Beginning of AFTER THE DEATH OF THE ICE CREAM MAN
[The beginning to After the Death of the Ice Cream Man. --TmC]
Mom died, Tina said into the phone, and it was strange the thing he first thinks of, the time his mind slips away to:
1976. He was in a Marcus Cinema on the North side of Green Bay, Wisconsin watching his first movie unfold before him like a dream. Someone had dared to remake King Kong and Jonah Swain was loving every second of it: the darkness, the screen before him like an immense idol, the feel of his mom's shoulder against his own, the heavy sweet smell of over-buttered popcorn, the sound of ice in soda cups like plastic rain through glass gutters.
At some point he had fallen asleep, waking just when the giant snake attacked, opening his eyes in awe as the great ape ripped the serpent in two, sending tongue and guts into the air, then tossing the snake aside and raging after his stolen love. The boy sat up from where he'd been curled fetal-like in the seat, and pressed to his mom as he stared with gaped mouth at the images before him, wonder and awe and fear racing through him in one joyful, triumphant stew. If he had been dreaming there in his seat he had opened his eyes to find himself in another dream, from one set of marvelous scenes to another. Years later he might think back and wonder if he had ever awakened at all, or which was dream and which was reality. Everything that came afterwards had been unreal, after all. But back then he had been too young, too virgin of mind, to even contemplate such things. Philosophy classes were still a good fifteen years away. He was only six.
You all right? his mom had whispered, leaning down to him. She was smiling, her eyes bright in the darkness.
He nodded. He was more than all right. He was a child, he was at his first movie, he was watching King Kong roar and stomp through the jungles of Skull Island. Everything was good and fine in his world, that world six years old and full of tomorrows. He'd seen the posters for the movie weeks ago and now his mom had taken him, and he knew his parents would always be there to give him what he needed, what he wanted. He was safe. Loved. The tale of King Kong might have been an old one, forty-three years, but he didn't know it, to him it was as fresh as a daydream.
Why did they have to remake that? his mom had asked those weeks ago, sounding disappointed, crestfallen, damn close to disgusted. The first is a classic.
He paid her no mind. That poster had pulled him in, the great barrel-chested ape standing on the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a foot on each, holding the pinched and pathetic wreckage of a train in one hand, the shapely figure of a blonde in the other, while below and beyond him spread the terrified and terrible city. And now here it was, the real thing, in the celluloid-flesh, larger than life… or life-sized, perhaps. He stared up to the great shambling monster and lost himself in that world.
The boy cried at the end, of course, the destruction of innocence was just too much. Kong's heart beat slows and slows to one final thump and falls silent. The camera pulls back to show the crowd gathering around the great dead hulk of the beast, and the image would stay with the boy, all those people staring at death, at the dying of a mystery, the dying of not only innocence but of spirit, tradition, idolatry. Something had been taken from an island and destroyed for no reason. This couldn't be the way it was in real life, it just couldn't be, what was the point? The words the boy would search for were pointless, senseless, ridiculous, but of course he would not find them and would sniffle back his tears when the lights came up because he didn't want to look stupid and his brother might make fun of him and he held his mom's hand and let her lead him out into the night, feeling the senselessness of it all washing over him, like a baptism into something dark, Christianity's black twin. A sensitive child, they would call him later. He felt that loss of innocence, loss of meaning, as deeply as he would feel anything. The blood dripping from Kong's lifeless lips was the first wound in the boy's heart.
