“Dude,”
VonBehren says to Patrick. “Can you believe this shit? Can you believe we
fucking did it?”
Patrick’s
face is still stunned. Lynnford is saying hut-hut and, before ordering the
final hike, inquires if Hale plans on bending over even more, big boy. A shot
is fired down the street. The skull is now a football and Patrick thinks of
telling the boys to quit it, but then thinks to himself, what’s the use, it’s
dead anyway. That was Weird Duane’s excuse. Weirdo Duane lived in between
Harvey Liddle in the abandoned house on the corner. Duane would teach Chinese
students how to drive stick shift by taking them to Saint Mary’s cemetery,
telling them explicitly not to worry if they just so happened to run off the
narrow gravel slither and onto the grass of the actual cemetery itself;
claiming that the inhabitants of St. Mary’s cemetery were dead anyway, prodding
the petrified Chinese in the ribs, quoting that they wouldn’t feel a thing
nonetheless.
Hale tells
Lynnford to go back, way back as he fires the skull in the air. Lynnford runs,
trips, his heel getting caught in a pothole, and Patrick can’t bare to look as
the skull hits the hard surface of Down Circle and splits into what seems like
a million cosmic pieces.
“Shit!”
Hale yells out. “Damnit Lynnford!”
Shots echo from near Patrick’s house. Harvey Liddle is more
than likely giving his salute. The Garcia clan has been unusually quiet
recently, and Patrick wonders if it is because of an anonymous caller from next
door called the police about a mango-colored hippopotamus that was grazing in
their yard. More shots echo out. Between Harvey and Patrick’s brother-in-law in
the air force, Patrick’s done pretty well keeping his bullet shell collection
in the upper hundreds. Another shot. He can hear his mother yelling for Patrick
to come home and grub. Hale still seems to be chewing out Lynford for not
reeling in the skull into his chest when he failed to catch it. Crazy Hoof’s
eyes appear to be somewhere else, like he has momentarily crossed over the
metaphysical bridge and his own hoofs are now galloping roughly over breaded
plains with thousands of Buffalo that have come and gone before him. The
smashed skull resembles the overturned dregs in the ashtray Helen turns over
and empties out of the car before Warren occasionally drives it. He can hear the occasional police car hum
down Sterling, headed toward the South side. Helen’s voice slithers through the
air once again, ordering Patrick to hurry, on the double; addressing him once
again the way the Coaches Widow addresses him. Calling him young man.
“Pat, bro,”
Von Behren’s voice perches up. “I guess you better get going now. Your mom
seems pretty intent on having you and your brother over there for dinner.
Perhaps maybe she’ll be generous with us and spare a few pork chops.”
Patrick
pauses Von Behren in mid gesticulation, brushing his hand down south, swatting
him on the wrist, looking at him as if he has just done something that would
constitute the shock jock caliber.
“Allan,”
Patrick says. “Holy fuck!!! We forgot Allan!!”
“Shit,”
VonBehren says. “Wait a minute, I though he was going to enter the gymnasium
with you?”
Patrick
slaps his hand on his forehead in a forgetful manner.
“Allan.
Shit!! They probably have him. We have to go back down there and rescue Allan.
Holy Shit. They’re going to slice off his pecker with the guillotine commonly
reserved for the Varsity mascots. They probably have him trussed and gagged
right now.”
Hale
immediately comes over, addressing Patrick and VonB as mass people, inquiring
to them what in god’s name is all the fuss about. Lynnford follows Hale,
holding his elbow pumped back, inquiring out loud if anybody thinks that the
wart on his elbow could be an early indication of genital herpes. Patrick drops
the tomahawk, jumping up and down after the blade lands on the top of his
tattered pro-wings.
“Hale,
shit. It’s Allan. He’s still down there. We have to go find Allan!!!”
As if
perfect echo, Helen’s voice once again soars out of nowhere, informing her two,
innocent darlings get to their sweet and innocent asses seated before Warren
operates that Garcia Clan tracking device he’s been waiting so earnestly to
use.
“We need to
get back down there right away,” Patrick briefly lodges the side of his nail
inside his mouth, bites down on it, looks up with a look of poised vigor
slitting from his eyes.
“Okay,” He
says. “Who hear knows how to operate a vehicle?”
The boys’ just sort of look around
at each other. Crazy Hoof continues to stamp his knees as if stranded in
mid-pout. Lynnford raises his hand and says that if the car has a clutch, he
should be able to figure something out, due to his history with jumping
starting objects phallic in both shape in nature.
“Patrick,” VonBehren assents. “We
need to get down there fast. Just tell your mom that you left something very
vital and important down at CLS and that you need to return ASAP to retrieve
it.”
“What?”
Patrick’s eyes blink. “I go into the school by myself and come back out with
brother in tow. Ahhh-yah. That will be the day.”
From the
house Patrick’s mother yells out again. Lynnford cuts in between the boys,
gulping his throat in such a way that his Adam’s apple looks like a pear.
“Okay,”
Offers Lynnford, making a time-out emblem with two finely manicured and
lotioned palms. “Here’s the plan, sweetie. Hale and I will go into the
McReynold’s establishment and keep your parents’ company while you and
VonBehren hustle down to CLS and retrieve your brother.”
“Nice one
Miss Collins but the only ordeal is that, we have no vehicle, and it will be at
least an hour round trip, twenty minutes jog both ways.” Patrick’s fingers
contort into his signature shotgun, his lips firing blanks at his temple.
“Wait,”
says VonBehren. “We won’t have to run,”
“Says you
Mr. All-state Track star guru.” Patrick comments, lifting up his shirt. “What
do you think this is, a tan line?” He says, pointing near his waist.
“No,” says
VonBehren. “What I’m talking about is our little Thruster-er in the garage.”
“Whew-hoo,”
Hale says, rattling his torso left and right like he is riding the helm of a
toga-clad conga line. Lynnford asks what about the Thrust-him, big boy?
“Dave,
that’s reserved for our Florida expedition in three weeks. We still haven’t
conducted all of the final rounds of tests.”
“Pat, we
have no time. Allan’s head could be lodged in that guillotine.” Patrick can
still feel the deep rug burns welted into his neck. Hale turns around
immediately, running into Casa McReynolds driveway.
Hale comes skidding out his claw
arm up in the air, the thruster bike kicking heavy clouds of smoke behind him.
He skids past the boys once, pops a wheelie, makes a u-turn, fires back in the
boys general direction.
“Shit,” VonBehren says. “Patrick,
bro you actually pulled it off.”
“Told you I could.” Patrick says in a semi-condescending manner,
smiling. Hale revs up the bike again. More smoke vomits from just beneath the
back seat cushion. Patrick takes over on the seat and orders VonBehren into the
passenger’s side.
“Where the fuck is the passenger’s
side?” VonBehren asks. Patrick points to the handlebars.
“Pat, bro. No mean to quash your
science fair hopes already but if we’re going sixty miles an hour, wouldn’t the
inverse velocity propel me off the handlebars at an even greater proportional
speed?” Patrick looks at VonBehren, informing him that his ass is to be seated
immediately.
“Remember!” Hale shouts, with his
hands cupped around his mouth. “If you find little pecker parrot pick him up. I
still want to see if he is capable of saying that other thing the man at the
Costume Trunk informed me that he was capable of saying.”
VonBehren squats on the front of
the handlebars. Patrick steps down hard, backwards on the breaks, kicking his
vehicle into start. Thick exhaust the color of charcoal erupts from Patrick’s
EAT SHIT COCK JOCK bicycle License plate and he can hear Lynnford say something
about needing a cock jock as the two of them zip out from Downs Circle, taking
a hard left on the cement flab of Sterling Avenue.
“Shit, Patrick, how fast is this
thing going?” VonBehren turns around.
Patrick still has his eyelids squinting, wishing he would have
remembered to bring goggles.
“I CAN’T HEAR YOU. WHAT?” Patrick
screams, blaring through the stop sign where Rohmann meets Sterling, heading
south. The average speed limit for automobiles is thirty miles per hour, radar
enforced and verified. When riding the EAT SHIT COCK JOCK in stationary mode,
he has seen the bicycle read near hovering speeds of 115 miles per hour. A
thick spume of smoke tornadoes behind the bicycle and before either of the boys
realize what is transpiring they are sliding between the blurred green of
Madison gulf course, headed toward Martin Luther King and Sterling, where the
path cuts down near Manual High, to Griswold and down to CLS.
“Shit,” Patrick yells. Hold on. I’m
going to fucking attempt to do something that has never before been done.”
Before VonBehren has a chance to
yell back at Patrick, asking him just what in the fuck he is actually talking
about, Patrick has grappled both the handle bars serving as VonBehren’s throne
and is kneeling back, trying to pop a wheelie. Near the break handle he
squeezes the clutch and before Patrick or VonBehren are aware of anything
happening the second back up thruster explodes, engendering a thick carcass of
deep black fumes, hurtling the bike over the stream of traffic pissing across
two opposing lanes Martin Luther King Drive, over the aluminum capped bluff,
through thick foliage.
“SHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTT!!!”
VonBehren yells out a-whew, much in
the similar fashion Hale would shout out the first syllable of his signature
catch phrase. Patrick places both of his own hands out like wings.
“Patrick,” VonBehren snaps back.
“Shit brother, you did it. You fucking did it!!!! This thing is flying.”
“Wheeeeeeewww!!!!” Patrick shouts
out, seventy-feet above the ground. “Dave, look. We’re flying. We’re fucking
flying! Take that Coach M and all your Varsity elite shit!!!”
The tips of Patrick’s wings turn
into middle fingers. From above they can see the sparsely shingled houses of
the south end. They can see smoke swirling from the direction of CLS. Manual
high school has already been passed.
“I feel like we’re the fucking
Wright Brothers,” VonBehren shouts, coated in black charcoal from the eruption
of the second thruster.
“How ‘bout you say we fucking kick
some of that CLS ass, Orville?” Patrick yells back, still shouting out at the
top of his lungs. With the thick exhaust smothered on top of the pancake mix
Patrick coated himself with to look like
an authentic Native American, Patrick face slightly resembles tar baby in
countenance. His hair is black as well and looks like a cactus salvaged from
greenhouse inferno.
“Dude, Patrick. This is fucking
amazing man. We get this out on the market, and we’ll both be millionaires. The
United Stets government will insist that every war troop will have one. This
could revolutionize modern warfare and infantry combat forever, bro!!!”
“Dude, says Patrick, slightly
relaxing, leaning back on his handlebars as the thick, ribbons of air brush
over the both of them. “Can you imagine Dave? We can take this thing anywhere
and not get in trouble for it.”
“Where do you suggest we go after
we rescue Allan?” VonBehren yells looking down, one-hundred and fifty feet
above the shingles and the trashcans and the graffiti.
“I don’t know?” Patrick says,
rather overly sure of himself and confidently. “I’ve always heard Paris is
extremely nice this time of year.”
“Patrick dude,” VonBehren shakes
his head left and right. “You don’t want to fucking get involved with any of
the French bitches’ brother. Trust me, when they find out you could build
something like this at the formative age of eleven, they’ll want you to be
devising shit for them all the time.”
Patrick alters his handlebars and
VonBehren’s crunched derriere slightly to the left. The can see the smoke
curling up like an Old Testament sacrifice from the corner of the gym. They can
make out the serpentine hose lines plugged into he fire extinguisher. From
above Christ Lutheran looks small. It seems that everything Patrick and Von B
avidly deplore in this world is small and scattered below them right now.
“Alright, bro.” VonBehren assents.
“Let’s land this here bitch.”
“Hunh?” Patrick looks at Vonbehren,
semi-puzzled. His face contorting into the slouched-crumpled countenance
excerpted from the yearbook last autumn.
“Patrick, bro, the school is right
over there. Slap on those air-brakes so we can swoop in, pick Allan up and then
thrust the fuck back home.”
“Uh-yeah, hmmm.” Patrick warbles
his consonance. “Air breaks, yeah.” Patrick’s knuckles grope around the edges
of the handlebars. Slight squeezes emit from the breaks. Nothing seems to
happen. All of a sudden the bike freeze at a seventy-five-degree curve above
CLS.
“Patrick,”
“Dave, look, I know what you are
about to tell me, and all I can say is that I know, I should have verified that
the brakes work. I should have learned how to land this thing.”
VonBehren turns his head around on
the handlebars. The vessel pauses completely in mid-air.
“Patrick!!!” VonBehren yells.
“Prepare for an emergency landing,
sir”
“What!!!” VonBehren yells back. The
encompassing force of gravity slowly begins to tug at the boys and their
vessels.
“I suggest you hold the fuck on
sir!!!”
“What!!!” VonBehren screams before
the bicycle drops, boomeranging out of nowhere, screeching towards the prison
of Christ Lutheran School. The scream the boys emit is something that their
future friend Tim down the street might classify as Bloody Murder.
pgs 405-411 in text...
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