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Gay/Lesbian/Feminist Bookstores Around the Country
The Mostly Unfabulous Homepage of Ethan Green
Excerpt One: "Colorado Springs"
By Brian Pera
From Troublemaker
Nothing else in the world to do, and nowheres else to go’s how I ended up at the carnie. And that’s how I met Red; got the fire hair, freckles scattershot all across his face. Said he was running, said he didn’t know where he’d be tomorrow but sure as hell not there in Nebraska. I couldn’t of said it better myself.
It was the last time I seen my ma. I come all the way from New York to Omaha, gone to her house and – what’s new – she wouldn’t let me in. Peeked out the window and mouthed the words I knowed so well by then.
…Go…away…
Just to bug her, or cause I come all that way for nothing and now what, I stood there, not a budge – stared her down. Her eyes skirted every which way over the windowpane, without she’d look me in the face. The more she done it the harder I stared. How’d we get to this place’s what I’s thinking. It was all in my head but not put together.
Red. I followed him around and for the most part he didn’t mind. He even told me some about his self. Said he come to Omaha from a rinky-dink neighbor city. Got sent to Boystown, where Pappy Flanagan’s supposed to save the souls. ("There’s no such thing as a bad boy," says Pappy. "Yeh right," said Red, "Just good and better.") He ain’t got a ma or pa, or so he much as said. Somebody-or-other sent him there, and the second he was in he was trying to figure how to bus out. Made two tries and got caught both times – they dragged his ass back. And cause they knowed he wanted out they put the pressure on even harder, more than on the others guys what just sat around and did the "yes sir" "no sir."
Wouldn’t you know he finally got out without he even had to try. Some man, some bigwig or other, come to Boystown, made an act like I’s ‘a gonna take care of this boy myself, gonna be my pet project, my special ward. Told them he’d put Red to work in his yard, make a man out of him. And cause the guy got money what fooled all the soul-savers, he took Red’s hand and waltzed him right out of there.
Sure he took care of Red, give him everything a guy could want and more. But there’s always a few small hitches for the price of room and board. Not just do this and do that but favors traded plain and simple. Strip down and dough-si-dough: Red was the man’s private boy. But the guy liked to share. There was stuff about flying him around in a jet, parties with other soul-saver bigwigs, putting on shows in back rooms. Here’s where the story got sketchy on account of Red only let me in on so much. Said he couldn’t never know for sure just who was who and who was listening in. He was going to keep quiet like some peoples told him, until they come through on their end of a deal.
Said he was here on business, said this was the perfect place to meet his man, the carnie: loads of peoples, noise, and colors, not a one thing to stick out from the rest. Told me I could hang with him until the man come, but after that I’d have to beat it like we didn’t know each other, which I figured’d be easy since it was anyways mostly true.
"So who’s the man?" I says. "He somebody from Boystown? You aim to go back there?"
"You crazy?" he says and his face gone screwy. "I’m trying to get away form them. Twisted motherfuckers made my life hell enough as it is."
And already by that time I knowed to keep my mouth shut, so I changed the subject to me. Told him I knowed just exactly what he meant, just exactly, on account of I myself ain’t had nowheres to go. How I seen what little home I got left just a few days before I come to the carnie – no go and get lost – and I’s ready to head just about anywheres. When he didn’t tell me to shut up, when I seen he’s just looking away like he always done so’s it might be he’s listening, I gone on about my pa dying awhile back and what that done to what was left.
"He was sick on his bed for the longest time: alcohol, and cigarettes. Or so they says. Holed up top of the house in a back room, his bedroom but since he got sick it seemed more like a waiting room weren’t nobody waiting in but him. He was on all kinds of pills, washed down with whiskey stored somewheres in there.
"Whichever, he was almost always asleep when I snuck in – got his head propped on a stack of pillows, body a sack of bones by then – and I’d know he was still alive from the way he’s breathing: mouth wide open reaching up far as he could make it like to suck all the air in with whatever energy he got left. Sometimes I’d take some of them pills myself, slide under his bed. Hide for the rest of the day. In the beginning I laid on the wood floor, which didn’t bother me none but later I brung pillows and a blanket and made my own bed to lie in. Figured I may as well set up camp.
"Sometimes he woke up after I been under for a while, and I’d be quiet, listen to the shake of the pill bottles, gulp of something to drink. I expected he’d get to bawling, like he just couldn’t stand being in bed no more after so long without cigarettes and whatever else, no matter what Ma said about he liked it better that way, but he never so much as shed a croc tear that I could tell. Just all the bottles rattling and maybe he’d holler for Ma but she generally didn’t come until after dinnertime, when Pa was dead to the world. By that time he didn’t wake up much. Just asleep and gasping like he done. Mostly I’d be under the bed trying to match my breathing to his, let myself near suffocate in that breadbox, thinking I could get to where he was so’s I’d know how it felt.
"Course it was me found him dead, snuck into the room to find it was silence, no more breathing out of whack or breathing at all. I figured he just delivered his self to whatever dream he been having, right? Like they say peoples get to a point they like what’s going on in their head better and want to go there so they just do; they just up and leave.
"Before I gone to tell my ma I searched the room until I found his flask: Looking in his drawers between clothes he ain’t wore in years, under seat cushions and back of curtains, in the bathroom cabinet under the sink – all I found there was an invitation to him and my ma’s wedding, like I’d wanted to go even if I could; it was pure white paper but for where the water pipes leaked lines on it. Come join us for the wedding of So-and-so and so on. Fell apart in my hands the second I picked it up.
"In the end I found the flask between the mattresses, half empty or half full. The whole time it been right under his nose and dangling over mine; now how come I wouldn’t of figured that out? Should of knowed he wouldn’t put it nowheres he’d have to walk for it. I took it, along with an empty pill bottle, and hid them in my room. Then I gone down to the basement where my ma was, told her Pa weren’t breathing no more. She got her back to me, digging for something in the pantry, and I thought maybe I should just kick her in so’s I could get rid of the worst too now the best was gone.
"In a minute," she said without she even turned to me.
"Weren’t until later I found out the real reason Pa died: He swallowed every pill out of them bottles on his bedside table. Ma never mentioned the one I got. Once in a while, until I lost it like everything else, I took the lid off and held it up to my nose, tried to smell what been in it before, like hearing the ocean in a shell. Just a hint left, but I got me a sense for it. Ain’t made me feel better, or feel anything in particular, but I found myself doing it again all the same. By the time I finished the whiskey off I got a taste for that too. Still got the flask in my bag."
And I motioned to it at my hip.
Red made a sound like to laugh, though you wouldn’t of knowed it by looking at him.
"Sounds like maybe you would of been better off at Boystown," he said.
Least I knowed he was listening.
Copyright © 2000 Brian Pera.
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