“Hey, Larry,” I said. “You wanna let go of me?”
Larry looked like he was considering my request, but then he made the mistake of checking with his goons.
“No fucking way!” said Craig. “Not until he says shit.”
An odd feeling of relief came over me. Up until that moment, I honestly hadn’t understood what was going on, what I’d done to run afoul of people whom I’d normally make every effort not to offend.
“Yeah,” chuckled Bobby. “Make the little angel say shit.”
The previous week, in the locker room after gym class, I’d told a bunch of my classmates a funny story about my uncle Frank, who’d been walking his basset hound near the Little League baseball field when a resident of one of the nearby houses—a town councilman—came outside and started yelling at him for not cleaning up after his dog. Uncle Frank got mad—he’d never liked the councilman—and denied that Lorenzo had made a mess.
I saw it! the councilman insisted. I saw it out my window!
The hell you did, Uncle Frank told him. I’ve been watching him the whole time.
They got into a heated argument, which ended with my uncle saying that if his dog had actually done what the guy claimed, he, Uncle Frank, would pick up the poop with his bare hand and carry it home, that’s how certain he was that he was right.
Is that a promise? said the councilman.
Damn right it is! said Uncle Frank.
At this point, the councilman took my uncle by the arm and led him straight to a steaming heap of turds that had just been deposited in the tall grass behind the left field fence, presumably by Lorenzo.
There, smart guy! the councilman gloated. What do you say to that?
My uncle actually seemed to be enjoying himself as he told the story to me and my parents after we’d finished our dessert.
But what happened? I asked. What did you do?
What could I do? my uncle replied. I picked it up. I walked all the way home with a pound of fresh dog shit in the palm of my hand.
In the locker room, I told the story exactly the way my uncle had, except for one small detail. Instead of saying the word shit, I’d spelled it out, which led someone in the audience—it was Larry, I suddenly realized—to ask if I was really afraid to say it.
“I’m not afraid,” I explained. “I just don’t like to curse.”
Mark Hofstetter surprised me. He was a science nerd, a smart but notoriously wimpy kid who spent most of his time fooling around with his telescope and chemistry set, and building scale models of cities like Reykjavik and Helsinki out of LEGOs. I wasn’t expecting much from him in the way of backup, but he actually grabbed Larry by the arm and tried to separate his hand from my jacket.
“Come on,” he said in a reedy, trembling voice. “This isn’t funny. Leave him alone.”
Craig Murtha stepped up and jabbed his index finger, hard, into Mark’s chest.
“Who’s gonna make us, Poindexter?”
“Yeah,” said Bobby. “Whaddaya gonna do? Build a bomb and blow us up?”*
Mark hesitated, searching his database for some kind of snappy comeback, but then thought better of it. He let go of Larry’s wrist and retreated a respectful distance from the fray.
So now we were back at square one. Larry shook me impatiently.
“Come on,” he said. “Say shit. It’s not that hard.”
There was an odd pleading note in his voice, as if he didn’t understand why I was putting him to all this trouble.
“No,” I said stoutly. “You’re not gonna make me say that word.”
“What word?” Craig asked quickly, hoping to trip me up.
“S-h-i-t,” I replied.
Larry looked back at his buddies, obviously stumped about what he was supposed to do next.
“He says he won’t say it.”
“Make him,” Craig commanded. “Make him say it or else.”
“Or else what?” I inquired.
“Or else … punch him in the fucking mouth!” Bobby said.
With a gasp of alarm, Mark took off running down the sidewalk, his arms flapping wildly around his head as if he were being attacked by a swarm of bees.
“I’m getting Mr. Lorber!” he shouted over his shoulder.
“Who’s Mr. Lorber?” Craig wanted to know.
“The crossing guard,” I explained. “The one who sits on the folding chair.”
“Big Fat Joe?” said Bobby, using the man’s more familiar name. “Is he Sharon Lorber’s father?”
“Grandfather,” I explained.
“Man,” said Craig. “Does she have big tits or what?”
“They are pretty big,” I agreed.
“No kidding,” said Bobby. “I’d like to get my hands on those watermelons.”
“Guys,” Larry reminded them, “he’s gonna tell on us. We gotta get outta here.”
Craig let out an irritated sigh and slapped me lightly on the forehead.
“Just say shit,” he told me. “That’s all we’re asking.”
“Yeah,” said Bobby. “It’s just one stupid word.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “You can knock my teeth out if you want, but you’re not gonna make me say it.”
“Come on,” said Larry. He was staring at me with what looked like panic in his eyes, and I could see what sort of a box I’d put him in. He didn’t want to hit me, but he also didn’t want to back down, not in front of his buddies.
“Say shit!” Craig repeated.
“Or else,” added Bobby.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I refuse.”
Craig threw up his hands in defeat.
“All right,” he said. “Fine. Be that way.”
“Yeah,” said Bobby. “Be a little pussy.”
“I don’t care if anyone else says it,” I explained. “I just don’t want to say it myself.”
Craig knitted his brow, as if he needed to think this over. Then he touched Larry’s arm.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Sock him in the mouth.”
Larry looked upset. “Really? You really want me to hit him?”
Craig squinted uneasily down the block. “Just slug him and let’s get the hell outta here.”
“You sure?” said Larry.
“Whaddaya, chickening out?” asked Craig.
With obvious reluctance, Larry raised his fist, which suddenly seemed very large and grown-up looking, and drew it back behind his ear. I closed my eyes, steeling myself for the blow, which I knew was gonna hurt like anything. Larry’s dad had been a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth, and he’d once given my Webelos troop a demonstration on the proper way of throwing a punch. A couple of seconds went by.
“Go on,” said Bobby. “What are you waiting for?”
I was curious about the delay, so I opened my eyes, just in time to see a shiny maroon-colored Lincoln Continental pull up right in front of us. Larry must have known whose car it was, because he let go of my windbreaker even before Monsignor Mulligan stepped out of the car and spread his arms wide in a plea for peace.
“Boys, boys,” he said with just a hint of a brogue. “What would be the trouble?”
To my amazement, Craig Murtha made the sign of the cross.
“Nothing, Father,” he said. “We’re just fooling around.”
“That’s not how it looks to me,” said the monsignor. He pushed between Bobby and Craig and headed straight for me, shouldering Larry aside as he approached.
“Are you all right, son?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Why are they picking on you, lad?”
Larry and I shared a moment of eye contact before I replied. It lasted just long enough for me to see how relieved he was that he hadn’t had to hit me.
“They wanted me to say a dirty word,” I told the priest. “But I wouldn’t do it.”
Monsignor Mulligan stared at me for a few seconds. He was a short, rotund man with a bald head and shrewd blue eyes. There was a look
on his face that I’ll never forget—not of an adult approving of a child, but of one man respecting another.
“Good for you, son,” he told me, laying a soft hand on my shoulder. “Good for you.”
The priest turned and frowned at my tormentors, all three of whom hung their heads in shame. He had just ordered them to go home and ask God for forgiveness when Mark came trotting up, with the very unhappy-looking crossing guard lumbering and wheezing along behind him, sweating profusely and clutching at his chest like Fred Sanford.
“Everything … okay … here?” he huffed.
“Fine,” said Monsignor Mulligan. “Score one for the good guys.”
Big Fat Joe hitched up his belt and took a moment to catch his breath. He shook his head in disgust as he watched Larry, Bobby, and Craig heading down the street toward McDonald’s, walking so fast they might as well have been running.
“Little bastards,” he said. “Someone should give ’em all a good swift kick in the ass.”
“Amen,” said the monsignor.
You’d think I would’ve been feeling pretty good about myself when I got home that afternoon. I’d stood up to some bullies, stuck to my principles, and been praised for my courage by the priest and the crossing guard. Mark said I reminded him of the Hardy Boys, who never backed down, not even when the bad guys had them tied to their chairs in some abandoned mansion by the river and were rubbing their hands together with sinister glee, gloating about how Fenton Hardy, the boys’ famous detective father, would never be able to find them, at least not until it’s too late, ha ha ha!
Flattered though I was—I’d been a huge Hardy Boys fan a couple of years back and still secretly believed they were pretty cool—I didn’t feel much like a hero. All I could think about was Larry Salvati, and how miserable he seemed the whole time he was gripping my windbreaker, threatening to bust me in the mouth. He kept staring at me with this sick-puppy-dog look on his face, like somehow the whole stupid situation was my fault, like it never would have happened if I hadn’t abandoned him midway through fifth grade and forced him to team up with jerks like Craig and Bobby.
Larry and I had been best friends for almost two years. He had a lot more freedom than me, and a wild streak that I really admired. He was always pushing me to go one step further than I wanted to, like that day we climbed into empty trash barrels and rolled down the sledding hill at Indian Park over and over again, making ourselves so dizzy we could barely stand up, or that day we let ourselves into his nextdoor neighbors’ house with a key they kept under the welcome mat and made ourselves turkey sandwiches.
Larry’s mother had died when he was in second grade, and his father worked a lot of overtime at the sheet-metal factory.
His father also happened to have a pretty large collection of porno magazines—not just Playboy, either, all different kinds, including the really disgusting ones you could only buy in New York—and he didn’t seem to mind if Larry and I looked at them from time to time. At Larry’s insistence, I borrowed a copy of Swank and kept it stashed in my bedroom closet, cleverly buried—or so I thought—in a stack of Richie Rich and Sad Sack comic books. I don’t know how my mother sniffed it out, but one day I came home from school and found the magazine—it had a picture of a blond woman sucking her own enormous breast on the cover—sitting right out on our kitchen table, along with my usual snack of cookies and milk. I lied and said I’d found it in the woods behind the Little League, but my mother didn’t believe me.
“Tell me the truth,” she said. “You got it from Larry, didn’t you?”
“It’s his dad’s,” I said. “Larry let me borrow it.”
My mother shook her head.
“I feel sorry for Mr. Salvati,” she said. “It’s terrible what happened to him. But I never liked him, not even when his wife was alive. That man has such a dirty mouth.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Mr. Salvati was one of those guys who said fuck in normal conversation, as if it were a perfectly ordinary word, and seemed to think shithead was a term of endearment.
“He’s always nice to me,” I told her.
“I’ll tell you what,” my mother said. “I feel sorry for his son. He’s not getting the kind of adult guidance he needs.”
My parents didn’t exactly force me to stop being friends with Larry. But they did bar me from going to his house after school and weren’t as nice as they used to be when he came over to ours. They encouraged me to spend more time with my other friends, nice kids like Mark Hofstetter. Slowly but inevitably, Larry and I drifted apart, a separation that became more and more pronounced as he started running with a pack of tough older kids, troublemakers like Craig and Bobby.
I must’ve been unusually quiet over supper that night, because my mother reached across the table to feel my forehead.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine.”
“You’ve barely touched your food.”
“Something bothering you?” my father wondered.
“Actually,” I said, “I’ve got a little stomachache. Can I be excused?”
I went up to the bathroom, locked the door, and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. My legs felt weak and my heart was beating fast, but I knew what I had to do.
I took a deep breath and clenched my muscles. I strained with all my might, but nothing happened. I scrunched my face and tried again. For a second, the word got trapped in my throat, but I managed to force it out in a harsh, barely audible whisper.
“Shit.”
I laughed at the sound of it, then felt myself relax a little. It was easier than I thought.
“Shit,” I said again, this time a little louder.
I opened the bathroom window and poked my head out. The sky was blue-black, speckled with nameless stars. I must have said my word a dozen times to the crisp October night, and each time I felt a little lighter, a little less burdened by my conscience. I only wished Larry had been standing there with me, so he could hear my apology.
When I was finished, I shut the window, flushed the toilet, and washed my hands. Then I headed back down to the kitchen and rejoined my parents, both of whom were watching me with worried expressions. I smiled and picked up my fork.
“Mission accomplished,” I told them.
author inspiration
I’ve always loved the Tom Petty song “I Won’t Back Down.” It’s an anthem full of exuberance and defiance, which are two of the great rock ‘n’ roll emotions. I also love how vague it is—you have no idea who wants the narrator to back down, or what particular principle might be at stake—as if it were somehow the human condition to be under pressure to compromise yourself and your beliefs. It was certainly easy for me as a teenager to hear the song and believe that it was somehow about the pride and pleasure that are the emotional payoffs of resisting authority—parental, governmental, whatever. A few years ago, though, Johnny Cash did an amazing cover of the song that made me think about it in a whole new way. Cash’s version has none of the brash energy of the original—it’s weary and mournful, as if Cash understands the cost of not backing down, the isolation and weariness that come with a lifetime of trying to be true to yourself. I was hoping to capture both aspects of the song in “Dirty Mouth,” to celebrate a moment of youthful defiance and inner strength, while also acknowledging the mysterious sadness that the narrator feels afterward.
“HALLELUJAH”
tanker dane
Well, I’ve heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the Lord …
“Hallelujah”
Jeff Buckley
(Lyrics by Leonard Cohen)
It is no longer, this instrument they played. Though not in its final resting place, for it will be found again, just not by the well-intentioned or inspired, nor by the suitable, even the capable. But it matters not. Anyone is invited to find it this time, provided they can: corroded and covered in algae, the neck warped, frets rusted and the double truss rod buried in sediment. The ivory
bindings around the soundboard split from the time spent submerged, the acoustic body once hollow, now flooded and the adopted dwelling of a flathead catfish.
A guitar having wept, bled, screamed, and soared lies on its side. All at once splashed down, adrift, sunken, and silent since the incident. Infamous and extraordinary, never anything less than sublime. To be strummed once more near impossible due to its wretched condition, yet this guitar, having been responsible for one musical miracle after another, just may and must be the subject of its own divine rescue. The age unknown. Its intial purpose unclear, but assuredly simple as compared to its eventual calling and final catastrophe.
This unassuming lute first handed down, then inherited, bartered, bought and sold, gifted, won and lost, then finally found. The most innocent way its most glorious. Nicked and scratched, smashed and cracked, the instrument wrecked and repaired as often as it changed hands. And changed shape. The lute was the shape of a pear, then a circle, then a square, before it got in the hands of the man who split it in half and played it in two. Went unrecognized for an extended time as a table, then a toy. Picked out of the trash and given away by a man to a boy, who gave it a name. Then stolen twice: first by a thief, then by the boy who stole it back from the thief, who renamed it the same.
The name never stuck, as no name would after several hundred years. A gitarer, a quintern, a guitarra … with each owner it became anew, in name, in shape, in sound, in song, but never in string.
The strings never changed, never snapped nor allowed the instrument out of tune. The string gut wrapped tight on the original lute remained, even now, underwater. Each string shimmering in the stabs of sunlight cutting through the kelp layered above, tempting and taunting the schools of sunnies and the stubborn rainbow trout who pass every half moon. The strings are neither prey, nor predictably attached to a rod and reel, but bare prints. Fingerprints. Multiple fingerprints, tens of thousands on each of the five strings, perhaps more. The G almost double the D, the E less than a quarter more than the A, all of them unable to compete with the the C. Whether solo or strummed in a chord, all of them intact, unable to be wiped or swept away with the changing times or tides. Equally apparent, but hardly in importance. In fact, only a minute fraction stand above the rest. The most recent fingerprints, played just minutes before the instrument was befallen, would remain the most recent. Played by the hand stripped of flesh and flopped on its side in bone beside the instrument. The hand, along with the other in bone behind the instrument, responsible for the fingerprints. Once bound in flesh making the most important fingerprints. Prints producing the finest notes. The most natural notes, notable notes, notorious notes. The notes responsible for the refrain.
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