Someday
Patrick thinks to himself that perhaps he will take this route again someday.
The moment the no non-break thruster popped an aerial wheelie and blasted above
CLS, with wigwam Native American Allan lodged on the front handle bars, his
butt drooping almost into Patrick’s face. Patrick, steering one handed,
twirling his tomahawk in the other hand as if it were a revolver spinning it
nonchalantly as if to say alls in the days work. Von Behren is stationed on the
pegs behind Patrick, uneasy to be flying this height with no net below or
parachute affixed, his arms buckled around Patrick’s waist, Hale’s pecker-pecker
parrot tucked under one arm like a pig-skin.
“Dude,”
Allan says, out of breath, sounding so much like his older progeny it’s
frightful, “You literally saved my ass. Check out the royal rug burn around my
neck.” Allan turns around showing a one-handed Patrick before commenting out
loud just how fucking cool this contraption is, asking Patrick if he built it,
which of course, Patrick will claim, that the original idea was patented by his
truly and that he had additional supervision from the man upstairs i.e. Casa
McReynolds that is.
Von Behren
sways on the bike back and forth trying not to look down, trying not to realize
just how close Allan’s ass is to both Patrick’s face and his buckled arms
wishing he would quit circling around the top of the school and just head the
fuck home—granted, since the Thruster is void of brakes.
Most
imperatively right now he just wishes Patrick would keep two hands steady on
the handlebars and quit fucking around with his joe-cool tomahawk routine.
Although squatted Allan performs a little marching bit with his limbs, and
continues to hum out the A-team theme song like a victory chant.
“Dude,”
Allan says again, taking one swinging marching hand off the front of the
handlebars and forming a little fist, “That was like so fucking cool the way
you just busted right in there, dove straight down and picked me up. Fuckwad
Coach M had no clue what the fuck just hit him.”
From above
the three lads can still make out a billow of exhaust smoke twirling out from the
sockets of ghetto Jesus. Von Behren wishes Patrick would quit doing the thing
with the tomahawk and just get the fuck home. As in now—wondering just how and what Lynnford and Hale are doing
to entertain Warren and Helen. Last time Lynnford spent the night during one of
the McReynolds thrice a season all out role-playing up all night water-gun
wars, Lynnford spent the entire night kicking it with Patrick’s older sis Amy,
getting manicures and facials and doing something with his hair that required
rollers and walking around the house with pink bunny slippers wearing a very
disgruntled outspoken Warren’s housecoat, until Helen pointed to the neon
stuttering Gu ts Fi
st sign above the fake fire place. Having long been accepted as a
rule in the McReynolds’ household that, during these massive dice-clattering
sleepovers, where Warren seemingly pops out from the middle of nowhere to tell
the boys to keep it down or it’s time to start thinking about bed, guys, it has
long been the well accepted truism that at the gong of midnight, the
splattering of ten-sided dice subside, the Nintendo control pad become rashly
unplugged like a sixth grade girl and a tampon, the remote Warren refers to as
his royal scepter in the kingdom of his household clicked off the channel where
the boys ogle at Green Nipple porn into the pink eye-shadow haze of dawn —at
the gong of Midnight, the grandfather clock Helen claims is a family heirloom
even though it has absolutely nothing to do with hair that Patrick can think
of, when the clock gongs twelve, uttering out an almost painful rendition of O,
Danny Boy, chimed with what sounds like
synthesized Uillean pipes and traditional kettle
Bodhran drum, many a nights Patrick has spotted his parents reveling misty eyed
under the allure of this syncopated interpretation, as if they were reminiscing
over something indelibly lost and twice Patrick has even walked up next to them
with an empty pint glass and had his father pour him a rather healthy shot of
Jemeson, as Patrick began to talk about ye olde days of yore, reminiscing about
U2 and James Joyce, and the Irish potato feminine of ‘79 and the one
freckled red head lass named Fiona who got away before Patrick could secure the
sheep farm as dowry. The second time he joined his parents Patrick
inadvertently confused the acronyms for the Irish Republican Army for the
International Revenue Service so when Patrick was in the middle of reminiscing
about ye days of olde country and how we’ll fight against injustice and the
tyrannical ways of the IRS Warren was suddenly hurtled back into reality and
shouted out the acronym IRS and then spewed out a “where” and then said duck,
scooping his familial litter and ducking behind the wooden planks of the heirloom
grandfather clock before knocking on the side wall-paneling in a certain way
Patrick had never seen before so that it guffaws wide mouth open and what
appears to be some sort of bazooka Patrick had seen him used only once in jest
at French Luc the paper boy, the Bazooka opening up from the covert hidden artillery
shaft, his father mumbling something under his breath sounding very much like
twenty acres and a mule my ass before saying that he always new it would come
down this, now it’s war. Warren yelling an all too familiar bloody Murder as he
charges outside only to fire randomly, into the electronic yielded fence of the
scrooge who lives across the street, watching the ammunition dissolve into some
other vector of space time and causality before reentering his abode and saying
fuck noticing that his youngest son is still chugging a half pint of Jameson
special reserve blend. Warren saying give me that, pouring a table-spoon shot
from the bottle into the pint glass, handing the glass back into the paws of
his sweet and innocent son and keeping the bottle for himself, leaning his head
back and taking a long elongated chug that last for three minutes, which, by
the time Warren removes the bottle of Jameson from his lips, he stumbles to the
front porch, claiming he can see through the fence, into the place his bazooka
cannon dissipated off to—a place full of gables and vernal country side and
sunsets before French Luc boomerangs a morning edition of the Urinal Jar into
Warren’s forehead and Warren himself collapses, completely exhausted as if
something forlorn inside him has been defeated.
Patrick
motions the bike in round aerial motions so it feels like he is going up the
aluminum tongue of the curly slide in upper Bradley park, going higher and
higher. Flashes of red fire trucks ache throughout the lower bluff like red
nails snapping out a quick screech across a chalkboard. There is a moment of
peace—a calm that ensues as the boys look down at the smoke drifting out from
the sockets of Ghetto Jesus, feeling that they have almost accomplished
something together in unison for the greater good of mankind. Even Allan, who
has been chattering and giddy nonstop since being rescued pauses and looks out
from his squat in the nest of the aluminum thruster-baby handlebars, his eyes
seemingly lost in the draped ocean of blue sky bulging like a sail in front of
him for what could pass for infinity.
“Dude,” Pat
says, feeling serene. Thinking for once in his life he didn’t freeze up in the
zone. He didn’t hit the pause button. Patrick twirls the tomahawk again, before
padding down the side of his pocket and finger out a smoke, firing it up with
the cigarette lighter his father had installed in the Thruster, perhaps knowing
in advance his son would need a nicotine
pick-me up on his pedaling flight down to Florida.
“Pecker,
pecker.”
“Well, at
least we got the parrot.” Von Behren addresses the crowd, still wobbling on the
pegs with his arms buckled around the torso of a very relaxed pilot
Patrick. “I mean that’s why we had to
rush back. Hale forgot his Goddamn pecker parrot. I didn’t even realize Allan
was missing til…”
The parrot
interrupts Von Behren’s sarcastic oration by chirping out another chorus of
peckers. Patrick continues to glide,
coasting the handlebars, as if he is out for an afternoon jaunt, a daily
callisthenic care-free spring afternoon constitutional feeling one with the
aerial vessel. Von Behren remains dubious eyed, tightens his grip around
Patrick’s shoulder in the manner that is too reminiscent of leather-clad femur
clenching boot attired females casting their arms around their male biker
escort outside the pool hall on Farmington road. Patrick seems to be having the
time of his life monitoring the direction of the Thruster of the handlebars
and, if it was night, and a full moon was out, Patrick would fly beneath its
illuminating oyster penumbra and have Allan do his “ET phone Slut,” routine
that Patrick taught his younger sibling when he was only three years old.
Patrick continues to fly whipping
out his middle finger below. Von Behren coughs several times, sounding almost
uncannily like Warren hinting about bed guys, trying to tell Patrick that he
should have no trouble landing this so-called bad boy even though it doesn’t
have any breaks in the Garcia clans back yard since all it essentially is is
one giant trampoline. Patrick remembers how, when Amy started attending Manual
and it was way less ghettoey a few years back when Patrick himself was only in
fourth grade, donning a top hat and cane and seated at the former
Lemonade-slash-ex-super solvent-slash-step-right-up ladies and experience the
69th wonder of the West Bluff, the Garcia clan residence whenever
Amy would bring one of her classmates home with her and if Patrick was lucky
she would be adorned in a posh hopefully checkered-catholic girl skirt and
Patrick would lead her aside while Amy had her hair crimped into a side
pony-tail and explain to her about the wonder curiosity of the Flyin’ Garcia
Lawn next door and then, have his brother Allan employed as a well known stunt
double urchin to perform a swan dive into the grass of the Garcia Clan lawn
next door sans net and at the moment Allan performs his precipitous dive, his
fingers pressed together, elbows forming an arch waiting for the classmate to jump
off the lip of Mcreynolds window sill and hopefully, if Patrick was lucky, his brother
would already have the nose of the camcorder rolling in a certain direction know
as juvenile lust.
“Dude, bro,” Allan says again,
really starting to annoy the fuck out of Von Behren with his older siblings
colloquial. “You have no idea how close it was in there.”
Patrick looks back at his brother’s
neck and flashes a look of duh. Von Behren tries to yell something over
Patrick’s shoulder, but the hi-altitude and spurts of wind keep his inquiry
muffled.
“I mean, Coach M literally thought
I was an Indian or something. I couldn’t breath for like five minutes he had
his belt lassoed around my neck so tight and then when he stationed me in the
Guillotine, I suddenly saw my whole life flash before me—which sad to say, was
not very much at all.”
Patrick adds a no shit and then
comment a that’s because you’re only eight.
Patrick has looped fairly high that
Von Behren can see all of West Peoria and he is pretty sure he sees what
appears to be Northwoods Mall, looking like a rather dull monotonous box of wet
cardboard luring in beads of car-ferrying patrons like ants. Allan continues to
tell his tomahawk twirling brother how he saw Hale scoop him up and ferry him
over the shoulder out of the side door of the gym and how he remembers seeing
Lynford run like a female basketball player runs with his elbows transitioning
into windshield wipers as he jetted out the gym and Dejuan looking around and
tipping his hat before dashing out and how Allan felt betrayed and just a tad
pissed, thinking about Justine Bateman in lurid sexual positions as Coach M
tethered presumably his own belt around Allan’s neck. Allan said he felt rather
betrayed by his brother, but then admits that this ride on the Thruster and the
rescue was one hell of a way to make up for forgetting his sibling’s ass in the
first place. Although Von Behren can tell from where he is stationed that
Patrick and Allan are participating in what his grandma calls a “Taster choice”
moment of sentimentality and recognition between them, he is still frantically
trying to yell something into their direction.
“Wah???” Patrick yells back, still
steering the vessel with one hand.
“I said, Allan, did Coach M happen
to recognize it was you? Did he see your true identity? Did he know it was you
underneath all the pancake make-up and the pow-wow-wow-wows?”
“I don’t think so,” Adds Allan. “In
fact, I’d more or less swear on a back issues of Playboy and Nintendo Power
that they thought I was bona fide.”
That parrot bleats out its pecker
pecker dance again. Patrick turns around and tells it to shut the fuck up,
Polly. Allan takes a fresh whiff of air before continuing on with his rendition
of the captured events.
“After Coach M took me hostage and
put me in the Guillotine he asked the crowd who should we set free this
low-life redskin terrorist wannabe injun or some guy named Barabbas, who is
apparently locked away somewhere in the school and the crowd started chanting
set free Barabbas and then, as if I was pinned in a gallows, starting hurtling
tomatoes and eggs and expired fruit. I think Bev Pinsol even tossed her bra in
my face, which nearly wiped me out—talk about overload on the olfactory sensory
device. Ick!!!”
“So no one realized it was you?”
Von Behren inquires again, trying not to look down or to think about which
stratosphere his captain is currently cruising through in a rather slovenly
fashion or from overhead, what sort of shape his own body would make if he
would topple off of the side pegs of the Thruster splattering in the center of
Starr street below—how it would resemble leftover jam with a cable static array
of flies humming annoyingly over his remnants. Allan turns over and looks at
Von Behren on the back of the Thruster as if he needn’t harbor any care in the
world and says that he’s getting to that.
“I was about ready to be
crucified—martyred which is kind of cool if you think about it, since I’m sure
once all of this pancake makeup would wear thin I would be recognized and coach
M would have to erect a statue in my honor.”
Both Dave and Pat yell at Allan.
Allan says he’s sorry for the martyr jab and then continues.
“Anyway,
Coach M said for legal purposed that he had to wash his hands of the entire
event before he quote, unquote, accidentally tripped over the latch setting the
guillotine blade free and then goodbye Mr. Allan.”
“He washed
his hands?”
“Publicly.
Yeah. The Crowd made a big fucking deal about it too. It was as if he was
reenacting something rather important and life changing.”
“So
anyway,” Von Behren says, briefly releasing one hand free of Patrick’s becoming
torso, making a reeling carry-on motion with his pointer finger as if he wishes
Allan would stop digressing before slightly stuttering, fastening his arms back
even more tightly around Patrick’s waist like a cummerbund. Patrick ashes his
cigarette and keeps looking down lost in how the ashes seem to drop and then
all of a sudden dissipate into the falling atmosphere of the forever blue.
“Yeah,”
Allan comments. “Anyway, the crowd apparently was familiar with what Coach M
was doing because Coach M kept trying to do a routine where he would quote,
unquote “accidentally” trip over the latch but lucky for my ass, literally the
latch wouldn’t break. First he put on sunglasses, turned around and started
doing a moonwalk backwards into the latch but he just ended up tripping over
his own feet, which made the crowd breakout into laughter. The he started
pretending to skip across the stage like a little school girl on her way to
loose her virginity at Little Red riding hoods house, tripping right when he
reach the latch but when he fell, that failed to skewer the latch as well also.
“Shit.”
Notes Patrick in the same drawled out monotone commonly reserved for his
“dude,” mantra. Patrick has let the bike slowly idle. Both him and Allan feel
completely safe up here, what seems like hundreds of feet above the school. Von
Behren has resorted to taking deep breaths and holding them before squeezing
his eyes shut, coercing himself not to look down no matter what.
Patrick
finishes his smoke, lights another smoke, from the nub of his recently
extinguished one in a fashion in which he will day call monkey-fucking before
dishing the lit-butt end of the cigarette off the vessel and watching as it
slowly winks out into deep blue pasture below before catching a breeze and
entering a windy draft of oblivion.
“Coach M
then apparently pretended he was a waiter and knocked over some sort of tray
into the side of the guillotine and still, the latch failed to snap. On a final
endeavor he did a cartwheel crash into the latch on purpose and still nothing.
Finally he got pissed off, ran into the Visitors Locker closet and came out
brandishing an epee telling the crowd, explicitly to remember, he was showing a
fencing demonstration when he accidentally severed the rope latch inadvertently
releasing the guillotine blade on a rather fortuitous and random native
American guest who was himself performing his interpretation of Injun Joe from
Mark Twain.”
Patrick
looks at the mole-ridden crevice slope of the back of Allan’s neck, commenting
to himself that damn, he wishes he would have seen that. Von Behren looks
below, notices the assemblage of more of CLS dignitaries and Varsity Elite
standing in the parking lot with their hands stuck in a wounded salute into
their brow like visors.
“Only the
moment he held out up the blade and muttered something under his breath
Marcellus Bucks father Got up and said shit, real slow, waving his arms as if
he was trying to stop an airforce jet plane on the runway, addressing Coach M
solely by his last name as if he were reprimanding him and had done in numerous
times before. He yelled ran up, looked me in the face, and asked Looney if he
had no clue what he had here—which of course, Coach M merely pouted, jabbed the
saber into the ground and sounded almost like a little kid whose parents were
turning off the TV due to the violence and copious sex scenes.”
Patrick
continues ashing his smoke, idling his aerial vessel. Von Behren screams out
that we need to quit stirring above enemy territory and get our ass home. This
was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission. Stating that he can only imagine
how Lynnford and Hale are killing the time with old Warren and Helen back at
Casa McReynolds. Von Behren can feel Patrick’s torso swivel as he turns around
and says, dude, enjoy this, Alan’s almost done with his story before snapping
off the tip of another ember.
“Marcellus
Buck’s father then somehow convinces Coach M that I’m some mascot for Illinois
named Chief Illnilick.”
Von Behren
interrupts Allan, saying that’s Illiniwek, illinilick is what you call to
sophomore thespian majors at U of I experimenting during the weekend at a
theatre party. Patrick turns around points his cigarette into Von Behren at
close range and comments that’s a good one. Allan simply shrugs, continuing on
with his hostage caper.
“Next thing
I know Coach M is looking at me addressing me as Chief, rubbing his eyes as if
discerning something and then saying by God it is—before he picked up the
vibrating phallic shaped microphone that Meredith-Elise reported she saw Bev
Pinesol using it as a dildo announced me as, all the way from Urbana-Champaign,
performing his own dance of death, I give you Chief Illinilik!!! And the next
thing I know I’m being momentarily set free and Coach M pulls me over and tells
me that this is my last dance before shoving me out to half-court where the
crowd, who obviously knew just a leeetle bit more about the Chiefs
antics then did I started chanting his name reeeeeeel slow at first and
clapping. I had no clue what exactly to do even though a spotlight flickered
right on me and the next thing I realized somebody yelled out dance fucker and
I remembered dad slouched in the confines of his throne watching Illinois
football games and that they must have thought that I was the mascot from U of
I, so of course, I started hammering my limbs up and down and stomping my limbs
all over the place, trying to remember the moves Crazy Hoof down the street
performs in his back yard after he has just gone mushroom hunting in the
nuclear woods.”
“Then what
happened?” Inquires his older sibling, still looking at the puerile academy
below with a devious smirched stenciled into his lips like he has complete
power to create and to destroy.
“So I start
doing this so-called esteemed war-paint dance, which, of course, I really have
no clue just what the fuck I’m just trying to evade the neck-severing gaping
mouth of the guillotine. And the clattering palms of the crowd starts clapping
even faster and faster and I keep on pogoing up and down and branching my legs
out like a sabre and there are howls and Coach M even starts making an Indian
sign that looks more like a Hitler salute than anything and the next thing I
know, the Varsity Elite cheerleaders come out to center court and begin shaking
their tight-ass booties in every direction and for once I feel like the center
of attention.”
“Damn,”
Patrick adds, wondering to himself, just how his sibling managed to get lodged
out of the spotlight and into the guillotine.
“Anyway,”
Allan continues, “I’m flanked by the sweet ass short-skirted chorus of the
Commeteers when the song ends so it looks and feels like the whole thing has
somehow been choreographed. At the end of the dance I have to admit I got a
little carried away with the sudden venerating and started smacking my Native
American ass in the direction of Karen Pinesol, asking her who her daddy was?”
Patrick
gives his sibling a look indicative of an attaboy. Von Behren gives both of his
companions a look indicative of get on with it.
“So the
crowd is going out of control and making little tomahawk chops by swiping their
arms down in a batting motion and everyone is cheering, wildly, before Coach M
once again grapples the microphone shaped like a pecker and starts instituting
a chorus of Hail to the chief in a round and the spotlight dips totally on me.
I tell you bro, that was one of the highlights of my eight years on this
planet, so far.”
 |
| chief Illiniallan |
Von Behren looses his vision in the swelling sea of blue and brick below.
He wishes Patrick would just hurry up and get him back home.
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