(Third revision)
A novel
by
Peter Alexander
WGAW Registry # 1363231
Carolyn
(1957)
When she awoke on Tuesday, she was not eager to rise. The dream laid her weak in her bed. Robbed her of her usual eagerness for taking on the new day. The flames still seemed to engulf her. The look on Deirdre’s face, flushed, angry, scared. Drunk, too, she supposed. Bruce and Blair and Hollis. They were all there. Glenn was not. Not in this dream.
Doctor Hermansen would want to hear about this dream, Carolyn thought. Would she remember enough? Maybe she should write it down while it still clung to her mind. Stuck in her throat. She slid open the drawer next to her bed. Pulled out a pencil and notebook.
Today’s session with Dr. Hermansen was for eleven o’clock. Her father drove her, taking time out of his business day. Peter Niskanen had gone to the factory before seven. Came back for her. He owned the company, so nobody could disapprove. But she knew what a stickler he was for being present at work. Everyone was sharper if he was there. He knew what his employees were working on. He let them know he was interested in their ideas. Their problems. Her father’s mind seldom wandered. She had always wanted to be like him, but lately her mind wandered often.
You know, Lynnie, it probably would have been better if Dr. Hermansen had known you before all this happened. His voice broke the silence in the car. Brought her back from her gray reveries.
I don’t know, daddy. She has lots of people.
Yes. He thought about it. But she hasn’t seen the Carolyn that we know.
You know, Glenn says he still has a lot of nightmares, too.
Well, I’m not surprised. When did you talk to Glenn?
He sent a letter last week.
That’s nice. I’m glad he still writes to you. Do his letters- um- make you feel better?
I guess. The car was released from a red light. They were getting closer to downtown Webster where Dr. Hermansen had her office. He hopes Mr. Nash is suffering. Y’know, in prison. Suffering like us.
Well, that’s not very Christian, Lynnie.
I know. That’s what I told him, more or less. I mean, how could he not be suffering in jail?
Basically, he’s lost everything, her father said.
I was supposed to have a biology test this morning. Mr. O’Connor said I could make it up on Friday.
It’s your favorite course. That shouldn’t be a problem.
Yeah, but it gives me three extra days. Y’know, to study.
And that makes you feel guilty, Lynnie?
I guess, Carolyn looked at him. That’s what Mrs. Hermansen said I’ve got to work on. I feel, y’know, guilty. A lot. It’s so stupid. Dad, do you think things will ever go back to being the way they used to be?
It’s my opinion, her father said, obviously having considered the matter, that
nothing goes back to being the way it was, sweetie. Just we have a chance to make things better sometimes.
They hugged before she got out of the car. I’ll see you in an hour, honey, Peter Niskanen told his daughter.
I feel guilty all the time, Carolyn told Mrs. Hermansen.
Her psychologist was in her early forties, had chestnut hair with a lot of curls, and a disarming smile. Her eyes, Carolyn noticed, were always observant, always seemed to have a keen mind working behind those soft brown eyes. Carolyn seldom felt she was wasting her time while Mrs. Hermansen sat there listening to her.
Yes, Lynnie?
I know, I said that before.
That’s all right.
My father has to drive me here. He has to leave his business. I have to have a special makeup test. Y’know, I should be feeling better. Not having weird dreams an’ stuff, if everybody gets, y’know, inconvenienced. Because of me.
What kind of weird dreams?
I knew you were gonna ask me that. She quickly reviewed her notebook. Mrs. Hermansen folded her hands in front of her chest and waited. Deirdre was real angry at me. Furious.
Deirdre was the girl, Bruce’s friend in the forest. Mrs. Hermansen confirmed that she remembered, that she was on the same page.
Yeah.
Why was she angry at you?
Carolyn gave her shoulders a shrug. I guess because I was there.
At the party. The swimming party.
It wasn’t a party. It was an orgy.
Why was it an orgy, Carolyn?
Well, I don’t know. They were drinking. They were all drunk.
Was there sex, Lynnie?
Well, not – you mean in the dream?
Whenever.
I don’t think – in the dream – last night. But I’ve had a lot of dreams about these people. I told you before. More like nightmares, I guess. Sometimes.
When you were actually there. In Mattipax. Trying to help Hollis. Was there sex?
No. Bruce and Deirdre were fooling around. Blair tried to get into it. Y’know. I told you.
So, in the dream, what happened?
Blair wanted to uh do something.
To you?
Uh huh. Yeah.
Do something?
Yeah.
Okay. And Deirdre was angry?
Like I was spoiling everything or something.
Didn’t you tell me that Deirdre communicated with you? Afterwards.
Yeah. She apologized.
She wrote you a letter? Or called you? She didn’t see you in person. Right?
She called me. She said that she just wanted to go swimming. And Bruce got her drunk. She said it was horrible that they almost killed Hollis.
Ummm, Dr. Hermansen murmured encouragingly. And what did Hollis do in your dream?
Nothing much, I think. I think he just said I should get out of there.
Was that the way he acted in the real situation last year?
No, of course not. I told you. He fought Blair. They almost drowned.
In your dream were Bruce and Blair or that third boy threatening him?
Carolyn thought about it. Consulted her notebook. The third boy wasn’t in my dream. They were mostly after me. Hollis—I guess—I think he was worried about me. But he was mostly watching. I guess.
What did Blair want to do with you?
I don’t know. Rape me? Kill me? It was a dream.
What about Bruce?
He was there. Maybe he was more with Deirdre. But he was on Blair’s side. I know that. Looking at me—like—
Like what?
I don’t know.
Not friendly.
Carolyn snorted. I guess not.
And Glenn wasn’t around this time?
No.
Glenn’s in most of your dreams, isn’t he?
A lot of them. That I can remember.
In the real story, he saved all of you.
Sure.
Where is Glenn today? He’s left West Palmerton, right?
Yeah. He had to go to private school.
Dr. Hermansen leaned back in her chair and wrapped her hands behind her head. And Hollis joined the Navy.
Yeah.
Such a great adventure, and the main characters are gone.
Carolyn was not surprised to find herself suddenly crying. She couldn’t stop. She didn’t really care. It felt good.
CAROLYN’s Diary
1959
I already had two lives and I was only sixteen. In my First Life I was a very innocent girl. I was interested in animals, books and Jesus. I don’t know if I ever was as religious as my mom and dad, or my big sister, Amantha. Certainly, Brad was not totally into it. Brad was my older brother- my hero. But I always liked the idea of Jesus. Because he was the opposite of Evil. When they killed him, he still went on. I liked that idea. Today when they kill you, you stay dead.
I didn’t think too much about Evil. Not the way it could get into people. It came up in church, sure, but it was just a word. Not until my Second Life started, did Evil look into my eyes. I was fourteen. Glenn and I were looking for his lost dog. Storm was his name. Storm used to chase squirrels in Mattipax. Sometimes they teased him and led him astray.
Mattipax is one of my favorite places of all time. I adored the forests of Mattipax. That’s an Indian name, but I forget what it meant. It also had this huge lake that went for miles and miles. On that lake I became a heroine, so they said, but if you were there, you probably would’ve done the same as me..
Glenn Humphrey is a boy I’ve known since we were in the third grade. In our innocent days we were just pals. Well, it’s possible I was really in love with Glenn for a while in those childish times. But I wouldn’t have called it love. What would a ten-year-old girl know about love? Love is such an important word. It means a lot of different things to different people. Sometimes it’s just a word. Sometimes it fills your heart and makes you cry. We were really just pals who enjoyed doing stuff together. Playing with our dogs and cats, collecting frogs, and for a while, even riding horses. Glenn gave up on horses because he didn’t like shoveling horse manure. That was the price of our rides. I didn’t mind it. I wanted to ride. Climbing trees was one of our favorite things. In the trees of Mattipax we were so free. There were no mothers and fathers there.
But when he was fourteen and I was still thirteen, suddenly Glenn stopped seeing me. I’d always be seven months behind him, and all of a sudden it seemed to make a difference. We were both in the eighth grade. I could walk past him in the hallway, and if he was with his friends, now his eyes would look right through me. Or he’d turn his head so he could pretend I wasn’t there.
I guess it had something to do with Sex. When my Second Life started I soon had to face Sex. I mean, I couldn’t avoid it, could I? None of us can, can we? It started to break out all over, although I refused to get pulled into the nuttiness that made so many of my friends act weird. Glenn hid his feelings, which he was good at, but Sex was driving Glenn nuts, too. I found out later he had seen really weird things he didn’t understand. Now that I’ve seen what I’ve seen, I really can’t blame Glenn for being confused.
I was not ignorant, after all. I had an older brother and sister, and practical parents to explain about the birds and bees. Do you remember that song, Let’s Do It by Eartha Kitt? You know, That’s why the birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. It was a cute song. In my class, I don’t think many people were doing it, but everybody was thinking about it.
It was the summer of 1956. That’s when my Second Life started. It began innocently enough. Looking for Storm. I was happy that Glenn noticed me again. That he needed me. Storm had been missing for over two weeks. Glenn was going to search Mattipax, the last place he had seen Storm. I volunteered to help him. At first he seemed embarrassed, maybe because his father was watching us, but then when we were alone together at Mattipax, he relaxed a lot. It was almost like the old days. Later I found out why he hesitated about letting me come with him.
We shouted and shouted. We listened, trying to hear anything from Storm. A bark or a whine. Maybe he was hurt. Sometimes injured dogs hide somewhere and lick their wounds until they can heal themselves. We heard some dogs baying, but they certainly weren’t Storm. They were somewhere on the other side of the lake. They sounded like big dogs. It turned out they were four bloodhounds, as we found out later when we were trying to escape from them.
But before the hounds came into our lives, and the men who came with them, Glenn showed me one of his secret projects. He and his friends had been building a raft all summer. He had hidden it under camouflage. He was very proud as he pulled off the camouflage to show me. They called it D’Artagnan after the fourth musketeer. That was that minute that my Second Life began.
I heard those bloodhounds getting closer and I looked across the lake. I saw Hollis fall from the top of the cliff and drop into the lake. Glenn saw him, too. He was just a dot when he hit the water. But we could tell that he was alive. He was trying to swim across the lake. Some men joined the bloodhounds at the top of the cliff. At the time I really didn’t think about the possibility that they were the police. And with the police came the first big Evil. Maybe if we knew who was up on that cliff chasing Hollis, we would have turned around and taken off. Well, no, I guess not. Glenn and me—we always thought we’d never be cowards. We believed we were Good Samaritans. I guess you could say that’s what we were, but not everybody would agree.
We had a raft and that swimmer looked like he would drown. We did the Christian thing. We rescued Hollis. Just before he was drowning. It turned out that the police couldn’t see us because the islands in the middle of the lake blocked us from their view. Glenn was unbelievably brave. He jumped in the lake with his clothes on. Somehow he found Hollis. I helped lug him onto the raft.
Glenn can make me mad about a lot of things. He used to swear a lot. He was a little bit sneaky, too, which has gotten him into some trouble. Sometimes I think he’s too proud of himself, but he says that’s my problem, not his. But I shouldn’t complain about Glenn; he risked his own life to save Hollis, not once but twice. As you will see, he even saved me from Evil, but he does some things in the oddest way. Glenn, as my brother Brad said, has a flair for the dramatic. He’s also lucky.
I’m good at biology. I want to be a vet. I knew about life and death. I just hadn’t quite thought too much about death happening to me. Not until my Second Life. Into my new life came Hollis Cooper. He was sixteen then. The first love of my Second Life. Now he’s in the Navy. And now I’m sixteen.
Until my Second Life, I never even spoke to a policeman, except for Wes Warren, the police chief in West Palmerton and a friend of my father. I never disobeyed the law. I never stole a thing. Or lied. Right from the beginning of my Second Life, I did them all.
Later I forced Glenn to show me the photos he stole from Mr. Nash’s summer cottage. Before the police or the FBI took them as evidence. After all, I deserved at least that much. Considering, I’d never wanted to think very much about sex and the things people could do to each other’s bodies. I thought what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me. After all I still had time, didn’t I?
Not much time, it turns out. You might have heard that high school kids have swimming holes in different places on Lake Mattipax. It’s illegal to swim there, but it’s such a big place that a lot of people sneak in and do it. The night of the day we rescued Hollis, it turned out that Glenn’s parents grounded him, so we couldn’t go back to Mattipax together. His dad actually struck him for the first time in his life. That was for Glenn breaking into Mr. Nash’s place. Our plan was to get some food and clothes and sneak back to Mattipax to help Hollis get away. But I had to go alone. My parents were already in bed. And they trusted me. I felt terrible, but I had my mission. It was around midnight. I never dreamed I would dare do such things. But if I’m honest about it, maybe I would have done anything to see Hollis again. To make sure he never went back to that horrible place.
Hollis was such a beautiful and gentle person. I can’t tell you exactly what he said to me the night he escaped. I mean, he was sixteen and I was just – well – like I said before, actually not quite fourteen. It wasn’t anything actually romantic, the way you might think about it. He had a younger sister who he tried to save from a terrible father. That’s how Hollis got sent to Sherman School for Boys. His father got him sent there so nobody could stop him from doing those things to Elise. Elise is Hollis’s sister, and she was eleven back then. At Sherman, he got into trouble with Mr. Nash, who had that sex ring that Glenn and Hollis ‘exposed,’ as the newspapers said. Brad thought that was the perfect word for that mess—‘exposed.’ You know, meaning about all the naked photographs they had in court.
What happened to Hollis and me and Glenn right after I brought Hollis the food and clothes I took from my home didn’t get into the newspapers. If Mr. Nash was the first Big Evil, specially for Hollis, then Blair and Bruce Benedict were the Second Big Evils for me and Glenn and Hollis. Blair almost killed my brother Brad a couple months later, except that Brad knew tae kwon do and he was a weight lifter, so luckily he could protect himself from Blair’s knife. Even so, he got cut pretty badly. Oh God, Mrs. Hermansen- I can’t write about this!
Next day. I can’t stop can I? I must keep going. What happened that day at West Palmerton HS led to all the stuff I’m going to tell you about.
First, what happened the night Hollis escaped was that Blair and Bruce were skinny-dipping at Mattipax. They had two friends with them. One was a girl, whose name I didn’t know then, but I do now because once she called me. Deirdre felt terrible about happened that night. They all had drunk a ton of beer. She said Bruce and Blair were drunk out of their minds. But that’s not an excuse for what they did.
They were going to drown Hollis, and probably me, too. I don’t want to talk what else they might’ve wanted to do with me. Just for fun. We’ve discussed this, Mrs. H. I know how much Blair hated me. He hated lots of people, but he didn’t know exactly what to do with his feelings. People figured he’d end up in prison. Evil blazed like a fire inside of him. Some kids even saw him burn cats alive! I won’t kid you that I wasn’t scared out of my head the night that my Second Life began. Blair and his brother were powerful like drunken gorillas. If Glenn hadn’t escaped from his house, I probably wouldn’t be here today to tell you this story. Again.
Blair
Blair cursed the day that he allowed Peter Niskanen to set him up in the Navy. He hadn’t dreamed that he would end up in a place like Korea. Prison might have been better. He could’ve learned some useful things. One time Blair heard some characters on TV say ‘kill or be killed,’ and he thought, yeah, that’s me. Instinctively, he had long realized that there was no greater power than supremacy over life and death. People feared you when they thought you had that kind of clout. Blair figured he had that kind of clout. He scared people. He wanted to kill someone.
He wore his tough face as he sat at the bar on Texas Street in Pusan. He saw a guy come in who he thought was a Russkie. The guy sat at the far end of the bar, a sour expression on his face, drinking vodka. Isn’t that what Russkies did, drink vodka? Blair was on his third beer, wondering how to best tell Russians from the other Europeans who now jammed Korea. America was defending South Korea, the skanky midgets, from the commie north, but these gumby Euro dickheads were crawling into town to do their slimy deals with the even slimier slits.
But the Russkies were our enemies. And here they were, skulking around the streets of Pusan, mean-looking fuckers, manhandling the pussy, drinking their pissy vodka, talking their loud, harsh language, acting like they could whip American butts, anywhere, anytime. Even their haircuts looked painful. Blair jerked his head at Squinty Sam, signaling his desire for another beer. His fingers unconsciously dropped to his ankle. They felt the leather handle of his butterfly knife, strapped to his leg under his Navy whites. When he came out at night, he always imagined someone would attack him before he got back to base. Paranoia could have been Blair’s middle name. All these fucking foreign languages. People jabbering with fluty voices He imagined his four-inch blade slicing someone’s gut. When confronted a few times late at night on a dark street, Blair had whipped out the knife when the slits got too close, but no one yet stayed around to test his abilities.
The stool to Blair’s right had emptied a few minutes earlier. A sailor had departed quietly with a hooker he had been plying with whiskey for the past half hour. Sometimes these Korean whores lost track of time if you got them plastered. Maybe you’d get more than you paid for, and sometimes you’d wish you hadn’t.
Another sailor slid onto the stool. Blair took him in through the corner of his eye. He was short, but not a skinny shit like the Koreans. Maybe 5 foot 8 or so, but muscular, a weight lifter. This was a Navy bar, but Blair hadn’t seen this guy before. Maybe a newbie. Pusan was primarily Army. Navy was mainly there to check the boats shipping cargo into Korea. This guy was smiling to himself. Blair thought that was weird, walking up to a bar smiling at nothing. The guy didn’t look like a faggot. If a faggot tried anything, Blair had his ways. The queers were generally smart enough to stay away from him. The brawny little sailor ordered a double scotch with a beer chaser. Winked at Squinty Sam, who gave him his best deadeye look.
The guy downed the first scotch. Slightly turned away from the newbie, Blair watched the Russian out of the corner of his eye. They usually came in numbers. Two or three. That’s what the Captain had cautioned them. These Russkies, they had guys watching guys. Maybe he had comrades sitting somewhere else in the bar. Big, sturdy bastards, he thought, though at 6 feet tall and 225, Blair was no midget. The Russkie was occupying Blair’s imagination while he waited for Candy Wing’s time slot to open up for him. Candy usually treated him like cold turd, but he somehow strangely enjoyed her mockery. She’d flip her distain into some kind of bleating subservience which excited the 20-year-old Massachusetts boy in ways he could not understand. Blay-uh, Blay-uh, you smell me pussy—you eat me pussy… She became an exceptionally desirable lay. How did they learn that, Blair wondered. He smiled to himself, hearing her shrill harangue as she flung off her clothing. He spent a lot of his money on Candy Wing. The Navy wasn’t paying him enough to keep up with her.
What the fuck? The sailor on his right was knocking on the bar right next to his elbow. Like knocking on the door. Blair’s space. His door.
Hey, swabbie.
Yeah? Whut’s happenin’?
That’s what I wanta know, man. Where’s the action?
The action? Blair scratched his chest, thinking of an answer. It’s where yuh make it, man. You new?
Bout a month. Buy ya a drink?
Blair didn’t know it until much later but Zip Romek almost always lied, except when he told the truth. He lied with purpose, not because he needed to conceal the truth, but because he wished to blur the lines between fact and uncertainty. No one knew where Zip stood, least of all Blair in the days to come, even though Zip frequently did actually tell Blair the truth. He quickly learned that Blair needed a certain dram of truth or he was liable to fuck up. Blair wasn’t bright enough to pick up Zip’s nuances. Zip had actually been in Korea eight months and had a sideline operation well underway. Let Blair assume he was a greenhorn.
Seaman Benedict, huh, Zip said, looking at the name on a strip of cloth above the pocket on Blair’s uniform.
Yeah. You’re Romek, huh? Blair could read, too.
Call me Zip.?
Zip? Whut fuckin kinda name is that?
Zip means quick. Zip-zip, y’know? In ‘n out.
Blair gave him a blank look. You’re a fuckin’ nut, right?
Zip gave him a sly smile. More like a cocky smirk. Blair was often to see it in days to come. Not always was it reassuring. Yeah, I’m a fuckin’ nut. What should I call you. You look like a fuckin’ bear.
Blair was amused. That’s pretty close, Zippy. I’m Blair.
Blair the bear, huh?
Whatever. So what do you do, zip-zip? Zip. Like a zipper, huh?
Stay away from my zipper, man. Nobody touches my zipper, ‘cep me an my lady.
I could give a shit about your fuckin zipper.
Zip downed another Scotch. Blair asked him, where you from?
Poplar Bluff. That was closer to the truth than Zip usually offered. Just for the hell of it, he’d recently told somebody Miami. He’d been there, too, but hadn’t stayed very long. The guy asked him too many questions about Miami that he couldn’t confidently answer. Zip should’ve known better. The guy was a Spic. So, he stayed closer to the truth with the bear. They were both in the Navy. Zip worked in Personnel. He knew where everyone’s records were, and he made sure his own weren’t in the right place. Zip believed very strongly in misdirection. He liked to be hard to track.
Where the fuck is Popular Buff?
Poplar Bluff. The Ozarks. You know about the Ozarks, bear?
Oklahoma or some shit like that? Blair downed the rest of the beer Zip had bought him. Hillbillies, right?
Those are the Okies, bear. I’m Cherokee.
Whatta you mean? You’re a redskin?
Half breed. My mom was full-blooded Cherokee. My dad was a white trail o’ tears.
My dad’s a gravedigger, Blair told him. Me too.
Buddy Benedict had, in fact, worked with his son in the West Palmerton cemetery, but he also mowed all the town’s grass. Blair enjoyed mentioning the part about burying bodies to get a reaction.
Interestin. Zip pondered his drink.
Blair thought it was much more than interesting. Death staring you in the face. Burying your own mother. Your own dad digging the same hole with you. Stiffs you used to know. Got drunk with. Lying there. Stiffs. Babies. A lot of babies. You wouldn’t think so in a small town like West Palmerton.
You ever see the size of a Korean’s dong?
Huh? Blair wasn’t sure he’d heard right.
They got bigger dongs than other Asians. They’re hung like niggers.
How the fuck you know that, man? You checkin gook cocks?
Hey, bear, don’t your bitch tell you?
Tell me?
Maybe she don’t wanta hurt your feelings. He rubbed his finger and thumb together. Keep her sugar daddy dumb an happy.
It seemed that Squinty was covertly observing him from the other side of the bar, that he had gotten the gist of the conversation. That he thought Blair was an asshole. That his mouth actually twisted a little bit into something like a smile. I know your secret, you white piece o’ shit. The fact was that Blair himself was dissatisfied with the size of his cock. It was not something he ever discussed with anyone. His whole life his fraternal twin brother Bruce had a bigger dick. Bruce, the good-looking twin, could get it up to ten inches. Blair had never managed much more than six inches. The book had said six was average. How could twin brothers have a four-inch difference? A few years back Blair used to have recurring nightmares where he sliced off his brother’s cock.
But Candy Wing worked him long and hard, said his dick was so big it choked her. Candy Wing blamed him for his big cock, said she’d kick him out before it killed her. He had enjoyed Candy Wing, her filthy mind and her earthy ways. Just her sucking on his toe made him shoot off one time. He had never enjoyed any American girl this way. Of course, most American girls preferred Bruce. Blair usually got the slags back in the US of A.
Now this jerk off who called himself Zip was tellin’ him some bullshit that Korean men had unusually big zongs. Blair gaped at Squinty who had moved off down the bar. The shriveled runt, who could be somewhere between 50 and 65; how could it be possible? Blair couldn’t imagine Candy Wing sucking off someone like Squinty with a dick as long as his leg. He didn’t dare ask Candy. What if it was true? If he buried one of them, he’d find out, wouldn’t he?
Zip
Before there was a Zip Romek, there had been three Fred Romeks in America. Actually, there may have been many more Fred Romeks, but in this story only the last one plays a leading role. And he made up his mind that he didn’t want to be called Fred. The third Fred Romek became the last one. He called himself Zip since he was twelve years old and lived in Brushy, Oklahoma with his Cherokee mother, Marie Hard Wing Romek. Marie had other names, as well, due to the fact that twice before she had been married to other men, with whom she had ten additional children. Zip was the only child she birthed with Fred II. Eleven was it for Marie Hard Wing.
Fred Romek II, Zip’s father, had dropped dead from a heart attack two years earlier at home. He was age 58, a man of varied occupations, but mostly he collected junk to fix up and resell. Fred II had met Marie in Tulsa at a gun and knife show. Jamboree was what they called such get togethers in those days. Turns out both Fred II and Marie came from long traditions of knife making, Though Fred II was born in Georgia after the Reconstruction, his father, Fred I, had come from Europe where his Roma gypsy forebears were famed for sharpening anything with a metal blade. Even their name, cutitari, implied their chief line of work. Being a Cherokee daughter of a keen hunter of creatures whose skin could be turned into clothing, Hard Wing grew up learning how to make knives and keep them sharp.
Zip’s lineage had been moving around the planet for about ten centuries, purportedly starting in northern India. Fred I, formerly Virgiliu in those Romanian days, heard about those upstart niggers in the southern American states being kicked off the land they had taken hold of when the Civil War ended. He became Fred, shortened his last name, and worked his way west to Atlanta in 1884 to see if he, a swarthy white man, but white, definitely, could grab a small corner of a piece of property for himself. It was no matter that Fred I had to rob a payroll wagon to secure his investment.
Fred I beat Fred II routinely, just as Fred I had been thumped regularly by his father. Discipline along the family line was unequivocal, if frequently unreasonable. Simple and quick. But not so simple and quick for Fred III. Out in the Ozarks, with ten half brothers and sisters, and a mother who could be meaner than his father when she was drunk, abuse of the young half-breed could take on a perverse array of expressions.
Fred III was frequently confused by his still attractive, but fierce-looking fifty-year-old mother. Hard Wing had been so aptly named. At times she possessed her men and children within the embrace of a soft, swathing wing. On other occasions that wing swung as hard a board, usually indiscriminant of the victim whom it astonished and punished. In the days before Fred II entered her life, it was usually James Slow Wolf, the retard, or Jeanie Many Birds, who was seen as the daughter most like her mother, therefore Marie’s chief competitor, who received a trouncing. Jeanie would fight Marie back, and sometimes Jeanie would disappear for hours with her stepfather, Walter Cold Horse. In time, though, the hard wing reigned triumphant. Many Birds married at sixteen and took flight with her Cherokee-Mexican brave, never to return until her stepfather’s funeral.
All of Marie’s husbands died conveniently of natural causes. Marie had not heard of insurance until after Joe Stone Eye had drowned. Once she understood how life insurance worked, she made sure that Cold Horse was worth $25,000 deader than alive. If she could have raised more money with which to purchase insurance she would have made sure Walter’s hefty body had greater monetary value than $25,000. There were those who said they wouldn’t pay a plugged nickel for Walter who seldom exerted himself other than to lumber off to the icebox to get a beer and then make it back to the creaky metal lawn chair next to the radio. The cold horse loved his Helen Trent, The Brighter Day, Guiding Light and Just Plain Bill. Wouldn’t miss his soaps.
It came as a surprise to no one when Walter slumped to the floor during one of those peregrinations between the bedroom and kitchen when his heart began attacking him on route to the icebox. When Jeanie Many Birds returned with Carlos, her husband and Chico, her two-year-old son, for the funeral, and she heard about the insurance, she told her sister, Flower, Mama killed him. Flower just assumed that it was the animus between her sister and mother talking. But, Many Birds, sharper-eyed than most of her siblings or the local constabulary, had noticed the faint red bruises on the side of her stepfather’s neck. Maybe someone had helped Cold Horse’s heart do its attacking.
Although he didn’t get to spend much time in school back in 1947 in Brushy, Fred III, now ten years old, but not yet Zip, was proving himself clever in numerous ways. If he hadn’t become smarter and harder, he might not have survived his years in Brushy. Besides learning how to survive minimally through his youth in a highly dysfunctional trailer park, Fred III was naturally a bright, restless child. In school when they taught the kids that the world was round, and that there were millions of children on the other side of the faded globe who were yellow-skinned and had slanted eyes, Fred III was fascinated. These facts meant little to his twenty-odd classmates who were eager to fish for their dinner, or be Tonto on the radio, or Straight Arrow on the cards that came with Nabisco Shredded Wheat boxes, Fred III never forgot those yellow people with the funny eyes on the other side of the world, even after he became Zip.
Back at the trailer, Marie was in bed, that big, sagging double mattress with the bearskin blanket, the place she usually inhabited with his father. But Fred II was out on the road with half brother, Jimmy (who spurned his Indian name) looking for junk they could bring back and fix and sell. She was drinking hooch and munching potato chips. When she told him to get into bed with her, Fred III was not surprised. He was not surprised because he had known this activity with James Slow Wolf, the retard, when young Fred was only five years old. His ma had become his most recent educator.
How’s your pecker?
It’s okay. How’s yours, ma? Hard Wing laughed. It was a gravelly laugh. She smoked two packs a day.
Let’s see. Gettin’ any bigger? She helped her son pull off his pants.
I don’t know.
Jeesus Christ! You’re a li’l feller, ain’t you?
Young Fred’s face got red. Marie pulled him roughly to her chest. Her strong arms crushed him to her breast. You useta like to suck this titty. Wanta have it? She pulled one flapping big roll from under her shirt. The nipple was dark and flattened against a wide, brown areola. The boy didn’t particularly like his mother’s smell, now almost choking him. He doubted he would enjoy her taste much either.
C’mon, ma.
She gave him an affectionate whap on the head. What’s the matta, Freddy? You like the other one better? Marie rolled her body so that the breast on the left side slid out from under her shirt. She took the child’s head with one hand and the breast with the other, and thrust it into his face. Suck that nipple, boy. See what it does for your pecker. Despite himself, his pecker grew and she took it in her hand.
With James Slow Wolf, at five, and totally artless, young Fred had been just one of several random victims of the fifteen-year-old retard-- recruited, coerced, or inveigled to suck his dick. If it wasn’t Freddy, it was the cat, enticed by fish oil smeared on James’ organ, or some other Cherokee kid paid money by one of the teenager’s siblings looking for a laugh. It was only a year after young Fred’s introduction to venery that the slow wolf unluckily made a bad choice of a co-conspirator for his concupiscent pleasures. In the process, a very sharp blade extirpated his plaything. It wasn’t until television came to the Cherokees in Brushy that James discovered a replacement for playing with his dick.
By the age of ten, Fred III was about to become wise beyond his years. Having watched his parents batter each other into bruised or bloodied drunken stupors, or having witnessed them fucking on the floor before he escaped the trailer, Freddy spent less and less time at home. After frequent fishing jaunts with one of his half brothers and his friends, drinking beer with them, he spent more time at the home of his sibling, watching the older boys, learning their ways. He also spent time with Juanita Suarez, a girl from school who found her grubby home as uninviting as Freddy found his. They met in a secluded arroyo, talked, and touched each other, but the boy deftly avoided any sexual activity like the plague. Then Juanita found another boy, a half-breed Mexican, almost two years older than young Fred. She chose him. Fred learned well how quickly a girl’s loyalty and friendship could gust away like the mountain wind.
At home, his father was frequently ill. It’s my heart, he told his son.
It’s his drinkin and smokin all the time, his mother told him.
You drink and smoke, the boy answered back.
Yeah, but I’m Cherokee.
So what?
I’m not so fragile, that’s what.
What’s that rash, the boy asked his father?
It’s nuthin’, his father answered, rubbing the red spots with their white scabs on his chest, watching the white flakes drift off in the air.
One night Fred II threw up after dinner. Shit all over the floor. Marie screamed at him for puking his guts. Take it outside, she hollered. Fred II groaned back that she was poisoning him. Fred III didn’t know what to make of that because the fresh fish and mashed potatoes his mother cooked tasted damn good to him. He didn’t feel sick until he saw that puke on the floor. His father lay down on the sofa, one hand on his forehead, the other limply touching the floor. Fred II hated staying at home alone when that sick, weak feeling took over. Neither his son nor his wife hung around. He was frightened. He had never felt as poorly as he had in these recent months. He had never gone to a doctor before, except for that time fifteen months earlier when a checkup was required for the insurance Marie insisted on.
I’m only 56, he bitched.
You ain’t gonna leave me depending on the tribe, Marie growled.
I never been sick.
The way you drink an’ smoke, you can drop any time.
The way I drink and smoke? Shit, Marie. That’s callin’ the kettle black, ain’t it, for chrissakes?
I ain’t no pot, she spit back.
Fred II keeled over when he was 58. Fred III was nearly 11. He was in the trailer when it happened. Marie was out doing something. His father didn’t die quickly. He writhed around on the floor, clutching his chest, moaning. When his father started shitting his pants, the younger Fred raced out to find Archibald Wailing Hawk, a Cherokee with medical experience. When they arrived back at the trailer, big Fred was finished. He laid there, the bottom of his torso on its back, the top half twisted on his side. His nightshirt lay open revealing a splotchy, sinewy chest.
What’s that shit, the medicine man murmured, his finger touching the rash?
That’s his rash, the boy said.
How long’s your pa had it?
I dunno. A long time, I guess.
You got rats in here?
Not much. Ma’s got rid of ‘em.
Rat poison?
Yeah. The boy couldn’t take any more of the close inspection of his father’s body. For one thing there was the shit smell mixed with others, equally unpleasant. He stood up and took a few steps toward the door. I gotta find ma.
The Hawk sighed and stood up. Yeah, you do that. I’ll go call the Constable.
Two years later, someone helped change Fred’s name to Zip. A very bad thing occurred, altering the boy’s life forever. Drink caused defining moments for a lot of people there in the Ozarks. Jimmy and three of his friends, all boys between 15 and 18, went fishing and swimming. Twelve-year-old Freddy, the youngest, was there because he had pestered Jimmy long and hard. At night they drank hooch while they cooked and ate the fish. There was a lot of laughter and story telling. As the evening and booze wore on the boys became increasingly aggressive. Competition with knives led to a different disposition. A kid who called himself Champ wrestled Jimmy down into leaf-filled gully. Held his blade to Jimmy’s neck. It should never have come to this. Hooch and testosterone had done similar work many times before.
You die, muthafucka, taunted the champ.
Jimmy laughed in his face. Jimmy tried to buck him off.
Champ drew some blood from Jimmy’s neck with his knife. Actually Champ was careful about it. It was show.
Hey, man, one of the boys said to Champ. Okay, enough. He seemed to know it wasn’t deeply serious.
Fred III, however, didn’t see it that way. The twelve year old had been drinking hooch, too. In his eyes, he saw an arrogant bigger kid ready to slice up his brother. He remembered James Slow Wolf losing his balls. In fact, earlier they’d been joking about just that matter, and it made Freddy feel deeply angry and sad at the same time. He had turned his head away from the revelry and wiped heated tears from his eyes. Of course, the hooch did considerably influence the boy’s emotional state. He had his knife, too. With Hard Wing’s expertise right there at home with him, his knife with its six-inch blade was razor ready. She didn’t have a knife at home that wasn’t razor ready.
With a howl, the boy jumped on Champ, one hand pulling back his forehead, his knife hand going for the older boy’s throat. Jimmy didn’t have time to utter a sound. Not to say Stop! to either of them. The blood from Champ’s throat shot out at Jimmy beneath him. Not another sound did Champ emit. His knife fell noiselessly into the leaves as he collapsed on top of Jimmy.
A sixteen year old propped up there against a rock, drinking his rotgut, silently spectating, simply commented, Zip, zip. They all looked at him. Immobilized by his liquor. He simply raised his eyebrows, grinning goofily, and repeated himself. Zip, zip. He ran the edge of his hand across his throat. The older boys put Champ in the river. Watched his body being carried away. Saluted him. Offered Zip some hooch.
There was a reasonably good library in Sallisaw, which Zip could reach by bicycle. The teenager found that he actually enjoyed reading. There was no such thing as a book at the trailer, other than auction guides his father used to need for his junk business. Now that Marie Hard Wing had received the $50,000 insurance payment, they didn’t need to seek junk. He encountered the story of Sequoyah, the most famous Cherokee, who moved here in 1829. Sequoyah had spent twelve years devising the written alphabet of the Cherokee language and was ultimately selected one of Oklahoma’s two greatest men. The giant redwood trees in California were named after this Indian. Reading this and thinking about it, Zip thought he, too, maybe could be a famous Cherokee. Well, half Cherokee.
He saw some similarities between himself and the greatest of the Cherokees. Sequoyah’s father had been a white man who abandoned his Indian wife and son. Something had disabled Sequoyah. The book wasn’t clear about exactly what happened, but the great Cherokee pressed on with his life, nevertheless, proving to all that he was a superior man. Zip thought about it quite a while, considered the ways he had been ‘disabled,’ and promised himself that he, too, would press on and prove his superiority. But his labors would not involve reuniting the Cherokee nation, Sequoyah’s final dream. Zip’s yearnings were far more personal.
Carolyn’s Diary
Last time I told you a little bit about Hollis. Doctor Hermansen tells me it’s good to talk about those times. Even write about it. Which is why I’m doing this. I know I want to write more about Brad, too, but I’m afraid to do that. Maybe later I’ll tell you more about my wonderful brother, even though I know I’ll start crying again. I was never like this before.
Hollis is further away now. I haven’t even seen him in almost two years. When I think of him my heart sort of smiles and cries at the same time. He was funny and kind and very handsome. He could be a James Dean if he wanted to. But instead he joined the Navy. It scared me to think that my dad made Blair join the Navy, and that Hollis and Blair could have met up again some day. I won’t think about that. Brad said too bad Dad didn’t get Blair into the Infantry, where maybe he’d get shot the first day. I think Brad was kidding because he doesn’t really believe that sort of thing. But we aren’t in a war now, so I don’t know that it makes any difference.
Hollis’s sister, Elise calls me sometimes, or I call her. She lives in Fitchburg with her aunt. Elise calls me her big sister. She’s got a real big sister, but she’s married and lives in Texas. Elise even took a bus to West Palmerton one time and we talked. I took her to Mattipax where Hollis and I first met. She told me Hollis’s still stationed in Yokohama. Blair was in Korea, so they never met again.
It doesn’t bother me that much that Hollis never writes me, except at Christmas. I understand better than a lot of people how life works. Boys don’t write letters that much. Even though Brad went off to the University of Maine and now Amantha attends Webster State Teachers, I know I always have my family who loves me. I told you how Hollis was running away from the bloodhounds and Mr. Nash and the State police, and he fell into Lake Mattipax. Glenn and I rescued Hollis from drowning with his raft. When we did it, even Glenn didn’t know who we had saved. As soon as Glenn saw Hollis’s face while he was lying there on the raft, he got white as a ghost. Quick, paddle! Glenn yelled at me. I didn’t know what was going on. We were extremely lucky that we got back to shore without the police seeing us. Glenn always studied tactics like how to sneak around like an Indian, so he knew how to get us walking in a brook when we went into the woods to hide. He knew it would be harder for the bloodhounds to pick up our trail if we stayed in the brook.
Why are we hiding? I asked. Who is this guy? Do you know him? I was getting scared because Hollis could hardly walk, he was so tired. Why weren’t we trying to take him to a hospital? I can’t tell you yet, Glenn said, acting weirder than I ever saw him. He was shaking. Well, even half dead, Hollis was like a dream boy you see in the movies. He had very light blond hair; he was tall and slim, and had a beautiful face. Later, in that horrible first night of my Second Life, I learned Hollis was also very tough and brave. The thing about Hollis is he can be in the most dangerous situation, and still he has this little smile, like it’s a joke. It’ll end; the bad things, and it’ll be just like normal again. I wish I still believed that.
My Second Life slowly became much more quiet after Blair was gone and the trial was over where Hollis and Glenn were so courageous against Mr. Nash’s horrible lawyer. It served him right. They put Mr. Nash in the State Prison near Springfield for fourteen years. Since Glenn and I were fourteen, too, we thought that was a pretty good sentence. Fourteen years was a long time, Glenn said. He was thinking about how long we’d been alive in this world. No parole the judge said, and his lawyer made a huge fuss.
Glenn’s parents sent him away to Wilbraham Academy, which, believe it or not, is also near Springfield. So both Glenn and Mr. Nash are both about three hours away from me! But they’re only about a half hour away from each other! Glenn had to go to Wilbraham because Mr. and Mrs. Humphrey said West Palmerton High wasn’t good enough for Glenn to get into a good college. I asked my dad about that, and he said, Lynnie, you get good enough grades, you’ll get into a good college. So, you know what that means, right? Carolyn, bring home A’s. Uh huh. I get a few more A’s these days, but probably not as many as I need to become a vet. I still hate Chemistry.
Of course, if you don’t know about that case back in 1956, you wouldn’t know that Mr. Nash had nothing to do with me, except that we both went to the same church, along with Glenn and a bunch of other kids from our class. Like I said before, I made Glenn show me the photographs he stole from Mr. Nash’s summer cottage before they became evidence. Glenn was extremely embarrassed and he left me alone to look at the photographs while he went to get a drink of water. They were naked kids, mostly boys, and what they were doing to each other was really gross. But you have to understand something. They had a slightly different affect on me than they did on Glenn. He’s the only child in his family, but I had an older brother and sister, so I’d seen more nudity than Glenn. I guess I was pretty nude myself when I was growing up, the youngest one, not knowing any different when I was little. Anyway, like my sister, Amantha, once explained to me, we’re Norwegian, and it’s more common for us to go around naked. Not that we did any weird stuff like in Mr. Nash’s photographs. Good grief— I hope not!
I’d never seen anything like what they were doing in those photographs which were taken inside prisons for kids, well, training schools, they called them, and Mr. Nash was selling these photos all around the world. They called it the Men’s Love Society. What a big deal that was, with the FBI and everything, and nobody would have caught them if it wasn’t for Glenn and Hollis. That’s why I’m so proud of them, and glad I helped. Men’s Love Society. My dad tried to explain all that to me. Grown men who want to love boys. It was sort of the opposite of Brad’s friend Suzie, but you’ll find out about that later. Too weird, as far as I’m concerned So, they put Mr. Nash behind bars for fourteen years, unless his lawyer gets something changed. I guess he won’t see any young boys in there. My dad said, don’t worry, whatever happens, Mr. Nash will never come back to West Palmerton.
My dad also got rid of Blair, who was really the one who hated me the most. Blair was in jail for attacking me in Mattipax when we were rescuing Hollis, and for going after Brad with a knife later. It happened on the basketball court outside school at lunchtime. It was Spring, just after the snow had melted, and the court case was still going on in Webster. Blair and Bruce’s broken bones had just about healed from what Glenn did to them with his baseball bat, and they were as hateful as all get out. They couldn’t get even with Glenn and Hollis with all the FBI around, so they tried something with Brad. Even though everybody knew Brad lifted weights and studied tae kwon do,
There were lots of other kids around; they saw what happened. Blair and Bruce were insulting me, saying I did things with Hollis and Glenn that I never did. Brad said some things back. Then Blair pulled out one of those knives he has, and he went for Brad. Brad put up his arm in defense and got a really bad slice on it. Really deep! He could of gotten killed, if he didn’t know tae kwon do. He kicked Blair in the face, even though Blair’s knife got him again on the shoulder. But not as bad as the slice on his arm. Brad broke Blair’s nose, and that pretty much ended things. Later the State Police found Blair out in East Palmerton hiding at one of his pal’s, drinking hooch. They arrested him for attacking Brad with the knife. Later they added charges for what he tried to do to me. Actually the police were talking about charging him with attempted murder!
That’s when my dad came into the story. My dad was a pacifist from the days when the Nazis executed his dad in Norway during World War II. The whole thing with Mr. Nash and Hollis, and me and Glenn’s connection, and then what Bruce and Blair tried to do to me when I was helping Hollis escape, well, it was like the Devil had come to test our family. I guess, to give you this story correctly, I should say that not all of us believe in the Devil. In my family, actually Brad and my dad said there’s no bad guy like in The Devil and Daniel Webster running around tempting us, but my dad, especially, thinks the Force of Evil is something like a disease – a plague – that gets into people and spreads, and you have to be ready to stop it. My mom, and sometimes Amantha, thinks he’s like a real thing – the Devil is the opposite of God, the Fallen Angel.
Anyway, our whole family prayed together and then we talked. My dad said the only way to stop Evil is to put Goodness up against it. To forgive the Wrongdoer, which, of course, Jesus always said. In this situation, my father got the idea that we should forgive Blair. Brad argued abut that. This guy is a born bully, Brad said; he burns cats alive; he tried to kill Lynnie and me—well, I don’t want to say too much about what Brad said. I don’t want to think about that right now. You know what I mean, Dr. Hermansen, right?
To Be Continued next week....