The Volcanoes of North Georgia

"You been in the Shed, boy?  You been in there?"

"No, paw!" the little boy squealed, "I ain't been in there ever, since you said."

The father scowled as he towered over his shrinking son.  Playing cards and puzzle pieces crunched under his heavy boots.  "You sure, Addy?  You damn sure?"

"Damn sure, paw!  I ain't been!" Addy wailed.

The father started at the parroted curse word and thought he was being mocked.  His rage rose, subsided, and then rose again as he stared at the quivering child.  But the boy was fortunate; the sound of his mother's car came from the driveway, she was back from the Piggly-Wiggly with his cousins.  They would have some treats for him, and he'd escaped a brutal lick from his father.  His father had few rules, and the only one he enforced with absolute authority was -- no one enters the Shed, except him and those who had permission -- which meant Addy's cousin Coddy, Uncle Amus, and pretty much no one else on Earth.

They had waffles, tea, instant sausages, and strawberry milk for dinner that night.  After most of the family dropped off to sleep, Addy and Coddy snuck out to the living room and stealthily turned on the family television.  They were playing some Lone Ranger and Flash Gordon reruns after midnight these days, which were far more tempting than sleep to boys their age.  Good as gold, as Coddy said.  Can't pass it up.  Coddy was nodding drowsily and nearly asleep on the couch when Addy lightly punched his arm and whispered, "Coddy... what does my paw keep in the Shed?  I gotta know, I promise I won't tell, not ever."

Coddy looked furtive.  "Nuthin', Addy.  Nuthin'."

"C'mon!  It's gotta be somethin'!  He keeps it locked, all the winders are boarded, and he keeps yellin' at me..."

"It ain't nuthin', Addy, nothing interesting anyway.  Juss' forget about it.  I'm goingta bed now.  This's a rerun anways."

Addy sat there in the darkness and felt hurt.  Coddy was only three years older than him, why would his paw trust him more than his own son?  It didn't add up.  It was then that Addy realized he would have to take matters into his own hands.

It didn't happen until well over three months later.  The first part of Addy's plan was to act as if he had no interest in the Shed, refusing to even look at it as he passed it by in the yard.  He feigned an interest in motorcars, asking his father endless questions about drivers and engines that he'd picked up by reading the racing magazines at Pop's newsstand.  As far as his father knew, the boy's interest was totally consumed by this new hobby.  Meanwhile, while they slept, Addy constructed a makeshift ladder (out of several broken ladders from the trash yard) and slowly loosening one of the ceiling planks that would allow him to peep into the Shed from above....

...one night, while everyone else was asleep, he climbed on top of the Shed, pried the board aside, and tried to look -- but it was far too dark to see anything inside.

The next night, he tried again and lowered a candle into the darkness inside the Shed, but its light was too feeble to offer much illumination, and all he saw was a patch of floor and part of a wooden crate.  

That weekend, he could resist no longer.  His paw, Uncle Amus, and Coddy repeated the same Saturday night ritual that Addy knew so well -- they would, one by one, nonchalantly take leave from the family table and mosey towards the Shed,  as if merely going on a leisurely stroll.  Addy marked the look on his mother's face whenever one left -- she was aware of whatever occurred in the Shed, and looked none too pleased about it.  

All of them were gone.  They were inside it, and would be for a couple of hours at least.  

"I'm going to bed, maw," Addy yawned.  

"So early?" she inquired.

"Yup, I'm bushed," he yawned theatrically.

Into bed.  Out the window.  Around the edge of the property.  Ladder retrieved from hiding place.  Up the ladder, silent as a scullery cat the boy moved.

The lights were on inside.  Addy removed the board, moving it as slowly as humanly possible, easing it aside at a snail's pace.  Finally, he saw...

...his paw was tending to a large copper tub that was attached to some other containers by some tubing.  Unce Amus was filling up some Mason jars with a clear liquid, and dropping a couple of maraschino cherries into each one before sealing it.  Coddy was wrapping them in wax paper and placing them in crates, and nailing each one up with extreme care.

Addy realized it was a still.  They was moonshinin'?  Addy felt a tremendous sense of disappointment.  For months, he'd nursed visions of secret wives, pirate doubloons, fugitive slaves, caged zoo animals, stockpiles of guns and artillery.... but no, his paw was just runnin' moonshine, same as half the men in the county.  Addy knew all about the illegal liquor and it didn't interest him a whit.  He'd heard all about it from the older boys who fished in the creek, just as he'd heard about cigarettes, and the wacky tobaccy that the hippies smoked out West, and the "F-word," and the "C-word," and a little about the birds and the bees... he felt suddenly excluded, untrusted.  He could be in there helping like Coddy was.  Why did they treat him like a baby?  He was only three years younger...

Addy watched a while longer, then decided to go to bed for real.  This was boring.  He was slowly moving the loose board back into position when things inside the Shed changed.  The work seemed to come to a halt.  Amus began to fidget, while Coddy was staring at the wall, as if hypnotized.

"Alright, now," his Paw began, "alright, now, it's time.  Come and get it, come and get it, boy, fresh meat on the bone, yessir..."

To Addy's shock, Coddy and Amus began removing their clothes.  They did so hurriedly, but uncomfortably.  Addy's father undid his overalls, and before Addy knew it, his... his thing, his dong doodle, was flapping loose.  It was larger and hairier than Addy could have imagined.  Below it, his father's balls hung low like those of a hog.  His thing began to grow and stand up in a way that Addy's never had, and then he was approaching Coddy, he grabbed the boy by the shoulders, turned him around, slapped his rump...

Several things happened at once.  Amus looked upwards for whatever reason, and saw Addy's eyes peeking through the roof.  A yelp of rage, shouts of surprise and anger, Addy thrashed in fear and stood up, fell, stood again... and then the boards he was standing on gave way, he was falling, then was caught in the broken boards, he was being stabbed by splinters and torn by rusty nails, then falling again, a thud, starbursts in his vision, more screams and hollers...

"YOU LITTLE SON OF A WHORE HOW MANY TIMES I TOLE YOU..."

"STOP!  STOP!  LOOK OUT!"

"GODDAMNIT BOY YOU GONNA..."

Addy never saw the still tip over.  He felt only a tremendous shock as the boiling corn mash slurry cascaded onto his face.  The pain was like nothing he'd ever felt.  He remembered the episode where Ming the Merciless threatened to lower Flash into an active volcano, it must have felt like this, like this, oh god the pain, the pain...

Addy clawed at his face, and felt his flesh melt and slough off in globs.  He screamed like the damned.  Then, the blackness claimed him and he knew no more.

Weeks passed.

Many weeks passed, as if in dreams.

He knew only darkness, darkness came like the setting of the sun, and that was all.  In the darkness, slow creatures moved, sloshing through his nightmares.
.
.


The boy in room 201-A had undergone such a change since he'd been brought in, the nurses all said.  At first he'd been nearly comatose throughout the treatments which was not surprising given the incredible extent of his burns.  Once he awoke, he cried, and cried, and wanted his mother.  She was there most of the time.  His weeping jags were interrupted by fits of screeching, and more than one nurse began to slowly realize that his terrors seemed to strike whenever his father entered the room, which was infrequently... and then, as he healed, he became quiet.  Too quiet, one might say.

One night, a pretty nurse named Frannie Dalton was tending to him, delicately changing the bandages that still swaddled his face like the Mummy.  You ever seen that movie, Frannie asked him.  The boy nodded.  You see the old one or the new one?  The old one was better...

He would only stare.  He lay propped up in the bed, his arms at his side, his small fists clenching the bedsheets.  What little of his face she could see was set, stonelike.  He appeared deep in thought, more serious than any boy his age had a right to be.

Frannie cleared her throat.  "I want you to know, Addy, that you're still going to have a normal life, when this is all over, I promise..."

"No, I won't."  His words were still partially garbled by the hideous, melted flaps of flesh that hadn't yet been repaired.

"Now sweetie..."

"You don't understand.  I don't want a normal life."

"Sweetie, everyone wants a normal..."

"I don't," he interrupted.  

His head swiveled slowly and he looked at her with haunted eyes.  A fire burned in them.

"I don't want to be normal.  I want to be powerful.  I'm going to run things... I'm going to become a man that runs things.  I won't let him hurt me anymore.  I won't let him hurt Coddy.  I don't want to be Flash... I want to be Ming.  The Merciless.  I want to be (the boss governor senator president overlord king god) the one lowering people into the Volcano.  Not me.  It will never be me again, do you hear me?  Do you?!"

"Sweetie, don't yell, you'll tear the skin..."

His mouth worked furiously as the bandages began to slip off, and his squelching lips looked strangely beaklike underneath his flattened nostrils... Frannie couldn't help it, she remembed the tortoise.  When she was four years old, her grandfather had taken her to the zoo and held her up to the tortoise in his habitat until her tiny young face was inches from his prehistoric one.  She screamed, and her grandfather had laughed.  See that ol' turtlepuss, Frannie?  You want to make friends with ol' turtlepuss? Oh, he gonna eat you, Frannie, you wanna be in ol' turtlepuss's belly?  Hee hee hee!  He'll gobble you up!  He held her too close and the tortoise opened his mouth to nip at her...

The room seemed darker.  Frannie could hear tortoises, she could hear them waddling and splashing in the halls... their ponderous bodies dragging through the darkened corridors of Peachtree General.  Their dumpy shadows fell over the room... oh, god, the tortoises, why did the boy look so much like the tortoise... Frannie wanted to scream, to run...

"Addy, please..."

"And don't call me that.  That's a baby's name..."

He reached up and grabbed her uniform by the lapels, and she was frightened at the strength of his small grip.

"My name is Addison Mitchell McConnell, Jr.  Call me that.  Call me that!"

10-10-2014
4:17AM