by Wally Lamb
The Constantines had had me over for the big inspection the week after they got back from Europe. It seemed weird to wear a sports jacket and tie, walk politely through the same rooms where Dessa and I had run around buck naked. Eating dinner was the worst of it: the five of us plunked down at their fancy dining room table. Dessa’s mother kept asking me questions every time my mouth was full. I spilled lamb gravy on this new tablecloth they’d just brought back from their trip. Then Dessa’s little sister, Angie, told me right there in front of everybody that I had a “nice bod.” She just came out with it. Not that Angie was that little at the time, either. Seventeen was old enough to know better. Old enough to know how to bust her big sister’s chops, too. Angie was an expert at that.
The worst part about that dinner, though, was Dessa’s old man. Every time I looked over at him, he was watching me—just chewing and staring, swallowing and staring. I half-expected him to turn off the lights and start rolling the surveillance films—replay the evidence of me screwing his daughter all over their fancy house.
The second time I saw Diogenes Constantine was at Constantine Dodge & Chrysler Motors. I had tried not to go there—had told Dessa it was a bad idea—but she’d insisted. “Dominick, they have two acres of used cars. I’m sure Daddy’ll do whatever he can for you.” When we got there, her old man greeted us coolly in his office and then palmed us off on George, his buzzardy-looking nephew—one of Dessa’s cousins who used to be in the business. George kept steering me to the thousand-dollar-plus models and rolling his eyes at every car I asked about. “I wouldn’t sell you that death trap,” he said about a banged-up Fairlane that was only a hundred and fifty bucks over my price range. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep nights knowing my cousin was riding around in that thing.” We ended the visit without a sale.
Down at work, I thumbtacked a notice on the bulletin board that I was looking for a car for around two hundred dollars. It was a desperation move. I’d already made the rounds at all the lots and junkyards around Three Rivers. I’d practically memorized the classifieds. Nothing.
Nothing was also what I’d done about telling Thomas that he and I weren’t going to be roommates anymore. Before long, we’d be saying good riddance to our summer jobs and getting back to school. Thomas deserved to know. Needed to know. I just couldn’t make myself do it.
One morning, in the midst of all this procrastination, Thomas and I were walking to work. It was already a scorcher—killer humidity, temperatures heading for the nineties. The air wasn’t moving. Okay, I told myself, this is it. When we get to Stanley’s Market, I’ll just come out with it. Stop making it such a big deal.
But as we passed Stanley’s, it was my brother who spoke, not me. “Dominick, could you do me a big favor?” he said.
“What?”
“Could you speak to Dell? Get him to stop calling me Dickless?”
Throughout the summer, I’d remained on neutral ground with Dell, basically by doing my work, keeping my mouth shut, and being the Birdsey brother he preferred. “Look, you been putting up with his bullshit all summer,” I told Thomas. “We’ve got less than two weeks left and then Dell Weeks is ancient history. Just ignore him.”
“I’m sick of ignoring him,” he huffed. “How would you like to be called Dickless?”
“Then you tell the son of a bitch,” I said. “Put your own foot down for once. That’s exactly the point.”
“All right, fine, Dominick. Thanks for nothing.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Anytime.”
Neither of us spoke the rest of the way there.
It was customary for the guys on the various work crews to stand around in the morning and shoot the shit while Clukey and the foremen discussed the day’s jobs. Ralph and I were in the middle of an argument with a bunch of guys about whether or not Tom Seaver and Koosman could take the Mets all the way to the Series when Dell whistled through his teeth and made a “come here” gesture at me.
“Hey, Lassie, you better run,” someone joked. “Timmy’s calling you.” All the guys laughed.
“Hey, look, I don’t appreciate getting whistled at,” I told Dell, approaching him. “If you want me for something, use my name.”
Ignoring my protest, he tapped his finger against the bulletin board—my notice about the car. “I just seen this,” he said. “You still looking?”
“Yeah, I’m still looking. I been looking all over the place.”
He told me he had a ’62 Valiant parked out in his backyard that he might be interested in selling. It had been his wife’s before she got MS. It was just sitting there.
“What’s wrong with it?” I said.
Dell shrugged. “Battery’s probably dead by now. Body’s got a little rust. But the engine’s fine. Thing’s only got about sixty thousand miles on it. You put a little money into it, you’d have a cream puff.”
“How much you asking for it?” I said.
He shrugged. “I’d have to get a little more than two hundred. Why don’t you come over sometime this weekend and take a look at it. I live on Bickel Road, just past the old woolen mill. We can talk price then if you’re interested.”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Call first, though. I’ll probably be in and out. I’m in the phone book.”
We were cutting brush at the reservoir that day—mosquitoes, wood ticks, horseflies zapping us every two seconds. Lou Clukey and his crew were there with the wood chipper, so we were all hauling ass, even Dell. The bugs and the heat and the constant rattle of the chipper had everyone riled up. Clukey and his guys took off just before noon, leaving us to finish the job.
The five of us were sitting at a picnic table, hunched over our lunches, when Dell looked up at Thomas. “Go up to the truck and get me my smokes there, will you, Dickless?” he said.
Thomas looked over at me, then at Dell. “Go to hell,” he said.
A smile crept across Dell’s face. He asked Thomas to repeat what he’d just said.
“You better not call me that anymore,” he said.
Dell put down his sandwich. Rested his chin in his hand and stared at my brother like he was suddenly the most amusing thing in the whole world. “Call you what?”
“You know. And I mean it, too. I’m warning you.”
When I had advised Thomas that morning to stand up for himself, I hadn’t meant for him to turn it into a shootout at Dodge City. I’d meant for him to say something to Dell in private—in the truck or something. But that was always the trouble with Thomas: you’d make an assumption that he had some kind of instinct about how to deal with people and then he’d prove you wrong. Show you how completely clueless he was. A showdown in front of the rest of the crew was the exact wrong way to go with Dell Weeks.
“You’re warning me?” Dell laughed.
Thomas got up from the table. Just stood there, blinking.
“He’s not warning you,” I said. “He’s asking you.”
Dell held up his hand to shut me up. “Did you say you’re warning me, there, Dickless? What are you warning me against?”
Thomas pouted. His bottom lip was shaking. De-fense, Thomas! De-fense!
“Just drop it, Dell,” Drinkwater said. “It’s too hot for this shit.”
Dell stood up. He sucked in his gut, hiked up his pants, and ambled around the picnic table to where my brother was. At six-two or six-three, Dell had Thomas by about four inches and outweighed him by maybe fifty or sixty pounds.
“I’m waiting, Dickless,” he said. “What are you warning me against?”
Thomas looked flushed. Confused. The rest of us sat there, staring stupidly.
“You gonna take me on? Is that it? You got the balls to go a few rounds with your foreman?” He reached out and gave Thomas a little shove that sent him back a step. I felt my whole body clench up.
Thomas looked over at me, then at Leo and Ralph, then back at Dell. “No, I’m not going to ‘go a few rounds’ with you,” he said. “But if y
ou don’t stop, I’ll talk to Lou Clukey. I’ll tell Lou you’re bothering me.”
Dell glanced at the rest of us, a grin on his face. “Well, you just tell him whatever you have to tell him, Mr. Dickless Dicky Bird. You just go crying to your uncle Lou and let him know the Big Bad Wolf’s been teasing you and you don’t have the balls to do anything about it yourself.”
Dell reached over and poked my brother in the breastbone with his knuckles. Once. Twice. Three times. “Course, Uncle Lou might have one or two other little things on his mind. Like the new sidewalks they’re pouring over on Broad Street next week. Or that big paving job up on Nestor Avenue. But I’m sure Uncle Lou will just drop whatever he’s doing to come out here and give me a spanking for calling the little candy-ass fairy boy a bad little name.”
“Why can’t you just stop it?” Thomas blurted. “That’s all I’m asking you to do! Just stop calling me that name!” He was shaking badly.
Dell took a step closer—got within a couple of inches of his face. He reached out and began kneading Thomas’s shoulder. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll make you a deal, right here and now. You drop your drawers and show me and my witnesses here that you got the proper equipment, and I guess I’ll just have to come up with a new name for you.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Ralph muttered.
Dell’s hand moved from my brother’s shoulder to the back of his neck. Thomas flinched. “What do you say there, Dickless? You want to show us once and for all that that ain’t a twat between your legs?” Smirking, he began to sniff the air. He turned back to us. “You smell what I smell, boys? It’s either a rotten fish or Dickless’s smelly cunt.”
Leo’s laugh was a single nervous note.
Thomas swallowed. Said nothing.
“No deal, eh, Dickless? Well, that’s just what I figured. You just plain got the wrong equipment to mess with me. I rest my case.”
Dell looked over at Leo and me, his smile slackening. He seemed more miserable than triumphant. He told us to get the scythes out of the truck and start cutting down the meadow grass in the field. After we were finished, he said, we could fill the water jugs out at the spring. We could take our time, take a swim in the reservoir if we wanted to. Cool off. We’d done enough grunt work for one day. We could take it a little easy.
It was the sound of Thomas’s sobbing that made us all turn in his direction. His hands were yanking at his belt buckle, fumbling with the snap of his jeans.
“Don’t!” I yelled.
Thomas jerked his pants and underpants to his knees and stood there, blubbering, exposed. “Are you happy NOW?” he screamed at Dell. “NOW will you just shut up and leave me alone?”
Ralph and Leo looked away. Dell stood there, smiling and shaking his head. “Pathetic,” he said. “Just plain pathetic.”
I hustled over to my brother, shielding him. His humiliation was my own. “Pull your goddamned pants up!” I screamed at him. “What’s the matter with you?”
Ralph was the only one still seated at the picnic table. Hunched down low, he kept eating, chewing angrily, mumbling something I couldn’t hear.
“Let’s go, Ralph,” Dell said. “Lunch is over.”
“Fuck you, lunch is over!” Drinkwater snapped back. “We got six minutes left. Don’t tell me lunch is over when it’s not over.” Ralph’s arm swept across the table, sending lunch pails and thermoses flying.
Dell stood there, glaring at Ralph. Then, without saying anything, he walked over to the picnic table, bent, and lifted it—first onto its side and then up and over. Ralph lay splayed on the ground, his legs still hooked beneath the bench where he’d been sitting.
Dell squatted down next to him. “Now, unless I died and they made you foreman,” he said, “you get that shit-brown Indian ass of yours back to work or I’ll have you off this crew before you can count to ten. Come to think of it, I got a special job for a couple of tough guys like you and Dicky Bird over there. I got a special assignment for you two.”
Dell put Drinkwater and my brother in the muckiest, most bug-infested part of the reservoir—an area I had overheard Lou Clukey tell him earlier we wouldn’t have to tackle.
I almost spoke. My mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but nothing would come out. Dell’s bullying felt just like Ray’s and the familiar dread fell over me, settling in my gut, my arms and legs. Paralyzing me. So instead of speaking up, I grabbed a scythe, walked to the meadow he’d said to cut, and started swinging. Every blade of grass I whacked that afternoon was Dell’s throat. Ray’s. Every swipe I took cut down the two of them.
At the end of the day, Drinkwater and Thomas climbed up into the back of the truck with Leo and me. They were both filthy with mud, studded with scabs and bug bites. Nobody said anything for miles. Then, without warning, Ralph’s boot slammed so hard against the tailgate that, for a second, I thought the truck had hit something. Dell looked back in the rearview mirror to see what the racket was. “That’s right, cocksucker, you better watch your back,” Ralph said, glaring back at Dell’s reflection. “You better keep your eye on me from now on.”
When we got back to the yard that afternoon, instead of driving right into the garage the way he usually did, Dell pulled off to the side of the road, cut the engine, and came around to the back.
“I got one thing to say about what happened out there today at lunchtime,” he informed us. “I’ll say it to all of you at once so there’s no misunderstanding. What goes on in our crew stays in our crew. Understand? It ain’t nobody’s business but ours.”
His eyes bounced nervously from Leo to Ralph to my brother, then landed on me.
“Oh, yeah?” I said.
“That’s right. What we do is our business. Not Clukey’s. Not anybody’s on one of the other crews. My guys and I cover for each other.” He nudged his chin toward my brother. “Take that stunt he pulled out there today. Pulling his pants down and crying like a little baby. They’d love a story like that around this place. But they’re not going to hear about it.”
“You told him to do it,” I reminded him. “You goaded him into it.”
He took a step toward me, glaring so hard and hatefully that I had to look away. “Or take all that dope you guys been smokin’ on the job all summer long, Dicky Boy,” he said. “You guys been high as kites half the summer. Having yourselves a great old time with your mary-j-uana. You think I didn’t know it? You think you fooled old Dell? Well, guess what? You didn’t. And if Clukey ever found out you been sucking on those funny little cigarettes, next thing you know, the cruiser and your old man would both be down here. But what we do is our business, nobody else’s. See? Long as you guys get your work done, I don’t see nothing. Understand? One hand washes the other.”
The four of us sat there, dumbfounded. Then Drinkwater hopped over the side of the truck and started walking away.
“Hey, big shot!” Dell called after him. Ralph didn’t answer. Didn’t look back. “What about your time card, wiseguy? How’d you like to lose a day’s pay?”
Without turning back, Ralph raised his arm, his middle finger, high into the air. The four of us watched his cocky gait, his exit around a hedge.
Dell got back in the truck and started her up.
“Can you believe that fucking prick?” Leo whispered to me. “He’s been spying on us.” I told him to just shut the fuck up.
Thomas quit. He didn’t talk it over with me or ask me to go into Lou Clukey’s office with him or anything. Dell pulled the truck into the garage, cut the engine, and Thomas just made a beeline for Clukey’s office. He was in there for less than three minutes and then he was out again. And that was it.
I couldn’t walk back home with him—couldn’t stomach his pissing and moaning or his I-told-you-so’s about the dope smoking. Nor was I about to forgive him for the way he’d degraded himself in front of the other guys. So I walked in the opposite direction, down Boswell, onto South Main, and into downtown. I ended up in front of the pinball machine at Tepper�
��s Bus Stop. I didn’t want to think about anything. I just wanted to slam those little silver balls, jerk knobs, pound buttons, grab the sides of that fucking machine and rattle it. Which I did a little too vigorously, I guess. Old Man Tepper came out from behind the counter and asked what the hell was the matter with me. What was the big idea, thinking I had the right to destroy someone else’s property? What was the matter with me?
What was the matter with him? What was going on?
By the time I got home, Thomas had already opened his mail from the university and learned that his roommate for the 1969–70 school year was a transfer student from Waterbury named Randall Deitz.
“This is just great,” he groaned, waving the letter in my face. “This is just what I needed after today. Some stupid secretary makes a mistake, and now we have a big mess to fix!” He was pacing the kitchen floor just the way he’d done in our dorm room the year before—getting riled up all out of proportion.
Ma was at the stove, making sauce for supper. “Okay, calm down, honey,” she told Thomas. “Maybe it’s something you can get straightened out over the phone.”