Текст книги "Forgive me, Leonard Peacock"

Автор книги: Matthew Quick

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

TWENTY-SEVEN

There’s part of me—deep down inside—that feels the need to make a confession here, especially before I go through with my plan and therefore will not be able to make any sort of statement ever again.

A few months after we went to the Green Day concert, Asher spent the weekend with his uncle Dan fishing somewhere in rural Pennsylvania—I think it might have been the Poconos. He loved his uncle Dan, who was tall and confident and funny and drove a cool truck and was always taking Asher places—like to the movies and car races and even hunting. Uncle Dan seemed like the kind of uncle every kid dreams of having. I remember liking him immediately when we first met. He really seemed like a great guy, which makes it all the worse.[60]60
  Why is it that great guys almost always let you down just as soon as you start to believe in them? Is that a rule of the universe or something? WTF?


[Закрыть]

But when Asher came back from this particular fishing trip—something wasn’t right.

We had this project for school we were working on—about ancient civilizations—and we had picked the Incas. We were putting the finishing touches on a miniature Machu Picchu at his house the Sunday night after he returned from fishing with Uncle Dan. I remember Asher wouldn’t look me in the eye and kept saying “Nothing!” way too loud every time I asked if anything was wrong. Finally he said, “If you ask me what’s wrong one more time, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.” He stared at me—like he wanted to kill me and was capable of doing it too.

I didn’t say anything as we finished creating our Machu Picchu. We had built the skeleton out of LEGOs, had used real sod for the grass, and had been making little cube-shaped papier-mâché buildings for weeks. In my memory, the project looks magnificent—like I’d never made something so beautiful before or since. And Asher had been really proud of it just the week before—excited even. But just as I put the final bit of paint on the last structure, Asher started to smash the project with his fists.

“What are you doing?” I yelled, because we had spent weeks on it.

He just kept punching and smashing, sending down fists from above like some cruel boy-god.

It was so fucking awful to watch—not just because he was ruining all of our hard work, but because I could clearly see he was coming undone.

I tried to grab him and he punched me in the face hard—giving me a black eye.

Then he just started to cry in this really violent way.

His mother came in and saw what was going on. She said, “What happened?”

I stood there with my mouth open as she tried to hug Asher, but he just ran right by her and into his room.

I’d never been so confused.

I couldn’t even explain what had happened to my parents, because I had no idea.

You’d think they would have called Mrs. Beal and asked a bunch of questions, but I don’t think they did, and I remember my dad saying, “Boys fight at that age. Just part of growing up,” to Linda, who was more concerned with how ugly my black eye appeared than the reason for Asher’s freak-out.

Asher didn’t come to school for a few days, and then he just showed up at my house late one afternoon and said, “Can we talk?”

“Sure,” I said.

My dad and Linda weren’t home. We went up into my room and he started pacing like a caged animal. I had never seen him pace like that before.

“I’m sorry I fucked up our project,” he said.

“It’s okay.” I didn’t really care about failing or anything like that, but what he had done to me definitely wasn’t okay, and I knew it.

Why did I say it was okay?

I should have said, “Why the hell did you punch me? What the fuck is wrong with you?” But I didn’t.

I wish I had.

Maybe if I had gotten angry . . .

“Something happened on the fishing trip,” he said.

He looked at me in this crazy way.

He looked so desperate.

But then he broke eye contact, said, “Never mind. I have to go,” and walked out of my room.

I was so confused that I let him walk away without saying a word. I know now that I should have chased him, asked again what was wrong, promised to help him, or—at the very least—I should have told someone that Asher was acting weird, but I was afraid of that desperate look. I didn’t want Asher to punch me again—and I was just a kid.

How was I supposed to know what to do?

The next day, Asher returned to school and really appeared to be okay. For a while everything seemed to go back to normal. Our teacher even let us redo our Machu Picchu model for three-quarters credit, which we accomplished in half the time it took us to build the original.

But then Asher started picking fights with kids at school who were small and quiet.

He started to make fun of me during lunch periods—saying crazy weird stuff like he caught me jerking off to a picture of his mom, or that I tried to grab his dick in the locker room—and he was always trying to trip me in the halls and pushing me into lockers.

I didn’t like it at all, but I didn’t say anything.

Why?

I should have said something—not just to stick up for myself, but because I think Asher wanted me to save him.

Like maybe he wanted me to make it stop the whole time and on some subconscious level he was pushing me to get so fucking angry that I would finally tell the adults in our lives that he needed help. I wonder now if all of what happened afterward—the bullying and then the really bad shit—was his way of punishing me for failing to protect him.

When I finally stood up for myself—when he stopped with me—I knew there would be others.

What if I had the power to save both of us—all of us—all along?

I need to take care of what I should have taken care of a long time ago.

I need to make it stop permanently.

TWENTY-EIGHT

My target suddenly makes an appearance in Mrs. Beal Makes Her Perverted Son His Last Meal—there he is on the kitchen’s bay-window drive-in movie screen.

I start to sweat.

Enemy collateral target known as “Asher’s mother” gives the primary target a kiss on the cheek.

Primary target says something before disappearing.

Primary target looks like the all-American next-door boy in the movie—like the kid you’d pick to take your daughter to the prom. The dutiful-son lie plastered all over that drive-in movie screen gets my heart pumping machine-gun blood drops that race through my veins as I turn the P-38 safety off with my thumb and finger the trigger.[61]61
  The trigger reminds me of a frozen snake’s tongue.


[Закрыть]

Every inch of my skin is slick with sweat, even though it’s probably less than forty degrees out. A minute ago I was shivering, but now I fight an urge to take off my shirt—that’s how hot I feel. It’s like I swallowed the sun.

Primary target’s bedroom light comes on a second later, which is supposed to be my cue to move and put the plan into action, but my feet remain rooted to the ground.

Primary target flicks on his computer and his face glows like an alien.

Kill the alien, I think.

Remember what he did to you.

You have every right.

He’s not human.

He’s a thing.

A target.

Remember to use your military training—what you gleaned from the Internet.

I leave my body and my essence floats up maybe fifteen feet above my head so that I am looking down on the flesh and bones and blood—the matter—I used to inhabit.

I can’t see my expression because of the Bogart hat, but my right arm is outstretched and the P-38 is pointed at the primary target.

My legs don’t walk, but I start to glide across the backyard, through the darkness, light as a ghost.

I look like a rigid lowercase r being pulled across ice.

What’s pulling me? I think as I hover through the stiff winter air looking down, which is when I realize my essence is being pulled too—I’m sort of following my flesh like a helium birthday balloon tied to a little kid’s wrist.[62]62
  This is what used to happen when I was alone with Asher in his bedroom too—I’d just sort of detach and float above as what happened happened. And for a while that was enough to protect me from feeling too bad. It was like what was happening was happening to someone else, while I floated safely with my back against the ceiling and my eyes closed.


[Закрыть]

I’m standing in the target’s window now, remembering what he did to me in that very bedroom so many times.

How confused I felt.

How I wanted it to stop.

How he intimidated me.

How he psychologically tricked me.

How he said if I stopped doing what we were doing he’d tell people in great detail all about what we had done together and then everyone would call me a faggot and maybe even beat the shit out of me.

People would believe him and not me, when he said I made him do it.

And how if I stopped doing what he wanted me to do he’d post the video he secretly made of us with his computer camera that I didn’t know was on.

The first time, he said his uncle had shown him how to feel good in a way I wouldn’t believe.

I wanted to feel good.

Who doesn’t?

We were almost twelve.

We were wrestling WWE-style.

Just messing around.

I had this ski mask I’d wear and pretend I was Rey Mysterio.

He was always John Cena.

And then we weren’t wrestling.

We were doing something I didn’t understand—something exciting, dangerous.

Something I wasn’t ready for—something I didn’t really want.

We were pretending—or were we?

Then Asher wanted to wrestle all the time.

I started asking questions—trying to figure out what was happening.

Asher told me not to ask questions—to keep what happened between us, not to think about it too much—and he looked mean when he said it, like someone I didn’t know, not like a friend at all.

The more it happened, the less friendly he got.

It went on for two years.

I didn’t want to lose my friend.

Haven’t you ever done things you didn’t want to do just to keep a friend?

I tried to avoid Asher’s bedroom—being alone with Asher period—but he was persistent, always asking me to wrestle, which became the code word.

Then I just started making up excuses—telling Asher I couldn’t hang out because I had homework, or my mom had grounded me, or whatever. He got the hint quick, which is when he started to threaten me.

It ended with a fistfight—Asher beating the shit out of me because I refused to “keep wrestling.”

He was always stronger, bigger.

I didn’t care about the beating.

And my not caring freed me.

When I made it clear that he’d have to give me regular black eyes—wounds that would get people asking a lot of questions—to keep it going, that’s when it stopped.

Maybe that’s when I became a man.

When my parents asked about the bruises, I told them Asher and I had another fight.

They didn’t ask any follow-up questions.

Maybe because they suspected I was gay.

I think I tried to tell Linda once, but she refused to believe it and changed the subject. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I was probably indirect, because how can you be direct about shit like that when you’re just going through puberty? Sometimes I remember her laughing, like I had told a joke. Sometimes I remember laughing too, just because it felt safer to laugh, although maybe I made that part up. The memory of that attempt to communicate is all fucking blurry, so I don’t really know.

No one ever found out the truth and that seems wrong—dangerous even.

I became a freak, while Asher somehow went on to become popular and well-adjusted and what most people would call normal, at least on the outside.

The bullies are always popular.

Why?

People love power.

Will I become temporarily powerful if I shoot Asher?[63]63
  The news world will make me instantly famous for sure, and what is fame if it isn’t power and popularity?


[Закрыть] I’ve been wondering.

But—standing there outside his window—I become that scared little kid again whose parents are oblivious and gone; whose mother doesn’t even say a word when she walks in on her son and his best friend naked one day, but simply shuts the door and pretends it never happened.[64]64
  I remember that happening suddenly. I do. It’s a real memory. Where did it come from?


[Закрыть]

But for some reason—regardless of all that—I start thinking about this one summer day, before all of the weirdness started, back when we were just two kids.

It’s the last good memory I have of my old friend.

For no reason at all, Asher and I decided to ride our bikes as far as we could before we were due home for dinner.

We left at nine AM and had to return by five PM.

That gave us eight hours, so we decided to ride in one direction for three and a half hours, and then simply turn around and ride home for four and a half, figuring we’d be tired on the return trip, so it would take longer.

It was a pointless thing to do—the type of plan kids come up with when they are bored to death in the summer. But we had never really left our town before without our parents, we knew we definitely weren’t allowed to do this, and so our hearts pounded as we began pedaling defiantly. It felt like we were embarking on an amazing, forbidden adventure.

I remember Asher leading the way through all of these towns we’d never been to before even though they were close by and I remember experiencing a sense of freedom that was new and alive and intoxicating.

I remember being forced to stop when a red-and-white gate came down, and as we watched a train pass, I noticed Asher’s T-shirt was soaked in sweat. He had us pedaling hard and my thighs were on fire for most of the trip, but they burned hottest then, when we were forced to wait idle.

When the train passed and the gate went up, we were off again.

He kept looking back over his shoulder and smiling at me—and I loved him in the sort of way you love a brother or a trusted friend—even as the bugs kept hitting my face and the summer wind blew back my hair.

I remember sitting by a pond in a formerly unknown-to-us park located in a town where we knew no one—eating the slices of leftover pizza we had wrapped in tinfoil and stuffed into our backpacks.

We didn’t even really say anything to each other, but smiled because we were rebelling—out in the great big world on our own—and we couldn’t believe how easy it was, how you could hop on your bike, pedal, and disappear from under your parents’ thumbs, from everything you knew, and how there was so much out there for us to explore.

That day buzzed with possibility.

We both felt it, and so there was no need to put it into words.

Everything was understood.

What happened to us?

What happened to those two kids who simply loved to ride bikes for hours and hours?

The mouth of my P-38 is almost touching the glass now.

Primary target doesn’t sense I’m just outside his window.

Primary target is approximately five feet away.

If your grandfather could execute an evil man, so can you, I think.

The computer screen casts an eerie glow over the target’s bedroom.

As I hover above my body, I try to move my index finger so that it will trip the trigger and the and the P-38 will dischar ge and the glass will shatter and the target’s head will explod e like a pumpk in.

But that doesn’t happen for some reason.

The target clicks off his computer and the room goes dark.

It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, but when they do I see that Asher has his dick in his hand and he’s jerking off in his chair, only he’s turned sideways so that his pumping fist won’t bang the underbelly of his desk. He’s even thrown back his head.

But, amazingly, even with Asher jerking off five feet away, I just can’t stop thinking about that day we went for that long-ass bike ride and wishing we could erase everything that happened since and live in the space of that one single day.

I remember turning around at the designated time so we wouldn’t be late for dinner, so we wouldn’t arouse our parents’ suspicions.

We were in front of a car dealership and there were all of these red, white, and blue balloons left over from the Fourth of July. We put our feet on the concrete, straddled our bikes, and surveyed the new land we’d discovered.

It was like we were little Christopher Columbuses or Ponce de Leóns.

Like we had left safe land and survived unknown waters.

BMX bikes were our ships.

Asher said, “We made it pretty far.”

I nodded and smiled.

“We can do this every day this summer. Go in so many different directions! Like the spokes of our bike wheels!”

I remember the look on his face was genuine pure excitement—like we had just discovered we had wings and could fly.

His eyes radiated like the summer sun above us.

But we never did go on another bike ride like that ever again, and I’ll never understand why.

Our parents didn’t catch us.

We didn’t get into any trouble at all.

The trip was a complete success.

We just never got around to taking another daylong ride, maybe because of what Asher’s uncle started, and that seems so so fucking sad right now, such a missed opportunity, that my eyes get all watery and my vision blurs.

 
My P-38 is
still pointed
at the primary
target, but I’m
starting to realize
that I’m not
going to
complete
this mission.
I’m
a
terrible
soldier.
 

My grandfather would probably call me a faggot and slap the shit out of me, like he used to do to my father, or so my mother told me at my grandfather’s funeral, when I was in the third grade.

My heart’s just not in it, but I’m not really sure why.

Probably because I’m a fuckup who can’t do anything right.

My essence gets sucked back into my body and then I’m clicking the P-38 safety back on.

I stuff the gun into my front pocket, pull out my cell phone, and hit the power button.

As soon as it loads up I tap the camera icon, make sure the flash is on, point it at Asher’s bedroom window, discharge an explosion of white light so he will know someone has taken a picture of him jerking off, and then run like hell through the woods.

TWENTY-NINE

As I snake through so many leafless trees, kicking through mounds of dead foliage and fallen branches, I keep tripping and worrying about the P-38 accidentally firing a bullet into my thigh—but I keep laughing too.

I picture Asher jumping up when he saw the flash and then scurrying to the window and seeing someone running for the woods.

I wonder if he knew it was me.

Of course he knew it was me!

Who else would it be?

Although he probably has many enemies and maybe even has a new secret boy, now that I’m out of the picture.

Still, whether he knows it was me or not, he’s probably worried about that photo showing up on Facebook or being posted all over the hallways of our school—and even though I would never do either of those things,[65]65
  Mostly because I’d be too afraid of what people would say about me if they deduced just who it was that took the photo and then, therefore, would know I was watching Asher through his bedroom window. “Why?” they’d ask me. Explaining the reason to übermorons would be worse than death any day. And Asher would definitely incriminate me if that picture ever got out. He’d drag me down with him for sure. Offer me up to the übermorons like a sacrifice. They’d believe whatever he said too, because he’s more like them than I am.


[Закрыть] it’s still kind of funny thinking about Asher’s jerk-off picture going public.

I mean, think of the meanest person you know.

Think of Hitler, even.

And then picture him jerking off alone in a room.

Suddenly, he doesn’t seem so evil and impressive anymore, does he?

He seems sort of hilarious and powerless and vulnerable and maybe even like someone you feel sorry for.

Back in junior high, our health teacher told us that everyone masturbates.

Everyone is a slave to sexual desire, I guess.

And so maybe everyone deserves our pity, then, too.

Maybe if we would just picture our enemies jerking off once in a while, the world would be a better place.

I don’t know.

Somehow I end up by the river and decide to catch my breath under this little bridge where there are endless empty beer cans, shards of cheap alcohol bottles that were long ago thrown against the massive concrete wall, used condoms here and there, and all sorts of graffiti—gems like “Rich fucked Neda here 10-3-09” and “Super Cock Hero!” and “Tru Nigga 4 life,” even though there are no black people living in our town.

Kids in my high school drink beer under this bridge, and call it Troll City, although I’ve never been to any of those parties.

As I catch my breath, I think about Asher and laugh once more.

What he did to me doesn’t seem all that important anymore, because I’m about to blow my brains out, and so the memory of it will instantly disappear and be gone forever.

End of problem.

And I tell myself that he’s freaked out about the photo I took—that will have to be his punishment.

I’ve evened the score.

I can let go.

I can finally close my eyes and fall backward into the deep beyond.

I try to believe that anyway.

For some crazy reason, I remember this quote about living with what you’ve done and that being a significant punishment of its own. Herr Silverman had us debate this quote in Holocaust class when we were talking about the Jews who searched the globe hunting for escaped Nazis after WWII—men who had done evil, horrible things and then fled to Argentina or Namibia or wherever.

A lot of kids in my class argued the validity of that quote, probably because they thought taking the high road was the right answer, what Herr Silverman wanted, the response that would score you the most points on the SAT.

I know Herr Silverman wasn’t saying the Nazis who fled should be forgiven and given a fresh start. He was trying to make us think about how life is hard and people suffer in all sorts of ways without our adding to their suffering to satisfy our sense of vengeance, but I sort of don’t think that the quote holds up in the real world, where literature and schooling and philosophy and morality don’t exist, because Asher and Linda and so many other culpable people seem to be fine—functioning exceptionally well within the world even—while I’m under a disgusting bridge about to put a hole in my skull.

Maybe this is how the Jewish Nazi hunters felt back in the fifties—like they were still living in Troll City even after they had been liberated from the Nazi death camps.

Or maybe this is justice.

Maybe I’ve allowed myself to become this fucked-up, depressed, misunderstood person.

Maybe this is all my fault.

Maybe I should have killed Asher Beal.

I mean, I was so angry.

Asher definitely deserved to die.[66]66
  It makes me think about how Hamlet had the chance to kill Claudius while he was praying, but didn’t since Claudius had just made peace with god, asked for god’s forgiveness, and therefore was eligible for entrance into heaven, as Lauren will tell you. So Hamlet waited for a time when Claudius was sinning. Would Hamlet have killed Claudius if he had found him jerking off like Asher? For some reason, I don’t think so, which makes me feel better. Who could kill someone while they were jerking off? It seems impossible. I bet Hamlet would have laughed if he found his father’s murderer rubbing one out. How could you not laugh?


[Закрыть]

Or maybe I should have tried to save Asher back when all the bad shit began—before he turned full-on evil?

But I was just a kid.

We were just kids, and maybe we still are.

You can’t expect kids to save themselves, can you?

I’ve got the gun to my temple now and I’m rubbing the side of my head into the metal O.

It feels sort of nice—almost like a massage—as I push the P-38’s mouth harder and deeper into the soft spot of my skull.

It’s like the P-38 is an old skeleton key I’m trying to fit into an old padlock and when I make that connection I’ll hear a click and a door will open and I’ll walk through and be saved.

“Make that lock click, Leonard,” I whisper to myself. “You just have to squeeze your index finger and everything will be okay. The thoughts will stop. No more problems. You can finally just rest.”

I’m just about to pull the trigger when another random question pops into my head.

I wonder whether Linda ever remembered that it was my birthday.

For some reason it seems important right now and the more I wonder the more I realize I just can’t die without knowing the answer.

I lower the P-38 and check my phone for voice messages.

There are none.

I check my e-mail.

Nothing.

Nor are there any text messages.

I laugh—I mean I fucking howl, because it seems so fitting somehow.

What a birthday it’s been.

What a life.

I raise the P-38 and press the mouth into my temple once more.

I close my eyes.

I squeeze the trigger.