Hairy Bromance Read online

  “No, Daddy, please…please don’t, Daddy,” he cried in a small plaintive voice. Barry sat up and leaned over to see his buddy’s face torn by painful torment. He brought up his hand and patted the huge curve of Glen’s brow. Eventually it smoothed and Glen lay silent.

  Looking at his friend like that got him thinking. He looked up at the stars and thought about how all things on earth cried out in the night, how each held their secret pain, even great hulking beasts that mark the earth with indiscriminate ease. He liked that. He thought he had something of a poem started. He was going over the verses he would write later that day when Glen spoke up.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Glen asked, looking up at the werewolf absently petting his head. Barry quickly removed his hand.

  “Nothing…I was…you were screaming out in your sleep,” Barry said.

  “What was I saying?”

  “You were crying out Daddy.”

  “No, I wasn’t.

  “Yes, you were.”

  “No, I wasn’t!”

  “Yes, you most certainly were.” Suddenly, a crow screamed out for them to shut up. They did.

  Chapter Two

  Sasquatch P.T.S.D.

  Barry Trudeau didn’t know if you could get poet’s block, but if you could, he had it. The month before he had sat under the glare of the full moon and stared at blank paper. The Depakote he took for bipolar disorder sucked the creative juices right out of him. Barry didn’t think he was bipolar, but he fit the profile and got the social security checks because of it. Finally, he threw the bottle in the trash and caution to the wind.

  It is difficult to write nature poetry under the full moon when your hands keep shifting into clawed paws and breaking the pens from which you’re expected inspired verse to spring. To make matters worse, the more he thought about nature the more he wanted to run around in it. Finally, he padded into his living room to lose himself in television viewing.

  The Caribou of Northern Canada looked mighty tasty on Animal Planet. He tried the news and decided that Cokie Roberts would make a fine meal. The right wing jerk on Fox News would not make a great meal, but Barry’s creative juices really got flowing thinking about what he would like to do to him. It took him fifteen minutes of meditation before he had hands again to let himself outside.

  Outside Barry heard the party that was taking place in his woods. Well, it was Barry’s and his friend’s Glen’s woods, technically. Glen was going to be pissed. With a wicked grin on his lupine face, Barry hurried up the wooded hillside to his friend’s cave.

  Glen lay sprawled and dreaming on the floor of his cave.

  “No…Daddy…don’,!” the Sasquatch pleaded in an eerily tiny voice. “Not this again,” Barry thought. It took a couple of kicks to rouse Glen.

  “What?” Glen groaned. “What the fuck, dude?”

  “You were doing it again.”

  “Doing what? What time is it, anyway?”

  “That daddy thing! It freaks me out. Listen,” Barry paused to slurp up saliva that dripped from his maw. “Those partygoers smell fantastic!” “There’s a party going on down where that jerk strip-cleared the woods. Let’s go crack some asses!”

  “That’s bust some asses, or crack heads, Barry. You shouldn’t try swearing. You aren’t good at it. Let them have their damn party.” Glen rolled his simian face over to the back of the cave.

  “You are definitely depressed, Glen. You should take something for it.”

  “Why, Barry? It’s pretty obvious you aren’t.”

  “I’m not depressed. I have bipolar disorder.”

  “You are a goddamned werewolf.”

  “Is there that big of a difference?” Barry asked.

  “No, I guess you have a point there,” Glen relented. “If I go and scare these teenagers away will you let me get some shut eye?” The Sasquatch rose on the knuckles of one hand and rubbed his face with the other.

  The two of them snuck up until they peered through the trees at the edge of the cleared strip.

  “There are women down there. You didn’t tell me there would be women!” Glen said.

  “Yeah, there are women. It’s a party.”

  “I…don’t think I can…I…” Glen sucked in his breath and grabbed his massive chest. “Ark, arg, ak!” he gargled and fell over with a crash.

  “Glen!” Barry instantly reverted to a naked human. He slapped Glen’s face. He slapped it. Glen did not move.

  “Help, somebody help!” Barry shouted. “We need a doctor!”

  A pale faced kid in a leather jacket appeared.

  “Whoa!” he said, blinking in surprise at Barry’s nudity. He looked down at Glen. His eyes widened. “What’s wrong with him? What did he take?”

  “He didn’t take anything. I mean, he drinks a lot of beer, more than he should. He just fell over and grabbed his chest!”

  “Guys,” the teenager yelled down the hill. “Get over here. We got to help this guy. His boyfriend’s had a heart attack!”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Glen yelled. “Heart attack? What do we do?”

  “Uh, CPR, I guess. Maybe one of the girls will know it.” Just at that moment the girls appeared. One of them had the sobriety to bring a flashlight. They shined it on Barry’s doughy mid-section and down to his genitals. Barry hunched over and covered himself with his hands.

  “What the fuck, Ollie?” one of the girls slurred. Then the flashlight beam lit upon the prone form of Glen. A lot of screaming commenced and the flashlight was thrown. It hit Barry in the shoulder. The screaming quickly trailed away.

  “Oh, shit,” Ollie, the leather-clad teen, said. “Girls, wait. Don’t go!” However, it was really too late for that. The girls would be out of the woods and quite possibly out of the state within the hour.

  “Hit him in the chest, I guess,” Ollie suggested. Barry hit Glen in the chest.

  “Now what?” Barry panted.

  “I think now you have to breathe for him or something.” Barry bent and tried to cover a part of Glen’s huge mouth with his own. He put his head to the side, gasped and then breathed hard.

  Glen’s eyes popped open. Barry flew through the air, beyond the tops of the trees and out of sight.

  * * * *

  When Barry limped back into the clearing, Glen was gone.

  “Are you all right?” Ollie asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. How’s…my friend?”

  “He seemed Okay. Said he would be up at his cave.” Barry looked down at his own now-hairy body and back up at the teenager.

  “Uh, how come you weren’t totally freaked out like those other kids?”

  “I’ve been around the block. I’ve seen some things in my day,” the kid said, took out a comb and ran it through his flawless hair.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Ollie Prince.”

  “Should I know you?” Barry felt like he should.

  “Do you remember that song: Doodle-boppin’ Girl? It goes—”

  “No, please, I remember. It got stuck in my head for six months once.”

  “I know, catchy beat, huh? That one was mine.”

  “When did you write it, when you were two years-old?”

  “What? You’re kidding me.” Ollie looked hurt. “You really can’t tell, can you? I’m a vampire. I don’t age.” Ollie bared tiny fangs and rolled his eyes around.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, really. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s all right. Many people don’t. I guess it’s for the best, really. I have never been able to master that eye glowing thing, anyways.”

  “So you’re stuck as a, what, sixteen year-old?” Barry asked.

  “Almost sixteen actually. It sucks. I thought it would be cool. People kept telling me that I had already peaked, that it was all downhill from here. I didn’t want the fun times to stop. I was an idiot. Now I just have to go from one small town to the next, find a group of girls that are on their way out of bars and do the whole ‘I’m the lost rock star
stuck in the lucky girl’s town’ shtick. Usually if they’re drunk enough they don’t notice that a lot of time has passed since I graced the Teen-bop posters on their walls.” He looked back down the hill.

  “This sucks. One of those girls was AB, I could smell it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Barry said. “Why don’t you come on up to the cave. Can you drink beer?”

  “Yes, Jesus. I’m old enough already.”

  “Right, sorry.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about your boyfriend?”

  “He’s my friend.” As they walked, Barry told Ollie about Glen and his recent volatile moods.

  “You know, your friend didn’t have a heart attack. Seemed more like a panic attack to me, classic P.T.S.D. When I was on tour, we had this one roadie. He was an Iraq war vet. He had the same symptoms.”

  “Why’s there a vampire outside my cave?” Glen asked from the cave when they arrived.

  “He’s a friend. He’s smart, too,” Barry said. “I think you should hear what he has to say.”

  “I don’t want to hear what anyone has to say. I just had a heart attack.”

  “You didn’t have a heart attack. If you come out and have a few brewskies, I’ll…buy you a subscription to the X-men.”

  “Take me to Comic-con,” Glen returned.

  “I’m not taking you to Comic-con! Can you imagine?”

  “I’ve seen pictures. You guys would fit right in,” Ollie whispered. Barry hissed at him.

  “Fine, I want both Uncanny X-men and plain old X-men.”

  “Deal,” Barry sighed. “Now, get out here.”

  * * * *

  “Now, posttraumatic stress disorder is usually caused by something horrible happening, right?” Barry finished off his beer. “Like abuse…maybe from a father?”

  “Jesus, Barry, let it go already,” Glen growled.

  “Hey, big guy look here!” Ollie snapped his fingers. Glen twisted his hairy head and was ensnared by the paltry pink emanating from Ollie’s eyeballs.

  “Relax,” Ollie commanded. “We are going back to your past, to the event that is bothering you so badly. You will be able to see everything, but it can’t hurt you. You will describe everything you see.”

  “Daddy has brought back a lady to the cave today,” Glen said in a tiny voice. Barry snorted. Ollie pointed a pale finger at Barry.

  “Describe the lady, Glen,” Ollie prompted.

  “She has nice hair and nice big boobs. She has the prettiest muumuu you ever saw.”

  “Do you touch the muumuu?” Ollie asked.

  “Yeah…I touched…the muumuu. The lady doesn’t like that. She says I’m a dirty nasty ape boy. Then she burns me with her cigarette.”

  “Poor boy,” Barry said.

  “Shut up, Barry,” Glen said automatically. “Hey, why is Barry here?”

  “Barry is…uh…Barry is just there to make sure you don’t get hurt.” Ollie winced, unsure if it would work. Glen nodded his head sagely. “Tell us what happens next.”

  “Daddy comes back. He’s angry. He knocks me down. He kicks me in the chest. I try to fight back and then he’s carrying me out of the cave. He throws me down the hill.” Tears spilled out of Glen’s eyes. “No, Daddy, don’t. Don’t!”

  “What is Daddy doing?” Ollie asked.

  “Daddy is pissing on me. No! Daddy, you mustn’t!” Glen is screaming now.

  “You should stop him, Ollie. I’m serious,” Barry said. Ollie blinked his eyes. Glen collapsed against his favorite drinking boulder. He shuddered and wiped a huge hairy hand across his face.

  “What the fuck, guys?” the Sasquatch asked.

  “Man, I can’t believe your Dad pissed on you,” Barry said.

  “Shut up, Barry,” Glen said.

  “It’s a common rite of passage among the Sasquatch,” Ollie said.

  “How do you know all this stuff? Your just a—” Ollie gave Barry a pink glare. “Well, it wasn’t a rite of passage, it was an exile. It was wrong. Your father shouldn’t have done that to you.”

  “Yeah, whipped-de-do, tell me another one,” Glen said miserably over his third beer.

  “Yeah, well, we’re going to do something about this. This will not stand!” Barry pronounced.

  * * * *

  “You are totally taking me to Comic Con,” Glen said from where the back seat of Barry’s car used to be. He threw his eighth empty beer can out the window onto Interstate 91 north.

  “Don’t do that,” Barry said. “You’ll get us picked up.”

  “Then we won’t have to stop for snacks later. Relax,” Glen slurred. “Where’s the little vampire boy staying?”

  “I told him he could stay at my place while he gets on his feet,” Barry said.

  “Man, you are so dumb sometimes.”

  “He promised he wouldn’t have more than a couple people over when we’re gone,” Barry shrugged.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this, you know. My dad is a total asshole.”

  “No, you need to do this. I saw it on Doctor Phil. When you suffer trauma like this you need to confront the source of your pain. It’s empowering.”

  “Hey, pull over, I’ve got an empowering need to piss, man,” Glen said.

  “I’m not pulling over! You’ll just get out and run off as soon as I stop.”

  “Well…I actually hadn’t thought of that, but now that you mention it…”

  “You’ll just have to go in the empty thermos in the back.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, seriously, my Dad made us do that all the time when we were on long trips.”

  “It sounds like we should go to see your Dad. Do you want to talk about it?” Glen added in a mocking falsetto.

  “Just piss in the thermos.” Glen pissed in the thermos, but soon shouted that he was going to overflow it. Barry cussed and dumped the contents of his Deep-chug coffee mug out the window. Glen filled it, too.

  “Just make sure that the cover goes back on tight,” Barry instructed.

  * * * *

  At the base of the mountain on which Glen spent his tender years, the friends did not find a disused logging trail leading through thick wood. Instead, they found a modern ranch house with a manicured lawn, complete with pink flamingos.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Glen snorted.

  “Just stay in the car. I’ll go find out if anybody knows anything about your dad. Henry, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s the bastard’s name,” Glen said from around his tenth beer. Barry walked over to the biggest door he had ever seen on a ranch house. The house hadn’t looked quite so big from car. He wondered if it was a trick of the landscaping.

  A plump middle-aged woman with a dye job stood with her head peaking just over the middle frame of the enormous screen door.

  “Yes, can I help you?”

  “Yes, actually, I was wondering if you knew the whereabouts of a Mister Henry Trucksmasher.” The busty matron opened the door and a herd of corgis spilled out sniffing and yipping. One of them squatted and peed on Barry’s shoe.

  “Yes, I’m Mrs. Trucksmasher, actually. Hankie is just in watching his programs—” Her eyes went to the car and widened. Barry looked back to see that the entire car was shaking back and forth as Glen tried to extract his ass from the back door.

  “Stay right here,” she commanded and disappeared around a refrigerator. When she returned, she wielded a 30.06 hunting rifle. Barry sprouted hair and teeth reflexively.

  “Put the gun away, ma’am,” Barry growled.

  “No way in hell. I am sick to death of all these big hairy bastards coming over to rip up my lawn and challenge my Hankie to a rite of challenge! You can kiss my ass if you think I’m not willing to put the two of you in the ground right now. And don’t think I can’t. This baby’s packing silver bullets. I’ve dealt with all kinds of scum like you in my day. I used to waitress in a truck stop!” she brought the gun to bear. Barry raised his hands lamely, his heart thudding in
his chest.

  “Hey, bitch,” Glen roared from behind Barry. “I wouldn’t keep pointing that thing at my buddy, or I’m going to start popping the heads off these little annoying dogs! It’s your choice.” Barry looked back to see his friend holding two of the little dogs up by the neck.

  “Hankie! Hankie, get out here! Your evil son is back and he’s going to kill Lulabelle and Gracie!” There was a grunt from inside and the background sound from a television stopped. Great sounds of footsteps shook the house. Barry backed away to stand beside Glen.

  The ugliest simian face Barry had ever seen stood in the doorway and surveyed the front yard from behind thick army-issue glasses. He had a considerable gut underneath his enormous blue-collared shirt. He wore khaki pants and suspenders. The only hair on the Sasquatch’s head was a militant crew cut.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Glen said again.

  “You go inside and check the laundry, Brenda. I’ll make sure nothing happens to those dogs of yours,” Hankie Trucksmasher said. He stepped out onto the lawn, and lifted enormous hands up in a gesture of appeasement. The two giants faced one another.

  “Hello, son,” Hankie said finally.

  “Hello?” Glen said.

  “Are you going to put those dogs down, so an old man can give his son a hug?” Glen dropped the dogs. They limped hurriedly away from the visitors. Glen’s mouth fell open. Hankie stepped forward and lifted his hairy son up off the ground in a bear hug. Barry raised a clawed finger in confusion.

  “How goes life, Glenwood?” Hankie asked.

  “Glenwood?” Barry asked.

  “Look,” Hankie continued without waiting for his son’s response. “I know why you’re here. You’re angry, and you have every right to be. I want you to know that I am a different kind of person now. I’m deeply sorry for what I’ve done to you. I can only hope we can move past this block in our relationship—”

  “Hankie!” Brenda screamed from behind the screen door, rifle in hand. “You have to the count of ten to get those hooligans off the lawn, or I’ll shoot through you. You also promised to fix the water heater before my evening soak.”

  “Yes, dear,” Hankie said. He took Glen and Barry by the arms. “Well, boys, I’m sure you have lots to do and people to see. I am mighty glad you stopped by…”