Creeps (9 page)

TWO

Wayne's naked from the waist down and throwing his pants and underwear into the clothes hamper when the bathroom door suddenly opens. “I'm in here!” he shouts.

“Jesus!” his father says, closing the door. “What are you doing home?”

“Nothing.”

“Aren't you supposed to be at school— What? I can't hear you.”

“I said I don't want to go today.”

“Why not?”

No answer.

“Wayne?”

“Aren't
you
supposed to be at work?”

“Hey, we're talking about
you
now.”

No sound from Wayne's side of the door.

“Come out,” his father says.

“I'm not done—”

“Out, I said. I need to use it.”

“I'm not wearing pants.”

“Grab a towel. Hurry up.”

A moment later Wayne comes out, a beige towel wrapped around his waist.

“What the hell were you doing in there?” his dad says, pushing past him.

Wayne runs to his bedroom and slams the door and puts on clean underwear and brown cords and sits on the edge of his bed with a palm over each knee. He stares at the wall and imagines himself passing through it into another place but even there The Meat's pointing and breathing tuna and smoothing his almost-a-moustache and Wayne wonders if there's anywhere that Pete isn't.

Knocking on his door, then the knob turning and catching. His father's voice: “Since when do you lock your door?”

Wayne stays quiet. “Wayne!”

“I'm sick.”

“Sick?”

“I threw up.”

“Did you?”

“On my way to school.”

Silence.

His father coughs, then says, “Let me in.”

“I just want to lie down—”

“I'll put a bucket by your bed—”

“If I could just sleep—”

“Give you a Gravol—”

“If I need anything, I'll sing out.”

Nothing for a moment, followed by the sound of his father resting his weight against the door. After a while, he says, “I called in sick.” Then, “Wayne?”

“I heard you.”

“Don't tell your mother.”

Silence.

“Wayne?”

“Okay.”

“All right then. Go to sleep. I'll be in the living room if you need me.”

Wayne waits until his father pushes himself away from the door and walks down the hall before getting up and going over to sit at his desk. He opens a nearly filled notebook and grabs a Razor Point extra-fine pen and writes:

Dear Pete The Meat,

Is it the way I walk? Talk? Is it because I'm small? Is my laugh strange? My voice? Do I smell funny or dress stupid or style my hair the wrong way? Are my eyes too far apart? WHAT? Or maybe I'm
juts
just an easy target, slow and easy to grab hold of and to give
a wedgie to, is that it? Do I remind you of someone you hate? Is it because I sometimes piss my pants and this is something for you and Bobby and Harvey and Kenny to laugh about and point fingers at and then get other people's attention so that they can laugh and point too? Am I a joke? Am I like a wrestling mat: something for you to lie and sweat and bleed on? Is it because I'm weak? Because I like drama and writing, but I also like UFC, did you know? Is it because your dad's not your real one and that you had a tough start but lots of kids live with people that aren't their biological parents and they turn out fine. Is it because you're afraid of me? I don't mean in the physical sense, but is there something about me you fear? Is that what this is about? Do you think it doesn't bother me? That I can get up and walk away and just forget about it? Do you think my pissy clothes wash themselves? Do you think I like eating yellow snow and being tackled by Bobby and having to smell tuna on your breath? Maybe I hate you too, even more than you hate me and maybe someday I'll wait outside your door and when you open it I'll shoot you in the head and then you'll be sorry, won't you? How would you like that? I just wish you'd leave me alone
becasue
because I'm tired and I'm only fifteen so I shouldn't be, right? I've been searching for a reason, you see, and I can't find one and I've come to believe that things don't just happen. So if there's something I've done let me know
and I'll stop doing it 'cause I just want to get these three years over with so I can get out of here.

The one you pick on that would like to know the
reason,
Wayne Pumphrey

Wayne opens his eyes and sees his father sitting there: checkered shirt and brown slacks and hair actually combed and slicked back like Tony Soprano and his cheek's so swollen it looks like he's stuffed grapes in his mouth and he's playing with his Zippo lighter. He looks at Wayne and says, “You're awake.”

Wayne nods and thinks he was a youngster the last time his father sat on the edge of his bed like this: a tugged toe, a hand messing his hair, a prickly kiss on his forehead. “What time is it?”

His dad glances at his watch. “Ten-thirty. How's your stomach?”

“Gurgling,” Wayne says. “Might need to sleep all day. How'd you get in?”

His father flips open and then closes the lid of his Zippo. “That lock's useless.”

Wayne looks at his father's face and says, “Your cheek broken?”

“Naw. Sore as Jesus, though.” His dad focuses on the space between his feet and says, “What's the real reason you're not in school?”

Wayne lies back down and pulls the sheets up. The silence presses down on him and makes it hard to breathe and he thinks it's even worse than having toothless Bobby on top.

“Got the strangest call a few minutes ago,” his father says at last. “Turns out Donna Hiscock was staring out her back window this morning and what do you think she saw?”

Wayne turns over on his side and tucks his knees into his chest and closes his eyes and hears the lighter flicking open again, then closing … opening … closing.

“A bunch of boys is what … picking on another boy. A smaller boy.”

Wayne imagines giant hands coming through the ceiling and plucking him from his bed and covering him and carrying him somewhere where there's no Zippo lighter and no father with a swollen cheek and no piss-soaked pants in the hamper down the hall …

“Now she couldn't be absolutely sure—her eyes being what they are—but she could have sworn that the tiny boy belonged to the sweet woman named Ruth that she used to work with at Woolworths.”

… and no iron ore mine and no eight months
of winter and no band called Nickelback and no mother swinging a heavy frying pan and no girl up the road with a dead father and a mother who may as well be …

“She would have called sooner, but it took her a while to find your mother's number. Would have grabbed a broom and gone outside herself, she said, if not for being seventy-odd.”

… and no old ladies staring out of windows and soggy turkey sandwiches and cancer-causing Crunchits and small bladders and snotty noses and tears and places to always have to fit into—

“Wayne?”

“What?”

“Why were you throwing your pants in the hamper?”

Silence.

A hand gripping his ankle and squeezing and his father saying, “Who were they?”

“That lady's blind.”

“Turn around, Wayne.”

“Let me sleep.”

“I said turn
around
— Ouch!” His dad covers his cheek. “Don't make me yell.”

Wayne turns, finds a place beyond his father's shoulder to set his eyes.

His father rests his elbows on his knees. Interlaces his fingers. When he speaks again his voice is calmer.
“A scuffle every now and then is to be expected. But what happened to you is something else.”

A long silence.

“They hurt you?” his dad says.

“No.”

“Speak up.”

“No, I said.”

Wayne looks away from the wall and down at his father's hands and notices blood pooling at their fingertips. His father says, “How long's it been going on?”

Wayne shrugs.

“Give me names.”

Wayne won't.

“You're not a tattle and that's good, but sometimes it isn't, so tell me who they are or would you rather I went to the school myself?”

“No, don't!”

“Then tell me.”

Wayne goes to speak, but doesn't, so his father gets up and goes to the door and grips the knob and says over his shoulder, “Drive on over now, perhaps—”

“Pete The Meat.”

His dad turns around. “What?”

“Pete The Meat.”

“What kinda name is that?”

“It's because he's got veins in his biceps and can
make his chest muscles move without touching them.”

His father pauses. “He have a last name?”

“Moved here three years ago and he had a tough start and has a second father and he struck a teacher once.”

“Wayne.”

“Avery. His last name's Avery.”

“Okay. Who else?”

“No one.”

“
Who?
I said.”

“Harvey and Bobby and Kenny, but they only do it 'cause Pete makes them.”

His father goes quiet for a moment, then says, “Where's he live, this Pete The Meat?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Just answer me.”

“I don't know and I wish now I never told you anything.”

“Get up.”

“What?”

“You're no sicker than I am and I think we'll pay Pete's parents a visit.”

“No!”

“Or we'll go see the principal. Your choice.”

“You'll make it worse.”

“Let's go.”

“His parents are working.”

“I'll take my chances.”

“I don't know where he lives, I already told you.”

“I think you do, Wayne. Now get your jacket.”

“No.”

“Wayne!”

“I'm weak like a girl already!”

“What—”

“And I eat yellow snow and if you go to Pete's I'll be the one who needs his dad to fight his battles
too,
and I've always come second to you before so why can't we just keep it that way!”

His dad opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes out and he tries to leave but can't seem to get the door open, so he faces Wayne instead and for the longest time doesn't speak, but then finally he says, “No point crying.”

Wayne wipes his eyes. “I'm not.” For a moment he thinks his father might come over and sit on the bed again, but his dad steps back instead, letting the door take his weight, and puts his hands in his pockets and stares down at his wool socks. After a while he goes, “Your Uncle Philip was small too.”

Wayne fiddles with the comforter.

“In school he could make up a joke on the spot and deliver it like a stand-up comic and he'd have the bullies laughing so hard they'd forget why they were picking on him.”

Wayne sets his eyes on his father's.

“So I never had to worry. But
you
… I don't know, you're different … softer. What are you supposed to do if you can't fight back or say something funny, so we'll go and talk to this Pete's parents and no one else has to know.”

Wayne turns away and imagines those giant hands again and this time they're taking him to a place where fathers don't make bad situations worse and where small and weak and soft are things to be admired, then he turns and looks up and notices his door is half open and his father is gone, so he lies back and dreams of another half-open door and slipping through it like a phantom, away from everything.

THREE

His father pulls into Pete The Meat's driveway and shuts off the engine. Looks over at Wayne and says, “You ready?”

Wayne nods and goes to grip the door handle but then changes his mind. “They say his second father owns a shotgun and that he spends all his time polishing it and pointing it and firing it like it's some joke.”

“Wayne—”

“And that he's got a tattoo of a tear beneath his left eye.”

“What foolishness—”

“And his mother spends hours each day over a huge pot of pork and chicken and she just plunks it down and Pete and his second father reach in with their bare hands and tear the flesh from the bones like wolves and then they even eat the bones—”

“Wayne—”

“And grease is all over their faces and it drips on their clothes and then Mrs. Avery puts the pot back on the stove and starts all over again and she's exhausted—”

“That's enough.”

“I'm just telling you what I heard.”

“Come on.”

They get out of the car and walk along the driveway and up the porch stairs and his dad rings the bell, and Wayne imagines the barrel of the gun, then the trigger, and the thick finger pressing against it followed by the arm and shoulder and neck and finally the pale, angry face of Mr. Avery: the little slit of a mouth and a Hitler moustache, probably, and that tear tattoo beneath cold, dead eyes—