We got a ride to Indiana, where the Mercedes had been repaired, and drove to Peoria, Illinois, for PeCon. My head hurt constantly. The bandages weren’t changed often enough and the wound began seeping. Each morning I awoke with my head stuck to the pillow. I remained in the hotel room, watching television and taking aspirin. My siblings stayed with me, our family roles reversed as they took care of their older brother, preparing meals of cheese and crackers, peanut butter, and fruit. They gave me pillows and changed the channels on the TV. For those three days, despite my persistent headache and cloudy vision, I felt protected and cared for.
We returned to Haldeman, where I recovered amid the woods I loved, grateful for the familiar culture. One neighbor plowed by mule. Another man nailed dead squirrels upside down to a tree in front of his house and gutted them, allowing the entrails to fall to the ground. He peeled off the skin and carried the carcasses inside to cook. The furry hides remained on the tree, turning black with rot, flapping in the wind. The stew he made tasted better than anything at a con, especially with a glass of well water cold enough to numb my gums.
But I had seen another world, exotic and strange, and at times I missed it. I grew my hair long to be more like fans. If I looked like them, my parents might have more interest in me.
Chapter Seventeen
IN THE strict hierarchy of the hills, people from Morehead were at the top of the heap. Next came families who lived on the outskirts, then those with homes along the few blacktop roads that headed into town. Last were country people like myself. Social strata was based on geography and family name. Both of mine were suspect. These distinctions became clearly delineated when I attended Rowan County High School, ten miles away in Morehead.
I loved the boys and girls I’d grown up with. Fourteen of us had moved through the Haldeman grade school together, but now we were dispersed among the largest entering freshman class in the high school’s history. We lost our sense of belonging. One by one, many of my classmates abandoned the routine of attending school. Dropping out was not expected but was accepted and of minimal concern. At four feet, eleven inches tall, I was the shortest kid with the longest hair, allegedly the smartest. As my childhood friends left school, I became socially isolated.
My parents were friends with the head of the theater program at the local college, and when a play called for a child actor, I was added to the cast and performed in several productions. Teachers viewed this as a promising development and excused me from school to attend rehearsals. I swiftly took advantage of the circumstances. My daily pattern was to ride the bus to school, check in to morning homeroom for attendance, leave school under the guise of “play practice at the college,” and catch the bus home in the afternoon. I began keeping my bicycle in town and often arranged to sleep at various people’s homes—friends of my parents or college students to whom I had become a kind of theater mascot.
By the time I was fifteen, my family was accustomed to my absences—wandering the woods, eating elsewhere, sleeping in town. What mattered to my parents were academic grades. The night before an exam, I stayed home and read the textbook, then aced the test. Of equal importance were granting utter obedience to Dad and never causing my mother public embarrassment. With this patina of civility thus attended to, I was free, and Morehead was mine to explore.
I don’t remember how I met the fatman. I assume he approached me. He lived in town on the second floor of a small building, where he rented a single room with a bathroom in the hall. He was nice to me, buying me candy bars and bottles of pop, which my parents never allowed me to have. I told him about my life and the girls I liked. The fatman listened to me. He offered a form of sympathy and attentiveness that I needed. He accepted that I wanted to be an actor or a comic book artist, and he believed such aspirations weren’t ridiculous. He didn’t talk about himself but implied that he’d experienced life beyond the confines of Rowan County, and that I would like it out there when I finally left.
The fatman’s room was small, with no chair, and we both had to sit on the bed. He suggested I lie on my back, and the whole time I pretended it was happening to someone else. I don’t remember his name or what he looked like. I don’t recall the print on the wallpaper or the color of the bedspread. What I do remember is the overhead light fixture, a plain globe in a ceramic setting that emitted a dim yellowish light. Surrounding the globe and painted over many times were plaster rosettes with narrow leaves. I remember the light because I spent all my time staring at it and waiting until I could leave.