by S. E. Hinton
He wondered if Terry was still alive.
Class Time
Mike watched the teacher walk back and forth in front of the blackboard. She was a little thing, maybe five-three or-four, barely came up to his shoulder. She looked to be about twenty-five, a couple of years younger than he was.
He had expected to be the oldest one in this American Short Stories class, but there were several students far older than he was. Just a few looked fresh out of high school. It had been almost ten years since he’d been in high school. And he sure didn’t remember any teachers that looked like this.
Once in a while she would stop, look down at her notes on her desk. When she did this, a piece of hair would fall forward over her face, and she would absent-mindedly brush it back behind her ear.
Mike kept thinking he would like to smooth her hair back like that. She had pretty, light brown hair, a gleam like silk to it.
He should be paying attention to what she was saying. Something about Henry James. He hadn’t been able to read the Henry James story, though he did like the one by Hemingway…
He started thinking about the first time he saw her. He had thought she was a student. He was taking a computer class for work. The boss had a bright idea about getting all the inventory, the records, on a computer, and since the other bartender would not touch a computer, Mike volunteered.
The class was fun in a way, and he was thinking maybe he’d take another one, something different. It was a community college. You could take things for no credit, it didn’t cost much. He was getting a little restless at the bar.
He was wondering what to take, when he saw a very pretty student in the hallway. She was looking at the bulletin board, and Mike, who was not shy about pretty women (though he was about most things), stopped and asked, “You know of a good class to take?”
She looked directly at him, didn’t seem to be afraid of him, although he scared some people. Tall, long-haired, tattooed, he looked more like a janitor than a student, and he knew it.
“I hear the American Short Story is good.”
“You going to be there?”
“Yes.”
Mike had walked off and signed up for the class. It was a day class, he worked nights, what the hell.
And when he walked in and saw she was the teacher, he had to laugh.
It was a good class. He read his first book ever for this class. To Have and Have Not. It was the first book he tried to read that seemed to have something to do with real life. He liked hearing what she had to say about the writers.
But best of all he liked watching the teacher. She was so pretty. She moved as graceful as a deer. She always wore long skirts and light sweaters. He liked to picture what she looked like underneath…
Everyone got up to leave, and Mike realized class must be over. He gathered up his notebook and book.
“Michael,” she said. “Could you see me after class for a minute?”
When she’d first called roll, she’d asked each person what they preferred to be called, which was nice. He’d said “Michael,” though no one ever used it.
Now what? he thought. So far he hadn’t made a good impression on her. Two weeks ago he forgot and wore his gun to class. When she spotted it under his jacket, she called him out into the hallway and gave him what-for.
“I have a permit.” He still shouldn’t wear it into a school building, he knew that.
“I don’t care if you have a handwritten note from God Almighty. Get that thing out of here.”
He had, and she made no objection when he slipped back into class.
Now he stood next to her desk, trying to think of what he could have done. Maybe his staring had bothered her.
She looked up at him, and paused, and seemed to change her mind.
“Would you mind not wearing your ball cap in class?” she asked. “It really makes it hard to see your face.”
Mike took it off. It was so much a part of him he felt like she’d asked him to go half-naked.
“That’s much better.” She had dark blue eyes, the color the sky got ten minutes after sunset. “You have nice eyes.”
He was startled at hearing her repeat what he had been thinking.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Okay.”
“I don’t mind you always sitting in the back, but can you tell me … why you are always watching the class? When I bore people, they usually look out the window. You’re always looking at the other pupils, watching for something. What is it?”
Mike, relieved she hadn’t said anything about watching her, tried to think. Suddenly he laughed. He knew what she meant.
“I’m a bouncer in a bar,” he said. “I have to watch for fights building up.”
“You think the class is going to break into a fight?”
“Well, when Mrs. Greemore said Henry James was better than Twain, I thought Mr. Lewis was going to pop her one. Sorry. It’s habit.”
She laughed, too. “Well that solves that. Thanks for taking off your hat.”
Mike nodded. She must have been looking his way a lot if that bothered her so much.
He didn’t wear the hat the next day. He knew she could see him better, and tried to keep his eyes on his book. But sometimes he had to grin to himself. He could feel her watching him.
Visit
“So how’s it going?” Terry asked.
He looked different, but not as different as Mike had thought he would. Anyone would change in almost five years. Hair a little longer, messy. A tooth missing. New scar on his upper lip—just new to Mike though, you could see it had been there a while.
“Okay,” Mike said. They didn’t have to talk through a glass wall on a phone, just sat at small table. He could have hugged Terry if he felt like it, but he didn’t.
“Mom says you’re a bartender now.”
“Yes.”
“Kind of like putting a fox in a hen house ain’t it?”
They were the same age, but Mike could see Terry now looked older than he did. Was older than he was.
“You still hitting the booze pretty hard?”
“Sometimes,” Mike said. He was going to tonight, that was for sure. For a second he wished he had a bottle out in the truck.
“You can get it in here. You can get just about anything in here. Except a woman.”
Mike couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
“Mom told me you and Amber broke up.”
“A long time ago. Not too long after…” Amber, the one girl Mike had who thought she chose the right one—but she had loved Terry, too, loved him the way a guy wanted his girl to love his brother.
The old Terry, anyway, the happy-go-lucky one, who had always been able to talk his way out of anything.
“Sorry to hear it. She was a real nice girl.”
“Yes,” Mike said.
They sat quiet for a minute.
Mike had been a loner all his life, but this was the one person he could always talk to. They had been raised as brothers, were closer than twins, this face was once as familiar as his own reflection in a mirror … Now the cousins sat silent.
“You’re up for parole next year,” Mike said finally.
“Yeah,”
“You want to move back in with me?”
“Mom wants me to stay with her for a while. We’ll see how long that lasts.”
No use thinking things would be the same as they used to be, Mike thought. But still…
“I might be able to get you a job,” Mike said. “We’re havin’ a hard time getting honest help in the bar.”
Terry looked at him and gave a short, ugly laugh, nothing like the laugh he had before.
“So they’d hire a felon?”
Mike hadn’t thought about that. But still, Terry was very honest, in his own way. No thief.
But as he looked at this man, this stranger, he knew there was no telling what Terry was these days. Who he’d become. What he might do.
God, Mike thought.
They’d shared everything from the beginning—family, blood, and history. Their moms were sisters, their dads brothers, they had the same sets of grandparents. You’d be hard put to find a baby picture of one without the other. They’d shared a playpen, a dog, a first duck hunt. Learned to water ski the same day. Helped each other figure out how to smoke. Terry had gone after it so hard he made himself sick. “Slow down,” Mike had said. “We’ll get it…”
Shared the mind-numbing grief the day their dads were killed in a car accident. First drunk. First joint. Swapped notes on the first sex. Had the same friends, both the good and the bad…
And they should be sharing this—but Mike was walking free.
“Thanks for looking after Mom,” Terry said.
“You know I’d do that.”
“Yeah. I knew you’d do that.”
Quiet again.
“Sorry I have not been good at writing,” Mike said awkwardly.
Terry’s letters had scared him. Bitter funny, not funny like he used to be. Strange. Sometimes so weird Mike was sure he’d gone nuts.
“Don’t worry. You were never big on words.”
That was true. Terry could talk rings around anyone,
Mike was shy—yet Mike had known Terry listened to him, needed him, to keep him grounded, steady, to supply the common sense. Then the one time that could have made a big difference, Mike shrugged and went along…
The guard said “Time,” and both stood up. Mike wondered if his cousin was as relieved as he was. Still, something he had wanted to say for almost five years was fighting to get out.
Mike looked down but said, “Man, I … I am so sorry. It was just a piece of goddamn luck. I should be in here with you…”
Still, Mike thought, it’s not like I really got off scot-free.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and met Terry’s eyes. The same ones he knew so well…
“There’s not a day goes by,” Terry said, “that I don’t thank God you are not in here with me.”
Out in the parking lot, Mike took a deep breath. He’d had a fear, all these years, that if he ever went into that place, he’d never get out. But here he was…
He’d been scared, too, that if he ever saw Terry in there, he’d start crying and not be able to stop. But he waited until he was in the truck for that.
The Sweetest Sound
Mike wasn’t sure what woke him up. Cat fight, maybe. The thunder was beginning to roll away, and Mike could sleep through thunder anyway.
Then he heard another sound, a cry or a moan, and he slipped out of bed and down the hall to his parents’ room.
Everything seemed wrong, disturbing—the bedside lamp on low, his mom kneeling on the side of the bed, her arms around his dad’s shoulders, his dad sitting on the edge of the bed, in his boxers and T-shirt, his head in his hands.
Mike had never been in that room at night, couldn’t make any sense of the scene. Then his mom saw him, wiped at her eyes with her wrist, and said, “It’s okay, honey. Your dad was having a bad dream.”
The grown-ups didn’t have bad dreams, everyone knew that. Mike was still confused.
Then his dad lifted his head and saw him, and Mike was more terrified than he’d ever been in all his nine years.
Not of his dad, Mike was never afraid of his father. But the fear, the despair, the helplessness he saw in those hollow dark eyes…
Mike’s dad could fix plumbing, change the oil in a car, filet a fish, gut a duck. He wasn’t afraid of the drunks stumbling in and out of the bar next to the hardware store. He knew what to do when a tornado was coming. He could hold a steady job whether it bored him or not, while Uncle TJ was always running off to try something new. The one time he got a ticket for speeding, Mike could tell he wasn’t afraid of the policeman.
“Michael?” The voice was hoarse, almost not recognizable.
His father held out his arms, and Michael went into them, was immediately pulled in between his dad’s legs, gripped tightly. His dad buried his face in Mike’s neck, sniffing hard. Mike shifted, a little uneasy; he’d taken a half-assed bath after playing ball with Terry, helping mow the lawn before the storm. He didn’t think he could smell too good.
But his dad breathed in like he was trying to smell the blood in his body, like it would smell like wildflowers instead of grass and dried sweat. He was listening to Mike’s heart intently, as if it would drown the pounding of his own.
As if it was the sweetest sound, the sweetest music.
Mike stood, knowing he was needed. But the sense of dread overwhelmed him. What did the grown-ups have to fear?
He knew when he was grown up, his own fears would be gone—like not being able to find his room first day of school, that maybe driving a car would be beyond him, that he might not be good enough for big-league baseball after all.
Maybe there was so much more out there than Mike realized. When he put his arms around his dad’s neck and clung, he wanted reassuring, although he realized that was his own job right now.
“Sorry, Son.” His dad slowly released him. “I know I must have scared you.”
Mike didn’t want to nod, so he said nothing.
“You go back to bed now. I’m fine.”
Mike’s dad twisted the chain on his neck, flipping the tags that hung from it.
“Go on, honey,” Mom said. She was rubbing Dad’s shoulders now. Mike went back to bed and fell asleep immediately. Nothing was mentioned the next day.
When Mike was a grown-up, when he could fix plumbing and filet a fish, and the only thing that scared him about the drunks around the hardware store was that he might end up just like them, he realized that changing the oil in his truck was no safeguard against anything except a burned-up engine…
He knew what to do when a tornado was coming, but that knowledge was useless if there weren’t any around…
And that wasn’t the kind of stuff he wished he could ask his dad about now, anyway.
Mike would never be wise like his father. He quit a job that paid good money, just because he didn’t get along with his boss. He cursed at the cops who kept giving him tickets, instead of not driving too fast.
But maybe he learned something in the ten years he had with his dad.
Because for a short while, he too had someone to cling to, when the bad dreams got heavy. Had someone whose skin smelled like wildflowers. Whose heartbeat drowned the pounding of his own.
And it was the sweetest sound, the sweetest music.
Homecoming
Aunt Julie was cleaning up the mess in the front room when Mike came back in with the beers.
In the kitchen, the women were taking advantage of her absence, their shushing whispers revealing the topic of the conversation as clear as shouts.
Except for Uncle Hiram and his fat-assed Jr., rooting and snorting around the leftovers, most of the men had left, preferring to take their speculations to the tavern.
Mike helped Aunt Julie stuff paper plates and cups into the garbage bag. The “Welcome Home Terry” banner was hanging by one tack, and Mike yanked it down and stuffed it in the bag, too.
It had been like watching kids poke a bear with a stick.
“He looks good, don’t he?” Aunt Julie said.
“He looks tired.”
Mike had never seen Terry tired like this. Exhausted maybe, after a long day of water-skiing, a weekend of bar-hopping, but not … worn out. Faded.
“He’ll be fine.” Aunt Julie patted Mike’s shoulder. “They didn’t b
reak him, honey. Terry’s still here. Don’t you worry about him.”
There was a shocked titter from the kitchen, and Mike clenched his teeth.
Aunt Julie’s face hardened for a moment. Then she said, “Family’s good for two things. Bring you joy,” she gave him a quick hug, “or teach you patience.”
Patience. That was it. In all their twenty-nine years, Mike had never seen Terry patient before now.
Lazy, hell yeah. Terry could be damn lazy. He’d always let Aunt Julie wait on him hand and foot, and they both acted like he was doing her a favor. Mike couldn’t count the times Terry had conned him into doing his chores, his homework.
But Terry never took bullshit from anyone.
Terry came in, dropping on the couch next to Mike, putting his boots up on the coffee table.
Mike handed him a beer. “I bet you could use this.”
“No shit.” Terry gulped half the beer down. “I didn’t see all these people claiming to be related to me at the trial. And they sure weren’t filling up the visitors’ room on weekends.”
Mike mumbled, “Uh … I…”
“I didn’t mean you, bro.”
“They’re really pissin’ me off. Half of ’em are acting like you’re going to jump up and cut their throats.”
“Can’t say the thought didn’t occur to me.” Terry paused. “You know what they’re all dyin’ to ask me, don’t you?”
Mike changed the subject. “I might be able to get you on at the bar.”
“Don’t think the parole board would go for it. This’ll shock you, but you do associate with known felons in that place.”
Mike laughed.
“Naw,” Terry went on. “I’m going to hook up with LeRoy, go back to framin’ houses. He owes me one. One of our best customers in the old days.”
Darlene wandered into the room, a scrawny girl in her late teens sporting a big frizzy perm with the front curls ironed in place, the rest hanging down her back in a tangle. Mike remembered her as a little kid, finger either in her nose or in her mouth, sneaking around, trying to catch them drinking beer or smoking, so she could run tattling to the grown-ups.