by James, Jesse
There was a flat steel rod in the door, and you could take a screwdriver with a rubber mallet and bam, pound it right underneath the lock. You’d hit the rod and pry it open, and it would unlock the door. Then there’d be a cast-aluminum tilt column behind the steering; you could hit that with a hammer and it would crack open like a nut. Then you just put anything in the ignition, and WHOOM! Good to go. A real operator could pull it off, from start to finish, in thirty seconds.
We could only drive around in a stolen car for about a day. That’s all it was safe to do, and we weren’t quite stupid enough to go longer. Then our aim would be to rip out the motor and the wheels, and try to sell them. We’d cut the rest of the car up with an acetylene blowtorch and toss the wrecked parts into a Dumpster.
I split time between my parents’ houses growing up. My mom had stayed in Long Beach after the divorce, while my dad had moved to neighboring Riverside, only a short drive away. Neither of them tried too hard to keep a close eye on their unruly, pissed-off son, though, and mostly, I was left to my own devices.
And that meant plenty of time with Bobby. Once, I remember going over to his house, and finding him up on the roof, shooting up his next-door neighbor’s yard.
“Hey, Bobby,” I said.
“What’s up, fuck face?” Bobby said politely. He didn’t look up at me: instead, he continued to stare through the range finder of his .22.
I watched him for a moment. “What’s all this?” I said.
“What’s it look like?” He pulled the trigger on the gun once: whoop. “I’m shooting shit.”
“You’re shooting dirt,” I observed.
“Yes,” Bobby agreed. He pulled the trigger again: whoop.
“Did your neighbor’s yard do something to you?” I asked.
Bobby looked up at me curiously for a moment. “Nothing in particular. Why?” He turned back to his gun and squeezed off another few rounds. Whoop, whoop, whoop. Clods of dirt and grass flew up from the perfect green turf of his next-door neighbor’s lawn.
“Hey, you got a silencer on there, huh?”
“Mm-hmm,” Bobby said. “Made it myself out of a plastic two-liter.”
Just as Bobby took aim at the next clod of dirt, the neighbor’s dog bounded out to investigate the odd, silent disturbance that was causing his yard to erupt magically from within.
Whoop.
Bobby’s rifle jerked up as the Labrador fell to the ground, dead.
“Holy shit!” Bobby croaked.
“You fucking asshole!” I shouted. “Goddamn you! You sick fuck!”
“Geez, James, don’t get so excited,” Bobby said, shaking a little and laughing nervously.
“Man, I should kill your dog, and see how you feel about it!”
“Chrissakes,” Bobby said. He removed the silencer from his gun. “Calm down. You’re acting like it was your girlfriend.”
Bobby handed me his rifle. Slowly, he climbed down from the roof. I watched as he walked into his neighbor’s yard and examined the dog, turning its head back and forth in his hands a few times, until he determined it was indeed dead. Then he lifted up the dog’s body, hefting up the deadweight in his arms. He carried the carcass over to an open trash can and threw it in.
“There,” he offered. “Feel better?”
——
One night, we were watching TV in Bobby’s dim house, and he was flipping channels. For the second in between each station, the house would go almost completely dark. Bobby’s house was always about three lamps short of being able to see.
“Jesse, you know George’s?”
“Sure. Up there on Magnolia and Riverside. Best cheeseburgers around.”
“Exactly. BUT, did you also know that Allan’s dating a chick who works there?”
Allan was Bobby’s older brother. To no one’s surprise, he was just as mental as Bobby. He was a dangerous fuck, actually. He would beat the shit out of Bobby and anyone else for the flimsiest of excuses.
“Didn’t know that.” I shrugged.
“I go there sometimes when she’s working—she lets me go behind the counter and stuff. Eat all the fries I want.”
“She cute?”
“She’s okay,” Bobby said shortly. “What I’m trying to tell you, Jesse, is that there’s a safe there.” He smiled broadly. “And I know the combination.”
“How’d you get it?”
“You don’t need to know. All I’m saying is . . . well, I think you see what I’m getting at.” He smirked. “That money could be ours.”
We waited a few days, and then, one night, after making sure his brother’s girlfriend wasn’t working, we pulled up behind the store in a boosted Ford Pinto. Not the best choice, but it was all we had been able to swipe at the last minute. It was just before closing time. Bobby killed the engine.
“Look, Bobby,” I said. “I don’t know about this.”
Bobby looked at me calmly. “You got that little gun with you, right?”
“Yeah, sure, I have the gun, of course,” I said, “but, Christ, I mean . . .”
“Fuck. You.” Bobby smiled. “Let me see it.”
I showed him the gun. It was a Ruger .357, a Security Six. The gun was my dad’s—I had lifted it out of his drawer that afternoon.
“Let me hold it.”
“I’m taking it in. It’s my gun.”
“Well, all right,” Bobby said, looking pleased. “Finally. You grew some balls, James. Tiny hairless ones, no doubt, but I’m proud of you just the same.” He took his backpack from beneath the front seat. “Got a little present for you.”
Bobby reached into the flimsy nylon sack, retrieving two worn blue ski masks. He handed one to me. “Put it on.”
Bobby and I both pulled on the masks. We checked ourselves out in the rearview for a second, impressed by what we saw. Over the course of just a few moments, we’d transformed from punk kids into badass monsters capable of fucking shit up on a major level. We huddled close together, a pair of teenaged shitheads wearing scratchy blue masks, breathing hard in Riverside, California, in a busted Pinto. The gun felt sweaty in my palm.
“Let’s go get some fucking money,” I whispered.
We strutted into the store, knocking over dishes and a trash can.
“Nobody fucking do anything!” Bobby yelled. “The first person who moves a single inch, my friend is gonna blow a hole in him!”
Only two customers were in the store: an old man reading a crumpled paper and a middle-aged guy with a lonely-looking burger in front of him. Both of them looked up, mild alarm registering.
Bobby walked up to the guy working the counter. “Don’t do anything stupid.” He motioned toward me and my gun. I nodded, not really sure what to do.
“Nobody fucking . . . move,” I ventured, lamely. I waved the gun.
Bobby laughed at me. “Now, I’m gonna go back and clean out the safe,” he explained to the clerk. “And if you so much as look at me, I’m gonna make sure you die tonight, understood?” He glanced toward me for emphasis.
Bobby slipped to the back and worked on the safe. “Fuck, I thought I knew this,” he muttered.
“You don’t remember the combination?” I hissed. I kept the gun trained on the customers and the clerk. They didn’t look very inclined to make sudden movements, but still. “You don’t remember it?”
“He doesn’t remember the combination,” the old man repeated.
“Shut up,” I snapped. “I heard him, okay?”
“I swear, man, I knew it yesterday,” said Bobby. He stood up and thought hard. “I probably should have written it down.”
“Let’s just go, man!”
“No way.” He looked at the clerk. “Hey, fuckhead, give me a hint. Is the first number twenty-one? Just tell me that.”
The clerk remained motionless for a second. I shook the gun in his face. “Tell him, asshole!”
He nodded nervously.
“It’s twenty-one!” I shouted.
“I knew it!”
>
“Let’s go,” I pleaded. “Goddammit!”
The safe clicked open. “There we go,” he crowed. He reached into the safe. His hands emerged holding an enormous stack of bills. Bobby turned toward me. “Do you understand why we didn’t bail out, buddy? God, there must be more than a thousand bucks here . . .”
“Can we fucking GO now?” I cried, the tension in my arms and neck unbearable. “Fucking please?”
“Of course, don’t have a nervous breakdown over it. We’re leaving right this very minute. You can put the piece away.” He motioned to my gun. I lowered it, trembling.
We stumbled out of the place, Bobby holding the money, rifling through it excitedly. When we stepped through the door, both of us broke out running, and as we exited, Bobby waved through the plate-glass window to our little audience of three.
——
Back in those days, my stepmom was a young chick named Joanna who couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old. I can still see her now: a rosy-cheeked, naïve blonde with a bubble butt and a Little Orphan Annie perm that circled her head like a curly yellow halo.
She wasn’t a bad lady, but she wasn’t equipped to deal with an irate fucker like me.
“Jesse, it’s dinnertime. Come to the table.”
“What’d you make this time?”
“Meat loaf!” She beamed. “Where’s your dad?”
“He’s probably doing shit,” I mumbled. “Making money . . . so he can support you.”
Joanna smiled cheerily at me, like she hadn’t heard a word. In fact, she probably hadn’t. I don’t remember her being the most attentive person I’d ever met. She never heard half the stuff I said to her, probably for the best.
“How was school, Jesse?”
“It’s still summer vacation.” I stared at her like she was stupid. “Are you serious?”
“Did you learn anything new?”
“Goddamn, I said,” my voice rising, “it’s summer, you friggin’ idiot. Are you simple?”
“Hey,” my dad said, emerging from the garage. “None of that crap in the house.” He looked tired, like he was working on some big issue. My dad was a big guy who refurbished antiques and sold junk for a living. He cut an imposing figure. He was bald on top, but he had a full beard and long hair in back. “What’s for chow?”
I pointed at the pan. “This shit.”
“Don’t say shit,” my dad said, frowning. “Your stepmom just worked for a long time to make that for you.”
“All I’m saying is, why does this meat loaf have hunks of Wonder Bread in it?” I asked. “I’m just interested.”
“That’s enough,” my dad warned.
“Bread meat loaf, with a side of ketchup,” I said. “Great combination there, Joanna.”
“Shut your mouth, Jess.” My dad glared at me. “Let’s eat in peace.”
My dad worked long hours. He was always wheeling and dealing—buying up auction lots, fixing up the crap he found, turning it into salable items. He was money hungry and talented at what he did; subsequently, his life was his business. He didn’t really have interests outside of it, as far as I could tell.
“I need you to come to the swap meet with me this weekend, Jesse.” My dad helped himself to a huge serving of Joanna’s meat loaf. “Help me unload the truck. I got a good feeling about this weekend. Gonna make a shit-ton of money if everything goes right.”
“Sure,” I said. I liked working for my dad. He paid plenty of attention to me, as long as I was laboring for him. “But hey, Dad, if I do it, can you spare a couple of bucks for school clothes? School’s gonna start up in a couple of weeks and—”
“Jesse, you know how tight things are right now.” He frowned. “I can hardly keep a roof over our heads.” He motioned to Joanna. “Now, look at your stepmom. She doesn’t bother me all the time for a bunch of new shit, does she?”
“No,” Joanna agreed. “I’m happy with the way things are.”
“But I don’t have any clothes for school, Dad.”
“I said no,” my dad snapped.
I huffed angrily. “But that’s not fair—I mean, I work for you and—”
My dad slammed his fist on the table. The plates jumped. “Shut the fuck up.” He turned to look at me with deep, angry eyes. “And quit fucking asking.”
“And eat your meat loaf,” Joanna added, quietly.
——
By now, you might be wondering why I’m not in prison or dead. The answer is simple: football. If I didn’t have football, I would have never made it. I am one hundred percent sure of this fact.
Ever since I started playing, I loved football more than anything else in my life. I was just primed for it: all the hurt and anger I felt growing up pulled me to the game, like a gravitational force. I was always a big kid—other kids’ parents used to complain about me when I was eleven or twelve, because I had a goatee. More than once, I had to bring my birth certificate to prove my age.
Once, an opposing coach demanded, “Let me see those gloves!”
“Huh? Why?” I had been hitting kids so hard, they fell back, unable to breathe.
“Because I got a pretty good feeling they’re filled with sand.”
He proceeded to produce a pocketknife and slash both of my gloves open—there was no sand, of course. All they contained was an oversized, angry fucker.
Football attracts all the crazies, for some reason. Gil Lake, my coach when I was kid, was absolutely out of his tree. He was the guy who taught me how to be mean.
Gil’s specialty was a drill called the Gauntlet, where all the kids on the team would line up about ten yards apart, and one by one, they’d run in and give one kid a hit. You always give the guy taking the hits a few moments between each knock, so he can recover—that’s just the way you do the drill. But when I would get up there, it was different.
“GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO!” Gil screamed. He was bombarding me with all the kids, not allowing them to give me a second between hits, even if they wanted to. It was like this crazy mosh pit, but with everyone in the pit trying to slam just one dude. He kept it going until I was on the ground. When one of the kids hesitated, Gil went nuts. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? YOU FUCKING HIT HIM ANYWAY!!!” So the rest of the kids proceeded to run up and hit me after I was on the ground.
Pretty soon, that kind of treatment made me tough. That guy made me into a monster. Soon enough, during hitting drills, I began to notice kids changing places in line, so they didn’t have to face me. That was when I knew I was good—when I realized people were scared of me.
Day of the big game. Gil went up to the other kids, all solemn and quiet and respectful. “I want you to have a good game, son, I need you to play tough for me . . .” You could see the encouraging effect of his voice. But then he came to me, last in line. He got up in my face, grabbed me. “YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” he growled. I looked up at him, terrified. His fingers dug into my shoulders. “YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU GET THE FUCK OUT THERE AND I WANT YOU TO KILL SOMEONE ON EVERY PLAY! WHAT DID I JUST SAY TO YOU?!”
“Kill someone!”
“THAT’S RIGHT!! IF YOU DON’T KILL SOMEONE ON EVERY PLAY, I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU!! WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT??”
“I’LL KILL THEM!!”
“WELL GODDAMMIT THEN, FUCKER—LET ME HEAR YOU ROAR!!!”
“RAAAAAAAARRRR!” I roared like a fucking beast. I get goose bumps just remembering it, because he totally got inside my head. I was so malleable, I really would have killed for him.
——
When high school started, I was sent to La Sierra, the crappiest public school in Riverside. The city had three nice schools, but those were not for me. I had grown even more over the summer, and although my face was still covered in acne, I was feeling less awkward in my own frame. I was still pretty shy and nervous when I wasn’t on the football field, but Bobby was right there by my side.
“James, we really hit the big time now. These high school girls are gonna shit w
hen they see us.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. First days were the worst, when you walked through unfamiliar hallways, not knowing anyone.
“I’m dead serious, Jess. God, I look so damn handsome, I’m gonna get laid a ton this year. That’s all I’m saying. Tell you what, after I take the virginity of a few chicks, I’ll pass ’em right over to you. How does that sound?”
I sighed. “I heard some guys on the football team want to kick our asses.”
That whole summer, there had been some chatter about how me and Bobby thought we were too tough for our own good, how we were going to get taught a lesson once we got to school. No one wants a freshman stealing his thunder, so I could see why the guys on the team might not have dug us all that much.
“So?” Bobby asked. He seemed genuinely confused as to why I would give it a second thought. A cute girl in tight jeans walked by, and Bobby’s eyes followed her down the hall hungrily.
“So, those guys want to kill us.”
“Fuck ’em,” Bobby said, tearing his gaze away from the girl’s perfect ass for the briefest second. “It’s not happening.”
Bobby’s attitude toward life was simple: fuck you. He was a tough kid who’d never been given anything by anyone. And you know, that’s how I wanted to feel, too. But in my head, things were always much more tangled up . . .
The bell rang.
“Class.”
“You go ahead,” he said. “I have pressing business to attend to.” He strode off in pursuit of that ass.
I walked down the hall slowly, watching the crowd part in front of me: permed-out cheerleaders and red-eyed stoners, math nerds and Mexicans, Dungeons-and-Dragons freaks in tight corduroys pressed up against gym rats walking the steroid swagger, Zeppelin dorks eyeing hair-metal chicks with horny hostility. And then I saw Tom Dixon, the captain of the varsity football team, coming toward me.
Dixon was an eighties jock dickhead straight out of Central Casting: a chick magnet with tight, white pegged pants, who must have owned the best Conair blow-dryer money could buy. He used it skillfully, creating a blond feathered ’do that winged out majestically. Tom stood in front of me, blocking my way.