CHAPTER NINE

In which I fill in some missing details about my fling in paradise

 

When Craig and Dirk and I first started being best friends, Dirk would often get tired of me complaining that Craig (whose phone number was 945-9464) hadn’t called, and he would drag me over to Craig’s house.  Being too young to know better, Dirk was willing to risk the possibility that Craig’s mother might be extremely upset that we wanted to play with her son.  I hid behind the little pine tree in Craig’s front yard while Dirk went up to the door, rang the doorbell, and asked Craig’s Mama or one of his three sisters if Craig could play.  When Craig appeared at the door, he would look over to my tree and holler at me to come on in.

I was especially terrified of Craig’s Daddy, who was a rich man, because he was the boss of a whole entire department store.  One day I got stuck witnessing Craig getting verbally lambasted by his Daddy for not hanging up his clothes, and I thanked my lucky stars that I had the Daddy that I had, because my Daddy never spoke in an impatient tone of voice, not even when he was angry, which he never was.  But one time he hit my sister Mo’s wiener dog Gretchen with a big long tent pole because the poor dog got in his way while he was trying to set up the family tent.

The next time I saw my Daddy get angry, which was several years later, toward the end of our time in Forward Falls, was when he was testing out a model rocket building project as part of his extra job as assistant boss of the local Cub Scout troop’s administrative division, and me and Dirk were helping.  He had warned us that if we didn’t stop sniping at each other, he wouldn’t let us help him anymore, and we didn’t pay much attention because he wasn’t letting us help him anyway; he had to get it just right, so we kept right on calling each other names.  Suddenly, the world caved in on us:  my Daddy got mad.  His face turned red and he wasn’t looking at us as he silently threw his model rocket building supplies into a box, and then ordered us to get on our pajamas and get into our beds.  There was no piggy-back ride to bed that night, just Go to Sleep.  I lay in my upper bunk, more sleepless than usual, listening to Dirk crying below me, and feeling something alive and extremely dangerous building in my chest. 

When I looked inside to see what it was, all I could see was my Daddy beating himself up with his own fists.  The vision was accompanied by a prolonged spasm of an intolerably unnamable emotion.  All I knew for a fact was that I had caused my Daddy to not have fun making his model, and had spoiled the only special thing he had attempted to do with us for weeks.

When it came time for me to build my own model rocket in Cub Scouts, my Daddy was gone on another of his trips out of town for his job, and the pastor from our church, Steve Barru, had to come over with his drill to help me make my rocket.  When the doorbell rang, Dirk ran to the door to let him in and I slid under the couch to hide, hoping that he would just drill his hole in my rocket and leave.  But no, he had to come over to the couch, lay on his belly, and talk to me for the longest time about how he was my friend and he liked me, and about how next time he came over it wouldn’t be necessary for me to hide.  I never knew a man could have so much to say.

The only conversations my Daddy ever had with me that I remember from those days were when he would take me in the car with him to run errands.  Then he would start in apologizing for being gone on business trips all the time, and promise to take us camping more often, or play ball with us.  When these conversations began, I at first got excited, but when the ball games seldom happened, I started to realize that the rides in the car were interruptions of what I really wanted to be doing, and I started to dread them, but I couldn’t break my Daddy’s heart by refusing to go with him.  It got to the point that he would leave town on Monday morning and return on Friday evening, and eventually I would hate the weekends when he was there to throw a monkey wrench into our normal family routine, and I would look forward to Monday morning when he would go away to do the things he enjoyed.

One time my Daddy was substitute Cub Scout leader in my weekly meeting, when we were trying to learn how to tie knots.  He had to leave work to be there, and as soon as he got there I noticed he was kind of jittery and moving faster than he usually did.  During the knot-tying lesson, two of the boys were having too much fun, talking and laughing and carrying on and making knots that reminded them of unmentionable body parts, when suddenly my Daddy leaped to his feet, turning over the bench he’d been sitting on, grabbed a piece of rope and began whacking those two boys on the back, his eyes bugged out and saliva shooting out between his clenched teeth.

I walked home like a robot.  The friend who walked with me was trying to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.  That was the last time I went to Cub Scouts.

The other time my Daddy got mad was when he was trying to help me and Dirk clean our room.  I was 11 by then, and this was shortly before we were to be ousted from our Forward Falls interlude by my Daddy’s next promotion.  Dirk had developed the habit of calling me names and insulting me constantly, and I was trying to keep up with him while our Daddy was picking our things up off the floor and handing them to us to put away.  One thing picked up, a pair of insults flung back and forth, one more thing picked up, another pair of insults, and on and on.  Finally my Daddy told us if we said one more word to each other, he would spank us.  I didn’t believe him, because he had never spanked me in my life, but when the next pair of insults popped out of us, my Daddy stuck out his jaw and grabbed a coat hanger and told me to come on over to the bed.  He told me to pull my pants down and bend over the bed.  I looked at him like he was crazy.  I didn’t pull down my pants for nobody.  He explained that this was for real, and if I didn’t pull down my pants he would pull them down for me.

With a sneer, I pulled down my pants and bent over the bed.  He smacked my ass with the coat hanger several times, and then performed the same act on my brother Dirk.

Since I was a great big 11 year old, the coat hanger didn’t hurt me, though it stung a little.  I wished that I hadn’t pulled down my pants, though.  I wished I’d taken that coat hanger away from him, poked out both his eyes with it, and sent him to his room to think about it.  The fucking pervert.  I’ll show you my ass, you pederastic piece of shit!  But I didn’t know those words back then; all I could do was feel my empty shell fill up with toxic fumes that had no place to go.

So you see, when my friend Craig’s Daddy spoke to him in an angry tone of voice almost every other time I was over there, I thanked my lucky stars that I had the Daddy that I had, because in the first 11 years of my life, my Daddy only got mad four times.

Back at Craig’s house, it would get to be 5:05 p.m., and my Mama would call over  and holler at me or Dirk over Craig’s Mama’s telephone that we should have been home five minutes ago, and so home we would go.  We had to wash our hands before dinner, and if we petted the dogs or cats on our way to the table, we had to wash our hands again.  We would sit down and someone would be forced to thank Jesus for dinner, then my Daddy would silently start gobbling and my Mama and my sisters would start talking about their day, laughing and having a good time.  If I tried to say anything, one of my sisters would say something sarcastic about whatever I’d said, so I’d say something else back and start giggling.  Once giggling, it was impossible to stop, until I’d fallen off my chair and was rolling on the floor clutching my sides and stomping my feet on the floor.  Then my Mama would tell me, That’s enough, now get back up to the table and eat your dinner.

The next thing that happened was always brought on by a giggling fit, and fortunately my sister Glenda eventually left home for college and there was no more laughing at dinnertime after that.

After I’d ignored her several attempts to interrupt my giggling, my Mama would repeat her injunction in a harsh tone of voice and I would run into the bathroom, because it was the only door with a lock on it, and I would sit on the toilet seat and shred the roll of toilet paper with my fingernails while going over in my mind a list of everybody I knew:  my brother and my sisters, my Mama, my friends, my pets, my teachers, my relatives, the President, and everyone else I could think of, and as I got to each individual on the list, I would drive a stake of utter and absolute Hate through their heart.  But when I got to my Daddy on the list, I couldn’t hate him.  I tried, but all I could do was feel this other feeling which I couldn’t name, didn’t like, and didn’t understand or have any control over, and then I would start crying.  About then, my Daddy would get up from the dinner table and come to the bathroom door.

Maxwell?

Maxwell?

Don’t you want to come finish your dinner, Maxwell?

What’s wrong?  Why won’t you talk to me.

Come on out, Maxwell, please come out.  Let’s talk about it, just you and me.  You can tell me what’s on your mind.

Eventually he would give up and go have a second helping of potatoes, and when that was done he’d be back to the door for round two.  Again he got no response.

After dessert, he’d be back for round three, and still not a peep out of me.

Eventually, his whining made me long for the dry heaves on christmas morning or something else that would be easier to stomach, and I’d sneak out of the bathroom and run into my bedroom and slam the door.  Somehow, I could never get one over on my Mama, who made me come back to the table and sit there until I finished my warm milk or my cold peas or whatever it was I didn’t want to eat, and by the time I’d gotten that gagged down it was bedtime, for the rule in my Mama’s house was that the bedtime schedule was set in concrete, and it seemed like it was always timed to take place before anything good came on TV, or right in the middle of the most fun I’d ever had in my life, or just when Dirk had finally agreed to play a game that I wanted to play.  Since we always had to go to bed at Bedtime, I’d almost never experienced the process of getting sleepy and staggering to bed on my own, so I had insomnia till I was 16, at which time I was miraculously cured.

The only time I got to stay up past bedtime was when Mrs. Scarecrow loaded us down with so much homework that I had to stay up late writing out all those Complete Sentences.

 

Although Craig was the friendliest and most sociable person who ever walked the face of the Earth, there would be times when we would get bored with each other, or he would get tired of the role he always played as leader to reluctant milquetoast, and we would have an argument and Never Speak to Each Other Again for a couple of weeks until one of us caved in and called the other one up.  By the time I was 11 he gradually started wanting to spend more time playing team games with groups of kids, and since I usually refused to play with anyone but Craig, Dirk, or girls, we weren’t seeing as much of each other.  That summer he and his family went on a long camping and fishing trip, and I was actually glad he was going.  His habit of saying “Oops sorry” all the time when he hadn’t done anything wrong was getting on my nerves.

As soon as he got back from his fishing trip, he raced over to tell me all about it, and as he stood there in his sweaty, fishy-smelling T-shirt, going on in detail about the places he had gone and the fish he had caught, I found my mind wandering.  Finally he left.  The next time he came over, we couldn’t think of anything to do, until he suggested we haul out the boxing gloves that me and Dirk had gotten for Christmas.  I didn’t really want to box, or do anything else, but I went and got the gloves anyway.  We put them on, and started whacking each other.  We kept on hitting harder and harder, getting madder and madder, until we were really trying to hurt each other.

Finally Craig said, Let’s not do this anymore, and he took off his gloves and handed them to me, his eyes downcast.  He turned around and went home, and we never played together again.

I spent the rest of the summer sitting in a chair in the living room, looking out the window.  My Mama kept wanting me to make up with Craig, like we’d done before, but it wouldn’t happen this time, so she changed it to, Why don’t you go make new friends, but that didn’t work either.  I wanted to sit in that chair and look out that window and feel with my whole body what it felt like to be left alone.

Then one day my Mama gathered us kids up while my Daddy was on one of his business trips, and told us in a low, serious tone of voice that we were going to have to put everything we owned in cardboard boxes and move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, because my Daddy had gotten another promotion.

I was the only one who was happy that we were leaving.