Rats Saw God (4 page)

Three girls arrived at the house to see Sarah off. One of them I recognized from school, the others I guessed were older. I had been in California for three months and had barely spoken to anyone my age. Sarah et al. hugged, wept, exchanged addresses.

The colonial home in which the astronaut and I coexisted had five bedrooms. Keep in mind, only the two of us lived there. We never actually finished unpacking either. We unpacked only as necessity dictated. In other words, toilet paper was out first and things like artwork, photographs, and knickknacks probably remain in their boxes to this day. Imagine a house with nothing on its walls save a small photograph above the astronaut's desk of himself with President Nixon. No plants, no wall hangings—in short, nothing even remotely nonutilitarian. As a result, the house looked only temporarily occupied for the entire three years I slept there.

Initially we had eaten together and made feeble attempts at conversation. I had yet to meet anyone and couldn't think of any place else to be, and he hadn't been assigned to a project that could justify his working late. We settled into a more comfortable routine soon enough. He would leave for work before I woke but would provide a list of chores by the kitchen sink, paper-clipped to a ten-dollar bill, which was to provide me both lunch and dinner

This was the routine we fell into again when I got back
from California. He did make one comment that surprised me. He said my time in California had begun to make a man out of me. I guess he was referring to my now recognizably male, if not Herculean, physique that had developed in some modest form due to the paces my summer employment put me through. In the mirror I could see the faint outline of a chest. Returning to form, however, he made his displeasure known about my choice of vehicle. An “eyesore,” he called the El Camino. He also fondled my pierced earlobe, grimaced, and said he thought he had made it clear before I left Texas that I was to no longer wear an earring. That hole, he said, would have closed up had his edict been obeyed. I never wore an earring in his presence.

I returned to my low-paying yet leisurely job at the Clear Lake Cineplex; my enthusiasm delivering vertical movement within the company. I became the newest projectionist. This meant two things: I earned an extra quarter an hour and I got to watch movies. I only saw them in ten- to fifteen-minute slices, but with most of Hollywood's offerings, this was enough for me to adequately deduce the remaining seventy minutes.

A few days after I returned, the astronaut's morning note included two Houston Astros tickets along with the ten-dollar bill. “Be ready to leave for the game by six,” the note said. The astronaut and I had never gone to a game—save my Little League efforts—together. Baseball I could comprehend if not play with distinction. The only sport I truly detested was football, and that was as much for the adulation bestowed upon its athletes in Texas as for the sport itself.
Watching a baseball game in the oddly hermetic Astrodome would be fun regardless of my company.

As I could have predicted, the astronaut's seats provided a close-up view of jockstrap cup realignment, tobacco juice drool, and celebrity hobnobbing. George Bush sat three rows in front of us. He even gave the astronaut a little wave. George Strait was one section over, directly behind home plate. Charlie Sheen, a good buddy of one of the Astros infielders, sat a row in front of the former president between two savory Victoria's Secret models. The astronaut and I didn't have much to say but alternated trips to the concession stand and both whooped when Craig Biggio broke a tie with a sixth inning home run. All in all it was the closest thing to bonding we had done since our last fishing trip when I was nine (there the silence didn't seem so awkward). The public service announcer helped me clear my head of the damp, pastel-hued haze of sentiment during the seventh inning stretch.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm round of applause to astronauts Daniel Gary, Frederick March, and Alan York, who are here with their sons tonight as guests of the Houston Astros. Gentlemen, please stand and be recognized.”

In the row behind us I saw two father-son teams stand in unison. I felt the astronaut get up beside me, and I heard the polite applause of twenty thousand baseball fans, but I, for one, wasn't going to function as the ceremonial family member trotted out to appease the apple pie set. I had seen Mom do it for too many years. I remained seated and ignored the
“Steves”
issuing from behind the astronaut's clenched teeth. We didn't speak a word to each other on the ride home from the game.

They showed my school mug shot on the morning video announcements today as one of Wakefield's two Merit finalists. I was
so
stoned when that picture was taken. I had a bandanna pulled low over my sleepy eyes, and, in a dead giveaway, I was out of focus. My fellow anatomy students roared when the announcement was read. A couple smokers gave me the thumbs-up sign. Mr. Reyes shook his head resignedly.

Reyes was happy to get rid of me when a reporter from the Wakefield
Picayune
asked permission to interview me later in the period. The reporter, a nervous freshman named Henry, was working on his first “real” assignment. Before landing this exclusive, he had been in charge of the student opinion polls and school calendar listings. He led me down Wakefield's dreary, dimly lit corridors to the library where the other finalist sat waiting for us.

I waited for the journalist to introduce us, but he sat down and began fumbling through his notes.

“I'm Steve York,” I said to my co-finalist, who was cuter than the picture they showed of her on TV.

“I know. I saw you on
Wake Up, Wakefield
.” That was the name of the morning announcement/news show, but I'd never heard anyone refer to it so formally. “I'm Allison Kimble.”

“Oh… I missed it this morning.”

Henry began questioning us in a manner common, I'm sure,
to staff writers for illustrious periodicals like
Teen Beat
and
16.
He wanted to know such vital data as favorite places to study and noteworthy hobbies. The brain-locked frosh asked no follow-up questions. Rather, he plowed heedlessly through his scripted line of inquiry, paying little if any attention to our responses.

“Steve, were there any major turning points in your life?”

“Let's see, Henry. I guess when I knocked over that liquor store in seventh grade….”

“And your favorite subject?”

“Wood shop.”

The legitimate biographical information he garnered in our twenty-minute interview would have fit nicely onto the back of a National Merit finalist trading card. Allison said her favorite author was J. D. Salinger. (How teenaged of her.) I said mine was Gore Vidal. (How deviant of me.) Allison said her hero was her father. I said my hero was also, coincidentally, Allison's father. Allison rolled her eyes.

When Henry asked Allison what she wanted to be when she grew up, my intellectual rival lost her patience with the cub reporter. She snatched Henry's notebook, scanned the list of remaining questions, then swiveled toward me to complete the interview herself. I adopted a countenance that suggested a renewed interest in the proceedings.

Clearing her throat, she managed to replicate Henry's grave tone. “If you could be any barnyard animal, what barnyard animal would you be?”

“Rooster,” I answered, resisting my urge to use a synonym.

“Uh-huh… and the sum of two and two is?” She held up two fingers on each hand to help me out.

“Four?” I replied, letting my voice register a shred of hope.

Henry clued in. “Hey, I've gotta get this stuff. Even if you think it's stupid.” He looked as if he might sob. Allison and I glanced at each other. She bit her lower lip and lowered her head like a frequently backhanded mutt. I likewise tried to appear repentant.

“Go ahead, Henry. We're sorry,” Allison offered.

Henry composed himself, reshuffled his notes, and, in his dinky freshman falsetto, continued. “Where do you plan on going to college?”

Allison: “Stanford, Northwestern, maybe Princeton.”

Steve: “San Diego Community College.”

Allison's trading card was filling up much quicker than mine. She had been on the Academic Decathlon team, was an officer for the Latin Club, and a founder of the Wakefield SADD chapter.

“And what about you, Steve?” Henry asked, number-two pencil poised.

“I just transferred here this year.”

“What did you belong to at your old school?”

“GOD,” I said.

Doug and I had gotten our driver's licenses within a week of each other. Though he was a grade ahead of me, I was four days older. Upon returning to town I called to find out what he had in store for Skate or Die. First of all, I asked, did we really want to be seen with freshmen?

“I don't really want to be seen with sophomores,” was Doug's sardonic reply.

The thought of sneaking cases of Busch down into the suburban waterway system to share in malodorous, centipede-infested darkness with fourteen cast alternates from
River's Edge
inspired us to seek a new direction. But figuring out an alternative proved difficult.

“Remind me again why the League of Women Voters won't grant us a chapter,” Doug said. He was still pissed that his original idea, though brilliant in concept, wasn't going to reach fruition.

“I called their office. They said the founders of any chapter had to be registered voters, and, as surprising as this may sound, women.”

Doug had seen the LWV as a surefire way to meet girls, and not just girls of our ilk—no, genuine letter-jacket-wearing, pep-rally-attending, rosy-cheeked “gals.” What mangy, head-banging Doug and I would do with these gals once we met them was a question we left unanswered. We had already rejected the Pete Best Fan Club (“too retro”) and the Sons of the Cold War (“too political”).

Losing faith in our ability to come up with anything inspired, Doug decided to raid his parents' stock of Red Stripe, a Jamaican beer they had developed a taste for on one of their frequent escapes from Doug and his older brother, Stan, Jr. As we walked into the house I caught the familiar lime-green neon glow of Doug's skateboard sticking out of a slab of seashell-laced concrete.

“What's this?” I said, pointing to what used to be my friend's sole means of transportation.

“Art,” he said.

“Sort of a
Tomb of the Unknown Skater
?”

“More like
Headstone of the Unknown Skater,
” Doug said, pausing to take a look at the juxtaposition. “It's nothing, really. I broke my board a couple weeks ago when I was working on the Hawthorne pool. (Doug worked for his parents at Clear Lake Pools and Spas.) We were pouring stepping-stones for a walkway, and I just stuck half the board into the concrete before it set. Voilà.
C'est fantastique.”
Doug had taken French while I was in typing.