“We tried that already,” James said.
Felix stared off into the distance, until a smile formed on his face. “A guy goes into a restaurant and orders a soup, and when the waiter comes with his soup he sees the waiter’s got his thumb stuck right in it, so the guy says: Waiter, why is your thumb in my soup? And the waiter says, I got this infection, and the doctor told me to keep the thumb in something warm, so here it is. The guy says, How ’bout sticking it up your ass? And the waiter says, I tried that already.”
The two of them burst into laughter at the same time, and were only interrupted when Dallas tumbled frantically down the stairs and shouted: “James, your dad just banged on my door! I think he’s drunk, and he’s talking to my dad!”
James and Felix stared at each other; their faces sobered from the laughter, and they all three scrambled up the stairs to see what was happening.
* * *
Ivan Illworth had stumbled up to Michael Darwin’s door and took a moment to tuck his shirt into his sagging pants. He sniffed and smoothed back his hair. Then he opened the screen and banged on the wooden door three solid times.
Michael answered, peering through one of the small panes of diamond-shaped glass. He fixed his eyes on Ivan, who was swaying back and forth. Rebecca appeared behind her husband and asked who was at the door.
“Go back into the living room. It’s Ivan Illworth.”
“What does he want?”
“I’m going to find out, go back there.”
Rebecca turned and walked down the hallway as Michael yanked the door open. Dallas breezed up to his father and saw James’s dad standing there unsteadily on the porch.
“Can I help you, Ivan?” Michael asked.
Ivan recognized his impatient tone. He sniffed and smoothed back his hair once more before he spoke. “I just wanted you to know that it’s okay, you know . . . All is forgiven.”
Michael tried to smile. “What on earth could you be talking about?”
“Well, the fight your boy started yesterday,” Ivan said. “The bruise James got on his neck, you must have seen it. But boys are boys, and I don’t hold it against Dallas one bit.”
“The fight Dallas started?”
“Yep. You should know, sir . . . you should jus’ know, I don’ hole it against Dallas one bit. Not one.” Ivan’s eyes darted past Mr. Darwin and landed on his son, standing there with his other friend.
“Hello, son,” Ivan said.
Michael looked back and upon seeing the boys, pulled the door so only his body filled the frame.
Ivan went up on his tiptoes and raised his voice. “Jus’ telling Mr. Darwin here, there’s no hard feelings, son. Not for what his son caused to your poor neck.”
“Ivan, are you feeling all right?” Michael asked. “Think maybe you had a little too much to drink?”
Ivan shook his head, still swaying back and forth. “I jus’ wanted to put your mine at ease. There’s no need for you to apologize for the fight or anything. Boys do boys things. And the same goes for Dallas . . . He doesn’t need to be apologizing to me for anything.”
Michael wrinkled his brow and shifted his weight to his other leg. “Ivan, Dallas is being dealt with for his part in the fight yesterday, don’t you worry about it.”
“But jus’ pass that mess’ge to ’im, will ya? He doesn’t owe . . . owe me an apology or nothing like that. It’s all forgiven. Same goes for yourself.”
Michael smiled. “Fine. Go home, Ivan. Go home and sleep it off.”
Ivan stumbled backward and narrowed his eyes at Michael, inspecting him for a sign of insincerity. In the window beside the door, James’s face peered into the evening dusk, watching his father. His face looked angelic in the late-evening glow of the living room lamp. Ivan waved to him.
“Have fun tonight, son!” he shouted, and staggered back down the porch, almost losing his balance entirely.
James watched from the window as his father straightened himself, and headed down the driveway. Ivan began to veer to the right, and compensated by staggering back to the left. Some other movement caught the corner of James’s eye: trotting along, as ignorant as ever, was the dog from yesterday. Spybot. Looking nosy, bowing his head, and locking his dog eyes on Ivan as he reached the end of the driveway. James didn’t see any hole in the ground, or anything else that could trip his father, but somehow he lost all balance and teetered to his left. He knocked into Mr. Darwin’s mailbox, and bounced violently off it. Ivan reached both his hands toward the mailbox as if apologizing to it, and reeled backward before he finally hit the ground. He rolled over to his side. Mr. Darwin propped open the screen.
“Ivan?” he called.
Ivan got up on his knees and waved his hand in the air to signal that he was all right. James could feel his eyes widen as he stared out the window, and blood rushed to his cheeks. The dog had trotted up to Ivan and was licking his face with playful familiarity. Then the dog turned to Ivan’s outstretched hand and starting licking that too. Ivan pulled his hand back and swatted the dog aside with a violent blow that sent the animal yelping across the street and drifting down the road. Then Ivan gingerly rose to his feet, and with an air of dignity, smoothed his hair, hiked up his pants, and continued home.
When Michael closed the heavy door by pushing his weight slowly into it until the lock caught, the three boys climbed down from the couch they had been kneeling over to watch. Michael looked at James. He took Dallas by the shoulder and drew him in. He smiled at James, a half-smile that looked like a nervous tick.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Michael said.
James blinked up at him. Then he turned and climbed back upon the couch to look out the window again. To make sure his father had made it safely inside.
It was not the first time he’d seen his father drunkenly obsessed over something. Last month, at the neighborhood block party, he had gotten drunk before the food even hit the grill. Tables were lined up alongside the street. Janet had made a spread of side dishes and placed them on a table at the entrance to their dirt driveway. She had just finished putting down her last bowl of potato salad when she caught a glimpse of Ivan staggering through the crowd of neighbors, laughing and telling crude jokes. The neighbors were laughing too, but James watched his mother’s face and could tell she wasn’t pleased.
The only other person at the party who hadn’t found Ivan amusing was Minister Roberts from the Darwins’ church, a burly man with a boyish face, who blinked at Ivan with a sort of silent indictment. Ivan had noticed, and narrowed his eyes at him. “Do you know what Jesus did when he went to a wedding, Father?” Ivan asked, swaying before the minister with his fists clenched.
“I’m a minister, not a priest,” he replied dryly. “You don’t have to call me Father.” He took a sip of his seltzer and looked away.
“You can look as bored as you want, Father, but I’ll tell you what he did. He took water and made five barrels of wine. He was a regular vintner, your Jesus, always keeping the jugs full for the party. I’ll bet you didn’t think I had a knowledge for the Bible-type stuff, but I know plenty about it.”
James noticed how the neighbors had grown quiet, and soon the only voices that could be heard were the minister and his father.
“I’m sure you do,” replied Minister Roberts, looking down at his hands folded neatly around the seltzer glass.
“Okay, Brother Roberts,” intercepted Mr. Darwin, “we have some food for you over by our table.” He pushed the minister away from the conversation.
Minister Roberts allowed himself to be escorted, but waved his hand in the air. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he kept repeating.
Ivan had then turned to Mr. Frado, the neighbor who, at least to James, looked just as drunk as his father. Mr. Frado was swaying in the summer street. Ivan’s face lit up to mirror his. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder, and proceeded to try and teach him an old folk song.
Soon enough night had fallen, and Ivan was at his worst. All the hum
or had gone out of him. He was scowling in the dark, leaning against his own mailbox. He looked around at all the laughing neighbors as if he suddenly hated them. As if they had betrayed him somehow.
He’d had his fill. He had pushed off the mailbox and rounded the corner of the dessert table to go inside, but he did not make the corner cleanly, and he lost his balance. He crashed, facedown, onto the dirt driveway beside the table, and the neighbors let out a collective gasp. James rushed to his side. Ivan curled up into a fetal position and let his head rest in the dirt. James pulled at his arm until Felix’s father ran and caught hold of Ivan’s elbow.
“I’m fine,” Ivan had said, still lying down. “I’m fine . . . I’ll just sleep right here.”
Mr. Cassidy pulled Ivan to his feet and gave his heavy arm to James. Ivan rested against James’s shoulder, using him as a crutch, as his son led him up the porch steps and into the house.
* * *
Now, when Dallas put his hand on James’s shoulder, it felt like his dad’s and he startled. He crawled back down from Dallas’s front window. Felix had already gone back downstairs to prepare more questions for the Ouija board. Dallas looked at his friend, who was trembling slightly, and was pale, his bruise darkening. Dallas made a face as if searching for something to say.
“Sometimes when people do things, they don’t do it to be mean, they do it for no reason,” he finally said. “Like they don’t even know they’re doing it.”
James nodded and looked at the floor. “I know that,” he said, breezing past Dallas and heading for the basement stairs.
Dallas glanced at his father, who had put his hand on the back of his neck.
“That was a good thing you did, Dallas,” Mr. Darwin said. “That was a good deed.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BOB CASSIDY GAVE DARRYL A PUNCH ON THE ARM and demanded one more try, since Darryl had turned him the wrong way. The crowd that had gathered around the piñata grew in size with every second Bob held the stick, and with more jibes and joking, the varsity football team was spinning him around once again. They turned him seven times, and the crowd shouted off each rotation. When they stopped, he was facing the right way. Players were howling for Bob to take his swing. Bob was drifting and teetering around, dizzy, drunk, ecstatic from the attention. David stood with his arms crossed, but he stretched out his neck and went to his toes to get a glimpse.
“Hey, he’s getting his balance back . . . Cheater!” someone shouted, laughing. Instantly, Bob reached back and came down hard with the stick. It made a loud whiffing sound as it glanced off the piñata’s back side and crashed down into the dirt. The piñata bounced and swung on its string. Bob staggered forward. The crowd erupted and several of the other players lunged to pull his blindfold off. David seemed to cheer up a bit as he watched Bob search for his balance again. The guy was laughing with drunken glee, as people lined up to slap him on the back.
A smaller kid stepped forward and took the stick from him, wanting to get his turn. David watched Darryl try to put the blindfold on the kid, but Bob suddenly pulled on Darryl’s shoulder and whispered something that drew Darryl’s eyes to David. Their eyes met for a moment. Nodding, Darryl tied the blindfold onto the small kid, who looked eager to be taking his swings in front of Bob Cassidy. He volunteered his back to Darryl, who started spinning him around and around, while the crowd counted to twelve.
Entirely drunk well before he ended up on the edges of this circle, and well before Bob Cassidy showed up, the slight boy could hardly stay on his feet. A few friends were chanting his name, while Darryl and his crew stared intently, practically licking their lips in anticipation. David left Julia’s side, and the closer he got, the more it looked like fun to get a shot at breaking the piñata open. The boy righted himself, and was just about to take his swing, when suddenly he staggered over to the other side of the circle. He lowered his arms and attempted to correct himself.
“Come on!” someone yelled from the back of the crowd.
“Swing, little man!” shouted another. Some of Darryl’s friends started to boo and hiss.
“All right,” said Darryl, “he’s taken too long, we have to spin him again!”
The crowd roared. Even David smiled. The kid dropped his arms down and searched blindly for Darryl’s hands. Darryl clutched the back of his shoulders and spun him another five times, as the crowd counted.
When Darryl was finished, the kid staggered about, and more people started to shout for him to swing. As if knowing he had little time, the kid took a moment to ground himself and raised his arms mightily. The crowd stopped like a watch. All eyes were on him. He reared back, and seemed just about ready to swing down on top of the piñata and burst its guts wide open, when he abruptly lurched forward and puked at his feet. The crowd groaned. David looked down at the puddle and scrunched his face. A dozen people moved away, as the boy, crouched with his head down between his knees, pulled off his blindfold and tried to regain his balance. Before he could, another wave hit, and he vomited again, as Darryl’s friends pulled him away from the pen and led him off to the side of the house. The crowd was dissatisfied. Some more people began to turn away, when Darryl stepped into the circle and held his arms up in the air. David’s heart was full—the boy had not broken the piñata.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I prepared for this,” Darryl announced. And with that, two of his teammates stepped forward with spades in their hands. They dug underneath the offensive pile and carried it off. The crowd had no problem parting the way for them to get by with their spades. With a divot left in the ground and nothing more, Darryl waved the blindfold around, searching for his next victim. Hands shot up in the darkness of the massive circle. His eyes locked on David, and he immediately pulled him by the collar into the empty space, to a few scattered cheers. David looked back into the crowd for Julia, though he could see nothing but a wall of classmates, all taller than he.
Darryl had his arm around David, and whispered into his ear, “Are you drunk enough?”
“Sure,” David answered.
This satisfied Darryl, and he pulled the blindfold over David’s eyes. David could feel the energy and space between himself and the growing crowd. He could also feel Darryl’s hands tightly gripping his shoulders. He wondered if Julia could see this, if she was smiling. He imagined she was, since it was she who wanted to watch the whole spectacle in the first place.
David heard Darryl bark, “Let the spin begin!” and suddenly he was turning to his right. Clockwise. He heard the roaring crowd count: “One, two, three, four . . .” He did not feel as if he had turned around twenty times, but had lost his own count by nine or so. He was reeling with nausea, and he began to panic. Don’t puke, he told himself as the crowd chanted. He flashed back to the kid who had gone before him, who was no doubt still crouched in the bushes somewhere. He prayed that he not suffer the same fate. Please don’t puke in front of all these people, he repeated to himself. But his chest was bursting with glee, because, even as he spun he started to feel like for once the crowd was not howling names and labels at him, or some other mean, hateful thing. He even started to feel like he was a part of something, with each number the crowd barked out: “Nine, ten, eleven . . .” He knew now that Julia was somewhere, smiling for him. He knew she was looking at this turn as a crowning moment—the time when everybody in the school thought David Westwood was an okay guy. These thoughts helped him to stay away from the other thought—that he might vomit all over himself.
When the crowd barked out the number twenty, the spinning stopped, and David had no idea if Darryl had placed him rightly in front of the piñata, or if he’d played another prank. He tripped over his feet, turned once completely around, and judging by the sound of the crowd, he turned back around once more. He raised the stick in the air. God guide this swing, he thought, trying to hold some semblance of equilibrium. Then he reeled backward, and stepped down into the divot. It wasn’t much of a hole, but when David felt it under his feet, the w
hole universe seemed to snap back in place like a photograph. Suddenly David knew every object in the yard, and where it stood. His mind painted the clearest picture in an instant, the contours of every object.
He turned, righted his swing, and crashed down with the stick. He felt a slight paper resistance, and then the stick buried itself in the ground. Instantly, he heard the crowd erupt into a cheer. When he pulled off the blindfold, he looked up at the piñata, swinging from the tree limb in two broken parts, and the ground where his swing had ended was littered with candy, lollipops, and the occasional condom. Some of the candy had fallen right at his feet. The smile inside him reached his mouth, and he stood up dizzy, grinning over at Darryl.
Adding to his victory, he watched his classmates grovel at his feet for the candy, the way he’d imagined they all would one day for his artwork. He felt like a king who had just rewarded all his serfs with a feast. He spun around to catch the whole scene, his entire high school bowing at his feet and glad for it. In his moment of triumph, he had almost forgotten the most important element, and remembering, he searched the crowd for Julia. He looked to where he had last seen her, and then scanned to his left, but she was nowhere to be seen. He peered down at the ground to see if she was among those grasping for candy, but she wasn’t. He looked up and around again.
The crowd dispersed after everything had been picked up, and David was still standing near the tree with the broken piñata swinging in the breeze. He glanced up at the head of the piñata; it was a paper horse. His eyes focused on its face, swinging in two halves with a dumb, happy grin. It seemed to mock him. He looked around for someone familiar and fixed his eyes on Nick heading toward him.
“Nice shot,” he said, as he lightly punched him on the shoulder and took a swig of his beer.
“Where’s Julia?” David looked over Nick’s shoulder to see if he could catch a glimpse of her. Nick’s eyes darted downward. “What is it?” David asked firmly.
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