Faithless: Tales of Transgression

  Buzzer sounds. First period. Tusk wakes out of a dream and it’s like XXX-RATED bam pop rapid fire and stop! and pop! and he’s grinning like not knowing where the fuck he is. But on his feet, and the backpack heaved up and hugged to his chest and filing out of homeroom slouched and oily hair swinging in his face Tusk has to pass Miss Zimbrig’s desk and the bitch smirks murmuring, “Here, Roland. Be my guest.” Handing him a Kleenex out of the box on her desk. And kids looking on giggle. And Tusk winces, his face burns but he’s been so fucking brainwashed to be polite to adults he actually mumbles, “Thanks, Miss Zimbrig.”

  And takes the Kleenex!

  Bitch is gonna pay. Nobody laughs at Tusk. Nobody fucks with Tusk. The hour of reckoning is near!

  ROLAND LANDRAU SR. he can hardly remember. He hadn’t known him all that well when the guy’d been his dad. Like the screen is zigzags and blurs and instead of rock music there’s static. Like through a telescope he can see the three of them at the dining room table where the father had to discipline the son and took pleasure in the task, leaning forward on his elbows with an almost boyish eagerness so the tablecloth bunched and pulled toward him, and the father not noticing, quietly reprimanding little Roland (three years old? four?) for eating his food too quickly, or maybe too slowly pushing it around his plate, or for whispering to his mother instead of speaking to both his parents, or for chattering when he should have been silent because Daddy was trying to talk, or for sitting silent, his head bowed and sulky, picking at his food when he should have been talking. Roland junior who never seemed to learn (dumb-ass kid! it’s hard to feel sorry for such a shithead) that he must look Daddy in the eye and not shrink or cringe or burst into tears which really infuriated Daddy for implying that Daddy was “some kind of bully who’d pick on a small kid” and next thing you knew Roland junior was shrieking because he’d been slapped, or shaken by the shoulder like a beanbag, or what scared the most though it didn’t hurt the most, his plump round face gripped in Daddy’s big fingers so Daddy could lean within an inch to shout at him. (And where was Mom, Mom was at the table white-faced, worried, biting her lower lip until the lipstick was eaten off, Mom was such a pretty mommy and her hair so beautifully styled it was a puzzle why little Roland grew up not to trust her for there was a time when Mom would say these episodes at the dining room table didn’t happen because they could not have happened explaining to Roland, Much of what you think has happened in a lifetime never did.) And there was the time when Roland was six years old and no longer a baby and he’d run from the table when his dad began to discipline him and his dad had caught him on the stairs and yanked him back down and shook him till his teeth and his brains rattled in his head and Roland drew breath to scream but could not scream for the scream was trapped inside him like partly chewed food and his reddened face puffed up like a balloon to bursting and his eyes bulged in their sockets and he fainted and next thing he knew he was being wakened by someone he’d never seen before, in a place whitely glaring with light he’d never seen before, not wanting to breathe but forced to breathe, eyes rolled back in his head not wanting to focus normally but forced to focus normally and that was the occasion as his parents would afterward describe it in grave hushed voices of their son’s first asthma attack.

  THIS OLD SHIT, Tusk mostly can’t remember. Like it did happen to another kid, some pathetic little nerd, now gone.

  “HIIIII TUSK.”

  “Hi ’lyse.”

  “How’s it goin’?”

  Tusk shrugs eloquently. “You?”

  Alyse Renke shrugs, too. In tight blue jeans and purple cotton-knit Gap sweater displaying her pear-sized little breasts. Alyse wears six glinting ear studs on her left ear and her broom-colored hair has zebra streaks of black and her flirty eyes are outlined in black mascara deliberate as crayon and she’s making a kissy-pouty mouth rolling her eyes at Tusk like it’s a movie close-up. Saying in a growl, “Sort of OK. But kinda pissy too, you really want to know.”

  Before Tusk can rack his brain for a clever reply Alyse moves on swinging her hot little ass so Tusk stares after her with bad intentions on his sweaty face like neon. At the door to her classroom Alyse will glance back at Tusk but Tusk has already shoved on, hugging his soiled backpack to his chest and blinking dazed into space.

  Like, Alyse Renke is the one, maybe? And Tusk isn’t gonna have any choice about it?

  NEXT PERIOD, study hall in the school library, Tusk guesses he’s calling attention to himself the way he’s squatting for long minutes by the World Book, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and other reference books nobody ever looks at unless there’s an assignment. Tusk is making faces to himself paging through Human Biology and there comes Mrs. Kottler the librarian to say, “What are you looking for, Roland? Maybe I can help you.” But Tusk won’t meet her eye. Shrugs and mumbles what sounds like Nah, I’m OK.

  At last he found what he was looking for: a cartoon drawing of a human being with bones, organs, arteries, and nerves highlighted. The heart is lower in the chest than you’d think, Tusk sees. And there’s bone protecting it, sort of. The neck? Those deep-blue blood vessels. Carotid arteries supplying blood to the brain. Instinctively Tusk locates a hot pulsing artery in his own neck, below the jawline. The carotid artery is his best bet, probably. He’d only need to slash once, twice, maybe saw the blade back and forth. If his victim is Alyse Renke, she’ll be easy to overpower, no taller than he is. If his victim is somebody bigger, like an adult, Tusk will be more challenged but You want to bet Tusk can’t do it?

  For all he needs is positioning and leverage. And the right timing. As in XXX-RATED. Strike by surprise! Rapid fire and stop and pop pop pop! Game over.

  IT WAS pop! game over! for Roland’s dad. One minute he’d been talking on the phone and the next he was slumped sideways in his swivel chair behind his desk like a man surprised in an earthquake and paralyzed in the posture of that first second’s terrible jolt. Had Mr. Landrau been arguing over the phone with a business associate?—had his son, Roland, twelve, upstairs in his room at his computer doing algebra homework heard his dad’s voice lifting in pain and terror like a wounded animal? Had the son heard his stricken father call to him for help?

  The business associate would afterward claim he’d assumed that Mr. Landrau had just hung up. Without saying good-bye. Not that Mr. Landrau was rude but he had ways of showing his impatience or moral indignation or disgust, and hanging up without saying good-bye or tossing the receiver down, off the hook, was one of them.

  It was bad luck for Mr. Landrau that no one else (except his son) was home at the time of the emergency. For possibly he might have been saved. If an ambulance had been summoned, if he’d been rushed into neurosurgery, just maybe. This would be a subject for the grieving widow and the deceased man’s relatives to ponder. But Mrs. Landrau was shopping at Lord & Taylor and the Puerto Rican woman who cleaned house so capably for the Landraus had gone home an hour before. And the door to Roland junior’s room was shut. For since seventh grade the boy had begun to insist upon his right to privacy. So it was plausible I didn’t hear Dad. I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t!

  What popped in Mr. Landrau’s brain was a weakened blood vessel. An aneurysm. An often undetectable and frequently fatal abnormal dilatation of a blood vessel in a brain. Roland Landrau Sr. would have ceased breathing by the time his wife returned home to discover him slumped in his swivel chair in his study, telephone receiver on the floor and his dead-white face so contorted as to be hardly recognizable. Mouth gaping open and eyes staring like a doll’s eyes too round and shiny to be real.

  Upstairs hunched over his computer keyboard Roland junior heard his mom begin to scream. A sound like tearing silk inside his skull he’ll hear through his lifetime. He knows.

  “Y’KNOW WHO I’d like to whack someday? Fuckface Snyder.”

  “Wow, Tusk! Cool.”

  “This knife of my dad’s I told you about, this thing like a dagger practically, already bloodstains on it, y’know?—fr
om ’Nam?—that’s what I’d use. Because a gun, even if I had a fucking gun, would make too much fucking noise, y’know?”

  “Cool, Tusk! Rii-ight.”

  But these assholes don’t take Tusk seriously, he can tell. In the locker room fourth period. Tusk is slow and sullen changing his clothes, fucking resents fucking gym class. Today it’s outdoor track and jumping he’s lousy at, no more coordinated than when he’d been Roland junior shy and blinking at the guys yelling in a pack around him like hyenas. What Tusk hates is anything regimented like you’re in the goddamn fucking army or something. “Butch” Snyder clapping his ham-hands and puffing his cheeks and faggot eyes twinkling shouting like it’s good news he’s bringing them All rii-ight, boys! Let’s go, boys! Three times around the track to warm up, boys! C’mon, let’s GET IT ON! You’d think Tusk Landrau might be a runner, he’s got that lean runner’s frame, long slender arms and legs, but the poor kid gets breathless in five minutes, only the fat kids run slower, there’s something wrong with his nasal passages or his sinuses, he’s had asthma. Coach Snyder who’s one of the popular teachers at East Park tries to sympathize. Tries to disguise his contempt for certain of these soft suburban kids. Spoiled rich men’s sons he can tolerate if they’re athletes who follow his instructions but the rest of them, sissies, punks, and fuck-offs he’s got no use for, like this “Tusk” pretending to be a cool dude grimacing and working his mouth like a schizo arguing with himself, and his baby-face oily with sweat like he’s running a fever. “Roland, see me in my office, OK? Before you shower and change.”

  Tusk is scared. But laughing and telling the guys it’s been a year since he’s had a shower at school, what’s Fuckface Snyder think, everybody’s a faggot like himself?

  In Coach’s glass-brick cubicle office off the gym, with no window except opening onto the gym, Tusk grips the backpack on his knees. Christ, he is scared. Sweating and shivering and his teeth practically chattering. He’s going to stick Snyder. In the gut because Snyder’s growing a gut and it serves the fucker right. Wild! He’s fumbling unzipping the pocket, slips his hand inside and there’s the knife blade he touches first, it feels pretty sharp though maybe not razor-sharp, then he grips the handle, clutches it in his sweaty palm. But Coach breezes in and taps his shoulder, “OK, Roland, how’s it going?” like Coach is Tusk’s big brother or a different kind of a dad and before Tusk can handle it there’s tears in his eyes, fucking tears spilling over and running like hot acid down his cheeks. Coach blushes pretending not to see this though for sure he’s embarrassed as hell. Repeating, “How’s it going?” in a kindly way that makes Tusk lose it even more so Tusk is on his feet wild-eyed stammering, “L-Leave me alone! You don’t know anything about me! Fuck you don’t touch me, leave me alone!” Tusk would yank out the knife from ’Nam, his right hand is actually shoved inside the pocket gripping the smooth handle (and this Coach will recall, speaking of the episode) but fuck it he’s crying too hard, hasn’t cried like this since he was a little kid, you forget how crying hurts. Coach is on his feet surprised saying, “Roland, hey wait—” but Tusk has already rushed out of the office hugging the backpack against his chest, can’t see where the fuck he’s going, choking for air, he’ll hide out in a toilet stall in the lavatory off the storage room until the buzzer sounds for fifth period and the coast is clear and Coach figures he knows better than to follow a distraught adolescent.

  What I’d do I thought was give the poor kid some slack; I could see he was upset but didn’t think it was more than that; sometimes I don’t involve anybody else at school to keep it off the kid’s record. What I figured was, I’d give Mrs. Landrau a call at home that evening.

  Yes. I knew the father was dead.

  WHEN THE ANEURYSM went pop! there was Roland junior upstairs in his room almost directly overhead. Yes he’d heard his dad screaming. Not for him, or for help—just screaming. Like a hurt, terrified animal. Yet, hunched at his computer concentrating on his algebra homework Roland junior who was a nervous twelve-year-old sort of didn’t hear. Or if he’d heard, he hadn’t understood. Dad had a TV in his study sometimes he’d switch it on to watch news in the evening, so maybe that was it—the strangulated scream. Yes I heard. I heard something. Yes I knew it was Dad. Yes I knew something had happened to him. Heart attack, I thought. Or somehow, I don’t know how, like in a movie or something—his clothes were on fire. Always had a weird imagination, I guess! Actually I’m kidding, I didn’t hear anything from downstairs. My room isn’t over Dad’s study really. Dad’s study is at the corner of the house. I stayed with the computer doing my homework. It was like I was paralyzed I guess. From downstairs there was nothing. No TV noises. I didn’t hear anything until Mom came home and started screaming.

  Then Roland junior ran into the bathroom connected to his room and locked the door and switched on the fan and even flushed the toilet pressing the sweaty palms of his hands against his ears framing his head like a vise.

  No! no! no! I didn’t hear a fucking thing!

  RED-EYED TUSK IS skipping fifth-period math. Hanging in the hall outside Alyse Renke’s social studies class. Framing his narrow paste-colored face in the door window so that Alyse can see him through her clotted eyelashes. He’s excited, he knows that guys from gym class are talking and laughing about him. He knows exactly who they are. And there’s Darian Fenner, his ex-friend now his enemy, who wasn’t in that gym class but is a friend of a guy who was and in the corridor just now changing classes Tusk sighted Darian and this kid laughing together at Darian’s locker and smiling in Tusk’s direction. There’s baaad Tusk, sweated through his clothes unless some of that damp is he’s peed his pants? Just chance that Darian is in Alyse’s class, Tusk doesn’t want to be distracted by thoughts of Darian right now though his ex-friend has betrayed him and deserves to die—Tusk could drift into an open-eyed dream seeing this in slow motion—he’d corner Darian in the lavatory and saw the blade across Darian’s throat until Darian’s dorky head was severed from Darian’s dorky-pudgy body and he’d position the head—eyes open—in the toilet so that’s how they would discover Darian Fenner—That Tusk! That cruel dude! You heard what he did to dorky Darian Fenner? Wi-ild!

  They wouldn’t show the head on TV, though. Just photos of Darian when he’d been alive.

  That’s what happens, you mess with Tusk Landrau.

  Tusk is hugging his backpack to his chest grinning and not seeing Alyse Renke till she’s practically in his face. Breathless and cutting her eyes at him saying she’d asked to be excused to use the rest room, how’s about they get out of this dump?—“Just leave by the side door by the cafeteria, nobody’s gonna notice.”

  HE’S HEARD his mom whining on the phone she didn’t know what to do with him this past year, Roland isn’t himself any longer and I don’t know who he is, whining and sniffling and if he’d walk into a room with her she’d blink at him like she was scared of him and why the fuck did the pathetic bitch imagine she could “do” anything with him, like you’d “do” something with a dog or something, fuck it what’s she think? “Like it’s some choice of hers! Like, she’d better learn.”

  Alyse says, coughing as she smokes, waving smoke out of her face with her stubby fingers, maroon-polished talon nails, “Fuck yes. Same with my mom. And my dad, too, there’s two of them constantly in my face. You ever thought about—y’know—” Alyse makes a slashing gesture across her throat with her fore-finger, giggling. “—offing them?”

  “Huh? Who?”

  “Like, your mom and dad.”

  Tusk grins at Alyse sort of blank, dazed. Like he hasn’t heard just right. “Uh, my dad’s actually, like, dead. He’s dead.”

  Alyse’s pink-lipsticked mouth opens. Her mascaraed eyes widen. She touches Tusk’s bare forearm with her talon nails, and every hair stirs. “Jeez! I forgot.”

  “That’s OK.”

  “Tusk, I’m sorry. Jeez I knew that, I just forgot.”

  Tusk is embarrassed, shrugging. “Yeah, it’s OK. It’
s cool.”

  “I mean—shit. I should know.”

  “Hell, it’s no big deal, y’know? It was over a year ago it happened.”

  Tusk is surprised, and moved, that Alyse Renke is so apologetic and sincere-seeming, nudging close to him like she’s his girl as they make their way along the edge of the school playing field and into a marshy wooded area sloping down to railroad tracks and a viaduct. This isn’t the way Tusk walks home from school but he knows the terrain from bicyling, it’s a no-man’s-land except on the two-lane asphalt road East End but even on this road there isn’t much traffic. In a movie, Tusk is thinking, excited and nervous, there’d be a long shot of the two of them walking here, sliding and stumbling downhill through litter drifted like seaweed against the stubby trees and bushes greening up, bursting with tawny buds in the unexpectedly bright spring sunshine. And the sky overhead is filmy patches of cloud and hard blue sky like something painted. There’d be a way the camera would zoom up to them to signal something’s gonna happen! For every moment on the screen is charged with electricity—and with meaning—not like real life that’s a fucking downer. Alyse is entertaining Tusk in that bright sharp way of hers complaining again of her parents, especially her mom “who if you ask me is morbidly jealous of her own daughter for Christ’s sake” and of Mr. Thibadeau her social studies teacher who’s practically harassing her “grading me so goddamn low like I’m a moron or something,” and Tusk thinks he’s never seen a girl close-up so sexy as Alyse Renke with her pouty lower lip and slip-sliding green eyes and a habit of sighing hard, drawing her breath in deep so her hard little breasts stand out in her plum-purple sweater and actually nudging against him like he’s seen her do with older guys, high school guys Alyse dates on the basis (as Tusk has heard) of whether they have cars they can drive—and know how to use condoms. In school, in the cafeteria where sometimes a gang of them hangs out, if other kids are around Alyse is flirty and loud-laughing and sarcastic, and Tusk isn’t too good with trading wisecracks and gets pissed off, and he never knows whether Alyse is putting him on like he never knows whether he’s crazy about her, crazy in love with her, or whether he actually despises her, she’s a cheap flirt and not too bright. (There’s been a rumor in their class since seventh-grade testing that a number of kids tested out with IQs below 100—and Alyse Renke is one of these. Roland Landrau Jr. tested out at 139 which was a moderate disappointment to Roland senior who’d had reason to expect his only son would score higher, as he did at that age.)