Free Helmet Head by Mike Baron Page A

Despite his predilection to shoot animals, Josh was a good friend, kind and generous. His size disturbed him but he couldn’t control himself. He ate like a starving dog. Saturday night’s they’d cruise to the Dog & Suds on Main Street and park in the shadows to watch the cool kids flirt, blurt, roll and testify. Fagan usually got the meal from the pick-up window as he was less likely to attract attention.
    “Hey there’s Faggot with his friend Big Pussy!”
    “Hey Faggot! How you two love birds doin’?”
    Fagan often wondered why they subjected themselves to that ordeal. He was aggressively, obsessively heterosexual but like most boys his age didn’t have the slightest idea how to score a girl. Silently acknowledging each other’s hopes and longings, Fagan and Josh never discussed girls except to express their disgust when someone they liked started dating someone they didn’t.
    Fagan kept his peeper phase to himself. Staring through blinds, saving the images up for when he was home alone in his basement lair. With the monster models and torture devices.
    The Rabbi wouldn’t permit video games in the house but Josh had plenty. He loved Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty . He’d sit in front of his computer for hours blasting away with remarkable accuracy. He was the only person Fagan knew who trained for video games on real firearms.
    They ate together in the school cafeteria. Once a week the school served hot dogs. When this happened, the muscled and mulleted Myron McDonald, a thug who fancied himself a wit, would lay in wait for Josh, swoop down unexpectedly, pluck the hot dogs from Josh’s plate and stuff them into his face like a wood chipper. All the time smacking his lips and spraying spittle.
    One day Josh took a glass tube from chemistry class and inserted it into one of his hot dogs. The look of shock on Myron’s face was like the sun rising over the Pacific. From Vietnam, obviously. After consultation with Josh’s student adviser, students and parents (Mr. Peterson was, after all, a veteran), it was decided that Josh would be suspended for a week.
    McDonald was a well-known troublemaker tolerated for his athletic prowess. The principal talked McDonald’s parents out of pressing charges, pointing to the fact that Myron himself was open to numerous bullying charges. Young Fagan had volunteered to detail numerous instances of anti-Semitic behavior and of course the school system could not tolerate that.
    Josh returned to class in October. For Halloween, Josh and Fagan planned to dress as a mad scientist and deranged assistant. Josh was the idea man. Josh called the shots. He would be the mad scientist although they both knew that in reality, that is, in the fictionalized reality of horror movies, it would be the little guy Fagan playing the mad scientist and Josh the hulking assistant with one finger up his nose.
    Josh procured an outsized white lab coat with a hacksaw sticking out of one pocket. He greased his hair into a huge pomp like a wave about to break and wore thick glasses with adhesive tape around the bridge. He lovingly splattered the lab coat with red paint. He carried a black leather satchel which contained a six-pack of Coors and a couple of joints.
    Fagan wore an OshKosh B’Gosh coverall, had made his face up with putty and fake blood to expose scavenged canines, fake stitches and carried a garden spade over his shoulder.
    They weren’t trick or treating. They were too old for that.
    They weren’t going to any parties. They hadn’t been invited.
    They were just going to cruise Main Street and enjoy the scene.
    They arrived at the Dog & Suds at eight-thirty and the streets were chock-a-block with trick-or-treaters from the very young, ferried from house to house by their parents, to teenagers with backpacks full of soap and toilet paper. Josh parked his car at the back end of the lot out of the lights and in the shade of a molting locust tree.
    Fagan waited in line behind Freddie