The Straw Men by Michael Marshall Page A

He was making a better job of it than the passed-out man had done. “We’ve played that song like a million times.”
    “That’s cause it’s cool,” the bear said, nodding vigorously. “It’s, like, what it says is . . . aw, shit.” The camera pulled back to show that he’d dropped the joint. He looked bereft. “ Shit . Now I got to start again. I been rolling thatfucker all my life, man. I’ve been rolling it since before I was born . Fucking Thomas Jefferson started that fucker off, left it to me in his will. Said I could finish the joint or have Monticello. I said fuck the building, I want the spliff. All my life I’ve been rolling it, like a good and faithful servant. And now it’s gone.”
    “Gone,” intoned the blonde girl. She started giggling.
    Without missing a beat of “Good Morning Starshine,” my mother reached forward and took the gear from the bear’s fumbling paws. She held the paper expertly in one hand, leveled the tobacco with an index finger, reached for the dope.
    “Roll ’em, Phlipper,” crowed the bear, much cheered by this turn of events. “Roll ’em, roll ’em, roll ’em.” The camera zoomed in on the joint, then back out again. It was already nearly done.
    By this stage my eyebrows were raised so high they were hovering over my head. My mother had just rolled a joint.
    “Put it on,” the bear wheedled. “Put on the sodomy song. Come on, Don, big Don man the Don, put on, Don, put it on .” In the background my mother kept singing.
    The camera swerved and started walking out of the room, and into a hallway. A pile of coats lay on the floor where they’d been dropped. I saw that there was a kitchen off to the left, and a flight of stairs on the right. It was our old house, the one in Hunter’s Rock. Every aspect of the furnishing and décor was different from the way I remembered it, but the spaces were the same.
    I watched, wide-eyed, as the camera walked across the hall and then started up the stairs. For a moment there was little more than swirling darkness, and from downstairs the muffled sound of bear-guy bellowing, “Sodomy . . . fellatio . . . cunnilingus . . . pederasty . . .” without any attempt to approximate a tune.
    My father made it to the upper landing, paused amoment, muttered something under his breath. Then started forward again, and I realized with a lurch where he was going. It was quiet below now, and all I could hear was his breathing and the quiet swish of his feet on the carpet as he pushed open the door to my room.
    At first it was dark, but gradually enough light seeped in from the landing to show my bed against the wall, and me sleeping in it. I must have been about five. All you could see was the top of my head, a patch of cheek where the light struck it. A little of one shoulder, in dark pajamas. The wall was a kind of mottled green color, and the carpet brown, as they always had been.
    He stood there a full two minutes, not saying or doing anything. Just holding the camera, and watching me sleep.
    I sat and watched, too, barely breathing.
    The quality of the ambient sound on the tape changed after a while, as if a different song had started downstairs. Then there was a soft noise, could have been footsteps on carpet. They stopped, and I knew, knew without seeing or hearing anything to confirm it, that my mother was now standing next to my father.
    The camera stayed on the boy in the bed, on me, for a few moments longer. Then it moved, slowly, panning around to the left. At first I assumed that they were leaving, but then I realized the camera was being pivoted, turned to face the other way.
    It turned a hundred and eighty degrees, and stopped.
    My parents were looking directly into the lens. Their faces filled the frame: not crowded together, just side by side. Neither looked drunk or stoned. They seemed to be looking right at me.
    “Hello, Ward,” my mother said, softly. “I wonder how old you are now.”
    She glanced over