The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin'

by Lamb, Wally

  I reeled in my line. Cast out as far as I could. Man, I was wasted.

  “You ever have a guy hit on you?” Leo said.

  “What?”

  “A queer. Did a queer ever try and pick you up?”

  “Man, Leo, would you get off it about queers?”

  “Did you, though?”

  “No. Why? Did you?”

  “Nah. Not really. . . . Just this old guy once. Down at the beach. He came up to my blanket and asked me if I wanted to take a walk with him and let him give me a hum job.”

  I looked over at his dope-glazed eyes. “And what’d you say?”

  “I told him no. That I was saving myself for you, Birdseed. Hey, you know what? Maybe you and me and Ralph and Dell can go on a double date sometime.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Maybe Dell’s one. But not Ralph.”

  “You mark my words, Birdsey. Believe me.”

  “Why? What makes you such a big expert?”

  “Well, for one thing, I’m a theater major, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah? So? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Because there are a lot of fags in theater. There’s tons of ’em. You know that professor I was talking about before? The Shakespeare teacher? He’s one.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “And how do you know that? He announce it in class one day?”

  Leo reeled in his line. “This is hopeless,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “No. Answer the question,” I said. “You tell me your teacher’s a homo. You tell me you’re an expert about it. I’d just like to know how you know.”

  “I just do, that’s all.” I sat there, watching him unhook his lure. As wrecked as I was, the operation was totally interesting to me.

  “Because the guy kissed me once. Okay?” I looked from Leo’s fingers to his face.

  “He kissed you? Some professor kissed you? That’s bullshit, Leo.”

  “Why would I bullshit about that?” he said. “You think I go around—”

  “Whereabouts? In class? Up on the stage?”

  “At his apartment.”

  “His apartment?” I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “What were you doing at the guy’s apartment?”

  “It’s not like I went over there by myself,” he said. “There was a bunch of us went over there.” He chugged the last of the wine. Flung the bottle against a ledge. We both paused for the satisfaction—the sound of smashing glass. “He had this cookout thing at his place at the end of the semester. For the whole class. He’d bought all this food and wine and shit, but then only about six or seven of us showed up. I got wasted—I mean, the guy had bought enough stuff for about twenty people—and before you know it . . . I don’t know. I was the last one there. Me and him. . . . And he just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “I told you already. He kissed me.”

  I sat there.

  “It wasn’t that big a deal, Dominick. You don’t have to look at me like that. He just did it, and then the two of us laughed a little, and I said thanks but no thanks, and he said fine, fine, he was just—how did he put it?—he was giving me an option I could exercise if I felt like it. And that was that.”

  “That’s weird,” I said.

  “Why?” he said. “What’s so weird about it? It’s different in theater. . . . Hey, I swear to Christ, Birdsey, if you ever tell anyone about—”

  “I just can’t believe some teacher would just—”

  “That’s because you’re so fucking naive,” he said. “You were brought up in this one-horse town. You never been anywhere, man. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  I stood up, reeling a little from the dope, and followed Leo down the path.

  Back in the car, we decided to smoke the second joint. Leo lit the thing up and passed it over.

  I was just sitting there, thinking. “It happened to my brother one time,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Thomas. This gay guy started coming on to him once while he was hitchhiking. He was . . . he told me about it.”

  “Told you about what?” Leo said. He was wasted.

  “This . . . this guy in a station wagon pulled over. He had out-of-state plates. Michigan, I think he said. . . . And he . . . Thomas said he looked like somebody’s grandfather, this guy—white hair, one of those old-man sweaters with the patches on the sleeves, all these family snapshots magnetized to the dashboard. So he . . . he gets in the car and . . .” Leo looked so stoned, I couldn’t tell if anything was registering. If he was even listening. “And the guy says how he’s visiting his daughter and her family. How he’d just decided to go out and take a drive. Says he’s lonely. So . . . so they’re riding along. Thomas and him. He just seemed like some friendly old guy. And then, out of the blue, he says, ‘You know what? You’re a good-looking son of a gun. Why don’t I find someplace and pull over so the two of us can get to know each other a little better?’ He said he’d pay him twenty bucks to . . .”

  I sat there, remembering. That guy’s hands groping me, petting me like an animal. His not listening when I told him to stop.

  “Dominick, stop it! You’re scaring me!” I heard Dessa say, and floated back to the Dial-Tone parking lot the night before. “Stop it! Stop it!” I told myself it wasn’t the same thing at all: the way that old pervert had scared me in that car, on that road, and the way I’d scared Dessa the night before. How were those two things anything alike?

  “And then what?” Leo said.

  “Huh? What’d you say?”

  “He told your brother he’d pay him twenty bucks and then what?”

  I looked over at Leo. Why were there gray pants at the driver’s side window?

  “Evening, gentlemen,” someone said.

  Leo jumped. Cursed. Tried, ridiculously, to shove the joint under his seat. I was so out of it, I didn’t get it at first. The officer asked to see Leo’s license and registration.

  “My partner and I have been observing you two gentlemen and we have probable cause to believe you may be in possession of an illegal substance.” A car door slammed. A cruiser door. In my sideview mirror, I saw the other cop approach us.

  Oh, fuck, I thought. We were royally fucked now.

  “We’re going to have to search your vehicle,” the first cop said. “Would you gentlemen please get out of the car and stand over here please?”

  “Absolutely, officer,” Leo said. “However my friend and I can be of assistance.”

  23

  1969

  When my stepfather warned me not to trust the Leo Bloods of the world any further than I could throw them, I dismissed the advice as Ray’s usual warm view of humanity. But that night, in the interrogation room of the Connecticut State Police Department, Barracks J, I saw what he meant.

  Within the first minute of their examination of Leo’s Skylark out at the trestle bridge, Officers Avery and Overcash had discovered both the unsmoked joint and the burning one that Leo had chucked under the seat. “Hey, how’d that get in there?” Leo asked stupidly about the smoldering roach. “Birdsey, you know anything about this?”

  They drove us to the station in the cruiser, explaining that they’d have Leo’s car towed back there, too. Riding through downtown Three Rivers, I slumped low and listed all the things our little fishing trip was probably going to cost me: my girlfriend, my tuition loan from Ray, my future teaching career. What school was going to hire a teacher with a drug charge on his record? I’d probably end up in Nam in a body bag after all. Stupid, I kept saying to myself. Stupid, stupid.

  At the station, they had us sit on wooden benches with the other losers and lawbreakers they’d netted that night: an old immigrant guy who’d shot his neighbor’s dog, a speed freak who’d head-butted his arresting officer. They wouldn’t let Leo and me sit together. They parked him across the room and me next to this real scuzzed-out woman who was so loaded, she didn’t even realize that the crotch of her pantyhose was hanging below her dress. She kept m
umbling about some guy named Buddy. Behind me and Crotch Lady, a noisy air conditioner pushed out a nonstop column of damp breeze. I was scared. I was freezing. I had to take a leak.

  Leo stretched, got up, and strolled over to the water fountain: Mr. Nonchalance. Did I look as stoned as he did? It dawned on me that my brother had been right when he’d told me we weren’t fooling anyone at work—that anybody could just look at us and tell we’d been smoking weed on the job. Hanging around with Leo was going to get me in trouble, Thomas had warned me, and here I was at the goddamned police barracks. Stupid asshole, I thought. Loser. Jerk.

  Passing by, Leo stopped in front of me and squatted. Untying and then retying his shoe, he said something ventriloquist-style which I couldn’t catch because of the noise from the air conditioner and because of Crotch Lady’s mumbling. “What?” I whispered.

  “I said, when we go in there, let me do the talking. Agree with whatever I say.”

  “Why?” I whispered. “What are you going to say?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m still thinking. Just back me up.”

  “Do you know a guy named Buddy Paquette?” Crotch Lady asked Leo.

  “What? Yeah, sure,” Leo said. “Buddy and I go way back.”

  “Did he ever mention me?”

  “You? What’s your name?”

  “Marie. Marie Skeets.”

  “Oh, yeah. Marie Skeets. He mentioned you plenty of times.” The cop at the front desk yelled at Leo to go sit down.

  This was the catch: they questioned Leo and me separately. He went first. How was I supposed to corroborate whatever bullshit story he’d cooked up when I didn’t even know what it was? A headache had begun to gnaw at the edges of the buzz I’d been enjoying out at the bridge. When I got up and asked the desk sergeant if I could use the bathroom, he told me to wait and ask the officers who’d be talking to me.

  “How does that guy know Buddy?” Crotch Lady asked me.

  “He doesn’t,” I said.

  “He said he did.”

  “Well, he doesn’t. Not that I know of, anyway.”

  “Oh. It’s chilly in here, ain’t it?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is it January?”

  I told her no—that it was August. Late August.

  “Oh,” she said. “Got any gum?”

  Half an hour later, I passed Leo in the hallway. He looked panicked—tried mouthing something I didn’t catch. “This door here,” Officer Overcash said.

  I got my wish: a visit to a cracked toilet in an adjoining bathroom/supply closet just off the interrogation room. The only thing was, I had to keep the door open. Had to have Officer Avery stand there while I took a wiz, aiming a sample into this plastic cup about the size of a shot glass. At first, in my nervousness, I got “stage fright.” Avery and I waited and waited. Then, when I finally got past that little problem, I managed to piss all over my jeans and onto the floor. I cleaned it up with paper towels, apologizing like I’d just committed murder.

  When we stepped back into the interrogation room, another cop was sitting at this enamel-topped table. He told me his name was Captain Balchunas and that I should have a seat. Balchunas was older than Avery and Overcash—grayish crewcut, red face, Santa Claus twinkle in his eye. I sat down, folding my arms across my chest. The enamel had worn off the tabletop at the exact points where I rested my elbows.

  They’d decided not to bother with the formality of a tape recorder, Balchunas said. Avery and Overcash sat on either side of him, a pair of stone-faced bookends. Overcash took out a pen and a legal pad. Did I have any questions before they started?

  “Should I . . . do I need a lawyer or anything?” I said.

  “For what?” Captain Balchunas asked. “You a bigtime drug lord or something?”

  “No. I just—”

  “You think these officers and I are going to step on your rights? Is that it? You one of those kids who thinks all cops are fascist pigs?” He was smiling as he said it.

  “No.”

  “What is it then?” He gave my paperwork a quick scan. “Tell me why you think you need a lawyer, Dom.”

  “I just . . . Never mind. Go ahead.”

  “See, what we’re thinking is, if you cooperate with us the way your buddy just did, we can streamline this process. Probably be able to get you out of here before a lawyer even had time to get in his car and get down here. See what I’m saying?”

  I didn’t really see, but it sounded good. I nodded.

  Captain Balchunas said he noticed I lived on Hollyhock Avenue. When he was a kid, he said, he used to hike up that road on his way to Rosemark’s Pond. He and his brothers used to catch snapping turtles up there. “That pond was lousy with them—ornery sons of bitches,” he said. “Some good-sized ones, too. You’d poke a stick at them and they’d latch on for dear life. Break a good-sized branch in half sometimes, neat as a pair of lopping shears.” He grabbed Officer Overcash’s pen and stuck it in his mouth, imitating the way the snapping turtle bit the stick. He had those really fake-looking false teeth—those grayish-green jobs. It struck me kind of funny, in spite of my nervousness. Or because of it, maybe: him chomping on that pen, shaking it back and forth, his jowls flapping. There was a tingling in my toes and fingertips. I was maybe 25 percent still stoned.

  Balchunas stopped. Stared at me. Kept staring. “Why you shaking, Dom?” he asked. I looked over at Officer Avery. Shrugged. I was a little nervous, I told him.

  “Nervous? Yeah?” He said they’d done a preliminary check on me and that my record was clean as a whistle. “Everyone makes mistakes, Dom,” he said. “Has lapses in judgment. You just talk straight with us and we’ll talk straight with you. All right?”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Because your buddy Leon—he was very candid with us just now, and we were equally candid with him. And things went well. Didn’t they, fellas?”

  Very well, the other two agreed. I recalled the look on Leo’s face in the hallway a few minutes before. If he’d been so candid and straight with them, why was he trying so hard to tell me something?

  “Leon says he and you are both in college, right?” Balchunas said. “Gonna be roommates this coming year? Up at the university?”

  “Yes.”

  “You ever have to do any research, Dom? For any of your college courses? Do some research on a subject, and then write a paper about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s what this is like, see? These officers and I are just doing some research, that’s all. You see, Dom, you might need a lawyer if protecting your rights was an issue. Which isn’t really applicable in this ‘sitchy-ation.’ At least we don’t think it is. That urine we took on you isn’t going to show us any surprises, is it?”

  “Surprises?”

  “Like that you’re a heroin addict or an LSD freak or something?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s good. Cryst-o-mint?”

  A blur waved in front of my face. A roll of Life Savers. “Uh, no . . . no thanks.”

  “No? You sure? Gee, your buddy Leon had three or four of these things. Said he had dry mouth. I guess being stoned affects different people different, right? One guy gets dry mouth, the other doesn’t. Course, he talks a lot, too, that pal of yours. He’s got quite the gift of gab.”

  I sat there. Said nothing. The less I said, the less likely I’d be to contradict whatever Leo had told them.

  “Jesus Christ, Dom, you’re shaking like a leaf,” Balchunas said. “What’s the matter? You got Saint Vitus’ dance or something? We scaring you?”

  Trying not to shake with them looking at me was futile. “I’m just . . . I’m all right.”

  “Well, just relax. I could be wrong, Dom, but I don’t think you’re going to get the chair on this one.” He said it deadpan, then smiled.

  I smiled back.

  He popped himself a Life Saver.

  “Gave up smoking three weeks ago, and I been sucking on thes
e things ever since,” he said. “I was a two-and-a-half-packs-a-day man. How about you, Dom? You smoke?”

  I looked over at Officer Avery. Looked back. Didn’t answer.

  “Tobacco, I mean? Cigarettes?”

  I shook my head.

  “No? Good. Take my advice and don’t start. I quit over two weeks ago and I’m still bringing up phlegm.”

  “Um . . . are you . . . are you going to arrest us?”

  “Who? You guys? You and Leon? Well, let’s put it this way. We’re going to try not to. See, frankly, Dom, you and your buddy are more trouble than you’re worth. Couple of gnats on the windshield, you know? To us, I mean. To the justice system. Not, I’m sure, to your parents. Or your girlfriend. You got a girlfriend, Dom?”

  “Yes, sir.” Had one, anyway, before this weird weekend. I saw Dessa, beneath me on the backseat of her mother’s car. Punching me, pushing me away.

  “I bet you do. Good-looking fella like you. She pretty?”

  What did he care? What did Dessa have to do with anything?

  “Yes.”

  “Hell, I bet she is.” He leaned forward and smiled. “She big-busted, Dom? You get to bury your face in some good-sized tittie, do you?”

  I looked over at Officer Avery. No expression. “Uh . . .”

  “None of my business, right? Okay, Dom. I withdraw the question. Consider it withdrawn. I envy you young guys these days, though. All this ‘sexual revolution’ stuff I read about in the papers. When I was your age, a guy used to have to stand on his head and spit nickels just to cop a feel, and nowadays you young fellas say, ‘Open your legs up,’ and all she wants to know is, ‘How wide, honey?’ Right, Dom?”

  I told myself he was just trying to piss me off—get me mad enough to incriminate myself. If I said I wanted a lawyer, didn’t they have to let me call one? Except getting a lawyer probably meant having to call Ma and Ray. Shit, if Ray found out . . .