Troy Weaver - Witchita Stories

My parents took me to the Renaissance Festival when I was ten. It was my first one. I’d heard good things from kids in my class. They were right. Everything intrigued me — the knights, the wenches, the guy locked in the stockade, being punished for a misdeed, and even all the weird hippies selling incense and soaps at their makeshift booths. But what really stuck with me, what put a cramp in my side, were the skinheads. At that point in my life, I didn’t know what these people were all about. All I knew is they didn’t have anything to do with the Renaissance Festival — no, they were more WWII than anything. I’d seen those symbols on the History Channel. When we walked past them, I could feel the sickly power of all those twisted crosses in the manic pacing of my heart beat, and I wondered about the words in the pamphlets they were passing out, and whether or not the tattoos covering their arms and necks and legs had been worth the pain. A pit formed in my stomach, a metallic taste in my mouth, but I didn’t really feel bad — just different, strange, slightly molested by their presence. They looked mean as fuck, like they would just crackle your teeth for smiling, or knock you over into the mud — then beat the shit out of you for being a “nigger.” They were handing out pamphlets filled with hate speech, I’m sure, recruitment ads. There were like twenty to thirty of them, men and women and children. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. They were ruining my day. The fear was palpable — you could snatch it from the air. Why? I’m blonde, have hazel eyes and white skin. My dad told me to pay no mind. They’re just a bunch of ignorant, misguided kids who probably never had anybody around to care for them when they were growing up. It was true, sometimes my dad spits it just right, so that I can go on and feel all right about the world he gave me. Then again, I’d heard him say racial slurs more than once in my life, so who exactly was he in this big, complex picture? Just because you keep it hidden doesn’t mean it isn’t right there inside you — a vast stain on your heart.

I wanted to be a cowboy and an Indian — I wanted to be anything with a weapon that went bang or fffwap or kaboom in my hands. I wanted to shoot a missile through the space between the hot June sky and the sinking sun. I’d sing cowboy songs to the dense air, dreaming of astronauts, wondering what time I’d wake up in the morning to go fishing with my friends. I wanted more than anything to feel connected to history, to feel connected to the world. I wondered about the buffalos that roamed these plains before they became cities. I envisioned carcasses for miles and miles, burning skinless in the sun forever, maggots asleep in the tragedy of their wounds. I wondered if someday some non-human would wonder about the people who had lived in these cities, way back in the day, before they became ruin-strewn tourist attractions replete with landing pads for alien spaceships.

Another summer, or maybe the same summer, I’m eleven and hanging out with my brother and this kid we go to church with. We are at the neighborhood park, swinging, shooting hoops, dicking around on the seesaw, and then, out of nowhere, my brother has this little baggy out of his pocket and he’s asking this kid we go to church with if he wants any. The bag is filled with these tiny yellowish crystals. The kid says: What is it? And my brother, he must sense some amount of uncoolness in the kid, because he just shrugs, says: Oh, nothing, just some candy , and puts the baggy back into his pocket. We shoot hoops for a while. Then my brother stops and points his finger at my best friend’s house. He says: You want to go into that house with us? The kid is hesitant to answer. His face is like what? and his hands and feet are nervous. What? My brother shrugs. It’s no biggie, they’re friends. They just happen to be out of town this weekend. But the kid makes this silly hand motion and says: Oh, no, no, I can’t do that. Actually, I’m late. I’ve got to go and he leaves, just like that, and me and my brother, we go home, not saying another thing about it.

Later that night, my brother wakes me. He says: We’re doing it? And I say: What the — what? And he says: We’re going into the house. Come on, get dressed. I hesitate, but only for a minute.

When we get there, we spend a few minutes figuring out the best form of entry. We check the doors but they’re all locked. All the windows are locked, too, except for the storm window, which my brother pushes in with his fist. He snakes down into the dark without a word. Objects crash around him — pictures, trophies, trinkets, and I whisper down: You okay? And he says: Yeah, I’m fine. Come on, I’ll let you in through the back door.

The sliding glass door at the back of the house opens. I’m inside. We start in the kitchen, snooping through the cupboards. Find a bottle of vodka tucked behind some crackers. My brother fills a glass, no mixer, and drinks down about a third of it, and then asks if I want any, but I shake my head, nah. We make our way up the stairs, looking through all of their stuff along the way. Exhilarated, my heart races faster and faster, but I feel dirty, too, so much muck of confusion making its slow drive into me.

My best friend’s parent’s bedroom is a goldmine we’re not expecting. While looking through the dresser drawer we come across a Penthouse. Claudia Schiffer’s in it, showing her stuff — tits, legs, ass, all of it out and on display. I try to play off my excitement but can feel the heat in my face, the blood rushing. In another drawer, a video cassette in oversized packaging (a porno), and a couple of rubber penises — my brother calls them dildos . I pull them out and look them over. One of them is about ten inches long. At the base there’s a place to put the batteries. I turn them over in my hands, imagining my best friend’s mother putting them inside her. I feel slightly sick, slightly turned on, slightly embarrassed. Suddenly, I want to leave. I feel wrong being there. My brother has the porno going on the large screen TV, watching with vague interest while drinking his liquor. I say, Hey, I want to go. I’m getting tired. And he says, Okay, we’ll go, just give me a minute, and he closes the door.

I go into my best friend’s bedroom and lay down on his bed. I close my eyes. I wait. I start counting sheep to alleviate the boredom — not really sheep, just aloud to myself in the dark. I open my eyes, I close them, I open them, and I wait. I count. I wonder what could possibly be taking so long. I count some more. I think about Claudia Schiffer’s perfect boobs, stop thinking about them, start again, stop again, decide to lay on my stomach so I don’t start jacking off on instinct in my best friend’s bed. Laying on your boner isn’t exactly comfortable. I’m starting to think we’ll get into trouble — that someone will find out what we’ve done, that maybe we will end up in a jail for kids somewhere off in the sticks. I’m grinding my teeth, eyes closed, face down, reaching for a thought that will make me feel just the slightest bit cleaner inside, when I hear my brother walking through the hallway, calling my name, signaling departure. And to this day, when someone says my name, I feel this unnamable force surround me. It comes on at the back of my neck, then full on, cold and familiar, and tugs at me, trying to pull me away from one place and set me down in another.