Have you ever found yourself contemplating something you wouldn't admit to anyone? Do thoughts sometimes enter your mind that seem to be not your own? Do you want to ignore them? Can you ignore them? No, really, deep down, have you ever wanted something so bad that you would do absolutely anything to get it: As long as nobody saw you do it? Who are you when nobody is looking? Are there forces outside of you, bigger than you are, more powerful, too powerful to ignore? Or are you the master of your own fate? In this coming of age story, Tommy Flack encounters not only his own greed and disillusionment, he also encounters a familiar Princess, a body morphing dog, piranhas, giant first graders, the Gabbernaught, drivable tornadoes, flowing volcanos, falling helicopters, racing horses, Sigmund Freud selling hot dogs, dancing pirates, slavery, his long-lost father, tap shoes, Unicorn Boy, the Freedom Riders, Anne Frank, Adolph Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, and Pablo Neruda on a journey to eliminate or become New Evil. Consider it a game of Devils' Tag. Are you it?
Devils' Tag
By John SchaefferAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 John Schaeffer
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4685-3813-7Contents
PART ONE: External Locus of Control........................................................................1CHAPTER ONE: Stacked.......................................................................................3CHAPTER TWO: Penny Parkman.................................................................................7CHAPTER THREE: Doggy-Go-Round..............................................................................12CHAPTER FOUR: Swollen Want Glands..........................................................................14CHAPTER FIVE: Master Of My Own Domain (Just Take It).......................................................17CHAPTER SIX: The heist.....................................................................................20CHAPTER SEVEN: his Father's Right hand.....................................................................26CHAPTER EIGHT: The Naked And The Bound.....................................................................30CHAPTER NINE: Forget The Anger.............................................................................33CHAPTER TEN: Meet The Princess.............................................................................39CHAPTER ELEVEN: King Of The Silly..........................................................................44CHAPTER TWELVE: Amazon Tug Of War..........................................................................51CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Silent Bubbles...........................................................................57CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Going For The Gold.......................................................................59CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Dog In Lemon Jell-O.......................................................................60CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Jungle Doctor Safari......................................................................61CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Dorothy Day Olympics....................................................................69CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: hunting Tornadoes........................................................................97CHAPTER NINETEEN: Johari Window............................................................................105CHAPTER TWENTY: Lavamoeba Lollipops........................................................................142CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Play The Guitar........................................................................149CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Volcanic Eruptions.....................................................................153CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Girl With The Voice Of An Eagle......................................................159CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Cave Paintings And Siamese Fighting Fish..............................................165CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: his honor, The Master Duck Surgeon, Sir Doctor Tommy Flack!...........................171CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Kami The Nurse.........................................................................183CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Ripped From The Page.................................................................185CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Tornado Race.........................................................................187CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Mrs. Cleveland........................................................................190CHAPTER THIRTY: Wherever You Go, There You Are.............................................................206PART TWO: Internal Locus of Control........................................................................213CHAPTER ONE: The Choice....................................................................................215CHAPTER TWO: Feel The Want.................................................................................219CHAPTER THREE: Measuremeanewville..........................................................................224CHAPTER FOUR: Tap Dancer Boy...............................................................................232CHAPTER FIVE: Sigmund Freud, The hotdog Salesman...........................................................245CHAPTER SIX: The Joker's Apprentice........................................................................250CHAPTER SEVEN: Spinning Tops...............................................................................257CHAPTER EIGHT: Leaders Lead The Followers Come Later......................................................270CHAPTER NINE: The Opposite Of Evil.........................................................................283CHAPTER TEN: Empty Armor...................................................................................298CHAPTER ELEVEN: Enter The Father...........................................................................307CHAPTER TWELVE: Tommy Becomes Mayor........................................................................310CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Auctioning Naked Girls...................................................................313CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Your Own Mother..........................................................................321CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Impeached.................................................................................329CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Moral high Ground?........................................................................335CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Parental Obligations....................................................................343CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Who's Hitler?............................................................................345CHAPTER NINETEEN: Become The Metaphor......................................................................358CHAPTER TWENTY: Vengeful Bones.............................................................................364CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Sniper.................................................................................374CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Free The Slaves........................................................................387CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: It's What You Do When Nobody's Watching That Defines Who You Are.....................392CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: The New York Submarine................................................................400CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Michele Warner And The Freedom Tribe..................................................407CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: The Ox-Orchid..........................................................................414CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Tom The Destruction Worker...........................................................418CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Discover Yourself At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art..................................423CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: A Painful Reality.....................................................................425CHAPTER THIRTY: The Journey Begins.........................................................................428CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Anne Frank's Place.....................................................................430CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Dancing in Fields of Thorny Sunflowers.................................................436CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Pablo Neruda.........................................................................441CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: I have A Dream........................................................................449CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: New Evil Exposed......................................................................461CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: The homecoming.........................................................................474CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: The Amazon Project...................................................................478
Chapter One
Stacked
Tommy Flack's momma is stacked.
At least that's what all the kids said at the Mesa View Elementary School.
And some of the teachers too.
And Principal Baldono.
Tommy didn't exactly know what they meant, but he beat 'em up for it anyway.
Well, the kids, he did.
Beat 'em right up. Enjoyed it too. Yes enjoyed. The joy of beating someone up for no reason. Fist hitting flesh. The difference between belly flesh and face flesh and head flesh. Their frantic tears and gasps for air. No reason? Well, he did know what they meant about his momma. He just tried to deny it—except for when he sold the Polaroid photo of his momma naked in the shower to his best friend Jimmy Leach. Hey, five bucks is five bucks.
"Guess we'll be gettin' your momma down here again," said Principal Baldono. He liked to have Tommy's mom come in for a conference. "You keep this up an' she's gonna lose that job a waitressin' down over at the Pancake Alley."
Tommy's mom waited tables. She hated buses full of high school kids on the road to some sporting event. They all wanted milk shakes and French fries and never left a tip unless inside a glass full of water turned upside down on the table. Tommy heard the clanking of dishes and the big kids laughing and yelling and bossing his mom around. "Get me some water!" "Refill my coke!" "My milkshake's too runny!"
She would slide that full upside down glass over to the edge of the table for the water to spill neatly into her dirty blue bussing tub and then simply pick up the shiny nickel or dime or penny and drop it, wet, into her apron pocket. Tommy loved to watch her get the better of those stupid punk kids. Made him tingle all over. Tommy hated high school kids too. Swore he'd never be one, and no one could make him. (he'd tried probably fifty times to turn a glass of water upside down without spilling it, nearly flooding the kitchen one afternoon. Then he'd figured out that you can put a napkin over the top of the glass, flip it, and then pull the napkin out and keep most of the water in the glass. Stupid big kids. Who do they think they are?)
The tip jar was the focus of all that was true in the Flack household. That by which everything else was measured. Hidden carefully in Mom's closet. Filled with quarters and dimes and pennies and nickels. The Kennedy half-dollar jar stood on the top shelf of his mother's closet, way up high above the rest of stuff. With a full jar, life could be good. An empty jar meant lean pickings.
Tommy lived in a trailer court.
Poor white trash.
They called his mom that too. Stacked, poor, white trash. Tommy didn't think he was stacked, just trash and white and poor.
That's what a lot of people called those living down at the trailer court on Idaho Street. They called Jimmy Leach that too. Even if he did have a picture of Tommy's mom naked in a shower. Jimmy lived five trailers down from Tommy, across the dirt road that separated the rows of rectangle-tubes.
Tommy could look out his own kitchen window and see into the living-room window of Jimmy's trailer across the way. He'd see Jimmy's old man yelling at him. Yellin' an' drinkin' a bottle of beer. So stood Jimmy Leach, Sr. And so fell Jimmy Leach, Sr. He sold cars. But he must not have been very good at it, Tommy thought, because Jason's dad sold cars too, and Jason lived in a house with a fenced-in back yard and a black Labrador retriever. The wire fence had those thin metal slats woven into it making a design of turquoises diamonds outlined in white. Tommy often wondered if that metal fence hid a swimming pool there in Jason's own back yard. Maybe the black lab would drown in it, Tommy thought with pleasure. The trailer park's swimming pool rested by some trees, just up the dirt road in the opposite direction from Jimmy. In the summer, Tommy could smell the chlorine through his bedroom window.
Jesse and Johnny Turpen lived in a trailer too—just not at the court. They rented space over behind someone else's real house. Nancy and Diana Turpen lived there too, but they were older. High school kids. Tommy didn't see them as sporting types who went on school bus trips. Their mom worked with Tommy's mom at the Pancake Alley. People called her Sunshine, and she wore a name-badge with a smiley face. Sometimes she wore it upside down. Now pancakes are stacked. That makes sense.
Tommy noticed for the first time that wood smacking jeans gave off a bit of an echo in Principal Baldono's office. Tommy wondered if he discovered the sound now on account of the fine new desk he leaned across. The old desk actually had wear marks at the points where all those kids through the years laid their hands while bending over to collect their swats. Not just rubbed off tarnish but actually smooth worn dents in the wood. That smooth feel under his fingers somehow gave him comfort. Tommy did his part to start the dents for this fine new desk, tapping with his fingers like a brave pounding out a warning to the tribe, telling of the dangers everywhere.
With war paint on their faces they could take over, he knew that for sure. War cries screamed off in the distance. Loud drums met Tommy's tapping and pulled it to higher ground. Puffs of white smoke floated into the blue sky. The smell of gun powder filled the back of his nose. A great horse appeared on the horizon, white with red and blue war paint. The horse galloped closer and reared up high on its hind legs. "Run, Tommy!" the horse bellowed. Run where? Tommy asked from inside his head.
"That's three, son. You want more?" Three? Tommy didn't even remember the second one. Principal Baldono, barely an inch taller than Tommy, stood panting with sweat rolling down his brow and neck. Tommy stared out the window at the dusty wind. A medium-sized dust devil swirled around lazily. He could see his trailer court, though not his own trailer, from Principal Baldono's window. "I'm callin' your momma. She gets fired, and it ain't my fault. Hey, maybe we'll give 'er a job over here, huh? She could wear that waitress dress of hers an' be my secretary." The man belched and rubbed the top of his fat belly. Tommy smelled sausage and eggs and coffee and felt the urge to vomit all over the nice, new desk.
Principal Baldono meant well. Just imagine being the short, fat, and bald principal of 375 little kids year after year after year after year. After year.
"And the next time you hit a first grader, you're suspended on top of four swats that time. Not three. Fifth grader beatin' up on a first grader. Pick on someone your own size. I've had it with you, Flack. No more flak from the Flack. Get it? It's a joke. Laugh more an' you may not have to beat up so many kids. Now get on back to class." Tommy imagined taking the wooden paddle out of Principal Baldono's hand, snapping it in half, and shoving both sharp ends down his throat. Tommy felt warmed by this thought. Even joy. A soothing in the revenge centers of his brain, and then he felt sudden pain as large goosebumps formed all over his body. "Ouch!" Tommy let out a gasp.
"Bit of a delayed reaction there, son," his still perspiring principal informed him as if he were a moron. "The swats were a few minutes ago, case you missed out on that." he put his fat hand on Tommy's right shoulder and looked with deep concern into his eyes. Tommy turned his head and searched through the window for the painted pony. "Shall we repeat the procedure?" the principal asked, tapping the paddle on the fine new desk for dramatic effect. "Wouldn't want you to miss out on the important lessons of life."
"No. I just got these really tight goosebumps," and Tommy held up his arm in demonstration, but the goose flesh had already passed.
"Right," Mr. Baldono said suspiciously.
"No, seriously! I just thought about the paddle and shov ... I mean I just had these painful goosebumps for no reason." Tommy explained, and he pointed to the wart on the knuckle of his right hand. His principal raised his left eyebrow. Tommy left the office rubbing his arms. He heard the man belch even louder, and Tommy felt a wave of nausea even before the smell of coffee, eggs, and sausage reached his nose. I feel like that a lot lately, that urge to vomit, he realized as he walked down the empty hall.
Chapter Two
Penny Parkman
In Ms. Malay's fifth-grade class, all the silence could only mean that it was time for English, which she usually began by reading from a novel. Or silence could mean someone made her mad. Tommy hated English. He'd rather speak Swahili or Portuguese or something. Portuhili or Swatuguese. But he loved silence. He always found it so easy to break.
"Take your seat, Tommy," Ms. Malay told him. He took Peter's pencil along the way.
"Hey!" Peter yelled.
"Tommy."
"What? I didn't do anything. Ask her." Tommy pointed to Alicia, but he wanted to point at Penny Parkman who sat in front of him.
"He took my pencil," Peter complained.
"`He took my pencil,'" Tommy echoed with a mockful wailing whine. Penny turned to look at him, and he sank back in his chair. He hated the way one look from Penny could make him behave. He didn't want to behave. He got swats for no reason today. It's not fair, he thought, as he handed the pencil to Penny and watched her pass it back to Peter who shyly flipped him the bird. Tommy made a mental note to kill Peter at a later date. Revenge killing is so sweet. Tommy felt all warm inside as if being rewarded for the thought right in the center of his brain. "You stink," Tommy whispered to Peter who always managed to emanate the slight hint of fresh poop.
"Tommy said I stink." All the kids laughed.
"What?" Tommy asked innocently.
"Peter, start reading from the top of page seventy-four," Tommy heard Ms. Malay answer. He could tell from her voice that she felt sad about something. Tommy's ears were particularly attuned to sad words when spoken by a woman. It's like he could taste their flavor on the back sides of his tongue, up into his ears. Or from the ears to the tongue, he couldn't be sure of the direction. The sound and taste of sadness. Sometimes Ms. Malay sounded like his mom. He hoped it wasn't something he had done to make his teacher feel bad this time. He started drawing on his paper as Peter read something boring about birds and the Amazon. Tommy hated the Amazon. Wished it would all burn down to the ground. He drew the bones of a fossilized camel flying and swooping down on some trees and peeing horrific flames all over everything. On the back of his three-humped camel, Tommy swayed and swooped, dipped and dove, weaving in and out of massive loops of fire and barked at all the little Amazonian first graders as they ran wildly from their burning forest-hut schools. It was a bark like no stupid dog could ever bark. A cross between a police siren and a blast from a 12 gage shot-gun. "Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?" Tommy heard the song in his head and laughed out loud. "Bad boys. Bad boys."
The stench of burning hair and flesh fed his nausea, and so he pulled on the reins of his fossilized camel bird and soared skyward so high that it began to freeze, and hail knocked bones free from the wings of his mighty camel! Finally, the weather forced Tommy to land on the belly of a passing jet plane to protect himself and his stead—whatever a stead was. A stead? A stead? It's a camel not a horse. Or is it a donkey? how come I use words I don't know the meaning of? he wondered. Then a big, bald mountain popped out of the forest, angry and aflame! And the plane cashed right smack into the mountainside and blew up. The blast blew Tommy and his partially boned camel-bird straight into the courtyard of a castle orphanage where all the orphans looked just like Penny Parkman in the pink dress he liked to see her wear—though he wasn't ready to admit that to Jimmy The Leach or anybody else. All the orphaned Pennies called out to him: "Tommy! Tommy!"
"Tommy!"
"What?" Tommy asked, startled that Penny stood beside his desk. He looked around the room and saw all the kids up out of their chairs in groups at the art stations.
"Can you draw me a lion?" Penny asked.
"A Lion?"
"Yeah."
"You want me to draw you a lion?"
"Yes. Please. Or a cougar. Ms. Malay, do they have cougars in the Amazon?" Penny called out, but she didn't wait for an answer. "It's for my Amazon project." Penny smiled at Tommy.
"A cougar?"
"What're you talkin' to him for?" Cindy, the leader of the girls, asked Penny.
"He's going to draw me a cougar for my Amazon project."
"Tommy?"
"He's the best artist in the class. Look at these," and Penny pointed to his fossilized camel bird.
"Ohh gross, what's that? It looks like it's peeing fire!" Cindy exclaimed.
This attracted the attention of Billy and Frankie who wanted to see it and Nicki who said "I think I'm gonna throw up," as she quivered and moved on back to the tempura paints with her wet brush dripping red paint.
"Oh! Look! There's blood everywhere!" Jessie Turpen squealed gleefully as he pointed to the trail of red on the floor. (he promptly stepped in it and made tennis shoe prints as he pranced around.) Ms. Malay rushed to check out the blood, and most of the class ran around in a frenzy trying to find the bleeder.
"That wasn't what it was doing, was it, Tommy?" Penny asked. "It wasn't really peeing fire, was it?"
"I can draw a cougar in the Amazon," Tommy responded.
"Great!" Penny pushed her drawing paper into his hands.
"Tommy, I'd like to talk with you out in the hall," Ms. Malay said, having determined the "blood" to be made from tempura paint. "Jesse, you get paper towels and clean this up."
"But I didn't spill it!"
Tommy shoved his fire-peeing camel drawings into his backpack and got up slowly as his teacher opened the door to the hallway and stood quietly waiting. He walked in short steps, his hands in his pockets, thinking: It's bolts of lightning, and the bird's just trying to save everybody.
"Tommy," Ms. Malay said as they stood in the hall, "you didn't pay attention at all during the geography lesson. I called on you twice, and I may as well have shouted to the moon." Tommy liked Ms. Malay. She acted nice even when she was supposed to be mean. He didn't know how to handle that.
"It's just bolts of lightning," he said, staring at the small howling coyote pin on her maroon blouse. Tommy wanted to join in the howl. AwwAwwAwoo!
"Tommy, I can't keep sending you to Principal Baldono's. You miss too much class. You're in his office more than your seat."
"Yes, ma'am." he felt safe in trouble in the principal's office. Why was that? The smell of sausage crossed his unconscious mind.
Ms. Malay sighed. Always a bad sign. "I want you to be in charge of the Amazon project," she said.
"I can't do that!"
"How quick you are to stand there and tell me you can't do something."
"I don't do stuff like that. Be in charge. I don't know what . . . I mean, I wasn't even gonna do an Amazon project, except Penny asked me to draw her a cougar, but, what, I just, what if, I mean I can't . . . I didn't even read the book."
"So you won't do it?"
"No."
"Not even if it means you'll disappoint me?"
"What am I supposed to do? In charge how? Like what?" "I want a group Amazon project from the class, and I want you to organize it. One project that shows everybody's amazing talents. Even yours."
"How am I supposed to know everybody's talents? And I don't have any."
His teacher stared at him blankly. A silence he couldn't stand and had to break immediately.
"You'll make me fail."
"I'll make you fail?"
"Yeah."
"How can I make you fail?"
"Just by giving me the assignment in the first place."
"My giving you an assignment makes you fail?" she asked incredulously.
"Yeah. Of course. If I didn't have to do it, then I couldn't fail at it, now could I?"
Again she stared. "Tommy, you have six weeks to find the absolute best talent of every kid in that class, including you, all put into a single class project on the Amazon in the cafeteria for presentation to the whole school, or I don't pass you to sixth grade." She displayed her sad, red-skinned angry face Tommy had come to know and trust.
"Yes, ma'am," Tommy said. Ms. Malay went back into the classroom and left Tommy standing in the hallway all by himself. He waited for the angry sound of the door slamming, but it didn't come. He heard her tell the class to start cleaning up. Tommy knew she had to pass him. He'd already flunked first grade, and when his second grade teacher wanted to hold him back again, Tommy overheard Principal Baldono tell her: "In this great state, you can only flunk 'em once. State law." So Tommy wasn't too concerned about not making it to sixth grade. A great state indeed, he thought.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Devils' Tagby John Schaeffer Copyright © 2012 by John Schaeffer. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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