by Lena Prodan
Tony's mom came out of their house with a pile of laundry. “Excuse me, kids,” she said as she shoved clothes into the wash. When she stood up, she frowned at the grass sticking to my hands. “Oh honey, you know that just makes your asthma kick in. There has to be a better way to earn spending money."
I shrugged.
"Do you at least carry your inhaler with you?” When I didn't say anything, she sighed and patted my hand. “Just be careful, okay? Asthma can kill, you know."
Promises, promises.
She gave me one of those sad smiles before she went back into the house.
Eric and I usually talked through the jam sessions. We heckled the band; we teased each other. I was relieved when he didn't say anything that time. Some hopelessly transparent question about Sean was bound to slip out of my mouth if I spoke. For a while, Eric picked at his fingernails and then dug at the sole of his sneakers. Mostly, he watched the band out of the corner of his eye.
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Chapter 3
When Eric picked me up for our youth group meeting at the base chapel, I wasn't surprised to see Sean in the car. I wasn't happy about it either.
Like every other time I'd seen Sean, my body went on full alert. I kept hoping he'd say something to break the spell, but he just peered out at the world through his hair, kept his mouth shut, and stayed interesting.
Eric was the only one who seemed able to get Sean to talk. At least, I assumed they talked, because they were together all the time. Military kids made friends quickly, so it didn't surprise me, but it was no reason for Eric to ignore me. I tried hanging with Eric and Sean, but as soon as I got near, they startled, as if caught at something.
There was nothing to do but let it run its course. Sean had new-guy glamour and I couldn't compete with that. Eventually though, Eric would piss him off, or he'd bore Eric, and things would get back to normal. Or so I thought, but Sean was in my place in the passenger's seat when Eric pulled the tiny blue Honda into our driveway, so I had to sit in the back with Eric's dad.
Eric's dad was a big guy. Thick, solid muscle on a huge frame, like a recruiting poster for the middle-aged Marines. Like Eric, he was one of those rare blonds who tanned dark. His bristly haircut, flattened nose, and huge hands hinted at a past as a boxer. He smiled an apology as his long legs pushed into my space.
As Eric backed out of my driveway, I said, “We have to talk about school."
Sean made a face. “You're killing summer."
Since I didn't expect to stay at Park Hills, I put no real thought into my senior year schedule. They handed me a sheet, I filled it out with whatever and gave it back. Classes were starting in three weeks though, and I had to fix my mistake. After a major panic attack, I found the carbon of my first semester schedule smashed into the bottom of my backpack.
In the car, I smoothed my class schedule over my knee. “Okay, I have calculus first period."
"No good. Switch physics to first, and calc to last period,” Eric said. “Are you taking World Lit, or American Lit two?"
"I don't know. Whatever you're taking."
Sean scratched his scalp. “You two take every class together?"
Eric paused and peered down the railroad tracks before crossing them. He only drove like that when his dad was in the car. Otherwise, he took curves on two wheels. “Just the important ones. I'm not great at writing. She is. History too. She fixes my essays so I can get a better grade."
"There's no rule against it,” I assured Eric's dad. “I do some editing.” Truthfully, I wrote the essay and then Eric transcribed it in his hand.
His dad nodded.
I dug my knees into the back of the driver's seat, hoping that Eric took the hint to stop talking about our arrangement. What we did to help my math scores wasn't exactly cheating, but I didn't want to admit to that either. I took the test, then I handed it back to Eric and he circled where I made my first mistake on each problem. Some days, every problem had a light pencil mark on the first step. If we were lucky, I could pass it back to him a second time without getting caught. I did my own work though.
Eric glanced at me in the rear view mirror. “World Lit or American? Do I need to change my schedule?"
I tugged on the driver's seat to pull forward. “If American Lit two is anything like one, then it's a waste of time. I got hold of Harvard's suggested reading list. Hardly anything on that list was required reading in our American Lit one. Hemingway? No. Twain? No. Poe—well, we read one of his poems, but none of his stories. Steinbeck? Oh, thank God for small miracles. I mean, we read John Jakes’ The Bastard. What's next? The Betsy or The Other Side of Midnight?"
"Is Harold Robbins even an American writer?” Eric asked.
"But you get my point? These stupid Ohioans are making it so we can't compete with kids from decent states when we try to get into college.” I slouched back against the seat. “I have a lot of reading to do."
Sean twisted around to look back at me. “You're going to read the entire list?"
"I'm a fast reader. I have all year. I've read some of them on my own, and I'll try to hit the important ones."
Sean made a face. “Save time. Read Cliff Notes."
"No. I want to read them."
Eric's dad didn't get involved. I liked that about him. He sat back and listened when Eric and I got on a roll, but he rarely said anything. Pop would have sermonized the entire drive.
Sean said, “Well, I can tell you right now that the moral of Catcher In The Rye is that if you're a stupid rebel without a cause, your parents will put you in a mental hospital."
"That isn't true,” I told him. “That one I read on my own. It's about a manic depressive whose parents and teachers won't admit it because mental illness is too déclassé for rich people."
Sean shrugged. “Fine, but if you want an A on your term paper, you have to write that rebel-without-a-clue shit. That's what they want to hear."
I sneaked a glance at Eric's dad. He pretended he didn't hear the word shit. Or maybe he didn't care.
"But it's wrong,” I told Sean.
"But that's what gets an A."
It was perverse of me, but I loved that we were fighting. Hopefully that hid my obsession with him. “Don't teachers ever read the books they assign? If they did, they'd know that Catcher in the Rye is about a mentally ill kid whose parents ignore all the signs."
Sean pushed buttons on the radio.
Eric relaxed his leg so that his knee touched Sean's. Sean stared out the window. He didn't move his leg away. They talked, but kept it low so that I couldn't join in.
We pulled up to the main gate of the base. The MP saluted the car, not the driver. Eric's father returned the salute from the back seat. Eric rolled forward slowly, only accelerating when the MP went inside his hut.
Young men in blue Air Force uniforms walked in formation down the sidewalk on base. Eric coasted, staying behind them.
"Eric!” his dad barked.
Eric jumped.
"The base speed limit isn't that slow, son."
Eric sped up.
His dad took a deep breath that swelled his barrel chest. “So, what colleges have you applied to?” he asked me.
I sighed forever, one of my greatest talents. “Mom ordered me to apply to Harvard."
His eyes widened. “Good school."
"I guess."
"I think Eric told me that your Mom went away again."
"No. We were on vacation, together. We went to Chicago. I'd love to go to school there."
"Eric is applying to MIT. That's close to Harvard, right?"
Hell if I knew.
"You don't seem excited. Harvard is a great school. If you go to school in Chicago, you two will be miles apart."
Eric's dad hardly ever talked to me. A word here or there to acknowledge my existence, but we'd never had a conversation. Why we had to start then was beyond me. I exhaled and tried not to make it sound like a sigh. “They asked for references. Peop
le who've known me for years. No one knows me."
"There must be somebody."
I ran my fingernail along the seam of my shorts. “Well, Pop hangs out with those Nazi rocket scientists that I've known since I was a kid. You think I'm joking? The Army nabbed these German guys at the end of World War II and brought them back to the US for government missile projects. I think they called it Operation Paperclip. The Russians were grabbing every Nazi scientist they could too, trying to get hold of German weapons knowledge."
"I think I heard of that,” he said slowly.
That wasn't what he wanted to talk about. I could see it in his eyes. I knew better than to talk to people like that, but he heard enough of my conversations with Eric that my weirdness shouldn't have surprised him.
"I can just imagine how great it will look on my application when all my references are from Nazis."
Eric's dad nudged me with his elbow. “Harvard might like that."
I cracked a little smile for him.
"I'll be glad to give you a reference. But have you thought of MIT? You could be there. With Eric."
"Math isn't my thing. He could tell you."
"You could be study buddies, like you are now."
"No amount of tutoring is going to help. I get As in math by sheer force of will. But all I'm doing is parroting back formulas. I have no idea what it means. Eric understands the concepts behind it. To me, formulas are random manipulations of numbers for no explicable reason. The answers mean nothing to me. They're just more numbers. I'll never get it."
We turned into the parking lot for the white clapboard chapel. Supposedly it was non-denominational, but the white spire and foursquare building made it clear that the de facto religion of the military was fundamentalist Christianity. Sure, I knew Catholics and Jews in uniform, but I'd never met one above the rank of Major.
Eric and Sean got out of the car without waiting for me.
Before I could get out, Eric's dad said, “There are other good schools up there. Near to MIT. I'll write any recommendation you need.” It was the first time I'd seen an adult with desperation in his eyes. “You could see Eric on weekends."
"That would be nice, I suppose."
"Wouldn't it?” His smile cranked up voltage. “A man with a degree from MIT can write his own ticket. Computers are the future."
I nodded.
We watched the boys walk across the lawn to the fellowship hall. Their shoulders brushed. Eric grinned at Sean. They laughed.
His dad said, “Would you like to go to see a movie with Eric? My treat. He can have the car any night you two want to go."
I got out of the car fast and ducked through the kids hanging out at the door of the fellowship hall. Sean, Eric, and I were the only three in the youth group that went to Park Hills. Everyone else lived on base and attended the rival high school.
Sean and Eric sat together on the back row of folding chairs. They each had a leg propped up on a chair in the next row. Eric had his hand cupped over his mouth and he bent toward Sean as he whispered. I took the chair next to Eric. Whatever they were talking about, they didn't share it with me.
The base chaplain stood behind a portable pulpit on a small stage. A quilt of Bible scenes hung on the wall behind him. “Okay, quiet everyone. Let's begin."
The conversations continued.
"Okay, I know it's been all summer since you've seen each other, and we have a few new people, but it's time to pay attention."
Sean snorted.
The chaplain put his hand over his heart and turned to the flags propped up in the corner. “I pledge allegiance..."
We reluctantly got to our feet and mumbled along.
"Let us bow our heads..."
Baptists could suck the fun out of anything. Would it have killed them to skip the prayers just once? But I guessed they wanted to make sure every moment of joy in our lives carried the taint of guilt.
When the Chaplain finally wound down to the end of his rambling prayer, we gave him exhausted amens and dropped back down into our seats.
"I went through the suggestions made at the end of last year. Of the useable comments.” The Chaplain glared over his reading glasses at the boys. “There was one I thought I'd bring to the group for a vote. How do you feel about a hiking trip along the Appalachian trail?"
I almost choked. That was my suggestion.
"How long of a trip?” one of the girls from the main base asked.
"Two weeks."
"Where's the Appalachian Trial?” one of the boys asked.
"In Appalachia, dumb ass,” someone told him.
"Now group, we agreed we weren't going to use that kind of language.” ‘We,’ meaning that the chaplain decided that. The rest of us kept at it.
I curled my fingers under the edge of the cool metal seat. It was a go-for-broke wish, one I didn't expect anyone to take seriously when I wrote it on the questionnaire. Heck, I expected to be living in a different state by then, and if it happened at all, the trip would be for other people, not for me. Sure, the youth group took weekend camping trips, and we hiked, but the kids who were into it like me had long since moved away.
The Chaplain pulled down a map like the kind they had in school, revealing the US. He tapped the east coast. “The trail runs from Georgia to Maine."
"I'm not hiking that far,” a boy grumbled. “Why don't we go to Hawaii for two weeks?"
Oh sure, as if that were a possibility.
The chaplain tapped on the map again. “We'd only have enough time to do part of the trail. I've looked into it, and the section through Virginia looks like our best bet. I have handouts with information. I'd like you all to think about this, and talk it over with your parents. If we decide to do this, we have to start training. That means lots of weekend camping, and practice with fully loaded backpacks. This is a trail for experienced hikers only."
I watched the other kids. They didn't seem interested. I wanted to tell them how great it would be, but didn't dare show my enthusiasm. I brutally shot down their lame suggestions and expected them to do the same to anything I supported.
Sean shoved his hands into his pockets. “Might be fun."
Eric leaned forward, elbows on his thighs. He regarded Sean for a bit, glanced at me, and slouched back against his seat. “I'm in."
Three votes for. It was enough support to give me a glimmer of hope. If I could only sway them. I listened to the complaints drone on for a while, and then cautiously argued for the trip.
Two weeks in the woods! Two weeks away from my parents; two weeks in relative seclusion; two weeks God couldn't escape me.
Slowly, the vote turned to my side. It was hard to keep the grin off my face. I'd been dreaming of that hike for years, and it looked as if it would happen.
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Chapter 4
We sat on lawn chairs by Tony's old Impala at the SkyPorn Drive-In Theater. As usual, there were a few cars spread out over the deeply rutted dirt parking lot. Broken sound boxes dangled from posts. Near the warped back fence, there was a small, dingy snack shack and bathrooms I wouldn't go into even on a double-dog dare.
The features that week were Swedish SeXXX and Teddy Bare. I wasn't sure which one was playing when Tony and I pulled into the lot and let the rest of the guys out of the trunk. On screen, a woman wearing Mary-Ann piggy-tails sprawled on a pile of hay with her thighs spread wide. A twenty-foot long dick lunged at her. Her voice was garbled in the speaker near the car, but we always made up our own dialog anyway.
"I'm almost sure your father didn't mean this when he told you to take me to a movie,” I told Eric as he lit the camp stove.
Lane popped open the cooler and took out the hot dogs. “Nice night,” he said as he looked up.
The sky was clear, a big improvement over the thunderheads the week before, but the light from the movie made it hard to see the fainter stars.
Mark slapped mosquitoes from his arms. “They fucking fly for miles just to bi
te me."
"That's because you're so sweet.” Lane pinched Mark's cheek and got punched for it.
"Pass the SC,” Tony called out.
The fifth of Southern Comfort got passed down the row.
There were four other cars at the drive-in, parked as far part as possible. When they got bored, the guys wandered over and peered into the fogged windows. Management never said a word to us. Then again, management didn't seem to care that five guys spilled out of the trunk when we only paid for two tickets, or about our cookouts, the noise, the drinking, or the pipe we kept going in the back seat of the car. We were regular customers.
It was Sean's first trip to the Skyporn with us. He stared up at the screen, mouth open. I couldn't tell if it was the movie or the drugs that overwhelmed him.
Eric balanced a wire coat hanger on the edge of the camp stove. He nudged my elbow and nodded to the Impala.
I staggered after him to the back seat of the car. Southern Comfort was always a mistake.
Eric dug into his pocket for the foil wrapped cube. He pinched the corner off a chunk of blonde hash, put it in the bowl of his pipe, and took long draws as he lit it. He passed it to me. I took my hit, held the smoke in my lungs, and passed the pipe to Sean.
"It's not as easy to drown as you might think,” I said after I coughed out the smoke.
"Almost Zen,” Eric said. His lips twitched a little.
I nudged him with my shoulder. “Shut up."
The caramel scent of hash filled the car.
Sean passed me the pipe. “How can you drown yourself?"
The metal burned my fingers, but I took my hit. “I didn't start out to. We were in San Diego, at the North Island Naval R&R facilities. I went for a swim in the ocean. The wind came up and the water got kind of cloudy, so I started to swim in. I'm a decent swimmer."
Eric nudged my hand. I gave him the lighter. He held the flame down to the bowl of the pipe.
"After I'd been swimming a while, I treaded water to see where I was. I was down the beach and further away from shore. I figured my direction got screwed up by the waves, so I started swimming again, only with my head up that time so I could see where I was going. Didn't take long to realize I was caught in a rip tide. And then I thought, if I don't do anything, if I don't fight it, this is like the easiest death ever, right? All I have to do is let it take me. And somewhere out there, it'll pull me under."