Be Kind

Just before the day it happened, I was confident by nature: my soul was brown and unashamed as any naked, fearless brave bedaubed with sweat and blackened dirt and crimson war paint of the gods. I slashed and splattered every hue like a shaggy buffalo in motion, Taurus ripping up the sod and turning prairie into dust before they trampled, tremor-like, with hooves that gobbled up the mud and turned the grass into a desert . . .  

The canvas edge was powder blue with swelling clouds like cotton candy.  Feeling circumscribed and crowded, and yet desirous to explore, I slid my paint-enraptured hands with drippy fingers down the easel, coating wood with earthen hues of olive green and yellow ocher. Once the easel was complete (a mere extension of my landscape), the moving fingers sought unanimously to fill the canvas of my skin with loamy roots, decrepit bones, and even a treasure chest of toys along the fabric of my sweater. How it shimmered like an emerald!

But it was only fingerpaint, and as I’d splattered it like blood with sloppy six-year-old abandon, feeling proud as old Picasso chiding Dali with his slashing, I barely heard a primal shriek that cut the classroom like a knife and turned my plump and pretty teacher into something red and horrid. I felt a hundred pupils staring . . .

A thousand saucer-eyes agape, by junior demon teens transformed to verbal swords of demon-laughter, slashing feelings to the bone and even nicking sticky marrow with the violence of their thrusting. Before Columbine there was Glenda . . .

Glenda Ford lived in a trailer talked by grunting drooled a lot and cruelly trapped within an age where bullies reached the size of houses, ate the weak like crazy Chronos, mauled the spirit bird forever. But once upon an autumn morning rolled a rusty yellow bus that loudly clattered through the ancient hills of Crab n’ Cancer Orchard . . . a school as coarse as Appalachia, children countrified and mean as any railroad tracks abandoned by the ghost of old Phineas; limestone quarries spawning crazy crippled killers never captured; ‘bandoned mines as black as mountains where they cooked and gobbled kids and human sacruments and femurs poking out through rotting foliage. Curse those horrid, broken images!

But every morning I would watch her, Pigpen-dirty Glenda Ford, the girl with messy, greasy hair who boards the bus and trudges slow and only seeks an empty slot amongst the rows of demon eyes and surreptitious, hateful, glances. I watch with pity mixed with horror. Perhaps I even die a little:

“You can’t sit here.”

“That girl’s retarded.”

“She sucks on DOG dicks!” they would snicker.

Her official title is The Ugliest Girl in the World, but if you look at her objectively you can see she’s not repulsive: decent teeth, a normal nose, a pair of big and rounded eyes that have the glitter of a woman’s. But she is draped in attic clothes and wears her poverty like a stigma. All the kids except for one have moved to block their empty seats. The more aggressive, feeling playful, even shove her “hot potato” back and forth across the aisle:

“Ewe gross.”

“Don’t even touch me.”

A handsome boy turns deathly pale as she approaches where he’s seated. He is stationed by a window, which leaves a single spot available. “Here you go,” he almost whispers, with a subtle, desperate nod.

“Whuhdyuhsay?!” responds the girl. The kindly gesture goes unfathomed, sparks confusion nearing fright. She scans his pupils for approval.

“I said you can sit HERE.”

She plops beside him with a grunt and looks at nothing in particular. Her face has holes that blink with hurt. The children’s hatred reconfigures: it adjusts its scaly head to catch the terror-stricken boy’s attempt to make himself obscure by slinking lower than the backrest. The children chant the catchy rhyme with perfect timing, like a choir: “Glenda and Nile, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

A couple years go roaring by and now the boy has grown popular. It’s still the corny early-Nineties: the jeans are acid-washed and rolled in little cuffs above the ankles, the shoes are Keds or LA Gear, the bangs are frozen in a wave of fluorocarboned insecurity. The boy dissimulates and cusses, kisses girls, and plays football. He occasionally even fights or sneaks a cigarette in the bathroom. Anything to be cool.

And in those days were foggy rinks where children skated, fell, and giggled . . . and in the dark a mirror ball threw shadow shapes and spectral hues across a floor of polished stone and stony hearts of future yuppies, roving gangs of preppy-jocks that knocked the losers off their skates or even loitered in the corners fusing silhouettes and shadows . . . 

Near the restrooms in the back, in loud and quarter-hungry rows, an old arcade with violent classics shuddered strobishly and beckoned: Street Fighter, Time Killers, and the immortal Mortal Combat. In the middle of the room was a concession stand and tables. It smelled of heat and buttered popcorn, but had a sideshow horror quality that made me queasy to my stomach. The ketchup looked like human blood.

I heard the sound of windows breaking, then the ghastliest explosion. The lighting flickered for a moment and you could hear the light bulbs sizzle. The children screamed and clumped together. More enraptured than afraid, I swept my eyes across the scene and tried to isolate the cause. I saw a stranger dressed in clothing that was black and very baggy; a red bandana masked his face except for eyes like blurry marbles. As he passed the check-out booth, he paused a moment with his weapon, an enormous-looking rifle. I crouched beside a video game and tried to hide behind its shoulder . . . 

A low and painted wall of stone enclosed a section of the rink: the stranger leaned against the wall with elbows propped along the top to keep his aim precision-steady. He unloaded it at will: “Chuh-cheet… BANG! SPLAT! Chuh-cheet… BANG! SPLAT! Chuh-cheet… BANG! SPLAT!” Every recoil from the barrel knocked him several feet backward. One student – my closest friend – exploded headfirst like a movie: brain tissue and bone pellets left him nothing but a neckhole. Another student, a blond cheerleader, clutched her disembodied arm and held it streaming to her shoulder. The polished surface of the rink became a pool of spooky crimson: gurgling half-deads on the floor meandered slowly like a slug in search of cover from the carnage. But there was nowhere close enough.

The shooter suddenly spun around, as if to check the arcade, and caught me frozen-and-standing-up in the forgetfulness of horror. I heard a visceral little squeak and ducked and flinched without thinking, too immobilized to act. Extremely slowly and deliberately, with time-suspended animation, he dropped the barrel to his knees and seemed to float in my direction. I gazed directly in his eyes and saw the glitter of a woman. She placed the shotgun buttocks-down against the ragged navy carpet: an explosion rocks the ceiling, fragments rain on head and shoulders . . .

They say it pays to be kind.