American Youth

by Phil LaMarche

  The three ate a quiet breakfast together the following morning. The mother, still in her robe, cleared the kitchen table after the meal and left the room at the father’s request. The boy and father sat kitty-corner to each other, the boy hunched, his head hanging. The father was barrel-chested and gray-haired. His elbows dug into the table, his eyes scrambled behind thick bifocals. As a child, the father had had a cyst removed from his left eyelid and now it sagged slightly. It gave him an inquisitive, untrusting look.

  The father looked out from behind his brass-rimmed glasses and rubbed his graying stubble. A stiff, coarse sound came from between his hand and face. On weekends he sometimes waited until noon before making his pilgrimage to the bathroom where he showered and scraped the stubble from his heavy cheeks. He had trouble with the neck. The boy knew this from childhood, when he stood on the toilet seat and watched his father work the razor delicately around the peach pit of his Adam’s apple.

  Now the father sat at the head of the table, quiet, patient. This was the father’s method: silence, silence for some time, and then a question, a question generally rhetorical in nature. It set the boy to floundering every time.

  “So what are we going to do now?” the father said.

  The boy shrugged.

  “I know what you been through. With the law fixing to come down on you, I can’t see throwing another log on the pyre.”

  The boy squirmed in his chair as a knot formed in his throat. This was another of the father’s tactics: unexpected kindness. It worked to choke him up and send him reeling further.

  The father shook his head and paused, perhaps to regain his composure. “I’ve heard what the police and your mother had to say. But I still can’t figure how two kids got their hands on a gun in my house.”

  The boy looked down at the table.

  “Well?” the father said.

  “I showed them.”

  “Yeah?”

  The boy shrugged. “They wanted to see it.”

  “So you do whatever any fool wants you to? You know what that makes you?”

  The boy had trouble breathing. His throat started to close and his face grew tight.

  “Who loaded that gun?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Don’t give me that.”

  “I don’t know.” The boy coughed it out.

  “You realize that what you’re saying makes no sense at all?”

  “It must’ve been one of them,” the boy said. “I didn’t do it.” He couldn’t hold it back any longer and he went full-blown. His sniffling and gurgling were the only sounds in the room for some time. He used his shirt to wipe the tears and snot from his face.

  “Quit the crybaby act,” the father said. “It ain’t going to work on me.”

  The boy didn’t say anything.

  “I hope you’re not crying for yourself.”

  The boy shook his head.

  “You best not be,” the father said. “There’s a dead kid out of this mess and a family who’s got to live with that. Your mother’s got to go teach in a school next week where every Tom, Dick, and Harry knows some kid just got himself killed in her dining room. And me, Ted, I’m a salesman. All I got is a reputation.”

  “I know,” the boy nearly shouted. “Jesus, you think I ain’t thought of all that?”

  The father flinched. “Good,” he said. “So this is what we’re going to do. We’re not going to say a word about it. Someone asks, you just shrug it off. Pretend like you don’t know what they’re talking about, like nothing ever happened. This rumor mill of a town doesn’t need its fire stoked any more than it is. You get me?”

  “Yes,” the boy said.

  “Good,” said the father. “We’re lucky we can leave. I don’t know how we could stay here after something like this.” He slid his chair back with a grunt. He stood and pushed the chair back under the table before he left the kitchen. Shortly after his departure, the mother returned from her seclusion in the living room. She rubbed the boy’s back.

  “You did good,” she whispered.

  “Ma. We can’t do this.”

  “Yes we can.”

  “They’re going to find out.”

  “It’s your word against Kevin’s,” she said. “They can’t prove anything.”

  He shook his head.

  “If you don’t play your cards right, they’re going to take you away from me,” she said. “And if that isn’t enough, they’ve got something called a civil suit. They find us guilty of negligence or recklessness or God knows what else, those Dennisons will sue us and they’ll win. You want to lose the house?” she asked him. “The cars? Everything?”

  “No,” he said and shook his head.

  “Then you keep saying what you’re saying. Understand?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Theodore,” she said. “We can’t take the gun out of Kevin’s hands and we can’t give that boy back to his poor mother. It’s not going to happen. All we’re doing is keeping you out of trouble. You get it?”

  He nodded. His arms were folded on the table before him and he put his forehead in the crook of an elbow, hiding his face in the darkness his body created.

  The father, son, and mother did what they could to duck one another’s company for the next five days. They stuck to the father’s policy—they didn’t speak of the shooting, or Bobby’s death, or what was to come. They came to the table for meals and they stared wide-eyed at the television in the evenings, but little was said among the three. The father busied himself with paperwork at a desk in the basement. The mother had two weeks’ worth of the father’s laundry to work through. The boy stayed in his bedroom and slept as much as he could. When he woke, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling for as long as he could stand. He inventoried the contents of his bureau and closet, twice. He read random selections from a collection of encyclopedias he had on a bookshelf. Given the chance, his mind ground through the events around Bobby’s death and his imagination ran off into the future, where he saw himself locked up in huge, clamoring institutions.

  When he managed to get his mind away from the shooting, it took off with his fears of school. It started in the coming week. His small town was one of six that sent their students to a large regional high school—he was going from an eighth grade of ninety-five to a freshman class of over six hundred.

  The day finally came when the father had to return to Pennsylvania and the house was busy preparing for his departure. The boy sat out of sight at the top of the stairs. He could see some of the interaction on the floor below in a mirror on the downstairs wall. His mother’s brother, John, and his wife, Margaret, had come to see the father off. The father held the local paper that his brother-in-law had handed him.

  “What?” the father said.

  “Article on the editorial page,” John said. “Look.”

  The father glanced quickly at the paper. “I don’t have time for this.” He handed the paper back.

  “Ahem,” John said, shaking the paper to attention. “‘I think it is an outrage that a firearm was left accessible to young people.’” John paused and looked at the father. “This woman is trying to screw you.”

  “John,” shouted the mother from another room.

  “‘I think it is time that gun owners are held responsible for any and all events that involve their firearms, even accidents.’” He let the paper down.

  “I don’t need this right now,” the father said.

  “She’s trying to make it your fault,” John said.

  “John,” the mother said, walking into the room. “Let it go.”

  “She has the right to say who can and can’t go to the goddamn services,” John said. “But this is too much.”

  “It doesn’t concern you,” she told him.

  “How can you say that?” he said. “It’s bullshit.”

  “Watch your language,” the mother said. “I got a boy in the house.”

  The boy loved listening to his uncle cuss. He trie
d to swear with the same authority, but it always sounded cheap and phony.

  “You think if you ignore it, it’ll all go away,” John said.

  “One more word,” she told him. “One more and you’re gone.”

  “Donna,” the father said. “Take it easy.” There was a pause in the conversation. “John, we appreciate the concern, but I think it’s just easier to let this lady do her thing. If and when they file charges, we’ll do what we have to.”

  “This is your town,” John said. “Both of you. You can’t let her chase you out.”

  “Don’t get dramatic on me, John—it doesn’t suit you,” the father said.

  John didn’t reply.

  “There isn’t work here,” the father told him. “I can’t live where there isn’t work.”

  “It’ll come back,” John said. “Everyone’s saying it.”

  “When it comes back, I’ll come back.”

  “With women like this,” John shook the newspaper. “There won’t be anything worth coming back to. It’ll be one big suburb. Nothing but Volvos and Saabs.”

  “I guess the only thing left to do is get drunk and cry about it,” the father said.

  “Piss off,” John said.

  “Nice talk,” said the father.

  The boy heard the front door open and slam shut.

  “Ted,” the father hollered.

  The boy waited a moment to give the impression that he’d been in his room. “Yeah?”

  “Get down here.”

  The boy rumbled down the stairs.

  “What?”

  “Give me a hand.” The father had a gun case in each hand. He pointed at two other cases on the floor. The boy took them up and followed him into the yard. The trunk of his Pontiac was open and half full, but the father went to Margaret’s station wagon instead.

  “What are you doing?”

  “They’re going to John’s,” his father said. “He’s going to keep them for us.”

  “Why?” said the boy.

  “You know why.” The father took the two guns from him and slid them into the station wagon. “Come on,” he said. They walked back into the house. The father made his way up the stairs to the boy’s bedroom. He pulled a chair from the corner and sat down. He pointed at the bed and the boy sat, facing him.

  “You all right?”

  “Yes,” the boy said.

  “You’re the man here now.”

  “I know.”

  “No more fooling around,” his father said. “Time to batten down the hatches and pull it together, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said the boy.

  “You got to help your mother.”

  “I know.”

  “You ready for school?”

  He shrugged.

  “It ain’t going to be easy.”

  “I know.”

  “Remember, just keep your head down, keep quiet, and let this thing blow over. I’ll be back again in another week or two. If you have any trouble when I’m not here, you see John. You can’t reach him, you call Dave Benson.”

  “Mr. Benson?” the boy said, surprised at the mention of an almost forgotten fishing partner of the father’s.

  “I know—it’s been years. But he knows folks.”

  The boy played with the fringe at the edge of his bedspread. “How long you think?” he said. “Till the house sells?”

  “It doesn’t look good,” the father said, “but you never know.”

  The boy nodded. He’d seen the real estate signs around town, the developments full of new, empty homes. He’d heard of people forced to sell their places for half of what they’d paid only a year prior. He’d heard worse. Notices of bank foreclosures and property auctions were showing up in the local paper with increasing frequency.

  “You know, some places in Pennsylvania, kids get the first day of deer season off,” the father said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Some schools even give the whole first week.”

  The boy smiled.

  “Honest to God,” said the father. “No kidding. It’ll be just like the old days. Me and you, in the woods.” He smiled at the boy and gave him a slap on the side of the shoulder with his heavy hand. The boy was afraid to speak. He thought his voice might crack and he would break into tears. He always felt overwhelmed when taken back into the father’s good favor.

  “Come on,” the father said. “Let’s get this show on the road. If I don’t leave soon, I’ll never get there.”

  In the driveway the father rearranged the contents of the trunk and slammed it shut. The mother and Margaret stood before the car and John appeared from the backyard and stood behind them. The boy sat on the front steps.

  “No baloney now,” the father said.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” John told him. The father smiled and the two men shook hands. Margaret stepped to the father next and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Drive safe,” she said.

  “Always,” said the father. He approached his wife and kissed her.

  “Work hard,” she said, softly rubbing his arm.

  The father nodded, turned, and approached the boy. He reached out his hand and the boy shook it.

  “Be good,” the father said, clapping him hard on the shoulder.

  The boy nodded.

  “Two weeks,” said the father. “Two weeks is nothing.” He climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. The engine turned over and started and the transmission clunked into reverse. The father smiled and waved through the windshield before he looked over his shoulder and backed into the road. The horn blasted twice and they waved at the tail end of the Pontiac.

  “Finally got rid of him,” John said.

  The boy smiled back but the women didn’t.

  “Don’t worry about dinner,” Margaret said to the mother. “I’ve got a shepherd’s pie in the freezer.”

  The mother nodded. “Thank you,” she said, and the two moved into an embrace. The boy watched as his mother pushed her face into Margaret’s shoulder and Margaret slowly rubbed her back in circles. John skirted the two and approached him.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” John pointed at the passenger side of the station wagon and the boy walked to the side of the car. “You’ll be over later?” John said to the women. They nodded and John got in the driver’s seat. He started the car and drove the short distance to his house.

  An oak bar stood in the back corner of the basement room. The head and antlers of two white-tailed deer hung from the back wall, next to a bearskin and a few mounted fish. Against the side walls stood well-crafted glass-faced gun cabinets, each lit from within, making them glow in the dull light. John had spent his tax refunds on the room, and while the rest of the basement lacked even Sheetrock, this room had hardwood molding. Margaret complained that the money could have paid for a vacation, and given the chance, John always replied, “That room is my vacation.”

  “You know where all these come from?” the boy said. He ran his finger around half the room, encompassing a good portion of John’s gun collection in a single pass.

  “I’d imagine,” John said.

  The boy walked over to a cabinet and opened it. “This one?” he said.

  “A friend needed the money,” John said. “Hit a kid in a crosswalk. Drunk.”

  The boy pointed at another.

  “Estate auction.”

  He pointed again.

  “Some fool didn’t know what he had. I bought that for fifty bucks out of the want ads.”

  He stepped to the next cabinet down. “This one?”

  “Me and your mother used to shoot that,” John said. “We went to this dump as kids and went through the rubbish with sticks, for bottles and jars. We stood them on the side of an old icebox and I made up charges against them: disorderly conduct, drunk and disorderly, driving while drunk. We took turns until they were all shot up.”

  “Yeah?” said the boy.

  “Don’t tell her I told yo
u, but we shot it at an oak door in the basement once. Had a bet whether or not it would go through.”

  “Who won?” said the boy. “The bet.”

  John shrugged. “It didn’t go through. I know that. And deaf? My ears rang for a week.”

  The boy smiled and went on to the next cabinet. He opened the door and looked closely at an old pump-action shotgun.

  “That was your great-grandfather’s.”

  “I know. I never met him.”

  “Go ahead.” He motioned for the boy to take up the firearm.

  He hesitated.

  “It’s all right,” John said. “It won’t bite.”

  “That’s okay.” He tried to smile.

  “Pick it up, Ted.”

  The boy reached into the cabinet and took it by the barrel. The action was open and he looked quickly to check the chamber.

  “There you go,” John said. “That’s about as close as you’re going to get to him. Without stepping in front of a bus anyway.”

  He pulled the stock to his shoulder. The wood was worn and smooth against his cheek. He let the gun down and looked it over again. It wouldn’t have been the gem of anyone else’s collection—the wood was nicked here and there and the blue steel had worn in places and shone silver. The boy used his shirttail to wipe it down before returning it. He looked at the next gun in the cabinet.

  “Dad gave that to your mother for confirmation.”

  “What did you get?” the boy asked.

  John shrugged. “I got that, when she got tired of it. She was his favorite.”

  “How come?”

  “She went along with his stories,” John said.

  “What were his stories about?”

  John squinted and looked at the ceiling as if to remember. “About how nice he was, how happy we all were. I tended to call his bluff.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t help it,” John said. “I guess I wasn’t very good at telling stories.”

  The boy nodded as if he understood. He motioned to the next firearm in the row.