The Redeeming Power of Brain Surgery

by Paul Flower

  “It’s almost ten o’clock. You better be gettin’ on to bed, don’t you think?”

  Ten o’clock—how could that be? Jesse whirled and looked out the window. It was dark. He’d been in the tub nearly three hours.

  “What’cha done to yourself, boy?” Mom asked, an edge of worry in her voice. She opened the door wider and started to step into the room, squinting at him. A shaft of light from the bulb in the hallway ceiling fell across his chest.

  Jesse was suddenly too tired to talk, and he didn’t have the strength to hide his body from her. So he sat there, looking down at himself—at the bright red of his arms, chest and stomach above the pinkish gray waterline.

  “You ‘bout took the skin right off you, didn’t you? What you using, some of that Lava soap?”

  “No. No Mom. I just washed good, like you always say,” he said quietly, his voice far away.

  “Oh, baby, does it hurt?” Her voice was soft and right next to him now. She touched his shoulder and Jesse winced. It felt like she’d touched a bad sunburn.

  “No,” he said, still looking down at the red skin stretched over his ribs. “It doesn’t hurt at all. I was just doing what you told—what you said—Mom.”

  “Looks like you maybe went too far.”

  “Oh, yeah, maybe.”

  “Well, you get yourself dried off and dressed, and you can have an ice cream or something before bed.”

  He looked at her, his mind fumbling with a dark thought he knew he needed to talk about. Finally, it came to him. “What about Elvis? How’s he doing? I mean... he going to, um, cooperate?”

  Mom smiled. “Sure he is, darlin’. Sure he is.” She turned to leave.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  She took a deep breath then let it out slowly. “I told him what we’re going to tell everyone else—that his fool daddy took off on us, left his family, and there’s nothing we can do but forget him and move on. Told him we’ll file one of what they call a missing person’s report with the police just in case they ever come across him.” She smiled. “But you and me know they never will.”

  “Oh.”

  She paused, backlit by the light from the hall. The only sounds were the water dripping into the tub and the kitchen radio playing a song that was just music, no singing. It had lots of fiddle and banjo in it, and Jesse hated fiddle and banjo music. In his exhaustion, the song irritated him, so did Mom’s attitude; he wasn’t sure she’d done enough to really scare Elvis.

  Mom started back toward the kitchen, thought about something, then stopped, leaned back in and smiled. “I also told him if he ever remembered what happened today, you’d kill him.”

  Jesse felt an icicle slide down his spine.

  “Good. Good Mom,” he said, smiling nervously.

  She again started to leave.

  “Mom?” Jesse said, stopping her again.

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “Can I have chocolate ice cream?”

  “Sure you can, baby. Sure you can.” The smile she gave him was the sweetest he’d ever seen from her.

  ****

  An hour, maybe two, later, Jesse sat on the edge of the bed, smoking another joint. There was no end to this night. It was a bleak tunnel of sad possibilities extending infinitely in two directions; squint through it one way and he had a half-moon view of the past, turn the other way and he was blinded by the train light of the future. Looking out the window now, he also felt the guilt and uncertainty hanging over him, threatening to crush him. Screw it, he mumbled. Yeah, he thought, screw it. He wanted to call his mom. He couldn’t explain why, except that all roads led back to her. Maybe he wanted to vent at her. Maybe. Yeah. Darn straight. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was ready to let her know what he thought. He ran a raw, red hand through his hair, took another hit, held it in, then exhaled. He licked his fingertips, then squeezed the tip of the joint. When he was sure it was snuffed out, he carefully placed it in the drawer of the bedstand, vowing not to forget it was there. He rolled back into bed. He would call Mom later. Darn straight he would. He would call her and give her a piece of his mind. This thought made him giggle, because he could picture it, the piece of his mind, in his hand. Jesse snickered, doubled up in bed for several seconds, imagining Mom’s face darkening as he tried to get her to hold the piece of his mind. Finally he controlled himself, but only after several deep breaths. He dried his eyes, rolled to his side and pulled the covers over his shoulder. Jesse allowed his gaze to run across the ceiling and down to one of the bedroom windows. Elvis, a boy in his PJs, was sitting up in bed, in front of the window, staring at him matter-of-factly.

  “You and me, we both know what happened out there. We know, but everybody else thinks he run off,” the boy Elvis said.

  Elvis picked at his nose for a second, then looked down at his fingertip before wiping it on the sheet. He swung his eyes back to Jesse’s. “It’s a lie, you know. He didn’t run off. I know it’s a lie and so do you.” Elvis paused. “So does she. Mom, she knows it’s a lie too.” Elvis’ eyes glazed and stared past Jesse, fixing on something just over his right shoulder. “Dad always said lying was the worst thing you could do,” Elvis continued, a thin little smile spreading across his face.

  Jesse’s throat tightened.

  Elvis looked at his brother. “I guess we all know that ain’t true, right?” He giggled. “I mean, there’s worse things than a lie, huh? You and me gotta know that by now. I mean, sometimes the truth’s worse, really.”

  Elvis turned away and pulled the sheet over his head. He curled up. To Jesse, Elvis looked like a sleeping dog lying on the ground after it had snowed; you could tell what was there, you just couldn’t see the color or, really, the complete shape, but you knew what the thing was.

  For several seconds there wasn’t a sound. Jesse swallowed. He was a boy again, a boy whose skin was on fire and whose head was heaving with molten, wild thoughts. His throat felt thick and swollen. So much had changed so quickly. Why, one minute, he’d been up here in this room thinking about strawberry fields and John Lennon and a worthless man. The next minute, it seemed, he’d been a killer looking for a way to cover up what he’d done.

  Elvis hadn’t told anyone anything. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t ever, Jesse thought. Elvis was going to believe the lie. He was going to accept the lie—hide in it. Even as he thought this, Jesse wasn’t sure.

  The acts of getting out of bed and fumbling around for his clothes, of getting dressed and going down to the kitchen were all part of the same reality, which was a debatable reality at best. It wasn’t until he was staring into the cupboard over the kitchen sink that Jesse realized he was awake and adult and in his new house. His head throbbed and he craved something sweet. Part of him wanted another drink, too. The drinking and the pot smoking had left a bitterness, a realization that he had fallen farther than he’d expected to fall. He felt dirty. Dirty and hungry for more.

  There was no food to be found. Frustrated, he contemplated going back to bed but imagined the high-octane dreams, his brother’s and father’s eyes in the dark corner of the room, stalking him. Food, he needed food, not sleep. Somewhere, he thought, a convenience store had to be open. With any luck it would sell booze.

  He made the decision to drive into town without making it at all. He was suddenly in the Mercedes, backing out of the driveway. The sounds of birds singing in the trees surprised him, as did the feel of the cool breeze and bright sun of a late spring morning. Was it spring? Wasn’t it fall, the middle of the night? No. No, wait. This could be a dream, he heard the little boy saying in his head. He gritted his teeth and took his foot off the gas, allowing the car to crawl. Suddenly, he was the boy again, opening the smokehouse door as he pictured Sheriff Matt Dillon would do it. Out of the smokehouse billowed that awful awful odor. There was a sound, too. It was the hum, the
combined buzzing of a million flies, creeping through the gloom in one round, ugly chord.

  The head of the corpse was deep enough in shadows that he couldn’t see it clearly, but the bottom half of the man was painted in diagonal-sunlit pinstripes from the cracks in the weather-beaten walls. In the pinstripes, he could see the flies. They were a quivering mass that moved restlessly over the man. If he hadn’t already known, Jesse wouldn’t have been able to tell the flies were on a body. He would’ve thought the shape underneath them was another kind of meat, a big old country ham maybe.

  The flies that weren’t on the body were angry black raindrops in the air. Some slapped his neck and face in their rampaging, sending shivers through him.

  Jesse remembered that he’d come to finish the job. He told himself that no matter how awful he felt about it, no matter how much he wanted to turn and run away, he had to do it. He pulled the Mercedes to the shoulder of the country road. Trembling, he put the car in park, closed his eyes and felt himself falling back through the years, falling, falling falling to his knees in the smokehouse. He leaned forward slowly until his forehead touched the floor, or was it the steering wheel? To his surprise and disappointment, Jesse began to cry. He was sobbing like a baby and floating above himself, arguing with the man in the car and the boy on the floor.

  “Be strong, you stupid moron. Be a man.”

  Trouble was, the boy-Jesse thought, while standing there in the smokehouse, as cool as killing the man had seemed, the result hadn’t been pretty—not pretty at all. He wanted to go back in time, back to before he’d done this thing, and say HA HA, the whole thing was a joke; nobody hurt. He, the boy man-killer, imagined himself as a magician on the Dead Sullivan Show; he saw himself clapping his hands, the dead man springing to his feet, bouncing on his toes, then bowing to the crowd, which loved this little trick he’d played.

  Impossible, he thought. The man really was dead, and young boys can’t do magic—not big tricks like that anyway.

  It had been days since Mom had shown him this awful hiding place—days since he’d become a killer. Now, in the smokehouse, Jesse rose to his feet and forced himself to re-enact the scene he’d already played out in his mind, shaking the man loose, jumping out of the way as the body fell and the flies darted, rolling the shockingly swollen corpse over and sliding the eyelids down, the way he’d seen it done on TV, covering the blue-gray eyes that were still, it seemed, crying out.

  He worried that maybe the eyelids wouldn’t stay shut. He’d seen a painting of President Lincoln after he’d been laid out in bed, dead; they’d put quarters or something like that over his eyes to keep the lids down. He wished he’d brought a couple of quarters.

  The next part was the hardest. Jesse swallowed hard and grabbed the man under the shoulders, in the armpits. It turned his stomach the way the body was swollen and stiff, but how else was he supposed to do this? He walked out of the shed backwards, dragging the body, his own mouth open, his back aching. He slipped and fell once, twice, his mind and heart racing. He recovered and continued, even though his fingers felt dirty and stained where he’d touched the cold skin of the eyelids and where he was touching the man’s stiff armpits. Still, Jesse clenched his mouth and closed his eyes, urging himself to be strong.

  After a time, he opened his eyes and stared out beyond the windshield of the Mercedes. His hands were knotted to the steering wheel.

  He was wet with a cold sweat. He had to be courageous, he told himself. He had to be. Head up, eyes now forward, trying hard not to look down, he felt the weight of the body pulling hard against his fingers, his wrists, threatening to pull his shoulders and elbows from their sockets as he dragged his father deep into the woods. At a clearing, he dropped the body, then went back to the smokehouse and retrieved the shovel he’d brought. He returned to his father’s side and took a moment to get his bearings. A large oak tree hung over the clearing. Someone, some kids he figured, had hammered a thick spike in the trunk about head-high to Jesse. He took that as an omen.

  He knew not to dig near the tree; his dad had taught him that was where the biggest roots would be. Jesse walked to the spike and stepped off twenty yards or so straight out from it. There were some big flat stones in the grass there. Another omen, he figured.

  The soil was sandy, the digging was easy—most of the roots were small enough to hack away with the shovel; for the rest, well, he just dug away the dirt underneath them and kept going. He dug for what seemed like hours. His eyes burned with sweat, but Jesse felt nothing else. He became happily, peacefully numb. When the hole was as deep as he thought he could make it, he dug a little more.

  At last, chest heaving, Jesse clambered out of the hole and threw the shovel aside. Grabbing the man by his boots, he dragged the body up over the pile of dirt and then down into the grave.

  He climbed out quickly and had the first shovel of dirt ready to throw before he let himself look at the man. Jesse took him in slowly, starting from the legs, then across the now crusty t-shirt, skirting the bloody edge of the wound. From there, his gaze jumped. From a gray face that no longer looked like a man but like maybe a waxy, obese dummy-man, the eyes stared up at him. To Jesse, they seemed sad, sadder than he’d ever remembered them being. It was like the man had stopped pleading and was now just sad over what his son had done.

  The heavy shovel slipped in Jesse’s sweaty hands. Some of the dirt dribbled onto the man’s chest, bounced off his chin and clung to his cheeks. Jesse tightened his grip and, eyes burning again with tears, tossed the rest of the dirt at the man’s newly fat face. Without looking again at the eyes, he jammed the spade into the pile of earth, pulled out another load and threw it in the hole. Frantically, he repeated the routine, tears falling.

  When he was finished, Jesse stood, shovel in hands, staring at the place he’d buried his father. He thought for a moment, then, working quickly, chest heaving, he dragged the two flat rocks to the mound of dirt and shaped them in a T. He stepped back. It wasn’t much, but it was the closest thing to a cross that he could throw together. In his tired brain, he figured anyone who found this might see it as a pet grave and leave it alone, and also that God, maybe, would feel better about him for the cross—about Jesse, for making the effort.

  He spent a few minutes scuffing up the freshly dug dirt, then several more minutes bringing old rotted limbs and leaves to the spot and arranging them so they looked natural, like they’d fallen there. Finally, Jesse gritted his teeth and imagined weeds and vines covering the grave, making it seem like the crime had never happened. He told himself to forget this moment, this place, but he realized he never would.

  He threw the shovel as hard and far as he could, heard it clang against something in the woods.

  Then he was racing away, the Mercedes spewing gravel, jolting onto the blacktop, moving in time, racing, with the tennis-shoed boy-feet in his mind, bulleting down the dark road as though someone else were driving. Something inside him was screaming that he should turn around, that he needed to stop and think—had he disguised the grave somehow?—but something else was telling him to go, move, move, get away.

  He barely slowed until he reached Stan’s 24-hour Mini-Mart, the sign glowing like a forlorn beacon on the outskirts of town. Jesse hurried inside, walking rapidly, not stopping, not slowing, not until he reached the bathroom, where he washed his fingers and hands, scrubbing them hard, over and over until the skin bled.

  As he toweled the hands dry, Jesse felt the cell phone vibrating in his pocket. Gingerly, wincing at the friction against the raw skin, he withdrew it and glanced at the display. He grunted. “Stupid local idiots. I’m not supposed to be on-call tonight.” He punched a button, held the phone to his ear. “This is Dr. Tieter. And this better be good.”

  Chapter Ten

  Put down that tuna fish before I spank your butt.” His mom was wagging a knobby finger at him. The dark eyes were daggers, her red hair rumpled, h
er head cocked to one side like a lead weight was in there. The shrill voice rattled through his head, making it ache. “You’ll eat what I tell you to eat—what I make. Tonight, it’s beanie weenie casserole so you’ll eat beanie weenie casserole and like it; no ifs, ands or buts.”

  Elvis was seeing her through a camera lens or something, like she was on TV. He tried to look down at the black and white PF Flyers on his feet, but he couldn’t see down there.

  The tuna fish can flew past his mother’s head. Mom ducked. The can hit their dog, a skinny black and white mutt named Hound Dog, then clattered loudly on the blue linoleum. Hound Dog yelped and started chasing his tail. The sound was odd, echo-ey. To Elvis, it was like they were inside an empty fruit jar. He wanted to cover his ears but he couldn’t reach them. He couldn’t look down either—couldn’t see those shoes.

  Mom slapped him. Elvis convulsed with sobs. He jerked his head back and she hit him again, hard. His nose throbbed and he turned and ran; he ran away from Hound Dog, the tuna fish and the beanie weenie. He awoke into something far more frightening: the present—what had to be the worst day of his life. He sat up, tried to focus in the semi-darkness. It took him several seconds to decide he’d fallen asleep on the living room floor. Then he remembered falling asleep on the couch. He must’ve rolled onto the floor without waking up.

  He took a swipe at the butt of his jeans, brought his hand back around and stared at it. There was a smear of something red on his fingers. The stuff had dried on his naked back too; he could feel it cracking when he moved. It took several seconds for him to remember Lavern had spilled fingernail polish. She had done a lousy job cleaning up.

  Elvis squinted at the clock on the wall; it had gold spires spoking out of it––Lavern told him once the spires were supposed to look like the rays of the sun. Mom had given them the clock as a wedding present; she’d bought it from some junk store. Elvis had always hated that clock. It was eight-thirty. Nearly two hours had passed since Donnel and Lavern had left.