by Bert Murray
Uncle Toby walked back to the wall. “My sister, Carol, Chester’s mom, doesn’t like to drive in the winter. She’s been very upset by all of Chester’s problems. Her health wasn’t too good to begin with. That’s why I came down to pack up Chester’s things. Five years ago, his dad went to California to play drums in a rock band. We haven’t heard from him since.”
“I guess Chester took that pretty hard.”
“His mother and I think that’s when his trouble began. He was really acting out that year. He was 14. I bought him a pet canary for his birthday. She had such soft feathers. A lovely bird.”
I almost laughed out loud, but I kept it in. I didn’t want Uncle Toby to think I was laughing at him.
“I thought having a pet would help. Something to bond with. But he let the bird loose and ran away from home, you know. To find his father in California. He managed to get to San Francisco on Greyhound buses.”
“Did he ever find his father?” I asked.
Uncle Toby shook his head. “No. He didn’t find him.” He coughed. “California. It was a disaster for the boy. That’s when things really went downhill. When I finally tracked him down it was only because he’d been arrested for selling pot on the Berkeley campus. Chester really lost it. He wasn’t washing his clothes. He shaved his head. I thought maybe he’d become a Buddhist monk. But nothing he said to me fit in with what I’ve read about that religion. The police told me when I picked him up that he’d been sleeping in the basement of one of the dorms there and that during the day he was making quite a good business selling marijuana.” Uncle Toby began to pick at a piece of tape still attached to the wall. When he pulled it off, a piece of paint came with it. “Darn, they’ll probably charge his mom for that,” he mumbled.
“If you have some Wite-Out, you can hide it.”
Uncle Toby began to rummage through the crates. “Wite-Out, huh? I would have never thought of that. Good idea. Thanks.”
“Will you tell Chester I said hello?”
“Sure. Colin? Right?”
“Yes. And is there a place I can call him?”
“No. He doesn’t have a phone at the hospital. But I can give you his mom’s address. I’ll make sure Chester gets to read whatever you send him.”
He lifted a spiral notebook out of one of the crates and took a pen from his breast pocket. He scribbled the address down and tore the paper out of the book and handed it to me. “I’m glad you came by. It’s nice that someone cared about him. Chester has always been such a lonely boy. He’s had a rough time with things.” Uncle Toby wiped his brow again with his handkerchief. “By the way, before you go, what do you think I should do with this?” He was holding up a football helmet.
“I’ll take care of that,” I said, taking it. It was Karl’s helmet. So Chester had taken revenge and stolen something from Karl’s room after all.
I said goodbye and decided to go to the basement and toss the helmet into the trash near the spot where Chester used to sit. I stood there for a moment remembering all my conversations with him.
7.
MY TALK WITH Chester’s uncle had been disturbing. After throwing out Karl’s helmet in the trash, I headed to Susan’s room on the third floor of Livingston. Had Chester told her he was leaving? She had to know something.
I could smell her musk-scented incense halfway down the hallway. I knocked twice and she opened the door seconds later. She looked surprised to see me but invited me in without a word.
It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dark lighting. There were thick black drapes covering the windows, and she’d replaced the bulbs in her lamps with low-wattage ones. On the far wall was a floor-to-ceiling black tapestry with odd red symbols. I wondered if they were connected to black magic. Small pewter statues of gargoyles and warlocks cluttered her bookcases.
I took a seat on her bed. The sheets were deep purple satin. Every time I shifted position, a pillow would slide to the floor. I wondered how she could get a good night’s sleep on such slippery sheets. She sat across from me on a black velvet beanbag chair.
“I just came from Chester’s room. Did you know he’s gone?” I asked.
“Gone where?”
“The nuthouse. I ran into his Uncle Toby. They pulled Chester out of Elerby, and he’s not coming back.”
“Shit. That’s horrible.” She swept her bangs away from her eyes, but they immediately fell back into place. She’d recently dyed them maroon, and they matched her lipstick.
“I knew he smoked a lot of pot, but I didn’t know he was doing hallucinogens. I didn’t know he was falling apart. What kind of friend was I if I didn’t even know this?” I shook my head and reached for the M&M’s in my pocket. Everything in my life seemed to screw up. Now Chester was nuts.
“Chester had issues. Don’t beat yourself up over this. He had a very bad aura around him. A lot of shit. I can feel these things.”
“But when I last saw him, it seemed like he’d pulled himself together.” I reached for another handful of M&M’s. I wasn’t sure if I should get into Chester’s romance with Susan, but I did anyway. “I figured that dating you had helped him and he was doing much better.”
Susan sat up. Her black plastic mini-dress crackled. She tugged the bottom of it down over her black fishnet stockings. The skirt was so short that I could see that they were held up by garters. The outfit really showed off her curves. “Wait a minute, Chester told you we were dating? Not true! We never went out after the night you introduced us.”
I grimaced. “What? Really? He told me you weren’t hooking up, but the way he spoke, I thought you were hanging out regularly.”
She walked to her dresser and stubbed out the smoking incense. She picked up a small trash bin and swept the gray ashes and burned stick into it.
I stared at her. “Susan, what happened with Chester?”
She looked at me for a few seconds and sat next to me on the bed. One of her pillows slipped to the floor. “I thought you’d get all weird around me if I told you about what was going on that night. But since he’s gone now, I guess I can.”
I was beginning to wish I’d never introduced them.
Susan sighed. She leaned over and picked up her pillow and put it in her lap. “OK, so you remember how Chester and I went back to my room after the Campus Pub? Well, for a while everything was totally chill. I put on Dark Side of the Moon and we stayed up for hours talking about our previous lives. I’m sure that you know he’s really smart, especially when it comes to history. We even kissed a little. But when the topic of Napoleon came up, Chester went mental. He totally cracked.”
I had a sick feeling in my stomach. “What did he do?”
She looked disgusted. “Chester dropped his jeans and boxers and danced around my room naked with a hard-on. I asked him to put his pants back on, but he acted like he didn’t even hear me.”
“No way.” I walked away from the bed and came back and stood in front of her. “Chester’s strange, but I can’t see him being that crazy.”
“You see, you’re upset.” She rubbed her face with her hands. “This is why I didn’t want to say anything to you, Colin. I knew you guys were tight. But the truth is, I’ve never been so grossed out. The only way to get him to leave was to threaten to call campus security. He ran out in just his shirt and boxers and left his jeans in my room. I threw them out the window.”
I was a complete ass for putting Susan in that situation. I started to pick at a hangnail on my thumb. I felt terrible. What a fucking disaster.
“Jesus, Susan. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he was like that. If I did, I wouldn’t have set you guys up. You know that, right?”
“I admit, it made me wonder. I didn’t know why you did it.”
“This probably won’t make things better, but I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm. He really does have a good heart. Maybe if I’d been a better friend to him, things would have turned out different for him.”
Susan placed the pillow back on the end
of her bed. She turned back to me and put her hand on my arm. I noticed that her black nail polish was chipped.
“You’re being too hard on yourself. He was too far gone from the day you met him. Believe me. You couldn’t have saved him. No matter what you did.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I hoped she was.
She leaned over and gave me a hug. I clutched her tightly and felt her silver cross press into my chest.
“If you ever need to talk, my door’s open. Come by any time.” She stood there as if she didn’t really want me to go.
I started to walk out the door.
8.
“WAIT,” SAID SUSAN.
I turned around. “Yeah?”
“I’ve decided to put a healing spell on Chester. So that he’ll get better. Come back. I need your help.”
I hesitated, but curiosity got the best of me and I walked back into the room. Whatever she did couldn’t hurt Chester, so why not?
As I closed the door behind me, Susan lighted three new incense candles and tapped a silver bell three times. She picked up a wooden ruler from her desk and used it to create an imaginary circle in the center of the room. I stood near the door, unsure of what to do or say.
Susan wrote Chester’s name on a piece of paper and placed it in the center of the circle. “Colin, will you please go into the closet and get the cinnamon out of the spice rack on the back wall?”
I opened the closet and pushed aside some of Susan’s clothes. On the back wall she’d hung a large spice rack filled with all sorts of glass bottles and vials. I had to step into the closet to get a better look at the small labels on each bottle. I found the cinnamon and handed it to her.
She took the shaker and sprinkled some cinnamon onto the piece of paper with Chester’s name on it. She took a matchbook out of her desk drawer and struck a match. She turned and lighted a half-burned white candle on top of her desk. When she blew out the match, the smell of the smoke wisping toward the ceiling made me think of Jasmine and all her candles.
“Colin, hand me that ribbon,” she said, gesturing to a long green ribbon hanging from a tack board. I watched her carefully tie the ribbon around an empty jelly jar. Then she placed the jar and the candle next to the paper in the circle.
She gestured for me to hold her hand. I was self-conscious because my palm was so sweaty. She didn’t seem to notice. She closed her eyes and started to speak in a soft, monotonous voice.
“Lady of Healing, bless us with your divine power of health and life. Cure Chester of his sickness and make him whole again.”
She placed the piece of paper in the jar and shook it nine times. She then raised it over her head and moved it up and down, left and right.
“Earth, water, wind and fire. Earth, water, wind and fire,” she chanted.
She handed me the jar and told me to take the paper out and burn it in the candle’s flame. I did it and got my fingers out of the way just in time.
She smiled. “Chester will soon be rid of his pain and suffering. You’ll see.”
“Thanks, Susan.”
This time I walked out the door and Susan didn’t call me back. I didn’t know what to think about Susan’s black-magic ceremony. It seemed like a lot of bullshit to me.
9.
I WENT TO the library and wandered through the fiction section in the basement. I stared at the sea of books that surrounded me. I knew the poetry section was just around the corner. After searching the shelves, I found a collection of e.e. cummings’ poems and sat in a worn leather chair at the end of the stacks.
I skimmed through the pages but couldn’t process the words. All I could think about was Chester. “The long and winding road” had ended in the mental hospital for him. Maybe I could have prevented him from dropping out and maybe I couldn’t. But I’d ignored him for weeks. What kind of friend does that?
I put the cummings next to me on the floor and pulled a pad and paper from my backpack. I needed to write Chester a letter. I stared at the blank white page, unsure of how to begin.
“Hey, Chester, sorry to hear you’re in rehab,” I scribbled and then crossed it out. “Hey, Chester, Susan sprinkled cinnamon and said a magic spell for you,” I wrote. I crossed that out, too. “Hey, Chester, sorry I was a selfish prick and ignored you,” I began again. I crossed that out as well. Finally, I realized that the best thing I could do was to show Chester that he wasn’t alone. That everyone has problems. That I had them, too.
Pretty soon I was spilling my guts onto the paper, telling him just how fucked up my own life was. I told him how much it hurt me the other day to see Jasmine and Karl making out in the Quad. I revealed that I was having trouble sleeping and cutting most of my classes. I told Chester about the meeting with Dean Patterson and about the academic warning I’d received. I let him know I was drinking heavily and writing myself a one-way ticket to AA. It was comforting to get all my thoughts down on paper. I knew that Chester was going to enjoy reading them.
The world was a strange place. Assholes like Karl skated through life with smirks on their faces. Sensitive people like Chester ended up in the loony bin.
I went back to my room, grabbed a beer out of the mini-fridge and listened to Pink Floyd’s The Wall in honor of Chester. I turned off all my lights and lay on the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by nothing but darkness. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply.
Roger Waters sang Is There Anybody out There in a hypnotic voice. The song was filled with the loneliness and suffering that seemed to cling to Chester’s soul. Now he was gone. Gone for good. I’d never see him again.
I read about Syd Barrett in Rolling Stone. He was a founding member of Pink Floyd, but he’d lost his mind to drugs. It made perfect sense that this was Chester’s favorite band. Barrett at one time had been the creative force behind the Pink Floyd’s sound. Shine On You Crazy Diamond was about Barrett’s madness.
My mind kept wandering back to Chester’s Napoleon costume. I remembered when he’d waved his sword when he stepped out of the shower. Where did he get the drugs? He ate a lot of chocolate. Did he put mushrooms in all that chocolate? He probably bought the stuff from Peter Taylor, a guy in our dorm. Everybody knew Peter was paying his tuition by dealing drugs.
Susan was right. Chester had major issues. But at least he wasn’t smug and stuck up like so many students at Elerby. And at least he wasn’t full of crap like Karl. I guzzled a second beer.
I compared my situation with Chester’s. Somehow I was still hanging on. But I wondered for how long. I took a third beer out of the mini-fridge. I opened the can and gulped it. I realized that I’d developed a new habit. Drinking alone. A lot like Chester.
I knew I needed to start going to classes and begin focusing on my schoolwork if I wanted to stay at Elerby. What really scared me about flunking out was this: I’d be stuck back in New York City, with my father and his rules. That would be the end of me.
10.
I WAS GOING to the Campus Pub almost every night. Before I went, I’d tell myself I wasn’t going to drink anymore. But sooner or later I’d find a bottle of Beck’s in my hand. Usually, I’d hang out with Liz. One night she couldn’t make it, but I went anyway and sat on my usual stool.
“So, where’s your girl tonight?” Ted placed a Beck’s in front of me.
“She’s not my girl,” I said before taking a swig of the cold beer. I’d decided I didn’t want just one girl anymore. “Better 100 than just one. One isn’t enough. Right?”
Ted winked. “Oh, really.”
“Don’t you know, Ted? I’m playing the field.”
“Does Liz know that? You guys are together a lot.”
“Too much – too soon – not ready – no more traps for me.”
We were interrupted by a shout from the other end of the bar.
“Hey, Ted! Two whiskey sours!” yelled a frat boy.
“One sec.” Ted pulled another Beck’s out from under the bar and put it in front of me.
I had
n’t finished my first bottle yet. I swiveled on my stool to get a better view of the crowd. There were two Asian guys playing an intense game of darts. A bunch of guys were crammed into a large booth, playing some sort of drinking game. Every few moments a roar came from the table and everyone would point at someone, who would then chug whatever beer was in the glass in front of him. A girl with teased, puffed-out blond hair was drunkenly making out with a guy near the popcorn cart. She was definitely beer-goggling. Everyone at the Campus Pub seemed to be having a good time. Except me.
“Are you drinking that?” a voice next to me asked.
I turned and saw a striking, dark-haired girl with green eyes and olive skin. She had full, red lips and a nice smile.
“It’s all yours,” I said, pushing the extra bottle of Beck’s toward her. “I’m Colin.”
“My name’s Nicole. Cheers.” She picked up the bottle and clinked it against the side of mine.
“Who are you here with?”
“I’m meeting my friend, but she doesn’t seem to be here yet. Wanna keep me company until she arrives? And before you answer that, I gotta warn you that it could be a while. She has a bad habit of being late.”
I thought of Liz. This would upset her. But it shouldn’t. Shit, it wasn’t like Liz was my girlfriend. I didn’t belong to anyone – not after Jasmine. Maybe not for a long time. Maybe never. And here was Nicole with her green eyes staring right at me. “I’ve got nowhere to be,” I said.
Nicole smiled. “Good. I didn’t want to drink alone.”
She ran her fingers through her long, jet-black hair. It looked so silky. I suddenly had the urge to touch it. I surprised myself by reaching over and tucking a strand of it behind her ear.
