Troy Weaver - Witchita Stories

I never meant to hurt anybody. I just wanted to snag me an Apache. I was ten. We were just playing, that’s all — games don’t hurt anybody. We were playing cowboys and Indians. When you want to trick the enemy, you have to outsmart them, be one step ahead. My brother and I were at the treehouse we’d built, on the outskirts of our neighborhood, shooting sticks into the trees. We were the only ones that ever went there, aside from a straggler or two every once in a blue moon.

That day I chose to be a cowboy. We fought invisible Apaches in the woods. We ran all over the place, panting and sweating, shooting down our foes. But even when you’re young, you eventually tire of the hunt. We rested against a tree trunk, catching our breath, devising a plan. Then we did it. Right before we left, we nailed three seven-inch nails through a two-by-four and hid it under some leaves. Right above that, there was a branch. We figured rope would be something the Indians would find useful, so we tied a piece of rope from this branch right above the nails, but it was just out of reach. So if an Apache wanted it, he would have to jump to grab it — three upturned nails awaiting his foot on landing. We didn’t think anything of it. It was just a game. But it didn’t even take two whole days before somebody actually got hurt. It was my brother’s friend’s older sister. She was probably out there smoking pot with some friends. Apparently she wanted the rope. Maybe it annoyed her seeing it hang there like that. All three nails entered the bottom or her foot and came out the top when she landed, rope in hand. Probably hurt like hell. I hope the rope was worth it. I felt really terrible when I found out about it. But nobody suspected a thing, so I kept my mouth shut. Even now, all these years later, I wish I could say something. Maybe I’m saying it now. In the off chance you’re still out there, please forgive me. I never meant to hurt anybody.

This girl who was my brother’s age, I was best friends with her little brother, so I was over at their house quite a lot — swimming, playing video games, watching TV, or, more often than not, waiting for some kind of drama to unfold. They had a pool in their backyard. I liked looking at his sister when she donned a bathing suit in the summers. But it was winter and school was back in session. She didn’t like school. I was over one day, my bare feet comfy and padded atop sea foam green carpet. I thought she was an oracle of some kind because she was always messing with Ouija boards and crystals. She wore darker eyeliner than most girls, smudges of it, and listened to Marilyn Manson and Ministry. She had a baggy black shirt on, which swallowed her form. When we heard what she was planning to do to herself to get out of going to school, my friend and I and their brother, the middle child, gathered around her and watched. She took a normal claw hammer from her purse. Then she lit some incense, biding time. After a minute or two she pressed her palm flat to the floor, making an angle of her arm, and started pounding on her forearm with the hammer. She was getting it pretty good, too. Thud, thud, thud. She had candles burning. Vanilla. We watched her with interest and admiration, but deep down we felt sick too, it was written on our faces. This girl needs help , I thought. This is so messed up. Just when I thought I couldn’t watch anymore, she gave up. She couldn’t break it, not even close, her bones were too strong. And it was all for nothing because her parents made her go to school anyway, with eight inches of purples and blues up and down her left arm, and thick globs of mascara making her eyes look as though they’d been left out in the sun too long.

I jumped off a bridge once. The girl I’d loved for the last two years was there. We were hanging out around Cow Skin Creek, smoking cigarettes, skipping stones over the water, talking shit on the influx of jocks at the middle school. I jumped into the water on a whim, treaded heavily with shoes and jeans on, and hoped she would fall in love with me for doing so. But her eyes, they just looked the same, dull and dead inside.

Maybe that’s why I loved her so much. I felt the same way. Empty.

When we were walking back up over the bridge to go home for dinner, that’s when I did it. I jumped up onto the rail without a thought, and did a front flip, letting my body fall twenty feet. I over-rotated though. Water feels like cement when you’re coming at it from that kind of height, at that kind of velocity. Knocked the wind clean out of my chest, and my face felt all puffy with blood, and my nose, water shot up it like you wouldn’t believe, felt like it was sloshing around inside my brain. But even still, approaching her back on top of the bridge, all I could do was smile. I wanted her to love me like I loved her, which was foolishly, selfishly, unhealthily. I wanted to consume her, and wanted to be consumed by her. Even though we believed we felt things more deeply than most, we were both consumed by our mutual distrust of emotions. We didn’t know shit, but we felt everything, even the static sound of the wind vibrating through our bones. It was too intense to feel. We hated it. And so we shielded ourselves with masks. She did her drugs and I drank. And when we got used to being numb, hiding behind our layers, the desire to feel again became a hunger. So she started searching for love in backseats in random cars and sloppy beds, and I burned myself with cigarettes and smoldering incense sticks, telling myself that love feels exactly the same as pain, only slightly better, only slightly more real.

My dad used to drink cough syrup like it was going out of style. He was doing that shit way before Lil Wayne even materialized as a sperm. He’d sit at the table and drink half a bottle straight down and smoke cigarettes in a daze. One night he got so looped he was out of his mind. He kept telling my sister to massage his brain. Please, he’d say. Massage my brain. Massage my medulla oblongata. And so she went along with it. She started rubbing her hands through his hair vigorously, giggling. And then he started saying shit like: You are massaging my brain. You are massaging my medulla oblongata, in this weird, loud, trembling vibrato. This went on for like two hours. It was better than watching a movie. I sat on the couch, and watched, laughing until I could no longer breathe. My lungs hurt so bad I thought I’d spit blood. Then he told her to stop. So she stopped for a minute, and he looked up at her from his chair and said: I need to sit down. My ass needs to sit down. She laughed. Dad, you are already sitting. Don’t lie to me , he said. Get me a chair. I need to sit my ass down.

When I was in second grade I drew a pentagram on the chalkboard during indoor recess and told my friend to check it out. What is it? he said. And I said, I don’t know, but if you turn it upside down, it’s the sign of the devil — at least that’s what my brother told me. The next day an angry parent showed up to confront me, and I got pulled out into the hall to explain myself. My teacher said: Troy, Troy, Troy… Where on earth did you learn about this stuff? I started crying. It was a joke, I told them. I don’t know what the sign of Satan looks like. I just made it up. I thought I could get away with it. But I didn’t. They took me back into the classroom and made me draw the symbol for them. I did. I should have made something up. I always had a problem with telling the truth. I always told the truth, even if a lie could get me out of trouble, which was not very bright on my end of things. Well, my teacher told me, for making up a symbol you did a pretty accurate job. I didn’t get in any trouble, but I was never allowed to hang out with my friend again. And a few months later, he started calling me names and shaming other kids into not liking me. He told people that I worshiped the devil, did human sacrifices, and drank goat’s blood. I didn’t worship the devil. I didn’t worship anything. I just wanted to be a kid who wasn’t alone in the world. But that day I learned an important lesson. Sharing: it’s the fastest assurer for your future loneliness.