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Authors: Joshua Furst

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Short People (4 page)

BOOK: Short People
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But Shawn knows he’s no longer a kid like that.

On Wednesdays, the Casper family’s busy day, when Shawn’s mother and father both go straight from work to their evening meetings—he’s on the church council, she’s in the choir—Shawn rides his bike home from school to the house he must inhabit until nearly bedtime, long after dark, alone. He tries to remember that God will protect him, but each Wednesday as he pedals slowly home, he remembers the Wednesday last week, when he hid in the hall closet, or two weeks ago, when he cowered in the shower staring at his hands, or the one before that, when he curled in a ball beneath the covers of his parents’ bed and cried. He remembers all the Wednesdays since his parents stopped hiring sitters last year, each one so much like the others—him shivering, shaking, afraid of he knows not what. Each new Wednesday picks up where the last one left off. The minions just keep getting stronger.

Please Jesus, please let me get through this hump day without doing anything to make You mad at me. I promise I won’t watch the TV shows Mom and Dad don’t like me to watch. I won’t turn the radio to the bad stations. If You please help me, I won’t do anything wrong. Let me not have the bad thoughts that I sometimes have. Let me pass through the darkness and into the light. And, Jesus, can You let me not be scared, never again? Thank You, Jesus. A-men.

This Wednesday, the minions are especially active. And worse, Shawn suspects his father of conspiring with them. Last night, even though he gave up smoking for Lent and promised this time it would be for good, Shawn saw him sneak a cigarette out in the garage. How could he do this? It’s horrible! Not only does smoking disappoint God, but to make a promise and then break it is basically the same as lying. It’s a big sin, and Shawn’s father didn’t seem apologetic or remorseful at all; he was defiant and edgy, seemingly more scared of disappointing Shawn’s mother than of being condemned by God. If Shawn had caught his mother sinning, he would’ve lectured her on right and wrong and God’s plan for her life, but his father’s a stern man, a Promise Keeper; challenging him leads to extra chores, raking the lawn again even though there aren’t any leaves left, washing the car with a toothbrush. At bedtime, Shawn prayed for the strength to calm down, but this morning he was even more upset. He tiptoed into his parents’ room while his father was in the shower and his mother was making breakfast and dug around for his father’s cigarettes. They were in the sock drawer, barely even hidden—a soft new green pack, only two smoked. Shawn took them out one at a time and destroyed them. Then, regret and panic burning on his skin, he shoved as much of the evidence as possible back through the hole at the top of the wrapper and returned it to its hiding place. Sweeping the loose tobacco into his hand, Shawn ran to the half-bath by the laundry room, where, as his father yelped at the suddenly ice-cold water, he flushed it down the toilet.

The worst of it, though, was that next to the cigarettes in the drawer Shawn found a box of condoms. He knew what they were, but never having seen one up close, he stole a packet for future examination. He’s been asking God for forgiveness all day, two, three, four times an hour and he plans to confess as soon as he can and be punished and start over, but what good will it do? He’ll never be an extra-good Christian. The evil is creeping around in his body.

He sits in the new chair now, gazing out the picture window. He does this every Wednesday because his mother’s not there to tell him the chair’s too expensive and guests-only for him to crud up and also because there’s some power in the sky, something invisible, something directly connected to his fear. The ritual does nothing to calm him down, but he is compelled to go through with it anyway, to watch the sun disappear and the streaky red and purple clouds change shape and hue, all the while monitoring the movements of his stomach muscles. They contract, squeezing out his goodness just like the sky does the sun.

The poplars and the cars, even the contents of the living room—his own skin—lose their color. The world goes black and white, a million shades of gray. He doesn’t turn the light on. To do so would mean to move and he must remain very still. Something might see him and catch him if he moves. He won’t even scratch his cheek; when it itches, he grimaces, clenches his eyes shut, works his mouth like he’s chewing cud, anything to keep his hands frozen beneath his thighs.

Then, when he can’t stand it one second longer he jumps up, his arms outstretched, ready to flail. Light from the streetlamp in front of the house slices a jagged triangle into the room; it ghosts at the edges and quivers as if it’s afraid. He peers at the fire poker, the cd rack, the plants on their stands, the little things that move in the dark, slight vibrations when he stares straight at them, but when he’s not looking, huge jerky shifts in the corner of his eye that halt abruptly as he tries to catch them.

Did God send the word down to Hell, “Hey, Satan, you know Shawn? Shawn Casper? He’s done it again, and I’m getting fed up. This time he not only sat in the chair, he vandalized his father’s cigarettes and stole a condom. He’s a bad boy. He knows it. There’s no excuse. Do you want him? He’s kind of bony, but once you’ve got him, you can give him Gluttony, butter him up. He’ll be nice and juicy in no time.” Shawn dashes from room to room, pounding buttons and flicking switches. He taps the two lamps in the living room one, two, three times each, to their brightest brilliance. Even the bare bulbs in the basement have to be burning. He jumps, sometimes over and over, for the cords.

The whole house ablaze, he loops back to the bathroom and begins washing himself. The water steams as he thrusts his hands in. Whimpering, he holds them there until his skin goes numb. He scrubs with the antiseptic soft soap, with the lava soap, with the pumice stone his father uses on his feet. He rummages under the sink until he finds the can of petroleum hand gunk, scoops up half of it, and twists each finger until the joints ache. When the hot water begins to run out, he pumps some more soft soap into his palms and washes away the germs from the other soaps. He studies his face in the mirror and wishes he could see a good boy there.

He rushes to the kitchen and knocks the scrubbing powders and spray bottles and sponges and boxes of soap-caked steel wool under the sink around in search of cleaning supplies. He clutches the Windex and, banging his head on the plumbing, spins out of the cupboard. Yanking, he pulls three, four, five yards of paper towel off the roll. He runs to the new chair and touches it for the absolute last time, then he wipes all his previous touches away.

If only he could burn the book the minions tempt him with, but it’s the Bible, and even if his intentions are good, it’s the word of God. God wrote it. Better to continue cleaning, clean away all the oily fingerprints of the bad boy he’s been up to now. He’ll start where he is, wash the windows, the end tables, the lamps—that’s tricky because when he touches them, they turn off. He has to dart in, pat, retreat, pat, retreat, pat, and there’s light again. Find the next target and hit it three times. Daubing in inches until the whole lamp has been wiped clean. Every cd case and every cd, the TV set, the stereo, the whole entertainment center, even the
TV Guide
s wedged in the cracks. He pulls the cushions off the couch and scoops out the rotting mints and cat-food crumbs and the lost Yahtzee dice, the paper clips and plastic half-inch guns. He cleans all four remote controls and the coffee table his father made during the year he tried carpentry. On to the fireplace. He cleans the poker, the prongs, the shovel. He cleans the rack that holds them. He scrubs the stone lip that juts out from the hearth. He scrubs the six logs waiting nearby for the night when they’ll be ignited. The hearth itself, with its four inches of soot and its iron bars caked in spongy black gunk, with its dark chimney chute and the sharp tin sheet that bangs when you close it, is too scary to touch. What a great place for the minions to hide. He skips it, moves on to the mantel.

The crèche and the Jesse Tree have been replaced by a photo of the family, casually dressed but posed stiffly, and a decorative box his mother bought last year at Kmart. The one thing that stays all year long is the cross Shawn made out of burned wooden matches a few years ago, back when goodness came easy, in Sunday school. As he sprays and washes the cross, the matches begin to fall out like hair; the whole stupid thing breaks apart in his hands. While he cleans the photo, Windex creeps under the glass and attacks his family. He has better luck with the wooden box, scrubbing its inlaid surface and picking at the gunk lodged between the tiles—he has better luck, that is, until he opens it.

Inside the box, Shawn finds a zip-lock bag, and inside the bag is an inch-deep layer of crushed, dried leaves—at first Shawn thinks it’s oregano, but it’s clumpier, with seeds and stalks—and an unlabeled bottle with a dropper cap. Squeezing some liquid into the dropper, he notes its brown color, its sickly sweet smell, like molasses or medicine. Drugs.

Please, Jesus, please, please, make something bad happen to Mom and Dad so I can be orphaned and sent somewhere else. And make the place you send me be a good place with good Christian role models. Or at least just please, take me far away from the bad things here. What did I do, Jesus, that made You do this? Why did You make me have drug-addict parents? Please, Jesus, talk to me just once, just please. Then You never have to talk to me ever again. Cause I’m really a good boy, Jesus, and I tried to get born again and I tried to do everything You want me to and it’s not my fault that Mom and Dad are like they are. How come You won’t ever talk to me and comfort me like the Bible says You will? I want to talk to You more than anybody has ever wanted to talk to You in the history of the world. Just this one time, please, will You do what I ask You to? Please? Please, Please, Please?

Splayed on the floor, the drugs spread out in front of him, Shawn bawls. His thoughts coalesce into this single word—
Please
—repeated and ceaselessly repeated. No response booms from on high, and as the seconds tumble and slow into minutes, as the minutes stagnate and Shawn wallows in them, lukewarm and numb, his mind wanders. Silence—
Please
—that’s what God is. God is—
Please
—this lack at the center of things. The nothing that—
Please
—defines everything else as real.
Please . . . Please . . . Please.
The thought that he will wait forever without hearing one word from Jesus flits through Shawn’s mind; it squirms away before he understands it, replaced by an empty awareness of himself, sitting cross-legged on the floor, then lying flat on his stomach, alone. But being alone is as meaningless to him as everything else now. He no longer cries. The ringing in his ears is self-created and it’s the only thing that breaks the silence.

The strain and clank of the garage door wakes Shawn from light sleep. He blinks at the carpet. It takes too much effort to move, and for what? The commotion of his parents in the kitchen bores him.

His father’s voice shoots down the hallway, “Shawn? Shawn, what are you doing with all the lights on?”

Shawn doesn’t move. He thinks about how still he’s lying.

“I’ve told you before, Shawn—only in the room you’re planning on being in.”

It seems like the living room is full of water, like his emotions are floating somewhere on the surface while he lies here on the floor, separated from the impetus to care about reprimands, lights, his parents, Jesus Himself, by the dense mass of liquid that is pressing down on him. His body is alive, tingling with low-grade panic, but he is dead inside it.

Room by room, the house is going dark and his parents are coming toward him. Their presence in the room sucks the water from it. He feels claustrophobic. The panic moves through his bloodstream more quickly now, without the water weight to slow it down. Holding back tears asphyxiates him; it’s like there’s a balloon inflating in his throat.

His mother clicks out the seconds with her tongue. She steps over him and he can feel the air shift as she sweeps past and swoops down, picking things up off the floor.

His father sits on the edge of the couch, his knees wide; he leans low between them, his face bulging in toward Shawn’s head. “Come on, Shawn. Let’s sit up now.”

With an abrupt, clumsy motion, almost like a rag doll, Shawn flops his head away. He sees his mother—her hands anyway— hiding the baggie and vial back in the box.

“Shawn, sit up and talk to us,” his father says. “You’re not a nine-year-old anymore.”

He waits long enough to feel like it’s his choice before doing what he’s told. His every slight movement reverberates like sound through the shell of a bass drum. He scoots away, cradles his knees, and picks a point at which he can’t see his parents to glare at.

“So, now, what’s going on?” his father asks.

He promises himself not to say a word. He’ll let his insolence speak for him, and when they ask questions, his silence will be close to that of God.

“Look at this place, Shawn. It’s—the lights are on, there are cleaning products strewn all over the kitchen, there’s greasy stuff all over the bathroom sink—”

“Hand goop,” Shawn says before he can stop himself.

“—And look at this, Shawn, you destroyed your cross. I’m thinking, what’s going on?” His father’s face goes slack, waiting for an answer. “Shawn?” His head wobbles back and forth. “I can’t even—Shawn, what happened here?”

“I . . .”

His father studies a cluster of matches. “I can’t hear you, Shawn.”

Shawn slumps his shoulders. He shrugs.

“Is this the game we’re playing? You think if you don’t say anything then everything will be okay? You going to wait us out and maybe it’ll go away?”

“Chad, it’s just a little matchstick cross.”

This is wrong, too, to let her defend him.

“I’m not angry. I’m not—look, we’re having a conversation. About responsibility and grown-up things like that. It’s not like I’m going to . . . we’re just talking. Right, Shawn?”

Shawn combusts. His body is on fire. The water has fled and he’s grown dry and brittle. Now he’s in flames, his every cell bursting. His skin cracks and crackles. His sinews shrink in the heat. He speaks and it’s as if the words are all one long syllable popping out in a sparkle of red coal.

BOOK: Short People
5.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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