I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1

by Artie Cabrera

  A queer look came over Jane’s face. “Your grandfather died going down the stairs to get candy?”

  “Yes. Well, he was a diabetic so she would hide it from him. He would go through a whole bag of butterscotch in one sitting. His blood sugar would go nuts, and he’d have an insulin attack in his chair. My brother and I used to think he was being electrocuted and we would laugh.

  He was sneaking around the house looking for those stupid candies while Nana was out shopping and died on the stairs. Dumbass. It serves him right if you ask me. He shouldn’t have been doing what he shouldn’t have been doing,” I answered.

  “Why did your grandmother buy them if she didn’t want him having them?” That is a valid question, and thank you for asking, Jane. For a moment there, I wondered the same.

  Why the fuck did Grandma buy two pounds of candy every time she went to the market if she was just going to hide them in the basement from Mumford anyway?

  “I don’t know. Go ask her yourself, she’s out in the yard beneath the tree over there. She’s all ears,” I said.

  “You can be a real dick, Charlie—and mean, you know that?

  I’m sorry I touched your stupid door!” Jane said, storming past me to go upstairs. Locking herself in the bathroom was a natural reaction for her whenever we argued, but I stopped her.

  “Hey, all right, okay, I’m sorry. Listen, my Uncle Richard would come over on the weekends, take my brother down to the basement where our model train set used to be, and make my brother touch him—inappropriately. Of course, I didn’t know until Stewart and I were both in the basement one day and he asked me if I wanted to touch his noodle. I thought he was joking. Why would he want me to touch him? I knew he was serious when he asked me again. I said, ‘Stewart, who taught you to say those things? I don’t want to touch you down there. You’re not supposed to ever, ever, play with it without Mommy’s permission or you’re gonna break it, okay?

  No one is allowed to touch you there without Mom or Dad around, you hear me?’

  It was as if someone had plunged a knife into my heart. My brother had no clue what I was talking about. He was just following protocol. I pulled him close to me and asked—‘Stewart, does Uncle Richard touch you funny when you come down to the basement to play with the trains?’

  Stewart shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head. ‘Show me what happens when you and Uncle Richard are alone in the basement together.’

  My brother took a step back and began showing me with his little fingers, on himself. Clearly, Richard liked to finger his own asshole to the dirty magazines he kept hidden behind the furnace while my brother watched.

  My Uncle made my brother watch him cum, that sick fuck. You believe that sick bastard? My brother asked me what that was, the white stuff, I mean.

  I told him that if it was something that ever happened again someone was going to die and that he should never, under any condition, be alone with Richard again.”

  “Oh my God, did you ever talk to your parents about it?” Jane asked, with a deep sadness in her blue eyes.

  “I sure did. I went straight up to my old man the next day and said, ‘Hey, dad! Richard made Bubba touch his dick,’ and wham! Fireworks! He cracked me upside the head with the back of his heavy hand. I had a fat red welt on the side of my face days after.

  I don’t remember how old I was, but I tell you what, that man’s hands took years off of my life, that’s for sure.”

  “What did your mom say?” asked Jane.

  “I never told her. I couldn’t tell her. Not that I couldn’t tell her, but my mom had a way with dealing with things or not dealing with things. She would coddle us too much or not coddle at all.

  She would treat minor scrapes like a broken neck, and my father would come down on her because we were going to grow up to be…forget it, you know what, it’s behind me now. Sorry about the door, it wasn’t you. I just don’t go down there anymore. Just don’t ever open that door, okay? It’s just a bad place. I don’t want anyone going down there.”

  “Charlie, did your uncle ever try…touching you?’’

  “What? No. What the hell’s wrong with you? Why would you ask me that?”

  “Charlie?”

  “No, I said.”

  “What happened?”

  “I said no, he didn’t…just that one time.”

  “What one time? He touched you once?”

  “Yes, in the basement. I was young, I don’t remember.”

  “Did anyone else know about this?”

  “Yes, Mumford found him down there with me, and he did nothing about it. He turned and went back up the stairs. He didn’t protect me, he just let him—he just let him take me. Richard was drinking and mad that I told my dad about him touching Stewart, so he did what he did, you know. He grabbed me when I was alone playing with my train set.”

  “What did he do?” She asked.

  “Come on. Do I really need to go into detail?”

  “No, of course you don’t have to.”

  “He pinned me against Nana’s sewing table, pulled my hair, he put his hands between my legs and said he would hurt me and Stewart really bad if we ever said anything to dad about him and Stewart again. Then he went to prison for raping Norman Braski a week later, and I watched my grandfather die almost two years later after that at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “You watched your grandfather die?”

  “Yeah, he didn’t go down there just for the candy. When I saw he was gone from his chair without his oxygen that afternoon, I snuck down to find him by the boiler with those dirty magazines. He was standing there in his robe strumming himself as he turned the pages. Jesus, the man was ninety. You would think he would have dried up already.”

  “Then what?”

  “He saw me watching him from the stairs and panicked. When he came after me his heart gave out, and I left him at the bottom step.”

  “So he didn’t die going down the stairs. You didn’t try to help him?”

  “It didn’t cross my mind to.”

  “It didn’t cross your mind to? What do you mean?”

  “It means it didn’t occur to me. I wanted him to die, so, he did. It all worked out for the better.”

  “How did that make you feel…to watch him die?”

  “Christ, did you get anything from what I’ve been telling you? Why would I help him? He did nothing to protect my brother or me. For all I know he could have been finger fucking my uncles and my father in the basement when they were kids.

  Why should I have done anything to help him? They were all monsters, every one of them. It made me feel good inside if that’s what you want to know.” It still makes me feel good inside.

  GRUDGES AND GRIEVANCES

  Saturday, February 8th, 2014

  I walked by my parents’ house today against my better judgment. I chose not to go in, but stood outside for a while internalizing—was he still in there or did the old man fall to the Deviants as I almost hoped for? My father that is, who lives six blocks from here, but I haven’t seen him in two years, not since our last encounter, our last fight.

  I thought I was ready to have the talk, the talk where I could finally lay it all out on the table and let him know what a trench he’s left in my soul.

  He listened, he sure did. He took in everything I said and shit it right out when it didn’t agree with him.

  I was an idiot for even thinking that after all these years my father would have the decency to show remorse or help me stop the bleeding. I said what I had to say, and he turned the knife on me once again, when all I wanted to do was to talk. It was that simple. All he had to do was notice me.

  “Come on Charlie, what? It’s all in your head there, bud. You must be outta’ your mind,” he chuckled, never once making eye contact with me.

  “You know what else is in my head, DAD?” I asked pointing to my scalp. “The scars from it bouncing off your dashboard, you do remember that don’t you, bud?”

  My fat
her made faces as if he was hearing this for the first time—“uhff, uh, well, I, uh…” I couldn’t tell if he was in denial or if he was just truly insane.

  Dad and Stewart walked away from the accident without a scratch while I suffered a broken arm, a broken collarbone, and something like eighteen staples to my head.

  It was Stewart’s tenth birthday. Park management shut the pool down because of the electrical storm that was quickly brewing over us—exactly a month to the day since that Asian kid got sucked into the pool’s faulty filtration system nearly killing him.

  My brother Stewart wasn’t too happy about it, and my father was sixteen beers in to his day. The whole car ride home, Stewart would not keep still or quiet in the backseat, complaining about leaving the pool prematurely.

  When my father decided he had enough of Stewart’s hyperactive bitching, he swung around to hit him, accidentally jerking the steering wheel instead.

  The car swerved and spun out of control on the wet pavement into another car, bounced off a divider and finally into an embankment off the service road. I heard metal twisting and the sound of tires screaming uncontrollably. I ate the dashboard and blacked out. Flashing lights and sirens cut in and out through the roaring chaos all around me. Why was I in so much pain? Why were they calling me? Why did they want me to come back? I felt pain where my head should have been, but not my head. Was I disfigured? How much of my head was gone? Who cares? Let me sleep. It was so dark where I was, but I was at peace. Stop waking me, shut up, there’s too much chattering.

  A paramedic was talking to me, but I couldn’t see because my eyes were swollen shut—maybe they had fallen out. Who cares? I just wanted to sleep, I wasn’t that important. I just wanted the lights to go out.

  My father acted as if it never happened. I never once got an apology. He never once tried talking to me about it or about the fact that my injuries could have prevented me from ever playing baseball again, which they did. Wasn’t he at least a bit ashamed?

  He concerned himself with the hospital bill and the grief the insurance company and lawyers were giving him, but—never the welfare of his own son.

  My mother had started becoming ill around the time of the accident, making it hard for her to even get around the house sometimes, much less make it out to see me. She made the best of it when I came home in stitches though.

  Mother had her own little quirky ways of showing love; the linen on my bed was crisp and fresh, and the bedroom was immaculate, my favorite blue jeans, hat and baseball jersey washed and folded at the foot of my bed. I guess I needed to come close to dying to get some attention around here.

  She hummed and glided through the kitchen cooking my favorite dish to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” serenading her from the radio on the kitchen counter. Where was I?

  Lorraine Dudley stood smiling over me with her soft hand on my back, running her fingers through my hair as I shoveled the food down into my face. I could hardly taste anything because of the medication I was taking, but I’m sure the shepherd’s pie tasted as fantastic as it looked.

  She was happy I was home. I was happy to feel her embrace and see life in her eyes again. I wish she would’ve held me for a little while longer, but I couldn’t help noticing how tired and thin she’d become. I didn’t dare show it. I didn’t dare draw attention to it. I didn’t want to ruin the moment by being the wiser.

  Ruining the moment was out of my hands once Dad came home—beer in one hand and tools in the other—and after all I had just been through, that cocksucker. I didn’t even get a “Hey son! I’m so glad you’re home after I nearly sent you flying through the windshield of the Buick because I was drinking and didn’t care enough for you to teach you the fundamental purpose of a seat belt.” No, there was none of that.

  Was he going to tell me about a friend of his who was eaten and spat out by a wood chipper, but managed to go to work the next day? Was he going to tell me I had to be a man? Was I not worthy of my father’s love?

  He walked right past me to help himself to another cold one from the fridge.

  “Charlie’s home, Seymour. Isn’t that wonderful?” my mother proudly announced, standing beside me at the kitchen table.

  “I thought you said you were making a roast tonight,” he answered with his back turned to us.

  It was nice knowing that my father valued me as much as a teenage boy valued the spunk he discarded onto a tissue and left in the toilet.

  Why didn’t he just piss on my plate while he was at it and tell me how he wished I were dead to my face instead of implying it?

  A week later on Saturday morning, traditionally known for watching pro wrestling and cartoons with Stewart before going to Grandma’s, Stewart and I woke to a commotion coming from downstairs in the kitchen.

  Glass shattered, chairs slammed, and my father repeatedly called my mother a whore at the top of his lungs. “Why? Why, you whore? You fucking whore!” he yelled.

  My father has called my mother worse many times before, but this time there was something in his voice that morning—crying. Crying like a broken man.

  “Who is it, Lorraine? Who is it? Tell me goddamn it! I… I am the man of this house! I pay the goddamn bills, and this is what you do to me? This is what you do to your children?” My father’s sudden and exaggerated concern for us children was laughable and, pathetically, too late an argument to feel genuine.

  I knew he was reaching, reaching for anything to hurt my mother, but crying is for pussies.

  Pain isn’t as bad until it find its way into the heart.

  “You whore! I’ll kill the both of ya’s!”

  The fighting continued with a resounding sound of a slap and my mother’s cry from my father striking her.

  If I had to say anything about my father, it’s that he had never hit her or even cheated on her with anyone…as far as I know. Not to say he was FATHER OF THE YEAR, because he was an asshole in every other possible direction.

  The morning he learned of my mother’s affair was hard on all of us. I think I’d have been more understanding if she stabbed him to death in his sleep instead of having an affair.

  Then came a long silence, possibly from them both stunned that he hit her, or it could be my father hit her so hard he killed her in his rage.

  Stewart sat up in his bed, suspended in fright, as tears spilled over his meaty little cherub cheeks and snot bubbles percolated from his nostrils. I didn’t know what to do. This was new to me too, and I never meddled in their fights.

  Some nights Stewart and I sat in our bedroom where we’d listen to the muted bickering through the walls, tension sometimes climbing so high I’m almost surprised it took this long for him to hit her.

  “Chawwrlie?” Stewart whimpered, sitting up from his bed in his racing car ‘jammers. His eyes darting between the door and myself with panic, ordering me to “Go, go, go!”

  I bolted out of our room and to my mother’s rescue, but my moment of chivalry met the back of my father’s hand, knocking me to the kitchen floor. My father stood over me while blood streamed down my face and over my lip. The taste of liquid iron didn’t alarm me.

  “You see what you did? Jesus Christ, look at you. Now get up! It was an accident, Lorraine. The boy came at me. You saw what he did,” he said, shamelessly defending himself.

  That was the first time the voice in my head came to taunt me. “Come on, Charlie. Get up on take the old man on. Beat the living piss out of him. He’s weak. Take him down. Now’s your chance to be a man.”

  My fists rolled up into two tight balls, ready to launch at my father in rage, fueled by a fury I have never felt before in my guts, but—it didn’t happen.

  My right eye had begun to blur and sting from the blood forming around its socket. I picked myself off the floor and stormed off past my mother and Stewart. They both watched me clean myself up from the bathroom door down the hall.

  When I saw myself in the mirror, the mighty anger and courage slowly dissol
ved into pain and frustration once I saw how badly my stitches were bleeding.

  Matters became miserably worse when I decided to pluck and gouge the stitches away from my scalp, using my mother’s tweezers that sat at the edge of the sink, soiling her once perfectly hung decorative doilies with my downpour, and wondering why I thought performing surgery on myself and risking infection at the expense of my father was a good idea at the time. I realized it was an act of self-pity and mutilation, the same kind of stupid tantrum where someone senselessly puts their fist through a plate glass window because they’re mad at their girlfriend.

  By no means am I a masochist. I knew it when the icy flash of the rubbing alcohol scorched the gash in my skull. I clenched my teeth to prevent the whimpering of a boy from escaping my lips. Be a man, Charlie.

  “Stop it this instance, Charlie, do you hear me!” she said, fighting my hands to apply gauze to the opening above my forehead, but the throbbing in my head drowned out my mother’s crying and my vision.

  Authority was never one of my mother’s stronger suits. It didn’t help that I saw her as a cracked up June Cleaver with no backbone, “Leave me alone. Don’t fucking touch me,” I growled at her.

  “Watch your mouth, Charlie, please,” she cried, ringing the bloody clothe at the sink.

  Daddy was always right even when he was wrong because Daddy paid the bills. Daddy, don’t hit Mommy!—I pay the bills. Daddy, I can’t breathe!—I pay the bills. Daddy, please stop drinking!—I pay the bills.

  “Should I continue?” I asked my father. “Answer me, you gutless bastard!” He didn’t have the balls to look me in the eye and say that he was sorry, so I laid it into him even harder when he reached across the kitchen table for the bottle and cracked the seal open. “Goddamn you. I am done with you, do you hear me? You will never see me again, do you understand? I want you to hurt.”

  “What do you want from me, Charlie?” he asked listlessly, pouring himself another glass of Wild Turkey.