Authors: Geoff North
The crowd around them had grown and Hugh
heard his mother call out. “Don’t Steve!”
“Fuckin’ drill him, dad!” Gordo yelled.
Tom Parton yelped like a dog getting its
tail stepped on, and dropped his son to the ground. Hugh knew that his dad had
applied even greater pressure around the other man’s wrist.
With his other arm now free, Tom swung out
wildly hoping to connect his oversized fist against the side of Steve Nance’s
face. Hugh wanted to look away, but was unable to even blink as he watched his
father sidestep quickly and counter with his own punch right in the center of
Parton’s bulbous nose. The man didn’t make another sound as he crumpled down to
his knees. His tight, white dress shirt now covered in blood.
Hugh looked around at the crowd gathered in
a semi-circle. No one said a word. This new, revised childhood memory would
forever be frozen in his mind. The boys wore rented, pastel-blue and beige tuxedos,
the girls in long gowns of yellow, pink, and puke-green. Clog shoes and plastic
corsages everywhere. Billy Parton’s dad wheezed on the ground through a broken
nose and three shattered teeth. Heather cried in her mother’s arms and yelled
at her father for ruining her graduation between sobs.
Fuckin’
drill him
, Gordo had said. His brother had gotten
his wish.
***
Over the following weeks, Hugh thought hard
about what had taken place that evening. How had things happened so differently
to change history so drastically? If he’d gone to the top of the fire escape
instead of Scott Harder, could the whole ugly scene with Billy’s dad been
avoided? Tom Parton, the abusive, alcoholic dipshit that would become a Born
Again Christian shortly after his son’s death in a few years, had already
cleaned up his act considerably. He quit drinking, swearing, and beating on his
son and wife. He’d found religion; become a whole new kind of tormenter to his
family. Did this mean Billy would now avoid the farming accident meant to take
his life? Or would his friend be killed in some other grisly fashion?
These questions and a thousand more
troubled Hugh late one evening in the fall of 1974. He sat in front of his
bedroom window and puffed away at one of his dad’s stolen cigarettes. He closed
his eyes and tried to hear Cathy’s soothing voice in his head. He couldn’t
remember what she sounded like. He tried to picture what her final hairstyle
had been but failed. What would be different tomorrow? What would change in the
days and months ahead to totally screw up his life and everyone else’s?
He looked at the lottery numbers printed on
the windowsill. They’d started to fade. He reached over for the felt marker on
his desk and carefully wrote over them again. He took a deep drag on the
cigarette and slowly exhaled through the window screen. He no longer choked and
coughed after each drag, it made him feel absurdly proud and ridiculously
relieved at the same time. That one bad habit he’d so desperately tried to give
up, the one that had started the chain reaction leading to his death was one of
the last things he had left to remember his first life by.
A flock of geese honked somewhere above the
house in the dark, autumn sky. They were headed south. Hugh was no longer
excited about the idea of winter coming.
Hugh didn’t bother dressing up for
Halloween. The idea of running from house to house in the freezing cold,
covered in awkward-fitting layers of cheap plastic costume with a group of
giggling children didn’t appeal to him. Demanding candy from people who
obviously didn’t want you on their doorstep, or others a little too pleased to
see you, was not his idea of a good time.
Winter hit hard the first week in November
with a foot of snow that refused to go away. It was unseasonably cold over the
next few weeks, and the snow continued to fall during December. A few days
before Christmas, the cold snap ended and there was over three feet of white
stuff to contend with. As an adult, it would have meant back-breaking work for
Hugh, but as a ten-year-old he found the winter months a joy to live through. No
shoveling for him this time around. No responsibility at all.
No wonder kids enjoyed the holiday season
so much, Hugh thought, as he helped his sister decorate the tree the weekend
before Christmas. Kids didn’t have to worry about shopping, and maintaining
enough money to pay the bills.
“Hand me the monkey,” Heather said,
standing on a kitchen chair beside the artificial tree.
Hugh dug around in one of the old decoration
boxes. He pushed a few broken ornaments aside, loved statuettes of reindeer
with missing legs, a stuffed Santa Claus with a crack up his backside and
sawdust leaking out, a red carousel-shaped spinner that would turn over the
heat of an individual tree light, the spinner in the middle long gone. They
should’ve been thrown out years ago, Hugh realized, but there was still
sentimental value in each of them, fond memories of holidays that could be
instantly recalled at the sight of them. Their mother would never let them go. He
found the wooden monkey his sister asked for. A bowler hat of green and yellow
was screwed to its head at a comical slant; the white rabbit fur glued to its
body was coming out in chunks.
Not many Christmases on the tree left
for this little guy.
He handed it to Heather and watched as she
hung reverently it on one of the top branches. Every ornament had its place,
whether it was on the tree, displayed along the fireplace mantle, or hung from
the curved arch separating the living-room from the kitchen. They called it OCD
in the twenty-first century, here it was known as tradition.
What did a dirty little monkey wearing a
hat have to do with the holidays, anyway?
Heather jumped off the chair and stood back
to admire the finished product. “Best tree yet,” she said proudly.
Hugh leaned into the tree and smelled the
pine scent of artificial snow sprayed in from years past. A plastic tree needle
tickled his nose and he felt the warmth of a frosted bulb against his cheek. He
couldn’t help but feeling giddy and sentimental.
“Ouch!” He stepped back quickly and almost
fell over the chair his sister had been using. “For
fuck’s
sake!” He
rubbed at his burnt cheek.
“Well why did you stick your face in there?
You retarded or something?”
Their father yelled from the kitchen. “Who
the hell’s swearing in there?”
“Sorry about that,” Hugh said, looking up
at Heather with his most innocent little boy face.
“Gordo!” Heather hollered back without
hesitation.
Hugh had become much closer to his sister
over the last few months. He’d been a pain in her ass the first time round,
your typically annoying little brother, but that had all changed. Hugh
appreciated Heather much more now, and she cared for him in return. It was
reminiscent of the relationship they shared in the twenty-first century as adults,
and Hugh wanted it to continue now.
Gordo appeared even more self-centered and
chauvinistic in comparison, and that drove her even closer to Hugh.
“Gordo’s out snowmobiling with Donald,”
Steve Nance yelled back.
“What?” Heather asked.
“I said he’s outside!”
“What’s outside?”
“Not what…
who!
”
“Who, what?”
“Oh just forget it,” their father snapped.
They could hear him muttering something to
their mother in the kitchen. Heather winked at her brother and grinned. “You
owe me one.”
“Thanks,” Hugh said. He dug into another
box of decorations.
“No problem, but you have to watch that
mouth of yours. How many times have you gotten in trouble with mom and dad for
swearing lately?”
“Too many.” His throat felt funny and his
eyes began to water up. It seemed that every time something even slightly emotional
came up, he would start to bawl. He loved this second life, this second chance,
but he loved and missed his other family so much more. Every time he got in
trouble reminded him of Colton, of all the times he and Cathy had yelled at the
boy for the smallest of things. Whenever he looked at Heather, he couldn’t help
but see Dana. They were so much alike in looks and personality. He was living
two lives, the one he desperately wanted back was beginning to fade, the memories
of it beginning to cloud over. It was becoming distant and dreamlike. This
second life was good,
really
good, and the feeling filled him with
shame. It was if he were letting the others go.
“What’re you staring at?” Heather asked.
“I-I love you.”
She looked
away, obviously embarrassed and perhaps a bit shocked but there was something
else there in the rising pink of her cheeks, a small smile beginning to form on
her lips. “The feeling’s mutual.”
***
Gordo woke his little brother up from a
deep slumber on Christmas morning.
“What time is it?” Hugh mumbled, wiping his
tired eyes.
“I don’t know,” Gordo whispered as he
pulled the boy’s blankets back off the bed. “Four or five I guess. Who cares? Let’s
go downstairs and check out the presents!”
Hugh hugged his shivering body. “Are you
serious? I just went to bed a few hours ago.”
“You’re kidding, right? You usually wake me
up way before this.” Gordo looked down at the end of his brother’s bed. “You
haven’t even opened your stocking yet.”
Hugh rubbed at his eyes again and strained
to see the grey work sock hung from a safety pin at the corner of his mattress.
It was stuffed to the top with small, gift-wrapped presents. His heart began to
thump in his throat with a joyful excitement he hadn’t felt for decades. The
magic of Christmas, that greedy anticipation overwhelmed him once again.
Why not enjoy it again?
He scrambled across the bed and dug in. Gordo
watched patiently as he tore into the gifts addressed from Santa, but written
in a female hand strangely reminiscent of their mother’s.
“What is that?” Gordo asked after the first
one had been opened.
“Spider-man.” Hugh remembered it fondly. The
red and blue plastic figure came with a parachute attached to its back. The
chute always struck as odd, everyone knew he used spider-webs to get around. Colonel
would make short work of it in the spring, chewing it into an unrecognizable
pulp. He opened another gift and then another one after that. They were packed
in solidly; every square inch of space within the heavy woolen sock had been
used wisely. He recalled some of the trinkets he unwrapped, most he didn’t. One
special toy, a clear blue plastic car that sparked up in the dark had been his
favorite gift.
“Hey, I got one of those too,” Gordo said. “Mine’s
red.”
After a few minutes the two boys sat on the
edge of the bed and admired the mess of cheap wrapping paper strewn on the
floor. Hugh piled the small collection of presents to one side and reached into
the bottom of the sock. He pulled out the traditional Satsuma orange he knew
would be there. He closed his eyes and smelled its dimpled skin.
Wonderful.
Gordo shook him by the shoulder. “Okay, let’s
go downstairs.”
Hugh followed, marveling at the rare times
when he and his brother made a good team, not actually friends, but partners in
crime. Gordo shushed him at the stairway. The slightest creak of a floorboard
could potentially waken their parents and send them back to bed for two or
three more hours…an eternity of hours, especially on that morning. Their eyes
had grown accustomed to the dark, but it was still too black to see one another
very well. They crept down on tip toes, the steps cool beneath their bare feet.
“Keep to the outside,” Gordo warned.
Hugh resisted the urge to laugh. How silly
they must have looked, their pajama-clad legs straddling down the stairs like
bowl-legged cowboys, mindful not to step in the center where there was more
give to the wood.
Hugh knew every inch of the way. He
instinctively sidestepped the laundry basket on the first landing, and made a
sharp turn to the right. Two more steps down and they were on the main floor
hallway. They were extra-stealthy as they crept past their parent’s bedroom. Hugh
ran his fingers gently across the door, and sighed in relief when he felt it
was tightly shut. It was often left open for their father’s occasional trips to
the washroom.
“We’re almost there,” Hugh whispered. The
excitement had solidified into a lump in his chest and stomach. They felt their
way along the tiled floor of the kitchen until Gordo came to a stop. He’d found
the narrow bookshelf that marked the entrance into the living room. Hugh took
another step forward and a blood-curdling yowl broke the silence. It was
quickly followed by a searing pain in his left ankle.
Fred.
He’d stepped on the goddamned cat’s tail
again.
“For
Christ’s
sake,” Gordo hissed. “You’re
gonna wake the whole house up!”
“Merry Christmas,” Hugh giggled.
A soft, multicolored glow shimmered off the
west living room wall and as they turned the corner. Hugh was assailed by one
of the most memorable moments of his life…again. The lights on the Christmas
tree had been left on, which was unusual. The bulbs back in those days burned
hotter than the sun, as the fading blister on his cheek could testify. The
plastic branches were as flammable as gasoline. It wasn’t like their parents to
forget. Hugh didn’t puzzle over it for more than a moment. His attention was
now consumed with the stacks of presents piled beneath the lowest, tinsel-laden
branches.
“Go to bed,” a gravelly voice rumbled from
the opposite side of the room.
Gordo jumped, and Hugh suddenly remembered
which
Christmas morning this was. How could he have forgotten? This was the year
their father had fallen asleep in the big armchair next to the fireplace. The few
remaining embers in the hearth painted his face in a ruddy, orange light. He
straightened up as best he could in his half-asleep state, kicking a red plaid
slipper out from under him in the process.
Gordo bolted back through the kitchen, but
Hugh remained where he was, soaking it all in. Something was amiss, this wasn’t
quite the way he remembered it.
“You came, you saw, and now you’re going
back upstairs,” his father said.
Hugh couldn’t move. Cold fear swept through
him as realized the problem. This was the Christmas their father had caught
them sneaking into the living room, that was clear, but he distinctly
remembered his cousin, Michael Cooden, being with them. Their mother’s sister’s
only child occasionally stayed over during holidays. This had been one of them.
Hugh was certain of it. The red-headed boy had screamed like a little girl when
Steve Nance had spoken, and all three the boys had all rushed back to their rooms,
terrified out of their wits but laughing all the way.
“Well? What’re you waiting for?” Steve
Nance leaned forward and worked his bare foot back into the slipper. He reached
for his cigarettes and found the matches a few seconds later on the floor. “You
want Santa to take all that stuff back?”
Hugh shook his head. “Where’s Michael?”
Where’s my gay cousin that vanished in
the nineties when his family found out he was HIV Positive?
His father took a deep drag and studied his
son carefully. “You sleep walking or something?”
Hugh shook his head again. “My cousin, Michael
Cooden, where is he?”
“I imagine he’s in bed like every other
sane kid.”
“Wasn’t he supposed to here for Christmas?”
“I don’t think so,” he answered. A steady,
slow stream of blue smoke escaped his nostrils and he chuckled softly. “Go to
bed, son. You need more sleep.”
Hugh backed away from his father a few
steps, unsure of what to do next. His middle-aged mind told him to march back
to bed; his ten-year-old one kept him in place. He needed answers, and more
importantly, he needed reassurance.
“What is it now?” His father asked
patiently.
“Do you believe in God?”
It took two more long drags from the
cigarette before he answered. “I believe in something, I suppose.” Hugh could
see in his father’s eyes that he was trying to find an answer that would
satisfy a child’s curiosity without scaring too much. “I guess that’s why we
have the tree in the corner…why we give each other gifts at this time of year.”