Читать книгу A Question of Manhood - Robin Reardon - Страница 10

I can barely stand to remember what I felt the next day, when Chris left. I hadn’t slept at all, I’d just lain there all night feeling like those SADEYE balls had all been shot directly at me. I had the pain in my chest and my gut to prove it.

I went over in my head all the things that might have happened to make Chris gay. Was Mom too affectionate toward him, and it hadn’t happened to me because he was her favorite? Did Dad push him too hard, and Chris decided that being gay would be a quiet, internal way to fight back? Did it have anything to do with being over there with all those guys, girls hardly ever available, and being—you know—in his prime? Was it something Mason had talked him into, and it was better than nothing, and now Chris just thought he was gay because he’d—I don’t know, done stuff with Mason and it had felt good?

It didn’t make any sense. I had to hold myself back several times from running into his room and telling him to go AWOL, to go to Canada right now, I’d go with him, and we’d figure out how he could change back again. But I knew he’d never do that. He’d never back out, he’d never leave his squad like that, or go back on something Dad expected him to do.

Dad! This was all his fault. Chris had practically told me that Dad had pressured him into signing up. But there was nothing for it now; it was done. And Chris wasn’t about to undo it.

So that left me being mad at Chris for being such a goody-goody. But if he left here tomorrow, with me mad at him, and then he died…my mind wouldn’t go there. So instead it went to a different place: Chris was wrong about being gay, and he wasn’t going to die. Lots of guys came home! Some of them were missing limbs, and some of them were pretty crazy, but they came home. If only Chris could survive another few months, the war would end and he could come home for good and I could help him be normal again!

Through all of it, every imagined set of events, every possible outcome, his words echoed: “I don’t think I’ll be coming back.”

My mind went round and round like this, all night. So in the morning, even though it was still dark, even though Chris was as quiet as he could be, I knew he was up. I knew he was in the bathroom. I watched all his motions in my mind’s eye. Soaping his hair in the shower. Shaving as he stood by the sink, towel around his waist. I knew when he was back in his room, dressing—pulling on his underwear, his fatigues, his socks. Running a comb through still-damp hair. Such ordinary things. Such a fucking extraordinary day.

I lay in bed as long as I could, but when I heard him move toward the top of the stairs I sat up and swung my legs over the side of my mattress. Hands pressing on either side of me, I was ready to propel myself out there. To Chris. Hold on to him! Hang on, don’t let him go down those stairs! My arms tensed, relaxed a little, tensed again.

And then I heard him start down, feet landing heavily with the weight of his duffle. Step. Step. Step.

You could still get to him!

Step. Step.

My entire face clenched, my hands tensed into tight balls. And I sat there. I sat there until the steps stopped, until I heard the duffle hit the floor downstairs.

I could smell breakfast; Mom must have got up incredibly early, ’cause it was pancakes and bacon. Hurriedly I wet my hair, washed my face, and threw on some clothes.

As usual, I sat across the table from Chris. Dad wasn’t down yet, so it was just the three of us. No joking today, though. No girlish silliness from Mom. No teasing from Chris. Every so often Mom would stand behind his chair and reach out a hand to touch his shoulder, his ear, the side of his face.

Chris’s last meal.

It felt like we were going to a funeral. And in a way we were; but the deceased was here with us. All through the meal I threw glances at Chris. Mostly he was staring down at his plate, but I didn’t dare really look at him for fear he’d raise his eyes and see me.

Dad showed up after Chris and I had finished. Or, after we had tried to finish. As good as it smelled, as good as Chris knew it would be compared to anything he’d get ever again, neither of us could get much down. Dad didn’t even try. He just grabbed a mug of coffee and sat down. I think he was trying to sound cheerful, but the effect was startling and harsh.

“All set, son? Got yourself all put together for the trip?” His voice was too loud.

“Yes, sir.” It was like Chris was getting into the habit again; he didn’t usually call Dad “sir.”

Dad saluted, and Chris did the same. He was gonna be himself, right to the end. Doing his best to keep everybody happy, to do what was expected of him. It nearly made me lose the little food I’d been able to swallow.

Chris had a cab pick him up. At first this made me mad; why couldn’t Dad take a little extra time from work and drive him? But then I realized Chris probably wanted his last memories of us—and ours of him—to be here, at home, not in some crowded public place that had no meaning for him. As soon as the car arrived, Mom got Chris into this hug that I didn’t think would ever end. When it did, Dad shook his hand and turned it into a kind of quick, hard hug that wasn’t really a hug but was more a series of slaps on the back.

Chris and I looked at each other. He half smiled, and he made a motion that made it seem like he was going to hug me. I stepped back quickly and my hand shot up in a salute. It was all I felt I could do. You know how in the service, even if you hate your commanding officer, or even if you think he’s completely wrong about something, you still salute? It was like that. It was a sign of respect, but it felt like I was doing it at his funeral.

It was also a silent acknowledgment: I’ll keep your fucking secrets, but I don’t have to thank you for that honor.

His face went all stiff, and then he saluted back. Then he picked up his gear, turned, and walked out the door. I watched through the window as he got into the backseat. The slam of the car door was like a pistol shot.

For Thanksgiving, the one on the calendar, we had turkey leftovers. Mom had bought some wine, something we almost never have in the house, and she even let me have a glass of it. I can’t say I liked it particularly, but I drank it; I think she was trying to pretend we could be cheerful. And Dad was doing his best, too. I was the lump. I was the one who knew Chris wasn’t coming home. I was the one who knew he wasn’t the man we’d all thought he was.

After dinner I went upstairs and threw the Ho Chi Minhs into the back of my closet. Then I stood in the doorway to Chris’s room for maybe half an hour. Then I went into my room and pounded my pillow until I heard Mom calling up from downstairs.

“Paul? What are you doing up there? Aren’t you going to come down and watch the movie with us?”

A rerun of Peter Pan. Hell, why not? I could use a little fantasy right now. But all the way through I kept making this connection between Wendy not being able to go home and Chris probably never coming home, and her problems seemed so pathetically unimportant compared to Chris’s. Compared to mine. I just watched in glum silence. Didn’t even want another piece of pie when Mom offered it.

That Sunday, lying in bed listening to the sounds of Mom and Dad getting toast and coffee before they headed out to church, I almost got up to go with them. I felt really shitty about the way I’d let Chris leave—no hug, no handshake. So what if he was a fag? He was still my brother. And so what if he was afraid? Anyone in their right mind would be terrified of that place. Look at how I’d reacted to nothing more threatening than my own imagination that day in the basement. And here I’d let him slip away, back to the jungle to die, without even a real good-bye.

I was still thinking along those lines when I heard the car pull away from the house. Some little voice was whispering, Get up! Go the window and watch them drive away, follow the car with your eyes as far as you can or they might never come back! If something happens it will be your fault for not being with them!

Stupid, right? But my hands had to clench the sheet under me so that I couldn’t dash to the window and watch the car disappear. Then there was silence, and this intense feeling of being completely alone.

Damn Chris, anyway! Why did he have to burden me with his fucking secrets? I’d had to listen to Dad for days, talking about how great Chris had looked, what a good soldier he was, with Mom adding what a handsome man he was growing into. Then Dad would go on about how bravely he was facing everything “over there.” I’m surprised nobody noticed the blood dripping out of the corners of my mouth! I mean, I was biting my tongue so much, and so hard, to keep from telling them how wrong they had it. How they didn’t know him at all. How I was the only one who really did.

So I lay there for a long time, feeling guilty about the way I’d treated Chris and wishing I’d gone with my folks to church, and feeling like the weight of what Chris had laid on me was what made me unable to get up and go with them.

If I can’t go to church and pray for your safety, big brother, it’s your own goddamn fault.

Like that made any sense. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and held my breath to keep tears in. I missed him so much! So fucking much! And now I felt like I’d never have him back. Even if he was wrong about dying over there, if he couldn’t go back to being normal I felt like he’d never be my brother again.

I tried to focus on what being gay was all about, tried to figure it out so maybe I could help undo it, but trying to think about that was like grabbing a fish underwater. I could sort of see it, and I could get close but not close enough. And sometimes I could feel it, but that was all.

What did come to mind clearly was the time Marty Kaufman and I had decided to teach this nerd a lesson. I couldn’t figure out at first why my mind went there, but I guess it was an indirect way to think about something that was too uncomfortable for me to look at directly. Kind of like if you want to see a star in the sky, you have to look off to the side a little.

I was fourteen. Marty—who’d been held back in sixth grade—was fifteen, and the nerd, Anthony (a.k.a. Don’t-Call-Me-Tony), was only thirteen because he’d been accelerated a grade at some point. This one year Anthony had seriously over-stepped his usual level of priggishness. He’d always been kind of a teacher’s pet, always won prizes for things like spelling bees and giving the best speech, always got high marks for everything—especially math. And always lording it over us dummies. Or so it seemed like, anyway. Looking back, I think maybe he wasn’t. I think maybe he was just trying to make us think he wasn’t afraid of us, ’cause that would have been the worst.

Anyway, at the start of that school year, it didn’t take him very long to let us all know that he’d been to this summer camp for math geniuses, and it became obvious real fast that this experience had given him some superinflated idea of his own worth as a human being. Like because he was so smart, he was more important than the rest of us.

I suppose that if there were two kids in class who would take this the hardest, it was gonna be me, because of always feeling like the bad kid in the family, and Marty, who really was the bad kid in the family. He’d already run away like, three times? He’d been caught stealing records, he’d broken into the high school once with Kevin Dodge and they’d smashed as much glass in the chem lab as they could find, stuff like that.

Since my last name’s Landon and Marty’s is Kaufman, we’ve usually sat either next to each other or me behind him since sixth grade on. He was the sort of kid who’s always thinking of new ways to get into trouble. You could usually tell when he was hatching something; his head would sink a little into his shoulders, and his light brown eyes would look at you sort of sideways from under the nothing-brown eyebrows. He wasn’t too much of a threat in sixth grade—at least, not to me—but with each year he got taller and a little more threatening. And it always seemed as though his hair was just a little longer than it should be, like proving he was defying something. I sort of had to make friends with him, or it would have been hell. But I’d managed to avoid getting sucked into the worst of his schemes. Until Anthony came back from math camp.

And it was just too good. Too tempting. It was Marty’s idea. I don’t say that to get out of any of the blame, just to be clear that it was his genius. And it was genius.

You know that expression that goes, “It seemed like a good idea at the time”? Well, we literally kidnapped Anthony one Monday afternoon, on the way home from school. Marty had skipped out on his last class so he could go home and sneak off with his mom’s car. She’d gone with a friend to a bridge party, or some such thing, and the car was there for the taking. He had a learner’s permit, not the full license, but Marty wasn’t one to let a thing like that stop him.

He picked me up at school, and we headed off in the direction Anthony would walk to get home. He was walking alone, par for the course; who’d walk with him? Marty slowed the car way down to roll alongside, and I rolled my window down to get his attention.

“Hey, Tony, wanna lift?”

He glared at me and then stared straight ahead. It took a few seconds, but finally he couldn’t stand it, and he said, “Don’t call me Tony.”

“Aw, don’t be so stiff. C’mon, let us give you a ride home. Whad’ya say?”

He looked hard at me, and I think we almost had him, but then he looked at who was driving. “No, thanks. I’m fine.” He picked up his pace and moved ahead of us.

I fished a rope from the floor by my feet. One end was tied into a slipknot. And then I tried once more. “Anthony? You sure?”

He didn’t even look at me this time. “I’m sure.”

I could tell he was getting a little nervous. I rolled up my window and looked at Marty like it was now or never. He nodded and pulled a little ahead of Anthony, I jumped out and threw the rope over the kid, and then I shoved him into the back. He started screaming right away, and I almost didn’t want to take the time to pick up his books, but I did. I threw them into the back, and one of them hit the side of his head. I looked to make sure he was okay, and he was staring at me, stark-raving terror on his face. At least it had shut him up.

Marty drove out to a dirt road and followed it to the edge of this field where there was a tree he was headed for. We tied each of Anthony’s hands separately around the tree, and did the same with his feet. It made the rest of his body stand out, vulnerable, helpless.

Anthony was crying by this time. At first he tried pleading with us. “Please, don’t. Don’t do this. I never did anything to you. Please.” Every so often he’d snuffle or sob. Marty and I just ignored him, and finally he gave up begging.

When we had him sufficiently trussed, we sat on the ground. Trying to look casual, I reached for a grass stalk and sucked on it. Marty looked at me and laughed. “Fuck that shit!” he said, and pulled a pack of Camels out of his shirt pocket; didn’t offer me one, which was good ’cause I wouldn’t have known what to do. He lit up, took a few puffs, then got up and went close enough to blow a lungful of smoke into Anthony’s face. I was getting a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to control Marty if he decided he wanted to do something really awful, so I tried to get him back to our program. I picked up my copy of our math book for that year.

“Hey Marty, you wanna start?”

Marty stood where he was, his nose inches from Anthony’s wet face, for another few seconds. “Yeah. Sure. Gimme the book.”

He plopped down on the ground to my left and flipped the book open at random. “Okay, Tony, now here’s the rules. I’m gonna ask you a question, and you answer. Only you won’t know whether I want the right answer or a wrong answer. Paul here is gonna facilitate. Keep score. However you wanna look at it. See, before I ask you the question, I’m gonna write on this piece of paper here”—and he snapped his fingers at me so I’d give him the pen and the pad we’d brought—“either R or W. Then, if I wrote R and you give me the right answer, Paul’s gonna cut through a little bit of rope with this.” He leaned forward and lifted his pants leg, and strapped to his ankle was a leather sheath. He’d told me we’d have a knife, but I hadn’t quite expected this lethal-looking thing. It was a dagger. As Marty lifted it out carelessly, using the same hand holding his cigarette, the late afternoon sun caught the metal and it sent this ray of light shooting toward me.

Marty went on. “If I wrote W and you give the right answer”—here he stood up and moved back over to Anthony—“I’m gonna cut away some part of your clothes.” He put the cig between his lips and tossed the dagger into the air. Anthony’s eyes followed it. Marty caught it and then plucked the cig out of his mouth. “In case you haven’t got the full picture,” he said, “if I wrote R and you give me the wrong answer, it’s your clothes, not the rope. Got it?”

Anthony’s eyes were locked on to Marty’s. He nodded shakily, but he nodded.

Back on the ground next to me, Marty picked up the book. And he took his time browsing for just the right question. Cig back in his mouth, he ran the forefinger of his right hand down page after page, all the while toying with the dagger in his left hand. Finally he slammed the book shut and stabbed the dagger into dirt. “We don’t need this,” he mumbled. He picked up the pen, leaned over the pad where it rested between us on the ground, wrote “R,” and asked Anthony, “What’s one plus one?” He tossed the book aside.

Marty was right; we didn’t need the book. The joke was going to be that Anthony had to guess whether Marty wanted the right answer or a wrong one. And, even more, it was a test to see if Anthony could bring himself to give a wrong answer to a math question.

Anthony was making a kind of squealing whining noise, like he couldn’t stand the strain. Marty grabbed the dagger and stood in front of him again. “Is that calculation too tough for you, whiz kid? Y’know, my grandparents were German. There’s a German word for kids like you. Wunderkind.”

Anthony stopped whining. He took a couple of rasping breaths and said, “Wunderkind.” He was correcting Marty’s pronunciation, so the W sounded like a V, and the d on the end sounded like a t. “It’s Wunderkind.”

Did this kid have a death wish? Marty balanced the lit cigarette between his lips and tossed the dagger from one hand to the other a few times, dangerously close to Anthony’s nose. Then, around the cigarette, he said, “That wasn’t the question, asshole. Just for that, you lose a sleeve.”

With his left hand he pinched up a layer of cloth at Anthony’s left shoulder, sliced through it, and then started to carve through the cloth. He pulled Anthony forward so he could cut behind him, the ropes cutting into skin from the pressure. Then Marty sliced slowly down the sleeve, inch by inch, toward the hem. Thank God it was a short sleeve, or I’m not sure Anthony could have taken it. He kept squinting his eyes tight shut, and then opening them wide to watch Marty’s progress, then squinting them shut again, all the while trying not to cough from Marty’s smoke—probably terrified that a cough would cause Marty to cut skin.

Marty held the cut sleeve remnant in front of Anthony’s face, then put it over his nose, and said, “Blow.” There was panic on the poor kid’s face by now, like he was afraid Marty was gonna suffocate him, and he just stared wildly.

“Blow your fucking nose, crybaby!”

Anthony did what he could, but he was having trouble getting his breath. When Marty was satisfied, he pulled the cloth away, laid it on top of Anthony’s head, and rubbed the snot into his hair. Marty left the cloth there, a corner covering one of Anthony’s eyes.

Back on the ground again, dagger stabbed into dirt and cigarette in his left hand, Marty resumed his role as inquisitor. “Now, Wunderkind,” he said, pronouncing it the same way he had the first time, “what’s the answer?”

Anthony whimpered, sobbed once or twice, and finally whispered, “Two.”

“Eh? Speak up, Tony. I can’t hear you. What was that you said?”

Anthony tried to take a deep breath and obviously failed, but he managed to say, “Two,” a little louder.

Marty sat back, took another puff of the cig, observed Anthony for several seconds, and then slowly reached for the dagger. After he’d dragged out the suspense as long as he could, he handed the dagger to me. “You know what you have to do.”

Now, Marty had written “R” before he asked this, so I knew I was to cut some rope. I also knew that Marty was trying to make Anthony think he’d made the wrong choice and that Marty had decided to give me the honor of cutting more clothing. But I wasn’t in the mood for delaying agony, so I was going to cut Anthony’s right hand loose.

Before I got close to the rope, though, Marty called to me, “Not all of it, Paul. Just cut maybe an eighth of the way through. After all,” and his voice was silky, “we seem to have more clothing than we have ropes. We want to be fair, don’t we?”

Marty had written “R” again before I sat down, and he called out, “What’s one plus two?”

Anthony gritted his teeth, probably feeling a little encouraged that Marty had kept his word on that last one and had cut rope. But the secret wasn’t in the right answer. It was in the right choice. “Five.”

I looked at Marty, whose face was pursed into fake disappointment. “Oh, Tony. Too bad, kid.” Marty stubbed his cig out in the dirt, reclaimed the dagger from me, and moved slowly over to the tree. Anthony looked anxious but not terrified, which was probably too bad for him. Marty stared at his face, then squatted down in front of him.

“No!” Anthony found his voice. His head jerked, and the snotty sleeve fell to the ground.

“Ha!” Marty shouted. “Wrong answer again!” He grabbed a handful of cloth right over Anthony’s groin, and the gasp I heard told me that Marty had also grabbed a handful of flesh. Very, um, sensitive flesh. He pinched his fingers together hard, working the cloth slowly away from what was undoubtedly Anthony’s dick, and then he lifted the dagger.

Anthony wasn’t whimpering any longer. He was crying, now, crying out, sobbing and begging. “Please! Please don’t! Stop it! What do you want?”

And to my surprise, Marty stopped. He let go of Anthony, lowered the arm with the dagger, and stood up. “You’re hard as metal in there, Tony. Do you know that? Your puny little dick is all excited. I think it’s enjoying this.”

Anthony’s eyes widened and his mouth hung open. “No!” was all he could say. “No!”

“Oh, but I think it is. Just look.” Marty stepped back and to one side. “Paul, do you see that?”

And Marty was right. Anthony had a boner. There was no denying it. Marty leaned toward him. “Tony? Is there something you haven’t told us?” Anthony just shook his head, desperate to understand, probably willing to do anything Marty said if it would get him out of this. “Oh, I think there is.” Marty reached forward and with the flat side of the dagger he slapped a few times at Anthony’s boner. Anthony flinched with every touch. Then Marty worked the blade up and down, sliding over the bulge and along the fly, then picked at the edge of the cloth with the metal point.

I can only imagine what Anthony was going through. But I’d had enough. “Look, Marty, I think we’ve got what we wanted.” Marty turned to look at me, and I got a hint of what he’d been boring into Anthony. It scared the shit out of me. But I couldn’t let this go on. “Just shove the snot rag down his back and we’ll cut him loose. We can dump him someplace he can walk home from.” I was having trouble breathing, praying it didn’t show. Praying Marty wouldn’t realize how scared I was.

“What was it we wanted, Paul? What have we got now?” I hated the tone of his voice.

I shrugged, trying once more to look casual. “Humiliate him. Take him down a peg. Show him that just because he’s smart doesn’t mean he’s invincible. I think we’ve done that.” I nearly added, “Don’t you?” but I wasn’t sure enough of the right answer.

Marty paced slowly back and forth in front of Anthony. At least I’d got him to stop pointing that dagger at the kid’s groin. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling quite—what’s the word? I’m sure Tony here would know. What’s the word I’m not quite feeling, Tony?”

Anthony closed his eyes and fought for breath.

“Mollified!” Marty shouted, and Anthony’s eyes flew open again. “I’m not quite mollified.” He started laughing. “Mollified. Like Molly, get it? Like Moll?” He laughed some more, looked at me like I should be getting the joke. I offered a weak smile, which was all I could muster; I wasn’t getting it. “Molly. The gangster’s Moll. You know, kid,” and Marty stopped right in front of the tree, hands on hips and dagger dangling from one hand, “I don’t think I’ll call you Tony ever again. I know you don’t like it. So I’m going to mollify you.” He threw his head back and barked out one more guffaw. “From now on, you’re Moll. You’re my bitch, kid.”

Marty moved forward again, dagger pointing upward now, directly under Anthony’s nose. “Tell me that suits you. Go on. But don’t nod, or you might lose a nostril.”

Anthony’s eyes were crossing so hard they must have hurt, trying to see the point of that dagger. He couldn’t move, and he couldn’t say anything, was my guess. Marty tilted the blade so that it was pointing toward the tip of Anthony’s nose now, but he pulled his hand away about a foot.

“Come on, Moll. Say that suits you.” He started moving the blade forward.

Anthony’s squeal started again, and just before the blade point would have met skin he whimpered, “Okay.”

Marty pulled the blade back an inch. “Okay, what? Come on, you little faggot, tell me it suits you. Tell me you liked having a guy’s dagger so close to yours. Tell me you got hard because you’re queer. Say that’s why I can call you Moll.”

Anthony was struggling to oblige him, I think, but he couldn’t quite decide what words to start with. I got up and moved over to them.

“Anthony, just nod if it’s okay for Marty to call you Moll.” Anthony’s eyes veered over to mine, and he nodded. “Nod that it’s because you’re queer.” I couldn’t let the kid off too easy, or Marty would keep at him. He nodded again.

Marty said, “Nod because you’re my bitch, faggot.”

Anthony squeezed his eyes shut and, once more, nodded.

Slowly Marty lowered his arm and slid the dagger back into its sheath. He punched my arm and said, “C’mon, Paul. Let’s get outta here. This kid is pathetic.” He moved toward the car.

“But…he’s still tied up. And we have to take him home.”

Marty was standing beside the open driver’s door. He pounded a fist on the roof. “Leave him!” he shouted at me.

There was this tense moment when we stared at each other over the car roof, and then he pounded it once more, got in, roared the engine to life, and gunned it, shooting gravel in all directions. I watched until I couldn’t see the car anymore, just dust hanging in the air over the dirt road. Then I turned to the tree.

Anthony’s head was hanging down, and he was sobbing quietly. He knew the worst was over, but he also knew his life was going to be hell from now on. I didn’t know what to say, so I just worked at the knots, cursing Marty for disappearing with the knife. And the car. How the hell were we going to get back? And Anthony’s books were in the back of Marty’s car. Come to that, so were mine.

When he was free of the ropes Anthony glared at me, still crying, and ran off down the road. I guess I didn’t blame him, but I’d been thinking we ought to work together to figure out the best way to get home. On the other hand, I sure as hell didn’t know what to say to him.

I picked up the ropes, my math book, the pen, and the pad of paper we’d been using, and walked down the road until I found enough scrub along the side to shove all but my book into a spot where they’d be hard to see. A lot of the plants were the kind with dark, dusky green, flat leaves that smell sort of sweet and sort of sour when you touch them. I think it’s called sweet fern, but I’ve never liked it, and now I stunk of it all up my arms.

Five minutes later I heard an engine coming up behind me. I turned and saw a light blue pickup, some guy who looked like a farmer behind the wheel. He slowed down when he came alongside me. There was a dog in the truck bed.

“Need a ride, kid?”

Hadn’t I just offered a ride to Anthony? I almost said no, but I really didn’t want to walk all the way home. Plus, the guy looked harmless. “Thanks,” I said as I slid onto the seat and pulled the door shut.

“What’re you doin’ out this way, and on foot?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Horsing around with a friend. Wheelies, you know. But he got pissed about something and took off.”

The guy nodded, like he’d probably done stuff like that himself. Then he jerked his chin toward the road ahead and said, “That your friend, by any chance?”

I looked up the road, and there was Anthony, shuffling along, head hanging down. Christ, I was thinking; don’t stop! Please don’t stop! All I said was, “My friend drove off in his car.”

“His shirt’s ripped.” The driver pulled a little ahead of Anthony, who didn’t even look up. The farmer stopped the truck, got out, and went over to him. “You okay, kid? Need a lift?”

Anthony’s head came up to look at the driver, then he turned to look at the truck and saw me. He shook his head violently and shoved past the guy.

“Hey! Kid!”

Anthony started running, but he stayed on the road. The guy got back in the truck, pulled forward so he was a ways ahead of Anthony, and got out again. I turned to watch as he took Anthony’s shoulders in his hands, shook him a little, and finally threw an arm around his shoulders, propelling him toward the truck. Anthony looked as though he was trying like hell not to cry.

I was sure neither of us wanted to sit on this seat, thighs touching, after what had happened. After what I’d done. I got out. “I’ll ride in the back,” I said, knowing that there was a distinct possibility that Anthony would spill his guts to the farmer. I hopped into the bed and got as comfortable as I could on a burlap bag full of something, across from the dog, a Border collie, who was tied to a heavy piece of equipment.

The guy shut the passenger side door after Anthony climbed in, and then he leaned his arms on the side of the truck bed next to the dog, staring at me. “What’s going on?”

It was Marty who got me into this mess. This isn’t really my problem. “The kid’s a jerk,” I said, wondering even as I said it where I thought this was going to get me. “We were just teaching him a lesson. We didn’t hurt him. He’s fine.” The guy stared at me until I had to drop my gaze. I felt heat flowing up my neck and into my face.

“Where do you live?” After I told him he said, “We’re taking this kid home, and then we’re taking you home. After that, you’re on your own.” He walked around the back of the truck to get to the driver’s side, but before he opened his door he said to me, “You’re a bully, you know that, kid? You can’t sink much lower than that.”

We bounced along the dirt road until the guy turned onto paved surface. There was another ten minutes, maybe, to Anthony’s house. So I was stuck back here until then. And maybe I wouldn’t even get into the cab after we dropped the kid off.

Then again, it would get me away from this dog. He kept staring at me. It was like he was saying, “Are you proud of yourself, you big, big boy?” I tried waving a hand in his face, but he barely flinched and just kept staring. In case you don’t know, Border collies are about the most intelligent dogs there are. There’s a joke that goes, How many Border collies does it take to change a lightbulb, and the answer is one, but he won’t get to it until he’s checked to make sure the wiring in the house is up to spec. Dad’s joke.

It was my Dad who told me about Border collies. And German shepherds. And standard poodles. And Australian shepherds. He likes the intelligent dogs best, I think. And that one, in the truck with me, he was definitely one of the smart ones. Now he was saying, “Do you feel great? Did you get what you wanted? How are you gonna feel when you see that kid in school tomorrow? What if he’s not even in school tomorrow? What will you think then? Will you be worried? How are you gonna tell your mom what you did? What will your dad do? Worse, what will Chris think?”

What will Chris think. That was the worst, the dog was right. I figured my dad would blow his top, probably lash me a few times with a belt, ground me for a month. Mom would cry and ask how could I have done such a thing. That’s all same old, same old. But Chris…

By the time we pulled up to Anthony’s the dog had read me the riot act, and I felt like a total shit. Anthony got out of the cab and ran pell-mell toward the front door of the house.

The driver called back to me, “You getting in?”

I wasn’t going to. I really wasn’t. But this dog was too much. It watched me as I scrambled over the side of the bed, turning its head as I went around the front where I was hoping it couldn’t see me, but I had to get into the cab on the dog’s side. He was looking right at me, and I could almost hear him clucking his tongue. I slammed the door and braced myself for a lecture from the dog’s owner, but the guy was totally silent. He wasn’t looking at me, but this silent treatment was at least as bad as the dog staring at me. Finally I couldn’t take it.

“It wasn’t my idea, you know.” No response. “The kid isn’t hurt. He’s just scared. He had to be taken down a couple of pegs. He thinks he’s God’s gift to the world or something.” Still nothing. I threw myself against the back of the seat and sulked for all I was worth.

When we got to my house he pulled into the end of the driveway. I reached for my math book on the floor, and finally the guy broke his silence. “Whatever you bullies called him, you’re worse.” Maybe Anthony hadn’t said much, then. But it was like this guy knew, anyway.

I slammed the cab door without looking around; that dog was probably glaring at me.

There was maybe an hour before dinner, and after I scrubbed my arms to get off as much of the sweet fern stink as possible, I spent about fifteen minutes sitting on the edge of my bed, head in my hands, trying to convince myself this wouldn’t be so bad. That farmer couldn’t be right. I mean, how could being a bully be worse than what we’d called Anthony? After all, it was actually illegal to be queer. Or, at least, to do anything about it. My dad had gone on at great lengths about it after that Stonewall incident in New York City, when all these homos attacked the police who had come to arrest them, or whatever it was that had happened. There was a riot, anyway.

“Of course they should be arrested!” Dad had bellowed at the time. “Disgusting people. Shouldn’t be allowed. Thank the Lord we don’t live in that modern-day Sodom.”

Still, this whole episode was making me feel ashamed, and I guess I knew, really, that it was bad. Soon I was trying to calculate how long it would be before Anthony’s parents called mine, and wondering whether it would be better if I told them about it first. Then I realized it would be better if Chris told them. So I went to find him.

The door to his room was shut, and I could hear he was playing this new album by Cat Stevens he’d bought recently. I knocked on the door. And waited. I knocked again, louder.

Chris’s voice, sounding a little odd, yelled, “Who is it?”

“Me.” Who else would it be? I reached for the knob and turned it, but it was locked.

“Just a minute!”

What’s he doing in there, masturbating? Would Chris do that? I’d got as far in my thinking as Don’t be an idiot; of course he would. He’s not dead, when the door jerked partway open.

“What?” He looked flushed, or surprised, or something. I barely caught some motion behind him.

“I—who’s in there?”

“What do you want?”

Must be a girl! Chris has a girl in his bedroom! Oh well, sorry, brother, this can’t wait. “I really need to talk to you.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. The shit’s gonna hit the fan.”

He kind of sighed, or something, cleared his throat, and said, “Great. Um…give me a minute, okay? I’ll come get you in your room.” He waited just long enough to be sure I’d heard him, and then he closed the door again. I headed toward my door, watching over my shoulder toward Chris’s, wondering how he’d got a girl up to his room past Mom. I positioned myself where I would be technically in my room but still be able to see if anyone headed for the stairs.

I waited a good three or four minutes, but when someone did head for the stairs it wasn’t a girl. It was Jim Waters, this friend of Chris’s. I remembered him mostly because his family had moved here the year before, and I remembered thinking, Who would move to this place? So it wasn’t a girl; too bad. But at least, I figured, I hadn’t interrupted anything.

Ha! I didn’t know at the time how wrong I’d been.

I scooted farther into my room and waited for Chris to show up. He took a couple more minutes, and I was pacing by the time he got there; I would have thought he’d just come right in when Jim left. But it gave me time to decide how to start.

“What’s going on, Paul?” His voice was flat, and I could tell he was irritated.

Not having a clue at the time what had really been going on in there, I launched into my own problem. “I’ve done something real stupid. Really, really stupid. And I’m gonna catch hell for it. There’s no way out of that.”

“So…”

“So I need you to help me keep it from being worse than it needs to be. You know how Dad is.”

“I guess you’d better tell me what it is, then.” He sat down on my desk chair. And I told him. But it didn’t turn out quite like I’d hoped. He sat there, silent, and at first I figured he was just letting me get the whole tale out. But the longer he didn’t say anything, the more details I gave him. Finally I ran out of words.

Chris had this really awful look on his face, somewhere between “I can’t believe what I’m hearing” and “I don’t think I know who you are.” He was silent for so long, just looking at me, that I couldn’t take it. “Well?”

He stood up, and he left the room.

Dumbstruck, I followed him out and watched as he started to go back to his own room. “Hey, Chris! Are you gonna help me talk to Dad or what?”

He stood in his doorway about three seconds, looking at me, and then he closed the door. I slammed a fist against the door frame, and then I heard Dad’s car pulling up. I stood at the top of the stairs, listening to the familiar phrases my folks almost always say to each other when he gets home. Tonight he added, “I’ve got to go back to the store after dinner, hon. Can we eat soon so I don’t spend all night doing paperwork?”

I was edgy all during dinner, expecting the phone to ring any second, expecting to be hauled into the basement for a session with Dad’s belt. Chris was nearly silent. He didn’t speak to me at all.

At one point Mom asked him, “Chris, are you all right, dear?”

“Yeah. Just concentrating. Got a paper to write for school.” But I knew he was lying. He was being quiet so it wouldn’t be so obvious he wasn’t speaking to me. Nobody seemed to notice that I wasn’t exactly chatting up a storm, either.

No one called that night. Marty called in the morning to say he and his mom would pick me up, which I took to mean he was willing to let me have my books back. I took Anthony’s as well; didn’t even ask Marty. I put them in my locker until English, when I thought I might see Anthony. He was there, bruised where I’d flung his book at him, and I just set his stuff on the desk in front of him. He didn’t even look at me.

No one called the next night, either. I was almost beginning to wish someone would, so I could get this over with. A couple of times I nearly told Dad myself, figuring it would be better that way, but the more time that went by, the harder that seemed. And judging from Chris’s reaction I wasn’t sure a lashing with the belt would be all I’d get from Dad. So I kept my mouth shut.

Chris spoke to me only when he had to. And that was another reason I almost wanted the other shoe to drop. Bad enough that this tension was going on and on, but Chris not talking to me? That was agony.

The third night, after dinner, I was sitting on my bed and trying to do some homework. The pages of my book kept swimming, and something wet fell onto my notes and blurred the ink. With kind of a shock I realized I was crying. Fourteen years old, and I was crying like some baby. I fell sideways onto my pillow and buried my face in it to muffle the sounds, and I cried. Don’t know how long I was at it before I felt a hand on my arm.

It was Chris. He sat on the edge of the bed, I sat up, and he held me while I dripped all over his shoulder. “I hate myself,” I stuttered. “I hate myself.”

“No you don’t, little brother. If you were bad enough to hate yourself, you wouldn’t know you felt this bad.”

I’m not really sure that made any sense, but it made me feel better. I snuffled and pulled away. Chris reached for a box of tissues and I blew my nose. Then he said, “You need to tell Anthony you’re sorry.”

“I can’t do that. He won’t even look at me.”

“Write him a note, then.”

“What about Marty?”

“What about him?” I was about to protest that it had been his idea, but that hadn’t got me anywhere so far. When I didn’t answer, Chris said, “Marty will do whatever it is Marty needs to do. It’s you I care about. And you need to do this. Not for Anthony. It might help Anthony, or it might not. Do it for you.”

I snuffled a few times. “I guess he didn’t rat. No one’s said anything.”

“I guess not.”

I never did tell Anthony I was sorry. After Christmas holiday that year, he didn’t come back. We heard he’d gone to another school, a private school with an advanced math curriculum. That seemed best, really; he got away from me and from Marty, and he would be with other kids like him. Maybe he’d even have to admit that he wasn’t the smartest kid in the world; small fish in a big pond now.

Thinking back on this whole incident, I’m amazed it didn’t occur to me that Chris’s reaction was probably worse than Dad’s would have been.

December ninth. That was the day the colonel, along with a lieutenant, showed up. Hats in hands, just like I’d pictured. It was a Saturday, so I was home. I’d taken to spending as much time as I could stand to at home, expecting this. But sometimes I’d just about go crazy waiting, and I’d have to get out, and the whole time I’d be gone I would wonder if they were at the house right now, that I’d get home to find Mom lying on her bed in hysterics and a doctor giving her a sedative, while Dad limped through the house punching things. I’d been noticing his limp a lot more these last couple of weeks. And I was angrier with him every day for putting us through this, for putting Chris through hell to make up for his own shortcomings, and almost certainly for getting Chris killed.

And now it had happened.

Dad wasn’t home; he was at the store, which he usually was on Saturdays. I was in Chris’s room, sitting on his bed, looking around at his things. The dumb things kids tend to collect had collected in spades in here. Chris was a bit of a pack rat, and even this stupid little fake mother-of-pearl handled jackknife he’d won at some fair when he was maybe nine was still in the drawer of the bedside table. I was in his room even though Mom had caught me in there several times since Thanksgiving and had told me to stay out. Damn it, I will not stay out. He’s my brother, after all, not just her son.

So I was sitting on his bed when the doorbell rang, and I jumped, which was what usually happened these days when that thing went off, or when the phone rang, anything that might tell us Chris was gone. So it rang, and I jumped and then sat still. Frozen, more like. It’s the mailman, and there’s a package he needs a signature for. Or it’s kids selling candy for some school project. My ears hurt, I was straining so hard to hear.

Mom was in the kitchen, and as I heard her footsteps I pictured her wiping her hands on her apron as she moved through the living room toward the front door. I heard the heavy wooden inside door open, knowing she could now see through the storm door to whoever might be there. I held my breath. And I heard my mom cry, “Oh! No! No!”

I took the stairs two at a time, and when I got to the door everyone was just standing there like they’d been waiting for me to make my entrance before the action could continue. Mom was staring at the two officers, hands to her face. They looked businesslike but contrite, as sympathetic as they could, I suppose. But they were messengers from hell.

I remember going all cold. Something clicked off, and something else clicked on. I took Mom gently by the shoulders and guided her away from the door so that I could open it and let the evil in. Still speechless, she kind of fell into the easy chair I led her to. I gestured toward the couch, and the two men sat while I fetched a box of tissues for Mom. Standing next to her chair, I held her hand while the colonel spoke.

“I’m very sorry to bring you this news, Mrs. Landon. Your son, Private First Class Christopher Landon, was killed two days ago while serving his country in Vietnam.”

What the fuck are they doing? Do they think we don’t know where he is? Mom gasped and then sobbed and covered her face completely.

He went on. “He died a hero. His squadron was ambushed, and everyone but Private Landon and four other men were killed very quickly. Those four men were wounded. Your son found cover for them. He got three of them under cover and was almost back with the fourth man when he was killed. All of the men he rescued survived, so we know how brave your son was. We know his story.”

You know nothing! You don’t know anything about him! I was blinking like crazy and breathing oddly, but I would not cry. I nodded at them so they would know they’d done what they needed to do and they could leave now. And that’s just what they did. They stood, and the lieutenant said, “Please accept our sincere condolences. We’ll be in touch again soon. And remember that there was much honor in his death.”

As if that would help. He’s dead! He’s gone, he’s fucking dead! I gritted my teeth.

The colonel saluted Mom, not that she noticed, and said, “We’ll see ourselves out.”

She was trying to say something, but she was crying so hard I almost couldn’t make it out. “I have to call your father.”

“Oh, Ma, no. Not over the phone.” I felt oddly calm, and somehow I knew that was the wrong thing to do. I didn’t have my full license yet, but this was no time to quibble over details like that. I said, “I’ll take your car and go to the store.”

“No! Don’t leave me alone.”

“Then come with me. We can’t tell him on the phone, Mom. That’s all there is to it.”

She did her best not to sob too much in the car, and I could tell the effort was costing her. She barely breathed all the way. Despite how calm I felt, my vision kept blurring, but I clenched my jaw and blinked a lot. It isn’t like I hadn’t known. It isn’t like Chris hadn’t told me this would happen.

When we got to the store Mom made me park away from the door, away from the other parked cars. “I can’t go in like this, Paul, and I don’t want anyone to see me in the car, either.”

So I parked where Mom could see the front of the store, facing that sunshine yellow sign that read LANDON’S PET SUPPLY. I trudged alone across the pavement, barely aware of how far I had to walk between the car and the store—it’s a big lot. Something in my mind was focusing hard on stupid details like avoiding icy puddles where I might slip, noticing all the wrinkly edges where the water had seeped between bits of pavement grit before it froze. I was in some kind of low gear, some survival mode I couldn’t remember having experienced before. I tried to come up with an opening sentence for telling Dad, but there was no right way to say what I had to say.

Dad was standing near the registers, in an animated discussion with some man whose small dog was wrapping the guy’s legs in the lead it was on. Dad stepped out of the way so the dog wouldn’t get him, too. I stood off to the side until I could get Dad’s attention, and then I jerked my head to the right, toward his office, and headed that way.

Carol was in there doing some paperwork. “Hey, Paul!”

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

Does anyone ever really want to know the answer to that question? “I’m just waiting for my dad to come in. I have to talk to him about something.”

“Oh. Do you need me to leave?”

I’ve always liked Carol. For an old person, maybe even older than Dad, she always seemed pretty with it. But how could I answer that? I was looking at her, feeling helpless, when Dad came in. He took one look at me and asked Carol if we could have a moment. It was an eternity before she shut the door from the other side.

“Paul?”

“It’s Chris.” I didn’t need to say anything else.

He walked slowly around his desk, limping heavily, touching everything solid he could reach, everything that wouldn’t move if he leaned on it, and sat in his chair. That calm I’d had was disappearing like so much fake fog in a horror flick. A few tears came out of nowhere and ran down my face.

“Where’s your mother?”

“Outside in the car. She didn’t want to stay at home alone, and she didn’t want to come in.” I swiped at my traitor eyes.

“Who drove?”

Who cares? “I did.”

He took a few deep breaths, rubbed his face, and then asked me how we’d found out. And I started bawling for real. It was almost like now that he knew, the burden was shifting onto him. When it had been just Mom and me, I’d had to be strong. I’m not sure whether I couldn’t carry the weight anymore or whether Dad had done something to take it off me and now I could let go. I’ve wondered about that a lot.

So I told him how Chris had rescued those other guys, how he was a hero. To keep myself from losing it too badly, I pictured Dean Pendleton’s blue wool hat, thinking that at last Chris had made up for letting him down. I told Dad everything Chris would want him to know.

What I wanted to tell him was that this was his fault, that Chris was dead because of him. I wanted to tell him that Chris had known he’d die, that he’d been really scared before he went back. I wanted to tell him why Chris felt he had nothing to keep him alive anymore, tell him about Mason. Maybe that’s why I was crying—because of what I couldn’t say.

I don’t think any of us slept all night. The room next to me, Chris’s room, seemed more than empty. More than hollow. I should have been used to not having anyone in it. It had been like that since Chris had signed up, but suddenly it was different. It was a black hole, and it was sucking all the light inside and devouring it.

In the morning I heard Mom get up, and I expected to hear Dad as well, since he’d been going to church with her for weeks. But it was only her.

I went downstairs and found her standing at the counter, watching the toaster. It was a cloudy day, and the light over the stove was on. I’ve always loved that light. Whenever the kitchen is dark and that light’s on, it seems like all the world is somewhere else, doing whatever it has to do, and the light over the stove creates this haven, this zone of peace and security, just for me. That morning, seeing the light from across the room, shining down on nothing and Mom off to the side in the darkness, it didn’t give me that feeling. Maybe it will again some day, when I can believe in peace again, when I can believe there are havens anywhere. That morning, seeing Mom’s tired face with the skin sagging in odd places, it felt to me like that light was—I dunno, inadequate. Pathetic.

She lifted her head slowly when she knew I was there. Then she looked back at the toaster.

“You going to church?” I asked. She nodded. “Dad isn’t up yet, you know.”

“He’s not going.”

We stood there like that, her watching the toaster, me watching her. I jumped a foot when the toast popped, when that jarring metallic crunching slapping noise shot out into the room. I said, “I’ll go with you.”

She didn’t say anything, didn’t even nod. She started buttering her toast. I headed back upstairs to wash my face and put on some clothes that would do for church, and when I got back to the kitchen Mom had made me some toast with butter and jam. She had made coffee for two, out of habit maybe, and I poured some. I’d never had it before, and it tasted terrible. Mom smiled at the face I made, so at least that was good.

“You might like that better with cream and sugar,” she suggested. She was right, but I still didn’t think it would ever be my favorite drink. Even so, I decided that I would start drinking it. I would just start, that’s all.

I drove. Chris used to drive her to church, and then Dad, and probably she liked that. We didn’t speak all the way. It felt surreal to me. Like we’d crossed into another world somehow, just driving along, not many cars on the road, gray light and dead-looking trees all around us.

We sat in the same pew as my uncle Jeff, mom’s brother, and his wife, Diane. Mom had called them last night, sobbing more than talking, and Aunt Diane had come over and they’d cried together. They nodded to me and smiled sadly, and Aunt Diane reached over and squeezed my arm. Probably Mom and Chris had always sat with them when he drove her. My aunt had had two miscarriages years ago and then I guess they’d decided against trying for any more, so at least there were no irritating cousins I’d have to deal with.

I’d forgotten about organ music. Don’t know how I could have, it’s so much a part of the experience. When I used to come here as a kid, the only parts I liked were singing the hymns and listening to the organ. Though it always made me a little crazy when the organist would try to do improv stuff on the last verse. I wanted the music to be familiar all the way through, damn it, and it was like they ruined the end for me.

Didn’t take long for me to figure out that they were still up to their old tricks. Still ruining the end. In one way, I didn’t mind; I mean, I hadn’t been here in so long I couldn’t exactly have anything to say about how things were done. On the other, I felt a real need for something—anything—to feel familiar. To feel like there was something that didn’t get yanked out from under you. But the service felt familiar, anyway. Different minister from the one I remembered; had Mom mentioned that at some point? She must have. This guy seemed a little younger. And maybe a little more with it, but it was still a sermon.

It was Christmas season, so the readings were full of things anticipated, a coming birth, the dawning of a new hope. Yeah, right. I glanced at Mom to see how she was taking this. She was looking at me, her eyes moist, but she didn’t look sad, exactly. She looked—wistful, maybe? Hopeful? What do I have to do with hope? I didn’t feel like smiling, but I did anyway, just to give her a little encouragement; at least she wasn’t sobbing, which I’d half thought she might do. I mean, there’s nothing like everyone else sounding cheerful when you’ve been hit by a bus to make you feel even more like shit.

Several times as I sat there, I felt sure I was supposed to be praying or something. Was there really no place in the service where everyone just sat still and had a word with Jesus? But then I thought, what would I say? Besides, God had probably forgotten about me. So mostly I just sat there and let things wash over me.

During the last part of the service Mom took my hand. I couldn’t quite remember the last time she did that. She held it until the final hymn was announced and we had to fumble in the hymnals, and I was thinking that maybe she and Chris used to do that. Hold hands.

So I’m hope now? I’m the hand-holder? One voice in my head said, “Oh, I don’t think so.” Another said, “Why not?” It was like that old comic book image where a devil was on one shoulder, and an angel on the other. “No way.” “Why not?” “You can’t take Chris’s place.” “Why not?” “Because even Chris failed at being the man she thought he was.”

Well, that shut the angel voice up real fast.

When we got home, Dad was up and Mom made breakfast. She’d cried a little in church, and a little on the way home, and her eyes were red, but she wasn’t moping as she moved around the kitchen or anything.

She made coffee and poured some for me. And then we sat there, the three of us, like lumps, carefully avoiding—or so it seemed to me—looking toward the fourth chair at the table. No one spoke, unless they wanted to ask for the jam or something. I don’t know what my folks were thinking, but it was suddenly hitting me pretty hard that this was it now. This was everybody. There would never again be four of us.

I had sort of got used to it being just me and Mom and Dad while Chris was away, but it was always a temporary thing, you know? There was always that light at the end of the tunnel. But Chris was the light, and now he was gone.