Wormwood - a novel by Lewis LaCook

1

Wormwood

a novel by

Lewis LaCook

for Mary

Something's not right, you think to yourself.It's Saturday night. Your body and mind are soft and booming with the last vapor trails of a speed capyou took in the morning. The capsules are time-release; over the course of twelve hours your skin hasbeen suffused with a cocktail of amphetamine salts, each metabolized at a different rate. By midnightMary's fallen asleep in her chair, first sitting upright, eyes closed, impish face slowly slackening; thenslumped over on her desk, head pillowed by crossed arms. The TV blathers and blares through thebrown living room, eating away at your concentration. To preserve the flood of grace through yourbody and mind you roll a joint and decide to take a walk. Lorain after midnight is no stranger to you.You've been lucky lately as far as weed goes. Your connect has been bringing you vibrant, pungent budsthat stick with you long after you've rubbed the smolder out with spit and finger. This and the MP3player Mary bought you last Christmas propel you out of the house; all night long the dark, salted withyellow and blue streetlights, has pressed against the windows like a poultice, drawing you out. Latespring in Lorain, it says.There are houses along railroad tracks, running like a rough scar.The East Side, where you live, used to be the place Lorain citizens moved if they wanted to get awayfrom the blight. Less sophisticated Lorainites would say the West Side of the city was full of niggersand spics, crackheads and gangs; this was always only partially true. There was a significantrepresentation of the darker races on the East Side of the Black River as well as the West; the maindifference between the two was that the West Side of the city seemed to be falling apart at a higher ratethan the East Side. The Black River separated the two sides if the city, crossable by two bridges: theCharles Berry bascule and the Lofton Henderson. As far as you're concerned, both bridges have theircharm when it comes to walking after midnight. Charles Berry is the closest of the two, just four blocksfrom your house, and it's also the smaller bridge. Crossing it takes you right into the thick of downtownLorain.The bars seem empty, dark, though it's just after midnight and a Saturday midnight as well. Broadway1

2begins with a left turn off the bridge. The architecture here always whispers to you of life in a previouscentury; every block of downtown is flanked by a stone facade, eagles and ornate corners carved towatch as you pass on the wide sidewalk below. This part of Broadway is easily the best-lit section of thecity, and the streetlights, stylized faux-iron lamps, hold the purple dark off the pavement, engineeringsharp, skittering shadows that roll across the sidewalk and catch you unaware as you stumble to the beatin your headphones.This walking, you think, one foot gliding before the other, this means something to me. My dreams areinfused with its images. Stark, blind buildings that flow over your mouth as you sleep and choke yourbreath with their emptiness; sidewalks dry and blue, tree-lawns cacophonous with abruprtly droppeddolls and upturned tricycles; the sense of the whole of the city unreeling through my body, and thesense that you could punch a hole in it with your finger, that it would pop and the hole would shriveland blacken brightly like botched film; this is where I live, you think. Stumbling forward as thespectacle burst.Streetlights hollow out the last of the gaunt churches on Reid Avenue. Dark ripples in stone, they'reembarrassed at their gothic baudiness; all around them, squat houses squint with windows, shrink.Because in your dreams too you're walking, Stereolab's “Parsec” bleaching your ears, and in yourdreams it's all de Chirico. Some feeling bit of memory, you think. As if pavement and box buildingsleering were a way to remember rust. Like raw walking the bottom of the ocean and just rememberingthat you needed air.So it's something like death?Hmmm, why would you say that?Well, that's what would happen. If you walked on the bottom of the ocean long enough. And rememberwhat you said about not breathing?Covering you over, coughing, slipping from the channels.I'm nothing if not a religious man.Like a monk, I'd say. She's slipping into a pair of pants she's had lying on the floor for days.She misses company and she misses family. Remember the early days, when you smiled your waythrough Christmas dinner with her Grandma and her brother. You stand with the two boys flanking you;they're restless like kids get, this isn't anywhere fun. You understand. Her brother collects glitteringholiday automata, and it's displayed in every open space. Fidgety hands release mechanical holidaysongs and the click and rotor of robot motion. You stand, flanked by the boys, and you smile. She willmiss this.2

3Her eyes widen.

I

know.What?A

farm!

Huh?A farm. That would be the best way. We could be free from society and all this advertising. We couldgrow our own food and raise animals for meat. We could find a natural gas well...You make a left from Reid onto 12

th

Street. Between 11

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and 12

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railroad tracks stretch beneathstreetlights like the ribs of a long snake, long dead. There's some sort of small industrial building atthis corner, and on previous walks the desolate aura around the place intrigued you. You click yourMP3 player silent and slip the headphones off your ears to rest around your neck. This is a dark street,one you haven't explored before, and you want to hear it. This isn't a neighborhood one strolls throughcasually at night; many of the low, peeling houses have the starved look of crack houses, dark windowspeering blindly back as you pass.This treet runs parallel with the tracks. Between sparse residences patches of trees and undergrowthstrain to reclaim it. As you walk the trees at some intervals achieve complete saturation; both sides of the street swoon with the hushed motion of leaves and the dark vistas between branches. These patchesyou walk slightly faster through. With so few streetlights here, passing into one of these woodedintervals is like falling down a well; a well alive with cricket sonatas and unseen sinister dance.Falling down and crawling out.When you hear the toilet flush you know Dad's done. It's a welcome sound. You've been standingoutside the bathroom door for what seems hours, listening to the tide of hush that is your family, asleep.For some reason you think of Mr. Murphy as you wait. He owned the house before your family did, andhis name has become tangled somehow in your mind as you settle in. You heard he died. That's howyour family could buy this big house on 12

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Street.The pop of the door cuts your thoughts. Dad stands for a minute, fifteen feet tall, in the doorway, harshbathroom lighting throwing his thick arms into relief. Then he flicks the switch, and mumblessomething unintelligible in a voice so deep you hear it in the rocks. You have no idea how long you'vebeen staring at it.White misty light in the shape of a man gliding up the stairs.White misty light in the shape of a man gliding up the stairs.3