He shrugged.
“You can say it. It’s okay.”
“I did,” he said.
“It felt good, didn’t it? Better, anyway. It felt better.”
“Anything felt better,” he said.
“I thought I’d have to kill myself to get away from it. I had to see someone. I have to take pills.”
He reached down and pulled back the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He pushed the cuff up past his forearm to his elbow. He rotated his arm so that the inside pointed toward the sky. A scabbed, smiling face stood out against the pale flesh. He looked from Mrs. Dennison down to his arm and pointed to the burn with his index finger.
“What’s that?” she said.
“Burn.”
“From what?”
“Top of a lighter.”
“You did it?”
He nodded.
“Did it feel good?”
“It felt really good.”
“You shouldn’t,” she said. “Not anymore. That wouldn’t make Bobby happy. He wouldn’t want that.”
Tears poked out of the corners of his eyes and crawled down his cheeks. “I’m so goddamn sorry.” His chin bounced as he spoke.
“I know, honey.” Her voice cracked. She reached over and rubbed his back. She slid closer and put an arm around his shoulder. Their bodies shook together.
He wiped at his eyes with a sleeve. “I’m going to tell what happened,” he said.
“That’s good.”
“Please don’t sue us,” he said.
“What?”
“Don’t sue my parents, please.”
“You don’t have anything I want,” she told him. “It wouldn’t bring him back.”
He looked out at the lawn.
“I don’t think about him as much as I used to,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like a bad mother because of that. I feel so terrible letting him go. But I try to think of what he would want. First I thought he wanted me to vindicate him or something. But that’s what I wanted. He just wants us to be happy.”
“I hope so,” he said.
“He’s forgiven you,” she said. “I know he has.”
“Kevin probably hates me,” he said.
Mrs. Dennison shrugged. “At the moment it’s easier for me to communicate with the dead than the living.”
“I bet he’s pissed,” he said.
“He’s a lot like us. He’s so busy being mad at everyone else, he can’t see how mad he is at himself.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Look at your arm again and tell me that,” she said. “You’ve got to let it go.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Yes you do.” She smiled at him. “You do. You’re doing it right now.”
From Sandy Creek the boy walked back in the direction of his house. As he walked down the side of the road, his bus roared past. The wake of the vehicle gusted and seemed to push him off balance. He stepped into the sand on the side of the road and regained his footing. Before he got to the Humphreys’, he kicked around in the downed leaves on the side of the road in search of a few suitable stones. He came up with one about the size of a baseball, worn smooth and oblong like an egg. A few feet over he found a smaller, more jagged one. He gripped the smoother piece of granite in his throwing hand and held the smaller one on the opposite side for backup. He crossed the road to put the tarmac between him and the Humphreys’ yard.
He saw the dog lying at the top of the drive, next to the cargo van that hadn’t moved in years. The dog’s head rested on the pavement between its two outstretched paws. The boy was halfway past the yard when the dog’s ears perked up and its head rose. It scrambled to its feet and trotted down the drive and across the yard. A low rumble came from the dog. Its long fur hung in patches of white, black, and several shades of brown. The boy knew he shouldn’t make eye contact with the dog, but he did. He half hoped the dog would come for him, would cross the pavement and make a lunge. He wanted an excuse to club it with the rock. He held it up and ready. The dog came a few feet out onto the pavement and barked once, sharp and loud. It snarled at him and its jaws popped. The boy didn’t turn his back to it, but he kept walking. He kept the rock ready. The dog made several false lunges at him, but it seemed to understand the threat of the raised stone. It didn’t come within striking distance.
It followed him well past the Humphreys’ property line. The boy grew tired of walking backward, but anytime he tried to turn around, the dog made for his heels.
“Go on,” he shouted. “Git!” But the dog still slunk along on the opposite side of the street. He swapped the two stones in his hands. He got a good grip on the small jagged rock. He turned his back to the dog but kept an eye over his shoulder. The dog came for him. He waited until it was well into the road. When the dog was close, he turned, hopped twice quickly, and overhanded the stone. It caught the dog in the rib cage with a hollow, dull sound. The dog shuddered at the blow and let out a quick yelp. It cowered for a moment in the middle of the road before turning to skulk away. When he saw the dog turn, he burst into a sprint after it, letting his feet fall hard and loud on the tarmac. The dog shot a quick glance back at him and bolted into the woods. He watched until the dog was out of sight.
He heard a car coming. He saw that he was in the middle of the road and took several quick steps to the opposite ditch. The noise grew as the car approached. It came around the bend ahead of him and he was glad that he still had the larger of the two stones. Jason Becker’s Volkswagen slowed and pulled off the road just ahead of him. He thought about ducking into the woods and making a run for it, but he was tired of all that. He was surprised to see that only Jason, George, and Peckerhead were in the car. They climbed out and walked toward him. Jason and George were in the front. Peckerhead lingered back, near the hood of the car.
“You can put the rock down, Theodore,” George said. “We’re not here for anything like that.”
“It’s not for you,” he said.
“You can put it down,” George told him.
He shook his head.
“You’re a coward,” Becker said.
“Jason,” George said, “you said you could do this.”
“This little punk sets my car on fire and you want me to be cordial? Fuck that,” Becker said. “Don’t even try to deny it.”
“I won’t,” said the boy. “Long as you don’t try to deny tearing up my yard.”
“Only because you raped Colleen, you fuck,” Jason said.
“You know it wasn’t like that,” the boy said. “Peckerhead, tell him, for Christ’s sake.”
Peckerhead shrugged. He stayed back by the car.
“Guys,” George said. “We can go back and forth like this forever. And where will it get us? Nowhere. So just quit it for a minute. Please.” He looked at both Jason and the boy. “This is exactly what they want. It’s infighting. It distracts us and weakens our cause. I’ve been thinking, and as it stands I’d say we’re all about even. I think we can call it water under the bridge and get on with business.”
“You want him back?” Becker said.
“Not immediately,” George said.
“You’re kidding me,” Becker said. “He rapes your girlfriend and torches my car and you want him back?”
“I didn’t rape her, you idiot,” the boy told Becker. “She wanted it and you know it.”
“What did you call me?” Becker said.
“A dumb-ass,” he said.
Becker came at him. The boy had the rock back and ready, but George jumped between the two and got a palm on both of their chests.
“What is wrong with you two?” George hollered.
Jason swatted at George’s hand and tried to push him out of the way.
The boy pushed George’s hand off of him, but rather than stepping away, he took a step closer. George was busy with Jason and he never saw the blow coming. The rock landed on the side of his head, just above his ear, just where the boy had aimed. It sounded like a stick coming down quic
kly on a wet sack of mud. George’s head bucked at the impact and he went to the ground like liquid. His face landed in the sand and his arms sprawled at odd angles from his torso. His eyes stared blankly at the far side of the street. His pupils twitched back and forth so fast they seemed to vibrate. Sand clung to his cheek and his body shivered. His hair was already wet around the wound. For a moment, it was quiet. The boy couldn’t say why he did it, but even in the act of protecting him, George seemed more threatening than Jason could ever have been.
“What the fuck,” Jason said to the boy.
He stepped back and held the rock up and ready.
“What is wrong with you?” Jason said. He looked back to George and squatted down beside him. “George? Man, you all right?” George didn’t respond. Peckerhead came close and looked down. Jason looked up at him. “Get help,” he said. “Go.”
Peckerhead looked at the boy.
“My house is closest,” he said. “Come on.” He broke into a run and he heard Peckerhead calling after him.
“I think you killed him,” Peckerhead said.
He didn’t answer. He turned into his driveway and then down the sidewalk. He ran up the stairs and found the door locked. He jabbed at the doorbell until he heard the lock turn in the door. He pushed through the door and by his mother and went to the telephone.
“You have got some explaining to do,” she said.
He dialed the three numbers and waited. He told the dispatch that a boy was unconscious on the side of the road and he gave her a general location.
“Was there an accident?” the dispatcher said.
“No,” he told her. “I hit him.” There was a pause. “You should probably send the police too,” he said.
His mother had him by the arm. “What is going on?”
He hung up the phone. “I hit George Haney,” he said. He held up the stone for his mother to see. “He’s out on the side of the road. He might be dead.”
His mother stared at him.
“I’m going to tell them the truth,” he said. “I already told Mrs. Dennison.”
She reached back and slapped him across the face. It stung but he didn’t move. He looked her in the eye. She took a breath like she was about to let him have it, but she stopped. “Fine,” she said. “But you’re on your own. All of it,” she swung a hand toward the front door. “It’s yours.” She turned and walked down the hall. She grabbed the railing and began climbing the stairs. He heard the door of her bedroom close.
He walked back outside. He followed the sidewalk and the driveway back out to the street. Jason squatted on his haunches next to George. He was bare-chested and he held what must have been his shirt to the side of George’s head. Peckerhead stood above the two with his hand on the hood of the Volkswagen. He looked at the boy for a moment but then looked back to George.
The boy walked back to his driveway and sat on the edge of the stone wall. He heard the sirens approaching and he watched the ambulance blow past. Shortly after, the local cruiser passed. He knew it wouldn’t be long.
He stood when the cruiser pulled in. Duncan looked at him, leaned down, and said something into the radio. He opened the door and stepped out. He came around the front of the car and stood before the boy.
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you,” Duncan said.
“Is he dead?”
Duncan smiled and shook his head.
The boy nodded. “How bad?”
“Pretty mean concussion,” Duncan said. “Some stitches and rest and he’ll be fine.”
“I was afraid I killed him,” he said.
Duncan shook his head and smiled. “Nah, just knocked the heck out of him.”
The boy shrugged.
“So what’s your story,” Duncan said. “I got three guys over there saying you just blindsided him.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Was he threatening you?” Duncan asked. “Talking like he was going to hurt you or anything?”
“No,” he said.
“Ted,” Duncan said, “you’re not giving me much to work with.”
“You going to take me in?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to.”
“Will you get that trooper?” he said. “Thompson?”
“How come?”
“’Cause I want to talk to him.”
“Sure,” Duncan said. “We can make that happen.”
“You going to cuff me?”
“Nah. Just get in.” Duncan opened the front door and the boy climbed inside. He pulled the door shut and drew the seat belt across his chest. Duncan stood outside for a moment, talking into his radio. He climbed in and they backed out.
As they drive, the boy stares out the window at the blur of the forest. The car feels like a bubble, the windows bulging out against the world. He knows that outside, it’s all still happening. And once he steps out of the cruiser, it will begin again. He wishes for even a week, a month, or a year more, but there isn’t any more time. Nothing will stop.
His face is reflected in the window at his side and he looks through himself to see the world outside. The next economic boom is already beginning out there, wherever that sort of thing happens. The forest outside the window will be cut for new house lots and condominium developments. The town will sing again with chainsaws—the pop of nail guns providing a disjointed rhythm for the sickly wail of power tools. One day he will look at the same road and hardly be able to see the world where all of this transpired. There will be glints of it here and there—a place where the old faded tarmac peeks out from under the new pavement, the house of an elderly couple that resists renovation—but for the most part, it will disappear, it will change, and all the while, his own memory of it will recede farther and farther from him.
17
He sits on the corner of his bed and with the tip of his finger he traces the ornamental engraving on the wooden stock and steel receiver. He rolls the gun upright and with the butt on his thigh he reaches up and opens the action. The sound of sliding metal and the clack of the action locking in place break the silence in the room. Holding the lever firm, he thrusts the bolt forward and closed again. He pulls the gun to his shoulder and looks down the sights, taking aim on a model airplane that hangs from the ceiling. Then he quickly slings the barrel to the side, bearing down on a ceramic figurine.
It’s a pink piggy bank, and it seems to point out a certain absurdity. The gun has gone the way of the dirt bikes and four-wheel-drive trucks—now that the roads have been paved and the sand pits landscaped. It’s difficult for him to think that he will never again hunt the hill behind his house. He looks at the .22, and it’s still difficult to think that he will never again see Bobby Dennison.
Telling the truth about loading the gun wasn’t quite the cure-all that he’d hoped it would be. With the stories corroborated and clear on paper, Trooper Thompson and the attorney general did agree that the shooting was indeed accidental and that Kevin and Theodore had suffered enough. But that wasn’t the end of their legal troubles. Kevin was recently arrested on a possession charge when he was pulled over with marijuana in his pocket. The boy was charged with assault for what he did to George. Duncan assured him that mandatory counseling would be included in his sentence.
The boy takes a slow breath and runs his fingers along the inside of his arm. He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt to look. He traces the wicked smiles with the tip of a finger. Some of the older scars have faded slightly, melting back into his skin, forming soft, pale outlines in his flesh. While he can’t give it up, the burns blossom less frequently.
He lets the sleeve of his shirt fall and he takes the .22 and slides it back under his bed. He hopes to give it to some child of his at an appropriate moment, and though it feels strange, he hopes the child will in turn do the same. It isn’t so much the desire to possess the gun itself, but rather the ill feeling that comes over him when he thinks of someone else taking it up, perhaps with no idea of what it has done.
&n
bsp; Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program, the Western Michigan University Prague Summer Program in Creative Writing, and the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg for their support; Peter Straus, Melanie Jackson, Daniel Menaker, and the gang at Random House for their belief in this manuscript; Arthur Flowers and George Saunders for their kindness and wisdom from the beginning to the end of this project; Mary Karr for revealing an easier, softer way through it all; the following technical advisers: Chris Decker, firearms instructor and armorer for the New Hampshire State Police, Wendy Foley of the Windham, New Hampshire, Police Department, Kenneth R. Martell of the Bristol, New Hampshire, Police Department, Phillip Maurice LaMarche of the Plattsburgh, New York, Fire Department; and the following readers for their advice and encouragement: Christian TeBordo, Adam Levin, Nina Shope, Erin Brooks Worley, Rahul Mehta, Stephanie Carpenter, Brian Evenson, Tobias Wolff, Robert Eversz, and Michael Schellenberg.
The author would also like to thank his family, Patty and Todd Davis, for their understanding and support; Cheryl and Greg Doble for sharing their home and their two wonderful boys; his parents for all the slingshots, guns, fireworks, and dirt bikes, for sticking by him through the ensuing trips to the hospital, for the hunting and fishing, and for showing him all the fun and beauty there is to be had in the world. He would also like to express his gratitude to Caroline, his best friend, his partner in crime, his favorite.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PHIL LAMARCHE was a writing fellow in the Syracuse University graduate creative writing program. He was also awarded the Ivan Klíma Fellowship in fiction in Prague and a Summer Literary Seminars fellowship in St. Petersburg, Russia. His story “In the Tradition of My Family,” published in the spring 2005 edition of Ninth Letter and the 2005 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories anthology, has been made into a film by or Later Productions. He lives in central New York State.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
American Youth Page 17