Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  Finally, still with no idea of the right way to say it, I said, “Well, while he was dying, I was around Dad all the time. He showed me how to fix everything around the house, how to rebuild a chimney and spade a garden and rehang a door and all that stuff he’d been good at once, and was good at again now that he wasn’t drinking. We’d do stuff all day and he’d add it to that list that—the list that used to be on my wall, and then we’d sit and watch old stupid movies together. He used to do that when he was drunk with Mom, but now he did it with me.

  “He was dying, but life was better than it had ever been. I loved that. But after a while I knew it wasn’t for me; a lot of ways, I realized, it didn’t have much to do with me except I was his son and he needed to prove to himself he could be a good father. He wasn’t doing it for anyone but himself, Coach. He had just decided to die sober. He was a proud old bastard, under all the aw-shucks routine he did when he was running for office, he was proud as all shit. So he didn’t get sober to spend the time with me. He could have done that anytime. But he didn’t do it for me. I wasn’t worth it.”

  “He loved you,” Gratz said. “He liked being around you. I know that.”

  “Yeah, I do too, but that wasn’t why he got sober.”

  Gratz sighed. “Karl, I ought to get on your case right now.” He made a sour little smile and I could tell he was trying to lighten the mood but didn’t feel like it. “This is a lot worse than thinking Huck Finn and Jim are two queers on a raft.”

  I made myself smile, knowing he meant well.

  Then he shrugged and said, “No one can get sober except for themselves. That’s what we’ll be trying to tell your mother tonight. She has to do it because she’s worth it. Not for you, though God knows she owes you the moon and the stars after all you’ve been through. Not for Bill, though I think the crazy guy really is in love with her and she’s what he’s wanted all his life, and I don’t understand that, either. If she’s going to get it together, she has to be the one to do it, just because she’d rather have it together than not. Nothing else will work, Karl, you know that. And it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you and want the best for you. And it doesn’t mean your dad didn’t.”

  “That’s what my friends try to tell me all the time in therapy group,” I admitted. “Cheryl is always saying to remember Dad liked my company and did spend all that time with me. Squid tells me how lucky I was to have a great dad for that long. One night for like four hours Darla kept telling me that it didn’t matter whether he got sober and then realized he loved me, or he realized he loved me and then got sober, she said either way my dad loved me and I ought to hang on to that with both hands.”

  “I can tell I’ve misjudged therapy.”

  “You’ve misjudged the group. Therapy is crap, it’s the friends that are great.”

  “Friends are great, aren’t they?” Gratz said. “I guess I should get back to mine. Wish us luck, and if she does get better, forgive your mother for it, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Promise.”

  Damn if we didn’t laugh and joke, just gossip about every old thing, the whole way back to Lightsburg. He dropped me off at my house. I waved as he drove off.

  I headed right for the kitchen. I had no idea how Mom would be coming back, or with who, but I wanted it clean when she did. She’d gotten such a kick out of her clean kitchen on Saturday.

  27

  I Love the McDonald’s Crowd, I Always Feel Like I’m Coming Home Here

  THAT NIGHT, I had just finished Huckleberry Finn and was thinking maybe I should do some math homework, it was looking that dull. There was a tap at the McDonald’s window, which I kind of expected, but I was surprised at the size of the crowd: it was everyone—Marti, Darla, Paul, Danny, Bonny, Cheryl, and Squid.

  I opened the door, not sure what to say.

  Marti looked from Paul to me and back, and said, “I don’t know what guy friends do about something like this in the real world. In the movies I think you’d go out and have a fistfight or something. But you already did and it didn’t work. If you want to have a fistfight about me, well, hell, fellas, you go right ahead, but it didn’t turn out to be nearly as romantic as I would have thought. Maybe you can have a fistfight over who gets to be the biggest queer on the raft.

  “Now, the reason for our visit: I was just lamenting, over Cokes at Pongo’s with Cheryl, that you two idiots still hadn’t made up, really, which is a hell of a way to treat a friendship that practically goes back to the womb. So we figured you wouldn’t act badly if the whole crowd was watching you, and then we recruited Darla because she was getting off work and we thought she might be a good influence, which gives you an idea what a mess you are if she can be a good influence.”

  “Think we can get them to fight?” Darla asked. “That would be cool. Actually I just came along because I had a car, and Marti’s keys have been confiscated, and Cheryl doesn’t have a car because her dad is grounded.”

  “Uh, what?” I asked, trying to follow this.

  “I have no idea either,” Danny said, “but it sounds like another good story.”

  Cheryl shrugged with a funny smile. “Cops came by the house at dinnertime tonight to talk to Dad. Seems a car registered to him—that one I always drive—was spotted cruising on the gay stroll in Toledo on Saturday night. My stepmom doesn’t believe his alibi, so I couldn’t have it tonight because she’s out there with a flashlight searching the car for whatever it is you find if your husband is going to gay prostitutes.”

  “Fairy dust,” Paul said, and we all groaned and made faces at him. “Thank you, thank you,” he said, putting on his Vegas-show voice, though of course he was getting it from television, not from having been to a Vegas show. “I love the McDonald’s crowd, I always feel like I’m coming home here.”

  There was a brief, awkward silence as we all contemplated how little that sounded like a joke.

  “Anyway,” Darla said, “from the pay phone at Pongo’s, we called Danny and he picked up Bonny, and the two of them went over to grab Paul from auditions for Barefoot in the Park.”

  Paul said, “Those ran late because I had to read with everybody,” but for once we didn’t all stop to tell him how talented he was.

  “Meanwhile,” Marti explained, “at first we thought we’d have to not include Squid because he wasn’t at his house when we called, but then the three of us spotted Squid just walking down Courthouse Street, minding his own business. Naturally all us little ladies realized at once that, if we had guessed wrong, and you guys had no shame at all and would quarrel and refuse to make up in front of us terrific women, then we could go to plan B, and Squid would pound you both into a single greasy smear on the floor.”

  “Just for your own good,” Squid assured us. “Nothing personal, you know?”

  “So we met up at the high school parking lot, four people in Darla’s car and three in Danny’s,” Cheryl finished. “This leaves us an empty seat, which you will be getting into pretty soon, because you will not duck out on the group.”

  “But first,” Marti announced, arms widespread, “now and for the first time in any McDonald’s parking lot, gather round because—” She gestured at the other girls, who all sang “Doot doo doo doo!” in a really bad imitation of a trumpet, which told me they’d rehearsed. “Yes, right now, before our very eyes, Paul and Karl are both going to shake hands and come out admitting you are idiots.”

  “Or be pounded into a single greasy smear on the floor,” Squid said hopefully.

  “Well, I know I am an idiot,” I said, and stuck out my hand. Paul shook it, and we looked each other right in the eye. I nearly blurted out that I loved him or some fucking stupid thing like that.

  “Now here’s the rest of the plan,” Bonny said. “Back when we were going out, Karl, being Karl, told me he has some way to fake out the time clock, but doesn’t usually do it, because if he does it too often he’s afraid of getting caught. So you are going to leave a note saying that it was very la
te and somebody just vandalized the windows and you can’t possibly get them clean because you have a test tomorrow. And we are all going to go to the tar pond—”

  “Hold on,” I said, “What if Harris and Tierden don’t come tonight? I could get caught.”

  Bonny shook her head. “I saw the trouble they got into at lunchtime for picking on you. They were mad. I think we can depend on the asshole wagon to hit the windows tonight. Now write that note, Karl—late, windows vandalized, gotta go, very sorry. Ready-set-go, done yet?”

  I grabbed the memo pad and started writing.

  “Now, once that is done,” Marti added, “Karl will fuck over the clock the way he knows how to do, and punch out with his full hours. And we will grab all this food—jeepers there’s a lot tonight—”

  “The crew left a lot and I wasn’t very hungry—”

  She rolled right over me. “And go sit by the tar pond, look up at the infinite universe, and eat McFood and talk about absolutely everything, and you will all tell me sad and funny tales of the Madman Underground, like old friends, which we are all going to be. After which we will all be so bonded that we’ll just shit. How’s that sound?”

  “Fucking great,” I said.

  Paul said, “Double fucking great.”

  Squid said, “Duh, what comes after double.”

  “Fucking,” Danny said. “Weren’t you listening?”

  It was going to be a night to goof, if the girls didn’t kill us, anyway.

  Cheryl nodded emphatically. “At the end of all this, we will be friends, and if I ever hear the word normal out of either of you again, I’ll tie your scrotums around your necks. Clear?”

  “Clear,” I said.

  “Scrota,” Paul corrected, “it’s a neuter third-declension noun.” So while I finished writing the note he tried to explain how a scrotum was neuter rather than masculine, which Squid got right away, because he said it kind of worked like Spanish, but Danny had a little trouble with.

  So I finished the note, and worked my little trick with a paper clip and a plastic fork on that time clock, and packed all the food into triple bags for insulation. I locked up, and we were just walking along the sidewalk beside the building when tires screamed.

  With a mighty wa-chow! of its expiring shocks, Harris’s car tore around the corner and hit that puddle. Tonight, though, not quite so much went on the window, because eight people were standing in the way.

  We all got covered. The car shrieked to a halt, fine-stone gravel howling out from under the locked rear tires as it slewed halfway round to face us. Scott Tierden emerged from the passenger side, looking like the Ghost of World Hunger Day Past, laughing like it was the funniest, cleverest thing in the world, and staring at Cheryl and Darla, who were pretty impressive in thin wet tops, come to admit it, though at the time I didn’t exactly appreciate it, being drenched with muddy water myself.

  Tierden, on the other hand, was hypnotized and paying no attention to anything else. I suppose, to be fair, I should mention that Cheryl and Darla in soaking wet shirts could have distracted most average males from Godzilla, a bagpipe band, and the Second Coming, all at once.

  But when Squid covered the twenty feet between him and Tierden in two big leaps, with ten times the enthusiasm he ever put into going after a quarterback, he got Tierden’s undivided attention. Scotty-poo ran right into the puddle behind him, Squid splashing after. Before Tierden got to the car, Squid had picked him up by the collar and belt. He threw him into the puddle, getting about as much on himself as he got onto Tierden. Tierden scrambled out like an underfed king crab with terrible hair, and ran to the car yelling, “They’re crazy! They’re crazy! Bobby, start the fucking car!”

  As Tierden slammed the door, the car lurched into motion and spun around, heading across the lot; Marti ran past me to the puddle, scooped a handful of mud, and did a high, arcing throw that would have been a first-rate Hail Mary pass. The mudblob came down almost vertically, making a real pretty whap-splat on the hood of Harris’s car, and must have scared him, or maybe splashed enough on the windshield to blind him, so he swerved and his right wheels ran over the ends of two parking bumpers, his prehistoric shocks creaking and smashing and the whole car bucking like a cat in a pillowcase.

  Harris got it straightened out, went over the curb into the street, peeled out, and roared away up the freeway ramp. Of course an old rust bucket like that roars when it’s doing forty.

  “Somebody say something positive,” Marti said, after a second.

  “This sack of food seems to be okay,” Paul said.

  We went back inside, cleaned ourselves and the bathrooms, and then ate the food. We never did get out to the tar ponds. We just sat around talking, one of those nothing conversations that go on for, like, forever, not getting anyplace except closer to each other.

  By the time Darla dropped me off at my house, giving me another kiss that made the whole world spin, I was pretty tired, I can tell you that, and it was almost two. The front door was unlocked, and the lights were on.

  Bill was sitting on the couch with Mom, and she was just leaning on his shoulder. She looked up and said, “Oh, it must be late,” and I was about to ask something inane, like if she’d had a nice evening or something, when she said, “Tiger, your sheets are in the dryer, if you don’t mind putting them on the bed yourself, and could you shake us awake when you get up? We both should at least try to make it to work tomorrow.”

  “Sure,” I said, and then remembered I’d be getting up extra early ’cause Browning and me were going out to deliver Rose Carson’s couch. “Uh, that’s going to be about five thirty in the morning.”

  “We’ll manage,” Bill said, and Mom nodded; he stood up and offered his hand to her like she was a duchess, and after looking a little startled, she took it. He brought her up from the couch and they went into the bedroom.

  “Hey,” I said, “you guys didn’t just wait up for me, did you?”

  “Not intentionally,” Mom said. “But if it makes you feel like a special child of the universe, pretend we did.”

  I put the sheets on my bed, grabbed a quick wonderful hot shower, and made it back upstairs. In less than ten minutes, I was setting down the alarm clock and turning out the light.

  As I dragged my clean sheets up over me, I felt Hairball walking up the mattress to lie down in the small of my back. He settled in with a little Qrph? and the tension flowed out of me like it had been flushed. My eyes came to rest on the alarm; the hour hand was already close to the alarm hand. I would get exactly three hours and eleven minutes of sleep tonight.

  I guess I should have regretted the extra time I’d spent with the other Madmen at McDonald’s, but fuck it, I’d really lost only one lousy hour of sleep. So I was going to be tired tomorrow. So what? Once I got going, with so much to do and so much in front of me, I’d be up on my feet again, running like a crazy bastard.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book would be a great deal more confusing, and far less a reflection of what I was trying to say, without the diligence, intelligence, and perception of Sharyn November, the editor, and Shelly Perron, the copy editor. Any remaining errors are deliberate, or my own damned fault, or both.

  This is JOHN BARNES’s twenty-eighth published book, including two books coauthored with astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Most of his work has been science fiction, but he has also written a number of nonfiction articles, including more than fifty in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance.

  At various times he has taught college classes in English, math, theater, speech, and communications; designed stage scenery and lighting; drawn weather maps; worked setups and tear-downs for a company that decorates building lobbies; written ad copy, political speeches, and computer manuals; copyedited a small city magazine; and traveled a three-state territory as a sales rep. His parents always said he’d never be able to hold a steady job.

  John Barnes lives in Colorado.

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