That which you are reading at this moment, I composed on my Dell. It took me four months to say it exactly the way it needed to be said, and since I wanted you to get the whole picture I put the thing in story form. I even added italics at times to express inner monologue and recent flashbacks. Though I am no professional, everyone knows that even a high school dropout can up his level of discourse through reading. And I have had nothing but time on my hands. I have had time to read, to write, to mourn, and adapt to the unthinkable.
Reed Road is a one-way thoroughfare that cuts through Scutters Woods for five miles and eventually opens out to Main Street. To use Reed Road up until now, you would have had to come off the Route 79 overpass and pay me a toll anywhere from fifty cents to two-seventy-five, depending on where you originally picked up the turnpike. So to all my customers, to my acquaintances in the past, to my mother God rest her, my relatives, and those of you that will hear of this through the media, know and try to understand my story.
And to you, my contractor friend with the hangover, he who has just found this packet under the bolted-down cabinet. I finally want to confirm something before you dismantle the walls, stack the safety glass, put my cash drawer and F9 500 POS touch screen on eBay, and start busting out the concrete pad below your feet.
The toll booth still erected around you is haunted.
I am going to tell you how it got that way.
This is my confession.
1.
She's a gay, faggot, pussy-dog, and you know it, Jimmy.
No she isn't.
Is! She looks like a leprechaun.
She's half beagle and half fox terrier. That's why her ears stick up like that. And she's really nice.
Nice! Dog's ain't supposed to be "nice." They're supposed to be faithful. They're supposed to have big paws and lots of hair. They're supposed to chase after sticks, guard the house, and flush rabbits and pheasants out of the brush and shit.
She barks when strangers come . . .
She yips! She's a yip dog.
Well, I like her.
I know you do, Jimmy. Hell, I like her too. I was just kidding.
Really?
Yeah, she's awesome. For a gay, faggot, pussy-dog.
Kyle winked, pushed out of the pit, and crawled under the caution tape. On tiptoe I peered over the lip of our new hiding hole and watched him strut across the abandoned job site. He stopped by a stack of cinderblocks and a pile of long steel bars with grooves in them. He turned and scratched his head. He stroked an imaginary beard. He hawked up and spit into a red wheelbarrow with a flat tire, then spun away, spread his feet, and fumbled with his pants. He started pissing down the side of a dented fifty-gallon drum. His shoulders were shaking as were mine, and his stream went through a number of unsteady spurts in rhythm with his laughter. He started gyrating his hips and the urine that dissolved the old dust in shiny splatters became a pattern. He was writing his name.
"Kyle, don't."
He zipped up and climbed into the cab of a bulldozer.
"Don't what?" He grinned and started yanking on the gear handles. He was not quite tall enough to reach the floor pedals with his feet.
"Don't mess around."
"But Jimmy, this piece of shit won't move."
I giggled a bit. It was forced. He knew it was forced and he challenged me to say exactly what was on my mind with a hard, watery stare. Then more yanking. Hard. His teeth were clenched beneath the thinnest of smiles and sweat ran through his dirty blond crewcut. The scene was becoming a familiar one. It was a hot summer day in Westville, we were thirteen years old, I was Kyle's new pal, and we were out making mischief.
"C'mon," I said. "You're gonna bust it."
He stopped.
"So? What are they going to do, take fingerprints? Next you're about tell me that the chief of police is going to connect some busted dozer gear with my name written in piss over there on that can. You're one paranoid little jerk-in-pants, ain't you?"
I shrugged. He shrugged back and we both laughed. It was the usual standoff. My base instincts screamed "foul" long before we chucked apples at the Levinworths' tin roof, or doused the church doorknobs with bacon grease, or lit up a bag of dogshit right by the umbrella stand in Mr. Kimball's front foyer. I was the worried voice of what could go wrong and Kyle would twist around my illustrations to prove we wouldn't get caught. He always had ironclad proof and a way of presenting that proof that left me speechless.
I rested my forearms on the edge of the trench and looked for a place to draw pictures in the dirt. There was a half-buried tube of liquid nails and a scuffed-up red gas cap next to a fanned-out toss of broken green glass pieces. The bent-up Genesee Cream Ale bottle cap was a foot to the left, and I made note to possibly flip it at Kyle if the moment was right. I rubbed my index finger into the ground. It was good dirt. Soft, with pretty little mica specs in it. I drew a cartoon penis and a cartoon vagina. A stalk with a bulb and an oval with an upside down "Y" in it. Why did vaginas look like peace signs anyway?
"So," I said. I scratched out a dot where I imagined the clitty thing would be. "This is the big secret?" I looked up. "We rode bikes five miles just to trash some old dozer? You said you had some new surprise out here that was ultimate pisser."
Kyle put his elbow up on the steering column.
"Still drawing pussy instead of getting it, Jimmy?"
I yanked up my finger as if burned. If Kyle had heard, it was pretty clear that more had gotten in on the story over the summer.
Mr. Ferguson had caught me drawing weird stuff in my notebook on the last day of school back in June, and I'd gotten a weirder lecture in the hall after class. He told me all about respect and being appropriate and careful and all. He'd colored up while telling me, reddened right at the neckline, and when Miss Royer came around the corner from teaching her gym class he'd gone scarlet. As all the boys in school had been doing since the beginning of time, we both ignored her horse-face, peeked at her long mane of straight brown hair that went nearly down to her waist, and then shot a quickie glance right to her Olympic legs. We looked back at each other, and his finger was right in my face.
"Now look, Jimmy. You're a good kid, but you're a bit lost. You've got one more year of junior high school and I want you to fly straight. I've seen you looking at the girls sitting next to you and across from you, and it's getting a bit obvious. Other kids are snickering about it. Keep your eyes out front, all right?"
Now I was scarlet. The fact that he was looking at Miss Royer's legs just as I was a second ago seemed suddenly petty. His accusation was true. I couldn't keep my eyes off anything female. They were all so . . . sexy. Since last year I couldn't help but always stare at the girls in their swishing little field hockey kilts, and the cheerleaders in their green and white "Go Wildcats" sweaters and matching black miniskirts, and the girls in gym class with their high-cut white shorts. How could I not stare? They were a dizzying carousel of feathered hair, shags, tight pants, blue jean skirts, strawberry lip gloss, and light blue eye shadow with sparkles in it. I studied them every chance that I had!
The urge had been so overwhelming that I had not considered the possibility that others were watching me watch the skirts and all. Weren't other boys doing the same thing as I was?
Maybe, but they weren't showing.
And I'd initially thought I was lucky. Even though I was pretty sure Melinda Thomas had seen the pictures I was drawing and actually heard bits of the conversation as she passed us in the hallway, Ferguson had confronted me after my second-to-last class on the day before summer vacation. There was no detention, no phone call home, and no lunch period for the rumors to fly through the student population like a bad disease. Still, the story had obviously gained legs over the last month and a half, painting me as the world's worst heavy breathing sex addict.
I rubbed out my dirty cartoons.
"So, how much kootchie are you getting?" I said.
"Enough. Just ask Billy Healy."
&n
bsp; I had heard the stories. Supposedly, Kyle had copped a feel of Jeanette Wallman's crotch at the Thatcher Park Shopping Center, in an unlocked pickup parked behind the Briarbrook Deli. The legend was that she was wearing tight white jeans and his dirty hand left actual prints. Suddenly I wished for a magic scale that would weigh my "staring problem" against his little episode in the pickup and somehow come up with a comparison between us on the perv-o-meter.
"Got any gum, Jimmy?"
He was staring. It sort of hurt to look back at it. For the millionth time that day, I looked down, and to my dismay, started drawing in the dirt again.
"You know I don't," I said. My mom didn't let me have gum. She didn't let me have Twizzlers or corn chips either. She was a health food mom and stocked the house with granola, wheat germ, and soy products. Of course that didn't mean I couldn't sneak to the Acme or the Drake Emporium on 7th, and cram an entire Plenti-Pack of Doublemint in my mouth every now and then. The problem was that Mom did regular room checks, I wasn't good at hiding leftovers, and today, as always, I was flat broke in the munchie department.
"That's OK," he said. "I do."
He fished a square of Bazooka out of his pocket and chucked it to me. It fell a bit short and I reached to pinch it from the dirt. It felt like Christmas when you could scarf up a freebie. I ripped it open and licked the sugar powder off the comic no one ever read anyway. I jammed the pink square deep between the back molars and had chewed it three good times before I realized that Kyle was still wearing that hard, blank expression.
"That's all right," he said. "I didn't want my half anyway."
I froze. Kyle Skinner was the rudest, hardest, most obnoxious boy that went to Paxon Hill Junior High School, but he sure had his cast-iron rules of etiquette. Figuring out these laws and boundaries was a constant source of pain for me, but it also fascinated me in some deep, secret place. Somehow, these were the real laws of growing up your mom never told you about. I just wish I didn't feel so stupid every time there was an infraction.
He turned away and gazed out at the woods that flanked the dirt road.
"Come up here and have a smoke with me, Jimmy."
My hesitation was embarrassing.
"My mom will smell it on me."
"Huh?"
"My mom will smell it!"
My voice carried louder than it had before, but I knew it wasn't going to do me any good. I used that excuse yesterday when he tried to convince me to light up in my room and blow it out the window. He did seem to forget about the whole thing when he found my school supply drawer and started a rubber band fight, but you just didn't re-gift excuses to Kyle Skinner. He was too quick for that.
In truth, I had no excuse to deflect the fact that I was absolutely petrified of tobacco. In truth, I had nightmarish visions of taking that puff and feeling that dirty ghost eat away at my guts. Its gray wisps would scrape at my throat and push through my nose. I would rapidly fizzle away from the inside out and become a spotty skeleton-child, destined to be buried in the back yard under the dandelions.
And all this was stupider than the "mommy" excuse. Kyle smoked all the time and was healthy as a greyhound.
"That's bullshit and you know it," he said. "Butt breath goes away in fifteen minutes."
"How do you know?"
With a jerk of surety, Kyle bent up his knee and slapped the sole of his foot flat to the bulldozer's control panel. He hiked up the bottom edge of his jeans and dug for the smoke pack hidden in his sock.
"Bobby Justice told me."
I was silenced. Just the fact that Kyle had conversed with Bobby Justice was an instant credibility. It made me feel young, and unworldly, and again one step behind the parade.
Bobby Justice was seventeen. He took shop classes half the day, majored in raising hell, and even got arrested once for selling grams of Hawaiian pot under the bleachers on the football field. He drove a jacked-up black Mustang. He wore shit-kicker boots, and a chain hanging out the back pocket in that half-moon that said in its dumb, blind sort of grin, "Fuck off, Chief." Rumor had it that he once pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of his trunk at a Hell's Angels biker party, somewhere between the tube-funnel beer-chugging contest and the motor throw, because some dude was wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd T shirt that he wanted.
And it was mind-boggling to picture Kyle extracting this information from Bobby Justice in casual conversation. The only reason this bully ignored kids like us was that we were still too young to beat up.
Kyle drew out the pack, ripped away the cellophane, and let it float off on the wind. With a mild sort of alarm I noticed that the brand in his fist was the filterless Chesterfields. Last time I'd looked it was Marlboros.
He scratched at the foil cover and shook one up.
"Come here, sit down, and have a smoke with me, Jimmy." He held it like a pointer for emphasis. "I'm not asking you to steal the change from your mom's purse like I did. I'm not asking you to go down to the Rexalls and tell the old fart that the butts are for your old man, neither. I've already done all that myself. The only thing I want is for your first puff to be with me. Ain't you my new best friend no more? Don't ya want to hang out with the big boys?"
I climbed out of the trench and edged toward the dozer, my face burning, my mind racing. In the past two years friendships had suddenly twisted around by definition, and it was like I hadn't been paying attention in math or something. Up until third grade the fastest readers and the ones who brought in the most clever projects were the coolest. In fourth and fifth the best on the playground sort of shared the rule of the roost with the fast talkers, and the only ones picked on were those accused of being quiet, bookwormy, unpopular gay birds. It seemed I had tons of friends and we told each other everything.
But things shifted in seventh and eighth. Suddenly friendships seemed built on what you could bring to the table, not who you were or the thoughts you could share. A boy who had regular access to his father's Penthouse and Gallery magazines was far more revered than the "nice" kid in the school choir. Anyone with a steady supply of Pop Rocks, cherry bombs, pump BB guns, and exploding gag cigarette loads stood head and shoulders above those with straight A's and no allowance like me. Cool kids were building monster album collections with the complete works of Zeppelin, Sabbath, Kiss, and The Who, while my only eight-track was a commercial, pop anthology you ordered from TV called Autumn '73. Every day it seemed like I was losing ground. I tried talking to Ma sometimes, but her response was always to supply me with thick doses of values after methodically rejecting my requests one by one.
I walked to the dozer.
Kyle scrambled from the big bucket seat and sat on the dozer's thick tread strip between the two side wheels. He slapped the area next to him and I took my place at his side. Our weight bowed the track pad down a bit and it brought our shoulders together. I cupped my hands between my knees. His arm was across my shoulders.
"Now listen," he said. "Don't suck it down like you're gulping a Pepsi. And don't use your teeth. Take a small puff, hold it in your mouth for a second and then breathe it in slow. And when you blow it out don't try to do smoke rings. That shit is for girls."
I nodded. With all the steps and instructions I was more worried about doing it wrong than the effects of doing it in the first place. I guess that was a good thing.
"Go on then, Bozo. Take it," he said. He was holding the pack out over my lap with my cigarette jutting up about a half inch from the others. It was a sentinel on guard duty with Kyle's arm holding me in place. No escape.
I reached for the cigarette. My fingers were shaking a bit.
"Breathe," he said. "Breathe, baby. Stay with me." In a far-off way I noticed that his arm had disengaged itself. I put the cigarette between my lips. Took it back out. Wiped off a little drool. Reinserted. "OK, OK," he said. "Here we go."
He struck a match, cupped it, and brought across the two-fisted treasure. I leaned in going cross-eyed in my trance before the dancing flame. Close up it looked beautiful an
d deadly. I sucked in carefully and got braced for the hot, nasty swallow.
It was awesome.
Sharp, it hit the back of my throat and rolled into me like a chocolate cloud. It was potent and rich. Forbidden. I blew it out and watched the gray smoke make art on the air, a mushroom cloud spreading to the gauzy, three-fingered hand of a beckoning witch, to thinning curlycues, drifts, trails. My head spun a bit in a friendly sort of a way, and I knew I could handle this. I was older now. Better. I spit my gum out and took another deep drag.
"Now you're ready for the surprise," Kyle said. He was studying me, smoking one himself now. His eyes were thin, but his expression was otherwise neutral. I leaned back.
"Show me."
He hopped down, went to his knees, and reached behind the dozer's front roller. I couldn't see his arm from my angle, and I had the sudden premonition that he was going to fake like something grabbed his hand. He would open his eyes in wide surprise and jam his shoulder into the front of the dozer, giving the illusion he was being yanked really hard from something lurking in the shadows under the load bucket. Of course, this did not happen. If it had, however, I would have been ready and it made me smile. I really was changing for the better.
He came back with a cardboard box about half the size of a car battery. It was old and stained with what was either coffee or puddle splashes, and the front had a sticker that said "16D."
"What is it?" I said. He carefully set it down on the tread a few feet to my left.
"This here is a fine example of why most grown-ups have shit for brains, that's what it is," he said. He gave the box a half turn so we both could view its front label. He took a deep drag of the smoke he'd been lipping, then pointed to the box with the lit end for emphasis.
Seven Deadly Pleasures Page 18