aUGUST1993-2 wEEKS iN

Johnny’s Dead (part-one)

(March 11/06)
The rain swept down from the sky and ran on pelican feet across the top of the water. The gulls paced restlessly on the embankment beneath trees heavy with whirly-tops--and underneath benches where bits of discarded food and wet cigarette butts littered the hard ground. Rain fell like glass from the middle of the sky, twisting and reforming the horizon into a sleeping child, knees bellied into it’s chest, eyes pressed tight behind heavy lids. I slipped Johnny’s upper plate from his mouth and lay it on the floor next to his arm; I had to thump him hard on the side of his face to loosen the lowers. I figured Johnny would look pretty stupid with only his bottoms in if he died and the ambulance people came and saw him like that. I figured it’d be better to have a mouthful of nothing then just have of nothing. A cobble of blood ran from the corner of his mouth and dribbled into the hole of his ear like chocolate syrup. Johnny looked so funny, so out of sorts and relaxed lying there on the floor, his eye all gouged out and clouted with blood. And these little pinpricks in his ribcage that made him look like some sort of ornament or a cheese grater and his mouth all flaccid and devoid of teeth and just sort of puffing little ounces of air while his chest gurgled and spurted like a defective engine.

When Johnny and I were teenagers we used to spend a lot of time at the pumping station fishing off the concrete ledge for crappies and small mouths. Once, when Johnny caught a fat yellow sunfish, he cut it’s fins off with his pocketknife and popped it’s eyes out with his thumb then threw it back into the water. We watched as the poor fish floated all fucked up on it’s side, a little gouty hole where it’s eye had been, trying to right side up itself and swim. It just fluttered and shook like it was having an epileptic. That same day another kid we were sometimes friends with got his eye pecked out by a seagull when he tried to stab it with his fishing rod. Actually his eye didn’t really get pecked out, just a piece of it near his nose. He had to wear one of those the Man in the Hathaway Shirt black eye patches, all the while thinking he was better than us because he wore a patch over his eye and had only one good one left. Johnny and I could care less, more than less. We stopped being his friends and put more effort into stealing cigarettes from the Dominion.

I tried combing Johnny’s hair except the comb just kept snapping off his head. I figured since he didn’t have any teeth in he might as well have a combed head of hair when the ambulance people came to take him away in the back of the ambulance. It would be terribly embarrassing for the ambulance attendants to find him lying there all fucked up on the floor like that. Least this way he’d look somewhat presentable, even for all fucked up like that.

I asked Johnny if it was still a fish if it didn’t have any fins. He said that it still had gills and that’s what makes fish, fish. As long as they have gills they’re still fish. That’s what sets them apart from other things and animals. How come they have gills, I asked? I don’t know, he said. I guess because they’re suppose to—that’s all, they’re supposed to have them otherwise they couldn’t really be called fish I suppose. Without ‘em, I don’t know, I guess they’re just another thing or animal or something. How come you cut its fins off and popped its eye out, I asked? I don’t know, Johnny said, just seemed like the thing to do at the time is all. It’s only a fucking fish for Christ sake, its not like I’m a murderer or something. Just shut the fuck up and give me another worm, will you? I don’t feel like talking about it anymore—fucking fish.

Johnny could skip a rock seven, eight--sometimes even ten times across the top of the water if he put his mind to it. We’d spend half an hour looking for good flat ones, sometimes nice chips of shale or real smooth ones that were the colour of beer bottles. Standing shoulder to shoulder on the concrete ledge of the pumping station, we’d position ourselves—Johnny usually preferring the side-foot stance, his throwing arm loose at his side fisting a rock—and challenge each other, best out of ten. Johnny, when it came down to it, always won, even though his knees were all bony and cockeyed and his head was real sharp looking and too small for his body. That’s the way it was, always, skipping rocks and shale off the pumping station.

I resign myself to the fact that there’s not much I can do for Johnny, cause the bleeding won’t stay--and the other internal shit that’s coming out of him is too much to bear, and it looks like his chest might cave inside him and crush the breath out of his lungs, which are, I’m pretty sure, as fucked up as the rest of him. And with me as I am kneeling beside him like a beggar looking stupid and tired out because I don’t know what to do, and even if I did, I’m not sure I’d have the courage to do it anyhow. I just wish he’d die and get over with it, it’d make things easier for the both of us. I’m sorry, that’s how I felt, not bearing up as good as I’d wanted to.

Why’d you have to go and play around with that shit to start with? Christ almighty, Johnny, you knew it was fucking dynamite and could blow up in your face anytime, anywise, Johnny, you should have known better, Christ man, your smarter than that. Should a left it to the pros--and look where it got you, fuck man, you’re better than that. All fucked up and bleeding, you’re missing a fucking eye, a fucking eye, man, an eye for Christ sake. They must a given it to your real good this time, probably even gave you a second warning, but you just wouldn’t listen, never have—so they decide to make an example out of you this time, a fucking example man. They fucked you up some good this time; they did, didn’t they? Fucked you up and took your eye, Johnny, your fucking eye, like that kid with the Hathaway patch, fuck man—your fucking eye. Christ, I mean you weren’t much to look at to begin with, but now without an eye, I mean this is fucked man, real fucked. Now I mean you’re a real ugly sonuvabitch, really. You’re a fucking ugly sight; one fucked up ugly sonuvabitch, Johnny. Bet you wish it was only just a couple of teeth and all they’d have to do is wire your jaw shut for awhile. Fuck your mother man, she was never worth a piece of shit to begin with. Remember that silly fucker went and got his eye pecked out, by a seagull man, what a silly fucking cunt he was—wearing a man in the Hathaway shirt patch and stumbling on his two feet like a drunk, fucking crazy shit, Johnny, remember. I mean the fucker thought he was Errol fucking Flynn, some kind of hero or a pirate or some shit like that. Deserved him right, lousy bastard. Christ man that was funny, remember Johnny, so fucking funny we almost pissed out pants, that fucking funny.

And answer me this, why’d you have to go and start chucking it in your arm, Johnny? Didn’t you have anything better to do, anymore sense than that? Christ Johnny, you could have at least snogged it up your nose like everybody else—but then you aren’t like everybody else, never one for convention, were you Johnny. Always having to do this your way, the hard way, the opposite way of everybody else. Always trying to make things as difficult and complicated as ever, always one step out a sync with the way things are suppose to be. But that shit, Johnny, that shit was way out of your league. A big mistake, too much out a sync. Shit got your head all scrambled up man, and look at you now, they took your eye; your fucking eye’s gone Johnny, nothing there. Fed it to a dog, some sonuvabitch dog ate your eye man, like fucking Alpo. Your bitch of a cunt mother would be proud of you—laying here on the floor all fucked up, bleeding with a hole where an eye’s suppose to be. And we thought that kid got his eye pecked out was funny. Well let me tell you, Johnny, this shit sure beats the hell out of that; pales in comparison.