The Outside Lands

by Hannah Kohler

  “Use it to break the window, then unhook the latch and go in.”

  “Why the towel?” I asked.

  Pete ignored the question. “Go for the Maker’s Mark. That’s the good shit,” he said. “And the Smirnoff. Chicks dig it.”

  I nodded and slipped a cigarette from my pocket, this being the sort of moment a man might take a smoke.

  “If Old Ted shows up, we cut out. I’ll gun the engine.”

  “You’re not coming in?”

  “Like you said, you’ve done this shit before,” said Pete, and I thought on this. Pete grinned, like he knew that I knew he was calling bullshit on me; he enjoyed being an asshole. We drove in silence, and I smoked and squinted at the dark streets. As we turned onto Thirty-Fifth, I thumbed the dead cigarette out the window.

  “Here we are,” said Pete, shutting off the engine. The street was empty, save for an old lady rolling heave-ho drunk along the sidewalk. We looked over to Old Ted’s, the sign hanging like a broken finger, bottles watching through the window.

  Pete whistled. “This place is fucking creepy.”

  Fear scurried up my back; I peered at Old Ted’s and saw something move behind the glass.

  “He’s in there, man,” I said.

  “Bullshit.” Pete leaned across me; I felt his dead weight in my lap, his hair at my mouth.

  I pushed him away. “Get the fuck off me.” He settled back into his seat, a shit-eating smile pulling across his face.

  “Nobody there,” he said.

  I watched the glass, but behind the bottles everything was dark, and the window above the shop had its blinds pulled shut. The drunk disappeared down Rivera.

  “Do it,” said Pete.

  I hesitated, glanced at Pete; saw the steel in his eyes. It was going to happen. I opened the door all slow and casual, leaned to spit on the ground, then stood, letting the moment rest clean and heavy on me. I squeezed the brick.

  “Get moving!” said Pete, and as I walked across the street, I heard him fire the engine.

  I peered through the glass for a sign of Old Ted, a boot or a hat or a whisker. But it was just shadow and dust—the store had been empty awhile. I stood back and lifted the brick, catching my reflection in the glass, and it came to me all of a sudden that something nasty was going to happen. But the brick was flying and the glass was splashing and time started racing. I scratched my arm through the door and unhooked the latch, and was scrabbling at the bottles when I heard a bang and a shout:

  “You’re fucking dead, shitbird!”

  Of course I got the hell out, the door hit me on the ass and I ran blind across the street. Pete was already driving like the getaway cat he was and I was wondering what kind of horse-jumping cowboy move I was going to have to pull to get myself into that car. Behind me Old Ted fired his gun and it put ten kinds of fear in me, made my legs run so hard they nearly came loose. But Pete was too fast and the getaway car was getting away and there was another bang and my heart was knocking and I was sure I was getting lined up to meet Bobby again. The sound of that siren was a relief.

  They say you’re not a man till you test yourself against the Law. Here I was throwing spitballs in jail, cuffed and crowded up with the smashed and the colored and the lawless, waiting for my dad to bail me out. He was so mad he couldn’t speak; that ride home put more dread in me than Ted’s Remington. He was silent for days after, all gray-skinned and dry-lipped like an alligator lizard, like any minute a tongue would fly out and sting me dead. Two weeks later, I was getting ready to go to the courthouse; he knocked on my door and handed me his baggy old funeral suit and the golden eagle necktie Aunt Ruth gave him for Christmas.

  “Speak when you’re spoken to. Let your top lip meet your bottom one for a change.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You be polite, you say you’re sorry, you eat crow.”

  “Sir.”

  “Give me your shoes.”

  He took my oxfords and buffed them wet. Then he took the leather case that stood on the john, drew out his straight razor, and ran it along the leather band till it was sharp as a snake tooth. “Come here,” he said. “Hold up your hand.” He took hold of my thumb as gently as if it were a baby’s and touched the blade against it. He eased it against the skin, and a bubble of blood cried up.

  “Shit, Dad—” I took my hand back to suck the blood.

  “It’s sharp, so you got to go slow and smooth.” He turned to the sink and whipped the froth in his shaving bowl. “You think you’re a big man, you go and shave like a man.”

  Mr. Harry Huffacker met us on the steps of the courthouse, pink head and brown suit shining in the sun, gripping his briefcase like it held a secret. “Okay, kid,” he said, his eyes drifting over the top of my head. “We tell him about your background, we got a chance of getting off lightly.”

  “And the burglary charge?” asked my dad.

  “Dropped if we plead guilty to vandalism.”

  My dad looked at his watch and tapped his foot.

  “It’s time,” said Huffacker.

  “Well, your sister’s too late now,” clacked my dad. He shook his head all long and sad, then turned to me and squeezed his arm around my shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Just do what you’re told.”

  The courtroom was brown and airless, like we’d stepped inside Huffacker’s brain. Justice Choate sat, gray-cheeked and yawning, and below him, lifting and placing papers, a blimp-lady whose peepers blazed in the light so you couldn’t see her eyes. Old men slow-talking and honking snot in their handkerchiefs—if it hadn’t been for my dad’s black eyes cramming into me, I might have been invisible. Sleep was buzzing on me when Justice Choate looked up all Droopy Dog and said, “You’ve had a hard time, son, but you’ve got to get your life straight.” A thread of white slime pulled and sagged between his upper and lower lips as he spoke, like some rotten puppet master was hiding behind his teeth and working his mouth with string. “The order of this court is you finish high school or you join the military.” The slime snapped; Choate licked his lips. “I need a decision by the end of the month.” He hit his little hammer, my dad blew breath, and Huffacker bounced his head. As I shuffled out, razor-bitten and zoot-trou’d, Justice Choate frowned and picked something nasty from his earhole.

  Outside, my dad clapped Huffacker’s back and almost ran to his Chevrolet. He drove one-handed, the other hand hanging from the window holding a Marlboro, the wind digging up his hair. “You graduate, you can still get to college,” he said, pulling hard on his cigarette. “You got lucky, Kip. No more bullshit.”

  I hadn’t spoken to Pete since that night at Old Ted’s, but I’ll tell you what happened to him: his dad got wind of the whole business and smacked all the trouble and inspiration out of him. Pete kept his dad’s belt tender for a week; I knew it because that whole time, all the drapes were drawn in Pete’s house and nobody went in or out but Mr. Marshall, with a face full of release and shame, like he’d just shit his pants but it sure felt good. By the time another Monday pulled around with no sight of Pete at school, I started feeling sorry for the asshole.

  The night after the trial, I found Pete at the playground on Forty-First and Ortega, lying on his belly at the top of the bleachers, crushing a cigarette into the stands. I stood over him and the wind tried to push me around and he looked up at me, and even in the dark I could see his face was fat with a beating.

  “You bring anything with you?” he said, and his voice was squashed and faraway.

  “I went to the courthouse today,” I said. “Thanks to you.”

  “And wouldn’t you know, you’re still here.” Pete sat up and scratch-shook his hair like it was full of bugs.

  “You’re an asshole,” I told him.

  “Yeah, fuck you too,” said Pete; but he said it all beaten-down and limp, and as he shifted to push his hand in his pocket, his face ooh-aah flinched. This time, his dad had hit his left eye shut—the lid was red and crusted, like a Cherry Slice—and his
lip was split from top to bottom.

  “You okay, man?”

  “Yeah.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

  I took a seat beside him. “Judge was a freako,” I said. Pete handed me a cigarette. “Kept looking at me like he was hungry, and licking his lips. I told him I wasn’t sorry, told him he could stick his courthouse and his big words and his fucking little hammer.”

  “So how come he didn’t throw your ass in jail?” He rattled the carton of matches.

  “’Cause I got a dead mom.” I struck a match; the wind sucked the flame right off. “How the fuck do you light this?”

  “So that’s it, you got off?” He took the cigarette, tunneled his hands on it, and passed it back, the tip glowing like an eye.

  I sucked the smoke and all the noise inside me went still. “Judge said graduate high school or join up.”

  “The Army?”

  “I guess.”

  Pete laughed. “Private fucking Jackson! Those Japs would shoot holes in you and use you for pussy.”

  “Fuck you, man. And it’s the Vietnamese.”

  “Same thing.” Pete danced his feet on the stand. “That’s hilarious!”

  I threw my cigarette into the wind. “Your dad got you good this time.”

  This settled him down. “Thinks I been hanging out with you too much,” he said. “Won’t believe I had nothing to do with Old Ted’s.”

  “You’re lucky you got away, you son of a bitch.”

  Pete pulled a big slack grin. “That’s what getaway drivers do, brother.”

  The next day Jeannie came by holding Charlie and a banana cream pie.

  “I’m so tired, I thought we could just eat this,” she said.

  “He doesn’t look all that delicious,” said my dad, creeping his fingers under Charlie’s chin. Charlie laugh-cried and dived into Jeannie’s shoulder.

  “How are you doing, Kip?” asked Jeannie, setting Charlie down; he squeezeboxed to the ground and screamed.

  “We expected you there yesterday,” said my dad, looking at her with his slow reptile eyes.

  “I had to see the doctor,” said Jeannie, and padded into the kitchen. I could tell this was bullshit, and my dad could too. He smacked his tongue in his mouth and sneaked a taffy from his pocket. “Here,” he whispered. Charlie cut the yelling, gave a crafty look, and let my dad peel him off the floor. I went after Jeannie. “Anybody ever think about shopping for groceries?” she wondered aloud, pulling her head from the refrigerator. She saw me watching her and put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m glad it worked out, Kip,” she said.

  After the pie, my dad set about scrubbing the place and Charlie got wild, throwing everything he could get his claws on.

  “He’s getting stir-crazy all cooped up in here,” said Jeannie, catching him in her arms. He wrestled like a caught skunk.

  “So take him out,” said my dad. He had that look about him, that all-of-a-sudden saggy look, like someone had snuck up and unzipped him at the back. Next thing it would be the Frankie Laine records and the long, bone-shaking sighs that rolled all the way up from his feet and blew all the daylight out of the room.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said.

  We took Charlie to the playground near the beach, the one where Bobby broke his leg playing kickball and Debra Davis once hawked Frenchies for a nickel. The place had shrunk, and all those snot-nosed kids that came after us had stamped all the grass out of the ground. A couple middle schoolers looped their Schwinns like they owned the place. Jeannie dragged Charlie out of his stroller and he staggered toward the slide like a drunk to a bar.

  “Here we are.” Jeannie plunked Charlie at the top of the slide and down he came. “Again,” he cried. A dozen slides in and I started to think that we might just be stuck there till the world stopped turning.

  “Damn, this is boring.”

  Jeannie slid me a look. “You doing all right, Kip?”

  “I guess.”

  Charlie headed for the tire swing.

  “How’s Daddy doing?”

  “Still mad as hell.”

  “He’s just worried about you. You better stay out of trouble and graduate.”

  There it was again, the story that I would settle down all nice and good and do my homework and get my diploma; that I would sit down every night for the next four hundred nights to a TV dinner in our dark-funk living room, just me and my sad old dad, watching happy families on TV, hoping-please-God that one day somebody would throw me a job loading boats in Oakland, so I could scratch some dollars and buy an apartment and fill it with some sick-hearted bullshit of my own.

  “Judge said I could join the military instead,” I said.

  “Mmmm?” Jeannie balanced Charlie on the swing; he heel-drummed the rubber.

  I wanted to make her look my way, make her fucking see me. “I was thinking I might join up.”

  This got her. “You don’t want to finish high school?” She moved her green eyes over me, and I thought on it, thought on the Spam stink of the homeroom and the sophomores whispering at their lockers, the sticky hallways and the fucking cafeteria. “The country needs men like me,” I told her.

  Jeannie turned her head to cough and when she looked back, she had that smile-squashing face that used to get her in trouble with Mom. An all-grown, rich-living doctor’s wife now, but she could still be a real bitch sometimes, still treated me like I was some thirteen-year-old shrimp with a cracked voice and a pathetic comic-book habit.

  “You can be real fucking stuck-up, you know that?” I told her.

  She frowned. “You’re serious? About joining up?”

  I shrugged.

  “Fast!” yelled Charlie.

  Jeannie gripped Charlie’s waist as she swung him; he pinched at her hands. “What does Daddy say?”

  “Haven’t talked to him about it.”

  Jeannie screwed up her eyes like I was standing all the way at the back of California; like she was really seeing me. Then she blinked, and the connection was lost. “I don’t know,” she said. She sighed. “Charlie, stop wriggling.”

  I wanted her back. “You heard about that kid from Lincoln High?” I said. “Got blown to pieces. They just sent his foot back in a casket.”

  But she was watching Charlie, who was bitching and squirming in her hands. “I’ve got to hold on to you, Charlie.” Something flew across her face—frustration or weariness or who-the-hell-knows—and then vanished, her expression smooth as a stone again. When I was a kid, I was real good at seeing those wisps that rose up from that great big fire inside her. I used to call them her smoke signals. “It’s a big decision,” she said, all flat and quiet.

  “Let go!” yelled Charlie, and Jeannie paused and moved her hands away. But the dumb kid was still kicking and raging and managed to boot himself right off the tire, headfirst into the grit. His face spilled into a scream that wouldn’t come. “Shit,” said Jeannie.

  And then it came, yanking a dozen heads our way. Jeannie took him and shushed and bounced. Spots of blood steamed through the back of his shirt and his hair was flicked with stones.

  I lifted his shirt. A graze skimmed the white meat of his back. “He’s all right,” I told her.

  Jeannie stroked his hair till he was quiet again, then blew a raspberry into his neck to force a smile. She lowered Charlie back into his stroller, letting her hair fall over her face like she was ashamed. She slipped a piece of candy into his mouth and frowned. “You’re grown now, Kip,” she said, all uptight. “I can’t do everything for you anymore.”

  This pissed me off, and I took off to the beach, hoping and unhoping I’d find Pete there, watching girls. But it was just more stupid moms and kids, and seagulls creeping over the sand. When I got back home, the place felt empty—Jeannie and Charlie had gone. I went to my room and lay down, listening to the ocean breathing its spit, and the crickets rubbing their legs, and my dad’s radio crackling news. I must have dropped dead asleep because next thing I knew I was drool-
soaked and rotten-breathed and the sun had gone.

  And there it was again—a scuff and a scratch and something that sure as hell sounded like crying.

  When I was a kid, Uncle Paulie would come by every Sunday night and get happy on his rotgut hooch and do my dad’s confessing for him. Dark salty yarns about my dad’s wartime days: how a sneeze dodged his head from a mortar shell; platoons disappearing in smoke-bursts; dead blanketed Marines covering the ground like pinecones. A place that stank of farts, where the ash got into your skin-creases and made you look a thousand years old. My dad would sit in the easy chair, belly slopping over his pants like he’d swallowed up all his secrets and it had made him fat. He wouldn’t say a word, just sat and drank and let that slow straight-line smile run across his face all the way till it spilled into a scowl and he told Uncle Paulie it was time for him to leave.

  But that was before everything that happened.

  The back door was open; I tipped my head out, but there was nobody. I was sliding the door closed when I saw a trail of smoke. There was my dad, sneaked up against the wall, holding on to himself like if he let go he might clean unravel. His grungy old bathrobe swamped off him and his hair was all frazzled up like he was wearing a question mark on his head. I ducked my head, but it was too late.

  “Kip,” he said, and his voice was all dusty.

  “I’m going to bed,” I told him.

  But he was moving closer, arms wide like Jesus at the feast.

  “Kip.” I thought about sliding that door shut and leaving him there to preach at his own reflection. “Come outside.” His eyes bulged red.

  I stepped out and then he was trying to fucking hug me, dragging me into his stink of skin and breath, and all I could think of was the last time he did this, which was when they put my mom into the ground.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” he said, clamping my shoulders. He still had some kind of Devil-strength in his fingers.

  “I’m okay, Dad. Just tired.”

  “You got your whole life waiting for you.”

  “Right.”

  “I always wanted to go to college.”