Characters in Rage

"So she's some kind of fucking bag," Al Lathrop said from beyond the canvas wall, "but fucking's the operant word there." Camping, I was camping with my dad and his friends. I hadn't wanted to come. "Yeah, but how do you git it up, Al?

Ted Jones raised his head slowly, as if he had just awakened. I could see the familiar, hating darkness cloud his eyes. Anne Lasky's eyes were round and frightened. Sylvia Ragan's fingers were doing a slow and dreamy ballet as they rummaged in her purse for another cigarette.

It was July, warm and very beautiful. The sky had a dim, very high haze. The girl I was with was named Annmarie. She spelled it all one name. She was very pretty. She wore dark green corduroy shorts and a silk pullover blouse. She had a beach bag.

I raised my hand, but she called on Billy Sawyer. "Eight plus eight," he blurted. "Explain. " "I mean it can be " Billy fidgeted. He ran his fingers over the graffiti etched into the surface of his desk; SM L DK, HOT SHIT, TOMMY '73.

… record the previous fall, a fact that Coach Bob "Stone Balls" Stoneham made much of at our frequent school-spirit assemblies. Thorne was a good-natured shit who weighed in at a cool two-ten; not exactly the brightest thing on two feet (but college material, of course), and Carol probably had no …

Jessie and her husband, Brian Hannaford, smiling in the background as my mom and dad cut the wedding cake. Jessie dancing with the minister. And in all the pictures she is only five months away from the shower and the dishrag on the hot stove burner.

And Carol Granger had that image. She went steady with Buck Thorne (the perfect American name). Buck was the center of the Placerville High Greyhounds, which had posted an 11-0 record the previous fall, a fact that Coach Bob "Stone Balls" Stoneham made much of at our frequent school-spirit assemblies.

No help there. He was all alone with Carl Decker's psychotic son, the fellow who had nearly killed the chemistry-physics teacher. "Sales trip, huh?" I asked him. "Yeah, that's right. " He grinned as best he could. "Just out there selling the old books." "Really crushing the competition, huh?"

Mrs. Underwood's smile reminded me of the shark in Jaws. Carol Granger raised her hand. Mrs. Underwood nodded. "Doesn't he mean that eight plus eight also fulfills the equation's need for truth?" "I don't know what he means," Mrs. Underwood said. A general laugh.

They were hung, hypnotized. They weren't thinking about Mr. Grace or Tom Denver or Charles Everett Decker. They were watching, and maybe what they saw was a little bit of their own souls, flashed at them in a cracked mirror. It was fine. It was like new grass in spring.

A light breeze flapped the bottom of his sport coat. "More company," Corky Herald said. I got up, went over to the intercom, and switched it back onto TALK-LISTEN. Then I sat down again, sweating a little. Mr. Don-God-Give-Us-Grace was on his way. And he was no lightweight.

"What's better?" Pete asked, also grinning. "Dana Collette's throwing a party at this camp her folks own out near Schoodic Point. There's gonna be about forty million unattached ladies there. Bring dope. " "Does Larry Moeller have any grass?" Pete asked. "Last I knew, he had a shitload.

They had the best sharpshooter in the state out there, a state policeman named Daniel Malvern, from Kent's Hill. There was a picture of him in the Lewiston Sun after everything was all over. He was a small man with a crew cut. He looked like an accountant.

"Come on," she whispered. "Come on, come on, come on " I tried to think of something sexy, anything sexy. Looking up Darleen Andreissen's skirt in study hall and her knowing it and letting me. Maynard Quinn's pack of dirty French playing cards.

You-" "You shut up, Teddy, or I'll knock your teeth down your fucking throat, " Dick Keene said coldly. "You got yours, didn't you?" Ted gaped at him. The two of them shot a lot of pool together down at the Harlow Rec, and sometimes went cruising in Ted's car.

I almost choked on my gum. I stumbled, turned around, and there was Dicky Cable. Dicky was a squat kid who always somehow reminded me of a lawn mower, a big Briggs & Stratton self-propelling model with the choke stuck open.

They were arrested and then let go when Dole flew out. Mrs. Bates must be having birds about it. Can't you just see Irma trying to brain Robt. Dole with a Gus Hall campaign sign?

Two little girls, both blond. "Don Grace has finished his report, and I've had it since last Thursday, considering his conclusions and his recommendations as carefully as I can.

"Has Peter Franklin been shot?" Mr. Denver asked quietly. "He's got the measles," Don Lordi said. This brought on another attack of the giggles. Ted Jones frowned deeply. "Decker?" "Yes." "Will you let them go?" "Not right now," I said. "Why?"

I was with Donna Taylor. We were buying Christmas presents. I'd just bought my sister a scarf in Porteus-Mitchell, and we were talking about it and laughing. Just silly stuff. We were giggling. It was about four o'clock and just starting to get dark. It was snowing.

… i c e m e m o FROM: Dr. Andersen TO: Rich Gossage, Admin. Wing SUBJECT: Theodore Jones Rich, Am still loath to try the shock treatments on this boy, altho I can't explain it even to myself-call it hunch. Of course I can't justify hunch to the board of …

… in that moment I could see for the first time the family resemblance between him and his brother Flapper, a borderline IQ case who had graduated after six long years in Placerville. Flapper was now doing postgraduate work at Thomaston State …

Nancy colored and told him to shut up. " and George Yannick. Frank Philbrick, head of the Maine State Police, has asked that all friends and family stay away from the scene. Decker is presumed dangerous, and Philbrick emphasized that nobody knows at this time what might set him off.

Dirtier, I mean." Sarah Pasterne started to giggle hysterically and clapped her hand over her mouth. George Yannick, who sat close to Pig Pen, squatted down beside him and began to pat his cheeks. Pig Pen moaned, opened his eyes, rolled them, and said, "He shot Book Bags."

"Ready, girls?" Grace Stanner grinned a healthy, gutsy grin. "All ready." Irma nodded. She was a big girl, standing with her legs apart and her head slightly lowered. Her hair was a dirty blond color, done in round curls that looked like toilet-paper rolls. I dropped my bandanna.

Mr. Johnson yelled. There was a faint bumping sound as he crawled away. The fire alarm buzzed hoarsely on and on. "Now what?" Harmon Jackson asked again. He was a small boy, usually with a big cockeyed grin on his face, but now he looked helpless, all at sea.

I once knew a kid, Herk Orville, who ate a mouse. I dared him, and he swallowed it. Raw. It was just a small fieldmouse, and it didn't look hurt at all when we found it; maybe it had just died of old age.

That was Hubie Levesque, the guide. I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them. I've never had to go to the bathroom so bad in my life, before or since. "You're goddamn right," Carl Decker, my sterling Dad, said. "Wha' about the woman in the case, Carl?"

That was when Irma Bates broke the silence with a high, gobbling scream that sounded like a young tom turkey getting its neck wrung on the day before Thanksgiving. But it was too late; everyone had taken that endless moment to consider the facts of life and death.

There were two pumpers behind that. "You going to let them in?" Jack Goldman asked. "The fire's out there," I said. "Not in here." "Did you shut ya locka door?" Sylvia Ragan asked. She was a big blond girl with great soft cardiganed breasts and gently rotting teeth. "Yes.

… August 27, 1976, of the willful murder of Jean Alice Underwood, and also convicted this day, August 27, 1976, of the willful murder of John Downes Vance, both human beings. It has been determined by five state psychiatrists that Charles Everett Decker cannot at this time be held accountable for …

They parked across the road from the high school, and Jerry Kesserling, the chief since Warren Talbot had retired into the local Methodist cemetery in 1975, began directing traffic onto the Oak Hill Pond road. "Did you hear me, Charlie?" "Yes. But I can't tell you. I don't know.

We went down to see Jerry Mueller, who Pete said was the biggest dope dealer in the Orono-Oldtown-Stillwater triangle. I kept my cool about it, as if I were one of the original Placerville Jones men, but privately I was excited and pretty apprehensive.

Her name was Jessie Decker Hannaford. As Jessie Decker, she had been my mom's roommate at the University of Maine, where they were both majoring in political science.

My friend Joe McKennedy was there, and he said they gave her nothing but a hard way to go. I wish I had been there. The way Joe told it, it sounded like a real good time. Two years ago.

We all appreciate the seriousness of this matter, and I've taken the liberty of discussing the whole thing with John Carlson, also. " "How is he?" I asked. "Pretty well. He'll be back in a month, I should think." "Well, that's something." "It is?"

… August 27, 1976, of the willful murder of John Downes Vance, both human beings. It has been determined by five state psychiatrists that Charles Everett Decker cannot at this time be held accountable for his actions, by reason of insanity. It is therefore the decision of this court that he …

A hook-nosed junior named LaFollet St. Armand began squiring her about, and then knocked her up higher than a kite. LaFollet joined the Marines, where they presumably taught him the difference between his rifle and his gun-which was for shooting and which was for fun.

There's gonna be about forty million unattached ladies there. Bring dope. " "Does Larry Moeller have any grass?" Pete asked. "Last I knew, he had a shitload. Foreign, domestic, local everything but filter tips. " Pete nodded. "We'll be there, unless the creek rises."

"Let her call," Pig Pen muttered. The Pen had an older sister, Lilly Dano, who was a senior when we were all freshmen. She had a face that looked a lot like Pig Pen's, which made her nobody's candidate for Teen Queen.

Looking up Darleen Andreissen's skirt in study hall and her knowing it and letting me. Maynard Quinn's pack of dirty French playing cards.

"Is it all right to do homework?" Melvin Thomas asked tremblingly. There was a general laugh. They seemed surprised to hear it. "Go ahead." I thought for a moment and added: "If you want to smoke, go ahead and do it. " A couple of them grabbed for their pockets.

"There's a fire in the building. Please-" "Charlie's got a gun, Mr. Vance, " Mike Gavin said in a discussing-the-weather tone. "I think you better-" The second bullet caught him in the throat. His flesh spread liquidly like water spreads when you throw a rock in it.

"I sure will, uh, Charlie." I went through the slatted gate, past the big safe set into the wall on the right and Miss Marble's cluttered desk on the left. Straight ahead was a door with a frosted glass pane. THOMAS DENVER PRINCIPAL was lettered on the glass.

I conferenced with everybody but Mr. Fazio, the janitor. Through it all my father kept admirably calm-my mother would come out of the house and was on tranquilizers-but every now and then during these civilized conversations, he would turn an icy, speculative eye on me that I knew eventually …

The cops tried to shoo them away, with greater or lesser degrees of success. Mr. Frankel, owner and proprietor of Frankel's Jewelry Store & Camera Shop, drove up in his new Pontiac Firebird and jawed for quite a while with Jerry Kesserling.

Up the hall, Mr. Johnson was saying: " and the Hessians, who were paid mercenaries, weren't any too anxious to fight, especially in a countryside where the opportunities for plunder over and above the agreed-upon wages " "Hessian," I whispered to Titus.

I don't know. There are more cops coming, I guess." "Mr. Wolfe called them," Mr. Denver said. "I imagine there will be a great deal more when they fully appreciate what's going on. They'll have tear gas and Mace, Dec Charlie. Why make it hard on yourself and your classmates?"

Mrs. Bates must be having birds about it. Can't you just see Irma trying to brain Robt. Dole with a Gus Hall campaign sign? Ha-ha, that just kills me. We would have had some laughs over that one, too, Charlie. God, I miss your old cracked ass sometimes.

Of course, almost anyone in the room could have told you how he came by any information he had; Mrs. Dano spent her life attending bazaars, rummage sales, church and school suppers, and Mrs. Dano had the longest, shrewdest nose in Gates Falls.

… kids wanted to play spin the bottle, but Mrs. Granger laughed a big jolly laugh and said no, haha, no no no. Oh, no. Finally Carol clapped her hands and said we were all going outside and play follow the leader, the game which asks the burning question: Are you …

The only time it lets up is when the bell changes the classes or when Mrs. Green has something to say. I guess she usually doesn't say much, because the typewriters hardly ever stop. There are thirty of them in there, a battle-scarred platoon of gray Underwoods.

Pig Pen gave her a quivering smile and then blurted out: "Mrs. Jones is an alcoholic. She had to go someplace and dry out. Ted had to help with his family." Silence for a second. "I'm going to kill you, Pig Pen," Ted said, getting up.

I had a buck in my pocket from weeding Mrs. Katzentz's flower garden the day before, and I could go to the movies in Brunswick if I could hook a ride, and work up a good head of self-pity sitting there in the dark.

" He glanced quickly at Miss Marble, but she was going over attendance lists with Mrs. Venson from next door. No help there. He was all alone with Carl Decker's psychotic son, the fellow who had nearly killed the chemistry-physics teacher. "Sales trip, huh?" I asked him. "Yeah, that's right.

Here we go. Irma Bates?" "I want to go home! " Irma screamed defiantly. "She's here," I said. "Susan Brooks?" "Here. " "Nancy Caskin?" "Here. " I went through the rest of the roll. There were twenty-five names, and the only absentee was Peter Franklin. "Has Peter Franklin been shot?"

He was also Placerville's second selectman and a crony of Norman Jones, Ted's father. "My mother got me a ring in his store," Sarah Pasterne said, looking at Ted from the corner of her eye. "It greened my finger the first day." "My mother says he's a gyp," Tanis said.

"Not that you've had any," Pat Fitzgerald said, and there was another laugh. "And not that it's any business of his or yours," she said haughtily, dropped her cigarette on the floor, and mashed it. "So what are we going to do?" Jack Goldman asked.

Pete McKennedy was twenty-one (a fantastic age, it seemed to me; I was struggling through the open sewer that is seventeen) and going to the University of Maine, where he was majoring in English. It looked like it was going to be a great weekend.

"Here. " I went through the rest of the roll. There were twenty-five names, and the only absentee was Peter Franklin. "Has Peter Franklin been shot?" Mr. Denver asked quietly. "He's got the measles," Don Lordi said. This brought on another attack of the giggles. Ted Jones frowned deeply. "Decker?"

'Sixty Minutes of Terror with the Placerville Maniac.' I'd get somebody who writes good to do it. Joe McKennedy or Phil Franks or maybe you, Charlie. How's that bite your banana?" She guffawed, and Pig Pen joined in tentatively. I think he was fascinated by Sylvia's fearlessness.

"Um." I put the pistol down on the blotter again. "Well, somebody try and bring Pig Pen around. He'll get his shirt dirty. Dirtier, I mean." Sarah Pasterne started to giggle hysterically and clapped her hand over her mouth.

"No, seriously," my dad said. "Seriously. You know what I'd do if I caught somebody with my wife?" "What, Carl?" That was Randy Earl. "You see this?" A new shadow on the canvas.

A couple of months later he got hit by a delivery truck up in Lewiston while he was crossing Lisbon Street. Randy Milliken was with him, and Randy said he wasn't even drunk or stoned. It was the truck driver's fault entirely. He went to jail for ninety days.

… m e m o FROM: Dr. Andersen TO: Rich Gossage, Admin. Wing SUBJECT: Theodore Jones Rich, Am still loath to try the shock treatments on this boy, altho I can't explain it even to myself-call it hunch. Of course I can't justify hunch to the board of directors, or to …

The voices were coming from high above me, like amplified declarations from mountaintops. "There's a car coming," he said. "Go inside, Rita." "Come on, love," my mother said. "Smile for mummy. Big smile." She pushed me away from her stomach and wiped tears from under my eyes.

Everybody had a transistor radio, all of them tuned to different stations. Joe and Rosalynn had body-surfed in glass-green waves. "YOU'VE GOT FIVE MINUTES, DECKER!" "Go on out," Ted urged.

Daddy didn't mean to be cross." "That was Sam Castinguay and his wife," my father said. "Now you've given that motor-mouth something to talk about. I hope-" "Come on, Charlie," she said, taking my hand. "We'll have chocolate. In my sewing room." "The hell you will," Dad said curtly.

When your stomach's bad, a few crackers can do wonders. One hundred thousand pregnant women can't be wrong. I was thinking about Sandra Cross, whose response in class a few minutes ago had been not bad, but also not the end. I was thinking about how she lost her buttons.

Dirtier, I mean." Sarah Pasterne started to giggle hysterically and clapped her hand over her mouth. George Yannick, who sat close to Pig Pen, squatted down beside him and began to pat his cheeks. Pig Pen moaned, opened his eyes, rolled them, and said, "He shot Book Bags."

I hadn't wanted to come. "Yeah, but how do you git it up, Al? That's what I want to know. " That was Scotty Norwiss, another one of Dad's friends. His voice was slurred and furry, and I started to feel afraid again. They were drunk.

"How's it hanging?" He asked. "Up a foot," Pete said. "This is my brother, Joe, and his buddy Charlie Decker," he introduced. "Scragg Simpson. " "Howdy-doody," Scragg said, shaking hands and dismissing us. "What you doing tonight, Peter?" "Thought the three of us might go to a movie.

Here we go. Irma Bates?" "I want to go home! " Irma screamed defiantly. "She's here," I said. "Susan Brooks?" "Here. " "Nancy Caskin?" "Here. " I went through the rest of the roll. There were twenty-five names, and the only absentee was Peter Franklin. "Has Peter Franklin been shot?"

"Did you shut ya locka door?" Sylvia Ragan asked. She was a big blond girl with great soft cardiganed breasts and gently rotting teeth. "Yes. " "Prolly out already, then." Mike Gavin looked at the scurrying firemen and snickered. "Two of 'em just ran into each other," he said.

" "You'll feel better when it's off your chest, Irma, " Tanis Gannon said. "I always do. " "Leave her alone, fa Chrissake," Dick Keene said from the back of the room. "I don't want to be let alone," Irma said suddenly. "I want to say it."

… apparently no one had passed except me and Ted Jones. I was keeping an eye on him, I can tell you. The squirrel, not Ted. On the board, Mrs. Underwood wrote this: a = 16. "Miss Cross," she said, turning back. "Tell us what that equation means, if you please."

Mr. Johnson pointed at Room 16. Thomas Denver, the Principal with the Amazing Overshaved Neck, ran over and joined the discussion. It was starting to look like a pitcher's mound conference in the last half of the ninth. "I want to go home!" Irma Bates said wildly.

She said I'd have to sell my car. That old Dodge my uncle gave me when I got my driver's license. I said I wouldn't. I said Uncle Fred gave it to me and I was going to keep it. She said if I wouldn't sell it, she would.

I think Uncle Tom was in collusion with my dad on that one. She did a lot of jigsaws-I helped-and they both thought it was the biggest waste of time on earth. So Tom sent her a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle that had a single blueberry down in the lower-right-hand corner.

They parked across the road from the high school, and Jerry Kesserling, the chief since Warren Talbot had retired into the local Methodist cemetery in 1975, began directing traffic onto the Oak Hill Pond road. "Did you hear me, Charlie?" "Yes. But I can't tell you. I don't know.

Will Greenberger has had a great deal of success with semi-catatonic patients as you know, and these two hallucinogens have played a major part in his therapy.