‘The Drawing’
I'm envious of doodlers. Not all, but most.
My dad said he lived to work and not the other way around, but we never really knew what that meant for a guy who hauled navel oranges to Alaska once a month to make money and get away from our mom. Every couple of weeks, he’d walk in the door and give us the choice of two things: the change in his pocket or the drawings he’d made out on the road. My twin brother, Beau, usually took the money, but I liked the drawings. There were portraits of short order cooks at roadside diners, native families huddled together on snowmobiles, even the odd dead dog, all drawn in black ink on the back of receipts or matchbooks, drips of coffee or smudged food on the edges. My brother spent the change at General Sam’s on packs of O-Pee-Chee hockey cards, hoping for a goalie or two that the other boys would shoot for on the schoolyard. I kept the drawings in my desk at school for when I got bored.
One night, dad walked in the door as mom was yelling at me from the kitchen where she was washing the cat in the sink along with our clothes. “Where the fuck does your underwear keep disappearing to?” She shouted. Dad scared her half to death with a kiss on the neck, startling the cat and sending it flying through the house like a wet rag on four legs. He walked into our room, put a handful of change on Beau’s nightstand, a stack of drawings next to mine, told us he loved us, and went to bed. I turned on my book light and looked at the drawings. There was one of a buffalo, another of a fat guy with a snowblower, and a third of a young girl with duct tape over her mouth, blood pouring from a gash on her head, and her hands tied. I laid in bed staring at her, the dead in her eyes, the matted hair framing her face. It was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen in my life. My brother told me he was gonna take his money and buy two packs of hockey cards when he got to school the next day. I told him to shut the fuck up and go to sleep.
The next day, I pulled out the drawing of the girl as my teacher taught us about the Red River Valley. The excitement rushed back and caught me in the dick. I was sitting in the back corner next to Beau with my hard on tucked lengthwise in my Levi’s wondering how little effort it might take to make it come. Staring at the girl and the contours of her ragged body I pet that bulge in my pants until it exploded. I let out a yelp, quickly covering it with a coughing fit. “Can I go get a drink of water?” I asked Mr. McDaniel. He told me to hurry so I hurried to the bathroom, took off my sticky underwear and tossed them in the trash. Then I locked the door and pulled my pants down to wash my balls in the sink. When I got back to class, Billy Pulford was on the ground crying because Mr. McDaniel refused to believe a lefty couldn’t use right handed scissors. It was really pathetic and as the bell rang I reached for that drawing but it was gone.
When everyone left for lunch, I walked up and down the rows, pushing over every desk and pilfering their contents for my drawing. I gathered up everything that wasn’t the girl and tossed it in Mr. McDaniel’s waste basket where I pissed on everything I could. When I was done, I walked out to the schoolyard to watch a group of boys huddled around Beau. Some kid from the French immersion class with a lazy eye and hairlip was shooting for what I thought was a hockey card, but ended up being my goddamn drawing. Hairlip couldn’t shoot to save his life and my brother’s card stack was getting huge, but I didn’t care. I ran up and grabbed the drawing quick as I could. Beau stuck out his leg and sent me flying to the ground. I turned around and pulled back to launch my fist into his nutsack when the yard monitor, Mrs. Yamamoto, grabbed me by the rage and dragged us to the vice principal’s office.
Beau and I got to the vice principal’s office under duress at the hands of that old Japanese broad. Mr. Sallows’ office always smelled like raisins, but not today, today he was eating dates. He stared at us a moment, rolling each date in his hands like clay to warm it up before popping it in his mouth. Finally, he turned to Beau.
“What did you do?” He asked my brother.
“Nothing,” said Beau.
“Okay, you can go.”
Beau got up and walked out and I just shook my head. Mr. Sallows saw the folded drawing in my hand and motioned for me to give it to him. I could’ve run out of there and hid it before he’d ever get a chance to see it. That or eaten it, but I didn’t. He took it from me and studied it like a sicko.
“Where did you get this?” He asked.
I had to lie to him so I did. “I found it,” I said.
“Where?”
“On the sidewalk outside General Sam’s.”
He looked at me, believing every word.
“You’re gonna need to find me another,” he said.
Mr. Sallows had a beard so big I wondered if he could hide things in it if need be, like a knife or a gun. I thought watching a guy pull a gun out of his beard would be pretty fucking cool. But Mr. Sallows wasn’t cool, he was just scary.
“Did you hear what I said?” He asked me as I looked up from his curly chin and into his dark brown eyes.
“I don’t know if I can,” I said. “It’s hard to find the same thing twice.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to try,” he said.
Getting up, I walked out of his office, back to the smell of lead paint and old bandaids our school was known for. When I got back to class Beau had this stupid fucking grin on his face and I told him I was walking home alone after school.
When the bell rang again, I left the schoolyard and headed down Pine Street toward home. The cracks in the cement made a game out of it and I tried not to break my mother’s back, but after awhile I gave up and jumped on every one, imagining her spine snapping in two and ripping her open, the contents of her body spilling everywhere. When I got to Arbutus Street, I noticed a house with an old lady gardening out front. She was sitting back on her ankles carving up her front garden with a spade. She turned and flashed me a big warm smile. “Hello there, young man,” she said and I said “Hello, old lady.” I walked through the front gate as she shrank, grabbed the shovel next to her and beat her to death with it. Then I got out my pencil crayons and did my best.
