Eldon and the Bully

A Story from The Little Gray Town

by Cole Hornaday

In Kerala, a statue of the goddess Durga sheds droplets of honey.

In Portland, Oregon, a plaster statue of the Blessed Virgin weeps tears of blood.

Outside the Sit-n-Spin Laundromat just off Main Street of the little gray town, the Laundry Pervert dials up the focus on his field glasses as two women stuff their damp underthings into a front loader. He slumps behind the steering wheel of his brown Cadillac El Dorado and loosens the drawstring of his sweatpants.

Hurtling himself through the waitress’ pick-up window and onto the bar and grill’s kitchen countertop called for greater momentum than he had anticipated. “I’m getting old,” Agent E told himself seconds before he started his dead run for the window. He felt his calf muscle pull as he leapt, planted his dry palms against the dull metal surface and hoisted his bulk over the breach. Sweeping his leg over the dull metal frame, Agent E returned the gift of flight to three fried chicken baskets and sent four pairs of salt and pepper shakers into the molten depths of the deep fat fryer.

Landing in a crouch on the countertop, he heard his knees pop like snap peas.

The bully turned slowly, the yellow hue of his eyes matching the grease stains spattered over his apron. Cracked lips parted over teeth etched with the scrimshaw of forty-five years of black coffee and chewing tobacco. The ten-inch butcher knife held in his fist was fang-sharp but gave off no gleam.

In a mental flickering, Agent E ticked through options; leaping from this crouched position guaranteed a high probability of his being instantly impaled, and dropping to one hand to kick the blade out of the other’s was risky at this distance. He could launch himself into the rectangular rack of overhead fluorescents and then swing up and over his target, but there was that hot and smoking grill on the other side…

Not one of these moves would find its mark, because this high-concept fight scene in the kitchen of the Kickin’ It Sports Bar and Grill would never take place. No, this was reality -- dull, colorless, dry-mouthed and itchy-eyed reality.

Eldon took the off-ramp from Highway 22 onto the old 99 Interstate. The cloverleaf brought his little two-door Mazda down and around in a short loop, placing him on a beeline for the little gray town. Times were a-changing here-a-bouts and his former hometown was fast becoming a "commuter city." Locals now happily drove forty or fifty minutes to their workplaces in the Portland suburbs. This new cloverleaf was proof of a world of progress in store for the little gray town.

Lipstick on a pig, he thought.

When he enrolled in college nearly thirty years ago, Eldon planned to leave the little gray town and never look back. History is full of those foolish enough to look back; they turn to salt or their lovers vanish into echoes. Eldon simply wanted to avoid taking stock of the knives in his back.

But return he did; to work in the summer, live rent-free with his parents and be with his friends, until time moved everyone away.

And it was good.

Chapter closed.

Until his peers, cohorts and friends decided moving back to the little gray town was a pretty good idea. They had all been to college, lived the wild life, done beer bongs and backpacked through Europe. Now was the time to return to their roots…

…To be near family…

…To get real jobs…

…To live where things were predictable and safe…

…To grow their kids up…

…To live without fear…

…but especially to grow their kids up.

Heading south on the single-lane highway, Eldon saw little change save the older barns kneeled closer to the earth and the waving acres of hay had been replaced by scads of hybrid tree farms -- identical cottonwoods planted in dense, geometric rows, destined for pulp mills and future textbook leaves or tabloids or porno.

Eldon swore he’d never return to the little gray town were it not for Christmas. All the cows come home at Christmas, and for the past sixteen years the lot had met up on the day set aside by Brits and Canadians as Boxing Day. For the cohorts, it was just a day to say “hello” and do a little catching-up, a little bragging, maybe compare a few notes on what it meant to be the country’s dominant generation. Beer was drunk, cigarettes smoked, cheeseburgers consumed -- then. Now, not so much beer, and the nicotine monkey was unilaterally kicked… but fatty foods were always on the menu.

Then came the addition of babies. Lots of babies. Everyone save Eldon and Daniel (Eldon’s only gay cohort, and a respectfully mum proponent for Zero Population Growth, thank you very much) were entrenched in the laborious process of procreating.

It didn’t bother Eldon initially. In fact, it was amusing for a while, watching them all set aside their passions and juggle their principles for mortgages, carports, riding lawnmowers and satellite TV. Eventually Eldon’s bemusement turned to dismay as his cohorts, with very matter-of-fact nonchalance, willingly plugged in that formula of perpetuation written into their genetic code.

A strand of proteins Eldon was clearly born without.

For a long time the holiday meet-ups were held at a pub in the nearby city -- the state capitol to be precise, where one could purchase liquor. The little gray town had been a dry one for nearly a century, but all that had changed of late.

In the township’s early days, an ultra-fundamental church first staked their claim upon the land with the intent of building a community and a Christian college. When the school fell on hard times, the church allocated several hundred acres for the institution under the stipulation no alcohol would be sold within the city limits. The town agreed and stayed dry as a bone (alcoholically speaking) for almost a hundred years. The little gray town became a mini-Mecca for the righteous and the abstinent. A large Mormon community bloomed, and what was once a Christian college became a college of education complete with working police academy.

On any given evening you could find more tyro police officers prowling the little gray town’s night streets than stray cats, and woe-betide a teen caught out after the 11:00pm curfew or an out-of-towner inching the gas pedal a mile over the posted speed limit.

Ultimately economics called for a change in city policy. The little gray town needed more cash, and vice sells. “So let them drink booze,” the city council said, and the measure passed 53% to 47%.

Let there be booze -- and there was! His cohorts were ecstatic as this shift in little gray town policy made the holiday gathering venue so much more convenient. No more driving those fifteen miles from home. Now we can get that all done right here.

For a decade or more Eldon had kept the little gray town in the deep background. But now he was back, as was the taste of stale copper in his mouth and the sensation of butterflies dying in his guts.

And as fate would have it, the first person to open a bar on the little gray town’s Main Street was the bully.

In this life the bullied have three options: Fight, flight or succumb.

As a teen, Eldon quietly steered away from the works of John Hughes and similar filmmakers, those who believed that in this essentially gentle veil the noble voice of the downtrodden would be heard, and that the righteous would triumph not through fists but by wit. Eldon knew from experience in the dull light of reality the geeks, nerds, chubbies and freaks never have the last say. There is no rising up with fist raised high, blocking out the sun to fall like God’s Own Hammer upon the head of the tormentor. Best to endure the Full Nelson hold and grit your teeth under repeated impact of forehead on tarmac and wait for it all to be over.

He didn’t fight back, ever.

But there were times when karma did a payback.

Walking home from school, casually pedaling his bike in order to keep pace with a handful of schoolmates walking on the footpath beside him, he heard a familiar cry from behind, “Hey, faggot!”

Eldon had a choice: He could pedal away as fast as he could and avoid the bully, or he could stay and attempt to ignore him, save what little face he had. He opted for the latter and the bully commenced kicking the knobby back tire of his Huffy motocross bike. With each impact of the bully’s toe upon his back tire, his bicycle did a little hop forward.

“C’mon, knock it off,” Eldon murmured.

“Get off the bike and make me, faggot,” crowed the bully.

His friends looked away and hustled off down the path as Eldon tried to hold onto a pinch of dignity and remain upright.

Suddenly Eldon felt the entire bicycle jerk from beneath him, his pubic bone slamming into the head tube just below the handlebars.

“Goddammit!” Eldon screamed.

“Goddammit!” echoed the bully. But the bully’s tone was not mocking and his inflection resonated genuine irritation.

Looking back Eldon half expected to see the bully gripping the bike’s rear crossbeam. Instead, his eyes dropped to the toe of the bully’s shoe hooked into the spokes of the bike’s rear wheel. Half a laugh hit the back of his teeth before he could subdue it. The bully swore again and twisted his foot back and forth until it came free.

The bully looked up with hooded eyes and his face froze for a second. He stepped up onto the walking path and quickly trotted away. Facing front once more Eldon heard the pop of gravel under Firestone radials as the police cruiser pulled across the fog-line and blocked his path. The hatchet-faced Chief of Police rolled down his window and barked, “Mister, if I see you playing in traffic again it’ll be a call to your parents and one spendy citation.” Before Eldon could speak in his defense, the headman of the little gray town’s finest rolled up his window and pulled away.

The bully, now yards away, never looked back. Eldon's classmates were long gone. His face was hot and his eyes were a scorching red.

Eldon pulled around the corner from the Kickin’ It Sports Bar and Grill and parked his car along the weed-encrusted curb. The winter sky was the color of slate and for the thousandth time he noted not a single building along the little gray town’s main street stood taller than two stories. Eldon took a hitched breath and pushed into the bar. The charmless interior was warm; muted TV sets tuned to ESPN hung from metal pipes mounted to the ceiling, and slick posters of famous athletes crowded the cedar-paneled walls. His eyes took a moment to adjust as he scanned the room. His friends crouched on barstools around an elevated table at the room’s center. It was the day after Christmas and the place was almost empty. One arm shot up to greet him with a finger-twinkle wave. It was Daniel.

Eldon pulled up a stool, sat down and with typical reptile-brain impulse blurted out: “Guys, did we really have to meet here?”

At the other end of the table, Glen -- the cohorts' team leader and self-appointed wrangler -- rolled his eyes.

In Kerala, crowds numbering in the thousands gather about the honey-oozing statue of Durga. A woman squeezes her way through the icon’s adjunct guardians and wriggles close enough to swipe her hand along the statue’s base. With half a droplet of honey collected on the pad of her index finger, she is hurled back by the agitated crowd. Curling her finger into a loose fist, she drapes her hand with her headscarf and runs for home.

The bridge of the Opus Dei prelate’s nose is slick with sweat and his glasses refuse to stay in place. The night before, an overzealous attendant cranked the thermostat to “high” in anticipation of the official’s arrival, and now the side room off the little Portland, Oregon chapel is sweltering. Pushing his glasses back into place, the prelate notes how the viscous red liquid collecting in the plaster folds of the Blessed Virgin Mary has refused to evaporate. He touches a single droplet with a sterile cotton swab and slides it into the glass vial.

Inside the Sit-n-Spin Laundromat, the women’s underthings, warm and well-fluffed, tumble from the dryer into the empty basket. Near the front window, one woman clears a space on the blue Formica counter while the other lifts the basket and gives it a good shake in an effort to cool down the delicates. Parked just off Main Street of the little gray town, the Laundry Pervert, now on the cusp of ecstasy, drops his field glasses onto the brown Cadillac El Dorado’s passenger seat with a bounce. Pursing his lips and eyelids in tandem, he holds tight to the final image of the woman dumping her fresh, hot clothing onto the flat, cold countertop.

Under the hard fluorescent lights, the bully’s eyes were polished points of black obsidian. Slashing out with the butcher knife, his blade bit a shallow graze across Agent E’s bicep. The pain was instantaneous but when E’s foot connected to the bully’s ragged teeth, the relief was better than morphine. The bully wheeled backwards, the knife spinning from his grip. The bully quickly righted himself and spat out a plume of blood and broken teeth.

“You should have listened when they told you to drink your milk,” said Agent E, landing on the tile floor.

Eldon couldn’t tell you when the bullying began, maybe sometime in the summer of ’78. He seemed to recall it had something to do with the bully’s younger sister. He and the sister were sixth-grade classmates, the bully two years ahead. The little sister was tall and bulky but aggressive in her pursuit of Eldon’s affections. She’d show up at the door in a flower-print dress, tugging the hem down lengthening knees or call at dinnertime just to say “hi.”

What little interest Eldon may have had in the sister trickled away thanks to her socially awkward nature, and when her growth spurt increased near the autumn months, putting her a full two heads above Eldon, it evaporated altogether.

But the bully persisted. Eldon’s summer vacations, spent bent over in the heat and filth, plucking through row after row of strawberries to earn money for school clothes, were made all the more miserable when he heard the thunder of heavy footfalls on the copper-colored earth. Then the womp! sound as a handful of strawberries furry with rot was first slapped against his crown and then ground into his scalp.

Looking away from his friend’s eye-rolling dismissal, Eldon glanced at the laminated bar menu. Perhaps that was the tragic irony of all those years of torment -- the bully thought to defend his sister's honor, and Eldon had never wished to test it.

Daniel leaned over the table and they grasped hands, exchanged a pleasantry or two. “You don’t like this place?” he asked.

“I’d rather not patronize it if I can help it. The owner used to kick my ass on a regular basis when I was a kid.”

Eldon glanced up and, to his surprise, saw the bully through the server pick-up window. It was the first time he had seen this man for nearly thirty years and he looked so… normal. Though there was a shallow hunch to the man’s shoulders and his hair was nearly gone, it was still most definitely he.

Daniel turned and gave the bully a half-glance over his shoulder and turned back. “Yeah. I had my share of assholes, too.”

“Kind of hard to believe after all this time I still empower the guy by dwelling on it,” Eldon mumbled into his empty glass.

“Yeah, but the most infuriating thing is that he probably has no recollection of who you were and what he did to you,” said Daniel. “He could pass you on the street without a clue. Trust me, I recall a few assholes I’d love to invite to share quality time with me, a length of metal pipe and a very dark alley.”

Daniel lived with his boyfriend in Canada. He and Eldon corresponded over the Internet from time to time. He missed Daniel. At that moment he was reminded just how much.

“How long did he terrorize you?” asked Daniel.

“Nearly all the way through junior high,” said Eldon.

“You ever find out why he chose you?”

Eldon’s response came from somewhere dark and shielded with lead. “Does a bully ever really need an excuse?”

“True. Funny how we try to apply logic to stuff like that, and car crashes, and cancer,” Daniel smirked.

“I think it may have started with his sister. She had a crush on me. I avoided her like the plague before he even started in on me.”

“Maybe she told him a different story,” said Daniel.

“Possibly.” Eldon said, though he didn’t think so.

The waitress came around and Eldon ordered two pitchers of beer for the cohorts. He half expected to look up and see the little sister taking his order, scribbling away at her pad, not recognizing him at all.

In Kerala the desperate mother slams the door of her ramshackle home shut behind her. Approaching her son as he sits at the table, eyes unfocused and distant, she delicately unwraps her hand and touches the smudge of translucent amber to the space between his vacant, milk-colored eyes.

In Portland, Oregon, the church’s chief of forensics withdraws his face from the microscope eyepiece. His lips are pursed, his expression a bewildered cloud. He looks back at the Opus Dei prelate at his elbow and pauses. The two have worked together for decades, sharing nonverbal shorthand more commonly known to married couples. The scientist gives a single steady nod to the other and the message is clear: “This may be it.”

The Laundry Pervert returns his $300 pair of Sharper Image field glasses to their patent leather case. Pulling his sweatpants back over his hips, he reties the drawstring about his rounded middle. Popping open the El Dorado’s glove box, he removes a worn container of handy wipes. Reaching under his seat, he twists the release knob and rolls the seat back, giving himself room to swab down the recently anointed steering wheel and dashboard.

Once the bully was off balance, kicking him to the floor was an afterthought. Applying the ball of his right foot to the bully’s throat, Agent E paused before applying the fullness of his weight to the other’s trachea.

The bully’s face split into a bloody, jagged grin. “Happy now?” he said, his voice like a hasp on raw bone. Before E could respond, the bully began to shudder and choke…

Eldon downed his second pint and watched the top of the bully’s head as he worked over the hot grill, his head bobbing in and out of the pickup window frame.

Eldon and his father didn’t really talk, not like adults, until after Eldon had left home. As an administrator of the little gray town’s only junior high school, his father kept more than attendance records; he kept his share of secrets. In his capacity, he was often privy to the darkest things people will do. In the shallow Petrie dish of a rural community, germs of rumor can become a pandemic in hours. Eldon's father, well-educated and worldly, buried them all -- ensuring careers, saving reputations and shoring the ramparts of more than a few families.

Now retired and having moved far, far away from the little gray town, Eldon’s father spent his days organizing charity golf tournaments, musing over a life spent in the service of others and spilling the occasional bean.

“Their family used to foster a lot of kids. Because they were doing it under the umbrella of the Mormon Church, getting the kids into the system wasn’t too much of a pain. It was just coping with them once they got there,” his father had once said over his second glass of Riesling.

It was a chilly November afternoon when Eldon and his dad decided to look into pricing new radials for Eldon’s ramshackle Mazda. How he and his father had gotten onto the subject of the bully’s family life, Eldon didn’t recall. “I don’t know how long the mother had been abusing this one kid,” his father said. “He was about fifteen. I don’t know how many other foster boys she’d gone after. It scares the crap out of me to think about it. But the vice principal and I thought it best to get on the horn to the church bishop, see if we couldn’t get the elders to intervene. We figured if we could keep it within the church it would keep all hell from breaking loose.”

“What kind of abuse are we talking about?” Eldon asked. He saw the bully, his bully, all of twelve years old, looking up from within the shadow of a stout, red-haired woman with eyes like polished points of black obsidian and a face of granite.

“Sexual,” said his father.

Eldon swallowed and the world went from a black-and-white frieze to a watercolor wash of grays.

“Did she abuse her own kids?” Eldon said.

“Yeah, I don’t know. It was sexual in nature. The church dealt with it. I had to admire them for that,” said his father.

Eldon downed his third pint and got up from his seat. He fixed his eyes on the server window and the bobbing, balding head beyond.

Daniel’s eyes did a little bulge. “Where you going?”

“To pee,” said Eldon.

There was a little edge to Daniel’s voice: “You’re not going to get in his face, are you?”

“No,” said Eldon. “I’d have to take him by surprise, and that would mean hoisting my fat ass through that server window…”

Daniel looked back at the bully. “You’d need a running start for sure.”

“I’d be winded before I hit my mark.”

“Go pee,” said Daniel.

Agent E felt the delicate bones in the bully’s neck snap and watched as the other man’s eyes rolled back in his head. Cocking his head to the side, he looked down into the bloody mess of the bully’s face. “Shouldn’t you disappear in a flash of ash and flame?” he asked the corpse.

In Kerala, the milky haze that has clouded the little boy’s brown eyes since birth instantly clears. He stands and walks directly to the glassless window of the one-room hovel. A breeze picks up on the humid wind and he blinks. A black sparrow arcs overhead, and he tracks it until it flies over the next hill of the shantytown. At his back, his mother bites into her headscarf, and tears soak the vibrant red cloth. “Are those clouds?” the little boy asks.

In Portland, Oregon, a host of black sedans pull up before the little Catholic church and a squad of men in dark suits and glasses take up a formation along the sidewalk. Dressed in starched white robes, a church officiate exits the center-most sedan. Surrounded by the pack of darks suits, he is hustled into the muggy room behind the sanctuary.

Off to the side sits an empty wheelchair. A woman kneels, her arms outstretched, tears sliding down her face as her eight-year-old daughter takes the first steps of her life. The Opus Dei prelate looks to the officiate and nods, his lips parting into his first genuine smile in decades.

In the little gray town, the Laundry Pervert secures his seatbelt, puts his car in gear and drives the three blocks north to the town hall. Parking in his reserved spot, he isn’t surprised to see the lot is all but empty. It is Sunday, after all. He has a handful of land use proposals to review by Monday, and he did promise the town's constituents that, if elected mayor, he would work tirelessly in their best interests, Sundays included if need be.

On his way back from the men’s room, Eldon paused after rounding the corner past the kitchen. He could hear the sound of a metal spatula scraping charbroiled crud from the grill. Eldon watched the bully’s back as he worked. The bully turned. Their eyes met. The bully paused.

“Hey…”

“Hey,” Eldon said.

“You can place your order at the bar,” said the bully.

“Yeah, I know. It’s just…” his words dried up and blew away. “It’s just kind of weird, standing here, you know. This used to the old Black’s Department Store. In fact, I think right here was where they hung all the men’s Levis.”

“You’ve got a pretty good memory,” the bully said without humor and returned to his grill.

“Yeah, better than most. I think it gets in my way sometimes.” Eldon walked back to the table and his cohorts, pausing long enough to give Daniel’s right shoulder a firm squeeze.

Love and thanks to Kendra, HB, K., and R'Chaard