Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  So Al would beat the hell out of me. And all the time, Squid, his then-best buddy, would be standing right beside him, saying, “Come on, make him cry so we can go talk to the pussy.” “The pussy” meaning Cheryl, who was Al’s then-girlfriend.

  Whenever I thought about Al’s then-life, and his now-job at a tire store and the now-wife he’d had to marry last year, I’d get a smile that nobody wanted to see.

  But even if it turned out all right later, back in seventh grade, there was nothing I could do to save my ribs. I couldn’t quit the team. It was a big deal to Dad. He saved the stories from the Lightsburg Lighthouse—they did a “preseason” about us, a story about each game, and a “postseason,” where Coach Stuckey mentioned me in a list of about ten guys he was expecting more from next year. Dad put yellow Hi-Liter on my name; that and the honor roll were the only times I appeared in the paper while he was alive.

  I’d come home from practice and go downstairs to sit on the couch with him, or he’d be doing some fix-up on the house and teach me how to do it, and he’d want to know what all I did in practice, and—well, I couldn’t quit. And I couldn’t really tell him, “Oh, Coach said I’m a fast runner, he always says that, and then Al beat on me in the locker room, here, look at the bruises up the side of my ribs.”

  Because for one thing my stupid old man would have said to fight back, and what was I gonna say, well, I used to try, but he just knocks my hands out of the way and keeps on pounding?

  I knew Dad. He would tell me to keep trying. I mean I know it’s good to keep trying and all, but sometimes, like when you just get pounded twice as hard for twice as long, you have to do what works instead of what’s good.

  I guess I could have told Coach Stuckey, but I didn’t want to be a nark and a crybaby. I’d have to go away to the State Home for Terminal Pussies with a big P tattooed on my forehead. Besides, who the hell were they going to believe, the popular QB, or skinny little Shoemaker whose dad used to be mayor before being the town drunk? Al’s dad, who was at every game cheering like a nut, or a spooky ghost like my dad, a dying bundle of sticks and scraggly hair?

  I knew where I was on the ladder. And where Al was.

  Anyway, so I’d walk home, sometimes crying all the way from the beating I’d gotten, and then wash my face and tell Dad how much I loved football and how well I was doing at practice. That was the fall of seventh grade.

  I don’t remember exactly what tipped me over. Maybe I just thought my ribs were fucking sore enough. So one Sunday Al was riding his brand-new ten-speed over to see Cheryl—he was always bragging on how he was feeling her up all the time—and I stepped out from behind a bush with a ball bat and spoked his bike, and he went over the handlebars, and as he stood up, I swung the bat real hard at him, and clipped his right elbow. (I couldn’t do anything right. I wanted his ribs).

  They said I chipped the bone, so he didn’t play that fourth game. Neither did I, of course, because good old Al had no problem with narking on me.

  Everyone kept saying I was lucky I didn’t break his spine or rupture his kidneys (I always thought he was luckier) and was all sympathetic for him, and nobody ever did give a shit that Paul and me and Larry had spent months being bruised and afraid. Pain only matters when it happens to someone important.

  Instead of hitting him a lot more like I planned to, when I saw him holding his arm and yelling like a baby, I ran away.

  If I’d left it at whacking Al’s elbow and destroying his bike wheel, I guess people would’ve understood eventually. Or if Al’s mommy had called the cops as soon as he came home and tattled, instead of rushing off to the emergency room and waiting for X-rays and shit, I might have gotten busted before I did anything else. But nobody stopped me, especially not me, and what I did next, well, I fucking made myself sick.

  That night, I went into Squid’s backyard, pulled down the chicken wire enclosure, grabbed his pet rabbit, cut its throat with a box knife before it knew what was happening, then tore it up with garden shears—it didn’t come apart as much or as easy as I planned, so I just kind of opened up a couple big rips in it. Then I left it in the yard for stray dogs and cats to tear up some more, and for him to find in the morning.

  Squid cried in school for like a week and the social girls were all over him—they all thought it was so cute how he wuvved his bunny wunny, and him such a big strong football player too. I think I probably got him laid.

  I got six days of in-school suspension for hitting Al with the bat, which they could prove. And that was well worth it.

  I didn’t draw any penalty for the rabbit, because the cops said could’ve been a dog did it, but Williams watched me real hard because he found out Squid had been in on beating me up—Al told him. Like I said, Al was a fucking nark.

  So later that week, Williams dropped by to talk to my parents while I was doing my bench time at school. When I got home that afternoon, Dad took me down in the basement and made me drop my pants and bend over the couch. Coughing and gasping for air, he took a metal yardstick and lashed the holy fuck out of my ass.

  Then Mom came down screaming at him, and got between me and the yardstick. She yelled at Dad because he hadn’t known what Al and Squid were doing to me, and they both started yelling about how I was turning out and whose fault I was. I pulled up my pants and went out and sat in the toolshed till Dad came and got me to tell me it was dinnertime, they’d ordered in a pizza, sausage and green peppers, my favorite.

  That night, as Mom rubbed salve into the welts, she was crying and talking about going to the cops but she didn’t; I guess I didn’t want her to.

  Come to admit it, I realized a while later that what I had done had really changed something. My parents were scared of me. So were the other kids for a while. And the teachers and Officer Williams all watched me like I was gonna explode.

  I guess maybe they thought, next thing, I might cut up a little kid or something, but the only person who asked me directly was this one therapist, a weird little East Coast guy named Bradshaw, months later.

  It was a little chilly, windy and cold. Doctor Bradshaw took me out to shoot baskets one afternoon, got me out of school and all, and then when I was pretty well worn out, way after school closing time, he sat down with me on the bench by the basketball courts in the park, and we just talked.

  Bradshaw was being so nice he got me crying, and I told him how I felt sick as fuck about that rabbit, sometimes I had bad dreams about how its jaw had worked against my hand, the way it rubbed its nose on my palm wanting to be petted, the second when I could feel the pulse in its soft throat, and then the ripping feeling in my hand and the warm blood squirting all over my arm. Come to admit it, it was the first time I’d cried in months, and it was pretty hard to stop once I got going.

  When I was all cried out, Bradshaw took me to a sandwich shop for dinner, and bought me a big sub sandwich and pile of French fries, and I always wondered if he slipped a drug into it or something, because I got pretty sleepy. He took me back to my parents’ house and told them, straight to their faces, that I was fucked up but not dangerous—he said it in psychology-talk but that was what he meant—and I think he told the cops and teachers that too, and after a while people forgot and I got some slack. And Paul stayed my friend through the whole thing, too, which helped.

  The next month Bradshaw got a job at a university counseling service. He left his address with me and I wrote him like three letters to say I was okay, and he always wrote back to say it was good that I was okay. He sent me a sympathy card when Dad died the following fall, and we traded Christmas cards once, and then I guess there just wasn’t much for either of us to talk about. I think I was probably the only Madman who remembered him.

  But though killing the rabbit was the worst thing I ever did, that wasn’t the worst part.

  The next fall I didn’t play football because Dad was sick all the time, dying, and I wanted to spend as much time as I could at the hospital. And that meant I didn’t see Squid at all. />
  One thing I remembered, though, at Dad’s funeral in October, it seemed like half the town was there, but nobody my age was except Paul, and his brother Dennis and sister Kimmie.

  I really remembered how much it helped to have Paul there standing next to me. Maybe because Mom was being so weird and quiet, maybe because everyone was just walking up to me and saying, “I’m sorry,” and then walking away like they were afraid I might talk, maybe just because it was a friend who was there for me. I don’t remember Paul saying anything. After the graveside service he touched my shoulder and said he’d come by the next day.

  When he did, he just sat with me all day, not talking, which for Paul was like not breathing.

  I needed Paul real bad and he was there; I couldn’t imagine how bad it would have been not to have anybody. And right there he set me an example, one I must have decided to live up to, though I can’t remember thinking that in words.

  If anybody ever needed a friend—a real one, I mean—it was Squid. That guy never had any kind of luck but shitty. On the April Fool’s Day after my father died, Squid’s mom killed herself. Harris and Tierden, these two real hateful guys that would have been our class clowns if they’d been funny, were making jokes about it the next day, when Squid wasn’t in school, so I treated them to my best Psycho expression and they went creeping away. First time (but not the last) I saw the usefulness of being Psycho Shoemaker. Doing Squid that favor got me thinking.

  Squid’s mom’d been depressed, everyone noticed that. A lot later Squid said, in group therapy, that old Cabrillo had been calling his mom up to tell her she was fat and ugly and how he hated her, and how much he loved his new no-shoes teenage hillbilly honey.

  So on April 1, 1970, Squid’s mom was walking home along County Line Road from one of her cleaning jobs, out in Oakwood, and she looked right at an oncoming semi—the driver said she “looked right through him”—the Lighthouse went and printed that. I guess Squid and Tony and Junie weren’t anybody, so it didn’t matter how they felt about it, and it sold newspapers.

  Semis really barrel along that road; he had no way to stop. He laid on the horn, and stood on the brake the whole way to her, and rolled the trailer trying to swerve, but she just walked straight toward the front grille till she hit and went under.

  Everyone said Catholics weren’t allowed to do that and she wasn’t supposed to get a Catholic funeral, but Father Robert, at St. Ignatius, basically told everyone to stop being an asshole. Maybe Father Robert told the bishop she was crazy or blind or something, but he gave her a Catholic burial.

  I had Paul’s example. I had scared Harris and Tierden into not being shitheads. I felt like I was committed but hadn’t yet done enough. So the afternoon of Squid’s mom’s funeral, I slipped out of the junior high, ran home, grabbed my jacket and a tie, and went over to St. Ignatius’s Church. I didn’t know when to stand or kneel or how to cross myself, I’d never been to anything Catholic before, but I watched the rest and figured it out.

  There wasn’t much of anybody there—just Squid; Tony, who was nine at the time; Junie, who was seven; Squid’s great-aunt, who didn’t speak any English; a lady from County Welfare; and Father Robert.

  The two kids clung to Squid like he might evaporate. After the service, since I wasn’t going to go out to the graveyard, I came up to Squid and touched his elbow and said, “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded, his face almost expressionless, and said, “Thank you.”

  I don’t think that was what made us friends, though.

  See, the next Monday was our second or third therapy meeting with Ramscik, one of the worst counselors we ever had, the one after Bradshaw, so I hated him extra bad already but he fucking deserved it, I can tell you that. It was Squid’s first time in therapy, since he’d gotten his ticket for having his life stink.

  Ramscik kept badgering Squid about letting his feelings out and shit, and Squid just sat there and looked at the floor and wiped his eyes, which I guess didn’t count as letting his feelings out.

  That went for I don’t know how long and everybody else was staring at the wall or the ceiling. Then my voice said, “Leave him alone,” real loud.

  Ramscik stared at me.

  I said, “Squid can talk when he wants to talk. And he’s not all alone. He’s got his aunt, you heard him. And me and Paul’re gonna go shoot baskets with Squid Saturday morning. Maybe he’ll talk to us.” I still don’t know where that came from. It got Ramscik off Squid’s case, though, and back into talking to us about staying away from drugs and peer pressure and sex.

  After therapy, in the hall, Squid said, “I suck at shooting baskets,” and Paul said, “Me too, and besides I have clarinet practice on Saturday mornings. What were you making up, Shoemaker?”

  “Something to get that asshole off Squid’s case,” I said. “If you had a better idea you should’ve been faster.”

  “’Preciate it,” Squid said. He touched my arm just for a second, and kind of half smiled. I smiled back for all I was worth. I couldn’t stand to think how lonely the guy was feeling. Christ, if that wasn’t a lesson—lose your rabbit and other kids swarm all over you, lose your mom and you’re invisible—what a thing to know about your friends. I wanted to be a friend for him worse than I’d ever wanted anything.

  Well, I guess I managed it. Squid followed us to lunch like a lost puppy. It was like a month before his jock friends started hanging out with him again. Meanwhile, since Squid and me were both lonely kids, and we knew what was wrong with each other, and didn’t want to talk about it, before we even realized it was weird, we were friends.

  Just before school got out, the judge decided that the house and the kids went to old Cabrillo, which meant Squid’s dad was in there on his mom’s bed with a girl just seven years older than Squid, and a lot of the nice way his mom had fixed the place up went all to hell. And my mom got serious about being a pretend hippie philosopher and a real drunk bimbo. Squid and I started running into each other at older-kid parties, where we got pretty good at stealing or begging booze. By the end of eighth grade, Squid and me were pretty regular drinking buddies, and all that summer, we’d get odd jobs together, then go to whatever party we could get into, and wind up in a vacant lot or behind a building, drinking till we passed out. We talked whenever it was necessary. Mostly it wasn’t.

  Okay, here’s the worst part. I don’t remember ever talking about it, but Squid knew about the rabbit. I could see that in his eyes. He never said a word, he just knew.

  But Squid forgave me. Really forgave me, I mean, all the way to trusting me and accepting me as his friend, and I would swear I didn’t have a more loyal friend from then on.

  Which I’d never have done for him. I can be an okay guy but I wouldn’t have it in me to be that good to someone who’d done something so awful to me.

  So my revenge was a mixed bag. I kept Al from playing his last game as quarterback and deprived him of the peak of his life. But killing that poor rabbit—all I accomplished was to prove that Squid might have a mean streak, but he was still a much better guy than I was.

  Me? I was a vicious crazy bastard who hurt helpless things when he thought he could get away with it.

  So that’s how I got to be called Psycho Shoemaker and why the name stuck. I earned it, I deserved it, and it was all my doing.

  5

  Normal Guys Walk with Pretty Girls Who Giggle

  LARRY O’GRARY WAS just getting into line when I got to the cafeteria. He wore his blond hair halfway down his back; he was “about six feet tall and weighed about six pounds, or it might be the other way round,” as he said, every time he got the chance.

  That was one of many things he said to be weird. I mean, Larry really was weird, no question, but I guess not being innately weird like the Madmen, he felt he had to work at it.

  You know how a girl who isn’t naturally pretty will wear too much makeup and get way too careful about matching colors? Or the way a not-so-smart guy who wishes he was smart wil
l always bring up some really hard book he read, or keeps repeating the only fact he knows about a subject? So you always keep noticing that she’s not really pretty, or he’s not really smart, and they can feel you noticing that, so they get all insecure and keep doing it more?

  That was Larry and weird.

  I think he was afraid someone would notice that he was just a guy with long hair who read a lot of sci-fi, knew all of Firesign Theatre by heart, and stole a lot of one-liners from MAD magazine.

  Larry did lights for the school plays, took photos for the school paper, and was a moderately shitty reliever for our immoderately shitty baseball team.

  I never saw him over a summer; he went to camp. Just this moment in lunch line he was telling me about some girl named Allison that he’d finally lost his virginity to. First thing every fall, he’d have to tell everyone that this year at camp, he’d lost his virginity. He never remembered that he’d said the same thing the year before. I thought about asking him if Allison’d gotten into any fights with Jen, who was the one from last year. But I didn’t; I’m a cowardly shit.

  Anyway, another ten years and he’d lose his virginity for real. Probably three weeks after I lost mine, come to admit it.

  We got up to the head of the line and Larry tried to freak out the cafeteria lady by asking for sea creatures and boiled wheat, with spoiled milk. He looked kind of disappointed when she just plopped a serving onto the tray.

  Since it was the first Wednesday of the school year, we had Wednesday meal number one, tuna noodle casserole, corn, and apple crumb cobbler. They hadn’t changed the rotation since Mom stopped packing my lunch back around third grade. For thirty cents more I could’ve gotten hamburger-with-fries, but I always got the main meal, for variety, because between all my jobs and my hanging out I was already eating like five thousand hamburgers a week.

  Larry and me headed for a vacant table on the main aisle. Paul would have lunch this period too. After a whole morning getting caught up with all the other Madmen, I’d come to see that, like it or not, they were the friends I had—and anyway avoiding my best friend wouldn’t exactly be normal. So I had added another operation to Operation Be Fucking Normal.