by Edward Bloor
Jenny put down her poster and explained. “Your own brain, your own body, will turn against you if you mess with drugs. It will shut down your ability to feel pleasure. It will make your life so much less than it could have been. That’s why we need to send out this message to everyone we can, in every way we can: NEO—Not Even Once.” She bowed slightly. “Thank you.”
The group applauded. Catherine Lyle positively beamed. Spontaneously, she said, “No, thank you! I would like to see this drawing, and this slogan, on a T-shirt. If it’s all right with you, I will advance the money to get those shirts made.”
Everyone approved of that.
Catherine Lyle then elaborated on the theme. “All it takes is one time for certain things—drugs, suicide, choking, sexually transmitted diseases. You don’t get a second chance with these things. These are things you cannot do even once.”
After thanking Jenny and Mikeszabo again, Mrs. Lyle switched gears. “Okay. Last month was Halloween, and we all got scared of vampires and zombies and other pretend monsters. Those were irrational fears.” Then, attempting a joke, she added, “Unless you happen to know any real monsters.” No one laughed. She went on. “This month we will face a real fear called claustrophobia. Who can tell me what that is?”
Wendy gave the answer right away: “Fear of confined spaces.”
Catherine frowned at her, I guess for not letting one of us answer. She continued: “Fear can be a major trigger for drug use, or for a drug relapse. So our next field trip will be to a local coal mine in order to face the fear of confined spaces. Anyone who would benefit from that should sign up and come along.”
I resisted the urge to look at Wendy. Was she looking at me? Was she thinking I would go, and sit with her, and be totally fascinated by everything she said and did?
Yeah. She probably was. But that wasn’t going to happen. At least I didn’t think so.
During my break at work, I grabbed my PSAT book and headed out back, hoping to do some vocabulary. But, to my surprise, Reg was there on the loading dock. He was standing with his back to me, posing like he was on a stage. His left arm extended outward, like it was the fret board of a guitar. His right arm was striking that guitar with sweeping blows. His voice, somewhat higher than normal, belted out the chorus of Ted Nugent’s “Wango Tango.”
He knew someone had joined him on the dock, because he stopped singing. But his arm crashed down on a few more chords before he turned to see who was there.
“Tom! Hey, I was just doing some Nugent for the fans.”
“The fans?”
“Right. The produce. They love it, especially the potatoes.”
Reg pulled out a Marlboro and lit it. He pointed to my book. “Okay, enough culture. What are the words today?”
I opened the book and read one aloud. “Puerile.”
Reg took a deep drag. “Sounds like pubes. Puberty.”
“Close. It means ‘childish, juvenile.’ ”
“That’s me. What’s next?”
“Pusillanimous.” Before he could put an obscene twist on that, I added the definition. “ ‘Lacking courage, cowardly.’ ”
“Being a pussy, in other words.”
“Right. In other words.”
“That’s a good one. What else you got?”
“Pernicious. It means ‘highly destructive.’ ”
“Ah, no. No way. That’s not me.” Reg took a final, long drag, burning up about an inch of tobacco. “There’s not a pernicious bone in my body.” He pitched what was left of the glowing cigarette into the truck bay, then saluted comically and walked back into the storeroom with all that smoke still inside his lungs.
I did manage to memorize a page of words before it was time to go in. Then I stashed my book on a shelf, pushed open the door, and saw two people standing by the bakery—Reg and Bobby. Never a good combination.
Reg was holding up a plastic bottle of Gold Bond talcum powder. He was pointing to it and talking, like a TV pitchman. “Bobby, you need to try this. You owe it to your customers.” He turned to include me. “Right, Tom?”
“What is this about?” I asked.
“I am trying to get Bobby to sprinkle some of this down his pants to relieve his chafing. I do it all the time, Bobby. I go through three or four bottles of this stuff every week. You owe it to your customers not to be irritable due to chafing in the crotch area. Did you ever hear the word crotchety?”
Bobby squirmed. “Yeah. I’ve heard that word. So what?”
“Well, that’s exactly what it means. Tom knows lots of big words.” He asked me, “Do you know the word crotchety?”
“Leave me out of this.”
“It means some guy has neglected to take proper care of his crotch, and he has become crotchety, irritable, unpleasant to customers. Do you think that’s good for business?”
I continued past them and got to work.
Reg, apparently, did not. Ten minutes later, he was at register two, bothering Lilly. I heard him say, “I can help you get a used car. Then we can go out together, now that you’re legal.”
Lilly, barely acknowledging him, muttered, “How do you know that?”
“What? That you’re legal? Uno told me.”
She didn’t like that. “John said I was legal?”
“In so many words. He said you turned eighteen.”
“That’s not the same. Anyway, I wouldn’t go out with you.”
“Well, we wouldn’t have to go very far. We could just go to the parking lot, to your car, where you could express your gratitude.”
Lilly shook her head. She replied matter-of-factly, “You are such a pig.”
“I am not a pig. I am merely puerile.” He turned to include me. (I wished he would stop doing that.) “Right, Mr. Tom?”
“Leave me out of this.”
“Come on, Lilly,” Reg continued. “Why are you so mean? You don’t talk like this to Uno.”
“He’s going by John now, not Uno.”
“Why?”
“That’s a boy’s nickname. He’s a man now.”
“Yeah? You made him a man?”
Lilly was starting to lose her cool. “Shut up.”
“Or did the other one finally drop?”
“Shut up!”
I looked over toward the customer-service desk and saw a stocky guy standing there. Something about him bothered me; it took me a second to realize why. It was Rick Dorfman. He was pointing at Walter and talking to him in an animated way.
Walter is a mild-mannered older guy. He’s retired, after working thirty-five years at the post office. He smiles at everybody, but he wasn’t smiling now. He looked scared. I thought about calling Dad to intervene, but Dorfman suddenly stopped pointing and talking, and stomped out of the store.
I got well out of his way, thinking, Good riddance.
A few minutes later, when Bobby came through the register line, I was sorry to see that he was carrying a bottle of Gold Bond talcum powder. I probably should have stopped him then and there, but I didn’t. I was afraid that would only make things worse.
Reg called after him, “Now don’t be stingy with that stuff, Bobby. Apply it liberally.”
Bobby replied, “Yeah. Okay.”
Reg waited until Bobby exited the store. Then he picked up the register phone and punched in the public-address number. He intoned, “Cleanup in Bobby’s room!” and hung up. With a final chuckle, he stuck a cigarette in his mouth and walked outside.
Lilly turned to me. “He is a pig. Piglike. Not that other word.”
“Puerile?”
“Yeah.”
Lilly pulled out her cash drawer and waved to Dad. He came over and asked, “Are you ready to close?”
“I am way beyond ready.”
Five minutes later, Lilly and I were standing outside, waiting for Mom. As we watched Reg drive away in his pickup, Lilly asked, “Did he show you that website?”
“Who, Reg?”
“Yeah.”
“No. W
hat website?”
“It was some gross thing, of course, just like Reg. John and him were looking at it on the office computer. John showed it to me, so I figured they showed you.”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
“Some guy at Blackwater University made it. He put pictures of girls on there, and he rated them on what they’d do to guys on dates.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like sex stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s gross. So, I was looking at some of the girls, and … that Wendy girl is on it.”
I tried to remain calm. I just repeated, “Really?”
“Yeah. I saw her picture. She was wearing, like, a purple Halloween costume. I told John, ‘Hey! That girl’s in our counseling group. She’s Mrs. Lyle’s daughter.’ ”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s like fourteen or fifteen years old. Right?”
“Yeah.”
Lilly shook her head. “That’s not right. I bet that’s not even legal. It’s like abusing a minor.”
I chose my words carefully. “What does it say about her?”
“It says the same stuff about every girl on there. It has columns with check marks. She’ll do this—like French kissing—but she won’t do this—like, you know. It’s gross, stupid guy stuff.”
Suddenly I felt like somebody had cut open the back of my head and sucked out my brain. I was totally numb.
Then I got angry.
I got angry at Wendy. For flirting with me. For making me think I had a chance with her. For asking if I had a zero sex drive. (Yeah, maybe I did, after watching her puke up those candy corns. That’ll do it.)
But I got more angry—enraged, violent angry—at that college guy. That scumbag. For calling me a townie. For making out with my girl—even if she was only my girl for ten minutes—and then posting lies about her on a website. A dirty sex site. What kind of scumbag would do that?
And, more important, what was I going to do about it?
Tuesday, November 6, 2001
I got to class early. I sat in the front row and stared up at the bars of the TV test pattern: ROY G BIV.
Wendy came in at the last second and sat next to me. I couldn’t even look at her.
Mr. Proctor wrote out today’s vocabulary word and sentence without comment: eschew—avoid. The shrewd shrew eschewed the chute.
Wendy, apparently, was not impressed. She didn’t say anything about it. We worked in our vocab books for ten minutes. Then I couldn’t take it anymore. I leaned my head toward Wendy and kept it there until I knew she was listening. Then I whispered in a quick, flat monotone exactly what Lilly had told me. Every word.
Wendy’s blond head stayed frozen in place until the end of my monologue. Then she whispered back, “First of all, if I am on that site, that guy is lying about me.”
“So you know about the site, and the guy? Is he your boyfriend or something?”
“That would fall under the category of none of your business.”
I pulled away, angrier than ever. I leaned back and demanded to know, “It was that guy at the Halloween party, wasn’t it?”
After a moment, she conceded, “Yes.”
“You were making out with him.”
She finally answered, “I was drunk. I was making out with you, too.”
“Yeah. I remember. So, did he ask you out after that?”
“Yes, he did. He wanted me to go back to his room that night, and I said no, and I guess that’s why he’s telling lies about me.”
“So he did this as revenge?”
“I guess, yeah.” After a long pause, she looked straight at me. She softened her voice. “Look, Tom, I’m really sorry about what happened at the party. I was drinking, and I should not drink. It’s a problem for me.” She added, “That’s why I’m in the counseling group.”
After a long pause, I finally managed to mumble, “Okay.”
Mr. Proctor walked over and stood right in front of me. He rarely got annoyed at talkers, but he was today. He asked coldly, “Are you two finished?”
I answered for both of us. “Yes.”
“Then let me get your attention up here.” He raised his voice. “Let me get everybody’s attention up here, please.” Mr. Proctor pulled out his marker and stepped to the whiteboard. He drew a rectangle with a curvy right side. He called over his shoulder, “What does this look like?”
Ben answered, “A rectangle?”
“No. What state in the United States does it look like? I’ll give you a hint: We’re living in it now.”
Several people chorused: “Pennsylvania.”
“That’s right. Your state. My state. Now listen to this, because it is important: Pennsylvania was once considered to be a Garden of Eden by Europeans. Many religious communities, utopian communities, settled here. They lived off the bounty of the land, in a Garden of Eden, just like the villagers of Eyam. Then, just as in Eyam, just as in Eden, something evil arrived, something so horrible that it was able to destroy everyone and everything.
“For the town of Eyam, that something was the bubonic plague. For Pennsylvania, that something was methamphetamine. For both places, it signaled the start of a plague year.”
He looked out at the class. “Those of you who are writing journals, I want you to keep this in mind.” He picked up a leather-bound classic. “In Paradise Lost, John Milton describes man’s fall from the Garden of Eden. So … who will tell the story of man’s fall from the beautiful land that was Pennsylvania? Will it be one of you?”
He looked right at me. On another day, I might have been excited. I might have been honored. But right then I couldn’t even register what he was saying.
I was in my own world, and it was a world full of pain.
All I could think about was that college guy. And what he had done to Wendy. And what he had done to me. And what he had said to me. And what I should do about it.
By the end of class, though, I had my answer. I turned and asked Arthur urgently, “Will you drive me to the college on Saturday?”
“Why?”
“I think I need to beat a guy up.”
“Righteous! Who is it?”
“A guy who started a website.”
“Really? Why?”
“He put lies on it about Wendy.”
Arthur looked disappointed. “The Grape? Come on, cuz. Can’t we come up with a better reason than that?”
“And he insulted me at the party.”
“There you go. What did he say?”
“He called me her ‘little townie friend.’ And he told me to go home.”
Arthur practically snapped to attention. “Oh, did he now?”
“Yeah. Can you help me? I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Definitely. You leave everything to me.”
“No. No, I want to do this myself. I just want you to drive me there. And maybe help me find him.”
“Yellow Corvette.”
“What?”
“Are we talking about the dude who was making out with the Grape?”
“Yeah.”
“Little curly-haired guy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I saw him get into a yellow Corvette.”
“So we just need to find that?”
“Yeah. Then what?”
I heard myself say, “I’ll take care of the rest.”
I couldn’t even look at Arthur. He might have been laughing at me. But he sounded serious enough when he replied, “I’ll do whatever you need me to do, cuz.”
The field trip to the Ashland coal mine began just like the one to the flight 93 crash site. There were three fewer passengers, though, since the high school stoners had not signed up.
Jimmy Giles was sitting up front again with his hand on the door. Catherine Lyle was driving. Wendy Lyle was sitting alone behind her, reading a novel. (Maybe it was another novel about someone who was beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside.)
&nbs
p; I was in the back row, next to Arthur. Jenny was right in front of me, between Ben and Mikeszabo. Her hair was hanging over the back of the seat, just inches in front of me. It looked and smelled really nice. Long and brown, with highlights. Very shiny. In fact, all of Jenny looked nice. I haven’t mentioned that before, but I should have.
Arthur was asleep with his head against the glass the entire way up there. I pulled out my PSAT book and tried to do some math problems, but I was way too distracted to work. I was still angry, scared, and pumped up about our plan to go after that college guy.
It wasn’t long before we were cruising down the main street of a small town. Catherine Lyle found the mine quickly and pulled into its parking lot. It was a pretty small operation, with a gift shop, the mine itself, and a train ride. I guess it gets crowded some days, but on this day the lot was empty.
Mrs. Lyle parked the Suburban in a space right across from the gift shop and we trooped in. All the gifts in the shop—and there were hundreds of them—were based on anthracite coal. They even had coal candy.
A short, skinny woman with a pointed nose stood behind the cash register. We lined up in front of her and purchased tickets for the next tour. A guy in coveralls and a miner’s helmet sauntered in and watched us, smiling. As soon as we all had tickets, he announced, “Are you ready to get to work? Okay, come on, then!”
He led us outside toward the mine entrance. A small engine was sitting there on railroad tracks. It had three yellow coal cars attached to it. The guy climbed into the engine cab and called out, “Hop on board, you coal miners!”
Wendy Lyle and her stepmother got into the first coal car. Arthur and his stepfather chose the second, and I joined Jenny and the guys in the last one.
The guide told us, “This is a real coal mine, folks, although no one is currently working it. It has been in operation in various forms for nearly one hundred years.
“We’ll be following the tracks of the coal cars down into the mine, where the temperature is always fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit. We will get out, walk around, and see the sights common to coal miners approximately seventy-five years ago.”