Abnormal Man: A Novel

by Grant Jerkins

  You head on back toward the pharmacy area and the breeze coming up under your garment feels good after driving for so long. It brings you a little secret pleasure. There is an endcap display of Pajama Jeans and that catches your eye. You’ve seen them on TV and they look so comfortable. They are pajamas and blue jeans at the same time and whoever thought of that is a genius. You are tempted to get some, but you know they don’t have a size big enough to fit you. Most people will never know what it is like to be a big person in a small world. Oh, look, and they have Snuggies. You’ve seen those on TV, too. They are blankets with sleeves. Another genius idea. Who thinks these things up? They have an XXL. It’s in a plaid pattern that you don’t really care for, but you toss it in the cart anyway, even though you know the double X isn’t going to be big enough, but still, maybe you will lose down enough to fit it, maybe that diet powder will start to work.

  On the analgesics aisle, you select a bottle of Bayer aspirin for Billy. Then you see a pink and green box of baby aspirin. That would really be more appropriate, so you get those instead. Plus, they are chewable.

  Well, that should do it, so you head on back to the front. Frank doesn’t really need a crutch. He gets around just fine. You don’t want to be an enabler. You prefer to accent the ability in disability. Yes. Oh, and look, they have baby bottles on sale. Why do those make you think of that little girl? She wasn’t a baby. She was getting to be a big girl. And you promised yourself you weren’t going to think about that. You were going to put that out of your mind for now. Why dwell? And look at those nursing bottles. A pack of three for $2.99. You can’t beat that. That is a steal. And such pretty pastel colors for the nipples. But you don’t really need those, do you? Well, there is need, and then there is want, and you most certainly do want these. But should you? Should you really indulge yourself like that? Well, why not? Really, just why the heck not? You deserve it, don’t you? You’ve been under a lot of pressure and need to let off some steam. You put two packs of bottles in your cart. The wipes are on sale, too. And you grab a big can of Enfamil—clinically proven to reduce spit-up—because you don’t want to cut corners when it comes to what goes in baby’s tummy.

  Then you see that they have diapers on sale, too. The price is so low, you’d be a fool to pass up a bargain like that. A nationally recognized brand, to boot. But one part of your mind realizes that they don’t make a baby diaper big enough to fit you, and if you are going to keep up this self-deceptive line of thought, you are going to have to make a fully conscious decision to make it work. You will have to go to the aisle where they sell adult diapers, and if you do that, you will be admitting that you are not buying the formula, and the bottles, and the diapers because they are such good deals, you are buying them for other reasons.

  Ever since they hooked you up to the bug zapper in Butts County, your mind has been separated into two compartments. There is the Chandler who knows exactly what he is doing, and then there is the Chandler who knows not what he does. That other Chandler takes what he wants, when he wants it. That Chandler does not feel bad about things. That Chandler wants the diapers and he will have them. That Chandler understands that if he gets the diapers and the rest of the paraphernalia, he will have to take care of the cashier on his way out of here—lest she find the morbidly obese customer and his odd assortment of purchases to be unusual, and oh, weren’t the police looking for someone who matched that description?

  Lying between the Chandler-Who-Knows and the Chandler-Who-Knows-Not is the Middle Ground. And in the Middle Ground a little girl is buried. And you have to jump over that Middle Ground as you travel from knows to knows-not. So you close your eyes, and you jump.

  By the time you make it up to the check-out counter with the baby aspirin, baby bottles, baby wipes, Enfamil powder, and a package of Prevail 3X Bariatric adult diapers, the Chandler who walked in this store, the Chandler whose image was digitally captured by security cameras—that Chandler is gone. Gone with the wind. The Chandler whom you watch put a bullet in the brain of the middle-age woman running the cash register—he is the Chandler-Who-Knows-Not.

  From somewhere inside you (perhaps from the electro-convulsive therapy room at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in unincorporated Butts County—yes, perhaps that room with the white gurney and beige cloth restraint straps is here inside you), you observe the Chandler-Who-Knows-Not as he reaches over the counter and shoves aside the woman whose body has slumped across the cash register in her sudden death. You watch the Chandler-Who-Knows-Not leave a perfect fingerprint (that will later prove to contain both blood and a bit of brain matter) on the NO SALE button. And as the Chandler-Who-Knows-Not scoops the little bit of cash from the register, he notes with disgust that blood has seeped into the drawer and contaminated the bills. That will have to be cleaned off, you hear him think. And then you hear him sigh and mutter under his breath that it’s always something. Always. And you can’t help but to agree.

  And you realize that maybe you, the Chandler-Who-Knows, and you, the Chandler-Who-Knows-Not, are not so different after all.

  When Chandler gets back in the car, he does not speak to you or Frank. When Frank pulls at the bag to look through it, Chandler slaps his hand away. He digs through the bag himself and tosses you a box of baby aspirin. You read the directions on the box and chew up enough of the pills to equal an adult dose.

  Chandler gets on the road and stops at the first hotel he comes to. It is, interestingly enough, called Hotel Harvey. He produces a wad of paper money from his muumuu, shoves it at Frank and motions toward the front office. Frank takes the money and counts it. Some of it has blood stains on it. Wet blood stains.

  “I can’t take this in there. What’s wrong with you?”

  Chandler reaches back inside the material that drapes him and comes up with a purse-size pack of tissues. He takes the wet money back from Frank and blots it dry. He motions again and Frank goes to get a room.

  * * *

  Chandler has a double bed all to himself. He lies on top of the sheets, naked except for a big white diaper. He is curled up and sucking on his third baby bottle full of chalky-looking formula. The sound of Chandler’s lips working the rubber nipple is the only sound in the room. Phhhhht phhhhht phhhhht phhhht phhhht phhhht. Over and over and over.

  He will not respond to you or Frank. He just stares off into the distance, looking at nothing at all, or maybe something only he can see. You remember that your mother called that pining. When a baby stares at something that is not there, it’s called pining.

  The most disturbing aspect to all of this is the stride in which Frank is taking it. He does not seem overly concerned. He bumps up every twenty minutes or so and keeps picking at that sore on his face, which looks really, really horrible now. You wonder when will he ever run out of that stuff because you do not like Frank when he uses it and he uses it all the time and he’s not really Frank anymore. You might as well be home with Harvey, emptying his pee jug.

  There is a wet sound like thick gravy bubbling in a saucepan and then the horrible stench of excrement fills the room. It is overpowering. You can feel it penetrating your hair and clothes. Chandler has shit himself.

  Frank squats down next to Chandler’s bed and whispers to him, “We’ve got to keep moving. Chandler, we’ve got to go. Can you hear me? Chandler, can you hear me? Are you in there? Where are you? Chandler, where are you?”

  And Chandler turns over. He speaks, but his eyes remain unfocused. “I’m in the Middle Ground, Frank. The Middle Ground. It’s horrible here.”

  Then his eyes come into focus and he smiles. He reaches down and works off the diaper as best he can. An oil-black smear of feces stains his ass and legs. But he can’t get the diaper off by himself and he says, “Help me.”

  And you do. You and Frank get the diaper off. It takes almost the whole box of baby wipes to get him clean, but you get him taken care of and wrap the whole mess up in a sheet and put it down the garbage chute. Then, together
, the two of you put a clean diaper on Chandler. At least the air in the room is breathable now, even though the odor lingers. Frank fixes a bottle of formula at the sink and puts the nipple to Chandler’s lips. He takes the bottle. Phhhht phhhhht phhhhht phhhht phhhht phhhht.

  After Chandler shot the cowboy businessman, you transferred all of the weapons from Frank’s old car to the new one, the Eldorado. Then Chandler went through the man’s pockets and found money. He found an iPhone, too, and tossed it to you. “Here little Billy, Daddy got you a video game to play.”

  The cowboy businessman had been browsing CNN on it. There was a live feed from the ocean floor. A mile under the ocean. It showed the oil bubbling out. Thousands of gallons a minute, just pouring out, poisoning the ocean and nobody could stop it. And you have the phone with you here now, in Hotel Harvey, watching the planet die. You watch that oil blooming like a black flower on the other side of the world. You watch until you fall asleep. And Frank stands over you, guarding you.

  When you wake up in the morning, Chandler is sitting in a chair by the window. He looks freshly showered and he’s wearing his muumuu. He’s browsing one of your travel brochures with theatrical interest. He makes a great show of noticing that you’re awake.

  “Are you two boys ready to start our vacation?”

  And you nod your head, because you are ready.

  The lieutenant doesn’t want you here, but he understands that you are finding this a little hard to let go. The bullet that Norris fired from Burdick’s gun actually grazed your skull. That’s how close it was. It etched a new hairline along the right side of your head. Bled like hell, the way scalp wounds usually do, but no real damage. The doctors released you within two hours. Burdick and the five members of the sheriff’s department would only be released to the morgue.

  Everyone was focusing on Chandler Norris and Frank Dobbs, and dismissing Billy Smith as either a Patty Hearst-type, a quasi-hostage, or a tagalong under Norris’s malevolent pied piper spell. But you wanted to know more about the boy.

  You tell the lieutenant that Billy Smith met Frank Dobbs at the Shoney’s in Marietta where they both worked. Dobbs attacked and brutally injured a coworker, Sidney Edenfield. Billy Smith may have participated in the attack, or he might simply have been an observer. Reports were conflicting. Dobbs and Smith fled the restaurant directly after the assault. They either left together, or Dobbs coerced Smith. Again, witness reports were conflicting. In any case, neither Smith nor Dobbs was seen again until they turned up in Stockmar County. It is also worth noting that Smith’s mother died of a rare cancer seven years ago, and his stepfather died in a house fire the same night Edenfield was attacked.

  “Was the fire suspicious?” the lieutenant asks.

  “Yes and no. Smoking in bed. Blood alcohol, at least what didn’t boil off in the fire, was through the roof. Also, the autopsy noted fracturing of the mandible, maxilla, and temporal bones, plus every proximal interphalangeal joint on his right hand was broken. All of which could be consistent with the nasty falls drunks are prone to take. Or the results of a bad beating. The kind violent people are prone to administer.”

  “You’re thinking Dobbs.”

  “I am. Every knuckle on his left hand was broken. Nobody takes a fall like that. And to cast a little more doubt on the drunk-smoking-in-bed theory, Billy Smith was receiving counseling and psychotropic drug therapy for antisocial behavior.”

  “So he had issues. Hell, my kid takes Ritalin.”

  “In this case, antisocial is codeword for pyrophilia.”

  “You mean pyromania?”

  “No, philia. Pyrophilia. Like a fetish. He gets off on it. Sexual gratification from burning shit. He was starting fires in the school bathroom. Behavior started not long after his mother’s death. Also, the counselor’s notes hint at suspected abuse by the stepfather. Possibly sexual.”

  “So the same night a troubled teenage fire bug runs amok and skips town, his abusive stepfather dies in a house fire? Sounds like something out of the Brothers Grimm.”

  “Yep. But it’s still uncertain to what degree Smith was a willing participant in any of this. Don’t forget, he was the one leading us to the girl.”

  “Right. And how did that turn out?”

  You don’t answer that. Mostly because no answer is expected, but also because a call comes over the lieutenant’s phone. The lieutenant tells the caller to hold on, puts it on speaker, and tells the officer on the other end to repeat what he just said.

  “A man’s body was found on Georgia 400, about 60 miles outside the perimeter. Hidden in a drainage ditch just off a dog trail. Two bullets to the head. The Cutlass was found abandoned at a truck stop five miles away.”

  “Can they be placed at the scene?”

  “No, but a long-haul driver was catching some sleep in the lot. Heard the shots, but didn’t get up to investigate.”

  “The murder victim’s vehicle?”

  “1978, brown Eldorado hardtop. Fully registered.”

  “Protocol followed?”

  “We’ve got checkpoints set up all around the perimeter and staggered into South Georgia. They’re heading into the city. Or past it. Listen to this, a Walgreens outside Cleveland was robbed ninety minutes ago. Cashier shot and killed. Chandler Norris plain as day on the surveillance video. And guess what he stole?”

  “I don’t care what he stole. They’re tracking southerly. Wouldn’t they be beyond the city by now?”

  “Probably, but since they’re hanging out at rest stops and going on shopping sprees, I figured we would look north and south of the perimeter.”

  “Good. Choppers?”

  “Two birds in the sky. Just as soon as dawn breaks.”

  “Good, keep me up to the minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What was it?”

  “Sir?”

  “What did he steal? Norris.”

  “Sir, he stole diapers, bottles, formula, wipes. All the shit you need to take care of a baby.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? They’ve abducted an infant?”

  “We don’t know sir. We have no reports of any child that young missing.”

  “Reach out to the local communities along their path. We need to know. We’ve got Kimberly’s Call activation, Blue Alert activation. Request a Levi’s Call. Contact GEMA. Get their input.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The lieutenant turns to look at you and says, “I’ve got a Cadillac Eldorado out there tooling around North Georgia with a kidnapped infant, a child pornographer, a violent offender, and a teenage pyro. There is no way this is real. This just can not be real. Where is God?”

  You are just trying to get from point A to point B. That is all you can do at this time. There is no future. There is no past. There is just point A and point B. And honestly, point B is probably too theoretical to worry about right now, so you take that out of your mind. Fuck that noise. In fact, fuck point A, too. There is no point A. There is no point B. There is just the Middle Ground. That is where Chandler went, and now you are there, too. It feels good. No worries.

  Here in the Middle Ground you are pumping gas at five o’clock in the morning at an isolated Exxon station. Here in the Middle Ground you have a lifetime supply of crank, which is good, because you are bumping up every ten minutes now. You haven’t slept in what, six days? Something like that. And you are hallucinating. But at least you are aware that you’re hallucinating. That’s half the battle. At least you understand that the black reticulated python you are fighting against is actually the feed hose of this gas pump. So you are okay. Earlier you were hallucinating that Chandler was wearing a diaper and sucking on a bottle and that he shit his diaper and you and Billy changed him like he was a giant baby. That was pretty fucking vivid.

  The python has stopped struggling against you. You have won. You have beat this hallucination and reality swims into view. You look at the digital readout on the gas pump. It is zeros all the way across. What the fuck? Where is
the gas? You’ve been out here a very long time, you finally killed the snake, and there is no gas? Then you see a peeling yellow sticker below the digital display. PAY FIRST AFTER DARK. Fuck. If you’re gonna have to go inside, you’ll need a bump first. You turn your back to the station and do that very thing. Really, there is no need to turn your back, because you’ve got the art of discreet bump down to a science. You could bump up in a crowded elevator and no one would be the wiser. They might think you rubbed your nose was all. Still, you turn your back. Best to play it safe.

  You step up to Chandler’s window and tell him you need cash. He gives you a fifty. Billy is in the backseat playing with that video game thing. He’s got it plugged into the cigarette lighter and the light from the screen flickers across his face. He’s playing some kind of undersea adventure game. Looks like he’s having fun. In a way, this really is like being on vacation.

  Inside, the bright florescent lights hurt your eyes. You walk around the store a little bit, thinking maybe you’ll get something to eat. You haven’t eaten in a long, long time. But you’re not hungry. You pick up a donut with white icing that’s sealed in plastic. They pump these things with chemicals to keep them shelf stable. You read that somewhere. The white icing looks like pus. Like something you would squeeze out of a zit. You put it back down. There is one of those curved mirrors right above your head and you can see the counter girl looking at you. Watching you. Then you look at yourself. Scraggly beard, dark circles under your eyes. Face tats. Skin like dough. Like the icing on that fucking donut. The red inflamed meth sore on your cheek stands out in sharp contrast. It takes every tiny little bit of self control you have left to keep your hands at your sides. To not pick at the sore. You want to pick at it, to doctor it, so very bad. And your eyes are glassy and blown like you had a fucking stroke or something. You look away. You feel angry. Like you want to kill someone. Like you want to shatter someone’s face. Like you want to smash that goddamn mirror and grind the girl’s face in it. Yep. Yank everything off the shelves. Shatter glass. Throw bottles. Kick shit. And the cashier would be screaming. Screaming. Just fucking screaming. You would grab that bitch and drag her to the stockroom and you would rip her fucking clothes right the fuck off her and she couldn’t stop you couldn’t stop you couldn’t stop you and you would put her face down on the dirty floor and you would rape her rape her rape her rape her rape rape rape.