Top Ten (17 page)

Through most of these events, Mickey Strange lay in his crib and slept and dreamt the things that only babies dream. He seemed a happy child.

He seemed that way for nine more years.

*   *   *

He thought they were his friends.

“Come on, Mick,” Johnny Gibbs urged him as the five of them ran through the scrub that summer day in 1969, mesquite stumps threatening to trip them up and the smell of the Hoover Chemical Plant only light in the air thanks to the breeze. “Hurry up.”

Mickey Strange went along, going with the guys, his buds, the new crowd he had met in his new school just that June. His mother had moved him from Amarillo to Calvert then after one too many beatings from Nicky. The twenty thousand had long been spent. A car. Another car. Furniture. Trips to Las Vegas. Nicky had gone through it in two years and had to go back to work for the railroad. He lasted six months before fighting on the job got him fired. After that he drove a tow truck, worked in the slaughterhouses, used his brother’s backhoe to pull up stumps for people. Moved from one job to another. Quit, got fired. Moved on. He even tried to get a lawyer to go after some of his son’s trust money, to pull some of it early, but no one would touch the case.

The family went on relief when Mickey was just three years old.

For six years after that Muriel put up with the father of her only child. Her father had died when she was very young, and she did not want her Mickey to grow up without one like she had. In 1969, though, she decided that she did not want her boy growing up with Nicky Strange in the house and took Mickey with her to her sister’s.

He made friends quickly in that one month at Sam Houston Elementary School, but he had always been a bright and happy boy, able to flash a smile and charm candy from clerks at the grocery store when his mother took him through the checkout. And now in the waning days of the summer break, with school just around the bend, fifth grade was on the horizon, and that day in the scrub between town and the towering smokestacks of the Hoover plant they were out to have fun. To chase each other. Throw a dirt clod or two. Be boys.

And boys would be boys.

Johnny Gibbs stopped fast on spot of cracked earth without warning. Mickey almost piled into him, as did Jimmy Logan, Andy Baloo, and Walter Fitzpatrick.

“What gives?” Walter asked. “I thought we were gonna...whoaaaaa.”

He saw it. Just like Johnny had seen it first, and the others upon reaching where he had cut their run short.

“Oh, man.” Walter came around the rest of his buddies and walked into the small clearing. “Man!”

The rest closed as well, ringing the cougar carcass where it lay, making a gawking circle around the thing that had been half eaten by buzzards. Its eyes were gone. Its guts had been picked out. One paw had come off and lay separated from the rest.

“Do you know what that is?” Andy asked his buddies, incredulous. “It’s a cougar!”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Johnny said.

“I didn’t know there were cougars around here,” Mickey said.

Jimmy looked around and pointed toward the hills to the north. “My grandpa told me he saw one up by the springs once.”

“How’d this one get here?” Jimmy wondered aloud.

Johnny Gibbs picked up the loose and nearly desiccated paw right then and tossed it at Jimmy. “Maybe he came looking for
this!
”

Jimmy jumped out of the way. “Yuck, man!”

Andy grabbed it up and chucked it toward Walter. It thudded off his chest, leaving a sticky dark spot on his tee shirt.

“Oh, man, my new shirt!” Walter took the paw from near his feet and sent it sailing back to Andy. It flew past his head and into the scrub.

The five of them howled with laughter, even Walter, who rubbed a handful of sandy dirt on his shirt to dry up what had been splattered there.

“Oh, man, I’m gonna bust a gut!” Jimmy said, almost doubled over.

Mickey, too, was nearly rolling. “I’m gonna pee my pants.”

That made them go practically nuts. Until, of course, Johnny Gibbs had the idea.

“Hey, I know what...”

Still struck with gigglefits, they looked to Johnny, the unspoken leader of their little gang. His face was aglow.

“Let’s piss on it!”

Andy laughed and nodded. “Yeah!”

Jimmy and Walter thought it a great idea, too, and chorused their approval. Only Mickey seemed less than enthused.

“I don’t know...” Mickey said.

“C’mon, Strange,” Johnny urged him. “Are you afraid it’s gonna jump up and bite your dick off?”

Four of the five fell into laughter again. Mickey did not. He simply shook off his friend’s jab with a smile.

“It’s a stupid idea,” Mickey told them.

“Yeah, here’s how stupid it is,” Johnny said, and drew the zipper down on his jeans. A second later he had it out, the small member pinched between his fingers. He took a stance near the carcass, shook his but for effect, and thrust his hips forward as he began to lay a stream of pee on the cougar’s incomplete head.

Three of his buddies hooted with laughter when he got the stream into the dead cat’s empty eye socket.

“Score!” Johnny shouted. “Two points.”

“I’m going for a touchdown,” Andy proclaimed and had his zipper down and a jet of pee shooting into the hollow gut.

Walter and Jimmy gave each other a look, then joined in, adding to the drenching the once proud predator was getting.

Mickey stood back and watched their revelry. Their raucous joy. Only a weak smile stretched across his lips.

Soon the drenching began to sputter out. Nine year old boys did not come specially equipped with immense bladders. But they did come equipped with a tendency toward the disgusting. The mischievous. The naughty.

“Hey, Andy,” Johnny said, pulling the short and flaccid tube that was his penis, stretching out to a length it would not naturally expand to for some time yet, “your dong is puny.”

“Fuck you, Johnny.” Andy stretched his own out proudly. “There.”

“Give me a magnifying glass,” Walter said, bending close to the small member.

“Fuck you, too,” Andy said.

Jimmy Logan barely had to stretch his any. It was impressive at nine. “Where’s the rest, Andy?”

“Shut up,” Andy Baloo told them, putting his away as the rest of them sent their laughs his way. Only Mickey wasn’t deriding him.

“You might want to give that some sun, Andy,” Johnny suggested, laughing. “Let it grow.”

“Oh yeah?!”

“Yeah, man,” Walter said.

Andy fumed. He gave a quick glance to the one of their number who had not participated and said, “Yeah, well Mickey’s got no dick at all.”

Mickey Strange’s face went slack with shock. With horror.

Johnny let his laugh die down. Even at nine, he could sense that his buddy was not just blowing smoke. Plus, the look on Mickey’s face... Man, it looked like the guy just wanted to die. He zipped up and asked, “What are you talking about, Andy?”

Andy gave his friend another look, maybe one of apology, or one that begged forgiveness, and said, “He’s got no dick. I saw one night when I slept over. He was changing and...well...there’s nothing there.”

All four of his friends looked at Mickey now.

“He’s shitting us,” Johnny said. “Right, Mickey?”

Mickey took a step backward. “I gotta get going home.”

Johnny rushed up to him and grabbed his collar. A devilish gleam lit his gaze. “He’s not, is he?”

“How can he not have a dick?” Walter asked. “Everyone’s got a dick.”

“Girls don’t have dicks,” Jimmy reminded him.

Johnny looked down toward Mickey’s crotch. “Well maybe he’s a girl.”

“I’m not a girl!” Mickey protested.

“I think we should check for ourselves,” Johnny said.

“Yeah!” Walter agreed.

“Guys, c’mon,” Andy said, not wanting what he had started to go any further.

“We’re just gonna check and make sure old Mick here is a guy,” Johnny said, and shoved Mickey back hard so that he fell to the ground. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Mick.”

Mickey crabwalked backwards on hands and feet, the hot earth stinging his palms. But he could not get away. Johnny and Jimmy and Walter were on him, the latter two pinning his arms down while Johnny tried to hold Mickey’s kicking legs.

Johnny looked sharply back to Andy. “Get his legs, man!”

Andy hesitated just a second. Any longer and it would have tacitly allied him with Mickey, and, well, Johnny and Jimmy and Walter had been his buddies since kindergarten. Mickey was a new guy. A pretty cool guy, yeah, but, the others were his
real
friends. Right? Right?

Andy grabbed Mickey’s feet and sat on them, leaving Johnny free to do the deed.

“No! Get off me, guys! Let me go! Let me GO!”

His wiggling and twisting made it difficult, but not impossible, and Johnny had the button on Mickey’s pants open and his zipper down to the urging of his two friends doing arm duty. Andy Baloo was party to this, but he couldn’t get into it. He did his part and tried not to look at Mickey, whose eyes were raging rivers now.

“Please! Guys! No!”

Johnny grabbed Mickey’s open pants at the waist, his fingers snagging his accused friend’s briefs as well. “Down they come!” And with a yank they did, revealing him.

Johnny Gibbs jumped back off his balling friend. “What the hell?”

“Oh, man,” Walter exclaimed with softened shock, and got off of Mickey too. Jimmy Logan couldn’t move for a moment, but slowly he let go the arm he was on and stood back a few steps.

A kick from Mickey sent Andy off of him, too, and once he was free he rolled to his side, covering himself inside a fetal ball.

“Shit, man, what was that?” Jimmy asked. They had gravitated together after letting go of Mickey, and now stood nearby his inconsolable form curled up on the hot, dry Texas ground.

“He ain’t got no dick,” Walter said. “Walter was right.”

Johnny looked to the three who stood with him. His expression was flat, but after a moment he snickered. “Man, he is almost a girl.”

The others laughed. Even Andy. His was nervous at best.

“He’s got no fucking dick, man,” Johnny said, as though repeating so gave the reality more credence. More power. And in a way, it did.

“What a freak,” Jimmy said, and they laughed again. Andy, too. A little more easily now. Just like his buddies.

Mickey Strange laid on the ground and let them hoot above him. Covered his eyes and let them howl.

“Man, let’s get away from the freak,” Walter suggested.

Johnny kicked a cloud of dust over the freak who was no longer their friend, man, no way, and started off back toward town. Walter and Jimmy followed, and right behind them Andy, who looked back once and saw Mickey still laying there, then he looked no more.

When school started a few weeks later, kids who had known him but a month the previous June were calling him something in the hall. Each time he passed. He had a new nickname. Mickey Dickless.

*   *   *

His parents divorced that winter. His mother got custody. His father got visitation. In the spring Mickey started little league.

He hadn’t wanted to, but his mother said he should. It would give him something to do on weekends while she worked, she explained. She’d gotten a job at the Hoover Chemical plant and they’d rented an apartment. Times were hard.

So was little league.

He was not a natural athlete. He could run, but throwing was not his strong suit. Hitting was a disaster. Catching worse than both. He was put in right field when they let him play at all. When he’d muff an easy catch, some polite people along the first base line would yell out, ‘Nice play, Mickey D.’ Impolite ones let the D be what is was.

One day just before summer his father came to watch.

Visitations were usually Wednesday night. Visitations were usually his father taking him for a burger and leaving him in the car while he talked dirty talk with the waitresses inside. Sometimes he’d bring one out with him and make Mickey hop over to the back seat of his Dodge. He’d drive the boy home with the waitress nibbling on his ear. Sometimes her head would disappear for a while. Sometimes his dad had to pull over.

The day he came to the field to watch his boy play, however, there would be no burgers. After an unimpressive performance, Mickey walked to where his father was waiting on the third base line. His head hung low. His father lifted his chin and handed him a baseball.

Mickey’s face beamed at it.

“That there’s a baseball signed by a bunch of baseball players,” Nicky Strange said. His mouth was half full of tobacco. “Yankees I think.”

Mickey examined it. The writing all looked the same. He looked up to his dad. “Thanks.”

“Your mom never gave you nothing like that, now, did she?”

Mickey shook his head. His mother had not. She had given him a watercolor set the previous week, but he hadn’t opened it yet. He’d told someone on his team about it. They’d said that painting was for sissies.

“How about some catch?” Nicky Strange asked his son.

“Okay,” Mickey said, and they walked toward the parking lot. Every now and then Nicky Strange looked nervously around.

Mickey had thought they were going home, to the lot out back of the apartment building where he and his mother lived. His father drove right past the pale yellow building.

“Where are we goin’?” Mickey asked.

Nicky Strange spit a messy wad of chaw out his open window and kept his eyes front and center. “Goin’ to play some catch.”

“Where?”

“Up here a piece.”

Up there a piece was behind the old Danbrook Warehouse. Fire had torn through it a dozen years before, leaving it decaying and deserted.

Nicky Strange pulled into the mostly overgrown lot behind it and parked out of sight of the street. Mickey held the baseball he’d been given in his hand, turning it over and over, trying to read all the names that seemed so alike. His father looked over to him. Put his arm on the seat behind his boy. Smiled half a smile with the side of his mouth not weighted by chaw.

“I talked to a lawyer man, Mickey,” Nicky said, and his son looked up. “He said that money you got for what the doctor did would go to your momma and me if anything happened to you.”