Savage

by Nathaniel G. Moore

  "Where’d ya get that?"

  "From the shed," Andrew said, blowing across the top of it. "We’ve had it for years."

  Andrew was up for another mêlée in the living room. I lunged forward, trying to escape him through the left, then the right, eyeing a nearby chair I could grab, wedge between us. Andrew was a wall moving forward. To him it was a game; he put his head hand on my head, made car noises, now adjusting his grip to my ears.

  We finished another bowl of cereal and went outside with the gun. "Let’s climb up there, on the roof and check it out." We climbed a large steel antenna that grew from the ground beside the cottage.

  He helped me off the antenna and onto the roof.

  "Up here, right at the top, it’s the best view. We can see birds or squirrels."

  Andrew pointed the worn pellet gun at my face.

  "Don’t point that gun at me."

  Andrew took a few shots through the snug trees. "Let’s get down. I can’t see anything."

  We climbed down and moved through the forest that surrounded our cabin, walking deeper into the green.

  "Close your eyes."

  "Why?"

  "Just do it."

  Andrew got on the cottage’s roof as I walked up the sandy hill. Andrew was careful, climbing a steel antenna pole, pulling himself up on the shingles. The pellet gun was on a strap across his chest.

  "A great big surprise!" Andrew shouted. "Turn around."

  I heard a noise and felt a prick on my ass—a piercing prick on my left cheek.

  Then, a laugh.

  Tears were in my eyes. "For fuck’s sake!" I rubbed my ass to see if the thing was lodged in there. "I can’t believe you shot me!" I pulled my pants down to reveal the red welt across a cheek. "Let’s see," Andrew said. He began to laugh, then held it in.

  "You fuckin’ jerk!" I screamed in a wimpy high-toned sound. I couldn’t help it. Andrew and I walked back to the cottage.

  The setting sun turned the beige hues grey like ash. Andrew charged at me, twisting my wrist into an arm bar. We were wrestling again. I tried to reverse it; he pushed his chin into the back of my spine, upper neck, his mouth moved towards my left ear, "Swing low, sweet cherry isle..." he boomed, as if trying to change the subject.

  Back in the cabin, archives of Playboy memories churned in our skulls, a thousand watts of pink and dark pink lighting up our veins and skin as we lay our heads down on clean pillowcases, the sheets snaking with greedy showgirls in tired lingerie.

  I often remembered how it used to be without the touching, before the strange unification of our naked bodies entered into a system of familiarity and alchemy.

  Toboggan runs, secret midnight firecracker sessions, Commodore 64 marathons, bicycle-grease errands. And the hobbies: comic book conventions, remote-control cars, and how Andrew came over to help build his hobby car from the set I bought with him just after my birthday and how we picked the car out together: Striker. I left the side door open for Andrew, who built the car in my bedroom one night when my family and I went out for dinner. Then the two of us built a miniature racing course in the church’s backyard and raced our cars while drinking up the hot pornographic lakes of our imagination. We tried jerking off in the pews inside the church once, but it was too strange with all the ghastly stain-glass. We laughed about that for a while.

  *

  It was nearing noon on Sunday. The sun grew higher and hotter. A day full of teen-toothed gum chewing, paddles in the water and cereal remnants in my molars.

  Steam rose from the paddle.

  "Let’s go out further," Andrew said. The canoe carved through the lake for hours, the heat crashed down to our cores and hunger grew in our expanding stomachs.

  "Get in the water." Andrew said sharply, pointing his paddle at my nose.

  "Why?"

  "Just do it."

  I got in the water. Andrew followed, sliding into the water with me.

  "Take off your trunks." Andrew said. I balked, looking into Andrew’s eyes, this time not squinting at all. I was about ten months younger than Andrew, but in the same grade. Andrew started school a year late. His mother died of an aneurysm when he was five. I knew everything about Andrew, or so I thought.

  "Might as well do it. I guess they can’t see us." I said.

  "I’ll do it," Andrew said, and submerged, squeezing me and taking my trunks down. He began to tug on my dick. His mouth took it in. He broke through the water.

  "How does that feel?" Andrew asked, eyes closed.

  "OK I guess." I spat water out. I was surprised by the confidence in his voice, how natural it felt. This was what we did now.

  Andrew pulled me in; his hands were like mad fish on bait, glistening under water. I took a deep breath rising up; his head disappeared under water until I felt his mouth envelope my dick. Less than a minute later, he broke through the water, gasping, eyes closed and wet, catching the tail end of a body spasm.

  "Are you done?"

  I finished moaning.

  "Now you do me." Andrew said, mouth half full of water.

  The sun continued its indiscriminate pursuit of our bodies, moles, crevices and lines to be. The red boat hit shallow water and Andrew dragged it across the damp sand.

  We drank dull lemonade and showered.

  After it was over, I packed up my things and went to the cottage for breakfast. We were leaving today, at some point. Returning to the city. The sun-sprayed cabin was vacated, beds once pushed together now separated, the evidence rearranged, curtains tied, door locked again.

  "What time are we leaving?" I asked Andrew through the screen door of the cottage.

  "Not sure."

  Today would be another scorcher of pooled youth resources7.

  7. The summer of 1988 was now a month-old memory, slow to evaporate, and as the Mega Powers, we really had done it all: bike rides, play fighting as a team with local kids our age, sailing, fireworks, go-karts, shopping in Yorkville, swimming at the neighbours’ pool complete with its perverted jet, and “reading” the finest pages of pornography, including the off-season classic, Playboy Girls of Winter, which featured girls in cabins with beams of winter sunlight telling time in between and across their legs, on their backsides and swathed across their breasts. Video games too—loads of them, Summer Games, Winter Games, Ghosts ’n Goblins, California Games, and some wrestling game where you could either be the white-trunk-clad Ricky’s Fighters or the black-trunked Strong & Bad. The dropkicks were especially funny, with the player suddenly in a horizontal position, heading towards their opponent with plenty of time to take a look at the crowd. Andrew would often imitate the experience of waiting to execute the dropkick, putting his feet up in the air, leaning back in his chair and leisurely waving to the crowd.

  4 )

  Round & Round

  August–September 1989

  When Mom was very small, living in Kew Beach in East Toronto, some neighbourhood kids stole her skipping rope. It was a ruse, a conspiracy which in turn became a legendary set-up I replayed over and over again in my head. As a child, the story was told to me only once, but it had a huge impact on me in understanding anything about the woman who my friends said "floated" in her giant pink tea cozy of a housecoat and had a haircut in the shape of Darth Vader’s iconic black helmet8.

  8. “I think I still have a photo you gave me of your mom standing with her back to the camera in front of the washing machine,” my friend told me recently. “And yeah, she had that same hairdo, the triangle bob, black or dark brown. I remember I never saw her feet; she was a bit of a ghost. If your mom was prime minister, no one would ever fuck with Canada ever again.”

  For me, the skipping-rope fable was a signal post; told to me after my own run-in with deception as the 1980s opened up. It was sweet revenge some forty years later when a group of camp bullies took it upon themselves to steal my chocolate milkshake at lunch. This was when we lived on Roehampton Avenue, that period in photographs when I wore glasses (June 1978–May 1980). M
om came to pick me up and asked me about my day, and I told her that someone stole my chocolate milkshake. The drink came in a can and it was not regular fare for me. I was looking forward to it at lunch and maybe I had drawn attention to it when I unpacked my food. I knew the culprits but was helpless to confront them. Mom didn’t feel this way at all, however, and proceeded to chew them out in the most ambitious toxic rant I’d ever heard up to that point. (Mom doesn’t remember this happening, but it was a life lesson, a triumph; she was making up for lost skipping ropes one shaggy-haired kid at a time, and to me it was a rare act of heroics I have permanently archived.)

  The docile sparkplug that would change the course of history and be added to our caustic family flag next to the rolling pin, beer bottle, jar of goose grease, pack of Craven "A" cigarettes and fish-tank bubbler, lay in wait inside our light-blue Buick’s tired engine.

  The morning was unscripted, tired and passed in tedious ritual as the cereal bowls, mugs, juice glasses and separate refrigerator-door seal breaches echoed in crude symphony.

  Mom was antsy and full of tasks. "I have to go to the library at some point today. Do you want to go?"

  We were almost finished emptying the dishwasher. "And if you have any clothes for the Salvation Army drop box," she added. "Holly’s coming back tonight from camping." I wandered into the den and turned on the television.

  Dad was outside, kneading the earth on his knees, his gut rubbing against the open earth; he put a mug to his lip every couple of minutes until his coffee became cold and he tossed the remainder into the garden behind him. The morning had escalated into an impromptu invasion as Dad mapped out his soil-turning conquest.

  I could see him in action through the drapes as he tried to make the menacing zucchini sprawl see it his way—its green prickling tentacles and leaves had pronounced themselves vivid past the lawn’s original border.

  Something had to be done: Dad’s way, non-stop, toiling and chewing off his Saturday inch by inch. I never saw any photos of Dad with anyone other than family members; it was great when Dad had new friends, I imagined saying, but he never did that; he didn’t know how or develop the need. He read newspapers, played cards, picked weeds and wore plaid shirts on the weekends. I never saw him on the phone talking to anyone for any personal reason unrelated to family topics. Did he know people? Did he see people on the street when walking, or was it blank?

  Through the window, I could see Dad’s veiled outline stretched large as he came in and out of frame through the curtained window. Mom had joined him now and was gesturing like crazy. I opened the window a bit so I could hear them, just a crack. She stopped with her hands and turned away.

  Dad didn’t look up. Mom pleaded. "Would you stop it!" Mom growled, cawed, standing behind Dad’s dig stance.

  I turned the television off.

  "David! Stop digging! Stop it!"

  My nose was at the window, heart kicking into a rapid-beating frenzy.

  Mom repeated, "Stop it!"

  "It’s my garden!" Dad snapped back, on his knees, his red plaid shirt a big round rectangle of sweat and sun and digging.

  The cicadas were holding their notes; their song came to a halt. Inside I could feel my stomach lubricating in a layer of pre-vomit. I sprinted back into the kitchen, jumping over the open dishwasher door Mom had abandoned, running into my shoes as I blasted to the side door. I burst through high noon’s Saturday heat, seeing Mom’s perm and the sunlight moving through it creating a temporary golden orb. She turned around, nose red, eyes watering.

  "He won’t stop digging!" she cried. "Would you stop it David!"

  These seconds were without sensation; it took forever to reach him, to be beside his dirt shoulder and smell his specific atmosphere.

  "Stop it!" I shouted.

  He was taking off his red shirt, revealing a yellow mountain of cotton T-shirt and a pair of dirty brown cords. "Stop digging up the fucking backyard, you psycho!"

  Dad didn’t budge. "Both of you get inside."

  He wanted to keep digging. Mom kept screaming. "We will if you just stop!"

  "Get inside!"

  I pulled at my father’s shoulder. Dad pushed me away. "Diane, get inside!"

  I returned to the frazzle, now pulling him from his garden crime scene into the driveway near a pile of wood.

  "Stop it, you asshole!" Dad shouted at me.

  "You stop it!" I shouted back. He shoved me. I shoved back, causing him to fall into the woodpile, spilling a few logs.

  Dad regained his composure, and with the weed pick in his hand, swung at me.

  "Asshole!" He shouted.

  I felt sick: hostile triggers and signifiers went off inside me—lighters flicking, the scent of bright-yellow beer and the gross suds filling me up from toe to head, the rage of a lawn gutted, brutally turned over, final.

  The language was barbed as we struggled, clenching hands and fists while Mom screamed like a banshee.

  Upon passing the driveway, one might have assumed a competitive road-hockey game was going on, but no hockey sticks or nets were in play; they lay dormant in the garage. Dad was holding Mom by the arms.

  "Stop it David!"

  Gusting down the hot driveway to the front door, swinging it open and pouring my eyes over the kitchen for something—anything...

  ...I spotted a wooden tea tray. Returning at full speed to the driveway, I saw Dad trying to shove Mom inside. I was about thirty feet away, standing in front of our car.

  "Get inside!" Dad shouted, glaring at me.

  "You’re scaring me, David!" Mom screamed. I ran at Dad, hitting him over the back with the wooden tray.

  TWACK!

  The funk of cigarette smoke alchemizing with his crap cologne hung in the air that separated us. I stared deeply into Dad’s steel-wool eyes.

  "Just get inside!" Dad shouted as I dropped the tray.

  "Nate!" Mom screamed.

  "Diane, inside!" Dad barked. "Call the police!"

  "You’re insane!" I shouted. "When they get here, I’m gonna make sure they lock you up forever!"

  "Diane, call the police!" He was behind the screen door now.

  "You’re such a fucking piece of crap!" I said, staring into his glazed grey eyes.

  I moved towards the screen door to pull it open. Dad slammed the side door shut in my face, and I heard the lock click, digesting my family inside.

  I stood in the driveway alone, the wooden tea tray at my feet, the sun now fully outstretched in the cloudless sky.

  Across the street in a bright deluge, several neighbours were huddled in their best late-morning wear.

  I dropped out of sense, out of sync from it all, and began shouting with ribbons of tears streaming from my hot face.

  "Call the police; he’s insane! He’s going to kill her!"

  I watched my house from down the street. Dad came outside and was standing in front of the car. "What’s he doing now?!" I shouted. Even more neighbours were gathering beside me.

  The show-stealing antics were rewarded in kind: two police cruisers showed up, just as Dad was fidgeting with the car’s engine.

  "What’s he doing now?" I asked hysterically, looking at my father playing with the car’s guts.

  The police moved up the driveway, one officer taking Mom to a police car, the other, as far as I could see, talking with Dad beside the car. Dad closed the hood.

  I disembarked from the group of local spectators and crossed the street towards Mom.

  "What’s going on?" I said, sidling up to Mom as she lit a cigarette. She dabbed it out after three tiny puffs.

  "They need a statement from me," Mom said. "This is so embarrassing."

  I looked at our house now, feeling as if a sinkhole had risen up and formed. In it we would now—all of us—slide towards a new-fangled dent in the property schematics, a dismal abyss in wait.

  The officer had finished speaking to Dad. He nodded and walked towards Mom and the other officer, passing a few neighbours who had frozen a
long the way.

  "What?" Mom said, her voice rising as she continued, "They’re letting him go!?" She was marvelling at the police officer standing next to her, face in a twist of creases and astonishment.

  "He’s putting the spark plug back in," Mom said, sobbing. "He took it out so we couldn’t leave!" she cried, snot dripping from her nose.

  I stepped back from the police car and watched as Dad finished operating on the car’s engine.

  Fucking asshole, I thought, watching Dad drive away. "He’s going to cool off at his folks’ place," the officer told Mom. "He said in Kingston, right?"

  Mom was dripping with wet and mucus. She nodded shamefully, not making any eye contact. "We just need to take your statement, Mrs. Moore."

  Slowly the gaggle of neighbours and onlookers thinned out, and we returned to our domestic shell.

  "You want to call one of your friends?" Mom asked, blowing her nose with Herculean pomp. She tossed her cigarettes in the trash.

  Later in the afternoon, Andrew came over with a baseball bat. Mom served us lemonade on the front porch; her eyes were now dry and open, awaiting another soft deluge. Telling Andrew what had happened both excited and shamed me, as if sharing the malicious porch gossip would provide fodder for the future judgment and ridicule I knew my best friend was capable of propagating. We rented two movies and ordered a pizza. Mom, Holly and I engaged in a silence with occasional facial recognitions in key comedy points. Otherwise, we were hypnotized for several hours wearing flatline expressions.

  Dad returned the next day, said nothing to anyone about the incident, quietly milled about the house, avoiding chaos, carpet shocks, raised tones or eye contact.

  "Hello, Nate," he said as if nothing had transpired. It was the absolute most terrified I’d ever been.

  Within the high noon showdown, we both flinched, and my fantasy uncoiled, spoiling a reel of seamless smiles. Each toothy grin killed forever.

  *

  At school, I submitted to the boys and their phys-ed steak arms, glistening in dark hairs, and new deodorant, their skin scabbing in places, from battles from sex, from falling down new and drunk. These growing and grizzly fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys would pick me up vertically, my head under their pits, my feet way up above their own heads, then they fell back on a gym mat. It was called a suplex. I stood five-and-a-half feet, weighed 118 pounds. When I had a bad headache from anxiety or illness, Mom suggested an Aspirin intervention while I sought to believe in the gods of synchronicity, not logic.