball had landed a direct hit, and as it swung free from the rubble a second feeling surfaced: confusion. The statement didn’t make sense. Corky fu- Corky did that to him? The boy did that to the priest? No, it was all wrong. Unless… unless it meant that the boy had used his middle finger against the priest. Yes, she knew about the middle finger, the one that the kids she grew up with called their ‘fu--’ uh, ‘that’ finger. But where could he have learned such a thing and why oh why would he have used it on a priest!

  Plus there was the matter of the bloody underwear. But if you thought about it for a moment, it made sense. The boy had been strapped and strapped but good likely by both the priest and daddy for having flipped the bird.

  The shock and confusion, as hard as they may have been on the surface, provided a short-lived underlying benefit. They knocked mommy’s obsessive compulsive behavior off its tracks. In a strained but lucid voice she asked: “Why? Why would Corky give the middle finger to the priest? Where did he learn that? What did Father Milliken say? What’s going to happen?”

  It was far too many questions for daddy to handle. So he repeated his original statement although this time inserting names for the pronouns: “Father Milliken – fucked – Corky.”

  A nomad dying of thirst in the desert will see his mirages. An addict jonesing for a far too tardy hit on the pipe, his phantoms. A near drowning victim, his decades of life in a still frame. And the mind of a woman being told that her son was fucked by a priest, well you may as well be looking at a trash-littered vacant lot in the heart of an upscale neighborhood. It just didn’t make sense.

  Again the kitchen went silent.

  4

  Corky had accepted his immersion in the bathwater unquestioningly. To any uninformed observer his cries and screams may have suggested a diffident level of affinity for the tub. The one member of his household who was uninformed was in the process of having the two-letter negative syllable stricken from the front of the word. Uninformed to informed. Simple as that.

  The slosh of the water, the slick feel of the enamel on his skin, even his lone bath toy, a squirt bottle that had long ago held Palmolive dishwashing soap that floated unused and empty at the foot of the tub, all of these things should have brought him physical comfort and emotional familiarity. And perhaps in some far distant reach of his perceptions they did. A little bit that is.

  They were minor creature comforts at best. But they held little chance against the creature feature movie that was running through his mind in living color; that, and the blood that was running out of his bottom and diffusing into a pastel pink contrail. It would have been better if daddy had added bubbles to the bath. Even a light a scrim of lather would have helped to hide the sight of the blood.

  With the door closed the wails of Corky’s cries began to be unnerving to his own ears. He began to hitch back his howls, if even just for a moment to briefly interrupt his own self-created cacophony. But when he saw the streaks of pink and where they were coming from, his mind suffered a final cataclysmic jolt. The bathroom began a
kaleidoscopic freefall. Corky’s mind disengaged and he plummeted down a blackened mineshaft. He fell deeper and deeper, faster and faster. The darkness so complete that he could only sense the plummet. Then came images… the telescope… the pool of his tears, drool and snot on the floor… the priest – evil, raging, brandishing vials, incense burners and crucifixes to shove up his behind, the blood seeping out between his legs. Faster and faster the images shot by. Corky braced for impact with the bottom of the shaft by doing the only thing he could. He resumed his screaming.

  5

  Mommy slumped into a kitchen chair. She picked up the underwear and turned it to and fro like an archeological student on his first dig wondering if the rock she held was noteworthy or just another piece for the slag pile. The bloodstain she could comprehend. It was the other part. The statement ‘Father Milliken Fucked Corky’ that she could not fathom. “That’s impossible.” Naïve denial. “That’s – that’s only men and women.” Immediately she realized her transgression of suggesting that father Milliken would actually copulate with a woman, but rather than embark on a litany of sackcloth laden expressions, she merely crossed herself and resumed fingering the waistband. Corky’s underwear. Corky had soiled his underwear somehow and was trying to blame the priest by using the word “fuck.” A word that he couldn’t possibly know the meaning of.