Abnormal Man: A Novel Read online

  ABNORMAL MAN

  OR,

  THE MIDDLE GROUND

  BEING A SCHOOL COMPENDIUM IN THE SCRIPTURAL STYLE

  OF

  CRIMINOLOGY

  AND THE

  ABNORMAL CLASSES

  AND GIVING

  AN HONEST ACCOUNT

  AND WAS THEREBY RAISED UP

  BY

  THAT ANCIENT SERVANT OF CHRIST

  GRANT JERKINS

  Note:

  All epigrams and extracts—as well as this book’s title—are taken from the Bureau of Education Circular of Information No. 4, Abnormal Man, Being Essays on Education and Crime and Related Subjects, by Arthur MacDonald, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1893. In addition, the author is indebted to the Sub-Sub Programmer who kept dark hours alone with her loupe and logarithms to amass, correlate, scan, and furthermore write proprietary code to digitally capture le mots justes contained therein—the very phrases that would illume, limn, and inform the following narrative. She did this on the author’s behalf, requesting in return, only anonymity. Fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub.

  For the convenience of those who are interested in questions concerning the abnormal classes—including their moral, intellectual, and physical education—the author presents in book form a number of his writings . . . In doing this the author has temporarily taken the point of view of the subject of each study, avoiding criticism, so that the reader may gain a clear insight . . .

  The Moon.

  You keep swallowing and you’re not sure why. You can feel your Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, up and down, over and over. Your eyes are closed, and there is a diffuse white glow bleeding through your eyelids. A pleasant, welcoming light. Not the sun. No, it is not the sun. It is the moon. Yes, the moon.

  When you were still just a little kid, you believed—certain, you were absolutely certain—that the moon followed you. You can remember being in the backseat of your father’s restored Chevelle SS, driving home from a vacation in Gatlinburg, and watching the moon through the blue-green glass of the side window.

  The moon stays with you. It follows you. No matter how fast the car speeds down the highway, that magnetic white disc keeps up with you, never lagging behind.

  At first you think it might be some kind of optical illusion, some trick you aren’t yet old enough to understand, so you test the theory by looking away from it for a little while. Maybe it just seems like the moon is following you because you never take your eyes off it. A clock’s hands can only be seen to move if you take your eyes away from it for a little while. It’s only when you look back later that you can tell the hands have changed position. Maybe if you ignore the moon for a little while, maybe when you look back at it again, you will be able to tell it is really getting farther away. That it isn’t really following you after all.

  So you look up front at the silver, rectangular radio buttons. They are the old-fashioned mechanical kind that you have to stab with your finger to make the dial physically turn to the preset station. The green radium-like glow of the dashboard instrument panel bathes the car’s interior, like being in a submarine. Sixty miles an hour. The car is moving at sixty miles an hour. Your daddy’s face does not look sinister in that green glow, but instead it looks warm and safe. You didn’t know it then, but he was your real daddy. Your true daddy. Not the son-of-a-bitch replacement. And your mama reaches back over the seat and scratches your knee with her long red fingernails and says your name real soft. “Billy? You awake, sweetie?” But you don’t answer her. Just let her think you’re asleep. And you watch her take her hand away and rest it high on Daddy’s leg, nestled in the crotch.

  And it feels good seeing that. You feel good. Because you have no way of knowing that she will be dead in nine years.

  And it has been long enough to test your theory. To see if it is real. You turn your head and look back out the side window, holding your breath in anticipation. And it’s true. The moon is still there. In the exact same place. This car is rolling down the road at sixty miles per hour, so the moon should be far, far behind you, but it has not slowed down one little bit. It’s following you. You.

  For the rest of the trip, you continue to test the moon. When the car stops, the moon stops too. It waits right there in the sky. It waits for you to get moving again. And when the car turns, the moon turns with it. Sometimes it ends up following you from the other side of the car, but it never stops following.

  It is following you.

  Your name is Billy Smith and that is not a special name. It is common.

  But the moon follows you.

  And that makes you special.

  You are special.

  * * *

  You haven’t seen the moon—or the sun—in more than three months. But still, all these years later, you know it is out there, waiting for you. You can feel it. Throbbing with gravity, pulling at you. Waiting for you.

  There are no windows in this place, only fluorescent lights that stay on all day, all night. This place is not a prison, but really it is. The Grierson Holding and Processing Facility for Violent Offenders. Not a prison.

  You ask yourself: How did it happen? Can you really be responsible for this? And you look around yourself and realize that every decision you have ever made in your life has brought you to this time, to this place. You are where you are supposed to be.

  You are eighteen years old.

  Was there a choice? Was there ever really a choice? Or was this all preordained? From the moment your head crowned from between your mother’s splayed legs, had all of this already been decided for you? Written down? Or was it chaos?

  No. It was choice. Of course it was. Of course. A never-ending series of decisions. More choices than there are numbers. Every step was decided upon. Chosen. How could you have not realized that?

  It was all a choice.

  * * *

  Swallowing. You keep swallowing. Why? Is it nerves? Anticipation? The light that surrounds you is too warm and intense to be the moon. The blunt white light that bleeds through your closed lids is implacable. Waiting patiently for you to open your eyes. And you do. You swallow one last time and open your eyes.

  You are staring into the dead flat eye of a video camera. Static. It is waiting for you to speak. There are three softbox lights on tripods angled around you, lighting you for the camera.

  The woman’s motorcycle helmet rests on the scratched and dirty table here in the not-a-prison interview room. The helmet is black, an impenetrable orb. And on the back, in red spray paint, the anarchy symbol. The letter A bursting through a ragged circle that can’t contain it.

  The woman is staring at you. Her camera is staring at you. You can hear it humming, waiting. The fuzzy black boom mic is pointing at you, accusatory. You like the woman, and you have agreed to speak to her. To be in her movie. Her documentary. About you.

  You want to tell her about how when you were just a little kid you used to think the moon followed you. In fact, you open your mouth and you are about to say that very thing, but you don’t. Because it would be a lie. The truth is that you still think that the moon follows you. And you always will.

  You wonder why someone would name their baby girl Jaymes and then be upset when, years later, she announces that she’s a lesbian. It’s like they prearranged it. Jaymes. What kind of name is that to saddle a child with? It is the name you give your daughter when what you really wanted was a son.

  You are eighteen years old, and when you left your parents’ house this morning, it was for the last time. You are never going back. You have your motorcycle—hello, Dad, your daughter is named Jaymes and she rides a bad motorscooter. Wake up—you have jeans, t-shirts, underwear, socks, comb, and a toothbrus
h crammed in your backpack. No makeup, obvious clue number three. The clichés just keep piling up. And you have your digital video camera. The camera is the only reason you stayed there as long as you did. That camera cost you every cent you ever made asking people if they wanted to supersize that order.

  You look at the boy sitting across from you, and you realize that is all that he is. A boy. He is eighteen years old, same as you, but he looks like he is about twelve. Thin to the point of emaciation. Skin like dirty chalk. He is pitiful. You have never felt a maternal impulse in your life, but you are overwhelmed with a need to grab this boy up and hug him and cover him in kisses. If you gave in to such a ludicrous temptation, you would need to be careful of your razor blade earrings. The kid has the complexion of a hemophiliac.

  The kid. His name is Billy, and you have been following his story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, on CNN, the Faux News Network, and the various blogs that have erupted around Billy Smith and what he has done.

  You do not know why your interest in the case rose to the level of obsession, but it did. It seemed to somehow mirror the arc of your own life. The snowball effect of bad choices, choices that often weren’t choices at all. The mocking echo of a life out of control.

  You are eighteen. An adult. You have been making films your whole life. Films about yourself. You have chronicled your life. And posted your images and rants online. But now you are ready to turn the camera around. Now you are ready to do something real.

  “Another two hours of shrugging isn’t going to help me.”

  You shrug again. The camera intimidates you. The girl doesn’t, but the camera does. You think the girl is kind of cool. You like the pink stubble like a neon nimbus around her head, the piercings. The tattoos. Her tattoos are not like Frank’s. You can tell hers were professionally done.

  You lift your hands to your mouth and chew a hangnail on your thumb. You have to lift both hands at the same time because they are cuffed together. They allowed you to do these interviews, but only with certain conditions. Like the guards standing in the corners. And the handcuffs.

  Not-a-prison.

  “I’m sure it’s nice to get out of population and chew on your hands for two hours, but, you know what? You’re wasting my time.”

  There is nothing to say. What can you say?

  “A lot of people care about this.”

  She is not looking at you directly, but watching your image in the monitor.

  You speak.

  “I’ve always been with Frank.”

  It is science class and you are looking at a Canadian travel pamphlet while the teacher speaks. You do not remember when you first became fascinated with Canada, but you are. Everything in Canada is green. Or cold and white and pure. You really do not even remember where you got the stack of Canadian tourist brochures that you carry around with you in your backpack. You have had them for so long that they are wrinkled and corner-bumped and the glossy photographs are missing thumbprint-size hunks of color.

  There is a loud crack, like a gunshot, and your head jerks up. It was the sound of a book hitting the floor.

  “Who remembers Newton’s third law of motion?”

  A girl raises her hand and says, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

  “Correct. I pushed the book forward and it fell off my desk. The action was pushing. The equal and opposite reaction was that the book moved forward. The foreseeable consequence of the action and reaction was that the book fell to the floor.”

  The teacher picks up the book and holds it out to the class as though it were a newly discovered and potentially dangerous vertebrate.

  “According to the concept of Chaos Theory, in any sufficiently complex environment, any action, even a simple one, will create a series of chain reactions that are unforeseen and unpredictable.”

  The teacher looks at you now. You close your textbook to hide the brochure you were looking at.

  “A butterfly flaps its wings in China, and six weeks later a hurricane forms off the coast of Florida. You can’t foresee that. Or, for instance, I didn’t know that by pushing the book and it falling and smacking the floor, that young Master Billy here would wake up and join the class. That was unforeseen. And could this unforeseen outcome set off a chain reaction? Perhaps the startling sound will leave Billy a bit more alert when he leaves here. And maybe that alertness will cause him to be aware of his environment in a way he would not otherwise have been. Maybe he’ll make decisions that will impact the rest of his day. Or the rest of his life. Or maybe he’ll just remember not to daydream in class. It is unforeseeable. And that’s the point.”

  You are bright red. You don’t like attention of any kind.

  A boy in the back raises his hand. He is a smart boy and does not mind drawing attention to himself.

  “If the sequence of events is untraceable, then how do we know the events share a cause-and-effect relationship? How do we know the hurricane wouldn’t have happened anyway?”

  “We don’t. And that’s a good point. So you, Hunter, fall into the Is it chaos or is it fate? camp. And that’s reasonable. Chaos theory is just that. A theory. Of course fate, as a theory, doesn’t hold much water either. That’s worth keeping in mind. But let’s assume—for the moment—that chaos is indeed a valid theory. Now let’s look at it on a global scale. If our action is to cut down all the world’s rainforests, what are the possible reactions?”

  “A greenhouse effect. Global warming.”

  “Maybe. Probably.”

  “The ozone hole over the Antarctic could get even bigger.”

  “Maybe”

  “We lose possible cures for AIDS and cancer.”

  “Maybe.”

  “We speed up the return of the Ice Age.”

  “Could be.”

  You do not offer an answer. You never speak in class unless forced.

  “Maybe, maybe, maybe. See, we really don’t know what the reaction will be, but we’re pretty sure it ain’t gonna be good. It’s a question of control, of which we have very little.”

  Someone, the smart kid, asks, “But if we can anticipate, don’t we have control? In the microcosm of this classroom, couldn’t we have anticipated every possible reaction of your action of pushing the book to the floor?”

  “No. Even in this closed environment, the possibilities are beyond number. When scientists were preparing to detonate the first atomic bomb, many of them believed a chain of reactions would ignite the atmosphere. Ignite the atmosphere. Think about that. But they went ahead and did it, didn’t they?”

  The bell rings, but you stay seated because the teacher is still talking and you want to hear the rest of this.

  “So, anyway, the next time you toss out an old newspaper or throw away an aluminum can without recycling it, remember Chaos Theory. For your every action, you set off a chain of events beyond control. Think about it.”

  You follow the last of the other students out the door and you hear the teacher say, “See ya’, Billy.” You half lift your hand in acknowledgement, but you don’t turn around.

  * * *

  Outside the classroom, two bigger boys run down the hall, weaving through the crowd. As they rush past you, one of them slams you into the wall, and the other slaps the books out of your arms. Already halfway down the hall, one of them calls back to you over his shoulder, “Buggie!” Then they both emit high-pitched giggles that sound like jungle animals.

  You gather the books up and put them in your backpack. You should have done that before you left class, but that would have taken too much time and the teacher might have tried to have a conversation with you. Teachers are always trying to engage you in conversation. And when they do that, it makes your stomach hurt. And your stomach hurts right now. It hurts bad. It always hurts bad before you have to see Mrs. Hamby. And you do not think that you can endure both the meeting and the pain at the same time. You need to ease the hurt.

  The hall has emptied, and you have ten mi
nutes before your meeting with the school psychologist. You head for the boys bathroom.

  You take the last stall, the handicapped one. This is your favorite not because it is the biggest, but because the lock on it still works and because it is directly under the overhead ventilation fan.

  You unroll a handful of toilet paper from the dispenser. You already know the perfect amount. You wad it up into a ball about the size of a rodent brain with a bit angling off from it like a brainstem. You will hold it from the brainstem.

  From your jeans pocket you extract a yellow Bic lighter, stolen from your stepfather, Harvey Peruro. You set the toilet paper rodent brain afire. The trick is to get a clean burn so that there is no smoke. Regardless of the ventilation fan, if there is smoke, it will permeate the bathroom and give you away. You watch the flame take hold, and as soon as it does, the pain in your stomach vanishes. You do not know if it is simply that you forget about the pain, or if fire acts as a painkiller. It doesn’t matter. The flame is beautiful, calming. It pulsates like an orange rose. A burning blossom. A fire flower.

  And then, still standing over the toilet, you use your other hand to unbuckle and drop your pants, push down your underwear, and it feels good to have your genitals exposed to the air. No shame. No self-consciousnesses.

  You know your cock is kind of small. From gym class and the mandatory showers. Most of the boys your age have bodies of substance. Bodies thick with bulk and muscle or lean with speed and innate strength. Pendulous penises that sway with weighty arrogance from strange dense growths of dark pubic hair as they walk around the locker room.

  Your pubic hair only just started to come in last summer. Harvey seems to enjoy referring to you as a late bloomer, and the few times that a drinking buddy of his comes to the house, Harvey inevitably points out that you are a late bloomer so as to explain your skinny pale body and voice that has only a hint of masculine timbre. It all seemed to start around the same time all the stuff with your mother happened. You just kind of stopped growing. The doctor called it delayed puberty. They are supposed to start giving you hormone shots, but then the doctor said that could exacerbate the conduct disorder. And you’ve been held back a couple of grades. Learning disability stemming from emotional trauma. Again, the stuff with your mom. You kind of have a lot of problems.