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I Will Burn

Joshua Copeland

#1: A Wave in Becoming

    “My Face is on the covers of several newspapers and TV news shows this week: T_F_” Check F for that one. “The six o’ clock newscaster speaks directly to me: T_F_” Another F. “I have flown across the Atlantic several times this year: T_F_” Yet again. F. This questionnaire would prove to be a cakewalk if it wasn’t so long and if I understood where the questions were coming from. Six hundred questions. Most were easy to answer. They were supposed to cull out the really deranged from the deranged. But a few gave me trouble, like, “When your mother or father are angry at someone, I get angry too: T_F_” And the answer to that question determines what? One wrong answer and I could be in here for longer than the mandatory 90 days. I was on question #342. At little more than halfway through. The concise maneuvering of the pencil made your fingers ache after a while.
    But maybe...maybe...I wanted to be here.
    I’m sixteen years old. This is my second stint in Western Psyche. What and who brought me here the first time? it’s children’s lit material. A pop up story book. I got in an argument with my parents. My shrink had told them I was not to watch any more movies that integrated sex and violence. They confiscated Bloodsucking Freaks (“Bloodsucking” appears to be a real word, this laptop didn’t “error” it), Blue Velvet, Angel Heart, Lost Highway, The Accused, Barb Wire Dolls, The Defilers, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS parts one, two, three, four, five, and six. They were the blood of my body. My essence. My life. Kapoof! Gone, like that half circle of sun sinks, turning into a dot, than nothing, no orange, no red, no color, just black.
    This made me mad. I charged into Greenfileld, my neighborhood’s polluted next door neighbor. I carried with me, under my coat, a panel ripped off a TV stand. I had duct taped one end of it as a grip. I beat down the first hunky I saw—he was about 5 foot 10—that is, until he got the upper hand, grabbed hold of my club, and beat me till the cops came. The judge at Juvey Court sentenced me to the St. Francis Adolescent Unit A. He said I wouldn’t last at Shuman Detention Center. The verdict pissed off the parents of my victim, they thought it wasn’t enough time, and shouted as such after the judge sentenced me.
    And so I arrived. Got lots of hugs, pretty common around there, hugging. And the staff were cool. One I grew fond of was Rocco. He was about 6 foot 3, twenty-eight-years old, and with his bulging eyes he looked like some aquatic creature mid-transformation, HP Lovecraft come to life. Revitalized. My first day there he wore a Transvision Vamp T-shirt (He would also sometimes wear a Plasmatics T-shirt and a GG Alin T-shirt. On his face: A constant smirk).
    My first day there he said, “So you tried to beat someone down?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So what the fuck did you do that for?”
    “He was lower income bracket,” I said. “I had no choice.”
    He grinned. “So you’re a brat. What do your mommy and daddy do?”
    That made me mad.
    “You can’t disrespect me like that!” I bellowed. “Watch. As soon as I’m released I’ll find a negro and stick a big black dick up your ass.”
    “Language. Be appropriate. Get as angry as you want. Just don’t swear.”
    Then he imitated me. He hunched his shoulders and ducked his neck down and his eyes darted up and around and back and forth: He looked at the carpet and squeaked, “Hi. My name’s Ray Synclair. I’m sixteen and I’m trying to take on all the kids in Greenfield but I’m really just a spoiled, anxious puddle of puke.”
    “That’s not me.”
    Over the next few weeks I warmed up to him. He had Howard Stern Grade A honesty, though Stern was much taller. Rocco was the first person to tell me who I was. Yes, he was right; I had to admit to myself I was frightened. Very frightened. Should I have attacked myself instead of someone else? (Months later this worry would come back to conk me on the head). How could I have done such a thing?
    We all ate breakfast on the unit, but for lunch and dinner Rocco and I sat together in the cafeteria. He turned off most of the other kids. He made Theresa cry. When she told him she had walked through her neighbor’s empty house nude, Rocco grinned and said, “I bet you were molested as a kid.” She burst into tears and ran into her room. He commanded an empty stadium; I was one of his few fans.
    Dr. Zitner was the unit Dr. He diagnosed me as manic depressive, a bulllshit diagnosis, cause I never had any highs, just low and low, trough after trough. But the doctors never really got to know you. They only met with you five minutes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It was the staff, who you were around every day, that you watched TV and play card games, they were the ones that got to know you best.
    At my high school I did not fit in. But in that adolescent unit I belonged. I was part of things. I wasn’t a moon to someone’s earth. That hospital was for me. Those staff were for me. Those patients were for me. I hugged them with all my soul the day I left. The prescribed recipe for living healthy and wholesome life: Take my Wellbutrin and Lithium every day. After my month and a half in there they unleashed me back into the real world.
    I went back to Pearson High, but reality and I could not coexist. Five months later I was back in St. Francis. My first afternoon back Rocco sat me down in the lounge. “What happened, dude?” he asked. “Why did you do that to yourself?”
    I was glum. “Read my file.”
    “I did. Lift up your shirt.”
    I pulled up my shirt.
    “Take off the bandage for a second.” I unwrapped it and felt the cool air as I pulled the bandage back.
    He rolled his eyes. “Nice. You know that’s going to scar, don’t you?”
    “Who cares.” It was my turn to roll my eyes.
    Deb—who was in there for bulimia (she smiled a sour smile that showed the acid had eroded her teeth)—sat across from me. She saw my scarring and yelped, “Ewww. Are you crazy?”
    “How long did that take you?” Rocco asked.
    “Don’t know. Can’t pay attention to time anymore.”
    “Why did you choose a tic tac toe game? Why not—”
    “A tied tic tac toe game.”
    “Alright. Why did you choose a tied tic toe game? Why not something less painful, more simpe?”
    “Be happy. I’ve learned how to internalize my anxiety and not funnel it into rage and go Coo Coo for Cocoa puffs on other people. That knife from Walmart was sharp. It cut my skin like warm butter.”
    “Good analogy. Idiot. Back to square one.”
    “Ha.”
    The next day they gave me the six hundred question test. It took about three hours to finish. On Wednesday Dr. Zitner came into my room. “So Ray, we got your SST blood draw back. It appears you’ve slacked off on the Lithium.”
    “Maybe. But I hate those pills. The Lithium gives me the shits and makes me thirsty all the time.”
    He laughed and said, “A lucid state of mind doesn’t come for free. Let’s try Depakote. You’ll gain weight but it won’t dehydrate you. Sound good?”
    When he left I kicked my desk. “Ow!” Hurt my big toe.
    Man, did Depakote knock me for a loop. It sapped me so much I could barely stand up, like supersaturated rag. And I slept like crazy.

#2: Hollywood

    Two paramedics wheeled him in tethered to a stretcher. It’s a humiliating way to be brought into the unit (But it made for good rubbernecking: One time they bought in this really hot blonde. She had given birth to a dead baby. She had a robe on, and showed a lot of leg as she stretched against the leather, kicking and screaming and crying). But this kid they brought in, he was all smiles. Within half an hour he was sitting by the TV chatting with Nancy, one of the more unfriendly staff. The new patient’s name was Manny.
    He was black, around 6 foot, medium build, looked around 160 pounds. I’m not gay, but he looked really good. And eloquent. His speech was perfect, ala Billy De Williams, no Ebonics or New York twang. For days I’d do nothing but watch him perform. He was all eyebrows, and I liked the bourgeoisie fluttering of the eyelids. The joke of everything, he always got the joke of everything, the joke of life. He reminded me of my mom’s one friend who was a Shakespearian actor. Manny didn’t belong there.
    Claire couldn’t find her gym shoes. “Hey you guys. Wait up. I can’t find my new white shoes.”
    “New white shoes?” Manny hummed. “Sounds like a fifties tune.”
    And he knew things, library after library of data. I envied him. He could recite De Sade by heart. He knew an owl’s head can swivel 180 degrees both left and right. He knew Sarte and had read “No Exit.” He worshipped Voltaire and Hume, ergo he didn’t believe in God—offending some of the patients and staff. He knew that Schliemann had discovered a building from ancient Troy.
    I found out through our groups that he tried to slit his wrist with a butter knife at a party. When I got out I ran into Megan Malloy, who had been at the party. She said the kids were angry at him for trying it. “Just a wimpy way to try and get attention, poor baby,” she told me she said to him. He never told us why he tried to kill himself. “Just one of those things you do when you get drunk,” he said in a “That’s life, oh well,” shrug of his shoulders. If anyone deserved to live, it was he.
    I don’t think he knew I existed. One time, as we lined up for cafeteria, I asked him, “Um, knowing Judo, have you gotten in any fights?”
    “Yes,” he said, and turned to talk to Clair.
    And there was the one time we were watching TV. He said, “Ray, you are kind of thin and fragile.” He lightly pinched my bicep. I yanked my arm back.
    My last day there Rocco sat me down in the lounge. He asked the other patients there to leave.
    “I hope I never see you again,” he said.
    I looked at my lap. “I know, I know.”
    “You got open fields ahead of you,” he said, trying to align my eyes with his. “You got your whole life to live. Don’t fuck up a third time. If you do, they’ll send you to State.” He let that hang there.
    “Huh? What do you mean, ‘State?’”
    “The State Hospital over in Clairiton. The TV’s don’t work there. Cold showers. Dinky, thin foam mattresses. The staff doesn’t give a shit about you. They tie you up with cold water soaked towels if you flip, no leather.”
    I sighed. “I’ll do my best, man. What do you want me to say?”
    “You don’t want to be a revolving door patient.”
    “What?! I try and be like other kids! Do you think I like being last all the time?! I so so SO much want a girlfriend! I’m a virgin!”
    “You’ll make it,” he said. “I think we got it this time around.” He looked at his lap on that one.
    By coincidence (Or superstitious synchronicity) Manny and I left the same day. We even exited the hospital the same time. My parents waited by their Camry “Free at last,” my dad said. “We cleaned your room for you. Did your bed. You could bounce a quarter off it.”
    I reluctantly hugged him. My attention was on Manny. He met a very pretty woman standing by a station wagon—our Camry paled in comparison—and they didn’t hug or exchange one word. Was she his mom? She looked awful young to be. They both got in. I was to see him again, but not in the flesh.
    I have before me now my journal from April to September, my last months of freedom after my second institutionalization. I turn through to it haphazardly, from page to random page, sentences, truncated and whole catch my eye. “Walked home from Tabby’s Deli, wondering what it would be like to turn eighteen, in the nightmare in the...to hide my stay at St. Francis, I told the kids I was in Austria with my grandfather. But now they know the truth, and they goof on me for it, especially Ryan Wilson...Sarte writes not to let others describe me (Bad Faith), that it’s my job to be the limner, to describe myself. Sarte, you suck. You’re a map maker, not down in it, not a geologist... I’d like to see him in my high school with all the stupid peer pressure and name calling...”
    Finally I settle on September 2^nd: “This morning—like every morning preceding it, and, with my luck, every morning to come—my alarm clock injects itself into my dream, pulling me back to earth. In the end, my soul belonged to the great antagonist, Satan himself. Depakote makes it impossible to get up, let alone walk an hour to my school. In my dreams I could float free in outer space, riding a yellow wave of Neutrinos. I possessed all I wanted with my eyes shut. But once that alarm rang, I crashed headfirst into the things that made me today—Terra Firma is hell.
    Everything the same. For the rest of my life. The meds do nothing for me. I’m a plant. I go nowhere. My mood is down, down, down. I try and act chipper, to act attractive to the chicks and join in on the merriment. I try and will myself to be in a good mood, but it’s a no go.
    Today after dinner my dad handed me his car keys. “You’re becoming an adult. It’s time I teach you how to drive.”
    The PSAT’s are coming up.
    I deserve mythic status. I should be the sole focus of college courses. I deserve my own constellation. My own temples. I deserve to be named in oaths.
    In those days after my second stay at St. Francis I thought of Manny, wondered what he was doing, wondered if that pretty woman with her station wagon was really his mother.
    One night I was studying for my PSATs and my dad walked in without knocking. He never knocked. “We got to get you down to Kim’s Tailor. For Nina’s wedding. “
    My cousin Nina lived in Rockland, about twenty minutes away. She was six years older than me. I had grown up with her. I had watched her dye her hair a dark, inky black. I was there when she got ears pierced, five earrings each ear. We had gone fishing so many times in Wilkensburgh. I had watched her grow to an astounding 6 foot 1. I had watched her breasts grow from little buds, antebellum summer, primed for growth, to actual pert appendages. She’d flaunt them occasionally by flashing me, providing me with ample jerk off fodder when my nuts sunk down and kicked into gear. She had written me ten times while I was in St. Francis. And now she was marrying some macho loser with trapezius muscles that eclipsed his neck. I hated him.
    “I’m sorry dad. I cannot go to Nina’s wedding.”
    My dad feigned a stern face. “You will go.”
    “Like I said, I’m sorry but I cannot go. It’s not that I will not go, it’s that I cannot go.”
    “Oh, you’ll do just fine. You’d really hurt her if you didn’t show up. You guys grew up together. Ray, you’re going. Period.”
    And so I was to go. I made the word “wedding” do tricks in my head. Round and round it tumbled, like it was in a dryer. I’d imagine it upside down, I’d imagine it backwards, I’d try and read it as if reflected in a mirror. If you replaced a d with an e you got “weeding” This was a sign.
    One day walking home from school—it was through the Dover Business District—I thought I saw Manny on the front page inside of a newspaper vending machine. In the photo, a crowd around him was chaotically stained. He was going somewhere. Or being taken somewhere. No way, I thought. Just an overactive imagination. Just my need to be connected to someone or something important. I kept on walking. Another newspaper vending machine. Different paper, but the same face, same encompassing gaggle, cameras and all. “Ah ah,” I said. “No way,” and continued to walk. Then, on the corner of Orchard and 8^th, a third newspaper vending machine. It had to be him. I put four quarters into the machine and took the whole pile of papers.
    I arrived home, headed straight to my room, shut the door, and read. Manny’s real name was Michael Hanson. He killed Carla Brownstone out on her back deck. Around midnight. She was a senior at our high school. He hit her over the head with a Samurai sword and strangled her to death with the rope segment of his nun chucks. Then he took the keys to her parent’s Porsche and drove off, had a hit and run on Forbes, and drove around all night. The next morning he wandered the halls of high school—blood on his shirt and jeans—until school security called the police. He confessed immediately. Carla had been meeting with him a lot lately, trying to help him out with his parent’s divorce. The paper mentioned his mom’s name, Sheila.
    I knew Carla Brownstone. I had gone to school with her. And she lived three blocks away from me. About a year ago she asked Chad Richter, a Punker, to cut and razor her hair into a punk style. So he and his girlfriend came over and worked her hair, but they really fucked it up, they did not know what they were doing. They couldn’t help laughing as Carla looked in the mirror and cried. If I remember right, she was pure as white linen, a goody goody two shoes, always on the honor roll. Not that pretty (But I think she dated Chuck Synquinni, another nerd, a bleeding heart like her; the worst type of bleeding heart, the high school/college brand). On principle, she didn’t wear makeup. I think she had a monthly article in the school paper.
    So there it was, the print total truth and unimpeachable. Dark and undeniable. What happened? What had clicked, or become unclicked? How could he do something like that? I wasn’t angry at him and I wasn’t horrified by the incident. But I needed to know why he did it. I needed to explain it away for myself more than anybody else. I cut out each picture in each paper and shoved the pictures under my bed. That night it was on the six o’ clock News.
    Sheila Hanson..........412-421-0725
    “Hello?”
    “Hi, um, is this Michael Hanson’s mom?”
    She sighed. “Yes. What do you want?”
    “I was a friend of your son’s. A really good friend. So I want to know: What happened?”
    Her voice ebbed into vitriol. “What do you mean, ‘What happened?’”
    “You know, why your son did what he did?”
    “It’s in the papers. Read ‘em.”
    “Yeah but they don’t say WHY I need to know I need to know for myself Many isn’t having any visitors and I don’t know what’s going to happen if I don’t find out WHY I need to know—”
    Click...Then the sound of those in need hate to hear: The infinitive punctuation of a dial tone.

#3: White Flag

    My parents and I drove to the Temple Beth Shalom in Rockland. I wore a tuxedo for the first time in my entire life. I didn’t like it. Too tight. When we arrived there they were taking pictures. Nina saw me and trotted over to me in her high heels and hugged me and gave me a peck on the cheek. Her fiancée put me in a headlock, ruffling up my hair. I just sucked it up, didn’t say anything. My mom, dad, me, Uncle Henry, Aunt Birdie, Uncle Howie, Aunt Joanie, Gramma, Nana, Florence, Nina, her beau. They photographed us all in different variations, this person and that person photographed together. Decades later, these pictures would be framed on someone else’s dresser. Shit.
    No one under twenty attended except for me. Always the minority. The rabbi called us all to the pews, all followed with expectant smiles. I wanted to sit away from my parents and any of my extended family. I sat next to a man in his early fifties. His gut protruded over his belt. I could see his nose hairs, a bristly gray, like a toothbrush. He had that stereotyped froggy face, like he was dangling on the gallows. All these adults in the pews, I looked at them and realized that their funerals were long gone, life had built bon fires with their bones, life had robbed them of their vigor. They were finished. Over the cliff.
    Uncle Howie walked Nina (I stress again she was 6 foot) down the aisle. She looked anemic and thin—she had been hospitalized in the past for anorexia—and her gown literally hung off her, like a veiled skeleton. The rabbi said some things. Then he asked. Nina accepted. She and the Neanderthal kissed. Applause. The organ kicked on. It warned.
    Then the banquet. I approached the bar. The bar tender was tall for a woman, about five ten. Would she serve me? I asked for a Scotch and Water. Bukowski’s favorite drink. She gave it to me and I swigged it. Burned my throat. It would be Scotch and Water the rest of the night.
    I kept making trips to the bar. After my first drink I wandered around, didn’t know anybody, felt as anonymous as (wince) a name in a phone book. After two drinks I began to see through people, I saw what was really inside them and their buckets of guts. After three drinks they were footless wraiths gliding across the floor. After four drinks I was walking above everyone and saw how pitiful they looked from above.
    Eventually I got bored. Why not go out and sit in my parents’ car and listen to the radio. So I did. After a while I thought, “Why not give the car a spin?” I didn’t know Rockland very well, but I was just planning on a quick lap around the neighborhood. I shifted into gear, backed out the lot, and drove. I couldn’t feel the tip of nose and the tips of my fingers. Everything was random and bubbly.
    I drove down tightly knit suburban streets with their vague, opulent curves, did a 360, and shot back. I passed well-groomed lawns, spacious family cars, and boats in driveways. The latter would be used in the summer.
“Please come in, Manny.” He did, and she shut the door behind him. He carried a black martial arts gym bag with a white yin yang painted on opposite ends. Carla spoke quietly. “Don’t get loud. My parents are asleep.” The two teens walked into the kitchen. “Are you okay? You know I worry about you. Can I get you anything to drink?” He stared, two lifeless dots.” How do you like fall weather? Let’s go out on my back deck, smell the fall air, and talk about the future. Do you know your future? Know the future and you know yourself.” She opened the back door and they both stepped outside.
    She pointed to the night sky. “Hey. Did you see that shooting star? There’s so much dust in space. Did you know that most of it never reaches earth? Most of it burns up in the atmosphere. Only the large rocks or stones—like the size of your fist—only those make it to earth.” She strolled around the deck.
    “You are so smart. If only you saw yourself the way other people see you, then you’d know you don’t need two parents to make it in this world.” She turned her back to him and craned her neck at the sky.
    He unzipped his gym bag and pulled out a long sword. He had won it in the USA Karate Sparring Tournament. It glowed under the deck lights. He gripped it with both hands, raised it, and swung down onto her skull, catching her mid breath. She fell to the deck floor, eyes shut, body twitching. Some trouble pulling the sword out her head. Then he struck, over and over, all across her chest and stomach. A virus of red bloomed, soaking her clothes, and then leaking to the deck floor. Time ticked as he hacked away.
    Finally he stopped, breathing heavily. He dropped the sword, took nun chucks out his bag, wrapped their cord around her neck, and pulled hard. There was the snap of a bone cracking. The veins in his arms and hands showed like road maps. After a bit he let go. A long blue, thin, necklace-like indentation was wound across her neck. He sifted around her pockets for her parents’ car keys to their Porsche. Then, leaving the bag and weapons there, he drove off, going somewhere.
    It stung, my whole body stung. I gripped the wheel hard, throttling it. No nose, no fingers. Mom and dad’s car. My throat burned. I whispered something guttural, and my throat burned even more. Houses receded into the distance.

#4: Exeunt

    Imagine, the earth, a globe with an ocean and puzzle pieces of land. Focus in on America. From east to west, from New York to California, the mountains and rivers like ivy in between. Zoom in farther. To New York. Manhattan, Wall Street, the Bronx, Brooklyn, then...a small dot named Rockland. Move in for a close up. Right behind a row of houses were miles and miles of rock and brush. I sat in that field, in that car.
    I kept coming to and passing out. The crackle of fire. Coming from behind. Something like a slur, “I must get out of here.” I passed out again, the heat brought me to. The car door. I tried it. The door was crushed into the car, it wouldn’t open. “I will burn!” I screamed. Ripped off the seat belt. The sear of pain began at the back of my head, and made its way over me like an avenging plague... and how I howled. My torso caught fire as I inhaled myself. Like a vat of popcorn biting at me. My nose hairs caught fire and I smelled steak. Strangely, when it got to my legs, it felt like a freeze, an agonizing freeze. I called for my mother. For sure, by an oath, I knew all of me would burn. My nose one big orange coal. Then the door caved in: The Jaws of Life. As they moved me to the ambulance, I asked the tech, “Did you ever hear of Charles Bukowski?”
    “No.” The tech smiled like a saint. He clapped an oxygen mask over my mouth. Then I coughed up thick bloody sputum, and the tech had to take the mask off, wipe it out, and put it back on. I felt it all as lava circulating through my body.
    At the hospital I came to and they shoved a tube down my throat as I screamed and gagged. After a few hours they pulled it out. “Stop fighting,” they said. They told me smoke had caused my trachea to swell up. I looked at my hand. It had melted into a slippery catcher’s mitt, like a sea creature, I saw pink webbing between what was left of my fingers. I felt my head—they wouldn’t give me a mirror—and it felt as swollen as a beach ball.
    One male nurse said, “We are going to graph your ass. Allograph skin. Straight from cadavers. Your NTSB is 70%.”
    I thought that because I was in the hospital they’d dampen the pain, but they didn’t. The little lever you push for the morphine feed didn’t help too much.
    Finally a doctor with a notebook pulled up a seat and said, “What year is it?”
    I croaked, “1991.”
    “Correct. What’s your name?”
    “Ray Synclair.”
    “Right. How old are you?”
    “Sixteen.”
    “Correct. How tall are you?”
    “Five foot four. Where’s my nose?”
    “It was burnt beyond repair. We had to remove it.”
    “Why am I in this plastic tent?”
    “Infection.”
    I saw the Foley Catheter bag, my urine was nut brown.
    I remembered my family trip out west. We took a tour of Alcatraz. On the east wing of the jail the prisoners had windows, and they could see San Francisco, they could see freedom. It was torture. Intentional torture.
    The pain was jagged. I thought if I pulled at the sheets and screamed they’d give me more morphine. I flapped around my blistery club hands and screamed and spit. For a moment my face felt mushy, like someone threw a pie at it.
    A female nurse came in. “We are giving you the most we are allowed.”
    I shouted, “I don’t care! I need more! I’ll get out of the bed and leave!” I walloped the IV Drip with my clubbed hand. Anything, being restrained by cold wet towels and a paper thin mattress, anything was better than this.
    The nurse said, “You’re disturbing the other patients. You’re not the only one here, you know. If you get physical we’ll restrain you.”
    I did my clumsily best to yank the IV out my arm. The female nurse left, and returned with security, and the leather enveloped me hard, fast, and finally.

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