“How was the lesson?”
“Great. I learned a new lick. Come check it out,” he said with a wink. Don’t ask me how, but he knew I’d been to Ralph’s.
I followed him up the stairs to his first room. Stewart had two rooms to himself. The room looking out over the mountains had been his mother’s sewing room until Stewart decided to make it his study. He’d turned it into a nice little pad, with a desk along one whole wall—some far-out cherry table his father had rigged up for him with all kinds of baskets and shit underneath—where he kept his computers and some of his books.
Stewart had lots of books. Especially the smart kind—you know, history books and others on politics and the environment. They bored the crap out of me, I’ll admit it. I never actually read any of them, but I had to listen to Stewart and his parents go on about them all the time, always in this sort of nasty, cynical tone, like they were arguing, even though they all were on the same side.
The one thing they didn’t talk much about was the war. At least, not in front of me, since my father had been in Iraq, not to mention what had happened after he got home. I wasn’t all gung-ho Mr. Patriot or anything like that—not like my father—and in fact, I’d grown to hate a lot about the whole goddam affair. But my hackles still rose when one of them slipped and made some comment about American atrocities and killings, and blood for oil, and the big bad wolf du jour. Old habits die hard, I guess. Everyone’s hackles were raised these days; it was impossible really to talk about anything. The whole thing sucked.
Stewart’s bedroom had a king-size futon and a kick-ass flat-screen TV mounted on the far wall. Compared to my room, it was fairly spare. Of course, his room was twice as big. Go figure.
It had been a couple weeks since I’d been here, and right away I noticed a difference.
“Whoa. Look at this place.”
For someone who was supposedly an anarchist, Stewart was a bit of a neat freak—everything in its place, a world in order—especially when it came to his rooms. It was the one thing about him my father always approved of. But Dad wouldn’t have liked this.
The bed was unmade, clothes littered the floor, a few drawers had been left half open, and the TV was on, with some nature show glowing mutely on the screen. Weirdest of all was the scattering of dirty dishes, some piled on the bureau, some on the nightstand, a few even on the floor. It was the kind of thing Stewart would normally never abide.
“Dude. This looks like my room,” I said. Almost, anyway. Mine was worse.
Stewart glanced around and shook his head a little. He seemed almost confused. “It’s a bit messy.” He turned to me. “It’s a conscious choice. A matter of will. I’d become a prisoner to my own self-imposed walls of rigidity. Got to break free.”
“That’s your excuse, huh? Me, I’m just lazy.”
He laughed. “So you are, Frenchy. It’s one of the things I like about you.”
“Have your parents noticed?”
“My mother knows better than to come knocking around my room. As for the Picasso of Steel, as long as I make it into Harvard or Yale and don’t interrupt his studio time, he doesn’t give a fuck what I do. They’re both clueless.”
“You should be nicer to your parents, Stewart. They practically worship you.”
“Hey,” he said, whirling back around. “You get a chance to visit old Ralphie this afternoon or what?”
“Yup.” I pulled the bag from my shirt pocket and tossed it to him.
He snatched it from the air and held it up, feeling it gently, testing its weight and fullness, like he was Weed Inspector #7 or something.
“Good old Ralph.” He took a long sniff of the bag.
“Yeah, good old Ralph,” I muttered. “By the way, I told him I’d pay him tomorrow.”
“Sure, sure. Help yourself.”
I went over to a jar on the top of the dresser, removed the lid, and tipped it toward me for a better look. Even with permission, I always felt weird poking around the jar full of cash. Stewart had quite a little hoard in there, some his parents had given him but most he’d made himself by selling shit on eBay and places like that. As much as he derided “capitalist pigs,” Stewart could be quite the entrepreneur when he wanted to be.
I spotted a fifty-dollar bill in the mix and fished it out.
“So, what about that new lick?”
He made a face. “There isn’t one, really,” he said. “I didn’t have a very good lesson. In fact, I think I’m going to quit.”
“Really? What for?”
Stewart had started playing two years ago. He was actually pretty good. Of course, he was good at everything he tried, but he took the whole guitar thing pretty seriously. At least he used to.
He shrugged. “I want to focus on other things.” There was a pause. “You disapprove?”
I looked up at him. “No,” I said. “Whatever, man.”
“Thanks, Frenchy.”
I just shook my head. Stewart’s messy bedroom, his quitting guitar: It was just like the mug I’d broken back at Ralph’s—the familiar turned upside down, things out of place. It just wasn’t right, none of it.
We both stared at the TV a moment.
“How’d it go with Bryant?”
I could sense him trying to feel out my mood.
“Whatever. Same old stuff.”
Stewart nodded. “You got to be careful about those shrinks. They’ll try to do all kinds of shit to you. Next thing you know, they’ll have you doped up, walking around like a fucking zombie.”
Thinking about our morning pit stops, about all our herbal adventures over the last two years, I had to shake my head. Then I burst out laughing. I just couldn’t help it.
“Yeah, we wouldn’t want that.”
Stewart was sharp. “Pot doesn’t count,” he said. “It’s natural.”
“Oh, right. Natural.” I snorted.
Then suddenly it just came out. Before I could stop them, the words rushed out:
“Ralph and my mother are having sex.”
There was a long pause. I could see Stewart looking me over, trying to figure out what to say.
“Ouch, dude,” he said at last.
“Yeah.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said again.
“People need companionship. It’s been a tough few months,” he continued.
“Yeah,” I repeated. I was starting to sound like a goddam broken record. “Thanks, anyway.”
“I know what you need.” He clapped me on the back. “You need a good walk in the woods.”
By this, of course, Stewart meant going out behind his house to smoke a bowl. It wasn’t exactly what I needed—I needed Ralph to stop banging my mother—but I figured it wouldn’t hurt.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Excellent,” he said, his face lighting up with glee. He turned and left the room. I followed him across the hall into the second room. It was more cluttered than usual but not as bad as the first.
While Stewart fished his bowl from its hiding place, I glanced over at some of the papers and shit on his desk. And that’s when I saw it. Right there on the desk in a Netflix sleeve: Man of La Mancha. I was about to ask him what the hell it was doing there when he hollered out.
“Think fast, Paquette!”
I turned just in time to catch the plastic shopping bag flying toward my face.
“What’s this?” I asked, weighing the bulky bag in my hands, feeling something soft beneath the plastic.
“Just something I picked up,” he said. “Yesterday. In Burlington.”
Burlington was an hour and a half away, the only real city in Vermont. Stewart and his parents went there every couple of weeks to shop in expensive stores and eat in nice restaurants and generally get back to their downcountry roots.
“So open it up, already,” he said, watching me.
I untied the knot and looked in.
It was a coat. A peacoat, to be exact, like w
hat the sailors used to wear, black and woolen, as soft as anything. I pulled it out and looked at the tag by the collar—Emerson Mills.
“Holy shit,” I whispered. It was a two-hundred-dollar coat.
“It’s going to be winter soon. Figured you could use a new jacket. Your old one’s a piece of crap.”
“Dude, you serious?” I held it up before me. “It’s just like yours.”
Stewart laughed. “You said last year you wanted mine. I was going to give it to you, but I got too attached. Then I saw this.”
“Great,” I joked. “Now we can be twins. The Hippie and the Canuck.”
He grinned. “Something like that.”
Now that the initial shock was wearing off, I could feel my face getting red all over again. Fucking Stewart. He did shit like this from time to time. He knew I could never afford it on my own. But I figured, if the shoe were on the other foot, I’d do the same for him. That’s what friends do, right?
CHAPTER FIVE
We slipped downstairs, out the back door, and made for the woods at the far end of the backyard. The afternoon was clear and cold, so I wrapped my new coat tight around me, inhaling the sweet smell of new wool and autumn leaves.
We stuck to our traditional route, drifting along the path between the trees until we reached the smoking rock. The large, flat stone was our accustomed destination. But that wasn’t why it was the smoking rock—we’d named it that long before we ever started getting high. I still remember the morning we made our way out here for the first time. It was November, our freshman year, and we hadn’t known each other very long. There’d been a hard frost the night before, and with all the leaves gone, the sun shone down warm and bright on the rock. Its black surface was just sucking up the heat, and in the morning cold of the woods, the melted frost rose in a curtain of steam along the rock’s entire length right before our eyes. We just looked at each other in awe—this was first-class mystical shit, a holy moment amid the dead leaves and gray, barren limbs. That was where we bonded, I guess you could say, right there before the smoking rock.
We packed the bowl and got right to it. It was all very methodical. Efficient, almost. Of course, Stewart engaged in his little theatrics, bringing the pipe to his mouth with a flourish, flicking the lighter above his head before applying the flame, drawing loudly, making a production of the holding and exhalation—like it was some ritual or something, like it was goddam performance art. Sometimes it amused me, usually I ignored it, but today it annoyed me. I wasn’t in the best mood to begin with, and now all I could think about was that movie on his desk. I was about to get pulled into something, I could feel it.
We finished up, shot the shit for a while, and then left the rock, taking the path farther out onto a loop that roughly traced the perimeter of the Bolgers’ land. Neither of us spoke as we made our way along, each wrapped in a warm, fuzzy glow under the autumn colors. The sun was breaking fast for the horizon by the time we reached the far point.
A muted buzz sounded from Stewart’s pocket. He pulled his cell out, glanced at the screen, and rolled his eyes.
“Lucinda wants to know when we want dinner.” He keyed a quick reply and shook his head. “It’s like the fifth text today. I never should have taught them how. My father’s even worse. You’re lucky, Frenchy.”
“Quit your bitching. At least you have a cell phone. I’ve been bugging my mother for months, but she says we can’t afford it. I keep telling her there’s this little thing called the twenty-first century.”
Stewart laughed. “Come on, let’s go.”
We turned to head back. I felt more relaxed now, but there was still that kernel of angst keeping the bliss at bay. I’d been hoping to leave it behind in the woods, but it had followed me.
“So you’re really serious about trying out for the musical?” I asked. We were getting close to the house now. I could see all the glass shining at the end of the path.
“Why not?”
“The last time I was in a play, I was a fucking cucumber in the fourth-grade nutrition pageant.”
“So what? That’s the beauty of it. We’ll go to the audition, fucking ham it up, and blow everyone’s minds. They’ll be talking about it for months.”
“So it is a prank, then. A joke. Right?”
“Dude, when am I serious about anything?”
We both came to a stop. I had him.
“Don’t give me that bullshit. I saw that movie on your desk. There’s something else going on here. You’re serious about this thing, aren’t you?” I reached out and pressed a finger against his chest.
His face turned dark red. He shook his head and pushed my hand away.
“So what?” he said at last. “Look at us, Frenchy. Everyone thinks we’re a pair of clowns with all the stupid shit we do.”
“We are a pair of clowns. That’s the fucking point. We don’t give a shit about anything. Everyone has their thing. That’s ours.”
“Look, it doesn’t even matter. We’re not going to get parts anyway. Not real ones. It’s just something to do. And it’s a good musical, Frenchy. I’ve seen it, like, ten times now. There’s something about it,” he said, his eyes drifting off. “I don’t know. It’s good, you know? It’s just good. Really good.”
“Hey, if that’s what you want, then go for it. But don’t drag me along,” I said. “I got enough shit to deal with right now.”
“Maybe you need a distraction, Frenchy,” he said, his eyes snapping back. When I didn’t answer, he kicked the ground. “I knew you were going to be this way,” he muttered. “I knew you were going to. I knew it. I knew it.”
Fucking Stewart.
“Oh, really? Is that why you got me the jacket?” I grabbed the front of the peacoat. “A bribe? Something to get dumb old Frenchy to go along?”
I had a hard time not wincing at the look of pain that crossed his face. And the confusion, the fear. The same look he’d had this morning and all those other times, jumping at whatever he thought he’d heard. I hated it. And then it suddenly hit me. I’d seen that look somewhere else before. I’d seen it on my old man’s face during those long, horrible days after he’d come home.
Stewart turned and ran off toward the house. I didn’t run after him.
I made my way back slowly, trying to push my buzz aside. All it was doing now was amplifying the nasty vibes welling up, making it hard for me to sort out what had been said.
Mrs. Bolger smiled as I came in through the back door. If she knew anything was amiss, she didn’t show it. I tried to give her my best smile in return, but my face felt a little numb, like somebody else’s face had been glued over my own, and not very well at that. I couldn’t reach the stairs fast enough.
Stewart was in his study, standing at the window. The sun was dipping behind the valley’s rim, behind the string of wind towers that rose and fell with the ridgeline, a row of black silhouettes against a clear gold sky.
He didn’t turn as I came up beside him.
There was a momentary glint as a few of the tower blades caught the waning light. I wondered how many hours Stewart had spent staring through the window at those hated towers over the last couple years.
“I can hear them,” he murmured. “Sometimes.”
“All the way from here, huh?”
That was one of the complaints people had against the wind towers—that they were noisy. And when the wind got ripping, it was true, they were pretty loud. I’d heard them a few times, down at the school, in town. But not on the Heights. Not this far away.
He closed his eyes. “In my head,” he whispered as the last sliver of sun ducked behind the ridge.
The room was warm from the afternoon sun, but a shiver ran down my spine anyway. “Right.” I glanced back at the open door. “Look, I’m sorry. You know, about before.”
Stewart nodded.
“It’s just, I really don’t want to be in that play. I don’t even want to try out, that’s all.”
He brought his hands up
and covered his face.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m going to go. Mom will be home from work soon, and I should be there for dinner and all. How about another night? Maybe tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure.” He lowered his hands. His eyes were still closed. I took a few steps backward, turning halfway across the room. I’d almost made it to the door when he stopped me.
“Take the movie,” he said. “Watch it. Just watch it.”
I hesitated, then grabbed the DVD from the desk and slipped it into my pocket.
“All right,” I said. “I’ve got it. Okay?”
Stewart nodded, but he didn’t turn around. He just kept staring out the window.
“I’ll pick you up in the morning,” he said.
“Thanks.” I hesitated once more in the doorway. “And thanks again for the coat.”
I headed for the stairs without waiting for a response.
I dodged Mrs. Bolger with a few quick apologies, then booked it out of the house and down the driveway, not bothering to look back to see if Stewart was up at the window watching me. I knew he was. I shoved my hands in my coat pockets and walked faster into the fading light, clutching the disc all the way home as the air bit at my cheeks and nose. It was unseasonably cold, even for northern Vermont, and I knew there would be a hard frost tonight.
By the time I reached my house, it was still light outside, but inside it seemed like night already. A double-wide trailer wasn’t a particularly bright place to begin with, but it was mostly due to the shades—my mother had a thing for keeping them closed. It’s because she was paranoid from her job. Working as a police dispatcher, taking all the emergency calls and working with the state troopers, seeing the scumbags they brought back to the barracks with them—she knew just what kind of sick fuckers were out there. I thought she was too paranoid, though. You can pull all the shades you want; it’s not going to stop someone who’s really out to get you. And even if you block out the dark, you end up blocking out the light, too. Besides, there was already plenty of darkness inside. My father had seen to that.
Spinning Out Page 3