while, and went to bed at about ten-thirty.
I didn’t sleep.
I sweated, shivering, alone.
I saw things, plastered down onto my eyes.
Thrown into them.
I saw it all. Every detail. From a baseball and cricket bat, fluoride treatment, an empty signpost, dreams, fathers, brothers, mother, sister, Bruce, friend, girl, voice, gone, and into. Me.
My life trampled my bed.
I felt tears like hammers down my face.
I saw myself walking to that phone.
Talking.
Staggering home.
Then, close to one o’clock, I stood up and put my jeans on and walked barefoot out into the backyard. Out of our room. Down the hallway. Out the back door. Freezing cold night.
Past the cement and onto the grass, till I stood. I stood there and stared, into the sky and at the city around me. I stood, hands at my side, and I saw what had happened to me and who I was and the way things would always be for me. Truth. There was no more wishing, or wondering. I knew who I was, and what I would always do. I believed it, as my teeth touched and my eyes were overrun.
My mouth opened.
It happened.
Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling.
Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions poured up my throat and past voices surrounded me. The sky listened. The city didn’t. I didn’t care. All I cared about was that I was howling so that I could hear my voice and so I would remember that the boy had intensity and something to offer. I howled, oh, so loud and desperate, telling a world that I was here and I wouldn’t lie down.
Not tonight.
Not ever.
Yes, I howled and without me knowing it, my family stood just beyond the back door, watching me and wondering what I was doing.
At first, all is black and white. Black on white.
That’s where I’m walking, through pages. These pages.
Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of. Sometimes I’m there again, hatching plans with Rube, fighting him, working with Dad, getting called a wild animal by my mother, watching Sarah’s life stumble at the hands of Bruce, and telling Steve I’ll smash his face in if he ever calls me a loser again. I even see Greg’s bought stash going up through his chimney, drugging the air above his roof. One foot walks me toward Rebecca Conlon’s place and working there, and ringing there. One foot stands me in the picture where the strangled public telephone hangs, dead, with only the remains of my voice left inside it.
Sometimes, when I am deep inside the pages, the letters of every word are like the huge buildings of the city. I stand beneath them, looking up.
I run at times.
I crawl.
Throu
Every page.
Dreams cover me sometimes, but at others, they strip the flesh off my soul or take the blanket away from me, leaving me with just myself, cold.
Fingers touch the pages.
They turn me.
I continue on.
I always do.
All is big.
The pages and the words are my world, spread out before your eyes and for your hands to touch. Vaguely, I can see your face looking down into me, as I look back. Do you see my eyes?
Still, I walk on, through a dream that takes me through these pages.
I arrive at the point where I see myself walking out to the backyard into the freezing cold. I see city and sky, and I feel the cold. I stand next to myself.
Jeans.
Bare feet.
Bare chest, shivering.
Boys’ arms.
They’re stretched out, reaching.
A wind picks up and sheets of paper take flight and fall down around us as we stand there. A howling noise stumbles despairingly for my ears and I receive it.
I hang on to that desperation, because.
I need it.
I want it.
I smile.
Dogs bark, far away but coming closer.
Next to me, I hear myself howl.
This is a good dream.
Howling. Loud.
Intense.
The last sheets of paper still fall.
I’m alive.
I’ve never been so —
I look down.
The words are my life.
Howling continues.
I stand with pages strewn at my ankles and with that howling in my ears.
FIGHTING RUBEN WOLF
For Scout
CHAPTER 1
The dog we’re betting on looks more like a rat.
“But he can run like hell,” Rub
e says. He’s all flannelette smiles and twisted shoes. He’ll spit, then smile. Spit, then smile. A nice guy, really, my brother. Ruben Wolfe. It’s our usual winter of discontent.
We’re at the bottom of the op
en, dusty grandstand.
A girl walks past.
Jesus, I think.
“Jesus,” Rube says,