Chinese Handcuffs

by Chris Crutcher

  Caldwell’s defenses were clogging his throat and his mind. “They’re just kids,” he said. “They don’t understand death.”

  “Don’t be a jerk,” Kathy said. “They sure as hell understand when something’s gone.”

  Caldwell opened his mouth to continue his argument, then threw up his hands. “That’s easy enough for you, Coach,” he said instead. “You’re a teacher. It looks a little different when you have to run things. You didn’t have to handle it when all those bikers came after him last year. And neither did he. Hell, he was in your room using your shower so he could go out and be a big triathlon hero. Somebody could have gotten hurt that day. And hurt badly.”

  “I know it’s different being a principal from being a teacher, John. But a power struggle is a power struggle no matter where you run it from. And I don’t know one of us that’s ever won one.” She flipped the newspaper onto the coffee table. “You can go to war over Dillon Hemingway’s T-shirt if you want to, but you’ll only come out looking bad.”

  By the time second lunch rolled around, Dillon had pulled the flannel shirt he carried in his book pack on over the offending article of clothing and stood before his locker, talking to Jennifer Lawless, looking for all the world like any all-American student in need of a haircut.

  “I thought you’d be out of here again by now,” Jen said, opening the top button of his shirt to see the slogan.

  “Naw,” Dillon answered. “I just wanted to get his circulation going a little, that’s all. I’m going to try to stay in at least until B-ball season is over. Last I heard, Caldwell has decided if I’m suspended from school, I’m suspended from my trainer’s job, too. Coach asked me to straighten up for a while at least.” He reached up and felt his right earlobe. “Soon as the season’s over, I think I’ll get an earring. That’ll give Caldwell something to do till graduation.”

  Jen smiled. “You know, he really doesn’t need you to make him look like an asshole. He does fine by himself.”

  “I know, I just like to think of myself as one of those yellow highlighters. You know, someone who brings out the prominent characteristics in someone. Listen, do you want to go on a date?”

  Jen was off guard. “With who?”

  “With me, you jerk. What do you mean, ‘with who’? You think I’m going to come up and ask you out for someone else?”

  Jennifer’s reaction was far more intense than seemed warranted. Claustrophobic feelings whirled around her stomach. She was expert at hiding them, and she did; but immense disappointment accompanied them. Dillon Hemingway was the one person around whom she felt comfortable. Their relationship was simple, and she liked that more than anything. “You might,” she said, holding a playful facade. “If the price were right.”

  Dillon ignored that. “Well?”

  “I don’t know, let me think about it.”

  He nodded. “Okay. How long do you need? I’m not real good at waiting when my self-esteem hangs in the balance.”

  “We can talk about it tomorrow. It’s not about you. I’m just really busy, you know. With basketball and everything.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m not talking about anything elaborate, maybe go someplace nice for dinner.”

  “We’ll talk about it, okay? Meanwhile, you keep yourself in school. I’m sure not going out with any dropout.”

  Dillon stuffed his books into his locker and headed for the parking lot. He figured he had pushed Caldwell a little far with the T-shirt and there was no sense making a target of himself in the lunchroom. Contrary to popular belief, he had some limits.

  At the door he met Coach Sherman coming in from the gymnasium. She looked at his chest, obviously glad to see he had decided not to push the T-shirt any further. “A word to the wise?” she said.

  Dillon smiled. “No one wise in here,” he said, tapping his forehead.

  She laughed and said, “No one in there. If he comes back, tell him to remember to play it cool. I need his athletic medical expertise at State, and Caldwell has just reminded himself of the Day the Warlocks Came.”

  Dillon grimaced, then shook his head. “Think I’ll ever live that down?”

  “Nope. It wasn’t your finest hour.”

  “The idea was good.”

  “The idea was bad.”

  The funeral is over, and Dillon moves slowly up the church aisle with his parents. His chest is filled with so much pain and confusion and anger he wants to scream, needs to scream. But he appears calm because his job is to get his parents—one on each arm, and of no help to each other—to the car, which stands waiting only a few yards from the church entrance. It might as well be ten miles. This is the last time he’ll ever see them together. Christy trails a few steps behind, silent and removed. This is the conclusion to the family unraveling that began when Preston started to go off the deep end two years ago. At the urging of school counselors they had gone into family therapy clear back then to try to get at the root of Preston’s feelings of isolation, of disenfranchisement, but each session brought more and more bogeymen out of the Hemingway closet until no one could figure out how his mom and dad had gotten together in the first place. It seemed there could be no repair. They had stopped the sessions when it seemed the only answer was divorce, and though his parents didn’t divorce, they might as well have. They stopped talking to each other almost completely, becoming simply two human beings living under one roof, sharing expenses and three children, then finally split up.

  Caulder Hemingway’s legs fold twice before Dillon can get him to the car, where his dad collapses into the back seat, sobbing inconsolably. His mother, Annie, dry-eyed and staring straight ahead, slides behind the wheel, cold and erect, a steel spear driven deep into the soil, impassively facing the winds of horrible change. Christy stands before both open doors, unable to decide which to enter, which parent to try to touch. Dillon puts his hand in the middle of Christy’s back and guides her toward the back, where Christy slides across the seat and buries her head deep into the crook of her dad’s arm. She runs her hand carefully down the back of his head, much like a cautious child with a new kitten. Dillon knows he should ride with them, if for no other reason than to save Christy; but he also knows if he doesn’t get away, his chest will explode, and like a cornered animal, he sees an escape route and runs.

  “I’ll bring the van,” he says into the window as he shuts the door. His mother nods, and he silently thanks her for not making an issue of it. “I’ll see you at home a little later.” The long white Chrysler New Yorker pulls slowly away and Dillon turns back toward Preston’s van. Remembering the funeral director has informed him Preston’s ashes are available at the funeral home when it’s convenient for someone to pick them up, Dillon drives the eight short blocks from the church. The door is locked so he rings the bell, stepping in when an attendant opens it. He states his business and is led to a small office in the rear filled with no more than a desk piled high with papers and two chairs. In one of the chairs rests a small plastic box, the name Hemingway tagged across the top in red plastic labeling tape. The attendant asks him to sign two sets of papers and hands him the box. Dillon is surprised at its weight, probably somewhere between six and ten pounds. The residue of a life. He stares at the box as the attendant waits patiently for him to go. She says, “I’m sorry,” and Dillon nods, brought back to reality by her words. He finds his way out.

  Back in the van, the swarm of feelings in his chest are slowly crowded out by rage, and suddenly all he wants is to get even. He doesn’t even know where he’d begin, so he just starts driving, out of town, through Riverside State Park, turning onto every obscure back road that presents itself, in an attempt to become as physically lost as he feels emotionally lost; but that place doesn’t exist on this planet, and each back road eventually comes back to pavement. Finally, feeling wholly unsuccessful at any kind of purge, he heads the van back toward town, though the thought of going home brings such emptiness into his heart he has to close off his mind. He thinks
that his anger has subsided some and that he can go home and try to help there, at least get Christy out of the center of all that weight.

  There are only traces of dusk left in the sky as he drives onto Monroe Street toward downtown, passing the Dragon tavern, where Preston used to get his drugs, where the Warlocks hang out. Five or six vintage Harley-Davidson motorcycles lean on their kickstands on the street in front of the bar, and the sight of the bikes brings his rage surging back, swirling into his throat, physically almost choking him. In what will later seem like a timeless blur he slams on the brakes at the next intersection, takes a hard right, and speeds around the block and into the back parking lot of the dry cleaners, housed next door to the Dragon.

  He reaches into the rider’s seat and picks up the plastic box containing what is left of his brother, snaps the cheap plastic clasp, and opens it. Inside he finds a thick clear plastic bag held closed with a twist tie, exactly like those used to seal Hefty bags. My brother’s in a Baggie, he thinks, and almost laughs. All that’s left of my brother is in a goddamn Baggie. He pulls the bag out of the box, and for a quick second curiosity slips in, leaves him staring at the fine ash, flecked with bone chips and whatever else resisted the heat of the cremator’s oven.

  Then Dillon ups the ante. He digs into the glove compartment, removes Preston’s Luger pistol, tucks it into his belt, fully visible, then stretches around behind the seat to pull up Preston’s toolbox, from which he extracts a large flathead screwdriver. With his brother’s remains in one hand and the screwdriver in the other, he moves around the side of the Dragon to where the Harleys are parked, pops the locked tanks on all six bikes, and adds a little bit of Preston to each one. Then he walks through the front door of the Dragon, the plastic bag still half full of Preston’s ashes and the Luger still tucked in plain sight.

  The Dragon is a small tavern, dimly lit by vintage Olympia and Rainier beer signs and shaded overhead lamps hanging at the center of each of three pool tables. Frosted windows prevent outside passersby from seeing in, and the room is ringed by old, hard-seated wooden booths. It’s early yet, and the bar is filled to only about a third capacity with bikers and their ladies, and at the moment Dillon walks in, heads turn. He stands before the bar that faces the entrance and waits for quiet. It doesn’t take long. He’s running on automatic, nearly unaware of the steel grip of fear that waits just beneath his rage.

  “My name is Dillon Hemingway,” he says in a voice bigger and deeper than he knows. “Some of you guys know me because I used to come in here to drag my brother, Preston, home when he was so messed up he couldn’t get to his van. You probably remember Preston as your wienie little crippled gofer, somebody to humiliate when things got slow.”

  One of the bikers stands up from a booth by the far window. “Hey, you little pimp, what the hell do you want?”

  Dillon fingers the gun. “Just a minute of your time,” he says, holding up one finger, “just a minute of your time.”

  “Get the hell out of here,” the biker says back.

  “I’m almost on my way,” Dillon says, glancing around at the rest of the room. “Any of you who can read probably know Preston’s dead. He killed himself with the very gun I have tucked here in my belt. He probably had a lot of reasons, but the one that pushed him over the edge was being humiliated beyond endurance right here in this wonderful little yuppie watering hole.”

  Another of the bikers rises, starts to cross the room, but Dillon says, “I wouldn’t do that. You need to know I don’t give a shit what happens to me and this gun holds nine very big bullets.” He hasn’t removed it from his belt yet, but his hand grips the handle. He holds the plastic bag up to eye level. “I brought Preston back with me,” he says. “He seemed to like it here a lot, so I thought it might be a good place to leave him.”

  He opens the bag, holding it in his palm, and begins sprinkling the ashes around. “I’m leaving him here to haunt your asses,” he says, taking the gun from his belt. “Anytime something really shitty happens in here—or out there, for that matter—consider that my brother might have had something to do with it. If one of you gets beat up real bad, or a bike goes down, or you lose an old lady, or your kid gets sick and dies, just think about old crippled wienie gofer Preston Hemingway. I got a feeling he’s already at work.” As he speaks, Dillon spreads the ashes onto the pool tables and the floor and the bar. Several bikers are up; but the gun is out, and no one wants to take the chance. Dillon empties the bag as he backs into the doorway. “Like I said, my name is Dillon Hemingway. I’m in the book, and if you can’t read the address, you can find me at Chief Joseph High School. I know what kind of greasy scum you are, and I know you’ll come after me, so I want you to know I ain’t hiding.” In a flash he’s out the door, around the corner and starting his van. He expects them to come after him now, but he’s out of the parking lot before he sees anyone. It will be later when they discover that Preston Hemingway isn’t necessarily a good fuel additive.

  The day the Warlocks showed up at Chief Joseph High School was a day when John Caldwell would have been more than willing to turn Dillon Hemingway over to them and call it even. They roared into the parking lot as school was dismissed and 1,722 students between the ages of fourteen and eighteen spilled out onto the campus, headed home. There were at least 55 of the outlaw club’s members, and each carried an instrument of considerable weight and substance whose sole purpose for existence was to assist its handler in the destruction of the human skull.

  The leader, the huge man known as Wolf, easily six feet five inches tall and a good three hundred pounds, with tattoos covering the length of both arms, stood straddling his chopper. He cupped his hands and boomed, “We wanna talk to Dillon Hemingway! Nobody’s lookin’ for no trouble. We just want to talk to Dillon Hemingway.”

  Julie Conners sprinted back inside to the principal’s office, and when she was finally able to spit out what she needed to say, Mr. Caldwell told one of the secretaries to call 911 and got up to go outside. He worked his way through the crowd, which was beginning to lose some of its fear, releasing occasional catcalls to the gang. Pushed to the front of the crowd by his pride and his position, Caldwell stood at the edge of the sidewalk, facing the bikers, and asked them calmly what they wanted.

  “We have business with Dillon Hemingway,” Wolf repeated.

  “I’m sorry,” Caldwell said. “We don’t have a student here by that name.”

  “Then how did you know he was a student?” Wolf asked with a sneer. “Maybe he’s a teacher or a janitor.”

  Caldwell stood his ground. “We don’t have anyone here by that name.”

  One of the other bikers yelled, “He told us he goes to school here, asshole. Now get him out here before someone gets hurt.”

  In a lapse of judgment even for him, John Caldwell flared. “You watch your mouth in front of these kids!

  The biker laughed. “Yes, sir. Try this: he told us he goes to school here, shithead. Now get him out here.”

  The sounds of sirens broke the gang up, and in seconds the bikers were roaring off in at least five different directions, but not before giving Caldwell a few more titles to try on in front of his students. They also made several pointed comparisons of certain parts of his genitalia to shrunken raisins. He was humiliated and outraged when he stormed into Coach Sherman’s office, where Dillon was pulling on his sweats, having spent sixth period—his independent study in PE—swimming a hard two miler.

  In the following days Caldwell held Dillon personally responsible for the more than ten thousand dollars in damages brought on by three separate incidents of nocturnal vandalism—as well as for the “image-damaging” television and newspaper coverage—and demanded that Dillon apologize to the student body en masse for bringing Chief Joseph High School into whatever foul dealings he had with a gang of low-life motorcycle bandits.

  Afraid he might offend the spiritual sensibilities of many student body members, Dillon never did tell anyone what he had done to br
ing the gang down on him, rather allowing the popular belief that he had some kind of shady dealings with these people and that he might indeed be, as Caldwell said many times to whoever would listen, just like his brother.

  CHAPTER 8

  Late in the third quarter, while Chief Joseph’s girls’ basketball team mopped up the floor with crosstown rival David Thompson High, Dillon shoved Kathy McCarty’s foot into a bucket of ice to stop the swelling in her ankle, sprained coming down from her fifteenth rebound of the night. Kathy played second string to Jennifer Lawless, who had been on the bench since two minutes into the half because of the lopsided score. Jennifer would get maybe four or five minutes’ more playing time before game’s end just to keep her loose, but the outcome was not in question—had not been since the first two minutes—and the pressure was off. This was the last league game before the district tournament, due to start in four days out at the community college, and Coach Sherman wanted to be sure her starters were as healthy as possible. She would spend the duration of this game watching girls with less experience to determine who could come off the bench to fill key roles when needed during the tournament.

  Jennifer had reluctantly agreed to go on a “date” with Dillon after the game if he would promise not to call it that, and Dillon found himself thinking more about that than his treatment of Kathy McCarty’s ankle, though by now sprains were second nature and Kathy was in no danger of losing her foot to malpractice. He had felt an awkwardness with Jen since she agreed to go, and though there was no way he could explain it to himself or anyone else, part of him wished he’d never asked.

  Jen was also having difficulty concentrating on the game. She had agreed to the date with Dillon because she felt that if she were ever going to take head-on what appeared to be almost a phobia about boys, Dillon would be the one with whom to do it. He was gentle and respectful with her, and most of the time it was as if neither of them considered that they were of the opposite sex. But Dillon or no Dillon, Jennifer knew how she felt anytime a boy tried to touch her in any kind of sexual way. And she knew why. She remembered how she froze inside and how quickly she rose to anger in the face of persistence. She had gained a reputation as rather unapproachable over the years and had actually welcomed the title of prude to help her keep her horrible secret. Less sensitive boys had at one time or another called her gay or les, and she even let that pass in favor of challenging anyone to look at her life.