Herb asked him what was wrong as soon as he saw him doing it and got zilch, not even the usual vocalizing stuff he does. Same when I tried. No words; no gabble, even. Just more sniffing. And once he was in the house, that stalking thing-walking from place to place as if his legs won’t bend. He went out back to the sandbox, he went upstairs to his room, he went downcellar, all in that ominous silence. Herb followed him for a while, asking what was wrong, then gave up. While I was emptying the dishwasher, Herb came in waving a religious tract he found sticking out of the milkbox around at the side door amp; yelling “Hallelujah! Tes, Jesus!” He is a dear man, always trying to cheer me up, although I know he isn’t doing all that well himself. His skin has gotten very pale, and I’m scared by all the weight he’s lost, mostly since January or so. It must be at least 20 lbs and might be as much as 30, but whenever I ask him about it, he just laughs it off.
Anyway, the tract was typical Baptist bullshit. Had a picture on the front of a man in agony, with his tongue sticking out and sweat running down his face and his eyes rolled up. IMAGINE A MILLION YEARS WITHOUT ONE DRINK OF WATER! it says over the face. And under it, WELCOME TO HELL! I checked on the back and sure enough, Zion’s Covenant Baptist Church. That bunch from Elder. “Look,” Herb says, “it’s my dad before he combs his hair in the morning.”
I wanted to laugh-I know it makes him happy when he can make me laugh-but I just couldn’t. I could feel Seth all around us, almost crackling on our skin. The way you can sometimes feel a storm building up, you know.
Just then he walked in-stalked in-with that horrible frown he gets on his face when something happens that doesn’t fit into his general plan of life. Except it isn’t him, it isn’t. Seth is the sweetest, kindest, most accepting child I can imagine. But he has this other personality that we see more and more. The stiff-legged one. The one that sniffs the air like a dog.
Herb asked him what was wrong, what was on his mind, and then all at once he-Herb, I mean-reached up and grabbed his own lower lip. Pulled it out like a windowshade and started twisting it. Until it bled. And all the time his poor eyes were watering with pain and bugging out with fear and Seth was staring at him with that hateful frown he gets, the one that says: “I’ll do anything I please, you can’t stop me.” And maybe we can’t, but I think that-sometimes, at least-Seth can.
“Stop making him do that!” I shouted at him. “You just stop it right now!”
When the other one, the not-Seth, gets really mad, his eyes seem to go from brown to black. He turned that look on me then, and all at once my hand came up and I slapped myself across the face. So hard my eye watered on that side.
“Make him stop, Seth,” I said. “It’s not fair. Whatever is wrong, we’re not responsible for it.
We don’t even know what it is.”
Nothing at first. Just more of the black look. My hand went up again, and then the hateful way he was looking at me changed a little. Not much, but enough. My hand went down and Seth turned and looked up into the open cabinet over the sink where we keep the glasses. My mother’s are on the top shelf, nice Waterford crystal that I only take down for the holidays. They were up there, anyway. They burst when Seth looked at them, one after the other, like ducks in a shooting gallery. When they were gone, the eleven of them that were left, he looked at me with that mean, gloating smi le he gets sometimes when you cross him and he hurts you for it. His eyes so black and somehow old in his child’s face.
I started to cry. Couldn’t help it. Called him a bad boy amp; told him to go away. The smile slipped, at that. He doesn’t like to be told anything, but that least of all. I thought he might make me hurt myself again, but then Herb stepped in front of me and told, him the same thing, to go away and calm down and then come back and maybe we could help him fix whatever was wrong.
Seth went off, and I could tell even before he got across the living room to the stairs that the other one was either gone or going. He wasn’t walking in that horrible stiff way anymore. (Herb calls it “Seth’s Rooty the Robot walk”.) Then, later, we could hear him crying in his room-Herb helped me clean up the glasses, me bawling like a fool the whole time. He didn’t try to comfort me or jolly me out of it with any of his jokes, either. Sometimes he can be very wise. When it was done (neither of us got a single cut, sort of a miracle), he said the obvious, that Seth had lost something. I said no shit Sherlock, what was your first clue? Then felt bad and hugged him and said I was sorry, I didn’t mean to be a bitch. Herb said he knew that, then turned over the stupid Baptist tract and wrote on the back on it: “What are we going to do?”
I shook my head. Lots of times we don’t even dare say stuff out loud for fear he’s listening-the not-Seth, I mean. Herbie crumpled the tract amp; threw it in the trash, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I took it out amp; tore it to shreds. But first I found myself looking at the sweaty, tortured face on the front of it. WELCOME TO HELL
Is that Herb? Is it me? I want to say no, but sometimes it feels like hell. A lot of times, actually. Why else am I keeping this diary?
June 11, 1995
Seth sleeping. Exhausted, maybe. Herbie outside in the back yard, looking everywhere. Although I think Seth has already been looking. We know what’s missing now, at least: his Dream Floater Power Wagon. He’s got all the MotoKops shit-action figures, HQ Crisis Center, Cassie’s Party Pad, Power Wagon Corral, two stun pistols, even “floatpad sheets” for his bed. But more than anything he loves the Power Wagons. They’re battery-powered vans, quite large, very futuristic. Most have wings he can pop out by pushing a lever on the bottom, plus radar dishes that really turn on the roofs (the one on Cassie Styles’s Dream Floater is shaped like a Valentine, this after about thirty years” worth of talking about equal rights amp; female role-models for girls; I could just about puke), flashing lights, siren noises, space-blaster noises, etc… etc.
Anyway, Seth came back from California with all six that are currently on the market: the red one (Tracker Arrow), the yellow one (Justice Wagon), the blue one (Freedom), the black one (Meatwagon, belongs to the bad guy), the silver one (Rooty-Toot, amp;just think, someone gets paid, to think this shit up), and the stupid pink one, driven by Cassie Styles, the love of our young nephew’s life. His crush is actually sorta funny amp; sweet, but there’s nothing funny about what’s currently going on around here: Seth’s “Dweem Fwoatah” is gone, and all this is a kind of tantrum.
Herbie shook me awake at six this morning, pulled me out of bed. His hand was cold as ice. I asked him what it was, what was wrong, and he wouldn’t say. Just pulled me over to the window amp; asked me if I saw anything out there. I could tell what he meant was did I see what he was seeing?
I saw it, all right. It was Dream Floater, which looks sorta art deco, like something from the old Batman comic books. But it wasn’t Seth’s Dream Floater, not the toy. That’s about two feet long amp; maybe a foot high. The one we were seeing was full-sized, probably twelve feet long and maybe seven feet high. The roof-hatch was partway up, amp; the heart-shaped radar dish was turning, just as it does on the show.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Where did that come from?” All I could think was that it must have flown in on its stubby little retractable wings. It was like getting out of bed with one eye open and discovering a flying saucer has landed in your back yard. I couldn’t get my breath. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach!
At first when he told me it wasn’t there I didn’t understand what he meant, and then the sun came up a little more and I realized I could see the aspens behind our fence right through it. It really wasn’t there. But at the same time it was.