Rotters (6 page)

“Hey,” I responded weakly, turning back to my tray.

“I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask you,” Woody said. “If you have a moment, that is.”

My eyes caught those of the boy sitting across from me. He glared, furious that I had drawn such harassment to his table. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t know Woody Trask and had not done anything wrong, but he grabbed his tray and left. I picked up my silverware and stared at it, feeling the bench fluctuate as two or three other boys fled the table.

“It’s no big thing,” Woody said. “I just want to do a little fact-checking. Now, the Garbageman, he’s your dad, right?”

I could almost hear Gottschalk’s narration:
The chemicals raging inside of Mr. Crouch, ladies and gentlemen, are a disgusting but nevertheless normal part of the physiology of the teenage male
. There were a number of ways this could end, all of them bad. My mind shuttled through the options. My best hope, I determined, was to say nothing at all. With luck, by tomorrow Woody would choose a new target.

The cheeriness of his voice flattened. “I’m talking to you, Crouch.”

“Crotch?” sputtered a different voice. “Trask, did you just call that kid Crotch?” I glanced up. A behemoth sat to Woody’s left, slobbering over a cupcake, his head the size, color, and texture of a shaved pig. I distantly recalled a teacher referring to him as Reinhart as she made her way down the attendance list.

“You heard right, Rhino,” Woody replied, keeping his eyes on me. “That is exactly what I said. So how about it, Crotch, is your dad the Garbageman or what?”

The Garbageman: it was more than a job description. At Bloughton High, at least, that was his official name. All around me, the crackle of utensils against plastic gave way to a strange wave of silence. I couldn’t help it this time; I began to ease into the soft nirvana of specifying—

—but their pause was mine to break. I dragged myself back to life.

“Yeah, I guess,” I responded. I looked at Celeste. Beneath the flawless cheeks, her jaw flexed in a chewing motion. Her expression remained perceptive yet removed.

“That’s fascinating,” said Woody. “Because we were just discussing how none of us have ever seen him pick up a single piece of our crap. Rhino here, his dad
works
for county sanitation, and Rhino’s dad told Rhino that he ain’t ever seen your dad pick up a single McDonald’s wrapper. So what we’re curious about, Crotch, is what exactly does he do all day?”

If I told them that I hadn’t the slightest idea, I would only sound stupid. Specifying continued its pull—

“Pop says the Garbageman’s always at the pawnshop,” Rhino said, interrupting my trance. “Always selling shit. Always got mud all over his clothes, and always selling shit. You know what Pop thinks?”

Woody held my eyes with minimal effort. “What’s that, Rhino?”

“Pop thinks he’s a thief. Who else has that much shit to pawn?”

I looked for a clock, a teacher, any excuse to get going. Instead I saw a battered old pay phone, mounted on the far cafeteria wall. The impulse to call Boris overwhelmed me. I had not bothered to reset my cell phone after Claire had suggested that I wait and see what kind of coverage was best in Bloughton. Boris’s cell number, though, I had memorized, and if I’d had just a bit more change left I could have called him, explained what was going on, told him that things were taking a series of bad turns and that I needed to get back to the city as soon as he could line it up.

“Man, I’ll never forget that time we were fishing out on the Big Chief and ran across that dude, and he was standing in the water,” Woody was saying, “like up to his waist in water.” He shook his head at the memory. Celeste’s neat smile suggested she had heard this story before.

“I don’t remember that,” said Rhino.

“You weren’t there, dipshit,” said Woody. He gave his face, beaming and animated, to the table around him, and the eyes of his friends replicated his joviality until all of them, Woody included, were handsomer. “We were in a boat and came
within probably ten feet of this guy, and he was like chest-deep in the water trying to catch fish with his hands. Colder than a motherfucker and this motherfucker was out there with water up to his chin, swiping at fish. I was with Gilman and Parker and we hadn’t had a bite all day, but this guy, Crotch’s dad, the Garbageman, he pulls this two-foot bluegill right out of the water in front of us. With his bare hands! Seriously about blew our minds.”

My head was spinning. I couldn’t imagine the inert figure I had met the night before doing anything demanding such bizarre resourcefulness.

Woody did not see it that way. “It’s sad, man,” he said, his eyes landing on me once again. “A working man like that having to fish without bait or tackle. What they’re paying garbagemen these days must suck.”

“They get paid very well,” said Rhino knowledgeably. “
Very
well.”

“Well, then you must be right, Rhino.” Woody sighed. “Resorting to crazy shit like that? The Garbageman
must
be a thief.”

Celeste was merciful. Wordlessly she decided it was time to go, and everyone else followed suit, forgetting me in an instant. Even without explicit violence I was shaken. The lunch period was short, only thirty-five minutes, and just when I had settled enough to seriously contemplate my food, everyone began hastening away. The room rose almost in unison; it felt as if I were the one sinking.

The day crawled. I kept my head down. Weaving through the crowded hallway during the next class break, I heard “Crotch!” called at me. By the time the last bell had rung and I was speeding for the nearest exit, I heard it from multiple sources.
Not me
, I pleaded, knowing that every school has one untouchable pariah.
Please let it not be me
.

I
WELCOMED THE HEAT
that singed me all the way home; it dulled my anguish and hunger. I even welcomed the prospect of a second round with my father. This abysmal day and any others like it still to come were his fault, and I would not be quick to forgive.

His truck was still missing. Despite myself, I almost sobbed in relief. I broke into a run. Inside the cabin, I flung myself to the floor in my corner by the sink. I buried my eyes in my hot elbow and felt my chest hitch up and down in alarming jags. In the darkness my mother comforted me and, after a while, whispered me away.

When I returned the sun was setting. The refrigerator buzzed and my stomach cramped in reply. I got up, gripped the rusty handle, and opened it. Yellow, stained walls greeted me—there was next to nothing inside. A wad of questionable meat, a row of condiment containers crusted shut. In the lower compartment, called the crisper by my mother, whips of onion skin were trapped in a black gel.

I closed the door, turned my back to it, and slid down until my butt hit the floor. There was nothing to eat and I had no money. These were the facts, and I was prepared to shame my father with them when he finally returned. In the meantime, though, I would scour the house. There were things I could learn here; better to learn them while still alone.

There was plenty evidence of hard work—an upside-down boot healing beside a curled tube of superglue, a pair of work gloves with fresh patches meticulously sewn over worn fingers, a pyre of misshapen shovels and hoes—but
nowhere did I see proof of my father’s occupation. If he picked up trash, where was his garbage truck? His uniform? Pay stubs from his monthly check? Yet the more I kicked through the crap that blanketed the floor and angled up the walls, the more comfortable I became with the moniker. He was the Garbageman because of the garbage of his life strewn out all around him: piteous scraps of food, mud-matted carpets, expired medicine, spare change in a mason jar, a brush so old it still clutched nongray hair in volume.

I opened drawers and cabinets—a few plates, a plastic bowl full of coffee grains, a scattering of utensils as random as twigs on a forest floor. Beneath the sink, to my surprise, I found an abundance of industrial-strength cleaning products. The abrasive perfumes of pine and bleach unsettled my empty stomach, but at least briefly overtook the gamey odor. Given the cabin’s state, I considered placing a cleaning product atop each newspaper tower in the room—who knew, maybe he would take the hint. Instead I threw open the front door and all the windows. Through the final window I discovered a small garden between the cabin and the river. Unlike the house, it was tidy, even meticulous.

Near the floor by the fireplace I found a phone outlet, but nowhere was there an actual phone.
Technophobe:
the word fit my father perfectly. No phone, no computer, no television, not even a radio. I dreaded oppressive nights spent here in this tiny space with nothing to fill the silence.

Already on my knees, I began scanning the titles of the books bottommost to the ten or twelve stacks. Most of these were quite old, and my eyes resisted their small print and faded colorings. I hopped into a squat to better read some of the spines. There were two disintegrating books rubber-banded together:
Antropologium
and
Mikrokosmographia
. I took
them between my fingers, but as I did so, the floor-to-ceiling pile bulged sinuously. I left them alone. Above them,
Historical Sketch of the Edinburgh Anatomical School
and
Great Medical Disasters
. There was a pattern here, but it could be explained away: this was an unrepresentative sample, a grouping of books perhaps collected from the discards of a hospital library. I shifted to another pile several feet away.
The Confessions of an Undertaker
. An audiotape titled
Highlights About Wood Caskets
. A thick yellow brick of magazines called
Casket and Sunnyside;
a smaller stack of a publication titled
American Funeral Director
. And creating stability concerns near the ceiling, the massive
Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media
. At least this title had some tie to the newspapers surrounding me.

This was the personal library of Ken Harnett. I backed away, trying to revive the memory of the colorful and reassuring books Janelle and Thaddeus let spill into the rooms of Boris and his sisters. Instead I could only see my father’s dark and troubled face. Sanitary worker or not, this might be a man I shouldn’t meddle with; I thought again of my mother’s disfigured ear. But instead of stopping, I dove into his bedroom, tearing at his sheets, lifting coats from the floor to see what was secreted beneath.

I found myself facing the narrowest of closets tucked behind the bedroom door. Inside, a few clean white dress shirts, a black suit, even; some ties draped over a nail. Interesting, these items—but I forgot them when I saw the safe. It was large and metal and secured with a combination lock. I kneeled in front of it and gave the handle a pull just in case. Nothing. I tried 10-20-30. I tried the combination of my old gym locker, 32-0-25. Nothing. I gave the safe a push to gauge its weight. It did not budge.

Behind the safe, wedged between it and the wall, was yet another surprise. I nudged my head through the hanging shirttails and pants legs. It was a cardboard box filled with alcohol. Carefully I lifted a few random bottles. It was the cheap, hard stuff, and plenty of it. Most unsettling of all was that it was well hidden, and the only one Ken Harnett had to hide it from was himself.

It wouldn’t do me any good to knock back any gin, no matter how raw my hunger. I dragged my feet back to my dusty corner and, feeling too much like a dog, curled myself up on the duffel bags that were my bed. What a strange and mixed-up misery I felt.
Come home
, I urged him. My very next thought:
Stay away
.

A
FRAID OF AGAIN SHOWING
up to school drenched from a thirty-minute run, I kept myself alert after waking up at four-thirty. I even tried to make coffee, but the outcome was tepid and bitter, and the caffeine only upped the intensity of my hunger. I waited for him as long as I could, praying that any minute now, he would return, any minute now.

I reached school early and successfully opened my locker, though still I had nothing to put inside. My green backpack I had protectively left at home, and my books, if they existed, still hid within my father’s fearful collection. I didn’t want to sift through those titles ever again.

Just outside the door to Pratt’s English class, Laverne stopped me in the hall. “Good morning, Joey! You find those books all right?”

Students herded past me on their way to class. Several of them shot me doubtful looks. Instantly I saw the scene through their eyes: some short, skinny new kid making friends with the overbearing fat lady who yelled at them for running past the principal’s office. I needed every friend I could get, including Laverne, I knew this, yet I felt the lie coming all the way up my throat. “Yep, got ’em,” I said.

“Atta boy,” she said, nodding herself into a half-dozen new chins. “You read through that salmon packet?”

“What?” I only vaguely remembered the
BLOUGHTON SCREAMING EAGLES
folder I held in my hand. More students, class about to start, another lie I couldn’t stop: “Oh, sure, I read it.”

“Well, don’t forget, during study hall today you can come down to the office and get all settled for band.” Horrifically, she winked. “I remember you said you had a special liking for band.”