Ohio

by Stephen Markley

  “Senior year. Homecoming.”

  She took it like it was made of ethylene glycol, held it in that way people hold old analog photos, with their fingers on the sides, afraid to get their smudgy prints on the surface.

  She studied it a moment before handing it back, voice anodyne. “We look like babies.” He folded the picture, his eye catching Lisa’s sultry squint, Kaylyn’s purple pornographic kiss, Rick’s playful menace, Harrington’s goofy-ass fedoraed smirk, his own vanishing face flaking into oblivion.

  He pulled the pack of cigarettes from his pocket and chucked one between his lips. Lit it, sucked in yet more poison. Kaylyn did not object.

  “I was at the bar tonight and ran into a bunch of people from high school. And you know, I found Dan Eaton while I was driving around. He was just walking along the side of the road, looking like a ghost crawled up his ass and into his eyes. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s homeless in five years living under a bridge. That’s what happens to kids like him. Sometimes I can’t believe how much we’ve lost. And even that’s only a fucking omen for what we might have left to lose.”

  He glanced over at her. Her eyes had lightning in them, flashing like the violent skies of Venus. He wanted to tell her the story of what Rick had done about Todd Beaufort, but why? And why, since he saw the fat, faded kid in the bar earlier that night, could he not stop thinking about him? He realized he was having another hallucination, but this wasn’t a vision. This was honest-to-Christ time travel. They were all time travelers. Shit, every time you glanced at the sky you were getting a glimpse of the ancient past, stars burned out or traveled millions of miles from where their light once shone, and the stronger the eye you constructed—say the TMT on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, with a thirty-meter mirror telescope—the further back in time you could look. Some people were just more attuned to it than others.

  “Kay,” he said softly as all time and space raced backward around his eyes. “Tell me what’s in that package.”

  * * *

  In early 2002, a few months after the night at Ostrowski’s, Rick called him on a Saturday night. He said he needed Bill’s help, but he didn’t explain. He only said he’d pick him up shortly.

  Rick pulled into his driveway, his old Explorer coated in a hazy film of white salt. The winter night had rolled in quickly, the town bathed in darkness by six p.m. He asked Bill to grab his papers and a bit of weed.

  “All I have are scraps.”

  “Just get it.”

  So Bill went up to his room and dug into the shoebox for his latest eighth, now mostly dust pinched into the corner. In the Explorer, Rick asked him to roll a joint.

  “Dude, where we going? Aren’t we meeting at Harrington’s later?”

  “After this.”

  They bounced along 229, passing a trailer park, Bluebaugh Auto Body Repair, a metal-fabrication shop, and then Rick turned off Dudgeon Ditch, a real backcountry road that alternated between pavement and gravel. Meager moonlight cut through the branches as Rick’s SUV crackled across gravel and leaves, snapping twigs and just missing a couple of horny raccoons darting through the elms.

  Rick pulled into a long driveway marked only by a battered black mailbox, twisting back through the woods, arriving at a one-story double-wide in disrepair. The siding was dull with dirt, awash in the hideous orange glow of a porch light, and the windows had storm shutters thick enough for a hurricane. When he spotted the black truck parked by the side of the house, the frame lifted high above the wheels so that it looked dinosauric, he understood.

  “What the fuck are we doing here?” Bill asked.

  “Just gonna talk,” he replied, yanking the key out, engine dying.

  “You fucking kidnapped me? What are you trying to prove, Brinklan?”

  “Shut up.” The anger in his voice actually caused Bill to do just that. “For just once in your life, shut the fuck up.” They sat in the car a moment, engine ticking. “We’re not here to fight him. You don’t have to say shit. Just stand there and offer him weed.”

  Before Bill could say anything more, Rick bounded out of the truck. Cursing his friend’s meddling nature, his bullshit chivalric simplicity, he followed. Behind the small house there was a fenced-in yard that must have ran for an acre to the rim of the woods, and he could hear an army of dogs barking, mewling, yipping, screaming like angry little girls, and as the two of them passed by, the mutts all crowded by the fence or pulled at their leashes and gave plenty of warning as visitors neared.

  Todd Beaufort pulled the door wide before they reached it. He wore black shorts that swamped his shins and a sleeveless T-shirt with the New Canaan jaguar crushing a football in its jaws. He looked confused, first by Rick and then very much by Bill.

  “Yo what’s up, Fifty-six,” said Rick, extending his hand. They slapped palms and traded a few manipulations. Bill remained below on the porch steps, like a child on his first day of kindergarten hiding behind his dad’s ankles.

  “Nothing. What are you two getting into?” Beaufort cast his eyes on Bill.

  “Your mom home? We got some bud. Need a place to smoke up. We were driving around, and I remembered you lived out here.”

  It was a thin excuse, but Beaufort seemed to find it reasonable. Bill attempted to scowl and it felt false, a mask rather than an attitude.

  “What up, Ashcraft.” Beaufort extended his fist, which Bill dapped. Their first exchange since Beaufort leveled him in the hallway that fall.

  “Hey,” he replied, thinking of their childhood. News of the alpha athlete of each class always filtered down, and he got his first glimpse of Beaufort during sixth-grade Little League, screaming at his mother in the parking lot. Bill watched this hefty woman the shape of a slope-shouldered lemon smack her kid in the face hard enough to spin him around, his heel skittering in gravel.

  “My mom’s at work,” Beaufort said, and surely Rick had known this. He led them into his home, which smelled of wet dog and something sickly, like the vomit of infants. The kitchen, living, and dining areas bled into one another in a mess of furniture too big for the space. A couch and two chairs crowded around a forty-two-inch TV, nearly banging into the dining room table and its mismatched chairs. Stacks of video games, copies of the New Canaan News (mostly the Sports section), catalogues, and bills overflowed a coffee table. SpongeBob chirped on the television. A pustule of plugs was suspended along one wall, extension cords running in every direction from its vertex, one fixed behind the only decoration, which was a tacky ten-cent painting of Jesus, hands in supplication, eyes fixed Fatherward because he suddenly understood he wouldn’t be carrying on the family name.

  “I got a lighter,” said Beaufort, and then they went about talking football for a while. This recruit Clarrett for the Buckeyes—man, he was going to be fearsome. Not to mention Beaufort’s teammate soon.

  Bill sat on a blue couch and felt parts of the fabric that had turned stiff from long-ago spills never cleaned. He could see the little black pocks from dropped cigarettes. Rick took a seat in a chair opposite Bill so that the two of them flanked their quarry; he waited until the joint had made the rounds and Beaufort had his first drag.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” said Rick. Beaufort had one leg up on the coffee table, resting his heel from a position of maximum lounge. The fabric of his shorts slid down, exposing a thigh of fine blond hairs. “I been hearing rumors about what you guys are up to with Tina. Gotta say it sorta has me disturbed.”

  Beaufort said nothing. He frowned, then leaned forward to pick up a mug already full of cigarette butts to ash the joint.

  “Don’t see how that’s none of your business,” he said finally and reclined back.

  “No.” Rick clasped his hands. His knees rose and fell like he was keeping time. “If you’re hurting her, it sure is. If you’re taking pictures, filming, doing shitty things to her . . .” He rubbed the stubble on his chin, his hand looking powerful.

  “It ain’t anything she don’t want,” said Beaufort, genu
inely confused. “She’s got no objections.”

  “Not sure I believe that.”

  They stared at each other. Bill wondered what he’d let himself get pulled into. It was only now, stoned eyes wandering the room because this scene was so uncomfortable, that he spotted amid the clutter of the coffee table a wicked knife resting on, of all things, a Guns & Ammo. The knife looked like something a Klingon would carry, curved and jagged with a mean black grip. He was sure Beaufort had picked it up when he heard the dogs barking.

  Now the linebacker murmured a laugh. “That why you came out here? To play moral police with me and my girl? Sure this ain’t about your girl?”

  Bill would always wonder what Beaufort meant by that, was never even sure if he heard the kid correctly, but Rick rolled over it too quickly.

  “Nah,” he said. “It’s about what you’re doing to someone you got power on. And it’s over, man. You’re done. I’m telling you you’re going to break it off with her. You’re not going near her again.”

  Beaufort leaned forward, amused. The dog tags he always wore dangled, two stiff, lazing flags. Bill saw how the ugliness would grow in his face when he aged: his wide nose, heavy brow, and thick, buttery lips. They looked firm and boyish right now but in a few years they’d go Mongoloid. By contrast, Rick looked brutishly heroic.

  “You should ask me who gave me all the help popping that cherry, Boy Scout,” said Beaufort, a depravity in the hard contours of his jaw. “Doesn’t matter though. Season’s over. We ain’t teammates anymore.” He jerked a thumb toward Bill. “Take your faggot boyfriend and get out. Or me, Curt, and Strow can make Kaylyn our fuck pig instead.”

  Bill stared at the grotesque beige of the carpet and saw chip crumbs. He knew he had to look up, and when he did Rick’s face was a haunted mask, maybe fear there, maybe panic, but certainly grim determination.

  “It’s like I go to all these camps,” said Rick following a long pause. “And I see these black kids from the cities, and they’ve just got something in them that I don’t. It’s like they know this is it, this is what they’ve got to get themselves out of where they’re from, and if it doesn’t work out, they’re fucked. So when the moment comes, they don’t flinch. You can be big, you can be athletic, but when you’re running the ball, it’s all about that moment when you’re about to get crushed, and you can’t hesitate. You can’t think about your family or your friends or your home or your girl because then you’ll flinch and the guy coming at you will pop your fucking head off. I feel like I got so many reasons to flinch. So sometimes I do.”

  His tricep twitched, and it sent a pulse through his whole arm.

  “Now you got a reason to flinch, Todd. You break it off. Leave Tina alone. The other guys, they don’t go near her either. You delete all the pictures, all that shit you took of her. You do it by the end of this week. And if you don’t, I got a copy of that video. The first one you made. And if you think you’ll be able to hold on to your scholarship after I hand that over to my dad, the school board, her parents, everyone, then you’re even stupider than you look. You’ll never get outta here, you’ll never have a shot at the pros, you’ll never do fucking anything. You’ll grow old and fat and broke in this house with your mom, and that’ll be that. This ain’t a negotiation, man. This is me telling you how it is.”

  Bill watched the cloud of doubt descend over Todd Beaufort, and it frightened him. He’d never seen the dark clarity of having another person’s fear in the palm of your hand. Rick stood. Bill’s eyes passed over the knife. He imagined Beaufort buying the dagger, trying to dream up what opportunity might allow him to stuff it between somebody’s ribs. He wondered if he should make a move for it.

  “Brink.” Beaufort hadn’t moved from the couch. He sat draped onto it. Relaxed. “I ain’t spending another minute in New Canaan, man. You fuck this up for me, I won’t have a reason to do nothing but kill you.”

  Rick stopped just long enough to shrug. “Alls I’m saying is do what I tell you, and we got no problem.” Then he popped open the door and Bill followed him out, glancing back at Beaufort one last time. What he saw there rearranged some things. As his cold blood mingled with the frigid winter air, he saw how much uncertainty this kid lived with. When Beaufort plowed into Bill in the hallway, it was because he was utterly without control over his own capacity to respond to his circumstances, getting played over and over again while believing fervently he had a grip on his own fate. He figured Beaufort would probably do what Rick asked. Then he would go to Columbus and get his head pounded to jelly for the NCAA, and when his body gave out, he’d wind up as a cog in some other machine. He’d live feeling only brief respites from confusion, and even these would pass quickly, like the gaps of sunlight in a massive anvil thundercloud.

  On the drive back into town, out of the entombing darkness of the country, on their way to Harrington’s to be with their friends and lovers, he said to Rick, “The tape? You don’t have any tape.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t know that. And those guys made enough copies, he thinks I might.”

  “What’s even on it?”

  Rick shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “What, so Todd Beaufort is suddenly going to see the light and behave himself? Treat his girlfriends and everyone else with empathy and respect? Fuck, Brinklan, you’ve got a worldview like an eight-year-old watching a bad action movie. Steven Seagal doesn’t really save young girls with karate.”

  Rick chewed his tongue. “Someone had to give that guy some consequences.”

  “Yeah, so he can get to college and do it to another five, seven, ten women. You probably just doomed some other poor moron to getting used by him. At least Tina Ross is dumb enough that she probably doesn’t even know the difference.”

  “Man, what is it with you?” He snatched a hot, furious look at Bill.

  “Keep your eyes on the road. This is like the deer holocaust strip.”

  “You know . . .” He gritted his teeth, hissed through them. “Jesus, Ashcraft. You think you have all these friends and admirers, man, but that’s not what they are. You think you’re this charming, slick dude. People think you’re arrogant, man. They think you’re full of yourself. They all talk behind your back about how fucking phony and unpleasant and unhappy you are. They feel sorry for you, Bill. I guess that’s what makes it that much more disappointing. Because I am your friend. I stick up for you when people talk shit, man. This will always make me wonder about that. The fact that I asked you to try to do something halfway decent for a person you know and grew up with, and you kicked and screamed the whole friggin way. It’s cowardly.”

  That was what really started their unwinding. That little speech on their drive back from Beaufort’s. Bill put it away, but he brought it back out. When he took Kaylyn to her grandma’s that March, for instance. Every time he needed to resurrect the unbridled, unhinged hatred he had for his friend, he just called up that moment and he had it in his grip again. He knew how you could grow resentment for a person over time, water it, care for it so that every word exchanged in every interaction—every glance even—could be loaded with this enmity.

  He barely even remembered their final exchange the summer of ’03. It had been late July, maybe a month after he woke up at Rick’s with the diaper on. A huge group of guys from their senior class had been drinking at Mike Yoon’s house, and he and Rick had ended up jawing about the war, as usual. He had been so loaded he didn’t recall the lead-up, just that somehow it escalated. They’d been in the backyard, the woods looking as dark as a black hole fallen to Earth. For whatever reason, Rick had called him a coward, and this reminded him in a savage way of the year before, when he’d used the same word driving back from Beaufort’s. Then Bill was screaming—and sure, it might have been incoherent at the time, but if you dressed it up without the alcohol it would be something that hurt, something like: You’re the one who talks all his patriotic blood-and-honor bullshit and then goes to OSU to become a fucking math teacher
. Go coach your high school football team someday, Brink. What a warrior! Yeah, Saddam and al-Qaeda are shaking in their boots at you. Talk about a fucking coward.

  Rick had gone at him then, which was probably good because Bill had already hitched in the breath to move to Total War, to spill everything, to stand in front of all their friends and recount how Kaylyn had crawled onto his face in her grandma’s bed and how her skinny thighs quaked when she came. Lucky for Bill, their buddies pulled them apart before he revealed all. Later, when he heard from Harrington that Rick had dropped out of OSU to join the Marines, Bill had to wonder if that night of wasted heat had something or everything to do with it. That night was the last time he ever spoke to Rick Brinklan.

  Four years later, Bill’s dad called him as the final semester of his senior year of college was winding down. He’d been in a bar on a weeknight watching the Cavs finish off the Wizards in a first-round playoff game. He told the story about playing fourteen-year-old LeBron one-on-one at a basketball camp because there was a beautiful blonde who’d joined them, some friend of a friend, and she had pearl earrings, a preppy popped collar, and an attractive curve to the bridge of her nose. She kept looking at him, and he at her. He went outside to take his dad’s call, and while Bill was easing in to his take on the game so far, his dad goes:

  “Hey, I’ve got something that you need to hear. I just got off the phone with Marty.” And of course Bill knew what was coming. “Rick was killed in combat yesterday. They’re planning a parade, and—you know, if you want to come home.” His dad went silent, his voice caught, like a sweater snagged by a nail, on the moment of telling his only son that his best friend from childhood, a kid who’d eaten Fruit Roll-Ups in their kitchen and played basketball in the driveway and sneaked liquor from above the stove, was gone.

  He got his dad off the phone as quickly as possible, but not because he needed to weep. Because there it was. Rick had gone off to fight a pointless, bullshit imperial war waged for the profit of a small elite, and he’d taken one for the team, hadn’t he? He got exactly what he wanted—to die a supposed hero. Bill went back inside the bar, watched the Cavs triumph, and fucked that pretty, preppy girl twice that night and once in the morning.