Christmas came and went like Thursday or Friday and nothing changed. I was still lurking around the mall but I wasn’t exactly a homeless boy yet until this one night I went up there alone because the bikers at Russ’s crib had been wired on meth for three days straight and finally they’d kicked me and Russ out for not having any weed. Russ said he was going to his mom’s to chill for a few days but no way I could do the same, not with my mom and stepdad still hanging up on me because of what happened when I got caught shoplifting and all. Russ said I couldn’t sleep in his car, he had it parked at his mom’s and she was definitely against that so I didn’t have anyplace to go which is why I decided to hitch up to the mall that night even though I didn’t have any money and no weed to sell.
It was snowing and I caught a ride from this air force guy heading back to the base and in the car I was like talking to myself saying, Asshole, asshole, asshole, all the way from where he’d picked me up in Au Sable. I really wanted to go home to my mom’s now or anyplace actually that was warm and homey but I didn’t know how to do it. The air force guy must’ve thought I was whacked on acid or something because he didn’t once ask me what the matter was, just dropped me like a turd at the exit off the Northway and booked.
I cruised awhile and ended up hanging by the fountain at the center of the mall which is more or less a crossroad looking for somebody I could bum a smoke off of when I spotted this little girl who I figured was lost. Her face was red like from crying although she was not at that moment crying, she was peeping around the place searching for her mom probably so I go, Hey, kid, how’s it going? You lost or something? She was maybe eight or nine, stringy blond hair, ratty red dress, and sneakers with no socks. I noticed the dress and no socks because it was cold and snowing out and it was unusual for a kid to be in a skimpy dress and almost barefoot. She stood by the fountain looking back and forth like this little alleycat caught in the middle of the road with cars whizzing past on both sides.
C’mere, kid, I said and got up and approached her a little too fast I guess because she jumped away from me. I’m not gonna hurt you, for chrissake, I said.
Then I felt the long arm of the law so to speak, a heavy hand on my shoulder and when I turn around I see the hand is black and it’s connected to one of the security guys, Bart the same dude who I once sold some weed to and who busted me anyhow for shoplifting when I was only trying to do a little Christmas shopping to get back into my mom’s good graces. He’s ex-military from Rochester, sort of a dim bulb.
Chappie, he says to me, what the hell are you doing here again? I tol’ you to keep your little punk ass out of here.
Hey, it’s America, jerk-off. Remember? Land of the free, home of the fucking brave, man.
Don’t give me no shit. You’re loitering. Now g’wan, before I toss you out with the garbage.
Where you scoring for weed now, man? I ask him just to remind him of the true nature of our relationship which he seems to want to forget. You still smoking them blunts? I say.
Chappie, he says to me, don’t fuckin’ antagonize the cops. It’s dumb.
You’re only a rent-a-cop, man. I’m waiting to meet somebody, I say.
Wait outside. Do it now, he says and he spins me around with one hand which he can do because he’s a sizable dude and I’m small for my age anyhow. He says, That’s a nice shearling jacket you got, Chappie. Who’d you rob it off of?
I got it last year from my mom, asshole, I tell him which happens to be true and I ease off in the general direction of Sears.
Yeah, sure, he says and laughs and heads slowly in the opposite direction. Walking his beat. He knows I’m only changing seats, moving to another crossing in the mall and he’s not especially worried because it’s kids like me that make his otherwise boring job interesting.
A few minutes later I’m walking past Victoria’s Secret, the same ladies’ fancy nightgown and underwear store where Bart busted me for shoplifting last month so I look inside with a special interest in the place and I notice the little girl in the red dress from before. Only this time she’s with somebody, this potbellied dude with a big soft nose and pockety skin and thin black strands of hair that he’s combed sideways over his head like a bar code. He’s got the kid by the hand like he’s her uncle. Not her father. It’s like they’re supposed to be shopping for a present for somebody only I can’t figure who. This guy was not the type who had a wife or a girlfriend even, he was all rumpled and the buttons of his navy peacoat were crossed up.
I don’t know what but something about the guy held my attention, like I knew him from someplace else although I didn’t. I watched them through the glass and the guy bought what looked like ladies’ pantyhose stockings, a whole bunch, six or seven packages of them and while he blah-blahs the salesgirl in this over-friendly way the kid just stands there beside him like she’s half asleep or maybe stoned. But she’s too young to be high, I think. I figure maybe they’re traveling someplace, like from Canada and she’s tired. Must be Canadians, I think and then when I start to move off they come out and the guy gives me this long stare, like What the hell are you? He doesn’t say anything but it’s like he’s never seen a kid with a mohawk or nose ring before which is probably true for Canadians.
I don’t know why I thought he was a Canadian. My stepfather is supposedly from Ontario but the guy didn’t look anything like my stepfather who except when he’s drinking is this neat and trim sort of person, a control freak with a crewcut and creases in his jeans who my mom thinks is God and I’m supposed to try and be just like him. Right. Naturally he thinks I’m a total loser which is okay because his idea of a real man is Arnold Schwarzenegger or General Schwarzkopf or anybody with a name with Schwarz in it because he’s basically a Nazi with a drinking problem plus a few others is how I see him. What bums me is that my mom bought that crap and kept telling me I was lucky to have Ken for my stepdad when I knew it was the opposite and he knew it too.
You got a problem? I say to the Canadian because of the way he looked at me and he smiles and says not at all and takes the little girl by the hand and walks off, real relaxed. I watch them for a minute wondering why they seem so laid back and all, especially him if they’re traveling so far from home because even if the border is only about an hour from here Canada is a huge place and they look definitely funky, like they’ve been on the road for a week and you’d think they’d want to get where they’re going. Plus him buying the packages of pantyhose is strange, unless they can’t get those in Canada.
Anyhow I didn’t exactly have anything better to do that night so I followed them, keeping back a ways and out of sight. I guess I was only curious about the guy but also I was thinking maybe he has cigarettes. It was cold outside, I remember and snowing. I thought maybe he’s driving one of those big RVs or a van that they’re sleeping in and he’s parked it out in the lot and he’ll let me crash there till tomorrow or till the bikers run out of speed and Russ and I can get back into our crib over the Video Den in Au Sable. So I follow the guy and the little girl in and out of the Wiz and then the Foot Locker where the guy actually buys the kid some socks which she puts on right there in the store while he waits and looks around and almost catches me watching and after a while I realize that I’m all hyped up, I’m like peaking out at a million RPMs and my heart is hammering in my chest and my hands are all sweaty. I didn’t know what was happening at the time but suddenly it was like I’m looking down this tunnel at the Canadian guy and the little girl, especially at the little girl who I was really worried about now, like some terrible thing was about to happen to her and she couldn’t see it coming but I could. I wanted to tell her something important about people but I didn’t want her to have to know it yet, she was too young still.
It’s weird but as long as I didn’t look directly at her and watched the guy with her instead, her uncle or whatever, I didn’t flip out, all I was into was maybe bumming a smoke from the guy. But the second I switched over to the kid it’s like something terrible is about to happen, this huge heavy ugly gray thing shaped like a tyrannosaurus rex or the country of Canada on the map is hovering over the entire United States of America and is about to fall or break apart and avalanche down on me and cut off my breath, so I start to breathe in and out real fast like I remember once Willie the cat did when he had a hairball in his throat and got all humped over with his head down next to the livingroom carpet making these quick little gagging noises. My stepfather walked in from the kitchen and gave him a kick across the room because he was afraid Willie was going to make a mess on the carpet so Willie threw up in my closet instead and I never told anyone. I just cleaned it up myself.
Basically people don’t know how kids think, I guess they forget. But when you’re a kid it’s like you’re wearing these binoculars strapped to your eyes and you can’t see anything except what’s in the dead center of the lenses because you’re too scared of everything else or else you don’t understand it and people expect you to, so you feel stupid all the time. Mostly a lot of stuff just doesn’t get registered. You’re always fucking up and there’s a lot that you don’t even see that people expect you to see, like the time after my thirteenth birthday when my grandmother asked me if I got the ten dollars and the birthday card she sent me. I said to her I don’t know and she started dissing me to my mom and all. But it was true, I really didn’t know. And I wasn’t even into drugs then.
The little girl in the red dress was wearing binoculars over her eyes like I did when I was her age and she couldn’t see that she was in danger any more than I could have seen it back then, only it was different for her now because she had me to help her and I didn’t have anyone.
They went into the food court and I followed a little ways behind and when they stopped at the Mr. Pizza and ordered slices I suddenly got too hungry to hang back anymore so I came up behind the guy and I go like, Hey, man, you got some spare change so I can buy me a slice, man? I haven’t eaten all day, I tell him which is basically true except for some cold french fries in Russ’s car this morning that he gave me.
The little girl had her slice in one hand and a Coke in the other and she was looking for a place to sit down. I smiled at her like we’re pals from before but she didn’t change her expression which was as serious as a spoon so I’m thinking what the hell, she’s scared, she doesn’t know friend from foe anymore, I can relate to that when suddenly it’s like a hot white light has been thrown on my face warming my cheeks and forehead and almost blinding me with the glare. The Canadian guy is looking at me, he’s staring directly into my eyes almost which people never do with me, not even kids because of my mohawk I guess and my earrings and the nose ring and plus I try to discourage that type of looking. But this caught me by surprise probably because I was distracted by the little girl when the guy hit me with all the attention and before I can shove it back at him he’s already talking a mile a minute which is definitely not like any Canadian I ever met.
Hey, you poor kid, you really do look like you’re starving, he says to me. He goes, I’m gonna buy you some supper, young man, I’m gonna buy you something solid to eat, something to get some meat on those young bones, he says stepping back and taking a look at me and shaking his head.
I must’ve made a mistake, I think. All that stuff about the little girl being in danger and this guy being some kind of Canadian weirdo was only in my head, a product of my fevered imagination and I just thought it all up because of what I know about my stepfather who is from Ontario and what I remembered feeling when I was a little kid myself. The guy’s just a normal American, I think, who happens to talk a lot. And he likes me. And he’s real interesting too.
What would please you, my good man? he says to me. You’re skinny as a rail underneath that jacket.
I told him anything and he ordered me a slice and a Coke, same as the girl which is not so much if I’m starving so I ask him for a smoke while we’re waiting and it turns out he’s carrying Camel Lights which sort of proved he’s American. When my order came he carried it over to the table where the little girl was and introduced me to her. He said her name was Froggy, aka Froggy the Gremlin.
Hi, I say and tell them my name. Froggy doesn’t seem to register anything.
Me Buster, the guy says pointing to himself with his thumb and I laugh.
Buster! No shit. How come Buster?
He goes, Hi-ya, kids, hi-ya, hi-ya, hi-ya! My name’s Buster Brown and I live in a shoe. And that’s Froggy the Gremlin, he said waving a hand at the girl who was mainly ignoring the guy like she was used to this stuff. Look for her in there too! he says.
He talked like that, in circles basically and different voices while I ate my slice and smoked my cigarette and mostly didn’t say anything. I noticed the little girl Froggy, she didn’t say anything either. She just kept her eyes on her food and chomped her way through to the end and then looked out at the people walking past in the mall.
I asked Buster if Froggy was his kid and he goes, More than my child, Chappie, and less. She’s my protégé. I have had dozens of proteges over the years and they keep me rising like a phoenix from the ashes of my past. My proteges are my once and future acting career.
Cool, I say. What’s a protege?
Those who can, do, Chappie, and those who can’t, teach. I could once but I can’t now, and thus I teach. I was an actor once, my boy, not a very famous actor but a success nonetheless. I had my share of film and TV roles. Now, he said, now I train young actresses and actors, now I make proteges of young people like Froggy the Gremlin here and the process like a heart transplant prolongs my own life as an actor extending into the indefinite future my own early gifts and training.
You probably can’t understand any of that, he says offering me another cigarette. You’re much too young.
I’m thinking no way this guy’s an actor, not with those pockmarks and a nose like a mushroom although when he was young with a full head of hair and no potbelly he might not have been too bad-looking. His way of talking was cool though. I liked listening to him and it didn’t really matter to me whether he was telling the truth or not. When he talked he looked right at me and made me feel like there was this spotlight on me and I was standing in the middle of a stage and anything I said would be listened to carefully and treated with total respect.
He said back in 1967 when he was a very young man he had been in this movie with Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda called The Trip, I guess some kind of travel movie but I had never heard of it although I had heard of Jack Nicholson from Batman so I was pretty impressed. He asked me, what about me, wouldn’t I like to become a TV star in New York City and Hollywood but I said no way.
I knew he was only this old gay guy hitting on me which I didn’t care about because he was so interesting to listen to but also because I felt like I was baking in the sun with all the attention he was paying to me and of course he was feeding me cigarettes and even bought another slice of pizza for me, this time with pepperoni.
I wasn’t afraid of Buster, not for myself anyhow even though he was a lot bigger than me because usually with these guys you just tell them what you’ll do and what you won’t do and they go along more or less. But I didn’t know what was the deal with little Froggy. She was like dreaming at the table with her eyes open and I figured the guy must’ve been dosing her with something, ‘ludes or pink ladies maybe but if I could get him to switch off of her and on to me then somebody like Black Bart the security cop would probably come by and latch onto her and get her back to wherever she came from.
It was like a plan from a movie or a TV show, I know but those shows are usually based on reality. Also I was really getting off on the guy Buster Brown and I was even starting to feel jealous of Froggy in this weird way so that if Black Bart didn’t come along and find her and take her to the lost kid office or wherever I didn’t care, as long as I could take her place with Buster.
So how come Froggy never talks? I asked Buster and he went off on this number about how frogs don’t talk, they croak or they keep you up all night cheeping and peeping and then he was talking about all the different types of frogs there are until I practically forgot my question. That’s how he handled questions. He constantly changed the subject and he talked about you yourself a lot and that kept you from thinking too hard about him or Froggy. It’s funny, he was so ugly-looking he made you feel handsome which is normal but he was so smart he made you feel smart too instead of stupid like smart people usually make you feel, like my stepfather for instance and teachers I have had.
At one point while he was rapping away I noticed Froggy get up from the table and take her tray and paper trash over to the barrel. She dumped her stuff and set the tray onto the pile there and started walking, heading back down the mall toward the fountain where I’d first seen her. It wasn’t like she was sneaking off or anything and Buster didn’t seem to care one way or the other although I didn’t think he actually saw her leave. He must’ve known that she was gone, once she was gone, but it was more like after I came onto his scene the little girl didn’t exist anymore so it didn’t matter to him if she was gone or not. Which was fine with me for various reasons so I wasn’t going to be the one who pointed out to him that his protege had split and what did he think of that? I just moved in and took her place, so to speak.
I was wondering if Buster was high, coke I figured because of how he talked and could I get a little taste, when he asked me did I want to do a screen test?
Sure, I said. When?
Oh, anytime. Tonight if you want.
Sure, I said and got up from the table and dumped the trash in the barrel like Froggy’d done and Buster and me went back into the mall and headed toward the exit down past Sears and J. C. Penney’s, opposite the way Froggy had gone. I was feeling lucky now because of how things were turning out after such a lousy start—me and Russ being kicked out of our crib by the bikers and Russ going back to his mom’s which was not an option for me and the cold and the snow and no money and no drugs. Now as I walked past Sears with this cool dude Buster Brown it looked like all my problems were solved, at least temporarily.
If I’m going to your place, I said to him, you oughta give me some money. For the screen test and all, I say.
That depends.
On what? I say and I stop right there so he’ll know I’m serious.
He’s like, Well, various things, Chappie. It depends on how much the camera loves you, for instance. You may not be in the slightest photogenic, despite your beauty to the naked eye. That’s why it’s called a screen test, Chappie. You have to pass it.
I’m like, Gimme twenty bucks up front or find yourself another protege. Plus I don’t do no sex with you. No fucking or sucking. Just the screen test.
Just the screen test, he says smiling and he pulls a twenty from his wallet and hands it to me. You drive a hard bargain, Chappie, he says.
Yeah, well, I had a good teacher, you might say. I’m thinking at that moment of my stepfather, I’m like flashing on his face, the outline of his head in the dark really so not quite his face and his smell of booze and Brut and the sandpaper scratch of his chin on my shoulder and neck. I almost never think about that stuff anymore, except when my mom tells me how lucky I am that he’s my stepfather which she doesn’t do since they kicked me out of the house for stealing and me being into drugs and all.
So how come you bought those pantyhoses? I ask Buster as we pass out the door by Sears into the parking lot. It was snowing fairly hard by now and there weren’t many cars in the lot. A couple of plows were scraping away at the far end.
Pantyhose! What makes you think that’s what I’ve got? he asked and he held up the Victoria’s Secret bag and wagged it.
I seen you buy them, man.
Ah, you were tracking me, were you? Playing detective, eh? And now you’re thinking you’ve caught me, he said. Only maybe instead I’ve caught you. He laughed at that like it was a big joke.
Whaddaya got, a girlfriend or something? I was starting to think he was a Canadian again because of the pantyhose. You see a lot of Canadians down here buying stuff they can’t get at home.
You’d look pretty terrific in pantyhose, he tells me.
Yeah, sure, I say. You can forget that. Forget all about it, man. I asked him where his car was and he said back alongside the J. C. Penney’s building. Then I asked him where’s his crib and he just said not far. Good, I said, because I ain’t going to no Canada tonight.
He said, Hey, no problema, Chappie. No problema.
Yeah, sure, I say. We’re walking side by side close to the building to stay out of the wind and snow and as we’re passing the big J. C. Penney’s windows I notice up ahead that there’s a guy working inside on one of the window displays and he’s got all these naked mannequins that he’s moving around. When we get closer I see that the mannequins are like in pieces with their arms and hands lying on the floor and some of them don’t even have any heads and the ones that do are bald. They have breasts and all but no nipples or pubic hair. It’s like they’re adults but they’re really little kids. Then the guy who’s setting them up disappears through a door into the store to get some clothes for them or something and I stop by the glass and look in at all the body parts.
C’mon, Chappie, Buster said. We’ve done our window-shopping for tonight.
Yeah, wait a minute, I said. I’d never seen mannequins like that before, all naked with their arms and heads looking like they were sliced off. There were these bright overhead lights inside the window that made it look like a dissecting room in a morgue or something. Definitely it was the grossest thing I’d ever seen, at least at that moment it was which is strange I guess because I’d seen lots of really gross things by then.
C’mon, let’s get out of here, Buster says like suddenly he’s afraid someone’ll see us.
I say, I don’t think I want to do that screen test, man.
Cut the shit, Chappie. We have a deal.
No, I say and I back off a few steps. I still couldn’t take my eyes off the mannequins. It was like I was in a dream and I didn’t want to wake up and this guy Buster Brown was standing by my bed shaking me by the shoulder.
He goes like, There’s the matter of my twenty bucks, kid.
That’s when I turned and started running. I ran back the way we’d come, past the Sears toward the entrance to the mall and I hear Buster’s feet slamming along behind me and him hollering, You little bastard! Give me back my money!
Buster was definitely pissed and he ran pretty good for an old guy so when I go through the door he’s only a few steps behind me. Inside there was no one in sight except way in the distance by the fountain but I spotted a fire exit sign a little ways down the mall and a door I could maybe lock behind me once I got through. I raced over to it and yanked it open and went in and slammed it shut just as Buster got there. There was no way to lock it from the inside though so I clamped onto the handle while Buster pulled on the other side until finally I couldn’t hold it closed anymore and when I let go Buster went flying.
Before he could get up I pulled the door shut again and took off down this long narrow hallway. There were doors and other hallways running off the main hall like in a video game maze and with all these fluorescent lights it was very bright, but no people anywhere. At one point I stopped and peeked back around a corner and listened for Buster. I could hear footsteps in the distance, somebody running but I couldn’t tell if it was water dripping or him or if he was going in the other direction away from me or about to pounce on me from behind. I didn’t even know how to get back to the mall where the people were.
This time when I start to run it’s like I’m a little kid lost in some kind of carnival funhouse and I’m panicking. I go down one hall and hang a left and come to a dead-end and make a U-turn back the same way I came. A second later I’m running along another hall and when I fly through a door with an exit sign on it I’m in a hall just like the one I left. I’m totally confused by now. It’s like I’ve been taken off the planet earth and set down on this new planet where there’s no people. I think I was almost crying by then.
Suddenly I smelled food cooking. There was a door ahead of me and when I pushed through it I almost knocked over a huge stainless steel counter with all kinds of steaming food in these big pans. I’m back in the mall but I’ve come out in the middle of the food court behind the counter of Wang’s Pavilion the Chinese take-out place and these three Chinese guys and a tiny Chinese woman are staring at me very shocked. They all start jabbering in Chinese at once and waving their hands at me in this very pissed-off way.
I go, C’mon, man, chill out, willya fucking chill, for chrissake! But it’s like they don’t understand English. It was late and there were no customers in the place anyhow but these people were acting like I’m some kind of freako terrorist. I pull out Buster’s twenty and go, Hey, man, I just want to buy some chopped suey, and they shut up for a second and stare suspiciously at the money like it’s not American. But then I glance over their heads into the food court and here comes Buster.
I freeze and the Chinese guys follow my eyes and slowly turn around and then they see him too and they must be figuring out that he’s the bad guy I’m running from because they don’t say anything, they just go back to work cleaning out their pans and stacking trays and so on. Then I noticed that Buster had Froggy the Gremlin with him. He was holding her by the hand like she was a rag doll. She looked really tired now, like she was in a nod.
They walked slowly past Wang’s and out of the food court on down the mall toward the exit to the parking lot and I watched them the whole time until they disappeared from sight. I felt incredibly sad then. I felt guilty too because of losing my courage and deciding not to take her place when I saw those mannequins in the window.
What you want? the head Chinese guy said to me.
I pointed to a couple of green and brown things in the pans and he dished the stuff into a Styrofoam box and I paid and got my change. I was ready to book through the front when I spotted Black Bart cruising the food court looking spaced like he’d managed to score some weed. It was late, there was almost nobody left in the mall except the workers and Bart making his nightly roundup of the last couple of kids still hanging out and the bums sleeping on the benches and so on, driving them with his stoned smile into the cold snowy night.
Not me though. I slipped through the door behind Wang’s Pavilion with my box of food and returned to the maze of hallways out back where I wandered around until finally I found this janitor’s closet I could sleep in and Bart didn’t find out about me crashing back there every night until about two weeks later. By then everything was cool with the bikers again and Russ’s mom had kicked him out for drinking all her booze one night and busting the place up so we went back to our old crib over the Video Den in Au Sable. Russ had his same room as before and I had to sleep on the couch in the livingroom but I didn’t mind, I knew then that as long as my stepfather was still living at my mom’s I was never going back there.