Wireman

CHAPTER 4

Tacoma, Washington

^{Veterans Administration Medical Center}

¹⁹⁷⁵

NICK SAT in the vocational therapy room, the inner workings of a small lamp spread before him on a wobbly card table. They had expected him to make something. He balked at the beginning, and said such idiotic therapy should be reserved for men with paralytic brains. It was no wonder that returning veterans were unemployable, be thought, shuffling the pieces around. What kind of work could a basket weaver, lamp maker, ashtray designer do on the outside anyway?

Shakey was talking to him. He sat to Nick’s right, gluing together Popsicle sticks into the shape of an Apache village. He claimed he was Apache, although no one knew what an Apache village was supposed to look like.

Shakey talked for hours nonstop, flitting from subject to obscure subject. Nick often tuned him out.

“Neutron stars have a density comparable to our sun’s, but their radius is only a few kilometers. Imagine one of them falling on us. Pow! Our tiny planet would be instantly vaporized.” Shakey obviously was excited at the prospect.

Nick rolled the lamp socket in his hands, clicking the black button switch on and off. Neutron stars. Now it was a lesson in celestial phenomena. Shakey’s knowledge had no end.

Nick studied the older man’s face. Heavy jowls, pendulous full lips, hooded salamander eyes that seldom blinked. Shakey had been in Pearl Harbor when the bombs fell. When they retrieved him from the water, he was shaking like an old palsied man. The shaking never stopped. Shakey’s tremors sometimes quieted, permitting him to enter the mainstream of life outside the V.A. hospital. When they returned, interfering with whatever job he was able to secure, Shakey would admit himself for a two month stay.

It scorned highly unlikely to Nick that the man would ever get the Popsicle sticks to stand teepee fashion.

Every third one slipped from tremulous fingers and clattered to the floor. There were more sticks around his feet than in the Indian village.

“Where do you learn all that stuff?” Nick asked.

“Encyclopedias,” Shakey said. “Where else?”

“Do you learn everything in the encyclopedias?”

“Not everything. That’s not realistic. I know quite a lot though,” Shame admitted.

“Why bother? What good’s it gonna do you?”

“Well, knowing things is good for you. Take a neutron star, for instance…”

“You already told me about the neutron star,” Nick interrupted.

“Oh, yes, of course. Then what about pre-Columbian art? I can tell you about the classic Maya period. There’s a fresco at Bonampak, Mexico…”

“Never mind that. Tell me something else. What are my chances of getting out of here this month? My brother’s coming in from Nam.”

“Pardon me while I consult my crystal ball.”

“Come on, Shakey, I mean it. What’s the scuttlebutt? You’ve been coming here for years, You know all the shrinks. You can probably predict the release date for any man in this room.”

Shakey looked pleased. He slowly scanned the room’s occupants. It was true. He did know those things.

“Well? Any guess?” Nick pressed.

“A psycho stays put awhile around here, but I think you’re fooling them with true psychopathic ease.”

Shakey sounded very sure of himself.

“Cut the doctor talk. I was in combat.”

“Nevertheless… you are fooling them.” The older man tried to balance two halves of a teepee together.

Nick took them from Shakey’s quivering hands and fitted them evenly. He began to glue the Popsicle sticks into a conical shape.

“What makes you think I’m trying to fool anyone?” Nick had dropped his voice to a whisper.

“I spend more time with you than the doctors, Nick. I’ve been around a long time.”

“You think I’m crazy,” Nick said flatly.

“Not bad crazy. You’re like me. It comes and goes. Mostly it comes. You can’t blame combat forever.”

“You think I’ll get out?” Nick asked again.

“You’ll get out.”

Nick had been holding the teepee so that it would dry, but suddenly he let it fall. Shakey picked lip the two sections and tried once again.

“That’s what I had to know. They wouldn’t tell me. I want to go home.”

“Where’s home?” Shakey asked as the Popsicle sticks flew apart. Discouraged, he swept them from he table,

“Houston.”

“You be careful in Houston.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nick glared, but Shakey was too busy filling a cigar box with the leftover sticks to notice.

“Your disease won’t let you go even if the hospital does. I’ve seen your kind before. Different problems but all of them sleeping under the same blanket.” Shakey nodded to himself sagely, pursing his lips like a strict schoolmarm.

“What disease?”

“There is an infinite variety of names and categories but it all comes down to plain old insanity. Rather out-of-date, that word, but pertinent.” The old man rose from his chair, his great bulk squeezing aside the card table.

Who cares what you think?” Nick caught lamp parts as they rolled near the table’s edge. “You know books. You don’t know me.”

Shakey gave one long blink as he stared down at Nick. An arrogant smile twisted his lips. “I know everything,” he claimed, sounding more pontifical than ever. “I especially understand you, Nick. How else would I know you liked beheading those Vietnamese?”

Instantly Nick was on his feet and swinging, but the fat, trembling man was out of range. Nick’s fists punched ineffectively at the air.

“How do you know those things? You don’t know anything,” he shouted at Shakey’s retreating back. “I don’t need you, you know that?” Nick was yelling now and couldn’t stop himself. He saw the other men in the room staring and suddenly sat down. He grabbed the lamp wire and wound it around his left hand so tightly his fingertips turned blue. He sat at the card table until he was gently tapped on the shoulder and told to put away his things, therapy was over.

That evening when Nick had some time to himself, Shakey’s accusations returned to haunt him. Had he really enjoyed killing the Vietnamese that night? But he was not a soldier, he was a boy. He was just a boy and… suddenly an old memory stirred in his mind.

At the very back of she property line of the house in Bloomington, Texas, stood a weeping willow, its tentacle-like branches brushing the earth. Nick thought the willow was his secret hideaway where he could brood or daydream or, on his particular day, jerk off. Daley spread apart the branches and discovered his brother lying on his back locked in the throes of a sexual odyssey. Daley left as quickly and quietly as he could.

“Daley! Come back here!” Nick called.

When the willow curtain parted a second time, Nick was sitting up trying to adjust his jeans. “You tell and I’ll beat you to a pulp,” he warned.

Daley’s gaze wandered everywhere but to his brother. “I won’t tell,” he promised.

“I bet you do it too. Come sit with me.”

Daley shook his head, clearly embarrassed. Nick gestured impatiently until Daley sat opposite him, studying his grubby fingernails.

“Don’t lie to me, Daley Ringer. Ain’t nobody your age who ain’t done it. It’s nothing dirty, you know. It’s natural.”

Daley refused to admit he too was no stranger to the joys of masturbation.

“What do you think about when you do it? You think about girls?” Nick asked.

Daley turned his head and watched the green limbs sway in the wind. He had not admitted a thing, but Nick clearly knew anyway.

“Sometimes,” Daley finally said.

“I don’t.”

Daley looked at his older brother in surprise.

“Nah, who cares about sticking it in girls? I think about doing it to a… a goat, sometimes.” Nick’s voice began to falter as he saw from Daley’s face that what he was confessing appalled his brother. A sense of shame engulfed him, and he felt dirty, ugly. “Don’t look at me that way, Daley! I was just joking around. God! Just to see what you’d say, that’s all. Who would want to do it with an animal anyway? I read about it in one of Dad’s books. One of those stupid nasty books. People can’t really do it with goats, I was lying,”

Daley got up slowly. He looked old beyond his years.

“Hey, let’s make a deal, huh?” Nick quickly stood up and tucked in his shirt. “This will be my place and you keep other kids away from it. Okay? You find a place and I’ll guard it for you. Good idea, you think?”

“Sure, Nick. That’s a good idea.” Daley looked listless and vacant. The two boys ducked beneath the willow curtain and into the June sunshine.

Later that evening a depression had fallen over Nick like dense fog. His confession to his brother could not be erased. It nagged at him and his mood darkened. Self-pity plunged him into despair and he hated everyone. Daley tried to cheer him up by offering to spend his savings of fifty-two cents downtown, to play baseball, to go scouting for treasure in the town dump. Nick kicked the dusty ground with his feet and shook his head at all the suggestions. Finally Daley gave up and went indoors to read comic books.

Nick disappeared for an hour. When he returned home, the depression had lifted. He smiled at his brother sprawled on the floor and sat down beside him to look over the comics.

Daley was acting funny, jerking his head toward the kitchen. Nick tried to read the silent message. “What is it?” he asked. Daley did not have time to answer.

Their mother burst into the room, her face livid and bruised-looking from crying. Suddenly Nick understood his brother’s anxiety.

“Mrs. Gardner called. I’m going to send you off, Nicholas Ringer. Do you hear me? You keep pushing me and by God, I’ll send you away from here!” she screamed.

Nick got to his feet, a sullen look creeping into his eyes. So that was it. He had been caught.

“I don’t care what you do,” he said defiantly. He was fourteen and taller than his gray-haired mother. She was no threat.

Daley was standing too. “Ma, please.”

“You shut up. What help are you anyway?” Mary Ringer demanded.

“He didn’t mean it, Ma.”

“Always taking up for your no good brother. You’re supposed to watch him. Your own father left us because of this… this… Nick! Are you listening to me?”

Nick met her stare.

“I should slap your smart-aleck face. Why do you do things like this? I can send you off to a home for juvenile delinquents, you know that, don’t you?”

Nick held her stare. Daley touched his mother’s arm, trying to divert her attention.

“You get away from me,” she shouted at the younger boy. “I told you to watch him. Now he goes off and gets caught strangling Mrs. Gardner’s dog! You think she’s going to overlook it? Why do you do it? Are you just out of your mind?” Her face was turning purple with rage.

Nick saw she was losing control a split second before she raised her hand to him. He was quick as he caught her wrist.

“Don’t ever hit me again,” he said, growling from deep within his throat.

Their arms trembled for a moment, Nick pitting his new-found strength against his mother. Suddenly she broke his grip and, flinging Daley aside, rushed from the room crying.

“Oh, Nick.” Daley sank to the floor. He rolled a comic in his hands, then threw it across the room.

“Don’t ‘Oh, Nick’ me. I don’t owe her nothing.”

“You wanna get sent sway?”

“She can’t do that. She’s bluffing. Don’t worry about it.” He scooped a Superman comic from the floor and flipped through the pages. Daley did not have to know how relieved he was. “She can’t do anything to me. No one can.”

“No one can,” Nick mumbled into his crisp white hospital pillowcase as he squirmed on the bed, remembering that day. His fists were balled, his fingers growing numb. He flung one arm over his eyes. He had been so brave that day. But before that confrontation and during all the years of his childhood he had not been able to defend himself against injustice. There had been so many times when his mother deliberately hurt him one way or another.

He would not think about it. He would not dredge up the old, rotten, sick memories. He would not allow himself to remember that evening Mary Ringer… that evening she… And he was only five, how could she have despised him even then, how could she…?

Five years old. Daley was barely three and Daley lived in shadow. He hovered in corners and hid beneath tables, sucking his thumb, dragging behind him a worn baby blanket covered with faded orange giraffes and yellow ducks. If Daley heard his mother and her various boyfriends fighting and yelling, he disappeared into the shadows to suck his thumb. He rarely laughed and he never smiled. He demanded little care or attention. Daley was too young to demand anything from life.

Nick, however, was coming of age, and much too soon. He noticed everything, even things he could not understand. Things like his mother being nice to strange men who came to stay the night and who were gone before morning. Things like bloody sanitary napkins left open and drying on the floor in the bathroom until, with other litter, they were swept into a pile and finally discarded. Things like loneliness and hunger, for a touch, a hug, a genuine smile turned his way.

It was not a happy time for either child, but for Nick it was worse because he knew things were not as they should be. Somewhere in the back of his young mind were the images he saw on TV, images that were different from his home and family. On TV he saw clean, neat homes where the mom and dad spoke in low, soothing voices to their children. No one screamed or broke dishes or slapped in fury. Some images flickering on the screen were violent, but they were the violence of the streets, where gangs fought, policemen shot criminals, and sheriffs in white hats got outlaws. The violence was far away from the pretty houses. He came to realize, instinctively, that his own world with its dirt and clutter and utter chaos was all wrong. It was a place where grown-ups drank beer and cursed, a place where strangers followed his mother to the bedroom.

Nick did not like seeing these things. He began to pout and sulk more often. He cried when he was not being punished, and his melancholy deepened.

Mrs. Ringer’s constant criticism sank into him like insidious poison that shriveled whatever was good and golden about him. He believed every word his mother said. If he was called a cry baby, well then that was what he was. If he was shouted at and pushed aside, then he must be in the way. If he was called ugly, then surely his own mother should know what she was talking about because, after all, she knew him well.

When Nick was five years old, something happened that convinced him he was totally unloved and unwanted. This feeling stayed with him forever.

It was a Friday and his mother had just taken a perfumed bath and was dressing in her bedroom. Nick wandered to the doorway and tried to make himself unobtrusive while he watched her. Suddenly spying him, his mother began to talk.

“I’ve got one hot date tonight, sonny boy,” she said, smiling as she drew on new, silky stockings. “Met him at the checkout counter today at work.” Nick came into the room, but still kept a respectable distance away.

“I’ll show these Bloomington women,” his mother continued, hooking the top of her stockings to her garter belt. “They won’t let their men be seen with me, oh no, they’d lock ‘em out cold if they caught ‘em running around with Mary Ringer. All those good husbands and fathers won’t even take me out for a hamburger, they’re so afraid of being seen. The bastards,” she added, slipping her arms through the straps of a faded pink lace bra. “But tonight—tonight, I got a stranger in town taking me out. Gonna buy me dinner, treat me right, you wait and see.”

Nick barely paid attention to what his mother was saying. All he knew was she intended to go out and leave him and Daley alone again, and he felt terrible all over. His head ached and he had the sniffles. He often caught cold and ran fevers for days. His mother called him sickly and, when she thought of it, gave him doses of the dreadful-tasting Black Draught to wash his system out.

“Those spineless slobs,” Mary Ringer continued, getting into a half-slip. “But I’ll show ‘em tonight. You just wait and see what I show ‘em.”

Nick rubbed his burning eyes and felt his chest tighten until it felt like a pack of cards with a thick rubber band around them. He was hot, even the bottom of his feet were hot. “Mama? Mama, I’m sick.” He stared at her hard while she donned a party dress. “I’m hot, Mama, and I hurt.”

“Stop your whining and come zip up my dress.” She stooped to the floor, her back to Nick. Impatient with his clumsy, five-year-old attempts, she cursed and reached over her shoulder, grunting as she zipped the dress up.

“Look how pretty your mama is,” she said, standing up and preening for him. She had one hand on her hip and she parted her slick, red lips to show the tip of her tongue. Suddenly her expression changed as she looked down at him. She motioned him forward. “What’s that all over your face, Nick?” Cautiously he sidled closer to her, his gaze lowered.

“Don’t you know when to blow your nose? Don’t you know when to wipe your face, for crissakes? Jesus, you’re disgusting. Here, wipe yourself.” She handed him a square of torn sheet she used for polishing her one pair of high heels.

Nick wiped and stood looking at a mess on the cloth. There were streaks of dust and bits of dried mud from her shoes and he wondered how that could have come from two little holes in his nose. She was right. He was dis… dis… whatever she said, that’s what he was.

“I don’t feel good,” he said, seeing she had forgotten him. She stood before the old waterfall veneer dresser brushing her hair. “I don’t feeelll good,” he said louder, coming up behind her so that his reflection was beside hers in the mirror. “I can’t breathe good,” he said with a bit of a lisp so that it sounded like “bweathe.”

Mary Ringer was not listening to her son. Her mind was thirty-five miles away at the Longhorn Steak House and Bar where her date promised to take her for a meal. Although Nick’s pleas fell on deaf ears, his presence did not escape his mother’s attention completely. Her preoccupied gaze lowered in the glass and she almost smiled at the little towheaded boy she saw reflected there. Impulsively she reached for him, drew him to the bench, and made him sit. Looking in the mirror again, she said, “I wish you’d’ve been a girl. Now wouldn’t that’ve been nice? See your hair?” She lifted his straight, too long hair and let it fall against his neck.

Nick sniffled. He squinted at his reflection in concentration. Yes, he could see it. A girl. A girl with long blond hair, his mother’s polished nails on her shoulders, his mother’s lips smiling at her, approving of her.

“Your hair’s perfect for a girl. It would need curling, of course, and a… a…” She eagerly looked over the stacked and scrambled cosmetics on the dresser. “…a ribbon! That’s what we need. If I had a little girl, I could put a ribbon just like this one in her hair.” She lifted the front of Nick’s hair and made a bunching motion while she wrapped the length of red ribbon around and around. Deftly she tied a tow and looked in the mirror for the effect.

It was grotesque. Nick hated it. His mother hated it, he saw it in her eyes. With his hair pulled back from his naked forehead he looked puny and feverish. His pale blue eyes were too wide and staring. The red bow stood up from his rounded head, and the bunched hair was an uneven mass that sprayed out like a handful of tattered feathers.

Nick reached up and pulled at the ribbon. One of his eyes was tearing and his chest hurt. He was going to cry and he did not want to.

His mother slapped his hand and yanked the ribbon from his hair herself. The face that had been dreamy and soft only moments before was now twisted with anger.

“You’re so goddamn ugly,” she said, pushing him back onto the bench when he tried to get away. She fiddled absently with the ribbon, untying it. “It wouldn’t have mattered, boy or girl, you would’ve been ugly as a stick. I didn’t want you. I didn’t want Daley neither, but I got knocked up because I was stupid. I didn’t know no better.”

Tears ran down Nick’s cheeks. He was hot and sick and alone.

His mother had the ribbon undone and she was snapping it between her hands, tight, then loose, tight, then loose. Nick would never know if it was pure hatred, or frustration over her own lost chances, or an unfortunate impulse. But suddenly his mother whipped the thin red ribbon around his neck as he sat beside her, looking into the mirror. She jerked him around until his head hit her pelvis, then she kneed him to push his body forward again, letting the ribbon loosen around his throat. She kept talking to him, her voice rising to a shriek. “Why’d I have to have kids, can you tell me that? What’d I ever do so wrong I got saddled with two brats to support all by myself in this goddamn rinky-dink town?” The ribbon snapped tight once again.

Nick’s head hit her pelvis, her knee in his back, then the ribbon mercifully loosened.

Nick was choking, his lungs gasping at the air, his face in the mirror looking bug-eyed and horror-stricken.

He could not see his mama and the nightmare went on and on, the awful words his mama spoke, the red ribbon tightening, jerking, loosening just enough for him to take a half breath, then tightening again, jerking…

“Mama! Mama!” It was Daley clutching at his arm, then beating at Mama with flailing fists.

And it went on and on. She was strangling him because he—because he was not a girl, because he was not pretty, because she hated him.

Finally Mary Ringer dropped the ribbon to the floor and stepped away from the mirror where she saw what she had done. Nick slumped to the floor gagging and crying. His nose was running and he struggled for air.

Daley knelt beside him and dabbed at his brother’s face with his favorite blanket.

Mary Ringer turned her back on her young sons and left the house to wait outdoors for her date. She did not come back to the house all night. It was the first time Nick did not miss her. It was the first time he felt safe being all alone in the big, shadowy house with his little brother curled up next to him. He would never feel safe around a woman again because they did not like little boys. They did not like them at all.

In three days he got over the cold and fever, but he would never get over what his mother had done.

Never.

Nick sat up on the hospital bed in Tacoma, Washington, his eyes wide open and frightened. He felt his throat, massaging the place where the ribbon had choked him. Was Shakey right? Was he insane?

Finally his pulse slowed, and he could swallow. He lay back on the bed. What was the difference? He had done nothing wrong, nothing immoral, nothing to be punished for. Didn’t anybody understand? If he was insane, then the whole world was insane. All he needed was Daley to help him. He needed to be free. Free to be where he belonged, free to roam Houston where no one would notice him.