Mama Fish Read online

  “Depeche Mode,” I snapped at him. “The Police. The Clash. Do you realize that without bands like The Clash, there would be no Green Day? Probably no Eminem or 25 Cent, either.”

  Kennedy fell back on the bed and laughed—a pure belly laugh that almost made him adorable. “25 Cent?” he said, wiping tears from his eyes, catching his breath. “You’re a quarter short, old man. It’s 50 Cent. Fiff-Tee.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  When he stopped laughing, he said, “Okay, so you’re eleven years old, in your room listening to your favorite music on your huge hi-fi system. Next thing you know, your dad—Grandpa—comes in with a bunch of records from five years before you were born. That would be …” (a pause as he did the math) “… 1966. Can you see where I’m going with this?”

  1966. I’m thinking The Beatles, The Who, maybe some Bob Dylan. Music I love now, but I can recall my dislike for it when I was eleven years old, simply because it was the music my father listened to. My father was old. Always. Even when he was young. That’s how I remember him. He listened to The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones—scratched vinyl records he had bought in the Sixties. It had smelled like teen spirit to him, but to me it had smelled like old man’s music.

  “You have a point,” I conceded to my beautiful son. I ruffled his hair and he grinned proudly.

  “What else you got, Pops?” He pointed at the other CDs in my hand: Guns N’ Roses, Pearl Jam, U2, and Lenny Kravitz. Great music, no doubt, but would Kennedy think so?

  “Nothing that’s going to float your boat,” I said. “But I’ll tell you what we’ll do: twenty years from now we’ll sit down with a case of beer, and we’ll spin these sounds again. You can bring Rihanna and Acorn—”

  “Akon.”

  “That’s what I said … you can bring those guys to the table, and I’ll bring U2 and Nirvana. Sound good?”

  “Sounds good,” he agreed. “If you’re still alive, that is.”

  Although being around Kennedy makes me feel like one of the Golden Girls, there are times—recalling certain childhood memories, for instance—when I feel as fresh and big-eyed as Bambi. It’s impossible to feel old when I can so clearly remember sitting on my father’s lap, steering his DeVille along Candy Apple Road while he worked the gas and brakes. I can remember the cigarette-smell of his breath, and the way the radio cut in and out because the reception was always bad there. Old seems so far away when I recall how my kite had caught the wind—I was five at the time—on top of Sparrow Hill. Even now I can feel the muscle-like pull as it whipped through the sky, and the exotic tension in the twine. I relive these memories. I see them through a child’s eyes, and feel them with a child’s soul. They arch through my mind like rainbows, furiously bright and sparkling with magic.

  What scares me is that none of it seems that long ago. Not really … not when you get right down to it. The thirty-six years of my life have passed quickly. If I throw a complete game and make it to eighty-five, then I have already lived 42.3% of my life. Almost half of it. Whoosh! Gone, baby, gone. I’d like to think that the second half runs a little slower, but I have a feeling this isn’t the case.

  Recent events have inspired me to put pen to paper (a figure of speech; I’m actually writing this on a Dell notebook), and in doing so, I have leapt into the mind of the boy I used to be. It’s not a giant leap, by any means—twenty-one years, and like I said, it doesn’t seem that long ago. Even so, it hasn’t been easy. The world spins quickly and everything has changed, including me—especially me. I look at myself in the mirror and see something almost foreign. Part man, part metal. There are times when I don’t even feel human, and there are times when I wonder if any of this is real … if perhaps the accident has knocked me into a cool-light coma from which I will one day awaken, and the first thing I’ll see will be my wife’s face. I’ll feel her tears dropping onto my forehead as she leans down to kiss my mouth, and when she talks, her voice will be scratchy, just like those old records my father used to play.

  It’s all over, she will say, and her smile will make flowers open. It’s all over now, baby blue.

  October 31, 1986. The day it happened.

  Talk about freakin’ Halloween. I looked over and saw a spider crawl out of Kelvin Fish’s nose. I swear to Jesus, man. I nearly barfed!

  Louie Spoon was the class clown, five-foot-zip with a comical spill of hair. His anecdotes were often regarded with a fistful of salt, but his claim to have seen a spider crawl out of Kelvin Fish’s nose—on Halloween, no less—became legend. I don’t know if it was true, but it spilled through the school hallways like toppling dominoes.

  It crawled out of his nose and down his shirt.

  It was big, too. A real scream-show.

  Kelvin Fish didn’t even blink, man. As if it happens all the time.

  He heard the whispers, of course, but behaved exactly as he had with me in the gym storeroom: head down, going about his business, saying nothing. He appeared to tune out the rest of the world, which seemed to me both honorable and sad. I became more curious to find out what made his motor run. I wanted to tap the mystery, like Indiana Jones going after the Lost Ark.

  I decided to follow him home. I would keep my distance until we were away from the school and the other children, and then I would approach, show him a friendly face, and try—again—to engage him in conversation. We were on nodding terms now, and he had let me copy from his math paper. Perhaps it would be easier this time.

  The last bell clanged through the classrooms and hallways, and Harlequin High’s students, some in Halloween attire, broke for the exits in a colorful stream. I normally rode the bus home, but this time I tossed my books into my locker and waited for Kelvin Fish on the front steps. He came dragging along a few minutes later with his shoulders sagging and his big, glum head hanging low. He didn’t see me, and that was good (I had a feeling he would “Le Freak” like Chic if he sensed I was trying to take our acquaintance beyond the nodding stage). I let him get about twenty feet ahead, and then followed … not daring to get any closer in case he somehow caught onto me. Like I said, the kid was weird, but he was smart.

  I watched as the other children pointed and giggled behind his back. One of them—a girl dressed as Morticia Addams—hunched her shoulders and shuffled along behind him, mimicking his walk as she dangled a rubber spider from her nose. She peeled away with her friends, all howling like sirens. Kelvin Fish either did not notice, or chose to ignore them (I imagined him at home, writing his shit-list, caressing the oiled barrel of his semi-automatic). He galumphed from the school grounds, his scuffed, clomping shoes kicking up old leaves. I kept my distance and lingered behind a Ford pickup when he reached Oakwood Road. There was a crossing guard on Oakwood, and if he saw me, he would wait before stopping traffic. I didn’t want to cross with Kelvin Fish. I wanted to be in the clear before approaching him.

  I almost lost him. He crossed with a half-dozen other children (snickering and pointing) and turned right onto Jackson Avenue. I had to wait on Oakwood for a break in traffic, and by the time I crossed and turned onto Jackson, Kelvin Fish was nowhere in sight. I picked up my heels and ran to Columbus Boulevard. Four lanes, and busy at any time of the day. There was no crossing guard on Columbus. Kids who lived this far from school normally took the bus.

  No sign of Kelvin Fish. The cars ripped by, whipping up dead leaves and light trash. An empty Big Mac carton bounced down the sidewalk as if it were being pulled by a string.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said, thinking that he must live on Jackson Avenue and was already home, probably rubbing liniment into the barnacle-like calluses on Mama Fish’s feet. I was about to give up—try again another day—when I heard a cruel, cutting voice from behind a nearby stand of trees:

  “Goddamn freak bastard. I’m gonna tear you a new asshole.”

  It was Nick Janowski, Harlequin High’s token bully. God had added only a half-teaspoon of brains to the recipe when he’d made Nick Janowski. Ten years later,
long after I had moved away from Harlequin, I saw Nick again on America’s Dumbest Criminals. You may have seen the clip, too. Nick was the guy who tried to rob a gas station with a pound of kielbasa wrapped in a paper bag, but was foiled by the owner’s ravenous Jack Russell Terrier. To give you some perspective of Nick’s brains-to-body ratio, think: ladybug in a submarine.

  “Talk to me, douche bag.”

  “Hit him again, Nicky. Hit the freak motherfucker.”

  Oh shit, I thought. That’s Ripsaw Griggs. I should have known; Richard “Ripsaw” Griggs was Nick’s right-hand man. No brains, either, but a body as wide as the Lincoln Tunnel. He pumped weights at Superstar Muscle with Nick and a couple of other meatheads, and it was rumored he could bench three-fifty. Ripsaw was sixteen years old.

  I heard another sound—one I didn’t like at all: the tough, thunderous thump of Nick Janowski’s fist striking something softer.

  “Ooooch, that’s gotta hurt.” Ripsaw Griggs was clearly delighted. “Again, Nicky. Knock his fucking eyes out.”

  I heard the sound again and the world wavered. I thought I was going to be sick.

  The cluster of trees was on the corner of Jackson and Columbus. They enclosed a lousy scrub of land where people used to dump their broken appliances and take their dogs for a crafty, no-need-to-scoop poop (you’ll find a Dunkin’ Donuts there today—make of that what you will). Hidden from the road, it was the perfect spot for a couple of bullies to whale on a defenseless kid.

  Leave well alone, a sensible voice at the back of my mind suggested. Trust me, Beauchamp … this is a fucked up situation. Leave it alone.

  “I can’t do that,” I said, and as if to reinforce this, I heard the awful thumping sound again, followed by Ripsaw Griggs screeching:

  “Hoooolah! Oooooch! Hold that freak son of a whore up, Nicky—let me take a shot.”

  I squeezed between the trees and saw Nick Janowski pulling Kelvin Fish to his feet by the back of his sweater. I heard small ripping sounds as the threads beneath the armpits popped. Nick was cackling. His eyes were crazed, lidless circles. Ripsaw hopped from one foot to the other, his hands balled into massive fists. Kelvin Fish sagged between them. There was a candy wrapper (Zagnut, if memory serves) stuck to the side of his face. I remember being surprised; I had expected to see him all beaten to shit: broken nose, busted lip, spitting out teeth. Not the case. There was no blood, no bruising. Except for the candy wrapper glued to his cheek, he looked the same as usual.

  Ripsaw Griggs took a shot—hit him hard. The sound was like an axe splitting wood. Kelvin Fish’s head rocked to the side. He wobbled for a moment, and then dropped to his knees. The candy wrapper fluttered into the air like a red and yellow butterfly.

  Ripsaw rubbed his knuckles and flexed his fingers. “Oooooch,” he said.

  “We heard you had a creepy-crawly spider up your nose,” Nick said, grabbing Kelvin Fish’s hair and pulling back his head. “Hey, Ripsaw … you see any spiders up them old nostrils? Take a look-see, huh?”

  “Awwww, I ain’t lookin’ up his goddamn nose. Hoooolah!”

  Nick brayed, his huge shoulders rolling. He high-fived Ripsaw, too involved to notice me creeping in from the side. I looked around for something heavy and found a rusted hunk of metal that looked like the motor from one of the discarded refrigerators. I picked it up. My plan was to throw it—knock one of them spark-out, with any luck—divert their attention and anger onto me, and then run like hell. I would deal with the consequences another day.

  “Is it true, freak boy? You got spiders up your nose?”

  “Hit him again, Nicky. I wanna see him bleed.”

  Nick hit him again. Kelvin Fish swayed and then crumpled. Both Nick and Ripsaw howled, and as Nick grabbed his sweater to yank him back to his feet, I raised the motor to shoulder-level and said:

  “Leave him alone, you dumb fucking monkeys.”

  For many years, I would wish that I hadn’t followed Kelvin Fish home. I tried to convince myself that the terrible things I had seen were not real. In the light of recent events, I have been able to accept—to embrace—these things. You could say that I have been given a refreshing perspective. But for a haunting stretch of time, beginning when Nick and Ripsaw turned to see me standing behind them with an old refrigerator motor raised to my shoulder, I would wish that I had minded my own business and caught the school bus home, just like any other day.

  Nick let go of Kelvin Fish’s sweater and he slumped to the ground again.

  “What the fuck have we got here?” he said. He wore a red bandana in the style of John Rambo, which was all the rage for stupid people at the time. He pulled his shoulders square, making himself bigger. The machismo was unnecessary; he was a foot taller than me, and easily a hundred pounds heavier. “Looks like a rat just crawled out of the garbage, Ripsaw. You know what we do with rats, don’t you?”

  Ripsaw sneered. “I light me a cancer stick and burn their eyes out.”

  “That’s right,” Nick agreed. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and popped one into his mouth. “And that’s what we’re gonna do with this one.”

  The refrigerator motor felt extremely heavy. I was less than ten feet from them, but I felt so drained that I didn’t think I could throw it that far. My heart had been pounding from the run along Jackson Avenue. It had doubled in speed when I heard the awful thunder of their fists. Now, watching Nick Janowski light his cigarette and blow a stream of smoke toward me, I thought it was going to split open. I gripped the motor tighter. Grains of rust dissolved in the sweat on my palm.

  “Just leave him alone,” I said. My kid sister had a talking doll that uttered nonsense phrases in a high-pitched tone. My voice sounded exactly the same. I imagined a string with a plastic loop on the end retracting into a hole in my back. “He didn’t do anything to you.”

  “He didn’t do anything to you,” Ripsaw squawked. He laughed and growled at the same time, like a dog shaking a rag.

  “I know your names,” I said. “I’ll call the cops.”

  “The fuck you will,” Nick said. “Because if I go to juvie, my old man will have to pay your old man a visit … and I don’t think your old man would like that very much.”

  They came toward me, Ripsaw with his rock-like fists swinging at his sides, Nick smoking his cigarette, the tip glowing menacingly. They didn’t notice Kelvin Fish getting to his feet behind them. They didn’t notice his good eye peeled wide and glaring with a kind of madness. He was shaking. No, that’s not right—he was vibrating. His shoulders and chest jerked and his head made stiff little snaps to the left and right. His mouth opened and closed in a way that reminded me of an elevator door banging against something in its tracks.

  “You’re gonna pay for interfering,” Nick said.

  A sound had started to come from Kelvin Fish—the sound of his vibration: a whup-whup-whup that was like the purr of a distant helicopter. His good eye snapped between Nick and Ripsaw. It was filled with dreadful anger. I shook my head and the rusty motor toppled from my hand.

  “Were you going to throw that at me?” Nick snarled, pointing at the motor with the tip of his cigarette.

  My mouth dropped open but no sound came out. I was still looking at Kelvin Fish. It was like looking at a bomb in the final five seconds of countdown.

  Nick blew a ribbon of smoke toward me. “You’re fucked,” he said.

  I think we’re all fucked, I thought.

  The whup-whup sound climbed in pitch and volume. Ripsaw Griggs heard it first. He turned around, saw Kelvin Fish—jigging and jerking—and took two steps backward.

  “Uhhh, Nick … take a look-see at the freak.”

  “Not now, Ripsaw.”

  “I think he’s pitchin’ a fit, or sumthin’.”

  Nick turned, maybe at the idea of seeing Kelvin Fish pitching a fit, or maybe because the whup-whup sound was too loud to ignore. I couldn’t see his face—he had his back to me—but I saw his cigarette fall to the ground as his jaw dr
opped open.

  “Holy Moses,” he said. “Motherfucker’s flipped his lid.”

  Despite the fact that Nick Janowski’s head was as empty as Al Capone’s vault, his observation would prove unusually astute.

  Kelvin Fish did indeed flip his lid. It was as if someone hit a switch and all the banks and programs of his emotion came to life. Ripsaw Griggs tried to back away but was not quick enough. Kelvin Fish hit him with a lightning uppercut that jacked his two hundred and twenty pounds clear off the ground. I have never seen anybody hit so hard, not in a boxing ring, not even in an action movie. There was a sickening crack! Ripsaw’s head snapped back at a ridiculous right angle to his body and he sailed through the air in an ungainly tangle. He landed among the trees that I had crept through, fifteen feet away.

  “Oooooch,” I said.

  Nick Janowski staggered backward. His boot came down on the rusty motor I had dropped and he fell with a breathless thud. Kelvin Fish was on him in an instant. He caught hold of one leg and dragged him—through the weeds and the dogshit, over rocks and odd bits of junk—to a cracked, overturned bathtub.

  “Let go of me! Goddamn freak!” Nick thrashed and kicked, but Kelvin Fish handled him with ease. He grabbed the front of Nick’s jacket—his good eye still filled with that abysmal anger—and shook him so hard that the back of his head rapped off the bathtub with an awful clonking sound. Not once, not twice, but again and again—thoink-thoink-thoink—until Nick’s eyes had rolled to helpless whites and a grim fan of blood had opened on the porcelain.

  “Dear Jesus,” I said. The sound of my heartbeat filled my head. A fat, sick, dark pounding that made me want to fall to my knees and cry.

  Kelvin Fish tossed Nick aside as if he weighed no more than a wet dishrag. His entire body trembled and jigged, and his good eye snapped open and closed like the shutter on an expensive camera. The whup-whup sound of his anger had lessened to a wavering murmur.

  The next moments moved in a dreamlike blur. I had no concept of time. I was aware of the vicious rip of traffic on Columbus Boulevard, and of the temperature dropping as the cloud cover thickened. At some point Ripsaw Griggs got to his feet (he would return to school two weeks later with his jaw wired shut to help heal the broken bones) and staggered through the trees onto Jackson Avenue. Nick Janowski was not far behind. Blood ran into his eyes from beneath the line of his bandana. He was crying, covered in dogshit, and he half-crawled, half-staggered after his friend. Kelvin Fish continued to rumble and twitch. I wondered for a moment if Ripsaw was right—maybe he was pitching a fit, and if I didn’t get to a payphone and dial 911 soon, he was apt to go Chernobyl. The tiny aspect of my brain that continued to operate with a modicum of sense assured me that this was not an epileptic or diabetic emergency, that Kelvin Fish was merely experiencing emotion-overload—an adrenaline rush. I shook my head. The air grew colder still.