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TRAGEDY IN THE BLOOD by Steven H. Davis
Chapter 16
It was after 10:00 by the time I got home from Linda's house on Sunday night. Tynah had already gone to bed, and Rex was snoozing in front of the TV with Foxy curled up by his side, so sound asleep that his ears didn't even twitch as I entered through the patio door.
Linda and I had gotten some good rehearsal in, and she had promised to pick me up the next morning so we could run through our Duet before school in the auditorium.
Linda had become almost like a sister to me in the weeks that we had known each other from practicing our Duet so often, and she sensed that I was not my normal self.
"Is something wrong, Rick?" she asked, as we sat on her living room couch in between run-throughs.
I looked down at the carpeted floor, where Linda's cat Cougar was eyeing me suspiciously. I wanted to tell her what was going on, I really did, but I was afraid of what she would think. Instead, I answered with the practiced elision which every teen with a secret had mastered for centuries.
"I did something today," I said. "Something that I had to do, and now I'm worried it's going to backfire on me."
She nodded, concern plainly evident on her pretty face. "Rick, if you had to do it, and it's already done, there's no use worrying about it. What's going to happen will happen whether you worry about it or not."
I smiled wanly at her, getting to my feet before Cougar could gouge my hand with his swiping claws. Linda's cat loved one thing in life, and that was scratching human hands. The criss-crossing red lines all over the backs of Linda's hands were evidence of that, and I had already picked up a couple of battle scars myself from the grumpy feline.
"Let's run it again," I said, wanting to change the subject away from my worry over Taine's reaction to the note I had slipped under his door.
So we rehearsed some more until Linda's mother came home from her back-breaking shift at a downtown hospital, exhausted and obviously not in the mood for company.
That's when I jumped on my bike and came home, slowing down as I passed the Maxwell house, where I gazed longingly at the light in the second-floor window which I knew was Taine's bedroom.
I couldn't see into the room, but I wondered if Taine was reading my letter. Whether he had already read it and was composing a reply. Whether he had read it, ripped it up into a million pieces and flushed it down the toilet. Or maybe he had ripped it up and flushed it before reading it.
I saw Sly's red Lambo turn onto the street and pedaled away quickly, having no desire to see whether Ms. Ogretz was in the passenger seat and really not wanting to see them go into the house together.
Now, back at home, I tiptoed past Rex and Foxy and made my way quietly to my room, where I put on headphones and began listening to music on my bed, waiting for sleep to overtake me.
*I've been holding out so long/
I've been sleeping all alone/
Lord I miss you*
Maybe things would work out in the end. Maybe I would have my Taine back, one way or another, and maybe he even felt the way I did. Maybe he was just as scared and confused as I had been before mowing the lawn earlier that day had strengthened my resolve.
Or maybe I was completely fooling myself, as I have the tendency to do, and he was just utterly horrified and repulsed.
*I've been hanging on the phone/
I've been sleeping all alone/
I want to kiss you*
But, I told myself, he had kissed me too. I had kissed him, but the next night -- in his own room -- he had kissed me. That had to mean something. Sure it did. It meant that he was sad about his mom and that's it.
"He's not in love with you," the voice in my head told me. "Who could ever love you? Your own mother didn't even love you. She couldn't wait to get rid of you. Just like everyone else. Just like TAINE."
"Shut up," I mumbled to myself. "Go to fucking sleep."
And so I did, and dreamed of him.
*Well, I've been haunted in my sleep/
You've been starring in my dreams/
Lord I miss you*
True to her word, Linda was waiting for me in the driveway early the next morning. I jumped into the passenger seat of her bright yellow Chevelle and exclaimed, "Morning, sunshine!"
"Good morning, Rick," she said, a note of concern in her voice. "Is everything okay? What you were worried about, I mean?"
I shrugged. "Dunno. I'll probably know by this afternoon, though."
Linda frowned and sighed, pulling her car back out onto the street and heading toward school. I already knew that sigh, and could tell that my friend was going into maternal mode. Here it comes, I thought, but what she said next surprised me.
"Rick," Linda began, "I want to know that you can tell me anything, and I will understand. So is it Taine Maxwell?"
I started in my seat, and must have been staring at her in shock, because she grinned, throwing me a warm sidelong glance as she kept her eyes on the road. I had no idea she even knew who Taine was, let alone that I knew him too.
"I... what... how..." I stammered.
"Oh, Rick, Rick, Rick," she said, smiling indulgently. "A Duet partner knows things."
I laughed nervously, wondering if I should admit it or plead ignorance. I felt naked and exposed, as if I had been caught doing something shameful. All of my lawn-mowing bravado from the previous day had withered on the vine, replaced in an instant by the embarrassment which came from years of societal disapproval and schoolyard insults.
"You don't have to say anything," she said, turning up Walzem Road. "I see how you look when you sit together at lunch, when you get off the bus together, when you keep looking around in the hallways between classes. You're looking for him."
I could only nod, fighting back tears.
"So what did you do, Rick?" Linda continued. "Did you tell him you loved him?"
That did it. On went the waterworks.
"Sort of," I managed. "I wrote him a note and slipped it under his door on my way to your house last night."
Linda chuckled, reaching across my legs to open the glove compartment and fish out a travel-pack of Kleenex for me.
"That was brave," she said. "And now you're worried he's going to tell everybody you're gay?"
"I'm not gay," I sniffled. "But Taine's... "
"Different," she finished for me. "I know he is. He's in my Geometry class. He seems so, I don't know, apart from everyone else. Like he knows things and thinks things that he doesn't think we could understand."
I paused from my nose-wiping to stare at Linda again, genuinely surprised by her insight. I couldn't have put it better myself.
"And he's beautiful," she said, flicking on the radio. "He's pretty enough that if you made him up, he'd be the prettiest girl in school. Except it's more than that... he's somehow like he's not from this planet. Like..."
"Like he's an angel," I finished for her. "Yeah, I know. I know."
*In the days of my youth/
I was told what it means to be a man*
"Don't worry, Rick," Linda said, patting my knee reassuringly as she pulled into the school. "It'll all work out."
*Now I've reached that age/
I've tried to do all those things the best I can*
I fell back against the seat as Linda circled the nearly empty early-morning parking lot. I wished I could believe her. I wished that I could, but I was filled with an existential dread at what the day would bring.
*No matter how I try/
I find my way into the same old jam*
Linda and I rehearsed in the auditorium for about an hour, me fretting and she reassuring me between performances, and then the warning bell rang, signaling that we had ten minutes to get to our first classes. Linda raced off to her Spanish class, and I went to my locker to store my bookbag and grab my English books.
There, on top of my books, was an envelope that had been slipped into my locker. On the front of the envelope was written "RICK" in a careful, cursive scrawl. My heart began to thud inside my chest, and I even felt a little ringing in my ears as I stared at the envelope... wanting to open it, but not wanting to open it. I tucked it into the inside pocket of my denim jacket, intending to read it when I wasn't in a hurry. I wanted to carefully consider whatever was written inside, whether it was good or bad.
It was then that I noticed a commotion further down the hallway. Students had crowded around near the door to Mrs. Colby's classroom, shouting and excited. A few more students rushed past me, and I knew there was a fight about to happen. Voyeuristic as anyone when it came to school fights, I hurriedly closed my locker and ran over to watch.
The first person I saw was Kevin Gorman. Kevin was a tall, muscular junior on the football team, and pretty much the biggest bully in school. I smirked, knowing that whoever was on the opposite side of the growing circle of students was in really big trouble. Kevin was a complete idiot, and wore a perpetually slack-jawed look on his dumb potato face, but there were two things he did quite well: sack quarterbacks and beat up underclassmen. It was clear that we were all to be treated to an example of the latter.
"Kick his ass!" someone screamed, the crowd's bloodlust rising in delirous arousal.
"Fuck him up!" another voice yelled.
I worked myself around to watch as Kevin moved in on his unfortunate prey. That was when my amusement turned to horror, for Kevin's target this morning was a very thin and scared-looking freshman named Taine Maxwell.
"Oh no," I whispered.
Taine had drawn fully inside himself, staring at the ground with his cap pointing straight down. His posture was deceptively relaxed, but the white knuckled hand clutching his English book in front of his slender abdomen told a different story.
With no warning, Kevin lunged toward Taine, causing him to flinch, then pulled up short and slapped the book from Taine's hand with one thick, meaty paw.
The book flew straight into Kirsten's sweater-covered tits, but did nothing to erase the fierce, animal excitement in her eyes or the feral grin on her thickly-glossed lips. I had always kind of liked Kirsten, but in that moment -- as the book fell to the ground and she pushed forward to be closer to this savage humiliation -- I hated her.
Taine raised his hands weakly and attempted to move around the larger boy, but Kevin faked a punch, making him flinch backward.
"Whatcha gonna do about it... TAINT?"
Someone kicked the book across the circle, then, and it bounced painfully off the toe of my shoe. I didn't care, because I was starting to see red.
I had been beaten and abused for much of my life, and one of the side-effects of that was what could charitably be called "anger issues."
I had a pretty long fuse, but when I saw something like this, the Incredible Hulk had nothing on me.
Taine was looking down at the floor again, and once more tried to charge past Kevin. The crowd was yelling and screaming wildly around me, but my focus was on the love of my life.
He's mine! my mind screamed. You can't hurt him!
Kevin laughed cruelly and slapped the hat from Taine's head, revealing the terrified face of my Taine, my angel, my Babes...
...And that was when I went berserk.
I don't remember what happened next, but a few minutes later, I was being restrained by the strong arms of Vice-Principals Wells and Kregar, Taine was looking at me in horrified awe, and the crowd of kids was hushed.
They were all staring at me too.
I didn't see Kevin. What I did see was quite a few splatters of blood on the floor, some of them smeared, one of them bearing part of a sneaker-print.
Then I saw Taine's English book on the ground, or what was left of it. One corner had been flattened and looked as if someone had been using it to hammer bricks into a wall.
It was also wet with blood.
"Go to class, everyone!" Mr. Wells barked, and the circle quickly dispersed.
As it did so, I saw Kevin being taken out of the school on a gurney a long way down the hall by some very concerned- looking EMTs. There was a lot of blood.
Mr. Wells had me by one arm and Mr. Kregar by the other as they unceremoniously dragged me to the office. As we passed Taine, he still stood rooted to the spot, watching me being pulled away, his mouth hanging open in mute amazement.
Chapter 17
*I heard you on the wireless back in '52/
Lying awake, intent on tuning in on you/
If I was young, it didn't didn't stop you coming through*
Oh-a-oh, I thought glumly. I was sitting in the La-Z-Boy in the living room watching MTV and trying to stave off the sense of impending doom which sat atop my chest, oppressive and stifling. I still wasn't quite sure what had happened in the hallway at Polk High that morning, but I knew that I was in serious trouble.
Rex had come to get me and brought me home, only to return immediately to the school for a very important conference. He was about to call Tynah at work because I had been pale, shaking and confused, but decided that would only lead to hysterics and a lot of yelling. So he left me alone while he went back to deal with Mr. Towers, the vice-principals, and Kevin's father.
Kevin's mother and brother were at the hospital, as far as I knew, looking after their hero. Some hero. Although I was sure I was facing life-altering consequences for my freakout, I also knew that if I hadn't stepped in, Kevin would have administered a serious beatdown to Taine, and that was something I couldn't have lived with. I would sooner have taken a bullet.
That being said, I knew things were about to get pretty bad for me at Polk, if... if... if I was ever allowed to return to school. Kevin had a lot of friends, and his father just happened to be better known as Coach Gorman, the squat, powerfully-built defensive line coach of the Polk Destroyers football team. And that Friday was the big Homecoming Game against Cartwright.
*And now we meet in an abandoned studio/
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago/
And you remember the jingles used to go/
Oh-a-oh, you were the first one/
Oh-a-oh, you were the last one*
Friday... crap. Friday was also the day of the Chamberlain Individual Qualifying Tournament. I had not only screwed myself, I had screwed Linda, my sweet, caring, understanding Duet partner. I had screwed Mr. McRory. I had screwed the speech team, the football team... oh, man. And what about Kevin? How badly had I hurt him with that English book?
Nice temper I had. Thanks, Mom. I thought back to that scared little boy, crouching behind a tree in the South Carolina woods behind the Little House which Rex had built for me and the furious, raging woman screaming my name. I had been pure, quivering fear for much of our time there, and somewhere along the line, all that fear and sadness and helplessness had turned into... well, whatever it was that happened at Polk this morning. And Taine had seen it all.
*Video killed the radio star/
Video killed the radio star/
In my mind and in my car/
We can't rewind, we've gone too far...*
An image of Taine flashed into my head. He had been standing there, hair askew from where Kevin had knocked his cap, his protective shield, his safe place, from his head. His eyes had been wide, his mouth hanging open as he watched me being pulled away by Mr. Wells and Mr. Kregar. He had seen The Beast, and it had horrified him. Even though it was for him, I knew that I had shown him a side of myself that there was no reeling back.
Oh, Taine... oh, my Babes, what will you think of me now?
That was when I remembered the note. In all the confusion, I had forgotten the note! I had slipped my own note under Taine's front door the previous evening, and worried all night and all morning about whether I had said too much, gone too far in my declarations of love and devotion to him.
And then I had gone to my locker, just before the fight, to find a sealed envelope with "RICK" written on the outside in Taine's careful, cursive script. I had put it in the inside pocket of my denim jacket to read later when I had time. Then the fight had started, and "later" had never arrived.
I flicked off the TV and practically ran to my bedroom, where the jacket lay crumpled on my bed. As I picked it up to reach the note, I noticed droplets of blood on the sleeve and on the front. Kevin's blood. Oh, my God. Those aren't coming out, I thought crazily. Oh, my God.
A wave of nausea and dizziness swept over me and I sat down heavily on the bed, the jacket hanging limply from my fingers. I closed my eyes and tried to compose myself. When the sick, awful feeling had passed, I reached for the inside front pocket and removed the envelope.
I wanted to open it, needed to open it, but I dreaded what might be inside. A rejection, I was sure. I turned the envelope over in my hands idly, wondering how badly Kevin was hurt, and whether I might be headed for jail.
JAIL!
"He got a reaaal purty mouth," the movie dialogue came to my mind. I would be popular in jail.
"Now let me hear you squeal. You know you can squeal like a pig. Come on, boy. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeet!"
Oh, God.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I couldn't afford to think about jail right now. It was too much, too awful, too surreal. I had to find out what was in this envelope.
As I turned over the envelope to the back and slowly began to break the seal, being careful not to let the envelope tear, I heard the automatic garage door opener groan to life, then the sounds of Rex's car pulling into the garage.
Oh, God.
My hand froze on the envelope. Quickly, I rose from the bed and slipped the letter -- still unopened -- into the top drawer of my dresser. It was time to face the music, and God only knew what that would entail.
Like a condemned man making that last walk down the Green Mile to the gas chamber, I took a deep breath, threw my shoulders back, and marched toward the kitchen to meet my fate.
Rex came into the kitchen and closed the door to the garage. He didn't slam the door, and he didn't look angry, which I took as good signs. But then he turned to face me, and he had the strangest look on his face that I had ever seen. My heart sank.
This was going to be that bad after all. It went beyond his prodigious capability for anger and into Bizarro-land.
His lip curled as he pointed to my chair at the kitchen table.
I sat.
Rex walked over to the cabinet over the coffeepot, replaced his checkbook, wallet and pen inside. He withdrew a pack of cigarettes, then closed the cabinet door and opened the pack, discarding the foil and cellophane in the plastic trashcan.
With another weird, unreadable glance at me, he came back to the table, returning his car keys on the hook above the radio and lighting a cigarette.
I was trembling by this point, and he wordlessly slid the cigarette pack, lighter and ashtray across the table toward me.
Gratefully, I took a cigarette and lit it, my eyes never leaving his face. Even though, intellectually, I knew he wasn't going to hit me, my long-term conditioning had kicked in, and I knew I must have been cowering as if expecting the blows to start raining down.
With a deep sigh, he sat down at his chair opposite mine, took a long drag off his cigarette, looking off into space.
Oh, God.
Finally, Rex flicked his cigarette in the ashtray and looked up at me.
"Welp," he said, "I guess you fucked up."
I sighed, and could only manage "Yeah" in a quavering whisper.
He sat back in his chair, looking down his long, oft-broken nose at me. I felt like his eyes were boring holes right through me to the fear and incipient panic inside.
Finally, he did something I didn't expect. He smiled slightly and chuckled.
"Towers is a real piece of work," he said. "He was sitting there between all of us like a buck private caught in the crossfire."
I had already seen my principal looking that way after the lockerroom incident with Coach Keith, and an image of his harried face came to my mind. I still dreaded what his decision would be.
"What happened?" I asked. "How is Kevin?"
Rex gave a dismissive wave. "Bumps and cuts. He was treated and released, but he's got a hell of a headache. What the hell did you do to him?"
I felt a massive wave of relief pass through me. Whatever else happened, at least I wasn't a murderer.
"I don't know," I answered truthfully.
"Well, you're a lucky son of a bitch," Rex said. "Coach Gorman wanted to call the fuzz and string you up by the balls. Towers was too scared to say 'boo' to the cocksucker, and you came this close to having a felony assault on your record."
I shuddered.
"You talked them out of it?" I asked.
Rex shook his head.
"Not me. Your girlfriend's daddy."
My eyes widened. "Sly was there?"
"I guess Taine called him. He showed up halfway through the meeting with steam coming from his ears. Apparently you saved his kid's ass today, and you'd done it before with some fucked-up coach?"
Rex looked at me quizzically, with what I was too scared at the time to realize was just a hint of admiration.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "Coach Keith was going crazy on him one day in the lockerroom and I reported it to security. Sly was going to sue the school unless Taine got excused from gym class for the year and Coach Keith got transferred to Central Office."
"Yeah," said Rex, dragging on his cigarette thoughtfully. He stood up and got a beer from the fridge, but rather than drinking it, he slid it across the table to me.
"Drink this. You look like shit."
I accepted the beer gratefully, very confused. As I gulped the cold, welcome brew, I looked at Rex expectantly, waiting for him to continue.
"Anyway," he went on, "Sly got in Towers' face, Gorman's face, he was yelling and cussing and screaming... He threatened to sue Towers again, the school district, Gorman. Well, shit, 'sue'... he was ready to knock the snot out of Gorman right there in the office."
"Wow," I said, my fear mostly forgotten. My heart and soul were moved by Sly's fierce, overwhelming devotion to his son. "He really is protective of Taine."
"Not just Taine," said Rex. "He saved your ass today. The only way he backed off of his lawsuit threat was if Towers and Gorman promised that the police wouldn't be involved, you wouldn't be expelled, and that there would be no retaliation by them, Kevin, or anyone else. One thing about Sly Maxwell, he knows how to get his way."
I just looked at Rex in awe, unable to speak.
"That's the good news," Rex said. "The bad news is that you're suspended for the rest of the week."
I nodded gravely, but inside I was giddy with joy, relief and happiness. It must have somehow shown in my eyes, because Rex leaned forward, staring into them with menace.
"There's worse news," he said quietly. "Your mommy is coming home in twenty minutes. And she is going to go... absolutely... insane."
My relief was washed away with those words, and the dread returned. Tynah was usually a cheerful, loving mother to me, but when she got angry... forget the suspension... my real punishment was yet to come.
I looked down at the table, finished my beer and cigarette quickly, and -- with one last, anxious look at Rex, which he ominously returned -- went out to feed the birds.
Thank you for reading Chapter 16 & 17. To be continued...
"Miss You" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Performed by The Rolling Stones. c 1978 by Rolling Stones Records. "Good Times Bad Times" by John Bonham, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page. Performed by Led Zeppelin. c 1969 by Atlantic Records. "Video Killed the Radio Star" written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley. Performed by The Buggles. c 1979 by Island Records. "Deliverance" screenplay by James Dickey and John Boorman. Based on the novel by James Dickey. c 1972 by Warner Bros. Pictures.
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