Travis
by Shaun Hayes
His name was Travis and he had crystal blue eyes that swam like idiot goldfish behind his enormous Coke-bottle glasses. He belonged in the IU-13 wing of the elementary school with the other kids that had what we all knew to call “problems” if we talked about them in front of adults. We were children behind the age of understanding mercy beyond the most fundamental level though, and so we had our own names for them. “Retard.” “Weirdo.” “Look at that” was used for them a lot. We were cruel. We didn’t know it and I’m not alone, I’m sure, when I say I feel shame for that.
I was in the Boys’ Room with Seth when Travis bungled his way past the swinging door and made for the opposite row of urinals. The place was a spattering of sour peanut-butter tiles and dented metal dividers. Bright fluorescent bulbs burned the place yellow through old and faded casings. Years away from learning the delicate etiquette of Man Alone that rules the American male in the public restroom, Seth and I exchanged glances as we opened our pants at our own spots and I remember snickering. At Travis. Travis the weirdo, who was fumbling at the zipper of his corduroys with crooked fingers, his fat tongue squeezed between rough-cut teeth.
Seth grinned at me and I saw an idea twist his face into a wrinkled sneer. Travis’ belt buckle clanged against the porcelain urinal like some loose cowbell and I heard him start urinating. It was a wild sound, a release of sudden, strange and massive scale—it suggested less about relief than animal need. Seth whispered, “Dare me?” and I didn’t understand the specifics so much as I read the clean razor-sharp malice of his intentions. Something wicked was going to happen to Travis, and it was, I perceived dimly, upon me to unleash Seth or extinguish the darkness before it occurred.
I was mid-business, tethered to my urinal, but I craned my neck and saw Travis shaking his whole lumpy frame—his buckle jangling, his shirt tail rising over his wobbling, knock-kneed legs. “Well?” Seth hissed, and I realized he hadn’t started going yet. I smiled. If intentions count for anything it should be said that I found the whole situation bizarre, the pressure and fuzzy concept of responsibility thrilling and the moment was charged with something beyond anything I’d ever known. It was strange. It was exciting. I couldn’t help myself.
Seth narrowed his eyes on mine for a second, his blonde rattail coiling over his shoulder and rising up at his earlobe. He spun around. Travis, in the meantime, had managed to get his pants buttoned and was stepping to the low bay of sinks, his knuckles banging together over his zipper. Seth stepped toward him. He said something. Probably “Hey.” Maybe “Hey, you.” My stream ran low and the reality of the situation caught me only as Seth’s back arched and a line of piss connected the two boys behind me. My throat closed. Something cold twisted in my stomach.
Travis stopped fumbling with his fly and raised his head, those eyes sloshing behind his fat lenses, unfocused but plainly alarmed. He looked around before he focused on the spattering stream dousing his crotch, his legs, dribbling from his high-water cuffs and splashing onto the Velcro straps of his shoes. His mouth worked and worried, his fat lower lip bobbing as he seemed to process this new thing as fast as he could. I remember finishing up and getting myself tucked back in just in time to see Travis look above us, behind us—where there was nothing, no one—and say, “Someone’s peeing on me.” His voice was mildly outraged, as if he’d just seen someone cut in line for the slide at recess.
Seth laughed and hurriedly pulled himself back together. Travis stood in the little puddle of urine, dripping and jerking his face from side to side, his fingers drumming uselessly at his chest.
I heard the bathroom door closing on Seth’s “Come on!” but for a moment I stood there with Travis in the Boys’ Room, breathing in the sharp stink of piss, the musky smell of damp clothing. I thought maybe I should unspool some toilet paper, dab at a few spots of wet on Travis’s face, try to explain how I knew I should have stopped this from happening to him. That it was my fault. His glasses magnified his eyes and they darted around and past me a dozen times in rapid succession. He was lost. When I ran out of the room, leaving him there, stranded and soaked, I was too.
Travis—all laws of physics, all rules of chemistry being equal—dried later that day. Hopefully found himself scrubbed clean and pulled into a fresh set of clothes. I still hear him, though, every time I’m in a bathroom, all these years later. It won’t dim down, won’t wash off, no matter how much time fills the space between me and what happened. In my mind he keeps saying it, “Someone’s peeing on me” while his eyes sweep over and above me, searching for someone bigger to help him.
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