M.J. Kjeldsen
writes under the name Marvin Redblood. He is author of the non-fiction
book THE MOUNTAINEERS: A HISTORY and the fiction book A FLASH ON THE
RIVER, as well as numerous novels and short stories. He lives with his
we-wife and dog in Red Wing, Minnesota.
~Jim Kjeldsen
THE GIANT GILA MONSTER
I think it was
Mrs. Raftis who called the police the night mother locked me out. I
had eaten too much for dinner, so she ordered me to take off my clothes. Instead
of standing in the bathroom or my own room with the window open, as I usually
did, she sent me out the back door. It didn't seem cold at first, and I
tried to ignore Mrs. Raftis, who was peeping out her window as I stood
huddled on the grass near the willow tree, which was leafless and bending in
the wind. The police came right away.
In spite of mother’s ways, life was
good up to that point. I usually did as I pleased, which was watch old
movies starring giant gila monsters and voodoo and creatures from outer
space. Or I might go to the library and read, not coming out until after dark. It
was only after the police came that things got bad. They didn’t say much
to mother, but the next day two people, a man and a woman, came to school and
sat me down in the principal’s office. They wanted to know everything
about me and mother, and at the time I saw no reason not to tell them that we
slept together in the same bed because she got very cold at night and that we
ate popcorn for dinner when she wasn’t feeling well, which was often. They
were terribly upset about these things, especially how I was made to stand in
the cold. The two people talked about me living elsewhere, but nothing
came of it.
I minded my manners well, as I’d been
taught. When we went to church, I got out and opened the car door for
mother, though she was the driver. She waited until I came around, then
took my arm as we walked into church. Usually, we sat in the back pew and
left early. Still, mother was religious and had different holy cards that
she set around the house. Each day when I came home from school they’d be
rearranged, a different set for each day of the week. I could tell what
day it was by looking at the cards: Thursday, St. Anthony; Friday,
St. Jerome; Monday, St. Ignatius Loyola. The Holy Family in all
their perfection was for Sunday.
She was in her bath as I was looking
at the holy cards one Sunday before church, and she called to me. In
the bathtub, her body was small and odd, her breasts limp, her stomach loose
and folded over itself. Mother said nothing, just kept looking at me.
“Yes, mother?”
“Can you look at me?”
“Yes. Of course, mother.”
“I want you to look at me.”
I glanced over, and she sighed deeply
as if I were an insect that had begun a slow crawl down the wall toward her,
legs trailing in the wetness. She held one hand over her private area, fingers
held up a bit, careful to conceal but not to touch. She kept an eye on me to
see if there was any response. This was a test I’d passed before. On the
counter was a hair dryer, and I began fiddling with it, turning it on and
off. Mother was more relaxed now and wasn’t asking me to look any
longer. The hair dryer fumbled from my hand and fell. The lights went
out and I could hear sloshing in the tub. The cord dangled from the
outlet like the guilty serpent in the Bible.
I ran off to find the breaker box and
flip the lights back on. In the garage behind her car, I tripped each
switch in slow succession until I found the one that had caused the outage. At
last, there was light in the bathroom. Mother hadn't moved. She was
gasping, her thin chest heaving. They shouldn’t see her like that, so I
pulled her up, flesh loose under the skin as if it were about to pull away like
a cadaver. I tucked her into bed so she’d be warm. When the police arrived,
they wanted to know all about it.
“The hair dryer fell in the
water?” a burly officer asked incredulously. “Was she drying her hair
in the tub?”
“I have no idea, sir. I removed
the hair dryer and put her to bed.”
“Where were you when this
happened?”
“I was counting holy cards, sir.”
“In which room?”
“Outside the door.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“I was standing counting holy cards,
sir. Some of them need to be replaced. They're quite sullied.”
“How old are you, son?”
“Fourteen, sir.”
“Do you always stand outside the door
while your mother is taking a bath?”
“Sometimes she asks for things.”
“Things?”
“A towel, other times lotion she
keeps in her bedroom.”
“And you wait just in case, every
time she takes a bath?”
“She's quite demanding.”
“Where were you when the hair dryer
fell in the tub?”
“I was standing here counting holy
cards.”
“Were you in the bathroom with her?”
“Well, she'd asked for something, I
don't remember if I was in the bathroom at the time.”
“Does she always dry her hair in the
tub?”
“Oh no, this was quite unusual.”
“You’ll have to come with us,
kid. You're lucky, you know. An electrical appliance dropped in
bathwater would have killed most people. She still might die.”
“That would be awful, sir. I
have no one else.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“What?”
“Drop the hair dryer in the
tub? Why?”
“I have no recollection of dropping a
hair dryer in the tub, sir. I have no idea what she was doing in there.”
“Okay, kid. Come on.”
The detention center was unpleasant,
with bizarre-looking people, most of them older, dressed in the meanest of
clothes. They were neither kind nor friendly nor understanding, and
pushed me around rudely, frisking my pockets for cigarettes and cash. Finally,
one of them, a huge black boy wearing a leather jacket over his bare chest,
flipped a finger at me.
“What are you in for?” he demanded.
“They say I electrocuted my mother.”
“Ho‑o‑o‑o‑ly Jesus!” he
exclaimed. “And you looking like such a piss-ant. What did you want
to go and do that to your own mother for?”
“It was an accident.”
He busted out laughing. “Kid,
we're all in here by accident. You’re in with mean dudes. There’s
Creely, he’ll screw you, give him half a chance. Won’t you, Cree? Go
on, wipe that shit-eatin’ grin off your face, maybe I'll help you do it, too.”
“She was bothering me, so I had to.”
There was silence as the others paid attention. “It's easy to kill someone
if you know how. But I leave those alone who leave me alone.”
The black boy muttered, “Your own
mother!” Then he returned to his business. They ignored me after that.
Mother recovered quickly and was out
of the hospital within a week. But doctors were reluctant to release me
back into her custody before the investigation was complete. In all, I
spent a month in detention, going to school and helping in the kitchen, where I
could be close to the food. Mother never was a good cook. We ate out of
cans, and she rarely felt the necessity of warming the food before serving
it. In detention, cooks were around all day, and I was drawn to the sweet
rolls they baked and some of the breads. I sought salty things, too. The chief
cook, Mrs. Bartholomew, was death on salt. She was a Seventh Day
Adventist and thought of salt as a tool of the devil. Of course, we didn’t
have much of it.
Mrs. Bartholomew was a slender,
pretty woman, and I suppose she expected all of us to look as she did
someday. I had nothing against her vision of my future, as long as she let
me work in the kitchen. It was in the kitchen I discovered many of the joys of
life that persist to this day, crushed in like compacted trash with the other
debris of my life.
As I say, I was only there a month,
and when the court date arrived, I was brought in wearing baggy jail coveralls
and tennis shoes without laces so I couldn’t run away. Mother was shocked. I
sat next to her without a word. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t any
worse for the accident. The social worker read the report. The court
commissioner shifted his papers.
“What’s the psychological
assessment?” he asked.
“Mentally uneven,” the social worker
said, “but he is an intelligent child.”
The commissioner looked at
me. “Young man, it’s up to this court to decide whether you should go back
home or be placed in an institution. What do you have to say to that?”
Mother was seated beside me, and I
could feel her grow tense. She erupted
frantically, “It was just an accident. It was foolish of me to
leave the hair dryer on the counter, plugged in no less. He’s a little
clumsy at times--aren’t all growing kids? I don’t know how I could do
without him at home. It’s been terrible with him gone. We do love
each other.”
The commissioner scratched his
head. “This is a difficult case,” he pondered. “I’m inclined, for the
child's own good, to recommend an outside home for the interim so we have time
to review the situation.”
“Please,” mother begged, “don’t do
that. He’s all I’ve got. He saved my life.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking
at it,” he said.
Mother carried the day, and I came
back home. She had more respect for me after that. She didn’t ask me
to do so much, which made life pleasant. Neither did she do for herself
the things she once asked me to do, with the result the garbage wasn’t taken
out, the cat wasn’t fed, and I got my own meals down from the cupboard. Mother
always made sure she carried her own towel to the bath. Most important, when
mother slept, she stayed on her side of the bed. I’d resented the way she
pushed me to the edge of the mattress.
From Mrs. Raftis’ kitchen, I could
smell cinnamon rolls, and she looked out. “Come in, have some coffee and a
roll,” she said. “I’ve missed you.” Her coffee was weak, and I put in milk, no
sugar. Mrs. Bartholomew had scolded me on the evils of sugar.
“I missed you, too.”
“Here’s a nice hot cinnamon roll for
you.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You don't have to call me
ma’am. Dorothy will do. You're old enough for that now. How is
school?”
“Fine.”
“Is the cinnamon roll too hot?”
On those days when I’d sit at
father’s desk, I could see right into Mrs. Raftis’ apartment. Not
that there was much to see, just the back of an overstuffed chair, lace
curtains and the ceiling. I suppose he saw much the same thing.
“Tell me about my father,” I said.
“Oh, just like that, right out
of the blue. Well, he was a fine man, very handsome and
intelligent. I always heard people say he never made a mistake on their
taxes.”
“Was it from here that you could see
him?”
“No, from that window over
there. Is there something wrong with the cinnamon roll?”
She picked up the roll to inspect it
as I looked down on the chair he’d sat in. There was a heavy lamp on the
table, and I swung it. Mrs. Raftis stood stunned. The frying pan in
the kitchen was heavier, and she crumpled under its weight. Before I left,
I put it back where it belonged, then placed the lamp back on the table. I
suppose the cord kept it from hitting her more forcefully.
In my hiding place, I was sure nobody
could find me. It was high, and I could reach it only by letting myself
down off the side of the railroad trestle just before it soared over the river,
guiding my feet along the girders, hands grasping the cold iron. When
trains passed just a few feet above, it was a joy to see the undercarriage in
the darkness as the trestle swayed and the rumble loosened my grip. This hiding
place was secure, especially so for its daring. No one would think to look
there. I was mistaken. As dusk came, people were calling my name and
shining flashlights into the girders. And mother's voice. “Joey, come down. I
know you're up there. Talk to me.”
Below, the river gushed wildly around
rocks. I leaned out for a better view, and my lunch spun into space,
taking a long time to reach the water. They saw it, too. “There he
is! Up there. Careful, he may have a gun.”
Mother’s voice. “Don’t be
fools. Joey doesn’t own a gun. He’s a 14‑year‑old boy. Joey,
come down.”
There was no more food left anyway.
“Joey, please come down!”
“Okay, mother. For God’s sake,
stop shouting.”
The men followed slowly above as I
made my way back to land, and once I reached it they threw themselves on
me. I was flung to the ground, my mouth pushed into the cinders.
“Do you know why you did it?” The
voice was soft and supple, words enunciated crisply.
“I think an accident must have
happened.”
“It was no accident. You killed
that old woman who was your friend.”
“They were going to hurt me, those
jail kids.”
“And who would have protected you, your
father?”
“Yes, he would have stopped them.”
“Does Mrs. Raftis remind you of
your father?”
“She was a lot like him.”
“How do you know? He died when
you were very young.”
“She told me. I could tell from
what she said.”
“Did your mother talk to you about
your father?”
“No.”
“Why did you want to kill her?”
“It wasn’t right of her to look down
on him like that.”
“I meant your mother. But you thought
Mrs. Raftis was looking down on him?”
“Oh, she was. She admitted it.”
“I see. Should everybody who looks
down on your father die?”
“I don’t think you understand.”
I didn’t get a chance to see
Mrs. Bartholomew as I hoped, nor have I dealt with other women
recently. Mostly, men are interested in me. The food isn’t as good
here, and much of it comes out of cans, but they’ve allowed me full rein in the
kitchen. I’ve learned to cook many things. In the morning, peanut butter
on toast with apple juice. For lunch, broiled hamburger with canned
fruit. For dinner, potatoes and bread, sometimes meat. I’m getting
quite plump.
Most of all, I’ve discovered
religion. Because Seventh Day Adventists do not eat meat, I couldn’t join
them. I firmly believe eating meat is a ritual ordained by God. He kills
many creatures every day, and it’s this imitation of God that brings salvation. Each
day I attempt to participate in the act of killing. I partake of the end
result, meat.
Mother has not been to see me, and
it’s been a long time. They tell me she died, that God called upon her,
too. I doubt this. Would God bestow such a gift on her, a woman like
that? It’s father who God chose for the sacred act of death. Mother
still lives.~Jim Kjeldsen