Eating Bleach Under the Sink~~Stand By Me

Eating Bleach Under the Sink

1959

Gordie wondered how Teddy could care so much about his father who had practically killed him; he didn't give a shit about his own father who hadn't laid a hand on him since he was three. And that was for eating bleach under the sink.

"I'm no good, my dad hates me!" Gordie Lachance cried to his best friend Chris Chambers. "He doesn't hate you, he just doesn't know you." Chris tried to convince him.

1950

Glenn Lachance's two sons could not have been more different from each other. Denny, the older one, was everything a father could hope for in a son. He loved to be outdoors and by the age of ten he handled most of the yard work on his own. He loved cars and showed every sign of becoming a first-class mechanic, if that's what he decided he wanted to do in life. He was popular and liked by nearly every kid in town; even the bullies and troublemakers like Ace Merrill and those Chambers kids, while he didn't socialize with them outside of school, respected him enough to leave him and anyone else in his presence alone. But where he really excelled was in sports. At thirteen, Dennis Lachance seemed on his way to a successful high school and maybe even college career in whatever sport he chose--baseball, basketball, and most of all, football. Yes, Denny was all boy.

Gordon was another matter. Glenn would deny he favored one son over the other, and as far as he was concerned, he took care of Gordie every bit as well as he did Dennis in anything that mattered, but the truth was, Gordie was...different. Glenn couldn't quite put his finger on it, because the boy got dirty playing outside as much as any other boy his age, seemed just as interested in cars, and loved playing catch with his older brother. He had friends, if a three-year-old's playmates could be called friends, but he never seemed to mind playing alone. And maybe it was the playing alone that worried Glenn just a little. When sent to his room he was content to play for hours with his blocks, cars, teddy bears, toy soldiers, and even a rag doll (much to Glenn's concern) one of his cousins had forgotten to take home. He constructed forts and castles and enlisted the service of every toy he had to act as characters in stories he narrated and replayed over and over, adding material each time. While limited to the influence of the radio programs the Lachance family listened to nightly, the stories about cowboys and Indians, gangsters, and soldiers seemed far more complicated than a boy his age should have been able to imagine. If Denny set up his old train set in there, like he'd been talking about, they might never get him to come out of the room. Still, Glenn reasoned to himself, if Gordie's solitary play kept him quiet and, therefore, out of trouble, he couldn't see any actual harm in it.

*****

Dorothy LaChance stood at the ironing board going over the boys shirts for church the next day while Glenn and Denny discussed the game Denny's team had just played. Except that, as usual, it was actually Glenn discussing the game while Denny listened and tried to get a word in edgewise.

"Dennis, I don't know what the coach was thinking, putting the Miller boy in ahead of you! If he'd just let you up to bat you could have hit the other guys home and gotten a home run yourself, instead of that no-talent getting the third out. That kid lost the game for you!"

"Dad, he's all right, he just had an off day. And besides, it's just Little League," Denny said wearily. It was the same old argument every Saturday, at least it felt like it. He just wanted to play ball, not listen to his teammates getting picked apart because they kept him from winning.

"Glenn, if they don't let all the boys play, they won't have a chance to learn," Dorothy tried to placate her husband.

"Dorothy, you stay out of this, you don't know anything about sports." Denny shook his head. Mom didn't know anything about sports? She attended his games every single week the same as Dad and they had plenty of conversations about it when Dad wasn't around. "Dennis has a real future in sports, he doesn't need to have the other kids holding him back!"

"Sorry, Glenn, I--" She got so flustered when Glenn talked to her that way. "I guess it's time to start supper, what do you guys want?"

Before either of them had a chance to respond, a long wail came from the direction of the sink. The three of them turned to look. Gordie, who, as far as any of them knew was in his room playing one of his cowboy and Indian games, sat on the floor, legs straight out in front of him, mouth full of grainy white powder that was beginning to dissolve, and both hands full of it, too. Large tears were rolling down his cheeks. "Mama!" he mumbled around the powder. "Yucky!"

"Gordie!" Dorothy shrieked. "Glenn, he's got something in his mouth!"

Glenn reached Gordie first, snatched him up and sniffed at his mouth. "Bleach!" He held him over the sink. "Spit it out, son! Spit! Dorothy, get me a washcloth!" Glenn used the washcloth to wipe as much of the half-dissolved powder out of Gordie's mouth as he could and asked for another. This one he ran under the cold water faucet and wiped the rest of the bleach out of his mouth and from his face. Dorothy gently unclenched Gordie's hands and shook the bleach out of them, then rinsed them off under the faucet.

With the immediate crisis over, relief turned to anger and Glenn turned Gordie over his knee and began paddling. "Never, ever ever put anything in your mouth if you don't know what it is!" he said sternly.

"Glenn, he doesn't know any better!"

"Well, this is how he's going to learn! Ever!" He gave one final swat to Gordie, who, by this time, was sobbing hysterically.

Dennis had stood observing all of this in stunned silence, not quite believing what he was seeing. When Glenn started spanking Gordie, it snapped him out of his daze. "Dad! Dad!" He wasn't able to get Glenn's attention until the spanking was finished. Glenn looked up at him. "Should we take him to the hospital?"

"Yeah...I guess we'd better. Dorothy, get the container in case they need to see what he took."

The fifteen mile drive to the hospital was mostly silence, occasionally interrupted by Glenn berating Dorothy for leaving the bleach out where the boy could get it, followed by Dorothy's response of "I'm sorry! I thought I had it put away!" or "I thought he was playing in his room," and once "he's never gotten into anything before!"

Finally Denny couldn't take any more. "I did it, okay!" he shouted from the back seat, just to shut his dad up. "It's my fault! I was using the bleach for a science experiment and I must have put it under the sink by mistake. Okay?"

"Oh," Glenn sighed dejectedly. "Well, son, I know you didn't mean to do it. Just remember where things go next time, all right?"

Denny sat through the rest of the ride in frustration. So this was how it was going to be for the rest of his life. Gordie gets punished for something he didn't know any better than to do, Mom gets blamed for not preventing it, and he gets practically a free pass. It just seemed like it got tougher all the time to earn the high opinion his dad had of him.

*****

Glenn sat on the back porch with a beer and a cigarette. Dorothy and Gordie were still at the hospital. The doctor in the emergency room said his throat looked like he hadn't actually swallowed any and his breathing sounded ok, but they wanted him to stay overnight just so they could keep an eye on things. Denny went to tent out with one of his friends and Glenn had the house to himself, a rare occurrence. He crushed out his cigarette and took a long drink of his beer. Might as well turn in. On his way to bed he stopped in the doorway of Gordie's room. He had misjudged his youngest son, they all had, and they could have lost him today because of it. Glenn looked around at the the toys carefully staged all over the room. He kind of hoped Denny would forget about setting up the train in here. He was damned if he knew what to do about the world Gordie was building in here.

END

A/N Please excuse any errors you might find in regard to baseball and the treatment of bleach ingestion and just try enjoy the story for what it is. I'm neither a sports expert nor a medical professional. Dialogue at the beginning of the story is paraphrased from the movie Stand By Me and was written by Stephen King, Raynold Gideon, and Bruce A. Evans.