It must be a couple days later. His eyes are flashing white and black in his sleep and he can hear violence in his room. His dad is there carrying out the tv, ripping down posters, smashing the video game system into the wall. ET’s heart sank. His dad was his hero when he was little. Like having Tarzan or the Incredible Hulk as a father. A big guy who could easily bench press 450 with no spotter and only slows down from a torn shoulder joint and bad back. His dad looked like a caveman, intense eyes but since his mother left the sly whit and joker personality was gone, now all he got was the sullen and vacant cop who came home to drink in the dark and occasionally yell about chores.
He couldn’t respond to accusations and a long winded rant about “stealing graffiti pens, breaking into buildings and smelling like weed.” ET just played dead while his father bagged up his clothes, crumpled up his best art and smashed his priceless collection of one of a kind DOS games and secret bootleg Japanese arcade ROMs he kept in glass boxes. He could hear the tell tales sound of his large comic collection being thrown out the window into the back yard burn pile. He catches a glimpse of his terrarium full of lizard bones showering down on him as it was thrown against the wall.
After some silence and sounds of his fathers Police Bronco roaring to life and peeling out on the gravel driveway… ET opens his eyes and sees light traveling across the roof of his bedroom. Sitting up slowly and painfully he sees his little sister standing there. “What the fuck… happened… to you?” She is careful to pronounce every syllable distinctly since cussing is not something he gets to do often. ET tries to speak but stops when a horrible pain in his eardrum stops him. Callisto says, “Dad says you are moving out and to be gone by the time his shift is over.” Then she skips off to play with dolls in the adjacent seasonal creek that has jumped the banks into their yard.
ET feels that coldness in his soul again, like rejection, depression and exile all in one. He imagines thats the feeling a framed man feels on the way to the electric chair. Unfairly nailed to a cross. Feeling the insults and threats from former friends. Watching sneers and polite old ladies snarling curses while the warden reads the death warrant. He imagines what the electric chair feels like, probably similar to false accusations when they make your sinuses hurt, your brain feels like it rolled down a hill in a motorcycle accident, breaking every bone in your body in a tumbling rag doll motion. Once he got offered a full ride scholarship to art school in the big city by a substitute teacher who had connections to Marvel comics and left to start a small imprint. His dad didn’t feel like taking him to the comic convention for the meeting. Now he doesn’t even like monster magazines or superheroes, if he does art its in aerosol so his parents get a bill. Two hour ferry ride on the weekend wasn’t worth securing his future in his dream job.
Thats grief. The world always cheers the death of an innocent man if the news tells them to. His room is trashed. Every thing he loves lies in ruins and at that moment to vows to never return here again. He looks at his art work wet and stomped on, his music thrown against the wall until the floor was covered with a carpet of pieces of broken cassettes and splintered vinyl. All his graffiti magazines and books personally mailed to him by taggers from all over the world. Issues of Graffiti TV on vhs, Can Control, Urban Autograff from Scandinavia lay shredded across the floor. His original Euro Star Wars magazines, rarer than the normal sized Marvel comic. His foreign Motorista Fantasma, Ghost Rider comics from Chile. His prized Vampirella comics from Spain. He got the first 15 issues out of a pawn shop that was going out of business for 50 cents each. He didn’t eat the school lunch for a month to save up for that. An entire run of Heavy Metal comics from 1977-now. Given to him by Max and Enrique. His dad left them in buckets outside, ruined in a 7 day rainstorm while he was away with his mothers side in Ketchikan. He doesn’t even know why.
He has a familiar hate for his father brewing for years, every time he could have taken his side he betrayed him. Attacking the things he holds dear, his artwork, his prized possessions. Things that can’t be replaced. Symbolic things that can never be reconciled. Maybe his parents taught him emotional terrorism and toxic stress as a parenting tactic. ET is sure his dad has long term PTSD from his own parents. Maybe they all do. Growing up around a dopers and bullies who have no hobbies besides domestic violence and drinking. Two settings, neglect or rage. Micromanagement of imagined infractions or abject disinterest in achivements.
There is something almost comforting in being reminded of someones true colors. That narcissistic whim they will take every thing you love and put it out on the street. When confronted with proof of your innocence, not even a apology. So many times he got blamed. Once the family car got stolen and his dad canceled his summer totem carving internship with elders from all over the coast. Humiliating him as the local car thief to the elder Chief who died before the next season. It wasn’t even true, the neighbor borrowed the car because he kept a key when he sold it to them. His dad was too proud to be wrong so he invented some BS about grades after cancelling MTV and sending him to live in the tool shed up the mountain like a refugee.
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ET remembers all the times his dad really went out of his way to ruin the only things that gave him any joy. Chases off his best friend because he wasn’t part of the tribes Eastern Orthodox church, his dad doesn’t like Catholics and told the kid so to his face. When ET wrote his own code for a dungeon crawler his dad poured a beer in the circuit board which he claimed was an accident. He wonders if its even his real dad? His mother was so interesting and full of life. ET imagines she had an affair with someone cooler, a radio DJ or a gallery painter, a savage Native warrior who was shot down by corrupt police. ET hates cops, their whole job is to fuck things up for people with no other way to express them selves than smoking weed in the park past curfew or no where else to go when its raining. Busting the homeless for breaking and entering because they were freezing to death in the elements and found an abandoned building to sleep in.
More and more he imagines plunging the edge of a sharp shovel into his fathers face while sleeping, breaking every bone in his body. Cutting through bone and cartilage with rusty steal. Throwing a heavy cement roofing tile on his fathers head while on the bench press. Carving his head like a pumpkin, putting a syringe of boiling sewage in his eyes, pouring draino into his nose while asleep, attaching jumper cables to his broken jaw. Just the thought of kicking his dads teeth out while incapacitated makes him feel warm. Rage is the best drug, but like any heavy opioid it kills the user before the dealer. ET vows when he is full grown he will teach his father every thing he knows about violence.
Lunging into the hall way he tries to take big steps since walking is traumatic. Getting into the bathroom, he can’t stand to piss so he falls onto the toilet and missed. Landing on his broken eye socket next to the toilet, beside a foul plunger, a smashed wine glass, helmets of action figures, mold and balls of hair lie in pools of yellow. Trying to get back up he gets some help from Callisto who appeared like an angel to help him onto the toilet and giggles as she slowly closes the door with gleeful eyes disappearing as the latch clicks.
He thinks to him self if he should commit suicide and burn the house down but he doesn’t want to hurt his baby sister. Maybe when she is away on the weekend. That would teach his father for blaming him for his own beating. He felt persecuted, like a witch hunt. Like he was always suspect no 1 when any thing serious went wrong. Trying to get dressed was hard. Putting on jeans and shoes with his injuries took 30 minutes of howling and working up the courage to put pressure on his feet.
Lifting his shirt and checking his wounds in the mirror. ET sees how badly he body is carved up. He isn’t quite disfigured but he looks like he lost a war. Getting a garbage bag of his stuff he sees a nasty note his dad left he blows his nose on it with out reading it, leaving a shocking amount of blood on it like a scarlet beating heart had come running out his nose.
As he gets down the drive way he thinks of all the things he should look for and try to save but walking away is too hard and walking back impossible. Its a beautiful day, big gusts of wind make the redwoods, conifers and evergreens sway. Golden light, milky blue skies and fat puffy clouds greet him as he gets on the main road. The wind at his back feels like it is with him in solidarity, urging him on to find his way in the world.
Still a black cloud looms on his thoughts. How powerless and betrayed he feels. Like he is always playing the fool, the whipping boy, the scape goat. Even in pain and emotional sorrow its hard to stay in a black mood when every corner of his place has majestic views of endless inlets, mountains, creeks, woodlands and blazing sun rays reflecting off gently breaking waves. The air is sweet with pine tree sap, crisp cold sprites of rain and warm glowing sun.
Coming to the tribal headquarters, an old Indian trading post and gas station turned into an artist swap meet. It was built at a crossroads outside of town near where the other major highway to the mainland was wiped out by a severe storm. Unpredictable geological activity was rampant here, fault lines, rockslides and high waves shut it down. A disused and forgotten link to elsewhere. The hills and coastline around here were dotted by abandoned tunnels and cement bridges falling apart like ruins from a nuclear war.
The trading post was guarded by dozens of ancient large totem poles, looming nearly 100 feet and grey from age and the elements. Huge leaning carvings of grizzlies, wolves, whales and great thunderbirds greet him. The Chief sits there with an amused smile, his bear cowl sitting on his lap as he scrubs the glass eyes with spit. The Chief is a large man like Arnold Swartzeneggar in his hey day. Dwarfs ET’s father and any one else. Sitting there on a tree stump beside the road, taking a break from chainsaw art and listening to the wind chimes.
His voice is deep and fearsome like a great forrest spirit of the earth bellowing from a cave. He was always extra warm and cool with ET, giving him this involved Vietnam era soul brother secret handshake with convoluted backhand slaps and snaps. Scrubbing his hair, curling into a boxers stance, play fighting with him as a greeting. “Hey Astroman! Want to tell me what happened?” The Chief says while opening a ginger ale with a pocket knife and handing it over. ET wants to say something but points to his jaw and can’t even muster a mumble.
The Chief says “Thats alright, I heard all about it. Sounds like you are staying with me until you can go back to school. We can go hunting and fishing and maybe we can make an example out of some bad people.” ET feels tears in his eyes and the Chiefs big hands twist a dowl into a carved raven head totem and he says “You will be alright…” ET gives in to tears, Chief pretends not to notice and finds a cool radio station with a new band called Nirvana.