by Chris Lynch
The howling, cheering, and foot stomping was so loud I could feel it through the ground under me. Honey had run crying out of the yard, but nobody else even seemed to notice.
“And now, it’s Miller time,” Augie yelled, and kissed his dog’s bloody, frothy mouth.
What remained of the goat lay in a heap in front of me, three feet from my face. As I stared at it my eyes felt huge in my head, the weight on my back felt like nothing. Bunky came sniffing over and took a quick little lick of the goat. Abruptly, Cormac flipped me over on my back and sat back down on me, pinning my arms to my sides. Terry towered over me, his boys flanking him left and right. He drank down a whole beer in one gulp for my entertainment.
“Now ain’t ya glad ya came back, Mick?”
I didn’t answer.
“Ya gonna stay now? Party wid us like old times, before ya f’got who ya was?”
“Eat me.”
All the boys started oooohh-ooohhing, egging Terry on to respond.
“Spit on the little fucker,” somebody yelled.
“Piss on him, Terry man.”
Terry smiled at that. But he did worse than that. He breathed on me. He dropped to his knees and got right in my face breathing hard. “Ya just f’get all the time lately, Mick. Ya f’get, ya can’t change who ya are. You’re one a us.” Suddenly, like he’d been slapped, his expression changed. He didn’t look like a real killer now, like he hated me. He looked weak and mushy. “You’re one a me, remember? And ya gotta stay that way. Ya can’t, like, leave. It don’t work that way. We, us like, gotta stick together. Forever. I love ya, Mick, man. I love ya, I really do.” There were a whole lot of yays and yas behind him. He snatched the vodka bottle out of Danny’s hand. “Have a drink wit me now, brother, and we can letcha up. Then we can fix everything.” He took a big, impossibly long, inhuman pull on the vodka bottle, lowered it, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, then tipped the bottle mouth down to my lips.
I kept my mouth clamped as tight as I could. I inhaled deeply and smelled the meat burned to coal on the untended grill.
“Open up,” he said. He pleaded. “It’s good, it’s really good stuff. Stoli.”
I didn’t.
The killer’s face returned. “Christ, open his hole,” Terry snarled, and three sets of big hands eagerly attached to my face and pried open my jaws. I bit a finger, got a wicked slap for it. I bit again, and took knuckles across the brow. I twisted and writhed enough to almost get out from under Cormac, but then one took my hair, two more pulled my feet wide, wide apart, and my brother stuck two kerosene-drenched fingers deep into my nostrils and pulled hard upward. He stuck the bottle in my mouth and poured. I gagged, tried to spit. He covered my mouth with his hand and I swallowed. He jammed the bottle in again, way in, and while I choked, the vodka got in, and down. “I love ya, man,” Terry said again and again, with that weird sad expression. I lost all fight, the bottle was in my mouth again, and vodka ran back up into my nose, out of the corners of my mouth. I coughed, I swallowed.
“I love ya, man, Mick. You’re my brother. I goddamn love ya, goddammit I do. You’ll see,” he said. He pulled the bottle out of my mouth, took a swig, stuck the bottle back in my mouth. I thought I saw him crying before I blacked out.
I heard the rapping at my bedroom window for a while before I moved. Sounded at first like a hard wind rattling the old sash, rat-a-tat-tatting steadily for five minutes or maybe ten or thirty. Gradually, I opened one eye and made out a shadow outside the window. I opened the other and blinked, blinked fifty times trying to clear it up, but it wasn’t coming. I lifted my head, but it fell back to the pillow like a million-pound melon. I started going back to sleep, and the knocking got louder and I looked up again. The gray-brown suppertime light spilled in the window from over the shadow and hurt my eyes.
I got myself off the bed, took three steps toward the window, and fell crashing to the floor. I wanted to stay down, like a fighter who wants to call it a night, but the knocking started again to urge me on. As I pushed myself up I saw that I was naked.
I made it to the window, pressed my face to the glass, and made out Toy’s straw hat on the other side.
“You all right?” he asked.
I licked my cracked dry lips. They felt big and coarse to my tongue. “I don’t think so.”
“Go let me in,” Toy said. “Open the front door.”
I shook my head. “Don’t think,” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t think. That I can make it.”
“Well, you have to make it. The front door’s locked and there’s a big monster dog sleeping on top of a carcass at the back door.”
“Move the dog.”
“Move the dog?”
“Ya, he’s wasted I think, ’cause he does that at parties. Test his water bowl. If it tastes like vodka, just drag his ass away from the door and he won’t even open his eyes.”
“I think not,” Toy said. “Go open the damn door.”
“Here, I’ll open the window and you can climb in.” Toy just stood and watched as I feebly tried to push up the old balky window. I could barely raise my hands above my head, and the window was going nowhere.
“Open the damn door, Mick.”
I nodded. “I’ll try.” Slowly, like a frail old man, I turned and stepped toward the door. I watched my feet shuffle over the rug, never quite lifting off the floor. I lurched forward as dizziness overcame me, but managed to put a hand out in front of me to keep from smacking into my bedroom door.
When I threw the bedroom door open, I stood there looking for something, I don’t know what. There appeared to be nothing out there, but then I caught the color out of the corner of my eye. All red, dripping down the outside of my door. Written with a finger, in goat’s blood maybe, MICK’S SPIC CHIC SUCKS BIG DICK.
I stared at it. I couldn’t think anything about it. It could have been written in Korean; there was nothing coming to me. I walked on past it, down the hall, past Terry’s closed door, through the living room and the stink of Terry’s unconscious friends. None moved, or even seemed to breathe, as I walked through them.
I leaned my temple against the doorway as I struggled to turn the dead bolt. The door popped open and Toy pushed through.
I stood there, naked, as he sized me up. He looked around the room, took a sniff, looked back at me. “Pretty rough haircut,” he said.
Toy helped me back to my room. “This is unbelievably disgusting,” he said. “It’s only six thirty and they’re all unconscious.”
“They’re gonna be up again soon. That’s the way it works. And it gets even worse—a lot worse—after that.”
Toy gave me an exaggerated nod. “We have to get you out of here.”
I pointed to the sign on the door as we walked into my room. He stared at it for a long time without speaking. He finally said something when he noticed me standing stupid, motionless in the middle of the room. “What’s the problem?”
“Where are my clothes?” I asked, searching the floor all around me.
“I saw them in the backyard. Forget about them. You don’t want ’em.”
“They stripped me down outside?” I asked nobody.
When I still didn’t move, Toy took over. “Sit down,” he said and pushed me back onto the bed. As he rummaged through my bureau for clothes for me, I let myself fall back on the pillow. Feeling something long and hairy there, I jumped.
I turned back to look and saw it, my new braid, hacked off and left lying beside me while I was sleeping.
He had said it before, Terry. He had me, and could have me again whenever he wanted. He couldn’t walk down the hall without crashing loudly into both walls, but he could come in here in my sleep and operate without my knowing. I got a shiver as I felt at the ragged bald spot on the back of my head.
“Here.” Toy threw some clothes at me. “You got a bag?”
I pointed to my closet as I wrestled myself into the pants with mighty effort. Toy pulled my gym bag off
the closet floor and stuffed it with clothes.
“Where are we going?” I asked, stepping gingerly into the curled-up old running shoes he threw down at my feet.
“You need a road trip,” he said. “Got any money?”
I thought about it. Was there money in my pockets out in the yard? No.
“Come on, Mick. I think I heard somebody moving out there. You got any money?”
I thought again, and a smile came to me. “Yes.”
I led him to Terry’s room, quietly twisted the knob, and we went inside. Terry was there, in bed with his clothes on, the blankets pulled up so hard to his chin that his legs were uncovered, showing his work boots still on. The room reeked like shit, the two night tables were covered in bottles, and Terry was snoring in bursts, like a hog. Toy stood in the doorway while I went to the closet and pulled out the duffel bag crammed tight with one-dollar bills. As I eased my way past the bed again on the way out, Terry’s body jerked stiff, like rigor mortis, and the snoring cut off. I froze as Terry lifted his head.
Comprehension came to him slowly, as it always did. Then he snarled at me toothy like a dog.
“I’ll waste you,” he said.
Just his voice shot me through with adrenaline, and I was wide awake, if a little more nauseous too. Toy took a couple of strides toward Terry, but I put out my hand to stop him.
“Come on,” I said, waving Terry my way. I dropped the bag at my feet.
He smiled at me, and ponderously raised himself up on his elbows. He sat, then rolled off the side of the bed and onto his feet. He stood there for a second, still smiling his cock-ass smile at me, then suddenly looked down. He reached his hand up to the side of his head, rubbed several times, then collapsed to the floor. There he rested on the side of his head, his arms flat under him, his ass in the air.
I walked over to him. “I love ya, man,” I said, and kicked him in the ribs, hard. When he rolled over, still unconscious, I kicked him again, in the stomach. He made barely a sound other than the wind shooting out his mouth. I raised my foot once more, six inches above his face, when Toy put his big hand on my shoulder and tore me away.
“I love ya, bruthaaah!” I yelled back as Toy hustled me out of the house.
When we got outside, the big Harley with the double sidecar was sitting there gleaming. “Holy smokes,” I said. “This is hot shit. Hope it’s fast, man, because I think we’re gonna be tops on the hit parade when that party wakes back up.”
“We’re not going to be around,” Toy said, popping a helmet on my head before thundering up the bike. It was so loud Toy couldn’t hear me screaming in his ear about where we were going to go. But nobody in the house seemed to notice.
Once we were off the block, I yanked on Toy’s sleeve to stop so I could puke. He pulled to the curb and cut the engine. When I finished, roaring louder than the bike, I asked where we were going.
“Going to the beach” was all he said before starting up again. I didn’t even recognize it when he turned down Evelyn’s street.
“What are you doin’?” I asked as he pulled up in front of the house. I was excited, but still nervous and sick.
“Picking up a rider,” he said. She was already coming down the stairs.
“Hey that’s right. Toy, she called me last night. I just remembered.”
“It was this morning. And ya, I already know.”
“You called me back,” she said as she walked up to me in the sidecar. She looked worried as she peered down into me. “But you don’t remember, do you.”
“Ah... maybe. What did I say?”
“Nothing. A lot of gurgles and chokes. Mostly you were just crying. And there were a lot of people laughing real loud behind you.”
I slinked down as low as I could into the sidecar. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Evelyn... I’m sorry.”
“Stop it, it wasn’t your fault. That was when I called Toy.”
Toy laughed, finally. “Ya, my old lady was already telling me about how you looked to be cruising for trouble when you left her.”
I managed to somehow slink a little bit lower into the sidecar, to where I was basically lying on the floor.
“And we’ll talk about that situation later,” Toy added. “Right now, miss, if you’ll kindly hop in...” Evelyn pulled a helmet off the floor of the front section of the sidecar. She threw her bag in.
I was sitting, stunned, right behind her. “You’re coming? On the road trip?”
“You’re a needy boy, Mick,” Toy cut in. “And a damn lucky one, I might add. I may be a chauffeur, but I’m no nurse. Evelita’s a good soul.”
“Shut up and drive,” Evelyn said.
I felt so good for that one moment, as the Harley engine caught and rattled my fillings, that I couldn’t form words. My head lolled back and I looked straight up at the sunset sky as we peeled away under it.
Part Two
Refugee
LIKE TOY SAID, THEY took me to the beach. But not just any beach. We rode about an hour and a quarter up I-95 to the short strip where New Hampshire’s toe touches the Atlantic. I had been there before, but like most people I had been there in the summer. In the off-season it was a different place, a place where lowlifes and weirdos, drifters and criminals came to relax and be invisible. My father once told me that Charles Manson and Carlos the Jackal spent winters in Hampton Beach. And now me. Perfect. But it wouldn’t have mattered to me where it was. I slept the whole ride up, revived briefly to be led up the motel steps, then crashed face-down on the bed as soon as I reached the room. When I finally woke the next morning, it took me half an hour to piece it all back together and remember where on the map I’d landed. To tell the truth, it took me that long to even care where I was. Because I was there with Evelyn.
I lay in the bed, scootched up behind her. Not touching her anywhere, but close enough so I could feel the heat of her all along our lengths. I arranged myself to be bent just like she was, lying sideways in kind of an S-curl tuck, shadowing, not touching her. The front of my knees an inch away from the back of her knees. My stomach an inch from the small of her back. My nose just touching her hair.
Then she quietly slipped out of bed, barely rustling the covers. She stood up—wearing her sweatshirt, jeans, and socks—and turned back toward me.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re awake. Feeling all right?”
I nodded, and a smile broke out. “I feel pretty great.”
“Amazing.”
“I have to ask, Evelyn. Did we... you know, did we do stuff?”
She stared at the ceiling and rubbed her forehead, as if she had my hangover.
“Well, I didn’t, but you, you did lots of stuff. You drooled. You snored. And one time you fell out of the bed.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed.
Evelyn sat down on the one chair under the one window in the tiny room. There was just enough space for it and the bed, with the bamboo pattern wallpaper making the walls seem even closer. She began putting on her sneakers.
“Look, Mick, I wanted to help you out here; don’t let your imagination run wild.”
Her big eyes were softer now, the puffiness of sleep still there. My insides were getting all confused, with all that had happened, and I knew I was attaching too much to Evelyn. I was stung with the sudden sinking feeling, of how temporary this all was. The feeling sped up, and pulled me along. Was it a joke? Was she just going to dump me here and vanish? I would, if I were her. What was I going to be left with after this?
Now I didn’t trust Evelyn.
“What’s the deal?” I asked. “Why are you doing this?”
“Toy asked me to,” she said evenly. “I respect Toy.”
“That’s not enough.”
“You remind me of my dad.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said.
“He was a loser too. He’s dead now, though.”
I quit there. I wasn’t up to hearing any more of that, so I didn’t ask for any more.
; After she’d finished tying her laces, Evelyn came over and sat on the bed.
“It seemed to me you could use a friend. Toy had to bring the bike back, he didn’t really want to leave you here alone. And I figured after that horrible phone call that maybe you’re not so much a loser as you are unlucky.”
I looked at her silently. She shrugged, and smiled.
“Okay?” she offered.
“Okay,” I accepted.
We spent the day killing time until Toy came back to get us. We ate breakfast in the bar on the first floor of the motel, then went for a long walk on the deserted beach. We carried our shoes and walked the water’s edge where the waves came flattening out around our feet and the sand was cold and hard and pounded smooth as a tabletop. We spun and walked backward for a long ways, just to do it, because we could. Walked for ten minutes without bumping into anyone. I stared down the beach northways and couldn’t see anything. I flipped back around and the whole south was ours alone too. Out to the east, over the water, there was one lone bump of a lobster boat on the horizon but otherwise, there seemed to be nothing between us and England. It occurred to me that this may have been the first thing that Evelyn and I both appreciated, this solitude. We walked in silence for a mile in each direction.
We finally left the beach for the boulevard in the afternoon when we started getting hungry. We ate pizza, drank Cokes, slipped into the arcade to play a few games. We acted like kids, and pretended for as long as we could that all the other stuff wasn’t out there.
“You thinking about where you’re going to go?” Evelyn finally asked as the afternoon wound down.
I waved her on out of the arcade so we could start back down the boulevard to the motel. “No,” I said. “I mean, no, I don’t think I’m thinking about it, like, I don’t hear words in my head the way I usually do when I’m thinking about something.”
“No, I didn’t see your lips moving either.”
I didn’t mind anymore that she was making fun of me. But I didn’t laugh.
“Well, I don’t hear the words, haven’t heard any actually since we got here. But I’m feeling stuff, you know? And so, ya, I think somewhere in there I’m thinking about where I’m going but I’m not telling myself.” I waited a few seconds, slowed my walk to almost nothing, then said, “Y’know?” the way you say it when you’re sure nobody knows.