Brewster (20 page)

“What’re you talkin’ about?”

He can feel it. In the pauses, in the way he’s cutting.

“Small town,” he says, slicing off a leg.

The shears are bad. There’s nothing to grab—a broom, a rolling pin. By his feet, leaning against the living room wall, is a busted picture frame—he could pull the top piece.

“Think you were just gonna leave?” He’s still cutting. There’s nothing left to cut. “Just drive away?”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Not much of a car anymore.” He’s pressing hard, clipping through bone. “Not much of anything anymore.”

“We’re leavin’,” he says. “I don’t give a fuck what you say.”

“Just leave me here? That it? You and that little cunt?”

“I don’t care what you say.”

He grunts, snapping through. Ray reaches down and pulls the top piece off the frame. It comes off easily, two thin nails sticking out of the point. It’s not enough.

“We’re leavin’,” he says again. “You hear what I said?”

“That right?” He picks up the glass with the hand holding the shears, his pinkie extended like a socialite, and takes a long drink, the open jaws by his face. “You’re not goin’ anywhere,” he says quietly. “Not in this world.”

H
E WALKED OUT,
listening for movement behind him, wondering if his old man was drunk enough to shoot him. Karen picked him up by the gas station. It was almost dusk. He didn’t know how to tell her about the car, their plans—any of it. He had to think. They went back to the hotel, ate macaroni and cheese and apple crumble sitting on the bed with towels across their laps. She could tell something was wrong. He was sorry—he was just thinking, he said. After midnight she went home. At five he woke up and walked back to his house in the dark.

It was dawn when he let himself in the back, the first light just catching the windows. The house was dark, still. The first thing he saw was Wilma whining and scratching at the kitchen door.

It took him a long time to get it out. He hadn’t understood what he was looking at—dark socks with pink circles? They were laid out in a row on the counter, legless. Their new fur matted and greasy. He’d gotten them all. One was still moving somehow. He closed his eyes and hit it with the meat mallet. Then hit it again.

W
HERE DO YOU GO?
When you’re seventeen? When there’s nowhere to go?

An unlocked bulldozer, a construction on the access road. We climbed up out of the wind. We’d left our stuff.

He had to go, I said. He had to run.

Where?

Anywhere. Oh, my God, I said.

He didn’t even know what he was doing, he said. He’d picked them up one by one and put them in a plastic bag. Their faces, he said. He tried not to look at the bowl, just spilled it into the bag with them and walked out.

Oh, my God, I said. You gotta get out.

He didn’t see his old man till he was halfway across the living room. It had been dark when he came in. He was lying on his back between the couch and the coffee table like a man in a coffin. His eyes were open and he was looking up at the ceiling as if he didn’t remember where he was. Then something passed through him and he knew and he rolled over on his side, his legs banging against the coffee table and brought his knees to his chest and covered his face and whined. Like some kind of animal.

I told him. “Run, I said—you gotta run, Ray.”

“Like some kind of animal,” he said.

“You can’t go back there,” I said.

He’d put them in the dumpster at the A&P, he said. He didn’t even know he was carrying them. He just looked down at one point and he had this bloody plastic bag in his hand and he walked over to the dumpster and put them in. He hadn’t realized he was walking to my house till he turned down our street.

“You gotta get out,” I said.

Their faces. He’d never forget their faces.

“Listen to me,” I said.

Ever.

“You gotta run.”

“I got nowhere to go,” he said. “Don’t you understand?”

“He’ll fuckin’ kill you.”

“He’ll find me. He’ll find all three of us. He’s an ex-cop. Where am I gonna go? Tell me where to go?”

“The cops.”

“The cops?”

“Tell ’em. How he threatened you, beat the crap out of you. How he—”

“What? Killed a bunch of dogs? They’ll say he’s fucked up, it ain’t against the law. Everything else is my word against his.”

“He’ll kill you.”

He was running his hand over a rip in the seat. “I should’ve fuckin’ left ’em there. I should’ve left ’em for him—to see what he did.”

“He knows what he did.”

“Fuckin’ make him look at it. Make him look at what he did.”

“What’re you gonna do?” I said.

A kind of numbness seemed to be coming over him. Like he was talking to himself. “What am I supposed to do? What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Ray, what about Gene? Ray.”

He laughed. “He’s comin’ back. Today.”

“Oh, my God, Ray, what the fuck are you gonna do?”

He looked over at me squatting against the door and started to say something, then shook his head and smiled—an end-of-things smile, a bottom-of-the-well smile.

The wind blew, rocking us. He wiggled the stick shift, like he was looking for a gear. “I don’t know,” he said.

H
E KNEW I WAS RIGHT
—that he couldn’t go back there. I knew he would anyway. He’d go because he had to. There’d be no one to call. And I couldn’t come with him. “I know you,” he said, “but I swear to God I’ll hurt you if you try.”

It took me a while to understand what it was inside of him, what it was that let him get out of that bulldozer and pull his coat tight like he was choking himself and start walking till he came to that unplowed street, to that house squatting there in the shadows; what it was that took him up those steps and under the nails coming through the roof and into those rooms still reeking of shit because things in pain will shit themselves and they had. Fingering the end of the copper pipe in his sleeve, the pepper in his pocket sticking to his hand. I thought it was bravery. It was love.

Suze would be bringing Gene back that evening. The puppies would be gone. He’d have to say something.

They could sleep in the same room. He could block the door. It might be enough.

I think I didn’t understand where it was going, or maybe I just didn’t want to. I was scared, more scared than I’d ever been.

I went home; I had nowhere else to go. It would be fine, I told myself. It would be fine, it would be fine. Sitting at my desk late that afternoon I saw my father walking up the street. It was just about dusk—I could barely make him out. He reached down and opened the little latch on the gate and let himself in and walked up the walk till he disappeared under the roof beneath my window and I heard the door open. As he had a thousand times before. Ten thousand. Holding on. Because that’s what he did.

It is what it is, he’d said to me.

We’d watch the news with dinner. Eight dead, seventeen wounded. In other news … and they’d ask me about how things were because they were worried, suddenly, and then my mother would say she’s going upstairs and pick up her plate and leave the room.

He thought he might read, my father would say.

I’d walk into the kitchen as my mother walked out. Washing the dishes, I’d hear her over the water—twelve steps, the creak of boards, a door quietly closing.

K
AREN ASKED
and I lied. About everything. About the car, about Gene, about Ray. About them. He’d made me swear and I had. It was easy. Easier than speaking. And what would I have said?

She believed me. It could have been love. Frank believed me, too. That’s what friends are for. Ray was fine, I told them. Working it out. I think there was some part of me believed it. Had to believe it.

She’d seen him yesterday, Karen told me. They’d met at the store. He had Gene with him. His dad was working again, he said.

We were sitting in the parking lot. The wind kept pushing her hair in her face. It was strange how he didn’t want her to come to the house even when his dad wasn’t around, she said.

They’d spent a few hours together. A warm afternoon, little rivers of snowmelt rushing down the gutters, a taste of ashes and sun in the air. They walked down the hill, then out to the Borden Bridge holding Gene by the hand until he got tired and Ray put him on his shoulders. At the bridge Ray stood on the other side and they’d yell across the traffic and then he’d drop a stick in the water and they’d see it come out, rolling in the current.

She’d let them off a block from the house, and he’d kissed her goodbye. She could tell it was on his mind, this whole thing with his dad. She couldn’t wait till they could leave. Three months, she said.

We were sitting on the hood of her dad’s car while Frank had a smoke. I watched Champbell and his friends come out of the building and get in his Camaro, the four doors slamming almost at the same time.

Was I nervous? she asked. About States? They were all going to be there.

“I’m always nervous,” I said.

She looked at me, a small smile on her face. “You’re good, aren’t you?”

“You’ll be watching this asshole in the Olympics someday,” Frank said.

“What’s it like being that good?” she said, like she meant it.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I
TRIED TO THINK
about it. About how much it meant.

Kennedy had told me. He’d wanted to tell me himself. He’d be skipping the spring season, he said. This was it.

But this was his last year, I said.

He knew that, he said, but he needed to work. His dad had been laid off again. Disability only went so far. They’d talked it over, he said. He’d be taking a year off before college. No big deal.

He could see the look on my face.

“Hey, c’mon,” he said.

I nodded.

He looked down at the ground, then back. “Listen, I want to tell you so you know I’m OK with it. Coach wants you running anchor tomorrow. So do I.”

I started to say something.

“It’s OK,” he said. “Really. I’ll try to keep us in it. If I can do that, you can take him. I believe that. No, fuck believe—I
know
that.”

T
HAT EVENING
was a blur of nervousness—I don’t even know what I did. A light jog, a little TV. I tried to read but couldn’t. Everything seemed to tire me out. Walking up the stairs tired me out. It was always like that the day before.

After dinner I packed my stuff, listened to records. Tried not to think. I set the alarm for seven. There was a special activities bus going in to school the next morning. I’d meet the team by the doors at eight-thirty. We’d go to White Plains from there.

T
HERE WAS LIGHT
around the curtains. Winter light.

I dressed, ate a hard-boiled egg and a piece of toast standing in the kitchen, my toes curling up from the floor, sipping a cup of tea. Not thinking. The house was quiet. I put the plate and the cup in the sink, sat down on the kitchen chair and pulled on my socks and training flats, then checked my bag and let myself out the door just as the clock in the hall started to chime, off-tune as always, three minutes late.

They’d find me there, Karen had said. Ray had another ride—he’d meet us. Something about having to arrange for his brother.

The bus was on time. I watched it make the turn, almost running up on the sidewalk, then start up the hill, a black cloud of exhaust rising up into the cold. It was warm inside. A handful of kids, some familiar, going to whatever went on on Saturday mornings. I hadn’t even known there
was
a Saturday bus.

Most of them were already there, jogging in place in front of the big glass doors—the pole vaulters with their poles, everybody nervous. I got out of the bus, still half-asleep, did a few lazy jumping jacks. Kennedy was talking to Moore and Falvo by the wall.

They’d meet me there.

Kennedy was walking over.

They’d meet me there.

“Ready to do this thing?”

He’d meet us there. He had another ride
.

I nodded.

“You OK, man?”

Ray had another ride. His brother.

“Hey—you OK?”

I could see Frank looking over at me.

Something about having to arrange for his brother.

I started to walk. The morning bus was making its loop around the parking lot.

“Jon?”

“I think I have to go,” I said. That’s what I told him: “I think I have to go.”

I caught the bus at the road and the guy let me in. I didn’t know Frank had watched me cross the lot, then started to run after me. I forgot something at home, I said. Could he give me a ride back?

I just had to check. Everything was fine
.

“Hop in, kid.”

I told him where I was going. I wasn’t worried. I just had to check.

He couldn’t change his route, he said.

I sat in the front, my leg muscles starting to shake. I left my bag behind, I thought. I left my bag.

Everything was fine. I’d find them on their way out. I could catch a ride with whoever was taking Ray. If I missed him, I could get my dad to drive me. Or even the Perillos. Everything was fine.

We went down Tonetta, then left on Griffin.

“Here,” I said. “Stop.” I took off my jacket, checked my flats.

“You sure?”

“Stop.”

“I can get you closer.”

“Please,” I said. “Please.”

And he pulled over and opened the doors and I started to run.

I
’VE NEVER RUN
like that. Never. I knew how far it was, knew the hill up from Kobacker’s, the cut behind the church. My last mile. Halfway there I could feel my breath screaming in my lungs, the lactic acid building in my calves, my hamstrings. I slipped turning into somebody’s yard, smashed into a low white fence and was up—I hadn’t even felt the snow.

It was the only time he’d be sure we’d be gone.

I’ve never run like that. I never will again. It’s all I have in my defense.

The last quarter mile was red with pain. I ran like I’d been shot, the second bullet right behind my skull. I turned up the street. I could see the house now—the rail, the porch. The door was open.

I didn’t know what I was looking at. The couch was on its back, the coffee table smashed flat to the ground. Ray and Mr. Cappicciano were on the ground. They seemed to be wrestling but nobody was moving. Mr. Cappicciano was behind him, his legs around his waist. He was holding Ray’s hands behind his back with his left hand. Ray’s face was in his right. He was moving his jaws for him. “That’s right, chew,” he was saying. “Chew.”

Ray twisted loose when I came in the door, a great gush of blood coming out of his mouth and something I didn’t know was the metal end of a lightbulb. He hit his father with his left, awkwardly, tried to scrabble away, to turn, then hit him again, harder, and Mr. Cappicciano, still on his knees, had the leg of the coffee table in his hands and had swung it, following through like a baseball player and Ray was making a noise like I’ve never heard before, his lower jaw stuck across his face like two halves of a photograph that aren’t lined up.

It was to stop that noise that I did it. It was to stop the thing that had brought that noise into the world—a scream of such outrage and pain and helplessness—that I did it, and I grabbed one of the irons from the stand by the fireplace and brought it down. I could hear the bones crack like sticks in a towel but something in my head was screaming at me that he could still turn, still smile, that he could swallow me whole with that disappointed face, and I walked up to him as he was trying to crawl away on his elbows and I waited and then I hit him across the spine to make him stop and then I hit him in the back of the head and it opened up like it was nothing at all. Like it was nothing at all.

What the movies don’t tell you is that people can die either quickly or slowly. It depends. Sometimes they take their time. Sometimes they lie on their side with a palm-sized section of their head caved in like a piece of hairy bark and this look on their face like they knew you once and they’re trying to remember your name and then it changes and it’s like they’re looking into a small mirror and then you realize they’re not seeing whatever it was they were seeing because they’re dead.

And that should be that. Except it’s not, really, ever again.

G
ENE WAS LOCKED
in the back room. Wilma was dead. It was Ray who crawled to me as I sank to my knees, his jaw stuck to the side, his mouth a well of blood. He was losing consciousness. He took the iron out of my hand, put his hands on the grip, gripped it again. His movements were stuttering, like a machine breaking down. He lay down on the carpet on his side, his hands between his knees like a child and closed his eyes.

It was only then I heard Gene crying from the back room, then the rising wail of the siren coming up the hill. Frank had guessed where to send it.