Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

by Ray Garton

  Brett had liked the movie. A lot. It had given him a deep feeling of satisfaction.

  Some people simply deserved to be punished.

  On the other hand, some deserved to be rewarded, like Luke, the Princess, Han, and Chewbacca at the end of Star Wars.

  Brett thought about rewards and punishments as he walked toward the RESTROOMS sign in the back and passed by the men's room. He went to a bank of payphones and fished in his pocket for some change.

  * * * *

  Mom tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel as she drove out of St. Helena.

  "You're just upset with me, that's all," she said stiffly. "I wanted us to have a nice evening together, but..." She shook her head and sighed.

  Brett gazed straight ahead, barely hearing her. His mind was intentionally blank, his body relaxed. Somehow, he had managed to get the walls working again.

  "I'm just tired," he said quietly.

  "Then why don't you let me take you home instead of to your friend's house?"

  "I have to pick up something I left there. Then I'll go home."

  She sighed again. "I came a long way to see you, you know. And my friend paid for it. What's he going to think when I tell him you didn't even want to be with me?"

  He pressed his lips together over the sharp reply that came to mind.

  Brett watched the road ahead for several minutes, then said, "Turn here, by the mailbox."

  When the car started down the bumpy dirt road, Mom said, "Jesus, this is a rented car, you know!"

  Lighted windows at the end of the road drew nearer.

  "Is this the house?"

  Brett nodded.

  She stopped in the drive and Brett said, "Come in. He'd like to meet you."

  Mom sighed but turned off the engine and got out, following him to the door.

  "Aren't you going to knock?" she asked when Brett walked into the house.

  "He doesn't mind." He let her in and closed the door. "He said he was —" He swallowed a dry knot in his throat. "— was going to do some laundry tonight. He's probably in the laundry room."

  Brett led her to the end of the hall, opened the door—he would not allow his hands to tremble—and stepped aside so she could go ahead.

  The light beyond the door was so dim that the room seemed bathed in gray, like a black-and-white movie. As soon as Mom stepped down into the room, her heels clicking on the dirty concrete floor, Brett swung the door shut. It slammed with the sound of a gunshot.

  "Brett!" she shouted on the other side. "What the hell are you—"

  She stopped. There was a scuffle. Then Mom screamed.

  Brett stared at the door for a moment, listening to the screaming and the awful, thick hacking noises, the retching and coughing. Then he began to back away, trying to shut the sounds from his ears, realizing that Mom was not the only one screaming.

  In the living room, he turned and crossed to the front door. Mom stopped screaming, but Mr. Moser continued. His cries of, "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! God, I'm sorry, so sorry!" died in the wet sounds of vomiting.

  Brett went outside and stood on the porch, thinking of nothing.

  * * * *

  It could have been a minute or an hour later when Mr. Moser came out of the house and into the dim yellow glow of the porch light; Brett was not sure.

  Mr. Moser held his hands out before him, palms up, fingers clawed, staring at them as if they were not his own. Blood speckled his twisted face and his sleeveless arms were black with it to his elbows. He gulped sobs and his eyes sparkled with tears.

  "Dear Jesus," he breathed over and over, "dear Jesus..."

  "Did you get it?" Brett asked. "On videotape?"

  "I...if I'd known earlier...it was such short notice and I-I-I...I was so upset, so scared...I didn't have time to —"

  "You didn't get it?" Brett snapped, anger flaring in his head for a moment.

  "I-I couldn't, I was too, too—why, Brett? Why did you make me do this? Why?"

  "I thought you enjoyed it," Brett replied flatly, still preoccupied with the fact that his mother's starring role had not been videotaped.

  "Not...not like this. What I do...it's different, for different reasons, it's...it's...you wouldn't understand."

  "Well, I think it's time you left behind the kid stuff, Mr. Moser." Brett turned and stared silently at his mom's rented car.

  Mr. Moser paced behind him, muttering, "Oh, God, oh Jesus God." He stopped abruptly and snapped in a hoarse, pained voice, "And what am I gonna do about the car, huh?"

  "It's rented."

  "Rented? Oh, God, that's just...that's...rented!"

  Brett stepped off the porch.

  "If I get caught," Mr. Moser shouted, "you're in just as much trouble as I am, you know! You helped. You're an accomplice. Worse than that, you set up this whole thing, it was your idea."

  Brett turned to him and, genuinely worried for a moment, said, "You think anybody'd believe that? I mean, I'm just a kid, and...and you killed those boys. I've got the tape." He thought about it for a while, then shook his head, feeling better. "No. I don't think so, Mr. Moser. I really don't." He started across the drive toward the dirt road. "I think I'm gonna walk home. They don't expect me for a while, so I've got time."

  "What will you tell them?"

  "I don't know. I'll think of something."

  "But...what if they notice she doesn't bring you home?"

  Grandma. Brett thought of Grandma's stern gaze and the stinging smell of those messy Ben Gay back rubs. He turned to Mr. Moser again and said, "Get rid of the car by tomorrow afternoon. I want to go into San Francisco."

  "What? Why?"

  "There's a movie I want to see. Bedside Manners." Then, to himself, Brett muttered, "You saw her die. Now I need to."

  But Grandma...she was still around to make Brett's life miserable. And Grandpa's.

  Mr. Moser bellowed, "Are you out of your—"

  "And keep that video camera loaded and ready. In a couple of days, I'm gonna bring my grandma over."

  Brett watched as Mr. Moser slowly turned his back, then began to kick the side of his house, pulling his hair and screaming like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

  Mr. Moser's screams faded as Brett started down the road, looking forward to getting to know Grandpa.

  PUNISHMENTS

  I arrived in Manning the day after I read of Jayne's death in the paper. It was front-page news across the country, the kind of story the press wrings dry.

  TEENAGER KILLS CHURCH ORGANIST

  IN BIZARRE SEX SLAYING

  I wouldn't have read it if I hadn't seen Jayne's picture, her big tortoiseshell glasses perched on her small nose, dull brown hair gathered in the back, her usually timid, fleeting smile opening brightly for the camera. It was a recent picture and she'd changed little in the last ten years.

  I immediately arranged to take a day off work, saw that my pet, Clarissa, had plenty of food and water, and left Los Angeles for Manning.

  I was raised in Manning, a small Seventh-day Adventist village in the Napa Valley. My parents still lived there, but when I arrived, I went straight to the boy's house. It was easy enough to find; reporters were gathered on the sidewalk waiting for a glimpse of the killer's family. I parked my rented car across the street and stared at the house, wondering what the boy was like, how he'd met her. And if she'd done to him what she'd done to me.

  When I was sixteen, I thought of Jayne Potter only as the woman who, each week, placed a square brown cushion on the church organ bench, sat down and played for services. I didn't find her attractive, but at the same time, she was not unattractive. She was simply...there. She had fair skin, dressed plainly, and always wore her hair in a bun or braided. She didn't wear makeup, but because that was against Seventh-day Adventist rules, neither did any of the girls at the Adventist prep school I attended. They, however, were the stars of my fantasies; although restricted by dress codes, they somehow managed to
dress in ways that accentuated their curves and angles to the fullest. Repression is the mother of stealth.

  Miss Potter attended every church function and gave more than her share of time to its causes. At a bake sale or potluck, she was impossible to distract, so great was her concentration on her duties. She seemed driven, as if she had to participate in church activities, as if she were repaying an important debt. But in spite of her sizeable contributions to the church, the congregation seemed to ignore her; sometimes I even thought they were shunning her. Most people that participated in church activities with any enthusiasm were quite popular socially. Not Miss Potter. She smiled and nodded a lot but spoke little and seldom if ever was spoken to by others.

  It wasn't until she came down with a summer cold and my mother sent me to her place with some homemade vegetable soup that our relationship began. I drove there in my mom's car. Miss Potter lived on the north side of town in a mobile home nestled by itself at the foot of a shady hill.

  It was a hot summer day, but she came to the door wearing a heavy white terrycloth robe. I didn't expect to be invited in, but she did so immediately. Once inside, with the glare of the sunlight out of my eyes, I could see that she wasn't wearing her glasses and her hair was down, full and wavy on her shoulders and back, and I discovered something. It wasn't an instant discovery; it took a little while to sink in and wasn't fully absorbed until after I'd left her. I discovered that Miss Potter was beautiful.

  She didn't seem sick. Her eyes were puffy, but that might have been from crying. I would later realize that she had been. I lost count of the times I found her crying when I came over for my visits. In fact, I lost count of the visits.

  Inside, her trailer was dimly lighted; only one small lamp was on by the sofa, but its dark gray shade shed little light. It was sparsely furnished and the walls were bare except for the most hideous portrait of the crucifixion I've ever seen; blood, dark and viscous, poured from Christ's head, hands and feet, and from the gaping hole in his side. His face was a long, cadaverous nightmare.

  She thanked me for the soup, took it to the kitchen, then sat on the sofa with a smile, gracefully folding her legs beneath the robe. She patted the cushion beside her and I sat, but there was nothing graceful about my movements. I was a clumsy and shy teenager, particularly in the presence of females. Especially females wearing robes. Miss Potter managed to put me at ease, though; we made small talk about school and the upcoming church picnic. As she spoke, she frequently patted my shoulder, hand, and knee—innocuous conversational gestures, but which I had never noticed from her before. She was not the same Miss Potter I knew from church.

  After insisting I call her Jayne, she discovered my interest in reptiles and softly said, "Ah, then, I have a book you'll enjoy." She scooted forward and leaned across my lap toward a small bookcase against the wall.

  My heart quivered like Jell-O. A shadowed valley plunged between the lapels of her robe and flesh shifted slightly; her skin was white as summer clouds and a faint green-blue vein meandered over the curve of her left breast, disappearing in the shadows. I wanted so badly to follow that vein down into her robe that my fingers actually twitched to reach out and pull the lapel aside. I blushed furiously and stood when she moved, preparing to leave.

  At the door, she gave me the book, gently touched a cool hand to the back of my neck and said, "This will give you an excuse to come back and see me." As I stepped out, something brushed my behind; it could have been a shifting wrinkle in my pants or the corner of the end table by the door...or her fingers.

  Of course, it was her fingers, but I couldn't bring myself to believe it then. I did, however, masturbate my way through variations of that fantasy for the next few nights in the secrecy of my bedroom. Masturbation is, of course, another no-no among Adventists, but I've often attributed any stability I may now possess to my refusal to stop masturbating even after my biology teacher told the class it could cause a nervous breakdown, insanity, and eventual death.

  I wanted to talk about this fantasy, as boys do, with my best and, really, my only friend, Gary Sigman, but Gary wasn't saying much to anyone that summer. The previous fall, his parents had divorced. Both were teachers at the Adventist grammar school in Manning and had lost their jobs due to the divorce. (The church cannot prevent divorces, but it does punish those involved for allowing their marriages to fail.) Gary became pale and withdrawn. Everyone attributed his subsequent sullenness and weight loss to the upset of the divorce. Everyone but me. I knew something else had happened to Gary. He looked older and didn't laugh much anymore. But it was out of my reach, so I decided to let him make the first move to open up. If he had, we might have spent those summer evenings on my back porch whispering about Miss Potter. But he didn't. And we didn't.

  When I returned the book three days later, Jayne met me at the door wearing that same robe. I thought that was odd; it was mid-afternoon and surely she was no longer ill. She greeted me pleasantly and led me to the sofa where she presented me with another book. It was huge and full of color photographs of rare and exotic reptiles.

  "I don't want to let it out of the house," she said, sitting close to me and opening the book on our laps, "but you're welcome to look at it here if you want. Anytime."

  As we paged through the book, her leg rubbed against mine and beneath the book, my crotch began to bulge. I realized I had imagined nothing three days before but didn't know what to do. Dry-mouthed and trembling, I stared blindly at the book, aware only of the burning friction between her leg and mine. When she unexpectedly pulled the book away, I found myself staring down at my erection. Jayne was staring at it, too. Smirking. She slowly reached over and placed her hand on it. Squeezed it slightly, then a little harder. My lungs convulsively sucked in a breath.

  "Do you like hot fudge sundaes, Paul?" she whispered. Then she stood and left the room to clatter around in the kitchen a moment. "I do. Would you like one?"

  I shook my head.

  She returned with a bowl of ice cream, chocolate syrup, nuts and a cherry and said, "I would." Placing the bowl on the coffee table, she knelt before me and began to undo my belt.

  I was paralyzed. I imagined my mother's horror should she walk in and find us. I remembered Pastor Helmond's recent sermon in which he declared, "Sex is a sweet-tasting poison that will surely kill your soul!" I remembered my Bible teacher at school telling the class, "Sex is such a dangerous, unhealthy diversion that, when faced with sexual desires, even married couples should take a cold shower or run around the block instead of giving in to the desire to have intercourse. Unless, of course, it's done for the purpose of reproduction." Long before I even knew what it was, I was told sex was a moral crime, the most treacherous curve on the road to heaven. But when Jayne took me in her hand, I lost all fear of the lake of fire that I had so long been warned about. Placing the bowl on the floor between my legs, she turned off the lamp, spooned ice cream and chocolate syrup onto my cock, sprinkled nuts over it, placed the cherry on the head and hungrily devoured her sundae.

  Her sofa converted into a bed, which we put to great use that afternoon. I was clumsy at first, but soon lost my self-consciousness as she covered my body with nibbles and kisses and touched me in ways that were startlingly new. I wanted to see her, touch her, taste her, but when I tugged at her robe, she refused to remove it. I rolled on top of her, but she pushed me away and gasped, "No, no, like this," and rolled onto her knees and elbows. I knelt behind her, she guided me in and immediately began to groan. It wasn't a sound of pleasure, it was a groan, and I feared I was hurting her somehow. When I started to pull out, she snapped, "No, do it! Hard!"

  My thrusts were uncertain at first, but I soon lost myself in waves of new sensations. The robe's hem gathered between us, but when I tried to slide it up so I could stroke her back, she quickly pulled it back down and began uttering garbled words between her gasps.

  I leaned forward and whispered, "What? What'd you say?" but she spoke into the pill
ow after that. It would be weeks before those words became clear to me.

  I went home on weak knees and said little to my parents on the way to my room. I remained in a stunned silence until the following afternoon when, at her request, I returned to Jayne's trailer like a somnambulist returning to his bed. Once again, she was wearing that robe; once again, she seated me on the sofa. There she stripped me and licked every inch of my body except my cock until I put her hand on it myself and breathed, "Please...please..." She opened the bed and, as before, left her robe on and cried out as we writhed together, her sobbed words buried in the pillow.

  There was only silence afterward. Although we exchanged small talk before, we never spoke after. We never spoke of what we had just done. As we lay side by side that second time, I tried to stroke her hair, her neck, but she pulled away and curled into a trembling ball. Finally, she whispered hoarsely, "Come back at three tomorrow."

  Her strange behavior was lost on me at first because I was too overwhelmed by the fact that I was HAVING SEX. On top of that, it was with an OLDER WOMAN. And I suppose I got a great charge from the fact that my lover was timid Miss Potter, the mousy church organist so ignored by everyone. It was a secret that made me feel somehow superior to everyone around because I knew it and they didn't.

  Church became a new experience altogether. Each time I saw Jayne mount that organ bench after carefully putting the cushion in place, I immediately grew hard—right there with Mom and Dad in our usual pew. I covered my erection with my leather-bound monogrammed Revised Standard Version Bible. I watched her throughout the sermon; sometimes her hips squirmed on that cushion, and I wondered if she was thinking of me.