‘Please monitor the systems, there’s no point upgrading our technology if you don’t monitor the systems. I emailed you three minutes ago for the next patient.’
‘Yes, Doctor.’ She taps at her keyboard, scowls at the monitor, then looks at me. ‘The doctor will see you now.’
My Nikes chirp over black and green linoleum, through a door, and into a room with supermarket lighting. Two armchairs sit by a window; an ole stereo rests beside one of them, with a notebook computer on top. At the back of the room stands a hospital bunk on wheels, with a towel over it. And there’s Dr Goosens; round, soft, butt-heavy, and as smug as a Disney worm. He smiles sympathetically, and waves me to an armchair.
‘Cindy, bring the client’s file, please.’
Check my fucken face now. Cindy! It slays me. Now I’m just waiting for her to say, ‘Groovy, Wayne,’ and bounce through the door in a little tennis skirt or something. She doesn’t though, not in the cold light of day. She trudges past in socks and sandals, and hands a file to Goosens. He thumbs through the pages and waits for her to leave the room.
‘Vernon Gregory Little, how are you today?’
‘Okay, I guess.’ My Nikes tap each other.
‘Alrighty. What can you tell me about why you’re here?’
‘The judge must think I’m crazy, or something.’
‘And are you?’ He gets ready to chuckle, like it’s obvious I ain’t. It might help if the judge thought I was bananas, but looking at Ole Mother Goosens just makes me want to tell him how I really feel, which is that everybody backed me into a nasty corner with their crashy fucken powerdimes.
‘I guess it ain’t up to me to say,’ I tell him. It doesn’t seem enough though; he stares and waits for more. As I catch his eye, I feel the past wheeze up my throat in a raft of bitter words. ‘See, first everybody dissed me because my buddy was Mexican, then because he was weird, but I stood by him, I thought friendship was a sacred thing – then it all went to hell, and now I’m being punished for it, they’re twisting every regular little fact to fit my guilt . . .’
Goosens raises a hand, and smiles gently. ‘Alrighty, let’s see what we can discover. Please continue to be candid – if you open yourself up to this process, in good faith, we won’t have a problem at all. Now, tell me – how do you feel about what’s happened?’
‘Just wrecked. Wrecked dead away. And now everybody’s calling me the psycho, I know they are.’
‘Why do you think they might be doing that?’
‘They need a skate-goat, they want to hang somebody high.’
‘A scapegoat? You feel something intangible caused the tragedy?’
‘Well, no, I mean – my friend Jesus ain’t around, in person, to take any blame. He did all the shooting, I was just a witness, not even involved at all.’ Goosens searches my face, and makes a note in his file.
‘Alrighty. What can you tell me about your family life?’
‘It’s just regular.’ Goosens holds his pen still, and looks at me. He knows he just found a major bug up my ass.
‘The file notes that you live with your mother. What can you tell me about that relationship?’
‘Uh, it’s just – regular.’ The whole subject drags a major tumor out of my ass, don’t fucken ask me why. It just lies there on the floor, throbbing, glistening with gut-slime. Goosens even leans back in his chair, to avoid the heaving tang of my fucken family life.
‘No brothers?’ he asks, wisely steering east. ‘No uncles, or – other male influences in your familial network?’
‘Not really,’ I say.
‘But you had – friends . . .?’ My eyes drop to the floor. He sits quiet for a moment, then reaches over to rest a hand on my leg. ‘Believe me, Jesus touched me too – the whole affair touched me deeply. If you’re able, tell me what happened that day.’
I try to dodge the spike of panic you get when you hear yourself fixing to bawl. ‘Things had already started when I got back.’
‘Where had you been?’ asks Goosens.
‘I got held up, running an errand.’
‘Vernon, you’re not on trial here – please be specific.’
‘I needed the bathroom on the way back from an errand Mr Nuckles sent me on.’
‘The school bathroom?’
‘No.’
‘You took a leak outside school?’ He leans his head over, as if the information might splat in his face.
‘Uh – not a leak, actually.’
‘You had a bowel movement, outside school? At the time of the tragedy?’
‘Sometimes I can be kind of unpredictable.’
Silence fills the forty years Fate gives me to recognize the import of things. This would never happen to Van Damme. Heroes never shit. They only fuck and kill.
A shine comes to Goosens’s eyes. ‘You told the court this?’
‘Hell no.’
He blinks and folds his arms. ‘Forgive me, but – forensically, doesn’t a fresh stool, situated away from the scene of the crimes – automatically rule you out as a suspect? Fecal matter can be accurately dated, you know.’
‘I guess that’s right, huh?’ You can tell Goosens is giving me extra service. He’s only supposed to suck information for the court, but here he is, prepared to take a chance and give me a revelation along the way. He clamps his lips tight, to hit home the significance of it all. Then his eyes fall.
‘I hear you say you’re kind of – unpredictable?’
‘It’s no big deal,’ I draw circles on the floor with a Nike.
‘Is it a diagnosed condition – sphincter weakness, or suchlike?’
‘Nah. Anyway, I almost don’t get it anymore.’
Goosens runs his tongue over his upper lip. ‘Alrighty, so tell me – do you like girls, Vernon?’
‘Sure.’
‘Can you name a girl you like?’
‘Taylor Figueroa.’
He chews his lip, and makes a note in the file. ‘Have you had physical contact with her?’
‘Kind of.’
‘What do you remember most about your contact with her?’
‘Her smell, I guess.’
Goosens frowns into the file, and makes another entry. Then he sits back. ‘Vernon – have you ever felt attraction towards another boy? Or a man?’
‘No way.’
‘Alrighty. Let’s see what we can discover.’
He reaches for the stereo and presses ‘Play’. A military drum beats out, softly at first, but growing in power, threatening, like a bear coming out of a cave, or a bear going into the cave, and you’re in the fucken cave.
‘Gustav Holst,’ says Goosens. ‘The Planets – Mars. This’ll rouse some glory in a boy’s soul.’ He walks to the bed and smacks it with the flat of his hand. The powerdime takes a reckless shift.
‘Get undressed for me, please, and come lie up here.’
‘Un-dressed?’
‘Sure – to finish the exam. We psychiatrists are medical doctors first, you know – don’t confuse us with your everyday psychologists.’
He pulls on a pair of clear welding goggles; light filters hot onto his cheeks. Folding my Calvin Kleins takes a while, in order to stop loose change falling from the pocket. Even though my loose change is in a plastic bag at the sheriff’s office. Brass stomps black and twisted over the drums from the stereo as I climb onto the bed. Goosens points at my underwear.
‘Off, please.’
A thought comes to me; it is that a breeze on the butt, in the presence of supermarket lighting, should only be felt by the dead. I’m a naked fucken animal. But even naked animals need bail. Especially naked animals need it.
‘On your stomach,’ says Goosens. ‘Spread your legs.’
‘Ta-t-t-t, TA-TA-TA.’ Musical hellfire accompanies the touch of two fingers on my back. They trace a line down my body, then turn into hands, and grab both cheeks of my ass.
‘Relax,’ he whispers, spreading my cheeks. ‘Does this make you think of Taylor?’
‘TA-TA-TA, TA-T-T-T!’
‘Or – something else?’ His breathing quickens with the march of his fingers, they trace a tightening circle around the rim of my hole. A line of violent cussing forms in my throat. The bail thought stops it.
‘Doctor, this don’t seem right,’ I say. What a fuckhole, I swear. I should jam a table-leg through his fucken eye, make him grunt like a tied hog. Jean-Claude would do it. James Bond would do it with a fucken cocktail in his hand. Me, I just squeak like a brownie. He takes no fucken notice anyway. A cool finger invades me as the music explodes to a climax. I grunt like a tied hog.
‘Al-righty, one for Jesus. Just relax, this next procedure won’t hurt a bit – in fact, don’t be embarrassed if you experience arousal.’ He grabs a pair of steel salad tongs, adjusts his goggles, and lowers his face to my ass.
‘I don’t fucken think so,’ I quiver, spinning upright. Cobwebs of spit fly from my mouth. Goosens recoils, forearms held up like a surgeon.
He slowly reaches for the towel on the bed, and wipes his middle finger. Huge gingery eyes stare through the goggles. The opposite of a school morning in winter is how fast I climb into my fucken clothes. I don’t button my shirt, I don’t tie my laces. I don’t fucken look back.
‘Think carefully, Vernon,’ says Goosens. ‘Think very carefully before jeopardizing your bail application.’ He stops to sigh a moment, and shake his head. ‘Remember there are only two kinds of people in your position: glorious, powerful boys, and prisoners.’
Music whips twisters behind me as I scramble out through the waiting room. Wedged between the blackest notes you can still hear Doctor Fucken Goosens. ‘Okay – alrighty ...’
I sit under a personal cloud in back of the jail van, like a sphinx, a sphinxter, to the beat of that rude orchestra music by Goosestep Holster. It does nothing to erase memories of the shrink, and his fucken ass-banditry. I try not to think what his report will say. I just watch the scenery pass by my window. Dead products dot the roadside on the way back to town: an abandoned shopping cart, a sofa skeleton. Under a tree sits a busted TV, empty of wacky antics. Pumpjacks poke dirty fingers into the landscape, but we drive past all of it, including the sky and the distance, ignorant of the fence wire that twangs a straight line to Mexico.
Mexico. Another coupon tacked onto the pile I’ll redeem when I get some power in my fucken life. Look around this life and all you see is folks’ coupons tacked everywhere, what they’ll do if, what they’ll do when. Warm anticipation for shit that ain’t even going to happen.
‘Kid,’ says one of the guards, ‘you ain’t haulin your stalk back there, are ya?’ He follows with the kind of ‘Grr-hrr-hrr’ he will have learned off lard-ass Barry. I swear these guys must share that one joke around, ole Barry must give fucken smut classes after work or something. Snatches of their talk filter back to me.
‘Uh-huh, Vaine Gurie petitioned the county for a SWAT team.’
‘Over the sheriff’s head?’
‘Uh-huh. Barry upgraded their in-surance same fuckin day.’
‘He told you that?’
‘Tuck says.’
‘Tuck What’s-his-name, at the morgue? What’s he know about Barry’s in-surance?’
‘Tuck sells goddam in-surance. Dropped Amway to sell fuckin in-surance.’
‘No shit.’
I sense a learning: that much dumber people than you end up in charge. Look at the way things are. I’m no fucken genius or anything, but these spazzos are in charge of my every twitch. What I’m starting to think is maybe only the dumb are safe in this world, the ones who roam with the herd, without thinking about every little thing. But see me? I have to think about every little fucken thing.
*
As I sit, then lay, then pace, then sit again in my cell, waiting for my next court appearance, time, being an agent of Fate, slows way the fuck down. Thursday eats Wednesday, and Jesus’ last breath drags ten days into the past, towing Nuckles’s silence behind it, as if he was never even there, like the truth was my shadow alone. To stretch things even further, Mom calls to say Lally has been contracted to shoot another report from Martirio. It’s typical of where things are at with Fate, slowing time down all over the place, calling the weirdest fucken people Cindy. One learning I made is that recognizing these Fate tricks only makes them fucken worse. Even as I pass on to you these amazing life insights, I curse you with making them fucken worse. Because once you know about them, you fucken wait for them to happen.
The day of my court appearance is hot and soupy. I sense dogs across town, chilling under window-mounted air-conditioners, letting any ole cat pass by, and cats letting any ole rat pass by, and rats – probably too fucken lathered to even want to pass by. I’m the only one passing by, in fact, on my way to the classroom. I mean, courtroom.
‘All-a rise.’
Court froths with sighs and the stench of hot clothes this Friday. Everybody stares at me. ‘Oh Lord,’ as Pam would say. Pam might come by later, but Mom can’t make it. Faces disfigured with memories of black blood and gray skin dot the crowd. Kin of the fallen. Mr Lechuga stares death-rays at me, and he ain’t even Max’s real daddy. Lorna Speltz’s mom is here, like a damp kind of turtle. I get waves of sadness, not for me but for them, all mangled and devastated. I’d give anything for them to be vastated again.
Vaine is gone, her table is occupied by a shiny man wearing black and white. Judge Gurie catches his attention. ‘Mr Gregson, I take it you’re appearing for the State?’
‘One hundred percent correct, ma’am – all the way to the district court.’ Perky fucker.
The judge picks Goosens’s file off her desk and waves it at the prosecutor. ‘I have a report on the defendant’s state of mind.’
‘We vigorously oppose bail, your honor.’
‘On what grounds?’ asks the judge.
The prosecutor fights a smile. ‘In common parlay – the kid’s stole more damn chain than he can swim with. We’re afraid he’ll go down with it, and we’ll never see him again!’ A chuckle runs through the court. It stops at the judge, who scowls at Goosens’s file, then turns to Abdini. ‘Any further submissions in respect of this application?’
Abdini stops fussing at his table and looks up. ‘Is family boy, have many interest . . .’
‘I know all that,’ the judge flaps her hand, ‘I mean anything new, like the – digestive condition mentioned in this report, for instance.’
‘A-ha, the toilet . . .’ says Abdini, mostly to himself.
‘If your honor pleases,’ says Gregson, ‘we’d object to the court doing the defense’s homework for them.’
‘Very well. They clearly haven’t been instructed, so I’ll leave the clues at that.’
‘Also, ma’am, we’d like to enter a statement from the witness, Marion Nuckles,’ says Gregson.
The judge’s eyebrows become airborne. Breathing dies in the room. ‘I was told no statement could be taken until March next year!’
‘It’s a transcript of digital media taken at the crime scene, Judge. A reporter from CNN sourced it for us, in the public interest.’ Motherfucker Lally flashes to mind. Makes you wonder which poor suck he’s fucking over right now.
‘Well that’s very public-spirited of them. Is the defendant’s alibi supported by the witness?’ asks the judge.
‘Not our brief, your honor. Our statement concerns the possible whereabouts of another firearm – I’m sure we all agree, that casts a serious light on the prisoner’s bail application.’
Judge Gurie puts on her glasses, reaching for the document. She scans it, frowning, then lays it down and peers at the prosecutor. ‘Counsel, the actual murder weapon was found at the outset. Are you saying you can link a second gun to these crimes?’
‘Very possibly, ma’am.’
‘Do you have that gun?’
‘Not as such, but officers are investigating.’
The judge sighs. ‘Well, it’s obvious neither of you has seen the psychiatric report. In the
absence of hard evidence, I’ll be ruling on the basis of this assessment.’
An itchy silence falls over the room, measured in tens of thousands of years. The crowd divides its attention between me and the bench, all the while juggling the decent, downtown skills that let them soak it up without looking like they’re at a traffic accident and fucken enjoying it. They juggle those skills with their eyebrows.
Judge Gurie sits still for a moment, then surveys the court. It freezes. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s fair to say we’ve had enough. We’re fed up – outraged! – at these continual damned breaches of our rightful peace.’ Applause erupts; some asshole even whoops like a TV audience. You wait for the chant, ‘Gu-rie! Gu-rie! Gu-rie!’
The judge pauses to straighten her collar. ‘My decision today takes into account the feelings of the victims’ families, as well as those of the wider community. I also acknowledge that, despite the defendant’s stable, if not very affluent background, he is a standing candidate to stand trial as an accessory to these crimes.’ The typist looks over at my corral, probably to boost the polish on her own dumb kids. None of them in jail today, no sirree. ‘Vernon Gregory Little,’ says the judge, ‘in light of the disorder identified in this report, and taking into account submissions by both counsels – I am releasing you . . .’
‘My babies, my poor dead babies,’ squeals a lady at the back. Outrage spews through the room.
‘Silence! Let me finish,’ says the judge. ‘Vernon Little, I am releasing you into the care of Dr Oliver Goosens, starting Monday, on an outpatient basis. Failure to comply with the doctor’s schedule of treatment, in any way whatsoever, will result in your further detention. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
She stretches over the bench and lowers her voice. ‘One more thing – if I were defending, I’d seriously consider expanding on this, ehm – bowel thing.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
I’ll be damned. I burrow through the mess of onlookers and float out of the courthouse into the sun, just like that. Reporters buzz around me like flies at a shit-roast. I’m full of feelings, but not the ones I dreamed of. Instead of true joy, I feel waves; the kind that make you look forward to the smell of laundry on a rainy Saturday, the type of drippy hormones that trick you into saying I Love You. Security they fucken call it. Watch out for that shit. Those waves erode your goddam bravery. I even get a wave of gratitude for the judge – go fucken figure. I mean, Judge Gurie’s been good to me, but – expand on the bowel thing? – I don’t fucken think so.