Dyed souls, p.1
Dyed Souls, page 1
Dyed Souls
Gary Santorella
Copyright © 2018 Gary Santorella
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 978 1789010 299
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
My thanks and appreciation to those who have, through their encouragement and critical feedback, helped to make this novel possible. A special thanks to: Ray and Ruth Munger, Geoff and Pat Ross, Chris Marsh, Bruce Wexler, Maureen and Michael Rekrut, Bill and Irene Langham, David Klos and J. Winfrey-Cuthbertson, Diana Hernandez, Gabriella Hernandez, Laura Reyes, Maxine Linnell, Aki Schiltz and Doug Johnston of The Literary Consultancy, Joe Shillito and Emily Castledine at Troubador Publishing, and of course, Yuanxiao Zhu and Danni Tu, my brother and my parents. And to the hundreds of kids I’ve worked with over the years, I hope I’ve done your lives justice.
A special thanks to Gabriella Hernandez for her exquisite cover art.
Contents
1.Great White
2.Faulty Circuits
3.A Little Rain; a Lot of Thunder
4.Not a Clue
5.Under the Microscope
6.Dyed Souls
7.T-h-o-R-a-z-I-n-e
8.Of Mice and Men
9.If I Had a Hammer…
10.Snap, Crackle, Pop
11.Wild Is the Wind
12.The Two Winged Steeds
13.The Next Day
14.First
15.Awakenings
16.Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
17.I See a Darkness
18.Unnatural Selection
19.Smoke and Ashes
20.Ground Control to Major Tom
21.Ashes to Ashes
22.Cyclone
23.Occam’s Razor
24.This Is Where I’m Staying
25.An Egg McMuffin and the Damage Done
26.The Long and Winding Road
27.The Climbing Tree
28.The Ties That Bind
29.Covenant
1
Great White
My mom isn’t saying anything. Then again, most times she doesn’t have to. She’s evolved a silent language all her own that can paralyze my tongue as well. The sagebrush and scrub oak race past the corner of my eye and I stare out the windshield, swallowing down the scream that’s rising in my throat. My mom seems to be daring the road or me to tell her to slow down. I can’t speak for the road, but I know better. We approach the next hairpin turn, and my fingers search for cracks in the Rambler’s worn-out upholstery. What I wouldn’t give for a seat belt right now.
It’s stiflingly hot, but we ride with the windows up. It isn’t because my mom wants everyone to think that we’ve got air conditioning this time. She wants me to sweat for what I did.
My stomach is swooning. A thin scent of sage seeps through a crack in the side window, and I take in a long, deep, secret breath, holding onto the sweetness for as long as I can. But the noxious brew of cigarette smoke and boozy sweat makes my stomach swoon even worse. I try to close my eyes, but the spent Pep Boys air freshener dangling from the cigarette lighter pokes at my knee, its three wildly grinning faces mocking my predicament. I reach out to stop its rhythm.
“Who told you to touch that?”
My hand freezes in midair.
“And keep those damn ugly mitts of yours where I can’t see them.”
I bury a hand under each leg. My mom reaches over and presses in the lighter. The grinning heads sway maniacally on their shortened tether.
We climb, and the sun slowly slips down the drain of the horizon. My insides sink right along with it. I’m not proud of what I did, but she had no business doing what she was doing neither. She makes me want to puke when I catch her at it. “Boyfriend” my ass.
My mom finally eases back on the accelerator. We pass through the last set of switchbacks, and an iron gate emerges in the dim yellow wash of the aging headlights. Attached to it is a sign that reads:
Hawthorne Residential Treatment Village
Please Register upon Arrival
It makes it sound like we’re going to some magical place hidden deep inside the Angeles Mountains. Trust me—we’re not.
My mom pulls into the circle and stops the car just short of my cottage. “No one’s gotta know, ya hear?”
We haven’t lived in Virginia for some time, but my mom lays on a thick southern drawl just the same. That’s never a good sign.
“You listening, Charlie?”
Her eyes poke at me like fingers.
“Why are we stopping here? The cottage is over there!” Big mistake.
She takes hold of my chin and pulls my face toward hers, her hair still mussed and wet from the couch. “Take a good hard look, Charlie boy,” she says, pointing toward the cottage with her eyes, “’cause this is exactly where you’ll be if you don’t get your shit together.”
I turn my eyes away from hers, and she pushes my face away.
“You know, it’s just me and you now. There ain’t no granddaddy or grandmamma to spoil you. So it’s me you gotta be showing some respect if you ever want to get out of this freak joint. Maybe you should think about that the next time you get the urge to throw ice water on your mama.” She reaches for her purse, fumbling through it until she finds her hairbrush. She works the brush through the tangles, not hiding how irritated it is making her. She lets out a deep southern sigh to fill in the space where I should be talking but don’t dare. “I don’t know; maybe that’s what you’ve really wanted all along—for your mama to disappear and never come back.”
Most people don’t know this, but when a great white hunts, it doesn’t go into a frenzy like other sharks do. It strikes its prey just once, then backs away and waits for its victim to bleed out so it can finish feeding without a fuss.
My mom leans back, smiles, and strokes my cheek. “That’s all right, Charlie. Never you mind. You just got soft living with your grandparents, is all. You forget that most people don’t have it so easy—that you have to be tough to make it in this world. That’s alright. That’s what your mama’s here for—to always remind you.”
She sighs again, and I try to stave off a chill passing through me.
“Say, do you remember that old library just outside of Arlington?” she asks. “You used to walk up and down, searching and a-pulling, searching and a-pulling. Then you’d make a neat little pile and read to me from each one.” She leans over. “I had to act like I was listening to every word or you’d get to frowning something fierce. Lord knows, I knew more about the life cycle of frogs than I ever imagined I would. Then after, we’d head over to the Dairy Queen on Old Post Road, and you’d always get the same thing—a chocolate-dipped vanilla cone—and end up wearing half of it on your face. Do you remember?” She grins, waiting for me to grin back.
I remember the library and the warm feeling of being surrounded by all those books. And my mom sitting next to me is one of the few memories of her that still makes me smile. But every good memory seems to come with three bad ones. I also remember the scraggly guys in the parking lot coming up to our car wearing big smiles, with baggies sticking out of their pockets, and how my mom would get all flirty and disappear for ages, leaving me sitting there in the hot car with ice cream and chocolate dribbling down my shirt. And it’s these memories—the ones my mom always seems to forget—that make me hold my tongue.
My mom sighs and looks at her watch. “You were so sweet back then; so easy.” She crushes out her cigarette and searches in her purse again. She glances around, sticks her face inside, snorts hard, then rubs the side of her nose like it’s burning.
She puts the car in gear, and it lurches forward.
“You’d better straighten yourself up,” she says, rubbing her nose again. She guides the car around the circle, comes to a stop in front of my cottage, and shuts the engine off. “Look at you,” she says. “You go in with that long face and your zookeepers are going to think that something’s up for sure. Which one’s on?”
“Ted.”
“Good.” She quickly checks her lipstick in the rearview mirror and pushes up on her boobs so they show out her halter top. “I’ll tell you what: tonight will be our little secret. No one’s gotta know, especially that Carl Dorn, okay?”
We walk past the living-room window, and I see Ted sitting cross legged in front of the fireplace, swaying back and forth to some mu
“Hi, Charles! Hello, Mrs. Lyle! How are you this fine evening?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” my mom says, hesitating for effect. “It’s Ted, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes it is! You have an amazing memory.”
“Well, how could I forget? Charlie is always going on about you. It’s Ted did this, and Ted did that!” My mom lies with such ease that I’m not sure whether to laugh or throw up. This time, I can’t help but laugh.
“I have to say, I’m very pleased to hear that, Mrs. Lyle,” Ted says with a grin.
He has this way of talking that sounds like he has one eye fixed on some hidden mirror that he can’t stop admiring himself in. Doesn’t he even get that we are back a whole day early?
Ted bends his six-foot-four-inch frame down until he and I are eye to eye and flips his white-boy dreadlocks to one side with a quick turn of his head. His face has this warm Mr. Rogers kind of glow to it. “Charlie, I have to say, I really appreciate getting this feedback from your mom.”
“It’s Charles,” I say back coldly. Believe me—I want to say more, but my mom slides a hand up my shirtsleeve and gives the fleshy part of my arm a good hard pinch. I know better than to flinch.
“Oh now, Ted, don’t take that the wrong way. I’m the only one who he lets call him that.” My mom smiles as she sizes Ted up, probing for a weakness. “My, my, it certainly is a beautiful evening, isn’t it?” She waggles toward the window in her leather miniskirt, making sure Ted gets a good look at what he shouldn’t be looking at. “I see all the little ones are off to bed. Must get awful lonesome, sitting all by yourself.” My mom pirouettes and props herself up onto the windowsill in one move and then slowly crosses her legs.
“Yes, uh, no, I mean they’re all tucked in.” The tendons in Ted’s neck strain against his instincts. “It’s a shame that I won’t be spending much more time with him.”
“Well, why’s that, Ted? You going somewhere?”
“No, I mean, as soon as we have an opening, Charlie—I mean, Charles—is transferring to the big kids’ cottage…you know, the adolescent side. He’s always been ahead of the younger kids intellectually, and since he’s turning fourteen…” Ted suddenly gathers himself. “You got the program update we sent, right?”
My mom looks flustered. “Oh…oh yes, of course. With the long drive, it must have slipped my mind. My goodness, fourteen.” She uncrosses and recrosses her legs, and then lets one of the high heels slide off her foot and dangle from her toe. Ted clenches his jaw just like Kenny before one of his fits. My mom smiles and checks her watch. “My goodness, is that the time already? Is it okay if I tuck my little boy in?”
“Sure, Mrs. Lyle, go right ahead.”
“Mrs. Lyle is what they call my mama. You can call me Patti.” She slips her shoe back on and walks toward the back bedrooms, making sure to give Ted a little wiggle as she does. “G’night, Ted. You sleep tight now, ya hear?”
“Goo…good night, Mrs. Lyle—I mean, Patti. You too, Charles.”
When we are out of sight, my mom grabs me by the arm and whisks me down the hallway. I have my own room, so she doesn’t need to be all that careful, but she leaves the light off just the same.
“What was all that ‘Charles’ stuff?” she whispers with a loud hiss, shoving me down on the bed. “I was getting you in good with ol’ Teddy boy there, and you had to go and blow it. You best remember what I told you.”
She undoes my shirt, grabbing skin along with buttons as she does. “Honestly, I don’t know what gets into you sometimes.” She scans my room by the dim street light filtering in through the window. “My, my, will you look at that? He must have sent you half his goddamn library.” She lets out an odd-sounding laugh, walks over to the bookcase, pulls out a book, hesitates, and puts it back.
“You’d better get under those covers,” she says hurriedly.
I close my eyes, and she jabs at the contours of my body with quick karate chops, tucking the bedding under me like a tight-fitting sarcophagus. I start to mouth the words “I’m sorry.” But before I open my eyes, I hear the click-click-click of her heels on the linoleum, and the side door opening with a creak.
“Nighty, night, Ted,” my mom calls from the darkness. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite. That is, unless you want them to.”
“G…good night, Patti.”
My mom is in such a hurry that she doesn’t close the door all the way, and it hangs lazily on the hinges of the dry desert air. Crickets fill the void after the car door slams shut. I wait. I hear the anemic clacking of the ignition before the motor turns over. Tires slowly crush gravel, the power steering squeals, and the engine lets out a tired roar. Gradually, the sound of the engine gives way to a distant hum until finally there is no sound at all. My mom is gone. Again.
The swamp cooler wheezes and squeaks through the vent at the head of my bed. I pretend I’m on a boat that’s drifting down the Potomac as seagulls fly overhead. But try as I might, my mind gets pulled back by the undercurrent of what just happened. One more home visit has come and gone, with one more secret that I can’t tell. As usual, I’ve got nothing to hold onto but the feeling of shame that always washes over me. I wonder if there is something deep inside us that rises up like an alarm whenever we go against our kin, regardless of what they’ve done, that warns us that our survival is in jeopardy. If there is, you’d think I’d do a better job of paying attention, because no matter how right I think I am at the time, I always end up in the same crappy place.
“Hey, Charlie boy!” cackles Frankie from the next room. Frankie likes to keep tabs of everyone’s home visits, and nothing makes him happier than the agony of defeat. I can picture his ratlike face all scrunched up in delight at the thought of my mom and me coming back early. Whenever I read about the Nazis, it’s not hard imagining Frankie sitting with Eichmann and the rest of the gang at the Bundesgarden, having the time of his life.
I close my eyes. Maybe if I stay quiet, Frankie will get bored and move on to something else. The swamp cooler takes a short, uneasy break. I can hear soft sounds of sleep coming from the back bedrooms.
I don’t know why things always turn out this way between my mom and me. Darwin says that how we act toward others is caused by the sympathies we feel toward them and our skill at figuring out the consequences of our actions—and that both of these abilities evolved because they increase our chances of survival. If that’s true, you’d think I’d do a better job of remembering it. Because whenever I am with my mom, a completely different set of instincts takes over, and my ability to figure things out flies right out the window along with any sympathies I have toward her. I don’t know; maybe I’m some weird mutation that isn’t meant to have a home. I don’t mean the kind you put together with hammer and nails, but one where you know how to have the right kind of feelings whenever you need them…
“Hey, Charlie! char-lie! Was that your mom? Man, she’s hot! I bet she gives great…”
A tsunami of rage surges through me, but Frankie isn’t worth a shot of Thorazine. The swamp cooler kicks in again, and the sounds of rushing currents and seagulls’ cries fill my ears so even Frankie’s voice can’t penetrate the darkness.
2
Faulty Circuits
I hear them going at it, like it will never stop. I run away to the park and hide under the trees like I always do, but the sound doesn’t go away. Then I hear a new sound. A cop making his rounds, flashing his light under the trees looking for campers. He comes closer. But when the beam comes near, all around, there are arms and legs as far as I can see. I get up to run, but the legs block me in.
I wake with a start.
“Hi, it’s me…Ted. No, everything’s is fine. I just thought I should let you know that Charles came back last night…yes, around ten…with his mom…no, she was alone…” Ted’s voice rattles through the vent like a tin cup in a tumbler. Even though you have to walk clear across the cottage to get to my room from the staff room, they are actually right next to each other. So when the swamp cooler isn’t running, I can hear all of the staff’s confidential conversations. “No, she didn’t say…it didn’t occur to me to ask…no, he seemed okay, but there was a weird karmic energy…okay, I’ll just log what I observed. Should I tell him that you’ll talk to him tomorrow?”
