October

by Michael Rowe

  “Well, you’d know more about crack then I would, you whore.” Bright red spots flamed on Gwen’s cheeks.

  Wroxy leaned forward and laughed in Gwen’s face. “At least my name isn’t ‘Whore-lick.’ And it’s never going to be ‘Whore-lick-Curtis.’ Of course,” Wroxy jeered, “neither is yours.” She turned her back on Gwen and Tina and began to gather her things.

  “We’ll see if you’re still laughing when your perverted queerboy gets what’s coming to him,” Gwen said behind her.

  Wroxy turned just in time to see Tina elbow Gwen in the ribs, mouthing Shut up! as she did. Gwen stared at Wroxy with frank loathing, unable to maintain the saccharine façade she had essayed earlier. For her part, Wroxy had matched the loathing watt for watt.

  “What did you say?” She took a menacing step toward Gwen, who flinched again but stood her ground. “What did you just say to me, Horlick?”

  “Never mind, bitch,” Gwen snapped. “You had your chance.”

  And that was the end of it. The girls had pivoted on their heels and swept past her. Wroxy had briefly contemplated grabbing a fistful of Gwen’s hair as she passed and ripping it out at the root, but she thought better of it. She realized a fight this close to class would only lead to a suspension, and would attract much more attention than she wanted. Gwen and Tina went to the back of the classroom and sat in their accustomed seats surrounded by their friends.

  Wroxy tried to concentrate on the lesson, but she was suddenly very afraid for Mikey. When she’d found him waiting for her outside the main doors of the school, standing as close as possible to the school buses, hands stuffed in his pockets, she’d hustled him off school property and into the coffee shop, where he’d told her the story while Wroxy had stared in disbelief.

  The late afternoon fall sunlight slanted through the plate-glass windows. It was easy light, flattering, golden and pellucid, but Mikey still looked like shit run over twice.

  Outside the windows, mothers with children safely in the back seats of their SUVs manoeuvred into the mall parking lot, expertly jockeying for the few remaining spaces. Groups of teenage girls, hair swinging in point-counterpoint to the sway of their newly full hips as they moved like a herd of painted gazelles through the lambent September afternoon, studiously ignoring the louche, slouching packs of teenage boys who trailed in their wake. They knew the boys would never be too far behind.

  Wroxy glanced briefly at the pageant of middle-class normalcy, then looked away in barely perceptible disdain. The supercilious pride in being part of the movement of an ordinary life, one that excluded any and all that weren’t ordinary, had a terrible cost, in her opinion.

  And she was sitting across from that cost. Silently she again damned the Shawn Curtises, the Gwen Horlicks, and the Dewey Verbinskis of the world. And she especially damned Jim Fields.

  “Do you want to stay over at my house tonight?” Wroxy offered. “We could tell your mother that we have a project. It’d be all right with my mom, I know. That way even if those guys came looking for you, they wouldn’t find you.”

  “My mom would never let me,” Mikey said. “She’d never let me stay at a girl’s house overnight.”

  “I’m not ‘a girl,’ I’m your best friend. Your mother has known me for three years.”

  “Even still.” He sighed. “No way would she ever let me.”

  “Your parents crack me up,” Wroxy said with bitter humour. “On one hand, they’re afraid you’re not enough of a man, but on the other hand you’re too much of a man to stay over at my house. Do they think you’d ravish me or something? Knock me up?”

  Mikey smiled wanly, momentarily distracted. “What do you think I should do? Do you think I should tell my parents about this?” Even as he said it, Mikey was already dismissing bringing his parents into it. His mother wouldn’t even be able to hear the word “jockstrap” without fainting, and he could imagine his father’s face turning purple with embarrassment at the whole situation. Mikey knew full well that his father would blame him somehow for the altercation with Shawn Curtis, even if only for being such an easy target, as though being a source of discomfort for “normal” boys was provocation enough to warrant violence. Mikey had no doubt about whose side his father would come down on if he’d been one of the boys in the locker room this afternoon. He knew that men like his father were what most of these boys would grow up to become.

  “Okay, let’s look at this situation rationally,” Wroxy said calmly, once again assuming the role of wise counsellor. “Do you think that Shawn Curtis really believed it was you? I mean, I know he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer—even for a football player. But do you think he really believes you’d be stupid enough to steal his jockstrap in the middle of a locker room full of people?”

  “He believes it.” Mikey shivered. “It’s so obvious that it was Dewey who did it. He planted the thing in my gym bag to embarrass Curtis on purpose. He wants something terrible to happen to me. He wants Curtis to beat me up. That’s why he did it. Dewey hates me.”

  “Dewey and Jim,” Wroxy corrected him sharply. “Goddamn it, get your head out of your ass, Childress. This crush of yours is going to kill you one of these days. They were in on it together. You know they were. They hate you. They both hate you.”

  Mikey sipped his cold coffee silently. He watched her over the rim of his cup.

  Wroxy sighed. “Okay, so he believes it. Do you think he can be reasoned with?”

  “Who, Dewey?” Mikey stared at her blankly. “What do you think?”

  “No, not Dewey!” Wroxy practically shouted. “Curtis! If we went over to his house right now and talked to him, do you think he’d listen to reason? What if we told him what happened? That Dewey and Jim hid that revolting thing in your bag to get you into trouble?”

  Mikey had never thought of his peers in terms of reason. The thought of going to Shawn Curtis’s house and confronting him filled Mikey with dread. But he knew that he had fewer options than ever. All afternoon he’d felt their eyes on him. He’d heard whispers and muffled, incredulous laughter. When he’d looked up, he’d faced disgusted stares and mocking smiles. But unlike the mocking smiles he’d endured for most of his life, he’d sensed in these a malignant undercurrent of anticipation. For the most part, Dewey—and beautiful Jim—watched him lazily, both expressionless save for Dewey’s signature half-smile that never touched his cold eyes.

  “Do you know where Shawn Curtis lives?” Mikey asked. He was warming to the idea of taking the situation directly to the source. He hoped that perhaps, away from the crowd, Curtis might be more prepared to listen to reason. As usual, Wroxy was right on the money.

  “No, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find him in the book. That stupid twat Gwen Horlick is always talking about him. She says he has his own telephone number. Apparently she called it once but was too scared to talk when he picked up. Pathetic. All we need to do is look for a Curtis, S with the same address as another Curtis. The other one should be his parents. Does he live in Milton or Auburn?”

  “Auburn, I think. I saw him outside St. Michael’s once with his family. I think they live over in the Estates,” Mikey said, naming an exclusive new subdivision being built north of town.

  “All right, hold on.” Wroxy got up and walked to the back of the coffee shop to the pay phones. She located the Milton-Campbellville-Auburn directory amid the jumble of regional phone books encased in hard black plastic, suspended on wires from the base of the pay phones. She opened it and riffled quickly through the dirty white pages, guiding her index finger down the column of names until she located Curtis, S on Blenheim Court in the Estates.

  “Blenheim Court,” she muttered disgustedly under her breath. “These people.” Then louder to Mikey she said, “Found him. Let’s go see what we can do.”

  [18]

  “Shawn’s busy right now,” said the expensively dressed older woman who answered the door of the sprawling new mock-Tudor on Blenheim Cour
t. The house sat on a field of dirt, the contractors not having yet had the time to lay down the sod for grass. Wroxy and Mikey deduced that the woman staring at them with ill-concealed disdain was Shawn’s mother. “He can’t come to the door. He’s with his dad.”

  Mikey shuffled his feet. “I’m in his class,” he said weakly. “My name is Mikey Childress. I just want to talk to him for a second. It won’t take long, I promise.”

  The woman stiffened. Her eyes turned flinty as she stared at Mikey and Wroxy. When she spoke, her voice was arctic. “I know who you are. You have a hell of a lot of nerve to show up at our house and ask for my son.”

  “Look, Mrs. Curtis, he didn’t do anything,” Wroxy said. “That’s the whole point. Your son’s friends set Mikey up, and now he just wants to talk to him and settle this. Would you get him, please? Like we said, it will only take a couple of minutes.”

  “As I said, young lady, my son has nothing to say to your friend. Please get off our property at once.” From behind the door Mikey heard the sound of muffled male voices. Mrs. Curtis half-turned toward them and said, “I’m handling this, Jeremy! Shawn, stay inside.”

  Mikey took a step forward and called out, “Shawn! I didn’t do it! Please let me talk to you!”

  “Go away!” Mrs. Curtis hissed, blocking the doorway. “Go back to where you came from! Get off our property or I’ll call the police! Or your parents! You need to get some help, son. You’re not normal!” She slammed the door in their faces. Mikey heard the bolt drawn on the other side.

  Wroxy looked at him mutely and spread her hands in a gesture of resignation. “Can’t say we didn’t try, Mikey. We really should tell your parents about this before something happens.”

  “We can’t,” he said. “They won’t believe I didn’t steal it.”

  “Yes they will! I’ll tell them, too! For God’s sake, we need to tell somebody or they’re going to kill you!”

  “I’m already dead,” Mikey said flatly. “I’m dead as shit.”

  That night, Mikey dreamed of swinging fists and broken bones. He dreamed of trying to dodge blows but being unable to. He dreamed of drowning in a warm red sea. He awoke gasping for air, his sheets drenched. Frantically he fumbled for the light switch, needed to see with his own eyes that his sheets were only soaked with sweat. Still, he touched his chest and side, feeling a phantom pain, looking for a wound, but there was none. His throat felt raw, as though he had been screaming.

  Mikey listened to the sound of the sleeping house all around him.

  “I’m alone,” he whispered, if only to hear a sound, any sound, even his own voice. He didn’t even think of Wroxy.

  This time, Mikey didn’t cry. He just hugged his pillow to his chest and tried to fall back to sleep with his bedroom light on.

  [19]

  They lay in wait for nearly two weeks. During that time, Mikey was left alone.

  Later he would realize that it was likely deliberate, intended to establish distance. To Mikey, though, at the time, it was a period of blissful peace unlike any he could recall in high school. That in itself should have given him a sense of alarm but, forever optimistic, he dared to allow himself to imagine that Shawn Curtis and his friends had either forgotten about punishing him, or that Dewey Verbinski and Jim Fields had confessed their prank to Curtis, who, in turn, was keeping quiet about it out of embarrassment over how angry he’d gotten. In the alien, masculine world Mikey pictured these boys inhabiting, he imagined they settled these situations according to arcane rituals of fraternal bonding, like men. Stoically, privately.

  “I think it’s going to be okay,” he told Wroxy happily as they sat on the grass of Rotary Park beside the millpond in Milton as the warm Indian summer sunlight faded from the sky. “I think they’re over it.”

  Wroxy wasn’t so sure. “Be careful,” she said. “It’s too early. Just watch your back.”

  Even as Wroxy said it, she was secretly, cautiously optimistic. She didn’t want Mikey to lower his guard and start calling attention to himself, but at the same time she had sensed a loosening of the tension in the hallways and in the classroom. She’d cast a protection spell over Mikey on the day he’d told her about the incident. She was daring to believe the spell had been one of her more successful conjurations. When they parted, she told him that her powers were keeping him safe.

  The September days were indeed achingly warm and sweet, but at night, the air turned cold. This classic early-autumn weather was coaxing from the leaves a foretaste of the glorious sourball colours that would burn like a low flame all through October and into November.

  That night, Mikey put on a sweater and took his bicycle out for a ride, his first night ride since the one in August when he’d seen the witches. The terror of that night had receded in his memory, and he was more than prepared now to accept Wroxy’s explanation of what he’d seen. He was sad about the goat—that part he knew he’d really seen—but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He inhaled the sweet night air as the wind blew his hair away from his forehead.

  Mikey pedalled past the dark shop windows on Main Street. He turned left up Lilac Lane, passing the red brick Auburn Library. He zipped down dark streets, passing the high school, and circled the outskirts of town. He looked over toward the hulking stone shoulders of the escarpment. Beneath the wheels of his bicycle, the smooth paved road gave way to rumbling dirt. Above him, the bright September moon waxed in the night sky.

  Mikey didn’t notice the car tailing him with its lights off until it was much, much too late.

  [20]

  When the car careened toward him, tires screaming against the road, Mikey swerved to avoid getting hit. He lost his balance, and the bike veered sharply, then crashed into the ditch.

  Agony sang through his shoulder as he felt sharp rock and gravel shear through the soft wool of the sweater, ripping the skin of his arms. The crossbar smashed into his solar plexus, knocking the air out of him. Gasping for breath and prone, he heard the car doors open, then slam shut. At dirt level, he saw five pairs of thick legs walk with measured steps to the place where he lay bleeding, face scratched and smudged with dirt. He looked up and saw Curtis, Dewey, Jim, and two others, older guys he’d seen around town but could only vaguely place. One of them swung a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, tapping it in almost absentminded rhythm against his thigh.

  “We told you, you were going to wish you’d never been born, queerboy,” Shawn Curtis said. His voice was slurred. Mikey caught the sharp, sour smack of stale whiskey on his breath.

  They fell on him like a storm.

  After the first blow, Mikey lost count.

  [21]

  He limped home, pushing his bicycle ahead of him when it became too painful to ride it, weaving slowly down the dark, pristine streets of Auburn. He didn’t get to his house until nearly ten o’clock. If his parents had been home—his father was working late and his mother was at church—Mikey knew they would have been angry at him for being out so late, and he was only mildly comforted at the thought that if they had seen him, broken and dirty and bleeding, they would have felt bad for their anger.

  Ultimately, though, it didn’t make any difference. He could never tell his parents what had happened.

  “You tell them you almost got hit by a car and fell off your bike,” Shawn Curtis had said when the beating was finished. His breathing was stertorous and laboured. The whiskey hit Mikey like another slap when Curtis leaned in close, pushing his face into Mikey’s. “You tell them you fell into a ditch and hurt yourself bad. You say one word about what happened here and you die, got it? You’ll find out what happens to faggots in this town.”

  Mikey could only nod. The filthy jockstrap was still stuffed in his mouth. Before gagging him with it, they had taken turns urinating on it while Shawn Curtis held him down, pressing Mikey’s face into the dirt.

  “C’mon, let me use the bat,” whined one of the guys Mikey didn’t know. “C’mon, the little f
uck will never tell. It’s awesome, man. We used one on a queer in the city last summer. Shoulda heard him scream.”

  “Shut up, asshole.” Dewey sounded regretful, like he wished he didn’t have to be the voice of reason. “You wanna go to jail?”

  “Yeah, shut up, asshole,” Jim parroted loyally. “Dew is right. You wanna go to fuckin’ jail?”

  “I could fix it so no one would ever find this faggot ever again.”

  “Both of you shut up!” Shawn Curtis screamed. He grabbed Mikey by the front of his shirt with one hand, lifting him up off the road. With the other hand, he roughly snatched the piss-soaked jockstrap out of Mikey’s mouth. He let go of Mikey’s shirt and Mikey fell back hard on the ground. Curtis leaned in again. He thrust his index finger in Mikey’s face. “Remember what I said, Childress. Not one word. And if you ever come near me again, your life won’t be worth living, I swear to fucking God.”

  Mikey had nodded mutely. After one last hard, threatening stare, Curtis had stood up and walked back to the car. The others followed. Mikey heard the ignition and the car started to life. The last in the car was Jim Fields, who turned back slowly to face Mikey.

  Jim smiled, almost playfully, then placed his finger on his lips and said, “Shhhhh.” He winked, then climbed into the back seat.

  As the car drove away Mikey tasted piss and dirt. And he tasted something new, something other than pain and sadness and loneliness and fear.

  For the first time in his life, Mikey Childress tasted hate.

  [22]

  At home he peeled off his dirty, bloodstained clothes and placed them in a garbage bag. He examined his body in the mirror. The boys had been brilliantly efficient in their work. Although much of his body was black and blue, they had very cleverly left his face and neck alone. He could cover up his bruises with a turtleneck. Gym class would be another matter entirely, but he had no illusions that any of the other guys in his class would blow the whistle. They likely all knew about it anyway, he thought viciously. They were all in on it. Besides, he’d been told what to tell people. He’d fallen off his bicycle, remember? Clumsy, stupid wimpfuck that he was.