the Lunatics: a walk across a field

Here's the thing. The first boy who fell for me was the first boy I destroyed. His name was David. The funny thing is, that was also my Grandfather's name. David was a friend from Tell City with an alcoholic sister named Jenni. Did I mention that luck did not run in abundance through our town. He would steal alcohol from her because it would fall into his lap every time he visited her. Jenni had a husband named Wayne and she kept the bottles hidden everywhere in the house, I mean everywhere. David would look in on his sister and the bottles would rain down on him every step he took: in the hat box, under the bathroom counter, miniatures in the spice rack. He would bring it to us- I mean me and the rat pack I used to run with- but would never touch it himself.

Poor David would walk to the ends of the earth for me. He looked at me with these aquatic frog's eyes. I've seen infants gaze at their mother with the same time of rabid, hopeless, need-driven love. He was a good kid, nice temperament and lovely tanned skin the color of a walnut. But when someone looks at you with so much love you either need to love them back or you need to step out and get a breath of fresh air. Since I was not in the position to be loving anybody I should have excused myself from the table, so to speak. But I didn't. So this is what happens next.

We were all sitting in Natty Clement's car in the field above the cemetery. We were fifteen and sixteen years old. There was a marvelous lightning storm playing out across the world. The world at least as we saw it, through the windshield, and that's only world that was for us. It was Natty and Johnny and David and me. At that point I had never seen such a storm. Later on during the Unseason when my mother would stand at the window and flutter her eyelids, then I would get used to the terrific beat and pulse of lightning, to nearby thunder banging in your teeth and resonating up your jaw, climbing up your face to your eyes.

But at this point I was just fifteen, just a girl caught in a storm. I had two parents at home reading the newspaper and worrying about seed-pearl rain on an unfinished chicken house. We were drinking a bottle of Davey's sister's finest: lemon-flavored vodka that smelled like something you'd use to disinfect the drain. It felt that way too but I drank long, outlandish pulls just to get the eyebrows raising. I could always be counted on. And the Natty from the front seat turned and told David he ought to take a walk across the field. The absurdities of this suggestions are too many to be catalogued. The storm was on us and we were the eye. He would have a no easier time dodging the stabs of lightning than he would trying to avoid the raindrops as they fell. Johnny twisted his body around and looked back and forth between David and Natty, his interest piqued.

'Just a walk across the field, David, that's all.' He spoke evenly, a little smile playing over his mouth.

We were all watching David. I stretched my arm and tapped his knee with my index finger. 'We'll come and pick you up on the other side. You just have to go one way.' He didn't say a word, just turned his face and pressed his forehead against the window, exhaled through closed teeth.

'David.' I said, 'go walk across that field. And tell me all about it. I'll take you out to Jillian's after this, just you and me, and you tell me all about it.' As I said this I could see, in my periphery, Johnny's jaw hitting the floor of the car. I ignored him. And that was it, David turned his high-beam eyes to me and made this expression with his mouth, half open, like he was fishing for words but coming up dry. Then he put his hand on the door handle, gave it a pull and stepped outside.

Why did we let him do such a thing? Because we were at an age where curiosity starts to bend into cruelty. Because kids throw rocks at animals.

He made it nearly halfway across the field. Any farther and we would have lost sight of him in the deluge. I think he was feeling a little better, not so scared, that he made it that far. Something made him stop dead and turn around. He raised a hand up to us, either a salute or a hello or a goodbye. Didn't wave it, just held it up next to his face. And then there was a white flash with a pink center that was David. It was accompanied by a grotesque clap of thunder that was like a hammer being slammed down on our eardrums. In the aftershock there was a faint buzzing that you felt more than you heard. And the rain kept falling and the storm went on.

In the car I Johnny was screaming and Natty was shouting 'OH JESUS OH JESUS OH JESUS OH JESUS'. I was quiet but I was pulling out pieces of my hair without noticing. My stomach ache felt like it was frothing up and would very quickly be spilling out of my mouth. The car suddenly reeked of sweat and lemon vodka. As for David, he lay on the ground smoking. I don't mean he was smoking a cigarette I mean there was literally a plume of smoke curling up from his head.

Somehow we managed to lurch the car over to his body. And I stood outside by the hood of the car, I seemed to be glued to the car and couldn't move from it- and Natty bent over David and shouted 'CAN YOU HEAR ME??? CAN YOU HEAR ME??'

Well he couldn't hear him. Was he dead? No, but he never heard another word as long as he lived. Deaf as a doornail. Funny thing was that even after all that he still wanted me to take him out to Jillian's. Kid wanted his reward. But I never did. I figured, there wasn't much for us to talk about now that he couldn't hear me.

There is a word for girls like me. Thankfully, by the time David was old enough to know it, he had lost his grip on language entirely.