We’d reached the dirt road that I’d taken from home to the woods, and I stopped. Fat Bobby took a few steps more before he noticed, then he stopped too and looked back at me, his hands in his pockets, his gut bulging beneath his shirt. He stood slouched, shoulders slumped, back bowed, as if a great weight were strapped to him.
“I’d rather have a quick and early hard lesson than to live my life taking shit from assholes,” I said, and regretted it even as I said the words. I felt and heard the heat in my voice, and I saw pain and hurt in Fat Bobby’s eyes as I looked him up and down as I spoke.
It was obvious what I was looking at, and that I wanted him to know it. Him. I was looking at him: his fatness, his complete and utter defeatist attitude, his self-pity bullshit. The hurt my words caused him were immediate, his doughy face falling slack in shame and embarrassment.
“Point taken,” he said, looking away from me, looking at his feet, idly kicking at a rock. “Geez,” he added, and that was all. Not “geez, why you being such a jerk?” or “geez, don’t be an asshole” or anything else that any self-respecting person would have added.
Just “geez,” and that one-word response did more than anything else could have. It made me feel ashamed. I felt embarrassed. I felt like I was one of them. That I belonged with the three high school kids, standing with them and throwing rocks and sticks at the fat boy crying in the stream.
Bandit trotted over to Fat Bobby and pressed close against the kid’s leg. My dog looked back at me from that distance, and I saw something like condemnation in his wolfish features. Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe I was projecting my thoughts irrationally onto an animal. But that look from my dog—my friend, my brother—made me feel even shittier.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and now it was me with my hands in my pockets, head down, not meeting Bobby’s eyes. Kicking idly at a pebble on the ground.
Meekly, I looked up, saw Fat Bobby nod. There was a glimmer in one eye that may have been a tear, or perhaps just the reflected daylight.
“Come on,” I said, and started walking again.
I clapped him on the shoulder as I passed by, he fell in beside me, and I knew then that for better or worse we were friends.
* * *
“Your dad sounds pretty cool,” Fat Bobby said when we reached the top of the hill. The road overlooked the woods to the west, and to the north the highway led into town.
“Yeah. He isn’t bad at all.”
“I wish my dad were like him.”
“Your dad can’t be all that bad,” I said, but I remembered the fat kid in his underwear crying in the stream, doing nothing as three other guys assaulted him, and that in itself spoke volumes. That a dad would raise a son like that said more than I needed to know about the man.
I knew my lie for what it was as soon as I said it, and the silence that followed told me Bobby did as well. I turned, cursing myself for not knowing when to shut up.
I looked back over the forest we’d just left.
Remembering the light that had caught my attention in the first place, I scanned the woods for it. Nothing. As before, all the trees seemed one endless growth, no one distinguishable from the rest. Could it have just been the stream water, catching the sunlight in a million little diamond pinpoints?
I didn’t think so. The reflected light had seemed farther out than where I placed myself to have stopped near the stream.
I wanted to ask Fat Bobby about it, turned to him to do so, and saw a shadow of the earlier sadness and hurt still on his face. A better idea came to me. One that made me feel less shitty as a person and a friend.
“You like comics?” I asked.
Fat Bobby looked at me like I’d spoken some alien language.
“I’ve never really read them.”
“My dad runs a bookstore,” I said. “Come on, I’ll show you some things.”
Down the hill, north, we started out, the world stretched out before us in shades of bleached desert-white and earthen browns. Walking along the highway, a dog and two boys, friends, taking the road to where it took us.
CHAPTER TWO
1.
Dad was making his rounds about the store when we pushed through the glass doors. Bandit walked into the store with us, and some old lady with thick makeup like cake batter gave me a dirty look. I looked right back at her and said: “Service dog, ma’am. I’m borderline retarded.” She harrumphed and walked away, and I felt proud of myself.
Dad saw us and walked over, gave me a hug. I liked his hugs and never felt embarrassed when he gave me one in public. They were manly hugs, like ballplayers or boxers showing their respect after a long game or twelve rounds of exchanging punches.
He gave Bandit a glance, looked towards me like he was about to say something, and then he noticed Fat Bobby. Dad saw the cut on his forehead almost scabbed over and dry with some help from the summer sun, and turned to me.
“What happened?” he asked.
It was like he had some sort of radar that sounded when something had happened that needed to be told. He called it his Bullshit Detector, and it was backed by a lifetime warranty with an Ass Whooping Clause. For emphasis, he held up his hand and pointed at my butt whenever he said this. My dad never actually hit me when he said this, but the intention was clear: be honest with him or pay the consequences. The consequences were usually his disappointment and displeasure and that was always enough for me. A stern, disapproving look from him and I felt like a worm caught in the sights of a bird.
So I told him what happened and, as I did, he walked us back to his office, motioned us both to sit in the swivel chairs in front of the desk. Pulling out a first aid kit from a file drawer, Dad put some disinfectant on Fat Bobby’s cut and two Band Aids in the shape of an X on his forehead.
The office door open, I had a view of the adjacent break room and an employee, a girl about my sister’s age, eating her lunch there at a table. She was tall, thin, and her brown hair hung in spirals like little galaxies. Her dress, a flower print affair, clung to her like a second skin, and then there was her skin itself, golden and tanned like she took precise measurements to get it that way. Just so much sun; just the right amount of lotion; a dollop of genetic luck or God’s favor; and it equaled something I wanted to run my hands over.
She saw me looking and smiled warmly.
I smiled back, but quickly broke eye contact.
“Pay attention, Joey,” Dad said, bringing me back from where I wanted to be, to the real world and the situation at hand, which was far less appealing for my young boy’s brain.
“Yes, sir,” I said, turning the swivel chair so it faced him.
“I think we ought to call the police,” he said. “Throwing rocks isn’t fun and games. Those boys could have really hurt you.”
He said this last while looking at Fat Bobby, but I knew he included me in that equation also.
“I can take care of myself, Dad,” I said, a little louder than necessary for the benefit of the girl in the room behind me. “Plus Bandit was with me,” I added and leaned over to pet my dog, saw he wasn’t there, spun the swivel chair some more, saw he was out in the break room with the girl.
He had his head in her lap, gazing lovingly up at her as she shook his head from side to side, massaged his ears, and cooed at him.
I prayed fervently for God to let me swap bodies with Bandit just for a few minutes. God didn’t oblige, and I had some choice words for Him spoken in my head.
Dad saw where my attention had gone again, and he wheeled his chair so he was leaning past me and looking out into the break room.
“Tara?” he called out, and the girl looked up.
“Yes, sir?”
“Isn’t lunch just about over?” Dad said, not harshly or mean-like at all, but not overly friendly either. He was irritated at me, and taking it out on her. An image of me dueling my dad for her honor sprang to mind and, in the daydream, I skewered him with my sword, and Tara leapt joyfully into my arms.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I just had to pet this cool dog, though.”
She rebelled against my dad by lingering a few moments longer, ruffling Bandit’s coat and cooing at him some more with baby talk. Then she was up, throwing her trash into a bin and walking out of sight, but remaining in my heart.
Bandit stared after her for a time before walking despondently into the office where the three of us sat. He settled on the ground beside me with a sigh, as if he were settling for second best. I tried to beam him a mental message.
Traitor.
His eyes rolled up at me as if he heard and was bored.
“She’s too old for you, son,” Dad said, and after a moment to register the words I turned back to face him.
“What? Who?”
“She’s fifteen and a half,” he said. “It’s some sort of work experience thing through her school. She’s only here a few days a week.”
But I heard none of that, save the first part. Fifteen and a half. Round down to the nearest whole number and that left fifteen. I was thirteen, with fourteen only a few weeks away. When you thought of it that way, you may as well just say we were the same age.
Dad saw my thoughts had trailed off again. Sighing, he brought us back to the subject at hand.
“These boys. Do you know their names?” he asked, facing Bobby again.
Bobby nodded hesitantly, but I interjected before he could say anything.
“I told you, Dad,” I said, knowing I was walking on thin ice by objecting to him when he was in a mood like this. Someone had threatened his family, and he wasn’t too keen on that. My dad liked books; obviously, he managed a bookstore. But he also had a punching bag in the garage, and he liked chopping wood, and seeing him shirtless like he often was in the summertime to do yard work, you’d think God had run out of flesh and bone and made my dad out of stone.
Once, a drunk man had accosted Mom when we were out for a family dinner. The drunk man had had two not-so-drunk friends with him, egging him on. Dad ended up accosting all three of them, and an ambulance took them away in gurneys for a stay at the hospital, where their busted teeth required of them a diet of Jell-O and apple sauce.
“I can take care of myself,” I finished.
“I don’t doubt that, son,” he said, and though he hadn’t raised his voice yet, his face was flat and stern, like a slab of rock with eyes, ears, a nose, and mouth. I knew he would only let me go so far. He wouldn’t lose his temper at work either. He’d wait until we were both home, then there’d be that disappointed look, he’d verbalize it, and I’d trail down the hall to my room with my tail between my legs. “But you know how I feel about fighting. There’s no reason for it—”
“Unless there’s no other option,” I finished for him.
“That’s right.” He ignored my mildly mocking tone. “And here we have an option. And that option is to call the police. Now, Bobby,” and here again he turned to face my new fat friend, “can I have those boys’ names please?”
Dad, poised over the office tabletop, pen in hand.
Bobby, head bowed, not looking at my dad.
Me, thinking Bobby doesn’t know what he’s doing. Son or no son, it doesn’t matter. My dad wants something from you, you better give it over.
“Bobby,” Dad said, his tone prodding and urging, but uncompromising at the same time, “where I come from, when an adult asks a kid something, the kid gives a response.”
The quiet between them stretched for a few moments more. The ticking of a clock somewhere could be heard. I thought if I farted it would be like a bomb blast in peacetime.
“Bobby?”
Dad’s gaze penetrated like a drill.
I looked at Fat Bobby and saw his double layer chins quiver. I saw that glimmer of a tear in his eye again. This kid is a real waterworks, I thought, again with a hint of disgust, and quickly on the heels of that, shame at the thought.
“I … really don’t want you to call the police … sir,” he said without looking up.
“Why on earth not?” Dad asked. He was leaning forward in what he probably thought was a confidential, comforting manner for Bobby. But a large man, muscled and burly, leaning towards you in such a way would seem like a mountain with a face leaning over you, towering over you. The shadow would probably eclipse the sun. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
The quivering chins flapped faster. I remembered something on The Discovery Channel about Hubble or other telescopes picking up the wobble of distant stars. Fat Bobby’s wobbling chins would have short circuited NASA’s instrumentation.
“I … don’t want my dad … to find out,” Bobby said. A single tear began to roll down his cheek.
Dad looked at me, and I shrugged. I saw the same look of mixed concern, mild disgust, and shame at his disgust that I’d felt many times around Bobby in the short time I’d known him, pass over my dad’s face.
“Again, I ask the same question,” he said. “Why not? You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Whatever dam had been holding it all back finally gave way under the pressure, and Fat Bobby really started crying. Embarrassed, but also saddened without knowing completely why, I reached out and swung the door to Dad’s office closed. In the room with the door shut and the wider world cut off, it was only the three of us, and Bandit too, who again stood and moved to Fat Bobby’s side and rested his head on the fat boy’s leg.
Dad scooted his chair closer to the crying boy and something amazing happened, something I’d never seen before outside my own home and my own family: he leaned over, pulled Bobby close, and engulfed the large boy in his larger arms. Those arms that had held me before in the aftermath of nightmares or scoldings or the various and countless other things in a boy’s life.
“It’s alright, son,” he said to a boy not his son, and I knew as never before my dad was a great man. He tried to keep his voice a whisper, but it was a soft rumble like a swarm of bees. “It’s alright, everything will be alright.”
And because my dad said it, I trusted it to be true.
2.
Dad gave us ten dollars each and told us to get some comics with it or a drink from the café. With the ten dollars in his hand, you would have thought Fat Bobby was holding the Holy Grail or something, his face was beaming so. His sudden and simple joy made my dad smile, and when Bobby and I made as if to leave the office for the sales floor, Dad stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. I called to Bobby and told him I’d meet him in the comics aisle. He waved, still clutching that ten dollars like it was something magic from a fairy tale.
“You’ve never chosen your friends easily, Joey,” my dad said. “You march to your own beat. Always been a bit of an outsider that way, and I can respect that. If you and Bobby are friends, then he must be a pretty okay kid.”
Knowing he wasn’t done yet, that he was working his way to what he really wanted to say, I didn’t respond. Just nodded my head where it felt appropriate.
“I know you already know this, son,” he said, me looking up at him like I was looking up at a skyscraper, “but I want to say it anyway.”
I nodded again, waiting.
“It’s never okay for a man to hit either women or kids.” His hand squeezed my shoulder gently. “A man that does that isn’t really a man at all.”
Still I didn’t say anything, knew I wasn’t really supposed to. He was telling me something, something important, and it was for me to listen and take it in. Nothing else.
“I won’t call the police this time, Joey. But I want you to stay away from those three guys. They’re nothing but trouble. And if you come across them, walk away, head the other direction. Got it?”
I didn’t want to, felt like I was already relinquishing my manhood and I wasn’t even a man yet, but I nodded and said: “Yes, sir.”
I started to walk out of the office, and his hand on my shoulder stopped me again.
“But to be on the safe side …” he began, then paused.
“Yes, sir?�
�
“Keep Bandit with you all the time,” he finished, and smiled.
I smiled too, and ruffled my dog’s coat and slapped him on the flank.
“Yes, sir. You can count on that.”
Then I was out the door, through the break room, and into the bookstore, a maze of covers and bindings and that smell of new leather and paper—something akin to what I imagined heaven must be like—I breathed it in, and went looking for my new sad friend in the comics section.
* * *
Comic books and how to read them, and which ones to read, is a thing of intricacy bordering on something like art. You have to read certain storylines to make sense of other storylines, and you have to understand the relationships between characters for those stories to make sense. Furthermore, add in variables like the creative teams, the artists and writers who put together the stories—some of whom shouldn’t be doing anything higher brow or complicated than Archie; others whose imaginations and love of magic had led them to novels and movies and other creative pursuits—and you have a recipe for disaster unless you have yourself a guide through the whole mess.
I tried being that guide for Bobby, virgin of all things Marvel and DC, allowing him to peruse the rack and shelves of titles. Deftly, I steered him clear of the craptastic stuff that really shouldn’t be used as anything other than backup asswipes when the toilet paper recession hit.
When he reached for some sort of Japanese manga garbage, I grabbed it out of Bobby’s hands and just barely restrained myself from throwing it across the aisle and stomping on it. I replaced it with a trade collection of a book called Preacher by a guy named Garth Ennis.
“Forget that manga shit,” I said.
Mrs. Old Lady Makeup was walking by just then and gave me a dirty look. She saw Bandit was still with me and gave another harrumph.
“Sorry, ma’am. I have Tourette’s syndrome,” I said, and flinched and jerked and twitched my face and said another “shit” just for good measure. She stormed away again, presumably to help the makeup stocks rise for the Wall Street makeup tycoons.
If You Go Down to the Woods Page 3
