Zombie

1

My name is Q__ P__ & I am thirty-one years old, three months.

Height five feet ten, weight one hundred forty-seven pounds.

Eyes brown, hair brown. Medium build. Light scattering of freckles on arms, back. Astigmatism in both eyes, corrective lenses required for driving.

Distinguishing features: none.

Except maybe these faint worm-shaped scars on both my knees. They say from a bicycle accident, I was a little boy then. I don’t contradict but I don’t remember.

I never contradict. I am in agreement with you as you utter your words of wisdom. Moving your asshole-mouth & YES SIR I am saying NO MA’AM I am saying. My shy eyes. Behind my plastic-rimmed glasses that are the color of skin seen through plastic.

Caucasian skin that is. On both sides of my family going back forever as far as I am aware.

My I.Q. when last tested: 112. A previous time tested: 107. In high school when tested: 121.

Born Mt. Vernon, Michigan. February 11, 1963. Dale Springs public schools. Dale Springs High School, class of 1981. Q__ P__ graduated forty-fourth in a class of one hundred eighteen. Did not win a scholarship to any college. Did not belong to any sports teams, school newspaper or yearbook etc. Highest grades in math except in senior year calculus where I fucked up.

I see my probation officer Mr. T__ alternate Thursdays 10 A.M., downtown Mt. Vernon. My therapist Dr. E__ Mondays 4 P.M., University Medical Center. Group therapy with Dr. B__ is Tuesdays 7 P.M.

I am not doing well, I think. Or maybe just O.K. I know they are writing reports. But I am not allowed to see. If one of these was a woman I would do better, I feel. They believe you, they are not always watching you. EYE CONTACT HAS BEEN MY DOWNFALL.

Mr. T__ asks questions like rolling off a tape. YES SIR I tell him NO SIR. I am employed. On a regular basis now. Dr. E__ is the one who prescribes the medication. Asks me questions to get me to talk. My tongue gets in the way of my talking. Dr. B__ throws out a question as he says to get the guys talking. They’re bullshit masters. I admire them. I sit inside my clothes staring at my shoes. My whole body is a numb tongue.

I drive everywhere in my Ford van. It is a 1987 model, the color of wet sand. No longer new but reliable. It passes through your vision like passing through a solid wall invisible. My American flag decal big as a real flag in the rear window.

My bumper sticker is I BRAKE FOR ANIMALS. I thought it was a good idea to have a bumper sticker.

2

Is Time outside me, I started wondering in high school. When things began to go fast. Or is Time inside me.

If OUTSIDE you have to keep pace with fucking clocks & calendars. No slacking off. If INSIDE, you do what you want. Whatever. You create your own Time. Like breaking the hands off a clock like I did once so it’s just the clock face there looking at you.

3

I am a registered part-time student at Dale County Technological College where I am enrolled in two three-credit courses for the spring semester. INTRO TO ENGINEERING & INTRO TO DIGITAL COMPUTER PROGRAMMING.

It was decided that Q__ P__ might become an ENGINEER. There are many kinds of ENGINEERING. Chemical ENGINEERING, civil ENGINEERING, electrical ENGINEERING, mechanical & aerospace ENGINEERING. The college catalog lists the requirements for majors. Q__ P__ might earn a degree in how many years Dad calculated.

In the detention center downtown where they locked me up awaiting Dad posting my bond I was observed doing rapid calculations in pencil. Up and down the margins of old magazines laying around. Weird: my hand moving like it had its own purpose. Like in eighth grade, algebra equations. Geometry problems except I didn’t have a compass or ruler but drew the figures anyway. Long columns of numbers like ants just to add them up for the hell of it, I guess. I don’t know why. This went on for a long time. For hours. I was sweating onto the magazine pages watching where the pencil point moved. Even after the pencil point got dull and the marks were invisible. Even when the guard was talking to me and I didn’t hear.

They had me quarantined as they called it. Ninety-one percent of inmates at the detention center are black or Hispanic, white guys are put together in holding cells. I was with two white guys busted on drugs. I was tagged RACIAL OFFENSE. But it was not RACIAL. I don’t know what RACIAL is.

I am not a RACIST. Don’t know what the fuck a RACIST is.

Sweating & my hand holding the pencil was moving but I wasn’t talking. Nor EYE CONTACT with anybody. It was observed how for that period of incarceration Q__ P__ was not talking & was not making EYE CONTACT with anybody.

In that way the fuckers slide down into your soul.

How Dad learned of these math calculations I don’t know. Might have been they allowed him to observe me through one-way glass. On a surveillance camera. & the magazines were probably gathered & given to him for examination. He is Professor P__ & they call him so. He said the idea came to him then. To lend me tuition for the tech college where I would learn to be an ENGINEER. We would all forget about Mt. Vernon State U., that hadn’t worked out. That was years ago.

A longer time ago when I was eighteen there was Eastern Michigan State at Ypsilanti. We had all forgotten about that long ago.

Quentin has a natural love of numbers Dad said to Mom. In my hearing. His voice thick like he was trying not to clear his throat of something clotted. A gift for numbers. Inherited from me. I should have realized.

THAT IS WHY I am a part-time student at Dale County Technological College. & I am studying hard. Dale Tech is seven miles from my current residence but no inconvenience for me, I told my probation officer Mr. T__, I have my Ford van I drive everywhere in. A distance of seven hundred miles is nothing, but I did not tell Mr. T__ that.

4

As of last Monday my residence is 118 North Church Street, Mt. Vernon. University Heights the area is called. Close by the big State University campus where Professor P__ teaches. (But Mom & Dad live in the suburb of Dale Springs, on the other side of town.)

At 118 North Church I am CARETAKER for this residence once my grandparents’ home. None of the tenants know this fact I am certain and I would not be the one to tell them.

The property is still owned by my Grandma P__ who lives now in Dale Springs. But it is maintained by my father R__ P__ as a multi-tenant residence partitioned into nine rental units as approved by the zoning commission.

As a gesture of our trust, Quentin. Dad said.

Oh but Quentin will do a good job! We know that. Mom said.

Grandma’s house is an old faded-red brick Victorian as they call it. With a smudged look in the front like somebody moved his thumb across it. Three storeys, plus the attic. An old addition at the rear used for storage. A big kitchen where tenants have “kitchen privileges” as they are called. A deep cellar which is OFF LIMITS to tenants. A stone foundation that is very solid. Clearing away some underbrush I discovered at the front right corner the date 1892 chiseled in the stone.

University students rent the rooms. The residence has been zoned for such a purpose since 1978 Dad was saying. If I knew this fact or not I don’t know.

As CARETAKER of this property I live on the ground floor rear in the room provided for the CARETAKER. This is a room with its own bathroom, a shower stall & toilet. There have been previous CARETAKERS working for Dad but I don’t know anything about them.

The back stairs to the upper floors & the stairs to the cellar are close by the CARETAKER’s room which is convenient. Nobody can use these stairs except by passing my door. The CARETAKER’s tools & equipment, work bench etc. are in the cellar.

I have access to all the floors of the house. Because I am CARETAKER. My father R__ P__ has entrusted me with this responsibility & I am grateful for the chance to make things up to him & Mom. My master key will open the door to any room in the house.

Most of the students who rent with us are foreign students. From India, China, Pakistan, Africa. Often they have trouble with their doors at first, so I am called upon to help. Mr. P__ they call me. & I am always obliging though speaking no more than is necessary. & MAKING NO EYE CONTACT.

Thank you Mr. P__ they will say. Or thank you sir.

Their dusky skins & dark-bright eyes & dark hair that looks oiled. A smell of them like ripening plums. They are shy & more polite than American students & they pay their rent on time & don’t notice things American students would notice & don’t trash their rooms like American students which is why Dad says they are preferred tenants. Quiet in the evenings. At their desks studying. They all have contracts with a residence hall for meals so using the kitchen is kept to a minimum, I am mainly the one who uses the kitchen but I don’t eat there I eat in my room watching TV. When I’m not out.

All the houses on North Church Street are big old brick or wood-frame Victorians. In big lots. In Grandma’s & Grandpa’s time when Dad was growing up here they were single-family residences of course. This was a classy neighborhood. University Heights. Grandma says it was after World War II the change began. In all of Mt. Vernon. Now North Church Street properties are rooming houses like ours or office buildings or taken over by the University like the house next door that is EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES. At the corner of North Church & Seventh three blocks away where the University president’s house used to be the lot was razed for a high-rise parking lot. So ugly! Grandma says. Farther up is a Burger King just opened that Grandma has not seen yet where sometimes I get hamburgers & fries I bring back to my room to eat & watch TV or do my homework for my courses.

This is a small white card tacked beside my door. I printed it myself with a black felt-tip pen.

5

Monday afternoons 4:00 P.M.-4:50 P.M. Mt. Vernon Medical Center. Dr. E__ asks What are your dreams, Quen-tin. What are your fantasies. Sit staring at the floor. Or at my hands I have scrubbed. There is a clock on Dr. E__’s desk that he can see & I can not. But I have my wristwatch which was RAISINEYES’ which is an expensive digital watch. With an ebony face kept turned to the inside of my wrist where only I can watch the tiny numerals flashing bronze toward 4:50 P.M.

Trying to think of a dream to tell Dr. E__. To confide in Dr. E__. Something that might be a dream. Such as a person might have. Flying? In the sky? Swimming? In—Lake Michigan? In Manistee National Park in one of the unnamed deep & fast-flowing rivers? If only Dr. E__ would not stare at me. His power being that he is Dr. E__ a staff psychiatrist at the Medical Center. (Which is part of the State University.) Dr. E__ is my private therapist hired by Dad but he makes reports to the Michigan Probation Department & these are secret from me. I wish my head did not become heavy in Dr. E__’s office. It turns to a substance like pancake batter, very thick though soft, raw & pale.

Once in Dr. E__’s office when nobody had spoken for a while I felt my jaw drop like a dead man’s & saliva trail across my chin. Slumped forward in the wooden chair with the hard slick bottom fitted to the cheeks of a wide ass. Head lolling & shoulders rounded & Dad was scolding whispering in disgust Quentin for God’s sake: you should see your posture. A rasping sound like a wasp that might have been a snore.

There was embarrassment to it. Falling asleep in Dr. E__’s office. If that was what had happened. Dr. E__ glancing at the clock on his desk. Some papers on his desk.

Thinking his thoughts to type up on his computer after Q__ P__ leaves.

Is Dr. E__ a friend of Dad’s I can’t ask. I have reason to believe that this is so (both men are senior professors in the State University system) but both men would deny it if asked. I never ask.

After I leave his office Dr. E__ will pick up the phone & call Dr. P__ in his office at the University. Your son Quentin is not making much progress I’m afraid. Did you know he never dreams. & his posture is so poor.

That afternoon a few weeks ago Dr. E__ was too polite to notice that I had fallen asleep in the chair facing his desk. It was the strong medication maybe. He might think. Or maybe Dr. E__ did not notice. For he is sleepy sometimes, too. Heavy-lidded eyes like a turtle’s. It was raining & water ran down the window behind his head in thin pissing streams.

Wrote my refill prescription & handed it to me, dosage as indicated. Dad’s medical insurance covers it. Saying we can end our session a few minutes early this week (it is 4:36 P.M. by my watch) if that’s O.K. with me, he had a staff meeting. It was O.K. with me.

6

Last night I was working late in the cellar. Emergency work repairing SEEPAGE DAMAGE in the old cistern. I am a hard worker if what I am doing has a purpose. I did not require sleep (did not take my nighttime medication) & so at 3 A.M. climbed to the attic where there is a star-shaped window at the front of the house. The peak of the ceiling is not high enough for me to stand upright & anyway I needed to crouch there looking up at the night sky where there was a MOON so bright it hurt my eyes! How I knew the MOON was there, from down in the cellar, I don’t know. Shreds of cloud were being blown across the moon clotted & cobwebbed like thoughts moving too fast for you to hear.

So sad & squalid Quentin.

But now we are going to turn over a new leaf aren’t we son.

You get to the attic by a steep narrow stairs at the rear of the third floor hallway. The attic is locked & OFF LIMITS to tenants like the cellar. I made my way silently in wool socks not wishing to wake up the young Pakistani graduate student whose room is almost directly beneath the stairs.

Ramid would not be a safe specimen. Nor any of them beneath this roof. I never think of it.

In the attic there was a strong sharp smell of dust & that sweetish-sour smell of dead mice. I took a deep breath & another & another—my lungs like BALLOONS filling with air. Proof I don’t need fucking medication. Am I sick? Who says? Shining my flashlight into the corners of the attic.

This could actually be for the best. Bringing a problem out into the open. The clarity of day.

Had I been here before? A long time ago a boy had climbed up here scared & in a hurry & he’d hidden something glittering & plastic on top of one of the beams back in the shadows but I don’t know if I am supposed to be that boy or the other one bleeding & choking. But I was not wearing glasses then was I. (Did not begin wearing prescription lenses until aged twelve.) So it couldn’t be Q__ P__. Or if I am confusing two times.

Fuck the PAST, it’s NOT NOW. Nothing NOT NOW is real.

Quiet & not moving for many minutes. I have trained myself to do so. & my eyes to penetrate the dark.

Shining the flashlight which is the CARETAKER’s flashlight into the corners of the attic. Where shadows leap like bats. Smiling to see how, when light moves, light you hold in your hand, bright as starlight you make shadows leap. The shadows are there all along. BUT YOU MAKE THEM LEAP.

Crouched there at the window watching the MOON move out of sight. The way a dream will move & you can’t stop it. Heart beating fast & hard. & beginning to feel horny. Excited, & blood seeping into my cock. I am not so safe in the attic as in the cellar where I have my work bench. I have moved my things to lock in the big drawer of the work bench with the CARETAKER’s tools.

This space in the attic is like certain dreams I used to have where shapes meant to be solid start to melt. & there is no protection. & there is no control. Unlike the cellar which is safe UNDER GROUND, the attic is far ABOVE GROUND. The concentration of COSMIC RAYS is higher at higher elevations on Earth than at lower elevations.

The suggestion was made by Dad that I clean out the attic to reduce the fire bazard & I said O.K. I will begin that task soon. Right now the cellar is my Number One priority.

Now we are going to turn over a new leaf aren’t we son & I said Yes Dad.

7

Of all of them, of Mom & Dad & Grandma & my sister Junie it has been hardest on Dad I know. For women, it is their nature to forgive. For men, it is harder.

Upsetting to Professor R__ P__ to learn certain things about his only son & these things a matter of public record. How does your client plead, the judge asked, & the lawyer Dad hired for me said, Your Honor, my client pleads guilty.

In my heart I did not plead GUILTY because I was NOT GUILTY & am not. But it was a RACIAL MATTER, too. The boy was black & Q__ P__ is white & the lawyer advised Dad this was a delicate issue in Mt. Vernon right now & the courts are carefully monitored, just be grateful we didn’t draw a black judge.

But I am on good terms with the family again. This is a relief to all concerned. I have been driving Mom & Grandma to church & have attended four Sundays in a row. I have been driving Grandma to senior citizens’ affairs & visiting friends. I have told them how sorry I am that I have hurt them. & how much it means to me that they trust me. I will live up to your trust from now on I told them.

The drinking is the cause of it & that will be terminated from now on.

It is fucking hard for me to hug them! Especially Dad. There is a stiffness in all our bones. But I do it & I believe I am doing it O.K. Mom & Grandma & Big Sis Junie were crying & there were tears leaking from my eyes I didn’t wipe away.

When Judge L__ pronounced TWO YEARS there was a long moment when nobody spoke or breathed before he added SUSPENDED SENTENCE. Judge L__’s eyes which I had no choice (my lawyer so counseled me) but to look at reflected severity but also kindness.

Judge L__ is a fair man & not vindictive & not to be pushed around by special-interest groups it was said. He is known to Dad & Dad is known to Judge L__. I did not ask but Mt. Vernon is a place where important men in the professions know one another & it may be they belong to the same club or clubs. Dad has membership in the Mt. Vernon Athletic Club downtown not far from the courthouse.

Afterward Dad shook my hand so hard it hurt & did embrace me & there were tears in his eyes behind his glasses like his eyes were loose in their sockets like jelly about to slip out. Handed me the keys to his car so I could drive the family home.

^{_{KEY TO DAD’S CAR (ACTUAL SIZE)}}

8

It has been hardest on Dad because R__ P__ is a name known to people. In Mt. Vernon where he & Mom have lived for thirty years & in Dad’s profession where he is a distinguished man.

I don’t mean that Dad is famous like Einstein or Oppenheimer or Dad’s mentor at the Washington Institute Dr. M__ K__ are famous, or a great genius in his field but he is well known & admired & has many graduate students wishing to study with him. His Ph.D. is in both physics & philosophy or maybe he has two Ph.D.’s & they are both from Harvard unless one is from somewhere else, Dad was at a lot of other universities & knows a lot of people.

Before I was born when R__ P__ was a new Ph.D. he received a fellowship from the Washington Institute in D.C. & there he was befriended by the research scientist Dr. M__ K__ who won a Nobel Prize in 1958. In something like neurobiology, or cell biology. On the fireplace mantel of the house in Dale Springs where I grew up there is a photograph of men in evening dress & one of them is Dr. K__ & one of them is Dad so young it’s hard to know who he is & these two are shaking hands & smiling toward the camera. Pinpricks of red lights in their eyes from the camera’s flash. Dr. K__ is a balding white-haired old guy with a goatee like crotch hair and R__ P__ could be his son is what you’d think. Serious & intelligent & only twenty-nine years old but already he’d published some papers as he calls them. & already married to Mom (who is not in the photograph).

This photograph of Dr. M__ K__ & R__ P__ is to be found in three places: Dad’s office in Erasmus Hall at the University & at the house in Dale Springs & in Grandma’s house on a dining room wall with mostly family photos. Visitors stare at it and say Oh! is that?— & Dad says Yes it is. Blushing like a kid. I didn’t know him that well really—but he was a great man, he touched many lives & he certainly touched mine.

When Dr. K__ died a few years ago at the age of eighty there were obituaries in Time, People, the New York Times, even the Mt. Vernon Inquirer. Dad clipped them all & had them laminated & they are on a wall in his University office. There was an obituary in the Detroit Free Press I saw & I should have torn it out & saved it for Dad but I forgot or it got lost. I was in Detroit where I go sometimes & stay in a hotel on Cass where I’m known as TODD CUTTLER a guy with curly red-brown hair & a moustache & he wears a leather necktie & looks kind of cool but also kind of a square, an asshole you could put something over onto if you tried. I was with Rooster & the two of us high & laughing leafing through the newspaper which always makes me laugh in the right mood & one of us was turning the pages fast & hard like a kid trying to rip them unless it was both of us & I saw this face on the obituary page NOBEL PRIZE LAUREATE DIES & I poked Rooster & said This guy is somebody my Dad knows & Rooster said Yeah? No shit?

9

It was five years ago the idea of creating a ZOMBIE for my own purposes first came to me in a brain storm to change my life.

Jesus! At such rare times you can feel the electrically charged neurons of the prefrontal brain realigning themselves like iron filings drawn by a magnet.

The Earth is continually bombarded by high-speed cosmic rays a voice was lecturing. An amplified voice. Was it Dad? Or somebody pretending to be Professor P__ with his nasal drone & habit of clearing his throat & pausing to let his words sink in.

Cosmic rays from outer space. Of an age many millions of years. More concentrated at higher elevations than lower. It was a darkened lecture amphitheater at the University. I did not know how I came to be there. I did not remember entering the amphitheater. It might have been observed that Q__ P__ had hidden himself purposefully to hear Professor P__ lecture, maybe he was seeking some knowledge or some secret? Like a dog seeking what dogs seek sniffing along the ground & their eyes alert. Except I must have nodded off in the back row & when I woke up I did not know where I was at first which happened in those days when I was not so much in control of myself as I am now & going for as long as forty-eight hours unsleeping then crashing wherever I might be. My skin giving off a pulsing heat & my breath tasting of metal & seeing me people kept their distance from me not sitting in any row near. I was not living at home at the time but had a place downtown. It was hard to bathe there, no hot water.

Dad was at a podium to the right. A microphone around his neck. Two or three hundred students in the amphitheater taking notes & if Dad saw his son he gave no sign. But he could not see me I am sure in the darkness.

Quantifiable & unquantifiable material. Research into the early Universe suggests. On an illuminated screen at the front of the auditorium was a computer simulation as Professor P__ identified it of a section of the Universe two hundred million years ago. Demonstrating how the Universe evolved from its early smoothness & equitable distribution of matter to the present condition of superclusters & dark matter. As much as ninety percent of the Universe’s mass is in unquantifiable “black holes.” Most of the Universe is therefore undetectable by our instruments & does not “obey” the laws of physics as we know them.

There was a hum & a drone & vibrating in the room. That sense you have that the floor is tilting or the Earth shifting & settling beneath your feet. Professor R__ P__’s students were busy taking notes & I observed their bent heads & shoulders & it came to me that almost any one of them would be a suitable specimen for a ZOMBIE.

Except: you would want a healthy young person, male. Of a certain height, weight & body build etc. You would want somebody with “fight” & “vigor” in him. & well hung.

But the University students have been forbidden to me. After that ignorant incident that, lucky for Q__ P__, turned out O.K. It was dark behind the dorm & the kid was drunk & stooped over vomiting & gagging & when he looked up hearing me the tire iron slammed down over his ear crashing him to the ground before he could register seeing me so it was O.K. I was wearing my hooded canvas jacket & there were no witnesses, still I panicked & ran as I would never do now with more experience. But it was O.K. A lesson was learned.

& in Ypsilanti a long time ago so long I can’t remember really I came to the same conclusion I think. For the fact is: any University student (with the exception of the foreign students who are so far from home) would be immediately missed. Their families care about them. & they have families.

A safer specimen for a ZOMBIE would be somebody from out of town. A hitch-hiker or a drifter or a junkie (if in good condition not skinny & strung out or sick with AIDS). Or from the black projects downtown. Somebody nobody gives a shit for. Somebody should never have been born.

Walked out of the amphitheater in the midst of the voice droning & went to the psych library to look up LOBOTOMY.

10

This is why: seeing the Universe like that (& that a replica of something billions of years extinct!) you see how fucking futile it is to believe that any galaxy matters let alone any star of any galaxy or any planet the size of not even a grain of sand in all that inky void. Let alone any continent or any nation or any state or any county or any city or any individual.

The idea came to me at that time too because I was having trouble keeping my dick hard with guys’ AWAKE EYES observing me at intimate quarters.

11

I was living in a two-room place on Twelfth Street at Reardon, back in Mt. Vernon after spending some time in Detroit & this address was known to Dad & Mom & I was working at Ace Quality Box Co. (Dad thought as a clerk, in fact it was loading & unloading trucks) or maybe I’d just quit or been fired that time Dad dropped by. A few days after the lecture in the amphitheater I think. It was mixed up in my mind that Dad had seen me there in the dark HIS EYES PENETRATING THE DARK but maybe that was not so.

Aged twenty-seven & time to be ON MY OWN I told them. & I meant it.

(Except: Mom gave me $$$ when I was in need, not checks but cash. So Dad wouldn’t know.)

The week following Thanksgiving 1988. BUNNYGLOVES had been missing twelve days but there was never anything in the Mt. Vernon Inquirer or on local TV, why would there be? Set out from Detroit to Montana & not a trace.

How many hundreds, thousands in a single year. Like sparrows of the air they rise on their wings & soar & falter & fall & disappear & not a trace. & God is himself the DARK MATTER swallows them up.

Dale Springs pop. 8,000 is where the P__’s live & where their son Q__ grew up. A suburb of Mt. Vernon beside Lake Michigan & many tall trees & a meridian of green planted in geraniums in summer when you drive in crossing the (invisible) border from the City of Mt. Vernon. Six miles west & north of the University now a big sprawling campus. Downtown Mt. Vernon, this shitty neighborhood where I was renting my place is five miles to the south so go figure. Dad said he’d DROPPED BY to visit me.

The rapping at the door. My eyes flew open breaking the sticky lashes apart & my heart beat in a cold panic because NOW WAS NOT THE TIME.

Called out stammering & was up from the bed stumbling pulling on my trousers. Zipping up. Dragging the khaki blanket up over the mattress. The stained sheets, the sweet-stale smell. I was used to it by now & should have tried to open the window but didn’t.

“O.K.,” I said, “—I’m cool. O.K.”

And it was Dad. My Dad. DROPPED BY to see how I was!

The chain latch was on the door. There was Professor R__ P__ smiling wearing his sand-colored corduroy face & his tweed asshole for his mouth & his black plastic-professor glasses riding the bridge of his nose. I fumbled opening the door. I tried to say the door wouldn’t open any further, the latch was stuck. But DAD’S EYES a few inches away through the crack.

Out of a horny dream of BUNNYGLOVES, & fondling. His voice so clear in my head like it was before the change in it. & his eyes muddy-brown as KNOWING deepened in it & the pupils shrank to pinpricks.

“Quentin, hello! It’s just me! Am I disturbing you?”

My hand moved & the chain latch was off. & Dad filled the doorway staring & breathless from the stairs. When R__ P__’s professor-goatee went from glossy brown to gray filings he shaved it off out of pride but there is the shadow of the goatee on his face still. That edge in his voice. “Son?”

The two of us the same height if I stood up straight which is hard & lifted my head to confront him. Asked how I was like always, & I said. & how was he, & things at home? & Mom & Grandma send their love. Yes & Junie. All wondering why I didn’t call & didn’t drop by & worrying (you know how women are!) maybe I’m sick. & DAD’S EYES darting as I had known they would fixing on the one thing. A pause & then asking, “That locker, that’s new isn’t it?” & a pause. &, “What’s in that that requires a lock, son?”

I turned to see the five-foot metal locker leaning in the corner. Between the bed & the bathroom. Like I had not seen it before & was myself surprised.

“Just some gym things, Dad,” I said. I said at once. “Jogging shoes, socks. Towels & stuff like that.”

Dad asked, so reasonable, “But why does it require a lock?”

It was a combination lock like for a high school locker. I had memorized the combination & thrown the slip of paper away.

I was saying, “A lock came with it, Dad. From the Salvation Army. It was a real bargain at $12. It’s a part of it. It’s a way of getting the full use of the locker, I suppose.”

“You wouldn’t need to use it, though. Why would you?”

Distinguished Professor, Mt. Vernon State University. Dual appointments in Physics & Philosophy. Senior fellow of the Michigan State Institute for Advanced Research.

DAD’S EYES behind his shiny glasses. Looking at me like when I was two years old & squatting on the bathroom floor shitting & when I was five years old playing with my baby dick & when I was seven years old & my T-shirt splotched with another kid’s nosebleed & when I was eleven home from the pool where my friend Barry drowned & most fierce DAD’S EYES when I was twelve years old that time Dad charged upstairs with the Body Builder magazines shaking in his hand. “Son? Son?”

“W-What?” I stammered. “I’m listening.”

Dad was frowning. Fifty-seven years old with hairy black nostrils widening & pinching. “Why would ‘gym things’ require a special lock, son? Why would ‘gym things’ emit such a smell?”

It came to me: Dad thinks I am drinking again & taking drugs again, is that it? & indulging in unclean habits again risking my health?

Of BUNNYGLOVES what could Dad know? Could he know?

Between the bedsprings & the skinny mattress was the fish-gutting knife & the ice pick & the .38 nickel Smith & Wesson pistol but I was paralyzed & could not make a sudden move to protect myself. Staring at my hands which were trembling just slightly as if the building was vibrating from beneath. I did wonder, Could I strangle Dad? But he would resist, he would put up a struggle, and he is strong. & in a struggle we would be so close. I was staring at my hands as if I had never seen them before, like learning my name is Q__ P__ & that is who I am, & there is nobody else for me to be, the fingers were stubby like a kid’s & the knuckles scraped & the nails with queer milky half-moons uneven & broken & edged with grime. How many times I had scrubbed my hands with the gray soap from Ace & cleaned under the nails with a knifeblade & yet it had all come back.

& then the answer came to me.

I said, “—I bet I know what it is, Dad. A dead rat.”

“A dead rat?”

“Or a mouse. Maybe mice.”

“There are dead mice in here?”

Had he been thinking maybe food, spoiled food. Oh shit.

Rapping on the locker with his knuckles. The locker was painted army-green & badly scratched & wobbled when he struck it. Dad’s corduroy face creased with disgust.

I said, “I k-know it’s not the way I was brought up, Dad, or Junie. I’m sorry.”

“Quentin, how long has it been like this in this room?”

“Not long, Dad. A day or two.”

“Aren’t you bothered by the smell yourself?”

“I’m going to do some cleaning this weekend, Dad.”

“You’ve been sleeping right here beside this locker, this smell, & you’re not bothered?”

“I am bothered, Dad. I just don’t get uptight about it.”

“It’s very disturbing to me, son, that you might be lying to me.”

“Well, I don’t mean to lie, Dad. I just don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking why this locker is padlocked, and why it smells. You know what I’m asking.”

“Apart from the mice, Dad,” I said, “—I don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Your mother is worried about you, and I’m worried about you,” Dad said, “—not just your future, but right now. What is your life right now, Quentin? How would you describe it?”

“My life ‘right now’—?”

“Are you working at that box company?”

“Sure. Only today’s a day off.”

“What were you doing in here when I knocked on the door?”

“Taking a nap.”

“A nap? At this time of day? With this—smell? Son, what has happened to you?”

I shook my head. I was looking at the floor but not seeing it.

If he looks in the bathroom, I thought, I’m fucked. The tub I didn’t have time to scrub. The shower curtain so stained & speckled. BUNNYGLOVES’ underwear wadded and soaked with blood & the pubic hairs I’d scraped off on the floor.

“Son? I’m talking to you. How do you explain yourself?”

“Well,” I said, “—apart from the mice, I don’t see what’s the problem.”

It went on like that. DAD’S MOUTH shaped certain words emerging like balloons & my mouth shaped certain words & it was familiar to me & there was a comfort in that. For finally Dad gives up for he does not want to know & wipes his face with a handkerchief & says, “Quentin, the main reason I dropped by is—how would you like to come home with me for dinner tonight? Your mom has made banana-custard pie,” & I said, “Thanks, Dad, but I’m not hungry I guess. I’ve already eaten.”

12

Twelve years old & in seventh grade & now I was wearing glasses & long-armed & skinny & hair sprouting under my arms & at my groin & their eyes sliding onto me & even the teachers & in gym class I refused to go through the shower refused to go naked moving through them & their cocks glistening & scratching their chests, bellies & some of them so muscular, so good-looking & laughing like apes not guessing except if seeing me & my eyes I couldn’t keep still darting & swimming among them like minnows if seeing me they knew & their faces would harden with disgust QUEER QUEER QUENTIN’S QUEER & that time Dad charged upstairs to get me where I was doing homework in my room & yanked me by the arm & downstairs & into the garage & showed me the Body Builder magazines & the naked Ken-doll from the playground I’d brought back hidden behind stacks of old newspapers & he’d found his face splotched & furious & at that time Dad did wear a goatee like Dr. M__ K__’s & this too livid with outrage. Twisting the magazines in his hands like wringing a chicken’s neck to spare himself the sight of the covers & the drawings somebody had done on them in fluorescent-red felt-pen ink. Nor the insides with more such drawings on centerfold models of male muscle-bodies & the young guy who looked like Barry might’ve been in a few years & many pounds heavier & a shiny pink upright banana lifting from his groin & parts of certain photos scissored out. This is sick Quentin Dad’s mouth worked, panted, this is disgusting I never never want to see anything like this again in my life. We won’t tell your mother starting to say more but his voice gave out.

Together we burned the evidence. Back behind the garage where Mom would not see.

13

This page, I razored out of the textbook. Back behind the psych library stacks where nobody could see. I COULD ALMOST SEE MY ZOMBIE MATERIALIZING BEFORE MY EYES.

Another book even better, Psychosurgery (1942) by Dr. Walter Freeman and Dr. James W. Watts of George Washington University—

I was excited getting a HARD-ON razoring out these pages, I knew this was a TURNING POINT in my life. How many thousands of transorbital lobotomies these guys performed in the 1940s & 1950s & how easy to perform, the author of Principles of Psychosurgery stated he did as many as thirty sometimes in a single day using only a “humble” ice pick as he called it!

Dad & Mom had hoped for me to become a scientist like Dad, or a doctor. But things had not turned out that way. But I knew I could perform a transorbital lobotomy even if it was in secret. All I would need is an ice pick. & a specimen.

14

At Tuesday’s group session Dr. B__ urged us to speak from the heart. There are eleven of us. Eyes are avoided. O.K. men let’s get the ball rolling, who wants to begin? There was a weird buzz at the back of my head. Kept looking back over my shoulder & shifting my ass in the chair but there was nobody behind me or nobody I could see. Remember nobody’s judging anybody else. That’s the bottom line, guys.

Fluorescent lights & some of them flickering. Cement-block wall painted mustard yellow & posters & fliers & sign-up sheets & a picture of Magic Johnson with some message on it & no windows except the one door with thick glass reinforced with wires like circuits of the brain & I’m wondering if it’s one-way glass & we are being observed like laboratory rats maybe videotaped? though when we came through that door that’s the same door we come through every week I would swear.

O.K. men let’s get the ball rolling, speak clearly & from the heart. Who wants to begin?

Bim goes first, Bim’s a white guy my age with a face like crumbly cheese & the Haldol tremors & a perpetual runny nose so there’s a glisten of snot in his nostrils like teardrops, once he gets talking & laughing & talking fast he can’t stop & I’m staring at the floor trying to think what Q__ P__ can say, three weeks in a row sitting here staring at the floor & deaf-&-dumb like a moron. If you don’t cooperate/communicate YOU’RE FUCKED. Next is this other white guy Perche in his forties always wears a plaid coat & necktie always grinning & trying to shake hands with everybody, saw me out on the street one day & called out QUEN-TIN! like we’re buddies & I stood there staring at him not eye-contact but chest-level & he stares at me & comes a little closer his hand held out to shake & I’m in my own space rigid & not-breathing & finally he backs off saying Excuse me, I thought you were somebody I know. & next there’s this fat guy, a kid younger than me with a beer gut all around his cowboy belt & pushing up toward his chin like a bloated frog, Frogsnout’s my name for him & he talks too fast too & sweats & pants & though I’m not listening I can’t help but hear; some bullshit about him haunted by the memory of, can’t stop thinking of, so fucking sorry for his sister’s kids he burnt up by accident pouring gasoline around the house & lighting it for revenge not knowing anybody was home & this takes a long time. & there’s the black guys of whom two are cool dudes I call Velvet Tongue & The Tease, these dudes true bullshit artists both on parole from Jackson Q__ P__ could learn from but DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT. So I don’t.

Forgot my morning meds & lunchtime & so on the way down here swallowed two ’ludes. Eating a double cheeseburger & fries & drinking Bud in the van, got a six-pack at a 7-Eleven & drank four beers straight, throat’s so fucking dry. Cruising the expressway & the riverfront & down by the projects. OFF LIMITS since sentencing. Taking a chance if a cop pulls me over & I’m drinking but no cop is going to pull me over, white guy with a neat haircut driving a van with O.K. headlights, taillights, safe within the speed limit & keeping to the right-hand lane. Q__ P__ got his driver’s license aged sixteen & always a damned careful driver.

So I’m cool & mellow & listening to the other guys or seeming so & Dr. B__’s frowning & nodding like they do, like they’re listening, too & taking it all in. & I’m not going to panic ’cause it’s my turn after the next guy. & I know I’m fucking up not contributing to the discussion as Dr. B__ calls it. & I know he’s already been giving me bad marks or??? on the reports. Nobody’s going to judge you, men. Just speak from the heart. It goes no further than this room, O.K.?

My shoulders hunched like a vulture’s & I’m staring at my shoes which are jogging shoes stained like rust. Quen-tin? How about you? & I open my mouth to speak & there’s this voice comes out, it’s Q__ P__’s but like another guy’s too, somebody on TV maybe, or I’m imitating Bim, Perche, Frogsnout, stammering saying how ashamed I was to betray the loving trust of my Mom & Dad & that was the worst part of what’d happened to me, not just this once but many times since the age of nineteen, though I had never been arrested before & never did anything illegal but many smaller things. (Why I said nineteen I don’t know, just an age that sounded O.K. It was aged eighteen in fact, the incident at Ypsilanti & how upset Dad & Mom were.) I wished I could turn the clock back to infancy I said! & start Time again. When I was pure & good. When I was with God. I said I believed in God but did not think He believed in me because I was not worthy. There is that way Mom’s face creases & collapses when she cries because she is getting old & my face collapsed like this & the guys were embarrassed & looked away except for Perche sucking it up like cum & Dr. B__ frowning & nodding. One of the black guys Velvet Tongue passed me a tissue but not looking at me & my voice was going fast now like a runaway trailer-truck down a mountain road. Said how sorry I was about the twelve-year-old boy I was accused of “molesting” (but did not supply details that he was black & retarded & a natural zombie—I’d thought!)—said I did not know what had happened exactly if I’d approached the boy myself in the alley back behind the dumpster where my van was parked or if the boy had followed me there & picked me up without my knowing. Because sometimes things happen to me I can’t comprehend. Too fast & confused for me to comprehend. This boy looking so much older than twelve with eyes piercing like blades demanding money from me or he would tell on me, he demanded $10 & when I gave him $10 he demanded $20 & when I gave him $20 he demanded $50 & when I gave him $50 he demanded $100 which was when I lost it & screamed at him & shook him BUT I DID NOT HURT HIM I SWEAR.

By this time I was stammering & my face was wet with tears! I had not known there were tears inside my eye sockets so close to leaking & once begun it’s easy to cry & half the guys were looking away from me & the other half mainly white guys were looking & Dr. B__ was flush-faced like he’d come in his pants asking questions about the boy as if this was some kid I’d known like in the neighborhood not a total stranger & weird questions like had I felt affection for the boy & did I feel that feeling affection was being manipulated & that was why I lost control, it was control of my own emotions I had lost wasn’t it? & feared? & I was shaking now a little imitating Bim, the hand-tremors & twitchy mouth & my face shining with tears & I looked up at Dr. B__ for the first time daring to make eye-contact because the tears protected me & I said in a loud clear voice like it was a surprise to me & a wonder—Yes doctor. I felt affection & that is why I lost control.

After each of our sessions Dr. B__ fills out this report for the probation office, I know. We are not allowed to see these reports which are confidential but that evening I was told something to make me hopeful, Dr. B__ pulling at his beard like it’s his dick & kindly smiling the way they do they’re making a gift to you of your own shit. Quen-tin you are making true progress at last, a breakthrough, getting in touch with your emotions Quen-tin!

15

A true ZOMBIE would be mine forever. He would obey every command & whim. Saying “Yes, Master” & “No, Master.” He would kneel before me lifting his eyes to me saying, “I love you, Master. There is no one but you, Master.”

& so it would come to pass, & so it would be. For a true ZOMBIE could not say a thing that was not, only a thing that was. His eyes would be open & clear but there would be nothing inside them seeing. & nothing behind them thinking. Nothing passing judgment.

Like you who observe me (you think I don’t know you are observing Q__ P__? making reports of Q__ P__? conferring with one another about Q__ P__?) & think your secret thoughts—ALWAYS & FOREVER PASSING JUDGMENT.

A ZOMBIE would pass no judgment. A ZOMBIE would say, “God bless you, Master.” He would say, “You are good, Master. You are kind & merciful.” He would say, “Fuck me in the ass, Master, until I bleed blue guts.” He would beg for his food & he would beg for oxygen to breathe. He would beg to use the toilet not to soil his clothes. He would be respectful at all times. He would never laugh or smirk or wrinkle his nose in disgust. He would lick with his tongue as bidden. He would suck with his mouth as bidden. He would spread the cheeks of his ass as bidden. He would cuddle like a teddy bear as bidden. He would rest his head on my shoulder like a baby. Or I would rest my head on his shoulder like a baby. We would eat pizza slices from each other’s fingers. We would lie beneath the covers in my bed in the CARETAKER’s room listening to the March wind & the bells of the Music College tower chiming & WE WOULD COUNT THE CHIMES UNTIL WE FELL ASLEEP AT EXACTLY THE SAME MOMENT.

16

Purchased my first ice pick, March 1988. Cruising the van along Rt. 31 & out to the Lake Michigan shore & through the little half-assed towns Stony Lake, Sable Pt., Ludington, Portage & Arcadia. In my down jacket, wool cap, my glasses with dark plastic shades slipped over them, a week’s growth of beard & keeping my voice low like it’s hoarse stopping at a crossroads store selling groceries plus hardware & it was no trouble making the purchase & nothing suspicious. Old guy watching TV by a woodburning stove & he rings up my purchase on an old-fashioned cash register & his face is wizened like a prune & I say, making a joke, A man needs a fucking ice pick this time of year, huh?—fucking winter, & the old guy blinks at me like he doesn’t know the English language so I say, grinning & making a joke of it, These ice storms, huh?—fucking Michigan winter & this time the old fart seems to hear or at least sneers his lip & agrees. & I’m thinking should he ever be asked to identify the purchaser of said ice pick & they show him a photo of Q__ P__ (shaven, with regular glasses & no cap) he’ll shake his head & say Naw, that don’t look anything like him.

Parked the van overlooking the ice-jammed shore & the lake & the sky steely gray & a glare so you can’t tell where one ends & the other begins so you could climb up from Earth into Heaven if you believe in that kind of shit WHICH Q__ P__ DOES NOT! & I had the ice pick in my hand poking & prodding & thrusting into its target & so EXCITED suddenly with no warning I COME IN MY PANTS before I can fucking unzip, oh Jesus IS THIS A SIGN WHAT’S TO COME?

17

Mondays & Thursdays are trash pick-up mornings on North Church. So I drag the yellow plastic cans out to the curb by 7:30 A.M. which is O.K. because I am an early riser not requiring sleep like weaker people. Wearing my sweats & a Tigers baseball cap & looking just ahead of me where I’m walking like I’m a guy minding my own business & there’s this voice out of the fucking sky!—there’s this soft humming voice!—& I almost didn’t hear then I heard it & whirled around like it’s Vietnam & I’m a hopped-up grunt like in the movies & it was one of the tenants!—just one of the tenants Ramid so polite on his way up to campus & hooded up like a little kid & with the face of a little kid & his eyes like chewy dates & he’s asking do I need some help? & I’m staring at him, there’s EYE CONTACT but only for a moment then I’m cool, I’m saying no thanks it’s my job. But thanks.

18

Dr. E__ asks What is the nature of your fantasies, Quentin? & I am blank & silent blushing like in school when I could not answer a teacher’s question nor even (everybody staring at me) comprehend it. Saying finally, so quiet Dr. E__ had to cup his hand to his ear to hear, I guess I don’t have any—what you call “fantasies,” Doctor. I don’t know.

19

At the time of BUNNYGLOVES, RAISINEYES, BIG GUY I did not have access to my caretaker’s quarters of course nor the cellar at 118 North Church. Only my van & the two-room place on Twelfth Street. The tub in the bathroom.

My procedures were crude & I was continually thwarted in my experiments. A radio had to be played loud, heavy-metal sound on WMWM out of Muskegon & sometimes fucking ads would come on, the intrusion of some stranger’s voice at a delicate moment. & if my hands shook or if I was ’luded-out & could not perform as I bid my hands to do like in a dream when you’re moving through glue. & if I got TOO EXCITED TOO FAST. Oh shit.

BUNNYGLOVES who I had such hope for, him being the first, convulsed like a madman when I pushed the ice pick at the angle in the diagram through the “bony orbit” above the eyeball (or whatever it was, splintering bone) & screamed through the sponge I’d shoved & tied in his mouth actually snapping the baling wire securing his ankles but he did not regain consciousness dying in twelve minutes while I ran cold water on his face to wash away the blood & revive him. My first ZOMBIE—a grade of fucking F.

RAISINEYES lived for seven hours in the tub sometimes almost conscious & snoring or rattling his breath so I thought IT’S WORKING! IT’S WORKING! MY ZOMBIE! but I had to lift the eyelid of his remaining eye (I only “did” one) & secure it with tape, it never kept open by itself. I would move his arms & legs to get the circulation going. & handled & squeezed his cock (which remained limp & clammycool like a chicken’s innards) but NOTHING HAPPENED. & then it was over & SHIT WHAT A DOWNER.

BIG GUY was most promising for by then I believe I had learned to use the ice pick skillfully, it’s a skill you learn with practice, using a hammer like Dr. Freeman said instead of, what I’d been doing before, just pounding with the flat of my left hand, to drive the ice pick up into the “frontal lobe.” Also, BIG GUY for a part-nigger part-Huron Indian drop-out college basketball player-junkle-dealer from Lansing was weird, he was so healthy, I mean looked healthy, his hair thick & glossy-black & his bones so long & hard, his muscles, flat stomach & chest hair & his penis a length of blood sausage, his skin a deep rich plum-black I was crazy to lick with my tongue & my teeth to gnaw. Even his toes, his big toes!—JUST CRAZY FOR HIM. Yet BIG GUY let me down like the others for he never regained what they call consciousness after the operation & like RAISINEYES was breathing these deep shuddering snoring gasps after I yanked out the sponge thinking he was choking on it. Hey? Hey c’mon? You’re O.K. c’mon open your eyes? But the left eye I’d gone into with the ice pick was shot & the right eye wasn’t much better, rolled back in his head like it wasn’t even an eye but something else. BIG GUY lived maybe fifteen hours I think dying as I was fucking him in the ass (not in the tub, in my bed) to discipline him as a ZOMBIE & I only comprehended he was dead when during the night waking needing to take a piss I felt how cold he was, arms & legs where I’d slung them over me & his head on my shoulder to cuddle but BIG GUY was stiffening in rigor mortis so I panicked thinking I would be locked in his embrace!

My first three ZOMBIES—all F’s.

Yet Q__ P__ did not give up hope. Nor have I to this day.

20

HOW A DUMB ACCIDENT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Supposed to meet a guy, young Wayne State kid, at the fountain at Grand Circus Park, downtown Detroit, it was a hot muggy summer night seven, eight years ago & Q__ P__ in the city for the weekend alone & fresh-faced amid the winos around the pigeonshit fountain strung out on Thunderbird & heroin some of them so far gone you’d mistake a young guy for old, a white guy for black, eyes bloodshot or filmed over in mucus & skin gray-moldery like an exhumed corpse. & this was the time I think this was the time when I was taking a course in learning to be a real estate agent in Mt. Vernon, my big sis Junie’s idea & it was a reasonable one, just didn’t work out. Maybe I’d been drinking too but I wasn’t drunk, for sure I am never what’s called DRUNK but steady on my feet & steady-eyed, steely. & I was looking pretty damn good in my tight jeans & palomino-skin jacket worn for reasons of style despite the 90° heat, my hair like wings oiled & combed back from my face curving just under my ears. Just come from sleeping & waking dazed not knowing where I was at first in the balcony of one of the big old palatial movie theaters on Woodward FIERY BOY LOVE & FORBIDDEN ECSTASIES. & now it was midnight & thrumming from electricity though Woodward & Gratiot were practically deserted. & I waited for my friend, & waited, & he never came & I was pissed wasting much of a Saturday night & went to some bars on Grand River & must’ve gotten drunk & afterward walking along the sidewalk I was grabbed from behind by two or three unknown assailants, might’ve been more of them standing watching, a nigger gang?—just teenagers but big & strong & laughing-elated doped to the eyeballs throwing me down like it’s a football tackle onto the filthy pavement & KICK KICK KICKING yelling Where’s your wallet, man? Where’s that wallet? I’d just seen a cop-cruiser pass through the intersection but nobody came to my rescue, if there were witnesses on the street they didn’t give a shit just walked away, or stood laughing at whitey getting pounded, his glasses broken & nose bloodied & the more he squirmed like a fish on a hook the more the kids laughed & yelled ripping my palomino-hide jacket & got my wallet within seconds but still laughing, chanting Where’s your wallet, man? Where’s that wallet? like these were words to some nigger music which maybe they were. & I’m sobbing & trying to say No! don’t hurt! oh hey please! no, NO! like not even a child but a baby, an infant might, & I’m pissing my pants & when it’s over & they’re running away I don’t even know it I’m still sobbing, trying to hide my face, double up like a thick writhing worm trying to protect my insides with my knees, & a long time afterward somebody comes over to peer at me & ask, Man, you alive? You want some ambulance or somethin’?

It was when I saw my face next day the revelation came.

Blinking & leaning close to the mirror because I didn’t have my glasses, & there was this FACE! this fantastic FACE! battered & bandaged (& blood leaking through already) & stitched (more than twenty stitches they gave me at Detroit General for three bad gashes) & the lips bruised & swollen & these were bloodshot-blackened EYES UNKNOWN TO ME.

& I understood then that I could habit a FACE NOT KNOWN. Not known ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. I could move in the world LIKE ANOTHER PERSON. I could arouse PITY, TRUST, SYMPATHY, WONDERMENT & AWE with such a face. I could EAT YOUR HEART & asshole you’d never know it.

21

Phone rang & it was Mom. Asked how I was & I said. Asked about my classes at Dale Tech & I said. Asked about my sinuses & I said. Asked about the caretaker’s job (which was Dad’s idea for Q__ P__, not Mom’s) & I said.

Has it been six months since my dental check-up Mom asked & I said I didn’t know & Mom said she was afraid it was more than six months possibly a year? & did I remember all the dental work I’d had to have done ten years ago when I’d neglected to have my teeth examined regularly & cleaned & I said & Mom said should she make an appointment for me? with Dr. Fish? & I stood there holding the phone receiver & through the opened doorway & along the hall at the mailboxes there was the one called Akhil talking with the one called Abdellah & I wondered what they were saying. If I could hear them, if the language they spoke was my own.

22

Couldn’t remember where I’d hidden them. Groping around on top of the beams filthy with cobwebs & desiccated husks of insects & my fingers came away empty. ROUND-LENSED GLASSES & CLEAR PLASTIC FRAMES. In school across the aisle his silky hair & face I stared at & the light winking off the lenses like there was a SECRET CONNÉCTION between us.

Except there wasn’t.

Or maybe there was & he denied it. Pushing me away if I stood too close in cafeteria line. Bruce & his friends & I’d slip in behind them & pretend like I was standing with them sometimes pushing up against them, a boy’s back.

BRUCE BRUUCE BRUUUUCE! I would whisper jamming my fingers in my mouth & my mouth against the pillow wet from drooling.

A door opened in my dream & I was BRUCE.

His parents came over to talk to Dad & Mom. I hid away hearing their terrible voices. Dad came finally to get me—Quentin! Quen-tin!—flush-faced & his glasses damp against his nose & his goatee quivering when he discovered me hiding curled up like a big slug behind the trash pail in the cupboard beneath the sink. What do you mean biding from me, son? Do you think you can hide from me? Led me by the arm into the living room where Mom was sitting stiff-smiling on the cream-colored brocaded sofa with two strangers, a man & a woman, Bruce’s parents, & their eyes like shattered glass in their angry faces & Dad stood with his hands lowered to my shoulders & asked in a calm voice like somebody on TV news had I purposefully hurt Bruce? tangling his neck & head in the swing chains purposefully? & I jammed my fingers in my mouth, I was a shy slow-seeming child & wide-eyed & the light of fear always quick in my face. I stared at the carpet & the little round plastic things that bore the weight of the coffee table & the sofa & were intended to protect the carpet & I wondered if there was a name for such things & who is the source of NAMING, why we are who we are & come into the world that way—one of us BRUCE, & one of us QUENTIN. Mom began to speak in her high quick voice & Dad cut her off calmly saying it was my responsibility to speak, I was seven years old which is the age of reason. & I started then to cry. I told them no it was Bruce, it was Bruce who hurt me, scared me saying he would strangle me in the swing chains because I wouldn’t touch his thing but I got away, I got away & ran home & I was crying hard, my elbows & knees were scraped & my clothes soiled.

& Mom hugged me, & I was stiff not wanting to press into her breasts or belly or the soft place between her legs.

& Dad said it was all right, I was excused. & Bruce’s parents were on their feet still angry but their power was gone. Bruce’s father called after me like a boy jeering, & what did you do with our son’s glasses?

23

Mom called. Left a message on the answering tape saying she’d made an appointment for me with Dr. Fish. Also would I like to come to dinner Sunday.

At the time the phone rang I was on the third floor in Akhil’s room using a screwdriver to open the rusted furnace vent which had been only partway open. Crouched over & my face heavy with blood. Akhil is from Calcutta, India. Maybe he is Hindu? A physics grad student & maybe one of Dad’s but I would never inquire nor would Akhil make any connection between the CARETAKER of this property in his jeans & sweatshirt & PROFESSOR R__ P__ who is so distinguished.

Akhil is shy & dusty-skinned & slender as a girl. In his mid-twenties at least but looks fifteen. Their blood so different from ours. Ancient civilization. Monkey-like. He speaks English so soft & whispery I almost can’t hear—Thank you sir. Take care NOT TO MAKE EYE CONTACT but in our mutual awkwardness I did glance at him, & he was looking at me, he was smiling. Eyes liquidy-brown like a monkey’s would be, a warm glisten in them.

Oh Jesus my eyes slid down him, the slippery length of him. Melting at his crotch. A shimmering puddle at his feet.

Q__ P__ was observed standing quickly. Had to get out of that room. My voice loud & American & movements clumsy but I believe this is what any CARETAKER of any rooming house in University Heights would say under the circumstances That’s O.K., it’s my job.

24

Thursday was Q__ P__’s busy day!

Chores at the house. Drive-in breakfast in the van at Wendy’s on Newaygo Street. Swallowed two uppers with black coffee. Swung around to Third Street to XXX VIDEO to return last night’s video & rent another, a new release. Feeling O.K. 10 A.M. meeting with Mr. T__ in the county services building, the old wing beside the courthouse. Where you walk through the metal detector & two county sheriff’s deputies give you the eye. & upstairs in the probation dept. Mr. T__’s door is shut & I wait for a few minutes & I’m O.K., I’m cool. Shaved last night & had a shower yesterday morning, or day before. Always wear a necktie, coat & a belt for my trousers at Mr. T__’s. A black dude looking like Velvet Tongue waiting for his probation officer too but I don’t want to look too close nor does he. & Mr. T__ calls me in & there is a handshake & Have a seat, Quentin, how’re things going? & I say. How’s your caretaking job? & I say. How’s your classes at Dale Tech? & I say—pretty good, a B in Intro to Computer & a B—in Intro to Engineering & Mr. T__ nods & writes something down. Or anyway doesn’t question.

Asks me how’s my group therapy, am I attending faithfully & I say. How’s my private therapist & I say.

& my medication? still taking your medication? & I say.

Tells me his sister’s son got a degree in electrical engineering from Dale Tech & has a good entry-level job with GE in Lansing.

Tells me our next meeting he’s sorry he’s going to be away on vacation so we’ll schedule it for four weeks same time same place O.K.?

There is a handshake at the end of the session. & Q__ P__ observed polite & respectful YES SIR. NO SIR. GOODBYE SIR.

Leaving Mr. T__’s office I see the black dude so resembling Velvet Tongue is just leaving his probation officer too & I hold back letting him get to the elevator first & take it down without me.

NO EYE CONTACT ANYWHERE BENEATH THIS ROOF.

Then out to Dr. Fish in Dale Springs. Driving the expressway north & out of the city. The edge of the lake. Tin-colored & the sky the same color. 11:30 A.M. appointment, same office in the same building Dr. Fish has had for years. Receptionist is new & doesn’t know me nor the female assistant, Asian-American with a flat face & breathy voice, calls me in & puts on her gauze mask & rubber gloves & seats me in the chair & prepares me for X-rays & teeth cleaning & I’m a little stiff & she lowers the chair with a pneumatic hiss & my stomach lurches & eyes shoot open & the girl is looking at me Sorry! was that too fast? For just that instant I was BIG GUY going under, or RAISINEYES, or who was it—BUNNYGLOVES. & I saw Velvet Tongue in my place in my own body in this chair & it’s like my eyes were his! But it passes. I’m O.K. The girl lays the lead bib over my chest to protect me from X-rays & arranges the little X-ray cardboards in my mouth so I’m almost gagging but I hold on, I’m cool. The girl says Please hold, don’t move & noiseless leaves the room & sets the machine humming. It might be that Q__ P__ is being photographed and/or videotaped here, might be Q__ P__’s actual brain is being X-rayed & the negatives sent to the county offices & East Lansing, the capital of Michigan & the F.B.I. in D.C. & to Dad c/o Physics Dept., Mt. Vernon State University. But I am not agitated, I am calm & unsuspecting. I have nothing to hide. What happened with the black boy was Q__ P__’s first offense, & a suspended sentence followed no actual jail time beyond the detention center—THAT IS THE PUBLIC RECORD. Flatface in her gauze mask returns & I’m almost asleep so calm & she takes out the X-ray cardboard & positions another & leaves the room again & sets the machine humming. & again. & again. WHEN Q__ P__ FIRST REALIZED THAT EVERYTHING HAPPENS AGAIN & AGAIN. & SOME PEOPLE KNOW, & SOME PEOPLE NEVER KNOW. Seventh grade, when my friend Barry died. When I PEELED OFF THE CLOCK HANDS. Flatface returns & the next step is cleaning my teeth & flossing which takes a long time. At a distance there is prickling & stinging in somebody’s mouth but I’m almost asleep. Please rinse, & I wake up rinsing my mouth taking care to shut my eyes not wanting to see the blood-tinged liquid. Somebody’s gums smarting & bleeding. This goes on for a while & finally it’s over & Dr. Fish himself comes in & he’s wearing a gauze mask too & rubber gloves & I feel a little shiver, excitement like a spike in the cock, behind the mask & glasses you don’t know Dr. Fish is an old guy in his fifties at least, his hair’s still O.K. unless it’s dyed?—& he’s looking at the teeth chart the female assistant has handed him & the X-rays & asking me how I am, how’s the family Quentin, & the high school, he’s confusing me with my sister Junie but that’s O.K. Now Dr. Fish examines my mouth & he’s fast & frowning & up close you can see the turtle-pouches around his eyes. This the man to see into your soul. Please rinse Quen-tin. Laying down one of the silver picks on a tray on a wad of cotton batting, the tip is shining with blood. There’s a sick excited sensation in my gut, I’m rinsing my mouth & can’t stop myself from seeing tendrils of blood in the water, I’m faint & excited & wish I could see Dr. Fish’s hands & that silver pick in Q__ P__’s mouth like on a video! Sorry if this hurts, Quen-tin, Dr. Fish says, it’s his mouth saying it, another pick in his hand, you haven’t been in for an exam in quite a while, eh?—almost three years. Afraid you’ve got several cavities & what might be the start of pyorrhea. Then the exam is over & Dr. Fish removes his gauze mask & rubber gloves & he’s smiling asking do I have any questions? any questions? & he’s ready to move on to the next patient in the next examining room & I’m clumsy-shaky rising from the chair & Dr. Fish is looking at me & I can’t think of any question to ask him & he’s turning to leave & I think of one.

“Do bones float?”

“Excuse me?”

“Bones. Do bones float?”

Dr. Fish stares at me & blinks once, twice. “What kind of bones?—human, or animal?”

“There’s a difference?”

“Well, there might be.” Dr. Fish shrugs & frowns backing off, I get the idea he’s stalling not knowing the answer. “It would depend, too, on whether the bones were heavy, or, you know, dried out—hollow & light. If so they would float, I’m sure.” There’s a pause & he adds, “You mean float in water?” & I nod sort of vague & he’s at the door, a little wave of his hand like a Thalidomide flipper, “Well, Quen-tin. See you next week?”

It was already arranged that the bill would be sent to Mom. No need for me to stop at the front desk. The receptionist called out surprised asking did I wish to make an appointment? & I mumbled no, I’d call sometime. & out of there, & that smell, fast. & in the van able to breathe & driving back to Church Street it came to me Fuckface Fish didn’t know the first fucking thing about BONES. Dentists are not doctors. Nor scientists of any kind. Probably didn’t know any more than Q__ P__.

A MEMENTO of the visit, though, in my pocket.

25

FUCKING SORRY to be missing so many classes at Dale Tech. I don’t know how it happens. Especially since I am determined to turn over a new leaf this time.

Except in Intro to Engineering I fucked up the first quiz, got a score of 34 (“F”). & missed the second. & when I got to the computer lab to do my assignments I’m behind in, there was a weird suspicious smell like formaldehyde that might’ve been a trick. (For the part of BIG GUY I’d saved, two-three years ago, I’d needed at least a quart of formaldehyde & got some from a biology lab at Mt. Vernon pretending I was a student, in my stick-on goatee & heavy glasses & carrying a briefcase I can pass for a grad student anywhere.) & the instructor is a young guy who looks right through me like there’s a blank space where I am.

Dad has paid my tuition & I have insisted I will pay him back out of my caretaker’s wages, as soon as things get settled. I still owe on my van & there are other expenses. Mom says I am careless with money spending on friends & making loans that will never be repaid, I’m like her with a generous heart she says & not many money-management skills. Since the trouble last year—the arrest & the hearing & the suspended sentence etc.—Dad looks at me differently I think, I’m not 100% sure because I am shy to raise my eyes to his but I think it’s like he is fearful of me as in the past he was impatient & always finding fault. Like Q__ his only son was a student failing a course of his. Yet I believe he is thinking we are all pretty lucky like my lawyer said. No matter the shame to the P__ family that Q__ is an “admitted” sex offender at least Q__ is not incarcerated at Jackson State Prison. At least his twelve-year-old “victim” was not injured. Or worse. Dad saying again & again Think of it as an investment in our joint future, son! You can pay me back when you’re able. His jaw like he’s got lockjaw but he’s smiling with that wrinkly little pink-asshole mouth & his professor eyes watery inside his glasses.

Mom hugs me & stands on tiptoe to kiss my cheek. Her bones are like dried sticks I could break in my hands so I stand very straight & still not breathing to inhale her smell. What that smell is I do not know & do not name. Mom was a plump woman once with soft big breasts like balloons filled with warm liquid unless I am remembering her wrong. Dr. E__ says all mothers are big in memory because we were tiny infants nursing at the breast. Dr. E__ says there is the GOOD BREAST & the BAD BREAST. There is the GOOD MOTHER & the BAD MOTHER. You know we love you Quentin Mom says like a tape when a button is punched This time things will turn out well.

I say, That’s right, Mom.

I say, I’m sure going to see to that, Mom.

These past ten months or so I’ve been driving out to Dale Springs & taking Mom & Grandma to church, & I’m missing some Sundays now but I intend to get back on schedule soon. Mom says This time things will turn out well. With God’s will. & Grandma says, This time things will turn out well. With God’s will Amen.

26

EXCEPT: the old dreams starting again in this new bed in this very house I’d visited so much as a little boy, Junie & me the grandchildren Grandma & Grandpa loved. They never knew Q__ P__ but they said they loved him. These old dreams now I’ve stopped taking my medication, I’m waking with a HARD-ON big as a ROCKET & sizzling-exploding going off LIKE A COMET’S TAIL. My cum is thick & clotted & gluey-hot wiped on the bedsheets, on the curtains, on the cardboard pizza box & napkins from Enzio’s I folded to an inch square & placed in Akhil’s bed (which was not that neatly made, not what you might expect) one afternoon when the house was empty.

Waking up in my caretaker bed at the ground floor rear of 118 North Church Street & I’m shuddering-groaning as the ORGASM slams through me like a bolt of electricity. Dreaming I’m strapped in the dentist’s chair & lowered helpless & knives & picks in my mouth till I’m choking with my own blood. I’m feeling O.K. once I get up & turn the TV to “Good Morning America” & I boil some black coffee & take some uppers I pick up on the street when required. & I remember the computer class was the day before. Or I’m driving out to Dale Tech & it’s the wrong day, or the wrong time of the right day. Because Time is like a tapeworm jammed inside you in any direction. So I drive out anyway once the van is IN MOTION headed in that direction I’m superstitious about changing course just on impulse.

& if there’s a hitch-hiker along the route, often just off the expressway I’ll probably stop & give him a ride & I will observe him detached as a scientist calculating what kind of ZOMBIE he might make. But I am never tempted so close to home. & out at Dale Tech which is this crappy fifth-rate place everybody at the University including Professor R__ P__ looks down their asses at I will park my van in lot C I have a sticker for & cross “campus” (just concrete & scrubby strips of grass & stick-trees half of them dead over the winter) thinking O.K.! I’ll visit my profs to explain there’s an illness in the family, my Mom in a struggle with cancer, or Dad with a bad heart but I can’t find their offices or if I find the office it’s in the wrong building or the wrong wing of the right building & by the time I get to the right office it’s shut, door’s locked, the cocksucker is gone for the day. Or say I get sidetracked trailing some young guys from my engineering class into the student union where I’ll have cups of black coffee till my eyeballs spin like pinwheels sitting seeing who’s around ANYBODY KNOW ME? ANYBODY WANT TO SIT WITH ME? squinting seeing if I recognize anybody, if it’s O.K. to sit with some of them, maybe they’re in my engineering class or maybe computer or I look enough like somebody they know so it’s O.K. I’m carrying some textbooks, it looks like, & my hair cut & not in a ponytail or straggling down my shoulders since the arrest though I am wearing RAISINEYES’ funky leather slouch-brim hat & BUNNYGLOVES’ soft-bunny-fur-lined leather gloves are in the pocket of my $300 sheepskin jacket & my aviator-style amber prescription lenses are in BIG GUY’s frames so I look pretty fucking cool I think for a shy white guy on the downside of thirty, weak chin & hairline receding. & it’s weird how friendly the Tech students are, & how trusting. Like if you are enrolled & a student you are one of them & no questions asked. All of them commuters like me living in Mt. Vernon or the county & most with part-time jobs or even full-time, like me. Even sometimes a girl will pull out a chair to sit at my table if she knows somebody with me. Hi! she’ll say like a high school cheerleader. Like the girls at Dale Springs High who looked through Q__ P__ those years like he didn’t exist. Are you in my computer class?—you look familiar.

I should mention my handtooled kidskin boots just a little too big for me courtesy of Rooster. Last observed striding along the street in Greektown, Detroit, Thanksgiving weekend 1991.

Never have selected any specimen except the black boy I don’t count, from the Roosevelt projects, from Mt. Vernon & vicinity. But it is a shrewd idea to keep in practice speaking with them. Though mainly I listen. To learn their words, their slang. Like they say, cool they say, that’s cool! every few words. Gross, fucked-up, weird, wasted, retro, wild, far-out bummed—the words don’t change that much, & there are not many of them. It’s more the way they move their hands, mouths, eyes. Though shrinking from their eyes unless I’m wearing my dark plastic shades.

Sometimes like Mom says I’m too generous paying for somebody’s lunch or beers or whatever. Or actually lending money. & driving one or two of them home sometimes if they’ve missed their bus going a few miles out of my way into suburbs not-known to me & No trouble! I say & in such instances Q__ P__’s kindness will be remembered, my face & the Ford van with the AMERICAN FLAG decal on the rear window. A big decal exactly fitting the rear window. If I needed a character witness (for instance at a trial) you would remember Q__ P__ from Dale Tech & the fact that I was kind.

Once lent a skinny Chinese kid my sheepskin jacket on a freezing winter night, no questions asked. & he returned it, maybe two weeks later but he returned it. Engineering student named “Chou” or “Chin” with a ping! sound in it. & his eyes shining-black & he did not seem so young & so innocent as most of them but when he said Thanks, man all I said was a mumble Sure.

27

That last time in my place on Reardon St. I was taking a chance bringing NO-NAME home. Picked him up on 1-96, Grand Rapids exit ramp but he said he was from Toledo & traveling west. Fighting the drug eyes rolling sideways in his head like marbles. Hey man I guess I don’t want to do this O.K.?—lemme go man & I told him I wanted him to stay with me like we were friends, brothers, I told him I would pay him well & he wouldn’t be disappointed & he was sweating saying Man I’m cool won’t tell anybody I swear just lemme out of here man please?—O.K.? & I tightened the cord so his big eyes bulged & his skin was ashy-plum & the lips I could not take my eyes off were ashy & it was shooting through me like electricity HE KNOWS! NOW HE KNOWS! NO TURNING BACK! which is the point that must be reached. The threshold of the black hole that sucks you in. A fraction of a second before & you are still free but a fraction of a second later & you are sucked into the black hole & are lost. & my dick hard as a club. & big as a club. & the sparks of my eyes. & I did not stammer as when first he swung into the van this cool dude eyeing whitey & his easy smile like Here I am, man, what’re you going to do about it? In the back the old battered Elements of Geophysics textbook to provide a false clue, & my stick-on woolly moustache & hair parted weird-neat high on the left side of my head & in the tavern in Grand Rapids where we had a few beers he did the talking & I sat quiet just listening & if anybody saw us it was NO-NAME they saw & some white guy who never was there.

Then home with me & the promise of a hot bath, home-cooked meal vodka & clean sheets etc. NO-NAME grinning thinking he’d be sucked off by whitey & paid for his trouble & maybe clear out whitey’s possessions but that was not how it came about & the panic in his eyes said this was so. I said, I am not a sadist, I am not a torturer, I think you are terrific, I ask you to cooperate & you will not be hurt. I was excited, I had to unzip. He saw, & he knew. You know even when you don’t. It was two barbiturates I gave him mashed & in vodka. But they were slow to take effect & he was struggling & I said how many times I will not hurt you I said if you lay still. But his struggling made things worse for him & he didn’t cooperate. He was crying, I saw he was just a kid. Maybe nineteen years old & he’d acted so much older, so cool! Jammed the kitchen sponge into his mouth seeing the flash of a gold tooth. He was near to choking so I had to be careful, I did not want to lose him. He was tied securely for his own safety, he was drugged & should have been anesthetized by now but it was taking too long. The way the doctors did lobotomies was to zap their patients first with electric shocks to render them unconscious but I didn’t have the nerve I feared I would electrocute NO-NAME & myself both. He was in the tub now naked & the water was running & that freaked him HE KNOWS! HE KNOWS! though he could not see the ice pick yet. Snaky-supple kid with that gold tooth—a real TURN-ON. Reddish-kinky hair & a deep red sheen to his skin. Like oxblood shoe polish, Dad’s shoe polish I remember from years ago at home. Good-looking in fact FABULOUS-LOOKING & they know it but it’s too late once Q__ P__ takes over. I secured his head in the clamp & now brought the ice pick (which I had sterilized on the hot-plate burner) to his right eye as indicated in Dr. Freeman’s diagram but when I inserted it through the “bony orbit” NO-NAME freaked out struggling & screaming through the sponge & there was a gush of blood & I came, I lost control & I came, so hard I kept COMING & COMING LIKE A CONVULSION I couldn’t stop nor even breathe I was groaning & gasping for air & when it was over & I was in control again I saw the damage done—fucking ice pick rammed up to the hilt in NO-NAME’s eye up into his brain & the black kid was dying, he was dead, blood gushing like from a giant nosebleed, another fuck-up & NO ZOMBIE.

28

& then the disposal of. The heavy weight of.

SO HEAVY. Like they’re doing it on purpose, RESISTING.

Wrapped naked in green garbage-pail liners & tied with rope & on the outside wrapped in canvas & tied with baling wire. Dragged by night by stealth & infinite care. Down the stairs & into the van, the rear of the van carefully prepared for its cargo. SO HEAVY! Q__ P__ sweating in even cold weather. Lifting weights & working out at a gym like I do from time to time & mean to do on a regular basis as every therapist I’ve ever had recommends hasn’t built up the muscles I would wish in the upper body & thighs.

The disposal of, these FABULOUS-LOOKING guys, it’s a DOWNER.

Leaves me depressed if I’m not careful, back on my regimen of medication. & the fucking medication has side-effects so they get you both ways.

Q__ P__ always drives at the speed limit & obeys all traffic regulations. Whether there is contraband cargo aboard the van or not. Sometimes impatient drivers sound their horns at him moving slow & cautious (for instance in rainy weather, in snow) in the right-hand lane. But no response. No lowering the window & yelling out or waving the .38 pistol & firing into somebody’s surprised face LIKE THEY DO IN DETROIT, MAN!

A landfill or dump is most strategic of course where the ground is already broken. & far from home base—seventy, one hundred, two hundred miles is Q__ P__’s rule. The extra effort is worth it like purchasing a new moustache, wig or whiskers every time. Vacant lots, wooded areas near parks—risky because kids play in them, & dogs. Dogs are your natural enemy if you don’t dig deep. But empty marsh land beyond the Interstate in some lonely place where nobody goes is a good bet & weighted down with a tire iron & baling wire dropped into deep water—NO-NAME was dropped into a river in Manistee National Forest east of Crystal Valley.

& never a ripple, nor any word. Never a news item. No obituary. He did in fact have a name but it did not suit him.

Only this single memento I have of him in my carekeeping: one of Q__ P__’s most prized good-luck charms.

^{_{GOLD TOOTH (ACTUAL SIZE)}}

How many times. I keep mementos but no records. My clock face has no hands & Q__ P__ has never been one to have hang-ups over personalities or the past, THE PAST IS PAST & you learn to move on. I could be a REBORN CHRISTIAN is what I sometimes think, & maybe I am waiting for that call.

In the meantime I have the basement of my grandparents’ old house entrusted to me as CARETAKER.

29

A little sickness in the air from so much fragrance everywhere—

somebody’s left-behind New Anthology of English Verse & I leafed through it in the student union, not at the tech college but at the University where sometimes I come by in the early evening & these words from a poem by “Gerald Manley Hopkins” leapt out at me & rang like the bell of the Music College.

Because now it is spring, it is April & Q__ P__’s first year of probation is behind him.

30

Dad & Mom & the relatives were ashamed but THAT IS HOW IT PLAYS OUT as my lawyer, in fact he is Dad’s lawyer, in Dad’s hire, has said. THAT IS HOW IT PLAYS OUT.

If your son had come up before a black judge, or a woman judge—it might’ve been much, much worse.

Q__ P__ was allowed after negotiation (in which Q__ P__ took no part) to plead guilty to sexual misdemeanor committed against a minor. My lawyer & the prosecution lawyer worked it out. & Judge L__ was understanding. People were saying where money changes hands & it is the word of an inexperienced white man, unmarried, thirty years old, against the charge of a black boy from the projects, & this black boy, twelve years old, from a “single-mother welfare” family, there is not much mystery guessing what probably occurred. Nor what kind of “justice” would be extracted.

Just plead guilty, it’s worked out & you’ll be O.K.

But if my son is not guilty?—what a travesty!

Quentin would not do such a thing. He is my son, my boy & I know.

Quentin, O.K.? Agreed?

In fact Q__ P__ was visibly ashamed & repentant & had “learned his lesson”—one look at him, his grainy red-rimmed eyelids & parched lips, you knew.

Two years’ sentence—suspended. Psychotherapy, counseling. Regular reporting to probation office. Agreed?

Tearful before Judge L__ & my hands in my pockets, in my right trouser pocket fingering my good-luck GOLD TOOTH & Dad whispered for me to take my hands out of my pockets, please. & I did, & I thanked Judge L__ for his understanding etc. as my lawyer advised. & leaving the judge’s chambers I was having trouble breathing & Dad was gripping me by the elbow. Buck up, son those were his actual words everything is fine now & we’re going home. & out in the empty courtroom, Mom & Grandma & Junie & Reverend Horn who is a close friend of Grandma’s & who “vouched” for Q__ P__ to Judge L__ were waiting. I was wearing a new suit of small brown checks & a beige bowtie with narrow red stripes & my hair had been cut trimmed neat at the ears & the nape of the neck & I was not wearing my sexy aviator-style glasses but the clear plastic frames & I was not crying now but smiling & hugging my family the way you would do at such a time. I shook Reverend Horn’s hand Thank you, thank you I am so happy, so grateful. Thank you for your faith in me.

We were outside then. A warm rain speckled my face.

It was then Dad handed me the car keys to his 1993 Lexus. Which I had never driven before. I understood it was to show how Dad trusts me, & the family trusts me & I would not let them down ever again. & driving out of the rundown city up along the lake to Dale Springs where the houses are spacious & set on large wooded lots & the streets are lined with trees & in good repair I felt such a sense of HOMECOMING & BEING LOVED & I kept just at the speed limit of 35 mph ignoring how other drivers tailgated & honked & passed me impatiently. Junie who is Big Sis to me even now aged thirty-five & principal of a junior high school, with a fond smile for her kid brother, said, Quen was always the one of us who could drive a car then adding quick,—I mean is. Right, Quen? I grinned into the rearview mirror. Right, Junie.

There has always been a special feeling between Big Sis & me. On her side at least.

Driving home, my old home I was welcome in at any time but had outgrown yes but Q__ P__ is welcome there at any time & maybe parental guidance is a good thing. One of those warm-rainy windy April days. The Great Lakes sky like folds of grayish-white brain matter. Dad beside me in the passenger’s seat of this smooth terrific car & he’s wearing a custom-made suit & looks good for an old guy his age stroking his chin where, a long time ago, his goatee had been. & in the back seat Mom, Grandma & Junie, chattering together & Mom’s tears & the others comforting her & turning off onto Lakeview Boulevard bringing us home I almost could not remember why I was so happy & feeling so free thinking of BLACK COCK, shy shrinking boy-penis like a baby rabbit, skinned. I’d held it tight in my hand tickling the tip with the tip of the ice pick but the pills hadn’t taken effect yet for I was impatient & exhibited poor judgment (I see in retrospect—I was drunk) & the boy panicked beginning to bellow as he broke free like a frenzied animal crashing through the locked rear door of the Ford van SO HELP ME GOD I DON’T KNOW HOW. & running then naked but for his filthy T-shirt out into the street bellowing like a fire alarm rising louder & louder. MY ZOMBIE!

He had not asked for a nickel, he was trusting as a dog. Yet Q__ P__ could not trust him.

From the back seat they were asking me something & I wasn’t listening the way you don’t listen to females mostly but I must’ve answered O.K., maybe it was something about taking over as caretaker or maybe they liked my haircut. & Dad laid his hand on my shoulder. For the first time driving that day I believed I could feel the motion of the Earth. The Earth rushing through the emptiness of space. Spinning on its axis but they say you don’t feel it, you can’t experience it. But to feel it is to be scared & happy at once & to know that nothing matters but that you do what you want to do & what you do you are. & I knew I was moving into the future. There is no PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or even to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it.