The Dirt Chronicles
Page 5
“What did the note say?” I finally asked.
Two Ton reached over to the orange crate he used as a nightstand and pulled out a small painted box. Inside was a piece of folded paper, thick and cream-coloured, but smudged from being handled. He tossed it to me. His father’s handwriting was careful: squared off at the top and bottom loops, like he’d used a ruler almost, and the letters, so many consonants, slanted sharply to the right, like they were marching headlong into the far side of the paper, in danger of falling off the edge if they arrived too soon. I had no idea what they spelled out, or even what language it was.
I waited for Two Ton to translate those life-altering phrases. What damning insights had his father inked? What great-grandmother’s recipe, what bastard child or torrid love affair, what ugly family secrets might be revealed in such a letter? I found myself wondering what my own father might attempt to share in such a profound moment. Two Ton scratched at the light hairs on his chest. He leaned toward me and drank another long gulp. His eyes bore through me; they shone and provoked a shiver from me. I struggled to comprehend all he was not saying. I didn’t know how to comfort him or if he even wanted that.
“What did you do next?”
“Easy,” he said. He spoke quietly. “I drink the last beer. Then I cut up the last bread and eat it, sitting in my father’s chair. Later, when the moon comes out, I lay down on the bed and cry. Finally, I sleep. In the morning, I pack a few things in a bag and just leave. I travelled. I did some crazy things, you know,” he said, his voice catching. “Some time, I just heard about coming to Canada, and so I did that. And now, you see, here I am.”
I smiled when he said that. But I noticed he didn’t. His face was impassive. Like the flat, smooth stones he had skipped at the lakefront.
On Monday morning, I woke with a furry tongue, my head in a vice. I stank. Two Ton was not in bed. He was standing by the large open window in an antique wash basin, an oversized tin bucket with edges that reached just below his knees. He had rigged a garden hose to the sink faucet and had duct-taped a shower head on the end of the hose. He showered in cold water, lathered up with soap stolen from one of the office washrooms, and then rinsed again. It occurred to me that this was slightly more barbaric than the amenities offered at the campground Linda had booked.
Linda. That poor girl.
“You’re avake,” he said loudly. “Good.” He stepped out of the basin, turned off the tap, and towelled himself off, all in the same movement. “I have to do some things today. Not vork, but, you know.”
I looked around the room. My knapsack was on the floor in one corner, my things vomited up from it, strewn the length of the room. I moved slowly, collecting familiar items as I went. A sock. My damp shorts. A box of condoms meant for the terrible sex with Linda, emptied now, with torn wrappers scattered around the room. It hurt when I bent to pick them up. The long bike ride, the stairs, the beer, the sweaty wrestles—it was all much more than I was accustomed to. I dressed myself. I washed my face and rinsed my mouth but couldn’t spit out the dread that burned at the back. I could hardly look at him, certainly not in the eyes.
“You’re like a voman,” he guffawed. “You should eat a sandwich.” He was slapping peanut butter onto slices of bread and dropping large dollops of jam on top. He handed me a folded-over piece and thumped my shoulder blade in some kind of manly gesture. I winced. He ate several sandwiches just like this while I choked through that single one. The peanut butter stuck in my throat. I could hardly swallow, even though I kept sipping from a large glass of water.
He was dressing quickly, moving purposefully around the room. He gathered his wallet, bike lock, keys, cap. He was oppressively cheerful. He was putting on other layers, too, the invisible ones that bricked him far away from me, hundreds of ocean miles between us, and I simply could not stay the maudlin waves from flooding. This—whatever had happened here in his room, whatever affection and intimacy he had poured over me the past few days—this was all gone. The air was changed. Two Ton smelled different. I was his shadow once more, and I could hardly bear it. The thought of seeing him at the office, me on a stool in the copier room, him captivating the maven gatekeepers out front, it sickened me.
“Ve had good times,” he said at last, jingling his keys by the door. I was tying my shoelace, peering at him through my dark bangs. “Don’t pout,” he said. “I don’t like that.”
Of course it only made things worse.
Out in the hallway the remains of my bicycle glared at me. It was my fault. I had abandoned it, not thought of it once the whole time I was inside Two Ton’s loft. The front wheel was missing, the gears were stripped. My pedals were gone. The seat-less post glared obscenely at me. Two Ton swore. “I forgot to varn you about my neighbours,” he said. He looked sad. To see a bike desecrated, well, that truly hurt him, I could tell.
“I’ll take the bus,” I said. I couldn’t begin to carry the thing home. Not now.
“Hey,” he said, and it was more the conspiratorial sound of his indoor voice, the intimate one I had heard all weekend. “I fix it. I bring it to the black tower ven it’s ready.” He stood in the cavernous hallway, dust sifting through the beams of light that filtered down from high windows of the warehouse. Sunlight played on his face and his large form; shadows crept over unexpected places. He was still the unapproachable guy I saw downtown, but the other one, the gentle-rough one I’d just come to know, that part of him was visible once again, too.
“Okay.” I stammered. “If you want.”
“Yeah,” he said. He stepped toward me. “I bring it and ve ride. See that lake again or some place.”
I would collapse, surely, or so I thought.
Two Ton came closer still, and put his warm hand on my neck. “Maybe come here, too. Mister.” His lips brushed mine. Then he was off, riding down the hallway, wheels thumping down the stairs. He was whistling, and the mournful tune echoed in the empty stairwell. Downstairs, the main door squeaked open, then slammed shut behind him. When I stood on my toes and peered out the window, I could just make out his blond head, the bigness of him, the grace of his figure, as he sped down the alley away from me.
Stargazing at Eddie’s
“I’d-a never tapped that if I’d a known she was such a ho. How ’bout it? You ride that?”
I say, “A-a-as if,” and Eddie chuckles, long and low. I hate when he girl talks.
Eddie passes a wee pinner of a joint, really just the filter. I suck ’til my mouth burns.
“Sh-shit.” I toss the thing somewhere and pour Pabst Blue Ribbon on my sore lip. I crank back the smoke, try to keep it all in longer. I cough. Smoke and air and beer snort out my nose, even though I’m used to this stinkweed. A burn bubble grows where the ember touched my mouth.
Eddie says, “Easy, Ray-Ray. Where’d you throw that roach?”
I shrug.
Eddie feels around for it with his big hands. I keep coughing, crapping my lungs out. Eddie and me are on his roof smoking, drinking, and bullshitting. His white mom sticks her head out the bedroom window and yells, “Get down here, you’re gonna break the bloody ruff,” but we don’t.
Eddie yells, “Get your fat ass up here and make me!” and she goes, “Fuck, you’re like your dad,” and slams the window, and that’s that for a while. Which is good, cuz even though I know she can’t climb up and get us, she creeps me right out.
Eddie rips off his studded cap and roughs up his hair. In grade school he wanted to feather it like all the other toughs, but he couldn’t. Not with his dad’s nappy hair. Now he’s punk. He shaves the sides and his tufty baby dreads stick up on top and all down the back, too. Like a Mohawk warrior. He plops the cap back on, sideways.
He says, “Okay. Who’s the hottest chick in our school?”
I spark up another joint so I don’t have to answer.
He pokes me. “Well?”
I roll my eyes. “They’re all d-d-dogs.”
Eddie laughs and slaps the roof. “You’
re funny, Ray-Ray. They’re no porn queens, you’re frigging right. Except maybe Mary Lou.”
I don’t say anything and neither does he. I guess he’s thinking about Mary Lou, who is ugly and boring and has really big boobs. We drink more beer. Eddie starts talking his usual crap about running away, about going to the big smoke, and us getting factory jobs and making lots of cash.
“We’ll score hot babes,” he says.
“Humph.”
“They’ll like me tall and dark, and you all tiny and white. We’ll tag team.”
But we both know that women don’t like me. They think I’m too soft.
“We’ll burn that city down, be so hot,” he says. “We’ll start a band.”
Thing is, Eddie never fills in the details. Like, how the hell would we even get to the city, let alone start a band? “W-w-we don’t have no b-bus money,” I say.
Eddie sucks his teeth. “We won’t take an old bus. We’ll drive.”
“Without a c-c-car?” On a beginner’s licence?`
“Always poking holes in my ideas, Ray-Ray.” Eddie sounds annoyed, like I’m the only thing stopping him from being a rich city millionaire, right this very minute.
After a bit I say, “We c-could hitch. On a t-t-truck.”
“You’re right,” he says, happy again. “That’s how I snuck out of Bluewater—in the back of a bread truck, got the hell right out of there. Didn’t go hungry, neither. Not ’til they brought me back, anyways.”
Eddie tells me that story over again, how he was stuck with some dirt bag trying to finish him off at the boys’ detention centre. That plus a white power gang jumping him every time he turned a corner. “Brown boys got to stick together in juvie. But we all different kinds of brown—Native, Latino, Asian. One brother blacker than me, that’s it.”
Eddie almost never made it out, except in a box.
“Wouldn’t want to go back, neither. You would not believe the shit you have to do to get by, Ray-Ray.”
His voice is thick with bad memories. I wonder what exactly happened to him there. There and all those other places he’s been sent. It always takes him a while to settle when he comes back. Then, living with his Monster Mom, he goes bonkers, fucks shit up, and gets hauled off all over again. It’s always a circle with him.
Eddie says, “In fact, you and me probably couldn’t even be friends there, what with the way they stack it up colour-wise. We’d get the beat down.”
I’ve heard all these stories before, but I don’t care. I like the sound of his deep voice. Eddie’s musky scent fills my nose—that and the smell of the night air, and Old Red’s garbage sweetly stewing down the lane, and the white tobacco flowers from the fields even farther away.
“It’s not t-t-too bad here,” I say, when he stops talking to light another smoke. I look up at the stars. Look over to the transformer behind Old Red’s place. Hear it humming. Look down at the other trailers, the bungalows. Hear Eddie’s Tom, Big Fat Rat Catcher, yowl as he slinks out from under a parked car. He’s hunting a skunk that crosses the dirt road, then stops right in the middle. I drain my beer and lob the empty King can in a beauty arc, over the crabgrass past Old Red’s garbage, so it lands in the dirt like a bomb. The skunk freaks. It flips around, tail up, legs spread, and its head sways back and forth, back and forth, sniffing the night air. A dog starts barking, down aways. Big Fat Rat Catcher stares right at me, like I wrecked his routine.
“Hole!” Eddie knuckle punches the back of my head.
“Ow, feh-fuck.”
“You want it to stink up the whole place?”
“N-no,” I says, “But you di-didn’t have to h-h-hit me.” I blink.
“Goof.”
The skunk prances away and doesn’t spray, after all. I watch the white tip of its tail disappear into the dark bushes. Big Fat Rat Catcher blinks and is gone too.
Eddie burps loud and long. It bounces off Old Red’s siding, and we laugh at the echo. In the background, we can hear his mom’s TV. She must have opened the window again. She’s chain-smoking in bed, probably wearing her lacy see-through pyjamas, watching the late-late show and the even later commercials. The ones that go on forever, selling shit you don’t need—no money down, don’t pay ’til next year—mattresses, couches, kitchen crap, cars. A zombie studio audience claps and cheers.
Eddie pulls the tab on another Pabst Blue Ribbon. Foam covers his fingers. He slurps it up quick. Beer dribbles off his wide lips, down his chin. Beer glistens on his thick fingers.
I lick my sore lip.
He shakes his hand, shakes the beer drops that land on the shingled roof between us. Eddie leans back on his elbows, looks up at the sky. He’s right good-looking, especially now, in spite of his buck teeth. Like a movie man with the light on him in all the right parts. I look away. Bend my knee to block my sudden boner.
“Want more?” he says, so I reach for it, but he pulls the can away.
I say, “G-give me some,” and he says, “M-m-make me,” and laughs again.
He rolls away and chugs the beer. He keeps rolling along the flat roof, holding the can up, not spilling much. Finally I stand up and lunge, but he scoots away quick. He’s still laughing. I’m lopsided from the beers and the weed.
“Whoa.”
“Easy there, Ray-Ray.” Then he kicks me in the back of my knee and I fall, plop, beside him. Practically on him and such.
“Sh-shit.”
“Don’t spill it, goof.”
“Cut it out, Eddie,” yells his mom. “What are ya, goddamn bowling?!” She’s got the window open again. She’s probably leaning her head out, stretching her neck in a crick, trying to figure out what all’s going on.
We crack up. I’m still laughing, and he pokes my ribs. I block. He fakes. He pokes again, and his big hands are faster than mine. He lands them almost every time. Those hard fingers jab my arm pit, stomach, ribs, whoops, my crotch, my armpit. I twist away. He pinches my nipple hard.
“Ow, feh-fuck’s sake,” I say, and he turns up the volume on my knob.
“Ow, m-mother f-f-fuck,” I yell and elbow him. He’s still kneeling on top of me, tweaking my nip. He drips beer on me.
“Open your mouth, whore,” he says, dead serious.
“Ark.” The warm beer pees right on my face. Beer bounces off my shut mouth, splashes my eyes, and pools in my neck, soaks my long hair and the top of my T-shirt.
“Look at me,” he says.
I look at him, and he looks good. Streetlight falls on his cheek, his lip; it outlines the tufts of his hair when his cap falls off. His arm muscles flex from holding me and hurting me and measuring out the beer. The lettering on his Ramones shirt glows white against his darker skin.
“Open your twat mouth.”
So I do. I open it, right, and catch the stream. And what do you know; I pop wood again, right under him. He’s leaning right on it and staring back at me. He might punch me, I think. Or throw me off the roof. But he don’t. He moves around a little, holds the can near his belt buckle, and still pours it into my mouth. I trance out, let the beer pour right in me and through me until it is all gone. And when Eddie unzips, when he slowly pulls it out, I almost lose it right then.
I don’t move a muscle, though. I don’t even breathe.
His is nice, alright. I already seen it dozens of times. Eddie’s always whipping it around in gym class, or when we’re loaded, pissing in a ditch somewhere. Other times, too. I usually look away; don’t want nobody thinking I’m a Gaylord. But now it’s all I can see; the fat head of it sticking out a bit, the rest filling his hand.
“What are you waiting for?” he says.
I don’t want to talk and ruin everything.
“Get it out, Ray-Ray,” and I don’t miss a heartbeat. I want to grind against him but he says, “Easy, Ray-Ray. Don’t be no fag.”
I’m pinned under him, confused. I don’t know the rules, don’t even know what game we’re playing. So I follow his lead. His hand moves slowly. He says, “Why don�
��t you like talking about girls, Ray-Ray?”
“Huh?” I stroke, light as I can.
“Don’t you like them?”
“I d-don’t know.”
When he speeds up, I do too. When he spits in his hand to work that in, so do I. Eddie leans closer, still above me, and says, “Well? Who do you like?”
I hold myself in a tight fist, count to five, and breathe.
Don’t make me talk, I think.
“Say it,” he hisses.
“O-okay. I like you, Eddie.”
“Thought so.” His eyes don’t leave mine, not once. “How long you been liking me, huh?”
I shrug. How long is forever?
“Guess.”
“Since that time you was tuh-tuh-trashed a-at Junior’s b-bush party.” That night Eddie got loaded and picked a fight with some out-of-town boys. Then he disappeared.
“You were looking for me?” His whisper is hoarse.
“Uh huh.” I lick my lip. I couldn’t find him at the fire, in the back lot, or with the other kids down at the pits. I thought those guys were maybe finishing him off, for good.
“You came here?” His hand moves up and down.
I nod. I hate what else happened that night. Don’t want to ruin everything. Why’d I start talking about this stupid night?
“Tell me.” Eddie breathes hard, his mouth hangs open, his eyes are fixed, just like a humping dog.
“She would-wouldn’t leave me alone.” I hold myself tight, trying not to go limp. There’s a roaring in my ears, my head rattles. I squeeze my eyes shut.
When I open them, Eddie’s face is even closer. His lips are right near mine. They brush my cheekbone. “Hey. Ray-Ray.” He’s not touching himself now; he’s touching my hair instead. “You okay?”
I nod.
“I did come home that night.” He licks his lips. His beer breath heats up my skin. I wish he would kiss me, but I’m not stupid. “I was watching you. Right through the window. Watching her suck that pretty thing of yours.”
He was watching me. I gulp. He thinks mine is pretty.