by Jim Shepard
“I don’t want one,” he goes.
“All right, then,” his dad says.
“God,” Flake goes, under his breath.
“Roddy’s grandmother was a wonderful musician,” his dad goes.
Flake’s looking off into the neighbor’s yard.
“Was she?” I finally go.
“She could’ve been a professional,” his dad goes.
“All she ever did was complain about her health,” Flake goes to me. “And she lived to be like a hundred and two.”
“What’d he say?” his dad goes.
“What do you care?” Flake goes.
“What’d you say to him?” his dad goes.
“He was telling me about her,” I go.
He looks skeptical but keeps eating. Flake’s mom is off in her own world, looking at her ginger ale.
“How did I end up with a kid with no ambition?” his dad finally goes. His mom shakes her head, like she doesn’t know.
“Don’t worry about the no ambition part,” Flake tells him.
“You got some?” his dad asks.
“I’m working on it,” Flake goes.
“You don’t look like you’re working on it,” his dad says.
“I’m working on it right now,” Flake goes.
I whack his leg to shut him up. He tears up more grass and won’t look at me.
His dad spreads out the quesadilla’s wrapping with the palm of his hand. “Glad to hear it,” he finally goes.
6
I come over to Flake’s the next day after school and he’s in his garage sitting on the floor doing something with his hand. He doesn’t answer when I say hey from the driveway.
I ask what he’s doing. Coming in out of the sunlight it’s hard to see at first. He’s holding a can of spray paint an inch from the back of his hand and spraying the same spot. The paint’s blue. It’s dripping onto the cement under his hand.
“What’re you doing?” I go.
He keeps spraying. The smell’s making his eyes water.
“What’re you doing?” I go.
He stops and looks at the spot he’s been spraying.
“Your dad’s gonna be pissed about the paint on the floor,” I tell him.
He looks at it. It’s not a very big puddle, but still.
“A few years ago I was trying to make a model,” he tells me. He’s got his eye right up to the part of his hand where the paint is. “When I was spray painting it, I found something out.”
“So?” I finally go. “What’d you find out?”
He puts the nozzle up against the part he’s already painted on his hand and sprays again. “You can fuck up your skin like this,” he goes. “If you do it long enough.”
I crouch next to him. Like that’ll help me figure out what he thinks he’s doing. Up close, the smell from the paint’s so intense that I feel like I’m squinting when I’m not.
“You are one weird kid,” I finally go.
“It’s like a burn, but a burn that doesn’t burn,” he goes.
“See?” he goes. “It’s making a blister.”
“What’d you do to your hand, Roddy?” my mom asks as soon as we come into the house.
“Burned it,” Flake goes.
“How’d you burn it?” my mom goes. She’s all alarmed. She gets in front of us.
“Wasn’t careful,” he goes.
“Were you playing with matches?” she asks. She looks at me.
“Oh, no,” he goes.
“Let me see,” she goes. She takes his hand with both of hers. He cleaned the paint off with thinner and that made the blistering worse. There are pink bubbles from his thumb to his pointer finger and down to his wrist.
“I got aloe,” she goes. “You want aloe?”
“My mom gave me some,” he goes.
“Well, I hope you weren’t doing something stupid,” she goes.
“Sometimes I need to be more careful,” he tells her. He means it.
“Were you guys doing anything stupid?” she asks me.
“He was already hurt when I got there,” I go. “I just brought him over here.”
We’re up in my room a minute and a half before the phone rings and my mom calls up the stairs that it’s for Flake.
“Were you painting in my garage?” his dad asks him. I can hear every word he says.
“We tried to clean it up,” Flake says.
“You didn’t try too hard,” his dad goes.
“I can hear like every word he’s saying,” I tell Flake.
He nods. “I’ll clean it some more,” he promises.
His dad swears a few times and then gets off the phone.
We sit and stare at his hand for a while. “Edwin,” my mom calls.
“Edwin,” Flake goes.
I go over to the door and open it. “What do you want?” I call down to her.
“There’s a boy here to see you,” she goes.
I look over at Flake, who thinks it’s funny.
“I don’t know any boys,” I go.
“I’m sending him up,” she says.
Hermie comes up the stairs two at a time.
“Who said you could come over?” I go.
“Your mom,” he goes.
“My mom said you could come up,” I tell him. “Who said you could come over?”
“I said,” he goes.
“You said?” Flake goes. “Midgets make the rules now?”
“Don’t make me kick your ass,” Hermie goes. He’s having the time of his tiny life. “Listen,” he goes. He’s looking around the room.
“Don’t get comfortable,” I tell him.
“I got a proposition for you guys,” he goes.
“A proposition?” Flake says.
“Yeah, a proposition,” Hermie goes. “You wanna hear it or not?”
Flake grabs him by the shorts and the collar of his shirt. I can hear Hermie grabbing at the banister as they go downstairs and complaining about something all the way out. The back door slams, then Flake comes walking back up and shuts the door behind him.
“Did that boy leave already?” my mom calls from the back of the house.
We can’t talk in my house and Flake doesn’t want to go back to his so we walk to the fort. When we get up to the underpass and duck under the concrete Flake hits his head. He’s still swearing when we see Dickhead and Weensie and two other kids sitting there with our candles and sketch pads. We had a box stuck up on a drainage pipe with some stuff in it, and the stuff is spread all over the dirt. There’s nothing on any of the sketch pads that anybody could figure out.
“This is ours,” Flake goes, holding his head.
“Yours?” Weensie goes. “You own the highway?” I don’t know where he got his name. He’s got freckles that look like they were drawn on and a space between his front teeth.
“Oh, this is theirs,” one of the other kids says. “Everything here is theirs.”
The other kids laugh.
“That’s ours too,” Flake says, about the sketch pads and candles.
“Why don’t you take ’em from us?” Dickhead says.
We stand there, half in and half out. “Fuck,” Flake finally says. He rubs his head some more.
“Hurt yourself?” Dickhead goes.
“You dumped all our shit out,” I go. “Who said you could dump all our shit out?” We had gum, pencils, a little flashlight and some napkins in the box. Flake liked to jerk off sometimes.
They don’t say anything. They just look at us. Dickhead has one droopy eye, and he’s always grinning up at you, like you’re just about to get the joke.
“Gimme the flashlight,” I go. “And gimme the sketch pads.”
“Oooo,” Weensie and another kid go. “Oooo.”
Weensie turns the flashlight on and shines it in my eyes. He turns it off and on again. He shakes his hand to make it like a strobe.
“Give him the flashlight,” Flake goes. He’s finally let go of his head.
T
hey make more scared noises. Flake wanders off and circles around on the slope up to the road. When he comes back he’s got a flat rock the size of a paperback.
“What’re you, gonna hit us with that?” Dickhead goes. “You tryin’ to fucking scare me with a rock?”
Flake takes the flat side and brings it to his head, and then lowers it and brings it back up again, like he’s demonstrating how to do something.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Dickhead goes. He sounds like he really wants to know, all of a sudden.
No one says anything. One of the kids coughs and clears his throat and spits. “Aw, give it to him,” another kid says.
“Why should I?” Weensie asks him. But then he rolls the flashlight over to me.
“Give him the sketch pads,” Flake goes.
“Put the rock down,” Dickhead goes.
“Give him the sketch pads,” Flake goes.
“You put the rock down,” Dickhead goes.
Flake puts the rock at his feet.
“These drawings suck, by the way,” Dickhead goes. He tosses the two little pads out to me.
“Blow me,” Flake goes.
“I’ll fucking kick your ass,” Dickhead goes.
“Kick my ass,” Flake goes.
You can see Dickhead deciding.
“Kick my ass,” Flake goes.
Dickhead starts to get up.
“Let ’em go,” Weensie says.
“Who wants to screw around with these dildoes?” another kid says.
“This is our place,” Dickhead says to Flake. “You find another place to blow each other. And take your rocks with you.”
“Oooo,” one of the kids goes. The rest of them laugh.
Flake turns and is halfway up the embankment before I realize he’s leaving. We don’t talk at all on the walk home. When he turns off for his house, he doesn’t say anything and neither do I.
“You still pissed?” I ask him the next day, which is a Saturday. His dad and mom are spending the afternoon getting shown around a condo they’re not going to buy so they can get a free TV. Flake’s pulled out the guns and ammo and we’re making sure we know how everything fits together.
“You still pissed?” he goes, in a pussy voice.
I tilt up the carbine’s barrel. “Put this in your mouth,” I go.
He’s got newspaper spread on his dad’s bed so we don’t get oil on the blanket. The Kalashnikov’s easy. You can see right where the clip goes. At first I don’t want to put it in because I’m worried we won’t be able to get it out.
“We’re gonna have to get it out at school,” he says.
“We are?” I go.
“What happens when you want to change clips?” he wants to know.
“Oh, yeah,” I go.
He shakes his head.
I turn over his dad’s nine-millimeter, which looks like something a secret agent would use. Its clip is heavier than a rock that size. Flake’s looking at it, too. We both just look at it for a few minutes. I’m still thinking about changing clips. “Think we’re really gonna do this?” I go.
Flake shrugs. He’s still looking at the pistol. We hear some kids ride by on bikes, but we can’t tell who they are. “Let’s do this later,” he says.
“Okay,” I go.
We put everything back in their cases. At first the snaps on the outside of the big one won’t close, but finally we get it. I push it into the closet while Flake puts the ammo away. When he gets back we fold up all the newspaper and look around to see if we missed anything.
“What do you want to do now?” Flake finally goes.
I’m as depressed as he is. “Who knows?” I go.
He takes the newspaper under his arm and leaves. I can hear him in the kitchen. When I get in there he’s sitting at the table crying.
“We are such pussies,” he goes.
I sit down across from him but there’s nothing to say.
He sniffs and rubs his face and then cleans his hand and nose on a napkin from the napkin holder.
“Wanna play mosh volleyball?” I go.
“No,” he goes.
“Wanna throw rocks?” I go. Sometimes we throw little rocks at cars from a sand-and-gravel lot where we can get a running start when we get chased.
“No,” he goes.
“So what do you want to do?” I go.
He puts his head on the table and leaves it there for a few minutes. “All right, let’s throw rocks,” he goes.
On Monday at breakfast my mom tells me that the meeting with the vice principal and Ms. Meier is going to be tomorrow, which is the same day as Gus’s birthday party.
“That should be festive,” she says.
“The kid didn’t do the scheduling,” my dad goes. He’s up early and looking at something on his laptop at the kitchen table.
“Can I try your coffee?” I ask him.
“Maybe you should try one bite of breakfast,” my mom says.
“I ate one bite,” I tell her.
“This graph is perfectly incoherent,” my dad goes. He turns the computer to show me, then taps around on the keyboard.
“I hate when that happens,” my mom says. She’s rooting in a little bowl for change for my lunch money.
I move his mug closer and take a sip. It’s so full I have to lean over it.
“Can I try?” Gus says.
“It’s not good for you,” my dad goes.
My mom reminds me I’m going to be late. She dumps the lunch money into an envelope and hands it over. I stuff it into my pack. “I hope you finished the rest of your homework,” she says.
My dad looks at me when I come around from the other side of the table. “We gotta get you some new pants,” he goes. “How often does he wear those pants?”
“Every day,” my mom tells him.
“Oh, was I supposed to have noticed sooner than this?” he asks her.
“Don’t you need a jacket?” she asks me.
“I’m all right,” I tell her, but when I open the back door it’s freezing.
“What about your homework?” she calls.
“I didn’t need to do it all,” I go.
“You going to say good-bye to your brother?” she asks.
“Bye, Edwin,” Gus calls.
I poke my head back in. “How old you gonna be, Gus?” I ask him. “How old you gonna be on your birthday?”
He holds up the right number of fingers.
At the bus stop the ninth-graders leave me alone. Outside before the bell rings I don’t see Flake. At the lockers I get mine open without much trouble.
In first-period English I get called on once and I know the answer. In second and third period I have a stomachache but it goes away. In math the teacher goes, “How many people didn’t get to finish the whole worksheet?” and I raise my hand along with a few other kids and he just leaves it at that.
At lunch I make a joke in line about the chocolate pudding and Tawanda and another kid laugh. “Hey, how’d that World of Color project come out?” the other kid, a cross-eyed girl, wants to know. “Don’t ask,” Tawanda tells her. A kid who’s holding everybody up looking for a cookie with chocolate chips instead of raisins has a booger hanging out of her nose and nobody tells her.
No Flake once I’m out of the line with my tray, so I sit by myself.
In fifth period two kids get into a fight before class as I’m coming through the door and I end up having to help break it up. They both get sent to the vice principal.
“Boys’re like dogs,” a girl by the window says, and everybody laughs.
“Well, girls’re like . . .” a boy goes, and when he can’t think of anything the class laughs again.
“I’m not going to be here Monday,” another kid goes. Nobody’s paying any attention. “I’m not going to be here Tuesday, either,” he adds.
In sixth period a kid falls asleep and slides all the way to the floor before he wakes up. In seventh I watch the clock for twenty-two straight minutes unti
l the bell rings. Flake isn’t around before I get on the bus to go home, and nobody answers at his house when I call him from my room.
7
When they first brought Gus home from the hospital they had him in a little bassinet by their bed. When I couldn’t sleep, instead of wandering around the house all night I’d creep in there and watch him move around. He looked like a little turnover. They left him right in the streetlight. I don’t know how he went to sleep. He’d move for a while and get quiet and then move a little more. My mom slept with her face in the pillow and whimpered every so often. My dad always looked like he’d washed ashore in a storm. Sometimes I sat in the chair in the corner. Sometimes I went back to bed.
In the mornings we had this thing we did when we all woke up. When I heard Gus making his noises I got up and went into their room. By then he was in their bed between them, and I’d climb over my dad and get next to Gus. I’d push the mattress with my hand to make his head move. He kept an eye on me. He grabbed my hair when he could reach it.
I’d say, “Gus, do you like Mommy and Daddy?” and give the mattress a few pushes and it would look like he was shaking his head. My dad especially laughed. I think I was nine then.
“What’s wrong, honey?” my mom would go sometimes. It always surprised me.
“Nothing’s wrong,” my dad would go. “Why does something have to be wrong?”
“Are you okay?” my mom would go. She’d be lying on her pillow looking at me over Gus’s head. He’d reach for my hair and I’d tip toward my dad, to make him reach farther.
“I’m fine,” I’d go.
“You seem worried,” she’d go. Or “You seem sad.” That happened five or six times.
“Are you worried?” she said one time a few hours later, when my dad was upstairs changing Gus.
“I guess,” I said. It felt like I was always worried.
“About Gus?” she asked.
I must’ve looked so surprised that she asked if it was something else.
“You think you need to see somebody?” she asked another time. She meant like a psychiatrist. She was always frustrated that she never got anywhere with me.
“I had this dream where I rolled Gus down the stairs,” I told them once at breakfast. “Except he did this stair-luge thing. Then we were all doing stair luge.”
