General Holy War

Awake early, I waltz to the living room of our trailer home with big plans to witness bloodshed. But what I find on the old wood-framed television Ma keeps promising to replace is public programming. I’m eleven, maybe twelve, old enough to get pissed off that Marlboro Reds lies sprawled out on the old pullout couch, snoring. I look at him, survey the rough hands braided across this chest, the knuckles fat from too much cracking. I glance back at the screen, wonder if it’s safe to flip the channel. 

Each morning I bust ass to the living room, sure Marlboro Reds has hit the road, always finding him there in too-big boxers and no shirt asleep and angry beneath the sleep. My old man’s gone, and ever since he got gone, Ma brings home guys you couldn’t pay me enough dollars to like, guys like Marlboro Reds. There’s been a few, too. She opens our trailer to just about any sad sack she meets at the bar where she works, this rundown spot where men drink Natural Light and Keystone Light and Coors Light. Ma says they all whistle at her and say, Hey, honey, how about another cold one. Ma says her customers all work the same lowlife jobs, the kind you only take if you can’t get good jobs, all collect cans at the beach or wait under the sharp sun behind the Home Depot for a day-labor gig or sometimes work the front door of Ma’s bar, though Ma’s bar is small and never crowded and it makes no sense anyone would need to mind the door. 

My old man had got hauled off to state jail about two years ago. Ma works six nights a week at the bar. When there’s not a new man, I get nights to myself, can roam the trailer park and smoke Ma’s snubbed-out cigarette butts and crush ladybugs beneath my sneaker soles and crawl up the pipe on the back of the house up to the roof to adjust the satellite to pick up skin flicks I watch through static until I fall asleep. 

Marlboro Reds won’t last because none of the men Ma brings home lasts, not long. They come, go, come, and go again, and I don’t think about them by their names because why bother. Of course, I know their names and call them sir—I know better than to not call them sir—but in my head, I think of them by whatever they smoke. They all smoke. 

American Spirits, Camel Milds, and Lucky Strikes each split after a couple weeks. They called taxis and took off while Ma was at work or hitched rides off the freeway around the bend where the big trucks with eighteen wheels and the colorless Hondas blast past all day and night heading wherever they go. They take Ma’s jewelry or the wads of cash she keeps in the brown box under her bed that she’s told me to not ever peek in because next to the wads of cash there are condoms. They leave behind crusted socks. They leave behind skidmarked drawers. I like the times when they leave because it’s just Ma and me and we are happy alone but they never stay gone for long because another one comes and they’re all the same. 

I fix myself a bowl of cereal from the store brand box Ma buys me for breakfast. I sit on the edge of the couch and look again at Marlboro Reds. We’ve had this couch my whole life. Duct tape holds together the spots where the cushions are gashed open from our bottoms always being there. Maybe Marlboro Reds has nowhere better to be. Maybe he’s hiding from bad things he’s done to other people. I don’t care. What I care about is he’s been here two months, a real long time, longer than American Spirits and longer than Camel Milds and Lucky Strikes. He thinks we’ve all voted him King of the Goddamn Television, what with the way he sleeps there and sits there all day and sloshes beer on the coffee table and tosses the crushed cans in a pile on the carpet. 

I keep careful to not make much noise. I hardly chew the cereal, the sharp pieces scratching my throat on the way down when I swallow a mouthful. The clock says ten minutes after nine and Road Runner is surely already hammering Wile E. Coyote’s ass, dropping big bushels of Acme Bricks on the coyote and painting tunnels on mountainsides and watching the coyote burn down the highway and crash into them, a bag of bones. 

Fuck it, I think, and reach for the clicker. But soon as my fingers touch it, Marlboro Reds is stirring. Marlboro Reds always stirs if I reach for the clicker. He sleeps through television shows on full blast and never moves his eyelids  when I shout every bad word I know or slam the front door over and over. If I change the channel, he flies to his feet like the washed-up men and sleepless vets at Ma’s bar hopping from a barstool to brawl. 

The smell of cigarettes soaks everything. I know enough to know you just have to stomach some letdowns. I leave on public programming. On the screen staring back at me is a fat-faced man with big bushy tufts of red hair on his cheeks, the words on the bottom of the screen General Holy War’s Battle Hour.  General Holy War is angry. He’s shouting. He saying freedom and family and faith and folk. He’s clasping his hands like he’s praying and saying we have to honor the Founding Fathers. 

My fifth-grade teacher has told us about the Founding Fathers again and again. I’m a bad student. I spend those class periods drawing in my notebook heads chopped off and writing the worst words I know, the ones I hear at the bar when Ma takes me with her to pick up her paycheck: jizzflap, asscock, fucktits. 

General Holy War’s real worked up. The Founding Fathers want us to be happy. Marlboro Reds coughs and hammers his chest once with a fist and never wakes up. The living room window is half open, and I hear from inside the sounds of the other trailer park kids letting loose outside like they let loose every Saturday. They run in packs and hurl water balloons at one another, let them rip like hand grenades and shout fire in the hole. I have gone out there before. I had no water balloons. The other trailer park kids pounded me with balloons until my shirt soaked through and I ran off quick, ducking back into the trailer.   

I imagine Marlboro Reds in the yard, maybe working on the rusty van he drives, and getting slammed with water balloons, retreating. Then, I imagine him out, maybe a wrench in hand, head under the hood, and real grenades bursting the van into metal parts. I imagine him now stumbling in the yard with big shrapnel gashes across his chest. I imagine Ma watching him take a last step and him falling face first into the balding grass yard and Ma draping a white blanket over his not-breathing body. Just you and me for a while, honey, she’s saying. 

General Holy War points to the letters written on his black t-shirt: Good Guy with a Gun.  General Holy War says, We should be willing to die for these freedoms and it says so right here. He’s thumping a pocket-sized Constitution with a fingernail, waving the booklet around. If they disarm our populace, he says, we ain’t got nothing left to protect ourselves from nothing else, maybe even from a hostile foreign force coming to take our lands and liberties and homes. The time will come when you have to stand up. 

I’m thinking, Yeah, yeah, and getting up and walking back to my room. Just for the shit of it, I scream jizzflap and asscock until my throat aches awful and slam the door as hard as I can once and twice, but I never can slam the door hard enough.  

***

Summer break starts and I sit inside where the air conditioning only sputters and coughs dust and life in the trailer park takes a turn for the worse. I start to go outside every day. The trailer park is big and has a lot of kids and some don’t wear shoes and others chew dip they steal from their fathers. A group of older trailer park boys chases down every kid they feel like chasing down. They have Super Soakers and when they catch you, they yank your pants down clean to your ankles, spray you good, and maybe spit on your ass and call you spitass. They hop on their bicycles and peel away and around the corner they laugh. 

In my bedroom, I rifle through clothes in the top drawer of my dresser. I fish out a tank top and it’s black and large and belonged to my old man. It has an American flag patch and I run my fingers along its edges. It smells like my father. I slide into the shirt, walk to the mirror, flex my arms in the mirror. I have no muscles. Ma says it’s because I only eat store brand cereal but there is nothing else in the cabinets and fridge. I search for something else to eat. On my arm is a small clump, scar tissue, atop my right bicep. 

Ma says my father is bad, but he’s not all that bad. He used to take me to her bar and sit me on the stool and after drinking his beers, he’d ask me did I want to split to a better joint and find some serious tail. I’d say, Tail?

The scar tissue is from the night my father made a mistake and sent everything sideways. He came home from the bar stumbling and red-faced and saying Ma made him pay his check for his beers. Also his whiskeys. He stomped in circles around the coffee table and went back and forth to the fridge and each time with a new beer in his hand. You aren’t tough enough, he told me. He sucked on his cigarette and held the smoke in his chest until it filled and he looked like he might explode into parts of a person. Son, he said, you aren’t tough enough. Come here, he said, and grabbed my arm and squeezed to keep it still and reached out with his cigarette. The tip burned hot. Steady, he said, and burned me good. Now they’ll know you’re tough. Now nobody’s going to hurt you. When Ma came home, she said, Goddamnit I’ve had enough. She called 911, yelling her head off. I won’t let nobody hurt you, she said, and hugged me. Through the window I watched the lights flash on the faces of trailers blue and red and the shadow of my father in the backseat leaning forward. 

I need to get strong, I think. I do push-ups until I hit ten and do more until I lose count. I do push-ups until my arms can’t work. I stand up again and see myself in the mirror, but I don’t look any stronger. I think hard and long and can’t remember what kind of cigarettes my father smoked.  

***

Two weeks or three into summer break and I go outside and walk to the entrance of the trailer park. I pass the sign that says Don’t Stay Gone Too Long. The mailbox needs a key. When its door opens, it’s spitting out coupon sheets and letters with stamps and bills. I pick up the envelopes from the ground, through the coupons, and flip through what’s left. There’s nothing from the state jail. I turn and pass the sign that says Welcome Home and walk back toward the trailer. 

Something wet smacks the back of my neck as I turn the corner of the gravel path. Four or five boys are staring at me when I turn around, all on their bicycles. They have faces flecked with acne. They all have Super Soakers. They’re smiling. I wrench and run but by the time I get away I’m damp through my shirt and shorts.  

I push through the door and my shoes squish on linoleum. Marlboro Reds shoots up from the couch. He grabs my collar and twists until I cough and says, You shouldn’t be tracking water in here. Yes, sir, I manage. He twists until his clenched palm faces the ceiling. Yes, sir. 

***

Next Saturday I sit on the porch cross-legged. I pick up ants and say, Fuck you, and pinch them dead, mash them until they’re nothing. I try to eat one because I saw it on TV once. It’s sour and I spit and spit but the taste stays. The sun rises high in the sky and bleeds like yolk. Marlboro Reds turns the TV up inside, General Holy War gumming about guns. The older trailer park boys peddle past on their bicycles and I make myself small, hug my knees to my chest, and try to knot up. 

When they’re gone, I do jumping jacks in the yard until my legs burn up and then do some more. When my father was still here, the older boys would roll up near our yard and take one look at him, the bluing jailhouse tattoo on his neck, and swing a U-turn. Day after he left, after everyone came out and cracked beer cans and watched the cop car drive him away, Jimmy skidded his bike out front and told me, Your old man can’t protect you no more, huh. Jimmy was the meanest of the older trailer park boys, the leader. He has red hair and lost a front tooth and wears no shirt and cut-off jean shorts with one leg longer than the other. I looked at the pimples on his chest, red from mashing, and said nothing. 

When my legs go rubbery, I switch to push-ups, crank them out until my arms ache. I picture myself strong. I see myself throwing punches at anyone dumb enough to Super Soaker spray me again. Ma’s Honda rounds the corner and grinds into the driveway, shooting gravel every way. It’s red and rust has gnawed away much of the color on its hood. I haven’t let Ma drive me to school in years. The engine ticks and she steps out. The trash cans toppled at the road, my bike on its side in the grass. Wind blows a Natural Light past her. It wasn’t me, I tell her, meaning the garbage. 

Worry lines shatter her forehead, but she smiles. I squash an ant. I can clean it up, though, I tell her. 

You can, huh? Ma smiles, eyeballs me. You must want something. 

I don’t, but I say a pellet gun.   

Forget it. Not happening.  

I frown, make a big show of it. 

OK, I say, a Super Soaker.  

A Super Squirter? That sounds expensive. 

Super Soaker, I hiss, embarrassed for her. The words shoot out meaner than I want them to sound. 

Work’s been slow, Ma says. She frowns. Maybe later this summer. Ma goes up the steps and disappears into the trailer. I sit on the porch, cross and uncross my legs, listen to the war cries from the other trailer park kids around the bend. The clouds above break apart. The sun smears the sky. 

The older boys are riding bicycles this way; I hear them kicking at their pedals and shouting words like fuckface and fartdick. A plastic bag twists in the air and then flies low and snags on weeds. I get up and go inside.  

***

Another week passes, then two more. I’m in the front yard every day cranking out push-ups. I’m up from ten to twenty-five. When I lower my chest to the earth, the grass blades poke it. I start doing sitting ups and squat jumps I’ve seen on the television. I tie buckets filled with water to each end of the broomstick and do curls. 

Ma works later. I hear every morning when she comes home, the sun not up but purpling the sky through my bedroom window. Marlboro Reds stays up late and watches TV and throws beer cans at the front door when he’s finished them. Sometimes the springs from her bed start squeaking fast and I bury my head beneath my pillow until they stop. I check the mailbox every day. No letters come from the state jail. 

***

One day halfway through summer, I eat my store bought cereal and pass Marlboro Reds on the couch on my way out front. I do push-ups, thirty. I hold the push-up at the bottom until my arms can’t hold me up. I fall face-first into the grass.

In the yard across from ours a girl appears. She’s Susanne, a classmate. She wears a flower-printed dress, has a purple bow lashed to her hair. I’ve sat behind her or next to her since the third or fourth grade, I guess, but she’s never spoken to me. I couldn’t meet her eyes if I tried. Barbies are strewn across her lawn. Sunlight snaps off the aluminum foil in her windows. Her house sits on cinder blocks. Her family’s not leaving anytime soon, I think, and smile. 

Susanne dances around her lawns, over spots balded by sun. Her little sister peels part of the aluminum foil back and watches from the window. Susanne’s shoulders are tanned. I think Susanne’s gone to the pool, the beach. I imagine her in a swimsuit. She jumps and twists and balances on one leg. I understand I’m staring at her and a knot twists my guts. I swallow and my throat feels crowded with thorns. 

I turn away. Someone’s stacked a pile of old tires on the corner. I look to Ma’s Honda, the scratches all across the door panels. Back over my shoulder Ma stands at the window, grinning.  

Later, inside, Ma gives me grief about Susanne. How about that Summer, she says. That your girlfriend? I make my face mean. I tell Ma her name’s Susanne, but she  doubles down. I’m embarrassed, she says, to forget my daughter-in-law’s name. Don’t tell her, please. Angry, I say, OK. Nothing else. OK shuts her up and I feel bad for spoiling her fun. Ma lights a Virginia Slim and looks out the window. I go back outside. 

Hammers are hammering metal somewhere far off. Susanne’s on a beach towel in her yard, but she’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I feel robbed. Sunlight bounces off antennas everywhere. Bicycles creak. Jimmy rounds the bend, then the others. Dust storms swirl around them. I jump to my feet and turn toward the door. I look back and see Jimmy let loose, lift his Super Soaker, spray Susanne. I pause, but then I step inside and close the door. 

I look out the window and Susanne’s ringing water out her dress. She looks up at me, the first time ever, and mouths the word jerk. 

***

Next morning, I blink my bedroom into focus and see Ma above me. She’s smiling big, hunched over. She’s got my shoulders in my hands and is shaking. What? I say. What’s the emergency?

Hon, Ma says. Her voice is rough, like it’s the first time she’s spoken today. Go to Walmart with me? Please?

Ma, I protest. 

Ma throws her hands up, says it’s the only time she has, that she can’t carry all the bags herself. I’m working the rest of the week, she says. Just help me out? 

I think hard and can’t find an excuse. I rub my eyes, nod.  

We pass through the doors that open on their own into the side with groceries. Cool air hits me. Families are scrambling everywhere, plucking cans and boxes from shelves. Some bicker. There are too many conversations and I can’t separate one from the next.  

Ma makes her way up and down the aisles. She snatches canned food, the shitty stuff. Green beans, red beans, baked beans. She grabs store brand cereal. She grabs oatmeal. My stomach flips around inside me. Ma writes down prices in a notebook and does math, whispering to herself. Ma puts the notebook in her purse and pushes the cart away from the groceries. I worry she’s heading to the clothes, but it’s too early for back-to-school sales. She plows forward and doesn’t slow down and moves through a crowd of shoppers. She whizzes past a rack of basketballs. I can hardly keep up. She turns down the last aisle and looks back, shoots me a small smile. 

By the time I get to Ma, she’s holding a Nerf Super Soaker. It has an orange pump and a matching plastic grip, a clear bottle fixed to the top for extra water. But Ma, I say, but she just drops the Super Soaker in the cart. It’s been a rough few months, she says. Things are still tight. Sorry I can’t get you the bigger one. 

I hug my arms around her waist. 

Outside, the sun beats down on the parking lot pavement. I ignore the heat. I’m careful not to complain. I lift groceries and put them in the trunk. In the passenger seat, the Super Soaker sits in my lap. I have big thoughts. I see myself with war paint on my face, maybe a bandana cinched around my forehead. I see the older boys in the trailer park tearing ass, diving for cover. I see myself giving chase, not giving them any mercy. 

***

Next morning, I find my bicycle in the yard and pedal out. I circle the trailer park two, three times, slowing in front of Susanne’s house. She never comes out. To myself I say the phrases General Holy War says on TV. It’s time for a prayer meeting, he says. Face down on the floor, he says. Get ready to meet your maker. 

The day burns hot. I hide behind an electrical unit, wait. A mound of trash nearby broils. The rotten food smell makes me gag, but I stay there, waiting. I clutch my Super Soaker. When the older boys in the trailer park finally ride up on their bicycles, I track them. I hunt them. I follow them until they get ready to attack younger kids, then I sprint up and spray and sprint off. 

I’m a natural with a weapon. I carry a scrap of paper and keep a tally of my kills. They chase me but I run fast and cut through trailers and disappear. 

When the day’s too hot, I go inside to take a break. I fill a coffee mug with water at the kitchen sink, and Marlboro Reds says, Bring me a beer while you’re at it, yeah? He’s watching General Holy War. I hand Marlboro Reds a cold can and he grips my shoulder. I wince. Thanks, he says. You’re putting on some beef, he says.  

I’m trying. 

That’s good. I can give you some pointers one of these days. 

I look at his gut, sagging over his belt buckle. Yes, sir, I say.  

Marlboro Reds says his father was stronger than shit. He says his father had him working out real young. 

General Holy War flashes off the screen and the show ends with a blue screen. Marlboro Reds clicks the clicker and lies back and drinks the beer. 

I think of my father. When I was little, he took me to the beach. We threw rocks at seagulls. If Ma was off work, she’d sit in the sand and draw with her finger, then tell us to knock it off, to not hurt the birds. Ma would bury me in the sand, but my father would laugh and flick my forehead and ask did I know about Chinese torture. I didn’t.

I fill sink water into the Super Soaker and head outside. I push my bicycle past the welcome sign and the cluster of mailboxes and the laundry building. Birds huddle around puddles and drink and I send them flying when I skid the bicycle their way. Someone shouts from behind a window screen. The sun’s sagging and smudging the sky orange. The moon’s outline’s carved into the day.   

I pull back around and ride until I reach the trailer. Ma’s Honda’s out front. I grab the doorknob and then hear the bed squeaking. I hear grunts. I lie on the porch belly-first and do push-ups. After a while, Marlboro Reds steps out the door and looks down on me. Good boy, he says. Now do ten more.  

***

One night a week before school starts, I sprawl on the living room floor, sunburnt and tired. The older boys don’t come out as much, and I’ve started cutting the patrols short. The ceiling fan rattles above. The night’s thick with the heat. Marlboro Reds pounds the air conditioner with a fist and it groans and quits. Goddamn, he’s saying. Goddamn. 

The TV’s off, so I reach for the clicker. Sweating, Marlboro Reds snaps, The hell? I’m watching something. 

It’s off, I say. The TV’s off. 

I’m about to watch something. 

Marlboro Reds snatches up the clicker. He shoots me a look that says go away. I go outside. My Super Soaker’s on the porch, but the heat’s got my mind lazy and I pass it and walk to my bicycle. I push out on my bicycle. A half-moon glows above. A cluster of clouds crowd around it. I speed up, slow down, speed up, then get tired and stay slow. Cicadas click. June bugs jump in cones of light beneath a streetlamp. Sweat sops down my sides. 

Boredom sinks in like a stone in water. I turn back home, hop off my bicycle, let the metal frame tumble to the yard. On the front porch, I slip out of my tank top and flick sweat from my tummy. Through the screen door comes the sound of the bed bouncing. 

I’m on my tenth pushup when a shadow shoots across the lawn so fast I wonder if it happens at all. Something snaps, a stick maybe. I wade into the yard, mosquitos circling me. 

I never see the first punch coming, but then my head hurtles. My pants are down at my ankles and I’m falling, face hitting the dirt. I roll to my back, see the older boys hunched over me.  

You little fuck, Jimmy’s saying.  You want to spray us? Us? 

Inside, the coils hit a high screech. I wrestle myself to my hands and knees. The older boys spray me good, on my chest, my arms, my face. Jimmy fishhooks me and they spray into my mouth. It’s sharp, sour. That’s piss, Jimmy says. We got a new name for you. You know what it is? 

Jolts of pain push through my sides and I feel fresh scrapes on my knees. I’m coughing. 

It’s Piss Breath, Jimmy says. All right, Piss Breath?  

The older boys make off in a flash. I’m hot with anger, but I lie there thinking how stupid I am, how reckless I’d been to get caught unarmed. Clouds charcoal the sky, disappearing the moon. The sound of their bicycles vanishes in the night, and all that’s left are cicadas screaming their brains out. When they finally let up, I listen to the quiet for a long time. Finally, the front door creaks open. Ma shouts something, the TV talking behind her. Marlboro Reds appears in the doorframe, a shadowed body in underwear, scratching his gut. He says, Did you get your ass whooped? I picture him standing at a bus stop or hailing a taxi. I picture gunshot wounds and grenades. General Holy War’s hitting a fever pitch. It’s time, he says. Right now. It’s time.