Authors: Andersen Prunty
The whumming clanged along in my skull, a black death train. Nausea wrestled with my stomach and fought its way up to the back of my throat.
What came out was a shriek.
I raised myself up to my knees, holding my whumming head with both hands. The storm broke, the rain a distant whisper over the hills before drumming down on my face. Wicked lightning snapped, a jagged blue across the black of the sky.
“
Why the hell is this happening to me!” I shouted at the clouds.
I grabbed the horns and wrestled with them. Were they fate, handed down to me? If so, maybe this would be my last tangle with it, the last chance to change it. Violently, I tugged and pulled at them with every ounce of strength I had. I flopped all around on the wet ground, splashing around on the grass as I tried to brace myself against the ground, pulling and pulling to get them off.
It was hopeless. Exhausted, I sprawled back down on the grass, opening my eyes wide and letting the cold rain cleanse them, wash the burning away.
A car sped by and a McDonald’s sack hit me in the face.
I stood up on trembling legs. My skin felt hot against the rain.
Maybe it
was
fate, I thought. Maybe I didn’t have any will of my own. But there were directions. Above all the contradictory voices there was that singular feeling I felt, more and more, like I
had
to listen to. I knew I still had to get to the Tar District and, amazingly, I still felt weightless.
Chapter Thirteen
Johnny Metal
Maybe it was just the storm but it seemed like it was getting dark incredibly early. Of course, I had no real idea of what time it actually was. For all I knew, I could have lain down by the road for a half an hour or three hours. I didn’t know and I didn’t really care. Maybe I cared too much. I don’t know. It seemed like as the sky got darker, my mood darkened also. The weightlessness was replaced with some sort of grim determination. The rain had tapered off a little. The lightning and thunder had rolled on. In the distance I could see the depressing yellow glow of the Tar District, the drizzle and mist creating tainted haloes around the street lamps.
Pretty much what I did was just stay on the state route. Honestly, I don’t really know if it was Milltown that was curved or if it was the state route. One time, when we were still living in Farmertown, Racecar drove us out for a vacation on the East Coast. I remember we took all state routes because the mother wanted to see all the historical small towns of Eastern America for some reason I now found vaguely obscene. I remember it so well because Racecar was mad that he couldn’t drive on the highway.
“
If we’d taken the highway we coulda been there by now on half the gas.”
He decided to elaborate on this theory when we were stuck at a traffic light at the end of a long line. “You wanted your chance to see the small towns, well, here you go. If you want to, you could probably get out and catch some local color before we ever get movin again. Damned state routes.”
“
Oh, Carl, relax,” the mother said.
Perhaps from that experience, I should have known that all state routes were, in some form or the other, damned. I could still hear the click of the father’s cigarette lighter, becoming more incessant as we got closer to Maine. Eventually he just lit one right off the other. He certainly didn’t do a very good job of relaxing.
I felt kind of like the mother and the father as I slurped along the side of that road. All those conflicts that had first started a while ago were still raging along inside of me—half of them driving me onward, telling me I had to get to the Tar District and whatever wild bleak yonder lay after that and the other half telling me I should just
relax
, soak it all up.
“
These are the best days of your life,” I laughed to myself.
I still wondered if I cared about what was happening to me at all or if I cared too much. Maybe it was better not to care. None of the fucking blobs cared—they didn’t care about anything. And there was something about their not caring that made them perfectly happy.
That kind of brought me back to the question of what the hell I was really doing. Was it some sort of moral dilemma or some sort of quest for freedom? I thought I was really too young to be having a moral dilemma and I guess it could have been both but those sets of voices in my head or body wanted things to be one way or another and they wanted those things to be in direct opposition to each other. A moral dilemma became a moral crisis. A quest for freedom became a violent and binding struggle.
Did Pearlbottom ever have a moral dilemma? I doubted it. I mean, the fucking blob devoured livestock in the hallway, for fucking Chrissake. And that fatass Swarth and his merry gang of Marlboro men. The only moral dilemma they had was when they raped someone, if they should do it single-handedly or if they should have their friends help. I was certain the only dilemma Mary Lou ever had was whether she should wear red or hot pink. I’m pretty sure there was a time when the parents had had moral dilemmas, but the mother had since used alcohol and a vigorous zest for cleaning to take her mind off any questions of morality. The father channeled all of it into hate—pure, unadulterated, stumpy hate.
Whatever it was I was feeling, it certainly wasn’t weightlessness. Not anymore. It was now like some kind of heavy soulhurt.
I was in a daze, just about ready to enter the Tar District. I stood hypnotized by the closeness of the dingy brown buildings. The storefronts were all adorned with outdated neon signs. I was sure all of these places were still open. Unlike the Historic District of Milltown, there weren’t 9-5 businesses like insurance agencies and banks. The Tar District was bars and tattoo parlors and bars and pool halls and triple- X video places and bars and pawnshops and bars and check cashing places and 24-hour diners for people to sober up in after the bars closed. I stood just outside that sickly yellow glow, watching the distant images of people shuffling around. According to the mother, these people were all either drunk or high on crack. A giant wave of depression washed over me. So this was where I wanted to come. This is where the inner feeling brought me. I felt both afraid and pathetic. Was I going to be one of them? Relax, I told myself, you’re just here to meet your Uncle Skad.
But what if he’s one of them?
And then I was lost, frozen. I stood there staring into the Tar District, nearly legendary for its seductive cruelty, and was completely unable to move.
I don’t know how much time passed before I was finally jolted alive by an excruciatingly loud train horn. I realized that I was standing maybe five feet away from the tracks.
For those who haven’t lived right next to train tracks, as I had for the past several years, a train’s sound seems to be made only of the whistle, somewhere far off in the distance, dragging its mysterious freight through the thick night air. During the day, some other distraction could keep you from noticing the sound at all. But a train’s sounds are really deafening. There’s the whistle, sure, but it is augmented, as though it’s funneled through a bullhorn. And there are other sounds, almost as deafening. There’s the rumblesqueak of the train itself, shooting along those steel rails, coupled with a nearly constant bell that tingalings throughout the train’s entire passing. Standing there, so close to the train, I was still overwhelmed by how loud it was. This one wasn’t going very fast. I figured it must have been dragging something away from one of those factories.
I looked to my right, down the train’s length. It was a long one. Something else caught my eye. Some dark object, not large enough to be a person, flew off the train, landed in the grass, and kind of skipped down the small incline there. I took a few steps toward the object, whatever the fuck it was, before the man flew out nearly right in front of me. He hit the ground with a bit of a grunt and went rolling down the hill, a few feet from the object he’d just hurled out.
I was excited to think this might be my first meeting with an honest-to-God hobo. Drifter Ken was adamant about being a drifter. According to him, a hobo was more clearly defined as someone who was constantly moving, often traveling in a pack, and usually by train. Sometimes they conjured up lovingly outdated images of a folksy person, a guitar slung over one shoulder, a knapsack tied around a stick slung over the other. Drifter Ken stayed some place until the law ran him out of town and then he want to the next place by foot. I think he liked the outlaw spin placed on drifters.
The man stood up, brushing wet grass off of his skintight pants. He looked dizzy and confused.
“
Are you okay?” I asked.
He picked a couple pieces of grass out of his curly blond hair. Even in the darkness, there was nothing natural-looking about that hair. It looked like it had been bleached a while ago, hanging to his shoulders in curls. Bangs had been cut straight across his forehead.
“
I’ve died and gone straight to hell.” Then I guess he noticed I was trying to help and he smiled a little, his teeth gross within his mottled flesh. “What the hell’s them things on your head?”
“
They’re horns.”
“
Well I can see they’re horns, but why the hell’re they there? On your head. What are you tryin to pull? You’re not a Satan worshipper are you?”
“
No.”
“
You gotta be careful. I hear the Satan worshippers are fairly prevalent around here. I’m from back East. Back there you got your occasional psycho or mass murderer, whatever the hell, some office worker snaps and fires off a few rounds in a mall somewhere but the cult stuff’s spooky shit. I had a friend who’s a cop over in Illinois. He says they pulled some dead sacka shit outta some ditch and the poor bastard didn’t have any ears. Now whatta you reckon some sickos gonna do with this guy’s
ears
?” I briefly imagined someone holding this pair of severed ears up to their head, having a joyous time at the thrill of having a new set of ears.
He looked around him on the ground. “By the way, you see somethin flyin out the train? Two something’s maybe.” He held his arms out from his body. “Bout this size?”
“
Over there,” I pointed into the darkness behind him.
Slowly, he backed up, not taking his eyes from me.
“
So what is it, with them horns?”
“
I was just born this way.”
“
And your folks? They ain’t tried to sell you to some kind of freak show yet?”
“
They tried to keep it under wraps.”
“
What are you doin around here after dark? This ain’t the best place to be, you know.”
It suddenly got quiet and I realized the train had fully passed, dragging its noise into the dark distance.
I didn’t feel like telling this guy the whole story. I’d already told Drifter Ken and I imagined I’d be telling Uncle Skad if I ever found him. Twice was enough. I counted myself lucky if I could make it through something the first time.
“
A freak show,” I said. “I figured I’d run off and join a freak show. Make some money on my own.” I was quickly learning that people desperately wanted
reasons
for just about everything.
The man bent down to pick up what I now realized was a guitar case and, a few feet away, an amp.
“
Show business is rough,” he held up the guitar case. “You got a few minutes, I can tell you a little bit about it. My name’s Johnny Metal.” He said “Metal” in a low growly voice. He held out his leathery hand. Over the course of the evening, I would learn that he liked to say his name a lot, out of the blue. Sometimes in that low, growly voice, and other times in a high nasally whine.
“
My name’s Wallace Black.”
“
You a Wally?” he asked as he pumped my hand with a comfortable and surprising strength.
“
Whatever you wanna call me is fine.”
“
Wally, you happen to see a bandanna layin around anywhere. I coulda swore I was wearin a badanna.”
I didn’t remember seeing a bandanna fly off his head as he jumped out. I supposed it could have been tossed off before the guitar case and the amp. He looked around for a few minutes and then threw up his hands and rolled his eyes.
“
Oh well,” he said. “Guess I can always find another bandana. I liked that one. It smelled like pussy. Johnny
Meeetal
. A drink, though, I need a drink right now. Come on, Wally, come with me. Only alcoholics drink alone. You drink?”
“
I’m only sixteen.”
“
Bah, had my first drink at twelve. Pussy at eleven, whiskey at twelve. Sixteen? Pot and maybe some coke. You got any pussy yet?”
“
Uh, no. I guess I haven’t.”
We started walking toward the Tar District. “It’s takin kids longer and longer to grow up.”
“
Nah, eleven or twelve still seems about the right age. I’m just incredibly ugly. Nobody would want much to do with me.”