He had asked if he could borrow their radio to hear the program for a minute, and it had been a commercial break or something, and the kids had given him the radio, probably out of some malicious kind of courtesy that would permit them to take offense and rag the little boy. He had changed the station... and they’d been unable to get it to go back to the ball game. It was locked into the past, on a station that was broadcasting a program that didn’t exist for anyone but Jeffty.
They had beaten him badly... as everyone watched.
And then they had run away.
I had left him alone, left him to fight off the present without sufficient weaponry. I had betrayed him for the sale of a 21” Mediterranean console television, and now his face was pulped meat. He moaned something inaudible and sobbed softly.
“Shhh, it’s okay, kiddo, it’s Donny. I’m here. I’ll get you home, it’ll be okay.”
I should have taken him straight to the hospital. I don’t know why I didn’t. I should have. I should have done that.
When I carried him through the door, John and Leona Kinzer just stared at me. They didn’t move to take him from my arms. One of his hands was hanging down. He was conscious, but just barely. They stared, there in the semi-darkness of a Saturday afternoon in the present. I looked at them. “ A couple of kids peat him up at the theater.” I raised him a few inches in my arms and extended him. They stared at me, at both of us, with nothing in their eyes, without movement. “Jesus Christ,” I shouted, “he’s been beaten! He’s your son! Don’t you even want to touch him? What the hell kind of people are you?!”
Then Leona moved toward me very slowly. She stood in front of us for a few seconds, and there was a leaden stoicism in her face that was terrible to see. It said, I have been in this place before, many times, and I cannot bear to be in it again; but I am here now.
So I gave him to her. God help me, I gave him over to her.
And she took him upstairs to bathe away his blood and his pain.
John Kinzer and I stood in our separate places in the dim living room of their home, and we stared at each other. He had nothing to say to me.
I shoved past him and fell into a chair. I was shaking.
I heard the bath water running upstairs.
After what seemed a very long time Leona came downstairs, wiping her hands on her apron. She sat down on the sofa and after a moment John sat down beside her. I heard the sound of rock music from upstairs.
“Would you like a piece of nice pound cake?” Leona said.
I didn’t answer. I was listening to the sound of the music. Rock music. On the radio. There was a table lamp on the end table beside the sofa. It cast a dim and futile light in the shadowed living room. Rock music from the present, on a radio upstairs? I started to say something, and then knew... Oh, God... no!
I jumped up just as the sound of hideous crackling blotted out the music, and the table lamp dimmed and dimmed and flickered. I screamed something, I don’t know what it was, and ran for the stairs.
Jeffty’s parents did not move. They sat there with their hands folded, in that place they had been for so many years.
I fell twice rushing up the stairs.
There isn’t much on television that can hold my interest. I bought an old cathedral-shaped Philco radio in a second-hand store, and I replaced all the burnt-out parts with the original tubes from old radios I could cannibalize that still worked. I don’t use transistors or printed circuits. They wouldn’t work. I’ve sat in front of that set for hours sometimes, running the dial back and forth as slowly as you can imagine, so slowly it doesn’t look as if it’s moving at all sometimes.
But I can’t find Captain Midnight or The Land of the Lost or The Shadow or Quiet, Please.
So she did love him, still, a little bit, even after all those years. I can’t hate them: they only wanted to live in the present world again. That isn’t such a terrible thing.
It’s a good world, all things considered. It’s much better than it used to be, in a lot of ways. People don’t die from the old diseases any more. They die from new ones, but that’s Progress, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
Tell me.
Somebody please tell me.
FREE WITH THIS BOX!
Here’s where we part company. You’ve been extremely patient with me, and I know you understand that I’ve been a little loose and twitchy from the start, directing this at people your age for the first time. So I am in your debt, and I thank you. So by way of a proper gracious “bread ‘n’ butter” gift for your indulgence, I’m going to leave you with this last story. The thing of it is, there were only supposed to be 15 stories in this book, ending with what may be one of my best ones, “Jeffty is Five.” But after I sent the book in to my editor and publisher, I thought about it, and I knew I had to add “Free With This BOX!” to the collection because, well, it’s as close to a recounting of what trouble I’ve been in all my life as I have handy. Oh, hell, I’ve written whole books of essays and columns and commentaries and reviews, many of which include anecdotes about my weird span; but in this story, which I wrote a long time ago, I took something that had actually happened to me, when I was a little kid, and I only fictionalized it a little bit. It is a story, yeah, not a memoir, but it is clear and clarion me-speaking-to-you warning about what it means to live the kind of life I’ve lived, amazing and fulfilling as it has been. There is a line I remember from the journalist and madman Hunter S. Thompson, in which he speaks about “the dead end loneliness of a man who makes his own rules.” I recall it now, as I get ready to bid you fond farewell, because if there is a lesson above all others contained in this volume, it is this: be your own person. Be kind, be ethical, be honorable and courageous; respect your friends, keep your word, treat your enemies with honor if you can but spin ‘em if they won’t let you treat them that way; don’t believe the okeydoke that people who’re trying to sell you something lay on you, remember True Love only happens when you have no fear and can laugh about it, and you cannot possibly be too smart. Above all, be your own person. Never blame bad luck, or fate, or “the breaks,” or paranoid delusions about conspiracies for what your life has become. You are now, and you will always be, in charge of your destiny. What was that line out of Buckaroo Bonzai...oh yeah, I remember...”Never forget: no matter where you go, there you are.” Here I am, the product of what I’ve made of myself, in trouble from the git-go; and there you are, looking at me looking at you. Wherever you are, kid, remember, I’m there, too. Take care of yourself. Don’t step on no broken glass.
His name was David Thomas Cooper. His mother called him Davey, and his teachers called him David, but he was old enough now to be called the way the guys called him: Dave. After all, eight years old was no longer a child. He was big enough to walk to school himself, and he was big enough to stay up till eight-thirty any weeknight.
Mommy had said last year, “For every birthday, we will let you stay up a half hour later,” and she had kept her word. The way he figured it, a few more years, and he could stay up all night, almost.