Faithless: Tales of Transgression

  Tusk murmurs, “Y’know—my old man?—I let him die, sort of.”

  Alyse maybe hears this or maybe doesn’t, she’s blinking and squinting nearsightedly across the highway. There’s a 7-Eleven store not far away but they’ll have to tramp through a marshy vacant lot and get their feet wet probably. But if they walk around the longer way, on pavement, that’s twice as far, a bummer. “Yeah, what? That’s cool. I mean—too bad,” Alyse says vaguely. She’s leading the way, must be they’re going to tramp through the field. On this damply sunny day there are insects everywhere, droning and buzzing and fluttering, tiny flies, clouds of gnats, from out of puddles an eager trilling sound like castanets that’s maybe—peepers? Alyse has said she’s thirsty, dying for a diet Coke, she drinks maybe a dozen diet Cokes a day, smiling sidelong at Tusk who’s staring at her with his fever-eyes saying it’s how she keeps her weight down, lifting her sweater and tugging down her tight-fitting jeans just a bit so Tusk can see her warm smooth pale midriff and the glass-ruby stud glittering in her belly button, Alyse is vain about being thin but not skinny, not one of these anorexics, guys get turned off by that. Also, she’s running out of cigarettes and he hasn’t got any, has he?—and it’s shitty, this state law, or maybe it’s federal law—“You can’t buy cigarettes if you’re a fucking minor. Like that’s supposed to stop you from smoking,” she says with withering sarcasm.

  Seeing that little glass-ruby stud in Alyse Renke’s belly button—oh, man. Like, Tusk is turned on. Man, Tusk is TURNED ON. It’s got to be a signal, right? Alyse Renke has brought Tusk Landrau out here back of school because she wants to make out with him, right? She’s done it with lots of guys, Tusk has heard—Jakey Mandell, Derek Etchinson, Buddy Watts as long ago as seventh grade, and older guys in high school, must be she’s giving Tusk Landrau the high sign she wants him to fuck her, right? It’s his turn! It’s his time! He’s scared, and excited, hears himself saying sort of choked up, his voice a weird croak, “Uh, ’lyse?—let’s go over this way, OK? C’mon.” Tusk is pointing toward the viaduct where there’s a pedestrian tunnel beneath the railroad tracks, a rarely used tunnel strewn with debris and puddles glittering like glass, graffiti scrawled on the walls like shouts, and Alyse squints and wrinkles her nose, “Huh? Why? I want a Coke, I said.” Her lipstick-pink lower lip is swollen, pouting. You can see she’s a girl accustomed to getting her way, with no delay. There’s a pimpled rash at her hairline where the black zebra stripes begin. Tusk says, choked, “Yeah. C’mon. OK?” Alyse shakes her head no, pettishly, but sees in Tusk’s looming face, in his heated pasty skin and red-rimmed eyes, eyes like he’s been crying, old-young eyes, eyes like you’d never see in any boy his age I swear, a promise of something interesting, something sexy, for a thirteen-year-old kid who’d been an honor-roll nerd only the year before, you have to grant Tusk Landrau is cool. So impulsively Alyse leans over and kisses Tusk—kisses him!—his first kiss from a girl, ever—on his parched lips light as a butterfly brushing against him and murmurs suggestively, “OK, maybe afterward. After the Coke and some chips, OK?” and nudges against him so the blank-staring boy gets her meaning, her left breast hard as a green pear against his electrified arm. Man, this is it. Tusk hears a roaring in his ears. Tusk is having trouble breathing. Fucking asthma! No, he’s never had asthma, he’s OK. He’s always been OK. They tried to make a freak out of him but he’s OK. He’s got a hard-on like a knife. His hard-on is a knife. He’ll drag this slut into the tunnel and fuck her till her brains fall out and he’ll stick her with his dad’s ’Nam knife like it was meant to do and the strength of this will carry him in his new Nikes flying a mile and a half to the five-bedroom green-shuttered white colonial on Pheasant Hill Lane where he’ll stick his mom with the same instrument from ’Nam. It’s time! It’s his turn! To put my mom out of her mercy, I mean misery, not like I hated her or anything, shit I loved her I guess—she was my mom, y’know? Tusk will have to work out coherently what he’s gonna tell the police and his lawyer, his statement for TV and the press, he’s anxious he won’t get a second chance, it will have to go down perfectly the first time. “Hey Tusk? You spaced out or what? Come on!”—flirty Alyse Renke giggling at him and he’s staring at her seeing her pink lips move but can’t hear what she’s actually saying. Alyse was my girl. I warned her from the first I would not share her with anybody! I would not be disrespected. Tusk is hugging the nylon backpack against his chest wondering if this sounds OK. He thinks so. Maybe. Is it plausible? He is sort of crazy about Alyse, to tell the truth. He’d like to kiss her and kiss her in some dark place like the Cinemax. He’d like to hang out at her house like he’s heard Jakey Mandell does, Saturdays. But Jesus, his hard-on is aching, his entire cock and balls, like a metal pipe or something inside his jockey shorts—how’s he gonna walk? His old man was embarrassed telling him about sex, sexual experimentation as his old man called it, sexual reproduction of the species which is nature’s imprint you might say upon the individual, but—how’s he gonna walk? He’d take Alyse’s stubby little hand to press against his bulging fly, give the slut a good feel and she’d shriek and giggle and snatch her hand away like it was burned but she’d be impressed, too—wouldn’t she?—except Alyse is running across the field squealing and cursing getting her feet wet, and Tusk hasn’t any choice but to trot after her, breathless and crouched over like he’s got a stomachache. “Hey, ’lyse! Wait.”

  Fuck, he’s getting his new Nikes wet.

  IN THE TACKY 7-Eleven they’re the only customers. Alyse knows the store and goes directly to the rear to get her Coke. A staticky radio playing old-time rock from the seventies and behind the counter staring unsmiling at Tusk is this fattish grizzle-bearded guy like a hippie going bald and what’s left of his stringy hair is totally gray, he’s wearing it in a ponytail tied with a piece of yarn, a soiled Grateful Dead T-shirt straining against his beer gut and bib overalls fitting him like sausage casing and those steely eyes behind rimless bifocals are fixed on Tusk immediately. Fucker never gave me a chance! What’d I ever do to him? Fucking Nazi like I’m, what?—a nigger or something. Alyse must know the fat hippie, or anyway she’s acting like she does, chattering and flirting, complaining why can’t she buy a pack of Virginia Slims at least?—“Who would ever know, I mean it’s just us in here, I mean—it’s just common sense. Or you could give me the pack, y’know? And I could, like, pay a little more for these chips? Tusk, you got some change?” But the hippie pays Alyse no more mind than you’d pay a cloud of gnats, and Tusk doesn’t hear her either, nervously prowling the aisles blinking at brightly packaged displays of Sunshine Cheez-Its, Doritos chips, Snak-Mix, Jif peanut butter, Pringles Potato Crisps, Miracle micro popcorn, Hungry Jack Bagel Bites, and at knee level ten-pound sacks of Purina Dog Chow and Kleen Kitty Litter. Tusk is a shy boy actually, hunching his shoulders like he wants to disappear, his chest practically caved in, that posture that so pissed off his old man he half expects to hear the old man’s disgusted voice over the radio Son! Tusk is talking to himself which he never does in public only when he’s alone, not audibly talking but his mouth is working, his grimacing, puckered-up baby face is close to crying. Heat prickling in his underarms like red ants. For Tusk seems to know before the hippie behind the counter speaks a single word to precipitate his doom, This is it! He’s the one I been waiting for, the fucker. “You, kid—yeah, you!—take your punk ass out of this store and keep on moving, you hear?” the hippie says in a sharp nasal voice pressing his gut against the counter, beefy muscled guy with wiry hairs bristling up through the Grateful Dead T-shirt and Tusk says stammering, “Say—what? I’m not doing nothing,” and Alyse is protesting, “Tusk isn’t doing a thing! Hey he isn’t! Hey c’mon, mister,” and the hippie ignores her saying to Tusk in a sneering voice, “Yeah? Like the other day you and your punk pals weren’t doing anything except tearing open bags, right? Right on the shelves, right? Yanking pull-tops and leaving the fucking cans to drain on the shelves while I’m waiting on fucking customers, right???
? Tusk is hurt, Tusk is shaking his head confused, saying, “Mister, I was never in this store before. I was never.” This is true!—Tusk’s lower lip is trembling and his eyes are misting over but the hippie is furious and unforgiving, stalking out from behind the counter waving his fatty-muscled arms, splotches of red in his face and his eyes steely-cold, “I said get out of my store, you little punk! You’re a thief, you’re a vandal and a thief and a punk and if I was your old man I’d blow out my brains, I want you out of this store right now before I break your skinny little—“

  Suddenly then the hippie is gaping down at himself with this look of profound astonishment and wonder where Tusk has shoved a seven-inch knife to the hilt in his guts.

  Following this, things happen swiftly.

  And Tusk is watching, and Tusk is moving with it but it’s like he’s outside himself watching. Grinning dazed at his blood-splattered hands and jeans and he yanks the knife out of the fat man falling to his knees and stabs at him with it—“Fucker! You got no right! I got my rights! See how you like it now!” The hippie is on the floor screaming, trying to stop the blood from rushing out of his belly, Tusk is panting, triumphant, kicks himself free except he’s splashed with goddamn blood—his jeans, his new Nikes—shit!—he’s excited, pissed—only just a little scared—runs behind the counter to the cash register reasoning I will need money if I go underground but the fucking cash register is shut up tight and there’s no way to open it Tusk can figure, tearing at the drawer with his hands and breaking his fingernails leaving blood-smears on the metal he knows are fingerprints to incriminate him but what’s he gonna do?—it’s all happening so swiftly.

  This buzzing in his ears like a trapped hornet, he can’t figure where it’s coming from. Old-time rock music at high decibels and somebody screaming? Then Tusk remembers with a tinge almost of nostalgia as if it had all happened long ago and they’re flying away from each other like the universe is said to be broken into an infinity of isolated parts rushing away from one another at nearly the speed of light: the girl with the zebra-stripe hair. Alyse Renke. Alyse who’s his girl. Her face wizened like a monkey’s contorted in rage rather than horror What the fuck are you doing Tusk! Just what the fuck are you doing you sorry asshole! as in a frenzy he’d stabbed the fat hippie as many times as he could draw the knife blade out and sink it into the man’s flesh like blue flames were licking over his brain until practically he was coming in his pants and panting he’d turned glassy-eyed toward the furious girl and seeing his face she backed off as the situation registered upon her—the knife, the gushing blood, the adult man thrashing and groaning at Tusk’s feet. And now he doesn’t know where she is. “ ’lyse? Hey ’lyse?” he hears himself yelling in a raw hurt voice, almost he’s laughing, “—you hiding on me? Hiding?” But she isn’t anywhere in sight. Isn’t in the store. Just Tusk in the store, and the whimpering man. Just shelves of merchandise, rows of tins and paper packages and on the farther wall a flyspecked Coors clock showing 2:25 P.M. and it flashes through Tusk’s mind that school’s still in session, no wonder there’s no kids hanging out at the 7-Eleven. The fat hippie, lying on his back, gasping and twitching his left leg in a pool of neon-glistening liquid like varnish is all that Tusk can see and then Tusk sees the girl outside, running toward the road and possibly she’s screaming. Alyse has left him? Alyse Renke his girl running from him? when she’d been kissing him just a few minutes ago? and he’d done this for her? to show her how serious he is, how serious about her? Tusk runs to the door and calls plaintively, “ ’lyse! Hey come back! Hey—” but Alyse doesn’t hear, she’s waving her arms running and stumbling in the road now and there’s a station wagon approaching and it’s going to stop, Tusk knows.

  WHERE THEY FIND him only a few minutes later, it wasn’t where he might’ve planned to be. Or at this abrupt time, either.

  Back of the 7-Eleven, behind the smelly overflowing Dumpster. The slippery knife in his fingers as he’s groping for the artery, what is it, carotid artery, in his throat. His fingers are clumsy, anxious. I never heard him calling me. Never heard him scream. I didn’t! Hearing now a faint train whistle. A dog’s forlorn persistent barking in the distance. A siren. A siren coming closer? He’s got to hurry. Doesn’t want to fuck up like he’s fucked up just about everything else today but he’s got to hurry. There’s no going back because he could not live this day again or any other day recalling what he’d learned in science class of how the sun is promised to continue shining for five billion more years before at last swelling and vaporizing the entire solar system but Tusk could not endure even one more day. Not one more! Drawing the knife across the artery he’s located pulsing hot beneath his jawbone, a sharp burning sensation and at once he’s bleeding but the cut isn’t deep enough so he tries again, holding his right hand steady with his left and pressing with his remaining strength, on his knees swaying, gasping for air, choking on something hot and liquid. Shit, he’s dropped the knife, can’t see to pick it up, groping amid wet newspaper on the pavement, crinkly yellow Doritos wrapper, but there’s the knife, the blood-glistening knife that’s his only consolation, he picks it up and tightens his fist around it and tries again.

  THE HIGH SCHOOL SWEETHEART:

  A MYSTERY

  There was an intensely private man whose fate was to become, as year followed year, something of a public figure and a model for others. Nothing astonished R more, and alarmed him! Relatively young, he’d achieved renown as a writer of popular, yet literary novels; his field was the psychological suspense mystery, a genre in which he excelled, perhaps because he respected the tradition and took infinite care in composition. These were terse, minimally plotted but psychologically knotty novels written, as R said in interviews, sentence by sentence, and so they must be read sentence by sentence, with attention; as one might perform steps in a difficult dance. R was himself both choreographer and dancer. And sometimes, even after decades of effort, R lost his way, and despaired. For there was something of horror in the lifelong contemplation of mystery; a sick, visceral helplessness that must be transformed into control, and mastery. And so R never gave up any challenge, no matter how difficult. “To give up is to confess you’re mortal, and must die.”

  R was one of those admired persons who remain mysterious even to old friends. By degrees, imperceptibly as it seemed to him, he became an elder, and respected; perhaps because his appearance inspired confidence. He had fair, fine, sand-colored hair that floated about his head, and a high forehead, and startlingly frank blue eyes; he was well over six feet tall, and lean as a knifeblade, with long loose limbs and a boyish energy. He seemed never to grow older, or even mature, but to retain a dreamy Nordic youthfulness with a glistening of something chill and soulless in his eyes; as if, inwardly, he gazed upon a tundra of terrifying, featureless white, and the utterly blank, vacuous Arctic sky above. One of the prevailing mysteries about R was his marriage, for none of us had ever glimpsed his wife of four decades, let alone been introduced to her; it was assumed that her name began with “B,” for each of R ’s eleven novels was dedicated, simply, to “B,” and it was believed that R had married, very young, a girl who’d been his high school sweetheart in a small town in northern Michigan, that she wasn’t at all literary or even interested in his career, and that they had no children.

  In one of his reluctant interviews R once admitted, enigmatically, that, no, he and his wife had no children. “That, I haven’t committed.”

  How proud we were of R , as one of the heralded patricians in the field! When he spoke to you, smiled and shook hands, like a big, animated doll, you felt privileged, if only just slightly uneasy at the remote, Arctic gleam in those blue, blue eyes.

  R WAS OFTEN NOMINATED to run for office in professional organizations to which he belonged, yet always he declined out of modesty, or self-doubt: “R isn’t the man you want, truly!” But finally at the age of sixty, he gave in, and was elected by a large majority as president of the American Mystery Writers, a fact that
seemed to both deeply move him and fill him with apprehension. Repeatedly he called members of the executive board to ask if truly R was the man we wanted; and repeatedly we assured him, yes, certainly, R was.

  On the occasion of his induction as president, R meant to entertain us, he promised, with a new mystery story written especially for that evening; not a lengthy, rambling speech interlarded with lame jokes, like certain of his predecessors. (Of course there was immediate laughter at this remark. For our outgoing president, an old friend of R ’s and of most of us in the audience, was a well-liked but garrulous gentleman not known for brevity.)

  Almost shyly, however, R took the podium, and stood before an audience of perhaps five hundred mystery writers and their guests, straight-backed and handsome in his detached, pale, Nordic way, a fine figure of a man in an elegant tuxedo, white silk shirt, and gleaming gold cuff links. R ’s hair was more silvery than we recalled, but floated airily about his head; his forehead appeared higher, a prominent ridge of bone at the hairline. Well back into the audience, you could see those remarkable blue eyes. In a beautifully modulated, rather musical voice, R thanked us for the honor of electing him president, thanked outgoing officers of the organization, and alluded with regret to the fact that “unforeseen circumstances” had prevented his wife from attending that evening. “As you know, my friends, I did not campaign to be elected your president, it’s an honor, as the saying goes, that has been thrust upon me. But I do feel that I am a kinsman of all of you, and I hope I will be worthy of your confidence. I hope you will like the story I’ve written for you!” Almost, R ’s voice quavered when he said these words, and he had to pause for a moment before beginning to read, in a dramatic voice, from what appeared to be a handwritten manuscript of about fifteen pages.