"Cradling Methuselah"
Baltimore – 1984
As soon as he got out of the cab he leapt up the narrow steps in twos, racing for the weathered awning stretched before the narrow brown row house. He got to his knees in the dirt beside the door, digging around for that plastic rock holding the door key. When he finally found it he tipped it over to get at the key, and that's when he noticed the clacking of the key inside the plastic container, courtesy of a tremor in his hands. He wagged his head, taking a tighter grip on the rock. He stilled his hands with effort, and forced the key out onto the ground.
Once inside he immediately wiggled out of his bloody jeans and stuffed them in the fireplace, dousing them in lighter fluid before setting them ablaze. He knelt before the fire for a time, watching the clothing smolder and then burn, his blue eyes cold and distant. Eventually he snapped out of his daze and noticed the obvious bloodstains on his underwear. He added these to the fire and then raced upstairs to take a shower.
He stood under the nozzle with one arm supported on the wall and cranked the hot water knob as far as it would go, letting the water scald him clean. It was too hot, but he didn't really notice, not until the blisters started spotting up on his arms, back and neck. He felt his skin sagging, as if it would slough off entirely, and so he killed the water and lumbered out of the shower. He sat on the side of the tub, staring at his leathery, blistered body in the mirror.
"So..." he muttered. "You were there when a guy died... and that's bad... but you were seen by... well, by not too many people... so... y'know..."
He shook his head, getting to his feet. He went across the narrow hallway and into his bedroom. There were three beds in the room, one a single, and two bunks, but only one showed any signs of being occupied. It was tidied up with all the best efforts of a young boy: sheets barely straightened, and a crooked pillow still indented from its small user's head.
He sat on the side of his bed and reached under the mattress. He pulled out a ratty brown piece of fluff. It was fur, probably a fine fur in its time, too, but now little more than mottled scraps of its former self. Its shape was barely recognizable: a fox's head, separated from the garment it once graced, with two mismatched plastic eyes beaming with a dead luster from carved sockets. The boy got to his feet and placed the macabre fox's head on the bedpost. From here the thing's vacant, lifeless eyes could watch as he paced back and forth across the room.
"See, the thing is: I wasn't seen by too many people, so..."
He stopped in the center of the room, arms crossed. He looked over at the fox as he started pacing again:
"Well... yeah. I thought of that. But he believed me, I think. That story about spilling the beer was pretty good. It worked, so—"
He stopped again, and again he stared at the fox head:
"Yeah, I know: they might have cameras. But the Quickening probably broke 'em all, so—"
Again he looked to the fox.
"Right, there might've been more. And I know about the police. But those policemen were running really fast. I don't think they noticed me. Why would they? Right?"
The boy knelt down, arms over his kneecaps. He shook his head, still looking at the fox head:
"There are too many 'things'. Aren't there?" He sat down on the carpeted floor, running one hand through his hair. He looked over at the mirror on his bedroom door; his body was now free of any blister or deformity, and his skin was again as soft and as fresh as a milk-bathed calf. He stared at his own face in the mirror, slowly nodding:
"'Kay," he whispered. "That's simple, then."
He looked back over at the fox's head, and he sneered.
"Yes. I agree with you, Galabeg. I'm done."
He stared at the floor between his legs, shaking his head:
"I'm done, here."
X
X
X
The sun fell quickly that night, and by 10:30 he was in a chair at the head of the kitchen table. The room was shrouded in darkness; only the faint glow of sickly yellow streetlamps illuminated anything, and they barely pierced the thick curtains on the window over the sink. His face rested on the oak table, twisted to one side, and his right hand lay splayed across the tabletop, gripping a gunmetal-colored walkman in his slender fingers.
The Policescreamed into his ears, belting out an angry little tune about polluting smokestacks and Scottish lakes. It was Synchronicity II— his favorite song of that album— and even that tune managed to sully his mood. They were broken up, now. The band was. Sting had left the group earlier that year, and now the only thing left to mark their passing was the music they left behind. Afterthoughts. Footprints.
He opened his eyes, blinking in the darkness of the room.
"Nothing lasts forever," he mumbled.
The Police were sure to leave some mighty large footprints in their wake. They couldn't help but do so. He'd remember them— that's for sure— and for a long time, too. In a way, their music made them immortal.
The boy closed his eyes again, shaking his head. Hewas immortal in a different way. And he didn't leave big footprints in his wake. No, he left very small footprints. He had to.
He absolutely had to.
He was still wearing that brand new Cal Ripken shirt, but he wore a faded, ratty pair of denim shorts down below. They were his. As in 'his', his. He'd come to this place wearing them, to live with Martha in her house. The Baltimore CPS agent who brought him here offered to drive him by a clothing store on the way and get him some nicer shorts. 'Respectable' bottoms, she told him, in order to make a good impression on his new foster parent. He declined the offer. He wanted to show up here wearing his own clothing, however tattered they might be.
He knew he'd be leaving in them, one day.
Same story with the dirty Reeboks now on his feet, their soles nearly peeling off, and part of one toe exposed to the elements. He prevented Martha from throwing them out by calling them his 'lucky shoes'. There was blood on his spiffy white Keds from that confrontation with Mister Corndog, naturally, but a quick run through the washer and dryer left them nearly spotless. Those he put on one of the empty bunk beds upstairs. They were in good shape, and they'd serve another boy well. The next boy that came to stay with Martha.
The song came to an end, and the band started droning the same words over and over and over.
"Many miles away..." he whispered along with the fading chorus.
The cassette tape stopped with an abrupt click. Instantly the spool seized up, and then began winding the tape backward at breakneck pace. That brought him out of his funk for a moment and he grinned. He had to admit: that feature was pretty cool. The whole gizmo was pretty cool, actually. The sound was all crap, of course. These cassettes were better than 8-track (by a little bit) but really it was just a gimmick to make it easier to take the music around with you. That was cool, too, but god was the sound terrible! Not only that, but if you were like he was, and loved playing, replaying, and re-replaying your favorite song again and again and again then you were in for a really bad time: those flimsy pieces of magnetic tape were liable to snap on you at any moment.
For rather understandable reasons the boy was attracted to things that could last a very, very long time.
Of course, now he was hearing all these crazy stories about some kind of new sound system: it was like a smaller, shiner 78 record, it could fit in the palm of your hand, and it used zaps from a red laser beam to make music play.
He smiled again: he'd have to pick one of those up sometime. Maybe he could listen to some tunes in the Millennium Falcon on his way to Alderaan.
Just as quickly he frowned: he remembered all the time he spent listening to Martha's 78s with her in the living room, especially on rainy days when the weather was too bad even for the other neighborhood boys to venture into. She didn't have much of a selection, mostly classical stuff, but it didn't really matter to him. He liked the music, whatever was playing, and there were those rare occasions that she surprised him with a record of his own. His prize possession was a copy of Thriller, all done up in that fancy packaging. She got it for him last year, and on its release day, no less. It was the same day as his birthday, anyway, so it was a convenient gift.
He stared down at his feet and absently kicked the small tartan backpack lying on its side. There was no room for records in there. Even if there were, he wouldn't have a chance to play it anytime soon. Besides, he was no thief: that record belonged to someone else: a boy named 'Penrith'.
He wasn't Penrith.
In fact, in just a few minutes', 'Penrith' would no longer exist.
Keys fumbled in the lock of the kitchen door. It swung open, revealing a stooped figure highlighted by the burning streetlamps outside. Martha toddled into the kitchen and flipped the light. She was spry for her age; at sixty years she still managed to put in half-shifts down at Union Memorial Hospital, as well as take in the odd foster child or two. He found it remarkable, actually. Lord knows he didn't know where she got the energy for it all— nursing patients during the day, tending to children in the evening and morning— especially now, in the obvious twilight of her life. It was a foreign thing to him, but he often thought that she must feel it, the winding down of all things, and the ticking of the clock. Why didn't she seem to feel tired? Why wasn't she more subdued? He was only 12, after all, and he felt tired all the time. Subdued. He had no clock ticking for him, either, so why was it that she seemed to be the one with all the energy, anyway? That was kinda backward, wasn't it?
Just one of those weird things, he guessed.
She started when she noticed the boy lying against the table.
"Oh, Pen!" She smiled. "What a surprise. But isn't it past your bedtime?"
"Wanted to see you, before bed." He waited for Martha to set her bags down and then motioned across the table, where a cold glass of iced tea bled onto a coaster. "Made you an iced tea. Kinda looks like you need it."
"Oh, you dear! It was a crazy day at the hospital. All these FBI agents were hanging about downstairs for some reason. Can you believe that?" She stood before the sink, washing her hands.
"FBI? Huh. Must've been cool." He watched her wash her hands, and his eyes were drawn to those heavy curtains above the sink. They were garish things, covered in a pattern of cardinals sailing around, singing. It was cartoony, too, since some of them looked like they were smiling. It freaked him out when he first came to Martha's house, and after that it just sort of annoyed him. He hated those curtains, and he really wished that Martha would change them.
But right now, for some reason, he thought he could stare at them for a lifetime and be happy.
Martha sat down, groaning on weathered knees, and she took a long drink from her iced tea. He stared at her, hands folded under his chin, and kept very still.
"Pen, are you alright?" She asked.
"Yeah. 'Course."
"Is your lip just trembling?"
The boy looked away, scoffing.
"What? No..."
"Pen."
The boy stared down at the tabletop. When he looked back up at Martha he was more composed:
"Martha, I want you to know that I've really liked living here. A lot. You've been taking really good care of me—"
The woman scoffed, smiling at the boy:
"That all's nonsense, Pen. You take good care of yourself. I've had all kinds of boys here in my time, and you're the most independent of the bunch, by far." She held up her iced tea, shaking the glass around. "Honestly, you take better care of me, Pen."
"I just don't want to be trouble. You don't deserve trouble."
The woman stared at him, her wrinkled face quizzical. She took his hand from across the table:
"Stop talking nonsense, Pen. You're no trouble. You're a good boy..."
Her dull green eyes trembled a bit, and she blinked unsteadily a few times.
"Well," she set her iced tea down and rubbed her forehead. "I was more tired than I thought!"
The boy slowly got to his feet. He rounded the table, coming to the old woman's side. He held her shoulder as she began slumping down.
"Oh...thank you, Pen!" She mumbled. "Such a good boy. So nice. You know, me being foolish, I always thought: so independent! Really is. And I always thought... you didn't have to be. Didn't think you needed to be. Or, at least I didn't think you should think...you had to be..."
She listed forward, limp, and he carefully held her up, gently cradling her wrinkled head with his young, toned arms. The old woman lay slumped, held in the child's arms, until finally he lowered her head onto the table. He retrieved a pillow from a sofa in the living room and slid it under her head. She muttered dreamily while he worked:
"You'll...let me in... one day... know I care... and that's enough..."
"You care about me?" The boy asked.
"Mmm... hmm..." Martha's head nodded a bit.
"You want me to be happy?"
Again, a small nod.
The boy nodded, too. He gently kissed the woman's forehead and brushed her gray hair away from her face:
"Then forget I ever existed. Forget that you even knew my name."
He got to his feet. His jaw trembled, but he willed it to stop.
"'Cause I don't wanna be trouble," he whispered. "You don't deserve that..."
He grabbed his tartan backpack and the Walkman and headed for the kitchen door. He suddenly skidded to a halt at the door, turning around to look at the sleeping woman one last time. He took several steps toward her. He got to his knees again, staring at her, and he slowly reached out for her shoulder. His fingers inched forward, and just before they touched he wagged his head, scowling.
He slammed the Walkman down on the tabletop and raced out of the row house as fast as his legs could carry him.
X
X
X
A couple bus trips brought him over to the 'wrong' side of town. He wasn't tired, and sleep wasn't even on his mind. Even here, though, he couldn't hope to wander the streets all night without being challenged, and so he looked for shelter. He found a small culvert under a bridge near a children's park that fit the bill, and he spent nearly half-an-hour there, knees curled up, staring off into the distance. A rusted merry-go-round squeaked on busted hinges as it turned in the wind, and the swing set chains let out ghostly rattles with every gust. Shapes began forming in the darkness, spurred by his imagination, and in every check of wind, or every car headlight passing over the bridge above him, he saw something sinister lumbering through the darkness, coming right for him.
"What are you?" He chastised himself. "Some scaredey-cat little boy?"
Another quick gust of wind brought even more rusty turns of the merry-go-round, and more rattling from the chains.
He leapt to his feet, and he quickly grabbed his backpack and shuttled off into the night. The macabre fox's head barely peeked out of a half-zipped compartment in the backpack. The boy looked down at it and snarled:
"Shut up," he muttered.
He didn't have to wander long before a church caught his eye. It was an old-time, gothic-looking thing, and when he circled back through the grounds he nearly bumped headfirst into a giant, mossy tombstone. The cemetery spanned quite a distance, hemmed in on all sides by a stone wall, and near one corner there was a small shack, little more than a collection of rotted wood boards and rusty nails jutting at intervals. He managed to pry the door open, and inside it was a true mess. At one time it had housed gardening supplies and, from the smell of things, fertilizer, but now there was nothing but a few bunches of old, rotting newspaper and the long-dormant remains of a homeless junkie's camp.
He pulled the rotted boards shut and unzipped his backpack. He got out a can of Sterno and lit it up. The thing cast sickly green light on his depressing surroundings. He pulled the fox head from his bag and propped it up on an uneven shelf on the wall. The erratic firelight made its shadow dance in the darkness, almost giving it a creepy sense of life.
"So, it's all good," he mumbled. "I mean, this isn't a bad thing, really. I was gonna age-out from there soon, anyway. So, you know, it's better that I was forced to leave, now..."
He looked up at the fox head, and he shook his head.
"No. Martha will be fine. She was...you know... just saying that stuff. That's the kind of stuff you say to a kid when they're staying with you. You have to say that kinda stuff. That's all. Doesn't mean anything. She'll be fine. She'll forget me. 'Course she will..."
He got to his feet and paced, nibbling on one fingernail as he spoke:
"At least I don't have to be 'Penrith' anymore, right? Always hated that name. Let's see...now... who will I be?"
He stopped and looked over at the fox head:
"You know what, Galabeg? I think you're right! I don't think I've used 'Penance' in a long time, have I? There was Pendry, Pendell, Penwyn..." he shrugged. "No, I haven't used my real name in ages. So, there's that..."
Penance put his head to the wall. He listened through the rotted wood boards, picking up all the soft sounds of the sleeping city outside: cars passing beyond the cemetery wall, the buzz of electric lamps dangling off the elegant gothic church, a hobo's shopping cart squeaking along on the sidewalk outside.
He was done with Baltimore. Finished. At least for a decade or two. Probably more, just to be safe. It was too bad. He rather liked the city, and he loved the ball team. Penance took off his new shirt and held it up, appreciating the bright colors. He gently folded it up and put it into his backpack. Seriously, he really shouldn't feel bad about leaving the city. After all, he'd been packing up and running away from cities long before this city was even born. That's right, compared to him, this city was a spring chicken.
1729. That was it. That was when it was founded. It was on his last history test. Penance remembered because he got it wrong by over two hundred years. The teacher thought he was being a wiseass, and Johnny thought it was hilarious. That reminded him: he was supposed to spend the night at Johnny's this Friday, wasn't he? Yeah: a couple of the guys were staying there. They were gonna see that new 'Conan' movie, then go and get pizza from that place around the corner. Johnny had Atari at his place, and so they'd spend the rest of the night playing that. It was easy to know when it was time to sleep; they always had leftovers from the pizza place, and so they'd spend the night gnawing on stale pizza crusts like a group of wolf cubs picking at animal bones, until the food was all gone. Then it was time to argue over who got the bunk beds and who got the floor. Johnny always suggested 'thumb war', but he always cheated, too...
Penance stumbled to his knees. His lips trembled and his iron blue eyes quivered. He fell back against the wall of the shed, and then gathered up all those scraps of newspaper and plastered them over his body, cuddling into the pile. His eyes absently scanned the dates: 1984, 1983, 1977, 1972...
He lay on his back, limp, and the sagging floorboards carefully held him up, gently cradling his head. Penance lay slumped, his ancient body held fast in the young embrace of the city's night, until finally he turned his head to one side, curled himself up into a ball, and tried to sleep.
He couldn't. Not at first. He spent about twenty minutes bawling into those dirty shreds of newspaper, tears flowing freely, until he exhausted himself and drifted into unconsciousness.
