Denic leaned in to inspect the object at the end of Steven Kemple’s toothpick and said, “Dude. Did you just give birth?” Then Denic added, “Hey! That’s a piece of oatmeal.”
Steven Kemple rotated his wrist like he was a jeweler holding a rare diamond. “Yeah. It is oatmeal. From yesterday. I had waffles today.”
I could have vomited, but it would have been too embarrassing in front of Kathryn Huxley and Amanda Flores.
Then Steven Kemple pointed his mouthbaby at me and said, “We should use some of Powell’s.”
Here’s another reason why I hated Steven Kemple: to Steven Kemple, all boys were last names. To Steven Kemple, life itself was a continuous gym class. But the thing Steven Kemple did next was why he should have died that day, because anyone else who did it would have.
Steven Kemple wiped his day-old mouthbaby oatmeal on my left shoulder.
But Steven Kemple didn’t die.
He could have swigged a pint of antifreeze and the fucker would not die.
You hate him, don’t you?
CRAZY HAT LADY
Let me explain.
Crazy Hat Lady was the first.
Crazy Hat Lady used to yell at me for running past her yard and making her dogs bark at me. Did you notice I referred to Crazy Hat Lady in past tense? Yeah, that’s major foreshadowing, too.
Of course I did not know Crazy Hat Lady’s real name. But she always wore hats, and I assumed she was crazy because there was never any reason for her to get mad and thrash her arms wildly and yell at me just because her stupid dogs barked at me whenever I ran by.
I like to run.
Present tense, so you know everything ends with running shoes and a pulse for me.
The incident with Crazy Hat Lady happened two years before Steven Kemple talked about “sperm day” in Mr. Kang’s biology class at Hoover High. Denic and I, who’ve been friends since we were in kindergarten, were tough-guy eighth graders, about to be liberated from Henry A. Wallace Middle School.
Iowans like to name their schools after prominent politicians who came from Iowa, as if to assert to the rest of the world that Iowa exists, and people who are not actually invisible come from there. Don’t Google Henry A. Wallace. He was a vice president.
A dirt path through vacant fields connects the street I live on with Onondaga Street, which runs straight down to the creek I like to run along. The path also goes right next to Crazy Hat Lady’s (former) house. That day, as usual, Crazy Hat Lady’s two dogs—a long-haired wiener dog and an overweight shepherd–chow mutt—were behind a low cedar fence, running around like crazed convicts in Crazy Hat Lady’s front yard. And that day, as usual, Crazy Hat Lady’s dogs launched themselves into a hysteria of agonized barking when I came running up through the field.
Crazy Hat Lady opened her front door, flailing her arms at me.
“Why do you have to run here? Look at what you do to my dogs! Leave us alone! How dare you do this to us!”
She wore a leopard-print pillbox hat with a black mesh net that looked like one of those sacks you buy tangerines in, and a black pheasant feather spearing out of its top.
I never answered her. I felt her line of interrogation was more rhetorical than inquisitive.
But that day, just as I cleared the field and came out onto Onondaga, two things happened: first, Crazy Hat Lady’s mutt scaled the short wooden fence around her front yard; and second, our local state trooper, Clayton Axelrod, rounded the corner in his patrol vehicle. So he saw everything.
The dog ran at me.
Crazy Hat Lady ran for her dog.
“Leave my dogs alone!”
I caught a glimpse—but only a glimpse—of her arms flailing as though she were attempting to extinguish invisible flames bursting from the top of her leopard-print pillbox hat.
The dog clamped his yellow teeth on my left wrist.
I realized something at just that moment: when a dog is biting you, shaking its head frantically as though attempting to remove a mouthful of flesh, it makes you really want to live. So I was kind of grateful—but only momentarily—to the dog for making me aware of just how much I loved my life.
“Leave my dog alone, you little prick!” Crazy Hat Lady yelled.
I slid my free hand inside the dog’s collar and twisted. The dog began choking.
I think at that moment, because of a lack of oxygen, Crazy Hat Lady’s dog realized how much he loved his life, too. In fact, there was so much love of life going on there on that morning beside the creek it was almost as though the dog and I had gone on a weekend retreat to one of those motivational seminars for depressed businessmen.
Trooper Axelrod got out of his vehicle.
Crazy Hat Lady, who ran very slowly, flailed and yelled, “Get the fuck away from my dog, you piece of shit!”
Trooper Axelrod, who wore very nice, shiny leather gloves, managed to grab the dog by the scruff of his ample neck fur. The dog unclamped from my bloody wrist, and Trooper Axelrod said, “Okay. You can let go of him.”
As soon as I untwisted my right hand from the dog’s collar, the fucker bit me again.
Thanks, Trooper Axelrod.
That was when Crazy Hat Lady finally caught up to us, yelling at Trooper Axelrod and me to get the fuck away from her dogs and her house.
I ended up with my mom and dad in the emergency room. I got four stitches and a tetanus shot in the left cheek of my pale, skinny butt, which everyone in the room, including the doctor, a nurse, Trooper Axelrod, my mother, and my father, looked at. I hated Crazy Hat Lady and her stupid dogs so much. And right when the needle was going in, that was when it happened for the first time. I thought, I wish Crazy Hat Lady would die. Wishes, like the thought of death, are almost always foreshadowing, and I wanted her dead. You might think that’s an intense overreaction to the situation. But not me. Death was called for, in my opinion.
My day was ruined, but probably not as much as Crazy Hat Lady’s would be, which is major foreshadowing.