Iola Clitty

 

 

 

Iola Clitty walks with her heels very close together, a denim skirt slipping almost to the glossed linoleum floor which reflects the refulgence of the trophies lined up and down Central plank. When Iola was in Kindergarten she used to imagine that the floors were the sidewalks in Heaven, and would even follow the linoleum down to the edge of the hallway, where the Newly refurbished gymnasium is now located, hoping she would find a heirloom of her Grandma Hazel, who she barely remembers being dandled on her lap and having the Howdy-Duty chorus sung to like a round.

            Iola Clitty is a foster child and a devout Apostolic Christian, which, for some reason, Coach M keeps on getting confused with the Amish, often asking Iola where did she park ye’ olde horse and carriage before coming to class this morning.

 

            Iola keeps her hair back, tucked and matted into a little auburn plateau that rises like a plateau from the back of her skull. She has six different assortments of the same denim dress which she shows Coach M comes replete with brass buttons and zippers, something the Amish populace would think were manufactured in the seventh level of Hell. Each of her denim skirts sweep across the linoleum floor. Iola has serious qualms about Meredith quoting Poe’s "Hear The Bells" every time she came into the room. Since becoming somewhat close to Iola, Meredith has altered her analogy, claiming that Iola in her skirt slightly resembles the dancing, bewitched broomstick from Fantasia—a movie, which of course, Iola was never permitted to see growing up.

 

            Morning is dawning in the hallways at CLS. The sun streaking in through the stain glass holographic neon in the Refurbished gym emanates and even greater morning aura of gold flecks throughout the hallway. Iola is bussed down to CLS from Guardian Angel on Heading, the home where Javon Worthington has been staying ever since he was got on film trying to hold up an Usher at Bethany Baptist cross town. Coach M, who was also, ironically, driving past in a van shaped like a Bread company no one had ever heard of, was initially accused of providing a botched ‘scape route for Javon, who under oath, said that Coach M had dropped him off and even somehow loaned him the gun.

 

            The case was settled outside of court for an undisclosed sum, Coach M, benching Worthington for the next two games, and shipping him to Guardian Angel, a Goth style reformatory orphanage on the far bluff side of the Nuclear woods, where Iola has also been living ever since her parents inscrutable disappearance three summers ago, when her parents, along with the McReynold’s, VonBeheren’s, McGranahan’s and Hale’s grandparents and Mom decided to hire an investigative journalistic news team to promulgate the real reason why they suspected tuition was so skyrocket high of non varsity athletes at Christ Lutheran. After a bevy of Journalists arrived at CLS tempting  Donald Lyonsinki, i.e. don Lyons with a life-time supply of Twinkies, cozening the hard-hated father of Hollis to divulge how much he pays for his four children to attend the academy and then, with his mouth muffled full of shortcake bread and filling, Dave began confessing in staccato grunts that what Coach M was really trying to accomplish was to milk all of the non-athletic families for all they are worth and that, the newly refurbished gymnasium was just the first step.

 

            The interview aired with little super titles posted beneath the screen, deciphering to the public just what it was Don Lyons was actually chewing on about.

 

            The tape was somehow aired, but when it came time for Don Lyons to take center mic an the scene was replaced with a photograph of Patrick from the yearbook two years ago with grunts being heard in the background.

 

The next Monday in class each of the boys were giving a self-destructing stamp envelopes which, as Warren, suggested, was penned in obviously fake blood, for the boys not to fuck with the Coach if they knew what was good for them.

 

            Iola’s parents decided to take things into their own shepherded hands and, after arriving to CLS one night to pick up Iola in the old shadowed corner beneath the flickering street light where the McReynolds clan used to wait, Paul Edward Clitty and his modest wife Merriam, escorted their youngest to their station wagon and informed her to wait and count the books of the King James Edition backwards bible from Revelations to Genesis.

 

            Iola fell asleep and the next thing she released she was surrounded by Coach M and Doctor Kennedy Marshal and a bourbon hiccupping Reverend Morning Wood and was being lift out of the car like she was a little girl all over again while M. tried to explain to her that their had been a terrible accident and Dr. Kennedy Marshal tried to look up her long-denim dress to verify that she wasn’t wearing anything that even remotely resembled a g-string flossed thong-a secular item that is strictly off limits to non-cheerleading students.

 

            At that moment, her brain seemed to be stuck inside the center of a pinwheel. She remembers Coach M gripping her wrist and telling her to walk faster, he’s supposed to be supervising the Varsity practice, trying to make sure that Marcellus doesn’t smuggle in any more forties than is socially salubrious for a fourteen year old. Reverend Morningwood adjusted his zipper and relieved himself in the one water faucet Coach M almost vehemently insists that Patrick and his friends use to hydrate themselves after p.e. Coach M tossed Iola into the Library which looked like it was something out of Charlotte’s Webb, where she stayed for two weeks, with visits from only Doctor Kennedy marshal who would bring her copious amounts of Tofu and rice and insist on doing a thong inspection everyday, even though Iola knew that there was just no such possible way that she could be wearing a thong because she was locked in hear and hadn’t even taken a bath in two weeks. When she asked Doctor Kennedy Marshal if she could us the ladies Kennedy insisted on expecting her panty line again for thong lines and then said no. Having Bev Pinesol slide a lard-crusted Crisco container with the words Potty crayoned over the CRISCO seal. Iola stayed inside the library for two weeks, clinging to a one-buttoned eyed Raggedy Anne she found in the corner.

 

            Eventually Coach M came and tugged Iola from the library, escorting her into his office, introducing her to Waverly Fortune, the black-willow of the Guardian angel estate, Waverly, expecting a frail cheeked Iola, addressing Coach M by his first name, telling him that she isn’t much but I guess for insurance purchases, she will do just fine.

 

            When Iola finally gulped three times and gathered up the gall to inquire to Coach M about the whereabouts of her parents Coach M just sighed, looked back at the Black Willow and feigned a look of naïve sadness.

 

            “See,” Coach M said. “She’s been crying for so long that she forgot that her parents were ruthlessly killed in that elevator accident two weeks ago.”  Coach M handing Iola Clitty a two week old paper with yellow coffee stains on the sides. The headline showing a picture of coach M giving a eulogy at the church across the street, saying how much the Clitty’s added to the congregation even though their style of raiment’s were a little bit more traditional than the church as a whole was used to. The last part of the article Iola skimmed had to do with memorials being made to the CLS Finance for Eternity fund in order to restore the condemned bleachers and rustic old gymnasium. Apparently, as Iola would later find out, her parents altered their wills and sold their house, giving CLS school sole possession of both their estate and fortune, if anything bad was to ever happen to either of them.

 

            That was three years ago and Iola still has dreams of both of her parents coming to her, telling her not to worry, that they are in a better place, to be a good girl and to say her prayers and to keep her hair high and her dress low, and, if she just so happens to ever ride in an elevator with either Coach M., Doctor Marshall or Reverend Morningwood, to be extremely cautious when they tell you to press the button to the basement, because sometimes, Iola, the very last level is hell.

 

            Iola was equally miserable the remainder of her fourth and all of her fifth grade year. Heavy construction had begun on the Finance for Eternity Fellowship Facility and, although Coach M had earlier told Iola that her parents would receive a statue dedicated to their demure nature and temperance, Iola saw nothing of the sort ever erected. In Math of fifth grade a new kid by the name of Patrick McReynolds invited Iola to form a secret club he was constituting named S.O.L, after the sons of Liberty in Johnny Tremain, claiming that what was going on to CLS today is quite germane to what was occurring at the dawn of this great country in terms of tyranny and rights and all that shit. Patrick claimed that if Iola would dress up like an Indian with him and his two good friends named Dave, pulling a Boston Tea party so to speak in the Gym, he would do everything within his means to find out what really, happened to Iola’s parents, a statement which made Iola cry just thinking about.                                          

                       



Guest's First

 

            Above the McReynolds fake fireplace (which Patrick, when he was three, tried to light a cheap firework in and nearly got all of us killed, as Warren iterates to neighbors or guests as he shows them the fake, itinerant fireplace—which is portable and good for any occasion—especially cheap Motel 8 rooms used to add a slice of needed nuptial romantic ambiance) Warren has hung the sign he had Ceramic in neon limerick green when he was participating in the typical Irish Curse, out of both cash and work and living on Cooper, entertaining potential employers with one of his wife’s damn fine home cooked meals hoping that Patrick, his eldest son, wasn’t doing anything completely embarrassing, such as playing with the Bunser Burner Warren fetched from a high school garbage receptacle and which Patrick and his younger sibling Allan used to use to torture their pocket sized Cobra GI Joes with, holding them with pair of bearded rusty tongs over the flame and telling them to die. Die. Warren lost a potential big time paying job as a computer analyst at Caterpillar because after he had poured the executive his third cognac and even allowed him to fire up a Cuban in the living room as the executive reviewed Warren’s inventions/technical innovations cutting-edge shit portfolio and wipes his brow and mentioned how Warren could possibly be an invaluable asset to the Global Caterpillar community with his unparalleled insight into modern technology (Helen, in the kitchen, holding the top of her blouse into her neck, flabbergasted that the executive, who told them before the meal to no, please call him Prescott, or P-daddy, please, I insist, that’s just the type of guy I am— said the word ‘Global’ which made Helen think about moving to the lush Irish country and having a farm and sending her three precocious angels to private  internationally renowned prep schools along the Swiss boarders-as Social Worker Kennedy had suggested on numerous occasions was the only possible methodology of redemption for her eldest son) and upstairs, Patrick and Allan kind of got carried away with the Bunsen burner and forgot it was running and seething through burnt plastic Cobra affiliates and leaving a foul odor as they went over to the side of the house and Patrick was trying to teach his brother and protégé, Allan, how to rappel down the side of the house without Mama or Papa bear spotting you, using the Christmas lights left over form last August when Warren claimed for once he was going to get an early head start this year and relax god damnit during neon blitz commerce whirl of the holiday vortex—Patrick, telling  Allan to pretend he is Tarzan and  swing from his glen and yawp out like Tarzan Yawps out loud, Allan, getting prematurely excited (as, his brother will claim, is a tendency still to this day) and Allan took his long-johns underwear top and wrapped it around his torso like a loin cloth before he grabbed hold of the Christmas lights. When Downstairs, simultaneously, Prescott was showing Warren the secret handshaking and talking seriously about cooperate golf outings and company paid Holidays and telling Misses McReynolds what a damn fine host she was and what a beautiful woman outside of the kitchen she was and if he wasn’t just so happily married with children and with step-children form his third previous marriage than maybe he just might have to employ Helen to be his personal secretary and get her to drop the note cards and that as long as he has a face Misses McReyolds has a place to sit down any time her husband is out of town, which, with the new job, would be often and bend over and laughs were heard. Warren, being handed a fountain pen and a cigar and having a slap on the back as Prescott invites Warren out to Big Als in the company car to meet his fellow co-workers, suddenly, without a known forecast, the sprinkler system, which Warren devised and tested out on his own room last week, begins to let off a defrost drizzle-which immediately puzzles Warren who had the Sprinkler system set on cigar friendly (the system, capable of being programmed secretly, on ASH TRAY level) to keep Patrick and Allan from firing up inside the house, which Mama McReynolds discerned last week that must be what happens when her Benson and Hedges grow fairy feet with footprints leading upstairs. Suddenly the drizzle begins to turn into an all out tempest, which douses Prescott so hard on his head that his toupee slips off and saddles the back of his neck; a mock Esau genuflecting ersatz  fur in front of his father. Misses McReynolds runs to the umbrella case and flaps open a broilli over Prescott’s head just as Warren runs into his master bedroom, fingers up the remote control to damn near everything in the house and begins to thumb the code for the indoor sprinkler system which for some reason, does not halt,which means that there must be a fire lurking somewhere on the premises,then fire Marshal Mitch showing up outside, telling everyone to get the hell out, there is an inferno blazing upstairs. Prescott, saying that now he is going to have to have his custom fitted emporio Armani suit laundered and dry cleaned while the four of them are escorted out at the same moment Allan McReynolds is heard yelling Geronimo and crashed through the downstairs window, holding onto the Christmas lights like a glen, commenting on how much fun that was and trying to escape Warren’s vicious grapple and run upstairs and rappel, once again, through the downstairs Window.

 

As Allan opens the door leading to the upstairs a boll of smoke shimmies out and he stops drops and rolls and runs outside. The Bunsen Burner slash Cobra torch (Torture) device apparently caught Patrick's mattress on fire and Patrick scaled down the rain gutter and is safe. The blaze turned out to be mostly smoked, but left a serious dent in the upstairs bedroom, over the oak Stork Warren had made when Patrick had to wear a Bowling Ball in his underwear at school to see what it was like to be pregnant for a week, an exercise exacted by school Social Worker Dr. Kennedy Marshal. The miffed, irate Caterpillar associate simply looked at Warren and told him that he and his prestigious company could never in this lifetime even remotely consider hiring a CEO/system analyst who, although his hacker skills were quite formidable—could never even govern his own family-how was he suppose to govern over his employers and competitors-and what about the country Club outings-would his kids set the Country Club on fire too?

 

Call me Prescott left uttering out the words I never at the top of his lungs, enunciating them very clearly so that even Rose, the deaf ninety year old that VonBehren is purported to have a crush on down the street, could read his lips. He kindly kissed Helen’s hand and took home the leftover Chicken teriyaki-thanking her once again-imploring her to reconsider his secretarial offer. Patrick was ordered to go to his room and clean up the ashes young man and Allan, once Warren and Helen reentered their house and mopped up the living room, continues to sway into the broken living room window three more consecutive times, calling himself Mouglai and pounding on his bear chest in his loin cloth and yelling out Geronimo, after every solitary leap.

 

After the Cooperate executive fiasco outing Warren reasserted his ceramic base GUESTS FIRST sign, above the fake fireplace. Warren even rigged it with a state-of-the art sensory detector, so that whenever a McReynolds, or a guest just so happen to point at he GUEST FIRST slogan, it will light up with Light BRIGHTS, a gift Patrick got three Christmases ago and decided never to use.

 

“GUESTS FIRST,” Warren iterates using his drill sergeant outdoor voice, indoors, “Means that our company, be it feline, furball, or Wall Street executive has the right to feel at Home in this here house. If we are serving Chicken for dinner the guest is served the first drumstick as well as the final breast. If you kids are playing Nintendo and our guests wishes to have a turn he may play first and as long as he or she likes. If our guest wishes to walk around wearing my pajama’s and slippers and nightcap, asking if he can make long distance phone calls to some remote villa in the South Pacific-all you guys have to look and point to find out what the proper and correct response will in fact be.”

 

Warren turns and points. By reflex the lights blink on as if from a Pinball machine. The McReynolds clan, in unison, reads the sign like they are driving past a newly reopened Restaurant they have never heard of before.”

 

“GUESTS FIRST,”

 

“First” says five finger old Sarah, who finishes just a second behind the choral of voices.

 

“Damn straight. Now, I want you kids to invite all of your friends over to Casa McReynolds and give them the royal treatment.  And remember, in the immortal words of my grandfather Graham McReynolds (god bless his Irish heart), “You can learn a lot from a McReynolds…”

 

In unison the family responds. “Shut the fuck up,”

 

 

“The fuck up!” Mutters Sarah, the caboose, slightly miming the lips of her progenitors and fellow siblings.

 

 

After Sarah offers the last ‘Fuck up,” and errant bowling pin, a botched spare, hammers through the window nearest Warren, slamming into his temple. Before Warren marches over to the corner Knight, alighting the sword both Patrick and Allan have monikered Excalibur and declare all out household war against the circus tent next door, Patrick can swear he sees a little cartoon carousel of birds, stars and seahorses orbiting around Warren’s head. Helen, trying to be rational, pointing to the flickering Neon of the Guest’s first sign, but Warren now has the sword brandished high above his shoulders, as if he is supplicating to Grayskull for power, ordering his troops to destroy the protestant three-ring next door in the name of Saint Patrick, not you, son.

Good stories, too, often have no beginning and no ending

##############################################

 

            Good stories, too, often have no beginning and no ending.

 

 

Looking back—

As seen through the tambourine leafy carousel taut movie screen of a kaleidoscope.

 

            Back in the days when Allan McReynold's had experienced only eight Christmas’ and looked slightly like a diminutive ventriloquist Pee-Wee Herman doll-cherry lips and fair forehead. This story also begins on Downs Circle, which is Patrick’s old street dig and is not really circle in semblance at all but more like a parabola. A contorted thoroughly graveled vowel proportioned “U” with the sad sunken visages of windexed houses brimming back behind concrete sidewalks.  A grade school summer stretched out into what could in fact be eternity. It is before cigarettes and DC. Before random sex with lasses whose first names is all we remember. Before coffee and Lums and the ogle of tautly assed waitresses chartering us the noxious odor that seemed to sate the longing all of us had felt for so long-since perhaps even birth.  Before Hale and cigars. Before any of us had fallen head over Doc Martens in love with life.

 

            Allan is pedaling his brother’s carriage. A thickly-spoked Schwinn numerically specialized something-or-other, computer screen blue that came replete with a pair of lashed poked webbed-eyelids passing for wheels. Allan is outside popping wheelies and fortuitously bumping into park cars informing the seesaw neighborhood smiles that he meant to do that. Patrick is inside either fucking with his VIX-20, palsied palms pressed against jutting joystick (sporadically swearing beneath the hushed parental din offering the computerized images of invaders from space an overture of late American colloquial finest (motherfucker-shit-damn-motherfucker) all the while paying precocious homage to his phonebook thick Irish ancestry)-either that or playing MacGyver upstairs, mulling over the deeper metaphysical modalities of post-hermeneutic thought, extrapolating discrete mathematical theorems while copiously masturbating over crumpled panties in sister Amy’s room, thoughts baptized by images of one whose initials are H.L.-who will spasmodically appear out of nowhere. Our mashed muse for over a decade…

 

            Outside appears a boy attired like he is a hommie with his pants sagging and swerved Starter’s cap pointed the direction of Ursula Minor. The seat on his bicycle is more fourth of July patriotic cap than banana peel. Wigger-Boy and Allan rove up and down the street. They race. Break pedals skid. Back and forth flanking the contours of the giant shaped ‘U”. in front of a Allan makes excuses and the confetti smiles of grade school sweethearts dressed in pastel, Easter M&M color clothing laugh as the two of them banter and bike it out.

 

Allan informs a this arcane bathroom tile skinned alien gesticulating like his mother was Harriet Tubman and his father was Big Daddy Kane that the propelled pedal-chipped vehicle which his bottom is currently appropriating actually belongs to his older brother who has won so many races with it and who also contrived the rope ladder fastened to a branched bicep of the tree in his lawn. Quickly the boy demounts his bike and clambers up the rungs of the rope ladder. He is looking for ascension. He is climbing higher. He is going up.

 

            When he reaches the pinnacle branch he will find a nose-snubbed window overlooking a gritty sallow-stained parking lot, a Dunkin’ Donut placard that blinks sporadically twenty-four-seven, a trash dumpster the size of a caravan and a tepid cup of jamoke positioned appositely in front of him with little S’s of steam rising from it and with human voices surrounding him from all sides.

           

Mama (Helen) McReynolds smacks rolled fists, cupping both sides of her waist in a slugger’s embraceful squeeze.  Leering through the Windex smear, she observes with keen lighthouse vision a stranger dressed in ghetto garb talking with his hands and lounging on the top tree branch, referring to his bike as a ‘ Hoopty.' She promptly informs Savant Boy to go outside and tell that boy to get off our property before he falls flat on his ass and his parents sue us for all we’re worth. Savant Boy seems to comply daintily with Momma McReynolds maternal mandate. There is the thud of the oak door and the swat of the screen slab. Out walks a boy the size of a tree-stump. His hair is thick, taupe in color, with subtle strands protruding out like a cactus. His off brand shoes and knee high socks hint of squeaked genius. He pops out nonchalantly, elbows pacing, fingers saddled around his waist. He is more Lorax than Luddite.  The sun glistens from the rearview mirror of Warren’s Honda reflecting into he boy in the trees vision like a blinding bullet. The ballet of playground pint sized innocence scatter-a clipped string of vocational bible school puppets. Allan pops a wheelie in front of his Brothers presence, falling flat on his ass, once again, and saying that he meant to do that, once again. The repudiated savant boy begins to quake his jowls and sputter out a caveat, trying hard not to use the word “fuck” for fear of mother and the flaky aftertaste of soap. Before his mouth opens he hears a voice sink down from overhead.

 

“Hey man, did you build this? It’s pretty cool.”

 

 The savant boy’s eyes avert to the north and he responds in the first person-affirmative almost immediately.

 

Trays are heard skiing into the dishwater. Utensils plop into dishy suds. The gym floor is always spotless and reeks heavily of the antiseptic fluid Frank Shleuther and Kadeem’s father uses to cleanse the floor three times a day. Trays are heard being emptied with solid thwacks into the garbage cans that remind Patrick of Chimney’s. The fifth and sixth graders linger on the bleachers.  Beneath the stage are catacombs where chairs are stowed in long, rafted pillars. A giant sun engulfed by foamy hair embellished the Northern side of the gymnasium. HOME OF THE COMETS. Proclaiming that this is Comet Country. Two giant ropes curl in near the left hand side of stage. A neon tennis ball is spotted stuck in one of the giant rafters overlooking the vestigial tabletops. Two fire doors are located on each side of the collapsible lunch tables like British beefeaters. Above are handcrafted banners proclaiming a plurality of State Basketball Championships, each banner cut like a ribbon inheriting the size of a Chinese Kite with silky tendrils. An assembly meets in the autumn to retire grade school jerseys and hoist up last years’ championship team.

 

“Get a load of this shit.” Patrick points, his signature revolver fires.

 

“This is like grade school, people.” Observes Hale, followed by a ‘No duh’ somewhere among his friends.

 

“Not only that, we don’t even play the secular grade schools here in town. Only the parochial.”

 

“Which is all like, what, three here in town, thirty in the entire state.”

 

“ If even...”

 

Fiery-haired chief lunch lady Marilyn enters the floor with a clip board, marking long-legged skewed red v’s as she slices past the boys. Hale quickly lumbers his limbs up to surprise her from behind, pinching her shoulders and tap dancing out for her his request.

 

“Hey good lookin’. Whatcha got cookin? Howsabout cookin’ something up for me?”

 

He returns to the table with six more bread and butters, two patties and a complimentary napkin for Patrick, “To wipe out all the shit that’s been coming out of your mouth lately.”

 

            Head of custodial arts, Frank Sleutcher begins to mop the newly refurbished gymnasium floor. Frank stutters and has distinct nose hairs and the basketball five imitate him behind his mop hunch, his rumored visible hard-on for the lunch ladies.

 

“Hey Miss-miss-miss Johnson. May I sma-sma-smell your va-va-va-ja-ja jihna?”

 

A  flannel attired and weak-lashed and eraser stubbed Frank turns and smiles.

 

 

“Fra-fra-fra Frank. Do you like to e-e-eat Ja-Ja-Ja Johnson’s for bra-bra-bra breakfast.”

 

Frank just bites down his lips and stutters out the importance of a nutritious diet, stuttering as he says that kids these days just don’t realize that with their coco puffs and rock music and everything. The boys can make out his dentures case in Franks flannel side pocket. 

 

Eric and Aron and Mario all laugh. The principle struts by and grins at their conversation before berating Iola Clitty for chewing with her mouth open.

 

“Iola, lets not be gross.”

 

Iola eats lunch by herself. Because of a slight birth defect, Iola’s nostrils seem wrenched open and her corky teeth protrude, crookedly. Mr. Mooney once used Iola as an animate visual in his Anatomy and Physiology. She was asked by several sources not to audition for the cheerleading squad because the lack of funding and the so-called shortage of new uniforms. Truth is, Alicia Durham’s mom swore to principle M. that she saw lice balls inhabit Iola’s hair during the sermon one Sunday and refused to be the parental sponsor if Iola got permitted to cheer on the squad. The perfect and pristine cheerleaders, wear their attire to class on game days which is often three to four times a week. It is widely known that her clothes are hand me downs from the Mission. She lugs generic food items home form the church pantry, walking by herself, holding the cardboard churches altruism sack that reads WE ARE HERE TO BRING PEOPLE TO CHRIST AND TO BRING CHRIST TO PEOPLE tightly into her bosom. That her grades suck because none of the teachers can read her handwriting. The teachers even joke in the lounge but having to disinfect her homework with Lysol before they grade it. Patrick, Hale and Von Behren have often been told that they are Iola’s lover. That they have fucked Iola many times. That Iola is more inbred than a leprous mutt. That her vagina is made out of sandpaper and could not get wet even if it we’re baptized.

 

            “What the fuck is up with that shit?” Patrick.

 

“She’s like piss poor.” Hale.

 

“I’m not sticking up for her or anything like that, but last year in Sunday School the teacher said that the only thing Iola got for Christmas, while everyone else was receiving Nintendo and sequels to Mario and Zelda, all Iola received was a pair of a hand me down pair of socks.”  Notes VonB.

 

Mario slinks behind the girl and begins to rattle his torso. A cheerleader with a waterfall spume bowed on the top of her head catapults a spoonful of Marilyn’s finest, splatting it on her shirt.

 

“Oh, Iola, tell me you want it. Oh, yeah, it’s been so long. Oh, yeah, harder, harder, faster spank me! Oh, yeah!!!”

 

Iola appears to be perplexed. Opening her mouth, before she has finished chewing all the way Mario, then places his hand over his jock, thrusts his pelvis out one more time and comments.

 

“Open your mouth a little bit wider. You gotta make room for my sausages, baby. Oh yeah.”

 

The gymnasium erupts. The teachers appear to be conferring by themselves-hand pocketed and tie straightening, pointing to the retired basketball jerseys on the wall.

 

“That isn’t right.” Patrick.

   

“Why do they always pick on her?”  Hale.

 

Aron Bowman struts over and slides down next to Iola, putting his arm around her and asking her, again, if she would like to go steady with him. When her lips offer a crumbly yes, Aron responds.

 

“Sorry, I don’t study lice-infested lesbians in my rodent laboratory.”

 

Mario laughs with a condescending HA slathered in Donna’s face. She smiles back before facing down into her food.

 

“Somebody needs to stand up to that ass hole.”

 

“Shit. Don’t do it.”

 

“Just ignore him, it’s not worth it.”

 

“Turn the other cheek.”

 

“Only if it’s a full moon and I can stick a veggie tale cucumber up his conniving ass.”

 

“Good one.”

 

“Poor girl.”

 

“I mean….”

 

“Wha?”

 

Patrick often starts declarative sentences meaning something and then pauses and waits for his compadre to inquire what it is that he means.

 

“Do you know how much my parents are paying for me to attend this self-ordained shit hole?”

 

“How much?”

 

“Well, I don’t know for sure, I never came right out and just asked them. But it’s over three hundred a month for myself, Allan and Sarah since we’re not authorized members of the church. Shit, it may even be as much as three hundred dollars for each of us to attend this so-called Christian institution.”

 

            “Blessed be the poor.”

 

“That’s too much.”

 

“The meek shall inherit the earth.”

 

“The meek doesn’t have five children and an exorbitant cable bill to budget every month.”

 

“Where do you think all our church offerings go to?”

 

In unison.

 

“Basketball.”

 

“I’ll gladly basket Mario and Aron’s balls and then shove them so far up their…..”

 

“Patrick lets not be vindictive.”

 

“Oh. That’s a good one; let’s see here. Vin, dick, tive.”

 

Patrick morphs into his spelling bee championship collar. Patrick has never studied for a spelling test once and always manages to get A with multiple pluses that look like either connective telephone poles or Miss Mooney’s salute to Calvary. Patrick always shrugs when the tests are handed back like it was no big deal;  making paper airplanes out of the folded test afterwards, claiming that it was nothing a very mediocre orangutan couldn’t sign with his bipedal feet. The All school spelling bee transpires yearly in March, in between Tornado Drills and Basketball Nationals, Patrick has been runner up for the past three consecutive springs, missing easy words because, as Patrick claims, he got bored standing all up their, in fort of the school, with just Dave’s cousin, principle nerd Matthew Schneider, to keep him company. Patrick always has a habit of making sure his zipper is not afraid of heights in public, and last year Mr. Money sent the spelling Bee in abeyance when he looked Patrick straight in the eye and asked him if there was something personal he needed to take care of before the Bee resumes, Patrick. What is most intriguing about Patrick’s natural ability to make or spell close to damn near anything is the fashion and motions his body conducts and performs throughout his enhanced oration.  Slowly bridging his arms into a pensive gruff, Patrick slowly says the word out loud with a puzzled McReynolds humf.  His eyes then umbrella into the Northwest as if scrutinizing a constellation, before a jean-zipper wiggle with his lips, says the offers the words “now” and “hum” out loud, again, before properly spelling out the given word. Mouthing each I with a first person’s apostle’s creed proclamation. 

 

“Now, Hum…..Vee-EYE-end-dee-EYE-see-kay-tee-EYE-vee-e- (pause.) period.”

 

“He’s good.”

 

Clap. Patrick bows. A new hinge on the conversation is slowly being creaked open.

 

“Thank you. Thank you. Never once studied for a spelling bee and I always get an A.”

 

“Patrick, how do you do it?”

 

“It’s a secret my old man ( god bless ‘me) once taught me.”

 

“Which is…”

 

“When you stand in front of the class and get real apprehensive, all you do is look at the prettiest girl in the class room an imagine her naked.”

 

“And it works?”

 

Patrick responds by tilting his head to Hale as if Von B had just said something tinged with condescension.

 

“Please.”

“So who were you thinking of, Holly?”

 

“Well,”

 

            “It may surprise you.”

 

            “Who?”

 

“Well, this really isn’t the most apt time to.”

 

“It’s not Misses Money by chance, would it?”

 

“Yeah, in her long johns and grading pen sandwiched between her lips like a rubber cigar.”

 

The chocolate milk half ballooned in Patrick’s mouth nearly implodes as he chokes, “What!”

 

“It’s alright Pat, you’re surrounded by People who love and care for you.”

 

“Look,” Patrick articulates, trying to justify his friend’s accusations, “Just because I had that one dream a couple months ago doesn’t mean that I…..”

 

“Can you imagine her with whips and chains?”

 

“And leather.”

“Cha-ching.” Hale distends his wrist, half-way between the swing of a handbell and the jerk of a fish pole. VonBehren then pretends that he is lassoing a splintered calf and reeling her in.

 

“Well, if she has a whip, Patrick sure as hell needs a ball and chain.” Hale puns, laughing.

 

“Well a chain is easier for Patrick to come by than the balls.” D. Von Behren touché, forming an invisible sword slash above the trays.

 

“Can we please like change the subject or else I’m leaving.” Insinuates Patrick, to which VonB just looks at Patrick as if to say that’ll be the day without

 

 

“I’m leaving this summer.” Hale.

 

“Where to?”

 

“Florida.”

 

For the past four years Dave and Dave and Patrick have contrived extensive spring plans anticipating come June 1st to traverse down to the sunny, golden avenue intersections of Florida. They make extensive plans for a homemade go-Kart, filled with color-penciled blueprints.

 

“All we need is a lawnmower engine, a few good year tires and my parent’s king size bed frame, and dude, and we’re off.”

 

“We tried that last year.”

 

“And that would’ve worked too.” Patrick insists by pointing.

 

“My dad said he’d pay for our round trip airfare if we could get that vehicle to Pekin and part way back.”

 

“It worked well going down on hills-with, of course, the slight exception of the brakes.”

 

“Hey, if the barefoot brake methodology was good enough for Fred Flintstone.” Patrick insists.

 

“The barefoot brake and crash methodology, you mean.” Hale rectifies Pat’s statement.

 

The boys make sounds of brakes suddenly being slammed into a battered fingernail screech. Von Behren forms cymbals with his palms, as if to recreate a crash overture and Hale pretends to be smoking his soup spoons like one of Castro’s finest, telling the boys that they could all learn a lot from a dummy, prodding Patrick with the inside curve of his spoon.

 

“Isn’t that right, DUMMY.” Hale nudges with a stately brush of elbow, Patrick nods his head like an otter.

 

“Ok, ok, slight brake deficiency, I’ll admit it.”

 

“But you gotta admit, sucker was one hell of a vehicle to mow lawns with.” Jokes VonB.

 

“Another problem was that it used up too much gas.”

 

“And it only got up to about ten miles and hour.” 

 

“Not this year.” Patrick looks both ways in his very Private-eyes-are-watching- you intuitive manner and then invites his friends to huddle up.  He unvelcroes the flaps to his homemade Trapper Keeper where he keeps most of his character sheets and stories, before upholding a stencil, holding it up in the air like a Neanderthals fresh kill.

 

“Is it?”

 

“No.”

 

“Yes. Yes it is.” Patrick nods.

 

“A…”

 

“…Thruster.”

 

“Oh Baby, is it.”

 

 

Patrick has traced a blueprint of what looks like a half-consumed ho-ho farting. The words THRUST HER thickly headline the top. A sticker of Donatello wielding his Bo choking it Chinese chicken style is pasted directly below the diagram.

 

“Oh my…”

 

“God…”

 

“Told you I could.”  Responds Patrick sounding like a little kid making a sandcastle wager.

 

“In God we thrust, all others must be blown away.”

 

“Patrick, you’re not as thought as I dumb you were.” Chides Hale.

 

“It was what my old man always told me before he was swallowed and chewed to cyberspace cider thanks to Apple’s latest PC—You could learn a lot from the stiff elbow-grease ingenuity of a McReynolds—Shut The Fuck UP!”

 

“Will it work?”

 

“I believe what you mean to say is will it work once again.”

 

“Please,”

 

“No way.”

 

“ Dude, my dad engendered a diminutive protocol for Derby Days last year, only the hoity-toity blonde haired North side judges disqualified it for fear it would incinerate the track and stink up the lower level of Northwood’s Mall.”

 

 

“Damn.” Adds Von Behren, his mouth ajar, bits of masticated food visible inside the oval gape of his lips.

 

“Which means, we fire this bad boy up, we could make it down to the citrus state in, oh, I dunno, what? Twenty minutes at most?” Patrick pauses and sways his head metronomically when he says the words oh and what.

 

“No…”

 

“…way.”

 

“Please. Dude. Look.”

 

           Hale begins his Marilyn jiggle-dance in elation.

 

           “Hey-eh Patrick,” Hale elbows, “We Thrust Her all the way down to Florida, and then we Thrust Her all over and inside the fine state of Florida, and then we Thrust all of the Hers we previously thrusted in Florida back up and into the good old state of Illinois.” Hale’s eyebrows perch up, emitting the last sentence with multiple inserted ‘Hey-Hays” and “Whew-hoos” and pronouncing Illinois phonetically, stapled with a thinly curved ‘s’, so that it sounds like two.

 

Patrick then instructs the boys to re-huddle around the Traper Keeper. In a camouflage dossier marked TO THE EXTREME: CLASSIFIED, reclines three Kelly green folders labeled LIFE CAMPAIGNS. One is a high school itinerary, one is marked top, top classified, the initials, H.L. outlined in a broken heart in the left hand corner, and the final is one is labeled Florida.

 

 “One pm, wake up in famous celebrity endorsed hotel with only a slight hangover from numerous screwdrivers the night before. Two pm, assuage hangover with shower, three shots of espresso and pay per view. Three pm, leave celebrity endorsed hotel for Nude Beach.”

 

            We had somehow gotten it into our minds that all Florida was was Disney rides and nude beaches.  Patrick, filtering our imaginations with beaches the size of Logan field adorned with naked women, wearing sunglasses, playing volleyball, performing inner-thigh aerobics to keep that figure.

 

“Waahhhhhh.” Patrick intones, beginning to drool. “Naked Women.”

 

“Yuck.” Jeremiah straightens the knot in his clip-on tie, leaves momentarily to go back up for seconds.

 

“Can you imagine Dave, once we get down to Florida, all the sights we can,” Patrick pauses, licks his lips and then comments into his lunch with sincerity, as if uttering an Amen, “see”.

 

VonBehren has often contradicted Patrick’s lascivious perspective by postulating an ‘imagine, what if’ scenario.

 

“Patrick, imagine what it would be like if you and your family go down to a nude beach.”

 

“What!”

 

“It would be like…,”

 

Warren: “Alright guys, well…. Shit, I guess it’s time to start seriously thinking about stripping.”

 

Patrick: “No need to ask,” Patrick grabs his raiment in the super-man center, his clothes denuding in one forcefully thrusted whiff. Patrick then begins canting the vocal intonations of his friend Hale while clacking his calloused heels together in the hot sand.

 

 

“Nude beach, here I come, whew-hoo!”

 

Warren, painfully looking down self-consciously, holding a plastic bucket in one hand and his doffed crinkled Kelly-green swimming trunks in the other. The perplexed look stretches across his face –that he has just emptied his hard earned plan-to-take over the world savings on idle scratch offs and found out that his eldest son is gay.  Allan has placed his swimming trunks above his head mimicking a court jester maladroit stance, chasing a musketeer eared Sarah around. Helen, slightly nudging her hubbie in an effort for him to loosen up, dear. And Patrick, having a field day, jouncing up down, clicking his sandals together, slouching near hot nude model, hoping that she will be impressed by how well he’s hung and his excellent appropriate usage of the word whom in complete sentences.

 

“Damnit Allan quit that.” Harks Mr. McReynolds. Allan, trying to impress innocent bare naked worshipers of the sun with his ability to stand on his head and quote the pig Latin alphabet backwards while holding his erection. In an endeavor intent on

making his youngest male sibling look like more of an imbecile than he already is, Patrick accosts Allan by shoving him in the arid sand, trying to coerce Allan’s neck through the sand.

 

“Allan, come on, show the pleasant internationally renowned Nude Model your imitation of the human Ostrich.”

 

“NO. Stop.”

 

Patrick shoves Allan’s noggin’ in the sand. The international nude model slowly exhales a sigh, as if someone is getting in the way of her fair share of the sun.

 

“Damn.” Allan wiggles his legs as Patrick stops to enjoy an idyllic panoramic of the scenery. Ahhh.  The natural way of life A film of moist, succulent tan flesh, nude and natural, the way God intended, buffeted in double rows of reclining chairs as long as the eye can see, and, now that his brother has burrowed his head in the sand, he appears to be the only, dare he say, eligible male, hugging the shore line.

 

“Hey Patrick, maybe you should have brought your flashlight, told all the girls you we’re a traveling gynecologist or something.”  Hale says at the lunch table.

 

            “Good afternoon,” Patrick says aloud, in his daydream, holding out a tube of sun block in one hand and a snake light in the other, “I’m Doctor McReynolds PhD, I was just wondering if I can take a look around today and make sure that everything is alright (which I’m sure it is-hint hint into Hale’s shoulder blade). Now open up and say ahhhhh,”

           

Patrick is drooling on top of his Chicken patty and mash potatoes. Jeremiah Noel looks at Patrick and says that he is gross, the way someone accuses someone else of farting during chapel. Von Behren continues with his story.

 

Next thing you know Von Behren struts out onto the shore, wearing just his spectacles to, as he says, ameliorate the scenery. Without more than a snigger and salutation, he points to Patrick’s ass, cups his hand over his mouth and chuckles.

 

“Wha’d you do, Pat, just come back from taking a dump?” VonB points southwest. As Patrick turns, an orbital ring is seen indented into the folds of his bare ass. The Celebratory nude model begins to laugh, almost spitting out her Nestea. Patrick stares at Von Behren disgruntled, naked and irked. His face begins to chance color. I though you guys were…

 

“…my friends.”

 

“Welcome to Florida, Pat.”

 

“Hmmmmmfh.”

 

Hale looks both ways and flattens out a spoon, claiming that once this goes through the dishwater it will petrify like a rock.

 

“Practicing for my high school days.”

 

“Dude, do you know how many girls there are in high school?”

 

“Have you browsed through Tim’s yearbook?”

 

Patrick once again acknowledges David Von Behrens’s query with a ‘Please.’

 

“Please. I like know that book better than my own confirmation book, the Manual Mirror”

 

Hale continues to smother his spoon with the side of his palm, thinking back on the time he played the blacksmith in the school musical. He aims the freshly flattened javelin in the direction of Mario, whose butt is still blocking Donna Landis open mouth.

 

“I know a good home for this.”

 

“Dude,” Patrick once again, “A Boeing 747 couldn’t even fill that rump.”

 

All the boys laugh, Patrick, continues.

 

“If only we could find a way to nail close their derisive, splintered lips. What I wouldn’t give right now for a reliable hammer and a few crooked nails.” Patrick pantomimes like he is nailing close Mario’s lips with a hammer, his lips, emitting multiple, ‘take that,’ and ‘here ya’ go’. Three table down reverend Morningwood, momentarily raising his head from his plate, observes Patrick and wonders out loud, to himself, if Patrick is publicly rehearsing for next years, Martin Luther Reformation day special, nailing his ninety-five thesis on the nature of the cock-sucking Lutheran imbecile.

 

If only we could. Hale says to himself. If only we could.

 

After sister Amy showed Patrick WHERE THERE’S A WILL THERE WILL B AN A educational Beta, Patrick has been much more vocal in eliciting his pent up and haggard emotions. Patrick cursed out Javon Worthington in the lunch line all of six days ago, last Friday. Javon offered a comment that Patrick’s two front teeth resembled the equivalent of a dusty, biblical shekel. Goody-two-shoes homemade cross-crocheted intern Miss Chamberlain overheard Patrick tell Javon Worthington explicitly where to go and by which orifice on his body is the proper means to get there. She removed Patrick to the principle offices, where a Mr. Mooney, licking the steel edge of his LUTHERAN SCHOOL SHARE CHRIST pen, like an ostrich quill and ink, mandated Patrick to a week of detention.

 

 

“But sir, Javon Worthington? Have you heard some of the shit he says? Some of the stuff he plans on bringing to school for what he calls Show-n-Blow?” Of course Patrick didn’t say the word shit in front of Coach M.

 

“Now, Patrick, as one of the four traveling apostles I’m sure once said, “You did the time you spray the grime.”

 

“What?”

 

“I think they wrote it on one of the twelve gospels.”

 

“Don’t you mean twelve apostles and four gospels?”

 

“Patrick, you know that is exactly what I just said, please don’t distort my sentences with your fictitious account of God’s good earth.”

 

 Mr. Mooney’s office desk is a heap of littered basketball itinerary and basketball uniform order forms and basketball practice schedules xeroxed on the back of old science worksheets. Mr. Mooney clears his throat and says to a daydreaming Patrick what sounds like, “Tits have cucumbered-bunned two bye detention that shoes Oslo half-cum good friend with Holly Lyons.”

 

“What!!!!!”

 

“Patrick, allow me to repeat myself once again-It has come to my attention that you also have become good friends with Holly Lyons-what do you think I just said.”

 

Patrick reveals to Mr. Mooney what he originally thought and of course, a referral is written, just to keep it on record-Patrick being scolded by the principle once again that his imagination is overly active and that he should spend more time watching televised sporting events on the weekends.

 

 His mind perambulates him back from last week, to the lunchroom today. Younger students report to the bleachers after lunch while the older students often linger at the lunch tables, jeering at those less fortunate. Von Behren has consumed five chocolate milks (with squashed cartons). Hale is dancing, performing his signature Harley-Davidson jig, asking if any of the boys are once again up for a little dice clattering on the monkey bars at recess. Patrick lets go of a sly, becoming grin and before Von Behren clears his throat with a deep inner throttle. Mario Rutherford and Aron Bowman slide down next to Patrick. Todd Nelson, Joey Lyons and Tierl Gibson all hover around. All of a sudden Mario speaks in a tone that is high and sounds like he is imbued with helium.

 

“Patrick-we all wrote you a song. Would you like to hear it?” Patrick ignores them and begins to talk about Wolverine and Iron Horse. The boys ask the same question again.

 

“Uhm-no. Not particularly. Thank you.” Patrick face swirls the other direction like Mrs. Mooney’s swivel chair.

 

“No Patrick-we wrote you a song. We need to sing it.” Bowman says, counting to four and snapping his fingers like the temptations do on television:

 

 

“It’s the story. Of a lovely Lady.

Who was bringing up three very lovely girls.

All of them had hair of gold-like their mothers.

The youngest one in curls.”

 

Patrick’s face does not answer, his face turns an irked Capri-sun punch colored and his eyes bite the other direction in an endeavor to ignore them. Bowman, dressed in one of his multiple jaded blue DON’T WORRY BE HAPPY t-shirts, slices his arm around Patrick again.

 

“Patrick have you heard of Mrs. Brady’s older sister named PAM? Actually, I missed the episode where Marsha decides to go Lesbo and makes out with her potato-chip tooth Irish cousin Helen. Sadly, I don’t think her cousin got off on it as much as your mom did when I had her last night.”

 

Patrick’s dander hardly has a wick. He tosses his plastic platter of chicken parts and gravy to the left like frisbee golf while his mouth accelerates without having revved up.

 

“God Damn you BumFuck Bowman! Shut the FUCK up.”

 

To which the sounds of clattering high heels and slinking penny loafers are heard brushing over linoleum and scurrying around the tables, asking the boys in a condescending drone who just said that and was it by any chance Patrick. Jeremiah Noel tries not to look in Patrick’s general direction when the teachers look at Jeremiah Noel. Mr. Mooney clasps his arms together sternly and says that maybe we should punish the whole class by considering canceling the school field trip to Dixon mounds next month two seconds before Jeremiah bursts out wailing and pointing, shouting out Patrick’s first and only name.