Wait Until Twilight (16 page)

The bearded guy walks away, and I feel better. But there’s a part of me that would have liked to see Jason fight him. Jason tells me, “Samuel, just remember, if you ever get in a fight, just keep getting back up and fighting, even if they’re dragging you all around the parking lot bleeding and screaming. You keep fighting; they’ll give up. That means you win.”

On the television mounted behind the bar wall there’s a movie showing a samurai fighting big green shiny beetles on some planet that doesn’t look like the Earth. The clip ends, and it shows people dressed up as those beetles in that movie. It’s an advertisement for a local anime exposition. Then it goes back to a baseball game.

As the night goes on Jason eventually meets a dark-haired Russian girl who invites all of us to a party she’s going to. She asks us to walk her and her blond friend to their car first, so we follow them across the street out to the bank parking lot. At the end of the parking lot is a fence with a gate that swings open. All the guys go through, and then for the fun of it I run up and swing it open as hard as I can. It opens all the way, letting the girls walk through.

“Thank you,” they say with smiles.

Their car’s on the other side of the fence, so Jim and Chang stay with them while Jason and me go back to retrieve their car. We follow them in her Camry out of town to a house in the suburbs, where we park on the street along with dozens of other cars. Once we get inside everyone scatters and seems to disappear in a matter of moments, and it’s just me and a bunch of strangers. It’s just like the bar except in a living room. Jim reappears a moment later with a beer in his hand.

“Bro, do you think you could drive us back?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Thanks, man,” he pats me on the back. Jason comes back and puts a pack of cigarettes in my pocket.

“I don’t smoke,” I say.

“Designated driver needs a bad habit,” he says. He follows the dark-haired Russian girl to a sofa, where she straddles him and starts kissing him.
What the hell? How does that happen?
I wonder. I feel pretty damn stupid standing there, so I find a wall to lean against. I take out the pack Jason gave me and find a girl who’s smoking.

“Do you have a light?” I ask.

She lights my cigarette, and I take some small puffs. I’ve tried smoking once before and nearly coughed my lungs up, so I know to take it slow. It makes me feel a little dizzy, so I just kind of hold it
without puffing. After a while I notice the cigarette has gone out so I ask the girl for a light again.

“You’re gonna burn yourself,” she says with a smile.

“It’ll be all right,” I say.

She’s right. The cigarette’s too short, and when I puff the flame goes right at my mouth. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“That was pretty dumb,” I say, and walk off to the bathroom, where I check my lip in the mirror. There’s no blister or burn. It looks normal, just a typical unassuming mouth, but when I touch it, it stings. I open and close it, feeling the slight pain when my upper lip stretches. It looks like I’m talking without making a sound. Hell, I think. There’s no such thing as a perfect mouth. Only on something so imperfect everywhere else would it seem so. How else would those baby mouths look like that? Their mouths were normal not perfect. They didn’t even say anything, just opened and closed like a fish trying to breath out of water. But it looked like they were trying to talk. What could something like that possibly say? It’d be like a fish talking. I look at myself for a long while. I can’t say I remember ever doing that, staring at myself like that. It’s a weird feeling. The more I stare, the less I recognize the face in the mirror. It could be anyone. The skin and flesh, the eyes and nose, it’s all some kind of crapshoot. Those babies are just a part of the same crapshoot that made me. That made Daryl. I notice I feel kind of hot. Am I getting a fever? I check my forehead. It feels cool and damp. Then someone comes in the bathroom, and I get out in a rush. I wade through the party people to the kitchen in search of coffee, something to kill the fatigue. Once I get in there, I nod to the handful of people there and start checking out the pantries when some shaggy-haired stranger wearing a blue flannel shirt asks, “What’re you doin’?”

“Is there any coffee?” I ask.

“Coffee?”

“Designated driver.”

“Sorry to hear that.” He opens the freezer for me. “Help yourself.” There’s a pack of some French coffee called Crème de la Busche. So not having anything to do, not knowing anyone there, I make coffee. I watch it percolating, and then drip into the coffeepot. And I listen to the people in the kitchen. They watch me making coffee and talk. One guy’s talking about how he burned a small barn full of marijuana. “It was a small barn behind my girlfriend’s house. I don’t know why we did it. I guess me and my buddies thought it would be funny?”

“Funny? It’s not funny in jail.”

“No jail time, man.”

“What? They didn’t catch you?”

“After we got it burning we all ran in different directions. I pretended to be jogging, but some cops caught me anyway. But no jail time.”

The strong smell of French coffee wafts from the kitchen into the rest of the house. People come to see what the smell is. Some want a cup, especially those who have to drive back home like me. I make a second pot and am dubbed the “coffee guy.”

I’m sipping on a cup of coffee listening to a story about a guy who got on a school bus full of middle-school kids. The bus driver was his friend and offered to drop him by his girlfriend’s house. During the ride the kids on the bus slowly turned against him and started harassing him. It started with asking him questions about who he was and what he was doing on their bus, next thing he knows they were throwing things at him, paper clips, pencils—whatever their little hands could grab. In the commotion they even threw his books out the window of the moving bus. The bus driver had to stop the bus so he could get his books. Some of the kids took pity on him and helped him pick up his things. Then he sat up front with his bus driver friend the rest of the way. Chang comes in the kitchen and says, “There you
are! Are you ready? The rest of the guys are waiting in the living room.” Chang takes me out to the living room and announces, “He’s the coffee guy!”

“Ahhhh! Holy shit!” says Jim.

“Coffee man! Your brother’s the coffee man!”

They grab me and take me back to the car. They’re all drunkenly ranting and raving at cross-purposes while trying to navigate me back to the apartment. I make my way out of the subdivision onto the main roads into town. Soon I recognize Jim’s apartment on the rise. As we pull up, someone with a laundry bag over one shoulder is locking Jim’s apartment. We get out of the car, and Jim yells up, “What’re you doing?”

It’s a tall guy with blond close-cropped hair and wearing red-and-white warm-up clothes. I could see him being a white rapper. This guy who looks like a white rapper stops on the stairs and brings his pinched fingers to his puckered lips before going on the second-floor landing and walking over to the door to the apartment below.

“What an idiot. He thinks he’s a gangster,” Jason whispers. “He’s gonna get himself in trouble one day because he’s so goddamn stupid.”

“He got us a hell of a deal on our apartment, man,” says Jim.

“Is it worth it having a drug-dealing landlord living right under your feet?”

“He told me, once we got the place, we wouldn’t have to deal with the landlord.”

“Yeah, except once a week when Carl goes to buy all that weed from him. The moron just doesn’t get it. I’m going home. Chang, you want a ride?”

“Just crash here tonight, man. What if you get pulled over?”

“I’ll take my chances with the cops rather than with that bastard.”

Chang finally chimes in, “Dude, you need to dump that asshole. He’s gonna bring you down.” Chang gets in the Bronco with Jason and they drive off. A Mexican lady opens the door on the second floor, and the guy who I assume is Carl goes inside. We go up the stairs to Jim’s, where I crash in Carl’s room. The coffee keeps me awake for a while and I just lay there. I can hear Carl and that Mexican woman arguing from downstairs. Carl gets extra loud, and I can hear him saying, “Listen to this scenario, okay! Listen to this scenario!” Then it gets quiet. Eventually I hear the door slam and I’m worried Carl will come back up here, but he doesn’t. His room smells like cologne, and on the walls there’re a lot of posters of women in bikinis and lingerie. On a shelf are two identical rubber masks that look like fleshy caricatures of angry maniacal men. Both have mustaches. The two identical faces stare at me through the dark. I close my eyes and after some time fall asleep and dream…

…I’M WORKING ON A
very high-tech offshore oil rig out in the Gulf of Mexico. This little platform surrounded by miles and miles of water. It looks futuristic, all metal and smooth lines. Almost everything’s done by computers and robots. I head a crew of five men who make sure each sector they’re in charge of is running smoothly. Then one day the rig is taken over by an evil force. It’s those two fleshy masks from Carl’s room…

It scares me so bad it wakes me up. I take some of those blankets off the bed and crash on the couch in the living room.

I GET UP AROUND EIGHT
. Jim’s still in bed and there’s no telling how long he’ll be in there and I don’t want to bug him, so I get up and head on out, making sure to leave a note of thanks on his fridge. It’s a long and
lonely drive home, and I feel tired and empty. The closer I get to Sugweepo, the closer Daryl gets in my thoughts. I really hope that cat he wanted me to kill got away. Just thinking about it turns my stomach.

By the time I get to Sugweepo I’m sure I got a fever. I just want to lie down on my back and forget I was even born, but I keep driving. As I cruise through town I see the Kmart up ahead, and I’m reminded of what’s lurking in the woods back there. Even though it feels like the whole thing is some out-of-control monster waiting beneath the surface of things, there’s a small part of me that feels like I can do something about it, a little nugget of anger that wasn’t there before. And it’s just enough to get me to turn into the Kmart and drive to the back lot. That goddamn shed. If there’re any of those animals there, I’m going to set them free. I drive by the garbage bin, making sure the Charger’s not there. Then I drive to the front lot and park along with the few Sunday shoppers. I walk back, past the Dumpsters, and start down the dirt path then cut through a large patch of kudzu that leads into the woods. It’s nice and peaceful in there, and I have to remind myself what I’m doing, what’s really in there. Ten minutes come and go as I’m walking through the brush. It’ll take at least thirty minutes if I keep that pace so I start jogging. The clearing is the same as before—shed set against the red dirt ridge, a fence on one side—but the cages are gone. I toss a rock at the shed from a distance just to make sure no one’s in there then peek inside. It’s empty. On the bloodstained workbench are three of those hinged boxes with the holes at the top laid out in a row. No animals, so I turn and start running back down the path, occasionally stopping to listen for approaching footsteps. By the time I get back to my car and am heading home, I’m soaked in a cold sweat.

I tell Dad I’ve come down with a fever and go straight to bed. I can hear him in the backyard building that installation art that Mom designed. He’s really going through with it. The man without an ar
tistic bone in his body. I can even hear him whistling while he works. He sounds happy. There’s only the wall of the house separating us, but it feels like he’s in a completely other world. On a different planet. One with sunshine and good hard work and whistling. I’m the alien in that world. I’m the two-headed fetus floating in formaldehyde. I wish I could become a part of his world. I wish I had something to do to make me whistle. Something that would make me forget everything.

I
’
M STILL FEELING COLD AND CLAMMY
on Monday. Dad tells me just to stay home, but I have to go to school because it’s the day a volunteer group of us students go to Sugweepo Elementary School for a visit. Among our group one of us has to assist in teaching twice a week for three months. I taught the previous three months, and it’s my duty to visit my old students this time around. It’s going to look good on my college application.

I sit through my morning classes, and then around lunchtime Clay, Will, Sheri, and I take a school minivan to the elementary school. Dad was right about me staying at home. My fever’s just getting worse, and those crazy eight- and nine-year-olds aren’t going to help the situation. The only reason they liked me as a teacher was because I played games with them all the time. I even played touch football with them in the hallway one day when it was raining. I got in trouble for that one.

When we get there we’re met by Ted, one of the teachers I got to know during my stint there. He was once a marine and now a bit of a blowhard, but for the most part he’s okay, even though most of the time I don’t think he knows what the hell he’s talking about. He has a bunch of sack lunches, which he hands out to us.

“Samuel, come back for a job?” he asks.

“Not on your life.”

“You know you loved those kids. I was always watching you.”

“Meh,” I say.

“Ha-ha. Samuel, could you take your group to the classroom while I get some Cokes for your lunch?”

“Sure.”

We walk over to the assistant-teacher classroom. Along the way in the hall I see familiar kids who weren’t my students but who recognize me anyway. They say, “Hello!”

I say, “Hi.”

I stop my group on an inclined walkway, from where we can look into the classroom. Down on the ground floor the classroom door is open and Lizard’s talking to the students. Lizard is Christa, a tall blond girl we call Lizard because of her skinniness and stooped-over posture. She has inherited my third-grade class, and from what I’ve heard has quickly become popular with the kids. We lean against a railing and start eating our lunches, peanut butter jelly sandwiches wrapped in plastic wax paper.

“This lunch sucks big time,” says Will. There’s some grape jelly oozing out of the corner of his sandwich. That jelly makes me a little nervous. Will is too unpredictable for not only his but everyone else’s good, especially mine. Lizard stops teaching for a minute and waves at us. All the kids then come to the door and wave, too. Lizard’s apparently told them we’re visiting because some of the students made a sign reading “We love you, Samuel!”

“Samuel!” says some of the kids. “We love you!” They yell up to me in their high childish nine-year-old voices. I can’t believe it.

“You don’t even know me,” I say off the top of my head.

“Hey, Samuel, you can have some of my sandwich,” says Will.

As soon as he says that I start ducking my head. But it’s too late. He’s taken some of that jelly and rubs it in my face, laughing that goofy laugh of his. I try to grab it from him, but he pulls away. I manage to get a piece of it and smear it in his face. All the while he’s trying to smear more on mine. It’s really pissing me off. He starts backing away from me, still laughing, but his back hits the railing. “I got you now, bastard,” I say as I start choking him with both hands. He’s too surprised to react. His face gets red, and he just looks at me with astonished eyes. Then while choking him with my left hand I take my right and start smearing the sandwich around his mouth. I even try to shove it down his throat.

In the distance it sounds like someone’s calling me, a woman’s voice from far away. “Samuel! Samuel!” It becomes louder and louder and there are other voices, too.

“Samuel, stop.”

“Let him go!”

I let go with my shaking hands. Will’s coughing and spitting up a mixture of bread and saliva.

“I’m sorry,” I say, taking deep breaths. “You can choke me back if you want.”

I walk over to a bench and sit down. He comes over and sits beside me without saying a word. My hands are shaking again, so I put them in my pockets.

“Samuel, what’s wrong with you?” asks Sheri. They all seem confused and concerned.

“I don’t know.”

Ted comes back from wherever he was and sees something has
happened. “They got in a fight,” says Sheri. “Will put jam on Samuel’s face, and Samuel choked him for it.”

“I was just playing,” says Will.

Ted sits down beside me and begins lecturing me, “You need to slow down, Samuel. You have too many high expectations about yourself. I could see that when you were here. You’re just going to drive yourself crazy that way. Just slow it down. Look at me,” he says, with his hands out. “I’m an old man, but I’m healthy. I just became head teacher. I know things.”

Will has a very confused look on his face while Ted’s giving one of his I’m-old-so-I-know-everything, blowhard spiels. I just nod my head, hoping he’ll go away. Then a plastic red ball with a face painted on it lands in between Will and me. Then a blue one comes down on Ted’s head.

“You’re dead,” a child’s voice says from below. Then colorful plastic balls start falling all over us. We’re being pelted from below by Lizard’s students. Ted and the rest of the guys get out of the way, as if they know we have it coming to us. Will and I just sit there getting bombarded. When they run out of those balls, they start throwing plastic inflatable cars and trucks that actually sting when they hit. Will and I dodge those while slowly slinking down the ramp until we reach some doors that lead out to an open yard of grass that slopes down to a playground.

“What the hell was Ted talking about back there?” Will asks.

“He’s always like that. Just nod your head enough, and he goes away. Well, we should probably help clean up those toys.”

“Yeah.”

“I need to make a phone call first. Could you give me a minute?”

“Sure, but I’m not cleaning alone.”

Will goes back in, and I take out my cell phone. My hands are steady enough to make a call to Melody. I just want to talk to her for
some reason. She doesn’t answer, so I leave a message asking her to call me back, and then go inside to help clean up. All the little kids come out and scold Will and me for fighting. “No fighting!”

“You don’t fight.”

“Didn’t your momma teach you not to fight?”

They continue reprimanding us for a while and then they help us pick up the toys. It turns out that when the little kids saw us fighting and Lizard saw how upset they were, she told them to unleash the rain of plastic balls, trains, and cars as a punishment, and they gladly did so. Like I said before, we had it coming to us.