Anton's Odyssey (9 page)

“Where’s Cotton?” I asked.

“He’s in his room.”

But Cotton wasn’t in his room, not hiding in the closet, and not under the covers. A normal parent would be concerned when
told her son was nowhere to be found, but mother simply shrugged and said, “I guess he must have sneaked out.”

The ductwork in the living room suddenly shook and rattled, startling me and causing me to jump out of my chair.

“Oh that!” mother said with unusual composure. “It does that every day about this time.”

“Really since when?”

“A couple of weeks I guess,” she said, “scared me the first few times. Had the steward look at it.”

“Yeah, I bet he was cool about that,” I said sarcastically.

“Actually he wasn’t. Said we had the cleanest ducts in the ship and that we shouldn’t complain.”

“I bet he did,” I mumbled to myself.

“Hey, while we are on the subject of clean,” mother said, “I got a message from the school guidance counselor the other day. What’s his name?”

“Mr. Yongscolder.”

“Yes, Mr. Yongscolder. Anyway, he said that he wanted to pass onto me that Cotton’s teachers have complained that he has been unusually dirty lately. Have you noticed anything about that?”

Actually, Cotton had been unusually dirty even compared to his normal baseline state of squalor. Tapping him on his shoulder would create a small dust cloud. However, he didn’t smell any worse than usual and the last thing I wanted was for mother to ask me to take him to the washateria and scrub his shriveled dong and nut sack, so I lied and said, “
no.”

“Yes, that’s what I said. A mother would know if her son was really filthy.”

“Well at least the teachers are noticing him in class,” I said. Mother looked puzzled. “Which is to say, at least he is going to class,” I added. Mother nodded and looked very pleased for having a child so well behaved that he would even show up at school periodically.

The routine of in-house suspension continued largely unchanged. Dr. Zanders continued to run in and out periodically. Usually he was covered in blood. One able starman got kicked out by the archives clerk for looking at boob models on the big screen, which was too bad because I much preferred looking at boobs to doing my homework.

Ms. Gross assigned another writing assignment, a rather dull one, which was unusual for her. Basically we had to write about what we wanted to do as adults. I wrote that I wanted to become addicted to fenes so that I could live in a shack in the desert and have rotten teeth. She sent me a message, telling me to take the assignment seriously or that she would giv
e me an F. I rewrote the essay stating that, unlike my peers, I had no delusions about becoming president or a sports hero or an important movie star or a high-ranking space marine. All I wanted was to have a normal job so that I wouldn’t become addicted to fenes and live in a shack in the desert and have rotten teeth. Ms. Gross sent me a second message saying she appreciated my essay’s “raw honesty” and gave me a B plus, which I think is the highest grade I ever got on anything.

With few distractions, I even did my math homework extra credit. I got a message from Mrs. Hallisworth that read, “Congratulations, you are no l
onger failing math.” which was good news.

Every day after lunch, the dorky kid with the giant glasses would come in and do his advanced math. I didn’t talk to him and he didn’t talk to me, which was just fine.

After the fourth day of my sentence, I got back home and Cotton asked me if I wanted to go to open rec. I told him I was tired, which was a lie. He left without me. He had made a few friends of his own, mostly slow smelly kids, kind of like himself, only fatter.

Lying on my rack, I took out Hammond’s father’s old skin mag so that I could spend some quality time alone. Hammond was right, the skin mag was an oldie but goodie. I leafed through the pages. All the exposed flesh made it easy to ignore the ductwork as it rattled and shook along the far wall. There was a particularly alluring photograph of Fiona Mammalot in her prime,
sometime after Lewd Dude Magazine rated her “Best Bust of all Time” and long before she was carted off to jail on fene-related charges. She was sitting by a swimming pool, wearing a bikini bottom but no top, buxom, her dark red hair had been slicked back with water. Granted, there was no reason for anyone to ever assume a pose like that, but I didn’t particularly care, as the camera’s point of view was rather revealing. All of a sudden, the grate popped off the vent from the ductwork along the far wall. Cotton stuck his head trough the vent and guffawed. Startled, I bolted upright and struck my head on the ceiling. Shooting white pain, I dropped the skin mag.

Cotton climbed out of the vent, dusty and dirty. Any normal person would find the confines of a ventilation duct extremely uncomfortable, but Cotton was different and liked that sort of thing, often hiding in laundry baskets so that he could ambush me.

As I rubbed the back of my head, I planned a rather brutal series of wrestling moves that would leave Cotton crippled for life. However, by the time I made it to the floor, something peculiar had happened. Cotton was holding the skin mag and was looking rather perplexed. His look was far from lustful and had the particular intensity one usually sees on the faces of honor students as they struggle with particularly challenging math problems. I saw it on the face of that geeky kid Allen a few hours earlier. The expression was not normal for Cotton and curiosity caused my rage to subside.

“What is it?” I asked.

He said nothing. I pulled the mag forward and saw the upside down picture of Fiona Mammalot.

“She’s on the ship,” Cotton said.

“What? No!”

“I swear she’s on the ship.” He sounded serious. He was seldom serious, which made me doubt that he was lying.

“Impossible!” I said. “She’s in jail. She shacked up with a fene-dealer who shot some cop during a raid. She was sent away for three to five years as an accessory and that wasn’t even two years ago.” The news had made all those cheesy tabloid shows on TV.

“Well, they must have let her out early,” said Cotton, “because I know I saw her on the ship.”

“When? Where?”

A pause, Cotton looked pensive, “I can’t remember.”

“Pig crap! You’re making this up!”

“No, I swear I saw her on the ship! I remember these.” He pointed at her high cheekbones, and the mole on her right cheek. “Her hair was also pulled back just like that.” He pointed at her bright red widow’s peak. The features in question were rather
unique, and despite having a limited capacity for logical thought, Cotton had a good memory for faces.

“When did you see her?” I asked. I could imagine nothing more exciting than telling Hammond that there was a real live boob model on the ship. Maybe she’d even give us a private show if we asked nicely.

“It couldn’t have been that long ago,” Cotton said. “Just a few days, I think.”

“Where?”

A pause, “I don’t know.”

“Come on think!” I begged.

Cotton shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

“Wait!” I had a sudden epiphany. “You said her hair was pulled back, was she wearing a hat?”

“Yes, yes…” Cotton closed his eyes and was imagining her.

“What color was it? Orange?
White?”

“I… I…” Cotton stammered.

“Yes, what?”

“I… I can’t remember.”

“Come on think!” I said more to myself than to Cotton. “Okay, she was supposed to be in jail right?”

“Right,” Cotton said, shrugging his shoulders.

“So she is probably here for the same reason as mom.”

“Mom’s a boob model?” Cotton asked, disgusted.

“No!” The thought was rather revolting. “She was probably sent here on some sort of work release. Remember how those guys said mom’s job was some sort of government make-work program for people on welfare?”

“No.” During embarkation, Cotton was preoccupied with finding lunch and otherwise didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings.

“Well, if she is like mom. She is probably unskilled. I mean being a boob model isn’t really a skill. So she was probably wearing an orange cap, as an ordinary starman… or starwoman.”

“Ordinary boobwoman,” Cotton added insightfully.

“No her boobs are not ordinary,” I said. “Was she wearing an orange cap?”

“Yes,” Cotton said, his eyes darting evasively.

“You are just saying that aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So you can’t remember what color it was?”

“No.”

“But you are certain she was wearing a hat.”

“No,” Cotton said, “but her hair was definitely pulled back. Maybe we should see if she’s at the mess hall?”

I knew Cotton had lost interest in Fiona Mammalot and was just looking for an excuse to stuff his face. Finished with his diet, his voracious appetite had returned with a vengeance. He kept (most) of the weight off by running around after a ball with his smelly friends during open rec. They never actually played basketball with the other kids. They usually played pointless games like “nuke the kook” where they beamed the ball as hard as possible at each other. As far as I could tell, they kept no score and the game had no points, winners, losers, or purpose, really, other than the infliction of pain. Often he would come back with welts on his face and torso.

Cotton’s plan had some merit though. If we went to the mess hall at that point in time, which was about when they started serving dinner, and if we stayed there until they shut down the hot line, we would get a chance to look at almost every person on the ship.

In the passageway, the peculiarity of Cotton’s prior actions finally registered. “Cotton, how long have you been crawling around in the ductworks?” I asked.

“Dunno really, a few weeks I guess.”

“Why?”

“Sort of happened by accident I guess?”

“How’s that?”

“You remember that guy Charlie?”

“Yes, you practically kicked his ass. What about him?”

“Yeah, well he has these two goons, Jeff and Mike. I think they’re older, and they’re pretty big.”

“I don’t think I know them. How big? As big as Hammond?”

“No not nearly that big, but they’re big enough, and they’re not all soft like Charlie.”

“So what about them?”

“Well, the other day, I guess it was a few weeks ago, you didn’t go to open rec so you could pull it.”

“I wasn’t pulling it!” I protested

“Yes you were.”

“No I was doing homework,” I said, which was a lie. Cotton was right. I was probably pulling it.

“Well whatever! You weren’t around. And I was hanging with my buds.”

“Who? Stronzo and Sorca?” I asked. Stronzo and Sorca were two fat, greasy brothers. They were from Brazil and didn’t speak English very well. For whatever reason, all the kids in school thought they were Italian and gave them derogatory nicknames using Italian swear words.

“Those aren’t their real names you know.” Cotton said. “You shouldn’t call them that. It’ll hurt their feelings.”

“But you call them Stronzo and Sorca all the time. What are their real names?”

Cotton scratched his head, “I don’t know.”

“Impressive, Cotton! With friends like you, they will never want for a kick in the teeth!” I said sharply.

Cotton shrugged indifferently, and I asked him to continue his story.

“So we were playing nuke the kook and Charlie keeps tossing his ball, that fancy leather one, into our corner. I knew he was just trying to start trouble so I didn’t touch it. Stronzo and Sorca didn’t know any better though. Charlie tosses the ball in our corner and Sorca picks it up. Charlie walks over and says, ‘Give me my ball back you knob gobbler!’ but Sorca only sort of understands and throws him the ball back. Charlie says, ‘Don’t you ever touch my ball again you greasy knob gobbler!’ and Sorca totally doesn’t understand, thinks Charlie is thanking him or something, and smiles. Charlie tosses the ball right back into our corner and Sorca picks it up again. This time Charlie acts like he’s really mad and says, ‘Hey, I thought I told you not to touch my ball!’ Sorca really doesn’t understand and just says ‘yes.’ So Charlie realizes Sorca doesn’t speak good English and decides to take advantage of him. Charlie gets the attention of Jeff and Mike and says, ‘Hey check this out.’ He turns to Sorca and says, ‘I bet you really are a knob gobbler?’ and Sorca says ‘yes’ again but he’s not smiling anymore because he’s finally starting to figure out Charlie’s picking on him. Charlie asks him, ‘I bet you want to gobble my knob?’ and Sorca says ‘no’ but not because he understands what Charlie is saying. He just guessed lucky. Now Mike and Charlie and Jeff figure this out so Mike asks, ‘Do you not want a face full of knuckles?’ you know phrases it so that if Sorca says ‘no’ he’s in trouble.”

“It’s called a double negative,” I interjected. “You should know this by now.”

“Well, whatever it’s called, Sorca falls for it and says ‘no.’ So Jeff says, ‘you heard him, he wants a face full of knuckles, hit him Charlie!’ Charlie looks around to make sure that referee guy wasn’t looking.”

“You mean Mr. Fox?” I asked.

“Yeah him. He wasn’t watching, so Charlie punches Sorca, but it was a pretty sorry punch, kind of like a slap, only with a fist. I could tell Sorca wasn’t really hurt but he flops over and closes his eyes like he was knocked out or something.”

In disbelief, I asked, “Did they actually fall for it?”

“Actually they did. Jeff says, ‘Holy crap, Charlie, you knocked him out!’ And Mike says, ‘I didn’t think you had it in you!’ Even Charlie looks surprised and then all smug, pleased with himself like he was some sort of tough guy, which he’s not.”

“No, he’s not,” I agreed. “Did Sorca fool you?”

“No, not at all. I could see that he had one eye open and was smiling, but I guess Stronzo fell for it ‘cause he tackles Charlie and brings him down pretty easy even though Charlie is like twice his size. Charlie is like all screaming, ‘Get him off of me!’ So Mike pulls Stronzo up and pins his arms at his side. Jeff punches Stronzo in the stomach, a real punch, real hard, not a sissy roundhouse fist slap like what Charlie did earlier. The punch made a real loud noise and Stronzo goes ‘ummpf’ and doubles over.”

“Knocked the breath out of him,” I observed.

“Yeah, he’s pretty much out of the fight so Mike lets go of him. So it’s three on one, so I knew I’d better book it.”

“You could
of just screamed for help, I mean Mr. Fox was right there. Wasn’t he?”

Cotton paused for a while, lost in thought. “Yeah, I guess. But I figured Mr. Fox would just blame everything on me. And I knew I was going to have to fight them at some time or another, either that or they would never stop picking on me. I guess by running I was hoping I could separate them and fight them one at a time.”

“Good man!” I nodded. Cotton had expressed very sound ghetto logic.

Cotton smiled and continued, “I had a bit of a head start on them. I looked back. Sorca was still lying on the ground, and Stronzo was crawling over to him to see if he was still alive. Mike and Jeff
weren’t too far behind but Charlie was, all huffin’ and puffin’ and out of breath.”