Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  “Yeah, well. . . . After that, like, breakdown thingy I had last May, the doctor made Dad promise me I could stay a whole year in one place this time, some place where I could just have some fun and be a kid. I’ve never had a whole school year in one place.”

  “And this causes an old trophy case to hypnotize you?”

  “You’ll laugh at me.”

  “Only if you say something stupid.”

  “Gee, thanks. What a pal.” She made that snorting noise. “I like your sense of humor, Karl. It probably keeps any poor girl from talking herself into having sex with you.”

  “And I thought it was the warts.”

  Neil’s senior picture had hair as short as Dad’s. Even then Neil had piggy little eyes and looked like he was mad that everyone thought they were better than he was, and they were all 100 percent correct.

  Shit, in 1961, Mom had already been the mayor’s wife for three years. How could Neil tell her he didn’t know how old she was later on? What kind of stupid excuse was that?

  “You’re clenching your fists,” Marti observed.

  “Too much history,” I said.

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “The reason everything about Lightsburg fascinates me is pathetic. Since I finally get to have a home town, just like a regular, ordinary, normal person, and people know all about their home towns, I want to know everything about Lightsburg, right now, because once I do it will really be my home town. Am I making sense?”

  “I guess people only appreciate what they don’t have—which is another stupid thing Dad used to say.”

  “You miss him a lot,” she said, “and that doesn’t sound so stupid.”

  “I don’t think he ever said a smart thing in his life. I’ve lived here all my life and I can’t wait to leave.”

  “I bet you’re pissed because no matter what you do in the future, Lightsburg is always going to be your home town. Right?”

  “I’ll never forgive it for that.” Our eyes met, seriously, for just a second. “Well, I’ll see you inside, then.”

  “Remember, ask me to dance, twice, in the first hour.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten.”

  “See ya.”

  We went in opposite directions, looping back through the corridors to the gym entrance. Was avoiding looking like we were with each other normal?

  At the gym doors, the crowd filled the hallway, but no one was going in just yet; still too hot and too light. Paul was leaning up against a wall looking lonely and bored and all tucked into himself, the way he got when things got shitty but not real shitty at home. I thought I’d try to just walk up and say hi, real casual and light.

  He saw me coming toward him and went out the door.

  I didn’t know what had knotted his shorts, but it was tiresome. The only positive side to it was that avoiding him, like I fucking meant to, was gonna be duck soup.

  Pretending I hadn’t been headed for Paul, I turned and walked the other way fast. Unfortunately, I wasn’t looking where I was going, and my hard swerve took me straight up to Bobby Harris and Scott Tierden.

  Other high schools had class clowns that were funny. Not poor old Lightsburg. We got Harris and Tierden.

  Their idea of funny was to bring a whoopee cushion to a choir concert to fuck up Bonny’s solo, or go into Philbin’s, order a banana split, and turn it upside down on the counter with a two-cent tip under it for me. They didn’t like Bon and me much because we worked a lot; they picked on Paul because everybody picked on Paul, for being a faggot. They didn’t fuck with Danny, Darla, or Squid much, and they left Cheryl alone.

  Picking on Madmen, or trying to, was one of those things they did, like playing rotten tricks on retarded kids, saying dirty shit to shy churchy girls, and sitting in the back to hassle anyone who was up front doing something.

  There was no one behind them, so I couldn’t pretend I’d been going to talk to anyone else. I turned to head back the way I’d come.

  Bobby Harris—short pudgy redhead with blotchy freckles and a haircut that looked like a sloppy copy of Moe Howard—said, “So you making your rounds, shaking hands and saying hi, like your pathetic old man used to do? Gonna be like big hot shit in this shithole town someday? Everybody’s always talking about how you’re such a go-getter, you know. Full of pep. Hardworking boy. King of shithole Lightsburg.”

  I swear I hated Harris so bad right then that I felt like defending Lightsburg. So I just walked up to the pudgy little asshole, real slow, and kept walking till he shoved his wire-rim glasses back up his shiny snub nose, took a step backward, and did this little ha-ha laugh that meant he was nervous.

  Tierden, who I guess you could call the brains of the pair if you kept in mind that it’s all relative, was about my height and maybe half my weight, with awful acne and thin oily shoulder-length blond hair. Even in this heat he wore cowboy boots and a denim jacket on which he had sloppily lettered, in very dark worked-in ballpoint pen, WHO GIVES A SHIT?

  He rode to Harris’s rescue and asked, “You gonna go out with the titless genius?”

  He meant Marti, obviously.

  I took another step so Harris would back up another one, like Tierden wasn’t even worth my attention. “I talked to her a couple of times, she’s really nice, and I hope we’re going to be friends.”

  “ ‘I hope we’re going to be friends,’ ” Tierden said, mincing it in a way that I was sure I hadn’t. “Oh. Oh. We’re almost a British person, aren’t we? ‘I hope we’re going to be friends.’ ” His version of a British accent was half Monty Python, half Ringo, and all duh. “She’s got no tits and a pizza face and ‘I hope we’re going to be friends.’ ”

  “Well,” I said, “you’ve got no brain, and a pizza face with extra sauce and cheese, and I hope you’re going to swing at me because it’ll give me an excuse.”

  “You are so pathetic, Shoemaker. So pathetic. You make me fucking sick. What you gonna do, try and make time with her? She don’t even have nipples, man.”

  Something blonde moved in the corner of my eye. That was why they were doing this. Marti was a few feet away and they wanted her to overhear.

  There were times when I liked being Psycho Shoemaker. I moved close enough to Scott Tierden to smell his nasty breath; his little rat’s-eyes widened to near-human proportions, and his drowned-corpse skin got even paler, and he backed up against the wall.

  “Fuck you.” I let my face go all flat, stared right into his eyes, dropped one hand to crotch height, and stood close enough to give him the horsebite. “Marti and me are friends. Leave my friends alone, got that, Scottsy? Not every pair of friends has to have sex. Unlike a couple of queerboys I’m thinking of, Scotty-poo.”

  Tierden looked pretty pissed and I thought the horse might have to bite him, but then Gratz, behind me, said, “What’s going on here?”

  “He tried to kiss me, Coach,” I said.

  “Oh, fuck you, Shoemaker,” Tierden said.

  “Well, Tierden,” Gratz said, “we don’t allow language like that at school events, anyway, so you’re out. Bye.”

  Tierden went slumping away with Harris trailing after him. At least they wouldn’t be hanging around on the bleachers staring at girls’ butts all night, like the dance was a strip show, which was what they usually did.

  “You okay, Karl?”

  “Yeah, Coach, I’m fine.”

  “Good.”

  And he walked away. Well, this wasn’t too bad. I heard tires scream and Gratz charged out the door to get the plate number; peeling out in the parking lot was a big no-no. He came back in writing something down, so I figured he’d probably tagged Harris’s old pile of shit Ford Galaxie.

  Paul came back in and went by me like he didn’t see me.

  I let a few people get in line behind him before moving in behind two funny-looking freshman guys, who were talking nasty about other kids in their class—probably the Harris and Tierden of the Class of ’77. Maybe that was an essential niche in the ecology, like lampreys or slime
mold.

  Inside the gym, it was still hot. They were playing records while the band was tuning up, and little circles of freshman and sophomore girls, who really wanted to dance and didn’t care about whether or not they looked stupid, were twitching to “Brother Louie.”

  I small-talked my way around the gym until the band got going, and people started dancing. The dark really helps guys dance; a lot of girls are real graceful and pretty and stuff, but most guys just kinda stomp and shake our butts. But not too much so we won’t look like homos. Most of us are at our best dancing in total darkness.

  The bass player could play and the lead guitar almost could. Anyway it was a high school dance and nobody cared much that you couldn’t tell one song from another.

  I tagged Marti for a dance early on; she wasn’t a great dancer—better than all the boys but only about half the girls. Then I kind of wandered around and danced with Bonny, for old times and another sure thing to get my confidence up.

  After a while I saw Paul on the other side of the gym, so at least I hadn’t completely ruined his evening. I talked with people I knew, got a couple of Cokes from the Spirit Club table, and wandered along the walls, meeting people and nerving up to ask pretty girls I didn’t know to dance.

  “Rounding up votes for later?” Gratz asked.

  “I just have a lot of friends.” Jeez, that was the second time some asshole had to bring that up tonight.

  “That’s what your dad would have said when he was in high school. Hey, Tierden didn’t really try to kiss you, did he?”

  I shrugged. “He was saying really cruel stuff about a friend of mine, so she’d overhear.”

  “Marti.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She looked like she was going to cry. That’s why I headed over. Then whatever you said—don’t tell me what it was—she heard that and she smiled.”

  “The way they were trying to hurt her pissed me off, Coach. I’m glad you turned up ’cause it was pretty close to a fight.”

  “I could tell. Stay out of stuff like that, Karl, will you? I’m perfectly sure you were in the right, but I don’t want to have to go through any more PTA meetings with Tierden’s mother whining about how the school isn’t fair.”

  “Yeah, sorry, Coach. I’ll try to stay away from them. Just, you know, when they start hurting people for fun—”

  He laughed. “Doug Shoemaker’s kid, to the bone. Defending the helpless and shaking hands.” He clapped my shoulder and walked away. I resisted the urge to wipe my shoulder.

  About 8:15 I broke away from cracking stupid jokes with Larry and asked Marti to dance again.

  We danced one song, then the band announced that they had to replace a broken string. “How can they tell?” Marti asked.

  “Good question. Hey, thanks for dancing with me.”

  She smiled. “Thanks for standing up to those two creepy guys.”

  “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

  “They were making sure I heard them be assholes. It’s okay that I accidentally also heard you being a gentleman, Karl. I promise I won’t let any other guys find out that you are. For a small fee, of course.”

  It wasn’t that funny, but I laughed. There wouldn’t be much laughter in the world if people didn’t like each other, because there sure as shit aren’t that many good jokes.

  She asked, “Maybe we could dance the first song after the band comes back?”

  “Shit, Marti, sorry, but I can’t. I should be going right now. I have to be at work before ten, and I have to get home, get into my uniform, and get out to McDonald’s. I ought to be running right now but I’m having fun talking to you.”

  “I thought McDonald’s was closed at night.”

  “I sweep out.”

  She slapped her forehead. “Duh, Marti.” Something about that gesture was fucking great. “Look, I’ve got a car and no curfew. Why don’t we dance when the band comes back, you hang around till nine-fifteen or nine-thirty, and then I’ll give you a ride home, and from home to work? It’s no problem, I’d rather not be at home till late anyway.”

  Marti was going to be a Madman, all right. I wondered what happened at home: did they hit her? Nobody sober after noon? Fights? A heap of coke on the coffee table? Bedroom visits from her mother’s creepy boyfriend? Wall-to-wall crosses and nonstop prayers? All of those were certainly possible, based on the other Madmen.

  I didn’t ask. I’d know, soon enough. One problem with an underground, you always know too much about what’s buried. “I’d really appreciate the ride, and getting to dance some more,” I said.

  Her bony shoulders dragged her T-shirt up and down like a sticky drape. “I really just want to talk to somebody for a while, preferably somebody that’s going to be a friend.” Marti pronounced preferably PREFFer-ubbly like all the educated grown-ups, instead of preeFUR-a-blee like the coaches, the kids, and the vice principal. “So this way I have a friend trapped in the car while I babble. And it’s so cool to know that if I make any friends I get to keep them.”

  “Well, keeping them is a whole different kind of problem.”

  She looked puzzled. Luckily the band kicked off into an almost-recognizable version of “Satisfaction,” too loud for us to talk over, so we danced again.

  8

  Tales of the Madman Underground

  NOBODY LEAVES A dance half an hour before the end. At that point the people who had to leave early have already left and everyone else is staying. So Marti and I had the parking lot to ourselves as we walked to her car—her parents’, so I guess they had money—a ’71 LTD, cherry red, with a big old air intake on the hood and a stick. I didn’t know shit about cars, so she quoted me a bunch of numbers and I nodded like I was impressed.

  She drove it like a guy, laying a little rubber on her way out of the lot. “Half a demerit,” I said, “if they catch you doing that in the school parking lot.”

  “Half a what?”

  “Demerit. Like a bad point. If your average goes above two demerits a week, you get a one-day suspension; if it goes above three, you get three days; four and up, a week. Of course there’s lots of shit you get suspended for right off the bat, but all the chickenshit goes through the demerit system. And they erase demerits every nine weeks.”

  “What happens if you keep your average under two?” She floored it up Courthouse Street toward the downtown.

  I didn’t know shit about cars, like I said, but I liked the way the acceleration pushed me back into her passenger seat. I explained, “They don’t do shit, not even talk to you. It’s a great system. You only have to watch your ass if it’s getting close to Friday and you’ve gotten caught a lot. Mrs. Brean, the secretary, figures up everyone’s average on Friday afternoon. Takes her most of the afternoon with charts and graph paper and an adding machine and all. Mom says it’s our tax dollars at work.”

  “So, like, at the end of nine weeks, I can have seventeen and a half demerits?”

  “Right, that’s the total everyone tries for. For anything you can do it’s either half or one, so seventeen and a half is the closest you can get. Peeling out’s a half, getting thrown out of class is a one, making out in school is a one, leaving your tray on the cafeteria table is a half, not standing for the school song at a pep rally is a half . . . if you’re short on sleep, ask Mister Emerson, the vice principal, to explain it to you.”

  “Why doesn’t Mrs. Brean just make up a cross table, once, that says if you have X demerits in the Yth week your average is Z? Then she could just draw a red diagonal with ‘too many’ below and ‘okay’ above, keep running totals, and be done in an hour.”

  “Because they’d make her do something else with the time she saved.”

  “Seems inefficient.” She gunned it to beat her third yellow in a row. “After downtown, which way do I go?”

  I directed her through the dark streets between white splashes of glaring streetlights, her headlights sweeping over front porches with columns and high steep steps up from th
e street, and broken-up crappy plastic toys, rusty bicycles, cars on blocks, vis-orange roll fencing, trash cans with stacked boxes of twenty-four empty Bud cans beside them; now and then a cat’s or dog’s eyes would flash out of the dark at us.

  “My house is right here. I’d invite you in to meet my mom while I change, but, uh, at night things are sometimes . . .”

  “I’ll wait here.” She killed the lights and engine and switched up the radio.

  “See you in a sec.” Seeing the lights that were on, I ran around the back of the house.

  I opened the kitchen door, and the stale cat piss and fresh cigarette smoke slammed into my sinuses. Mom was at the kitchen table writing her big loopy scrawl in her notebook. She had four big books, paperweighted with cats, open in front of her: her big old leather-bound astrology guide, a 1958 nautical almanac, her big UFO book with crappy grainy photos of dark spots in the sky, and Nixon’s Six Crises.

  Of course it would explain a fuckload if Nixon was an alien, but even if he was, I didn’t think Mom was going to be the one to prove it.

  She looked up from her work, the yellow hair falling around her face, and took a drag from the cigarette that had burned down, unheeded, in her propped-up left hand while she scribbled. “Hi, Tiger. Home for the night?”

  “Still have to work.” I thought about not telling her and decided it was better to get it over with. “Uh, Mom, Sunflower got into a fight with that big old coon; she was dead in the yard when I came home from school.”

  “How could she be fighting a raccoon in the middle of the day? They only come out at night!” I couldn’t tell if Mom was angry at me, the raccoon, or Sunflower.

  “Wilson said Trixie was dragging her around in the yard. He thinks she got killed last night under his lilac bush. I’m sorry, Mom, I know you really loved her.”