This was the kind of introduction that made his job both frustrating and exhilarating. Wayne had met many 'Fathead' s over the years. Nothing was ever their fault and trouble just seemed to always — completely randomly — follow them about. Still, they had their quirky charm about them — so genuine in their utter bullshit — that he couldn't help but be drawn to them. Every Fathead was an opportunity to show God's love and mercy. Wayne stepped out of the doorway to let Fathead in. Rhianna rushed up to him as if they were long-lost friends reunited at long last, and hugged him for several moments.
'We'll be having dinner in a few minutes.' Wayne put his hand on Fathead's shoulder, nudging them apart.
'Hey man, do you have any points?'
'We don't do needle exchanges here.'
'Oh my bad.'
Esther walked into the dining room carrying a large bowl of salad as one of the other volunteers for the night toiled away in the kitchen. She hesitated when she saw Fathead, then not wanting to stare at his eye patch, arranged the array of salad dressing.
'No worries, baby. I ain't self-conscious of this shit. My pops put a cigarette out in my eye when I was a baby. Had a glass one, but I lost that shit. Got a marble I use sometimes. You want to see it?'
'No, that's all right.'
'Not 'Baby'.' Wayne glanced over at Rhianna and smiled at the irony. 'Her name's Ms Esther.'
Percy wandered out of the kitchen. Tipping nearly three bills, he had a darker knot above his left eyebrow in the shape of a crescent moon. His downcast eyes rarely met people in the eye. Carrying a tray of cinnamon graham crackers and milk, he liked to pretend that he'd made them from his secret recipe. They were the last addition to the food set out for that evening's drop night. Wayne stood at the dining room table and gestured for them to join him. He took Esther's hand as they all clasped hands.
'Percy, you want to bless the food?'
'God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food,' Percy said. 'By His hands we all are fed. Thank You, Lord, for our daily bread.'
'Amen.' Wayne clapped Percy on the back. He'd come a long way from the shy boy too spooked by his own shadow to speak. And there were still untapped pools of potential they hadn't begun to reach. Percy radiated a peace about him, a simplicity many confused with him being simple.
'Has anyone seen Prez?' Percy asked.
'Prez ain't right.' Rhianna sprawled down low in a wooden dinette chair which only matched three others pulled around the table.
'What you mean?' Wayne passed a bowl of mashed potatoes.
'He stays up in his crib. Avoids us.'
'You know why?'
'Cause of… how things went down. You know how tight he was with King.'
'Yeah. I keep meaning to check in on him,' Wayne said.
'Someone ought to. He up in his room all day.'
'He back with Big Momma?'
'Naw, he on his own.' Rhianna piled salad on her plate. 'He's just sort of… lost… without King.'
King's personal mission, Prez, had come far, too. He'd fallen into drugs, but King walked with him through his addiction to the other side. Addicts could always find one another, like they had a radar for that weakness.
Despite the familiar sickness in his stomach, Fathead still chased after his high. Though he remembered the first time he got high with crystal clarity — a memory driven home by the fact that he had sex for the first time while high — the rest of that summer he could barely recall. Not feeling whole, he doubted himself. But when he smoked marijuana, it was like aspirin for the soul and fixed the ache for a while. The shameful things he had to do to earn only gave him more of a reason to get that high. Shooting up was the next obvious progression. The first time he shot up, he shot his load straight into his muscle. It burned so badly, he didn't think he'd walk again. Luckily, he had internet access and taught himself how to properly shoot up. Setting up his rig, he located a vein on his wrist and got off. The high was perfection. Effortless. For the first time, he knew wholeness. All his hopes, dreams, and worries faded; fear no longer consumed him. Life suddenly worked. A few hours later, it was over and he was scared again. After that, it was a short trip to the land of an addict's broken promises and second/third/fourth chances: snorting crystals up his nose, drunk on Stoli, stoned on Ambien stolen from rehab, breaking into his parents' house, and writing checks to himself.
Fathead plopped down on the couch in what passed for a living room in the Outreach Inc house. He shifted without purpose, not quite knowing what to do with himself. His family didn't exactly sit around discussing the day's events with one another, so he withdrew from the dining room table, unsure what to do with himself. His hands found a pencil next to a notepad on the coffee table beside him. Without asking whose pad it was, he began to doodle his name on the pad. An ornate 'F' as if he sketched what a tag of his name might look like.
'Man, look at you. You about as uncomfortable as a fat man adjusting his thong.' Wayne walked over to him. 'Want me to hook up the games?'
'I don't even recognize that gaming system. This shit should be in a museum.' Fathead covered his mouth in a 'my bad' gesture for cussing.
'It's free. It's here. And your alternative is sitting on the couch staring at nothing.'
Their Nintendo 64 couldn't exactly compete with the latest game system, but it had been donated to the house, in that way rich folks gave away their 'old' things when they got the latest model. Part of him chided himself for being so constantly cynical. It wasn't as if he wasn't called to love the wealthy also, but somehow it was so much harder for him. He hated the waste, the excess, the sense of entitlement. Life was simple and was to be lived simply. Plus, he grew up with this game system, so he could beat any of the kids on the games.
Fathead picked out a hunting game that came with guns that plugged directly into the television. Spreading his legs shoulder-length apart, he relaxed his knees to squat low. He pulled his bandana up over his mouth and turned his gun sideways. He twisted his right and then left, popping the joints in his neck, then nodded to Wayne.
Wayne did a sly double-take, staring at the boy like he was a damn fool. 'Does the mask help?'
'I'm more into it.' Fathead raised the mask. 'You know they call me 'Wolf', right.'
'Thought they called you 'Fathead'.'
'That too. See, I used to raise timber wolves on my uncle's property. One day, when we were out hunting on his property — man must have a thousand acres — we found a litter. The mother had been shot dead. So we decided to raise the litter. Sold all of them but one off. My uncle decided to keep that one for himself. Probably how I got such a good sense of smell.'
'What do you mean?'
'This one time I was standing downtown on the circle, I turned to my friends and was like 'Dude, I can smell Noles from here. He's on his way.' Now Noles stay down on Washington and Lynhurst, and sure enough, two and a half hours later, he came walking up. I smelled him just as he was leaving the house.'
'You use the truth interesting ways.' Wayne hit start on the game.
During the course of the next hour, Fathead claimed to be a trained martial artist and having died and been brought back five times in one night. What Wayne had been able to glean from the endless stream of BS that flew out of his mouth was that Fathead sold weed and hung out with a rougher set than he intended, who attacked him a few times. And trouble always followed him.
Percy, hanging a few steps away from everyone else, hid on the couch. Where the spread of light from the lamps failed to blanket. He loved many of the people in this room, Rhianna, Wayne, and Esther especially, but he sat on the fringe of them as if an invisible wedge separated him. A recurring dream troubled him in ways he didn't understand and couldn't articulate. At first he thought about how his friends all seemed beset by disturbing dreams which set them on edge. But his dream came from a different place. The images stayed with him during the day. No one noticed his odd posture, shoulders pulled in, a large man tucking his body within itself if possible.
A ruined church, a place of hope reduced to a darkened chamber. Overturned pews and a broken altar, the hall lit by the suffuse light of dimming candles. A boy came in holding a white gun — a pearl-white hand grip, white shaft — on a velvet pillow. He passed in front of a fire. Two boys each carried stands of ten candles. A young girl, in his heart he wanted her to be Rhianna, came in holding a cup. The cup was pure gold inlaid with precious stones.
