The Hearts of Men

by Nickolas Butler

  “Take the money!” Tim says, stuffing it into Nelson’s front pockets. “Say, you want to take a seat? Get comfortable? I can find you a cigarette if you’d like to try one. Whad’ya say there, Nelson, old pal?”

  “No,” Nelson says. “No, it’s okay, Tim, really.” It occurs to him suddenly that he has not noticed Jonathan anywhere in the mix. The thought leaves him at least a little relieved.

  Tim looks concerned. “All right, all right. Hey, you okay? I mean, you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. Just, you can’t tell anyone, understand? But you can go. Is that what you want to do?”

  Nelson can’t take his eyes off the screen, wants desperately to avert his gaze, but can’t. It’s all too much. The woman on-screen is still on her knees, her back so flat that a cup of coffee would be safe from spilling, were it not for the man pounding at her from behind.

  “Scouts!” thunders a righteously indignant voice all of a sudden. “Stop this stag smut right now!”

  It is Wilbur, standing on the edge of the forest, knuckles pressed into his waist, elbows at perfectly congruous angles, kneecaps bulging over high socks, mustache waxed into two tiny horns. His eyes ablaze.

  The projectionist fumbles, the film either tearing or simply falling away from its spool, and now the white screen glows in the night as the rows of moviegoers fiddle and readjust, their faces telegraphing shame and dread. Some of the partygoers have already slinked off into the woods to the sound of branches breaking and boughs snapping, their hasty retreat resounding through the forest. Many of the counselors in attendance simply hang their heads, spilling drinks onto the ground. A few younger boys seem close to tears.

  “A stag movie,” Wilbur says indignantly. “Tobacco, alcohol, pornography . . .” He is positively fuming. “Not a one of you is a true Scout, do you hear? Not a one of you, a true man.” He looks down upon the Scouts who have not yet absconded, looks down upon them with such fury, such indignation, and, what is worse, with such disappointment, that Nelson knows all their faces are pointed, as his is, down at their boots.

  “You will all be sent home tomorrow. All of you. You boys, your Scoutmasters will be notified. I will try to determine if your parents should be informed likewise. As for the counselors among you here, begin packing your effects tonight. At three P.M. tomorrow afternoon, I will inspect your cabins, and any possessions left on camp premises shall be burned. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Role models? Leaders? Citizens?” He spits at the movie projector some ten feet away. “Perverts, is what you are. Unfit. Indecent. I have half a mind to call the police, do you hear me? I am just . . . disgusted.”

  “Now wait just a second,” one older boy says, emerging from the shadows. He is very tall, already regal-looking even, broad across the shoulders and slim at the waist. This, Nelson knows at once, is Rand Cook, a boy known across the state as the son of a paper company magnate who once ran for governor. A state track star, Rand lives with his family on the eastern side of Wisconsin along the banks of the rivers where once French trappers and Jesuit priests had come exploring America, and where now great factories burp out noxious steam and piss into those same swift-running waters. It is not uncommon to see Rand Cook standing in a back corner of the mess hall while others eat, him surrounded by a U of younger boys, holding court, gesticulating with long fingers, wide palms, and the loud, forceful delivery of a boy supremely confident and rarely interrupted or second-guessed. “I mean, listen,” he says with a soft, courtly laugh, moving smoothly toward Wilbur, “there’s no need to go off half-cocked here, Scoutmaster. Boys will be boys, right? And this is just—”

  “I am trying to make men of you all!” Wilbur roars, turning to intercept Cook, spittle flying from his lips, past that magnificent anachronism of a mustache, his thin, veiny arms atremble. “Honorable men! Men that won’t divorce their wives. That won’t leave their friends on the battlefield. That will pay their taxes and vote and work hard. Do you understand me? This is an insult not just to me, but to yourselves. It is lewd and pernicious and you, you little twerp, should be ashamed! Truly. Shame on you!”

  “Now, Mr. Whiteside, come on. Let’s get a hold of ourselves, all right? I mean, you seem a bit distraught.” Cook lays a condescending hand on Wilbur’s quivering shoulder.

  In a single movement, Wilbur swipes the youth’s hand off his person, moves directly into Cook, grabbing the boy by his windpipe, pushing him against the trunk of a tree, holding him there long enough for everyone left around the amphitheater to gasp, take a step toward them, and then think better of it.

  “Leave my camp,” Wilbur says. “Don’t come back. You hear? Call your daddy, why don’t you, and tell him why I’ve given you the boot.” He releases his hold. “Everyone, get back to your campsites. Pack up, now. I want you gone by lunch.” He kicks at the dust. “Now!” he snaps.

  NELSON HIDES IN THE UNDERBRUSH, waits for the amphitheater to empty. He watches Wilbur hang his head, kick at bottles of rum, whiskey, brandy. Watches him stoop to collect cigarette butts, stuffing them into his pockets. Wilbur struggles to pull the screen down from its mooring above the stage, and Nelson emerges from the shadows to help him, climbing up onto the stage, where he begins ripping and wrenching at the fabric.

  “Thank you, son,” says the old man. “I’m so tired this evening, I must say.”

  “Shall I walk with you,” Nelson says, “back to your cabin?”

  “I want you to know, Nelson, that film. You have to forget that. See, that isn’t how . . . Your wife, she may not look like that. You can’t expect every woman, any woman to . . . Those films warp a man’s mind.” Wilbur gives a strong tug on the sheet’s last remaining stay, but it doesn’t want to give. “It becomes like any other vice. I’m at a loss for words, son. Boys come to camp for . . . Not to see, not to be shown . . .”

  And now the fabric breaks loose and flutters down, like a banner of defeat that settles all over Wilbur, over his head and shoulders, all the way down to his polished boots. The old man does not even struggle out from beneath it, just stands, and waits until Nelson pulls it off him, as if unveiling a statue from another time, his mustache now slightly askew, and drooping.

  THE CAMPSITE IS ABUZZ when Nelson returns: father-son shouting matches, tents collapsing in hurried heaps, clothes rushed into bags. He watches one father spank his teenage son, a boy who might be larger than his own dad, and yet . . . General confusion has descended over the camp and already some boys are marching down the path back to the parking lot, their fathers behind them, cursing, saying, “I just can’t believe . . .” or “Wait until your mother hears about . . .”

  Nelson finds his father sitting beside the campfire.

  “You weren’t mixed up in this whole fiasco, I trust?” Clete asks, shaking his head. “I don’t know what happened, but holy shit. Whiteside’s gone crazy.”

  “No, Dad,” he says, settling down beside him on a wooden bench. He sits close enough to his father that their arms touch, their knees, this minuscule contact so reassuring somehow, so grounding. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Can’t figure it out. Reminds me of the army, though. Like a bunch of kids went AWOL or something. Hard to tell.”

  “Huh.”

  They stare at the fire for some time.

  “You’re a good boy, though,” Clete says. “I know I’ve been hard on you at times, but you’re a good boy.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Clete yawns. “Let’s talk tomorrow, all right, son? I think I’m going to turn in.”

  “Me, too,” the boy says.

  His eyelids feel so heavy. He rests his head on his father’s shoulder, wishes he were small enough to be carried back to his tent and tucked into his sleeping bag.

  17

  NINETY MILES FROM THE ENTRANCE OF CAMP CHIPPEWA to Nelson’s driveway back in Eau Claire and the car ride is epically silent. His father rolls down his window, hangs an elbow out into the sun, occasionally glancing at the boy in the rearview, a
nd smokes a rare chain of cigarettes; he keeps a secret pack in the glove compartment for those sporadic instances of flat tires, speeding tickets, or near-death collisions. The smoke rolls back to Nelson, making him green.

  He played reveille this morning before a group of campers shrunk by fully a quarter, with very few counselors standing alongside Wilbur. Even a few of the cooks were missing, and breakfast came slowly, the bacon badly undercooked, the scrambled eggs runny, burning toast filling the mess hall with smoke.

  Cars loaded with scared-looking kids and sullen, angry fathers left the camp in an all-too-speedy parade of exhaust and flicked cigarette butts. Wilbur stood motionless at the entrance of the camp. Nelson had waved at him, but the old man just nodded—that was all.

  “I can’t even believe what I had to hear at breakfast,” his father says finally, the first words between them in more than an hour. “That a bunch of Scouts jerry-rigged some kind of stag theater? Out in the woods? And you sniffed them out? You were the snitch?” He eyeballs Nelson in the rearview mirror. “Do I have that correct?”

  Nelson lowers his head. “Yes, sir.”

  “And you even indicted some of the boys from your own goddamn troop?”

  The boy nods.

  “Well, great goddamn,” Clete says under his breath, “I might be getting out of business at the right time after all . . .”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Nelson.” He stares at the boy in the rearview. “All right, well, you got something in return, I hope?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Quid pro quo and all that,” Clete says. “Wilbur scratching your back, too?”

  Nelson squirms in his seat slightly. “It was just the right thing to do, Dad. I didn’t . . . I mean, I didn’t need a reward, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  Clete shrugs. “Well, Nelson, see, most people would. Because, the thing of it is, people don’t like snitches, and afterward, sometimes the snitch isn’t exactly treated like a real war hero, you catch my drift?”

  “I’m not a snitch,” the boy insists.

  The car returns to silence and Nelson cups his chin in his hands and leans against the window, scanning out over the passing fields as they fly by.

  “Where’d they get the films anyway?”

  Nelson shrugs. “Someone’s uncle passed away, I guess? I don’t know. They didn’t tell me much. They were in his basement or something.”

  At this, Clete Doughty begins laughing. Laughing and laughing and coughing smoke and pounding his hand against the steering wheel.

  Nelson is startled, confused. “I don’t understand, Dad. What’s so funny?”

  “It’s nothing,” his father says. “Just that . . . all this fuss, and they were probably just watching someone’s aunt maybe. Someone’s mom.”

  Nelson can’t help feeling very sad.

  DAYS LATER, Nelson, his mother, and his father sit around the kitchen table, a large casserole dish between them, along with a bowl of salad, a loaf of bread, and some butter. The days are growing infinitesimally shorter, but still there is the sound of children at play on the street before their mothers issue a stern last call from the front steps. The silence around the table ever since they returned home from camp has grown more stifling, crushing even. The loud secret inside the house is that Clete’s bosses at work seem on the brink of firing him. This Nelson has gleaned from a late-night conversation between his parents; having snuck out of his bed to press an ear against the bedroom door—and eavesdrop on what was being said in the kitchen down the hall. Now he is afraid to look his father in his eyes, afraid to turn his back to him; worries that his snitching in camp may have lost his dad some clients. Certainly, it is hard to imagine his snitching having benefited his father.

  “You’re a good woman, Dorothy,” his father mumbles uncharacteristically, scratching with a fork at a few cold peas left on his plate. “Always been a good wife to me.”

  “What did you say, dear?” Nelson’s mother asks, quite surprised.

  Now Clete swallows, wipes at his stubbled face with a red and white gingham napkin, and looks at Nelson. “I’m proud of you, too, son. You are your own person, always have been. The truth is, I haven’t always understood who that is, but . . .”

  “Clete,” Dorothy says. “Clete, now what in blazes are you talking about? You’re not making a lick of sense.”

  He rises from the table somewhat unsteadily. “I think I might just rest for a moment,” he says softly.

  “Sure, sure thing,” says Dorothy. “Let me fix you a Manhattan, dear. You go put up your feet, go rest.”

  Nelson finishes his dinner, wanders into the living room, where his father is reclined in his chair, staring at the blank screen of the television. The cocktail in his hand seems precariously close to slipping right through his fingers to the carpeting. Nelson takes the glass from his father’s hand, sets it on the coffee table.

  “Dad, are you okay?” Nelson asks.

  Clete blinks slowly, looks at his son. “Come here,” he says.

  The boy moves cautiously toward his father, half-afraid of being slapped.

  But Clete pulls him in close, sits up in his chair, and hugs the boy, fiercely, then kisses him on the top of his head. A kiss.

  “I’m going to bed now,” Clete says. “I’m tired. Have a good day at school tomorrow, okay?”

  18

  THE NEXT NIGHT DOROTHY AND NELSON SIT AT THE kitchen table for almost an hour before Clete shows up. He is drunk, smells of alcohol and of cigarettes. His eyelids droop over angry-looking red eyes. He rips into the roast chicken on the table in a way that makes Dorothy gasp, as if he’s a wild animal. He doesn’t say a word to them.

  Dorothy asks, “How was work today, dear?”

  He begins laughing.

  What happens next does not elapse in a single movement, the way James Cagney did it in movies, no. Clete’s legs graze the table as he rises, the chair tips over slowly, then skids against the wall, leaving a rip in the wallpaper. And when he tries to flip the table over, his hand slips, and he almost falls to the floor, before finding better purchase, and then lifting just that side of the table, causing all the food, all the china, all the silverware to go sliding off in a single wave, right past his wife and son. Now, the table lighter, he manages to throw it against the kitchen counter. His glasses are crazily crooked, his forehead is so very red, and his lower jaw protrudes, the teeth visible and spittle connecting them.

  “My son the snitch,” Clete says. “What? The old man offered you some chocolate? Some fucking baseball cards?”

  “Clete!” his mother shrieks. “Leave him alone!” She places her own body between Nelson and his father. She is trembling and when her hands touch her son, he feels the strength and fear in her fingers and forearms.

  “I was fired!” Clete roars. “And guess what the boss mentions, after he gives me the news. He asks me about my son, the snitch. Turns out his nephew was one of the boys Nelson ratted out. So thanks, you little shit.” He is upon them now, about to make his rage felt as surely as he’s ever done, one broad hand raised up high, the other one pushing this woman of his aside like the nuisance she is.

  “Stop it!” she screams.

  “Go on, protect him! That’ll make him a man! Can’t go through life with a mother holding his hand. Defending him everywhere he goes.” He pushes her hard enough now that she falls to the floor. Nelson’s eyes widen as he registers what is about to happen.

  Only Dorothy is done with this. She picks up a fork that has fallen to the floor and for a moment, seems almost to fumble it, unable to commit to a grip. Then she raises it, and screaming, rushes Clete, begins to stab him in the arm, and then she is pushing him out of the kitchen, knocking him to the floor of the living room, falling down upon him, plunging the tines of the fork right down into his face, raking his forehead and cheeks, at one point catching the fork on the helix of Clete’s ear, into that delicately curved translucent flesh. His ear tears open an
d for a moment appears in danger of ripping off. Blood everywhere. He is screaming, too, now, as he crawls toward the front door, and with Dorothy following him every step of the way, stabbing at his back and awkwardly kicking at his butt, shouting at him to leave, never come back, good riddance.

  Finally he is out the door and running toward the Chevrolet.

  “Get him his keys,” his mother orders her son in a strangely commanding lower register of her voice. He rushes to the coat tree, rifles through his father’s pockets, finds the keys, brings them to her.

  She steps out the front door now and throws the keys at the car. “Get out of here, you ugly, stupid man. Go!”

  Up and down the street porch lights are blinking on, dogs barking, windows cracking, doors opening discreetly, faces peering out, and no one says a word—the jubilant cries of summertime children have been hushed, AM radios turned way way down, and dessert and coffee conversation shrunk to wrinkled forehead whispers, What on earth is going on over at the Doughty house? Meanwhile, Dorothy is shuddering violently with adrenaline, holding her own shoulders, and leaning against the door, blood on her hands.

  Clete collects the keys off the ground. “I haven’t been in love with you for years,” he says pointing at Dorothy. “So long, you old cow.”

  Then he is in the car, slamming it into reverse, out onto the street, and in a scream of Firestones he is gone, just two angry red taillights receding down the block. Oh, the street is so quiet now. You can hear the streetlights flickering on, humming their nocturnal return to steady service. And how the house at 1325 Fairway Street is suddenly so much bigger for his absence, so much quieter. The screen door closes and mother and son sit silently in the living room, she sprawled across the couch, and Nelson, in shock, sliding to the carpeting beside her.