The Boogie-Man and Daniel Blacke

The Boogie-Man And Daniel Blacke

Dedicated to the great Sir Elton John for helping me to find expression in the darkest moments of my life.

         It's Sunday morning.

         A little boy stands in front of a huge dam, the wind whipping his platinum blond hair. His face - nearly expressionless but with a hint of sadness in the slack of his cheeks and ever so slight furrow of his brow. His sky blue eyes - like puddles that lead to another dimension, unseen and unknown, but just beyond the edge of perception.

         The blowing wind tugs at his tattered clothes. His plaid pants, patched in places, hang off him obscuring his thin body. His dirty shirt and sweater vest worn nearly through from years of use beyond his age.

         His right arm hangs slack at his side. His other arm reaches to a small crack in the dam where his finger lightly touches the trickle of water that passes and flows down to a tiny creek that wanders away. Down it goes, through the sleepy town below where families slumber as the early morning sunlight peeks through and warms them in their bliss.

         High above him the shadow of the rim of the dam holds the boy out of the sun's warming rays. The wind-swept waves of the reservoir cast sprays of mist high enough to create tiny momentary rainbows and reveal that the spring thaw has melted the heavy snows of winter so quickly that the lake has risen well beyond what would be considered an acceptable level.

         The waters of the lake are alive with every foul and unclean beast to ever walk, swim or crawl the face of the earth. Hideous monstrosities, beyond the gates of even the most creative of human imaginations, lumber and glide in a cacophony of death and mutilation. They consume each other in their lust to sate their hunger and assert the dominance of their existence. Their greedy eyes peering over the dam and down to the town below dreaming, yearning, wishing for a time when the dam crashes down in a thunder of rushing water, concrete and steel. Sweeping them and the little boy below into the valley so they can devour its very happiness that they despise so intensely...

Genesis

         I was the third of four children. My older brother and sister were from my Mom's first marriage, me and my little sister her second. My father left when I was three. His own issues with heroin, drinking and generally being a miscreant were much more alluring than being a father and a husband. The years directly following his departure from my life were a hodge-podge of foster care, motel rooms, homeless shelters and short stays in houses and trailers leased from people who did not realize that my mom would never be able to pay the rent. Time and time again we were evicted from our home, often losing everything we had but the clothes on our backs.

         Add to this a steady stream of my mother's boyfriends, who ranged from the borderline-decent to the physically and/or sexually abusive. My Mom's own issues with sanity, drugs, gambling, abuse and her propensity to tell us constantly about how much better her life would be without us kids, how much she was giving up to keep us together, and her just dumping on us all the time about the bills and how broke we were, abject hunger of a nature most Americans cannot imagine. You can begin to get a feel for how quickly my brother, sisters and I grew up. We were exposed to situations and issues before starting kindergarten that most people never have to face until they are adults, if ever.

         In those days I clung tight to the only things that ever stayed constant... Going to my father's parent's house and my love of music. I had the ability to disappear into those soulfully sad hits of the 1970's. Smokey Robinson, Lionel Richie, The Jackson Five, Randy VanWarmer... I could go on and on. Topping the list was my absolute favorite: Elton John. And, in particular, his song "Daniel"   with its powerfully open imagery and incredible conveyance of sadness.

         In my young mind's eye, I was Daniel... flying off to "Spain", where-ever that is. Anywhere but where I was, dealing with that day's madness. It was like a 'special place' were I could be numb to whatever I needed to. At that time I imagined that the song was from my little sister whom I was almost always with and looked after. We were very close, then. The song somehow reinforced our bond in my mind, our love and need for each other. We had been together in a foster home in my very earliest memory and that was right around the release date of the song. I fancied myself "A Star" to her and that made me feel special and unique. I really needed that and, even only imagined, it made me feel better, somehow. As if someone would miss me if I were gone away.

Exodus

         One day when I was five years old my mom packs up my little sister and me and we board a bus with one suitcase of belongings. (My older brother and sister would stay with my Mom's twin sister until the end of the school year, then follow with their own bus trip.) Something like 12 or 13 hours and a bus change later we get off the bus in some small roadside town in the Catskills at the town bar. Its storeroom would be our home for the next couple months and its owner would be my Mom's latest flame. I was five and my little sister was four. My mom gave us both our first beers and first cigarettes that night, sitting at the empty bar of "Choo Choo Charlie's".

         This place had a small town feel that I don't think my Mom anticipated, or even thought about. She had long ago given up trying to make us look presentable and I really have to wonder if she gave a single thought to how things looked. She tended bar at Charlie's while we were there and found out quickly that she was the talk of the town.  We wound up staying in this small town for a little more than a year, albeit, we lived in three different apartments after the bar storeroom.

          Across the dirt parking lot from the bar was the house of this really fabulous family. The Ballard's were truly beautiful people. I slept there on several occasions and, aside from never really being able to be comfortable on a bed my whole life, it was always like being at my grandmothers: safe, secure and reassuringly calm.

         These people would have all manner of outdoor events in the huge yard of their beautiful log-cabin home and most of the town was invited, I think you had to get yourself un-invited to be excluded. Easter-egg hunts, pig roasts, Halloween parties... The works. They made that town a great place to live for everyone. There would be literally over a hundred of people in attendance.

         Well, as it turned out, their son fell head over heels in love with my mother. He was ten years younger and liked the idea of an instant family. He fought his own family tooth and nail for the independence and recognition of status as a full grown man. He had a point to prove to his father and I believe he truly loved my mother. He was cool, and over the months I grew to love him. At that point, he was the only acceptable father figure that I recall from childhood.

Leviticus

         My brother had some friends over and they were in the barn behind the apartment house we lived in. He produced some white tip matches, the kind you can strike on any rough surface, from behind a loose board in the barn wall. He proceeded to make a very small fire on the floor with some straw, feeding it just enough to keep it burning. It snapped and popped, danced and whirled like some elemental pet, doing tricks at my brother's command. I stared in fascination. I was captivated by it and by his control of it. His friends were amazed, as well. He put it out and returned the matches behind the loose board with a smile of satisfaction on his face. As he and his friends left, he warned me not to touch his matches.

         But he had so many... I only needed one. I lit it and then carefully fed it from a small pile of straw that I had gathered. I was elated with the feeling of power that it gave me, the sense of control and the beauty of the flickering flame. But, with everybody not gathered around it, the wind pushed my little fire right into my straw pile. Before I knew what happened it was climbing up the wooden wall and fast turning the barn into an inferno. I got scared and ran to my room. My mom came frantically asking if I lit the fire. I was scared. I said, "no". She believed me.

          Well, the fire turned out to be "The Event" of the town for the last hundred years or so, and nearly the entire town gathered to watch the fire department put it out.. As the investigation got under way, it didn't take long before someone accused my brother of being the "Fire Bug". Mom was embarrassed in front of them all. She had worked hard to overcome the gossip and negative impression of how we had arrived there and tried to become an accepted member of the community. She verbally hounded my brother who just vehemently denied it. My brother had a certain amount of respect given to him because he had taken care of the rest of us kids so often Mom treated him much like an adult. But, Mom wouldn't let up on him. Her face was turning red and her eyes were bulging out of her damned head and I just couldn't let my brother take it for something I had done. I cried and shouted that I had lit the fire! She turned in shock and stared at me, and, then....

         Mom snapped.

         She grabbed the belt, folded in half end-to-end in her hand, and just started swinging wild. I ran for my room. I knew running was a dangerous thing to do and likely to make her even angrier, but that belt stung and she wasn't exactly aiming for my ass. In my room, I lay on my belly in my bed. She whipped me until her arm hurt too much to continue, left me and closed the door. Then she screamed at me every once in a while through the door to stop crying. Eventually I stifled it when she threatened to come in and "make me stop". About an hour later, I took one of those quivering breaths that you take after a deep, deep cry... She screamed, "I'll give you something to cry about!" kicked the door open like a psychopath with her eyes wide in pure rage. She ran across the room for momentum and hit me with the belt again. She hit me until she could no more. She left, bawling and complaining to me about how I made her hurt her arm.

         Later, she returned, calm and apparently realizing that she had gone too far. She tried to tell me that she had not beat me "like that" because I had lit the fire, she beat me "like that" because I had lied to her. I doubt at that moment that she realized the extent of how far, too far, she had actually gone. The whole damned town heard it or heard of it. A crowd was still lingering outside because of the fire. The apartments were cheap with thin walls and floors. Half the town heard that first beating, and many were still there or were in earshot of the second. The welts had had time to swell from the first beating, I screamed bloody murder for the second.

Numbers

         There was no way my mother could continue to live in this small town after that. Everyone who lived there knew that she was "Cuckoo for CoCoPuffs" and most who were not outcasts themselves kept their distance from her afterward. Even my very best friends wouldn't talk to me once I was finally allowed out of the my room. They all just looked at me with glum eyes, then tried to avoid me. I remember a kid trying to tease me and call me "Fire Bug". His mother spun him to face her, scolded him in a hushed tone, then marched him away by an up stretched arm. It was decided that we must now leave all these people and all these ties that everyone had and plans and school and literally everything that didn't fit in the car they bought to drive back home to Jersey.

         And, it was all my fault... to everyone who mattered.

         My brother and sisters were furious at me. My mom seemed to feel bad for me in small moments when we were alone, which was rare. I think that had more to do with her guilt than any recognition of the position the situation put me in. But the worst... the worst was my mom's boyfriend. He had to leave this dreamy little town where he grew up, the son of the town's most beloved citizens and everybody knew and loved him. To go live with my mom's twin sister who rented a bi-level with her husband, three sons, my grandfather, another cousin and a family friend. In we moved, all six of us, and no body was happy about it.

         And it was all my fault... to everyone!

         The time that followed was dark and miserable, for me especially. Everyone: the adults; my brother and sisters; my cousins; even my grandfather, seemed to be upset with me for being the executor of this cramped and overcrowded fate. Everyone was tense and short with each other. Even the other kids from the neighborhood where my aunt lived seemed to be in on making life difficult. They were mean and made fun of us for being poor and living like we did.

         My mom's boy friend sank deep into despair as he searched for a job. Back at home, in New York, he had no trouble finding work. He knew everyone in town and many people in the county. His family was so well known and loved that much of life came easily to him. He had never known an existence anything like what we were all used to. He tried to be as fair as he could but his anger at me was always evident. He tended to snap or yell at me whenever he addressed me.

         I spent much of that summer alone. I would go in the woods and seek a small clearing, then lay there in the weeds staring up at the sky imagining I could see happy things in the shapes of the clouds as they drifted past. Bored and lonely, I would day-dream of being "Daniel" off in "Spain". I would cry to myself about my poor little sisters sadness at missing me so much. In reality, this was the end of the close bond of our early childhood. She was angry with me, too, for making her leave her life and friends in that small New York town. Things would never be the way they had been between her and I ever again.

Deuteronomy

         One day, I was feeling particularly down. My seventh birthday was approaching and no one had even mentioned it. It seemed it would come and go without any notice being taken whatsoever. So, I set out in search of my older sister and one of my cousins who had disappeared into the woods earlier that morning. I looked in all the usual places, eventually finding them in the barren frame of a makeshift fort that was in the woods. I could hear them singing some strange song as I approached.

         There, in the pit inside the frame of the fort, they had a small fire burning. Not far away they had a pile of styro-foam blocks they had found and gathered together to watch them melt and burn in the fire. They marched mechanically back and forth from the pile to the fire heaping the styro- foam onto the flames as huge plumes of black smoke billowed up into the clear summer sky. All the while they sang this insane song:

"Feed, feed, feed the fire"
"Feed, feed, feed the fire"

         I stood there, mouth agape. In my fear for them I shouted at them, "Stop! Stop doing that! You're going to get in trouble!"

         My sister turned from her circular path, her blue eye's round, eye brows crooked in anger yelling,"Shut up! We know what we're doing." With that she put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me down hard on the ground. She turned on her heel and rejoined my cousin in marching and singing their song. I ran away as fast as I could in terrified for them. I headed for home to get my older brother to try to convince them to stop and put the fire out.

         As I ran from the trail in the woods that lead to the fort I could see the rest of my house mates standing in front of the house, looking in the direction of where I had come from. I turned to see what they were looking at and over the tree line arose a steady pillar of black smoke. Looking back toward them I could see that they had now turn their attention on me. I could see the anger contorting every one of their faces. Some had their hands on their hips in judgment... My mother was pointing at the ground in front of her which I knew to mean: Front and Center. I tried to explain as I got close to them. I could tell they didn't believe me.

         I'm not exactly sure what happened in the next few moments. I remember flying straight up into the air and landing really hard on the ground. My mom pounced on me, closed fists punching me and beating me. I think others may have been kicking me there, as well. At one point, my mom backed up off me enough that I could see the face of her twin sister over her shoulder. She was staring at my mom in fright, with her hand drawn up to her mouth. My mom had come unhinged and was just mindlessly smashing me with every ounce of her being. My aunt came close and grabbed my mom by the shoulders, forced her to stand up, then led her away talking softly in her ear.

         My aunt's husband, realizing that other neighbors were watching, started saying that this cannot go on out in front of the house. I was dragged across the lawn, up the front stairs and into the house by a foot. Inside the front door I was hoisted up and carried to a bedroom and literally thrown on a bed like a piece of dirty laundry. My mother's boyfriend slammed the door. He beat me with his belt, unfolded, buckle end to me.... It was one of those large ornate kind that gleamed with a chrome like shine. He was in his early twenties, in great physical condition, and he was taking out his anger and frustration, at what had happened now and back in New York, on me with every single swing. He went on and on, until his chest was heaving and he was sweating like a pig. I buried my head in the pillows on the bed because every time he would hit me I would let out these loud pealing screams and he would scream back at me to, "Shut Up!", sometimes actually drooling as he spat the words at me.

         Eventually, he began to tire and the swings came slower and slower. There was a bang on the door. Someone was yelling, "That's enough!" It was the family friend who was staying with my aunt. He could not stand by and listen to this for even one more minute. My mother's boyfriend yelled back at him and a fist-fight ensued between them in the hall in front of the room I was in. Someone slammed the door closed, and there I lay, I don't know for how long. Hours? Days?

         I lay there sobbing, trying desperately to be quiet so as not to invoke a second round of beating. My back was on fire from my neck to my ankles. My chest hurt, my arms, my legs, even my head was sore. It had been banged on the ground after I was thrown in the air and while my mom was beating me in the front yard and while I was being dragged in the house. I think the belt buckle once hit me there, too, during one of my mom's boyfriends wild swings with the belt.

         And there it happened... My mind swirling in darkness and despair at the injustice that I had just endured for a crime that I didn't even commit. That I, in fact, tried to stop... In my unfathomable confusion and lack of understanding at the events which just unfolded... In the utter blackness of physical, emotional and psychological pain... My hand balled up in a fist and rammed beneath my crotch in the only path to self comfort that I could find...

I kissed the chalky lip-less face of death, herself.
I embraced her fleshless body.
I found refuge in the black folds of her cowl.
And, that sweet little "Daniel"   finally did take his flight to "Spain".
He left me there, alone and empty and forever missing him.
And, an alien darkness filled the void where my soul had been.
And, forevermore I would equate myself with that thing just beyond
the edge of the perceptible darkness that every child and inner-child fears...
Forevermore I would equate who and what I am with
The Boogie-Man.