The Scream
by Cindy McKay

When I was a kid I lived on a block in the suburbs that boasted 45 kids ranging in age from 2 to 18. Our street was called Catskill, and for good reason: it was a cliff-like drop from Brownsville Road down to our block where the cobblestones leveled out before a second drop that led to the Hollow, a dark wooded area where you could ride your bike through the creek, do battle with tree branch swords and catch salamanders in glass jars. This was the ‘60s, before screens, before cable. We knew how to play back then.

We hung out all day in the alley—a shady, sloping stretch of crumbling macadam filled with potholes, bordered on one side by Mr. Templeton’s backyard, on the other by a Mom and Pop store in a cinder block structure about the size of a one-car garage, where you could get penny candy in little brown paper bags. We played pickup games of wiffle ball, Red Rover and Cannot Cross the Delaware, stopping only for lunch, or if the ball went into the Templeton’s yard, where we’d been warned to keep out.

Gather that many kids together on a humid summer day and put bats in their hands, and you’re just asking for drama: squabbles, tears, allegiances, betrayals, we had it all. Charlene Becker kept us in stitches. The Skacells and the Walters—three of each—were our own Brady Bunch; Larry Staley, our own Bobby Sherman. I was one of the youngest; shy, insecure. I understood my place in the presence of Others, would circle the older kids’ bravado, quietly watch, listen and take notes on the intricate conflicts playing out before me; then I would jump on my horse to ride in and save the day—in my head, of course. I was writing my way through the knots even then.

When Billy Fluger moved to the neighborhood, we were leery. He and his older sister Margie weren’t like the rest of us—for one thing, they only had one parent, Mr. Fluger, who mysteriously came and went in a rusted-out black pickup truck. No one knew what had happened to Mrs. Fluger, but the words “run off” were whispered around the block. We were afraid to ask. Their house was dingy; they didn’t plant flowers or put up Christmas lights. Margie was tall and pushy and opinionated. I envied her—I possessed none of those traits. But Billy was just plain scary. He wouldn’t look you in the eyes. Didn’t join in our games, not even to disrupt them. Rode his bike, kept to himself. Didn’t talk.

But he was far from quiet.

Billy Fluger liked to push his bike to the very top of Catskill Avenue, aim for the bottom and start peddling as fast as he could—way before helmets. About midway down the hill, he would hunch over his handlebars, ropes of gnarled hair flying in the wind, dirty hands tightly gripping the bars, his tires rumbling on the cobblestones. And then, as soon as he reached our block, Billy Fluger would sit up straight in his seat and scream like a maniac.

It was a glorious thing, Billy’s scream, a shrill sound that was both agony and triumph, rage and unbridled joy—it lasted the entire block, a monstrous regurgitation of everything that Billy Fluger kept knotted up inside. It was ear-piercing, chilling, an animalistic howl that stopped your heart. You could hear it in your house, in your yard, in your sleep; it crashed in your ears with the screech of metal on sharp, jagged metal, reverberated down to your toes with the boom of a shotgun. You couldn’t prepare for it, never got used to it, even though we all knew what it was. It was Billy: uncivilized, destined for a bad ending. Out of control, bad-ass crazy and just plain weird. Everyone thought so. Everyone but me.

Secretly, I screamed with him.

I think I understood, even at nine, that he didn’t do it to be provocative or delinquent. He did it because screaming helped untangle whatever it was that kept Billy Fluger tied in knots. I knew this because of the euphoric freedom I felt in my own chest when that sound was released from him: raw, wild, hideous—and somehow, poetic. It captured the essence of Billy Fluger; it was his personal tale, rendered in a way that only Billy could tell it—in Billy’s unmistakable voice. But the knots behind that scream, whatever they were—those were universal. Why else would I understand that scream in the pit of my stomach, in the deepest, darkest crevice of my soul? Why else would I spend the next four and a half decades of my life trying to scream just like Billy, but all over the blank page, and without the bike?

A painter reveals himself in color, a singer uses melody, a dancer’s tale is told in leaps and bends and twirls. I like to create characters, put them in difficult situations and let them hack their way out. There are countless ways to tell a story, to unravel a knot. And no way is more right or wrong than another, whether fact or fiction, long or short; happy, heartbreaking, fantastic or true. The means by which a story is expressed doesn’t matter.

As long as it screams.

Cindy’s story “The Interruption” appears in Dammit, I Learned a Lot from That Son-of-a-Gun. Click here to learn more about her.