As always, you can read the previous issues of “Crooked Creek” by using the tab above titled “Crooked Creek: A Continuing Story”.
“These dreams we have are thin and easily wrecked. Build them up with stone. Burn into them strength. But be careful with your nightmares. They may become reality without you even knowing.”
- Anonymous
The deliveryman’s breath was warm on Conrad’s neck, the feeling of which made him shudder and slither curses off his tongue. With a jerk he was pulled to his feet, and swung around to face his captor. He did not make eye contact with the man; shame pulling his gaze to the rocks at his feet. This was failure. He felt stupid. Worthless. The boiling started in his stomach.
“What do you think you were doin’, boy?” the deliveryman scolded.
He had felt the shame before, many times in his own kitchen or bedroom. Living room. Porch. Toilet. This was only the farthest from home he’d felt it.
***
Conrad was smiling. He was alone with his mother who was hot and cold, hot and cold, but now she was just warm. He wished to keep it that way.
In front of him was a plate of carrots, peas and potatoes. It wasn’t often that Conrad had the table to all himself. But what he really wanted was for his mother to sit down and share the moment with him.
In his head his mother would tell him what a wonderful son he had been, for this day and for all. There would be singing in his voice, and he would run to his brother and sing for him. His singing would be miraculous and he would swirl new life into those damned lungs and Kaleb would join them at the table. The family he dreamed of. They would be merry. Empty bowls would fill themselves and the three of them would sit satisfied.
Just the contentment of sitting at the dinner table, alone and smiling, made Conrad believe these things could happen.
But they did not.
***
The boy started to twitch, not speaking.
“You running away? Oh, somebody’s looking for trouble,” the deliveryman warned.
No response. Conrad kept mute, the strings in his muscles beginning to tighten; a feral cat backed into a corner.
“You won’t talk? You’re a little off, ain’t ya? Get on now, you’re riding in the cab this time”. Gripping him by the left shirtsleeve the deliveryman began to pull Conrad back towards the truck and the road.
The tug of his shirt ignited Conrad, and the rage he began to feel was this time controllable, tied to his survival. This was his realization that failure was not an option; the sensation was brimming with self-hate, a skill he’d been taught by his parents.
***
Coughing started from the rear of the house. Traveling down from the hallway it grew louder with each hacking expulsion. Then the air in the house changed all at once, like a sparkling blue ocean swallowing thick black oil in itself. Conrad froze with a fork in his hand, and even though he felt the room change he held on to the hope that his daydream might come true.
Without a word, Judith stepped deliberately to Kaleb’s room. She would be gone for a long time. The love she once felt for her children was now no more than a fading image to uphold.
At the table Conrad was still. Motionless he kept the image steady in his mind, so that it would not leave his sights. If he could just hold onto it the world would change around him. His mother would return to the table and the dream would begin again. He decided that he would not eat until she was with him. And so he waited.
He waited for a long time, a long time for a young boy. The food got cold, and yet he sat there. This is what his mother would want. She would love him for waiting, and that was most important. He would be a good boy for once; the boy he was always trying to be. Waiting showed patience and maturity; he knew she would be proud.
When the coughing ceased he perked up, holding his fork at the ready, eyeing the hallway for his mother’s shadow. He felt as if he held the key to an always-sunny alternate universe in his small fingers. There was unabashed love in his cheeks.
She turned the corner into the kitchen and he smiled, whispering, “I waited for you, Mom”.
And the world changed.
His world changed.
***
Surely the world was going to change – he’d put that in to motion – but this time he sensed the winds shifting. Planting his feet in the pebbles he began to skid. His face grew red and heated, the sensation somehow calming. He wasn’t going anywhere.
The deliveryman stopped and turned around to face the dragging boy who was now foaming a bit from the mouth, his eyes solid in the tops of their holes, staring ugly at the man.
“Knock that off boy. Christ, you are a weird little sonofabitch”. The deliveryman sighed and shook his head. Conrad was used to this. Facing the road he started at the pulling again, but Conrad would not budge.
The deliveryman switched his grip from Conrad’s sleeve to his twiggish wrists, determined to cause pain. Conrad winced and rasped his hollow throat. He could feel a prickly sort of dancing in his fingers, and they splayed and fixed-straight off his hand. There were impulses in his head that he was beginning to like. Things that he wanted to take advantage of in ways that weren’t there before. He threw his right foot back in a kick, and attempted to breath smoke through his nostrils.
The deliveryman snorted, “Don’t make this harder than it has to be you little freak”.
He clicked his free wrist like a switchblade, and swooping low to the ground, almost sliding out of his shirt, Conrad stole a jagged fist-sized rock from the dirt and swung towards the deliveryman. The rock and his underwhelming hand crushing into plaque-ridden teeth and a spotted nose. Chipped calcium and blood spewed from the deliveryman’s rotten mouth and his hand shot open freeing Conrad from his grasp. An oily clod of hair hung over his eyes and dripped sweat and blurred his vision.
“I’ll do what I want!” he screamed, running towards the truck.
***
“I waited for you, so that we could eat together, and maybe sing,” Conrad whistled.
She lifted a hand to her forehead and sighed, rubbing the wrinkles above her eyebrows. Whichever world Conrad lived in was not the same for her. The reality she inhabited was a dull plastic sheeting, thin and cracking. Her cup was already running over with dirty water, and her youngest son’s presence was a boiling pot of water pouring in without regard, burning her raw fingertips red.
With a foot stomp she emitted, “Why haven’t you eaten?!”
Conrad’s heart sank – his head, too.
“I can’t leave you alone and expect anything, can I?”
Her words were confusing. This was not the happy thing he had imagined. “I thought you would like it if I waited,” he trailed off, the words coming unsure from his mouth and muted into his jeans.
“What am I supposed to do with you, Conrad? I make you dinner and you wait for it to get cold. Are you stupid? You’re supposed to finish your potatoes and clean your room and check on your brother. That’s the way the night is planned. If you can’t even eat your goddamn dinner, then what are you going to do? Do I have to do everything for you? ”
A more perfect son: this is what they needed, and he could never be. The world in his head against the real world of his parents and the electric lightning in between. Navigating that battlefield left Conrad a crooked mess. His fits, those uncontrollable and kinetic shocks to his system, were his body reacting to the torture played on his mind. The outward expression of an inner torment, like an exorcism patient only the devil was rejecting the human soul.
The fits, oh, the fits she abhorred.
She watched his contortions; the spitting, the way his throat sounded as if throttled and stuffed with pine needles made her nostrils flare. Why did she have to have a boy like this?
And before she hit her little boy across the face, shocking him out of his disgusting display, a little voice in the back of her head said, “You made him this way”.
Stumble It!
