Larry was quiet a long time after that, long enough for Dugan to begin thinking that his friend had fallen asleep. It was just before Dugan might have nodded off himself that Larry began to speak.
“It was last spring, after they combined gym classes. When Mr. McClay had his heart attack.” He spoke in a monotone, like he was disconnected from the story he was about to tell, or wanted to be.
“It took a while for us all to get into the showers and whatnot, and I was one of the last to go in. I was under the nozzle and had my back turned and my eyes were closed when…I got grabbed from behind. I started to scream but they shoved a towel into my mouth and then they shoved me onto the floor.”
Dugan listened to Larry begin shifting around in his bed, like he was half-sitting up to check and see if Dugan was still awake. Dugan opened his eyes to assure him that he was. It was a while after that before Larry began to speak again.
“It was Harris. Cotter and Walsh were there too. They used Richie Brooks to guard the entrance. Cotter held my legs down and Walsh was up by my head, kinda holdin’ down my arms.” He paused as if reliving the experience.
“Stephen Harris stood up over me for a while, just kinda starin’ down at me and then…then he reaches down and…and starts takin’ a piss.”
Larry stopped for a while before he continued. “He was movin’ it all around and…then he starts pointin’ it right at my face. I could hardly breathe anyway, what with the towel in my mouth and all, but then…it starts gettin’ in my nose. After that, I really couldn’t breathe.”
Dugan didn’t know how much time passed after Larry finished his story, or how long he lay there trying to take in what he just heard. He knew that it could just as easily have been him, and he was privately ashamed to realize he was glad it wasn’t. After all, it was just another normal day at Grantham Junior High School. It was just the luck of the gym class draw that it had been Larry in the shower room that day and not himself.
“There but for the grace of God, go I,” was something his mother often said. He never really understood what it meant until that moment.
Dugan’s thoughts wandered around like that for a while before he started thinking about Jimmy. It was different for him, because he was kind of a jock. But then Dugan remembered that Jimmy had his own set of problems to deal with. Lying on his back, he moved his arms behind his head to stay awake and think a while longer.
At least twenty minutes had passed since Larry had spoken his last words, enough time for Dugan to think Larry was done telling the story. A moment later, he discovered there was one last thing Larry needed to share with him about the incident.
“Walshie had a hard-on,” he whispered.
It was the last thing that Larry would ever say to him on the subject, that night or ever again.
Dugan stayed up a while after that, listening to the sound of his friend’s breathing mingle with the sounds that the ocean makes at night. He was determined not to let himself fall asleep until he heard Larry’s breathing change, signaling that he had finally succumbed to sleep. He made himself stay awake a little while after that too, waiting patiently for his friend’s light breathing to turn into deeper snores.
* * *
On the night before school started, Dugan was at his kitchen table eating a French bread pizza. He was reading a blurb in Time magazine about some kind of strange new disease that afflicted mainly homosexuals, in New York City, San Francisco, and some of the other large cities around the country. The article said that the disease began as a “fever of unknown origin” and always ended in death, and what was worse, they weren’t sure yet just how the thing was transmitted.
Dugan heard his father come down the stairs and glanced up to see that he had, for some reason, shed his trademark torn flannel shirt and jeans for a pair of chinos and a red sweater. He walked behind Dugan and began rummaging around in the fridge for something to eat.
“Where you goin’?” Dugan asked after a while.
“Work.”
Dugan raised his head and stared at his father’s back. “Where?”
“Thunderbird. Gonna bartend there a few nights a week.”
Dugan looked back down at his Time and without thinking, muttered, “That’ll be convenient…”
…and the next thing he knew he’d been pulled out of his chair and heard it crash loudly onto the floor behind him. His father lifted him off the floor and spun him around to slam him back against the shelves of the open fridge. His left hand pressed viciously against Dugan’s chest, squeezing out his breath, while his right hand was squared, palm open, raised over his shoulder and aimed toward Dugan’s face.
“Whaddyou say to me, you little punk?” His father’s eyes were wild.
Dugan stared back at him for a long moment. He began to feel his bottom grow wet, as the milk or juice or whatever it was in the fridge that had been knocked over by the violence began to dribble against his backside and drip down onto the floor that was now an inch beneath Dugan’s feet.
He felt his face grow red with anger and his lip quiver, but he willed away the tears that threatened to fill his eyes. The two of them stared each other down for a moment, face to face and man to man, and then Dugan screamed suddenly, “Hit me!” A moment later, he screamed it again. “Hit me!”
He watched his father slowly shrink back from him and then something in his father’s eyes changed. Dugan felt the pressure on his chest begin to abate somewhat. He grabbed his father’s arm with both of his hands and shoved his father’s hand viciously against his own chest.
“Hit me!” he shrieked, demanding it now…
…and after that he couldn’t stop the tears from falling and collapsed limply against the fridge, with only his father’s big hand holding him up at all. He closed his eyes a moment before he felt his father begin to slowly lower him to the floor, where he collapsed onto the dirty linoleum and into the puddle of milk or whatever the hell it was, where he turned his bleary eyes up toward his father to beg, “hit me…please…just…hit me…please…”
…and sometime after that he heard his father leave the house.
10
Halloween
Larry’s mother dropped them off outside Sullivan’s Tap just after seven o’clock where the three filled up on a dinner of pizza and soda. While they were eating, Larry told them his theory about junior high. He swore that its sole purpose was to prepare kids to die. Both his friends scoffed at first, but Larry was serious and said he could prove it.
“What book they got you readin’ right now, Dugan?”
Dugan thought a moment. “Death Be Not Proud.”
“Kid gets brain cancer and dies,” Larry said. Without missing a beat, he turned to Jimmy. “Quick, don’t even think about it, just answer. What book they got you readin’?”
“Lord of the Flies.”
Larry mock shivered. “Plane crash, adults die, cannibalism. Just like our school.”
The three managed a chuckle despite the truth of it, but Larry wouldn’t let it go. He asked Jimmy, “What was the last book they had ya read?”
“Go Ask Alice.” Larry turned to Dugan and asked the same question.
Dugan felt a smile spread along his face when he began to see where this was going. He shook his head because he didn’t want to answer, but Larry just laughed.
“Come on. We don’t keep secrets. I’ll find out anyway.”
Dugan chuckled before finally answering. “On the Beach.”
They all began to laugh, because On the Beach was the granddaddy of them all. In that book, everybody in the world dies. Eventually.
“I could keep goin’ with this if you want,” Larry said. “But you guys see what I’m getting at here, dontcha?”
Jimmy and Dugan both laughed and shook their heads before Dugan looked down at his watch and told them it was time to go.
He and Larry kicked in a few bucks for Jimmy’s portion of the tab and then they all walked downtown to the State Cinema. They paid their
dollar bills outside and stood in line at the front counter for popcorn and more soda. They climbed the wide staircase leading up to the balcony and found a few seats together before the lights went down.
Dugan could just make out the lip of the big stage behind the tattered red curtain covering the screen, evidence of the real theater the State had once been. Huge organ pipes rose up from the walls on both sides of the stage like a brass skyline. Dugan looked up at the once ornate carvings in the ceiling, yellowed and water stained now, and then around at the brown and peeling wallpaper.
Although he loved it here, Dugan knew the place was old and dingy. It also had a nasty smell about it, a kind of rank bathroom smell. Dugan figured it was the reek of a hundred years of movie popcorn butter wafting throughout the building to settle in every nook and cranny. He hoped it had nothing to do with those years in the ‘70s when the place had shown porn flicks.
His mother had told him once that back in the teens and twenties the State had hosted musical shows and vaudeville acts like the Marx Brothers and Al Jolsen and Will Rogers, but talkies and the Depression had set it toward hard times. But it had survived all these years…
“…Earth to Dugan. Come in Dugan.”
His head snapped around. When he turned to look over at his friends, he saw them both staring at him and shaking their heads. Dugan smiled and leaned back to settle in just as the lights went down and the tattered red curtain went up for the Halloween night double feature.
The first movie was about a suicidal fashion model who rented an apartment in an old brownstone in New York City with a bunch of strange neighbors. But it turned out that the building was actually the gate of hell, and the girl had been selected to be the new guardian, whether she wanted to be or not. The movie ended with her taking up her position as the “Sentinel,” staring out of the top floor of the brownstone, rosary beads in her hand, keeping the rest of us safe from the slithering demons.
It was good, but it was the second movie that Dugan had really come to see. It was based on a novel by one of his favorite writers. He was excited when the lights went down again after the short intermission and the movie began.
* * *
The old Plymouth Fury III cruised down the highway at eighty-five miles an hour. It was the ‘69 model, green with whitewall tires, a sun-faded vinyl top, and the powerful 383 V-8 under the hood. The .45 caliber bullet dangling from the rear-view mirror swayed gently back and forth. There were five of them in the car.
Just before they passed the rest area, Walshie suggested that they stop to beat up some fags, like they did after seeing Al Pacino in that movie. Walshie was a huge Pacino fan. He remembered that the others didn’t want to see that one but he talked them into it. Sitting in the theater with his arms and legs brushing up against his two friends, Walshie got strangely excited to think that the great Pacino himself might be a fag.
But in the movie, he wasn’t a real fag, just a cop who had to go undercover as a fag. He had to do everything he could to make sure his cover wasn’t blown. There was one scene where he even let himself get blown. That was Walshie’s favorite part of the movie.
“We should stop,” Walshie said again as the exit rapidly approached. He thought his voice sounded kind of funny and hoped his friends couldn’t tell. He cleared his throat.
Harris, in the front passenger seat, shook his head almost imperceptibly. There were still a few stops to make. Walshie sat back, disappointed. The seventeen year old driver didn’t say anything at all.
* * *
The three snickered nervously at the beginning of the movie, after the girl had gotten her period in the shower. It got a whole lot less funny after her classmates began to laugh and throw tampons.
Before he could stop himself, Dugan half-turned to Larry. He nudged him in the arm and began to raise his arm and point it at the screen, remembering the story that Larry had shared with him last summer. He almost spoke, but managed to stop himself in time when Larry just barely shook his head in the dark.
Dugan turned away quickly and lowered his arm. He had looked at his friend long enough to see that beneath his mask of a face, the muscles twitched and quivered. Dugan was ashamed and embarrassed to realize what he’d almost done—how close he had come to breaching the code.
* * *
Metzger dropped them all off at Cotter’s house and left them with a gram for their trouble. They went downstairs and turned on the big TV in the basement. A rerun of M*A*S*H droned on in the background as they each took turns snorting lines off the coffee table, dividing them up first on a Budweiser mirror they had taken down off the wall.
When they’d gone through half of it, they leaned back to enjoy the combined warmth of the first rush kicking in and the anticipation of finishing the rest. Cotter found Klinger hilarious all of a sudden and began to lose it. Walshie had to remind Cotter that Klinger was in fact a fag who traipsed around all day in women’s clothes. He said he had to be at least half a fag, anyway. Cotter thought that was even funnier.
“How can you be half a fag?” he asked. Walshie just shook his head, tapped his foot, and looked away.
Michael was feeling pretty good too. As he sat back, he watched Cotter throw his head back with laughter to reveal his two perfectly formed sets of upper teeth. They only grew on the top of his mouth for some reason. Michael saw there was about a half-inch gap between the front and back set. Cotter had always joked that it was the perfect place to hide gum, in the event that a teacher ever suspected him of chewing it.
Looking more closely now, Michael saw that the rear set did look a little more crooked and twisted, more yellowed than the front. He had always wondered—but never dared ask—why Cotter didn’t just get them fixed. He looked at the big TV set that dominated the finished basement and thought that his family certainly had the money.
Harris was sitting on the couch, still wearing his signature green army jacket. He was licking the white paper that had held the drugs, running it back and forth across his teeth and gums. Walshie and Cotter started roughhousing, punching each other in the arm to see who’d flinch first. Michael’s money was on Walshie.
When M*A*S*H was over, they turned to the Boston news station because it was a Friday night, and on Friday nights at this particular station everybody was stoned. The boys never missed it.
They laughed as the obviously inebriated weatherman stumbled through his forecast and tripped over every other word. They laughed even harder when the male newscaster with the glazed eyes made a comment about his female colleague’s breasts, and just as she was about to respond, from upstairs they heard the back door slam.
”Da-a-ad!” Cotter yelled.
Heavy footsteps came down the stairs. A moment later, Cotter’s father poked his head into the room. “What’s goin’ on boys?” He was still in uniform.
“You goin’ out again?” Cotter asked. His father nodded.
“Can you give us a ride downtown?”
Cotter’s dad nodded again. “Five minutes,” he said, before running back up the stairs.
Cotter looked over at Harris. “Whaddya wanna do?”
Harris’ eyes were closed and his head lay back against the couch. His now constant headache thrummed painfully inside his skull. He was seriously beginning to wonder whether he might have a brain tumor or something, like he had seen on TV once. He managed to open his eyes and raise his head off the couch. Maybe some fresh air would help. He looked at his friends and stretched his arms. “Let’s go places and eat things.”
Ten minutes later, Cotter’s father dropped the four of them off at the diner. As they got out of the back of the Grantham Police cruiser, Cotter’s father warned them sternly, “Stay out of trouble, boys,” before he sped off into the night to fight crime.
* * *
The nice girl talked her boyfriend into taking Carrie to the prom as a kind of penance for her own participation in the shower incident, although why the nice boyfriend should have to suffer, Dugan did not know. B
ut then Travolta and his friends went out and killed a pig, and as the three friends sat in the darkness of the theater watching the nasty girls get ready for their prom, they still didn’t understand why.
* * *
The four of them ordered food, but none of them were really hungry and they didn’t plan to pay for any of it anyway. Cotter asked a waitress dressed as Wonder Woman to bring them another round of chocolate milk shakes just so they could watch her ass as she walked away.
* * *
They drained the pig’s blood and put it into a metal bucket mounted high over the stage. It was filled to the brim and almost overflowed.
* * *
The boys finished their chew and screw and ran downtown. Before they left the diner, Walshie noticed that the two guys sitting across from each other in one of the booths were probably fucking faggots so he took the time to call them that as he passed.
When they got downtown, Richie Brooks cruised by with his cousin Butchie and pulled over to pick them up, and the four got in and drove around for a while.
* * *
They were stuffing the ballot box. It was all clear now. They were going to make Carrie the prom queen. She would have to stand on the stage. Underneath the metal bucket. When she walked up onto the stage she was smiling.
* * *
Butchie got tired of Walshie’s act in a big hurry and kicked them all out of the car. Harris thought about it, but his head hurt too much to argue. He also needed some fresh air and didn’t feel like putting Richie on the spot. Richie spotted them a fattie anyway, and the four of them got out to find themselves on the outskirts of the cemetery. They wandered in there to smoke the joint, past the front of the cemetery where the oldest graves were. Along the way, Cotter wanted to see if he could push over a gravestone and discovered that he could.
* * *
She was drenched in blood but still smiling.
* * *
The idiot caretaker had left the utility shed unlocked, and there they found flashlights and shovels, pickaxes and a sledgehammer. Harris wielded the sledgehammer and the gravestones began to fall. Walshie found a can of black spray paint so he began to look around for the Jewish sounding names. Cotter had taken a pickaxe and thought it might be fun to find a freshly dug grave. Michael didn’t think any of it was much fun at all.
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