Tattoo

There was a picture that his mother kept in her dresser; a group of boys standing outside a drugstore sulking, scowling, goofing for the camera. Black and white. There were six or seven boys in the photograph, all about eighteen years old. His mother had told him the one on the far right was his father, the one with his hair in a pompadour. The hair seemed to be coming undone, as if he’d just been driving with the window open. He had on a striped polo shirt and a wrinkly pair of khakis. One hand was jammed into his pocket, while the other held a cigarette, poised slightly above his waist and dangling between his thumb and forefinger. A tattoo peeked out from under his sleeve but in the photograph you couldn’t make out what it was. Randy had once looked at the tattoo through a magnifying glass, but it had only separated the blur into small black dots. In the end, he decided it was probably an eagle or a snake, because this seemed right. The boy in the picture had a defiant look, as if he had just cursed at the photographer and was daring a response.

When he was young, Randy’s mother had played him a song called Bird Dog, and the verses in the song seemed to fit the boy in the picture. So there was the picture and the song. Once Randy had smuggled the picture into his room for over a week before placing it back in the drawer with his mother’s underwear. Somewhere along the line his mother had misplaced the record that had Bird Dog on it. Then, as Randy became more aware of things, he realized that the picture was clipped from a magazine and probably wasn’t really his father. Still, the picture and the song were all Randy knew of him.

Route 1-30

Across the street from the apartment building where Randy lived with his mother and younger sister, there was a fish store called Pier 130, named after the highway. A few days after his thirteenth birthday Randy went into the store to talk to Mr. Giannetti, the owner. He left with the promise that if he showed up every day after school and worked for three hours, he would earn sixty-five dollars a week. “That’s under the table, kid.” Mr. Gianetti had said.

That evening his mother didn’t come home, and his sister spent the evening alternating between sitcoms and video games, so Randy kept the news of his employment to himself and didn’t mention it the next morning when his mother did come in, excited and reeking of cigarette smoke.

That day after school, Randy went into the shop and held his breath for a moment, figuring the smell was something he’d get used to. Mr. Gianetti said nothing, but gave him an apron and indicated by pointing to a beat-up broom and then at the back of the shop what Randy should do. A while later, Mr. Gianetti called to him. Randy went to the front, broom in hand.

“Listen, chief, think you can clean some mussels for me? I got a big order.”

“Yeah sure,” said Randy. “Whatever you want.”

Back in the rear of the store, Randy stood next to the sink. To his right was a pail of live mussels on ice. He drew the first one from the pail and recognized what Mr. Gianetti had described as “the beard”. This was to be removed before rinsing the mussel with warm water and placing it in a second, ice filled pail. The first beard came off with a slight tug but as he went on they seemed harder to pull off, as if the mussels had recognized their fate and were holding on for dear life. Randy hadn’t asked what the beards were, but thought they might be external organs of some sort. He began to dread ripping them out. Then he came upon a mussel with its shell slightly agape. Randy winced at the flesh he saw within, a shade of grayish pink. His instructions had been to tap lightly on the shells of any open mussels to see if they were still alive. Drawing in his breath, Randy touched a fingernail to the shell, producing no audible result. Still, the mussel closed in slow motion. Randy saw the pulpy inside contract. He let it fall from his fingertips inside the pail.

Randy walked out to the front of the store where Mr. Gianetti was closing up for the day.

“Do you need me to sweep up here?” he asked.

Mr Gianetti looked at him, wringing a blood soaked rag out on the floor. “Yeah. Did you finish the mussels?”

Randy hesitated a moment. “Uh, no. I figured I should sweep up.”

“You been back there a half hour!” cried Mr. Gianetti, flinging the rag to a nearby sink. “Listen, I’m paying you to work.” He looked at Randy expectantly.

“I was,” said Randy, but he didn’t go back to the store the next day.

Cartoons

Randy let himself in one day and found his sister sitting on the couch, watching cartoons. A dog and a cat skidded all over a kitchen. His sister watched with a blank expression, chewing gum rhythmically. She didn’t laugh or even smile, no matter how riotous the action on the tiny screen became. This annoyed Randy and he walked across the room and switched off the set. She stared at him.

“Clean the house,” he said.

She took her eyes off him and began looking at the TV Guide. “Nobody told me to,” she said.

“I just told you to,” he said, grabbing the magazine from her hands. “Now do it.”

“You’re not the Jesus of me,” she said, sounding bored. When she was a baby, Randy had spent hours holding her as she slept. He was always careful not to move and after a while his arms would begin to ache. But he would hold her as long as she slept. He remembered this for a moment.

“Mommy called. She says order pizza, she’ll be home later,” she said, and then stretched out on the couch, her joints crackling.

All at once, Randy felt anger welling up inside of him. “Get up and clean this room!” he shouted. “It stinks in here! You stink. I heard the lady from downstairs telling someone that there’s a girl up her who smells so bad nobody can stand it!”

“I do not stink!” she cried, rising.

“Yes you do. It’s only that no one will tell you to your face. But everybody knows it.” Randy looked at his sister. She wore a panicked expression and clutched a Barbie doll by the throat in one small hand. “You lay around so much that you started to reek. Now you’ll never get it out. The odor is totally absorbed.”

She began to sniffle, biting her lip as tears welled in her eyes. They looked pretty that way. “It’s not true,” she sobbed.

“Okay, then how come nobody ever comes here? It’s your fault. Why don’t you
have any friends? The smell is too bad. Nobody wants to be near you!” he said, hurling this last insult at her tiny retreating form. She slammed the door of her room and his mother’s knick- knacks rattled on the shelves.

Later that day, as Randy slept in his room, he had a dream. He and his sister were sitting on the couch watching cartoons. Without warning, she lunged at him, punching him in the arm with a force so incredible that his eyes filled with white light. He woke up gasping and alone in the darkness of his room.

Porno

Next to the fish market was a convenience store called Quick Out where Randy often spent his afternoons playing a video game. One day while looking through the magazine rack he discovered a porno magazine. He knew it had been misplaced there because the clerks kept these types of magazines behind the counter. The store was quiet and the magazine rack was toward the back, so Randy cautiously opened the magazine. He found himself entranced by a photo spread entitled The Spider and the Fly. In it, a hapless and beautiful blonde was cast as the fly and a harsh looking woman with a slick black wig was the spider. The two characters were sprawled in various positions all over a web of black netting. The fly’s terrified expression excited Randy. After a few moments, he noticed that a man was looking over his shoulder, smiling. Relieved that it wasn’t one of the store employees or worse, a woman, Randy closed the magazine quickly and slid it behind a fashion magazine on the rack. The man continued to regard him with a pleasant smile. He wore a business suit with an undone necktie and held a six pack of soda. His lapel bore a pin with a bank logo and the words, “Nobody’s more important than you.”

“Enjoying that, were you,” said the man, retrieving the magazine and holding it gingerly in between them. “I’ll buy it for you, if you want. Shit, I know what it’s like.”

Randy stood silently, feeling uncomfortable, but wondering what was on the next page of the photo spread. In the last picture he had seen, the fly had looked directly at him, pleading for salvation as the spider worried between her legs.

“You’ll take it, right?,” said the man, coughing out a laugh. “Believe me, I know how you feel. Meet me outside in a minute.”

Randy waited outside next to a Toyota that was the only car in the lot. Soon, the man emerged holding a slim paper bag, the bells on the front door tinkling. He opened the passenger side door for Randy, who hesitated. “Just get in for a second. C’mon, I’m not going to take it out here.” It seemed logical. Randy stepped into the car.

Randy turned back to the photo spread and the man leaned over, whistling appreciatively. “See, that’s what I’m talking about.” Randy turned the pages.

“I knew a girl once, who turned up in one of these things.” He touched the magazine. “Used to see her at Dairy Queen standing in line.”

The man touched his eyelashes and fluttered them, as if a piece of dust had landed there.

“You don’t really know what you’ll wind up as, that’s the thing. I liked baking, as a kid. I used to bake a lot of brownies, cakes and stuff. I thought I might end up a baker, but instead I’m a banker. That’s what I tell people, if not for the ‘n’, I’d be a baker like I thought.”

The man snorted, something like a laugh, and put his hand on Randy’s crotch. He strummed his fingers across it twice.

Randy tried to move over, but the man had gripped his shoulder.

Randy clawed at his hand and twisted furiously, fumbling for the door handle. The man eased his hold. “C’mon man. Don’t you want to know how it feels?” the man asked, but Randy had opened the door and bounced out, his ass grinding into the gravel of the parking lot. The man leaned over, the pleasant smile returning to his face. “Okay, no problem,” he said, then shut the door. Randy stood up and dusted off the back of his jeans. Then he stood in the parking lot, watching solemnly as the Toyota made its way down Route 130 in the early evening light.

The Spider

That night in his room, Randy thought about the Spider and the Fly. He frowned, wishing he’d grabbed the magazine before jumping out of the car. He could have kept it, he was sure. Still, if he closed his eyes, he could remember the fly’s face, the panicked grimace that had thrilled him. Under his sheets he touched himself, concentrating on everything he could remember about the photographs: the spider’s toenails painted glossy black, the fly’s large pale nipples and the way she’d been bent backwards over the spider’s knee. But as he went on he found it hard to recall the images. All he thought about as he finally came, careful to ejaculate on his stomach and not on his bed, was the look of urgency and triumph on the spider’s face and the way the stranger had touched him through his jeans.

Kangaroo

Randy’s mother was on the phone, screaming. His sister’s father wasn’t coming; wouldn’t be taking her for the weekend as he had promised. Randy had heard the conversation before, word for word, so he walked out the back door.

It was raining outside. Randy found his sister behind the apartment building, at a picnic table leaning over some colorful clay. He stared at her for a while. Using the clay, she rolled out worms and snakes and eels by the dozen, lining them up in the grooves of the picnic table. As she rolled, her animals picked up red paint chips and grime from her hands, which were muddy from the rain.
Randy started making her a Kangaroo out of white clay, and labored over it for fifteen minutes.

“Kangaroos aren’t white,” she said. “That looks like a ghost.”

“Well, look at all your animals. I don’t know which is an eel and which is a snake. Explain that.” Randy was only joking, but she looked down at her hands, studying them as if they’d done something wrong. Randy returned to work, perfecting the details: the pointed ears, the long feet. When he finished, she was looking down at the table, staring blankly at all her dirty rolls of clay.

“Here,” he said. “Put the baby in the pouch.” It was a cute little thing. He had made a tiny replica of the white kangaroo in blue clay and placed them both gently on the table in front of her.

With the heel of her hand she pushed the tiny animal into the tabletop, then rolled it slowly with her palm, until it was the thinnest worm of all.

Mantis

There was a tiny stream trickling behind the apartment building where Randy lived, with two willow trees on either side of it. It was cool back there in the summer, and Randy often went there to look at comic books. Sometimes he found himself staring for hours at the tadpoles and turtles on the muddy banks. One morning Randy saw two younger boys who lived in his building playing near the stream. They were twins, but one was fat and one was thin. The neighborhood kids called the fat one Leonard, which was his name, and the skinny one Diet Leonard. Randy didn’t know what Diet Leonard’s real name was. He’d never spoken to them before.

He stood ten feet from them, watching. The fat brother had a wooden rolling pin, and was using it like a pestle to grind something in a chipped orange bowl. The skinny one stood looking over his brother’s shoulder, rubbing his hands together and then picking his nose. They talked to one another in wheezy little voices. Diet Leonard looked at Randy for the first time and smiled, showing gaps where baby teeth had fallen out.

“Wanna see?” he said, and his fat brother raised his head, squinting at Randy and snorting back snot.

Randy moved toward them. He looked into the bowl. Inside it was a pulpy brown mess, and the sides of the bowl were streaked with red goo.

“It’s bug mush, “ said Diet Leonard, a bit of spittle flying out of his mouth and sticking to his chin. “We’ve been mixing it for days. There’s probably a thousand bugs in it.” Randy could see that the bowl was half full, and could make out tiny scraps of wings, legs and abdomens. There was a stink, too; something that he’d smelled in the dank cabinets under the sink in his mother’s kitchen. The fat brother had the end of the rolling pin on something long and green in the center of the bowl and Randy could see that it was still alive, half crushed. It was a praying mantis: its forearms clawing at the carnage around it, its mandibles working almost imperceptibly.

“It’s illegal to do that; to kill a praying mantis,” Randy said.

“Why?” asked Diet Leonard.

“Because they help farmers. They kill pests. You could go to jail.”

The fat brother spoke up. “Oh, that’s bullshit.” He wiped his hands on his pants.

“Really?” said Randy and grabbed the bowl by the rim. He threw it into the stream, where it smashed against a jutting rock. Both brothers looked at him with open mouths.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” said the fat one, and behind his shaky words Randy heard a sob. “You fucker…”

Randy grabbed the back of the fat one’s shirt. It was wet. He forced him down to the ground as the skinny brother laughed. He held him on the ground for a while listening to his short breaths and looking at the back of his neck. It was lined with sweaty creases filled with dirt. The kid smelled like baby shit and sweat. Randy felt no anger, but there was heat behind his eyes and in his ears. He held the fat brother there. He didn’t struggle. Diet Leonard, still laughing, said “I’ll go tell my mother,” and then more quietly, “He didn’t do anything to you.”

It was true. With a final shove to the fat kid’s back, Randy let go. But the kid stayed on the ground, and only lifted his face from the mud when Randy had walked away.

Bats

On a November evening Randy and his sister were sitting on top of a dirt mound at a construction site not far from their apartment. Randy had found a pack of cigarettes that one of the workers had left. If he rolled a cigarette gently between his finger and thumb, he found that he could work the tobacco out of the top. Then he had a hollow tube, which he could fill with dirt. He did this fifteen times, until he had a pack of dirt cigarettes.

“Do you smoke?” asked his sister.

“Why, do you?” he asked back. His sister needed a haircut, her bangs kept covering her eyes. Her green windbreaker was filthy.

“No,” she said. “But I could.”

Bats were flying over their heads as they walked home along the highway, darting out of the darkening sky. When Randy looked for a few seconds, he realized there were hundreds of them. "Somebody said they can get tangled in your hair," his sister said.

"No, they don't really do that," he said, reaching down to wiggle his fingers on her scalp.

"Stop it!" she shrieked, crouching out of his reach. "Why do you do things like that?" Cars hummed by, drowning her words.

"I don't know," said Randy. She ran off wildly, crisscrossing her arms above her head. Randy breathed in and the air felt cool. He stood a moment and watched her running down the side of the road ahead of him.