Waxy Maxy

by M.O. Walsh

 

He lit her face on fire. He thought he was in love. Maxy!

We eat two biscuits each on the weekend, my friend Waxy Maxy and me. Waxy Maxy is from the carnival that broke down here. He has a big dumb face that makes him look half surprised at everything. You can say Waxy! Girls think you are an ape! and he looks the same as anything else. Or Maxy! You are not supposed to put that there! and it is the same thing. He is not retarded though, I don’t think, just big and stupid. My dad says people used to pay money to see him because people pay money for anything. He is large.

He is different. Don’t forget about the time Maxy shot his thumb off. He thought the gun was a novelty lighter! Maxy was trying to burn off his thumbnail! Waxy Maxy likes fire, you can say that for sure. He brings me out into the woods to this place he calls Hell-town, Casey! A burn down place!

Casey is my first name, but I’m a guy. Write that down. It’s supposed to be a guy’s name, really. Hippies screwed it up, that’s what my father says.

Hell-town isn’t much. Maybe half an acre burnt black. The grass is gone, and the trees are big ashy sticks. They lean over like one good karate chop could break them into dust, but I kicked one once and it snapped my ankle. Waxy laughed at me. I had a cast for two weeks! Maxy laughs a lot. Casey got a hurt foot! he said. I have two feet!

Squirrels skeletons, burned out TVs, and hairless Barbie dolls make up Maxy’s Hell-Town. The ground crunches like charcoal when you walk it. I’ve seen three burnt up bicycles out there because Maxy is always wanting a bike. He steals them from kids in my neighborhood until my Dad chases him away. I don’t know where Maxy lives at night. My dad acts like all carnies are homeless people, but I imagine most bums to be skinny. And Maxy is huge, like I said, and stronger than a gorilla. And when he sees the two-wheelers he goes crazy.

You’ll hit a tree! we always tell him.

But still he knocks a kid like Chip Bickney off his bike. Chip cries. He is small, eight years old maybe, and he wears a helmet all the time. Maxy plays it like a drum. Then he steals Chip’s bike and rides it into a tree.

It is hard to hurt Waxy Maxy’s body. My dad says this was his big draw. He punches himself in the face when he gets hungry. He pulls out his hair when he has to go number two. They say they called him Waxy Maxy because his face is like plaxy. I don’t know what that means. Maybe he is slow, I don’t know. He is thick.

He is my friend. His lips are all puffed out and his head is as big as football. I’m just trying to describe him for you. Lisa Trendle called him Cabbage Head and so Waxy Maxy killed her dog. I think it was a poodle. Lisa still believes it’s missing and her family puts up signs all over the place. There is a b ig reward out for Pippers.

Maxy told me how he killed it and you don’t even want to know. Pippers is just a skeleton now, all burned out in Hell-Town. The bones looked like toothpicks spilled from their box. You have to be smart to get away with stuff like that, I think. Waxy Maxy gets away with everything. At least he used to. Maybe that was his problem.

Jeenie Deecie is our friend, too. Isn’t that what all this is about? My father says she is a bleeding heart. She picks up stray puppies no matter what. They are sometimes not even lost. She just takes them home regardless. It is always Jeenie who does this. If you come home to a missing dog you call 546-1987. That is the Deecies’ number.

She carries her shoes in her hand, Jeenie Deecie.

A few days ago, I told Waxy Maxy about kissing. That is probably how all this got started. He is older than me, maybe a lot, who knows. But when I told him about this he went crazy, like he had never even heard of love before. He asked me who I kissed and I told him Jeenie Deecie. This may have been a lie, but she is all I think about kissing.

Then Maxy asked me how to spell Jeenie’s name and I told him. He started to bang on the gas cans of Hell-Town. He went nuts, like I said, about this kissing. He smooched up his hand and gave it tongue. He called it JeeJeeDeeZee! and went on like this until the skin was raw. But the next day it had a bandage, so I’m thinking that he must live with someone!

When he is alone, Waxy Maxy walks the fences by my school until I’m done at three o’clock. Then we eat here at Waffle House a lot, sausage biscuits. They don’t charge Maxy ever.

Jeenie Deecie has one pig tail, or is it a pony? It sticks out to the side of her head. She wears blue shorts underneath her jumper at school and has glasses. She also has a scar on her shin that looks like caterpillars. I wrote her a note during Civics class and she wrote me a love poem back. I still remember the words of it.

Casey Spacey

I thought you liked Tracy Hudgins

She is mean

To dogs.

They are soft when I pick them up

You are soft too

Maybe. I guess.

Do you like to pick up dogs?

When they are soft?

I keep her poem in my pocket and read it. We will get married probably, after her face is healed. After she forgives me for Maxy.

She came with us on Wednesday, which I guess is still today. These are the days when she plays trumpet at school. She carries her horn in a big and black case and it knocks against her knees when she’s skipping.

Maxy took us to Hell-Town. It was Jeenie’s first time to see it. She asked us where the birds went. She asked us where they lived now.

In the middle of Hell-Town, Maxy stacked wood. He did it in a pattern. A lot of the wood was like tree trunks, I mean, Waxy Maxy is strong! When he was done with the wood he pointed at it. He clapped his hands like a seal.

Maxy had spelled Jeenie’s name out with logs. It said GGDZ. He was excited. Then he emptied the gas cans on top of it, and set all the wood words on fire. But when Waxy Maxy does things, some people don’t know how to act.

Waxy Maxy is sugar! I heard. He is a million soft dogs in my yard!

That’s what Jeenie Deecie was screaming, she was always being so nice. She jumped on his back like a monkey. She kissed at his basketball head. I was laughing so hard that it hurt me. And that’s when the whole thing turned bad.

Maxy squeezed Jeenie’s head in his hand, and then he kissed her not like I taught him. I mean he licked her like a giraffe at the zoo!

So I punched Maxy twice in the stomach. I said Maxy, you have to let go!

But Waxy Maxy is a tree.

He beat me up there on the charcoal, and never let go of her hair. Then Maxy put Jeenie’s face in the fire, but that part you already know.

Jeenie lit up like a match stick, newly struck on the top part. Then she ran out of the woods and Waxy Maxy started crying. Waxy Maxy started wailing! He said something over and over, but I was really too beat up to listen. It’s hard to breathe with blood in your nose, and the skin on your face wet as jelly, but still I ran all the way home.

My father was sitting there at the table. He told me the Deecies had called him. He told me my name had been mentioned.

Now this part of the story I can tell right, because I remember the words as he said them.

I heard about the retard, he said. I guess that trumps it. Now you are grown up forever.

At this point I couldn’t stop crying, but my father didn’t tell me stop.

Instead he put his stupid pistol on the table. Waxy Maxy just needs to learn, he said, about living on nothing from women. And you should learn it too, he told me, Pain is the food that they feed on. Then he put his hand on my shoulder and I put the big gun in my belt. Because I didn’t tell you what else my father said, about Jeenie’s new burnt up face. He told me that burns were so painful, she had no more reasons to smile. He told me I had to remember that she would never be pretty again. He told me to think about it this way; the last thing her face felt was his tongue. So when I left from the house after that I was angry, and I covered the gun with my shirt.

I went all the way back out to Hell-Town. That was probably around six o’clock. Where’s Cabbage Head in the forest? I yelled. Where’s the monster that lives

in the trees?

I said all sorts of things like this screaming, but Maxy wasn’t there to be found.

Instead, I saw the big and black case for Jeenie’s trumpet and I knelt down to open it up. The smoke was still thick from her log name, I remember, and the heat was crackling the wood. Still, she might want her horn back for practice, I thought, before I remembered her gone away face.

So I took the mouthpiece off the trumpet and held it. It was silver with green on the tube part. I pressed my lips up against it, I kind of gave it a kiss, and then I put the cold thing in my pocket. The rest of her trumpet smelled like oil, so I threw it on top of the coals.

I started thinking that maybe a dog might make Jeenie feel better, so I laid Pippers to rest in her case. Then I wrote her a love poem with charcoal, right on the back of her first one. It only took me a second. I hope that she likes what I wrote her. I hope she will be able to read.

Hi

This is Casey

I never did like Tracy Hudgins

I picked up this dog like you said

Now I’ve got a gun.

My Dad tells me not to be soft

But I won’t shoot at you Jeenie, ever.

Even if you can’t pick up dogs anymore

That are soft.

I want her poem back when she’s done reading mine. I tried to write that down at the bottom. The charcoal was thick though and smudgy, and made it hard to write words really small.

So then I ran all the way down to the Deecies’ and some of you cops were there parked in her driveway. Others were parked on the lawn. I saw people in the house that were crying, and all these police talking into their radios. So I left the black case by the mailbox, and took off down the road to find Maxy.

When I finally found him he was lonesome, and walking the dark fences at school. I tried not to let that bother me, though, because he needed to know how I felt. So I ran at Maxy fast and was yelling. You are the one who is sorry! I told him.

But Maxy just kept saying my name.

So I put the big gun to his forehead, and for this I had to stand on my tip-toes. My Dad says you have to learn about women! I yelled. How you can’t put their face in a fire! Especially not Jeenie Deecie’s!

Then I waited for Maxy to hit me, to beat me all over again. But Waxy Maxy just stood there, so I pulled the trigger instead. The gun went off like a cannon and Maxy looked halfway surprised. His scalp flipped up like a trash lid, and then I watched it just fall right back down.

It is hard to hurt Maxy’s body, no one can argue with that. Maybe his head is made different. Maybe I shot the gun wrong. But the blood down his eyes was like goggles, and it ran from a crack in his skull. He started punching himself in the face.

Casey and me eat two biscuits! he said, and so I knew Waxy Maxy was hungry.

Then we walked all the way down here to the Waffle House, and I couldn’t stop thinking of Jeenie, how the gun I just shot would have killed her, how she was even much smaller than me.

We sat our usual table, right over there, and the last thing I asked him was about Jeenie, about what it must have felt like to kiss her. But Maxy just wouldn’t be normal! He kept on repeating her name. He took off his shirt for no reason. He stabbed at his chest with the salt! Then he vomited up on the table, and it spilled off the edge to his pants.

It wasn’t Maxy that did that! he said, but people were starting to wonder.

What is the matter with Maxy? a waitress asked me, and that’s when you pulled into the parking lot.

All these people stood up from there tables. They shouted at you like a pep squad.

He’s in here! they said. Officer, take him away!

It was really mean the way they yelled that, too, like they’d been waiting their whole lives to say it. But just look at him there in your cop car, Officer, banging his head on the glass. He is harmless. Write that down. We are innocent.

We just don’t understand about love is our problem.

We are trying to figure it out.