Read Online Untouchable by Scott O'Connor - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Scott O'Connor
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An electric organ sat in the corner, sheet music open on top, hymns to the Lord. There was no TV in the living room, in the entire house. Matthew’s father said that they didn’t need a TV. They had books, they had the electric organ.
The Kid could hear Matthew’s mother’s kitchen radio set low to a religious station, organ music and a pastor’s deep voice. Mrs. Crump moved through the kitchen like a bird, cautious and precise, setting out silverware, folding napkins, humming along with the radio.
There was still time before dinner, so they went upstairs and sat on the floor of Matthew’s bedroom with the big blank sheets of paper Mr. Crump brought home from work. The sheets were big enough that when a few pages were folded in half, it was the perfect size for a comic book. The Kid wanted to work on a new issue of the comic that he and Matthew had made for the last couple of years, Extraordinary Adventures . A new issue every month, maybe every two months if they were really busy with homework. They each wrote and drew their own stories, one or two per issue. Superhero stories, outer-space stories, cowboy stories, war stories—anything, really, the only rule was that the stories had to be extraordinary. No boring stories, no stories about people doing normal things.
The star of most of The Kid’s stories was Smooshie Smith, Talk Show Host of the Future. Smooshie was the most popular talk show host in the history of TV because he had a time machine that let him go back and forth through the years and interview all sorts of people. He interviewed cowboys in the Western stories, soldiers in the war stories, aliens in the outer-space stories. Sometime he got caught up in battles and fights, but mostly he stuck to broadcasting his highly-rated show from different points in the timeline of the universe.
For the first issue of Extraordinary Adventures back in fourth grade, The Kid’s mom made copies of the original comic at her school. Then The Kid and Matthew sold as many as they could to other kids for fifty cents each and used the money to make copies of the next issue at the print shop on Vermont Avenue. With the money from that issue, they paid for the copies of the next issue, and so on. That was how it worked. Ten or twelve pages, usually, per issue. Black and white drawings because color copies were too expensive.
Since that first issue, they’d sold fewer copies of the comic. More kids didn’t like The Kid, didn’t want to buy the comic. The Kid had always been picked on, had always been smaller than the other kids, not as tough as the other kids, but things got really bad in fourth grade. A girl in his class said that The Kid’s breath stank. She may have been right, The Kid didn’t know. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, plenty of kids’ breath stank, but it stuck to The Kid. Someone told someone and someone told someone else and before The Kid knew it almost every day some kid was telling him that his breath stank. And then his armpits. And then his hair. They said that he was contagious. They didn’t want to touch anything that The Kid had touched. It grew like a weed, this idea of The Kid as an awful thing. It tangled around everyone and everything.
Around that time, his class had done a history unit where they learned about people in India who were so despised that they couldn’t even be brushed up against, could barely be looked at. That was where the name came from, the untouchables, the name for The Kid and Matthew and Michelle Mustache. Things got so bad that for the last issue of the comic they’d made, right at the end of the last school year, they’d only sold one copy. The rest were under The Kid’s bed, or boxed up in the garage back at the house, hidden away, embarrassing, a failed thing.
He’d tried to keep it from his mom and dad. He was ashamed of this, the way other kids thought about him. He didn’t want the germ of the idea to be planted with his parents, that he was
The Kid could hear Matthew’s mother’s kitchen radio set low to a religious station, organ music and a pastor’s deep voice. Mrs. Crump moved through the kitchen like a bird, cautious and precise, setting out silverware, folding napkins, humming along with the radio.
There was still time before dinner, so they went upstairs and sat on the floor of Matthew’s bedroom with the big blank sheets of paper Mr. Crump brought home from work. The sheets were big enough that when a few pages were folded in half, it was the perfect size for a comic book. The Kid wanted to work on a new issue of the comic that he and Matthew had made for the last couple of years, Extraordinary Adventures . A new issue every month, maybe every two months if they were really busy with homework. They each wrote and drew their own stories, one or two per issue. Superhero stories, outer-space stories, cowboy stories, war stories—anything, really, the only rule was that the stories had to be extraordinary. No boring stories, no stories about people doing normal things.
The star of most of The Kid’s stories was Smooshie Smith, Talk Show Host of the Future. Smooshie was the most popular talk show host in the history of TV because he had a time machine that let him go back and forth through the years and interview all sorts of people. He interviewed cowboys in the Western stories, soldiers in the war stories, aliens in the outer-space stories. Sometime he got caught up in battles and fights, but mostly he stuck to broadcasting his highly-rated show from different points in the timeline of the universe.
For the first issue of Extraordinary Adventures back in fourth grade, The Kid’s mom made copies of the original comic at her school. Then The Kid and Matthew sold as many as they could to other kids for fifty cents each and used the money to make copies of the next issue at the print shop on Vermont Avenue. With the money from that issue, they paid for the copies of the next issue, and so on. That was how it worked. Ten or twelve pages, usually, per issue. Black and white drawings because color copies were too expensive.
Since that first issue, they’d sold fewer copies of the comic. More kids didn’t like The Kid, didn’t want to buy the comic. The Kid had always been picked on, had always been smaller than the other kids, not as tough as the other kids, but things got really bad in fourth grade. A girl in his class said that The Kid’s breath stank. She may have been right, The Kid didn’t know. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, plenty of kids’ breath stank, but it stuck to The Kid. Someone told someone and someone told someone else and before The Kid knew it almost every day some kid was telling him that his breath stank. And then his armpits. And then his hair. They said that he was contagious. They didn’t want to touch anything that The Kid had touched. It grew like a weed, this idea of The Kid as an awful thing. It tangled around everyone and everything.
Around that time, his class had done a history unit where they learned about people in India who were so despised that they couldn’t even be brushed up against, could barely be looked at. That was where the name came from, the untouchables, the name for The Kid and Matthew and Michelle Mustache. Things got so bad that for the last issue of the comic they’d made, right at the end of the last school year, they’d only sold one copy. The rest were under The Kid’s bed, or boxed up in the garage back at the house, hidden away, embarrassing, a failed thing.
He’d tried to keep it from his mom and dad. He was ashamed of this, the way other kids thought about him. He didn’t want the germ of the idea to be planted with his parents, that he was
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