Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  I nodded through a mouthful of Farmer’s Special.

  Caught up with the orders, Dick leaned out of the kitchen. “Hey, you look a little sad, and you’ve been kind of quiet.”

  “Just a lot on my mind.”

  “One day at a time, bro.”

  “Yeah, well. See you at meeting tomorrow?”

  “Never miss.”

  Angie came back shaking her head; whatever it was, she wasn’t about to be an aunt. I washed the last of the doughnut down with the last gulp of coffee, picked up my bag, laid some singles and change on the counter, said good-bye to Angie and Dick, and was off like as much of a shot as you can be when you’ve swallowed your own weight in breakfast.

  Now the early sun had vanished. Growling distant thunder came from the almost-black thunderheads that darkened the deep reds and yellows of the closed, blind brick storefronts to bare tints in the gray. I hurried toward the school bus stop at Pierce.

  A blinding crack-bang! tore across the sky like God’s photo flash, and black lines of rain came racing up the road after me, like the teeth of a mile-high comb. The bus stop was a block away and I sure as hell wasn’t running unless I wanted to puke.

  A hearse pulled up beside me and a familiar voice said, “Mister Shoemaker, would you rather arrive at school embarrassed, or soaked like a cat in a sack?”

  “Embarrassed,” I said. “I don’t need so many towels to get that off.”

  I got in just as the first big drops spatted onto my hair and neck, and we hadn’t gone ten yards before, instead of a hearse, Browning needed a submarine. “Well,” Browning said, “now that was timing. How are you this morning?”

  “Oh, exhausted, my life’s insane, everybody hates me, and I’ve decided to renounce Jesus and sell drugs.”

  We stopped at a light, and two sophomore girls I didn’t know ran across the street; their thin shirts were soaked and it was a hell of a good show. “Now tell me that doesn’t catch your attention, Karl. You just get hold of those nice big—”

  “Uh,” I said. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “We can, but we can’t find a subject that’s more interesting. But sure, a-course, suit yourself.”

  We’d covered another block when we overtook someone running, books held over the head, long hair swinging soggy wet to midback, and low tight jeans seeming to be sprayed on. “Oh, lord God I like driving by the high school in this weather,” Browning said.

  “You like that butt and hair?” I asked.

  “Oh, that sweet little baby—”

  “How would you like to have that around the shop all day?” I asked. “I could probably, you know, arrange it.”

  Browning’s breath caught. “You mean—”

  “Sure, what the hell, Mister Browning, Larry needs a job.”

  “That was a boy?”

  “It’s more apparent in the locker room.”

  We turned again, through a big puddle, and he said, “And people wonder why our country’s falling to hell.”

  I kinda thought I’d teased the old turd enough, lately, so I just said, “Whatever you say, sir.”

  “No!” he said. “No, no, no, no. Not whatever I say. That’s the thing that’s wrecking this country. People just going along to be nice. People not standing up for what’s right. We used to be a nation that was proud of its dissenters and now we’re a whole country of suck-up chick enshits.”

  I figured if I argued he’d yell at me for being wrong, and if I agreed he’d yell at me for being a suck-up chickenshit, so I just dummied up and enjoyed being out of that cold downpour.

  The ride meant I was twenty minutes early, plenty of time to collect my No Ticket This Year letter from Gratz.

  Paul was leaning up against my locker, looking at me but not talking. For some weird reason, for just an instant, I thought he might be about to beat me up and take my lunch money, the way old Al used to before I hit him with the bat.

  After a long, long second, I said, “Hi.”

  He looked off to the side. “We ought to talk or something.”

  “Yeah, we ought to. Are you mad at me?”

  “No, not exactly.” He paused. “Well, yeah, but it’s not exactly your fault. Not exactly. I mean like you couldn’t know.”

  “This isn’t making a lot of sense.”

  He shrugged, meaning it didn’t matter whether it made sense or not, I guess. “Look, you’re still my friend but I can’t really hang out with you for a while, ’cause it just won’t work with what I’m trying to do. Okay?” He was looking at the floor like he was ashamed.

  I felt like he’d just punched me in the stomach. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked. I thought I might cry.

  “Nothing. Nothing wrong with you. Or with me. I just need to kind of get away from the therapy group for a while. You know how we talked about that off and on for years, being tired of it, you know? We talked a lot about that this summer.”

  Come to admit it, we had. “Yeah, so?”

  He raised his chin a little and looked at me like I might hit him. “So I don’t want to get the ticket this year.”

  It clicked. “You don’t want to be in the Madman Underground anymore, either!”

  I was about to confess that that was the reason I’d been trying to avoid him, until his avoiding me had hurt my feelings, but he grabbed my lapels. “Jesus fucking Christ fuck me up the butt, Karl, you’re such a baby. Grow up. It’s a therapy group, okay? A therapy group. Where they put weird loser kids. We don’t have some kind of mystical magical Madman mystique. It’s not the club where all the geeks get to be special. What it is, is where fucked-up kids go.” His twisted, awkward hands pushed hard on my sternum.

  Like my body took over on its own, I punched low and got him in the stomach. “Great,” I said. “I’m gonna be fucking normal too. So don’t fuck around with me, faggot. I’m tired of you crying on my shoulder and if you’re trying to queer me it ain’t gonna work.”

  He was doubled over and breathing hard; I was pretty strong, he was small, and he hadn’t expected it. “How normal do you want me to be?” I whispered. “Can’t get more normal than beating up a queer, can I?” I couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth.

  He looked up like he’d been poisoned, and I knew he was about to cry and I was about to scream at him.

  He made himself stand straight up, which must have hurt. He turned and stalked away in his funny I’m-mad stiff-legged strut. I guess he has a right to be mad, I thought, and just like that, right as I thought that, I became aware of kids whispering “Psycho,” and it was like a red fog just switched off, leaving me standing in an ordinary hallway. At least twenty kids were staring at me. Great. A couple of them were Goody Two-shoes that would nark me out.

  I opened my locker and yanked out my books with shaking hands and my eyes full of tears. I still had plenty of time to get to class before anyone else, and to meet with Gratz, and all that, but instead of going to class I went into the boys’ restroom, locked myself into a stall, jammed my fist into my mouth so I wouldn’t make any noise, and let the tears flow.

  I was in there while the hoods came in and out and smoked and made stupid jokes. Nobody even noticed that one stall was locked; those guys only used the toilets for ashtrays anyway.

  Class started. They left. All that crying had made me breathe hard, so I couldn’t stand any more of the smoke smell. I was about cried out, anyway.

  I half-wondered if maybe I’d been there so long that school was over for the day. Jags were like that, and so were rages. My sense of time vanished. By my watch, I was going to be ten minutes late to Coach Gratz’s class, and have to take a public reaming. I scoured my face over and over, using the rough paper towels and the harsh hand soap so it wouldn’t be so apparent that I’d been crying, and hurried to class.

  “Nice you could join us, Karl,” Gratz said. “I bet you can explain why you’re late.”

  “I can, sir,” I said, “but, it, um, involves the bathroom—” />
  Everyone, including Gratz, laughed, except Paul, who had his head down on his desk.

  Gratz shook his head, smiling. “I think you just explained everything that needs explaining. “

  Just like that, I was off the hook.

  One problem with fascist dictators is that you never know what’s going to happen; his mercies are as much caprices as his cruelties, I quoted to myself.

  Darla winked at me. I took my seat. Gratz resumed his tirade. “Now, yesterday we talked about two ways not to read Huckleberry Finn, and today we’re going to talk about the most important way of all not to read it, the most absolutely disgusting idea I have ever, ever run into. There’s this guy named Leslie Fiedler—a professor at one of those jerkwater cowboy universities out west—who wrote a book called Love and Death in the American Novel.”

  I wrote down “Leslie Fiedler, Satan,” and put a big colon after it. Then I stopped taking notes to wait for The Sentence. Long experience with Gratz’s classes had taught me that there would be just one sentence I needed to know about Leslie Fiedler, and I would be hearing that sentence at least six times this morning.

  “What Professor Fiedler says is that Huck Finn and Nigger Jim go floating down the river together . . . because they’re a couple of fags!” All the people who thought it was funny to have a teacher say “fag” giggled, but Gratz froze them with his glare; you could tell he was serious as death. “He says their relationship is homosexual. According to Professor Fiedler, Huckleberry Finn has nothing to do with slavery, nothing to do with the meaning of life—no, sir! Huckleberry Finn is the story of two queers on a raft.

  “And you know what? If you start to read any book, you can find things like that. Sure, Jim calls Huck ‘honey’— because people from his background called all children ‘honey.’ Sure, when it’s cold they huddle up to keep warm. Sure, they’ll do anything for each other—they’re friends. But the idea—Marti?”

  “Uh, at my old school last year, we had to read Love and Death in the American Novel, and that’s not really what Fiedler says. He’s just very into Freud, and Freud thought that boys and girls before puberty, when they get to be like super-intense friends, were in ‘homosexual’ love, like it was something they’d grow out of later?” She made it sound like a question. “So he’s saying that Huck and Jim avoid maturity by being so devoted—”

  “Well.” Gratz’s tone froze my blood. “Marti, have you read all the books I’ve read?”

  “I’m sure I haven’t, sir,” she said. She spoke slowly and softly, knowing she was right but not how to back out of it. “But I did read Love and Death in the American Novel, and I do know that what you were saying was not an accurate version of what Leslie Fiedler was saying.”

  “Why the hell would I want to say what he says? If you’d been paying attention in class, instead of getting ready to show off, you’d know that I have been trying to tell you how not to read Huckleberry Finn.”

  “What I meant was, sir, I thought you were misrepresenting Leslie Fiedler.” I could hear her swallow. “In fact I feel that you still are. Sir.” Marti wasn’t the type to give up without a fight, especially not if she was very afraid—some people are like that. They lean into the fear. I was starting to wish I had just stayed in the boys’ room stall.

  “So,” Gratz said, “you’re going to defend calling one of the greatest books in American literature a story about a couple of queers on a raft.”

  That was the third time I’d heard that phrase. Any time I was asked about Leslie Fiedler, obviously, I was supposed to say that he was the professor who had called Huckleberry Finn a story about a couple of queers on a raft. One thing about school, no matter how important or crazy or upsetting things are, there’s always something trivial you should be thinking about instead.

  “But . . . that’s . . . exactly . . . what . . . he . . . doesn’t . . . say.” I could hear the tears in her voice.

  With Gratz standing over my desk like that, yelling at the girl behind me, I could have grabbed him by the balls, twisted them up tight, and yanked them down to the floor. It was a very pleasant thought. “See, Professor Fiedler is some kind of big name intellectual, very very in the club, so all the big name intellectuals shove his silly ideas down the throat of the next generation at the expensive schools. And a kid has no ability to resist an idea, no matter how dumb it is.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I—”

  “That’s why things are in the mess they are in across this whole country, because the leadership just can’t talk to people.”

  Shit, I’d seen old Gratz lose it before but this was like ultraGratzical. Maybe I should just suddenly puke on his shoes, as a diversion.

  “Like. For. Example. I could talk to my wrestling team about James Joyce. I mean, I have read James Joyce, and I can talk about James Joyce, so it would be no problem to talk about him to my wrestling team. But! But! But! I know that if I did, they wouldn’t wrestle better and they wouldn’t get much out of Joyce. It would be for no purpose!”

  His face was past red and heading for purple. His diaphragm heaved his little hard round basketball of a belly against his polo shirt. I could just ram my pencil right up in there, see how deep it would go into him, probably not far, there’s still good muscle there, it would probably just scare the piss out of him.

  Of course I didn’t, but thinking about it was better than listening to him, or to the little catch-sobs I could hear struggling in Marti’s throat. Gratz was going to get what he really enjoyed most—she was going to cry.

  Paul tried to jump in. “Sir, I don’t think Marti was being disrespectful. I feel as though—”

  “What do they do,” Gratz snapped at him, “teach you to talk like that in therapy? ‘I don’t feel this,’ ‘I don’t feel that.’ Even if your old man is a big deal in this town—”

  Cheryl said, “Coach, I think we do understand what—”

  “You people really stick together,” Gratz said. He sat down on his desk and spread his hands, as if laying out all the cards. “But I’m not running this class based on what students think their psychological needs are. No matter—”

  Danny tried. “Coach, uh, Coach Gratz, maybe—”

  “Shut up, Danny, this has nothing to do with you!”

  Danny started breathing hard, the way he did just before a crying jag. Paul jumped up and started to rub Danny’s shoulders, which sometimes kept him from going into it.

  In an almost-reasonable tone, Gratz said, “All right, Danny, if you’re going to have one of your things, you can go have it in the principal’s office, and Paul, you can go with him. And Martinella, don’t you even think you can get away with stuff like this in my class. You go down to the principal’s office, too.”

  The three of them gathered up their books and papers. I guess Paul must’ve done some good, getting to Danny’s shoulders as quick as he did, because Danny was just making some little spasming sounds in his chest, like fighting down hiccups. They made a strange little trio going through the door—huge Danny, his short hair neatly in place even now, in his eternal FFA jacket, and small skinny Paul and Marti, each topped with a mess of uncontrollable curly hair—like a cathedral with two flanking towers.

  As the door closed, Darla stood up. Her books were already stacked against her pink leotard, but she held Mister Babbitt out in front of her, as if he were a microphone, or like she was Hamlet looking at Yorick’s skull. “Oh, dear, Mister Babbitt. Oh, dear dear dear. I do believe you are right. Everyone interesting has left the room. There is no one left to make the scene, and consequently, the scene is not made.

  “What’s that you say, Mister Babbitt? You don’t want to stay and listen to an asshole shouting at us? Oh, oh, oh dear, Mister Babbitt, you naughty little bunny, don’t you know that if people overheard you calling that asshole an asshole, they might think that I had called that asshole an asshole, and then I could get sent to the principal’s office for calling the asshole an asshole? What’s that? Don’t mumble, yo
u bad little rabbit.” She held Mister Babbitt up to her ear like a phone. “Why, Mister Babbitt! Of course you are right. All the cool people are already down at the principal’s office, so we will just be going along there ourselfies. Say good-bye to the kiddies and the asshole, Mister Babbitt.”

  She walked to the door in the slinky, hair-flipping way she had perfected for annoying teachers, turned, wiggled Mister Babbitt’s arm so that he seemed to wave at us, bowed deeply, and went out, closing the door behind her.

  Gratz’s mouth could not have hung any more open if she’d kicked him in the balls. I had never been so in love before in my life.

  “So,” Gratz said. “Now, about Professor Fiedler and—”

  Cheryl grabbed her books against her chest, barely keeping them as she ran for the door. Gratz started to say, “I didn’t—” and she was gone, leaving the door flapping into the hall behind her. Gratz very slowly walked over, closed it, and began his harangue about Professor Fiedler. He pretty much delivered it all to me, I think watching to see when I was going to stand up and yell, or break for the door, or something. I sat and listened, my face as still as I could keep it. I even took some notes on what he said.

  I didn’t yet have my ticket-proof letter from him.

  So here I was, the Lone Madman. All eyes were on him as the town rode away, and he sat there on his great white chicken. My work here is done. I’m needed wherever there’s another friend to betray, another butt to lick, wherever the people cry out for conformity. I couldn’t draw cartoons because Gratz was standing right over me, and I wouldn’t be able to show them to Paul anyway. And since I already had The Sentence about Leslie Fiedler, there wasn’t anything left to listen for.

  16

  The Value of Anything

  WHEN GRATZ FINISHED repeating his variations on The Sentence about Fiedler, he said, “Okay, far enough for today,” and made the usual pencil mark on his notes. “Over the weekend, read through to the end of Chapter Six. Karl Shoemaker, don’t forget you need to see me for a couple minutes.”