God’s Own Singer Of
Songs
Goes Home
by
R.E. Prindle
When Earth’s last picture is painted
And the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded,
And the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and faith, we shall
need it
-Lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of all Good Workmen
Shall put us to work anew.
And those that were good shall be
happy;
They shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten league
canvas
With brushes of comet’s hair.
They shall find real saints to draw
from
-Magdalene, Peter and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a
sitting
And never be tired at all!
And only the Master shall praise us,
And only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money,
And no one shall work for fame.
But each for the joy of the working
And each in his separate star
Shall draw the Thing as he sees it
For the God of Things as they are.
R. Kipling
I was on my
hands and knees with the paper opened out before me on the floor when I came
across a startling news item. Darius
Trued had committed suicide. It was July
24, 1949. I remember the date clearly. The news blip said he had blown his head off
with his step-father’s shotgun. I was
speechless. How could somebody I knew commit suicide? By
coincidence we had met in the public library just two weeks before where he
told me his story since leaving the Orphanage.
If you
remember, Darius was the little boy who had nearly hemorrhaged to death after
his tonsil operation. I didn’t mention
it then but as a result of ‘having saved his life’ Darius felt an obligation to
me and we had to become friends.
He was
something over two years younger than me, he was only nine when he tubed it,
and so for the first part of my sojourn in the Orphanage he’d been down in the
infant’s quarters. This was a very
terrible pace; I have no idea what effect it had on his plastic young
mind. God only knows what horrors were
impressed on him down there. The horrors
of the Orphanage were not the sort that you would find that obvious. The place wasn’t exactly like the death camps
of Auschwitz or Dachau, there wasn’t killing and beating going on. It was more subtle than that but the effect
was the same, if you came out, you came out with a different view of
humanity. If you had been given a tour
you would probably have said: This is really
OK…for them. But not for you.
But we were
young and impressionable, we needed positive reinforcement. We needed something to bolster our
self-respect. As bad as it was up above
in the older boy’s dorm it was a lot worse in the infant’s quarters. I would never go in there so I don’t know how
many kids there were, I imagine thirty from the sound of their continual
yowling and screaming. There were only
two or three women to deal with those thirty infants. They
were all demanding attention every minute of the time. It’s not that the women were not of the
kindest disposition, it’s not that they didn’t try, but you can only spread one
woman so thin. It was impossible to give
each child the attention they needed so they just lay around and screamed. Once one got started they all began in
sympathy. The cacophony was horrendous
and very emotionally disturbing.
After a year
of that they sent Darius upstairs with us Big Boys. I must have been nine at the time so Darius
was maybe seven, probably sixish.
Downstairs they had told Darius that I had saved his life so when he
came upstairs the first person he wanted to meet was me.
When a new
boy came in it was quite a thing so we were all gathered around to evaluate
this new kid. The difference of two
years between seven and nine is immense.
The housemother came leading this little kid up to me by the hand. He had this big happy grin on his face like I
don’t know what he expected. Maybe he
was just happy to get out of the infant’s quarters. Maybe he thought I was going to be his big
brother, I don’t know, I didn’t even care.
I do know
that I didn’t need any little kid hanging on me all the time. I was alone and had withdrawn pretty far into
myself. I didn’t want to come out for
anybody. I was no longer looking for the
‘human’ touch; I’d had enough of that. I was trying to avoid it.
The woman
led this little guy right up to me and introduces me as the guy who saved his
life. Give me a break! All I did was open the door to the infirmary,
look at all the blood spattered on the walls and went and got help. That wasn’t as easy as it sounds either; it
was hard to get their attention. And
then they made fun of me like I was always inventing things. I had to endure that humiliation for the
little bastard. So now I was saddled
with him.
You know…you
know…all I knew up to this point were heart-rending stories of tragic
situations. Darius’ story wasn’t any
exception. I was too young to understand
then but I knew something funny was going on.
It all came together in later years.
You see, the reason that Darius was in the Orphanage was because his
mother was a prostitute. She put him in
the Orphanage so he would be out of the way.
She hadn’t
come around all the time Darius was in the infant’s quarters but she began
popping in every couple weeks or so after he came upstairs. She always gave Darius a couple bucks so that
between that which Darius was only too willing to share with the guy who ‘saved
his life’ and this pop bottle money and whatever else I was able to scrounge we
were the financial elite of the Orphanage.
You can feel
the guilt building up, can’t you. I took
from him and I didn’t quibble.
Now, Darius
had a couple problems. He had some sort
of skin ailment where his whole left arm from just above the elbow to his
finger tips was crusted and thick kind of like sandpaper. I don’t know what it was and it wasn’t his
fault. Everyone accused him of being
unclean and not washing but that wasn’t true.
They all ridiculed him and it was very hard on the kid. What can I say, everyone made fun of me too,
everyone made fun of everyone else. I
made fun of everyone in self-defense.
I was no
slouch at giving insults either. It wasn’t
just the Orphanage either; everyone in society is busy tearing the other guy
down. I’m afraid I wasn’t very sympathetic
which hurt Darius a lot but I had saved his life so he thought we were pals for
life.
There wasn’t
anyone in the Orphanage that could be called a happy soul. You already know my story there. I was one of the gang. We were all pretty dark but I wasn’t mean and
nasty and neither was Darius. Darius
expressed his distraction by composing little songs. He had a very sweet voice and could hit and
sustain notes, stay in key, carry a tune and all those musical things. I’ve never been able to do those things, as
much as I’ve wanted to. That was the
only time I’ve ever known envy in my life.
I’m not
going to try to reproduce any of his songs although I do remember lines of two
or three but they wouldn’t make any sense now and without his plaintive
sorrowful voice and despairing gestures the effect wouldn’t be the same. They were all sad songs anyway. The kid could improvise for hours. I don’t know how anybody with such a small
vocabulary could express so much in so many different ways.
So, alright,
so the kid is God’s own singer of songs and I wasn’t. So, what do I care. On top of my own problems his songs might as
well have been hosing me down with acid.
How much pain can anyone bear?
Fortunately this only lasts for a year before I leave and coincidentally
so does he. I went to the Wardens but
his mother remarries some monster of a prick, as Darius told me, and takes him
out of the Orphanage.
Before she
does however she took Darius to this place where she lived and Darius insists
that I go along. Why me? What did I ever do to anybody? Saving lives is perilous work, I would have
thought twice if I’d known what was going to happen. The place his mother stays is not exactly a
whore house. The place was merely the house
out of which the women worked. I know
what was going on there although I was too young to understand the implications
then. It is only much later that I am
able to reconstruct it and make sense of it.
How much Darius understood of it I can’t say although he never discussed
the visit or his mother with me again.
I only
learned the nature of the place by accident.
As it happened one of these women took a shine to me. She was a real beauty too. She must have been a real sensualist who
wanted to induct a young boy like me into the mysteries. She had this beautiful room just filled with
this enormous bed. Her colors were blue
and white, everything in a becoming disarray; there were mountains of
comforters, sheets and pillows. I was
thoroughly enthralled. She could have
done anything to me she wanted and I wouldn’t have been afraid.
She was
leading me into this paradise when Darius’ mom spotted us. She hurried over and broke it up; acted real
sanctimonious about it too. Too bad for
me; I’m sure I would have been given a new slant on life that I would surely
have appreciated. It might even have
made a different man of me, so to speak.
Well, the
madam, or house-mother, took the woman and Darius’ mom aside in my hearing
admonished them. She told them that under
no circumstances were men to be allowed in the house. For her thing to work, she said, there had to
be an absolute appearance of propriety.
The girls would have to have their ‘dates’ pick them up at the door and
then do their business elsewhere.
The two
women objected that Darius and I were only little boys but the Madam
interjected that boys grew into men and no boys or men were allowed. Darius and I were not to be brought
back. Darius’ mom wasn’t ready to leave
so were sent out in the back yard to play.
You can be
sure that the neighbors had a pretty good idea of what was going on so Darius
and I were given the cold shoulder, anybody who was outside their house went
in. I had had enough of rejection so I
was only irritated the more. I took it
out on Darius. I could say I wasn’t
aware of what I was doing but if I did you would have little reason to believe
me as I would you. Of course, we all
know what we are doing but it’s not exactly like we willed it. It’s more like we just hoped that it would
happen.
We were
playing catch. I could hear this
ferocious sounding German Shepherd in the yard behind Darius. I managed to throw the ball over the hedge
into the nextdoor yard. Naturally it was
Darius’ responsibility to retrieve
it. He came back with wide open eyes to
tell me that a giant ferocious German Shepherd was standing over the ball. Well, this Alsatian was not a meek dog. But just as everybody in the Orphanage was
suffering from more hurt than they needed or deserved, the addition to Darius’
store of pain was perilously close to the top.
I mean how much more could any of us stand, not that we stopped
inflicting it on each other.
Then I
really did it to Darius. I betrayed his
trust in an unforgiveable way. You know,
really, the unkindest cuts of all are those that don’t look like much to
anybody else. You’ve got to remember
that we all lived in the House of the Distraught, fourth floor.
I had a high
school teacher who used to put these maxims on the blackboard. One of them was: When you reach the end of your rope, tie a
knot and hang on. That guy was a
homosexual so you know he knew what he was talking about. Well, I was kind of Darius’ knot; I was all
there was between his holding on and his losing his grip. So when I failed him he fell.
No big deal
really. I mean I lost the end of my rope
too. The irony is that there is no place
to fall. You just end up standing on
your feet but living in a different reality that is inhabited by the same
people but who look like other people.
Who needs ‘em anyway? But then my
reaction may not have the same as Darius’.
Darius and I
went out and bought a goldfish and a bowl, his money. Cost a quarter each. We kept them on top of the bookcases down in
the library where no one ever went but me, and now Darius. That way nobody would kill the goldfish.
Just as
Darius wanted to be my friend more than I wanted to be his I wanted to be
friends with the Darwan’s son Skippy more than he wanted to be friends with
me. As he was the son of the Orphanage
administrator everyone else avoided him and his brother Cappy. The Darwens had no use for me so I was
actually toadying up. I could only
expect from them what happened.
When you’re
at the bottom you, or at least me, will do anything to acquire some
respectability. Once again I knew what I
was doing but as, on the same level that love is blind, I didn’t care.
I tried to
hang around with the younger Darwen, Skippy, who was my age or maybe a year
older. He took advantage of me but
thought it was his due for tolerating me.
He was a sadistic little bastard.
He used to catch frogs then lay in his bed with one of those spring guns
that shot suction cups and try to blow the frogs up. This was a really low point in my life. I used to retrieve the suction darts for him
so he could try again. That was a long
time ago and I only did it once, maybe twice.
I stopped trying to hang around with him after that.
What caused
this incident with Darius was that there was this movie about this wonder horse
who, as this movie made you believe, single hoofedly defeated the Japs on some
tropical South Pacific island. I either
wanted to go or was made to believe I wanted to go. Skippy and Cappy were biking it down and I
was allowed to go with them. Most
expensive trip I’ve ever taken.
That I was
allowed to go along with them indicates that some sadistic dirty trick was
involved. That I went with them knowing
that dirty tricks against we orphans was their stock in trade show my level of
desperation. I knew better. All I can say in my defense is that I was trusting
to my luck. My luck wasn’t trustworthy.
They had
bikes and I didn’t. I was at an
immediate disadvantage. To begin with
Skippy suggested I hold onto the back of his seat and trot along beside
him. Even I recognized the humiliation
of that. Being of a resourceful turn of
mind I suggested I ride on his back fender.
Skippy vetoed that but suggested I ride on the crossbar. I thought that it would be possible that
others could confuse me for his little brother; I declined so I could avoid
humiliation. Riding the crossbar is a
painful thing, especially when Skippy was taking every bump as hard as he
could.
I soon
objected to that.
Then Skippy
suggested I could sit on the handlebars and rest my feet on the lugnuts of the
front wheel. This was much more easy in
the planning than the execution. The
nuts were only about a quarter inch wide so no firm purchase was possible. As my feet continually slipped off as I tried
to balance on the bars it was inevitable that my heel got caught in the
spokes. I tore the heel off my shoe,
breaking four spokes of Skippy’s wheel.
We were
downtown, two blocks from the Temple theater when it happened. Skippy wobbled the bars, my feet came loose
and I broke three or four spokes and well as taking the heel off my shoe. Skippy was mock irate and said I would have
to pay for the damage. He calculated the
damage to his bike and said I owed him five dollars. Five dollars was a lot of bottles at two
cents each. While a dollar bought a lot
in kid terms, five dollars was equivalent to the national debt. I had to tell him that I didn’t have five
dollars and didn’t know where I could get it.
He said I could owe it to him.
But, when we
got to the Temple he took my seventy-five cents admission saying that I now
owed him only four twenty-five. I had to
walk back to the Orphanage alone crying in my heart over the impossible figure
of four twenty-five.
Well, Skippy hounded me for the money every
day. Darius was mad at me over the
German Shepherd so he wouldn’t loan me any money at all. It’s slow work accumulating bottle money when
you need a lot. Skippy suggested that I
could offset the debt with some of my meager possessions. Needless to say he took them at less than ten
cents on the dollar. So I was down to
some few cents left to pay. Under
Skippy’s constant hectoring I was desperate to pay him off. I had already given him my gold fish and bowl
when in desperation I thought of Darius’ gold fish and bowl to discharge my
so-called debt.
And then I
didn’t have the guts to just come right out and tell Darius what I had
done. I let him discover it. I didn’t think a twenty-five cent gold fish
was too high a price for saving a guy’s life but in the orphanage where they’ve
even taken away your pride whatever you do have assumes an exaggerated
importance. Or maybe it was the
principle of the thing.
Darius was
hurt beyond all belief. He was really
hysterical. To be honest I felt so
ashamed. I knew I had done something really wrong. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Here we both were, despised by the outside
world, outsiders within our own world falling out with each other. It was all my fault too. I couldn’t lay off even a particle of blame on
someone else. It is true that Skippy was
a sadistic scumbag but I knew that before I debased myself by forcing myself on
him to go to the Temple. Every way I
turned for a way out I found a closed door.
The only refuge I had was that I’d saved his life, as Darius kept
telling me, and I figured his life must have been worth a quarter.
That was
what I figured. Darius thought I had
betrayed his sacred trust. So, well, we all make mistakes. I was just miserable.
That all
transpired in the fall of 1947 when my whole world was spinning so crazily I
couldn’t even tell it was spinning. Like
I said; when you let go of the rope you enter a new reality. Darius wouldn’t speak to me anymore while I
put a big X on Skippy. Old Man Darwen
got fired for embezzlement that spring, while in June 1948 Darius and I both
left the Orphanage.
I went to
the Warden’s of course while Darius’ mom remarried and he was taken to live
with them.
I had no
sooner walked away from the Orphanage when all that became a closed book that
happened in another lifetime. The gold
fish thing is one of those things that bothered me on a daily basis then as now
but I forgot Darius.
-II-
I was living
another life when I ran into Darius at the public library. The Wardens and I were down there for some
reason, I don’t know, maybe they wanted to check out a book, when Darius
touched my shirt in the most timid manner from behind.
I turned and
around and actually didn’t recognize him.
In only a year this kid had been beaten to a psychological pulp. He was totally distracted. He no longer had any personal identity
left. He wasn’t even breathing the same
air everyone else was. It wasn’t
pleasant for me to be reminded of my own past so I was about to brush him off
but with eyes that could no longer see outside his mental trauma he implored me
in this strange birdlike voice to come with him as he had something to tell me.
My god, I
saw into his anguished mind and could not refuse him.
Only a year,
only a year had elapsed since we had left the Orphanage but our lives were so
crowded with debilitating incident that it might as well have been three or
four lifetimes. Things were moving so
fast that I had no time for reflection to make some sense of it. Everything was just scenery passing by a train
window. For Darius that year had been
all the time he needed to complete his education in this world.
Darius, who
then only nine, took me by the hand and led me into the children’s story
telling room and holding both my hands he began telling me the story of his
life since leaving the Orphanage. He
didn’t really tell it to me but he sang me his adventures in that high birdlike
twitter he was using in a series of sort of poetic lay. Darius had a real gift for putting his
thoughts in poetic form. It was as
though he had three of the Muses on his shoulders singing the words to him
while he merely repeated them in a trancelike fashion.
I don’t know
what a distracted picture I might have presented to him but Darius was no
longer looking at the world through his windshield. He was completely withdrawn within
himself. His eyes were turned inward. I’m sure he saw me and his surroundings but
only in the most passive manner, sort of like seeing the reflection of the
world inside of the train window at sixty miles per.
As before he
spoke or sang in this high twitter through pursed lips as though he were
whistling. He held me firmly but gently
telling me he had to tell me this as I was his only friend. Only I would understand. I guess he’d forgotten the gold fish. I didn’t want to listen because Darius was an
unwelcome intrusion from a past I did not want back in my life. I’m probably the only guy who could
understand what he was talking about and be able to even partially
sympathize. As he was holding onto me
firmly and gently even imploringly I had no choice.
Darius’
mother remarried with full intentions of giving up her former profession but
the guy she married didn’t have much character.
He didn’t exactly mistreat Darius but there was a cold indifference in
his attitude that dashed any hopes Darius had of having a decent family life.
Part of this
Darius told me and part of this I conjecture.
His step-father ran up some gambling debts that he didn’t have the money
to pay. He turned to his wife for help
suggesting that she ply her old trade.
Following the precepts of her former Madam Darius’ mom had come through
her experience without too much damage to her reputation. People knew but because of the Madam’s
precautions not as many as you might think.
Mainly her patrons. She had
learned the lesson and was reluctant to practice in the Valley. So in that very summer he was released Darius’
family took a working vacation in Toronto, Canada.
Darius was
unaware of the true situation as it unfolded.
The truth only dawned on him later.
Too bad for him, I would have suppressed it. The three of them checked into a motel. Darius’ mother walked over to the side of the
road to begin soliciting right there and then.
Darius saw this and was somewhat mystified as to what his mother was
doing. Well, the motel manager was not
mystified, he knew exactly what she was doing.
He wasn’t going to have any of that done out of his motel either.
He accosted
Darius’ mother and her husband in the courtyard. As Darius was standing by he informed his
mother that he couldn’t have prostitutes working out of his motel. Darius had no idea that his mother had been
or was a prostitute, so he became very angry with the manager, taking it as a
personal insult, laying into him with both his little fists screaming that the
man couldn’t call his mother a prostitute.
The manager
was a pretty decent guy and when he realized that Darius was innocent of his
mother’s and step-father’s doings he relented rather than humiliate the little
boy. He said they could stay but to practice
her trade somewhere else than in front of his motel.
My heart
nearly broke at this story but it was only a preamble to a worse. The sequel made clear to Darius his mother’s
true past. The poor little guy just
couldn’t handle it. Of course, who knows
how his mind was affected down in the hell hole of an infant’s dormitory. Dormitory?
Heck, there was so much noise going on all the time down there who could
sleep? The poor guy had probably been
awake a whole year before he came upstairs, that certainly would have weakened
his resistance.
There was a
big change in the way Darius told the second story too. He had sung the first story in the first
person. Strangely he never looked
directly at me but off to the right with his head down.
In the
second half he switched to the third person like he was telling about someone
else. I guess it was too much for him to
bear. I read a story by Jean Genet once
in which five or six guys gang raped him.
He tells the story as though he stood by watching some other get
sodomized. You see, when it all bets bad
enough in order to protect your sanity you just step outside yourself and let
them do whatever they will to your body but you don’t let them touch your mind
but you still have to live with the results.
Darius did that although he wasn’t capable of actually maintaining the
lie. Given enough time he would have
suppressed the memory into his subconscious where it would have made him
schizophrenic or maybe worse sometime later on.
Or, maybe he
might have been able to turn it into something else like maybe his father
dying. Or, who knows, maybe he’d have
been able to manage his way out. Life is
funny, you can’t never tell. Of course,
also, maybe he might have become a serial killer, teach everyone a lesson.
Here the
story gets really incredible. It took me
years and years to figure this out but I finally did. I probably will not be believed but as Mark
Twain said, of course truth is stranger than fiction, the truth doesn’t have to
be plausible. How true that is. The finest stories in the world can’t be told
because they require too great a suspension of belief.
Now, Darius
didn’t know who David Hirsh was but he got the name right. I knew who David Hirsh was but a mental block
prevented my dealing with him on a conscious level. So I didn’t know to whom Darius referred at
the time but he gave me a very accurate physical description which I did
remember and was able to connect up decades later.
Hirsh
apparently had visited the house out of which Darius’ mother worked. Whether or not he had anything against
Darius’ mother or his step-father, Hirsh’s perversity apparently followed
diverse and devious channels so it’s difficult to figure. He must
have had some strange variant of homosexuality that, while he didn’t violate
little boys directly, he literally screwed their minds. You know my history with Hirsh. Hirsh now came after little nine year old
Darius. Aww, didn’t Hirsh have anything
else to do? Didn’t he have enough money
to entertain himself in other ways?
As I said,
Hirsh was seen around the Orphanage so
perhaps he saw Darius there, or maybe Darius’ mom had mentioned him to Hirsh on
a ‘date.’ Perhaps he took a perverse
delight in adding to the torments of a disadvantaged child. Perhaps he was saying that as a little Jewish
kid he had felt tormented by others.
Maybe he felt he had been in the exact same situation and no one had
taken pity on him. Perhaps he thought he
was just passing it on. Madness lasts a
lifetime and takes many forms.
The setup he
organized was incredibly elaborate but he was able to control all the variables
to make it work. I’m sure he saw himself
as a man of consummate genius, some sort of Einstein of perversity.
First,
unknown to Darius, of course, he went to Darius’ mom to proposition her. She declined at first because she was
sincerely trying to go straight. But, as
Hirsh pointed out to here it wasn’t like he was asking her to do what she had
never done before. One more time
wouldn’t hurt. The pay was good and he
wanted her to be sure to bring her son along. I’m afraid I can’t tell about golden hearted prostitutes,
Darius’ mom had no scruples to overcome, she was only too glad to do it. She just asked the details then went along.
There was an
old decrepit amusement park just North of Bay City called Winona Beach. The place was within a few months of shutting
down. On weekdays there was virtually no
one there, they didn’t even operate the rides.
This was a
Wednesday, Darius’ mom showed up at Winona Beach with Darius in tow. The day itself was sultry and overcast
threatening a rain shower which it didn’t deliver. There was literally no one in sight when
Darius and his mom arrived save for a few employees. The merry-go-round was still and there was no
mirth in the Fun House.
Following
Hirsh’s instructions Darius was left on the boardwalk. It was a real boardwalk elevated about twelve
to fifteen feet above the beach forming the midway. Darius’ mom entered a door to the side of the
Fun House, mounting a flight of stairs leading to a room over the Fun House
where Hirsh awaited her. Darius was told
to wait outside.
Doing this
in an amusement park over the Fun House was a capital joke for Hirsh’s mad
criminal mind as he was having fun in so many ways at someone else’s expense. He was really a shameless guy.
He brought
along his son Michael and that gang to torment Darius. Even though I was outnumbered by them in my
encounters I was at least he same age but at nine they were much bigger and
more savvy than he. Hirsh had no
business turning big kids like that loose on a nine year old kid. Hirsh had already demonstrated his
shamelessness and would again but he was so base in this that my mind just
boggles. It’s like he wasn’t human and
if he was he had found ways to distort ‘human’ out of all recognition.
Darius said,
or rather sang, that they didn’t lay a hand on him but butted and jostled him
with their shoulders hoping he would fall off the boardwalk. Of course, Hirsh was watching from his window
over the Fun House with Darius’ mom making her laugh at Darius’ plight. How perverse do you have to be to take pleasure
in making a boy’s mother laugh at his tortures?
Shameless whore that she was she respected Hirsh’s power more than her
son’s welfare and laughed heartily.
Then one of
the Hirshes suggested that people often dropped money through the boardwalk to
the sand below. Sid Cohen showed Darius
seventy-five cents he said he found down there.
As much to get away from them as anything else Darius went down below
the boardwalk. Then as a big joke all
the Hirshes stood over him and peed on him through the gaps in the slats. As they did they looked up at Hirsh’s window
where they were rewarded with peals of laughter from Hirsh and Darius’ mom.
Darius had
no idea why he was being treated so badly by complete strangers. There was no way he could get away from them. When he went back up they hustled him into
the dance hall. The hall was adjacent to
the Fun House. The owners had built a
viewing place behind some slats like a venetian blind high up so they could
monitor activity on the dance floor from above the Fun House. You know, either keep fights to a minimum or
watch their stooges start them. Darius
was by now thoroughly unhappy. As he was
trying to escape the taunts and jostling of the Hirshes the bartender, or
whatever he was, big burly guy, charged at him shouting get out of here you
little bastard, we don’t want your kind around here.
Darius
almost broke down when he had to tell how frightened he was as he fled the
place while the little Hirshes rolled on the floor laughing at him. Darius actually told me that he heard his
mom’s voice laughing but as he told it he seemed to edit it out so that he
seemed to forget, or suppress it, as he told it. It was bad enough that I had betrayed his
trust over the gold fish; his mother’s betrayal was so much worse. I guess he had to go through some pretty deep
denial to keep his mental balance, such as he had. Even then he hadn’t seen the worst yet.
So, this fat
old bartender comes out and shouts at him that he couldn’t be much of a boy or
he wouldn’t have scattered like that.
Did Darius think, he said, that he would actually hurt him? Well, Darius did think that and I don’t blame
him. The Hirshes didn’t follow Darius
outside so he sat on this bench around a big oak tree next to the
merry-go-round looking down the boardwalk wondering when this nightmare was
going to end and feeling like he really was a failure because he ran from the
big fat bartender.
Now, the
boardwalk curved along the beach in a manner that Darius was looking directly
at the window behind which Hirsh, delirious with delight at Darius’ distress,
was screwing his mother for a few dollars.
Whether it was a happy inspiration or Hirsh’s devious projection of
reality actually happening, as Darius watched the blinds were pulled up where
Darius could see his mother facing him on her hands and knees while Hirsh
worked her behind doggy style. Maybe she
was embarrassed finally and didn’t know what to do but she laughed out loud at
Darius, stuck out her tongue and wagged it at him.
I don’t know
for sure that Darius was even aware of what he was telling. I mean, I don’t know how much he consciously
remembered and much was just welling up from his subconscious where it would
return unremembered by Darius’ conscious mind.
I mean, the kid was hurting so bad that I didn’t want to be near him let
alone share in his terrible anguish.
Shortly
after his mother came down the stairs motioned to him to get in the car telling
him they were finished and were going home.
They were finished! Who were they? Darius and his mom or the Hirshes and Darius’
mom. Finished at what? Demolishing the poor little kids sanity? He then said that he told his mom that he
didn’t want to know her anymore.
I had
listened in shocked silence but that sent me through the floor. I was immobilized by the end of his
story. Darius then actually kissed my
hands and said I was the only friend he’d ever had. Just about that time Jack Warden shows up and
orders me out to the car. ‘What are you
queer?’ he says in the most derogatory
way. ‘No, I’m not queer.’ I say, not even knowing what queer was at
that time. I didn’t know what it was but
I knew if it was bad I couldn’t be it.
So, I left
Darius standing there.
If I was
Darius’ best friend he was in sadder shape than either of us knew because I
couldn’t use his distress. I had enough
of my own. If I had added his to mine it
would have broken me. I just couldn’t do
it, he would have to fend for himself.
Life was just as hard for me too.
I dismissed him from my mind, didn’t think about him at all until two weeks
later I read that he’d solaced his mental problem with a load of buckshot.
A shotgun. Wow! The kid sure as hell had a lot more nerve
than I did. But, you know, I’ve thought
about it and I don’t really think he was trying to commit suicide. This may sound funny but I think he was just
trying to put his eyes out. Somehow he
didn’t think the buckshot would go any further than that; it would stop short
of taking his head off.
That’s what
I think. His eyes had seen too
much. His intellect and will had been
totally emasculated. It was something
like George Bernard Shaw who thought his peculiar vision of the world was the
result of being able to see more accurately than other men, or Jackson Brown who makes the same complaint in his song
Doctor, My Eyes. Darius’ reaction was
much the same as that of Oedipus who put out his eyes with the clasps of if his
mother who was also his wife’s brooches when he could no longer deal with the
reality that he had married his mother.
A little further in and he too would have committed suicide. The minds of both he and Darius were
incapable of resolving their mental dilemmas.
So I suppose you could say Hirsh murdered Darius. It was a good law and order crime. At the time I knew nothing of Hirsh’s
involvement. I couldn’t recognize Hirsh. I had my own eyes and mental emasculation to
worry about.
In way I was
almost relieved that Darius had done it because I had no room for his troubles
and my own. Saving his life hung over
me. How did I even know he wanted his
life saved. I mean, he had every reason
to believe that he had been deserted by his mother, he was down there in that
infant’s hell hole, alone and deserted.
How fearful he must have been of his tonsil operation. When he passed me in the hall he did say that
he had to go and die now. So, maybe he
had a death wish. Maybe he’d already had
enough then. Maybe subconsciously he was
taking advantage of an opportunity so his subconscious mind made him
hemorrhage. Maybe I ruined his chance to
change this world for the next and so he made me responsible for the rest of
his life. It sure seemed like he thought
I owed him something. I didn’t
care. I didn’t want any part of it. I was just being a good scout, that’s all.
I stood on
my knees with my hands on my hips for some few minutes before I closed the door
on that one and moved on to the next.
There were lots of news items I hadn’t read yet and besides I hadn’t
even gotten to the funnies.
