C. Russell Monaghan
Monster World
There were snakes coiled inside the ceiling fixture, cock-a-rooches
hiding behind the closet door, fish circling hungrily under
the floorboards. No question. Rocky heard all these things.
He saw these creatures: the snakes had blue-light
eyes like the dashboard lights in his dad’s Subaru;
the cockroaches had rubber wheels instead of skittering feet.
How else, after all, to explain their silent
entrances and quick exits?
The fish swam with question marks above their heads,
like in a cartoon…because they were wondering something.
He wondered what the fish were wondering.
Rocky would like to learn to talk with them.
It was only at night, though, in the chasm between his
light being turned out by the Sergeant and his eyes
adjusting to the dark that Rocky could actually see the
fish through the floor. They were exactly like!
the koi in the pond by the staircase at the Disneyland Hotel.
His mother had not been able to wrest him away from
that calm water, not with entreaties—“Bear Country!”—or pleas—“for
fucksake, Rocky! The lines are
getting freaking longer!” Finally it was his father,
Sergeant Shithead (as his mother called him),
who simply swept him up and onto his shoulders and
forward marched with him to Space Mountain.
Never mind. Rocky could picture the fish anyway,
yellow and orange and white, some spotted like cows,
big as spinner kites, winding in and out of the
green weeds. The curl of their tails, the
coolness of their scales...they could talk without
talking...it was nice and quiet down there.
As Space Mountain hurled him down an eerie
rabbit hole, the fish flipped back and forth,
their fins pumping the water, their jewel eyes roaming.
That was in July. Snow fell now, loads of it, wiping out summer
and fall and everything in his life except third grade.
That was stuck to him now: I’M IN THIRD GRADE. No escape.
He had to make a clay Santa; he had to practice spelling words
like “horse” and “mice.” He had a hard time understanding why
they were spelled differently. That was why he was in the Green
Language Group. The sounds were all the same. Why did it
matter? He did a bad job with the Santa, which was a cone
of clay supposed to be painted with the Santa hat at the
top and the belt in the middle. He didn’t like the pointy
top and he knew that Santa was a bitch this
year—his mother had said so many times already—so he made
a stovepipe hat like Abraham Lincoln’s. It would be friendlier
if Abraham Lincoln, who loved children, came down the
chimney this year. He had warm eyes and a good warty face.
When his teacher, Mr. Griffin, asked why Santa’s hat was black,
Rocky couldn’t answer. He knew why it was black,
sure, there were lots of reasons, lots of snow covering
everything up. He didn’t know why. His eyes welled
up and he threw the Santa at the window and it
crackled the safety glass and thudded to the floor.
There was a dented spider web in the green glass now.
The lights outside, in the multry gloom, were splintered.
What did it matter! He put his head on his arms and
cried and cried until Mr. Griffin picked him up
and carried him like a limp cat to the office.
“He was fine,” his mother said to the principal. Rocky heard them through the door. “He’s been fine. He hasn’t said a thing. Even at the service…”
“It’s normal,” the principal said.
“He’s weirdly happy,” his mother said. “Who knows, I thought he was ok.”
“Kids react differently.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Do you have family support?” the principal asked.
Rocky tried to look through the floor. The carpet was an ugly blue. The secretaries glanced at him then glanced down and looked busy again. He heard one whisper, “I didn’t know.” Mrs. Peach had a large jar of candy on her desk. For the first time in his life he understood he didn’t want any candy; for the first time in his life he knew he could have it all without even asking.
His mother tried to grab his hand when she came out, but he didn’t
want that either. “We’re just gonna go home today, that’s all, Rocky.”
Maybe play games, he thought. He liked Chutes and Ladders.
But when they got home, his mother mixed herself something
to drink and brought him a Coke and turned on the TV with
the sound off. Her leg bounced up and down, making her
pointed shoe stab the air. Finally she said, “Your
principal thinks you’re upset. [kick kick] You can
tell me if you’re upset. [kick] I mean, I’m
upset. [kick kick kick] Who wouldn’t be upset.”
“I’m not upset,” he said, slugging back the Coke like his dad had swigged summer beer. He looked around for his toy milk truck. It was his favorite because the back doors opened and the front doors opened and you could take the milk man out to deliver milk.
“You threw Santa.” From his vantage point on the floor she was just a pair of crossed lady’s legs, shimmery
in pantyhose. Her voice, a storm cloud over the couch, warned of torrents and
lightning to come. It sounded the same as
how she'd talked to his dad just about every night before he left.
Then both voices would get loud and they would fight. Then his dad, the Sergeant, was gone to Afghanistan, which he’d shown Rocky on a map. It had a lot of mountains and terrorists in those mountains and it was his dad’s job to help find those guys and then he would come back. He said he would come back. His mom didn’t have to yell at him like that, which is probably why he didn’t come back. He wanted to stay and then he got killed. He would’ve already been back if his mom hadn’t yelled at him so much.
Rocky took his truck up to his bedroom and as he delivered milk to
the green soldiers under his bed he thought about what he should do
about today, which was a bothersome day. Tonight he would tell the
fish to tell his dad what happened at school. He knew now: the
question marks were because the koi wanted to know things. So he
told them. Then the snakes, with their dashboard-blue lighted eyes,
led the way to the Sergeant’s plot over in the military cemetery
and the fish followed beneath, swimming through the dirt. The koi
visited the Sergeant and usually told him that Rocky missed him
a lot and he wished they were still at Disneyland or that he
could watch his dad mow the lawn like he used to. Tonight the
fish would tell him that Rocky didn’t mean to throw the Santa;
that he didn’t know why he did that and he wished he could tell his
dad in person; and what should he do now because his mom was
sinking farther into the couch than before and ignoring it when the
phone rang.
Rocky sat cross-legged on the floor to draw a picture of his Abraham Lincoln Santa. He had found the cockroaches to be useful as well: After he fell to sleep tonight the cockroaches would silently roll his drawing to the coffin and slip it under the lid. After his dad saw it, they would bring it back. Rocky liked this setup. It was pretty good. It kept his mom out of the picture. He got busy with his crayons.
©2009 by C. Russell Monaghan
