Sea Monkeys

by Kris Saknussemm

  The concert was great but I only really remember two things about that night, other than the guy pissing in the sink. I remember having to wait two hours after the concert was over to find the car because we got so high I forgot where I’d parked it. And I remember discovering the next morning that I’d broken every finger in my right hand. How the fight started, I’ll never know. I know I hit this big mother as hard as I could in the face. Somewhere in the fog I felt a hot freezing pain in my hand and I saw Lewis lashing out at my opponent with both fists flying. I’d hit the guy with all I had and he was still coming. If it hadn’t been for Lewis I would’ve spent my birthday in the hospital. It’s funny, because he always insisted that he didn’t like white people. He liked to think of himself as blacker than black. “What about me?” I asked him as I drove him home that night. “You?” he said. “Well, in your case—I make an exception.” I never did find out why.

  But back at Boys State, Lewis dug in, spun on his heels, reached down and pulled me up and we dashed off toward the unfinished housing development. We’d missed the bridge but they hadn’t caught us yet. Although my ankle ached like hell, we made it down the gravel road under the skeletons of young streetlights in the direction of the swinging-singles apartments, where it sounded as if a big party was in progress. The brown Camaro took off in hot pursuit. I had this sickening feeling we were going to play cat-and-mouse with those bastards. The sun was going down. Only a few more hours to Pool Pony Launching. We had to be there.

  The apartment building had security doors, but fortunately the pool didn’t. We snuck around to find one of the most humungous pool parties of all time—a perfect hiding place. Just mingle with the crazy natives and we’d be all right. You can show up anywhere with a bottle and be welcome. We had four bottles, two thumb-thick joints and a matchbox-size block of Lebanese hash. The people even liked our T-shirts. They thought it was a good joke! When Higginbottom and crew came around, we were hiding in the filter room with two gorgeous blondes. We danced, we partied. We might have stayed there all night, but we had an obligation to Jimbo to be on the roof of our dorm at midnight. So we at last decided to make a run for it, or in my case, a hobble.

  An old Sam Cooke record was coming on when we split. We could hear the music drifting out over the desolate development as we stumbled down the dusty, unmade streets. “We’re having a party . . . everybody’s singin’ . . . dancin’ to the music . . . on the radio . . . ” Pleasantly plastered, wandering through a haunted display-home village on a full moon Fourth of July night . . . imagine our surprise to see a brown Camaro waiting by the bridge.

  “Fuckin’ hell, man! Those dudes don’t give up,” Lewis moaned, his eyes wide with distress.

  We hadn’t expected they’d wait for us. It had been hours. More. It was almost midnight. We stopped and listened. We had another surprise in store for us. Higginbottom’s Doberman. I don’t know why they let him bring that vicious dog along with him for the week but they did. It was so well trained it was scary. The Doberman was outside the car, patrolling the bridge. I was a little sorry we hadn’t robbed a few banks, given how serious these assholes were taking it. Now we were going to get ripped to shreds by some sicko attack dog that Higginbottom probably did obscene things to when no one was around. Our only choice was up and over the giant Cyclone fence that looked like some menacing industrial spiderweb. Above us the moon was full and huge. Between us and the assholes, a great soft willow tree. Without that, they would’ve seen us. We still had a chance.

  But what about Jimbo? It was one minute to midnight. Had he made it safely back? Was he in place on the roof, anxiously awaiting our arrival? Or was he now sleeping like a stoned-out wimp, dreaming of his old ladies? Our answer came on the third or fourth stroke of midnight, which echoed out across the campus and the creek as we clung to the crest of the fence and swung our legs over. Lewis saw them first. Shadows rising toward the moon, drifting on a light breeze. First one. And then another. And another. Pool ponies on the wing.

  “Reach for the Devil and howl at the moon!” said Lewis under his breath. “Have you ever seen anything more mighty than that?”

  Jimbo had launched every single goddamn pool pony. They rose into the moonlight like creatures from another world. Higginbottom and his henchmen saw them too. For those few seconds hanging up in the fence with Lewis, I had a suspicion that great things were still possible.

  I didn’t know then that I’d never see Jimbo again after that week, despite all our plans—and of course I had no way of knowing that Lewis would one day become a cop of all things, and one night raid a crack house only a few blocks from where he grew up and get torn apart by some sonofabitch with an Ingram machine pistol, leaving behind a baby girl and a pretty wife.

  But I don’t think knowing would’ve made me cling any harder to those mesh diamonds as the pool ponies ghosted slowly over the river, Lewis singing softly, in spite of that damn Doberman, “We’re having a party . . .”

  Lewis died having been awarded the highest commendation

  for bravery in the line of duty that a metropolitan police officer

  can receive. He was just 30.

  FOOTPRINTS IN A FIELD OF ASPARAGUS

  I vaguely remembered arguing with the clown at Jack in the Box (something I’ve done on more than one occasion). But I definitely don’t remember dying.

  Still, it was dark all around, just the way I’d dreamed it would be.

  Torrance had been driving . . . and we reached out to touch the dashboard, to see if things were still real . . . and yes, we were just as we’d been in life, when we’d been back on the highway. (High way is right.)

  There was an eerie music filling the car—and we both said, “Where are we?” at the exact same time.

  Judging from the damp peat that accumulated on our shoes the moment we stepped out of the car, we were in an asparagus field just outside Salinas . . . evidence of a nice lost-consciousness glide off the asphalt to avoid a State Farm Insurance billboard showing a pair of giant hands holding a bewildered white couple. This discovery prompted others.

  The faintly celestial glow in the distance proved to be the Italian Villa . . . best pizza for miles. The music of the afterworld turned out to be Pink Floyd. I thought it sounded familiar.

  I took the wheel to get us out of the mud, and Torrance slumped over in relieved disgrace, rolling a joint to calm his nerves. I had to admire the nodded-out swerve to avoid the billboard, though, even though I didn’t recall it. Just looking at the tracks in the black damp earth told me we could’ve ended up in those giant hands at the speed we’d probably been going. But bigger hands were holding us.

  After the trauma and dislocation of our little late-night field trip, I had the mistaken idea that we were indestructible and that the drive home would be easy and uneventful, once we made it back to the road.

  But following the white lines again with great care, about two miles before our turnoff, I spotted a car coming toward us in our lane.

  I started honking the horn like a madman, thinking, damn it, we’d just survived a field of asparagus and a tight corner. And the sun was starting to come up.

  At the very last minute, the oncoming car jerked hard to avoid collision, me riding both the line and the shoulder, ready to head into whichever field lay open.

  I watched until the sunrise took him in a ball of blood. A loner in need of a field of sleep—or some stoners out late like us, on their way to bed somewhere or headed all the way home.

  CAHOOTS

  My father got smashed at my high school’s father-son athletic awards banquet. They’d organized predinner drinks for the dads and Dad got predinner drunk. He must’ve been drinking beforehand—I’d never seen him so incapacitated. His face was red and swollen, and there was a layer of sweat on it like the condensation on a block of cheese on a humid day. His breathing was heavy, his speech badly slurred, and in order to stay standing, he was forced to perform a kind of dance that brought to mind a cartoon ch
aracter or a very bad actor in the early stages of what would be a long, drawn-out death scene.

  When we filed into the cafeteria for the banquet, things got worse. There was a glass case full of sports trophies and a wooden signboard listing the school’s athletic records down through the years. Dad slammed his shoulder against the side of the glass on the way past and a trophy fell over on the shelf inside. It could easily have rolled like a bowling pin and taken out the whole shelf—or the shelf could’ve broken. Or the glass door could’ve shattered. Fortunately, only a small wooden statue with a tiny gold cross-country runner tipped over.

  Then Dad tipped over. And like the cross-country runner, frozen in midstride, he seemed both still and still moving on the floor—as if the change in elevation and direction hadn’t registered. By this time, I could feel the eyes all over me. My friend Kyle looked at me with a grimace of apology. I had no idea what to do, except to get Dad on his feet, keep moving in line—get seated fast. Maybe some food would sober him up.

  Some food! I sat him down at one of the long tables and told him to wait while I went to the buffet to fix his plate. I took my eyes off him for one minute—and then fear and embarrassment got the better of me and I looked back. He was gone. He’d gone around the other way, nearly pulling a tablecloth out from one setting and almost destroying the circular table that displayed the desserts. Then he found the plates. Everyone cleared away. I couldn’t seem to move. All I could do was watch him go to work.

  He plucked and picked and ladled and slathered—and piled and crammed and stacked and smushed. It was only when I thought he was going to keel over and take out the whole buffet that I regained control of my body. I got him back to the table with the help of Kyle’s dad, losing dinner rolls and lemon-glazed carrots along the way. I was so angry, so ashamed. Yet I still thought that food would help.

  The problem was that there was so much food on his plate, he couldn’t eat anything without spilling some. Then more—and more. A revoltingly large slice of bloody roast beef fell in his lap and he didn’t even notice. Peas tumbled, English mustard smeared. And the sounds he made. Johnny Johnstone and his father actually got up and moved to another table. Then suddenly Dad belched—an awful-smelling, resonant bark. His head lolled and he pitched forward into his plate, splattering mashed potatoes and gravy.

  Someone at the table behind us laughed sharply. No one else said a word. The whole hall went silent, everyone looking at my father, who on my side appeared to be sporting a sideburn of tangy cheese cauliflower. Frances Perada, the sister of one of my friends, was serving drinks; she helped me get Dad out of his chair. The mashed potatoes made a muddy, sucking sound when we peeled him free. His suit was ruined. But Dr. Abrams was more worried about his breathing. We dragged him into the kitchen and laid him out on one of the long stainless steel bench tops, at the end of which were piled chicken carcasses and a mountain of moist potato skins. Dr. Abrams checked his airway and his pulse, and Frances helped me clean his face with a wet dish towel.

  When he came around he needed to go to the bathroom. I carried him under the arms and walked him to the men’s room like a piece of awkward furniture. Just in time. I pushed open the stall door and he started spewing. I was holding on to him but the force of the upchuck yanked him loose and he fell forward, smacking his head on the white ceramic tank, then bouncing back, clutching the toilet seat as if he were drowning in the floor.

  We never went back to the banquet. It took me an hour to clean up the bathroom, Dad propped against the toilet in another stall, his forehead wrapped in a big moist turban of paper towels. My friends and rivals and their fathers came and used the facilities and left. Some asked quiet questions. Most, gratefully, did not. A couple of the other dads were tipsy, but nothing like this.

  The thing I kept thinking about as I mopped up was that I’d been drunk myself only two nights before. Very drunk. In fact I was so drunk, when wandering back across the soccer field in the middle of the night, I blundered into the nylon net of the goal. I had no idea what it was—it was like some giant spiderweb set up there to trap me and I got hopelessly tangled. I finally blacked out and only woke up at sunrise, stiff and wet from the dew.

  Now here was my father, leaning against a wall and smelling of puke. It would be another few years before he died, but I see now that I was witnessing a ghastly preview. Somehow, without warning, time had condensed around us. That was where the blood and bodily fluids came from. We’d been in an accident. A time implosion.

  After Dad was emptied out, I endeavored to drive him back to his motel to sleep it off, but after great effort he managed to inform me that he hadn’t come down alone. He’d brought Marti with him. She was back at the motel and he pleaded with me not to let her see him that way.

  Marti was his “girlfriend” of the moment, but Dad was thinking meal ticket. She was a wealthy woman from Marin County, whose even wealthier husband had hanged himself. How she met my father I’m not sure. I don’t know how Dad met any of his counselees. In any case, he started sleeping with her. (I think it would be safe to assume that he bedded the majority of the women he counseled. The men he got drunk with. A simple strategy.)

  Dad had left his second wife and her kids (the family I’d come to think of as my own, after he divorced my mother) to be with Marti. Having been stuck in a combative marriage for twenty years, Marti was ready to kick up her heels. She had money, she had big tits, she had a lot of guilt and sadness. She wanted to have fun. To fuck. To travel. To escape. And nobody was better at escaping from responsibility than my father. So they were having a pretty good time. If only Dad could nudge her to the altar, his financial future would be set. No wonder he didn’t want her to see him in such a condition.

  But if he couldn’t go back to the motel, that meant he had to come home with me. That meant smuggling him into my bedroom, because of course I couldn’t explain things to my mother and stepfather. I couldn’t explain anything to them. They already disapproved of Dad enough without seeing him stained and slurring.

  I’d slipped out of my room and back into it in the wee hours many times before. But I’d never attempted so stealthy a maneuver with such a handicap. Worse still, my father’s pathological optimism had given him the idea that I’d somehow forgiven him, and that we were old buddies again—partners in crime, tomcatting around. He became giggly and sentimental. I wanted to kill him. Especially when I had to shoehorn him through the window. I might as well have brought home one of the derelicts who sleep under the pier. At least they would’ve been quiet. I kept thinking my mother was going to wake up. I finally got him set up on the floor by my bed, windows open because of the smell. He was having a great time—like we were sleeping out in a tree house.

  The thing that really pissed me off is that he kept calling me Cahoots. When I was growing up, we had these two Old West characters: Cahoots McCoy and his trusty sidekick Crusty Drifter. We made up stories about them when we were camping and fishing—driving up into the mountains to drop a line in the American River, hoping to hook a couple of steelhead and lay them in a bed of spitting bacon in Dad’s old Klondike skillet. Sometimes he’d give me a shot of Jim Beam. He’d have a few swigs and tell me about the days of his boyhood, when giant timber wolves roamed Minnesota and his father would bring home a muskellunge and drink his homemade vodka and start talking in Swedish to people who weren’t there.

  My father had an encyclopedic range of faults, but he could make a warm can of Snappy Tom tomato juice and a thrown rod twenty miles from the nearest town seem like a stroke of good fortune—and there aren’t many people like that left anymore. I’m certainly not one of them. I realized this watching him when he finally fell asleep. I didn’t really know him. Yet there we were, in that room together. A small dark moment.

  I managed to get him out of the house the next morning without my mother and stepfather finding out—but I almost had a nervous breakdown doing it. By that time the remorse had kicked in and he barely spoke. I didn�
�t have a thought in my head as to what to say to Marti about where he’d been all night (which proved to be the beginning of the end for that relationship, although Dad, as always, was philosophical about the downturn). Thankfully, Marti wasn’t in the motel room when we got there. She’d left a note saying she was walking along the beach. I left Dad to clean himself up and start thinking of excuses, and went off to find another stretch of beach where I could pull the car over and get some sleep. I was beat. He’d snored heavily during the night. I was sure Mom would hear it. Then when he stopped snoring, I was afraid he’d stopped breathing. I lay there in bed watching him, listening to the clock, until the sound got smaller and smaller. Sometimes he’d talk in his sleep. Once he called out a name, but I didn’t recognize it.

  FRESH MELON

  It doesn’t matter that her brother was a sadist with small animals and her mother wished I were as tall as the keyboard player, who later crashed into a cop car while stoned at the wheel.

  It doesn’t matter that her father came from Castroville, the Artichoke Capital of the World—or that he took up painting as a hobby and shredded a bouquet of yellow roses I sent one Easter, when I laughed at the quaint little owls his brush had deformed.

  The only thing that seems important now is that she tasted like fresh melon sprinkled with salt.

  She was the girl I’d been expecting—the girl of summer, the girl of my youth. The real deal.

  So many lovers, even wives later, and it’s still her I hope to feel, to smell—and I reach across the bed for her, knowing that she’s only hiding, waiting to step from behind the curtain of a new name and embrace me for forever again.

  MR. VERY LATE NIGHT

  I know, I know—it’s not the most creative handle in the world. Lame. Pathetic. But I had to have some kind of gimmick and I couldn’t very well call myself something like Nick the High Priest of Soul, could I? Nick was black, after all, and a real, professional DJ with a genuinely soulful deep voice and worked for KSOL in San Mateo, a true, legit radio station that actually made money—a station powerful enough for us to hear loud and clear down in Sand City. He was my idol at the time and I needed to show some respect.