Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  Once she’d blown a couple streams of smoke around dramatically, I told her about the two rescue missions last night.

  She thought it was pretty funny that we’d all met up there and claimed she was hurt not to have been invited. “Maybe if I start walking Dorr Street myself?”

  I must’ve looked pretty startled because she laughed, blowing a big gust of smoke up toward the ceiling, and whipped Mister Babbitt out of her purse. “Mister Babbitt, do you think somebody is having naughty thoughts? Speak up, naughty bunny. Oh, you think this nasty, nasty young man was getting off on imagining us doing naugh ties for money? And you think we should—oh, well, just whisper it to me.” She held Mister Babbitt up to her ear, then made a shocked face and talked into him like he was a microphone. “Mister Babbitt! I am not going to slap him there. That would mean having to touch it!”

  To get off that subject, I said, “Look, you’re gonna hear from everyone else, so I’m just going to tell you,” and explained about Gratz and my Get Out of Therapy Free letter and all that.

  She shook her head and whacked her forehead. “Oh, God, Darla. Oh, God. Duh-duh, duh-duh-duh. I am the dumbest fucking bitch that ever fucking walked, and I’m always finding fresh proof.” Her eyes met mine. “That would be such a great deal. You know you’re gonna bullshit Gratz, wall to wall. You know that’s not hard at all. He won’t have a clue. Whereas some of these therapists are fairly smart people and they catch on to shit and all of a sudden they’re not near as nonjudgmental as they say they are, and they nark you out to cops and things . . .” She shrugged. “Jesus, what a great deal, Karl, and here I only realize what he was offering us after I went and called him an asshole in class. Now if I want one of those letters, too, I’m gonna have to kiss him where it feels good and he don’t wash.” She shook her head again. “Oh, Darla.”

  “He’s a fool and a mean bastard of a bully,” I pointed out.

  “He is, but if he’s a big enough fool, you can cope with the rest.” She shook her head. “That letter means you’re gonna miss all the reruns. Danny doing his big-strong-gotta-cry number, brave little Cheryl being so courageous about having to blow Grandpa, and Paul playing ‘save me I’m having a hissy fit’ every time anyone gets more attention than he does.”

  “I wouldn’t let any of them talk that way about you.”

  “I wouldn’t care.”

  “Yeah, but I would.”

  She didn’t answer right away. Watching Darla, I saw that one reason why some smart people smoke is all the delays it gives them to rewrite their answers, and the perfect prop for posing when they finally have what they’re going to say all composed perfect. It would make them look so classy if it didn’t fucking stink.

  After a long drag and looking up in the air, Darla said, “Karl, no wonder they all love you, you stupid bastard.”

  “Darla, they are my friends. I’m sorry if you don’t like anybody in the therapy group.”

  “They’re better than the people that aren’t in the group.” She picked up the ashtray, which was in the shape of the Pongo’s monkey’s face, with his mouth open. She seemed to make a point of looking into the monkey’s eyes as she stubbed out her cigarette hard enough to make a smeary mess, looking exactly like she was grabbing his decapitated head and ramming it down his throat.

  While she lit another, I said, “Look, I know they’re screwed up, but they’re the friends I have. And I’m so pissed that I’d like to kill Paul, but if any shithead lays a finger on him I’d be there with the bat, like Squid says, to explain ‘Don’t be an asshole’ in terms anyone can understand. It might be fucking crazy—in fact I know it is—but those guys are pretty much all the family I want to admit to. Even Paul. Especially even Paul.”

  She took another drag and shrugged. “I hang out with them too, as much as I hang out with anybody. At least the Madman Underground have a fucking clue what kind of world it is. But the Madman Underground is all about how much everybody needs each other, and hauling my ass out of here is all about not needing anybody. And the Madman Underground is all about telling your story to people who already heard it and like you anyway, and I want to live someplace where I have my story, not just some things that happened to me.

  “Besides, it’s not like it’s nearly as wonderful as people like Paul make it out to be. You know I’m on probation for possession; who do you think turned me in? Our old pal Vic Marston the Lovable Wonder Shrink. Who smokes the stuff himself. Maybe he wouldn’t have turned me in if I’d let him feel me up the time he tried, hunh? Who do you think tipped my parents when I was gonna elope? Shirley Reloso, that shrink we had freshman year, the one who was really nice to me and made me her special friend and all. The one that narked on me that I was beating up that little turd brother of mine in the first place. Jesus, it would feel so good to bang his punkin head up against a door one more time and hear him make those whiny crying noises ’cause he was too chickenshit to really cry, he’d get so scared of me.”

  At least this was familiar territory. Maybe a third of the time Darla was crying about what a bad person she was, and the awful things she’d done to Logan, and how she was a sex kitten for college boys and a dumb bitch and everyone used her and dumped her and like that. Then maybe another third of the time she was basically a grown-up trapped in high school, it was all about her plan to get out and how she was going to get so far away she’d never be bothered again. But then there was that last third of the time, when she was a stone crazy-bastard fucking psycho, bragging up all the shit she’d done and gotten away with. When she was like that she always made me kind of sick to my stomach, but horny, too, come to admit it.

  Darla glanced to make sure Michelson or some customer wasn’t watching her, leaned forward, and spoke very softly. “Now let’s talk about some interesting issues. You know Carol-Ann, she works in the kitchen here, not real pretty but big boobs, dropped out of school last year because fucking high school was too fucking tough for her?”

  “Uh, yeah, I think—”

  “She told me about what you do to cats down by Hawthorne Ditch. She’s seen them out there twice, and then seen you coming by and getting what was left of the cats. What do you use, Karl, a steak knife? Garden shears, like you did Squid’s rabbit? Carol-Ann says sometimes you leave them in fucking pieces.”

  I felt my whole brain go blank. “I, um—”

  “Eddie Cockburn, that kid that stole the money from you one time, out of your shed, he watches your house all the time. He says sometimes you leave the cats out in the yard to get your mom all upset.”

  “I—It’s a fucking raccoon, Darla!”

  “Oh, no, that’s not what they say, those are cats, your mom’s cats, and—”

  “No, I mean, a raccoon. Kills the cats. An old boar coon that lives right around the Hawthorne Ditch, he kills them and eats them, that’s why—”

  “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. They eat garbage and corn and things.”

  “And anything else they can catch, kill, or steal,” I said. “A family of them got into the reptile pit at Scout Camp and ate pretty well all the snakes and turtles in one night. They’re like giant pretty rats; if it’s food and it doesn’t eat them, they eat it. This guy’s big and old and mean as shit. He’s the one that tore up the Schneiders’ dog last year—”

  “Hey, did you do the dog, too? What happened, did he get away before you got done playing? Do you use that coon to cover everything you do?” Her gaze into my eyes was cold and level. “I know how fucked-up you really are, Karl. Everybody knows what you did to Squid’s rabbit. Everyone can see you’re running around on like five thousand pounds of anger. You’re best buddies with a homo-whore and I just saw you in here letting Lightsburg’s favorite old fag buy you dinner. Old boar raccoon. Shit. You probably get a lot of the old people in town to believe that, too, because they believe all kinds of folktales and shit.”

  Or, I thought desperately, because they hunted, and ran traplines, and they’ve come by and found a fox
in a trap torn to pieces—

  “Even though you’re fucking loaded with all that work you do, and you’ve got a great body and girls like you and you could, like, bang your way through the school—”

  Okay, now I knew she had lost her mind. But I couldn’t seem to stop looking into those mad eyes.

  “—only girlfriend you’ve ever had was weird helpless little Bonny. I can guess what kinds of things you do to her because boys talk, you know, and she doesn’t keep a boyfriend unless he’s pretty physical. Like she’s the queen of ‘stop that some more,’ you know? Old Chip was in here just last week all bragging about pantsing her and not giving her pants back till she put out.”

  At least that made sense; I knew what to say about that. “And he was out to beat up Paul last night. And Bonny just dumped him. Maybe we need to get together to fucking deal with the son of a bitch.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Bonny will beg you not to hurt him. He’s the only boy she’s ever loved besides you.” She blew out another cloud of smoke. “Paging Dr. Freud, you know? I’ve got my bunny, you’ve got your Bonny. I don’t know what you do to enslave her but I’d like to find out.” The weird little wickets of her eyebrows bounced up above the tortoiseshell glasses, she performed a big drag and puff on her cigarette; abstractly, I thought Mom’s technique of smoking for emphasis was more refined, but Darla’s was more dramatic.

  Her smile was creepy. “Karl, baby, I know about the cats—half the town has heard stories about what the cats look like before you take them home to bury them.”

  I wanted to scream or run or something but I just sat there, not knowing what to say, not sure how even to move.

  She leaned forward, showing cleavage, and ran a finger around the side of her breast. “We all know about Squid’s rabbit.”

  I was starting to feel a little desperate—well, a lot desperate. “Darla, I have never hurt one of those cats. It’s that old coon that tears them up. I just bury them because my mother can’t stand to look at them.”

  “That’s not what I hear. Or what the town hears. And we hear it from someone who knows,” she said. “It’s not just seeing cut-up cats and you with your shovel.”

  I was trying to think what to say, and realizing there must be something that—She had been looking around, and now she just reached into her Pongo’s uniform top—they were pretty low cut—and pulled her breast out. Slowly, she ran a finger over the nipple. “Kill me a cat, Karl, and do whatever you want,” she said. “Don’t pretend you don’t want to.”

  She tucked it back in, sat up, and giggled. “Was that sexy, or what?”

  “I—it got to me.”

  “Oh, good, I was afraid you really were queer like Paul.” She leaned forward, breathing out smoke, and despite the smell, I leaned in. I faintly remembered that I’d seen a blacksnake get a baby rabbit like this, once, when one of the other Scouts threw it into the pit while the adults weren’t watching. I figured I didn’t have half the chance that rabbit did.

  “And I can tell you’re smart about the whole thing. In spite of all the evidence, you’re never going to get caught. That’s pretty sexy, too, Karl, intelligence is always sexy.”

  “What am I doing that looks so intelligent?” I wondered if my mouth was hanging open.

  She sat back, gave me a wry little smile like she knew she was explaining something I already understood, and said, “Of course you wanted to see Gratz instead of a real shrink. Because Gratz would never catch on to you even if you were roasting babies and had a refrigerator full of old lady cutlets. Gratz isn’t half as dangerous for you as a smart shrink would be.

  “Plus the idea of spending an hour bullshitting Gratz every week, instead of listening to reruns of the Greatest Stories of the Pathetic Losers Club—what a cool deal! I might just go see Gratz after school on Monday, tell him what a bad girl I feel I’ve been, and see if I can be Gratz’s stooge, instead of a Madman, this year.

  “You can’t throw away a great deal like that, just because you miss being in the Pathetic Losers Club. They’ll still talk with you, bud, they have to talk to anyone that’ll talk to them, they don’t have enough real friends to lose one.” She crushed out another cigarette in the monkey’s mouth, making a point of looking into his eyes. “To get that letter you’ve got, I’d do lots of things for it. Maybe I’d even do Gratz.”

  “Darla,” I said, “you scare me.”

  She turned on a thousand-watt smile, all flirty and cute and come-and-get-me, and said, “Thanks, baby, I try.” Then she leaned forward and whispered, “Next time you kill a cat, if you take me along, I’ll do anything you want afterward. Whatever you do to Bonny or whatever else you want, and I hope it leaves marks. I don’t even want you to wash your hands; I want them on me while they’re still warm, damp, and sticky from the cat. This is a guarantee, Karl, take me along when you do a cat, and you’re in. It would be so cool to do that with a guy who just killed something.” She sat back, smiling like she was proud as all shit of herself, and licked her lips at me, half-giggling, like she couldn’t believe she was doing this, either.

  This was spookier than anything she’d ever done, and I was creeped out, I can tell you that. Also so hard I was afraid to get up from the table. But most of all, I was confused; this looked rehearsed, planned, scripted, like she’d been planning to say these things to me for a long time. What the fuck was she up to?

  Michelson called her back to the counter, and she blew a kiss at me and was on her way.

  But whatever she was faking, it was clear she wanted me to kill a cat in front of her, and she wanted to have sex with me after I did. Through all my confusion, two thoughts burned like high-beams: a shit-free bed and losing my virginity to Darla.

  I only hoped nobody saw what a silly sick grin that put on my face, or if they did, they’d think it was because I was checking out Darla’s ass in that short tight skirt of her Pongo’s uniform.

  On my way out, Darla ran around the counter to give me a big hug that involved a certain amount of her chest being up against me and her leg running against mine, the high heel scraping down my calf. Of course I loved it (I mean what guy wouldn’t?), but I was kind of wondering what I’d look like walking down the street with a major tent in my pants.

  When I turned away from Darla, Stacy Hobbins and some of her other social buddies were just coming in. Her face looked like she’d sat down on a Popsicle naked. Then she looked away. The social platoon, all in their huge platform wedgies and jeans, clip-clopped off to a booth.

  Then I realized it looked to Stacy like I was running around on Cheryl. I laughed for most of my way back downtown, kicking an old pop can in front of me, thinking, Me, Karl Shoemaker, breaker of hearts—the guy that might have to kill a cat to lose his virginity. Hopefully just one cat to get started having sex, but even if it turned out to be one cat per time, at least I had plenty of cats. I guess when life hands you lemons, chop ’em up and get lemonade; when life hands you cats, chop ’em up and get pussy.

  21

  How Many Madman Stories Ever Made Any Sense?

  THERE WAS A catch to all this. There always is a catch, they say. I was mad at the bedshitter, but I’d been thinking more along the lines of arranging for an encounter with a hunter, something that might be messy but would be over in a second. I felt sick about what the coon did to cats. At least I was going to tell Darla that I killed them first, before I cut them up, quick, that there was never any pain.

  I had been wanting to fuck Darla since about the time that Paul told me what fucking was and I started noticing those famous boobs growing on her. She was more or less the walking definition of sex.

  I was still having some trouble imagining getting in the mood right after cutting up a cat, especially after making the kind of mess the coon had made of Sunflower and Ocean. On the other hand I kept thinking about the way that Pongo’s uniform fit Darla. And the way her tight jeans and leotard tops did.

  What the fuck was her damage, anyway? She might b
e ten million flavors of pervert, but I was sure that when she was talking to me about killing a cat and having sex with her, there was something—

  “Hey, I got a bone to pick with you,” a voice said, behind me. I turned. It was Scott Tierden, and sure enough, Bobby Harris was standing just behind him, so that they looked like a skinny guy with a fat shadow.

  “‘I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, and what can be the use of him is more than I can see,’” I began, and Tierden, being a dumbass, walked right up and grabbed my lapels, so I slapped him down low. It wasn’t the wrack in the sack I was trying for, because he bounced back, glaring.

  I gave him my very best Psycho Shoemaker happy-smile, and thought about kicking his head. “Pick your bone, while you still got one.”

  “I’m fucking tired of you making fun of us and acting all superior, Shoemaker, just cause your drunk dad was the mayor and you think all your mental patient friends are like oh so special hot shit. You make me fucking sick.”

  “Put your hands on me again and I’ll make you so fucking sore,” I said, “that you’ll cry every time Bobby fucks you up the ass.”

  “Fuck you,” Harris said, stretching his vocabulary and displaying more wit than he usually did.

  “Your mom’s a crazy drunk slut,” Tierden said. “She lets Neil Strossman bang her like, all the time.”

  I could tell he’d been saving that one up. Probably took him like a week to think of it.

  I closed the four steps between us real slow; it would bust his balls better if he chickened and ran than if I actually had to slug him. Still, with all the yard work I did I was pretty strong, and come to admit it, I was in a mood to hurt something.

  “You boys break that up!”

  It was Browning, stomping into the middle of things—I hadn’t even realized we were right at the alley just behind his shop. Tierden gave me the one-finger salute, and they both ran back to Bobby’s car. Bobby popped a u-ey and nearly collided with an old lady driving a Volkswagen.