Killing the Cross Read online

  Killing the Cross

  A novella

  by

  K. Martin Gardner

  Copyright 2012

  Volume One of Series

  The Adventures of Foley McMann

  Penny Per Page Publishing

  Dear Dad,

  I finally decided to go see a shrink like you said. I know you didn’t mean it like it sounded, and I didn’t really have the money to go see a shrink because I didn’t have health insurance and all, but I thought that I would give it a try owing to the fact that you say it all the time now when we try to talk about anything. Talking to you has been so hard lately. I don’t know why, but it makes it even harder when I think about how cool you used to be when we could talk about anything. Ever since you got saved, though, things have been different. But that doesn’t stop me from remembering the way things used to be, even though every time I try to bring something up that happened the way I remember it, you get really upset and say I need to see a shrink.

  Love,

  Foley

  Dear Dad,

  Well, I’ve been seeing my shrink for a while, and she is really nice, actually. She asked me why I came, and I told her I really didn’t know. She told me it had to be something bothering me, or a forty-year-old man would not just wake up one day and decide to go see a ‘therapist,’ as she says it is properly called. I told her ‘man’ is not how I feel talking to you lately, and she said she wanted me to tell her a little bit more about my relationship with you. I said “what relationship?” And that is how it all began.

  I told her that I felt strange lately: That all this anger kept coming up inside me every time I think about you and I don’t know why. We always got along great, except for a couple of times, but now it feels like we are not friends anymore like you always said you would try to be with me, and not like other kids’ parents who drank martinis and drove station wagons with wood sides and lived in those houses like the TV shows. You always said we were cooler than them, and I believed you because you always let me smoke some pot with you and mom before I had to go to bed.

  Boy, my psychiatrist got really interested when I mentioned that, and she asked me how young I was when I remember the first time you gave me any. I told her that I was about four, and you put it into brownies and everything was totally blurry laying in the back of the that Volkswagen van (the newer orange one, not the older red one, but the newer orange one was older I guess because we had it first), and mom was totally acting worried and nervous and whining at you, and you just kept laughing and saying it was all right. I remember it ruined the taste of brownies and I thought deep down that adults must be stupid to ruin the taste of chocolate brownies.

  My therapist says I might have “arrested development,” because of my feelings about you and my life. She says that I am very angry and don’t know it. She says that I am lucky because she is actually doing a study on men like me for a paper she is writing. She asked me if I would be willing to sign up for the study, and also try some drug that her company is testing. She said that my therapy would be free as long as I did what she told me. I said yes. The drug is called “Fenestreban.”

  She’s got nice tits, and she smells good. She is young, too. I bet she used to get drunk and do cocaine with her asshole frat boyfriend in college, just like me. She’s one of those chick psych majors I could never imagine giving a shit about anyone with problems, especially someone like me, now you got me going to one of them. I hope you are happy.

  Love,

  Foley

  Dear Dad,

  You really are a fucking cocksucker. At least that’s what my therapist says, or at least she says you should be comfortable with me saying that after all I have told her about what you did. She says that I have been holding my anger in all my life, and now it is looking for a way out. She says mine is really bad and I am lucky that I came to her in time, or I might get really violent. I had to tell her that is why I am divorced anyway, and why I have to take my kid on weekends at six o’clock on Friday night, and then have him ready for his mother to pick up at six o’clock Monday morning with hardly any time for a nap or watching football and drinking beer by myself. Because I hit my wife, did you know that, Dad? My therapist says I should tell you everything, even if I don’t think you want to hear it. You are a motherfucker. How about that? Boy, that Fenestraban is something else. It really gets the old mind going. If I didn’t have to work to pay all that child support and take care of the kid on weekends, I might just sit around and think about everything for a while or write a novel or something. Maybe that would get some of these crazy thoughts out of my head. My therapist says that I am not crazy, that I am a genius. I told you she is nice. She is telling me that I may be able to take some time off work since the study about me taking the drug is going so well. I will let you know. Are you reading these letters? I hope so, but if you’re not, I am going to tell you everything anyways. Talk to you later.

  Love,

  Foley

  Dear Dad,

  I had a little time between milkings, so I thought I would write you real quick and update you. I know it’s been a while, so let me see what has happened over the last six months. I told myself that I was through with you and was never going talk to you again, but somehow my feelings have changed: I am not as angry at you anymore. I think it is the Fennies. You know, the Fenestreban. You’d be amazed. The first thing that this stuff does is make you feel better about yourself. The second thing it does is cut out all thoughts about drugs and alcohol. I mean all thoughts, not cravings. You don’t even think about that stuff, let alone want any of it. Ingrid, remember my therapist, says stuff about serotonin release and reuptake inhibitors and all that stuff, but all I know is one a day and I feel great.

  Oh yeah, Ingrid is here too. She came with me to New Zealand. She’s still asleep now, like she always is after the morning milking. It’s a long story, but we are a sharemilking couple now. This is the easiest job for backpackers to get in New Zealand, next to apple picking. You can do both, because the seasons are different. We just got off the plane and got a room at a hostel out in the country and got a prepaid cell phone and started calling want ads. We both always wanted to work on a farm. Ingrid actually grew up on a farm in Holland. She is Dutch, so she says that all the cows in New Zealand come from the Netherlands. The Dutch are very meticulous and actually still track all of the bloodlines and success of all the cows that go all around the world. They make the most milk. Ingrid is still keeping track of how I am doing with the Fenestraban too.

  Oh yeah, if you haven’t figured out already, we fell in love and moved out of the country, the United States I mean. All of that talk about Y2K and the stock market bubble, and all of Clinton’s bulllshit was really getting me down, so we decided to move. After we first hooked up, I started telling her that the Fennies were giving me the clearest thoughts about how boring and fucked up my life had become, what with still being at the beck and call of my ex-wife and having to watch the kid in my spare time and not being able to date and all. My ex got married in a quickie ceremony without telling me, and that really pissed me off, so Ingrid said that we should just take the next step in the treatment anyway and that the company would pay for it. I told her that I hadn’t traveled much except in the navy, but Australia was first on my list. She said let’s make it New Zealand first, so here we are. You would be proud, Dad, just one backpack of clothes and stuff and we were on the plane, just like when we moved from California to North Carolina. Remember that? When I was eight and I was just learning to skateboard and surf, with all of my best friends ever, and mom was so happy living in the sunshine and one day you just came home and smoked a joint and said pack your shit in one box, we are driving to North Caro
lina. This was actually a little easier. I was ready for the change this time. Ingrid is up and has to take a blood sample now, and then it’s back to my herd. It sure is quiet here on a Sunday morning. No hammers banging, and saws running, and your running around yelling at everyone to “get up and do something so we can finally finish this damn house we are living in!”

  Later.

  Foley

  Dear Dad,

  I just heard about Columbine, so I thought I would write you. They have a saying here, “only in America.” It bothered me at first, but now it seems to be true. The rest of the world as I can tell, and especially New Zealand, is a very peaceful place. It has really helped with my anger. Ingrid says that I am really making progress. She says that my anger toward you is really a symptom of something else. Not that I don’t have a right to be angry at you, she says, but just that the anger is tied to something deeper. Now this is all her theory, and it goes along with the Fennies, so please bear with me: I am “a typical middle-aged American male who has been disenfranchised from my primal cultural roots by a modern dysfunctional society.” How do you like them apples? She is a fucking genius. I felt ten times better just hearing the words come out of those pretty little lips of hers. Finally, a woman who understands me! I know what you would say, that I am just looking for something or someone to blame my problems on, but it is true.

  Ingrid says that it used to be customary, and it still is in most civilized European countries, for the young men to travel when they reach a certain age. In fact, it is mandatory in many countries like Germany. Out the door they go at seventeen not to return for at least two years, until they have gained their manhood. She says that stupid Americans go straight from high school to university to some other academic prison until they are thirty and then feel like something is missing. Like they never did something they were supposed to, that is, If they make it that far without killing themselves or someone else. I know what you used to say about me even going on Spring Break with my college buddies. Those spoiled little rich pricks, right Dad? Just come home and do the dishes and watch the Saturday night fights and smoke pot with you and mom on the couch until you go back to school, right Dad?

  Well, anyway, New Zealand has been a real experience and has made me feel like a real man. Getting up before dawn and rounding up five hundred cows on a motorbike on cold, wet, grassy hills is a real hoot. That’s what New Zealand is: Cold, wet, green hills for as far as you can see. Our cabin is out in the middle of the farm, about a mile from the owner’s house, and the farm is out in the wop wops, what we call the boondocks. Town is just a few stores and a couple of backpacker hostels.

  So let’s review: You are a cocksucker. New Zealand is great. America is an overpopulated suck hole where pissed off kids are out of touch with reality and have easy access to guns. I feel like a real man now, and Ingrid gets restless when the cattle rustle and scrape against the walls outside our bedroom in the middle of the night. Something about the snorting and the chewing and the house vibrating causes her hand to clench mine. The thought of there being more cows and sheep in this nation than there are people makes me shake. Did I mention I’m writing a novel?

  Love,

  Foley

  Dear Dad,

  We are getting away from the cows for a while. The season is over, and besides, I was getting sick and tired of their blank stares. The cows, I mean, just look right through you, kind of like you and your new wife do when I visit and you are just waiting to see if there is something smart that you can add to what I am saying when I am done talking. Or like the blank stares that I have always gotten when I walk into a room and try to speak to a group of people whom I may or may not know. Always the same blank stare, and then the heads turning away all at once, followed by the talking amongst themselves. You say I am paranoid, but I know what I know. The cows are the same way. They can be persuaded to go in a certain direction, or even scared into running, but they never really seem to appreciate what I am saying. Not like Ingrid does.

  I don’t know if this is due to life on the farm, or the Fenestreban, but my face has grown and become more manly. Not like a little boy’s anymore. A late-life growth spurt? How can that be? Do you know what it was like to be thirty-five years old and still have the face of a little boy? Besides the fact that no one listens to you or takes you seriously, people call you names. They called me monkey boy and two-head on the submarine, as opposed to a four-head owing to the fact that my face was so small. But now, either from sunshine or fresh air, my face has filled out to that of a man. Finally, at age forty! So you can maybe forgive yourself a little for feeding me pot as a child and stunting my growth. Don’t get ahead of yourself, there is still the matter of the narrow palate and the small mouth and the missing teeth and the ones that the orthodontist had to pull out just to keep me from looking like a total freak. Don’t forget your little hippy health plan and how pot was good for everyone, especially growing and developing four-year olds. Thanks Dad. We are wandering around New Zealand looking for something. I will let you know when we find it. Besides, I want to have time just to write my novel. I don’t know what it is going to be about, but I know what I want it to be for. That is, I don’t want people who pick it up and start to read it to have to think about anything, I just want them to realize things as they are reading it. Like the book is helping them figure out things about themselves that they thought were so bizarre that they could never tell anyone else, or that they could never have them in common with someone else, especially a character in a novel.

  Like, “The Catcher in the Rye” for example. Salinger was such a fucking genius. IS, I mean. I read some book that says he is still alive somewhere. But THERE’S a guy who wrote a book about some misfit, probably like himself, and everybody thought it was so dirty because he briefly mentioned prostitutes and used words like “throw” to describe the sex act. What I think is hilarious is his joke on everybody: “Throw.” “Catcher.” “Catcher in the Rye.” “Catch her in the eye.” Get it?

  Love,

  Foley

  Dear Dad,

  We are having a blast touring New Zealand. I always wanted to do all of the extreme things like bungee jumping and jet boating. You can even swim with the dolphins, and bow-legged women like you always said. Did you know that there are no snakes here? I mean, nowhere in this country can you find a snake. Well, maybe if you go to church, you might be able to find some of those Christians that hiss at you after they tell you about eternal happiness and dunk you in the water. I know, you say that I am paranoid. I swear that has got to be the most overused word in the English language.

  But as for the Christians, I am talking about those new ones that get together and sing and smile and read out of the newfangled translation of the bible and call their churches nice vanilla names like the bible church or the house of worship or anything that says nothing about the long, bloody history of Christianity, and then when you try to talk to them after you are saved according to them, they hiss at you. Not real noticeable or obvious or anything, but real slow and low like a tire sneaking flat. It’s just something they do, like they are telling you they think you are the serpent in the Garden of Eden or something. Like all that smiling and singing and praying doesn’t make a lick of difference: They think they know what is in your heart. Just another no-good evil bastard to hiss at. So, that’s me.

  But honestly, I feel like Ingrid and me are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is so nice here. We actually met some of those European fellas who are traveling around as part of their rite of passage. German, I think they are, all dressed in black like the Amish back home. Believe me, they are not slow-witted. They already figured out that I am American, and boy do they have some choice words for me. They told me if I want to get around easier, that I should tell people that I am Canadian. Whatever, they can kiss my ass if you want my honest opinion. Ingrid is just happy that I have got my manhood. I didn’t have to get up and say, “Today I am a man” like a little Jew boy,
or walk across the Sahara, or cut myself in some private place, but by God, I got my manhood now and I didn’t need some goddam clinical psychologist to show me in some book as to how to go about getting it. I just took it, what I deserved being alive and being male on this planet. Drives Ingrid wild. She sucks and fucks like a little banshee. I just act like I am something special, and no one messes with me. Not like when I was ten and just started feeling good about myself, and you yelled at me, “Stop strutting around like a little Hitler!” I heard that father bears will castrate their male cubs with their teeth just to eliminate the competition. I think that is what you tried to do to me. So FUCK you.

  By the way, we tried this thing today called a Zorb. It’s a big rubber ball you get in and roll down a hill. I gotta go, I’m real busy.

  Love,

  Foley

  Dear Dad,

  The Zorb is something else. Like a big-ass pool ball. Remember when we used to play pool with Grampa and you two would teach me about hitting the ball right and with English and how to hit it down the rail and stuff? I remember that one tricky move you showed me one time and said never to show no one, it was a family secret. I remember the cross where you can make the ball go one direction and then end up going another just by hitting it with two kinds of English off the rail. Drives the Kiwis nutters as they say. And then we three would have the best time ever all day long, until it was my time to take a shower at night before bed, and I would come out and both of you would be scowling at me for being in too long and using up too much hot water and running up the electric bill, even though I swear I turned off the water while I was soaping up and I was real proud too because I let the shampoo sting my eyes and then I rinsed off all at once. That didn’t matter to you though, I just went to bed in trouble called a liar with a burning lump in my throat.