It is the final time I am collecting before my trip. It is the Saturday before Easter. I leave the ontological scalp of this world in less than 72 hours. I leave everything I have ever known. I collect from the houses on Sherman. The Walhs and the Endres and the Sparks. I collect from the polish pipe fitter with the bartender wife who lives next to the unemployed pirates on the corner of Cedar and Moss. I stop at the cool young married couple’s house close to Sterling. Everyone is inquiring about my trip. Everyone is telling me to have the time of my life.
When I see Bob Frank the stage for the future club 30
is half finished. They are making a cocktail room. Every picture in the
cocktail room is a picture of Marilyn Monroe.
“I’m leaving Tuesday morning at six-thirty. I am
flying into Chicago. Then I am flying to New York for the day where we have
orientation as a group as a whole before we leave for London late that night."
“New York!!” Both Bob and Frank’s eyebrow’s
simultaneously perch up. I remember them telling me that they used to make a
trek to New York every summer in the late seventies to check out the new
Broadway shows.
“Yeah, I won’t be there very long. Only for a couple
of hours. It’s where the whole group is congregating. Then we are off to
London.”
Bob says that it must be a long flight to London. I tell him
eight hours. I tell him that I am really excited since I have never flown
before. Frank says that I’m not leaving without having some of
that Hawaiin coffee that I love so much. I accept. When Bob is in the other room brewing the coffee, doctoring it with what I will learn a lifetime later is Kahlua Frank fishes his hand down the front of his pants. As normal when Bob has his hands down his pants I avert my eyes and try to focus on the floor. Bob is talking to me. At first I think he has an itch. "Well, we are just really proud of you. Couldn't be prouder."
I refrain from looking up. I can hear the coffee pot gurgling one room over. When I look up Frank has his penis in his hand. It looks like the stem to a violin sans frets.
When I look up again Bob is back in the room handing me a cup of coffee. Frank has both his hands on his waist and is looking at the ceiling. I drink the coffee quickly. I tell him I need to finish collecting and go home and pack. I tell them that I need to leave.
I give them both hugs. I tell them thank you for the recommendations.
Frank has half a cigarette lit and dangling.
“Take this and have a good time over there.”
I can’t take this.
Both Bob and Frank say no we insist. That tell me that I am an amazing paperboy. They tell me that it isn't every day that our paperboy wins a contest and goes over seas.
I give both of them a hug.
“You just have to promise if you find the girl of your
dreams overseas you have to make us proud.”
I tell him I will.
I can't get the image of Frank's wizened cock out of my mind. It looks like an Easter cross missing the horizontal plank, tilted to the side.
I wonder if he realized that he inadvertently flashed me.
I wonder if it was somehow his plan all along.
***I can't get the image of Frank's wizened cock out of my mind. It looks like an Easter cross missing the horizontal plank, tilted to the side.
I wonder if he realized that he inadvertently flashed me.
I wonder if it was somehow his plan all along.
“They’re going to pray for you in church today, Dave.” Mother tells me in the station wagon before Sunrise Service on Easter.. “They’re going to pray for your trip. They are going to pray for your safety, for your protection They are going to pray for you before you leave.”
***
The second to last house I stop at is the White House
that looks like the White House. It is Easter week I am hoping Mary is home
for break. I am hoping that she answers the door and smiles and me and we
embrace. I have not seen Mary since before Christmas. The last
time I heard her voice was when she was screaming out the syllables of my name
the night I won the contest.
Mrs. McQuellen who I honestly envision somehow being my future mother-in-law someday when I am old enough and propose to her oldest daughter Mary.
Mrs. McQuellen with the hot daughter whose twin son died tragically in a car accident last June right after graduation and I know looks at me as being somewhat of a surrogate son.
I want to ask about Mary. I want to inquire how she is
enjoying college I want to inquire about
whether or not she will be home for Easter.
I thank Mrs. McQuellen for writing the letter again of recommendation."Listen I know you are going overseas and everything but I just need you to be careful over there. I mean, I'm sure you will be thoroughly chaperoned and everything but if you get in trouble remember you can always call your parents."
I nod.
"Or you can call us. You know our number. If you ever get in any trouble over seas or when you are back just call us."
I tell her thank you. I want to ask about Mary. I want to tell her that I can hear Mary screaming my name on the opposite end of the phone the last time I called her and told her that I had won.
"Well, you take care, we'll be praying for you when you are overseas."
She uses the word prayer. Mom's forty day spiritual adventure ends tomorrow on Easter Sunday.
I tell her I have more houses to collect from and that I need to get going.
As she hugs me I can tell she is thinking about her only son.
***
***
They are cutting themselves in supplication under the
gilded mausoleum of contemporary Baal. They are tattooing his emblem on their
forehead. They are spinning around like caffeinated dervishes. They are brandishing upside-down wands with serpentine S’s in the
center like crosses. They are pointing to the east, the direction of the rising
sun. They are promulgating that he died saving all of us. They are burning incense.
They are cloaked in robes. They are chanting Kal-el. They are praying. They are being interviewed by the Daily
Planet, stating that they are not a cult, they are a bona fide religion, they
are worshiping the savior, the one who was sounded, the avatar for our material
transgressions, the one who came and asked nothing in return, they are
worshiping the deity who could fly, the Deity who saved, the Deity who was able
to thwart apocalypse, the super man who quashed Doomsday so that his followers
might live in metropolitan here and now, the world to come.
He will come again, they state, again, candles in
front of their cloaked navels.
They say he will rise again.
I have one house left to collect from. It is Marge. I
normally catch her during the week when I know that her step-daughter Tina is
not home. I have become almost adept at avoiding Tina. Tina who I more or less got naked with and dry-humped in her swimming pool last summer. Tina who smokes weed and lies about her address to go to the rival high school. Tina who was stoned and erupted when I confessed that I lied about my age. Tina who went n a verbal racial harangue as I walked off her front porch and told her goodbye vowing to never speak with her again.
“Hey,” I say, almost apologetically.
She says hey. She looks frazzled yet she is quiet. She says it has been awhile. I nod. I don't know exactly what to say.
“Yeah, I won this trip to England. I’m excited. I
tried to win it the previous two years and I just kept on failing. This year I
finally broke through.”
Tina smiles. She is wearing a shirt with the band Suicidal Tendencies logo on the front. I feel I should apologize to Tina about last summer. We are still talking between the screen door.
“It’s okay”
I want to tell her how I remember the night we went
swimming in our underwear we dunked each other as if performing a religious act
and she buckled her limbs around my torso and her body smelled damp and brand
new.
"It's alright. I'm looking forward to getting out for a couple of days, you know. Just looking forward on seeing the world."
“Well listen, congrats on your trip, again.”
I tell her thank you. I tell her that it has been
really nice seeing her again in a perfunctory sort of way. She says likewise. She steps back before she closes the door. As I see
her I notice that she is pregnant. It looks like she is at least six months,
perhaps seven, around the time we hung out last summer. For a second I wonder if the baby is mine then I
realize we did nothing but make out and dry hump late last summer in the pool. Even so I wonder if something happened where I was inside the pubescent newness of her body and didn't realize it. I wonder if she is carrying something that I planted inside of he that is gestating, growing, forming fingernails.
I wonder if the child is somehow mine.
I feel like falling down. I feel like opening my lips and convectively expurgating everything that is inside my body. There is no way the baby could have been mine. No way I could have been plagued with the biological pulse of lust all semester long and not realize that I have not gotten laid and still be so hormonally obsessed with Renae.
She takes another drag off her Newport 100’s.
"Don't worry," She says, rubbing her lower abdomen as if she if hungry.
No way I could have attended every day of high school not realizing that I was an incumbent father.
For a brief second I am convinced that something happened.
"Whatever we had last summer David we never did anything that could have resulted in this. Whatever happened between us there was never sex. We never had actual intercourse. We never did anything David. The child is not yours. "
Tina says so that I'm not wondering she knows who the father is. See says that even though he went crazy and disappeared she's gonna make him pay child support.
"I'm not gonna be like the those bitches down at Manual. I'm gonna have my baby and go to college. I'm gonna make something of myself. I'm gonna raise my girls with principles and pride and move across the river where she can go to a school with values."
I am looking at Tina. The creature basting like a thanksgiving ornithological specimen inside her belly is not mine. I am not the father. We never had sex. I am still a virgin. I am still sexually unfledged.
I am not the father.
Although I could be.
I want to hug her. I want to pinch her cigarette out and tell her to stop smoking. I want to tell her that maybe we did have something between. I want to tell her how sexy I always thought she looked in those Daisy Dukes. I want to tell her how I wake up stiff in the morning falling off the island of my bed, picturing Renae's face and Tina's body from last summer, chlorine-stared, clad in bra and panties, her translucent rosemary nipples and slight concave button of her navel all seem to me winking at me simultaneously. I want to tell her that maybe in a couple of years, once I have a job, if I'm not married to Mary McQuellen, I could take of her. That maybe I could be a surrogate to the daughter whose womb my genital was thrusting against weeks before she was conceived by someone else. That maybe I could help raise her. That Tina could stay off the dope and we could get married. That things could work out.
That we could somehow be one.
Tina tells me that she will tell Marge that I stopped by to collect.
"Goodbye David." She says, as if she has been rehearsing this. As if it is dialogue in an after-school teenage age drama special.
"Goodbye." I tell Tina, very simply.
I wonder if the child is somehow mine.
I feel like falling down. I feel like opening my lips and convectively expurgating everything that is inside my body. There is no way the baby could have been mine. No way I could have been plagued with the biological pulse of lust all semester long and not realize that I have not gotten laid and still be so hormonally obsessed with Renae.
She takes another drag off her Newport 100’s.
"Don't worry," She says, rubbing her lower abdomen as if she if hungry.
No way I could have attended every day of high school not realizing that I was an incumbent father.
For a brief second I am convinced that something happened.
"Whatever we had last summer David we never did anything that could have resulted in this. Whatever happened between us there was never sex. We never had actual intercourse. We never did anything David. The child is not yours. "
Tina says so that I'm not wondering she knows who the father is. See says that even though he went crazy and disappeared she's gonna make him pay child support.
"I'm not gonna be like the those bitches down at Manual. I'm gonna have my baby and go to college. I'm gonna make something of myself. I'm gonna raise my girls with principles and pride and move across the river where she can go to a school with values."
I am looking at Tina. The creature basting like a thanksgiving ornithological specimen inside her belly is not mine. I am not the father. We never had sex. I am still a virgin. I am still sexually unfledged.
I am not the father.
Although I could be.
I want to hug her. I want to pinch her cigarette out and tell her to stop smoking. I want to tell her that maybe we did have something between. I want to tell her how sexy I always thought she looked in those Daisy Dukes. I want to tell her how I wake up stiff in the morning falling off the island of my bed, picturing Renae's face and Tina's body from last summer, chlorine-stared, clad in bra and panties, her translucent rosemary nipples and slight concave button of her navel all seem to me winking at me simultaneously. I want to tell her that maybe in a couple of years, once I have a job, if I'm not married to Mary McQuellen, I could take of her. That maybe I could be a surrogate to the daughter whose womb my genital was thrusting against weeks before she was conceived by someone else. That maybe I could help raise her. That Tina could stay off the dope and we could get married. That things could work out.
That we could somehow be one.
Tina tells me that she will tell Marge that I stopped by to collect.
"Goodbye David." She says, as if she has been rehearsing this. As if it is dialogue in an after-school teenage age drama special.
"Goodbye." I tell Tina, very simply.
I am counting the hours before I leave.
Goodbye.
***
I will respond in rote by stating the same sentence back to my father only adding an exclamation, a verification.
Tomorrow is Sunday morning. It is Easter. Father will
wake me up in the zinfandel stillness of dawn, and before we unclasp the neon-trussed
heap of Sunday papers, before we stuff the inerst and count and verify that we
are not short, filling testicle sac of my paper bag as I walk into the street,
beneath the glowering street lights, dawn, approaching in stippled peach
streaks, Dad will repeat to me the stanza that will be used as both a
salutation and an amen in church this morning. The reply the angels gave the feminine
visitors encroaching the empty tomb.
He will say simply that He has risen.
I will respond in rote by stating the same sentence back to my father only adding an exclamation, a verification.
I will respond to father saying that He has risen indeed.
***
After I come back from collecting Dad is in the living
room. He is excited.
“You need to go back outside and meet someone. Todd is
outside. You just missed him. He’s working as an electrician.”
I say Todd. I am bewildered. I had one friend name
Todd in third grade.
“You know, your second cousin. The runner. Todd
Brooks. He was working on the Transformer overhead and stopped by.”
I have never met Todd Brooks. I have idolized him. I
have gone down to the RECORDS BOARD and vowed to break his freshman record,
before every meet this is season which I was on course to do until I got
injured. Todd Brooks who went to state
in the mile when I was in Kindergarten running a 4:20 finishing fourth with a
time that any other year could have easily won.
Todd Brooks who is a legend at Manual. Todd Brooks who
finished just out of medal contention at the state meet his senior year,
crimpling his numerical bib and chucking it in disgust, Coach Ricca, giving me
the creased numerical slate this year at Conference when I was injured, the
number I wore under my own bib a week later at regionals, my final race of the
year.
Todd Brooks.
“He asked about you. He’s walking down the street.
Down Cedar. If your hurry you can still catch him.”
I take off. Dad points. I heard the Todd ran for
Bradley for a couple of years and then partied out. I’m not entirely sure how he is related to me
knowing only that his Grandmother is my Grandfather’s sister, one of the twins,
the one I never met because she died a year before I was born.
I catch him as he is walking towards a CILCO truck
parked near the run-down shadow of Jumers Castle lodge.
“Mr Brooks,” I say, nervous, apprehensive, looking
down.
He looks nothing like the pictures Coach has of him in
his office from when he was a student. He is larger. Maybe 220 pounds. He is in his early thirties. He looks like a stout Irish bricklayer. He doesn’t
look like a runner. I can still see his reddish-hair with a splash of
nectarine.
He tells me to call him Todd. I say the name Todd.
“You must be David.” He says, with a smile. I nod.
“I’ve been following you. Your dad said you had a
tough season and all with a stress fracture.
I nod again like a trained Schnauzer. I tell him yes.
I am awed. I am meeting the legend to whom I am somehow related.
“It’s an honor to meet you man,” He says, as we are
shaking hands.I am numb. I am speechless. He asks me several questions about
cross-country. He asks me how Coach Ricca is doing. He how asks me how good ol’
Coach Winkler is doing these days. When I tell him that Coach Winkler is still
cursing and chewing tobacco he smiles. He tells me that he has heard good things about my running ability. He said that he has been following me in the paper ever since I got second place in the Steamboat Classic when I was ten.He asks me how my mile time is doing at
track. I tell him I am close to breaking five minutes. He says whoa.
“I ran a 5:05 in practice. Hopefully soon.”
My mentor says that was close to what he ran when he
was a freshman.
“I’m gonna be watchin’ you. I’ve heard good thing about
you. I’m gonna be looking for your name in the paper after every Manual meet.”
I am honored. I want to tell him that I still go down
and look at the FROSH record he set in cross-country. I want to tell him that I
was really close to breaking it and that I almost did my first meet out only I
was nervous and I took a wrong turn.
“I’m gonnna be watchin’ you.” He says, in a voice with
a subtle southern drawl attached.
“Don’t be like me. Don’t think you know everything. Listen
to Coach man. Listen to Ricca. He knows
his stuff.”
I nod. Make a vow. I promise him I will.
He tells me that he needs to go and check some more transformers.
He reaches out his hand and shakes my hand goodbye.
I am smiling.
“Hey, Congratulations on that contest you won. We saw
your name in the paper. Its nice to have a Von Behren represent us. When are
you going overseas?”
I tell Todd soon.
He tells me, when I come back home, he’ll see my name
in thepaper running a sub-five minute mile.
I tell him yes sir.
Yes cousin. Yes brother. Yes mentor. Yes Friend.
Yes indeed.
Yes.
..Saturday April 10th, 1993...three days before he is to leave...Long live the LEGACY of my cuz TODD BROOKS!!! Still the Junior cross-country record holder at Manual (Madison golf course)....
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