A Dead Mouse (Part Won)

A Dead Mouse

  If you were to ask Daniel himself he would probably tell you, with an ingenious choice of words, that he hates most people which if you knew him back then would be completely understandable. I mean considering the people he knew as he was growing up, how could he trust anyone? At least, that’s what most people think. They find simple explanations for people like him and then they change the subject to talk about the funny weather we’ve been having lately or whichever team won the first draft pick this year. And who’s to say they’re wrong? If you think about it he and his brother are the products of an interracial couple after all, his father was Black and his mother was half White and half Japanese. It must be hard to find one’s own ethnic identity with such mixed heritage and all, even in this day and age. And then there’s the fact that his mom died from multiple sclerosis while he was still pretty young, Daniel being eight and his brother Joshua only four at the time. And to make matters worse Daniel’s father was convicted for murder and sentenced fifteen years in prison while his boy’s were only ten and seven.  How normal can a person be when they grow up under such circumstances? They had no family to take them in at the time; their closest relative being an uncle who was serving a hundred year prison sentence in Oklahoma for drug trafficking. So naturally they went into foster care. Daniel and Joshua bounced back and forth between homes until they came to a stop at a lower-middle class establishment in South Oak Cliff six months ago. Oh speaking of dates, this story takes place in June 2008. Sorry about that, I can be kind of a bad narrator sometimes. And in case you’re wondering, no I’m not a character in this particular story or any story really. I’m just your typical omniscient voice whose only purpose is to keep the reader on point and alert. Still getting used to this job so please bear with me. I know it can be kind of confusing sometimes with me using words like “I” and “me” all the time. I’ll try to keep that stuff to a minimum; I don’t want to distract you from the story or anything like that.

Anyway, it’s June eighteenth, 2008 in the year of Our Lord. The place is Oak Cliff Texas. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Oak Cliff was a neighbor of Dallas until it was annexed by the city near the beginning of the twentieth century. You can look it up on Google maps if you’re near your computer right now. There are two parts of Oak Cliff which are important to this story; South Oak Cliff which is a predominantly Black, excuse me, African American neighborhood (which by the way was never part of the original city of Oak Cliff, just saying) and then there is North Oak Cliff which features large homes, condos, parks and festive shopping districts. We’ll start out in North Oak Cliff, which happens to be where our hero, Daniel Gideon, is currently located. He is in the back yard of a large brick two story home. It is one of those nice houses, but not too nice so that it doesn’t look all flashy and boisterous until you step inside the front door. There is a pool in the back yard which is bordered by a wooden deck that overlooks a little manmade lake around which several other nice but not too nice houses encompass. The deck is half ruined, well not necessarily “ruined” but it is in a much needed state of repair. You see Daniel works part time for a man named Thomas Gein who owns a little workshop in South Oak Cliff just a few blocks away from the foster home where Daniel and his little brother are currently residing. Mr. Gein pays Daniel a few bucks an hour to help him retile swimming pools, install awnings, replace gutters and other little outdoor home improvement projects. Today, the owners of the brick house where kind enough to hire Mr. Gein to tear up the decaying wooden boards on their deck and replace them with this new composite weather proof stuff while they spend the day at Hurricane Harbor. Daniel would like to go to Hurricane Harbor some day. They have waterslides which are taller than some of the roller coasters at Six Flags. But he cannot go because he has no money and instead has to spend his weekends fixing up rich people’s houses for them. Right now Daniel is prying the rusty nails out of the old boards with a small crowbar. Sorry, I should probably describe Daniel, him being our protagonist and all. I promise I’ll get this narration thing down before the story is over. Daniel Gideon is eleven years old. He is wearing two pairs of basketball shorts (a black one outside of a blue one), a black wife beater and a pair of black and red Jordans Basketball shoes which look like they were pretty nice at one time but have become all scuffed and faded looking. The shoes were the last thing his dad ever bought for him before he was hauled away. You wouldn’t think of Daniel as being a particularly sentimental person and he’s not, he really isn’t; but for reasons unknown to his foster mother, his best friend or even his little brother he refuses to wear any other pair of shoes. They were a little too big for him when he first got them, but now his toes are starting to become sore from being pressed up against the sides. Oh and he also has on a pair of black fingerless gloves which he sometimes wears at gym class when they lift weights. I probably should have mentioned the gloves earlier because they’re kind of important.

Daniel is sitting on the new artificial board with one of his legs perched up on the old rotten board and the other hanging down into the gap between them. He takes a brief break, setting his crowbar down and wiping the sweat from his forehead with his arm as he looks out at the artificial lake in front of him. There is a fountain in the middle of the lake where a family of ducks is quacking and flapping their wings as they bathe in the mist. (“Bathe in the mist” see, I am getting better at this.)He wonders what it would be like to be one of those ducks or even a fish in the water right about now. Daniel wonders if any fish could even survive in that water or if they just replace them with fish from some other manmade lake. A lot of the lakes around there are manmade. Daniel remembers when his dad used to take him and his little brother to Oklahoma with him so they could play at the Casino’s water park while their dad played black jack. They drove across one of the lakes and he could see the dead trees poking out of the water.

Thomas Gein (Daniel’s boss in case you forgot) walked up behind Daniel and said, “Hot today.”

Daniel looked up, eyes squinting from the sun shining in his face as looked at Mr. Gein. Daniel felt anxious all of a sudden, he could never explain why but every once in a while he would get real nervous for no apparent reason. He picked up his crowbar again and continued to pry the jagged nails out from the board in front of him.

Mr. Gein looked down and said, “Thirsty son?” with a smile on his face.

Daniel simply shook his head and replied, “No thanks,” before he reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver mp3 player with black headphones.

Daniel began to listen to the mp3 player as Mr. Gein walked over to his little makeshift work bench with a slightly disappointed look on his face. Mr. Gein was a pretty normal looking guy. He was slightly overweight, but it wasn’t as noticeable due to his height, him being six foot nine and all. He had a short blonde crew cut with a few silvery gray hairs scattered throughout. He was wearing a long sleeve button down shirt, faded blue jeans and brown work boots. But his most distinguishing feature was his blue baseball cap with a large red B embroidered on the outside, the hat he was almost never seen without. Mr. Gein turned on his circular saw and began to cut another piece of artificial wood. He tossed the chunks he had cut off onto the pile to his right and set the board on the stack to his left, pausing only to watch the rays of sunlight glisten on the sweat of his young employee’s shoulders as he scratched the exposed scalp between his cornrows.

My bad, I forgot to mention that Daniel has cornrows. He’s had them for about three months now. And while we’re on the subject, Daniel’s brother Joshua has his hair braided the same way. You know how little kids are always trying to copy their older siblings. Daniel had the cute Hispanic girl from across the street braid his hair for him. He didn’t care all that much about having cornrows as much as he just wanted to spend a few hours sitting between her legs in her living room. Every so often she would stop braiding for a moment to grab the TV remote or her bottle of water or something and Daniel would look up at her breasts suspended a few inches above his head by nothing more than a few layers of cloth. Daniel didn’t know it, but she caught him sneaking peaks a few times but she thought it was cute and decided not to say anything. Although she might have done something about it had she only known how many times he had done it.

Daniel realized that his boss was looking at him again so he turned up the volume on his mp3 and went back to work. There was something about Mr. Gein staring at him that made Daniel feel the way you do when you see a cat walking around with a dead mouse locked in its jaws or when you listen to someone with long nails scraping a chalk board; the feeling that makes your spine quiver and your whole body feel cold despite the fact that it’s ninety eight degrees outside and the sun is bearing down on you. Daniel felt like jumping into the lake with the ducks or at least taking off his shirt, but he didn’t want to with Mr. Gein there. It is difficult to explain, Mr. Gein was not a mean boss in anyway. In fact, anyone who knew him would tell you that he was more than friendly. He was a close friend of Mrs. Buckingham, Daniel and Joshua’s current foster mother. He had apparently employed several of Mrs. Buck’s adopted children in the past. Even though Daniel still played football and basketball, Mrs. Buck thought a job to do after school and on the weekends would give Daniel some sense of independence. Which it did, he enjoyed having money in his pocket and being able to buy his brother candy or go to the mall with his friends. But there was something about Mr. Gein that just made him feel uneasy.

Like I said in the previous paragraph, Mr. Gein was not a mean boss. He was always joking around with his employees about this, that and the other. But Daniel felt like there was something “fake” about the way he talked to kids. There was a fakeness he noticed when he was talking to adults, but it was something much different. When Daniel first started working for Mr. Gein the previous winter, it was the same boring old grownup talk. “How’s school?” “Playing any sports?” stuff like that. But as the weeks went on it started to change a little bit.  “Got any girlfriends yet?” Mr. Gein would ask, “good lookin’ kid like you, must have all the girls chasin’ after ya’.” Those were the kinds of remarks that Daniel would just laugh at lightheartedly and then try to find an excuse to stop talking to him.  Then some time later there was the physical contact. You know, just the regular pat on the back or the occasional tussling of the hair which all kids secretly hate, but simply tolerate out of respect for adults. Daniel never liked being touched, unless of course it was by someone like the cute Hispanic girl across the street or the college aged chick at the gas station around the way who said he was cute that one time. Then it eventually grew more irritating but still tolerable, like the time Mr. Gein complemented Daniel on his muscles as he squeezed his arm, telling him he would have to beat the girls away with a stick. Then one day when they were retiling a swimming pool, Daniel finished prying up the last of the old tiles and asked if he could go get a drink of water. Mr. Gein asked Daniel if he had finished and Daniel said yes so Mr. Gein said “good job” and told him he could go, but as Daniel walked toward the truck where the cooler was located Mr. Gein gave him a very brief yet very noticeable pat on the butt. Daniel stopped and turned around, but Mr. Gein had already returned to measuring the tiles as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t like a pat on the butt was anything to make a big deal out of, it wasn’t. It happened all the time at football games when Daniel gained a lot of yardage on the field or scored a touchdown or something like that. It wasn’t something he ever thought about. It wasn’t even something he thought anyone should think about (if that makes any sense), except this time he wasn’t in uniform on the football field when it happened, Mr. Gein was not one of his teammates and all he had done was ask for a drink of water.

Daniel became wary of Mr. Gein. He noticed that his boss was less forthcoming with Daniel on the days he wore long sleeve shirts and jeans instead of shorts. It wasn’t a huge change, but there were a few less annoying conversations and considerably fewer ass slaps when Daniel wore his tall t-shirts and multiple pairs of ball shorts. Daniel made this his own dress code for work. He always made sure that the only exposed skin on his body was on his hands, his face and his neck. But today was different. It was unmercifully humid and the sun was beating down on him like the rubber hammer Mr. Gein’s used to beat misshapen joints into place. The only clean long sleeve shirt Daniel had at home was this thick cotton thermal which Daniel thought he would die in if he had to wear today. So Daniel came to work just the way he was and just as he suspected old Mr. Gein was as chummy as could be. Daniel tried his best to ignore him but perhaps Mr. Gein thought he was just playing “hard to get”. The thought made Daniel want to laugh out loud and hurl the frozen waffles he had for breakfast that morning all at the same time. He shrugged the thought away and continued his work. He pried up the last of the boards and slid one of the new ones into its proper place. He took the power drill and a screw from the plastic container and began to drive the screw into the deck.

Daniel was halfway finished putting the screw in the new board when Mr. Gein walked over to him and asked, “Hey Daniel why are you doin’ every other joice instead of just gettin’ them all in a straight line?”

To which Daniel responded, “Huh? … Oh, if I do it like this I don’t have to hold it with my foot every time. The other screws keep it in place.”

“Oh, good thinkin’.”

Daniel finished the right side and began to move to the left but when he tried to push the board into place with his foot, he had some difficulty. He kicked it and pushed back against the other board but it refused to fit like it was supposed to.

Mr. Gein asked “Havin’ some trouble?”

To which Daniel answered, “I can get.”

Daniel did not necessarily think this was true, but he wanted to avoid Mr. Gein’s help if it was at all possible. He kicked at the board again with as much strength as he could muster while sitting down, which wasn’t a whole lot if you’ve ever tried to do something like that, but it was no use.

Mr. Gein set down his circular saw and said, “Here, lemme give you a hand.”

Before Daniel could lie once more and say that he could do it himself, Mr. Gein had already sat down behind him and was pushing against his back, the added force securing the board in its proper place. That cat with a dead mouse feeling was back again. Daniel could feel Mr. Gein’s hands on his back and his breath on his neck, and for a second he could have sworn he felt Mr. Gein sniffing his hair.

Mr. Gein said, “you got it kiddo?”

Daniel wished he could tell his boss to get lost. He had a very sour frown on his face as he drilled the last screw into the joice.

After what should have been a short time later Daniel droned, “I’m done now.”

To which Mr. Gein replied, “Good job,” as he stood up he said, “I’m gonna’ go use the bathroom. The last board is already cut.”

Daniel glared at Mr. Gein as he walked away and pictured his head melting like the Nazis at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. He looked around the deck. They were almost done. Pretty soon Mr. Gein would drop him off at Mrs. Buck’s house and he would get to spend the rest of the afternoon with his friends playing Xbox and looking up dirty pictures on the internet. Daniel put the earphone back in its place and went to work on the last board.

They were finished with the deck in less than an hour. Mr. Gein hauled the old boards into the trailer of his truck while Daniel swept away the wood shavings. When he was finished sweeping, Daniel began to carry the equipment to the bed of Mr. Gein’s truck.

Daniel was putting away the last piece of equipment, the battery powered drill, when he heard Mr. Gein calling him from the front door of the house. Daniel sighed as he shut the truck door and walked up the sidewalk through the freshly cut grass to the front of the house. When Daniel stepped inside, he heard Mr. Gein calling him from the kitchen. As he stepped past the granite counter which separated the kitchen from the dining room, he saw Mr. Gein shut the refrigerator door as he held two brown bottles of beer.

Mr. Gein held up one of the bottles and asked, “want one?” laughing as he spoke.

Daniel looked like he was bored out of his mind when he said, “no thanks.”

“Aw come on. I was about your age when I had my first beer.”

Daniel shrugged as he folded his arms. He had already tasted beer and decided that he preferred the taste of paint thinner. He was even familiar with hard liquor. One Sunday, he went to a Catholic church with his best friend Joseph. The two of them snuck some whiskey inside with a bottle of coke and took turns drinking it and cracking jokes about the priest as they laughed their asses off in the back pew. Joseph ended up getting caught by his mother because he had a tendency to grow louder as his blood alcohol content rose, but Daniel simply became more and more laid back the more he drank and he even managed to keep himself from vomiting until he returned home that afternoon. Yes, he was no stranger to alcohol although the peculiarity of being offered a drink by a grownup did not escape him.

Mr. Gein carried both beer bottles with him as he walked into the living room.

As Daniel took a seat on the leather sofa he asked Mr. Gein, “are you supposed to have those?”

Mr. Gein sat down next to him and set the beers on the coffee table, “it’s okay. I know the guy who owns this house. He said it’s okay if I have a few.”

Daniel was about to tell Mr. Gein that he was referring to the fact that he was drinking right before he was supposed to drive Daniel home, but he decided not to say anything. It’s not like he hasn’t ridden in a car with someone while they were drinking before. Once when Daniel was eight, his dad picked him up from baseball practice.  Daniel noticed a red plastic cup filled with orange juice sitting in the cup holder. He asked his dad if he could have some only to be told that it wasn’t for little kids. When Daniel asked his father what it was, he told him to start naming tools. Daniel answered, “hammer…wrench…um pliers…” but as soon as he said the word “screwdriver” his father laughed and shouted “bingo!”

So Daniel decided that he wouldn’t mention anything about it. He picked up the remote and began to flip through some of the channels while pretending not to notice that Mr. Gein was moving closer to him on the sofa.

Mr. Gein guzzled his beer until there was less than half of if left in the bottle. As he sat the beer down on the coffee table he looked at Daniel who was by then leaning against the armrest as he flipped through the channels.

Mr. Gein said to Daniel, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you.”

Daniel continued surfing the channels as he replied, “bout what?”

“I know it must be hard for you, with all the stuff that’s been goin’ on lately.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. He could sense another wave of sympathy rolling along to batter his shores once more. He had heard this speech about a million times before from teachers, police officers, psychiatrists and whatnot. There was nothing like the phrase “I know it must be hard for you” to let you know that you were about to be hit in the head with the fakest speech you had ever heard in your life. Daniel tried to drown out Mr. Gein’s voice with his own thoughts as he pretended to be interested in what he had to say.

Mr. Gein continued, “I don’t think anybody should have to grow up without a father in their lives, ya’ know? Boys they…they need someone to look up to. Someone they can always count on to listen to them and all.”

Mr. Gein put his left arm around Daniel’s shoulder, causing the boy to change his face from a look of sheer boredom to sheer confusion. You know the look I’m talking about, the look that a person makes when they want to say, “what the fuck is going on!” without actually speaking because they know it will be too loud and possibly wake the neighbors. The cat with a dead mouse feeling returned once again and this time it was worse than it was outside at the deck. Daniel felt like he could jump out of his skin when he felt Mr. Gein’s sandpaper fingers scraping against his naked shoulder.

Mr. Gein said, “it’s important you know, for boys to have someone to talk to. I know you probably just think of me as your boss and all, but I want to be more than that. You know?”

“Not really.”

“What I mean is…I want to be that person you can talk to about anything and I mean anything. You’re at a time in your life when you’re starting to go through changes and noticing women and you’re not really sure what to do with your feelings and all.”

“What the hell’s he talking about?” wondered Daniel as Mr. Gein’s grip around his shoulder began to tighten.

Mr. Gein whispered as he began to push Daniel’s back against the armrest, “don’t think of me as your boss.”

“What are you doing?” Daniel tried to get up but Mr. Gein was holding him in place

“Think of me as your best friend.”

Daniel cried out “Lemme go!”as he tried to push Mr. Gein away.

Mr. Gein pinned Daniel’s arms to his sides as he whispered “Don’t be scared,” the sandpapery feeling of his right hand slowly moving from the boy’s knee to his thigh.

Daniel shouted, “get the fuck off me!” delivering a very decisive kick to his boss’ groin as he made the F sound in the word “fuck”.

Mr. Gein cried out as he inadvertently released Daniel from his grip. Daniel jumped up from the sofa and backed away as Mr. Gein fell down, holding himself where he had been kicked. Immediately after Daniel had freed himself he began to feel a bit of remorse. He had always thought it was somewhat of a “bitch move” to kick a guy in the balls. That was something that girls did when a guy was trying to rape them or something. But what other option did he have? Mr. Gein was a giant compared to Daniel and he had made it so that he could even use his arms.

Daniel did not realize that he was still backing away until he bumped into the end table next to the loveseat behind him, causing the ceramic lamp that was resting on it to fall to the floor. The sound of the shattering lamp snapped Daniel out of his temporary daze. He looked at Mr. Gein lying on the sofa with his face mashed up against the armrest where Daniel had just been sitting. You know that feeling you get when you wake up too late in the morning so you skip your shower and go straight to work and all day long you feel all grimy and kind of itchy even though you don’t really smell too bad because you put on some deodorant before you left? That’s how Daniel felt at that moment. He wasn’t sure why but all of a sudden he felt they way he did when he slept in his clothes at a friend’s house, only it was worse because he had already taken a shower that morning and even put on a clean pair of boxers. He wasn’t sure what Mr. Gein had done, or tried to do, but he knew that it made him feel all grimy just the same. Before Mr. Gein could call to him, Daniel opened the door and ran outside. He had the urge to run back to Mrs. Buck’s house and take a hot shower and when he was finished he would take about ten more before tossing his clothes into the fireplace.