Adrift

Chapter 18 Samson

Eighth of an ounce of white mice, please.”

She adjusts her hairnet and reaches back for the glass jar. It is not a popular choice, and I ponder the last time she likely poured from this dusty container. She tips the silver bowl into a paper bag and twists it and hands it to me. I pay and leave.

A retired colonel with a moustache speaks in assembly. He talks eloquently about duty and brotherhood and sacrifice. About Korea. There’s a direct question from a boy with a buzz cut about how many people the colonel killed. My chemistry teacher looks embarrassed.

The rest of the morning is uneventful. Boys kick my heels and push me through doorways but it’s nothing I can’t handle.

It takes me longer to walk home each night since Dad moved the boat farther away.

Other fathers are strict; they dominate their homes, but not to the extent of deciding where home will be at the end of each day.

The way he has acted since her book news means it is best not to come home too early anyway.

The school halls are enemy territory. The bus station is enemy territory.

The streets of this unseen town are enemy territory.

And then, when I am exhausted and it is dark outside and I want to rest and warm up, I have to trek back to a damp boat and my dad.

I do not have the words.

The boys in geography start to hum when our substitute teacher walks in. She tells us to settle down. We hum louder. She looks afraid. Twenty fourteen-year-old boys and one adult.

“Quiet.”

The humming intensifies.

“I’m warning you.”

I’m humming along with them and the abject thrill of being allowed to be part of something, a small cog in a powerful machine, a team member, one of a gang, is electrifying.

Eventually she orders us all outside for five minutes, and then, afterward, class progresses as normal.

I am buzzing but Johnno keeps kicking the back of my chair.

Doesn’t he know I was humming like he was?

I was part of this, for God’s sake. How can he forget something like that?

He kicks me again and the boys behind snicker.

In the cafeteria I eat turkey and cheese roll-ups Mom wrapped for me. I sit at the table alone. Smells of Lysol and bacon. My stomach aches for more food.

Gunner walks behind me and slows.

“Pritch wants to see you by the big saw. Ten minutes.”

When I turn my head he’s already gone.

Pritch is four inches taller than me and three inches broader. He’s no friend. The circular saw in woodshop? I’ll stay here, thanks. No, that won’t work. They’ll come. I will hide in the boys’ bathroom until Spanish.

When I arrive Fenwell’s standing outside.

I go in.

The scent of cheap paper and a thousand varieties of piss. On the floor and up the walls. Doors kicked in and a trail of paper leading into a stall, the toilet bowl blocked, an anatomically correct depiction of a spread-eagle woman rendered in pencil next to the paper dispenser.

I walk to the end stall, but it is occupied so I move two along and go inside and lock the door. The floor is wet. The toilet has no seat. There is excrement smeared on the wall behind the chain.

The smell is pungent, but I have grown accustomed to it.

I pull out the last white mouse from my pocket and let the dusty sweet rest on my tongue. I know I shouldn’t eat in here but I need something. It takes a long time for the mouse to break down, saliva pooling around it.

The sound of footsteps.

I push the mouse up with my tongue until it presses into the roof of my mouth. Sugar and comfort. A drop of goodness in this rotten place.

Someone grunts outside.

I freeze.

My eyes widen.

Someone steps into the stall next to mine. There are noises. Banging. A large shadow on the floor.

More footsteps.

I look up and there are faces staring back down. One’s chewing gum, blowing a bubble.

“No circular saw in here, is there, Johnno?”

“None, Spocky.”

“No saws at all around here, is there, bud?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Is this shop?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“What you doin’ down there, Noodles?”

I shrug.

“You get lost on your way, did you? Redheads like you have trouble with directions, I heard. Saw it on MTV. Irish problem. Shall we help Noodles, Johnno?”

“Nah.”

“Johnno says no, Noodles. You playing with yourself down there, buddy? Why aren’t you sitting down, it’s not as easy from a standing start. I can tell you that from bitter experience. Have a seat if you’re gonna do that.”

I shake my head.

“What’s that, Noodles?”

“I’m all right.”

“You are not fucking all right, little man. You are the fucking polar opposite of all right. You’re skinny redhead trailer trash living on the canal with your mom and her rabbit teeth and your bald excuse for a dad.

Pedo if I ever saw one, sweating every time he walks past the school gates, pervert, shiny head weirdo, and now you gone and killed the poor old boy you were paid to look after. ”

“I heard it was euthanasia,” says Johnno.

“Euthanasia,” repeats Pritch. “Johnno says you euthanized your employer, little man. You threw him in the canal. I heard he sank down to the weeds, just his colostomy bag floating on the surface. Why’d you do him in, bud?”

“I didn’t.”

“Lying clown,” says Pritch. “You can’t afford to be in our school, you shouldn’t be here. Period.”

They both climb down from their respective stalls.

“Open the door, Noodles. I just want to talk to you, buddy.”

I’m frozen in place.

“Kick it in,” whispers Johnno.

“Listen, yeah. Open up or Johnno might headbutt the door in. Do me a favor and just open the latch, dude. Save us the bother.”

I do nothing.

“Save us the paperwork, little man.”

I lift the latch.

My fingers are shaking.

They both squeeze inside and I’m pushed back toward the toilet bowl.

“Sit down, bud,” says Pritch. “Relax.”

I shake my head.

Together they push me to sit down on the disgusting porcelain rim of the toilet.

“You look comfier now, Noodles. Next time come and see me at the saw like we agreed, right? Don’t make me come in here sniffin’ your old piss.”

Johnno pushes my schoolbag behind the toilet toward the excrement on the wall.

“Don’t do it again, yeah. Some old-timer bothers you, take a fucking breath and leave ’em alone. Take a breath, little man. Self-control. You heard the admiral this morning…”

“Colonel. He was a colonel, Johnno.”

“Was he?”

“I think so. Army, I reckon. Fought in Korea, didn’t he say?”

“I think you might be right there, brother.”

I look up at them both.

“You heard the colonel. That generation went to war so we could come to this fine academic institution. So don’t go chucking old fellas in the canal, yeah?”

They leave.

It’s not that I want to hurt them; I merely yearn to be somewhere else.

Almost anywhere else. I crave to be four years ahead.

I want to be leaving town, and I want Pritch and Johnno to have failed their GED and for them to watch as I board a train, calmly, and I want them to see the relief on my face as I move away from the station.

“Noodles,” says another voice, farther away.

I don’t reply.

“What’s your real name?”

I pause.

“Jenkins.”

A face at the door.

“Name’s Pricklett. Paul Pricklett.”

He fills the entire doorframe—I mean, the entire thing. Thick glasses and hair that looks like it’s already receding. I recognize him. Looks more like a teacher than a boy.

“Did you hear all that?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I was about to step in.”

“You never was.”

He looks at my bag.

The bell rings outside.

“You need to wipe all that down, Jenkins. You’ll stink the place out. Come over to the sinks and I’ll pass you soapy paper.”

I stand up and walk to the sinks with my bag.

“Here.”

He hands me a long folded section of paper complete with pink soap.

I wipe down my bag and place the dirty paper in the trash.

“Cooties,” he says.

“Yeah.”

Then I dry off my pants and use some of the pink soap to mask the smell.

“What you got now?” he asks.

“Football.”

He frowns.

“You?”

“Chemistry,” he says. “Gases and liquids. All bullshit. Come with me.”

“No.”

“I said come with me.”

I follow him. He walks behind the library and around the back of the science labs and slips behind the industrial waste bin near the principal’s office.

“Not there,” I whisper. “Not that way.”

He gestures for me to follow him and within seconds we’re outside the school gates and passing through the churchyard.

“What if…” I say.

“It’s all right,” he says. “Trust me.”

The sun emerges from behind a slate-gray cloud and the air noticeably warms. Pricklett and I walk past a nail bar and a dry cleaner.

Army recruitment posters. A fire hydrant with one baby shoe balanced on top.

We duck down an alley by the Pentecostal church and then we’re outside a bakery Mr. Turner used to talk about.

“Yeah?” he says.

I smile at him. “I’ve got no money.”

“You get it next time,” he says, opening the door.

A bell rings and the people inside turn to look at us. Can we do this? This bakery and coffeehouse is larger than the diner Mom took me to. Paul buys two bottles of cola and two cream puff pastries. He carries the tray to the rear corner, by a door that says Private.

“Thanks for this,” I say.

He bites into his cream puff.

“You done this before?”

He nods. “I’m not your buddy, Jenkins.”

“I know.”

“Mom says I have complex needs when it comes to social connections. I don’t make friends.”

I bite into my cream puff.

“We’re not buddies,” he says again, eclipsing the bakery with his bulk. “I don’t need one. Only I don’t have anyone to talk with, really. You like X-Files?”

“Yeah.”

“I got the video last Christmas. I like Agent Scully. I got the book too. Mom got a check because she was hit by a carpet van.”

“By a carpet van?”

He nods. “In her Impala.”

“Is she OK?”

“You got any pets, Jenkins?”

His impressive chin is covered with powdered sugar.

“I kind of have a dog.”

“What species?”

Species? It’s a dog. “Jack Russell.”

“Four out of ten.”

“Four? Come on, she’s a good dog.”

“Still a four, though, objectively. Tiger is ten and we work down from there. Wild stallion is a seven. Rottweiler gets six. You been up to Chicago yet on the Amtrak?”

I shake my head and open my cola.

“On the Greyhound, then?”

I shake my head again.

“I’m goin’ next year with my mom and stepdad. You ever seen a pornographic magazine? Like, a proper one?”

“Yeah. Just for a second.”

“What one?”

I have never seen one.

“Can’t remember.”

He nods and finishes his pastry.

“How much allowance do you get?”

“I don’t.”

“Monthly or weekly?”

“I don’t.”

He nods.

Dad talked about it once. About teaching me sound financial discipline—saving, keeping a bankbook—but it never materialized.

And now my independent source of income has died, literally, and we’ve moved so far from town I hardly have time to do my school assignments, never mind extra jobs.

If I do find work I’ll have to sleep less.

Last week I found Dad’s secret receipts.

They were in the kindling packages he makes: intricately folded newspaper enveloping thin sticks.

Receipts for heavy paper with a watermark.

Receipts from the printing and photocopy shop near the courthouse.

Receipts for padded envelopes and special delivery at the post office.

He sends out his manuscripts and, judging by those receipts, the process uses up most of our money.

That and ribbons for his word processor.

I don’t think Mom has any idea how much it all costs him.

We leave and walk past the pawnshop.

Cash Advance.

We Buy Gold.

“You goin’ back in school?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not your buddy, you know.”

“You said.”

“I know.”

“Thanks for the food,” I say.

“You done the right thing today.”

“Going back to school?”

He shakes his head. “Not going mental when they put shit on your bag. If you let it all out at once they’ll start doing worse things. I know about that. You keep on ignoring it and one day they’ll move on to somebody else.”

“Thanks.”

“See ya, buddy.”