This story’s about shaky hands, not dead mice. I don’t really care for this title but what do I know, I’m just a narrator. I wanted to call it “On Shaky Hands: Methods for Treatment”, you know kinda like Archimedes “On the Measurement of a Circle”. It would’ve been awesome because then I could throw in a clever Archimedes joke, maybe have one of the characters say “Do not disturb my shaky hands” or something like that. But it’s his story, not mine so here it goes. The hero of this story, as you’ve probably already guessed, has shaky hands. Well actually it’s just his right hand that shakes, but you get the idea. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal if he happened to be about ninety-seven years old or, but he’s not, he’s only eleven. Imagine an eleven year old boy on his knees, alone in an alley way. He’s clutching his right hand with his left, staring at it, tears streaming down his face, while he’s cries, no wait, while he laughs. Yeah, that works. He’s on his knees, staring into his right hand, tears on his face and laughing like a super villain in one of his favorite cartoon shows, the one with the guy in the metal mask who talks like a snob. Super villains hate shaky hands, you know.
Our hero’s name is Daniel Gideon and aside from his trembling hand, he’s a pretty normal kid. Well there’s also his ethnicity. His dad’s Black, his mom’s half Japanese and half German or Dutch or something. I don’t know, whatever country her dad comes from it’s mostly White people who live there. So other than those two things he’s pretty average. He enjoys doing the things all normal half-Black half White/Japanese boys like to do. He plays running-back for his football team, he likes to play basketball and soccer and baseball. Well, not so much baseball, but he does enjoy playing hockey and what have you. Now as your narrator I feel it’s my responsibility to make sure you don’t get the idea that all Daniel ever does is play sports. He doesn’t, he also likes to draw and he’s not terrible at it either.
Like this one time when Daniel was eight. It was the night after his mom passed away. Daniel locked himself in his bedroom with his sketchpad determined to draw a perfect picture of his mother, which he did by the way. I don’t think I can do the drawing justice. It was like a black and white photograph of her, the way Daniel used different shades of pencil to show the lightness of her skin, the careful use of white space to show the light reflecting off her silky black hair, the tiny wrinkles in the corners of her mouth which showed up every time she flashed that smile of hers. It’s no wonder Daniel’s dad snatched her up as quick as he could before his friends got a good look at her. All of his fellow marines were head over heels for the future Mrs. Gideon. Damn, that was cliché wasn’t it? Head over heels? Sorry about that. But anyway, the drawing turned out pretty good. The only mistakes were these two little blotches near the center that you might see on a pencil drawing if someone happened to be crying over it. But it’s probably just water that Daniel spilled on the page. That’s what he tells people, it’s just water.
As you can imagine, for someone who loves to draw as much as Daniel it really sucks to have a right hand that doesn’t know how to control itself. It was about a week after his mom’s death that Daniel first noticed his problem. He thought to himself, maybe I’ve got the same thing Mom had. He thought about telling his Dad, but he wasn’t really all there, if you know what I mean. Mr. Gideon would spend more time at work or at the bar than he did at home. So Daniel had to just “suck it up” as he’d say and focus on making dinner for himself and his little brother; Joshua in case you were wondering what is name was. So for the next three years Daniel tried his best to ignore his spasms, which worked out pretty well. His hand didn’t shake all the time, just every couple of hours or so. And when it did, he’d just shove his hands in his pockets so people wouldn’t see them and think he was some kinda spaz or something. Because of this Daniel made sure that all of his clothes had pockets. Like the shorts he’s wearing right now, for example.
Picture Daniel right now, wearing a pair of black basketball shorts with red stripes that go up to the pockets. Only one of the black earphones to the mp3 player in his left pocket is actually in his ear, the other is dangling to the side. Daniel’s hair is braided into cornbraids, or is it cornrows, whatever those people call them. The braids are courtesy of this cute Latina looking girl who lives across the street from his foster home. Daniel didn’t really care about getting braids as much he did about spending a few hours sitting on the floor between that girl’s legs, her breasts just inches above his head separated by nothing more than a few layers of cotton fabric. Moving right along, Daniel’s got on a black undershirt and a pair of black and red Jordans basketball shoes that his Dad bought for him. The shoes were a little too big for Daniel when he first got them but now his toes are practically curling over themselves inside. But Daniel won’t let anyone buy him a new pair of shoes; they’re sorta the last thing his dad ever bought him before he got sent away to Hutchins State correctional. Sorry, did I mention that the kid’s dad was in prison, cuz its kinda important? I’ll get this narration thing down eventually, I swear.
While we’re on the subject, this story is taking place in a town called Oak Cliff Texas, a suburb of Dallas. It’s a real place too; I didn’t make it up like some narrators would. You can look it up if you’re near your computer right now. Daniel’s in a little gated community in North Oak Cliff where the houses are all really big, but not too big so it doesn’t seem like the people who live in them are flaunting their wealth or anything like that. Daniel’s in the back yard of one of the houses sitting on the half ruined deck that overlooks the little manmade lake around which several of the other big-but-not-too-big houses encompass. This house in particular is really nice. It’s a two-story colonial style brick house, the kind with those green shutters around the windows that don’t actually close but they’re just sorta bolted in place because they look nice from the outside. There’s a nice little flower bed in the front yard that follows the cement walkway to the front door. Next to the door is one of those little lawn jockey things, its black face grinning, forever holding up a little rusty metal ring. What they hell are the rings on those things for anyway? There’s a two door garage with an extra extension on the driveway where a trailer with a decent sized boat is sitting underneath its protective tarp, waiting to be taken out to the lake once again.
Daniel doesn’t live here. The owners are gone for the day, taking their kids to Hurricane Harbor, that’s the biggest water park in the Metroplex in case you’re wondering. And no, Daniel’s not trespassing or anything like that. It’s his job to tear up the old deck in the backyard, the one right behind the swimming pool and in front of the hot tub. You see Daniel’s current foster mom, Mrs. Buckingham or “Miss Buck” as her kids call her, thought that it would be good for Daniel to get a job during the summer in order to help build independence and self reliance and all of that other hypothetical stuff. And what eleven year old wouldn’t wanna spend his summer vacation working on rich people’s patios in ninety degree heat? I’m just kidding, it’s actually ninety-eight degrees.
So Daniel’s out there now, prying the rusty nails outta the old deck so he can remove the old rotten boards and replace them with these new composite water resistant things that his boss is currently resizing. Oh, I should probably tell you about Daniel’s boss too cuz he’s also a pretty important character. Daniel’s boss’ name is Thomas Gein. He’s also one of those average people I’ve been telling you about. Despite the long hours he spends in the sun his skin always seems to have a sorta pale translucence to it kinda like a, oh what’s a good metaphor to use? A napkin with grease on it or something? Well you get the idea. He’s slightly overweight but it’s barely noticeable because of how tall he is. He’s got a blond crew-cut with a few silvery hairs near the edges. There’s even more gray hair on the top of his head but you wouldn’t be able to tell because he always wears his blue baseball cap with a big red B embroidered on the front. He’s never seen without his “lucky cap” as well as his blue jeans, brown work boots and one of the dozens of plaid long-sleeve button up shirts in his closet. Daniel thinks it’s amazing how someone can wear a long sleeve shirt like in this heat without having a heat stroke. He can barely look at his boss without breaking out in a sweat.
Tom can barely look at his young employee without coming dangerously close to messing up the composite boards with his circular saw. He’s already caught himself three times this very afternoon slicing oblong grooves into the composite board while his eyes were busy tracing the outline of Daniel’s figure, watching the sun reflect on his skin. Tom was trying to decide which color best described the boy’s skin. Was it bronze? Or perhaps copper? Tom watches Daniel set down his crowbar and stare into the palm of his right hand. Tom can’t see it from there, but Daniel’s hand is trembling again. Daniel begins to scratch his scalp between his braids which is still kinda tender from being braided for the first time. When Daniel looks over his shoulder he sees that Tom is watching him again so he picks up his crowbar and continues working. Tom turns off the circular saw and walks over to the edge of the patio where Daniel is seated with his right leg dangling in the gap of the deck and the other sitting on top of the old board. Daniel notices that it seems to be getting dark all of a sudden so he looks up to see his boss hovering over him, blocking the sunlight. Daniel’s hand stops shaking
“Hot today.” Tom looks out to the manmade lake where the ducks are busy flapping about in the water. Daniel mumbles something too low for Tom to hear and then goes back to prying out the rusty nails. Tom says to Daniel, “I’m gonna go grab a coke out the cooler, you want one?”
Daniel just mumbles, no thanks while trying not to sound too annoyed.
Daniel knows without looking that Mr. Gein has a sad look on his face as his shadow disappears. Daniel’s got kind of a…what would you call it? Not really a resentment toward his boss but more of a sense of a… suspicion. Yeah that’s it. You see, Daniel noticed that there was something sorta phony about the way Mr. Gein talked to kids. I mean, there was a phoniness when he was talking to customers and Daniel’s foster mother and all that, but that was pretty much the same phoniness all adults have when they talk to each other. With Daniel it was different though. When he first started working for Mr. Gein the conversations they had were pretty basic, “how’s school goin, playin any sports”, you know stuff like that. As time went on the conversations got a bit more personal but still pretty innocent. “Got any girlfriend’s yet? Good lookin kid like you, must have all the girls chasin after ya.” Daniel always felt like jumping off a tall building whenever Tom talked to him like that, but he put up with it because Miss Buck always insisted that he respect his elders, especially when your elder happens to be your boss. Then there came the physical contact.
It was still pretty innocent. A friendly pat on the back here and there. Maybe Gein would squeeze Daniel’s arm every so often, commenting on how big his muscles were getting, telling him he’d have to beat the girls away with a stick. Oh and of course there’s the tussling of the hair which all kids secretly hate. It’s kinda hard to tussle a black kid’s hair after all, especially with cornbraids. But then this one time a few weeks ago, they were retiling the area around somebody’s swimming pool and Daniel asked Tom if he could go get something to drink and Tom said it was okay. As Daniel walked away Tom gave him a very brief but very noticeable pat on the butt. Daniel stopped and turned around but Tom had already returned to measuring the tiles or whatever it was he was doing. It wasn’t like a pat on the butt was anything to make a big deal out of. Daniel was on the football team after all so stuff like that happened all the time, but from Daniel’s point of view it’s pretty damn weird getting a pat on the butt from your boss who happens to be about a million years older than you.
After that awkward hand-to-ass incident, Daniel started paying closer attention to Mr. Gein when he was at work. He noticed that his boss was less forthcoming on days when he wore jeans instead of shorts and tall tees or long sleeve shirts instead of just his wife-beaters. So Daniel decided to make that his designated dress code and every day for the past three or so weeks he’s made sure to wear something loose fitting that left very little skin exposed. But today was different. He had no clean jeans or tall tees, he couldn’t wear his church clothes to work and the only clean long sleeved shirt he had was this gray thermal which he knew he would probably be baked alive in if he wore it outside that day. So he came to work in his shorts and the same black wife-beater he slept in the night before and sure enough old Mr. Gein was as chummy as could be.
Daniel finishes prying out the old boards and is now fastening the new ones in place, sliding them into the pre-cut grooves and screwing them into the wooden joices with the battery powered drill. Daniel is now at the last joice on the board he is working on. He tries to push it into the groove of the other board but it won’t go in all the way. He kicks at the board and pushes it with all the strength he can manage while sitting down, but it barely moves. It gets dark again and Daniel knows without even looking up that his boss is standing behind him once more.
Tom asks the kid if he’s havin any trouble and Daniel jus says no. The bass in his boss’ voice gives Daniel the same skin crawling feeling he got the other day when he saw his neighbor’s cat walking around the front yard with a dead mouse in its mouth. Hey, a dead mouse, wadda ya know? Still like my title better, though.
But anyway, Daniel shakes his head. “Naw I can get it, jus gimme a sec.” He knows this isn’t true, but the last thing he wants right now is his boss’ help.
Daniel kicks at the board again but it barely moves a half inch. Next thing he knows, Mr. Gein is sitting down behind him. Before he can tell him to stop Mr. Gein’s right hand is in the middle of Daniel’s back and his left is on his side, but his fingers are so long that they’re also pushing into the boy’s stomach a little. Tom puts his right foot on the composite board right next to Daniel’s which lets the boy know he’s sitting between his legs. The board slides easily into place. Daniel’s right hand starts shaking again. For a moment he thinks about standing up and telling Mr. Gein to keep his fucking hands off him, but his thoughts are interrupted when Mr. Gein says, “Ya got it, kiddo?” Daniel feels the moist breath on the back of his neck as his boss speaks. He can even smell a little bit of the Meatball Sub his boss had for lunch.
Tom hears Daniel mumble something he can’t hear again as the boy lifts the power drill and puts the last screw into place. Tom feels the muscle’s in his young employee’s back moving and twitching as he lifts the drill, the pressure of his shape beneath his fingertips. He inhales and tastes the scent of the oil or cream or spray or whatever it was that the boy put in his braids before coming to work this morning. What is that, he thinks, cocoa butter? So foreign, so exotic.
Daniel groans, “I’m done.”
Tom clears his throat and stands up. “Um…good work. The last board’s right over there. I’m gonna go use the bathroom real quick.” As Daniel watches Mr. Gein walking toward the house, he pictures his head melting like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a movie he and Josh used to watch with their Dad.
Tom was in the bathroom for quite a while. By the time he got back, Daniel had already finished with the last board and had begun to clean up. The two of them spend the next half hour sweeping away the composite wood shavings, gathering up the left over pieces of board, picking up any nails they might’ve missed and whatever else it is you do after you finish building a deck. They’re pretty much done by now. Daniel’s carrying the last piece of equipment, the battery powered drill, to the truck. Mr. Gein had disappeared into the customer’s house a few minutes ago, he’s been doing that a lot today. All Daniel’s thinking about right now is getting back home where he’ll spend the rest of his afternoon playing video games with Josh, looking up pictures of naked women on the internet with his best friend Joseph and possibly getting into another heated argument with the other foster child, Isaac. Daniel tosses the case with the power drill into the bed of the truck. As soon as he pulls out the earphone to his mp3 player he hears his boss calling him from inside the house. Daniel groans louder than usual because Mr. Gein isn’t close enough to hear him this time. He shoves the earphones back into his pocket and makes his way toward the house. A cloud moves in front of the sun as and its shadow makes it dark again, as if it was God standing behind Daniel this time, ready to ask him if he’d like anything to drink.
Part 2: Tomorrow
