Maladaptation

By L.A. Fields

The Disorder Series book 1. Sixteen-year-old Marley Kurtz is an incurable bookworm who is sent to a program for maladapted youth in Loweville, Colorado after his parents discover he has been having an affair with a man forty-three years his senior. Once there, Marley befriends the wry yet optimistic Missy, who is fifteen and pregnant in the lowest town on earth, and falls in love with Jesse, an ice-eyed sociopath with an outlaw for a father and a corpse for a mother. As the stress of the summer causes Marley s physical and mental health to decline, it is unclear which of his new friends has the worst influence on him, or whether the instruction of a small town s Baptist-run therapy group will do more harm than good to everyone involved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rebel Satori Press
• Release date: Feb 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781608641185

L.A. Fields

L.A. Fields is the author of The Disorder Series, published by Rebel Satori Press, along with the Lambda Literary Award finalist My Dear Watson, the collection Countrycide, and her newest book, Homo Superiors. Her work has been featured in Wilde Stories 2009, Best Gay Romance 2010 and the Bram Stoker Award-winning Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet. She has traveled the world but now lives in Texas.

Book preview

Maladaptation

A Novel

L.A. Fields

QueerMojo

A Rebel Satori Imprint

Published in the United States of America by

REBEL SATORI PRESS

www.rebelsatori.com

Copyright © 2009 by L. A. Fields. All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Book Design by Sven Davisson

But catastrophes only encouraged experiment.

As a rule, it was the fittest who perished, the mis-fits,

Forced by failure to emigrate to unsettled niches, who

Altered their structure and prospered.

—W. H. Auden

Prologue: The Lonesome Crowded West

Dan McGrath was born with the kind of wanderlust that damns those afflicted to a life of gypsy-hood and loneliness. Always he had an itchy foot, a vagrant urge, an addiction to the smell of asphalt. Dan was tramp, a rover. He could see the shimmer of rainbows in a gallon of gasoline.

Even as a child, he could not be fenced or tethered. His parents often lost him for hours, and then days, and then weeks as he got older and more self-sufficient. They eventually lost him for good when he got himself a job and a rusty 1965 red Chevy pickup truck, though at first Dan’s truck would not take him anywhere. He had to learn how to fix just about everything in, on, and around it before the thing would even start, but that was no problem for Dan. The same brain that could not wrap around his mother’s disappointment or his father’s disapproval was more than adept at rewiring his truck’s rubber and metal innards. Like knows like.

Really there was nothing Dan could not or would not do; he proved that with the kinds of jobs he took. Dan was not too proud to dig a ditch or pump some gas. If you wanted something done, you would only need to teach him how. If you wanted something undone, you’d only need to point Dan in the right direction. If you wanted that gas pumped, then give him the nozzle and watch him handle it as deftly as a shootist would his favorite tailored gun, and if you wanted a ditch dug, Dan would (as his friends liked to say) dig it.

Yet in spite of his work ethic, Dan fell in love with long distances, and when he did finally get his truck running and some money for his own gas, he drove west to find some space far from where the topless towers met the bottomless sky in tight seams like the teeth of a lock. Deep down in the most secret place of his heart, Dan knew he was a cowboy on his way to adventure and freedom, to solitary places where his soul could be unbounded. That’s about as much drive and direction as Dan ever had.

His truck didn’t even make it out of the state. It broke down fifty miles north of Denver near a shitsplat little town called Loweville. The vehicle just sputtered and died, and it seemed to slouch low on its tires as it stopped, as though the earth of the town had some sort of downward pull, something more than gravity, like a vortex or sinkhole, a place to get trapped in. Dan was appropriately low as he entered Loweville.

What he didn’t know as he entered Ruthie Grahm of Loweville was that she had never even seen a birth control pill and wouldn’t have taken one if she had because she wanted to be a grown up with a baby more than anything in the world. She was young, tight like claustrophobia, and oh so very insistent. And so Dan, with his shotgun wife and cowboy-christened son, moved into a little shotgun house near her parents, and he bought himself a shotgun thinking that if it ever got too bad, there was always His and Hers bullets to solve the problem. Dan had never meant to get tied down and he could never bring himself to settle. Dan was not cut out to be a family man; he was never lonesome when he was alone.

He took to drinking in self-defense. Once Ruthie got an idea of the life she’d stuck herself with, she went to church and got saved and nearly drove Dan to insanity with shouts and shalts and Jesus jargon. Dan would drink too much every night, get mean, have a lot to say, and then go cut himself on the guts of his truck. He was trying to fix everything that was wrong with it, yearning for the day it would fulfill its promise to take him far away and pleading with something. I want more. I want less.

But, as though the dirt grounded all its energy and fed upon its life, the truck’s engine only managed to turn over twice in Loweville. Once was in the middle of the night and Dan, with a flashlight between his teeth, had been so ecstatic that he grabbed his gun, a tattered blanket, and the family’s meager wad of emergency cash and hit the road. The distance ahead of him had been so big that it half blinded him, a big moon-like cataract in the middle of his vision. He couldn’t see around or beyond it, but he didn’t really need to.

That trip didn’t last the night. The truck sputtered to a stop in the desert near dawn, and Dan kicked and raged and warred inside the cab, but vainly, and to no end. A sickening candy cane twist of icy fear and molten rage twirled inside of him. The only thing he could think to do was to fire his gun a few times at the mountains, the sun, and the sky and fall to his knees like a man praying or dying. He let out a wailing howl, a sermon yell to rival that of the faith-healing preacher back in Loweville. He was plunged completely in the cool blue morning from the tips of his steel toes to the top of his corn-silk head, submerged as completely as any drowning man in the middle of the cold, wide Pacific.

Going back to Loweville was more punishment than any other person could have ever inflicted upon Dan. It was like going back to death row, like being lucky enough to beat a righteous rap, and then getting busted again. It was like double jeopardy, but Dan allowed himself to be punished again. When he was ordered to quit drinking, he did it without complaint, knowing that they were fools to even suggest it. Dan used the booze to tamp down his anger. How they never knew, why it never occurred to them that Dan was more dangerous stone cold sober than when he was stinking drunk, remained a mystery until the day it became a tragedy. When Dan was reamed for being a terrible father and told to spend more time with his son, he did that too. The pain of the one condition was lessened by the ease of the other.

Little Jesse James McGrath never wanted his daddy to be somebody he wasn’t, or expected him to do something he couldn’t, or looked at him with anything except unconditional filial affection and serene glacial eyes, blue like Dan’s and yet unlike them; there was something more in them, or something lacking altogether. Jesse did not listen to his mother or his nosy Aunt Karen or the rest of the evil town, and he seemed to understand everything about Dan without being told a word.

Three years passed, and just as Dan’s drive was beginning to deteriorate, just as he was starting to develop rust around his edges like his dear old truck, the engine turned over a second time. A little longer and it would have been too late for the both of them: out of gas, out of road, out of time. Dan knew it, and so he arranged to get away clean by making sure he could never come back to Loweville. He might be goddamned, but would not die in that town. Ruthie had once told Dan that the only way he’d ever leave her was over her dead body. Dan just took a long time in realizing that she meant it.

He’d had to step over her, the way she landed. When the shotgun went off in the living room, she lay splayed and bleeding and blessedly silent right at the mouth of the hall. Jesse, fifteen at the time, only blinked mildly at Dan from the sofa, like someone who had just asked a question. Jesse’s eyes were calm, and his posture relaxed, and he had never looked so much like his father.

Dan gathered his supplies again. Guns and money were all any real cowboy ever needed. He would wager that his hand was on the doorknob within eight seconds. Eight seconds, and he knew he was done riding that bull forever. He stopped only briefly on his way out to kiss his son on the forehead and ask him to please avoid calling the authorities if he possibly could. Jesse stood watching from the door of the house for as long as Dan could see him in the rearview, and after that, Dan didn’t look back once.

Part One: June

Chapter One: The Passenger

Marley Kurtz presses his forehead against the passenger side window, his face smudging up the smudges. He rocks his head back and forth, wondering how much strength he would need to break the glass while still remaining in his seat. Does he have that ability? Does anybody? And more importantly, would Marley bring himself to do such a thing, even if he could? Just rear back, take aim, and crack! Skull meets pane.

If so, would the glass split into one of those starbursts, like the one he saw when his window passed a car accident in Louisiana, a spider web of little fractures like roads emanating from a big city on a small map? Or would the glass shatter out in big puzzle piece fragments, leaving a large razor-toothed hole in its place? Marley entertains himself by imagining his head impaled on a spiked shard, rocking gently with the movement of the truck. He can almost see his silky black hair slipping through the air, his brain’s electric goo oozing down the door and over the greasy chrome of the handle, dripping slowly on to the rushing road, mingling with the dust.

Marley rubs his eyes hard, two fat grapes that he could easily rupture with his grime-lined hands. It reminds of the B-rate haunted houses people used to erect in the park on Halloween with covered bowls of peeled grapes standing in for eyeballs, cold spaghetti for worms or entrails, and the raw insides of eggs for all of the body’s anonymous jellies. Marley’s eyes feel weird in his head, foreign and treacherous, like someone has indeed replaced them with inferior fakes. As the signs proclaimed: They feel just like real eyeees! But they act like grapes. Marley’s mind is awake, but his eyes are sleeping, hypnotized by miles and miles of crawling kudzu.

Kudzu was something that Marley had never seen until two days ago, when he crossed over the Florida state line for the first time in his life. He was able to identify the plant immediately thanks to a book he once read twice; a southern gothic horror thing about a homicide-haunted house in North Carolina. The house was half-consumed by rabid vines, nearly eaten alive by those rolling, leafy seas. The book had gone into such luscious detail that Marley would have known the plant anywhere.

At first it was almost a joy (it was at the very least a distraction) to watch the kudzu-covered forests whip by in oddly lumped vistas. It grows so fast and indiscriminately, just like any other weed; dead and brown every winter, but snaking around power lines in the heat of summer, scurrying up the sides of buildings as fast as a flurry of jazz notes. Marley made a game of trying to figure out what was beneath those blankets of leaves. What had the plant grown over the top of to make such strange shapes? What geography was it hiding? Trees he could recognize, cars and houses, all blanketed in rippling green. It was kind of fun. Marley started to feel like a traveler, a drifter, like maybe Kerouac and Cassidy were looking down on him and nodding with approval from that big truck stop in the sky. At times, Marley would even hum along with the wind’s white noise. I am the passenger, and I ride and I ride.

But now Marley is sick of roads. He is sick of highways and interstates and their lack of numerical significance. Where is Highway 42 or Route 666? Where is the Interstate 8 that leads you around and around in the inescapable loops of a figure eight? He expected the road to have more poetry, just a little more artifice than this. He is sick of slutty food (fast and easy), sick of slimy hotel rooms, and he is capitally sick of being followed around by all his earthly possessions (mostly books) as they jostle gently in the back of the metal-walled moving van.

Marley and his father have been on the road for two whole days, driving north from the gulf coast city of East Arrow, Florida. Marley has been the ideal passenger the whole time: he needs no extra stops, no entertainment, and no conversation. He doesn’t give a damn what’s on the radio. He is never hungry and never tired, though he naps quite a bit with his face against the weave of the seat belt and his arms bent in under his chin. He watches the scenery scroll by. It has been nothing but gently curving lines and bland uniformity since the sharp left turn at Atlanta. They have driven straight through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Through the literary landscape of Louisiana, through the torturously wide Texas, and now through melodious New Mexico. Do you know the way to Santa Fe?

Marley has been compliant and peaceable for all those long miles, but not out of respect for his father. By all rights, Marley should be in an absolute tantrum against this injustice. All that is stopping him is his own pussy common sense. Jacob Kurtz is not a patient man on the most relaxing day of his life, and Marley simply refuses to invite any more grief from him. Not one good thing could come of it. Marley has been treading on thin ice for ages now, and more than once he has seen the gleam in his father’s eye that means the man is about this close to punching him in the face. That is usually how Jacob solves a problem between himself and another man. Marley has crossed so many of his father’s lines, and any one of them could have been the one between child and adult for Jacob. Marley’s father is not unlike a court of law sometimes; when you commit an adult’s crime, you may no longer be considered a child. Such was most likely Jacob’s reasoning behind kicking Marley out of the house.

An uncomfortable silence settled over the inside of the truck somewhere in Alabama. Marley resolved himself then against protesting and arguing in favor of his quiet, loathsome fantasies. He has given up fighting and now contemplates his predicament as if it is already ancient history, unchangeable and largely irrelevant. Otherwise this would be a long, long drive.

Marley suspects (and with good reason) that he is a disappointment to his father. Marley is the oldest of three children, the only son, and he knows that his father can barely tolerate him. Jacob needs to have a son he can joke with, take on fishing trips, brag to his buddies about. The fishing trips he took Marley on? He might as well have taken his daughters; it was gross and labor intensive and hot outside, and Marley had no problem pointing out those facts until Jacob gave up and took him home. He could have let Marley bring a book, but according to Jacob, Reading ain’t fishing. Jacob doesn’t know what to do with this twig-boned, bookish son, a boy who resembles his mother in more than just looks, and acts like someone Jacob has never met. Jacob used to try understanding Marley, but his tries were always misguided and awkward. Marley discouraged such attempts at father-son bonding, knowing that they would only lead to a wider rift. Marley turned out to be right. What Jacob didn’t know never hurt Marley.

Marley glances at his father. Ancient history though he is, Marley is still curious about the man’s motives. Does he believe himself to be acting in his son’s best interests, or is he just a total asshole? Marley is unsure. As he stares, Jacob’s blunt profile morphs into a more pointed and delicate face, his grubby T-shirt knits itself into a pressed and collared button-down, his fingers lengthen and his nails grow cleanly white at the tips. Marley shuts his eyes tight and rubs those grapes even harder than before, but when he opens them again and the spots clear, he is still looking at Mr. David Franklin, who goes by Frank to students, friends, and Marley. Frank gives Marley a knowing smile, part empathy and part amusement.

What…? Frank asks. As if to say, What do you expect? What…? What can you do about it, kiddo? He lifts his hand from the steering wheel. What…?

The hand flies toward Marley and smacks him on the forehead.

What the fuck are you looking at? Suddenly Marley is facing his irritated, short-tempered and road-weary father again. It occurs to Marley that they have both been in this truck for too long.

Sorry, Marley mumbles, turning back to the window just in time to read Welcome to Colorful Colorado. Marley sets his head against the window again with more force than is strictly necessary. I am the passenger, he mouths at his reflection. I stay under glass.

***

On the trucker’s atlas, their destination is a miniscule dot just far enough from Denver to be close to Cheyenne. Loweville: a veritable haven for the kind of people who don’t use the word ‘haven’ ironically. Lots of churches, lots of primary schools, but no bars, no casinos, and no strip clubs. The moving van, the dust of seven states spinning from its wheels, passes a sign proclaiming You Are Entering Loweville! at the town’s limit, on which has been added in cramped, black spray paint letters, The LOWEST place on EARTH. Encouraging.

To Marley, the whole place looks indistinguishably brown. It’s as if every building is made out of dirt, each one pushed up out of the ground like the mountains Marley can see but cannot name. The main road, Lincoln Street, has a bunch of western-style store fronts that Marley mentally classifies as old-timey, though for all he knows each building could date back to circa 1831. He is not exactly a historical expert, hailing from south Florida where the oldest building he can ever remember seeing was built in, like, the 50s. This street should look like any other in America, smoothly paved, bustling businesses, but the powdery sand of the desert still hangs in the air, the road to dusty death.

Marley has lived his whole life in a place with no elevation, no snow, with sea to the left and right; he was not built for this place. Marley scrutinizes the vague shapes of the mountains off to his left. They take up the whole horizon in the most audacious way. They are nothing but self-righteous piles of dirt that will block sunsets and bar Marley from the ocean. They hold no majesty for him.

Turning from the main road, Marley begins to notice that all the streets off Lincoln are also named after presidents: Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Monroe. He finds this ominous, like the kind of place that wants to name shit after every Commander in Chief is not a place he wants to be. He imagines he can hear unseen conversations taking place all around him in the squat houses and dull buildings, fading in and out like a radio in the middle of nowhere: God talk, family talk, country talk. Shut that off.

Marley’s aunt lives on Pierce Avenue, and for the next two years, so does Marley.

The woman is sitting on the porch when they pull up, smoothing what must be one of her fancier dresses, though it’s just a plain flower-print brown thing with no real shape or design. Marley has never met her before. Bess Caine (married, widowed) is a 47-year-old, plump, rosy woman with thick, brick-colored hair that stops mid-neck and the big brown eyes of a dumb but affectionate puppy. She jumps up as soon as Marley’s feet strike the ground, making a doomed sound like a falling gavel, making vibrations that expand in concentricity like a pebble tossed into still, mirrored waters.

Hi there, dear. She puts out a work-roughened hand and gives Marley a warm, firm handshake. Welcome to your new home. She gives Marley an elevator look and then suddenly pulls him into a tight hug. Stunned and apprehensive, he tentatively pats her on the back. Oh, I’m so glad to have you here, Aunt Bess says. Everything’s going to be all right.

Marley looks around for his father, for help or reassurance or something else he knows damn well he won’t get from Jacob. Marley still isn’t used to the way things are. He finds Jacob already unloading boxes as if eager to get this job over and done with. He pays no attention to Marley or Bess.

Well, says Bess, letting him go at last. Let’s get you settled in, hmm?

The initial packing had been pretty informal and last minute. Less than a week ago Marley’s parents told him he would be spending the summer, and the rest of his adolescence, somewhere else.

Your aunt helps run a program, his mother had told him, giving her husband an intensely melodramatic look. She spoke in a hushed and careful tone, as though breaking bad news to a mental patient on the second day of a suicide watch. "It’s a group therapy for teenagers who are… maladjusted. We want