New Jersey Me

by Ferguson, Rich;

  “Forget it,” I said. “Fifteen.”

  Mad Man spit out a laugh. “I was trying to be generous with the holidays and all, Spicoli. But forget you.” He turned to walk away.

  Jimmy flashed me a look: wide-eyed, open-mouthed. It was definitely an addled expression, but nowhere near as freaked as that guy in the Edvard Munch Scream painting. Jimmy’s look was code for: What now?

  I flashed him my own worried look: We need booze.

  “All right,” I called out to Mad Man. “Deal.”

  Once we made the exchange, Jimmy and I schlepped down to the liquor store. We convinced some guy hanging out front to buy us a quart of Rolling Rock and a pint of off-brand schnapps. Per the agreement with his parents, Jimmy stayed drink-free until returning home. Not me. The rest of my evening was spent like all those falling snowflakes. The more I drank the more I drifted along in a dreamy white haze. Even when I stumbled to the ground my fall was soft. I never felt a thing.

  Chapter 7

  The next day—Saturday—was a different story. I didn’t get up until almost noon that day. When I was at home, and Mom was around, she’d wake me much earlier on the weekends to help with chores, or go to church. With me at Jimmy’s though, I could sleep as late as I wanted. But the extra Zs hadn’t allowed me to skip out on a hangover. I had the spins. Dry heaves. Couldn’t walk a straight line to the bathroom. Around four that afternoon, when most of the shadows had cleared from my head, Jimmy’s dad rousted me from the couch.

  “Alright, son,” he said. “It’s time to take part in a Gigliotti family tradition.”

  Jimmy and I snagged our jackets from the gnome. Threw on scarves and boots. Mr. Gigliotti grabbed a long-handled fishing net, cigarettes, and a couple sixers. Jimmy swiped a Styrofoam cooler. Forget riding in super-cool Bessie that day. Mr. Gigliotti had her stored away in the garage, warm and under wraps. So the three of us trudged alongside Route 9, through the frigid, back-hunching air toward Crab Creek Power Plant.

  About the power plant.

  It was gray and weathered, loomed over my little town like a giant tombstone. Built in just four years, it had been birthed a few months before me—back during the height of the Vietnam War, when astronauts were only steps away from walking on the moon. Within the walls of the power plant’s thousand-megawatt facility was enough long-lived radiation to equal a thousand Hiroshima bombs. Maybe all that radioactive waste was good for certain superheroes, but not for me. Over the years I began to feel contaminated. Was sure I glowed like a night-light in my sleep. Stick a plug up my ass, watch me power New York City for days.

  Once we reached the icy creek alongside the power plant, I noticed a few other fishermen—some with poles, some not—dotting the frozen landscape. There wasn’t a crow, grebe, or gull in sight.

  Jimmy’s dad sparked up a Camel. Between drags, he said: “Time to catch some fish, boys.”

  “What about a fishing pole?” I offered.

  “Not necessary, son.” Mr. Gigliotti pointed to a cluster of dead fish floating belly-up in the creek. Told me how they’d migrated to Blackwater in cold weather due to the power plant flushing water that had been used to cool the reactor back into Crab Creek. The newly warmed creek must’ve felt like a hot tub to those stupid fish. But on wintry days, when the power plant would occasionally shut down for routine maintenance, party time was over. The creek was back to icy cold, and the vacationing fish would go into shock and die.

  All those duped fish: those were the ones Jimmy’s dad wanted. They were the easiest to scoop up in his net. He hauled in a load, dumped them into the cooler. Then he handed the net to Jimmy.

  Jimmy held it high above his head and called out another Hobbit reference: “Here is my dagger, Sting. It glows blue in the presence of goblins like you.” He dipped the net into the creek, scooped up a mess of fish. “See,” he said. “A, B, C. Easy as 1, 2, 3.” Once he’d dumped the stiff catch into the cooler, he got in my face.

  I could still smell lunch on his breath: tomato soup, creamed corn, ground-beef tacos.

  He pushed the net into my chest. “Your turn.”

  I could’ve easily refused. Ever since I was twelve, I’d read all kinds of articles about nuclear power and radiation I’d dug up at the library. Like how radioactivity is often measured in rems. The nuclear waste from a reactor gives off about 10,000 rems per hour. When exposed to 500 rems at one time, a human will die. By those standards, we were all doomed. There was no use fighting it. Even if I had, I was clueless as to whom I’d go after. Forget the corporation that built the power plant, or the ghost of Enrico Fermi, father of the atomic bomb. In Blackwater, it was much easier for residents to visit the strip club, blast off guns in the Dump, or get completely trashed to help forget about the huge nuclear device in their backyard. I dipped the net into the icy waters and hauled up my poisonous load.

  After a while, Jimmy, Mr. Gigliotti, and I took a break, cracked open some Rolling Rocks. The beer melted the last remnants of my hangover headache.

  I noticed one of the milky-eyed catfish in the cooler. It recalled a time I’d visited Mr. Gigliotti in his shop. Over the course of a few days, I’d studied him stuffing a largemouth bass. He first laid the fish out on a sheet of cardboard, traced around it, made a stencil. Then, with a caliper, he measured the width of the fish in various positions—tail area, belly area, gill area—to determine its various thicknesses. Then, with a couple pairs of scissors—one to cut bones, one to cut scales and skin—he cut straight up the side of the fish. Used a butter knife to separate the outer scaly hide from the inner meat. He scraped out all the meat, muscle, tough tendons, and bone. Took another tool, popped out an eye, and measured it so he’d know how big the glass eye should be. Then, using the stencil he’d made, along with his measurements, he created a Styrofoam form. After soaking the fish skin in a 50/50 mixture of denatured alcohol and water, he fit it around the form. Got a handful of clay, packed it inside the head and cheek pad area to fill it out. The side of the fish that wasn’t the “show side” he sewed shut with spider wire. He trimmed the fins, painted them with a material to ensure that they’d dry out properly. Then he painted those fins with a clear caulk compound to make them durable and flexible. Spray sealed it all to lock in the fish smell, and ensure that the paint wouldn’t peel off. Then he airbrushed it, carefully fading the brown, yellow, ochre, and other colors into one another. Lastly, he sealed it all up with a clear lacquer to make the colors burst. It was all such an involved process for such a small creature. Then I recalled the moose head he’d stuffed which was on prominent display at the liquor store. A bobcat at the gun and ammo store. Also that quiet jungle in Jimmy’s living room. None of those creatures seemed beautiful to me—just dead, stiff, glassy eyed. I could never figure why Mr. Gigliotti loved the work so much. “So what’s so great about it, Mr. Gigs?”

  “Great about what, son?”

  “Stuffing dead animals.”

  Mr. Gigliotti downed more brew, swiped a drag off his Camel, then said: “It’s a beautiful thing.”

  “Fucken A,” Jimmy chimed in. “Tell him about it, Pops.” Jimmy was well aware of his dad’s take on taxidermy, and wanted me to know, too.

  Like Mr. Gigliotti had often done with Jimmy, he explained to me how taxidermy was an art form. How preserving and displaying animals was an ultimate form of respect. But when it first began back in the early nineteenth century, it was a crude process. Animals were gutted, hides tanned, stuffed with straw, paper and rags, without any regard for the animal’s actual anatomy. Unnatural preservatives like arsenic made their teeth, eyes, nose, and tongue rot. Skins would dry, tighten, crack. Natural muscle tone: obliterated. Mr. Gigliotti paused, scuffed a boot toe against the hard frozen ground, then added: “But all that changed in the seventies.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “That’s when we began stretching animal skins over sculpted molds.” T
hen he ruffled my mess of hair. “That’s why you should never refer to an animal as stuffed, but mounted.”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy echoed. “They’re mounted, not stuffed, you fag.”

  “Look who’s talking,” I shot back. “You Hobbit-loving Bella Donna.”

  That one made Mr. Gigliotti crack a smile. But it quickly crumbled into a more serious look: Dillinger lean and mean crossed with cemetery somber. “You might be surprised,” he said. “Taxidermy isn’t just all blood, guts, and death. It's one of the finests ways I know to honor a life well lived.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  That evening, a new odor skulked through Jimmy’s house—Crab Creek fish. Smelled like fried corn meal crossed with armpit sweat. Mrs. Gigliotti—constantly veiled in her own stench of cigarette smoke and bengay—didn’t like the fish stink either. She went to her sister’s house for dinner.

  Jimmy’s dad slid a plate in front of me. “Dig in, son.”

  As I stared at the seafood waste dump, I wondered how those fish could’ve been so foolish, how their innate sense of survival could’ve tricked them into believing that any kind of warmth and comfort could last forever. I thought of Mom, my old man, and Grandmother. Wondered how they were doing at that moment. Wondered if they’d been thinking of me. Or had they been like me, filling their time with numerous activities, trying to forget the fact that our home sweet home had rarely been that at all? The equivalent of screwed: Me. Me plus radioactive fish: family. I dug my fork into the seafood waste dump.

  “Way to go, son,” said Jimmy’s dad. “Now you’re a true Gigliotti.” He cracked open a Rolling Rock, handed it over.

  As I downed brew, Jimmy said: “Guess what we did last night, Pops?”

  “Besides getting wasted?”

  “We sold socks to Mad Man.”

  Mr. Gigliotti choked out a piece of fish. It landed on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth, right between the three of us. Without missing a beat, Jimmy’s dad picked it up, popped it in his mouth, and said: “I’ve told you to stay away from that guy. He’s a whack job.”

  Jimmy waved his fork back and forth, indicating no. “Forget about it. He’s harmless.”

  “So, Mr. Gigs,” I barged in, “whudya think he does with all those socks?”

  Before he could respond, Jimmy had already dropped his fork and was pumping his fist in the air. “Beating meat mittens,” he declared.

  “Or fucked-up sock puppets,” I shot back.

  Mr. Gigliotti waved his skinny arms about. “Dio Caro. Shaddup, you meatballs. I hear something else.”

  Jimmy zipped it. So did I. The only sounds: the hum of the fridge and the wall clock going tick, tock, tick, tock.

  “My friend, Bill, over at the power plant, tells a different story. Says he’s heard Mad Man’s been sewing socks into blankets to protect himself from the power plant.”

  Jimmy cackled. “That’s nuts.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s nuts.”

  “Yeah,” said Jimmy’s dad. “Bill says Mad Man’s supposedly found a way to use sock stink to ward off radiation.”

  Jimmy and his dad howled over that one.

  As for me, I kept quiet. Sure a vest of dirty socks sounded insane. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized maybe Mad Man was onto something. Maybe even a genius. And maybe I was the idiot. Instead of selling all my socks, I should’ve been stitching them into my own stinky quilt.

  “If you ask me,” said Jimmy’s dad, “the power plant’s safe. It’ll be here long after I’m gone.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” said Jimmy. “You’re gonna be around a long time, Pops.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’ll outlive us all, Mr. Gigs.”

  Jimmy’s dad shrugged. “The power plant ain’t gonna kill us. We’re more likely to die in a car crash.”

  He had a point. Plenty of Blackwater Pineys—in their hopped-up Fords and Chevys blaring Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet—drove like reckless maniacs. Either out in the Dump or through town, where they’d often crash into Satan’s Tree.

  Deep down, though, I knew the power plant would kill us first. There’d be the power surge, followed by the steam explosion, the rupture of the containment vessel, then the melting of the control rods. All that released radioactivity would light up the night like hell’s raging rock club. The inferno-like atomic winds would turn everyone to ash. Ashes mixing, friends and enemies coming together as one. Maybe that was it, I thought. Forget everything Mr. Gigliotti had said about taxidermy. Forget stitching our skins around foam-sculpted molds, or treating us with preservatives as a way to honor our lives. Maybe obliterating us to ash was the only way to go. Maybe then my old man and I, or Mom and I, or even Mom, dad, Grandmother, and I could finally rest happily together forever.

  “I dunno,” I said. “One day the power plant is gonna get us good.”

  “You got it all wrong,” said Mr. Gigs.

  “Maybe,” I replied. “But if it did?”

  Chapter 8

  After numerous phone arguments, and a Christmas spent without one another, my old man and I gave the living-together thing another go. But we made some changes. We began by delegating household responsibilities. My old man: yard work, laundry, taking out the garbage. Me: cooking, cleaning, making beds. Nightly, we shared dinner to discuss the day’s events. Had even set up a punching bag in the garage to hammer out our aggressions. But whenever our tempers or fists hadn’t gotten a good enough workout, we got better about storming off to our separate rooms—my old man to chip away at his mountain of paperwork, me to crank my sonic walls. Sometimes we’d forget our agreement. My old man would raise a fist to clock me if I’d gotten a D on a math quiz. Or I’d call him a son of a bitch if he’d cracked wise about Mom. With time, however, things got better. Never perfect, but at least bearable.

  On one of our calmer evenings—an unusually warm Tuesday in mid-April—my old man and I were seated at the dinner table. We were chowing down on one of Mom’s simpler recipes I’d prepared—Hamburger Helper Stroganoff. Through a mouthful of food, my old man mumbled: “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” I said, thinking I’d set the table wrong, or something.

  My old man pointed out a bruise on my arm.

  Usually, I’d been good about covering my bully bruises in the past, either with long-sleeve shirts, or using Mary Kay concealer that I’d swiped from Mom before she left. But I’d been in such a rush to prepare dinner that I’d forgotten to unroll the sleeves on my Deep Purple Perfect Strangers shirt after browning the ground meat. “It’s nothing,” I said, looking more at my heap of steaming beef and noodles than my old man.

  Just as those words had flown from my mouth, I knew it had been useless trying to lie to him. He was a master at noticing when I was avoiding eye contact, or when my gestures were stiff, or when facial expressions were limited to mouth movements, instead of using my entire face.

  “It’s Terry,” my old man said. “Isn’t it?” Not only had he witnessed prior Terry-inflicted bruises I hadn’t concealed well enough, but he’d also hauled Terry to juvi court on numerous occasions for theft, disorderly conduct, truancy.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I got it under control.”

  My old man studied the bruise, studied my arms, which hadn’t beefed up much despite all my punching bag whacks. He got a look on his face like he was about to slug someone or something, but instead repeated the words he’d often uttered: “Want me to handle it?”

  I gave him my usual response: “Then I’ll be in even more trouble.”

  My old man downed another couple forkfuls of food, and a few swigs of Guinness. The whole time I could see he was considering my situation. The rate of his eyeblinking decreased. Mouth: hard set in a grimace. Forehead creases: tense. Eventually, those creases diminished, and his mouth relaxed into a slight smile as he jokingly nodded in t
he direction of his study, where his .38 sat atop his desk. “If you need any reinforcement,” he said, “let me know.”

  Again, I told him everything was fine. I had it under control.

  But that wasn’t the case the next day at school.

  It was between third and fourth periods. Flooding the school hallway were students of all shapes and sizes decked out in spandex, polyester, feathered hair, scruffy hair, and black jackets over T-shirts—all fashion offshoots of Charlie’s Angels, the disco craze, and that pensive, gritty Springsteen-look circa The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.

  Over the D-flat drone of the morning bell, I continued down the hall to my locker. Just as I’d spun out the last number on my combination lock, I heard: “Yo, faggot.”

  Generally, the halls reeked of sour milk, cleaning products, and hairspray applied one too many times to achieve the perfect Farrah Fawcett feathered hairdoo, the Dorothy Hamill wedge, or the spiky, asymmetrical New Wave look. Added to that noxious stew of smells were two new ones: weed and Brut cologne. I knew that stink all too well, along with the stench of those two all-too-familiar words. I wheeled around, spotted Terry.

  He slammed me against my locker, got in my face.

  Since I’d recently had a growth spurt, I was almost his height. I got a close-up of circles beneath his intense brown eyes. Mouth carved into a pout. Pretty-boy looks flown south. A young James Dean after a weeklong drinking jag.

  Terry seized me by my Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here sweatshirt.

  Not only was that sweatshirt one of my most cherished ones, but Wish You Were Here was also one of my favorite sonic wall records. “Fuck off,” I said, struggling to break free.

  Terry doubled his grip on me. “Just ’cause you’re in tenth doesn’t make you a big man. Remember, I’m in eleventh.”

  “Technically,” I said, “you’re a senior. Don’t forget. You flunked second.”

  He fired off another locker slam.