Tales of the Madman Underground Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1 - The Year of Being Normal

  Chapter 2 - How the Most Expensive Pizza of My Life Resulted in Delayed Gratzification

  Chapter 3 - Eight Madmen, the Biggest Asshole in Ohio, and One Very Normal Guy

  Chapter 4 - How to Get Your Very Own Madman Nickname

  Chapter 5 - Normal Guys Walk with Pretty Girls Who Giggle

  Chapter 6 - A Word from My Sponsor

  Chapter 7 - Shoemaker’s Kid

  Chapter 8 - Tales of the Madman Underground

  Chapter 9 - “Don’t Be an Asshole,” Explained in Easy-to-Understand Terms

  PART TWO

  Chapter 10 - Cussing a Blue Streak Does Not Work on Goddam Ghoul Bastards

  Chapter 11 - I Was a Third-Grade Communist

  Chapter 12 - Two Stooges Short of an Act

  Chapter 13 - An Afternoon Down the Toilet

  Chapter 14 - In Their Backseats or at McDonald’s, the Madmen Sleep Tonight

  PART THREE

  Chapter 15 - That, Son, Was the Lone Madman

  Chapter 16 - The Value of Anything

  Chapter 17 - Tonto Joins the All-Faggot Midnight Softball League

  Chapter 18 - Tales the Madmen Never Tell

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 19 - Love, Waffles, Capitalism, Scooby-Doo, and a Grave in the Rain

  Chapter 20 - You Can’t Throw Away a Great Deal Like That

  Chapter 21 - How Many Madman Stories Ever Made Any Sense?

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 22 - Paradise Lost, Bedshitter Found, Paradise Regained

  Chapter 23 - Water Under the Bridge, Letting the Cat Out of the Bag, Everyone’s ...

  PART SIX

  Chapter 24 - The Long End of the Stick Isn’t So Hot Either

  Chapter 25 - A Completely Normal Monday, If You Happen to Be a Madman

  Chapter 26 - How Uncle Al Became My Favorite Hollering Asshole, and Vice Versa

  Chapter 27 - I Love the McDonald’s Crowd, I Always Feel Like I’m Coming Home Here

  Acknowledgements

  Books by John Barnes

  The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky

  Sin of Origin

  Orbital Resonance

  Wartide

  > Battlecry

  Union Fires

  A Million Open Doors

  Mother of Storms

  Kaleidoscope Century

  One for the Morning Glory

  Encounter with Tiber (with Buzz Aldrin)

  Patton’s Spaceship

  Washington’s Dirigible

  Caesar’s Bicycle

  Apostrophes and Apocalypses (stories)

  Earth Made of Glass

  Finity

  Candle

  The Return (with Buzz Aldrin)

  The Merchants of Souls

  The Duke of Uranium

  The Sky So Big and Black

  Princess of the Aerie

  In the Hall of the Martian King

  Gaudeamus

  The Armies of Memory

  Payback City

  Tales of the Madman Underground

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2009 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © John Barnes, 2009

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  eISBN : 978-1-101-08193-8

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  This book is dedicated, with deep gratitude,

  to two loyal friends, who insisted, for years,

  that I ought to write it,

  and then that I could write it,

  until finally I did write it:

  Ashley Grayson and Jes Tate.

  . . . and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim had ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

  It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, between two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

  “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

  It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t.

  —Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  “God, you don’t want to stay with me,” he said to the girl. “Someday you’ll be in difficulty and need my help and I’d do to you exactly what I did to Leo; I’d let you sink without moving my right arm.”

  “But your own life was at—”

  “It always is,” he pointed out. “When you do anything. That’s the name of the comedy we’re stuck in.”

  —Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

  PART ONE

  (Wednesday, September 5, 1973)

  1

  The Year of Being Normal

  I HAD DEVELOPED this theory all summer: if I could be perfectly, ideally, totally normal for the first day of my senior year, which was today, then I could do it for the first week, which was only Wednesday through Friday. And if I could be normal for that first short week, I could do it for the next long week. After that I’d just have to repeat the have-a-normal-week process seven more times. I’d worked that out on a calendar.

  Far as I could remember, nobody ever got their ticket after about Halloween, unless they spazattacked in class.

  My alarm went off at 7:15, and my eyes opened on the sun smearing across the yellowing roughcoat of my ceiling. Get up and be normal. Just for today.

  It was kind of like an idea that I’d gotten from my dad back when he was alive—“one day at a time.” Just this pas
t summer I’d found out it wasn’t his idea, he got it from AA. Anyway, good idea or not, it was my theory, which was about to become my plan, and I was going to stick to it. Like a coat of paint—for Dad, everything that stuck, stuck to everything like a coat of paint.

  Thinking about Dad was a bad way to start the plan, because it could make me blow acting normal all to hell, and nobody would understand, since he’d been dead for almost four years—four years exactly on October 17. Which I had noted would fall on Week Six of Operation Be Fucking Normal.

  Don’t think about that. I shoved that whole thought away like I shoved away the two hungry cats that jumped up onto the dining room table and headed for my bowl of raisin bran. Since I could tell Mom was still passed out solid, I didn’t worry about looking like I was being all gentle and caring with those nasty hairy fuckers; I just pushed them off the table.

  No matter what you heard, they don’t always land on their four feet. Starlight did and stalked away with most of his dignity, but Prettyangel flopped on her back, and came up snarling.

  “You’re supposed to be graceful, asshole,” I said, but the cat was already gone, charging into the living room. There was considerable yowling and screaming; with cats everywhere and all perpetually hungry and pissed off, any cat that moved fast was gonna get jumped.

  I finished my cereal, dumped the milk down the sink to keep it away from the cats, and rinsed the bowl. They always fought over any food that was left out, even if it was just something to lick, and made an even bigger mess than Mom’s kitchen was naturally.

  I spritzed my pits, splashed my hair, combed it out, and checked myself in the hallway mirror. T-shirt: red and gray, not white like a farm boy. Jeans: faded, moderate flare, Levi’s, not dirty and written on like a stoner, not chinos like a nerd, not polyester or big flared groovy-boy cords like a Christian jock. Tennis shoes: low-tops, scuffed but not too scuffed. Look groomed without looking like I had groomed. Normal normal normal.

  I combed the hair out again, riffled it with my fingers. Straight, fine, mudcolored—it clung blandly to my skull like chocolate pudding running down a bowling ball.

  Probably I was worrying way too much. Nobody normal was always trying to figure out the rules.

  I shut the door to my room good and tight; I had my time planned kind of tight for that evening and didn’t want unexpected cat messes in my room. Sometimes when I came in late I didn’t have time to do cat turd patrol in the whole house, and just had to catch it the next morning, but I drew the line at cat shit in my room.

  Especially ’cause one of those evil furry bastards liked to shit on my bed, and even Hairball, the big orange one that was kind of mine, would pee on my throw rugs if he could. I had the only room in the house where you didn’t need an ax to cut through the cat stench, and I was gonna keep it that way. The doorknob held when I tugged. Okay, if Mom didn’t open the door and forget to close it, I was catproof for the day.

  I picked up the old coal shovel I had for the purpose and ran through; I’d gotten so good I could do this in less than five minutes, like the world champion Easter egg hunter except of course it was for cat turds. More piles than I could count, as always—I was never completely sure how many cats we had at any given second—because no matter how many litter pans I set out, the big cats always guarded them and the little cats ended up crapping in the corners.

  Most of the cat pile was wormy; I didn’t look too close because I hated to see. Mom didn’t believe in fascist things like veterinarians, vaccinations, or spaying. When SkyMusic had gotten clawed up by a raccoon and been in godawful pain from his infected wounds, I’d broken down—I had sworn I’d never spend a dime on those cats but he was suffering so bad—and taken him to the vet myself, and Mom had screamed at me all that night about it, and taken SkyMusic’s painkillers for herself, and flushed his antibiotics down the toilet because all he needed were herbs and love. He went into a coma or something and died a couple days later; I remember crying the whole time I was burying SkyMusic (I gave him the spot by the lilac bush near where he used to hang out). Usually burying cats was just a job, something I did a couple times a month, but I could still get sad and pissed off and near tears when I thought about SkyMusic.

  I was gripping that shovel so hard you’d think I’d bend it in half, and I made myself relax before I spilled any. I opened the back door and slung the shovelful under the trellis. People always wondered why our morning glories were so impressive.

  At least there weren’t any dead cats this morning, and it didn’t look like anybody had lost a fight with a raccoon, skunk, or owl. I hadn’t seen BeautySong in a while, though, so maybe she’d run out of luck.

  Ocean, Starlight, LoveJoy, and Tundra all padded past me, off to kill birds and raid garbage cans in the neighborhood, as I closed and locked the back door. I’d lost two minutes to getting into a rage about cats. Fuck. Normal guys did not do that.

  One last check in the mirror. It was still me, Karl Shoemaker, Prospective Normal Guy. Normal normal normal. One like him on every street corner. Think normal thoughts, stop being a chickenshit, get moving.

  Check on Mom, like always; you never knew what might be breaking and shaking, because she broke things and shook things the way cats have kittens. So I quietly opened the door to her room, slipped inside, and looked around. Trouble, definitely—Neil was there.

  Shit. Real trouble. Whenever Mom went out at night she dressed like she’d gone to a costume party as a gypsy—big clunky black boots, baggy skirt in about twenty colors that looked like an old quilt, lots of fake gold and silver chains and loops, baggy shirt, bright head scarf. But this morning the junk jewelry lying on the nightstand and the clothes thrown around the room were new, and in the ashtray beside all the Kent butts, there were a couple roach clips with a not-smoked-down joint in each one.

  Fuck.

  This close to her paycheck, she could only have gotten the money one way.

  I slipped back out, down the hall, glanced around, opened the closet door, lifted the carpet, flipped up the little take-out piece I’d made in the floor there, and sure fucking enough. The big Ragú jar there was empty except for a note that said “Tue. Sept. 4 1973. I.O.U. $226.00. Put it on my tab, Beth Shoemaker.”

  I had a familiar numb, sick feeling as I pocketed the IOU. I’d paste it in my account book later. She’d just wiped out what I’d made last week selling radio ads, or what I’d made gardening in a month, or three McDonald’s paychecks. Figure it any way you liked, there were some days of my life I had worked for nothing, and sure as shit I was never getting them back, because Mom’s IOU wasn’t worth wiping your butt with.

  “I had to do that, sweetie,” she said, behind me. I turned around. Her jaw was set forward; she was pout ing. In the early morning light her skin was pale and ashy, showing every fine wrinkle. She really needed to learn to wash her face before going to bed. The heavy electric-blue eye makeup looked like some kind of a disease, and her lips, crusted with pink lipstick, looked kind of sick and dead. She was wearing a Lightsburg Wildcats T-shirt, probably Neil’s, since it hit her about midthigh. “I really needed some freedom last night.” She looked away, her face disappearing behind her loose hanging hair. “I’ll pay you back when I get my real estate license, it’ll all come out of the first sale to pay you.”

  Her thick, long, dyed-yellow hair was wet on one side where she’d drooled into it. “You slobbered on your hair again, Mom.”

  She touched it, yelled, “Ucky ucky!” and ran into the bathroom to splash water into it and brush it out. Good. That would give me my minute to get out the door.

  She was still yelling “Ucky ucky ucky!” in the bathroom as I grabbed up my books. She got that from back when she used to be a substitute teacher; she liked really little kids and kind of naturally got down on their level. I guess doing that “ucky ucky” thing every time she got spit all over her hair was cute, maybe the first few times she did that, back when I was in eighth grade, right after she started to gr
ow it out and dye it. Most of the guys who came through seemed to think it was cute, anyway.

  Dashing for the door, I plowed right into Neil, who was naked. His shoulder-length brown hair smelled like a fire in a rope factory, his rumpled beard brushed over his mound of chest hair, and he was kind of waddling toward the bathroom, looking like Primitive Man in the diorama at the Toledo museum; slumped like an ape, big jaw hanging half open, peering around like he was afraid someone would hit him but hoped someone would feed him.

  He reached out and rubbed my head with his hand, which was probably as much cleaning as that hand would get today. “Hey, little dude. You oughta stick around. Your mommy got some money. Betcha she takes us to breakfast.”

  He’d thought that was fucking hilarious for years, pretending like he didn’t know where she got it. Sometimes he’d helped her look for my stashes.

  “I gotta get to school, Neil.” I slapped his hand up off my head.

  “School’s bullshit,” he said as I opened the door, and “Hey, what’s with the little dude?” as I closed it behind me.

  I was almost as tall as he was, and in better shape from work (something he wouldn’t know much about), but I was sure as shit not as heavy.

  Off my schedule. Shit, right in the first twenty minutes. Now I’d have to hurry, no slack in my timing.

  It was a nice, bright summer day, no trace of fall yet. I had to catch the early bus, and make it look like an accident, so I could just accidentally miss seeing Paul Knauss.

  Paul and me had been best friends since we shared a playpen—our dads had been best friends for like five years before we were born. We were like two pieces of the same guy; I got the muscles and the common sense, he got the talent and the face. I told Paul that once, and like right then, not even a second for a breath, he said, “How do you know we’re not two parts of the same ugly, puny, untalented dork?”