Hill William

by Scott McClanahan

  And here I am years later and I’m still saying it to myself.

  I’m saying, “It’s going to be all right now. It’s going to be all right.”

  And sometimes I believe it to be true.

  THE SCREAMING ANGELS

  I knew it wasn’t going to be all right a week later when Gay Walter lost his hamster in the cinder block porch. I was standing with Derrick and Derrick was smashing this five pound hammer against the chain linked fence. Gay Walter was sitting in his flip flops and short shorts, smoking cigarettes and holding his hamster, Hardees.

  “Did that redneck try to kill you the other day?” Walter asked him.

  He let Hardees crawl from one hand to the other. Then he let Hardees crawl up his other arm and down his shirt.

  “That tickles, Hardees,” he giggled. The hamster ran into his shirt.

  He looked down trying to find him.

  “Where are you, you little bugger?”

  He looked on his arms. He looked inside his shirt again. He looked behind him. He panicked and started screaming. The hamster had escaped.

  “O my god,” Gay Walter shouted and jumped up and looked down into the crack in the concrete porch.

  “My hamster got away. Hardees got away,” he said and looked at us. “Guys please help me.”

  Derrick shook his head no.

  Walter whined, “Please.”

  I walked over to the porch but I didn’t know what to do.

  “I told you the other day that hamster was going to get away,” Derrick said. He smacked the hammer. “I told you that little rat didn’t like you.”

  Walter was on his hands and knees looking for it. He went inside the house and came back out with some cheese whiz. He sprayed it around the edge of the porch. He sprayed it in a crack in the porch.

  “Help me,” he screamed again, but no one would help him.

  Derrick and I went off to work on a tree stand in the woods and when we came back a half an hour later we could hear this banging.

  “Where the hell is that banging coming from?” Derrick said as we came around the corner of the house.

  The banging was coming from Gay Walter. He was crazy and he was taking the five pound sledge and hitting and smashing up the porch with it.

  “You’re going to get in trouble,” Derrick told him.

  Walter didn’t care. He cried and called out the hamster’s name, “Hardees!”

  He kept smacking at the porch with the sledge. Big chunks of porch started falling and breaking off. Then he busted those chunks. He busted the chunks of those chunks and made those chunks into smaller chunks. By the time he was finished half of the porch was gone. The hamster was still missing. Walter sat down in front of the broken porch. He put his head in his hands. He cried for his hamster.

  He cried long and loud like you would over someone you had loved and lost.

  That afternoon Derrick said he had to watch Fat Brenda’s daughters because his mom had to clean the old company houses in middle town.

  “You want to come help me baby sit?” he asked.

  I didn’t know. I didn’t like Fat Brenda.

  She was this mouthy woman who was always smoking cigarettes and had scabby mosquito bites all up and down her legs. A month before, I had left my Bill Elliot cap in the Anger’s front yard and Fat Brenda walked up and stole it right in front of me.

  Derrick asked me again if I wanted to help him.

  I told him no.

  “You still mad about your ball cap?” Derek asked.

  “I just can’t believe she would steal my shit right in front of me,” I said.

  Derrick laughed. “I can’t believe you would let her steal it right in front of you and not say anything to her. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  I thought for a moment. I said, “I was nervous.”

  Then Derrick told me to come down and we could look for the cap and besides that, Brenda wasn’t even going to be there.

  That evening I went to the end of the gravel road where Derrick was babysitting Brenda’s girls. I looked around the living room for my cap, but I couldn’t find it. I stood and watched the television flash beside Fat Brenda’s daughters. There was a red-haired little girl and she looked like she was seven. There was a blonde-haired younger sister and she looked like she was five. Derrick was in the bedroom. I was carrying around an aluminum baseball bat I was hitting rocks with earlier. I kept looking around the living room for my ball cap. The house was so stuffed full of shit that it was hard to look.

  I watched TV for a few more minutes and then I went into the kitchen and there were dirty dishes and stacks of newspapers sitting on the table. There was cat shit in the corners and bird cages on the table. I tried to open the door to the backroom but there were garbage bags full of clothes piled up to the ceiling. I finally went and sat back down beside the two sisters in front of the TV.

  “What are you looking for?” the red haired little girl asked. I didn’t say anything. Derrick walked back from the bedroom and asked, “Did you find your hat?”

  I shook my head.

  Derrick went into the bathroom and turned on the light. The door was cracked and I saw him putting towels down on the floor.

  Then he called for the red haired girl, “Hey come in here.”

  The red haired little girl acted like she didn’t know what to do. She looked at me. She looked at her sister. Then she walked to the bathroom door. She stood still.

  “Come on in here,” Derrick said and pulled her inside.

  “What the fuck?” I thought.

  I twirled the aluminum bat and I watched TV on the fuzzy TV. The blonde haired little girl looked over at me.

  “Do you play baseball?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Do you like TV?”

  I told her yeah.

  Then I heard the bathroom door lock. The blonde haired little girl kept talking about how her mom was going to get a job and buy her stuff.

  She talked about how she was going to start kindergarten soon.

  She asked me what her sister was doing in the bathroom.

  Then she asked me if I liked school. I wasn’t even answering her questions now. I was listening to the voices coming from the bathroom.

  At first they were whispering voices and then I heard something brushing up against the door. It sounded like someone was smacking the door with a broom. The blonde haired girl kept jabbering on about something. I heard a cry. The blonde haired girl kept talking but then there was another sound. I stood up and went outside. The screen door creaked and eaked and shut behind me.

  “Where are you going?” the blonde little girl asked me through the screen door mesh. I didn’t answer. I took the baseball bat and bounced it against the concrete and then I bounced it again on the top of the steps.

  The concrete porch was painted green. I took my finger and started chipping away at the flaky paint—piece by piece. Then I threw each piece like a Frisbee and watched it fly. I heard something else coming from the bathroom.

  So I stood back up and went inside.

  “Are you coming back to watch TV with me?” The blonde little girl asked and laughed. I walked over to the bathroom door and banged on it. The bang banged back. I banged again. Derrick cracked it open. He was sweating.

  “I’ll be out in a second,” he said. “Just give me a few minutes.” He closed the door.

  I wanted to say, “What’s going on?”

  I couldn’t see the little girl.

  I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut.

  I turned around and in the hallway there were these giant piles of mountains made of clothes. I saw something sticking out from beneath a dirty T-shirt. It was a Bill Elliot ball cap. It was my cap.

  I picked it up and put it under my shirt and I walked away.

  I walked past the little blonde girl who saw me and said, “Hey, you can’t take that.”

  She followed me to the screen door. I let the door slam and bounce and bang b
ehind me.

  “Hey, you’re stealing,” she shouted. “I’m going to tell my mom. I’m telling on you for taking that.”

  I kept walking. I walked up the gravel road. The little girl kept shouting at me from the porch, “I’m telling on you. I’m telling my mom.”

  I put the baseball cap up to my head but then I stopped.

  I turned and shouted, “Your mother is a fucking thief.”

  I passed a briar thicket and I thought for a moment. I took the cap and threw it into the weeds. It sunk deep in the green and the weeds covered it up. I couldn’t see it anymore. It was gone.

  So I walked to the top of the mountain and I looked up towards the clouds. The sky was streaked with purple and pink. I kept looking and then I saw something. I saw hundreds of dirty angels in the sky. They were flying angels but they had devil horns. They were all swooping down at me and screaming and swirling and telling me in their country voices what I had to do. They were telling me to go see Batman and everything would be okay. I needed to go see Batman and my world would be healed and made wonderful.

  THE DAY I MET BATMAN

  I went to see Batman at the Park Center Shopping Complex. I was in junior high or at least I was going to be in junior high the next year. This was just a year or so after the Batman movie came out and some promotional outfit had decided to go around to shopping centers and visit the kids. When I saw the poster saying he was coming, all I could think about was how I was going to tell Batman how afraid I was. I wanted to tell him how I felt safe around him and I knew we’d end up fighting crime together, capturing bad guys and ridding the world of fear.

  I knew I was afraid. I was afraid of watching Unsolved Mysteries and seeing the D.B. Cooper composite drawings. D.B. Cooper was this guy who hijacked a plane in the 70’s and parachuted out. I couldn’t sleep for a month after seeing his composite drawing. I was afraid of devil worshippers too. I was afraid of devil worshippers after this neighbor lady told my mom how they found dead animals in the woods, and some people saw the devil worshippers at Kroger, and the worshippers wanted to steal and sacrifice a blonde haired child who was a virgin. At the time I had sandy blonde hair, and I didn’t know what a virgin was, but I knew it was a bad thing if devil worshippers were going to sacrifice me over it. I stayed in my yard and didn’t go out into the woods so the devil worshippers wouldn’t find me.

  I couldn’t sleep at night without my mother sleeping with me.

  So I stood around at the Park Center shopping complex dressed up in my jean jacket and waited for the superhero. There were buttons all over it. There were five and six year old kids standing around waiting for Batman to show up. I started talking to one of the kid’s mothers.

  “It’s funny how little kids love Batman,” I said.

  She smiled.

  I said, “You know, it’s really nice they’re having something like this for all the little kids. I know when I was a little kid they would have never had anything like this.”

  The mother grinned again and rolled her eyes and said, “Are you here to see Batman?”

  “O no,” I said, “I was just coming by here to see what was going on.”

  I stood with all the kids and the mothers of the kids and waited for him to show up. Then he pulled up in his plastic-looking Batman car that didn’t look like the real Batmobile. It didn’t sound real and it didn’t have flames coming out of the back. But Batman got out in his black rubber suit and walked into the store past all of the kids. He walked like he could whip the hell out of all the bad things in the world. I waited in line with all the other kids to see Batman and get him to sign an autograph for me. I was still nervous about one of my buddies seeing me with all the little kids and telling everyone at school.

  I took my place in line and thought about what I was going to tell him.

  I wanted to tell him about devil worshippers and how afraid I was. I wanted to tell him about how I couldn’t sleep, and how I was afraid of Unsolved Mysteries because they were always showing composite drawings. I wanted to tell him about my mom sleeping with me at night and how if she didn’t sleep with me I peed the bed.

  I even peed the bed at my friend Wayne’s house. He woke me up and started saying, “What the hell! Did you pee the bed?”

  I tried defending myself. I had to think fast.

  We ate ice cream the night before so I said, “NO, I guess I spilled some ice cream last night.”

  O god, I couldn’t even lie about peeing the bed. What a stupid excuse. I wanted to tell Batman that if he ever peed the bed at a friend’s house not to say you spilled ice cream the night before because no one will believe you.

  Then the line moved and there he was. Batman was standing in the back of the store in his Batman costume. He shook the hands of the kids and took pictures with them.

  I thought about these things as I moved closer. I was getting nervous. Then this lady walked up and said, “Do you have ten dollars for the official picture for Batman to sign?”

  “O shit,” I thought, “I didn’t realize you needed to buy a picture of Batman so he could sign it.”

  All the little kids and their parents were buying the official Batman picture.

  That will be 10 dollars.

  Thank you.

  That will be 10 dollars.

  Thank you.

  I didn’t have any money. I searched through my jacket pockets and reached into the pant pockets and all I had was this little wadded up candy stained post-it note. Earlier that day a teacher asked me to take a note to another teacher at school and the note was still in my pocket.

  “Do you have your money for the official Batman picture?”

  I shook my head “No” and I held up my wadded post-it note. I showed it to her and said, “I just have this post-it note.”

  At first the lady wasn’t going to let me go, but then Batman put his fists on his hips and said, “Hey. Let that young man through.”

  I walked up to him shaking nervous and gave him my post it note. He looked at me like, “What is this? You didn’t pay ten dollars for this.”

  The note was covered in candy stains and pocket lint.

  Batman finally took the wadded up paper from me, held his marker and signed it except the post it note was too little and wadded up for my full name to fit on it. He handed it back to me.

  All he wrote on it was like a BAT and then half an M. The A even looked like a U so it said BUT. He signed my name wrong.

  I took the post-it note and turned around and thought, “This is bullshit.”

  I wondered if Batman was a part of it.

  I saw a sign that Batman was going to be taking a break in fifteen minutes. I waited around until Batman took his break. I went outside the store, and snuck around the side of the building where I thought Batman might be taking his break and where I could talk to him about being afraid.

  I wanted to tell him about the bad things.

  I wanted to tell him about the dirty angels.

  I wanted to tell him about my life.

  I walked around the side of the building and I saw Batman, except something was different now. He was standing without his mask on. I thought, “Batman looks old.” I stared at his receding hairline and I looked at his thick jowls. I watched him pull part of his suit over his arms and chest until he was standing in a sweat stained T-shirt. There were a couple of women who worked at the store standing around and talking to him, but I didn’t know why. He wasn’t muscular at all. He had a big pregnant belly.

  I saw something strange. I saw him take a cigarette from one of the women. She lit it for him and he stood smoking their cigarettes.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Something wasn’t right.

  I thought, “Batman smokes cigarettes.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “Batman smokes fucking cigarettes.”

  I walked away and saw that Batman was just this stupid guy dressed up in a rubber suit, just as afraid as I was, and that I lived in a lost place inside m
y own heart, where even Batman couldn’t help me.

  CHURCH

  A couple of days later, this strange guy started to drive up and down the gravel road looking for Walter. The strange guy was baldheaded, forty and wore glasses, and he drove a white car. One evening Sissy and I noticed the white car was parked at the end of the street. We walked up to it and then we walked in the woods. We started hearing these panicky whispers and then we heard Walter screaming.

  “Help,” he was screaming now and running out of the woods.

  He ran past us and we watched him zipping down the road back home.

  The strange guy came out a couple of seconds later.

  “What’s going on?” Sissy asked.

  The strange guy was nervous and trying to get away.

  “What’s going on with Walter?” Sissy asked again.

  The strange guy wiped off his forehead with his handkerchief. He walked past us to his white car and got inside.

  He started it, hit the gas and drove away.

  The next week Sissy said, “My mom said that guy tried to do bad stuff to Walter.”

  She looked around and then whispered like she didn’t want anyone to hear, “She said he was trying to rape him.”

  It wasn’t long after this that I was going door to door through Middletown selling oversized candy bars for my little league baseball team. I knocked on a door. We stopped talking. An old woman opened it. Sissy opened up the box of candy.

  I started my speech, “Hello, I play for our team the Rainelle Mets. Would you like to buy some candy and help support our local players?”

  The old woman listened to my spiel, but I felt scared because she had a goiter. I’d never seen a goiter before. I stood and stared and I thought about taking a pin and popping the goiter and watching it deflate like a balloon.

  She could tell we were scared, so she talked sweet and said, “Of course, I’ll buy some.”