Let Flowers Be Flowers

CHAPTER 1

It doesn’t have to be perfect, but this is ridiculous! the Mother screamed.

For the next thirty seconds, all the way out to, let’s say maybe five minutes, depending on the severity of the atrocity, her anger would grow. She would start to take it more and more personally, whatever the it du jour happened to be. Today, the design on my bed cover wasn’t perfectly centered on the made bed. It was best to stay out of arm’s reach, and I knew this, but today I stayed. I don’t like pain, but I can take it. Whatever she wanted to send my way was going to be fine with me. It had been awhile since I took a slap to the face. A slap isn’t solitaire, it’s not something you can adequately deal to yourself. And of course, you shouldn’t see it coming. That way you can get an accurate gauge, a baseline of pain and tolerance.

People had it worse. When I was little, I would go cry somewhere. Sometimes I’d pull out the trundle bed, climb under and roll it in behind me. Like most kids, I had a desire to make the parents feel bad, to be sorry for treating me like crap. I enjoyed my rage inward time after the initial pain of not feeling loved wore off. I planned a life without them, without any real knowledge of what living alone involved.

I would occasionally get lucky in my daydreams and they would die. I didn’t much care for gore. Usually, I would skip right to the funeral, to the crying people. I wanted everyone to know they were dead otherwise what was the point? After the funeral I’d come home to an empty house. It would have appeared to be a sad moment if anyone else could have seen into my head, but it was the part I always looked forward to. Usually right after I was done crying it was quiet. There was no one else in the house for her to yell at.

Mikey was my older brother, but I wasn’t really sure how much older. Whatever our age difference, it must have been equal to the amount of time it takes for you to think you’re emotionally over your son’s accidental death and you’re ready to have another child. The not really is something you never realize.

It was important for the parents to escape in the summer time. A cabin rental on a lake up north is the perfect place to take a kid who can’t swim and isolate him from all social activities and relationship building. It’s a perfect place to die. It’s beautiful there. I loved being in the woods, talking to him, exploring together. The water I swam in, it went through him, he breathed it until he couldn’t anymore. Water is a part of all of us. Same with dirt, ashes to ashes and all of that. It took days for divers to find his body in the coldest water in the deepest part of the lake. Plenty of time for things to bite and nibble on him, to make him part of the food chain. I caught and ate fish out of that lake so in a way he became a part of me. Not like a cannibal. It was more like appreciating and participating in the circle of life. It is worth noting that I wouldn’t have eaten the parents no matter how they were presented. They were responsible for my arrest, sentencing and incarceration in this glorious prison. At the time I was quite angry with them and I think they knew that about me.

It is thanks to the parents that I was able to establish a baseline for life. Not for my life but for the lives of all beings. Empathy be damned, and sympathy is reserved for all characters Disney. There was a real world of make-believe where people and personified nouns cared for one another.

The family dog came with the name Bennet. We called him Ben and he got used to it alright. He was going to be my substitute brother, my friend through thick and thin. My version of Lassie. Ben was a brilliant mutt who didn’t care anything for me beyond the food I gave him and my ability to operate a door knob. Still I tried to bring him along wherever I went.

At first, I didn’t use a leash because I thought it was mean, but Ben ran away from me too many times. Once he scared the neighbor lady carrying her groceries into her house so bad, she dropped everything all over the sidewalk which resulted in a huge mess.

She pitched a fit that I swear lasted for years. Every time I walked down the street in front of her house, whether there was a dog with me or not there she’d be at the window, giving me the stink eye. Even after I learned to drive, she would come to the window like a shitty old cat whenever she heard my car. Her husband was a Nazi anyway, hiding in a low rent American suburb after the war. She was a sympathizer, an accomplice to the Holocaust and her hatred toward me was on automatic return. I didn’t even have to bother with it because there was no way she wasn’t dying first.

Ben was awesome to explore with, a welcome member of the team. Me, Mikey, and Ben. Back in the woods on the other side of the road we could dip our feet into tens of thousands of acres of lumber company land that men had logged for a hundred years. We were free to roam and roam we did. Further and further each time, until we were either cut off by a swamp or just got out a little too far and were scared of getting lost.

I wanted to hunt even at my earliest recollection. Killing was important then, not death. We always explored as if we were hunting.

I was in my earliest of teens when we found it. Ben got there first, his front paws barely crossing the threshold of some sort of crude structure. At first, I thought it was an old Indian building because I didn’t really know any better. It was low to the ground, no taller than a man at its peak. It was built of progressively-sized logs with the smallest and thinnest sticks on top, kind of like a beaver lodge. It was built around an old triangular-shaped, canvas tent like the kind issued to GI’s in the great wars. The door wasn’t attached and maybe never was, instead it was heavy enough for its own weight to keep it in place. The rot of time opened it up wide enough for Ben to stick his head inside.

Ben, Bennet, come! I whispered in a loud scream. I was pointing behind me but not looking that way as I approached trying to signal the dog. The closer I got the more I could see that this thing was old and decrepit. The canvas was stained gray and green from moss and time. The door was tipped to one side, the bottom more dirt than wood. The canvas flap was torn nearly completely off, exposing enough of the inside to see a shoe with a bone in it.

I used a stick to pull back enough of the material to see inside. My heart skipped like I had just looked over a high edge. I was afraid of heights. What I saw I was able to determine was a man by what was left of his plaid, red, wool coat. His grey beard grew from beef jerky flesh over a smiling jawbone on the ground next to the rest of his head. A head that still wore a matching hat.

I backed away and stood for a while with my hands on my knees, thinking maybe I should puke. But did I really feel like it or not? Once it became a decision, the feeling went away. There was more to see.

Indeed, there was another. And it was a her. Her pink top, blue jeans and once-pretty shoes were not tattered and destroyed like his clothes were. They weren’t because they were not on her. They were instead folded neatly and stacked to the side. That must have made it easier for scavengers to pull her apart. Her arms and legs, what was left of them, were bound with wire. Not one of the four appendages were attached to the body. The ribs all laid flat as if she was drawn in chalk onto the rotted canvas floor. Her skull was gone.

I found that fact particularly shameful. I was angry for her, laying there without a head. It didn’t seem fair. So what if his was next to him, at least he had one. The right thing to do would be to find it for her. I think I fell in love with her right then and there. She was older than me and I knew that, but I also thought that maybe I could love her like a sister, or aunt. Anyone besides the Mother. She would be perfect for Mikey and I knew he knew that too but was too shy to say anything.

Anger overwhelmed me to the point of exhaustion. I backed-out and pouted on the ground for a minute. I was mad at what happened to them, to her. There was nobody to blame for me. I was caught-up in the moment, obvious evidence meant nothing. I was mad that I didn’t know what to do. I was mad that Mikey wasn’t there with me. I was mad that I allowed that door to be open if only for a few moments.

If my god-damned mother had been watching my brother instead of compiling a life list of reasons she sucked, her life sucked, and because of that her husband and kids’ lives must suck, I wouldn’t have had a dog for a brother and we would never have found those people in the woods that day.

CHAPTER 2

I had to go back to the cabin. I wasn’t sure why. I justified going back without looking any further by telling myself I needed to know what time it was so that I knew how much time I had. I ignored Mikey. Sometimes I felt like I didn’t have to listen to him at all. I could just shut him off like a valve. A lie that fits into place so well that you can convince yourself it’s true is a thing of beauty.

Of course, I was scared. I was always scared. I couldn’t very well tell myself that though. Who knew how I could react? I had to keep everything I feared to my conscious self.

The old man was snoring in his easy chair, I didn’t know where the Mother was but that was as good as knowing because I didn’t have to see her. If he was sleeping already that meant it was just after lunch, I could tell without even looking at the clock, but I had to look anyway. I should have appreciated the accuracy. Instead I scorned myself for my lack of trust in myself. I had to get back out into the woods as quick as I could without seeming too obvious to myself that I was in a hurry. Ah, but the excitement.

I could talk to Mikey about it again because now the stress was anticipatory. He seemed slightly disconnected, like he was thinking about something else. Probably her I guessed. Still, I could tell he was excited to get back as well. Ben was too but dogs are usually excited to go anywhere.

We need a plan, we need a plan, we need a plan Mikey! I chopped the air with a knife hand, pleading with him for an answer.

Okay, okay, okay, okay. We need something, stuff. Like at least a bag, or you know, um, a camera, I said to Mikey. We didn’t have a camera. There was 110 slide model with a slot on top for a flash-cube in the drawer but there was no film. I could never get the Mother’s good one.

I had to find what I needed in the garage, but I didn’t know what I needed. An ax. There was no real reason that I needed an ax, but it seemed to be intense and I wanted it. Then there was the moldy, green, looked like it had been in WWI tool bag stuck in the corner on the floor ever since I could remember. I was saving that for a someday.

I found my pocket knife. I got it for Christmas a few years earlier after I mentioned I wanted to be a boy scout. I quit in the middle of cub scouts. I recall the stupid hurricane lantern, or whatever it was called we had to make for a badge. A tuna can on a broom stick with a glass jar glued onto it and a little candle inside. Asking the Mother to help me gather up the pieces was an Asian ground war even though she had no less than a million candles lying around the house. The Mother was fond of candles. With just enough time for the glue to dry I got it done. If it required effort I really wasn’t interested, unless I was really interested.

The foul odor of the moldy, canvas bag and its clanking contents told the entire natural world that I was on my way. In the garage I found a flashlight, a pair of pliers, a razor knife, and a magic marker. I had the ax slung Paul Bunyan style on my right shoulder while I simply carried the stinky, green bag by its God-given handle. Ben was irritating me as he walked along my left side, constantly nosing the bag. He liked the stinkiness.

This time as we approached the scene, I had a television show mind-set. We came up slowly, trying to notice everything. Nothing was out of the ordinary as far as I knew. The Quincy M.E. show theme song played in my head. I needed it, to keep humming along with it silently because otherwise I was just so excited, I wanted to scream and for some reason I thought I needed to be quiet. Quiet out of respect for something I was sure, but for what or whom, I didn’t even think to ask myself.

Cloth of some kind, a clue, a tatter was mixed into dead leaves under a small Christmas tree pine near the entrance. I picked it up and rubbed it between my fingers. I couldn’t think as two different mosquitos, each with their own tone picked an ear to infest. Their buzzing was maddening. They chose that moment to mock me because I was stone cold serious, and I looked like I knew what I was doing. They were just little soldier bullies that knew nothing. They didn’t live long enough to learn. I killed one of them for sure but the longer I stayed still in the shade the more of them there would be.

Gently I pulled back the edge of the tattered and torn tent flap. I waited there by the entrance, waiting to be asked to come inside. I wanted to burst-in and start asking questions but as I prepared my speech, I realized I didn’t know what to say. I crawled in carefully. It was wetter than I remembered. An odor lingered although I couldn’t say whether it was foul or enlightening. It reminded me of coloring Easter eggs. A beam of sun cut through the branches outside the tent illuminating the inside upper corner. It made a hot spot and a bunch of flies gathered there soaking in the heat.

I just sat there staring at his face sideways on the ground. I couldn’t tell whether he was angry, happy, in pain or anything. I was sort of frozen. It was like I was staring at some horrific accident on the side of the road. You’re sitting there hoping to see blood and guts and when you do, you’re shocked. It stays with you, sometimes you cry the first time you see it but never again. Then there is the moment when you’re sitting there staring at a long-dead man’s face and you wonder if you should be crying.

Thank god, I saw the accident.

In fall the big trees in our city yard would predictably turn yellow and leaves would cascade to the ground like snowflakes. I was too little to handle a rake but not to play in the piles. The leaves had to get to the curb, where people normally park cars. A truck that was part elephant, part monster would come to clean them up every so often. You could hear it coming for blocks. When it got close enough to see me, I ran and hid around the back of the house. Once it was done and gone, I would come back to find a wet spot in the road and a few leaf crumbs. My perfect pile gone. That was the monster’s job though, it seemed right.

People in cars were different monsters. Constantly clipping the piles, spreading the leaves around, mashing them into un-rakeable crumbs. How did they know I wasn’t in there? I could have been burying myself, breathing the air through the leaves that smelled like autumn.

I dragged two concrete blocks from the retaining wall across the alley that was supposed to hold back the hill. I placed them one on top of the other like a capitol T. Carefully I built up the leaves around it until it was completely invisible inside the pile.

I waited on the edge of my seat all through dinner. Waiting to hear the bang and the brakes but nothing happened. Later the pile stood stoic under the street light, also waiting. I guess from that moment forward we both forgot about it.

I never really saw the bottom of a car before besides matchbox toys. That was the first thing that crossed my mind as I walked up to the scene. More accurately, I ran up to the scene because it was right in front of my house and I could see the emergency vehicles from a block away as I was walking home from school.

It was a blue car, but the bottom was rusty brown. It was on its side, the roof firmly caved-in and pressed against the base of the big elm next to the street. Glass was everywhere. There was muffled wailing coming from the car, kind of a haunting moaning or screaming. Men rushed around the scene. Everything was happening very quickly. It was loud and frightening. One of the police officers saw me watching from my front lawn, hiding partially behind the big maple. The tree gave me comfort. Other neighbors started to trickle out.

Go inside kid, the police officer said to me pointing towards the house as he rushed to render aid.

I ran around the back of the house, through the alley, crossed the street at the corner and came around the front side of the wreck. On the sidewalk next to the juniper bush near the corner, a stained, white sheet was laid over what I presumed to be a body. At the time I don’t recall how I knew that, but I never thought it was anything else. The person making all the noise had black, long hair. The top of her head was stuck partially out of the windshield which had been broken in so many pieces that it looked white around the hole. It explained why the screams sounded off. The face must have been about the half-way point. That’s where most of the blood was coming from. Firemen stepped in my line of sight trying to peel the windshield away from the top down. A broken half of a cinder block leaned up against the curb a stone’s throw away from the crash scene on the other side of the street. I never knew what happened to the other one.

CHAPTER 3

He wore boots, the regular hiking kind the color of tanned leather with black, knobby rubber bottoms. Bone, shreds of clothing, leaves and pine needles were the choice ingredients of a decomposed stir fry where he laid. The head I wanted to pick up so badly, but I was afraid a bug would crawl out of it. What a waste. I felt like Mikey could have used it while it was still good.

She was a puzzle literally and figuratively.

Geez, I said to Mikey as I picked up a hoop of wire wrapped around her ankle bones.

It went around six times and was twisted together like a bread tie. Even now it kept the bones from falling apart. How tight must they have been when there was actual meat? She must have been pretty skinny.

I unfolded her clothes reverently. They weren’t full-length jeans after all but instead shorts. The tag said size zero, the pink shirt was a small. The tennis shoes had been pulled off without being untied, size six. I didn’t understand girls’ sizes and like any kid I didn’t want to look stupid in front of my brother, so I nodded and searched for anything that would make it seem as if this were an important clue. Writing things down always makes the writer look important and I remembered I had the marker. I didn’t bring paper, so I used the piece of cloth I found outside the tent. It was lightly-colored, leathery. Maybe it was leather, I didn’t know. It would suffice if I wrote small.

Nothing inside seemed to be made of the same cloth anyway. His coat and hat I recognized as the same type the Father wore for hunting. His pants were dark gray, and the material was brittle and thin. Her clothes weren’t even torn, and it wasn’t part of the tent either. I looked in his pants for a wallet but there was nothing.

I felt like a genius for even thinking of this, that maybe it was leather from his wallet. That word was thrown around loosely when it came to my learning prowess, genius. So much so that I believed it as well. The teachers moved me into the most advanced classes my grade level offered. I was supposed to find the work more challenging, even difficult. They didn’t care, they just didn’t want me disrupting their classes. Next year I was going to have to skip a grade. They were all phonies, the teachers, the kids, probably the parents too. Follow our little routine and grow up to be like mommy and daddy. Grow up to be maniacs. Grow up to be slave owners and make more of the same. Keep the ball rolling. Nobody stops the ball.

Sometimes, you don’t see something that’s right in front of you, even something that’s a big deal. Something like a rusty, old gun.

CHAPTER 4

The Father liked to shoot his guns. Moving targets, stationary targets, shotguns, rifles, handguns, he had them all. In the grand unlikelihood of invasion I guess the family would have been able to hold-out for more minutes than the initial few it would have taken to expose his fear. Every single time when I watched him, I just couldn’t prepare my body for the sound of the shot. If I turned my back and didn’t watch, I was fine, it didn’t bother me. It was the anticipation that killed me. As far as attempting to shoot things myself I gave it a fair go on many an occasion. Whatever was exhilarating about the experience was quickly wiped-out by the over-scrutiny the Father reaped upon my technique. Apparently, the invading armies wouldn’t appreciate being shot by a person who didn’t use perfect shooting form. Do it this way or that way or you’ll miss, you’ll never get that big buck. When target shooting, deer and invading armies are synonymous.

The cowboys in the movies on horseback didn’t have perfect form yet they managed to kill thousands of Indians. Why wouldn’t they? Indiscriminate killing comes easy to people with superior weapons. It’s almost as if having a better weapon makes you a better person somehow. Maybe that’s what the Father clung-to, my gun is better, so it doesn’t matter how much I lie or steal. Who do you clap for at the end of a movie? Is it the guy who overcame the odds and persevered or is it the bully who couldn’t lose? The guys with bows and arrows were the real heroes, but the symphony playing in the background won’t let you feel that way.

What does a gun really do except throw something really hard? If I had a robot arm could I throw a rock faster than the speed of sound? Like a bullet? If I arm-wrestled you with my robot arm, I’d win even though I cheated. Why not make a film of cowboys fighting Indians on horseback but instead of guns the cowboys would have robotic arms? What sort of music would it take to make them the good guys then?

It was the sort of gun made popular in old westerns. It was a short rifle, with a wood stock and grip under the barrel. It had a lever for cocking, but it was rusted-closed. I would have to guess there were bullets still inside but there was really no way for me to check. I treated it like it was a live bomb, an old mine found floating in the ocean years after the war was over.

Holy shit Mikey! Holy shit! I yelled quietly.

Ben was behind me, sniffing like he really meant something by it. He put his ice-cold nose against the exposed area of my back above my beltline.

Shit Ben! That’s cold! I shrieked. He crouched and crawled to my side begging forgiveness. It was a ruse. Bones are what he was after and a split second later he had one of the girl’s and was off to the races.

Ben! Bennet! Come! I screamed at him to come back but his game was to taunt me, to force my hand and leave me no choice but to give chase.

I kept calling and calling. I didn’t want to get too far away from the find for fear of getting lost. I was just far-enough away to activate the I’m a kid lost in the grocery store sort of pre-game panic when I managed somehow to get ahold of myself. It occurred to me that the dog may have gone back to the cabin. It the parents saw Ben chewing on a girl’s bone would they notice?

Would they Mike? I asked.

CHAPTER 5

I had to head back, I had to know if Ben went back with the bone.

Jesus Mikey, you should have been watching him.

Immediately after the words left my mouth, I was