The Summer I Died: A Thriller (7 page)

“
It’s empty,
”
I told him.

He was smiling at me, like Dr. Frankenstein marveling at his monster. I must have looked hypnotized because he poked me.
“
Go ahead, pull the trigger, see how little tension there is.
”

I pulled the trigger with ease and the gun went
click
.
A wave of anticipation washed over me and left me feeling a little disturbed. I’d never been a gun freak before and didn’t
know how to handle this new sense of
power the weapon carried
.
I felt almost guilty
for wa
nting to shoot
it
, see what type of destruction it could do
. There was a wrongness to it
all
, so
I handed it back and watched him put it in the case.

“
How much did these cost you?
”
I asked.

“
Got ’
em both used, which is why the targeting is slightly off. Four hundred for the
9mm
and six hundred for the .44.
”

“
That’s a lot of dough. If you’re making that kind of money why don’t you move out an
d get an apartment or something?
”

He took two small bags out from behind the dresser. The first was a bag of marijuana, which he squeezed and then stuck in his back pocket. The second was small and black, and from it he removed some cleaning materials, including a little wire brush, some oil and a few rags, and began cleaning the .44.
“
Remember when I said I was gonna go to California?
”

“
Yeah, you say it all the time.
”

“
No, you remember when we were in jail and I said it?
”

I remembered. That was the first time he told me he wanted to get away from everything.

“
Well, that was the night I told myself I was really going to do it,
”
he said.
“
I started putting some money away every week since then. Nickels and dimes at first, then about twenty dollars a week since I got the job at Dataview. I’ve got myself a nice little stash. Three grand right now, and I still got some bills to pay, and I owe Dad a few
months’
rent, but as soon as I hit five I’m leaving.
”

“
If you hadn’t bought the guns you’d have four grand.
”

“
And if I hadn’t fixed up that Camaro I could have left long ago, but I’d have had to walk there. These guns, they’re a bit of insurance. Besides, it’s not like it’s a bad thing to know how to shoot straight.
”
He stopped cleaning the gun, took off his hat and wiped the sweat from above his eyes. He looked at me with one of those
looks that ma
k
e people feel uncomfortable, like he was going to tell me how I’d die.
“
Quit that college shit and come out with me.
”

“
I can’t quit college, you know that.
”

“
No, I don’t. And yes, you can. You said you want to draw comics. Having a degree isn’t going to accomplish that. All it’s gonna do is get you nice little cubicle next to someone else’s nice little cubicle, where the two of you will swap family photos and talk about how cute your kids’ poopie is. You don’t need to study economics to get a job drawing Batman. You just need a pencil and paper and the know-how to draw a fucking cape and horns and
—
voila!
—
y
ou’re living your dream.
”

The sad thing was, he had a point. I wasn’t sure why I was going to college, other than it was what you were supposed to do, and my dad would rip my asshole out through my mouth if I quit. Also, I’d been conditioned to believe that a college diploma was like a skeleton key to the world. I was banking on that somewhat.

California would be great. I could see us now, surfing, drinking, just soaking in the sun. Probably be the only two idiots rooting for the Red Sox when they came to town. But, for now, it wasn’t in the cards for me. Would Tooth wait? No, he’d go, and he’d move on without me. I could feel it happening already, the slow separation of our lives. We’d survived this first year of college, but we hadn’t seen each other much. Adulthood was coming in like a wedge to our friendship. Was this summer our last one together, the final hoorah for the road?

I heard Mr.
Elliot
come in the house and open the refrigerator, clank beer bottles together, and saw Tooth scrub a little bit harder at the .44’s barrel. The fridge door closing was followed by some serious coughs and a loogie
being hacked up from so far down it probably had
“
Made in China
”
stamped on it.

“
Is he all right?
”
I asked.

“
Who knows. I ain’t seen him sober in a while but he don’t bug me either
so
.
.
.
.
He says God will take care of him, and then he starts preaching to me about faith and I have to run out of the house. He quit working at the mill a few months ago and filed for workman’s comp when a log fell on his leg. You don’t need to be Kreskin to know he was drunk and caused the thing to fall on himself.
”

I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live with his father, watching the man seep down through the floorboards of degradation before your eyes. But that was the life Tooth chose and, thus far, he hadn’t seemed to mind it let alone try
to
fix the problem. I guess some problems were too big to fix and you just hoped they would take care of themselves. I felt uncomfortable for having brought it up so I changed the subject.
“
Batman doesn’t have horns, he has ears.
”

“
What?
”

“
Batman has ears, not horns. You said I had to know how to draw horns.
”

“
Man
, you’re a geek sometimes. C’mon, this is clean enough. Grab the
9mm
and let’s go.
”

Tooth put the
case with the
.44
in it
back behind the dresser,
slid the dresser back in place, then
went into the kitchen and grabbed some beers. We walked out of the stifling house into equally stifling afternoon dust. A cloud of gnats trying to fly through the screen door turned their attention to our eyes and mouths and Tooth swatted them with his cap. Mr.
Elliot
was back sitting in his place on the porch. As we walked by, I kept my head down, pretending to be wrapped up in
my sneakers
so he wouldn’t talk to me.

“
Got to have a purpose in life,
”
he said as I opened the car door. I was still pre
tending to be interested in my feet
when Tooth started the car and we sped away.

CHAPTER 7

The Camaro rumbled down the road like a metallic fart with a purp
ose. Heat wave
r
ose off the baking blacktop as
I searched for a radio station worth listening to.
In the part of the county we were in, I knew we wouldn’t get much but
country
music
—
which
explain
ed
all the
goth kids and wannabe punks
who
infest
ed
the shops along main street, just begging for an alternative.
Only way we’d get any
good radio
would be to head
north toward Canada or a few hours south toward Boston.

I kept flipping stations, hoping something
would come up
I could hum along to, but the best I could find was some song about a man whose
woman left him and took the dog when she did
. I looked at the CD player and sighed.
If it weren’t for online CD distributors I’d have gone Charlie Manson a long time ago. But we couldn’t use CDs in the Camaro because Tooth had fucked up the player trying to fix it.

I finally just turned it off and stuck my hand out the window instead, let it catch the wind and swim up and down like a dolphin. We took a lesser-traveled back route that ran under the trees and offered sporadic shade. Crooked limbs criss-crossed overhead like giant arthritic fingers. The blazing sun stabbed through
them
here and there creating a kind of flicker effect
as we drove.

“
Where to?
”
Tooth asked.

“
I don’t know. Let’s go up toward Bobcat and see what we find. Should be pretty secluded and we can shoot all we want.
”

He reached into his pocket and brought out the bag of weed and tossed it in my lap.

“
I bought you a coming home present. Roll a nice fatty for us.
”

Shaking the bag in front of my eyes, I thought, fuck yeah, this is the shit that makes coming home worth it. I opened the bag
and took a whiff and holy shit
was it bad.
“
This stinks like a hobo’s asshole. Is it even good?
”

“
Probably not, but it’s weed, ain’t it? Who cares what it smells like long as it gets us fucked up, right?
”

I took a
B
ud out and crunched it up in my lap. The wind whipped some of it up and stuck it to my Silver Surfer T-shirt. The papers were in the bag as well and I took one out and rolled it as best I could despite the wind. It looked rather pathetic when I finished, but I agreed with Tooth’s philosophy.

“
How’s that?
”
I asked, holding it up like a prize catfish.

“
Looks like a piece of bird shit, but it’ll do.
”

Bobcat Mountain was farther north than we liked to travel, about an hour and fifteen minutes, but it was as desolate as volunteer day at the old folks home. A few years ago there was an attempt to turn it into a
ski resort, but a bunch of tree-
hugging hippies rallied against it,
arguing
it would drive the mountain’s animals out of their natural habitat and
into people’s bedrooms. I hate
hippies.

I lit the
joint and sucked in the rancid-
smelling weed, then passed it to Tooth, who took a big toke. I hadn’t
smoked pot in over a month because I was afraid it would affect my finals. I got
okay
grades, but they weren’t going to get me into Harvard Law or anything. The drug wasted no time climbing into the recesses of my mind and convincing my brain cells they could run the place with minimal staff. I slumped back in the seat and watched my dolphin-hand dive for food. When I got bored with that I took the dice out of my pocket and we played an imaginative game of craps.

“
What odds you give me I roll a seven?
”
I asked, shaking the dice in my hand.

“
I bet you an ass-kicking.
”

“
For you or for me?
”

“
For your mothe
r, who do you think? Just roll ’
em so I can get started. I been waiting to give you a good ass kicking for a while now.
”

I rolled them on the floor
and t
hey came up seven.
Scooping them up, I showed Tooth.
He blew smoke in my face and punched me in the arm like a prize pugilist and I almost went through the door.