Sway (9 page)

There wasn't enough wrong with him that it was immediately obvious. Until you studied him carefully, there was just a nagging sense that something was off, not quite right—his awkward gait, lopsided expressions, and, when he spoke, the mild speech impediment that made him sound slightly drunk.

Looking at him now, I got the sense that he was posed, his skinny ass irreverently parked on the cherry finish of my car, his hip hitched at an angle to give the appearance of indifference. He was an actor playing a role, Guy Casually Waiting for Friend at Car. Just like he had played the Betrayed by Life role while talking about his sister at the Siegel Center.

“Hey, Pete,” I said as my car alarm chirped under him.

His face lit up when he saw me and I wondered how long he had been waiting.

“Hey, Jesse,” he said with as much enthusiasm as a puppy greeting its master at the door.

“What's shakin'?” I asked.

“Nothin',” he said. “What are you doing today? Can you hang out?”

I tossed my bag in the backseat and shut the door. “I've got some errands to run.”

His face fell, but since his face was already droopy on one side, the expression was pathetically reminiscent of a baby pug.

“You can ride along if you want, but it will be boring,” I said.

The light behind his eyes returned. “That'd be great. I mean, that's cool. I'll just ride with you—keep you company.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, and he hurried around the hood of the car to get into the passenger side.

“Your car is awesome,” he said as he settled into the passenger seat. “I can't believe your parents bought you these wheels.”

“They didn't buy it,” I said. “I bought it myself, had it fixed up.”

“That's awesome,” he said.

“Yeah. Awesome.”

I drove to Digger's with the plan to get in and out of there early, before he was too high to transact business. He smoked all day at work, but once he settled in with his Miller High Life and his bong, it was hard to keep him focused. After he had been home for a few hours, spent some time in his own head, he started to get paranoid too. He'd keep moving to the front window to check the street from behind the curtain and would rock on his bony ass with nervous energy.

When I pulled up in front of Digger's trailer, I turned to Pete before I opened my door. “We're just stopping in to run an errand. You keep your mouth shut while we're here, got it?”

He nodded mutely, apparently good at following directions.

I knocked on Digger's aluminum storm door and waited patiently for him to look out from the top of the curtain covering the window right next to the door, probably with gun in hand—a Walther P38 pistol his grandfather took off some dead Kraut during World War II.

“Who's your girlfriend?” Digger asked as he opened the door.

“Who him?” I asked, feigning some surprise. “He's my kid brother.”

“I didn't know you had a kid brother,” Digger said as he eyed Pete carefully. “You never mentioned him.”

“Yeah, well, he's retarded. I don't like to talk about him,” I said as we stepped inside and shut the door behind us.

“What's your name?” Digger asked Pete.

Pete looked to me but kept his mouth shut. “His name is Pete,” I said. “He doesn't talk much.”

“I guess that's good,” Digger said as he slipped the pistol into the waistband of his jeans. Pete followed me meekly into the room and sat next to me on the couch. Digger took his place in the recliner across from us and immediately started loading a bong hit. He held the bong out to Pete, who shot me a questioning look. I gave a barely perceptible nod and he took the bong and the lighter from Digger. “Shotgun,” Digger said, and Pete flinched, ducking his head down between his shoulders.

“He means there's a shotgun on the bong,” I said. “Here.” I held the shotgun while Pete tried to light the shake in the bowl. He kept fumbling the lighter, couldn't hold the lighter and flick it with the same hand. An eternity passed while Digger and I tensely watched Pete struggle to light the bong. Finally I put a stop to the debacle by taking the lighter from him and holding it to the bong myself. When the tube was filled with thick blue smoke I removed my finger and told him to inhale.

Pete's coughing fit lasted for about three minutes, his face getting redder and redder. Digger got him a glass of water from the galley kitchen and Pete struggled to get his coughing under control while Digger and I each took our bong hits and discussed the likelihood of the Patriots making it to the play-offs that season.

I took a QP off Digger and stayed as long as was necessary to be polite. Pete did two more bong hits and had pretty much melted into a puddle on the love seat when I nudged him and told him it was time to go.

“Hey, you're all right, kid,” Digger said to Pete. “For a retard, he doesn't say a bunch of stupid stuff,” Digger said to me.

“Nah, he's all right,” I said.

“You tell your brother,” Digger said in a loud, succinct voice, as if Pete had a hearing problem, “from now on, he should bring you around more. Let you hang out.”

Pete gave a noncommittal grunt that could be interpreted either way and gave me a look as if most of the time I kept him locked in a basement.

Back in the car Pete tipped his head back on the headrest and rocked it from side to side. “Shit, man,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“I'm fucking stoned.”

“Yeah? Well, don't get used to it. That shit will make you stupid.”

“I'm hungry,” he said as he slid down into the seat and put a foot on the dash. I slapped his leg down, then put the car into gear.

“Yeah, let's hit the diner,” I said as I backed the car out. “I could use something to eat. I missed lunch.”

I drove us to Dan and Ethel's Diner on Main Street and we got a booth near the window. Pete ate corned beef and cabbage while I had potato pancakes and lox—the Jew in me taking charge when I was stoned. Genes are a crazy thing.

“So, how do you know that guy—Digger—was that his name?” Pete asked me.

“I met him through another guy I know,” I said evasively.

“He's weird. You think he really believes all that psychobabble shit about the Colombians putting mind-control chemicals in the cocaine they export?”

I wiped my mouth, then tossed my crumpled napkin on the plate before pushing it aside. “Digger spent some time inside. It made him a little paranoid.”

“Inside where?” Pete asked, his brow wrinkled in confusion.

“Inside, inside. In jail, dope.”

“Seriously?” he asked, his voice breaking like a twelve-year-old's.

“As a heart attack.”

“People call you Sway, don't they?” Pete asked. “I've heard that around school.”

“Some do,” I agreed. “But if you start calling me that, I'll knock you out.”

“Why do they call you that?”

“I have no idea,” I lied.

“Are you lying, or you really don't know?”

I leveled a look on him that would shut most people up but he just watched me and waited expectantly. If Pete didn't have many friends, it would not come as a surprise to me. He had a really annoying habit of asking questions, prying in a way that was almost an interrogation.

“Sometimes what we want to be and what the world expects from us are two different things,” I said.

“
Tchuh
,” he grunted, and laughed. “You don't have to tell me that. Welcome to my world,” he said.

 

TWELVE

For the next week, studying Bridget became my full-time job, and not just because Ken was paying me to get to know her. I figured with what I knew about her work at the Siegel Center and her brother, I had enough to give Ken an in, but I didn't contact him to make a report. With each day, I became more intrigued by Bridget, the only genuinely nice person I had ever observed. With knowledge of her class schedule, I could keep track of her movements during the day and discovered some remarkable things.

First, she smiled at everyone—not just the good-looking or popular people, but the rejects of society as well. And second, she never showed any interest in using her good looks as a tool or a weapon. Everywhere she went, she left a trail of yearning boys in her wake but she was mostly oblivious.

I managed to run into her accidentally on purpose two more times and each time she greeted me enthusiastically with a warm smile, and took the time to talk to me.

Sometimes I found my thoughts traveling back to Bridget by even the most unlikely paths. Just a glimpse of her in the hallway at school was enough to throw me off balance and disrupt my thought processes.

That was the same week Joey and I obtained access to Travis Marsh's locker. It was Joey who delivered the anonymous tip to Burke about illegal drug activity at Wakefield that inspired the school administration to take action. Travis was busted during a supposedly random search, the local police K-9 unit brought in to sniff lockers while the school was in lockdown.

No one was really surprised when Travis Marsh went down for drug possession, ten hits of X and half an ounce of pot divided into dime bags, all of it in his locker concealed under a duffel bag full of filthy gym clothes. Possession with intent to distribute requires mandatory expulsion from the school system.

Later I heard that Travis did six months at county lockup, but I figured if the nation's tax dollars were going to pay for Travis's care and feeding either way, he might as well spend some time in jail. At least there he had a better chance of earning a high school diploma than he did at Wakefield. Could be it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

*   *   *

I happened to be home from school with a stomachache and general malaise the day of Travis's bust, but kept an eye on the news throughout the day to see if the local media picked up on the police activity at Wakefield. It was just the kind of story the media loved, prompting terrified parents to wonder whether their child was in extreme danger every time he or she entered the halls of their public school, imagining Columbine-like possibilities that could threaten the beautiful and athletically capable. Anti-bullying, empowering the powerless, and parent involvement would be hot topics for a while, until everyone remembered they didn't really give a shit about the weaker kids with limited social skills.

It wasn't long after the school day ended when my doorbell rang, and even though I took my time getting there, the person didn't follow the ring with a knock. A large black guy, with the unlikely name of Carter Goldsmith, stood at the kitchen door. Always laid-back, he would probably have waited a full ten minutes without ever wondering what was taking me so long.

“What's shakin'?” I greeted him as I opened the door and stepped back to let him enter the house. Carter had a ribbon of scar tissue on his temple and short dreadlocks. His six feet four inches and 250 pounds of bulk were scary as shit on the football field, but he was the nicest guy I knew.

Carter was an important ally. His size and strength made him a good heavy, a physical threat that most people would never challenge. And as it was for me with many people, I owned his biggest secret, had guarded it carefully for a long time. He saw it as a debt, but I never really thought of it that way. He had long since repaid me for my services.

“Hey, Sway,” he said as he squeezed his frame through the kitchen door and gave me a hand to shake as he gripped my shoulder in a man hug.

As Carter eased himself onto the leather couch, I aimed the remote at the stereo and it clicked on to one of my dad's old CDs. A lot of nights I came home and found Dad sitting in the dark, enveloped in a cocoon of the old folky music he preferred for heavy drinking. Usually Dad was drunk, and sometimes asleep, and I would rouse him from the recliner, encourage him to go to bed so I wouldn't have to look at him in the morning.

Carter began nodding his head in time with the music, “Cecilia” by Simon & Garfunkel. “This is nice,” Carter said. “I like this. What do you call this?”

“Simon and Garfunkel,” I said.

“Whatsa who?” he asked.

“The music. It's Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.”

“Garfunky? That's a white dude's name?” Carter asked with a chuckle.

“Uh, yeah,” I said as I took up the bag of weed I kept stowed on the hidden ledge under the coffee table and started to fill him a bowl. “Yeah, he's white. Jewish, I guess, with a name like Art Garfunkel. It's my dad's music.”

“Funny,” said Carter, the football-playing philosopher, “you don't have to look at a man's skin but can still judge him instantly by his name. You think someone hears the name Carter Goldsmith they assume I'm black?”

“No, they probably think you're Jewish,” I said, “which could help you or hurt you, depending.”

“How do you know I'm not Jewish?” he asked, and he sincerely wanted to know.

“Are you?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well, being Jewish myself, I can usually spot a tribe member right off. It's not just about the way you look, hard to define what gives it away.”

He nodded and seemed to accept my answer. “Your old man's music is my music, my friend,” he said as he took the bowl from me and hit it. He offered the bowl back to me and I just shook my head.

“It's good stuff. Creeper,” I said as I headed to the fridge and got him a cold bottle of Gatorade, which I kept on hand specifically for Carter's visits. We sat in amicable silence for a little while, listening to music while Carter enjoyed his buzz.

Finally we got down to business and Carter bought three quarters, which I knew he would break into eighths to sell to the other guys on the football team, making a little finder's fee for himself. Nothing wrong with that and it saved me the trouble. Even if Carter got caught, he would never name his source. His word was as good as gold. We owned each other's secrets—a friendship, most people would call it, though caring about other people only promises misery. It's one of the laws of the universe.