Criminal Zoo Page 7

  I tied the top of the sack closed and ran back to the apartment complex, my balls barely even hurting. I stashed the snake under the bottom step of an outside stairwell, then went to our apartment, threw on my swimsuit, grabbed a towel, and returned to the stairwell. I laid the towel on the ground and put the sack on top. I opened the bag, dumped the snake into the center of the towel, and quickly balled it up.

  The pool was really crowded. Sheila played in the shallow end while my dad sat on a lawn chair next to a blond girl sunbathing in a tiny yellow bikini.

  “Careful, Dad, horrors of hell,” I mumbled.

  No one paid attention as I strolled to the pool’s edge. Yeah, it was crowded, but not so crowded a bull snake couldn’t take a swim. Everyone was busy swimming, splashing, and screwing around. I climbed in and pulled the towel next to the water.

  As if it already knew the plan, the snake shot out of the towel and into the pool. It darted across the top of the water like a torpedo in search of a battleship. I turned away, pretending not to notice.

  Things got good in a hurry. People started screaming and trying to get away. It was really funny to watch everyone running through the water, pushing each other out of the way and jumping from the pool like Jaws had just been spotted.

  A young boy was knocked down. The kid had always looked a little weird to me, like God made him with a messed-up face, putting his ears too low and making his eyes almost Chinese. And he talked funny, too.

  I saw the boy go under. I watched as his little hand reached up, barely breaking the water’s surface—his pruned fingers searching for anyone, anything to grab hold of, only to be knocked back under by another panicked body. I wondered how long the kid could hold his breath.

  His hand came up again and for a second I thought about grabbing it. But then the memory of everyone laughing at me came back. He might have been one of them.

  The boy wasn’t breathing when the ambulance got there. Everyone gathered in a circle and watched as one man pushed on his chest while another blew into his mouth. They tried to make him breathe, but he didn’t. He just lay there. His mom was on her knees beside him, just screaming and blubbering, carrying on like an idiot. A lot like my Aunt Ellen when the doctor told her about Jeremy. But if the kid’s mom had really cared that much, why hadn’t she been keeping a closer eye on him? I think moms are all show. Nothing real.

  Everyone was talking about a snake in the pool, and they really got mad when it was drained the next day. Had I known they were going to empty it, I probably wouldn’t have put the stupid snake in there. If my dad had ever found out I was the cause of all the trouble, he probably would have killed me. But he didn’t find out and life went on. Just not for the funny-looking kid.

  Slowly Being Erased

  The dead boy in the swimming pool seemed like a lifetime ago. Since then, the world had grown only meaner. Harsher. Even more unbearable.

  Silence roared through my head, sliced through my mind like a meat cleaver. The saying “the deafening sound of silence” had taken on a whole new meaning.

  My universe was absent of all noise. I existed in a horrifyingly unnatural quiet. I had for a long time. And then there was the white light. All the fucking time, that white light! No break from it. Ever. White light and nothingness—that was my entire world.

  It didn’t take long to realize that my sanity would soon become a casualty in the Total Sensory Deprivation room.

  I kept closing and opening my eyes. Over and over. I counted each time I closed them, each time I opened them. I counted each time I breathed in, each time I breathed out. In the silence, I could hear my heart beat. I counted that too. I counted to create something out of nothing. To occupy my mind. Counted forward. Counted backward. Started in the middle. Again and again. But it never occupied my mind. I jumped up and down, listening to my feet hit the soft floor. A noise. Slight, soft, but something. I jumped until I was exhausted. Until I could barely stand. Sweat poured off me. And then the sanitizing spray rinsed me. But at least the water felt like something. Almost. Something more than nothing.

  I screamed until my throat hurt. I screamed until my voice failed me. I screamed for no reason. I screamed for every reason. I screamed to make sure I still existed. To make sure I could create a change in the universe, no matter how small. I pushed against my skin. It was real. I took up space. I was real. I hadn’t disappeared. Not yet.

  Sleep didn’t happen anymore. It was more like I just passed out once in a while. It wasn’t peaceful, restful. It was filled with anxiety and despair. I was going crazy, second by fucking painful second. No sound! No smell! No feeling! I needed to feel something. Anything.

  I became obsessed with existing. I launched myself into the walls. The slight sound of my body slamming against the walls gave proof I was still real. I did it again. Harder. And again. And again. And again. Each time harder. In some bizarre way, this was almost comforting. Not quite, but almost. Hearing my body hit the wall, the floor. Knowing I was real.

  But to exist, you had to feel. Feel something, even if it was pain. Something was better than nothing.

  I looked at the red button.

  “Push the button and we’ll be here in seconds,” they told me just before closing the door and making me invisible to the universe. “Only two ways out. Push the button or die.”

  They told me there was no medical attention here. If I had a heart attack or massive stroke, it basically took care of the problem: no more me. If I chose to starve myself to death, no worries. Problem solved.

  They watched me. They were ready to come get me. Push the button and I would see people. I would hear voices. I would feel their grasp on me. Their touch. And the nothing would go away. But on the other side of the button was the Criminal Zoo. Physical torture—day in, day out. Being the object of other people’s pain. People intent on hurting me because they themselves hurt. Because misery loves company and if they hurt, so should I.

  But at least in the Zoo, they had told me, there were doctors. Medical attention.

  “Serve your time in the Confinement Center,” the governor had proposed during yet another talk show. “If you’re good there until you die, so be it. But if you can’t take the solitude, the loneliness, you have a choice. Choose the Zoo. Make it one year in the Criminal Zoo and you are released into a traditional maximum-security prison. But you cannot be set free. Never. You gave up the right to freedom when you became a killer.”

  That was the chain of progression. Sentenced to the Confinement Center. Stay there and die, slowly and in madness, or push the red button: next stop, the Zoo. Survive one year in the Zoo, tortured daily, and graduate to a “lifer” in maximum-security prison.

  I was told that Zoo exhibits who actually ran the gauntlet and made it through the Zoo and into the prison system were revered by the other inmates. Treated like heroes, real badasses, because they were tough enough to survive the Zoo.

  The degree of torture, both physical and psychological, was staggering. How sick was the governor to push someone into getting physically tortured day after day, their only goal for survival being to walk tall in a maximum-security prison for the rest of their lives? The depth of his callousness was immeasurable. And the death penalty was cruel and unusual? You gotta be fucking kidding me. How in the hell did the governor get an entire nation to buy into this insanity?

  Push the button, Sam.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Make the nothing go away.

  “I don’t want to be tortured!”

  You’re already there.

  I screamed. Screamed until I passed out.

  Almost Normal

  If there was a highlight to my life, it was between the ages of maybe ten and fifteen. That’s when my buddy Terry Anderson was around. We did just about everything together.

  We met right after my dad moved us for the third time, ending up in Terr
y’s neighborhood on the edge of town. He lived two houses down from ours. The neighborhood was generally pretty quiet and shared a border with infinity. At least that’s the way the desolate field next to our property appeared to me as a child. It started at our street and ended where land turned into sky.

  While unpacking the car, I noticed the boy standing in his driveway beneath a basketball hoop, a ball tucked under his arm. He watched me for a few moments, threw the ball into his yard, and walked over.

  “Need some help?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I nodded.

  “I’m Terry.”

  “Hey.”

  “What’s your name?” Terry asked.

  “I’m Samuel. Samuel Bradbury.”

  “Hi, Sam.”

  I stopped what I was doing and looked Terry in the eyes. “I don’t mind if you call me Sam, but if my dad’s around, you better call me Samuel. He gets pretty mad when people don’t. He says if he’d wanted a boy named ‘Sam,’ he wouldn’t have put the ‘u-e-l’ on the end.”

  Terry held my stare for a moment, probably deciding if I was yanking his chain. When I said nothing else, he replied, “That’s really stupid.”

  “I know, but it’s important to him. It’s a name out of the Old Testament.”

  “So who was he?”

  “Samuel? I guess he was a prophet or something.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Terry shrugged and stepped toward the car. He was skinny, a little taller than me, and had pale, freckled skin. The direct sunlight made his hair look like a miniature version of the burning bush. “Want some help?”

  “You bet.”

  He reached into the trunk, and after a brief struggle pulled out a cardboard box. “Holy cow, what you got in here, rocks?”

  “That’s either the box with pots and pans, or all the stupid books about wars that my dad reads. I think it’s the books.”

  “Hmmm. Feels like rocks.”

  From that day on, we hung out. He was the only real friend I ever had. With Terry around, it was like life was almost normal.

  About the only thing I accomplished without him was to compete in my church’s Scripture Challenge. Actually, it was about the only thing I ever accomplished, period.

  My dad used to wake me up every weekday morning at five. He made sure Sheila and I were seated in church by six for Bible studies. Afterward, he picked us up, made us breakfast—either burned toast or cold lumpy oatmeal—and sent us to school.

  Terry used to tease me, saying, “I know you had to get up at five this morning, but it could’ve been worse.”

  “Really? How?”

  “It could’ve been me getting up at five!” He finished the line with a laugh. He was the only one laughing.

  My attitude about learning the Bible changed one morning when my dad said, “Samuel, no matter how hard you study, you’ll never know more about God than me. You want to know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re too stupid. And to think I named you after the prophet. You don’t even know who he was, do you?”

  Didn’t my dad just say Samuel was a prophet? What else was there to know? I said nothing.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” My dad wasn’t one to let things go. “Maybe you should actually read about your namesake. Maybe then you’d appreciate the gift I tried to give you. But you won’t, will you? You won’t because you’re lazy. Lazy and stupid. Everything the prophet Samuel wasn’t. Boy, did I call that one wrong.”

  After I finished my schoolwork each day, I went to work on the word of God. I would know the Bible better than my dad, our preacher, or anyone else. I would prove it was my dad who was the stupid one.

  Each year, our church held a competition called the Scripture Challenge. Apparently it was a pretty big deal. Participants were given clues to certain Bible verses, and the first one to find the verse won the point. After several rounds, the points were tallied. The one with the most points won.

  An old lady named Edna Johnson was the defending champion. She walked around like she was a heavyweight prizefighter. It was time to take Edna down. But I wasn’t after the awards. I couldn’t give a shit about a brand-new personalized Bible and an engraved plaque hanging on the wall in the church hallway. I was after something much bigger, much more important. I was after the satisfaction that would come from proving my dad wrong. And him knowing he was wrong.

  The day of the contest, the questions were asked, clues given, and verses found. Edna was good, but not good enough. When the Bibles were closed for the last time and the dust settled, there was a new champion. I beat Edna, and I knew more about the scriptures than my dad. I didn’t necessarily believe them, but by God I knew them!

  What I hadn’t taken into account was how Dad would respond. He didn’t like finding out he was the stupid one. He came into my room the night after the Scripture Challenge and sat on the end of my bed.

  “Sit here next to me, Samuel,” he said, patting the bed.

  I obeyed.

  “God doesn’t take any shit. You know why?”

  I had no idea where the question was going. And I certainly knew better than to try to force a stupid answer. Stupid answers got you hit. So I shrugged.

  “No? Well, I’ll tell you. Because God doesn’t take any shit. He’ll turn you into a pillar of salt if you cross Him. And you know what? That’s the way it should be.”

  I stared at the floor, uneasy about the direction of this one-sided conversation.

  “That’s why I don’t take any shit, either. Especially from you stupid kids. Because I don’t have to. In your world, I’m God. I’m the punisher. You know that, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Damn right you do. I’ll smack your asses so hard you won’t sit down for a week. And now that you’re thinking you’re pretty smart and all, thinking you know the Bible more than me, I’m sure you know all about how God told Abraham to kill his own kid.”

  I nodded again.

  “But do you know why?”

  Of course I knew why. God was testing Abraham’s faith. But I also knew my dad would have his own answer. I shrugged.

  “Because He had to put Abraham in his place. Let him know who the boss was. So Abraham raised a knife over his boy’s chest and was about to stab it right into his heart because God told him to. But then God told him not to. Once again, He did it because He could.”

  My dad paused for effect. I said nothing.

  “You better hope God doesn’t tell me to take you out, boy, because I won’t give Him time to change His mind.” He laughed.

  I had no idea what was funny.

  “So the moral to this little story is…you don’t mess with God and you sure as hell don’t mess with me. You think you’re all smart because you won some stupid church contest. It doesn’t mean a damned thing. Not in this house. You know that, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s good. Because I’d hate to think you might get a little cocky, thinking you’re special or something. Just like God does, I’d put you in your place. And I can guarantee you wouldn’t like it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. That’s good. It would be wise for you never to forget this conversation.”

  I never did. I also never forgot that when he least expected it, I planned on putting him in his place. Permanently.

  Uncle Henry

  When I was a kid, I had a really cool pocketknife. It was an Uncle Henry: Five inches of badass, lethal stainless steel. Hard plastic handle molded to look like polished wood. I carried it with me everywhere I went and used it any chance I got.

  My Uncle Henry came in handy when I was hanging out with my boyhood friend, Terry. Following him around, I always seemed to have reason to pull out my knife.

  “Nice shot, Terry.” I nodded my
approval of my buddy’s marksmanship.

  I moved toward the flopping gopher. Gut shot. But still very much alive. Terry followed me to the animal. He smiled like he was about to open a Christmas present.

  “You got your Uncle Henry?” he asked.

  “Of course. Always.”

  I pulled the knife from my pocket and snapped it open. Its beautiful polished silver blade glistened under the Texas sun.

  I had found the Uncle Henry back when we lived in the apartments. I had gone to see if a kid named Garrett could play; I guess you could call him a buddy of mine at the time, even though he was kind of a geek. But he lived in the unit next to ours and he always wanted to play when I was bored. Garrett’s dad let me in and went in search of his dorky son. While I waited, I saw the knife—folded up all nice and safe—lying on an end table by the couch. I grabbed it, turned it over in my hands, felt its weight and admired its fine craftsmanship. And then I dropped it into my pocket. I didn’t do it because I was a thief; it just kind of seemed like the thing to do. The weight of the knife was comforting, like it belonged there.

  Garrett entered the living room, followed by his father. I was a little nervous when his father walked right to me. He stood over me, next to the table, which was now missing an Uncle Henry.

  “Hey,” he said.

  My pulse quickened, my face flushed, and I turned my eyes downward.

  “After you guys are done playing, let’s go down to the Sonic and grab a Coke,” he said. “My treat.”

  I loved the Sonic. “That sounds real good, Mr. Johnson,” I said.

  Garrett’s father nodded in approval. “All right, then, it’s settled. Cokes are on me.”

  I smiled. I didn’t have many good days, but that one was shaping up pretty well. I nodded and said, “Cool!” Then Garrett and I headed for the door. On the way out, I patted my pocket and felt the knife’s bulk. But it wasn’t just any old knife; it was a genuine Uncle Henry. And it was all mine.

  Terry had seen the gopher sitting at the edge of his hole, before I did. “Look,” he’d said, pointing.