—
I suspected something out of the ordinary was going on with Teddy. It was in the way he picked through the world, watching everything like it might come down on top of him. He tapped on doors. He looked in the windows before entering his own house. He washed his hands over and over until they were nasty, waxy-clean. He bit at the chapped parts of his lips until they bled. This was a kid who operated on the basis of caution, like he had learned things that made him watch out. I wondered, in quiet moments, what was wrong with him.
I thought maybe his house was to blame. Teddy’s house was openly filthy; the carpet hadn’t been vacuumed in years, was sticky with ashes, pop spills, and in some places crisp, fragmented dog poop, courtesy of Teddy’s mother’s Pekingese, Coco, with whom she had left and not returned the year prior. But there was something else in there, something strange I could feel on my skin, a muffled line of electricity that prickled my arm hairs whenever I was alone with it. My house wasn’t exactly good—it was a fighting house I came from—but Teddy’s house scared the shit out of me.
Even when it was just the two of us, I wouldn’t go into any room without him. I made him come into the bathroom and turn around while I peed.
The only other person I’d seen there since Teddy’s mom left was Teddy’s dad, Honus Caudill. Honus Caudill was big and red-faced and I could hear him when he breathed. His work boots were crumpled by the door, dark at the instep. The length of his shoe was three times mine.
Sometimes I would hear low noises coming from deep within the house. I asked Teddy about it once. His mouth fell into a straight line and he said, “That’s my dad,” and that was all.
Honus Caudill scared the shit out of me, too, but if asked, I wouldn’t be able to explain why. Yet another thing that refused to exist, because I didn’t know the words to prove that it did.
Once, we saw him cleaning out the van he drove, a rusting, silver Dodge Caravan I could see limping up the side of the mountain when he came home. It was so old, its rear opened with two doors splaying out instead of a hatch rising skyward. Teddy walked slightly in front of me, head down as we passed his father sitting there, the van interior dark, cleaning solution and a roll of paper towels at his feet.
This all happened the summer before sixth grade.
We went to Teddy’s after my sister tried to lock us in a closet. We had settled on the living room rug to play Scrabble when I noticed a small, gummy spot near the floorboard. Unlike the rest of the spills, it looked like someone had tried to rub it clean.
“That’s where Daddy came last night,” Teddy whispered.
I didn’t know what he meant. So I pointed to a dog poop stain nearby and said, “And that’s where he went. Hah hah.”
Teddy was quiet.
I confessed sheepishly, “I don’t know what that means.”
“You don’t know what coming is?”
“No.”
“It’s when a man watches dirty stuff,” he says, eyes still on the stain, “and his wiener gets all hard, and he rubs it against something or he slaps it against his hand, and then white stuff like shampoo comes out of it. That’s splooge. That’s where my dad splooged last night.”
I had no idea what to make of this. It sounded like a lie. Way too far out there to be something people actually did. But Teddy didn’t lie. That, I did know. He wasn’t the kind of kid who lied because he thought it was funny, or because he was bored. Teddy’s dad wasn’t at home that afternoon. The house was still. No one had turned on the TV yet.
Finally I said, “Ew.”
“Want to see where he keeps his dirty stuff?” Teddy asked.
I didn’t. I really didn’t. Every fiber of my body was clamoring, even then, to run out that front door and pull Teddy with me. But I stayed. And I nodded.
Teddy went to the bedroom at the end of the hallway and opened the door. I followed him, heavy with the feeling somebody was watching me. I felt weird even entering my own parents’ bedroom, uneasy at the stack of Redbooks on my mother’s nightstand, the fifth of Jack Daniel’s my dad kept in the headboard meant for books.
My belly churned as I stepped inside and took it all in. Noticed a crack in the window, the sound of the mammoth air conditioner chugging, the red blanket jumbled on the bed with clothing and a few dirty dishes in the folds. The pale stains dripping from ceiling to carpet. The ashtrays scattered throughout, all full. My senses were sharp and bloated, afraid. I couldn’t explain it, would have felt stupid trying to, but I felt, all over, like my body was trying to take off without me.
There was a stack of magazines by the bed. I craned my neck to look. A lady in a bikini, bottom hiked high in the air. Barely Legal College Daze: Hot and Horny Coeds of the SEC!
The room stank. Mushrooms sprouting, bleach and rock salt. “What’s that smell?” I asked Teddy.
He turned. “That’s what splooge smells like.”
“What makes it smell like that?”