Ache

by P. J. Post

  We both turn our heads at the sound of a growling engine and squealing brakes.

  I’m out of time.

  “You sum-bitch, I know you did it. I know you broke my goddamn door. You’re going to pay for it too, you little shit.”

  My dad drags himself out of the station wagon and heads over. He’s fifty, has a mess of long stringy, greasy gray hair, a gallery of tattoos and has a slender, but muscled frame. He’s tough as nails. He’s wearing his gray mechanics uniform. It’s early, so he’s still mostly sober. He’s the exception to the rule about bullies, he doesn’t back down when you pop him in the face, he just gets more excited.

  He flicks his cigarette at me as he gets closer.

  I dodge it and suddenly, for the first time in a long time — I’m nine again.

  “What the fuck are you doing at a bank? You never worked a goddamn day in your whole miserable life, what business do you have at a bank?”

  “Dad, please?”

  “Please what? Spit it out pussy. You got something to say to me?”

  Shauna is standing next to me, and I’m humiliated and suddenly so weak. My voice catches in my throat and I can’t speak. She takes a step back, I can’t protect her and I’m afraid she senses it.

  I’m ashamed and hate myself even more.

  “You always were a little cocksucker. So if you’re at a bank, you must have money here, so where’s my goddamn money?”

  And then he takes a swing and lands it on my jaw. It staggers me, but my arms are like lead and I can’t raise them, even to fend off the blows I know are coming.

  “What’s wrong with you? Where’s that fight I put in you? You just going to take it up the ass like that?”

  “Stop it!” Shauna shouts, taking a step closer. “Just stop it!”

  “Oh, I get it. You’re visiting your little whore here. Maybe she can cover your debt and get me my money or — I can take it out in trade.” And then he leers at her and starts to laugh, like he’s the funniest person alive.

  Suddenly, I hear every girl I ever saw wronged, every girl hurt senselessly — every girl I couldn’t help that was made to suffer unnecessarily at the hands of some two-bit, fuck-up like my father.

  I feel the blood in my hands again as I flex my fingers and tighten my fists into fucking clubs.

  “Connor,” the girls scream like a chorus, “help us.”

  I can suddenly feel the blood pounding in my temples and my vision narrows to a single point, just above his goddamn chin.

  Never fucking again.

  His face is spouting blood before I’m even aware I’ve hit him.

  He goes down hard, like cutting the strings to a marionette. Lights out.

  It’s all I can do not to kick his fucking teeth in.

  Shauna jumps back again.

  “You okay?” I ask her.

  She nods, in shock I think. This sort of thing is pretty fucked up if you’ve never seen it up close, close enough to smell the beer and cigarettes, close enough to smell the desperation, the fear.

  “See? This is what I am.”

  “No, that is what he is,” she says.

  The bank manager and a few others come out about the same time as a police cruiser burps the siren and hits the lights.

  Jesus Christ.

  The cops must have followed my dad to the bank to give him a ticket for his crazy driving, and I’m pretty sure they saw me deck him too.

  “I’m sorry, Tonya, I’m so sorry for everything.”

  “What did you just say?’ Shauna asks, taking a step back.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you just called me Tonya, what the hell Connor?”

  “No I didn’t. Look, this isn’t going to work between us, it just isn’t. I wish we had more time to talk.”

  The cops get out of their car, and I see one of them on the radio, probably calling for an ambulance. My dad is still laid out cold.

  “Shauna, are you okay?” the bank manager asks.

  “Yes, Mrs. Farmington, I’m fine.”

  “We’re all going to have to talk to the police, you know,” Mrs. Farmington says as she gives me a compassionate look.

  Shauna waves her away. “Yes, I know, please, can we have some space. Connor, please, I don’t care about this. Maybe we have some work to do, but I’m not giving up. I’m sorry, but don’t you dare leave me hanging.”

  “Son, we need you to come on over here and turn around, okay?” one of the cops says.

  I glance at Shauna who is trying to reassure her boss and talk to me at the same time as I walk over to the cop. I’ve been through this drill before.

  He cuffs me.

  “Connor!” I hear Shauna shout across the parking lot as the cop pushes me into the car.

  The cruiser is facing away from the lobby entrance so I can’t see Shauna or anything else.

  A few minutes later, I hear the ambulance siren and then see it pull up. My dad must be on his feet, because I can hear him shouting and swearing. Most of it is about me. I’m guessing the paramedics are having a tough time getting him under control long enough to examine him.

  Another police cruiser pulls up along side and two more cops get out.

  This is a fucking circus. Thanks, Dad.

  The other cop leans in the car, it’s Officer Flashlight from the Laundromat — Dan-o.

  “Your dad’s at it again, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s a piece of work.”

  “Tell me about it. Does that mean I can go?”

  “You’re not having a very good week, huh, son? We’ll get this mess straightened out down at the station.”

  “Great.”

  I drop my head. To think I could have just stayed home and watched re-runs of Green Acres and Petticoat Junction and avoided overhearing Tonya and Bradford, avoided remembering her and realizing I loved her, avoided being arrested, avoided all of this.

  I can’t imagine how embarrassed Shauna must be, humiliated even, considering the whole fiasco is taking place at her job in front her boss and her coworkers. I’ve seen it all before, but I’m pretty sure this is a first for most of them. It’s not like television.

  But I know Shauna is going to try to forgive this too, like it matters in the end. My mind is made up, regardless. I just need to get her to that place so she accepts we’re done and that it isn’t anything to do with her, not entirely anyway, and then she’ll be better, even okay in time.

  As I sit here, I realize my rage is evaporating, like a deflating balloon. Even after all the abuse and humiliation, I held it together. The rage kept me strong, gave me purpose, gave me the strength to fight back. But now, I just don’t know anymore.

  I hear Shauna shout as they close the doors, “I love you, Connor Clay!”

  And now I understand with clarity, not like a child feeling sorry for himself, but as a man who not only understands his station in life, but accepts it. There’s no point in fighting against the inevitable. It’s about accepting reality and discarding childish hopes and dreams, because they don’t pay the rent.

  Besides, Shauna’s love was going to turn to resentment anyway, and it wasn’t going to take very long, it never does. I’ve seen that before too. I failed Shauna. This is all I have to offer, a life of bitterness, disappointment and hopelessness, just ask Annie — except you can’t.

  I’m truly unworthy of love.

  They were all right about me, Carla, my Dad and even Dan-o — I don’t have a future.

  This is one hell of a start to my eighteenth birthday.

  My name is Connor Clay and I’m broken.

  16

  The Rise and Fall of the Elm Street Scorpions

  Behind my house is a playground. Along the back of the playground is a dense wood and on the other side of that is a concrete drainage ditch that winds around back towards the playground and under Elm Street. That’s where I met Annie.

  I was twelve and my dad had started working the night shift at the beginnin
g of the summer, which gave me the whole night to find adventure, as long as I was home by sun-up, he would never know. I remember the first time I got the guts to cross the playground and adventure past the wood. It was late May and it was raining big drops. The clouds seemed to follow me, but the sky was clear to the west and the sun streamed underneath, sparkling and shining off of everything; creating rainbows, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, like it was raining sunshine. It was almost like it was calling me, leading me.

  The drainage ditch was wet, but didn’t have running water. I looked over my shoulder, back to the wood and my house that lay beyond and stepped off the grass onto the banked concrete sides.

  I looked back up, but could only see trees and clouds. The ditch was so deep I couldn’t see over the top. I knew about the tunnel under Elm Street, because you can just see the entrance through the bushes from the playground, but a high fence keeps people out. The fence only runs half-way through the woods. I walked back along the broken concrete towards the park and the tunnel imagining what was on the other side. Was it a magical kingdom with knights and princesses?

  I knew it was really a trailer park, but I dreamed anyway.

  By the time I got to the tunnel, the rain had stopped and I could hear the other kids playing above me in the park just beyond the bushes and fence. I got excited because I wasn’t one of them. I was on a real adventure. I was going where all the neighborhood kids were forbidden to play.

  This is where I find myself after I walked away from the Police Station. I can remember everything from that summer.

  I remember stopping at the edge of the sunlight, my toes brushing against the shadowed darkness and peering inside. The concrete ceiling wasn’t much taller than I was. The light from the other side was shining through.

  And then, like a shrouded echo, the hot humid air of that distant summer returns and I see a silhouette leaning up against one of the walls.

  “Keep out, this is private,” I hear from the tunnel. It’s a girl’s voice.

  I walk inside.

  “I said stay out, you dummy.”

  As I near her, my eyes adjust and I can see she’s wearing striped bell-bottom pants and a boy’s dress shirt and skinny black track shoes with stripes down the sides, the kind you get from the discount store. She’s poor too. She’s smoking a cigarette. I can see the smoke filtering through the sunlight.

  “I said, beat it, kid,” she shouts, pointing at me with her cigarette.

  She’s maybe thirteen or fourteen.

  The sunlight is glowing around her like a halo.

  I’m mesmerized.

  Her hair is purple. I’ve never seen anyone with purple hair.

  I step close and stare at her. She has dark eye make-up and black lipstick, and her eyes are like perfect circles of coal. She’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. I decide I’m not going to leave, she’ll have to make me.

  “Are you deaf?” she asks, bouncing off the wall to jump in front of me.

  “You’re really pretty,” I say.

  She stops cold and takes a drag off her cigarette, as though considering.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “My uncle doesn’t think so. He says no one is ever going to like me.”

  “He’s a liar.”

  “Yeah, how do you know that?” she asks.

  “Because I already like you,” I say.

  She flashes me a smoky smile. “I’m Annie.” She sticks her hand out like grown-ups do.

  I shake her hand. It’s rough.

  “Connor,” I respond.

  “Nice to meet you, Connor.”

  “Nice to meet you, Annie.”

  “Want a cigarette?” she asks.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Come on, they’re fun. You never smoked?”

  I shake my head.

  “Here.” She pulls one out and hands it to me. “Put it in your mouth like this.”

  “I know how it works, my dad smokes,” I say.

  She strikes a match and lights it. I pull in the smoke and blow it out. I sneak cigarettes from my dad all the time. I don’t know why I lied to her, some secrets need protecting, I guess.

  “Hey, you big fat liar. You do so smoke.”

  I lean back against the concrete wall. “I guess I do.”

  We stand there for a moment as the sun slowly sinks below the trailer park horizon.

  “What are you doing down here,” I ask.

  “It’s my fort. No one ever comes here, so it’s mine.”

  “What do you do here?”

  She grins. “Anything I want.”

  “Sounds fun. What about your parents?”

  She spits. “Never had a dad and Mom has the cancer, so I’ve been staying with my uncle since school ended.”

  “Where is that?”

  She points back towards the trailer park. “Over there.”

  “Isn’t he worried about you being out?”

  “He works nights. I just have to be back before the sun comes up.”

  I grin.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Me too. We could meet and play here. I mean if you want to.”

  “Play? Little kids play. Are you a little kid, because if you are, you can’t be part of this club.”

  “No...” I stammer.

  “How old are you?” she asks.

  “Almost thirteen.”

  “Okay, I guess that isn’t a little kid. I’m almost fourteen.”

  “What’s the name of the club?”

  “It doesn’t have a name, it’s just mine.”

  “Clubs have to have names,” I say.

  “You sure about that?”

  “It’s a rule,” I say earnestly.

  “Well, I don’t know. Let’s see, I like scorpions, they’re cool. They’re tough and even the little ones are so poisonous they can kill you. Something with scorpions?”

  “Scorpions are pretty neat and I bet they can protect themselves.”

  “Oh yeah, they can so protect themselves.”

  “How about The Elm Street Scorpions?”

  She grins. “I like it, it sounds mean.”

  I’d never been part of a club before. I hadn’t been part of anything since my mom died.

  “Welcome to the Elm Street Scorpions, Connor.”

  “Why, thank you, Miss Annie.”

  We laugh.

  It feels good.

  “Ever had a beer?” she asks.

  I have, but say, “No.”

  She turns around and pulls two cans out of this huge purse she has laying on the ground. She hands me one. It’s not very cold. I pull the tab off and toss it.

  “Hey, save those, we can make chains with them.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Just don’t let it happen again,” she says.

  We tip the beers back. It tastes awful, but I like it anyway.

  We drink two a piece that first night, and she tells me about this new music called Punk. “It’s crazy,” she says. She tells me about the record store nearby that plays it all day and how she hangs out and listens and all the kids are digging it. It’s fun and angry. It’s not like her uncle’s music or other grown-up stuff.

  We make plans to go.

  The next night I bring my guitar.

  “Cool, you play?” she asks.

  “Yeah, a little.”

  “Play something,” she tells me.

  I open the case and pull out my mom’s Martin. It’s a light yellow, spruce top dreadnought.

  “What should I play?”

  “Something, I don’t know, anything.”

  We sit down and she opens two beers and sets one down next to me.

  I take a drink and think and then start playing Stairway to Heaven.

  She listens, her eyes wide. “You’re amazing, that’s incredible. How did you get so good?”

  “I’ve played for a long time and I play a lot. I don’t have friends, but
I have this,” I say, holding up the guitar.

  “Play something else,” she says.

  So I do. We drink a few beers and I play for a long time.

  We meet again the next night, and the next and every night through June and July, working on our beer tab chains, playing and singing songs.

  After a couple of weeks, Annie decides I should pierce my ear.

  “It’s cool, all the punks are doing it. You want to be a punk like me?” she asks.

  I nod. I want to do anything to make her happy. She’s become the most important person in m life.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not that much, don’t be a baby,” she says.

  She has several earrings in each ear. I can take anything she can, I have to.

  “I don’t have an earring, how are you going to do it?”

  “I’ll give you one of mine; it’ll be like a blood oath. I saw it in a pirate movie once.”

  We drink a few beers and smoke cigarettes until it’s dark and then she pulls out a flashlight and a needle.

  “Ready?”

  “I trust you.”

  “You should, I’ll never hurt you Connor, ever — honest. Cross my heart and hope to die.” She smiles at me while she crosses her chest, and I decide that she’s even more beautiful than that rainy sunset on the day we met.

  She sits on my legs, facing me.

  I can smell her perfume. She smells like candy.

  “Here, hold the flash light. Like this,” she says.

  She turns and positions my head so she can get at my ear and grabs my earlobe. She doesn’t count or anything, she just shoves the needle through.

  It hurts something awful, but I hold it in and don’t move. I don’t want her to think I’m a baby.

  She pours something on my ear that makes it burn, and then I feel her pushing something through the hole and pressing against the back of my ear.

  She leans back and I sit up. She’s grinning.

  “You’re done. I wish we had a mirror, it’s so cool, like a rock star.”

  I reach up and feel it. It stings, but I feel cool for the first time in my life and I smile back at her.

  She holds her ear and pushes the flashlight towards her face. “I gave you the black rose one. It looks like this. Cool, huh?”

  She’s still sitting on me, and then she slides closer until our faces are almost touching. I can feel her breathing. I put my arms around her waist, because it seems natural.