The kids moved in clutches, some distracted while others wandered the outskirts of the action around the ball. Others ended up kicking at their own teammates ankles, so anxious were they to get at the soccer ball.
A fat man at the edge of the field yelled encouragement to his son, jumping up and down in a ponderous pogo motion. Other parents clapped and shouted encouragement from the stands. Jack found his gaze wrenched back to the stands, hoping to see Peroxide Woman having a seizure and choking to death on her tongue. Or spontaneously combust. That would, by God’s grace, be a very good thing. Every time he glanced over, she stared back at him. Jesus was not going to reach down from his throne at the right hand of the Father and crush her into dust. A thought passed through his mind of which Dr. Papua would not approve: The Lord helps them that help themselves.
Jack looked away, trying to focus on the action of all the little witnesses kicking clumsily at the soccer ball. He willed himself not to look at Peroxide Woman, but at every break in the action, he glanced over. He peeked at her so often, he worried the witnesses would begin to see him for what he really was.
“I am what I pretend to be,” he said under his breath, over and over. But each assertion was instead a reminder that his mask was slipping. The herd might see his teeth.
A very old woman who watched everything with a massive pair of binoculars — so big they had to be Navy issue — sat beside the man in red. She was obviously somebody’s grandmother. As she watched the action, she spoke to the pretty young woman beside her. They smiled placidly back at him and he found their presence calming. He tried to focus on the old woman and her stack of curly white hair rather than the vibrating presence of The Beast. He felt like his chest was full of violin strings, shuddering and singing to match The Beast’s vibrations.
Jack encouraged the kids to pass to each other. One boy, taller than the rest, hogged the ball and wouldn’t pass it. He was talented, so much so that Jack thought he was too precocious for this age division and should be moved up to a more competitive level. Jack blew his whistle and broke up the play, telling the kids again the importance of teamwork and passing the ball.
On the very next play, the tall kid moved the ball up the field all on his own again. With a strong and straight kick he scored a goal. Everyone clapped and he gave the kid a high five while yelling to the tiny goalie who had been scored upon that his was an excellent try. “I don’t think it would be easy for anybody to stop that kick,” he said.
“What’s your name again?” he asked the tall boy.
“Chad.”
“Chad. Right. I want you to take over for goal for your team, okay?”
The boy nodded and ran back to take over for his team’s goaltender.
Peroxide Woman rose from her seat and stalked toward him. She pulled her big sunglasses down her nose to reveal eyes like shiny blades. She stood in front of him as if fighting a strong wind, her arms wrapped tight around her chest. “Chad’s the best out here. He doesn’t belong in goal. Fat kids go in the net.”
He felt the tingle in his gut again and his jaw tightened. “We’re just trying to spread the wealth around, ma’am. Everybody gets a turn in net. Now if you’ll excuse me, we’re in the middle of a practice game.”
“We’re not trying to do anything. You’re trying to screw Chad over just because you drive about as well you coach.”
His eyes flicked away to all the little witnesses. “Lower your voice and exit the field, please.”
“You haven’t got over our little parking lot drama, have you, Coach? Just yank him out of the net, put him on offense and I’ll go sit down.”
“This is just a practice and it’s for everybody.”
“If he’s stuck in net, it’s a waste of his time. And mine.”
“He’s in Under Seven Soccer. At this stage, it’s fine to waste his time.”
“I’m over seven,” she said.
He looked around, embarrassed. The kids were standing still, watching the argument. Murmurs and whispers came from the assembly of parents in the stands. He called for a break early and directed the kids to the cooler full of water bottles at the edge of the field again. The kids melted away slowly and all the while she stood in front of him with her arms crossed. Jack wondered if anyone had ever refused her anything.
Before he could speak she spun and started heading back to the stands. “Stupid bitch,” she said, loudly enough for all to hear.
She was only two steps away. He hissed his message out to her in a whisper the breeze brought only to her ear. “A-T-A-6-6-7,” he said slowly.
She spun again and headed straight for him, less than a foot from his nose. “What did you say?” Her hands were fists. He expected that at any moment, she would punch him.
“I said, ‘A-T-A 6-6-7.’ ”
“And what am I supposed to think that means, dickhead?”
“It means I know your car. With that I can find your house. In fact, I can find you anywhere.”
She blinked and her mouth dropped.
“Are you actually threatening me?”
She was judge and jury. What she didn’t know was that he was the executioner. Dr. Circe Papua herself had praised him for his skill. He didn’t have the doctor’s gift of persuasion, but perhaps he could borrow a page from her book with effective results.
“You must listen very carefully,” he said.
“Yeah? I must, must I?”
“Shut up. Let me explain something to you.”
“Anything else?” she looked amused.
“People don’t listen,” the bearded man in red had said. And he was so right. People walked around in civilization as if the world had been made safe for them. Nervous little squirrels eating frantically while keeping their eyes sharp for hawk shadows? They understood the world so much better than human prey.
He wanted to slap Peroxide Woman across the face and wipe the blood from her nose on her bleached white sweater.
“I know you,” Jack said. “I see you lots of places. You’re the kind of person who has one attitudinal setting.” He kept his voice low so the kids and the other parents could not hear him. “You don’t have a lot of varied responses. You’re either satisfied things are going perfectly your way or you’re a bitch.”
He was sure she was just on the edge of hitting him then and he wondered what the societal etiquette was. If a woman hits you first, can you defend yourself and hit her back? And what if you lose control, say, and accidentally crush her windpipe in the process with one strike with the heel of your hand? Just because you’re the kids’ friendly soccer coach now doesn’t mean you aren’t also a guy who’s wound so tightly you can hardly wait for Dr. Papua to call on your peculiar talents again.
His head began to throb. He could feel the pulse pounding loudly in his left ear again. It was a danger sign the shrill woman in front of him could not see or hear. If she knew, she’d scurry back to the stands and grab her children and keep running. If this went badly, his mask could fall to the ground. He could turn into the other thing right here and he would be of no use to Dr. Papua in her exploration of the mysteries. He had to tamp down his natural impulses. I am what I pretend to be. Or, like he told the kids in his charge, Use your words.
“You have two choices,” Jack said.
“Get you fired for threatening me or get you arrested for threatening me? I think I’ll do both!”
He stepped close enough he could smell bleach. “It’s just you and me out here, ATA 667. Go ahead and call the police. Then when they let me out, I’ll wait. I could wait a year, maybe two. All the time I’m waiting for my time, you’ll be sweating and wondering. All the time you’ll be checking your back seat and looking over your shoulder. Anything could happen. Your car could blow up or I could come by for a visit over a long weekend when the kids are off on a sleepover. I could just show up with a big screwdriver one day.”
“My husband — ”
“Your husband is a minor factor in the equation. Guys
who marry women like you? They’re used to taking orders. They don’t get an opinion. They get told. You’ll have beaten him down every day long before I start in on him. I could bend your husband over and do him in the ass while I watch you burn in battery acid. He and I could both enjoy that.”
She made a choking sound. She turned white.
“See, what you don’t know about me is, not so deep down, I’m a pretty angry guy. The world is full of us. I’m the postal carrier you stiffed on a tip last Christmas. I’m the homeless guy with the sign you pretend you don’t see. I’m the miserable poor slob you married who can never do anything right. Right now that poor bastard is surfing porn and dreaming of the freedom he’ll get after you’re dead. At this very moment he’s dreaming of the day you are paralyzed by a stroke so he can have the joy of parking your wheelchair by the remote control and slapping you across the face every time you drool. He doesn’t have the balls to divorce you. Men who marry women like you never leave, but he’s hoping every morning that you’ll fall and hit your useless head and drown in the bathtub. I’ve watched a guy drown in a bathtub. It’s slower than you might think and very interesting to watch.”
Her mouth moved but she made no sound.
“Do you read me?”
She nodded.
“I said, ‘Do…you…read…me?’ ”
“Y-yes.”
He glanced at the crowd. They were watching but he was satisfied there was no way they could hear anything he said.
“I said you have two choices. You want to know what the other one is?”
She said nothing. He didn’t need her to reply to anything he said now. “You can run to old doddering Chief Rose and he’ll come talk to the sweet coach who’s great with the kids — everybody says so — and it will be a he said, bitch on wheels said situation. Then, I can assure you, at some point, something really bad is going to happen. Something so bad you can’t even imagine it yet. Something so bad, I’ll have to take some time to think it through to make sure it lasts a long time when I come calling.”
She was bug-eyed and mouthed the word “Jesus.”
“The second choice — and I bet you’re going to love the second choice — is you turn around and sit back down and let me coach your kid. It’s a long season ahead and I don’t want to hear another fucking peep from you.”
“Okay…okay.” She was shaking. A single tear slid down her cheek.
“Wipe your face. I won’t hurt you as long as you keep your mouth shut. You are a burden to all who know you. I suggest you call Dr. Circe Papua. Call her and make an appointment. She’s an excellent therapist who helps people like you. In fact, I insist you go see her or bad things will certainly happen. If you fuck up and fail to turn your life around, I’ll find out about it. I really hope you do fuck up, ATA667. I want to show you things you’ve never dreamed in your worst nightmares. I’m talking horror movie-level shit storms and rope that bites your wrists. Read me?”
She turned around and began walking back when he hit her with, “Oh, yeah, and clean up your driving. Maybe you should take a defensive driving course to remind you to be courteous to other drivers.”
She slunk toward the stands, her head down.
The rest of the practice went smoothly. He kept Chad in goal for the rest of the game and finished with passing drills. When he blew the final whistle, the humidity had taken its toll and the kids went to their parents soaking wet, their jerseys plastered to their bodies.
Jack watched Peroxide Woman go. He was reminded of Lot’s wife in the story of Sodom. When she ran, her two children in tow, she did not dare look back upon him, the force of God who had chased her away, lest she turn into a pillar of salt.
The pretty, young woman appeared at his side. “Hi, I’m Gina. I’m Maddy’s mom.” Jack gave her a smile and shook her hand. I got your schedule in e-mail and I’m first to give out snacks. Any recommendations for what I should bring?”
“Something cold,” he said. “And please, no nuts.”
“You bet,” she said. “We certainly don’t want any nuts around our kids.” She smiled at him and, in some small seductive gesture, she touched her long brown hair and they both felt self-conscious. “And this is my mother,” Gina said.
The old woman with the stack of curly white hair and the binoculars smiled up at him.
“Oh, hello, ma’am,” he said.
Gina’s hands flew in a mixture of signs Jack had no hope of following and after a moment both women laughed. When they looked at Jack, they gave him kind smiles and he could see the resemblance between the two, despite their age difference. The old woman must have been a beauty once, too.
“Never mind me,” the old woman said in a dysphonic, nasal voice. “I’m just an old deaf woman.” She gave him a wink and clapped him on the shoulder with a surprisingly strong hand. “I can’t hear you, but I read you!”
One of her eyes was shot white with a cataract. The other was dark and pierced him with a knowing look that said conspiratorially, “Hello, brother. Does my mask look right?”
His words to Dr. Papua returned to him: “The world is divided into three categories: The Prey and the Witnesses. And things like me. The Predators.”
We are everywhere.
OVER & OUT
Through several stories, you’ll see that tinnitus recurs. There’s a reason for that. I had it. At one point, I was sure it was a brain tumour and, if it didn’t kill me, I was sure it would drive me insane. I used stress reduction techniques and after a long time, it went away. I guess it wasn’t a tumour. ~ Chazz
My two-year-old son wailed, “No!” from his crib. His cry told me he was asleep. It was another bad dream. I rubbed his back, my touch so light I just smoothed his pyjama top. Frankie sucked his thumb hard. One eye rolled open for a moment, like a vacant nod to a passing stranger. He was on his way back to deeper sleep, though the intensity of his self-soothing hardly abated. He bears the mark of a dedicated thumbsucker — a tough little red callous at the knuckle of his left thumb — and I worry that he might screw up his teeth if he keeps it up too long. If Josy were here, he would be toilet trained by now.
Emily slept through Frankie’s nightmare. Teenagers seem exhausted all the time, or maybe that’s just Emily. The alarm clock by her bed doesn’t even wake her for school some mornings. Even when she is awake and getting ready for school, she seems distant, as if she is still dreaming in a small, warm place. She is stronger than me, but fathers don’t have the option to act sullen.
I tip-toed into the bathroom, avoiding the squeakiest floorboards. When Josy and I bought the slouching house on Seaside Road, she and the real estate agent went on and on about how great the old floors were. Now with two kids, it seems the bare, shiny floors are for sliding and banging up knees and elbows. I can’t walk the floors at night without thinking I’ll wake the children.
When Josy still lived here, I don’t remember worrying about the noise the floors made. It was as if two adults roaming a creaky house cancelled each other out with the white noise of living. Why is “antique” so valued when “old” sucks so much? Why do we hold on to things we should have thrown out long ago? Do our atoms mix so much over time with other people and things that, in some unseen way, we mistake the things we own for ourselves?
Noise first became a problem when I began fighting with my wife. Sometimes Josy and I would take the baby monitor out to the car in the garage so Emily wouldn’t hear us yelling. We cooperated in that, at least, so we could hear Frankie if he woke crying, catching our discordant vibe through the ether.
I can’t sleep, except in stolen snatches of disturbing dreams I can’t quite remember on waking. The rest of the night I disappear into a book or escape into late-night infomercials for products I would never use.
At three in the morning, television becomes a time machine. I revisit my days of eating cheese sandwiches while watching the paramedics from Emergency!, Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto. The cops from Adam-12 are still keeping the st
reets of L.A. safe. The Six Million Dollar Man is still running at 60 miles per hour, though the special effects, so impressive then, make me giddy now.
At Josy’s urging I tried an anti-depressant for a few months, but I didn’t feel any different and I would wake in the middle of the night biting my tongue, sometimes till it bled. After Josy left, I flushed the rest of the prescription down the toilet in a rare moment of certainty and righteous anger. I told myself that Josy finally getting out might be the only anti-depressant I would ever need.
The only time to have a long, hot shower is after the kids are in bed for the night. I tell myself it’s relaxing, but lately it seems less so, like the running water is an excuse to sit on the bottom of the shower stall and cry without being heard. I am an actor during daylight hours, but I have no script. My audience of two wants to believe everything will be okay, almost as much as I do, but I don’t know how much longer the show will go on. Improv is so much harder than saying the lines someone else made up for you.
When the hot water runs out, I step out of the shower stall’s steam cocoon and examine my body’s aging topography carefully. I probe the inside of my upper lip for that bump that comes and goes. It’s down now, but who knows what it will do by morning? I examine my neck with my hands slowly, like a man selecting coins from his pocket, going only by feel. I find no lumps. I wipe the mirror clean of fog with my towel and examine my throat. It looks too red to me, but that hasn’t changed in a long time. I wish now that they had taken my tonsils, almost the size of golf balls, when I was a kid. I came along just when that operation was going out of style.
I take a deep breath and hold it. My respiration used to be much deeper and slower, I think. I was a lifeguard during my summer breaks from college. I used to be able to hold my breath for much longer, swimming underwater all the way out to the line of buoys that roped off the common area for beach goers.
Murders Among Dead Trees Page 14
