The Screaming Pole - Chapter 1

The Screaming Pole

a novel by Jeff Minton

Chapter 1:



         Leah heard voices over a microphone.  She heard laughter and silence and murmuring.  The late spring heat hung in the air.  Her blue polyester robe clung to her skin. The tassels of her cap brushed at her cheek.

         An invisible presence pulled at her from the chair to her right, where an oafish kid named Stuart Sutherland was giving off a smell like old socks and continually sniffling.  It was her brother’s chair, which the school should’ve left empty, maybe with a name tag or a plaque with the words:

Lenny Sumner

Honorary Graduate

2010 Senior Class

Distinguished Thespian

Funniest guy you’d ever meet

We save this seat for you, Sir

         That night Leah spent just like any other night: sitting at the corner desk in her bedroom with her laptop in her face, the darkness of the room swallowing the faint light of the screen, the only sound the steady hum of its fan.

Leah had been staring at her inbox forever with her lids halfway open and her cheek slowly sliding down her knuckles, clicking refresh . . . refresh . . . refresh.

She jerked and stretched her eyes then refreshed the page again, exhaling yawningly, her fingertips tapping at the plastic corner of the computer.  She opened another of the ten minimized windows, read a post from her cousin, Livvy, about how much crap it was that she had to leave her dorm for the summer, then returned to her mail and checked again.

         Three messages: mail-order pharmaceuticals, something about maintaining a lifelong erection, and email from a guy named jesusiskingandyouarenot about how god is the head of men and men are the head of women.

Leah clicked the reply button and typed, “And the head of God is a horse’s ass.” Then she erased what she had written, thought, and wrote, “And the Virgin Mary was the God of head.”  She erased it.  She deleted the email without replying, and she sat and stared and drifted.

         Her instant messenger chimed.

                   Brianthepoeteer:           What's up in Leelahland?

To Brian, Leah was Leelah, a sporty playwright in her first year of college. 

littleolme:          Hey, sweety.  I’m up late writing writing writing.  You?

Brianthepoeteer:          I’m here wishing I was there.

littleolme:          You wouldn’t want to see me now.

Brianthepoeteer:          I would kill to see you now.

littleolme:          I’m just bumming around in my PJ’s all scruffylike.

Brianthepoeteer:          What kind of PJ’s?

littleolme:          Why do you want to know?

Brianthepoeteer:          If I can’t see you in person I want to see you in my head.

littleolme:          Imagine Pippi Longstocking in flannel shorts and a oversized t-shirt.

Brianthepoeteer:          Ooh. Pippi's kinda hot.  I'd do her.

littleolme:          lol, she's like ten or something you perve.

Brianthepoeteer:          If your outer beauty is at all comparable to that which you possess inside, you leave men breathless in your wake.  I imagine you as a flower unculled, too perfect to uproot.

         Leah typed a few words, then deleted them and waited instead.

Brianthepoeteer:          I wrote you a poem.

littleolme:                    Pray tell.

Brianthepoeteer:          Here I sit in English class,

Watching as the hours pass.

I think of all there is to say,

To capture what I feel this day.  But words don't come,

Instead there's you,          

A foggy hopeful silhouette,

Of a love both blind and true.

                   Brianthepoeteer:          You still there?

littleolme:          Yeah.

Brianthepoeteer:          What do you think?

littleolme:          I like it.

Brianthepoeteer:          Really?

littleolme:          Really.

Brianthepoeteer:          So, seriously, are you ever going to send me a picture?

Brianthepoeteer:          Not that it matters what you look like.  I just want to see you.

littleolme:          I told you I can’t.  I promised my parents.

Brianthepoeteer:          You know what I think . . .

Brianthepoeteer:          I think that’s bullshit.  I think you are afraid I won’t like what I see, and that I’m petty enough to stop liking you.  I want you to listen to me.  Listen. To. Me.  Okay?  I don't care about any of that.  I already love you without a face. 

littleolme:          Maybe someday.  Not now.  I gotta go.  I'll be on tomorrow.

         Talk later.

         Thanks for the poem.           

         xoxo, night.

Brianthepoeteer:          Sleep dwell upon thine eyes,

Peace in thy breast!

Would I were sleep and peace,

So sweet to rest! 

My Juliet!

         She closed the window feeling like an ass.  The time in the lower corner of the screen read 3:00 AM.  She’d had enough, and thought she better try to get to sleep before the rest of the world woke up.

At five, every morning but Sunday, a battalion of sputtering trucks with bright lights passed by on their way to the quarry down the road.  The noise lasted at least an hour, and it usually meant she’d be up for the day since her father always started waking her up for school at six-fifteen--but tomorrow was Saturday, and school was done, and she didn’t have anything to do.  That wasn’t right.  She had to think past a wall in her brain to acknowledge it.  Tomorrow was that one god-awful day of the year she avoided thinking about until it was there.  Which is not yet, she reminded herself.

         Rowdygirl911 closed her pages and checked her email one more time.  Amid five spams was a message from [e-mail]--she didn't even know how he had that name given that Gmail required at least six characters.  She paused, her hands going cold, hovering over the keyboard.  She flagged the message and left it unread.

         Her legs tingled with numbness as she stood up and stretched her back.  She closed the laptop and hobbled across her bedroom to the attached bathroom.

         Her father insisted on 100-watt bulbs.  He said they kept you alert.  There were four of them above her sink.  She squinted in preparation and flipped the bastards on.

         This was the fifth day of her period and she was sick of it.  She was sick of everything.  She changed her pad, brushed her teeth, and caught her own eyes in the mirror.

She still wore her graduation gown, her skin washed-out under the intense lights.  She examined the curves of her face, the permanent crumbs that trailed from the sides of her nose across her sharp cheek bones, her lips that were perhaps too thin and often chapped if she did not tend to them, her tiny nose and pointy chin.  She watched her mouth start to droop into a frown then hid it with her hand and looked away.

         She turned and left her image trapped inside the bathroom mirror.  She took off her gown, threw it in the corner, and changed into a pair of flannel pajama shorts and a long cotton shirt--thinking perhaps of Leelah the playwrite.  She turned and fell backward onto the pink and white checkered bed with enough force to creak the hardwood floor beneath its four chiseled legs.  She lay atop the covers for a long time trying to muster up the strength to slip between the sheets. 

Her hand stumbled through the nightstand drawer for her composition pad.  She pulled the chain on the bedside lamp, unclipped a fountain pen from the cover, rubbed the blur from her eyes, and wrote:

May 25th, 2010

So I wound up going today.  I don’t know how I thought I could get out of it.  Dad actually threatened to kick me out of the house if I didn’t go.  I don’t think he was lying.

Grandpa was there.  He gave me six packs of big red and a hundred bucks.  Grandpa rocks. 

Dad was just quiet the whole time.  He didn’t even complain about Grandpa coming.  I thought he’d be maybe more excited about it or something.  As big a deal as he made of it, you know?  He hardly said a word.  Didn’t look at me.  Didn’t smile.  Just kept staring at the podium all motionless and stoic-like.  I figure he’s probably planning out my summer.  I’m sure I’ll need to get a job and lay out some new goals for him to bitch at me about.  Maybe he will kick me out.  I might like that, actually.

I missed you today.

         It took her a minute to slog through the last movements and find the correct order of blanket and body, then she shut off the lamp and wriggled into a position that would suit her for however many hours her father would let her sleep.

         No breeze blew through the cracked window.  The darkness grew thicker and began to weigh on her eyes.  One leg kicked free of the blanket.  Humid air settled around her.  Silence sucked at her ears.

         She tried not to think about dreaming.  If she did, her body wouldn’t let her sleep.  She knew this well.  The trick was to think of something absurd and whimsical, but lately she lacked the imagination, so she just tried to think of nothing. Lightless and soundless.  As soon as her body succumbed to exhaustion, the dreams would come anyway, and that was fine so long as she could just sleep a little.

The dreams usually made no sense, and that uncertainty was the real scary part.  They were fast moving images, lucid and evasive.  Sometimes nothing.  Darkness and sadness without boundary.  Sometimes like she was waiting for a voice to call out to her, like she could almost hear it just beneath the layer of nothingness.

         But it was no fear of dreams or an unsettled mind that kept her up this night.  Tonight was something different.  The wall in her head was breaking open.  The sun would soon rise and bring upon her May 26th.