The Deadsong (3 page)

“I’ll drop you off at the side doors. All I need is someone to see me and go snitch to Pearson,” she said. Ellis Pearson was the vice principal who had given her some broad marks across the ass for chewing gum in his economics class her freshman year. It was his first term as the almighty peacekeeper with a flaming sword of discipline and a handful of shit-nosed minions known around school as the hall-pass police. It was one of these fine young fellows that had given Dylan a shiner for looking at him the wrong way.
You squeal on me you shit-freckled fuck I’ll rip that red mop right off your retarded noggin
! Dylan had said nothing about it. No member of Pearson’s personally selected saints would have done such a cruel thing. They had, though. Many times. A handful of them would take turns putting the boot to his guts on the floor of the boy’s restroom between classes. There had been a time when corrective action would deliver justice to the cruel and peace to the weak. But those days were long gone.

Weak. Just a weak, shit-freckled fuck.

He shivered away the self-loathing long enough to say “They’ll recognize your car. Just park in the lot and go inside with me. Say you were helping me with the flat tire, and they’ll excuse you. I’ll need a ride home later anyways.” He was afraid, weak with fear.

Gina wasn’t aware of his suffering or his fear of the Pearson posse, but right now, she was preoccupied with her own tangled emotions and the escalating uneasiness swimming beneath her straw hat. The sight of Jared Kemper’s metallic blue muscle car parked beside the football field had burst open her memory gates, and out of them flooded fragmented images, shapes, and words that brought on feelings of intense arousal and fear.

(railin and wailin)

She bit down on her lip, wading through the murky pool of artifacts from…her dream. That’s right. It had been a dream. With a snake––a talking snake, at that. The thought suddenly felt absurd. She laughed out loud, tossing the thoughts back into the deep, piece by ridiculous piece, like a grown-up discarding embarrassing childhood moments frozen in yellowing Polaroids.

The car slowed and slid into a parking space. Gina sighed, and glanced over at Dylan slouched in his seat. The dark crescents under his pitiful eyes made him look a bit like a frightened woodland creature––a raccoon, perhaps. Yes, that’s it, like Ole’ Rocky Raccoon with his head twisted up begging for mercy from a camouflaged hunter or a droopy-faced bloodhound.

Dylan’s mercy came more easily than she anticipated. Sisterly love stretched out from behind her ribcage as though it had been quietly sleeping––hibernating for just this moment.

Over his shoulder, she watched the football team step out of the gymnasium and trot toward the playing field where Jared’s car was parked. It sparkled like a polished sapphire set neatly into the asphalt. After inspecting their faces, Gina whispered, “Come on. We’re late enough as it is.”

She had not seen Jared among them.

9

“I'd suck a fart out of that ass!” Duke Pearson exclaimed, elbowing a dazed kid he didn’t know. The kid dropped his books, not sure of what the preppy dirtbag in the letterman jacket was talking about––until he looked up and saw the girl in a straw fedora approaching them.

Gina glided down the hallway gracefully, modestly. The halls were filling up after the dismissal of first period, but she could see the boy picking up his chemistry books, and recognized him as the only known homo in school, Danny Rickles––the only one she knew of for sure, anyway.

She thought it was foolish for Rickles to proudly proclaim his sexual preference considering their small town didn’t take gently to that kind––peter-lickers and casual queers blindly measured up for the gallows or a pair of cement shoes meant for dancing on the bottom of Goose Creek.

Gina considered how lucky the poor boy had been. The drooling dirtbag to his left was Duke Pearson––the son of Vice Principal Ellis Pearson––who hadn’t recognized him at all and that was a good thing. Luckily she held Duke’s gaze long enough for Rickles to dodge into the school library and out of sight.

“Gina!” Duke waved a hand at her. He was sure she was totally in love with him. His girlfriend wouldn’t like that so much, but if she ever found out, maybe she’d give in to some three-way action. He kept his fingers crossed.

“Have you seen Jared Kemper?” Gina asked.

“Yeah,” Duke blinked away his endearing fantasy and pocketed his hands. “He popped into Webb’s class for a bit, showed her a note, then took off. Didn’t seem sick or anything.”

He’d never seen closely the beauty of her face. The rest of her he had mapped out pretty well––perfect legs, killer tits, and two tight mounds of ass in the caboose––but her face, he had never examined before now. In it were the bluest eyes he'd ever seen. Her pupils were tiny black islands floating in an untainted ocean. He was lost in them, swimming.

He ran a hand through his hair, but before he could say anything else, she thanked him and disappeared into a noisy sea of chattering heads and banging locker doors.

Duke thought she looked worried. Maybe about the test on key figures of the American Civil War, the one she skipped out on in first period? Perhaps. Duke knew because his girlfriend––the hopeful ménage-a-trois participant––had noticed Gina’s empty seat while stammering through a riveting spiel on George Armstrong Custer, although she insisted his last name was Custard, which the class found rather amusing.

Gina’s attention was indeed directed somewhere within herself, thinking. Not about the report––she would take care of that soon enough––but about the snake.

How could it have known? How could it have known about what happened to her all those years ago? How could it have known something so horrifying and unspeakable that she herself had buried far beneath a towering stack of memories, feelings, and trivial brain fodder accumulated by a particularly average seventeen-year-old?

But it knew, all right
, she thought.
Oh yes, I’m sure it knows everything and more.

10

Dylan drew mentholated smoke into his lungs and squeezed out a cool plume of the stuff. It wasn’t as bad as he had expected. In fact, the taste was almost pleasant––like that of medicated vapor rub his mother spread on his chest when he was a wee lad. The buzz crept in, swelling Dylan’s being with a numbing sensation that flowed from his toes to his crown. He coughed then passed the butt to Garrett Eucher.

“Hey, keep it down, will ya?” Garrett said. He sucked down nearly half of the cigarette while peeking from behind the cafeteria dumpster. He saw the empty picnic tables on the common area in front of the cafeteria. His head jerked back to Dylan. “What time ya got there, Stark?”

Dylan pulled back his sleeve and checked his watch. “It’s almost eleven. We should be getting back.”

“Yeah, it’s almost first lunch.” Garrett extinguished the cig on the sole of his hightop.

They stood up quietly, Garrett’s eyes darting around for signs of life. “Wait!” he whispered, yanking Dylan back down behind the dumpster. Miss Webb stood by the back door of her classroom putting a flame to a non-filter jutting from her lips.

They tiptoed around the dumpster and squatted behind the concrete wall of the cafeteria’s loading dock. The eleven o’clock bell screamed through the open double doors of the east wing. An orange plastic chair used as a doorstop kept them open. Miss Webb pinched off the burning tobacco, pitched the cigarette out into the uncut grass, and went inside.

A hand snatched a wad of Dylan’s shirt collar and reeled him up. Before he could react, his freckled face was rearranged with one sharp, fleeting smack into the concrete wall.

“Whatcha doin out here, creep?” Duke was standing over him watching the blood pour from his broken nose. He turned to Garrett. “Beat it, Eucher, or you’ll get some, too.”

Garrett ran like a spooked rabbit.

Two other guys stood behind Duke, but Dylan couldn’t remember their names. He had seen them in the halls, but to him they were just faceless, brainless jocks. From this angle, the trio looked like angry gods from Mount Olympus ready to unleash their wrath on the shit-freckled fucks of Durden High. But Dylan seemed to be the only one branded for punishment today.

“I asked what you were doing out here,” Duke said.

“We we’re just having a smoke, man,” Dylan replied wiping his face with his shirt.

Duke bent down and looked him over carefully, grinning.

“I think you two were getting fresh out here. What do you think, fellas?”

“Yeah, Duke. Real fresh,” the two jocks snickered.

The wrinkled pack of cigarettes lay on the cement with one bent filter sticking out. Duke fished it into his palm. He looked at it, scoffed, and stuck it between his lips. “Gimme a light, faggot.”

Dylan fumbled in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a butane lighter with Avery’s Country Store logo screened on the side. A cocktail of blood and sweat leaked from the corners of his eyes, pink dots splattering silently on his t-shirt. He held out the lighter with a shaky hand. Duke sagged closer. As the tobacco caught fire, Dylan shoved the jet flame into Duke’s face hissing away the neatly groomed eyebrow over his right eye. The sandy blond bangs above it shriveled and recoiled, the pungent aroma of menthol and burned hair floating grossly on the breeze. Duke jerked away screaming and swatting at his face. The jocks just stood there like deer in a car’s headlights, and by the time they realized what had happened, Dylan was gone.

They helped Duke to his feet. They kept asking him to take his hands away from his face so they could get a look. He shook his head like a rabid dog, grunting and saying something they couldn’t understand at first.

“Dat mehrrr fuher…gonna KELLL…AT…FAHUT!”

He was going absolutely batshit. He ran out in the grass and banged his knee on a picnic table, but the adrenaline and fury fueled him, numbed him as he zigzagged around the commons area like a sugar-buzzed toddler throwing a tantrum. Students watched from the cafeteria windows. They pointed and hee-hawed, spitting globs of food on the glass. One student yelled, “Hey, it’s the Three Stooges!” They enjoyed the dinner and show, watching Larry and Curly chasing a wounded Moe, waiting for him to stop and boink their heads together. But in today’s exciting episode, Duke only stopped long enough to expose his face and explode at the gaping mouths behind the cafeteria windows.

“WHAT’RE YOU LOOKIN’ AT?!”
he roared. His right eyebrow was almost completely gone. The blond hair that usually hung in face now receded to one side. The skin around his right eye burned scarlet red, squeezed shut with the lashes gone.

His father came quickly up the sidewalk with a half-pint of chocolate milk in his hand. Mr. Pearson had been eating lunch in the teacher’s lounge reading the latest copy of Popular Science when the office secretary came in and told him Duke was running around the commons area screaming like a girl.

Ellis exhaled a breath of relief after surveying Duke’s face. It wasn’t nearly bad as he expected. But his son acting a damn fool in front of the whole student body like a whipped puppy, that was something else entirely.

He felt embarrassed. Duke was an exceptional boy. God had blessed him with the athletic prowess of an Olympic track runner but had damned him with the intellect of a small turnip. Ellis had high hopes of Duke scoring an athletic scholarship––lots of luck, kiddo––and easily slipping into the prestige and scale of college football.

But Duke had an entire school year ahead of him, and that was plenty of time for him to fuck it up.

“You all right?” Ellis asked, shaking Duke out of his madness.

“Is it bad?” Duke asked.

“What the hell happened?”

Duke dropped his head.

“Go see the nurse,” Ellis whispered, “then come to my office when you’ve finished.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m going to have a chat with these two clowns,” Ellis said, pointing at Duke’s jock buddies.

11

After having his eye smudged with Vasoline and patched with cotton gauze, Duke napped in the nurse’s office until the dismissal bell rang. He came out and saw Gina waiting beside her Volkswagen. Pride and shame wedged together in his throat. An arm slid under his. A pretty young thing with golden curls named Lindsey Stevens smooched Duke below the patch of gauze taped over his right eye.

“Hey babe,” she said bearing her top row of glossy whites. “Does it still hurt?”

“Oh hey, nah, it’s nothing.” Duke laughed it off and dismissed his foolish flapping around the commons. “You should see the other guy.”

“Like I’ve never heard that one before,” she said, amused. “Listen, I’m working tonight so we can’t…you know.”

“No problem.”

“I might have to work tomorrow, but I’ll let you know.”

Sounds like a hint, Duke. Time for a new playmate…

She slung her bag over her shoulder and left. Duke watched her go, and then turned his attention back to Gina. She was still leaning against the hood of her car, her legs glistening in the afternoon sun. His gaze jerked up to her face that now looked at his with a look of sheer, dumb shock. He grinned a little, dropped his head, and ambled over to her.

“Hiya, Gina,” he said, still grinning.

“You can spit the shit out of your cheeks now.”

“Sorry, it’s just––”

“Just what?” She tilted her head. Her gaze was hard, yet as warm and inviting as a stone cottage.

“Listen, I was wondering if you might wanna hang out sometime. You know, maybe go dancing, or grab dinner and a movie. That sort of thing. Whadaya say?”

He looked as if he was waiting to hear the final lottery number.

“What about Lindsey?” She asked.

“Who?”

“Lindsey Stevens. The girl you were just talking to. She’s your girlfriend, right?”

“Well, yeah, today she is. But that thing changes day to day. Who knows about tomorrow. Could be you.”

“That’s pushing it, buddy. Hey, have seen my brother?”

Duke’s heart hit the pavement. The thought never crossed his mind. That shit-freckled faggot was her brother.
Oh, man. This is gonna get real ugly real fast.