by Chris Lynch
“Wow” was all Jerome could say. I had to turn to give him a look, to find out if he was for real, or if he was zooming me. He was for real. Every idea I had, he was wowing all over it.
“Do you need any help? Like, an assistant or something?”
I thought about it. “No.”
Seemed like he was going to cry after that. But he didn’t, thank god, because I would have had to get physical with him if he did. But also, he didn’t seem to register what I said, because he started showing up at Lars’s every day even though I never invited him and we can safely assume that Lars didn’t either. He didn’t bother me, much, so I didn’t kick him out.
“This is probably about the best clubhouse a guy ever had,” Jerome piped one day. He’d been coming for two weeks by then and, being a bright kid, had probably noticed that we were doing a lot more hanging around than auto restoration.
This was actually the first time the idea of the Club ever came up. “What clubhouse?” I said. “This is an automobile. It ain’t no club.”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that, well, it doesn’t move, and I think the ‘mobile’ part of automobile means—”
“Don’t make me come over there, Jerome,” I said, even though “over there” was only the width of the car’s hood.
Jerome clammed up. Which was sneaky. This is the thing with Jerome, the way you tell him not to come over and he shows up anyway and you let him; and you tell him this is not a club and he shuts up like he believes you but really he’s just waiting for you to sort of start thinking more like he’s thinking. I don’t know how he does that.
“So, if it was a club,” I said, in my large leadership voice, “what would be the point?”
“Well…ah…we could hang out. Guys like us, you know, like, individuals, guys, who don’t belong to any other clubs or anything. Guys who go their own way, who aren’t like anybody else. But at the same time, guys who might want, or need, to have a crew of guys like themselves. To back them up, to…”
“To be bigger than just one guy alone,” I joined in. I had to admit, he had me thinking. And he knew he had me thinking, because then he came in for the kill.
“Guys like me,” Jerome gushed, “who want to be like you!”
Sometimes you can hear something like that, that sounds so plainly like a crock.
And then, a crock doesn’t sound so bad.
“Like me?” I bit. “Like, what do you mean, like me? Like what?”
“Like…I don’t know, like a kind of a guy, like a real guy, like…”
“Like a Johnny Chesthair kind of a guy,” I was happy to offer.
“Yes!” Jerome said. “Exactly.”
So I bought in. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to hang out with a lot of guys who thought and acted like me. Men with a common goal, and a noble purpose.
And who would do whatever I told them to.
3.
More Troops
“I QUIT,” JEROME SAID for the fiftieth time.
“I’m not chasing you anymore, Jerome,” I said for the fiftieth time. “You want to go, go.”
He went. I waited. I heard the door shut. I went after him for the fiftieth time.
“What’s the problem now?” I asked as we walked our regular, Jerome’s-quitting route. Down the parkway, through the glacier hole, alongside the pond where the winter ice was finally breaking up, and down to the arched stone bridge that crossed the nearly dry river.
“I need to do something. This club is dead…all we do is lie around.”
“See, Jerome, that’s where you’re such a rookie. We’re not lying around…we’re hanging out. That’s a very club thing to do. There’s really a lot going on beneath the surface when we’re there, together, hanging out. Important stuff.”
“I want more, Steven. I need more. More man stuff.”
Jerome and I assumed thinking position—draped over the cold stone wall of the bridge, heads over the side and aimed down at the riverbed below, making our heads spin with stalled blood.
“Want to kill somebody?” I asked, to lighten the mood.
“No, I’m serious. You have your car, which is great, and your thirty-nine chest hairs and everything…you’re a complete, total guy.”
Well, I certainly wasn’t going to contradict him.
“Total,” he said.
“Total,” I said.
“Total,” Jerome added. The upside-down blood thing makes us a little slow. “But I need something else. Steven…” Here he got all very serious on me, which I don’t much like but is pretty hard to avoid with Jerome. “I mean this, I need help. You understand me? I need more. I need to get more man stuff in me or out of me, or however it works. That’s what I got into this club for. You’ve been given a gift, Steven—the ability to get the most immense pleasure out of the stupidest little rituals. Share that gift with me.
“Teach me to be a real guy, Steven. I’m desperate. I don’t know how—all right?—and I’m worried about myself.”
I looked at him, the two of us hanging there like a couple of exhausted bats. He stared right into my brain, so I looked away. Can’t have another guy seeing into your brain. Especially one who’s worried about himself.
“What’s the manliest thing?” Jerome asked.
“Sorry, man. This is a no-girls club. I told you….”
“What’s the next manliest thing?”
“Guns.”
“Hmmmm?” Jerome said, apparently thinking that one over seriously.
“Let me interrupt before you get too out of hand,” I said. “First is having the gun, but then the big manly thing is, you have to use it. Starting with bottles and cans, I suppose, then little animals, then big animals, then…people. If you want to get full, badder-than-the-next-guy man points, you gotta eventually put the gun to work.”
“Oh.” He seemed to be slowing down, but the idea was still not quite dead.
“Okay, Jerome, so then, assuming you have killed a guy—a big, mean guy, somebody from downtown, let’s say, and who was probably pretty close to splattering your brains first—”
“I don’t like this story anymore.”
“Shaddup. Let’s say you achieved all that and in the end you award yourself the thirty-nine-hairs medal of honor. You know what happens then? They put you in jail, and in there…from what I understand, the whole manliness process gets turned completely around all over again.”
Jerome’s face went from upside-down-blood red to greenish-purplish.
“Fine,” he sighed. “What’s the next manliest thing?”
“Easy. Football.”
“Forget it, I’d rather do the gun-and-jail thing. But I think you have something there. Sports. That’s what I need. Steven, you’re an athlete, you know. Help me. Help me get into a sport. What should I do? How do I start? What will it do for me? This is it, right? This is the solution. I will make myself be a…sports…type…person.”
“Ah, ya. Right,” I answered, trying not to sound the way I felt. How I felt was, he might as well have asked, Steven, please go back to the garage and build me a spacecraft so I can link up with the Star Trek gang by the weekend, okay?
“Well, ah, Jerome, um, what sports do you like, for starters?”
“None of ’em!” he said proudly. “But that’s not the point. I’m on a mission. I have no need to enjoy it.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good,” I said. “That’s helpful. I think we can come up with something you won’t enjoy.”
He slapped his hands together loudly, like dinner was being served right there over the side of the bridge.
“But let me sleep on this,” I said. “I need to give it some…” I stopped. “Jerome, did you hear something?”
Jerome was preoccupied, swiping at the air below, and punching his little fists on the stone of the bridge. As if we had decided on boxing as the life for him. Not.
“I think I heard someth—”
I’ll be darned if I wasn’t right about that. For
, just then, several hands grabbed our feet and legs and—heave-ho—we were dropped like dead Mafia guys over the side of the bridge. With a half-splash, half-crunch—the melty ice water was only two feet deep at the deepest part—we landed flat on our backs. Under the six-foot-high bridge. Like a couple of trolls.
There definitely were laughing voices trailing off down the road as we stood there mucking off.
High, frivolous, no-rules-type evil laughing voices.
“I wish I had a buck for every time I had this dream,” Jerome said calmly, shaking himself off like a dog.
“In yours,” I asked, “are there always girls’ voices laughing at you in the background?”
“How did you know that?”
“Never mind,” I answered, helping him up the bank. “What we need, Jerome, is numbers. Bulk. Men. We need more troops.”
4.
Wolfgang on Wheels
“SING ME A CHRISTMAS song.”
“I don’t know any Christmas songs, Dad.”
“Don’t be stupid. Everybody knows at least ten Christmas songs. Sing me a Christmas song, Swimmer.”
Swimmer was his nickname for me. It was not a compliment.
“Okay, I do, I know exactly two Christmas songs. Do you want to hear ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ or ‘Happy Happy, Joy Joy’ by Ren and Stimpy?”
The old man was stumped. “I never heard of that one. Sounds nice. Do the happy joy one.”
Hah. He went for it. So, with all my might, I tore into the song. “Happy happy, joy joy, happy happy, joy joy…” I screeched, and after I’d sung all two of the lyrics thirty thousand times, he got up from the breakfast table, smacked me on the back of the head, and headed out the back door.
He did that a lot, the smacking. Not abusive stuff. I wouldn’t ever try and say I was an abused kid. I read Globe Santa, about the six brothers under the age of twelve who got punched around by eight different fathers and only wanted one G.I. Joe doll to share for Christmas, so I know what’s a bad-news life and what’s not. So I know mine’s not, and that’s why you’ll never catch me bellyaching about my life. No, sir, you won’t hear me bellyaching.
He’d really bop me, if he caught me bellyaching.
The cuffing from my old man is just communication anyway, not abuse. Communication, not abuse. He’s just reminding me who’s boss, who calls the shots, who’s the man, and how that gets decided.
As if I couldn’t figure it out without the cuffings.
But enough about me. We’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about the club.
Jerome had been out scouting since we got dumped in the river by our rivals. He was all excited about this one guy who lived halfway across town, in an area where I didn’t even think they had houses, just hospitals and warehouses and fingernail salons. A cold and rough part of town.
“Jerome, where are you taking me?”
“I told you. To meet somebody. Somebody for the club. He’s somebody who could really use you. As a matter of fact, he reminds me a lot of you.”
“Cool, then, I like him. But if he reminds you of me, why does he need to learn to be like me?”
“He’s got…some weaknesses.”
“Weaknesses.”
“Weaknesses.”
“What’s Mr. Weakness’s name?”
“His name…is Wolfie.”
“Wolfie. He reminds you of me, and his name is Wolfie? How do you know Wolfie?”
“We were in frrdemurfurferapee together.” His voice trailed badly toward the end there.
“What? You were in what?”
He got very calm, pronounced his words softly and clearly. The kind of thing you can only do when you’re trying really hard.
“Therapy. We were in a group therapy thing together. It was something the schools organized to get boys who couldn’t—”
I held up my hands. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what you couldn’t do, Jerome, okay? This here, this He-Man, Johnny Chesthair Club…this is going to have to be, like, anti-therapy, because I can’t be hearing anybody’s stuff, okay? Our rule is going to be: You got a problem? Get over it.”
“I’m over it,” Jerome said grimly.
“Good. So that’s settled forever. What’s Wolfie’s real name?”
“Far as I know, it’s Wolfie.”
I thought about the possibilities as we approached the cold brick box of a building. The possibilities seemed bleak.
“We’re going to have to collect dues in this club, I think. I’m going to need to get paid for this job.”
He wasn’t listening; he was marching. I followed along as Jerome stepped lively up the ramp that zigged back and forth and back up toward the front entrance of the official, public-looking building that had no name. He pushed through the glass entrance and walked up to the tall, severe lady at the tall front desk.
“Jail, Jerome? You’re taking me to meet a juvie jail kid? To join our fine, clean, American organization?”
Ignoring me, Jerome inquired at the desk.
“He’s not here now,” the woman said.
“Okay. Where is he, then?”
“He is allowed to come and go as he pleases…within reason.”
We both waited on that, since she sounded like she was going to finish up with an actual answer to Jerome’s question. But no, that was it.
“So, lady,” I blurted, shouldering Jerome out of the way. “Where did Wolfie boy come and go to this morning?”
She looked to me like a famous wicked woman, but I couldn’t place her. Her hands were long and spidery; her gray-blond hair was long and spidery. I imagined her legs back there were long and spidery too, as she stretched herself up even taller and looked way, way down on me.
“So what?” I said. “So you’re taller than me.”
I thought I must have looked pretty imposing right then, feeling my scowl bring her down to my size. But instead of withering, she brought her hand to her mouth, and laughed. At me, apparently.
Tittering, is what you would call it. Stuff only women do. I hate it when they do that. Why do they do that to me?
“I believe he’s at the V.R.,” she answered finally.
When we were outside, I tried bringing Jerome up to speed, filling him in on the wickedness. He didn’t get it, though.
“Really? I thought she was kind of helpful,” he said. “I guess I must’ve missed the part where she was nasty.”
“Jeez, Jerome, you are such a rookie,” I said.
The V.R. was a place mostly older, techno-nerdy types hung out, but for the few younger guys who paid attention, it was the graphic leap for when regular video games didn’t flick your Bic anymore. The place was actually called “Virtual Life and Death,” and specialized in team assaults, space explorations, and BattleTechs into oblivion that you couldn’t even play if five other guys didn’t want to play with you. They had these maze hallways, private cubbies, posters and video screens and gear hanging off the walls, all tied in to the latest, up-to-the-nanosecond, blow-out-the-eyeballs versions of Virtual Reality thrill kill. And they had a really nice lounge area.
That’s where we found Wolfie.
“Wolfgang is my name,” he howled at me, like an actual wolf-boy.
“Sorry,” Jerome said. “I’ve been calling you Wolfie all this time, so I told Steven—”
“You can call me Wolfie,” he said to Jerome. “But you call me Wolfgang.”
“Fine,” I said, struggling to remain cool. “Fine, then I’ll just—”
“Wolfbang, instead.”
“Huh?”
“Wolfbang. I like the sound of that better. Just made it up. It fits me better, I think. Wolfbang!”
I turned slightly to grab a look at Jerome’s face. Jerome was smiling, very friendly, at this mean and loud kid. Jerome, it seemed, could like anybody.
“You got a club, huh? I hear you got a club?” Wolfbang asked. “And you came to beg me to be in it.”
I looked at Jerome again.
He would not look at me, and would not remove the smile. First chance I got, I was gonna remove that smile, boy….
“What are you looking at him for?” Wolfbang demanded. “I’m the guy who asked you the question.”
“Oh,” I said, startled. “Sorry.”
Who was this fool? Who was this measly-weasly chump? These were the questions running through my head, but I was asking them not about Wolfwhatever, I was asking them about Steven. Why was I taking this crap from him?
Maybe it was the wheels. He was on wheels. Big wheels. Wheelchair wheels. Wolfgang on Wheels.
So the long black hair slicked and combed straight back, swept-back ears, and Vulcan V-shaped facial features, which made him look like he was always speeding past on a train with his head hanging out the window, didn’t even matter a whole lot.
“Keep it down, please,” the lounge keeper said. He was serving juice drinks and high-energy snacks from behind the counter. The style of the place was like a hunting lodge, warm and full of wood, only with video monitors strobing away where the animal heads would be mounted.
“And if you’re finished playing and you’re not buying anything, perhaps you should be moving along.”
“Hey,” Wolfbang snarled. “If I had the quarter, I’d be playing.”
“Get outta here, ya little con artist,” the man sneered. “You probably ain’t even a for-real crip.”
“Let me play on credit, or I’ll go out and start begging right in front of your store.”
“You little…”
This was getting awfully embarrassing. I pulled out the two quarters I had in my pocket and handed them to the kid.
He looked at the quarters in his palm, then up at me. “What do you want me to do with this, feed your parking meter for ya?”
“Hey,” I said. “I thought—”
“Quarter was just an expression. You wanna play in here, cost ya a fin.” He bounced one of the quarters off my forehead. Kept the other one.
