The Home

TWELVE

Freeman was dreaming of his dead grandparents' farm, a hundred and twelve acres of rolling woodlands, the green valleys pocked with cattle, a silver creek winding through the belly of the land. Freeman was in the garden near the barn, the smell of drying tobacco, manure, and hay dust hanging in the warm summer air. Broad leaves of zucchini plants and wires of runner beans surrounded him. He drove his shovel into the black earth, turning up nightcrawlers.

He turned the shovel and the worms spilled out, slimy and as thick as pencils. The shovel blade dipped again, and the ground fell away, becoming a huge black cavity. A monstrous worm reared up, glistening with mucus, its blind head probing the sky. The worm continued to swell, its girth like that of a rubbery tree.

Suddenly, the worm grew a hundred arms and the dark mouth opened: "Hey, Shit For Brains, what the fuck you doing jerking off in here when I need you?"

Now the worm wore Dad's head, and Freeman struggled against his blankets as the worm's millipedic arms reached for him, strangled him, slapped at him, smothered him, and, worst of all, hugged him "Psst. Hey, new guy. Freeman."

Freeman shoved away, cried out, the sunshine of his dream gave way to six walls of shadow, and still the Dad-worm clutched at him.

"Whoa, man. Take it easy."

Freeman groaned and opened his eyes. In the muted night light of the Blue Room, he could make out the face of the mossy-eyed boy, Isaac, from Group. The boy was shaking him awake.

"You must have been in a bad nightmare," Isaac said in a loud whisper. He released Freeman and knelt by the cot.

Freeman blinked in the gloom, his heart pounding. Even in here, behind these dense stone walls, he couldn't escape that damned asshole. Dad was deeper inside his brain than a maggot in a corpse, whether he was asleep or awake. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Thanks."

"You were kicking up a storm. About broke my arm."

"I was getting away. I've had lots of practice."

"Who hasn't? You either get away or you're not around very long. You know how they are."

The Blue Room was fairly quiet. At the far end of the rows of bunks, a couple of boys were talking. It might have been eleven o'clock or three in the morning. "Where are the house parents?"

Isaac snorted. "Probably playing kissy-face with each other, for all I know. They make themselves pretty scarce after Lights Out."

Freeman lowered his voice. "And Deke?"

He pictured Deke pestering the smaller boys in the night, maybe even molesting them. The thought sickened him as much as the dream had.

"The fearless leader? Listen for a second."

Among the nocturnal stirrings and small talk, an abrasive, rhythmic sound rose and fell.

"That's his snoring," Isaac said. "He's big on sleep. At night, you can always count on being able to tell where he is. I'm Isaac, by the way."

"I know. Like in the Bible. You ever get sacrificed?"

"Not that I know of. You know how hard it is to put up with all this Christian baloney when you're a Jew?"

"I can imagine. But, if you're like me, you learn to fake it pretty quick. I've been in enough homes to know that the faith-based ones make for easier time, and have better food, too."

"Damn. Are you Jewish, too?"

"No, but I might as well be. Got nothing better going on."

"Jews don't trust their kids to be outside a Jewish family. When I got orphaned, my aunts and uncles tried to claim me. But the shrinks wouldn't let them, because, swear to God, I don't trust Jews, either. I mean, we're pretty peculiar sometimes."

The main door creaked open. "Hey, keep it down in there," came an adult voice. A flashlight beam sliced from nowhere and swept over the rows of bunks.

Isaac put his face near Freeman's and whispered, "Nazis."

"Ah, the fathers of modern psychiatry," Freeman said. "You know that's how the Germans got their taste for genocide, by wiping out nut cases in the 1930s. Then they started on the homosexuals."

"Hey, I thought the Jews were first."

"Nah. They were doing that stuff even before Hitler came along. All the while these doctors would twirl their mustaches and talk about what a great service they were doing by putting undesirables out of their misery."

"Some of the doctors were Jews, I bet," Isaac whispered.

"Well, Isaac, you present as a classic casebook example of 'paranoia.'"

"You talk like a shrink."

"No, I'm smarter than most of the shrinks I've gone up against," Freeman said. "My dad was one. Always shrink your shrink until they're smaller than you are. That's my philosophy."

"I'll bet you've got a lot of philosophies."

"Changes with the weather."

"So what are you?" Isaac asked. "Manic D? Plain D? Schizo? Socio?"

"Manic D with a cherry on top. At least that's what my case file says. What's got you?"

"Demons. Ugly little Jewish demons with hooks for fingers. Can't shake the bastards loose." Isaac shuddered as if one of the invisible demons had just landed on his back.

"You should see a doctor about that."

"Nah. They tell me that all I have to do is accept Jesus as my own personal savior and I'll be cured. I'd just as soon put up with the demons. A lot lower maintenance."

They were quiet for a moment. Deke's snoring cut through the still air, halted as he rolled over, then picked up again, the rhythm crippled now. One of the guys in a nearby bunk broke wind in his sleep, and Freeman stifled a giggle.

"On nights we have pinto beans, it gets really rough in here," Isaac said.

"There's more than one way to gas a Jew."

They shared a hushed snicker, then Isaac said, "That was a pretty clever trick, what you did with the book today. I've been here for two years, and that's the first time anybody's stood up to Deke."

"I didn't stand up to him so much as just confuse him a little."

"That's easy to do, I admit. But you could have got your face broken. Keep an eye on him. He'll be out to show the others you're not so hot."

"It burns me up that he picks on the little kids. What's the deal with Dipes?"

"It's not a good thing when you're old enough to change your own diapers. Somebody or something must have screwed him up bad. He won't talk about it."

"Join the club," Freeman said. "We're all people of difference, exceptional children. The troubled. The little bumblefucks that society likes to keep out of sight and out of mind."

The door to the Blue Room opened again, spilling a shaft of light from the hallway. A house parent entered the room, following his flashlight beam between the rows of cots. Isaac slid under the bed beside Freeman's, then flipped onto his own cot. Isaac was under the blankets by the time the light settled on him.

"Were you sleepwalking again, Isaac?" said the house parent, Phil.

Isaac sat up and rubbed at his eyes. "They've got pointy fingers," he murmured.

Freeman had to chew the hem of his blanket to keep from laughing out loud.

"Well, try to keep quiet," Phil said. He was thin, with styled hair and cologne that was so strong Freeman could smell it over the lingering odor of flatulence. The man's voice was girlish and whiny. "The other boys need their sleep."

"Sure thing, Phil," Isaac said rolling his face into the pillow. He said something else which was lost in the bedding.

The light played across the room, resting for a moment on Freeman. He squeezed his eyes tight and concentrated on breathing evenly. The light moved on, and Freeman listened until the footsteps receded and the door closed.

"Nar-nar-narcolepsy," Isaac said out loud imitating a snore.

"Fake sleep disorder," Freeman said. "Good one. If you hadn't already taken it, I might have added it to my repertoire."

"Yeah, I can pretend to fall asleep whenever some shrink is droning on about my learned helplessness. But if you're manic depressive, you got all the outs you need. Nothing like swinging both ways."

"And then there are the in-between days. Or even hours. I'm a rapid cycler. Up and down faster than a damned elevator."

"Shut the hell up," came a brusque voice from the end of the room.

Freeman flipped his middle finger into the semidark-ness and settled into the covers. At least he'd made an ally. One thing he'd learned in group homes, you needed a few allies if you were going to pull through, as long as they didn't become baggage. Even a loner couldn't always make it alone, and sometimes a sidekick took a bullet for you. True in the movies, maybe true in the outside world. Maybe someday Freeman would find out.

But first there was a night to live through, and the dreams that sleep brought.

Dreams.

Which one would come next?

Dad as a giant whale, with Freeman in a tiny boat on a calm sea? In that one, a storm always blew up as Dad surfaced, the sky became a red hell of bloody lightning, the wind screamed like a thousand dying gulls, the waves rose up in monstrous hands of foam. And the whale opened its mouth, a mouth that swelled until it became a great black chasm and beyond that an everlasting night No, not that one. Freeman hoped he would never have that one again. He'd rather Dad be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, with nothing under his black cloak but bones and disease. Dad with fluorescent yellow eyes glowing inside the hood. Dad with long claws clutching a gleaming scythe, come to harvest Freeman, who ran through the knee-high meadow until even the grass became his enemy, pulling at him, sucking him down No. Not that.

Think of something else.

He thought of Mom, but every time he thought of Mom, he saw only one thing: the bathtub with the red streaks on the shower curtain and NO SECOND CHANCES. THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE.

He mentally shuffled through all of the possible distractions. A mental film fest, Pacino and De Niro facing off in Heat. Do-it-yourself cartoons, the ones you make in your head, where the clowns are jolly and the painted smiles have no teeth behind them. Imaginary music, where the notes hang fat in the air and you can bob them around like balloons.

In his manic state, he could conduct entire symphonies, break down each piece in his mental orchestra, build to throbbing crescendos of air and color. Which was good, because when he was manic, he couldn't sleep. And when he slid down the brain tunnel into depression, he couldn't sleep, either.

Right now, in his in-between state, all he had to do was avoid the nightmares and he could shut his brain off for a while. His medication made his head itch, and the blanket was rough against his skin. They'd put him on some new stuff, Depakote, it was better than the lithium in some ways, but also brought a whole new group of side effects. Though none of the side effects were worse than the ones caused by Dad's experiments.

Like the triptrapping.

It was bad enough when Dad put him in the closet and made him read the cards, kept them hidden while Freeman guessed stars or triangles or wavy lines. Except Freeman didn't have to guess, he could see the cards as if he were looking through Dad's eyes.

And that scary first time when the words "Billy Goat Gruff" popped into his brain for no reason at all, with Dad sitting across from him in the garage that he'd turned into a workroom.

"Goat Gruff?" Freeman had said aloud. "Like in the story?"

"Sure. What we're doing, Freeman, is like when the goats triptrap over the troll's bridge. I'm on one end of the bridge and you're on the other, and you go trip-trap, trip-trap, trip-trap straight across and don't let the ugly old troll know what you're thinking. Because you know what will happen if he hears you?"

Freeman shook his head, and Dad jumped up, yanked Freeman by the hair, and pressed his mouth against Freeman's ear. His words spat like hot bullets. "Because… he… will… GOBBLE… your…fucking BRAIN?"

Then he let go of Freeman's hair, patted him on the head, and said, "This is our little secret, okay, Trooper? I've got some people breathing down my neck that would make the troll look like Little Red Riding Hood. You've got to work with me on this one. It's going to hurt a little, but I promise it will be okay in the end."

Dad had gotten more bizarre from then on, zapping him with electricity, telling Freeman the pain was for his own good because it made his mind more pure and open. Dad stuck him with needles and applied the tip of the blowtorch and locked him away in the closet for longer and longer periods of time, and he must have played games on Mom because she didn't do anything to stop the experiments.

In the closet, with Dad's weird machines humming, Freeman would triptrap into Dad's mind and scream and scream and scream because Dad's thoughts weren't nice at all. And Dad was trying to put thoughts back into Freeman's head, things he didn't understand and that made no sense. That was how he learned about the Trust and why Dad was so scared.

But then Mom was dead and all those strange people from the Trust showed up, took Dad's equipment away, and hauled Dad down to the police station. And Freeman went into protective custody and entered the foster system. And he didn't triptrap for years. Then the gift crept back, as if it had been a hideous monster hibernating in the base of his skull.

Some of the telepathic glimpses were fleeting, some were robust and overwhelming, some were pleasant, and some were pitch black. He'd practiced until he could control the ability a little, because he was afraid of the troll, though he never had figured out what Dad meant. Maybe it was fear, a big, black hungry thing inside. Though he tried to bury the gift, hoping neglect would make it disappear, he'd never been able to completely get rid of it.

He wasn't sure he wanted to give it up, either. Mind reading was kind of cool, even though it was freaky. And it definitely augmented his survival skills. He often knew which people to avoid and which people to mine for useful secrets.

But he was tired right now, and needed to shut down for a while. Thinking of triptrapping always made him remember Dad, and memory could murder. So tonight it was either music or the other tiling that was foremost in his mind.

Vicky won out, and he thought of her until sleep pulled him under its dark sheets.