by M. E. Kerr
He was a little guy: short for his age and he said he wasn’t into sports. He didn’t take to the roughneck wise guys he might have got along with better, if he’d made any effort. They ignored him, too.
I’d stayed on at Tumble Inn, after school started, working afternoons setting up tables, and weekend nights I was in the dining room. Harley was by himself a lot.
Don’t ask me why Jitz Rossi got it into his head to go after him, but he did. It happened on a Saturday morning when Harley and I were walking back from town after helping Mom load the groceries into her Pinto. She had other errands—it was a great fall day—and we decided to head back home along Highland Avenue.
Jitz was waiting for us at the top of the hill. He had his own Harley, and he was sitting on it, with a red-and-white bandanna around his forehead, a leather vest, and bikers’ gloves … A few of his buddies were behind him on their bikes.
The funny thing was Jitz wasn’t that different from Harley. He was a lot bigger (star of the wrestling team), but he had the same “insensitivity,” as my father’d put it. He was a bully, though, and I think what got him going was that he figured Harley’s style was too much like his.
There was that nickname, too. That might have caught Jitz’s attention.
The first thing Jitz said was, “How come you call yourself Harley?”
“It’s my name.”
“Where’s your Harley?”
“I don’t got one!” Harley laughed. “Got the name without the game.”
“I hear you got a name for Italians, too,” Jitz said. “I hear you’re an outsider with a smart mouth.”
Harley said, “I hear it only takes two people to bury your relatives, because there’s only two handles on a garbage can.”
What I remember after that little crack was Jitz getting off his Harley in perfect sync with the guys behind him. It looked like some kind of orchestrated ballet.
Next, this big bruiser had me down on the ground, slamming my head against the dirt.
What I didn’t know was that Harley was a Karate expert, and that there was more power in his small frame and tiny hands than there was in all four of the bikers who went after us. He took them on one by one, starting with Jitz, and then the guy holding me down.
After they all hobbled back on their bikes and roared off, Harley brushed the grass and dirt off me and grinned.
My head and back felt wrecked and I had a nosebleed.
“Where would you dumb Micks be without the McFarlands to pull you out of tanks and up off your butts?” he said.
He was laughing and slapping his knee, and he didn’t see my punch coming.
His body jerked back and one hand grabbed his jaw, and he looked at me wide-eyed. “What the HECK?” he said. “What’s that for? I just saved your butt, Connor!”
“That,” I shouted back at him, “is for making it necessary to save my butt!”
“You mad because I called you a dumb Mick?”
“I’m mad because we’ve been tip-toeing around trying to tell you you’re this stupid toilet mouth! We hate the things you say! My dad hated your dad’s dumb jokes. Every time he called my dad wanted to plug his ears!”
“My old man saved your dad’s life!”
“Are we supposed to pay for that forever? When we go home, you get the hide-a-bed! Stop wearing my jacket. Put your dumb swastika back on and stay clear of me!”
I was starting down the hill, and Harley was following after me. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“We did say something!”
“Your mom and dad did. You never did!”
“I was trying to be nice because your folks died!”
“But you know I just kid around, Connor.”
“From now on kid around somewhere else! I don’t need my head banged in the dirt because you’re this bigot!”
“You should have said something before.”
“I’m saying it now! Get it? You’re an embarrassment! You don’t have a brain in your thick head!”
“An embarrassment?” He sounded really amazed. “I embarrass you?” He was trailing behind me, his voice suddenly a few registers higher than usual.
“That’s right, and my family, too. You sound ignorant.”
“I’m smarter than you. My grades are higher than yours.”
That was true. He always made all As. I said, “Yeah, but we can’t take you anyplace with that mouth of yours. You’re not fit. You sound like you crawled out of some gutter.”
I don’t know what else I said. I guess I said a lot of petty stuff, too, about him wearing my socks and using my PC too much. I just kept babbling away because of the pain I felt. I was finally tired of holding everything in, walking around on eggshells so as not to offend The Great Filth Mouth.
When I got home from work that night, he was in bed on the sleeping porch. His parents’ photograph was out there with him on the wicker table near the alarm clock.
I told Dad what happened and he said, “I’m not surprised. Ken knew Karate too … But Harley’s right. You should have said something before this. We owe that to friends, if we want to keep them for friends. I should have told Ken, instead of dreading our phone talks. We could have become real friends, but I missed that chance because I was too chicken to just say knock it off … Now that you’ve cooled down, maybe you have more to say to Harley.”
The next day my folks went to church. I stayed home purposely. I was making breakfast in the kitchen when Harley walked in.
He hadn’t expected to find me there. His eyes looked away from mine, and he was ready to head back into the living room when I said, “Want some eggs?”
“I got one on my chin,” he murmured, “thanks to you.”
“Nothing like they’ve all got. You’re a good fighter.”
“I guess with my big mouth I’d better be. Right, Connor?”
He folded his hands across his chest and gave me this sheepish grin.
“Right!” I agreed.
“OK?” he said, and then quickly he said, “I’ll make us toast. I can do that.”
End of discussion, and we never spoke of it again.
Harley didn’t make another slip after that.
He wouldn’t move back into my bedroom, even though I told him we should take turns. I thought Jitz Rossi would want to even up the score, but instead he tried to get him on the wrestling team since we needed to beat Ithaca, the all-time champions … Harley said he only went in for the martial arts. They weren’t big at Cortland High.
Finally, his uncle got back and sent for him.
A month after he left, I got a postcard from Madison.
All it said was, “Thanks, Connor.”
I keep wishing I hadn’t said all that stuff about him giving me back my room and not taking my socks etcetera. I keep remembering how he took his folks’ photograph out to the sleeping porch the first night he spent there. And I can’t forget that Sunday morning. I’d feel better if I’d told him calmly what I’d hollered at him in anger.
I should have had the guts to say more.
Maybe he got it, finally … or maybe someone in Wisconsin will do him a favor and level with him.
But maybe not, too. And that’s what keeps me awake some nights.
I WILL NOT THINK OF MAINE
You’d think he’d be pale, that he’d come from the shadows, that I’d never see him very clearly, but Maine stepped into the kitchen on a sunny Saturday morning looking the same way he always did.
So I said, “I must be dreaming.”
I’d dreamed he’d come back maybe a dozen times since his death, but it had been months since I’d had that dream.
In it he always looked sad. He always said, “I’m so sorry, Zoë. I didn’t mean to go that way.”
“You couldn’t help it,” I’d say. “Yo
u were so wild, Maine. You weren’t like other kids.”
Then I’d wake up. I’d feel full of him again. I’d remember how he stood across my room in the dream, with his long hair and his beautiful face, the one skull earring he always wore, the tattoo of the white pinecone and tassel on his arm, the blue-and-white sweatband on his forehead, like the blue and white of his eyes. I’d remember the low purr of his chuckle when something pleased him.
“I dreamed of Maine again,” I’d tell my brother.
“Forget Maine, will you, please? He nearly killed Daddy.”
Then there he was in our kitchen one summer morning, big as life. Nothing about him said death. “Are you a ghost, Maine?”
He laughed hard, but it was not a happy sound, not like another boy’s laughter. He slapped his knee where his jeans were torn, his hands filled with rings, those silver bracelets he liked jangling down one arm.
He said, “We don’t use the word ‘ghost.’ We don’t haunt houses or that sort of thing. We call ourselves revenants.”
“I never heard that word.”
“A revenant is someone who comes back.”
Then he did what he always used to do, and it would make my mother furious. He opened the refrigerator door, reached in for the carton of orange juice, put it up to his lips, tossed his head back, and took a long gulp.
“I can’t believe it’s really you,” I finally said.
“Your loving pretend brother is back. Am I your dream come true, Zoë?”
“I guess.” I was a little embarrassed to admit it. I had thought of him that way. But even though Maine and I weren’t related, my family had adopted him, and called him “Son.” So now I had two brothers.
My family would never have let me date Maine Foremann under any circumstances, not just because he was family. But also because he was different from other boys. He looked like some dark, edgy character out of an old English novel filled with moors and dungeons.
Back then girls hung out in groups nights, often colliding with boys who did the same.
I could never think of anything to say.
The boys weren’t big conversationalists, either.
My mother used to say, “Don’t you know why Nelson Rider calls you up all the time, Zoë? He’s trying to find the words to ask you out.”
“All he talks about is acting in the school plays.”
“Invite him over. You’ll see.”
“What would we do?”
“What do you do when you spend time with Maine?”
“That’s different,” I said. “I always know what to say to Maine.”
The truth was, we hadn’t talked that much. But I felt close to him. I felt in some secret way he had the same feeling about me, even though he never said so. I looked out at life through my big thick glasses and waited for things to change.
I was always a major daydreamer, even losing track of what went on in movies I’d watch, because I was thinking of what I’d say one day when Maine came into the theater and just sat down in the empty seat next to me.
Maybe I’d say, “What are you doing here?”
Maybe he’d say, “Well, I knew you were in here so I bought a ticket.”
And I’d say … never mind what I’d say, or what he’d say. If I had all the hours back I’d spent daydreaming about that sort of thing, I’d be the same age I was then. Thirteen. That was my style, age thirteen. I was waiting for Maine to speak up, and tell me what was in his heart.
Mostly, Maine hung out with my real brother, Carl.
They were both fifteen and neither one was that interested in girls yet.
They liked skateboarding together. They’d go over to Heartsunk Hill and show off. Carl said Maine was a daredevil, so much so sometimes Carl thought he was a little crazy. He said it with a tone of admiration, mostly, but occasionally he sounded exasperated, as though Maine had gone too far … like the time Maine brought some beer home he’d gotten an older boy to buy for him. My folks were down at the movies.
He’d shrugged and said, “Your mom doesn’t like me drinking your orange juice so I brought my own refreshments.”
Carl told him, “You can drink our orange juice, just don’t drink from the container. Put it in a glass.”
“I’ve got my own drink now.”
“Don’t drink it here or I’ll be grounded,” Carl said.
Maine had a six-pack with him.
He drank it out in the backyard hammock, singing songs by himself. He got louder and sillier, and the cats ran inside and hid under the bed, and the dog wouldn’t stop barking at him.
Then he got really sick. I never saw anyone so sick and sorry, and when my folks got back my father had to put him to bed.
Neither of my folks stayed mad at him. Next day, Mom just said, “That boy is so lost, Zoë. I don’t know if we’re enough to make up for all that’s happened to him. But you’re a good sister to him, honey.”
“I don’t think of him as my brother,” I said.
She changed the subject. “Carl says Nelson Rider’s in the school play.”
“When isn’t he? He calls me up and says things like ‘Boy, is my part hard! I’ve got more lines than anyone.’ What am I supposed to say to that?”
“Say, ‘Congratulations!’ Or say, ‘Tell me about the play.’”
“We’re all going to see the play, so I’ll know what it’s about soon.”
“What would you say if Maine said, ‘Boy, is my part hard!’?”
“Maine wouldn’t be in a school play,” I said. “That’s not his style.”
“Oh, I saw his style last night. Your father and I came along right in time for the upchucking.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “And Nelson Rider’s ears stick out.”
Maine seemed so innocent when he’d sit with me and tell me things he’d like to do someday. He’d say he was going back to Maine where he was born, and he was going to live in the woods near a cliff overlooking the ocean.
None of the other boys at school liked Maine. He’d come to us in his freshman year when his parents moved to our town. He’d never connected with a crowd. He shaved his whole head once and painted a Happy face on top, with tears dropping from its eyes. He made no effort to get better than passing grades, even though he knew the answers to most every question any teacher asked in class. He’d tell us school bored him. He complained he missed the weather in Bangor, where he used to live. He missed the bitter cold. Even in freezing weather he wouldn’t wear gloves or a scarf, or ear-muffs like the rest of us.
In falling snow I’d see him with his jacket open, shirt unbuttoned, boots laced only halfway—he had a flair. I envied him that. My mother told me flair and fashion didn’t just happen—you had to create it for yourself. You had to work at it.
I always doubted there was much I could do with myself. I threw on my clothes and tried not to look in a mirror because I’d see that I was hopeless.
One day, when the family was new in town, Maine’s mother showed up at our house looking for him. She was beautiful, and she was driving this white Porsche convertible, and she said, “Tell him his father and I are going to California tonight and we’d like to see him before we go.”
Maine could hear her. He was hiding in the hall closet.
When she left, I said, “Wow! Is that your mom? Was that her car?”
Maine said, “You’re very impressionable, Zoë.”
Carl said, “What do they do in California?”
“They sun themselves,” Maine said.
“What does your father do for a living?”
“He makes movies,” Maine said.
“Wow!” I said.
“Really?” Carl asked.
“Horror movies,” he said. “B movies. … You’d think he didn’t have a brain in his head.”
�
�But she looks so glitzy, Maine, and she’s nice!”
“I’m not close to them. They’re always gone.”
“Do you ever go with them?” I asked.
“I prefer not to be seen with them,” said Maine.
He’d break me up saying things like that. He was cool. I always wanted to be like that: cool.
That morning he showed up in our kitchen, Maine said, “I came back for a reason, Zoë.”
“To say you’re sorry for almost running over my father? He was in the hospital for months, and he still limps.”
“I shouted at him to get out of the way, Zoë! I tried to brake, but it was too late.”
“But you were going down our driveway in our car!”
“I know where I was, Zoë. One thing you always know is where you were when you were born, and where you were when you died.” He leaned over and looked out the window. “I died right down the street by that oak tree.” Then he socked his palm with his fist. “Pow!” he said. “What a crash! I never drove a car before!”
“I kept dreaming you came back, Maine, and now here you are!”
“Not for long,” he said. “I came back on a Saturday morning when I knew your folks would be out, your brother over on Heartsunk skating, and you’d probably be here alone.”
I shivered.
“Don’t tremble. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want you to stop dreaming about me. Could you please put me out of your head altogether?”
“How did you know I—”
He cut me off. “We always know because we can’t rest if people dream of us. It’s been a year now, Zoë. When my family died, I stopped dreaming of them after about a week.”
I didn’t say the obvious: that he hadn’t liked his family, but that I had been crazy about him.
He said, “I had no friends but you and Carl. He’s never dreamed of me. But you do.”
“Yes, I do. Not so much lately, but I definitely do.”
“Don’t!” Maine said. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my time in eternity waiting for you to stop dreaming of me. I want to escape life forever … to sleep, finally!”
“It’s just that I always felt so close to you, Maine.”