I'm done.
It's kinda weird and... weird. Just as a warning.
It was raining, and the underside of the rickety wooden bridge was less dry than Marcos had hoped it would be. He sat on the edge of a concrete slab that covered the muddy stream that creeped slowly southward to the big river in the center of the city. The short boy scribbled furiously, hunchbacked, trying to cover himself with the jean jacket two sizes too small that barely covered his back. His belly looked too round to be natural and his fat fingers clumsily grasped a cheap pen, giving the impression of an overstuffed teddy bear. The boy suddenly stopped his mad scribbling and squinted at the smudged and crumpled paper. His shoulders slumped further in dejection; the words ran together in the rain as quickly as they did in his head.
He never did get any inspiration when the day was sunny and clear and perfect for lying in a bed of dandelions. Marcos thought about walking home and bitterly rejected the idea. Today his father’s friends were playing poker at his house meaning he’d be sent straight to bed as soon as he got home, without dinner most likely. That left just Marcos’s imagination to decipher the terrifying laughter and curses and breaking of wood that accompanied the bittersweet smell of alcohol.
Times weren’t good. But then, times were never good. His father had never quite gotten over Marcos’s mother running off with his paternal grandfather’s fortune when Marcos was six. He often blamed the fat, terrified young boy whenever he was angry or drunk or both, which was often. His stepmother blamed his father for ever getting involved with that hussy in the first place. Marcos wasn’t really sure whose fault it was. He hoped it wasn’t his. Sometimes on Sunday mornings, when he kneeled on the hard wooden floor of the gigantic Catholic church they attended precisely at eight a.m. every week, when his backside hurt from another lashing induced by his terrible grades, when the new baby giggled at him mockingly, saying “At least I’m not a retard,” he liked to blame his whole miserable life on God. He used to be terrified of God when he was younger, trembling at the glowing, lifeless eyes of the portraits of Jesus on the cross, flinching away from the haunted gaze of the Holy Mother. By now, though, Marcos had learned the God was too remote and distant to notice his plight. Marcos supposed He must exist, and he was just too unimportant to share in His view.
Moodily he fished for his glasses in his coat and discovered they were caught on a loose thread. He tugged, lightly at first, and then hard enough that with a flick of the wrist he managed to skip the fragile things across the cement slab. He cursed quietly, hearing in his mind the echo of his father, the things he would say when Marcos finally came home. He turned to get up when a deftly-thrown rock whistled by his ear. The pudgy boy wheeled around so fast he would’ve fallen if he’d been standing up.
A lanky figure emerged from the dark, misty rain. Smoothly tanned, lightly freckled, an awkward red-headed boy towered over Marcos. He was probably a little older than Marcos but still caught in the same awkward transition from child to man. “Sorry ‘bout that,” the kid said, smiling lopsidedly; one side of his mouth grinned mischievously while the other side remained passive, almost snarling. “I didn’t think anyone else ever came down here when it rained. Thought you was a target practice.” He giggled quietly, as if he’d made a funny joke.
Marcos shrugged nervously. He hands were getting clammy and he could feel himself become conscious of every function of his body, from the quickening pace of his heart to the uncomfortable bowel movements left over from lunch. “I thought it’d be drier down here,” he said quietly, crumpling the soggy paper in his hand and smashing it into his jean pockets, hoping the other boy hadn’t already seen them.
“Nah, it’s never dry here,” the other boy drawled slowly. “If it was I wouldn’t be here. I like rain more’n other things. More’n most things.” The boy’s neck was long, and he stretched it out like an ostrich and peered into Marcos’ face. He held his arms back and crouched slightly, giving the impression of a wet, gangly chicken. Marcos tried not to laugh out loud. “Hey,” the boy continued, when Marcos only bemusedly shook his head. “Mind if I sit down? And talk a little? I don’t got anyone to talk to, most the time.”
Again Marcos shrugged. Everything looked kind of smeary, but he wasn’t sure if it was the rain or his missing glasses. The other boy flopped down next to him. His legs were so long that his feet trailed in the mud, so he pulled them up and hugged them tight instead. Everything about him was long and thin, making him look like a grossly large grasshopper. Marcos looked at the boy’s face and was surprised to find his emerald green eyes, looking out on the gray landscape of the darkening day, looked more like the eyes of an old seadog inwardly reflecting on a familiar ocean. “So where d’you live?” the boy asked quietly.
“On F-F-Forest. Down near the old d-d-downtown library.”
“You don’t look like you can drive.” Marcos shook his head. “You really walked all the way here?”
Marcos twiddled his thumbs nervously, quietly examining the patch of concrete he sat on. “’Snot that far. I walk everywhere. C-C-C-Can’t get around any other w-way.”
“Well, yeah, me too,” he said, sort of hurt. “But I wouldn’t walk all the way over there. Man. Slumboy, huh? So are your parents like white trash or somethin?”
The tiny bit of hope that had welled up in Marcos’s heart suddenly burst like a wet paper bag. This other boy-older than him, probably meaner, too-was just making fun of him, just like everyone else Marcos had ever met. He wished he could melt into a puddle and slide away like the rain, into the slowly oozing stream.
The other boy must have noticed Marcos’s demeanor because his green eyes suddenly grew darker and panicky. “Oh man, did I really just say that? Oh man. I’m so sorry. I get so used to just talkin to myself, y’know? I keep forgettin. Oh man. Sorry.”
Marcos didn’t know what to say to that. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. The minutes slipped past and a couple of cars roared over them. The kid seemed sincerely apologetic, and finally Marcos felt like he ought to say something. “Y-you t-t-talk to yourself?”
“Yeah. All the time.” A sly grin crept across the boy’s face. “It’s my own little piece of insanity. Everyone’s got one. Even you, I bet.”
Marcos knew what his “piece of insanity” was. He didn’t want to be reminded of it, of the taunting and teasing at school, of the drudgery of going to the library, of the ultimate futility and pain that resulted in his “inspirations.” But at the same time he felt a strange empathic bond with this boy, this nobody who materialized in shadows and liked rain. How bad could it be? “My b-brain’s all screwed up.”
“Yeah? How?”
“I c-can’t read things right. I can’t see l-letters. They twirl around an melt together an n-never look the same way twice. An I st-st-stutter when I talk, even when I try r-really hard not to!”
“Hey,” the kid said, a bit of sympathy in his voice. “You don’t sound so bad to me.”
“That’s just cuz I’m not nervous right now. I try to talk to my teachers but I get all screwed up.” Tiny tears formed in his eyes. He was such a compulsive cryer! “They make me go to all the special ed classes even though I could get straight A’s. Whenever they try an jus talk to to me I get it all fine. Then they try to make me read an I ca-ca…I can’t do it!” Marcos couldn’t hold back the tears and the slowly dripped down, mingling with the fading rain.
The boy’s look was unreadable. Marcos tried to cover his face with his hands but the boy put a cold, white arm around him. “Hey. Hey man. Don’t cry. Okay? It’s not so bad. Who says who’s crazy anyway, huh?”
He sniffled slightly and mumbled, “What’re you talkin about?”
“Well I just wanna know who made up all these rules.” The kid pulled away and leaned forward, clinging tenaciously to the concrete slab. The same look entered his eyes that Marcos had seen earlier. “There’s gotta be a standard. A cutoff line, right? So who says where’s the cutoff line? Who says one guy’s insane and another guy, just a little bit saner, just a smidgen, isn’t? How come they all say I’m crazy, but they won’t listen to me when I say they are?”
Marcos quit sniffling. He was starting to get a little frightened of this boy, this crazy boy with crazy ideas. He tried to look out and see the world the way the boy did, but everything was just brushstrokes of an impressionist painting. He thought of his glasses, but he didn’t want to move for fear of breaking the spell.
The boy kept staring at him expectantly, and when he didn’t say anything the boy let out a small sigh. His voice dropped low and serious. “Have you ever thought about the purpose of life? Like why there’s pain an bad stuff an things you just can’t control?” He stood up and paced up and down, his face gloomy and ponderous. “And you think to yourself about all the reasons why there’s pain and sorrow, and you start to sort of think yourself in circles, you start to realize that the only reason why there’s pain and sorrow is cuz you’re there.” He looked up, his face blazing with mysterious fury. “Cuz if you weren’t there, there wouldn’t be any sorrow, right? Right?” Without warning he grabbed Marcos, scared into immobility, by the collar and dragged him up. “Right? It’s your fault, right!?”
Marcos swallowed hard, trying to overcome the lump in his throat that impeded his voice. The boy’s hands were clammy and cold as ice against Marcos’s skin. From here he could see the hot tears that tattooed the boy’s muddy face. His flaming red hair was matted and dirty; his clothes were worn down or torn at the seams. The boy’s teeth, just inches from Marcos’s nose, were yellow and his breath was fetid with a strange smell. Marcos felt that if he could only calm him down, everything would be okay. “It c-c-can’t all be y-your fault,” he said lamely.
“But it is,” he whined. In a sudden burst of strength, the thin boy pushed Marcos to the ground-his head throbbed painfully from the collision with the cement-and sat on Marcos’s stomach, pinning his legs and arms. “If I wasn’t here, then I wouldn’t feel all this pain. I used to climb all the way up to the top of skyscrapers an jus look over the edge an think. I never could, y’know, psych myself into doin it, but I’d just sit an think about it.” The boy’s eyebrows still furrowed in anger but his eyes looked lost, darting back and forth as though searching for some invisible enemy. “I never intended to live this way. I didn’t want to live this way. It just happened. And I didn’t know what to do.”
Marcos heard it first, the crescendoing rumble of a car slowing on the bridge above them. Then a squelching sound as the car turned on to the steep gravel and mud road that slithered down to the landing the boy and Marcos were on. The boy stood up, a panicky look in his eyes. Marcos grabbed his glasses and adjusted them on his face just in time to realize it was a police car that had intruded their private space before the bright headlights blinded him.
Two men stepped out of the car. The driver was thirty-ish, white, overweight and balding. His partner looked Hispanic, young and hip in his new police uniform. The older one asked, “What’s the matter down here? We heard yelling.”
Marcos stood like one possessed, immobile, sensing reality through a heavy curtain. No one had ever intruded on his private domain like this. No one authoritative, anyway. A clash of anger and fear hit his stomach, and he felt like he might throw up.
The younger one approached with a confident, macho smile. “Whatssa matter? Cat got your tongue?”
Marcos’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish, before he could feel words forcibly repelled from his throat. “W-w-w-w-we w-w-were j-just p-p-p-p-playin. M-m-my f-friend-”
“Your friend?” the older one asked, suspicion in his voice.
Marcos saw that the red-haired boy was lying face down behind him. He walked over and grabbed his wrist, trying to pull him up. “H-h-h-here he is.” Strangely, the boy didn’t respond. Marcos tugged harder.
The younger cop knelt down and rolled the boy over. His face was bluer than Marcos remembered and his eyes looked completely empty. “Jesus,” the Hispanic guy breathed. He pulled out his notebook and looked at something, then looked back up at his partner. “It’s the MacRae kid. Missing for four days.” A horrified look crossed over the balding cop’s faced and he pulled out the gun and aimed it at Marcos. “Goddammit, Harold, put that away!” the younger cop swore.
“No way,” he grunted. “There’s somethin wrong with this kid. How long’ve you been down here?” he demanded Marcos. Stupidly, the boy looked down at his friend, concern on his face. “Well?!”
“Quit yelling.” The younger cop, smooth and obviously in control, stood up and pushed the gun away from Marcos’s head. He tightened his lips and furrowed his brow, trying to look authoritative and still sympathetic, and failing. “What he means is, did you find him like this?”
Marcos didn’t understand. “N-n-n-no. I-I don’t t-t-t-hink so.”
The younger cop’s expression softened into a dopey face reserved for toddlers and dogs. “See Harold,” he muttered. “He’s just a retard. He don’t know anything.”
“Is he dead?” Marcos asked.
“Yeah,” the cop said sadly. “Yeah he is.”
Marcos didn’t resist as the two men half-led, half-dragged him into the back seat of the car. He didn’t notice what they did with the body. All he felt was the sinking feeling in his heart, the cynical nagging that lectured him quietly. He’d almost had a friend, he could tell. They were almost there. And then something happened and now… now he was alone again.
It was raining, and the underside of the rickety wooden bridge was less dry than Marcos had hoped it would be. He sat on the edge of a concrete slab that covered the muddy stream that creeped slowly southward to the big river in the center of the city. The short boy scribbled furiously, hunchbacked, trying to cover himself with the jean jacket two sizes too small that barely covered his back. His belly looked too round to be natural and his fat fingers clumsily grasped a cheap pen, giving the impression of an overstuffed teddy bear. The boy suddenly stopped his mad scribbling and squinted at the smudged and crumpled paper. His shoulders slumped further in dejection; the words ran together in the rain as quickly as they did in his head.
He never did get any inspiration when the day was sunny and clear and perfect for lying in a bed of dandelions. Marcos thought about walking home and bitterly rejected the idea. Today his father’s friends were playing poker at his house meaning he’d be sent straight to bed as soon as he got home, without dinner most likely. That left just Marcos’s imagination to decipher the terrifying laughter and curses and breaking of wood that accompanied the bittersweet smell of alcohol.
Times weren’t good. But then, times were never good. His father had never quite gotten over Marcos’s mother running off with his paternal grandfather’s fortune when Marcos was six. He often blamed the fat, terrified young boy whenever he was angry or drunk or both, which was often. His stepmother blamed his father for ever getting involved with that hussy in the first place. Marcos wasn’t really sure whose fault it was. He hoped it wasn’t his. Sometimes on Sunday mornings, when he kneeled on the hard wooden floor of the gigantic Catholic church they attended precisely at eight a.m. every week, when his backside hurt from another lashing induced by his terrible grades, when the new baby giggled at him mockingly, saying “At least I’m not a retard,” he liked to blame his whole miserable life on God. He used to be terrified of God when he was younger, trembling at the glowing, lifeless eyes of the portraits of Jesus on the cross, flinching away from the haunted gaze of the Holy Mother. By now, though, Marcos had learned the God was too remote and distant to notice his plight. Marcos supposed He must exist, and he was just too unimportant to share in His view.
Moodily he fished for his glasses in his coat and discovered they were caught on a loose thread. He tugged, lightly at first, and then hard enough that with a flick of the wrist he managed to skip the fragile things across the cement slab. He cursed quietly, hearing in his mind the echo of his father, the things he would say when Marcos finally came home. He turned to get up when a deftly-thrown rock whistled by his ear. The pudgy boy wheeled around so fast he would’ve fallen if he’d been standing up.
A lanky figure emerged from the dark, misty rain. Smoothly tanned, lightly freckled, an awkward red-headed boy towered over Marcos. He was probably a little older than Marcos but still caught in the same awkward transition from child to man. “Sorry ‘bout that,” the kid said, smiling lopsidedly; one side of his mouth grinned mischievously while the other side remained passive, almost snarling. “I didn’t think anyone else ever came down here when it rained. Thought you was a target practice.” He giggled quietly, as if he’d made a funny joke.
Marcos shrugged nervously. He hands were getting clammy and he could feel himself become conscious of every function of his body, from the quickening pace of his heart to the uncomfortable bowel movements left over from lunch. “I thought it’d be drier down here,” he said quietly, crumpling the soggy paper in his hand and smashing it into his jean pockets, hoping the other boy hadn’t already seen them.
“Nah, it’s never dry here,” the other boy drawled slowly. “If it was I wouldn’t be here. I like rain more’n other things. More’n most things.” The boy’s neck was long, and he stretched it out like an ostrich and peered into Marcos’ face. He held his arms back and crouched slightly, giving the impression of a wet, gangly chicken. Marcos tried not to laugh out loud. “Hey,” the boy continued, when Marcos only bemusedly shook his head. “Mind if I sit down? And talk a little? I don’t got anyone to talk to, most the time.”
Again Marcos shrugged. Everything looked kind of smeary, but he wasn’t sure if it was the rain or his missing glasses. The other boy flopped down next to him. His legs were so long that his feet trailed in the mud, so he pulled them up and hugged them tight instead. Everything about him was long and thin, making him look like a grossly large grasshopper. Marcos looked at the boy’s face and was surprised to find his emerald green eyes, looking out on the gray landscape of the darkening day, looked more like the eyes of an old seadog inwardly reflecting on a familiar ocean. “So where d’you live?” the boy asked quietly.
“On F-F-Forest. Down near the old d-d-downtown library.”
“You don’t look like you can drive.” Marcos shook his head. “You really walked all the way here?”
Marcos twiddled his thumbs nervously, quietly examining the patch of concrete he sat on. “’Snot that far. I walk everywhere. C-C-C-Can’t get around any other w-way.”
“Well, yeah, me too,” he said, sort of hurt. “But I wouldn’t walk all the way over there. Man. Slumboy, huh? So are your parents like white trash or somethin?”
The tiny bit of hope that had welled up in Marcos’s heart suddenly burst like a wet paper bag. This other boy-older than him, probably meaner, too-was just making fun of him, just like everyone else Marcos had ever met. He wished he could melt into a puddle and slide away like the rain, into the slowly oozing stream.
The other boy must have noticed Marcos’s demeanor because his green eyes suddenly grew darker and panicky. “Oh man, did I really just say that? Oh man. I’m so sorry. I get so used to just talkin to myself, y’know? I keep forgettin. Oh man. Sorry.”
Marcos didn’t know what to say to that. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. The minutes slipped past and a couple of cars roared over them. The kid seemed sincerely apologetic, and finally Marcos felt like he ought to say something. “Y-you t-t-talk to yourself?”
“Yeah. All the time.” A sly grin crept across the boy’s face. “It’s my own little piece of insanity. Everyone’s got one. Even you, I bet.”
Marcos knew what his “piece of insanity” was. He didn’t want to be reminded of it, of the taunting and teasing at school, of the drudgery of going to the library, of the ultimate futility and pain that resulted in his “inspirations.” But at the same time he felt a strange empathic bond with this boy, this nobody who materialized in shadows and liked rain. How bad could it be? “My b-brain’s all screwed up.”
“Yeah? How?”
“I c-can’t read things right. I can’t see l-letters. They twirl around an melt together an n-never look the same way twice. An I st-st-stutter when I talk, even when I try r-really hard not to!”
“Hey,” the kid said, a bit of sympathy in his voice. “You don’t sound so bad to me.”
“That’s just cuz I’m not nervous right now. I try to talk to my teachers but I get all screwed up.” Tiny tears formed in his eyes. He was such a compulsive cryer! “They make me go to all the special ed classes even though I could get straight A’s. Whenever they try an jus talk to to me I get it all fine. Then they try to make me read an I ca-ca…I can’t do it!” Marcos couldn’t hold back the tears and the slowly dripped down, mingling with the fading rain.
The boy’s look was unreadable. Marcos tried to cover his face with his hands but the boy put a cold, white arm around him. “Hey. Hey man. Don’t cry. Okay? It’s not so bad. Who says who’s crazy anyway, huh?”
He sniffled slightly and mumbled, “What’re you talkin about?”
“Well I just wanna know who made up all these rules.” The kid pulled away and leaned forward, clinging tenaciously to the concrete slab. The same look entered his eyes that Marcos had seen earlier. “There’s gotta be a standard. A cutoff line, right? So who says where’s the cutoff line? Who says one guy’s insane and another guy, just a little bit saner, just a smidgen, isn’t? How come they all say I’m crazy, but they won’t listen to me when I say they are?”
Marcos quit sniffling. He was starting to get a little frightened of this boy, this crazy boy with crazy ideas. He tried to look out and see the world the way the boy did, but everything was just brushstrokes of an impressionist painting. He thought of his glasses, but he didn’t want to move for fear of breaking the spell.
The boy kept staring at him expectantly, and when he didn’t say anything the boy let out a small sigh. His voice dropped low and serious. “Have you ever thought about the purpose of life? Like why there’s pain an bad stuff an things you just can’t control?” He stood up and paced up and down, his face gloomy and ponderous. “And you think to yourself about all the reasons why there’s pain and sorrow, and you start to sort of think yourself in circles, you start to realize that the only reason why there’s pain and sorrow is cuz you’re there.” He looked up, his face blazing with mysterious fury. “Cuz if you weren’t there, there wouldn’t be any sorrow, right? Right?” Without warning he grabbed Marcos, scared into immobility, by the collar and dragged him up. “Right? It’s your fault, right!?”
Marcos swallowed hard, trying to overcome the lump in his throat that impeded his voice. The boy’s hands were clammy and cold as ice against Marcos’s skin. From here he could see the hot tears that tattooed the boy’s muddy face. His flaming red hair was matted and dirty; his clothes were worn down or torn at the seams. The boy’s teeth, just inches from Marcos’s nose, were yellow and his breath was fetid with a strange smell. Marcos felt that if he could only calm him down, everything would be okay. “It c-c-can’t all be y-your fault,” he said lamely.
“But it is,” he whined. In a sudden burst of strength, the thin boy pushed Marcos to the ground-his head throbbed painfully from the collision with the cement-and sat on Marcos’s stomach, pinning his legs and arms. “If I wasn’t here, then I wouldn’t feel all this pain. I used to climb all the way up to the top of skyscrapers an jus look over the edge an think. I never could, y’know, psych myself into doin it, but I’d just sit an think about it.” The boy’s eyebrows still furrowed in anger but his eyes looked lost, darting back and forth as though searching for some invisible enemy. “I never intended to live this way. I didn’t want to live this way. It just happened. And I didn’t know what to do.”
Marcos heard it first, the crescendoing rumble of a car slowing on the bridge above them. Then a squelching sound as the car turned on to the steep gravel and mud road that slithered down to the landing the boy and Marcos were on. The boy stood up, a panicky look in his eyes. Marcos grabbed his glasses and adjusted them on his face just in time to realize it was a police car that had intruded their private space before the bright headlights blinded him.
Two men stepped out of the car. The driver was thirty-ish, white, overweight and balding. His partner looked Hispanic, young and hip in his new police uniform. The older one asked, “What’s the matter down here? We heard yelling.”
Marcos stood like one possessed, immobile, sensing reality through a heavy curtain. No one had ever intruded on his private domain like this. No one authoritative, anyway. A clash of anger and fear hit his stomach, and he felt like he might throw up.
The younger one approached with a confident, macho smile. “Whatssa matter? Cat got your tongue?”
Marcos’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish, before he could feel words forcibly repelled from his throat. “W-w-w-w-we w-w-were j-just p-p-p-p-playin. M-m-my f-friend-”
“Your friend?” the older one asked, suspicion in his voice.
Marcos saw that the red-haired boy was lying face down behind him. He walked over and grabbed his wrist, trying to pull him up. “H-h-h-here he is.” Strangely, the boy didn’t respond. Marcos tugged harder.
The younger cop knelt down and rolled the boy over. His face was bluer than Marcos remembered and his eyes looked completely empty. “Jesus,” the Hispanic guy breathed. He pulled out his notebook and looked at something, then looked back up at his partner. “It’s the MacRae kid. Missing for four days.” A horrified look crossed over the balding cop’s faced and he pulled out the gun and aimed it at Marcos. “Goddammit, Harold, put that away!” the younger cop swore.
“No way,” he grunted. “There’s somethin wrong with this kid. How long’ve you been down here?” he demanded Marcos. Stupidly, the boy looked down at his friend, concern on his face. “Well?!”
“Quit yelling.” The younger cop, smooth and obviously in control, stood up and pushed the gun away from Marcos’s head. He tightened his lips and furrowed his brow, trying to look authoritative and still sympathetic, and failing. “What he means is, did you find him like this?”
Marcos didn’t understand. “N-n-n-no. I-I don’t t-t-t-hink so.”
The younger cop’s expression softened into a dopey face reserved for toddlers and dogs. “See Harold,” he muttered. “He’s just a retard. He don’t know anything.”
“Is he dead?” Marcos asked.
“Yeah,” the cop said sadly. “Yeah he is.”
Marcos didn’t resist as the two men half-led, half-dragged him into the back seat of the car. He didn’t notice what they did with the body. All he felt was the sinking feeling in his heart, the cynical nagging that lectured him quietly. He’d almost had a friend, he could tell. They were almost there. And then something happened and now… now he was alone again.