The Summer I Died: A Thriller

by Ryan C. Thomas

  I kept flipping stations, hoping something would come up I could hum along to, but the best I could find was some song about a man whose woman left him and took the dog when she did. I looked at the CD player and sighed. If it weren’t for online CD distributors I’d have gone Charlie Manson a long time ago. But we couldn’t use CDs in the Camaro because Tooth had fucked up the player trying to fix it.

  I finally just turned it off and stuck my hand out the window instead, let it catch the wind and swim up and down like a dolphin. We took a lesser-traveled back route that ran under the trees and offered sporadic shade. Crooked limbs criss-crossed overhead like giant arthritic fingers. The blazing sun stabbed through them here and there creating a kind of flicker effect as we drove.

  “Where to?” Tooth asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s go up toward Bobcat and see what we find. Should be pretty secluded and we can shoot all we want.”

  He reached into his pocket and brought out the bag of weed and tossed it in my lap.

  “I bought you a coming home present. Roll a nice fatty for us.”

  Shaking the bag in front of my eyes, I thought, fuck yeah, this is the shit that makes coming home worth it. I opened the bag and took a whiff and holy shit was it bad. “This stinks like a hobo’s asshole. Is it even good?”

  “Probably not, but it’s weed, ain’t it? Who cares what it smells like long as it gets us fucked up, right?”

  I took a Bud out and crunched it up in my lap. The wind whipped some of it up and stuck it to my Silver Surfer T-shirt. The papers were in the bag as well and I took one out and rolled it as best I could despite the wind. It looked rather pathetic when I finished, but I agreed with Tooth’s philosophy.

  “How’s that?” I asked, holding it up like a prize catfish.

  “Looks like a piece of bird shit, but it’ll do.”

  Bobcat Mountain was farther north than we liked to travel, about an hour and fifteen minutes, but it was as desolate as volunteer day at the old folks home. A few years ago there was an attempt to turn it into a ski resort, but a bunch of tree-hugging hippies rallied against it, arguing it would drive the mountain’s animals out of their natural habitat and into people’s bedrooms. I hate hippies.

  I lit the joint and sucked in the rancid-smelling weed, then passed it to Tooth, who took a big toke. I hadn’t smoked pot in over a month because I was afraid it would affect my finals. I got okay grades, but they weren’t going to get me into Harvard Law or anything. The drug wasted no time climbing into the recesses of my mind and convincing my brain cells they could run the place with minimal staff. I slumped back in the seat and watched my dolphin-hand dive for food. When I got bored with that I took the dice out of my pocket and we played an imaginative game of craps.

  “What odds you give me I roll a seven?” I asked, shaking the dice in my hand.

  “I bet you an ass-kicking.”

  “For you or for me?”

  “For your mother, who do you think? Just roll ’em so I can get started. I been waiting to give you a good ass kicking for a while now.”

  I rolled them on the floor and they came up seven. Scooping them up, I showed Tooth. He blew smoke in my face and punched me in the arm like a prize pugilist and I almost went through the door.

  “Ow! Youfuckingbitchthathurt!”

  He erupted in laughter and flicked the spent roach out the window. I rubbed my arm and felt it bubble up. My fist already balled, I went to hit him back, but he caught me with another blow in the other bicep. My arms went flaccid and hung down like a basset hound’s ears.

  “Sonofabitch!” I yelled.

  Tooth was high and just kept laughing. I was pissed at him, but pot giggles are a pox that spreads fast, and soon we were both cackling like a couple of idiots.

  “That weed tastes like shit,” he said.

  “I told you.”

  “I think I know a good spot around the backside of the mountain. It has some trails that were supposed to be ski paths. They go up into a nice clearing on the side; you can see out over the whole forest.”

  “We should have packed a lunch.” I was suddenly aware that our inevitable hunger would have to wait a considerable amount of time to be satiated. The nearest town from Bobcat Mountain was Bobtail, so named because it was at the back end of the mountain, and it was a good half hour away.

  I put the dice back in my pocket. We drove in silence for a bit until we arrived, then sat a bit longer until we convinced ourselves to make the hike. Tooth took the 9mm out of the case, tucked it in his waistband and pulled his shirt over it.

  “What are you doing that for?”

  “Park police patrol here sometimes. They see some strange case they might get nosy and ask me to open it up. This way, I just tell ’em I got a gargantuan cock.”

  Unlike most mountains in New Hampshire, this one didn’t have a little man in a booth asking for parking money, so we just drove up a dirt road that dead-ended about two hundred feet up, and parked off to the side. We took the six pack Tooth had grabbed from his house and started trudging up the nearest trail like two dwarves high on ore fumes. Tooth even whistled, the gap in his bridge making him sound like a hot teakettle. It wasn’t long before mosquitoes and gnats considered us fine dining. At one point, in the shadows of the trees, the bugs got so bad that I put my head in my shirt and jogged a bit. Through the fabric I could smell pine sap bubbling out of the surrounding tree trunks. The firecracker snapping of twigs behind me told me Tooth had followed my lead.

  We came out into a clearing about a third of the way up the mountain. The sun was out in full force and I could feel it working its claws into my face. Tooth was smart to wear a hat; unfortunately, my head was small and I looked kind of ridiculous in them. Looking out you could see for a distance, though there wasn’t much to see but trees, the road we’d arrived on winding through them, and summer haze.

  “Motherfucker those mosquitoes are hungry.” Tooth swatted at a few brave ones that followed us into the open air.

  He stared at the mountains in the distance and narrowed his eyes. “You see that?”

  “What?”

  “That. That interesting thing over there.” He pointed out at the mountains and I tried to follow his trajectory. I squinted but all I saw was trees.

  “I don’t see anything interesting,” I told him.

  “Neither do I. I have to get out of this place. And soon.”

  He was “California dreaming” again and I’d walked right into it. I’d kind of figured by now that Tooth’s summer mission was to get me to move to the west coast with him, and since I had no intention of going, it was going be a long summer. He popped the tab on one of the beers and handed it to me, took another himself and chugged it down in one gulp. When he was done he looked me in the eye and I could see he wanted to say something. I figured he was going to ask me to move again, but instead he punched me in the shoulder and yelled, “Let’s shoot something, you pantywaist!”

  Any pain that had dissipated from my arm was now back in full force. I’d have returned the punch but quickly realized the futility of it. Tooth always got this way when he drank; I was used to it. Hitting him back would only encourage him and fuel his energy.

  He walked to the tree line, put the empty beer can on a low tree limb and backed up to where I stood. “Bet you an ass-kicking I make this shot,” he said. Aiming the gun, he squared his feet and fired.

  Bang!

  The report wasn’t nearly as loud as the .44 had been, and the recoil was mild at best. The beer can flipped up in the air like a gold medal gymnast and landed on its side a little ways in the woods. He looked at me and smiled. I flinched.

  “Here.” He handed me the gun. “I’ll have to owe you that ass-kicking. I hurt my hand last time I hit you. You’re a bony little fucker.”

  I hefted the gun while he went and put the can back on the limb. When he was walking back he pretended to dodge bullets. And that was the first moment in my life I scared myself, becaus
e I felt how easy it would be to shoot someone in the head, dump the body in the woods, and walk away scot-free. The simplicity of it shook me.

  Or maybe I’d just read too many comics and seen too many movies where the only time someone had a gun was when they were blowing another person’s head off. Because, somehow, despite knowing the feeling was wrong, it felt like that’s what I was supposed to do.

  I handed the gun back to Tooth.

  “I can’t shoot. My arm hurts from when you punched me,” I lied.

  “You pussy. Suck it up and squeeze the trigger. This gun is so light a baby could shoot it.”

  Forcefully, he pushed the gun back in my hand, placed his own hand over mine and made me grip it firmly. He didn’t back away until I faked an air of confidence, though what I really did was clear my mind of any thoughts that would land me in the loony bin. Across the field, the beer can reflected the sun so it appeared a train was coming out of the woods. I relaxed my grip, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger.

  Bang!

  The noise was more like a firecracker than a cannon, and perhaps because of this I felt less nervous. My shot landed square and sent the can cartwheeling backwards to the ground. Tooth ran over and picked it up and brought it back.

  “Damn, you’re a natural.” He fingered the bullet hole.

  The bullet had gone through dead center, a bit below Tooth’s hole. I didn’t tell him I had pictured the can as a man’s head when I shot, though I doubt he would have given a shit. Then again, maybe I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want to hear myself admit it.

  CHAPTER 8

  By midday we’d shot so many holes in the cans they were unusable even as targets. At twenty yards my aim had gotten so I could hit my mark about seventy percent of the time. Tooth’s accuracy was a much better. Even drunk he could shoot the ass hairs off a gnat. After we’d grown bored, he wobbled around picking up the empty shells.

  “I can reuse these,” he told me.

  I wasn’t so sure homemade bullets were a good idea, but for all I knew the ones we’d shot hadn’t come from a store anyway.

  We rolled another joint and sat and looked out over the forest. Not much had changed in the past couple hours, except maybe some clouds had reshaped themselves. Off in the distance, a bleak gray was spreading over the blue sky and I figured by supper time we’d be in for rain.

  Tooth passed me the joint and said, “Want to go to O’Conner’s tonight?”

  I sucked in the stale smoke and coughed, then drummed my fist on my chest, apelike. “I’d just as soon not go back there.”

  “Yeah, but they’re the only ones that don’t check IDs.”

  Getting carded was the least of my worries. The last time we’d ventured into O’Conner’s was on Christmas break and I’d ended up with a fat lip and piss-drenched pants and Tooth had ended up with a broken nose. O’Conner’s was a local hangout for some bored skinheads who had nothing to do and no one to take it out on, these parts being primarily white. As a result, an unsuspecting soul who happened to remark about a film starring a black man was like a gift from the gods.

  No sooner had I mentioned the Wesley Snipe film Blade to Tooth than a fist the size of the moon hauled me out of my chair and brought me face to face with a suspender-wearing gorilla with two lightning bolts tattooed on his skull.

  “We don’t discuss eggplants in here,” he breathed. “You want to proliferate the spreading disease that is the black man, you do it somewhere else.”

  Had I been alone, I would have thanked the man for leaving my neck in one piece and slinked out the door like a frightened mouse. Unfortunately, I was with Tooth, who never passes up an opportunity to land me in jail or a hospital bed. He came around the back of the skinhead and put his arm around the guy like they were best buddies.

  “I say we lynch this little fucker,” he said.

  Naturally, my eyes went wide and I hoped Lightning Bolt Head understood the joke. He gave Tooth a serious stare, as if he might pick him up and use him as a toothpick. The owner of the bar came over, carrying a golf club, and told us to knock it off or he was calling the cops. But like hyenas trapping two lion cubs, the other skinheads gathered around to support their friend—who could have easily taken both Tooth and me with one finger.

  “We’re just talking movies,” Lightning Bolt Head said.

  The other patrons in the bar, mostly drunks and a few college students home on break, stopped all conversation and started salivating for blood. Normally, I’d have been just as eager for some violence, but my heart just wasn’t in it this time, what with my face likely to be the first target and all.

  As the owner walked back behind the bar, Tooth gave me his famous glance, the same one he’d shot me in the liquor store, the one that always made my scrotum shrivel, and I suddenly knew I was very likely leaving the bar with missing teeth. It was kindergarten all over again. Tooth was setting up for a distraction and I was going to do something on the sly. But what? There was nothing to swipe from these guys and I sure as hell wasn’t going to blindside one of them.

  “So what do you say?” Tooth continued. “Let’s take this nigger-lover out back and show him what it means to live in the white man’s world. Maybe we can get points on our community service, eh?”

  “I know you,” Lightning Bolt Head said. “You’re that guy who got run over by his daddy. What do they call you, Mouth or something?”

  “Tooth.”

  “Yeah, Tooth, nice name. Well, listen here, Tooth, why don’t you fuck off before I stamp my name on your forehead.”

  He raised his other fist and proudly displayed a three-fingered silver ring that was more brass knuckles than jewelry. Beveled in reverse were the words BRODY WAS HERE. I almost laughed. Almost.

  “Nice ring,” Tooth replied, “I got one, too. It says ‘Once you go black you never go back.’ Put it right where I had that epiphany. Want to see it?” He pretended to unzip his fly, and it was at this moment I realized Tooth had stepped over the line of safety. We were in for it now. As the skins stood in stunned silence, waiting to see if Tooth had a cock ring on, I slowly put my foot against the back of Lightning Bolt Head’s knee—and prayed.

  “That’s it,” the skinhead yelled as he adjusted the ring on his hand for optimal stamping, “we’re all going outside.”

  Tooth snapped his arm back, fist balled into a battering ram, and I shoved my foot forward. Lightning Bolt Head stumbled as his leg gave out, and in that instant Tooth hit him square in the face. The force of the blow slammed his head back into mine and split my lip. A flash of white erupted under my eyelids and I felt myself falling. Then everything kind of exploded, as if a pack of wolves had been released into a hen house. Fists came from every direction, combat boots flashed at eye level. Yelling and screaming and bottles breaking. Grunts and gouts of blood spitting through the air. Taking advantage of my new position on the ground, I began crawling toward the door over shards of green and brown bottle. I was inches away from salvation when a dozen hands reached down and yanked me up and I knew, without a doubt, that I was a dead man. I pissed myself.

  The next thing I saw was a golf club slicing the air and bodies flying this way and that. Whoosh! I ducked a swing that would have made a hole-in-one in my cheek and came up to find Tooth in front of me. His face was awash in blood and his bridge had been punched out.

  “Let’s get the fuck outta here!” I yelled.

  “Holdth on, I woft my tees.”

  We bent down as skinheads careened around us, bleeding and moaning. Cheers went up from the other patrons, whose expectations had been generously fulfilled. I found his bridge under a barstool, covered in a glob of ichor that reminded me of a stewed tomato. I thrust it in his hand and nearly retched as he shoved it in his mouth. He yanked me up and we bolted out the front door and sped away.

  And that was how my last trip to O’Conner’s had ended.

  As I looked at the encroaching grayness crawling toward us over the mountains
, I passed the joint back to Tooth and thought, no, I’m not particularly interested in going to O’Conner’s tonight. I told this to Tooth.

  “You’re afraid those skinhead jerkoffs will be there,” he said. “Man, when are you gonna get a backbone?”

  “I have a backbone, and it’s straight and in one piece. I kind of like it that way.”

  “You kind of make me sick sometimes.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. But then again, he was drunk and he was unpredictable when drunk. I didn’t take his bait though; if he wanted to give me shit about not wanting to fight he could work it into the conversation on his own.

  Man, he was pissing me off.

  “You never take any chances,” he continued. “How long are you gonna stay in this hick town, doing nothing but reading comic books? When was the last time you got laid?”

  “I get laid.”

  “No, you don’t. Shit, you must pull your dick as often as I take a drink.”

  “I’d have my dick in my hand right now if that were the case.”

  “Man, don’t you feel suffocated here?”

  “The university isn’t like that, there’s opportunity, cool people. You’d know that if you came to visit.”

  “There’s no point. All college girls want to do is talk about how they’re going to be lawyers and doctors. None of them want to rape me like a bitch in heat, like the Internet says.”

  “It’s not like that. Mostly they’re all hippies, listen to reggae music, hang out and let their leg hair grow. And they’re so sheltered, like they all grew up in communes. These girls came in my dorm room one night while I was watching Evil Dead and they asked what it was. Can you believe that? They’d never seen Evil Dead. I just laughed.”

  “You elitist jackass. You should have fucked them.”

  “Who said I didn’t?” I replied, annoyed at his lack of faith in me. Though the truth was they had walked into my room by mistake and asked the one question and left. I didn’t know too many girls, at least ones I could relate to. There was one girl living in a room down the hall who was very cute, small nose, short brown hair, had a picture of Ewan McGregor on her door in his Obi Wan Kenobi costume. I liked her, and we’d talked briefly, but I learned she had a boyfriend and not a very nice one at that. She left soon after anyway. Tooth was right—I pulled my dick a lot.