Monday, October 24.
I woke up
woozy, the baby pictures on the dresser crawling in and out of focus, so in my pyjamas and untied housecoat I tugged the second half-pound of bacon out from its hiding place under the romaine lettuce. I fried it up crispy as potato chips, and after generous taste-testing my nausea evaporated.
Deb stood beside the fridge with the pint of cream in her hand, diaphanous muumuu in its glory. Lydia, in her wedding dress, peered over her mother's shoulder.
“I guess I should be happy we're eating the same things now, but I read that only when bacon is really overcooked do its nitrite levels become dangerously high.”
Nitrites
, that sounded deliciousâmaybe I was craving more than just fat and salt? I put the bacon on the table beside two bowls of Cream of Wheat and yelled to Josie and Ray, then the doorbell rang. Early in the day, even for Jehovah's Witnesses. Before I could slump toward the front door I crammed two more strips in my mouth.
Amber and Grace, from the field trip, stood hunched on my porch. I knew it was a school day, sure, but hadn't really pondered what state any of my elevens would be in when they shuffled into my classroom. The girls wore ball caps and their skull hoodies, old eyeliner clotted at the corners of their eyes, and Amber seemed to be having a problem with one armâa sleeve dangled loose.
“Mr. Giller?” said Grace. “Hey, it seemed like something was going on with you too, so weâ”
“You hurt your arm?” I asked Amber.
“Not too bad,” she mumbled.
Her baby-blue car sat with one wheel up on the curb.
“Hey,” I started to ask, “have you guys been eatingâ”
“Show him,” said Grace.
Amber glared, then with her one hand tugged up the hem of her hoodie until her shoulder appeared, in the middle of her belly where no shoulder was meant to be. I saw the knob of bone. It wasn't attached to her. My new-found aversion to celery became inconsequential.
“Oh,” I said. “Jeez.”
A purplish lip showed at the edge of the broken skin. The detached shoulder somehow reminded me of that hollow feeling I'd been having in my arms and legs.
“See?” said Grace. “It's gross.”
“I must've slept on it funny,” said Amber.
I ran my tongue around my teeth, collecting the lovely black fragments of bacon, and tried to picture exactly how much pink goo had hit Amberâmore than had hit me, right? She lowered the hem and cradled the detached arm beneath the fabric, like it was a puppy she was sneaking into school. They needed some kind of help, these two, but it was hard to think past the heap of bacon I'd just set on the table.
“Does it
hurt
?” I asked.
They both shook their heads. As recently as Friday I'd have brought them in for breakfast if they'd come to the door for any reason, much less this dismemberment, but the bedside manner I'd perfected with Lydia had gone up the range hood like steam.
“Take it to a hospital?” I suggested.
Amber twisted her lips and studied my welcome mat.
“She doesn't like needles,” said Grace.
“Tell the doctor you want general anaesthetic, that'll be the mask.”
Amber took a creaking step backward.
“She doesn't like gas either,” explained Grace.
They'd stick a saline drip in her good arm anyway, and jab her for tetanus, but I wanted them gone before the
nitrites
ran off the baconâman, the word rang in my head like a bell!
“Take her to the hospital anyway,” I told Grace. “You're driving, right? Or you want a cab instead?”
They just looked at each other, so I went inside to the hallway phone and dialed for a taxi they didn't need. I stood by the framed baby pictures but didn't even glance up in case I saw my reflection in the glass, because I didn't want to know what this version of me looked like.
The dispatcher put me on hold. I glanced outside. The girls and car were gone.
I slammed the phone down and ran back to the kitchen, fast as Antonio Brown. I found my kids in their terry-cloth housecoats at the kitchen table, knees up on their chairs as Josie pushed the plastic maple syrup bottle across to Ray. No bacon platter in sight. My quadriceps and hamstrings suddenly quit working so I fell on the floorâmaybe I tripped? But I kept crawling toward the table.
I twisted my face up at the kids. “Whereâwhere is it?”
“Holy cow!” said Ray. “You okay?”
Josie didn't even look at me, just held her hair back as she ferried a spoonful of cereal toward her mouth.
“In the garbage,” she said.
“Shit,” I yelled, “don't you know I
need
that?”
I stumbled to my feet and lurched toward the trash. With a gasp Deb turned from the sink, still testing the water with a finger under the tap.
“I told her it was a waste,” she hissed, “but, Peter, I can see where sheâ”
“I
need
it!”
Like little nerve-gas victims the bacon strips lay splayed in the bottom of the bin, amongst apple cores, Deb's gushy tissues and a Baker's Chocolate wrapper. I scooped the bacon out, still warm like little birds, and thrust the handful accusingly under Josie's nose. Both kids' eyes widened and their little throats swallowed hard.
“Now, Peter!” Deb called. “Just youâ”
I swung toward her, slammed the bacon back into the grease-smeared pan and carried the whole works into the sunshine on the back steps, slamming the door behind me.
“Sorry!” I yelled into the reticent wood.
I sat with the pan in my lap, gnawing through the bacon before tackling the pan itself, sucking back bubbly grease by the thumbful, but my arms still felt stuffed with lit matches. I licked the pan so the grease got all in my hair, then I dove under the steps for my dad's shovelâyes, the one we'd buried Keister withâand knocked the kids' birdhouse out of its maple tree and smashed the little thing to smithereens, bringing the shovel's blade down again and again.
I picked a splinter out of the shovel's handle, and maybe the bacon had hit my system by then because I finally remembered to take a long breath in. Their birdhouse was pulp between my feetâwas that normal? The situation was going to take figuring out.
I remembered that I had Rob Aiken's phone number.
Inside, I told
the kids I was sorry and Josie said she was sorry too. Deb leaned against the counter with her arms foldedâshe'd already changed into her jeans and hummingbird-patterned sweatshirt.
“I'm going to call that grief counselor in Wahoo today,” she said. “Get him to recommend somebody here.”
“Bring it on,” I said, for no reason I could really pin down.
“Did Ms. Federici say I had to be there right away to scrape gum?” asked Ray.
“No, buddy, no. Recess.”
“I've started making the lunches,” announced Deb. “That's okay?”
I showered to get the pig fat out of my hair, then as I dressed for school the nail of my big toe cut through the end of my sock. That happens with socks, especially if you don't clip your nails, so what was my civilized reaction? I lifted the
tv
from my dresser and flung it through the window into the front yard. The
tv
screen imploded on the lawn and long daggers of window-glass embedded themselves in the dirt. Deb was already out putting the kids in her car, so they were standing at the curb when it happened.
“Dad?” Josie called, voice breaking again.
Deb grabbed her hand and helped her into the back seat. An Alice's Flowers
van was parked across the street, and at first glance I thought the guy in the passenger seat was pointing a camera at our house. But then the van was squealing off down the street.
I taped a garbage bag over the smashed window and headed to work.
I didn't see
the lunchtime wiener massacre myself because I was back at home alone just then, standing at the kitchen counter to fry and eat a freshly bought pound of bacon, followed by an arduous session of flossing carcinogenic material out of my back teethâdrawing blood more than onceâand that ate up time, so right before the second bell I was running, tie flapping, down the main hallway toward my classroom. Cam Vincent caught me by standing stock-still under the picture of Eisenhower, sporting the same rubber-lipped half-smile of our former president, arms folded with an identical stoicism, though with hairstyles from
diametrically opposed ends of the animal kingdom
.
I thought those very words because, thanks to all that bacon, my brain was operating at the peak of lubrication.
“Peter. So,” said Cam, “we had a cafeteria incident just now.”
“Involving who?” I asked, though I knew. I might've gone wobbly in the knees if the bacon hadn't propped me up.
“Um.” He gave me a look. “These were all kids from your Chemistry 11. I've got them in my office while Mrs. Abel tries to get the cops to come back.”
“Why, did somebodyâ?”
“And I want the district counselors in here tomorrow, yeah. Amber Morton strolled in after C block, you see her?”
“No.”
“She's got one arm. Acts like it's nothingâtold me she's
always
had one arm, and the way she walks around, no trauma, no tears, I believed it for a second. I can't even think straight about it, I mean, howâ”
“I need to talk to those kids, can I?”
He squared his shoulders as we passed the half-empty trophy case.
“I'd appreciate it if you could tell me what to do with them.”
We sidled into the office and Kathleen, in a yellow dress, paused in watering her fern to give me an apologetic smile. We stopped at Cam's blue door, six inches ajar.
“Who's your class right now?” Cam asked. “I'll go hang out with them.”
“The nines. Genetics quiz, multicolored hamsters and that.”
“They hear about that human ear somebody grew out of a mouse's back?”
“Probably not.”
“Kids love that freaky stuff.”
He strode out into the hallway, more of a spring in his step now that I was apparently on the case, though I still hadn't found out what had actually happened in the cafeteria. Kathleen turned the fan on beside her desk and started typing.
“Seriously!” Grace was saying in Cam's office. “You weren't in gym with him?”
“I was last year,” said Shawn quietly, “but I never saw anything like that.”
How many were in there?
“But the size, I mean, it doesn't really matter what size it is when it's, like, soft.” Was that Megan Avery, seriously? “It can start out real small and get big, you know, after.”
“Really, Megan,
really
?” asked Amber.
“This whole thing is making me so turned on right now,” Clint said, stonily.
“Sure it's true,” said Megan.
I slid into the gap in the doorway. Grace and Amber were perched on Cam's desk and the rest of them sat in a circle on the floor like a “Kumbaya” singalong. Amber wore a green T-shirt that showed a snarling bear. One short sleeve hung like a napkin, because apparently she still had no left arm.
“Know what, bitches?” Franny sat up on her knees, some godawful purple brooch on her shoulder. “If we want to know if it's
so
big he passes
out
when it's hard, all we've got to do is
get
him hard!”
“Or we could ask his dick about it when Harv's not in the room,” suggested Eric.
“I would totally fuck him either way,” said Amber, applying chapstick then slipping the lid back on with just the one hand. “Front of my car. Gravel pit.”
“Man, I would so pay to see that!” said Grace, hunting for something in Cam's jar of pencils. “You guys would look so hot together!”
This was the sad-eyed war protester? We'd lost our inhibitions, that's all it was. And for years I'd wanted to throw a
tv
out a window?
“Shit yes! So can we all at least agree on
that
?” Amber asked.
Down on the floor, Franny, Shawn, Megan, Clint and Eric and his mullet all nodded grudgingly. This was enough of a lull for Franny to notice I'd come in.
“Oh, hey, Gillbrick! They tell you we made the caff too popular?”
“They haven't told me a thing. So the hospital couldn't get it back on?”
Flexing her skinny right arm, Amber grimaced up at me. Whitest possible teeth.
“We didn't go,” said Grace.
“Hey-hey, G,” said Franny, “you can totally take us to Walgreens! Independence, man, buy up some bacon, get us a load of frying pansâ”
“Shawn, am I freaking out right now?” asked Clint. “Is that what I think it is on your shirt?”
Shawn pulled his bangs back to look at the shoulder of his plaid shirt.
“It
is
!” hollered Clint, and though cross-legged he somehow launched himself across the office, tackling Shawn around the middle to press his face to his lapel.
“Aw, damn!” Megan shuffled over to avoid getting squashed. “I was next to him all the time and never even smelled it!”
“Dude,” Shawn grunted. “Off.”
“All right, listen!” I said, and my hands produced an almighty clap. “Who else in here has bacon on their shirt?”
They inspected each other, sniffed their own cuffs.
“Shawn, sorry, man.” Clint sat up in the middle of the circle and retied his scarf. “That was a sweet little nugget.”
“Can't we go now?” asked Amber.
“No, I've got to figure this out.” I sat down, squeezing between the mullet and Megan's turquoise cardigan. “What the hell did you do to get shut in here?”
“Oh, honky!” Franny snorted. “It was classic!”
To synthesize the seven simultaneous stories: at 12:05, as I was sprinting across the parking lot to my car, these gentle, well-meaning kids approached the cafeteria and read the daily special scrawled in yellow chalk,
bacon dogs
. But they found a dozen kids already in line and, God forbid, a couple of ninth-grade freaks actually in the act of
finishing
their bacon dogs right there on the spot! Mrs. Abel had gone out for a smoke, leaving the Culinary Skills 12 students to man the chafing dishes. My seven grabbed slotted spoons and chased everybody out, barricading the doors by locking the wheels on the ketchup cart. Ninety seconds later the chafing dishes had been licked clean and my seven walked out as though nothing had happened. One of the freaks had already called the cops on his cell phone, unfortunately, but Mr. Vincent met the officers at the front doors and no one, it turned out, had wanted to press charges.