Devils' Tag

By John Schaeffer

Have you ever found yourself contemplating something you wouldn't admit to anyone? Do thoughts sometimes enter your mind that seem to be not your own? Do you want to ignore them? Can you ignore them? No, really, deep down, have you ever wanted something so bad that you would do absolutely anything to get it: As long as nobody saw you do it? Who are you when nobody is looking? Are there forces outside of you, bigger than you are, more powerful, too powerful to ignore? Or are you the master of your own fate?
In this coming of age story, Tommy Flack encounters not only his own greed and disillusionment, he also encounters a familiar Princess, a body morphing dog, piranhas, giant first graders, the Gabbernaught, drivable tornadoes, flowing volcanos, falling helicopters, racing horses, Sigmund Freud selling hot dogs, dancing pirates, slavery, his long-lost father, tap shoes, Unicorn Boy, the Freedom Riders, Anne Frank, Adolph Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, and Pablo Neruda on a journey to eliminate or become New Evil. Consider it a game of Devils' Tag. Are you it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468538144

Book preview

Devils’ Tag

John Schaeffer

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AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

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© 2012 by John Schaeffer. All rights reserved.

Author website: johnschaeffer.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 01/06/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-3813-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-3815-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-3814-4 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011963694

Printed in the United States of America

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

PART TWO

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

For Alyx

The characters in this book are purely fictional. Any similarities between them and real individuals are purely coincidental.

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.

—William Edgar Stafford (1914-1993)

A child sucking at his mother’s breast has become the prototype of every relation of love. The finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it; and, furthermore, introducing object loss as an unavoidable step in the path to mental evolution, that it is only later that the instinct loses that object, just at the time, perhaps, when the child is able to form a total idea of the person to whom the organ that is giving him satisfaction belongs.

—Sigmund Freud, (1856-1939).

Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers

—William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet - act 4, scene 2

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Photo by John Schaeffer © 2011. www.waxyflexibility.com

PART ONE

External Locus of Control

CHAPTER ONE

Stacked

TOMMY FLACK’S MOMMA IS STACKED.

At least that’s what all the kids said at the Mesa View Elementary School.

And some of the teachers too.

And Principal Baldono.

Tommy didn’t exactly know what they meant, but he beat ’em up for it anyway.

Well, the kids, he did.

Beat ’em right up. Enjoyed it too. Yes enjoyed. The joy of beating someone up for no reason. Fist hitting flesh. The difference between belly flesh and face flesh and head flesh. Their frantic tears and gasps for air. No reason? Well, he did know what they meant about his momma. He just tried to deny it—except for when he sold the Polaroid photo of his momma naked in the shower to his best friend Jimmy Leach. Hey, five bucks is five bucks.

Guess we’ll be gettin’ your momma down here again, said Principal Baldono. He liked to have Tommy’s mom come in for a conference. You keep this up an’ she’s gonna lose that job a waitressin’ down over at the Pancake Alley.

Tommy’s mom waited tables. She hated buses full of high school kids on the road to some sporting event. They all wanted milk shakes and French fries and never left a tip unless inside a glass full of water turned upside down on the table. Tommy heard the clanking of dishes and the big kids laughing and yelling and bossing his mom around. Get me some water! Refill my coke! My milkshake’s too runny!

She would slide that full upside down glass over to the edge of the table for the water to spill neatly into her dirty blue bussing tub and then simply pick up the shiny nickel or dime or penny and drop it, wet, into her apron pocket. Tommy loved to watch her get the better of those stupid punk kids. Made him tingle all over. Tommy hated high school kids too. Swore he’d never be one, and no one could make him. (He’d tried probably fifty times to turn a glass of water upside down without spilling it, nearly flooding the kitchen one afternoon. Then he’d figured out that you can put a napkin over the top of the glass, flip it, and then pull the napkin out and keep most of the water in the glass. Stupid big kids. Who do they think they are?)

The tip jar was the focus of all that was true in the Flack household. That by which everything else was measured. Hidden carefully in Mom’s closet. Filled with quarters and dimes and pennies and nickels. The Kennedy half-dollar jar stood on the top shelf of his mother’s closet, way up high above the rest of stuff. With a full jar, life could be good. An empty jar meant lean pickings.

Tommy lived in a trailer court.

Poor white trash.

They called his mom that too. Stacked, poor, white trash. Tommy didn’t think he was stacked, just trash and white and poor.

That’s what a lot of people called those living down at the trailer court on Idaho Street. They called Jimmy Leach that too. Even if he did have a picture of Tommy’s mom naked in a shower. Jimmy lived five trailers down from Tommy, across the dirt road that separated the rows of rectangle-tubes.

Tommy could look out his own kitchen window and see into the living-room window of Jimmy’s trailer across the way. He’d see Jimmy’s old man yelling at him. Yellin’ an’ drinkin’ a bottle of beer. So stood Jimmy Leach, Sr. And so fell Jimmy Leach, Sr. He sold cars. But he must not have been very good at it, Tommy thought, because Jason’s dad sold cars too, and Jason lived in a house with a fenced-in back yard and a black Labrador retriever. The wire fence had those thin metal slats woven into it making a design of turquoises diamonds outlined in white. Tommy often wondered if that metal fence hid a swimming pool there in Jason’s own back yard. Maybe the black lab would drown in it, Tommy thought with pleasure. The trailer park’s swimming pool rested by some trees, just up the dirt road in the opposite direction from Jimmy. In the summer, Tommy could smell the chlorine through his bedroom window.

Jesse and Johnny Turpen lived in a trailer too—just not at the court. They rented space over behind someone else’s real house. Nancy and Diana Turpen lived there too, but they were older. High school kids. Tommy didn’t see them as sporting types who went on school bus trips. Their mom worked with Tommy’s mom at the Pancake Alley. People called her Sunshine, and she wore a name-badge with a smiley face. Sometimes she wore it upside down. Now pancakes are stacked. That makes sense.

Tommy noticed for the first time that wood smacking jeans gave off a bit of an echo in Principal Baldono’s office. Tommy wondered if he discovered the sound now on account of the fine new desk he leaned across. The old desk actually had wear marks at the points where all those kids through the years laid their hands while bending over to collect their swats. Not just rubbed off tarnish but actually smooth worn dents in the wood. That smooth feel under his fingers somehow gave him comfort. Tommy did his part to start the dents for this fine new desk, tapping with his fingers like a brave pounding out a warning to the tribe, telling of the dangers everywhere.

With war paint on their faces they could take over, he knew that for sure. War cries screamed off in the distance. Loud drums met Tommy’s tapping and pulled it to higher ground. Puffs of white smoke floated into the blue sky. The smell of gun powder filled the back of his nose. A great horse appeared on the horizon, white with red and blue war paint. The horse galloped closer and reared up high on its hind legs. Run, Tommy! the horse bellowed. Run where? Tommy asked from inside his head.

That’s three, son. You want more? Three? Tommy didn’t even remember the second one. Principal Baldono, barely an inch taller than Tommy, stood panting with sweat rolling down his brow and neck. Tommy stared out the window at the dusty wind. A medium-sized dust devil swirled around lazily. He could see his trailer court, though not his own trailer, from Principal Baldono’s window. I’m callin’ your momma. She gets fired, and it ain’t my fault. Hey, maybe we’ll give ’er a job over here, huh? She could wear that waitress dress of hers an’ be my secretary. The man belched and rubbed the top of his fat belly. Tommy smelled sausage and eggs and coffee and felt the urge to vomit all over the nice, new desk.

Principal Baldono meant well. Just imagine being the short, fat, and bald principal of 375 little kids year after year after year after year. After year.

And the next time you hit a first grader, you’re suspended on top of four swats that time. Not three. Fifth grader beatin’ up on a first grader. Pick on someone your own size. I’ve had it with you, Flack. No more flak from the Flack. Get it? It’s a joke. Laugh more an’ you may not have to beat up so many kids. Now get on back to class. Tommy imagined taking the wooden paddle out of Principal Baldono’s hand, snapping it in half, and shoving both sharp ends down his throat. Tommy felt warmed by this thought. Even joy. A soothing in the revenge centers of his brain, and then he felt sudden pain as large goosebumps formed all over his body.

Ouch! Tommy let out a gasp.

Bit of a delayed reaction there, son, his still perspiring principal informed him as if he were a moron. The swats were a few minutes ago, case you missed out on that. He put his fat hand on Tommy’s right shoulder and looked with deep concern into his eyes. Tommy turned his head and searched through the window for the painted pony. Shall we repeat the procedure? the principal asked, tapping the paddle on the fine new desk for dramatic effect. Wouldn’t want you to miss out on the important lessons of life.

No. I just got these really tight goosebumps, and Tommy held up his arm in demonstration, but the goose flesh had already passed.

Right, Mr. Baldono said suspiciously.

No, seriously! I just thought about the paddle and shov… I mean I just had these painful goosebumps for no reason. Tommy explained, and he pointed to the wart on the knuckle of his right hand. His principal raised his left eyebrow. Tommy left the office rubbing his arms. He heard the man belch even louder, and Tommy felt a wave of nausea even before the smell of coffee, eggs, and sausage reached his nose. I feel like that a lot lately, that urge to vomit, he realized as he walked down the empty hall.

CHAPTER TWO

Penny Parkman

IN MS. MALAY’S FIFTH-GRADE CLASS, all the silence could only mean that it was time for English, which she usually began by reading from a novel. Or silence could mean someone made her mad. Tommy hated English. He’d rather speak Swahili or Portuguese or something. Portuhili or Swatuguese. But he loved silence. He always found it so easy to break.

Take your seat, Tommy, Ms. Malay told him. He took Peter’s pencil along the way.

Hey! Peter yelled.

Tommy.

What? I didn’t do anything. Ask her. Tommy pointed to Alicia, but he wanted to point at Penny Parkman who sat in front of him.

He took my pencil, Peter complained.

‘He took my pencil,’ Tommy echoed with a mockful wailing whine. Penny turned to look at him, and he sank back in his chair. He hated the way one look from Penny could make him behave. He didn’t want to behave. He got swats for no reason today. It’s not fair, he thought, as he handed the pencil to Penny and watched her pass it back to Peter who shyly flipped him the bird. Tommy made a mental note to kill Peter at a later date. Revenge killing is so sweet. Tommy felt all warm inside as if being rewarded for the thought right in the center of his brain. You stink, Tommy whispered to Peter who always managed to emanate the slight hint of fresh poop.

Tommy said I stink. All the kids laughed.

What? Tommy asked innocently.

Peter, start reading from the top of page seventy-four, Tommy heard Ms. Malay answer. He could tell from her voice that she felt sad about something. Tommy’s ears were particularly attuned to sad words when spoken by a woman. It’s like he could taste their flavor on the back sides of his tongue, up into his ears. Or from the ears to the tongue, he couldn’t be sure of the direction. The sound and taste of sadness. Sometimes Ms. Malay sounded like his mom. He hoped it wasn’t something he had done to make his teacher feel bad this time. He started drawing on his paper as Peter read something boring about birds and the Amazon. Tommy hated the Amazon. Wished it would all burn down to the ground. He drew the bones of a fossilized camel flying and swooping down on some trees and peeing horrific flames all over everything. On the back of his three-humped camel, Tommy swayed and swooped, dipped and dove, weaving in and out of massive loops of fire and barked at all the little Amazonian first graders as they ran wildly from their burning forest-hut schools. It was a bark like no stupid dog could ever bark. A cross between a police siren and a blast from a 12 gage shot-gun. Whatcha gonna do when they come for you? Tommy heard the song in his head and laughed out loud. Bad boys. Bad boys.

The stench of burning hair and flesh fed his nausea, and so he pulled on the reins of his fossilized camel bird and soared skyward so high that it began to freeze, and hail knocked bones free from the wings of his mighty camel! Finally, the weather forced Tommy to land on the belly of a passing jet plane to protect himself and his stead—whatever a stead was. A stead? A stead? It’s a camel not a horse. Or is it a donkey? How come I use words I don’t know the meaning of? he wondered. Then a big, bald mountain popped out of the forest, angry and aflame! And the plane cashed right smack into the mountainside and blew up. The blast blew Tommy and his partially boned camel-bird straight into the courtyard of a castle orphanage where all the orphans looked just like Penny Parkman in the pink dress he liked to see her wear—though he wasn’t ready to admit that to Jimmy The Leach or anybody else. All the orphaned Pennies called out to him: Tommy! Tommy!

Tommy!

What? Tommy asked, startled that Penny stood beside his desk. He looked around the room and saw all the kids up out of their chairs in groups at the art stations.

Can you draw me a lion? Penny asked.

A Lion?

Yeah.

You want me to draw you a lion?

Yes. Please. Or a cougar. Ms. Malay, do they have cougars in the Amazon? Penny called out, but she didn’t wait for an answer. It’s for my Amazon project. Penny smiled at Tommy.

A cougar?

What’re you talkin’ to him for? Cindy, the leader of the girls, asked Penny.

He’s going to draw me a cougar for my Amazon project.

Tommy?

He’s the best artist in the class. Look at these, and Penny pointed to his fossilized camel bird.

Ohh gross, what’s that? It looks like it’s peeing fire! Cindy exclaimed.

This attracted the attention of Billy and Frankie who wanted to see it and Nicki who said I think I’m gonna throw up, as she quivered and moved on back to the tempura paints with her wet brush dripping red paint.

Oh! Look! There’s blood everywhere! Jessie Turpen squealed gleefully as he pointed to the trail of red on the floor. (He promptly stepped in it and made tennis shoe prints as he pranced around.) Ms. Malay rushed to check out the blood, and most of the class ran around in a frenzy trying to find the bleeder.

That wasn’t what it was doing, was it, Tommy? Penny asked. It wasn’t really peeing fire, was it?

I can draw a cougar in the Amazon, Tommy responded.

Great! Penny pushed her drawing paper into his hands.

Tommy, I’d like to talk with you out in the hall, Ms. Malay said, having determined the blood to be made from tempura paint. Jesse, you get paper towels and clean this up.

But I didn’t spill it!

Tommy shoved his fire-peeing camel drawings into his backpack and got up slowly as his teacher opened the door to the hallway and stood quietly waiting. He walked in short steps, his hands in his pockets, thinking: It’s bolts of lightning, and the bird’s just trying to save everybody.

Tommy, Ms. Malay said as they stood in the hall, you didn’t pay attention at all during the geography lesson. I called on you twice, and I may as well have shouted to the moon. Tommy liked Ms. Malay. She acted nice even when she was supposed to be mean. He didn’t know how to handle that.

It’s just bolts of lightning, he said, staring at the small howling coyote pin on her maroon blouse. Tommy wanted to join in the howl. AwwAwwAwoo!

Tommy, I can’t keep sending you to Principal Baldono’s. You miss too much class. You’re in his office more than your seat.

Yes, ma’am. He felt safe in trouble in the principal’s office. Why was that? The smell of sausage crossed his unconscious mind.

Ms. Malay sighed. Always a bad sign. I want you to be in charge of the Amazon project, she said.

I can’t do that!

How quick you are to stand there and tell me you can’t do something.

I don’t do stuff like that. Be in charge. I don’t know what… I mean, I wasn’t even gonna do an Amazon project, except Penny asked me to draw her a cougar, but, what, I just, what if, I mean I can’t… I didn’t even read the book.

So you won’t do it?

No.

Not even if it means you’ll disappoint me?

What am I supposed to do? In charge how? Like what?

I want a group Amazon project from the class, and I want you to organize it. One project that shows everybody’s amazing talents. Even yours.

How am I supposed to know everybody’s talents? And I don’t have any.

His teacher stared at him blankly. A silence he couldn’t stand and had to break immediately.

You’ll make me fail.

I’ll make you fail?

Yeah.

How can I make you fail?

Just by giving me the assignment in the first place.

My giving you an assignment makes you fail? she asked incredulously.

Yeah. Of course. If I didn’t have to do it, then I couldn’t fail at it, now could I?

Again she stared. Tommy, you have six weeks to find the absolute best talent of every kid in that class, including you, all put into a single class project on the Amazon in the cafeteria for presentation to the whole school, or I don’t pass you to sixth grade. She displayed her sad, red-skinned angry face Tommy had come to know and trust.

Yes, ma’am, Tommy said. Ms. Malay went back into the classroom and left Tommy standing in the hallway all by himself. He waited for the angry sound of the door slamming, but it didn’t come. He heard her tell the class to start cleaning up. Tommy knew she had to pass him. He’d already flunked first grade, and when his second grade teacher wanted to hold him back again, Tommy overheard Principal Baldono tell her: In this great state, you can only flunk ’em once. State law. So Tommy wasn’t too concerned about not making it to sixth grade. A great state indeed, he thought.

He went to the boy’s bathroom down the hall to see if he could find Jimmy Leach smoking a cigarette, but Tommy found nobody there. So he wrote Prinsapul Baldono is a fat ass on the wall of the second stall. The principal of Mesa View Elementary School weighed 348 pounds. Almost one pound for every kid in the school. His head shined bald—except for the thick, black toupee he wore that kept blowing off in the frequent gusts of wind. Tommy imagined the swirling dirt devil from the playground lifting off the black mop and zipping it around in the air in fine circles above the school while all the kids pointed and laughed.

Tommy hoped that little bug-eyed first grader would come in to take a whiz. I’ll flush his fat little head down the toilet for crying and squealing. Make him piss fire. And besides, it wasn’t even me who hit the little moron this time. It was Jimmy Leach who smacked him upside the head because he used a Power Ranger lunch box. Dumb kid. Deserved to get smacked. Deserved to get skewered and barbecued like a pig with a green apple in his mouth. Power Rangers! Pfuu!

CHAPTER THREE

Doggy-Go-Round

THE BELL RANG, AND TOMMY dropped a full roll of toilet paper into the toilet, flushed it, and ran down the hall thumping first graders on the back of the head. He ran into his class to grab his backpack, immediately regretting it as Ms. Malay said: And take your recorder home and practice it. He stuffed the plastic tube into his pack, along with Penny’s drawing paper, and he ran out the back door, grabbing a handful of Play-Doh on his way. He hated playing the recorder. Sounded like a trash truck backing up. He stuffed the clay into his pocket.

He ran through the playground and then sprinted as fast as he could past the old-folks home on the corner of Idaho and Corbett Streets. Tommy hated old folks. They scared him to death. As he turned onto Corbett, he found what he’d been looking forward to all day: the dirty white dog that never stopped yapping every time Tommy walked by. He called it the doggy-go-round because the stupid dog ran around in tight circles while it yapped and barked. The more Tommy riled it up, the faster it ran—which was pretty funny because it always got dizzy and fell over like it was drunk.

But the owner always yelled at Tommy for flipping the switch, for turning on the doggy-go-round and juicing it up. So he brought that fat little dog a present this fine day: A magnifying glass that, when held just right up toward the sun, at the perfect distance, would light a tree on fire.

The dog started its yapping, and Tommy knelt down close to the fence and held up his magnifying glass, finding that point at which he could focus the heat of the sun on an ant walking quietly along the wire, causing it to crackle in a wisp of smoke.

Here boy, Tommy called to the scruffy dog that kept on yap, yap, yapping. Come ’er, just a little closer. Got a doggy treat for ya. Stop goin’ roundy-round just for a second. As soon as the dog got close enough, snarling and snapping, at that one brief second when it stopped swirling around like a dust devil, Tommy moved the glass and focused the point of light right on the little bugger’s shiny wet nose. And Zap! The dog screeched and did a backflip before it scurried off around the side of the house, yelping all the way, and Tommy laughed and laughed. Feelings of triumph, success, pride, cleverness, glory, happiness. Yes, Happiness with a capital H. It’s so easy to be happy, he thought. The he suddenly felt as if somebody invisible stood next to him.

Hey, you leave that dog alone! some man from the house yelled out as he opened the door to come after Tommy, but Tommy ran, laughing, to his short-cut home. Dumb, stupid kid! I’m gonna tell your mother! Yeah, my stacked momma, Tommy thought to himself. As he turned, he saw a shadow behind a car, but it seemed out of place from the sun. He didn’t think much of it though. Until later when he started to feel watched.

CHAPTER FOUR

Swollen Want Glands

MAGNIFYING DOGS IS SO MUCH fun, he thought again, and he ran the image of the burnt-nosed dog flipping backward. The smile stretched so big across his face that it hurt. Then he felt a sudden surge of painful goosebumps again, and he smelled sausage and felt nauseous. He shook his whole body and brushed his arms as if to fling the gooseflesh away. He walked faster.

Tommy hated dogs. All dogs. All brands and types. All mixtures of all brands and all types. Some time back, Tommy wanted a dog so bad he felt his heart swollen to the point of spilling out his throat. Want glands, his mother called it. Your want glands are swollen. But he’d gotten over it. Didn’t even care anymore. Not a single, little, itsy-bitsy bit. He smiled thinking about Mr. Doggy Burntnose.

He pulled out a cigarette, one he’d slyly borrowed when leaning over the top of Principal Baldono’s desk. He’d bent and smashed it in the classroom when he’d shoved the Play-Doh in the same pocket, and so he just broke off the loose end and reshaped it a bit. He used his magnifying glass to light the cigarette and then stuck the glass in his backpack. Yuck! Menthol! Tommy hated menthols. That’s what his mother smoked. He knew she only did it so he wouldn’t steal so many smokes from her.

As he climbed over the last sand dune before the broken fence to the trailer court, he saw the red flashing lights of the three police cars parked in front of his trailer. Dave’s rusted, dirty white pickup sat in the driveway. Tommy pushed the menthol cigarette into the sand with his worn sneaker and shook his foot to get the excess sand out.

Suddenly, Jimmy Leach tackled him from behind and knocked him into the dirt where they wrestled and tumbled for several seconds.

Hey, what’s goin’ on at your mom’s house? Since Jimmy lived with his dad but visited his mom, he always separated out mom’s house from dad’s. Tommy had no idea where his own dad disappeared to years ago.

Bank robber. Robbed the First National. Shot three bank ladies, ran out, stole a cab, Tommy reported. That’s it over there. He shook sand out of his shirt and pants. He could feel some grains in his underpants.

That’s Marsha’s dad’s taxi.

Yeah. He was taking somebody to the bank.

And the robber parked it right back in front of his house? Took his cab right home for him. Come on—

Yeah! Hey, the robber’s a nice guy, a bank robber not a taxi thief. You asked me, I’m tellin’ you. Bank robber ran into my house. Holdin’ my mom and Dave hostage. Already shot Kami. Splattered her brains all over the living room wall.

Thought your sister didn’t have no brains, Jimmy laughed.

Cops just storm trooped the house. Swat teams on the other side of the trailer. See that guy on the roof over there? Sniper. Special Ops.

Yeah, right. Dave hittin’ your mom again?

Yip.

Let’s kill him. Bury his body out here with all your cigarette butts, Jimmy dug the new cigarette out of the sand while Tommy imagined him and his friend smothering Dave with beer soaked pillows and dragging his limp body out here for an improper burial. Man, you ruined it, Jimmy complained of the cigarette. And what the hell’s this blue shit on here? Play-Doh?

Ahh, it’s a menthol anyway, Tommy confessed. Jimmy threw it away.

Hey, if my ol’ man’s passed out on the couch, you wanna play Atari? Jimmy’s dad bought him an old, used Atari system from the Goodwill store to play video games with. It came with a whole paper grocery bag full of game cartridges. Eleven of them worked most of the time.

Nah. I’m gettin’ an X-Box.

No way!

Yes way! I’m gettin’ it tonight.

How’re you gettin’ an X-Box?

Dave—

Dave’s gettin’ hauled away by the cops again, and he never buys you anything—

I don’t care. It’s in the closet. I saw it. He said I could have it tonight, and I don’t care if they do haul him off or not. I’m openin’ it anyway.

X-Box?

Yep.

With Halo?

I don’t know.

Dead or Alive?

I didn’t see the games. Come over at six an’ we’ll play whatever games they got.

Cool. And Jimmy ran off to his trailer. Tommy tried nonchalantly to shake the annoying sand out of his underwear.

CHAPTER FIVE

Master Of My Own Domain (Just Take It)

THERE IN THAT SECOND OF sand-grained annoyance, Tommy decided it was time for his life to take a turn for the better. If nobody would give him good things, then he’d take them. He decided to steal Joey’s X-Box. Joey, the punk third grader, lived in space 19 in a Double-wide, Tommy said out loud in mock importance, over on the other side of the trailer court by the drainage ditch. Joey’d bragged about his X-Box just one time too many. Besides, if Tommy was going to get swats for nothing, he may as well start doing something that deserved it. He’d never be able to get an X-Box on his own in his whole life. His mom couldn’t even afford a used Atari from the Goodwill store. He’d seen Joey get a key from a nail under the wooden steps. At lunch, Tommy overheard Joey say his family had to go to a funeral for some aunt or something. So as soon as the cops drove away, Tommy planned on sprinting. He ran the route over in his mind.

The door to Tommy’s trailer opened, and a lady cop came out writing on some yellow note pad. Then Dave came out, his arms handcuffed behind his back. A tall, fat cop and two shorter ones followed Dave out. Tommy watched as they put Dave into the back seat of one of the cop cars doing the familiar watch-your-head gesture that Tommy remembered seeing for real three times now. Dave was a tall man, and so he hit his head anyway. Tommy laughed. The cop held his arms up as if to say I told you to watch your head, stupid, and Dave shook his long hair out to hang in front of his face as he tried to get comfortable with his arms handcuffed behind him. Tommy remembered overhearing Dave say once you get into the back seat of a cop car, there ain’t no getting’ out till they open the doors for you from the outside. I hope you rot in there, Tommy thought.

He moved closer to his trailer to make sure Dave knew that he saw him in the car. Call me a sissy one more time, you punk ass… . But Dave turned his head, rubbed his mouth on his shoulder, and looked down at the floor of the car. The police ignored Tommy as they turned off their flashing red lights and drove slowly away, the car with Dave in it moving the slowest as if to prolong the display of its contents. Mrs. Ditweiler’s retarded son, Erik, chased after the car on his beat-up, old Schwinn bicycle, going: Warrrwarrrwarrrwarrr, like a police siren. Tommy could see curtains moving from several trailers around them. Like this embarrasses Dave, Tommy thought to himself. Give me a break.

Tommy’s mom came out of the trailer carrying Kami, his two-year-old HALF-sister. Her father, Sean, left before she was even born. And then came Dave. Now that was sure an improvement, Tommy thought sarcastically as he stared at the tail lights of the cop cars, now at the stop sign onto Idaho Street. His mom had been crying, he could tell, but she didn’t have a bruise this time. She’d lost work for a week last time because of a black eye. That cut back on the amount of beer she could buy Dave, which was a much more effective punishment than putting him in jail overnight.

Hi, Sweetie, his mother said with fake cheer. Get in the car. We’re gonna go for a ride. I need some cigarettes. His mom always liked to drive after a good fight. Sometimes she’d do it for hours. One time they drove all the way to another state, ate a hamburger and a shake at Denny’s and then came back home.

I don’t wanta go, Tommy told her.

Oh, come on, Tommy, just the three of us. We’ll go get ice cream or something.

Ice cream! Kami said, smiling big and wide at her brother.

Nah, I got homework. I got a project on the Amazon Rain Forest.

Is it due tomorrow?

Yeah, he lied. A lot of drawing and stuff. A cougar. He thought of Penny.

Oh, you like that. You like to draw, don’t you, Sweetie? Well, we’ll be back in a few minutes, okay? We’ll just go to Baskin Robbins.

Baskin Wobbins, Kami repeated. Tommy’s mom put his half-sister into the car seat of the sky-blue Ford Pinto. The driver’s side fender was completely missing, thanks to Tommy, but he didn’t want to remember that.

You okay, Mom?

Yeah, I’m fine. She hugged him. I’ll clean up when I get back, okay?

Your shirt’s torn, he finally told her. The right shoulder spaghetti strap of her shirt hung ripped in half. Tommy tried very hard not to notice how much of his mom’s breast was exposed to the neighbors. The image of stacks of bleached trash flashed through his mind for some reason. Mountains of it, stacked to the sky and bleached as white as fresh snow.

Oh, thanks. Can’t go around like this, can I? She laughed and tied the two ends together and opened her car door. You don’t have a cigarette on you do you?

No.

Good. Don’t smoke. It’s bad for you. She got in the car and closed the door and cranked down the window. We’ll just be a minute. Maybe there’s some ice cream for you already in the freezer. She flipped on the radio to silence and pushed some buttons and peaked her ears as if listening to music no-one else could hear. Then she turned it off. Damn Radio.

You keep trying, he reminded her.

Someday it’ll work again. She smiled at her son and then wiped her eyes as she looked at herself in the cracked rear-view mirror. She lit a cigarette butt from out of the car’s ash tray using a red Bic lighter. Previously lit cigarettes are really gross, he thought to himself, and he felt sorry for his mother in that moment.

CHAPTER SIX

The Heist

TOMMY WATCHED HIS MOTHER DRIVE away. Kami waved bye-bye to him from her car seat. He did not wave back. Kami’s hair flowed long and curly blond like his mother’s. He pictured Sean and his curly, long hair. Tommy hated Sean too, but then, Tommy thought, at least he didn’t hit my mom.

As soon as the car turned out of view, Tommy ran as fast as he could toward trailer space number nineteen, following the plan he’d laid out in his mind. All the way there, he felt like someone followed him, but he chose to ignore it. Ignore the paranoia, and you’ll get away with a lot, he thought. That’s my new motto: Ignore the paranoia. And the nausea. Ignore that too.

As he got closer, he slowed to a normal pace, walked into the yard without hesitation, got the key from under the stairs, and entered through the door like he was being paid to watch the trailer or something. He knew they didn’t have a stupid dog. They did, however, have a stupid cat that came up and purred and rubbed against Tommy’s legs as he found the X-Box beside the television. Great, cat hair evidence. He tried to rub it off his pant legs. He smelled bacon from the kitchen and remembered sausage. What’s with all the cooked pig today?

Would you move, stupid cat. He looked for extra game disks but found only the one in the drawer of the machine. Halo! he said to the cat. Sweet. It’s not two, but I haven’t even finished playing one yet. The cat meowed. Tommy carefully unplugged the machine in such a way to make certain he would have all the cords necessary to play the thing.

Where’s the box, Cat? Not the cat box. You know what I mean. Tommy knew that if he could get all traces of the thing, there would be no way to prove that the one he possessed was the one they once owned until he kiped it. He found the box in the closet with the receipt taped to it. Jack-pot! What he did not realize, since his mother did not have a credit card and therefore paid with cash or check for everything, was that the receipt had Joey’s parent’s name and partial credit card account number printed right on it. He put it all into a paper grocery bag and left slowly, his heart pounding, careful to replace the key under the stairs. He felt the adrenaline rushing through his veins. With a car coming, he quickly cut through Lindy’s yard and jumped the small fence into his own yard. He moved the piece of aluminum siding he’d long-ago rigged to give him access to the secret hiding place under his trailer. He caught his backpack on the siding as he crawled through the gap and thought of how stupid he was for not just hiding the X-Box in the backpack.

He liked the familiar wet, mossy, earthy smell under the trailer. The stupid paper grocery sack crinkled so much he may as well have hooked it up to giant stereo speakers. Tommy felt its contents thump against a pipe or something as he fumbled in the darkness for the flashlight he kept near his entrance. He always felt terrified of grabbing onto a black widow spider or something worse. Even with the light coming in from his entrance, he still couldn’t see the flashlight all that well. He rejoiced the day he found, in the dumpster, a flashlight with a magnetic bottom.

He felt the cool cylinder of the flashlight with his left hand and broke its magnetic attraction to the metal frame of the trailer. He turned on the light. Fortunately, he used new batteries, having just taken them out the day before from Kami’s Sesame Street toy. What does a two-year-old need with a toy that moves on its own anyway? I didn’t have any moving toys when I was two.

He pulled his entryway closed and shined the light into the darkness to illuminate the aluminum canoe left behind by his father when Tommy was five. It had never been in the water, as far as he knew, but they stored it under the trailer on some gray cinder blocks. Tommy kept his treasures in the canoe, covered over with a tarp. He would often hide under his trailer, sitting on the floor of that canoe, his feet resting up on the seat. He could hear his mom and Dave yelling at each other from there, or making noise in her bedroom.

Enough light peaked in through holes and gaps in the siding that he didn’t need the flashlight after the first few minutes. Whenever he thought he saw or heard a bug, he would shine the light around in a quick panic. Tommy hated bugs. Almost as much as he hated dogs.

He put the grocery bag with his first ever truly important stolen goods into the canoe. He took his backpack off and put that in there too and covered everything up with the tarp, and he felt a sense of exhilaration with his success. He chuckled to himself as he ran through his mind the movie of him stealing the X-Box. He felt pride in the way he just walked right into Joey’s house without any hesitation. Exhilaration! A world-class cat burglar couldn’t have done it any better! I won’t even have that much fun playing the game, he thought. He brushed cat hair off his pant legs again. Let’s see Joey brag now, Tommy laughed. Braggarts get their due. But as fun as that was? I don’t even need to justify it anymore. I don’t need anyone if I can feel this good alone. I should just steal for the fun of it. He felt warmth and then sharp goosebumps. He shined the light on the wart of his right knuckle.

Suddenly, he heard a twig snap outside the trailer, and he froze. Somebody saw me, his mind raced, but even that felt exciting. Through the gaps in the siding, he thought he saw a shadow move. Suddenly, he remembered the odd, out-of-place shadow he’d seen by the car on the way home. His heart pounded, and he wondered if it could be heard beating from inside his chest. He started making up lies about how Joey told him he could borrow the X-Box. This made him feel a little warmer and calmer, but then he felt goosebumps again. He refused to cry out.

Frantically, he searched the many small beams of light that reached toward him through the darkness like long, sharp fingers. He thought of destroying the evidence, burying it under the trailer, and warmth took on a life of its own and seemed to try to overpower the goosebumps.

It felt like his skin was in the middle of a battle that didn’t even really have anything to do with him. Warmth, gooseflesh, warmth again, then more painful goosebumps followed by relaxation. His mind couldn’t even keep up as his skin struggled to express itself through happiness and pain.

He felt nauseous again, and then dizzy. He saw darkness and then a flash of light like a nuclear mushroom cloud right behind his eyes. Then his skin became his own again, and he regained his vision. He stared intensely through the darkness at the light streaking through the trailer siding and listened like he’d never listened before. After several minutes, he heard nothing and saw no hint of another shadow. Probably just a cat. If only I could listen that way in class, he thought for a fleeting second.

He left as he had come, replacing the flashlight to its post, making the piece of siding flush with the next piece of siding. He’d learned long ago to be very careful to restore the things he touched to the exact position they’d held before he had disturbed them. It always made for much less chaos in the world if he pretended he’d never been there. Anywhere.

Carefully, he walked around the entire trailer looking for a cat. Or footprints on broken twigs. He found nothing out of the ordinary. When he entered his home, he saw its contents strewn about. His mom was a clean freak. She kept things usually overly organized. Even Dave contributed to household-item organization, always yelling at Tommy and Kami to pick things up—which meant: Tommy, pick up your crap and Kami’s crap and my crap… . Tommy thought Dave must have decided to throw stuff around instead of blacken any eyes this time—protecting his source of beer money. Tommy looked in his fridge and saw no beer. He did find empty cans of Bud on the kitchen floor and in the sink. Someone poured them all out. It smelled like beer in his sink.

He ran down the hall to the bathroom and peed and finally shook loose that annoying sand in his shorts. Then he went to his mom’s bedroom and opened her closet door. He found the tip jar intact, safe, half empty. He took four quarters and a dime out and put them in his pocket. The glass had an imperfection, a bubble in it on one side. He never took money out of the jar if the supply fell below that line.

He saw the Kennedy Half-Dollar jar behind the wig box. Returning to the living room, he turned his TV on to afternoon cartoons. The Roadrunner went Beep-beep as an anvil fell onto the head of a dumbstruck Wile E. Coyote. Dumb dog, Tommy remarked. He looked for SpongeBob but then remembered that they hadn’t been able to keep paying their cable bill and had it turned off the week before.

He sifted through the chaos on the floor looking for a stray cigarette but found none. He came across Kami’s baby doll and without thinking pulled its head off and tossed the body to the other side of the room. He clearly enjoyed ripping the head off. Again he felt warmth and then goosebumps and feared another skin-crawling battle. Man, I gotta see a doctor, he said to the severed doll head before throwing it against the wall on the other side of the room from its body.

He thought of his BB gun his mom grounded him from using the week before (because of a neighbor’s window) and ran back to her bedroom to find it under her bed. He cocked it and shot a BB out onto the top of his tennis shoe to make sure everything functioned all right.

He thought of his mother’s birth-control pills and put his gun on her bed while he looked in her nightstand drawer. He found the round pack. Tuesday’s was still there, and he tried to remember if today was Wednesday. He put the pack onto his mother’s pillow to pretend it accidentally landed there in Dave’s mad toss-about. Tommy didn’t want any more little sisters, and though he didn’t understand the mechanism, these little white pills seemed to do the trick. At least that’s what Jimmy said, and Jimmy seemed to know a lot about this kind of thing. Tommy heard a knock at the door. He flashed back to the shadow in the light beam under the trailer and felt a panic.

Stealthily, he looked out his mother’s window and saw Mr. Phillips, the next door neighbor to the right, standing on the wooden steps. Tommy sighed with relief. Stop being paranoid, he told himself again. Ignore the paranoia, he said out loud before he opened the back door to go out and meet Mr. Phillips.

Hey, Tommy, just thought I’d bring over that five bucks I owe you for washing my car Saturday, the old man called out.

Thanks. Tommy took the money and put it in his pocket. Can I wash it again this Saturday?

Maybe next week after this. Old, fixed-income, retired geezer, you know. Just too much arthritis to wash my own car. He held up his distorted hands. Tommy felt pain in his own joints seeing how Mr. Phillips’ fingers bent at odd angles. Tommy turned away, wanting to never get old and bent. You okay? Mr. Phillips asked.

Yeah. Here was a silence that Tommy did not want to break. Did Mr. Phillips know? Did he see the X-Box? Was he the one who snapped the twig? Did he call the cops on Dave for beating up my mom this time? Many questions raced through Tommy’s mind.

Well, I better be gettin’ back, the man said. You need anything, just knock on the door. Mr. Phillips walked with a limp, and Tommy wandered if the man’s feet and toes bent and twisted like his hands and fingers. He’s ancient, Tommy thought. All wrinkled and slow. Mr. Phillips’ skin looked black, and his young wife only spoke Spanish. They had a nearly two-year-old daughter who played with Kami sometimes—or at least next to her if not really with her.

Thanks, Mr. Phillips, Tommy said, but the old man must have been hard of hearing too, because he kept walking without a response. Did he see the X-Box, Tommy wondered again? Naw, I don’t think he can see anything. Mr. Phillips’ right eye looked cloudy somehow. Smoky. I wonder if you smoke too much, do your eyes get cloudy? He remembered the sting he felt from getting cigarette smoke in his eyes. The memory of menthol filled his nose and coated his tongue.

Tommy suddenly felt very tired. So he got his BB gun from off his mom’s bed and surveyed the room to make sure the chaos looked just like he’d found it—save for the placement of the pills and Kami’s baby doll parts and his rifle for protection. Then he crawled back to his canoe under the trailer. He climbed into his command seat on the floor of the canoe, flashlight in hand. He shined the beam of light around looking for bugs to shoot BBs at but found none. Surprisingly few bugs lived under his trailer. If I wake up as a bug someday, I’d want to live under here, he thought. Beep, beep, he heard from the TV above him through the plywood floor. He looked suspiciously through the many thin beams of light.

CHAPTER SEVEN

His Father’s Right Hand

TOMMY REMEMBERED THE BLUE PLAY-DOH in his pocket and pulled it out. It stuck to Mr. Phillips’ five dollar bill and the borrowed four