by Chris McCoy
For Mom
Part One
On a black night, beneath a canopy of dense trees determined to prevent the moon from illuminating his route, Ted Merritt furiously pedaled his bike to his summer job at the local Stop to Shop supermarket. It was 11:05 p.m., he was late, and he had just launched himself down a steep, zigzagging road.
The wind whipped Ted’s face and the glow from his bike lamp bounced off the eyes of animals hiding in the trees. He held his breath on the plunge down, hoping no cars would come barreling around the bend and send him flying into the woods, where he was certain he would become a slender meal for any number of ravenous sharp-toothed beasts. Reaching the bottom of the hill, he exhaled, took a sharp right onto a set of abandoned railroad tracks, and began pedaling through broken gravel and rusty metal stakes that poked up from the rails, eager to pop his tires. Two miles later, Ted cut up a dirt path that crossed the backyard of an old man who spent his nights etching designs onto seashells using an acid-dipped nail.
“Hello, Mr. Gamrecki!” called out Ted, receiving a hrrmmph in response. Scraping through some shrubbery, he boomed out onto Main Street, dodging flashy cars driven by barhopping tourists who liked to speed around and pretend they owned his town. Finally, Ted coasted to the front door of Stop to Shop.
Inside, the bacon was waiting.
As he entered the supermarket, Ted glimpsed his reflection in the glass of the automatic doors, and he experienced a familiar pang of dismay at how his appearance and the way he felt inside seemed to match up so perfectly. His brown bangs were sweat-mashed against his forehead. His white collared shirt was buttoned incorrectly. His earlobes were slightly uneven—one was attached to the base of his ear as it should be, but the other one dangled freely, which was the result of being nipped by a shar-pei puppy when he was a baby, and then being stitched up by an elderly, and unfortunately shaky, doctor. Too often, he felt like a platypus—a creature assembled from a mishmash of mismatched limbs and parts, compelled to hide in a burrow.
And as always, looking into the fingerprint-covered glass of the automatic doors, Ted saw him. Hovering behind his shoulder were the familiar black tricorne hat, sitting atop a greasy mop of hair, and the bearded, liver-spotted face highlighted by a large mouth filled with cracked and missing teeth. He saw the rotund body draped in a loose-fitting shirt that had been falling apart for the past three centuries. A pair of plump legs sported striped tailored trousers that had been the height of fashion in their day, and beneath these pants were two leather boots polished to a high shine.
This jumble of flesh and clothing and dirt and hair was Scurvy Goonda, a pirate who had been hanging out with Ted every moment of every day for seven of Ted’s fourteen years. He was as much a part of Ted’s life as Ted’s own skin.
“Hello, Scurvy,” sighed Ted.
“Ahoy, hello, and yes, Teddy m’boy!” said Scurvy. “It is time to eat some animals. Me goal tonight is tah not even chew. O, a yo ho ho, and a yo ho ho! Ya’ve never heard somebody go two yo ho hos in a row, have ya! To the bacon!”
II
In Ted’s workstation of processed meats, Scurvy Goonda was stabbing packages of bacon with his dagger and sliding the raw slabs off the blade into his mouth. Scurvy loved the cured, smoked strips of pork with an insane enthusiasm.
For as long as Ted could remember, in the tradition of piratical pillagers, Scurvy had demolished Ted’s sand castles and broken his toys and caused all manner of destruction for which Ted was inevitably blamed. Every night at the Stop to Shop, Ted was forced to conceal the pirate’s meat-aisle carnage from Jed, the night manager, so that he didn’t get fired.
“Please. Tell me again: why bacon?” asked Ted. “Why raw bacon?”
“Ah, a story, ya want! Y’see, I once survived on a lifeboat fer three weeks with a lovely pig named Alfie,” said Scurvy, small globs of pink meat decorating his beard. “Alfie was a dear old friend, but there came a point where it was him or me. So I ate me dear piggy, I did. Roasted the lovely strips of him right on the blade of me sword. Alfie kept me company, and then kept me alive. Since that day, tah me bacon has tasted like friendship.”
Ted nodded. Over the years he had learned it was best not to question Scurvy too vigorously about odd moments from his past.
“But it isn’t good for you to eat it raw like that,” said Ted, something he’d told Scurvy many times before. “Part of the point of cooking it is to burn off the fat.”
“Don’t ya worry about me, Teddy-boy,” said Scurvy. “Whenever me heart stops, I just give it a wee pep talk—Ahoy! Ticky-ticky thump pumper! Yer better than that! Buck up and do yer jobbie!—and all of a sudden it’s beatin’ again like I’m a teenager in love.”
Whether consuming cured meats, juggling chainsaws, cliff diving, or any other manner of questionable and dangerous activity, Scurvy approached everything he did as something to be devoured. When Ted went skiing for the first time, Scurvy slapped on his own skis and insisted they take the lift to the top of the highest peak, whereupon he told Ted that they needed to forge their own trail through the wooded backcountry.
“To the ledge!” he’d roared.
Ted had promised him it was certain death, but Scurvy launched himself over a sheer cliff and went tumbling down the mountain, head over leather boots, all the way to the bottom. Then he got up and brushed himself off, all fine and dandy.
“Yer turn!” he’d bellowed at Ted, but after one look at the cliff, Ted took the ski lift back down the mountain and spent the rest of the day on the beginner slope.
Then there was the time Ted had visited the Grand Canyon, and Scurvy had shown up wearing a parachute and had jumped over the edge of the chasm, yelling about how he would drink the entire Colorado River because he was that thirsty. Ted dropped a quarter into a tourist telescope at the top of the canyon and watched Scurvy howl through the empty air, plummet into the water, and be swept away by the current, whereupon he navigated deadly rapids by dog-paddling and using his face to absorb the impact of the boulders.
“Weren’t no worse than boxin’ fifteen rounds with an outback kangaroo!” Scurvy had explained later, while Ted was trying to jam the pirate’s nose back into its correct position.
A great white shark had once swum to the shore near Ted’s house. Scurvy hopped in the bay, grabbed on to the shark’s fin, and disappeared for the next three days as he and the shark zoomed from Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket to the Maine shore and back to Cape Cod again. When he returned, Scurvy demanded that Ted start cooking him seal bacon, saying he’d developed a taste for aquatic mammals. Ted told him that Stop to Shop didn’t carry it.
“Then ya gotta look at it as a fantastic business opportunity, me Teddy!” said Scurvy. “Melts on tha tongue, seal bacon! Ya’d never have tah work at a supermarket again! Seals are tha food of tha future, matey!”
Ted often wished that he was as brave as Scurvy—even though he knew that much of what Scurvy did was more stupid than brave.
Ted wasn’t brave. At school, juniors and seniors picked on certain freshmen almost every day—headlocks and jibes and charley horses and … flushings. He didn’t know why these kids singled him out, and he was jealous of Scurvy’s gift for going unnoticed. Scurvy always explained that appearing invisible was a necessary skill for pirates, who had to be able to sneak up on enemies and slit their lousy throats.
“If you’re going to eat free bacon,” said Ted, “could you at least help me organize what’s left? The night manager just moved me into this department, and I want to do a good job.”
Scurvy stared down at the aisle. “What do ya want me tah do?”
“Stack the packages by brand, but make sure to stack the newer packages on the bottom. We want the bacon closest to the expiration date on to
p.”
Scurvy squinted at the crates. Then he sliced open a package of hot dogs with his dagger.
“Hey, thanks, Scurvy! That’s really great!” Ted picked up the hot dogs and threw them in the trash. “How come no matter how much older I get, you always act the same as you did when I was seven?”
Scurvy looked down at his boots, avoiding eye contact with Ted, which was how he always acted when he felt bad about his actions.
“I’m sorry, Ted. I am. Sometimes I don’t know why I do tha things I do. I admit I am a wee bit impulsive.”
“Just think of it this way: if you get me fired, there won’t be meat for you to plunder anymore. So let’s clean up your mess, and then you can help me stack this stuff before the night manager comes by.”
Jed had hired Ted even though state law required employees to be at least sixteen. Nobody wanted to work the night shift and Jed was desperate for help. But tonight, as he watched Ted pointing to the meat aisle, instructing the empty air on the finer points of stacking bologna, he wondered if he had lowered the job requirements a tad too much.
Then again, is it so wrong to employ the underage clinically insane? thought Jed. Don’t whack jobs like Ted deserve the chance to earn money and contribute to society?
“What is wrong with you?” yelled Ted, at nothing. “Now all the packages are dripping!”
Okay, decided Jed. Ted was obviously far too nuts to be around the meat. It was time to call his mother.
III
“We’ve gone over this before. I am really, really not crazy.”
Ted’s family—his ancient grandmother, Rose; his mother, Debbie; and his seven-year-old sister, Adeline—was having breakfast and analyzing his mental condition. Despite his assurances, his mother and grandmother truly feared he was loony. Adeline simply thought that her brother was amazing.
The family home was an old whaling captain’s quarters that had been battered by wind and saltwater spray for 150 years—shingles fell, leaks were constant, and the gardens awaited a tending to. Though the structure was three stories tall, the family never used the third floor because it lacked adequate insulation—drafts whirled through the dusty hallways even when there wasn’t a hint of wind outside. The second floor held Debbie’s bedroom and the guest rooms—but no guests. On the first floor, Ted’s and Adeline’s bedrooms were side by side, and Grandma Rose had converted the living room into a suite to give herself the shortest possible walk from her bed to the kitchen table, where she spent her long and sour-tempered days yelling about anything that crossed her mind:
“BUCKINGHAM PALACE HAS GOT TOO MANY ROOMS!”
“PEOPLE NEED TO SLOW DOWN THEIR SNEEZES!”
“CAPE COD NEEDS TO GET RID OF ALL THIS SAND! BEACHES SHOULD BE MADE OF BRICKS! THEY’D LAST LONGER!”
Despite her advanced age, Grandma Rose supported the family—her husband had owned a fleet of fishing ships fifty years before, when the North Atlantic was still thick with blue-fish and striped bass. He had invested his money wisely, but ever since his death, the ships had been sold off one by one, and now Debbie and her children lived off what would have been their inheritance. Debbie didn’t work because she was afraid to leave her unpredictable mother alone.
The porch was perhaps the house’s most striking feature, a long platform made from a mélange of exotic wood planks that had probably cost a fortune a century and a half ago. According to family lore, the wife of the whaling captain who’d built the house had liked to sit on the porch and wait for her husband’s boat to return. Once in a while, Ted liked to sit out there too. The view was lovely, and sometimes he could see the backs of humpback whales as they glided by.
But now, back in the kitchen, Debbie was pleading with her son.
“The night manager told us he saw you ranting in the meat aisle,” Debbie said. She had a small glob of chocolate stuck to her cheek, though they hadn’t eaten anything containing chocolate for breakfast.
“I was not ranting,” said Ted.
“This has come up before,” said Debbie. “You remember the time you stole that boat in Falmouth Harbor, and you told the cops that it wasn’t your idea?”
“Because it wasn’t.”
“You ran a Jolly Roger up its mast,” said his mother.
“No, I didn’t.”
“It was SCURVY,” said Adeline. Ted smiled at her, and she smiled back.
“Sweetheart,” said Debbie. “This Scurvy, he doesn’t exist. Scurvy is just your brother’s imaginary friend.”
“Abstract companion,” Ted mumbled.
“What’d you say?” said Debbie.
“Nothing, Ma,” sighed Ted. “Never mind. I didn’t say anything.”
“He said ABSTRACT COMPANION,” explained Adeline. “Imaginary friends don’t CALL themselves imaginary friends, because they know they are not imaginary. They call themselves abstract companions because they’re more than our friends and they’re around all the time. Tell Mom what you told me, Ted!”
“Er,” said Ted, “sometimes, they’re not really friends with the kids they’re assigned to. The word ‘companion’ works better. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”
“But Scurvy loves Ted,” said Adeline. “That’s why he has stuck around for so long!”
“Okay, Adeline,” said Ted.
“They call themselves ab-coms for short!” said Adeline. “Don’t they, Ted?”
“Um,” said Ted.
Debbie stared at Ted. “What sort of nonsense are you telling your sister?”
“Just… it’s just what I’ve learned.”
“Well, you have completely lost your mind, and now you’re turning Adeline into a batty little madwoman.”
“Whatever you think,” said Ted.
“Scurvy DOES exist,” insisted Adeline. “He plays with my Eric.”
Eric the Planda was Adeline’s abstract companion, whom she described as an enormous panda that walked on his hind legs and had a bonsai tree growing out of the top of his head. Because of the plant, Adeline called Eric a “planda.”
“All we want you to do is have a little chat with a professional,” said Debbie.
“I don’t want to.”
“BECAUSE YOU’RE CRAZY,” said Grandma Rose. “AND IF YOU ASK ME, YOU COULD USE A WHOLE NEW HEAD.”
“Mom, tell Grandma that I’m not going to get a new head.”
“Your grandma knows that. She’s just trying to be helpful.”
“MAKE HIM LOOK LIKE MARLON BRANDO IF HE GETS A NEW HEAD!”
“Ted, I went to a therapist when your father left. It helped me a lot to have somebody to talk to. I just think—”
“I have to go to bed,” said Ted, getting up from the breakfast table, which for him was actually the dinner table, given that he’d just worked a full night shift.
“It isn’t natural for a kid to sleep through his summer,” said Debbie.
“LOTS OF THINGS AIN’T NATURAL ABOUT THAT BOY,” said Grandma Rose.
“He’s great! You leave him alone!” yelled Adeline, and ran after Ted.
Outside, standing on the porch, Scurvy Goonda looked at a dolphin frolicking and splashing, and wondered what it would taste like with a side of hash browns.
IV
No matter how tight Ted shut the curtains, light snuck in and bounced off his bedroom mirror, painting golden strips across his body. He was stretched out on his back, staring at the ceiling, which was covered with little glow-in-the-dark stars that his dad had given him when he was small.
As he always did, Scurvy lay in the bed next to Ted, breathing heavily, his face bright red. Scurvy didn’t like the summer heat. Ted used to make him take off his boots before climbing under the covers, but Scurvy’s feet were so shocking to look at—bent toes and explosive bunions, toenails the length of Ted’s fingers—that Ted soon begged Scurvy to keep his boots on. This meant that whatever sludge Scurvy had been tramping through all day got smeared all over the bed.
Ted had thought about asking
Scurvy to find another place to sleep, but he knew a secret—Scurvy was afraid of the dark. “If ya knew tha things that I’ve seen in tha dark, ya’d be afraid too,” the pirate had once said. Ted figured that because Scurvy was so brave when it came to everything else, whatever he had seen must have been really alarming.
This morning, Ted and Scurvy were looking each other straight in the eye, faces six inches apart. Ted saw the grease in Scurvy’s mustache and took in the smell of his breath. Scurvy frequently helped himself to the family liquor cabinet. Luckily, Debbie and Grandma Rose always blamed each other for the missing booze, which allowed Scurvy to drink his fill. Tonight it smelled like he’d sampled the coconut-flavored rum. Scurvy loved all fruit-flavored cocktails.
“Roll over, Scurvy,” said Ted. “It’s too hard to sleep when you’re staring at me.”
“I like sleepin’ on me left side,” said Scurvy.
“Well, I like sleeping on my right side, and it’s my bed, so I say you roll over.”
“If ya want, we could sleep tha ol’ head to toe. That way we could both sleep on tha side that we want, but we won’t have tah look at each other.”
Ted thought about this.
“But that would mean that I would have to smell what comes up out of your boots,” said Ted. “Do you know what that smells like?”
“Smells like adventure, I reckon,” said Scurvy.
Abruptly, Ted’s door squeaked open, and Adeline peeked her little head inside the room.
“You awake, Ted?” she said.
“Come on in, Addie.”
Adeline walked in, dragging her blanket behind her. She only carried the blanket, a relic of her baby days, when she was upset.
“What’s wrong?” said Ted.
Adeline turned her head to her left, and Ted knew that she was looking at Eric. The planda always walked on her left.
“Is it something to do with Eric?” Ted said.
Adeline nodded.
“Tell me about it,” said Ted.
“He’s worried,” said Adeline.
