“Came back from World War Two with your great-uncle Dale’s,” John said.
The next cabinet down had just been stocked with the guns from the boy’s home. He stood for a moment, staring through the glass.
“I know you’ve probably been asked this a hundred times,” his uncle said. “But how you holding up through all this?”
“Fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You want to tell me what happened?”
“Dad told me not to talk any more about it.”
“Yeah, well, he’s probably right.”
“Besides,” said the boy. “What’s there to tell? Some kid killed his brother—you know that.”
“I do,” John said. “But that’s a lot to carry. Whether you know it or not.”
“You ever seen anyone die?”
John nodded. “Car accident,” he said. “A woman got pitched from a truck when it flipped and it rolled right on over the top of her. She was terrible, head split open, arms and legs all twisted up. Gave me nightmares for weeks. Couldn’t drive in the car for a while without getting these little spells where my heart raced and my breathing got all crazy.”
“Bobby wasn’t anything like that,” said the boy. “You could hardly tell he was hurt. And I ain’t had no nightmares.”
“Well, just be careful,” John said. “When it comes, it comes.”
The boy nodded absentmindedly. His eyes were on the back wall. He walked over to one of the mounted deer. Its eyes were wide and glassy and the nose shone like it was still wet. He reached up and ran a hand down its thick neck, which felt stiff and hollow, the fur dry and brittle. He remembered the day his uncle had shot the buck. The boy had arrived just after John finished gutting it. The hind legs were splayed and steam rose from the empty carcass. Its eyes had already clouded over and the tongue that stuck out from between its clenched teeth was caked with dirt.
John cut the heart and the liver from the gut pile and he cut two feet of a branch with a wide fork at one end. He skewered the organs and slid them down until they came to rest on the Y where the branch split in two. He gave the stick a quick shake and when the makeshift handle proved suitable, he laid it to rest inside the deer and grabbed fistfuls of downed leaves to wipe the blood from his hands. Together, they noosed a rope around the animal’s neck and front legs and dragged it back to John’s house, where they hung it in a small shed. They went inside and John gave the boy his first beer. They said, “Cheers,” and they drank.
5
The boy stepped down the three rubber-clad stairs and stood for a moment, looking out at the crowd, before he took the last step from the bus to the pavement. The driveway ran in a crescent in front of the school. Hordes of kids poured from their buses and crowds waited on the walk for friends to arrive. The red-brick bell tower stood high over them, the clock on its face off by hours. The boy saw a few people he recognized, but for the most part he stood surrounded by strangers.
He tried to stop and survey his surroundings, but the crowd behind him surged and forced him into the mob on the sidewalk. He bumped and squirmed through the maze of bodies and book bags. He saw Karen Hatch. She smiled, waved, and took quick little steps toward him.
“Hey, Teddy,” she said. She leaned in and hugged him quick.
“Hey.” He smiled. They weren’t particularly close but he had known her since elementary school.
“There’s so many new people,” she said. “It’s so exciting.”
He nodded.
She eyed everything around her except him.
“You seen Terry Duvall?”
She shook her head and he nodded.
“Well,” she said. “See you.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Good luck,” she told him. She smiled and waved again before she walked away.
When he stumbled into some free space, he pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. It was a map of the school he’d received in the mail several weeks back. The silhouette of each building was sketched on the paper with the names written inside. A star marked the location of his homeroom. He oriented himself, quickly stuffed the map back into his pocket, and set off for the star.
He rounded a corner and saw Darren Bell coming toward him. He smiled and tried to catch his eye, but Darren quickly looked at the pavement and passed without speaking.
The boy wondered how much they knew. He wondered if Karen’s “good luck” was intended for the day of school or the investigation. He wondered if that was why Darren ignored him. Since he was a minor, his name hadn’t been released to the public, but that didn’t mean much in their small town.
Two students sat in his homeroom when he arrived. He looked at the clock on the wall and saw that he still had another fifteen minutes before he had to be there. There was a 5-×-7 card on each desk. He found his name, sat, and pulled out his schedule and his map and plotted his course through the day. Then he rested his head on his folded arms and closed his eyes.
Before long the bell rang and students came pouring in. He recognized a few and nodded quickly at them. A huge kid with a shaved head took the seat behind him. He seemed older than the rest of the freshmen. After a few minutes he tapped a hard finger on the boy’s shoulder. The boy turned. Without saying a word, the kid took hold of each side of his bottom lip and turned it out for the boy to see. On the inside of his lip, dark capital letters spelled out SKINS.
“It’s killing me,” he said once he had let his lip go. “Just got it done.”
The boy nodded. Skinheads. He’d heard of them.
When the kid didn’t say anything else, the boy turned around and put his head back on the desk. He tried to close his eyes, but they kept springing open.
He made his way to and from his first four classes without trouble, but a bottleneck in the hallway and the resulting crowd kept him from the lunchroom. The doorway had to accommodate both the inbound and the outbound traffic. He tried to edge his way into the single file that passed through the door, but no one would let him in. Just as a girl stopped and let the line move forward ahead of her, making room for him, he saw Kevin Dennison coming from the opposite direction. The boy froze and looked at the floor.
“You going?” said the girl who’d made room for him.
He shook his head.
“Fine,” she snapped.
He turned and walked into the bathroom behind him. He went across the tile floor to one of the stalls and swung the flimsy door. It didn’t quite fit in the frame, so he shouldered it shut. He sat on the toilet without pulling his pants down. The sounds of other students in the bathroom echoed around the walls of the stall.
Kevin Dennison had looked different. The boy couldn’t place it exactly, but it was there. Maybe it was his face. His expression was stern, stoic. Perhaps it was the black T-shirt. Kevin was a prep in junior high and his outfits had included colorful collared tops and khakis.
The boy heard footsteps approach. Someone took the toilet next to him. He heard the flick of a lighter and soon he smelled smoke. He leaned forward and saw a familiar pair of work boots.
“Terry?” he said.
“Ted? The hell you doing in here?”
“Nothing,” said the boy.
“You were pulling it, weren’t you?”
He looked up and saw Terry, standing on the toilet, resting his elbows on the wall of the stall.
The boy shook his head. “You got an extra one of those?”
“An after-sex cigarette?”
“Come on.” The boy waved his hand for one.
“What are you doing in here?” Terry reached down behind the wall and came up with his pack of Marlboros. He flicked the top open with his thumb and held it out to the boy. “You ain’t taking a shit with your pants like that. Least I hope.”
“Just taking a breather,” the boy said.
“That’s a good one,” Terry said. “I’m going to steal that. Taking a breather.” He inhaled hard on his ci
garette and held the smoke in his lungs. “Take another one for later.” Smoke poured out of his mouth as he spoke.
The boy stood and leaned against the wall opposite Terry. He put one cigarette behind his ear and held one between his lips.
“Suppose you need a light too.” Terry reached down behind the wall again and his shoulder bobbed as he rummaged in his pocket. He leaned over the wall and lit the boy’s cigarette. “Need one?” Terry held out the lighter to him. “I got another in my bag.”
The boy nodded and took it. He focused on inhaling the way Terry had taught him. The smoke burned all the way down. He felt like coughing, but he held it back. The graffiti on the walls around him began to wobble and go crooked. He felt dizzy, so he sat back down. He liked the feeling. For a moment the two smoked in silence.
“So what happened?” Terry asked him.
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Come on.”
The boy shook his head.
“That trooper came by my house,” Terry said. “My parents loved that. I been meaning to say thanks.”
The boy took another cautious drag.
“You told him we were on Darling’s place.”
“I had to.”
“I sounded like a jackass, making some other story up,” Terry said. “Then he told me you already told him.”
“I had to say it.”
“How long you figure until they know it was us setting the street on fire?”
“I don’t think they care much about that.”
“We’ll see,” Terry said. He stepped down from the toilet, out of the boy’s sight. “I guess I should’ve known.”
“What?” said the boy.
“You know. You can’t ever keep your mouth shut.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well,” Terry said, “I know what I know.”
The boy heard the quick hiss of Terry’s cigarette hitting the water in the toilet. He heard the door of his stall whine open and bang shut.
“See you,” he said.
“Yeah,” Terry called back, the heels of his boots pounding the tile.
He stood and tossed what was left of his cigarette into the toilet. He flushed it with his foot and watched the butt circle and circle and eventually spin down the drain. He slid the second cigarette and the lighter into a small pocket of his book bag.
The crowd in the doorway to the lunchroom was gone when he got there. He saw Terry’s orange hair above a table on the far side of the room. Terry sat with some older guys—the boy figured they were friends of Terry’s brothers. He scanned the rest of the room and finally took a corner seat at a half-empty table. The nausea from the cigarette had stifled his appetite. He ate what he could of his lunch and then put his head on his folded arms and waited for the bell to ring.
His last class was in one of the portable buildings. They were long and narrow and looked like extended trailer homes. They sat between the tall bell tower and the four-story rectangle of the vocational building. In the late seventies the school had hauled the portables in as temporary classrooms for a sudden boom in the student body. More than a decade later they still housed history and social studies. He walked half the length of the hallway in the second portable to his American government class. The floor had a hollow, bouncy feel. When the door of the classroom closed, the whole wall seemed to shudder.
He knew his teacher from town. Mrs. Kimball had a son a year ahead of him and a daughter the year behind. She stood at the front of the class straightening papers on her desk. She put a folder in the drawer and called attendance. When his name came, he slowly raised his hand. He knew that every time he did so, he gave someone else the chance to put the name to his face, the chance to put his face in the stories they had heard.
Mrs. Kimball passed out her syllabus and gave an overview of what the class would entail. Students raised their hands and asked questions and she answered them. When the questions ceased, she began to outline their first assignment.
“Think about that old cliché assignment What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” she said. “It’s a little bit like that.” She smiled and a few students laughed. “But I want it to be an analysis of something political that occurred over the summer. I want you to pursue your own interests. Doug, for instance, since he is interested in business, might want to focus on a specific interaction between government and the business world that occurred this summer. Some of you might be able to use some personal experience. Someone in this class might even be able to shed some light for us on the criminal-justice system.” She looked directly at the boy when she said it, and he looked at his desk.
“Yes?” Mrs. Kimball said, acknowledging a hand somewhere behind him.
“Can I write about the gun debate?” a boy asked.
“In what way?” she asked him.
“Well, to start with, the ridiculous concept of blaming an inanimate object for our country’s woes, and how that figures into the larger theme of liberal America’s inability to accept responsibility for their own actions?”
Mrs. Kimball stood silently for a moment. “Do you have a specific event in mind?” she said.
“Of course,” he said.
“What might that be?”
“I think you know what I’m talking about.”
“I’m not a mind reader, Mr….?”
“Jackson,” he said. “Jeffrey. Or J.J. But most people call me Peckerhead.”
The class giggled. The boy tried to look over his shoulder but he couldn’t get a glimpse of him.
“I don’t think I’ll be calling you that, Mr. Jackson.”
“I’m just saying if you want to, I don’t mind.”
“I don’t want this assignment to simply be a platform for your own political views, Mr. Jackson,” Mrs. Kimball said. “It’s an analysis of a specific event, with as much objectivity as possible.”
“I’m sorry if I angered you,” he said. “I meant no disrespect.”
“You haven’t angered me, Mr. Jackson.”
“I come from a family where healthy debate is encouraged—that’s all.”
“I’m curious,” Mrs. Kimball said. “Are your parents conservatives too?”
“I can only wish that was the case,” Peckerhead said. “Bleeding hearts, the both of them.”
The boy stood when the bell rang. He quickly packed his things and turned for the door. He looked at the ground. He feared that Mrs. Kimball would pull him aside and want to discuss what had happened with the Dennisons. He joined the herd at the doorway, waited his turn to leave, and hit a quick stride in the hallway. He didn’t want to miss his bus.
“Theodore,” someone called from behind him. It was the kid’s voice from class.
He kept up his pace.
“Hey,” the kid said. “Hey, man.”
The boy looked when the kid grabbed his shoulder. Peckerhead Jackson was a skinny kid. Short brown hair, some acne. Black suspenders stood out from his white T-shirt. His khakis had long sharp creases.
“Don’t call me that,” the boy said. “It’s Ted.”
“Ted,” he said. “Peckerhead.” He held out his hand.
The boy shook it quickly. “Peckerhead?”
“Nobody forgets a name like Peckerhead.” He smiled at the boy. “I didn’t pick it.”
The boy nodded.
“We had third-period bio together too. I sat three rows over.”
“Yeah?”
“I was a little more reserved in bio. That was bullshit, what she pulled on you.” Peckerhead pointed a thumb in the direction of the classroom that they had just left.
The boy kept walking.
“What are you doing after school?” Peckerhead said. “I got some friends. We all get together—you should come.”
“So I can get a nickname like Peckerhead?”
“Funny. You’re a ball-breaker—they’ll like that.”
“I got to run. I can’t miss my bus.” The boy quickened his
pace, but Peckerhead kept up.
“We’ll give you a ride. A few of the guys got cars.”
“That’s all right,” the boy said.
“You like guns?” Peckerhead smiled. “We got a lot of guns.”
The boy shook his head. He turned and jogged toward the drive where the buses idled.
“See you,” Peckerhead called out.
The boy threw a hand up in a quick wave.
He had a dull evening of chores and homework and a quiet dinner with his mother. When he finished eating, he excused himself. He said he had homework and went to his room. He changed out of his school clothes, sat, and pulled a photo album out of his desk drawer. The leather cover was dry and cracked. The brown finish had worn off the edges and the corners were curled over. He liked to look at the pictures of his father in adolescence. He was pale, skinny, almost fragile-looking. On football teams where his father had insisted he was a standout, the boy saw that he was one of the smallest players. He always thought the realization should have been disheartening, but each time it actually let him breathe. The boy was a late bloomer. At fourteen, his armpits were bald and he still weighed less than most of the girls he wanted to date. The pictures made it easier. Sure he was skinny and hairless, but at least he was no worse than his father had been.
He turned the page to reveal four photos of several figures, heaped in winter clothes, standing on the vast, white expanse of a frozen lake. Their faces were so concealed by hoods and scarves that if it had not been for the father’s stories, the boy would not have known who they were. The father and his father and brothers took to the ice when winter came, cut holes, and jigged for walleye and perch. But unlike the other fishermen—who drove trucks on the frozen lake and pulled shanties and sat around fires drinking schnapps—they stood some distance from one another and jigged away in silence. After they departed from the shore together, a toboggan loaded with gear in tow, the father’s father would periodically auger a hole and leave a son, auger a hole and leave a son. They stood alone, weighed down in layer upon layer of wool, shifting from foot to foot, shivering. Rotating about the holes to keep their backs to the wind, they were sometimes envious of the houses on the shore, sometimes of the shanties, strewn like black pox on the ice.
American Youth Page 5