Just Beneath My Skin (15 page)

IT'S AMAZING, WHEN YOU'RE TRYING
to be quiet, how much noise everything makes. I have opened Johnny's patio door a million times and it always seemed silent to me. But now suddenly it seems to rattle on its tracks when I slide it across, and the sound of the river seems louder than it ever has.

I step inside.

It smells of liquor, and joints, and cigarettes, and some other odour. The smell that's always in Johnny's house, a musty rotten smell, because he never cleans. White Shark bottles are everywhere, and an ashtray on the coffee table is overflowing with butts. A lamp beside the sofa is on, and the radio in the kitchen is playing low. Culture Club. I step farther into the room.

I see something lying between the two sofas, near the coffee table. It's Charlie Whynot. He looks asleep, passed out like he always is. Charlie can sleep anywhere when he's drunk — the floor or the sofa or sitting up in a chair. He's wearing my leather. Softly I step in between the sofas and stand beside Charlie. I reach down, easy, to check the pockets for my keys. He can keep the fucking jacket.

It's then I realize Charlie's dead. Half his head is missing. There's blood and brains all over the floor.

Sweet Jesus.

Sweet Lord Fucking Goddamned Jesus Christ.

FOR A WHILE NO ONE
says a word. Mom and Jake's dad look at each other. Jake's dad takes a couple of steps back. “It was nice meeting you, Carla. Now I think I'll take Nathan back, like I said, and —”

“You're not taking him nowhere,” shouts my mother. “He's mine, and not yours and not that goddamned Jake McNeil's. You hear me?”

“Yes,” says Jake's dad. “But I think —”

Before he can say any more, Mom is up out of her chair and grabbing me by the arm. “You see 'im?” she says. “You see 'im? Mine, I said, and not yours or Jake's!” My mom's squeezing my arm so hard it hurts, and tugging on it too, so it feels like it's gonna pull out of its socket. I can't help it: I cry out, and Jake's dad sees my face.

“You're hurting him,” he says.

“Too bad,” my mother says. “I got my ways, and no white trash minister is gonna come in and tell me how to treat my kid.”

Jake's dad steps towards my mom. “Let him go,” he says.

“What you gonna do about it?” says my mother. She starts dragging me across the linoleum, and tries to push me into the living room. But I'm scared, and won't go. I try keeping my heels flat on the floor and she almost pushes me over. When Mom sees what I'm doing she claps me once on the side of the head and tells me to stop dragging my feet.

“Get into your room,” she says. “Get into your goddamn room right now!”

And she claps me again.

“Stop that!” cries Jake's dad.

“Stop what?” my mom says. “What are you gonna do about it, Mr. Man?”

Suddenly I slip out of my mom's grip and try to turn back to Jake's dad. She hauls off and hits me harder than she has in a long while. I fall on the floor and the whole room reels and I see little yellow spots, like sparks, in front of my eyes. The next thing I know Jake's dad and she are arguing over me, with Mom screaming.

“You ain't got no right,” she says. “I'll call the police, and then let's see where you'll be.”

“You go ahead,” says Jake's dad. “I'll tell them what's been going on here!”

“You bastard!” cries my mom. “You and that son of yours can go to fucking hell for all I care. You hear me? You miserable cock-sucking prick!”

They argue some more. Eventually Mom hits Jake's dad. He stands there and doesn't say a word. She hits him again, her hand hard across his face. He turns away from her, walks over to me, stands me up and pushes me towards the door. Mom is still screaming at us.

“Go on, Nathan,” he says softly. “Go get in the car. I'll deal with your mother.”

“You get back here,” my mother yells at me. “You listen to your mother, and you get back here right now!”

“Go!” he says. He really means it.

I go out to the car, open the door, and get in the front seat. I'm afraid any minute Mom will come running out and make me go back, but she doesn't. I see Jake's dad standing in the door and my mother screaming at him. He backs away from her, carefully, down the steps. She slams the door.

“Fasten your seat belt,” says Jake's dad, when he gets in the car.

I could have said I told you so. But I don't. I'm just glad we got out without Mom keeping me. Before he starts the car, Jake's dad looks over at me. His hands are shaking on the steering wheel. “I'm sorry, Nathan,” he says. “I'm really sorry.” He starts the car and we back out and drive away.

He keeps saying he's sorry all the way up Harmony Lake Road, though I can't figure out exactly what he's sorry for.

ON THE DAY SHE DIED
, I was out fishing with my rod and reel beside the river. It was a Sunday, and on Sundays when my father preached Mrs. Hunt from next door came by to watch me and my mother while he was at church. But my father must have known it was near the end, because that Sunday he didn't go and the replacement preacher from Oldsport went in his place.

“Your mother wants to see you,” my father said when he came out to get me in the yard. There was nothing special in that. Most days he let me go in, unless she was in too much pain and wouldn't recognize anyone. Sometimes on the days I was to visit she cried out a lot and my father would try and give her more morphine but she wouldn't take it.

“I want to be here for my son,” I heard her say to him once. “I don't want to be half in and half out of the world and not know where I am at all.”

But the day he let me in, the last day she was alive, was a good day. She was sitting up in the bed, with the pillows propped up behind her. She was pale, and thin, and she hadn't eaten in days. The needles were sitting on the night table for when I left and the pain got too bad. The doctor taught Dad how to give them to her. She smiled at me. It was a horrible smile. Her face was so thin it looked like a skull, and I wanted her to stop smiling. I wanted to
scream
at her to stop smiling.

But I didn't. Because I knew my mother was in there somewhere. She was buried in there somewhere. I could see it in her eyes. Her blue eyes.

“Sit with me, Jacob,” she said, and I pulled up a chair beside her bed. “Talk to me.”

But I didn't know what to say.

“About what?” I said finally.

“About your day,” my mother said. “About school. About whatever comes into your mind.”

But nothing was in my mind except how scary my mother looked, how thin and wasted and sad. But I tried anyway, because she was my mother and I loved her. I told her about school — though it was summer and I hadn't been to school for two months — and the sun and the stars and the moon which we studied in science, and Susan Labrador, this Indian girl I had a crush on. I told her about fishing in the river and after a while I forgot she was so sick and I talked and talked and talked. After I was done she just looked at me and smiled again and this time I didn't feel like screaming at all.

“Go on now,” she said. “I'm gonna try and get some sleep. I love you, Jacob.”

I wanted to say I loved her back but I couldn't.

I ALWAYS WONDERED HOW MY
mother could have died on such a good day, on a day when she was feeling so good.

When my old man told me she was dead and led me in to see her body one last time, I saw all the needles beside her bed were gone.

THE ONLY THING I WANT
to do when I see Charlie's body is scream. I've never seen a dead body before, except my mother, and my granddad lying in his casket during his funeral, and that one glimpse of my sister when they pulled her from the river. But this is different. I vomit, and then almost break my neck trying to get out of there, but I don't get very far.

Johnny's there. He's been there all along, waiting for me.

WHEN I GROW UP I
want to be a policeman. I want to help people. Sometimes I see a police car go by in North River and I think how neat it would be to drive around in one and turn on the lights when I want and hunt down people like Johnny Lang and put them in jail.

Make the world safe for people like me and Jake.

I never told anyone this in my whole life.

Not even Jake.

“YOU'RE DEAD, MCNEIL,” JOHNNY SAYS
. “One more move and you're dead.”

I stop in my tracks. Johnny tells me to turn around slowly. I do. He is sitting in a chair in the corner next to the fireplace with the gun across his lap. He's jangling the keys to the Pinto. I hadn't looked over there when I came in. It's so dark in that corner of that room I wouldn't have seen him if I did. I can't tell in the shadow, but Johnny sounds like he is smiling. I know from his voice alone that he's taken more acid. He's probably been sitting in that corner with the gun all night, waiting for me to come back.

I don't know what to say, so I just point at Charlie.

“Jesus, Johnny,” I say. “You killed him.”

“It was an accident,” says Johnny. “It was dark. I was high. I thought it was you. He was wearing your jacket. Poor fucking Chuck.”

Johnny says this with no more feeling in his voice than someone telling me what they ate for breakfast. I start to turn back towards the door.

“Don't even try it, McNeil,” he says. “I got you covered.”

“But why, Johnny?” I cry once more. “Why do you want to kill me?”

“I'll tell you why,” Johnny says. “I'm tired of you, McNeil. You think you're better than me; I was put here to show you you ain't.”

“You'll go to jail,” I say.

Johnny laughs. It is a throaty, husky laugh and it makes me shiver. There's nothing human in that laugh. It's the laugh of an animal. “You think I care about jail? It's time, McNeil. Chuck's dead. You'll soon be dead. I got nothing but time.”

“You're high,” I say. “When you come down you'll see it was all a mistake.”

Johnny doesn't answer. Instead he stands up, and steps with the gun out of the corner into the light coming in through the patio windows. He's a mess. His hair is all stuck up, and his eyes are red, and his skin white. He looks like death.

“Say your prayers, McNeil,” he says, and lifts the bore of the gun up to my face.

I make a break for the door. This time Johnny gets smart. He doesn't try to get off a shot. It's a single barrel, and one shot means he'll have to stop and reload and I'll get away. I left the patio door open. Sometimes whether you get away or not comes down to something simple like whether or not you leave a patio door open.

JAKE'S DAD SAYS, “LET ME
tell you a story, Nathan.”

“Okay,” I say. We are pulling out of Harmony Lake Road on the road to Middlebridge, and I can picture Mom back there screaming in the kitchen and throwing stuff around. I'm glad I'm with Jake's dad.

“It's a story from the Bible,” he says.

“Okay,” I say. I ask him if I can turn on the radio.

“No,” he says. “Now listen.”

“Okay,” I say. “I will.”

“Consider it your first lesson,” says Jake's dad.

“
IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED
the heavens and the Earth. Now the Earth was formless and empty, and the darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

“And God said, ‘Let there be light.'

“And there was light.

“God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.

“God called the light day and he called the darkness night.”

I RUN AWAY FROM JOHNNY'S
house down the River Road as fast as I can. As fast as I ever run in my life. I don't look back to see if Johnny is coming.

You should never look back to see if anyone is coming.

That's the stupidest thing you can do.

WE GO BACK TOWARDS MIDDLEBRIDGE
. I watch the river.

“The Lord God said: ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.'”

After a while I can't see the river, so I watch the trees. We're coming up to the River Road where Johnny Lang lives.

“So the Lord God banished Adam from the garden to work the ground from which he had been taken.”

I HIDE IN THE WOODS
. I decide Johnny is less likely to find me there. And it's a good thing I do too, 'cause as soon as I get off the road I hear the Pinto coming down it with Johnny revving the engine and shifting like he is trying to tear the transmission out of it. I lie down flat on my stomach behind a log and try and catch my breath.