Rotters

by Daniel Kraus

  24.

  THIS IS THE DAY Woody Trask dies. I can taste it right off: the burning away of bile from the back of my throat. He doesn’t know it yet. That’s what makes it so exquisite. His death will not be physical, but it will be death nonetheless. He will never think the same way; he will never do the same things to others; it will be years before he is able to wake up without screaming.

  Corruption of the Incorruptibles. I dug all night. You should have seen it.

  I have planned it so carefully it’s like being there to see it. It’s like specifying so hard I can cut across time and space. He wakes up late. It’s Saturday, a day he hates because there are no built-in crowds to cheer him on. He plods around home in bare feet and stops for a moment to stare at a photograph under a refrigerator magnet. He scratches his balls and picks his nose. He doesn’t recall its being here before.

  I put it there. I was in his house and found it at the bottom of a drawer. I couldn’t resist. The photo, you see, is of Woody as a child, maybe six or seven years old, squatting in a sandbox with other children. It’s amazing how some faces retain their basic elements over time, and I’m sure that two of the sandbox boys are now kids Woody torments at every opportunity. There’s a chance that he will gaze at the picture until he drifts into a remorse so deep that he hangs himself from the workout machine in the basement. But that’s unlikely. He is too lost in arrogance to see anything in such images except weaker children deserving of their pitiful lots.

  He doesn’t notice what’s written on the back of the photo until after he’s showered, shaved, and dressed. Unable to get the picture out of his mind, he flips it over. At first he thinks it’s a joke.

  weight room

  6pm tonight

  see you there

  A FAT BITCH

  But it can’t be a joke. Rhino’s too dumb to arrange this. Pranks are not Celeste’s thing. And who knew he had Laverne’s car scratched except Crotch? It takes until he is stuffing pizza-for-breakfast into his mouth for him to realize that whoever left the note has been inside his house. He feels something he hasn’t felt in a long time. He doesn’t know what it is. I do. It’s fear.

  He goes about his day. He’s got meals to eat. Bros to hang with. Maybe a blow job later if he plays his cards right. But it continues to prey upon him, this note. It’s not something he can bring up to his father; it would generate too many questions. It’s not something he really wants to bring up to his bros, either. Because what if Crotch, even for a second, gets the best of him?

  So he worries. It’s beautiful—you can see it in his face. He doesn’t relish his meals. He finds no joy in his bros. He’s not invested in angling for that blow job. All he can think about is six o’clock and that weight room. It’s killing him. It’s really killing him and it’s beautiful.

  At five o’clock he heads to school. He figures he’ll show up early, get the drop on whoever awaits him. It’s something he’s learned from sports. Get up earlier, train harder. It’s Saturday, so he doesn’t know which doors, if any, will be unlocked. Turns out only the back door, the one nearest the parking lot, is slightly ajar. The walk takes him past the trophy cases, where his name is engraved in multiple metal plates. This is by design. Soak it up, Woody. Enjoy the feeling one last time. Because guess what engravings remind me of?

  The halls are dark. He’s a big guy, he’s not scared. The gymnasium is darker. Okay, he’s a little scared. The stairway leading up to the weight room is a total void because I’ve unscrewed the bulbs. He’s scared. He’s scared now. His heart is hammering like a little birdie’s. There’s the door. Anything could be behind it. But he can’t stop moving. He’s never hesitated inside Bloughton High, he doesn’t know how.

  Woody won’t get it, but I’ve chosen the weight room for its symbolism. Without the weight room, there’s no Fun and Games, no Celeste, no Foley. Maybe none of this would have happened. I owe this weight room a lot, and now it’s time for repayment.

  He pulls open the door, enters, and is blinded. All the lights are on. He throws a hand over his eyes. His feet tangle in barbells. He’s down, hands and elbows and knees knocking against ten-, twenty-, fifty-pound weights. They’re scattered everywhere just inside the door. That’s not where they’re supposed to be. It’s so careless, what kind of jerk—

  A cloth over his mouth.

  This is also the day Celeste Carpenter dies. More precisely, this is the day she becomes like Joey Crouch, forever fearful and humiliated. Such a fate would seem preposterous to her at this moment. At last night’s Spring Fling, her routine was flawless. No, I wasn’t there. But this is how Celeste’s life works. There was riotous applause. An award or two was won. People who don’t know shit about dance swore it is their favorite art form. I can’t blame them.

  There is a note waiting for Celeste, too. It is sitting outside her bedroom door in a sealed envelope. At first read, she is alarmed. After several rereads, though, she finds it surprisingly easy to convince herself of the number of legitimate routes the note could have taken to her door. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The news contained is too exciting.

  Dear Celeste,

  I’m sorry about the other day. To make it up to you, I’ve pulled some strings. Representatives from a theater company in Chicago are here. They missed your show last night but would like a repeat performance at 7:30 tonight. I hope this is all right. Come to the stage at seven. I’ll meet you in the greenroom.

  Congratulations.

  What she feels is not surprise. Not even close. What she feels is irritation that it took this long. After all, the crowd response last night was so forceful. After all, wasn’t TV’s Shasta McTagert discovered at a similar event? Celeste carries out her morning with exaggerated calmness, holding her teacup daintily, lingering with her loofah in the shower, taking time to inhale the scent of pollen sweetening the breeze. She acts like someone who believes she’s being filmed.

  Throughout the day she wants to call me for details but can’t. It’s not because I don’t have a phone. It’s because she can’t remember my last name to look up my number. As hard as she tries all she can remember is Crotch. And that can’t be a real name. Can it?

  The note said be there at seven but she’s a pro. She’s there at six-forty-five. She doesn’t see Woody’s truck because I have moved it. She tries various doors, including the entrance Woody used, but they are all locked. Eventually she examines a side door leading directly to the stage, and to her surprise it is ajar. This search has taken way too long and now she’s late. She goes directly to the greenroom and finds a second note.

  Dear Celeste,

  Wait here for me and I’ll introduce you to the representatives. If I’m not back by 7:30 please begin the performance on time. They’re already seated. I’m sure they’ll want to meet you afterward.

  Congratulations again.

  Oh, the agony! Thirty minutes she waits, clutching her cued-up iPod, dying to ask me questions about the setup. Will it be stage lights or house lights? And what about the music? She’s not expected to do the routine without music, is she? But she’s a pro. She keeps it together. This is what she’s trained for, after all. This is why she put in the hours. It all comes down to this.

  Seven-thirty comes. She takes a meditative breath and heads out. From the wing she can see that the Spring Fling decorations are still in place. Pink and yellow dominate. Flowers festoon the curtains. It’s only when she walks onto the stage that she realizes the lighting is all wrong. Every single spot is lit to full wattage. Black spots swim before her eyes. She turns away and sees a portable stereo near the center of the stage. As gracefully as possible, she hooks up her iPod, then springs to her starting position. Squinting is ugly, she knows this, so she accepts the temporary blindness. It’s all right. She’s a pro. The music begins and she makes her first move.

  Twirling, she notices that the flowers have begun to wilt. That must explain the sickly smell.

  Finally, this is the day that the most important t
hings in Gottschalk’s life, his so-called career and so-called reputation, prematurely expire. He will vanish from the lives of the students who endured his narcissistic orations and unjust policies. It has been my experience that high school students are quick to forget the absent. When Gottschalk is gone, he’ll be as good as dead.

  No notes are necessary. Instead I wait until after I have dealt with Woody and Celeste and then I call him. By now it is almost eight. He picks up on the fourth ring and only gets to say one word—Hello?—and I wish I didn’t have to allow him even that. I don’t want to hear any voices tonight or see any faces. Not live ones, anyway.

  “There are students in your school,” I say. “Right now. Two of them.”

  I hang up and prepare. There is never any doubt that he will arrive alone. In a town this size every dispatched unit gets written up in the paper. For a new principal, that doesn’t look good. Besides, the idea of sending cops to his school affronts his sense of sovereignty.

  Sure enough, he finds two vehicles in the parking lot; I have moved Woody’s truck and Celeste’s car. Both vehicles are parked in the handicapped spots by the front door. Such audacity is infuriating. He shuffles his keys as he stomps toward the main entrance, but it is unlocked. Now he’s angrier. He moves to unlock the next set of doors, but they’re unlocked, too. Now he’s livid.

  Mostly, though, he’s vain and arrogant. He heads right for his classroom. Of course he does. If someone has broken in to the school, naturally they have done it to attack him personally. He can see the cracked door, the blade of light. He moves so fast he’s waddling. His massive key ring jingles like chain mail. The bulbous contours of his face look ready to rupture. He grabs the knob and throws himself inside. Silently I step from the locker in which I’m hiding, close the door quietly behind him, tighten a length of rope around the knob, run it twenty feet, and then loop the other end to the adjacent classroom’s doorknob. He doesn’t even notice he’s trapped. The thing lying on top of his desk has him mesmerized.

  25.

  SOMEDAY IN THE FUTURE when furtive men gather to swap stories of the Diggers, they will talk about that night. They may not like what the Son did, but they cannot deny it was the work of a master.

  When I dropped Foley at home after the movie theater debacle, I promised him I’d come by the next day to talk. In truth, I didn’t plan on seeing him ever again. It was a brutal thing I had to do, but I’d do it to protect him, and once it was done there would be no future for me in Bloughton.

  Before setting out for the school, I had put the necessities into my green backpack. A few items of clothing, my trumpet, and the bone taken from my mother’s coffin. Harnett was packing, too. He was leaving for another Bad Job and couldn’t even get his tools into the sacks. Tarp pegs clattered to the floor. He gripped a bottle to steady his hands. I zipped my bag and considered offering him some kind of goodbye or good riddance. It was too easy to imagine how that would go. Instead I just looked on silently as he fumbled things like an old man and stooped to retrieve them.

  I left in a hurry. Pity was not an emotion I wanted to feel, not that night. I focused on the task. There was much to do and the timing was crucial. I was not worried. In fact, I was happier than I had been in a long time. I even sang. We became oblivion was my song for a while. Then it was Sabbath: What is this that stands before me? But as I unscrewed the lights in the weight room hallway and left the greenroom note for Celeste, I realized that that song wasn’t right, either. What I settled on was a lyric from Sabbath’s fourth album, sung in a plaintive moan by Ozzy, one of the band’s most moving choruses: I’m going through changes.

  I wasn’t the only one.

  When Woody awoke he felt softness—the room’s wrestling mats. But that was only part of it. His fingers felt softness; so did his toes; so did his legs. His legs—his legs were bare. They shouldn’t be bare but they were. He opened his eyes and saw breasts and hips and maybe for a moment thought that this was a typical Saturday night and he had gone to a party, gotten beered up, and fallen into bed with a girl or three. Only this time, the muddle of their faces did not clear when he rubbed his eyes. That was because their faces were in fact muddled. One girl’s eyes were hanging loose from their sockets. Another woman’s nose had been entirely eaten away. Woody jerked and another woman’s lips brushed his, or they would’ve if her face hadn’t long ago peeled back from its skull. He screamed—I swear I could hear it miles away—and thrashed about in an attempt to dislodge himself from the bloated and purple embrace of three naked female corpses. He was naked, too; the dry, cold genitals of his harem pressed against his own. I hoped he thought about Tess while he screamed. I hoped he thought about Heidi. I hoped he thought about Foley. I hoped he thought about me. I hoped he thought about everyone he had ever fucked over.

  After Celeste adjusted to her blindness she became aware of another lack—there was no crowd noise. Then again, it made sense. The theater representatives were probably few in number and, after all, they were captivated. She was a pro, so she kept on dancing. Somehow her eyes began to adjust and she was encouraged by the smiles shining white through the darkness. The end was near now and she tried to concentrate on her routine. She became aware of a sound, a strange whirring and clicking. Applause? Could it be applause already? She executed the bravura ending, falling to the stage like a cut flower, and convinced herself that, yes, that crackling sound was applause, it had to be. She stood and bowed and, receiving no further instruction, shaded her eyes and stepped forward out of the spots. The white she had seen was indeed teeth. The noise, though, was rats. A gang of skeletons sat in the chairs, their skulls and rib cages wired shut so that each had a rat for a brain and a rat for a heart. The sound was that of the animals chewing for their freedom. Some had already escaped and, fat with marrow, slugged their bodies up the center aisle. She did not scream. She met her audience head-on. Maybe I mentioned it before, but Celeste Carpenter was a pro.

  My revenge on Gottschalk did not have the tawdry exuberance of my other efforts, but in its relative subtlety it was my favorite. His desk, from behind which he had unfairly butchered my A and beside which he had whipped me with his wand, had been cleared. Upon it sat a tombstone. Chipped into it was his name and the date. Gottschalk was not dumb. He knew right away it was over. There was a fucking tombstone in his fucking classroom. The clinging sod and clay proved it as the genuine article. After registering the sound of the door locking behind him, he squeezed himself into one of the student desks and speculated on what other horrors laid hidden in his school and what kinds of disgrace they would herald. When he heard the faint reverberations of a young man’s screams from the direction of the gymnasium, he began to cry. Against his sobbing gut the chair hurt and so he stretched out on the floor, right under his tombstone. Even that close, he probably didn’t recognize how much it smelled like the student he had tormented for months. He bawled until his body ached. Eventually he felt like a medical school cadaver, or even one of those pictures in his textbook, flayed open to show his undersized heart and oversized lungs and stringy intestines. He felt eviscerated, dissected, and alone. Finally he knew how it felt.

  He didn’t have to wait long. I had already called the cops. It had been a risk, but Harnett had said it the first time he buried my homework in the backyard: Time is always against you. He was right and I wanted it no other way, because for me that was how it had always been. I hitched a ride from the highway, took a bus west—that was the direction the most recent Polaroids had suggested—and began to ask questions of the homeless people who hung out near bus stations. Over the next few days, I moved from town to town, reading local papers and, when the trail felt hot, following Harnett’s old advice of getting a trim from a local barber. There had been incidents, I learned, just a couple of towns over. I investigated those cemeteries in person. As I boarded another bus and crossed the Missouri River on the state’s western border, I could feel him like knives in my gut.

  As I approached th
e highway underpass, I thought of my mother. I told her that I was sorry I had left Harnett, I was sorry her plans for me had failed, but at least she would be avenged. Up ahead, I saw a shabby lean-to lit by a paltry fire. My veins pained me with each heartbeat. My muscles convulsed in expectation. I had taken care of Woody, Celeste, and Gottschalk, but I was not done.

  I stood at the edge of the fire. I felt as if I were standing at its center. A man used his fingers to scoop baked beans out of a can, sucked them clean, and then motioned his head at another can.

  “There’s beans,” Boggs said. “Just don’t eat too many.”

  26.

  STALACTITES BIT DOWN FROM the overpass above us like teeth, salivating when semis thundered overhead. The clammy corners seemed to squirm toward the fire like slugs, craving the heat of the wan and ribboned flames. Boggs passed another finger across his lips. The tongue that licked at the gloppy residue was red and suppurating.

  “I don’t mind sharing.” He shrugged. “You look hungry.”

  He leaned and his half-grin tipped from shadow. Something was horribly wrong. His face, merely ruddy when I had met him back at the diner in West Virginia, had progressed through some calamitous change. Patches were eaten away as if by acid, revealing layers of abraded flesh that winked wetly in the changing light. His thin hair had receded unevenly in all directions, leaving isolated crests of orange silk that flapped with every breath of wind. His nostrils and lips were crusted over and pulled so tight at the surrounding skin that it looked as if he were inhaling his own face. Worst of all were his eyes. The left was still a thing of pure and cerulean beauty. But the veiny tendrils that had threatened months ago had taken full hold of the right, and the infected orb poised on the edge of its lids. It moved not at all while his good eye whirled, taking in my fists, my larger and stronger biceps, the explosions contained within my bearing.